Pints With Aquinas - 191: Explaining the Trinity ... Without Being a Heretic

Starting point is 00:00:00 G'day, you little rascals. Hope you're doing well. Happy Tuesday morning. Hope you enjoyed the Super Bowl, as they like to call it in these parts. I'm not a big sports guy. I love that you are. I love that you are. I think sports are great. I totally get the communal aspect and why it's good for a city and a country. I get it. I just have never been able to care. But anyway, here's why I'm excited, I guess. My mum texted me the other day and she was telling me some bloke is an Aussie and he was playing for the Kansas City Chiefs. I think that's the name of them. Anyway, so that's who I went for. And I

Starting point is 00:00:37 just learned about three minutes ago, because I had to look it up to figure this out. That's how little I know about football, that they won! So congratulations to everybody in Kansas and to everybody in San Francisco. I want to get to four points before we jump into today's show and they're all very brief, so please bear with me. The first is that Lent is coming up at the end of this month, which is, it feels just incredible to me because I feel like we just had Advent and Christmas and I guess I feel that way because we did. Anyway, Lent is coming up, the great fast. So I'm not sure if you know this or not, but Thomas Aquinas actually wrote daily meditations for Lent. So my patrons all have access to these daily meditations, not just the text of them, but we've had them professionally recorded with Gregorian chant underneath. Each meditation is about three to six minutes long.

Starting point is 00:01:28 So this could be something you do for Lent. Every single day, all you do is open up your phone, press play, and listen to Thomas Aquinas share with you a meditation for that day. It goes from Ash Wednesday all the way up to Easter Sunday. And I tell you what, I will play the first meditation, which he does for Ash Wednesday. I'll play that at the end of this episode so you can hear the quality of it and if it's something you're into. So that's pretty cool. And these are not meditations that someone has cobbled together from his works. You know what I'm saying? These are actually

Starting point is 00:02:00 meditations he wrote specifically to help you grow in your prayer life for Lent. So to get free access to this, please become a patron. I know many of you have been thinking about doing it anyway, so here might be that final push. Go to patreon.com slash Matt Fradd, patreon.com slash Matt Fradd, and then you'll have access to all of that. Not to mention, I'll be sending you copies of my new book, Marian Consecration with Aquinas, that I wrote with Father Gregory Pine. I will sign it. I'll send it to you. You'll get Pines with Aquinas stickers. And, you know, so that's pretty cool. So please consider doing that so you can get those free meditations from Thomas Aquinas for Lent. Here's the second thing I wanted to tell

Starting point is 00:02:38 you. I am going to Africa this August at no expense to the people I'm speaking to. This is something I told you I wanted to do once we reached a certain number of patrons. So I'm going to Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Uganda. I'm going to be having suitcases filled to the brim with beautiful rosaries and catechisms. I'm speaking to Catholic Answers about getting Trent Horn's book, Why We're Catholic. I'm going to fill up suitcases, take them with me. You'll remember the reason I'm doing this is because I spoke to some of my friends on the ground in Uganda and they said, if you send stuff to us, sometimes it doesn't get to us. Like it might get to the post office, but that doesn't mean it's going to get to us. Very economically desperate areas, at least in some of these

Starting point is 00:03:18 places. And so that's the reason. And so I'm really excited to do this, to teach these awesome leaders. And I'm doing it in conjunction with leaders in these countries. So it's not just me coming in and telling them what I think they need to know. Rather, it's me and these leaders working in unison. I'm coming into their communities and we're going to be teaching them apologetics so they can better defend the Catholic faith against errors coming from these evangelical groups or atheism or these big companies trying to push contraception into their countries and things like that. So very excited about that. Here is the third point, which almost nobody will care about, but I'm going to tell you anyway.

Starting point is 00:03:55 My sister and I write short horror stories just to make you uncomfortable because I thought when I spoke about pornography, that made some people uncomfortable, but not nearly as uncomfortable evidently as when I speak about horror. So anyway, my sister and I write little horror stories, and then we pay someone to narrate them. The podcast is called Sibling Horror. Each story is about 15 minutes long, 20, 30. This one's about 35 minutes long. It just came out today. So I'll put a link in the show notes if you're interested in that. Here's the premise for an upcoming story, which I'm pretty excited about. You've got this liberal priest who doesn't believe in Satan, barely prays, gets frustrated with Latin speaking type people, right? Who want to go to the Latin mass and these sorts of things.

Starting point is 00:04:36 One night he receives a call from a lady in his parish and she says that her house is haunted. And anyway, he doesn't believe her, of course. And the only way he's able to eventually help this woman is with the help of this old traddy priest, who he had thought was kind of crazy. So it's a really cool story. Most of our stories are in no way religious. This will kind of be the first one. But it's been really cool because we've garnered a big, I wouldn't say big, but significant for us audience of people who have no idea who I am, who my sister is, what Pints with Aquinas is, who are listening. Anyway, so I know some people have some hangups on horror and I get that horror is a gross genre in many respects, not just in the

Starting point is 00:05:20 legitimate sense in that it's gross, but that no genre is so filled with trash as horror. I get it. But hopefully you'll think this is at least decent. So you might want to check that out. And then fourthly, my book on Marian consecration with Father Gregory Pine, as I say, is already out. We ran a contest the other week. We're sending out 10 copies to those of you who won on Instagram. And I want you to know too now that when you become a patron, I used to give you my book, Does God Exist in Socratic Dialogue and the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas. Now, when you become a patron, I'm going to sign a copy of this and send it to you. So if you've been wanting to

Starting point is 00:05:52 get married in consecration, there's another reason to become a patron and I'll send that to you right away. That's the final thing. Here is my episode in which I speak to you about the Holy Trinity. If you're not yet subscribed over on YouTube, be sure to do that, because this month I've got two big Pints with Aquinas video podcasts coming out with Father Gregory Pine, and then the other one is with a Byzantine priest, Father Michael O'Loughlin, where we talk all things Eastern Catholicism, Orthodoxy, et cetera, et cetera. Here you go. G'day, welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd. Today we are going to be talking about something just super simple to understand. You'll be fine. The Trinity! So, not simple necessarily, at all actually. Simple, but difficult to understand. So here's what we're going to do. I want to talk

Starting point is 00:06:46 about why the Holy Trinity is the most fundamental kind of mystery of our faith and why to get that wrong leads to all sorts of errors. We want to see maybe some bad ways of explaining the Trinity, bad analogies that you've heard, maybe that you've offered, maybe that I've offered. I want to then share three ways I like to talk about the Trinity with people who are trying to understand the Holy Trinity. What else? We then take a break because I was exhausted because this is pretty dense. And then I took a look at your comments on YouTube and I respond to you. We look at Trent Horne's episode and Dr. William Lane Craig's episode. I go through, read some comments out loud, respond to them. That was kind of fun. And then I share with you

Starting point is 00:07:30 the Athanasian Creed, and then we wrap up. So this is a pretty theologically dense episode today. So, you know, maybe pull over, park the car, just, it's okay. I had someone tell me that they were riding their bike and they nearly crashed because they were concentrating so hard. So I just don't want that to happen. Do you understand? I don't want that to happen. But anyway, enjoy today's episode. God bless you. Thanks for being here. Who's in your heart? the Catechism of the Catholic Church says is the central mystery of our faith. Now, if it's the central mystery, then it's fair to say it's the most fundamental. And if we get it wrong, then what ends up happening, what will happen is that everything else will get obscured or perverted in some way. So what does the Catechism of the Catholic Church have to say about the Trinity?

Starting point is 00:08:46 In paragraph 253, it says, we do not confess three gods, but one God in three persons, the consubstantial Trinity, the divine persons do not share the one divinity among themselves, but each of them is God whole and entire. In the words of the fourth ladder and council, each of the persons is that supreme reality, the divine substance, essence, or nature. And Aquinas says, right, famously that we can know, or maybe not famously, but I think a lot of people are shocked by this. We can know God exists apart from revelation, but we cannot know that God is a Trinity apart from revelation. And there were people, Hugh of St. Victor was one, prior to Aquinas who tried to make the case that we can know through philosophy that God is triune. And sometimes you hear people speaking about this in metaphorical ways to try to drive home the point, make it more understandable. You know, they might say the Father loves the Son, the Son loves the Father, and that love that issues forth and so on.

Starting point is 00:09:54 Augustine spoke a little bit like that. And that can sometimes lead people to think that maybe you can come up with a philosophical argument for the Trinity. But Aquinas says, rightly, the church agrees that you can't. Anyway, so to that description that we just read from the fourth ladder and council, this is succinct, right? It's precise, it's compact, but it can be very overwhelming for us, especially if we're not used to technical jargon like consubstantial or essence. And I think that jargon like consubstantial or essence. And I think that sometimes what happens is it leads us, if we are to explain the Trinity to people like our children or other people, Christians or non-Christians, whatever, it can lead us to sharing, talking about the Trinity in inferior ways.

Starting point is 00:10:42 And we should work hard to avoid that. Now, I think the first, you know, sometimes a lot of people, they might share it in an inadequate way, but another thing we do, I think a lot is we just say, it's a mystery, right? Stop trying to understand and just believe. So what do we say about that? Well, what might they say? They'd say, and I've heard this, isn't trying to define the nature of the infinite and unique Trinitarian God an impossible task? And in so doing, aren't we trying to drink up the ocean in a teacup by trying to fit God inside of our tiny finite minds? But this is important, I think. And my bishop used to say this, a mystery isn't something that's unknowable. Rather, it's something that is incomprehensible.

Starting point is 00:11:32 So you might know that pi is the ratio of a circle's diameter to its circumference, but that doesn't mean you comprehend or could ever comprehend the full value of pi since it possesses an infinite amount of numbers after its decimal point. So I think similarly, we could say, you know, I can know God is all-knowing, but I can't fully comprehend, you know, what that really means, what that really entails. So the church teaches that the mysteries of our faith, unlike the value of pi, are those things that we human beings can't come to know through reason alone. And the catechism actually does, as I say, affirm that in paragraph 237, as opposed to something that, oh, you might, you know, the truth is out there in the X-file sense, and you might come to know it through your own kind of investigation.

Starting point is 00:12:28 The first Vatican Council taught that while man, by reason alone, comes to know, can come to know that God exists, affirming what Aquinas said, it taught, as Aquinas taught, that man cannot know that God is a trinity of three persons, right, apart from Revelation, and also that there are other things that we cannot know apart from Revelation. Like the Eucharist, for example, that we can't know through philosophy that the Eucharist is the substance of Christ's body under the form of bread and wine. The fact is, if God hadn't revealed these truths and other truths to us, you know, like maybe angels, the incarnation, that we would still be in ignorance of them, which is why they are what we call them sacred mysteries of faith. Also, I think it's important to point out,

Starting point is 00:13:19 right, that just because we can't fully understand something, it doesn't mean that we can't understand errors about that thing. So, for example, Jesus Christ is the most mysterious person who ever lived because he was, well, fully man and fully God. I mean, seriously, just try to think about that. I think when most people think about Jesus as man and God, they either think that he's like a transformer. You know, like he's walking around doing his man stuff and then someone needs to be healed and he changes into God and he heals them. Or they think he's 50% man and 50% God. Of course, that's not what the church teaches. The church teaches that Christ is fully man and fully God, right? That's a bloody difficult thing to figure out. In fact, right? That's a bloody difficult thing to figure out. In fact, the catechism even admits this in paragraph 514. Here it is. Quote, many things about Jesus of interest to human curiosity do

Starting point is 00:14:15 not figure in the gospels. Almost nothing is said about his hidden life at Nazareth, and even a great part of his public life is not recorded. So, yeah, I mean, there's a lot about Jesus that is mysterious. I mean, I think it's the end of John's gospel, isn't it, that says there's many things that he has done, and that if you were to write them all down, there wouldn't be enough books in the world to write them all down in, you know? So, anyway, Jesus, mysterious, right? We can't presume to know more than what's been revealed to us. I'm trying to think of an example of that. Like, I guess what he looked like exactly, like down to a T, you know what I mean? Can't presume to know that if it hasn't been revealed to us.

Starting point is 00:14:56 But just because we can't know everything about Jesus, correcting someone who says that Jesus was a woman or that Jesus wasn't a Jew doesn't reveal a lack of humility on our part. It reveals a sense of, well, fidelity to the truths about Jesus we can know through historical investigation, by what the scriptures reveal, by what the church teaches. So that's, I just say that to get back to that point. Just because we can't fully understand something, that doesn't mean we can't understand and point out errors around that thing. So since the Trinity, as we've said, is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the hierarchy of truths of the faith, that comes from the catechism, by the way, hierarchy of truths of the faith, that comes from the catechism, by the way, the most essential teaching in the hierarchy of the truths of faith, that's catechism paragraph 90, then we ought to stamp out errors wherever we find them. Now, unfortunately, these errors usually come about,

Starting point is 00:16:00 as I've said, when we Catholics who have good intentions try to create an analogy to help non-believers or kids or whatever, right, to understand the Trinity. Now, the problem with using analogies to explain the Trinity is that God is the most unique being in existence. In fact, Aquinas will tell us that it's actually not quite correct, right? To call God a being, but rather he is being itself. He is the reason anything exists at all because God is so unique, any analogy we use will inevitably fall short. Here's another quote from the catechism, right? Getting to this point. God transcends all creatures. Our human words always fall short of the mystery of God.

Starting point is 00:16:52 So while these analogies can be helpful for children or people thinking about the faith, maybe even as you converse with Muslims, thinking about the faith, maybe even as you converse with Muslims. The fact is, if you press them too far, they actually often lead to conclusions that the church has deemed heretical. So here's what I want to do. I want to share just a couple of ways. I've heard people try to explain the Trinity, and these are ways that I, some of them at least, are in the ways that I used to try to explain the Trinity, and I found out that they actually led to kind of erroneous ways of thinking. Okay, so the first is this. Someone might say, and someone actually came up to me recently and shared this. I was giving a talk. Is it West Keys? Key West? I always get that wrong. Oh, Florida. Anyway, I was blessed

Starting point is 00:17:46 enough to go there. And someone came up to me after the talk and they were like, hey, the Trinity is really easy to explain actually. Because I think in my talk, I was talking about Aquinas and how it needs to be revealed to us, this reality of the Trinity. And he said, no, no, no, it's actually really easy. He's like, think about it. The Trinity is like how a man, right? You've got one man and he can be a son and he can be a father and he can be an uncle at the same time, right? He's one and three at the same time, just as God is father, son, and Holy Spirit at the same time. Now, this sounds really compelling. At least the first time I heard it, I thought it sounded really compelling. But actually, this is a bad analogy. It commits

Starting point is 00:18:31 a heresy called modalism. And modalism is the false belief that God is one person who has revealed himself in three different modes or forms. It's also called Sabellianism after Sabellius, an ancient theologian who I think was excommunicated for this heresy. Don't quote me on that, but I'm pretty sure. Modalists, as this bloke was in Florida who came out to me, were heavily influenced by Greek philosophy, which taught that God was an ultimate one or act of unity. And so while this is obviously a big improvement over Greek polytheism that said that there were many gods who fought each other and stuff, it goes too far when it denies that God can be three relationally distinct persons in one being, right? So, don't say that anymore, as if you have. So,

Starting point is 00:19:28 though, and here's why, just to kind of drive the point home. Though a man like myself may be a son, a father, and an uncle, right? That's true of me. I'm a son of Gary Fradd. I'm a father to Peter Fradd. I'm an uncle to my nephew, Blake, say. So that's true, but I'm not three persons, right? As God is three persons. Rather, I'm one person who has three titles, you might say. or whatever you say, you can't say in three persons. That's what we want to say about God. So another popular, but false analogy is the following. I've heard this one, someone, gosh, I forget where I heard it. The Trinity is like how water can be ice, liquid, and steam, right? But again, as you can see, this commits the heresy of modalism. God doesn't go through three different states. The persons of the Holy Trinity coexist. The different

Starting point is 00:20:35 forms of water don't coexist in that sense. And even I think people have told me that there's a way in which water can be, can go through, can be ice, liquid, and steam as it changes as a whole. But still, we're not talking about one thing being three things. We're talking about a transition that's taking place in different parts of the water, I suppose you would say. So anyway, I think it's fair to say, unless you want to get super technical, water can't be ice, liquid, and steam at the same time. It may be between two stages, like when ice is melting, but this is different from coexisting. It's not coexisting, it's transforming. Another analogy attributed to Sibelius that we hear a lot today is that of the sun. And this kind of dates back a little bit, sort of a Platonic thought.

Starting point is 00:21:31 Someone will say the father is the sun, right? While the son, Jesus, sorry, the father is the sun, like the sun in the sky, while the sun, S-O-N, and the Holy Spirit are the light and heat created by the Father. Someone could say, if the sun existed from all eternity, then the light would exist from all eternity, and the heat would exist from all eternity. Light and heat are necessary attributes of the sun, and if it existed for all eternity, there you go. They're talking about three things and that seems to work. But this analogy also falls into modalism because the star is simply present under three forms. Or it can be seen to express Arianism, right? Which is the heretical view. We've talked about this on the show before, that essentially the Father is superior to the Son and Holy Spirit by being different and higher divine,

Starting point is 00:22:31 a higher divine substance than the latter two. So in the Son analogy, the light and heat are, what are they? They're passive byproducts of the Son. So they're not really equal in the way that the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit share equally and completely in the divine nature. And I want to share a little bit later here about what Aquinas has to say on the equality within the Trinity. So we could say much more here about Sabellianism. We could talk about that very popular book that came out a while ago, The Shack, in which the Trinity is shown in three different people and so on. But basically, to kind of sum it up, the main problem with modalism is that it denies that God is three distinct persons. And the Catechism responds to this in paragraph 254. It says,

Starting point is 00:23:27 Father, Son, Holy Spirit are not simply names designating modalities of the divine being, for they are really distinct from one another. So, what you're left with is when you fall into the Sabellianism is a kind of confusing monotheism where God merely pretends to be three different persons instead of actually being three different persons. So unfortunately, in order to correct this error, some analogies overcompensate. And so that leads me to this next bad analogy that I want to share with you. You can find these on YouTube. There's some funny videos where people are trying to describe the Trinity. Maybe you've heard this. The Trinity is like an egg, yolk, albumen, and shell. The three elements form one egg, just as the three members of the Trinity comprise one God. All right, so you should probably figure this out. If you cannot use an analogy with the sun that's appropriate in explaining the Trinity, you probably can't use an egg. with this explanation is that it commits, or at least could commit, the heresy of saying that God

Starting point is 00:24:46 is composed of three parts and that those parts make up one God. So you can see how it's almost like this is trying to balance out the errors of Sabellianism, which basically says there's one God who expresses himself in three ways. We have these other analogies that say, no, no, there are actually three things here. And that's, at least in these analogies, this is the problem because God doesn't have parts. As the late second century church father Irenaeus affirmed, quote, and this is from his letter against heresies, This is from his letter against heresies. God is simple, not composed of parts, without structure, altogether like and equal to himself alone. He is all mind, all spirit, all thought, all intelligence, all reason, all light, all fountain of every good and this is the manner in which the religious and the pious are accustomed to speak of god so basically the key here is that

Starting point is 00:25:53 we don't believe in three persons who when they come together um become god it's not like that captain planet thing where you bring them all together and you've got Captain Planet, right? Rather, we believe in three persons who possess the same divine nature. Sorry, I just dropped something. The Father is that which the Son is. The Son, that which the Father is. The Father and the Son, that which the Holy Spirit is, that is by nature one God. All right. So I guess one thing I've tried to not do as I've kind of talked, as I have spoken about the Trinity to my kids and others is maybe not using analogies, right? Because by the way, I mean, we could talk about the, I don't know why I didn't even think about this, but we could think of the three leaf clover, but there again, where But there again, it falls into this heresy or can fall into the heresy when you press it,

Starting point is 00:26:50 saying that God is this thing that has three parts. That's kind of similar to the egg analogy. So though it can be tempting to use an analogy to help our kids understand who God is. In my experience with just my kids, sometimes analogies just end up muddying the waters. Like kids are pretty smart. I found that as I try to explain things to Peter, who's my youngest, he'll then have follow-up questions, right, to my explanation. And the follow-up questions show me that my explanation was unhelpful because I then have to go back and clean the errors of that up. So I tend to stay away from analogies. The closest I get to dumbing it down would be, I guess, three ways. First would be a simple conversation about being, person, and nature. I'm going to share that conversation in a second. And then second, a simple diagram. And then third, the Athanasian

Starting point is 00:27:52 creed. So let me tell you about a conversation I had with my son, Liam, uh, when he was much younger, I was working at Catholic answers. So was kind of geeking out on all of this at the time. And we had a conversation about the Trinity. And so here's basically how it went. I said, Liam, what is a person? He said, I don't know. And I said, well, a person is someone who can say I, or if you want to be nitpicky, who can potentially say I, refer to themselves. That's what I mean by say I. And so I said, is a statue a person? And he said, no. And I said, why? And he said, because it can't say anything, right? It's not alive. And I said, but a statue like that one over there, I forget where we were. I said, that's real,

Starting point is 00:28:37 isn't it? Even though it's not a person. It's not make believe like when we talk about fairies or dragons or something. And he said, yeah, it's real. I said, okay. And this is something that I think a lot of people don't realize, especially who haven't studied philosophy. I said to him, so anything that's real is a being. I think sometimes people equate being and personhood, but basically in philosophy, if something's real, it's a being, a plate, well, when you start talking about artificial things, I guess it can get complicated, but a tree is a being. So for the sake of argument, a statue is a being, right? It's just not a person. So I said, so that statue is a being, but it's not a person. He went, that's right. And I said, now, what about you? Are you a person? And he said, yes. And so I said, okay, so a statue is a being with zero persons. You are a being who is one person and God is a being who is three persons. I said,

Starting point is 00:29:36 does it make sense? He went, not really. I said, that's good. But yeah, I think that can really help. And if you don't like the idea of a statue because it's man-made, think of a stone, right? A stone is a being which is zero persons. You are a being who is one person and God is a being, one being who is three persons. So, I don't know. I've kind of felt that that was helpful. It kind of at least gets him to the foot of the, whatever you want to call it, gigantic theological mountain before he tries to scale up to the summit. Let's talk about some key terms. So just remember that when you have a conversation about the Trinity, the most important distinction you can make is between beings, persons, and natures. So a being, as I alluded to, is a unified substance that exists. A person is an I, all right, or an individual self. Think of God as one being that is composed of three I's. So if you said to me, what are you? I would say, man. And you would say, who are you?

Starting point is 00:30:49 I would say man, and you would say, well, who are you? And I would say, I'm one thing. So I'm one thing, which is a man. Who am I? I am one thing, which is Matt Fradd. If you say, what is God? You'd say, well, it's one thing that's God. Who is God? And you would say, well, there are three things, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So I'm one what and one who, you are one what and one who, God is one what and three who's. Incidentally, it's interesting that when you make the sign of the cross, you notice that you don't say in the names, you don't say in the names of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, right? Because it's one God who is three persons in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, right? Because it's one God who is three persons in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. So, think of God as one being that is composed, as I say, of three eyes or three persons, the famous Trinity Shield, which I'll put a link up

Starting point is 00:31:50 in the description for you to check out. If you just typed in Trinity Shield into Google Images, you'd see it. This can help illustrate this concept. Here's what Frank Sheed wrote. He was an Australian apologist in his book, Theology and Sanity, which I would highly recommend you read if you want to grow in your understanding of God. And obviously, studying theology is a great way to do that, or maybe the only way to do that. So, Theology and Sanity by Frank Sheed is very excellent. I would highly recommend it. He says this. He says,

Starting point is 00:32:23 A newcomer to this sort of thinking must be prepared to work hard here. It is a decisive stage of our advance into theology to get some grasp of the meaning of nature and the meaning of person. Fortunately, the first stage of our search goes easily enough. We begin with ourselves. Such a phrase as my nature suggests that there is a person, I, who possess a nature. The person could not exist without his nature, but there is some distinction all the same, for it is the person who possesses the nature and not the other way around. One distinction we see instantly, nature answers the question of what we are. Person answers the question of who we are. Every being has a nature. Of every being,

Starting point is 00:33:16 we may properly ask, what is it? But not every being is a person. Only rational beings are persons. We could not properly ask of a stone or a potato or an oyster, who is it? And that is the end of that quote. So when we examine the Trinity, we can ask of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who they are. We might say that the Father is the creator, the Son is the redeemer, the Holy Spirit is the Sanctifier. Now, the church teaches that the Son was eternally begotten by the Father. The Father has always been the Father. The Son has always been the Son. The Holy Spirit proceeds from, well, depending on who you ask, let's just say the Father and the Son. Though they differ in their roles, it doesn't follow that the members of the Trinity differ in what they are. So when we ask what the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are, the answer is going to

Starting point is 00:34:12 always be the same. The Father is God. The Son is God. The Holy Spirit is God. Not a God, but each is God. So, excuse me, hopefully that's something of a help. I want to look at Aquinas' response in Article 1 in Question 42 of the Prima Pars, whether there is equality in God. Here's what he says. We must needs admit equality among the divine persons, for according to the philosopher, Admit equality among the divine persons. For according to the philosopher, equality signifies the negation of greater or less. Now, we cannot admit anything greater or less in the divine persons. For as Boethius says in De Trinitate, they must needs admit a difference. Who speak of either increase or decrease as the Arians do. Now the reason of this is that unequal things cannot have the same quantity.

Starting point is 00:35:20 But quantity in God is nothing else than his essence. Wherefore, it follows that if there were any inequality in the divine persons, they would not have the same essence. And thus, the three persons would not be one God, which is impossible. We must therefore admit equality among the divine persons. So when we're talking about this distinction in God, this quantity in God, we're talking about his essence, which is one. But if you want to say that there is greater and lesser, then we're no longer talking about the same essence. We're talking about different things. So that's just a little bit about why Aquinas says that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all equal and God.

Starting point is 00:36:12 Okay. Now, here's what I want to do. That was a lot. It was dense. I had to read several passages and I'm drawing from a paper I wrote earlier on the Trinity as well. So I know that that was really dense. So what I want to do is eventually I want to share the Athanasian Creed with y'all. I want to read through that famous creed on the Holy Trinity, but I don't want to jump right into that because I feel like that was a lot. So before I get to that, I want to look at some comments that we've received on some YouTube videos we've done on Pints with Aquinas. So this should be fun. I'm just doing this right now. I'm clicking up my episode with Trent Horn, episode 188. It's had over almost 30,000 views on YouTube, so that's pretty cool. So I'm going to go to the top comments.

Starting point is 00:37:03 This one is from Chazza2222, and he's doing a little dialogue for his comment. Mum, okay, one more video before bed. Child, turns on four-hour Pints with Aquinas episode. So that was very good. Yeah, it was pretty much a four-hour conversation between me and Trent Horn, for those of you who have had the courage to go through it. Let's see. Joseph and Jessica Zwiak says, it feels like Trent Horn could speak continuously for the rest

Starting point is 00:37:34 of time and eternity and never run out of anything to say. It's fantastic. I have to say, I thought the same thing. Yeah i felt like we had just we hadn't even begun to scratch the knowledge uh of of trent horn meanwhile if i spoke for an hour i'd i'd pretty much exhaust my knowledge on all topics so so there you go um austin stokes says i made a whole entire gumbo while listening to this best gumbo i ever made very good uh sarah ristan ristanio says i like when these things go for longer hours you're able to get a lot deeper into different topics and cover a lot more areas um harris craycraft says four hour break from editing my own video sounds Sounds good.

Starting point is 00:38:30 Justin Trefney says, great video. I think Matt Fradd would be an excellent moderator for a debate between Tim Gordon and Trent Horn on what the Catholic teaching is on women in the workplace. Yeah, that's not going to happen. Crystal D says, looking forward to watching this whole interview after my kids are in bed. Let's see what else we have here. Maybe two more from this one, and then we'll go to William Lane Craig's episode. Christopher Jones says, Matt, I'm an evangelical brother here from South Carolina, but wanted to let you know that I enjoy your show so much. Having Trent do a long form interview was a treat. Looking forward to more. That's very nice, isn't it? And let's see one more from Nicholas Ramirez. He says, very nice new camera work, Matt.

Starting point is 00:39:08 The shots and lighting look really nice as well as the new Pints with Aquinas logo. However, Trent's face is seen in the mirror on the left shot. It's hilarious. Yeah, that is kind of, we missed that. For those of you who didn't see it, I have a mirror behind me, off to the right of me. And so you can see Trent's like eyeball when the camera is on me, which is, we definitely corrected that for the next episodes. But thank you for your compliment. It's a work in progress. We are working on getting even better cameras, even better lighting, so it can be kind of the

Starting point is 00:39:40 best it can be. So that's, thank you very much. All right, let's go to my interview with William Lane Craig. This was just such a pleasure. As I already said, I am just, I was super smitten, I have to say. I have been so blessed by his work in my own life that it was a real pleasure to have him on. All right, so let's look at some of the comments. Carl Williams says, Dr. William Lane Craig was instrumental in my journey back to the faith. That's great. Jonathan Gill Santillan says, I love seeing Christians from different denominations just chilling and hanging out without being all hateful to each other. Oh, that's good.

Starting point is 00:40:23 Thank you. Michael A. Ratnam says, Matt, your defense of celibate priests was spot on. You have moved up in position on my Catholic YouTube list. Well, that's nice. Let's see. This guy, he's called That Right, says, this guy, he's called That Right, says, thanks for not falling for the bologna advice of Catholics who wanted you to turn this into a rivalry debate between Catholicism and Protestantism. I learned a lot from this show because of it. Yeah, thank you very much. I really appreciate that comment because it seems to me that angry, crazy people tend to be, it feels like they're dominant on YouTube and you forget that they're actually normal, regular people watching this. So to kind of give you an example, I mean, I'm saying crazy, which is a derogatory term, I know,

Starting point is 00:41:16 but you know, I don't care. This person said, when you said, Matt, that we could learn from Protestants, I was done and something dismissive. And always unsubscribed. And I wrote back and said, okay, bye, like, go away. But I, you know, which I think is a ridiculous thing to say that it's impossible that we can learn from people we fundamentally disagree with. So I'm really heartened to see comments like that, that aren't all about, yeah, like, tell him he's a heretic and throw coffee at his face. So happy to not listen to those people. All right, let's do one more comment.

Starting point is 00:42:03 Luca says, great show, Matt. How unfortunate that it only went for an hour. I'm sure there was a legitimate reason why it was so short, but I was hoping that it would fill my whole afternoon with theology and philosophy. Nevertheless, I did enjoy it, and you certainly carried yourself well here. Us Catholics can be proud of your openness towards dialogue and defensive celibacy alike. I would have liked to hear William Lane Craig talk more on the subject of Catholic-Protestant relations, differences, and possible bridges to build between us. Oh my goodness, she goes on, but I'm not going to keep reading, but thank you very much. So thank you to everybody who is commenting over at YouTube. And if you haven't yet listened to that William Lane Craig episode, you can listen to it. It was a podcast last week. It's also on YouTube. All right, let's talk a

Starting point is 00:42:40 little bit about the Athanasian Creed and then I will get into it for you. All right, so the Athanasian Creed is or was believed to have been written by St. Athanasius himself, but it looks like that may not be the case anymore. I think most scholars or many scholars now think that it comes perhaps from the 5th century and was obviously influenced by Athanasius. So nevertheless, it is an excellent little creed that can help people who are struggling to understand the Trinity. So here's what it says. Whoever desires to be saved should above all hold to the Catholic faith. Anyone who does not keep in Trinity and the Trinity in unity, neither blending their persons nor dividing their essence.

Starting point is 00:43:38 For the person of the Father is a distinct person, the person of the Son is another, and that of the Holy Spirit still another, but the divinity of the Son is another, and that of the Holy Spirit still another, but the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one. Their glory equal, their majesty co-eternal. What quality the Father has, the Son has, and the Holy Spirit has. The Father is uncreated, the Son is uncreated, the Holy Spirit is uncreated the son is uncreated the holy spirit is uncreated the father is immeasurable the son is immeasurable the holy spirit is immeasurable the father is eternal the son is eternal the holy spirit is eternal and yet there are not three eternal beings there is but one eternal being so two there are not three uncreated or immeasurable beings.

Starting point is 00:44:27 There is but one uncreated and immeasurable being. Similarly, the Father is almighty. The Son is almighty. The Holy Spirit is almighty. Yet there are not three almighty beings. There is but one almighty being. Thus the Father is God. The Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God. Yet there are not three gods, there is but one God. Thus the Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, the Holy Spirit is Lord. Yet there are not three lords, but there is one Lord. Just as Christian truth compels us to confess each person individually as both God and Lord, so Catholic religion forbids us to say that there are three gods or lords. The Father was neither

Starting point is 00:45:13 made nor created nor begotten from anyone. The Son was neither made nor created. He was begotten from the Father alone. The Holy Spirit was neither made nor created nor begotten. He proceeds from the Father and the Son. Accordingly, there is one Father, not three fathers. There is one Son, not three sons. There is one Holy Spirit, not three Holy Spirits. Nothing in the Trinity is before or after. Nothing is greater or smaller. In their entirety, the three persons are co-eternal and co-equal with each other. So in everything, as was said earlier, we must worship their Trinity in their unity and their unity in their Trinity. Anyone then who desires to be saved should think thus about the Trinity. But it is necessary for eternal salvation that one also

Starting point is 00:46:07 believe in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ faithfully. Now, this is the true faith, that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, God's Son, is both God and human equally. He is God from the essence of the Father, begotten before time, and he is human from the essence of his mother, born in time, completely God, completely human, with a rational soul and human flesh, equal to the Father as regards divinity, less than the Father as regards humanity. Although he is God and human, yet Christ is not two but one. He is one, however, not by his divinity being turned into flesh, but by God's taking humanity to himself. He is one, certainly not by the blending of his essence, but by the unity of his person. For just as one human is both rational soul and flesh, so too

Starting point is 00:47:06 the one Christ is both God and human. He suffered for our salvation. He descended to hell. He arose from the dead. He ascended to heaven. He is seated at the father's right hand. From there, he will come to judge the living and the dead. At his coming, all people will arise bodily and give an accounting of their own deeds. Those who have done good will enter eternal life, and those who have done evil will enter eternal fire. This is the Catholic faith. One cannot be saved without believing it firmly and faithfully. So there you are. That's the Athanasian Creed.

Starting point is 00:47:42 Thank you very much for listening to Pints with Aquinas today. You'll remember at the beginning of the episode, I said I wanted to share with you a meditation for Lent. Aquinas wrote these daily meditations for Lent. I know Lent, even though it's at the end of this month, it might feel like it's a little ways away, but don't be caught flat-footed. Figure out what you want to do now. And this could be at least part of what you do for Lent, listening to Aquinas every day. I think sometimes we can come up with these big, grandiose plans, which can be admirable, right? Like, for Lent, I'm not going to eat anything except whatever. And those can be great.

Starting point is 00:48:16 But sometimes it helps to be realistic. And I think this is a realistic thing you could do, listening to Thomas Aquinas for three to six minutes every day, in addition to the other things that you'll do. If you want to get access to these, go to patreon.com slash mattfradd. Patreon.com slash mattfradd. As I say, you can read the meditations there, and they will also be read to you by yours truly. And here's what they'll sound like. Chat with you next week. Meditations for Lent from St. Thomas Aquinas. Ash Wednesday.

Starting point is 00:48:49 Death. By one man, sin entered into this world and by sin, death. If for some wrongdoing a man is deprived of some benefit once given to him, that he should lack that benefit is the punishment of his sin. Now in man's first creation he was divinely endowed with this advantage that so long as his mind remained subject to God, the lower powers of his soul were subjected to the reason and the body was subjected to the soul. But because by sin man's mind moved away from its subjection to God, it followed that the lower parts of his mind ceased to be wholly subjected to the reason. From this there followed such a rebellion of the bodily inclination against the reason

Starting point is 00:49:33 that the body was no longer wholly subject to the soul. Whence follow death and all bodily defects. For life and wholeness of body are bound up with this, that the body is wholly subject to the soul, as a thing which can be made perfect is subject to that which makes it perfect. So it comes about that conversely there are such things as death, sickness, and every other bodily defect. For such misfortunes abound up with an incomplete subjection of body to soul. The rational soul is of its nature immortal, and therefore death is not natural to man insofar as man has a soul. It is natural to his body, for the body, man has a soul. It is natural to his body, for the body, since it is formed of things contrary to each other in nature, is necessarily liable to corruption, and it is in this respect that

Starting point is 00:50:34 death is natural to man. But God who fashioned man is all-powerful, and hence by an advantage conferred on the first man, he took away that necessity of dying which was bound up with the matter of which man was made. This advantage was, however, withdrawn through the sin of our first parents. Death is then natural, if we consider the matter of which man is made, and it is a penalty inasmuch as it happens through the loss of the privilege whereby man was preserved from dying. Sin, original sin and actual sin, is taken away by Christ, that is to say, by him who is also the remover of all bodily defects. He shall quicken also your mortal bodies because of his spirit that dwelleth in you. But according to the order appointed by a wisdom that is divine, it is at the time which best suits that Christ takes away both the one and the other, that is,

Starting point is 00:51:42 both sin and bodily defects. Now it is only right that, before we arrive at the glory of impassibility and immortality which began in Christ and which was acquired for us through Christ, we should be shaped after the pattern of Christ's sufferings. It is then only right that Christ's liability to suffer should remain in us too for a time, as a means of our coming to the impassibility of glory in the way He Himself came to it.

Pints With Aquinas - 191: Explaining the Trinity ... Without Being a Heretic

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