James Dominic Rooney
Biographic Data
| ID | 3071593 |
|---|---|
| NAME | James Dominic Rooney |
| GIVEN NAMES | James Dominic |
| FAMILY NAME | Rooney |
| SIGNATURE | ROONEY J D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Hong Kong Baptist University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0087-3218 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Defending damnation: A response to Hill
Scott Hill has recently published a response to the ‘Master Argument against Universalism,’ defended at length in James Dominic Rooney’s ( Not a Hope in Hell, Routledge, 2025). Hill relies on his own summaries or interpretations of that argument which involve fundamental misconceptions about it and the reasons given in the book for affirming its premises. Further, he ignores the responses or qualifications made in the book to objections that rese…
Hell? Yes!’ Moorean reasons to reject three objections to the possibility of damnation
Objections to the orthodox doctrine of an eternal hell often rely on arguments that it cannot be a person’s own fault that she ends up in hell. The article summarizes and addresses three significant arguments which aim to show that it could not be any individual’s fault that they end up in hell. I respond to these objections by showing that those who affirm a classical picture of sin have Moorean reasons to reject these objections. That classical…
Evils of Optimistic Panentheism
Theologians have described Sergius Bulgakov as one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century. Bulgakov is an ‘optimistic panentheist,’ someone who embraces a combination of panentheist metaphysics and an optimistic attitude that God’s eschatological will (an essential desire of God) will necessarily be accomplished in the future, when all evil will be eliminated. This paper fleshes out a practical problem affecting ‘optimistic’ versions of …
Unknowing: Christian and Buddhist soteriological epistemology
Buddhists point to the soteriological value not only of the dispelling of ignorance, but the arising of insight or wisdom which constitutes the salvific goal of practice. Madhyamaka’s unique conception of the ultimate nature of reality makes this cognition of what is metaphysically ultimate distinct from other kinds of knowledge, as these soteriologically valuable cognitive states aim at something unlike anything else so known: the lack of ‘own-b…
Hylomorphism and Persons in Odd Situations
Hylomorphism provides an explanation of material composition: the material parts, the Xs, will compose a whole, a Y, belonging to a given natural kind, when those parts are characterized by a substantial form. While there are a number of those who hold that each human person is identical with a human animal – ‘animalists’ – most of these are not hylomorphists. One could worry that hylomorphism contributes little unique to debates about personal i…
Orthodox panentheism’ is neither orthodox nor coherent
Jeremiah Carey presents a version of panentheism which he attributes to Gregory Palamas, as well as other Greek patristic thinkers. The Greek tradition, he alleges, is more open to panentheistic metaphysics than the Latin. Palamas, for instance, hold that God's energies are participable, even if God's essence is not. Carey uses Palamas' metaphysics to sketch an account on which divine energies are the forms of created substances, and argues that …
Knowing what you want–why disembodied repentance is impossible
It is a reasonable worry that God would not truly love us and want our salvation if He fixed a definite point after which He will no longer offer us the graces to repent of our sins. I propose that Thomas Aquinas succeeds in showing us that God would not be cruel or arbitrary in setting up a world where embodied agents end up after death in a state where they will inevitably fail to repent of their sins. Aquinas proposes that being disembodied is…
We Deserve It: An Augustinian Response to Divine Hiddenness Arguments
Significant attention has been devoted to the problem of ‘divine hiddenness’ proposed by JL Schellenberg. I propose a novel response that involves denying part of the empirical premise in divine hiddenness arguments, which holds that nonresistant nonbelievers are capable of relationship with God. While Plantinga and others in ‘reformed’ epistemology have at times appealed to original sin as an explanation for divine hiddenness, such responses mig…
Is metaethical naturalism sufficient? A Confucian response to problems of meaning
Ethical naturalism is sometimes accused of problematic metaphysics or epistemology. Some argue that naturalists rely on concepts of ‘nature’ indefensible in the light of modern evolutionary biology. There is also an epistemological worry that has been raised recently that strong normative evaluation, such as meaning in human life, is empirically inaccessible or even in conflict with what we know in scientific contexts. While the critics have targ…
The Problem of Thomistic Parts
Thomas Aquinas embraces a controversial claim about the way in which parts of a substance depend on the substance’s substantial form. The substantial form is responsible for the identity/nature of the parts of the substance such a form constitutes. Aquinas’s controversial claim can be roughly put as the view that things are members of their kind in virtue of their substantial form. The aim of this paper will be to defend Aquinas’s claim that ever…
Being a ‘not-quite-Buddhist theist’
Buddhism is a tradition that set itself decidedly against theism, with the development of complex arguments against the existence of God. I propose that the metaphysical conclusions reached by some schools in the Mahayana tradition present a vision of reality that, with some apparently small modification, would ground an argument for the existence of God. This argument involves explanation in terms of natures rather than causal agency. Yet I conc…
Material Objects in Confucian and Aristotelian Metaphysics: The Inevitability of Hylomorphism
Hylomorphism is a metaphysical theory that explains the unity of material objects through a special immaterial part, a ‘form’. While contemporary accounts of hylomorphism appeal to structure, and advocate that material substances can have other substances as parts, James Dominic Rooney highlights the flaws in this Neo-Aristotelian way of thinking. Instead, he draws on medieval European and Chinese traditions to put forward that the classical appr…
Why all classical theists should believe in physical premotions, but it doesn’t really matter (for freedom)
Murray's Balancing Act: The Harmony of Nature and Grace
Dignitatis Humanae) of the Second Vatican Council. He was even acclaimed in the secular world, appearing on the cover of Time (December 12 th , 1960). His legacy in the area of church-state relations, however, ran into serious difficulties shortly after his death. The causes for these difficulties in contemporary reception of Murray's thought are complicated. Many have alleged that the cause of this non-reception lay in a new religious pluralism …
Knowing what you want–why disembodied repentance is impossible
It is a reasonable worry that God would not truly love us and want our salvation if He fixed a definite point after which He will no longer offer us the graces to repent of our sins. I propose that Thomas Aquinas succeeds in showing us that God would not be cruel or arbitrary in setting up a world where embodied agents end up after death in a state where they will inevitably fail to repent of their sins. Aquinas proposes that being disembodied is…
Murray's Balancing Act: The Harmony of Nature and Grace
Dignitatis Humanae) of the Second Vatican Council. He was even acclaimed in the secular world, appearing on the cover of Time (December 12 th , 1960). His legacy in the area of church-state relations, however, ran into serious difficulties shortly after his death. The causes for these difficulties in contemporary reception of Murray's thought are complicated. Many have alleged that the cause of this non-reception lay in a new religious pluralism …
Why all classical theists should believe in physical premotions, but it doesn’t really matter (for freedom)
Being a ‘not-quite-Buddhist theist’
Buddhism is a tradition that set itself decidedly against theism, with the development of complex arguments against the existence of God. I propose that the metaphysical conclusions reached by some schools in the Mahayana tradition present a vision of reality that, with some apparently small modification, would ground an argument for the existence of God. This argument involves explanation in terms of natures rather than causal agency. Yet I conc…
Material Objects in Confucian and Aristotelian Metaphysics: The Inevitability of Hylomorphism
Hylomorphism is a metaphysical theory that explains the unity of material objects through a special immaterial part, a ‘form’. While contemporary accounts of hylomorphism appeal to structure, and advocate that material substances can have other substances as parts, James Dominic Rooney highlights the flaws in this Neo-Aristotelian way of thinking. Instead, he draws on medieval European and Chinese traditions to put forward that the classical appr…
The Problem of Thomistic Parts
Thomas Aquinas embraces a controversial claim about the way in which parts of a substance depend on the substance’s substantial form. The substantial form is responsible for the identity/nature of the parts of the substance such a form constitutes. Aquinas’s controversial claim can be roughly put as the view that things are members of their kind in virtue of their substantial form. The aim of this paper will be to defend Aquinas’s claim that ever…
We Deserve It: An Augustinian Response to Divine Hiddenness Arguments
Significant attention has been devoted to the problem of ‘divine hiddenness’ proposed by JL Schellenberg. I propose a novel response that involves denying part of the empirical premise in divine hiddenness arguments, which holds that nonresistant nonbelievers are capable of relationship with God. While Plantinga and others in ‘reformed’ epistemology have at times appealed to original sin as an explanation for divine hiddenness, such responses mig…
Is metaethical naturalism sufficient? A Confucian response to problems of meaning
Ethical naturalism is sometimes accused of problematic metaphysics or epistemology. Some argue that naturalists rely on concepts of ‘nature’ indefensible in the light of modern evolutionary biology. There is also an epistemological worry that has been raised recently that strong normative evaluation, such as meaning in human life, is empirically inaccessible or even in conflict with what we know in scientific contexts. While the critics have targ…
Unknowing: Christian and Buddhist soteriological epistemology
Buddhists point to the soteriological value not only of the dispelling of ignorance, but the arising of insight or wisdom which constitutes the salvific goal of practice. Madhyamaka’s unique conception of the ultimate nature of reality makes this cognition of what is metaphysically ultimate distinct from other kinds of knowledge, as these soteriologically valuable cognitive states aim at something unlike anything else so known: the lack of ‘own-b…
Hylomorphism and Persons in Odd Situations
Hylomorphism provides an explanation of material composition: the material parts, the Xs, will compose a whole, a Y, belonging to a given natural kind, when those parts are characterized by a substantial form. While there are a number of those who hold that each human person is identical with a human animal – ‘animalists’ – most of these are not hylomorphists. One could worry that hylomorphism contributes little unique to debates about personal i…
Orthodox panentheism’ is neither orthodox nor coherent
Jeremiah Carey presents a version of panentheism which he attributes to Gregory Palamas, as well as other Greek patristic thinkers. The Greek tradition, he alleges, is more open to panentheistic metaphysics than the Latin. Palamas, for instance, hold that God's energies are participable, even if God's essence is not. Carey uses Palamas' metaphysics to sketch an account on which divine energies are the forms of created substances, and argues that …
Knowing what you want–why disembodied repentance is impossible
It is a reasonable worry that God would not truly love us and want our salvation if He fixed a definite point after which He will no longer offer us the graces to repent of our sins. I propose that Thomas Aquinas succeeds in showing us that God would not be cruel or arbitrary in setting up a world where embodied agents end up after death in a state where they will inevitably fail to repent of their sins. Aquinas proposes that being disembodied is…
Defending damnation: A response to Hill
Scott Hill has recently published a response to the ‘Master Argument against Universalism,’ defended at length in James Dominic Rooney’s ( Not a Hope in Hell, Routledge, 2025). Hill relies on his own summaries or interpretations of that argument which involve fundamental misconceptions about it and the reasons given in the book for affirming its premises. Further, he ignores the responses or qualifications made in the book to objections that rese…
Hell? Yes!’ Moorean reasons to reject three objections to the possibility of damnation
Objections to the orthodox doctrine of an eternal hell often rely on arguments that it cannot be a person’s own fault that she ends up in hell. The article summarizes and addresses three significant arguments which aim to show that it could not be any individual’s fault that they end up in hell. I respond to these objections by showing that those who affirm a classical picture of sin have Moorean reasons to reject these objections. That classical…
Evils of Optimistic Panentheism
Theologians have described Sergius Bulgakov as one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century. Bulgakov is an ‘optimistic panentheist,’ someone who embraces a combination of panentheist metaphysics and an optimistic attitude that God’s eschatological will (an essential desire of God) will necessarily be accomplished in the future, when all evil will be eliminated. This paper fleshes out a practical problem affecting ‘optimistic’ versions of …
Philosophy (10 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Theology and Philosophy of Evil (8 works) · Theology (6 works) · Metaphysics (5 works) · Philosophy of religion (5 works) · Argument (complex analysis) (3 works) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (3 works) · Free Will and Agency (3 works) · Law (3 works)