1 hours 4 minutes 14 seconds
🇬🇧 English
Speaker 1
00:00
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.
Speaker 1
00:26
Thomas Aquinas as our guide. This isn't because we think that 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.
Speaker 1
01:01
So the Aquinas 101 course is broken into 6 shorter courses or segments. The first is entitled Why Aquinas? And that has 6 videos. And for this particular presentation, there are 4 videos which are especially pertinent, kind of good background information.
Speaker 1
01:18
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. Thomas. 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.
Speaker 1
01:39
So when you know the great profundity of his love for the Lord, it commends him to your affection. The next is what did St. 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.
Speaker 1
02:03
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? And that's kind of nuts and boltsy. That's a way for you to just feel more confident as you approach St. Thomas himself.
Speaker 1
02:16
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.
Speaker 1
02:38
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.
Speaker 1
03:09
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.
Speaker 1
03:44
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. She writes this about St.
Speaker 1
04:07
Thomas as a kind of commendation of his excellence. What has been called St. Thomas' system took shape in this work of assembling, sifting, ordering. The body of knowledge of his time became organized in his mind.
Speaker 1
04:20
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.
Speaker 1
05:04
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. They want a philosophy for life.
Speaker 1
05:18
And this they find in Thomas. 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.
Speaker 1
05:36
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.
Speaker 1
06:08
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.
Speaker 1
06:29
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.
Speaker 1
07:05
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.
Speaker 1
07:26
There's a similar effect with those who study St. Thomas. 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.
Speaker 1
07:49
The study of St. 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.
Speaker 1
08:07
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. It may do that, but that's accidental. It makes you good.
Speaker 1
08:25
It makes you holy. Because when you think well, you are able to love better. That's the hope. So I think it is not helpful to divide one's intellectual life from one's spiritual life.
Speaker 1
08:38
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? Maybe not, but I don't know. 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.
Speaker 1
09:05
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.
Speaker 1
09:38
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.
Speaker 1
10:25
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.
Speaker 1
10:51
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.
Speaker 1
11:30
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. Furthermore though, St.
Speaker 1
11:54
Thomas adds, we can have God's own knowledge of himself and God's own love of himself as the actualization of those powers. What does that mean? 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.
Speaker 1
12:17
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.
Speaker 1
12:51
That is not of primary importance. 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.
Speaker 1
13:22
That he was kind of slipping towards dementia or Alzheimer's at a very young age. And for him, this was devastating. 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?
Speaker 1
13:43
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. It proved fatal.
Speaker 1
14:32
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.
Speaker 1
15:05
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?
Speaker 1
15:32
There are no winners. 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.
Speaker 1
16:00
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.
Speaker 1
16:20
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. So wisdom.
Speaker 1
16:34
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.
Speaker 1
16:52
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.
Speaker 1
17:28
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.
Speaker 1
17:49
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.
Speaker 1
18:43
So that's our first sense of wisdom. 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.
Speaker 1
19:21
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.
Speaker 1
20:00
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.
Speaker 1
20:25
A-F-F-E-C-T-I-V, affective. 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.
Speaker 1
20:42
And among those gifts, he lists wisdom. When St. 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.
Speaker 1
20:55
With hope, he associates the fear of the Lord. With charity, he associates wisdom. With prudence, he associates counsel. With justice, he associates piety.
Speaker 1
21:02
With fortitude, he associates fortitude. 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.
Speaker 1
21:22
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.
Speaker 1
22:13
We can talk about it as a kind of like affective tether to divine wisdom. So it's in this context that St. 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.
Speaker 1
22:43
How did St. Thomas pursue this wisdom? Here we can think about how St. Thomas functioned in the university and then how he conducted himself in his publications.
Speaker 1
22:51
So St. 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.
Speaker 1
23:20
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. First, legere, to read.
Speaker 1
23:32
Second, disputare, to dispute. And third, predicare, to preach. So legere, what are the texts that 1 reads? Well, Scripture.
Speaker 1
23:41
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. Thomas read the Gospels very closely. 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 all of the epistles of St.
Speaker 1
24:08
Paul. He commented a lot of Old Testament texts, and he would have taught them to his students. Second then, Disputare, to dispute. St.
Speaker 1
24:15
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.
Speaker 1
24:31
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.
Speaker 1
25:02
Third and final thing is sermons he preached. So St. Thomas is a friar of the order of preachers and he would have preached in the university setting and then in a popular setting. If you find a lot of St.
Speaker 1
25:12
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. They're in the public domain.
Speaker 1
25:25
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.
Speaker 1
25:59
So He wrote a number of treatises to defend the religious life as he had come to live it. And then some other short treatises. So ultimately, all of this work is in service of the Lord. It's in service of holy wisdom.
Speaker 1
26:11
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. Even if it seems like hair-splitting, as Edith Stein said, it's a kind of hair-splitting that attunes your mind to the hinges of reality such that when it comes time to understand or to explain how the current consideration is to be articulated, St. Thomas has equipped you. St.
Speaker 1
26:33
Thomas has given you this kind of pedagogical approach. He has disciplined you for this such that you can think through it on your own steam. He is not 1 who merely gives you a fish, a kind of ready-made answer. He's 1 who teaches you to fish, and he does so excellently.
Speaker 1
26:49
So we see this especially in the way that he shapes the Summa Theologiae, and here we're honing in on our text as we have time for questions to follow. In the prologue, St. Thomas writes this, Since a teacher of Catholic truth should instruct not only the advanced but beginners as well, our intention in this work is to convey the content of the Christian religion in a way fit for the training of beginners. We have seen that novices in this study are greatly hindered by the various writings on the subject.
Speaker 1
27:18
They are hindered partly because of the multiplication of useless questions, articles, and arguments in these writings, partly because the order in which essential material is delivered in these writings is determined not by the nature of doctrine itself, but by the books on which the writings are commenting, and partly because frequent repetition has bred boredom and confusion in the minds of hearers." So St. Thomas is thinking especially of the commentary on the sentences that he composed, and he found that, you know, different things were arranged in different ways, and oftentimes the same subject would come up in different places under different aspects and a lot of useless repetition, a lot of questions that he didn't think actually merited too terribly much attention. And so in the Summa, he endeavors to set out theology in such a way that it can be explained well and learned well. Which is to say, he tries to set it out according to the very pattern of God's wisdom, and he tries to set it out such that the beginner, which is the person who would have studied a little bit of the liberal arts, okay, so grammar and dialectic and rhetoric and maybe a little bit beyond that, that they would be well equipped to begin this endeavor.
Speaker 1
28:22
So it's a matter of sweeping aside boring repetitions and kind of tuning up the poor organization and then doing it with a mind to a kind of wisdom-based pedagogy. Oftentimes it's remarked that the Summa has this kind of exitus-reditus schema, which is to say it has a shape of going forth from and returning to God. So it starts in the first part with a consideration of God and then creation, so man, beasts, angels, and divine providence and governance. And then it continues with the return to God in the moral life, right, so through happiness, human action, the passions, habits, virtues, vices, sin, law, grace, and then even more yet in the kind of fine-tuning of the moral life through faith, hope, charity, the theological virtues, prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, the different cardinal virtues, and then ultimately all of which is to be accomplished by Christ, who is the centerpiece, the kind of keystone of the whole work.
Speaker 1
29:16
So he talks about the kind of metaphysics of Christ and then the life of Christ, which is beautiful. And then the sacraments, which are kind of Christ's enduring presence in this world, separated instruments whereby he applies the merits of his suffering and deeds. So we see this going forth and returning to, all of which is attuned to or is sensitive to this movement of wisdom that we have described. So with this in mind, we're just going to read a short text of St.
Speaker 1
29:43
Thomas Aquinas, highlighting along the way not only what he intends to cover, but how to read it in such a way as to grow in wisdom and to benefit from the realities that he describes. So the text here is from the Prima Pars, the first part of the Summa, the first question, which is about theological method before he gets to the second question where he talks about God. And then it's the sixth article. And the title of the article is, Whether This Doctrine is the Same as Wisdom.
Speaker 1
30:11
So we're going to go through each section as we bring the text up on screen, And we're just going to talk about what each section means. So it's interesting that St. Thomas begins with objections to the teaching that he is going to propose. And often it's commented that St.
Speaker 1
30:26
Thomas expresses the objections of those who he will refute better than they themselves were able to enunciate. Because St. Thomas has a very incisive mind, he's able to parse arguments very well, and he also has a great intellectual charity. So if these persons are in search of the truth, then St.
Speaker 1
30:42
Thomas wants to ally himself with their good intention and the insights that they have successfully mined. So he's not about bludgeoning his opponents. He's about drawing forth from them all of the resources upon which he can seize. So you can talk about it as kind of like despoiling the Egyptians, just as the Jews took precious jewels from the Egyptians before they left as they departed for the promised land.
Speaker 1
31:03
So too, St. Thomas takes all of the riches that he can uncover from the pagan tradition, the Jewish tradition, the Islamic tradition, from his contemporaries, the fathers of the church, everything. He's about drawing it forth and making it perfect. And this for him is all part of the process of dialectic.
Speaker 1
31:18
So you have these different opinions, you have these different theological kind of propositions that are on offer, and he is trying to sift and determine so that he can kind of become more and more confident about his conclusions, and ultimately have a better grasp on the principles. So let's start then with this first objection that you see here. It begins with the words, it seems that. The objections, the first objection begins with the words in Latin, vidator quod, it seems that.
Speaker 1
31:46
So you sometimes may hear this referenced in philosophical or theological literature of a Thomistic sort, it seems that, videter quote, it seems that this doctrine is not the same as wisdom. So at first here we're kind of confused because We seem to think from the title of the article that he is going to make the argument that this doctrine, namely sacred theology, sacred doctrine, is the same as wisdom, but here he's saying the opposite. So he's setting up his objections by saying, what if it were the case that it were not the same as wisdom? So Here he goes, "'For no doctrine which borrows its principles is worthy of the name of wisdom, seeing that the wise man directs and is not directed.
Speaker 1
32:23
But this doctrine borrows its principles. Therefore this science is not wisdom.'" So observe here that this is a very kind of straightforward syllogistic logic. So he's saying that wisdom, or all wisdom worthy of the name, should not borrow its principles, okay, but this 1 borrows its principles, so it's not wisdom. Here, he's making an argument about what are called subordinated sciences.
Speaker 1
32:48
So sciences are not all of equal merit or rank in the kind of theological understanding of the medieval tradition. Basically, there are some things which borrow their principles from other things because these higher sciences are more simple, kind of crystalline, clear in their teaching. So you can think here, an example that's often given is that optics borrows its principles from geometry. So you have to have a basic grasp of the principles of geometry if you're going to apply them well in optics, but you don't prove them in optics, okay?
Speaker 1
33:14
You just take them as granted because you can rely upon on geometry. So we would speak about optics as a subordinated science to the science of geometry. So here we're assuming the mind of St. Thomas.
Speaker 1
33:26
For him, the better thing is not necessarily the more complex thing. Recall that God is simple, okay? So the better thing is not necessarily more complex, but it's that which has a greater or more perfect or more crystalline clarity. So let's pass it out to the second objection.
Speaker 1
33:42
Further, he writes, it is a part of wisdom to prove the principles of other sciences. Hence, it is called the chief of sciences, as it is clear in Ethics 6. But this doctrine does not prove the principles of other sciences. Therefore, it is not the same as wisdom.
Speaker 1
33:59
So here again is another criteria of what it means to have an elevated or a dignified science. So typically, the higher science or the higher wisdom, it would be able to prove the principles of other sciences. So maybe for mathematicians out there, you can think about the relationship between calculus, which is a great science indeed, and then real analysis, which effectively proves calculus. Things that you take for granted in calculus, which you learn as formulae, have to be proved in real analysis.
Speaker 1
34:25
Real analysis is more abstract, you know, it kind of departs further from matter, and You can perceive that immediately because there are like next to no numbers in real analysis. There are just symbols So what he is saying is that the higher science should be able to prove the principles of the lower science as a way of Kind of showing it to be more abstract effectively so so further removed from matter so He's saying effectively what we have here is that there is no proof of the principles of lower sciences, so theology or sacred doctrine cannot qualify in the way that wisdom is described in the text that he cites from the Ethics 6. So let's pass now to our third objection. He writes, Further, this doctrine is acquired by study, whereas wisdom is acquired by God's inspiration, so that it is numbered among the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1
35:17
Therefore, this doctrine is not the same as wisdom." Recall from our earlier conversation about the difference between conceptual, Christological, and then what I call mystical wisdom. So here, he's just kind of playing the 2 off. So he's saying that this wisdom that you hear described here, it doesn't accord with what the Christian tradition will sometimes describe as wisdom. You've got the gift of the Holy Spirit 1, and then you've got this high science 1, this conceptual 1.
Speaker 1
35:42
So they can't possibly be the same, as a result of which It is not the case that this doctrine is the same as wisdom. So let's turn now to the text that follows. The next portion is often referred to by its Latin name again, sed contra, which just means on the contrary, which you see there. He says, it is written in Deuteronomy 4, 6, this is your wisdom and understanding in the sight of nations.
Speaker 1
36:05
So this sed contra text is usually taken from an authority. It is not an argument in the strict sense. So he's not trying really to prove anything right here, so we shouldn't scoff if the argumentation of the said contra seems loose or irresponsible. And oftentimes it can actually be even a little bit cheeky.
Speaker 1
36:24
So 1 of the most famous articles in the Summa Theologiae is Prima Pars Question 2, Article 3, where St. Thomas gives his 5 ways. So he asks in that question whether God exists. The said contra that he uses is, on the contrary, it is said in the person of God, I am who am.
Speaker 1
36:39
Exodus 3 14. So you know it's hilarious because he's effectively saying for those who may not be convinced of the existence of God, for my authority I'm going to give you God's authority, because I'm funny. St. Thomas Aquinas, hilarious.
Speaker 1
36:54
Note that. Okay, so after then the said contra, he gives his principal argument, and the principal argument will typically begin with the words, I answer that, which can sometimes be referred to in the Latin as respondeo decendum quode, so you heard that in the quotation that we took from Edith Stein. And this body of the article is often called the corpus, which just means body. So let's read this all the way through together and then we'll come back and then we'll just comment it part by part.
Speaker 1
37:22
This doctrine is wisdom above all human wisdom, not merely in any 1 order but absolutely distinct. For since it is the part of a wise man to arrange and to judge, and since lesser matters should be judged in the light of some higher principle, he is said to be wise in any 1 order who considers the highest principle in that order. Thus, in the order of building, he who plans the form of the house is called wise and architect, in opposition to the inferior labors who trim the wood and make ready the stones. As a wise architect, I have laid the foundation.
Speaker 1
37:57
Again in the order of all human life, the prudent man is called wise inasmuch as he directs his acts to a fitting end. Wisdom is prudence to a man, therefore he who considers absolutely the highest cause of the whole universe, namely God, is most of all called wise. Hence, wisdom is said to be the knowledge of divine things, as Augustine says. But sacred doctrine essentially treats of God viewed as the highest cause.
Speaker 1
38:20
Not only so far as he can be known through creatures just as philosophers knew him, that which is known of God is manifest in them, but also as far as he is known to himself alone and revealed to others. Hence, sacred doctrine is especially called wisdom. So, let's take this briefly. The argumentation here is fairly straightforward, not overly complex.
Speaker 1
38:41
He's just making some simple distinctions, holding you by the hand and walking you through it. So, he begins with this observation that this doctrine is wisdom above all human wisdom. So he's setting up here an analogy of wisdoms. So he's saying there's a kind of philosophical wisdom, which would have been described by Aristotle and Plato.
Speaker 1
38:57
There's a theological wisdom, which we're going to describe here. And then there's this further sense of wisdom, which we described as coming with the gifts of the Holy Spirit and perfecting the movement of charity. So it's not merely in any 1 order, but absolutely. So this is the highest of high wisdoms.
Speaker 1
39:12
So he is effectively making the argument that These are distinct, but they are related, so let's go about sorting out how that is the case. He says, for since it is the part of a wise man to arrange and to judge. Here, he's taking his cue from Metaphysics 1, the extended kind of description there, but it's also a text which he loves very much. He cites at the beginning of the Summa Contra Gentiles, Summa Contra Gentiles book 1, article 1, and he says, since lesser matters should be judged in light of some higher principle, he is said to be wise in any 1 order who considers the highest principle in that order.
Speaker 1
39:47
So here you see he's going for the conceptual definition. He's talking about the sense of principles and conclusions, conclusions and principles, but judging in light of highest principles. So it's a matter of ordering all things well, but ordering them in light of what is highest. So rather than kind of getting consumed with picky-une details and constructing a constellation of associated causes that may not account for what is most architectonic, he says we gotta go there first, to the top.
Speaker 1
40:15
Thus, in the order of building, he who plans the form of the house is called wise and architect, arch from archae, principles, tect, you know, from builder. So he is the most principled builder. In opposition, he says to the inferior laborers who trim the wood and make ready the stones. So God has the whole plan in mind and he is able to direct the course and the wise man is actually appealing to the highest plan.
Speaker 1
40:38
He is appealing to the highest plan as it is knowable. So, in the order of all human life, he continues, the prudent man is called wise inasmuch as he directs his acts to a fitting end. Wisdom is prudence to a man. Therefore he who considers absolutely the highest cause of the whole universe, namely God, is called most wise.
Speaker 1
40:58
Hence wisdom is said to be the knowledge of divine things, as Augustine says." So this is the basic argument. This is effectively what he is going to propose. That in Sacra Doctrina, with theological wisdom, what we are doing is appealing to the highest cause. At this point in the Summa, He's already proved that theology is a science, but he hasn't yet shown that it's a wisdom or a highest science.
Speaker 1
41:21
He's also proved that the principles of the science come from the knowledge of God and of the blessed. In order for us to begin this endeavor, we have to accept revelation. It's something over which we do not have a claim in the strict sense, but rather is given to us by God and the infusion of faith with grace. So we are actually reasoning upon God's own knowledge of himself and the blessed's own knowledge of God, as it is exposited in the Church's tradition through the Sacred Scriptures in Revelation.
Speaker 1
41:49
So we can believe and then argue thereupon by virtue of the fact that God has first revealed. So he continues, Hence wisdom is said to be the knowledge of divine things, as Augustine says. But sacred doctrine essentially treats of God viewed as the highest cause, not only so far as he can be known through creatures, just as philosophers knew him, that which is known of God is manifest in them, but also as far as he is known to himself alone and revealed to others. Hence, sacred doctrine is especially called wisdom.
Speaker 1
42:21
So, with that, we have a basic sense of St. Thomas' argument. And also, when it comes to replying to the objections, I can leave that to you to read them each in turn, because in what we have said to this point, we've actually provided principles for sifting all of the different distinctions. So St.
Speaker 1
42:37
Thomas will say effectively that, sure, it borrows its principles, but it's fine to borrow principles provided that they are from a higher source. And here, the source is indeed higher, the knowledge of God and of the blessed. So it's a kind of like there's an analogy there with faith. So faith affords us a greater certainty than knowledge or science, not because we see as we see in knowledge, but because we believe a testator, we believe a witness, namely God, who is most certain, who is most to be believed.
Speaker 1
43:04
So we can borrow from higher things provided that their grounding is more certain. And you can think also in the second objection how what we're talking about, you know, the interaction between the science is different because the provenance, the origin of the different principles of these sciences is distinct. So ordinarily you can make judgments or borrow from if they are on the same plane, but sacro-doctrina is higher. And then The third reply to the objection, what you have is a distinction made between the kind of connatural inclination-based wisdom that he describes in the treatise on charity, I think it's in question 44, and then the wisdom that we have been at pains to discern here.
Speaker 1
43:43
So with that, I hope that it provides to you some benefit in the reading of St. Thomas, and it breaks you open to a wisdom which itself is saving, provided that it is known and loved, consented to, and cooperated with. So we have some time now for questions, and I would be delighted to entertain them as you see fit to proffer.
Speaker 2
44:00
All right, thank you very much, Father Gregory. Our first question comes from Zoom. Santiago Pinzon will ask a live question.
Speaker 2
44:10
Santiago, please go ahead.
Speaker 3
44:13
Thank you for your talk, Father Pine. I wanted to ask, how does 1 begin to cultivate the virtue of wisdom through study? And for those of us who are complete novices, it can seem as if you're staring at a rock wall and there's a million ways to get to the top and you don't know which stone to grab onto.
Speaker 3
44:29
So in a similar way, it can seem as if there's so much to learn from so many different sources and so little time. So how does 1 begin that journey in a practical sense?
Speaker 1
44:39
Sure. So I meant when I said that prayer and study are not to be compartmentalized or divided from each other. And so I think a similar discipline as informs prayer ought to inform study. So I think the most important thing with prayer is not that it be long, or not that it be mystically infused, but that it be faithful.
Speaker 1
45:00
So the kind of, the rule for a healthy prayer life is that you show up, that's it. So I'd say that it's good, it's to be preferred that you pray each day for 5 minutes, than that you pray maybe an hour each week, just in 1 clip. So I think that fidelity is what gives us the habit, and then gives us the appetite for growing in it. Because you're going to have to apply a modicum of discipline at the outset, but then love for the things will kind of incline you.
Speaker 1
45:26
It gives you an affinity for them, for the mysteries themselves, and then they draw you by their own gravity. So I think with respect to study that you just begin each week and you write a number of minutes in the top right corner of your planer. Maybe you want to study for 15 minutes each day so you got an hour and 45 minutes that you're going to cover and you try to do it 15 minutes at a day but if you only do 10 minutes then you get 20 the next day. But you never erase that number and make it smaller.
Speaker 1
45:50
You can be backlogged for an entire year. But if you endeavor to do something, provided that it actually is proportionate to your capacity, then you should do it. And then when you say study, do something that challenges you. The purpose is not 100% comprehension.
Speaker 1
46:02
If you're doing like listening and speaking exercises for learning a language They say if you get 80% keep going because if you get fixated on 100% comprehension It can often derail you or defeat you So I think set a number of minutes each day that you want to study. Adopt a text that is a challenge to you but that is doable, right, and then go about it pedagogically. So if you want to study St. Thomas, I think that there are places where you can turn which are very fruitful.
Speaker 1
46:27
If you don't know a lot about the shape of his thought, start with 1 of these primers, right. So Francis Selman wrote a book called Aquinas 101, which gives you a nice theological introduction. Ed Faser wrote a book called Aquinas, which is an excellent introduction to his philosophy, but I would say that's a notch above. If you want to get into St.
Speaker 1
46:42
Thomas himself with some notes, you can pick up 1 of Peter Kreef's The Summa of the Summa or The Shorter Summa, just to kind of get a flavor for how the Summa looks. And then you might pick up, you know, like a kind of commentary that's a bit more in depth if you want to be held by the hand and walked through. But effectively, there's no real substitute for reading St. Thomas on his own terms.
Speaker 1
47:00
And when you begin, it will be dull, like I was about to say, dull, but it'll be hard. It'll be difficult. But if you continue with it, you'll find that you comprehend more and more, and then also you get a savor for it. You begin to anticipate his replies, and then you'll be able to supply them in conversation.
Speaker 1
47:17
And once that starts happening, then you're like, wow, something is afoot. It's important that in those conversations you don't prove yourself kind of boorish and be like, well, St. Thomas says, because you don't want to turn people off to the study of St. Thomas.
Speaker 1
47:30
But you can always introduce his wisdom in a way that's sneaky, you know, crafty as serpents, innocent as doves. So I think that's a good way to begin.
Speaker 2
47:39
So we have a question from YouTube. Carlos Neves asks, Should I study Plato and Aristotle before studying Aquinas or can I just jump in?
Speaker 1
47:51
Right, so Should you study Plato and Aristotle before studying St. Thomas or should you just jump in? I think that it's good to do introductory material or propodutics provided that you can count on yourself to persevere.
Speaker 1
48:05
But sometimes we set ourselves up to fail and that we say I have to do ABCDE, and F before I get about to doing the thing that I really want to do. But truth be told, you have the conceptual framework or you have the wherewithal to begin at step G. And so you would benefit from ABCDEF, and certainly you have the entirety of your life to go about it, so there's no rush to get right to the red meat. But if those early steps can prove difficult, I don't see that you need to take them.
Speaker 1
48:37
So for instance, a lot of Plato's dialogues are very difficult to comprehend. There are certain classics, and the Republic is 1 to be read by all, for sure. You have those ones associated with his last days and then the kind of classics, like the Euthyphro or things like that. But you get a good kind of savor for Plato's thought and you'll be able to recognize it in St.
Speaker 1
48:56
Thomas after having read maybe 4 or 5 of his dialogues. And then with respect to Aristotle, I think that Aristotle is more immediately pertinent in as much as St. Thomas uses Aristotle more and more deliberately. So in the Summa, he quotes most from Scripture, but then after Scripture, he quotes most from Aristotle and St.
Speaker 1
49:12
Augustine. So Aristotle is contributing to his thought in very marked fashion. So Aristotle's major works that would be beneficial in this regard would be the Dianima for kind of philosophical anthropology, the Ethics, the Nicomachean Ethics for the study of the basics of moral philosophy. The metaphysics, certainly, which is hugely important and kind of difficult to read.
Speaker 1
49:39
And then you would have another text that I'm failing to remember right now. So, yeah, you have, or the physics, right, for natural philosophy. So oftentimes the order is physics, de anima, metaphysics, ethics. That's the kind of order exposition.
Speaker 1
49:55
And a lot of people will get out ahead and do some of Aristotle's logical works, often referred to as the organon, which would be like the categories, prior and posterior analytics, the topics, the De Interpretazione, and the De Sofistici Salencis. Do you have to read all those things? No, they're not huge though, so you can read them conceivably, and I think it's helpful to read them with someone who can guide you through. That's a long, wending, and wild answer.
Speaker 1
50:22
So I would say go for it if you think that you will persevere through the study and arrive at St. Thomas, but by reading St. Thomas himself it's also a good way to learn Aristotle and Plato. Some Aristotle or Plato scholars would find that claim offensive, so I'm not going to lean too heavily on it.
Speaker 1
50:36
So that's my basic counsel.
Speaker 2
50:39
All right. So you made brief reference to this in a previous answer, But John Paul from YouTube asks, as we learn new truths, how do we continue to grow in humility so that we avoid intellectual pride when speaking and being with others?
Speaker 1
50:56
That's great. So as to speaking on humility, I know not that I am the 1 best suited to do so. Humility, I've often heard, is an old man's virtue.
Speaker 1
51:06
So young men tend to be proud, vainglorious, and ambitious. So 1 thing I would recommend is praying the Litany of Humility, which is a very challenging prayer, but it's very much informed by St. Thomas's theology. So a lot of people find this notion that others become holier than I provided that I become as holy as I should odious, right?
Speaker 1
51:24
But I think it's something that you should stick with and discern the reasons for which you find it odious. So I think praying the Holy Humility is a good spiritual discipline. The other thing is just having conversations with your friends about these themes because you'll discover that if you comport yourself pridefully that it will turn people off. And you'll be able to recognize it immediately in their eyes.
Speaker 1
51:46
Their eyes will dim. Their smile will shift. And they will begin to distance themselves intellectually from you. And to feel that is heartbreaking, harrowing, difficult indeed.
Speaker 1
51:57
So in the context of conversations with friends, You learn how to argue well and charitably. You learn how to convey your points persuasively, but to do so without violence or coercion. But ultimately, you learn to be a service of communion, to be at service to communion, and to be of service to the truth. A.G.
Speaker 1
52:15
Sirciange says that truth serves only her slaves. So what we espouse is a kind of Servitude or bondage to the truth which frees ultimately, right, but it's not something over which we can Lord ourselves Because there is no real sovereignty or dominion to be spoken of in this regard It's a matter of loving the Lord well and responding to his instigation And if you continue to study you will constantly be rebuked and chastened By yeah, the way that your pride proves a stumbling block in a pitfall Because it will it will undoubtedly especially for a spirited individual who fancies themself well suited to the intellectual life. But just because you can stumble in pride, in vainglory, in ambition, does not mean that you should not endeavor. Because magnanimity is in virtue, we're made to endeavor great things worthy of great honors precisely because they are great and because we are made to be great in dialogue with them.
Speaker 1
53:07
So the fact that we can go wrong, while terrible, need not paralyze us. Our intentions will be purified to the extent that we continue to submit them to God's healing and elevating grace, but in the interim we can only, yeah, we can only try.
Speaker 2
53:23
Our next question is a live question from Zoom. Grace Regnier, please go ahead.
Speaker 4
53:30
Hi Father. Thank you for your talk. I had a question on what is contemplation?
Speaker 4
53:36
Like, what does it mean to contemplate? What should our attitude be towards this knowledge?
Speaker 5
53:42
And I think you kind of described it, but I was wondering if you could go deeper into that. Thank you.
Speaker 1
53:46
Sure. Yeah. So I would say contemplation is a kind of active receptivity to reality. Monsignor Luigi Giussani, who founded the ecclesial movement, Communion and Liberation, He describes reason as a kind of openness or attentiveness to reality and all of its factors.
Speaker 1
54:07
And I think that's a pretty apt description of contemplation. So contemplation is not so much mystical transport, right, by location or levitation or the things that we associate with great mystics. Rather, it's a kind of openness to reality. So the way that St.
Speaker 1
54:22
Thomas describes it is that it's a kind of predominance of the speculative intellect. So there are 2 principal ways in which our minds can function, practically or speculatively. And when we exercise our practical intellect, we're thinking about things so that we can perform them, so that we can exercise agency, or some kind of, you know, like manipulation of the material world. So we want to fashion, we want to fabricate, we want to change, we want to move, shake.
Speaker 1
54:49
But when we think about things in the speculative order, we know them to know them for the kind of delight in their knowability, in their intelligibility. And they may have practical import, they may have use, they may give us pleasure, but principally we're attracted to those things because of their nobility, because of their excellence, because of their beauty, because there's something that kind of calls us or beckons us or initiates us into a wider world or to a kind of richer human culture. They're the types of things in which the good life just consists. So worship, certainly, play, meals, meals had leisurely with those whom you love with good conversation.
Speaker 1
55:30
These are the different types of things that we would associate with a contemplative life. St. Thomas will argue, this is in the Secunda Secundae, in questions 179 through 182, the treatise there, short treatise is called On the Diversity of Lives. He'll argue that the contemplative life is to be preferred to the active life, which to us sounds strange because you know don't people engage in the active life do helpful things for other people?
Speaker 1
55:51
He says yes, but ultimately the purpose of our lives is to be like God and God is a contemplative, okay, and heaven is contemplative. In heaven you will not file taxes or change diapers. In heaven you will abide in the radiant presence of the Most High God and be engrossed in that loving vision such that it engages your powers so that they fire on all cylinders, right? That you're wholly engrossed.
Speaker 1
56:14
So this side of eternity, we're attempting to live a kind of beginning of beatitude, and the contemplative life disposes us well to that, as a result of which it proves more meritorious. So it's something towards which we should strive. It doesn't mean that we will be engaged exclusively in contemplative things, but it means that we should aim, you know, depending on your state in life and depending on what you are called to, for those who feel that they may have a kind of contemplative vocation, whether in a religious or academic or whatever other mode, that they should endeavor to set aside the requisite mental resources for that type of thing, Which means, yeah, it means a kind of discipline. It means a kind of asceticism.
Speaker 2
56:52
Our next question comes from Zoom. Another live question. Justin Frugia, please go ahead.
Speaker 6
57:00
Thank you so much for your talk. I was wondering if you could speak a little bit more about how we should think of the relationship or differences between the contemplation or study of sacred scripture and divine revelation and the complication... The study of something like the Summa because at the beginning of your talk, you hinted that it might be proper to bring your copy of the Summa into the chapel for a holy hour.
Speaker 6
57:29
And so I'm wondering, should there be marked differences between the fruitfulness of the contemplation of scripture and the compl... I'm having trouble with that word... And the commentary on scripture, or would you advocate for sort of a blending of those 2 activities?
Speaker 1
57:44
So that's, yeah, that's a great question. So The Second Vatican Council in De Verbum says that sacred scripture is the soul of theology. I like the image there of soul.
Speaker 1
57:56
It animates it. It gives it life. Because theology, apart from divine revelation, is lifeless. Because it lacks the first principles, and it also lacks the light sufficient to illuminate the mysteries under consideration.
Speaker 1
58:09
So there's a sense in which 1 can go about the study of theology that obscures that light, which gets into the habit of thinking apart from the faith or of abstracting from the faith, and I think that becomes soul poisoning, and it can ultimately lead you astray. And you come to discover that you're drawing conclusions that you would never have previously drawn were you to have engaged in this study in a former time. So I think, what do I want to say? I want to say that these 2 things are to be held together, right?
Speaker 1
58:41
I wanted to challenge this distinction that we often draw between prayer and study as occupying different spaces in our lives to be conducted at different times, to be had in different places. Because I think both of them are part of a more broad understanding of the contemplative life, of a recollected life. So I think I personally don't bring the Summa into the chapel with me. I haven't thought about whether I ought to, but I stay very close to scripture in the chapel because I think that one's primary experience in chapel is of seating control to God.
Speaker 1
59:09
So oftentimes you have the experience of being tired or being distracted, and then you want to manage the kind of anxiety attendant upon that by like reading books feverishly, so that way you feel you are accomplishing something in the context of your holy hour and you need to keep that at bay and just be completely content to be led by God even if being led by God feels like not being led by God. So I think that in that endeavor we're supposed to dedicate the principal part of our time to silence active and kind of passive cogitation and then reading of Scripture to keep us on track. Saint Teresa of Avila talks about reading books for like 20 years of her religious life in the context of that time because she was very easily distracted and so I don't think we need to think about it as a weakness, right? But I think we want to be kind of sparse, kind of Spartan in our approach to dedicated times of prayer.
Speaker 1
59:52
But I think that when we break it open into this understanding of a more recollected or broadly contemplative life, whenever we have these different impacts,
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