Episode 126: Interview with Dr. Jacob Wood

Timestamps:

5:42- Barth, Balthasar, and the Doctrine of Analogy

14:32- Aquinas and Creation

23:34- Life on the Farm and Ordered Perfection

42:17- Imitating Christ as Mediator

Episode Transcription

Charles Kim 0:00

Hello, and welcome to a history of Christian theology. My name is Chad Kim. With me this week will be Dr. Jacob wood. Dr. Wood writes often on nature and grace, especially with respect to Hungary to lubok. And Thomas Aquinas, and he has a new volume coming out with Catholic University Press, which will also discuss Hans urs von balsa czar, who we've talked about occasionally in the podcast. But this conversation that we have is especially trying to talk about how the life of the farm can be related to theology. And so we talked a little bit about his experience living on a farm in Ohio, near where he is professor at the University of Steubenville. And what that experience has been like for him and his family. So I hope you'll enjoy this foray into some slightly different topics than we normally cover on the podcast, but something that is near and dear to my own heart. We thank you all for your ratings and reviews, and for any kind of comments that you give on the podcast on iTunes. And so please do leave a rating and review if you if you can. Also feel free to contact us on Facebook, or on our website now at www dot A History of Christian theology.com. Thanks for listening. And without further ado, my conversation with Dr. Jacob wood. So today I have with me Dr. Jacob wood. And we've had Dr. Wood on the podcast before to talk about his book to stir a restless heart, Thomas Aquinas and Henri de Lubac on nature, grace and the desire for God. And it was a very good conversation, it was much more academic much more technical. And but the one thing that it sort of deals with is this question of nature, and then how you know how humans relate to our own nature, and then how Grace helps us acquire the desire for God. And or helps us arrive at and sort of this sort of thing. But I was following him on Facebook, and he released a sort of a very different kind of piece on his life on the farm. And it's turned to durable goods, as he calls them. So I've asked him to come on to talk about that. You also though, sent me a one of your own essays that's going to be coming out in a larger volume. So could you tell me about the new volume that's coming out first, and then maybe we can kind of chip away at this question of, Okay, what does it look like for theologian to turn to the farm?

Jacob W. Wood 2:30

Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. So the new volume is a co edited volume of essays on Aquinas and Baltus are and as any believing Catholic theologian knows, these are two of the really shining lights of theologians looking to study the faith but also to live their faith at the same time. The trouble is, folks don't always see eye to eye Tomoson fault as Aryans it's kind of like, it's kind of like a sibling rivalry almost. Although sometimes that rivalry turns into a bit of a melee pit, which we can joke about, but it's actually not great for the public witness of the church. Right? I mean, the sayings of the scriptures apply to theologians too, right? That well, they will know you by your love for one another. And sometimes we get into friendly banter. Other times, we get into some pretty ugly, unfriendly arguments. And so you know, St. Paul warns us against that kind of factionalism at the beginning of First Corinthians. And so the goal of this volume is to try to build a more irenic peaceful relationship between Thomas and Valters, Aryans, by bringing seven scholars from each side, if you will, together, each to talk about, you know, pairs of essays on different topics. So my own contribution is in theological anthropology. And when I was beginning to think about how I was going to approach that essay, I thought, well, when we're talking about knowing human nature, and Tomoson, Baltimoreans, the the elephant in the room is the doctrine of analogy. So I started working on the doctrine of analogy, and Aquinas and trying to figure out how I could connect that up with a theological doctrine because one of the big arguments between Thomas and bolt is RPMs, on the question of analogies, does analogy start in philosophy or does analogy start theology? And so as a Tomoson, myself, I was looking to see, well, is there a theological setting that we could discuss analogy in and kind of go from there to kind of build a pathway build a bridge, and what I found in Aquinas as writing was that it was connected up. The Aquinas actually connects up the doctrine of analogy with the doctrine of creation. And so that got me thinking about the doctrine of creation, the relationship between creation and analogy, and I realized, wait a sec. Again, this is like the life I'm trying to live here. Right? It's this life of, of trying to raise up the whole of the natural world into the knowledge and love of God through analogy. And so I have a friend in psychology here, my colleague who says, you know, research is me search, right? And this keeps happening, like I unwittingly stumbled upon this whole theological exploration in the Middle Ages of the life I was trying to live. And so they ended up building upon some of the things I had been thinking about in this essay I wrote for public discourse about life on the farm.

Charles Kim 5:42

Very good. Well, there's a lot of stuff that in what you have just said, for the introduction, as far as like my podcast is concerned, we haven't done very much on both as our we've maybe occasionally mentioned the name Bart. So Bart and Balthazar kind of go together. But we've not we've really not tackled the doctrine of analogy at all. Can you? Can you say something quickly? About I mean, so even even as I said that, I was like, I can't believe this phrase is coming out of my mouth. I mean, we I tried to read what is a Ciavarella with, with Greg Kaplan here at SLU? And like, I mean, I read it, I don't know how much I understood. But, you know, so the analog via Entus, and all of this. But, yeah, so like, what are we, in some, in some sense? I don't know any way that you can give us a kind of purchase on what we're talking about when we're talking about the doctrine of analogy.

Jacob W. Wood 6:39

Wow. Okay. Yeah. Let's try this. So basically, from step one, we human beings are finite, and God is infinite. Right. So in the infinitude of divine being, God transcends our finite concepts, and he transcends our finite ideas and our finite speech. So the question in the doctrine of analogy is, how do we address how do we talk about God at all. And there's sort of two poles within which we can, we can move as Aquinas sets them out in the premium course, there's University, which means that when I when I speak about God, I'm speaking about I'm using words that I draw from creation, and I'm using them in exactly the same way to mean exactly the same thing. And there's equity paucity, which is the polar opposite, that I still draw my words from creation. But when I talk about God, I mean, something completely different. The trouble with those two poles is that on the one hand, when, if we're engaging in university, we run the risk of some, subjecting God to creaturely, calm, calm, excuse me, to creaturely ideas and creaturely being and so God ends up not transcending creaturely, being at all, at least in our minds. The danger with the university is that we actually end up not saying anything about God at all. So the classic, you know, classic teaching example, not classic isn't like going back to the Middle Ages would be like the word. Good, right? So I, you know, doughnuts are good. I love donuts, right? And God is good. And I love God. So do I mean, you know, if it was University, I would be saying, God is good, and exactly the same way that a donut is good, which that can't possibly be true, because I'm not saying that, like, God tastes good, and sprinkles on top. But if I was engaging in complete Aqua velocity, I would be when I say God is good, what I would really mean is that God is, and a doughnut is good. But I have no idea what it means to say that God is good. And so in the Middle Ages, there were some very, very serious discussions about this and a kind of hashing out of the doctrine of analogy, in the 12th and 13th centuries. And it took place heavily under the influence of pseudo Dionysius. And in the Divine Name pseudo Dionysius kind of lays out three ways that we can go about speaking about God, one is the via negativa the negative way there's our apparatus ism, one is the via cazalla status. So speaking of God as creator of the things that we find around us, and one is the Vita M and NCAA speaking is God speaking of Goddess super eminently above all the things that he has created. And, you know, I should probably just stop there before I go any further because if you tread any further you wade into a minefield. Right? Right. But so the basically the doctrine of analogy is about sorting out that that bag of questions about how we speak about God and how we how we do that without lapsing into university and subjecting God to creatures or equity paucity and cutting off our ability to speak or think about God at all.

Charles Kim 9:59

Hmm, Yeah. And that yeah, though it's very, very helpful. I reminds me I had a professor in my M div who was a bartender, but he would always use this phrase that he kind of coined, but but from Iran as God is like light, but unlike any light that we know. So he tried, he tried to straddle it kind of by goodbye going that direction. But, yeah, so there's just one thing that came to take came to mind right away.

Jacob W. Wood 10:29

Yeah, for sure. So, um, you know, one of the biggest challenges in the doctrine of analogy, and I'll take this phrase from Alan Torrance that I had the privilege of bartender scholar, who I had the privilege of taking theology, one on one with back in the day, and he would always speak of the direction of the pressure of interpretation, like, which way is is that pressure moving if were imagined, like a set of plumbing, right? Is it because the the danger or the worry about the doctrine of analogy, in Bart and and bargains in general and then also in many bolters, Aryans as well? Is this question of, well, are we imposing our ideas or concepts or limitations on God? Or are we allowing God to reveal Himself to us, as he is? And so, you know, one of the, one of the challenges there is to kind of sort out the, the extent to which you can, you can have God revealing himself in the created order, without lapsing into a kind of feed atheism, right, and still preserving this idea that God can be naturally known which it speaks of and St. Paul speaks of in Romans 120. And the first Vatican Council actually defines as a dogma of the Catholic faith, right, that, that God can be nationally known is a dogma, the fates kind of ironic. Yeah, there you have it, right. So that's where that's how I ended up actually in the doctrine of creation. Because what I found was that the medieval theologians, whereas obviously, they had a very robust understanding of Revelation, properly speaking in Scripture and tradition, they also have this equally robust understanding of the way in which God actually chooses to give himself to be known through creation, which is a little bit different than saying, I'm walking around in creation, and I find stuff and I draw ideas from this. And I impose those ideas on God, if God actually wills himself to be known to an extent or in a particular way, in creation, that I'm not imposing my ideas on God, when I know him and illogically through it, even if I'm doing that in a kind of philosophical manner. I'm actually doing what God wills to be done with creation. And that I would say, is probably the biggest theological insight that the medievals bring to this whole question of analogy. But it's often lost in the contemporary debate, when we're going back and forth between say, both as Aryans who are barbarians, who are concerned about, you know, are imposing ideas on God and Thomas, who are saying, no, no, it works philosophically like this. Let me just show you how the doctrine of analogy work safe.

Charles Kim 13:21

Yeah, well, and you begin your essay that's going to be in this volume, kind of, like, setting out the debate over Christ, and how this revelation works about who Christ is, and then kind of turn it to this, say, what can we learn from creation? And I like this phrase from Matthew levering, you talked about where he's, we're, I guess, it's kind of a paraphrase, but creation itself is Theo FANUC. So there's a way to as a way of kind of describing what you just said there, about how looking into the world you can see what God desires that you know about God through creation. But so I liked that phrase, and it made me wonder, in your other article, you talk about the pig, and the pig roast and you did and the fire of of peach, peach wood, or sorry, smoked it in, in peach wood, and you said it was unlike any other pork or bacon that you've ever had. So is that feel FANTIC? Is that God? God, you're learning something there?

Jacob W. Wood 14:32

Well, yes, actually, that, you know, there's there's sort of tongue in cheek way in which it's literally out of this world. But there's also a more serious way, right. So the, the insight that I gathered from Aquinas and from the medieval is more generally, is that creation isn't just there as something for us to use as we as we want to or as we need it. It's that God has a purpose for creation. And the purpose of creation is to participate in the knowledge and love of Him, except that all the material creation around us can't know and love God on its own, it doesn't have an intellect with which to do it. In fact, in all of creation, only human beings have both an intellect and a will, and a material component as well, we have a body, which means that unlike the angels were this kind of linchpin where this hinge around which, you know, the, the perfection of the entire material order depends, because God wills for that for the material creation to know and love him. But it can only do that if it participates in our knowing and loving God. And when we know and love God through creation, we fulfill God's will for creation and for ourselves, by drawing it up into a participation in our knowing and loving God. And that can be applied to Krishna in so many different ways. I mean, in the most, like, explicit and obvious way, right? It would be like in the sacraments, okay, we take water, or we think even bread and wine is the most poignant example, that's transubstantiated, into the body and blood of Jesus. So there's creation being taken God, but it radiates outward from that, right? I mean, anytime we do anything, where we know and love God, through creation, it offers us an opportunity to give this gift to creation, of knowing, loving God. So it could be something as simple as going on a hike, you know, and praising God for the for the beauty around you. But it can also be something you know, sort of between those poles, like in your domestic church, in your family, doing things that build up your family, and build up the knowledge and love of God among your family. So this peach would smoke bacon that I talked about in the in the public discourse article. I mean, we grew the trees together, we prune the trees together, we raised the pig together, we butcher the pig together, we smoked the bacon together. And so all of all of these things were done. In the love of our family. Yes, and the love of the world around us, yes, but all of that illumined by the love of God among us. And so, in a really, you know, profound way, the glory, the earthly glory of this peach with smoked bacon, which still makes my mouth watered thinking about it right. You know, is is, is is evocative of a much deeper sense of the way in which creation and working with creation can build up the love of God around us. And yes, it leads to the, you know, when we, when we live this way, it leads to this perfection of creation around us that when it participates in the knowledge and love of God, great things are made. So you can think of like, the medieval is like, what, how did they perfect creation, they built these beautiful churches that still stand today. You know, and just marvelous examples of Gothic architecture. So I was talking about, you know, how this way of approaching creation was really hashed out in the 12th and 13th centuries. Well, notre DOM dickory. I mean, you know, notwithstanding the horrendous fire that had suffered, and thank God they're rebuilding, has been standing since the mid 20th century, they built this church in the middle of hashing out that doctrine. And I don't think that that's accident. And anytime we're thinking about the swing creation, we can't help but approach it in that kind of perfective way. And we build and make beautiful and glorious things, and beautiful and glorious things evoke for us, the beauty and wonder of God, and they're drawn up into our praise of him and our love of Him.

Charles Kim 18:45

Yeah, very well said. It's, it's kind of interesting. You know, just like we started off this conversation, I was trying to tie it to this, this sort of article where you are kind of more academically delving into the distinctions and these sort of camps, and it can feel very, you know, what's the word like, you know, abstract, or it can feel very, kind of in your own head. But it's interesting that for you, it's to some extent that it's not divorced at all, from reality from reality, which actually, as I use that word, I hate that word. It's not divorced at all from creation. Let me say that, because I'm not actually sure that creation is reality in the strictest sense. But, um, but yeah, but you know, we might think that Aquinas could seem like a guy who was divorced from living in his body. Like, if you just read a lot of the Summa Theologica or something, you might think Well, man, does this guy ever just go out and eat a good piece of bacon? And, and so what you're trying to say it seems like is that that's absolutely not the case. It's almost the inverse like these people were very aware of living in their bodies and very aware, you know, Aquinas is very aware and this sort of even these medieval debates, they're, they're actually working out these theological ideas in concert with how they how they lived in the world.

Jacob W. Wood 20:10

Yeah, that that is that is very well said. You know, okay, so first up Aquinas it's true that he had like if you read white sciples book on Aquinas, you know, Terrell is the standard Well, Terrell is the standard reference texts now on Aquinas. I have a friend and colleague Brian coral down at the University of St. Thomas and Houston who points out I think very correctly, that though it's it trails really like a compliment to why cycle of he updates the scholarship, but the story the real like, story of Aquinas is still in why cycle and why cycles, the one that gives you all the tidbits from the angiography. So, you know, why disciple gives us to understand that Aquinas was led a very abstracted life. You know, he could enter into these long periods of abstract thought and contemplation to the point that he didn't even realize what was going on around him and some pretty hilarious ways. But, you know, if you when you read Aquinas his words carefully, these little bits of appreciation for creation, I mean, there's the abstract stuff, but there's also the very concrete stuff. I'll read you an example, actually, and this is from the Summa Chertsey APARs, question 72 Article Two. And it's this question on sacrament, confirmation, excuse me, and whether Chrism is fitting matter for the sacrament. And the third objection says further oil is used as the matter of this sacrament for the purpose of anointing, but any oil do for anointing for instance, oil made from nuts, and from anything else, therefore, not only olive oil should be used for the sacrament, and Aquinas response and bear in mind points was Italian. By birth, these properties of oil by reason of which it symbolizes the Holy Spirit, are to be found in olive oil rather than in any other oil. In fact, the olive tree itself though, being an evergreen signifies the refreshing and merciful operation of the Holy Spirit, more oil. Moreover, this oil that's olive oil is called oil properly and is very much in use wherever it is to be had. And whatever other liquid is so called, is called oil derives its name from its likeness to this oil. Nor are the latter commonly used unless it be the supply for the want of olive oil. Therefore, it is that this oil alone is used for this and certain other sacraments. So we were joking, talking about before about, like, you know, things that are just out of this world good. Aquinas considers olive oil to be so fragrant, so delicious, that he treats it in relation to other oils, like the primary analogous that all other oil is called oil in reference to olive oil, because olive oil is just so good. And, you know, okay, so here's a man who obviously spent a lot of time and abstraction all the time fasting, but, you know, deep down inside somewhere, you can, you can take the Italian out of Italy, right? But you can't take you can't take the love of olive oil out of the Italian because he has a deep appreciation as deep understanding of olive trees, olive oil, and, and so on, so forth. And he relates that very pointedly, to the holy to the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Charles Kim 23:34

Yeah, that's, that's really good. I like it. Well, so could you, you know, this might get a little more autobiographical. But how long have you been living on your farm? And I mean, we're seeing one way I think it sounds like very concretely which this is kind of, well, this is in the background of the the article on, on, on the doctrine of creation. And it's very in the forefront and your article from the public discourse. But yeah, could you just say, like, how long have you been living on the farm? And any other ways in which you found that, you know, either that work complements your academic work? Or are there times in which you feel pulled in one direction or the other? Like, you know, either? Why am I on the farm? Because I've got so much writing to do and teaching to do or maybe why am I doing this writing and teaching? I've got so much work to do on the farm?

Jacob W. Wood 24:22

Oh my gosh, yes. So we've been there for seven years. Okay. And we've done it, you know, baptism by fire for sure. I grew up, as I mentioned, about five miles from Manhattan. So this was not my everyday experience. I mean, when we got to our farm, our old you know, 19 century farmhouse, I didn't even know how to change a lock. And I always had a black thumb. And I had plenty of pets growing up and never any farm animals. So we just kind of jumped into it. And it's interesting. You talk about living like what you're talking about. out, you know, when you get out there and you start doing this, you realize that sometimes there can be like a total disconnect between those two things. So I can sit here and I can talk about creation. And I'm enjoying, you know, this comfortable environment here where I've got my coffee and my coffee maker over there, you can't see it off camera, I have all my books around me and the air conditioning is blasting and it feels wonderful, okay, like, I'm good, uncomfortable, great. Um, okay, now let's step outside where it's approaching 80 degrees, I think it's going to be about 86 today, and let's go work out in the garden, where there are no trees, there is no shade, where you're going to sweat, and you're going to toil and it's not going to feel good. And in fact, Genesis three tells you explicitly, because of the fall, this is going to feel bad, it's going to be hard. But it's also, it's also in a way going to be redemptive. And you realize that sometimes, in you know, me, when we lead, when we lead a more academic life, as I obviously do, we can become disconnected from the world around us. Now, the thing is, every time we go to the supermarket, though, there is someone who is not disconnected from the world around us, where we wouldn't have food, we just simply not eat unless somebody grew that food and somebody was was was, was forging that connection. And so what we found early on was that it can be, you know, it can be a lot of hard work a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, to, to reconnect those dots in your own life, between, you know, just the ordinary, everyday, daily, everyday daily grind, and the office and the natural world when we become accustomed to it, and yet, the mutual enrichment of these two was profound. So we've talked a bit already today about how, you know, theological approach, theological understanding of the doctrine of creation in the Middle Ages is kind of like informs the work that I do on the farm. But let's talk the other way for a minute about how what goes on there can inform the pologize and the first of all, for just a great place to think about, about about theology a great place to contemplate God. You

Charles Kim 27:20

know, okay, so for the podcast listeners, we did just have a little technical difficulty. So I'm going to ask Jacob to restate this. So he's just talking about the way that theology theology has informed his work on the farm. But he just said that he was going to tell us a little bit more about how this farm life could help him understand his theology or inform the way that he does theology.

Jacob W. Wood 27:43

Yeah, definitely. Both actually. So first, just in terms of, you know, general theologizing, um, you know, theology is the pursuit of Christ as wisdom. And, you know, as we know, to pursue any kind of human perfection requires virtue. And when you're sitting here in the office doing the daily grind, it's actually easy to get into some really unvirtuous habits, right? So you're sitting in front of your computer, and what do you got in front of you, you got, you got instant messaging, you have social media, you have the news, you have online shopping, you have really everything is there ready to distract you from the life of the mind and the life of the Spirit. So some of my best theologizing has been standing outside, at a stump of wood, split and firewood, to heat our home with our wood burning furnace. There's no distractions there. It's just, it's just a it's just an opportunity to focus and peace and quiet. There's no social media, there's no smartphones, there's no nothing. There's just an opportunity to think, clearly, to engage in those intellectual virtues and also to focus on the life of the mind and the life of the Spirit. So sometimes, just even being in that setting, can help pare down the modern distractions that, that that that invite us to unvirtuous habits, when we when we shouldn't be engaging in the life of the mind or life and spirit. But even more profound, I think, has been coming to understand our relationship to creation and adoption of analogy, by understanding a little bit more about what farming entails. Now, if you look at the gospel, our Lord is always using farming metaphors. And I feel like I know for myself growing up, I approached those farming metaphors, like I approached children's literature, which is also usually drawn from the life of the farm, but I had no idea what any of that meant. I'm just like, oh, there's a cute chicken or a cute bunny rabbit or horse or whatever.

But I was I was learning about grazing animals from a local farmer. And she was pointing out that in you know, there's there's a kind of I ordered perfection that comes about through using grazing animals. And here's how it works. You have a field, okay, the field is full of grass and weeds. And it just kind of grows up into wildflowers and weeds. And that's fine and great, but you can't really do anything with a field that's overgrown and grass and weeds. The definitely cannot produce any human edible food from it, unless like some kind of edible weed would have happened to grow there. Otherwise, it's just kind of, it's pretty in itself, but kind of wasted space. So what what can you do? Well, you can put a grazing animal on that on that field, and a grazing animal can eat grass or brush depending on the species. And then they turn it into something you can eat, whether it's an elk, or whether it's meat. Okay, that's interesting. So already, we're starting to see like, there's a transformation occurring and kind of connecting up of us with that particular plot of land and a transformation by which that plot of land is raised up to our use. Okay, that's great, except that there's a problem. grazing animals in themselves tend not to do a great job of field management, right? Goats are a wonderful example of this. I mean, I know in Scripture, they're like a symbol of the reprobate. That's because they have quite, phenomenally ornery temperament. And they're wild and crazy. But here's what they do. When you put them in a field, they eat the things they like best, and they eat them off. And it's kind of like, you know, if you were just like, turned loose at a buffet, what would you do? Right? That's what any of us do. It's like, Oh, I'm gonna go get all the things I like, right? Okay, so you eat all the things you like. And then those are all gone, but you're still hungry. So what do you do? Well, you eat the things you like, second best. And that's what goats do. And they do all that and they eat all those. So they end up actually destroying all the things that they like. And the things that they like, by the way, are the things that are best for them. So they destroy all those things. And then all that grows in their place are all the things that they don't like and aren't particularly good for them. So you started out trying to put this animal in this field, because you want to draw, you want to connect the field up with you and raise it up to a higher perfection, but you actually just destroyed it. Oops, what are you going to? How are you going to fix that problem? The answer is rotational grazing. So you, you enclose the animal, you give it some structure, and, and you seem to take away a little bit of its freedom, but actually, what you end up doing is perfecting the animal and the field at the same time. So you enclose the animal in a smaller space, and you have it stripped down all the all the vegetation in that space, then you move the pen that the animals in over to the next space, and then they stripped down that space, and you go all the way around the paddock or field until the first area has grown back again. And then you put them in that area again. And what that does is it preserves the variety of vegetation in the field, and make sure that the animal itself gets a variety of, of vegetation, healthy variety of vegetation. And so the field doesn't just turn into some horrible weeds, the animal gets well nourished, and then the animal can turn the field into some into a useful product for a human being. And so that the field is perfected, the animals perfected the human being is perfected, the whole of that weary of creation ends up being perfected by a human being imposing order through the animal. Right. And so there's a there's a reaching down from the human being to offer a higher perfection to the lower creation. And then there is the lower creation itself being drawn up into this higher perfection and what is that? If not the whole Dionysian hierarchy. From that's that's described in the celestial hierarchy, the names this, this is what pseudo Dinis is talking about. This is what the medievals are looking at. And this is what we've become disconnected from. But I think there's a profound sense in which this is exactly what God intends for us to do. What does it mean to till and keep the garden if not to confer a perfection upon the garden, so that the garden can be raised up to a higher level, but also offer us its fruits and its gifts. And sure, after the fall, there is a lot of blood, sweat and tears associated in that. That's, that's just the nature of the fall. But there's also this there's a deep redemptive opportunity, that if we offer that blood, sweat and tears up to God, if we engage in that toil in that labor, that we can become participants in the perfecting of the world around us. And it also has a protective effect on ourselves as well. So I never understood the Dionysian hierarchy of being so well, until I started rotationally grazing goats in the field outside my house

Charles Kim 34:39

Yeah, well and my my similar example although much smaller is I was reading window berries Oh, what is it the UN cannot get? The name is just escaping me. Oh, well, it's anyway it's one of his essays on culturing of America maybe or something like that. But anywhere, he talks about the sort of the threefold pattern of production of like a growing something of concern of eating something, but then returning what you've eaten. And so, you know, he basically talks about how in American life, you know, we, we've so separated ourselves from the farm, that we consume things in our house, and then we think there's waste that just has to go somewhere else. And we don't even really consider that, you know, sort of composting or, like, we have chickens in our little small, you know, like, we have a small plot of land, we have chickens. So like, when we cut up the leftovers from our dinner, or anything that my kids don't eat, they go back to the chickens, or they can go into a compost bin. And so the chickens will lay some eggs. And so there's a cyclical and sort of, there's a reciprocity, amongst our living together. I mean, just again, it's a very small way we, we still shop at grocery stores and other things, but at least in that one respect, we've had a much better understanding of how all of these things can work in concert, rather than then then work kind of against one another. Which is, you know, that's kind of Barry's point is that it seems like the modern world has forced all these things to work against each other, rather than work together.

Jacob W. Wood 36:22

Oh, for sure. 100%. So you brought up the example of chickens, and I'll just, I'll just throw in the example of pigs as well. Just like chickens only bigger in this respect, that, you know, every time you think about scraping that plate of food into the trash, you know, and look, I have six children, okay? They can waste a lot of food, if they don't like dinner, or they're feeling a little unwell that evening. Like that's normal. But what's also normal is not to throw that food in the trash. But to as you put it, to recycle that food into other food. So when we first got pigs, it you know, we would sit there and use faced with this extra food that was maybe could otherwise be wasted. I mean, maybe it could also be composted. Okay. But then you think, Well, what can we do with this? Well, we can make bacon with this. And what we mean by that is, I can go out tonight when I do the chores, and I can throw that in the pig trough, and the pigs will eat it and they will be nourished. I mean, there's folks around if you have like a good connection, you know, good if you have like dairy, for example, you can take the dairy and you can feed it to the pigs, if you know, or if there's a brewery around, you know, oftentimes, like spent grain will be will be fed to cows. So there's lots of ways in which Yeah, absolutely, things that would ordinarily just get thrown out, can definitely be recycled and turned into food. And so the amount of waste shrinks and strength and strength. Now there's one other thing I want to say though, which is that we can also I think it also helps if we're realistic. Like folks who who want to want to get reconnected with the land. I think sometimes we feel bad like if we don't do enough, like so I had, I remember one time having this conversation about homesteading, somebody heard I was homesteading? Like, oh, are you off the grid? No, definitely not. Yeah, I totally respect that. But I think we also have to be be realistic about the, you know, what, what are what is our own state in life? What are our own demands? You know, I'm a university professor, I'm not going to be a full time farmer, because that's not what God has called me to be. And that's okay. I'm just trying to do the best that I can to kind of reconnect with the book of nature as much St. Bonaventure calls it alongside the book of Scripture. And these two things have to fit together, I'm not going to abandon the theological work that God has called me to do, to farm, although, as you mentioned, that tension yeah, sometimes it feels like oh my gosh, there's so much to do over in the farming or so Oh, there's so much to do at work, I'm gonna end up neglecting this thing, and that you have to find a kind of balance. You know, and sometimes when I talk to people, they're like, Oh, well, I only do I only have a garden, or I only have some chickens, or My garden is only so big. It's like, well, you know, compared to other people, my garden is only so big compared to other people. My flock of chickens is always you know, is small. It's like, there's another friend who says, you know, there's as many goals as there are families, right? Because each each one of us has to discern, you know, what works with what God has called us to? I don't think there's anybody on the planet who could say they could live a life completely disconnected from nature and from the natural world. Are you going to live in a bubble somewhere? I mean, like I said before, so otherwise somebody is is forging this connection on your behalf to the extent that you lead a life that's disconnected to it. But that doesn't mean we all have to become sustenance farmers I you know, people I think can glorify that life and it is a beautiful thing and I am just floored by the people I see doing this. I have nothing but the utmost respect. And I feel home before them, but on the on the other hand, I mean, have to remember, you know, that is a very, that is a full time life, right? You can be assessed in as farmer if that's what God is calling you to do. Go for it. Um, but you will spend all of your time doing that. And remember that, you know, traditionally farming is not a nine to five job. You can't look at God and say, well, it's break time God. And God looks at you and says, Well, the peas need to be weeded. Right. Farming is a sunup to sundown kind of thing. And sometimes after sundown, so we should just be mindful of, you know, trying to find a good balance within you know, the life that the life that God has, had, God has called us to, we don't all need to jump off the grid. That's a beautiful thing. But what I think the real goal is, is to be is to reconnect with the book of nature. However, God is calling us to do that so that in our state in life, we can, you know, in whatever way he calls us to enter into the perfection of ourselves and of the world around us by knowing and loving him. We don't want to abandon the work that he's called us to just Just raise it up to a higher perfection.

Charles Kim 41:12

Yeah, so do you find that there's a well, I'll just say it this way I have been struck at so I teach at Kendrick Glennon seminary, sometimes like some Latin and Greek for them. And when I first started teaching there a few years ago, I was like, surprised at how many men come to the seminary from farms and from farm families from around the US, primarily Missouri, but you know, sometimes North Dakota, South Dakota few different places. And I think I was surprised by that, because I was at a Protestant Seminary in New Jersey, a historically Protestant seminary, Princeton seminary,

Jacob W. Wood 41:54

Jersey. And I own state. There you

Charles Kim 41:58

go. Yeah, I lived there for three years, the Garden State, I didn't know why it was called that. But it is, like, it's beautiful in places. It's it really is. But I, I'm glad I'm I mean, I'm also glad I don't live there full time. But that's another.

Jacob W. Wood 42:14

Yeah, go on.

Charles Kim 42:17

But I was just, you know, in a lot of the Protestant seminaries that I was aware of, almost nobody was coming from the farms. And, and so I just wonder, like, what, what does that say something about, like a connection. So you use the phrase, the Catholic land movement? Is there something about the Catholic faith or your understanding of your own faith? Which, which sort of I don't know, somehow Catholicism actually seems to connect more deeply to the land and your experience? I quoted Wendell Berry, he's Baptist. But you know, take that for what for what you will but um, but yeah, I don't know. Ya

Jacob W. Wood 42:52

know, there's a lot of Catholic Wendell Berry fans. Yeah. And, and, you know, I think I think the answer your question was, is absolutely. And it has to do with the, I think, two things, the Catholic understanding of mediation, and the Catholic understanding of grace. So, Catholics believe that, you know, Grace heals our human nature and makes us participants in the work, active participants and cooperates in the work of God. And we tend to think of that, like, when we're doing our CIA or something, obviously, we're going to focus on how we cooperate in God's work in our own lives. But there is this much deeper tradition of cooperating in God's work over the entirety of creation, that humanity's participation in Providence, like working on ourselves is just the first step it actually encompasses the entire cosmos around us. Now, in the, in the western theological tradition, you know, some place that we used to focus on that was in sacramental theology. So if you look at somebody like you of Saint Victor, you know, the reflection on the sacraments, just branches out and reflection to Sacramentals and the entirety of the cosmic order being sacramental, but that kind of got lost along the way somewhere. So we focus on the sacraments as these like, sometimes we focus on the sacrament as these individual discrete events where we lose the connection with the broader creation. Whereas in the sometimes that gets preserved a little more clearly in the eastern Catholic tradition. You know, think about drawing on the eastern fathers, like St. Maximus the Confessor has this very, very keen understanding of like Christ, as the center of creation and man as a microcosm of the the Macro Cosmos and the entirety of the cosmos, finding us perfection man, and specifically in the human nature of Jesus Christ. So there's this participative element to Catholicism whereby, you know, we don't just participate in the perfection of ourselves, but we participate in the perfection of the entirety of the world around us. And I Actually, you know that in the West, I think the greatest Reviver of that understanding of the cosmos is actually Pope Francis. Now, Pope Francis, I know at times can be a divisive figure in theological circles, right? And I'm not looking to go there. Now, on the let me just say this, if you take a look at the encyclical, Laudato Si, and you read past the comments about air conditioning, which is I think, where a lot of people stopped, okay, I don't want to talk about air conditioning. I love air conditioning, okay. But if you read to the end of lodato, Z, it's amazing, because he actually revived this medieval cosmology that that I've been talking about. And he cites it now he's he's looking at reading through the lens of St. Bonaventure. Right, who very, who gives us this language of the book of nature alongside the book of Scripture. And if you look in the footnotes, he's citing the Bonaventure in text directly. And so we get in these fights about like policy, and air conditioning. But if we could put those to one side for just a moment, like, here's the Holy Father offering us a revival of medieval cosmology, which is deeply integrated into the Catholic tradition as a whole, east and west and inviting us, to inviting us to enter into that understanding of creation again. And so yes, okay, we have our arguments about the air conditioning, but if we can get beyond those, there's something much deeper in the logic of Catholicism, that invites us to interact with creation in this way. And when we understand our mediatory role in the perfection of creation, it's much easier, I think, even if we only understand that intuitively, on the farm, to enter into a mediatory role in the priesthood, because as the Orthodox theologian, Johnson Zula, still, you know, tells us like, Adam and Eve, were intended to be priests of creation in the garden. And so it and I think that's true. And so living on the farm helps you to understand that the priesthood of the baptized as a as applied to the whole of creation. And it's it's so intuitive to move from that into the priesthood of Holy Orders. It's just a moving up of the sacramental ladder, in the ultimate assent to God.

Charles Kim 47:32

Yeah, it's somehow it just clicked for me, as I was listening, listening to you talk, I've been, you know, kind of taken with the way that Augustine talks about the mediation of Christ. But as well, reading a Protestant theologian, TF Torrance, who talks a lot about the mediation of Christ as He understands it through Athanasius. And so we talk a lot about in the church fathers in the early church, this kind of idea of Christ as mediator. But one thing that you're bringing into light that I hadn't really kind of, I don't know, at least thought of so explicitly, is our roles as imitating Christ as mediator, and our roles as imitating Christ and mediating creation. And so so so Christ becomes human. So that humans might become divine as Athanasius would say, there's a sense in which we become more deeply you know, we allow creation to find its own tell us as you've been saying, its own perfection by becoming one with the Earth and the way that we live and and the way that we are participating in the sort of the life that that doesn't have the spiritual and intellectual capacities that we do. It's it really is a kind of a beautiful synthesis. And, and also make a short plug that we're supposed to have Jordan would come on, and talk a little bit about Maximus, the confessor, he's got a book coming out with Notre Dame press, but in Christ is incarnate, or I can't remember what the title of the book is. But anyway, so we will, we will get into more Maximus the Confessor on that, but uh, but yeah, I don't know, that just really brought that to light. It's, it's such a beautiful way of looking at the world.

Jacob W. Wood 49:14

It is, and you brought up, you know, you mentioned Athanasius Athanasius, himself has a very keen sense of this, because he speaks of Christ as logos, with a capital lambda, if he will. But then also the, there's this there's the log boy of all creation, and how Adam and Eve, you know, they were created so that by encountering the logo and creation, they would contemplatively and ascend to the logos who is Christ. And the, you know, part of the drama of the fall is that by being separated from the capital, lambda Lagace by being separated from Christ through sin, we also then lose our understanding of all of creation. Shouldn't around us. Because if if they have a logo it with a lowercase lambda that which are oriented towards the logos towards Christ, then then not only do we not understand the teleology of creation after the fall, because we don't understand that it's supposed to be headed towards Christ. We actually just don't even understand that things are heading. Because what they are is bound up with where they're headed.

Charles Kim 50:25

Yeah, yeah. Well, well said. I mean, and we have an episode talking about wisdom and Augustine and in order to be wise, we need to understand the one wisdom is another, you know, is another way to kind of think about this, as well. Yeah, it's it's a very, yeah, it's just, it's not the way that I often think about this. And again, I hope for the listeners, that they're grasping, like, you know, well, and it can be very easy to kind of make a dichotomy. I mean, I think of Augustine ins teaching on ours, he does some sermons, he talks about Mary and Martha, and Mary has chosen the better part, but he doesn't denigrate what Martha does. You know, right. Like, it's not that it's not that Martha does something bad. But, you know, it can look a little bit like a disjunction that, you know, you know, Mary has the better part because she is contemplating Christ. But I like this vision that sees the way that these are sort of interpenetrating like that, that they're not a dichotomy.

Jacob W. Wood 51:28

You know, absolutely. And I think I'd love to cycle back to Thomas Aquinas here to explain how they're not a dichotomy. Because probably the domestic listeners are like, Well, sounds like this guy's gone full bolt is Aryan, actually. But but no. So here's, here's how Aquinas kind of connects the dots. Right? So he has this, this understanding of analogy. And it's deeply informed by the debates of the 12th century about the Divine unity. And so everybody knows that for Aquinas, right? When you look at creation, and you ascend to God, and and logically, you arrive at God is one not God is three, anything else would be rationalism, right? Okay. But here's what Aquinas says, when he says, well, the, the rats do, that nature pattern of, you know, every perfection exhibit pre exists in God. Okay, and Aquinas is well known for thinking that I actually do the rats do and so if individual perfections we encountered in creation, in our work in creation, are in God distinctly, even if we can't understand how that distinction is made. They're they're each, they're each the ratio of each perfection that pre exists in God distinctly. He also Aquinas also devotes, you know, powerful, powerful reflections to the inner life of the Trinity, and enter the processions in the Trinity and the missions of the Trinitarian persons in southern Spirit coming forth from the inner processions in God. So connecting in the economic trinity in that way. Well, people don't typically realize is that Aquinas, though, he actually when he when he's talking about the, the under the doctrine of appropriation, of appropriating individual divine attributes to individual Trinitarian persons, even though the entirety of the Trinity possesses these, in view of the unity of the divine being, he says, there exists an association in God Himself, between certain divine attributes, and certain Trinitarian persons in view of the similarity between the rat CEO of a divine attribute and the nature of a divine procession. So now this is this is like crazy abstract. So I'll give an example. So, a great example that Aquinas uses is power, power is a divine perfection is a divine attribute that each one of the fathers on the spirit share equal in, in virtue of their unity and the divine being. But what does it mean to be powerful? Right, you know, and one of the things that it means for Aquinas to be powerful is to be the principal of things to be able to do things, right. And so if you look in, in in the inner Trinitarian processions, right, okay, so all of the Divine Persons share the divine beings, so they all share the divine power, sure, but there's only one divine person that is the principal of the other two, and that's the Father. And so Aquinas says, there's actually an objective sense and objective similarity between the meaning of power and the, in this case, not proceeding of the Father, right, and his being the principal of the other two persons in the Godhead. And so, this very Thomistic understanding of creation and analogy actually leads into a Trinitarian understanding of appropriations and contemplation. Yes, it requires the dogmas and the doctrines of the faith. informing. So it requires grace in forming it. But once we have grace giving us access to the inner Trinitarian life, there is Aquinas thinks this kind of ascent from the contemplation of creation to the contemplation of the Trinitarian persons. Yeah.

Charles Kim 55:17

Hmm. Interesting. Well, like you said, it does bring us full circle. So we began with a little bit of the difference between both his Aryans And Aquinas and, and this idea of the doctrine of analogy. And so it's nice to end there. And Jacob Dr. Wood. It's been a pleasure talking with you today, and a lot to chew on. So thanks for coming on. I will have links up to well have link up to the one article on so just we just have a new web page. So I'll put that up on the web page and link to your book and then hopefully, when the new one comes out, I can link to that as well.

Jacob W. Wood 55:55

Fantastic. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure as always

Transcribed by https://otter.ai