Luther and Aquinas on Grace and Justification | Dr. Nathaniel Peters

The Thomistic Institute

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

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 20 November 2024

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This lecture was given on March 13th, 2024, at New York University.

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

About the Speaker:

Nathaniel Peters is the Director of the Morningside Institute. He received his B.A. from Swarthmore College in linguistics, with a focus on French and Latin, his M.T.S. from the University of Notre Dame, and his Ph.D. in theology from Boston College. He has published articles and reviews on many topics in historical theology and ethics and serves as a contributing editor at Public Discourse.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tomistic Institute podcast.
0:06.8	Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.
0:13.1	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.
0:19.1	To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at
0:22.5	to mystic institute.org. Tonight, we're going to look at the thought of Luther and Aquinas on grace
0:30.3	and justification, trying to get at the heart of the disagreements that provoked the Protestant
0:36.1	Reformation and that still divide Catholics and Protestants
0:39.7	today. I want to start by just asking, what is justification and why would it be so controversial
0:45.6	in case that's not something that is already kind of on your radar? Why does it matter for these
0:51.6	authors? Why should it matter for us? Justification matters because human beings are made for perfect union with God, but A, we're not God,
1:03.4	and B, we are sinful, which means that we do evil and we separate ourselves from God.
1:09.8	Justification matters because we want to be happy, but happiness requires union with God,
1:17.0	and union with God requires a kind of perfection that we lack.
1:23.0	And it's also the case, then, that our sin is a moral offense against God.
1:29.0	It's an offense against his goodness.
1:37.9	It's an injustice that cries out against his justice. And something has to be done about it. Something has to happen so that I, sinful and imperfect, can be forgiven by and united to a good and perfect God.
1:49.5	Both Luther and Aquinas see this as kind of the problem behind the question of justification,
1:56.2	and indeed see this as the driving problem behind the life and work of Christ and of the Christian life.
2:03.9	The words incarnation, life, death, and resurrection, as we'll celebrate in a few weeks,
2:10.3	bring about, or the words life, death, and resurrection in the person of Jesus, bring about
2:14.5	salvation objectively in history. And justification applies this work
2:21.0	subjectively to individual persons. So Luther and Aquinas are both concerned with questions like,
	...

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