Can We Be Good Without God? | Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski, O.P.

The Thomistic Institute

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

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 29 November 2022

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This lecture was given on October 10, 2022, at Trinity University(San Antonio). For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website: www.thomisticinstitute.org About the Speaker: Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski, O.P. is a member of the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist. She is an Associate Professor of Theology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston where she also teaches at St. Mary's Seminary. Her main area of research is medieval sacramental theology with a focus on Albert the Great and Aquinas. She has published a translation of Albert the Great's work On the Body of the Lord, in the CUA Fathers of the Church Medieval Continuation series as well as a translation of Aquinas's Commentary on the Psalms for the Aquinas Institute. She has published articles in various journals including Logos, Antiphon, Nova et Vetera and Franciscan Studies.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Father Dominic Leg, director of the Thomistic Institute. Thanks for tuning in to today's
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1:00.2	generosity, and may God bless you this Advent and Christmas season.
1:10.4	So this is the topic on which I was asked to speak, and it's a really good topic. Can we be good
1:16.3	without God? Of course, I'm going to approach it by way of the theology and thought of St. Thomas
1:23.0	Aquinas and also using some of his methodology that is clarifying and making distinctions, right?
1:29.2	This question, can we be good? And what is meant by without God? There's two reasons why I think
1:35.1	people might be interested in this question, right? They might be interested in how do we
1:39.1	growing goodness? I want to be good. I'm interested in generically learning about goodness.
1:45.8	Also, I find people are interested about the question of goodness flourishing in a non-religious context. We hear all these things
1:51.5	about God being good and us needing Christianity to live good and holy lives, which leaves people
1:57.1	to the question of, well, but I think I see things that are good in my non-Christian
2:01.4	friends or my non-religious friends, and how do I understand that goodness? So I'm hoping this
2:06.6	talk will help to answer both of those questions, help us to understand goodness more generally,
2:11.5	and also to speak to this question of goodness in a non-religious context.
	...

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