In today’s episode, we hear three distinct voices wrestling with the human condition. Thomas Aquinas, in Summa Theologica, asks whether sensuality belongs only to the appetitive part of the soul. He explains that while sensuality presupposes sense perception, it properly belongs to the lower appetite—the part that responds to pleasure and pain apart from reason. Meanwhile, Augustine, in Confessions, Book 10, Chapter 14, explores the strange power of memory: how we can recall past emotions without presently feeling them, and how the mind stores joy, sorrow, fear, and desire as experiences to be remembered but not re-suffered. Finally, Irenaeus exposes the mystical numerology of the Marcosian Gnostics. In Against Heresies, Book 1, Chapter 16, he shows how they twist parables and letters into arbitrary systems, turning the Gospel into a cipher and undermining the simplicity of God’s mercy. Together, these readings show the Church's commitment to sober-minded theology, embodied experience, and rejection of speculative fictions.
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