Pints With Aquinas - 133: Aquinas on Evangelizing Muslims with Dr. David Bertaina

Episode Date: November 20, 2018

Please become a Patron of Pints With Aquinas here. In today's episode of Pints With Aquinas we're joined around the bar table by Dr. David Bertaina to discuss how to evanelize Muslims. We take a look at a lesser known work of Thomas' called, in English, Reasons for the Faith Against Muslim Objections to the Cantor of Antioch Which, btw, I just paid to have turned into an audiobook. Patrons, have at it. It's free for y'all. SPONSORS EL Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/  Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/  GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show. LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd MY BOOKS  Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform  

G'day, welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd. If you could sit down over a pint of beer with Thomas Aquinas and ask him any one question, what would it be? In today's episode, I'm joined around the bar table by Dr. David Bertana, who is a historian at the University of Illinois. And we're going to discuss how we should evangelize Muslims. We're going to discuss how we should evangelize Muslims. So I'm going to take a look at a lesser known work of Thomas Aquinas, which you're going to love. Here we go. All right. Good to have you with us here at Pints with Aquinas. This is the show where you and I pull up a barstool next to the angelic doctor to discuss theology and philosophy.

So it's not Pints with Aquinas for me today. It's herbal tea. I am just past my first week of Exodus 90. Many of you are aware of Exodus 90. Let me see. I just want to make sure I get this thing right. You should check them out if you want to do something super great. It's a spiritual exercise program for Catholic men. I think you could say exodus90.com. If you plug in my name, just Matt, you get a discount. But it's really cool. I'm doing it with a bunch of guys right now. We're taking cold showers and fasting from a bunch of stuff, not watching television or YouTube.

Yeah, it's really cool. So anyway, that's why I'm drinking a herbal tea, like a loser. Yeah, really excited about today's episode. So this is cool, right? So Dr. David Bettainer and I start chatting, and we're talking about how to evangelize Muslims, what Thomas Aquinas has to say and so forth. Well, one thing I wasn't aware of was there was this awesome doc, this is awesome work of Thomas Aquinas, which I had never heard of until today's episode. It's called Reasons for the Faith Against Muslim Objections to the Cantor of Antioch. This is a powerful work of Thomas Aquinas, which as I said, hadn't ever heard of before. So halfway through, he starts quoting from it. I'm like, wait, what's this? And I pull it up online and we start reading it together. Oh my gosh, I was totally blown away. And so what I

decided to do is I've paid somebody to record this work as an audio book. So this is just available for our patrons. And as you know, we're doing a whole thing this month where we're trying to get more and more patrons in so that we can do more and more cool things. So if you're listening today, you haven't supported Pints with Aquinas and you want to, if you give me $10 or more a month, I'm going to send you a Pints with Aquinas car magnet, which is exclusive just to this kind of a promotion. You'll get a chance to win one of three five-volume sets of the Summa Theologiae, and I will record a private personal video message just to say thanks to you. And you also get access to all these other things. That's what's great about

Patreon. You show me your support, and then I'm able to kind of give you all this stuff in return. And one of those things is this, I say document, but like, it's 21 pages. Like it's really, it's quite substantive. And you can go and listen to this for yourself. I think there's a lot of people out there, they want to be exposed to Thomas Aquinas, not just what other people think about Thomas Aquinas, but Thomas Aquinas. And this is why we strive really hard in every episode of Pines with Aquinas to read directly from the man. really hard in every episode of Pints with Aquinas to read directly from the man. Well, we have a growing library of audio content, audio books, which are exclusive just for patrons. This is one of them. So again, go to patreon.com slash Matt Fradd, or you can go to pintswithaquinas.com and click donate. As soon as you give me 10 bucks a month, all of this online content like this

audio book is available to you. We also have papal encyclicals on Thomas Aquinas, which you can listen to. So it's just a great way to educate yourself and become more familiar with Thomas Aquinas. And you get all those other free things in return. So please, if you haven't supported the show, do that now. Go to pintswithaquinas.com, click donate, and once you give us $10 or more a month, you get all that free stuff in return, plus the car magnet. I know that sounds kind of lame. Maybe it doesn't. I don't know.

But it's a big, big, it's like a bust of Thomas Aquinas, and it's based off like a traditional painting, but it's in a kind of cartoonish sort of style. It looks really cool, actually. So thank you to everybody who supports me, and thank you to all of those of you out there who will. All right, here's the show. Enjoy. Yeah, thank you so much for being on the show. We've addressed Islam a couple of times in the past, but I know we're going to get into much greater detail in this show. Would you mind telling me, since this is the first time we've ever chatted,

and our listeners a bit about yourself? Sure. So, I first studied my undergraduate at St. Mary's College in the San Francisco Bay Area, and following that, I went to Duke University and did a master's in theological studies there, focusing on the history of Christianity, and I had the privilege to be able to study abroad in Germany. At that point, I realized that the facility in languages was going to be essential in studying the history of Christianity. I wanted to do it. What if we stay in the exact same place where Jesus is and look eastward rather than moving west, which we traditionally do in a lot of our historical accounts of Catholic history? What if we stay with the Christians living there? And so, I went to the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.,

and I was in their Semitics program, and I focused on Arabic and Syriac literature along with Coptic language and Ethiopic. And through that, I studied through the languages of the Christian East. And so my specialty is in the period basically from the Quran through the Crusades, looking at a lot of the Christian Arabic literature and Islamic literature from that period. Wow, fascinating stuff. And what are you doing today? Are you teaching? That's right. Today, I serve as department chair in the history department at the University of Illinois in Springfield.

And here, my job is to teach most of the courses that cover late antiquity, the early medieval era, and religious history. So I teach courses on Bible and Quran, Christian-Muslim encounters, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, things like that. encounters, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, things like that. Speaking of, you said, facing east, my family and I attend a Byzantine church, and we just got out the, we got a new house recently, got out the compass and found out where east was to build our icon. That's right. That's essential. Yes, we have our icons also set up, making sure that they're facing east in the morning.

Yeah, beautiful. Are you a Roman Catholic? Yes. In fact, my story, I was baptized Roman Catholic. My parents divorced when I was young, and I was raised in the Episcopal Church. And due to some fantastic exposure to the Catholic faith I had at St. Mary's, and I had an intellectual conversion very similar to what we see with John Henry Newman and his understanding of the development of doctrine. And so I had a reversion to the Catholic faith at that time. Fantastic. Well, as I say, we've done some episodes before and mainly read that big excerpt from Thomas Aquinas from the Summa Contra Gentiles. And

what he has to say about Muhammad and the origins of Islam are certainly not flattering. No, Thomas is always getting his information second and third hand about Islam, and so he's not always working from, you know, the full information, but at the same time, he's thoroughly enmeshed in the kinds of discussions that Muslim philosophers are having at the same time. You know, for instance, he's constantly quoting from the Averroes all the time. And so, despite his perspective on Muhammad reflects that of his time, absolutely. And it's not unlike that that we find with his contemporary, St. Francis, as well. But they have very different perspectives on that because Francis goes out, he encounters the Sultan al-Kamil in Egypt during the Crusades. The Franciscans are going out,

and many of the Dominicans are doing the same thing. They're preaching to the Muslims in Spain, in North Africa, in the Middle East. Thomas is in connection with those people, but he doesn't seem to take the time to read a lot of what's going on with a lot of his other colleagues at the time period. But that doesn't make him uninterested in what's going on, and quite the contrary. So we can talk about certainly that and his reasons for the faith against Muslim objections today. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but he certainly had a respect for Averroes in that he referred to him as the translator, is my understanding, in the Summa

Theologiae. So like he calls Aristotle the philosopher, I believe he calls Averroes the translator. Is that right? Yes, that's correct. And then St. John of Damascus is the Damascene. And so those three become, you know, the three authorities that he refers to. And Averroes is so important because of his tradition. Averroes dies in 1198, so he's very close to a contemporary with St. Thomas Aquinas. But because of his influence, his critiques of Neoplatonism and his arguments for Aristotelianism, his works get translated and they ignite part of the trends that start with and continue with the Thomas. And, you know, he gets accused of Averroism, you know, of these readings of Catholic theology through Aristotle as interpreted by Averroes. Well, and we really have the Muslims to thank in part for bringing Aristotle to the West, don't we? Well, yes and no. Arabic philosophy, I suppose, in general.

It's just something people aren't that familiar with when they think of Muslims. They don't think of the great contribution the Arabic philosophers brought to the West, I suppose. Absolutely. But you know more than me, so you correct me if I'm wrong there. Yes, it is yes and no, because a lot of the translation that took place, a lot of this took place in translation movements in Baghdad under the Abbasid Caliphate, and they took place in Spain under the Cordoba Caliphate, and a lot of those translations were done, and a number of those translations that

were done were done from Greek, and often cases in Syriac, into Arabic, and then those Arabic translations eventually made their way into Latin translations, most especially in Spain. Sometimes they made their way into the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire and then make their way to the Italian Peninsula that way. So that's the yes, absolutely they play a large role in the translation and preservation of some of the philosophical knowledge. But at the same time, a lot of the translators were actually Christians who were doing these translations. And so I'm fine with talking about that as long as we don't miss the point that when a Muslim caliph asked for a translation, they would usually talk to a Christian who was a Syriac-speaking, who would go and who knew Greek and who knew

Syriac and who knew Arabic were trilingual, and they would take those texts, they would translate them into Arabic to make them accessible for the Islamic community, but also for their Christian community, because the Christians in the Middle East are starting to speak Arabic over the course of the pre-Crusader era, by the Crusader era, they're all speaking Arabic or Syriac with Arabic together bilingually. And so, it's these translations. And the same thing in Spain, that a number of the translators and some of the translations were done not by Muslims, but they were often done by Jews who were working in collaboration with Christians, and the Christian would often work on the Latin, and the Jewish member might work on the Arabic, and together

these teams of collaborators would put together these Latin translations. You know, people often think of the 13th century as a rather idyllic time. You know, you think of Thomas Aquinas sitting contemplatively in front of a fire, cracking out the Summa Congentile, the Summa Theologiae, but it was a rather tumultuous time. I mean, you've got the new translations of Aristotle, you've got the rise of the Mendicant orders, and then the threat of Islam would be another one of these things. That's right. And so, one thing I wanted to mention, now's as good a time as any, is that there's this, here I'm in Springfield, Illinois, it's not too far from St. Louis. And if you go to the St. Louis Art Museum there, which is in Forest Park there, what you'll see there is an image of St. Thomas Aquinas confounding Averroes.

And this was done by Giovanni di Paolo, who was an Italian, who did it around 1445 to 1450. But why it's important is it shows St. Thomas sitting at the pulpit demonstrating the truth of the Catholic faith, and there down in front of him sitting on the ground is Averroes, who is distraught over the superiority of Thomas's teachings and so forth. And so, it's really interesting to see already this idea of debate and the arguments and that these discussions were at the point where immediately following, and in the centuries following Thomas's death, that they continue to have these portraits and ideas of disputation were part of, and the expectation and part and parcel of the culture that we don't always know about. Now, for those of you, those who are listening right now,

they're not that familiar with Averroes and his contribution, maybe speak a bit about that, and then also, I suppose, how, why it was that Aquinas confounded Averroes in the idea of this painter. Well, Averroes is interesting because he starts to write, he's originally from Islamic Spain. He was born under the Almoravid Empire. So the Alm Almoravids controlled the southern third of the Spanish peninsula, and eventually, by the time he grew into adulthood, the Almohads, who were another group from North Africa, took over, and so he wrote under them as well. And this is right on the cusp of the beginning of the final conquest. Verrues dies in 1198. The Reconquista, by 1250, basically takes over everything except for the Granada, the kingdom in Granada, and that's about

it. So, he's right on the cusp of the declining Islamic presence in Spain. But at the same time, he is not like the traditional Sunni philosophers or the traditional thinkers in Sunni tradition. By and large, by this point, thanks to Al-Ghazali, who was an important thinker who died in 1111, so roughly 100 years earlier, a lot of people through Ghazali in the Islamic tradition rejected philosophy as the best method for knowing God, and instead focused on a type of theology that focused on a particular thinker named al-Ash'ari. And within al-Ash'ari's tradition, the idea was that we can know God especially through his divine attributes, and we can approach it, but at the same time, we should not try to

understand God purely based on philosophy, but instead focused on the Quran, the Quran and hadith or tradition-based understanding. And so, even during Averroes' lifetime, his books are burned. He is rejected by other Muslims. He is put in exile. He's forced to live in the Jewish community outside of Cordoba in Spain. And so, there was this growing disillusionment with philosophy that takes place during Averroes' life. And so, it's kind of interesting that just as the Muslims are rejecting some of these philosophical approaches. Thomas and others are taking these rediscovery of Aristotle, and Aristotelianism are reinvigorating it within the Catholic tradition.

Was it this disillusionment with philosophy that led to the double truth theory? And was that something kind of put forth by Averroes or some of the so-called Latin Averroists? That I'm not quite sure on, so I can't speak to that exactly with him. But of course, this idea of Aquinas confounding Averroes, I suppose the idea is that he was able to reconcile faith and reason in a way that Averroes, because he's coming from an Islamic point of view, was unable to do. Would that be fair? Yes, absolutely. Thomas is able to engage other thinkers as well in ways that Averroes is not capable of doing.

Thomas is not only speaking with, he's communicating with Christians who are in the Middle East, Orthodox Christians with Muslims, and Averroes is not able to do that during his lifetime. The irony, of course, is that his ideas spread after his death, but during his life that his works are rejected by his community around him. Of course, Thomas had his own experiences, not unlike that, during his lifetime as well, that he's not without controversy. Was the Summa Contra Gentiles, I mean, it was originally written, correct me if I'm wrong, to help convert the Muslims, correct? Yes, yes. How successful was that? Was that something that was actually, and did that end up being used?

actually, and did that end up being used? Well, it's not so much that it is used directly for discussions, but it becomes a handbook for philosophical assumptions that you need to know in order to engage in debate. These are the kinds of things that you need to be ready to discuss. And so, there's no doubt, and of course, Thomas Aquinas, he writes one work in particular that hasn't been given as much thought, hasn't been given as much attention called De Razzinobibs Fide Contra Saracenos Grecos Ad Arminos Ad Cantorum Antiochium. It's very impressive. Yeah, what does that mean? Antioch. It's very impressive. Yeah, what does that mean? On the rationality of the faith against the Saracens, the Greeks,

and the Armenians to the Cantor of Antioch. All right, pause. This is the work that I referred to in the introduction, in which I paid somebody to record professionally as an audiobook. Again, that's available right now to you if you are a patron of Pints with Aquinas or if you choose to be. Also, patrons, you might be being a little lost here with all this talk of Arabic philosophy. I took a course on Arabic philosophy and so I've created a little kind of overview of Arabic philosophy in the form of a video which I've just uploaded to the Patreon wall. So, go watch that. It'll help you understand the greater context here. Who are the Greeks? The Orthodox? Yes, absolutely. The Orthodox and

the Armenians, of course, for their heresy of monophysitism that they're accused of in this time period. And so this particular work, he does write, he writes it to a Dominican cantor who is in Antioch. Antioch by the 1200s has been under Roman Catholic rule for a couple hundred years. Everyone who lives there was born, raised, and had their entire life there. And the Dominicans who are serving there, they're serving alongside Franciscans. They're serving along Greek Orthodox Christians, Armenian Christians. There are Muslims who are merchants and traders that they're speaking with. There are certainly the Syriac-speaking Christians called the Jacobites as well. And so the cantor there ends up asking a series of questions to Thomas because of questions

he'd been given by Muslims. And so, he decides, well, I'm going to ask the most preeminent Dominican thinker of our time, I'm going to send these over to Thomas. And so, Thomas writes back this letter on the rationality of the faith, reasons for the faith, against the Saracens replying to these questions. And this is one of the— Sorry to cut you off there. Yeah. I was going to say, what does Saracens mean?

Where does that word come from? Yeah, the word Saracen was the commonly used term used in the medieval era by Western Christians when they referred to Muslims. And the reason they use Saracen is there are a couple of debates about where it comes from. One of them is that it comes from Sarah Kenoy, Sarah meaning Sarah, the wife of Abraham, and Kenoy, the one who is empty in the kenosis, the idea of emptying to get out. And so, that Sarah is the one who got rid of the Ishmael, who got rid of Hagar and Ishmael. And so, because of that, the Saracens are the ones who were taken away. We also have the tradition of the, but the more likely tradition is that Saracen means

simply a tent dweller. And the word Saracen actually predates the existence of Islam and Muslims, and it was referred to Arabs or nomadic peoples, so tent dwellers. And so Saracen was a non-polemical term, but by the medieval era, it became a polemical term that was just used widely not only for Arabs, but for anyone who held the Islamic faith. I've never read this work of Thomas'. Is it long? It's not. It's probably in its modern edition about 20 pages in length. Wow. about 20 pages in length. He wrote it in probably around 1264 is what is considered, so around 10 years before his death when he was in Orvieto. And we don't know who the Cantor of Antioch was,

specifically who it was who was writing to him. But there were several times when Thomas makes reference to the Summa Contra several times when Thomas makes reference to the Summa Contra Gentiles, which makes it clear that the cantor has access to that and was using it in his discussions or would have used it as. But there are some new questions that aren't addressed in there that this Dominican was asking Thomas about. And so, some of the main questions in there were about the Trinity. How do we explain the Trinity to these Christians who say that if there was a Trinity, that it must have been connected in some type of carnal way that there was a Trinity? How could God have some type of a carnal relation with humanity?

The second key point in there is the incarnation. And so, again, these are right in Thomas' roundhouse, but he has to explain the incarnation to someone who's a Muslim who doesn't have any understanding of the idea that... Oh my gosh, I am so excited to read this, I can't even tell you. Yeah, how can, in God's transcendence, how can you actually talk to someone who, if they believe God is completely transcendent, that he could come down with someone who, if you reject the idea that God, through love, comes down to have a relationship with humankind, how do you talk to someone about the Incarnation? How did he do, do you think? I mean,

was his explanations quite convincing? Yeah. Ones that we might you think? I mean, was his explanations quite convincing? Yeah. Ones that we might apply today, I mean, you know, without... Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, of course, with Thomas, you know, you have to know the Aristotelian terminology. So they're the kinds of things where you would need to go through either very slowly or in carefully in order to explain some of these issues. But it's a good starting point because typically Muslims, when they have discussions with Christians, they want to talk about Trinity and Incarnation, and those are the two topics they want to talk about.

And they don't want to talk about other topics. The reason being that Trinity and Incarnation are central parts of the Quran, the rejection of the Trinity and the rejection of, or polytheism in general, the rejection of the incarnation of Jesus Christ's divinity. And so, they're comfortable with that because then it puts them on their terms. And so, if a Christian wants to talk to a Muslim more productively, then actually Trinity and incarnation are two of the ones where you need to stick to more philosophical terms in order to avoid a simple scriptural quotation, proof texting, because then it falls into that where they'll simply proof text the Quran. And so, there's a lot of productivity you can have on other questions like, what is Eucharist? Or what does God will for us? What kind of,

do we have free will? These are the kinds of questions that also appear in this, on the reasons for the faith. I'm just looking at this document right now. He is such a sublime writer. I just want to read just a couple of quick paragraphs here. He's talking about how to argue with unbelievers. And I like this line. He says, yet whatever comes from the supreme truth cannot be false, and what is not false cannot be repudiated by any necessary reason, just as our faith cannot be proved by necessary reasons because it exceeds the human mind, so because of its truth it cannot be refuted by any necessary reason. Yes, yes, absolutely. So he just makes it very clear in that particular quote why it's necessary to engage Muslims and do it in a way that truth is there, truth is truth.

And we can defend the truth rather than prove the truth. Gosh, listen to this language of his. First of all, we must observe that Muslims are silly in ridiculing us for holding that Christ is the Son of the Living God, as if God had a wife. Yes. as if God had a wife. Yes. So, this is getting into his first question about, yeah, how can the generation be not carnal?

You know, right? This gets to his idea, you know, Thomas' idea when he talks about the mind and the intellect being part of the mind and how we move from a concept of the mind, which is an interior thing or an accident, And through that, then, we also give voice or a word, an exterior word of the intellect, which is an accident. But at the same time, when we understand God's generation, it's not in that carnal sense. It's not an offspring. He has a great discussion of this. He said, the word of God is not an accident or a part of God. It was simple, nor something extrinsic to the divine nature,

but is something complete, subsisting in the divine nature and coming forth from another as any word must be. In our human way of talking, this is called a son, because it comes forth from another in its likeness and subsists in the same nature with it. So, his discussion of the incarnation is a way that he gets around a lot of the Muslim critiques of how can this be a carnal way or how can the incarnation be understood as anything other than violating God's unity, the oneness of God. And so, he makes the point here that this is still the divine nature and it's the misunderstanding of the difference between

essence and accidents which causes this misunderstanding. Yeah, my gosh. You know, we could learn a lot from this as far as, you know, meeting people where they're at and beginning to argue from there rather than sort of beginning to argue from premises our interlocutors don't accept. How familiar was Thomas? It sounds like not very. How familiar was he with Muslims on a personal level? We know that he probably never spoke with Muslims directly or debated with them directly based on the way that he responds to these kinds of questions because he starts from a Catholic basis in his framing of questions. He never makes any references to the Quran at any point in his debates, which the

cantor in Antioch is referencing them. That's why he's trying to get some responses to them. And while he's read Averroes, he doesn't seem to know any of his historical context. And so with no quotations of the Quran, with no references to some of their historical tradition, or some of the internal arguments Muslims were having, that we assume that most of his knowledge is coming secondhand. But at the same time, he understands what's going on in their discussions. That doesn't mean that he doesn't understand them at all. So he wasn't that familiar on a personal level. What about a literary level? So it doesn't sound like he'd read the Quran. Correct. Yeah, as far as the other writings, perhaps. Yeah, he seems to have a very good, strong understanding of how we should talk to

Muslims in particular about Trinity, about incarnation, in ways that will avoid some of the most common critiques that come up. For instance, when there were debates, there were a number of different Muslims who often would make critiques of Catholic theology. And so he seems to be really able to respond to them. Some examples would be Ali al-Tabari, who lived in the 9th century. He was a convert from Christianity to Islam at the end of his life. And so, he wrote a critique of Christianity at the end of his life. Or another figure living in the 9th century named Abu Isa al-Warraq.

al-Warraq wrote a critique of both the Trinity and the Incarnation, and Thomas's responses, although they're not directly, we see that he doesn't have direct knowledge of that particular text, he knows how to answer the kinds of critiques that Alvar Ack makes in his critiques of Christianity, of Christian doctrine. Yeah. What do you think we can learn from Aquinas here? You know, because it sounds like even though he wasn't that familiar with the primary scriptures, he certainly did his best, like he always did, it would seem, to understand where his opponent was coming from. Yeah, I really...

I don't mean to put it so adversarial, you know, but his interlocutor. Yes, absolutely. I think that, in particular, I think this really comes out in his discussion in the fifth chapter of this work on the reasons for the faith. And in this particular section, he reminds us of what is the purpose or end, our telos, of all human life. And he reminds us that rightly ordered love is to love God above all things as our supreme good and to refer to Him in everything that we love as our ultimate goal and to observe the proper order in loving other things by preferring spiritual to bodily goods. spiritual to bodily goods. And he reminds us, he says, when you're talking to other people, that nothing can provoke love more than to know that one is loved. And so, you know, he reminds us that, again, of this tradition that goes all the way back to Paul in the New Testament, that

God has loved us, and exactly it's this particular love, and this is the reason why the Incarnation happens. I'm reading it as you're speaking. It is glorious. People sometimes make fun of him saying his writings are very dry, but this is not dry. No, not at all. I mean, this gets to his idea of the final beatific vision is enjoyment, blessed enjoyment and happiness, and that we desire, all humans desire to be united in happiness with God. And so, this can only happen through God becoming man. And so, when he makes this point, I think he understands that when speaking with Muslims, that it's important to remind and focus on the discussion that it isn't just that dry philosophical idea, which even philosophy itself is not dry, but

the perception that one might have of it, but that it is this telos, this end and this love, this ultimate happiness to which we're directed. And I think that's a great way to continue a debate or a conversation is to focus on how does God love us? Why does God love us? How could God love us more? How do we see that in our life? And those kinds of questions are the ones that Thomas knows, even without speaking or debating with Muslims. He understands that. Yeah, I just got to read a couple of lines here for our listeners, because I'm getting

blown away here. Rightly ordered love is to love God above all things as our supreme good and refer to him everything that we love as our ultimate goal and to observe the proper order in loving other things by preferential good. You already said that. I love this bit, to excite our love towards God. There was no more powerful way than that the word of God through whom all things remain should assume our human nature in order to restore it. Yeah, just these ideas, you know, nothing provokes love as love. I mean, I know that, just these ideas, you know, nothing provokes love as love. I mean, I know that as a married man. You know, if I get the sense that my wife is being affectionate to me and giving me the benefit of the doubt and really wants my good, you know, I'm more willing to trust her, to love her back, you know, to respond in kind and vice

versa. Well, what are we to do when the God of the universe does that towards us? Well, what are we to do when the God of the universe does that towards us? Oh, just, this is just, you know, this is a wonderful, wonderful thing. Now, what do you do when you're talking to someone who rejects that notion, though? Who says that by God's very nature, God is transcendent, and God is not something to participate in a divine happiness or love with, because God does not require that in God's omnipotence, and God is complete, God is perfect already as God is, and so therefore there is nothing which God could have added to God's self or that would benefit God from having or participating with humanity in this sort of a way. So how do you

respond to someone that understands that? I remember meeting a Muslim at a Catholic church, incidentally, in Dublin, and we got to talking. I'm not even sure why he was there. And he told me about his perception of God as a sort of sort of someone who has slaves but not sons. At least this is how he was articulating it. And I spoke to him about the love of God, and you could tell that he looked at me almost like it were blasphemous or weak or something. Yeah, I think this is one of the things that Catholics and all Christians in general have to recognize, is that while Muslims do want to talk about the Trinity,

they want to talk about the Incarnation because those are comfort zones, that it's important to talk about things that are important and comfortable and central to our Catholic faith and help Muslims to understand that more because the only way that dialogue is possible is through people understanding one another. And so we have a responsibility to explain, in particular, things that emphasize that God is not just transcendent, but God, and we are made in the image of God, and God has come down to us, especially in Jesus Christ. And there are two ways we see that, especially that Thomas talks about in his writing on the reasons of the faith.

One is on the cross, and the other one is on the Eucharist. So, you want to talk about the cross a little bit first? Yeah, let's go. Let's do it. So, in the Cantor of Antioch, he writes to Thomas, and he says, the Muslims, the Muslims ridicule the fact that we say that Christ, the Son of God, was crucified for the salvation of the human race. For if God is all-powerful, he could have saved the human race without the suffering of his Son. And he also could have constituted humankind in such a way that we would not be able to sin. So, why do we need a cross? The argument that many Muslims made was, well, if you are saved by

your works, then you don't need the cross because it depends on what you do. So, no cross is necessary. Other arguments would be, well, again, assuming a Muslim perspective on predetermination, well, all of our acts are predetermined. And since God doesn't need a cross to help people to decide on their own free will about whether to be saved or not. So, based on some of these assumptions that Muslims have, their argument is that the cross is no longer necessary, that no redemption is necessary for humanity. So, how do we talk to someone who thinks that redemption and that God's closeness to us is not essential? And so, Thomas gets into that. And, you know, Thomas wants to say, you know, why is it that we can, that is important to talk about this? Why is it that we should talk about suffering?

to talk about this? Why is it that we should talk about suffering? So, he reminds people here that he uses the argument of what's most fitting. This is in chapter 7 here. He talks about the crucifixion and the necessity for suffering. And he reminds us, first of all, that Christ assumed a human nature to repair the fall of man, and that Christ should have suffered and done whatever would serve as a remedy for sin. The sin of man consists in cleaving to bodily things and neglecting spiritual goods. Therefore, the Son of God and his human nature fittingly showed by what he did and suffered that men should consider temporal goods or evils as nothing, lest a disordered love for them impede them from being dedicated to spiritual things. So, Jesus Christ provides us with a model for virtue and a model to order us towards love of spiritual things in

the cross. You know, what's interesting about this, and Aquinas says this in the Summa as well, is it's not like the Romans or the Egyptians or whoever it was had to invent the torture of crucifixion, the method by which you would kill people, in order for God to save humanity. It's not like God could not have, in theory, forgiven mankind without the cross. This is something Aquinas says, but he says, as you say, it's an argument from fittingness. Yes, absolutely. And he, in addition to this, he brings up a second point, and it's that the cross is necessary for a sure knowledge of what is true, of the truth, and that there could be any type of way, you know, something, some other way could be that was a

human way we would recognize as being possibly deceitful or possibly less than perfect. And so, only God is the one who's capable of showing us what redemption is, and that's why we need Jesus Christ. And so, he uses this, too, in the argument of paradox. I mean, it's not G.K. Chesterton-level paradox, but he makes this argument, of course, that everything he did, everything he suffered shows human weakness, but divine power. And that despite the fact, for instance, that the nativity, that Jesus Christ is wrapped in a cloth and cheap clothing, and he's there in a manger, but at the same time, there are angels there and magi bringing him gifts.

And so, we have the divine power and the human weakness. And so through this means we have this sure knowledge of truth and the suffering of the cross that is there and important to us. Yeah, he closes chapter 7 by saying, therefore it was not fitting, as Muslims think, for God to wipe away human sins without satisfaction or even to have never permitted man to fall into sin, that would first be contrary to the order of justice, and secondly, to the order of human nature, by which man has free will and can choose good or evil. God's providence does not destroy the nature and order of things, but preserves them.

So God's wisdom was most evident in his preserving the order of justice and of nature, and at the same time, mercifully providing man a saving remedy in the incarnation and death of his son. Yeah, that just sums it up so perfectly right there. So we can't forget that a good way of talking to Muslims about the importance of the cross is to talk about, you know, the model of virtue, talking about the right ordering of justice, talking about a way to train disciples, train followers, and to recognize that there is sin in the world and that sin requires a penalty. And so, when you're talking with a group of people that have no concept of original sin, how do you deal with their understanding? And so these are the kinds of things that are worthwhile to talk about in discussions, both for Thomas in the 1200s in Antioch and on the Italian peninsula and today as well. You mentioned also the Eucharist.

Yes. And so in his eighth chapter in Reasons for the Faith, Thomas talks about his response. He says, at the opening, he's dealing with these reproaches, and he says that they reproach the Christians also for the idea that daily they eat their God on the altar, and that the body of Christ, even if it were as big as a mountain, should have already been consumed up. Such a great argument. It's one you hear today. It's one you think when you're eight years old to get taught about the Eucharist. That's right. Well, you know, and so there is this very, again, this very carnal understanding of the way that things operate, that there's a very literal

understanding. And so how do you respond to this? And so in his second paragraph there, you know, his response is, anyone even slightly instructed in the Christian religion can see how unreasonably unbelievers ridicule the sacrament, for we do not say that the body of Christ is cut into parts and distributed for consumption by the faithful in the sacraments that it would even run out, even if his body were as big as a mountain, as they claim. But we say that the conversion of bread into the body of Christ, the very body of Christ exists in the sacrament of the church and is eaten by the faithful because the body of Christ is not divided, but something is changed in it. There is no way that by eating it, its quantity could be reduced. And so, Thomas goes into his description of the Eucharist here to show that God is omnipotent, God changes

substance without changing accidents, and that's what takes place in the Eucharist, and that's what needs to be taught to Muslims, although he reminds us at the very end, sacred things of faith should not be exposed to unbelievers. Yes. That's something we say in the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom before we receive the Eucharist, where we say, I will not reveal your mysteries to your enemies. That's right. That's right. You know, Aquinas is rarely sassy, and his sass is very different to what we would think of sass.

But I'm just looking at this line, and he's like, but if an unbeliever wants to say that this conversion, this is about trans-association, is impossible, let him think of the omnipotence of God. And he goes on. Exactly. He writes very frankly, doesn't he, in this? He does. He knows he's writing to someone who, and just to put a wider context, he's writing, again, right around 1264. And in 1268, Antioch is going to fall to the, right after this time, the Mongols had come through and they had conquered large portions of the Middle East. And there was hope, because a number of the Mongols were Christians, that there was going to be a new age and safety for Christians. But unfortunately, the lead Khan, lead Mongol Khan at the time, died. And when he died, the leader of the Mongols in the

Middle East had to leave. And when he left, the people he left behind got into battle, got into war with the Egyptian Mamluks. And the Mamluks were able to defeat them. And after they were able to defeat them, that left Antioch defenseless. And four years after this was written, Antioch fell to the Muslims, never to be back in Christian hands. So, you can see why this was such an important point right now for the cantor in Antioch and to Antiochian Christians that they've been living for 200 years basically under siege in this area, and very soon after this, they would have been suddenly in the minority, or have even been dead or killed. In fact, most of the people in Antioch were either sold into slavery or were killed, and so it's very possible that this cantor who wrote this four years later was no longer around. I'm just trying to figure out the structure of this document. Is the canter of Antioch, is his specific words in here, or does Aquinas summarize what he wants

him to respond to and then respond? Yeah, he summarizes his words at the outset. So he gives us the questions in here. And so that's where we get the questions, Trinity, Incarnation, And so that's where we get the questions, Trinity, Incarnation, Crucifixion, Eucharist, and Predetermination. And so, which brings us to, and as well, he brings in, in his final chapter, Thomas decides to, you know, also mention some other question that they had also about the Greeks, the Orthodox and the Armenians, where he also argues with them about purgatory there in the closing. Yeah, I see that here. Yeah, fascinating stuff. Yeah, keep going. And you know Thomas is aware of his audience here, though, because the first eight chapters, there is no reference to Scripture or only allusions to Scripture. He knows that this is something that needs to be used with Muslims who will not accept Scripture. The last chapter on purgatory, suddenly this is for a Christian audience,

and so Scripture appears, you know, the way you see in many of his other writings. Yeah, it's everywhere. I'm looking at just like one of these paragraphs. It's like six, seven, ten times, yeah. Yeah, well, there's another thing we can learn from him. You know, you've got to begin where people are. I often, sometimes I'll make this anecdote, you know, I'll go to a university campus, give a talk on how I came to believe in God, you know, and I'll have somebody come up to me and say, I don't believe in God. And I say, why? And they say, haven't you read the Bible? It's filled with contradictions. And you think, well, even if that were true,

it wouldn't show that God doesn't exist. And so rather than beginning at scripture, which they don't accept anyway, you want to kind of go down a level and begin where they are. Absolutely. And one of the things, one of the challenges I've had as an instructor is that when you talk about, okay, we're going to discuss this particular thinker, and you mentioned he's a Christian, the responses will often be something like, well, he's approaching this from a religious perspective. And then I will remind them, actually, well, take a look at his arguments. And, you know, is Thomas using logic? Is he using a language and discussion and words that you could engage with? Or is he simply citing scripture?

So there is this challenge as an instructor to try to get over this bias when people hear someone who is a medieval and is Christian, that there's this assumption that they're going to be a religious bigot. Maybe beginning the class on the ad hominem fallacy and the genetic fallacy. Yes, every year there's a new crop of freshmen, and so there's a class of people that you've got to fight the good fight against. And just work on that question. A course I teach here is called How Do You Know? It's a course on epistemology. And so we read Aristotle. We read, you know, from Plato, Socrates, of course, and talk about, and we read Thomas

on the five ways. And so they get an introduction to how can we think, how can we think about how we acquire knowledge. And I think by the end of that unit, they have a new appreciation. But it's great to see the light go on from where they start to where they finish in this kind of a discussion, because they just assume that, yes, that any religious person cannot have recourse to anything that's non-religious. Yeah, must be very gratifying. Dr. Batena, we've got some questions from some of our listeners, which I'd like to throw you away, and you don't have to give, you know, I'm sure you could spend an hour addressing each, but you can just address them briefly, if that's okay. Sure. David Wallace

asks, what is the simplest rational argument that can be made for why Christianity is the religion we should be following and not Islam? And he says, any recommended readings on that point? Yeah, I could give you, well, there are a couple of readings that could talk about, as a historian, I approach things a little bit different than you would have from a philosopher or from a theologian for that matter. than you would have from a philosopher or from a theologian, for that matter. And so one of the things that I would look at for a Catholic is a book that's done by Ignatius Press called 111 Questions on Islam, done by Samir Khalil Samir. That'll do.

Father Samir is a Jesuit. He worked with Pope Benedict previously on several of the policies, and he worked at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome and as well in Lebanon. So he's one of the most preeminent thinkers and a Jesuit priest who is a fantastic resource for this. There's also an important book, a couple books by another priest, Christian Troll. And he wrote one book called Dialogue and Difference, which focuses on these kinds of questions. And he wrote a more popular one called Muslims Ask, Christians Answer, where he goes on a number of different topics and shows how Christians can engage in some of these discussions. So, I recommend Christian Troll and Samir Khalil Samir as two

good resources for people looking at discussing these in more detail. Yeah. Let's see here. Peter Gagliardi asks, when, and this, well, this might be an assumption that's not true, but let's see. When did the Islamic religion start rejecting the value in trying to understand God and the universe? And how do you try and reach out to people that don't believe human reason can lead us to God? I heard Robert Spencer, author of Not Peace But A Sword, speak once, and it was eye-opening to see the great chasm fundamentally between Islam and Christianity. What's your take on that? Yeah, you have the tradition within the Islamic tradition, certainly in the opening centuries, there is an important place for philosophy. Philosophy is one of the avenues for debate

and discussion, along with traditional theology, along with what's called Hadith studies, oral tradition studies, and legal studies, law. Of course, law being central really to Islamic faith in the same way that you have in the ancient Jewish tradition that we don't have in the Christian tradition. Our canon law is not the same as compared to the type of legal tradition they have. And so, philosophy is one of these schools of thought begins to lose out in the Middle East and Islamic Spain and other places by the 12th century because of thinkers like Al-Ghazali and others who adopt positions which in general reject a few key components

that philosophers supported. reject a few key components that philosophers supported. One of them is about, you know, the question of God's foreknowledge. Are we free to act if God has foreknowledge, or are we simply because of God's omnipotence, are we merely participating in acts through which God is already fully the one and author of our acts. And so, I think because of some of the arguments by some of the groups, one of them is the Mutazilite who argue for free will, because they end up losing out, those particular voices become weaker within the Sunni tradition. Now, in the Shi'i tradition, you do have some more openness to free will and to philosophy, and that continues all the way through, although it's not as prominent. One of

the thinkers, for instance, is a philosopher named Mullah Sadra in the 16th, 17th century, and continuing up through today. In the Sunni tradition, though, by and large, which makes up a large portion of the Islamic world, they held to the tradition that in order to know God, we should focus on the Quran, the Hadith, and the legal prescriptions that we have. And so, it's through praxis, not through theory and abstract thought that we come to know God. We know God through law. Okay. Well, you began to answer this in your last answer there, but Brandon Sterinchuk wants to know, is Islam like Protestantism, where there are a bunch of branches? Who claims the fullness of truth and divine authority in Islam, like in the Catholic world? What authority do

they use? Quran alone? A magisterium? That's a good question, because there isn't a consensus within the Islamic tradition. It very much is one where we have, by and large, you have a Sunni and a Shia split, which takes place in the 7th century right within a generation of Muhammad's death. After that split takes place, the Sunni and Shia also fall into certain schools. The schools are usually divided by different legal schools. And so, one could be a Sunni Muslim, but they might follow the Maliki right, or they might follow the Hanbali right, or they might follow the Hanafi right. One might follow one of the Shi'i rights. And these rights, again, prescribe how they do the rituals and then how they might

be judged in a legal court of law in some of their courts and so forth. But there's not a large difference. And so, a lot of the Islamic tradition, even today, a lot of it is dependent upon the type of imam that one has, so the type of pastor that one has in their masjid, in their mosque. And so, these leaders, one might say, more akin to a Baptist tradition, where the individual pastor has a lot of power within his community over what's said and so forth. And I think the reason that happened was because in the Umayyad period, in the Abbasid period, the caliphs had so much power that eventually the legal scholars rejected them as authoritative figures. They rejected the idea of a magisterium or any type of

authority and instead fell back on the written legal texts as being the authorities and the interpreters as being the authorities. But you might have, one person might have one set of interpretations from one school and another will have a different one. And so, because of that, there isn't, it's basically the tradition that is the thing that binds Muslims together, the Quran and the tradition and the law. Here's a provocative question from Charles Lawrence. He says, Pope Francis said at some point, I think the catechism says as much as well, that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. Do you agree with that, and could you expound upon the matter? Christians and Muslims worship the same God. Do you agree with that, and could you expound upon the matter? This is something that continues to be debated, including among different Catholic

thinkers that would argue that, yes, I mean, in the Second Vatican Council and Nostra Aetate, there's the argument that, or the statement that Catholics and Muslims worship the same God. The question is, when we say God, what are we talking about when we say God? Because clearly when Christians talk about God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Muslims would would not accept that as a clear expression of what the divinity is. And so, I think what they mean by that is that, yes, we both worship a God that historically we understand through the scriptures of the Old Testament and the New Testament. And so, because of that, at least, we have something common that we can talk about. And also that despite our understanding of Trinitarian monotheism, that we can still talk in some way about monotheism with Muslims.

But again, there are Catholics who fit on both ends of the spectrum who argue that the God of the Quran is not the same God of the Bible. And there are good arguments for that as well, that the way that God appears in the Quran, God's transcendence, the rejection of a crucifixion, the idea that God predetermines acts, that these kinds of things describe a very different God. And this is one thing that's brought up in a lot of Islamic writings, is that when they describe, the reason they often reject the crucifixion as a historical fact, and the reason they reject it is because all of the prophets have to come out victorious. The fall of Noah, the fall of Abraham, those don't occur in the Quran.

The prophets in the Quran always come out on top. They're always triumphant. Jesus Christ could not have died on the cross because all of those messengers, God is triumphant. God would never allow in His omnipotence any of His messengers to be weakened in any way or ever be attacked in any way by unbelievers. Which is in part why, you know, since they accept Jesus as a prophet, they have to say either he wasn't crucified or that it just appeared that he was. Exactly. And so because of that particular view, and of course this is coming from Muhammad, it's the same thing, that he sees himself as someone who's ultimately triumphant, who cannot be overcome as one of

God's messengers. And so, because if he preaches a Christ crucified or weakness, that could mean his own skin in Mecca, when some of the people he's preaching to are quite, you know, skeptical about his message. And so, this is a key issue, I think. And so, that difference in understanding of who God is and how God operates makes it difficult to say, we worship the same God, but you can't say that without having a but in there and then talking about all of these differences. Yeah, good answer. Robert Spencer debated Peter Kreeft, well, several years back now. The topic was, is the only good Muslim a bad Muslim?

And Robert Spencer argued in the affirmative. What's your take on that? I understand where, I think Robert Spencer just had a book come out recently, I think he makes some of this argument that if a Muslim is to remain faithful to their tradition, to all of their legal teachings and everything, then a Muslim who follows all of those things is someone with whom is not something that is compatible with anybody else, whether they're Christian, secular, or any other religion. And I think that's what he's getting at is that point. traditional teachings that they have in their hadith and their old traditions in their Quran that that could be seen as a bad Islamic portrait of the way that Muslims should live. But at the same time, because faiths are living and dynamic, we're seeing even in this process, Muslims who reinterpret the Quran and see or their verses in there, sometimes one verse might portray a particular teaching in a more negative light and one in a more positive light, and I'll emphasize the positive light

and say that the more negative one, we don't focus on that anymore. And so, because of that dynamic interpretation of religion, I'd say that a reinterpretation of Islam is certainly possible and happens among people who are both academics and people of sincere goodwill who are Muslims. Is that our main hope for peace between Christians and Muslims, that in the future Islam will be more, quote-unquote, progressive or secular, less fundamentalist? I think, yeah, that the change has to come from the Islamic community itself. It's not going to be something that, it's not going to come because enough Muslims read Thomas' teachings and finally figure out, you know what, that's right, you know, I really should think about redemption. And I'd love for that to be the case, but I think that you're right that I think some of these internal discussions need to take place.

And I think certainly in the academic world that we're seeing a growing number of people who, if not Muslim, at the very least accept the historical critical context for the development of Islam. And once they accept that, then it becomes possible to have more academic and more fruitful discussions and dialogue with people once you can talk about, well, all of these religions grew up in a historical context. And then once we get that symmetry of comparison instead of an asymmetrical comparison, then I think that's really going to help. Because on the Christian side, you've got people who are saying, well, there's J, E, P, and D who, you know, that are Old Testament sources. There's the Yahwist sourced and the Elohist sourced, and these different sources all are put together. And so, we see a redaction, a slow editing process of the text. And so, we talk about the Scripture in this very historical way. And I think as the Qur'an gets understood and taught in its historical context, I think

that'll help to create a symmetry for discussion that will be fruitful for dialogue. Okay, final question. I mean, obviously, as good Christians, we want our Muslim brothers and sisters to abandon the errors of Islam and to accept the truth of Christianity. And it does no good for Christians to talk like Muhammad was actually a prophet or to speak as if we should not evangelize our Muslim friends, because we absolutely ought to do that. Christ commanded that we do that. That said, what can we learn from our Muslim friends? that we do that. That said, what can we learn from our Muslim friends?

That's a great question, Matt. I appreciate that because I think what you can learn, especially are acts of hospitality is one great example. Acts of, and again, the acts of spiritual mercy that we talk about, those kinds of qualities we can see manifest in the types of activities that Muslims do in their day-to-day lives and in the community. I think that's one thing we can learn from them. We can learn how to be better at prayer. The Muslim commitment to prayer is something that is amazing. It's really great. prayer is something that is amazing. And if you're a monk or a sister and you follow the liturgy of the hours, then you're closer to what many of these Muslim prayer practices. And so, you know,

some of us might try to follow the liturgy of the hours, and that's a great example of something we can learn is where we can all be better at prayer. I wish that the bishops would just impose this upon us, like, you know, three times a day, here's when you're praying, you know. And there is really something to be said about that, about when you pray, if you pray just whenever you want to, you rarely end up praying. But something that was set in stone like that. There's also something very masculine about Islam. Like, I'm sure there's no felt banners or liturgical dances in mosques. I hope to God that there isn't, you know. But, you know, there is something that appeals to men in that it's very, well, what is it? I think there's something about that

in the tradition that there is an expectation that men are going to take leadership roles and that men, not just in terms of an imam equivalent to like a priest, but that men are going to take leadership roles in prayer. Men are going to take leadership roles in community activities. are going to take leadership roles in community activities. And, you know, if you walk into the average Roman Catholic community, you're going to see that it's much more egalitarian, but you might not see male role leadership, that they just have a good, I think it's part of just the expectation, and it's also a product of the culture, that the culture in general is more masculine,

that that has a lot to do with it compared to Western culture in general. Well, this has been really fascinating, and thank you so much for taking the time to be on Pints of Aquinas to discuss all this. How can people learn more about you, maybe what you've written? Where can they find you online? Yes, you can find a little bit more about me just by looking up my, well, you know, Matt, I don't have a whole bunch that's online in all honesty. See, this is the sign of a true academic. You do not have a Twitter account. You do not have a fancy web page. You know, so I have...

I just typed your name in. So if you go there, you can at least find the thing. The first thing that comes up is the University of Illinois. That's right. You can find a little bit about me on my academic website. A couple of things that I'm working on right now is I'm working on a text by a Muslim who lived in Egypt around the year 1000 who converted to Christianity and then wrote about it. So I'm creating an Arabic edition and translation of that particular work. Also, I was published recently in the Rutledge Handbook of Christian-Muslim Relations,

which is a collection of 20 different authors that have put together chapters on what are the key things that we need to understand in terms of Christian-Muslim relations. And so a lot of my work might not be something that's the most accessible for the average reader. Someone's got to be doing it, though. Someone needs to be doing it, absolutely. So thanks a lot, Matt. Yeah, thanks a lot. God bless. Have a lovely day. Okay, thanks a lot. Bye. All right. Big thanks to everybody who listened to this excellent episode. I appreciate you coming back week after week to listen. Shout out to all the guys at Wisconsin that I spoke to a couple of weeks ago now. I gave three talks on Thomas Aquinas.

The first time I've ever done that, but it was a fascinating experience. I want to invite you again, if you haven't already, to become a patron of Pints with Aquinas. We're doing a special promotion this month. So if you give $10 or more a month, I will send you a private video message that's directed at you personally. month. I will send you a private video message that's directed at you personally. You get a chance to win one of three five-volume sets of the Summa Theologiae, and I'll send you our Pints with Aquinas car magnet. And this is all in addition to all the other free stuff that I already give you, like a signed copy of my book and a sticker or a Pints with Aquinas beer stein if you give 20 bucks a month. And then you also get access to this free audio library and this exclusive Patreon community.

A big thanks to everybody listening who supports me. You make it possible for this show to exist and for the work that I'm doing as a whole to continue and hopefully to go from good to great. A big thanks to everybody who's listening. God bless. Keep it real. Chat with you next week.

And I would give my whole life to carry you, to carry you. And I would give my whole life to carry you, to carry you, to carry you, to carry you, to carry you To carry you To carry you There were birds in your tears Falling from the sky Into a dry riverbed That began to flow down to A cross town high up above the water and maple trees surrounded it leaves caught flame with golden embers