Pints With Aquinas - 220: 7 Ways To Argue Better w/ Fr. Gregory Pine

Episode Date: August 25, 2020

Have you noticed just how bad we are at arguing these days, especially online? Take a look at your Facebook feed during this election year or just scroll through the comments on previous “Pints with Aquinas” episodes, and you’ll see exactly what I mean. Sometimes it feels like we’re overly eager to misunderstand each other. Today we’re joined around the bar table by my good friend Fr. Gregory Pine. Together we’re going to discuss 7 things you can learn from St. Thomas Aquinas about how to argue effectively, persuasively and charitably.   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

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd and today I am joined around the bar table by Father Gregory Pine to discuss seven things we can learn from Thomas Aquinas as it pertains to arguing and apologetics. want to get better at arguing, there is a lot of wisdom in here. As I say, we go through these seven things and we give examples from Thomas Aquinas. Really great episode, I think. And I think you'll bloody well love it. So there you go. Hey, I started a course called Strive21.com. We have over 17,000 men in it. What is it? Well, it's a 21-day detox from porn course. So if you're a bloke who struggles with porn or lust in any way, go check out strive21.com. For 21 days, you get like five-minute videos from me kind of like leading you along. Like basically, if I had 21 days to speak to somebody, I wouldn't say it all at once. I would gradually lead them. And this is what I did in this course.

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Thanks so much. Delighted to be here. How are you doing? So you're complimenting my mustache. Thanks so much. Delighted to be here. How you doing? So you were complimenting my mustache. I was. Do go on. Oh, yeah. I was just saying it's ample and it's fulsome and it's resplendent. I can continue, but I think three. No, it's good. No, it's full bodied.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. So I started growing a mustache or not just a mustache, but like a beard at the start of coronavirus. It's been a rocky journey because i've always wanted to do it but at the same time i knew i couldn't grow like a super thick awesome looking beard and so i would always give up when it got kind of ugly and i think it's okay it's definitely patchy and stuff but

basically i'm going for a beard comb over so if i can grow that out i'll just push that over anyway most beards start out looking bad, and then they continue looking bad, and then they end looking bad. So, hey, kudos to you, man, for making it burn. Yeah, you really brought it home. My wife, like, doesn't kiss me anymore. She's trying, you know, like we kind of get intimate, and she starts kissing me, and she can't do it.

I'm like, I still think it's worth keeping the beard. Sorry, babe. Yeah, I think it's the Capuchin friars have something about beards in their legislation. And I think the reason for which it's like because they're supposed to be austere and manly and ugly. Right. So there's a logic to beards. But, you know, you look at them long enough and you're like, actually, this is pretty sweet.

No, for sure. For sure. I was actually with the Friars of the Renewal in England doing a discernment kind of weekend. And while I was there, we were out traveling on the trains doing evangelization. And that was one of the things this, you know, this very honest and humble brother, I won't say his name, said to me,

because we were out there and we kind of bumped into this lady and it seemed like they got into a conversation and she was very attractive. And his point was just that. It's like, yeah, this really helps. Like looking like this, wearing this, it really does help.

And what's funny though, is I did like a thing on my Patreon. I asked people, do you like the beard or not the beard? pretty much all of the women were like please shave it off it's disgusting all of the men were like yes don't stop so i think women are just jealous that they can't do it wow bold statement yeah i also think that there's like you know you form a kind of attachment to it because um all right so before i entered the, I would look at the fryers who had white socks, and I would be like, that looks ridiculous. I've thought that. Yeah, yeah.

You look at these guys, and they got black shoes and white socks, and you're like, that's real bad. That's devastating. But then you enter, and the expectation is that you wear white socks. And all of a sudden, when anyone does anything otherwise, you like that guy over there really silly looking unbelievable uh so yeah it's uh you know once you once you start abiding in beard culture you know to not have a beard would be you know detestable you you need to start like a dominican irony website where you just mock that friar who wears black socks and black shoes or something i mean i, by contemporary standards, they look far more normal than I, but because I've been swimming in this very strange ocean,

I've learned to breathe this particular type of – No, I know exactly what you mean. It's so funny. We have to realize that too, like as Catholics, right? Because I think sometimes we Catholics think, all I need to do is expose my Protestant friend to the majesty of the Latin mass and they'll be swept off their feet. And sometimes that just isn't what happens. Like they might be able to appreciate the beauty of it, but for them, they just might be like, this is really weird.

And just like you say, it's because we've been swimming in it for so long that we've learned to appreciate it. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. in it for so long that we've learned to appreciate it. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Random thought, there's an essay by David Foster Wallace called This Is Water. I don't remember what exactly is in it, but he gave it as a commencement address, I think, for the graduates of Kenyon College. And it's really good on the, I mean, it's like, you know, 15 minutes long, it's a commencement address. But he basically opens your eyes to what you're swimming in. It's pretty cool.

Yeah, awesome. Well, today we're going to be talking about seven things we can learn from Thomas Aquinas as it pertains to arguing. So what I might do is just go through these seven, just read them, then we'll just kind of talk maybe generally about arguing and why we can learn from Aquinas, and then we'll get into each one. So here's what we've come up with. Number one, listen to your opponent to understand what he's arguing for or against. Second, define terms.

Third, don't be afraid to appeal to tradition and authority. Four, be nuanced. Five, don't use bad arguments because they support your belief. Six, cultivate an apologetic habit of mind. And seven, love the apologetic habit of mind. Seven, love the person you're arguing with. So I'm excited to do this because one of the reasons I wanted to do this is because arguments online are atrocious and they're probably not much better offline as well. I find one of the things that's like really struck me recently that led me to want to do this episode

is we are all so eager to take each other out of context and misunderstand each other when we're arguing online. You know, like someone says something and maybe they're just kind of speaking hyperbolically or casually. You're like, oh really? You're saying, and you know, we just take them literally and we're just a jerk to them. And this happens a lot. So I think if we want to get better at arguing, we need to learn from Thomas Aquinas. So why is Thomas Aquinas an ample saint, philosopher, theologian to learn from when it comes to arguing? I think because St. Thomas argued often and argued well, and also exhibits certain virtues of argument in exemplary fashion. Maybe just to say one thing rather than say a

billion things, but I think St. Thomas was wise. You think about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, right? You got wisdom, knowledge, understanding, counsel, piety, fortitude, and fear of the Lord, and the gift of wisdom gives you this kind of sensitivity to God's mind, and I think that St. Thomas had that in spades. So he saw, like, how everything was articulated, and so he was able to navigate those connections when explaining things to other people in a way that was luminous, beautiful, clear. So I think he's really well-suited to teach us these types of things. If Aquinas didn't exist and we didn't have him or his writings, what other saint would you point to and say this person argued very well? I suspect that we would look to other leading lights of the Middle Ages. We'd probably look

to Albert, to Bonaventure, to Alexander of Hales, because there's something about the habit of mind that was kind of common in the 13th century, which is especially so. And I think that we look to St. Thomas because he was the best of his contemporaries, but I think that he lived during an especially reasonable time, right? There was this great confidence in reason at work within the life of faith, especially with, you know, all these texts from Aristotle were coming back into the medieval universities because they had been, you know, translated into Arabic and then communicated through, you know, Spanish folks. So yeah, I think that that time was especially well-suited to communicate it, and St. Thomas says the best of the bunch, but there are others who are very, very good in their own right.

You know, I've often thought that when it comes to arguing for God's existence, you have three and only three starting points. You have outside of you, you know, cosmological arguments. You have inside of you, you know, an appreciation of beauty or recognition of moral law. And then you have the only other thing that exists other than outside and inside is the thing that connects inside and outside, namely language. And that's sort of the only kind of one argument in that category, namely the ontological argument. But it's interesting to me that Aquinas and probably older scholastics, correct me if I'm wrong, to your point about being a very sort of reasonable society of men, would begin from the outside and argue. And I want you to comment on that.

But I also want to ask, like, you know, what do you think Thomas Aquinas would have thought of these sort of more emotional arguments i guess i don't know if emotional is the right word but arguing for morality based on experience or arguing for god based on our perception of beauty these more kind of internal kind of things that i think modern people like a lot more they kind of resonate with them a lot more than those sort of more what they seem to think to be as sort of abstract cosmological arguments yeah i think that um so saint, like you said, he starts with what's out there. And G.K. Chesterton has this nice chapter in The Dumb Ox, where he talks about St. Thomas in light of, like, Cartesian critiques. So we know that Descartes, René Descartes came along, whatever, maybe 400 years after St. Thomas, and he begins with his own consciousness as a way by which to prove that there's a world outside of his consciousness. And then he goes from there to prove the existence of God.

And he says St. Thomas is not hung up with some of Descartes' problems. So Descartes is very concerned that you have to prove what's out there before you consider what's out there. And St. Thomas says, no, it's just out there. So the image that Chesterton uses is that St. Thomas builds a bridge across the chasm of subjectivity and then just explores the land on the other side. So I think that a lot of times argument can get tripped up at the outset because it's difficult to agree with your interlocutor on shared ground, shared territory, but also because it's difficult to agree on what you are observing. So St. Thomas, he gives us a kind of confidence to say, like, you know, you can trust your sense experience,

you can trust that there's a common human nature and that other people will share something of what you describe. Now, mind you, sin on your own part and sin on the part of the other makes it difficult to foster agreement, but it is still possible. So I think in that way, it can be very encouraging to think with him. But what do you think if you were to run the moral argument by him? How do you think he would have interpreted that? So he certainly has like a category for experience, experimentum in his Latin, but it doesn't enter in in the same way that it does for, like, St. Augustine. So, for instance, when you read the Confessions, you're like, holy moly, this is

incredible, you know? Tole et lege, you know? And you read Romans 13, 13, and it convinces you about the baseness of your own kind of pursuits, and then it turns you towards God, and, you know, you feel there's a kind of warmth, an effective charge to it. It's really rich in that regard. Whereas when you read St. Thomas, you're like, whoosh, this is dry. This is heavy lifting. Does that mean that St. Thomas himself did not have these experiences? No, I don't think that it's what it means. But I think that he had a certain cast of mind, which recognized that you could only rely so much upon them. But like the poetic, like the artistic, like the fine arts in general, that they work upon this kind of insight or flash that may or may not translate. Like we've talked about this before, like you love Dostoevsky, I don't love Dostoevsky. He translates to you,

he does not translate to me. St. Thomas wanted to ensure that what he did translated as broadly as possible. And so he appealed beyond experience to something that was more common, verifiable. That wasn't as much, you know, and we've all had the experience of having arguments with other people who marshal a lot of anecdotal evidence. You know, I have a friend who is, or my best friend growing up was, or blah, blah, blah. And then that's a way by which to ensure that nobody can say anything contrary to what you put forward, because this for you is a felt attachment. Same time I said, no, no, no, let's get that out of the way. Let's talk about common territory that we can explore together without having it be the sole province of one or the other. Yeah, that's really great.

Okay, well, let's dive into it. Here's the first thing we can learn from Aquinas. Listen to your opponent to understand what he's arguing for. And here I would just kind of point to two things that I've always found really fascinating with Thomas Aquinas is, well, first of all, kind of getting back to what I said earlier. Like we always – it's a cheap trick to misunderstand somebody intentionally, though we might not think we're doing it intentionally. Though I think there's something in us that is because we want to look good. We want to disparage the other person's position.

They'll say something. We reinterpret it and restate it in the least favorable light or argue against it rather than seeking to, what is it you're actually trying to say? And it's like, my kids do this, you know, like my, something really simple, like my son will say, this has been the best day ever. And his brother will say, really like the best day ever. And you're like, oh, for goodness sake, this is tedious. You know what he meant. Or if you didn't, it's your fault, you know, or at least seek to understand what he meant. But I think on Facebook, like how many times or YouTube do you see a clarifying comment? And whenever you do, I'm always like, good for you.

But it's very rare that you see someone saying, hey, when you said this, did you mean this or this? And then you can kind of attack or make an argument, you know, but you don't often see it. But one of the things Aquinas does really well is he's steel man as opposed to straw mans, his opponent's positions. And finally, he seems to formulate his opponent's positions in syllogisms, which is also really interesting to me, right? So here he is, he's trying to think of arguments against his position, and he doesn't strawman them, right? He doesn't, like when arguing for atheism, he doesn't say, atheists don't want to believe in God because they want to sin.

You know, it's like, no, I don't think that's necessarily what they're arguing for. That may be the case, but that's definitely not the strongest argument. But then when he states their objection, he'll do it syllogistically. And for those who are watching, a syllogism is like two premises and a conclusion in a deductive form. And what's great about that is sometimes it's really difficult to kind of understand what your opponent's saying. It's almost like if you were to throw a bunch of stuff on the floor and you're like, okay, what am I dealing with here? And it can be overwhelming. But when you put it into a syllogistic form,

it's like someone might say something, you might be emotionally persuasive. Okay, it sounds like you're saying premise one of this, premise two of this, therefore, is that what you're saying? And then it's like a lot easier to examine it and to see the merits and flaws in it. And I've always appreciated that about Aquinas. But regarding this first point, what do you think, listening to your opponent? Yeah, I think that what comes through is that St. Thomas is about the business of discovering the truth. So for him, the thought of vanquishing his foes doesn't so much enter into his mind,

unless he finds that those advancing the arguments are doing so in bad faith. So he always assumes good faith. He always assumes that the other individual is in pursuit of a common truth. And if that's the case, then he can use what they put forward as fodder for or as, you know, potential insight in the discovery of the truth. So he has this habit, especially, you know, with Christians of reverential exposition, where whenever he reads them, he tries to interpret their words in such a way that it conduces to the discovery of the truth. So he's never going to say like, you know, Augustine said this thing, but fool, you know, yeah, girl, please. No, he's going to show a way by which subsequent, you know,

resources in the tradition shed light on what he has said and tease out the implications thereof and show it ultimately to be true. So I think that's, I mean, that's the ultimate point. He's doing dialectic, right? So he's using these different opinions as a way by which to kind of triangulate towards the truth, as a way by which to sift different insights and show them by comparison to, you know, maybe they're maybe contrary opinions, so as to tease out ultimately what will help us discover the Lord and look more, you know, clearly upon reality. So yeah, it's just, he's just got a very fair and disciplined temper of mind to be able to see what is rather than simply who said. Yeah, I like what you said there, that he tries to, he assumes good faith in the other person,

unless it becomes apparent that they're not arguing. And I think we don't... Just that kind of example I gave earlier when you say, like, you only believe because. It's almost like whenever you say that, you're about to commit the genetic fallacy, first of all. But then also, it's like you're assuming bad faith or you're psychologizing.

So when you say of an atheist, you just want there to be no gods so that you can do X, Y, and Z, yeah, you're assuming bad faith. You're assuming that this person isn't genuinely interested in the truth. And you're also assuming their psychological state, which presumably you don't actually have access to. So at the very least, you're not off to a good start, and this argument together is probably not going to go anywhere useful. Yeah. Okay, yeah, you go. Oh, yeah, I was just going to say, I mean, like, think about the Gospels.

Where in the Gospels do you hear about what Jesus thought? You know, you don't. Huh. Yeah, you just get publicly verifiable acts, and then those publicly verifiable acts impinge upon our lives. publicly verifiable acts, and then those publicly verifiable acts impinge upon our lives. And maybe it's like a helpful exercise to think meditatively or an image-driven way about what he might have thought. But, you know, we're in the business of dealing with what people do. Yeah, the gospel writers may not have talked about Christ's thoughts, but Christ was the

only one who could, you know, infallibly understand other people's thoughts and then respond to them even without them saying things. We see that in the gospels. Yeah, exactly. But unless you've been given that gift. Here's the second thing is we should define terms before getting into a argument. So why should we do that? Because words can mean lots of different things. And there's a kind of lead into that, the logical explanation. So some words mean exactly the same thing when you use them of different things, like I'm a man, you're a man. Some things mean completely different things, like I hit a bank shot or I deposited my meager earnings at the bank. Or they might mean related things like I'm

good and God is good, you know, so they might be analogically related. But still, whenever we're dealing with language, we have to recognize that language has limits, but also that people approach it from different traditions and from different vantages. And so if you're arguing with an atheist, for instance, what they say by reason may not be entirely in step with what you say by reason. may not be entirely in step with what you say by reason. So we tend to think about it as, you know, like, capable of the truth, but they might think about it as constructive of the truth.

And so, yeah, it can be helpful at the outset to determine what other people mean when they say what they mean, especially for the big-ticket items in the conversation. You know, you think about, like, conversations between Catholics and Protestants. What do you mean by the inspired scriptures? You know, that's just like a big question on account of the fact that you have these deuterocanonical texts, and what is the authority of the book of wisdom in this conversation? You know, if we're going to talk about the existence of God, because wisdom 13 could be really important for natural, kind of like natural theology purposes. So, yeah, something like that. Yeah, what do you mean by pray? You know, like if a Protestant was to say,

when you say pray to Mary, what do you mean by that? Like that would be an excellent question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Worship is another one too in the same conversation. What does worship mean? Exactly, yeah. Because, yeah, because the thing is, I mean, you want to disagree with people because they're wrong, you know, and sometimes I feel like we just want to disagree with people.

But it's like, I mean, I've had conversations with Protestants and I'm like, okay, here's what I mean by purgatory. You know, it's like the final rush of our sanctification, you know, and so we could drop the term for now. You know, forget it. I get purgatory has a lot of baggage, conjures up a lot of images. Let's just put that to one side and let's just talk about the concept and then sometimes that can be that can be really helpful yeah i also just in like things that are happening today you know we're talking a lot about racism uh systemic or systematic racism um like in order to even have a conversation about that it's like okay i need i need to know what we mean. Because maybe there is systemic racism. But in order for me to know that, I first need to know what you

mean by that. But if a term is so vague, if it has no edges, then we can't really have a conversation. This happened recently, not on systemic racism, but on socialism. Trent Horn debated a bloke, I forget his name. He did it on Catholic Answers, and the bloke never defined socialism. In fact, at the end, he just sort of said it's a lived reality. You have to understand it through living it. You're like, well, how can you have a conversation about something if we can't define it, you know? Yeah. No, I think that, like, the question of systemic racism is a good one for this as a kind of case point, because you can define a term in a variety of

ways, but ultimately it's helpful to know what the other person means by it. Because, you know, systemic racism, from what I understand, has its origin in critical race theory, right? And I think a lot of that in the academic setting is associated with certain political theories, right? Or certain, you know, whatever ideological theories. And so you need to know, like, what's the native context? And is the person using it with the consciousness of that native context? Or with all of like the polyvalence that assumes in its original context? And if not, then where is the person getting the term? And if they're getting the term from this place, that place, the other place, do they assume all of the presuppositions of the person proffering it in that place, the other place, blah, blah, blah. So that can be really, really helpful,

especially because, you know, you can't, we can't expect to know exactly what we're saying all the time or to expect the other person to know exactly what we're saying. Yeah. So many times, like, I'll say something and someone's like, what do you mean by that? And I'm like, gosh, I don't even know if I know. Let me rephrase that, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was giving a talk the other day and I said something, it was a Zoom talk and I said something that was factually inaccurate and somebody just bopped up into the chat and said like, that's factually inaccurate. I was like, that's a good reminder because I often speak in approximations. I'm like a horseshoes and hand grenades man. I like to speak quickly, you know, and for the most time I'm hoping to say

things that are true, but with the recognition that sometimes I'll say things that are wrong, I'll try to say like energize. And instead I say enervate, and that actually means to weaken. It's like, whoopsie daisy, you know, my bad. So yeah, I think it's good to be charitable in that regard too, that people may know what they mean. They may not know what they mean. And that doesn't mean that they're dumb if they don't know exactly what they mean, because we do it all the time. Yeah. Yeah. I think another thing that's important is the person, like in agreeing to the term, like we have to define our terms. The person doesn't even have to hold to the dictionary definition of that term in order to have a good back and forth. It's not like I need to pin you to the dictionary definition of this thing you're

talking about. I just need to understand what you mean by that so that we can have a conversation that we're understanding. So if you say, I'm an atheist, and you say, by atheist, I mean I lack a belief in God, I can continue to have a conversation with you without having to pin you to what has traditionally been meant by atheism and why that definition doesn't square up with the traditional definition. You know, I can say, OK, fair enough. That's how you understand it. OK, so given that and then I can proceed, I think that's an important thing to remember as well. Like we. Yeah. Yeah. No, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was also thinking, too, like I think sometimes people are nervous to define their terms because they are afraid that you're going to kind of pin them to the wall, you know. And so I think it's good to establish a kind of mutual trust at the beginning of a conversation. Like I was having a conversation with somebody the other day who was making an argument that men and women pertain to different philosophic species. And I was like, OK, so like what would be the nature of the specific difference, right? And do you think that there's a distinctively feminine soul? And if so, does that register at the level of substance or of accident? And there was like an increasing reticence to answer those questions. And I think it was because I had – like I had my teeth out.

So it just – it can be helpful in those conversations to say like, no, no, no. I'm not trying to like catch you in a contradiction. I just want to understand what you think exactly. And if it gets refined in the course of this conversation, fine. I just want to understand what you think exactly so that way we can actually, we can discuss what it is rather than what I think to be, which you may not actually espouse. Yeah, that's a really good point. Yeah. I think like two questions are really helpful when we get into sort of sort of an adversarial back and forth and again that doesn't mean i'm not using that in a negative way when you have an argument you're you're taking up something of a see i don't even know what i mean by

adversarial i said that i think what do i mean by adversarial i guess i mean you're taking opposing views and going at it uh but that's okay that Arguments are good. Arguments, they're not spats, they're not fights, they're giving reasons to think something's true, which is like a necessary follow-up to evangelization, really. If you say God exists and he loves you and he sent his son, yada, yada, and the person says, why should I believe that? If you answer him coherently, you will be arguing. So this idea that Christians shouldn't argue, they should just share their story, I think is unhelpful. And it's unbiblical because you see in Acts 17, more than once, I think it's in verse 1 and verse 17, I think, I'm going off memory, you have St. Paul arguing with those in the synagogue, arguing with those in the marketplace. Arguing is good.

But here's the point. I think these are two good questions saying like, what do you believe and why do you believe it? And again, not in order to pin someone to the wall but those are two very helpful questions because i think sometimes you know if we're getting into a conversation with somebody who disagrees with us it can seem really scary and um like something we might not know how to navigate but asking those questions is really helpful. Like, what do you believe? Well, I think this is true. Okay, now why do you believe that?

Well, I believe that because of this and this and this. Ah, that's interesting. Why do you think that's true? And again, we got to be really kind of self-reflective to know whether we're doing this as a way to sort of make someone feel bad or not, because it's a lot easier to ask questions and tear down somebody's worldview than to build one up.

So we don't want to do that, but... Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's just, there's, I mean, with any argument, there is a kind of instinctual movement to become contentious, right? But that needn't be the case. I think, like, the distinction that you made between argument and other less noble forms of exchange is helpful.

To argue does not mean to be against, except in the sense of being turned towards. Like adversary, ad versus. You just turn towards another person. So you're regarding another person for the purpose of having with them a substantive exchange. See? That's what I meant. Good job for telling me what I meant. I didn't even know what I meant.

If you'd have asked me what adversary meant, I wouldn't have been able to know. Say. You know, here's what happened recently too. I think it's so important to be humble. It really is. I know that sounds like such a cliche, but I've got a good friend of mine who runs a, he's a Protestant, he's an apologist, he's got a really terrific channel on YouTube. He said to me the other day, he's like, so what happens when a priest blesses you? Like, what is that? What is a blessing if he blesses something or you? And I went, I don't know, really. Like, I don't know what it means. Crap. Like, I guess it means, like, is it the blessing of Jesus? And what does that

mean? Like, I just had no idea. And I'm like, I guess it's like if curses are possible and if people and things can be cursed and people and things can surely be blessed. But I probably, maybe it's because I was thinking too hard and wanted to give a super accurate definition, but I was just like, I don't know. And it was really cool.

I was really glad that I got to say that because I think a lot of the time we have no idea what we're talking about, but we just waffle our way through it and hope that it lands somehow and it will seem it'll seem somewhat i don't know not embarrassing but that's right that's good all right okay um oh you're are you still there okay you're uh oh no there you are. You're back now. Okay. All right. Here's the third one. Don't be afraid to appeal to tradition and authority. Now, first thing I want to say here is obviously appeal to authority is like a legit fallacy, right? So I don't know if it's a formal or informal fallacy, but the point is like, if somebody says, what do you think that you say?

Well, because this person said it, that's not a good reason. But if you're Catholic, you've probably got reasons for why that authority can't be wrong. And so it's OK to do that. And the reason I say that, of course, is in the Summa Theologiae. Aquinas sets arguments against himself. The very first thing he does before giving his own answer is by appealing to tradition. And it's OK to do that, especially when you believe that you belong to a church that teaches what God wants us to know. Yeah. And this is a very pre-enlightenment, but also post-enlightenment, maybe anti-enlightenment

sensibility. I think in the Enlightenment, you see this desire to distance ourselves from tradition because there's a kind of fear that tradition is a form of bias. It's a form of partiality. And during the Enlightenment, philosophers are looking for an impartial, reason-based, kind of sanitized ground whereby to begin discourse. But I don't know if folks who have read anything by Alistair MacIntyre know that we really sounded the death nail on that project. It's not possible to argue from nowhere or to argue from a vacuum. to argue from nowhere or to argue from, you know, like a vacuum. We all argue from a tradition in as much as, you know, you're all born to your parents in your country, you're taught your language, you're baptized into your faith or not, as it were, right? So you can't divest yourself

of these fundamental commitments which shape you as a human person. And that being the case, it's not, it's an illusion, I think, to think that you could divest yourself of those things so as to argue in a way that was perfectly and purely impartial. Rather, you need to take those things into account and to recognize in them sources of rationality. So I think that when one appeals to an authority or when one appeals to a tradition, it's not the end of a conversation, right? But it actually broadens the conversation to include those who have gone before. What Chesterton talked about is the democracy of the dead, because it's silly to think that you have all the reasons or that the argument need be terminated, you know, or limited to the narrow confines of these two

individuals in the exchange. So by appealing to authority, by appealing to tradition, you're implicating others in a conversation which is bigger, broader, deeper, wider than you yourselves, in fact, which is great. It just really breathes new air, fresh life into a conversation that might otherwise become stale. Excellent. The fourth thing we should be doing is being nuanced. Man, I got so many thoughts on this one. But to kind of launch us, I wanted to point to an article in the Summa just where Aquinas is being nuanced.

I think sometimes it's very easy to say yes or no, but very often Aquinas says, well, yes, if you mean this, but no, if you mean that. And so the first thing that came to my mind was the Prima Pars Question 2, Article 1, whether or not God's existence is self-evident. And he does two things in this respondio. He defines terms, really, by being nuanced.

Or in being nuanced, he ends up defining terms. So there's this first line here where he says, a thing can be self-evident in either of two ways. And so he's going to say, if you mean like, you know, if it can be self-evident in itself and to others, or it can be self-evident like in its internal logic or in itself, but not to others. So if you mean this, yes. If you mean this, no, or vice versa. But I thought that was a good example of Aquinas being nuanced. Yeah. And I think whenever people talk about medieval theologians, specifically St. Thomas Aquinas, sometimes it's exhausting to hear this

refrain, but you often hear make distinctions, right? Seldom affirm, never deny, always distinguish. Explain that again, because even though it's like maybe exhausting to you, I think a lot of people, this is the first time they're hearing it. So maybe say that again and help us understand that, because it's an excellent point. Sure. Yeah. So you'll often hear this dictum. St. Thomas himself didn't write it. It's a thought crystallized by subsequent folks. Seldom affirm, never deny, and always distinguish. The idea there being not like you should be cagey and not paint yourself into a corner from which you cannot escape, but like seldom affirm. There's a sense in which you can affirm many things, right? So we're not saying that you should be skeptical, but rather when you have a kind of novel thought

or you have a novel yielding of the tradition, as it were, you should look on it with some kind of, not fear and trembling, but yeah, with a little bit of hesitation maybe or reticence to just go all in for it. This is like a kind of admonition against faddishness, right? There are a lot of things that crop up and everyone's like, get on board, and if you don't get on board, you're going to be on, you know, the wrong side of history or you're going to get left behind, you're going to prove yourself a troglodyte or a dinosaur or whatever. And I think it's in those instances where he says, let's pump the brakes, right? Because the church proceeds by kind of plotting steps. Is that because she is slow or obscurantistic? That's a sweet word, against progress.

What's the word? Obscurantistic. Obscurantistic? Yeah, exactly. What does that mean? Like to obscure? Yeah, well, she's like against progress, you know, against science. Obscurantistic. That's fantastic. Does that come from the same word, obscure? I think so, yeah. Wow, that's awesome.

Alright, continue. This better be right or it'd be embarrassing. It'd be awesome. You'll have that guy show up, that is factually inaccurate. Shut up, two subscribers. That's right. Humility is an old man's virtue. Right, so it's no, it's because the church weighs things in,

you know, she weighs them over the course of time. She weighs them through a variety of voices. You can think about the fact that the Immaculate Conception was widely espoused throughout the course of the church's history, but wasn't solemnly defined until the 19th century. So to the assumption in the 20th century. So seldom affirm, never deny is to say that you can't really rule something out until you've seen it fleshed out. So I think here about like people ask the question of what to do with frozen embryos, right? So a lot of these eggs have been fertilized, they're kept in massive numbers, and there's a debate as to whether they ought to be thawed, permitted to die, and then given a burial, or whether they ought to be adopted.

I think that, you know, people are arguing for one or for the other, but this is an instance in which we ought not deny. I heard one bioethicist say that we're waiting on a saint. Really, we don't know. We really don't know what the best way by which to go about it is, and we're waiting on a saint to show us through. So I think it's in those instances where you have to leave, you know, you have to be as wide as the church. But then the always distinguish is, be as wide as the church. But then the always distinguish is, you know, you got to draw distinctions amongst the options so as to show their maybe advantages or disadvantage, to show the subtle nuance, since that's our point number four, to show the complexity thereof, so that way we don't just espouse something blindly or run roughshod over something which may be legitimate

in some aspect. So yeah, it's just a kind of discipline of mind and heart so that way we don't kind of launch precipitously or get paralyzed by the fear of making the wrong decision. Yeah, that's really good. I think another thing too is in a time of chaos, we seek stability. And in a time of sort of intellectual instability, right, we seek stability, which often time of sort of intellectual instability right we seek stability which often

feels like it's coming about when people state things plainly like when people are obscuring things if they're lying um if they're saying like men can have periods you know if we live in a world which is ridiculous but this the world we live in it's like we're so tired and then we're tired of people like pandering to that side. I'm like, well, it's like, okay, we're done with that. We just need someone to say it. And that's good. We need people to speak frankly.

Like to speak frankly, I think, has always been considered a masculine trait. And that's good. But I think in a time of instability like this, intellectual instability, like doctrinal instability in the church, when people are afraid that bishops and priests and other people might be less clear than they should be, let's put it that way, that we need someone to say it clearly. And again, we need that, but sometimes it can be at the expense of nuance. Yeah. No, and I think that's why in a time of great unrest, that's where the ideologues come in. It's like you think about Hitler and the Weimar Republic. You had bewildering inflation, and people were really, really dispirited on account of the fact that having been made to pay war reparations, if you had like a wicker basket full of German marks, it was easier just to empty out

the marks and steal the basket because it was worth more than the money. And it's in that that he comes speaking what to some seems like clarity, what to some seems like, you know, the hard points that need to be advanced. But that's the type of thing that cows people in fear and really preys upon, you know, the populace. So I think it's, yeah, we can't, in a time of instability, there can be a swing towards demagogy or demagogery. And I think that too, we need to hold off at arm's length. And sometimes people will accuse, you know, one or the other of being soft or being insufficiently kind of hard on the tough matters. But yeah, I mean, it's, hard on the tough matters. But yeah, I mean, it's an exceedingly difficult needle to thread,

but it's worth it because demagoguery always ends poorly, right? It doesn't actually inform the citizenry. It just leads them around by their nose. I didn't actually know what demagogue meant when you said it, so I just Googled it. I mean, I could have used it in a sentence, but again, I wasn't really sure what I was saying saying a demagogue is a leader who gains popularity in a democracy by exploiting emotions prejudice and ignorance to arouse some against others whipping up the passions or the crowd and shutting down reasoned deliberation we we see that the united states today like both sides accusing each of doing that right like the sides accusing each of doing that, right? Like the left accusing Trump of doing that, the Trump crowd accusing like mainstream media of doing that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that, I mean, in an era where there's increasing skepticism about the efficacy of discourse and increasing skepticism about the good faith of

those who participate therein. Yeah, I think everyone's going to be nervous about it, but that we're equally disposed to go in for it. So yeah, it's tough, but that's why, you know, faith, you know, you have the Lord Jesus Christ, you have the church, you have the sacraments, you have all these different ways by which the Lord infuses sanity into your members, and you're going to be listening for voices who may or may not speak the truth, but you're going to be looking for it in a way that, you know, corresponds with the sense of the faith that the Lord has breathed into you by baptism, and you should be able to recognize it. And if something sounds to you like, wow, that's like really hard-hitting, and may be,

you know, like maybe it's lancing the boil on the Church's flesh or something like that, but it kind of makes me nervous because I feel like it could tend in this direction. That's probably the Holy Spirit, you know, kind of giving you a gentle admonition. Yeah, like, thinking of this sort may not lead to the heart of the Church. I mean, it's just like—and I speak with a massive presumption that I am tending there unto, but there's always—I mean, there's always a temptation to be too soft, to be too hard, to be too this, that, or the other, but it's what it is. Yeah, really well put. Thank you. Number five is don't use bad arguments because they support

your belief. Aquinas, I mean, forgive me if you guys are regular listeners or viewers of Plants with Aquinas, you've heard me say this ad infinitum at this point. But I mean, there's a couple of things that could be said here. Like Aquinas is often accused of being under the thumb of the church. So you can't take him seriously as a philosopher. But if that were true, why would he reject the most famous argument in the Christian tradition for God's existence? Like he might be wrong. Maybe the ontological argument works and Aquinas is wrong. That's not the point. The point is he rejected it. And then he rejects like an argument

that his contemporary Bonaventure is making, which has become coined now by Dr. William A. Craig as the Kalam cosmological argument. The idea that you can prove that the universe is finite. You know, Aquinas thinks that's wrong and he's pretty scathing in his remarks. The idea that you can prove that the universe is finite. You know, Aquinas thinks that's wrong. And he's pretty scathing in his remarks. And I think that's one of the things he actually says.

It's like, we shouldn't use bad arguments because then we make us look stupid. Right? Isn't that something that Aquinas says? I mean, he said that a bit more eloquently than that. Yeah. He says exactly that. Specifically in his treatment of the triune God. Oh, okay. Sorry.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think in both contexts. I mean, I could be wrong. I've forgotten the exact context. But the eternity of the world, he rejects the Bonaventurian argument for its creation. And then with respect to the Trinity, he rejects an argument advanced by, I guess it's like Hugh of St. Victor, that one could prove that there are three persons on account of the nature of, you know, imminent actions and God's goodness, effectively. And he just says, no, there are certain things that we only really know from Revelation. We can't prove

them by reason. And if we were to say publicly that we can prove them by reason, our opponents will recognize those arguments as paper thin, as insufficient, as paltry, and then they will think us to be bad reasoners, and then we will lose face and not gain for ourselves a real hearing in the marketplace or beyond in the mission fields. So yeah, he's great in that regard. I love it. Yeah, I've just pulled up on the eternity of the world. And so first, Aquinas argues that God can create something that has always existed and so if that is true then maybe the this Kalam argument philosophically doesn't doesn't hold but the point is like after he argues for it that's when he says something that if he were to

begin with it it wouldn't be it wouldn't be an argument but he says, let's see here, how remarkable it would be that even the most noble of philosophers failed to see a contradiction in the idea that something made by God has always existed. Now, if you lead with that, that's not an argument. That's just counting noses or something. Maybe all of these noble philosophers were wrong. But first he argues for it, and that's when he uses that line. So yeah, that's really important. I'm trying to think of ways we do that today in our own kind of different arguments apologetically. Can you think of an example? Yeah, I think sometimes we're of the mind that like any ammunition trained on my, or any weapon

trained on my opponent or adversary, as it were, is good enough for me. And so maybe you're in dread battle with somebody about some philosophical or theological point, and then somebody else in the public square kind of lays into them for something else, and you're like, yeah, that's right, you know, but he may not be right. And ultimately, if we align ourselves with people who may be simpatico with us, you know, 95 he may not be right. And ultimately, if we align ourselves with people who may be simpatico with us, you know, 95% of the time, but in that other 5% of the time, maybe they're really cockeyed, you know, maybe they're really wonky, and maybe they're making arguments that are scary and maybe conducted in bad faith. Who's to say? That's the type of thing

that should give us pause. So we shouldn't just say say like, you know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So we need to host real exchanges with all of those people if we're going to come to a common consensus, because we can just assume sometimes that because they're against him, they're for us. And then we find, you know, politics has indeed made a strange bedfellow and we might not be comfortable with the fit. Yeah, so I think something like that. I think, and I'm hesitant to bring this up because I don't want to misinterpret Fulton Sheen, but I remember him saying something about the illogic of atheism, because in order to be an atheist, you have to have something to atheate.

It was something like that. because in order to be an atheist, you have to have something to atheate. It was something like that. And I think he may have said something like being against smoking, like presumes that smoking exists and to be against God. Now, I might be taking him out of context, but if I've understood him correctly, like that just sounds like a terrible argument against atheism. You could also just think God doesn't exist.

You don't have to, you know. And I think I've even heard, who was that guy? He was the actor from Home Improvement, Tim the Toolman Taylor. Oh, yeah, Tim Allen. Yeah, he's like a Christian. And I remember seeing a YouTube clip of him saying, you know, my daughter was an atheist

and she had don't believe in God. And he had some stupid response. Like, if you don't believe in God and he's had some stupid response like if you don't believe in god like it was so bad like it was along those lines or how do you know why are you against him he doesn't exist that proves that he does this or something like that i'm just like this is awful um and i've done the same thing as well like just just you just jump onto any bad argument i was doing this actually recently like in, in an argument with my friend Cameron Bertuzzi, we were looking at John chapter 6, and I was giving reasons why it shows that Jesus Christ meant what he said.

And I had heard one argument in the past that said, well, in verse 63, where he says, the words I've spoken to you are spirit and life, right? And that's sometimes what Protestants will cite to show that Christ was speaking symbolically. Now there's really, really compelling reasons to think that's not at all the case, but one of those reasons isn't a good one. And I used it in an argument with him. And as I use it, I'm not even convinced by this. Why am I using it? And it was the idea that the Bread of Life discourse ended a few verses prior to this. And somehow that made it distinct from what he was saying in the Bread of Life discourse. But the point is, even if that made little sense, the point is I was offering an argument that I had heard before.

And as I was arguing it, thought, yeah, this isn't really good. So why am I using it? And it's okay just to be like, this isn't really good so why am i using it you know and like it's okay just to be like this this this isn't good and or at least i don't find it compelling and so i shouldn't be using it yeah yeah yeah i think that like here here a helpful point is that apologetically it's not sufficient to have memorized the passages in the scriptures that convey your point right so like the general point now, number five is don't use bad arguments to defend your position because then it can expose the faith to ridicule. So I think

that proof texting can sometimes be a bad argument because if it is not underwritten by real understanding, it can make other people to think that we are just Bible-toting fundamentalists, right? So it's good to know the text that you can marshal in defense of your position. Say you're arguing for purgatory, it's, you know, good to know what it says in, you know, 2 Maccabees or something like that. But those need to be incorporated within a philosophy and a theology of apologetics. So that's not to say that you need to be wicked smart. It's not to say that you need to have studied these things for many years, but you need to have rehearsed the arguments, thought through them, you know, prayed through them,

and they need to be kind of articulated, right? So it's not sufficient to say, like, this passage says this, and this passage says this, and this passage says this, because they're not self-interpreting. You need to do the work of interpretation, and in doing the work of interpretation, you need to appeal to your interlocutor in a way that he or she will recognize, and, you know, so as to ensure that it resonates with them. So I'd say, yeah, proof texting maybe is another example of this type of thing. Excellent. And that leads us to our sixth point. And this is one you texted me prior to getting on the show. So I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say here, that we ought to cultivate an apologetic habit of mind. that we ought to cultivate an apologetic habit of mind.

Yeah. So I think that this maybe just dovetails from the last point, that, again, it's not sufficient just to know the texts. We have to have a kind of wisdom of apologetics, right? So you think about the different intellectual virtues that come into play. Faith. We need to believe the things. Perhaps you've had the experience of arguing with somebody, and you suspect that they might actually to believe the things. Perhaps, you know, you've had the experience of arguing with somebody and you suspect that they might actually not believe the things that

they're saying. It's very devastating, you know, it can be very dispiriting, actually. But wisdom, right? So as to judge all things in light of highest causes. Whenever you're arguing a point, however meaningful or meaningless it may seem, the existence of purgatory, the Church's practice of indulgences, praying to saints, we should be able to connect that to the Trinity, and we should be able to connect that to the redemption. So you should think about it in terms of those highest principles of the faith. To speak on them as principles seems, you know, strange, but those highest realities, those highest mysteries. So wisdom, understanding, you know, to cultivate a kind of knack for or a supernatural sensitivity to the most basic foundational points. Right. That what is, is right.

And that it's not otherwise than that it is. So you should be able to kind of see those things as they come through in the argumentation of other people. If they say like Okay, the thing about this is it's to be interpreted this way and think about that is this to be interpreted that way and you're like Wait, those two things cannot cohere because you recognize it as such and the knowledge, you know to like to read to have a habit of Not just reading apology edicts But reading philosophy and reading theology and reading literature reading broadly reading history You know all these different things reading broadly so that you have a context in which to host the

argument, not merely for argument's sake, but because there's an argument that is conducted within your own heart, right? If you play host to the Most Blessed Trinity, and if the Most Blessed Trinity is teasing out of you in more concrete, in more distilled fashion, a knowledge and love of itself, then that means that you should be hosting that conversation. I heard Father James Brent say, one of the effects of the fall is that we have a conversation with ourselves about ourselves. So like we're always thinking about what needs to be done and fretting over it. You know, you wake up, you turn off your alarm on your phone, you check your text messages, you think about how you need to respond to them,

you just start going, you know, with that series of considerations throughout the course of the day. Whereas he says we should be having a conversation with God about God, and that's something that informs our apologetics, is that we're talking these things through with the Lord, and we might come up at the end of the conversation with the recognition, I don't understand, and I don't know the resources whereby to understand, and maybe I won't understand anytime soon. There are plenty of things that I've argued through, like, you know, grace and free will or the doctrine of predestination and things like that. And at the end of which it's like, I don't know, you know, I can I can kind of circumscribe the mystery and tell you true things that have been solemnly defined and show how they're not incoherent in themselves. But I'm not going to be able to riddle the thing away from you. So yeah, just to have a kind of apologetic habit of mind whereby you are hosting these conversations, hosting these arguments in ongoing fashion with the Lord so that when it comes time to give reason for your hope, it's not terrifying or anxiety-inducing, but it just flows naturally from what has gone before.

That's really good. I had a few thoughts come to mind as you were saying that, and I think it goes into what you're saying about establishing a kind of apologetic mind. The first thing is you don't need to convince other people for your arguments to be solid. I think sometimes we fall into this trap that if my arguments aren't convincing a particular person that they aren't convincing. And you find this a lot online in this sort of kind of a skeptical community. They'll say, well, look, I'm sorry, I'm just not convinced. And then we're like, okay, well, and then we kind of think that we're doing a bad job. But the answer could just be, okay, well, that could be your fault.

Like, why does that have to... I've given a good argument. I think this is where the evidence leads in this direction. If you're not convinced, that could be your fault. Another thing I was thinking as you were speaking was here's something I've learned to do over the course of many kind of debates and arguments, and it's really helped out, is when somebody is arguing against something that I believe, I instinctively now, because I've done apologetics for a while, ask myself, what is the most that this proves? And can I live with that? Well, not only can I live with that, but if they were right, could this other thing still be true? A classic example of this is I was giving a talk on Christianity at some university campus and somebody came up and said, I don't know how you can believe in God. I'm an atheist. I said, why are you an atheist? And he said, look at all the terrible things that is

commanded in the Bible. And you can instinctively go, okay, what's the most this proves? The most this proves is that the Bible is errant or fictitious. That's the most it proves. But he began by saying he does not believe in God because of this. And I just kind of instinctively and quickly realized this doesn't follow. Like dismissing God's existence because of one religion is like dismissing extraterrestrial life because of one claimant's, you know, he said he gets abducted or something. And you're like, yeah, I see a lot of contradictions here. Okay. The most that proves is this person's wrong or is delusional, but it doesn't prove that

aliens don't exist. Does that make sense? Like asking yourself, what's the most this proves? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, for sure. And I think it's interesting because the person is accepting the scripture as an authoritative text of Christianity in arguing against the existence of the God of Christianity. So there's, you know, it's just like, all right, either one or the other.

Either you dismiss the Scriptures, right, and then you have to give independent reasons for which you do not believe in God, or you accept the Scriptures. But what's your reason for accepting the Scriptures? Is that suppositionally based on the fact that Christians accept it? But if you do so suppositionally by virtue of the fact that Christians accept it, then you also do so with the intent to read it as Christians do. Are you willing to talk about how Christians read it? And if so, that's a long conversation. That's like a four-beer conversation.

This is just a post-lecture conversation. Now, in your text message in regard to this point of cultivating an apologetic habit of mind, you said that Thomas—you referenced Thomas solving the manichees. You said argues even with sympathetic audiences. What does that mean? Yeah, so like the story is told of St. Thomas Aquinas at dinner with King Louis. Oh, yes. Right, and he's abstracted, and then he slams his big fist on the table

and says that solves the manichees. So he was there in the high court, presumably surrounded by vicomtes and, you know, whatever, duchess and this, that, and the other thing. I don't know all the names of these things. But he is still kind of holding converse with God. He's still teasing out his arguments because he wants to see them through to their terminus. And, you know, for us, I mean, you think about this as just kind of like a spiritual discipline. This is what we mean by meditation. This is what we mean by prayer. Sometimes people think like prayer, I need to evacuate my mind, play Enya, and then hope for the best. It's like, no, like you can pray by thinking through these types of things, you know, like read a little bit of the scriptures and then think about the implications of them, or like read

a little bit of theology, you know, Frank Sheed's Theology for Beginners, and then think about it. You know, there's really beautiful nuggets there that merit your consideration, and then this can be kind of passed to the rest of one's life recollectively. Okay, awesome. And then the final one, which, you know, again, sounds so—we've heard it so often that we might be deaf to it at this point, but we should love the person we're arguing with. And the line that came to my mind from Pope Paul VI was, modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers. And if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses. What say you regarding that? Yeah, I have many thoughts. I read this book about St. Thomas Aquinas called

The Quiet Light by Louis Duval, which I recommended to you at one point. Yeah, I love that. You keep bringing that up. It must have had a real impact on you. That's really cool. It did. It's just super charming. People should check that out. Delightful. But in that, it describes an argument that St. Thomas had. So there was, in 1256, there's a man in Paris named William of Saint-Amour who said that these new mendicant orders were a sign of the end times, and that they were like the devil's henchmen, and basically because they were monks who had left their monasteries or had made their monasteries too close to the city center and were kind of undermining the rights of the secular clergy, it seemed to him. A lot of it was because some of these friars were getting university chairs at the University of Paris. And so St. Thomas, St. Albert the Great, and St. Bonaventure

went to defend the mendicant orders before the Holy Father in Rome in like 1256, I want to say. And I mean, the account is fictionalized, but the way that Louis de Waal describes it is really beautiful. He talks about, you know, Thomas and Albert being the one-two punch and then St. Bonaventure coming up to kind of, you know, hit power. And he says, like, St. Thomas reduced his arguments to mere rubble. You know, St. Albert the Great basically, like, burned them to a remnant of ash. And then St. Bonaventure sang away the remains. burned them to a remnant of ash, and then St. Bonaventure sang away the remains. But like, St. Thomas Aquinas was willing to undertake the debates of his contemporary age. We don't often think about him as writing polemical treatises, but he wrote quite a few of them. And the reason,

I think, that he was able to do so, and the reason for which he was appealed to in doing so, was because of his great sanctity. So you put those texts alongside his Eucharistic hymns, and you realize, like, this is the same man. This is the same man, and he can be trusted to argue because he can be trusted with other hearts, you know, like, because he genuinely loves. There's another scene recounted in that book where St. Thomas is seated reading in his family's home. His sister comes up and asks him, like, how do you become a saint? And he says, desire it. And Thomas is a man of great desire, and his desire for the Lord spills out into a desire for souls. And so in all of his argumentation, you see it animated by this consideration, by this concern that others know God. Because, you know, sometimes we forget St. Thomas was a priest, he was a Dominican friar,

his life was given to the contemplation of the Most High and to the salvation of souls through this preaching act. So, yeah, the reason that he's good at arguing is because he knows and loves. One of the things that Jason Everett has said, because Jason Everett does a lot of chastity work, and I've heard him be asked the question, you know, what do I do with my daughter? What do I do with my son? And they're living this lifestyle that's not chaste. And I think his response to them is something we should keep in mind as well. He says, take a holistic interest in the person's life. Like nobody likes to feel like they're a problem to be fixed.

And that's exactly what you feel when a Mormon or a Jehovah's Witness knocks on your door and they show up. Like, you know, like, and they might have the best intentions. They might be a super great person. But, like, they're there because you're not the way you should be, you know. And whenever you kind of enter a relationship like that or you feel like this is what it's about, like, I need to believe what you believe or I'm wrong, it's really, really, really, really difficult to be open to changing. So I think that's really good too. Many people might be watching and they have a loved one or a family member who is away from the faith. And I think that's a really good advice. Take a holistic interest in your daughter's life, in your son's life, in your brother's life,

in your wife's life, whoever. What do they love? What Netflix shows are they watching? What are they doing next month? What are they afraid of? What are they looking forward to? You know, like, if we don't know the answer to these questions, we're probably not being a good witness, you know? We're not interested in them. I think that's just a really great point. Yeah, I think it's Joseph Pieper. One of my friends points this out with some frequency. Joseph Pieper has this passage, I think it's in Faith, Hope, and Love, where he's talking about charity. And he says, you know, oftentimes we think about charity as this division between—or excuse me, we think about love as divided between egoism and altruism. We have it in our minds that we ought to be altruistic, and so we deny our own desires, and we preference the desires of others, or we preference the good of others.

But he says, think about how that plays out practically. Like, if you don't actually want to spend time with this person, and you are spending time with them because you feel it your altruistic duty to do so, take that from the opposite vantage. Do you want to be, like, visited as a charity case, or do you want the other to delight in you? And I think this just kind of issues pretty seamlessly from what you just described with taking a holistic interest in the person. We don't want to make the other the quarry or the object of our apologetic desire. We don't want to just basically objectivize them. Is that a word? Objectify them? Yeah, that's the word. Objectify them as if they were just a person to be converted. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We want to love them, genuinely love them, but that means discovering them as someone delightful. Like you said, taking a holistic interest, like what Netflix are they watching? What are they interested in? Because if we are thrown in together and if we are to share a common life, it will only be something that is for them transformative and delightful if we really care, you know, because they can smell a rat. And, you know, if we're just there to put another notch on our apologetic belt, then we would do otherwise. Yeah, this is really helpful, I think.

So those are seven things and we got through them in just in an hour. So I hope that's really helpful to people. And, yeah, as you were talking, Father, you say things so succinctly. I feel like I'm grasping for stuff for like five minutes. You're like, yeah, boom. And I'm like, okay, yeah, that's it. It's almost like you should have your own podcast. Tell us about that.

Let's see. The Dominican Friars of my province, the province of St. Joseph, we have a podcast called Godsplaining. G-O-D-S-P-L-A-I-N-I-N-G. Love the name. Love the name. Yeah, so instead of being mansplained, you can be godsplained, not because you have men telling you about God, because God makes himself known in the scriptures and the tradition.

So it's just a podcast about all things Catholic, a kind of Catholic miscellany. So, yeah, you can hear about faith. You can hear about theology, philosophy, arts, literature, culture. We just put up a couple episodes about Flannery O'Connor, Dostoevsky. The one coming out this week is about the conversation about race, actually, and how to navigate it. So, yeah, a variety of options. Do check it out. Get ready to blow up.

It's like a quagmire. You can't walk into that and expect to come out. Not possible. Oh, that's awesome. Dostoevsky, cool. Yeah, I was thinking about this, you know, like just because somebody wants to take an interest in the more classical works of art, whether that be music or literature, it doesn't mean they will naturally gravitate to every author or composer. And just because you don't, that isn't a sign of not being cultivated. It doesn't mean they will naturally gravitate to every author or composer. And just because you don't, that isn't a sign of not being cultivated.

You know, I think that's something people don't really realize is they try to read the classics. Just like you were saying, I don't know how on earth you cannot love Dostoevsky. Yeah, maybe it's because I'm a bad human being or maybe it's because we have different temperaments. It's hard to say. It probably is. I'm super melancholic and he just and everything he says, I'm just like, yeah, he's been reading my thoughts. I heard somebody say, I don't know if this is true, that Dostoevsky is more of a psychologist,

that Tolstoy is more of a sociologist. I'm not even sure what that means. But you like Tolstoy more, apparently. I do. I've just read the one book. I've just read War and Peace. I mean, it's a big book. It's impressive. I do. I've just read the one book. I've just read War and Peace. I mean, it's a big book. It's impressive.

I do love it. I just read The Death of Ivan Ilyich to my family. Have you read that? Small, small novella. And gosh, it is so powerful. It's amazing. And I actually just started reading Man Alive by Chesterton. Hey, I love that book.

I don't really read Chesterton. I don't know why, but as I'm reading him, I'm like, he is one of the greats. He really, really is. It's farcical. It's kind of like themes on stilts, but it is quite delightful. Themes on stilts. I love it. Alright, Father. And then also, just finally,

the Thomistic Institute looks like it's doing great. I've been noticing your thumbnails have been going from good to great. Good for y'all. Let me look y'all up while you're talking about it. Tell the people about it. Yeah, someone else is making our thumbnails apart from me, so that makes them a lot better. They look great. Yeah, so Aquinas 101 is still plugging along, and we're most of the way through the course, but still doing the walkthrough of the Summa Theologiae, so you can check those out on YouTube or sign up at Aquinas101.com. We have quarantine lectures that continue through the end of July, and then we'll kind of rejigger once our own academic year here gets booted up. So those are just, you know, kind of full-length

lectures on a variety of themes, sometimes, you know, quarantine-specific, sometimes more broadly theological. And then we have a conference—well, we have an intellectual retreat this summer. It's like one of our first in-person events in a long time, so we're jazzed out of our minds. But August 7th through 10th, it's called Virtuous Autonomy, Freedom and Dependence in a Technological Age. And we're going to have two professors lecturing on philosophical topics. So Professor Jim Madden from Benedictine College in Atchison and then Professor John O'Callaghan from University of Notre Dame in South Bend. And that's going to be in Estes Park, Colorado. And we have scholarships available for graduate students,

some undergraduate students, and other interested young adults. Where would they go to see if they want to go book tickets or something? Yeah, so that's ThomisticInstitute.org or just Google Colorado Intellectual Retreat Thomistic Institute. Sounds great. Father, thank you for being on Pints with Aquinas. Hey, thanks so much for having me. Okay, thank you so much for being here.

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