The Biggest Problem with Catholic Theology?

[00:00:00]Hey, wanted to talk about created grace.

[00:00:03]Wondering >> um do you have any resources like specific places that you have seen that be like dogmatic inism?

[00:00:12]>> Uh it's dogmatically stated as part of dogma. Well, it's stated as part of dogma in Ludwig A's fundamentals of Catholic dogma. And it's stated in the council of Trent, for example, that uh in in that the righteousness that you get in baptism is not the righteousness that God himself possesses, but that which makes you righteous, which is said to be created grace.

[00:00:35]>> Okay.

[00:00:36]>> Cuz anything that's not God's created, right?

[00:00:38]>> So when you when you like press Catholics on this, like what like what what is what is their go-to response?

[00:00:45]Like how do they what do they what do they say about that? Like what do they say created grace actually is? I mean they have to say what uh is stated in their dogmatic manuals that it's according to to little God it is quote a created accident in the soul not the soul not the effect that grace itself is a created accident in the soul that is not God himself.

[00:01:07]>> Okay so they like okay so like have you have you press like the idea of it just seems to be pushing the the thing underneath the rug like or a back a step you know what I It kind of seems like, hey, we have this thing that we're counted as righteous, but we don't really know what it is. And it >> Well, no. I mean, it's called in in Ludwig, it's called a supernatural creation.

[00:01:31]>> Supernatural creation.

[00:01:32]>> Okay.

[00:01:33]>> But it's an accident in the soul.

[00:01:35]>> Okay.

[00:01:36]>> So, I mean, that's just That's the end of Roman Catholicism right there. I mean, it's like I don't know how else to say it. Like, that should be a kill shot right there.

[00:01:45]>> Okay. So, um I'm not if you'd humor me and just kind of explain just like humor me a little bit like what what what that statement entails. Like I'm not well read on Aristotle at all. I don't know what that would mean like a a supernatural creative thing that is an accident in in the soul. Like what does that what does that entail?

[00:02:04]>> Well, I mean they don't go beyond that because they would argue that's really all they can say. So you can't say that it's the holy. So there's later uh if you read my essay on this divine simplicity essay that I wrote many years ago, I cite some I think I cite some of the later debates postridden team debates about it. So there was some debates like well is it the Holy Spirit?

[00:02:27]And they say no you it can't you can't say it's the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit's uncreated. Uh so if it's a thing that's not God and not God's righteousness, it has to be created.

[00:02:37]There's no there's nothing that's half created or half God. There's only uncreated and created things. Yeah. So, like Okay. So, I know that um like uh Paul Ma sure seems to take issue with that um from from my reading of the triads um a few weeks back. I'm wondering >> Yeah. You also the the book to read on this though is the dialogue with a barley and the one that's like 90 pages.

[00:03:03]>> I heard I was I supposed to read that second so I just haven't got to yet. But >> yeah, it will it will deal with all that.

[00:03:08]>> Okay. So, like I'm sure there's, you know, all these um all the Catholics that try to try to deal with this problem. Like, have you have you read like their responses to this? And [snorts] if so, like, do they grant any further insights into this? Like I mean, >> I mean, it's usually just ends up being it usually just ends up being a bunch of like philosophical jargon from Tomists or you'll get somebody who's a Franciscan saying, well, Bonaventure says maybe it's uncreated. Well, but Bonaventure lived before the council Trent, so it really doesn't matter what Bonaventure or or Aquinus said.

[00:03:44]>> Uh um and then I >> I'll put I'll put it this way. The last time I remember having an extensive conversation with a Roman Catholic on this was classical theist, and you can still find our old conversation about this. And all he ever does is say, "Well, it's cause and effect. So grace is the cause and we're the created effect." And I'm like, that's not addressing the debate, which is that your theology specifies the grace itself. Yeah, but it's cause and he just kept saying, well, it's cause and effect. So God is the cause and we're the created effect. And it's like that's not that question is about the grace itself. And in that debate, he's not he's not familiar with the stuff I bring up. So maybe he is now. I don't know. I forgot about that dude. I is he still tweet? I don't even know what he what does he is he still doing the trad thing? I don't know. Okay. So, I'll have to I'll have to look into your article and I'll I'll get to dialogue.

[00:04:38]>> Yeah. The article is absolute divine simplicity. It's you can find it.

[00:04:43]>> Okay. And then if you don't mind, I'd like to talk a little bit about uh analogy as well.

[00:04:48]>> Okay.

[00:04:49]>> I've been into that uh in a while. I've been watching some of your lectures on it. Um so so from the uh from the toistic view um you would say it's correct to say that uh we are on the same spectrum of being as God.

[00:05:05]>> No >> right like God is at the from the toistic view God's at like the very end of the spectrum and we're >> oh in their view. Yes. Yeah.

[00:05:11]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. From the Yeah.

[00:05:13]From the toistic view. So in that in that sense Aquinus would be saying like hey um we're able to reason up towards and understand this being of God more and more through creation. Um but then so like so he he says that and you know obviously because of his lack of essence energy distinction um he he's going to say that anything that you learn about God is going to be um also about the essence. So like when he says these things when he says hey you know you you look at creation and you see God but later he it also seemed like he says that we don't ever uh participate in the essence of God. So have you like in what way does he balance those two things or how does he clarify that? It seems to be a contra >> Yeah he just assumes the basic arisatilian principles of causation.

[00:06:08]Um I have if you get the giant whipple whi pel that's like one of the classic tomistic manuals on all this philosophy and metaphysics he lists uh three things that are the tomistic basis for this analogy. Um, one of the principles is the Arisatilian idea that every effect bears some similarity to the cause, which again is kind of just assuming, well, how do we know that though, right?

[00:06:36]So, that's a huge metaphysical causal assumption. But I mean, these guys operate on the principle that well, yeah, but that's just a given. That's just that's just what metaphysics tells us. So, they're not really in a school or a position where they're willing to even question, well, how do we know that that is the case? That's later philosophy post enlightenment. So they have the assumption that every effect bears a similarity to the cause.

[00:06:59]Therefore the created order has some analogical you know predicates that are similar to its uh source which is God the first cause. And then there's another one uh it bears the similarity because of the divine ideas. So everything that exists is created based on the archetypes in the divine essence.

[00:07:19]Um which again is a whole another set of problems because the divine essence is absolutely necessary.

[00:07:25]>> Sure.

[00:07:26]>> God also has God also has knowledge of all of the things he didn't create and all the other possible worlds he didn't create. So if God's pure act with no potential then all of those other things should also be reality. So it seems like it would lead to like multiverse or whatever. But um beyond that it's like well how do we know but what is the similarity between an uncreated absolutely simple essence and the created uh effects? It's like it's usually cashed out as opposites especially in Greek philosophy. So [clears throat] it it kind of ignores the elephant in the room which is well how is that in any way similar? If God is absolutely simple, yeah, outside of time and space, >> doesn't he's not made of parts, uh he's, you know, like we say, non-composite, he is uh non-physical, >> etc. Uh he's eternal, unchanging, then what in any of that is at all similar to created things, which are the opposite? created things are temporal.

[00:08:26]They are changing. They are many. They are uh composite. They exist in a state of potentiality. So it's hard to understand what the similarity would even be other than to just say there is one.

[00:08:41]>> Okay. So from the from from our view, we would say uh what like >> by the way there's a third category and I but I don't remember off the top of my head what the third category is.

[00:08:50]>> Um okay. From our from our from our view, we would say that we do we have like um an like we we reason uh what what Basil says in letter 234 that we that we we do reason towards the energies or that or sorry that the creation is so we learn about >> yeah for us for example the analogia if we were to speak this way it would be to the energies or the operations which are not the same as the divine essence. So there would no be there would be no analogy to the essence. This is why it's very bizarre when Roman Catholics speak of analogia entis and then they reduce every attribute and predicate to the divine essence especially I mean the tomus. So for us that's like well then it doesn't really make sense that you also believe in via negativa apehatic theology because that's a theology of negation. So if you have a theology of negation, how are you turning around and then doing positive predication of the divine essence by saying that God's fornowledge, God's love, God's mercy are absolutely isomorphically identical to the absolutely simple essence.

[00:09:56]>> It just cancels out the whole thing because now there's no actual distinction between real distinction between the attributes. They're all kind of jumbled up and the distinction is only mental, notional or in our minds.

[00:10:11]So they're not really distinct.

[00:10:13]>> Yeah.

[00:10:14]>> So creating is the same thing as destroying. So and then from that view um I've also I also understood uh you know uh Thomas would also say that we exper our experience of God or like the experience of like God's love comes to us in that same like natural knowledge way as the rest of the created order.

[00:10:39]And I I feel like I've heard I've heard people make that argument that the the idea that there's no like qualitative difference between like natural knowledge and like knowledge of and from God.

[00:10:50]>> Yeah. I made this argument. It's like I mean so he wants to have the two-tiered nature grace idea. Revelation is, you know, supernatural. It's grace.

[00:10:58]Knowledge that comes from, you know, the natural realm is natural knowledge. But it's like, but you say that both of them are just created effects. So that cancels out the two-tier thing because all you're ever getting is created effects.

[00:11:12]>> Sure. And >> by the way, if all you're ever getting is created effects, how do you know the difference between the created effect of God's love and the created effects of God's wrath? Be it all be the same. So it's an equalizer.

[00:11:21]>> Sure. Well, it seems to devolve in I guess nominalism, huh?

[00:11:25]>> I think you could make that argument and I made an argument. I had a essay I wrote a long time ago arguing that um really David Hume and his empiricism and nominalism is just the next step next step uh in that direction of uh of tomistic empiricism because >> sure >> if you think about Thomas's anthropology he says there's nothing in the intellect that's not first in the senses and if you begin your whole philosophy and your epistemology with that then there's a host of problems for example the it's called the um um parapotetic axiom.

[00:11:58]Well, the parapotetic axiom is not in the senses, so it also can't be in the intellect.

[00:12:02]>> Mhm. Okay, [clears throat] cool. Does uh does Bradshaw's book Aristotle East and West talk a lot about this or is there [snorts] >> um it it overlaps with I mean some of these are my own personal uh critiques, but many of these critiques do overlap with a lot of Bradshaws.

[00:12:18]>> Okay, cool. I would say also though beyond just aerosol east and west which is absolutely a necessary read. You'll notice especially in the first few chapters that he makes some of those same critiques that I just made about you know the way that the Greeks cashed out uh opposition between the first cause and everything that's not the first cause. It would it would negate the possibility of analogy because they're cashed out as opposites. And how is there analogy between things that are opposites? Right? So, and then he goes into critiquing um the neoplatonic side of it, which the Roman Catholic Church even I would argue very clearly like their definition of simplicity is 100% straight out of Plutinus and uh it's the same because Augustine has this definition of simplicity straight from Plutinus and he argues in that book that it's not the definition that the Capidosians took for what divine simplicity is. That's why we have two different trinitarian models.

[00:13:13]>> Yeah. Okay, cool. Do you think that I can >> Oh, I forgot. I forgot to tell you. The other Bradshaw book is the collection of the essays on the energies. That's just >> Yeah, I got that one too.

[00:13:23]>> That's just as important as aerosol east and west.

[00:13:25]>> Should I read that one first or no?

[00:13:28]>> I mean, I'm going to I don't know how advanced you are in uh philosophy because the aerosol east and west the hardest part of it will be the first three chapters because it gets really really deep into arisatilian philosophy, but after that it gets a lot more accessible gets it gets into like petristic stuff. that goes into uh Pho and uh how was how is inner Gaya used in these different you know philosophers and thinkers and then it gets into more petristic stuff. So um >> do you think do you have like a uh is there a is there a good um is there is there a good book that uh is able to touch on some of the core pieces that you think would be fundamental in understanding this book regarding Aristotle or do I just need to like put my boots on and like dive into the metaphysics and stuff? I mean there's a good there's a good book by Acerel on the basics of Arisatian philosophy a ce r i l l u but also uh my buddy Lewis uh some years back he read the acel book and then did a podcast summary of it which is on my um so if you want to skip reading it you can listen to Louiswis's summary to get the basics of aristotilian metaphysics then that would probably help you a lot with the first few chapters of Bradshaw's east aerosol east and west um >> you said j L JL Ailles uh Aristotle the Philosopher. Is that what you're talking about?

[00:14:46]>> I think that's it.