As a current Protestant, I definitely do value Fr Pine and your abilities to articulate the nuances of Catholicism; and, if become a Catholic it will be by the God’s graces through the two of you! Blessings!
Prayers for you both as well! I reverted back to the Catholic faith from Protestantism a couple months ago; it is definitely a hard journey intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally. However, the Eucharist and beauty of the bride of Christ makes it worth it!
It's so beautiful to see Matt not only hosting but truly trying to understand. I love that you can see him making notes throughout the interview. It's good to know that he's alongside us in this pursuit of truth.
Matt. I'm glad I found you and your channel. I'm a Catholic convert and have struggled to find catholic media that wasn't just a little too boring (I'm sure it's my own feeble brain). Keep up the good work!
Have to say I started crying around minute 40 when Fr. Pine was explaining how much God cares about the tiny, seemingly insignificant and mundane details of our lives
I love Fr. Gregory! Can't believe content like this is free. As a philosophy undergrad this is probably one of my favorite discussions yet. Gotta get heavy into Aquinas and soon.
I think I’ve watched this video once a month since you published it. Love love love this conversation to help me seek a deeper understanding of my faith. Thank you both. God bless you both!
The german word for Robber is Räuber and in our legal system the distinguishing factor between theft and robbery is whether violence is involved or not, so maybe St. Thomas hat an influence on this?
Great discussion. God sustains the cup. God loves the cup. God moves the cup. Perhaps it's just the arrogance of a musician, but I like to think of God's persistent power of Creation as similar to a singer sustaining a song. The Lord sings us into being and maintains the song. If He did not love us, He could simply stop singing. It's especially beautiful and expressive of His mercy that the Lord sustains and enables even the wicked. Evil is to good as darkness is to light - not a powerful opposition, but rather an impotent absence or diffused imperfection. Evil is utterly helpless without the Lord allowance to assist in the refining of more loveful souls.
@Matt Fradd. The difference between a monastery and a convent is a technical difference that has nothing to do with men or women. A monastery is the home of monastics, whether they be monks or nuns. A convent is a home of religious brothers aka friars, and sisters who are not monastic, they are mendicants. Some mendicant orders have special names for a convent of their specific order, such as priory. There are also religious orders of priestly fraternities that are not monks or mendicants but have religious houses they call convents, this would include groups like the Marian Fathers. In the Eastern Churches, traditionally, mendicants do not exist. The only form of special religious life in the East is monasticism, so the East has no convents or priories, only monasteries. So, in pop culture people associate the term "convent" with women because they are thinking about Franciscan and Dominican sisters, and they associate "monastery" with men because they are thinking of Benedictine monks, but of course, there are Benedictine nuns and Cistercian nuns who live in monasteries and there are the Marian Fathers who live in convents. It is mainly pop culture that causes this association, in actuality something being a convent or a monastery has to do with the kind of religious life rather than men or women and this is true for East and West only that Byzantine Church never developed religious orders outside of monastics, as monastics can be traced back to 4th Century Egypt with the Desert Fathers and mendicants evolved in Medieval Western Europe around the 12th Century and have remained a uniquely Roman Catholic phenomenon.
Our teens during our last LT session had a problem with God's being limited by intrinsic incoherencies - they thought that this STILL counted as a limitation of power , and trying to explain why it is not was really difficult. Their concern is that "can do all that accords to His nature" is a qualified omnipotence, which is not a true omnipotence, which should be total (and thereby unqualified). The closest we could answer is that the limitation is not in the power of God but in the limitations of the objects, or their states of existence/possibility . If anyone is bored and equipped, resources on these sorts of arguments broken down into steps for teens would be a boon
"Can God make a rock so heavy he can't lift it?" and other such questions only seem valid until you realize it's semantically equivalent to "can God do [something God can't do]," which is of course gibberish.
Probably, the best thing to do is to reframe the question that makes the logical contradiction more obvious. For instance, ask if God could make a square circle. Logically, this is impossible because squares and circles are mutually exclusive concepts. You get around having to explain how an unstoppable force and an ummovable object are mutually exclusive, which people tend to have a harder time accepting. In any case, there are two possible answers to the question: Yes and no. As it turns out, both answers fail to show that omnipotence is nonsensical. If yes, God can make a square circle, then an omnipotent God is not constrained by the rules of logic. If an omnipotent God is not constrained by the rules of logic, then logic cannot be used to show that omnipotence is nonsense. God can make an object that is both a square and a circle, and our inability to conceive of such a thing is irrelevant to the question. If no, God cannot make a square circle, then an omnipotent God is constrained by the rules of logic. If an omnipotent God is constrained by the rules of logic, then an illogical proposition cannot be used to show that omnipotence is nonsense. God cannot make an object that is both a square and circle, and this is simply because such a thing cannot be conceived. Thus irrespective of whether one conceives of omnipotence as constrained by logic or unconstrained by logic, the question of whether an omnipotent entity could perform a logically contradictory act fails to show that omnipotence is nonsense. Either God can do illogical things, and the question is affirmed despite its apparent sillyness; or God cannot do illogical things, and the question is actully just silly.
Believe it or not, Fr Gregory's explanation about God being present in Matt's cup really affected me. The idea that God knew the smallest of details and how they would act towards our salvation is amazing.
Dinesh D'Souza did a great segment on God's all knowingness and our freewill. He basically explains that God exists outside of time so he can see the past, present and future at the same time and that's how he knows what we will do but we still have freewill in each choice.
Love Father Pine he is awesome! don't often get to go to talks but got to see him in Shelbyville during lent 3 years or so ago he's great like tony the tiger
I love Thomas but I honestly prefer the Molinist view of providence. It gives both a)a fuller conception of God's knowledge b)a fuller conception of human freedom.
This has been a great talk. I mostly took that I should not limit God and His ways to my relative human perspective and understanding of the laws of nature and reality. He’s much bigger than that!! 1:01:17 Also- I love how Fr Pine will sometimes narrate the situation and his role in it in a detached observer way~ makes me feel like less of an alien when I analyze in this way 😆
God as being itself, does not have a body. Unlike us, our being requires us to have a material body. Though, God can, of course, manifest in something. Like in Jesus Christ, or of the Eucharist. But, His abilities and his absoluteness is never limited.
Fr. Pine came to my church one time and gave a killer homily on the prodigal son, and then played a ruthless game of ultimate frisbee with the Youth Group afterward lmao, God bless him
Gods light lives in and through all things, his spirit is in and through all things, he's being is in and through all things, this is why in him with live, move and have our being. In all matter there is space, and there is more space than there is matter, and it is in this space he is.
First time here. Like a new found oasis, I thoroughly appreciate each of your genuine sensibilities, humor, devotion and seemingly effortless likability. Are either of you aware of the work of Julian Jane's or Ian Mcgilchrist, among others, regarding the bilateral brain and its possible explanatory power regarding the relationship between God and man? He (Mcgilchrist) has 2 books on the subject, that I'm aware of, "The Divided Brain" & "The Master and His Emissary". Janes wrote a book called, wait for it!, "The Origins of Consciousness In the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind". Briefly, as I understand the ideas, psychophysiologically(...mouthful) the right hemisphere(Godlike) provides the broadest theoretic form via language and imagery to the left hemisphere(man) with which to analyze the theory more narrowly and act. If you're familiar with this conception, what if anything does this mean to you for the Thomistic tradition?...and/or metaphysical and transcendental belief more broadly?
Matt, someone explained free will to me this way: God is like a parent and we are toddlers. Knowing their child, a parent knows that their child would choose to eat ice cream over vegetables if presented with the two options but that doesn't affect the fact that the child does choose to eat the ice cream over the vegetables.
What I would like to know is why 3 Omnies” ? While the problem of Evil is easily addressed by free will, it is the problem of suffering that cannot be solved. To my mind God, the Trinity, consisting of 3 persons in 1 substance really only has 1 “Omni”; that is to say God is Omniperfect.
Omni..latin word we also have and use in Spain.i mean spanish language..for us is easy to understand many terms of latin words because our language has many roots and similar words...is means.."the all..the totally"..
As Alan Watts has said, imagine you could dream any dream. You’d dream having everything, doing anything. Until one day you’d dream where you are today, dreaming you aren’t god. When Alan Watts said this, it brings me to what the double slit experiment/measurement problem has to bring us to consciousness creates physical nature. And how this world is dream like and not really as it appears..
I understand it as, God is present all time, therefore, He knows you are going to drop the pen because you are dropping the pen because you have dropped the pen.
Hey Matt, on the issues of grace, predestination, and human vs. Divine knowledge, you should have Taylor Patrick O'Neill of Mount Mercy University on the show. He specializes in that area and could probably give a more robust defense of the Thomistic view.
Matt, I think the way we think about God’s OMNISCIENCE is somewhat incoherent; and because of that we may trip to the problem you and Fr Pine said about the difficulty on reconciling human free will and every other things as happening in time. I would say that a Providential God’s knowing is nothing like ours, which is situated in time: past, present and future for God are just one single dimensioned event like a uniform “present”. That’s what we would call “timelessness” or “eternity”: rather than an everlasting durable time, it is simply beyond time that God’s knowledge makes a single event comprehensible. Each and all single events are comprehensible to His unlimited knowledge and the omniscience- to his matter - may seem much more like a prescience if we try to squeeze into temporal categories. Aquinas explaining on time may help: _”As we attain to the knowledge of simple things by way of compound things, so must we reach to the knowledge of eternity by means of time, which is nothing but the numbering of movement by "before" and "after." For since succession occurs in every movement, and one part comes after another, the fact that we reckon before and after in movement, makes us apprehend time, which is nothing else but the measure of before and after in movement. Now in a thing bereft of movement, which is always the same, there is no before or after. As therefore the idea of time consists in the numbering of before and after in movement; so likewise in the apprehension of the uniformity of what is outside of movement, consists the idea of eternity”_ (STh 1aPars, Question 10). So, your free will doesn’t contradict God’s knowing what you would/will choose in a singular event because God’s knowledge is not circumscribed to the conception of time limit or time sequences. This kind of error is pretty much would causes the Calvinists to proclaim the “double predestination” and see it like God want some to be saved and some to be doomed, which is an absurdity on the nature of good and on the culpability of sin (original or actual).
Exactly. God is without composition and therefore He is not one place at once, which means He isn't subject to time relativity but He knows all times intimately. But just because He doesn't experience time as we do doesn't mean there's like predestination stuff.
I don't think there is anything wrong with viewing Mass on the TV, given the current restrictions we are under and we must also consider those housebound and in hospital who can only view Mass on the television.
Please Internet, where's the part of this with the "bod" where Fr. Pine says "So I have this bod that is animated to and fro by the soul" ? Thanks in advance !
Matt, thank you for your honesty and putting words to my thoughts: it sounds like a bunch of flowery words and doesn't make the idea make sense to me. I need a material analogy. That said, I thoroughly enjoy listening to you two 😊
Imagine the best person or the best thing you like to do in this life? Well God is infinitely much more than that you are thinking about. It’s not about human love. As Saint Paul writes, we can’t even imagine what God has prepared for us. God one and trine is the total Good, Beauty, Light, Perfection, Peace, our Maker, not created, Omnipotent .There are no worries, pain, shortages. He’s been there forever and since ever. He doesn’t need us but He created us and also created angels. Out of his infinite Good. What we don’t have here and are yearning for.
Very interesting and enlightening conversation. I have one correction though. We are not born with a blank slate. We are born with a biological nature that determines the range of behaviours available to us. Psychology has thoroughly debunked the theory of the blank slate. Thanks again for an amazing talk.
46:56 CCC1733 The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes. There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just. The choice to disobey and do evil is an abuse of freedom and leads to "the slavery of sin."
Hey Matt, am I not looking in the correct place for those Links? I see all your links - Social media, books, etc - your sponsors, but nothing about Fr. Pine's stuff.
It's as simple as follows: the "rock creation" issue is self-contradictory, the result in either case would be the same. God is omnipotent because He is unconditioned. Only He can give life out of nothing.
Near the end of the video he asks “why be philosophical and just trust the Bible” I’m paraphrasing, but because this religion is passed down with not much facts to be proven and to just trust the mysterious. It’s tough to just have faith in when there’s things like science. Which speaking of science, a lot of scientific findings it leads me to having faith… but to just accept fully the Bible from people who wrote it….. it’s tough!
How do you respond to the aloneness argument against classical theism, which is that had God existed alone, then there would be contingent truths (eg that the Earth doesn't exist), and so, He would have to know these contingent truths in Himself (since He cannot know them in causing them because nothing else exists but Him), but, then He would have contingency in Him, refuting divine simplicity.
"If God is infinite in his power, can God make a rock too heavy for him to lift?" The trick is that the question is logically incoherent, but an answer requires logical coherence. So, either we dismiss the question because its logically incoherent, or we allow for the answer to be logically incoherent. So the answer can simply be: "If we accept the question, than yes."
I recommend this video for those who have sleeping problems at night. You'll doze off in the first 10 min and wake up with Fr. Mark of Ascension presents saying something. lol
I wouldn’t say that a square circle isn’t anything, rather that God made a world in which a square circle isn’t anything. Had He wished it a square circle could have been either an unrealised thing or a realised thing.
God's knowledge of our eternal salvation in no way detracts from our freedom and ability to know and do God's will. The impilcation behind this question is that we do not actually choose our destiny and that is clearly not true.
I just didn't want to. ... I felt it would be more helpful to the spiritual life of my family to lead them in different prayers. Akathist to Mary; the rosary; bible reading. etc.
I like Fr Pine, and he is indeed very knowledgeable, but (respectfully) I think he needs to reflect on some of these issues a little more. At least in terms of how to articulate his ideas.
Fr. Gregory Pine, though your holy bible commentary is a light house to me, i hope my sunflower bible commentary will also be a fun read for you, if you fr., you dont mind.
Matt, I know what you should do to gain more views in your videos: Make an playlist and make this video first to watch on the playlist. Viewers will then dose off in a few minutes and the next vid will automatically play until the viewer wakes up 8 hours later.
Causal observation would strongly suggest that, if God exists, then he is either incompetent, limited in knowledge or power, or an omni-malevolent monster..
Goodbye for now fr......................................................................................for i forgot " the sendoff blessing " of roman catholic mass......................................................which anyhow i am not " " GIVEN in PROVIDENCE " to spell.
The almighty God is normally expected to BOTH A) being able to make decisions and B) to know the future. Here you should make a distinction between "optional futures" - God could maybe interact and modify them - and "THE ONE FUTURE", because ONLY ONE DETERMINED future will eventually come true. (The one that will become our ONLY ONE PAST). Well, God is supposed to be able to get the best performance: to know that ONE future. But then God MUST JUST LET IT UNFOLD EXACTLY like it is, He is NOT ALLOWED to change anything in it, because God makes no errors in his knowledge of the future! God cannot decide ANYTHING more: ALL God's decisions are already included in that future. What above means that EITHER God is free to decide, but this implies He does NOT know the ONE future, OR He knows the ONE future, but this prevents Him from making ANY further decision. Even worse than that, GOD WOULD BE OBLIGED to HIMSELF slavishly follow that one determined future. This all means the two abilities A) and B) are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE ("either", "or", but never "BOTH" at the same time). Since obviously God was able to make his decisions and we are also confident that He knows the future, the path followed must be from A) to B). When that transition occurred ? Certainly not during the man's history, of course that must have happened BEFORE the birth of the universe. However, God only arrived at step B) BUT WITHOUT ENTERING that step, we saw earlier that God is absolutely NOT INTERESTED IN TAKING PART to that future: He would be obliged to "SLAVISHLY" follow it. The God's actions in that one future (for example words) will AUTOMATICALLY come true instead. In other words that one future will become true WITHOUT GOD. NOBODY will be there to take the God's actions: that NOBODY is the SPIRIT OF GOD. God was thus FREE from any other duty. But where has the almighty God gone ? Of course He is now the Son of God. The almighty God dropped his then USELESS power to become like a normal man: Jesus. Thus, the almighty God is only IN THE PAST, "no one ever saw God" ""The world has not known you".
Response to Can "God create a rock so heavy even he couldn't lift it?" Question Fact:God can do anything - there is no limit to him Challange: Can God create a rock so heavy even he couldn't lift it? Answer:Yes. Yes, because God can do anything - God can defy our understanding. Example: The Holy Trinity. How can God be one and yet three persons? The incarnation. How can a virgin have a child? Conclusion: God is Mysterious, so that he could do things that would make no sense to us, that in out mind are in compatible (Virgin Mother!) and yet they are true!
God can't do something illogical. God can't fall into error or contradiction. That question is a wrong question. If God can't lift something, it means that thing is greater than Him. If something is greater than God, then God is not God because God is above all things. It is impossible to make something that God can't break because it goes against reason, since he can do everything. He can do everything but he cannot fail because he is perfect. So that's why he can't create a rock that would surpass his powers. He can't create something that surpasses his omnipotence because then it would be an error.