If Theres 1 True God Why Are There So Many Religions w Fr Gregory Pine OP

hello my name is Father Gregory Pine and I'm Dominican Friar of the province of Saint Joseph and this is pints with Aquinas in this video thought that we could talk little bit about the plurality of religious or anti-religious commitments that we see on offer in the world because for many people it's stumbling block or scandal so the idea is if God reveals himself and if we have access to that Revelation you would expect to see more consensus in the world instead you just have bunch of religious or anti-religious Traditions all of whom are absolutely certain of what they believe or don't believe and aren't really willing to bend or to break in conversation with others so how do you account for the fact that so many people can be so sure of so many things which are in conflict or which are even contrary so we're going to take look at that claim and show that the church has reasons for its positions and also way by which to understand our current conflicts or our current lack of consensus so here we go so we can approach this from variety of different angles and some might want to approach it just head on and try to prove that the Catholic church is the true church or that the Catholic faith is the true faith and that's one argument that you can make and you can do so based on kind of like history or archeology or anthropology or religious studies or philosophy or theology all of which are interesting things to do but think that's bigger argument to make so just want to Simply say all right we can make sense of the fact that there is lack of consensus and then we can Marshal some reasons or we can use some resources to show that what we have has reasons has arguments has kind of clout when it comes to hosting these types of conversations so first let's treat why is there such lack of consensus think well one reason for which is because we as human beings are both wounded and weakened all right so we can't think that we just have clear access to the truth of the matter or that everyone just has clear access to the truth of the matter because we suffer from wounds and we suffer from weaknesses when it comes to wounds we think here of the effects of sin so both original sin and personal sin when God created us he created us with all kinds of awesome graces with all kinds of awesome privileges which made it easier for us to know and to love but on account of original sin we forfeited lot of those awesome Graces and privileges and as result it's it's much more difficult for us now to know the truth and to love the good so St Thomas will talk about the wounds of original sin so in our minds or in our intellects it registers as ignorance and our Wills as malice and then in our emotions or passions as weakness and concupiscence so when we're reasoning we're doing so you know like kind of obscurely also sometimes like twistedly and sometimes we're doing it when we're all inflamed or stirred up by different passions so think about somebody who wants to convert for instance or somebody who's beginning to think about converting it's not just matter of like thought this was true and now know this is true and so I'm going to do this instead of what formally did because for lot of people their faith commitments are more than just their faith commitments it's their way of relating to their family to their friends to their co-workers to life more generally and so if you convert okay in certain sense you lose lot more than your former Faith commitments you might lose your family your friends your work Associates and all that goes with all that goes with that so we can't say it's simply just matter of acknowledging the truth think about converting from Islam to Christianity in country in which Christianity is persecuted severely okay it could mean your life and as result of which it's not it's not as easy as saying like yeah it's just you know you know this thing and then you figure this thing out and then you just go ahead it's not it's not that easy all right so there's the fact that we don't have clear access to the truth on account of the fact that we're that we're wounded and that we're just limited as human beings so we think in time we think in steps we think progressively we come to the knowledge of the truth so while you know it's common enough that we'll make demonstrative arguments like if then if then therefore then which is great but we as human beings often take time to come to the appreciation of the truth of thing so maybe you've engaged with st Thomas's reasoning on the five ways which is awesome but at the end of it you're like wait second what does that proved does that prove that there's God but if you spend time with those arguments you continue to revisit those arguments you come to kind of put on the mind of Thomas as it were you come to inhabit his metaphysical universe and in doing so you have greater sympathy with you have greater appreciation for the arguments and then you see more and more how they obtain and think that lot of human life is like that human life is life on the way human life is life of healing from wounds of of strengthening from weaknesses and of coming to Fuller and deeper appreciation of the truth but when we look around the world at all like seven or eight billion people everyone's at different place on that Spectrum or in different place along that journey and so there's going to inevitably be conflicts among people who see things differently given their own subjective dispositions and then you add that you add to that the fact of counter testimony okay so for us as human beings we're very convinced by stories we're very convinced by Witnesses we're very convinced by those who bear out the truth of their commitments so Paul VI said famously in evangeliondi you know if if the world's going to listen to teachers it's going to listen to the teachers who are also Witnesses so what we need is witnesses witnesses to the truth witnesses to the gospel but there are also lots of counter Witnesses or counter testimonies which are which are given on daily basis so you can think about the sins of the church historically or contemporaneously and that causes people to wonder like what's going on here if it gives rise to such Wicked people or if it gives rise to such mediocre people or lukewarm people okay so if we knew what we were if we were what we were we would set the world Ablaze but alas and lack we ourselves are still kind of on the way we're still converting we're still growing in our faith and the testimony that we give is going to be partial in perfect incomplete sometimes mean sometimes it's just going to be bad if we ourselves indulge in the life of sin in scandalous and terrible way so those are all obstacles to gaining consensus or to kind of telling forth the truth of the Catholic faith and when people grapple with these different different things they're going to come to different conclusions for some of the reasons that we've described but we have kind of confidence that we can use reason or we can use reason aided by faith in the context of these discussions to show that we really have chops right we really have reasons to supply for the things that we hold it's not just like we're believing in the void it's not like we're just holding on to something for dear life without any rational justification because we can we can render an account right in first letter of Saint Peter calls us to do so think it's the first letter of Saint Peter if it's the second letter of Saint Peter you will correct me in the comment box which reminds me I'm trying to do better job of of doing videos based on comments in the comment box so if you have something that you want to hear about just write comment father Gregory could you write could you do video about this particular theme and then I'm going to go each week and kind of scan through the comments and then pick out different video suggestions and then just record those for the following week so you should see pretty quick turnaround on those if there are lot of them then maybe not as much but if there are you know just few each time then think that we can probably work our way through them so want them to be response to your questions rather than just hilarious things that think of in the long and lonely hours of the night so cheers to you drop some comments in with suggestions for videos and we'll see what we can do about them all right so when God reveals himself in time and space he reveals himself according to his Divine wisdom it's not just like God is saying like I'm gonna do this or I'm going to do that God does so for reasons and those reasons are ones that only he can search the depths of but he often gives us access to those reasons he often does so with kind of fittiness or he does so with kind of convenience says Saint Thomas Aquinas such that when we gaze upon those Mysteries when we look at those Mysteries we see in them subtlety or delicacy or beauty even which commends the truth of them so we can we can apply our reasoning whether unaided by faith or aided by faith two the different things that the church proposes and in the process we come to greater appreciation of what's at stake we come to greater appreciation of the way in which the gospel is proclaimed and how that how that's true so would identify four ways in which we can use reason in the context of the life of faith so one is to use reason to argue about the actual doctrines themselves and to show how they are coherent all right and to deflect the arguments against those doctrines so to deflect objections to the teaching or critiques of the teaching and to show that those objections and critiques do not obtain so to prove them you know unavailing to prove them unsound or invalid or whatever it might be okay so like for instance our belief in The Most Blessed Trinity is not something that we can prove by reason but we can use our minds we can use our reason to think about it and to show that there's no interior contradictions or internal contradictions or that when people say there are contradictions or this can possibly be the case that their arguments do not obtain so this would be the first use of reason to apply our reason to the doctrines of the faith to show how they are coherent to show how they reveal something of the Divine wisdom to show how there's something in that Doctrine to which we have access by you know Faith or excuse me reason and and resonated by faith and that we can use those to deflect arguments against the second would be to argue that these doctrines of the faith actually illumine The Human Condition so an example of this and I'm drawing this from father Thomas Joseph's the Light of Christ which he published with COA press maybe like five years ago he says the doctrine of original sin for instance all right it's something that we believe but when we consider our human experience it's very helpful to see it in light of original sin because it just helps us to make sense of the reality it helps us to make sense of the phenomenon and if you don't have doctrine of original sin then things get crazy all right so you can think of 19th and 20th Century utopian movements who were like all we really need is just good organization of society and whatever sound intention and we're going to make an excellent thing and those experiments almost always end terribly like with wife sharing and craziness so if you don't have doctrine of original sin you tend in kind of wonky Direction but if you do have doctrine of original sin then you plan for it then you provide for it then you account for it and that often helps you to better organize whatever family life and societal life and then ecclesial life so that way you're not constantly surprised by the weakness or by the woundedness of sinful man so that would be the second and then the third is what Saint Thomas calls the preambles of the faith so there are certain aspects of our faith tradition which we can prove by reason so there's kind of overlap between faith and reason because God knows all right these things are super important and in order for everyone to know them I'm going to reveal them because if didn't reveal them maybe some people would arrive at the knowledge of these things but it would take them super long time and there'd be lot of Errors mixed in and truth be told it would probably only be be available to wise people so I'm going to go ahead and reveal those things examples of the preambles of the faith would be like the existence of God or the fact that God is simple perfect good one immutable Eternal omnipresent infinite you see where this is going so there are things that we can reason to and this would be like the domain of natural theology but God goes ahead and also reveals them so there's an overlap between the life of faith and the life of reason but by virtue of the fact that we can prove these things they show certain legitimacy to our religious claims and they give us yeah they give us what would you say kind of currency for the types of debates that we are involved in and then fourth and finally are what are called signs of credibility or sometimes motives of credibility and so there are things that testify to the truth of the faith which we hold or testify to the truth of the church and its teaching so you can think about like all the prophecy which is brought to bear in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ or which is fulfilled in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ or you could think about the many miracles which our Lord performs or the many miracles which are performed by Saints they testify to the fact there's something going on here or you can think about the endurance of the church the fact that it as an institution is still here after however so many years sometimes years of managerial incompetence okay you can think about like the lives of saints which testify to certain Radiance or goodness which is at work within the life of the church so these would be examples of signs or motives of credibility they basically say there's something going on here which is worth looking into all right so it's more anecdotal but you can structure those arguments in way that's more disciplined and which people would respect in turn so in short we shouldn't be scandalized by the fact that there are plurality of religious or anti-religious commitments given the fact that we as human beings are weak and wounded and that we come to the knowledge of the truth as the end or as the goal of journey of kind of pilgrimage and that some people are more in Earnest about those those that pilgrimage and some people are less than Earnest about that pilgrimage and that there are all kinds of obstacles or impediments to our acknowledgment of the truth reasons which we might make it reasons for which it might be difficult to acknowledge the truth or reasons for which we might want to resist the truth even so we need to account for all of that in our model as it were of of the true Faith but then we also have arguments which we can supply and that's just what we do so we can show that the doctrines themselves are coherent and that they don't fail on account of criticisms or arguments marshaled against them we can show how the doctrines illumine our Human Condition making sense of human life kind of covering the phenomenon as it were we can also argue for certain things which are proper to our tradition of Faith so preambles of the faith specifically which are available to us by our exercise of human reason and then we can point to certain signs or motives of credibility which say okay this is worth looking into this is worth inquiring after because there's something happening here there's something afoot there's something Supernatural which we can't account for in merely natural ways and so it merits our consideration and then mean ultimately at the end of the day one of the greatest signs of the truth of the faith is your life right the way in which you live the faith that God has given you by singular gift which is high calling because we're constantly subject to the criticism of hypocrisy and you know it's probably best just to admit at the outset yes I'm hypocrite espouse these high ideals not just ideals but have wed myself in faith and charity to this beloved God and yet betray him and kind of crass stupid and embarrassing ways on daily basis would that it were not so but we also need to be patient with ourselves we need to be patient with our own faith commitments and the flourishing thereof because God gives us whole life to live which doesn't mean that we should yeah be dilatory about getting the getting about the work of our conversion but it means that we should be patient with God who is patient with us all right patient with the conversion which will often take time to unfold in our life and to take hold of us holy and entirely all right boom so that is what wanted to say and this is Pines with Aquinas if you haven't yet please do subscribe to the channel and push the bell and then you'll get updates via email on all kinds of good things which come from the channel also two small announcements for me wrote book it's called Prudence choose confidently live boldly it's available on amazon.com and it's about choosing for happiness in light of God's love for you that is simple way to summarize 160 page book but think you'll like it and then the last thing is contribute to podcast with four of the Dominican Friars called God's planing which hope you might enjoy and also we're having Retreats this summer and you can find out about those Retreats at godsplending.org so check them out and I'll hope to see you there alright that's it for me my prayers are for you please pray for me and will catch you next time on Ponce with Aquinas