LIVESTREAM - Aquinas 101 Live: How to Think Like St. Thomas - Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

Summa Theologiae, Part Ia, Question 1, Article 6: Whether this doctrine is the same as wisdom?

https://aquinas101.thomisticinstitute.org/st-ia-q-1#FPQ1A6THEP1

The handout for this lecture can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/yy6yg87t

Fr. Pine will cover the themes of these Aquinas 101 videos: 

Thomas Aquinas: Saint and Scholar 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_FuJXZOy90&list=PL_kd4Kgq4tP8e1BBGrC-eFlp86fqyvGex&index=3

What Did St. Thomas Write? 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12gkjiLBMdg&list=PL_kd4Kgq4tP8e1BBGrC-eFlp86fqyvGex&index=5

Why is the Summa Important? 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLY8q61ZdXI&list=PL_kd4Kgq4tP8e1BBGrC-eFlp86fqyvGex&index=7

How Do You Read an Article of the Summa?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSXIUbiweLo&list=PL_kd4Kgq4tP8e1BBGrC-eFlp86fqyvGex&index=8


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Welcome to our first installment of Aquinas 101 Live.

Here, we're going to attempt to go deeper as a way by which to sound the depths of the Aquinas 101 course, which has to treat a lot of topics in cursory fashion, so that way you aren't overburdened with all kinds of viewing content.

So here, this is the going deeper component of Aquinas 101.

Aquinas 101 is just a thorough introduction to the Catholic intellectual tradition with St.

Thomas Aquinas' thought is a monolith that is so weighty that the other elements of the tradition can be discarded or perhaps just simply disregarded, but rather because St.

Thomas is an excellent pedagogue, and so he is able to introduce us to lead us into the heart of the Christian tradition as a reader and interpreter of Scripture, as a receiver of the Church's tradition, as 1 who read well the Fathers of the Church, contemporary theologians, and who prepares us for our contemporary conversation.

So the Aquinas 101 course is broken into 6 shorter courses or segments.

And for this particular presentation, there are 4 videos which are especially pertinent, kind of good background information.

So if you haven't watched them yet, I'd encourage you to either pause the video and go and watch them, or to take the opportunity later to watch those videos.

So those are Thomas Aquinas, Satan's Scholar, which is just a kind of biographical introduction to St.

It's helpful to fall in love with a saint in order to have greater sympathy for the scholar because sometimes it can be intimidating to start with him.

So when you know the great profundity of his love for the Lord, it commends him to your affection.

Thomas write, which is a kind of bibliography of his different works.

Then why is the Summa important, which gives us a sense of why everyone is constantly quoting from the Summa Theologiae, and how is it structured so that way I can better approach this work, which seems to span some 3, 000, 4, 000, 5, 000 pages.

And then the last of those 4 videos, which are pertinent for this presentation, is entitled, How Do You Read an Article of the Summa?

That's a way for you to just feel more confident as you approach St.

So that's the first course, is Why Aquinas, and then next there's a course on An Introduction to Thomistic Philosophy, and then there are 4 more courses which basically follow the layout of the Summa Theologiae.

So the first is entitled God and His Creation, The second is entitled Principles of the Moral Life.

The third is entitled Theological and Cardinal Virtues.

And the fourth is entitled Christ and the Sacraments.

And those basically track with the first part of the Summa, the first part of the second part, the second part of the second part, and the third part of the Summa.

So here, we're going to address the first course, Why Aquinas?

And we will have more Aquinas 101 live sessions.

You can find them in rapid succession coming to you, which we'll track with the philosophy course, and then we'll dive into the theological content, making use of the different Dominicans that we have here at the House of Studies who have contributed to the project to this point.

So, the links for those videos that I described, Thomas Aquinas, Satan Scholar, What Did St.

Thomas Write?, Why is the Summa Important?, and how do you read an article of the Summa?

Those links can be found in the description of the YouTube video, and there's also a link there for a text that we're going to cover at the end of the initial lecture session before we pass on to question and answers.

So I thought, as a way to focus our study here and our considerations, as a way to unpack the content of those 4 videos and expand or expound upon it, we could kind of focus in on this theme of study and holiness.

So In the time that we have together, let's consider why Aquinas, but specifically with an eye towards his sanctity, his manner of approaching holy things and holy writ, and specifically about how he can help us to become holier and wiser.

Let's begin with a text, a quote from St.

Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, also known as Edith Stein.

Thomas as a kind of commendation of his excellence.

Thomas' system took shape in this work of assembling, sifting, ordering.

The body of knowledge of his time became organized in his mind.

He wrote no philosophical system, nor has the system behind his works been written so far.

Yet anyone who studies his works will find clear, definite answers, perhaps to more questions than he himself could ask.

And what is more, the organon, or the instrument, that the master bore within himself and that enabled him to settle a host of issues with a firm, serene respondio decendum, which just means I respond, or I responded to said that, leaves its mark on his disciple and gives him the ability to answer questions in Thomas' spirit that Thomas never asked and possibly at the time could not have been asked at all.

This may well also be the reason why folks today are going back to his writings.

Ours is a time that is no longer content with methodical deliberations.

People have nothing to hold on to and are looking for purchase.

They want a truth to cling to, a meaning for their lives.

Of course, there is a world of difference between Thomas's philosophy and what passes for philosophy for life today.

In his philosophy, we will look in vain for flights of emotion.

All we will find is truth, soberly grasped in abstract concepts.

On the surface, much of it looks like theoretical hair splitting that we cannot do anything with.

And even after serious study, it is not easy to put our finger on practical returns.

But a person who has lived for some time with the mind of St.

Thomas, lucid, keen, calm, cautious, and dwelt in his world, will come to feel more and more that he is making right choices with ease and confidence on difficult theoretical issues or in practical situations where before he would have been helpless.

And if later he thinks back, even surprising himself on how he managed it, he will realize that a bit of St.

Thomas' hair-splitting laid the groundwork.

At the time that Thomas was working on this or that problem, he naturally had no idea what it could someday be good for, nor was he concerned about it.

He was but following out the law of truth.

Truth bears fruit of itself." So that's a long text there, but it merits consideration because I think it helps us to appreciate why Aquinas, which is 1 of our central questions here.

When you approach it kind of at face value, you may sometimes be discouraged or even dissuaded from the pursuit by the fact that here is vocabulary and grammar, which may initially seem a bit forbidding.

And yet, you come to discover that in conversations with folks who know St.

Thomas well, that oftentimes they have principles that they can deploy at the ready, and those principles often illumine a situation which would otherwise be obscure.

It's kind of like something that you can't quite put your finger on, but Edith Stein has grasped and communicated.

It's like your experience of somebody who prays.

You don't know exactly why, but you find it, I don't know, more serene, more placid, more delightful to be in their company.

Whereas for those who don't, you may find it a bit more frenzied or frantic.

There's a similar effect with those who study St.

There's a kind of serenity, there's a kind of peace of mind which is able to penetrate to the depths of deep theological obscurities or aporia and to unravel, to unbind, to uncover what is true.

So I'd like to consider this then from the perspective of holiness of mind.

Thomas, which is to say the study of God with the help of St.

Thomas, is a contemplative endeavor which is part of our pursuit of God.

So I think it's here helpful to think about this as more closely akin to prayer than you would often hear described in academic circles.

What we are talking about is the salvation of the human person who goes to God by mind and heart, which illumination of mind through the principles of faith and the practice of theological science is truly sanctifying.

It doesn't make you erudite and pedantic.

Because when you think well, you are able to love better.

So I think it is not helpful to divide one's intellectual life from one's spiritual life.

Do I think that it's fruitful to bring difficult texts of analytic philosophy with you into the chapel and call it your holy hour?

I don't want to draw that distinction too hard and fast, but what I want to say, like effectively, is that we need not or we ought not divide our intellectual lives from our spiritual lives, because I think that both are dimensions, kind of, compensating dimensions of a contemplative life.

So I think we have a tendency to compartmentalize.

We're able to kind of manage our expectations of the day or to placate the demands of others or to feel yet somehow competent if we are able to kind of parcel off divisions of time, parcel off divisions of tasks.

So here is where I do the prayer thing, here is where I do the work thing, here is where I do the family thing, here is where I do the friendship thing.

But I think what we want, ultimately what we are striving for, is a greater integrity of life.

And this is 1 component of that process, because our lives are more broadly given unto God.

It's not just that we give them unto God in the chapel, and then we work on fumes throughout the rest of the day.

Rather, all of our life is to be dedicated to Him, such that we love Him with our whole heart, whole mind, whole strength, whole soul, actually and habitually, throughout the course of the day, whether rising or asleep.

So let's resist this notion that real life is in church, or real life is being lived by professed religious and that everything else is just distraction or ambition or something of a lower order.

What we are professing effectively is that all of it can be given to God and that God gives himself back to the human person who is capacious for the reception thereof." I read this passage recently from Saint Therese, and I think it's helpful to kind of focus our understanding.

She's talking about her experience of prayer, and I guess a lot of people, when they think about Saint Therese, they would imagine her having these kind of mystical transports, hearing the voice of God being drawn out ecstatically towards the object of her contemplation.

But apparently her experience was far more mundane, far more simple.

She slept a lot and she was distracted quite a bit.

She writes, She writes, I have never heard him speak, but I feel that he is in me that at every moment.

He is guiding me Inspiring me with what I should say or do just when I need it I discover lights that I had not seen before It is not usually during my prayer that they are most abundant, but rather amidst my daily occupations.

So all of it is the Lord's, and all of it can be returned to the Lord's.

And 1 of those daily occupations, and I would submit to you a very significant, a very important 1 of those daily occupations is study.

So this is kind of part of the broader movement of what it means to be made to the image of God and what it means to kind of be yet more perfectly conformed to the image of God.

So again we said we have intellects, right, and we have wills, which spiritual powers can have a truly spiritual object, so they can be trained on God.

So we are made to the image of God in as much as we have this intellectual nature, but also beyond that we can have God as the object of our knowing and of our loving.

So not only are we capacious thereof, but we can actualize that capacity.

Thomas adds, we can have God's own knowledge of himself and God's own love of himself as the actualization of those powers.

It means to say that we can know God with God's own knowledge and that we can love God with God's own love.

And truth be told, his knowledge and his love are the only knowledge and love that are proportionate to the object.

So were it not for that, we would kind of founder in our inability.

But God is so generous as to give himself to us by knowledge and by love.

And our contemplative life with dimensions of both prayer and study and a more broadly integral human life is all part of this broad sweep whereby we return to the God who hath fashioned us." So here, a helpful kind of further distinction, I think it's important, or it bears repeating time and time again, that it doesn't matter whether or not you are smart.

It does not matter whether or not you are smart.

What matters is that you grow in the habit of study.

I read an article, it's just kind of like a little opinion piece in a newspaper a few years back and I think I think the title was something like why it pays to fail at French and the gentleman was describing that he You know he started noticed that his memory was slipping and so he went to his primary care physician He got a recommendation You know kind of for like a memory doctor.

And then he did these tests and he came to discover that his numbers were pretty grave.

That he was kind of slipping towards dementia or Alzheimer's at a very young age.

So he was deeply saddened by this because he could feel his grasp on life kind of slipping through his fingers.

And so he says, you know, with my remaining memory, if I'm going to stockpile things to which I may someday return, what do I want to do?

And he said to himself, I've always wanted, you know, to study French, and I've always wanted to be able to visit a French-speaking country and to enjoy the culture, the food, the people, the sights, etc.

So he dedicated himself over the course of the next many months to exercises, listening exercises and writing exercises and you know he did the State Department program and he did the Pindler method and he did fluids and he did all These different things and he was he was gaining confidence and feeling like he had he had made something of himself And so then he went to France And he began his kind of pilgrimage and he stayed with a host family that host family had like a two-year-old kid, and he came to discover rather quickly at breakfast that the two-year-old spoke far better French than he.

And this for him was very disappointing, dispiriting, and he kind of muddled his way through the rest of his vacation, but never really recovered from that blow.

But when he returned, he had a regular checkup with his memory doctor, and he came to discover that all of his numbers had increased markedly.

So thus the title of the article, which I paraphrased as why it pays to stink at French, or why it pays to fail at French.

So he endeavored this thing, he tried, and by some standards he failed, he was disappointed and kind of came back to the United States with his tail between his legs.

But as a result of him dedicating himself to this pursuit, which was mind expanding, he actually grew in his capacity.

So it was a it was an endeavor not so much to be measured by the results that he had initially anticipated, but rather what came in its wake.

And I think the habit of study is just like this.

You may be infinitely frustrated that all of the knowable things out there seem to exceed your grasp and that for every 1 thing that you know you discover 10 that you don't.

It can be extremely dispiriting to discover how much smarter other people are than you and the comparison game, you know, it's just it's awful, right?

But by devoting ourselves to study, right, by growing in this habit of study We come to discover that our interior life our kind of human culture expands to embrace a wider reality So we go from inhabiting a kind of small, consistent circle to a bigger circle.

It's not that we need to be convinced out of our small logic.

We need to be invited into a greater world, and that's effectively what study does.

I mean, I suppose we can apply the line from the Gospel that you have to lose your life to save it.

And sometimes losing your life takes the shape of nailing yourself to the wood of the desk.

So, the habit, the discipline, is 1 of inquiry, and it grows you in virtue.

So let's then consider what virtue, specifically, it grows you in.

We can talk about different intellectual virtues.

There are some of the practical intellect, like prudence and art, and then there are some of the speculative intellect.

We talk here about faith, but I want to concern ourselves with wisdom, specifically.

There are different ways in which wisdom are described in the tradition.

So first we can talk about a kind of conceptual sense of wisdom.

And this you would find in Plato and in Aristotle in the Greek tradition.

There's the sense that the wise person sees the principles in the conclusions, and sees the conclusions in the principles.

So, with respect to the habit of knowledge, or science, as it is often called, what we have to do is kind of tease out conclusions from premises.

So I say, all men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal.

But I only arrive at that by kind of composing and dividing Whereas with wisdom I just see so the thing is transparent to my gaze, and I see specifically how it hinges.

So we can talk about this kind of wisdom, even a kind of pagan understanding, as a participation in the mind of God, or a kind of participation in providence.

So it pertains to the wise man, says Aristotle, to order.

But we could also say that it pertains to the wise man to call each thing by its right name.

The wise man has the words with which to describe, the grammar with which to compose, and the rhetoric with which to communicate.

He is 1 who grasps reality and see how reality itself hinges.

So when we talk about providence, we talk about God as a kind of like artisan or like a master foreman who commands these different, you know, subcontractors who have their particular tasks with their particular ends all ordered towards some ultimate end, and he has the knowledge, and efficaciously he wills these things to transpire as the universal cause thereof.

So God sees how they are all integrated and orchestrated, and he makes them such that if it depart from him in 1 direction or dimension, it returns to him in another.

So God's plans are not to be defeated, and they are able to draw out the native resources of all of these secondary causes or instrumental causes or limited contingent beings, and to draw them forth unto the praise of his glory.

So the wise person is able to kind of see that, or to participate in that vision of God the divine artisan, such that his mind is gradually assimilated more and more to the mind of God.

Second sense of wisdom, I'm going to call the Christological sense of wisdom.

So here, we're thinking about the identification of Christ in the Gospels as the Word made flesh, right?

As the Logos, as He is spoken of in John chapter 1, as the very reason of the Father, who proceeds forth from the Father personally, from all eternity, who is a kind of God's thinking of himself which is so potent and so perfectly encapsulates the deity as to be spoken and thereby to break forth in love in the procession of the Holy Spirit.

So what we're talking about with this sense of wisdom is a kind of personalistic sense of wisdom.

Okay, it's a wisdom that is Christ in person, but that can be communicated to us by conformity to Christ, such that it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

This is the wisdom of the cross, whereby we set aside the wisdom of this world, weary and sick as it is, and assume the very mind of Christ, whereby it is transformed, whereby we think anew, whereby we actually think with Christ's own thoughts.

So here, the sense of wisdom that we were talking about is a far more rich but complementary sense of wisdom.

It doesn't leave the conceptual sense of wisdom behind, but rather draws it up and perfects it yet further.

Another sense of wisdom, a third and final sense of wisdom, by the way, these names conceptual, Christological, and mystical are mine.

I've made them up, so whether or not they bear repeating, that is for you to determine." So a mystical sense of wisdom.

Here we're talking about not just an intellectual appreciation, but a kind of affective appreciation with an A.

Okay, and the teaching about this sense of wisdom is derived often from St.

Thomas' description of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

So you recall, the gifts of the Holy Spirit are listed in Isaiah 11, verses 2 and 3.

Thomas Aquinas talks about the virtues, he associates each of the virtues with a different gift of the Holy Spirit.

So with faith, he associates knowledge and understanding.

With hope, he associates the fear of the Lord.

And with temperance, he associates the fear of the Lord.

So there are 2 for faith and then fear of the Lord is used in 2 different senses for hope and for temperance.

But his association of charity with wisdom is strange because charity is a virtue of the will and wisdom is typically associated with the mind.

But when he talks about wisdom as a gift of the Holy Spirit perfecting the movement of charity, he talks about it as a kind of supernatural sensitivity to God's heart, as it were.

So he talks sometimes about conaturality, and we'll get to that here shortly as we begin reading the article under consideration for this time Right so conaturality It's a kind of knowledge by inclination which is to say that loving is a kind of knowing.

When you love something, you have a kind of sympathy with it, and it permits that thing to kind of blossom, bloom, or unfold before you such that you see it in its innermost depths.

No longer is the thing afraid or in fear of being vulnerable before your gaze, but rather it is broken open unto your consideration by virtue of the fact that you are inclined to it, that you love it, that you have a kind of supernatural sensitivity to the thing.

We can talk about it as a kind of like affective tether to divine wisdom.

Thomas will quote Pseudodynesius, who says that, So here we have our kind of basic senses of wisdom.

A brief then hinge point before we begin our reading of the article and then open up for some time for questions.

Thomas functioned in the university and then how he conducted himself in his publications.

Thomas was born in 1225 and he began his initial studies in like 1245 and then he studied this big textbook of theology, the sentences of Peter Lombard for a time, he studied scripture for a time, and in 1256, he was made a Master of Theology, and he began his teaching career at the University of Paris.

And he taught at a variety of places, right, so in Orvieto, in the Papal Curia, He taught in Naples at the university there.

He taught in Rome at the Studium of the Friars Preachers.

He went back to Paris for a time, went back to Naples for a time, so he was all over the place.

But always, he was doing effectively the same things.

There were 3 responsibilities of the university master.

So legere, what are the texts that 1 reads?

The university master was always engaged in a process of reading and commenting on Scripture, and his courses, which he would have had with the students of the university or the students of the order Were always dedicated to this pursuit So st.

He has commentaries in the Gospel of Matthew the Gospel of John He composed the Katina Aurea, which is a kind of golden chain of different quotations from the fathers of the church.

He commented a lot of Old Testament texts, and he would have taught them to his students.

Thomas engaged in a lot of disputed questions on topics big and small.

Some of the most famous include the De Veritate on truth, the De Mollo on evil.

He did a number of disputed questions on the virtues, specifically on charity.

He did disputed questions on separate substances.

He did disputed questions on the unity of the incarnate Lord, a bunch of different things.

So he would have been engaging in disputes in his classroom setting or engaging in broader disputes in the university setting, sometimes in public.

Those were called quod libitals, which means whatsoever, when different people could have come and asked their questions.

And so his students would have recorded these lectures, he would have edited them, and then they would have been published in a way that was kind of far more verbose or prolix than the Summa as we are kind of well disposed to read.

Third and final thing is sermons he preached.

Thomas is a friar of the order of preachers and he would have preached in the university setting and then in a popular setting.

Thomas's writings overwhelming, a good place to start are with his popular sermons.

So he has a sermon on the creed, which is very beautiful and approachable, sermon on the Our Father, sermon on the Hail Mary, a variety of others.

But I would recommend that you start with those.

And then in addition to these things, as a kind of side hustle, he wrote commentaries on other texts, so a lot of texts from Aristotle, and then other texts from the tradition.

He wrote these 3 big theology textbooks, so his commentary on the sentences of Peter Lombard, the Summa Contra Gentiles, and then the Summa Theologiae, and then he wrote some shorter handbooks of theology.

And then he also wrote polemical treatises.

So like for instance when he lived, the fate of the friar's preachers was uncertain, because a lot of people didn't think that, they thought that it was a novelty and as a result of which it should be spurned or suppressed even.

So He wrote a number of treatises to defend the religious life as he had come to live it.

So ultimately, all of this work is in service of the Lord.

And though some of his writings may be occasional, you come to discover that a lot of them have profound application in the present context.

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Aquinas 101 Live: How to Think Like St. Thomas w/ Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.