Pints With Aquinas - 78: Is the sin of certainty a sin?

Episode Date: October 31, 2017

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Welcome to Pints with Aquinas. I'm Matt Fradd. If you could sit down over a pint of beer with St. Thomas Aquinas and ask him any one question, what would it be? In today's episode, we'll ask St. Thomas, is the sin of certainty a sin? Who's in your heart? the title of this podcast, Is It A Sin? Is the sin of certainty a sin? And honestly, this is just something I'm beginning to think about because I've been beginning to hear about it more and more. And it's usually from our evangelical brothers and sisters, but I think it's probably going to be popping up more and more in the Catholic community. And it's this idea that we really can only be certain about the fact that, you know, hey, Jesus is God and that he

rose from the dead, but everything else is really up for grabs. Now, people are going to be stating this differently, right? Like when people talk about the sin of certainty, maybe what they mean is it's more important that you trust God in your life than you try to box Him in this cage or this box, right? So, I have no beef with that. The beef that I have with different folks is this idea that, well, just like I said, we can only be certain about God loves me, Jesus loves me. So really, I don't know if hell exists, and I don't know if the Eucharist is true, and I don't know if homosexual acts are sinful, and I don't know if contraception is sinful. I can't know these things.

is sinful, and, you know, I don't, I can't know these things. So, here's what made me want to do this episode. A couple of weeks ago, my boys at Catching Foxes did an episode in which they interviewed one of the presenters of a podcast called Bad Christian. Okay, Bad Christian. And he kind of shared what I'm talking about here. This belief that, hey, you know, like, what do I know? You know, like, God is so beyond me. So just listen to this little clip from Catching Foxes. Now I'm at a point where I really and truly do not believe that anyone, you know, is like burning forever and ever and ever, but that doesn't threaten everything else because I think I've learned how to hold loosely everything else. I mean, for me, it's like, why do I need to be so sure on different things outside of Jesus and what He means to me personally.

So, I really don't mean to be rude, but I just think this is, it has some merit, and some of it's just complete crap, right? Like, it has some merit, right? This idea that, you know, God is infinitely beyond me, okay? There is a lot about God that I don't know, right? There are things that seem right to me that I might be wrong about, right? There are things that seem, you know, that may be sinful. Maybe I've got that wrong too. And so, in that sense, yeah, we ought to be humble. But this idea that we have to hold all of these doctrines loosely, like further on in this podcast, if you listen to it, if you want to go listen to it,

maybe hear the whole thing in context. You know, this guy says that even the canon of Scripture is, you know, it's just this, we think that's what we're supposed to hold to, but maybe we're not, you know? Like, how do we know that? And of course, he's coming from

an evangelical background where he, maybe he's, I guess he's following his logic where it leads. If sola scriptura is true and scripture does not teach that you ought to hold to the books of scripture, then maybe the books of scripture aren't inerrant after all. All right. So, yeah, man, look, here's what I think, right? When you say, you know, maybe hell doesn't exist, and maybe homosexual acts aren't sinful, and maybe transgenderism is totally cool, and whatever. That's not humble, right?

It's not humble to reject the revelation of God. Like, God has revealed himself to us, and he's revealed certain truths to us. This idea that he's only revealed two, right? God exists, He rose from the dead. What does that mean to me personally? And then I can reject everything else, like everything else is multiple choice. Where does it say that in sacred scripture? It doesn't say that. So, I'm not accusing this particular pastor of being arrogant or anything like that, but I do think it is an act of arrogance to not submit to the revelation of God, right? Like, maybe you ought to be certain that God has revealed

it. You should believe it, right? God has revealed that hell exists, right? His church has taught it authoritatively for over 2,000 years. It does exist. Submit to that truth, whether or not you understand or not why a loving God would send someone to hell. It seems to me that's the humble position, not to just reject doctrine because you don't understand it. So today we're going to be reading from the Summa Contra Gentiles, Book 1, Chapter 4. By the way, if you support Pints with Aquinas on Patreon for any dollar amount, you will now hear a second episode every week of Pints with Aquinas. So if one episode isn't enough, now you'll hear a second episode. And in that second episode, we're going to read directly from the Summa Contra Gentiles and have somewhat of a book study on it in Patreon.

So again, if you want to support me, go to pintswithaquinas.com, click support, or click the Patreon banner. You support me for two bucks a month, five bucks a month, 10 bucks a month, whatever, you'll get access to the second episode that'll be coming out every week on Fridays. And so anyway, so in chapter four, in the Summa Contra Gentiles, book 1, the chapter title is, that the truth about God to which the natural reason reaches is fittingly proposed to men for belief. And so basically Aquinas argues that there are three reasons that he can think of that God revealed not only himself, right, that he exists and that he is love to us, but truths, you know, truths about revelation, about his church, and

all sorts of things, right, that we should submit to. Because, and here's what he says, there's three awkward things that result if God doesn't reveal himself to us. That's His word, actually, which I thought was funny. Three awkward consequences would follow. What are those three awkward consequences? Well, the first awkward consequence is that few men would possess the knowledge of God if God hadn't revealed Himself to us. The second awkward effect is that those who would eventually come to possess knowledge of God would do so only after a long time, right? Because they would have to reason their way to God's existence, etc. And that takes time, and intellect, and whatever. The third awkward fact is that, you know, human reason is always,

almost always, perhaps, you know, intermingled with false beliefs, all right? And so, because God wanted us to possess knowledge of Him, because He thought it was within our best interest that we would possess knowledge of Him, you know, through faith, through receiving revelation, rather than working it out our entire life, and because He wanted us to have true knowledge of him that isn't intermingled with error, he revealed himself to us. Now, Aquinas is talking primarily of those truths that exceed human reason, like the fact that God is a trinity, right? The virgin birth and these sorts of things. So, I mean, for Aquinas, who's like incredibly logical, he thinks a lot of these other things, So, I mean, for Aquinas, who's like incredibly logical, he thinks a lot of these other things, like homosexual acts, or sex outside of marriage, or whether lying is always wrong, and all these sorts of things.

He thinks you can reason to these sorts of things, but he thinks that there are certain things above the human reason, and that's why God had to reveal himself to us, and these truths to us. And I think it's fair to say that in a culture that has largely abandoned reason, we can also apply those moral truths that God has revealed to us through sacred scripture and His church and say, there's a real good reason that He had to reveal these truths to us, because your culture is going insane, and we are all so incredibly easily persuaded, aren't we? I mean, goodness sake. I mean, our entire culture was able to convince ourselves for 20 minutes that skinny jeans look good, right? Like bell bottoms used to be a thing. And if tomorrow Hollywood actors and models started wearing bell bottoms, you probably would too. Like that's how easily persuaded we are. You know, like 20 years ago, guys didn't wax their chests. Today, because most, you know, people on TV don't have hair on their chests,

apparently a lot of guys are waxing their chests. Not a thing I do, but hey, you know. Just again, like we are so easily persuaded by the culture in which we live, by the people we interact with, that it's important that God should reveal truth to us so that we can hold fast to them, even while the entire culture is calling us bigots and homophobes and evil people. All right. So, my point with all this is that certainty is not a sin. Certainty where we ought to have certainty is not a sin. Rejecting revelation,

right, and saying, hey, you know, God's just so much bigger than me, that sounds humble, but it isn't necessarily humble at all. Like, it might be, but if you know that God's revealed something and you just don't want to believe it anymore, that's called, like, apostatizing from the faith, right? Like, that's not actually humble. Okay, so let's go through these three points that Aquinas raises, right? These three awkward things. Okay, so the first thing he says, right, is that few men would come to possess knowledge of God. All right, now listen to what Aquinas says. He says,

reasons why most men and women are cut off from the fruit of diligent inquiry, which is the discovery of truth. Okay. First, he says, some do not have the physical disposition for such work. As a result, there are many who are naturally not fitted to pursue knowledge. And so, however much they tried, they would be unable to reach the highest level of human knowledge, which consists in knowing God. All right. The second reason, right, is others are cut off from pursuing this truth by the necessities imposed upon them by their daily lives. For some men must devote themselves to taking care of temporal matters. Such men would not be able to give so much time to the leisure of contemplative inquiry as to reach the highest peak at which human investigation can arrive, That's a real good point. I mean, I think of my grandma, right? Margaret Harris, one of the most beautiful human beings I was ever blessed enough to know. And, you know, my nan, you know, she, I, you know, never went to college, certainly.

I spent her entire life being a beautiful daughter and a beautiful wife and a beautiful mother. And she worked her butt off to provide for her kids and to care for her husband. She doesn't have time to be reading books on theology. Because she's being faithful to what God is calling her to do. books on theology, right? Because she's being faithful to what God is calling her to do, okay? So, you know, if it were not for divine revelation, then there's a chance that my nan would not have come to know not just the existence of God, which she probably would have known, but what God was like, you know? What was necessary for heaven, that hell exists, what purgatory was, why we can pray to the saints.

I mean, there's so many things that she wouldn't have been able to figure out by human investigation because she was being faithful to the temporal affairs that God had placed before her. Here's the third reason of this first point, you know, why men wouldn't possess knowledge of God. He says, there are some who are cut off by indolence in order to know the things that the reason can investigate concerning God. A knowledge of many things must already be possessed, for almost all philosophy is directed towards knowledge of God. And that is why metaphysics, which deals with divine things, is the last part of philosophy to be learned. This means that we're able to arrive at the inquiry concerning the aforementioned truth only on the basis of a great deal of labor spent in study.

Now, those who wish to undergo such a labor for the mere love of knowledge are few, even though God has inserted into the minds of men a natural appetite for knowledge. So his point here is sort of like the second point, and that's that in order to come to know that God exists, there's all sorts of other things you have to first know. And not just that God exists, but that He's beautiful, that He loves us, that we're culpable for our moral actions, and so forth. I mean, you've got to know logic, right?

You have to understand epistemology and why it is you're warranted in holding this or that belief, right? So, I mean, that all kind of goes back to the main point here, the first awkward consequence that follows from God not revealing himself to us, right? And that's namely that, you know, we wouldn't possess knowledge of God because whatever, like we don't want to study it. We can't study it. There's a lot to study. All right. So here's the second awkward effect.

And that's that those who would come to discover the above mentioned truth, namely that God exists and that we could know him in some degree, would barely reach it after a great deal of time. So that's another point, right? Like, I guess maybe my grandma could have come to know these things, but it would have taken her a heck of a lot of time to figure that out. By the time she's 80, maybe, you know, if she's lucky. But because she accepted divine revelation and was faithful to it, she was able to live,

you know, just as intelligently in one sense, okay, in one sense as Thomas Aquinas, right? Because she knew that God existed, that he loved her, that he cared for her, that she could pray to him, and everything that's involved with the Christian faith, and she acted on that since she was a child, right? So even if someone like Thomas Aquinas could have figured out a lot of these things without divine revelation, you know, and that my grandma couldn't, well, the good news is Thomas Aquinas had faith and so did my nan, isn't that beautiful, I'm just going to skip down to the third awkward effect, well, no, okay, let me read the second awkward effect here, okay, so just, you know, because you want to hear more of this and I don't want to skip stuff that you want to

hear, so he says the second awkward effect is that those who come to discover, you know because you want to hear more of this and i don't want to skip stuff that you want to hear so uh he says the second order fact is that those who come to discover you know the the above mentioned truth would barely reach it after a great deal of time the reasons are several okay like there is a profundity of this truth which the human intellect is made capable of grasping by natural inquiry only after a long training then there are many things that must be presupposed as we have have said. There is also the fact that in youth, when the soul is swayed by the various movements of the passions, it's not in a suitable state for the knowledge of such lofty truth. On the contrary, one becomes wise and knowing in response, as it is said in the physics. The result is this. The only way open

to us for the knowledge of God was solely that of the reason. The human race would remain in the blackest shadows of ignorance. For then, the knowledge of God, which especially renders men perfect and good, would come to be possessed only by a few. And these few would require a great deal of time in order to reach it. So here's the third awkward effect. The third awkward effect is that the investigation of the human reason, for the most part, has falsity present within it. And this is due partly to the weakness of our intellect and judgment, and partly to the admixture of images. The result is that many remaining ignorant of the power of demonstration would hold in doubt those things that have been made most truly demonstrated.

This would be particularly the case since they see that among those who are reputed to be wise men, each one teaches his own brand of doctrine. I've got to stop here and say that looks like Protestantism to me. And I don't mean to pick on my Protestant brothers and sisters, but even within the church, you sort of have dissenting priests and dissenting theologians that have their own brand of doctrine i mean this guy that catching foxes interview the other day doesn't think hell exists even though christ apparently did and all of christ's followers did and even all of the protestant reformers did but but now all of a sudden you know like two thousand

years later with my my bible in hand i've come to know what none of these people have known for like 2,000 years. Now, I know what you're going to say, right? Someone might say, well, no, that's not necessarily true. One can make a case for annihilationism, and that one could point maybe to this obscure church father here, or this particular Christian individual in Christian history here, who said, church father here, or this particular Christian individual in Christian history here, who said, you know, no, like, maybe hell doesn't exist. But, you know, people have held erroneous views always. It's not enough to be able to point to one or two individuals in Christian history and say, hey, they had an erroneous belief, therefore I'm justified in holding it too, you know. No, that's why God gave us a magisterium, as well as Holy Scripture,

to teach us the truths contained therein. I forget where I... Okay, let's keep going. I'm not really sure where I left off there. He said, This would be particularly the case, since they see that among those who are reputed to be wise men,

each one teaches his own brand of doctrine how confusing is that how confusing is that furthermore with the many truths that are demonstrated there sometimes is mingled something that is false which is not demonstrated but rather asserted on the basis of some probable or sophistical argument which yet has the credit of being a demonstration that is why it was necessary that the unshakable certitude and pure truth concerning divine things should be presented to men by way of faith. So, beneficially, therefore, Aquinas says, did the divine mercy provide that it should instruct us to hold by faith

even those truths that the human reason is able to investigate? Listen to that again. Divine mercy decided that it should instruct us to hold by faith even those truths that the human reason is able to investigate. So not just those things that are above and beyond human reason, but those things that we should be able to investigate. So not just those things that are above and beyond human reason, but those things that we should be able to investigate, He revealed to us so that we could know. And in knowing these truths, we don't become arrogant, right? How could you possibly accuse someone of arrogance for submitting to the holy will of God. Like, how do you do that? Again, more could be said on this matter. I want to give this guy a fair shake. I want to give people of his ilk a fair shake. I appreciate at least the intellectual honesty, right? That he

doesn't want to continue believing in something or saying, right? That he doesn't want to continue believing in something or saying he believes something that he doesn't believe, all right? Okay? And again, I'm not accusing him of being arrogant, but I just think it's a wake-up call for us, all right? Whether you're evangelical or whether you're Catholic, right? This idea that we have to walk around and talk about how uncertain we are of these truths that the church has been certain about for 2,000 years and that somehow makes us humble, I think is crap, right? I think it's actually an arrogant thing for you and I to reject those parts of Scripture that we don't understand,

right? We don't understand or we don't want to understand. Actually, in the third chapter of the first book of the Summa Contra Gentiles uh aquinas makes a point that goes along with this let me see here i've been listening to a lot of metallica lately uh i love metallica okay here it is side note add i've had a lot of coffee this morning. He says this, okay. Just as therefore it would be the height of folly for a simple person to assert that what a philosopher proposes is false on the grounds that he himself cannot understand it. So, and even more so, it would be the height of stupidity for a man to suspect as false what is divinely revealed through the ministry of the angels simply because it cannot be investigated by man and so i think we can say that's true right

like it would be the height of folly to say that well because i don't understand it's not true even though god revealed it and that has to do with things that we cannot understand in principle and it has to do with things that we can understand but don't because either we haven't investigated enough or we're really biased due to the culture in which we live. All right, sweet. I hope that was a help. What we're going to do now is the same thing we're going to do from now on.

That's some Q&A. If you support Planets with Aquinas on Patreon, that's one of the things, among other things, that you get to do is ask me a question. So here are some of the questions we received this week. All right, now's the time in the show where I respond to your questions. If you want me to answer your question in an upcoming show, just become a supporter of Pints with Aquinas on Patreon by going to pintswithaquinas.com, click the Patreon banner or just click support. There you can support the show for as little as five bucks a month and

see the different thank you gifts I give you in return. And of course, if you are already a Patreon supporter, go to the Patreon page and ask me a question and I'll do my best to get to them. So let's see. Let's answer a few questions. There's a ton of them here. I'm going to try and get through three. The first comes from Philip Haddon. Philip, you rock, brother. Thank you so much for supporting Pints with Aquinas. You wrote this, I've read a bit of Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, and it appears many times that he is of the opinion that we should prefer the theology of Augustine over that of St. Thomas Aquinas. He again mentioned this in his latest work, The Last Testament. Ratzinger, arguably the greatest Catholic theologian of the 20th century, writes in his memoir, I spontaneously, by the way, this is

now Ratzinger, I spontaneously associated such personalism with the thought of St. Augustine, who in his confessions had struck me with the power of all of his human passion and depth. By contrast, I had difficulty penetrating the thought of Thomas Aquinas, whose crystal clear logic seemed to me to be too closed in on itself, too impersonal and ready made. And then, Philip, you ask, what are your thoughts on Pope Benedict's assessment of St. Thomas Aquinas? So, I don't think, I mean, just from what I've read there, you said he's of the opinion that we should prefer the theology of Augustine over that of Thomas Aquinas. I don't think that's true, necessarily. He doesn't say that in the quotation

you've given me, and I've never read that elsewhere. So, I don't think he's saying we, as in everyone, should prefer the theology of Augustine over Thomas Aquinas. I think all he's doing is sharing a personal opinion, right? And that's why he says that he had difficulty penetrating the thought of Thomas Aquinas, right? But he certainly refers to Thomas Aquinas' writings as crystal clear logic. And so I think this is a distinction that I've made in the past between St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. Augustine is beautiful like a sunset or like a garden is

beautiful. And I've said, Thomas Aquinas is beautiful like a tool is beautiful, right? You think of a intricate tool, right? Used for whatever. You might say, wow, this is a beautiful tool, but you mean that in a different sense to when you say the garden is beautiful. I've also said elsewhere, you know, there are no successful Thomas Aquinas quotation Twitter accounts. Have you noticed that? I mean, if you follow me on Pines with Aquinas on Twitter, I do give you quotations from St. Thomas Aquinas, but none of them are as inspiring as something, say, Augustine has written or Chesterton has written. Why? Because Aquinas isn't a poet,

and that's not what he's doing. He's not trying to convey the desires of the human heart, like Augustine does so well, or like C.S. Lewis does so well. He's involved in a different sort of business, right? He's involved in stating the truth in as crystal clear logic as he can. And so I think it's totally fine that people have different preferences. Like if I go to Thomas Aquinas because I want to be inspired, because I want to feel a tremendous desire for God, often I don't get it. You know what I mean? And if you want to be inspired and you go to Thomas Aquinas, you'll probably end up disappointed, right? If you go there because you want truth, right? And you want it laid out in a crystal clear manner, then you won't be disappointed. But yeah, I agree with Benedict. You know, like if I want to be inspired, you know, then I certainly get inspired by reading St. Augustine in a way that I don't from reading

St. Thomas Aquinas. So hope that's a help. Thank you so much, Philip. Here's another question that we got from Desiree. Desiree, if I try to pronounce your last name, I will butcher it and you will cease being a supporter of Binds with Aquinas. And so I don't want to do that, but I want to thank you very much for your question. You said this, I'd love to know how you found yourself at Steubenville and around Luke and Goma. You said, also seems like you've bounced around the world quite a bit before settling in Georgia. Where are all the places you've lived and why did you live there for X period of time? Okay, so first of all, I never studied at Steubenville, which by the way is a university in Ohio to those who aren't familiar with it. I did my undergrad mostly at

Maryvale University in Birmingham in England and then did my graduate studies in philosophy at Holy Apostles College. Okay. How do I know Luke and Goma? Well, for those of you who aren't aware, Luke and Goma run the podcast Catching Foxes. Goma's been a friend of ours for a while. When my wife and I got married in Texas, we then made the decision to move to do missionary work in Ireland. And at that time, we needed to find somebody to take over our lease. So we would have been charged a bunch of money. And my wife knew Gomer, at least better than I did. And Gomer and a few of his friends moved into our apartment. So that's how I know them. By the way, their podcast, again, is Catching Foxes. If you want to check out their show, you can go check that out

over there. By the way, there's cursing and things in it. So if you're one of these people who gets very offended by cursing, which is fine, then you might choose not to listen to it. But I think they have some really insightful and honest commentary and they speak right from the heart in an unfiltered sort of way. And so I always get a lot out of their show. Now, you've also said I've lived around the world quite a bit. Yes, I have. their show. Now, you've also said I've lived around the world quite a bit. Yes, I have. From Australia, I got married in Texas. After our marriage, we decided to move, as I say, to Ireland, where we worked as youth ministers and we helped establish the office for Net Ministries in Ireland. We were there for a few years, about three. Then we moved to Ottawa in Canada. Hello,

shout out to my Canadian brethren. I absolutely love Ottawa. It's like one of my favorite places to be ever, especially in the fall. I absolutely love Ottawa in the fall. It's such a beautiful city. I think somebody said, you know, like Ottawa is one of the only cities where you can be, you know, half hour from downtown and get eaten by a bear. That's always good. So I worked as the recruiter for Net Ministries in Ottawa, Canada. I then got invited to work as an apologist at Catholic Answers in San Diego. So my family and I got into a truck and we drove across the country to San Diego, lived there for three years. And then I decided to do sort of more on my own. And so I moved to Georgia for different reasons that would bore you if I went into them. But

suffice it to say, we decided we wanted to live close to an airport for my work and we like Georgia. Now that we're here, I have to say we absolutely love Georgia. It's such a beautiful state. We're so happy that we're here. And God willing, we'll be here for a long time. So anyway, hope that's helped, Desiree. Let's see. Let's get to one more question. And that comes from Nicholas Sosa. I think that's how I pronounce your last name.

Forgive me, Nicholas, if I got that wrong. Thanks for being a Patreon supporter, by the way. You rock. You said, could you possibly touch on how the sacraments are efficacious? Do we have to understand how they work in order to receive the grace they give, or do we receive it no matter what? Thank you very much. Well, there's a Latin phrase, which you may have heard of, called ex opere operato. Ex opere operato. What that means is from the work worked, and this refers to the sacraments. And what that means is that the sacraments derive their power from Jesus Christ, not from us humans.

And so, you know, maybe you go to a particular church and let's say that the priest is a really shady character. You know what I mean? Maybe he's an alcoholic. Maybe he's a fornicator. Maybe he's involved in all sorts of stuff. And you might begin to question, well, oh my goodness, maybe what I'm receiving isn't the Eucharist after all. Well, yes, you are receiving the Eucharist, you know, presuming that he celebrated the mass, right? So yeah, so that's the first thing to say. Now, that doesn't mean that we receive the sacraments,

the grace given to us in the sacraments in a sort of magical, automatic way that's independent from faith, all right? We, as the recipient, have to have faith in order for the sacraments to be efficacious. Now, you might say, well, what about in the instance of baptism? Well, that's a good question. When it comes to baptism, right, the faith is almost like a stand-in. The parents who bring forward their child for baptism, it's their faith, in a sense, that makes that baptism efficacious. But even if the parents weren't around, there is no obstacle within the child to prevent the grace from being received in baptism.

to prevent the grace from being received in baptism. And that's why the church teaches that in a case of an emergency, you may baptize a child, not only without their parents' consent, but even if their parents object to it, you can still baptize them in a case of an emergency. Now, you can't do that with, say, you can't force people to convert who are above the age of reason. So let's say you grab somebody by the collar, you know, who's 7 or 8 or 12 or 52 or whatever,

and you say, I'm going to baptize you right now, and they don't want to be baptized. Guess what? That baptism was invalid. But provided we don't put up any obstacle to receiving the grace given to us in the sacraments, we will receive it. My children received their sacraments in a Byzantine Catholic church. In the Eastern Catholic churches, all three sacraments of initiation are given to the child. Okay, so baptism, confirmation, and Eucharist are given in one sort of ceremony. So my children, you know, my eldest is nine, my youngest is three, they've all received the sacrament of

confirmation, or chrismation as they call it in the East. My son is two, right? When he first received Eucharist, he's two. And so there are different thoughts in both West and East, and we don't need to pit one against the other. So in the West, the understanding is we should wait until a child has reached the age of reason so they know what it is they're receiving. Okay, fine, beautiful, good. In the East, the understanding is, just like I don't need my child to explain nutrition to me before I feed him, I don't need him to explain the Eucharist to me before he receives it. Okay, so again, we don't need to pit one against the other, and that's not what we should do as faithful Catholics, right?

Catholic means universal, colloquially at least. And so we should understand that the church is universal and we shouldn't be pitting one thing against the other where the church allows diversity of opinion or custom. But anyway, in those situations, you know, when my two-year-old receives the Eucharist, he is certainly receiving the grace that Christ wants to give him through that. Okay, so I hope that's a help. There's three questions we got to today. Next week, I'll get to more. Thank you to everyone who supports me again on Patreon and thank you everyone who downloads this episode week after week.

I've got a big surprise for you next week. Edward Fazer. Thomist philosopher Edward Fazer will be on and we will be going through Richard Dawkins' supposed refutations of Aquinas' five ways. Chat with you then. To carry you, to carry you. And I would give my whole life to carry you.