Listening to him is like putting your brain on a stairmaster xD It's a serious workout

Haha, you're not the only one!

I imagine he's quite busy between his doctoral work and his weekly Q&A on PWA

Thank you so much!

Same, amen 🙏❤

Glad you enjoyed it!

He's great!

Glad you enjoyed it!

Always good to see you, Master Chief 👌 Pax Christi

@@renjithjoseph7135 Pax Christi, my friend!

Winning combo!

Oh wow! I'm glad my channel could be your first interaction with him

@@GospelSimplicity I am Catholic, but not much of a Thomist.

Thank you so much! That’s really helpful feedback

Haha that’s so well said

You're not alone in that! Glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks!

My pleasure!

Glad you enjoyed it!

Hope you enjoy it!

Thanks! It's a privilege to get to do this, and I'm so grateful for this community!

Wow, thank you so much for these kind words! I really appreciate that

🙏✝️

Thanks!

Interesting connection!

Nice! I actually have looked into that program a bit

Haha, I don’t blame you for that! I’m just going to try his “keep saying it till it sounds right” method haha

I'd love to have him on!

@@GospelSimplicity yey! Looking forward to it!

@@GospelSimplicity I second that!! Would love to see Scott come on!

That could be interesting!

Thank you so much!

@@GospelSimplicity Yes congratulations !!! Keep up the good work!

Thanks for the recommendation!

I pray Fr Ripperger would reach sainthood. Imagine praying to "St. Chad" one day for your spiritual battles.

How interesting! I need to check out his channel. I've been meaning to do that

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.

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.

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?

I have! I haven't looked into his work much though

@@GospelSimplicity he's into a lot, fitness, writing, podcast.

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

I’ll check them out!

@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"

Interesting!

He’s great!

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

yo

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

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.

You're definitely not alone in that

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. 🤔

Care to elaborate?

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”._

It's spelled Transubstantiation, oh the irony.

@@bobaphat3676 typical reply which Proves how religious you are. Pedophile priest's is that spelt correctly.