My latest: substacktools.com/sharex/0cKSx...

My latest post: We get clear on Plato’s so-called “unwritten doctrines,” which Aristotle will revise and perfect. We also learn how Plato’s commitment to idealism and the status of myth in his corpus. open.substack.com/pub/awildlog...

Aristotle is a speculative thinker of the highest caliber. I reflect here on the obstacles that prevent us from appreciating the depth of his thinking He need not be seen in theological, mystical, and speculative circles as Plato’s junior colleague.

Baby's first Know Your Enemy episode. Well, actually, we're wondering if he recognizes Sam and Matt's voices from in utero

Senator Kelly is correct. Plus a Public Service Announcement: KEY section of Department of Defense's Law of War Manual is 18.3.2.1. The VERY rule on the "requirement" to refuse illegal orders gives as its paradigmatic example of what is "clearly illegal: "orders to fire upon the shipwrecked."

If you are in Boston for AAR 2025, consider attending my paper in the Plato and Platonisms unit. That is, if Sarah has not given birth by then (it's just 3 days before the due date)! Monday, November 24th 12:30 PM - 2:30 PM | Sheraton, Arnold Arboretum (Fifth Floor)

Good statement from the US conference of Catholic Bishops

BREAKING: Mark Wolf, appointed to the federal bench by Ronald Reagan, writes that he is resigning as a judge to have the freedom to speak out against the president's assault on the rule of law. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

Got my first email from a student who has a parent being deported. It's bad out there.

In Hudson, MA (population ~20,000) the No Kings crowd was 750+.

Visited my favorite bookstore again (Commonwealth Books in Newport)

I will not back down. Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power. What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?

My latest post takes on the Manichean vision of Stephen Miller, and the intellectual cover provided by the recent remarks of Hillsdale's Larry Arnn.

I went to a Willi Carlisle concert last week and the first sentence he said upon taking the stage was: “It’s so good to be with you in these latter days of Babylon.” Check out Winged Victory. My album of the year so far.

First Things is now running interference for Jeffrey Epstein if you were wondering how things are going over there

Reports that ICE is on the Boston College campus currently

Illinois Gov. Pritzker vows to pursue Trump officials who participate in an illegal National Guard deployment to Chicago: "If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me - not time or political circumstance - from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law."

The second installment of my philosophical dialogue has now been published. I re-examine the interpretative problem of Chalcedon and then dive into the various senses of the term "identity."

My latest post: Cosmic Return and the Victims of ICE

I spent most of today seeking to meet with one of the many victims of ICE raids currently jailed in Downtown LA. While @chrclla.bsky.social focuses its efforts on impact litigation, my team boosts efforts on the ground whenever possible. What I saw speaks to the crisis in LA & beyond.

That it may please thee to make wars to cease in all the world; to give to all nations unity, peace, and concord; and to bestow freedom upon all peoples, We beesech thee to hear us, good Lord. ⚓

A short talk I gave on the Christian Humanism of Pope Francis, about a month before the Holy Father died. At Fordham University, it was a chance to say some things. amigodefrodo.wordpress.com/2025/06/20/a...

Christology: Analogy or Identity? "Is it not simpler to say that Christ is no instance of analogy because analogy is not the whole truth of his Person, any more than it is the truth of the cosmos, the Truth he is?" open.substack.com/pub/awildlog...

OK I did it.

Rahner: the hidden basis for all Christological debates in Catholicism today is the difference between Chalcedonism and Neochaldedonism

Rahner is famous for the identity of economic and immanent Trinity. Here he explains that this identity is what Hegel would call a speculative proposition: an identity which includes difference as its self-difference. A living sameness which produces and sublates otherness.

No Kings Worcester was massive

No Kings in Hudson, MA. I estimate 200 protestors, which was impressive for the town's size. 50+% of signs were patriotic (Founding Fathers, veterans, civil liberties), 30% #Resist (Drumpf, orange etc.), 20% Pride themed. Very moving.

My latest:

We are enveloped in a mystery. We exist within God. Not him there and us here. There is nothing outside of God. But creation has not known him. And we will not know him until God is received to make his dwelling within us. To this aim, the immense labor of the Christ.

Dollar Book Swap near Dayton OH

Rödl, citing Aryeh Kosman: the mind's first apprehension of being is of the divinity of it, and the first expression of this apprehension in language is "hallelujah."

"The Divine Comedy is not a work of eschatology; it is not about the afterlife. It is essentially about this life, here and now."

I have finally posted part 1 of my review of Jordan Wood's book. I attempt to explain why the book has been so controversial and why it marks, as Milbank has suggested, a new era in theology. awildlogos.substack.com/p/crisis-of-...

Anyone have recommendations on the most important volumes of Rahner's Theological Investigations? I only have I and V. @kyriakos.bsky.social @jdw11.bsky.social

A starter pack for Knowing What's Going On

🚨Rödl cites McCabe's essay "Felix culpa" in his new book! 🚨

This seems to be the heart of the development from Plato to Aristotle, for Hegel - the fuller emergence of subjectivity - the development of abstract negation into negativity - the energy of separation as self-determination

We should all expect that Trump will send a US citizen to CECOT, and soon. The question is what we’re prepared to do about it

Basically: I don’t think people understand that 36 hours from now it’s possible that America will have a formalized system for abducting enemies of the regime and stashing them in foreign gulags, indefinitely. www.thebulwark.com/p/bukele-abr...

It is frequently claimed that Christianity achieves a “balance,” “harmony,” or “reconciliation” between faith and reason. While this is not without truth, it is often presented in a form tinged with the nostalgia for pure origins.

The publication of this book (this November) will be a major event. This is the big picture that was in the background in his previous works.

My AAR proposal was accepted! I will be presenting on "Damascius' Crisis of Participation and Our Own" as part of the Platonism and Neoplatonism Unit. The abstract is below.

Sebastian Rödl comments on the Epistle to the Romans:

Me: gives an absurdly Hegelian reading of Anselm for two weeks in class, about how the very thought of not knowing God by reason makes him cry Student thesis (via ChatGPT): Anselm thinks faith fills the gap of God being beyond human comprehension

Unidentified men grabbing someone off the street and putting her in a car because she wrote an op-Ed. This as flatly authoritarian as anything we’ve seen in this country in a very long time.

Can I explain Kant's Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason to freshmen? Well, I tried...

This is the gospel. Eckhart:

Rahner's Hearer of the Word is sublime. It's genuinely sublime.

Rödl on Anscombe/Geach: "This is also theologically questionable. It is questionable to leave an Aristotelian naturalism running underneath the belief in God."