An Introductory Debate between Jay Dyer and Classical Theist

This was more of an introduction of sorts in the way of debates, so there will be more to come of this in the future. Also, I will return to uploading regular content sometime in April throughout the Spring and Summer so look out for that!

[ClassicalTheist]

This was meant to be an introductory debate — the first of more to come. That’s why I was a bit more restrained and let him go on for longer than I otherwise would if this was meant to be a full debate.

[RBtoobsalot]

This is a debate that needs moderation. Jay cannot help himself it seems. He constantly interrupts his opponent, goes on lengthy rants and in doing so leaves little room for rebuttal. One thing I am convinced of after listening to this debate, though I could barely hear CT speak while Jay Dyer's voice was loud and clear, is that the best way to forge an atheist is to listen to different sects of Christianity exchanging rhetorical blows one with the other.

[misterkefir]

I knew You were the guy which is going to debate Jay. Good to see, cheers and God Bless!

[dioscoros]

Glad to see you uploading. Also, I've been waiting to hear you two talk, so this is great. I'm looking forward to see what the future will hold!

[aus]

Classical Theist begins a sentence, pauses, gets loudly talked over for 4 sentences. This is a terrible way to communicate.

[JayDyer]

What did my article argue? It argued Ott was *INCONSISTENT, * which if any of you could read, you'd see the flow of the argument: “According to the Council of Trent sanctifying grace is not merely a formal cause, but “the only formal cause” (unica causa formalis) of our justification. By this important decision the Council excluded the error of Butzer and some Catholic theologians (Gropper, Scripando, and Albert Pighius) who maintained that an additional “external favour of God” (favor Dei externus) belonged to the essence of justification. The same decree also effectually set aside the opinion of Peter Lombard, that the formal cause of justification (i.e. sanctifying grace) is nothing less than the Person of the Holy Ghost, Who is the hypostatic holiness and charity, or the uncreated grace (gratia increata). Since justification consists in an interior sanctity and renovation of spirit, its formal cause evidently must be a created grace (gratia creata), a permanent quality, a supernatural modification or accident (accidens) of the soul. Quite distinct from this is the question whether the personal indwelling of the Holy Ghost, although not required for justification (inasmuch as sanctifying grace alone suffices), be necessary as a prerequisite for Divine adoption.”

The famous Thomist Lagrange agrees:”2. The supernatural gift of grace itself freely bestowed and ordained to eternal life; this is created grace, of which we are now treating, whether it is interior or exterior, such as the preaching of the gospel.” (Commentary on the Summa)

Ludwig Ott declares (Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, page 254): “Santifying grace is a created supernatural gift really distinct from God.” (Sent. fide proxima) . For those interested in the Ott rabbit hole, the next few pages (256-7) are an amazing amalgam of Roman Catholic mental gymnastics and confusion attempting to explain how we also, in some way, ‘participate in the divine nature.” The preposterous speculations and confusion and contradictions in Ott are exemplary of the madness that results from dogmatically denying the essence-energy distinction (as Ott does on pages 24-27 and then attempting to grant a “real deification.” This argument alone should topple all Roman Catholicism, since, as St. Gregory Palamas also retorted to Barlaam, if all you receive in salvation is a created effect, you are not saved."

[gauloab]

hearing these two talk reminds me how little i know. I am learning more though, God willing.

[JayDyer]

Here is a list of the first few statements from Ott on grace:

"1. Sanctifying Grace is a created supernatural gift really distinct from God. (Sent. fidei proxima.)
2. Sanctifying Grace is a supernatural state of being which is infused by God, and which permanently inheres in the soul. (Sent. certa.)
3. Sanctifying grace is not a substance, but a real accident, which inheres in the soul-substance. (Sent. certa.)
4. Sanctifying grace is really distinct from charity. (Sent. communior.)
5. Supernatural grace is a participation in the divine nature. (Sent. certa.)"

When going from memory and I said "infused substance, " it should have been "infused accident, " but it doesn't matter because the point of the argument is that if #1 is true, then the participation in #5 isn't real. It's not really a participation the divine nature, because the divine nature isn't created and cannot be participated in on the basis of ADS. THAT was the point and I made it forcefully in the essay no one seems able to actually read.

Furthermore, the argument is even clearer when we look at numerous other RC statements on the matter:

Fundamentals of Catholicism Vol. 3 by Fr. Barker. Vindicated. Exact same doctrine Ott lays out - Grace is a "created supernatural gift" "really distinct from God" - "infused in man" word for word making all my arguments - doesn't matter if it's a "substance" or an "accident.”

"It is something created, given to us by God... which gives us a created likeness of God's nature and life. It is a supernatural gift infused into our souls by God, a positive reality, spiritual, supernatural, and invisible." -Fr Hardon, Ch 8 


"Sanctifying Grace is a created reality.
"created grace is something distinct. So, as Trent says, it can be increased, and received within us, each according to his own measure, which the Holy Spirit distributes.."

Even the grace in the Incarnation in Christ's humanity Rome heretically says is created: "By reason of His endowment with the fullness of created habitual grace, Christ's soul is also accidentally holy. (Sent. certa.)"

[TACADD]

With my new wagie job, I'm falling behind on all my favorite content. I missed 4 episodes of AM 1st, and now Classical Theist is making new content. I can't keep up! I guess this is a good problem to have though.

[rambles]

In the future you guys should just stick to one Church Father or possibly one book because Jay likes to throw 100 different things at you and not let you fully respond.

[GrayFates]

I think the most telling part was where Jay said no Catholic believes the Eucharist is the presence of the Divine Essence. If he used to be Catholic and doesn’t know what Transubstantiation is that really has me question his ability to understand EO now.

There’s also the fact that the East is way more atheist that the West but that’s not for theological reasons even though the West’s atheism is.

[RCTsanctuary]

Starting at 40 and especially around 51, classical theist really transcends jay. Jay is left being frustrated/uncharitable and falls on “your not repeating my misunderstanding of thomas, which my arguments depend, so you are wrong”.

[phoult]

Jay likes to hammer the source citations. The first 14 minutes of the "debate" is him monologuing and shotgunning sources without laying out the framework for his argument, making clear claims, etc. CT I appreciate your effort but you need to be more forceful with this type of guy and pin him down more to prevent this strategy of overwhelming through citation drops.


Also, CT needs to go on the attack more.

[rambles]

Jay does what he’s best at, throwing books at people’s faces LOL

[PeteV]

I haven't even watched this yet and I know exactly what all the comments are about Jay's behavior.

[marceloviana]

The virgin debater vs the Chad shouter

[joea]

The volume differential on this video is ridiculous. You can run these things through a compressor before you post that or make sure the volumes are equal before recording.

[IvanTheHeathen]

26:51 -- Dyer is talking nonsense here. Because we can only reason our way to God from His effects, we cannot know that He exists? Is that _really_ what Dyer is saying here? It seems so. It seems that he's saying that if (1) we can only reason about God from His effects; then (2) we cannot distinguish between those effects; and so (3) we cannot know that God actually exists. I want to be careful not to misrepresent Dyer here, but if you go to the point I indicate in my timestamp, that really does appear to be what he's saying.

If you can only reason from effect to cause, then it may follow that you will not be able to discern the _precise nature_ of the cause, but it certainly does not follow that you cannot discern the _existence_ of the cause. In other words, proposition (3) does not follow at all from proposition (1) above. If I see a fire erupt in an area, I can certainly conclude that something capable of starting a fire existed in that area, even if I cannot determine precisely what that something was. You can't reach (3) from (1), unless you use (2) as a premise in the argument. But Dyer clearly isn't using (2) as a premise. He claims to be deducing it from (1).

The crux of his objection seems to be the claim that if God were truly absolutely simple, it would not be possible for Him to create a finite, mutable and differentiated world. In other words, if the world uses divine ideas as a kind of template, and if all divine ideas are really one, then how can there be distinct and differentiated objects in reality? The problem here is that anyone who takes divine simplicity seriously must say that God ultimately _is_ His own creative act. And to understand how God could create a finite world of differentiated objects, you must understand how divine creation works. But to understand how divine creation works is to understand God Himself -- and it is not possible to do that directly.

(By the way, the fact that we can categorize distinct objects and speak about them at all implies that there's some general reality underlying them all and universal to them all -- so distinction and oneness are intimately linked. We can reason from the presence of many distinct objects to the presence of one God, but not from the presence of one God to the presence of many distinct objects because the distinct objects are dependent on God, but God is not dependent on the objects.)

As far as I can see, Dyer is just begging the question against the apophatic theology that those who accept divine simplicity tend to be partial to. In other words, he's demanding that we say that which is unsayable. How was God able to create a finite world of differentiated objects? It's a mystery. You won't know that until you experience the beatific vision. But clearly, He was able to do so -- somehow. Dyer is saying, in short, that doing violence to the divine nature is necessary to understand Him directly. But why should we demand that God conform entirely to the categories of our understanding, such that our reason will be able to exhaust Him? 'Tis impious, no?

Dyer's position looks to be like a kind of Arianism, to be honest. He's saying that the ultimately simple divine essence is -- if you like -- too perfect to create a finite and mutable world, and so it needs the energies to be able to do so. The energies of God serve the function of a kind of demiurge. The energies are basically what the demiurge is in Platonism and Neoplatonism. Palamas explicitly says that the energies are less than the divine essence, just as the demiurge is less than the One in Neoplatonism. Just as the One needs the demiurge to carry out his will in the finite realm, so the God needs His energies -- which are Him but somehow also less than Him -- to create the world. And for Arius, Christ was, in effect, the "firstborn" of creation -- the equivalent of the demiurge in Neoplatonism.

The Orthodox say that their position is the only thing that saves the possibility of true communion with God, but just the opposite is true. Palamas is explicit that the divine essence is forever unknowable -- _even to those who are in Heaven._ It's Palamas' position that makes true communion with God impossible.

Dyer's insistence that distinction need not entail composition sounds straightforwardly absurd and irrational to me. I'm with you there. Can Dyer provide an example of something other than God in which distinction would not entail composition? If not (and it's hard to see how he could), then it really starts to look like he (or Palamas) just made this up to be able to wiggle out of some perceived problem. He admits as much when he says that he uses "revelation" (by which he really means the dogmatic pronouncements of his favored theologians) to structure his reason, rather than reason itself -- kind of like how it's possible to create an entire system of logic based around the assumption that the principle of non-contradiction is false.

[daddorocket]

Jay seems to be lacking in understanding the difference between a logical and a virtual distinction. I suggest he read Bittle's book on Ontology.

[nathanielolson]

Will you ever discuss the Filioque Clause?