This is a very enlightening lecture that gives light to some of the mysterious questions many of us have struggled such as fixity of the human will after death.
I thoroughly enjoyed this presentation. Thank you Dr. Feser. I have a question. When we die, do we obtain new knowledge? Is our knowledge illuminated? A new way of knowing? I’m trying to reconcile the choice at the moment of death versus receiving a new way of knowing after death as it relates to the will being fixed at death. Thank you anyone who can help.
At 15:12, Feser claims that the behavior of animals is neither determined, random, or freely willed. What other possible explanation can there be for any event? Those three options seem to encompass every possible explanation for any event so far as I can tell. Does anyone have any idea what he's getting at?
I'm currently rereading DBHs TASBS and his comments regarding strict or otherwise mostly committed thomists are spot on. Those thomists are brilliant until they deal with the question of Hell at which point their intellectual acuity abandons them and what we get is gibberish. Ed illustrates this point quite well here.
Regarding the introduction, when Feser speaks about the difference between substantial and accidental/artificial forms: what's the form of bread? Is it substantial or accidental? And if it's not substantial, how do we understand Transubstantiation?
Great question. But on reflection, does it matter whether the substance of the wheat, water, etc. are changed, or the substance of “bread” is changed? Either way, what was there is gone, and Something has taken its place, miraculously, and this change is, in the full technical sense, substantial.
@@johnlane3753 I see. So if I understand your response, bread might lack a substantial form to undergo substantiation (i.e. the change of one substance for the Substance of Our Lord), but its constituent parts (wheat and water) do not!
@@gladtrad Yes, that is what I am suggesting as a cover-all. But I think that bread does have a substantial form - it is not a mere mix of ground wheat etc. The flour etc. have themselves already undergone a substantial change, and they no longer exist. They are only virtually in the bread.
Bread is an accidental form because it can be separated into parts without losing its essential nature as bread. However, with substances, if a part of it is separated, then that separated part will lose its substantial form and become something else, but when bread is sliced it does not lose its form as bread, so it is an accidental form. Contrast this with a human being, which has the substantial form (rational animal). If my arm is cut off, then that arm ceases to be part of my substance and becomes something else, namely, the substantial forms which make it up: water, trace amounts of arsenic, gold, phosphorous, etc. But separability is only one condition for determining whether or not a thing is a substance. The nature of dependence is another: the redness of a ball depends on the ball unlike how the ball depends on the redness. The redness could go out of existence, but the ball would remain. However, if the ball went out of existence, so too would the redness. Substantial forms don’t depend on other substances for their existence, but accidental forms do. The circularity of the ball as well is an accidental form, since the actual substance of the ball is its rubber or secondary matter. Bread is then an accidental form because its parts are separable, but not because it depends on another substance for its existence, since the bread is decidedly something other than just the sum of its parts (unlike a watch, which is exactly the sum of its parts). Because we would say that the flour, water, etc are not present in the bread actually, but virtually, since the properties of the bread are irreducible to either the flour or the water, since neither poses the attribute of sponginess, which is a property of bread (the same can be said of water, which is a substance, and whose properties are irreducible to either hydrogen or oxygen, since the latter alone have radically different properties than water). For water, though, once the molecule is separated, it becomes something else, making it a substance. It isn’t actually such an easy question, but bread is an accidental form. How does this affect transubstantiation? It doesn’t. Why would it? The bread is made into a substance even though its visible accidents remain the same. I’m not catholic, but that’s what I believe is the teaching.
@@whoami8434 That was my one of the clearest expositions regarding accidental and substantial forms I've ever read. Thank you so much! As to how all of this affects Transubstantiation, well, I always thought that the "trans" preffix stood for "changing one thing for another" and thus in this case it meant changing the substance of bread for the Substance of Christ. But maybe that was just my preconceived notion of the word. Thank you again for this very thorough explanation. And I hope you are not offended when I say I will pray you come to the Catholic Church as well.
It still seems odd that someone should go to hell because of ignorance, whether through passion or whatnot. After all, we are made to desire God, the only who can fulfill us. So if someone ends up in hell, then it is through error. How is that sensible?
From my understanding, this is exactly the reason why people like David Bentley Hart argue for universalism. If the will can simply be corrected and errs via ignorance, then how can our sin be blameworthy and therefore punishable? Seems ridiculous if indeed we do not already know exactly what is good and what is evil, and from experience we simply don’t know what is good and what is evil. We must be taught what is good and what is evil, and we can make errors along the way. Strange to think, then, that our “first parents” ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The knowledge doesn’t seem to have propagated through the species! I don’t take the story literally, but for those who do it’s an interesting stumbling block.
Who Am I? Yes this is interesting! I think Hart faces problems with the New Testament’s rather dire warnings about hell-though I’m sure he had his own way of interpreting them (though the straightforward interpretation seems to imply eternal hell).
Are you talking about being able to erroneously choose something else over God? As Dr. Feser said, once the will is fixed, it's either for or against God, and that determines your path either to beatitude (face to face with God) or damnation (eternal separation from Him). Error alone, as in invincible ignorance (you had no way of knowing the truth), isn't enough to condemn you, but willful ignorance & sin, those all put you against God. If you want to talk about justice, it wouldn't be just for someone who hates God to be with Him (nor would that soul want to be). Don't know if you're Catholic but there's also the concept of baptism of desire. If someone would have received baptism knowing its necessity but didn't because they had no idea, God knows, He's not unjustly going to punish them for what they couldn't have known.
Liraco If he was not ignorant, then he would not want to be away from God. I don’t see how knowing God is not the same thing as wanting God. God is good, and if we do not see this, then we are simply in error. But if we do not want God, we have failed to realize this, since we all want what we recognize as good (even if we mistake what is good for what is truly evil, say, thievery or murder. In that act we believed the object of our pursuit to be good, because we perceived that it would bring about our happiness). But to fail to see God as bringing about our happiness is simply a mistake, and mistakes are not done willfully, but out of ignorance. To me, I cannot see how to get around this aspect of the will. What we will is always a function of our ignorance, and so it seems not even murder is truly blameworthy, since we really did believe it would make us happy, mistaking evil for good. How does one remedy this within themselves except by understanding that what they desire is not good? And where does that understanding come from? It seems to me, then, that our actions are a function of our ignorance, and not even the murderer can be blamed for his stupidity in murdering. I don’t really see a way around this. Yeah we can hold people personally responsible because we can identify them as the cause of this or that crime, but justice? I mean, maybe if we all acted from a state of perfect understanding, but then there just wouldn’t be any wrongdoing, and so justice would never need to arrive as a concept. Is there a different way of thinking about this?
Liraco The capacity for willful ignorance would itself be a kind of ignorance, since WHY does that person want to remain ignorant? It will be due to some ignorance that is itself not willful.
Considering the damned will have their bodies, an eternity of suffering seems entirely unjust and I don’t see how it follows that they can no longer choose a higher good, God. Ed like a good Thomist is just echoing Aquinas’ own attempt to understand the nature of the soul in the afterlife. But I have a hard time accept this explanation for an eternity of suffering.
Hey Patric, I want to weigh in on your question, but please be aware that this is from my readings of the Fathers and Aquinas myself. Feel free to disagree with my conclusion as you see fit. Also feel free to correct me if I misrepresent something you have some better knowledge on. The creature is endowed with Free will. Free will is predicated on the notion that mankind should not be coerced by someone else to sway towards something that they in themselves do not see as a Good. Now the world is filled with unlimited choices that suites man’s nature. These choices are proportionate to and appropriate for man. These are called “natural inclinations” because they are things in which it is proportionate to our nature to obtain. For instance, a spouse. Children. Virtues. Money. Jobs. In virtue of the fact that we are creatures in a hierarchical structure, to receive things above our nature is not fitting. Animals that are beneath our nature, likewise, do not receive in the gifted way that we do. For an animal cannot work towards ends. An animal cannot drive convertibles, more less even build one. An animal has no economical system. An animal cannot abstract from particulars, nor peer into Mathematics. The animal was not gifted with the same measure of God’s creation as a human being. Now, we must ask, what is “owed” to man? What is “owed” to him are the things proportionate to his nature. Eternal life, in the loose since, is owed to all mankind in virtue of the fact God made mankind to be eternal. For this reason, ALL of mankind lives eternally regardless of the content of their character. Its their “due” in the order of Justice. For this reason, even the wicked will “rise up” from the grave and be reunited to their body. This is the due of all mankind to live forever.
Now, whatever is ABOVE man’s nature is not “owed” to him. Think of yourself and your dog. The dog is not “owed” a spot next to your bed on a comfortable pillow. If you choose to make a spot next to your bed you are extending your hand and picking the dog up to a level in which the dog did not earn. Now, what if the dog on hearing you call him to the bed decided to remain in his “domain” and turned away to sleep in the dog house? This is an analogy for us and God. Jesus said that those who participate in the resurrection will be “equal to the Angels.” Well, angels are above us in a greater capacity then we are above dogs. Angels “see the Face of My Father.” Angels gaze at God and “see Him as He is.” This gift is not owed to Man in virtue of him being Man. Even Adam and Eve who were spotless in the Garden did not see God in His Essence. For that nobody has is clear from John: “Nobody has seen God at any time. The Only Begotten who is in the Bosom of the Father has declared Him.” And again, Jesus says, “You have never seen His form.” But Jesus, God from God, has “seen the Father” and it is a GIFT to be able to see the Father. Jesus alone of all humanity has the gift, that is, the Sight of God. He alone gives the gift to “all who are thirsty.” Not by a right is it given, but by Grace to those who seek it. Therefore, to whoever God gives the gift to He gives graciously. To who He withholds the gift from, He does so Justly. For Man is not owed the gift to “see God.” Jesus says “THIS IS eternal life, that they may KNOW you and Jesus Christ who you have sent.” To know God is above our Nature. To participate in God is not owed to a creature. This is clear from Scripture that Jesus will not reveal the Father to the wicked. They will no doubt see Jesus at judgement day, but the Trinity they will justly be restrained from seeing. "The pure in heart shall see God." "Who shall ascend the Lords mountain or stand on His holy hill? Only him who has clean hands and a pure heart." This gift is extended to all in virtue of The Word becoming incarnate. For it is only by participation in the Son that we, as sons, will see the Father. "in that Day you will ask Me nothing. Whatever you ask the Father He will give you." "In that day you will know that the Father is in Me and I am in the Father." The fallen angels, by pride, preferred to contemplate themselves rather then see God and thus lost the potential for the vision of God. When man chooses his own proportioned good over the infinite Good he is saying, "I choose to remain away from the bed you have made me, and prefer to live in the dog house,." That is, the fallen man rejects the "Supernatural (ABOVE NATURE)" and decides to spend eternity turned in on himself as his own end. I Hope this makes sense the way I typed it up! If you have any questions or need clarification, I’ll be happy to respond.
Nick B Rocks hey! This is actually extremely helpful. In a sense, God maintains the saved and damned in everlasting existence because he loves them. My remaining question would be: sure, a rational creature can prefer a lesser good. Fine. But why must this result in endless, horrific suffering - like the kind suggested by the symbolic language of fire? Where does the horror of hell come from-and shouldn’t this seem unjust?
Patric Peters Hey Patric, I am glad my response made sense. I think your observation is correct. God loves his creatures and wills their Good. Like a wind blowing, God is as a gentle Breeze trying to guide us in the direction of Himself. Man chooses to walk with the breeze or go against it. “The Spirit blows where He wills and you do not know where He comes from or where He is going. So is everyone who is born from above.” That is, mankind is unaware of where we came from because God transcends our nature and trying to find Him through the 5 senses by which we learn EVERYTHING is difficult to say the least. But the Spirit comes and “blows where He wills.” We do not know where the Spirit comes from either since He too comes from God (and is God). And we do not know where the Spirit is “Going,” because He is leading us ABOVE ourselves willing that where Jesus is we may be with Him. But of the Pharisees and Sadducees who were “stiff necked” according to Stephen, they always “resist the Holy Spirit.” Man receives his due by resisting. If resisting God before Jesus was bad, how much more after Jesus? For Jesus, out of Love, invited all mankind to the image of the Father. “Whoever is thirsty let Him come!” And this love was so radically demonstrated that He took the worst beating of any known human. Isaiah says “He was marred more than any son of Man.” And again, “He was bruised for our iniquity, the chastisement of our Peace was placed upon Him. By His stripes we are healed.” Jesus agony on the Cross was the agony for Man. It was His Passion for His creatures. A man who was in no pain, full of wisdom, and endowed with gifts fell in the garden because of a beautiful tree to behold. And yet, with Jesus, A man full of pain, on a tree that wasn’t pleasing to the eye, passed into the Heavens and sits at the right Hand of God. Of this Crucified Man it says “there was no beauty that we should desire Him.” The tree that brought death was desirable. The tree that brings life is undesirable. The God and King of the Universe hung naked on a Tree to bring Man not only back to union of soul and body but to something transcendent: namely, Himself. How can one willfully hate Him? “Whoever is thirsty let him come!” The one who is not thirsty does not come. Now with all that being said, if you have hung with me this far hang on a little longer and I will get to your question. Forgive my long drawn out narrative (my wife has to have a lot of patience with me). It’s important to note that many images have been drawn up about Hell over the Centuries. However, when it comes to Catholic Dogma (teachings we must adhere to as a light before our feet) only 2 real truths have been declared. First, Hell is eternal. Second, it is proportioned to each ones guilt and is the just due of their sins. Besides these two Dogmas there is some wiggle room as to what exactly “hell” intel’s. Rather or not the “fire” is literal or not is disputed. The one thing we know for certain, is when someone unknowingly loses a great good willfully then regret is bound to torment the conscience. How tormented will the soul be who realizes (like the Rich man and Lazarus) that he has lost the greatest opportunity is unfathomable. Not only this, but they will also find out that they who persecuted Christ members and harassed them this whole life have lost the greatest Good in their obstinate blindness. The men that bore under their hatred the patience of Christ will be vindicated in the sphere in which they were humiliated. Thus, at the resurrection the heart of the damned will immediately know he has lost the greatest Good and also inflicted injury to the members of the ones who sought this Good. This in itself will be torturous as nobody likes to see their “enemy” (Christians are enemies to wicked men) raised above their head. With that all being said, the Catholic Church has the most beautiful teachings on the condemnation of men. She never presumes upon the souls of the departed and intercedes for all men. Who the damned are we don’t know. All we know is if they are, then they are willfully. If anyone’s makes it to Heaven it is because God gave them the Grace to go ABOVE themselves to a place they did not deserve. If anyone goes to hell it is because he chose willfully to receive the dues owed to him and rejected the extended Hand to pull them up above themselves. Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions.
@@MountAthosandAquinas The Catholic Church has the most disgusting teachings ever. No one consented to being born with an unstable, unpredictable will that randomly chooses one thing over another. And how can a finite will merit infinite punishment? I think Thomists lack empathy, which is why they're capable of loving a tyrannical deity that tortures people forever.
@@ObsidianTeen , my job isn’t to convince you. You have a conscience of your own and will follow it as you please. However, I will say that your use of the word “tyrannical” is wanting. If your going to label the “Thomist” deity as tyrannical then the burden of proof is on you. Who knows, perhaps you will actually read Saint Thomas yourself and find that your assertion has no basis.
I love his books, but it is truely remarkable how he manages to lay out a sound metaphysics of human rationality and then proceeds to defend patent nonsense regarding angelic intellects and the fixity of the will after death. God creates an angel. That angel has a passive intellect meaning that he doesn't aquire any knowledge himself and only knows what God has given him to know. Based on that knowledge the angel makes an instantaneous decision of whether to accept or reject God which then locks the angel into that decision for all eternity. God of course knows beforehand the decision the angel would make given the knowledge he will impart to the angel so he knows beforehand that certain angels will condemn themselves to Hell at the moment of their creation and based on the knowledge they have been given by God. Oh, also God is Goodness himself and infinitely merciful.
If I recall correctly, what you have pointed out is part of the mystery of iniquity. Why would God create at all if he knew that even one of his beloved creations would use their will against him? It seems no one can quite answer this (even the DBH brand universalists) because even if there is some suffering or evil (whether eternal or not) you cannot get away from the “why would God create and allow that at all?” Question. I like Tolkien’s poetic response in the Ainulindale where he responds to Melkor. But I’m with the thomists on this one so 🤷♂️
@@bballaguy298 I think regarding suffering a distinction has to be made. Temporal sufferend is redeemable and infact is redeemed by God in the end such that all the goodness is restored. This is a problem faced by all Christians. Eternal suffering isn't redeemable and thus a wholly different problem which Universalists don't face. The point I was trying to make concerning Angelic salvation and damnation was that it's not based on free decisions made by Angels. It's metaphysical nonsense to assert that it is since, as Ed rightly points out, our choices are always directed at the end we take to be the Good. And all of our choices are limited by our knowledge. We can't choose what we don't know. Now angelic intellects, being entirely passive, are wholly determined by what God puts into them. So if God gave all of the Angels the knowledge that God is the highest Good, ALL the Angels would choose God as their highest good and thus attain salvation. If, on the other hand, they had that knowledge and still chose against God, that choice would be irrational(hence not free) and Thomists are right to reject such a voluntarist concept of freedom. Given all this, the only way an Angel could choose something other than God would be to not know God as the highest Good. But that would mean that God didn't give him that knowledge. In which case God is fully responsible for the damnation of that Angel. What we are left with then, on this thomist picture, is that God is fully responsible for the damnation of all of the fallen Angels due to him having refused to impart to them the knowledge of his Goodness. Of course one can elect to call all this a mystery, but then again, that's no better than the Atheist calling the origin of life or of the universe a mystery.
Nowhere in this did you present the "patent nonsense". Just because you don't like the answer, doesn't make it nonsense. But you've misunderstood the answer anyway. "God of course knows beforehand the decision the angel would make" This is the part that shows the misunderstanding. God is not in time. There is no beforehand for God. All events, as well as His actions and reactions, are present to God as one eternal instant. In order for the angel to make a choice, the angel must exist. It is incoherent to say that God can just not create an angel after knowing what free choices it will make, since those free choices won't be because there is no angel. The knowledge an angel receives is adequate to freely choose Him. If they don't choose him, how is that his fault? Updated: "If, on the other hand, they had that knowledge and still chose against God, that choice would be irrational(hence not free)...Given all this, the only way an Angel could choose something other than God would be to not know God as the highest Good. " This is false. Feser explained the problem here when replying to DBH's response to his review: "Hart puts heavy emphasis in his book on the irrationality of acting contrary to an end toward which our nature directs us. Of course, he is right about that much. The trouble is that he fallaciously reasons from this correct premise a mistaken conclusion about culpability, because he persistently fails to distinguish: (a) an end the pursuit of which is in fact good for us, given our nature, and (b) an end the pursuit of which we take to be good for us (whether it really is or not) Now, acting against either (a) or (b) would be contrary to reason, but not in the same sense. In particular, a person might act against (b) because of confusion, duress, passion, or something else that clouds reason. And that can certainly affect culpability. For example, suppose that you say something extremely rude and uncalled for to your mother, because she just roused you from a deep sleep or because you are heavily medicated and not thinking straight. We would not hold you culpable for such behavior, because we know you weren’t thinking clearly. If you had been, you would never have done such a thing, because you yourself take it to be good to be respectful of your mother. But suppose instead that you are fully awake, stone cold sober, and calm, but that you nevertheless say something extremely rude and uncalled for to your mother. Here we typically would regard you as culpable, and we might be even more inclined to do so if you refused to admit that you had done something wrong but tried to rationalize it. Now, here too you would be acting contrary to reason or irrationally, but not in the same way as in the first example. In particular, your act would in this case be contrary to reason in the sense that it conflicted with what is actually good (as opposed to what you’d fooled yourself into falsely thinking was good). But your act would not be irrational in the sense that it resulted from confusion, duress, passion, or other factors of the kind that prevent clear thinking. And that is why we would regard it as culpable. Hart’s mistake is conflating these two sorts of case. He thinks that since choosing to reject God would be irrational in the sense in which any action that is contrary to (a) would be, it follows that it would be irrational in the sense that would mitigate culpability, as actions that are contrary to (b) often are. But that doesn’t follow. And this erroneous conflation would also entail that we would not be culpable for any bad action that we commit, since any bad action (and not just explicitly rejecting God) would be contrary to (a). " The "what you'd fooled yourself into falsely thinking was good" part can apply to angels as well. God gave them the knowledge that he is the highest good, but freely choose to not recognise Him as such.
@@billyg898 "Nowhere in this did you present the "patent nonsense"." I didn't claim I did. Instead I referred to that part of the talk where Ed discussed the "angelic intellects and the fixity of the will after death" as exemplifying what I call patent nonsense. You're free to disagree with me of course. "Just because you don't like the answer, doesn't make it nonsense." I gave two arguments for it being nonsense, none of which you have adressed. "There is no beforehand for God." Beforehand here means that God is logically and metaphysically prior to his creation and entirely independent of it, while his creation is entirely dependent on him. It has nothing to do with temporal priority. "In order for the angel to make a choice, the angel must exist." True, but God knows that choice prior to the creation of the Angel otherwise God would have to learn about the choice after it had been made which is wrong. "It is incoherent to say that God can just not create an angel after knowing what free choices it will make, since those free choices won't be because there is no angel." Again, this would make Gods actions and knowledge dependent on his actual creation which contradicts his being omnipotent, omniscient and unchangable. "The knowledge an angel receives is adequate to freely choose Him. If they don't choose him, how is that his fault?" If the knowledge were adequate, then all the angels WOULD choose him as that is the only rational option and anything else would be irrational and hence not free. If the knowledge were not adequate it would be Gods fault that the Angel damned himself. My reply to Anthony further argues this point.
I think your observation is fair, but I am curious if you have actually read the whole argument which Feser has only quickly introduced in saint Thomas Summa Contra Gentiles and the Summa Theologia? If not, you may consider reading more into it. It's fascinating! There is more to it than what Dr Feser mentioned in this short video.
Feser gets it dead wrong @ 34:20 when he says "there's nothing within the intellect that necessitates that a particular conceptualization will prevail" leading to the conclusion that "there's nothing that necessitates that a particular outcome will prevail." In fact, human action is governed by the underlying biochemical substrates that constitute the human person. The brain is composed of functional modules, like a computer is composed of functional modules, and just because you don't understand why a particular choice seems optimal from the point of view of your individual conscious experience, it does not follow that the machinations of your decision making are not mechanistic. On the contrary, the mechanistic account is the only one that comports with everything we know from philosophy, physics, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and experimental psychology.
Feser also gets it dead wrong at 39:20 when he says "determinism" vs "randomness" is a false choice, because when a person acts, he always acts for a reason, though the outcome is "indeterministic" (based on the false conclusion he drew earlier that I outlined above). The relevant question Dr. Feser is why one indeterministic outcome prevails over another. If you can explain that in terms of causal relations, then you're a determinist. If you can't, then the by definition, the furniture of the universe (the human biochemical machine + any nonphysical souls you might believe in) isn't the sufficient cause for the action, which entails the conclusion that it is something outside the person that is responsible for the outcome. Van Inwagen makes the dilemma clear in ruclips.net/video/ImvEqnbfdIw/видео.html
@@sergeysmirnov5986 My argument is more general than naturalism vs supernaturalism. Neither one makes free will possible. See the talk I linked from Van Inwagen for the philosophical reasons why, and see the talk I linked from Jerry Coyne to see the scientific reasons why.
Peter Thorpe So you are not making the argument right now, it’s the chemicals in your brain forcing you to mechanically type this on the keyboard, right?
Apologies for the abrupt ending! A thunderstorm knocked out the power of our studio. Thanks for watching!
I was wondering what happened.
Please, is there a transcript for this talk??
@@crystald3346 Yes, A transcript will be lovely!
Wonderful lecture, thank you Dr. Feser and Fr. Ephrem!
Our pleasure!
This is a very enlightening lecture that gives light to some of the mysterious questions many of us have struggled such as fixity of the human will after death.
I'm happy I found this channel. Been very excited with Prof. Feser's work. God bless!
I thoroughly enjoyed this presentation. Thank you Dr. Feser. I have a question. When we die, do we obtain new knowledge? Is our knowledge illuminated? A new way of knowing? I’m trying to reconcile the choice at the moment of death versus receiving a new way of knowing after death as it relates to the will being fixed at death. Thank you anyone who can help.
39:35 on the will being fixed (angels and humans). Very interesting.
Very, very interesting.
At 15:12, Feser claims that the behavior of animals is neither determined, random, or freely willed. What other possible explanation can there be for any event? Those three options seem to encompass every possible explanation for any event so far as I can tell. Does anyone have any idea what he's getting at?
God
Would have really liked to have the outline for this lecture... It's been removed...
Is there a better quality version? This is tough to listen to.
I'm currently rereading DBHs TASBS and his comments regarding strict or otherwise mostly committed thomists are spot on. Those thomists are brilliant until they deal with the question of Hell at which point their intellectual acuity abandons them and what we get is gibberish. Ed illustrates this point quite well here.
Does anyone know if Aquinas talks about this (the wills of angels, demons, blessed and the damned, etc.) in the Summa Theologica?
Regarding the introduction, when Feser speaks about the difference between substantial and accidental/artificial forms: what's the form of bread? Is it substantial or accidental? And if it's not substantial, how do we understand Transubstantiation?
Great question. But on reflection, does it matter whether the substance of the wheat, water, etc. are changed, or the substance of “bread” is changed? Either way, what was there is gone, and Something has taken its place, miraculously, and this change is, in the full technical sense, substantial.
@@johnlane3753 I see. So if I understand your response, bread might lack a substantial form to undergo substantiation (i.e. the change of one substance for the Substance of Our Lord), but its constituent parts (wheat and water) do not!
@@gladtrad Yes, that is what I am suggesting as a cover-all. But I think that bread does have a substantial form - it is not a mere mix of ground wheat etc. The flour etc. have themselves already undergone a substantial change, and they no longer exist. They are only virtually in the bread.
Bread is an accidental form because it can be separated into parts without losing its essential nature as bread. However, with substances, if a part of it is separated, then that separated part will lose its substantial form and become something else, but when bread is sliced it does not lose its form as bread, so it is an accidental form. Contrast this with a human being, which has the substantial form (rational animal). If my arm is cut off, then that arm ceases to be part of my substance and becomes something else, namely, the substantial forms which make it up: water, trace amounts of arsenic, gold, phosphorous, etc.
But separability is only one condition for determining whether or not a thing is a substance. The nature of dependence is another: the redness of a ball depends on the ball unlike how the ball depends on the redness. The redness could go out of existence, but the ball would remain. However, if the ball went out of existence, so too would the redness. Substantial forms don’t depend on other substances for their existence, but accidental forms do. The circularity of the ball as well is an accidental form, since the actual substance of the ball is its rubber or secondary matter.
Bread is then an accidental form because its parts are separable, but not because it depends on another substance for its existence, since the bread is decidedly something other than just the sum of its parts (unlike a watch, which is exactly the sum of its parts). Because we would say that the flour, water, etc are not present in the bread actually, but virtually, since the properties of the bread are irreducible to either the flour or the water, since neither poses the attribute of sponginess, which is a property of bread (the same can be said of water, which is a substance, and whose properties are irreducible to either hydrogen or oxygen, since the latter alone have radically different properties than water). For water, though, once the molecule is separated, it becomes something else, making it a substance.
It isn’t actually such an easy question, but bread is an accidental form. How does this affect transubstantiation? It doesn’t. Why would it? The bread is made into a substance even though its visible accidents remain the same. I’m not catholic, but that’s what I believe is the teaching.
@@whoami8434 That was my one of the clearest expositions regarding accidental and substantial forms I've ever read. Thank you so much!
As to how all of this affects Transubstantiation, well, I always thought that the "trans" preffix stood for "changing one thing for another" and thus in this case it meant changing the substance of bread for the Substance of Christ. But maybe that was just my preconceived notion of the word.
Thank you again for this very thorough explanation. And I hope you are not offended when I say I will pray you come to the Catholic Church as well.
Comment for traction🎉
Thanks for taking the time to watch and comment. May the Lord bless you!
Looks like the IKEA Billy shelf.
It still seems odd that someone should go to hell because of ignorance, whether through passion or whatnot. After all, we are made to desire God, the only who can fulfill us. So if someone ends up in hell, then it is through error. How is that sensible?
From my understanding, this is exactly the reason why people like David Bentley Hart argue for universalism. If the will can simply be corrected and errs via ignorance, then how can our sin be blameworthy and therefore punishable? Seems ridiculous if indeed we do not already know exactly what is good and what is evil, and from experience we simply don’t know what is good and what is evil. We must be taught what is good and what is evil, and we can make errors along the way.
Strange to think, then, that our “first parents” ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The knowledge doesn’t seem to have propagated through the species! I don’t take the story literally, but for those who do it’s an interesting stumbling block.
Who Am I? Yes this is interesting! I think Hart faces problems with the New Testament’s rather dire warnings about hell-though I’m sure he had his own way of interpreting them (though the straightforward interpretation seems to imply eternal hell).
Are you talking about being able to erroneously choose something else over God?
As Dr. Feser said, once the will is fixed, it's either for or against God, and that determines your path either to beatitude (face to face with God) or damnation (eternal separation from Him). Error alone, as in invincible ignorance (you had no way of knowing the truth), isn't enough to condemn you, but willful ignorance & sin, those all put you against God.
If you want to talk about justice, it wouldn't be just for someone who hates God to be with Him (nor would that soul want to be).
Don't know if you're Catholic but there's also the concept of baptism of desire. If someone would have received baptism knowing its necessity but didn't because they had no idea, God knows, He's not unjustly going to punish them for what they couldn't have known.
Liraco
If he was not ignorant, then he would not want to be away from God.
I don’t see how knowing God is not the same thing as wanting God. God is good, and if we do not see this, then we are simply in error. But if we do not want God, we have failed to realize this, since we all want what we recognize as good (even if we mistake what is good for what is truly evil, say, thievery or murder. In that act we believed the object of our pursuit to be good, because we perceived that it would bring about our happiness). But to fail to see God as bringing about our happiness is simply a mistake, and mistakes are not done willfully, but out of ignorance.
To me, I cannot see how to get around this aspect of the will. What we will is always a function of our ignorance, and so it seems not even murder is truly blameworthy, since we really did believe it would make us happy, mistaking evil for good. How does one remedy this within themselves except by understanding that what they desire is not good? And where does that understanding come from? It seems to me, then, that our actions are a function of our ignorance, and not even the murderer can be blamed for his stupidity in murdering.
I don’t really see a way around this. Yeah we can hold people personally responsible because we can identify them as the cause of this or that crime, but justice? I mean, maybe if we all acted from a state of perfect understanding, but then there just wouldn’t be any wrongdoing, and so justice would never need to arrive as a concept.
Is there a different way of thinking about this?
Liraco
The capacity for willful ignorance would itself be a kind of ignorance, since WHY does that person want to remain ignorant? It will be due to some ignorance that is itself not willful.
Considering the damned will have their bodies, an eternity of suffering seems entirely unjust and I don’t see how it follows that they can no longer choose a higher good, God. Ed like a good Thomist is just echoing Aquinas’ own attempt to understand the nature of the soul in the afterlife. But I have a hard time accept this explanation for an eternity of suffering.
Hey Patric,
I want to weigh in on your question, but please be aware that this is from my readings of the Fathers and Aquinas myself. Feel free to disagree with my conclusion as you see fit. Also feel free to correct me if I misrepresent something you have some better knowledge on.
The creature is endowed with Free will.
Free will is predicated on the notion that mankind should not be coerced by someone else to sway towards something that they in themselves do not see as a Good. Now the world is filled with unlimited choices that suites man’s nature. These choices are proportionate to and appropriate for man. These are called “natural inclinations” because they are things in which it is proportionate to our nature to obtain. For instance, a spouse. Children. Virtues. Money. Jobs. In virtue of the fact that we are creatures in a hierarchical structure, to receive things above our nature is not fitting. Animals that are beneath our nature, likewise, do not receive in the gifted way that we do. For an animal cannot work towards ends. An animal cannot drive convertibles, more less even build one. An animal has no economical system. An animal cannot abstract from particulars, nor peer into Mathematics. The animal was not gifted with the same measure of God’s creation as a human being. Now, we must ask, what is “owed” to man? What is “owed” to him are the things proportionate to his nature. Eternal life, in the loose since, is owed to all mankind in virtue of the fact God made mankind to be eternal. For this reason, ALL of mankind lives eternally regardless of the content of their character. Its their “due” in the order of Justice. For this reason, even the wicked will “rise up” from the grave and be reunited to their body. This is the due of all mankind to live forever.
Now, whatever is ABOVE man’s nature is not “owed” to him. Think of yourself and your dog. The dog is not “owed” a spot next to your bed on a comfortable pillow. If you choose to make a spot next to your bed you are extending your hand and picking the dog up to a level in which the dog did not earn. Now, what if the dog on hearing you call him to the bed decided to remain in his “domain” and turned away to sleep in the dog house? This is an analogy for us and God. Jesus said that those who participate in the resurrection will be “equal to the Angels.” Well, angels are above us in a greater capacity then we are above dogs. Angels “see the Face of My Father.” Angels gaze at God and “see Him as He is.” This gift is not owed to Man in virtue of him being Man. Even Adam and Eve who were spotless in the Garden did not see God in His Essence. For that nobody has is clear from John: “Nobody has seen God at any time. The Only Begotten who is in the Bosom of the Father has declared Him.” And again, Jesus says, “You have never seen His form.” But Jesus, God from God, has “seen the Father” and it is a GIFT to be able to see the Father. Jesus alone of all humanity has the gift, that is, the Sight of God. He alone gives the gift to “all who are thirsty.” Not by a right is it given, but by Grace to those who seek it. Therefore, to whoever God gives the gift to He gives graciously. To who He withholds the gift from, He does so Justly. For Man is not owed the gift to “see God.” Jesus says “THIS IS eternal life, that they may KNOW you and Jesus Christ who you have sent.” To know God is above our Nature. To participate in God is not owed to a creature. This is clear from Scripture that Jesus will not reveal the Father to the wicked. They will no doubt see Jesus at judgement day, but the Trinity they will justly be restrained from seeing. "The pure in heart shall see God." "Who shall ascend the Lords mountain or stand on His holy hill? Only him who has clean hands and a pure heart." This gift is extended to all in virtue of The Word becoming incarnate. For it is only by participation in the Son that we, as sons, will see the Father. "in that Day you will ask Me nothing. Whatever you ask the Father He will give you." "In that day you will know that the Father is in Me and I am in the Father." The fallen angels, by pride, preferred to contemplate themselves rather then see God and thus lost the potential for the vision of God.
When man chooses his own proportioned good over the infinite Good he is saying, "I choose to remain away from the bed you have made me, and prefer to live in the dog house,." That is, the fallen man rejects the "Supernatural (ABOVE NATURE)" and decides to spend eternity turned in on himself as his own end.
I Hope this makes sense the way I typed it up! If you have any questions or need clarification, I’ll be happy to respond.
Nick B Rocks hey! This is actually extremely helpful. In a sense, God maintains the saved and damned in everlasting existence because he loves them. My remaining question would be: sure, a rational creature can prefer a lesser good. Fine. But why must this result in endless, horrific suffering - like the kind suggested by the symbolic language of fire? Where does the horror of hell come from-and shouldn’t this seem unjust?
Patric Peters Hey Patric, I am glad my response made sense. I think your observation is correct. God loves his creatures and wills their Good. Like a wind blowing, God is as a gentle Breeze trying to guide us in the direction of Himself. Man chooses to walk with the breeze or go against it. “The Spirit blows where He wills and you do not know where He comes from or where He is going. So is everyone who is born from above.” That is, mankind is unaware of where we came from because God transcends our nature and trying to find Him through the 5 senses by which we learn EVERYTHING is difficult to say the least. But the Spirit comes and “blows where He wills.” We do not know where the Spirit comes from either since He too comes from God (and is God). And we do not know where the Spirit is “Going,” because He is leading us ABOVE ourselves willing that where Jesus is we may be with Him. But of the Pharisees and Sadducees who were “stiff necked” according to Stephen, they always “resist the Holy Spirit.” Man receives his due by resisting. If resisting God before Jesus was bad, how much more after Jesus? For Jesus, out of Love, invited all mankind to the image of the Father. “Whoever is thirsty let Him come!” And this love was so radically demonstrated that He took the worst beating of any known human. Isaiah says “He was marred more than any son of Man.” And again, “He was bruised for our iniquity, the chastisement of our Peace was placed upon Him. By His stripes we are healed.” Jesus agony on the Cross was the agony for Man. It was His Passion for His creatures. A man who was in no pain, full of wisdom, and endowed with gifts fell in the garden because of a beautiful tree to behold. And yet, with Jesus, A man full of pain, on a tree that wasn’t pleasing to the eye, passed into the Heavens and sits at the right Hand of God. Of this Crucified Man it says “there was no beauty that we should desire Him.” The tree that brought death was desirable. The tree that brings life is undesirable. The God and King of the Universe hung naked on a Tree to bring Man not only back to union of soul and body but to something transcendent: namely, Himself. How can one willfully hate Him? “Whoever is thirsty let him come!” The one who is not thirsty does not come.
Now with all that being said, if you have hung with me this far hang on a little longer and I will get to your question. Forgive my long drawn out narrative (my wife has to have a lot of patience with me). It’s important to note that many images have been drawn up about Hell over the Centuries. However, when it comes to Catholic Dogma (teachings we must adhere to as a light before our feet) only 2 real truths have been declared. First, Hell is eternal. Second, it is proportioned to each ones guilt and is the just due of their sins. Besides these two Dogmas there is some wiggle room as to what exactly “hell” intel’s. Rather or not the “fire” is literal or not is disputed. The one thing we know for certain, is when someone unknowingly loses a great good willfully then regret is bound to torment the conscience. How tormented will the soul be who realizes (like the Rich man and Lazarus) that he has lost the greatest opportunity is unfathomable. Not only this, but they will also find out that they who persecuted Christ members and harassed them this whole life have lost the greatest Good in their obstinate blindness. The men that bore under their hatred the patience of Christ will be vindicated in the sphere in which they were humiliated. Thus, at the resurrection the heart of the damned will immediately know he has lost the greatest Good and also inflicted injury to the members of the ones who sought this Good. This in itself will be torturous as nobody likes to see their “enemy” (Christians are enemies to wicked men) raised above their head.
With that all being said, the Catholic Church has the most beautiful teachings on the condemnation of men. She never presumes upon the souls of the departed and intercedes for all men. Who the damned are we don’t know. All we know is if they are, then they are willfully. If anyone’s makes it to Heaven it is because God gave them the Grace to go ABOVE themselves to a place they did not deserve. If anyone goes to hell it is because he chose willfully to receive the dues owed to him and rejected the extended Hand to pull them up above themselves.
Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions.
@@MountAthosandAquinas The Catholic Church has the most disgusting teachings ever. No one consented to being born with an unstable, unpredictable will that randomly chooses one thing over another. And how can a finite will merit infinite punishment?
I think Thomists lack empathy, which is why they're capable of loving a tyrannical deity that tortures people forever.
@@ObsidianTeen , my job isn’t to convince you. You have a conscience of your own and will follow it as you please. However, I will say that your use of the word “tyrannical” is wanting. If your going to label the “Thomist” deity as tyrannical then the burden of proof is on you. Who knows, perhaps you will actually read Saint Thomas yourself and find that your assertion has no basis.
I love his books, but it is truely remarkable how he manages to lay out a sound metaphysics of human rationality and then proceeds to defend patent nonsense regarding angelic intellects and the fixity of the will after death. God creates an angel. That angel has a passive intellect meaning that he doesn't aquire any knowledge himself and only knows what God has given him to know. Based on that knowledge the angel makes an instantaneous decision of whether to accept or reject God which then locks the angel into that decision for all eternity. God of course knows beforehand the decision the angel would make given the knowledge he will impart to the angel so he knows beforehand that certain angels will condemn themselves to Hell at the moment of their creation and based on the knowledge they have been given by God. Oh, also God is Goodness himself and infinitely merciful.
If I recall correctly, what you have pointed out is part of the mystery of iniquity. Why would God create at all if he knew that even one of his beloved creations would use their will against him? It seems no one can quite answer this (even the DBH brand universalists) because even if there is some suffering or evil (whether eternal or not) you cannot get away from the “why would God create and allow that at all?” Question.
I like Tolkien’s poetic response in the Ainulindale where he responds to Melkor. But I’m with the thomists on this one so 🤷♂️
@@bballaguy298 I think regarding suffering a distinction has to be made. Temporal sufferend is redeemable and infact is redeemed by God in the end such that all the goodness is restored. This is a problem faced by all Christians. Eternal suffering isn't redeemable and thus a wholly different problem which Universalists don't face.
The point I was trying to make concerning Angelic salvation and damnation was that it's not based on free decisions made by Angels. It's metaphysical nonsense to assert that it is since, as Ed rightly points out, our choices are always directed at the end we take to be the Good. And all of our choices are limited by our knowledge. We can't choose what we don't know. Now angelic intellects, being entirely passive, are wholly determined by what God puts into them. So if God gave all of the Angels the knowledge that God is the highest Good, ALL the Angels would choose God as their highest good and thus attain salvation. If, on the other hand, they had that knowledge and still chose against God, that choice would be irrational(hence not free) and Thomists are right to reject such a voluntarist concept of freedom. Given all this, the only way an Angel could choose something other than God would be to not know God as the highest Good. But that would mean that God didn't give him that knowledge. In which case God is fully responsible for the damnation of that Angel. What we are left with then, on this thomist picture, is that God is fully responsible for the damnation of all of the fallen Angels due to him having refused to impart to them the knowledge of his Goodness. Of course one can elect to call all this a mystery, but then again, that's no better than the Atheist calling the origin of life or of the universe a mystery.
Nowhere in this did you present the "patent nonsense".
Just because you don't like the answer, doesn't make it nonsense.
But you've misunderstood the answer anyway.
"God of course knows beforehand the decision the angel would make"
This is the part that shows the misunderstanding. God is not in time. There is no beforehand for God. All events, as well as His actions and reactions, are present to God as one eternal instant. In order for the angel to make a choice, the angel must exist. It is incoherent to say that God can just not create an angel after knowing what free choices it will make, since those free choices won't be because there is no angel.
The knowledge an angel receives is adequate to freely choose Him. If they don't choose him, how is that his fault?
Updated:
"If, on the other hand, they had that knowledge and still chose against God, that choice would be irrational(hence not free)...Given all this, the only way an Angel could choose something other than God would be to not know God as the highest Good. "
This is false. Feser explained the problem here when replying to DBH's response to his review:
"Hart puts heavy emphasis in his book on the irrationality of acting contrary to an end toward which our nature directs us. Of course, he is right about that much. The trouble is that he fallaciously reasons from this correct premise a mistaken conclusion about culpability, because he persistently fails to distinguish:
(a) an end the pursuit of which is in fact good for us, given our nature, and
(b) an end the pursuit of which we take to be good for us (whether it really is or not)
Now, acting against either (a) or (b) would be contrary to reason, but not in the same sense. In particular, a person might act against (b) because of confusion, duress, passion, or something else that clouds reason. And that can certainly affect culpability. For example, suppose that you say something extremely rude and uncalled for to your mother, because she just roused you from a deep sleep or because you are heavily medicated and not thinking straight. We would not hold you culpable for such behavior, because we know you weren’t thinking clearly. If you had been, you would never have done such a thing, because you yourself take it to be good to be respectful of your mother.
But suppose instead that you are fully awake, stone cold sober, and calm, but that you nevertheless say something extremely rude and uncalled for to your mother. Here we typically would regard you as culpable, and we might be even more inclined to do so if you refused to admit that you had done something wrong but tried to rationalize it. Now, here too you would be acting contrary to reason or irrationally, but not in the same way as in the first example. In particular, your act would in this case be contrary to reason in the sense that it conflicted with what is actually good (as opposed to what you’d fooled yourself into falsely thinking was good). But your act would not be irrational in the sense that it resulted from confusion, duress, passion, or other factors of the kind that prevent clear thinking. And that is why we would regard it as culpable.
Hart’s mistake is conflating these two sorts of case. He thinks that since choosing to reject God would be irrational in the sense in which any action that is contrary to (a) would be, it follows that it would be irrational in the sense that would mitigate culpability, as actions that are contrary to (b) often are. But that doesn’t follow. And this erroneous conflation would also entail that we would not be culpable for any bad action that we commit, since any bad action (and not just explicitly rejecting God) would be contrary to (a).
"
The "what you'd fooled yourself into falsely thinking was good" part can apply to angels as well. God gave them the knowledge that he is the highest good, but freely choose to not recognise Him as such.
@@billyg898
"Nowhere in this did you present the "patent nonsense"." I didn't claim I did. Instead I referred to that part of the talk where Ed discussed the "angelic intellects and the fixity of the will after death" as exemplifying what I call patent nonsense. You're free to disagree with me of course.
"Just because you don't like the answer, doesn't make it nonsense." I gave two arguments for it being nonsense, none of which you have adressed.
"There is no beforehand for God." Beforehand here means that God is logically and metaphysically prior to his creation and entirely independent of it, while his creation is entirely dependent on him. It has nothing to do with temporal priority.
"In order for the angel to make a choice, the angel must exist." True, but God knows that choice prior to the creation of the Angel otherwise God would have to learn about the choice after it had been made which is wrong.
"It is incoherent to say that God can just not create an angel after knowing what free choices it will make, since those free choices won't be because there is no angel." Again, this would make Gods actions and knowledge dependent on his actual creation which contradicts his being omnipotent, omniscient and unchangable.
"The knowledge an angel receives is adequate to freely choose Him. If they don't choose him, how is that his fault?" If the knowledge were adequate, then all the angels WOULD choose him as that is the only rational option and anything else would be irrational and hence not free. If the knowledge were not adequate it would be Gods fault that the Angel damned himself. My reply to Anthony further argues this point.
I think your observation is fair, but I am curious if you have actually read the whole argument which Feser has only quickly introduced in saint Thomas Summa Contra Gentiles and the Summa Theologia? If not, you may consider reading more into it. It's fascinating! There is more to it than what Dr Feser mentioned in this short video.
Feser gets it dead wrong @ 34:20 when he says "there's nothing within the intellect that necessitates that a particular conceptualization will prevail" leading to the conclusion that "there's nothing that necessitates that a particular outcome will prevail." In fact, human action is governed by the underlying biochemical substrates that constitute the human person. The brain is composed of functional modules, like a computer is composed of functional modules, and just because you don't understand why a particular choice seems optimal from the point of view of your individual conscious experience, it does not follow that the machinations of your decision making are not mechanistic. On the contrary, the mechanistic account is the only one that comports with everything we know from philosophy, physics, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and experimental psychology.
Feser also gets it dead wrong at 39:20 when he says "determinism" vs "randomness" is a false choice, because when a person acts, he always acts for a reason, though the outcome is "indeterministic" (based on the false conclusion he drew earlier that I outlined above). The relevant question Dr. Feser is why one indeterministic outcome prevails over another. If you can explain that in terms of causal relations, then you're a determinist. If you can't, then the by definition, the furniture of the universe (the human biochemical machine + any nonphysical souls you might believe in) isn't the sufficient cause for the action, which entails the conclusion that it is something outside the person that is responsible for the outcome. Van Inwagen makes the dilemma clear in ruclips.net/video/ImvEqnbfdIw/видео.html
Also see Jerry Coyne's talk @ ruclips.net/video/CiZAlG-BhwA/видео.html for more on the science of decision making
If naturalism is true, we cannot know it.
Also, comparing human mind to a computer is deeply fallacious
@@sergeysmirnov5986 My argument is more general than naturalism vs supernaturalism. Neither one makes free will possible. See the talk I linked from Van Inwagen for the philosophical reasons why, and see the talk I linked from Jerry Coyne to see the scientific reasons why.
Peter Thorpe
So you are not making the argument right now, it’s the chemicals in your brain forcing you to mechanically type this on the keyboard, right?