Zain's Guide to Overthinking Everything

The Paradox of Multiplicity in Divine Simplicity According to many Aristotelian philosophers, all bodies have the inseparable property of motion and it does not proceed from the nature of bodies themselves and thus motion demands an external source or a prime mover. The series of moving causes must stop at an immovable object that moves everything else to avoid an infinite regress of movers. This first mover is God. Since the transition from non-existence to existence is a form of motion and motion requires matter then God must be immaterial and eternal while all things created by it are material and in motion. God is free from matter and therefore is free from motion and therefore cannot change and therefore is pure act ( actus purus ) and also therefore God must be completely simple as God is not made of parts. Now the question is in regards to creation, how can the many be created by one or how can something like God who is completely simple create multiplicity or how can a single c...

Notes of the Overview of the Early Church Fathers: On the Trinity and Incarnation      In our exploration of early Christian thought, our focus is directed towards understanding the evolving perspectives on the Trinity and the Incarnation as articulated by influential figures within the Church such as Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Lyon, Tertullian, Origen of Alexandria, Athanasius, and others, thus providing a comprehensive understanding of the theological landscape that shaped Christianity during its nascent stages. While I cannot go over all the early church fathers since that would take up the length of the book, investigating these influential individuals who are mostly saints will have to suffice. This will also ignore early modalist theologians (who believed that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were one person and modes of God), gnostic theologians (who believed in many gods and that Jesus was not a human), and Jewish-christian th...

The Christology of The Gospel of John   Jesus in the Gospel of John (we shall continue to call him John, though we do not know who wrote this book and this essay is not on the historicity of the Gospel) is traditionally presented as equal to God the Father in status before coming in the world as read in his famous prologue, “In the beginning was the Word ( Logos ), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:1,14) At the same time, he is not identical to the Father as when he talks to God he is clearly not talking to himself. Yet when he leaves the world after his resurrection at the end of the Gospel, his glory will be restored by God to be as it was before his incarnation as being God’s logos as a preexistent divine being. However, is the standard narrative true about the logos being equal to the Father?...

Refuting Apostolic Succession: Unraveling the Threads of Early Christianity     Christians often defend theological doctrines such as the Trinity and the Incarnation through the idea of apostolic succession. This notion, claiming an unbroken line of authority of true teachings passed down from Jesus to the apostles to the early church and thus reaching us today even, has long been held as a cornerstone of many Christian denominations. However, delving into the annals of early Christian thought with a microscope, will this notion stand? Contrary to the commonly held notion of a universally accepted apostolic succession, we will highlight the diversity of thought within early Christianity that clearly paints those considered saints as unorthodox. This blog post will examine the writings of eminent church fathers such as Justin Martyr (c. 100–165 CE), Irenaeus (c. 130–202 CE), Tertullian (c. 155–220 CE), and Origen (c. 185–253 CE). In doing so, we will challenge the modern percep...