There is no modern philosophy without belief in Jesus Christ: our true, absolute, objective end is also the means of grasping "Is". His Incarnation is an action in time and space, thought "today" is distinguished from thought "yesterday" by events that mark time. Of which, Truth coming true (fulfilling prophecy), dispensing truth (Gospel), establishing The Truth(Catholicism) and sending Truth(Pentecost) stands as most significant.
I once gifted one of his books to the seminary novice master, who after reading it made sure to seek me out in the congregation before saying the next mass to thank me for the gift of such a profoundly true book.
I like the jump cut vibe. He's just so dense (conceptually/verbally, not cognitively 😉) that they had to cut out all of his pauses to keep it to an hour. Feels very... UA-cam-vlogger-esque.
Better examples please. Eg. liquid water is wet. Snow is cold. Ice is slippery. Steaming water is hot. All agree with those true properties of water. Thank you
Great lecture, thank you for sharing! A question to any at the Thomistic Institute who may be monitoring the comments - could you suggest any resources which delve into the relation of Thomistic conception of God as actus purus, with the Palamite essence-energies distinction? Specifically, I am having a bit of trouble understanding the characterization that God's "operations" or "actions" are identical to His essence - would this imply that, for example, the action of the theophany of the Burning Bush is itself somehow identical to God's essence, or am I misunderstanding? Thanks in advance, and much love to you all for your edifying work!
That’s a good question that many (including myself) have been trying to search deeper on. I personally haven’t found a book that addresses this. However, the avenue I decided to take was to actually research Thomas Aquinas more thoroughly to see how he can hold to positions that seem difficult at best to defend. A book that I found extremely helpful is the “trinitarian theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas” by Father Gilles Emery (one of the foremost Dominicans and defender of Thomas). The book is very thorough and takes you through Thomas understanding of the Immanent acts within the Godhead and the transitive acts that are outside the Godhead. He also speaks of the different relations (Logical, virtual, real), what Personhood is, appropriation, notional acts etc… The book doesn’t address your question directly but it does shed some light on your question.
Guys he addresses just this issue among many more. Listen really closely. I understand it’s not easy. Go to around the 38 minute mark where Dr. Is speaking of how Aquinas “deals with” the modal collapse. The modal collapse is primarily an argument which East orthodox attempts to straw an Thomism. They’re wrong. And Dr. Fester explains it beautifully in this lecture. It is in “the formal identity of the knower and the known”.
@@clark8250 thanks Clark. I haven’t had the time to watch the whole lecture yet. I would however say this: when dialoguing with Eastern Orthodox it’s important to stick to the terms Thomas himself uses to defend his own propositions. I love listening to guys like Feser, but it’s important to note that he (and other neo Thomist) sometimes uses jargon that is foreign to Thomas. Orthodox (from what I have seen-such as talks by Bradshaw) find it unhelpful to define Thomas in any other context then how he defends himself. With that being said, I haven’t listened yet and look forward to. I’m sure the “knower and the known” is the argument that when something is “known” the said known object doesn’t have a real relation to the knower but just a logical relation. But the known IN the knower is a real relation. Even so, God as the known brings about a “real relation” in the knower (us) but not vice versa. Thomas would say this is because the creature being “adds nothing to God.” Gods intellect is always in “Act” and thus gains no new acts of knowing. For He is all knowing. In fact, it is because He knows that the knower (us) isn’t an object to be known but rather is known as an object free to will. The difficulty is more when you get into willing, where the will itself is “identical” to the Intellect with only a “virtual distinction” in God. Thus that God wills “this” and not “that,” would, as the argument goes, either posit change in God, or if it doesn’t then Gods creatures are necessary. I think Thomas has good answers to both of these objections that most neo Thomist don’t latch onto since they find it unsatisfying.
Influenced by greek thinking the 10 letters of pseudo Dionysus proves that. Hermoneutics greek style. Apostle Paul said the truth, " the Greeks seek wisdom the Jews sign's"
Though I would have to say that the attribution of attributes specifically to each of the persons of the trinity seems very artifical, very forced. If there is a sound reason for doing so, I cannot see it.
In Thomistic metaphysics, metaphysic is ontology. Feser's point is that logical truth and ontological truth are formal distinctions that are interconvertible; they are only different because modern Cartesian philosophy has excised ontology from metaphysics.
Appreciate your clarifications😊👍 appreciate the speech without the childish puns rhetoric analogies!😊😂 too much controversy over my time and life I won't make intellectual property royalties claims on the thomistic institute's. 😊😊😊😊👍👍😂😂
A good reminder but lacking in the clarification by modern, mathematical logic since Frege, esp. A.Tarski's formal definition of a true sentence (in a formal science),AD 1933. One does not ask if an individual name like "John" is true but only if for an example a sentence "John is doing sth now at such a place,..etc." is true if it happens really (as in the famous Tarskis's sentence . According to the transcendental concept of truth the term "John" or any individual one" would be true but that has not sense in logic; a term cannot be predicated as true or not; it is introduced by a convention like any for example mathematical term and symbol- mathematics (as a system)is not true (semantically) at all; it is a convention and its theorems/sentence are only logical truths-it is an empty science (known already since Aristotle) Consequently, plenty parts of Summa are logical (and theological) useless now junk since St.Thomas was not aware of the these subtilities
I just love what Aquinas said toward the end of his life. As he was saying Mass, he had some kind of divine revelation which caused him to say that all he had written was straw, even leaving his Summa Theologiae unfinished. We need to consider what straw is. It is the part of the grain harvest that has no value insofar as human consumption. No nutritional value. The Divine revelation that he so graciously received forced him to see that. We would do well to heed his own assessment of all he had written. "Straw". And, by the way, all Divine Truth is contained in the Word. We no longer need human reasoning or philosophy. No need to reconcile faith and reason(truth). Both are entirely contained in the Person described below. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... In Him was life, and the Life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it." John 1:1, 4-5 Fortunately, at the end of his life, Thomas did finally comprehend "it". Praise God forevermore. And his Son. 😎
BS.Plenty of S.Th. is outdated and fancies; St.Thomas read Bible only literally and could not know the 20th cent. mathematical logic; his arguments on for example Trinity, transubstantiation are a total logical fallacy (like a vicious circle)i.e a lie from...Devil
"When we say…Jesus Christ…was produced without sexual union, and was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended to heaven, ***we propound nothing new or different*** *from what you believe regarding those whom you call Sons of God. [In fact]…if anybody objects that [Jesus] was crucified, this is in* ***common*** *with the sons of Zeus (as you call them) who suffered, as previously listed [he listed Dionysus, Hercules, and Asclepius].* Since their fatal sufferings are all narrated as not similar but different, so his unique passion should not seem to be any worse." *Note how Justin (Martyr) is less of a fool than modern Christian apologists. He admits that differences don’t matter.* Since each and every one of the suffering and dying gods are slain by different means, one cannot argue the mytheme requires exactly the same means of death. “But Osiris can’t have inspired the Jesus myth because Osiris wasn’t nailed to a cross” is a stupid argument. The mytheme is simply death. Being killed. Suffering and dying. The exact mode of death can vary freely. It makes no difference to the existence and influence of the mytheme. It’s simply the particular instantiation of a generic abstraction. *And Justin’s argument (that Satan invented these fake religions to confuse people) entails Justin agreed the mytheme existed: indeed, it was demonically promulgated, multiple times. Intentionally.* *Likewise, Justin notices the mytheme is not virgin birth, but sexless conception. Of which many examples had already been popularized in pagan mythology (there just happens to also have been examples of actual virgin born gods as well). And by his argument (that the Devil was deliberately emulating the Jesus mytheme, in advance), Justin clearly accepted the same principle for “rising again” after death:* the particular exact metaphysics of the resurrection could, like the exact method of death or conception, vary freely. The mytheme consists solely of the abstraction: returning to life. Somehow. Some way. We will say bodily, at the very least. But what sort of body (the same one, a new one, a mortal one, an immortal one), didn’t matter. *If it had, Justin would have made the argument that “those gods” weren’t really resurrected. But that argument, never occurs to him. Nor did it to any other apologist of the first three centuries.* *Ancient Christians well knew there was nothing new about their dying-and-rising god. Not in respect to the mytheme.* Their claims were solely that his particular instantiation of it was better, and the only one that actually happened. *They didn’t make up the stupid modern arguments that dying-and-rising god myths didn’t exist or weren’t part of a common mytheme everyone knew about. For example, in the same century, Tertullian, in Prescription against Heretics 40, makes exactly the same argument as Justin. Funny that. They had better access to the evidence than we do. They knew what was really and widely the case. We should listen to them.* Google *"Dying-and-Rising Gods: It's Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. • Richard Carrier"* Google *"Ehrman Errs: Yes, Bart, There Were Dying & Rising Gods - atheologica"* Watch *"Dying & Rising Gods: A Response to William Lane Craig"* by Derreck Bennett at Atheologica. Google *"Virgin Birth: It's Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. • Richard Carrier"* Google *"5 Pagan Parallels to Jesus That Actually Aren’t Bullshit - Atheomedy"* Google *"Christian Apologetics: The Art of Deceit - Atheomedy"* Google *"Defending the Resurrection: It’s Easy if You Lie! - Atheomedy"* Google *"Majority of Scholars agree: The Gospels were not written by Eyewitnesses - Escaping Christian Fundamentalism"* A good site written by an actual Biblical scholar. Google *"Contradictions in the Bible | Identified verse by verse and explained using the most up-to-date scholarly information about the Bible, its texts, and the men who wrote them -- by Dr. Steven DiMattei"* Google *"How do we know that the biblical writers were* ***not*** *writing history? -- by Dr Steven DiMattei"* Also: Google *"How Did The Gospel Writers Know? - The Doston Jones Blog"* Google *"Yes, the Four Gospels Were Originally Anonymous: Part 1 - The Doston Jones Blog"* Google *"Gospels Not Written By Matthew, Mark, Luke or John - The Church Of Truth"*
Edward Feser and the Thomistic Institute are the cause of my restored faith. Thank you both for your hard work.
Edward Feser One of the Best theist philosophers today
Absolutely!
What is your favorite book of his?
@@YovanypadillaJr Five Proofs of God.
There is no modern philosophy without belief in Jesus Christ: our true, absolute, objective end is also the means of grasping "Is".
His Incarnation is an action in time and space, thought "today" is distinguished from thought "yesterday" by events that mark time. Of which, Truth coming true (fulfilling prophecy), dispensing truth (Gospel), establishing The Truth(Catholicism) and sending Truth(Pentecost) stands as most significant.
@@michaelsaint9794 What you said sounds really good however to help me grasp it better, can you explain it a little more? Thanks
I once gifted one of his books to the seminary novice master, who after reading it made sure to seek me out in the congregation before saying the next mass to thank me for the gift of such a profoundly true book.
FESER IS BACK IN ACTION
Fascinating, very interesting. It's great to have a university level course available free on UA-cam.
Another great one from Mr. Feser. Thank you!
Feser is a true master.
I hope dr. Feser will write more half-popular book on existance of God. Absolutely awsome philosopher!
BOOM!!! East ortho bros..this is for you. And, go to minute 38 for the money money shot.
I would much prefer to read this rather than listen to it. Is a written copy available anywhere?
I like the jump cut vibe. He's just so dense (conceptually/verbally, not cognitively 😉) that they had to cut out all of his pauses to keep it to an hour. Feels very... UA-cam-vlogger-esque.
Better examples please.
Eg. liquid water is wet.
Snow is cold.
Ice is slippery.
Steaming water is hot.
All agree with those true properties of water.
Thank you
Great lecture, thank you for sharing! A question to any at the Thomistic Institute who may be monitoring the comments - could you suggest any resources which delve into the relation of Thomistic conception of God as actus purus, with the Palamite essence-energies distinction?
Specifically, I am having a bit of trouble understanding the characterization that God's "operations" or "actions" are identical to His essence - would this imply that, for example, the action of the theophany of the Burning Bush is itself somehow identical to God's essence, or am I misunderstanding?
Thanks in advance, and much love to you all for your edifying work!
That’s a good question that many (including myself) have been trying to search deeper on.
I personally haven’t found a book that addresses this. However, the avenue I decided to take was to actually research Thomas Aquinas more thoroughly to see how he can hold to positions that seem difficult at best to defend.
A book that I found extremely helpful is the “trinitarian theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas” by Father Gilles Emery (one of the foremost Dominicans and defender of Thomas).
The book is very thorough and takes you through Thomas understanding of the Immanent acts within the Godhead and the transitive acts that are outside the Godhead. He also speaks of the different relations (Logical, virtual, real), what Personhood is, appropriation, notional acts etc…
The book doesn’t address your question directly but it does shed some light on your question.
Guys he addresses just this issue among many more. Listen really closely. I understand it’s not easy. Go to around the 38 minute mark where Dr. Is speaking of how Aquinas “deals with” the modal collapse. The modal collapse is primarily an argument which East orthodox attempts to straw an Thomism. They’re wrong. And Dr. Fester explains it beautifully in this lecture. It is in “the formal identity of the knower and the known”.
@@clark8250 thanks Clark. I haven’t had the time to watch the whole lecture yet.
I would however say this: when dialoguing with Eastern Orthodox it’s important to stick to the terms Thomas himself uses to defend his own propositions. I love listening to guys like Feser, but it’s important to note that he (and other neo Thomist) sometimes uses jargon that is foreign to Thomas. Orthodox (from what I have seen-such as talks by Bradshaw) find it unhelpful to define Thomas in any other context then how he defends himself.
With that being said, I haven’t listened yet and look forward to. I’m sure the “knower and the known” is the argument that when something is “known” the said known object doesn’t have a real relation to the knower but just a logical relation. But the known IN the knower is a real relation. Even so, God as the known brings about a “real relation” in the knower (us) but not vice versa. Thomas would say this is because the creature being “adds nothing to God.” Gods intellect is always in “Act” and thus gains no new acts of knowing. For He is all knowing. In fact, it is because He knows that the knower (us) isn’t an object to be known but rather is known as an object free to will. The difficulty is more when you get into willing, where the will itself is “identical” to the Intellect with only a “virtual distinction” in God. Thus that God wills “this” and not “that,” would, as the argument goes, either posit change in God, or if it doesn’t then Gods creatures are necessary. I think Thomas has good answers to both of these objections that most neo Thomist don’t latch onto since they find it unsatisfying.
@@MountAthosandAquinas Thank you for your recommendation! God bless.
Thank you very much for your content!
Truth: do not eat yellow snow!
Most true is that snow is cold.
Does anyone know the diagram mentioned at 16:13 and where it can be found?
The handout for the talk can be found here: tinyurl.com/phksp393. Thanks for tuning in, and may the Lord bless you!
Influenced by greek thinking the 10 letters of pseudo Dionysus proves that. Hermoneutics greek style. Apostle Paul said the truth, " the Greeks seek wisdom the Jews sign's"
Though I would have to say that the attribution of attributes specifically to each of the persons of the trinity seems very artifical, very forced. If there is a sound reason for doing so, I cannot see it.
Comment for traction
But isn't metaphysical truth also logical?
In Thomistic metaphysics, metaphysic is ontology. Feser's point is that logical truth and ontological truth are formal distinctions that are interconvertible; they are only different because modern Cartesian philosophy has excised ontology from metaphysics.
Appreciate your clarifications😊👍 appreciate the speech without the childish puns rhetoric analogies!😊😂 too much controversy over my time and life I won't make intellectual property royalties claims on the thomistic institute's. 😊😊😊😊👍👍😂😂
A good reminder but lacking in the clarification by modern, mathematical logic since Frege, esp. A.Tarski's formal definition of a true sentence (in a formal science),AD 1933. One does not ask if an individual name like "John" is true but only if for an example a sentence "John is doing sth now at such a place,..etc." is true if it happens really (as in the famous Tarskis's sentence . According to the transcendental concept of truth the term "John" or any individual one" would be true but that has not sense in logic; a term cannot be predicated as true or not; it is introduced by a convention like any for example mathematical term and symbol- mathematics (as a system)is not true (semantically) at all; it is a convention and its theorems/sentence are only logical truths-it is an empty science (known already since Aristotle) Consequently, plenty parts of Summa are logical (and theological) useless now junk since St.Thomas was not aware of the these subtilities
I just love what Aquinas said toward the end of his life. As he was saying Mass, he had some kind of divine revelation which caused him to say that all he had written was straw, even leaving his Summa Theologiae unfinished.
We need to consider what straw is. It is the part of the grain harvest that has no value insofar as human consumption. No nutritional value. The Divine revelation that he so graciously received forced him to see that. We would do well to heed his own assessment of all he had written. "Straw".
And, by the way, all Divine Truth is contained in the Word. We no longer need human reasoning or philosophy.
No need to reconcile faith and reason(truth). Both are entirely contained in the Person described below.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... In Him was life, and the Life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it."
John 1:1, 4-5
Fortunately, at the end of his life, Thomas did finally comprehend "it".
Praise God forevermore. And his Son. 😎
This doesn’t make sense. The Church absolutely does not teach that Aquinas’ works hold no nutritional value.
Uh source please.
BS.Plenty of S.Th. is outdated and fancies; St.Thomas read Bible only literally and could not know the 20th cent. mathematical logic; his arguments on for example Trinity, transubstantiation are a total logical fallacy (like a vicious circle)i.e a lie from...Devil
@@krzysztofciuba271 Ok. Prove it.
@@npswm1314 read it at first,then ...I can enlighten u!
"When we say…Jesus Christ…was produced without sexual union, and was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended to heaven, ***we propound nothing new or different*** *from what you believe regarding those whom you call Sons of God. [In fact]…if anybody objects that [Jesus] was crucified, this is in* ***common*** *with the sons of Zeus (as you call them) who suffered, as previously listed [he listed Dionysus, Hercules, and Asclepius].* Since their fatal sufferings are all narrated as not similar but different, so his unique passion should not seem to be any worse."
*Note how Justin (Martyr) is less of a fool than modern Christian apologists. He admits that differences don’t matter.* Since each and every one of the suffering and dying gods are slain by different means, one cannot argue the mytheme requires exactly the same means of death. “But Osiris can’t have inspired the Jesus myth because Osiris wasn’t nailed to a cross” is a stupid argument. The mytheme is simply death. Being killed. Suffering and dying. The exact mode of death can vary freely. It makes no difference to the existence and influence of the mytheme. It’s simply the particular instantiation of a generic abstraction. *And Justin’s argument (that Satan invented these fake religions to confuse people) entails Justin agreed the mytheme existed: indeed, it was demonically promulgated, multiple times. Intentionally.*
*Likewise, Justin notices the mytheme is not virgin birth, but sexless conception. Of which many examples had already been popularized in pagan mythology (there just happens to also have been examples of actual virgin born gods as well). And by his argument (that the Devil was deliberately emulating the Jesus mytheme, in advance), Justin clearly accepted the same principle for “rising again” after death:* the particular exact metaphysics of the resurrection could, like the exact method of death or conception, vary freely. The mytheme consists solely of the abstraction: returning to life. Somehow. Some way. We will say bodily, at the very least. But what sort of body (the same one, a new one, a mortal one, an immortal one), didn’t matter. *If it had, Justin would have made the argument that “those gods” weren’t really resurrected. But that argument, never occurs to him. Nor did it to any other apologist of the first three centuries.*
*Ancient Christians well knew there was nothing new about their dying-and-rising god. Not in respect to the mytheme.* Their claims were solely that his particular instantiation of it was better, and the only one that actually happened. *They didn’t make up the stupid modern arguments that dying-and-rising god myths didn’t exist or weren’t part of a common mytheme everyone knew about. For example, in the same century, Tertullian, in Prescription against Heretics 40, makes exactly the same argument as Justin. Funny that. They had better access to the evidence than we do. They knew what was really and widely the case. We should listen to them.*
Google *"Dying-and-Rising Gods: It's Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. • Richard Carrier"*
Google *"Ehrman Errs: Yes, Bart, There Were Dying & Rising Gods - atheologica"*
Watch *"Dying & Rising Gods: A Response to William Lane Craig"* by Derreck Bennett at Atheologica.
Google *"Virgin Birth: It's Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. • Richard Carrier"*
Google *"5 Pagan Parallels to Jesus That Actually Aren’t Bullshit - Atheomedy"*
Google *"Christian Apologetics: The Art of Deceit - Atheomedy"*
Google *"Defending the Resurrection: It’s Easy if You Lie! - Atheomedy"*
Google *"Majority of Scholars agree: The Gospels were not written by Eyewitnesses - Escaping Christian Fundamentalism"*
A good site written by an actual Biblical scholar.
Google *"Contradictions in the Bible | Identified verse by verse and explained using the most up-to-date scholarly information about the Bible, its texts, and the men who wrote them -- by Dr. Steven DiMattei"*
Google *"How do we know that the biblical writers were* ***not*** *writing history? -- by Dr Steven DiMattei"*
Also:
Google *"How Did The Gospel Writers Know? - The Doston Jones Blog"*
Google *"Yes, the Four Gospels Were Originally Anonymous: Part 1 - The Doston Jones Blog"*
Google *"Gospels Not Written By Matthew, Mark, Luke or John - The Church Of Truth"*
I almost gave this talk a thumbs down, just from the utter speed he speaks in... this is almost impossible to follow.
gigantic word salad. "truth" is just a behaviour of the brain.
What a nasty way to start a lecture by deriding your intellectual colleagues. How "charitable"