All right, everybody, well, welcome back to Red Grace Live. It's good to be with you guys. My name is Emilio Ramos. As always, we're back for another episode to discuss theology and apologetics. And in order to do that, we have a special guest back with us again, Dr. Lane G. Tipton from the Reform Forum.
And Dr. Tipton, great to see you again, and I'm excited to resume. the exposition of this content regarding Thomas Aquinas and the image of God, and how important it is for us to grasp at the deeper conceptual level what Thomas Aquinas is saying and what he is developing archetypally, and how that compares and contrasts with Reformed Orthodoxy, especially the deeper Protestant conception that is represented by Voss and then later others like Van Til. expounding on that and yourself. So welcome back, brother. It's good to be with you again, and it's good to pick up where we left off last week.
It's great to be here. I really enjoy it. Thanks again for having me. Absolutely. So let's dive right in, brothers, because when we got Lane on the show, let me just give you guys some insight.
We try to maximize the time that we have with Dr. Tipton, and also because the content is, you know, obviously it's... It's much more dense and advanced and takes development. And so we don't want to waste any time. We want to jump right in.
And so, Lane, let's talk about now the invisible missions, the image of God, and the whole notion of beatitude in Thomas. Where would you like to kind of pick up? Well, let me make an initial distinction that I think will be programmatic, and then we'll read some Thomas and we'll amplify what he's saying. Thomas is going to relate the image of God to the divine processions in terms of two distinct classes of knowledge. Natural knowledge of God and supernatural knowledge of God.
Natural knowledge of God comes by way of creation as the image of God. Supernatural knowledge comes by way of super added grace. what theologians call the donum super aditum, that elevates the rational creature above natural knowledge.
And so there's a two-fold move from nature to grace, and image of God is strictly speaking given in creation, special creation. That's natural knowledge. And then grace...
begins an ascending path of the supernatural knowledge of God. And what is it patterned after? This knowledge and this love, patterned after the divine processions.
So let's try now to talk about the creaturely image of God as an ascending participation in the divine processions from nature to grace, to glory. And we'll try to read some quotations from Thomas and walk through it so that listeners are able once again to read him and reflect on what he's saying and grasp the internal structure of what he's after. Would you be able to read from his commentary on the sentences? It's from Volume 4. Would you be able to read that just as a kind of framing insight for the way thomas speaks of the path of beatitude for the creature it's a circulation from um that that moves uh in terms of a participation in knowledge and a participation in love in an ascending movement from nature to grace to glory and we're going to just start with what thomas says about you the path to beatitude for the rational creature patterned after these divine processions.
Sure, sure. He says, since everything proceeds from God insofar as he is good, as Augustine and Dionysius say, therefore all creatures receive from their creator an imprint inclining them to seek the good, each after its own modality, and thus a certain circulation is found in things. Now, issuing from the good, they incline to the good.
This circulation is perfect in some creatures while remaining imperfect in others. For there are creatures which are not ordained to touch upon the first good from which they proceed, but only to obtain some sort of likeness to him. These do not have a perfect circulation. This only belongs to the rational creature who can attain. God through knowledge and love, and in this attainment, their beatitude exists.
Now here's what Thomas is after. He's saying that rational creatures have an initial imprint that drives them to seek the good in two distinct ways. First, there is the created imprint. the Son.
Think of Adam in the Garden of Eden right when he's formed from the dust of the ground and created as the image of God. He had reason imprinted upon his soul as a replica, creaturely replica, of the reason, understanding, or wisdom that is the eternal Son of God. So he can utilize reason, a light of reason within him, to gain a natural knowledge of God.
I've lectured on this before in other venues. Thomas, especially in his Romans commentary, Romans 1, 19-21, speaks of this. But natural reason... Begins with sensible objects and can trace back behind them to a knowledge of God as the first cause, an unmoved mover, or a perfect being.
That capacity, that rational capacity, is an imprint in the creature as a capacity of the sun as the intellect. of the father second there is the imprint of the spirit what does it consist of the rational creature possesses the capacity to act or choose the rational creature possesses free agency a willing toward what is good and so adam by virtue of creation has an inclination to love the good and to seek the good, even as the Spirit, what? Has an inclination toward the good, toward the Father, toward the Son.
So the capacity, here's the key, the capacity to know God by virtue of creation derives from a reproduction... in the creature of the personal property of the Son in generation. The capacity to pursue what is good, to choose what is good, to love what is good, derives from a reproduction in the creature of the personal property of the Spirit, charity.
So that the capacity to know and the capacity to love Ultimately, the Father is concreated. As the Son knows the Father and the Spirit loves the Father and, by extension, the Son, so the rational creature as the image of God has the imprint of reason and freedom concreated and can know indirectly through mediated objects and love imperfectly. in a manner analogous to and patterned after the divine processions of reason and love, sun and spirit respectively. And so this is, we could call it this, this might help those with a little bit of a philosophical background, this is what we call capacity innatism in Thomas.
Rational and volitional capacities are innate or concreated in Adam. Knowledge is not concreated. He doesn't know God until after he's worked on sensible objects and traced knowledge back to God. As first cause, for instance.
But the capacities are concreated. And that's key. That is the sum and substance of the natural image of God.
Concreated capacities to know and to act in freedom and in love. Now, Thomas also speaks of a... supernatural knowledge of God. A knowledge that is given by way of superadded, infused grace. What Roman Catholic theologians call often the donum superadditum.
And here's the key. Once that grace is infused, if Adam cooperates with it, it can elevate him abode. Above his created nature to know God, the Father, as the Son knows God, the Father, directly and immediately. And to love God, the Father, and God, the Son, as the Spirit loves God, the Father, and the Son. Which is what?
Direct and unmediated apprehension of and love for the essence of the Father. There's a wonderful... So if you ask the question, what is the invisible mission of the Son in grace?
It is to enable an ascending participation in his own knowledge of the Father to the creature. What is the invisible mission of the Spirit? To enable a participation in his own love for the Father and the Son in eternal spiration. So the...
So the Son and the Spirit enable, not by nature, but by grace. Not by virtue of creation, but by virtue of sanctifying and elevating grace. They enable, not a natural, but a supernatural knowledge and a supernatural love for God that reproportions the creature to the divine processions themselves.
And Emilio, there's a lot more that I do in a different course, but I... I wanted to give a quote from Lawrence Feingold in a work that he has done on the natural desire to see God that is so trenchant. And I'd like to expand on it. Could you read that quote? And then I'll try to expand on it and show the logic of graced, elevated, supernatural knowledge of God that leads toward beatitude for the rational creature.
Sure, sure, this is what Feingold says. He says, It should be evident that to be able to see God face to face, to know him as he knows himself, is not an end that could correspond naturally to any creature, no matter how exalted is nature. To see the essence of God is proper only to God.
In fact, God's own eternal beatitude lies in his infinite act. of knowledge of his own infinite goodness and his eternal act of love of that same goodness in which consists the ineffable interior life of the holy trinity engendering the eternal procession of the son and the holy spirit the beatific vision therefore is an absolutely mysterious participation or sharing of the rational creature in God's own divine life and beatitude. Wow.
This is why I love Feingold. Me too. Yeah, he is so straightforward and so clear. As is Emery and as are other Roman Catholics, this is uniquely penetrating, though, I will say.
Here's what Feingold is saying. The Father's own, and this is the... the patricentrism that you were flagging in our previous episode um emilio the father's own infinite act of knowledge and love for his own infinite goodness engenders the eternal procession of the son knowledge the eternal procession of the spirit love as the father knows his own goodness he engenders the son you And the son knows the father as the father knows himself directly and immediately.
As the Father loves his own goodness, he engenders with the Son the Spirit, inspiration. So that the Father's infinite knowledge of and love for his own essence engenders the two processions within the Godhead, and that is the beatitude of the Trinity. That is, quote, the ineffable interior life of the Trinity. Now, what is the beatific vision? The beatific vision is the supernatural and final end of elevating grace given by the Son and by the Spirit.
And what does it do? It elevates the rational creature above his nature to know God as God knows himself in the affiliation of the Son. So that grace enables what? A movement above immediate inferential knowledge of God like you have in nature. And it enables what?
A direct intellective apprehension of the Father just as the Son possesses it. Sanctifying or deifying grace elevates the rational creature above his nature to love God as God loves himself in the spiration of the Spirit. So when grace reaches its end in the light of glory, it is then that the rational creature perfectly participates in the eternal processions themselves, being returned to God in a direct intellective apprehension of and love for the essence of God as communicated in the divine processions.
It is a retitus to the Father and a sharing. in the knowledge the Son has of the Father and a sharing in the love the Spirit has for the Father and for the Son. And so if you think of it this way, to know and love God perfectly as a creature is to know the Father as the Son knows him and to love the Father as the Spirit loves him.
And this is an unmediated and direct apprehension of the Father as given in the Trinitarian processions. Now, Emilio, let me pause and just say this to kind of take a breath for a second. I think the listeners are probably aghast if they've not heard this from Thomas or Thomas interpreters.
But what's happened here? is we see that Thomas means what he says. He means that the image of God is both patterned after and derives from the two processions. But he also means that the image is reproportioned above itself to participate perfectly in those two processions.
To have the kind of knowledge the Son has, the kind of love the Spirit has, direct and unmediated. in return to the Father, in the divine processions. And so here's the question, and this is kind of thesis two, Emilio.
I gave a thesis earlier. I kind of gave a whole thesis. I kind of surveyed the whole thing. But thesis two is that Thomas'doctrine of image of God is this.
Here it is in a single sentence. This is the best I can do. The image of God consists in an ascending participation in the processions of the Son and Spirit in a three-fold movement from nature to grace to glory. I'll say it again just so everyone can hear it. Thomas'doctrine of image of God is this.
The created image of God consists in an ascending participation. and ontological assimilation yeah into the processions of the sun and spirit in a threefold movement from nature to grace to glory and just to get people into this could you read st1 question 93 answer 4 on this this is where thomas really focuses this three-tiered ascending ontological assimilation into the processions sure Thomas says, the image of God is in human beings on three levels, primarily in as much as the human being has a natural aptitude for understanding and loving God. And this aptitude rests in the very nature of the mind, which is common to all human beings.
Secondly, inasmuch as human beings know and love God, though imperfectly, and this image consists in the conformity of grace. Thirdly, inasmuch as a human being knows and loves God perfectly, and this image consists in the likeness of glory. Now, that's from ST1, question 93, answer 4. Let me do a little bit beyond what we've quoted from Thomas, noting that there are resources that I've had with Reform Forum and Emory that expand this. But let me clarify this so the listeners can get a grasp of it. The natural image of God, level one.
consists in natural aptitudes, aptitudes to know and love God through creation. That is indirect and mediated by nature. Thomas does not believe in the sensus divinitatis and concreated natural knowledge of God, but he does believe in a natural aptitude to know God and love God through created objects indirectly and in immediate way now and this is hard to put but supernatural knowledge comes by grace nature is level one grace is level two and in that there is a supernatural knowledge of god through grace but it still remains indirect and mediated there is not yet a direct and unmediated knowledge of the essence of god but it is the beginning of a path to that end that's what grace enables a supernatural knowledge of god a knowledge above and beyond what is discernible through created objects but then third he speaks of perfect supernatural knowledge and love for god and glory And I have a quote from an essay I wrote for Reform Forum, where Thomas speaks of this, where there is a direct and unmediated knowledge of the essence of the Father in glory, patterned directly after the Son.
That's the three levels of knowledge. I'm just choosing knowledge because it's easier to conceptualize. Now, the feature that's common here is knowledge and love. There's a natural knowledge, a supernatural knowledge, and a perfected knowledge.
But what is the background for this? Well, the background for this are the processions of the Son and the Spirit. Thomas puts it this way.
In fact, Emilio, I think you have this. There's a quote from the Trinitarian Theology of Thomas Aquinas, page 358. Where Emory summarizes this point that we're making, could you give that a read where he's talking about the processions of sun and spirit being the doctrinal basis for both the departure and the return of the creature, for both nature, grace, and glory. Exodus, nature. Reditus, grace, and glory. He summarizes this.
Could you give us that? Sure. Emery says, in the same way that the procession of the persons is the rationale for the production of creatures by the first principle, so likewise the procession of the persons is the rationale of this return to their end. Since in the same way that we have been created through the Son and the Holy Spirit, so likewise it is through them that we are united to the ultimate end.
Right. See, the double movement of the Son and Spirit in departure and return, exodus and reditus, is reflected in the work of creation. Creation is an exodus, and in reditus, sanctifying grace is a reditus that enables a return. And the The exodus is a conferring of natural capacities, and the reditus is an elevation above those natural capacities for a full-orbed assimilation into the divine processions, whereby the rational creature can know God the Father as the Son knows God the Father, and love God the Father. And the Son is the Spirit loves the Father and the Son.
And the supernatural end is the perfect ontological assimilation into the divine processions themselves. Now, of course, Thomas is not wanting to deny the distinction between the original processions and these particular. participations in the processions in beatitude but emilio there there is here a very clear catholicizing sacerdotal move that thomas is making because after the fall when sanctifying grace is lost the place where sanctifying and deifying grace is realized perfectly is in the incarnation of jesus he is perfectly deified his humanity is perfectly deified in the grace of union where the son confers himself upon that humanity in the grace of the hypostatic union and he's instantly deified the spirit as a logical consequence of the grace of union gives deifying and sanctifying you habitual grace to that humanity making it perfectly inclined toward the things of god and then the sacrament of the eucharist communicates that deified humanity to the church in a sacramental mystery and the end is that the church will know god as the son knows god love god as the spirit loves god in a perfected participation of the divine missions Now, here's what, here's just to pause and comment on this, Emilio.
That is the deeper Catholic conception. That's it. It is a, the doctrine of the image of God and this threefold ascending movement from nature to grace to glory, where reason and love are elevated and perfected.
as participations in the personal properties of Son and Spirit. That is the system of theology. And here's what's so important to appreciate. If you want to retrieve Thomas'doctrine of the divine processions, you have to recognize that the intellective and volitional processions are the archetype and cause For his theology of image, grace, incarnation, sacrament, and beatitude.
It's a system. It's an organic system. And it's right there that I think it's easy for Protestants to see, once you put it this way, that Thomas is really doing in his theology of the image of God.
theology proper because what is the image of god but an ascending participation in the divine processions themselves the grace lost in the fall is regained through the sacraments of the church and dispensed principally but not exclusively through the eucharist and and here's here's what i i i think before we haven't we've defined in part the deeper protestant conception through the shorter catechism but here's something i want the listeners to to reflect on i kind of started with this in our first um in our our previous um module or previous interview on thomas i think protestants especially reformed are so prone to say that we would disagree with thomas in terms of our understanding of scripture. I think there are still a few who would say that. Some might not anymore. But certainly on justification, there are differences.
Thomas has a renovative conception of justification because he's a sacerdotalist. But when you look at the best that the Reformed tradition has to offer when it comes to understanding traditional Dominican Thomistic theology, Bavink and Voss make some penetrating statements that I think are calculated to stave off the deeper Catholic conception as we've expounded. Voss and Bavink, and I want to start with Bavink if you can do this.
Bavink speaks directly about the view. That beatitude consists in an unmediated, direct, intellective apprehension of the essence of God. It is the Dominican Thomistic conception of beatitude. And he has some statements that are just scintillating in terms of offering a critique and pointing us in a little bit different direction.
Could you read at least the first one? From his Reformed Dogmatics to 190 and 191. Sure. Yeah, it won't be the first time I've read this.
You know I've... This is a good one, isn't it? You know I've poured over these pages.
Bavinck says, Every vision of God, then, always requires an act of divine condescension, a revelation by which God, on his part, comes down to us and makes himself knowable. But regardless of how high and glorious Reformed theologians conceived the state of glory to be, human beings remained human even there, indeed raised above their natural position, but never above their own kind, and that which is analogous to that. Humanity's blessedness indeed lies in the beatific vision of God, but this vision will always be such that finite and limited human nature is capable of it. A divinization such as Rome teaches indeed fits into the system of a pseudo-Dionysian hierarchy, but has no support in Scripture. That's quite stunning.
This is Bavink taking us beyond formal and material causes of the Reformation. and the differences between the Reformed and the Roman Catholics on Scripture and justification. And here's what he's saying, and this is worth remembering. Thomas Aquinas believed that the Dionysius that he interacted with, the Dionysian theology that he inherited, he believed he was a father of the Church.
He believed he was a figure alluded to in the Scriptures. He didn't realize he was a mystic. And the hierarchy of divinization that Thomas picks up on as he develops this pseudo-Dionysian mysticism, we've already looked at. And what is it? It is an elevation not above natural position but above kind.
And it's a knowing of God by which the knower is elevated above his... nature and that vision is a direct and immediate vision of the divine essence and bovink is saying that is something categorically unique to trinitarian persons it's not communicable why well i think he says it better maybe even in rd2 539 what's the big problem with this Roman Catholic view of divinization rooted in the pseudo-Dionysian hierarchy, which, by the way, for anyone who needs to know, that is code language for Thomas Aquinas. Blankenhorn's book, the Dionysian influence on Thomas makes this so clear.
And Albert the Great, yeah. Albert the Great, yeah. And yeah, in the title, Albert the Great and Thomas. Legg makes this clear. Emery makes this clear.
This is not so subtle coded language for Thomas, but listen to what he goes on to say about this same view, RD2-539. I think this is maybe even more powerful. Yeah, Bobbink says this, that the traditional Roman Catholic view of beatitude amounts, quote, to a melting union, end quote, that rests on, quote, a neo-platonic vision of God and a mystical fusion of the soul with God and entails, quote, the erasure of the boundary between the creator and the creature.
Now, end quote. Now, let me put this as clearly as I know how. Thomas and the traditional Roman Catholicism that Bavink is critiquing do not say that creatures are generated along with the Son and the Holy Spirit.
There's a unique archetypal hierarchy or priority. Only the Son is eternally generated. Only the Spirit eternally proceeds.
And so up front, there's a strong, absolute creator-creature distinction in Thomas Aquinas and in traditional Roman Catholicism. Now, and that must be recognized, but what happens when the beatific vision is attained, according to Bobbink, is a mystical fusion. of the soul with god how so well here's the key that we've got to get this the creature no longer knows as creature the creature who knows as creature knows in immediate and inferential way through sensible objects the sun knows directly and immediately and at the time point of the beatific vision that distinction is erased that's boving's point there is no longer mediated, inferential, and indirect knowledge through sensible objects, as it would be in heaven, seeing the glory of God in the face of Christ.
There is now an erasure of the distinction between God and the soul, insofar as the creature knows the Father, as the Son knows the Father in the divine procession. And so what Bobbink is saying is what the traditional Roman Catholic view, I think exemplified quite clearly by Thomas in his mind. What it is presenting is a creator-creature distinction up front that on the back end entails a mystical fusion, entails an erasure of that initial boundary, and therefore becomes a mystical, or pardon me, a melting union. And so the distinction between The knowledge that the creature has of the Father and the knowledge the Son has of the Father, Bavink is saying, is erased because both are immediate, both are direct, and the knowledge that the Son has of the Father in eternal generation simply is the knowledge that the creature, so elevated and deified, now has of the Father.
I think it's amazing, Elaine, and I don't want to kick you completely off kilter here, but I think it's amazing that people, in critiquing someone like Van Til, insist that Van Til does not read Thomas correctly, for example, when here you have a whole tradition going on, I mean, all the way back to Bavink, and we're going to look at Voss, and you know, others, but that very clearly understood the sort of neoplatonic and therefore, to some degree, pagan conceptions in terms of creator-creature relation in Thomas. And Van Til gets just, he gets, you know, he gets thrown under the bus for making, now granted, Van Til maybe used colorful language that people wouldn't want to use, but at the same time, he understood that this led to the erasure of the distinction between creator and creature. and and the boundaries there yeah yeah i call this um backdoor mutualism in my van til book because up front there's a strong creator creature distinction but in the back on the back end there's a melting union a mystical fusion of the soul with god the erasure of a boundary between the creator and the creature which is really just the entailment of thomas's dionysian um his embrace of a Dionysian Exodus redditus model, and a failure to check that properly. A failure to maintain the creator-creature distinction in the consummation of the creator-creature relation.
So it's not saying Thomas has denied from the outset the creator-creature distinction. It's just that at the point of eschatological consummation, The distinction cannot be found. There's a melting union, a mystical fusion, an erasing of a boundary once established. That's the critique. And that's something that I believe you find in the deepest structures of every Reformed doctrine of the image of God, going all the way back to Turretin and others.
And so... Why do we deny that? Well, why do we deny that melting union?
Why do we deny that mystical fusion? Why do we deny that erasure of the boundary? Here it is, and this is slowly coming back. And it's a segue to Voss, wink wink. We have a different view of the image of God and deny the need for ontologically reproportioning grace in the Donum Super Addict.
See? So that the grave difference there in terms of the eschatological telos is ultimately rooted in a different view of the nature and the destiny of man. And Voss, in his review of Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics, page 492, has some wonderful comments on this.
Could you just read him briefly? on the nature and destiny of man. Absolutely. He makes parallel points to Bavink, and then I guess we can kind of trail off. And I think we'll try Bellarmine next time, and then we'll move on to Turret and Burgess and Bavink and Voss.
You got it. Well, Voss says, with the nature of man and the destiny of man, the debate returns from these apologetic outposts to the heart of the Christian and Protestant position, the Romanist doctrine of the Donus Supernaturalia, is shown to have two roots. One in the Neoplatonic idea of a mystical deification as the true destiny of man, and the other in the Pelagian principle of the meritoriousness of good works.
If man is to earn the status gloria, which is supernatural, he can do so only by the employment of a principle, likewise intrinsically supernatural, the gradia infusia or gradia gratum faziens, or the grace that makes you pleasing, right? Something like that. Now, this is huge. I've pointed this out to Matthew Barrett, and I talked to Harrison Perkins about this a while back, and he recognizes this. There's a distinction between the Franciscans and the Dominicans when it comes to the overtness of Pelagianism.
The Franciscan tradition suspends the giving of the donum on obedience, the obedience of a natural creature, and that's overtly Pelagian. But there is also an inherent... Voss argues Pelagianism in the Dominican tradition, insofar as the mystical deification and the Pelagian principle of the meritoriousness of good works is affirmed.
Rome affirms meritorious good works. Thomas affirms meritorious good works through what? Super added grace.
And what is that? It's not... What I call front door Pelagianism, it's back door Pelagianism.
It's affirming that the creature can merit the good, the favor of God. And what's the source of it? To put it very briefly, the source of it rests in the fact, and this is Voss from his Reformed Dogmatics. I'm going off on a bit of a sidebar here, but I think it's important.
The moment... original righteousness is loosed from the will, which both the Franciscans and the Dominicans do, at that moment you have a, what Voss calls, an in principle expression of Pelagianism. And so what is Voss saying?
He's saying this, the moment you go with the donum, the moment you do it, what have you done? Whether you're Franciscan or Dominican. He's saying you have embraced a neo-platonic idea of mystical deification. Bavik is going to call it a melting union that erases the creator-creature distinction at the telos. And you're also going to embrace a modified form of a Pelagian principle of the meritoriousness of good works.
And so Voss is saying the moment... that you go with the donum, whether Franciscan or Dominican, that twofold consequence accrues, and you have not enabled true religion. He even goes so far as to talk about a, you know, a fundamental Neoplatonic Pelagian dialectic embedded in the Roman Catholic system. I mean, Voss is explicit about that.
Those are the two problems. And so, what is the issue here? Well, I'll put it this way. The end or goal that Thomas is pursuing is so wrong because the beginning of Thomas'doctrine of the image, as we've explained, is also so. The nature and destiny of man determines the eschatological term, the eschatological telos.
And as Thomas has a different view of the nature of man, so Thomas has a different view of the destiny of man. That's Voss's point. And that means that nature and destiny of man are joined to one another within the Thomistic system and according to Bavink and Voss stand categorically and antithetically over against the nature and destiny of man in the reformed system that you find outlined in the Westminster standards that we believe is taught in scripture so all of this to be said once you see what Bavink and Voss are saying the issue is that you have Divergent conceptions of nature and destiny of man in Thomas and traditional Dominican Roman Catholic theology, as it's set in contrast to the nature and destiny of man in traditional confessional Reformed theology.
And once you see this, and we've done the thumbnail version, brother, you can't unsee it. And I would ask the, that's page 492, by the way, from... Voss's shorter writings where we've cited Voss and he's reviewing Bavink and coming to the same conclusions Bavink comes to regarding traditional Roman Catholic theology and its Dominican expression, Thomas and others. You really start to see that the entire problem, both Bavink and Voss critique, stems from the Thomistic doctrine of divine processions being now.
Imaged in the creature in this threefold ascending path from nature to grace to glory. The systematic impress is quite clear. And I hope our listeners will be able to go back, read Thomas, read Bovink and Voss, and continue to reflect on this.
Because I believe the more you take time. unfettered time to reflect on these things. I think the deep structures come more and more clear. And I'll just say this as a sidebar, just to help direct people. Short comments that don't develop all of this.
Matthew Barrett's a good example in his Reformationist Renewal. I interact with him in that Thomas Aquinas course. Those kind of... Short and undeveloped reflections on Franciscan and Dominican differences, failing to see their deeper unity, failing to see the architectonic or structural character of processions and image and the way it influences the whole system, how nature and destiny of man entail one another for Thomas and lead to a path other than the reformed path.
And then also, and I won't comment. with any names because it's more just popular internet thought, but there are some people without training saying things about the deeper Protestant conception online, misunderstanding Calvin and Bavinck and Turretin and Thomas, because they don't have an integrated understanding of the systems. What this requires, what we're asking people to do and the reflection we've given them, This just requires some sustained reflection of deep structures in systems that's really lacking right now. And my hope is that with this in a couple of hours, condensed form, people can begin to reflect and read and work on this material and come to a much more profound appreciation of what it means to be reformed when it comes to Trinity image and eschatology. Absolutely.
And just to kind of close this out here, It's amazing, isn't it, Lane, that this whole thing began for Thomas with a simple question. Can man see the essence of God directly? Can man participate in the essence of God?
These questions that he had at the beginning of the Summa, by the time he's done with his system, results in this dialectic of Neoplatonic Pelagian thought. And ultimately, in what we would identify as... of correlativism or mutualism at the end of the day.
A backdoor form. Yeah, and so good. And I would just tell people, for our listeners, I would just tell you, go back on this. I know for 99% of you, this was way over your head, as it was for me initially exposed to all of this.
But as you go back and work through the material very slowly, I promise you that the things that Lane was talking about today here are so... fundamental. These are deep structural issues that if you don't consider these things, you can spend hours reading popular Thomistic authors and completely miss why you need to be remarkably careful what you're doing there and retrieving medieval scholasticism. There's a reason why we're Protestant and Reformed, and we are not Thomistic, and we are not Roman Catholic, and it has more to do than just justification or sola scriptura and these things, and so these are much deeper issues, more structural issues, and I think what you said, Lane, is so critical for people to understand that what we're talking about in the deeper Protestant conception is a comprehensive alternative, a comprehensive alternative. It's not just, oh, we're tweaking a few things.
Or we're retrieving most of it, but we're changing a couple things and making them a little bit more Protestant. This is a comprehensive alternative in reformed federalism and reformed Trinitarianism. So, I mean, we can go on and on.
Let me give, I don't do this as often as I should. My wife is helping me in this regard. Two practical suggestions. I feel something good coming then. Yes, yes, yes.
Much better if it's from my wife. If you listen to this, my advice would be when you're driving rather long distances heading to work, this is probably best listened to five to 15 times in little sections. So if you listen to something, listen for two minutes and think for 10. Listen for a minute and think for five. Listen for 30 seconds and think for five. you know minutes that that sort of thing don't don't um don't let it just keep going stop and reflect on it and listen to the specific way certain sentences are crafted and and it will it'll start to become clearer uh secondly um you can read thomas's st it's quite demanding but there are two books written by roman catholic uh theologians One of the highest order, and the other one is a very respected one.
If you can get your hands on the Trinitarian Theology of Thomas Aquinas by Gilles Emery, E-M-E-R-Y, it is, in my view, far and away, the best synthetic presentation of Thomas'system of Trinitarianism. It's remarkable. I was fortunate enough to get a hardback of it, and I gave away a paperback a while back. Secondly... If you want a little bit more on how the system extends, Dominic Legge, L-E-G-G-E, worked under Emory and I believe wrote a thesis under Emory's guidance.
I'm almost certain of that. I may be wrong, but I'm almost certain of that, entitled The Trinitarian Christology of Thomas Aquinas. And he shows dexterity in understanding Thomas and Emory and extends the insights more directly into Christology.
Very much worth picking up. And you can read those and not have to, you know, you want to read Thomas. I gave you a lot of quotes. But you want to read those works of men who are just expounding Thomas and wanting him understood with no desire to retrieve him because they already own him.
They're Roman Catholics. He's the angelic doctor. And so my advice for the listener, take your time and. Listen to this numbers of times if you need to in small bites and do something that's rare these days. Reflect for several minutes on short portions of what you're hearing and then it will come into focus so much easier than if you're listening to it just one time through and at the end of it say what in the world was just said um that's what i don't want to happen so we do it in this format we give a lot of material in a couple of hours so that you at your own pace and your own um you know calendar can reflect and ruminate on it So Emilio, thank you for the opportunity, brother.
I look forward to future episodes and I hope these prove helpful to the church, brother. I appreciate your convictions and your time too. Yeah, absolutely. Well, the next couple episodes we'll do on this, Lane, are going to be absolutely essential.
Is there anything you can say about that? Yeah, I'll say this. We're going to do a quick foray into Bellarmine because I think some people...
Need to know some of the unique emphases in Bellarmine that you don't find as directly in Thomas. He's taking Thomas to his logical conclusion. But then after that, we're going to spend time looking at, I think the way we'll structure it is a summary of everything from Bovink, which is stellar on this particular topic.
And then I just want to spend some time looking at Francis Turretin, Burgess of Westminster Divine, and then... conclude, I think, with some material directly from Voss that helps you see the programmatic, or to use Emilio's language, the comprehensive alternative regarding the nature and destiny of man in Reformed theology. That is where Voss and Bavinck, Turretin and Burgess are going to turn us when it comes to critiquing the Roman Catholic view of either Thomas or Bellarmine or Trent, the nature and destiny.
of man. So that will be our path forward. Awesome.
Great. Lane, thanks so much, brother. It's great to see you as always.
And we'll look forward to having you back. So everybody out there, thanks so much for tuning in. These episodes here, the last couple episodes with Lane, they'll also be on the playlist for the deepest conceptions.
And that's going to end up when we're done with that. That's going to be kind of, we hope will be almost something of a module that you can take here and that you can watch on Red Grace Media. So.
Till next time, God bless all of you. Thanks so much.