Pints With Aquinas - Should We Fight About the Faith? | Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

Episode Date: March 10, 2024

Father Pine talks about arguing theology online. He approaches it from the lens of how it affects the people observing the debate, the people we are debating with, and ourselves. 🟣 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  

Hello, my name is Father Gregory Pine and I'm a Dominican friar of the province of St. Joseph. I teach at the Dominican House of Studies and I work for the Thomistic Institute and this is Pines for the Aquinas. In this episode, I'd like to talk about whether or not we fight about the faith and if we fight about the faith, how we go about it. So why pose the question? Well, as you know, there are lots of fights about the faith raging on every side.

They might be kind of crass, like the ones that take place in comm boxes, or they might be more subtle, like the ones that take place in academic journals. But the question is, which ones do we participate in? Or if we participate, you know, how do we contribute? Because there's risk, on the one hand, that we could scandalize or involve people in conversations for which they're not prepared. But then there's a risk on the other hand that we fail in our responsibility to preach the gospel

and to teach the faith. So here, we're gonna just like look at the question together and then lay out some principles and arguments whereby we can enter more profitably into the mystery at stake. So here we go. Okay. So as you know, there are plenty of fights about the faith.

They rage on every side. But whether or not we enter them will in part depend on us. It will in part depend upon our interlocutor and it will in part depend upon our audience. So we can think about in terms of you, him and them. All right. So I think there are some background considerations that we can pull in from the outset. The first is, you know, like what's at stake.

All right. So is this something where your interlocutor is an unbeliever and then the people who are listening in are a mix of believers and unbelievers? Because if so, right, you're one, not going to be able to presume a lot of principles that you can presume with a Christian for instance and then two, you're going to defend the faith in a particular way. It's like, yeah, like when somebody says something negative about a member of your family. If that's a member of your family you're probably like a member of your family, you're probably like, yeah, I understand the backstory,

I understand what this means in the circumstances, it's not that big of a deal, or maybe it is. But if somebody who is not a member of your family says something negative about a member of your family, then that's a different story entirely. So we talk about the household of faith, and I think that we need to be conscious to house rules. Not in the sense of like, we're all here huddled up in the household of faith and we're just trading secrets and defending stuff

But like when it comes to other people they're not worth it pearls before swine. I'm not saying that I'm just saying it changes the literary genre Okay so when it comes to the household of faith you can do more in the way of you know pedagogy and mystagogy when it comes to those who lie outside its bounds, you're gonna be doing more in the way of faith, you can do more in the way of pedagogy and mystagogy. When it comes to those who lie outside its bounds, you're going to be doing more in the way of apologetics and charismatics. That's a made-up word. But it's good to establish from the outset how much common ground you share, because then that's going to condition the way in which you exchange and how much you can then presume upon, or how much you can rely upon the other to sympathize with because like at the level

of sympathy that's important, okay? Now, then we're gonna motivate the question, all right? So like I'm gonna say or I'm gonna argue that it is profitable in certain circumstances to argue about the faith, all right? But that we need to be careful in doing so, all right? So we have a problem on our hands, and the problem is, largely speaking, historical. So the church has fought about the faith, and maybe there have been, you know, excesses and defects to the way in which the church has fought about the faith in the past, and our secular contemporaries, regardless of whether they have engaged with those historical

realities profoundly or superficially, are often enough going to use those against us as ammunition. It's like when it comes to the enemies of the faith or when it comes to secular contemporaries who hate the faith, they're just going to use whatever weapon lies ready at hand. Maybe that's not to say all of them will, but many will use whatever lies ready at hand as ammunition or as a stick to beat the church with. So know that there's baggage. You can think about the Inquisition or you can think about the Crusade. We've fought about the faith before and we've done it in different ways and the church has backed off those ways in various... yeah, you get it. Okay, so we need to be conscious of the fact that the church in her kind of invading

against her enemies and in her fighting for the faith has at times proven a counter-sign and a scandal. So there's a place in this conversation for some modicum of tolerance. And I think, you know, when certain people hear the word tolerance, they're like, wishy-washy nonsense because they associate tolerance with relativism or with latitudinarianism or with indifferentism, right? So a kind of sense that nothing really matters, there's no truth to be had, so you can say whatever you darn well Please the point is just to get along That's not what I'm saying, but there is a sense in which God tolerates us

Alright and that we should seek to image God or conform ourselves to God in that respect God gives us human freedom All right and he gives scope to that human freedom and He puts our lives in our hands and he's excited to see what we're going to do with them, but sometimes people do crazy things with them. And that we as Christians have an opportunity to be made like unto God in a kind of tolerance. Now mind you, we're going to try to preach, we're going to try to teach, we're going to try to evangelize and convert, but people are going to do what people are going to do,

all right? And we need to provide a kind of space for that because they have freedom and their scope for that freedom So I think in our fighting against the faith we can't be Yeah, like crazy. We have to be patient in the way that God is patient and merciful in the way that God is merciful so in so far as God tolerates our Craziness we should have a kind of openness to the other we should have a kind of charity before the other We have a kind of patience with the other, not just in the sense that we're like biding our time before we're proven right, but in the sense that we need to let the other speak to us and we need to provide a space in which the other can feel comfortable if we're ever

going to host an argument or if we're ever going to host an exchange which is profitable. Because ultimately we believe it's worth believing, we believe it's worth fighting over, and how that shakes down or shakes out is gonna look different in different cases. But there you go, okay. So then, let's talk about you, him, and them. You, all right? So what are the dispositions that you bring to the table when it comes to fighting about the faith?

Well, I don't think that we should engage in debate or that we should engage in dispute if it's a matter of working out our own doubts. When you do it as an expression of doubt, it's very easy to get lost. It's very easy to get swallowed up by the discourse. I mean, regardless of how good the discourse is, there's a kind of pressure in public dispute or debate, in public exchange of whatever sort, and we can just kind of get born under by that or ground under by that. So if you have a doubt, it's best to work that out

privately, you know, like maybe with your confessor or your spiritual director or a trusted Christian friend or somebody who's wise in these matters, because we don't want to use dispute or debate as kind of doubt reconciliation time or opportunity, okay? It's kind of like debate or dispute is mostly what we're doing is apologetics, but there's a sense in which we're also doing theology, and in theology you're thinking through the faith speculatively, and you're finding ways in which the faith is articulated so that your love of those realities revealed can find more places in which to abide or more

places in which to gain traction. So our dispute or our debate is informed by that spirit rather than by a spirit of doubt. Okay, that's the first. Then with respect to him, that is to say your interlocutor, you want to gauge like is there an openness? Because there's not a whole lot of sense in somebody who just comes into the conversation looking to destroy you. It's not cowardice to say, I don't know if this is going to be especially fruitful.

Like I've told that to people on a couple of occasions. It's like, hey, I see you, you've got the things that you want to do. I just have limited time and limited resources and I don't know if I just want to do bludgeoning because I like other things more than bludgeoning. For instance, I like 76ers basketball. Okay, so, it can be profitable in those situations to kind of gauge at the outset whether there is an openness. So it's really, you know, it's for God in his providence to determine and for him to open the other. And it's for you to serve as a kind of instrument of the defense of the faith, right,

of this dispute, whatever setting it takes place in. But it's not going to be you who really affects the change in the other person except insofar as God wants to make use of you. Okay, so if there is an openness, then there's a real space there for Christian preaching and teaching, the kind of Christian preaching and teaching that's asked of every individual who's baptized. Okay, but something simple that you can do in the circumstances is just pray beforehand.

You're like, duh. Right, but like, pray with the other person. So for instance, I was once engaged in a debate with a non-denominational Protestant who had like a lot of questions, but they were mostly gotcha questions. And I was like, what are we doing right now? At the end, I asked him if he wanted to pray and he said no, because his understanding of the mediation of Christ differed so markedly from my understanding of the mediation of Christ, as he explained it to me later, that he couldn't bear to pray with me because he was afraid of something like unto idolatry. So that had been good to know at the

outset. I would have preferred to know that at the outset because I would have started far more basically, not in the sense that I was doing like high-handed or hoity-toity theology, but I would have started with very simple things about how we read Scripture and what it means for our lives rather than like getting into the doctrinal points, which I thought he wanted to discuss when I was way down the road. Okay, so I would say also in these circumstances, you need to be sensitive to how competent you are in philosophical and theological matters. To be clear, you don't need to be competent in order to do these things, because you're

certain, you're confident that the church has a reason, right? That the church has thought this through. And maybe you don't yet know the reasons, or maybe you haven't yet thought this through, but by virtue of your baptism you have faith, and faith gives you access to the realities. And you can testify to those realities from whatever vantage you adopt, okay? So don't worry too terribly much about your incompetence because like apologetics or the defense of the faith, it's not like a technique that you try to master. There are techniques which are involved, and it's helpful to know principles, and it's helpful to know

arguments, but ultimately you're like, you're trying to get holy, right? Because the greatest witness that you can provide is the witness of your love of the Lord Jesus. And the reasons that you can provide is the witness of your love of the Lord Jesus. And the reasons that you supply are going to issue from that love, and when they do, oof, there are a few things more attractive, or there are a few things more convicting. All right, so when it comes to technique, like if you don't have all the answers, well, then you might just start by asking the other individual questions, finding out what it is that he or she really cares about

so that way you address the real concerns or at least surface the real concerns because sometimes that's enough, okay? So if somebody has just like a billion things that they want to talk about, okay, cool, maybe that's genuine Sometimes it's not genuine, sometimes it's just like I feel sad or I feel angry or I've been hurt or I've been wounded and I'm just kind of coming at You with a bunch of debris or with a bunch of flak In the circumstances you might say all right What do you think is the the strongest objection or what is the thing that troubles you the most and then?

Pursue that and when the person tries to change course or tries to you know switch the subject up you can say like no No, we say we're gonna focus on this Let's focus on this and it's not so as simply like to pin the person to the wall, but when you stay on topic that can you can really tease out the implications of whatever arguments at stake. So good. This is all good in the way of background, but like you're going to have to gauge again whether or not to engage. You're going to have to engage like whether or not to engage. You're going to have to gauge whether or not

to defend the faith in this circumstance or that. So just know that this is part of your life of faith, that there's an interior and exterior dimension of faith. The interior dimension of faith is belief, the exterior dimension is confession. And obviously you're not going to be able to confess the faith at all times of all days because you're going to take naps or you're going to sleep. But you're going to be asked to confess the faith at all times of all days because you're going to take naps or you're going to sleep. But you're going to be asked to confess the faith in certain instances, right, to actually give public proclamation or to give a public defense. St. Thomas will say that you always need to be prepared in spirit for this and that there are going to be times and places in which you're going to have to do it.

You're going to have to actually, you know, whatever, gin up the courage to go forward. And I think that, you know, like the closest description that he gives to something like this is martyrdom. You should always be ready to testify in a way that imperils your life, or testify in a way that could risk everything. You're not trying to throw your life away, nor are you seeking opportunities to die for the faith because you want to, what, tempt the Lord in His giving of martyrdom graces. But yeah, I think that you might find yourself in a circumstance where you're called upon to do just this. Like I was talking to a chaplain the other day, and he was at like this joint chaplain's meeting at the university where he works, and you know, one of the chaplains of another denomination said like, basically, all enlightened people think and said something contrary to church teaching,

specifically as concerns abortion, and he just had to say like, yeah, not necessarily. I mean, maybe you don't think I'm an enlightened person, but just know that that's not our confessional line, and I affirm the Church's teaching in this regard. So it's just like very simple, but he found himself in a circumstance where two have remained silent would have been, in some way, to be complicit. And he thought, all right, this is the time. So, yeah, certain circumstances people are going to say a thing and it's going to be your responsibility to correct it, maybe not to correct them, but to correct the error and then to testify to the truth. And then in other circumstances, you might judge that there is, this is not the time and this is

not the place, right? Because it's not the appropriate setting or because of whatever else, you know, you're going to have to judge that on the basis of prudence. And maybe we could talk about that more at a later date. So then the last thing to take into account is them, all right? So I've said, you know, you, him, and them. What about the audience? I think that you need to be sensitive to those listening in, and this really concerns discourse hosted on the internet because people don't always have the right context in which to

interpret what is said because nowadays a lot of people are just raised by the internet and a lot of people come to faith by the internet and a lot Of people work out their difficulties in faith with the internet and in part That's just because people live in every possible corner of the world But also it's because here we are. This is just 2024. It's what we do. Okay So you need to have the discourse calibrated to the audience so as to not eliminate the possibility but to reduce the possibility of potential misinterpretation So you have to be careful about what people can take the wrong way So like yeah again debates among Christians can sometimes be scandalous to non-Christians If we're like fighting in really ugly ways when we all pertain to the household of faith, that's something we should be a little bit embarrassed about,

or even ashamed of. So I think certain things are just going to be best done off the internet. And while it might be a temptation to do it on the internet because people click on it and then you, whatever, like accumulate fame, if you're actually concerned with the hearts of the people involved, right, if you're actually concerned with the hearts of the people involved, if you're actually concerned with conversion and the working out of whatever doctrinal point or the elaborating of whatever practical thing, then we have to shape our lives accordingly. So that doesn't mean that we're necessarily hiding, it's just to say that certain things are best worked out in a private setting or in a secret setting as a sensitivity to the

individuals involved and the delicacy or the fragility of their lives. So, yeah, I think that those are just some principles that you can use when determining whether or not to defend the faith and then what the circumstances might be which would require it of you. So yes, boom. That's what I hope to share. This is Pius the Aquinas. If you haven't yet, please do subscribe to the channel, push the bell, get sweet email

updates when other things come out. Also, if you haven't yet, check out God's Planning where we talk about things along these lines with dread frequency. So that's myself and then four of the Dominican Friars. You might enjoy that. And then I wrote a book. It's called Prudence. Choose confidently.

Live boldly. I'm working on the next installment which is on justice. Don't know what the subtitle will be but hopefully something snappy. So you can pray for that actually because writing this book might kill me. But there you go. And alright guys, no of my prayers for you. Please pray for me and I'll look forward to chatting with you next time on Pines with Aquinas.