Pints With Aquinas - 189: 19 Metaphysical terms you should know! W/ Fr. Gregory Pine

Episode Date: January 21, 2020

Today I sit down with Fr. Gregory Pine to discuss and explain about 19 metaphysical terms Aquinas uses that will help you understand him more. SPONSORS EL Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/  Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/  GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show. LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd MY BOOKS  Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform

G'day and welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd and today I am joined around the bar table by Father Gregory Pine to discuss a bunch of temistic metaphysical jargon that will help you understand Aquinas better. Welcome to Pines with Aquinas, the show where you and I pull up a barstool next to the angelic doctor to discuss theology and philosophy. Listen to what we're going to discuss today. Buckle up. Do you know what these words mean? Metaphysics, substance, accident, property, genus, species, form, matter, act, potency, good, evil, being, essence, existence, nature, cause, teleology. I think we even get into hypostasis. So buckle up. This is a great episode. The reason I wanted to do this episode at the front of the year is that I know many of you would like to read more about Thomas Aquinas, or not about him, but him. And I think this will help you. It was a good episode. Father Gregory Pine, such a bloody champion.

So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it. Hey, I want to share something funny with you. This just happened to me and I cannot believe it happened. My wife just was at the SLS Focus Conference. She got to get a photo with Cardinal Muller, who is a rock star. And in this photo, it's my lovely wife and two daughters. And you think that's sweet. No, well, it is.

But Avila, my eldest daughter, has a gigantic sticker on her face. You cannot see her forehead at all. Barely see her face. You cannot see her forehead at all. Barely see her eyes. Okay. And it's of Thomas Aquinas shooting a fireball at Richard Dawkins. So I'll be uploading that to social media. And I, you know,

just the one chance we had to have a nice photo there with Cardinal Mueller. But well, these things happen, don't they? Hey, I want to show you something really cool. Check this out. How nice is her voice? So much better than my voice.

All right, so the point is, Halo is sponsoring this episode, so I wanted to show you a little bit from their app. You don't have to use, you know, the synth music like a hippie. You can actually choose to use Gregorian chant in the background. Point is, it's a bloody fantastic app, and you should check it out. Halo, H-A-L-L-O-W. Halo offers a permanently free version of their app, which includes content that's updated every day.

You can listen and go through this Lectio Divina on the daily mass readings, but it also offers a paid subscription option with premium content. I have it. It's great. But by using the promo code Matt Fradd, one word, you can try out all the sessions in the app for a full month, totally for free. To take advantage of this special offer, visit hallo.app.com. That's hallo.app.com and create your account online before downloading the app. All right, good. Here's the episode. What are you stirring there? Some tea? Stirring some tea. I'm just getting my honey in and then I'll be ready to rock. I am drinking some, this is my new favorite bourbon.

It's Old Dominic. Wait, what? Old Dominic from Memphis. Never even heard of that. The reason I like it is I like rye, and this has a high rye in it. Yeah, I think it's a root. I don't know if it's relatively new or not. I think they've just done a recent push.

But anyway, that's what I'm drinking. Do you like Bullet? Yeah, Bullet's great. Nice. I mean, Bullet's another one of those high rye bourbons. Yeah, what's funny is, because they have both bourbon and rye. And I like rye, but bourbon is more romantic to me.

What do you mean by romantic? It has a sort of feeling to it that I like to associate myself with i want to sit out in the back deck with a bourbon i don't want to sit out in the back deck with a rye even if i enjoy rye more huh i'm working through it i'm not saying it's okay that i'm like that but but there's like a classic americana song which talks about drinking like whiskey and rye so i feel like which is weird weird because rye is whiskey. I'm not sure what he meant.

Yeah, maybe he was confused. Maybe he was thinking like, I'll name a genus and a species and people will just give me a pass on it. Very good. Yeah, thanks. I have really been loving the stuff coming out of the Thomistic Institute.

I was on your YouTube channel the other day and I was just kind of binging through a bunch of episodes. It is very well done, like the graphics, everything. And then also, I've noticed like your thumbnails are looking a lot more impressive lately. You guys are really going for it. Tell our listeners about what y'all are doing. Sure. Let's see. So, Aquinas 101 is the ongoing project. And the hope is to produce video content from this point forward for general consumption. And this is the introductory course. So it's 85 videos. And then the first third basically is an introduction to St. Thomas's genius and vocabulary. And then the rest is like a walkthrough of the Summa Theologiae. So we just transitioned now into actually doing the walkthrough of the Summa. So we've had videos on like the five ways, divine attributes, naming God, stuff like that. And yeah, we're just like learning how to do YouTube. We corporately, myself personally. So there's all kinds of ways to do it

better. And I've been learning some of those. Thumbnails, for instance. Like I've never used Photoshop before. Oh, you've been doing them? Yeah, you better believe it, man. You personally? So we had a guy basically help us to get it started up, and now I'm the thumbnail man.

So I just discovered – I'm gradually discovering different things available from Photoshop. So who did that one, God's Knowledge? Was that you? That was me, my friend. Yeah, and then these other ones that say Faith and Reason and What is Metaphysics, you put those in over the stills? Yeah, basically, yep. Just take a screenshot of the thing on the MP4 and then just drop it into Photoshop

and then do gussy it up, you know? Well, good for you because you're actually getting a significant amount of views for your subscribers. So I have over 30,000 kind of subscribers. It's all relative really. I mean, but, um, you know, like some, I might put out a video and I'm like, I just did one with Jason Everett. Um, but you've got one, you put out a month ago you have 11 000 views on what is truth and you only have 4 000 subscribers that's pretty great thank you have people told yeah people told you that um i don't really know how to read the analytics yet so i just look at them and then i see a bunch of like numbers and then i see a bunch of pie charts and graphs and i'm just supposed to make sense of that.

And instead what happens is I get overwhelmed and then I go check my email. End up watching videos about cats and things. Exactly, yeah. So grumpy cat and his ilk. No, yeah. So I don't exactly know how to interpret the data yet, but that's helpful. So I'm encouraged by what you've said.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm so excited. I can just see your channel growing a ton. And it's actually like, I don't mean to keep this much praise upon you guys. I feel like I'm going a little overboard here. But it's the kind of videos that I actually have sent to some evangelical friends. And not in a way that my friends would find annoying. I know they'd be like, oh my goodness, like this is great.

You know, like I'm just so happy y'all exist. That's what I'm trying to say. Dang. Well, thank you. I'm very, yeah, I'm very grateful. Sometimes, you know, you're doing the thing and you're like, I don't know if this thing does anything. I bet you there's like, I don't know, 48,000 cats in Korea who are watching our videos.

But apart from that, no one's seeing them. But hey, at least one human being has and maybe he's sent it to another couple. So cheers. Thanks. Yeah. Well, I'm excited for today's episode because we are going to help people read Thomas Aquinas. I think one of the things that people find most difficult if they pick up a copy of the Sumer and try to make their way through it is Thomas's Aristotelian metaphysical lingo. And so today we want to go through a bunch of terms and have you explain to us what they mean.

Before we do that, though, we should probably define what we mean by metaphysics. This is something people aren't often sure how to define. So before we define these other terms, what is metaphysics? Excellent. Actually, this is super apropos. This is super pertinent, timely, etc. Excellent. Actually, this is super apropos. This is super pertinent, timely, etc. I was just answering. I also answer the comments on each video. I noticed. It's cool that you do that. little too much. So you should, you should do stuff on defining those terms, blah, blah, blah, this and such. And so I was like, Hey, we'll check out our first, you know, 27 videos that maybe have some help. And you might also check out a, a podcast with father Gregory Pine and Matt Fred. Absolutely. So, um, so what is metaphysics? Okay. So you can do this from the,

let's see the word perspective or the thing perspective. So from the word perspective, meta just means beyond. Physics means basically natural philosophy. From physis meaning nature. So the Aristotelian division of the sciences that St. Thomas inherits and that he explicates is that you get an object of study by abstracting. Okay, what do you mean by abstracting? A lot of times when we hear the word abstraction, we think of people who are out of touch with reality. So a kind of absent-minded professor we think of as abstracted, but abstraction just means to draw away from. So it's to take something of an object of study, but to leave other things of that object of study

behind so that you can be focused in how you approach it. So when you do natural philosophy, which is what Aristotle describes in his book, The Physics, what you're doing is you're studying being under the aspect of motion. So you're considering being as movable, ens mobile, he says, is the object of study. And in order to do that, you have to get away from all the particular matter. So this flesh and these bones, he'll say, and then you have to abstract to kind of matter in general. So what you're thinking about is what's common to material things. And in the study of natural philosophy, you'll get stuff like a description of motion and time of place and things like that. My heating unit just turned on. I'm going to silence that sucker because it's a blowtorch. Oh, sure.

It's incredible. It's just, it's very powerful. Um, I'm sweating already. Uh, so, uh, so in natural philosophy, that's where you get those things. And like the big gem of natural philosophy is act and potency because you can actually get that in the study of change. Okay. So then you abstract some more and you leave behind matter, uh, number, so like quantity, and then you retain figure, which is the fourth species of quality, not particularly important, but whatever. And that's your object of study for mathematics. So with mathematics, you're just considering number and figure. And then they'll go on to say if you abstract further yet and you leave behind matter of whatever sort and you just consider being as it is being, then what you're doing is you're doing metaphysics. So in metaphysics, you're considering being and you or like physics insofar as it's like quantifiable, mathematizable science. You're studying it insofar as it's being. So you're asking the types of

questions that are proper to the study of being as being. So like you're asking about what being is and how like substance is being and how accidents are being and how negations are being and how privations are being. What do they have in common? What is distinct? Um, and you're trying to divide up being into, you know, like substances and then quantities and qualities and relations, et cetera. Uh, and you're asking these big ticket questions about like, what does it mean to be one? Or what does it mean to be true? Or what does it mean to be good? Or what does it mean to be beautiful? Things like that. So you're asking these types of questions that are overarching, and that touch upon all different kinds of being, but considered precisely as they are being.

Excellent. What's some objections you've heard to kind of metaphysics as a discipline? I think the most significant objection to metaphysics as a discipline is that, I think the most significant objection to metaphysics as a discipline is that we don't need it, so it's unnecessary. And actually Aristotle kind of anticipates this. He says if there is nothing immaterial – this is a super paraphrase, and this is also a point that is contentious. So different people say different things about this. I realize that I'm simplifying, but hey, cheers. So he'll say, if there isn't anything immaterial, then you don't really need metaphysics because you can basically study everything under

the aspect of natural philosophy. But he thinks that you can discover some things that are immaterial. So like at the end of the physics, he proves that there is a first mover. At the end of the De Anima, he proves that the soul, it seems he proves that the soul is immaterial in order for it to be, well, yeah, dot, dot, dot, the soul is immaterial. And then like St. Thomas will add, there are other things that you can prove, like the existence of angels, right, who are pure spirit. Once you've got that, then natural philosophy simply cannot exhaust your philosophical inquiry because there are certain things that fall without its bounds. So metaphysics, you know, you have to, you have to get at these immaterial things, but you have to, you also have to study the material things, uh, insofar as they have commonalities with the immaterial things. That's what you're doing there. So I think that the most significant

objection to metaphysics is the materialistic or reductionistic objection that, um, metaphysics is basically tantamount, tantamount to, um, I don't know, like magic, right? Because why would you need metaphysics when you have biology, chemistry, and physics? Because it's able to say everything that we need to say about reality. And like teleology, like who gives a care in the world because that's a totally occult claim and you just make up nonsense like that because you don't want to like acknowledge the clear deliverances of science, dot, dot, dot. You get how it goes. Yeah. Okay. Next couple of terms you want to look at, andances of science, dot, dot, dot. You get how it goes. Yeah. Okay.

Next couple of terms you want to look at, and we'll look at these together since they go together, substance and accidents. What does Aquinas mean by that? Boom. Okay, so maybe at this point in the episode you're like, I don't know if I should keep listening because this doesn't really seem to matter too much. But cheers, this does matter because this is how we understand the Eucharist, the doctrine of the Eucharist, for instance.

We call it transubstantiation because it's a change, trans, of substance, substantiation. You got it? Okay. So like how we explain the Eucharist relies very heavily on these terms. So what is substance? Substance comes from the Latin, sub stantia, so under, standing under. So a substance is the type of thing, so if you're to find it logically, it's the type of thing that other things are predicated of. You don't predicate it of other things. And if you speak of it metaphysically, it's the type of thing

in which other things inhere itself, not inhearing in other things. So what does that mean? Okay. Like examples of substances would be like a rock or like a plant or like an animal or like a man. Okay. So these are the types of things that you attribute other kinds of beings to. So the general division comes in Aristotle's categories, which I think is the first book of his logical treatises, the Organon. And he says that you can divide up all of reality into substance and accidents. And accidents he lists are like quantity, quality, relation, habits, posture, place, time, action, passion, dot, dot, dot. So those are different things that inhere in a substance. and a substance is the type of thing in which those other things inhere. So a substance is basically like the basic unit of reality. And here, this is really

helpful to think about by contrast to or by comparison with what we are fed in chemistry. So when you look at the periodic table of elements, you just kind of think like, okay, these are the most basic things in reality, and everything else is just constituted of these basic things. But the Aristotelian notion, the Thomistic notion is that the basic things of reality are substances. So the most basic things are the things that you encounter in the wild, you know, when you're toddling down the street. So, for instance, like a rock is a basic thing or a Venus flytrap is a basic thing or a lynx, just like an animal that I thought of, the name of which I think is interesting, is a basic thing, or a Venus flytrap is a basic thing, or a lynx, just like an animal that I thought of, the name of which I think is interesting, is a basic thing. Or like my next-door neighbor, you know, at, you know, theological college, whatever, Anthony Ferguson,

is a basic thing. So the chemicals that make us up are informed by our souls to make up this basic thing. And so when you look at the periodic table, sometimes you get a false sense of what reality is constituted of. Because, yes, those things are present in reality, but they're taken up into and shaped by the things that they constitute. So like you'll often hear it said that a human person is like 70% water or like 68% water or something like that. I mean, that's like true in one way, but it's also not true in another because once that water is taken up into a human form, it becomes a human, right? So we're 100% human being and it doesn't make too terribly much sense to divide us out into our constituent parts because we're one thing. And the unity of that one thing is what we mean by a substance. So a substance is something with a kind of coherence, with a kind of integrity, with a

kind of unity, right? So it's a thing towards which we can point and we can say that thing. And then accidents are the types of things that give shape to or kind of fill out the picture. So like quantity, I am, I don't know, like 183 pounds. Quality, I am like middling at basketball. Relation, I am the son of Barry Pine. Time, I am situated in the 21st century. Place, I – you can see how this is going. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's the type of things that – These things can all change while your substance remains. it's the type of things that, um, these things can all change while your substance remains. Exactly. Yeah. So, um, so accident, the word accident, we, when we hear accident initially, you think about like a mistake, right. Or gotten a car accident or you missed a step, you know,

while you were carrying, um, you know, like a big pile of junk down into your basement. And then you had an accident or like your two-year-old as he was body training had an accident or you get it okay yeah so what we mean here is not accident in that sense okay so accident comes from the latin accedere which just means to befall or you know to happen to so accidents are the types of things that quote-unquote metaphysically happen to a substance so yeah yeah now we're going to get into what we mean by essence later on so i don't want to get into that right now but how is substance different from essence because sometimes they sound like the same thing if i'm referring to that thing over there kind of independent of its accidental qualities it kind of sounds like i'm talking about what it is or its essence right yeah good question

um so aristotle will he'll distinguish between primary substance and secondary substance. So substance in the in the principal sense is just like this person, this man or that man. So it'd be like Matt or it'd be like Gregory or it'd be like George Washington. So that's like Plato and Socrates are the examples that that are often given in these types of philosophical conversations. And then the other sense of substance is like man, okay? And when we talk about it in those terms, so abstracting from individuals, when we talk about the most distinct or the most particular species but not yet an individual, that's basically what we mean by an essence. So substance and essence are somewhat interchangeable in that regard. When we say essence, what we're effectively saying is the essence of like, so humanity would be the essence of a human person. So it takes account of the form of the matter, but it is not actually individuated and it's not instantiated. So that's a kind of like unhelpfully short way. But yeah, I guess when we return to essence, we can flesh it out. Yeah, and have you heard people say there are no such thing as substances?

Because, for example, if you take any sort of what we would call a substance like an apple and you remove its accidental qualities, its roundness, its firmness, its redness, its, you know, sweetness, you have nothing left once you remove all of these accidental qualities. So have you heard the objection that, yeah, you see what I'm doing? So I actually don't know that much about this stuff, but I have friends who do, and they take classes and then they describe to me the things that they discovered in their classes. But I have friends who do, and they take classes, and then they describe to me the things that they discovered in their classes. So in modern metaphysics, there's a debate as to what constitutes the integrity or coherence or unity of a thing. And some people hold for a kind of classic Aristotelian description, which is what I gave earlier. And some people tend to think that's untenable given the advances of modern science in the last 300 years-ish.

Basically, what we can kind of repose upon is that I think that what's often happening in those instances is a kind of category error. So if you appeal to your common sense, you can often recognize the fact that this is that and that is this you know so like totally walking down the street and you know this is a tree you're walking down the street you know this is a dog right you see a dalmatian you're like i wonder if that was a rescue you know and it was put out to pasture after its two-year-old racing career um you know like so like you you interact with these things as if they had a kind of unity coherence or integrity because they do. And yet we're able to distinguish between the thing and its accidents, you know, its characteristic

properties and things of such nature. And I think that this kind of like the man in the street would be able to say like, that's a dog and that's a tree. And so what St. Thomas and what Aristotle are doing is they're giving us a kind of vocabulary to examine and to, I don't know, like explicate our common sense knowledge. This is why we love Plato so much. He's like a breath of fresh air if you've been reading sort of modern philosophy in that it's just commonsensical. Yeah, yeah, I think that's the basic thing. So I'm not especially familiar with those critiques. I'm probably treating them somewhat dismissively, for which I apologize. Yeah, no worries.

To use an example, I mean, I have a black Russian terrier. And if you go to Google, type in black Russian terrier and have a look. He looks like an orc should be riding him. He's massive. Anyway, I took him to the groomer today, and I said, can you give him an Airedale cut? Because we want to see his eyes. Usually black Russians have their hair all the way over their face, big beard. And so I brought him home today and he looks, you know, he's got the, he's got an Airedale cut, but he's a black Russian terrier. So his accidental qualities, his hair has changed. And yet, you know, he's not an Airedale. He is

a black Russian terrier. That is his substance, I guess, huh? Yeah. And I think too, yeah, I suppose we'll talk about this with genus and species. But what we're talking about here isn't necessarily like what we have in mind from biology class where you have, you know, like phylum and class and whatever, like animalia and down, down, down, down, down. So you get to like genus and species and something like that. Like we're not talking about biological species. That's not the basic unit of our consideration. Like there are some people, and this is, you know, I realized somewhat untenable in the 21st century or people think it to be untenable who think that there are only basically like four substances. You got minerals, you got plants, you got animals,

you got man. And then, you know, once you admit the existence of angels and God, then I suppose you've got something else there too. So, um, what we're like, we want to just make sure that we're not importing our hack knowledge of science from ninth, 10th and 11th grade, which is like what most people do. So when I say hack knowledge, I'm referring to my own knowledge. I'm taking a science class beyond like 12th grade. So, um, yeah. So what we're talking about is a philosophical thing, which is trying to point at the intelligibility, right. Or, you know, like the quiddity of a thing, the whatness. And here we're already kind of drifting towards the language that properly describes essence. But what we're describing is not the thisness of a thing, but the whatness of

a thing to try to get down into what it is that is common to different instances of this kind, this philosophical kind that we experience in reality. And that's, yeah, that's basically what we're trying to describe. Can artificial things be said to be substances? Can they have essences in the way that natural things do? So, yeah, this is debated. And again, I'm like a babe in the woods when it comes to this conversation. No worries. Thank you. If you're a babe, I'm a fetus. Wow. Nice. That's a rich image. Thank you. In the woods. Um, so, uh, so some people will say yes and some people will say no. Uh, we, it's, it's significant that Aristotle will often use, uh, art of artifacts for giving descriptions of the four causes, right? So he'll use like, um, a bronze statue

to describe what he means by material cause and formal cause and final cause and efficient cause. And he has in mind there that there's a kind of, again, unity, integrity, coherence of a sort, obviously of a lower grade because it's not an animate thing. And he'll often, you know, he'll use this too of he uses the example of a bed when describing a nature. He says, how do you know – whatever. So he'll say that like a bed is a different kind of thing than a tree because when you plant a bed, it doesn't grow further beds. But when you plant a sapling, it does grow further trees. So he makes this distinction and he recognizes the difference. But he finds it very helpful to use artifacts for drawing analogies to natural kinds.

So I think – and this also comes up in the description, or kind of the question regarding the Eucharist. Okay, so we talk about it as transubstantiation, but like bread is something that men make because you harvest grain and then you mill it and then you like mix it with water and other stuff that I don't know because I've never worked a day in my life, just kidding. And then you bake it and then it becomes a loaf of bread. So is that a substance? I mean, because if it's not a substance, then what is transubstantiation? Because you'd be going from the mess of accidents of bread to the substance of Christ's body,

blood, soul, and image. It's hard to say. So yeah, this question ends up being very significant. I think that we can say that there is a kind of substantial unity to artifacts. That substantial unity is imparted by the artificer, you know, or by the artisan. So we have a kind of subordinate capability. So like God makes substances, right? But we have a kind of capability to be instrumental in the fashioning of new substances, most concretely in the giving or begetting of new life, but also in the way in which we impress a human culture on our environment. So like animal husbandry, we like draw out the native excellence of animals or like horticulture, you know, we draw out the native excellence of plants, but also like when we shape things into artifacts, we draw out the native excellence of our environment as we kind of call it up into

a human use. And so I think, yeah, there's a kind of substantial unity to those things, and we can speak of them as substances. To do so is somewhat improper, but I don't think we should get hung up on it. Okay, sounds good. Well, let's move on to the third term, and that is property. What do we mean by property? So this is a cool kind of intermediate spot between substance and accidents. St. Thomas will say, or Aristotle will say, and St. Thomas will follow him, that there are certain accidents that follow immediately from the fact of this being this type of thing. Okay, so from the fact that we are men, it follows that we are risible is the example that they give often, so that like we have the

capacity for laughter or humor. Why? Well, because we're intellectual creatures and so we can recognize incongruities between things. So when you see somebody pulling at a door that says push and the door is the entry to a school for the gifted, you're like, wow, that's hilarious. When a bride slips on a banana peel. Right, yeah. So this to us is hilarious

because we can recognize incongruities because we can make comparisons because we're intellectual creatures. Whereas a dog would look at that and they'd be like, wow. Right. Okay. So it follows immediately from the fact that we are intelligent, that we are risible. So strictly speaking, our being risible is not, it's not substantial. It's not, we're not like, uh, you know, risible animals. We're rational animals because it's more significant that we have a mind than that we can laugh because having a mind is primary and that we can laugh flows from that. So, property is like a turbo accident. It's the type of accident

that flows immediately from the substance. Would another example of that be the heat to the sun? Does that make sense? Like the heat it is if the sun has existed from all eternity which it hasn't but if it had we would say that the heat has also existed from all eternity because it's a necessary accident of it yeah um i think so you can say no i'm just trying to think i mean like i suppose the sun's going to uh i don't know actually how stars evolve but i i seem to remember that they supernova and that they dwarf and that they black hole and there are maybe other intermediate steps where they become giants or super giants

but I think that's like a left turn in the road so at a certain point the sun maybe won't emit heat but sun in the sense of how we understand it if it existed from all eternity got it but that's okay fair enough these next Yeah, if it existed from all eternity. Oh, right. Yeah. Got it.

Okay, fair enough. These next two words that I've had trouble understanding in the past, and it's not just because when someone explains them to me, I don't get them. It's when I read it, trying to remember what they mean, and we read this a lot in Aquinas, help us understand genus and species. Nice. Boom. So genus, you've probably encountered this word in Trivial Pursuit when you have the one from like the 70s or 80s in the blue box. It says the genus edition and everyone says genius edition, but it's actually genus. So I think a helpful way to think about this is like, okay, you close your eyes unless you're driving and then you don't close your eyes. And then you have like a tree where you separate out this type of thing from that type of thing. Okay. So let's say at the top of the tree, you have the word being, and then you separate out non-living from living beings.

Okay. So you've got two little tracks going down and it's like a flow chart type thing. So you've got two little tracks going down, and it's like a flow chart-y type thing. And then now we're with living beings. And you can say sensate and non-sensate. So non-sensate being like plants and then sensate being animals. And then you can go from sensate and divide further to rational and irrational. So what you've got there is at the top, you've got beings, and then you divide that out into non-living and living, and then you divide living basically into plants and animals, and then you divide animals into non-rational and rational.

Okay. So a genus is a category that includes things of its kind. So a genus here, so I gave a bad example because being isn't technically speaking a genus for X, Y, and Z reasons. But so let's go and use living. Okay, so living things is our genus here, and the species of living things are plants and animals, okay? And then animals is a genus with respect to its species, which are rational animals and non-rational animals, so what we would call men and brutes, to use the Aristotelian language. So a genus is just – it's a kind of universal with respect to particulars. And then a species is a further differentiated instance of that genus, okay? So what we're talking about is like categorization.

This works both in logic and in metaphysics, right? But what you have with man and what you have with brute is a most specific species, okay? So this is what we mean by species in the strictest sense, right? That man is a species of animal, that by species in the strictest sense, right? That man is a species of animal, that animal is a species of living things, right? And that living things are a species of whatever. Okay. So when we talk about a genus, we're talking about a category. When we talk about a species, we're talking about a kind of that category. And you can do it. It's just a relative distinction. So you can do it anywhere along that tree as we've just done. But at the bottom most level, that's what we really mean by species, those most specific species.

So, yeah, it's a way of organizing our divisions of reality. So one way I've tried to understand it when I've read it is that genus refers to something general. Species refers to something specific within that general category. Is that helpful? Yeah, that's awesome. That's like far more simple than i said it's so pretty yeah because genus is singular the the plural for genus is genera so genera adenal general bingo and then yeah species is just that's yeah that's means to say it's more specific. So, yes, nailed it. Okay, fantastic. All right, next couple we want to look at is form and matter.

You want to look at them together or just form on its own? Let's look at them together. All right. So, again, to use the example that Aristotle uses with like a statue. So you got a bronze statue. It's made out of bronze. And it's made into, let's say it's made into the shape of winged victory. So the matter is the bronze and the form is winged victory. So the form kind of in this most basic sense would just be like the shape or the figure or

the organization. So that's to use an artificial example. But when we talk about natural kinds, we mean something more significant. So a form is, strictly speaking, what makes a thing to be what it is. What makes a thing to be what it is. So when we talk about living things, the form is the soul. Okay? And recall, a soul is what makes a thing to be alive. So the form is what it animates, right? It gives life to, uh, it organizes the matter and orients it towards vital activity. So what we're talking

about when we're talking about form is basically what organizes the thing and makes it to be what it is so that it is intelligible. And so that it is, you know, operable that it can, that it can function as such, or be understood as such. Just to pause here, this is really important because, as you say, when people hear form, they think shape. But if the form is the soul of the body, if form meant shape, then it would mean that we have different sized souls. And a soul is a material, so that's not going to work. So a form, again, is that which makes a thing to be what it is. Is that right? Yep. Yeah. And St. Thomas will repeat that a form

gives being, right? So a form is the type of principle that is the source of the things, integrity, unity, coherence, and also of its dynamism. So it's by virtue of our soul that we act through powers, that those powers have activities and that those activities are oriented to their objects. So like intellect and will are powers of the soul, which are informed by faith and charity, respectively, which operate to posit acts of faith and charity. So like form isn't just some like static principle that shapes a thing and then leaves it to be what it is. But it's rather, excuse me, it's the source of our agency. It's the source of our engagement with the world. So a form is a principle of being.

It's a principle of living in the case of living things. It's a principle of understanding in the case of intellectual things. And it's what gives a thing or what makes a thing to be what it in fact is. And then matter is just the corresponding principle. It's the thing shaped by, animated by, operationalized by the form. So like they'll talk about prime matter, which of itself doesn't really have any intelligibility. Okay. So it's just, it's just the type of thing that undergirds, you know, a substance or undergirds a thing informed by, you know, its substantial form. So, sorry, that's kind of jargony. The way that Aristotle comes to this

is that he comes to this by examining change. So he'll look at a thing and then he'll watch how it changes into another thing. So like, say I have a log and then I set it on fire and then it becomes ash. They'll say, what do you have at the beginning? And then what do you have at the end? And then what is continuous or constant throughout the course of that change? I'll say at the beginning, you have a form of a log, right? And at the end, you have the form of a pile of ash.

And what's common to those two states is the matter. So the matter was first formed or informed by a log form, and then it was subsequently informed by an ash pile form, right? And the substantial change, you know, is what transitions it from the one to the other. So yeah, I think that's- And this is sort of his way of responding to Parmenides' idea that change is impossible, right? And it sounds like you know his idea was well explain it explain it to us a parmenides idea why nothing can change so the basic thing would be like uh nothing can change on account of the fact that um so you have being right yeah

and then the only other thing is non-being non-being and then not basically non-being isn't on the table as something that can exercise agency. So how do you account for the fact that this being becomes another being when all being is in fact being? And so as a result of which we have to deny change, and every change that we see is merely illusory. So yeah, and then he wants to say, and this will transition us into another set of terms, us into another set of terms, that what you're observing isn't just being or non-being, but that there's an intermediate category, which is called potency, okay? And potency is a type of thing that accounts for why this can become that. Yeah, yeah.

Okay. Well, do you want to get to, should we look at act and then go to potency or do you want to? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. What does Aquinas mean by act then? And then I guess act and potency together would be helpful. Right. So, um, so act, so act and potency taken together again, we can look at this example of change and say, um, so in a, in a, in a change, you go from one thing to another thing. Okay. So we said that we have a log and then we burn it and it becomes a pile of ash. So at the beginning, it is a log, right? So it's log in being. So we can observe it, we can interact with it, we can touch it, we can taste it if we're into eating bark. Right. And so those properties are actualized. OK, so when we talk about like a

self-actuated person, you know, like psychology students like to talk about this and they're Carl Rogers, you know, like units. What we're talking about is somebody who's realized somebody who has kind of like come to fruition, somebody who is perfect or complete. So for something to be actualized is for something to be in a state of being or it has come to be. But a thing like a log is also, it's kind of like primed to be other things. And when we say that it's primed to be other things, we mean that there are some things to which it is well disposed, some things to which it will welcome a change. So a log cannot become a human person, okay? There's nothing that you can do to a log to make it into a human person. So it has no capacity to realize or to receive that change, but a log can become a pile of ash, okay? So we'll say that a

log has potency or it has the potential or the power. Okay. Potency comes from potency, which just means a power. It has the power to become a pile of ash. And when a particular agent acts upon it, that potency is realized or actualized. So it goes from being in potency to being in act. Okay. so in this case, the agent would be like fire. So fire will burn the wood, and in so burning it, it actualizes the potency of it becoming ash. And so now you have a realized potency of it becoming ash. And then in the process, it ceases to be like like a log and so it is no longer log in act I guess in a kind of remote sense it is log in potency because that ash can then fertilize the

ground a seed can fall in it a sapling will grow it becomes a tree the tree grows a thick trunk you cut it down and now it's a log again so it's only like it only has that potency in a very remote sense right because you can't just return ash to log in a simple way. So, yeah, that's basically what we mean by act and by potency. So act being, you know, like being as expressed and then potency being being as to be realized, you know, as possible to be realized, but the kind of power for it being realized. possible to be realized, but the kind of power for it being realized. Now, one of the things Aquinas says to kind of make this concrete in his writing is that there's no potentiality in God or that God is pure act. So what does he mean by that? Sure. Yeah. So like God is, there's no becoming in God. So God exhausts all that there is of being.

So there's nothing of being that is foreign to God or that lies outside of the bounds of God. So God doesn't get better, right? Or God doesn't cease to act or God doesn't fail in any way proper to his nature. So like we, for instance, we can only exist and act to such an extent. OK, so to a limited extent, I should say. So like, for instance, we grow in virtue. So we have minds with which to know and hearts with which to love, but we're constantly, you know, like, please God, growing in our capacity to know and to love.

So the potency of knowledge and love is being realized in us as we, you know, by faith, we know with God's own knowledge, right? But as we grow in grace, that knowledge becomes the very principle of our knowing, and then please God in heaven, in glory, we will know God with His own knowledge in a way that is unceasing and unstinting and perfect, admitting of no lack. So, we're realizing this potency, this capacity to be knowers of God. Or like sleeping, for instance, you know, like I know right now that two plus two equals four, but I'm going to go to sleep and I won't like, you know, recall that knowledge or that knowledge won't be active in me. So, you know, like there's a kind of dormancy where our knowledge goes between dormancy and, you know, actualization in the fullest sense.

Whereas in God, all of the pistons are always firing, right? And there is no dormancy to be spoken of, nor is there anything on which he can improve, because all that is exists in him in eminent form, negated of all of its creaturely imperfection in super subsistent fashion. So God is pure act, which is to say that there is no potency to speak of in God. All right, so I'm going to throw a curveball at you here. We haven't kind of gone over this, so I don't mean to put you on the spot. But someone would say, okay, fair enough, but there was a time where the second person of the Blessed Trinity was potentially incarnated, and then at another point in time, he was actually incarnated. So, how is there no potency in God if a potency was realized? Sure. So, that would be a potency in creation, a potency in human nature. So, there's a potency in human nature to be united to a divine person. We call this the

hypostatic union. So that Christ took to himself a human nature is something that changes in creation, but it doesn't change in God. And so we get principles for talking about this in the way that St. Thomas describes creation. So he'll talk about creation as principally a relation of dependence. So, oftentimes people think about creation as like a first starting point in time, like God snapped his fingers and then creation began to be. But creation is actually more so a relation of dependence of all things on God who gives them being, okay? So, everything is by its kind of created share or created participation in God, who is in the utmost sense. So God knows himself and he knows all of the ways in which his being can be shared in or participated. And to some of those ways, he conjoins his will, a choice that he has foreseen from all eternity that represents no change in him, but rather a change in creation.

from all eternity that represents no change in Him, but rather a change in creation. And then from the moment of those things coming to be, they rely upon God for their being and for their agency, and all things are transparent to His gaze. So, as concerns a human nature, human nature can be, you know, it has a passive potency, to be hypostatically united to a divine person. So, that represents no change in Christ. That's no change in the second person of the Most Holy Trinity. It is a change in time and space. In the nature, right, in the human nature. In the human nature of Christ, which is by grace united to the divine person and filled with grace, right?

But it's no change in the second of the Trinity. Well, since you brought up hypostatic union, why don't we add another term to the list? And that's hypostasis. What does that mean? Dig. So check this out. Okay. All right. I'm ready. Bring it. So this word, this is, okay. I'm going to be honest. This is tough, but stick with it. It's going to be awesome. That sounds like I understand it. But when I say something is tough, it usually means that I don't remember it entirely well, but I'll flag where I'm being muddled. So hypostasis or hypostasis comes from the Greek hupo, which means under, and stasis, which means stand. So here we have, again, something that stands under. So in general, we can think about a hypostasis the way you would

think about a substance. The problem is that in, like, Trinitarian discourse of the fourth and fifth century, this word gets used in a very particular way, basically to be interchangeable with the word person, okay? So, interchangeable with the word person or supposit. So in the case of Trinitarian theology, we speak of one divine essence, right, or ousia in Greek. And then we speak of three divine persons or three hypostases. So when we talk about the hypostatic union, we're talking about the union of the human nature and divine nature in the hypostasis of the word. So in general, it kind of like – I mean, you can take it to mean substance, but in Trinitarian discourse, it's effectively interchangeable with person. So in Trinitarian discourse, you have the one divine essence or ousia in Greek, you have the three

hypostasis or persons, and then you talk about the two natures of christ and the word for that is fuses um where we get the word physics for instance so that's that's something like that yeah very good all right does that uh so i was just thinking that it would be an insult uh if you were to say to somebody you are full of potential because you're basically saying you don't exist you're basically saying well yeah to so to say somebody to say to somebody like there's great potential to be realized is a kind of optimistic way of saying that that person is, you know, unactualized. So that's like a common trope, you know, when you speak of things that you think are kind of underdeveloped. You say it's got great potential. kind of underdeveloped you say it's got great potential um but that being said um a potency is not an insignificant constituent part of a thing because i for instance do not have potency to be an nba superstar right because don't you though don't you no i think you could say that

there is at least potential oh well like i thought too, up until about six, you know, even if I were to dedicate myself to it for the next seven years for 18 hours a day and like, you know, enroll, excuse me, employ a dietician and a personal trainer and like a callous then a titian, you know, what's up. Um, if I were to do all of those things, I would never make it to the NBA. And I can recognize that because of the, basically like the shape of my body and my limited athletic ability. Yeah. So but if you say somebody does have the potential to be an NBA star, yeah, it might be unrealized. They might be very raw and gawky and all over the place on the court. But you see in them a kind of native excellence that if trained, disciplined and made virtuous can actually flourish in this particular setting.

So on the one hand, to say a thing has a lot of potential, yeah, it can be insulting. But on the other hand, you know, there are other things that don't have that potential and that you have it is not insignificant. Well, these two next terms are things that we throw about all the time, but Aquinas means something very specific by them, good and evil. What does Aquinas mean by those terms? Totes. So when he talks about good, he describes it first, kind of like phenomenologically, he describes one's experience of it. And he says, good is what all men desire. So love that. Yeah. As do I. The good is like the object of appetite. So we are animals. So we have, so we inc inclined towards things. Okay. So St. Thomas will describe

a few different kinds of appetite. He says, there's some things that you just inclined to by virtue of the fact that you're a being. Okay. So like every being wants to continue in existence. So rocks resist being broken up, for instance. Um, there are other things that you inclined to because you're an animal. So animals have senses and they gather knowledge of the world. And then when they do so, there's a kind of appetite that follows on that information gathering. So you're an animal and let's say you're a sheep, you see a wolf, you flee from it because you want to preserve your life. Or you see, you know, like you're a, I don't know, a tree sloth. And I don't

know what tree sloths eat. Let's say they eat very rare berries, the name of which I'm about to make up, peekaboo berries. So tree sloths eat peekaboo berries and a tree sloth sees a peekaboo berry. And then like 18 hours later, it grabs it and then it puts it in his mouth. So it has this kind of sense cognition of the thing. And then from that sense cognition there unfolds this appetite for the thing and that it goes forward, assimilates it, it eats it delicious. But then in our case, we have this highest appetite, intellectual appetite or will. So I can muse on what's good in life, and I can think, you know, it's good that I pray in the morning in the presence of the blessed sacrament. in the morning, in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. And that recognition, that apprehension, that intellectual knowledge inclines me towards doing that thing. And so I find myself the next day doing that thing. So basically, when we discover something out in the world as good for

us, we have this spontaneous movement, whether naturally or in the sensitive appetite or in the intellectual appetite, towards that thing so that we can, you know, interact with it profitably and that we can kind of assimilate it in some way. So St. Thomas will add the second notion of good, which is that it represents a perfection for us. The reason that we realize it or recognize it as for us and the reason that we incline towards it as for us is because it somehow contributes to the building up of our life, whether bodily or emotionally or, you know, psychologically or spiritually. We see that thing out there and we think this is for me. And if I realize this good, then I will be more so me or more perfectly me. And so then St. Thomas adds this third notion of

good, which is good as a final cause. So it's the type of thing towards which agency or action is ordered. So it's the type of thing that gives shape to, or I suppose it kind of gives order to, our movement in the world. So we don't, you know, kind of dawdle about aimlessly, but rather we incline towards those things which make us to be what we are meant to be in an ultimate sense. So this is how we can explain or understand, you know, like the pursuit of virtuous living. And this is how we can understand our desire for contemplation and for friendship and for living in a just political order and things like that, because we recognize in the good life and the good life is just the type of thing for which we are made. So, yeah, when we talk about good, we're talking about what all things desire, or what all men desire,

and then we're talking about perfection, and we're talking about final cause. Now, when it comes to evil, sometimes I find that people don't really know what they think about evil, what it means. It doesn't mean pain, does it? I mean, I was at the dentist the other day, and it wasn't a pleasant experience, but I didn't think that what the lady was doing was evil, nor did I think she was evil. So, what does Aquinas mean by evil and what's the difference between, say, natural evil and moral evil? Sure. Yes. So, the basic sense of evil is that it's a privation of the good. So, a privation is not just a negation. A privation is something should be there but it isn't there so for instance you wouldn't say it's evil that a rock is blind because a rock shouldn't be sighted

but you would say that it's evil that a man is blind because we're meant to see and so the loss or absence of the power capacity to see represents a deficiency or represents, um, yeah, kind of liability to that nature. So we call those things evil, which are privations of the good. So that is to say a conspicuous lack of a good that ought to be there. Um, and we can distinguish between natural evils and moral evils. So natural evils are just the type of things that happen in the world, irrespective of human agency. Okay. So like, uh, that lions eat antelopes, it's evil for an antelope, right? Because it means their bodily death and their existential extinction. So that's rough, right? But whenever you have a universe in

which material things are built up by the destruction of other material things, you're always going to have evil of this sort. So even if, whatever, God didn't create any carnivores or omnivores, still, you'd have to have plants be destroyed. Okay, maybe God could create everything to just subsist on soylent. I don't even know what soylent's made out of. But yeah, no, that'd be insane. Okay, so God makes certain natures to flourish according to certain kind of like circumscribed laws. And if you're a lion, you're built up by antelope flesh. And so there's going to be this kind of evil written into the cosmos.

So physical evil is just a natural outgrowth of the fact that we have bodies. Whereas moral evil is the type of evil that we do. Okay. So it's not necessary. It's not the type of thing that we do, okay? So it's not necessary. It's not the type of thing that needed to happen. Rather, it represents an accident. It represents a perversion of human will. And what is it to say that it's evil? Well, there should be a due order in our choosing. So we have an intellect and will. We have sense, cognition, and appetite, right? And we have a

bodily nature. And we're inclined in different ways, right? So I'm inclined to the preservation of my existence. I am inclined to the procreation and education of children. I am inclined towards the, you know, like to living in society and to knowing the truth about God. But there's a hierarchy that should obtain, right? I should be inclined to those things in a kind of just order or proportion. And if I don't observe that order and proportion, then I can do things that are bad. So like, let's say that I live in a town of, I don't know, like 53 people. I know everyone on my street and I see this kid and he's doing something that I know his parents wouldn't

want him to do. He's like lighting things on fire under his deck. And I know that his parents are sleeping because they're narcoleptic and they sleep for like 14 hours a day. Um, and I see him lighting on like bigger and bigger things. Now, mind you, I'm on my porch and I'm drinking bourbon, which is a classic porch drink. Um, and I'm, I've just gotten to that point where the condensation on the edge of the glass is very much perfect, right? It got like a big cube in there. I'm sloshing around some Henman Canada 10-year. I'm feeling very good about life, you know, kind of lackadaisical. Let's say I've got a good book, like a David Foster Wallace collection of short stories. And just the mere thought of getting people who are my neighbors you know like

of a just political order of ultimately like living a human life i just i just did it upside down yeah i think i think i think a good kind of basic definition of evil is the way things shouldn't be like don't you think yeah yeah because i mean again like the dentist people didn't it wasn't it wasn't the fact it wasn't that it shouldn't have been that way um but when people say well that's evil and say what do you mean they say well just it shouldn't be like that and i think what they mean is it's something analogous to physical evil where we would say that there is a lack of a good that ought to be there i can't think of one moral morally evil act where i can't say there's something that should have been there that

wasn't, like a tenderness, a charity, a prudence, a humility, and so forth. Yeah. Do you agree with that or no? I do, yeah. No, that's a good observation, and that's like a helpful, much more simple summary of what I tried to say. All I got is simple. All I got is simple. summary of what i tried to say all i got is simple all i got is simple oh man these things are these things can be complicated eh they can indeed yeah wild times good and evil all right let's see being essence and existence now yeah okay here we go so

yeah there you go being essence and existence, and existence. And then let's talk about how that applies to God's is-ness and that-ness. Ooh. Okay. So, we'll start with being. So, Aristotle famously says that being can be said in many ways. So, when we talk about being, in the primary sense, what we're talking about is substances, okay? So, these are the types of things that are. So, they are in virtue of themselves, right? So, they have—that's not to say that they don't, like, rely upon God to make them to be, and that God does not perpetuate their being. We're affirming all those things, right? But that a substance is a type of thing that is unto itself, right? It's a type of thing that

exists by virtue of itself. But then accidents are the type of thing that is unto itself, right? It's the type of thing that exists by virtue of itself. But then accidents are the type of thing that exists by virtue of another or they exist in another. And so we say being of them in a different way, okay? And then privation, right? We're pointing to a being that ought to be there but isn't there. And then we have like negation, which is just to say not being. So being can be said in many ways. And we want to say that being is like a kind of analogical thing. So substance realizes being in the most perfect sense and then accidents less so and then privations less so and then negations less so. So we're talking about being. We're talking about something that has a kind of intelligibility to it, right? Something that is knowable by virtue

of the fact that it is, right? It's the type of thing that has existence in the world. And already I'm lapsing into discussions of essence and existence. So the essence of a thing is the whatness of a thing, okay? Or the quiddity of a thing. So when I imagined, for instance, like a pterodactyl, okay, I can tell you very many things about a pterodactyl on account of the fact that I was once a seven-year-old boy and I had encyclopedic knowledge of the whole dinosaur kingdom. Or I watched Jurassic World, you know, installment number four, Chris Pratt's Finest Hour, and I saw them come out of the aviary, right, and I know that they can wreak havoc on Eastland Nublar. Okay. So you can also envision a unicorn. Okay. So you got a unicorn. I know very many

things about unicorns because I have a five-year-old niece who loves them. I know that they have, you know, like special abilities for friendship, that their friendship is magical, right? That they like are deeply and intimately associated with rainbows and sparkles and such like things. Okay. Um, and then I can talk about, let's see something more daily, mundane, ordinary. Um, I can tell you about like the Kiwi bird. Okay. Which hails from New Zealand and is adorable. Okay. What do these things, uh, have? Okay. How do we, how do we talk about these things? Well things? Well, we can talk about these things as all being a certain thing on account of the fact that they have a coherence, right? That they have a certain integrity. They have a certain interiority to them.

So they have – there's a knowability to them. I think that's probably the most basic way to say it, that there's a knowability to each of these things. And even if they're fantastical, right, we have a way of describing them and we have a way of knowing them. But one of those things exists, one of those things did exist and no longer does exist, and one of those things never existed. Okay, if you're confused on the details, the kiwi bird exists, the pterodactyl once existed, and the unicorn, heartbreakingly, has never existed. So there must be something beyond the knowability of a thing or the isness, the kind of like whatness of a thing.

And this is what we mean by existence. So existence is the type of thing – or excuse me. Existence is a principle whereby a thing is in the world. is in the world. That's the principle whereby a thing has actual, present, real, kind of potent force as, you know, kind of like an agent or an actor or something in the world that we can, you know, like move and live with, etc. So, essence is describing the whatness of a thing, and existence is describing the thatness of a thing. And St. Thomas will use this distinction to describe an argument for God. Okay, so it doesn't come through explicitly in one of the five ways, but it's kind of like the backdrop to especially the third way, where St. Thomas will say that we have to account for the fact that some things could have been

otherwise, or some things could not have been, right? That it's not necessary that they exist and that their existence is something given to them. And in order to account for this place, this wild place in which the existence of things is given to them, we need to have some explanatory principle whose existence is not given to him, who just is his existence. And that, you know, we call God. So it's common to say that God is ipsum esse per se subsistence, the very subsisting existence. Explain that. What does subsisting existence mean? So in the case of all the stuff that we encounter in the material world, they aren't subsisting

existence, right? So they receive their existence and they only exist in this way or that way. So existence is a kind of principle that is circumscribed by essence. So existence is this kind of like unbounding and burgeoning life. But when it's instantiated in a dog or in a tree or in a rock, it's kind of contracted in the form that it actualizes. Whereas in the case of God is, you know, his existence is not contracted by a form. He just is his existence. And so this is like how St. Thomas reads Exodus three. He'll say that, you know, like I am who am is the way by which God identifies himself in the burning bush.

Like God just is to be. God just is existence. So, all that there is of existence, uncontracted by particular forms of, you know, like, concrete material things, all of what it means to be is God. God just is all of what it is to be, subsisting in himself. Keeping in mind that all I have is simple, and keeping in mind that all analogies break down, is this a helpful way of thinking about it? Immediately in my head, I thought about how, you know, existence, when kind of, if you want, put into an essence, is sort of like existence being stuffed into a concrete thing. Yeah.

Like a dog or a man or a bottle of whiskey but god just is and isn't contracted restricted uh de-finite defined in any thing yeah i like yeah contracted or restricted are both yeah excellent that's awesome that's amazing stuff and so this is where we kind of kind of aquinas gets into talking about God's simplicity, right? Right, right, right, right. So there's no, there needs to be no division. There's no limit or division, yeah. Right, because God just is to be. So, in what way would you divide that? Yeah.

No, no. Okay. All right, that's pretty cool. All right, did you want to say more on that, or should we move on to the next three here? Let's move on. Okay, nature. What does Aquinas mean by nature? So he'll say that nature is a principle of movement or of rest in that to which it pertains per se and not per action ends. That's not all important. But what do we mean by nature?

Okay, so nature is a principle both of identity and of unfolding. So a nature, so I have a human nature. So when we talk about one thing having a human nature, that kind of sets the pattern for how you should treat that thing and how that thing should unfold in the world. So because I am an intellectual creature, it follows that I should know the things that perfect an intellect. On account of the fact that I have a sensitive bodily nature, right, I shouldn't like, I don't know, take a bath in muriatic acid. That would probably be bad. So because I am this type of thing, there are certain ways in which I should be treated and treat myself. And because I am this type of thing, there's a kind of goal set for me.

So nature, we said, is a principle of identity, but also a principle of unfolding. So I'm supposed to realize the fullness of my human nature, which means that I should know the truth about God, that I should live well in society, that I should, you know, like go towards the advancement of the human race in the way proper to my state, that I should continue in existence, things like that. So in nature is what we mean by something kind of being, let's see, orderly and ordered to its realization and its fulfillment. I think that's kind of like a rough thumbnail sketch. Okay. Yeah, that's good. Let's talk about cause. We could talk forever about this, but let's try to sum it up because we're almost running out of time here. When Aquinas talks about causation, what does he mean?

Right. So at the beginning of the physics, he describes different things. Uh, he describes elements, principles, and causes. Elements are just like the stuff from which principles are the, like the, I guess the sources of other things. So a principle is something from which something else comes. But then cause is like a stronger sense of principle. A cause exercises a kind of agency, okay? Or it exercises a kind of influence or force upon a thing, okay? So he'll talk about causes in four ways, and we already alluded to this when we talked about form and matter, He'll talk about causes in four ways, and we already alluded to this when we talked about form and matter because those are two of the four causes. But when we gave our example about the bronze statue, when we talked about four causes, we said that the form is the shape. We said that the matter is the bronze. And then we want to add that the efficient cause is the sculptor and that the final cause is for the beautification of the space in which it is displayed,

or, you know, just like being a perfect statue. So a cause is the type of thing that kind of acts upon or exercises agency on a given thing. And that can, you know, be described according to these four paradigms, right? It could be the very stuff from which, the material cause. It could be that which makes a thing to be what it is, the formal cause. It could be what acts upon it to make it assume its present shape, and that's the efficient cause. Or it could be that for the sake of which, and then it's the final cause. So when we talk about causes, we're talking about those things which kind of influence the object under consideration. And when we examine those four causes we build out a more perfect picture of what the thing is we answer the question why you know like why is this thing what it is and you can answer that question in uh in this polyvalent fashion so as to form

a scientific picture of its whatness when i I was studying this as an undergrad, I remember thinking that it was sometimes helpful to think of Aristotle's four causes as four explanations regarding a thing. Like, what is it? Why is it? What is it for? Is that also helpful, do you think? Yeah, yeah, that's great. And that's like, so the Aquinas 101 video on the four causes, the thumbnail just says, answering the question why. So yeah, it's four explanations for what you have before you. And I think that in the modern sensibility, we tend to think only of efficient causes and material causes, right? We tend to leave out formal causes and final causes. We tend to leave out formal causes and final causes, but that is really helpful to reintroduce those into our thinking about the matter because they form a more perfect kind of philosophical picture of the thing under consideration.

They help us better to account for it as it is. Okay. Now, finally, and of course we could have come up with more, but we have to limit it somehow. Here's the final term we want to look at, and that's teleology. What's teleology mean? What does Aquinas mean by that? Right, so this just follows from our consideration of final cause. So teleology comes from the Greek telos, which just means end. So teleology is the study of the end, or it's a kind of scientific consideration of those things which are ordered to the end. So we talk about natural teleology. So this isn't to say that teleology, okay, whatever, dot, dot, dot, I'm not going to qualify. I'm just going to

start describing. Things act for ends, right? So we said that rocks resist being broken up. We say that like plants turn their leaves toward the sun so that they can better photosynthesize. We say that sheep run from wolves and they beget other sheep and they live in sheep communes and practice sheep discipline and that men do what is proper to men. So each thing acts towards its end. And that doesn't mean that it does so consciously, right? It doesn't necessarily need to have a cognitive component, but that everything acts towards the fulfillment of its nature. Everything is inclined toward the good by which it is perfected, right? Which it desires in some either natural or sensate or intellectual

sense and that which, you know, perfects its nature and what serves for it as a kind of goal. So when we talk about teleology, we're talking about things moving towards their goals or failing to move towards their goals, but that there is a standard by which we can judge whether or not a thing is flourishing and whether or not it is achieving the end for which it is made. And this consideration really follows from what a thing is, right? So we said that nature is a principle both of motion and of rest. So it's because of what a thing is, we know what a thing is for. And so, insofar as it's possible, that thing should attain to it, right? And we should facilitate that movement in ourselves and in those things over which we have care.

Excellent stuff. And Aquinas obviously gets into this in the fifth way. As you said, they're not just referring to sort of conscious things, but even unconscious things, like protons and electrons, right? All acting for an end that is good. Right. Yeah. And St. Thomas will add that like, on account of the fact that we observe this movement and all of creation, then there must be some intelligence, which makes them all to act accordingly, you know, because nature obtains always or for the most part, and there has to be some way by which to account for that. part, and there has to be some way by which to account for that. And he says there has to be some supreme intelligence, divine intelligence that accounts for this orderliness in nature as all things proceed towards their goal.

Well, that's pretty bloody fantastic there, Father Pine. We just got through a bunch of metaphysical terms. For our listeners, if you want to kind of delve a little deeper or kind of you know want to understand this a little more you go to mattfrad.com on the middle of the home page there i have a short ebook about 20 pages called you can understand aquinas and i go through a bunch of metaphysical terms and then also it sounds like you've addressed a lot of these in your videos that domestic institute which people can find at no aqu, Aquinas101.com. All right, thank you very much

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