Pints With Aquinas - 162: 5 Reasons For The Incarnation, W/ Fr. Gregory Pine (Part 1)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey guys, I've got some fantastic news I want to share with you. Do you remember that 21-day detox from porn course that I created called Strive, strive21.com? We've put a lot of money into this thing. It's extremely well-produced. We've just had over a thousand men go through the course. They are all raving about it. But we have now a very generous underwriter who, for a limited time only, is making it free for you. That's right, free. There is absolutely no catch. Go to strive21.com right now. Strive21.com right now. If you're a man who struggles with porn and you want to be free and you're finally ready to do something about it, go to strive21.com. If you know and love somebody who's struggling with this,

Starting point is 00:00:42 send them strive21.com. If you suspect a man friend of yours might be dealing with pornography, send them strive21.com. It's a limited time only. We're creating a female course for next year. We're doing a parent's course this year. But right now, Strive 21, a 21-day detox from porn for men is available 100% free, absolutely no strings attached. Would you please check it out? Strive21.com and tell everybody you know about it. Tweet about it, email about it. We want men to be healed. Check it out. Strive21.com. Thanks. Welcome to Pines of the Quietness. My name is Matt Fradd. If you could sit down and rip

Starting point is 00:01:23 on it, be with Thomas Aquinas and ask him any one question. Welcome to me. In today's episode, we're going to talk to Father Gregory Pine about why the incarnation happened and stuff. And we're going to look at, obviously, what Aquinas says. How you doing? Welcome back to Pints with Aquinas.

Starting point is 00:01:51 Hey, Gowan. This is the show where you and I pull up a bar stall next to the angelic doctor and we're just like, hey, what's up? How you doing? What do you got there? You want a beer? Are those fries? And today joined around the bar table with us is Father Gregory Pine, who we've had on the show several times before. I want to tell you something cool about

Starting point is 00:02:09 that in just one second, but this is going to be a two-part episode this week and next week, where we discuss 10 reasons Aquinas gives in the Summa for why God became incarnate in Christ. So we'll do five this week and then five next week. So it's a fascinating discussion and you're going to bloody love it. But this is the last time you're going to hear Father Gregory Pine on our show until we can get 40 more patrons. And here's why. I reached out to Father Gregory, who is a busy guy, right? And I said, I want to have you on my show every other week. But in order to make that happen, I want to pay him appropriately for his time and for his study prior to each episode. I mean, think about how great this is going to be, by the way,

Starting point is 00:02:49 when we'll finally get to this. I'll reach out and we'll see what topics we want to cover and we'll be able to address these every other week with Father Gregory Pine. So it's just going to take, I think, this podcast to the next level. I'm really pumped about it. But in order to make the money so that I can pay him for it. But in order to make the money so that I can pay him for that, we need 40 more patrons. So if you're not yet a patron, please become one at patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. You can see all the cool stuff. We've totally revamped all the free gifts that we give you. So be sure to go check that out, would you? That'd be great. Yeah. And so we can't do it. I'm not going to start doing it until we reach those 40 patrons

Starting point is 00:03:25 because we just can't afford it because there's just a lot of expenses going out as i've said before all that happens here at the pines of the coin is the matt frad show it's a team effort there's like six people that we are father gregory the seventh that we're kind of like paying monthly to do all this work and so just to be good stewards we just can't bring him on until we get that so that would be the bloody best if you could go do that right now, patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. Cool. All right. Here is the episode with Father Gregory Pinus, not his real name. Father Gregory Pine. Here we go. What beverage are you sipping on? I'm drinking Trader Joe's Organic Ginger Turmeric Herbal Tea. That's the full name.

Starting point is 00:04:08 Oh, my goodness. That's fantastic. Are you a coffee guy? No, I'm not a coffee guy. But I do like tea on occasion. I, unfortunately, I think I'm getting to that age where I can't actually drink a lot of coffee anymore. Is that like acid reflux or just being old? Yeah, it's not even acid reflux.

Starting point is 00:04:28 It's more just I get jittery. Wow. And anxious. Like I used to be awesome. I used to put them away like with the best of them, like five cups of coffee, six cups of coffee a day. I loved it. Now I have one cup of coffee in the morning.

Starting point is 00:04:41 I'm like, all right, I'm kind of done. When you say jittery, you mean like you're more sensitive to the fact that you're waiting in traffic or that like your prescription isn't filled at the pharmacy or like your hands are shaking? Yeah, that's a good distinction. Kind of both. Like I find myself a little more kind of irritable. Like the inside of my brain is like rushing around and it's not at rest. Yeah, that's bad.

Starting point is 00:05:03 I can see how that would be bad yeah so i gotta i gotta get some of that turmeric tea yes it's delicious tastes like almost nothing but it's just the right amount of something ah good well good lovely to have you on everybody is hey do you bump into people who've heard of you or heard you on pines with aquinas and this video should we do and stuff i have yes and they're like hey i heard you slash saw you on Pines with Aquinas and this video show we do and stuff? I have, yes. And they're like, hey, I heard you slash saw you on Matt Fradd Show slash Pines with Aquinas. And I'm like, hey, that's great.

Starting point is 00:05:34 And then we talk about something else. But usually it's pretty good. Yeah, it's awesome. Everybody is – everyone's just been so blessed by the stuff we've done together and all of your wisdom. I actually showed Father John Parks, who's one of my favorite people, really brilliant guy in love with Jesus. He's from Arizona. We were speaking at a Steubenville conference the other week, and he was giving a talk on heaven, hell, and purgatory. I'm like, hey, listen to this. And it was that clip from you from the Matt Fradd Show explaining heaven. He's like, I will never speak again. He thought it was

Starting point is 00:06:03 so great. And this guy's really excellent too. I'm like, oh, shut up. You're fine. You're fine. It was a blessing to him. That's awesome. Cool. Okay. Father John Parks. Yeah. But today we're going to talk about the fittingness of the incarnation. Dig. I'm ready. Third part of the Summa. Question one, article two, was it necessary for the restoration of the human race that the word of God should become incarnate? Anything you want to say before we dive in? No, let's just kick it. All right. Well, let's just go to the respondio.

Starting point is 00:06:40 I love that he begins by defining necessary in two different senses. So, maybe we'll start there and I'll just stop and kind of let you kind of add some commentary. So, here's the said contra. What frees the human race from perdition is necessary for the salvation of man, but the mystery of incarnation is such, according to John 3.16, God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him may not perish, but have life everlasting. Therefore, it was necessary for man's salvation that God should become incarnate. He says, I answer that a thing is said to be necessary for a certain end in two ways. First, when the end cannot be without

Starting point is 00:07:23 it as food is necessary for the preservation of human life. Secondly, when the end cannot be without it as food is necessary for the preservation of human life. Secondly, when the end is attained better and more conveniently as a horse is necessary for a journey. In the first way, it was not necessary that God should become incarnate for the restoration of human nature. For God, with His omnipotent power, could have restored human nature in many other ways. But in the second way, it was necessary that God should become incarnate for the restoration of human nature. Hence, Augustine says, we shall also show that other ways were not wanting to God, to whose power all things are equally subject, but that there was a more fitting way of healing our misery. Beautiful way to put it.

Starting point is 00:08:06 This is fantastic right here. Read me. Let's break that open. Boom. Yeah, so like the idea that, so first, you know, when you hear the language of necessity, I think a lot of us think could not have been otherwise. And so St. Thomas wants to say from the outset that it's not necessary in that way because God could have snapped his celestial fingers and pushed the

Starting point is 00:08:31 reset button on us. What is more, I think you have to reckon with this fact, God could have chosen not to save us, period, right? So when we were created, we were outfitted with everything we needed to be happy, everything we needed to choose God, to flourish, to attain to the life of heaven. And then we chose against that. And some people would be like, well, I didn't choose against that because I wasn't there. You know, but we were all present in the nature of Adam. We were all present in his flesh. We are all present in his choice. And so we justly merited condemnation. And so it's not necessary that God save us. So everything that we're talking about here is in the order of grace, right? It's in the dispensation of gratuity.

Starting point is 00:09:12 Not necessary, but because God is generous, we can speak of it as necessary in a certain way. And actually, in his second description of necessity, there's like a little Dominican joke. He's being funny. Really? He says, secondly, when the end is attained better and more conveniently as a horse is necessary for a journey. So in the Dominican constitutions at the time that St. Thomas was writing this, so this is the third part. This would be like the 1270s. It was forbidden for Dominicans to ride horses.

Starting point is 00:09:40 Really? Yeah, because that was like living in the lap of luxury. So a horse by comparison to like you know a donkey yeah would have been the maserati as opposed to like a ford focus so it would have been scandalous you know to be seen with this noble steed or in a great retinue um so what he's saying is like already he's saying like this is excessive you know god is just being lavish god is just being out of control bit extra, but such is the nature of His love. So, He's saying that for God to save us in this way is a kind of necessity to show just how generous He is, just how glorious He is, just how beautiful He is.

Starting point is 00:10:18 Yeah, this is good. I remember telling somebody, they found this hard to believe, right, that God could have been born of a prostitute. It wasn't strictly necessary that the Virgin Mary be immaculately conceived in order for Christ to be, you know, sinless. But here we go again with these two different ways of necessity. Like, so, strictly, yeah, God could have been born of a prostitute, but it was more appropriate that He be born of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Yeah, and I mean, St. Thomas will use the same kind of thought or the same kind of logic when he describes that the cross was necessary. Because St. Thomas teaches that all of the deeds and sufferings of Christ are saving. Okay, so like whatever Jesus is doing, it's saving. Like he is salvation incarnate, and he's always enacting that salvation. So when he's conceived in the womb, he's saving. Like, he is salvation incarnate, and he's always enacting that salvation. So,

Starting point is 00:11:06 when he's conceived in the womb, he's saving. When he is born of the virgin, he's saving, etc., down the line, all the way to his passion, death, resurrection, ascension, and seated at the right hand of the Father. So, like, Christ could have saved us in any way he thought fit, right? Why, then, is he, why does he suffer the cross? Because St. Thomas says it like kind of concentrates his salvation or it makes it manifest in the most marvelous of ways. So we see like, well, sin kills God, right? It's that bad. But we also see God loves us this much.

Starting point is 00:11:38 So on the one hand, it convicts us of our, you know, waywardness, but it also shows us that God comes in search of us. So, again, here he speaks of the cross as necessary, not in the strict sense, right? But again, by virtue of the fact that God is so generous, that God is so loving. Sweet. I love this final quote here from Augustine, we shall also show that other ways we're not wanting to God, to whose power all things are equally subject. So, we've just addressed that. And then this line here, but there was not a more fitting way of healing our misery. I know we have this language a lot in the Eastern Church, right, about healing at this sickness, like sin kind of being a sickness. But I love that way of putting it.

Starting point is 00:12:18 He's healing our misery. What a beautiful paternal way of describing it. Yes. beautiful paternal way of describing it. Yes. St. Thomas will often use grace as the two of the most frequent ways that he refers to grace are gratia sanans and gratia elevans. So grace has this twofold dimension of healing us in our wounded nature and purifying us, but also this way of elevating us, so emboldening and empowering what is good. And the healing dimension, it's really present in the Augustinian tradition. And it's dimension, it's really present in the Augustinian tradition. And it's cool that it's paired here with misery, because misery, right? So what is it

Starting point is 00:12:51 about our condition that attracts God? In a paradoxical way, it's actually our misery. It's not that like we were good and God was like, ah, yes, I will visit my favors on this good creature of mine. But almost in a kind of upside-down way, it's our very lack of goodness that draws the Lord by a kind of negative gravity. And misery, so, is the root of misericordia, right? So, God sees our misery, is moved by it analogously. He's God, so He's not like suffering change or corruption. And then He works to, you know, relieve the source of our sickness, which is sin. So, He gets at the root of it and so affords us the possibility of rising to the height of our powers and living with Him forever in heaven, which is, yeah,

Starting point is 00:13:35 it's a pretty good deal. Mm-hmm. So, next what He does is He shows five reasons that Christ did this for the furtherance of our good, and then he gives five reasons for why this withdraws us from evil. Again, just loving the bullet points. Yeah, this is just, St. Thomas is going nuts. He's just over the top. And he wasn't even drinking coffee. All right. So, here's the first one. These are all quite brief, so I'll read them and then we can address them. First, with regard to faith, which is made more certain by believing God himself who speaks, hence Augustine says, in order that man might journey more trustfully toward the truth, the truth itself, the Son of God, having assumed human nature, established and founded faith. Yeah. I mean, like, with each of

Starting point is 00:14:29 these, I suppose it's somewhat of an overstatement to say, like, I would be content with each of these as a sole reason. But it's just like, each one is so rich. So, like this, for instance, with regard to faith. So, St. Thomas starts the second part of the second part talking about the virtue of faith, and he asks, like, what is it about faith? Like, what is it that's distinctive about Christian faith? And he describes how faith is certainty or a kind of knowledge through testimony. And when we talk about believing God, we are believing first truth speaking, right? So, like, the foundation of the testimony is most firm, most stable, most fixed, because God himself is most trustworthy. And then, like, the modern mind is like, yeah, but, like, it's unverifiable. It's an occult claim. It's crazy. He's invisible. Whoa,

Starting point is 00:15:14 even if he exists, right? But it's like, no, no, no. What we're talking about here is the objective order of testimony. Like, we are made for heaven, but no one has access to heaven except for those who dwell there, right? And God has power over that heavenly realm. And so, if we really believe that it's possible, like, if our heart wells up with a desire for eternal places, and then we have the possibility of hearing of those places from one who alone is competent to describe them, we would do well to listen, right? So, when he says, like, with regard to faith, which is made more certain by believing God himself who speaks. So, Christ is the word

Starting point is 00:15:49 spoken from all eternity who then takes human flesh such that he is wisdom and truth incarnate. And so, we can believe God yet more readily. We can believe him yet more perfectly by virtue of the fact that Christ has said it to be so, right? So, like, he reveals the Father and the truth of the Father in his very flesh. And so, we can believe, we can kind of, like, lean into that with a greater confidence, right? We believe the words as spoken. We believe God as trustworthy, but we believe kind of, like, unto God. There's, like, this effective tether where Christ draws us into the mysteries because we see, you know, like in his very countenance that he is trustworthy. It's just like... So, is the idea kind of like a trust,

Starting point is 00:16:31 a good person is easier to believe than a bad person, a prophet even more so, but the son of God, you know, infinitely so, in that we have to totally submit to whatever he's saying? Yes. And I think also, like, who do you believe in life, right? When you think about people who are trying to, like, convince you of something, you know, you've got your teachers, right? You've got other people in the public sphere. You've got, you know, like, your friends. Who do we believe? Like, in my experience, I believe those people who continue to show up, you know? Like, say something tragic happens in your life and, you know, like, people show, initially, they show a lot of support. But then, you know, like say something tragic happens in your life and, you know, like

Starting point is 00:17:05 people show initially they show a lot of support, but then, you know, they kind of go back to their ordinary lives and they forget that you're still like an open wound. Um, but then there are certain people in your life who just keep coming, right? They just keep showing up and you you're, you're like more and more convinced that they are your friends, but you're also like convinced that life is worth living because they're present. Like they're not trying to fix your problems, but because they're there, it's like possible to keep going. So Jesus does that in human flesh because we were just like languishing in this veil of tears.

Starting point is 00:17:36 And it's like, is it possible, you know, like, is it possible to be happy? Is it possible to attain to the heights of our powers? Which seems like, you know, our heart kind of has this like stamp of desire, but like it's so far off. And so, Christ comes in human flesh and is present to us and speaks so that we can believe anew, believe aright, believe afresh. Beautiful. The second reason he gives, he says, for the furtherance of good, this is why Christ became incarnate, is with regard to hope, which is thereby greatly strengthened, he says. Hence, Augustine says, nothing was so necessary for raising our hope as to show us how deeply God loved us. And what could afford us a stronger proof of this? That the Son of God should become

Starting point is 00:18:19 a partaker with us of human nature. Dude, I mean, glory to glory, grace upon grace. So, okay, what is then the object of hope? St. Thomas says that we hope because God is omnipotent and merciful, and He gives salvation, right? He gives beatitude. So, it's this kind of trust, a kind of confidence that the Lord is true to His promises. And hope, you know, on the one side, it can be undermined by despair. You know, you have this good thing, but it seems impossible to attain, and so we just give up on ever striving for it. And on the other hand, by presumption, we just kind of take it for granted that it's in the bank, and then we don't actually go through the process of attaining to God. So we want real hope. You know, we want, like, effectively, we want real hope based on real promises, because false

Starting point is 00:19:16 hopes based on false promises only disappoint and cause despair, or they just lead to a presumption deprived of any real objective content, okay? So, like, what is it that gives us real hope and real promises? Like, when you look at the Gospels, what is it that Jesus promises, okay? He just promises himself. That's it, you know? Like, there's some allusions to the hundredfold, though perhaps somewhat ill-defined, but then in the apocalyptic discourses at the end of each Gospel, like, basically what we're told is everything is just going to, like, blow up, but I will be with you, right? So, we see that, again, in the flesh of Jesus Christ because he comes to be with us, which is why, you know, the fact that he's addressed as Emmanuel is so encouraging and

Starting point is 00:19:58 beautiful. It's just, yeah, like, I can take another step, right? I can, even if tomorrow is just compassed about with sorrows and difficulties, I can endeavor at least to try, because Christ has come. He has cast his lot with us. He has taken up a kind of solidarity in our flesh. So, like, let's go. And when you consider the incarnation, like, how radical it is, it beggars belief. I mean, it's kind of, I think Peter Kreeft used this example that if he had like an ant farm and his ants are in trouble, and so he became an ant, you know, you become an ant in order to save your ants. That's still a finite shift between man and ant, but the condescension from God to man is infinite. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:20:44 Yeah, that's, I mean, it's mind bogoggling. You think about that the next time you step on an ant. My last assignment was in Louisville, Kentucky, and there was this, so outside of Churchill Downs, where they have the Kentucky Derby every May, there's a statue of a horse named Barbaro. And Barbaro was like this horse dearly beloved of, you know, horse racers or breeders or whomever. But he broke down during one race, and then they made a bunch of attempts with surgeries to save Barbaro, which is kind of unorthodox, because usually when a horse breaks down as a kind of mercy, you just kill it, you euthanize it, right? So you think about that, all right, like a horse that you've just poured time and money, an

Starting point is 00:21:20 incredible amount of money into, it breaks down on the track, you're like, yikes, this is tragic, we kill it, it's a mercy stroke. Right. So, like, when you think about human history and the original sin, we broke down on the track. And so, like, God, our horse trainer, to use, again, this weird extended analogy, could have just kind of put us down or set the reset button or just said, yeah, return it all to nothing. But instead, like he, he like gives us a transplant of his own life, which is bizarre. You know, like you think about that, if a horse trainer to be like, ah, yes, this horse is broke down, but the sinews in my leg will be sufficient for the repairing of it. It'd be like, ah, gross. Like you love your horse way too much. Yeah. Like

Starting point is 00:22:03 that's, that's more so creepy than it is encouraging. But you think about that, like that's what happens in the order of the incarnation, which is mind boggling. Now, how do we hope kind of actually and not just in our intellect? Because there is this sense, right, where we can know certain things, but it doesn't actually affect us. Like there's a difference between me, say, well, let's use an example of my child, right? There's a difference between him saying, yes, I trust you, dad. And then him jumping into my arms or something, say into the pool, knowing that I'll catch him. You know, have you found that in your own life? Like how do we hope practically and from the heart as opposed to just acknowledging

Starting point is 00:22:39 it intellectually? So, one concrete thing that I would propose is to follow what you think are promptings of the Holy Spirit. So, the gifts of the Holy Spirit perfect the acts of the virtues, right? When we act by the virtues, we act in a human mode. When we act by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we act in a divine mode, right? And so, we get like, you know, as we get supernaturally sensitized to God's promptings, it becomes more and more the case that we feel like he's indicating that we should talk to this person. Yes. I'm experiencing that.

Starting point is 00:23:10 Yep. Totally. Or we should like move in this direction. Or we should sit in this particular seat, you know, in the waiting area at the airport or whatever. And so I think like hope gives us a deeper and deeper appreciation that God is operative in our life. He's drawing us to eternity. All of these things are implicated. His promises obtain, right?

Starting point is 00:23:31 And when we respond to those promptings of the Holy Spirit, they only prove more fruitful. They kind of take over our lives in a more sovereign way, and they make the kingdom of God more present, like in our midst, rather than something laid up in heaven. So, I think hope is all about, like, anticipating heaven here. It's all about having the confidence of God's omnipotence and mercy as a present fact that He's provident, that He is orchestrating, and that He loves my destiny more than I do so I can trust Him, and that He loves the destiny of those by whom I am surrounded, over whom He has care, and that I am somehow bound up in their lives as an instrument to bring them to the praise of his glory. So, yeah, I would say when you have the desire, like Stranger Things 3 is coming out on July 4th,

Starting point is 00:24:17 and you're going to be like, wow, I want to watch all of these episodes simultaneously. But then you might feel like the Lord's saying like, hey, space them out and maybe spend 15 minutes in prayer. And you'd be like, ah, you know, just like respond, respond to generosity, respond and the Lord will make it fruitful. And what I found in my own life is as I respond to what I believe to be promptings of the Holy Spirit, that they come more often. And I've just been doing this recently where I'll feel like the Father is saying, go and say this to that person. And I've just been doing this recently where I'll feel like the Father is saying, go and say this to that person. And I'm like, that's weird. I'm not going to do that.

Starting point is 00:24:52 But I've learned when I think it's the Holy Spirit as opposed to just me or my digestion. And so, I find that when I go and I'll speak to them, I'm like, okay, wow, that was blessed. And then I almost, it's kind of like if you're trustworthy with little, you'll be given more. And so, I find like those promptings have become stronger. Yeah. Yeah. So, I love how you put that. Because I think sometimes when we discuss all this theology stuff, it can be kind of isolated from the dynamic relationship that the Father wants to have with us right now, right? Like it becomes like this thing in the past, this stale theology that we defend to ourselves. Our faith becomes more of a, I don't know if this is Chester or something, but more of a syllogism, less of a love affair. So I'm glad you said that.

Starting point is 00:25:32 That's really cool. Big. Yeah. One more word before going on. To people who don't like talking to people or are scared of talking to people, to like follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit doesn't always mean to be super out there evangelist. It can be as simple as going to the airport and saying, Lord, help me to have a conversation with somebody today whom you want me to have a conversation with. Even if a small exchange of kindness or whatever. I don't think we realize the extent to which we can encourage each other in the Lord and that all of us have a role to play in that.

Starting point is 00:26:04 It doesn't have to be like this. You don't have to wear like a three foot wall crucifix or around your neck so that you have like Christa centric conversations wherever you go. Right. It can be just something as simple as like doing your job well and lovingly. I like, I'm thinking about this for whatever reason, but I was just recently at the doctor's office and I, and I've kind of gotten used to like doctor's office as like corporate, like meat market management technique. And you're just like used to kind of getting pushed from this to that thing. And so I went into this doctor's office and the receptionists were just like very kind, very warm. Then I go into the room and the nurse is like super solicitous, like very careful. And then the doctor just like took time with me.

Starting point is 00:26:42 He did history. He did pathology. He did all of these things. And then he explained to me the treatment options. And he explained to me all of the fallout and what he recommended and why. And it was just like the mere fact that he just was present to me and did his job well, I was just blown away. I was like, I want to be a preacher the way that you are a doctor. you are like a doctor. And I was like leaving the office and I was like moved, you know, I just like, and it wasn't about like having like a greater confidence in humanity. It was just like, for whatever reason, like God was more real to me because I had seen him and these people who just took care of me. So like to follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit doesn't mean to be way out there. It can just mean operating in the balance of your temperament. It doesn't mean you have to go up to strangers and say something like, and with this tone, I just get the sense. I just, I just, I'm getting, I just getting this word, which I respect. I love it when people do that to me. But sometimes I had a guy come up to

Starting point is 00:27:34 me. I was giving a talk and he's like, Hey, I just, I'm just getting the sense that you are very much under attack by Satan right now. I don't know if that means anything to you. I like, no, I think I'm good. But unless I'm so under attack that I'm now deluding myself and I'm fully possessed, but I think I'm good, but thank you. Yeah. Yeah. And you can always tell those people, hey, the Lord has revealed this to you for a reason. Please pray for me and fast for me. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Well, I mean, we brought this up recently with, well, he's now a priest now. Father, I was thinking of Patrick Hagen. Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 00:28:07 Father Joseph Hagen. Father Joseph Hagen. So, like, I was in a pub in Ireland about 10 years ago, and I saw him across the room, and I felt the Holy Spirit tell me to go preach to him. Like, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. So, because I was looking at him, and even though he had red hair and white skin, I'm like, no, there's no way that those straight white teeth belong to an Irishman. I knew he was American.

Starting point is 00:28:28 So I went and we talked. I gave him my rosary. And then just a couple of months ago when I was there in D.C. and he's a month away from ordination, he's now a priest. We were sitting in the coffee shop and he pulls out that same rosary that I had personally made and handed to him like a weirdo in a pub in Ireland. How glorious is that? It is, yeah, because the Lord wants us to go to him together, and he's generous, and that's just, yeah, it's awesome. So, boom. Glory. Thirdly, he says, I love this. So, we've done faith, hope, and now charity. Thirdly,

Starting point is 00:29:02 with regard to charity, which is greatly enkindled by this. Hence, Augustine says, I love how much he's drawing from Augustine, What greater cause is there of the Lord's coming than to show God's love for us? And he afterward adds, If we have been slow to love, at least let us hasten to love in return. Yeah, I mean, when I, so when I first think of this, I think of Father James Brent, with whom I live. He's a Dominican friar as well, and just an incredible preacher and just a really good man. I heard him preach once about the love of God, and he just drew this really vivid image of the scene on Calvary.

Starting point is 00:29:42 He just drew this really vivid image of the scene on Calvary. And he describes, you know, all of the people there round about the Lord and all of the circumstances that led up to that and the emotional turmoil of the people who were kind of gazing upon him as he suffered in his final agony. And then he just kind of brought it home to the individual listener at this particular retreat. And he just kind of like formulated our questions for us. He was like, why, like, why, why Lord, are you doing this? Like, why are you, why are you up there on the cross? For what reason have you submitted yourself to such torture? It wasn't necessary. You know, it wasn't, you know, it just doesn't seem to be called for. And then he just goes through and he says, if you were to be able to transport yourself bodily back there to that time, and you had a big old ladder and you put that ladder next to the cross, and you walked up, you know, you mounted those steps up next to Jesus,

Starting point is 00:30:28 and you, you know, whispered in his ear, like, why, Lord, are you doing this? He says, the Lord would turn to you and say, because you are worth it. And when I first heard that, I was just like, it's just absolutely incredible. Like, the whole trajectory of the incarnation is just to show us that God loves us, and that that love is transformative and saving, and that we actually have the possibility, we actually have the hope of, like, living in and with that love, like, playing host to that love. The Lord can dwell in us richly and that charity can suffuse every feature of a redeemed life and be the very principle whereby we act. Like we can live, we can act, we can move, we can breathe for the love of God, you know, for love of God and for

Starting point is 00:31:15 love of His creatures. It's just like, bleh. Yeah, go ahead. When most people hear that, you know, the Lord turning to us and saying, because you're worthy, I think most of us or many of us might have a reaction like, no, I'm not worthy. Like, that's what I've been told to say in my prayers all the time, right? Like, I'm not worthy. So, tell us how to understand that. Yeah, no. So, like, worth it in the sense that, like, you are worth it. Worth it.

Starting point is 00:31:39 In the sense that, yeah, yeah, yeah. And not in the sense that there is anything about us that merits that, right? Every claim that we have on God is first God's gift. So, yeah, I mean, like, I think it's the second Council of Orange, which is like in the sixth century, and it says, of our own, we can only lay claim to falsity and sin. In case you attempted to pride. In case you attempted to pride. Yeah, exactly. It's like, all right. You know, like we're just big old dumpster fires. What a blessing.

Starting point is 00:32:12 But by God's grace, we are called to so much more. And this is like a very typical Dominican trope that God loves us not because we are good, but because he is good. Right? So, like God's love makes us worth it. So, it's no, you know, prior claim. He is the cause of our goodness. Exactly, you know? He makes us to be worthy, and he shows us to be worth it in that sense, which boggles the mind, but it also has, like, very, very practical implications,

Starting point is 00:32:45 right? When you think about, like, when should I pray? The answer is now, right? The answer isn't some future time, you know, when you'll have your life together, right? The answer is presently. I was just thinking that this morning, like my son, Peter, wakes up at really bad hours, like 5am, and I'm exhausted. And I would love it, right? If the kids would just sleep into 9 or 8 or 7, and that way I could get up and I could do my prayers. But he kind of worked me out really early this morning and it was just like that. I felt groggy. There was a bit of a mess in the lounge room. It's not like I was walking into a beautiful, neat chapel where there was no noise. But I just made that decision to pray. So, I'm like, I lit a couple of candles and I'm like

Starting point is 00:33:23 doing my little prayers while he's like throwing, banging a balloon around the place and being really annoying. Yeah, but just choosing to pray now, as you say, not waiting for a more perfect time. Pete Yeah. Because God is good and our goodness is His gift. Pete There's a beautiful praise and worship song from Hillsong. I forget the name of it, but it says, I am chosen, not forsaken.

Starting point is 00:33:51 I am who you say I am. I love that line because so often we think we are who we say we are or we think we are who Satan says we are. There's that beautiful line, Satan calls you by your sin. The Father calls you by your name. And I just love that. It's like, well, look, I might think that I'm crap, but I'm actually who he says I am. So, it's almost like Christianity is an invitation to reality. Like, you might think the earth's flat, but you can think that, but you'd be wrong.

Starting point is 00:34:21 Likewise, you can think that God does not love you, that you are broken beyond repair, that you are not worth paying attention to, that the Father isn't concerned with the small details of your life, but you're wrong. So, I invite you to accept reality. To live in the truth. Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome.

Starting point is 00:34:39 Like G.K. Chesterton talks about in Orthodoxy, there's like this chapter called The Maniac, where he says that modern man, it's not that he's illogical or irrational. There's a kind of logic or reason to his thoughts, but they just operate in a smaller circle. He says he doesn't need to be so much convinced that he's illogical, but that he is narrow. You know, we need to be invited into a wider circle. So, like when we say like, yeah, we are unworthy, that's true. Yeah. But it's just not the last word. Yeah. Beautiful.

Starting point is 00:35:09 Fourthly, says Aquinas, with regard to well-doing in which he set us an example, hence Augustine says in a sermon, man who might be seen was not to be followed, but God was to be followed who could not be seen. And therefore, God was made man, that he who might be seen by man and whom man might follow might be shown to man. God, I love Augustine. The hardest parts about reading St. Thomas Aquinas is when he quotes St. Augustine. Well, maybe you're right, because I'm sure it's a lot more difficult to comprehend than I sense that it is. But whenever he quotes Augustine, I'm like, ah, thank God.

Starting point is 00:35:47 Sometimes you read Aquinas, it's quite stale. It's very kind of, he writes in syllogisms, and I love him for that. But as soon as he begins to quote Augustine, I'm like, oh, here comes the heart language. Got it. Okay. Well, I see your point, and I concede it for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So with respect to this, I love the imagery of an example.

Starting point is 00:36:11 So St. Thomas says that God is the efficient cause of creation. He's the final cause of creation. But he's also the exemplar formal cause of creation, which is, okay, slightly technical language, but let's dial it back. Here we go. So, like, when you're making a statue, this is a classic example that philosophers use to describe the four causes. You've got the stuff, which is the matter. You've got like the shape that the craftsman imposes upon it. And then you've got the efficient causes is the artist himself. And the final cause is to be beautiful. But before the shape is in the matter, the shape is first in the mind of the artisan, right?

Starting point is 00:36:47 And he has that notion of what it's going to look like, and he imposes that in reality. So St. Thomas will say that God has that kind of notion with respect to creation. He has a sense of—not a sense, I mean he has an idea of how it's to play out, and then he works that in creation. He has an idea of how it's to play out, and then he works that in creation. But to be an example or to be an exemplar cause is something that's true more broadly in the dispensation of grace. So there's a sense in which Jesus is the pattern of our flourishing, right? So what it means to be a man or what it means to be a human being exists first in Jesus by virtue of the fact that he's taken to human nature. So when he does that, when he comes among us like a bolt from the blue, he shows us what it is to be man because we've forgotten, right? We've forgotten our origins,

Starting point is 00:37:35 we've forgotten our dignity, we've forgotten our destiny. And so Christ shows all of that to us in the flesh by the working of deeds in our midst. And so, we can look at Christ and see our own story, and Christ gives us His story to be our own, which is just kind of wild. So, like, Christ is somehow, like, exercising humanity. He's, like, taking our body out for a walk, which is a very bad image and kind of an historian, so don't quote me on that. But yeah, like, He is an example in a real rich and saving way. Beautiful. Fifthly, says Aquinas, with regard to the full participation of the divinity, which is the true bliss of man and end of human life. And this is bestowed upon us by Christ's humanity.

Starting point is 00:38:26 For Augustine, whoop, says in a sermon, God was made man that man might be God. So we actually, we did a whole episode on deification with one of your fraters. Nice. I'm not getting who, but he was brilliant. And he's super into the Eastern Church stuff. Was it Father Andrew Hofer? No. Was it?

Starting point is 00:38:45 I don't remember. Anyway. No. So this, I mean, yeah, this is classic divinization language or deification language or, to use the Eastern terminology, theosis language. Whoa. So there's this like, there's the sense that Christ takes everything proper to human nature and he introduces it into the Godhead to show us what our, you know, like, basically to show us what we were made for. So, like, the whole history of the early church councils is just to say, you know, Christ is God, and Christ has a human soul, and Christ has a human body, and Christ has a human mind, and will, and passions, and, you know, like,

Starting point is 00:39:22 the deprivations of human flesh. Like, he has all of it because, and this is something that's often quoted as like, what Christ has not assumed, he has not healed or he has not redeemed. So, Christ takes all of humanity, brings it into God, not that it was estranged from God, you get what I'm saying, so that we can see the real, you know, the course of our lives and we can understand what it means to be an adopted son of God by looking to the only begotten son of God. So, yeah. And I think, like, sometimes people think that to be Christian is to follow the rules well or to, like, be a swell fellow. But here, you get the full, you know, like, the full majesty of the vision of Christian life. It's to be God. Again, not in a polytheistic way, like get off my back. But to be God in the sense that you are utterly transformed after the lightness of the sun.

Starting point is 00:40:10 I like the analogy of iron in a fire, right? Where it is in a sense becomes fire while retaining what it is. Yeah. I mean, I know all analogies are going to break down when we start talking about this. But by the way, it's Father James Brent. Oh, nice. Okay, perfect. So, if people want to listen to more on this topic of deification, theosis, check out episode 137 of Pines with Aquinas. Because the episode's called Becoming God.

Starting point is 00:40:38 Dig. How can that benefit our... It seems like we've forgotten that. I mean, I know people in your circles probably haven't forgotten it. And I know there's big circles of Eastern Catholicism and Orthodoxy that haven't forgotten this. But the layman in the pew has no idea what we're talking about and thinks perhaps we're talking heresy. Yeah. Why have we forgotten this, do you think?

Starting point is 00:41:01 And why should we begin talking about it again? So, I think that part of it, this is one answer. There are potentially a billion answers, but this is the one I'm going to give, so deal with it. I think part of the reason is because the way the church is portrayed in public discourse is associated with morality. So when people think of the Catholic church, they often think of like the church's stand on marriage or same-sex attraction or life issues or abortion, contraception, euthanasia, etc. So they associate it with its moral teaching, which is not bad. I'm not saying that's bad. It's good.

Starting point is 00:41:36 But when that's most of what you hear or most of the way in which the church is envisioned, then you tend to think that it exists for the propagation of rules, right? So the church is principally a moral entity. And then, yeah, then that kind of changes the way that a lot of Catholics think about the matter. So to be a good Christian then is to follow the rules well, right? It's to acquit yourself admirably in the sphere of morality. And here I'm going to quote Monsignor Luigi Giussani, who isn't the easiest person to read, but he has some really cool insights. So, when he talks about the life of faith, he talks about responsibility and morality as a feature of it, but not the most important feature. So, he says, like, what first happens is that you meet Jesus, and you're like, this is exceptional. There's something about this

Starting point is 00:42:25 that I can't dismiss. You know, like the way in John 1, the first disciples, Andrew and the unnamed disciple, you know, have the kind of confidence when they meet the Lord that Andrew can come back to his brother and just say, like, we have found the Messiah. You know, there's something different about this that causes us to wonder. And it's all bound up in the person of Jesus Christ. And then responsibility, morality, comes as a subsequent revelation. Like, in order to enjoy this friendship, right, I need to live in a certain way because I couldn't bear the thought of betraying this love. But oftentimes, yeah, we just get it backwards and we think about the rules first. So I think that to reclaim, to recapture a sense of the majesty of Jesus Christ, like what we're doing here, helps to bring that back into focus. Yeah, it also makes the idea of heaven a lot more exciting. So, it's not like we

Starting point is 00:43:09 just, heaven will be where we're really well behaved. All right, well, thanks very much. So, we'll save the rest of this till next week, but thank you so much for that. That was bloody amazing. Go Thomas Aquinas. Tell us what's going on at the Thomistic Institute and what the Thomistic Institute is for those who are listening who have no idea. Gladly. So the Thomistic Institute, what I'm about to say will sound uninteresting for one sentence, and then we'll get very interesting in the second sentence. The Thomistic Institute is a research institute of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. Okay, so like you hear that, and you're like, weird, brain trust, bizarro. Okay, so it started as like Dominicans at our, effectively our seminary, thinking,

Starting point is 00:43:53 hey, we've got a lot of cool things, and Jesus is Lord, so let's make that more widely known. So we started having conferences here about 11 years ago to that effect, and then some conferences in other places. And then four years ago, Fr Thomas Joseph White and Father Dominic Legge were like, hey, these resources are just super fantastic. If you're a German speaker, that'd be super fantastisch, which is one of my favorite German words. And I say that because I only know like four of them. But they were like, what if we were to export evangelical Thomism? So what we have here works really well. People find it super liberating, encouraging, life-changing.

Starting point is 00:44:31 What if we were to bring that to college campuses? So they started this Campus Chapters program. And now students at universities, principally secular universities, can organize in such a way where they get recognition as a student group. So you get a sponsor, a faculty sponsor. You kind of talk to the chaplain to make sure it's all good. And then you start having speakers come to talk at your school in the Catholic intellectual tradition. And then, you know, you can do like book studies, you can do like little student symposia, you can do other things. So it's grown a lot in the past four years. And we're like, maybe 50, 55 campuses in the US and Canada, in Ireland, in England. We just started in China, which is sweet. Wow. Oh yeah. And then now there's a

Starting point is 00:45:13 Thomistic Institute for Europe. So they're doing continental Europe. So we're just carving up the world. And yeah, it's been like super fruitful and students typically have between like, I don't know, like four to six events a year and then the other things in between. And then we host these conferences over the summer, and everyone just pumps their fist like absolute monsters. A more recent development at the old TI is this program called Aquinas 101. So a lot of times people are like, hey, I love Jesus, and I want to think well about Jesus, and I want to talk well about Jesus. And I think St. Thomas is a good guide. And then they start working with St. Thomas, and they want to think well about Jesus, and I want to talk well about Jesus. And I think St. Thomas is a good guide. And then they start working with St. Thomas, and they're like, this is kind of difficult at first.

Starting point is 00:45:49 And then they listen to Pints with Aquinas. They're like, yeah, we can do this. And then some people are like, I want to kind of like walk through the whole thing and get a systematic look. So we at the Thomistic Institute just are working on a program called Aquinas 101, which will kind of go live this fall. And it's just a series of videos and they're short. And the first kind of sets take you through the rudiments of St. Thomas's philosophy. So we'll introduce, you know, who is St. Thomas? What did he write? Et cetera. Then what are the main philosophical terms? Like what is form? What does matter? What are the four causes?

Starting point is 00:46:20 Et cetera. And then we just walk you through the Summa with videos. And for each of those videos, we'll give you some, you know, just a couple of articles of the SUMA to read, then some podcasts to kind of get you like plugged into a wider universe. And yeah, you just like, share and love. So yeah, we're going to make that available on September 1st and the videos will continue to come out over the course of the year. And it'll be something where you can just enroll, you know, just put your email address in, and then you just get an email, two emails each week with a video,

Starting point is 00:46:50 and then those little texts, and then some links to get other things if you should so desire. Do you have the website up right now so people can check it when this goes live? Or else I'll just promote it as soon as it's live. Yes. So the website is not ready. I should have said no no the website will be live

Starting point is 00:47:06 well the website will be live on august 1st um so we're building it out presently and it looks great um there's a woman who works here at the ti who's who's awesome and super dedicated to it so we are we are jazzed uh well do you know what the url will be it'll be aquinas101.com because when this goes live it may actually be in August. I'm recording some of these ahead of time for when I take my month sabbatical from the internet. Nice. That's amazing. I'm so happy that you're doing what you're doing.

Starting point is 00:47:33 Why do you think there's such a hunger for this stuff? I think because there are a lot of, like, there are a lot of, like, opinions out there, a lot of truth claims out there. And I think a lot of us just feel, yeah, we want to be able to sort them out. We just want to be wise. I think a lot of people just want to be wise. They want to look at reality, and they want to be able to kind of carve it at the joints. They want to be able to call each thing by its right name. And just personally, you want to be able to look at your life and know why.

Starting point is 00:47:59 And we can recognize in St. Thomas wisdom. They're like, this guy, he just knows stuff, and it's beautiful, and it's just, yeah, it's just like my first encounter with St. Thomas wisdom. They're like, this guy, he just, he knows stuff and it's beautiful. And it's just, yeah, it's just like, like my first encounter with St. Thomas, I was just like, the things that that woman said, it was Eleanor Stump, the things that she just said, super articulate and precise and also deep and probing and profound. And she's given expression to things that I hoped to know, but could never enunciate with a vocabulary that's just really, really, ah, yeah. So at that point, I was just like, yeah, I need more of this in my life. Yeah. I think for me, like Aquinas gives intellectual legs to what otherwise may sound trite and hallmarky. So like when someone says,

Starting point is 00:48:41 if you were the only person in the world, Jesus would have died for you. You know, you're like, yeah, maybe that's true. I don't know. And then Aquinas gives a syllogism for it, you know, or you're like, money can't make you happy. And I'm like, I'll prove God wrong. And then Aquinas argues for why, you know, and I just, I love it. It's beautiful. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:48:57 Yeah. No, he's a good friend, a wise friend. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate you. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. All right. Bye. All right. There you go. What do you. Thanks for having me. All right. Bye. All right. There you go. What do you reckon? That was pretty good, wasn't it? Father Gregory

Starting point is 00:49:09 Pine and the Matt Fradfrads. Sorry about that drum beat at the beginning. I don't know what I was doing. I was just getting excited and I thought I would play that and that's the magic that happened. Just thanks, man. Thanks for listening and be sure to check out next week's episode. We're going to get into the atonement and maybe some kind of Calvinistic versus Catholic understandings of the atonement. So that's going to be pretty bloody fun. Yeah. As I say, we want to get 40 more patrons so we can start bringing on Father Gregory Pine every other episode. We're doing a bunch of cool things over at patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. After we get Father gregory on the next uh project we're trying to conquer is to get a pint of the aquinas app so you could actually read all of aquinas's prayers

Starting point is 00:49:50 you could even listen to them uh recorded professionally some audio books will be there of his um the episodes will be there even the matt frad show episodes we're going to put there what's cool about that i think is i don't know i just get this sense that as big tech companies begin to crack down on conservative voices and i guess i'm a conservative voice um that it'll be more difficult to kind of hear us so i just thought that this could be like another way in addition to just being cool to have a pints of the coin app um that you could kind of just get notified from the app and so it's not like youtube telling you when a new thing is up hey can i tell you what you get if you start giving 10 bucks a month right now at patreon.com slash manfred? You get a signed copy of my book,

Starting point is 00:50:29 Does God Exist? A Socratic Dialogue and the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas. I will send you a Pints with Aquinas sticker. You get regular video reflections from me that I post. It's just available to y'all. You get post-show wrap-up footage from the Matt Fradd Show. So every time we record a Matt Fradd Show episode, we record like 10 to 20 minutes after it's like a private more fun kind of laid back thing and you get access to that nobody else does um you get your questions answered i do these youtube live streams regularly now and i'm answering your questions before i answer anybody else's on youtube so that's cool you'll get access to an ever-growing library of audiobooks like papal encyclicals and Works by St. Thomas Aquinas that maybe you would never read but you could listen to. They're recorded professionally.

Starting point is 00:51:09 That's all available. Also, you'll get access to a 15-audio lecture series on the Divine Comedy. This is a legit university course which you can take for free, like today, if you start supporting. There's that and a bunch of other things. I know that most people don't start supporting me on Patreon because they want a bunch of free stuff, but free stuff can help get you through the door. So if you want to go help us out so we can start crushing some of these projects we have,

Starting point is 00:51:33 go to patreon.com slash mattfradd. Give us 10 bucks a month or less or more if you want. And then also, if you hate Patreon and just want to give directly, go to pintswithaquinas.com slash mattfradd. Alrighty, cheers. Buckle up for next week. Next week's a real doozy i i had a great time doozy nobody says doozy anymore so if i say doozy it's just that i'm old now so things that i used it doesn't matter just have a good day okay just have a great one. I'm going to go do the same.

Pints With Aquinas - 162: 5 Reasons For The Incarnation, W/ Fr. Gregory Pine (Part 1)

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.