Pints With Aquinas - 174: 7 Misunderstandings About Thomas Aquinas W/ Fr. Gregory Pine

Episode Date: October 8, 2019

Today I chat with Fr. Gregory Pine about 7 ways people often misunderstand Thomas Aquinas 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, 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 going to ask Aquinas, what are the ways that people misunderstand you? How do people misunderstand you? I'm joined around the bar table by my good mate, Father Gregory Pine, to discuss seven ways people often misunderstand St. Thomas Aquinas. All right, welcome back to Pints with Aquinas. This is the show where you and I pull up a bar stool next to the angelic doctor to discuss theology and philosophy. I love doing episodes like this from time to time. For those who are brand new to Thomas Aquinas, some of you have been listening to Pints with Aquinas. Maybe you also listen to the guys over at the Thomistic Institute.

But there's a lot of new people that come on board and they're like, okay, who is this Aquinas fellow? okay who is this Aquinas fellow uh actually my wife designed this uh I drive a jeep and she she created this jeep tire cover to go on the back of my truck says pints with Aquinas so now I get into all sorts of random conversations um although you don't you don't want to drive was at the Latin mass two weeks ago and of course everybody knew who I was at the Latin Mass two weeks ago, and of course, everybody knew who I was. Got a big black Jeep with a big Pints with Aquinas sign on the back tire of the Jeep. It got back to the Jeep, and there was a note in my windshield. Matt Fradd, I presume? Yes, okay, good. Anyway, my point is this. I get into conversations about Thomas Aquinas, and people want to know who he is.

this i get into conversations about thomas aquinas and people want to know who he is and that's why episodes like this exist to kind of really help you get a better holistic understanding of thomas aquinas again we're going to go through seven ways people misunderstand him and set the record straight i also need to share i don't need to but i'm going to this beautiful message i was just given by a bloke called Lucan Stitzel. He wrote to me and forgive me, this is a little self-aggrandizing. Like I'm, this does whatever. I don't, but here we go. He says, Matt, I want you to know that you have been an instrumental part in my falling in love with St. Thomas and the Dominicans. When I started listening to Pints with Aquinas nearly a year ago, a year and a half ago, I was still unconvinced of the Catholic faith.

But Aquinas' words pierced my heart and left me doubting the staunch atheism I had clung to for so many years. As I would listen to each of your episodes, I felt like I, too, sat alongside the angelic doctor receiving refreshment from him. For the first time in my life, I realized that the aching in my heart was the yearning for the infinite, for truth, for I am who I am. Amazing, hey? And this is actually one of three people who define themselves as staunch atheists that I've heard from over the last few weeks who have become patrons of Pints with Aquinas. And they said that Pints with Aquinas played a big role in them abandoning atheism and coming to the Catholic faith. So glory to Jesus Christ. Just wanted to share that with you. But the point is, obviously, there are people like that

who, you know, they don't want to delve right into an episode on divine simplicity. They want something a little more basic, but nonetheless interesting. So this was a really fun episode I did with Father Gregory of Pine. You're really going to enjoy it. So, you know, buckle up. Here we go. Well, thanks for being back. Today, we're going to talk about seven ways people misunderstand Aquinas.

I love doing episodes like this from time to time for complete newbies. I just had somebody reach out to me today, like literally this morning while I was getting breakfast, and they said they were, and this is different from the email I sent you, Father. He said he was a staunch atheist for a couple of years and had a pretty profound conversion. And, you know, it's relatively new to Thomas Aquinas. So I thought, this is great. You know, people can come in and they can get their bearings. They don't have to jump right into divine simplicity or something. Excellent. All right. So anyway,

how are you? Are you okay? Are you well? I'm feeling groovy. Yeah. Let's see. What's up? I had knee surgery and then I was on crutches for a few weeks. And then the doctor told me two days ago that I can ditch the crutches. So as far as like my bodily, you know, concerns go, I feel, I feel much better than I have for like the past month plus. So that's pretty great. Um, and then things are moving and grooving on the, uh, Thomistic Institute front. So started visiting campuses and checking in with the students, doing a little bit of hype and a little bit of high-fiving and fist pumping. So that's always exciting. So yes, I would say that I'm doing well. I just interviewed your frate, Father Dominic. Oh, excellent. Nice. How was that? Oh, I love that guy. He's so masculine and gentle

and knowledgeable, humble. Love the guy. He's really great. Yeah, it's a killer combo. So I sit like 12 feet from him every day for many hours. Wow. Yeah, I feel like the Thomistic Institute is one of these things where the Lord has you right where he wants you. And I think big things are just now about to unfold in a way that not even y'all have knowledge of. Yeah, I hope that's the case. I'm like conscious of the fact, and this is a token point, I'm conscious of the fact that like basically everything fails with the exception of the universal church. So you can't presume upon the fact that the thing that you're doing is going to be good for any long period of time.

That's good. So, but like while it's happening, it's really delightful to see the Lord blessing people through it and enriching their lives. Strange, somewhat tenuously connected point, but there's an EDM artist named Kygo, who I think is hilarious and good. And he was like, asked, you know, like, how do you account for this popularity? And he said, he's like, I have no idea, but I know that I'm popular right now and that people are enjoying my music and I want to produce it for them. And there will come a time when they will no longer enjoy my music. He said, and I'm just happy to produce that music now.

So I was like, yeah, that's the spirit, you know. So yeah. It really is. I love how you put that. It's not that Christ said of the Thomistic Institute that the gates of hell will not prevail against it. He said that of the church, not my little ministry, not pints with Aquinas. It's good to keep things in perspective. Yeah.

So like I'm sitting in our offices right now. things in perspective yeah so like i'm sitting in our offices right now and like uh i don't know somebody on a biplane flying lesson could just cruise through the windows of this second story in like two seconds and like burn up our offices and take half of our staff and whatever life would be crazy and sad but um it's conceivable so you know speaking of planes flying low, you know Brian Regan? I do know Brian Regan, yeah. He has this one line. He says, you know who I feel sorry for? Arab Americans who genuinely want to get into crop dusting.

Oh, gosh. The question is, is it too soon? And I think he answered no. It is precisely when it ought to be. Yeah. This is great. Yeah, and we told everyone in the episode we did with Father Leg that everybody has to go to Aquinas101.com,

sign up right away. You'll start getting videos. Is it two times a week? It's two times a week. Yeah, so Tuesdays and Thursdays, basically because that's when people tend to read their email more, but you don't have to read them on those days. Obviously, you can mark them on red and then pick them up on the weekend if you want to. Exciting stuff.

Well, today we want to talk about seven ways people misunderstand Aquinas. Let me go through them. You agreed with the list that I sent you. You didn't have any major changes. I did indeed, yeah. Okay, so here they are. Number one, Thomas is a disembodied brain. Number two, Thomas doesn't have a personality. Number three, Thomas is impossible to read. Number four, Thomas is rationalistic and doesn't give a rip about the heart. No, I think that was yours. Number five, Thomas shouldn't be considered a real philosopher since he's under the thumb of the church. Number six, Thomas only attacked straw men and didn't deal seriously with his opponent's arguments. Number seven, Thomas was right about everything.

This will be fun. This will be fun. Dive right in. Let's do it. Number one, Thomas is a disembodied brain. Lead others to truth and enrich your life in Christ by studying Catholic theology that is faithful to Scripture, tradition, and the magisterium. At Franciscan University of Steubenville, you'll challenge your mind and contemplate the mysteries of the faith while being guided by some of the most respected theologians in the church today.

People like Dr. Scott Hahn, Dr. Michael Volstein, Dr. Mark Miravalle, and more. There's a reason so many of the leaders in the church and lay apostolates count Franciscan theology graduates among their staff, faculty, and clergy. Our faculty members are not only some of the most respected Catholic intellectuals, authors, speakers, and apologists in the world today, they're also committed to teaching the truth of the Catholic faith. All of them take an oath of fidelity to the magisterium, pledging to live in a way that expresses full communion with the church. Our programs are available online or on campus. We offer several different graduate theology degrees suited to fit

your interests and career goals. Concentrations are available in Mariology, Theology of the Body, Moral Theology, Sacred Scripture Canon Law, Young and Young Adult Ministry and more. Best of all you don't need an undergraduate degree in Theology or Philosophy to enroll in these programs So here's what I want you to do. I want you to go to

franciscan.university slash pints Okay? Did you hear me? Good Because I really want them to know that these adverts are bloody well working. So franciscan.university slash pints for more information about graduate theology and catechetics at Franciscan University of Steubenville. That's franciscan.university slash pints, like of beer, franciscan.university slash pints number one thomas is a disembodied brain by which we mean what by which we mean that he is just a kind of intellect without uh like a history without

a family um without sanctity proper to his whole life but rather like the only reason that he was canonized the only reason that he's recommended to us as a good teacher is because he says brilliant stuff. But oftentimes when we think along those lines, we lose sight of St. Thomas and we can kind of be, I don't know, like averse to studying in the school of someone with whom we wouldn't necessarily want to be friends. So yeah, I think a good way to approach this is just to learn a little bit about St. Thomas the saint. And for me, just kind of autobiographically, I came to love St. Thomas first as a saint and then as a philosopher and theologian. I think I might have mentioned, but have you ever come across those books? They're republished by Ignatius Press by an author named Louis DeWall, D-E space W-O-H-L.

I have not, but I have heard you mention them. Okay. So he wrote one about St. Thomas Aquinas called The Quiet Light, and it's charming, and it's historical fiction, maybe like 300 pages long. And I'm buying it on Amazon right now. Excellent. Yeah, so there's actually quite a few men in my province who read that book and decided, you know, the Dominican life is for me, including Father Andrew Hofer, who's very intelligent and was my student master for a few years. Father Peter John Cameron, who edited Magnificat for a few years as well. So I count myself blessed to be numbered among their ranks. But the book, it's hilarious. So it's like, it's one of these things where the book is, it's about him, but it's also about Europe in the 13th century. And it's about members of his family. And's like a love story not what saint thomas but with like his sister and this knight errant um so yes you can imagine that it'd

be delightful to read i was like 19 i think when i read it and i was i was just taken taken aback nope blown away that's the word um what is it and since you got to love him as a philosopher after what was it about him that really gripped you i think the thing that I found most beautiful was that he gave expression to like thoughts and I don't know, like, uh, inclinations of the heart so well. I remember there's this one little scene recounted where, so yeah, many people know that St. Thomas Aquinas was kept on house arrest for like a year. So he was born in 1225. And then, um, uh, at the age of five, he was given as a boy oblate to the monastery of Monte Cassino, uh, Benedictine monastery. And it was common at that time was like what you would do with your kids if you wanted them to go to a boarding school

and like finishing school and like gentry school. Um, but yeah, the monastery was threatened by Frederick the second Hohenstaufen, I think at a certain point. So he was forced to leave, and then he enrolled in the University of Naples, and that's where he met the Dominicans. And he's like, these guys are sweet. But his parents wanted him to be an abbot. They wanted him actually to be the abbot of Monte Cassino because that was close to their family estates. And that would have been a relatively well-respected position within the church and within the world at the time, within Christendom. But to join the Dominicans was like political and social suicide. Yeah, because they were rag-tag, untested, you know, like otherwise, yeah, just unproven in the church. So yeah, you can think about how that might translate to the present day. To join an order that just seems like

kind of tenuous. You know, it's like, will this thing work or will it just dissolve? It's hard to say. And his parents are just made very nervous by that. So they opposed it. And like normal parents, they sent their two or three sons to waylay him on the road from Naples to Paris, where he was going to make his novitiate. And they kind of kidnapped him. And then they held him at their family estate for some time. And they kind of kidnapped him, and then they held him at their family estate for some time. So there's like a story told that when he was being held semi-captive in his family home, his sisters would come, and they would just kind of talk to him about the spiritual life. So he was making good use of his time memorizing the scriptures, you know.

Cheers. And his one sister, Marada, came up, you know, to sit at his feet and asked him, Thomas, how does one become a saint or how do I become a saint? And St. Thomas says in this recounting, desire it, which I love because it's not like he's saying try harder, nor is it like he's saying you have no shot or you can do anything you set your mind to, which is know, lie. He's just saying desire it, and that in desiring it, you come to already enjoy the fruits of the sanctity that lies in store, because the Lord kind of like kindles in you a desire for the things that he wills to give you in grace. I don't know, it's just like such a simple and beautiful answer. And the book is just like filled with lines like that. It just like devastated me. I remember once, so in 1256, the mendicant orders, mendicant from mendicare, meaning too big, which would be like mostly the Franciscans and the Dominicans at this

time. They were put to the test by a secular teacher, a secular master at the University of Paris named William of Saint Amour. And he was saying that these guys are basically, they're like robbing the poor, and they're a sign of the end times and they shouldn't be allowed to teach and yada yada like they're just bad monks so because like in the rule of saint benedict you have a few categories of people at the beginning you know you can live by yourself as a hermit you can live together as a cenobite um you know you can you can do x y and z things but the worst thing that you could possibly be is a gyro vague you know somebody who wanders around a wandering monk and in his in his mind, the Dominicans and the Franciscans were just

wandering monks. So they were completely untethered and unmoored. And so he wrote this polemical treatise trying to condemn them. And then St. Albert the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Bonaventure had to appear in Rome with this gentleman, William of St. Amour, to kind of have like a disputation before the Holy Father in his court to see kind of what would happen, as it were. And the story that he tells of it, it's super beautiful. He says something to the effect of like the three men sang, or the three men sang like something like a symphonic tune in succession. So St. Thomas reduced William of St. Amour's arguments to mere straw, and then St. Albert the Great consumed them in flames, and then St. Bonaventure sang away the

ashes. And I was just like, I'm sitting in my chair, you know, just pumping my fist. I'm like, I want to be like that. But yeah, there's like, there just lots of lots of tender stories told about St. Thomas, his attentiveness to his brethren. Like he wrote a bunch of these occasional treatises because one of his brothers said, like, hey, I've got these weird questions. Do you have time? And meanwhile, he's writing commentaries on the letters to St. Paul, on the works of Aristotle. He's writing the Summa Theologiae. And he always takes time out for his brothers. And on the one hand, that sounds like, well, yeah, well, I mean, that's kind of like what you signed up for in religious life. But some of the questions are

insane. And he's just infinitely patient with them, you know, because truth be told, like a lot of them are just curious questions. They're not like this theological question, you know, the whole future of christendom hangs in the balance it's like yeah it's like about the movement of the stars and stuff like that whatever okay so yeah super generous those are just some small things i don't know do you have particular stories of his that you love or particular uh well as he was uh on his way was it to the fourth ladder in council when he was about to die? Second council of Lyon. Oh, got that totally wrong. When he was on his way to the council and was dying,

they took him to, was it the Cistercians? That's right, yeah, in Fasanova. And it was there that he asked, I think the monks came in and asked if he could offer a commentary on the Song of Songs. Yeah, they put him to work, like with his last breaths. Hey, boys, if I could just have a quick five minutes of just one, you know, hilarious that they made him work, yeah. Now, do we have that commentary?

We don't. Oh, how sad. It is. It's tragic. I'm sure it would have been beautiful, yeah, and especially rich, but alas and alack. He also, like, on his deathbed, too, he makes an act of submission to the church. It's often said, you know, like, of what I have written, you know, I stand by, but if any should conflict with the church's judgments, you know,

I humbly recant. So, yeah, to go out. Well, like, I mean, a lot of things are said about that journey, that he went there kind of in charity because he wanted the East and the West to be reconciled. He and Bonaventure both were, you know, slated to go to the council. Bonaventure made it and died on the way home. He didn't make it, right? He died on the way. And that he's said to have been, you know, considering the different arguments of Eastern Christianity and how East and West could be reconciled, and that in his abstraction, he just failed to identify a low-hanging branch as he was, you know was going along on his mule or his donkey. And he struck his head, and that's what actually led to his demise.

So yeah, he was on an errand of charity when he died, which is a good way to go out. Do you ever wonder if Thomas will be part of what reconciles East and West? I know that he's a contentious figure in the East. Some accuse him of rationalism, but at the same time, he's very patristic, which is what the East is. And I wonder if, please God, that the East and West will reconcile. I wonder what part the works of Thomas will play in that. I think there, so we just had a conference at the House of Studies not too long ago. It was called Salvation in Christ. And we had papers given by a number of excellent theologians, one of whom is a man named Marcus

Plested, who is Greek Orthodox. He teaches at Marquette, another of whom is Father Khaled Anatolios, who is Byzantine Catholic and teaches at Notre Dame. And then Rick Van Neuvenhove, who's, he's Flemish. He teaches in England at the University of Durham. Father Dominic spoke as well. And then Father Robert Imbelli, who's a priest of the Archdiocese of New York. But it's really cool because you had Eastern and Western takes on Christianity, but all of whom were interested in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. So Marcus Plested,

in particular, is very much about reclaiming scholasticism for Eastern Christianity, because he's made nervous by the polemics, which cut Eastern Christianity off from a lot of these figures who really bridge the gap between the patristic period and the contemporary church. And he's interested in, you know, contemporary thinkers who are willing to kind of go back and reclaim some of that language. So it's really cool. And I think, yeah, I mean, St. Thomas is especially well suited in this regard. Like when you think about St. Thomas wrote or collected the Catena Aurea, the golden chain, which is a series of quotations from different fathers of the church on the four

canonical gospels. And in the commentary on Matthew, he quotes, you know, X number of people. But then in the commentary of Mark, he says, basically, I got access to a bunch of awesome stuff, a bunch of Eastern Christians, a bunch of councils of the church that formerly were not available to me, but now I'm going to incorporate them. And then he just quotes a bunch of, yeah, like Eastern Catholic and, you know, Orthodox theologians that were not really in vogue at the time. St. Thomas also spent a long time at Orvieto, the papal curia there, and had access to the library. So he's reading a lot of the documents from the early ecumenical councils that a lot of Christians in the 13th century just aren't engaging with. So St. Thomas is, yeah, he's got deep, deep ecclesial roots which

reach both East and West. And so, yes, I think that he would be an excellent resource in these kind of dialogues, and certainly it was something about which he was passionate. He wrote the Contra Errores Graecorum against the errors of the Greeks, which is really, I mean, it's a polemical treatise on the one hand, but it's also a kind of ironic treatise on the other, because the purpose of which is for unity. So, yes. Yes, and I have to point out that for our patrons, that is an audio book on Patreon, so people can go listen to that whole thing if they want.

Dig. All right, number two, Thomas doesn't have a personality. This makes sense, because when you read him, he sounds more like a math equation than a poet or a lover. Yeah. At least when you read his Summa, not when you read his prayers. Those are very different. Sure.

No, and I think those are great places to turn. So I think, yeah, I think when people encounter him, oftentimes it's in like a collection of medieval philosophers or theologians that you, you know, have in like a survey course. And usually you'll read the five ways, or you might read something from, I don't know, like the Summa Contra Gentiles or something like that. So what you're reading is the, I don't know what you would call exactly, but maybe like the starkest prose or some of the humblest of his personal revelations. I don't know exactly. I mean, it's difficult to express in words that don't just sound well, like you're just rooting for the home team. wed to the truth that he wants to keep from his presentation of it anything that could be potentially misleading or anything that could be potentially attract others to him rather than to

sacred truth itself so i think like okay when you when you think about a lot of texts that are contemporary with saint thomas saint thomas translates basically the best um and and part of it is because he wrote in very simple Latin by comparison to some of his contemporaries. But part of it, too, is that it's just like it's less idiosyncratic. It's more available to common sense. And now, you know, a lot of people are like, yeah, I mean, who's common sense? What are you talking about, chief? But again, by comparison to his contemporaries who are just very, very much involved in this dialectical method and, you know, like the answering of disputed questions, things just kind of get wild. Things get super complicated and heavily articulated. And as a result of which,

it's really difficult to access the truth at stake or to identify what is really important. But St. Thomas is so much a slave of the truth, so much a servant and lover of the truth that he really kind of gets out of the way, you know, like you can think about, say you're an academic, you know, kind of jockeying among your contemporaries for an important teaching position. You know, you're going to write erudite articles. You're going to try to just bowl them over by your scholarship. But St. Thomas doesn't do that. I mean, St. Thomas just puts forward the things that merit consideration because he's really, really animated by the formation of his contemporaries to hear confessions well and to celebrate the Mass worthily and to evangelize, you know, to those who have not yet

heard the gospel or to those who may differ on how the gospel is to be received. So his primary drive is evangelical. And so he just kind of,he's very self-effacing as a result. He's not saying, like, this is how I do it, and you might preferably consider that as an option. He just says, like, let's put us in contact with the truth, and we can have a kind of confidence that the truth will save. Every once in a while, though, you do see St. Thomas being, like, hilarious. Every once in a while, though, you do see St. Thomas being hilarious. For instance, in the Prima Pars Question 2, Article 3, I think, this is the question on the five ways, whether God exists. So he entertains two objections, namely evil.

Okay, how could God possibly exist if there are evil things on offer? I can't have a good God and evil things. It just doesn't square. And then the other is it doesn't seem like you need it, right, because you already have nature and then you have human volition. So to add another principle seems unnecessary. And then he levels the boom with his said contra. He says, quote, but in the scriptures it says, God says, I am who am. So there's that. Exactly.

So, like, it's awesome. So, like like god told us that he is so basically he is um now mind you he's he's being cheeky because scripture is a revealed source and if you don't accept it as a revealed source obviously you're not going to receive it as god saying that he is but st thomas is just like yeah send it baby like his finger is hovering above the mouse. Should I send? Click. Boom. Yeah, and then, yeah, I just, I mean, like you can see him be cheeky sometimes.

And you can also see him be justly angry. Yes, I was thinking that. So, classic examples are at the end of his polemical treatise is defending the religious life. So, during his two stints in Paris, so 12, so he was a master there from 1259, excuse me, 1256 to 1259. And then again, from 1268 to like 1272. And during both of those periods, there were these, you know, big controversies as to whether or not the mendicant order should be permitted to exist. And he writes three treatises, three polemical treatises in defense of the mendicant orders. The first is called Contra Impugnantes, basically against those who fight the mendicant orders. And

then another one is called the De Retrohentes, so against those who draw back those who would enter religious life. And then there's another one called the De Perfectione Spiritus Alice Vitae, On the Perfection of Spiritual Life. And basically, at the end of each of those, he just says, like, bring it on, baby, which I love. So, at the end of the De Perfectione, he says, it has occurred to me to say these things in answer to those who strive to detract from the perfection of religious life. Nevertheless, In answer to those who strive to detract from the perfection of religious life. Nevertheless, I abstain from reproaches. For he who utters reproach is foolish, and all fools are meddling with reproaches.

If anyone desired to send me a reply, his words will be very welcome to me. For the surest way to elucidate truth and to confound error is by confuting the arguments brought against the truth. Solomon says, iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend. So he's basically saying, like, if you want it, come and get it. And that's because... What was the passage in which he said, don't let them not whisper in corners like boys, but present themselves like a man.

Does it have to do with this issue? It's on the same issue. I don't know exactly which one. So that's the end of the De Perfectione. And at the end of the Contra Impugnantes, let's see, it may come up in there. That's okay. I didn't know if that was regarding the same topic or not,

because I know he also speaks very strongly on other issues as well. But yeah, you don't often see Aquinas speak like that. Yeah. But you can tell, like, you know, it's very rare that you encounter a just anger, because a lot of people will say, you know, like, Jesus wove a whip out of many cords, and he drove him out of the temple. Therefore, anger can be practiced righteously. And so every time I'm angry, it's probably righteous anger. My judgment on that is most of our anger is unrighteous anger, nearly all of it, just because it's so clouds our minds. And it's so, yeah, it just it proves so very distracting. It's so vehement that it just kind of like deflects us from the good.

But very rarely and occasionally you see it in the just, you know, you see it among the saints. And I think you see it with St. Thomas because this is something that he loves so much. And he'll talk about how one of the effects of love is zeal. And zeal confronts impediments to the beloved. So St. Thomas sees people attacking something for which he has labored, something to which he has given his whole life. And that causes him a great distress, but he conducts himself with a kind of righteous anger that is ordered to the truth. And it's fascinating that like at the end of that passage, he refers to his interlocutors as friends. You know, he says, come, come, if you have objections, come to me with them and I will

reply because iron sharpens iron. So a man sharpens the countenance of a friend like I am willing to help you in this. And he says it with, you know, with an air that's not condescending. He says it with an air that's not patronizing. I mean, St. Thomas himself is famous for his humility because, you know, the reason that he's called the dumb ox is because he didn't speak in class until such times he was provoked. It's recounted kind of apocryphally that his fellow classmates thought he was dumb, and so they tried to explain to him the lessons. And then in explaining to him the lessons, they themselves committed errors. And St. Thomas very gently and generously corrected them, and they came to discover that he knew it far better than they. And so it's St. Albert who is said to have, you know, said something to the effect of like, you call him a dumb ox, but I, you know, I promise you, you will hear this ox bellow to the very end of the world.

So, yeah, St. Thomas, humble, but righteously anger, but very virtuous and delightful. So the third one is the idea that Thomas is just impossible to read. And I think for people who are not used to reading sort of scholastic text, it can feel like that. It can feel very dry. If somebody jumps directly from Augustine into Aquinas, they can kind of feel a certain shock. But one thing I remember one of my philosophy professors saying, and then I noticed it everywhere, is that Aquinas often will write in syllogisms.

That's to say like two premises and a conclusion. And I just pulled up the Summa here to see if I could find a quick example. And here's the first objection to God's existence that he wants to respond to, and just look at how clear this is, right? And I'll leave out a couple of words here or there, but he says, it seems that the existence of God cannot be demonstrated, let's see, for it is an article of faith, so that would be the first premise, but what is of faith cannot be demonstrated, therefore it cannot be demonstrated that God exists. So even though it's a little dry and

technical, it's very clear. Yeah. It's the kind of thing where like, you know, in seventh and eighth grade English class, you're taught to diagram sentences, and then you begin to identify a sentence in light of its, you know, principal parts. You're like, oh, that's a verb. That's a subject. That's a compliment. This is a dependent clause. You know, this is a clause of apposition. And then, like, once you see that, you're more conscious of the way in which you speak.

You're more conscious of the way in which you write and your prose style improves. So, too, like when you have a better appreciation of the logic or the system of logic that St. Thomas employs, you see like, wow, this is this is actually very clear. It's something that can be diagrammed. Now, you wouldn't necessarily spend the time in diagramming each article or each objection to each article or something like that. But as you read it, it begins to kind of like, as one professor said, it begins to trim the fat off your brain because we're often accustomed to reading irresponsible prose. Say, like, for instance, you've written something for publication and then the publisher comes back and says, this has to be half the length. And you're like, no, it's impossible. What I've written is perfect.

And then they say it still has to be half the length. You're like, OK. So you go back and you try to edit it. You're like, well, I guess I can get rid of most of this. And then like upon further inspection with some outside source telling you, you need to pare it down. You come to discover that you've wasted a lot of words and that your argumentation was sometimes kind of slippery and that you were making leaps here and there. The thing about St. Thomas that's so delightful is that he really is being compact. He's being precise. He is being kind of sparse in his use.

So it's like unadorned. It's not very florid. I mean, he wrote a fraction of the number of words that St. Augustine wrote. But when he does write, he writes to the point, he writes with a purpose. And that has a way of kind of, well, like I described it as being ruined for life. Once you read St. Thomas, it can be very difficult to read others who are not as precise or who are not as careful and deliberate in their kind of curating of arguments. Because St. Thomas just, he gives you what you want, and he gives it to you in a very clear and delightful way. I also find that sometimes when you read other people, their responses to certain objections of the faith don't feel convincing. You know, you ever had that experience where you want to agree with the author as he seeks to refute this atheistic position or something. But at the end, you're like, I just, I don't, I need to reread that, but that didn't feel very convincing.

Whereas when you read Aquinas, I often get the sense, I'm like, oh, wow, he has dealt with that masterfully. Yeah, it's often said of Aquinas that he makes, so for like the objections that he poses, these are often taken from the philosophical and theological tradition, and he makes the arguments of his opponents better than they themselves do. And also, like he's able to massage the responses of some figures in the tradition so that what they said, which formerly was kind of off base, is now more so true. But he does it in a way that one author, Jean-Pierre Terrel, refers to as reverential exposition. So he doesn't say like this guy, total idiot.

Let me say what he tried to say far better. He says like Augustine got it right. And then as he explains Augustine, he's also interpreting Augustine and interpreting Augustine in a way that's a little bit foreign to his sensibility from the fourth and fifth century, but that actually gets at the truth, which St. Thomas knows that St. Augustine was in pursuit of and was on the way towards. And again, he does it in a way that's not condescending. It's not patronizing. It's just genuinely truth oriented. So it's sort of like when I'm out on a double date with my wife and say something stupid. And she says, I think what he meant to say was, yeah, yeah, that's it. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Unless it's one of those double dates where you're trying to make it a

single date and then you double down and say, no, that's exactly what I meant. Honey, let's go get ice cream. Yeah. But that said, Aquinas is difficult to read. I think one of the – he can be, and I think one of the reasons for that is the sort of Aristotelian metaphysical jargon he uses. Sure. As well as other words that we're not familiar with, you know, like menses, that comes to mind. Like instead of wet dream, what does he call them? Nocturnal pollutions or something like – and other things not sexual, but you get the point. I mean, he uses words that we don't use today today and then he uses a lot of metaphysical language so what do you say to someone who wants to read aquinas but they're bumping up against that

so i'd say that the number of words the number of like jargony words or specific vocab words that you need to master before having a good appreciation of what St. Thomas describing is actually pretty small. So now mind you, some of them you won't detect as words meriting further consideration because they're words that we use now, but we use them in a different way. So part of it is like, okay, if you encounter a word that you're not used to, you just kind of look it up in say like Ed Fazer's book, Aquinas, right? Or you just like Google it from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, read for a couple seconds, and you've got a decent sense of what's at stake. But say it's a word like matter, okay? That should flag, okay, this is something that has probably

changed since the Enlightenment, since the Industrial Revolution, since the advances of science in the 19th and 20th century. So I wonder what St. Thomas means by matter. So also to be sensitive to the words that may not originally flag your, you know, like they won't confound you at the outset because we use them in everyday speech, but that you suspect this has probably changed. So those are good to look up too. And the list, I mean, the list isn't long. It's maybe like 25 words long.

And for those who are interested, we're like 170 something episodes into Pints of the Quietness. But if our listeners are interested, go and listen to episode 18. I did a whole episode called Understanding Thomas's Metaphysical Lingo, where we go through them kind of one at a time. That might help you as well. Okay, the next one is Thomas is rationalistic and doesn't give a rip about the heart. So first question is, what do you mean by rationalistic? So I think people will hear that St. Thomas was in arguments with his contemporaries about the nature of beatitude. Okay, so at the end of our lives, what we hope for is the vision of God, the loving vision of God.

and St. Thomas says that that is kind of first or formally a matter of the intellect, and that it is also a matter of the heart, right, of the will, of the intellectual appetite, but for him it's kind of a matter of principle that you can't love what you don't know, and so the beatific vision is first illumination before it is inspiration, you know, to kind of use language a little bit loosely. Whereas some Franciscans who lived at the time, I think this is true of Alexander of Hales and Bonaventure and probably of Duns Scotus, they would say that it's principally a matter of love. And I think when people hear that, they tend to absolutize those claims and think like, St. Thomas thinks that we just spend heaven seated at a desk thinking things. And it sounds amazing to me. Exactly. And the Franciscans think about heaven is like

in second grade when you pulled out that big parachute and put a bunch of like balls on it and like sent the balls flying with your classmates as you all made like ripples in the parachute and then you yourself jump in the parachute and then they're throwing you on the parachute and like everyone's hugging each other. And that's way better. so I want to be a Franciscan, or at least in Franciscan heaven. So I would say that's not what St. Thomas is saying, right? So he's saying something a little more nuanced, and St. Thomas likes the parachute game, too. So St. Thomas certainly cares about the heart. And they're also like he has these descriptions about in this life, it's actually better to love God than it is to know God. So he'll say something like this.

Truth, right, or knowledge of something is assimilative, right? So when we know something or when we have the truth about it, that thing goes from being out there in the world to taking up a kind of residence in our minds. truth about it, that thing goes from being out there in the world to taking up a kind of residence in our minds. So like you see a dog pass by on the street and then you abstract from it the form of dogness, and then now you have the form of dog in your mind, a kind of intentional form. So it goes from being out there to being in here. Whereas he says with love, we go out towards the thing. So love begets desire begets rest. Love is the recognition that that thing out there corresponds to my nature, right? It's something that builds me up. It's something that represents perfection. And so, I go out in search of it. I go out in a kind of

ecstatic movement is how he describes it. And then it causes a mutual indwelling where I dwell in that thing and that thing dwells in me. So St. Thomas will say like for things that are lower than us in the order of being rocks and trees and stegosauruses, it is better that we know them than that we love them. Because when we know them, they take up a residence in our interior lives. And as a result of which they themselves are elevated, right? So it's better that a tree be known because now it's contributing to a human culture. It's been incorporated into human life. And you can like love a tree, right? You can hug a tree. You can do whatever with a tree, I suppose. But it's good. It's best that you know it more so than that you love it because it doesn't really

merit your love in the same way that other existing things do. Now, by contrast, he says, with things that are higher than us, it is better that we love them than that we know them in this life, because when we go out to them, we ourselves are elevated as a result. So, he says this with respect to God, you know, it's better that we love God than that we know God. And he's not drawing a hard and fast distinction, saying like, don't know anything about God, just love him. You know, it should all be a blind act of volition. But rather, he's saying that it's better to abide in God and with God than to know discrete facts about God. Yeah, and just like a very simple and humble way, which I find super encouraging. Yeah, in regards to this rationalistic bit,

I guess it's similar to the first mistake, the idea that he's a disembodied brain, that he's just essentially a calculator that has no heart. I mean, there's much that could be said to this. I love that he used to, the story goes, that he would rest his head upon the tabernacle and cry when he would seek to understand something. Also, in the Summa Theologiae Secundus Secundi Question 186,

he talks about the merit of playing. And I like just this, the said contra here. He quotes Augustine, I pray thee spare thyself at times, for it becomes a wise man sometimes to relax the high pressures of his attention to work. Now this relaxation of the mind from work consists in playful words or deeds. Therefore it becomes a wise and virtuous man to have recourse to such things at times. Do we have any stories about Aquinas in regards to how he would play or rest or joke or not really?

Hmm. We have one story about how he wouldn't joke. Okay, let's do that one. Apparently his classmates. Sounds great. They told him, St. Thomas, there are flying cows outside. And so St. Thomas apparently went to the window to inspect. And then his classmates mocked him for his gullibility.

To which St. Thomas is said to have responded, I would rather believe that cows fly than that a religious would lie. Boom. And then burning coals were that a religious would lie. Boom. And then burning coals were heaped upon their heads. Exactly. I think one of the things here that I, something to which we can draw attention is his capacity for friendship. So St. Thomas, so one story that is told is that when he left the Abbey of Monte Cassino, he was like disappointed or sad that Benedict had lost a son. But eventually his sister Marada, the aforementioned one who asked him how to become a saint, she herself ended up becoming a Benedictine nun.

She became the abbess of her monastery. I think her name was Mother Maria of Gethsemane. And St. Thomas is said to have been moved very much by this experience for when Benedict lost in him a son he gained in her a daughter and then another kind of like testimony to friendship is the love that he had for his friend Reginald so Reginald of Piperno was I guess his socius is the word that that we use in the order is his companion who would accompany him on his travels and also help him with his kind of daily tasks. And he was also a scribe. So he wrote, he would have dictated, St. Thomas would have dictated a lot of his works to Reginald and to a couple other scribes, perhaps.

And then Reginald would have taken notes at like his sermons and his disputed questions and his university lectures and help St. Thomas turn those into published works. his disputed questions and his university lectures and help St. Thomas turn those into published works. So they would go from what is called a repartatio into an actual work in a postcolum. And St. Thomas really loved Reginald. He really loved him in a big way. And he dedicates his compendium theologiae to Reginald. There's this little line, which I love. He says, Wherefore, my dearest son Reginald, receive from my hands this compendious treatise on Christian teaching to keep continually before your eyes. My whole endeavor in the present work is taken up with these three virtues, faith, hope, and charity.

I shall treat first of faith, then of hope, and lastly of charity. This is the apostle's arrangement, which for that matter, right reason imposes. Love cannot be rightly ordered unless the proper goal of our hope is established, nor can there be any hope if knowledge of the truth is lacking. Therefore, the first thing necessary is faith by which you may come to a knowledge of the truth. Second, hope is necessary that your intention may be fixed on the right end. Thirdly, love is necessary that your affections may be put perfectly in order. Which I just love. Thirdly, love is necessary, that your affections may be put perfectly in order. Which I just love. I mean, he dedicates this treatise to him. It's basically a summa of the

summa. It's just a condensed version of a treatise. Wasn't that because Reginald asked him to write a simpler version of the summa? Exactly. Yeah, that's the story that's often told. That's amazing. Yeah. Well, because in the beginning of the Sumer, it talks about it being a work for beginners, but that doesn't mean people who are not versed in theology, does it? So typically, it would have been the Dominicans often studying just to become, you know, good confessors and good preachers. So they would have had a little bit of liberal arts. They would have studied logic and dialectic and rhetoric, and they would study the quadrivium, which is like astronomy and arithmetic, etc.

And then they would have had like a little bit of a basis in like reading scripture effectively. And then they would have used this as part of their kind of study, their formal study of theology. So they would have already been in school for a while. They would have just been very educated, kind of like graduate students. I just love if the story is true that Reginald asked for a beginner's beginning Summa Theologiae, you know? Yeah. And I just love it that St. Thomas took the time to write it.

And this work is unfinished. He only got through a couple questions in the treatise on hope because it ended in December 6, 1273. And then my understanding is when Thomas died, towards the end of writing the Summa Theologiae, it was Brother Reginald who went back into Aquinas' writings and completed it in the supplemental section. Is that right? Yep.

He's the one that collected together the articles that St. Thomas had already written in his commentary on the sentences and then put them together to supplement what would have come in the Summa but never came to fruition. All right. The fifth way people misunderstand Aquinas, and I hear this a lot on YouTube from atheists and from just even secular commentators on Thomas Aquinas, is that we really shouldn't consider him a philosopher as he was, and I've heard this phrase used once at least, under the thumb of the church. So he really wasn't free to be engaged in philosophy, really, when his philosophy

is essentially just finding excuses for his theology or arguing for his theology. Have you heard that a bunch? I guess when people, so because I'm dressed the way I'm dressed, people don't often say things as conflictual to me head on. But certainly, yeah, this I mean, this kind of thinking is is in the air. It's in the water. And I think it goes back to a more fundamental point of whether or not one is free to think in faith. And in the 20th century, there's this huge debate about what Christian philosophy was or whether there's such a thing as Christian philosophy. And Jacques Maritain weighs in on it. And A.T. Angelelo Song weighs in on it, and I guess like Van Steenbergen weighs in on it, and Maurice Blundell weighs in

on it. And the question is effectively like, once one has been given the gift of faith, once one, you know, operates under the sway of revelation, can one be a good philosopher, or can one philosophize like apart from his faith commitments? Can one bracket that off? Like, or would one want to bracket that off? And I think the way that St. Thomas approached it is just really beautiful because a lot of times when people read his work, they're trying to make distinctions between what is philosophical and what is theological.

But St. Thomas, it doesn't seem to me, is especially concerned with that. The one exception would be the Summa Contra Gentiles, where in the first three books, he really tries not to introduce claims of revelation. But he's not worried about it, again, because what is his principal concern? It's the truth, right? And the apologetics that come with that are a subordinated thing. So he doesn't think we should ever hamstring our efforts to know the truth about God and all things in light of God on account of the fact that it's somehow methodologically more pure not to admit the testimony of faith. Now, mind you, when he's arguing against, you know, so like the Summa Contra Gentiles, it's thought as a kind of missionary manual for people who

would have evangelized in Muslim nations, right? So in that case, he's being more conscious of his audience apologetically, right? Yeah, but in general, what he wants to know is the truth of the matter. And his general sensibility on the fact is that our minds, by virtue of original sin, are darkened by ignorance, and our wills are twisted by malice, and our emotional life has been infected with weakness and concupiscence. And as a result of which, we can't rely upon ourselves to reason well. We are not impartial judges. And I think this is like something that's really helpful for Alistair MacIntyre to kind of declare failed the Enlightenment project of impartiality. Like, you just can't argue from...

Blank slate. Exactly. Yeah. You can't argue from, like, an impartial perspective, or you can't wholly bracket out your fundamental commitments. I think what Alistair MacIntyre points our attention to, and what St. Thomas does unto perfection, is that he is conscious of his commitments, right? And he reasons with them, but not naively, right? In such a way that he kind of places them before you in an honest testimony of where he begins from, what the premises are. And then he examines the content of revelation or the yields of reason in light of those commitments. And then the conclusions that he draws, he shows you how they hang or how they are articulated, how they are hinged, you know, like or how they hinge from the premises themselves.

So in his case, what he thinks is that that faith actually heals our mind and elevates it. And so, like in the first question and the first article of the Summa, he asks whether it is necessary that there be a further discipline than philosophy. And he says, yes, because there are other things to know, and even the things that we could possibly know. It's just really hard to know them unless we have some help. And so, I think you see St. Thomas as a better philosopher by virtue of his faith commitments. And it's not that he's cheating, it's just that the faculties with which he philosophizes are being healed and elevated, and that the discipline of philosophy is being subordinated to the higher science of theology, right, which can actually judge it, which can reorient it, which can purify it of its excesses and defects and actually bring it along to its full term. Two things I like to

point out when people tell me that Aquinas was under the thumb of the church and therefore should not be trusted as a philosopher is, firstly, he denies, you denies the most, would you say, popular argument for God's existence in the Christian tradition, namely the ontological argument. That's pretty, you know, if you were only interested in proving God's existence and Christ and the authority of the church, surely you would give that a sympathetic read, or at least not flat out reject it. And then secondly, he denies the medieval Muslim, what's his name, Al-Ghazali's Kalam argument, which Bonaventure was in favor of, and which we hear William Lane Craig talk about today. And again, this is something you would expect if Thomas's project was just to convince people of the Catholic faith, that he would be

on board with, but he speaks very critically of it. Yeah. Yeah. And St. Thomas has the sense that we can't use bad arguments for the faith because then non-believers think that we believe for these reasons, and as a result of which we expose the faith to ridicule. Another example is there's a 12th century Christian, Richard of St. Victor, who thought that you could basically prove the Trinity or that it was provable by reason. And it was based on, and I don't know was provable by reason. And it was based on, and I don't know the argument too terribly well, but it's based on the nature of goodness, that goodness is diffusive of itself, and that love entails alterity. So you'll have to have like another loving subject in order for love to give, you know, like to have its full scope,

and that when you have two subjects and there's something that unites them, and so by that he proves that there are three persons in the Trinity. And St. Thomas just thinks that this is a bad argument. He says it's like, it's interesting, right? It's kind of nice, I suppose, but it's not an argument. It's not demonstrative, and so we shouldn't advance it as if it were. So St. Thomas isn't just like, he's not just proselytizing. He's not taking whatever arguments lie ready at hand in order to advance what is effectively a kind of like fideistic project. Really, he's committed to the discourse and that the discourse itself be purified from, you know, what keeps it from getting to its term, which is namely, you know,

like an advance in the understanding of God and of things in light of God. Number six, Thomas only attacked straw men and didn't deal seriously with his opponent's arguments. Yeah. So I think, yeah, it's just a credit to his name and to his intellect that he is not content to set people aside. And I think that like, okay, so if you've ever had like a full inbox and you just want to bomb it out in like an hour, right? You just content yourself with shorter answers than you would ordinarily give. Um, and like, let's say that like one of your friends asks you some deep and probing philosophical or theological question. The temptation is to say like, yeah, read this article of the Suman. Let me know what you think,

you know, like put the ball back in his court and make it so that he has to read a bunch of scholastic theology before, before such time as ever, like, receive another email from him again. With St. Thomas, like, that just, that doesn't occur to him. St. Thomas is so generous, and he's so zealous for the truth, that he takes the questions that are proffered by the tradition or by his contemporaries, and he interiorizes them so as to sympathize with them. Because for him, it's just not, it's not just a matter of confronting them. It's a matter of actually like inhabiting them. Which for us is like kind of a really good discipline to begin to recover like discourse, right? To begin to recover public argument. Because I think, and I think we've

talked about this before, that a lot of people in today's day and age, and I'm not actually like excluding us from that number, but they're more so concerned with persuasion than they are with discourse. Right. So we think we tend to be of the mind that truth is when your mind fits with what is. But a lot of people don't have that sense of truth. Truth for a lot of people is just a matter of human invention. And if that's the case, then your human invention is in direct conflict with someone else's human invention. And in order to kind of get recognition for your truth, you need to convince other people of it. And you can do that by whatever tactics, you know, you think best.

But oftentimes it's pretty shrill, pretty angry and it's pretty rough going. become better at discourse by interiorizing the arguments of the other person, by trying to sympathize with their first premises, or at the very least to understand their vocabulary, their grammar, and then to try to repeat back to them their arguments in sympathetic terms so that we can garner assent and then actually have a clear starting point. And I know that like there are things going on in the media there have been for the past five months, about the degree to which one should be civil in discourse, like French versus Amari. But I think that at the very least, there's something to be said for being reasonable and rational in discourse, regardless of how you come down on either side of that debate. And St. Thomas, he just does this to perfection. It's very clear that he's able to sympathize with Moses Maimonides, and with

Averroes, and with Avicenna, and with Aristotle, and with sympathize with Moses Maimonides and with Averroes and with Avicenna and with Aristotle and with Plato and with Origen and with, you know, down the line, and then to give their arguments in ways that people who would actually inhabit those traditions would recognize and would grant, by and large. Where, in the case of a lot of contemporary-like scholars, just such is not the case. You can't expect the same intellectual charity from folks. Yeah, and regarding setting up straw men, you only have to look at some of his objections to see that they aren't in any way straw men. Like, for those who aren't aware, of course, a straw man is just a weakened version of your

opponent's arguments. But when you look at that Article 3, whether God exists in the first part, I mean, this is a really powerful argument. It seems that the existence of God... Oh, no, that's Article 2, sorry. It seems that God doesn't 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 goodness does not exist. I mean, if you stood up in front of a bunch of Catholics and said, quick, give me an answer to that, how many would be able to give a pretty compelling, satisfactory, pithy response to that? That's a pretty good argument. compelling, satisfactory, pithy response to that. That's a pretty good argument. Yeah, it is. And it deploys a logic that corresponds with a lot of people's sense of the thing. You know, it's not just an argument abstracted from reality. It's an argument that issues from a lot of people's human experience, which is just like this very bad thing happened. How do you square that with, quote unquote, infinite goodness, right? And so St.

Thomas takes seriously objections from all quarters. It's often said that, you know, his is a philosophy of common sense, because it's the kind of thing that people actually think. It's the kind of thing that you don't have to teach them, but you just have to help them grasp the first principles of, and then they themselves take it from there. Whereas like a lot of professional philosophers, it's not commonsensical, right? These are the types of vain fancies that only professional philosophers have the leisure to entertain. Right. There are no such things as persons, including myself. Yeah, well, even David Hume, that the self doesn't exist.

Exactly, yeah. I was going to say that the self doesn't exist and causation. Exactly, yeah. I was going to say the causation doesn't obtain. It's just a mere association of ideas, stuff like that. It's like St. Thomas is like, nope, let's start with what is. Let's start with people think because that's a valid input, which is great. Thanks be to God. The seventh thing people misunderstand about Aquinas is the idea that he was right about everything. Sometimes people talk about

Aquinas or point back to Aquinas as if he were infallible. Yeah, I think a lot of... So people have difficulty with St. Thomas Aquinas. One reason is because St. Thomas Aquinas can be difficult to read, and then the other is that Thomists can be difficult to deal with. So yeah, it's like the greatest testimony against the truth of Christianity is Christians. You'll often hear that said. So too, perhaps the most scandalous testimony against the truth of Thomism is Thomists. Have you heard the joke, there are three things that God doesn't understand? things that God doesn't understand. Yes.

I just know the two. Something like, oh my gosh, what a Dominican just said, what a Jesuit is about to say, and how many Franciscan orders there are. Dig. I could have set that up way better. I'm sorry. I stumbled over that. No, that's good. I could have set that up way better I'm sorry I stumbled over that but it's interesting sometimes you'll hear

a Dominican speak about God or about some nuanced part of theology and it's quite overwhelming yeah so there's that for one and then the other thing too is you'll often hear Thomas say well St. Thomas says and it's kind of like

in a okay so like say you're in a conversation with somebody and you're speaking in approximations and I go and say like, yeah, I went to, um, you know, I went to the Capitol the other day and he got a tour of the dome. That thing was like super huge. I mean, it was like hundreds of feet tall. And then somebody on the other side of the table says, well, actually it's only like, um, you know, like 189 feet tall. So it's not even quite 200 feet tall. And you're just like, I'm going to hurt you. Because human speech is to be understood contextually. You get the hell out and take your EpiPen with you.

What was that from? I have no idea, but I support it. Okay. John Mulaney. John Mulaney. He was saying his point. Okay, let's take a quick derail. He was talking about he's obviously against President Trump, right?

And so he'll say it's like when people are right but not interesting. They'll say, well, technically this was true under Obama as well. Get out and take your EpiPen with you. Or when you're at a sleepover and somebody's like, can you believe we stayed up all night? Well, technically it's not yet morning. It's 1150. Get out. But I digress.

Continue. Yes. Okay. So we've all had the experience of being frustrated in conversation, and we ourselves have perhaps frustrated others in conversation. This is something for which we were corrected as kids. Needless contradiction. So we were told, ask yourself whether this matters, and then maybe speak. So when it comes to Thomists, for whatever reason, reason many Thomas feel compelled to lead off with like well St. Thomas says usually as a contradiction of what has gone before and sometimes you just get a kind of undigested simple presentation of the thing that's not to

say like you can't start talking about St. Thomas you know from the get-go it's encouraged but for whatever reason Thomas tend to carry themselves with a pretty swaggering bearing, one of a confidence that may not be quite merited by our formation. Whereas like those of other religious or excuse me, those of other philosophical traditions tend to be like just in general, a little more humble and a little more modest. And part of that, I think, is because they don't have the same kind of system with the same kind of architecture, with the same kind of history. And so they're able to kind of like move in and out of arguments without sounding as doctrinaire. So yeah, whenever people are just like, well, St. Thomas says, it gives the impression, I think, that St. Thomas is encyclopedic knowledge of the faith to be quoted, you know, chapter and verse unto the defeat or the confounding of all one's enemies. I just don't, yeah, it's just not a good thing. And it gives people the impression that St. Thomas was right about everything.

And yeah, in order to like be good in the Christian intellectual tradition, you need to memorize what St. Thomas says and then just like parrot it for the rest of your life. So what did Aquinas get wrong? What did he get wrong? Nothing. Wait. Suckers. Yeah, exactly.

This was an elaborate setup. So St. Thomas got a few things wrong. One thing you often hear described is St. Thomas' view on women. So Prima Pars, question 92, I think it's like Article 1, response to the first objection. St. Thomas refers to women as ill-formed men. And the question is, like, how could you have done that? So, like, St. Thomas is relying upon the biology and the cosmology of his contemporaries. And often he's relying upon Aristotelian biology and cosmology.

And that's not because he's just, like, wed to Aristotle over and against all comers. But it's because it's, like, the best science the day, or it's the accepted science of the day. So St. Thomas is just taking what he knows best, the kind of disciplines that aren't properly his own discipline, right? These are subordinated sciences, and he's relying upon the yields of those things to give him what he knows. So yeah, he'll say like that the women are ill-formed men, and then he'll say things about conception and ensoulment, which, you know, are based on that biology. Now, mind you, he is able to get to the heart of some of these issues in a way without being derailed by the biological commitments. So, like, in just the very next

question, question 93, when he's talking about women, he talks about women as made to the image of God equally as men. And then he has this really beautiful passage where he says that Eve was formed from the rib of Adam because she was formed from his side, not from his head, lest she rule over him, nor from his feet, lest he rule over her, but rather from his side, that he be a helpmate, or that she be a helpmate. So, St. Thomas is able to kind of smooth out some of the errors of those from whom he inherits. And also, he's willing to admit when the things that he's saying are contingent upon the science and how they should be altered should the science change. A lot of people are doing work with that when it comes to, like, evolutionary biology.

I don't know. Do you have a couple of things in mind as well? Well, the Immaculate Conception is a famous one that he seems to explicitly reject. Yeah. So he got that wrong um my understanding is that he believed that hell may have been in the middle of the earth or at least below us yeah yeah so some of those some of those more kind of the scientific questions which he shouldn't be expected to know really at that time yeah i think too the immaculate conception is a good point for just clarifying like what it is that we think and how we defend St. Thomas. Because even in admitting that he is wrong, there's sometimes a temptation to say, like, like I just did, you know, he's wrong, but basically he's right.

And, you know, basically he's right about everything. So the Immaculate Conception, it's one of those places where he's wrong for good reasons, but he's still wrong. OK, so like what St. Thomas is concerned about is that everyone is saved by Jesus Christ. And he just can't think of a way to account for how Mary would be saved if she were to be immaculately conceived before Christ is born. Now, mind you, St. Thomas already has a way of explaining how like the Old Testament patriarchs are saved by faith in Jesus Christ, even though they're born before him. So it's not like he can't imagine grace time travel because he already has the conceptual machinery for that. But like he just, for him, it's just if somebody were conceived without sin, even if they were sanctified immediately upon conception, which is his understanding of the Blessed Virgin Mary, it somehow derogates from the excellence

of Christ or from the universality of salvation. And so, like, that's what he's concerned about. But, like, it really did take the argumentation of Duns Scotus to show how preservation from sin is actually a more acute or more pronounced form of salvation than is liberation from sin. And that's something that, like, St. Thomas just didn't think to explain. So it's a limitation.

I think God knew that the Dominicans needed to be humbled and chose a Franciscan to figure that out. Yeah, I remember somebody debating Mitch Pacwa, who was an evangelical pastor. And I remember hearing this for the first time, that Aquinas denied the Immaculate Conception. I don't think that Father Mitch Pacwa perhaps was fully ready to respond to that, just like you can't be fully ready to respond to every objection that's thrown at you. But you know, when you go and read in the Summa, as you say, he makes it clear that Mary never sinned. He just isn't sure when she was sanctified, in the womb, at what point, and so forth. So even if that comes up as an objection, Aquinas denied the Immaculate Conception, that doesn't mean that Aquinas thought that she sinned. Yeah. Yeah. And so like, he also has this notion of sanctification in the womb. He has it also for

John the Baptist and Jeremiah. And the reasons for which is because scripture seems to indicate that they were sanctified in the womb. Like, how do you account for the fact that John the Baptist leapt when Mary and Elizabeth met at the visitation. And he says, it seems he was given special graces, kind of prophetic graces to recognize the Lord. And that entails a kind of sanctification. So to Jeremiah, the Lord, you know, it says in Jeremiah one that, you know, like the Lord knit me in my mother's womb and that he has a kind of prophetic calling from that point. So for St. Thomas, that entails pre-sanctification of a sort. So he's willing to say that things can happen that make a child very, very holy,

even before birth, right? But again, he just couldn't see how this, like, salvation in Christ would be universal, and how Christ's excellence would be distinctive and other, were he to admit something along those lines. Excellent. All right, well, that does it. Those are the seven misunderstandings you wanted to address. I think we did it quite well. So thank you very much for being on the show today and cranking through those things. One more time for the people in the back, how do they connect with the Thomistic Institute? Totes. Let's see. So you can go to ThomisticInstitute.org to check out events on campus and beyond. And then you can go to

Aquinas101.com if you would like to enroll in a delightful video course, 85 to 90 videos, curated two a week over the course of the next basically academic year. And you'll get some course listening, you know, a little podcast, and you'll get some course reading, some selections from St. Thomas and from other philosophers and theologians to help. And, yeah, we'll send it to you Tuesdays and Thursdays. Just go sign up on Aquinas101.com. Boom. Thanks so much.

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I really appreciate it. Have a great week. Bye. my whole life to carry you to carry you and i would give my whole life