Pints With Aquinas - 163: 5 (MORE) Reasons For The Incarnation W/ Fr. Gregory Pine (Part 2)

Starting point is 00:00:00 G'day and 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 am joined around the bar table by Father Gregory Pine to discuss the fittingness of the Incarnation. So this is part two in a two-part series we're doing on the Incarnation. So if you're having it, listen to last week's episode. This week will make a lot more sense once you've done it so maybe go do it and then come back if you've already done it then hey welcome let's do this all right welcome back to pints with aquinas the show where you and i pull up a barstool next to Using your heart Using your heart race, that God become incarnate in Christ. And Aquinas gives us five reasons. We went over the first five reasons last week. We're going to go over the next five reasons this week. And you'll

Starting point is 00:01:11 notice that I always cut and paste Aquinas' text into the, you know, what do you call it? The notes, the episode notes, so you can read along if you want. Also, we have some really good news. You remember last week I told you that once we reached a certain amount of patrons, that we would start bringing Father Gregory Pine on the show every other episode. Well, I'm so bloody pumped to say that my supporters are the greatest anywhere. Seriously, y'all are amazing. People stepped up and they were like, yeah, we want that. So yeah, thank you. So that actually, we reached the number. We're only, as of today of the recording of this, we're just one or two over. So that's always a little scary in case people start quitting. So feel free to go to patreon.com

Starting point is 00:01:55 slash Matt Fradd if you want and start supporting so that we can get this app out so we can start doing the Matt Fradd show and stuff. But yeah. Now look, I take August off of the internet entirely. So even though you're going to be getting Matt Fradd shows and every Monday and Friday, and like you're going to be getting Pines of the Quietness every week, like nothing's going to change on your end. I'm not going to be around. This is something I prayed about. I'm going to take time off just to be with my family and to read and to be with the Lord. So because of that, we're going to start having Father Gregory Pine on every other episode in September. So I just want to say thank you. You made that happen. Like really, you did. So

Starting point is 00:02:30 cheers. About a year ago now, I said once I reached a certain amount of patrons that I would go to Uganda actually and kind of for free and proclaim the gospel kind of thing if they wanted me to. That was definitely a caveat. Hey, I'll come and preach. And they're like, no, we're good. Thanks. We have people that do that. So just stay in America. Anyway, no, I know people in Uganda and they wanted me to come down and I couldn't take the time off before because I couldn't afford it, but now I'm going to. So basically they're going to pay for my flight. So I'm going in like September, I think. See, if I didn't have an assistant, I wouldn't know when to go to the bathroom.

Starting point is 00:03:11 I am that bad with dates and stuff. But anyway, I'm really pumped. I really, really, really am excited about this. Let's see here. Gosh, I'm going all over the place. I travel a lot. November, where is this? Savannah, Georgia, Houston, Texas.

Starting point is 00:03:26 I'm going to Manchester, New Hampshire. Who knew that was a place? Okay. Uganda, first week of September, about 10 days. Cool. Then I'm in Quebec and Canada in September. And I mean, I'm all over the place. So anyway, if you're in one of those areas, including Uganda, can't wait to see you soon. All right. Here is the second episode. I'm just going to stop talking now. I feel like I've talked too much. It may have to do with the amount of coffee I have imbibed. Father Gregory Pine. I want someone to come up with a little, I want someone to come up.

Starting point is 00:04:07 I want someone to come up with a jingle. I'm going to pay somebody to create a jingle. Father Gregory Pine. Okay. Was your name Gregory before you became a priest? It was, yeah. I did not change my name. And why? I don't know. Maybe fear, maybe inability, maybe legitimate reasons. It's hard to say, you know, because when you look back at your life, you like tell yourself a story about it and you're like, I think that's true, but I can't quite remember. So spot on. Yeah. I like had some ideas going in. I was like, Benedict would be sweet or Rabonis Maurus would be sweet or Pier Giorgio Frassati would be sweet.

Starting point is 00:04:41 But then I was like, I don't know. I I kind of like Gregory. Gregory is a really epic name. It's so much cooler than Greg. I'm with you. Sup, Greg? I go with Matt. The reason I go with Matt, this is a kind of interesting story. Are you familiar with Jimmy Akin? I've heard his name, but I know nothing about him. He's a brilliant guy from Catholic Answers. He's been working with them for decades now, I think. Just super, super, super smart. And I remember once I had just, I began working with Catholic Answers and I was kind of putting together my first product

Starting point is 00:05:15 and they were like, do you want to go by Matthew Fradd or Matt Fradd? I'm like, and I realized like, well, I have to choose, right? Because it's not like I can have one book that says Matthew Fradd and one book that says Matt Fradd. And so I spoke to him about it and he went, I have to choose, right? Because it's not like I can have one book that says Matthew Fradd and one book that says Matt Fradd. So I spoke to him about it, and he went, I would go with Matt Fradd because of the double dental stop. Matt Fradd. I'm like, done. Yeah, dude. Jimmy names me.

Starting point is 00:05:37 That's as good a reason as any. I think to be sensitive to the sonic quality of words is a good thing. You want words that fill your mouth or fill your teeth, as it were. Yes, fill my teeth. Good. What's going on with you and the Thomistic Institute? Last week, you were talking about these videos that you guys are putting out. Have you guys, you guys, you wonderful priests, have you already recorded all these videos? We have recorded half of them. Yeah, we've recorded half of them. And we'll finish, we'll be two-thirds done in August, and then the rest will be recorded half of them. Yeah, we've recorded half of them and we'll finish,

Starting point is 00:06:10 we'll be two thirds done in August and then the rest will be recorded in the fall. So the launch of the early ones, you know, will be simultaneous with the recording of the latter one. So it'll be a kind of ongoing odyssey. It'll be, it'll be a lesson in discovery. Um, how long are the videos? So the early ones are about three minutes long, just to kind of get you your philosophical chops. So like three minutes on, uh, what is the final cause or three minutes on, um, what does it mean to say that St. Thomas was a moderate realist? Um, and then once we get into the Summa, they're a little bit longer. So maybe like seven minutes. Uh, so that way we can give, I mean, the short answer as to why they're longer is because we can't help ourselves, right? It's like, Ooh, so many interesting things. Um, and, and to, to speak for only three minutes, you feel like

Starting point is 00:06:55 a bird tethered by, and this is a weird image. Nevermind. I'll stop. Do it, do it, do it. Change. I feel it. Toothpick. Exactly. To in a inside a cage yes at the bottom of the ocean that's right um without an aqualung um so yeah so you feel like that so you just want to you want to give vent to your heart's love in seven minutes rather than three that's also and when you say you're going to go through the whole suma like what do you mean by that because the suma is really big yeah so we're not going it's not going to be like popcorn reading, like Father James will now read this article and I will say things about it.

Starting point is 00:07:29 So like there'll be a video on the five ways, right? There'll be a video on questions three through 11 of the Prima Pars, which is like God's simplicity and perfection and goodness and eternity and immutability and omnipresence, et cetera. And so it's just like an attempt to synthesize those things. And you'll get little gem here and little gem there and little gem there, you know, quotables. But the idea is to get a sense of St. Thomas's vision, because at the

Starting point is 00:07:52 end of the day, we don't want to memorize a lot of quotable quotes. We want to be wise. So yeah, that's what we're in for. I don't know if it was Aquinas who said this. I think he's quoted as saying it, but we don't study philosophy so that we can... I'm butchering this quote, if it even is a quote. We don't study philosophy so that we can quote the philosophers. We study philosophy so that we can know and love truth. Something to that effect. I've never heard that, but I believe it. Yeah. If no one has said that, I would like to claim that, please. Yeah. Just put it on your website and attribute it to yourself.

Starting point is 00:08:24 Do you remember that episode of The Office where michael scott quotes wayne gretzky and he says i don't he writes on a whiteboard with like quotation marks and then you know the quotation marks within the quotation marks so it's a quotation mark and then another little like one quotation mark and he says, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take, hyphen Wayne Gretzky, hyphen Michael Scott. So it's him quoting Wayne Gretzky. Nice. That's not a bad way to live. Wayne Gretzky, man.

Starting point is 00:08:55 Yeah, that's like, never mind. I'm not going to quote the Muddy Ducks. Yep. Yes, I agree. Hockey is awesome. Beautiful. Well, we talked about Jesus last week, which is a wonderful, beautiful, glorious topic to address. We were talking about the question from the, was it Tertiopas? Yeah,

Starting point is 00:09:11 Tertiopas. The fitness of the incarnation, was it necessary for the restoration of the human race? Aquinas says, strictly no, because God could have saved us by another way. I think we should spend one more second talking about that because I feel like people are going to get tripped up on that and would like you to explain a little bit more. Yes. I know elsewhere, maybe when he's talking about the crucifixion, he brings up the point that like, if I, Matt Fradd, hurt you, well, then there is someone above me, namely a judge, who can order me to pay reparations. But when you're dealing with God as the judge, technically, he could have let us off the hook, as it were, without dying. It's not like, strictly speaking, blood had to be shed. It's that it was

Starting point is 00:09:57 the most fitting way. Yes. Okay. So, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think you get into questions there of like satisfaction and penal substitution. Cause when you say that it's like strictly necessary that the son of man had to take human flesh and die, then you start to get like a weird image of God, um, where he, yeah, he's just, uh, someone's got to die. He needs, yeah. Someone's got to die. He's kind of, he's kind of bloodthirsty and, uh, wrathful. I once had a conversation with somebody and they said that that was like the first principle of soteriology. The study of salvation is that like God's wrath needs to be satisfied. And I was like, I don't, I don't, I don't think that's like point number one. And like, what I'm going to say by comparison to you is going to sound mamby pamby, you know,

Starting point is 00:10:42 that like God loves us, but I'm not like saying that in a way that evacuates the cross of its content. But I think that that is the point that's being communicated. Not that like justice needs to be satisfied, but there is a fittingness to the satisfaction of justice. Because if like, if God were just to say, like if he were to send a celestial sky writer, you know, like those little planes that they have, you know, that fly up around the beach. And like in the sky, he wrote in very large clouds that was visible to everyone of all times and all places that said, you sinned. That was bad. But I forgive you because I'm the man. I'm not the man because I haven't taken human flesh because I'm the God.

Starting point is 00:11:14 But he's like, but you know what I mean. And God. Yeah. You know the saying. Uh huh. Right. So he could have done that. But then there's like, I don't know, there's an unfittingness to not having justice repaired because we just get a false impression of, again, the wages of sin. You get a false impression of the significance of the original sin. You get a false impression of the dignity of human nature. You get a false impression of God.

Starting point is 00:11:39 God kind of ends up seeming like us to a pushover. That wasn't a clear sentence. God ends up seeming to us like a pushover. I think that's a good sentence. So, like, when you think about it in terms of salvation, God does what best conduces to salvation. Like, God is saving in the best way because he loves us. So, it's an expression of love, and love always wants to, like, repair a wrong. And we feel that too, like in our bones, like when we do something bad, uh, in the Dominican tradition, it used to be the case that you would prostrate yourself on the floor, like as a sign of bodily humiliation. Like, I can't believe I did this. I am abashed and embarrassed. Or like when you hurt one of your

Starting point is 00:12:17 friends, like you want to repair the wrong, you don't just want them to say like, oh, it's no big deal. You want them to say like, I forgive you. And then you want to satisfy for that because to do otherwise would be like, you'd always be just kind of, yeah, kind of uncertain of the whole thing. Right. Yeah. What was that movie with Robert De Niro where in order to pay for his sins for, I think, killing the native people, he ends up becoming a priest and dragging those, that bag of shields up to the top of the mountain or something. Yeah, the mission. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:12:48 Exactly. I remember watching that and thinking that I can imagine someone watching that and being like, oh, he mustn't know that the grace of God is free. But then I thought, but we need to feel it. Like we need to pay. Like, we need to pay. Even though Christ has paid, as you say, if you've committed a grievous sin against somebody or against yourself, you don't say, well, then I don't need to. You know what I mean? You got to do penance.

Starting point is 00:13:12 Yeah. And like, basically, okay. So, the, okay, Jesus is Lord. I'm going to talk clearly and simply. The heart of penance is love. Okay? So, there's a difference between punishment, the word that St. Thomas uses, pena, P-O-E-N-A, and then satisfaction, satisfaxio, right? Because satisfaction entails love, right? And satisfaction is bound up with penitence. So, think about this concretely in terms of like the sacrament of, you know, confession, reconciliation, penance. sacrament of confession, reconciliation, penance. So, like, what is healing of your sins is charity,

Starting point is 00:13:54 and contrition plays a role in that. Like, when you are contrite, it's because the love of God is at work in your life, kind of crushing your heart and making you look back on your sins, not to regret them and wish them undone, rather, but to acknowledge the way that they have wounded friendship with Christ, and then in love to revisit those things with the Lord, so that you can make them like kind of part of the story of redemption. Okay, Father Gregory, that sounds like really, really mamby-pamby. Like, come on, say something meaty. All right. So, like, love is the operative principle of the passion, death, and resurrection of the Lord. Like, his obedience is one, and his love is another, but he is obedient in love and he is loving in obedience, right? They're distinct but virtually indistinguishable. So, like, love is what saves, and that same love has to be at work in our lives.

Starting point is 00:14:38 And so we make satisfaction motivated by love, not for fear, not as a kind of, you know, act of penal substitution, you know, in the case of Christ, but because we, yeah, because like God has poured His love into our hearts, and this is how it responds, right? Penance is part of our flourishing, so we can actually make a life that, yeah, is given to God whole and entire. All right, I'm gonna stop talking, that's too long. Sorry. No, you're good. So, what do you say to somebody who holds to the theory of penal substitution, which

Starting point is 00:15:11 for those who are listening, just to be clear, I'm looking at it here, an atonement within Christian theology which argues that Christ, by His own sacrificial choice, was punished in the place of sinners, as we get that word, the substitution. And in so doing, he satisfies the demands and justice of God. So that God can justly then love us. Yes. So, this is at odds with Catholic teaching? It is at odds with Catholic teaching.

Starting point is 00:15:39 This is associated with Reformed theology. So, it's at odds with Catholic teaching, principally because of the picture that it paints of God. And I think, like, to revisit that sense of necessary is really important, you know, because it wasn't strictly necessary. But on the logic of penal substitution, like, we had to satisfy the wrath of God. We were unable to do so because we could only offer our limited, finite human resources, and so Christ had to take do so because we could only offer our limited, finite human resources. And so Christ had to take flesh so that he could perform a satisfactory act, you know, from the abundance of his Godhead so that God's wrath would be sated, right? This is, okay,

Starting point is 00:16:17 for like Reformed folks who are listening, this is a slight caricature and an oversimplification, for which I apologize. I don't mean to, like, lampoon John Calvin in this regard. His theology is a lot more sensitive than I'm making it out to be. But, like, when you play it out to its logical implications, it ends up, yeah, it just ends up sounding like God is very angry in Jesus. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah, here's what the Catechism says in paragraph 615. So, he says, For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man's obedience many will be made righteous. By his obedience unto death, Jesus accomplished the substitution of the suffering servant who makes himself an offering for sin, when he bore the sins of many and who shall make many to be accounted righteous,

Starting point is 00:17:09 for he shall bear their iniquities. Jesus atoned for our faults and made satisfaction for our sins to the Father. So, if we're not saying, and I know I didn't kind of prep you for a whole episode on penal substitution, so we're going to wrap this up quickly. So, I'm sorry if you haven't sort of studied this recently. So, if we're not going to talk about, so we're going to wrap this up quickly. So, I'm sorry if you haven't sort of studied this recently. Oh, that's good. So, if we're not going to talk about, if we want to kind of say, well, it's not that God's wrath had to be sated, or at least it's not principally that, then what are we saying then?

Starting point is 00:17:37 Like, what is it that Jesus did? Yeah, so, a good place to look for this is in, so it's in the Tertia Pars, I think it's question 48, when St. Thomas goes through the different ways that Christ saves us, or like the different paradigms according to which we can envision it. Okay, overly complex. Basically, how do we describe salvation? We can describe it, he says, as satisfaction. We can describe it as sacrifice. We can describe it as merit.

Starting point is 00:18:02 We can describe it as redemption. We can describe it as merit. We can describe it as redemption. We can describe it as efficacy. And in all those things, he describes how each highlights a different feature of the Lord's offering. But what he's always keeping at the forefront is obedience and charity. So, sacrifice, for instance, what does sacrifice mean? It's an offering. So, it's the perfection of oblation in the sense that you give a host to God to show him how very worthy he is of it. And in sacrifice, it often entails that the host is destroyed because it just shows the depth of love. So, to speak of the cross as

Starting point is 00:18:38 sacrifice really seizes upon that imagery. Or like merit, you know, we think about merit in terms of like exchange, right? I merit this from you, and so you give it to me in strict justice. But no, like the idea of merit at work in the way that it's operative on the cross is like Jesus performs this act from an abundant charity and an abundant obedience. And so in friendship, certain like privileges are extended to those who enjoy solidarity with him and so he merits salvation for the whole world and here you know you have your intellectual legs to describe how one drop of his blood is sufficient for the salvation of all because it's born of an infinite charity and so it merits an infinite reward it's not the amount of blood

Starting point is 00:19:24 that was spilled it was the amount of blood that was spilled. It was the amount of charity that led him to spill it. Exactly. Yeah. And mind you, Christ does undergo the worst and most brutal. Brutal. Brutal. It's good.

Starting point is 00:19:35 Brutal. It's beautiful and brutal simultaneously. Brutal. I would like that to appear in what's put in me. You heard it first here, ladies and gentlemen. Brutal. So Christ undergoes the worst of tortures. One, because he's shouldering all of our sin, two, because he's a perfect man.

Starting point is 00:19:50 So his body is, I mean, far more sensitive than anything before or since. And so Christ undergoes that, but the only reason for which it is supported, I mean, he's God, but the only reason for which he can support it is the depth of love, right? He is willing to undergo anything. Greater love hath no man than this, to lay down his life for his friends. So, whenever St. Thomas describes it, he always describes it in terms of charity and obedience, and he draws on these images, whether of merit or satisfaction or redemption or sacrifice or efficacy, just in terms of that. He keeps first the idea that Jesus is God, and so his acts have an infinite quality to them, but also that Jesus' human soul is filled with an infinite charity,

Starting point is 00:20:31 and that's instrumental in our salvation. What is it you mean when you say that Christ's body was sensitive in a way that, you know, hasn't been experienced before or after? You can think about like sin as dumbing us down in the sense that like – right. So like as a result of sin, all of our faculties are somehow – what's the word I want to use? Dolled? Hardened? Dolled, yeah. Dolled, hardened, attenuated, to use a word from physics class. I remember attenuators and something about capacity. Never mind, it doesn't matter. Okay, so all of our senses are dulled. So, when St. Thomas will talk about like the wounds of original sin, our minds are darkened

Starting point is 00:21:16 by ignorance, our wills are bent by malice, and our passions are kind of infected or diseased with weakness and concupiscence, right? So, we ordinarily, I mean, in God's original plan, we were meant to fire on all cylinders, right? We were meant to just live to the hilt. We were meant to give just manifest and glorious expression to God's greatness, right, in a way that we are uniquely suited to do. But with those sins, the compass of our life is narrowed, right? In a way that we are uniquely suited to do. But with those sins, the, you know, like the compass of our life is narrowed, right? We live in a smaller circle. And Christ doesn't suffer those effects of sin. Now, mind you, He can die, right? And He can, He thirsts and He hungers and He experiences sadness of a sort that he expresses on the cross, right? But he still has the sensitivity proper to an unfallen man. So yeah, like he feels the wounds of the nails. He feels the lash of the scourge.

Starting point is 00:22:14 He feels the crown of thorns more so than anyone else. And there's like an analogy to that in the way that we experience love too, because like when you love somebody more, you're able to like hurt each other in far more simple, subtle, and seemingly trivial ways. Which is why vulnerability takes such courage, especially if you've been hurt. Yeah. No, yeah, for sure. I mean like, I don't know, your experience of like being married and stuff, but you can be like kind of offhanded and flippant at the outset. But like you can't keep doing that over the course of a marriage or your wife is going to be like, chief, you're killing me right now. It's just like, because I love you, I want you to love me as well as we can love each other, blah, blah, blah, dot, dot, dot.

Starting point is 00:22:57 I think it was Jason Everett who was talking about if you line up the world's kind of what we would consider the greatest sinners, you know, like mass murderers and dictators of, right? They all kind of look the same. But if you line up the saints, you know, compare Mother Teresa to, you know, Louis de Montfort and Pierre Giorgio Frassati and St. Francis and St. Thomas, it's like they are fully alive. So, my point, I guess, is like when we're steeped in sin, I can see what you mean by this dullness of heart, this unoriginality, this, yeah. Yeah. It just makes you homogeneously uninteresting. Yeah. Sin makes you homogeneously uninteresting.

Starting point is 00:23:36 Bumper sticker. Yeah. Homogenized and pasteurized like milk. Glory. All right. Well, let's get to this first one here. This is the first reason that the incarnation withdraws us from evil from Aquinas. He says, because man is taught by it not to prefer the devil to himself, nor to honor him who is the author of sin.

Starting point is 00:23:57 Hence, Augustine says, since human nature is so united to God as to become one person, let not these proud spirits dare to prefer themselves to man, because they have no bodies. What does that mean? So, honest answer. I'm not quite sure. I've heard Father Thomas Joseph speak about this, but here you can think about the fact that God leapt over the angelic order, right? And in a strange way, too, we can see some of that topsy-turviness in heaven, like the Blessed Mother is seated above the choirs of angels. So, you know, in the natural order, God is greatest. Well, God, according to nature, is greatest, and then angels, and then man. But the incarnation, like God draws close to us

Starting point is 00:24:42 and shows us a kind of peculiar solicitude, right? And so, like the devil tells us the lie that he is close, that he is near, that he is a companion in a way that God who is invisible is not. But by leaping down, you know, by quitting the halls of heaven. Hurdling over, yeah. Yeah, exactly. When earth and sky change places for an hour and heaven look upward from a human face, we get the sense of like God's nearness, you know, that really pushes the devil to the periphery. Gosh, that's powerful. I have to say, I read that without understanding what I was reading. And when you just explained it, I'm like, oh, wow, there's so much in that. Right. Yeah. I love it. So, God became man so that we would be taught not to prefer the devil to what? Like us, to mankind? Just because he's greater in, you know, metaphysically speaking?

Starting point is 00:25:34 To himself in the sense of like to man himself. So, that man would be instructed not to prefer the devil to his own nature. So, like... Yes, because God has exalted our human nature in becoming man. And you can think about like pagan worship too, like pagans worshipped demons, right? Because they invested, kind of like animistically, they invested nature with a kind of, I don't know, spirit of, I don't know how to describe this stuff, I'm just stumbling and using dumb words. But if you don't worship God, you're going to worship demons. There's no like, I will worship something else that's really benign and delightful. You're going to worship demons.

Starting point is 00:26:13 And this is what's meant, right, in the Old Testament by worshiping Baal and these other things. Like, these are the demonic. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, it comes out really clearly in Paul's letters. Yeah. I'm thinking of Colossians, of Christ making a spectacle of the elemental spirits. Dig? Yeah. And he talks about it in Galatians 2, like in this present evil age.

Starting point is 00:26:34 And, yeah, he like kind of paradises, if that's a verb, I have no idea. More coffee is needed. Exactly. More ginger turmeric tea. Oh, yes. So, you know, like he makes a parody of, yeah, of the pagan like holdings or worship or blah, blah, blah. You get it. Yeah. As a way of drawing our attention to what is true and to what is real, right?

Starting point is 00:26:58 Because it's not that it's laughable in a kind of mocking sense because you don't mock the devil. That's just inviting temptation and attack, right? But we do recognize the fact that, yeah, like you think about how the Satan is pictured in the Inferno, right? Dante's Divine Comedy. He's locked at the bottom of a frozen lake. He's immobile. He's almost like a very large overgrown insect, right? But we need that revealed to us, because otherwise, like, it's very sexy, know and you think about like oh like i could be outside and worship the sun or like worship fitness or like worship food and talk about all these new kind of south american you know millet grains that i've discovered and incorporated into my very interesting diet and those things are all fine whatever just as long as it doesn't become worship right yeah that's taking the place of God, yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh, spot on.

Starting point is 00:27:46 Yeah, that's super powerful. I love that illustration in Dante that, if I didn't misunderstand him when I read the Inferno, that it was the beating of Satan's wings which froze the waters of hell. So, in a sense, like, he is perpetually responsible for his own imprisonment. Yeah. Because it was his refusal to submit to the Father, right? And this perpetual refusal that is the cause of his perpetual enslavement. Did you get that when you read it? I did get that when I read it. Maybe that was more obvious than I thought, but yeah.

Starting point is 00:28:18 No, no, no. I think that was told to me in a commentary. So, I didn't pick that up. I don't pick many things up by myself. So, yeah, it was great. Beautiful. Secondly, Aquinas says, because we are thereby taught how great is man's dignity, lest we should sully it with sin. Hence, Augustine says, God has proved to us how high a place human nature holds amongst creatures in as much as he appeared to men as a true man. As Pope Leo says in a sermon on the nativity, learn, O Christian, thy worth. And being made a partner of the divine nature, refuse to return by evil deeds to your former worthlessness. Glory. Two things I want to point out that I've noticed lately as I speak to kind of people. I was on an airplane recently, kind of able to kind of share the gospel with this man beside me. And I'm noticing something.

Starting point is 00:29:11 One, people tend to want to kind of speak, what do you say, belittle their intellect and our intellect. Like, what can we know anyway? I mean, we're just a speck. We know nothing, right? And then secondly, our dignity as man. Like, well, we're no different to the moths or the cockroaches or to the cheetahs or whatever else. Yeah. You notice that?

Starting point is 00:29:33 Because like when you look at Aquinas, I mean, he holds the intellect in great regard. He knows that we can't know what God is. He knows that we can't know by human reason that the Trinity is the Trinity, that that had to be revealed to us and so on. But we can know a heck of a lot. Like, he holds the intellect in high esteem. And it seems like that modern man today, which is crazy because we're able to, we have discovered so much, you know, from the origins of the universe and all this. And yet, we continually, what's it, denigrate the entire and ourselves. We're nothing and our minds are nothing. And so. Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of, I get the impression that there are a lot of

Starting point is 00:30:15 tendencies or kind of currents in culture that would convince us of that. And you can just think like specifically moral relativism. If you can't know the truth about morality, then it's not too far of a step to just denigrate the possibility of our knowing the truth about anything. When everything is sanctioned or when everything is free or when everything is available, then there's nothing to separate one from the other. And then the place of our intellect in apprehending and judging and actually reasoning becomes kind of an afterthought or it gets pushed to the side or trivialized. So, yeah, no, I have noticed things along those lines. And especially when people make truth claims in one way or another, sometimes it's criticized as being condescending or intolerant or otherwise bad. And so, like, people are very loath to even make them. And so, there's this whole kind of

Starting point is 00:31:11 culture of, like, fear of absolutes, you know? We associate it with 20th century fascism. We associate it with authoritarian regimes. Like, that's what happens, you know? It lands us in this kind of place. But I just decidedly think that's wrong. I listened to a lecture recently by Rusty Reno about the return of the strong gods. And he was saying like, we, you know, when we got afraid of authoritarian things, we preferred weak gods, you know, kind of gods of our own sociological invention. But when you do that, you end up with demons, like you end up with far worse problems. Like you need to be rooted and grounded and fixed in something or you're going to end up in crazy town, which I think is what a lot of people are experiencing now. So, yeah, just I think that another reason to love Aquinas is the vindication of the place of reason and our capacity to know the truth, right, and to love accordingly and to be real causes in the world that make a difference, right? And to love accordingly and to be real causes in the world that make a difference, right? I think another reason people sometimes think Christianity is absurd isn't because they

Starting point is 00:32:11 thought through it, but what they kind of get this sense of how huge, gigantic, massive, or seemingly infinite the universe is. And that in relation to to that like if you could see the infinitude or you know the almost infinitude you write spaces of the i know it's not infinite but the spaces of the universe and then we would be not even a pinprick like we are nothing almost you can't even be seen and so isn't this all just rubbish like they'll see our smallness and take from that that we're worthless. So that is certainly one way to respond to the data. But you could just as well respond in the opposite fashion. Because when you think about it, I was just at a science conference that the TI co-sponsored, the Thomistic Institute co-sponsored.

Starting point is 00:33:10 Well, I guess just sponsored for philosophers and natural scientists. It was about Thomistic natural philosophy and modern science and whether there's something to be dialogued about between them. And I heard this lecture given by a woman, a physicist, a PhD in physics. She has a PhD in physics. She does research at the University of Pennsylvania named Marisa March. Great, really excellent woman. And she was talking about basically a short history of the universe from 14.4 billion years ago up until about 4.5 billion years ago, so before the emergence of life on Earth. And you just get this overwhelming impression, right, and we don't even have to talk about, like, the way in which providence is exercised, but this overwhelming impression of vastness and complexity and just infinite, potentially infinite, not actually infinite, variation in

Starting point is 00:33:56 the universe. And then you just meditate on the fact that we've never had contact with any other intelligent life. You know, we're working on, you working on submitting or whatever you call it, transmitting radio signals to this, that, and the other place and seeing if we get anything back and blah, blah, blah. There's a whole funded project for finding life elsewhere, like flying space probes through the moons of Saturn and finding if there's any bacterial excrement, whatever. I don't understand a lot of this. But you just have to reckon with the fact that the conditions for life, it entails water, it entails a certain distance from your star, it entails heat and blah, blah, blah, and thus and such, and all of these

Starting point is 00:34:33 anthropic coincidences or principles. There's just a bunch of stuff that has come together for the supporting of life in this particular time and place. And it's staggering, you know, like in all of the laws of physics that have to be just such and not otherwise for it to be the case, you know? And so, I mean, it really is a matter of how you look at the thing. Yeah, I think you're right. Lewis said something like this as well. It's sort of like, okay, so if the universe is vast, someone concludes, therefore God doesn't exist. But then if the universe were just our solar system, someone could conclude, well, if God did exist, wouldn't you expect it to be much more grand than it is?

Starting point is 00:35:14 Yeah. So it's almost like God can't win. Well, when you think about it in terms of like, what's the purpose of creation? It's not because God needs any of this stuff, right? It's for the manifestation of his glory and because he invites rational creatures into a sharing in that glory. And if you want to communicate glory and you are a simple and infinite God, you're going to have to give expression to your interior life by many multifaceted and varied manifestations, right? So, God spends himself in creation, speaking many created words, so that by the joint, conjoined testimony of all of those created things,

Starting point is 00:35:51 we might return to him who is the author of them all, right? And who kind of possesses all of them eminently in the perfection of his simplicity. And so, like, God is just this generous, right? It's not a matter of like, wow, how do you find God in a vast universe? That's just, like, to ask the wrong question. God is not, like, one cause amidst a welter of causes. God is transcendent and universal and actually orchestrating all of these things in such a way that it redounds to the praise of his glory, which is far more majestic than, like, whatever, the way it's envisioned in reductionistic terms. Yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, when people say, well, look at all this waste. You know, when you look at the universe and all these things, it's envisioned in reductionistic terms yeah yeah i think you know when people say well look at all this waste you know when you look at the universe and all these

Starting point is 00:36:28 things it's wasteful and it was william lane craig who said you know wastefulness has to do with limited time or resources and god isn't limited neither yeah yeah you hear some people say that too with like evolution like the the the species that exist presently are like 1% of the species that have existed over the course of the past X billion years. And I've heard Father Nicanor Austriaco, who's a Dominican of my province. We've had him on the show to talk about evolution, yeah. Awesome. Well, he says like God fills both time and space with creation. Because you think about it, like certain creatures can't coexist, right? It would be kind of inespittable if Tyrannosaurus rexes, you know, wandered the planes. It just makes travel a little more

Starting point is 00:37:10 perilous. Yeah. Fun, maybe, but perilous. So, God fills time with all of these species so as to give...it's like a museum curator, right? You work at the Louvre. You've got like a billion artworks. You can't put them all up on the walls because you've got limited space. And so, you curate it. And so, God curates time with the manifestation of His glory and puts certain things in exhibitions during the Cretaceous period and other things in exhibitions during the present. So, yeah, not wasteful. It's just lavish. I love this line from Leo that he quotes, Learn, O Christian, thy worth, and being made a partner of the divine nature, refuse to return by evil deeds to your former worthlessness. And this speaks to what you mentioned earlier about knowing our worth.

Starting point is 00:38:00 Like, why did you do this, Jesus? Why did you die on the cross? That he would look at us and say, because you're worth it. Like, why did you do this, Jesus? Why did you die on the cross? That He would look at us and say, because you're worth it. And yeah, we can also kind of like denigrate ourselves, you know, and think of ourselves as slaves when He says, I don't call you servants, I call you friends. I think it's 1 John 3, verse 1, like, see what love, you know, God has for us in calling us His children and that we are. Woo! Yeah.

Starting point is 00:38:31 No, it's just like the plan of God is more majestic than the compass of our minds. And if we but knew the love of God for us, if we but trusted in the love of God for us, it would completely change our lives. Indeed. We would no longer be gripped by the anxiety and insecurity and fear that characterizes a lot of our movements. But here's the thing, like he continues to pour that love out as daily bread, and so we can grow into it. And our hope is that we can learn it, you know, like that we can interiorize it,

Starting point is 00:38:54 that we can actually embody it, and that it will come to characterize our every thought, word, and deed. So learning is, fortunately, something that takes place over the course of a life, and the Lord is patient, and the Lord is generous. This is why, I mean, I know you went to Steubenville, and I know it's become kind of in vogue to crap all over praise and worship these days, but I love praise and worship. And one of the reasons I love praise and worship is because I love telling God who He is and telling me who I am. I think that's such a beautiful way to begin prayer, right? Like, you're good and I am your son. You are trustworthy and I am your beloved son,

Starting point is 00:39:32 right? And you delight in me and I trust you. I trust you, Father. Because I feel like it's only in that context that we can give our lives to Him. Like, if you're good and you're all powerful and you love me and I am yours, then I can rest in you, you know? But if you're impotent somehow, or if you're distant, like maybe my father was distant, or if I'm not actually lovable, then this totally perverts the spiritual life. And so, I'm a big fan of that. Like, you are good, Father, and I am yours. You are good. I am yours. Yeah. Father, and I am yours. You are good. I am yours. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, yeah, I'm with you. I will just say yes, and then I will laugh at the fact. So, you can have an intellectual life like you, Father, and still be okay with praising God in the praise and worship sense. Is that what you're

Starting point is 00:40:18 saying? I am saying that, and I'm a sucker for Hillsong. I'm just big into lyrics that begin with Scripture, are the fruit of a real and vibrant spiritual life. Yeah. And that, you know, like work. I'm lacking the language, but that like has like a real artistry to it. Yeah. I think those are what I love. Like Scripture that's been chewed up and spat out.

Starting point is 00:40:42 And so it looks slightly different. You're not just parroting the Gospels. You're not just quoting Scripture directly, but it's been digested and, you know. It's like you're getting somebody's Lectio Divina in a way that can be very, very powerful and very, very moving. Yeah. Beautiful. No, because I think, you know, a lot of people out there are like, okay, so I have two options. I can be like into the intellectual life and Thomas Aquinas, or I can be one of those mindless people who just sing praise and worship stuff.

Starting point is 00:41:07 That is a thought that's out there. I don't think that, but you do encounter that in people. False dichotomy. Yeah, exactly. False dichotomy. All right. Thirdly, says Aquinas, the reason Christ came to draw us away from evil was in order to do away with man's presumption.

Starting point is 00:41:22 The grace of God is commended in Jesus Christ, though no merits of ours went before. As Augustine says, oh, is that it? Oh, that's what he said. I thought he was right. Good. So, just to sum that up, the third reason was something that Augustine said. And what he said was, in order to do away with our presumption, the grace of God is commended in Jesus Christ through no merits of ours, though no merits of ours went before. So, we didn't have to kind of flirt with him, and then he came on to us. He just came on to us when we were disgusting. Yeah, while we were yet sinners, right? That's like a kind of classic Pauline line that, well, it banishes the devil's blackmail, you know, that like, we'll never be good enough,

Starting point is 00:42:04 we'll never be adequate, we'll never be worthy. That doesn't matter, right? That's just beside the point. And so we can't think it a matter of our merit because we see just how gratuitous it is. And so he's highlighting here, we can't presume, you know, on our own strength or our own merits because Christ goes before us, right? He accompanies us and he brings to perfection all of our things, but it's primarily the case that he goes before us. Right. This gets back to something I've heard you say before, not in these exact words, but God doesn't love us because we're good, but we are made good because of God's love for us. So, that's beautiful. The love is free. We don't have to earn it. Glory. Okay. Let's see.

Starting point is 00:42:45 Fourthly, because man's pride, which is the greatest stumbling block to our clinging to God, can be convinced and cured by humility. So great, as Augustine says in the same place. Love it. This is just like one big Augustine romp. I love it. You just must be jazzed out of your mind. Yeah, like if I was writing a paper and I was quoting Augustine as much as he is, I'm pretty sure someone would be like, dude, you got to have some of your own thoughts. And Aquinas is like, why? If it's not broke, don't fix it.

Starting point is 00:43:15 Exactly. This is what the tradition is, bro. Yeah. Yeah, and I love, too, this whole idea of humility, like that Christ condescends, right? The abbreviated word takes human flesh. And we see in it, you know, though he was in the form of God, Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at, but rather humbled himself, emptied himself, and took the form of a slave. So he commends to us humility in his flesh, right? And that's something like the fact of God's humility and the humility whereby we are redeemed is shot through the whole sacramental order.

Starting point is 00:43:46 Because St. Thomas will talk about, like, why is it fitting that we have sacraments? Well, so that we need to, like, take up earthly things for spiritual goods so that we can be humbled, right? Cognizant of the fact that we need these type of things. And otherwise, we'll lapse into idolatry, that this is now part and parcel of the incarnate order because God humbled himself and we must humble ourselves in turn, which is pretty sweet. I love that line. Pride, which is our greatest stumbling block, to our clinging to God can be convinced and cured by humility. So great. I love that. Convinced and cured. That'd be a great band name. Convinced. Yeah. Convinced like intellectually, right? And also like healed in the depths of us.

Starting point is 00:44:26 Yeah. So, self-knowledge goes before transcendence of self. You need to recognize the fact. And this is like the place of conscience too. It convicts us. The Lord often illumines our consciences when he gives indication of what he's about to heal in us. So, you'll bring it to the sacrament of confession. You're like, I wasn't even thinking about this and here this is, and I'm just like, yikes, this is bad. But that's a sign that like God is illumining so sacrament of confession. Like, I wasn't even thinking about this, and here this is, and I'm just like, yikes, this is bad. But that's a sign that, like, God is illumining so that he can heal. So, to convince and to cure. Here's the fifth reason, and I need you to, I guess, thraldom.

Starting point is 00:44:53 Does that mean, like, thrald? Is that what thraldom means? Thraldom means, like, slavery. Oh, I didn't know that. Okay, so see how humble I am? Okay, fifthly, in order to free man from the thralldom of sin, which, as Augustine says, ought to be done in such a way that the devil should be overcome by the justice of the man Jesus Christ. And this was done by Christ satisfying for us. Now, a mere man could not have satisfied for the whole human race, and God was not bound to satisfy.

Starting point is 00:45:26 Hence, it behooved Jesus same mediator of God and men might die in one and rise in the other, for this was our fitting remedy. Unless he was God, he would not have brought a remedy, and unless he was man, he would not have set an example. And then Aquinas concludes, and there are very many other advantages, just a catch-all sentence there. And there were many other advantages which accued above man's apprehension. Yeah. I mean, that is the longest, the most fulsome. And there he's just summarizing the satisfaction argument as it's enunciated in the tradition in a big way by St. Anselm. But it's obviously he's quoting St. Augustine. So, yeah, we've talked about satisfaction a good bit.

Starting point is 00:46:33 I don't know that it merits more discussion. But basically, he did in our flesh what we couldn't do for ourselves so that we could attain to him who is beyond us. But I think Scott Hahn's quote, you know, he owed a debt. No, we owed a debt. We could not pay. So he paid a debt he could not owe. He did not owe. Beautiful.

Starting point is 00:46:52 Well, thank you so much again for being on Pines with Erquinas. Let's say you want to point people to some of the great work the Thomistic Institute is cranking out. Where would you direct them? Yes, I'd be delighted to do such. I mean, the Thomistic Institute podcast is a place where we host the recordings of the lectures that take place on our various campuses where we have campus chapters. And then, as I mentioned in an earlier episode, we're launching Aquinas 101. So the website will go live at the beginning of August and the videos will start coming out in early September. And you can just

Starting point is 00:47:33 enroll in one of the kind of courses that we have curated so as to have those videos sent to your inbox with some readings and then some recommended listening as a way to help you get a nice, well-rounded Thomistic formation. I think sometimes we're intimidated a little bit by the language or maybe by the length of St. Thomas' work, but this will give you an excellent way not only to learn St. Thomas, but to take him as your guide and to be able to engage with him directly and well. So, yeah, it's pretty sweet. Aquinas101.com. More details forthcoming. I presume that's the numerals 101. Correctamundo. Yeah. Good. Thanks so much.

Starting point is 00:48:13 Hey, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. All right. Thank you so much for listening. This was the second in a two-part series on the incarnation. If you haven't yet listened to last week's, as I said in the beginning, be sure to go back and check that out. A big thanks again to all of you who have begun to start, begun to start, begun supporting me on Patreon and making it possible for me to do all this great work. We're going to have Father Gregory Pine coming on every other episode, starting in September, we think, well, at the earliest, September. And after that, we're creating hopefully a Pints with Aquinas app. Once we reach enough patrons after that, we want to start doing the Matt Fradd Show every other

Starting point is 00:48:51 week. It's amazing to see the traction on this thing. It just kind of blew up recently. I say blew up. I know blow up is relative, right? But the other day, it was like two days ago, I had just under 17,000 subscribers. Two days ago, 17,000, just under. Now I have 19,000 subscribers. So these things tend to catch on, and I just love the idea that I get to put really awesome people like Peter Kreeft and Father Mike Schmitz, who we'll have on soon, and others in front of people on YouTube, so we can kind of let them see what the Catholic church has to say at its best. So pumped about that. So a lot is happening. And so you might just think that giving me 10 bucks a month is not going to actually help us a great deal,

Starting point is 00:49:34 but it does help us a tremendous deal. So if you want to see what we're doing, expand to these goals that we've set for ourselves, please go to patreon.com slash Matt Fradd right now. Give us a buck a month, 10 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month, $5 million a month. I mean, I don't care. Well, I do care. It's just whatever you want to do. You could also go to pintswithaquinas.com slash donate if you hate Patreon and don't want to give that way. So that's cool too. But really appreciate it. Thank you for making the show be the best that it can be. Also, if you're like, I got no money, that's all right. You could pray for us. And I don't just say that as an offhand remark. I actually mean it. Your prayers really bless us and those who are listening. I think that the most brilliant,

Starting point is 00:50:15 constructed argument, podcast, lecture, or whatever will not convert souls. It's the Holy Spirit who converts souls through the use of these things. You know what I mean? So your prayers would be tremendously helpful. Also, you could leave us a review on iTunes. And when you do that, that actually helps us a lot. People have told me, and I believe them, that we get recommended more. So if the show is more popular, if we get more ratings, then when someone's looking at something related to philosophy or Aquinas or drinking or something, we get recommended. And so we have so many people who find us accidentally. So, go to iTunes, review us there as well if you want. That'd be the sweetness. Have a great day. Bye. That's all

Starting point is 00:50:54 I got to say. I can't believe you're still listening because I really have nothing else. Okay. So, okay. Since you're not going to go, go to Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. You can follow me on all of those platforms if you want. And have you subscribed to our YouTube channel yet? We're doing the big Matt Fradd show episode once a month, and then we're putting out little episodes twice a week. And then I do these live streams every week too. So that's starting to hop, hop, hop, hop. We're gaining about a thousand new subscribers a month right now, which is pretty cool. So yeah, if you haven't subscribed, go to YouTube and go to Matt Fradd and subscribe, I think that's all I'm going to say.

Starting point is 00:51:31 Um, it's ridiculous that you're not going, Oh, what if I play you a song? Wait there. All right. I don't know how much you're going to hear. All right, I don't know how much you can hear. Ooh. How's it going? This is really not worth your time. I wouldn't stick around. Nope.

Starting point is 00:52:00 Hmm. Do you remember that song? Who was that guy? He used to be addicted to drugs and stuff. Who was that guy? Is this copyright? Taking my hand to the promised land and on you I will want to stand because I cannot do it on my own Yeah, that one.

Starting point is 00:52:23 I need you, I need you You know that one? I need you, I need you Sean MacDonald, that's it Sean MacDonald Check him out He's got that beautiful song called Gravity What's that? How's it go? I don't even know

Starting point is 00:52:40 I don't wanna fall away from you I don't wanna know. I don't want to fall away from you. I don't want to fall away from you. Gravity is pulling me on down.

Pints With Aquinas - 163: 5 (MORE) Reasons For The Incarnation W/ Fr. Gregory Pine (Part 2)

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