Blog Intro and Description

          I should have written something on this earlier, but I guess now is as good a time as ever. The following blog is something like a menagerie of my thoughts on a variety of topics in philosophy and theology. The topics include Christian philosophical theology and systematic theology, the philosophy of religion (from a Catholic Christian perspective), metaphysics, and the history of philosophy (especially Late Antiquity and the Late Middle Ages). From time to time, I also include prayers and statements on Christian spirituality that I regard as particularly conducive to reflective thought on the topics I've mentioned.
         My purpose for writing is to try to work out some thoughts I might have on a given topic. Here, I find that making my thoughts public is a good way for making me more careful and clearer in my expression of an idea I might have; and, frankly, I feel I just need the practice. And if what I write succeeds in starting a conversation over such a topic or stimulating the occasional thought in someone else, all the better. I'm trying to aim for a more casual and conversational style for the written posts, but I feel this is something I need more practice with -- at the moment, at least, it's something on the wish list.
         As for the blog's title, a word or two is in order. As will be evident, the philosophical style in which I write here bears some influence from what many have identified as the 'Anglo-American' tradition in philosophy. While this style is not perfect, it does possess a number of what I would regard as important theoretical virtues, and it also I think values these virtues to a somewhat higher degree than many of its competitors. In this vein, these virtues also closely correspond I think to those found in a number of Christian writers who informed the systematic study of theology in the middle ages, beginning with St. Anselm and concluding five centuries later with Francisco Suarez. For, despite their many detractors, the practitioners of medieval scholasticism are often overlooked in the carefulness, systematic attention to detail, and subtlety with which they addressed questions both philosophical and theological. (Nor need one indite them with accusations of lukewarmness for Christ or for spiritual sloth as the well-meaning but I think mistaken Thomas Kempis wrote in his The Imitation of Christ.) And for this reason, far from being an oxymoron, I think the blog's title brings together two names that, in fact, perhaps belong together, or, at the very least, have a much stronger claim to this than many would seem to think.