https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/12-secunda-secundae/Recent content in 4. Secunda Secundae on The Duane Berquist LecturesHugoenThu, 16 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/12-secunda-secundae/001-prologue-to-the-secunda-secundae-the-seven-virtues-the-eleven/Thu, 21 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/12-secunda-secundae/001-prologue-to-the-secunda-secundae-the-seven-virtues-the-eleven/Berquist introduces the Secunda Secundae by working through its prologue, explaining why Thomas treats virtues, vices, and precepts together and how the three theological and four cardinal virtues correspond to the gifts of the Holy Spirit and opposing vices. He draws on Vatican II’s Dei Verbum, quoting St. John’s first epistle and Augustine’s De Catechizandis Rudibus, to clarify the ordering of faith, hope, and charity. He then turns to Question 1, article 1, on the object of faith as “first truth,” setting Thomas’s treatment against the backdrop of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and the soul’s four faculties—reason, will, and the irascible and concupiscible appetites.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/12-secunda-secundae/002-ii-ii-q-1-articles-1-2-is-the-object-of-faith-the-first-truth/Thu, 21 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/12-secunda-secundae/002-ii-ii-q-1-articles-1-2-is-the-object-of-faith-the-first-truth/Berquist takes up the first two articles of Aquinas’s question on faith. The question: since faith’s object is the “first truth,” how can Christians be said to believe in Christ’s humanity, the sacraments, or events in Scripture, none of which is God himself? He works through Aquinas’s objections and replies to show these are all believed only as referred back to God. He then turns to whether what is believed is something simple (incomplexum) or a stated proposition (enunciabile), pausing along the way over angelic knowledge and what “Word of God” means to clarify the distinction between simple apprehension and complex judgment.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/12-secunda-secundae/003-aquinas-on-faith-part-1-marys-unique-grace-whether-anything/Thu, 28 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/12-secunda-secundae/003-aquinas-on-faith-part-1-marys-unique-grace-whether-anything/Berquist takes up two articles from Aquinas’s treatise on faith: whether anything false can fall under belief, and whether faith concerns things seen. He walks through the objections, sed contra, and responses, distinguishing an article of faith itself from a merely human conjecture about its timing, and showing how faith stands apart from both vision and opinion by way of God’s eternal knowledge. Along the way he digresses on Mary’s “hypostatic order” of grace, citing the Dominican Louis Chardon and his own teachers Charles De Koninck and Maurice Dion, with anecdotes on certitude and first principles.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/12-secunda-secundae/004-aquinas-on-faith-part-2-the-light-of-faith-whether-faith/Thu, 28 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/12-secunda-secundae/004-aquinas-on-faith-part-2-the-light-of-faith-whether-faith/Berquist takes up Aquinas’s question of what exactly faith’s object is. He works through article 4’s distinctions between believing something “in particular” and finding it generally credible, and between believing simply and believing “somewhat,” tying these to how the light of faith differs from the light of glory. Article 5 asks whether matters of faith can also be known by science or opinion; article 6 asks why the articles of faith are distinguished as they are, using the word “article” itself and the example of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection. He draws in moral-virtue analogies, the Transfiguration, and other asides to keep the distinctions tied to how faith is actually lived.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/12-secunda-secundae/005-summa-ii-ii-question-1-articles-7-8-how-the-articles-of-faith/Thu, 05 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/12-secunda-secundae/005-summa-ii-ii-question-1-articles-7-8-how-the-articles-of-faith/Berquist takes up two questions from Aquinas: does the content of faith increase through history, and why do the articles of faith come to fourteen? He works through Aquinas’s distinction between implicit and explicit belief, likening doctrine’s growth to a teacher condescending to a learner’s capacity rather than adding new truths. Along the way he distinguishes agent from material causality and discusses the “fullness of time” surrounding Christ’s coming, drawing on Hebrews, Galatians, Ephesians, and Gregory the Great, with side references to Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Categories and brief remarks on Marian and Josephine devotion.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/12-secunda-secundae/006-summa-ii-ii-question-1-articles-8-10-the-objections-on-the/Thu, 05 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/12-secunda-secundae/006-summa-ii-ii-question-1-articles-8-10-the-objections-on-the/Berquist works through Aquinas’s replies to objections on the unity of God and the Trinity before taking up Question 1, Articles 9 and 10: whether the Creed is fittingly worded and whether it belongs to the pope to draw up a new edition of it. He compares the ordering of divine attributes in the Summa against the Summa Contra Gentiles, distinguishes the Apostles’ Creed from the Nicene “symbol of the fathers,” and considers Athanasius’s role behind the Athanasian Creed. The discussion is conversational, mixing close reading of the text with tangents into Church history and contemporary magisterial teaching.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/12-secunda-secundae/007-distinction-and-order-the-senses-of-before-and-augustines/Thu, 12 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/12-secunda-secundae/007-distinction-and-order-the-senses-of-before-and-augustines/Berquist opens with the logical distinctions between material and formal distinction, and between the senses of “order,” working through Aristotle’s five meanings of “before” in the Categories, ch. 12 — in time, in being, in knowledge, in goodness, and by causality. He shows how these senses bear on the Trinity and on Aquinas’s arguments for God as first being and first cause. The class then turns to Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 2, a. 1, examining Augustine’s definition of believing as “thinking with assent” and distinguishing it from doubt, suspicion, opinion, and simple understanding, to explain how firm adherence joined to ongoing inquiry grounds theology as fides quaerens intellectum.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/12-secunda-secundae/008-believing-god-believing-by-god-believing-in-god-and-why-faith/Thu, 12 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/12-secunda-secundae/008-believing-god-believing-by-god-believing-in-god-and-why-faith/Berquist takes up Article 2’s question of what it means to believe God, to believe by God, and to believe in God, tracing how Aquinas distinguishes the object, the authority, and the end of the act of faith. He moves closely through the Latin text, objections, and replies, pausing over translation problems between Latin and English and drawing on Aristotle’s account of learning and of equivocal terms to sharpen the distinctions. Turning to Article 3, he examines why rational creatures, ordered to an end exceeding natural reason, require supernatural instruction from God to attain it. Brief anecdotes—John Paul II in Poland, Cardinal O’Connor—illustrate the stakes, and the class breaks off partway through Article 3’s replies.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/12-secunda-secundae/009-washingtons-virtues-believing-god-about-god-and-why-truths/Thu, 09 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/12-secunda-secundae/009-washingtons-virtues-believing-god-about-god-and-why-truths/Before reaching Aquinas, Berquist lingers on George Washington, using tributes from Adams, Jefferson, and Washington Irving to show the cardinal virtues embodied in a life. He then takes up Article 4 of question two: is it fitting for man to believe things demonstrable by natural reason? Working through Thomas’s three reasons—speed, universality, and certitude—he ties the answer to divine simplicity and to the structure of the act of faith itself, distinguishing credere Deum, Deo, and in Deum, and touching on how miracles and an infused habit dispose the believer toward assent.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/12-secunda-secundae/010-explicit-and-implicit-faith-the-learned-and-the-simple-and/Thu, 09 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/12-secunda-secundae/010-explicit-and-implicit-faith-the-learned-and-the-simple-and/Berquist takes up three articles of the Summa on the scope of required faith: must everyone believe every article explicitly, does this obligation differ between the learned and the simple, and was explicit belief in the mystery of Christ demanded of people in every historical period? He follows Aquinas’s objections, sed contra, and corpus in each article, drawing on Augustine, Gregory, Dionysius, and scriptural texts from Hebrews, Romans, Job, and John to distinguish core articles everyone must know from secondary matters the unlearned may hold only implicitly, trusting the Church’s fuller understanding.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/12-secunda-secundae/011-explicit-faith-in-the-trinity-the-merit-of-believing-and/Thu, 16 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/12-secunda-secundae/011-explicit-faith-in-the-trinity-the-merit-of-believing-and/Berquist continues his article-by-article reading of the Summa on faith, taking up whether explicit belief in the Trinity is necessary for salvation, whether the act of believing is meritorious, and whether reasoning about what one believes increases or lessens that merit. Working through objections and Thomas’s replies in turn, he digresses into personal recollections of Charles De Koninck and Msgr. Dionne and touches on euthanasia and Protestant belief as test cases for the principles at stake. The class ends just as Thomas opens q.3, a.1, distinguishing confession as an act of faith from confession as an act of penance or thanksgiving.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/12-secunda-secundae/012-confession-of-faith-and-the-definition-of-faith-substance/Thu, 16 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/12-secunda-secundae/012-confession-of-faith-and-the-definition-of-faith-substance/Berquist finishes the objections and replies on whether confession of faith is necessary for salvation, showing how it depends on charity and the circumstances one is in, then turns to Question 4 and Paul’s Hebrews text defining faith as “the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” He treats this not as a formal definition but an implicit one, unpacking how it links faith to hope and grounds the intellect’s assent in divine authority rather than in seen evidence. Along the way he reaches for Aristotelian logic and geometry to pin down words like “substantia” and “argumentum,” mixing in anecdotes and historical asides to make the scholastic vocabulary concrete.