**Ep. 19 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Augustine and Aquinas — Transcript & Summary | SozAI**
Source: https://sozai.app/transcript/awakening-meaning-crisis-augustine-aquinas/

Vervaeke traces Augustine's synthesis of Neoplatonism, Christianity and Gnosticism, shaped by his sexual addiction, Manichaeism and a mystical experience with Plotinus.

## Key Takeaways

- Augustine synthesized Neoplatonism and Christianity to address personal moral conflict and the problem of evil in a declining world.
- Augustine's account of love as the engine of reason reframes the damaged faculty as the capacity to love, not reason.
- Mystical experience without sustained transformation can produce despair, which Augustine resolved through a Christian framework of grace and narrative.
- Medieval thought integrated knowing, becoming and meaning, a unity later fragmented into separate science and spirituality.

## What the video covers

- Recaps the previous episode: Plato, Aristotle, Stoicism and Neoplatonism unified in Plotinus, integrating mystical experience with rational argument.
- Introduces Augustine as a towering figure who blends Christianity, Neoplatonism and Gnosticism during the decline of the Roman Empire.
- Augustine was initially drawn to Manichaeism, whose light-versus-dark cosmology offered explanations for evil and his inner conflict.
- Augustine describes his sexual addiction as licking the open sore of lust, reflecting severe self-loathing and loss of agency.
- The episode recounts the stolen-fruit episode in adolescence, which Augustine read as evidence that evil desire drew him downward for its own sake.
- Reading Plotinus gave Augustine a mystical ascent he could not sustain, leaving him in a rebound despair.
- Augustine's conversion moment occurs in his mother's garden, where he reads Paul and finds a kindred account of inner conflict.
- Augustine reframes Plato's view: reason is driven by love, and the damage lies in the capacity to love rightly rather than reason itself.
- Augustine synthesizes Neoplatonism with Christianity, presenting Christianity as the answer to the problem of evil that Gnosticism sought.
- Vervaeke links this to later developments: the Great Schism, and the divorce of science from spirituality in the modern era.

## Chapters

1. 00:00 Recap: Latinas and the Unification of Ancient Thought
2. 03:33 Augustine's World: Decline of Rome and Manichaeism
3. 06:51 Augustine's Inner Conflict and the Stolen Fruit
4. 10:13 Reading Plotinus and the Mystical Ascent
5. 16:51 Despair, the Garden Voice and Paul
6. 22:00 Love as the Heart of Reason
7. 28:20 Augustine's Synthesis and Meaning as Normative Order
8. 37:00 Schism, Knowing versus Thinking and the Divorce of Science and Spirituality

Answers

## Questions about this video

Why was Augustine drawn to Manichaeism?

Manichaeism's light-versus-dark cosmology offered an explanation for evil and for the struggle within him. Its gnostic elements promised liberation from the darkness that seemed to drag people down.

What did Augustine find in Plotinus?

Augustine found a Neoplatonic worldview and a mystical ascent to the One. He could not sustain that experience, and the contrast with his inner darkness led to despair.

What is Augustine's key insight about reason and love?

Augustine argues that reason is driven by love for truth, goodness and beauty. What is damaged in him is his capacity to love rightly, not his capacity to reason.

## Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

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Speaker A

[Music] you [Music] welcome back to awakening from the meaning crisis last time we were talking about this interaction and confluence between Macy and Christianity the transformation that's undergoing the platonic tradition in neoplatonism and Gnosticism we had ended up by talking

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about Latinas and how he brings about this grand unification of the best science of the time Aristotle the best therapy of the time stoicism and the best spirituality of the time Platonism and this is done all in a way that

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powerfully integrates mystical experience achieving higher states of consciousness and rational argumentation things that we now experience is diametrically opposed science and spirituality reason and transformation therapy and realness all of these things were not they were instead powerfully mutually supportive now platanus is

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around 270 or so of the Common Era and after him of course the Roman Empire starts to go into decline and we're seeing the end of the ancient world and there is a figure there a towering figure who basically brings this

01:39

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configuration this triangle that I've mentioned of Christianity Neoplatonism and Gnosticism together he's deeply influenced by all of them although he will eventually give priority to Christianity and that's Augustine so Augustine is a Roman and he's alive - and the 4th century into the beginnings

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of the fifth century as the Roman Empire is entering its final stages so as you can imagine the alright that call that in pending collapse is bringing with it a very dark vision of the world and for that reason Augustine is attracted to

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manic any ISM now this is a religion that was started by many from Persia and many people argue that it is a gnostic religion some people disagree with applying the term Gnostics to it again it doesn't matter it was seems to have picked up on a lot

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of the same kinds of ideas about a machinery in which we are meshed as creatures of light and that light has to be liberated by a special kind of gnosis and and Augustine is deeply attracted to this religion he's attracted to this

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religion precisely because it is as I said it has Gnostic components in it and therefore promises to address his own personal loss of agency which I'll talk about momentarily but also to address what is becoming more and more salient

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to people of Augustine's time which is a world that is darkening around them so he's influenced by that which means ideas of evil and evil powers and structures in the world are very salient to Augustine he also deeply suffers as I

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mentioned personally he is riven with inner conflict to put it I think in terms that would make sense to us today Augustine is a sex addict he is deeply addicted to sexual behavior he described it this way and I think this is a

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particularly apt way of describing his addiction he said I was always licking the open or of lust which gives you a very telling image of a compelling desire and yet and something disgusting and degrading and it's also exacerbating and

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making worse the very affliction that you're suffering so he he suffers tremendous self-loathing because of this tremendous loss of agency and he struggles to try and find a way of getting free from his own personal inner conflict and degradation and also

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providing an answer to the evil that he sees in the world he writes the first autobiography in the history of the West the confessions and in there he relates an experience which deeply deeply affected him I would say it came close

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to traumatizing him so when he was young he relates this story he and some of his friends broke into a courtyard and stole some fruit and you're thinking most of us would think yeah you know a young adolescent performing you know a

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misdemeanor act of minor theft stealing some fruit who cares but this is Augustine he's already a meshed in a Manichaean worldview he's already deeply sort of he's becoming aware as an adolescent of how powerful his drives can be and what affected Augustine about

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this very profoundly as he said he did not want the fruit do not desire the fruit he wasn't really trying to impress his friends he wasn't desiring that he came away with a very strong experience it's almost like a reverse of a higher

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state of consciousness he came away with a very strong experience that he stole the fruit simply because it was the wrong thing to do that he wanted to do this that was something in him that was dragging him down

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and this is again why this worldview appealed to him there was there's these it's like again Manichean ism is very much like the Star Wars mythology of the light and the dark side there is a dark side and it's drawing people down and

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it's the side of desire and anger and destruction right and Augustine sees this alive within his own body in his sexual addiction so he travels around the world he teaches rhetoric and he becomes eventually connected and familiar with philosophy and something

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happens to him that's quite profound he reads the work of Latinas he reads the work of plutinos he has very high opinion of Latinas he later writes in Latinas Plato lived again and he writes very glowingly of the plate myths and in

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Plato and especially in plutinos Augustine sees a different way he gets a world view other than the Manichaean world view he gets the naplan the Neoplatonic world view and he gets it I mean this in the gnosis sense he gets it

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Augustine has a mystical experience well reading Latinas he has that ascent up to the one he rises through the levels of reality and levels of his self and he has this mystical experience but he can't hold it he can't stay there the

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the darkness in him is so has so much gravity pulls him back down and pulls him back towards that world of lust and addiction that reciprocal narrowing that mark Lewis talks about so powerfully and he wonders ice what why what why is the gravity

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pulling me why is the darkness that pulls me down why is it so powerful is there anything that more can can more can overpower it and pull me up he says I get what Latonya is talking about but

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the evil within me it's too strong the darkness pulls me down too much he lightly he later come to say that this is like a hole in being and it's just sucking the light away and so he he has

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what some people have reported having after they have some mystical experiences he has a rebound effect of despair it's like if I was to show you a beautiful place this beautiful beach and when you stepped on to the beach you

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finally felt at peace like the peace you've sought all your life and there's beauty around you and you feel alive and vital that you can't stay you can't somehow you just can't hold and you're drawn away and you can't stay there now

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the place you're in the darkness and the squalor that you're in is so much worse because you have been in the light and you know you were incapable of staying there so he's falling into despair and he's at

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his mother's house and his mother as a Christian Monica and he's in the backyard like the courtyard and he's listening and he hears a child's voice say take it pick up and read and there's a Bible there or an early version of a

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Bible and he picks it up just where it is and he happens to of course read the work of Paul and in Paul he finds an affinity a deep affinity that kindred spirit because in Paul he sees that same

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inner conflict that same tortured inner conflict and he sees a worldview that makes sense of that inner conflict and Augustine has this insight he says look look look pay attention to Platonists pay attention to Plato what are they saying

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Plato and Platonists are ultimately saying we're driven by two powerful loves word riveting driven by the love of becoming one within and becoming one with what is most real just what's driving all of our reason is love a love

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that a love for what's true a love for what's good a love for what is beautiful and then he says at the heart of reason is love and what's damaged in me is my capacity to love not my capacity to

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reason that's why I have this sexual addiction my capacity for love has been thwarted and twisted by my sexuality so I need something that can heal remember the gnosis the healing I need to be healed there's a love that is

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within reason that can help you grow beyond reason - what reason always sought how do we grow in love well agape that's what the Christian message is agape by participating in agape we grow in love we grow in the

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love that is driving us to becoming persons fully realized persons so Augustine says Neoplatonism needs Christianity and the healing and the response to evil that Gnosticism was looking for can actually be found in Christianity and so he synthesizes them

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all together so notice what we now have let's put this together very carefully in Augustine and notice the way he's putting it he's not putting it out there as a theory he's writing an autobiography he's talking about it in a

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perspectival and participatory way he writes the first autobiography the confessions this is not a dry academic treatise this is an existential manual how you can also go through the process that he has gone through it is gnosis through and through okay so from

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plutinos what do we have well Platonists already has given us because part of plutinos is the Aristotelian worldview that's the Noma logical order we talked about right the conformity theory right the geocentric worldview the two things in attunement they say is your this is

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the best science account of the structure of reality and how reality is known from platini's himself we get now what I'm going to call the normative order so Tinus gave us an account of how we can move in a coordinated fashion up

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the levels of reality up the levels of consciousness up the levels of the self from what is less real to what is more real what's Augustine going to do with that well look what's less real what's down here has less oneness less

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integration it makes less sense look if when I destroy something what do I do I take away its structural functional organization I make it more disordered right as I go downward things are fragmenting becoming having less and less form less and less i daus they're

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less and less intelligible they're less and less understandable this becomes more and more pure chaos I'm losing truth I'm losing goodness I'm losing beauty I'm losing what makes things to be and what makes them to be sensible and intelligible this is evil down here

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is that that's the whole that's the tear in being towards which things can fall but I can also move up to what's more true more good more real and of course what Platonists knows is that this is driven by a love a love to

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love of knowing what it's real and simultaneously becoming what is more real and so for Augustine this of course and Plato even called it if you remember the good this is the normative order the normal logical order tells you how

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things are structured the normative order tells you how you can become better how you can deal with evil and how you can increase realness meaning in your life Augustine takes that and as I've shown you it says wait the thing about

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Aristotle is well you know what everything was moving to get where it belongs all right but that's all it is in Aristotle but I think Augustine is basically saying that everything is moving in a way in order to try and move us away from evil

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towards goodness and so he says I think Christianity puts these two together the world everything is moving on purpose and the purpose is to try and afford realization both cognitive and in the world things are becoming more real

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we're becoming more real we're realizing that and then he says and you know what all of this is driven by love and about the transformation that happens in me the gnosis agape that's the narrative order of Christianity there's this great

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narrative there's this great story about the course of history and the course of history is a course of moving right towards a final consummation the promised land and is the history of God's love of God's agape of God intervening and creating

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the open future but that agape isn't just a historical force it's also a normative force in me it's also leading me upward towards the good what Augustine does is he says Christianity can put all of these things together the world is organized this way

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so that it moves through history this way so that all of us can self transcend this way all three orders come together in a mutually supporting fashion now we know from current cognitive science right that the three components of

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meaning that people talk about the things that contribute to meeting in life and this is Hensel men's work and others are a sense of coherence I'll explain what this means in a minute a sense of significance and a sense of

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purpose I got to talk to Samantha Hanselman about this the more coherent the more intelligible the more things fit together for you the more real they are the more meaningful you find your life well that's the normal logical

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order how things fit together and make sense in a coherent fashion what about significance significance is this how valuable house how how deep in reality how good are the elements of your life that's the normative order purpose does your life have a direction

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is it moving in a course that's the narrative order human beings want things to make sense they need a noble logical order and Augustine says I have this it's the Aristotelian worry of world order and I can give a Christian

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explanation of that they want things to be significant they want to satisfy the anagogical inner peace and contact with reality and Augustine says I can tell you that because I can tell you how to put reason and agape together

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that's what Christianity does and they people want things to have a purpose they want there to be write a story Christianity is offering the ultimate story Augustine puts it all together and he puts it all together as the Roman

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Empire is literally collapsing he's in hippo in North Africa when the barbarians are literally at the gate laying siege to the city and he's basically laying the foundations for what's going to come next he's lying laying foundations for the

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medieval worldview but what do we have from this what we have right and we'll come back to the cognitive science what we have is a very long and powerful history that tells us how our our culture has articulated the axial

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revolution how it has given a grammar a way of understanding what the axial revolution has given us it has given us a system for interpreting and inhabiting a worldview in which meaning and wisdom as understood by the actual revolution

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have been developed and have been articulated in a sophisticated and compelling fashion meaning is to have a neurological order that connects us to what is real it is to have a normative order that connects us not intellectually but existentially to what

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is good so that we can become better meaning is to have a narrative order that tells us how we can move forward through history both collective and individual history but what I've tried to show you is that these are not three

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separate things they're like the three dimensions right of a space the space of meaning they're the three axes of the space of meaning this is a beautiful synthesis it's the culmination of tremendous amount of historical development it's profound and

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it's not just an intellectual thing it is some as I've tried to show you it is simultaneously a scientific thing a spiritual thing a therapeutic thing an existential thing this is why this is going to last a thousand years because

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it is such a powerful and enriching vision imagine if you could what if I could offer this to you and make it deeply historically scientifically and intellectually viable for you what if I could offer to you a worldview that had

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the deepest scientific legitimacy totally integrated with the most profound spirituality no antagonism no irrationality in it could join seamlessly with a personal project of therapy of therapeutic change in healing and sappy entral education the cultivation of genuine wisdom and track

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self and self transcendence in community with yourself your world your culture and other people would you not want this so here's the question y'all have to ask yourself why don't you have it because we know from the science that's what you

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want we know from the history that that's what our culture has like our foundational culture from the axial revolution built for us why don't we have it is it irredeemably lost when we lost the gnostic mythology when we lost

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the axial mythology the two worlds mythology when we lost the mythology of christian do we are we now bereft forever so part of the way I can start to answer that the the short answer for a long series of arguments that are forthcoming

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is no I think there is a response that's why this series is entitled awakening from the meeting crisis not despairing because of the meeting crisis but we're only halfway through right we're only halfway through posing the problem we

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have to we need to understand we're getting an understanding of this meaning in this wisdom we're getting how it was articulated and developed and woven into our cultural framework our cognitive machinery the very grammar of our of our

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existential modes but we still don't know why does it all fall apart how does it all come apart and where does that leave us we need a better understanding of the genealogy now of the crisis now that we have a better understanding of

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the nature of the meaning that was lost we need to understand we need to understand the process of loss so as I said this world is the world that Augustine bestows and this is what you need to understand there's tremendous

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loss when the Roman Empire collapses it's not as great as the Bronze Age collapse but it is its major so there's this but it's only in the west by the way not in the East the Byzantine Empire survives but nevertheless there's a

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traumatic loss traumatic not dramatic traumatic loss of cities literacy trade commerce the standard of living that was lost in the Roman Empire he's not recovered again until 1750 in London England takes that long for that standard of living to be recovered again

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so this is very traumatic but the Heritage given by Augustine is so powerful that it serves as and I'm using this word very carefully now I hope you understand it serves as a home for people throughout all of this turbulent

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turmoil but some things start to happen let's start to pull it apart this sacred canopy starts to be torn apart and can no longer shelter us from our terrors and our despair so one of the first things is in 1054 there's a division and

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I'm not going to go into all part of it has to do with that that the Roman Empire and the west collapses but it doesn't collapse in the East the East is greek-speaking the West is lot and speaking that in addition to Augustine

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the East is deeply influenced by Dionysus pseudo pseudo Tania's also the case in the West there's a but there's a lot of cultural historical socio-economic differences in how Christianity was understood and they split apart there's what's called the

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Great Schism so Christianity splits between an Eastern Orthodox and what's going to be called a Catholic version of Christianity this of course weakens Christianity it also has an impact on it by separating itself from the East Christianity loses

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some of the connection that leads to Christianity in the West Western Europe Christianity loses some of its deeper connections to that Neoplatonic mystical theology that sorts to have an impact the West starts to become less and less platonic and more and more Aristotelian

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now as always this starts right this starts with a change in psycho technology so Ivan ellic has done some work looking at the the work of hue of st. Victor who was around from 1096 to 1141 and what he points out and Chellam

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talks about this in his book in his books and katham also refers as Corbin does too Corbin talks about this chatham talks about this refers to the work of Krantz and others trying to summarize a lot of this what's happening is there's a shift

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in reading how people read right and it's after the schism so before that and this is something I can speak to from first person before that reading is done largely aloud people read aloud they read the Bible for example because

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that's mostly the only thing that can be read and some of the church fathers people like Augustine for example the read aloud reading is often done communally so first of all you're embedded in a cultural context you're embedded in a central community you read

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aloud and more than you read aloud you're reciting so let's try and get something in your experience that might bring this out okay think of the difference between reading a poem and reciting a poem and it's no coincidence

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by the way that when Gabriel spoke to Muhammad he told him to recite not to write okay what happens when you I was something wonderful last Saturday was my birthday and so it was a surprise party my partner she organized a wonderful party

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for me and I'd always said that instead of gifts I would prefer it if people brought one of their favorite pieces of poetry and read it aloud so it was a poetry party and people read it aloud and there's such a difference between

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reading a poem silently and reading it aloud because the intonation and the sharing it with others makes it very different what was a particularly beautiful is my girlfriend actually she's she's a gifted singer she actually sang her version of the poem by Robert

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Frost it's a famous one about the two roads diverging and I took the road less traveled by and that has made all the difference but when somebody is singing a song singing a poem and most songs are poems if you if you think about it right

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it is appealing to you not just propositional e it's not just write that kind of knowing it's not just trying to create beliefs in you first of all by reciting the poem right you you and trying to communicate it to others you

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have to bring in all your know-how of communication being able to share with other people you have to know all your ways of paying attention much more embodied there's a perspectival stuff what does it feel like what is it like

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to be here in this space in this context with these people uttering these words and that and with that it has the potential to be participatory because people are these are poems that have changed them have made a difference to their identity they

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know these poems not the way you know the words on the back of your cereal box they know these poems because of the way in which they have been changed by them their very sense of identity has been

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altered by it so when people were reading their they're reading the Bible they're reciting it they're reciting it communally they're also doing something and I do this practice now and other people do write it's called lectio Divina it's a way

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it's a way of reading a text right in which you are not speak at the point is not to have the propositions and to speak it is to let the text as much as possible speak to you it is to engage

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with the text in a meditative mindful fashion opening yourselves up to the possibility of it transforming you it is much more like going to listen to a piece of music and having prepared yourself prepared the receptivity to have a profound aesthetic experience

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it's analogous to that your reading and your reciting in such a way that you're trying to open yourself up to this protects speaking to you people that our religious will often talk about this as if God is present in the text and

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speaking to them through the text this is how people were reading it's a form of reading that is ontologically remedial it's designed to heal you transform you it's designed to trigger activate and educate your procedural perspectival and participatory knowing

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not just give you propositions it's about helping you in your reading remember the being mode and not just have beliefs and propositions but people start to read differently shortly thereafter what's happening is people are shifting from right so have a Cinna which is an

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anglicized form of Benson who's a great Persian philosopher he was up until this time very the dominant interpreter of that ERISA that Augustinian worldview that whole Augustinian way and he gives priority to the Neoplatonic and Corbin is going to make a lot of the

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fact that Persian philosophy was always trying to keep the neo platonic and Gnostic elements of spirituality alive Persia has played a much greater role in world history and cultural history than we have properly given credit to in the

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so-called West but he he gets replaced by Averroes right and Averroes is more purely purely Aristotelian and what that really means is a shift a shift to giving exclusive priority to definitions remember Aristotle try to understand essences the I das as Evans

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essences and essences as definitions and that's very problematic as many things don't have definitions but definitions and propositions so people now start to read silently to themselves and what they're trying what they give priority to right is coherence within a language

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rather than transformation within themselves in the world so what matters is how the various symbols and I don't mean that in a spiritual sense the various propositional terms and logical connectives fit together coherently so a new model for thought emerges see

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the old model was thought is a conforming to the world and and then we get this this we got this articulated and developed and expanded into this whole process of gnosis and an agog a and self transformation that model of

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knowing that's also a way of being that's also a way of becoming that's being taken away and it's being replaced by a different model thought knowing is to have coherent propositional language thinking is to have a coherent set of

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propositions in your head so Kranz talks about we shift from the extensive self the self that is transacted li connected to the world that understands itself in terms of its conformity to the world to right and the intensive self this is a

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self that's inside my head it's inside my beliefs my self is primarily the way I talk to myself by affirming my beliefs through propositional language so people start to think that the primary way in which we know things is to get as much

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coherence within our inner language then instead of conformity in our outer existential modes now why would people make this shift people make this shift because the world is starting to open up again people are starting to get interested in knowing the world

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scientifically we're getting its and it's gonna it's gonna it's just slowly beginning here right but we're gonna get the move towards the value of having and by the way I believe in this value I'm a scientist write the value of logically

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coherent well-organized propositional theories the power of this is being discovered so when I can read in this other way right I can empower my argumentative skills tremendously what I'm losing right what I'm losing is I'm losing reading as a

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psycho technology of psycho-spiritual existential transformation reading is now becoming the consumption of propositions and they're structuring in logical coherency why well as I said there's the beginning of this reorientation towards the external world and it's being driven by the fact

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that Aristotle is coming into prominence because he's being rediscovered so because of the Crusades there is a rediscovery of the works of Aristotle that had largely been lost to Western Europe and in Aristotle there is a problem for Christianity there's a

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problem for Christianity the problem is we have a figure that can't be ignored Aristotle is is part of that whole ancient world that Augustine gave us he's the author of the Noma logical order that Augustine has baptized with

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Christianity's approval so aerosol can't be ignored but Aristotle describes a world that does not have a lot of the Christian mythology attached to it and offers explanations for things that Christianity makes no effort to explain so there is this tremendous attraction

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to the power the new explanatory power provided by Aristotle and the model he gives of getting clear definitions and clear syllogistic inferences and building up a very clear picture is a meshed with this new way of reading and

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this new way of experiencing knowing and experiencing oneself primarily inside one's head inside one's language so Aristotle can't be ignored or rejected because of his eminent Authority but neither can he simply be assimilated into the Christian worldview because he

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talks about and explains things and does things in a manner that you don't find in the Bible so more and more people are reading in this new way they're starting to emulate the new right Aristotelian science but this is starting to cause a

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crisis within Christianity and so there's an individual who arises who sees the looming threat that this poses who sees two things happening there's a change in the psycho technology of reading and there is a change and how people are starting to look at the world

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both of these changes are associated with the difficulty of assimilating the rediscovered Aristotle into a Christian worldview the Thomas Aquinas takes up the task of solving this problem he's going to be a pivotal figure precisely for that reason now again

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Thomas Aquinas volume is writing and there's a whole group of people both theologians and philosophers two mystic and there's all kinds of controversy around you know how Aristotelian aquinas is how platonic he is right I'm going to again try and present the way I think he

47:09

Speaker A

was historically taken up and basically understood so for the coin it's how do we how do we salvage both the Christian worldview and the new science the new science of the rediscovered Aristotle he he does something really brilliant he goes to

47:39

Speaker A

the fundamental grammar of all of us what's the fundamental grammar of this it's the mythology of the two worlds the axial revolution is there's two worlds there's the real world and the illusory world right and that has been a constant

47:55

Speaker A

throat all of this and he comes up with a way of trying to assimilate it right so we have the two worlds right you seriously in Plato in the Platonic and even in the Augustinian here's the everyday world right and then here is

48:15

Speaker A

the real world but what Aquinas does is he changes that he says this world is real too there is real knowledge of this world possible this is knowledge that we can get through reason and science so reason in science study this world this

48:49

Speaker A

world and they can discover real truths about that through reason through science but this world up here is still somehow more real how do we do that well he invents a distinction that we tend to anachronistically push back on people

49:18

Speaker A

before and there and there are definitely precursors in pseudo-dionysius and Augustine but the idea is this is the natural world that can be studied by reason and by science this is the world above the natural world what's the word for above super so

49:37

Speaker A

this is the supernatural world and this is not a world that can be studied by science or reason this is a world that is only right accessible by faith so there's now the two worlds have been made sort of fundamentally two separate

50:06

Speaker A

kinds of worlds and there isn't a continuum between them now there isn't a way of moving through them by love and reason United together what now happens is the following and what's going to happen is the notion of faith is going

50:19

Speaker A

to be changed to reason is down here and love is up here and the idea for UGG for Aquinas I should say is that love moves the will see in plutinos and even in Augustine love moves reason but for

50:44

Speaker A

Aquinas love moves the will love moves the will to assert things that it can't know through reason so love now become sort of faith now becomes the act of willful assertion now to be fair to Aquinas this is not willful in the sense

51:05

Speaker A

of my will this is a will that is being by the love of God but nevertheless what's now happening is love and reason are being pulled apart faith is going from this participation in the flow of the course of history to the assertion

51:28

Speaker A

of propositions the assertion of statements giving a Creed and more fundamentally right science and spirituality are now being divorced from each other in a profound way such that if it's scientific it's not spiritual and if it's spiritual it's not

51:49

Speaker A

scientific and if you're talking and you can see the beginnings of Romanticism if it has to do with love then it has nothing to do with reason and if it has anything to do with reason that it has

52:00

Speaker A

nothing to do with love and all of these things are now being pulled apart now he is I mean he Aquinas is a wonderful man a wonderful writer he is trying to save right the axial worldview by reformulating its fundamental grammar of

52:24

Speaker A

two worlds into a formulation that is now becoming familiar to you but here's the danger and this is not a danger that Aquinas foresees as this becomes more and more successful and we less and less find our assertions our will being

52:51

Speaker A

driven by love but just by willpower alone this world becomes less and less real to us the supernatural world and if there is no supernatural world if it's no longer and listen to my language if it's no longer viable to us we can think

53:14

Speaker A

about it and imagine it but if it's no longer livable to us then the whole acts your world myth all the whole axle world grammar that grammar that gave us the grammar of meaning and wisdom and self transcendence that huge heritage is now

53:31

Speaker A

threatened to fall apart we'll start looking at that next time together thank you for your time and attention [Music] you [Music] you

Topics: Augustine Neoplatonism Plotinus Manichaeism Gnosticism Confessions meaning crisis Christianity love and reason Vervaeke

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