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Thomas Aquinas For Protestants with Miles Smith · Christians Reading Classics

• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: Since a teacher of Catholic truth should instruct not only the advanced, but beginners as well.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: As St.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: Paul says, like babes in Christ, I fed you milk and not meat, 1 Corinthians 3.1, our intention in this work is to convey the content of the Christian religion in a way fit for the training of beginners.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: We have seen that novices in this study are greatly hindered by the various writings on the subject.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: They are hindered partly because of the multiplication of useless questions, articles, and arguments in these writings, partly because the order in which essential material is delivered in these writings is determined not by the nature of doctrine itself, but by the books on which the writings are commenting.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: And partly because frequent repetition has bred boredom and confusion in the minds of hearers.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: Eager to avoid these and other pitfalls, we shall now attempt to examine the content of sacred doctrine briefly and clearly, so far as the material allows, twisting and God's aid.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: So wrote Thomas Aquinas in opening his classic, The Summa Theologii, originally published in 1274.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Christians Reading Classics podcast from Mirror Orthodoxy.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Nadia Williams, book's editor for Mirror Orthodoxy, and the author of the book, Christians Reading Classics.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: And it is my absolute delight today to welcome a friend, Miles Smith IV, to the podcast.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: And Miles is a faculty member in the history department and Hillsdale College.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: He is the author of several books.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: Especially, I will highlight for you Religion and Republic, Christian America from the Founding to the Civil War, which came out with Davenant Press in 2024.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: And his forthcoming book coming this summer, Valiant and Pious, The Idea of the Christian Soldier in America from 1776 to 1861.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: And together with Adam Carrington, he's also the co-author of That Blessed Liberty, Episcopal Bishops and the Development of the American Republic, 1789 to 1860.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: But for our purposes today, the most important qualification is that he teaches Thomas Aquinas Summa every year.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: This conversation started.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: Well, first and foremost, of course, Aquinas' Summa is a classic.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: But this conversation started because there has been some discourse on social media of late about whether it can be a Protestant classic or if it is uniquely a Catholic one.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's what we're going to talk about today.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: But first I wanted to ask you, Miles, what is a classic?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so I think like a classic is it's sort of um it can have a lot of definitions, obviously, from from discipline to discipline, different things are different classics.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think of something as just essentially enduring, right?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: A classic is something that's essentially enduring, and that everybody should read, even a non-specialist.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not a medievalist, I'm not a theologian.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I teach a Western Civ class at my college.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so by no means am I the world's leading expert on Thomas Aquinas, but I do have to read him every year.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's probably a good thing.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: He's probably someone that I should read uh regularly and semi-regularly, not merely the Summa itself, but other works of his, like on kingship.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so I think of the classics are those uh those works that transcend discipline and time um and really kind of call all of us to engage them at some point.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: So Okay, so something that, well, and again, like this is a book from the late 13th century, so yeah, and it's still relevant for us, and you read it every year.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: Now, most importantly, though, for this conversation, you read it every year and you're still a Protestant.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: So walk us through that.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I think some of it is um, since I am a Christian, um, and all Christians, I think on some level have theological commitments, whether they realize it or not.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: And my theological commitments are sort of, I guess I'd call broadly Protestant, broadly reformed.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I worship at an Anglican church now.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: I was reared um in a Presbyterian church, and I never really had an anti-Presbyan uh stage.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so I would I think I would be happy in a wide variety of places.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I like to think I'm kind of an ironic um guy in that sense.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um I do read it as a Protestant, though, and I think for me, um, the reason I read it as a Protestant is, and this is going to be a terribly um not sophisticated answer, um, is that my intellectual life and my um my devotion aren't synonyms.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um the older I get, um, whether someone uh who walks through a hard situation, like losing a loved one, whether they have a health issue.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: In my case, it was a health issue.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they have that kind of hard thing, or at least for me, at least I had this hard thing that sort of call what I believed in, and my intellectual life couldn't really do it.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so uh I'm I wouldn't identify as a reformed person because of John Calvin.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I would identify as a reformed person because um the experience of being a Christian for me has been most acute, most meaningful through reading someone like a Tim Keller.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so for I'm and I'm perfectly willing to say, and a lot of people might say, well, gosh, that makes you nut doesn't sound very scholarly, that doesn't sound very elite, um, that doesn't sound very high-minded.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, okay, uh the point of the gospel for me isn't to be high-minded.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: The point of the gospel is to realize I'm a sinner in need of a savior.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so my own, uh, what Archibald Alexander, the famous Princetonian, called experiential piety, um, is not one that calls that hearkens me to think one way or the other about my need to do what Aquinas does.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think I think that what he says is is important truths, um, but like, I mean, so too does my grandmother.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I don't go to church with my grandmother.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: So uh so I think there's just for me, and and again, I maybe I'm not doing this right as a scholar.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe I need to be fancier, but my my intellectual life and my devotion um aren't synonyms.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I I think that that probably makes me an outlier amongst academics.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: And um I think that that is okay, you caught me.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I think in that sense, I've never felt the need to follow a thinker.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I don't think of thinkers as having demands on me.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's a terribly modern thing to say.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but the only thinker I think who has demands on me uh is Christ.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so uh that is probably again a terribly uh not a sexy intellectual answer, um, but it's an honest one.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I I think I don't think I could answer it as a Christian uh differently if if if I tried.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I think this is really helpful to hear.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: And to give um listeners background, really the idea for this conversation started when um a formerly Protestant theologian declared on social media that um after studying Aquinas in detail, he decided that he had no choice but to follow Aquinas, and what that meant for him was to convert to Catholicism from Protestantism.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: Now, in theory, there's nothing wrong with that, but the conversation that Miles and I are having here is to see how do you read Aquinas as a Protestant?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: Because of course we both agree that you can read Aquinas as a Protestant, appreciate him very much, and stay a Protestant.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_02: So this is not a conversation that is uh in any way meant to be in a spirit of animosity to Catholics.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: Rather, this is a question of how do different theological traditions appreciate Aquinas?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: Because guess what?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: As a Protestant, you still should read this classic of theology.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: So, with this background in mind, let's back up now and let's assume.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: So, Miles, I hate to do this to you, but assume that you're talking like, or to some listeners who don't have to, this is a safe space.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: They don't have to tell anybody.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: But let's say some listeners have no idea who Aquinas is, other than like some medieval dude who wrote theology.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: So, what basic things should they know?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, Thomas Aquinas was a 13th-century uh uh Catholic thinker.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I would call him a Christian thinker.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, the division between Catholic and Protestant is a little bit anachronistic.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um he was a big guy, uh he's a really big guy, um, and uh in what's now north central Italy.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um and the Summa is is sort is sort of famous for squaring late medieval, well, the beginnings, the transition from high medieval to late medieval Christianity, squaring it with Aristotelian thought, and particularly sort of sort of um making a space for revelation and reason to coexist together.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's kind of the grand um that's kind of the grand argument of um the Summa.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I've marked up a particular um, then get my copy here and mark up a pick particular part.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: And this is one of the ones I share um with students because I think it's um maybe kind of one of the most um important parts.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: The heading of my translation, which is uh Naughty's a Latinist, so she can tell me.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um I have uh Anthony Pegas, I guess.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Anthony um C.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: Pegas from 1955.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know if it's good, but the paragraph I always think of um uh is uh it says begins with, now although the truth of the Christian faith, which we have discussed, surpasses the capacity of the reason, nevertheless, that truth that the human reason is naturally um in doubt to know cannot be opposed to the truth of the Christian faith.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really that I think that short, short summary there is just kind of getting reason and revelation um on the same page, obviously.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's the Summa's grand, I think, uh, offering to the Christian world in an era where cathedral schools and scholasticism and sort of a sort of rote, not Bible memorization, but sort of a rote memorization from clerical uh from clerical education and clerical authority had been how you learned.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Here, Thomas comes in and says, actually, like your reason can teach you uh things, and your reason can actually teach you things about God too.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so, and it really was earth-shattering.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but again, um, I don't know if that means I need to be a 13th century Catholic.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and that's kind of the point of a classic, a classic of of any sort, and including a classic of theology, something that still speaks to us today, uh, because it has some timeless truth to convey.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: And actually, the passage you just read, to me, it sounded very much as a medieval version of all truth is God's truth.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I think that we kind of take for granted these things now.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think perhaps um when someone says, Well, do I have to follow Thomas?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: I I think we all do already.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think there's just some place where if someone were to say, um, well, no one told me that, well, I think a lot of maybe evangelical Christians kind of have that disposition in their mind already without having the sort of the language of the Summa uh on it.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so when someone says, Well, do I need to follow Thomas?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: There's a good chance they're kind of already doing it, maybe without even sort of realizing it.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, Thomas was following Aristotle.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_02: So, what does that mean?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: And walk us through like what is the structure of this work?
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: What is going on here?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: Because it's an unusual one.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, so obviously Aristotelian thought is kind of gone for somewhere in the order of you know, eight, nine hundred years.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, the Alexandria, the library at Alexandria burns up, and so a lot of the copies of Aristotle are gone from the Christian world.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I have colleagues who say he's still sort of in the canon of the Christian East, um, but at least in the Latin West, he's not particularly well known.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so when crusaders go to Baghdad and they kind of rediscover Aristotle at the uh transition from the 12th to the 13th centuries, there's an explosion of Aristotelian thought.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so, like, I think this question of Aristotle's interesting because when someone set talks about Aquinas, um, I think my MO is again to sort of say, well, isn't Aquinas talking a lot about Aristotle?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe the more fundamental question is not whether I should follow Aquinas.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe the question is, can I follow Aristotle and be a Christian?
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think this is where a lot of the debate um hangs on for a lot of people because Aristotle doesn't talk in the categories I think a lot of evangelicals are used to talking about in things like politics and things like reason.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, his understanding of revelations obviously completely different um than Christians.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I think this is maybe the question, right?
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like, do we follow Aristotle or not?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Petrarch had a lot of feelings about this very question, um, and uh didn't hate Aristotle, but was involved in being one of these 14th-century men who's negotiating how can I, as a Christian, feel about Aristotle?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think that a lot of people are sort of asking this question about Aquinas, and it's popular too amongst evangelicals who maybe shade towards Biblicism, say, well, we can't really read Aquinas.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think actually everybody has read and sort of accepted Aquinas, whether they realize it or not.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's good works that give good evidence that uh reform scholasticism is deeply influenced by Aquinas.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe the more anterior question is um, what do we do with Aristotle as Christians?
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because that does lead us to some first order questions.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's kind of a dodge, Nadia, a little bit, maybe hopefully a useful dodge.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I think so.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, listeners who um have been following every week, or earlier this season, we did have a conversation with Sabrina a little on Nicomachian ethics.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so we talked about eudaimonia and just the pursuit of the virtues, which very much is a Christian project.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_02: And even though uh pre-Christian philosophers were thinking of the virtues more as closer to a self-improvement project, um, still the language of the virtues is something that was very uh relatable to the church.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, we still talk about this today.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: And this spring alone, there are like four or five different excellent new books coming out on the virtues.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_02: So clearly we care deeply as Christians about that aspect.
• 15:50
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• 16:04
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• 16:24
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• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Most Christian parents I know want to pass their faith on to their kids.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a tension.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: The work of discipling your children has largely been outsourced to church programs like Sunday School, youth group, and children's ministry.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: And those things are great.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: But the research actually suggests that when faith formation is treated like a class to complete, the kids graduate from church the same way they graduate from high school.
• 16:51
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• 16:53
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• 16:59
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• 17:06
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• 17:10
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• 17:17
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• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: Now, how does uh Aquinas think about this idea, the pursuit of flourishing life?
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_02: Is this something that is of interest to him or is he more intellectual in his thinking about theology?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think he thinks of he thinks of um knowledge of God as a vehicle um to a flourishing life.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so in that sense, I I think your point's well taken, Nadi.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how different he is than than uh maybe a pretty normal uh sort of evangelical these days.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: Why why wouldn't we know of God about God?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: And of course isn't knowing uh isn't knowledge of God good for us?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so for him, I think he's sort of uh okay, so maybe this is a terrible way to say it, and I don't want to get too reductionistic, but I think a lot of evangelicals are maybe wearing, well, do I have to be Catholic to um to follow Aquinas?
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder at some point, is he just merely sort of a proto-evangelical, right?
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh just you know, 600 years years early.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, doesn't he sort of frame things that actually we already affirm?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: So um do I need to follow Thomas?
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think the question becomes does the Roman Catholic Church even completely follow Thomas?
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I don't know that they do, I don't know if any group here in the 21st century completely follows Thomas because he lived 700, so you know, 600, 700 years ago.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I think seven, eight hundred years ago, sorry, my math's bad.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I think that this question becomes one, maybe instead of sorting, do I need to go back and sort of retroactively follow this person who's not with us anymore, sort of asking questions about um our traditions, like, okay, what what have we learned from him and why is this valuable to us?
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: And why do it, why is this continuity there?
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: Why is this continuity important?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: So Thomas, in the prologue that I read at the beginning of this conversation, says that he's writing this like really um accessible summary.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um I mean, one word I have never seen anybody other than Thomas use to describe him is accessible and easy.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_02: So walk us through it.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like, say somebody is listening and decided, you know, maybe I need to read Thomas Aquinas.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody's been talking about him for good or ill.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what would you advise that first-time reader?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I would say get some get some help.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean, I I just read, I mainly read um selections.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: And my entree was talking to um colleagues who have read him before.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's a lot of people read Aquinas, and so a lot of there's a lot of I think scholars uh of Aquinas out there.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: So he's a bit of a historiographic burned over district.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so for for me, I think I was blessed enough to be an academic, right?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I can run and talk to people like Dr.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: Nadia Williams or talk to colleagues who have some sort of background in, if not Latin, then certainly medieval history.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't know Latin.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: Latin's probably really helpful.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so for me, I think what was what was compelling is sort of having the humility to at once um sit at the feet of a great thinker like Thomas Aquinas and also sit at the feet of people who were teaching me how to learn about Thomas Aquinas.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think this is maybe something that is a little harder for um a specific earnest type of intellectual who sort of sort of is maybe insistent upon their own reading of any given um thinker.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I think one of the nice things about being a non-specialist is um I teach certain parts of him, and I feel like those parts I'm supposed to know, I know pretty well.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I wouldn't claim sort of to know his corpus well enough to know how to follow him.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know if any modern person can can know a corpus that well because uh there's just if it's my philosophy of history, right?
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think that history is a fundamentally limiting discipline.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: It means I can only know so much.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that is is hard.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: We're Americans, we want to know everything, we want to know exactly what to do.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, not meant to be another dodge, but I think that in that sense, um, how do I read him?
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: What with help, with a lot of help.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um some of it I don't need anymore.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um but some of it I still do need, admittedly.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: So And I think that's a really good point because sometimes we forget that great books can be difficult.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: Not every great book is going to be an easy beach read.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, some of the most rewarding books we read, some of the greatest classics, are well, they ask us to work hard.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I think this is one of them.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: Now, we've mentioned Aristotle so far, but there's a lot in reading Aquinas for this conversation.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_02: I was thinking he actually his method read uh reads more Socratic.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um Well, I think this is a little bit of a departure uh from I mean, his his contemporaries.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the the education you would have gotten in most of the of the world in the 13th and 14th century would have not had a lot of quote unquote student engagement.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um you're not talking a lot if you're a student, you're kind of just getting what the rector of the cathedral chapter is telling you.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, even universities are basically like that.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: But um, right, there's this sort of inquisitiveness that Aquinas has about his potential readers.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so your point's well taken.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: He's sort of sort of recognizing that people are going to have questions, so he's answering questions he assumes that other intellectuals in the 13th century are going to have.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and think, I mean, think about um the sort of the the pace of transmission of works is slower back then.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so but what think about, I mean, there's a really famous contemporary of Aquinas's, um, and who we don't typically think of him as a theologian, but I mean, who is it?
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: You, you know, it's Dante, right?
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so uh like like Dante and Aquinas sort of share a chronology in a in a particular way.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so think about the type of person that might be able to read Dante and sort of being catechized in a particular imaginative way by the divine comedy, and then encountering the Summa.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so that's a person with a lot of questions, you know.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe uh, you know, Aquinas dies in 1270, is it 1270?
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and Dante, about I think not too far.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um well, Dante's younger.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: So um, but these guys are like they're they're they're filling a world that you know is going to have questions.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: And it's kind of a little bit of a revolution that's gonna set up the humanist movement.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's sort of a transition there.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I think what's fascinating for me is to think about what questions not only do the people have who were coming to the Summa, but what did they have after the Summa?
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what did it do to their world?
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: What did it do to the way their cosmology?
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh Petrarch, uh Virgilius, all of those guys that are coming, I think are downstream from questions that are asked, uh, that are prompted by the Summa Um and also by Dante, but but largely the Summa, especially if they're theologians.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_02: That's striking.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: I had never thought of that, but that's a really good reminder that historical context and those friendships matter.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_02: Books don't exist in a vacuum, neither do readers.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's especially striking to consider that someone uh could read both sort of the, I guess, the um the easier literature of Dante.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_02: I and I suppose we don't really think of Dante as easy beach read either, but compared to Thomas Aquinas, he is.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_02: And with Dante, you have a clear story whereas with Aquinas, this is thoughtful, like really deep digging questions about God.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: And how can you know God?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that chronology is really important because you think about what happens in the 14th century in Europe.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, right?
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: You have the the the boumonic plague, you know, the great plague.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that estimates are now like 25 to 30 percent of the European population dies.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's particularly intense in Italy.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: The boot of Italy is where it first strikes in Western Europe.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so you think about as, and and the plague's a slow-rolling event.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't just happen at once.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: It takes you know 15, 20, 30 years for it to kind of come to fruition and for all the deaths to happen.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: So, like, what would it have been like to be living in plague time and to have access to the Summa?
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like, um, you have a lot of questions about God and about knowledge at that time and dark versions of those questions.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I think that that's Tim cleanly fascinating to me just thinking about the chronology of this.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the Summa is a document that is written before the bubonic plague.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: So that coincidence coincidence, not really a coincidence, but people who live at the same time and then uh the questions that readers in the next couple of generations of European history are going to have.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_02: And it seems like Aquinas really resonated with them because the book becomes an incredible success.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: And a success relatively early.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's being referenced within about 30 years of its publication, pretty um, and not just in Italy, right?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's being referenced like especially in um what we now call Southern Europe.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't know when its first transmission is on the island of Great Britain.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: You may know, Nadia.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_02: I do not actually.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: So um, yeah, I don't know when it gets uh to Britain.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's all over what we would think of as the medieval Catholic world.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's made it into German, German spaces.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the Summa is is a predicate of a lot of the sort of intense debates over what gets called the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, over the Holy Roman Emperor versus the Pope.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so these aren't just merely theological debates.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's not merely a theological book, right?
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: It tell it's telling us a lot about how we know what we know.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's like this essential epistemological book.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_02: So it is in that regard a work of philosophy and theology at once.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, in the Middle Ages, the two did not have that great divorce that we now assume they do.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think um, and so I think that this question of theology um and philosophy, to add to it, is the Summa a work of devotion?
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think is is maybe a question here that has uh has maybe resonance with intellectuals.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um like like how how do like do people really sort of experience God through the reading of the Summa?
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: Some people might, some people might not.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, does that mean then that we should treat it a specific way, that we shouldn't?
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that that in itself is this whole other sort of question.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: So if if people are sort of intellectually oriented a specific way, they really do experience God uh through reading these grand kind of theological treatises.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um what about people who experience God through other means?
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I talk to parents a lot, you know, a lot of people experience God through their kids.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and a lot of people experience it through friendship.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so does this make these people who might appreciate the Summa, but their sort of experiential piety is through other means, does that make them any less intellectuals?
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, right?
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so uh none of you and I are friends, like you you have a very elite pedigree, but you're also a homeschooling mom.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so uh does the fact that you might have joy in homeschooling mean you're not a scholar anymore or something like this?
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that there's these kind of questions over how we interact with our our vocations and our piety um that are really worth thinking about.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: The Summa seems it's one of those works that's big enough um to be something that be one that kind of people's piety or philosophy or theology often breaks on.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: It it just shatters them and they have to rethink everything.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a few works that are like that.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: The Summa is one of them.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but there's there's other works that that really aren't like that.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I just read a short history of of um you know uh plantation society in the South.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's a great history book, but like neither my philosophy nor my my piety uh like shattered on it, right?
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: But the Summa really does shatter things.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of those, it's one of those sort of big, bolder uh uh documents that um people kind of break upon, and maybe that's good in one way.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I guess what I might ask is uh, is it possible to sit on the Summa Um rather than be broken upon it?
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I think this is a question for a lot of books.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: Can we can we um do we have to have these kind of confrontational or even submissive relationships to works?
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um obviously I'm saying that as a prostant because I believe that scripture is the inerrant word of God.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so I feel like I submit to those, but the the Summa isn't.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so my relationship with the Summa is definitely as a Protestant.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I need to submit to it.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I need to submit to Thomas Aquinas.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: I love what you've brought up here, not just about Thomas Aquinas, but also about what books do to us.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_02: The whole idea of reading is to be open to ideas that could be uncomfortable, could be difficult.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_02: Ideas of someone from a thousand, two thousand, three thousand years ago can change our lives.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: And that's beautiful.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: It's also scary.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_02: But I also love your exhortation that we should not allow this book to break us.
• 32:05
  unknown: Yeah.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_02: Although it might break your brain to read it.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: Right, yeah.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there's so many books that that do that.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but some of them aren't particularly.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think what's interesting is um different types of people get broken by by different books.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so uh I think we're both paid to be intellectuals.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think the assumption is okay, only um only certain types of books are actually supposed to to sort of really break an intellectuals.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I'm not sure that's true.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, the the works that most affected me most deeply typically aren't the most highbrow ones.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a lot of them aren't even philosophical, sometimes they're novels.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I I mean, I tell people that uh you I don't think it's possible uh to read um C.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: S.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: Lewis's Till We Have Faces and not be broke.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of my favorite novels.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: I completely was a basket case as I read it.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: It deeply affected me and has continued to affect me and my piety in specific ways, in a way that Thomas Aquinas never has.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so does this mean I need to follow C.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: S.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: Lewis on everything?
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think so, but nonetheless, his work was very much formative for me, and I would say truly broke me.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um and Nani, I know you have a lot of thoughts on Till We Have Faces too.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: So um it's one of those, it's one of those books that I think is just as big of a book for me as the Summa.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I can imagine a lot of people in philosophy would disagree with me on that.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_02: So well, Miles, final question for you.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_02: And it and it may be that you just answered it, but let's see.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_02: What classic book from any time period do you wish you had written and why?
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's such a great question.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I I think if I could pick um any any work to have written, um, it would have been uh Willa Cather's My Antonia.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh for a variety of reasons, but it's the only um it is not my favorite novel, but I think it's the single most transcendent novel I've ever read.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: It maps onto the most dispositions that I look for in the great books that I love.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so uh and also inspired a great Dave Matthews and Emily Harris song.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_02: So well, Miles, thank you so much for taking the time for this.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Nadia.