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

welcome to our first installment of aquinas 101 live here we're going to attempt to go deeper uh 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 this is the going deeper component of aquinas 101 aquinas 101 is just uh a thorough introduction to the catholic intellectual tradition with saint thomas aquinas as our guide this isn't because we think that saint 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 saint 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 uh as one 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 six shorter courses or segments the first is entitled why aquinas and that has six videos and for this particular presentation there are four videos which are especially pertinent kind of good background information so if you haven't watched them yet i'd encourage you to either you know pause the video and go and watch them or to take the opportunity later to watch those videos so those are thomas aquinas satan scholar which is just a kind of biographical introduction to saint thomas it's helpful to fall in love with the 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 the next is what did saint 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 you know seems to span some three thousand four thousand five thousand pages and then the last of those four 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 bolts that's a way for you to just feel more confident as you approach saint thomas himself so that's the first course is why aquinas and then next there's a course on an introduction to domestic philosophy and then there are four more courses which basically follow the layout of the summa theologiae so the first is entitled god in 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 in 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 uh you can find them uh in in rapid succession coming to you uh which will kind of track with the philosophy course and then we'll kind of 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 uh to this point so the links for those videos that i described thomas aquinas satan scholar what did saint 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 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 four videos and expand or expound upon it we could uh 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 uh 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 saint teresa benedict of the cross also known as edith stein she writes this about saint thomas as a kind of commendation of his excellence what has been called st thomas's 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 respondeo decendum which just means i respond or i responded it 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 they want a philosophy for life 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 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 saint 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 saint thomas's 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 one 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 saint 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 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 eporia 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 the study of saint thomas which is to say the study of god with the help of saint 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 were 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 kind of erudite and pedantic it may do that but that's accidental it makes you good 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 do i think that it's fruitful to bring um 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 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 partial 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 one 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 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 one of those daily occupations and i would submit to you a very significant a very important one 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 furthermore though saint 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 so were it not for that we would kind of found her 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 uh further distinction i think it 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 that is not of primary importance okay 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 notice 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 and for him this was this was devastating um 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 sites etc so he dedicated himself over the course of the next many months to uh exercises listening exercises and writing exercises and you know he did the state department program and he did the pimsleur method and he did fluents 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 uh 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 you know disappointing dispiriting and he kind of muddled his way through the rest of his vacation but uh never really recovered from that blow it proved fatal 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've paraphrased as why it pays to stink at french or why it pays to fail at french so he he endeavored this thing he tried and by some standards he failed uh 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 noble things out there seem to exceed your grasp and that for every one 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 just it's awful right there are no winners but by devoting ourselves to study right by 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 one of inquiry and it grows you in virtue so let's then consider what virtue specifically 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 so wisdom 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 and 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 men 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 one 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 one 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 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 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 you know 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 effective appreciation with an a a f e c t i v effective okay and and the teaching about this sense of wisdom is derived often uh from saint thomas's description of the gifts of the holy spirit so you recall the gifts of the holy spirit are listed in isaiah chapter 11 verses 2 and 3. and among those gifts he lists wisdom when saint 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 with charity he associates wisdom with prudence he associates counsel with justice he associates piety with fortitude he associates fortitude and with temperance he associates the fear of the lord so there are two for faith and then fear of the lord is used in two 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 co-naturality and we'll get to that here shortly as we uh begin reading the article under consideration for this time right so co-naturality 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 uh 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 effective tether to divine wisdom so it's in this context that saint thomas will quote pseudodynesis who says that by wisdom we are made to suffer divine things it's no longer so much a matter of inquiry as it's a matter of god's wisdom being visited upon us 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 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 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 studio 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 three responsibilities of the university master first legere to read second disbutare to dispute and third predicare to preach so ledre what are the texts that one reads well scripture 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 saint thomas read the gospels very closely he has commentaries in the gospel of matthew the gospel of john he composed the catina ouria which is a kind of golden chain of different quotations from the fathers of the church he commented all of the epistles of saint paul he commented a lot of old testament texts and he would have taught them to his students second then disbutarie to dispute st 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 day malo on evil he did a number of disputed questions on the virtues specifically on charity he did disputed questions on separate substances he 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 quote liberals 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 um in a way that was you know kind of far more verbose or prolix than the summa as we are kind of uh well disposed to read third and final thing is sermons he preached so saint 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 saint 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 and then in addition to these things as a kind of you know side hustle he wrote commentaries on other texts um so a lot of texts from aristotle and then other texts from the tradition he wrote these three 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 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 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 uh 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 the current consideration is to be articulated st thomas has equipped you st 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 one who merely gives you a fish a kind of ready-made answer he's one who teaches you to fish and he does so excellently 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 uh 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 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 uh you know 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 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 exetus 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 the 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 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 saint thomas aquinas highlighting along the way uh not only what he intends to cover but how to read it uh 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 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 okay so it's interesting that st thomas begins with objections to the teaching that he is going to propose and often it's it's commented that saint thomas expresses the objections of those who he will refute better than they themselves were able to enunciate because saint 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 saint 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 um as they they departed for the promised land so too saint 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 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 uh the objections the first objection begins with the words uh in latin v dayter it seems that so you sometimes may hear this referenced in uh philosophical or theological literature of a domestic sort it seems that vedatar 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 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 one borrows its principles so it's not wisdom here he's making an argument about what are called subordinated sciences 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 you just take them as granted because you can rely upon um 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 saint thomas 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 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 six but this doctrine does not prove the principles of other sciences therefore it is not the same as wisdom so here again is another criteria of what it means to have an elevated or a dignified science so typically the the higher science or the higher wisdom okay 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 learners formulae have to be proved in real analysis 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 six 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 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 two off okay so he's saying that this this wisdom that you hear described here it doesn't accord with what the christian tradition will sometimes describe as wisdom you got the gift of the holy spirit one and then you've got this high science one this conceptual one so they can't possibly be the same as a result of which it uh 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 said contra which just means on the contrary which you see there he says it is written uh in deuteronomy 4 6 this is your wisdom and understanding and the sight of nations so this said contratext is usually taken from an authority uh 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 uh and oftentimes it can actually be even a little bit cheeky so one of the most famous articles in the summa theologiae is prima paris question two article three where saint thomas gives his five 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 exodus 3 14. uh 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 saint thomas aquinas hilarious note that okay um so after then the said contra he gives his uh principal argument and the principle argument will typically begin with the words uh i answer that which can sometimes be referred to in the latin as respondio de chendum 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 this doctrine is wisdom above all human wisdom not merely in any one order but absolutely distinct excuse me 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 one 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 again in the order of all human life the prudent man is called wise in as much as he directs his axe 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 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 this uh the argumentation here is fairly straightforward not overly complex 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 by saying there's a kind of philosophical wisdom which would have been described by aristotle and plato 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 one order but absolutely so this is the highest of high wisdoms 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 one the extended kind of description there but it's also a text which he loves very much he he cites it at the beginning of the summa contra gentiles uh summa contregentilius book one article one and he says since lesser matter should be judged in light of some higher principle he is said to be wise in any one order who considers the highest principle in that order 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 picayune details and constructing a consulate a constellation of associated causes that may not account for what is most archetectonic he says we got to go there first to the top thus in the order of building he who plans the form of the house is called wise and architect arc from rk principles tech you know from builders so he is the most principal 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 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 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 soccer doctrina with theological wisdom what we are doing is appealing to the highest cause at this point in the summit he's already proved that theology is a science but he hasn't yet shown that it's a wisdom or a highest science and he's also proved that the principles of this science come from the knowledge of god and of the blessed so 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 themselves or of god as it is exposited in the church's tradition through the sacred scriptures in revelation 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 views and 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 so with that we have a basic sense of saint thomas's 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 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 so we can borrow from higher things provided that their grounding is more certain and you can think also in the second objection how um what we're talking about you know the interaction between the science is different because the provenance the 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 soccer doctrina is higher and then the third reply to the objection what you have is a distinction made between the kind of co-natural 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 so with that i hope that it provides to you some benefit in the reading of saint 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 all right thank you very much father gregory our first question comes from zoom santiago pinzone we'll ask a live question santiago please go ahead thank you for your talk father pine um i wanted to ask how does one 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 on to so in a similar way you can see it seem as if there's so much to learn from so many different sources in so little time so how does one begin that journey in a practical sense sure so i meant what i said 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 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 five minutes then that you pray maybe an hour each week just in one 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 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 planner maybe you want to study for 15 minutes uh 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 okay you can be backlogged for an entire year but if you endeavor to do something provided that it actually is proportionate to your capacity that you should do it and then when you say study do something that challenges you the purpose is not 100 comprehension 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 saint thomas i think that there are places where you can turn which are very fruitful if you don't know a lot about the shape of his thought start with one of these primers right so francis selman wrote a book called aquinas 101 which gives you a nice kind of theological introduction ed phaser wrote a book called aquinas which is an excellent introduction to his philosophy but i would say that's like a notch above you can if you want to get into st thomas himself with some notes you can pick up one of peter kreef's the sum of the sumo or the shorter summa just to kind of get a flavor for how the zuma 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 walk through but effectively there's no real substitute for reading st thomas on his own terms and when you begin it will be duh 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 you comprehend more and more uh and then also you get a saver for it you begin to anticipate his replies and then you'll be able to you'll be able to supply them in conversation and once that starts happening um then you're like wow something is something is afoot it's important that in those conversations you don't prove yourself kind of boorish and be like well saint thomas says you know because you don't want to turn people off to the study of saint thomas 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 um so we have a question from youtube carlos nieves asks should i study plato and aristotle before studying aquinas or or can i just jump in right so uh should you study plato and aristotle before studying st thomas or should you just jump in i think that um it's good to do introductory material or proper duties provided that you can count on yourself to persevere but sometimes we set ourselves up to fail and that we say i have to do a b c d e and f before i get about to doing the thing that i really want to do but truth be told you have uh the conceptual uh framework or you have the wherewithal to begin at step g and so you would benefit from abc to ef uh and and certainly you have the entirety of your life to go about it so there's no rush uh to get right to the red meat um but if those early steps can prove difficult i don't i don't see that you need to take them so for instance a lot of plato's dialogues are very difficult to comprehend uh there are certain classics uh and the republic is is one to be read by all for sure uh you have those ones associated with his last days and then the kind of classics um like the euthyphro or things like that but you get a good kind of saver for plato's thought and you'll be able to recognize it in st thomas after having read maybe four or five of his dialogues and then with respect to aristotle i think that aristotle is more immediately pertinent in as much as saint thomas uses aristotle more uh and more deliberately so in the summa he quotes most from scripture but then after scripture he quotes most from from aristotle and saint augustine so aristotle is contributing to his thought in very market fashion so um so saint or aristotle's major works that would be beneficial in this regard would be um the day anima for kind of philosophical anthropology the ethics the nicomachean ethics for the study of the the basics of moral philosophy uh the metaphysics certainly which is hugely important and kind of difficult to read um and then you would have um another text that i'm failing to remember right now so um yeah you have or the physics right for natural philosophy um so oftentimes the order is physics day anima metaphysics ethics that's the kind of order exposition 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 in posterior analytics um the topics uh the danter patacione and the sophistic do you have to read all those things no they're 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 winding and wild answer 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 um some aristotle or plato scholars would find that claim offensive so i'm not going to lean too heavily on it so that's my basic counsel all right um so you made brief reference to this in a previous answer um 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 that's great um so as to speaking on humility i know not that i am the one best suited to do so um humility i've often heard is an old man's virtue so young men tend to be proud vainglorious and ambitious so i um one thing i would recommend is praying the litany of humility which is a very challenging prayer but it's very much informed by saint 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 uh odious right but i think it's it's something that you should stick with and discern the reasons for which you find it odious uh so i think bringing the 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 their eyes will dim their smile will shift and they will begin to distance themselves intellectually from you and and to feel that is heartbreaking harrowing difficult indeed so in the 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 uh a.g cerseiance 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 uh by yeah the way that your pride proves a stumbling block and a pitfall because it will it will undoubtedly uh especially for a spirited individual who fancies themself you know well suited to the intellectual life but just because you can stumble in pride in vain glory and 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 were great uh because they are great and because we are made to be great in dialogue with them uh so the fact that we can go wrong uh while terrible need not paralyze us uh our 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 our next question is a live question from zoom uh grace regnier please go ahead hi father thank you for your talk um i had a question on what is contemplation like what does it mean to contemplate what should our attitude be towards this knowledge um and i think you kind of you kind of described it but it's wrong if you go go deeper into that thank you so i would say uh contemplation is a kind of active receptivity to reality uh monsignor luigi giusani who founded the ecclesial movement communion liberation he describes reason as a kind of openness or attentiveness to reality in all of its factors 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 thomas describes it is that it's a kind of predominance of the speculative intellect so there are two uh principle ways in which our minds can function uh 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 uh like manipulation of the material world so we want to fashion we want to fabricate we want to change we want to move shake but when we think about things in the speculative order we know them to know them for the kind of delight in their nobility in their intelligibility and they may have practical import they may have use they may give us pleasure but 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 um play um meals uh meals had leisurely with those whom you love with good conversation um these are the different types of things that we would associate with a contemplative life and st thomas will argue this is in the sakuna secunde in questions 179 through 182 uh the treatise there short treatise is called on this on the diversity of lives you'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 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 uh so that they fire on all cylinders right that you're wholly engrossed 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 you know 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 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 uh it means a kind of asceticism our next question comes from zoom another live question justin frugia uh please go ahead thank you so much uh for your talk um i 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 um and the complicate complementation um the study of of something like the suma because at the beginning of your talk you you hinted that you know it might be proper to bring your copy of the summa into the chapel for a whole holy hour um and so i'm wondering is it like should there be marked differences between the fruitfulness of the contemplation of scripture and the compliment i'm having trouble with that word um and the the commentary on scripture or would you advocate for sort of a blending of of those two activities so that's yeah that's a great question um so the second vatican council in dave verbum says that sacred scripture is the soul of theology and i like the image there of soul 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 so there's a sense in which one 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 right and it can ultimately lead you astray and you come to discover that you're drawing conclusions that you would never have previously drawn uh were you to have engaged in the study in a former time um so i think what do i want to say i want to say that these two things are to be held together right 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 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 suma into the chapel with me um 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 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 principle part of our time to silence active and kind of passive cogitation and then reading of scripture to keep us on track saint teresa vavala 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 um i think we want to be kind of sparse kind of spartan in our approach to uh like dedicated times of prayer but i think that when we when we break it open into this understanding of a more recollected or broadly contemplative life whenever we have these different inputs we should be cogitating throughout the course of the day so in my own experience i don't have brilliant insights in the chapel i often don't really have brilliant insights at the desk it's when i'm walking from place to place that i'm either like singing some song that i heard on the radio 17 years ago or i have a brief insight of connection of things that i did not formally associate and a lot of intellection is just that the association of things that you formerly had not seen the connection between so i think that st thomas is doing that same work so saint thomas isn't giving us revelation kind of at face value but he's showing us basically he's transposing revelation he's doing the work of translation so he himself is receiving revelation in one medium in the light of faith and then he is transposing it into a theological register so that way we can see revelation in a different way it's the way that an artist can choose to compose a poem or compose prose or you know like a musician can choose to compose a symphony or an opera there are different mediums in which to convey similar insights and you find one better suited than another given the subject matter and so i think that we should be open to the fact that revelation can be communicated received translated and then kind of ingested in different ways but ultimately it's all for this kind of gradual progressive entry into a life of wisdom and this more broadly salvific movement of mind and heart on the way to god by many by many tethers all right i think we have time for one more question sylvia krisczyk from one of our students from yale asks on youtube how is fear of the lord the beginning of knowledge and to what extent is knowledge necessary for wisdom not all have intellectual gifts yet scripture promises wisdom is attainable by all yeah so how is the fear of the lord the beginning of wisdom as it is identified in sirach i think and in the book of wisdom so that's an excellent question so fear of the lord sometimes associated with wonder and awe is often identified in the philosophical tradition as the beginning of the contemplative life so i have a friend who says that the most boring thing in the world is the answer to a question that has never been asked and you find this often times in your classroom experience when um your teachers are just giving you data to be memorized you find it very stale very dry i think of the dickens novel hard times the the teacher thomas grad grind refers to the heads of his students as pitchers to be filled with facts facts facts there are a few things so terrible few things so mind-numbing as that type of approach to knowledge so what is the responsibility of a teacher is to kindle in his or her students this desire for wisdom and to help you know one's students ask the questions to which the philosophical and theological tradition of the christian and you know christian past answers in such profound manner so i think uh for us as a kind of spiritual discipline we shouldn't think about uh philosophy or theology as an entitled an intelligible world to be conquered as if um you know there are so many things to learn and i need to go about this life project as of like learning as many as possible so that way i can show myself better than the next and therefore you know be more beloved of god because i am distinguished in this way but rather the thing that's most important is to have this disposition of being broken open into reality and in order to do that it requires of us a kind of asceticism as i kind of mentioned in response to one of the earlier questions we need to starve ourselves of lower goods in order to acquire the appetite for these higher goods um lower goods are so lovely but they they ensnare us so easily so like you know like so many suitors they try to espouse us to themselves but we need to hold them off at arm's length as we await in vigilance uh the true spouse who awaits us in heaven where they will neither be marriage married nor given in marriage but all will be wholly his and i think that like this disposition of fear of the lord or of wonder is the necessary or antecedent um kind of condition for for entering into this dialogue which will sustain us and for endeavoring this journey which proves long and difficult but ultimately fruitful in a very perfecting way

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Published: Thu May 21 2020