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So yesterday, we talked about humility as being an integral part of knowing oneself truly, which is to say knowing oneself as God does.

And today I'm going to talk more specifically about humility, what it is, and how it comes about, as Thomas understands it.

And, you know, there's no real, I don't think, real merit in understanding how Thomas thinks of the really of humility and the relationship

between the fear of God, unless his understanding of those ideas are rooted in scripture.

And I want to suggest to you this morning that, that what Thomas has to say about these things,

humility on the one hand, fear of God and the other will help you to understand many passages

in scripture that speak to this set of topics.

Let's begin with just a couple of quotations here.

What I want to show you first is the way in which Thomas's ideas are rooted not only

in scripture, but in the interpretation of scripture as it's attested in his predecessors.

So I won't go through all these, but let's just begin with a couple.

So we have here in the sains of the fathers that a certain brother asks Abacronius,

how can a man become humble?

This is a young desert monk asking an elder of the desert how you can become humble.

And the old man speaking in the simple language of the desert says only through the fear of God.

This notion is attested and then transmitted, mediated to the Latin West principally through John Cashin, though we find it independently also in Augustine.

But Cassian says here in the third quotation,

...