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| Saint Thomas Aquinas by Carlo Crivelli, downloaded from Wikipedia |
The short answer to the question is: a lot. St. Thomas puts a lot of modern men, who have word processing tools, to shame. His two most famous works are Summa Contra Gentiles (which is apologetics directed to pagans) and Summa Theologica (which is a systematic treatment of theology).
The audio is a continuation of yesterday's lesson on faith entitled "Light of Faith: Why It's Not Irrational to Believe" by Fr. James Brent, OP. In early Christianity, the arguments were over the word of God and what it meant (that is, what is heresy or not), but the modern difficulty faced by the Church is whether God spoke at all. In the lecture, Fr. Brent spoke of skepticism, and the evidentialist objection which is has two premises: 1) it is irrational to believe without sufficient evidence and 2) the mysteries of faith lacks sufficient evidence.
It's hard to see any way to attack the first without appearing credulous, and Catholics claim that Christianity is a reasonable faith. So it's more profitable to go after the second, although it might not be easy, since the standard of "sufficient evidence" is not concrete and fixed. Anyone wishing to disbelieve could simply claim he hasn't heard a sufficient amount of evidence. Still, that's no reason for not trying. Now it's not possible to directly prove that Jesus is God and man, or the doctrine of the Trinity, but it is possible to do this indirectly. The evidence would be the miracles throughout time, the endurance of the Church and her doctrines, and the ability of the faith to transform men and cultures.
Fr. Brent continued with the idea that faith is a supernatural gift. It has three aspects: 1) what we believe (the content of the faith), 2) the inclination of the will to believe, an instinct of faith, or a movement by the Holy Spirit, and 3) the evidence or reasons to believe. He cautions that the signs given are not proofs, for if they were, then the faith would be a vehement opinion rather than an inclination to trust.
Fr. Brent also included a cool quote (it's cool because it's from the Lord of the Rings): "What you say to me sounds like wisdom, but for something in my heart tells me otherwise." But the important quote is this (from Aquinas' commentary on The Divine Names by Pseudo-Dionysius):
He who is united to the truth by faith knows well how good it is for him to be united to the truth in this way, even though many reprehend him as having gone out of his senses and of being a fool and a madman. For truly it is hidden from those reprehending him for his errors that he has suffered an ecstasy of truth as if placed beyond all sense knowledge and conjoined to the supernatural truth. The believer knows himself to be no fool, as they say, but to be liberated by the pure and unchangeable truth and to be withdrawn from the unstable and changing current of error.The following are optional links (of which I've not listened):
Does Science Discredit Faith? | Fr. Gregory Pine, OP
Thomas Aquinas and the Harmony of Faith and Reason | Thomas Joseph White, OP
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