Welcome to the Tomistic Institute podcast.

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The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.

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So my approach to theology is, I suppose, somewhat democratic, or if you think it's disorderly and chaotic,

I believe the technical term for a democracy that's devolved as an

occlocracy, so maybe it's oclocratic. But I think that by virtue of faith, one has the

wherewithal to do theology. So in certain academic settings, theology can become a kind of highbrow

affair where, you know, people use jargon as a way by which to

forbid the entry of the non-initiate. And then they kind of spin out arguments as a formal exercise

without real consideration for the truth of the matter or the way in which that truth registers in

our humanity. So it's important to me that in the practice of

theology, we come to a discovery that not only does God, you know, know us and love us, but that we can

know and love God so that we have a real kind of competence as agents, as protagonists of our own

theological and theological life. And so what I'm going to do in this

talk isn't necessarily going to be engaging academic debates about the question of predestination.

So much is furnishing you with principles and arguments with which you yourself can think through

and discuss the matter.

And then if you have difficulties where you feel like this issue is like satisfactorily clear to me

or it's not satisfactorily kind of settled for me in a way that I find troubling

in a way that I find disquieting, will then just identify one of the men

dressed in white.

...