Voluntarism? Nominalism?

OUP: Political Theology of International Order by William Bain

Defenses and critiques of modern politics will ultimately come back to the choice between a metaphysics of inherent order or divine fiat, so which should we choose? https://t.co/lgv4xL7DN0

— Richard Reinsch (@Reinsch84) August 28, 2020

Theological Roots of the Secular World Order by Nathaniel Peters

Did people with power and influence really believe in legal voluntarism? Or were they just acting in accordance with their appetites? Is this sort of genealogy, putting the blame on late medieval theology/philosophy for "modernity" really still useful, in comparison with a proper study of history?

The Nominalist Bogeyman?

CWR: Negotiating grace, nature, freedom, autonomy: A conversation with Douglas Farrow
“The faith is handed down to us by the Church. We don’t get to invent it,” says the author of Theological Negotiations: Proposals in Soteriology and Anthropology. “But we do share in the task and responsibility of trying to understand it.”

Dr. Farrow: It takes me next to two very basic areas of dispute: the relation between justification and sanctification, in which Luther becomes my chief interlocutor, and the relation between “satisfaction” and punishment, a subsidiary but crucial topic that if anything is even more misunderstood today. Both of these have very significant implications for pastoral theology, as for systematic theology.

Those two chapters are followed by a pair on doxology. The first of these treats what I call “doxological Pelagianism”; that is, the tendency to rely on nature to perfect itself even in the act of worship, where the grace of God in Jesus Christ should be most evident. It will be among the most controversial chapters in the book, since it takes its cue from Protestant thinkers while contending that the problem is more exaggerated in Protestantism than in Catholicism, where it is also present.

The second is a detailed treatment of the problem of transubstantiation. Here I return to Aquinas, and to the task of rethinking some of his ideas by way of a more adequate eschatology. I expect this chapter to be controversial as well, even inside Catholicism. But both Catholics and Protestants, if they read it patiently, will perhaps find that the whole stubborn business—the very serious business—of transubstantiation appears in a fresh light.

I'd need more historical evidence before accepting his claims about nominalism:

CWR: In the Introduction, you write, “Nominalism is Western civilization’s wounded side, from which is flowing, not water and blood, but blood and fire.” Can you provide some background and context to that strong statement?

Dr. Farrow: That is said with respect to modernity’s doomed attempt to re-found Western civilization on the basis that “God” is merely a concept in the world, a way of speaking about emergent order in the world, rather than the living God, the God of the Bible who through the incarnation suffers and dies with man, who as man actually conquers death for the sake of life eternal. It was through nominalism that we learned to regard the latter as myth, as an empty vessel that could be filled with fresh content as required. But the fresh content we have poured into it has not brought progress towards perpetual peace, as the fathers of modernity hoped. It has brought moral confusion, incited hubris of every kind, and led to the sickness unto death; that is, despair. Western civilization is crumbling before our eyes, and being torn down by our own hands. We’ve decided that there’s little or nothing there worth salvaging, not even the statuary, as it turns out.

I was thinking about the Inquisition and the Dominicans and how they are portrayed in the movie version of The Name of the Rose, which while rooted in historical circumstances is anti-Catholic and hence not so historically accurate (especially with its depiction of the Dominicans?). I know someone who admires his writing style, if not necessarily his message. (I don't think he has ever blogged about that aspect of Eco's writing.) If only Eco had remained Catholic and written a novel that revealed the historical truth about the medieval Church; I agree with De Mattei that Eco should have put his talents to better use, in service of God and the Church. (Though De Mattei's genealogy in that article of nominalism, "a decadent and deformed interpretation of Thomist doctrine" is suspect.) Eco would probably have access to the scholarship done on the medieval Latin churches; even now we have historians like Fr. Augustine Thompson writing about that period. But if he had an agenda, he would have ignored that scholarship regardless.

How would a historical novel about the medieval Latin churches be different, if written from the perspective of someone like Fr. Louis Bouyer regarding the development of Latin spirituality?

Brad Gregory Still Eliciting Responses to His Historical Thesis

Don’t Blame the Reformation by Rod Dreher

Luther, A Nominalist?

Luther’s Doctrine of Imputation: Nominalism vs. Aristotelian Realism by Joshua Price

Or Voluntarist?

Related:
MARTIN LUTHER AND SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY
Is Luther's Doctrine of Justification Compatible with Orthodox Catholic Theology?
Was there a Lutheran Metaphysics?

James Chastek on Nominalism

Two posts today: first and second parts.

The Debate on Logic

The Difference between Traditional and Modern Logic and the Difference it Makes (via First Thoughts, which refers on a recent Peter Kreeft article - William Randolph Brafford's first post responding to Kreeft - see the comments posted there)

Related:
Henry Babcock Veatch's Two Logics

Peter King, The Failure of Ockham’s Nominalism