Does God Speak Through Signs? (Aquinas 101)
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- Опубліковано 26 вер 2021
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Is it reasonable to believe in God because of supernatural signs? Catholicism says yes: many signs confirm that God himself has revealed the mysteries of faith spelled out in the articles of the Creed. St. Thomas Aquinas says it belongs to theology to offer a narrative of those confirmatory signs. In this video, Fr. James Brent reviews the illative sense, motives of credibility, and such confirmatory signs, or evidences, for the faith.
Does God Speak through Signs? (Aquinas 101) - Fr. James Brent, O.P.
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This video was made possible through the support of grant #61944 from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.
Bishop Barron did a wonderful talk on at Oxford about the illative sense. I recommend it to any of you interested in this concept
Do you have a link?
It is such a delight to have these intellectually rich discussions of the problems of the faith!
I Love from India
I am happy and grateful that this channel exists.
We're happy and grateful you're watching! God bless you.
Nice concept for tying together visible signs. I think I ll remember that. It helps that it has a long history itself. Thanks.
You're welcome! Thanks very much for watching. God bless you!
Great video!
Thanks! God bless you.
Beautiful video
Many thanks! We're so glad you enjoyed it.
What do you mean by “they at least ‘thought’ they experienced the risen Jesus”? Are you saying that the resurrection is reducible to a thought? I was under the firm teaching that He absolutely rose from the dead and many people actually saw Him.
No prejudice against the supernatural, no prejudice for natural law.
That would be me., it would explain why I have no problem with believing a few things , but then I deeply know natural law isn't all there is.
thank you so much father
Thanks very much!
Lol, faith literally goes hand in hand with knowledge. Hoping that scientific measurements will lead to a positive result is faith.
Yeah, thats where I take the Augustinian perspective. Faith is unreasonable to the carnal mind. That is also the case Paul is making in the first three chapter of 1 Corinthians.
I recommend the reading of Augustine Confessions, Book 6 chapter 5. Augustine says that faith without reason, or at least reason outside of faith, was the common practice in the church. The early church also taught these principles and I think we should abide to those teachings.
We agree with the point in Augustine's Confession, Book 6, chapter 5, and make the same point as Augustine in this video: ua-cam.com/video/2z4wKCsD59Q/v-deo.html
@@ThomisticInstitute Respectfully, I do not see the same epistemology here. Augustine say that reason is absolutely unnecessary to faith. He says that the Christian faith is independent of reason. On only truly KNOWS through faith and not by anything else. The only source of truth is God, which is why divine illumination is absolutely necessary to know something. That is also evident from scriptual examples such as Abraham offering his son and other examples listed in Hebrews 11. Hebrews 11 also gives us the definition of faith and not just that but actually we have apostolic teaching on faith in 1 Corinthians 1-3. The heathens and the Jews both cannot understand nor grasp faith. Their reasoning is not leading to faith but the Holy Spirit is. You might think that is a very 16th century Prostestant epistemology but that is exactly what Augustine teaches in Book 6. He is arguing for faith being the only source of knowledge and even reproaches Manecheism for the rejection of that principle.
The Thomistic view is too much concentrated on rationalism and not on the divine powers and the state of man. Man in his fallen state cannot come to faith by his reasoning. Faith is free from reason, which does not mean that believers do not know truth, nay, believers are the only ones who know truth.
When all “signs” are evaluated individually or cumulatively, a leap of faith is still required to reach God. Jesus knew this, which is why He bristled at the disciples’ need to see signs and wonders. Indeed, He knew signs are antithetical to faith. Faith and signs are independent. They might be correlated. But signs, and everything else that can be revealed to the senses, aren’t causal for faith. There is a gulf between reason (with which signs are evaluated) and faith that can only be crossed by human free agency. Said another way, you have to choose to believe.
Just remember that the Orthodox Church has numerous ecclesiastical miracles as well, and Craig Keener documented many miracles for Protestants in his 2 volume work on Miracles. Indian yogis have also produced miracles too. So you can be sad that miracles don't prove dogma, or happy that the ubiquity of miracles shows that atheism is false.
While God can do miracles for whomsoever He wills, I do wonder how strictly these others have been tested. The Church tests miracles before accepting them with what I consider a very good manner of weighing these sorts of claims, where it is strict enough to not be credible, but not epistemologically cut off from these signs. So for instance, we can scientifically test a Eucharistic miracle to see there is human flesh and blood, and there is a board of doctors to investigate the cases of healing miracles to see if there is a natural explanation, etc. In this way we can test them and hold onto the good.
It's also important to note that miracles can vindicate a certain doctrine, while others may not specifically do such a thing. So for instance, Jesus rising from the dead is pretty obviously a vindication that He was and is who He said He was. There's clearly some sort of theological point going on. Say I heal someone. Well, just about everyone thinks health is a good thing, regardless of theology (but within a Judeo-Christian worldview it shows a hint of the harmony at the beginning if Creation prior to the Fall). But if a saint is having some theological argument and says, "Behold, I will show that even a donkey will respect the Eucharist!" and so it happens, there's clearly a theological point...if I am dying and need of warmth, then fire miraculously appearing may not seem to point to a specific theology. But if a prophet is challenging the worshippers of Baal so that their "god" could show his power, and this god utterly fails, and then God makes fire miraculously appear to vindicate Himself against the worshippers of the false god Baal, then there is clearly a theological point despite the similarity of the miracle.
Here we see that context is the important aspect when it comes to the meaning of miracles.
Within various faith traditions, there are also those in the spiritual realm who may try to trick us. Demons classically have the ability to do præternatural works (as opposed to the supernatural works only God can work in technical theological terms, whereas the meaning of "supernatural" is more closely related to anything paranormal in more common parlance), which COULD explain some works that are classified as miracles in the modern sense as has been used throughout this comment (as opposed to the slightly different classical understanding). Natural explanations are looked for first when it comes to these sorts of phenomena, but in terms of spiritual discernment it is important to be cautious of demonic deception.
It seems to me that the illative sense is kind of like a combination of induction (going from particulars to universals) and intuition. Am I on the right track?
It would appear so to me , but I'm unsure if it depends on an inductive process...how about two intuitions being confirmatory of each other and something else?...maybe a bit like remembering a sound combined from two sources as in the manner of a chord?
"26."
This logic was very easy to follow but first one must educate himself about the matter so he knows how compilation of these reasons led us to this conclusion.
Because to outsider without it, it seem irational what we do and think and we are partially to blame for this but also the the outsiders because they chose the easier rout of dismissing us and remaining ignorant without putting effort into trying to understand
Yes, the signs work in a cumulative way. An important point. That point was made in a previous video here: ua-cam.com/video/KO69YzMIv9s/v-deo.html
@@ThomisticInstitute I'll check it out
Paul's martyrdom belongs to folklore. His last mention in canonical scripture, the last chapter or Acts, finds him living comfortably in Rome, freely teaching the Gospel to all who visited. It's quite likely both Peter and Paul simply died of old age. They were certainly getting up there! Does not being martyrs tarnish their sainthood?
Except you're forgetting the mountains of historical evidence showing otherwise, including the writings of the Church Fathers (especially ones directly connected to the apostles, like Clement of Rome). Does that not instead point towards Acts being written before Paul's death? Why is it that all those in the early Church affirm their martyrdom and no one spoke against them if it was all a lie? Lol
I am not prejudiced against the reality of the supernatural. I am prejudiced against taking any second-hand accounts on faith. I have been lied to about many important things in my life and I'm not going to trust anything anyone says that I can't verify for myself.
It's such stupid question only someone with no faith would ask it
What if they have doubts or struggle with faith?
If they were called by God obviously there can be no doubt, If people doubt then they need to remind themselves of their calling, and God will respond.
"...thus giving us a sense of god speaking to us through the prophets and apostles."
A very poor substitute for god actually speaking to us himself directly. Wonder why?
You need to see God. Here it is: الله
I wear jewellery with scripture from the cathedral Quran on it.
My body is not the HOSTIA, yet it still is showing you God as الله
none of this is evidence that any God exists. You seem insane.