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7: What Is Thomism?
33 Plays9 days ago
"An educated person believes things because they must. Not because they want to."
Dr. Jason Reed joins us today to share with us the potentially life-saving discipline of studying philosophy and how it is essential to diving into the beautiful theology of St. Thomas Aquinas.
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Transcript
Introduction by Hosts
00:00:16
Speaker
Hello, my name is Father Jacob Rouse, and I am the pastor of Notre Dame Parish in Cresco, Iowa. And welcome to episode seven of the DeBucharistic Revival podcast.
00:00:27
Speaker
Because that's the name we're going with. That other beautiful voice you're hearing is Father Kevin Earlywine, my co-host. Father Kevin, can you introduce yourself? Yes, I am Father Kevin Earlywine, pastor of St. Patrick's in Hampton and St. Mary's in Ackley.
00:00:43
Speaker
And here we are, and we have a special guest with us, Father Jacob, who who you know and brought on.
Guest Introduction: Dr. Jason Reed
00:00:50
Speaker
so Yes, our guest this week, this month, this period, this episode is Dr. Jason Reed.
00:00:58
Speaker
And um he is wild about philosophy and Thomas Aquinas and everything that goes with that. And so I'd like to introduce yourself. And um where do you teach right now?
00:01:10
Speaker
So right now I am associate professor of philosophy at diet divine word college, which is run by the society of divine word, about 20 minutes west of Dubuque and father, father Rouse actually mess. We, but we met at St. Patrick's in Cedar Rapids.
00:01:27
Speaker
Yes. That's where we met. yeah That's right. So we've known each other for long. So I'm excited to come talk to you about this stuff. So that's what i'm doing now. And I was a, um, this might come up later, but I was a seminary professor at a Protestant school.
00:01:39
Speaker
for about six or seven years and now i've been at divine word for seven so okay and i also teach in the archdiocese in the permanent deaconate program the archdiocese of dubuque which i love so i teach them philosophy theology yeah the deacon candidates are a little shaken when they come out of your class but it's very very good for them i've heard rumors you are You are educating the clergy. We love it.
00:02:09
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, you mentioned you were a professor at a non-Catholic seminary, a Protestant seminary. Where was that
Dr. Reed's Religious Journey
00:02:16
Speaker
at? That was in Charlotte, North Carolina. In what denomination?
00:02:20
Speaker
Well, it was non-denomination non-denominational, but it was Baptist in its theology, dispensational in its its eschatology. So pretty straightforward Baptist, fundamentalist.
00:02:33
Speaker
And what were you? Exactly. question So I was, it's interesting how you find out what you were when you but joined the church, because the church wants to find out when you're baptized. I did not know i was baptized as an infant until I decided to join the church.
00:02:52
Speaker
So baptized Lutheran, raised and confirmed Methodist. And then when I went to college and had a religious experience, I got involved with the Baptists. So I was Baptist for about 20 years.
00:03:04
Speaker
But you knew the Lord this whole time, though. I would think so. Yes, I think so. um you You were teaching philosophy at this seminary, correct?
00:03:16
Speaker
That's right. And what's interesting about this seminary, even though it's Baptist, we read Thomas Aquinas. Wow. So the the the main professor, some of your listeners might know who this is.
00:03:28
Speaker
ah Dr. Norman Geisler was the main teacher. at divine word. Actually, I'm sorry, at some evangelical. And I have his book over here to my left, Thomas Aquinas, an evangelical appraisal. So it was it was an evangelical who introduced me to to Thomas Aquinas.
00:03:46
Speaker
I see. So it was heavy emphasis on classical apologetics, classical theism, right? the the The proofs for the existence of God evidence for the resurrection. And the the divine attributes in Thomas, Tom Geisler was famous for saying most people's God is an angel.
00:04:06
Speaker
Not the not the the one who exists, not pure being. So Dr. Geisler was the head guy there. So when I went to study under him, then he said, after I was there for a while, he said, you yeah you need to go get a PhD in philosophy.
00:04:25
Speaker
So I went from there.
Encounter with Catholic Philosophy
00:04:27
Speaker
to a place called St. Louis University, which I did not know was Jesuit. Hmm. Catholics. Yeah. Very Catholic. So show up on campus. Here I am this evangelical and I'm surrounded by these priests and callers and this massive church and other Catholics.
00:04:45
Speaker
So that was my first taste of the the Catholic philosophical world. Can I ask before that, what, what had been your experience of Catholicism or Catholics or like, did you have any,
00:04:57
Speaker
ah kind of preconceived notions about Catholics before you landed at St. Louis University? I did. So what I knew about Catholics growing up was there was a Catholic church by the highway.
00:05:11
Speaker
And some of my friends went there, but the the hometown I was in was for primarily Presbyterian and Methodist. And I remember the Catholic families were bigger they had the big families of the Catholic kids. And i remember them having fish they at at the, at the school, the elementary school, the Catholic kids had ah their own line where they would get fish.
00:05:33
Speaker
I didn't quite understand why they're eating fish. That's what I knew growing up. And then in college, when you become an evangelical in college, these, like the salt company was always a part of, um or the campus crusade. I don't know if that's still around, but a lot of these evangelical campus groups, lots of former Catholics.
00:05:52
Speaker
who had walked away. So most of my interaction prior to St. Louis were Catholics who had left the church. So now I saw the church kind of through their eyes, right? The the church doesn't talk about salvation, doesn't talk about faith in Jesus. It doesn't really talk about God. It was more just rules. And that that that was my picture of the church.
00:06:15
Speaker
But I was always very respectful of Thomas. And so I was always
00:06:21
Speaker
I love Thomas Aquinas so much, but at the time he was a real enigma to me because how can you be this great and be Catholic? And so I'd say, well, there was nothing else to be in the 13th century.
00:06:33
Speaker
So I used to say that, but then Dr. Geiser assigned Geragou Lagrange, um who was a famous 20th century Dominican priest who was um JP II's dissertation director.
00:06:46
Speaker
Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, all these great Thomists and they're all Catholics. And I remember the day i remember getting um back in the day that was this is before Amazon. so you got books on ABE books.
00:07:05
Speaker
I remember Gary Gould Lagrange's book coming in the mail ah and I opened it up and it was devoted Mary and my head just like, how can you have this deep perf in the title of the book was on God's existence in nature. There's two volume. It's like 1200 pages total.
00:07:21
Speaker
or remember about a thousand. I'm like, this is just this dense, super dense philosophy, but it's devoted to Mary. So it's just, I was very confused. And then going to St. Louis, I got more confused.
00:07:35
Speaker
Cause at St. Louis, I, so I found, I ran into like faithful Catholics. so I was actually, that was the first time I was in the Catholic world.
00:07:45
Speaker
And so I'm around these, these really sharp philosophers. and they were serious about their faith. That really shocked me that as, as serious as they were about philosophy, they were just as serious about their relationship with God.
00:08:01
Speaker
So you got, not only were exposed to their knowledge and intelligence and also their, uh, uh, devotion and. they were see Yeah, they're, they're serious.
00:08:13
Speaker
That's the one thing about Catholic intellectuals that I have always appreciated is that they take their faith very seriously. When I go to professional philosophy conferences where there are lots of Catholics and we'll have, you know, like a morning mass there, they all show up and when they sing, they sing loud.
00:08:35
Speaker
They really are in love. So that was extremely refreshing. So not only were they were very good philosophers in their minds and their devotions, um, But they, you could see how their philosophy was like part of their their life.
00:08:54
Speaker
but it was It was integrated into their life in a way that as an evangelical, wasn't. An evangelical philosophy integrated insofar as you can use it to defend the faith, um do apologetics, respond to objections.
00:09:10
Speaker
But it really wasn't part of like a formative aspect to one's soul becoming something. And they just, they had that.
00:09:21
Speaker
Did you have a sort of ah moment or a series of moments that here you are learning in this Catholic world? And then was there a change in your heart or mind that opened
Philosophical Inquiry and Catholicism
00:09:33
Speaker
you up to belonging to the Catholic church?
00:09:36
Speaker
Well, my time at St. Louis, the biggest change for me was I really fell in love with my Catholic friends. But I wasn't interested in being Catholic.
00:09:51
Speaker
I never really thought about becoming Catholic, but I really respected them. What I wanted to do is I wanted to take all that great Catholicism and change the evangelicals. um That's what I wanted to do.
00:10:03
Speaker
Because I wasn't interested in being Catholic. I have respected them. But I wasn't even close to being there. It wasn't until I went back to the seminary and started teaching the things started to change so when i was at this when i like the seminary i was at asked me to come back and teach and then when i was teaching philosophy there i started coming to catholic conclusions
00:10:33
Speaker
for example i i'm teaching systematic theology which is called um 502 excuse me which is theology proper and we're going over christology
00:10:44
Speaker
Now, in logic, you have premises and you have a conclusion. And the thing about logic and arguments is that the conclusion either follows or it doesn't.
00:10:58
Speaker
It's either follows or it doesn't. So the first premise was Jesus is God.
00:11:05
Speaker
And um and good I'm just teaching what I think is standard. Christology. So the first premise was Jesus is God, we're talking about his humanity and his divinity. The second premise is Mary is the mother of Jesus. And there's, there's tons of scripture for that.
00:11:21
Speaker
I said, well, then it just follows that Mary is the mother of God.
00:11:27
Speaker
That just follows those premises. They didn't think much of it until the Dean in the back raised his hand. it was one of those, one of those classes where the dean comes and observes you when you're teaching as a young, as a young professor.
00:11:42
Speaker
And he said, so are you saying she's the, she's Theotokos? She is the mother of God. And so I said, not so I explained it to him, right? Although I understood, I'm not saying that Mary is, is responsible for Jesus's divinity.
00:12:00
Speaker
So it's, that I don't mean mother of God in that way. Now and that they're, they're, they're, she, there here's Mary and she gets pregnant and God comes forth. I don't think that, but the second person of the Trinity is in her womb.
00:12:17
Speaker
And she is responsible for his body. I mean, she is a mother. She plays the exact same role that my mother played for me. And then he said, I guess the Catholics are right. Hmm.
00:12:30
Speaker
like, I didn't know what that meant. Okay. ah So that started the whole, that, that, that was a one just brief window. And it was just a, it was just a series of one moment of, ha huh, huh.
00:12:48
Speaker
And just slowly over time is I de dive is the, the more serious I got about philosophy, the more serious I got about doing theology. Hmm.
00:12:59
Speaker
And the more serious I got but about doing theology, i was having a very difficult time being evangelical. Because as an instructor, you want to find a good textbook.
00:13:12
Speaker
I could not find a decent evangelical textbook on God's existence in nature. I just could not find one. I mean, there were some and they were okay, but they weren't systematic. I didn't.
00:13:23
Speaker
i didn't I didn't realize how Thomistic it was. It wasn't systematic. There wasn't a necessary an order to it. Sometimes it'd start with the Trinity. Sometimes it'd start with God's existence. I didn't i didn't find anything that was suited my goals for the class. And I talked to the dean. I said, well, since we teach Thomas, I'll just teach the Summa.
00:13:43
Speaker
And so the the the book that you you had in your hand before we started the recording, that was the textbook. Mm-hmm. to a bunch evangelicals reading St. Thomas Aquinas and his arguments in the proofs.
00:13:55
Speaker
Now, why is that a problem? Because he's Catholic. and So if he's really good at philosophy, then why don't we consider his theology?
00:14:08
Speaker
I never got a good answer to that question.
00:14:13
Speaker
So when we then when after a few few years there, just before I met Father Rouse, We decided we need to move back to Iowa and be near our families.
00:14:24
Speaker
So nothing about the school per se. It wasn't like we were unhappy there. It wasn't I'm going to become Catholic and move. Lisa had turned, our oldest had just turned 11. And i was at a soccer game and it just dawned on me, my parents are never going to know their own grandkids.
00:14:39
Speaker
So we moved back for for family reasons. And I continued to adjunct a little bit. But when we moved back to and went to start and go to St. Patrick's after a few years there, I finally came to terms with my.
00:14:53
Speaker
With the Catholic faith, again, another argument. So in John, chapter six, Jesus gives an argument, right? He says. the the The flesh, the the the bread that comes down from heaven.
00:15:07
Speaker
You're supposed to eat and you will live. And the bread that came down from heaven is my flesh. that I give for the world. So he's saying, premise one, eating this bread is how you become, how you have life.
00:15:23
Speaker
The second premise is this bread you this bread that you eat is my flesh.
00:15:29
Speaker
Conclusion, this, that Christ's flesh, you eat it for life. And that's exactly what the Jews ask him. The Jews ask him the question that's logically implied in what Jesus taught.
00:15:43
Speaker
none Jesus's answer. So when you do logic, right, you either deny a premise, like because just previous to that, he's talking to the Sadducees. And the Sadducees give argument against the resurrection. And Jesus says, you get a false premise, right? You believe there that there's that there's marriage in the in the resurrection. Well, that's a false premise.
00:16:03
Speaker
So he corrects the premise. Okay, that's a false assumption. In the very next these next lines, he doesn't correct a premise. He doesn't say no, because the word eat in the argument, right? Eat flesh, but eat the bread and eat, eat the flesh means eating with your mouth, you know, chewing on it. That's what he's teaching.
00:16:22
Speaker
So when he responds, he doesn't say, no, no, I don't, I don't mean eat the way you do. He repeats the conclusion. He repeats their inference.
00:16:35
Speaker
My flesh is food indeed. My blood is drink indeed, unless you eat, unless you drink, unless you eat, unless you drink. Yeah, he doubles down on it.
00:16:47
Speaker
He doubles down on it, yeah. Yeah, but but that's how logic works. And when you when you study philosophy, you know how these Jesus is very logical. So that's what's going on. So again you don't have to be aware of logic, but it's it's working.
00:17:00
Speaker
And so the conclusion, it's same thing when he talks about, um asks about the Messiah, whose son is he? yeah know who's the Messiah? Well, he's David's son. Well, if if the Messiah is David's son, then why does David call him his Lord?
Conversion to Catholicism
00:17:16
Speaker
Because what follows logically is that David is saying that his son is his God. Oh, wow.
00:17:25
Speaker
That's what follows logically. David's son is David's Lord. Yeah. How can his son, who's a human, be his God. Well, the answer is standing right in front of him.
00:17:39
Speaker
It's me. That's cool. That passage has always confused me. Yeah. So that's what's going on there. So again, so you see how philosophy does lead to really good theology. You start to pick out these sorts of implications. So was reading this. And so what happens when you teach logic or you study logic?
00:17:56
Speaker
Well, now I can't run away from it.
00:18:01
Speaker
It was a hound of heaven, wasn't it? It was pretty awful. Because when you're evangelical, to think about becoming Catholic, in a sense, you do feel like you are losing your soul.
00:18:12
Speaker
So what I tell people is I actually know what it feels like phenomenologically
00:18:20
Speaker
to convert. Okay. I know what it means to convert. Yeah.
00:18:29
Speaker
It's not fun. So backing up a little bit, what what led you guys to go to St. Patrick's in the first place? You moved to Iowa. So my wife my wife was raised Catholic, and she reverted.
00:18:39
Speaker
but So our our church in North Carolina split.
00:18:45
Speaker
And the first two churches we went after that were splitting that day, and I'm not exaggerating, Father. We went from one church splitting. The next weekend when we visited another church. It was splitting that day.
00:18:56
Speaker
ah wow. They had just fired the pastor and they started split. And then the next church we went to, they were splitting that day. I mean, you you can't make this stuff up. Yeah. So at that time, I'm not sure exactly when, but Holly's, my in-laws had come down and visited and they're and they're Catholic. So they we went to mass with them. And after that mass, I think this is the right order. My wife can correct me.
00:19:23
Speaker
But then so she said, I'm going back to the Catholic church. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I started going with her because I didn't have to see all the, you I knew there weren there weren't going to be evangelicals there.
00:19:34
Speaker
So I could just go and sit and not have to worry about church politics. So we came back to Iowa, now to answer your question, she had already said, we're going to go to the Catholic church. I said, okay, I want the least evangelical Catholic church in town.
00:19:52
Speaker
And she gave me two options. She said, there's Immaculate Conception and St. Patrick's. I said, which is closer? She said St. Patrick's. And that was, I walked in that building. That was it. Like, this will be, I'll go, at least like I can go here. And that would have been about 2011.
00:20:08
Speaker
And I joined the church a year after that. Oh, wow. And I probably met you in 13 or 14, probably. Wow. You were fresh. That was fresh.
00:20:18
Speaker
Wow. Wow. What was your wife's name? What is your wife's name? Holly. And then your three, your daughter, you said Lisa was your oldest? Lisa, Genevieve, Mary, and John.
00:20:31
Speaker
John wants to make sure I hardly, always forget to mention him. So John, you're mentioned. Yes, John, if you're listening. John, if you're listening, you're mentioned. He loves you.
00:20:42
Speaker
So philosophy saved my life in two ways. Wow. The first time it saved my life, because I imagine you want to talk a little bit more about philosophy and the in the
Philosophy's Role in Dr. Reed's Life
00:20:53
Speaker
church that started. So how did philosophy save me?
00:20:56
Speaker
When I was, and and I'm sure this is true for so many people. I know it's true for a lot of people. You graduate high school and then what do you do? Well, you go to college. That's the next thing you do. And so I went to college because you know, it's kind of like, why do you get engaged? We've been dating this long.
00:21:15
Speaker
It's just sort of, you just kind of do that. And my really good friends are going to Iowa state, but I had no idea why I was there. Had no, mean, I was good in math. So I thought maybe I'll be an engineer. Well, I went to couple of freshman engineering classes. Like this is not for me. This isn't math, right? This is something else.
00:21:34
Speaker
And so I just went from major to major. i was a PE major for a while. I was a bad, a biology major for a while, but, not doing well in school again, just lacking direction, just going to classes and racking up debt, unfortunately.
00:21:50
Speaker
So in my June, between my junior and senior year, I had a religious experience. I had been reading some evangelical books and I saw someone preach the gospel and I met God, right? So I i need to get saved. You know, so this sounds very evangelical, right? I need to be born again.
00:22:09
Speaker
And so you got to say the s sinner's prayer. So I had this religious conversion, right? So I'm no longer drinking and no longer partying. i i'm so I'm thinking about school. But now with that I've been saved and I'm no longer distracted by all the you know the stupidity that like that um college kids do, I had to think about what I wanted to study.
00:22:32
Speaker
And so ah couldn't find anything. I really had a hard time. I was communications, I got so tired of school, I just want to read my Bible all the time. so I read the Bible so much that I stopped going to class.
00:22:49
Speaker
And I didn't withdraw. so I was so i I didn't know anything about academics. I didn't know anything about how the the system worked. I just quit going. I was that depressed. I just want to stay home and read and and evangelize. So then ah basically got asked to take some time off from Iowa State.
00:23:07
Speaker
And then when I decide, okay, what I'm going to do is maybe I can be religious studies major. Maybe I can be a pastor or a missionary, something like that, or least or at least graduate. if i If I study religious studies, I know I can at least complete that degree.
00:23:24
Speaker
What I do with that, I don't know. Just got to get to the degree. So I went to a community college and i so i was going to take religious studies. it was a Monday night.
00:23:35
Speaker
it it was world religions man i can't wait to go in there we're going to debate hinduism we're going to debate is i'm ready to to you know to to argue and debate have some you know fascinating conversations and then the other tuesday thursday classes one was developmental psych and the only other one that fit my schedule was philosophy there's a moral philosophy class ethics and i just was not pretty apathetic like yeah whatever Wasn't all that crazy about taking philosophy.
00:24:09
Speaker
So the semester starts, i go to the Monday night class, I'm ready to argue. And the professor just shoots me down from the beginning. He said, we don't debate in here. We just really read and appreciate different religions. And I thought, okay, which is fine, but religious like to debate each other. i just didn't understand. I mean, this is okay. I mean, can i ask questions? No, we're just to study. like, so that was kind of a letdown.
00:24:34
Speaker
Then the next day, the philosophy class, I go in there, ah sit down and the professor comes in, he writes on the board, what is the good?
00:24:47
Speaker
And that was it. I just sat there and I just stared at it.
00:24:53
Speaker
What is that?
00:24:56
Speaker
Next question, what is happiness?
00:25:01
Speaker
Yeah, what, what is that? And so why did it save me? Because finally there was something to think about. Finally there was some meaningful conversation to have.
00:25:16
Speaker
And it saved me because philosophy was asking the very same questions that I was asking as a Christian. They were the same questions.
00:25:27
Speaker
Then after a few months, I realized after keep studying and that I could do philosophy. I think this is something that I'm actually... and capable of doing. It's work. It's very hard, but I think I can do this.
00:25:41
Speaker
So then I went back to Iowa State, changed majors, and finished up philosophy there. And as i was studying there, what do you do with a philosophy degree? Well, you have to teach. But it saved me because now it really gave me something to do, something to think about, something to that kept my interest.
00:26:01
Speaker
I loved it. Still love it. I love these things. i love I love the questions that philosophers ask. And you almost become a kid again.
00:26:12
Speaker
Right? So in a sense, philosophers are like the childlike things that Jesus is talking about. Unless you have the faith like a child, well, that's kind of what a ah real philosopher is kind of like that.
00:26:24
Speaker
Right? The world isn't boring to them. They wonder why is there anything, um why does anything exist? Just today in our metaphysics class, One student said, how free are we?
00:26:37
Speaker
the world tells us how free we are. I said, well, you're not really all that free. He said, what do you mean? i said, well, what, what in your life has actually been up to you?
00:26:53
Speaker
How about your DNA, your parents, your abilities?
00:27:02
Speaker
your talents. Because my wife's beautiful, but she had nothing to do with that. Right? I mean, right. I mean, some people are really tall, they had nothing to do with that. Some people are short, god had nothing to do with that. i wish I had more hair, I had nothing to do with that.
00:27:18
Speaker
They said, so what do we have, what are we free to do? And so this is one of those moments where you just, I swear the guardian angels talking into your ear. I said, well, you're free to either accept that or not.
00:27:32
Speaker
look but You can just see you just hear a pin drop. What are you talking about? you can you're either You're free to accept what God has done or not.
00:27:41
Speaker
Now, here's how it's dangerous. So the the the tiger just bees as a tiger. God makes the tiger. And what do tigers do? They be tigers. That's why they're never pets.
00:27:53
Speaker
Okay. What does the tree do? Trees be trees. Pigs be pigs. But I can choose to be a pig.
00:28:05
Speaker
I can choose to be like an animal. ah I can choose not to do what God has wants me to do. I can choose to live like a pig.
00:28:21
Speaker
So those are kinds of things that, see that, that, that sort of, you that's why philosophy is so great. That's why it's so fun because you, you get at the heart of things. hey It forces you to think about these things.
00:28:34
Speaker
Mm-hmm. yeah Yeah. When you said you were you were just standing in your room reading the Bible all day, you were obviously interacting with the inspired word of God.
00:28:45
Speaker
And yet it was not until the philosophy or the way to think was introduced. What do you think was missing from you as you were reading the same scriptures that, well, St. Thomas would have read?
00:28:58
Speaker
So what you're doing as an evangelical, you don't do systematic theology like you would as a Catholic. So when you are evangelical, and especially when you're in a ministry like these campus ministries, they take you through the scriptures primarily to witness.
00:29:17
Speaker
So you would know like um no one is righteous before God, right? um You must be born again to see the kingdom of heaven. So you'd have these verses that were evangelical verses and you would put these to memory and you do some studies.
00:29:34
Speaker
But For whatever reason, I don't ever remember coming across a standard Catholic verse, like when Jesus breathes on the apostles and says, who's ever sins you forgive or forgiven. I don't remember.
00:29:46
Speaker
I think it's Titus where says that the church is the bulwark and pillar of the truth. I don't remember these statements. I don't remember going through um like first Peter with the ah Noah's Ark in the waters representing baptism. We just didn't talk about those things. So that's a real eye opener.
00:30:04
Speaker
for evangelicals. Okay. And one of the reasons why i don't think we encounter it because the Catholics didn't know these verses existed. Almost every Catholic I met in college had no idea what the Bible said. So you could, you you could, you could really twist a Catholic pretty quickly by saying things like, show me in the Bible where the word sacraments used.
00:30:24
Speaker
her Show me in the Bible where it says, I confess my sins to a priest. Show me where the list of seven sacraments are. So that, that, that kind of, question. Now, when of course we to St. Louis, these guys had answers.
00:30:39
Speaker
They said, you're doing theology, so scriptura. I'm like, oh, yes. He said, where does your, where does your scriptura come?
00:30:47
Speaker
Like, oh, I never thought of that. Didn't think of that. So that was the first time philosophy saved me. Is it really, i loved studying it i love thinking about god because primarily my whole life has been about is there a god i really want to know if there's a god i tend to be kind of a pessimist is there really anything more than just this world and so i've always been interested in god of course with thomas the reason i fell in love with thomas aquinas i want to know his god if you if you take anything away from thomas aquinas his god is he puts aslan
00:31:25
Speaker
to shame. He really is the one. He is the one being he is existence. So I tell this to students to does God exist?
00:31:35
Speaker
Depends what you mean. The statement God exists is true.
00:31:41
Speaker
But God doesn't exist. He is existence.
00:31:47
Speaker
Like what? you're gonna see the students, what are you talking about? Yeah, he is being itself. What does that mean? Well, God is why there's anything. So I don't put God on the board.
00:31:59
Speaker
God is why the board's there. That's why the reason God is why I'm right. God is responsible for why I'm able to write on this thing right there and teach you. He's responsible for all of this.
00:32:10
Speaker
or why we're even able to talk about him at all or have this podcast even. Yeah. The whole thing. Father Bema, may he rest in peace and in our seminary. He always would say that there is not, God is not one of many gods running around the universe. He is the only God, obviously. And he's also the source ah all ah source of being.
00:32:34
Speaker
Yeah. hes He's not one. He's not in the universe. Right. He's not he's not a member of a group.
00:32:46
Speaker
So when when so when becoming Catholic, the one thing I love about being Catholic now we can start to maybe trans transfer, sorry, um um move into kind of what I'm doing now in the whole philosophy thing and and how St. Thomas and and being Catholic what has changed what has changed is a Catholic and this might surprise some people.
00:33:07
Speaker
being Catholic is what saved me being a philosopher.
00:33:13
Speaker
So I'm a philosopher and I'm loving philosophy, but the more I'm studying philosophy, the more I'm realizing how limited reason is.
Philosophy and Theology in Catholicism
00:33:23
Speaker
And I'm realizing how much of a rationalist I am. I'm coming to terms with with myself thinking I'm i'm using philosophy to see whether I should believe something.
00:33:36
Speaker
And so I... i believe that I believe in the Trinity because I think philosophy can show it's true. I believe in the incarnation of Jesus Christ because I think we can use philosophy and evidence evidence to prove it.
00:33:49
Speaker
And then I read Thomas Aquinas, and he says, you believe in the Trinity on God's authority, period. So that really just struck me. So what is going on here? So i when I started reading how Thomas understood faith,
00:34:05
Speaker
For the first time, I saw how faith completes the philosophical journey. and i And in the evangelical world, I'm always having to, at the time, fight people and argue with them that they need to do philosophy and using Bible, but they didn't have any teeth because just one opinion among many.
00:34:27
Speaker
And then I started reading the the church. I couldn't believe it. The church says philosophy is necessary for doing theology.
00:34:37
Speaker
Right, paragraph 251 of the Catechism says that the Church, in order to articulate its doctrine of the Trinity, employs terms of philosophical origin.
00:34:52
Speaker
And just dawned on me, well, if a Catholic doesn't know philosophy, they're not going to understand their doctrine. Who else is like that? Nobody. Nobody.
00:35:04
Speaker
The church teaches that the the that sees in philosophy noble pursuit.
00:35:13
Speaker
The church sees in philosophy a way of becoming more human. Like, wow, so this the church's um advocation for philosophy says something about what they think we are.
00:35:31
Speaker
The church believes... that in philosophy, it's indispensable for and understanding your faith. And it's one of the highest human
00:35:45
Speaker
inquiries.
00:35:49
Speaker
I've been, I've been, I thought about that quite a bit. What does that tell me? It tells me that what's most about being like God is I have an intellect using my mind is what makes me like God.
00:36:08
Speaker
Not that have a body, that I have feelings or emotions, that because I have a mind, when I exercise and I understand metaphysics and philosophy, I am being, quote unquote, God-like.
00:36:25
Speaker
To your point about the intellect, my intellect participates in God's mind. That's how it even does this stuff. I mean, Augustine called it the divine illumination.
00:36:34
Speaker
And that's where I think if the church gets that right, it's got to be right about its theology. So when the church says that not only do you is it important to study philosophy, not only is it noble, but it's indispensable for the formation of her priests.
00:36:54
Speaker
What does that tell us? It tells us that the guardians at the gate, right, the priests who stand in the gap, are trained philosophers,
00:37:07
Speaker
or they should be.
00:37:10
Speaker
about- They're trained philosophers. On the last episode, we had the rector of St. Pius X Seminary, Father Jeff Dolan, and he talked about- He just came back from Angelicum, I believe, right? Yeah, yeah, he was studying.
00:37:22
Speaker
over there and he he said that philosophy is the handmaiden of theology and and ah this is what we talked a pretty good chunk of the episode about why it's important for seminarians to not only learn how to say mass and exercise and stuff, but also learn philosophy. So you need to have an intellectual life.
00:37:42
Speaker
here Right now, say that help your soul. It does. So when i um became Catholic, I really struggled with, should I stay a philosopher?
00:37:58
Speaker
Because we had family at the time, we had four kids, still have four kids. And we were pretty much stuck in Iowa. Stuck in a sense that we were, we had roots. And so I was going to leave academia and find a job in Cedar Rapids because we needed, I needed a job. And so I was downtown looking at jobs.
00:38:20
Speaker
And I ran into a friend of mine who worked at Xavier High School. She said, Xavier's hiring a for a theology instructor.
00:38:29
Speaker
And I said, well they're not going hire me. There's just no way I'm going to give my CV. This person's too much of an academic nerd, right? He's going to be too abstract. He can't relate to the students. And I don't know what happened in the interview, but it must've gone fairly well because Tom Keating called me and offered me the job.
00:38:47
Speaker
And I told Holly, do I take the job? She said, yes. I couldn't even get the question out. Yes, take that job. i said, why is that, honey? She said, two reasons. It's almost like she's a philosopher. Two, do you have any job now? Like, no.
00:38:59
Speaker
Okay. So in second, she said, that's going to lead somewhere.
00:39:04
Speaker
And being at the high school, it wasn't three weeks in the high school and all the kids already wanted philosophy. They already wanted philosophy. I kind of wish that the i kind of wish sometimes administrations knew that.
00:39:17
Speaker
how much the students love to philosophize, love reading Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Augustine, right? These are the some of the greatest minds ever. And in my second year, this is a real shot in the arm. They have a baccalaureate speaker and the senior class picks their speaker.
00:39:40
Speaker
Okay. So I didn't think anything of it. I'm sitting in my office and priest comes in, Father Wu comes in. He says, do you have a minute? I'm like, Hey, who did I offend? but I probably gave some argument and made somebody upset. Philosophers tend to do that.
00:39:53
Speaker
And he said, you've been um asked to be the baccalaureate speaker. And my jaw just hit the ground. Like they want the philosopher? And so he said, apparently.
00:40:07
Speaker
and that was during my prep time. Okay. So um I said, I'll think about it. The next class came in, and so it was the seniors. I said, is this true? They said, yes, we want we we want philosophy in our baccalaureate. We want to hear arguments.
00:40:19
Speaker
And so, okay, so then when the speech came, I walked up there, and I started giving arguments against skepticism. They just they lost it. They loved it. They said, see, Mom, this is what we've been studying.
00:40:31
Speaker
Well, it wasn't hard to make the case because um the church advocates for it. So once people start and they see it, they start loving it. Okay.
00:40:42
Speaker
So I'm teaching at, um, philosophy at Xavier, then move forward. I get the job at a divine word and I'm teaching peep students from all over the world.
00:40:53
Speaker
And I keep getting emails from folks saying, do you have, do you have a podcast? Like what's, this is years ago. I don't know. What's, what's a podcast.
00:41:05
Speaker
don't know what that was. It's probably probably nine, 10 years ago. Like, no. Why would I want to do that? I'll i'll just go home and read books. So anything you think of it, another email, do you have, do you have any videos? Like, no, I don't have any videos.
00:41:23
Speaker
And I, and I finally said, why do you guys keep asking me this? They said, well, because you teach us one class, we get really excited. And what else are we supposed to do? like oh, so you want to keep going with this?
00:41:35
Speaker
They said, yes. Okay. Well, I'll think about it. You know, if that sounds interesting and maybe, cause I don't, As my spiritual director always says, you know be careful who's telling you, you should do some something.
00:41:46
Speaker
That's very wise. Yeah. Very wise. So three years ago, a friend of mine in North Carolina, former student of mine at SES, he said, I'm going to create a website for you and you're going to make those classes.
00:42:02
Speaker
You're going to create these classes. Like what class he said, I have, it's at this point, it'd been like eight years since I had him as a student. He said, that was great. I'd be in those classes. We're studying metaphysics, philosophy of God, the Trinity and all these wonderful things.
00:42:17
Speaker
And then I graduated. And now what? This is not the community college. So I really been thinking about, i said, wait, so you're trying to tell me you can't get this anywhere.
00:42:29
Speaker
He said, no. And so I started thinking about just what's happening in academia.
ReadThomist: Online Philosophy Education
00:42:36
Speaker
philosophers tend to be lost in their own thoughts. And so i I said, I've been just in my own head for a long time teaching my class of what's going on in education. Come to find out many so colleges, Catholic colleges, unfortunately, they are reducing the number of philosophy classes required.
00:42:53
Speaker
um You can go to a Catholic college, go through the entire program, not take logic. Can you believe that?
00:43:00
Speaker
Maybe an intro class. So here's the church saying that The church believes that a solid education and formation in good philosophy is necessary to find the truth.
00:43:14
Speaker
Faith and reason are both necessary for finding the truth, that that you need philosophy to understand the mysteries of revelation. You need philosophy to understand how to evangelize the world.
00:43:29
Speaker
It's also evident that people have a minimal opportunity to do that.
00:43:36
Speaker
Where can you go? i thought, okay, now there's a need.
00:43:42
Speaker
So maybe I'll do that. So then two years ago, we started ReadThomist, which is the the the website, which is the ministry, the online project, like to I like to say.
00:43:54
Speaker
so over the last few years, then students have been coming up and asking, so i'll teach like, I'll be teaching the diaconate. The diaconate was a big changer for me because Here you have, here I am teaching. You have to have philosophy.
00:44:09
Speaker
You've got to have theology and they have one day on it.
00:44:14
Speaker
So oftentimes they'd say, you know, we we love this, but we want to learn more. Where can we learn it? I said, we could come to divine word, do that.
00:44:26
Speaker
course that didn't work.
00:44:29
Speaker
So finally i said, I need to do something about this. And that was just at the same time that Matt Graham told me that he's going to create the website for me. And I can't, I have no idea how this is going to go because I'm a teacher. I cannot do, and maybe this is a bad thing. I can't just do popular level stuff.
00:44:49
Speaker
Thomas Aquinas ruins you.
00:44:53
Speaker
so but but I, but I want to make it super deep, but I really want to teach people. If we're going to do philosophy, we're going to do philosophy. Philosophy is for serious people. And philosophy is so counter-cultural right now.
00:45:08
Speaker
Right, as G.K. Testerton said, right, the the the saint for the time is the one who contradicts the time the most.
00:45:19
Speaker
Well, our time is is is characterized by irrationality and anti-intellectual. So who's the saint for the time? The most intellectual. the the the The heaviest philosopher. So I decided that we'll make this philosophy channel Thomistic.
00:45:38
Speaker
We're going to make it Thomistic. Why Thomas? Why Thomas? Well, because Thomas provides insight into the truth.
00:45:49
Speaker
He is one of the greatest philosophers of all time, whether you're Catholic or not. He's a genius. He's prolific. um he's original, of the most original, he's most systematic, he's comprehensive, his method is wonderful, his dialectical method where he raises objections and then responds with his own reply and then responds to the objections.
00:46:19
Speaker
His arguments for God are still valid and sound. His insight into the nature of the virtue, supernatural, grace, um nature, ah his doctrines of the Trinity, his conceptions of love. It's just amazing, original, deep.
00:46:34
Speaker
um His answer to pantheism, his doctrine of analogy, his metaphysics. um Non-Catholics love him. and So he's insightful. He's comprehensive.
00:46:48
Speaker
He's biblical.
00:46:51
Speaker
He's devout.
00:46:56
Speaker
He's, he, as big as his brain is, his heart is bigger. He really loves God. god And you know what? He is successful.
00:47:09
Speaker
You can actually find truth with him. So we named it the Read Thomist Philosophy website.
00:47:19
Speaker
Okay. I'm thinking, is this going to go anywhere? So we start off Introduction Philosophy. We got a good number of students. So I just decided this year we would just build the channel.
00:47:32
Speaker
That's all we're going to We're going to create content. And so I thought I'm going to teach stuff that I love. i want to teach topics that you can't find anywhere else. I just don't want to be, i don't want to be an online blogger. I don't want to be a pop person. I don't want to be someone who just has comments and everything in the media.
00:47:55
Speaker
I wanted this to be a way to actually learn philosophy and theology. And so I thought, what do I do? That's what do I do? Well, not a whole lot, but I think I do an okay job of teaching.
00:48:10
Speaker
So what does that mean? Well, I'm going to try to reproduce for folks what they would get if I was their professor live. So I record an hour to two hour of lectures for every week.
00:48:24
Speaker
And so you can just watch me lecture on the analogy of being, on Plato's theory of forms, Descartes' mind-body problem, the skepticism of David Hume, um the divine processions in um the
Teaching Philosophy Online
00:48:41
Speaker
Trinity, um the problem of the one of the many in metaphysics, how God can be simple and timeless, and all of these things.
00:48:50
Speaker
So I do that, and then After students, will after participants watch it, then what can we do? We'll do a Zoom class. And so I set up the Zoom. And so that's where the live action is. And so they have watched the the prerecorded lecture.
00:49:08
Speaker
And then they get to talk to me face to face for two hours.
00:49:16
Speaker
And it's, I can't be but it's growing. Now it's slow and steady because I don't mean, I'm i don't i'm never going to give up my teaching job. What I have seen so often is that when folks do well online, they quit their teaching jobs over and over. And I see it affect their teaching. You've got to have your foot in the classroom.
00:49:39
Speaker
So the classes we have now, we just got done with our first year and I went online looking is anyone else doing something like this? And I can't find it. When there are classes, um,
00:49:55
Speaker
You can go to a popular website and they'll have, you know, I couldn't believe this. I saw one website. It's called like a Thomistic, not the Thomistic Institute of Dominican States, but it's a kind of a Catholic um claiming to be Thomistic. And they're talking about God's eternity.
00:50:12
Speaker
The lecture was 20 minutes.
00:50:15
Speaker
That's not even a warm up. You can't even define your terms yet. Yeah. so this is So this is a serious thing. And so I looked all over and no one's doing this. And um and I come to find out why. It's a lot of work.
00:50:31
Speaker
Because not only are there classes, I give probably 10 pages of a handout just for the the recorded lecture. it's a ten And there's several handouts. And then I give you another handout for the Zoom meeting.
00:50:46
Speaker
So there's all is there's all these notes and handouts and charts um because I'm i'm insane. yeah why because of what philosophy has done for me how it has saved me what has done in other people's lives I so I want I want people to actually learn what the church is teaching when the church says that philosophy is indispensable when it says that philosophy is noble when philosophy is one of the two wings that we read we we uh flied for the contemplation of truth
00:51:22
Speaker
It's not, it doesn't mean a 20 minute discussion in eternity. It's talking about get, roll up your sleeves and it's time to get to work. And we're going to dive into speculative, theoretical, abstract thinking. That's what the church is saying.
00:51:39
Speaker
That's what the church advocates. And so that's what we're going to do. And that's what we've been doing. So we've got the introduction of philosophies on there. We have a class on metaphysics. We have a class on philosophy of God.
00:51:52
Speaker
I just finished the Trinity. We have angels next. Angels is next. We have a class of moral theology. And then we're going to finish off the year with Christology, Thomas's Christology.
00:52:05
Speaker
Next year, it's going to be David Hume and Kant. We're going to look at um um natural theology, arguments and proofs for the existence and nature of God. We're going to do um human nature.
00:52:19
Speaker
and we're going to do epistemology.
00:52:23
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:52:26
Speaker
Yeah. So we're crazy. Yeah. Roll up your sleeves, kids. Roll up your sleeves, kids. It's time to get to work, but you're not alone. Yeah. Because oftentimes when people try to do philosophy on their own, they either, on the one hand, they start to learn things. They've got no one to talk to.
00:52:47
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Yeah. No one to talk to. No place to really bounce ideas. yeah You want to say something? but i want to make a connection. um This is because I've got um Clark's I've had ah ah the Summa.
00:53:03
Speaker
First of all, the Summa Theologiae is Thomas's greatest work. And I've got like Clark's one in the many on my shelf. And I remember learning some of that stuff. And and when I try to read those on my own, I'm like, OK, this is this is great. um I can only go so far, I feel, right until I really ask the Holy Spirit, the intercession of the saints and other humans in the same way that when you were just reading the Bible on your own um in your room.
00:53:32
Speaker
alone, it wasn't until you found community as well that that really made everything click. And yeah, and and we've there are friendships being formed in these classes.
00:53:45
Speaker
h There's no doubt about that. um I want to say something about the study on your own. So
00:53:58
Speaker
Just it was yesterday. i was having a pretty rough day. I thought, does does anybody care about this? You know, I have my moments where it is. Everyone just one thing so quick. Is this even worth it? I get a long email for someone who's thanking me because of the classes. He said, this is exactly what I've been looking for. I'm like, OK, that was really a shot in the arm.
00:54:19
Speaker
And a former student of mine came in um into my office. He said to get some knowledge is what he said. I'm here to get some knowledge. I was cute. um He said, I am, I graduated two years ago.
00:54:32
Speaker
He said, Dr. Reed, I'm dying. You're what said. I'm dying. I got, I want to, I studied philosophy. I'm starting to lose it. Right. i'm I'm starting to forget.
00:54:45
Speaker
Help me. What can I do? And so I showed him Reed Thomas. He said, you actually have classes. i mean, I can go in and I said, yes, you can go. You can have access to these sign up.
00:54:57
Speaker
And he said, thank you. So for me, it's much more like i am like I have received much. I have been educated by some fantastic teachers.
00:55:13
Speaker
It's just now time for me to pass that on.
00:55:18
Speaker
That's what I'm thinking. Yeah. So, ah so there's re-tomism. And it's Hebesus and Thomas Aquinas. We also have a radio broadcast. So we have, there's a Reed Thomas YouTube channel.
00:55:33
Speaker
And I have been asked to do some radio shows through KMMK, I think it is, in Cedar Rapids, the Mays radio station out Cedar Rapids. Yeah, Tony and Sue May, yeah. Yep.
00:55:46
Speaker
And so one I just got done recording episode 12 where I go over syllogism. So here's a radio show where like I'm covering syllogisms and how that happened. So I'm making the case in the first three three episodes that what I'm saying to you, you've you've got to know philosophy. Like what's wrong with you people, right? We got to know philosophy. We need to be serious thinkers. We need to be serious people.
00:56:09
Speaker
That's what the church needs, the serious thinkers. And then I relayed a story. This is, it had been a few weeks before this episode. So i was at a local college and I'm checking out Augusta on the Trinity, some light reading. Okay.
00:56:26
Speaker
And I don't know how we're walking, um'm I'm checking out the book. And again, I don't teach at the school and the young man working behind the counter, he said, oh, the Trinity, were are you working on? I said, well, there's a ah logical objection to the Trinity. I'm going to read Augustine, how he solves that.
00:56:41
Speaker
He said, logic, what's that? I said, oh, well, logic is the study or the science of arguments.
00:56:53
Speaker
And you could just see his, i mean, life was starting to come into his eyes. He said, so there you can study arguments. Oh yeah, there's a valid arguments. There's an objective science to inference.
00:57:04
Speaker
um how you um How you reason to conclusions. You study the mistakes that you can make. You learn the basics of reasoning.
00:57:15
Speaker
And so you learn to think for yourself. But I said to this young man, thinking for yourself doesn't mean you're thinking what you want to think. Yeah. Logic makes you think things and helps you to find the truth, whether you like it or not.
00:57:30
Speaker
That's an educated person believes something because they must not because they want to. And logic does that because logic takes out all prejudice, all bias, all superstition, because either the premises are true or they're not. And they and entail their conclusion or they don't.
00:57:50
Speaker
It cuts through all the noise. then he said to me something that just really made me sad. He said, oh, where can I study that? ah So I'm sure they've got something here at the university.
00:58:03
Speaker
No, they don't. And so I'm talking about this at the radio show. So here I'm making my own argument. Here's my argument. If someone, if we really are educating people, if we're really educating them, then aren't we teaching them the basics of reasoning?
00:58:21
Speaker
but we're not teaching the basics of reasoning,
00:58:27
Speaker
then who are we educating?
00:58:30
Speaker
If you don't know how to draw a conclusion from a premise, how in the world can you be educated? And as these words are coming out of my mouth, I said, oh, there's my next radio show.
00:58:42
Speaker
So I said, I guess I'm going to be talking about that. Ready, folks, youre're you're going to learn some logic on a radio program.
00:58:51
Speaker
So I just finished up that. And and some of the things we're talking about earlier about Jesus making arguments, we go through that.
00:59:00
Speaker
Logic preaches, philosophy preaches. So we're doing that. And then over Christmas break, I'm going to create Read Rants is the other channel where there's a lot of nonsense out there.
00:59:17
Speaker
And so I get, I'm a choleric. So I get, I get fired up. So we're going to some ranting on some stuff that needs some good ranting. that there's one There's one evangelical scholar right now.
00:59:31
Speaker
Now, this is a laundry list of errors. They teach nominalism, so there are no essences. They teach that Jesus has one will, so he's a monophyllite.
00:59:45
Speaker
He teaches he's a neo-apollinarian, which means Jesus does not have a human soul. and God is tri-personal. There are three individual persons in the Godhead.
01:00:01
Speaker
Wow. Okay, when you said you were going to start ranting, I thought... There's a rant coming right there. Well, I thought you maybe you were just going to go light and like rant about why daylight savings time still is a thing. But no, you're going to rant about the the triune God and how ah yeah Christ was not a monotheolite. Yes, yes.
01:00:19
Speaker
got some good rants. Yeah, um so absolutelys fine. Um, yeah, as this episode is kind of an ad, we're not receiving any money. um I'm currently in on the tail end of the the Trinity class from read Thomas.
01:00:33
Speaker
And that's how I first thought to ask you on. um And I Forgot one thing when I started taking this class that oh yeah i'm a pastor.
01:00:44
Speaker
um It was it was difficult to um ah keep up i've still got a little work to do anyway, my question is if I or another person wanted to learn the just take the intro to philosophy class that already technically occurred, but is that still on the website for anyone to just go watch and take the hand absolutely i've decided.
01:01:06
Speaker
I, um, cause you know, first year's trial and error. Yep. I think I need to make classes more just viewer friendly. So over break, I'm going to create a five week, just logic class.
01:01:20
Speaker
There won't be any zooms. They'll just, you can watch them at your own pace and there'll be homework for you. So that'd be a nice, so that's sort of a, you don't have, so that's just there and you can take that whenever.
01:01:34
Speaker
any classes that have already have already been um had there already been done, right, you have access to those. And the future, I'm going to do less zooms, but longer.
01:01:48
Speaker
So but yeah, and that's the nice thing about the zooms. Everything is recorded. So whether you actually are in the classroom or not, you get to watch the whole thing at your own pace, everything is recorded.
01:02:05
Speaker
And some people like that. They like to come back later and watch the class, like like the class interaction.
01:02:12
Speaker
ah So doing five weeks of Zoom, it's it's a lot. Now it's every other week, um but people are busy. So I think we're going to try for the with the ah the angel class, do three this time.
01:02:26
Speaker
So yeah, you can you can start the intro class today. You can start the metaphysics class today. And if you have suggestions, Like some students, they wanted me to do a Catholic apologetics class.
01:02:37
Speaker
So we'd be doing that in the summer.
01:02:41
Speaker
We may do um like even book studies. Like I'm thinking about doing Dante's Inferno over the summer. So we're just can we're just growing and growing and growing.
01:02:53
Speaker
Does that answer your question? It does. Yes. So if you get started today, yep. To look at any of these classes that you've talked about and the website is readthomas.com and I'll be putting that in the description for you to click and check around there. All the classes are pretty much the same price. Is that correct?
01:03:11
Speaker
Okay. About two, I think it was $250. Something like that. Yeah. And that's just, and you just have it then. Yeah. You just have it. And it's great. I mean, it's grueling graduate level work. So you don't sign up and pay.
01:03:28
Speaker
I'm also creating different levels. so Oh, okay. So the the the logic will be, so that's another thing that I've realized is that students can sign up for something. wait a minute, this is really hard. So there's going to be beginner, moderate, and advanced.
01:03:44
Speaker
The logic is beginner. The intro is beginner. Mm-hmm. Human nature will be a moderate level, right? um Moral philosophy will be moderate.
01:03:57
Speaker
The Trinity is advanced.
01:04:00
Speaker
There's no other way to do the Trinity than advanced. There is no other way. So that's another change that we're making. And if you want to have if you want to get a catalog for all that stuff, you can just email me at reedthomas at gmail.com and I can send you a catalog for what's coming up and the more to course descriptions and things like that.
01:04:20
Speaker
because you're right, it is, I tend to go deep and I i have a hard time not doing that. Don't apologize for that. That's been, okay yeah, when I'm when i'm saying saying Mass, actually, because of the Trinity class, I've been thinking, reading the prayers and the prefaces and different things and thinking, who am I talking to right now?
01:04:40
Speaker
Like, am I addressing the father or the son or, and then seeing the prayers come around together and yeah, it's, it's made everything glow and it's, it's, it's really cool. Well, the other thing too about, cause this is something I've learned about philosophy as well.
01:04:55
Speaker
It's hard. hu So even if you're taking a hard philosophy class, you as the learner, you make it your own, how you want to understand it.
01:05:07
Speaker
Mm-hmm. So when you study safe, and this happens all the time, people will take a deep metaphysics class. And like we have sister Marietta in our class, that divine word, she doesn't have much of a philosophy background, but she just want to take metaphysics.
01:05:21
Speaker
She is just but her life has changed just with talking about how evil isn't a thing.
01:05:29
Speaker
And she's been really moved by metaphysically speaking, there's no such thing as a human best that you don't you you don't have a best. You can't do your best. See, all right. If you have people look that, what can't do my best.
01:05:40
Speaker
You can't do your best. It doesn't exist. If you do your best, you're God.
01:05:49
Speaker
God can be, cant God can do the best. You can't do the best. Why? Because no matter what you do, could it be better?
01:05:57
Speaker
Now, grace changes everything. Grace changes everything, but that's not you anymore. right So just just again, those things she's just sort of yeah, I can't. So she said um just the nature of act and potency. If you take a philosophy class, act and potency.
01:06:17
Speaker
What's act and potency? it explains how things change.
01:06:23
Speaker
So you can't be whatever you want to be. You can only become actual what you have the potential to be. And she said my whole life I've been told I can do whatever I want. And that has not made me happy. She said, I have, God created me to be a certain way and I'm limited.
01:06:43
Speaker
and so I have to deal with the potencies that I have. I said, exactly. I said, I am a C student in art.
01:06:56
Speaker
That's what I am. That's, I had the potency to be a C student in art. Hmm. And why is that a good thing? Because if we give out A's to everybody, what are we telling them?
01:07:09
Speaker
They have the potential and they're actually excellent. It's not excellent. If they told me I got an A in art, I have the false assumption that I'm actually an A student in art. I'm not an actual A student art because I'm not a potential A student.
01:07:24
Speaker
I'm potential C student. And people, if you don't if you want to debate me, I'll show you my art work when I was in school.
01:07:32
Speaker
But here's what's also great. I said, but we were all A students when it comes to love. We're all A students when it comes to faith. yeah So we may not have St. Thomas's mind.
01:07:47
Speaker
We may not have the potential to be him, but we can all be people of love that we all have.
01:07:54
Speaker
And so again, you become the philosopher that you want to be. you become the kind of philosopher that you have the potential to be. And that's a good thing. And so, yeah, the class may be difficult, but everyone should think about the Trinity.
01:08:08
Speaker
Everyone should think about Christology. Everyone should think about angels.
01:08:16
Speaker
And so like this one, this one um he's a businessman. He's in one of the classes. And he says, you're ruining me. like what are you talking about? He said, i I've been thinking about the divine processions all week.
01:08:28
Speaker
is I can't stop thinking about there really is ah procession in God, but there is a word proceeding in God. And it's the same thing as God all week. He's been thinking that.
01:08:41
Speaker
And what I love is when we just rattle off the creed every Sunday, like the sun proceed for me, the same. after It's right. You can never see it the same. What does that mean? Like it all means something and it's, it's all deep, very deep. Yeah.
01:08:55
Speaker
Here's another thing too. Um, it, is god's Is God the Father masculine?
01:09:06
Speaker
I'd say no. No. Is it feminine? No. No.
01:09:15
Speaker
So then what is it? I don't know. I just know that he's called Father because he issues his son. But the scripture does say that the son is in the womb of the father.
01:09:26
Speaker
Somehow that God's fatherhood transcends the masculine feminine. There's a womb, which is feminine in the bosom of the father. that's like These are kind of things you start contemplating, thinking about.
01:09:42
Speaker
He's a father that in ways I don't understand.
01:09:47
Speaker
He is. then And then this leads to Christology, right? start it's that that's what That's what philosophy does. Philosophy helps develop nourish and grow your speculative intellect.
01:10:03
Speaker
Have you ever speculated on what it means for a divine person to have human flesh? who's who's who's Whose body is that?
01:10:18
Speaker
Whose human body is that?
01:10:21
Speaker
This is God's body.
01:10:25
Speaker
This is God's blood.
01:10:29
Speaker
What happens if you eat a divine being? What happens when you drink his blood?
01:10:37
Speaker
You have life. oh It's not just regular flesh. now it's it is it's not it's It's not less than human flesh.
01:10:49
Speaker
But because it belongs to the second person of the Trinity, Another thing, when when when the second person the Trinity's body walks into the water, does the baptism of water change him?
01:11:03
Speaker
He changes the water.
01:11:07
Speaker
What?
01:11:12
Speaker
When Jesus' human body shows up to a wedding, it's now a sacrament. Because you literally have God walking around in the flesh,
01:11:24
Speaker
yeah And then what happens when you kill him? Uh-oh.
01:11:32
Speaker
Does he have to go into the dead? Yeah, when you die, you go to the dead. Now, what happens when the Son of Man, what happens when God, who is dead, goes to where the dead are?
01:11:45
Speaker
He undoes the whole thing.
01:11:49
Speaker
There's a great prayer. in the Eastern Orthodox Church on on the funeral of Jesus. It's on Sunday mornings. Wow. Where the prayer is is chanted from the from the perspective of hell itself.
01:12:06
Speaker
And hell is lamenting that they that they killed the Lord because they didn't realize that when you kill the Son of God, you've just killed yourself because life is coming in And they can't stop him from coming in because they have to receive the dead. And so he's lamenting.
01:12:29
Speaker
By killing him, we just sealed our own fate because life is now coming into the dead. The one whom you can't kill because he's not going to stay there. and He's bringing people. He's bringing the captives. with that that's It's a great prayer.
01:12:45
Speaker
That's all speculative theology. Now, in order to do that, You've got to do some serious philosophy. It is going to be abstract. It is going to be jargony. but you got it Why? Because it's scientific. So I've kind of given you some of the fun stuff in it, but you've got to do the work.
01:13:01
Speaker
As you would attest to, Father, you've got to do the work.
01:13:08
Speaker
yeah Wow. well do you have any questions or comments or is anything else you
Dr. Reed's Motivation and Reflections
01:13:13
Speaker
want to hear from me? Yeah.
01:13:16
Speaker
Just so to repeat, my students dragged me kicking and screaming. I'm not even on Facebook. I just hate it so much.
01:13:25
Speaker
No, this is this is absolutely wonderful. um So I would encourage our listeners also to, I guess we said we talked about our last episode, talking about the importance of, so this this really builds very well in our last episode where we just talked about seminary formation and how philosophy is an integral part of that.
01:13:44
Speaker
But how much is it going to take this much more deeper? Because all priests love philosophy, right? They love it. They come to love it. Seminarians usually don't, but priests don't. Seminarians don't. remember one time, why don do I have to do this?
01:13:58
Speaker
What's this got to do with me running a parish? like, oh, man. i will say running it It's not about running a I did cringe a little bit when you talked about ah studying Kant and Hume. Because when I first joined seminary, course, I was all eager to learn about God.
01:14:13
Speaker
And then um my first philosophy class as a seminarian was ah modern philosophy. so Oh, boy. Which is like the worst place to start in the cycle of philosophy.
01:14:25
Speaker
So we're just talking about it's like the skepticism. Very depressing. that Yes, it was super depressing, and I'm like, what did I get myself into? But then we cycled around to ancient and medieval, and so I kind of actually ended my my undergrad of seminary with the study of Thomas Aquinas, and and then it's like, oh, so this is where... And you see how how Thomas is even a giant amongst all of them.
01:14:46
Speaker
Oh, yeah, yeah. That's a nice thing, too, about as a Catholic... you go to any university and you go to any philosophy department and you ask them who are, who are the top five philosophers of all time.
01:15:02
Speaker
There isn't a Protestant on that list. There are two Catholics on that list, Augustine and and Aquinas. And then Plato, Socrates and Aristotle.
01:15:13
Speaker
Or Kant. Usually Kant would be on there. Kant's great. Hegel could be on there. um That changes, but there's a book by Robert, ah sorry, um, ah Pelican, what's Pelican's first name? You ever saw Pelican? It's called The Riddle of Roman Catholicism.
01:15:28
Speaker
And he says that lot of people say the Catholic Church has superstition, right? We got our beads and our statues and all of our crossings, but what people might think is superstitious.
01:15:44
Speaker
But said no one in all of the Protestant denominations, no one in all the secular philosophies has anything like Thomism.
01:15:56
Speaker
Thomas is a monster the intellect. And there's nothing because so are there any cart? Let's talk about modern philosophy for a second. Are there any to be a Cartesian is to be a follower of Descartes?
01:16:09
Speaker
Where are the Cartesians?
01:16:14
Speaker
Where are the Contians? Where's Spinoza? Where's Leibniz? We are 700 years after Thomas, and we are filled with Thomists. There are Anglican Thomists.
01:16:26
Speaker
There are Baptist Thomists. There are Eastern Orthodox Thomists. There are atheist Thomists, like Robert Pasno, because there are Catholic Thomists. Because what people don't realize, too, and what this is what you get at re-Thomism, is that there's something called the Thomistic tradition.
01:16:42
Speaker
So not only do you have Thomas writing in the 1200s and 13th centuries, You've got commentaries. You've got Cajetan, Robert Boulard, Jean-Baptiste Jonet.
01:16:54
Speaker
You've got Silvestri Ferrari. You've got these, and John of St. Thomas. um Some of the greatest mystics, they're all Thomists. The Carmelites, they're all Thomists.
01:17:06
Speaker
And so what time where does this all end? At the end of the day, to be Thomistic, to be philosophical, we're goingnna become a mystic. Mm-hmm.
01:17:17
Speaker
um become add there ah because you mentioned earlier about thomas of course his massive intellect we talked about and and you mentioned earlier in the episode about like he wasn't only a giant intellect but he had heart he was like he loved god and so he did love god so maybe you're at the closing i just might uh mention that was one of my favorite stories about thomas st thomas aquinas of course is there's the story of of him laying in prayer or being there in prayer before the blessed sacrament. and And there was the voice ah where God said, you know, what you've written well of me. What would what would you have me give you?
01:17:52
Speaker
And he said, nothing but you, Lord, nothing but you. And there are stories that people would find him just praying. There's a story even, I think, of him like kneeling right before the tabernacle and him just resting his head on the tabernacle. He just so desired to be He just desired the Lord and nothing else. It was the feast day of St. Nicholas in 1273. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
01:18:13
Speaker
who And the person that recalls that for us is Reginald, his assistant. Mm-hmm. You have written relevance, Thomas.
01:18:25
Speaker
but What will you have as your reward? Non tici de nomine. Nothing but you, Lord. Mm-hmm. And God showed him a little bit of heaven, and Father, he never wrote again. Mm-hmm.
01:18:38
Speaker
He said, everything I've written is as straw. Now he didn't say dung. right It is straw compared to what he see, but we love the straw.
01:18:53
Speaker
they do a lot well You can do a lot of work with straw. And then a few months later in March, he passed away, but he never wrote again. So isn't it fitting that the summa is unfinished?
01:19:07
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't finish. That's right.
Conclusion and Acknowledgments
01:19:12
Speaker
So I would like to congratulate you, dr Reid, on, well, first of all, infecting the world with Thomistic thinking and continuing to educate and sharing what you have received so freely.
01:19:24
Speaker
I'd also like to second, I'd like to congratulate you on, um this is now the longest episode in season season one or two. of Dubuque Rizzo Revival, yes. Listeners, if if you're still with us, good for you. You can find a sticker, right? Do you have stickers you can send out?
01:19:41
Speaker
Yes, we can get stickers. We'll have a sticker. We'll have a sticker. We'll have a sticker, yes. um But you can, like I said, in the description, I'll put the website and some some of the book recommendations and just some maybe some of the authors. Yeah, just see just reach out to me at the worst case scenario. Just reach out to me. That's right. Yeah, and he Dr. Reed is is hungry.
01:20:02
Speaker
for your tutel for your studies he wants to give his i want you to i want you to grow yes i love it when students grow and he is right here in our own archdiocese of dubuque which is why we wanted to bring him on like this is not true happening right here in the archdiocese of dubuque so that's true highlighting this season thank you thank you so much um everyone go look up saint thomas aquinas and i will see you in the eucharist
01:20:34
Speaker
Is that it?