Who are you when you strip everything else away? Before your job, your relationships, your achievements, and your possessions, what makes you you?

JPII argues that the question "Who am I?" is one of the most fundamental human questions. Through his experience of original solitude, Adam discovers that he is not just another animal, or a passive part of Creation. He is something else: a child of God.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why Jesus points us to Genesis to understand the true meaning of marriage and human sexuality
• What it means to be created in the image of God
• What the original human experience was like, prior to the Fall
• What John Paul II means by "original solitude"
• How Adam discovers his uniqueness among the rest of creation
• Why the question "Who am I?" is fundamental to human experience
• Why the world can't give us our identity
• Why our relationship with God is our first and fundamental relationship
• What original solitude can teach us about identity, silence, and prayer today

This episode is part of our series exploring St John Paul II's Theology of the Body. In the next episode, we'll continue through Genesis and explore the other two fundamental experiences of original man: original unity and original nakedness.

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This podcast relies 100% on the generosity of viewers. If you have found these episodes helpful and would like to support the future of Crash Course Catholicism, please consider donating via the following links:

Donate via PayPal: ⁠⁠https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=6WSCLFHLCDXH2⁠⁠

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In this episode, we continue our series on St Thomas Aquinas' Five Ways by exploring his Third Way: the Argument from Contingency.

Aquinas begins with a simple but profound observation: the things we encounter in the world don't have to exist. You exist, but you could have failed to exist. The same is true of trees, mountains, planets, stars, and everything else we encounter in the created world. Philosophers describe things like these as contingent beings.

But if everything were contingent, i.e. if everything depended upon something else for its existence, then what ultimately explains why anything exists at all? Aquinas argues that contingent beings must ultimately depend upon a Necessary Being: a reality that does not receive its existence from anything else and cannot fail to exist.

In this episode, we discuss:

• What "contingency" means in philosophy
• The difference between contingent and necessary beings
• Why things in the world don't contain the reason for their own existence
• Why a collection of contingent beings cannot ultimately explain itself
• Aquinas' argument for the existence of a Necessary Being
• Why the Argument from Contingency does not require the universe to have a beginning in time
• How Aquinas' Third Way differs from the Argument from Motion and the Argument from Efficient Causality
• How Aquinas' first three Ways point towards the same ultimate reality from three different starting points

This episode is part of our series exploring St Thomas Aquinas' Five Ways and the classical philosophical arguments for the existence of God. The First Way begins with change and leads us to an Unmoved Mover. The Second begins with efficient causality and leads us to a First Efficient Cause. And the Third begins with contingent existence and leads us to a Necessary Being.

Whether you're interested in philosophy, Catholic theology, apologetics, metaphysics, or the relationship between faith and reason, I hope these episodes help make Aquinas' thought more accessible and encourage you to explore his arguments for yourself.

SUPPORT THE PODCAST

This podcast relies 100% on the generosity of viewers. If you have found these episodes helpful and would like to support the future of Crash Course Catholicism, please consider donating via the following links:

Donate via PayPal: ⁠https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=6WSCLFHLCDXH2⁠

Support on Patreon: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/caitlinwest⁠

Contact: ⁠www.caitlinwest.com⁠

Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/crashcoursecatholicism/⁠

In this episode, we explore St Thomas Aquinas' Second Way, also known as the Argument from Efficient Causality. This is a classic cosmological argument for the existence of God.

Aquinas begins with a simple observation: everything we encounter in the world has a cause. Houses are built by builders, paintings are painted by artists, and trees grow from seeds. But if every cause depends on another cause, where does the chain ultimately begin? Aquinas argues that there must be a First Efficient Cause that gives existence and causal power to everything else.

In this episode, we discuss:

• What an efficient cause is
• Why nothing can be the efficient cause of itself
• The difference between temporal and hierarchical chains of causation
• Why Aquinas rejects an infinite regress of essentially ordered causes
• Peter Kreeft's "borrowed book" analogy
• How the Second Way differs from the Argument from Motion
• What Aquinas means by a First Efficient Cause
• Why this argument points toward God's existence without yet establishing every Christian belief about God

This episode is part of our series on St Thomas Aquinas' Five Ways and the classical arguments for the existence of God. Whether you're interested in philosophy, Catholic theology, apologetics, metaphysics, or the relationship between faith and reason, I hope these episodes help make Aquinas' thought more accessible and encourage you to explore these remarkable arguments for yourself.

SUPPORT THE PODCAST

This podcast relies 100% on the generosity of viewers. If you have found these episodes helpful and would like to support the future of Crash Course Catholicism, please consider donating via the following links:

Donate via PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=6WSCLFHLCDXH2

Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/caitlinwest

Contact: www.caitlinwest.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crashcoursecatholicism/