Pints With Aquinas - 170: Why Love is the cause of Hate, W/ Fr. Gregory Pine

Episode Date: September 10, 2019

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G'day and welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name's 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? Today, we are joined around the bar table by Father Gregory Pine to ask Aquinas a whole host of questions. We're going to be talking about whether love is the cause of hatred, whether love is what motivates all of our actions, and a whole lot else besides. Last week, we did a broad overview about what Aquinas has to say on the passions. If you haven't yet listened to it, go and listen to that. And then today, we're going to be delving into the Summa Theologiae. So buckle up.

Here we go. Welcome back to Pints with Aquinas, the show where you and I pull up a barstool next to the angelic doctor to discuss theology and philosophy. Glad to have you back with us. I want to tell you about something. This fall, we are going to be leading a book study on Flannery O'Connor. a book study on Flannery O'Connor. Father Damien Ference is currently getting his PhD on the philosophical underpinnings of Flannery O'Connor's art. Maybe you've read some of Flannery O'Connor's fiction, maybe you want to. But this fall, Father Damien Ference is going to be leading

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So if you believe in this work and you want to support it, join the team and get a bunch of free stuff in return. Go to patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. Or if you don't like Patreon, you can give to me directly. You don't have the whole Patreon experience, so that might be a bummer for you. But some people just hate Patreon and want to give directly. You could do that at pintswithaquinas.com slash, no, yes, pintswithaquinas.com slash donate. All right. Here's the show. the second part of our two-part series on the passions with Father Gregory Pine. Okay, this is fantastic. Now, when we were first going to sit down and go through two episodes on the emotions,

you had suggested a couple of articles. I did indeed. I'm not sure if they're worth going over, if they'd be superfluous at this point, because we've probably dug into a lot of it. So feel free if you want to kind of point us to a particular article at this point that you want to delve into, or if we might want to speak a little bit more about love being the spring of the emotions and joy and whatever else? Yeah, I think we've covered, of the articles that I suggested, we've covered all the, I think, all the salient points. So I think love, the questions on love are, one, they're beautiful, and two, they're super helpful for our consideration. So I think those would be... Yeah, let's turn to them. Remind me, what are we doing? Question 24 in the Secunda Secundae?

So Prima Secundae, question 26 is when he starts talking about love. The first question 26 is kind of like programmatic. We've already covered a lot of that territory. So I think that, yeah, like 26, 27, excuse me, 27, 28, 29 are pretty great. So like 27 is the causes of love all right you want to start then yeah let's let's kick it i'm opening it now is good the only cause of love is knowledge a cause of love is likeness a cause of love where do you want to start is any other passion of the soul a cause of love so i think the question on um knowledge so so article number two is is short

and delightful just like the little response. It gets at what we talked about with respect to apprehension. So I think that might be helpful. Sure. You want to do the respondio or the objections first or what? Let's just do the respondio. Okay. He says, I answer that as stated above, good is the cause of love as being its object, but good is not the object of the appetite, except as apprehended, and therefore love demands some apprehension of the good that is loved. For this reason, the philosopher says that bodily sight is the beginning of sensitive love, and in like manner the contemplation of

spiritual beauty or goodness is the beginning of spiritual love. Accordingly, knowledge is the cause of love for the same reason as good is, which can be loved only if known. Dig. So I love it because there's something about this question that's just very sober. Yeah. So he's trying to examine what it is that begets love in us. And he comes up with three main things, namely the good, what is known, and then what is like. And what we talked about earlier kind of gets at what's under the hood when it comes to the good. Like we only love those things which we find appetitable or we only love those things which represent for us a kind of perfection, which cause in us a kind of complacency.

But here he just makes the simple observation that you cannot love what you do not know. And I think that so like the spiritual import of this is big because if you want to basically, if you want to change the way that you love, you first change the way that you know. So perhaps you've had the experience of somebody just like profound, somebody just appealing to your will that you should try. Yeah. Just love. Just do it. Just do it. Just saddle up. Just do it. Just go for it. Reach for the sky, whatever. And oftentimes we find that kind of exhausting, like a little bit. I don't know, just especially for people who are sensitive to being told what to do. It just seems abrasive, almost crass.

I mean, it can lead to despair, too. It's like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps in some sense. Certainly. And if we continually attempt to try harder and only ever fail, then it may cause in us a real spiritual lassitude. Like, what's the point? You know, I've attempted it before. What is different about my present circumstances? Yes. If that's your only paradigm. But St. Thomas here is stressing that, like, basically, love is the movement begotten of a form, but the form is first apprehended, is first known. And so, like, to think

about this in the most concrete and practical of ways, when I preach, I am not just appealing to willpower. I'm appealing to embodied souls and to ensouled bodies. I am appealing to persons who have a supernatural destiny, and they have minds with which to know, and they have hearts with which to love. And it turns out that what you think actually affects what you love. And so if you know things about the triune God, if you know things about the dispensation of creation, if you know things about the heart of man and about angels and about divine governance, and if you know things about beatitude and the virtues, et cetera, down the line, then that can actually change the way that you pursue those goods. Which is why it's like when we go to mass or we hear a good preacher, it's not like we're just kind of like harvesting or

mining cute insights that we can tell them to our friends. It's because effectively we're, we're shaping our desires because our desires follow in the wake or they follow on the coattails or they follow in the train of what it is that we know. Um, so yeah, you can only love what you have first conceived, um, which is, which is why it's so very important to feed your mind. Let's think about some practical applications of this then, how this insight now could lead us to love God more or love our fellow priest, in your case, in the household, or my wife or my son. People out there perhaps are struggling to love their children.

Yeah, what are some thoughts here? I like what you just said there about your parishioners, People out there perhaps are struggling to love their children. Yeah. What are some thoughts here? I like what you just said there about your parishioners, like recognizing who they are and almost telling yourself who they are, like reminding yourself so that you can then be incentivized to love them through good preaching or something. I do this when I speak to teenagers. Like I'll say it to myself. Like these are beloved children of God. They are not merely mortal. They have an eternal destiny. You know, their family tree could change based on what I am about to tell them.

And these things kind of stir up love in me for them. Yeah. So the first thing that came to mind when you're describing that is just, okay, me living at home. So I live in a house with 75 dominican friars wow 75 that's crazy i didn't realize it was that many yeah it's big it's a big big house with lots and lots of rooms um so sometimes you know like sometimes maybe if there's friction with a brother unfortunately and thanks be to god i'm not just saying this to like be edifying or cute but it's's like, it's a very happy house. Um, and it's a very amicable and, you know, like cordon house, which is grace. Um, but if like, say you're, you feel, you know, kind of like attention with a brother or like estranged from

brother or, you know, suspicious or angry or otherwise resentful, blah, blah, blah. The temptation is often to draw away from them. Yep. Yep. But in that instance, right, you begin to think of that person abstracted from the person himself, right? You begin to magnify his faults. Yep. You kind of host in your own mind a conversation with him to which he himself is not privy. You begin formulating objections or you begin formulating corrections and kind of ginning up your anger. But but you haven't really introduced him into that. What I find is best is to spend more time with that person.

And that sounds like strange and terrible and hateful. You know, like like why would you visit your you know, your being on somebody who doesn't really like you? Well, I think like oftentimes it's very rare that like the other guys, you know, against you or that he's bad. Oftentimes, you know, you're thinking similar thoughts and you're loving similar things. You're not against each other. It's Satan's against both of you. And Satan is trying to stir up discord and strife and envy or jealousy or whatever it is. When you spend time together, you find out who the actual person is, right? You know them better. And as a result of which you find it easier to love them. I find that it's almost universally the case that the more time you spend with somebody, the more time that you love them. Now, mind you, there are people who are just infuriating or bombastic. I may be one of them, etc. But like in general, people are lovable. It's awesome. You know, like people are kind of great. Like a lot of people are pretty darn great. So when you spend the time, you come to discover their excellences and virtues and charm, whatever it is. I mean, this is why parents will often bring two quarreling siblings together and make them hug, you know, as opposed to separating them, which might be our first inclination.

Well, OK, you two have to go downstairs and play Lego together. And this is also really helpful for parents too right they have a child that's really annoying them and sometimes it might be appropriate to separate them from the family because maybe they're causing a lot of turmoil or something but it might also be helpful and i found this helpful is to kind of like sit with them hold them even if they don't want you to hold them because they're being you know a little ghastly or something. But yeah, I see that in parenting, exactly what you're saying.

It's really interesting. Yeah. So yes, so love is preceded by knowledge and love is inspired by knowledge. And oftentimes when we know something, we come to discover that it's desirable, that it's lovable, that it's delightful. And then also with our relationship with God, I mean, this is how theology can cause us to love God more, right? Yeah. And I think, and here, it's not just to say that you have to be smart to love God. You don't have to be smart to love God. What is the sufficient principle for

contemplation? It's charity, right? But ultimately, the whole trajectory of a Christian life is contemplative. We're made to know God and so to love him. And so, again, to like, well, the virtue of charity is perfect effective tethering of our hearts to God so that we suffer in our very members the knowledge of God, the plan of God, the love of God. So ultimately, what we hope for in the Christian life is a way of knowing God that is really, really well attuned to, sensitive to, like the kind of interior dynamism of the triune life. So like to know God is essentially to love him, and the two kind of bleed into each other at the heart of the Christian mystery. Now, help me understand this, because this does sound like a contradiction, because we're saying you can love something only to the degree that you know it.

Is that what we're saying, first of all? I want to get that premise right. You can love something only to the degree that you know it. The words to the degree make me slightly nervous. Yeah, me too, because you see where I'm going. I do, yeah. So the next premise is, well, people who are smarter have a greater capacity to understand God's attributes and what God has done for us. Therefore, it would seem to follow that smarter people could potentially love God far more than a simpleton.

Right. Well, here, you know, you've, like, Jacques Maritain has this famous book, The Three Degrees of Knowledge or Distinguish in Order to Unite. There are different ways of knowing, and this isn't to get, like, Eastern and wonky, but, like, there's philosophical knowledge, there's theological knowledge or the knowledge begotten by faith, and then there's mystical knowledge. And they don't necessarily track, right? So you can be a very adept philosopher, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you know anything about the interior life of God, right?

St. Thomas will often – he'll cite the example of the widow, quid sit una vitula, you know, like what a simple widow knows by faith exceeds the greatest of insights of the most advanced philosophers who operate outside of the Christian fold. And to some people, that was something patronizing and super triumphalistic. But like, what you get with faith is a higher knowledge, because St. Thomas says early on in the Summa that faith gives you a participation in the very knowledge of God and of the blessed. Scientia Dei et Beatorum. So like you actually know with God's knowledge of himself. You know with the knowledge whereby the blessed know God.

And by faith you mean trust in revelation. By faith, I mean, well, faith in the sense of the virtue that is poured into our hearts at our baptism, whereby we hear or we are disposed to receive the revelation of first truth speaking. So it's just faith, which is a virtue, which is the gift of God. Okay. Yeah, so that's a great point. So I'm just thinking of my beautiful,

humble grandmother, Margaret Harris. Love that beautiful woman. She trusted what the church taught her. And so therefore, was able to know a lot more about God than say, even Aristotle, by his own steam. Yeah. And you think like Aristotle, you think how incredibly intelligent he was. You think about all of the just massive insights that he accumulated or that he divined or that he reasoned to over the course of his life. But he got some stuff wrong. And we know that with certainty just by mere virtue of the fact that it's revealed to us. So like he thought that the universe was eternal. But like, you know, everyone's grandmother knows that it's not, that it had a beginning because in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, right? And that's given to us without any labor. It's given to us by virtue of the fact that the Lord reveals himself in time and space and that he sent his only begotten son so that, you know, we might not perish but have eternal life.

So that's a knowledge that transcends even the smartest of smarts. All right, fantastic. All right, here's another thing I want to look at. This is question 29 in the first part of the second part on hatred. And I think this is going to blow a lot of people away here. Is love the cause of hatred? And now I just want to spend time flirting with this article because it's so short and sweet and cute and little. So let's just read an objection because I always love it. You know, because he always puts the objection so well. He says, it would seem that love is not a cause of hatred for the opposite members of a division are naturally simultaneous. But love and hatred are opposite members of a division since they are contrary to one another. Therefore, they are naturally simultaneous. I don't know what that means.

What does natural simultaneous mean? Naturally simultaneous. They are naturally, basically the word, I think in Latin, it's like they're naturally together, held together, which is to say that they are taken as one. So, you know the one in knowing the other. So, like logically dependent. Okay. So, it seems to make sense. So you know the one in knowing the other. So like logically dependent. Okay. So it seems to make sense. Love is not the cause of hatred. And then objection two, further of two contraries, one is not the cause of the other, but love and hatred are contraries. Therefore, love is not the cause of it. I mean, that makes prima facie. It's like, yeah, that totally makes sense. And here he goes, he's going to debunk that. He quotes Augustine, who says that all emotions are caused by love.

Therefore, hatred also, since it is an emotion of the soul, it is caused by love. His respondio is, as stated above, love consists in a certain agreement of the lover with the object loved, while hatred consists in a certain disagreement or dissonance. Now, we should consider in each thing what agrees with it before that which disagrees, since a thing disagrees with another through destroying or hindering that which agrees with it. Consequently, love must needs precede hatred, and nothing is hated, save through being contrary to a suitable thing which is loved. And hence it is that every hatred is caused by love. Delicious. Just that second objection about them two being contrary and therefore love not being able to cause hatred

here's his quick response to that he says love and hatred are contraries if considered in respect of the same thing but if taken in respect of contraries they are not themselves contrary but consequent to one another for it amounts to the same that one love a certain thing or that one hate its contrary. Thus, love of one thing is the cause of one's hating its contrary. All right, excavate that for us, please. Here we go. So I think a basic spiritual insight from this is that we are first for something before we are against something. And I think for a lot of people, you know, maybe people who are exhausted with like argument or political culture or whatever, you know, like a lot of people are exhausted with contention. This should come as a welcome revelation because we are not so much defined by what we are not as by what we are and what we are

for. So like Alistair McIntyre will say that man is a functional concept. So just like we have a functional concept of an axe, namely that is for cutting, or a saw that it is for sawing, or of an astrolabe that it is for navigating by the stars, so too man is a functional concept. He is for knowing and loving. He is broken open unto us like a supernatural destiny, and he succeeds only to the extent that he knows, loves, and serves God in this life and enjoys him in the next. And if he defects from that end, then we would say he has failed because we can judge him in light of what he is for, made for, and ought to operate for. So that is what is most basic or foundational about man. And it's in recovering that identity that we get a sense of trajectory,

that we can actually project a vision and that we can command a scent. So like it doesn't really, it's very difficult to like rally troops around what we are not, right? It's kind of like vacuous and dissatisfactory. It's like why, if you watch the movie V for Vendetta, why you find it so dissatisfactory because what are they rebelling against? It's unclear. It's like some kind of occult or, you know, ill-defined totalitarianism, but you never know as to why it need be overthrown. You have like a kind of atmospheric sense, and I suppose that's part of the artistry, but it's like, but what are we for, you know? And you can say a similar thing with respect to like Les Mis. I'm sure the book and the screen, I mean, the play are better. I have only,

no, whatever, dot, dot, dot. But like the movie, you know, you don't have like a well-developed picture of what they are fighting for. You just have a sense of them overthrowing the shackles of some oppressive, you know, like old regime. But it's very difficult to command assent until you can say what we are for. And so St. Thomas is effectively saying that as human beings, we are first for something before we are distinguished over and against others or before we are against something simply. And that we only know basically what we hate by comparison or by contrast to what it is that we love. I mean, often you encounter cynical people who seem only to be able to talk about what they're against, whether that be politically or in the Catholic Church. We're very good at talking about what we hate and what we're against, but we very often sit and reflect upon what we love. Yeah, but the people who are most inspiring, the people who command the ascent of their friends and acquaintances and followers are people who can project a vision.

their friends and acquaintances and followers, you know, are people who can project a vision. Like, you know, like Bishop Barron, for instance, is like somebody whom a lot of people look to and are inspired by because he can actually, he can tell you something about yourself that you didn't know until it was explained to you. And then subsequently you find it energizing, you know, like it gives you a kind of new life because you're like, yeah, it is possible to love that way. And I'm glad that you expressed it in just those terms because now I have the moral imagination to do what you have, you know, projected. And, you know, ironically, many people look at the church and have seen the church as only against certain things. Yeah. Which I think is why many people appreciate Bishop Robert Barron's work because he's kind of just, okay, let's focus, let's show the culture what the church is for, the beauty, the goodness that it,

you know. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, it's heartbreaking, but a lot of, you know, a lot of people encounter the church first by, again, its stances. Against sex outside of marriage, against homosexual lifestyle. Yeah. And it's just like, who wants to be in an organization that's

just against everything? Yeah. Which is, which is like why it's incumbent upon Christians to be able to give or project a vision, to be able to explain themselves in such a way that's essentially an affirmation. Because like, why do we believe? It's because the only begotten son of God took human flesh and died for love of us. And that he, you know, like founded a church and instituted sacraments so that we would have access to the merits of his grace, that that could be applied through time and space in such a way that our interior lives could be renovated and transformed, and that we ourselves could become partakers of the divine nature and reign with him gloriously as co-heirs in heaven. Like, that's why I'm Christian, you know? And the other

things, like, come in turn. They come in its wake because it's a matter'm Christian, you know? And the other things like come in turn, they come in its wake because it's a matter of like delimiting the bounds of that encounter. And so they're necessary, right? But we typically, you know, like we don't lead with that. We want to be able to explain ourselves in such a way that's as radiantly attractive as the gospel and truth is. Yeah, gosh, that's fantastic. I love this next article, Article 3 here, because it sounds like a T-shirt, a slogan or something. Whether hatred is stronger than love. And I guess the answer would be love is stronger than hate. But let's see what Aquinas says.

He says, it is impossible for an effect to be stronger than its cause. Now, every hatred arises from love, some love as its cause, as above stated, therefore it's impossible for hatred to be stronger than love absolutely. Then he says, but furthermore, love must needs be absolutely speaking stronger than hatred, because a thing is moved to the end more strongly than to the means. Now, turning away from evil is directed as a means to the gaining of good. Wherefore, absolutely speaking, the soul's movement in respect of good is stronger than its movement in respect of evil. Yeah, so this is just a kind of clarification or elucidation

or extension of the logic that we heard in the previous article. And while I'm thinking about it, just a cue for the next article or the next question. Question 28. Question 28 is like an absolute menagerie. It's awesome. The effects of love. Oh, yeah.

We can jump there if you want. Well, a brief word on whether hatred is stronger than love. I think effectively this is a great way to bring into focus the fact that the passions are moral energy energy to think about them in those terms, that they are the fuel which, um, supplies the gusto to the virtues. Um, and effectively what we're saying here is that love is the strongest because the very most basic interaction with our environment is the recognition of something is fitting or the recognition of something as good, something addressed to us, something for us, something that will somehow represent a perfecting of our humanity. And that is the most like constitutive movement, the most constitutive passion, or it's just like kind of like the most fundamental force.

Right. And now I'm starting to sound like anne hathaway's character in interstellar like love is a force um which was actually pretty cool uh if matthew mcconaughey hadn't mumbled through the entire movie um god love him sweet dude so um yeah so like what we're talking about here is just the raw energy which love represents um so like i mean this is a reason for which a lot of the kind of go-to stock phrases of contemporary movements have such force, like love is love or love wins, because love still conjures this image in people's minds. Because as much as we might try to trivialize it or, you know, abuse or misuse the word, people still recognize this in a very basic

level, that love commands assent and attention in a way that really nothing else does, because everyone has a desire for it, a deep and abiding desire for it that cannot be obscured by or occluded from our, you know, like everyone is longing to hear the gospel preached in a way that's attractive and that appeals to them at precisely this point, which is good news. And then, of course, Aquinas still says that nevertheless, hatred sometimes seems to be stronger than love because it's more keenly felt, for example. Yeah, because you don't always shake when you love, but when you hate something, sometimes you need to pace and take deep breaths and talk yourself down. Whereas love for us is kind of more connatural. All right, let's look at that article, question 28 did you say?

Question 28. It's going to blow you away. I cannot wait. All right, the effects of love, where do you want to go first? So the first, basically there are six articles. The first four articles are what he's really interested in. So that there are four four principal effects of love. And this is just like getting downright poetic. People like St. Thomas is boring. Read this article. Get back to me. Yeah. Whether union is an effect of love, whether mutual indwelling is an effect of love, whether ecstasy is an effective love, and whether zeal is an effective love. And I think like the first three, you can kind of take them together. I don't know that any of them merits like a full reading.

Yep. But like what St. Thomas talks about is like love, love. Okay, let's just start with ecstasy. What does ecstasy mean? So ecstasis, I guess it's like a Greek loan word, which means to stand outside of oneself. So in love, you go out. So St. Thomas will talk about like in the movement of the intellect, it's something out there takes up residence in me. So it's from the world to the person because we apprehend it. And then there arises in our mind a kind of intentional form of the thing. So it's effectively like an act of assimilation. But he says with love, we are always drawn to the thing and we go out to the thing, and as a result of which we stand outside of ourselves. So let's just go for a spiritual point at the outset. Like, this is why we can have a hope to become like God,

because in loving God, we actually take up a kind of residence in Him. So, like in St. Thomas's description of beatitude, right, we think about it as a loving vision, so it's something that entails intellection and volition. But he says it's not so much something that, you know, kind of takes up residence in ourselves so much as we take up residence in it. It's not like a thought that enters our mind. It's something into which we ourselves enter. So love has this ecstatic quality, which defines the very term of human existence. It's the thing for which we long. We want to go outside of ourselves. We want to give ourselves, you know, like we want to be almost absorbed into the beloved so that way we can abolish the distance, which so, you know, vexes our relationships.

Yeah. And so like all of these things, you know, union, mutual indwelling, ecstasy are just variations on that theme. Because when you go out towards the thing loved, you take up a kind of dwelling in it. Right. And when you know it, it takes up a dwelling in you. So that's how he accounts for mutual indwelling. it takes up a dwelling in you. So that's how he accounts for mutual indwelling. Yeah, and then like with union, he talks about it in terms of, you know, like you will the good of the beloved, and the beloved wills your own. And as a result of what, you know, you have a kind of

shared life, but that knits two hearts together, and it makes something that previously did not exist, right? So people talk about like how love increases their capacity for love. I just heard a homily the other day where this priest was asking this mother of 11, you know, how do you love all 11 of your children? And she says, you know, with each one, with each new child, it's almost as if my capacity for loving them grows. So it's not like one detracts from the other, but somehow it kind of like augments in turn. And sometimes you sense that, that love creates a space, you know, like you'll meet a couple who've been married for a while and it's almost like their love creates a space of welcome for you i don't know yeah really what i'm i know what i mean by that i don't know how to express it well it's like the difference

that you express in hanging out with a couple that's super clingy and makes you kind of want to like yeah the other side of the room and a couple that like, you see a kind of quiet confidence in their love. And they're, they're delighted at a dinner party to be sat, you know, three seats apart. And yet, you know, that like, they're conscious of the other person in a way that's very attentive, um, and, and patient. Right. But their love is like, yeah, it's for you, it's a kind of revelation of like an, uh, a different or better or higher way to be engaged with another human person. And for you, it's like a kind of, yeah, it's like a kind of welcome. Um, uh, yeah, like I went to, again, I went to Steubenville and some couples were like really good at loving each

other in such a way that you felt drawn into that. And then others, you know, or less so, or not to be faulted for it. And like, we were like 19. Um, and, and yeah, that would, that for me was just a kind of big indicator of the health of the relationship. It's like, does this represent an invitation? Is it a kind of way by which we are being drawn further up and further in into something that transcends us? Now, I'm looking at these last two articles. Is love a passion that is hurtful to the lover? And I mean, i immediately was like

yeah i sometimes like feel like i love my kids so much it hurts me but that's not what he's talking about i guess yeah so i mean well um the idea of you know what i mean i think you know what i mean by that i think as i'm as i'm saying that out loud i mean i want a union that isn't possible with them almost you ever been around a baby that's so cute you just want to like bite it you know i've heard many people describe that yeah i usually say like yeah yeah or at least like well i mean my own children you want to snuggle into your nose into the crest of their neck and just kind of you know kiss them and blow raspberries on them and like just be close to them you know in that sense i think it creates this kind of i can't i can't

be close enough to you i certainly feel like that with my wife i i was just with my uh family for a few days and my one sister she has a little three-year-old daughter and she was doing this like it was super precious she was doing this exhaustive inventory where she was going through, like, you know, like, can I munch your arm? She's like, no, mommy. She's like, can I munch your cheeks? No, mommy. Can I munch your leg? Okay, mommy.

Yeah, right. Yeah, but you just want to squish them. You just want to snuggle them. You just want to, you know, yeah, you just want to eat them up. You just want to snuggle them. You just want to, you know, yeah, you just want to eat them up. It's funny because you want to be one with them, and you mean that obviously in a different sense to the way you might want to be one with a lover. But it's like you want an intimacy that you feel like you can't attain here on earth with them almost.

And I think that like, well, certainly the more that you love someone, the more it opens you up to the experience of, you know, the difficulties attendant upon love, right? So we're made for love, and love is our perfection. It's the very, you know, it's at the heart of the universe, and love is what we hope for in the end, a love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit into which we ourselves are kind of inducted, in which we are called up by virtue of our conformity to Christ. in which we are called up by virtue of our conformity to Christ. And so we get intimations of that here, or we experience it in pale shadows. But what we ultimately want is the perfection of the image of God in us, to know and to love with God's own self-knowing and self-loving in such a way that puts us at the very heart of the Trinity. So everything that we experience now has a kind of dynamism towards that, and yet we recognize its limitation. We recognize the way in which it's still, you know, troubled by this, that, or the other kind of selfishness or egotism

or alienation or whatever, right? And we want to banish that, right? We want to like remove those things that distance us from the object of our love. And in so doing, we are opened up to a world of pain because we discover ways in which it's possible to misinterpret each other or to misrepresent each other or to be dull or dense or otherwise unsympathetic. And like we would that it were not the case, but yet it is because we remain as yet to be redeemed. But we wouldn't have it any other way because like without this love, we wouldn't experience the kind of growth that's born of suffering because it makes us more like Christ, who opened himself up to love to such a radical extent that he, you know, shed every last drop of his blood, you know, for love of us, that we might not experience this life without the hope

of a love that goes to the nth degree. So, yeah, I mean, that's like a kind of overly, I suppose, theological and poetic way of saying that, like, you just want to love people more. And yes, sometimes we're lazy, and maybe we don't really want it that much because we'd rather sit on a couch and eat cookies and watch the NBA. But like, we really want to love people more. And we recognize that when we see in their eyes that kind of mild disappointment with us being buttheads, you know, and it's just like, ah, I was a butthead again. You know, like I didn't return like the charge cord that I borrowed from her desk because I am lazy and selfish. And she came and get it because she is long suffering and generous, you know, but like office life, man, I just like I can be really a booger in a variety of ways. And would

it were not so like I wish I could love better, you know, and it inspires you this deep desire, but the very desire itself, the very love itself wounds, right? Yeah. And the greater you love someone, the greater hurt you are by them. Like if you snub me, I'm like, oh man, a little hurt. If my wife snubs me, I'm a little crushed, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Because the stakes are higher, you know? Yeah, that vulnerability too. I think it was Bonaventure who talked about Christ's love. This is what vulnerability looks like in a broken world. We crucify it. Dig.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whether love is cause of all that the lover does is the cause of all the lover does. He says yes. He doesn't. And this is the kind of like this is the last question this is talk about a cute article every it's like every objection is almost a sentence the said contra is a sentence it's very nice and little yeah because because saint thomas can do cute to the point to the point he says in five words what modern theologians

would take a page to write. Yeah. So for him, this is just like a nice way to button up. Recall like questions 22 through 25 are the introduction to the passions. Yeah. Question 26 through 28 is where he talks about love. And he doesn't actually talk about all 11 of the passions over the course of, let's see, 48 divided by 22, 26, 27. So he doesn't talk about all 11 in the course of 23 articles. So, like to some, he dedicates more time. And love is one of those things because

it's so foundational and fundamental. So, to hope, he gives a lot of space to hope. But here, he's just kind of buttoning up what has gone before in the last three questions. And simply to say that, like, love is the fount love is the very source um and as a result of which if you want to get at uh the inspiration for the passionate life you get first at love um and and so like that's the most fundamental question that we ask of man is like you want to know who man is ask what it is that he loves because in, in desire is sown destiny. Um, and it's, it's like, it's revelatory of who you are, you know, like by you, what you are is effectively revealed by what you love because we can tell ourselves, you know, strange fancies or

like, you know, vain musings that I, I'm, you know, like I'm, I'm a great basketball player. I'm an aspiring astronaut. You know, I'm great at yachting. I think I'm wonderful at calligraphy. But like if I don't do any of those things, if I don't actually pursue any of them with passion or verve or desire, then I am lying to myself because what I what I what I love is what I do. Right. And that, you know, the real drama is to train up my love. So I do the things that are most constitutive of me as a person so that ultimately I'm defined by a reality that is more noble than my present circumstances that can draw me up into something bigger and better and holier because to wallow and languish in my present state would be, you know, like offensive to the real deep desires and like burning love that the Lord

has given each of us at our baptism. So, yeah. Okay, last article before we start wrapping up, because this is hilarious. I just saw this. I've never seen it before. Question 40, article 6. Where the hope abounds in young men and drunkards. What? That's a good one.

Yeah. So basically, for him, it's a matter of estimating your strength. So he's of the mind that when you've had a vast experience of life or you have encountered suffering or, you know, like you're wise for whatever reason, you just have a more modest that you think attainable. And so if you have an exaggerated sense of your own power or of what is attainable, then you're going to be more hopeful, as it were. And again, here, we're not talking about a virtue. We're just talking about a movement of the passion. So he thinks that, you know, like prideful or excuse me, drunk men tend to be pretty swashbuckling. You know, they tend to have a pretty decent estimation of their own powers. And so do young men because they don't have a wide experience of life and they tend not to be docile. Oh my gosh, please let us read this. This is too good not to read.

Youth is a cause of hope for three reasons, as the philosopher states. And these three reasons may be gathered from the three conditions of the good, which is the object of hope. Namely that it is future, arduous, and possible, said it above. For youth has much of the future before it and little of the past, and therefore, since memory is of the past, and this is so great, hope is of the future, it has little to remember and lives very much in hope. I remember when I was about 17 years old, and I was thinking about becoming a priest. I remember saying to somebody, I said like, I'm becoming a priest because I want to change the world. And like, you know, if I don't want to change the world, what's the point of becoming a priest? Like so,

what do you say? Idealistic and audacious, right? Yeah. Because life hadn't kicked the crap out of me yet. And then I just want to see, what does he say this bit about drunkards because this is just glorious wherefore youth through inexperience of obstacles and of their own shortcomings easily counterthink possible and consequently are of good hope and he says two of these causes are also in those who are drunk heat and high spirits on account of wine and heedlessness of danger and shortcomings yeah cool i love it so this is why like drunk people can ask people out and have more well And high spirits on account of wine and heedlessness of danger and shortcomings. Yeah, cool. I love it. So, this is why like drunk people can ask people out and have more.

Well, this is what not maybe not drunkenness, but what this is why drink can be conducive to good conversations. In vino veritas, right? Because our inhibitions are down. Indeed. I am with you. This comes full circle to Pints with Aquinas here. It does indeed. Oh, you're also going to love an article.

We'll have to delay it for another consideration. You tell me that in a second, but listen to this last sentence. For the same reason all foolish and thoughtless persons attempt everything and are full of hope. Ha, that's brilliant. This is a good question. Like, how does one not become cynical?

I mean, you know, I just interviewed Peter Kreeft on the Matt Fradd Show a few months back. and one of the questions i asked him is like how come you're not cynical because a lot of old people i meet do tend to be world weary and why shouldn't they be you know but he's very playful and optimistic still yeah i mean well i mean like this is why youth is given to the youth right and this is why, the best contribution that they can make isn't to be like overly circumspect and cautious. It's just to be audacious, right? Because they supply, you know, when you think about it in terms of a community, they supply

the kind of moral energy that the old and wizened sometimes have lost. But to retain that throughout the course of one's life, to have a kind of youthful and buoyant spirit, I mean, that's awesome. That's a great gift and that's a joy because I think it's a lot easier to indulge in sadness or to become world-wearied and to become, you know, just kind of like down and out, as it were. And if this is the only world we've got, it makes all the sense in the world to become world-weary and exhausted i mean you're only the days are getting shorter you're only heading towards nothingness right you know um all right you said there was an article but i have one final question but what was the other article you said we got to get to another day another day it's in question

38 on the remedies for sorrow oh yeah and uh there's where he like talks about like taking bads yeah we've done we've done whole episodes on this. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, for those who are interested. I'm not sure if you know Father Damien Ferencz. Him and I did a whole episode on this fantastic stuff. How do we put a bow on this? So for the last two weeks, in the first week, we kind of did an introduction to the passions.

We kind of went through the whole thing. Here, we've kind of jumped to and fro about the place in the Sumer. Maybe help tie this together for us somehow and maybe give us some suggested readings if you want to delve deeper. Sure. So I think with respect to the passions, one of the best things to keep in mind is that the passions are the raw energy which supplies the virtues with their dynamism. which supplies the virtues with their dynamism. So if asked whether we love too much or too little, the answer is too little and perhaps in a disorderly fashion. But the promise of virtue is that our passions can be incorporated into a truly human culture and a truly human life, and that they can be super constructive and super helpful and beneficial for growing in knowledge and growing in love of God,

of neighbor, of self in such a way that ultimately it becomes easy to do the right, to choose the right, and it becomes delightful. It becomes prompt and that the passions will kind of respond seamlessly and spontaneously to the dictative reason and the law of God because those things have been breathed into or impressed in our very bodies. So all of this is just a kind of consideration of—we did like the 30,000-foot view and then we got into some details—but all just to say that we have this bodily life that is not to be left aside because the Incarnation is a principle that accompanies us through every aspect of Christianity, but that we needn't despair that we are somehow like, um, in, in, entrapped in a flesh prison,

but rather that our bodies really make a genuine contribution to our spiritual health, um, and to the way in which we glorify God or give particular expression to his grandeur. So yeah, the passions are at the outset perhaps neutral, but they can become fearfully and terribly good. Fantastic. Well, one book I would recommend people get, I've referenced it a few times over these couple of weeks, is Aquinas 101 by Francis Selman. I believe he's a Catholic priest. He is i think he's from england or yeah yeah he's a very succinct uh entertaining writer um he gets yeah right down to the point in chapter set he has a whole chapter on the emotions um what would you recommend people look into if they wanted to delve deeper yeah that's great um let's think first thought would be okay so for people who are like

i really really really want to know know this in clear and distinct detail. There are two good books that were written in like the late 2000 aughts. The Logic of Desire by Father Nicholas Lombardo and then Treatise on the Passions by Robert Miner who is based out of Baylor. So both are like, they're like 200 pages, maybe 300 pages and they're very in-depth so it's a kind of it's just like that would that would be if you're nerding out but they get they get into the weeds and they are both really excellent excellent reads and then again aquinas101. what's the website that y'all are putting together the website is aquinas101.com yeah i guess you'll be discussing the passions there at some point huh huh? We shall indeed. Yeah, I recorded a couple of videos about the passions not too long ago. So we're going to release two videos a week, basically for the next nine months.

So we have the first three up and there'll be like a little bit of a lag, but then they'll come out and that'll correspond with, you'll get emails sent to your inbox when you enroll, which will have the video. And then just like a little bit of suggested reading that we'll make some snippets of for you, some suggested listening where you can kind of follow on with podcasts that are pertinent, and then some further resources. So I think you'll find it super delightful. And the ones about the passions, I imagine based on a rough estimate will come out in about January. So stay tuned. I just want to say this is fantastic. I'm just going through Aquinas101.com. I want to

encourage everybody listening to go there right now. This is amazing. And then I just clicked enroll and it says all our courses are free of charge. So you have full course enrollment, short course enrollment, an introduction to Thomistic philosophy. Dude, I can quit now. This is fantastic. Yeah, I think it's a great resource and I think people will find it super delightful. Oh, I'm so glad you're doing it. Well, thank you very much. I really have enjoyed these couple of weeks and chatting with you, so thanks for being with us. It is my joy.

Thanks so much for the invite. Okay, thank you very much. That concludes our two-week course. You want to call it a course? I don't know. Drinking session on the passions. I hope you learned a lot. I certainly did. Again, if you haven't listened to last week's episode, be sure to do that. And I want to ask you if you would consider reviewing Pints with Aquinas on

iTunes or wherever you listen to it, because it really does help spread the word about this podcast. Maybe tweet at us at Pints with Aquinas or at Matt Fradd, and we'll retweet you provided that you tweet something cool enough for us to retweet. Yeah, just help us spread the word about it. And again, we've got a big book study coming up in the fall for our patrons on Flannery O'Connor, as well as a bunch of other free things you'll get in return if you want to go and support us right now at patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. Big thanks. God bless.