Fr. Robert Barron, “Aquinas and Why the New Atheists are Right"

hello excellent hello thank you thank you all for coming good evening happy Easter to you all as well right my name is dr. Timothy Paul I'm an associate professor of philosophy here in the program and I together with Gloria frost my colleague in the philosophy department here would like to welcome you to this talk where we'll hear a father Robert Barron talked to us dr. frost and I are leading a multi-year grant found a general fund a generous Lee by the John Templeton Foundation and it's to look into classical theism the doctrine of God that's common to the traditional understandings of Judaism Christianity and Islam and so we're looking into it in the following years and part of that project is having talks like this talk and part is having funding for researchers who want to look into the conception of God that's common to those traditions and part of it is having workshops on it during the summers well this is the first of two talks and the second one is going to be by father robert spitzer past president of Gonzaga University and founder of the magic Institute for reason and faith and it'll be next year on December 7th here so mark your calendars now for it these public talks are intended to highlight the relevance of philosophical reflection about God to ordinary life when dr. Frost and I were discussing who would be best to bring out for this sort of talk we immediately thought of father bear and father bear Ann's work father Barron is well known for his word on fire Catholic ministries the website fair which gets more than 1 million hits per year his 10 part documentary the Catholicism project and its sequel Catholicism the New Evangelization had been wild successes the Catholicism project takes father bear into 50 different locations in 16 different countries where he discusses what it is that Catholics believe and why it is that Catholics believe what they believe and furthermore he shows us the artistic beauty and the spiritual beauty of the Catholic Church in all these places it was broadcast on PBS and the stations across the country and just today I saw on his Facebook page you have to keep up with them because things come out really quick just today I saw on his Facebook page a page which has over 450,000 followers that he has announced the new film and new study program entitled the mystery of God who God is and why he matters but not only his father Baron internationally known for his interaction with popular culture and for his katha catechol work he's also a scholar he has a master's degree from Catholic University of America and he's got a in philosophy and he's got a PhD in theology he's authored no fewer than 10 books one of which seeds of the word finding God in the culture is currently a number one bestseller I encourage you all to go buy two copies and give one to a friend in addition to all this high-quality output he's a priest for the Archdiocese of Chicago and he's the rector of Mundelein seminary I mean one gets a distinct impression that father Baron doesn't need to sleep with all the things that he has coming on what dr. frost and I both found so very impressive about father Barron's talks is his ability to draw on the Catholic intellectual tradition and it's a deep inspiration for us here at the University of st. Thomas he continually refers back to st. Thomas Aquinas our institutions namesake when expounding Catholic views in his work on the seven deadly sins he brings a tone mystic analysis of the sins along with the helpful illustrations from Dante's Divine Comedy I myself use his insights when I teach my own ethics students as they learn in about two weeks time we like to thank the John Templeton Foundation for the grant that made this talk possible we'd like to thank the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences over there the philosophy department Catholic studies here at the University of st. Thomas campus ministry and the two seminaries here on campus for either help with funding or for helping us in other ways for this event st. Thomas Aquinas in his customary prayer before study petitions God for five things he asks for quickness to comprehend memory to retain he asks for happiness and expounding a facility in learning and copious eloquence in speaking and I think you'll all agree with me at the end of this talk that father baron has received all of these gifts in great measure so please join me and welcoming father baron who's going to speak to us about Aquinas and why the New Atheists are right father bear with you all thank you that's very nice thank you for that kind introduction Tim and thank you for your presence here tonight everybody on this beautiful spring evening in Minneapolis I I just flew from Chicago I know about these beautiful April evenings hey listen I'm so pleased to be here at this place I visited I think is my third or fourth trip as the microphone is collapsing and I've admired this place for a long time admired many of the people who have taught here at studied here most recently our new Archbishop in Chicago is a graduate of this institution so he asked me to send his best to everybody but you heard about the importance of Thomas Aquinas for me personally when I was a freshman at Fenwick high school I was 14 years old outside Chicago and one of my classmates is here actually it's true I was in a you know classroom with my friends and and one of the young friars presented Thomas's arguments for God's existence and I don't know why it was the case I'm sure it impacted no one else in the room but for me was like a bell going off it was like a light turning on and to think of God as someone real and that came to me that day and has never left me and the path I'm still on the path of priesthood the path of theology the path of preaching and teaching is one that started that day at Fenwick high school and it was under the aegis and inspiration of saint thomas acquaintances so whenever i can I'd love to pay tribute to him and to do it here at the University name for him is a great thrill you heard I've given this talk I'd rather provocative title Thomas Aquinas and why the New Atheists are right and I hope in the course of this presentation to make that clear to you don't worry I am going to read this paper I know it can be a little bit tiresome but I promise it's only about 45 minutes so it's like one of your shorter classes up here and then we'll have a chance afterwards for some some conversation let me get a little sip of water and then we'll get going the great English Dominican theologian Herbert McCabe a favorite of mine engaged a number of atheists in the course of his career as a public intellectual typically he Talal was interlocutor to make his opening statement detailing precisely why he didn't believe in God and McCabe would respond I completely agree with you the Anglin new testament of scholar NT right tells him in a counter he had with a young undergraduate when wright was chaplain at oxford the freshmen said chaplain don't expect to see a lot of me I just don't believe in God right asked him what he meant by God and upon hearing the young man's account he responded I can assure you I don't believe in that God either like McCabe and right I've always found atheists of all stripes helpful both spiritually and theologically precisely the measure that they clarify what the true God is not they expose and implicitly undermine new forms of idolatry one of the clearest in this regard is the father of modern atheism namely Ludwig Feuerbach who famously held that God is a projection of our idealized self understanding which is to say a simulacrum of God made in the image of man precisely what the Bible would have called an idol the only thing particularly new about the new atheism is its nastiness Christopher Hitchens Richard Dawkins whom Paul Griffith by the way deliciously combined his ditch khun's sam harris daniel dennett their numerous disciples and by the way they're everywhere on the internet so my internet ministry with people in their twenties and thirties their disciples are very thick on the ground they borrow many of the intellectual insights of Fourier Bach Marx Freud Sartre and Nietzsche what they've added is a dismissive contempt for religion and religious people whereas Nietzsche and Sartre gave the impression they were in a battle with a pretty serious opponent ditch khun's and company imply they're exposing the delusions of an idiot child nevertheless they serve for our generation they're essentially prophetic function of displaying idolatry and this is continually needed since the Saint John of the Cross once said the mind is an idol making machine there's so much we could say about the ruminations of the new atheist so many ways we could engage them their obsession with biblical literalism their deep concern about religion in relation to violence their conviction that religion is irreconcilable with modern science their conviction that faith poisons the minds of the young famously they claim that religion is a form of child abuse what I want to draw attention to though is one thing you might take to be basic one misunderstanding that conditions everything else they discuss namely the view that God is a being among many one cause amidst the range of contingent causes a reality in the world whose existence or non-existence can be determined through rational for them scientific investigation Christopher Hitchens for example delights in recounting the famous tale of the encounter between the Emperor Napoleon and the French scientists PLC Mon to the plus the author of celestial mechanics having heard the plazas exposition on the movement of the planets within the solar system napoleon reportedly asked why the figure of God did not appear in the plazas schema to which the scientists laconically respondent jeanette población de cette tipo des I have no need of that hypothesis the Assumption of both Napoleon in Laplace was apparently that God is rightly understood as one of the mechanical causes that contributes to the motion of the planets perhaps the largest most important cause but still one among many though Napoleon's seem to favor the existence of such a cause and Laplace to deny it both thought of God is fundamentally like otherworldly agents we find something very similar in Richard Dawkins The God Delusion dismissing Stephen Jay Gould position that religion and science deal with qualitatively different dimensions of reality hence the Noma non-overlapping magisteria Dawkins of Pines that science can and must adjudicate the question of God's existence he says turning certain cosmological questions that seemed to pass beyond the province of the sciences over to the chaplain makes as much sense as quote turning them over to the chef or the gardener here's how Dawkins characterizes the religious position and listen carefully to how he lays it out quote the god hypothesis suggests that the reality we inhabit also contains a supernatural agent who designed the universe and even intervenes in it with miracles that's a direct quote now in Dawkins and this is precisely why he can compare a belief in God to belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster have you heard that phrase it's everywhere on the Internet in fact you can see it on people's cars now people have the little fish that they're Christians and people put feet on the finish therefore Darwin now they have the Flying Spaghetti Monster on the car now why is he saying it's a fantastical imaginary being for whom there's not a trace of physical evidence and therefore the claim is made like God and here Dawkins simply mimics his master Bertrand Russell who famously speculated that it's as impossible to prove the non-existence of God as to demonstrate the non-existence of a china teapot orbiting the Sun between Earth and Mars that's Bertrand Russell's example what's so telling about both analogies again is that God is being compared to some agent or entity within the universe and operating alongside of other agents and entities Dawkins concludes on the basis of this understand the divine that God's non-existence can be demonstrated to a very high degree of probability if Ockham's great principle holds then God is not required since we can explain most if not all worldly phenomena by appealing to worldly causes Janelle Pappas Wanda said he both Eze who needs the appositive God when things can be explained naturalistically this way of approaching God is a particularly clear display in the manner in which the New Atheists assess the traditional arguments for God's existence that has such an impact on me when I was a young man both Hitchens and Dawkins dismissed Thomas Aquinas arguments in favor of first mover or uncaused cause with the Cavalier question well then what caused God the observation proves a course that neither thinker is grasp the nettle of the argument but for our present purposes it shows that both persistent thinking of God as one more cause in a chain of contingent causes we see it as well in their preoccupation and their boy their disciples every day I hear this on the on the internet their preoccupation with quote the God of the gaps all the New Atheists revel and what they take to be religions instinctive but pathetic retreat into the gaps in present-day scientific accounts of reality with some justification they characterize intelligent design theory as just this sort of illegitimate move because we can't discern it clear and uninterrupted path by which certain living forms today evolve from lower forms we assert that God did it but what will happen to God so construed as the fossil gap closes or as our imaginations enable us to picture the evolutionary process more exactly Dawkins laments the fact that while scientists try to clear up mystification theologians seem to exult in it playing temporarily in the darkness that science will eventually illumine once more please God is being thought of as a competing cause ontological II at the same level as conventional empirically verifiable causes now the new atheists are far from reluctant to extrapolate from this metaphysical conception to what they take to be deeply disturbing implication for human flourishing representing as they do a Supreme Being competitive with other causes and brooding over the human project the religions they claim foster a quote police state in which all aspects of the private public life must be submitted to a permanent higher supervision that's from Hitchens book God is not great this God I'll put it in quotes watches and governs the world from the outside and imposes his rules on a recalcitrant human freedom Hitchens seems to accept sart's famous syllogism to the effect that if God exists I can't be free but I am free therefore God's not exist probably valid the logic of that by the way but look at the Assumption undergirds it this explains hitches believes why religion and political totalitarianism are usually closely allied you find that argument again and again in the new atheist now that's their position I maintain that the exertions of the new atheist in regard to God are for the most part an exercise in knocking down a not very impressive straw God a God who dwells in or alongside the cosmos who exists whose existence or non-existence could be determined through scientific investigation who might himself be susceptible of causal influence who bears even the slightest resemblance to a Flying Spaghetti Monster and who resides over the human project in the manner of Kim Jong Il presiding over Korea is simply an idol of the worst type and it's Thomas Aquinas the great patron of this university that helps us to see it one of the most remarkable features as you know of Thomas's doctrine of God is its agnosticism in the prologue to question 3 in the first part of the Summa theologia which deals with the divine simplicity Thomas famously comments I'm quoting since we are not able to know what God is only what God is not we are not able to consider in regard to God how he is but rather how he is not that that sheds light in every direction when it comes to reading Thomas though we say many things about God we're not entirely sure what we mean when we say them the fourth Council of the Lateran taught that in regard to our speech concerning God in tanta similar to Dean a Meyer dissimilar to tow-in however greatest similitude there's an ever-greater dissimilar to Thomas picked up on this and making his distinction between the res significant and the Moda significant D the things signified in the manner of signifying and this is why Thomas consistently prefers the negative path when speaking of God taking away from the concept of God whatever belongs to creatureliness though for instance we can speak positively enough of God's goodness we don't really know what we mean when we use the term to say that God is eternal is tantamount to saying he's not in time to say he's immutable is tantamount to saying he doesn't change in the creaturely manner to say he's a spirit is to say he's not marked by matter but what any of these terms signal positively remains quite mysterious what precisely doesn't mean to be outside of time I challenge you to tell me that positively no one here below can possibly know what precisely is it like not to be material no one whose mind and senses are ordered to the realm of physical things can ever really grasp the parables of Jesus can be read under this rubric we say quite correctly that God is just but in light of the parable of the vineyard owner who pays the same ways to those whom we hired at different times a day we find our conventional view of justice confounded we say quite correctly that God is compassionate but in light of the parable of the prodigal son we realize the inadequacy of even our most generous interpretation of compassion if we press the question wondering precisely why the God of the Bible remained so mysterious so resistant to description and nomination think of the scripture truly o God of Israel you are a hidden God the answer lies in the opening line of the book of Genesis in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth because God brought the whole of the finite universe into existence God cannot be ingredient within the universe he must be other in a way that transcends any and all modes of other nestled in creation spatial distance modal diversity differences in grade degree kind species variations in speed temperature modal of diversity none of these can begin to indicate the radicality of the difference that obtains between God and anything that God has made in Katherine Tanner's language God is not simply other he's quote utterly other the put is still another way God's transcendence must be construed in such a manner that it precludes the possibility of contrast in the ordinary acceptation of the term Nicholas of Kusano Nichols of Kooza caught this when he commented that God though radically not the world still must be seen as the non ally owed the non other and this is why Thomas Aquinas typically refers to God not as n Summa means the highest being but rather as epsom sa subsistence the subsistent act of to be itself God's an infinitive si not ends not a known if God were the highest being then he could in principle be categorized alongside of other beings assume si however is not the most powerful and impressive instance of the genus being in fact Thomas specifies that God cannot be placed in any genus even the genus of being he is but not in the manner the creatures are just the contrary creatures are analogues of God's essentially mysterious modality of existence the technical term that Aquinas we use it to signal this unique quality of the divine manner of being is simplicity to us simplicity by this he means that in God there's no distinction between essence and existence a distinction which perforce obtains in anything that God has made to be a desk is to be a kind of being namely that which is constrained by the essential properties of desk ness to be human is to be precisely a human being an existent delimited by the form or essence of humanity in both cases amusing Thomas's language here the act of being the octo so Cindy is as it were poured into the receptacle of a particular rising essence and hence the things in question are to that degree metaphysically complex but in God the source of finite existence itself there is no such distinction hence God is not this kind of being rather than that he's not in this category rather than that one he's not great rather than small he can't be placed positioned or indicated in the strictest sense of the term and Thomas insist upon it he can't be defined since definition necessarily implies delimitation as David Borel taught for many years at Notre Dame put it to be God is to be to be he would certainly not fit therefore into any of the gaps in a conventional scientific account of thing to see why it's so silly even to entertain that possibility we see now why Aquinas so consistently correlated the divine simplicity to the self designation of Yahweh in Exodus 3:14 Moses was asking a common sensical question he was assuming if you want the mode of a scientist which God are you what kind of being am i dealing with God's answer from the burning bush I am Who I am might be interpreted as off-putting stop asking me such silly questions but see Thomas reads it as darkly illuminating my existence who I am is identical to my essence what I am and this precisely why Yahweh told Moses that is servant should take off his shoes for he was on holy ground holy set apart other different what becomes abundantly clear in this discussion is that the simple God is patch a ditch khun's never reducible to the level of a creaturely nature he could never even in principle become the object of an empirical or scientific investigation he could never be defined or categorized by an inquiring mind he's about as far from a Flying Spaghetti Monster as it's metaphysically possible to be a passes and Thomas mertens wonderful seven story mountain comes to mind in this context he's the other Thomas by the way that so influenced me when I was a kid Thomas Aquinas and Thomas Merton Merton read almost by accident Etienne Jill Stone's book the spirit of medieval philosophy in which the subtle philosophical doctrine of a simple God is laid out and the young Merton was stunned freed always considered God I'm quoting him now a noisy mythological being huh it's not like a Flying Spaghetti Monster right he never imagined that the Christian understanding of God could be presented in a sophisticated way it seems to me that the young Merton before this intellectual conversion had a good deal in common with the new atheist today and now some words about the Creator God and Aquinas as I've been implying it's only this simple God who can in the proper sense of the term create since creation designates the act of giving rise to finite being ex nihilo out of nothing that creation is a pivotal idea for Thomas Aquinas is evident throughout his writings GK Chesterton caught this when he commented the Aquinas should be known as Thomas of the creator getting right the absolutely unique way that the simple God relates to what he is made go a long way toward clearing up the pseudo problems raised by Hitchens Dawkins and company timeses most thorough and technical treatment of creation occurs in question three of his great question is boo tada day potency a day on the power of God which he composed in the mid 12 60s while he was stationed at Santa Sabina in Rome in article one of question three Thomas maintains that it must be firmly held tuned and Menten in domestic terror that God not only can but does create ex nihilo his justification for the claim rests upon the intensity of God's actuality every agent Thomas says act in the measure that it is in Act which to say in possession of some perfection of being thus a finite cause fire sunlight a carpenter produces a finite mode of existence being secundum quid determinate this way or that another way to state this is to say that a finite cause acts by moving changing or further specifying the being of another in some way as I'm doing right now with you I'm affecting I hope in some ways you're thinking it's a very very limited mode of causality but God who is totally actualized in his being can affect things not simply through motion or change but through bringing forth the totality of their being through creating them ex nihilo from nothing in creating as we know God does not affect pre-existing reality in some accidental way rather he brings the whole of that reality into being Thomas insists the creation doesn't take place in time a lot of these discussions by the way the Big Bang and all this business I mean the Big Bang is great it formulated by a Catholic priests yours Lamech WA I'm all in favor of it but has very little to do with creation and the way I'm describing the way Thomas would describe it creation doesn't take place in time why time itself as a creature further it doesn't occur within the theater provided by space because space is itself a creature there's no matter or energy upon which God acts since both matter and energy are creatures as such creation never appears to the senses nor can it be measured nor can it be specified temporally it's better to speak of it as a continual act as Thomas does create Co continua not way back then that's where Deus wanted I say a theist wanted to way back then no create Co continua it's happening moment to moment as is true in the case of the divine nature we know that creation is but not really what it is the anomalous elusive quality of creation is reiterated in the third article of question 3 which raises the issue of the locale of creation that's to say whether it's something really in the creature or perhaps between the creature and god Thomas responds the creation as an act is in God since whatever God does is identical to what God is given the divine simplicity but creation in the creature is harder to pin down for we can't say that it's simply received by the creature as an outside influence since that would presume there's a receptacle that is not itself created we can only say and all this language always puts me in mind of a Zen koan we can only say that God creates that which is receiving the act of creation hence and here's Thomas's conclusion creation is quote a kind of relationship to the Creator with newness of being queda morality allowed credit orem Combe novita asnd beautiful it's a kind of relationship to the Creator with no Vita's freshness if you want of being gods responsible in short for the entirety be creatures being yet his influence this is so important thing is not external to the creature and this is why Thomas speaks of it as queda morality oh it's a kind of relationship he was well acquainted with the Aristotelian notion of relationship as an accidental qualification of two or more substances we're having that right now I'm in front of you you're over there I'm speaking to you you're listening to me there there's a number of relationships that apply to us accidentally thomas is using aerosols language but he's speaking of fractured aristotle 'yes if he does when speaking of the eucharist thomas here uses Aristotelian language but in a decidedly non Aristotelian way signaling that something else metaphysically speaking is the case you know that the substance changes while accidents remain the same well that's gobbledygook from an Aristotelian standpoint it's using Aristotelian language but it's precisely the opposite for Aristotle something very similar here relationship as an accident between substances that can't be the case in regard to God's relationship to us God is therefore properly discovered as the deepest ground of a creatures ontological identity Merton again was entirely anatomists frame of mind when he famously said the contemplative prayer is quote finding that place in you where you are here and now being created by God if you take nothing else for my talk take that from Merton a contemplative prayer is finding that place in you where you are here and now being created by God it's entirely Thomaston inspiration this clarification i think is of enormous importance as a preliminary response to the atheist contention that the human rapport with god can only one of abject submission to a tyrant you see how it's just the opposite I'll come back to that the Creator is certainly other than the creature yet his other neskowin twith his absolute closeness to the creature Thomas hall is the transcendent God is quote in all things by essence Prez and power and then he adds in team a intimately so his lordship over creation rightly named is simultaneously the most gentle letting be of creation creatures don't so much have a relationship to God they are a relationship to God which is why meister eckhart the great mystic who sat in a crisis chair of theology in paris for a time said the best way to find god is to sink into him it's the same metaphysics behind an idea to sink into God to find the place in you where you are here and now being created by God John Milbank and many others in recent years have drawn out a most important feature of this teaching namely that creation ex nihilo from nothing is an essentially nonviolent act in most of the mythology of the ancient world creation takes place through a primordial act of violence God or the gods wrestling some enemy into submission the philosophical accounts of Plato and Aristotle represent a more sophisticated version of this myth in the measure that they picture a divine figure think of a demi or gloss of Plato or the prime mover Aristotle shaping matter into form but there is none of that in the doctrine of create Co X Neal Oh God cannot even in principle wrestle some alien and macallan opponent into submission or shape from the outside in an intervening way some substance standing opposed to him rather he brings the whole of finite reality into being non-violently the biblical narrative here I think is quite telling God doesn't fight the world into existence he speaks it into existence another question that can be explored under the rubric of the divine creativity is this why precisely does God create at all if as Thomas insists God and His perfection is utterly self-sufficient why would he feel obligated to give rise to finite being one way classically to solve this problem is to dissolve it and say that God creates because he had to the medieval Arabic philosopher Avicenna for example argue that creation is a kind of automatic emanation from God in saying this he anticipated by eight centuries the dialectical theology of Hegel and by nine centuries the process theology of Whitehead and his disciples but with this sort of emanation ISM Aquinas has no truck while natural causes that act through necessity are determined toward the production of one kind of effect think of a plant that gives rise predictably to seed after seed causes that act through intelligence and will produce Thomas thinks a wide variety of effects think here of Picasso or James Joyce God's production obviously is wild in its fecundity and diversity and thus it follows for Aquinas that God's mode of creativity is not automatic but intelligent purposive and artistic thus God chooses with artistic intent to give rise to the universe but he does so in utter freedom from self-interest and this implies necessarily that God's creative act is a gesture of love for love and here again I'm quoting Aquinas is the Willing of the good of the other as other since God has no ontological need any and all of his actions odd extra are for the good of the other absolutely perfectly therefore the world if I can sum this up has been spoken into being non violently and lovingly in response to certain Hegelian izing tendencies in the theology of the 19th century the first Vatican Council reiterated this point stating that God creates not out of need but simply out of a desire to share his goodness and glory here again we can see how far are this two mystics sense of God is from the caricature proposed by the new atheist the creatures relation to the Creator God cannot be crushing and oppressive despite our imaginings instead it is the very act by which the creature subsist more to it this act has to be fundamentally nonviolent non-intrusive non aggressive and it's done out of sheer is love that's Christian metaphysics pacce all the new atheists please it's really young people please don't believe them I mean they they're parading and stuff all the time and they're as I say their disciples are very thick on the ground but they don't know what they're talking about in terms of our great metaphysical tradition okay just few words now about Thomas's view of Providence with all this in mind having sketched acquaintances treatment of the divine simplicity and creativity I want to examine now however inadequately one more major motif in Thomas's doctrine of God namely is teaching concerning the relationship between divine causality and creaturely causality the problem is a vexing one and much hangs upon its resolution as we clearly see in the new atheist the modern mind reacts against any claim that God interferes with the movements of nature or the movements of the human intellect and we'll the objection is theoretical for don't the Natural Sciences and psychology adequately account for these phenomena but it's also existential a competing supernatural cause seems to be an intolerable affront to finite freedom again think of Sartre what I've been exploring more abstractly now becomes focused and concrete how exactly does the non competitiveness of God play itself out in terms of specific interior and exterior events I'll first observe the Thomas speaks of God as both creator the one who gives rise to the whole of the universe from nothing and as mover the one who directs particular creatures in creation as a whole to their appointed ends and he sees no contradiction or tension between the two characterizations God indeed affects creatures of the deepest possible level of your existence and in relatively secondary ways as well now when God moves or otherwise affects a creature he's not strictly speaking creating however he never ceases to be the Creator and see what this means is the non competitiveness that obtains in regard to the unique act of creation holds analogously in regard to less dramatic instances of the divine influence Thomas explores this matter in detail in the seventh article that famous question three of the day potency oh the topic for discussion is whether God operates in the operations of nature the dilemma should be clear if God is the creator of the entire universe in every detail what room is left for the free exercise of creaturely agency wouldn't the presence of the Creator simply absorb any purposeful causality outside of himself it's a good question by the way and a lot of the finest minds theological in the West have Russell with them the said contrib to this article could function as the light motif of my entire discussion tonight of the god world relationship thomas quotes the prophet isaiah Oh Lord it is you who have accomplished all that we have done if you if you let the full ramifications of that statement echo in your heart mind you'll understand what thomas is trying to get at here Oh Lord it's you who've accomplished all that we have done mind you no competition between the two there it stated clearly and unapologetically the dimensions of created and uncreated causality are placed side by side we have really done certain things and yet they've been accomplished in us by God this sort of juxtaposition is possible only on the assumption that God and creatures are not competing for space on the same metaphysical plane I mean I can't say I've done what you've accomplished can I because we were both on the same metaphysical playing field you got your space I got my space if I've totally invade your space I'm aggressing you right I have accomplished what you've done well then you haven't really accomplished it but see we can say it about God because of the peculiar way that God is other that's what we're driving at here the high paradise once more is that the very strangeness and other neskowin with finite agency in the course of his respondió Thomas lays out a number of models for understanding the synergy between divine and non divine causality I'll look here only at one one thing he says can operate in another in the measure that the former provides the latter with its virtus or power as say when the Sun influences a solar heating device now God certainly acts in this way since as creator he continually provides not only power but being to all his creatures he's the condition for the possibility of their being and acting in the first place but then Thomas adds this I'm quoting the higher the cause the more common and efficacious and the more efficacious the more profoundly it can penetrate into the effect the higher the cause the more common and efficacious and the more efficacious the more profoundly it can penetrate into the effect a finite cause can influence other finite cause but the infinite creator whose the sheer active to be itself can penetrate utterly the effect acting thoroughly but non obtrusively in the agency of that effect and with this clarification we come to the heart of the matter in our ordinary experience of instrumental causality the using cause invades the being of that which it uses but God precisely is the creative cause of all that exists can use finite causes instrumentally but yet non-invasively of course the most interesting instance of this dynamic at least from our perspective is the manner which God works in and through the moves of the human free will Aquinas is convinced that God moves human wills in such a way as to achieve his purpose and at this providential direction in no way compromises human freedom this is the case because God doesn't push or pull human wills from the outside as much as he energizes them from the inside freedom is not unmitigated spontaneity but the ordered pursuit of the good in a core with the deepest desire of the free subject the other Li other God can operate at the level of the ground of the will lowering it in a core with its own most nature and hence can enable the human subject to be itself precisely through surrender to get that to get a lot of Christian spirituality the reason it sounds so anomalous and strange is people who get the metaphysics that's behind it it's fascinating to me how this non-competitive play is consistently displayed in the biblical narratives Yahweh acts in human affairs but not typically in an interruptive way rather he accomplishes his purposes precisely through the play of human freedom the narratives concerning David are particularly instructive here there's very little of the explicitly supernatural in those stories go back to 1 & 2 Samuel that David cycle yet Yahweh is clearly presented as achieving what he wants as acting and achieving what he wants been achievement takes place in the densely textured political and psychological drama involving Hannah Eli Samuel Saul Jonathan and David the story is on one level completely understandable in political and psychological terms yet the author of the Samuel cycle wants us to penetrate to the deeper level of the divine agency because the highest cause is not a being among many it can operate in the realm of beings violently or as the book of wisdom has it sweetly God's wisdom stretches from end to end mightily and orders all things sweetly that typical idea is being given philosophical heft by Aquinas we see again how the atheist concerns about the God of the gaps who terrorizes the human project from without our at least for the perspective of the patron saint of this university completely misplaced Josiah promised two more pages a little bit on where we got off the rails how this thing gets so messed up one might be forgiven for wondering how things got so confused how exactly we get from Thomas's subtle metaphysics of the divine simplicity and non-competition to the overwrought and misplaced preoccupations of the New Atheists a good deal of blame I think can be assigned to the option that happened in the late 13th into the 14th century for UNIF achill over an analogical conception of being within the limits of this very brief presentation I can hardly do justice to the complexities of that shift in epistemology but suffice to say that once being is posited as UNIF achill term God and creatures had to be categorized under the same general metaphysical heading as modalities of being though he was supreme infinite all-powerful God on this reading was one reality alongside of others and hence necessarily competitive with them on Aquinas is reading which is an analogical conception of being all crucially things were linked to one another through their shared centeredness in the creative ground of existence but on the you nificant interpretation the totality of being is made up of mutually exclusive and essentially unconnected individuals William of Ockham is famous summary line praetor alas part is absolute us Nuala res that means outside of these absolute parts there is no real thing and one of the absolute parts he's talking about is God the Supreme Being so that's a revolution in epistemology and metaphysics which led to a lot of mischief in my judgment as the late medieval world gave way to the modern this conception of the God world relationship became unhappily solidified even as God was affirmed by the modern philosophers and most of them Descartes lightness and so on are believers so philosophers from Descartes - lightness to Thomas Jefferson he was more and more imagined as a distant being who had a mechanistic relationship to natural causes and an interruptive relationship to human freedom see how that happened you see it haunting the minds of all the modern philosophers but the ever more precise specification of the physical forces involved in cosmic movement conduced her never more abstract and distant view of God and the ever greater assertion of human freedom can do is first toward the marginalization of God and finally to his elimination commencing with feuerbach atheist philosophers began to say that the no to God is the yes to man and the trajectory finally reached its some its fulfillment in sart's famous syllogism to which I alluded above it's only the competitive Supreme Being the unhappy offspring of the universal conception of being that could possibly be the object of that kind of contempt the God articulated by Thomas Aquinas is a competitor neither to the mechanistic causes named to the physical sciences nor to a robustly functioning human freedom rather he's the one whose glory in the words of st. Irenaeus is a human being fully alive and by extension a cosmos operating according to his own principles laws and rhythms God delights in human freedom God delights and glorifies in the integrity of the natural world they're not at odds with each other just a couple paragraphs novel conclusion through my wrestling with the New Atheists in both academic and popular contexts I become convinced that the Catholic Church in the years following vatican ii has been rather inept at presenting its own textured and intellectually satisfying understanding of god as i've tried to demonstrate in this brief paper the contemporary atheists are doing battle with caricatures and therefore it is altogether right to say to them as Herbert McCabe did you're absolutely right but this is not enough we have to get much better and I'll say it now is a little fervor Eno here at the University of st. Thomas we've got to get much better at giving a reason for the hope that's in us we've got to get much more adept at articulating our belief in the simple God whose other nough since enough competitive with it we have to formulate a new fundamental apologetics when I was coming of age in the years just after the council apologetics in a very bad name it was defensive rationalistic unbiblical and above all disrespectful other religions furthermore my post conciliar teachers and for manners were enthusiastic advocates of a positive engagement with the environment secular culture even going so far as to suggest according to a slogan at that time happily of falun of the decima to now that the world sets the agenda for the church but see all this was exaggerated in one sided every culture very much including our own is evangelical II ambiguous best to say to some degree amenable to the proclamation of the gospel and to some degree quite inhospitable to it simply to pursue a culture and seek accommodation to it therefore is never a healthy evangelical strategy my own conviction is that during these years when the church was running after the secular culture that culture was not the least bit eager to reciprocate instead it went about its business more or less indifferent to the church which was which was ardently pitching woo in its direction and then in the wake of September 11th and it's no accident whatsoever the new atheist phenomenon is a post September 11 phenomenon BSE it revived the old Enlightenment argument religions irrational therefore the only way for religious people to adjudicate disputes is through violence so the minute those planes flew in those buildings on September 11th people said look there it is there is religion irrational therefore violent and that's when the new atheist phenomenon really emerged so in the wake of Ed of in portion the secular world led by Dickens and company turned aggressively against religion in general but Christianity in particular and when they did so we found ourselves ill-equipped to defend ourselves having long before jettisoned our own evangelical and apologetic tools ironically I promise ate here it's the pre-modern doctrine of Thomas Aquinas that provides the surest foundation for this evangelical apologetics in our postmodern world thanks everybody for listening that was great very edifying very very thought-provoking we have some time now for questions and so you see there's two microphones set up up here what we'll do is we'll just go back and forth between the mics taking questions one from each mic until we run out of time and then we'll call it quits but a join me again in thanking father baron and we'll have questions so thank you please my father I'm the Fenwick student but I just wanted to ask oh you're one weak student yeah is it right yeah I graduated in 2011 from Hill st. isaac's yeah good yeah that's nice um players yeah so I just wanted to ask what do you think is that I'm running my philosophy guide paper on it but what do you think is the best Catholic response to the evidential problem of evil to the one of the the evidential argument from evil well I mean it's the most serious objection to God there is and I think quite as new that I still think the Augustinian resolution is the best one you know once we get the language of permission clear god doesn't cause evil II can't he was a mode of non-being but God permits it to bring about a greater good is a pearly fine way to state the thing abstract ly in a pastoral setting it takes out a whole different coloration but I think from a theoretical standpoint that's fine secondly I'd say this along with some of the apologists today that in a certain way it's not a serious intellectual objection because how could a finite mind ever claim to know that there's insufficient reason in an infinite mind and I think that's what you're always up against if you say there can't be a God because a god of infinite goodness would never allow such a thing was he how do we possibly be in a position ever to make that claim so I I totally understand the emotional texture of the objection I totally get it everybody feels it I feel it but a strictly intellectual standpoint it really dissolves once you pit a finite mind against an infant of mine years ago when I was doing a pastoral work there was a young father came to me and he said father was breaking my heart is my little son he's three have some physical problems felt it was but he had to go in for surgery and so the kid went to surgery and then in the aftermath of the surgery he was in such discomfort and there his father was in the hospital room and he said father he's looking at me with this look of why why are you precise being over this I mean you can't do something about this why are you putting me through it and he said what broke my heart was I couldn't even in principle explain to him what surgery was why you'd need surgery why you have to recover etcetera etc and when he said that a light went off like that's a perfect analogy for our relation to God is there we are saying in a million ways how could you possibly be presiding over this this catastrophe but just as the the qualitative difference between the mind of that kidness father we're now to the infinite degree the quality of difference bringing our minds in God I mean so that's a standard but I still think valid way to look at it you know please thank you Father very and just strictly a philosophical question you're talking about the distinction where we there's no contradiction between saying goddess and mover in a creator I think it was Maimonides that like spoke on like when we speak of God's eye since we can't like super add anything to that we can say God created we can't say he's a creator too so I'm just wanting what Aquinas would say about like adding the creator and the mover to his essence is that like kind of like partial izing the essence of God or what would he say about that no because right neither one belongs to the essence of God otherwise you're into some kind of emanation of schema so you can't say that they both deal with some move odd extra but yeah I think what he means there is that his activity as mover is not metaphysically incompatible with his being as creator and so therefore it's got a non-competitive quality so when Thomas talks about movement whether it's like efficient causality or final causality it's always under the aegis and rubric of his fundamental identity is creator both named and add extra relationships and neither one's reducible to his essence but they're they're compatible because he remains creator as he moves you know so it wouldn't be the Maimonides issue so much but it's the two of them are our noncontradictory when it comes to God's activity I'd extra it's not my gun please I thank you Father so tom was talking about the problem of evil and I kind of want to go there again so you you've talked about God's influence and like work in the world as this this other and he influences and works by just as like really deep and pervading way right so if he influences our wills in that way like you were saying by energizing can we say that God's will is always fulfilled in that way and if so how do we come for evil yeah no I mean you're touching on one of the most complicated issues for example gods but it is I mean how do you you talk about God's Universal desire for people to be saved for example is that reconcilable with some people falling away from it does God permit sin I mean clearly he does because it's a fact of life press that question may we hope that God's universal salvific will will be realized yes it seems to me is that contradictory no and see what I press on is this God's moving someone to salvation is not incompatible with that person willing salvation because God moves precisely through the free will now let me give you a real concrete example that my students a Mundell I know this that I'm a big Bob Dylan fan Bob Dylan is is my guy you know suppose a student in Mundelein came to me and said Bob Dylan is appearing with his band at 8 o'clock and Friday night in the Mundelein auditorium would that get me to the Monon auditorium of course it would I mean ineluctably and he would know that if he wanted me there the one way to do it would be arranged at Bob Dylan and his band appearing right but would you ever say I went there under coercion or I went there against my will no on the contrary is a good was proposed to my will that was so compelling that I followed it you know and that goes back to Augustine's example of the the leafy branch that draws the the animal so what God does is he now from within God who knows you better than you know yourself so I can say yeah I love Bob Dylan if someone had Bob Dylan at the auditorium I'd be there but God knows everything about everything he knows every desire my heart knows every longing of my body knows everything about me can God get me to do what he wants yeah in a way that is utterly congruent my freedom yes yes and there's another instance of the non-competitive causality of God but that's a quick answer to our really complicated question thanks please thank you for the talk father you addressed New Atheism which is a very popular American heresy but I want to ask you about another one yeah there's a there's a good deal of the population of America for whom God exists but he does not matter much yep our Chopra's The Oprah is Joel Osteen and what have you and while and while the new atheists are filling up the comments on your YouTube page I think the people who run YouTube probably belong in the Oprah camp yeah so my question is what are the implicit metaphysical assumptions of this God that exists but doesn't have any effect on my moral and especially sexual life and what ways the st. Thomas help us address them yeah probably in public debate yeah good no that's helpful someone said that if Oprah married Deepak Chopra she'd be Oprah Chopra what always struck me is a happy resolution yeah I mean I'm with Thomas and saying this that all these movements including the atheists are all onto something they're getting some aspect of it I think the Deepak Chopra thing is a kind of pantheism sort of a pantheist mysticism let's say are the pantheists right yes in the measure that they're intuiting something they're intuiting what Thomas would say God's presence to all things in the most intimate way is God ubiquitous omnipresent and in all things by essence presence and power yeah since Thomas Aquinas so if some essay is if some essay in this room well no in one sense because this room is filled with beings that's all that's in this room God's not a being so guys on this room God's totally taralli tear right totally other but is if some essay in this room of course in the most intimate way because God is here and now giving rise to the being of this room I would argue that the pantheous ancient and modern are intuiting that they're getting that that but in a confused way because what they're confounding to use Thomas's language is enscombe own a with ipsum sa ends commune a being in general being in general so this Pinos a sort of pantheism that's what God is day Oh Savannah Taurus has been oh my god or nature they mean the same thing well no God is it some s a nature is is the sum total of beings there's an intimate relationship between them it's not identity but the pantheists are getting something right you're furthermore right in intuiting that if they turn God in sort of a bland force so the Star Wars thing uh George Lucas got it from Joseph Campbell you know Joseph Campbell the comparative mythologist who was asked do you believe in a personal God he said no no I believe God is the zoom of energy that runs through all things now again is that getting something right I'd say yes but it's guys I'm deeply wrong at the same time you know it's reducing God to ends communy so metaphysically I think that's where they in my judgment where they come they're getting something right but not the total picture because the real God is a person who has a personal relationship with us who's moving us and shaping us according to his purposes that's not the abstract pantheist principle you know please thanks father I just have a question about a problem of language you spoke about God being beyond categories and non definable and it seems that there is a problem that you run into and even being able to speak about God in the first place and yeah and how do we resolve this issue that your entire talk just made sense to me but under those kind of definitions of God it seems like any utterances about God would be meaningless yeah because that's taking you too far it's it's right to say God can't be defined and that's Thomas Aquinas page one of the Summa you can't set limits to God but can you set certain language on a trajectory toward God yes and can you recognize that as relatively adequate compared to other types of language that are on a wrong trajectory yes so that's the way to play it I think we can never name God the way I can name you so I can start naming you right now just by looking at you if I looked you up on Google I find out more about you and I talk to people that know you I can start naming you you know more or less clearly I can never name God that way but I can send certain words on a trajectory that are going toward God but he always remains as I say there agnostic you know it's what we don't know about God that really matters but we can say with relative adequacy I think certain things about God thank you okay yes sir thank thank you Father I was wondering if you could say something about miracles because there's a lot of hatred and abhorrence for the idea that God can act directly within his creation both on the atheist and even within lots of modern theology people want to really restrict God's action within creation down to the bare minimum necessary to have Orthodox faith in Christ yeah could you help me understand the source of that hatred and then say something about how we should think about miracles and yeah in relation to that and go back at least to David Hume you know his book is still influential but to me the argument of it has not improved with age it was bad in the 18th century has not got any better in my judgment but yet is still I mean undergraduates all across the country read David Hume on miracles I think that settles the issue yeah here's the quick thing I'll say can we talk about God's presence in ever increasing intensity so is God present right now yes sustaining moving influencing all of us right now absolutely I couldn't do this without God I couldn't think I couldn't speak without God in you we live and move and have our being Lord you search me you know me you know my am i rising and so all of that is true but then can we talk about more and more intense expressions of God's influence and presence yeah why can't God concentrate things in a very intense way and call that the miraculous if you want I'm with Augustine who says it's not so much the violation of the laws of nature but a speeding up an intensification of the law guy within nature you know his famous example of the changing the water into wine right Augustine says it happens all the time rain water comes down it goes into the earth comes up through vines becomes grapes which gets crushed and fermented they become wine it happens all the time but what happened at Cana was it happen very intensely and quickly and with a certain spiritual purpose his point there is it we don't have to play the game of God like breaking into his own creation they are said that it said that God enters his creation the way an artist enters his studio the artist doesn't break into his own studio you know so I would say that the non competitiveness but then can God express his presence in a very focused intense way yes and that's the miraculous I say please thank you Father can you say something about philosophy and theology and how to make them more than just academic disciplines but how to make them food for prayer yeah good and you're right that's a good intuition I'm with the PRA Dodi read his books you know the great student of classical philosophy who said that in the ancient world philosophy was a was a minimum it was a way of life and that comes true through in Plato doesn't really clearly we think oh I'm studying platonic philosophy because he we've all our educational system is predicated upon higher mockers University of Berlin circa 1815 professor comes out like I am at a podium and delivers a lecture everyone listens and takes notes that's one way to do it but that wasn't classical of philosophy at all but rather it was a whole way of life it was like a monastery Amma like joining a form of life it wasn't a medieval style the question of this patata that's not a lecturer coming out and talking it's not the Oxford style of Attu her and his student you know so I think there's we're philosophy now in theology their ways of life see I always tell my students at Mundelein when you read the the parable of a cave which we all read in philosophy 101 but that's so important isn't it because what Plato is talking about there is that delicious moment that an unforgettable moment when you really do break out of this world because the minute you say and you really get it two plus three equals five and you get that you really get that it's not like oh there's this and there's that and then three other things no but you're getting it as an abstract proposition you've left this world in some very real way you've left the world of ordinary even essence and you've entered an eternal realm you've you've broken out of something you know you've broken into a higher world Bertrand Russell whom I don't like but said at one point mathematics is always the ground of all religion and there's something very right about that the pythagoras and company you know it's when you break out of the even SM everyday world into a higher world that's of enormous spiritual significance and I think philosophy at its best affects that sort of transformation and then of course theology even a fortiori theology is is a way of life it's a form of life in the story about Gregory the wonder-worker Gregory Thumb a Turkish who comes to origin and he says I want to learn your doctrine in order to said first you will live our life and then you will know our doctrine that's right it's like I want to know the rules of baseball well don't do it that way play baseball play baseball and then you'll know the rules from the inside you know I always say that one of our problems after the council is we it's like teaching baseball by leading with the infield fly rule okay you want to learn baseball well first time we talked about the infield fly rule well I love the infield fly rule too gets a cool thing it makes the game better but see when I was coming of age the Catholic Church debated with itself about sex largely and authority and reproductive morality great I mean nothing wrong with anything these are good questions entertained by good people but I submit to you as someone that grew up during that time that does not make for compelling evangelization you know saying it doesn't it's good and important but much better live our life come live our life come see what this is about and then you'll understand the rules from the inside philosophy and theology contribute I think too that you know please well father my questions about dialogue and part of New Evangelization so for me like right now sitting for example seeing your talk everything's like kindly said ringing the bells like everything is just there and I understand in what in my capacity however if I were to have a conversation with somebody who is you know a new atheist as well and like you just said it's just like they have some truth to it but they miss the mark it's just like Oh like there's some moral to it but the same time you're wrong but in my mind like Oh like I know the answer to this or like but I can't get the dialogue out anyway I'm having such a hard time like even going in the New Evangelization yeah just because it's like I know this but it's like well I'll write your 10 page letter but I mean that that's just my style but at the same time it's like in the moment in the present moment now ya can give me some advice or anybody here who has trouble with this ya know it's it's a very good question I wrestle at all the time because I'm dealing with atheists all the time and what you said echoing an earlier remark I think is the right thing is to find the positive point of contact there's always something in the perspective being enunciated that's right like Herbert McCabe saying to the atheist you're absolutely right the god you're dismissing I would dismiss - or the view you're defending there's something right about it so start with that start with that the point of contact and then build on it say you're right here but I think here's the problem if you go too far so I always do that look for the semi NAVAIR be as the father said right the seeds of the word we're the seeds of the word even in the most violently opposing position you can find them and then start with that I think also it's so hard I know the internet thing I get drawn into it on time you make a video or something or you write an article then somebody in the combo you know and it's so infuriating you know you read this thing in like muddy I'm talking about and then you come back count count to ten you know I've had to myself count to ten there's a person behind that obnoxious comment there's a there's a person that has to be engaged and then try to find that point of contact I think is a good starting point but also I tell a Catholic I tell all of you especially young people is um learn the great tradition I mean this call at the end of my paper for a new apologetics by God we need it you know and like all everyone loves us and just reach out to the culture well they don't all love us you know and cultures are evangelical II ambiguous there are good things and we should we should engage them and there are bad things and we should oppose them we should know how to oppose them so I think learn our own great tradition so we can come at people even the very best guy on the web he works for war on fire now is Brandon Vaud the you know that name vo GT Brandon's got a website called strange notions that is designed to reach out to atheists and it's really good he's some of the best people in the country writing with him and for him go check out his website thank you please hold all right howdy follow the headers let's get ready I'm just a break from really philosophical theological questions more on the pastoral side is because she was talking about you talk a little bit about the beginning in the beginning of your talk about how new atheists and these this movement that's coming about really attacking a straw god kind of the notion of what bringing about the notion of what God isn't maybe we could maybe you could help us figure out some ways in which to enlighten the new atheist that are often under the discipleship of say like cult of dusty the amazing atheists you know about Bill Maher an example move for on on ad infinitum but um of bringing them beyond just that notion of just a straw god really getting them the think about the sense of religion or theology or God in himself in a new a light that's kind of foreign to them almost but somehow closer to a realization of transporting what God is even though we just talked about that but uh yeah you know sorry yeah no that's what the paper was about in some ways was trying to do just that is there's a much richer and healthier understanding of God and you're right the Bill Maher's and company don't have it they don't know that and in some ways in some ways we are to blame that we've been very poor at propagating our own view of God and uh so that's what we have to do I think is Rhian habit our own great tradition and bring that to bear the only guys see that Marv never lets people on the show that really would fight with him he had Ross dolphin on one time you know Rasta elephant rights for the new york times one of the only kind of traditional religious voices in the new york times and he was good he was waiting with bill maher but I think resource our great tradition yeah use it thank you we have just about five minutes left for questions sure go ahead thank you Father back to the topic of philosophy and theology a little bit in their interrelation Nam you shared with us that when you're in high school you had this moment of grace where you're going to struck by the reality of God yeah and I'm just wondering if you could share a few thoughts on the degree to which you think it's necessary to have those moments of grace or infused virtue of faith as the points we call it in order to kind of really grasp this metaphysical understanding God when she shared with us yeah there's a lot to that um are there preamble to the faith to use Thomas's language of the rational pass we can follow even outside of that explicit embrace of grace sure and we should use those but I'm with you I think the fullness of it comes through a gift a graze where God invites you into real intimacy and fellowship and that is what happened to me I think when I was a kid is it was an embrace of of God's grace and probably without that you won't really get what it's meant to do marry 10 has is you know intuition to being that sort of thing is that quasi philosophical is it more mystical you know we can debate that I think you're right I think you need God's personal outreach ready to lift you up into intimacy with him you know thank you please uh thank you favorite your time father um one of thomas aquinas a--'s arguments for God's existence I know relies upon a an impossibility of infinite regress yeah regression yeah um but I've come across some people who have said that's not necessarily the case how would you respond to the heck yeah it's an old problem Bertrand Russell for example had a really almost comically inadequate approach that when he said that the reason time is denied that was he couldn't imagine infinite sets which certainly isn't the case Thomas is denying to use a technical language a infinite series a infinite causal series subordinated per se not pair accidents Thomas accepts a the possibility of an infinite set of things there's no problem with that more to it an infinite causal series subordinated pair accidents by which he means in which one element of the series is depending not immediately upon the previous one but only accidentally for example I dependent on my father to give rise to my being my father God Rustom is been dead for a long time and yet I'm here I don't have a purse a relationship with him right now causally speaking Thomas thought that kind of series could go back indefinitely so that's a philosophical possibility thought it's only a causal theories subordinated per se whereby one element is here now dependent upon the previous element that kind of chain can't be infinite why in that kind of chain alone you suppress the first element you press all subsequent elements and therefore the contingent event you can see before your eyes so it's that particular mode of infinite regress of Thomas denies oftentimes in these debates people will bring out certain mathematical forms and sort of thing that is very little to do with it you know Thomas would have no problem with that it's a particular modality of a causal series that he thinks precludes the possibility of infinite regress thank you thank you Father I have a question about this idea that you know it's not the best strategy to lead with the infield fly rule - yeah you know try to evangelize and I grew that completely I wonder do you see any tension in that idea now in kind of these times where it seems that the church is under increasing attack or has to defend its kind of views on for example sexuality the family increasingly assertively how do you kind of reconcile the need to win yeah I that's available I think somebody has shifted I was talking about the time after the council when the church was largely debating with itself over these things but you're right something new has happened which is a newly aggressive secularism is coming after our views and especially around family issues and I think yes that probably does invite if you want some what more pugnacious engagement so I think yeah that's a different game in some ways something is shifted and I think we do have to be legitimately defensive I mean we just highlighted over dinner I think it's so obvious that with the breakdown of the family it said so many implications for the breakdown of the society and I think that point should be made clearly and Christians shouldn't just be falling down the canvas all time but we should get up and engage precisely on that point if the family is the building block of society as church teaching has always said then a compromised family is a compromised society in a very deep way so I think you know maybe we do need to be a bit more pugnacious there you know yeah one more how we doing go ahead okay thank your father I was just wondering if you could clarify what you mean by um continual creation versus just a kind of deistic perspective of God creating once and then stepping back yeah and furthermore how we can bring that understanding to others who may who may be reading some of these new atheists or kind of falling for this sort of view yeah oh good I'll put it in real stark terms creation is the relationship that obtains between if zoom si and finite things it's a way to put it and so the very act of existence itself God must from moment to moment to stay the being of a contingent thing namely at you and me Thomas says the way light is in the air so the minute the light's gone the air is dark you know it's not like heat and water where the water can maintain at the heat for a while my being here and now depends upon God at every detail in you we live and move and have our being and so that's what creation means it means that did that obtain at the time of the Big Bang sure sure is it obtaining now yeah of course so what's interesting is that not so much the temporality of a way back when something to happen well fine let the physicists discuss that til the cows can let them decide that's not really a theological issue the theological issue was the metaphysical one here thank you all right why we solved everything thank you all

Channel: University of St. Thomas | Minnesota

Views: 369,881

Keywords: University of St. Thomas, UST, Tommies, Fr. Barron, Thomas Aquinas, New Atheists

Id: -NMex7qk5GU

Length: 84min 53sec (5093 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 13 2015