Reddit reviews The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics
We found 4 Reddit comments about The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Well, this is what philosophy is all about. I think this guy has the most convincing case for Aristotelian hylomorphism as the best explanation compared with other theories. This other guy's book is also a great introduction to why Aquinas' metaphysics is "the best."
Ultimately, you have to make these decisions after reflecting on your own how the world works.
A good introductory text on metaphysics is The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics. It's a standard text in seminaries.
Basically transcendentals are convertible with being, that is to say, insofar as something exists, it is good, true and one.
This isn't an answer to your question, but I wanted to offer my experience since I'm right where you are, or maybe a year or two past you.
You really do learn how to read this stuff in the process of going through seminary. I've been in since 2017 and am about to graduate in December, and I've seen my reading ability skyrocket. For example, I've gone from 1.5 hours for a journal article to 20/30 minutes, depending on how comfortable I am with the topic, and my comprehension has gone up. I can actually track authors' arguments now.
It's also a muscle. I worked through W. Norris Clarke's The One and the Many, and the result of struggling my way through it is both my baseline reading ability and my understanding of metaphysics has grown quite a bit. Likewise, after reading On the Apostolic Preaching, I'm legitimately more comfortable reading early church fathers, but also better at reading in general.
Sure, I still have a long way to go, but my point is as you work the muscle and force yourself to read hard stuff, your baseline really will improve. So be encouraged in that. Your struggling through the hard stuff is legitimately making you a better reader and thinker.
God and causality are lively subjects in contemporary academic philosophy. Brian Davies' book An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion is an excellent overview of recent work on God and His nature. If you had posted something on, say, the Gale-Pruss cosmological argument, or questions you had after reading Aquinas on Being and Essence or The One and the Many, it would have been fine, but moral theology, biblical prophecy, and demonology are a bit far afield for this subreddit.