We are going to talk about man as a creature, one of whose special marks which make him god-like is his capacity to reason. Because, of course, although the more complex kinds of animals do appear to be able to go several steps, as I said, from A to D, or something like this, and Pavlov's pigeon and so on, wrote out some kinds of connections, which at least made some sort of patterns, didn't they, which are rather like philosophical patterns. Still, it does remain true that I think you have to be a human being before you can do things like that, if that diagram is meaningful for you at all. Yes? Yes. It might be kind of foolish, but if you go out, or into the beyond or whatever, isn't that, is it correct to say that's non-rational?

[01:08]

Well, I think you're right to raise the point, insofar as what you are saying, and what indeed St Thomas is saying, or anybody who holds a philosophical argument for the existence of God is saying, is all right. All I can say is that there must be some what, I don't know what to call it, out here, and I don't know what it is. It's pure mystery. And as I say, it's very important to see that any arguments you can produce which are philosophical arguments, which are going to conclude that it's sensible to say that God exists, is not going to make it lucid to you what on earth we mean by this. Because you'll remember that one of the important things about the whole idea of the use of I am as the name of God,

[02:13]

simply I am, everything we know about has to be I am a cat, or whatever the name is, doesn't it? But God is nothing specific like that. God is not a definable thing. Hmm? All right? Yes? Yes Mark? Well, maybe connecting with what Ken was asking, to move, OK you have this line going from A to Z, and to move on your arrow out of the line is a rational movement, isn't it? I mean you do that by reason. You say well this, when A to Z would go on. Well in a certain way, but it's much more like a Zen experience, isn't it really, if I can talk in some language which probably you all understand. I mean it is, it's suddenly seeing what you don't see, if you see what I mean.

[03:17]

Does that meet you more or less? I guess just to talk about it. Yes, I think it's a good point to talk about. As I say, somehow or other one has to be able to see that you've got to see that it is out of it. Is that what you were trying to say, Mark? Well, I was just, like brother Ken was asking, if that's going into the realm of the irrational. And I was thinking that the movement, if we can talk in human diagrams, moving on that, out of that line onto this line, could be a rational movement. But like you were saying, it takes you into the realm of mystery. Yes, but I suppose, if you like, what Ken's being is saying, here am I, poor chap, I'm only a rational being. Isn't it? I mean, he remains rational by accepting the fact that he's there in the middle of mystery. I mean, here am I, surrounded by God, and it's just poor me.

[04:22]

And I can't get anywhere, except with this. Yes? Isn't that what Paul says in Romans, that that actually is accessible to everybody? Well, he does say that, but as I say, it's very significant that neither of the council documents that have specifically repeated this text, have said that it can be shown from reason, because this is required by revelation itself to say it. They don't tell us how it can be done. Yes? I mean, it seems like every Trinity Sunday, every year, for as many years as I can remember, when the big balloon with the big things coming out of it comes up, every homilist always says, well, of course, it's an unexplainable mystery. Meaning that I don't understand the philosophical concepts underneath it. At least that's what it seems to be saying. Yes, I think that's because they always start with God, don't they? Whereas in fact, I found it was, one of the delightful things, it's not meant to be a compliment to myself, but it's something I've consistently done

[05:25]

whenever I've had to preach on Trinity. I had, when I was a hermit, as I've told you, a village of peasant farmers, German peasant farmers. And after Trinity Sunday, because I had preached exactly out of the New Testament, starting with Christ, into the Father, and the Spirit coming out, one lady said to me afterwards, it's the very first time I've ever heard a sermon on the Trinity that I think I understood. You see, I think this is a very, I was very pleased with this. I hadn't done this as a kind of trick, but, yes? Yes, Peter? I don't know if it ties in, but I've heard in past language about people talking about the Godhead. Yes, exactly. What can that mean? Well, the Godhead means the kind of abstraction, doesn't it? Let's say, if you like, the Godhead is Godliness, if you see. It's rather like so much mud, or raw stuff, out of which the three persons are made. That's where you get into, really, this balloon thing of John Baptist, isn't it?

[06:30]

This is a very real problem, there's no doubt about it. Whereas if you do take the New Testament method, of course it's a mystery, but at least it's a mystery because we always have some experience of personal relationship. We can intuit some kind of meaning. We can't know what the inner God of life is like, but we do know what relationship is like. We do know that Ken and John Baptist sitting together, are related to each other precisely because they are not the same, although they may be sitting together. And the closer they may be there, let's say, the more character there is between us, the closer we come together, it's rather important. The very first thing John Bingham has ever said to me in 1943, it's always stuck in my mind, and I don't think it's worth saying. He said, it's very, very important, isn't it, for people to remember,

[07:31]

that in order, and I've had a story which I've constantly had to tell about two undergraduate students, who were my friends in Oxford, who fell in love in their first term. And everywhere you went, if you were invited to a charity party or a tea party, there they were sitting together, having their tea together or their coffee together. And then, after about six weeks, the girl suddenly rang me, in clouds of tears, and said, it's all over, the whole thing is completely finished. And what had happened was, the boy had said, I can't stand another minute of this, because it's absolutely claustrophobic. And the point he gives us is this, and this is of course what everybody has to go through in love theory, of any kind. You see, as long as A thinks that they're one thing, you can't have a relationship.

[08:37]

A can't really love B, unless A can bear the fact that A is not B. This is where love begins, and it's a difficult thing, but however close A and B get together, they never become the same. The father is not the son, although it's been it, though they're all God. There we are, off again, off the causes thing. But at the human level, this is a very important thing to do. It's part of this maturing in love, to be able to bear that A is not B. And of course it's also part of the joy of love, when you really do begin to appreciate how steady it is. Thank God, A is not me. It makes it so much more exciting. He's got all kinds of causes I haven't got at all. And so that's an enormous asset in life, that we aren't the same.

[09:39]

We can go together very well. Father, if that approach of the East, to me, I certainly feel more at home with that. I think we all do. How does this balloon loom up in the distance? Where does that actually stem from? Well, I think, you see, how we get there, Paul, it's fairly easy to see, isn't it? We have, for various reasons, to say, and this is one of the things the fathers, in fact, had to argue their way through. If we were going to do a complete history of this, we would have to have several more days together. I must say, I would enjoy it very much indeed. I should learn a lot from him about this. You see, St Basil, for instance, who was one of the very first people to say very, very clearly that the Holy Spirit was God. He's not the first person, but when Basil's work on the Holy Spirit,

[10:46]

he very carefully makes the point that the Holy Spirit must be divine. And, interestingly enough, one of his major arguments is that when we baptise people, we baptise them in the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit. He says, this is what the Church does. It must mean that the Holy Spirit is divine. So, in other words, that's where the balloon begins, if you like. In fact, we've got to say each of the three persons is divine, is God. Then, of course, we've got the problem of saying how they're different. And St Thomas will do it mainly in the Sermon. He'll do it mainly through a discussion of relationship. And, of course, he is going to say when he comes to the Holy Spirit, this is the most difficult one to talk about, because the relationship between the Father and the Son is the relationship of the Word to the one who utters the Word. And, in one way, we have some interior experience of what this life is about.

[11:50]

We may also have some experience of what it is to love. That's much more difficult to talk about. And it is, of course, infinitely more difficult to say what you mean by a love relationship than a relationship of understanding. Isn't it? They are so much more complex. But I think, if you like, as I say, it's what we have in the early centuries, and mainly, tomorrow and on Saturday and on Monday, I'm going to talk about the Renaissance and Hillary, mostly talking about Christ our Lord. And there, of course, we have got into some difficulties, but especially in the case of the Holy Spirit. Dino, are you with us all right? It's difficult stuff, I know. You can see how it gets there. Yes, you were saying something about this way of knowing by means of con-naturality.

[12:52]

Yes, in a certain way, as we're going to have to see, this is what I'm hoping to be able to do with you next week, is when we're talking about what it means to say that we are made in the image of God, is that we do know something about these inner processes by analogy. Perhaps you'd better say it. I think we've got... Oh, your timing is very bad, Peter. We've got five minutes more. I think we've got five minutes we could give ourselves without breaking any rules. When we're talking about analogy, we're doing something rather different from using a metaphor or a synonym. We're going to say that just as A is to B, so, shall we say, Y is to Z. In other words, we're not going to say these two, this kind of relatedness is precisely the same as that one,

[13:57]

but that, this kind, that sort of relation, a given sort of relationship, would give you an idea of what the other one is like. And so, as I was just saying to Paul, although St Thomas does make this point, that although we are going to have to talk about the Holy Spirit as a love procession within the Trinity, precisely because love is not primarily an intellectual thing, although it's also going to include what we understand about the other person, the person we love, it's going to be an analogy. That's what you're saying, isn't it, Dino? It's con-naturality in a certain way, yes, that's to say it is. It is. I think, you know, really though, one of the things we're going to see, which is the richness of thinking about ourselves, I think it's why we have to do it nowadays, because the whole concept of love has become so debased, I think, hasn't it,

[14:57]

that often the relationship element is completely left out of it. I'm not saying, there are going to be some people, almost every time in America tonight, who will imagine they've fallen in love, and they're going to go to bed with me, because they're in love, but they aren't. Oh, I mean, that's saying, in other words, they're not really related to each other, because they don't know anything about each other at all, except that they met five minutes before. I was actually told by a music critic, now he's older than I am, Martin Cooper, who was fronting with his daughter one day, who'd just come back from one of these very modern kinds of parties, in which she'd been having a chat with a beside young man, who suddenly said, well, why don't we just lie down on the floor here? And she said, well, I've never even seen you before in my life, I don't know who you are. And promptly left, very sensible girl. Because, and obviously, in a way, well, I suppose I'm only mentioning this kind of thing, because I think some people, who are limiting these kinds of concepts,

[16:01]

so even the human being is dehumanised, then they're diminishing their understanding of connaturality. And those of us who have the joy of actually knowing what it is to love somebody, knowing how difficult it is, or so, then we are going, I hope to be able to attain some kind of connaturality that enables us to know, yes, it must be something like this. That's what an analogy is. It's not telling us exactly what the thing is, but as you say, it gives us a connatural feeling. I think this is why all the fathers, and all the monastic writers, are trying to help us to see why we have to have virtues. Virtues are very dull to talk about, but they're very humanly important if we're to remain whole and alive, and if we're going to be connatural with these divine things we're talking about. We have to keep our hearts capable of loving,

[17:02]

capable of bearing the strange mystery of it all, because this enables us then to appreciate the divine mysteries better. Are you going to protest, John Baptiste? No. It is important. Don't do the, it has to be said nowadays. I think it's unavoidable. Well, I was going to protest, but I didn't realise it showed. Last Sunday, in a recent talk by someone, the whole notion of the monastic life as preceding, as perfecting virtue. Yes. I was just thinking, gosh, it's hard to keep it in balance. In fact, we're not really here to just pursue virtue, but in fact we also have to have it. Absolutely. In other words, you know, to not... Yes, yes. You can see this is really why, from the very beginning we've been saying, and we shall see Athanasius saying very, very clearly on Saturday, when he's talking about the incarnation,

[18:04]

that we don't just have to read the scriptures, we have to lead the kind of life that makes it possible to understand what this faith is. It's only when you talk about virtue in those terms that then you know how important it is to do the human thing. Because that's what virtues are about really, isn't it? They are things that make us, not less, but more human. Because the trouble is, I suppose we're working our way in monastic life out of a conception of virtue which was so abstract. I know I often used to amuse the nuns when I was teaching them, by saying, you know, I've known so many convents where there was a whole list of things that were acts of charity. And she gave somebody a cup of tea without asking whether they preferred coffee. And you see, it really isn't an act of charity if you don't do that. I mean, you've got to ask somebody which do you prefer, if there's a choice. You may have to say, I'm sorry, we've only got coffee in the house. We'd rather have water. But if you like,

[19:09]

it's just putting into the act the human dimension that keeps you yourself alive, doesn't it? Unless we keep ourselves alive in this way, at the human level, then we shan't understand the divine things. I suppose it's probably not very wrong of me to say that I'm standing here this particular week because when Father Abbott was trying to get these courses arranged, somebody worked out a scheme who was going to begin with a Christian anthropology. And I said to Father Abbott, well, I don't see how you can begin with it if we don't even know what Christianity is to begin with. So we must look at Revelation first. Otherwise, we shan't know what sort of thing it is. And you can see, in the way Paul's question and Isaiah's question have brought out exactly how once we're confronted with what we're to say about Revelation, we then begin to see how we get back to the human thing. And we've got to think about some human processes. Otherwise,

[20:10]

Gina's extremely important point about a certain canaturality within us which enables us to understand divine things, which shows that we're made in the image of God. We can lose it. And we can lose it, of course, John Baptists, can't we? If life is only about virtue in the abstract. If I'm only doing the kind of thing even though you hate my guts for doing it. I think I learnt it most vividly when I was novice. I've never forgotten this. How sometimes, when I could do the wrong thing with the best intentions. In those days, we used to go, the novices went together back to the bishop who was locked in all the religious houses, I think, in those days. Mine certainly wasn't. I knew all the houses I knew. The bishop was normally locked. We went down to choir with the rest of the people and came back, the door was locked behind us. On the way back from choir, we, in my particular house, recited the Day of Revenge of the Dead. And when we reached a certain point on the landing

[21:11]

where the door was about to be locked, I turned round and the man behind me was as white as a sheet. And so I said to him, instinctively, you look so terrible, can I get you some water or something? Then I suddenly realised, I'd no sooner said the word than I realised he was shaking with rage. I've never really seen anybody so completely physically transformed with anger as he was. I still don't know what he was angry about. Whether it was something I'd done, I don't know. Whether it was something to do with me or something to do with somebody else, I just don't know. But it taught me, you have to use every bit in yourself before you know what the virtuous thing to do is. I never dreamt of asking him what it was all about. That would have been just to add a word's length to it. He simply was angry. And some people can get angry like that. It's very, very frightening. It's one of the things I think we haven't got to omit

[22:11]

when we're thinking about ourselves next week. That's why I've got so much thinking to do before I try and put it before you. Then I hope you won't punch me rather hard so that we get it right. But there is quite a lot of chemistry in this. In fact, this chap was suffering from various kinds of illnesses and there may even have been some quite chemical reason why anger seized him just like thunderstorms. He was obviously quite out of control and I don't believe he was un-virtuous. He was simply just plain angry and it transformed his body so that he really looked ill with it. So I wasn't really doing the wrong thing in offering to Buddha, but the minute I saw that he wasn't feeling ill but he was really simply shaking in anger, I knew I'd done the wrong thing. Let's hope we don't most of the time tread on other people's toes quite so hard as that. One usually doesn't mean to.

[23:12]

One often has to ask people of course to forgive one for things one has just been silly of not seeing. But I suppose at least the virtues are at least keeping us, meant to keep us, sensitive to the reality of the situation so that we can do what the loving thing is in the right circumstances. As I say, I think you brought up something very valuable there, Gino, that it does help to preserve our con-naturality with divine things. That's what it ought to be doing all the time. Anybody else want to say anything? Have we blown up the balloon enough? I think it's a very interesting result. Yes, Ken? Yes? I don't quite know. One thing that has always kind of puzzled me is how do these men know how the angels and all this happen? Have they gone into that unknown and come back?

[24:16]

Is that just speculation? In some cases it is, I think we must say. In some cases I think we must say it is. You see, I'll give you the shortest answer I can with it. Is everybody too tired? May we have another few minutes? May we have another minute or two? Plenty of time. Well, I suppose it's got something to do with the temptation of everybody who wants to explain what happens in terms of causes. Nearly all the things start like this. Interesting enough, you see, the Islamic world consists of men, angels and jinn, which appear afar. Don't ask me to defend that particular one. But again, it's essentially, if you like, a mediated world.

[25:20]

Because Mohammed is going, just like all monotheists, including us, those who believe there's only one God, they're going to want to have an area beyond which we cannot see. And we're going to be aware by experience, and much more I suppose in our own time than people were in the past, though people have always been aware to some extent, that little bears come to bigger bears and so on. And so they're going to find that some processes are so mysterious, even St. Thomas actually thought the separate angels moved the clouds about. So some people are going to think that some processes, which are not either physically or intellectually above us, they can be either physical or intellectually,

[26:22]

these are going to require some explanation as to how they function. So you very quickly get back to a picture, which is very like that one I had at Dennis, in which you're going to require one thing. This is, I think, actually the way certain kinds of neosynasticism got in a terrible muddle. Because they wanted to have, they thought, that in order for God to act on something, there had to be a kind of first push. It was called physical pre-motion. But of course God acts in everything that moves. And this is the way the most interesting of St. Thomas' five ways begins, is the observation that something moves. If you want to try it on yourself, I find that the most interesting way is to notice that from Ken's question to where I'm speaking now, both our minds have been moving, and that requires something else that is not us,

[27:25]

in all that it may have. If you think back to it, Augustine has a wonderful moment in the Dei Trinitati where he says, if you could only stop at that particular moment, where the thought passes into another thought, then you'd see. But at any rate, people don't usually do that. So they often want to put something in between God. And that's how you get a world of superior spiritual beings, I think. Because, I don't think that's the only thing. There probably are all kinds of things to do with connaturality, I think about this. Some of them may have to do with quite natural capacities. I don't suppose I'm the only one in the room who very frequently knows when people whom I feel very close to are in trouble, even if I'm a long way away from them, even over the sea or over mountains. I think this is probably quite a normal human capacity, which people tend to deaden in a world in which they function very much,

[28:32]

in terms of their concrete things. But some people might think that was done by angels, but no. Would you see that as where analogy comes in, where men need some way to comprehend that, which is incomprehensible? It seems to me, if you're going to have a God, He's going to have to be greater than you, greater than anything you could think of. Exactly. He is. He is. The only way you can know Him is by analogy. So if I can reason, and God is greater than me, then He has to Himself either be able to function on a super reason, or even outside of that. Yes, exactly. In other words, we're going to say that, as indeed the New Testament says, all things are possible for God. They aren't for me, as you're saying. But I think, really, if you like, the way that the angel world comes in, or the fairy world, or the world of Deprecordance,

[29:33]

whatever you choose to be, is somehow the feeling of a need for explaining something which doesn't necessarily go quite as far as the rather big leap into God, into the mystery of God, that a long philosophical reflection does. And some people feel content to deal with that, to prepare the fairies, by putting out a sauce of milk tonight. Do you do that at night? Two sauces. That's your next safe one. I think it's a good enough answer. Don't you think it's sufficient to explain, if you like, why this happens? This is, of course, not in any way meant to be a demonstration that angels really do exist, because I think we are bound to think that they do. Because it does appear that God does send messengers, which is what the angels are,

[30:35]

what their name means, as Gregory the Great says when he's talking about them, the ones who are sent. And he says, of course, they have only names when they're doing things. Because, if you like, he is again talking about the human end which Peter is insisting on. Sometimes we only know what has happened by what it is that occurs. We don't know anything more about them. What Caper is doing when he's not coming to Our Lady with the Annunciation, we don't know. One thought that came to me is this word of Our Lord. He said, I praise you, Heavenly Father, because you have revealed this to the little ones, that you have been fair and wise. Yes. Yes, well, as you can see, that's also the kind of text that's used sometimes for saying we shouldn't hold the kind of discussion we've just held. But you see, I suppose, what is the thing is that by holding this discussion,

[31:36]

surely we've come back to defending the little ones. Because it's the little ones who haven't given away the simplicity of the child. I think the most striking thing about the child is if you're sitting with a child at a restaurant and the child says, look at that lady with the funny hat, you can always reassure him, the child is entirely right. The hat is silly. That sort of innocence which is capable of penetrating through something which is not true, which is absolutely bogus, isn't that really why divine things are available to the beautiful children? Because they can easily see what is true. And this is also in line with Peter's point. We can easily believe in a God who is greater than we are. What is not possible to believe in is a God who is less than we are, who is quite comprehensive. We are happier in the world than we used to be.

[32:41]

Children always are. They often feel it with their own imaginary people, of course. Did you have an imaginary companion at all when you were a child? Some people do. Andre Mourat was from Rosefather, and there's a wonderful book called Mabe. Do you ever read Mabe? He talks about this, about a sort of complete lair, where children, especially learned children, often do invent a deep world of their own to fill. But then I think they're always capable of defending the logic of that world. In a curious kind of way, I imagine Isaiah will be quite in touch with that too, because he was interested in his to an event that was in the family. There is a kind of logic in the world that children invent, and they won't have anything bogus about it. That's really what the Gospel is about. The child sees through what's not really honest. I think it wouldn't be honest

[33:43]

if we didn't just go away now and say we're quite tired enough for today. God bless you all. Pray for me as I get through. The quotations I shall be making from the sermon are my own translation. At least the portion of this little sermon I should quote mentions the company in which St Thomas was accustomed to move. Denis, that mysterious Syrian writer of the 5th century, Augustine, the Damascene as he calls him, John of Damascus, and Gregory the Great. In relation to the last of those writers, I may say that very few realise how often St Thomas quotes Gregory the Great. Especially in his section on morals in the sermon. Very often when he wants to make a refinement, because he wants to find an authority from the past for making it, he nearly always has to go to Gregory.

[34:44]

He was an extraordinarily reflective and perceptive, intuitive person about human beings. And so there's a very great deal. If you look up the big Leudenia division, where you've got all these sources analyzed, you'll find that Gregory the Great comes very close after Aristotle. In the people quoted by St Thomas. And Aristotle is generally called the philosopher, as St Thomas called him. Of course for St Thomas himself he was the primary one. But here we have St Thomas' rather traditional sounding first fruits as a young master. Thou water'st the hills from thy upper rooms, the earth shall be filled with the fruit of thy works. From eternity the Lord King of heaven made the law that the gifts of his providence should reach lowly things through intermediate principles.

[35:45]

Wherefore Denys says this to be the holy law of divinity, that they should be led by measured steps to divine light. This law is developed in bodily as well as in spiritual creatures. On this point Augustine remarks that just as the crasser and weaker bodies are ruled by subtler and more potent bodies according to plan, so are all bodies ruled by the rational spirit of life. And therefore the psalm of our texts sings this law, observed in the communication of spiritual truth through metaphors drawn from things of sense. Thou water'st the earth from thy upper rooms. So also from the heights of divine wisdom are watered the minds of teachers, signified by mountains. And through their ministry divine wisdom is shed on the minds of their hearers. Let us consider four points in the text we have cited.

[36:50]

The height of spiritual doctrine the dignity of its teachers the condition of the hearers and the method of communication. The height is reckoned by the words from his upper rooms. The glass, and I showed you what that was two days ago, a little marginal Bible with its annotation from the fathers, a vast book of annotated scripture. The glass says from his higher chambers. Three comparisons may illustrate how near theology is to the summit of knowledge. First by its origin, for this is the wisdom described as ascending from above. Also the word of God on high is the fount of wisdom, second because of the rarity of the air. I dwelt in the highest places. There are some heights of divine wisdom

[37:54]

to which all may climb, though with difficulty. As Davison says, some knowledge of God's being is naturally inborn. I shall later suggest that there is, in spite of what I have said earlier, at least a sense in which St. Thomas will continue to keep this view, even in the summer. Though it is one he does not feel very sympathetic towards. Gregory the Great is mentioned a little later where those of us who know him would expect to find him when the dignity of the teachers is being discussed. Accordingly, all teachers of holy writ should stand out in virtue, that they may be fitted to preach. For as Gregory says, it must need be that the teaching will be condemned of those whose life is despised. Well, with that little taste of his youth and St. Thomas' beginnings, I remind you that he had, of course,

[38:57]

behind him some years of teaching experience before writing the prologue to the Summa Theologica. The first question of which contains so many points of general importance for us that I am just going to consider it in some detail with you in care. And we are only just going to take the very first article of it today and the rest of it we'll look at tomorrow. But I think the sort of thing he's doing here is important for us to have a look at, however we decide to shape our programme later. Now perhaps I ought to say about those of you who come to look at this, as some of you will, I expect, in translation, even if you can't see it in the divisional, I ought to say about the layout of the Summa in general that it's always referred to by question or topic of discussion and the subdivision of various aspects of the question

[40:01]

which are called articles. So that, for instance, the bit I'm... If you look this up in a book of reference, you will see the bit I'm quoting today is going to be called something that looks like this Prima Pars, the first part, and it's going to be Article 1. Sorry. It's going to be Question 1 of the Prima Pars and Article 1 of that question. You should see that it's got 10 articles. I'm only going to talk about Number 1 today. This structure is, of course, really based on the public method of teaching in St Thomas' own day whereby a master or teacher in theology was faced with various queries which would seem to raise a difficulty. This is the sort of thing we do in this class

[41:01]

when we ventilate a subject later on. The master would then give what was called a determination. That's how he exposes what is his position on the question. And then, when this appears in a book form, you will find this as the body of the article, a little solid bit in the middle, and then to be followed by particular answers to particular queries. So, if you like, in a sort of planned way, you can say what the average article within a question will look like. You'll get, shall we say, one, two, three difficulties about a particular point. And then you'll get a swazio in between which suggests that perhaps there might be another point of view about this.

[42:02]

And then you'll get the master's answer to what he thinks should be said on this subject and then he will deal with one, two and three in three separate considerations which sometimes will give you important modifications about what he said in the main thing and are very seldom to be overlooked. One other extremely important point about the printed editions, even the best ones, the so-called Leonine edition in honour of Pope Leo XIII who got it going as a project, is that the titles in heavy type above each question are not the work of St Thomas. In order to see what he intended you to see, you must read the prologue each time. There he gives a question of what he's going to do

[43:03]

in the question and then he gives you what his queries are going to be and sometimes you'll find they're not identical and so you may find it's clearer if you really look at what St Thomas himself wrote rather than what later people thought he was thinking. It's quite one's own difficulties about work are quite bad enough without having been made worse by other people's difficulties. And so here is the prologue to the Summa Theologica. Since the teacher of Catholic truth ought not only to instruct the advanced, but it's also his business to educate beginners, according to the apostolic word, as babes in Christ have aided with milk, not solid food, in this work it is our purpose to hand on things which pertain to the Christian religion in the way suited to the training of beginners. He continues by saying that

[44:03]

the trouble about most of the existing books is they get involved in a lot of useless questions, especially when instruction is given in the form of a commentary on a book. This is of course the way in which St Thomas was really trying to escape from some of the cumbersome ways of teaching. We obviously all had too much lunch today. And I'm afraid this is rather difficult to take when one is feeling a little bit sleepy. St Thomas was really making an effort to get away from the rather cumbersome teaching which would occur if you just simply do what very often the masters in the schools were doing, were taking a classical text and simply commenting on it sentence by sentence. I've seen some of these students' notes in a place like Oxford where we have many medieval manuscripts. You can form a very good idea of what students did in the way of trying to take down the notes from the master. And I've also seen sometimes

[45:04]

the notes taken down on me, the result is often very terrifying, both for the pupil and the master. So St Thomas was really trying to eliminate this by doing a very carefully planned scheme which was not departing from the substantial method of teaching but at least clarifying each particular point. And so he continues, in an attempt to avoid these and similar difficulties, we shall try, trusting in God's help, to proceed briefly and clearly with the things that are the subject of safe teaching as the matter itself permits. I shall try, of course, to do the same with the same confidence in these lectures, though I believe that other times and other thoughts positively compel us to follow a slightly different course in many different places. And I still believe that the first question of the summer does conveniently raise some of the basic questions which concern us here. For as St Thomas' own prologue

[46:06]

to the first ten articles of the first question says, if we are to embrace our subject within definite limits, we must first look into the matter of what sort of a thing sacred teaching is. What is it? What is it? What kind of a thing? What ground it covers? And so he will ask about the need to have this kind of teaching at all. And he proceeds at once to give two arguments against this being necessary at all. One from scripture and the other from philosophy. In this case, Aristotle, in whom St Thomas had what for his day was of course a pioneer interest. Where for once, Aristotle is sufficiently representative of a fairly broad sweep of Greek philosophy. The first quotation comes from the book of Sirach, chapter 3, verse 22, where the whole sentence says,

[47:08]

as St Thomas' readers would know, reflect upon what has been assigned to you, for you do not need what is hidden. Or if you prefer an older translation, nearer to St Thomas' Latin, seek not the things that are too high for you, and search not into things above your ability. It's the kind of argument that people often use against holding a class like this, of course. So, seek not the things that are too high for you. It's an argument that we more often have to hear in the monastery, whether this text is quoted or not. And the philosophical argument against having this kind of teaching at all is from the metaphysics of Aristotle, where it emerges, of course, that theology is that part of philosophy

[48:08]

which deals with the question of God. So another treatment of this difficult matter is not necessary, in other words, we've already got one in philosophy. That's to say, in other words, obviously, if you're a philosopher, you can have a God problem. You don't have to be a theologian to have a problem about whether there is a God, or whether anything sensible can be said about him or not. I think it's useful and time-saving thing to say, in brackets at this point, that a great deal of the first part of the Summa is, in fact, devoted to questions which may be, for some people at any rate, obstacles to studying theology at all. I would include in this connection the so-called five ways by which St. Thomas believes that one concludes that it is right to say that God exists. And we shall see some of his reserves

[49:11]

about this kind of question in a moment or two. I think that's the right way to formulate it. Often you hear people talking about the five proofs of the existence of God. Thomas believes in no such thing. He believes that there are five ways in which you can show that it's true to say that God exists, which is rather different. First of all, St. Thomas gives a suasion in the opposite direction, which always occurs under the heading but to the contrary, said contra, but on the contrary. In this case, it's quotation from the second letter to Timothy. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness. But, St. Thomas comments, it's not the business of the philosophical disciplines which are devised by human reason to treat of divinely inspired Scripture. So it is useful,

[50:11]

beside the philosophical disciplines, to have another kind of knowledge divinely inspired. So there you are, you're moving across from the objections through another text of Scripture to what the master wants to say in defense of his being there at all. And this I'll do before we take our break. So the master's main summary of his doctrine says, I reply that we must say it was necessary for human salvation that there should be a science of divine revelation beside the philosophical disciplines which human reason can investigate. In the first place, because mankind is destined for God as to a goal which exceeds the grasp of reasoning, according to the word of Isaiah, the gist of which occurs, of course, in 1 Corinthians 2, verse 9, I have not seen no God beside thee,

[51:12]

what things thou hast prepared for those that love thee. Now, for human beings, a goal needs to have been known in advance if they are to direct their desires and their actions to it. And this is why certain things which are beyond human understanding need to be made known by divine revelation for the salvation of mankind. Further, it was necessary that things about God which cannot be discovered by human reasoning should be presented to mankind by divine revelation. For the truth about God which can be discovered by human reason by a few people reaches mankind over a long period of time with an admixture of error. Yet upon the knowledge of this truth depends the whole salvation of human beings and is in God. Thus, for salvation to come to human beings more easily

[52:14]

and with greater certainty, it was necessary that they should be instructed about divine things by divine revelation. This is why it was necessary to have a holy teaching dependent upon revelation in addition to the philosophical disciplines which are studied by reason. This second point is one which St. Thomas very frequently makes. He makes it very elaborately, in fact, in the Summa Conscientia Antilles, which I mentioned earlier, the anti-Islamic book. And it's one which we all of us know very well. In some ways, of course, we are very privileged to have the time to be able to do something like this. And it is, in fact, the case that most human beings are in the middle of their afternoon's work. But if it is true that knowledge of divine things is necessary for all men, there must be some organized knowledge which can be communicated

[53:14]

to others who haven't got this kind of leisure. And since God has given us revelation in addition to what we could discover by reason, and St. Thomas does very often elaborate all the complexities of doing this kind of work. You might be married, you might have a job, and all sorts of other things. Children might be shouting at the tops of their voices, and so on. So, very, very few people... He says, even those things which you can see, in principle, not everybody will, in fact, see. So you do need somebody to tell you what they are. To the two initial difficulties raised, St. Thomas replies that to the first it must be said that although the things which are above human knowledge cannot be discovered by human beings through reasoning, they are nevertheless revealed by a God to be received in faith. This is why

[54:16]

it's not enough to say, don't look to things that are too high for you, because the next sentence says, as he quite rightly quotes, Matters too great for human understanding have been shown to you. And holy teaching is exactly this kind of thing. So don't tell me this is not for ordinary chaps, because if it's revelation intended for all mankind, then we need to know about it. And to the second difficulty, he says that, namely that, there is already a part of philosophy which deals with the problem of God, so we don't need another one. He says the different modes of understanding lead to different systems of knowledge. For instance,

[55:17]

that the earth is round is a conclusion reached by the astrologer and the specialist in natural sciences. But the astrologer does it by mathematics, which is an abstract subject, and the naturalist by considering the nature of matter. Thus there is no reason why the same things which the philosophical distance has studied, insofar as they can be known by the light of natural reason, should not be discussed by another science, by the light of divine revelation. So the theology which pertains to holy teaching differs in kind from that theology which is taken to be a part of philosophy. I suppose there are several points we ought to notice about this way of situating theology. Perhaps first that, evidently, starting from the proposition, presupposition, that there are not, as it were, two worlds interpenetrating each other,

[56:18]

theology here being spoken of is not being centred primarily on the mystery of Christ, but on the mystery of God. Which becomes, at least in a large number of matters, common ground for the philosopher and the theologian. As I've said, you can obviously, if you're going to have a great body of philosophical discussion, it may very well include a section about God. Even if it reaches a negative conclusion that there is no God. At least there'll be a theology. Many philosophers have really thought about the problem of God quite a lot. And St Thomas is really saying that it's not as though what we're doing here, when we're trying to study theology in the proper sense of the word, in the Christian sense of the word, we're doing the same thing as the philosopher is doing when he's got a God problem.

[57:20]

We're doing this because, in fact, we have the waters come down from the mountains. Because we've got the divine revelation, and this is our, as we saw in the Council, this is the starting point of our theology. In other words, St Thomas is insisting if you call this theology, which you could, these two are different in kind, because this one depends on reason alone. It doesn't mean to say we're not going to use reason in theology. But everything that the philosopher is going to say about God, he's got to be able to derive from his own arguments. This kind of theology we're doing here, has got God revealing behind it. So this is different in kind.

[58:25]

That's why he compares it with the other sciences, when he says, for instance, you may have, for instance, for medieval music, shall we say, as a subject, which depends on mathematics. Which it takes, where it gets its primary information from, rhythms and things and so on, which can be measured. We don't think of music in that kind of way, but that's what's said. And you can see, the general principle of the thing is simply to say, well, we really have got a special body of matter here, and the speciality about it is that it's revealed by God. I think we're going to come back again

[59:32]

to finish with the last few reflections I'd like to make on this, because I think we rather need a break at this moment, all of us, to get out and fresh air. Because as it was a feast day, and we had a rather good lunch, then we're obviously still digesting it. So let's just have a brief break, and we'll come back in ten minutes' time. Well, I'm sure our lady would crave this today, because it was her feast day after all, and I think we all enjoyed the liturgy very much indeed. And I suppose the lunch was part of the liturgy of the day. If we were a bit tired, it'll certainly be excused. The thought which occurred to me, which I didn't actually, I didn't actually finish all I'd written about this lecture, because it occurred to me, just thinking about the sort of things St. Thomas was saying here, something which I think has a contemporary interest for many of us,

[60:32]

even if it isn't personal to us. We may meet people coming to the monastery for whom it is a personal question. I think that you can see that St. Thomas is very concerned to to make a very clear distinction, which I think we need to keep in our own minds, between that sort of discipline which could be called theological, which is primarily based on philosophical principles, and that sort of theology proper, which is what we're supposed to be doing here, which is really discussing and dealing with divine revelation. And so it's different in kind.

[61:35]

We don't really need to understand the theory of the vision of the sciences, which St. Thomas was common, as St. Thomas as well is, in terms of that. He had to try to explain it, of course. Do you find that difficult, Mark? It isn't really too difficult. I don't think we need to. I needn't tell you much about that, in order to make that clear. It seems to me that, even in modern terms, we can see that there must be two different kinds of bodies of knowledge, if you're going to use revelation as the basis of what you talk about. When you talked about that, some of us had a class when his father met Torpey, and he talked about different blackboards in terms of different ways of looking at one particular thing. We look at it through the blackboard of philosophical theology, or we look at it on the

[62:38]

blackboard of revelation. Yes. Yes. As long as I think one does get quite clear that really, of course, the ground covered is not necessarily the same. And that's to say that sometimes, of course, you're going to have to at least mention or presume, in some way, something which can be philosophically demonstrated, at least by some people. I think, you see, Thomas is making two quite special points. And one of them is that, first of all, if it were going to be philosophical, anyway, only a very small section of the human race would ever get to know about it. So there is a need to have something like this. At the same time, I can't help feeling that nowadays for instance, in the Summa

[63:40]

Continentales, which is the Summa written against Islam, it's difficult to escape the feeling that St. Thomas is more concerned with the fact that so few have the time or capacity to penetrate the mystery of God by reflection. Now, for someone like me, and I may not be the only one in the room, who has tried several times to look into what we can know of the problems faced by Buddha, I've had to do this partly out of interest of my own in the earlier stage, and partly because I was eventually, while I was in Norway, asked to give a series of discussions on the great world religions, and so I had to try and give an honest picture of Buddhism. And it does seem to me that it's tempting to think that the sort of thing that St. Thomas is here using in the

[64:41]

philosophical part of his work is exactly the kind of thing which persuaded the Buddha to leave these questions aside. In other words, it seems to me more probable that Buddha was an agnostic rather than an atheist. I mean, he does seem to be, I think he may very well have thought, you know, this is all too difficult. We can leave this aside. I'm not, of course, saying that St. Thomas was an agnostic, either the theologian or the philosopher, I don't think he was. But I am saying that I feel a little concern that he does appear, doesn't appear to be showing, at least at this point, why we should be Christian theologians. And this is something I'm going to come back to. Because although you can see that the Summa is going to contain a whole section

[65:41]

on Christ, and of course it's very soon in the first part the Trinity is going to be discussed and so on. At any rate, you don't have quite the same feeling as you have in John of Damascus, that Christ is the gateway, the door into the mystery of God. And in fact, if you're going to learn about Christian theology from the Summa, you're going to have to wait a very long time before you get to the third part. Before this matter, in other words, is going to be brought explicitly into focus. As I say, please don't misunderstand me in saying this, but it's one of the ways in which I think you might feel some reserve about this way. Let's say it's one of the reasons why I don't think it's very satisfactory for a modern student only to read St. Thomas by himself. Mercifully, nowadays, at least he might be able

[66:45]

to do that instead of reading St. Thomas through other people's eyes, which is mostly the way I was taught. And sometimes a very strange interpretation which I'm quite sure St. Thomas wouldn't have understood or certainly wouldn't have agreed with. But, I suppose, if you'd like me to put what I might say about this first question, if I'd been a Muslim, I should say, why on earth shouldn't I take the Koran as my sacred book? You might think about that a bit. Do you see why I say that? I mean, that's to say, if we take the divisions we've had on the board here, in other words, a theology which is based on revelation and a theology based on philosophy, well, the Koran makes claim to be a revelation. What are you going to say

[67:47]

to that? Well, I quoted something from Fr. Morty yesterday, which is, I think, part of the answer, and we've repeated it again today, that really, Christian theology is first of all the encounter with Christ as a person, and the Koran is specifically a written book by a specific man, and is the foundation of Islam. It is actually a very, very fascinating book indeed. If you've never looked at it, you should now, because I'm done. One of the chapters, especially the chapter, Light over Light, is very like something St. Gregory the Great says at some point in Moroni. But I think this is, if you like, a kind of private problem, which I just kind of put to you. It's something that I think I'm going to try to keep before us.

[68:48]

Later on, when we're trying to think about Christian anthropology, because you can see that the first really big theological books are all going to be concentrated on the person of Christ, and of course the first great theological consciences are going to be about the person of Christ. So that Christian theology is very, very Christ-centered. And the very big proportion of this, as I say, I think the fairest and brightest way to see the large amount of the first part of the sermon, which is devoted to the discussion of God, and let's say, if you like, there are two, I suppose we could say, if they, it's the kind of thing the Orthodox, especially the more bigoted kind of Orthodox, they have to hold against the West, is that we start, if you like, with God as one, and then

[69:53]

talk about Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Whereas the East has preserved the tradition that we know about the Father through the Son, and the Holy Spirit is the gift of the Father sent after the ascension of the Son. Which means to say, in other words, you have to think about your Trinitarian theology a rather different way. Do you see that? Does anybody not see that? You can see that, as I say, by having, by positing what is a perfectly genuine problem for us, after all, we're going to confront very many people for whom God will seem to be primarily a philosophical problem. And we're going to have to confront the fact

[70:54]

that in order to be a living Christian, you have to have some conception of revelation. Still, this is an easier thing to defend in terms of the New Testament than this one is. He who sees me, sees the Father. All those things that our Lord says. So that whereas if you start with a big monotheism then you have to show how to talk about three persons. You've got what becomes to be the same problem, but his problem is posed in a different manner. Do you see what I mean? Well, I don't want to give you my difference, what are yours? I wonder. Ken, do you see the point I'm making? Yeah, I think I do.

[71:55]

My question is, do they speak of the Holy Trinity? How can I speak? Yes, indeed. Indeed, because you have to. In other words, you start with very much the picture of our Lord as the person we are confronted with, who leads us to the Father, who sends us the Holy Spirit, to teach us as, indeed, Christ promised at the Last Supper, those things which we need to remember about faith. One seems to be more based on man's view of God, or man's concept of God, and the other, God as he tells us about himself in the Scriptures. Yes, that's true. I'm glad to see that you see this. It is an embarrassment, if you like,

[72:56]

I think, and I don't see why we should feel really compelled to choose. I mean, I think that sometimes the Orthodox have to make too exaggerated a claim for the superiority of their approach to things. But I think most of us in this particular period feel more sympathetic with this one, because it's the way in which we are confronted with it in Revelation. We're confronted with it in the personal teaching of Christ, who shows us the way to the Father, and who tells us in his Last Supper discourse in St. John, that the Spirit will be sent to teach us and bring to remembrance all the things we need to know. Whereas this one is very strongly influenced by, although it is Revelation, it's the one who is speaking to Moses. At the same time,

[73:56]

there is something which is much closer to a philosophical conception of one God, one mystery behind it. That's what you're saying, isn't it? Yes. I think you've got it. You see it that it is different. It's just a question of... I think it's primarily a Christian method. I mean, I don't think that the Orthodox are right to make an issue of the filioque. As you know, as a matter of fact, Professor Pelican, in his history of the Christian tradition, says that it's mainly through Augustine, who simply said that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and that the West tended to want to defend this position. Of course, in fact, the East don't deny that the Spirit can also be sent by the Son.

[74:57]

But I think, if you like, the approach to theology, this being much more Christocentric than the other one, is clearly the case, and the shape of the Summa does bring that out, I think, just as the day-feeding Orthodox. Which has, after all, philosophically, they've got a great deal in common. They're going to have to discuss the same kind of concepts, because they're both dealing with a tradition, which uses hypostases and substance and person and individual, and so on. Those things have got to be talked about. They are unavoidable somehow or other. But, it is a different picture, and it's much more, even in St. John's version, which is really much more untidy than St. Thomas's, it has an extraordinary clarity about it, as I think we'll see as we go on tomorrow. Tomorrow is Friday.

[76:01]

I promise you it will be my most difficult day, but I don't think it will be as difficult as all that we've got through today. Is there anybody who can't really feel that this is unavoidable? It seems to me, if you like, that if we're going to be trained with theologians, we simply have to be able to say in what way our faith is different from their philosophy. We really do have to say that. And it seems to me this is the way in which this particular question of Summa is a clearly necessary one. We have to be aware of the fact that we are committed by our faith to defending a divine revelation. As I say, the documents of the Church and the New Testament itself make clear that this

[77:03]

divine revelation has a certain element of ambiguity about it when we use this word because it is a confrontation with the person of the word and not just the spoken word. Do you see a problem here, John Baptiste, which I'm not seeing? No. Lauren, what do you feel about this? It's obviously difficult to have to face this, but I think somehow we can't quite get ourselves off this. We don't have to know very much philosophy in order to see that it would be. In fact, we are bound actually by something from Revelation by the text beginning near the beginning of the letter to the Romans to believe that it is possible to conclude that God exists from the observance

[78:03]

of the world of nature. In other words, even our Revelation connects us to believing that there could be. I think it's highly significant that neither Vatican I nor Vatican II said how you can actually do it. None of them in fact presented Thomas' five ways although sometimes introductions to the Catholic faith sometimes presented Thomas' five ways as exactly as though they had a kind of infallibility about them which certainly isn't guaranteed. But they don't themselves, they do not prove that God exists. There are analytical arguments that show that it can be argued that he exists if he exists. Thank you Peter. This is a very very important point. It's one which I think seems to me was not sufficiently clearly said when I myself was being taught. Sometimes the arguments were presented exactly as though somehow you suddenly almost see God

[79:05]

when you get to the end of the argument. That's not true. What Thomas says is that these conclude to the proposition that it's true to say that God is. But then you are left out in the mystery of God. This somewhat he says is what all men call God. I remember once being called in by one of my Norwegian students. He was holding a philosophy class and talking a bit about St. Thomas and got him rather affixed when he got to this point. He said, will you come, please come and talk to my class about this. And what Jacob, my dear friend to whom I dedicated my last book, a very charming person, made very honest attempts to present this very well. And what Jacob hadn't quite grasped is this. For instance, if you take the argument from causes.

[80:05]

A causes A causes B B causes C C causes D and so on. And St. Thomas' argument is going to be that if you go on indefinitely along a chain like this, you can go on forever. There is an infinite regress. So what the argument concludes to is, there must be something which is outside this chain. In other words, there is a cause which is uncaused. In other words, it isn't really true that the argument goes from A to Z because Z is still on the same line. What the argument concludes to is that it goes up to R, if you like, or whatever you call it. This is what we call R. You see how we got there? Can I ask, Father, though, can the two views complement one another? I mean, do we necessarily

[81:09]

have to take one over the other? It seems to me that if the philosophy is an enlightened one, insofar as it is enlightened, it really can get one closer to the truth of God. Yes, I suppose in a certain way, if you like, I think you're raising something which is important. I believe it's important for all the great theologians. I think you'll feel it in Athanasius when we're talking about him on Saturday. Very strongly. I think all the great theologians feel very strongly that truth, wherever you meet it, is going to have something of God about it. And if you like, I'm sure you're right, there's a complement. If you can do this, if you can produce a philosophical argument which convinces you that it's true to say that God is, well, all right, you do it. I don't happen to work that way, but most people don't.

[82:09]

I was thinking more of the Western and Eastern views. I was back on that. Whatever man can know about God from his own... Yes, well, you see, I don't think, after all, the fountain of knowledge does contain a very long philosophical section. And I say, although it's clearly, clearly anticipating what it's going to have to say about Christ, right from the beginning, that commands a philosophical interest. Certainly, isn't it?

[82:38]

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