Aquinas’ Error

How Thomism Departs From Patristic Fundamental Theology:

In this presentation, I discuss Thomas Aquinas’ departure from some of the basic tenants of Patristic fundamental theology and St. Maximos the Confessor in particular who synthesized much of this tradition. Namely Thomas’ theology proper with the doctrine of actus purus influenced by both Aristotle and Islamic philosophers. This identification of the nature of God with this one aspect of being (or any one aspect of being) was explicitly not adopted by the Fathers because God’s absolute transcendence makes such identification with one category of being unnecessary. Likewise, this has profound implications for theological epistemology. For, actuality is the precondition for contact and knowing. When God’s essence is identified with His act (energia) the same ineffability proper to God’s essence applies to His act. Therefore, knowing God becomes an impossibility, and theology is left only with reflections on the effects of God-as-Creator discernable by natural reason. Thomas nominally retains the centrality of grace, revelation, and divine illumination in his theological epistemology; but due to his conception of the nature of God, these things cannot be God-as-He-is-present to us (energia) but mere creatures. Even with grace, no real epistemically grounding contact with God can take place. This is contrary to the teachings of the Fathers.

[raymondrider]

This video has made me very excited for your future content! As someone who has studied philosophy, I appreciate the rigor of the presentation while keeping things engaging. I’m definitely subscribing and certainly willing to support your work in the future!

[matthewschrank]

Raymond Vincent is one of the greatest minds I have been able to have the privilege to personally meet. Thank you for sharing you wisdom and reasoning to the public.

[CopeandSeethe]

Good video brother. One factor you didn’t mention is the filioque, which results in a de facto rejection of the monarchy of the Father and replacing the Father as the source of Divinity with the impersonal Divine Essence. I would say this is the biggest factor behind ADS.

[justian]

This is gold standard in youtube Theology. Well done, Sir!

[stephenpropps]

This was fantastic! Thanks so much for putting this together. You helped me put together some threads in my thinking that I’d been working on for some time. Now I need to go read St Maximus more.

[Virtual_spheres]

Wonderful video Raymond! Very informed and helpful inspection of Thomism! ❤

[TheNameIsForgettable]

This is very well done. Great work and prayers for you and your family.

[premodernprejudices]

Well-done, sir! Truly, bravo! God bless you, brother.

[shotguntribe]

Thank you for this most incisive presentation.

[stephengolay]

You are very, very good. Skilled in breaking all this down and puzzling it back together- in a new (recovered) way.

Correct, what the East refused, and the West embraced (utterly) was the systemization of both Aristotle and Plato. This compelled the West to take neo-Platonism, neo-Aristotleanism, to its logical ends. With the second into German Idealism (Kant); and the first into philosophical, cultural, political and religious Hermenticism (Hegel). Not to ride the "Neo" beasts to terminus is Orthodoxy standing sentinel.

[SharkyG]

You had 666 subscribers lol the former protestant in me couldn't allow that. 667 now thanks for the content

[MountAthosandAquinas]

Vincent, having newly subscribed to this channel and come across this video on the error of Aquinas, I was obliged to engage with your perspective. However, having heard of your recent Cross God has sent your way I send my deepest regards and prayers instead.

-Irenaeus

[CDUTT]

Can you list the relevant sources, primary and secondary, to help us understand this!? Thanks!

[prometheusjones]

I'm no Aquinas expert, but I find it odd that he comes off as a Nominalist here. Perhaps he unwittingly laid the groundwork for Scotus and Occam, but no Thomist scholar I've encountered has ever portrayed him as a Nominalist.

Following Norris Clarke, the formula "God is pure act" should mean that God is most concrete and hyper-knowable, since he is existence (esse) itself.

I haven't read any of the Palamite appropriations of Aquinas (like Scholarios), but I've always wondered whether the EED could be read into the proposition that "God is actus purus." The subject is the Divine Essence and the predicate is the singular-yet-many Energy. The proposition would not make sense if there weren't a distinction of some sort. And this is fine so long as we do not read a sort of Occamite Nominalism back into the EED (as Romanides seems to do). For God qua participable self-communication (energy) is not other than God himself--as if God's energeia could decieve us--yet it is distinguishable from God's being in and of itself.

[buckledcrane]

I’m wondering about these references you use by Gilson, I would like to buy them!

[Hosea]

I’m 18 minutes in and waiting for a primary source reference from Aquinas to show your understanding of his theology of grace, divine simplicity, theistic arguments, and so on. Is it going to get more into primary sources at some point?

[charlesnunno]

The plotinus model of the universe being both full of being and non-being as a model is something a lot of people have not heard enough yet to understand. Great video. ( We need to be immersed in these concepts before the culture can regurgitate them. )

[shiaaaa]

I am honestly shocked that he taught such errors and yet no one in the west really challenged his type of thinking.

[MediaevalGuitar]

From an idealistic perspective, what is going on here (I think) is that Beyond Being means Infinite, while being pertains to the finite, and Thomas overlooked the fact that acts must also have an agent, whereas the Eastern essence/energies distinction preserves the distinction between agent and act, ¿verdad?

[RobertDryer]

I’m not sure error is the right word. This is pretty obscure stuff. Both Aquinas and the fathers are trying to appropriate participation, salvation, the sacraments, the divine nature into a coherent whole. Balancing transcendence and immanence liberally as the fathers often do, and cautiously like Aquinas does just means they have different emphasis’. This doesn’t mean they don’t have generally the same goal they’re trying to communicate: Union with God. The fathers tend to be read as universalists and Aquinas focuses on normative types of mediation but leaves room for the exception to the rule. The analogy of being, mixed relations, participatory metaphysics, vs essence energies, it seems at the end of the day they’re just trying to communicate a mystery towards a union as best as possible.