Aquinas on Nature and the Natural: Form and the Scale of 'Esse' – Fr. Raymund Snyder, O.P.

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Religion &Amp; Spirituality, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 30 September 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Fr. Raymund Snyder explores Thomas Aquinas’s metaphysics of nature, form, and the scale of being, emphasizing the integration of Aristotelian and Neoplatonic traditions and the unique Christian vision of creation, essence, and intellect.

This lecture was given on May 29th, 2025, at Mount Saint Mary College.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speakers:

Fr. Raymund Snyder, O.P. is the Director of Campus Programs and Evangelization for the Thomistic Institute. He grew up in Wichita, Kansas and studied philosophy and classics at the University of Notre Dame. He entered the Order of Preachers in 2010 and was ordained a priest in 2016. He recently completed a licentiate in philosophy at the Catholic University of America. His academic interests include Metaphysics, Natural Theology, and Neoplatonism.

Keywords: Aristotelianism, Christian Distinction, Creation, Divine Names, Essence and Esse, Metaphysics, Natural Law, Neoplatonism, On the Nature of Man, Scale of Being

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the Tomistic Institute podcast.
0:06.2	Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.
0:12.7	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.
0:19.0	To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at to mystic institute.org.
0:25.3	Well, I've completed our chart here with the correlative pairs that more or less
0:30.4	summarized the content of the first lecture, recalling that while many things can be referred
0:37.3	to as nature, there is a convergence, more or less.
0:43.8	All of these things have an intelligible order among themselves if we consider them with reference to form.
0:51.7	So while yes, matter can be, let's say, associated with nature,
0:58.7	we can say a thing's nature and then describe its material composition, it's better
1:04.1	referred to according to its form. Likewise, things accidents, more or less, but best according
1:10.6	to substance. Remember that the definition of
1:16.1	nature in its basic form in the physics is according to the principle, the intrinsic principle
1:23.9	of motion and rest in a thing. And that makes us think then about act
1:29.3	and potency that even if a thing is not currently enact, its nature, let's say, is the
1:36.8	principle according to which it can receive, i.e. receive a change, be at motion or in rest. Moving into the properly metaphysical domain,
1:47.9	we can consider things in terms of essence and essay. Essence being the kind or definition
1:55.3	associated with the definition. It has a reality that's separate from the linguistic definition.
2:00.6	So the definition puts its finger on the reality that is in essence.
2:05.6	Whereas essay, leaving it in the Latin here, which I think is the best route with this,
2:11.6	refers to the act of being that is composite.
2:16.6	With any created thing, essence and essay are distinct, are really distinct.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Thomistic Institute, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Thomistic Institute and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.