Pints With Aquinas - What is a Thomist? w/ Fr. Gregory Pine

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

Fr. Pine tells us what a Thomist is. 🟣 Join Us on Locals (before we get banned on YT): https://mattfradd.locals.com/ 📖 Fr. Pine's Book: https://bit.ly/3lEsP8F ✝️ Show Sponsor: https://hallow.com/mattfradd 🖥️ 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.

Hello, my name is Father Gregory Pine and I'm a Dominican friar of the province of St. Joseph and this is Pines with Aquinas. In this episode we're going to talk about what it means to be a Thomist. Why? Well, because it's a cool question. Also because Matt sent me a list of topics that he wants me to cover and one of them was, what does it mean to be a Thomist? So here we are.

Also, I think it's just interesting in itself. You know, this channel is Pines with Aquinas, so it has something to do with the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, and people who follow St. Thomas Aquinas typically identify themselves as Thomists, and presumably they do so for a reason, hopefully a good reason. I myself would identify as a Thomist, and I think I have good reasons for doing so. So let me explain to you some of my reasoning upon this very subject. Here we go Okay, so beyond just having something to do with st. Thomas Aquinas I think we can identify two elements which often feature in this conversation

So one is like what st. Thomas says and then the other is how st. Thomas Theologizes, okay, so we'll call the first one content and then we other is how St. Thomas theologizes. Okay, so we'll call the first one content and then we'll call the second one methodology. So let's turn then first to content. So what does St. Thomas say? A lot of people find it very important to discover and to repeat what it is that St. Thomas says. I myself think this to be an important enterprise because St. Thomas Aquinas gets a lot of things right, and the Church proposes him as an excellent theologian because he gets a lot of things right.

Now, we know that St. Thomas has gotten a couple of things wrong, so the Immaculate Conception has been subsequently clarified by the Church and solemnly defined in the 19th century, and St. Thomas, he didn't get that right. And that's okay. All right? Not in the sense that error is okay okay but in the sense that it wasn't yet defined and he made an error and he submitted to the judgment of the church on his deathbed so cheers to him. There are also scientific details that he had inherited from those who had gone before him

about like biology and cosmology which based on subsequent scientific findings we know to be false. We're also pumped because Saint Thomas doesn't make his theories to rely too terribly much on some of that science so he's awesome. Okay so when you focus a lot on the content you might find yourself saying things like well Saint Thomas says now you can say these words in a more or less annoying way I would counsel that words in a more or less annoying way. I would counsel that you do it in a less annoying way. I myself have done it in a more and less annoying way throughout the course of my life.

But there's a kind of, what would one say, a solidity or a firmness in feeling that you have stable footing in St. Thomas Aquinas. But when you make arguments like this, you're effectively making an argument from authority. Now, arguments from authority can be very, very well grounded and well substantiated. Like, I believe because of the authority of God. That's an excellent reason to believe. Right? But when you just appeal to authority, there's a kind of risk that you're not inhabiting

the thought or appropriating the thought of another. So you're just being like, well, St. Thomas says, well, St. Thomas says, even though you've just skimmed the Summa Theologiae once or twice, and you're just using it as a kind of theological cudgel to beat up on your opponents who might be thinking through whatever it is, honestly or genuinely, and may be coming to a solution, but you're using, you know, St. Thomas Aquinas to kind of end the discourse or to deal the death blow. I would say that this is a strategy which is typically employed by theological conservatives. I'm not saying all theological conservatives employ this strategy, but that it's a kind of tendency that you will observe in theologically conservative centers

or theologically conservative conversations. And the fear, I suppose, in using this type of argumentation, is that you produce an aversion in those whom you address. Because they're like, oh my gosh, this person actually isn't engaging his humanity, he's not actually doing the work of theology, he's just repeating the things that have gone before, he doesn't actually think that anything new can be discovered, so what's the point? Why don't we all just retreat from this terrible position? Okay, so that is a fear on those who are like turned off by or put off by this type of argumentation So I would say it's good right to insist upon

the content of st Thomas's teaching for the very reason that we describe because he gets most things right and because he's been proposed by the church is one Who gets most things right but still st Thomas's thought needs to be received and appropriated within a living tradition, which is to say, conducted as faith discourse, as a theological enterprise, which he plays a role in, communicates to us subsequently, but we also have to exercise some kind of agency in, which is to say we need to think it through. So you'll often hear me saying in videos, like, I want to give you principles, I want to give you arguments, so that way you don't find yourself just parroting in whatever, you know, apologetical setting,

but you can actually inhabit the discourse and that you can become a protagonist of the discourse. Okay. So that's the one poll, which is content. The other poll is methodology. Okay, so we said we're gonna pay attention to what St. Thomas says, but also how he goes about saying what he says. So this is the methodology piece. Some people will say, and you'll hear this often enough, St. Thomas Aquinas was a great synthesizer.

So he synthesizes faith and science, or he synthesizes reason and revelation, or he synthesizes Aristotle and Augustine, or he synthesizes the best of the Judaic and Islamic and Christian intellectual traditions, or he synthesizes East and West. I remember one book by Gerald Vann which lists maybe seven ways in which St. Thomas synthesizes. But I would say that's cool. Like St. Thomas draws from a variety of sources, but he's not a great thinker just because he draws from a variety of sources, but he's not a great thinker just because he draws from a variety of sources So knowledge has exploded in the last 750 years since St. Thomas Aquinas died and

But that doesn't make us any wiser doesn't make us any smarter It just means that we have access to more data or more information But the question is whether or not you have assimilated it and whether or not you have ordered it. So here Aristotle say, and St. Thomas repeats at the beginning of the Summa Contra Gentiles, that it pertains to the wise to order. So the question is, what's the order? And I think that what you find,

and that you'll often hear this among theological liberals, you'll find people insisting upon St. Thomas's synthetic efforts in a way that makes him sound almost like a syncretizer, or like his thought is syncretistic. So like St. Thomas is just mixing and molding and mashing and whatever word I can come up with that starts with an M and uses gerund or gerundive, whatever. So what happens when people really really insist on this feature is they'll often trivialize the content. Like it doesn't matter that

Conclusions that st. Thomas came to what really matters is how we went about it So what we should do in the 21st century is engage all those different currents of thought which are gonna prove most fruitful in the discourse It's like so let's get into critical theory. It's like, okay. All right I'm not saying you shouldn't get into critical theory Especially if you're going to address it and help people to confront the errors therein. But I also don't think that we should expect to approach every stream of information or data with the anticipation that it's going to bear much fruit in our lives, because some things are better and some things are worse.

Some people are smarter and some people are less. Some, you know, figures in the tradition are wiser, and they afford us more in the way of philosophical and theological resources and some less. And I think that you have to do that work of distinguishing, that work of ordering, which is precisely the work that St. Thomas undertakes. So when people say, if St. Thomas were around today, he would, or he would say, I almost instantaneously become skeptical of whatever it is that's proposed because I suspect that it's not engaging sufficiently with what he actually said with the Content of his teaching and as a result of which it's kind of going a little bit in a wonky direction and could often be irresponsible

So is that to say that we shouldn't make this effort? No But I think that this effort has to really be rooted in what st. Thomas, you know what what he taught right what he preached So you have these two poles you have the content pole and the methodology pole. And I think to be a Thomist means to be invested in both. Okay? Why? Well, because, you know, to be a Thomist is effectively to be a student of St. Thomas Aquinas, who has no mere authority, right? He's a teacher. He's a master. Okay? And so he helps us, as a teacher, as a master, to pull forth from the potency of our mind some Actuality which is to say he helps us take the steps to reason through the realities

such that we can come to knowledge since we can come to an appreciation of what is and that our minds might correspond to what is in the truth and that by engaging in a lifelong process of Not merely the acquisition but also the ordering of knowledge, we will in turn become wise. Which is to say, we'll be able to see the principles and the conclusions and the conclusions and the principles and we'll have our sense for how reality itself hinges as our minds partake more richly of God's very providence and as we're assimilated to the Lord Jesus Christ himself who is wisdom proceeding from all eternity. were assimilated to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, who was wisdom proceeding from all eternity.

So, St. Thomas commends himself to the subsequent tradition, especially insofar as he's smart, but also insofar as he's wise, as he's a good teacher, as he gives us the resources and shows us the way to be about this work of theology, or faith discourse. So, you know, he helps us to engage sacred scripture, which is the soul of theology, to which we should always return in our theologizing. He shows us a way of recognizing and receiving the tradition and subsequently communicating it because he does so in a way that's balanced, which is why I think we should be a little bit nervous when people do these kind of racer-smart moves and jump over most of the tradition and say, well, we forgot about this guy from the second century.

Have we forgot about him? Or have we perhaps relegated him to a place of lesser importance? Or have we perhaps relegate him to a place of lesser importance? And have we perhaps done so with good reason? Okay, those are all questions that need to be asked. Because whenever we recover something, we're trying to recover something within the tradition, rather than just invent a new tradition, or just subject all of those who might read our work to the arbitrary choice that we made because this was a little corner of academia that hadn't been explored and I wanted to write a dissertation or to get tenure or whatever it is. Okay? So St. Thomas is making these types of judgments when he engages the tradition, like

what's more important on the basis of what helps us better to engage the revelation and the grace of God? And then, you know, St. Thomas commends himself because the subsequent tradition has made this judgment about him. The subsequent tradition has received him as one best disposed for the reading of sacred scripture and the communicating of sacred tradition, and as a result of which we have this kind of accumulated trust. And it's for this reason that we call him, in part, the common doctor, because, yeah, I mean, he's, you know, common, which is to say, available to all. He's able to mediate this to us in a way that is recognizable and receivable both. And so like GK Chesterton, for instance, will vindicate, say, Thomas Aquinas as a kind of teacher of common sense. Not in that you pick up the book and you're

like, oh, that's abundantly evident from a first read. No, but in the sense that if you engage with it, you'll come to find that it's wise, and it's going to be a lot easier than a lot of things written by his contemporaries, for instance. So even though the idiom is a 13th century idiom and there are going to be some obstacles or hurdles to get over, okay, it actually, I think, it corresponds to reality and so it's going to commend itself to your instruction, right, to the discipline, as it were, of the intellectual life better because it fits. Because it's not just various trivia to be memorized or like various arguments to then be used as you know cudgels as I mentioned previously

but that it's something that corresponds to your human nature as you engage with reality and it helps to mediate that encounter in a way that bears fruit. And this was my experience when I first heard St. Thomas describe I was a freshman at Franciscan University of Steubenville, and Eleanor Stump came and gave a talk about Aquinas on the nature of love, it was as if things fell into place. Because I knew like X and Y and Z said by, you know, this saint or this doctor of the church or whatever, this theologian, but I just didn't know how things fit or I didn't know how things were meant to come together in some kind of integral whole and then she Was describing what st. Thomas Gwine's taught on the nature of love and here it is with a kind of precision

with a kind of accuracy, you know with a kind of Eloquence that commends the very truth of the thing because it mediates an encounter with the reality because that's what we're ultimately about God and all things in light of God So I think that it's in fact easier to learn because it corresponds to our nature and to the things described, the reality described. Okay, I'm talking too much so I'm just gonna sum this up by a sweet little quote from St. Teresa Benedict of the Cross which is to say, Edith Stein. So this was sent to me by Brother Charles

Rooney of the Order of Preachers which was to him by or who's turned on to it by Gavin Kerr who is a Professor well, he's a Thomist. So cheers to you. He has various publications especially on st Thomas Aquinas in creation and on proofs for the existence of God but this excerpt is from a dialogue that Edith Stein wrote between Husserl and st. Thomas Aquinas and it's entitled What is philosophy a dialogue between Edmund Husserl and Thomas Aquinas and she gave it to Husserl for his 70th birthday. She later submitted it to a journal but Heidegger thought that it was better if she were to rewrite it in a more neutral fashion which is to say in prose and so she did and it was published in 1929

four years before she entered Carmel. So this is a quotation from the prose essay. It's going to take me about a minute and a half to read. So here we go. What has been called St. Thomas's system took shape in this work of assembling, sifting, ordering. The body of knowledge of his time became organized in his mind. He wrote no quote philosophical system, nor has the system behind his works been written so far.

Yet anyone who studies his works been written so far. Yet anyone who studies his works will find clear, definite answers, perhaps to more questions than he himself could ask. And what is more, the organon that the master bore within himself, organon just means instrument, and that enabled him to settle a host of questions with a firm, serene respondeo decendum, which means, I respond that, which is how he begins a lot of his articles in the Summa Theologiae, leaves its mark on his disciple and gives him the ability to answer questions in Thomas's spirit that Thomas never asked and possibly at the time could not have been asked at all.

This may well also be the reason why folks today are going back to his writings. Ours is a time that is no longer content with methodological deliberations. People have nothing to hold on to and are looking for purchase. They want a truth to cling to, a meaning for their lives. They want a quote philosophy for life. And this they find in Thomas. Of course, there is a world of difference between Thomas's philosophy and what passes for quote philosophy for life today. In his philosophy, we will look in vain for flights of emotion. All we will find is truth, soberly grasped in abstract concepts. On the surface, much of it looks like theoretical hair splitting that

we cannot do anything with. And even after serious study, it is not easy to put our finger on practical returns. But a person who has lived for some time with the mind of St. Thomas, lucid, keen, calm, cautious, and dwelt in his world will come to feel more and more that he is making right choices with ease and confidence on difficult theoretical issues or in practical situations where we, where he would have been helpless.

And if later he thinks back, even surprising himself on how he managed it, he will realize that a bit of St. Thomas's hair splitting laid the groundwork. At the time that Thomas was working on this or that problem, he naturally had no idea what it could someday be quote good for, nor was he concerned about it. He was but following out the law of truth. Truth bears fruit of itself. Boom.

All right. That is what I wanted to communicate. If you have further questions on what it means to be a Thomist, you might consult the article of Serge Thomas Bonino in the journal Nova Edvetera, which is called To Be a Thomist, which is excellent. Other than that, please subscribe to the channel if you haven't yet. Push the bell, get updates when other things come out. Also, if you would like, please check out the podcast which I contribute called God's

Planning. We just had an episode on the anniversary, the seven, uh, 700th anniversary of St. Thomas's canonization. So you can check that out from a couple of months ago, just search God's planning Thomas Aquinas. You might find a couple about that. Okay.

Cool. Um, and then lastly, I wrote a book it's called prudence, choose confidently, live boldly. It's been a year now since it was published, which is wild. It's not that wild. Who cares? Come on, Gregory. Um, so if you haven't yet, please do consider reading it. That is all I have for you.

So know my prayers for you and please pray for me and I look forward to chatting with you next time on Pawns with a Quinas.