The Eleventh Annual Christendom Summer Apologetics Institute
The Fathers Know Best: Patristics and the Catholic Tradition
Copyright June, 1997 Christendom Educational Corporation
Tag: metaphysics
The Fathers Of The Church On
Addenda To “Metaphysical Personhood And The IUD”
Addenda to “Metaphysical Personhood and the IUD”
W. H. Marshner
October 3, 1974
1. Emergence
Fr. Joseph Donceel’s account of ontogeny might be read as presenting an organism which, without changing genetically, undergoes a series of holistic alterations which can best be described as “emergent shifts,” Such shifts are said to occur (by evolutionary theorists) when life, for example, “emerges” in matter previously non-living, or when sensation “emerges” in living matter previously non-sentient, or when consciousness “emerges” in animals previously non-conscious. Teilhard, indeed, seems to extend this series indefinitely, lumping such phenomena as thought, value, history, community, and even the contemporary Zeitgeist into the general category of emergent qualities. Continue reading “Addenda To “Metaphysical Personhood And The IUD””
Metaphysical Personhood And The IUD
Metaphysical Personhood And The IUD
By W.H. MARSHNER
THE WANDERER
October 3, 1974
This paper attempts a correlation between biological data and philosophical terminology with respect to the earliest stages of human embryonic development. The purpose is to assist people active in the right-to-life (RTL) movement to meet certain philosophical objections, ancient and modern, to their position. It is not claimed that RTL should incorporate this or any other philosophical correlation into its public argumentation (which is necessarily scientific in character); it is merely argued that the present correlation will protect the movement’s public argumentation from ambush by other philosophical positions, such as those of Dr. James Diamond or Fr. Joseph Donceel.