Prima Secundae
219. Eternal Law, Part 1: Is the Eternal Law Known to All? Distinction, Before and After, and the Last Instant of Change
Class of 2015-05-28
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/11-prima-secundae/219-eternal-law-part-1-is-the-eternal-law-known-to-all-distinction/

[0:00] of the Father, and the Son, and the, Holy Spirit, Amen. God of our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, pour in illumination on our images, and arouse us to consider more quickly. St. Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, help us to understand all that you have written. Son, and the, Holy Spirit, Amen.

[0:28] I was reading an article in the Sentences this morning, and it's on the famous one that the soul is the whole soul is in every part of the body, and so on, right? And I know that Thomas gets us from Augustine, right? Huh? But in here he says, you know, Augustine says this, and Albert too. So he takes Augustine and Albert, yeah. I haven't seen him quote Albert, Yeah.

[0:57] by name He says Albert, yeah, But. He says those who think that it's not, they are what, false imagination, right? And he says there's two kinds of false, There's two examples of false imagination in their thinking, huh? One is that the soul is in the body as in a place.

[1:21] Of course, one of the objections was that if the soul is in every part of the body, right? Huh? Then it's in two places at once. And of course Thomas says the soul is is not in the body, is in a place. I think Descartes thought it was in a place, you know, where was it? gland up there in the brain, something. And so the soul is in the body as a form and matter, right?

[1:47] This is a different way. So two different senses of in, right? But it's false imagination. You imagine, you know, the one that's more comes under imagination. And then the other one is that they imagine the soul, which is said to be indivisible, right? They imagine to be indivisible, like a point is. And of course, a point is the indivisible that has a position somewhere in the continuous, right?

[2:12] So if the soul was indivisible in that way, so two false imagination. And Thomas says, but this is stupid, he says. How can stupid be? I say, how many people, you know, think that way about the soul, right? Huh? You know, just fall back, false imagination. I

[2:34] noticed another text of Thomas there in the Sentences where he's talking about the act of the mind, and he says uses the word imagine, right?

[2:47] Now that shouldn't, you know, strike you as, you know, unheard of, right? But we often use the word to see for what to understand, right? But to see means first the act of the eye, and then it's carried over, right? But here's a text where Thomas is using the word to imagine, right, for the mind, what, thinking, right. And the,

[3:12] you know how Shakespeare or Hamlet says, you know, I can see his father in my mind's eye, right. But that's the imagination, right. But the idea that the imagination is in some ways more alike reason than the what, seeing, because of the fact that when you imagine something, you form an image of it, right. You think about something, you form a thought. So it's kind of striking to see that, right, the way he speaks there.

[3:41] Okay, we're up to Article Two here, whether the eternal law is known to all, right. To the second, one goes forward. Thus, it seems that the eternal law is not known to all, because, as the apostle says, right, in the first to the Corinthians, chapter two, verse eleven, for Saint Paul, the first epistle to the Corinthians, the things which are of God, no one knows except the Spirit of God.

[4:14] That's a pretty good quote to use for this purpose. But the eternal law is a certain ratio, a certain what, thought, you might say, or something thought of in existing in the divine mind. Therefore, it's unknown to everyone except to God alone. That convinces me, huh.

[4:41] Moreover, Augustine says in the book on free judgment that the eternal law is that by which the just is, right, by which it is just that all things be what, most ordered, right. That's the support. Prototy of order, huh? Before and after, right? It's a prototype of before and after.

[5:09] But not all know in what way all things are most ordered, huh? So everybody thinks that there can't be evil in the world if God's around, right? How can there be dis disorder, huh? Which is all things are. Things are most ordered. How could there be disorder? Therefore, not all know the eternal law.

[5:36] Seems good to me that argument. Have you closed the book at this point, like, like? throw away from Jews for the wrong false imagination More of Augustine says in the book on true religion that the eternal law is that about which men are not able to what, judge. But as Aristotle says in the first book of the Ethics, each one judges well those things that he knows.

[6:12] Therefore, the eternal law is not known to us. Again, it seems good to me. But against this is what Augustine says in the book on free judgment or free will,

[6:32] that the notion or knowledge of the eternal law is pressed upon us. Right. So Thomas going to look before and after now in the

[6:51] body of the article. I would expect it I would expect nothing less But in order to understand Shakespeare's definition, right, you have to look before and after, don't you?

[7:11] And what comes before, before and after? Distinction. Yeah. So in the ability to look before and after is included the ability to look for what distinctions, huh?

[7:29] And then for divisions and even for definitions, right? Because every division is a distinction, and a definition is, in a way, a division. Yeah, it's also got an order in it too.

[7:50] So answer, Thomas says, that in two ways something is able to be known. In one way, in itself; in another way, in its effect, in which some likeness of it is what found, huh? So do you, do we know Sophia?

[8:15] in some way. Which of these two ways? No, we have a picture in here, right? Cooking, doing some cooking there, right? Yeah. Just as someone not seeing the sun in its own what substance, huh? Knows it in its what? Substance. It's irradiation, right? It's yeah, its effect, something like it. Thus, therefore, should be said. That the eternal law, no one is able to know it according as it is in itself,

[9:12] except only what the blessed, who see God through what His essence. Okay, or Saint John says they see Him as He is, right, face to face.

[9:32] But every reasonable creature, every rational creature, knows it according to its what? Its irradiation yeah. More or less. Either more or less, he knows it, right?

[9:50] For every knowledge of truth is a certain what? Yeah. What could he say that in a in a less Latinized? word than irradiation How could you call that I wouldn't say shining but reflection has this translation Yeah, But irradiation comes from from what rays, doesn't it? Yeah. Something shining, but. I don't know what's supposed to be Yeah. Yeah. Reflections, yeah. I suppose like when you're in the in the house there, and the rays of the sun are what coming through the windows, right, and hitting the floor in front of you, and so on.

[10:36] Yeah. I think of this as the rays coming from it, not the rays bouncing off something else. That would be reflection. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[10:48] It's funny we speak of reflecting upon something, huh? Chesterton has it in his book on what they call the story, "Man on," who is a student. I guess it's Oxford, right? There's a lot of water at Oxford, and he talks about the puddles and the rain and the reflections. It's just what a perfect place for a university. We're reflecting all the time. Yeah. The priest in the parish here, he speaks of his reflection.

[11:19] You know, it's a little sermon, right? And he concludes the reflection with a question for us, right? It's just a pretty good idea. So every or all knowledge of truth is asserted in what, ray, radiation, and a partaking of the eternal law, which is the unchangeable what truth, as Augustine says in the book on religion.

[11:49] Now, what all in some way know truth, right? At least as regards the common beginnings of the what natural law, so it's a kind of partaking, right, of the eternal law in us.

[12:07] In other things, huh? Some more and some less partake of a knowledge of the what truth, and according to this, also they know more or less the eternal what law. Okay.

[12:31] So Thomas sees a distinction, and he reasons, huh, to one part of that, right? That everybody in that way has some knowledge of the eternal law, right? But in its likeness, right?

[12:50] To the first, therefore, it should be said that those things which are of God are not able to be known in themselves by us, right? But nevertheless, in their effects, they are made known to us, according to that of Romans, the famous text here, chapter one, verse twenty: the invisible things of God, through the things which have been made, being understood, right? Huh? Or looked upon? Huh?

[13:23] That's always a text that they use in Vatican, or in Trent, I think, didn't they? That was a text they used. That's one, as well. Yeah. Yeah.

[13:38] To the second, it should be said, huh? That the eternal law, each one knows according to his what? Capacity, right? Huh? According, or in the foresaid way, right? But no one, nevertheless, is able to what? Comprehend it, huh?

[14:03] For it cannot be known entirely, huh? Totaliter, through its what? Effects, huh? And therefore, is not necessary that whoever knows eternal law, in the foresaid way, knows the whole order of things by which all things are most what? Yeah, yeah. See when these bad things are ordered in a way that's hidden to us, huh?

[14:35] To the third, it should be said that to judge about something can be understood in two ways, huh? Thomas always looking for distinctions, huh?

[14:49] I was a little annoyed by that Dominican told me, you know, he had a teacher, you know, who said, "Never affirm, seldom deny, always distinguish." But I can see why he'd say that, right? After reading Thomas for all these years, he probably said, "I mean, don't begin by saying yes, affirmatively or negatively, you know, but you have to distinguish because maybe in one way yes, another way no, right?

[15:17] " There's nothing to be said for that, right? Though, huh? But it shows the the importance of understanding, you know, distinction in Shakespeare's definition, right? Just like, you know, when when I was first thinking about Shakespeare's definition, and he uses the word discourse, right? And Aristotle, when he talks about the human reason there in the third book on the soul, he distinguishes the first and the second act of reason.

[15:51] And the first act of reason there is to understand what something is. Like to understand what a square is, or to understand what a circle is, right? Or to understand what a quadrilateral is, right? And then he talks about the second act, right? Whereby you join these things to separate them, huh? So you say that the square is not a circle, right? Or the square is a quadrilateral, right?

[16:18] Or the circle is not a quadrilateral, right? And then he stops there, right? And Thomas, in his proemium to logic, at the beginning of his commentary on the Posterior Analytics of Aristotle, he quotes this text, you know, from the De Anima, third book, and he says to which you can add a third act, which is reasoning, right? Well, of course, reasoning is the act of what? Discourse that's so characteristic of reason, that it's named from reason, right?

[16:53] So reasoning is especially the discourse of reason, right? So I'm kind of you know puzzled by that, right? Huh? See. Well, you got to bear in mind that Thomas, Aristotle, rather, in the De Anima, it's part of natural philosophy. So he doesn't want to emphasize discourse because there is kind of what's peculiar to reason, right? And Aristotle wants to emphasize more what we naturally know, right?

[17:29] But then you can say that when Shakespeare says discourse, he includes what we naturally understand, because discourse means what? Yeah, it means coming to know what you don't know through what you do know, right? Now maybe you you came to know what you use there, right? But can that go on forever? You knew A through B and B through C and C through D and always through something else, you would never know what anything.

[18:00] So in the ability for discourse is to be understood what? The starting point. Yeah, the ability to understand some things naturally, like what a whole is and what a part is, that the whole is larger than the part, right? Aristotle emphasizes the things that reason naturally knows and just the first two acts because it's a natural philosophy, right? Okay. But Shakespeare, in saying that reason is capable of discourse, that implies, if you looked before, that reason must be capable of knowing something naturally, and not by discourse, right?

[18:43] Just as if reason is capable, as we said before, of looking before and after, right? And as the axiom which we naturally know, nothing is before or after itself, right? Then. Reason must be capable of looking for what distinctions, right?

[19:05] See that very clear, right? And just like if it's capable of a large discourse, it's capable of a small discourse, right? So you have to look before and after to fully understand the excellence of what Shakespeare's definition, right?

[19:28] Make a little aside here, you know, talking about that. I was reading, you know, when I was on vacation there with the grandchildren there, the De Veritate, De Veritate, the question on the good, De Bonitate Bonitate, and so I finished reading through the twenty-seven ones, but

[19:50] he has a couple in there on the emotions, right? A couple questions, you know, divided into many articles, and of course, as a younger thinker there. I was very interested in that text, right? Because I was interested in politics, and I was interested therefore in rhetoric, right? And Aristotle spoke about using the emotions to convince the crowd, right? So that's one reason I wanted to know the emotions, right?

[20:18] And Aristotle takes up the ones that are appropriate for the rhetorician. And then I was reading Aristotle, you know, and reading the book on the poetic art, and the poet is what? The playwright is representing people with various emotions. And secondly, tragedy and comedy arouse certain emotions in us. So I wanted to know about the emotions to understand tragedy and comedy, and to understand that part of rhetoric that uses the emotions, right?

[20:50] And then I was reading Aristotle, and of course I was realizing that music is a likeness of the what? Emotions. We have that famous letter of Mozart to his father, you know, where he describes how he's going to represent the emotion of anger in Osmin there, the guard there in abduction from the Seraglio, right? And how when a man gets angry, he kind of loses control of himself.

[21:15] And so Mozart says to his father, the music has to represent this, right? But not in a way he says that is displeasing to the ears, or in other words, cease to be music. Okay. So I had those reasons. Plus I was studying ethics, right? And some of the virtues, like courage and temperance and so on, are about the emotions, right? So I had three or four different what?

[21:42] Arts or sciences I was pursuing, and they all required a knowledge of the what? Emotions. Well, then I got a text of the De Veritate there. I think I had one in English that my brother or something had, and I think I first read it in English, you know, but then Latin later. And what a marvelous explanation of Thomas of the emotions there, right? Which is kind of the key for what?

[22:07] All of these, right? Okay. Rhetoric, for understanding poetics, for music, for the virtues, right? I mean, just really, you know, just beautiful. Well, what does Thomas do? Well, you find out that there are what? Eleven emotions, right?

[22:30] And how many distinctions of two or three does Thomas use to get the eleven? About eight. Eight. Eight, yeah, yeah. Like about the number that you have, you know, in the categories. He tries to distinguish the ten, right? So Thomas is distinguishing all these emotions, right? Well, the first distinction is between what? The emotions of the concupiscible, right? Which are concerned with something agreeable or disagreeable, as such to the senses, right?

[23:07] And then the virtues or the emotions of the irascible, which are concerned with the difficulty of getting what is agreeable, or avoiding what is disagreeable, like you know,

[23:22] okay? And then that's the first distinction, right? And then he distinguishes the what concupiscible, right? And those concerned with what is agreeable, those concerned with what is disagreeable. That's the second distinction of two, right? And then each of those is divided into three, right? Because some things the senses are agreeable to senses, so you like them, you love them. So as a little boy, I like candy, you know.

[23:55] I discovered that. And then if you like something, but you don't have it or haven't had it for a while, then you want it, right? And then if you what get it, you like it, then you have joy. You enjoy what you got, right? And then you have something like that with the bad, right? Huh? So if you taste salmon and you find it's disagreeable, you say you hate, right?

[24:23] You hate this, huh? And so when it's offered on the menu, you turn away from it, right? But if you're at somebody's house for dinner and they're surprising you with a delicious dinner of salmon, yes, forced upon you, right? You've got to some kind eat the damn thing.

[24:43] Then you're sad. Yeah, great pain, huh? That's distinction of what two distinctions of two so far, and a distinction of what two or three. That's four distinctions there, right? Okay. Then you get the irascible, and one distinction in them is in terms of the good and the what bad, right? Huh? And if it's a good that is difficult to get, then you have another distinction of two, because you can have hope or what despair, right?

[25:18] And hope or despair arise after you want something, right? But there's difficulty in getting it, right? And therefore the hope if you think can overcome the difficulty, and despair if you see no way of of getting it, right? Huh? Okay. And likewise regard to the bad, right? Huh? It arises from aversion you're turning away from it, right? It's difficult though to avoid it, right? Huh? And so there can be fear if you think you cannot over avoid it, huh?

[25:50] But boldness, you know, if you can, you know, overcome it. Now, there's the eleventh oddball, right, which is anger, right? And so, if you're stepping on my toes, and I say you're on my toes, and you say so what? And you're causing a great deal of pain. Well, that's going to cause for some anger, right? Huh? Or you're out there using my grandchildren for target practice or something, right?

[26:19] Well, going to result some anger, right? Huh? Okay. But if I succeed in punishing you for your misdeed, then I have a certain satisfaction, joy, right? Huh? Okay. But notice how Thomas, at the same time, was showing us the what? Not only, the distinctions, eleven, but the order, right? How liking gives rise to wanting in the absence of the thing you like, and to joy or enjoyment when you have it, right?

[26:46] And how hope and fear arise from desire, you know? And how anger arises from pain, right? But anger can give rise to what? Lead on to joy if you succeed in repulsing this thing that's causing you pain. Huh? So what a what a thing that Shakespeare was talking about, right? The distinction of the emotions and the order of them, right? It's magnificent, huh? Okay.

[27:19] Real nice how how Thomas was following, right? Exactly, yeah. He's looking for distinction and looking before and after, right? Magnificent. Magnificent text, huh? You know, we're we're the Tuesday night students there in the sixth book of the Natural Hearing, right? And you know, remember recall I should say De Koninck's famous article in the Revue Thomiste Philosophique, which was the it's in French. Some of his articles were in English, some in French.

[28:08] But the paradox devenir par la contradiction, when the changes between contradictories, right? And Hegel, you know, goof, right? But the problem that Hegel had was, you know, suppose what is not a sphere is becoming a sphere, right? Or what is not a man is becoming a man, right? Well, there's a time in which the clay is not a sphere, right? And there's a last instant in which it is what?

[28:45] Not a sphere, right? And then there's a later time where it is a sphere, right? And therefore, since it always wasn't always, there is a what? Instant which it began to be a sphere, right?

[29:02] Now, are they the same instant—the last instant in which it is not a sphere, and the first instant in which it is a sphere? Well, if they are the same, right? If they're not the same, there'd be some time between the two, right? In which case, in that time in between, you'd neither be a sphere nor not a sphere, which is impossible, right? Now, so Hegel says it must be the same, but yeah.

[29:34] So in that instant of the chain of contradictions, you both are and are not a sphere, right? You see, well, of course, that's committing something impossible, right? A contradiction, right? Well, Aristotle, of course, what solves it, right? By showing that when it becomes a sphere, in this time it becomes a sphere. At the end of that time, you are a sphere. So there's a first instant in which you are a sphere, but there's no what, last instance, instant in which you are not a sphere.

[30:11] That's kind of an amazing thing, right? So I was talking to him about when you're dying, right, huh? Will there be a last instant that you're alive, huh?

[30:28] No, no. There'll be a first instant which you're dead. I said, in case you want to know, I told him. In case you're curious about that, there would not be a last instant which you are alive, right? So when you're dying, you're coming to be dead, right? And when this activity of dying is completed, what are you? You're dead. So there's a first instant which you're dead, but there's no last instant in which you are what, alive, huh?

[30:55] Whereas Saint Augustine, kind of in the sixth book, but it takes up again in the eighth book, you know, okay. Well, De Koninck was talking about this and the difficulty of Hegel, right, And how he didn't see these things, right. That's a rather important thing, right? But then I haven't looked at De Koninck's thing for a long time, but he goes into the difficulties they had in the Middle Ages, right?

[31:22] And the one with the Eucharist, right? So you got bread here, and then the body of our Lord later on, right? You've got wine here, and then the blood of our Lord, right? Okay. So there's a time which it is bread, right? But that time comes to an end, right? So that's the last instant in which it is bread, right? Okay. And then there's a time where it begins to be what,

[31:51] the body of our Lord, and therefore there's a first instant in which it is the body of our Lord. Now, are those two instances the same? Well, if they were, then you'd have something heretical. You'd have both the body and the bread there together, right? The same thing with the wine and the blood, right? Okay. Because there was a problem for the people in the Middle Ages, right?

[32:16] But Thomas says there's no last instant in which it is bread, but there's a first instant in which it is what? It is the body, yeah. And there's no last instant in which it is wine. There's a last time we can take, whatever you want to take, an hour or a minute or what, but there's no last instant, no indivisible, right? But there's a first instant in which it is what, the blood of our Lord, right?

[32:47] That's very important, right, huh? You see how how enormously important this was, huh? So anyway, I'm reading along here, you know, and the last question there in the De Veritatis about grace, huh?

[33:02] And of course, the question is, can you be free of your guilt without grace? The answer is no, right? Okay. But even one of the objections I thought was very clever, right? It says you're in a state of guilt, but that time has an end, right? And the justification takes place in the in the confession. So there's a last instant in which you are what? You're in guilt, right?

[33:29] Okay. Likewise, the later time in which you are what? In grace, right? And therefore, it's the first instant which you are in grace, right? Now, is the last instant in which you are in guilt the same as the first instant which you are in grace? No, because then you have real contraries there together, right? Therefore, they're two different instances, right? But then there's some time between the two, right?

[33:57] In that time, you're neither in guilt nor in what? Grace. But if you're not in grace in that time in between, right? And you have to, you couldn't be, because because this is where the other one begins. But you're not in guilt either. Therefore, you're freed of your guilt in that time in between the two nows without grace. Pretty good argument, right? You know. Well,

[34:31] what's interesting about Thomas's consideration thing, right, is he gives, he goes through three attempts to answer this, right? And after everyone, he says this cannot stand, and he shows why it can't stand, right? Huh? But I won't go through all of them, you know, with you, but just take one of them, right? Huh? The guy says, well, although it's the same now, right? Insofar as it's the end of the past, it has what?

[35:01] Guilt, right? Insofar as it's the beginning of the future, it has, yeah. Thomas says, but that's not going to stand, right? Because it's still one now. It's one that one now. See, but they're they're straining, you know, to what? Get out of this, and it goes through three different ones, apparently historical ones, and so. And then he says, and finally he solves it the same way that we solved the one on the Eucharist.

[35:29] I don't know if DeKyne gives this one or not. I remember the one the Eucharist, but I didn't remember this one. Um, and there is a what? A last. There's no last instant in which you are in guilt, but there's a first instant in which you are what? In grace, right? And and then he ends up with the solution is from Aristotle, the eighth book of the what?

[35:54] Natural hearing. See, my goodness, you know. You see, oh, Hegel going astray there, you know, and talking about. Change between contradictories, you know, in natural philosophy, and now you see the Eucharist, the greatest of the sacraments, and even now the confession is a very great sacrament too. The difficulty is we're not seeing what Aristotle saw here, right?

[36:19] But how does first or last, right? How are they defined? In relation to before and after Yeah, yeah. So Aristotle is looking for what is first or last in this change, right? Or where there is a first or a last, right? You know, he's looking before and after, right?

[36:47] And he saw that there was no last second in which you are alive, right? There, in the same way, Thomas saw that, you know, following Aristotle, that there was no last second in which it is bread, right? There's no last second in which you are in guilt, right? Notice the enormous accomplishment of Aristotle, there, right? But looking before and after, right? Huh? In a very subtle way that Hegel wasn't able to do, and all these theologians in the Middle Ages weren't able to do, right?

[37:21] You know, that's absolutely amazing, right? Amazing. Had Hegel actually studied Aristotle and Saint Thomas and missed this sort of thing, or was were there gaps in his education? At least a gap in his understanding. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Was his background was if if he just missed it when he had gone through it, or he never actually saw the beginning? Well, it depends on how thoroughly they read it, you know, huh?

[37:55] I remember De Koninck saying one time in that volume, you know, oh, they read Aristotle's Physics on weekends at Columbia. He just mentioned that you know it's kind of you know it's a it's kind of a joke, right? Huh? I mean, what what do you understand, right? Huh? You know, I remember my my friend Warren Murray was taking a philosophy course at University of Minnesota, you know, and the very obvious thing the professor was just giving you know saying what Aristotle did not say, right?

[38:27] As if he had said it, right? And you know, he's maintained that Aristotle was looking for the four causes everywhere, you know. Well Aristotle in mathematics wouldn't look for in their purpose, you know? What's the purpose, you know, for a right angle triangle?

[38:50] Yeah, yeah, yeah. But Aristotle, you know, was had this this thing of forcing everything into these four things, you know, huh? Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, but he's a professor, you know, the University of Minnesota, you know, you know that he's read the man, obviously, but doesn't. Yeah, there's a similar. There's one particular document that just comes to mind. There's a document that put published a letter from one of the one of the councils in the Holy See.

[39:16] Yeah. About something liturgical, and I've heard one and one person say they've read it, and it says this, and it's exactly the opposite of what it says. Yeah. It's exactly the opposite of what it says. Yeah. And I just am astonished. Like, did you actually read this document? Because you're asserting that it says it says exactly the opposite of this detail, but what it said, right? I know.

[39:39] Yeah. One time, Rose and I went to some. Rose and I went for the parish one time to some meeting, you know. This Jesuit was doing the talking, right? And he was saying just the opposite of what the thing said, right? And so I told him about that. I said, "If you're going to be more careful with this," he said, "That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me, in a long time."This is a.

[40:05] How is it that Hegel could have such an incredible impact with his very erroneous foundations? Well, it it appeals to imagination in some way, you know. People want to believe it, in other words. Yeah, but it appeals to imagination, you know. Hegel Hegel's kind of fun to read, you know, and he's on literature and so on, right? And he talks about the the fine arts and he orders them, you know.

[40:30] He's good, you know. Um, he sees that music is higher than painting, you know. One of the reasons I ask is, uh, Margaret Mead had made a big splash in anthropology with her supposed excellent study in Samoa, and it turned out that it was all bogus. Yeah. yeah. It was a misinformation, essentially, And one anthropologist who came out and exposed this, who initially went along with it, he said, "Well, the reason why it caught so much traction was because we all really wanted to believe it, even though we could see that there was some error.

[41:06] So I was wondering if similar things. Oh yeah, oh yeah. They go into different areas. Yeah. This is what Pius XII said. um, it's in the Catechism I quote him about some things we because of the fall, of human nature, and the corruption of our will, things that are difficult to understand. We are easily persuaded that they're doubtful or simply not true because we don't want them to be true.

[41:31] That's that's part of the problem. the corruption of the will that's what you understand But Feuerbach you know, he syllogizes like this. He says, "Man's mind is infinite. Even the theologians tell us the infinite is God. Therefore, man's mind is God, right? " There you go. You know. Problem solved. Thomas, is, this is stupid. He's stupid, you know. But you know how how Marx, as a young man, and and uh Engels and so on, they all became enthusiastic for Feuerbachians right?

[41:58] huh Does his name mean River of Fire. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah When you read you know Marx's introduction to his doctoral thesis, you know. you really see the, "Pride," you know, just, yeah, just smoking, you know.

[42:26] Yeah. It gets anybody who doesn't admit the human mind to be the highest divinity, you know, and so. This is terrible. Some of the bishops in are getting together, you know, you heard about that, for the next synod, you know, to push their things about homosexual marriage and so on. Oh, boy. Yeah. yeah. Terr- terrible, yeah. Which bishops are these? Let's go find out. Well, Marx there from Germany, the head of the thing in France, yeah, yeah.

[43:07] Some of the theologians they got, you know, they want to ordain women and so on. And you know, I remember John Paul II saying, you know, this thing about only men can be priests. You know, this is de fide, right? I mean, it's pretty clear, you know. I mean, this is like they still haven't left the nineteen sixties yet. these people Yeah, yeah. I think it's kind of kind of depressing to see that people that high up, you know.

[43:31] Well, that's what it's those Germanic? countries It's those Germanic countries are still under the influence of Arians yeah. According to Belloc, they never really became Christians they became Arians. but yeah, that's what I heard Father Hardon say. Of course, if you read the history of the church, synods and councils have been the most violent and vile encounters of Christians ever. You know, t here is no more disturbing congregation of Christians than a synod or a council.

[44:01] And so Father Hardon was talking about the synod on religious life back in the nineties, mid nineties. He knew a bishop that attended it. and the bishop came home and said, "I've never been so insulted in all my life." So I can only anticipate what's this one? This is going to be the, the knockdown drag out of them all. this one, Yeah, yeah. Wow, So Cardinal Newman, uh, I think, was invited to Vatican 1, Yeah.

[44:26] but he bowed out, He said, "No thanks." I think his phlegmatic temperament was not up to the. You know, he he studied the history of the church and he knew he was so sensitive he could he couldn't he'd have a nervous breakdown if he went.

[44:40] You know, that's why they stopped wearing beards. They have come to the fisticuffs sometimes. You see how important it is what Shakespeare is saying, though. Though you know that's, yeah. How Aristotle was, you know, was able to see the. Yeah, that's amazing to me. Yeah,

[45:09] but the importance of that for theology, you see that, you know, when De Koninck gives those examples, or this one here, that was just that's that's two of chief sacraments, right? The Eucharist is the greatest sacrament, confession, you know, is the most common sacraments.

[45:27] Baptism would be the same. Yeah, yeah, And you're justifying. Yeah. I was kind of surprised. It was interesting about this text in the in the De Veritate is that he has about 3 different attempts, you know, that don't stand, you know, to to resolve it, you know, and you see in the mind in good faith, maybe trying to get out of this difficulty, right? Well, you can think of it.

[45:49] I was just thinking of it in terms of marriage. Yeah. Either you are tied or not, or you don't. Yeah. Are you free or are you tied? Yeah. You can say, well, where's the last instant when you are free? Yeah. Rosenau is joking. We say marriage is a dead end, you know. and because people look at it and say "must be something wrong with their marriage," something their marriage, is suffering or something, you know.

[46:11] He says dead. there's no way out. There's no way out. of death. Yeah. That's what a fellow I met at the hardware store. He's dead. Douglas O'Hara. And we were talking. He asked me something about marriage. because his wife had died years ago." And he said, "Oh, so I guess death is like the ultimate divorce." But I said, "No, it's dissolution. It's not."

[46:33] Untying the knot. It isn't just it isn't divorce. Can we finish the article. Third objection. Okay. To third, it should be said that to judge about something can be understood in two ways. In one way, as the knowing power judges about its own what object,

[47:06] just as what, just as what, do not. According to that of Job twelve, do not the what? Does not the ear judge the sound words. Yeah, or does not judge the words of the ear, right? Okay. And the throat, huh? The savor of the one eating, or the one eating. Yeah, I suppose that's. his Couches is your jaws or. Yeah,

[47:38] yeah. Okay. I suppose that's true about man. Okay. According to this way of judging, right, huh? The philosopher says that each one judges well what he knows, right? By judging to it whether it be true what has been proposed, right? In another way, according as the higher judges about the what lower by certain practical what judgment, right? Whether it ought to be so or is not so, right?

[48:15] Huh? And thus, no one is able to judge about the eternal law, right? Okay. Notice, I take the example there, marriage that you're giving there, right? If the marriage is going to be annulled, right? That's belong to the to the people who are married to make this judgment, right? That their marriage should be annulled, as not being a valid marriage, right? See, you might say it's not for them to judge, right?

[48:41] Huh? Even though in some sense they they might know something about their marriage, right? You know. Yeah. Okay. So that's the sense which you you you see that sometimes said. Okay.

[49:05] Let's turn on.