Pints With Aquinas - How Can Faith Be So Certain? | Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

Episode Date: November 18, 2023

Father Pine talks about how we can gain such certainty from the Virtue of Faith. 🟣 Join Us on Locals (before we get banned on YT): https://mattfradd.locals.com/ 📖 Fr. Pine's Book: https://bit.ly/3lEsP8F 🖥️ Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ 🟢 Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/pintswithaquinas 👕 Merch: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com 🚫 FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ 🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd We get a small kick back from affiliate links

Oh hello there. My name is Father Gregory Pine and I am a Dominican friar of the province of St. Joseph and this is Pines of the Aquinas. In this episode I'd like to talk about faith. He looks left to remember exactly what it is that he is describing even though this is his 17th attempt at the same video. Wow. Great work, chief. Okay, so I want to talk about faith. Specifically I want to talk about the virtue of faith and the certainty born of the virtue of faith. Because seeing from a certain vantage, it's kind of crazy. Okay, from our vantage, from the vantage of a believer, you're like, yeah, I believe, I am certain and confident of that. Nothing's going to change my mind, so what's up?

But from the vantage of a non-believer it's like you guys are crazy, right? So you hold to this thing which isn't, you know, terribly obvious to us and it doesn't, you know, submit to verification or falsification. It's just assertion or so it seems to us. So what's the deal? What gives? So I think that the Apostle Peter, I don't think that, I know that the Apostle Peter tells us to give reason for our hope and it's part of our responsibility to inform ourselves in light of our ability and our state in life so as to engage with some of this argumentation and not so much as an explanation but as a kind of clarification of the reasons for which

we believe. So, let's go for it. Okay, so faith is a strange mental act. Okay, so you got different mental acts available to you as a human being. You got doubt, where your mind is suspended between two different positions. You've got suspicion where you're like, I think it's this one, not really sure. You've got opinion where you're like, yeah, it's this one, but you're a little bit afraid of the other option because it might be true. And then on the other hand, you've got these virtues of the intellect, right? These mental acts

like understanding, knowledge, wisdom, where you've got premises, like either the principles, they just appear to you as it were, is clear enough, like an understanding. Or you've got arguments, like with knowledge, you're like, all right, this is a premise and that's a premise and that's a conclusion. I can see the conclusion in the premises. Or like wisdom, where you just see how reality

articulates or hinges, because it's clear to you, because you are wise, and it pertains to the wise to order. Okay so with this first category there's a kind of mental unrest because you're searching around you're looking around for the right answer and with the second category that is to say understanding knowledge wisdom there's a real certainty because you have access to the realities your thoughts have made those realities available to you I mean they're already available, but you access them further by thought and then they take up residence in your mind with a kind of fixity, with a kind of stability

Okay, faith is a weird kind of mental act because it's like both the former and the latter It's like doubt, suspicion, and opinion, and that there's a kind of mental unrest to it because you're still inquiring You're still searching as it were But it's like understanding and knowledge and wisdom in so far as it's certain There's a kind of fixity or stability to the mental act So one of the ways that st. Thomas describes faith is and this is a line he quotes from st. Augustine Kuma since the only cojita are you like cool did you just use Latin and expect me to understand it?

Oh yeah. So it's to cogitate or to inquire with ascent. All right, so there's a kind of mental unrest piece there in the cogitate or inquire. And then there's the fixity or stability piece there with ascent. Now, whenever you mention ascent, we're talking about something that goes beyond the intellect. We're talking about something that

includes the will, and that is also true of faith. So with faith it's not just a matter of seeing the things, it's also a choice to see the things. Okay, so we come before faith with a kind of will to believe, or faith requires of us a kind of will to believe or faith requires of us a kind of will to believe. So you know you have some vague or you know ill-formulated indication that something lies beyond and it seems to be revealing itself to me even offering itself to me and then you think to yourself ah this is a threat because I prefer you know Sour Kids, to whatever this thing is. Or you say, this could be awesome because I am really lonely, anxious, and sad, and I'd like this thing in my life because it seems better. So in the former case you're like, nah, I

reject it. In the latter case you're like, yeah, I accept it. And the way I described it there makes it sound kind of arbitrary, but it's not so arbitrary. Each of us is given a grace, a kind of arbitrary but it's not it's not so arbitrary each of us is given a grace a kind of openness as it were with which to recognize and receive this offer some of us choose for it some of us choose against it which is again kind of crazy but with that you know with that choice for comes the virtue of faith and the virtue of charity in its wake so that way we can think cogitate inquire inquire with assent, right? With the type of assent that it requires to hold fast to something beyond human

power or beyond human resources. When St. Augustine describes faith he says there's a kind of threefold belief that is at work in faith. So you believe in God, you believe God, and you believe unto God. Believe in God. It's like, okay, we're believing things. Like there are certain things that we believe. Like God is who he says he is, and that Jesus did these things, and other stuff besides. But then we believe it because we believe in God, right? Because God is the one who reveals it. So when St. Thomas talks about the virtues, he says, like the virtues, they pick out different facets or different

features of reality, and they're kind of specified or determined by those features of reality. So what is the feature of reality upon which faith fixates? Upon which faith fixates, that's nice to say. It's God as first truth who speaks, right, who reveals, who affords us entry into the divine life, you know, who like spills into our mind or pours into our mind the knowledge of him so Faith leans on the divine truth and

This ultimately is the reason for its certainty because it leans on the divine truth Okay, so we have certainty of other things in our human experience truth. Okay? So we have certainty of other things in our human experience. Okay? So like with sense knowledge, for instance, we are certain of the things that we sense, at least their most basic sensible qualities. Okay? So you might be mistaken in X, Y, or Z ways about your sense reality, but like you're going to get the sensual bedrock right. All right? So too in our, you know, intellectual knowledge. There are certain things that you're just going to get right. The principle of non-contradiction, the principle of identity, the principle of finality, if you know what those are. If not, no worries. Moving on. But there are certain things that just happen on the mind, or happen to the mind, and you're like, boom, yep.

So you just apprehend simple things without complexity and without error. So there's a kind of infallibility to this basics experience of reality, whether sensible or intellectual. And faith, it's not like in keeping with those things, or like, oh if we just extend the analogy, you're not going to extend an analogy from nature to grace. But it gives us a certain insight into what's going on here with faith. The reason for which faith is infallible is because God speaks, and God cannot be deceived, nor does He deceive. Okay? So, you have to have a certain will to believe before the revelation itself, which affords the virtue, which virtue gives you access to the God who does not deceive or is not deceived and does not will to deceive, and so can be relied

upon infallibly to reveal the truth. Now, people make mistakes about the faith obviously and that's given their own limitations as reasoners, their own kind of misappropriations of faith and reasoning thereupon, you know, so these things can arise but basically in its bedrock we're saying that faith as revealed by God who is first truth who speaks truly, right, is infallible. That's basically what we're saying. All right, now there are ways in which we can point to that infallibility or we can point to that truth. That's not to say that we argue for it as making it such that you have to believe, but we can show that it's not as crazy as some people think. All right, so we can, for instance, reason

upon the doctrines of the faith and show how they're not at least contradictory in themselves, or we can show further that they illumine our human condition. So like in the first case, you can use sweet Aristotelian categories to describe the most blessed Trinity. Now, is that going to exhaust the mystery of the Trinity? No. Does that prove the Trinity? No. Does that convince everybody that the Trinity is what God says it is? No. In the second case, like illumine the human condition, you can hold up on the one hand the doctrine of original sin and then hold up on the other hand our experience of the 21st century and be like, uh-huh, yeah, you get, uh-huh. Right? So it helps us to make sense of our experience. Now there are some things which are revealed in faith

which we can prove, like the existence of God for instance. We refer to these in the tradition as the preambula fidei,idei, the preambles of the faith. And there are other things we can prove too, like the existence of the immortal soul, or whatever. So there are other things that you can prove. And then there are these sweet, what we call, signs of credibility. These things that point to the fact that something's going on here, and that something seems to be supernatural at least, divine at most. Is there anything more than divine? I don't think so. And so like the fulfillment of prophecy in Christ or the miracles that he performs or the enduring teaching of the church or the

you know lucidity of her teachings things like that. Okay so these things all point to the fact that something is going on here, but they all pertain to credibility, all right? So we don't believe for those reasons, but they show that our belief is not unfounded, all right? Or our belief can marshal arguments subsequently. Now, when it comes to further reasoning upon the things of faith, that's to be commended, right? We don't further reason about the things of faith because we're like, ah, I have to do that, or else I'll fall into doubt. No, that's to be commended, right? We don't further reason about the things of faith because we're like, ah, I have to do that or else I'll fall into doubt. No, that's not necessarily the case because that shows a certain weakness of faith. Rather, our reasoning upon the faith can show

a certain strength of faith because you want to know better those things which are revealed so that you can love better those things which are revealed. So this would be the motivation of the theologian. He believes, right, and then he seeks in his further exploration, his further inquiry, to find handles for this theological reality so that he can grip it in love, right, so that he can then present it to others with a kind of affection. So, yeah, the reason for our certainty is ultimately, you know, it leans on the divine truth, so it looks to the divine testimony, right, which, you know, is leans on the divine truth. So it looks to the divine testimony, right? Which, you know, is the highest of warrant. It's something that we have to choose,

but in our choosing of it, we're not ourselves thereby irrational, because faith is actually something that's consonant with our human nature and flourishing. Even in a natural way, we experience faith claims on the reg, like that Moscow is where people say it is, or that Moscow is where it is on the map, I believe that I've never been there, I've never verified it, I've never taken a whatever, like a space mission that would afford me the opportunity to verify that Moscow is by comparison to St. Petersburg, where it, you know, dot dot dot. I have to receive that trust, that believe that, in order then to function as a human being without having to verify everything for myself. Like faith is part of our human nature. I mean, it's part of our human life,

and it's part of our human flourishing. Here, though, we see it in the highest order, because it concerns our supernatural end, our supernatural beatitude, upon which everything else hinges, all of our eggs being in that basket, or so it seems. So, I would say it's not crazy, seems. So I would say it's not crazy, at the very least. It's not crazy. Is it a kind of wild proposition that lays claim to the whole of a life and is potentially perilous? Absolutely. I will grant that. But I think that this is part of the reason for which we reason, part of the reason for which faith seeks understanding, so that we can come before our contemporaries and say, yes, I believe I can give reasons for my hope that may not convince you, but at the very least it will show that this is worth judging further, you know, this is worth taking under consideration because there's something going on there. Okay, boom, I hope that's helpful for you, I hope that's helpful to you. Whatever the right preposition is you Regardless this is pines with Aquinas if you haven't yet Please do subscribe to the channel push the bell and get sweet email updates when other things come out

Also, if you would check out God's planning Which is the podcast that I contribute to with for the Dominican friars We did a seven part series a couple of Easter's ago on the seven virtues We did a seven part series a couple of Easter's ago on the seven virtues and there's one on faith and I think you might like it. Or you might not, regardless. No, don't, definitely don't. No, okay, yeah, stop. Okay, so, and then the last thing is I wrote a book. That book is called Prudence. Choose confidently. Live boldly. You might enjoy it, you might not. That seems to be the theme for me today. Regardless, moving on, if you haven't yet picked it up, consider it. Alright guys, this is what I got, so no of my prayers for you, please pray for me, and I look forward to chatting with you next time on Pines with the Coins.