Pints With Aquinas - 131: The problem of evil and suffering, with Eleonore Stump

Episode Date: November 6, 2018

Pints With Aquinas is funded by listeners like you, support on Patreon here. Here's my previous episode on the problem of evil. Here's how Aquinas formulated the problem of evil: "It seems that God does not exist; because if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. But the word "God" means that He is infinite goodness. If, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. Therefore God does not exist." A bit about my guest Eleonore Stump: Eleonore Stump is the Robert J. Henle Professor of Philosophy at Saint Louis University, where she has taught since 1992. She is also Honorary Professor at Wuhan University and at the Logos Institute, St. Andrews, and she is a Professorial Fellow at Australian Catholic University. She has published extensively in philosophy of religion, contemporary metaphysics, and medieval philosophy. Her books include her major study Aquinas (Routledge, 2003), her extensive treatment of the problem of evil, Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (Oxford, 2010), and her far-reaching examination of human redemption, Atonement (Oxford, 2018). She has given the Gifford Lectures (Aberdeen, 2003), the Wilde lectures (Oxford, 2006), the Stewart lectures (Princeton, 2009) and the Stanton lectures (Cambridge, 2018). She is past president of the Society of Christian Philosophers, the American Catholic Philosophical Association, and the American Philosophical Association, Central Division; and she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. SPONSORS EL Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/  Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/  GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show. LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd MY BOOKS  Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform

G'day everybody, really excited about my episode today with renowned philosopher and Thomist Dr. Eleanor Stump. But before we get into the show, I wanted to let you know that I'm doing a promotion for this month to try to bring more people into Patreon. We're doing a lot more work. We're doing a lot of video, as you've probably seen. I'm commissioning artists to create beautiful illustrations of St. Thomas Aquinas, which I'm printing in books that I want to literally give away for free. And if you want to buy them in bulk, for example, I'll give you the number for the printer. So you pay legitimately the same price that I do. I'm also doing a trip to Uganda next month, which I'm doing for free. And yeah, we're just trying to do more and more great stuff. But

like, as the saying goes, water's free, whiskey costs money. It's a good saying. And this stuff does all cost money. So if you've been wanting to support Pints with Aquinas on Patreon and the work that I'm doing as a whole, but you haven't up until now, here's an incentive to do so. So all of this month, if you give $10 or more to me on Patreon, you get all of the free stuff that I normally give you in return, like access to our exclusive audio library, our audio books. By the way, we've got a really exciting audio book coming just for you patrons really soon, so stay tuned. You get a signed copy of my book. You get a Pints with Aquinas sticker. If you give more, you get a Pints with Aquinas beer sign, all that stuff. Okay. But for this month only, if you give to Patreon, not to Patreon,

to me, over Patreon, right? If you do that, I'll send you all that stuff. But also I'm going to send you a Pints with Aquinas car magnet. Now, this is something we've developed just for this month, November only. If you are to give this month, we will send you this magnet for free. You can put it on the back of your car. Everyone will know that you're totally awesome and hip, or at least lame, but kind of intelligent. Okay. It doesn't matter. So I'll send you that. I'll also send you a personal video message, like a private personal video message, not a generic one to everybody, but to you specifically, like I'll actually use your name. You'll also be in the running to win one of three five-volume sets of the Summa Theologiae. All right? So if you've been listening to

Pints with Aquinas, you enjoy what I have to say. If it's enriched your faith life and you want to give back because you want to see us do more work that'll actually bless more and more people, please consider doing that. Go to patreon.com slash mattfradd, or just go to pintswithaquinas.com and click donate. Either one doesn't matter. I'll put a link in the show notes. Again, you give $10 a month, you get all that free stuff in return. I'll send you a private video message, you'll get the car magnet, and you'll be in the running to win one of three five-volume sets of the Summa Theologiae, which is pretty cool. And again, this runs all of November. So, you know. Hello, hello, and welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd. If you could sit down over a pint of beer with Thomas Aquinas and ask him any one question,

what would it be? Today, we're joined around the bar table by philosopher Eleanor Stump to discuss the problem of evil. Great to have you back here at Pints with Aquinas. This is the show where you and I pull up a barstool next to the angelic doctor to discuss theology and philosophy. And today we're joined, as I said already, by Eleanor Stump, who is professor of philosophy at St. Louis University. She's been teaching since 1992. I was nine years old. Yep, nine years old. She's given lectures, written books, recorded series, or serieses, is that the plural, of Aquinas. You can actually find one of her series on Audible on Thomas Aquinas. Today, as I said, we're going to be discussing the problem of evil. You know, Aquinas puts forth two arguments against the existence of God, which is, as I've said over and over again, is rather noteworthy because at times he gives as many as 12 objections to the position he wants to make.

So if Aquinas thought there were other good arguments against God's existence, he would have put them forth. The fact that he only puts forth two is pretty telling. he puts forth two is pretty telling. Now, the two he puts forth, one is the idea that science has sort of made God redundant, or since we can explain things by the scientific method, not that it was called that at the time necessarily, but since we can do that, well, there's no need for a God to explain anything, all right? But what's interesting is about that argument is even if that argument were to work, it wouldn't disprove God. Does that make sense? Like if I say, well, you don't need God to explain the universe, that's quite a different thing to saying God doesn't exist.

So the only argument Aquinas puts forth that he thinks has any merit that would disprove the existence of God is the problem of evil. Now, I've discussed this in a previous episode. If you want more of my fully fleshed out opinion on this topic, go to pintswithaquinas.com and just write evil into the search bar and you'll find that episode of mine. Today, I try to shut up and let Eleanor St episode of mine. Today, I try to shut up and let Eleanor Stump teach us. So I hope you really enjoy the episode. God bless and keep it real. No, no one says keep it real anymore. Keep it country. A little better. I got nothing. Eleanor Stump, thank you very much for being on Pints with Aquinas. I'm so pleased to be joining you for this, and I appreciate very much you're inviting me.

Appreciate very much the great ministry that you are doing with this podcast. Thank you. And tell us a bit about yourself. You are a philosopher and you work at St. Louis University, is that right? That's correct. And if you put my name in it, Google, E-L-E-O-N-O-R-E-S-T-U-M-P, you can get straight to my Google Sites web page. And there's a lot of lovely resources, videos and other things of that nature that people might be interested in having a look at. How did you get interested in philosophy? Because I'll just say this and see what you think. I don't know too many, maybe it's because I don't get out enough, women philosophers who are really interested in Thomas.

Do you? Well, no, I don't really. But philosophy is an academic discipline in which women are underrepresented. Right. And there's a lot of discussion in the academic world about why that is, what sorts of problems precipitate it, what can be done to remedy it, and so on. Lots of people have differing views. But I would say that more and more women are coming into the field, and they do good work. They help shape the discipline in ways that make it a more friendly place for women.

And those are very welcome trends in my view. Do you have any favorite female philosophers? Oh, heavens. I wouldn't dream of answering that question. What about Edith Stein? You got to pick her. No, no. There are a lot of women, living and dead, who have done excellent work in philosophy.

But if I can pick among the dead ones, then I suppose one of my very favorite is Teresa of Avila. And what I especially love about Teresa of Avila, in addition to all the things that everybody loves her for, is I love the places where she says i really need to be doing the laundry and i've got a ferocious headache but my confessor told me i had to write this stuff up so here i am sitting writing this stuff up with a terrible headache and of course her stuff that she's writing up is so wonderful so deep and insightful. But it's a picture of what life is like for very many women, the headache, the laundry, and then also trying to write it up. So, yeah, anyway. And then have you been Catholic your whole life?

No, I have not, although almost all my adult life I have been in effect a Catholic insofar as I was a very committed medievalist. I just didn't know what that meant. So when did you become Catholic? Were you baptized or confirmed? I was received into the Catholic Church. I'm not very good at this sort of question. I don't remember exactly. No problem. I'm not very good at this sort of question. I don't remember exactly, but it must have been in the early part of this century, somewhere in there.

Sure. Yeah, great. Well, and then you've written a lot, and this is the topic we want to talk about today, the problem of evil and suffering and how perhaps we in our modern society view suffering and how we might alter our thinking about suffering. I'm looking forward to chatting with you about that today. How did that become a passion of yours? Well, it's a passion of everyone's, isn't it? It's a passion of everyone's. There's nobody who lives past the age of reason, whenever that might be, who doesn't experience suffering, and there isn't anybody who doesn't at some point reflect on it and wonder why this happens, why it happens to me, why it happens to others. It's a universal human concern.

There's nobody who isn't interested in that. You know, it's interesting in the Summa that Aquinas puts forth two arguments against God's existence. And this problem of evil is something that's sort of perpetually alive in philosophical circles, it seems. And certainly it's the thing people often bring up who don't believe in God. And I can understand why. when you think about all of the awful things that are happening around the world, like sexual trafficking and child abuse.

If you really just stop and think about what's happening right now, it's so overwhelming that to try to fit those thoughts in the same mind as a loving God who wants the best for us, on the face of it, it sounds contradictory. It sounds absurd. Well, you know, here's one interesting thing to think about. Let's begin just randomly making a list of evils. So what did you start with? Sex trafficking.

Child abuse. Child abuse. We have natural evils like hurricanes that do great damage and so forth. Yes, and they do great damage. And why? Because the seas are rising, the global temperature is going up, the storms are worse. worse um i mean there's the oppression of the of the poor by the rich think of of puerto rico and the terrible suffering of those people during the hurricane and even now after the hurricane and ask yourself this question um in addition to wondering about a loving God,

here's another thing to ask about and wonder about, and that is the nature of human beings. If human beings were loving to each other, if they were honest, if they were kind, would we have these stories even the horrors of of natural evil if human beings had integrity generosity of spirit gentleness of temper care for one another what does this list of evils show us so you can sit around and think to yourself how could god allow that but you know what um you're missing you're missing the elephant in the room and the elephant in the room is us

look at it just look at it so what we have here is the endless the endless depredation of human beings against one another the the dreadful cruelty of human beings to one another the oppression of the poor the the torture of the vulnerable and that's to say nothing of our cruelty to the beasts, our self-destructive damage to the planet we live on. What you have to understand is that when you want to know how a loving God could do this to us, you're thinking of us as somehow innocent, lovely, noble, and in every way to be wafted on gentle breezes. That's not us. That's not us. So here's a question for all of us.

Suppose you have children who really are a moral disaster. What would you do with them? what would you do with them? What would you do with them? You might think to yourself, kill them, kill them. Start over, kill them. And I can see why that thought would come to people. I really can. But in the end, no loving parent really is willing to kill his own children.

And God is not willing to destroy the entire human race because the human species is his children so kill him kill him is not a response that i think will will survive a second's reflection as a strategy for how to deal with the moral corruption of the human race but here's what else is obviously not a good idea. If you're a parent of children who are a moral disaster, here's also what's not a good idea. Just make life as nice as possible for them and let them keep doing what they're doing. That also is not a good idea. That reminds me of C.S. Lewis's point about we want not so much a father in heaven, but a grandfather who at the end of each day just wants to say a good time was had by all. Yeah.

It's worse than that. It's worse than that. Because take your own favorite example of a moral monster, Adolf Eichmann, Joseph Goebbels. pick your own moral monster and ask yourself this question. If you loved that moral monster, if you loved that moral monster, what would you want for him? And the answer is clear. You would want him not to be a moral monster.

And God hates nothing that he has made. We have scriptural warrant for that claim. God loves everything he has made. That includes the Aikmans, the moral monsters of the world, and that includes me. I also am part of this species, and so are you. And the fact that the moral monsters outstrip us in evil comes from the vicissitudes of fortune, the choices they have made. But, you know, if there ever were a place where you might say,

there but for the grace of God go I, that might be a place to think that thought. In any event, what is God to do with us? What is God to do with them? And here we all have some idea of what the answer is. We have some idea. If you've got a child that's desperately sick, what do you do with them? You bring them to the hospital. You bring them to the hospital with stress, with strickenness.

Why? Because there's hardly anybody who spends any time in a hospital who doesn't suffer there hospitals aren't places where people have a nice time and everybody wishes they could go back again hospitals are time where where the humans around you do things that hurt you they add to your pain even when they're alleviating your pain with pain medications they're still also adding to it. One test after another, one blood draw after another. Nonetheless, although we know that hospitals are places of suffering, we are so glad they're there. We feel sorry for people who don't

have access to excellent medical health care. Why? Because that's the hope of a cure. So is your argument that suffering is remedial in some sense? The Christian tradition has thought this from the very beginning. Notice that in the Lord's Prayer, there is no prayer to avoid suffering. is no prayer to avoid suffering notice that um when the apostles in the acts of the apostles talk about the things that they suffer notice that when the apostle paul talks about shipwreck and so on none of them ever ask why did a good god allow this to happen to me the apostle paul might have said to himself look god i'm doing everything i for you. I've given my whole life to ministry for you. It's bad enough that I get beaten by the people who reject Christianity.

You've got to let me have shipwreck also. Couldn't you at least let me get across the sea? Never do these people say anything. Why is that? Well, part of the answer, it's a two-part answer. Part of the answer is they think that suffering is remedial. It helps. Could we just quickly define and distinguish two terms, evil and suffering? What is it we mean by these terms and how are they different? Because in the Lord's Prayer, we say, you know,

deliver us from evil, but that's not the same as suffering necessarily. Correct, correct, correct. We will pause with what I was saying to answer your question. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. No, no, but I just want people who are listening to know that there are two reasons in the history of the Christian tradition for thinking about suffering in a special kind of a way. One of them is it's remedial, but there's one more reason, too, and we'll get to that one in a minute. Okay, here's our terms.

These words, evil and suffering, they're common terms, and so they have a broad variety of meanings. And it's hard to pin them down exactly but when we talk about evil in the lord's prayer we're talking about moral evil the sort of thing you can be tempted to when we're talking about suffering we're talking about something that makes a person that goes contrary to the will of a person in one way or another, either because it makes you less than you want to be, it diminishes your flourishing as you yourself understand it, or because, forget flourishing, it just goes against your heart's desire.

Right. Even if I want something bad for me, I don't want it as an evil. I see it and pursue it as if it were a good. And if something were to kind of stop me from getting that thing, which would be detrimental to me, I suffer nonetheless because I perceive it to be a good. Those are cases where you suffer because something is taken away from you or you don't get something which you think has intrinsic value and which you desired because of its value. But in addition, there's another way of suffering, and that's when you lose something or don't get something which has value for you just because you had your heart set on it so if before your mother died she gave you her wedding band and if her wedding band is worth all of a hundred dollars because it was always cheap you will nonetheless grieve and grieve and grieve if you lose it not because you see the wedding band as intrinsically valuable but because you loved it it had value for you because you see the wedding band as intrinsically valuable but because you loved it it had value for you because you loved it and there are many things like that where we lose something or don't get something which is important to us just because we desired it

it has value for us children are like that so i have children maybe you have children i love my children more than i love your children. But not because I think my children are intrinsically more valuable than your children, because I certainly don't think that. My children have infinite value for me, not because that's what they have in themselves exactly, but because I love them so much. And so, if you lose something that has great value for you because you love it so much, then you suffer too. So that's what suffering is. It's when you lose what you care about basically in one way or another. And when we speak about evil today, people don't often have a sort of Aristotelian understanding of that or a Thomistic one.

It's more, you know, you think of a horror movie or you think of it as a positive thing imposing itself upon you or your situation. Could you speak a little bit about how Aquinas understood evil as a deprivation? Well, you can ask about evil metaphysically. That is, you can ask, what is it of anything around you? You can look at a rock and say, what is it? You can look at a newfangled device put out by the Apple company and say, what is it? So there's lots of things about which you can ask the question, what is it? And you can ask that about evil, considered as a philosophical category or something you can ask

what is evil and then the answer um in the west the great metaphysical answer in the west that comes from um the tradition of the pre-socratics through plato through augustine to Aquinas, the great answer is evil is non-being. Now, that has given some people the screwy idea that Christians think evil doesn't exist. But that's not the idea. Evil is non-being where being ought to be. So consider a whole. That's a great phrase. I've got to stop you right there.

I haven't ever heard it said so succinctly. Evil is non-being where being ought to be. That's great great phrase. I've got to stop you right there. I haven't ever heard it said so succinctly. Evil is non-being where being ought to be. That's great. Yeah. So you can see the point by thinking about a whole. What is a whole? Well, a whole is nothing. But it's nothing where you expected something to be. And if you have a whole in your head, there is nothing in your head where something ought to be, but this nothing is very devastating to you, to me. So, evil is very devastating on this way of thinking about it, because it's a nothing where something really needed to be. So, a nostril is a hole in your head, but it's not evil because it ought to be there. Correct.

That's right. because it ought to be there. Correct. That's right. That particular nothing has a very important and useful role to play, like the empty space within your esophagus that lets food go down, for example. So that's what I would say about evil metaphysically considered. But we're now talking about evil morally considered, But we're now talking about evil morally considered, and we are talking about suffering as a heartbreak for human beings.

Could I raise a couple of objections to the idea that suffering is medicinal? What about the idea that, well, yeah, we need to sort of give injections and perhaps do things like open heart surgery to cure a person, to make them what they ought to be. But, you know, medicine is advancing and it's becoming less painful. Perhaps in the future, there won't be any pain involved at all. And so in that case, we'll be able to treat people without them having to undergo suffering. And if we can eventually get to that, surely God could do that. So why does God need to use suffering to heal us if He's God? Surely He doesn't need to use that. Well, think about the issue this way. What is it that suffering is meant to be medicinal for it's not a problem in your leg it's not a problem in your intellect if you kick a puppy the issue is not because you're stupid you don't kick the puppy because you're stupid what's the matter with you where is the problem in you and the answer from earliest times on is

the problem is in your will so we have a very nice statement of this by Paul in Romans 7 and it goes sort of like this the good that I would I do not the evil that I would not that I would, I do not. The evil that I would not, that I do. There is no human being who does not understand this problem. You say to yourself, I'm going to reform in myself the following habit. I'm going to stop smoking. Every December right before the new year. Correct. Correct.

There's no human being who doesn't know what it is to make a New Year's resolution. And there's also no human being who doesn't know what it is to make a new year's resolution and there's also no human being who doesn't laugh and here's the problem um here's the problem if you have a problem in the will the difficulty for you is this you as paul, you don't do what you yourself want to do. And why do you not do what you yourself want to do? Because you don't want to do it. And now you begin to see the problem. What's broken is not your leg, it's your will. It does want to do this and it doesn't want to do this.

Ah, I see. So suffering must result in that sense, right? Correct. Absolutely correct. The scripture says there is no peace to the wicked. Why is there no peace to the wicked? Consider somebody who does want to reform his smoking habit and doesn't. If he gets a chance to smoke, he's going to be miserable because he was trying to reform his smoking habit. If he doesn't get to smoke, he'll be miserable because he really wanted to smoke. So you're restless in this condition because no matter what you get, you're not getting what you want. And what that means is that as you begin to heal from this brokenness in the will, your suffering is guaranteed. Just from the very process of being engaged in the healing.

Because you will not be getting something that, think how I define suffering. It's losing or not getting what you care about. If your will is divided against itself, healing your broken will is going to involve you in not getting what you care about, one way or another. Yeah. So that's the sense in which suffering can hurt you. I mean, the medicinal process of suffering can hurt you, and there's no way to get that hurt out. That's not like being able to do medicine with better painkillers. Yeah, that's a good answer. I want to tell you one more thing about suffering, though,

so your audience doesn't think on the Christian tradition the only good thing about suffering is medicinal. So here's an interesting question to ask. Here's an interesting question to ask here's an interesting question to ask will there be disability in heaven? do you want me to answer that or is that a rhetorical question? no it's a rhetorical question

because what I want to say is the non-disabled people Christian people who answer that question tend to say no no non-disabled people, Christian people who answer that question tend to say, no, no, of course not. But the disabled Christian people who answer that question say, of course. And if you think about Christ's resurrected body, you begin to see the point of their answer, because what do we know about Christ's resurrected body? It had wounds, wounds big enough for Thomas to put his hand in that's a pretty big wound and um why would that be i mean in heaven you're perfected

in heaven christ's body is perfected why is it still got wounds if you look at the christian well look at the look at the disability rights movement what it says is we have disability pride parades we want to invite you all to have pride in us as disabled we don't want you to see us as objects of pity or as heroic overcomers of tragedy. Why would anybody take this attitude toward disability? Why would Christ's resurrected body have wounds? And you can begin to see the answer if you look at the actions of the apostles in the book of Acts. So they're beaten and imprisoned. And does it say they rejoiced okay now assuming they're not crazy or masochistic why would they rejoice because

and this is the line from the patristic period because there is something not just medicinal about suffering but if you approach it in the right way there is something not just medicinal about suffering, but if you approach it in the right way, there is something glorious about it. What could possibly be glorious about suffering? The answer is complicated, hard to give succinctly in a podcast, but the basic idea is that you can lose what you care about on one set of values and get the very thing you cared about most deeply by that very same set of events. Get what you cared about much more deeply on a more important standard of values for you. So the apostles, when they are beaten, lose something that they care about, not being hurt by other people in a public spectacle. But they gain something that they care about much more deeply, which is a sense that Christ has trusted them to be able to suffer with him and for him. And so they have a sense of unity with him, companionship with him, solidarity with him.

And therefore, they rejoice in the glorification that they get through the suffering that he trusts them to have. So Chrysostom said about people who are worried about the problem of evil, he said they just don't understand. The people who have more suffering in their lives are not life's losers. They're not the pitiable or the tragic overcomers of the unfortunate. They are among life's winners. Christendom said, people scandalized at the sight of human suffering don't understand that those who have more suffering are those who are more dear to the Lord. And so there's a medicinal side to suffering, all right, but there's also, you might say, something like an athletic side to suffering. So if you go to the gym,

the people who are groaning the loudest are not the weakest. That was me this morning. I was at the gym, and I was definitely groaning the loudest. Yeah, but the people who are groaning the loudest are not the weakest. They're the ones who are pushing themselves the hardest. And what we know about them is there is something glorious that they are going for and are likely to achieve by that means. So if we go to the hospital and say to the parents of small children suffering in the hospital, why are you doing this? Why don't you take your child out of the hospital and say to the parents of small children suffering in the hospital, why are you doing this? Why don't you take your child out of the hospital?

We'll be foolish. If we go to the gym and say to the groaners, why aren't you just at home reading the newspaper in bed with your coffee? We'll be foolish. See what I mean? Yeah. So there are those two sides. Those two sides to suffering, and we don't want to miss that second side.

Those are great points. Thanks. We have many atheist listeners to point to the Qantas, so I want to miss that second time. No, those are great points. Thanks. We have, you know, many atheist listeners to point to the Qantas. I want to make sure they're represented as well. And I imagine an atheist response to this might be that suffering doesn't always result in the suffering subject becoming morally better. Suffering can result in the person becoming embittered and frustrated and even more immoral than he or she was to begin with, at least theoretically that's possible. Let me backtrack here and correct a misunderstanding. So, I say that in the Christian tradition, suffering is medicinal, but it's not

medicinal to make you morally better. To be morally better is to be isolated by yourself alone, focused inward, considering your own moral virtue or lack of it. But the Christian tradition doesn't work that way. What is it that Christians are pushed toward, aimed at? What is the goal? And it's not to be morally better. It's to be united with God in love. and it's not to be morally better. It's to be united with God in love.

So what suffering is medicinal for is to open your heart to a relationship of love. It's not a good in and of itself. Oh, absolutely. It's meant to point us to another good. Yeah, but the good it's meant to point us to is not a good that can be had by one individual in isolation it's a good that can be had only in relationship of love what is good about suffering as medicinal is not that it makes you morally better but that it makes you more willing to open up to another person i mean think about it this way when i get on a plane

the first thing i do is pull out my book to put everybody on notice. I'm not available for conversation. I don't want to make new friends on an airplane. I really don't. But if that plane were going down, I would talk to anybody. Yep, that's really a good analogy. Yeah, and that's the whole point. Suffering makes you willing to let down your defenses, open yourself up, turn to other people in openness or turn to God in openness.

And that's the only route to help. That's the only route to help. And yet, even here in tremendous suffering, not everyone will do that. Hitchens, who died of cancer, and who said, if you hear about me having a sudden deathbed conversion, well, then you will know that my brain went before my body did, which was a really unfortunate thing to say, I thought. But he certainly seemed to go out a staunch atheist. Well, we don't know what he did. Of course, we know only what he announced publicly he thought he should do, we don't actually know what he did do. But here's what I would say. If you listen to what I just said, what is wanted, the goal that we are after as Christians is union. Now, in order to have union, you have to have two things that come together into one thing while still remaining two things. Yeah.

So that's a little hard to understand, but basically you can see for union we need two wills. If there's only one will, we can't get union. We'll have something, but what we won't have is union. So in order for God to get union with us, God has to allow us to have a will to or he won't get the union he's after to get something but he won't get union if you have a will of your own the whole point of having a will of your own is you can do what you want to do and in the face of the worst suffering, you might want to close yourself off all the harder from love. That's a possibility. And God can't guarantee that you won't. If he were to guarantee that you don't, he'd lose your will. He wouldn't have your will. Because then if he could guarantee

what you do, then it would be his will operating in him and in you, and then there'd be just one will, and then we couldn't get union. That's the point. That's a great point. So we've talked about physical suffering. We've talked about the suffering inflicted upon animals by human beings. But there also seems to be a lot of senseless suffering, doesn't there, that has nothing to do with human beings.

I mean, prior to man, there were dinosaurs who were ripping each other apart. Even now, you see animals doing the same thing. And so we can't account for suffering just by saying human beings are bad and need to be reformed. Is that right? The question that you ask is the question of animal suffering. How do we understand animal suffering? And now you can think about this question in two ways. What about animal suffering before there were human beings? And what about animal suffering after there were

human beings? So we could think of the dinosaurs, that was clearly prior to us. Yeah, we can think of the dinosaurs and here what i want to say is um if you think you know how dinosaurs behaved and what they were like mindless savage killing instruments ripping one another apart you are going so far past the evidence it's funny it's funny how we think dinosaurs were behaved, what we think they looked like, whether they were herbivores or carnivores and so on, a lot of these things change through the ages as we come to understand more about the animals. And how dinosaurs behaved exactly or why they behaved that way, I think think has to be an open question mark for us we have to leave that until we have better evidence so are you it doesn't sound like you're making this claim but are you saying that there weren't carnivore dinosaurs oh no no no i'm not

definitely there were carnivore dinosaurs but um how they got their dinner, whether they got it by ripping one another to pieces in mindless savage killings, that's the open question. Did dinosaurs love their offspring, for example? Sure. The question would have sounded ridiculous at certain points in history. Depending on what you're made by love, I suppose, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it would have seemed like a ridiculous question sometimes, and other times in history, it neither of us have time machines. Suppose that there were, just as a thought experiment, dinosaurs who were ripping each other apart.

Maybe it wasn't gratuitous, maybe it was provoked. I mean, this is still suffering that has to be accounted for. I would say there are places where what you know best is that you don't know enough to deal sensibly with the question. And in that case, you simply have to table it. But we can talk about the suffering of animals in the period in which there is humans. We can talk about that. Okay. Could we stop a moment and just perhaps realize that if as an argument for atheism,

which this isn't always the case, I mean, there are lots of Christians like you and me who see the suffering around us and are really confused and hurt by it, but who are still theists. But then there are atheists who will try to argue for atheism from evil. I think it's important, don't you, to recognize that the onus of proof is upon the atheist in this instance. Because one can make an emotional appeal and one can feel the full force of that emotional appeal, but that can still be a bad argument. It would be like a Christian saying to an atheist, how can you possibly be an atheist knowing you'll never see your loved ones again? And the atheist might say, I agree that that's an emotional appeal, but as far as an argument, it's not enough to get me to believe in the afterlife. So, do you think that the onus of proof lies on the atheist here?

I'm not saying that. I'm saying something different. Okay. So consider a case from medicine. Mm-hmm. So, in the 20th century, Peyton Roos produced evidence to show that a particular kind of cancer in chickens, a cancer now named for him the Roos sarcoma, gave evidence to show that this cancer is caused by a virus. At that time, he was laughed practically out of the profession. The reason he was laughed out of the profession is that his opposition, which didn't bother to replicate his experiments, his opposition said, everyone knows that's impossible.

Here's why it's impossible. The cancer runs in families. If it runs in families, it's caused by genes. If it's caused by genes, it can't be caused by a virus. Therefore, we know in advance your position is absurd. Peyton Roos won a Nobel Prize 50 years later for that discovery which showed that viruses interact with the genes to produce cancer but at the time at which he first put out his evidence people were certain he was absurd and what i want to say is there are cases where if you reason thoughtfully and carefully you can see you do not have enough information to make a judgment one way or another. The people who were laughing at Peyton Roos saying anything caused by a virus can't also

be caused by genes, they had insufficient evidence for that claim. That was the crucial claim. So it wasn't a question of on whose side in that debate there was the onus of proof. The question was whether the information needed really to finally assess the situation was available at that time. And at that time, it wasn't. It became available in consequence of Peyton Roos' experiments. With respect to the dinosaurs, all I'm saying is we are in the same epistemic position that those scientists were in with regard to the question of genes and viruses. We are not in a situation where we have enough evidence to give a thoughtful and reflective answer about why we could have't know, it is the course of wisdom to table it until you have the information needed to proceed further. Otherwise, all you come up with is the kind of foolishness that feels certain it knows, certain it knows, and then you discover you were an idiot.

You just missed the main point. Okay. And this idea of being with epistemology, that's true today too. I mean, our family members could be suffering something that seems inexplicable to us. How could this possibly do any good for them, for us, for anyone? And yet maybe years down the line we see the reason for it. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

So we are talking in the abstract now, but nothing about discussions in the abstract about suffering will tell you why your Aunt Sally has leukemia. That's a great point. Can we speak about that for a moment? Because maybe there's someone listening here who just had an abortion or just did something they're very ashamed of, or is suffering some disease. And I think both of us would want to say that there is this distinction that needs to be made between the sort of pastoral approach to the problem of evil and then the philosophical approach. There's no good giving a philosophical argument to somebody who's starving to death or something. I wouldn't want to say that it's philosophy all the way down like this,

seeing like this. So consider medicine. Medicine tells you that smoking causes lung cancer. But it can't really tell you why your Aunt Sally got lung cancer. Maybe your Aunt Sally never smoked, but maybe she lived in a city that was highly polluted. lived in a city that was highly polluted or maybe your aunt sally had a genetic condition that predisposed her to lung cancer altogether apart from smoking or maybe your aunt sally smoked all her life but didn't get lung cancer does that mean that smoking doesn't cause lung cancer no it just means that they're so in order order to know why your Aunt Sally did or did not get lung cancer, you've got to know a ton of stuff about Aunt Sally. But it's not the job of medicine to know about your Aunt Sally,

just to know about general causes of cancer, see? In the same way, the point of philosophy is to know general reasons why love would allow suffering. But it won't tell you why love allows this suffering to this person at this time, because that's something that can be known only by someone with intimate details about the life and heart of this person. Philosophy can't know those things. That's not its job. Well, let's get practical here as we wrap up. I want you to give us some advice to those listening who might be struggling with something they're finding really difficult to deal with. Just to give a couple of examples, I know that there's some listeners of mine who

are trying to be faithful Catholics, but had to separate, say, from their husband, and are now getting a divorce, and they feel like people are judging them, and they feel so horrible about that, and there are other people who are suffering certain illnesses, and life can be difficult, especially as we get older, it feels like all of these sufferings sort of compound, and it's very easy to grow cynical. Yeah, what kind of advice would you have for those suffering right now? What kind of advice would you have for those suffering right now? Well, the first thing I want to say is that although it is the job of philosophy or the job of philosophy and theology to find explanations for why a loving God would allow suffering, these explanations are explanations for suffering. That is, the thing which we are trying to explain is suffering, and it doesn't cease to be suffering because we got an explanation. Suffering is suffering. It hurts, and nothing changes that. It hurts, and it stays hurting. And it stays hurting. And there is something heartbreaking, ought to be heartbreaking to us,

about the way in which humans and animals too suffer. There ought to be something that we find unbearable about it. If we lose sight of those things, then we're not doing philosophy anymore, we're just becoming inhuman. So that's the first thing to say but the second thing to say is it it's important to understand that somebody can allow you to suffer and still love you that's important to understand So here's my story to show this point. When my children were little, there was a theory widely accepted in the medical community that if a small child has a high fever, what you must do is strip the little child naked, put him in the bathtub and pour cold water over him. I don't want to comment on that medical

practice or that medical advice. I mean, maybe it was right, maybe it was wrong. But in any event, it was the common medical view. And those of us who loved our children tried to do what the doctors told us to do because we loved our children. So there was a time when my tiny child, little tiny child, had a very high fever. They put him in the tub naked and poured cold water on him. And you can imagine what this produces. A sick, sick little child wants to be snuggled next to his mother, kept cozy. You put him in the tub naked and pour cold water on him, and he screams and screams and reaches out his arms and says to you, mama, mama. I did it once and then I said to my husband, I don't care.

That's it. I'm not doing that. I am not doing that. And you know what? My husband did it. He did it. And of the two of us, which one was the more loving to that child? You think about that one for a minute.

And now you see the point. Love is what you see. When my husband did it. And what I had was inability to discipline myself to do what was best for my child. So that is the first thing to understand. The Christ who weeps over Jerusalem and weeps over over lazarus that is the face of god toward us that's the face of god toward us but it is love that is willing to allow that suffering out of love for the sufferer that so that's the second thing and the third thing i would say to

those who are suffering is no matter how isolated or abandoned you may feel no matter how rejected and judged you may feel you never suffer alone and there is biblical warrant for that why because christ says i will be with you always to the end of the age so the christ who wept over human beings and the christ who was crucified for human beings. That is the one who is with you always to the end of the age. And that makes a huge difference to people in their pain and heartbreak, whether they are suffering alone or whether there is somebody with them. And the person who is with them is the person who causes the soul to say, I am my beloved, and my beloved is mine. That makes a big difference. It doesn't take the pain away, but it makes a big difference in the way it feels. That's what I'd say. Beautiful put. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks for being on Pints with Aquinas.

People are listening. They want to learn more about you, Eleanor. I know you have a course on Thomas Aquinas on Audible, I think it was. I actually bought it and listened to it and got a lot out of it. Where else can people find the great work you're doing? If people will go to my Google sites, we have a lot of videos there. I'll put a link in the show notes for our listeners. Yeah, there's a lot of videos there and videos I have discovered are sometimes useful and helpful for people. We also have papers and books of mine. Some things are available also on that website just for downloading.

And there is a whole course on Aquinas, which I've given on Now You Know Media. It's for sale there, and it's reasonably priced um so that's also an another uh that's also another route and if somebody thinks to themselves good grief she's trying to sell her stuff on pints with aquinas now you Know Media stuff, I did that for free for Now You Know Media, and they take minimal amounts of profit just to keep their operation going. I don't know if you know Father Gregory Pine. He's a Dominican right now, a Dominican priest. I've had him on the show a number of times, a very brilliant young man. I asked him why he started looking into the Dominicans. And he said that he was at Steubenville University and a philosopher by the name of Eleanor Stump came and gave a talk

on the love of God. And he said he was so moved by it, he had to look into this Thomas fellow. Didn't know if you knew that or not, but I had to share that with you. So you were, by God's grace, you were partly responsible for leading a young man to the Dominicans. Well, you know, God does the leading and all of us can be honored to follow along. Amen. Well, thank you for the good work that you do. Thank you for having me on your show. I appreciate it.

I'm grateful for the opportunity to be part of this, and I wish you all the best in your ministry, which looks terrific. Yo, yo, yo, yo! We are 50 minutes in, and you are still listening, which means you probably got a lot out of this episode. I know I did, and I hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Remember, all of November, we're doing this promotion where if you give $10 or more a month to me on Patreon, you'll get all the free stuff people usually get, but this month only, you'll get a free Pints with Aquinas car magnet. You'll get in the running to win one of three five-volume sets of the Summa Theologiae, and I will send you a personal and private video message that will make you feel really good inside. And that's a good thing.

Again, go to pintswithaquinas.com and click donate or just go to patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. A big thanks to everybody who is choosing to support this sort of entertainment, material, stuff, whatever you consider it. So hey, every week people ask me about the intro and outro music here at Pints with Aquinas. Who is it? Well, it's my sister, Emma Fradd, and she's in a band, and the band is called Heaps Good Friends. And so what I thought I would do is play one of their songs all the way through for y'all. Once you've listened to it, go check them out on Spotify or iTunes. Heaps Good Friends. Heaps Good Friends. You're welcome. Pilot me, I'm limitless emptiness I won't decide who's love to live, is it in the fridge?

You took it in your hands, while I was in the quicksand Shouldn't you be mine? Shouldn't you be easier to love? Shouldn't you be easier to love? Shouldn't you be easier to love? Shouldn't you be easier to love? The stone in my shoe Is a portable waiting room. Arrive before close, but water down with the fire hose.

No one broken ever left. Heart so small. Shouldn't you be mine? Shouldn't you be easier to love shouldn't you be easier to love I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm

I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm Bye. Shouldn't you be easier to love? Shouldn't you be easier to hold it down? Shouldn't you be easier to know you're the one?

The broken, never left heart So shouldn't you be easier to love? Shouldn't you be mine? Shouldn't you be easier yard love?