What I'm going to try to talk about tonight, hopefully, relatively briefly, is the question, vexing and contested question of whether the human person is naturally religious.

And I'm going to begin, the first half of the talk, I'm going to look at two opposed views, opposed to one another, both of which I'll disagree with. And in the second half

of the talk, I'm going to look at a view from Thomas Aquinas, which unsurprisingly I'm going to

recommend. So you have a rough outline. You don't have to refer to the outline, but it gives

you some notes to look back on and don't have to refer to the outline, but it gives you some notes to

look back on and also some references to some of the important books mentioned.

So let's start the story with St. Bonaventure, who is the great scholastic doctor of the Franciscan

order in the 13th century in medieval Paris, who is commenting on Peter Lombard's sentences,

which was a great text of theology that everyone commented on to get a doctorate

in the 13th century at the University of Paris.

And he asks a question, which is a standard question that everyone needs to respond to,

is the virtue of religion, basically, I think, let's see it, is the virtue of religion a supernatural

virtue?

Now, what that means is, is the act of being religious fundamentally motivated by grace?

Can you be rightly religious without grace?

Is grace the presupposition of the act of being religious?

Now Bonaventure, in his own sort of discrete way, argues that it is a supernatural virtue

and it is principally by charity that human beings are able to be religious.

At least this is the way I'm reading Bonaventure.

The argument there being that it is the infused grace of Christ and the charity of Christ poured into our heart by the Holy Spirit

that allows us to be religious in a rightly ordered way.

Now that is obviously a very theological answer.

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