Tertia Pars
Lecture 33: Christ's Multiple Kinds of Knowledge

Transcript
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And therefore, from the very beginning, it is taking on this human nature, this tool. It should be what? Perfect. Perfect for doing that, right? That's interesting, yeah. And he did, you know, at the age of 12, he went to the temple, he enlightened these guys. And he could have done so earlier. We got there at the age of six. But somebody could argue his intellect was so perfect that he acquired vast knowledge in a very short space of time. You know, I'm just, you know, I'm trying to be able to... Well, let's get up in the air for a moment, because he's going to distinguish three kinds, you know. And what you say may be true about one of those kinds, right? Yeah, with the knowledge that he acquires, I don't know if I'm understanding this, because I read the journal this morning. It seems to me he's acquiring knowledge that he already has. Well, that's what he's going from. Well, it's like the first objection, you know. I mean, as God he has knowledge, he doesn't have his man. No, but even his human-acquired knowledge, he's acquiring knowledge that he already has as a human. Well, it's going to be a different kind of knowledge, right? But the infused knowledge isn't the same... In other words, he doesn't know the same thing by different modes? You can see that. You see, when I get the big division, if I do, if I'm... In seeing God as he is, I will see the truth of the Pythagorean theorem. Did you know that? In other words, everything that I naturally want to know, in seeing God as he is, which is the main truth, is seeing God as he is, right? But in seeing God as he is, I also see, in seeing God as he is, everything that I naturally want to know, all at once. But now, why cease to know the demonstration of Euclid at the end of book one of Euclid? No. But that would be a different one, right? Different knowledge from that, right? And actually, I'll see that last theorem, and it's human proof, better, right? Now, Thomas, you know, Thomas, when he's talking about how human knowledge can remain with this more divine knowledge later on, he makes a comparison there to dialectic and demonstration, right? And he compares how dialectic is a way to knowledge. But once you arrive at a certain knowledge of the thing, demonstration, and so on, that doesn't destroy the dialectic, right? And Thomas says you can come back and do the dialectic even better. And it always strikes me when these two great teachers we have from the Greeks, Plato and Aristotle, right? In Plato's dialogues, he seemed to have a representation of dialectic in a mind that's on the way to knowing the truth. When you find the dialectic that Aristotle has in most of his books, right, it's a dialectic of a man who may have come through dialectic to see the truth, right? But who's now seen the truth in a kind of certain way, and has come back and, what, ordered that, right, huh? Okay? And sometimes they say about good teaching, huh? Good teaching should imitate discovery, right? In other words, the teacher is taking you through those things by which the man who discovered this in the first place did discover it, huh? But maybe there's some dead ends that you don't trade this to and through, right, huh? And you realize there's only some, you know, steps that actually led to, you know, you see? And these other crazy ideas you had one morning or other, you know, you didn't want to even thought of that, you know? Well, so the dialectic, you find Aristotle, is in much better order than in Plato, right? And it goes right, you know, directly, you know, towards the truth, huh? And I'm kind of amazed, too, sometimes, you know, as a student of Aristotle, and knowing his works, you know, you know, better, really, than I know the books of Plato. But as I read Plato there, I find, oh, here's something that Aristotle may have got this already from Plato, right? Here's something else, but it doesn't have the order he has in Aristotle. And it's all kind of jumbled up in Plato, right? And Aristotle, he'll take this, let's just come first, and this second, this third. Oh, yeah, now I see, huh? And I know myself there, I sometimes was influenced by Plato, you know, his representation in the Mino there, where, not Mino, the Euthyphro, where Euthyphro defines the pious as what pleases the gods, right? And Socrates says, well, is it pious because it pleases the gods, or does it please the gods because it is pious? Yes. And, well, then I saw this is the kind of question that Aristotle must have asked himself with the first definition of the good. The good is what all want, and is it good because you want it, or do you want it because it is good, right? And you have to answer that question to be able to understand the good, huh? So he doesn't put those two together, right? And in another dialogue, you know, he's talking about something, and he goes off and talks about happiness, and in a very beautiful way he talks about happiness there. If he's in something, Aristotle pulls it out and puts it right in place, huh? So the lesser knowledge, or the imperfect, the dialectic, is not eliminated by the less perfected, huh? And so my human knowledge, right? I'll be able to carry a tune probably in heaven, right? The way I can now, see? I know there's something wrong here, but my humming, you know, I'm always getting melodies off, and my wife informs me of the various mistakes I'm making. But I'll be perfecting those things, those lesser things, right? Even in heaven, huh? Okay, let's look at Thomas as he applied on the first objection. The first, therefore, it should be said that Christ knows all things through his divine knowledge by a, what? Uncreated operation, huh? Which is the very substance of God. When we studied, if you recall, the knowledge of God, we saw that for God to be and to know are the same thing. For the, to understand of God, the act of understanding, is his very, what, substance, huh? Otherwise, he'd be in potency to that, he wouldn't be pure act, and so on. But notice, as Thomas says, as is proved in the 12th book of wisdom. The 12th book after the book is a natural philosophy. And Aristotle saw that, right? You know, he was talking there about God and your life. He said, this is what God is, it's life itself, right, he says. So he sees that, huh? I've often thought, you know, that if Aristotle had read the Bible, he would have been struck by Christ, saying, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Oh, yeah, that makes sense. This guy's really God. When, since this act is the very substance of God, right, this act cannot be that of the, what, soul, the human soul of Christ, huh? Since it is of a, what, another nature. If, therefore, there was not in the soul of Christ some other knowledge besides the divine, he would know nothing. Is that why he said up here that otherwise he would be more imperfect than the soul of all of the man? Yeah, he'd know nothing, yeah, his soul and all of the man. And thus it would be assumed in vain, huh? Since a thing is for the sake of its, what, operation, right? Now, the second objection here, walk the two lights. To the second it should be said that if two lights are taken of the same order, one, what, to the other. As the light of the sun obscures the light of the candle, right? Of which both are taken in the order of what? What is illuminating? But if one is taken as, what, greater in the order of illuminating, and one is less in the order of the illumined, the lesser light is not, what, darkened by the greater, but it's more, what, increased. Just as the light of the air through the light of the, what, sun. And in this way, the light of the knowledge is not obscured, but is, what, made more clear in the soul of Christ through the light of the divine knowledge, which is a light, the true light, enlightening every man coming in. Thank you. Thank you. So, that's a little bit, the objection is a little bit metaphorical, right? Thomas is saying, hey, the light of the sun, right, doesn't make the air dark, it illumines the air, right? The third objection. To the third should be said that from the side of the things united, meaning the two natures, there is placed a knowledge in Christ, both as regards his divine nature and as regards his, what, human nature, right? Thus, that through the union, nevertheless, right, by which there is the same, what, hypostasis of God and of man, that which is attributed to what? God, that which is of God is attributed to man, right? And that which is of man is attributed to God. As has been said above. But from the side of the, what, union, one cannot place in Christ, what, some knowledge, right? Because knowledge pertains to the nature. For the union, that union is to the personal being, but knowledge does not belong to the person except by reason of some, what, nature. Do you hear and understand? That's right. Do you hear and understand? I'm not sure that I can answer the objection of the person saying that there's a fitting in this. I mean, I, I don't know, his whole, his main argument is that Christ needs, I mean, given his place in the universe, and the fact that he's going to be the source for enlightening anybody, supernaturally, that he needs for you. But also perfection of his soul, right? Is it appropriate that God should assume something imperfect, right? In terms, at least, of knowledge, right? Again, it seems to me, to have, to not have knowledge isn't imperfect to human nature, it's the way human nature is. That's the imperfection that man is born with, though. That's what you're saying. Right. That's what, that would you... In that sense, it's not an imperfection. I mean, in other words, what, you perfectly born human baby doesn't have knowledge. Yeah, I was saying it's not, it lacked in the strict sense, right? It's not, it's not having something you should have when you should have it, right? But still, to have the ability to know, but not actually know, is to be in an imperfect state, yeah. Okay. You're talking sort of about the fact, what's immature. But when you say perfectly born, what you're doing, perfectly, you kind of say, well, meaning things like that. Something left that can know. It's able to know, but now able to know. It doesn't. But our souls, when we're born, quote, normal, we do have original sin. It probably obscures any kind of perfection in the soul to begin with. And if that wasn't true... No, no. Original sin doesn't affect our knowledge in that way. I think Adam was given a knowledge. But he had infused knowledge. That was infused knowledge. Yeah, Adam was... I don't know that his children would have been born with that. Yeah, I don't think Adam would have simply gotten all his knowledge in time, right? Now, he was born. Right. Because he was going to be the teacher, in a sense, of mankind, right? He was in the same kind of position Christ. Yeah, yeah. Less so, but something like that, right? So it's not kind of surprising that Thomas would see Christ as, you know, having this knowledge when he sees the same thing as being true in the way of Adam, right? Yeah. So is the error that Father Robert's talking about, the fact that the person making that error is just trying to make Christ too much like just the regular Joe or whatever? Yeah, kind of a human weakness there, I think. That's one reason. I think also it's confusing the kinds of knowledge. He said, if he doesn't have sense knowledge, therefore he doesn't have perfect knowledge. It doesn't rule out the fact that Christ could acquire knowledge from his experience. That's what, when we learned it from St. Bonaventure, he said the fact that he... His experience was not like ours in every way, because we go from not knowing something to knowing something. He goes from knowing it in one way to knowing it in another way. Right. So he could still acquire knowledge from his experience, but he already knew it more perfectly than either infuse or blessed knowledge or divine knowledge. Right. Notice the order in which Thomas is going to go here in these next three articles. Yeah. He's going to start off with the, you know, the division and come down finally to the knowledge that some people want to limit him to. Yeah. I just suppose that the problem this brother was having was he's saying that then he really wasn't like us in all things except sin. He was a superhuman. He wasn't... Which, I mean, I don't have a problem with it myself. Yeah. It doesn't destroy human nature to be born with knowledge. You still have human nature even if you have the fullness of knowledge one year. Mm-hmm. But the problem he was saying, but then he's not like us in all things. He's not imperfect. That's the problem. He's not imperfect. Oh, darn. Yeah. Right. That's the force of the argument. Yeah. And of course, he's not like us and had original sin, right? And he doesn't have his emotions in this... Turmoil. Yeah, the reading in Mass this morning was the one about, you know, Adam and Eve and sin and so on. And then they discovered that they're naked and so on, you know. But the priest was kind of from around a little bit with it, I thought. But it's the idea that they discovered that their emotions are not in control of their reason anymore. Mm-hmm. They're not quite masters of themselves anymore, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Now, to the second one goes forward thus. It seems that in Christ there was not the knowledge of the blessed or the comprehended, those who have gotten to the end. For the knowledge of the blessed is by partaking of the divine light, according to that of Psalm 35. In your light we shall see light. But Christ did not have the divine light as it were partaken, but the divinity itself he had in himself, substantially what? According to that of Colossians 2. In him dwelled the whole fullness of divinity, bodily, right? Again, I've seen that properly, right? It doesn't mean the body had the whole divinity, right? Therefore in him there was not the knowledge of the what? Blessed, huh? In fact, he had that knowledge, essentially. Well, maybe in his divine nature he did, but in his human nature. Moreover, the knowledge of the blessed makes them blessed, according to that of John 17, verse 3. This is eternal life, that they might know you, the true God, and him whom you have sent, Jesus Christ. Incidentally, when Thomas talks about faith, right? He'll quote the definition of faith in Hebrews, right? And the first part of the definition is the substance of things hoped for, right? What you hope for is eternal life, right? So it's a certain foundation of eternal life. Well, eternal life consists in these two things here. And so Thomas says, well, then faith has two parts, right? About the divinity of Christ and the humanity of Christ. So it goes back to this text here. But that man was blessed from the fact that he was united to God in person, according to that of Psalm 64. Blessed whom you have chosen and taken on. Therefore, why not not to place in him the what? Knowledge of the what? Blessed, huh? Would he be blessed as man if he was united in person but didn't have the vision? He would be, but he wouldn't know it. Well, it doesn't pass. Moreover, a two-fold knowledge belongs to man. One by his nature and another which is above his nature. But the knowledge of the blessed, which consists in the divine vision, is not according to the nature of man, but above his nature. In Christ, however, there was another supernatural knowledge, much stronger and higher to it, the divine knowledge. Therefore, it's not necessary in Christ for there to be the knowledge of the what? Blessed, huh? That could be enough for you to be blessed as God, but not as what? Man, huh? When happiness is enough. But against this, huh? The knowledge of the blessed consists in the vision or knowledge of God. But he fully knew God, even according as he was, what? Man, according to that of John chapter 8. I know him and, what? I deserve his word. Therefore, in Christ there was the knowledge of the blessed. So, Thomas answers, that that which is inability is reduced to act by that which is, what? Inact, huh? See, ability for act can't give itself the act it doesn't have. It doesn't have to have what it doesn't have to give itself what it doesn't have. So, it must get act in something already inact, huh? And this is the way that Aristotle reasons in the Ninth Book of Wisdom that the beginning of things must not be matter, which is most in ability, but something which is most in act, which is pure act, huh? Because of this here. So, Aristotle says that in the thing that goes from ability to act, it's in ability before it's in act, right? But it goes from ability to act because something's already in act. So, simply act is before ability. And therefore, the universe as a whole, the beginning of all things is pure act. And so, those who think that ability comes first and matter, therefore, is the beginning of all things, right? Are making the second kind of mistake outside of speech. The mistake of mixing up what is so simply and not so simply, huh? That runs through, that mistake runs through, you know, the philosophers, huh? I mean, Feuerbach says that man's mind is infinite. What is infinite in some way, but not simply? And so, he's making the mistake of saying what is so in some way is what? Simple. Yeah. But Mule's making that same mistake when he says you can't investigate what you don't know. You don't know what you're looking for. So, he's saying that because you don't know it simply, right? You can't know it in some what? In some way, right? Okay. Okay. So, you stay in this principle. For it's necessary to be, for it's necessary for that to be hot, to which other things are, what? Heated, huh? Or warmed. Now, man is in ability to the knowledge of the blessed, which consists in the vision of God. And to that he is ordered as to an end. Now, the rational creature is capable of that blessed knowledge insofar as he is made to the, what, image of God. Now, to this end of beatitude, men are reduced or led back to the humanity of Christ, huh? According to that of Hebrews 2, verse 10. It behooved him, on account of whom are all things, and to which are all things, who would, what? Lead many sons to glory, the author of their salvation, to consummate it through his, what? Passion death. And therefore, it is necessary that that knowledge, the knowledge, what, consisting in the vision of God, would belong most excellently to that man, huh? Because always the cause is necessarily more, what, potent than the cause, right? So, with both of these, he has been this understanding that Christ has had, huh? Yeah. And that he is the cause, right, he's saying, huh? He's the cause of this perfection in others, right, huh? Yeah. So that he himself should most of all have this perfection if he's going to cause this perfection in the rest of us. As you say, learn to be friendly, get humble of heart. Yeah. He must have some perfection, humility, to be that way, huh? I was just saying that, because I think it shows you how big it was in it, with question eight, which is about Christ, just that's right. Yeah, yeah. I was talking about Warren Murray the other day about, you know, are you supposed to imitate Christ or imitate the saints, huh? Oh, yeah. Well, I think, you know, what St. Paul says, you know, be imitative to me as I am of Christ, right? But you might imitate a saint as, what, closer to you, and you're imitating him insofar as in somebody like Christ, but he doesn't have the full perfection of Christ, right? So it's kind of a tricky thing, but I think, you know, the saints, you know, in the church's teaching, the saints are held up to us as models to what? To imitate, right? So you don't want to say, you know, it's either or, but you realize that in imitating this saint who's maybe closer to you by reason of your occupation in life or something, right, or your position, you're imitating him or her insofar as they are in some way imitating, what, Christ. You don't take them as being perfect, right? You don't take them as being perfect, right? You don't take them as being perfect, right? You don't take them as being perfect, right? You don't take them as being perfect, right? You don't take them as being perfect, right? You know, Christ says in the Sermon on the Mount there, be ye perfect even if your Heavenly Father is perfect. Well, that's kind of, you know, the tension there between Plato and Aristotle because Plato says that the perfect is the, what, the measure of the imperfect, right? And Aristotle would agree with that, right? But a measure has to be known to be able to measure other things. So, is the measure what one should do is in politics, let's say, take that example where Aristotle was talking about these things, or even in ethics, is the measure, you know, God, or is it this virtuous man that you know? Well, we need, you know, an image that is what? Close to us, you know? The young manager that took out after my father died, you know, he said, well, it gets a difference, what would the old man have done, you know? So he's imitating, you know? Now can a business manager imitate Christ to see what decision he should make? Yeah? So you often see, you know, in each art or whatever it might be, each thing, the younger man imitating the older man, right? So a young doctor or intern is going to imitate the, what, experienced doctor and young baseball players that imitate, you know? So does a baseball player become perfect by imitating Christ? Well, you know, you don't have any example, really, of Christ's athletic ability, except walking in the water, baby. Okay. So we're down to the applied rejections now? Mm-hmm. To the first, therefore, it should be said that the divine nature is you join to the human nature of Christ in the person, right? Secundan persona. And they're not joined according to their, what, the nature or essence, but with the unity of person, there remains the, what, distinction of nature, so. And therefore, the soul of Christ, which is a part of human nature, through some partaking, partaken light, from the divine nature, is, what, perfect for the blessed knowledge by which God is seen through, what, essence, son? So he seems to be saying there that God who is essentially a knowledge of God, right? Okay. That can't be what Christ has in his human nature, right? So it must be a partaking knowledge, right? Okay. The second objection here. The guy's saying that he's implicit because he's united to God in person, okay? To second it should be said from that union, right, that man was blessed by an uncreated blessedness, huh? Just as from that union that man was, what? God, huh? But in addition to the uncreated blessedness, it was necessary in the human nature of Christ to be a certain created blessedness, to which his soul was constituted in the ultimate end of human nature. It became ridiculous for the soul of Christ not to be blessed, huh? And trying to lead us to be blessed, right? But he gave up for us. He gave up a lot for us, but not that. That's part of the problem with so many of these is that they want the kenosis, the empty, It's a clue of that. Yeah. Get rid of that. This is from outside, but it's kind of, I mean, Pius XII had condemned it. I think it was Pius XII. Yeah, it's a long-standing problem. They say self-emptying was everything. Yeah. Third objection, to get his higher blessedness. The third should be said that the vision or blessed knowledge is in some way above the nature of the rational soul. In what sense is that? Insofar as that by his own power he's not able to arrive at this. In another way, it is by his nature, huh? Insofar as through his nature he is capable of it, right? Insofar as he is made to the image of God. But the uncreated knowledge is in all ways above the, what? Nature of the human soul. I guess objection is saying that he has knowledge above the human knowledge. So why does he need a knowledge above the human knowledge if he already has one? Well, this is not above the human knowledge in the way in which the divine nature is above it, huh? Yeah, yeah. Okay? So should we do the article before our break or should we take our break? Take a break. Take a break? Okay. Now, was there some knowledge in Christ besides the what? Science of the blessed, right? Now he says, every other created knowledge compared to the what? Blessed knowledge as the imperfect to the what? Perfect, right? But the perfect knowledge being present, there is excluded what? Imperfect knowledge. Just as the manifest vision of the face of God excludes the enigmatic vision of faith, as is clear, 1 Corinthians 13. So faith and what? Oh, that might disappear, right? Since therefore in Christ there was the blessed science, it seems that there could not be in him any other. How do they translate in your text? That should be not innate, but... Endowed, yeah, endowed probably, yeah. Isn't there an impressive knowledge? Well, ditares to endow something, endow. A more imperfect knowledge disposes for a perfect one. Just as opinion, which is the dialectical syllogism, disposes for, what? Science, right? Reasoned out knowledge, which is by the demonstrative, what? Syllogism. So in the 12 books of wisdom, there are 14 books. There's still a whole book devoted to the, what? Syllogismum dialecticum, huh? Yeah, the third book. But the perfection being had, there is no necessity further for the disposition, right? Just as in having the term is not necessarily the, what? Motion. Since, therefore, whatever created knowledge, other created knowledge, since, therefore, any other created knowledge is compared to the blessed knowledge as the imperfect to the perfect and as a disposition to the term or end, it seems that when Christ had the, what? Blessed knowledge was not necessary for him to have, what? Any other knowledge, huh? And third, moreover, as bodily matter is in ability for sensible form, so the possible understanding, that's one way which we understand, is in ability to the understandable form. Now, if you have a form of mind, you have your understandable form, I'm sorry. But a material body cannot receive at the same time to, what, sensible forms, huh? One more perfect and one less perfect. So I can't be, what, very healthy and not so healthy at the same time, can I? Therefore, need is a soul able to receive a two-fold knowledge, one more perfect and the other less perfect. And that's the same as, what, before. Therefore, but against all this nonsense, is what is said in Colossians 2, verse 3, that in Christ are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden. So he's got it all, huh? The answer should be said, that as has been said above, it was suitable, right? That human nature, assumed by the word of God, be not, what, imperfect. But everything that is in ability is imperfect unless it be reduced to act. But the possible understanding, the human possible understanding, is an ability to all understandables. It is reduced to act through the understandable forms, which are forms that complete it, as is clear from those things which I said in the third book about the soul. And therefore, it's necessary in Christ to place a, what, involving knowledge, huh? Insofar as through the word of God, united to the soul of Christ in person, there are, what, pressed upon the mind of Christ, understandable forms for all those things to which the possible understanding is an ability. Just as through the word of God are impressed intelligible forms on the angelic minds in the beginning of their, what, creation, as is clear by Augustine in the Genesis to the letter. And therefore, just as in the angels, according to the same Augustine, there is placed a two-fold knowledge, one to it, the morning knowledge, right, by which are known things in the word itself, in the vision, right? Christ says that the angels are the little boys, right? They see God face to face, huh? And the other, the evening knowledge, through which things are known in their own nature, through forms, what? He came to them, yeah. So, besides the created, uncreated divine knowledge, there is in Christ, in his soul, the, what, blessed knowledge, by which he knows, what, the word and things in the word, huh? And the, what, infused knowledge, right? To which he knows things in their own nature, through intelligible forms that are, what, proportioned to the, what, human mind, huh? You'll get some of those here in Garden Angel when your soul leaves your body, by the way. I'm very forward to that. You'll get some of those from your angel when your body leaves, your soul leaves your body, from the higher angels. They'll send you some forms. Okay? So how does this form? Intrubular. What? Intrubular. Intrubular. Not those kind of forms. In government sense, yeah. That's when you know you're not in heaven. Yeah, you know, if you've got to fill out forms, you're not on the right bill. Okay, now, Thomas is replying to the first objection, which is arguing from the fact that faith disappears when you come to see God face to face. To the first, therefore, it should be said that the imperfect vision of faith, in its very, what, definition, right, includes the opposite of manifest vision. Because it is of the very definition of faith that it be of things not seen. So the definition in Hebrew is, what, the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of what is, what, not seen. The Greek word there is, what, hypostasis, which is etymologically the same as Latin substantia, right? You know, all the problems that it gives us in the study of the Trinity, you know. Because there are three hypostasis in God, and they say, well, there are three substances, because the word is the same etymologically. But substance in Latin will be used for what a thing is, as well. So it gave rise to misunderstanding, right? See, now, the Greek word that we translate by substantia in Latin is usually, what, usia in Aristotle, yeah. And usia doesn't have at all the etymology that substantia has, substance. But the other Greek word that's used for individual substances, which are most of all substances, is the same, hypostasis, huh? But you've got to be careful, because substance is used for what a thing is. And Aristotle distinguishes usia, you do it into what a thing is, and then hypostasis, huh? Doesn't use that word, hypostasis, but he's talking about that. And that's the two main meanings he gives, huh? But the knowledge which is through these infused forms does not include something opposed to what? Blessed knowledge, huh? And therefore, the reason is not the same for what? Both, huh? And we'll... We'll... We'll... Opposition there between seeing and not seeing, right? You know, the other stories talk about this saying, you know, seeing is believing, you know. He calls it what you're saying now, you care what you're saying there, right? The seeing in the essence is not for believing, or believing is not seeing. Would you infuse knowledge as something that wouldn't be present with the significant amount? Well, you're seeing more in the Vedic vision than you see by this infused knowledge, right? But you're seeing in this infused knowledge there's many forms, right? So you're not seeing it all at once by seeing one thing, as in the Vedic vision. In seeing God, you see everything else you know. You don't have any discourse there, right? With these infused species, even the angels, there's a discourse, right? Not discourse in the sense of coming to know what you don't know, but going from one form to the other, right? Use this form and the other form. So, a human soul that, you know, a baby baptizes and dies, has a Vedic vision, if that baby would come back to earth and talk to us and he would say, well, can you do us some geometry, do us a gathering of the arm, from just having a Vedic vision, could you start doing a gathering of the... Yeah, but like your garden angel there, you know? If you pray to your garden angel, like I ask, try to teach you guys to do it. Then you could sit down and do some geometry and he'll enlighten you, maybe, you know? Or strengthen the light of your mind, right? Okay, so that baby could just start doing the thing right there. He would know from the Vedic vision those... What does he know when he knows there? That's what I... That's what I'm trying to understand the different types of knowledge. Yeah. It kind of gets interesting, the article there on the limits there and the calculus and so on as being kind of our mind striving to be like the angels. Because, you know, if you see, for example, the... You inscribe, let's say, a square inside a circle, right? When you bisect these things and you keep on getting a, what, polygon with more sides and it gets closer and closer and closer to the circle, but it never, what? It becomes a circle. Yeah, you never get a polygon that's going to be exactly equal to the circle, right? So the circle, therefore, is the limit of these polygons increasing in this way in the number of their sides, right? So you seem to be knowing circle and polygon by the same thought. And so you're striving to be like an angel who by one thought knows maybe what a dog and a cat is and a horse is, each of them distinctly, right? And here you kind of, in seeing the circle as a limit, a limit that you never reach, right? You see kind of absolutely a distinction between the polygon and the circle, right? That no matter how close the polygon gets, no matter how many times you divide and double the sides and so on, you never get a polygon equal to a circle, right? So it's like knowing distinctly at the same time circle and what? And polygon, right? And he says, you know, the fact that people aren't struck by this, right? It's a sign of the decadence of the modern mind, right? You know? Because you hear our mind is striving to be, however imperfectly, a little bit like the angels or by one thought you know distinctly what? Many things. Many things, yeah. By one thought they can know distinctly. You see, as you go up, as you go up, you know, the angels, they know more and better by fewer thoughts, huh? And then you come up to God who knows it all by what? Yeah. Now it's time for my, now it's time to recite my poem again, right? That's right. God the Father said it all in one word. No wonder when that word became a man, he spoke in words so few and said so much, he was the brevity and soul of it. Okay? But you can see that in these minds, that the great mind says more with what? With fewer words, right? I'm like John Locke, you know, apologizes for the wordiness of his work. It's too lazy, he says, to go back over and, you know? And I have some beautiful quotes there from the Greek things, you know, where the famous speaker, you know, he's down there, you know, and he's going to give a speech, you know, and he's working a speech, eh? And he's working and he says, are you lengthening your speech, you know? I said, no, I'm shortening. He's going to say it better, right? But the thing I used to notice as a professor, sometimes you'd have, you know, two or three sections of the same course, right, you know? And so the second time you explained the matter, you had the impression that you explained it better than the first time you did it, but now you've got a little bit of time left over it. You know, you get the sections, you know, kind of, you know, parallel, right? And so I said the same thing better than I did the last time I explained it, but I've taken less time. I'm a little wiser. So that's what Shakespeare says, brevity is his soul wisdom, right? The beautiful thing there in the, in, what do I say, in the seventh book of wisdom, right? And Aristotle, he says something, well, that's a brevity, he says. And that's, that's a brevity. Thomas says, oh, he means it's the beginning, small in size, but great in his power. Aristotle, he said, that's a short, you know? It's very short, but Aristotle, you know, I know. But Aristotle's straight away, what do you mean by that, huh? It's something that's very small, but very powerful. There's a story in Herodotus of an island which was threatened with, by a very, very powerful member. So there was Sparta looking for help. And I guess one thing that they needed, first of all, was a whole bunch of food, like flour. And they started off with this big, long, winded speech about how bad they needed to power. I don't know, start me on, on, on, on. And the Spartans said, wait too long, come back, and try again. So they came back with like a two or three word request, like we need flour. And they said, two superfluous words. And the Spartans were infamous or famous for, you know, Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You were to get to the point. Yeah. Yeah, Plato talks about that. I don't know, how they owned that too, you know. Yeah. Okay, the second objection here, right? I'm supposed to draw this sword and say, plow. Before we're done. This is the thing I referred to earlier about the dialectic here, right? To the second it should be said, the disposition has itself to perfection in two ways. We've met this distinction before. In one way, as a road leading to perfection. Another way, as an effect proceeding from what? Perfection. And they take this example from the ancient science. For, through heat, matter is disposed to receiving the form of what? Fire. So they heat up the paper, all of a sudden it's going to what? First in the flame, right? But now the heat is what? Before the fire is there and it's disposing the thing to receive the form of fire. Which, nevertheless, arriving, then the heat does not cease to be, right? But it remains as an effect of such a form, right? And likewise, opinion caused to the dialectical syllogism is a road to knowledge, right? Which is acquired by demonstration. Demonstration is the, what, syllogism making us know the cause and that of which it is the cause and it cannot be, what, otherwise, huh? That's demonstration of the quittingly. But which, having been acquired, there can remain knowledge, which is the dialectical syllogism, as it were, what, fouling upon the demonstrative knowledge, knowledge, which is the cause. Because the one who knows the cause from this is more able to know the probable signs of which dialectical syllogism goes forward. You can see Thomas, as I mentioned before, in the Summa, you find a little bit of dialectic beforehand, right? But this is arranged by a man who already knows, what, the truth, right? You remember that beautiful dialectic there when he's got the definition of eternity? And each objection to the way this is definition is what? To some part of the definition. So he's really preparing the way very well for you to eventually see the definition as a whole, right? That's the dialectic of a man who's what? Arrived at the truth and now is coming back and ordering this, right? And, you know, in the disputed questions, you know, sometimes you have 15 or 20 objections, but they don't always add that much to your thing, you know, and then you get through the summa, you get down to more of the most essential ones, right? So it's, but it's, so the man can, can order it more, what, directly to the thing that he wants to lead you to, huh? So it's not really opposed to it, right? Now, to the third, it should be said that the blessed knowledge is not through a species or form, which is a likeness of the divine essence, or of those things which are known in the divine essence, as is clear from what is said in the first part. But such a knowledge is of the divine essence itself, immediately, right, to the fact that the divine essence itself is united to the blessed mind as the understandable form to the one understanding. So, we see God by God, right? God is the form by which we see him. Otherwise, we would not see him as he is. Which divine essence is a form excelling or exceeding the ratio of any, what, creature? It can't be his natural one. Whence nothing prevents that with a, what, super-excelling form, there can be at the same time, right, in the rational mind, understandable forms that are, what, proportioned to his nature. They're not opposed, right, but one is. I think he gives a second objection first, in case you can see that thing, you know, that the dialectical association is something imperfect compared to the demonstration, right? Aristotle often will give a reason which is very strong, right? And then he'll give a, what, sign afterwards, right? And when Sr. Dionysius says, hey, he does that, probably to bring it back to your senses. Because a sign is something that strikes the senses, right? Right, but he can select the sign better, right, because he's seeing the truth, right? Okay. You know, in Nicomachean Ethics, when he's showing that the virtuous amount to eat is not the same for every man, right? And so for the younger man, or for the active man, it might be more than for the inactive man, or for the so on. And then he gives the example of, what, Milo, right? We get an ox every day, right? Well, it's fiction a lot, right? But it's very beautiful, right? That's not his main argument. But it brings you back to your senses, and you say, oh yeah, I can see that now, yeah. Sort of like that. I was thinking at the end of the day, that many Protestants believe the same things we do, but not for the same reason. We believe not only God revealing, but the Church proposing it as the divine reveal. They might believe many truths that are divine reveal, but they don't actually know the reason why they're there, because they don't believe the Church. They don't believe what they believe through the Church, so they kind of have a right opinion. So it would be, a Catholic could better lead them to understanding things of the divine revelation than they do themselves. They don't find what the Church says, which kind of goes out the window at the beginning, because they accept the Scriptures, but they don't know that it's because of the Church. That's why in that program I need to be in, you know, when they cling back to the Church. A lot of these Protestants, they realize they have a problem. Why do they accept these books and other ones, you know? And I think the Second Vatican Council, you know, speaks of those three things. I think it's on the Magisterium and the Scripture and Tradition. Those three are such that no one can stand without the other two. But that's a good example of three being enough, like Aristotle says a lot of times. But you can see it very much, you know. And Thomas here is not emphasizing, he's trying to give the reasons more for things, you know. But there's Tradition here and there's Scripture, you know, behind what he's saying, too. Or in harmony with what he's saying, you know. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.