Prima Pars
3. The Necessity of Belief and the Two Roads to God: Vatican I on Revelation
Class of 2005-12-15
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/10-prima-pars/003-the-necessity-of-belief-and-the-two-roads-to-god-vatican/

[0:03] Okay, maybe even in merely human terms, we can talk about the necessity of belief. Augustine has some little treatises on the utility or the usefulness of believing, and Thomas sometimes repeats some of those things that Augustine points out. But one thing that Augustine says is, "Don't you believe that this man, woman are your mother and father? Unless you believe that this man, woman are your mother and father, you're not going to give them the honor due to your father and mother.

[0:37] So if you don't believe, you've got a real problem there. Okay. But is it necessary for the learner to believe? In human terms, huh?

[0:52] I mean, suppose somebody comes to me. Let me give a couple of simple things here. Suppose someone comes to me and he says, "I've heard about this Pythagorean theorem that the angles, I mean, that a right angled triangle, the square on the side opposite the right angle, will always be equal to the squares on the sides containing the right angle. Um, now could you show that to me, Mr.

[1:19] Berquist I say, well, I know a pretty good proof for that, and it's Proposition 47 in Book One of Euclid. But you have to go through 46 theorems before that, and you've got to familiarize yourself with some definitions and some postulates and axioms, right, before we go through these 46. Oh, I don't want to go through all that. That's an awful long way to go. Well, then you're not going to know the Pythagorean theorem.

[1:50] You're not going to learn from me because that's the only way I know to get there. Well, now, yes, you do believe me that that is the road to follow, right, to the Pythagorean theorem. He's not going to plow through 48 theorems unless he believes that that is the road there, right? But will he know that that is the road to Pythagorean theorem until he's gone through the first 46?

[2:16] See. And if you go back to, you know, a homely analogy there, how many times in your life do you ask somebody directions? Now, sometimes they give you the wrong directions and so on, right? But you're believing him, right? That this is, you know, go down two blocks and turn right, and then so on. You're believing him, and that's why you go down there and follow his directions.

[2:44] And if you get to the place you wanted to get to, your belief now gives way to what knowledge, huh? But if you never believed anybody that this was the road to take to this or that place, right, and just tried roads at random until you got to the place you wanted to go to. You wouldn't get that far in this life, would you? But the same way in the life of the mind, Aristotle often calls philosophy a methodos, right?

[3:12] Which means over a road. Philosophy is is a methodos, knowledge over a road, knowledge that follows a road, and you don't know where that road's going until you get to the what? You go down that road, right? And so you're believing the teacher, right? Until you go down the road, but once you go down the road and get to where you want to go, then knowledge replaces what belief.

[3:43] That's one way, right? That belief is necessary just in human teaching. Take another thing. Often there's fundamental things in any part of philosophy or any part of knowledge, really, that illuminate other things, right? And a good teacher will point out these fundamental things and emphasize their importance and so on for you, right?

[4:19] But when you first hear these things, can you see how important they are and how many doors they open up for your mind? No, it's only if you listen to professor and focus upon those fundamental things that he says are very important for the rest of your your study of the subject, right? That you will eventually, through them, come to see other things and realize how important it was and how right it was that he emphasized those things in the beginning, huh?

[4:51] I always told you a little story of me when I was a freshman in college, haven't I? And my brother Richard had, and when I knew I was interested in philosophy, he arranged for me to have a a private meeting with Dr. Kasurik right? We thought was the best philosopher around in the college, anyway. And Kasurik, you know, became my kind of mentor, you might say, for my four years at the College of Saint Thomas.

[5:23] But anyway, when I was a freshman, I come with my list of courses I'm taking and so on, and Kasurik looked at me and says, "Duane, where's your Greek? " Now I'm not very good at learning foreign languages, and he says, "Where's your Greek, Duane? " I said, "My Greek. " Yeah, he says, "Why aren't you taking Greek? " I said, "Well, other things I'd rather take.

[5:48] " He says, "That's not a reason. " Other things you'd rather take that's not a reason. You're going to study philosophy, you take Greek. So he twisted my arm and had enough docility that I took the Greek, huh? And this opened all kinds of doors to me, right? Now I realized how important was not that I'm any great master Greek, right? But in reading Aristotle and reading Plato without that Greek that he insisted I get, I wouldn't have got anywhere.

[6:18] And opened all kinds of doors, even to reading the sacred scripture in Greek, huh? The New Testament, at least, huh? But I didn't realize when he first what said this how important it would be. But now looking back, I realize I'm very thankful to him, right? Left to my own scrubby aptitude, I wouldn't know any Greek today at all, right? You see, I wouldn't even be able to look up a word dictionary, let alone read some Plato or Aristotle in Greek, huh?

[6:52] Do you see? So when somebody emphasizes something fundamental, and you start to focus on that and make it a part of your thinking, and then you start to see other things through it and from it and by it, then you realize, hey, this is good that he insisted upon this. But you had to believe him; that was important.

[7:20] You see that? Now those are kind of more obvious examples of how you depend upon even a human teacher in human sciences. The third thing that you find out when I read Aristotle, I read Thomas, something like that was way above my mind. I don't understand everything I read, at least at first. I don't understand everything I read. I've learned, you know, to say, "Well, I'm going to understand some things, but not everything."

[7:58] The first time I read them, and then the second time I read them, I'm going to understand the things I understood the first time I read them even better. And now begin to see some of the things I hadn't understood at first, right?

[8:11] So as I read these things again and again, I start to understand them better and better, right? But how do you know it's going to be true? Experience. But it requires a certain amount of belief, right? There's some things you don't understand at all, or don't understand well, unless you continue to what think about them, right?

[8:38] And the more you think about them, if you have a good enough mind, you'll start to understand them, and then you will realize, right, how good it was that you persisted thinking about them. You see that? I make a little comparison here to music. There, my brother Mark and Richard there, they insisted upon only good music in the house. But I remember in particular the time when they brought home the the magic flute of Mozart, right?

[9:11] This song to listen to, right? So I listened to the whole Magic Flute, and I don't think I really heard anything, you know. But the more I listened to Mozart, the more I what heard, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the more I recognized his excellence, huh? And you know, I tend to agree with what Wagner says. You know, Mozart is above all the masters in all the arts.

[9:40] He says, and in all the ages, it's actually incredible. You see, when I first heard him, I didn't even hear, right? Just like when you first read Aristotle or Thomas, you don't understand anything. But if you continue to listen to Mozart, the more you listen to him, say, "Hey, this is really."Good, right? And sometimes when you're in the automobile or something like that, and and the piece of Mozart comes on, the 102.

[10:08] 5 or something, and driving doesn't use up much mental energy, as you know. You tend to listen to the piece maybe more than you do at the house where you might be reading a book at the same time. Say, oh, this is really good. I didn't realize how good this was, huh? You see? So it's something like that with reading Aristotle or Thomas Aquino. The first time you read it is kind of a what dense forest, huh?

[10:33] But then as you start to read it again and again and think about it, it becomes more and more clear and more and more you see the what profundity of it, huh? Well, what made you persist in thinking about something before till you understood it?

[10:50] I mean, you could think about Hegel or somebody again and again. You never come to understand anything, you know. In fact, Hegel was writing, I guess, you know, in an obscure way, so he'd be admired for his obscurity.

[11:06] But no, unless I was convinced, right, that unless I believe that Mozart was such a great composer, I would not have listened to his music so what carefully, right? And I would not have come to appreciate it and to to really hear it.

[11:23] And the same way, unless I believe that Aristotle or Thomas or something like that was very wise, I would not have thought about what they said again and again until I finally understood it. So these are three ways in which you can say that what even learning from a human teacher, you have to what believe first, huh? Okay.

[11:48] Now, um, the higher the science is, though, the higher the knowledge is. You could say the more necessary is the what belief, Belief, yeah. If you take the extremes here, right? Revealed theology and let's say geometry, huh? Okay. The names are revealing, huh? Geometry and arithmetic are called what mathematics, right? And the word mathematics comes from the word mathesis, huh? Learn. And in a sense, mathematics means the things that can be learned.

[12:34] Now, not the only things that can be learned, right? But the things that are most easily and fully learnable by us, right? So you can say that in some way, mathematics is named from the learner. Okay. Now, like you'll notice, maybe in the Summa summa, Thomas will use the term sacra what doctrina, or the famous work of Augustine, huh? Doctrina Christiana, right? Christian doctrina. Well, sacred doctrine is named from what?

[13:10] The doctor, the teacher. So it's interesting, right? In mathematics, the student is most—even there, he's not self-sufficient, but there he's closest to being self-sufficient, right? Or you could say belief there is is

[13:32] less required, right, or required for a lesser time, anyway, right? Okay. While in sacra doctrina, as the name indicates, sacred teaching, is what it means to speak in English, holy teaching. The emphasis there is named for the teacher because you are most dependent there upon the what? Teacher. Yeah. So you could, you know, make a kind of spectrum there as you go from revealed theology, sacra doctrina, down to mathematics, right?

[14:02] As you go towards mathematics, you are more—you are less dependent upon the teacher to split that way, right? And as you go towards theology, you are more dependent upon the what? Teacher, right? Okay. And the same, and of course, with this goes the idea that belief is required for a longer time and so on, right? And and you go towards sacra doctrina, and less as you go towards geometry, okay?

[14:31] And you can't just lump everything like he does. Just simplicity, you know, that. Okay, let's come back now to the text here in Vatican I. I think we kind of looked at chapter one, right? Okay.

[14:51] Now, as you know, one of the things I've emphasized is the rule of two or three, right? Okay. And to apply it to this treatise, let's, go back to something else. here, huh? we talked about this maybe before. Nothing is more necessary in philosophy than what? You want to complete that? Begin well. Yeah. Hey, how'd you know that? You told us. Yeah.

[15:27] So if you read Plato and Aristotle, they'll always be quoting the Greek proverb: "The beginning is half of all, right? " And Plato, after quoting, he says, or Socrates will say, "I really think it's more than half, right? " Okay. Because everything else depends upon the beginning, right? So if you begin well, you're helped through the whole philosophy. If you begin badly, right, you're going to be harmed through the whole philosophy, huh?

[15:59] And you often use that comparison of the road, right? Where a little mistake in the beginning is a what great one as you go forward, you take the wrong turn as though distance between where you should go and where you shouldn't go. Right? If you go where you shouldn't go, the further you go, the worse off you're going to be. Right? Okay. A little mistake in the beginning is a great one in the end.

[16:25] Now you can say the same thing about what I think theology that nothing is more necessary than to begin well. Now, how would you divide the beginnings?

[16:50] Well, there are some beginnings in the mind or the reason, our knowing powers in general, and some beginnings in the what the will, the will. Okay. So when Plato and Aristotle pointed out that wonder is the beginning of philosophy, right? Wonder is a beginning in the desiring powers. Wonder is his natural desire to know what and why to know the cause.

[17:21] But in reason, you can distinguish two beginnings. Two groups of beginnings. if you want to say that. You can distinguish the beginnings about things and the beginnings about our knowledge of things. Okay.

[17:58] So Heraclitus and Socrates in the Phaedo, Aristotle in the first book of Natural Hearing, they talk about how change is between opposites, right? Okay, that's the beginning about things, right? But even more fundamentally, the axioms are beginnings about things. The whole is more than a what part, right? The same thing cannot both be and not be at the same time in the same way. These are beginnings about what things, right?

[18:28] Okay. But now we've talked before about the roads in our knowledge, right? The natural road in our knowledge, the road from the senses into reason, and the common road of reasoned out knowledge studied in logic, and the private road of each reasoned out knowledge, and so on. Well, those are beginnings of our what knowledge of things, right? Okay, they're beginnings of all our knowledge, right? So that's kind of the fundamental what Distinction, right?

[19:06] Of beginnings. Of philosophy, let's say, or theology, for that matter, in our mind, right? Okay. The beginnings about the things, and the beginnings about the knowledge of the things, huh? Okay. But besides these beginnings of the mind, we can speak of the beginnings in the what the will, all right? Okay. Now, what's the distinction here between the first chapter and chapters two, three, and four

[19:42] in the this treatise? Some way, it would say the. Compare it. Is God is like the thing, and the other is the knowledge about? Yeah, the first chapter, in a way, is a kind of creed you might say, almost right. Maybe a little bit, you know, specialized for certain problems that the contemporaries are having, right? Okay. Earlier, as I mentioned in Vatican I, there is a profession of faith, which is basically the Nicene Constantinople Creed, with a few additions from the Council Trent, you know, spelling out some things about the sacraments and things that sort, right?

[20:37] Okay. But basically, the Apostles' creed. Creed, or the Nicene Constantinople Creed, or the Athanasian Creed, or the Creed of the Fourth Vatican Fourth Lateran Council, and so on, or the Credo of the People of God, there by Paul the Sixth, and so on, right? Those contain beginnings about the things, right? The articles of faith are beginnings about things, huh? And so Saint Thomas says, you know, in the, I guess, in the exposition of the Epistles of Saint Paul, you know, that a man who doesn't know the articles of faith yet, time is going against him.

[21:19] He says, okay. So a man doesn't have the beginnings about things; he doesn't have the creed. He's not ready to begin. I had a colleague years ago, you know, and he would he would say some kind of strange things. Finally, one day, I said to him, "I said, Neil, do you do you accept the Nicene Creed?" I said, and he said, "No." Okay, so okay, that clarifies things.

[21:51] I said. One one time I was at a social function there, and I was introduced to the new man in theology, right? The new new guy coming in, they just been hired, and so I was introduced to him, and I said, "Are you Orthodox?" He says, "What do you mean?"

[22:15] And I said, "Do you accept the Nicene Creed?" I said. He said, "Yes." Okay, I said, "Fine then." Okay, but the Nicene Creed is a what?

[22:27] It contains the beginnings about the things, right? Okay. And sometimes, as we mentioned before, the creed divides it according to the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, right? Sometimes, like I think, in the Athanasian Creed and the Fourth Lateran Council, and so on, it divides it according to the humanity and divinity of Christ, huh? Okay.

[22:53] Thomas does that in the Adoro te devote Devote too, humanity and divinity of Christ, huh? Says on the cross, he says, the divinity was hidden, right? But here, humanity as well is a divinity. But then he says, believing both and confessing both, right? Okay. So those are two ways of doing it. In the first chapter here, it seemed more a division into three. But God in Himself, God as the Creator or Maker, God as the what, End and the Provident One, right?

[23:30] Okay, into those three, right? But how we divide those beginnings about the things, right? This is containing the beginnings about the things. Okay. But now the remaining chapters on revelation and on faith and on you know faith and reason, this is more talking about beginnings about our knowledge of these things, right? Okay. We know these things by revelation, by faith, to some extent. Reason is involved in knowing them too, right?

[24:11] Okay. So in general, the distinction between the first chapter and chapters two, three, and four is the distinction, like we make in philosophy, between the beginnings about the things themselves and about our knowledge of things, huh? Do you see? Okay. Beginning of Euclid's elements, right? You have these definitions and the postulates and the axioms, right? All of those things before theorem one are what beginnings about the things, huh?

[24:49] Okay. Euclid doesn't give us any beginnings about our knowledge of these things, huh? Okay. But Aristotle and Boethius and so on talk about, huh? The way of defining in geometry is opposed the way of defining in natural philosophy, right? You talk about the order in which you consider things, from the simple to the composed, right? The equal before the unequal and so on, huh? Well, those are beginnings about our knowledge of these things, huh?

[25:20] Okay. Are we going to know these things with a great rigor, right? They're learnable, right? Not in the sense that they're the only things learnable, but they're really very learnable by us, right? Okay, very proportioned to us, huh? Okay. Natural philosophy and wisdom are not so learnable, okay? They're much harder to learn, right? Do you see? So there are beginnings which Euclid gives us, right? Beginnings about the things, right?

[25:56] This is what a triangle is, what a circle, is this is, what a point is, right? All right angles are equal, et cetera, et cetera, right? And then Aristotle, many places, gives us the beginnings about the what?

[26:10] Yeah, yeah, yeah. How you define, how you demonstrate, right? Aristotle contrasts, you know, geometry with natural philosophy. In geometry, you go from the cause to the effect. Natural philosophy usually from the effect to the cause. Okay, well, this is the beginning about the way we know. Okay, in natural philosophy, we define with sensible matter and motion, right? In geometry, we define without sensible matter and motion. Okay, this is a beginning about the way we know, right?

[26:48] Do you see the idea? In geometry, you know something is going to be completely universal, and natural philosophy. I have many things that are true for the most part, right? Man is born with two hands, right? Occasionally, a baby is born without a hand or something, right? Or somebody is born with six fingers. They say, "Handful of six fingers." I don't know what he had. What he saw in there, I don't know, but it turned me off.

[27:21] I think It's physically, kind of funny, you know. what I mean? So there are exceptions, right? But that's a beginning about the what knowledge, huh? Okay, so you see the distinction here. Then, the first reading, I mean, the first chapter rather, is contains beginnings about the things. But chapters two, three, and four are beginnings about the the knowledge, right? It reminded a little bit of Aristotle's proemium too, to the Nicomachean Ethics, right, where he talks about the way of proceeding in ethics.

[28:15] And how the teacher ought to what he ought to do, right? And then corresponding to that, how the student ought to receive what the teacher has to say. Well, that in a way corresponds to chapters two and three, right? Because revelation is on the part of the what teachers, God, who ultimately reveals these things, right? But faith is on our side, huh? The way we ought to receive these things, huh?

[28:41] Okay. But since faith is what in reason, right? We have to talk about the connection, right, between faith and reason, which will be the fourth chapter, right? Okay. So though we have four chapters, we divide the first chapter against the last. chapter. Three right, following the rule of two or three right. I told you how important that rule is, but it's you have to follow that rule to understand most things.

[29:18] Any time you, almost any time, right? You divide into more than three. To really understand that distinction into more than three, you have to what distinguish it into two or three, and then subdivide one of those into two or three, or else crisscross. Sometimes they say a division into two or three by another division into two or three. Okay.

[29:45] Okay. You need to go through all these examples that we give of those things, but I know two famous distinctions into ten, the ten categories of Aristotle, right, and the Ten Commandments, right. When you try to understand a division to ten. You have to divide into two or three. In the Ten Commandments, we divide them into three and seven, right? So you see the tablets of the three and the seven, right?

[30:11] Okay. But when you subdivide those seven, you divide into two or three too. Ah, the ten categories of Aristotle, right? We divide them sometimes into two: substance and nine genera accidents. Or Thomas usually divides it into what three? And he subdivides one, three, six. He subdivides the six one and five, the five two and three, right? He's always dividing into two or three until he gets his what ten.

[30:45] Okay. Same if you take take the seven parts of philosophy. Nobody can understand division to seven. Okay. But basically, there is what looking philosophy, practical philosophy, which are the two chief kinds of philosophy, and then the two of logic. And practical philosophy is subdivided into ethics, domestics, politics. Looking philosophy, as we saw in the sixth book of wisdom, into natural philosophy, mathematics, wisdom, right? So you divide into three, and two of them are subdivided into what?

[31:29] Three. Yeah. Yeah. That's when we can understand these things by dividing into two or three, right? Now another famous division to seven is the seven sacraments, right? Well, I can't understand that by one division, right? So you divide what five of them against two of them, right? There is five of them ordered to the good of the individual, right? And matrimony and orders are ordered to the good of others, in a way, the good of the multitude, huh?

[32:01] So that's a division into two, right? Then you divide the five into the three that go together: baptism, confirmation, eucharist, right? Then the two repairing ones, confession or penance, what I call it, and the last anointing, yeah. You see, so you are always dividing into two or three, right? When Aristotle is dealing with the the categories and he is talking about quality, I forget exactly what the four types of quality are, but he makes a division into four.

[32:38] Is there is that an exception, or is there is that into? Yeah, I could say it's an exception. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why I say it's the rule for the most part. Yeah, so you know. Okay. Although, when he gets to the fifth book of wisdom, you'll see that he kind of withdraws power from that, right? Yeah. Okay, but it's different thing. But as I say, this is a good rule, right?

[33:04] Okay. So there is a real distinction here between what he's doing in the first chapter, then, or what the Vatican one is doing in the first chapter, and what's doing in chapters two, three, and four, isn't it? Okay.

[33:23] See, let's look here down the chapter revelation. What does the word revelation mean? What's what would be the Latin for that? Well, I mean, it's got a more concrete origin. The word though. The veil, unveil. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a veil or curtain between us, right? Okay. And the curtain is being pulled back to some extent, right? But notice this revelation here is not a complete revelation because we don't fully see what is being revealed here yet, huh?

[34:04] And what is revealed here will not be fully revealed until we see God as He is face to face, okay? So you could distinguish the revelation that is being spoken of here that corresponds to faith, right? From the revelation that will result when we see God as He is face to face, huh? So when Thomas at the end says the adoro te devote, right, use the word what?

[34:36] Jesu quem velatum nunc aspicio, right? Well, he's veiled, huh? In the sense he doesn't see God as He is face to face yet, right? And so that's going to be drawn back, and then you'll see God as He is face to face. But there won't be another faith corresponding to that revelation. Faith will be succeeded by seeing God as He is face to face, huh? And that won't be belief anymore.

[35:05] Okay. So it's interesting that the word revelation has, in a sense, two meanings, right? And corresponding to one of them on our side is faith, and on the other side is what? Yeah. Yeah, the beatific vision, huh? Seeing God as He is, you see John's word, or like Saint Paul says, seeing Him face to face, huh? Um.

[35:36] When you get later on to the definition of faith, you know, and the substance of things hoped for, right? Kind of foundation of the things you're going to what see, huh? Because you're believing what you're going to see later on. It's interesting thing in the life of Saint Teresa of Avila, right? She appeared to one of her nuns after her death, right? And she says, you know, we're not.

[36:04] Two different situations, she said. You and I, huh? Because we're both what praising God, right? Huh? But I'm praising God face to face, right? Seeing Him as He is, and you're praising God kind of behind the veil. It's kind of interesting, you know, like in the continuity between the the contemplative life, right, and the the next life, huh? When our Lord says to to Martha, you know, that Mary hath chosen the better part, right?

[36:33] I mean, the contemplative part as opposed to the practical one, and it shall not be taken away from her. What Thomas says, he says that second thing because the practical life comes to an end with this life, but contemplative life continues the next life, but it's more perfect, right? Yeah, but in a way, there's a continuity there that when Teresa of Avila says to us, "We're not right, " in a way, you know, we're doing the same thing you and I.

[36:58] We're we're both praising God, but the difference is I'm praising Him face to face, praising Him behind a veil, isn't it? Okay. So notice there's two senses of revelation, and but not two faiths corresponding to them, right? Okay, that's interesting.

[37:23] So he begins here in the first part on revelation. Here, the distinction of two roads leading to a knowledge of God, and this is a distinction that Thomas makes at the beginning of the Summa Contra Gentiles. And one you might call the road of the natural light of human reason,

[37:49] and first you have now, as I mentioned before, now the the bold print there is is the text, and the other is my division, right? That's not in the text, right? So don't give it the authority that has, right? Okay. I'm trying to to do like Thomas does to lay out what the council is doing, right? So first describes the road of the natural life in reason, and first there's a description of this road by the council, and then followed by the biblical statement of the same road, huh?

[38:24] The same Holy Mother Church holds and teaches, huh? That God, the source and end of all things. Notice that's looking back now to what we saw in the first chapter, right? The first chapter divided the beginnings about the things, right, into God in Himself mainly, right? God is the source or beginning of things, and God is the what end of all things, huh? It's exactly what Thomas does in the first three books of Summa Contra Gentiles God Himself, God is the Creator, God is the end and the and providence for the end.

[39:07] Right. Now the same Holy Mother Church holds and teaches that God, the source and end of all things, the Alpha and the Omega, as He says in the Apocalypse, the first and the last, the beginning and the end, can be known with certainty. Can be known with certainty.

[39:34] Okay, that's very strong, right? From the consideration of created things, by the natural power of what human reason? So reasoning from His effects, right? Reasoning from created things, we could know with certitude,

[39:57] God, the source and end of all things, right? So Thomas in the second question, of the Summa would do that, right? Okay. Now you'll notice when you get to Thomas there in the second question, I think there are three articles, and one article says is about those who say what the existence of God is obvious, right? And Thomas rejects that, huh? And then there are others who say it's not obvious, but you can't prove it either, and he rejects that, right?

[40:30] And then the truth is in between those two extremes, huh? And that's exactly what the Church is teaching right here. The truth is in between two extremes. All my reports go with the modest truth, nor more nor clipped, but so Shakespeare says, huh? Okay. They say more or less than the truth. They are villains and the sons of darkness, as Falstaff says. Okay.

[41:01] So to say that the existence of God is obvious, right? is saying more than the truth, huh? In saying that it's not obvious, but you can't even demonstrate it, is saying less than the truth, huh? Now you have a lot of people running around the Catholic colleges nowadays who say you can't prove it, right? Now that doesn't mean it's easy to prove it, right? Or that most people will be able to understand the proofs, huh?

[41:30] When I was in graduate school there, De Koninck gave a course for the last year students one time on the five ways, right? That Thomas has, huh? Which are not original with Thomas. I go back to other authors, and each of us had to work on one of the five ways, huh? And you could, for your paper, either take a modern philosopher discussing that proof, right? Or you could take a modern Thomist discussing one of those proofs, right?

[42:01] And everybody to examine had failed to understand the proof he was discussing. I think I mentioned how I did mine on Descartes because I was writing my doctoral thesis on a comparison of Aristotle and Descartes, so I was kind of familiar with Descartes, right? And Descartes, if I remember rightly now, had misunderstood the major premise and the minor premise of the argument he was discussing.

[42:24] So De Koninck you know, said, "I think it was giving us a little lesson as to the difficulty of the proofs, huh?" And De Koninck said, "Now I think I can demonstrate the existence of God, but I would not be so presumptuous as to say so." And he says, you know, I believe there's a God more from what my mother taught me than from his understanding of the proofs, but he's kind of trying to emphasize upon us or impress upon us the difficulty of these proofs, you know.

[42:54] I mean, sometimes you get this naivete in Catholic colleges. Sometimes you know, you get a freshman, you give them the proofs, and I can go out and convince the whole world, right? And he doesn't really understand the proofs yet, and but despite all it's difficult to understand the proofs. You got to be clear that what the church is maintaining now, and this is an article of faith now, that you can prove the existence of God with certitude from created things.

[43:22] And some people in Catholic colleges nowadays more opposite the other extreme. error, right, that you can't, right? Okay, or it hasn't been done. Okay.

[43:37] Then the council follows this teaching with a biblical statement of the same road from the epistle of Saint Paul to the Romans. This is the famous text, chapter one, verse twenty.

[43:52] Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible nature has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So Saint Paul is teaching there already. The church is teaching here. And now the second road is the road of what revelation.

[44:25] And first of all, there is a description of this road by the council, and then is followed again by a biblical statement of the same road.

[44:35] It was, however, pleasing to his wisdom and goodness. Now we'll see some of that wisdom in part two, and get the reasons for the two roads, Okay. But his goodness, huh? In taking account of our weakness and so on,

[45:03] it was, however, pleasing to his wisdom and goodness to reveal himself and the eternal laws of his will to the human race by another and that a what supernatural way, right? When super means what? Above, huh? Okay.

[45:26] Then you have the biblical statement of the same road. This is how the apostle puts it. I notice how they call Saint Paul there the what? Apostle. Yeah. Now I guess if you go through the New Testament carefully, you'll see that Peter and Paul are called apostles, and the others not. You see when they when they write their letters and so on. And Thomas will say they are the apostles by Antonomasia, that figure of speech we spoke about before.

[45:58] And I notice how how John Paul II often called them the princes, Principes of the apostles. Okay, and you know the famous feast there we have in summer there, right? Feast of Peter and Paul, right?

[46:15] So he's called the apostle. Thomas will often refer to him as the apostle, just like he refers to Aristotle as the philosopher. This is how the apostle puts it: in many and various ways, God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, he's spoken to us by his son, right, or by his son. huh? Okay.

[46:45] The epistle of Hebrews is about the son, Christ, on the origin of grace. So you have these two roads, right? Okay, now the two reasons why revelation is necessary and their difference. This is the second part of this.

[47:13] Now Thomas himself will talk about how the supernatural road is necessary, even for those things that our reason can know by itself, right? By its natural powers, and following this, the council teaches the same thing here. It is indeed thanks to this divine revelation that those matters concerning God which are not of themselves beyond the scope of human reason can even in the present state of the human race be known by everyone without difficulty, with firm certitude, and with no intermingling of error, right?

[47:57] Okay. So, as Thomas will explain this a little more at length, if we only had this natural road, first of all, there'd be very few men who would what follow that road down to knowing that God exists. Some men would be excluded just because they're not intelligent enough to follow this road. But even those who are intelligent enough, for the most part, are taken up with other things, right?

[48:34] The necessities of life, huh? So they don't have the time to do it, right? And even those who might have the ability and the time, well, let's go through all this, so very few, right? Men would ever come to know these things, and even those few who could. Would take most of their life before they arrived at the goal, and yet a man has to know about these things to direct his whole life.

[49:06] So you can see the need, right, for this. Now, the second part of this part two here is why this revelation is necessary, absolutely, right? Okay. Now,

[49:29] Aristotle in the chapter in the fifth book of wisdom, in the chapter on necessary, he distinguishes four different meanings of the word necessary. Okay,

[49:52] and they're connected with different kinds of cause, right? And two of them are connected with the cause called the end. Okay. One of them is connected with the cause called the mover, and one is connected with the intrinsic causes, huh? Okay. So if I say, for example, that two,

[50:26] it's necessary that two be what half of four, right? Okay. Well, that's due to what two is, right? Contingently. Okay. Um. When the tsunami came, or when the the Katrina came and so on, right? Maybe you had to move, right? Yes. Well, that's because what the the water was more what powerful, right? Huh? Okay. So the the wind, let's say, or the wind and the waves, whatever it is, blew, right?

[51:13] Okay. They couldn't resist, right? Huh? That's the mover, right? Okay. Then he speaks regard to the end, the two kinds of necessity, right? One is that without which the end cannot be what attained at all. Okay. So is it necessary to breathe? Yeah. But not in this sense here, because sometimes a person fails in his breathing, right? Okay. But if you're going to live, then you must breathe, right?

[51:50] If you're going to live, then you must what eat, right? Okay. But then he gives another sense of what is necessary to achieve the end well. Okay. Okay. So is logic necessary to philosophize? Or you might say to philosophize well, right? But men can philosophize without logic, right? In fact, logic was the the last part of philosophy to be what worked on, right? Okay. So men were philosophizing before logic was found, but they were making a lot of mistakes that they wouldn't make after they learned logic, right?

[52:38] Okay. So Thomas gives the example like the horse is necessary for a journey, right? Well, you can go without the horse, but it takes a long time to get there, right? You can't get there well, right? Huh? Okay. Um.

[52:59] So you need a car, right? Car is necessary. Okay. Well, not in the sense that it's impossible to get somewhere without a car, but you can't get to a lot of places easily or well without a car, right? Okay. So,

[53:20] when when the council speaks here of necessary, absolutely, they're thinking of an end that cannot be but achieved without revelation, right? But we're talking before

[53:39] that revelation is necessary even for those things, right? That reason can naturally come to know. He's saying, "Well, we couldn't attain those things well, right? Without revelation, because very few of us never attained it, and even those who did attain it would take most of their life to get there, and they'd probably make a lot of mistakes on the way too, and so on, right? So revelation is necessary to get well to those things that we can know naturally, right?

[54:12] But then for those things like the Trinity and things of that sort, natural reason couldn't get there at all, right? So revelation was necessary for those things, right? You'll see Thomas in the beginning of the Summa there. The first article in the Summa Theologia will be whether, besides philosophy, some other teaching, you know, is necessary, right? And he'll make that distinction, right? It's maybe even more fully in the Summa Contra Gentiles stuff.

[54:42] Okay, we're making that distinction now. It is not because of this that one must hold revelation to be absolutely necessary, but the reason why it's absolutely necessary is that God directed human beings to a supernatural end, right? That is, a sharing in the good things of God that utterly surpasses the understanding of human mind and its natural powers, and then it requires the biblical statement of the same from St.

[55:14] Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians: "Indeed, eye has not seen, neither has ear heard, nor has it come into our hearts into our minds even to conceive what things God has prepared for those who love Him." Right. So, if we're going to work towards an end that our natural reason can't know, right, that's got to be revealed to us, absolutely necessary. But as the great Heraclitus said, "The things that can be seen and heard and learned are what I prize the most," but he has only you know experience of our natural knowledge, right?

[55:57] Okay, because these have not been seen or heard, nor even conceived of, right, by our natural powers, huh? Okay. So you see what he's saying here, huh?

[56:18] You know, sometime maybe we'll have a chance to do that chapter necessary in the fifth book of wisdom, right? But Aristotle gives the chapter on necessary. It's attached to the chapters on the causes, right? And that's because the different senses of necessary are connected with the different senses of cause. And the two senses of necessary that come in here, right, are these two senses that are referenced to the to the end.

[56:46] That without which the end cannot be reached at all, and that without which the end cannot be reached what? Well, right. Some might say, you know, you need a college education nowadays, huh?

[57:10] You need to go to college, do you? Can't live that good of college? No, but presumably you can't live well in this society unless you've been to what college. It's necessary to live well, right? Whatever this society considers living well, right? Okay. You see? But breathing and eating are absolutely necessary. You can't live without breathing and what? Okay.

[57:43] Aristotle says when he talks about wisdom, you know, every other knowledge is more necessary, but none is what better, right? Okay. Okay. Is Mozart necessary? Yeah. Yeah. To hear well, necessary. Yeah. Okay.

[58:12] Wine necessary at the meal? Yeah. When the French say, you know, a meal without wine is like a day without sunshine. Okay. But is sunshine absolutely necessary for there to be a day? No, it can be cloudy. Cloudy year, you know, still a day.

[58:31] It's still even on a cloudy day, it's still light because of the sun. Yeah, yeah, but you see, but okay. But some things necessary for something to be, some for it to be well, right? Okay.

[58:44] So when I talk about logic, I would say what? Is logic necessary for philosophy? I wanted to see what sense necessary, right? Okay. Necessary to do philosophy well, right? You do philosophy in some some way or other. Without it, it's not going to be done well. So it's necessary in that sense. It's not necessary in the way that that

[59:14] eating and breathing necessary. Five, you think? Can you review the one for the mover? What? Can you review the understanding of connection of the necessary connected to the to the mover cause? Well, actually, Aristotle says there is of the mover is so powerful you cannot can't be resisted, right? Can't be resisted. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

[59:46] So they throw a rope around you and they pull it, and you can't. That's strong enough to resist. You got to go, right? You know.

[59:56] But I mean, I'll take an example there: the to sound or something, right? Yeah. Yeah. that's from the mover, right? The maker. But these two senses are necessary here from the end. Right. But the first sense is necessary. This necessary for knowing those things that reason, as such, can know. That's for the what? For knowing such things well, right? Because it wouldn't be these things would be known well if if hardly anybody knew them, and those people only did their life and a lot of maybe mistakes and so on, right?

[1:00:35] They're thinking about these things, right? Okay. So, so you're seeing the necessity of belief even in regard to those things that reason here can naturally know about God, right? You have to realize the great weakness of human mind, right? And the fact, you know, Aristotle says in the Proemium to Wisdom that the human mind is in many ways enslaved, right, to the needs of our body, the needs of our house, and needs of our car, right?

[1:01:11] Okay. And maybe most people, some time people might spend their whole life trying to get enough food or enough clothing, whatever it is, right? And maybe some days they go hungry, right? So it'd be very rare that someone would get to a knowledge of God that reason was capable of, and even those people would be spending most of their life before they got to this, and maybe along the way they make some mistakes and thinking about God, right?

[1:01:48] Okay. So certainly you can't attain those things well without revelation. Okay. But for those things that are But natural reason cannot arrive at, right, then faith is absolutely necessary, right? Because it can't you can't direct yourself to them at all without Do you see, the idea? Okay? But you'll find that we use those two senses of necessary in daily life, right? And sometimes we say something's necessary, and we mean one of these senses, sometimes the other sense, right?

[1:02:29] Okay. Money is necessary to live, right? People will say that, right? Absolutely. That's why I'm in poverty. That's why I'm in poverty. I mean, Robinson Crusoe was living there without money on the island there, right?

[1:02:56] Okay.