The Dominicans FIRST are contemplatives. They have a deep mystical prayer life and then share with us on an intellectual level what they experience in prayer. The heart/soul are expressed as best as possible by the mind/intellect but are not separate. Words can never express our deep experience of the Lord.
Love Fr Pine, he's so brilliant and articulate while also humble, charming, authentic and godly. I love his heart for the Lord and it makes me so happy to know there are smart faithful people who know and think important thoughts and can translate for us mere mortals. All that being said, I love your heart Austin and your great questions and summaries of Father Pine's points. You articulate exactly what I'm wondering so clearly (episode from April 9 on Patreon). I'm so blessed by your heart and your approach in your interviews. I cannot believe the wisdom you have at 22!!! Lk 2:40 he...grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.💙❤🤍
This is what constitutes the divine simplicity and pure actuality in that GOD is not a composite of essence and existence because HIS existence is essential and his essence is to exist.
Fr Pine is a fantastic! What a humble and bright personality, I loved the explanations! I sense his doctoral study on soteriology - particularly, the salvific actions of Christ - can make a deep positive impact on the way to connect academia and spirituality more soundly: he is definitely a very knowledgeable guy and of course very talented as a theologian. Thanks for this, Austin. God bless!
I watch Pints with Aquinas all the time, especially since Matt moved here to the Catholic Mecca, but I have never listened to Father Gregory Pine even once. Today will be the first...lol
great questions Austin for bringing out the best in Fr Pine and helping us understand why these things matter and how they connect to other ideas. Fr Pine became clearer, to me at least, as the interview went on, thanks impart to your questions. Very enlightening. Greatly appreciated!
Pog: Fr Gregory Pine can range from witty Charming dialogue to “oh good Lord he might as well be speaking Russian with the amount of Complex thomistic terminology he’s using”. Love him tho
My gosh the introduction of divine simplicity is so deep that I can't still comprehend it but I'm gonna watch this episode over and over again until i understand it. Thank you Austin for this wonderful topic that you've discuss with Fr. Pines.
This was interesting. What he says about God being one reminds me of what St.Paul said that people should not say “I belong to Paul” “I belong to Apollos” or “I belong to Peter”. We all belong to God, who is one.
Another outstanding interview. Your gift, Austin, is the questioning the guest to elicit understanding and clarification. You have the calming manner to encourage the guest and the listener. Too many interviewers wish to compete with their guests. You are of the school of Brian Lamb of C-SPAN as opposed to Charlie Rose who ruined interviews w his puerile need to show off. As for the Trinity I'm going w St. Anselm who said, "Tres nescio quid" or three I know not what. God bless you. It's such a delight to listen to these interviews which you do in charity and humility.
Hey Austin, I really appreciate the content you’re putting out. I truly think you would likewise appreciate Fr. Ripperger’s videos and conferences, there’s plenty of them on youtube on the whole multitude of issues regarding morality, theology, the current state of the church and everything that I assume would interest you much. So far I haven’t found a better help in my spiritual life, theology, morality regarding catholicism and I say that because Fr. Ripperger doesn’t give you his own opinions but only the teaching of the church, saints, theologians and of course the church fathers. I hope you’ll enjoy:)
Hey Austin. How about finally featuring the Eucharistic Miracles on your show? Maybe you'd like to reach out to the Joy of the Faith channel. The guy who owns the channel is making a Hollywood style production of the Eucharistic miracles.
What a great video Austin. Thanks. You really love us your subscribers. Can't wait for the next one. Congrats again for your 20Kth subcriber. Your channel is exploding.
41:15 made me happy 😊 but I'm not confident that the words Divine Simplicity are essential in order to reach there... mostly because Orthodoxy doesn't hold to Divine Simplicity and it's magnificently intimate in practice AND harmonious...
To be honest, pretty much all of the discussion Gregory Palamas had with the Calabrian monk Barlaam was to prove his model was not endangering divine unity and divine simplicity. It had to be many centuries later - specially during the very late 19th or all 20th century - that Neo-Palamites started to defend that something they called “absolute divine simplicity” wasn’t compatible with Palamism, inverting therefore the theological historical disputation. But no Eastern Orthodox, at least that I know of (doctrinal clearness and unity can be hard to find, but still), holds that their theology abandoned divine simplicity.
Orthodox most definitely affirm divine simplicity. The Eastern Fathers, such as John Damascene, repeatedly state that God is simple and uncomposed (a-synthetic).
Hey just randomly stumbled upon your channel. Found some gold! Currently going to Gordon-Conwell studying Church History and Theology. I love what you are doing and is something I want to do.
Hope you enjoy it! I’m not sure how versed Fr. Pine is in Orthodox theology, so I’m not sure if he’d be interested and I’ve never seen Dr. Bradshaw do a debate, but it’s an interesting idea!
Thank you Austin! Question: I read your description of the name “Gospel Simplicity” in the description of your videos. I think that there is a connection between the usage of “simplicity” in both contexts. So I ask, to seek to understand, why name it Gospel “Simplicity”?
The theory of "being" that you began with is actually a philosophical problem that goes back to the ancient philosophers. The problem was.... how can anything exist? Where does it get it's source of being? Parmenides attempted to solve this with his theory that stated, "Whatever is, is. Pretty cool , yes? But it left out God as the ultimate source of being.
Divine simplicity as understood by Aquinas is not actually dogmatic in the Catholic Church. Aquinas is in fact more strict than the dogma. The Catholic Church allows to believe that God attributes are really distinct (as in Scotism) and even allows to believe in an essence-energy distinction in God (as in Palamism, which is the preferred theology of eastern Catholicism). Yes, divine simplicity (understood as absence of composition in God) is dogmatic, but the question of whether absence of composition implies absence of multiplicity remains open. A composition implies that parts are ontologically prior to the whole, at least in some sense, because they are contingently united (as so the whole is contingent). So one could argue that there is a multiplicity in God, but also that the unity in God is ontologically prior to the multiplicity (since in this case the elements of this multiplicity are necessarily united), which could allow to keep divine simplicity (this is the reasoning more or less implied at least in Scotism).
@Ελληνας Γραικος there's nothing called absolute. Either God is simple or not. I don’t know what ‘absolute’ tells me as opposed to ‘kinda sorta’ simple.
@Ελληνας Γραικος councils and holy saints never say what Palamas taught in his Triads. don't refer to St. Basil's 238th letter I've read it many times and there's no EED in his letter (they way Palamas taught)
Philosophical predisposition was needed to understand this. You need to understand those terms and in context. Normal ppl should not be bothered, because they might end up confused even more.
Can you sprinkle written definitions on screen for words some of us don’t know please? It’s taking time to stop video to look up “soteriology.” Thanks so much! 🍉🌻🦋
All ‘sense’ (and therefore all understanding) is made in ‘relationship’ (not mere relation) to God. Austin, you need to have an Open and Relational theologian on your show. I suggest Thomas Jay Oord or Tripp Fuller.
It is. I'm not sure exactly how I would approach that though. I mean I'd be happy to talk about Chalcedon, but it's not at the top of my list of videos to make
For a doctrine with "simplicity" in it's name, I find it rather confusing. I've had a couple conversations with Catholics where Divine Simplicity has come up, and I still don't really get it lol.
It's definitely not the easiest concept. The definition is simple enough (God is not composed/God does not have parts), but fleshing that out is a bit tricky
As a thomist I cannot help but point out that existence and being is NOT the same. God is His own Being and NOT his own existence. Existence is binary and is something we predicate of the composite of ESSENCE +BEING. So something either exists or does not exist BUT it can BE more or less than something else. God's Being is unlimited, his essence is identical to his own being (nhot existence). Intensive being helps to understand how it can allow to speak about divine attributes.
How can a mind be simple? To be utterly simple, God would have to be utterly mindless. You can't have both intelligence and simplicity. A mindless rock is simpler than a mind. A supreme mind cannot be simpler than a rock. This should be supremely simple to understand.
Aquinas actually wrote a full length commentary on Dionysius’s The Divine Names. I always loved Dionysius and actually only began to take aquinas seriously when I saw how reverent he was to the thought of this great teacher.
Thomistic divine simplicity or absolute divine simplicity necessitates that God must exercise justice or creative power, and it also implies that God is a collection of attributes as much as he is Father. This essentially means that all things are necessary emanations from monad. This is Platonism with a Trinity mask.
I didn't really understand how God in the thomism perspective in your opinion have attributes. Thomas said that the trinity are relations, in fact, for what I've seen, divine simplicity leads to the trinity. 🤔
Father Pine is charming and a good presenter. The Thomistic approach though, of which the topic on Divine Simplicity is but a topic, is highly problematic. The system of the Summa relies heavily on the Aristotelean epistemology which goes from the natural to the metaphysical. From the beginning of the Organon to the end of the Metaphysics, such is the Stagirite’s approach through and through. For the early Christian Fathers, of whom many were Greek and knew intimately Aristotelean tradition, this natural-to-the-supernatural approach was useful only to an extent. The Fathers understood well that Christianity is a revelatory Truth, so patent in the Old Testament and even more so in its fulfilment, the New Testament. Therefore, if revelation is the source of truth, it is not a good idea to start with the world around us and infer God from it, especially as humans and the cosmos as a whole are fallen (cosmos through the fall of Adam and Eve). Therefore, God should be understood first and foremost through His revelation of which the fullness is in the Divine Eucharist. Therefore a theologian is by necessity a liturgical being: whoever prays is the true theologian, not the one who philosophises. The distinction between “intellect” and “mysticism” is false and a clear sign of those failed attempts to know the unknowable God through philosophising. The West stumbled on Aristotle late and through translations. The Dominicans and Aquinas, especially, took most of its epistemological apparatus to build a coherent but, at the end of the day, a faulty system. There was a great enthusiasm in the West about this Aristotelean find (much alike the enthusiasm of recent converts who think that they have discovered something momentous which they need to tell the world but do not know that the world got there a while ago!). The West was largely unaware that the East had rejected the Stigirite approach as a basis for theology almost a millennium ago. Aquinas displayed a huge admiration for Aristotle, whom he called the Philosopher, and for Averroes, whom he called the Commentator. If many people feel intuitively that Thomism is dry and does not tally well with their personal encounter with God, this is indeed an accurate observation. This is not a lack of nerdiness but a correct understanding of the human heart that God is not described and understood through syllogisms. The East heavily relied on the Fathers because the Fathers were first eu-charistically (eu-charis) and en-lightened. They lead lives of great sainthood which gave them the discernment to elucidate the REVEALED, not the philosophised, holy Scriptures. Much as he was a righteous man, Aristotle did not share into the fullness of the eucharistic light and was is therefore unsuitable as the foundation of a theological system. During the proceedings of the failed council of Ferrara - chaired by Dominicans - an Eastern Bishop exclaimed: “Aristotle, Aristotle, they are constantly talking about Aristotle. What about the Fathers?” Enough said.
So it isn't correct to infer God through reasoning about nature, partly because we are fallen, but then our ability to infer anything about God from revelation doesn't suffer from being fallen? PS: Aquinas quotes Augustine more than Aristotle. Aquinas would happily throw Aristotle's ideas out the window if they conflict with revelation. I think some people just hear Thomists speak so much of Aristotle, that they think the Fathers and revelation are less important.
@@luisnuke8389 Orthodox are schismatic ethno churches with no functioning Catholic ecclesiology. They can't Objectively and universally DEFINE (not simply agree upon) what makes an ecumenical council truly legitimate, therefore the eastern orthodox church(es) are false
@@billyg898 because revelation is exactly that - revealed - it is only understood through the Holy Spirit in the Body of the Church; the only true exegesis is doxological. The fallen nature gets the ability to reconnect with the divine image and likeness and understand the revelation through the Eucharist, not syllogistically. That’s where you make the epistemological error. What you say is completely inaccurate. Even statistically, Aquinas quotes Aristotle far more than anyone. He was also not familiar with the Capadocians who were indeed the saintly geniuses who formulated the Trinitarian understanding of the church. The Augustinian approach in this regard was incomplete and Thomas used this in the greatest extent, as you say.
I would be a bit cautious on his understanding and explanation of the divine unity @ 48:00 , where the Holy Spirit is mentioned as proceeding from the Father and the Son (filioque). This understanding is largely absent from the early creed specifically the Nicene Creed. According the East this is the beginning of the Latin heresies. I would like to hear more on this topic for sure from both side.
Why is this even a question? It absolutely does matter. If you don’t know the identity and essence of who god is then you have a false understanding of the true god lol
Divine Simplicity is of course simply Christian doctrine = God is Uncompound [Simple] Aquinian Divine Simplicity, however, by conflating and identifying everything into Essence in God, makes Communicatio Idiomatum impossible and thus negates the Incarnation
The whole development of the theory of “communicatio idiomatum” was the way Catholic thinkers - and St Thomas was maybe the single greatest in the theology of Incarnation in all history of the Church, let us be at least fair - have developed further the theological concept of “hypostatic union” against the Christological heresies of Nestorianism and Monophysitism. So “communicatio idiomatum” (an exact translation would be “communication of idioms”) was the subsequent theological development with which Catholic theologians explained how could the divine ATTRIBUTES of God be communicated to the humanity of Christ, instrumental to God’s very actions, in the absolute mystery of the hypostatic union (like in the example of the salvific properties of Our Lord’s saliva/spit, v. Mark 8,22-25 or John 9, 6-7). So the whole communication of properties/attributes of the divine through the humanity of Christ can never be less than a very Thomistic and Medieval Catholic scholastic thinking and theological reasoning. I really have NO IDEA from what you picked your affirmations. To be true, actually no other Christian tradition took the Incarnation and the humanity of Jesus Christ to all its effects but the Catholic Church, inclusive in the very mystery of the Church (both as the Mystical Body of Christ or as the universal sacrament of salvation) and in all realm of the salvific actions of Christ. St Thomas even calls the humanity of Christ the ‘formal cause’ (that would mean, in a more simple terminology, the instrumental cause) of our salvation in his very deep and rich soteriology. The whole discussions around the “communicatio idiomatum” were not even common, at least not properly, to Eastern (Byzantine) medieval scholasticism nor it was entirely present in the Patristics, because the Fathers in the Patristic era were superficial in the applications (theological consequences) of the mystery of hypostatic union. More than that, the very discussions between Lutherans and Calvinists about the way the latter arguably abandoned it - meaning to explain why they rejected the substantial and true/ bodily presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist or, as they say, in Lord’s supper - according to the first (much closer to Catholics), who believe it, was entirely present in the Western tradition and so “communicatio idiomatum” was discussed by the Protestant Reformers with huge appreciation, but not so much in the Byzantine or other Eastern ones. Inclusive, for both Catholics and Lutherans, the wrong perceptions about “communicatio idiomatum” is one of the many doctrinal facts that made the anti-sacramental mentality so triumphant in Evangelicalism. I frankly couldn’t even understand what you mean, my friend. Sorry. I would be glad if you explain your points with more details. PS: as a recommendation to both of us read in the future, the doctoral thesis of Fr Gregory Pine in the University of Fribourg would very much touch the whole theme of the “communicatio idiomatum” and the salvific actions of Christ. So for a Dominican theologian entirely inserted in the Thomist intellectual tradition, I sense it would be very, very strange (if not simply unintelligible) to preach out that St Thomas Aquinas’ theology and “communicatio idiomatum” antagonize. I think Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s books and articles on this theme would be helpful to you, my friend. God bless!
@@masterchief8179 You are aware that Aquinas, contrary to St. Cyril, denied Essence-Energies distinction, right? And Essence-Energies distinction being denied in God, that there is no way or media for what is creaturely, namely the Flesh taken from Mary, to participate in Divine Nature?
@@adothariman966 St Thomas did NOT use the category of the energies of God in his theology. Actually St Thomas Aquinas was a century earlier than Palamas, who more or less systematized the comprehension of God being “divine essence” and “divine energies” (plural). Although it is very common to see some Neopalamites of the 20th century trying to “Google search” the word ‘energeia’ in the NT and in the Fathers (and they found it in some few texts of the Cappadocian Fathers, who wrote in Greek) as to retroactively encounter Palamism in the Apostolic Tradition, the more rigorous it can get is to say the theory can only be a sort of doctrinal development that is particular to Byzantine scholasticism, specially the intellectual tradition that supported (theologically) the spiritual practices of Mount Athos. So to say that Thomas Aquinas dealt with “God’s energies” and refused it is not only anachronistic, but a false statement. That would be my first - an necessary- point. As I said once, I would point out that St Thomas says that God has no potentialities: all potencies, all faculties, are in God in the plenitude of realization. God is pure actuality. There is not a thing that God could be or could have been: he IS. Exactly under this theory St Thomas defined God as “ipsum esse subsistens”: the absolute plenitude of being, who receives nothing from an external cause but causes everything to be, either directly or by secondary causations. God is, therefore, Who is (“I am Who am”). Sometimes I sense (and I may be incorrect on this) some EOs brothers tent to think that, since Palamism understood the way of God’s actions in the theory of energies, that when St Thomas defends that God is pure actuality - and his explanation is quite irreproachable, let us be honest here -, therefore, God became “energy only” (a Palamite, not Thomist category) as if He was emptied from His radical and all transcendental essence and then disguised Himself under some created essences out there, being pure immanence with no transcendence. Or, as you said, since you ‘a priori’ assume there must be the distinction of God’s essence and energies, therefore you imply God’s essence equals to his “energies or actions” for Thomas Aquinas, so this makes God’s essence (since we don’t find in him the category of “divine energies”) equal to what He does, because everything related to Him would be His essence, which led you to the absurd of equalling creation to God or imagining that God couldn’t truly come in the flesh or have anything to the created order, being pure transcendence with no possible immanence. That’s a very basic level of caricaturization. What St Thomas actually says - and that’s not even dogmatic for us Catholics, that’s just something on the side of intellectual Thomism - is that God’s essence is equal to his ATTRIBUTES, meaning not what God “does” but the whole set of characteristics of what God IS. So you shouldn’t dive into an incomprehension on Thomism that is subsequent to the simple misunderstanding of the word “ACT” in the ideia of pure actuality (“actus purus”) and an implicit assimilation with the word “ENERGY”, all under Palamism’s lenses. It is always a bad intellectual exercise to mix up categorical differences when the similitude is imprecise and undue and to differentiate categories when they are identical. The more rabid accuser most surely will be - not surprisingly - the one who proves to know the least about the thing or person he accuses. That’s all over the Internet. Pick that and add to it a bunch of ideologues supplying material for the militants and voilá, a trend starts. _”Damnant quod non intellegunt”:_ they condemn what they do not understand. Trying to understand Thomism under Palamite categories or vice-versa is the same as trying to understand Portuguese with English verbs, nouns, phrasal constructions and so forth. We should all go studying, but more than that, pray seriously and with humility. EDIT: But let me just ask: are you saying that Jesus’s humanity would be categorically inserted into the Palamite concept of God’s energies? I am just trying to understand your statement and Palamas, not to impute to you any caricature, so your explanations would be helpful in the dialogue. Specially because you said St Cyril was the one responsible for using the distinction between God’s essence and God’s energy (which is imprecise, since Palamas was evidently the very responsible to develop it in doctrinal form, not even among EOs it is disputed - apart from Internet blogs) because the Oriental Orthodox Monophysites used St Cyril of Alexandria’s texts to advocate for the fusion (or absorption) of the human nature of Christ in his divine nature, therefore making - the heresy of Eutyches of Constantinople - Jesus to have one and not two perfect natures which define the hypostatic union terminology. I’m sincerely curious.
@@masterchief8179 I'm curious if you can discuss without resorting to long-winding monologues First question: Did Aquinas admit real distinction of Essence and Energy in God? Just simple yes no answer is fine. If you want to elaborate sure. But start with yes or no. And keep your elaboration relevant
@@adothariman966 Aquinas didn’t use the category of God’s “energies”. So I clearly said it would be a wrong question in the first place. It is not that Aquinas denies Essence and Energies are distinct (what you implied) but that he does not even use the category of the so-called “divine energies”, which is why I said the question does not fit. That was actually my answer and it was very specific and direct. So you should not bring Thomism to Palamism’s categories and drive abysmal consequences for it as a gesture of intellectual honesty, at the very least. I didn’t engage in a monologue (sorry if you saw things like that) but tried to say all that could be said the more didactic I could in a very complex theme. I sense I treat it to be tiresome - yeah, I give you that - that EOs people in the anglophonic Internet specialized at throwing some framed propagandistic absurdities like “absolute (sic) divine simplicity leads to...” and then fill in the blanks with some accusation. I’ve seen at least some: atheism, Protestantism, empty intellectualism, killing the mysteries, etc. I have not seen until your post a “negation of Incarnation” (Arianism?) filled in those blanks, which caught my attention, so that’s why I engaged with you in the first place. Oh, and by “absolute divine simplicity” they are targeting St Thomas Aquinas but think they are shooting Catholic dogmatics, which is simply a case of ignorance in the most strict sense of the term, to be (again) sincere. I asked my question. If you’d like to answer, I’d really appreciate it. It would be nice if you read things above too before answering, if possible. My question was: _”are you saying that Jesus’s humanity would be categorically inserted into the Palamite concept of God’s energies? I am just trying to understand your statement and Palamas, not to impute to you any caricature, so your explanations would be helpful in the dialogue. Specially because you said St Cyril was the one responsible for using the distinction between God’s essence and God’s energy (which is imprecise, since Palamas was evidently the very responsible to develop it in doctrinal form, not even among EOs it is disputed - apart from Internet blogs) because the Oriental Orthodox Monophysites used St Cyril of Alexandria’s texts to advocate for the fusion (or absorption) of the human nature of Christ in his divine nature, therefore making - the heresy of Eutyches of Constantinople - Jesus to have one and not two perfect natures which define the hypostatic union terminology. I’m sincerely curious”._
The Dominicans FIRST are contemplatives. They have a deep mystical prayer life and then share with us on an intellectual level what they experience in prayer. The heart/soul are expressed as best as possible by the mind/intellect but are not separate. Words can never express our deep experience of the Lord.
Let us pray for all good and faithful priests who dedicate themselves to their people with generosity and unknown sacrifices 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
I love Fr. Pine!
Though I must admit..I only understand a third of what he says!
May God bless him in his priesthood! 💠
Listening to him is like putting your brain on a stairmaster xD It's a serious workout
Haha, you're not the only one!
Love Fr Pine, he's so brilliant and articulate while also humble, charming, authentic and godly. I love his heart for the Lord and it makes me so happy to know there are smart faithful people who know and think important thoughts and can translate for us mere mortals.
All that being said, I love your heart Austin and your great questions and summaries of Father Pine's points. You articulate exactly what I'm wondering so clearly (episode from April 9 on Patreon). I'm so blessed by your heart and your approach in your interviews. I cannot believe the wisdom you have at 22!!!
Lk 2:40 he...grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.💙❤🤍
Thank you so much!
I think Fr Pine should be a regular on your show.
I imagine he's quite busy between his doctoral work and his weekly Q&A on PWA
Thank you, St. Dominic, for teaching us the Holy Rosary. I don't know where I'd be without it.
Same, amen 🙏❤
This is what constitutes the divine simplicity and pure actuality in that GOD is not a composite of essence and existence because HIS existence is essential and his essence is to exist.
Wow! I had a thirst for a some spiritual intellectual exercise, but this young friar just sprayed me with a fire hose!
Fr Pine is a fantastic! What a humble and bright personality, I loved the explanations! I sense his doctoral study on soteriology - particularly, the salvific actions of Christ - can make a deep positive impact on the way to connect academia and spirituality more soundly: he is definitely a very knowledgeable guy and of course very talented as a theologian. Thanks for this, Austin. God bless!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Always good to see you, Master Chief 👌 Pax Christi
@@renjithjoseph7135 Pax Christi, my friend!
Father Pineeee! What an amazing crossover, it's like it's my birthday today!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Gospel Simplicity & Divine Simplicity👍
Winning combo!
Hey, it’s one of my favorite nerds!
He's great!
I watch Pints with Aquinas all the time, especially since Matt moved here to the Catholic Mecca, but I have never listened to Father Gregory Pine even once. Today will be the first...lol
Oh wow! I'm glad my channel could be your first interaction with him
@@GospelSimplicity I am Catholic, but not much of a Thomist.
great questions Austin for bringing out the best in Fr Pine and helping us understand why these things matter and how they connect to other ideas. Fr Pine became clearer, to me at least, as the interview went on, thanks impart to your questions. Very enlightening. Greatly appreciated!
Thank you so much! That’s really helpful feedback
Pog: Fr Gregory Pine can range from witty Charming dialogue to “oh good Lord he might as well be speaking Russian with the amount of Complex thomistic terminology he’s using”.
Love him tho
Haha that’s so well said
My gosh the introduction of divine simplicity is so deep that I can't still comprehend it but I'm gonna watch this episode over and over again until i understand it. Thank you Austin for this wonderful topic that you've discuss with Fr. Pines.
You're not alone in that! Glad you enjoyed it!
This was interesting. What he says about God being one reminds me of what St.Paul said that people should not say “I belong to Paul” “I belong to Apollos” or “I belong to Peter”. We all belong to God, who is one.
Interesting connection!
There is nothing higher than contemplation of the Divine. Contemplation is form of leisure, the just “end” of work (Ora et Labora).
Another outstanding interview. Your gift, Austin, is the questioning the guest to elicit understanding and clarification. You have the calming manner to encourage the guest and the listener. Too many interviewers wish to compete with their guests. You are of the school of Brian Lamb of C-SPAN as opposed to Charlie Rose who ruined interviews w his puerile need to show off. As for the Trinity I'm going w St. Anselm who said, "Tres nescio quid" or three I know not what. God bless you. It's such a delight to listen to these interviews which you do in charity and humility.
Wow, thank you so much for these kind words! I really appreciate that
🙏✝️
Oh goodie. Fr. Gregory Pine is good. Looking forward to this.
Hope you enjoy it!
Great to listen to two of my favourite people ! Austin, your questions, comments, and summaries were very helpful.
Thanks!
This was such a dope podcast
Thank you for making this understandable to the layman/woman.
Great interview...God is I AM, that I AM... He is everything seen and unseen of ALL things
God changing - less than or could become better
Hey Austin, I really appreciate the content you’re putting out. I truly think you would likewise appreciate Fr. Ripperger’s videos and conferences, there’s plenty of them on youtube on the whole multitude of issues regarding morality, theology, the current state of the church and everything that I assume would interest you much. So far I haven’t found a better help in my spiritual life, theology, morality regarding catholicism and I say that because Fr. Ripperger doesn’t give you his own opinions but only the teaching of the church, saints, theologians and of course the church fathers. I hope you’ll enjoy:)
Thanks for the recommendation!
I pray Fr Ripperger would reach sainthood. Imagine praying to "St. Chad" one day for your spiritual battles.
Wow you got him on your show very cool!!!
Father is unbegotten
Hey Austin. How about finally featuring the Eucharistic Miracles on your show? Maybe you'd like to reach out to the Joy of the Faith channel. The guy who owns the channel is making a Hollywood style production of the Eucharistic miracles.
How interesting! I need to check out his channel. I've been meaning to do that
What a great video Austin. Thanks. You really love us your subscribers. Can't wait for the next one. Congrats again for your 20Kth subcriber. Your channel is exploding.
Thanks! It's a privilege to get to do this, and I'm so grateful for this community!
How about celebrating your 20Kth subscriber with a show with Scott Hahn?
I'd love to have him on!
@@GospelSimplicity yey! Looking forward to it!
@@GospelSimplicity I second that!! Would love to see Scott come on!
I am going to have to watch this multiple times to absorb the "pput" and "being being" information. 🤯
Haha, I don’t blame you for that! I’m just going to try his “keep saying it till it sounds right” method haha
God in thinking himself
41:15 made me happy 😊 but I'm not confident that the words Divine Simplicity are essential in order to reach there... mostly because Orthodoxy doesn't hold to Divine Simplicity and it's magnificently intimate in practice AND harmonious...
To be honest, pretty much all of the discussion Gregory Palamas had with the Calabrian monk Barlaam was to prove his model was not endangering divine unity and divine simplicity. It had to be many centuries later - specially during the very late 19th or all 20th century - that Neo-Palamites started to defend that something they called “absolute divine simplicity” wasn’t compatible with Palamism, inverting therefore the theological historical disputation. But no Eastern Orthodox, at least that I know of (doctrinal clearness and unity can be hard to find, but still), holds that their theology abandoned divine simplicity.
Orthodox most definitely affirm divine simplicity. The Eastern Fathers, such as John Damascene, repeatedly state that God is simple and uncomposed (a-synthetic).
Perhaps Matt fradds episode on palamism might help with that
Hey Austin. You've reached over 20K subscribers! Congratulations!
Thank you so much!
@@GospelSimplicity Yes congratulations !!! Keep up the good work!
Change - realization of a potency
Love Fr, amazing work on this channel!^_^
God is to be
To live
To understand
God is to be
We are all limited expression of God
Oh yea it's all coming together...
Haha, not sure precisely what you mean, but I hope you enjoy the episode!
@@GospelSimplicity It's a meme on the internet 😉.
@@TheChunkyCrusader yeah he’s not becoming Catholic. If anything he’s going to come to the one and only catholic and apostolic Orthodox Church.
Thank you for this.
My pleasure!
Hey just randomly stumbled upon your channel.
Found some gold!
Currently going to Gordon-Conwell studying Church History and Theology.
I love what you are doing and is something I want to do.
Nice! I actually have looked into that program a bit
How is this Divine Simplicity and not Complexity?
Oh snap! This ought to be good! Ever thought about moderating a friendly debate Austin? Perhaps one between him and Dr. David Bradshaw?
Hope you enjoy it! I’m not sure how versed Fr. Pine is in Orthodox theology, so I’m not sure if he’d be interested and I’ve never seen Dr. Bradshaw do a debate, but it’s an interesting idea!
It would definitely be a cordial debate. I’m looking forward to the interview.
Fantastic
Excellent and well explained! Thank you
Glad you enjoyed it!
Thank you Austin!
Question: I read your description of the name “Gospel Simplicity” in the description of your videos. I think that there is a connection between the usage of “simplicity” in both contexts.
So I ask, to seek to understand, why name it Gospel “Simplicity”?
The theory of "being" that you began with is actually a philosophical problem that goes back to the ancient philosophers. The problem was.... how can anything exist? Where does it get it's source of being? Parmenides attempted to solve this with his theory that stated, "Whatever is, is. Pretty cool , yes? But it left out God as the ultimate source of being.
Divine simplicity as understood by Aquinas is not actually dogmatic in the Catholic Church. Aquinas is in fact more strict than the dogma. The Catholic Church allows to believe that God attributes are really distinct (as in Scotism) and even allows to believe in an essence-energy distinction in God (as in Palamism, which is the preferred theology of eastern Catholicism). Yes, divine simplicity (understood as absence of composition in God) is dogmatic, but the question of whether absence of composition implies absence of multiplicity remains open. A composition implies that parts are ontologically prior to the whole, at least in some sense, because they are contingently united (as so the whole is contingent). So one could argue that there is a multiplicity in God, but also that the unity in God is ontologically prior to the multiplicity (since in this case the elements of this multiplicity are necessarily united), which could allow to keep divine simplicity (this is the reasoning more or less implied at least in Scotism).
Interesting!
To be or not to be
That is the question
Without Divine Simplicity, Your God is not absolutely perfect.
@Ελληνας Γραικος there's nothing called absolute. Either God is simple or not. I don’t know what ‘absolute’ tells me as opposed to ‘kinda sorta’ simple.
@Ελληνας Γραικος if he's composed in some other way, then you have composition.
@Ελληνας Γραικος councils and holy saints never say what Palamas taught in his Triads. don't refer to St. Basil's 238th letter I've read it many times and there's no EED in his letter (they way Palamas taught)
@Ελληνας Γραικος is God "fully" present in each energy?
@Ελληνας Γραικος It does not, you're just reflection and repeating what you've heard in Orthodox Channels. check out "Classical Theist"
Have on Father Deacon Ananias to clarify Essence Energy distinction
Nice intro to the topic! I'd also love to see you interview David Bentley Hart sometime
That could be interesting!
Limited participation in the very divine life
Philosophical predisposition was needed to understand this. You need to understand those terms and in context. Normal ppl should not be bothered, because they might end up confused even more.
Can you sprinkle written definitions on screen for words some of us don’t know please? It’s taking time to stop video to look up “soteriology.” Thanks so much! 🍉🌻🦋
All ‘sense’ (and therefore all understanding) is made in ‘relationship’ (not mere relation) to God.
Austin, you need to have an Open and Relational theologian on your show. I suggest Thomas Jay Oord or Tripp Fuller.
I’ll check them out!
hey austin, nestorian theology is different than western theology you must do a video about this topic.
It is. I'm not sure exactly how I would approach that though. I mean I'd be happy to talk about Chalcedon, but it's not at the top of my list of videos to make
@@GospelSimplicity maybe interview some "church of the east" priest /theologian?
There is no being outside of God
Pantheism - everything is God
Great video!!
Thanks!
Have you heard about Patrick Flynn? He's an Athiest who converted to Catholicism. Would love to see him on your show.
I have! I haven't looked into his work much though
@@GospelSimplicity he's into a lot, fitness, writing, podcast.
Proceeding forth from
Soteriologically in charge
For a doctrine with "simplicity" in it's name, I find it rather confusing. I've had a couple conversations with Catholics where Divine Simplicity has come up, and I still don't really get it lol.
It's definitely not the easiest concept. The definition is simple enough (God is not composed/God does not have parts), but fleshing that out is a bit tricky
As a thomist I cannot help but point out that existence and being is NOT the same. God is His own Being and NOT his own existence. Existence is binary and is something we predicate of the composite of ESSENCE +BEING. So something either exists or does not exist BUT it can BE more or less than something else. God's Being is unlimited, his essence is identical to his own being (nhot existence). Intensive being helps to understand how it can allow to speak about divine attributes.
He can’t give what he doesn’t have
Divine simplicity is not Absolute divine simplicity .those are two different things
Divine Calculus
/yo/ I just started watching him
He’s great!
My nature limits my being
How can a mind be simple? To be utterly simple, God would have to be utterly mindless. You can't have both intelligence and simplicity. A mindless rock is simpler than a mind. A supreme mind cannot be simpler than a rock. This should be supremely simple to understand.
You should do a video with someone from the Apostolic Assyrian Church of the East
This is not the right content for a cure to insomnia at 2:45am.
God’s essence is Godhead
God’s essence is his existence
Man’s essence is to be a rational animal
Cataphatic and Apophatic Theology
God is not, just as soon as you say he is. I wonder if Thomas read St Dionysius well.
Aquinas actually wrote a full length commentary on Dionysius’s The Divine Names. I always loved Dionysius and actually only began to take aquinas seriously when I saw how reverent he was to the thought of this great teacher.
Father is godhead begetting the son
Son is godhead begotten by the father
Holy Spirit is godhead being breathed forth by the father and the son
yoooooooooo
yo
Thomistic divine simplicity or absolute divine simplicity necessitates that God must exercise justice or creative power, and it also implies that God is a collection of attributes as much as he is Father. This essentially means that all things are necessary emanations from monad. This is Platonism with a Trinity mask.
I didn't really understand how God in the thomism perspective in your opinion have attributes.
Thomas said that the trinity are relations, in fact, for what I've seen, divine simplicity leads to the trinity. 🤔
Scholastics had too much time on their hands
Father Pine is charming and a good presenter. The Thomistic approach though, of which the topic on Divine Simplicity is but a topic, is highly problematic. The system of the Summa relies heavily on the Aristotelean epistemology which goes from the natural to the metaphysical. From the beginning of the Organon to the end of the Metaphysics, such is the Stagirite’s approach through and through. For the early Christian Fathers, of whom many were Greek and knew intimately Aristotelean tradition, this natural-to-the-supernatural approach was useful only to an extent. The Fathers understood well that Christianity is a revelatory Truth, so patent in the Old Testament and even more so in its fulfilment, the New Testament. Therefore, if revelation is the source of truth, it is not a good idea to start with the world around us and infer God from it, especially as humans and the cosmos as a whole are fallen (cosmos through the fall of Adam and Eve). Therefore, God should be understood first and foremost through His revelation of which the fullness is in the Divine Eucharist. Therefore a theologian is by necessity a liturgical being: whoever prays is the true theologian, not the one who philosophises. The distinction between “intellect” and “mysticism” is false and a clear sign of those failed attempts to know the unknowable God through philosophising.
The West stumbled on Aristotle late and through translations. The Dominicans and Aquinas, especially, took most of its epistemological apparatus to build a coherent but, at the end of the day, a faulty system. There was a great enthusiasm in the West about this Aristotelean find (much alike the enthusiasm of recent converts who think that they have discovered something momentous which they need to tell the world but do not know that the world got there a while ago!). The West was largely unaware that the East had rejected the Stigirite approach as a basis for theology almost a millennium ago. Aquinas displayed a huge admiration for Aristotle, whom he called the Philosopher, and for Averroes, whom he called the Commentator. If many people feel intuitively that Thomism is dry and does not tally well with their personal encounter with God, this is indeed an accurate observation. This is not a lack of nerdiness but a correct understanding of the human heart that God is not described and understood through syllogisms.
The East heavily relied on the Fathers because the Fathers were first eu-charistically (eu-charis) and en-lightened. They lead lives of great sainthood which gave them the discernment to elucidate the REVEALED, not the philosophised, holy Scriptures. Much as he was a righteous man, Aristotle did not share into the fullness of the eucharistic light and was is therefore unsuitable as the foundation of a theological system. During the proceedings of the failed council of Ferrara - chaired by Dominicans - an Eastern Bishop exclaimed: “Aristotle, Aristotle, they are constantly talking about Aristotle. What about the Fathers?” Enough said.
So it isn't correct to infer God through reasoning about nature, partly because we are fallen, but then our ability to infer anything about God from revelation doesn't suffer from being fallen?
PS: Aquinas quotes Augustine more than Aristotle. Aquinas would happily throw Aristotle's ideas out the window if they conflict with revelation. I think some people just hear Thomists speak so much of Aristotle, that they think the Fathers and revelation are less important.
@@billyg898 it's things like this that make me think orthodox are just haters and can't take them seriously.
@@luisnuke8389 Orthodox are schismatic ethno churches with no functioning Catholic ecclesiology. They can't Objectively and universally DEFINE (not simply agree upon) what makes an ecumenical council truly legitimate, therefore the eastern orthodox church(es) are false
@@billyg898 because revelation is exactly that - revealed - it is only understood through the Holy Spirit in the Body of the Church; the only true exegesis is doxological. The fallen nature gets the ability to reconnect with the divine image and likeness and understand the revelation through the Eucharist, not syllogistically. That’s where you make the epistemological error.
What you say is completely inaccurate. Even statistically, Aquinas quotes Aristotle far more than anyone. He was also not familiar with the Capadocians who were indeed the saintly geniuses who formulated the Trinitarian understanding of the church. The Augustinian approach in this regard was incomplete and Thomas used this in the greatest extent, as you say.
@@luisnuke8389 where is the “hater” bit? If you have to say something substantive, say it, otherwise keep your peace
Soteriology
I would be a bit cautious on his understanding and explanation of the divine unity @ 48:00 , where the Holy Spirit is mentioned as proceeding from the Father and the Son (filioque). This understanding is largely absent from the early creed specifically the Nicene Creed. According the East this is the beginning of the Latin heresies. I would like to hear more on this topic for sure from both side.
Hii Austin, Please interview Gabriel of gabiafterhours and truefaith tv!
Way over my head.
You're definitely not alone in that
Why is this even a question? It absolutely does matter. If you don’t know the identity and essence of who god is then you have a false understanding of the true god lol
God plus creation is not greater than God
God’s nature wrong
Human mode of understanding
HERESY!
Care to elaborate?
Pagan Philosophical Behemoth
Divine Simplicity is of course simply Christian doctrine = God is Uncompound [Simple]
Aquinian Divine Simplicity, however, by conflating and identifying everything into Essence in God, makes Communicatio Idiomatum impossible and thus negates the Incarnation
The whole development of the theory of “communicatio idiomatum” was the way Catholic thinkers - and St Thomas was maybe the single greatest in the theology of Incarnation in all history of the Church, let us be at least fair - have developed further the theological concept of “hypostatic union” against the Christological heresies of Nestorianism and Monophysitism. So “communicatio idiomatum” (an exact translation would be “communication of idioms”) was the subsequent theological development with which Catholic theologians explained how could the divine ATTRIBUTES of God be communicated to the humanity of Christ, instrumental to God’s very actions, in the absolute mystery of the hypostatic union (like in the example of the salvific properties of Our Lord’s saliva/spit, v. Mark 8,22-25 or John 9, 6-7).
So the whole communication of properties/attributes of the divine through the humanity of Christ can never be less than a very Thomistic and Medieval Catholic scholastic thinking and theological reasoning. I really have NO IDEA from what you picked your affirmations. To be true, actually no other Christian tradition took the Incarnation and the humanity of Jesus Christ to all its effects but the Catholic Church, inclusive in the very mystery of the Church (both as the Mystical Body of Christ or as the universal sacrament of salvation) and in all realm of the salvific actions of Christ. St Thomas even calls the humanity of Christ the ‘formal cause’ (that would mean, in a more simple terminology, the instrumental cause) of our salvation in his very deep and rich soteriology. The whole discussions around the “communicatio idiomatum” were not even common, at least not properly, to Eastern (Byzantine) medieval scholasticism nor it was entirely present in the Patristics, because the Fathers in the Patristic era were superficial in the applications (theological consequences) of the mystery of hypostatic union. More than that, the very discussions between Lutherans and Calvinists about the way the latter arguably abandoned it - meaning to explain why they rejected the substantial and true/ bodily presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist or, as they say, in Lord’s supper - according to the first (much closer to Catholics), who believe it, was entirely present in the Western tradition and so “communicatio idiomatum” was discussed by the Protestant Reformers with huge appreciation, but not so much in the Byzantine or other Eastern ones. Inclusive, for both Catholics and Lutherans, the wrong perceptions about “communicatio idiomatum” is one of the many doctrinal facts that made the anti-sacramental mentality so triumphant in Evangelicalism. I frankly couldn’t even understand what you mean, my friend. Sorry. I would be glad if you explain your points with more details.
PS: as a recommendation to both of us read in the future, the doctoral thesis of Fr Gregory Pine in the University of Fribourg would very much touch the whole theme of the “communicatio idiomatum” and the salvific actions of Christ. So for a Dominican theologian entirely inserted in the Thomist intellectual tradition, I sense it would be very, very strange (if not simply unintelligible) to preach out that St Thomas Aquinas’ theology and “communicatio idiomatum” antagonize. I think Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s books and articles on this theme would be helpful to you, my friend.
God bless!
@@masterchief8179
You are aware that Aquinas, contrary to St. Cyril, denied Essence-Energies distinction, right?
And Essence-Energies distinction being denied in God, that there is no way or media for what is creaturely, namely the Flesh taken from Mary, to participate in Divine Nature?
@@adothariman966 St Thomas did NOT use the category of the energies of God in his theology. Actually St Thomas Aquinas was a century earlier than Palamas, who more or less systematized the comprehension of God being “divine essence” and “divine energies” (plural). Although it is very common to see some Neopalamites of the 20th century trying to “Google search” the word ‘energeia’ in the NT and in the Fathers (and they found it in some few texts of the Cappadocian Fathers, who wrote in Greek) as to retroactively encounter Palamism in the Apostolic Tradition, the more rigorous it can get is to say the theory can only be a sort of doctrinal development that is particular to Byzantine scholasticism, specially the intellectual tradition that supported (theologically) the spiritual practices of Mount Athos. So to say that Thomas Aquinas dealt with “God’s energies” and refused it is not only anachronistic, but a false statement. That would be my first - an necessary- point.
As I said once, I would point out that St Thomas says that God has no potentialities: all potencies, all faculties, are in God in the plenitude of realization. God is pure actuality. There is not a thing that God could be or could have been: he IS. Exactly under this theory St Thomas defined God as “ipsum esse subsistens”: the absolute plenitude of being, who receives nothing from an external cause but causes everything to be, either directly or by secondary causations. God is, therefore, Who is (“I am Who am”).
Sometimes I sense (and I may be incorrect on this) some EOs brothers tent to think that, since Palamism understood the way of God’s actions in the theory of energies, that when St Thomas defends that God is pure actuality - and his explanation is quite irreproachable, let us be honest here -, therefore, God became “energy only” (a Palamite, not Thomist category) as if He was emptied from His radical and all transcendental essence and then disguised Himself under some created essences out there, being pure immanence with no transcendence. Or, as you said, since you ‘a priori’ assume there must be the distinction of God’s essence and energies, therefore you imply God’s essence equals to his “energies or actions” for Thomas Aquinas, so this makes God’s essence (since we don’t find in him the category of “divine energies”) equal to what He does, because everything related to Him would be His essence, which led you to the absurd of equalling creation to God or imagining that God couldn’t truly come in the flesh or have anything to the created order, being pure transcendence with no possible immanence. That’s a very basic level of caricaturization. What St Thomas actually says - and that’s not even dogmatic for us Catholics, that’s just something on the side of intellectual Thomism - is that God’s essence is equal to his ATTRIBUTES, meaning not what God “does” but the whole set of characteristics of what God IS. So you shouldn’t dive into an incomprehension on Thomism that is subsequent to the simple misunderstanding of the word “ACT” in the ideia of pure actuality (“actus purus”) and an implicit assimilation with the word “ENERGY”, all under Palamism’s lenses.
It is always a bad intellectual exercise to mix up categorical differences when the similitude is imprecise and undue and to differentiate categories when they are identical. The more rabid accuser most surely will be - not surprisingly - the one who proves to know the least about the thing or person he accuses. That’s all over the Internet. Pick that and add to it a bunch of ideologues supplying material for the militants and voilá, a trend starts. _”Damnant quod non intellegunt”:_ they condemn what they do not understand.
Trying to understand Thomism under Palamite categories or vice-versa is the same as trying to understand Portuguese with English verbs, nouns, phrasal constructions and so forth. We should all go studying, but more than that, pray seriously and with humility.
EDIT: But let me just ask: are you saying that Jesus’s humanity would be categorically inserted into the Palamite concept of God’s energies? I am just trying to understand your statement and Palamas, not to impute to you any caricature, so your explanations would be helpful in the dialogue. Specially because you said St Cyril was the one responsible for using the distinction between God’s essence and God’s energy (which is imprecise, since Palamas was evidently the very responsible to develop it in doctrinal form, not even among EOs it is disputed - apart from Internet blogs) because the Oriental Orthodox Monophysites used St Cyril of Alexandria’s texts to advocate for the fusion (or absorption) of the human nature of Christ in his divine nature, therefore making - the heresy of Eutyches of Constantinople - Jesus to have one and not two perfect natures which define the hypostatic union terminology. I’m sincerely curious.
@@masterchief8179
I'm curious if you can discuss without resorting to long-winding monologues
First question: Did Aquinas admit real distinction of Essence and Energy in God?
Just simple yes no answer is fine. If you want to elaborate sure. But start with yes or no. And keep your elaboration relevant
@@adothariman966 Aquinas didn’t use the category of God’s “energies”. So I clearly said it would be a wrong question in the first place. It is not that Aquinas denies Essence and Energies are distinct (what you implied) but that he does not even use the category of the so-called “divine energies”, which is why I said the question does not fit. That was actually my answer and it was very specific and direct. So you should not bring Thomism to Palamism’s categories and drive abysmal consequences for it as a gesture of intellectual honesty, at the very least.
I didn’t engage in a monologue (sorry if you saw things like that) but tried to say all that could be said the more didactic I could in a very complex theme. I sense I treat it to be tiresome - yeah, I give you that - that EOs people in the anglophonic Internet specialized at throwing some framed propagandistic absurdities like “absolute (sic) divine simplicity leads to...” and then fill in the blanks with some accusation. I’ve seen at least some: atheism, Protestantism, empty intellectualism, killing the mysteries, etc. I have not seen until your post a “negation of Incarnation” (Arianism?) filled in those blanks, which caught my attention, so that’s why I engaged with you in the first place. Oh, and by “absolute divine simplicity” they are targeting St Thomas Aquinas but think they are shooting Catholic dogmatics, which is simply a case of ignorance in the most strict sense of the term, to be (again) sincere.
I asked my question. If you’d like to answer, I’d really appreciate it. It would be nice if you read things above too before answering, if possible.
My question was: _”are you saying that Jesus’s humanity would be categorically inserted into the Palamite concept of God’s energies? I am just trying to understand your statement and Palamas, not to impute to you any caricature, so your explanations would be helpful in the dialogue. Specially because you said St Cyril was the one responsible for using the distinction between God’s essence and God’s energy (which is imprecise, since Palamas was evidently the very responsible to develop it in doctrinal form, not even among EOs it is disputed - apart from Internet blogs) because the Oriental Orthodox Monophysites used St Cyril of Alexandria’s texts to advocate for the fusion (or absorption) of the human nature of Christ in his divine nature, therefore making - the heresy of Eutyches of Constantinople - Jesus to have one and not two perfect natures which define the hypostatic union terminology. I’m sincerely curious”._
Divine incredulity and stupidity. Like transubsatation and the priest is like a second Christ to pronounce this change.
It's spelled Transubstantiation, oh the irony.
@@bobaphat3676 typical reply which Proves how religious you are. Pedophile priest's is that spelt correctly.