Matthew J Coté | Southern Evangelical Seminary (original) (raw)
Papers by Matthew J Coté
This response paper argues that John Frame unnecessarily dichotomizes the notions of Pure Being a... more This response paper argues that John Frame unnecessarily dichotomizes the notions of Pure Being and Divine Lordship as being incompatible and mutually exclusive. Further, this paper argues that Frame’s rejection of the classical position as a distortion of the biblical Gospel mixed with Greek philosophy is rooted in a presuppositional methodological adherence to the principle of sola Scriptura, which asserts that “Scripture alone is the ultimate authority for human thought.”
This paper serves as an analysis of Augustine’s position on the nature of evil and its relationsh... more This paper serves as an analysis of Augustine’s position on the nature of evil and its relationship to creation and the will of God. More specifically, Augustine’s notion of the beauty of the opposition of contraries will be evaluated as a viable theodicy in light of the nature of evil and God’s will.
Matthew J. Coté, 2024
The doctrine of analogy is of paramount importance in religious epistemology and philosophical th... more The doctrine of analogy is of paramount importance in religious epistemology and
philosophical theology; one which affects what is communicated about the knowledge of God. If
quidditative knowledge begins in the senses, and God is not directly part of sensible reality, it
follows that knowledge of God is not quidditative. Further, if the intellectual concept is a product
of abstracting quiddities from sensible reality, then it also follows that there is no quidditative
concept of God. Aquinas, following from this reasoning and leading into his demonstration of
God’s existence with his five ways, states that one can know that God is, but not what God is.
Given this, it seems to follow that when one is predicating of God, that such predications are not
ultimately a matter of any type of conceptualization through abstraction, but rather a matter of a
series of necessary metaphysical judgments rooted in negation, causality, and supereminence,
even though originally stemming from our knowledge of delimited acts of being in sensible
reality. It is contended that any predication of God that is not purified through this threefold way
ends up entailing a delimiting of the Simple Pure Act of Being Itself Subsisting, i.e., God.
This dissertation serves to more clearly identify and enunciate the problem of concepts in
relation to analogical predication of God, and reiterates a consistent method already proposed by
Aquinas, and found augmented in the works of Étienne Gilson, Joseph Owens, and Gregory
Rocca. In contrast, those views of predication of God that use or entail abstraction and
conceptualization without the necessary purification by the threefold way are shown to be both
inconsistent with an existential Thomistic metaphysic and philosophy of human nature, and bring
the implication that God’s being is not Qui Est, but rather a delimited being according to some
relation of act/potency and essence/existence according to human sensible experience.
This response paper argues that John Frame unnecessarily dichotomizes the notions of Pure Being a... more This response paper argues that John Frame unnecessarily dichotomizes the notions of Pure Being and Divine Lordship as being incompatible and mutually exclusive. Further, this paper argues that Frame’s rejection of the classical position as a distortion of the biblical Gospel mixed with Greek philosophy is rooted in a presuppositional methodological adherence to the principle of sola Scriptura, which asserts that “Scripture alone is the ultimate authority for human thought.”
This paper serves as an analysis of Augustine’s position on the nature of evil and its relationsh... more This paper serves as an analysis of Augustine’s position on the nature of evil and its relationship to creation and the will of God. More specifically, Augustine’s notion of the beauty of the opposition of contraries will be evaluated as a viable theodicy in light of the nature of evil and God’s will.
Matthew J. Coté, 2024
The doctrine of analogy is of paramount importance in religious epistemology and philosophical th... more The doctrine of analogy is of paramount importance in religious epistemology and
philosophical theology; one which affects what is communicated about the knowledge of God. If
quidditative knowledge begins in the senses, and God is not directly part of sensible reality, it
follows that knowledge of God is not quidditative. Further, if the intellectual concept is a product
of abstracting quiddities from sensible reality, then it also follows that there is no quidditative
concept of God. Aquinas, following from this reasoning and leading into his demonstration of
God’s existence with his five ways, states that one can know that God is, but not what God is.
Given this, it seems to follow that when one is predicating of God, that such predications are not
ultimately a matter of any type of conceptualization through abstraction, but rather a matter of a
series of necessary metaphysical judgments rooted in negation, causality, and supereminence,
even though originally stemming from our knowledge of delimited acts of being in sensible
reality. It is contended that any predication of God that is not purified through this threefold way
ends up entailing a delimiting of the Simple Pure Act of Being Itself Subsisting, i.e., God.
This dissertation serves to more clearly identify and enunciate the problem of concepts in
relation to analogical predication of God, and reiterates a consistent method already proposed by
Aquinas, and found augmented in the works of Étienne Gilson, Joseph Owens, and Gregory
Rocca. In contrast, those views of predication of God that use or entail abstraction and
conceptualization without the necessary purification by the threefold way are shown to be both
inconsistent with an existential Thomistic metaphysic and philosophy of human nature, and bring
the implication that God’s being is not Qui Est, but rather a delimited being according to some
relation of act/potency and essence/existence according to human sensible experience.