Prima Secundae
69. Aquinas on Love (ST I-II q.26, aa.2-3): Love as a Passion, and Amor vs. Dilectio
Class of 2012-04-19
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/11-prima-secundae/069-aquinas-on-love-st-i-ii-q-26-aa-2-3-love-as-a-passion-and/

[0:00] In the Name of the Father, the Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. Thank you, God. Thank you, guardian angels. Thank you, Thomas Aquinas, Deo gratias. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, ordain our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, and help us to understand what you have written. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

[0:32] Amen. And one of the objections, you know, Chrysostom is saying that the Father is the cause of the Son. I think Basil. I think I first saw it Basil, but both Basil and Chrysostom are, you know, Thomas of course, is the same way. He's using it loose to the word, you know. So, but

[0:54] Aristotle's pretty good on that, you know. That the beginning is more universal than cause, right? Not every beginning is a cause. I watch these guys, Basil and Chrysostom, once in a while, right? Even though Thomas is going to transfer, you know, Paris for Chrysostom's commentary. on John was it? Yeah. Okay, so in article two here in question twenty-six: Whether amor is a passion? Whether

[1:33] it's an undergoing, right? Well, no virtus, no virtue is a passion, huh? But every love is a certain virtue, as Dionysius says, huh? In the fourth chapter of the Divine Names, therefore love is not a what passion. But what does Dionysius mean, huh, Thomas? So, that.

[2:03] Moreover, love is a certain union or connection, according to Augustine, the Book of Trinity. But union or connection is not a passion, but more a what relation? Relation. Therefore, love is not a what passion? Huh. As we in the article there in the sentences on whether the Holy Spirit is the nexus, right, the connection of the Father and the Son, huh? And in what sense is he, huh?

[2:36] Not, not in the way that essential love is their connection. So he says he compares it to almost, I think, to husband and wife, right? Husband and wife are united in their offspring, right? And this is the way the Father and the Son are united in the Holy Spirit, yeah, as He proceeds from them, right? Yeah. So it's kind of interesting. It's interesting because when St. Maximilian Kolbe refers to the Blessed Mother as the created immaculate conception and the Holy Spirit as the uncreated immaculate conception, this same notion is in Saint Bonaventure as he refers to the Holy Spirit as the conceptio of the Father and the Son.

[3:19] In that sense, of like making the same comparison, I think that's what the Saint is. It's not a natural procession, but it's like the parents, mother and father, united. More Damascene says in the second book that passion is a certain motion, right?

[3:47] Aristotle takes up motion in the third book of Natural Hearing, third book of the Physics, right? And he attaches to that a consideration of what acting upon and what undergoing, right? So if you're moving because I'm pushing you, right? Is your motion pushing and being pushed in some way? Then Aristotle compares it, right? Takes up acting upon and undergoing, right? Attaching it to motion. That's where Thomas stops and says, "We got to understand the whole categories for this, you know.

[4:22] What does this mean? You know, what's what? So passio is a motion quidam, right? Huh? So you're being pushed, right? This is motion, right?

[4:39] But love does not imply the motion of the desiring power because that's what desire, but the beginning of this motion, right? Therefore, love is not a passion.

[5:04] But against all this is what the guy called the philosopher says in the eighth book of the Nicomachean Ethics that amor es pasio, right? Well, that's a pretty good.

[5:19] Yeah, that's pretty good. Now Thomas says, "I answer. It should be said that passion or suffering or undergoing, right, is an effect of the agent on the what patient, right? Okay.

[5:40] Now, in Latin they'll speak of what Axio and pasio, right? In Greek, it's what Poien and pascain, right? Okay. But I use the term sometimes in English, acting upon and what undergoing or being acted upon, right?

[5:59] But a natural agent has a two-fold effect, huh? in the one undergoing, right? For first, it gives the form. Secondly, he gives the motion that follows upon the form. And then the simple example from the ancient science there, just as the one generating, right?

[6:33] If I generate a stone, right? The one generating the stone, the body gives it what weight, huh? Gravity, huh? And then the what motion that follows upon gravity, right?

[6:53] And this weight, which is the beginning, the source of motion, to the natural place in account of the weight, can in some way be called natural what? Love, huh? And that's why Augustine will kind of compare it, right? My love is my weight. Exactly.

[7:25] So in a similar way, right? The desirable, right? Appetibile gives to the appetite, that is to say, the desirable power, first a certain what? Yeah, coaptatio, a coordination, something, right? Which is the what agreement with the thing desirable, right?

[7:52] And from this there follows emotion towards the thing desirable you don't have it, right? For as Aristotle points out in the third book about the soul, the motion of the appetite is done in a certain circle, right? Okay. So something makes an impression upon me, right? And then I'm kind of what adapted to that thing, right? Huh? I'm fitted to it, so to speak, right? And then, as a result of it being fitted to me, then I seek it, right?

[8:26] Huh? And then I try to what possess that thing, right? Huh? And so what started from the thing acting upon me, now I turn going out to what join myself what to it, yeah. There's kind of a circle there, right? Huh? Okay.

[8:45] For the desirable moves the desiring power, huh? Making itself or producing itself in some way in its intention, right? And the desiring power tends in the desirable object, really in reality, right? You might say, pursuing it, right? So that there is the end of motion where was the beginning of it, right? Okay.

[9:19] So the desirable thing that was the beginning, that is, say, that acted upon, right, is the thing that is the end that you're pursuing, right? The good that you're pursuing. Now, so here you have the two effects, then, right, Hen? The first, therefore, change of the appetite from the desirable is called amor, love, which is nothing other than the agreement with the desirable, right? It's pleasing you in a sense.

[9:54] From this agreement, there follows motion to the desirable, and is what desire, and last what rest, which is what joy. Joy, huh? That's how we call it beautiful, restful.

[10:20] Beautiful is restful. Since therefore, since love consists in a certain change of desiring power from the desirable, it is manifest that love is a passion undergoing.

[10:46] Strictly speaking, or properly speaking, according as it is in this what sense, desiring power, consumable appetite, right? But speaking more generally, and by extension of the name, according as it is in the what will, okay?

[11:07] So the guy go or the girl goes to the party, right? And someone makes a big impression upon them. But notice the expression, make an impression upon them, right? Okay, you know, if I lay my hand on something soft, it starts to make an impression upon the table. You know, it's hard to make on a hard, hard-hearted person or see, but you know, someone who's soft-hearted, right?

[11:31] You can give an impression upon that heart, right? And it's like giving it a what a form whereby it's conformed, right, to the object, right? But desire also be an undergoing, right? Well, no, it's following upon the see. So because because the the girl has made an impression upon my heart, right?

[11:57] Then I'm going to what pursue the girl, right? But the desire desire also is an undergoing, right? It's hard to distinguish. They're both passions. Yeah, yeah. That kind of follows from the fact that that my heart has been in some way conformed to that object, right? Okay. It something about Mozart's music, right? It just fits my heart, right? And so I keep on putting on every morning, you know.

[12:29] Rosie says that's enough. No, I condemn myself to one or two CDs, you know, for a day. Amazing, amazing. Told you how the guy one day in class there, you know, he happened to mention Bach and Mozart, you know. So I confronted him after class and said, "No, you mentioned Bach and Mozart, so you put them on the same level." He says, "Oh, no, no." Mozart, separated substance, you know.

[13:05] It's like Thomas would call the angelic doctor, right? It's a separated substance, you know. They say that the kind of first, you know, it's a kind of debarking of it. Then they do analyze more certain ones.

[13:21] B one now. So. Now, what about the objection from our great friend Dionysius, right? Well, to first, it should be said that because virtue signifies a source, a beginning of motion or action, therefore love, in so far as it is a beginning of the what? Desiring motion. Yeah, is called by Dionysius. Say what? Virtus. Yeah. Incidentally, the word principium, What's the English word for Principium? Yeah, yeah.

[14:02] Now, if you look at the fifth book of wisdom, Aristotle takes up the word arche, principium. The first three meanings of beginning are meanings of beginning where the beginning is in that of which it is the beginning. So, for example, the point—the first meaning of beginning—would be like the point is the beginning of the line, right? Or the line is the beginning of the surface, or the surface is the beginning of the body, right?

[14:37] And the point is in the line of which it is the beginning. And then the second sense of beginning is not the beginning of the line, but where you might begin on the line might be halfway down the line. And then the third sense of beginning is the fundamental part. So the foundation of a house is the beginning of the house, right? Okay.

[15:01] So those first three senses of beginning, the beginning is in that of which it is the beginning, right? Now, in English, right, the word beginning has those meanings. We could speak of the foundation of the house, you know. That's the beginning of my house, right? But when you get to the fourth sense of beginning, right, is that so much in English? Has the word been moved that much?

[15:28] Would you say, for example, that I'm the beginning of my son? Does that seem a little more? Yeah, a little bit odd, right? See, because I'm not in my son in the way the point or the the foundation of the house is in the house, right? Okay. So

[15:53] when you translate the word principium there you've got to kind of extend the what? The the English word, right? Huh? See what happens is sometimes the natural carrying over the word is kind of by accident impeded in English because we take over the Greek or Latin. from when we learn some things, right, we take over their word, right, and use that. Okay. So now, as in grade school, you know they're always telling us the difference between principal P-A-L and principal P-L-E, right?

[16:34] Well, principal P-A-L would be the first sense of the beginning, and principal P-L-E, the principles of science, would be the fifth sense, right? Okay. But it'd be sound kind of funny to say that the prince of the city or the principal of the school is the beginning of the school, right? You may think that they're down there in the in the foundation somewhere.

[17:02] And and you got to kind of you know force people to say you know that the the axioms say the definitions are the beginnings of what the science, right? Okay.

[17:17] So I'm all in favor of moving the word, right? Huh? I was mention that same thing about the word birth, you know. But Shakespeare, the last sense of birth of nature, rather in Phusis in Greek and nature and Latin, is what a thing is.

[17:42] And we use the word birth for what a thing is. But notice in that passage I quoted from Shakespeare, right? For not so vile the earth doth live, but to the earth some special good doth give. Nor not so good, but strange from that fair use, revolts from true birth, stumbling out of use. Well, in a sense, revolts from true birth means revolting from your true, what nature, the sense of what a thing is, right?

[18:10] So there, Shakespeare has moved the word, right? Huh? Once in a while, you talk about people can't move the word, right? Their minds are clogged, right? Huh? You know. But you do have to go back and you know use the Greek or the Latin, you know, but you have to follow the word up from there, you know. If we take over the Greek or Latin word in the later meanings and don't take over the first meanings with it, where our mind is is out of order, right?

[18:38] So you've got to extend these things, huh? So I'm the beginning of my son and my daughter, right? You know. And the carpenter is the beginning of this here, right? You know.

[18:57] Yeah. Yeah. The tailor is the beginning of my shirt, my pants, right? Yeah. But that's the fourth sense of beginning. It's outside. So prince and principal, P-L-E and principal, P-L-E. Those are all basically the the word and referring to these later senses of the beginning and this.

[19:29] So he says here, Virtus signifies a principium motus racionis, right? Well, that's a what? Maybe an exterior beginning, right? It's interesting when Aristotle goes on from beginning to the next word, which is cause. The first two meanings he gives of cause is matter and then form, and those are what intrinsic causes, right? They're in that of which they are. a what

[20:04] a cause, right? So the wood is in the the table, right? In the form of the table is in the wood, right? The table. So Aristotle defines matter as that from which something comes to be, existing within it, right? Now it comes in some way from the the mover or the maker, but he's not in the the thing that he's made, huh?

[20:30] So in that way, the cause and the effect goes the beginning. Different kinds of. Well, the cause is the beginning, not the effect. Let's talk about the effect. I mean, the end that's got a cause.

[20:45] Oh, I'm thinking of different ways of looking at the table. You say the maker is the beginning of the table in one way. The wood is the beginning of the table. Another. way That's not the same thing. Yeah, different kinds of causes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I

[21:01] actually explained the four causes. I take the write the board C A T, right? I said now it's the word cat if you don't know. And what's the most obvious dependence that this word on the blackboard, right, has, huh? What does it depend upon for its existence? Chalk. Well, C A and T, right, huh? You see, and someone says it doesn't depend upon C and A and T.

[21:32] We'll take away C A and T. I raise them. Obviously, it depends upon the right? It's gone, right? Okay. And so that's the that's the first kind of cause, right? You know. And then I say, but now I'd write next to the word cat the word act, right? Same word, same letters, and now they're forced by the truth itself, as Aristotle would say, to say that there's something that the word cat depends upon besides the three letters it's made of.

[22:04] Otherwise, the word act would be, yeah. I'm talking to graduates of Thomas Aquinas College, and they always refer to as T A C. So I think that is sometimes too much talk about his assumptions, anyway. And then, then I go on and say, now,

[22:26] did the letters C A T get in that order because they are those letters? Well, now you're introduced to a third kind of cause, right, huh? Okay. And this is the mover or maker, right, huh?

[22:45] Now is my ability to order the letters? Does that explain why I put them in that order? Because I could have done a TAC or TCA or right, I got I got a lot of ability, you know, for ways I can arrange the letters, right? Why did I put it in the form C A and T?

[23:12] I want to talk about my favorite animal, which is the cat, right? Okay. If I want to talk about, you know, ability and act in metaphysics, then I would have put them in order A C T, right? I want to talk about the first act, the pure act, you know, A C T, right? So now you are forced to the fourth kind of cause be what end, right?

[23:38] I take the example, you know, of the of the carpenter, right? Why does he make the roof like this? Why does he make it like this? Does his ability extend to this, but not to this. You can't explain why his ability, right?

[23:55] But if you have snow and rain, you realize this is better than that. So it's for the sake of, you know. So you are forced to the causes, but in the very order Aristotle gave them, right? Matter, form, mover, and end.

[24:11] So I think Aristotle's got a good reason to put them in that order, which is also the history there, you know. The Greek philosophers are talking about matter first. Water is the beginning of all things, or even before the philosophers, Mother Earth is the beginning of all things.

[24:34] In the Greek philosophers, there to some extent you see the natural movement of our mind. Because they're the first philosophers, so they start with what's most known, and then people, you know, later on they start with whatever Professor X was talking about the first day class. But anything he's talking about, right? You know, and by by no means where you should begin, huh?

[25:05] Okay. What about union now? Union pertains to love, but union is not a passio. Union is a what relation, right? Well, Thomas says to the second should be said that union pertains to love in so far as the what of the agreement of the appetite, the one loving has himself towards that which he loves as towards himself, right? Or as something of himself, right?

[25:40] Remember my mother saying that. I think fathers look upon their wives and their children as something of themselves, part of their establishment of life, right? Aliquid sui, you know.

[25:52] And thus it is clear that love is not what the very relation of union, right? But that the union is something following upon the love,

[26:05] whence the great Dionysius says that love is a virtus unitiva, right? A power that unites, right? And the philosopher says, in the second bit of politics politics, that union is the opus, the work of love, right? So, the great Dionysius and the philosopher they're bringing ... Yeah. Yeah, yeah, marvelous. And Thomas says great respect for Dionysius and great respect for the man he calls the philosopher.

[26:48] Now, what about passion being an undergoing, and undergoing being motion, right? Huh? And the motion of the appetite is what desire, not love. To the third, it should be said that love, although it does not name the motion of the desiring power tending towards the thing that is desirable, nevertheless it does name the motion of the desiring power by which it is changed by the what desirable, right?

[27:26] Or by the what desirable what makes an impression upon the heart, right? Conforming it to that, so that it is fitting and pleased with, you might say, the desirable, right?

[27:41] So love is something passionate. Now we know that, right? Now. Whether love is the same thing as what dilexio, right? Now dilexio etymologically comes from a word I guess for what choice, yeah. So when I was trying to translate this, I would call it what chosen love, right?

[28:15] To the third, one goes forward. Thus, it seems that love is the same thing as dilexio, right? For Dionysius says in the fourth chapter in the Divine Names,

[28:34] he says that in this way love and dilexio have themselves as what four and twice two, and rectilinear and having right or straight lines.

[28:51] But these signify the same thing, right? Might have said like you know twelve inches or one foot or something, right? Same thing. Therefore, love and dilexio signify the same thing, right?

[29:14] Moreover, the emotions of the desiring power differ in their what objects, huh? But the same is the object of what dilexio, chosen love, love, right? And therefore, they are the same.

[29:40] Moreover, if dilexio and amor differ in something, most of all they would seem to differ in this: that dilexio is taken as in something good, right? But amor in malo, huh? As some say, right? According to as Augustine narrates, right? I think it's a little bit like the word what for desire. The other word that he has here, concupiscencia. You know, if you take the English word, they're concupiscence, right?

[30:12] It kind of it tends to have kind of a bad connotation, seems to be, right? You know, doesn't it? Concubiscence, yeah. And so he's saying, you know,

[30:27] love has a bad sense, right? According as Augustine narrates in the fourteenth book on the City of God, but in this way they did not differ because, as Augustine says there, in Sacred Scriptures, both are taken both in good and in bad, huh?

[30:58] So I still ask students sometimes, which is better, love or knowledge? huh? They all say love. But love can be good or bad, right? If love to torture people, that's not good. No, so love can be good or bad, right? But knowledge is always what? Yeah. That's an advantage that knowledge has over love, right? Huh.

[31:26] At least over bad ideas Therefore, amor and dilectio do not differ, right? Huh. As Augustine himself concludes, that it's not other to say amorem, love, right? And to say another thing to say what dilectionem but be saying the same thing, right? Okay. So most of these arguments are taken up as to how exactly these two words are used, right? And how are they related? Are they simply synonyms, or is there still some you know difference in meaning there, right?

[32:09] But against this is what Dionysius says in the fourth chapter of Divine Names, that to some of the saints it seems more divine the name of what? Love. And I think the the Greek word there is eros, right? Okay. So that eros in Greek may be more clearly than amor in Latin has the sense of what sense love, right? Huh. Sense love. But I think you know our our word amorous, right?

[32:38] Usually refers to kind of romantic love and what it called, you know. So I mean Dionysius is writing, I think, in Greek, right? But saying the name of eros is more divine, some say, right? Than the name of dilectio, right? See, I'm not sure Dion talking about the the meaning of this. Okay. Thomas is going to

[33:03] try to clear up now this confusion about names. I answer it should be said that there are found four names pertaining to the same in some way, right? Huh. Closer to it, amor, huh? Dilectio, caritas, and amicitia, right? Now amicitia means what? Friendship, right? Huh. Caritas I suppose the Greek word would be what? Agape. Yeah. And we talked a bit about amor and dilectio, right? Huh. Okay.

[33:46] Now they differ in this that amicitia, according to the philosopher in the eighth book of the Ethics, so books eight and nine of the Ethics are concerned with what? Friendship, right? And Aristotle says it's more like a habit, right? Huh? Okay. So he starts to take up friendship. He says it belongs to ethics because it's either a virtue or effect of virtue, right? Virtue is a habit, huh?

[34:16] But amor in delecio signify more what in the manner of a act or of a passion, right? But charity can be taken either for the habit, right? So charity is one of the what theological virtues, right? And virtues are habits, right? But also can be in the act, I suppose. Agape maybe. Okay.

[34:50] Okay, but now he's going to talk about the difference of these, right? A little more. But these signify differently acts through these three things. For amor is what more general among them. For every delecio or caritas can be called a love, right? But not every amor is delecio or caritas, right? Okay. So it's not altogether wrong when they translate agape love, right? Huh? I think trouble is the word charity has got kind of downgraded to kind of exterior.

[35:31] I think things, yeah, yeah. Okay. I you know what I listed there? I'm a charitable. Charitable, sit down. Charitable tax right off. Yeah. Sit down the checkbook there and write off the charitable. I see the rolls laid off. Okay. But delecio

[35:56] adds over love, right? Above love, a what choice preceding it, right? Okay. As the name itself sounds, right? Dilectio Next we have the word what election, right? That's in route there. So election is choose, right? Choice, right? You really have elections as a choice. It's rigged. You don't have a choice. I'm not sure. But if God wanted us to have a democracy, He'd give us choices.

[36:34] Now, of course, choice refers to the what the you know involves reason, so it refers to the what the will, right, rather than to the sense desire. Whence delecio is not in the concupiscible, right? Which is part of the emotions, the the sense desires, huh? The concupiscible and the irascible, right? But it's in the will only, right?

[37:06] And is only in the what rational nature, right? Now, caritas adds above love perfection. A certain perfection of love, insofar as that which is loved is estimated to be of great what price, great worth, as the name itself designates. So I suppose carus which means dear, right? Okay. Shakespeare uses the word dear in that sense, you know.

[37:42] Yeah, it's common in the Irish. The Irish speak that way. I remember as a kid that they would if something was very costly, it's very dear. It's very dear. Yeah, yeah, They use that expression all the time Yeah, we still use that, I guess. Yeah. Yeah Cost him dearly Cost you an arm and a leg.

[38:04] I remember buying my first big car, you know, a new car, you know, kind of, and uh, driving on, it's like you're you've suddenly been relieved, you know, you've gone through the the eye of the needle, you know, or something, you know, relieved of all your your money, you know.

[38:22] You're no longer a man of substance, right? huh? It's always like that. you know. But you hope you're not a man of accidents with a new car.

[38:36] Yeah. Okay. So now he's going to clear up these objections here on the basis of the distinction seen in the body of the article, right? So when Dionysius is talking about these things as being like four and twice two or rectilineal and having straight lines, right? Dionysius speaks of love and dilectio according as they are both in the what?

[39:10] In the intellectual appetite, power. Yeah. For thus love is the same thing as what? Dilectio right? So I used to say to students, you know, when you get up there to get married, you know, does the priest ask you, you know, now do you have a real warm feeling for each other?

[39:39] No, he's really asking you, do you choose this person as your husband or choose this person as your what? Wife, right? And you're expressing not your warm feelings, which I assume you are, but but you're expressing your what choice? Okay. The irrevocable

[40:02] choice. I was reading, rereading Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, right? And he's writing to Baretti there, who's an Italian man who'd come to England and spent some time became, you know, a friend of him. He's gone back to Italy and he's writing him in Milan. I guess Baretti is thinking of getting married, you know, and Johnson is saying, you know, a few things, you know, disturb the judgment of reason, you know, like the prospect of a, you know, long life with an amiable woman, you know.

[40:36] That's kind of funny. I guess I guess the mother of Johnson, you know, took care of him to be what blessed by the king, you know. And Boswell said to him, you know, "Surprise, you didn't take all the way to the Pope." Because he's so conservative in some ways, Johnson, you know.

[41:22] It's a beautiful conversation that movie there, the October Baby. You know, where she takes, she goes to the to the, she's a Baptist, but she goes to the to the Catholic cathedral there. You know, sitting there, and the priest comes down. and says, we're about to close the church? And then, you know, they get talking. You know, and he quotes a beautiful quote from Saint Paul. You know, you know, Christ has forgiven us, therefore we should forgive each other.

[41:47] You know, beautiful. You know, she does. Nice, good movie. I'd buy Obama a ticket. I said, if he'd go watch it, maybe he would, you know, occasionally have to rethink his thinking about that. That's the way he voted, you know in Illinois. You know he voted against the. Re-hat. Yeah. Yeah. Terrible. I remember that little girl, she was like eight or something, and she was watching this little kids' program about lying.

[42:18] And she got up and said she wanted to send the thing to the president. She said, "Mom, you got to send this to Mr. President." She's a little handicapped girl. she has some sort of heart.

[42:34] I guess you know. sometimes it's funny the way these things work, but I guess there was a guy who was a young man there. he was kind of tied up with the communists, something like that, and he was marching on one of their parades, you know, and this old lady, you know, come on, and hit him over the head with an umbrella and said you ought to be ashamed of yourself, right?"

[42:54] Turned him around, and he eventually became like a Dominican. I think it was. Yeah, yeah. But why, am, you know, just what do you do with old old you know, grandmother type Enjoy yourself, young man. It needs something like this to wake you, wake these people up. sometimes You never know how how God will wake you up. how big occasion he uses. How humble God is. you know.

[43:18] Yeah, yeah. That's just the one. like St. Albani talks about the man who was debaucher at the brothel one night, and he heard a bell ring in the middle of the night. He says to his friend, "what? what's that? What's that bell Oh, that's the monks down the street. They're going to choir to chant the office now. And that was the beginning of his conversion. Yeah. Later, he joined the monastery.

[43:37] So that bell in the middle of his escapades, Yeah. God was humble enough. Yeah. to come down there. Yeah. yeah. Edwin Campion, the story of Edwin Campion, he's, uh... in England, there there was an actor who he was kind of well liked at court and everything, but he came on stage once and he slipped, and everybody laughed at him. And that was the beginning. The occasion of his conversion.

[44:02] That's like. it. He eventually, gets, you know, together with Edwin Campion. It was like Saint Alphonsus himself, you know, what I mean? He's a lawyer. That's what I always tell my brother, "in-law who's a lawyer." Saint Alphonsus was a lawyer, but then he had a conversion. He not only lost lost a case. He lost he was so embarrassed by it, yeah. He lost a huge case, and he argued.

[44:19] he made this magnificent presentation, of the whole thing based on a mistake in his judgment about some detail, And so he makes this magnificent presentation, and the other lawyer just said, "uh, but you know this this this isn't true." right? And the whole thing the whole thing just collapsed around. That was the beginning of his conversion. That Roman comedian. Do you know this story. This was in the, during the the first few centuries of Christianity.

[44:48] This comedian went up, and he was in the middle of like, the show in the Colosseum or something, and he's making fun of Christians. And and uh, I think during that time he had his conversion when when they were uh, kind of going along with it, and he asked to be baptized. They thought he was joking. After he he professed his Christianity, then he died. He killed him or something.

[45:13] Oh, It's very interesting. I have to read about that. Okay, the second objection is pointing out that love is more general, right? So, is the love of wisdom a dilectio Yes. Yeah. So you find out, you know, when Aristotle's comparing. it's interesting when he compares the philosopher and the sophist, right, and the dialectician. he compares the three, right? And he's trying to manifest, you know, the universality of wisdom, and of course, the sophist is seeking an apparent wisdom, right?

[45:54] So, no matter what you say, he's going to refute you, right? That he's seeming to be, you know, wise, right? And the dialectician has a a method for thinking about all things, right? So he's like the wise man, but he doesn't have the certitude. He differs from the wise man in his, you know, probabilities as opposed to certitude. But how does the philosopher differ from the dialectician?

[46:18] You know, well, I mean, from the sophist, well, he says, by his choice of life. Well, he used the word choice there, right? You know, it's it's a chosen love, this love of wisdom, huh?

[46:33] So you have to know what wisdom is, and deliberate a bit about to realize, right? This one I'm going to choose, right? It's my chosen love, wisdom.

[46:48] But nevertheless, we speak of the philosopher as being what a lover, of wisdom, right? Okay, so love is more general, right? than dilectio So every dilectio is a amor, but not every amor is a dilectio. So the object of love, he says, is more common than the object of dilectio because love extends to more things than dilectio does, as has been said.

[47:23] To the third, it should be said that amor and dilectio do not differ by the difference or according to difference of good and bad. as has been said, right? And in the intellectual part, the same is amor and what dilectio. And thus Augustine speaks there that way about love. huh Whence a little bit afterwards, he adds. That a rectified will is a good love, right? And a perverse willing is a what?

[48:00] Bad love, right? Because, however, amor, which is a passion of the concupiscible appetite, right, inclines many to what? Bad, right? And therefore, it has the occasion, right, for some to assign the foresaid difference, right? Okay. So, especially the strong passions, like the sexual passion, right? As well as the passion for drink and drugs and so on, and anger and so on. They they're always in the paper there, right?

[48:34] You heard about anyway. If you hear about the news, you know, but the news is president went down to Colombia, right? And they had prostitutes there for the the secret service people. About surprise. And so, you know, they're going through them. A few people are out of the secret service already. because the 8 were probably out. And so, people always get in trouble with these things, right?

[48:57] And so, apparently, some guy wouldn't pay his bill to the to the prostitute or whatever it is, the escort, what they call them. And she complained, and the thing blew up, and finally came to the notice of the authorities.

[49:14] The public notice of it. Yeah. And then the GSA, you know, are having these big parties. You know, spending thousands of dollars. You know, living it up.

[49:29] They're being forced out too. I guess some of them. So, but I was pointing to the word concupiscence and so on. that it's a little bit of that kind of sense of something bad. I remember coming up. You know, wasn't as a kid there. I think even maybe in the Baltimore Catechism and even wasn't anger kind of like a big sin? Anger? Yeah. Yeah. Well, of course, anger names one of the strongest of the passions, right?

[50:01] They're in the very wrath of love as Shakespeare says. obviously, The similarity between those passions. Well, you've got to be kind of careful. to say anger is, you know, even our Lord has anger, right? There's there's rectified anger and so on. But why should that way of speaking arise? If it wasn't that people are often led astray by the passions, and especially by the strong passions, right?

[50:24] You know. So it's kind of misnomer to call anger, but you can see how people speak that way, right? Anger is a sin. I've got to be kind of careful. That's why uh, Colin Bennett, the bad kind of love he always used to refer to as L U V. Love.

[50:52] I remember when John Paul the Second came to America there, and the nuns there, you know, with their insubordination, you know, and I think you know, or even went to you know Switzerland, you know, and the priests, you know, there was disorder there, you know, gets angry at that, you know, to see that kind of thing. But in the gospel, there our Lord gets angry, you know, at the hardness of their heart, right?

[51:14] You know. feels above, you know, it's- it's- that's why he casts out the devils, you know. They delivered him up out of envy, Pilate, Pilate did this. He knew there was a lot of envy He kind of mocked them. Yeah, yeah.

[51:40] But probably more strictly speaking, amor can be good or bad, right? Depends upon what you what love, right? Bible says they are abominable as the things they loved, right? Now, that shows you how love goes out to the thing itself, right? Now, you know, as I say, if you love disgusting things, you are yourself disgusting. But if you know what's disgusting, that doesn't make you disgusting. If you know what is bad, does that make you bad.

[52:13] No, If you love what is bad, that makes you bad. Because it makes you conform to that. It makes an impression on them. See all these complications that Kant has as to you know what makes a bad will, you know. And you just want to see the simple thing, you know. you can't love something that's bad.

[52:42] Okay. Now, what about the fourth objection? here right? Let's see. we said sed contra yeah, but it says in the text here. To the fourth, it should be said that therefore some lay down, even in the will itself, right? That the name of amoris right to be more divine than the name of what? dilectio Why? Because more, more than what, dilectio, implies a certain passion, a certain undergoing, right?

[53:27] Of being moved, you might say, right? Especially, it implies that according as it's in the what sense appetite Why dilectio chosen love, right? Presupposes the judgment of reason.

[53:49] So it's pro-choice stuff. You know, it's not about-choice at all, right? It's not about being informed to make a choice, okay. But notice what he says here. Moreover, man is able to tend towards God through love, being moved in a way, right? Drawn by God, okay. Then his own reason can what lead him, right? And that seems to what pertain to an idea of dilectio right? It's a chosen love, therefore it's a love that arises from reason, right?

[54:30] So that's why I say the love of wisdom is very much a chosen love, right? Huh? See, but he says this love of God is stronger, right? When one is what moved by God, right? Huh? He always quoting that guy. Who's it? Hierotheus. He what speaks of God as were undergoing divine things, you know. But isn't that what you think of the prophets too? You know, kind of as undergoing something, right?

[54:59] That's true. I'm told that once the word in scripture when we read the translation it says the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah or something. The Hebrew words we're told actually means the word happened to him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he kind of underwent this, which is what Saint Thomas talks about later with states of life and perfection Yeah. It seems that the bishop is one who does perfection, but the religious, the consecrated soul, undergoes perfection He doesn't do it.

[55:29] Yeah. So I mean, when the Holy Spirit came down upon them at Pentecost, you know, this is more like they're being what moved, huh? Drawn, huh Attracted. Saint Francis de Sales, he was criticized when he called he called his treatise on the love of God, you know, amour Mm hmm And somebody criticized, no, you shouldn't use amour you should use charité Mm hmm This is kind of the reason, why Yeah, yeah, this is Monsignor Dionne talking about this text, you know, sometimes.

[55:58] Yeah, I think I think it's either in that and or in the, um, introduction to the devout life. He makes, I think, it's based probably on this article. He makes a distinction in the meaning of love. but maybe in the series I forget.