7 Reasons to LOVE St Thomas Aquinas (an Introduction to the Angelic Doctor)

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd, and I am very happy to be with you. Over the last eight, was it eight? No, six days. Over the last six days, I gave twelve different talks in Texas. I arrived in Austin, drove to Houston, drove back to Austin, spoke in San Marcos, and it was amazing. I'll share some of those stories another time, but it's really great to have you. Today, I want to give an introduction to Thomas Aquinas. Obviously, I've been doing this podcast, Pints with Aquinas, for the last five years. It was prior to Trump. It was pre-Trump. It's great. I love doing it. It just occurred to me that many people have been listening to these podcasts, and they're like, okay, I pretty much understand Thomas Aquinas. I know some things about him, but maybe you'd like to know more. So that's what this is about. I want to share with you seven reasons the world needs Thomas Aquinas, seven reasons I love Thomas Aquinas, and you should, too. Now, look, I'm not an academic, nor do I consider myself an expert on Thomas Aquinas, so maybe we should call this an introduction to an introduction on Thomas Aquinas. It'll be fun either way, so I'm really glad that you are here. Do us a favor, subscribe if you haven't already. Click that thumbs up button and share the video on Facebook. That's the best way you can really support this channel. Next week, we are hosting an Orthodox Catholic debate. We're going to be debating whether the papacy, as it was defined in the first Vatican Council, finds its roots in patristic sources or not. So that's going to be a really interesting debate. So make sure you subscribe, click that bell button, and that way you won't miss awesome things like that. All right. Before we do anything else, I thought it would be super appropriate if we began with a prayer from Thomas Aquinas. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Creator of all things, true source of light and wisdom, origin of all being, graciously let a ray of your light penetrate the darkness of my understanding. Take from me the double darkness in which I've been born, an obscurity of sin and ignorance. Give me a keen understanding, a retentive memory, and the ability to grasp things correctly and fundamentally. Grant me the talent of being exact in my explanations and the ability to express myself with thoroughness and charm. Point out the beginning, direct the progress, and help in the completion. I ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. I want to begin with a short timeline about Thomas Aquinas, and I will fill in some things along the way. Thomas Aquinas was born in the 13th century in 1225 in a town called Roca Seca, which is about an hour and a half northwest of Naples. Roca Seca is a word which means dry rock, and it's been pointed out on more than one occasion that that was sort of prophetic because people tend to find his writings like eating gravel at times. It can be pretty hard. Five years after his birth, he went to school at the Benedictine Monastery, which St. Benedict actually founded, how cool is that? He was five years old, as I say, at Monte Cassino. And apparently, he would often ask his teachers, what is God? We can know what a human being is. We can know what a plant is, or a tree, or a beaver, or a deer. But what is God? And it's really kind of a good question. Aquinas later on, of course, in the Summa Theologiae and elsewhere would say, we can't know what God is. We can know that God is without the use of revelation, but we cannot know what God is even with the help of revelation. Why? Well, because whenever we define something, we make it less, we define it, like finite, we de-finite it. So you kind of break it up into chunks, you know, like man is a rational animal. But since God is infinite in being, we cannot grasp what God is. In 1239, oh, by the way, he would have been an oblate with the Benedictines, would have even wore the black habit, I believe. Of course, he didn't stay with the Benedictines, which was fine, because he left prior to the age in which he would have to have made his final consent. But in 1239, he continued his university studies in Naples. There was some political unrest, which caused him to have to leave Monte Cassino. And this is where he met the Dominican order for the first time. Now, you know, if you have a brother or a sister who becomes a Dominican or a son or a daughter, or maybe you become a Dominican or a Franciscan, you know, it's a pretty respectable thing. It's a very respectable thing. You know, like I actually met a father the other day in San Marcos. He said, my daughter's a Dominican sister. I was like, that's awesome, you know. But at the time, Dominicans and Franciscans weren't thought of terribly highly. There was quite a weird movement. It was called the mendicant movement, mendicant coming from the Latin mendicare, which means to beg. You see, prior to the mendicant orders, religious orders took a sort of vow of stability like the Benedictines or the Cistercians. They would stay in one place. But these new orders rose up in response, actually, to certain heretical movements like the Cathars and the Albigensians, and they would beg for their provisions. They would live in the new urban centers and so forth. Part of the reason they had to respond to these heretical movements in this way was that these new heretical movements, while they had heresies, they also had some things they were trying to do that were of value. They were trying to get back to sacred scripture, for example. They were trying to live a more austere life. And so they were meeting these heretics on their own terms, if you want, but then without the heresy. So anyway, it wasn't a terribly, what do you say, respectable thing to be a Dominican at the time. And that's why in 1244, even though he joins the Dominicans, his family protests. I think his father had passed away by then. But his mother sent, I think, two of his brothers to go and capture him and bring him back under house arrest to the family castle where he was born. He was there for about a year. It was during that time, it's said, that he memorized a great deal of sacred scripture. Even his example even kind of talked one of his sisters into becoming a nun. In 1245, he was released by his mother. We're not really sure why, but one theory is that she realized she couldn't get through to him. The brothers couldn't convince him to do anything else. I mean, his mother had hoped he would become the abbot of Monte Cassino because there would have been great prestige in that and other things, power, wealth, at least for the family. So anyway, eventually couldn't convince him. So I think she let him go and then maybe said, you know, he left to save face. At least that's one of the theories. He went to Paris and he studied with one of the greatest philosophers of the time, Albert the Great. In 1250, he was ordained a priest. He was named Master of Theology in 1256. In 1260, he begins the Summa Theologiae. So two of his most major works are the Summa Theologiae and the Summa Contra Gentiles. And he started the Summa Contra Gentiles in 1260, about five years later is when he started the Summa Theologiae. The Summa Contra Gentiles is actually, in my opinion, a more enjoyable read because it really does read entirely, I think, like a work of apologetics. It means a summary against the Gentiles. And so he often doesn't resort to sacred scripture if he's trying to come up with arguments to refute the Mohammedans, you see. So anyway, the Summa Contra Gentiles is something that he did finish. The Summa Theologiae, which is what he's most known for, he didn't finish. Man, there's so much I could say, but I want to kind of move on here. Let's see. Let's kind of come towards the end of his life. 1273, he stops working on the Summa Theologiae. Right. Why? Because on the Feast of St. Nicholas on December the 6th, after celebrating Holy Mass, it's said that he had a vision of God. Brother Reginald apparently witnessed this and saw our Lord say to Thomas, And Thomas said what you should say. I think I would say, like, a jeep and a trip to Russia. And Aquinas said, And I love that way of putting it. I'll have everything if I can have you. I'll have nothing if I can have you. I'll have some things if I can have you, but I don't want anything or nothing or some things or everything if it means I don't have you. I want you. Beautiful. He died in 1274 on his way to the Council of Lyon. And while he was dying, he was in a Cistercian monastery at Fosanova. He was asked by the monks to dictate a commentary on the Song of Songs, that beautiful book of the Bible. We don't have it. We have a lot of his commentaries. I've got a ton of them up here. We don't have the Song of Songs. I wonder if we ever will. At least the commentary on it is what I made, of course. 1323, he's canonized. And 1567, he is made a doctor of the church. So, yeah, there's a brief history about Thomas Aquinas. So why do we need Thomas Aquinas? We need Thomas Aquinas because we need Jesus Christ. And it seems to me that the best people able to exemplify Christ and teach us about Christ are saints and scholars. And Thomas was top among both. And he comes—well, we'll get to that. We'll get to that first one in just a second. Before I do that, I want to say thank you to Catholic Chemistry. Check these guys out. I know the bloke who founded this. His name is Chuck Gallucci. I used to work with him at Catholic Answers. This is the best Catholic dating website that you're going to find. When COVID hit, they actually came up with this video and voice chat. And they were the first ones to do it among Catholic dating websites. And that way, you don't have to give out your number to somebody you don't know very well. But you can just straightaway jump on a call. It's highly recommended by a lot of people. It's really serious stuff. And I would highly recommend you go check it out, Catholic Chemistry. There is a link in the description below which I want you to click on. Listen to this one testimony from someone who did it. They said, I reluctantly joined Catholic Chemistry in January 2020. After over two years of online dating, I had become very discouraged. 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Okay, here is the first reason I love Thomas Aquinas and you should too. And that is he comes highly recommended. That's a good reason. You know, like we are or ought to be humble sons and daughters of the church. And if the church highly recommends that you read someone, you know, you should listen. There are so many quotations that have come down to us from the popes. I'll just read one, though I could read many. Pope John XXIII said this when he was speaking about St. Thomas. He said that his life was more saintly and his doctrine could only be miraculous because he enlightened the church more than all the other doctors. By the use of his works, a man could profit more in one year than if he studies the doctrine of the of others for his whole life. How good is that? I got to read one more. Pope Benedict XV said that along with our predecessors, we are equally persuaded that the only philosophy worth our efforts is that which is according to Christ. Therefore, the study of philosophy according to the principles and system of Aquinas must certainly be encouraged so that the explanation and invincible defense of divinely revealed truths may be as full as human reason can make of it. So there's the first reason. Here is the second reason as I drink my black Russian tea. Thomas Aquinas, of course, was a champion of faith and reason. And very often in our day and age, if somebody considers themselves very reasonable, they may look upon religion with undue skepticism. And likewise, if somebody considers themselves very religious, they may view with sort of unnecessary skepticism advances and findings of modern science. But Aquinas recognized that truth is truth and all of it comes from the same source. You could never have a truth of faith contradict a truth of science or philosophy. If you think you've found one, that's only because you have bad faith or bad science or philosophy. Aquinas recognized that truth, quote, is the agreement or conformity of reality and the mind's judgment of reality. Or to put it more simply, what is truth? It is the equation of thought and thing. I like how Pope St. John Paul II put it when giving an address on Thomas Aquinas, talking about these two ways that we come to know. He says, philosophical and theological truth converge into a single truth. Truth of reason goes back from creatures to God. Truth of faith descends directly from God to man. Now, there was a movement within the 13th century church that was, you know, very pernicious, namely that of the Latin Averroists. There was a Muslim philosopher and translator of Aristotle, who Aquinas in the Summa refers to simply as the translator. And whereas he, I think, did not propose a sort of double truth theory, some of his followers did, such as Siger of Brabant. And these people seemed to have said that religion has its truths and philosophy has its truths. And so Siger of Brabant seems to have said, since Aristotle has given proofs for why the universe is infinite in the past, I therefore believe that the universe has always existed. But, says Siger of Brabant, since I am a Christian and Genesis teaches that the world began to exist, I also believe that the universe is not infinite in the past. This, of course, is silly, and Aquinas recognized it as such and had some pretty prickly language for those who would hold to this sort of thing. Another reason I love Aquinas, and this comes under him being a champion of faith and reason, is that he did not mischaracterize his opponents' arguments. And I think we very often do, not just in public debates, but even among friends and in our own thinking. We tend to strawman our opponents' arguments. We weaken them to such a degree that we can get away with, and then we knock them over. That's why that fallacy is called a strawman argument, because it's easier to knock down a strawman than a real man. Aquinas didn't do this. Aquinas not only did not strawman his opponents' arguments, but he steelmanned them. That is to say, he often made them stronger than his opponents could. In the Prima Pars of the Summa Theologiae, Question 2, Article 3, Aquinas addresses the question of God's existence. Does God exist? And he gives two arguments for thinking that he doesn't before responding to them. And what's interesting is, this just goes to show how brilliant he is, the two arguments that he puts forth are really the two arguments that we hear about today. I mean, there's so many bad arguments for atheism. Somebody might say, I only believe in one less God than you, or something. Or they might say, all religions are equal, they're just different expressions of mythical truths. Or they might say, I don't know, who created God? Or they might say, religion is just bad for the world. I don't know. Christopher Hitchens was really good at making bad arguments, but he was fun to listen to, though. But the two arguments, I think, that we keep hearing that are, at least on the surface of them, formidable, are arguments from evil and science. And even arguments, say, from the hiddenness of God. If God existed, surely he would make his existence more evident to us. Even that, I think, would be a subset of the problem of evil. Like, why is it the case that we don't know or can't see that God exists? But, anyway, those are the two objections Aquinas offers. And what I want to do is just read to you the objection he gives from evil. I'm not going to give his response to it, but I just want to show you how formidable it is. How formidable it is. Listen to this. Suppose I put you on the video right now, and you had a camera in front of you, and I said, I'm going to read this objection, and then I'd like you to answer it. Let's see how well you think you'd do. Here's the argument. For atheism, again, from evil. And, again, then Aquinas is going to respond to it. We won't get to that, but here it is. It seems that God does not exist. Because if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. But the word God means that he is infinite goodness. So, if, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable. But there is evil in the world. Therefore, God doesn't exist. That's a pretty formidable argument, I think. So, the point of this is just to show he doesn't mischaracterize his opponent's arguments, and that's very impressive. You know, another thing that I think is worthy of our respect under this category of Aquinas being a champion of faith and reason is that he did not adopt arguments for his position merely because they supported his position. We might do that. Suppose you think that abortion is evil, and then somebody comes up with an argument against abortion that's actually really bad. You know, like, okay, yeah, abortion's evil, but this argument isn't proving that. I don't know where you got that from. We tend to stay silent about those arguments. We don't tend to pick them apart, especially not in public. Aquinas wasn't like that. He didn't want bad arguments being made for God's existence. And here are three that he considered bad. Number one was the most popular theistic argument in Christian history, probably still today, and at least prior to the time of the 13th century, when Aquinas lays out his five ways, namely the ontological argument, which was written and conceived by Anselm of Canterbury. Aquinas rejects it. Now, I don't know what I think about it, honestly. I haven't done enough study, but Aquinas thinks it's a bad argument. Another argument for God's existence that he thinks is bad is the kalam cosmological argument. Now, that's come to be known as such because of the work of Dr. William Lane Craig, but it actually, I think, stems back at least to, is it, Al-Ghazali, the Islamic philosopher. And the argument basically goes, everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence, and the universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe has a cause for its existence. Now, in Aquinas' day, they had really no knowledge of, obviously, modern cosmology, so they couldn't appeal to scientific evidence for why the world began to exist. They were merely relying on philosophical arguments. So it was that second premise, the universe began to exist, that Aquinas said, you can't prove that by philosophy. And his contemporary, St. Bonaventure, a Franciscan, a doctor of the church, he died the same year, actually, as Thomas Aquinas. Bonaventure thinks the argument does work, and he showed certain absurdities that would result if the universe had never began to exist, and there was sort of, the past was infinite. Aquinas thinks it doesn't work. I mean, here's an example, just in case you've never heard the sort of kalam argument before. This is just very brief, but suppose I was to say, okay, if the universe is infinite, if it stretches back infinite into the past, then it would follow that there has been an infinite series of moments that preceded this moment, yes? But if there were an infinite series of moments that preceded this moment, then this moment should never have arrived, because you can't chronologically make your way through an infinite number of anything. Therefore, the universe must have begun to exist. He gives other arguments, of course. The point is, Aquinas has some blistering words for proponents of the kalam argument. His main point is, don't use bad arguments for God's existence, because then you make us look silly. So even though people like Richard Dawkins totally misunderstand Aquinas' five ways, you shouldn't. And that is to say, his five ways don't depend on the finitude of the past. So when he talks about a first mover, he's not talking about a first mover in time, when he's talking about a first cause, he's not talking about a first cause in time. If the universe had never begun to exist, Aquinas' arguments, theoretically, would still work. So they don't depend on that, because Aquinas doesn't think philosophically you can prove that the universe began to exist. And so when he comes up with arguments for God's existence, he's obviously not relying on revelation, which says the universe began to exist, and so he's assuming the universe is eternal. Another argument he rejects is an argument that certain philosophers, Christian philosophers, had made prior to the time of Aquinas, and maybe since, I'm not sure. And that is an argument to think that God is triune. Hugh of St. Victor would be an example who lived prior to the time of Aquinas, who thought you could come up with a philosophical argument for God's being trinity. So Aquinas doesn't think that you need revelation to know God exists. You heard that right. You don't need the Bible and you don't need faith to know that God exists. That was ratified by the First Vatican Council. But, he says, there are certain things that you can't know. You cannot know, for example, the existence of angels unless it's revealed to us. You wouldn't be able to know that the second person of the Blessed Trinity became man, of course. You couldn't know about transubstantiation and the Eucharist except for divine revelation. These aren't things that we can reason to from philosophical axioms. Same thing with the Trinity. So somebody might try and say, okay, you know, like, if God is love, then love, what is love? Well, for love to exist, there needs to be three things. The one who loves, the one who is loved, and the love that they share. So if God is love, God is three things. Therefore, God is triune or something like that. The only reason I'm spending so much time on this is just to say, Aquinas will not adopt an argument that he doesn't think is good for the position he wants to make or hold. And I think we can learn a lot from that. That's the reason I love Aquinas, and that's a reason that I think you should as well. Here's the third reason. He's extremely clear. Aquinas can say more in a page, I think, than I could say in a book. He gets right to the point, and it's very refreshing. I think that today, we tend to cover up our lack of knowledge with passion. We say something passionately. Maybe we cry or something like that. We say something that moves people emotionally, and this is thought to be a strong argument. But it could be a terrible argument that just happened to be emotionally moving. So I think that's what we tend to do. We cover up our lack of knowledge with words. We just keep speaking, hoping it'll somehow convince you, sort of filibuster, and with passion. Now, Albert Einstein supposedly said that if you can't explain something simply, then you don't understand it well enough. And I think that, whether he said that or not, I think that's excellent. This is why I think people love C.S. Lewis so much. You don't get the sense that he's waffling. You don't get the sense that he's talking about things he hasn't thought through and accepted. And Aquinas is like that as well. Let me kind of give you one example. This is a very short example. And this is Aquinas talking about three kinds of knowledge that are necessary for salvation. Listen to how clear and to the point he is. The knowledge of what we must believe, the knowledge of that for which we must pray, and the knowledge of what he must do. The first is taught in the creeds of our faith, the second in the prayer of the Lord, the third in the commandments. So that's what I mean. Very, very down to earth. All right. The fourth reason I love Thomas Aquinas, and you should too, is that he's incredibly down to earth. And we'll get to that in just one moment. But first, I wanted to say thank you to our sponsor, Hallo. Now, Hallo is a fantastic Catholic prayer app. It's the number one downloaded Catholic app on iTunes. It's incredible. It really, really is. They have sleep stories. They have Bible studies. They have somebody who can lead you through in the rosary and things like this. There was a time I would actually take my earbuds into Eucharistic adoration. I'm not sure if I am allowed to do that, am I? But I did. And I don't know why I wouldn't be. And I listened to meditations on the Scripture. And you can click it like it's a five-minute meditation, you know, or a ten-minute or a twenty-minute. And then you can actually put synth music or Gregorian chant behind it. You can ask it to have a woman read you the meditation or a man. It's sort of like those anxiety apps, you know, like Calm. Except unlike those apps, this is not going to lead you into sort of New Age fallacies. So go check out Hallo.com.com.com.com.com.com.com. Again, there is a link in the description below. The app is free, but in order to get access to everything, you have to pay, which is fair enough. They're putting a ton of money into this thing. But in order to get access to the entire app for three months for free, click below Hallo.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com. And as you sign up on the website, just use Matt Fradd's promo code. You are going to get three months. You can try it out. If you don't like it, you can just quit. But I've used it and my wife has used it. And we have both found it really, really helpful. So please go check it out. Hallo.com.com.com.com.com.com. Hallo.com.com.com.comm.com.com.com.com. Okay. Number four, as I say he is down to earth. I'm going to have a sip of tea here because I'm doing a lot more talking than I usually do. Cheers. mug, in case you were wondering. Oh my goodness. That is good. Go Russia. All right. It's Russian black tea, for those who weren't around earlier. When we think of academics, we tend to think of them as people who are aloof. People who are interested maybe in theories and arguments and data, but aren't terribly interested or concerned about the problems of everyday people. And this wasn't at all Thomas Aquinas. Thomas recognized what the church, of course, teaches, which is we are not ghosts in a machine. We are not, how else to put it, sort of the platonic view of the body. We are our bodies. Our body is equally a part of who we are. If I slap you, I don't slap the colonel. Think about that. That's really funny. If I'm not my body and you're not your body, then if I slap you, which would be a terrible thing to do, of course, I'm merely manipulating the husk, which is not me, and striking the husk, which is not you. So I actually never strike you. But of course, that's ridiculous. We are our bodies and we have to take care of our bodies. And so Aquinas has five remedies for sorrow, which of course we've spoken about on the show before. So I won't go into it a great deal. If you want to learn more, go to pintswithaquinas.com and type in five remedies for sorrow and you can check that out. Also, I have to tell you this because I have put together, sorry, before we go any further, I've put together an ebook for you guys, which I think you're going to actually find terribly bloody helpful. This is pintswithaquinas.com in case you didn't know. This is my website. It's really great. But as you can see up here, you can put in your email address and get a free ebook. It's called You Can Understand Aquinas. And it's also down here. Just put in your email and you'll get it sent to your inbox. And in that ebook, I go over a bunch of Aristotelian metaphysical terms and show you what they mean. Because I think often this is what prevents people from diving into Aquinas. They're not really sure what he means when he talks about cause and motion and accident and existence and essence and these sorts of things. And so I go over them and explain them for you in a way that I think you'll find most helpful. So go to pintswithaquinas.com. You can click below. There's a link in the description and that'll take you to get the free ebook. All right. Okay, so moving on. Here are the five remedies for sorrow. Pleasure, weeping, the sympathy of friends, contemplating the truth, and then my personal favorite, sleep and baths. Now we could go into this, of course, in great detail, but I really don't want to, because as I say, we've done this in previous episodes, but just real sort of quickly. Pleasure, he says, is a kind of repose of the appetite in a suitable good. So if you're engaging in sins in order to get pleasure, this is an unsuitable good and you probably won't end up rested. You might end up more frantic, you know, but I love this line of his. He says, in movements of the appetite, listen to this. Pleasure is to sorrow what in bodies repose is to weariness. So you're tired. Therefore you sleep in order to feel refreshed. Well, Aquinas is saying, well, there's an analogy here. You feel sorrowful. So you engage in pleasure in order to be refreshed. So you could say in a sense that pleasure does for the soul what a good nap does for the body. The second thing he says we should do, and I think we've really lost this, is that we should weep. And he doesn't just say weep, somewhere he says weep tears and groans. So in other words, don't just cry, make it an ugly cry. And he says this for two reasons. And the first reason is just wonderful, because it sounds like something your mum said to you when you were six. Listen to this. First, because a hurtful thing hurts yet more if we keep it shut up. That is like advice your grandma gave you that, of course, Aquinas is here arguing for. What's the argument? Well, he says, because the soul is more intent on it. Whereas if it be allowed to escape through tears and groaning, the soul's intention is dispersed, as it were, on outward things, so that the inward sorrow is lessened. Right? And yeah, so we got to cry. We really have to kind of connect with that. And I would say like, if you're somebody who's been told from a young age that, you know, crying shows is weak, or if you're a man and you shouldn't cry, you might want to engage in some sort of, I don't know, movie or book or painting that kind of gets you to that place where you can actually cry. Full disclosure, about three weeks ago, I was reading a short story by Dostoevsky called A Gentle Creature. And he explains this in the preface, so I'm not giving anything away. But Dostoevsky says that, well, in the preface, he says that it's a story about a woman who's committed suicide, right? She's jumped out of a building and now she's laying dead upon a table. And the husband is sitting there trying to come to grips with what's just happened. And he goes through an account of their life and what ended up leading to this. Point is, I read that book, and I cried my eyes out. I mean, it just moved me in such a profound way. And I do think, you know, that we can sometimes be dissuaded from crying because of what we've heard in the past. Like, that's really a girly thing to do, or rather a weak thing. You shouldn't be crying. No, that's rubbish. Aquinas disagrees with the people who told you that, as do I. Three, the sympathy of friends. Four, contemplating the truth, right? We're not beasts who have been made for earthly things. We are body and soul, and our last end is to be found in none of these things, but in God alone. So we need to contemplate the truth, and this will help us be happy. Finally, sleep in baths. Listen to what he says here. By the way, I think what he's saying here is essentially what people today mean when they say self-care. But if it leads to narcissism, perhaps, in modern society, certainly he is warning against that. But the point remains, we've got to take care of our bodies, because we are our bodies, right? So he says, is repugnant to the vital movement of the body, and consequently, whatever restores the bodily nature to its due state of vital movement is opposed to sorrow and assuages it, which just means gets rid of it. Moreover, such remedies, from the very fact that they bring nature back to its normal state, are causes of pleasure, for this is precisely in what pleasure consists. Therefore, since every pleasure assuages sorrow, sorrow is assuaged by such-like bodily remedies. Notice he doesn't just limit it to sleep in baths, he's saying such-like. So I would suppose like a massage would do that, and maybe going for a swim, or working out, or sitting in a hot tub, sitting in a sauna, right? Aquinas would say that these are remedies for sorrow. So I just thought to myself, what would this look like if we were to put these five things together? If you're experiencing sadness right now, what might you do? Well, may I make a suggestion? You could go home tonight and read that short story that I told you about, A Gentle Creature, and it is a short story. You could read it in two to four hours, right? You could read that, and that would be pleasurable. If you're anything like me, you will weep your face off. Then you should have a hot bath, and a large glass of red wine, and a good night's sleep. Then when you wake up, you could have a coffee with a friend, and you could talk to them about your problems, and that would take care of number three, the sympathy of friends. Of course, contemplating the truth would be done as you read Dostoevsky's little story there. Another good story which I recommended earlier was Tolstoy's book, The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Try and read that without crying, you monster. All right, number five. We have three more, and I'll get through these rather quickly because I know that we've been going on a bit here. And yes, I did just spill tea all down my front. Number five, he was a man of great virtue. According to the records of his canonization, Thomas fell at once... Okay, let me back up. I didn't explain this. When Thomas was under house arrest, there was a point at which his brothers, who may have obviously wanted to dissuade him from becoming a Dominican, maybe they were jealous of his desire to be chased, sent a prostitute into the room. And what did he do? Did he chat with her? Did he sit down with her? No, actually. What he did was he went immediately to the fireplace and pulled out a hot fire iron and chased her out of the room with it. You will never hear that in a Jason Everett book, but Thomas Aquinas would probably say, in certain circumstances, that would be good. Now, I'm sure he had no intention of hurting the poor woman, but he didn't pussyfoot around with sin. And we often do, you know? Oh, it's not pornography, technically. Oh, it's a really good story, so yeah, like, I can watch it and it's okay, or whatever. Yeah, Aquinas wouldn't recommend that, eh? Don't do it. But it's said that after this time, after he chased the prostitute out of the room, he burnt, he got the metal, the iron poker, and he put a cross on the back of the door. And it's said that he fell into a mystical sleep and had a vision, and two angels came to him from heaven and bound a cord around his waist, saying, quote, on God's behalf, we gird you with a girdle of chastity, a girdle which no attack will ever destroy. In the records of his canonization, many different witnesses who knew Saint Thomas at different points in his life remarked about his evidently high degree of purity and chastity. Pope Pius XI said, if Saint Thomas had not been victorious when his chastity was in peril, it's very probable that the church would never have had her angelic doctor. Such a great point. I mean, and that's true of us in a sense, too, right? Like, we have vocations, we have things within our domain that we need to shepherd and help along. And if we are to be taken out by sexual sins, think about what we lose, not just what we lose, but what those around us lose. You know, when I was in high school, I remember a friend's dad, he just divorced his wife and moved to Bali, which I don't know in America what that would be, you know, somewhere in the Caribbean. It would be the equivalent, you know. And he just led this sort of depraved lifestyle and he even bleached his hair blonde. He was just this big, I mean, sorry, but he was a unhealthy dude with bleached tip blonde hair. And everyone kind of knew he was in Bali with hookers. And nobody was like, what a great guy. Everyone was like, it's super pathetic. You know, it's funny that we can see other people as being pathetic when they engage in lustful activities. But when we do it, we just kind of feel very empowered. It's really interesting. Point is, he didn't just destroy his own life, like he really destroyed people's lives around him. And same thing can be true of me and it can be true of you, unless we take virtue and growing in virtue seriously and relying on the grace of God, you know. All right, next to six, he addressed almost every question concerning Christianity and the moral life that you can think of. Let me just share a few with you. Do dogs go to heaven? Aquinas says, no. Now the church doesn't teach that officially. I hope he's wrong because I like my dog. But Aquinas says, no, they don't have rational souls. They don't survive death. Are wet dreams sinful? I mean, did you know that? Aquinas addressed that question. And Aquinas says, no, they're not sinful because in order to sin, you need to will the action or the lack of action that you're engaging in, you know, or not engaging in, you know. He says that you could be doing activities prior to sleep that are maybe sinful that then lead to that and that that would be something you should repent of. But a sexual dream, no matter how intense, is not sinful. Did Jesus have a guardian angel? Aquinas says, yes. Oh, that's so funny. Jesus having a guardian angel, that would be like, that would be like me being a bodyguard for a UFC fighter and being like, nah, I've got this, mate. If anything goes down, you can count on me. And he's like, okay, that's great. Just glad you're here. Aquinas asks, was the incarnation necessary? Well, he says, strictly speaking, and by necessary, I mean necessary for our salvation. Aquinas is strictly speaking, no. God could have saved mankind in any other of many other ways, but he says it was the most fitting. And so, in that sense, it was necessary and that it was fitting, but not strictly necessary. Aquinas asks or addresses the question, was there death prior to the fall of Adam and Eve? And Aquinas says, yes. What he addresses is animals. You know, we have these animals that are carnivorous. Well, did they only become carnivorous after the fall? Like, were lions eating grass and berries and then suddenly became carnivorous? Aquinas says, no, they were killing gazelles back then too, right? Or whatever the animals were, you see? And we also have, of course, the death of those plants. So, there was death prior to the fall, just not the death of man and woman. He addresses us a lot more, but I don't want to get into it because some of it's pretty intense without the context. Here's the final reason we should love Thomas Aquinas. Here's the seventh and final reason the world needs Thomas Aquinas, why you should love Thomas Aquinas, and that was he was immersed in sacred scripture and he loved Jesus Christ. Aquinas says somewhere, I don't know where, but I've heard it so often that I think it must be true. He said that studying philosophy is not about coming to know the different philosophers and what they said. It's about coming to know the truth. I mean, that's what he was interested in. He was interested in the truth. And so, he loved Jesus Christ and he loved sacred scripture. He wrote a bunch of commentaries, which I have here on my bookshelf. What do we have here? Jeremiah, I can't see, I'm blind. Yeah, John's gospel, Matthew's gospel. He wrote a commentary on the Psalms, a commentary on Job. He loved the sacred scripture. He was immersed in scripture. You cannot read the Summa Theologiae. Try to take, just randomly open up the Summa Theologiae. I was tempted to do it, but I won't. And then just go to one of his main answers. You bump into a scripture verse, almost every point he makes. Also, not only are his writings immersed in scripture, so for example, in the Summa Theologiae, you may have realized that he quotes Aristotle a great deal. Well, he actually quotes in order the Bible, then Augustine, then Aristotle. He quotes scripture the most. He has a work called the Cantena Aurea, I think I'm pronouncing that right, which is an editorial work in which he goes through the four gospels and then lays out what all of the church fathers had to say about those verses of scripture. Isn't that amazing? So imagine, Matthew chapter one, verse one through 10, here's what Jerome said, here's what Augustine said, here's what whoever said, he's going through them all. So nothing in this work of the Cantena Aurea is his. It's just a basic, it's a Bible study with the church fathers. If you have a priest and you care for him, you should buy him this. This would make a fantastic help for his homilies. And if your priest is bad at homilies and you want them to be more scriptural, you should also give him this because he could just look up whatever section he's reading and see what all the church fathers have to say about it. It's amazing. We know too, of course, what I said earlier, non niscite domine, he loved our blessed Lord. It's said that he would often lay his head upon the tabernacle and weep because he just, he loved our Lord. Listen to this final prayer that he offered as he was leaving this earth. He says this, I wish to receive thee. He's talking about our Lord in the Eucharist. I wish to receive thee price of my redemption, viaticum of my pilgrimage, for love of whom I have fasted, prayed, taught, and labored. Never have I said anything against thee. If I have, it was in ignorance and I do not persist in my ignorance. I leave the correction of my work to the holy Catholic church. And in that obedience, I pass from this life. Right? So not only was he a great saint, a great scholar, he was also a humble son of the church. And you and I should be like that as well. You know, there's never been a shortage of scandals within the church. We may be seeing more of it today than we have in the past, but there's always been scandal and scandal is never a reason to cease being a humble son. And I say, this is somebody who struggles to be a humble son a lot of the time, but there you go. There are seven reasons we should love Thomas Aquinas. Let me suggest a couple of resources. Linked in the description below is a podcast I recorded a few years back, and it's 10 books on or about Aquinas that you should read. Two that I mentioned are the Dumb Ox by GK Chesterton and Guide to Thomas Aquinas by Joseph Pieper. So anyway, click that below and you can listen to that and that'll kind of give you more of a, it'll fill in, you know, more. What am I trying to say? It's just listen to it. Okay. That's what I'm trying to say. As far as podcasts, obviously you're listening to Pints with Aquinas. If you want to listen to something far more sophisticated and academic having to do with Thomas Aquinas, be sure to check out the Thomistic Institute. These guys, Dominican friars up in DC are doing fantastic work. They've got a great podcast that you can listen to of academic lectures that are held all around the country. They're getting into video in a big way as well, and I just can't recommend them highly enough. So type in the Thomistic Institute. Oh, I just realized something. I've mentioned Bonaventure a few times, haven't I? So why don't I end with this? Bonaventure, Franciscan, right? Doctor of the church, 1274 is when he died, same year as Thomas Aquinas. You want to know something funny? Thomas Aquinas is the patron saint of teachers and the universities. Well, you want to know what Bonaventure is the patron saint of? Bowel issues. Take from that what you will. Hey, thank you so much for being here. I hope that this has been a good introduction to an introduction on Thomas Aquinas. If you haven't yet, help the channel out by subscribing and clicking that bell button. You can obviously listen to these podcasts wherever you get podcasts, Apple iTunes, all that sort of stuff, Spotify. And if you'd like to support the work that we're doing, I would be so, so humbled if you would go to patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. I just spent over 30 grand setting up this studio, and that's not an exaggeration. That is actually how much we've spent on all the equipment, on soundproofing the room. We've got more to go, actually. You may notice a slight echo in here. I need to buy some soundproofing panels. And then, of course, we plan on flying people in, right? And that all costs money as well, in addition to the 30 grand. No one tell my wife. And, of course, we want to host debates. And whenever I host debates, I offer money to those who come on debate, you know, and it's not insignificant. And then we have other things, you know, Father Gregory Pine, who we pay to do his excellent weekly podcast. So, if you like the show and you want to support it, please go to patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. When you do, you get a bunch of free things in return. Pints with Aquinas beer steins, pints with Aquinas stickers. You get books sent to your door. You get access to these online courses that we keep doing. We just did a five-part Bible history course. It's a great community over there on patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. So, please, please consider doing that. God bless you, and thanks for being here.