Latest / Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture / No Nation Can Be the City of God | Faith & Politics #4

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No Nation Can Be the City of God | Faith & Politics #4 · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: I'm Dr.
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  Speaker 3: James Spencer. I'm joined by Dr. Ashish Varma. And today
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  Speaker 3: we're going to be reflecting on the conversation that I
• 0:09
  Speaker 3: had with Veronica Ogle. And I'm really excited to hear
• 0:12
  Speaker 3: your thoughts on this, Ashish. You know, I've sort of
• 0:15
  Speaker 3: played around in Augustine a bit. Her conversation, which you
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: all can listen to in the previous episode, was really
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: on Augustine and the city of God primarily. But we
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: did get into a few other things in Augustine, but...
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  Speaker 3: I've read The City of God, I've read The Confessions,
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  Speaker 3: but I am by no way, shape, or form an
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  Speaker 3: Augustine scholar.
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  Speaker 1: And so this should be a fun conversation, man.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, by no means am I a scholar of Augustine either.
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  Speaker 2: I may have just through my historical and theological work
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  Speaker 2: dabbled a little bit more than you, but not at
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  Speaker 2: Gogol's level. So I enjoyed listening to it. Fantastic. A
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  Speaker 2: lot of wonderful things to talk about.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and her book is really fantastic as well.
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  Speaker 3: And so I think she just does a really good job,
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  Speaker 3: I think, of synthesizing a lot of Augustine's ideas. And
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  Speaker 3: so I was really happy to have her on the podcast,
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  Speaker 3: and it was good to talk with her. But I think,
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  Speaker 3: you know, as we're dealing with faith and politics, Augustine's
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  Speaker 3: City of God comes up a fair amount. I've written
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  Speaker 3: on Josh Howley, who I believe is like a representative
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  Speaker 3: from Missouri or something like that. He's referenced Augustine. As
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  Speaker 3: I recall, he was at a conservatism forum or a
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  Speaker 3: conservatism conference and referenced Augustine's City of God. And part
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  Speaker 3: of what he did with it, and part of the
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  Speaker 3: reason I got interested in having Veronica on after hearing this,
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: was that he talked about the United States as sort
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  Speaker 3: of the epitome of what Augustine meant by the City
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  Speaker 3: of God. He talked about, you know, the Christian nation
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  Speaker 3: sort of bit. Augustine is trying to advance this Christian nation.
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  Speaker 3: And as he does so, as Augustine does so in
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  Speaker 3: his work, he's advocating for this Christian nation. That then
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  Speaker 3: sort of for Howley and his audience comes together in
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  Speaker 3: the United States and those founding, you know, sort of
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  Speaker 3: Christian nation principles. Now, obviously, I don't love that uh
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  Speaker 3: i think i think there's more wrong with that than
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  Speaker 3: i can count um and i think it misses the
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  Speaker 3: point of augustine which is these two cities the city
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  Speaker 3: of god and the city of man have different loves
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  Speaker 3: and if you're going to love like the city of
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  Speaker 3: man does which is a love of self in augustine's
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  Speaker 3: sort of terminology you're never going to elevate.
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  Speaker 1: Beyond being the city of man.
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  Speaker 3: It requires the love of God in order to be
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  Speaker 3: the city of God. Now, that may be a little
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  Speaker 3: bit too stark. I'll trust you to nuance it a
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  Speaker 3: little bit, but maybe that's where we can start our
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  Speaker 3: conversation in this dichotomy that Veronica Ogle talks about, but
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  Speaker 3: then also that it seems like Josh Howley wants to collapse.
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  Speaker 2: So the mild word. That comes to my mind when
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  Speaker 2: I hear you say, Josh Howley saying that is concerning.
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  Speaker 2: That's the mild word. My harsher words I'll keep to myself.
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  Speaker 2: To my mind, if that's what he said, that just
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  Speaker 2: entirely misses the point of Augustine. I don't think we
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  Speaker 2: need Ogle's level of reading the work and understanding the
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: context to get at its base level that this is
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  Speaker 2: precisely what actually Augustine's arguing against by positing two cities. Now,
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  Speaker 2: they're two overlapping cities, and those two overlapping cities are
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  Speaker 2: what make things interesting. But to conflate the one with
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  Speaker 2: the other, concerning, again, is the word I'll use. I
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  Speaker 2: think you're right, and I think Ogle, as I recall,
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  Speaker 2: spent a decent amount of time reflecting upon this as well,
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  Speaker 2: that the crux of the matter, and this is where
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  Speaker 2: the crux just is it's confusing to hear this from Howley,
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  Speaker 2: is the nature of love. What is one's love, right?
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  Speaker 2: And the nature of love, how it is fulfilled, even
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  Speaker 2: to the degree that we can speak of for those
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  Speaker 2: who are classicists and early church experts and Greek philosophical
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  Speaker 2: and Latin philosophical experts, we could speak of there's clear
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  Speaker 2: borrowing from these traditions by the early Christians in the
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  Speaker 2: way that they understand the virtues and the way they
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  Speaker 2: understand love and the way that they understand how these
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  Speaker 2: things go together in terms of thinking about early versions
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  Speaker 2: of civility. But to say that they're the same is
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  Speaker 2: actually to not read well, right? Because Augustine's point above
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  Speaker 2: anything else is precisely that they're not the same, that
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  Speaker 2: what one's love is directed towards and even how what
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  Speaker 2: shapes one's love is going to change everything in the
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  Speaker 2: most meaningful sense. So if one's love is not just
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  Speaker 2: directed towards the triune God as revealed in the Son
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  Speaker 2: Jesus incarnate and the Holy Spirit or breath of God
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  Speaker 2: giving forth from that Son, that changes not just the
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  Speaker 2: nature of what forms our love, not just the nature
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  Speaker 2: of what our love is directed towards, but also the
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  Speaker 2: very nature of what we perceive to be the goal
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  Speaker 2: of that love. So classicists we'll point out that ancient
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  Speaker 2: understandings of virtue, we'll talk about the importance of virtue
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  Speaker 2: being the love of something for its own sake. But
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  Speaker 2: as Ogle was drawing out, as noble as that would
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  Speaker 2: be to move us beyond the love of something for
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  Speaker 2: my sake, it still stops short in a significant way
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  Speaker 2: from the love of someone and something itself. For God's sake,
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  Speaker 2: which doesn't mean a used sake, right? Like to help
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  Speaker 2: them elevate me, but it means my love is so
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  Speaker 2: much for you that I want to help direct you
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  Speaker 2: to the source of love, the triune God, right? In
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  Speaker 2: whom all things consist and by whom all things were
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  Speaker 2: made and for whom all things find their completion. And
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  Speaker 2: that's a pretty significant difference then in terms of thinking
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  Speaker 2: about what the goals or the agendas are.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I.
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  Speaker 3: Think one of the things I've sort of reflected on
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  Speaker 3: since I talked with her is the Old Testament studies,
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  Speaker 3: love and loyalty are really strongly connected.
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  Speaker 1: We see it particularly in Deuteronomy.
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  Speaker 3: This has been around, I think, since the 1970s is
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  Speaker 3: the earliest essay I can remember reading on it. What
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  Speaker 3: does love mean in Deuteronomy? Well, it has an awful
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  Speaker 3: lot to do with loyalty. It doesn't have to do
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  Speaker 3: with the sort of love that we see in modern
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: day movies or something like that. This is about ordering
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  Speaker 3: one's life and aligning one's life with the suzerain or
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  Speaker 3: the superior entity in the treaty, the covenant.
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  Speaker 1: And you... agreeing to be the.
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  Speaker 3: Vassal in every way, shape, and form that you can
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  Speaker 3: possibly be that vassal. And so we read something like
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  Speaker 3: in Deuteronomy 6, 4, and 5, love the Lord your
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  Speaker 3: God with all your heart, with all your soul, with
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  Speaker 3: all your strength. Those three things are really all encompassing,
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  Speaker 3: particularly when we understand strength, not as how much you
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  Speaker 3: can bench, but in terms of All of the resources
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  Speaker 3: that you have at your disposal, everything that you can muster,
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  Speaker 3: this is what you're to love God with. And in
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  Speaker 3: that context, that would have been your herds, your cattle,
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  Speaker 3: your household, everything was to be given in service and
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  Speaker 3: dedicated in loyalty to God. We see glimpses of this
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  Speaker 3: in the New Testament, I think, especially in 1 John.
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  Speaker 3: where we have this sort of melding together and correlation
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  Speaker 3: between love and obedience and even love of neighbor and obedience.
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  Speaker 3: That obedience language to me gestures back toward the loyalty
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  Speaker 3: angle of love. It is love working itself out on
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  Speaker 3: another's terms. And so it's always working itself out on
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  Speaker 3: God's terms. One thing I do like to sort of
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  Speaker 3: throw in here when we are talking about love in
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  Speaker 3: this way, because I think a lot of times this
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  Speaker 3: gets sort of misconstrued as well. Especially again, we got
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  Speaker 3: kind of a political example on this, but J.D. Vance
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  Speaker 3: at one point was explaining the order of loves. It
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  Speaker 3: kind of went quasi viral on the internet when he
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  Speaker 3: did it. But he talked about, you know, you love
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  Speaker 3: God and then you love family and then you love,
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  Speaker 3: you know, local society. Then, you know, you work your
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  Speaker 3: way out all the way to nation and the stranger.
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  Speaker 3: And he describes this order of love as sequential almost,
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  Speaker 3: that there are rings and in the fur, you know,
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  Speaker 3: there's a bull's eye, love of God. And then as
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  Speaker 3: you get further out on the dartboard, right, you might
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  Speaker 3: hit that outer rim at some point. I think that's
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  Speaker 3: the wrong way to conceptualize it. And I don't think
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  Speaker 3: that's the way Augustine conceptualizes it. Because that sort of
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  Speaker 3: sequential aspect is tears that I don't actually think are there.
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  Speaker 3: It's not that I want to say, yeah, there is
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  Speaker 3: something specific called the love of God. There's something specific
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  Speaker 3: about loving family. There's something specific about loving other people
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  Speaker 3: who aren't family. I think those can be distinguished. But
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  Speaker 3: I think ultimately what we are supposed to understand is
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  Speaker 3: that these things are all immersed within the love of God.
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  Speaker 1: So that now.
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  Speaker 3: We have no choice but to treat our neighbors differently
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  Speaker 3: because we are immersed in the love of God. We
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  Speaker 3: have no choice but to treat our family differently because
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  Speaker 3: we're immersed within the love of God. All of these
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  Speaker 3: things that are informed and shaped, to use your word,
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  Speaker 3: how does that love shape us? All of these things
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  Speaker 3: are shaped by a love of God. And even though
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  Speaker 3: we'll keep saying love throughout the episode, I think it's
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  Speaker 3: important to sort of nail down that loyalty aspect of
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  Speaker 3: love because it really is that notion of loving others
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  Speaker 3: on God's terms, I think is just crucial to what
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  Speaker 3: Augustine is saying and the way that we need to
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  Speaker 3: be thinking about love of God.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is good stuff. Apparently I'm, I'm watching the
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  Speaker 2: wrong YouTube channels and listen to the wrong podcast. Cause
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  Speaker 2: I'm missing these political viral moments. Um, you don't get
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  Speaker 2: this when you're listening to a tennis podcast, I guess.
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  Speaker 3: Um, nevertheless, different sort of love in tennis, brother, different
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  Speaker 3: sort of love in tennis.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Different sort of love. That's a love that doesn't make
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  Speaker 2: any sense to me still after 30 years of playing
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  Speaker 2: the game. Love means zero.
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  Speaker 1: What? Anyway.
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  Speaker 2: Um, so, As I hear you describe what Van said,
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  Speaker 2: what strikes me immediately is how, on the surface, that's
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  Speaker 2: immediately the opposite, actually, of Jesus' point when he tells
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  Speaker 2: the story of the Good Samaritan. That seems to me
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  Speaker 2: to be the thing that he's responding to with the
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  Speaker 2: question that's given to him of who should we love,
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  Speaker 2: who is our neighbor. And Jesus is making it abundantly
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  Speaker 2: clear that precisely the one who outside of your immediate
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  Speaker 2: context exists is the one that you're inclined to think
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  Speaker 2: belongs to an outer rung, is the one who's precisely
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  Speaker 2: the neighbor, right? Meaning everyone's your neighbor. The Jew's a neighbor,
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  Speaker 2: the Gentile's a neighbor, even that Samaritan is your neighbor, right?
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  Speaker 2: Love them all. So nerd moment. I've been reading a
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  Speaker 2: lot of Hans Urs von Balthasar lately. Mid-20th century Swiss theologian,
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  Speaker 2: of course, everyone knows. Now he... belongs, broadly speaking, to
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  Speaker 2: this Augustinian tradition. But some of the things I've been
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  Speaker 2: reading lately in him actually fit very well with some
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  Speaker 2: of the themes that both Ogle and you have brought up.
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  Speaker 2: So for instance, this idea of love connected to obedience
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  Speaker 2: is actually exactly what Balthazar is arguing with regard to
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: a Pauline understanding of faith. But I think what Balthazar
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  Speaker 2: does to set things up So the context here is,
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  Speaker 2: I'm going to say it's beautiful. Balthazar's whole point is
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  Speaker 2: he's trying to give you a theology of beauty mattering,
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  Speaker 2: such that beauty ultimately ought to help us see the beautiful,
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  Speaker 2: which is made known in the revelation of the triune
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  Speaker 2: God in Christ. So he sees faith as beautiful precisely
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  Speaker 2: to the degree that he sees it as a resonance
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  Speaker 2: or an attunement, as he puts it. where the image
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  Speaker 2: he gives you is a violin. I love the violin,
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  Speaker 2: beautiful instrument, but I'll borrow that and change it to
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: the sitar because I love the sitar even more. Even
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  Speaker 2: though I have no musical ability, the ability of it
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  Speaker 2: to resonate, right? So you think about the plucking of
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  Speaker 2: the strings of the sitar or the playing of the
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  Speaker 2: strings with the bow on the violin, its ability to
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  Speaker 2: echo those strings, and that's where music comes from, that resonance.
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  Speaker 2: such that the whole body of the instrument is involved
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  Speaker 2: in the making of the noise. But to take that
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  Speaker 2: a step further, Balthazar is wanting to take that instrument
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  Speaker 2: and equate that in some sense with us, where what
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  Speaker 2: we are doing when we resound in faith in this
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  Speaker 2: resonance with God is that we begin to, in our
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  Speaker 2: very selves, become attuned and to make that music present
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  Speaker 2: that God is already making. Now that sounds like it's
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  Speaker 2: devoid of agency, but Balthazar's point is not wanting to
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  Speaker 2: say that we are like inner pieces of wood or
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  Speaker 2: inner strings that are vibrating, but rather that it's the
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  Speaker 2: passive active. It's the passive reality of realizing that the
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  Speaker 2: fullness of who we are, the freedom of our lives
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  Speaker 2: comes from our attunement to God, but it's active in
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  Speaker 2: that We are deliberately posturing ourselves to be attuned in
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  Speaker 2: that sort of way. And he describes that in specifically
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  Speaker 2: the language of obedience, right? This isn't the obedience of,
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  Speaker 2: you must listen to me because I'm your overlord. This
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  Speaker 2: is the obedience of recognizing the beautiful. And that's what is,
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  Speaker 2: not to be redundant, beautiful about what Balthazar is explaining.
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  Speaker 2: That I see him as he's extending Augustine and very
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  Speaker 2: much working in line with what you were saying and
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  Speaker 2: what Ogle is saying. speaks to the nature of faith
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  Speaker 2: where now Balthazar can say the experience of faith isn't
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  Speaker 2: just some sort of subjective sense of I believe this
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  Speaker 2: and I hope for that and I love this, but
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  Speaker 2: it's rather the very love of God producing through our
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  Speaker 2: active obedience into attunement the kind of faith that allows
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  Speaker 2: us to have what I've previously loved to refer to
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  Speaker 2: in Gandalf's words as the fool's hope, which is itself
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  Speaker 2: the context within which love abounds to neighbor here, there,
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  Speaker 2: and everywhere, right? Where there are no boundaries now to
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  Speaker 2: what that love of neighbor is. And again, I want
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  Speaker 2: to say, I think that's beautiful, you know, and even
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  Speaker 2: as it's an extension of Augustine, it's the sort of
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  Speaker 2: spirit of Augustine that's getting at in the big, in
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  Speaker 2: the sense of big P politics, right? Politics as in
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  Speaker 2: the life of the city and the communal existing together.
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  Speaker 2: What he wants to say distinguishes the city of God
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  Speaker 2: from the the city of man, right? Because now our
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  Speaker 2: attentiveness to each other in love is to, for instance,
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  Speaker 2: what I would hope for you, James, is to help
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  Speaker 2: you become attuned to God. And reciprocally, your hope, ideally,
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: is to help me become attuned to God. And in that,
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: we become attuned in some ways to each other in
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  Speaker 2: our differences so that we can begin to actually be
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  Speaker 2: a functioning and harmonious body together in the way that
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  Speaker 2: you know, the New Testament language and even the Old
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  Speaker 2: Testament language speaks up in terms of bodies.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting. I, I, Balthazar's passive active, I think
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  Speaker 3: is really good and helpful. I had always wondered why
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: he didn't just go with like a choral, like a chorale, right?
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  Speaker 3: Where you're singing.
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  Speaker 2: I have thoughts on that, but I'll wait.
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  Speaker 3: And I think it works better when you're together, like
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  Speaker 3: the image that comes to my mind, which is, So
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  Speaker 3: Goofy is like an acapella group where you're opting to
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: make the sounds in line with everyone else. And to
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  Speaker 3: the extent that you could do that, that is attunement, essentially.
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: To the extent that you do that, it sounds really good.
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: And so then there's this sort of interesting extension of
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: the analogy, which I haven't thought all the way through.
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: But I often say I can't sing, which is really
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: just shorthand for no one would want to hear me sing.
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: it's not good, but you can actually sing. And so
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  Speaker 3: the idea would be, you know, everybody can sing. There's
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: a sense in which all of us can carry some
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: semblance of a tune, but it's the master singers, the
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: one who can really sing on key and can sing
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: with and can sing together with one another and are
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: willing to follow sort of the plan for the song.
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  Speaker 3: The melody, the rhythm, but also the coming in and
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: out together, right, in various ways.
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  Speaker 1: Those are the ones you really want to listen to.
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  Speaker 1: Those are the good singers.
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  Speaker 3: And I think there's something there to explore as we
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: think through love, because I've often gotten the question, well,
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  Speaker 3: if you construe love in this manner, then non-Christians couldn't
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: ever love. And what I want to say is, no,
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  Speaker 3: that's not what Augustine is saying. And that's not what
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  Speaker 3: I'm saying. Everybody has the capacity to love. It's the
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: sort of love that we're talking about here. Not being
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: rooted in God's love has deep implications and consequences.
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  Speaker 1: We could think of it.
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  Speaker 3: As because being rooted in the love of God carries
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: with it certain constraints that enable us to love one
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  Speaker 3: another in ways that are on God's terms. not being
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: constrained by that love of God, then loosens what we
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: can do, right? It gives us more opportunities to do
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: whatever it is that we want to do. And we
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: can try to love one another on our own terms,
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  Speaker 3: and that doesn't work out well.
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  Speaker 1: But there's still love there.
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  Speaker 3: And there's just something I think helpful in thinking through
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  Speaker 3: the performative act of that, which Balthazar includes, obviously. But
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  Speaker 3: I think there's something crucial there because what we don't
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: want to be conveying is that, well, if you're not
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: a Christian, you just can't love anyone because that's just
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: patently untrue. There's a finer distinction that Augustine is making,
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: I think, that we need to maintain. And there's just
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: something about the analogies that I don't recall Balthazar carrying
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: it that far. But I think there's something in those
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: analogies that we could carry that far.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: Like you, no one wants to hear me sing, and
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: I shorthand that by I can't sing. Thankfully, my kids
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: are not yet at the age where they balk when
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: I try to sing.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: But it's coming.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: I know it's coming because I'm well aware of who
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: I am. And yet at the same time, when I
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: think about singing, I mean, I can think of a
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: friend right now who has, she has the most beautiful
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: voice I've ever heard in my life. And I could
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: sit and listen to her sing all day.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: Um, but I think to, to your question of why
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: he doesn't use the choral analogy, um, I think it's
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: because when we get, and I'm admittedly importing here a
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: little bit, a conversation that's going on between Owen Barfield
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: and Tolkien that's contemporaneous, but not necessarily something that Balthazar
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: is aware of. But I think that they're resonant in
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: the sense that they're talking about similar things, and there's
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: clear at least influence of Balthazar upon Barfield and Tolkien.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: But in that other conversation, even Tolkien, who has this beautiful,
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: Aino Lindele is what it's called. It's this introduction of
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: sorts to the Silmarillion that gives you the whole tenor,
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: musical term, of what's going on there and how the
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: creative event is inherently tied to a musical speaking into being.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: For Tolkien, this is a narrative, poetic, literary gloss on
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: how he seems to imagine Let There Be. But of course,
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: Let There Be is words, and for us, they're English.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: Bible scholars, it's Hebrew, but they're still words that are
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: confined to peoples and places that are limited, right? In
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: the sense that they represent the limited imaginations of what
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: speakers of language do with words and the buckets that
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: they form in our conceptual categories. And so what Tolkien
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: does in the Ainu Lindelays, he then speaks of this
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: creative event in which it's the music of the Ainur,
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: these angelic beings, And we can talk about this again
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: at some future time, the full robustness of it. But
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: what I think is significant is his description. He calls it,
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: it's like unto a chorus. But the language of like
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: unto I think is deliberate for him because he's trying
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: to decouple. He's trying to invoke the image that we
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: think of that you were alluding to with a chorus,
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: but trying to decouple it from any sense of the
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: specificity of language where for him, there's a movement away
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: from the poetic the moment we move to words, right?
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: So we tend to know of poetry with words, and
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: the poetry of words is different than the prosaic use
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: of words. And one can use prosaic discourse and use
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: them poetically, and one can use a poetic structure but
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: be speaking prosaically, right? But the idea is that the poetic,
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: whichever form that it's in, can do more. And yet
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: even that more is limited by the conceptual framework, categories,
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: allusions that are contained within those words, right? Even at
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: the fullest expanse, right? So chorus-like is meant to invoke
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: the idea of the chorus, and it's meant to then
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: draw us to, but it wasn't a chorus, because there's
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: something that music is able to do that can transcend
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: the specificity of language, right? So you think about this,
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: I think of actually Arab music. I don't know a
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: lick of Arab or Arabic, but when I hear good
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: Arabic music, it resonates with me. Right. And I'd imagine
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: you could say something similar with any number of languages
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: because the music is able to speak in a certain
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: way that transcends even our comprehension of particular linguistic frameworks.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: And I think that's why both what Balthazar is doing
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: as well, the direction he's taking it, um, But I
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: think this is all relevant to us here because I
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: think as an extension at the very least of this
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: idea of love, if we're seeing this as love as
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: a resonance and as an obedience, it's going to potentially
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: move us when we're thinking of the city of God
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: in a direction that maybe Augustine never had reason to
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: conceptualize and maybe the church following him didn't, not maybe,
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: I think they didn't fully grasp the possibility here. But
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: what we can do is say, The city of God
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: as a resonance and as a resonance that for us
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: is tied to places and languages and therefore the cultures
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: formed within them has multiple versions within it, right? We're
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: not limited to having to reimagine what does it look
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: like for the Christians to live under a Roman situation.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: First as people on the margins, then in the case
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: of Augustine as someone who's now having to write something
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: of an apologetic as to why the sacking of Rome
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: wasn't Christian's fault. but also for us now to be
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: thinking about in a totally different context with a totally
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: different set of agencies involved in our political life. To
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: imagine still something like what we're seeing in biblical discourse
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: and in different layers of historical church discourse, but be
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: able to say, we have to imagine something different, but
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: it's still the same, right? I'm thinking here of the
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: difference that Kevin Van Hooser makes between Not important to
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: think of the Latin terms, but he uses ips and adem,
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: identity or sameness, right? The one kind of sameness is static.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: It's just repetition, rote repetition. But the other kind is
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: an improvisational sameness. It's working through it, being able to
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: pick up the patterns, as we've talked before, of what's
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: going on. What does it mean to feel out the margins?
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: What does it mean to be able to embody the
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: spirit or the breath of what God is doing now
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: in this particular environment? and to love accordingly, right? With
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: different sets of challenges, different sets of situations. Does that
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: make sense?
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: It does.
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: And I actually think that distinction that you're making and
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: that Van Hooser makes in his book is in part
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: what we see in Hebrews 11, the Hall of Faith, right?
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: Where you have all these different people. This is all
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: recognized as faithful action, right? They're very different actions across
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: a very long time period. We see something of this
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: in the letters to the seven churches in Revelation, where
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: Jesus comes down and is calling balls and strikes and saying,
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: you know, you've epitomized faithfulness.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: You haven't.
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: And really sort of driving those churches to come back
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: and exhibit the sort of faithfulness that is necessary and
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: commensurate with you know, the broader witness of the church.
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: And so I think that's a really important aspect of
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: this that, again, I, you know, I spent a lot
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: of time over the last couple of years thinking through
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: the whole Christian nation shtick, I'll call it, because I'm
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: not sure I would call it a theology. I find
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: it to be problematic on these deeper layers of Because
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: we're applying a name to something, describing a nation as
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: something it simply can't be. It's paradoxical by its very nature.
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: The two things just don't fit. And so where we
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: find ourselves, I think, in this moment is in deep
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: confusion about what it really means to pursue the city
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: of God. in the way that Augustine was talking about,
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: to create this sort of attunement with God, this resonance
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: that you're talking about from Balthazar, to have this sort
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: of similar identity, although extremely different and distinct within the
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: modern era, where we have a relatively high degree of
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: tolerance for Christianity. We're not being persecuted in I know
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: some people would argue that, but we're not being persecuted
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: at all. We may be being poked with a stick,
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: but we're not being stabbed with a spear. I just
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: don't find that the persecution, at least in the United States,
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: is really happening. And so where I think we've gone
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: wrong is we've done something akin to what Howley did,
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: which we've accepted the notion that, yeah, the United States
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: can be a Christian nation. yeah, we can collapse the
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: city of man and the city of God to a
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: large extent. Probably people would not say the whole way,
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: but I think they would say to a large extent,
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: we can collapse those two, right? They might keep a
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: distinction for more of a utopian notion of the city
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: of God when Jesus comes back and all that kind
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: of good stuff, sort of an eschatological city. But within time, yeah,
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: we can kind of emulate the city of God as
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: a nation, right? I think those are fundamentally flawed simply
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: because of the things that we're talking about. The nation
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: doesn't start in a love for God, and it doesn't
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: live on God's terms. It's not attempting to attune to
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: what God is saying in his revelations. Part of what
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: we lose when we accept that notion is that the
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: church is supposed to be a prophetic voice. The church
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: is supposed to remind the governing authorities that they sit
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: under God and that they are supposed to be attuning
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: to his justice, attuning to his mercy, attuning to his
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: governmental sort of authority and judgment. These are things that
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: every government is supposed to do, but because they don't
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: acknowledge Jesus has authority over all things on earth and
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: on heaven.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: They often don't.
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: And so the church is there to remind the governing
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: authorities that they are not the highest authority, that they
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: are under authority. And part of the way that we
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: love our nations is not just, hey, let's go along
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: with everything that is good about our nation and ignore
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: everything that is bad, or let's make sure that our
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: nation is making everything healthier rather than sicker. Those things
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: may not, you know, making your nation healthier rather than
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: sicker isn't necessarily a bad thing. But I think for Christians,
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: we also have to love our nation and recognizing that
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: there are people here who just don't acknowledge.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Jesus as Lord. And no matter how.
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: Good we have it, settling for wholesomeness as a substitute
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: for holiness is just never going to cut it.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: And I think that the.
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: Way that Veronica Ogle talked through this, I think your
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: stuff on von Balthasar, you know, the way we're discussing
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: love should push us toward something different as an entity
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: within the United States, a group of people within the
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: United States that not toward one political spectrum or another,
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: but toward a love for neighbor that refuses to allow
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: people to sit in a wholesome environment and assume that
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: that wholesome environment is good enough. I've often talked about
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: this as not allowing people just to be less lost, right?
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: We push them towards some sort of morality We get
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: some law passed. We ensure that some aspect of our
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: society is better ordered and better attuned toward God's justice
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: or what have you. And then we're just, we stop there.
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: And that's what I would call getting people less lost.
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: They're still lost. They're just close. They're closer than they
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: were before. But I just don't see that as being
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: the place that we as the church and as Christians
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: can actually stop when we understand what the love of
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: God is, when we understand what love of neighbor really is,
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: when we understand what love of nation really is. It
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: requires something different of us than I see us doing today.
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: So I'll let you respond to that.
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, my response, in terms of the substance of what
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: you're saying, I'm with you. My response maybe is I
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: want to push to say that those things that you're
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: hesitant to call theologies, I understand why. But I want
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: to push to say we should call them theologies.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: Good. Yeah.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: Not meaning that they're inherently good theologies.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: But maybe in the way that J. Cameron Carter uses
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: that term pseudo-theologies, right? By which he just means they're theologies,
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: they're false theologies. But what makes them false and what
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: makes them theologies in some sense are the same and
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: that's they are movements to order our loves yeah and
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: this in some sense is the rub of where there
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: is a contrast that is a is a contrast that
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: can't the gap can't fully be closed right to the
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: degree that one might say ideally the government does the
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: work of bringing about justice the work that the government
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: does is meant to protect the voices of the least, right.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: Or whatever sorts of things we want to put within that.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: The thing that we can't fudge is that there, the formation,
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: the shaping of our loves, there's a gap between those
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: two cities.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: And I think Augustine got that. I think that's what
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: false theology is getting at. And to the degree that there's,
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: there's a battle, I would agree. There's not, there's not
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: a context of persecution of Christians in this country. And
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: I think I might take you a step further and
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: say it's not... I don't even know that Christians are
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: being poked. I think Christians have, you know, sort of
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: done what my kids like to do, right? Deliberately pester
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: and then get smacked. Well, stop pestering. If you get
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: smacked when you're pestering, then that's your own painful lesson
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: that you just learned, you know?
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: And that's maybe a little harsh, right? There's sometimes... might
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: be good reasons to quote pester but i think the
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: mechanisms the ways of going about it the motivations are
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: often less jesus inclined less city of god inclined and
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: more um control the city of man force the city
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: of man into the mold of making it into the
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: sort of ways you represented senator howley's motivations you know
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: but back to the pseudo theology let me say this
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: real quick that Insofar as its attempt to shape our loves,
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: there's a major difference in terms of the nature of
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: the cities. The nature of the modern nation-state has a
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: sacred function, a pseudo-sacred function. And it's an exclusionary sacred function.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: You cannot have a nation-state that's completely inclusively abounding. Conversely,
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: the message of Jesus is open to all. And I
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: don't mean that in some sense of anyone who says
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: whatever they want is part of the kingdom that Jesus
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: is proclaiming. I mean this in the sense of there
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: does not need to be a remainder. Every single person,
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: according to the strictures and structures of the ways in
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: which Jesus is reorganizing creation around his own flesh, and
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: doing so in this notion of weakness being the counterintuitive
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: place in which we we find inclusion and love because
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: weakness is the place in which we, we delegate. Is
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: that a word? The opposite of elevate ourselves. And we
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: begin to see ourselves as articulated in and through the other, right?
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: Which means an elevation of those around us. The nation
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: state can't do that because it's not its purpose. It is,
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: it is exclusionary. So there's going to be inherent tensions
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: that creates that necessary gap between the two. Now, again,
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: it doesn't mean that those who see themselves as working
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: towards the formation and shaping of loves for the city
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: of God can't be involved in the city of man,
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: but it does mean there's an inherent conflict of interest
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: that creates a tension. And it's a sacred tension, right?
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree.
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: And I like you drawing in the false theologies. I mean,
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: we've interviewed William Kavanaugh on the show, he wrote The
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: Uses of Idolatry. He tends to sort of read these
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: as false theologies, and I don't disagree with that. I
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: think that as soon as we decide that the way
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: our country is ordered is good enough, and I'll just
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: use those terms, we're setting ourselves up to adopt portions
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: of a false theology that that don't do us any
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: favor as Christians. So let me unpack that a little bit.
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: When I talk about it, I usually just shorthand it
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: and say, we can't settle for wholesomeness when only holiness
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: will do. Juergen Moltmann in Theology of Hope talks about
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: sin in terms of complacency, of passivity, not an overt
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: rebellion necessarily, but the way he phrases it is something like,
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: an unwillingness to.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: Be what God requires.
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: And I think that at times what we've done is
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: we've accepted and adopted a false theology that then breeds
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: this complacency because we're no longer shooting for what we
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: should be shooting for, that sort of beatific vision at
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: the end of time where we're standing in God's presence.
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: What we've done is we've said, no, no, no, God
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: would want us to be here. And God will be
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: here with us. not because he's determined it, but because
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: we've determined it. And I think that we get very
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: comfortable and that comfort, that comfort and complacency then keeps
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: us from really recognizing this as a false theology and
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: breaking through to that sort of prophetic witness that we
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: should be having within our nations. All that said, I,
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: wanted to kind of key in on a little bit
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: of what you said, like when you think about Jesus
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: being available to all, yes, agreed. Then you think of
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: nations as being inherently constrained by resources, by just sheer space, right?
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: Special concerns. Right.
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: You just, you know, sometimes you just can't fit more
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: people in a room. And that's just all there is.
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: There's a max capacity. And I think that as Christians
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: navigate those lines, we have to be very careful to
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: understand that for a civilization to continue running, there have
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: to be hard choices made. At the same time, we
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: should be pushing to make sure that those we encounter
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: who are about to be displaced, we're being kind to.
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: And I don't know exactly how to, I don't think
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: there is a solution to that, but I think this
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: is where sort of city of man and city of
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: God wedge.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: Right. I think that's the chasm that you can't, you
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: can't conflate.
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: You can't because to your point, and I think it's
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: a really important one. That's why I'm coming back to
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: it is, There's always room in the kingdom for more.
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: It's not like Jesus had room for the 12 and
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: not 13 or 14 or 15 and so on. He
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: has infinite room. And so he just adds additions as
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: people come on. Your nations, none of them can do that.
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: They simply do not have the resources and capacity to
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: care for an infinite number of beings. And so this
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: is where we start to see that hard wedge. I
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: think it's a crucial point in part because as we
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: look at the Old Testament again, when we see the
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: formation of Israel, so much about the Israelite law that
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: was revealed, in my reading of it anyway, it's divinely
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: empowered practice. This isn't wisdom that you can just pick
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: up and move, right? God working within that setting makes
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: so much of that possible. We can see it very
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: clearly in things like the sabbatical year where God promises
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: to give Israel, you know, two years or three years
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: worth of crops in order for them to take one
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: year off. We see it clearly there. I don't think
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: we should look at that and say, that's the exception.
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: The rest of this is just good everyday wisdom that
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: we could execute without God.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: I think that's the wrong way to understand it.
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: And so again, As we look at that context and
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: we understand how integral God is as a sociological actor
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: within the life of Israel, where he's actually present, where
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: he's actually empowering these practices, where he's actually giving Israel
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: the ability to carry out the law, not simply from
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: a heart perspective, but from a practical perspective.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: He's going to make all of this work.
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: I don't think there's another nation that has that potential.
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: That was a covenant relationship with Israel. That was something
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: special that he was doing with them to demonstrate to
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: the rest of the nations that Israel had this wisdom
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: and that their wisdom involved fearing the Lord, obeying his commandments.
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: And that was going to make the nations curious. As
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: we carry that into the New Testament and the formation
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: of the church, I think what the church has now is.
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: That same sort of capacity on a non-national level. We're
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: a different sort of entity. And so we have always
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: the capacity to welcome more people in, to care for
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: more people, to do the things that would be commensurate
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: with the city of God, whereas our nation simply doesn't.
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: And I think that's, I don't know how to tease
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: all that out in like the next 20 minutes, but
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: I do think this is where the wedge sits. The
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: church has capacity that the world doesn't, that the nation doesn't,
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: because we have the Holy Spirit, because God is actually
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: present with us in a way that he's not present
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: with the United States.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: For the church to be.
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: That distinct and that entity that knows God, that participates
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: with God, that obeys God, that loves God in this way,
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: opens up opportunities for us.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: It doesn't close them down.
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: I think this is commensurate with a lot of our
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: narrowing conversation with a lot of our assimilation and, you know,
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: the diagnosis that we've sort of talked through, because what
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: you begin to realize is that, you know, the God
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: who can do abundantly more than we could ever ask
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: or think is actually the God that Christians have accepted
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: and embraced and are attempting to live according.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: To his rule.
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: And when we do that, interesting things happen. We have
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: different decisions that we can make because we're not dependent
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: on the resources that we just have sitting in front
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: of us.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: So it's worth dwelling on that wedge for a moment.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: And I hope that it leads us into... Ogle talked
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: a lot about this notion of pilgrim or wayfarer, because
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: I think these are significantly tied and one of the
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: most powerful parts of understanding City of God logic, if
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: you will. This idea of the wedge, as we're discussing
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: this here, doesn't create an easy solution, right? And that
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: might be probably one of the big takeaways, because I
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: think we might be inclined to hear the way you're
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: describing it just on an informational basis and say, well,
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: then obviously the solution is fill in the blank, right?
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: But I don't think it's that simple one way or
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: the other, right? It requires the development of a theological
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: imagination to say, what is it that the church, if
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: we have infinite possibilities, and I agree, we have infinite possibilities,
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: obviously within the realm of possible actions, right? Like the
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: church isn't going to quite literally build a church on
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: a cloud or something like that. But there's a possibility
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: at play here. And that possibility, is the capacity by
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: the very holy breath of God proceeding from the mouth
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: of Jesus and filling our lungs and hopefully proceeding from
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: our lungs to be able to do things that show
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: that there's no remainder. So, while there might be limitations
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: for a variety of reasons of the balance of the state, again,
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: there's no limitations of the population possibility of inclusion at
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: the feet of Jesus.
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: So what is it that.
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: We're called to do that might not align with what
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: the state is able to do, or that might not
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: align with certain senses, I'll call them little p politics, right,
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: in the sense of what we strictly think of as
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: politics these days, that might be within our balance in
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: terms of big P politics, the ability to act in
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: polity that doesn't have to register the kinds of barriers
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: and and borders that little P politics does. And how
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: might that influence that aspect of our big P politics
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: as we engage with little P politics, right? Perhaps part
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: of it is that we can put pressure on the
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: state not to do things for us, though maybe sometimes
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: that might be the case, but to empower us to
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: be able to do what we know we should do, right?
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: You know, a simple example of this might be what
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: you've described before of There's a lot of attempts to
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: make legislation regarding abortion, but very little attempts by the
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: church to actually help women in need. Very little attempts
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: to help children that are overflowing from orphanage situations and
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: foster situations. That's a church problem, right? Why is it
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: that we're not doing it? Is the work just advocacy,
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: or is there actually a responsibility upon us? Or I
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: think of, as we've mentioned before on this podcast, this
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: often forgotten part of Galatians, right, where right after he
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: talks about the Jerusalem council, James and Peter have sent
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: him to be a minister to the Gentiles, he adds
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: on that forgotten element of, and to help the needy,
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: the poor, which I already do, right? We not only
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: forget the, to help the needy and the poor, we
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: probably often can't say, which I already do, right? And
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: why don't we tag that onto Paul as something that
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: ought to be imitated? Or, When we think about the
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: deep racial divisions that are quite frankly geographic, right? We
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: think about my beloved city of Chicago, right? As I
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: just look out the eastern window of my home, it's
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: one of the most segregated spaces on earth. And there's
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: quite literally roads and highways that are built in order
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: to maintain that segregation historically. Why does the church honor
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: those boundaries? Why is the church building in spaces and
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: buying in spaces historically? that's meant to reaffirm that kind
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: of racial geography. These are the sorts of things that
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: church has the capacity to overcome, right? And I think
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: two of the sorts of things that William Kavanaugh, he
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: mentioned things that his church is up to that are
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: trying to reimagine these sorts of things. But there are
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: possibilities even amid the chasm to be able to say
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: the role of politics isn't to recreate the work of
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: the church necessarily, though there might be things that they
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: can do to help, right? Perhaps there are social nets
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: that can be formed. But at the end of the day,
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: perhaps Christians should be thinking less about legislating their ways
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: and more of how the government or how little-p politics
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: can help the larger polity Of what is actually the church's,
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: not just responsibility, but blessed hope that they ought to
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: be breathing forth into the world. And I guess what
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: concerns me is that we don't often think of politics,
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: little p politics, in terms of that big p polity
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: of church's responsibility, church's mission, church's loves as the extension
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: of the very love of God in Christ.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: Been sort of captivated by Oliver O'Donovan's, he makes this
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: statement in The Ways of Judgment, I believe it is.
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: And he says that the governing authorities don't lose their
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: identity once Christ is crowned king, but that once Christ
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: is crowned king, their identity shifts and changes. It's resituated
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: under that new authority. And so what he talks about
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: is the governing authorities are a secondary witness to to
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: the judgment primarily of God. And so they are gesturing
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: toward reflecting in some way, shape, or form the justice
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: that God is to bring. But they're doing it as
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: a secondary theater. And the implication is the primary theater
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: is what?
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: It's the church. We're supposed to be exercising these things.
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: But I love that notion of And I don't think
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: he would necessarily construe it this way. But the idea
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: of the church is first. We're Christian first. We're whatever
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: nation we happen to live in second. And so we
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: need to be thinking, to your point, little p polity,
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: the politics of the nation, who's going to represent us,
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: who are we electing as president, you know, who gets
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: to be a senator, who gets to be a judge,
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: whatever that is. Those really are secondary issues to a
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: big P polity that Christians are to coordinate around within
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: the boundaries of a given national setting. And so we
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: can properly speak of the church in the United States
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: and the way that that polity, that big P polity
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: is coordinated together in order to influence public life, thus politics.
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: The politics of who gets elected, what laws are passed,
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: what policies are passed, that's not trivial. But we have
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: to put it in its proper place and scope it appropriately.
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: Because if we continue to lean on it as heavily
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: as we are, it's going to break. I love the image.
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: I believe it's in Isaiah, and I can't remember exactly
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: the verse, but there's this warning not to lean on
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: the bent reed of Egypt because it will break.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: And pierce your hand.
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: And I feel like that is being patterned right now
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: on a lot of what we're seeing in dependency of
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: politics and even the importation or importing of notions like
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: Christian nation onto the United States. You know, Christian nationalism
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: does this an awful lot. And I think it's wrongheaded
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: maneuvers like that that are gesturing toward the fact that
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: we're leaning too heavily on the broken reed and eventually
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: is going to pierce our hand. When the strategy really
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: should be coordinating with one another, becoming a churchly polity
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: within the United States that now has a shared sense
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: and understanding of the way that the world works and
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: and can begin influencing the rest of society from the
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: standpoint of Christ, from the standpoint of discipleship.
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: And I think that actually, in this remaining time, maybe
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: gives us an opportunity to then reflect on the wayfarer
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: idea or the pilgrim idea. I've largely come to the
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: significance of that in Augustinian thought through Aquinas, who was
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: deeply But this notion of pilgrim then sets forth, I
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: think through Kavanaugh, he does a wonderful job again of
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: describing this, that the pilgrim is not the same as
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: the tourist. The tourist goes somewhere and the goal of
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: that something is to take my experience and have my
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: experience enriched.
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: I go to.
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: In my case, I prefer to go to a wonderful
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: historic site or a place of natural beauty. Maybe someone
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: else prefers the sunny beach, right? And just relax on
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: the beach. Whatever it is that you're thinking of for
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: a vacation, as a tourist, your goal is not to
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: go and integrate with a place and to receive that
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: place into yourself as having been open to it and
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: then to bring that experience back. Your goal is to
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: take yourself there and to have yourself enriched in order
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: that you might come home more yourself. The pilgrim, by contrast,
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: as Kavanaugh points out, is on a pilgrimage, is entering
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: into a space not for one's own enrichment, though in
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: fact gets enriched because the place that the pilgrim goes
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: to is about opening oneself up to the significance of
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: that place and allowing that place to change you from
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: the inside so that you might then be able to
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: enrich the places around you because you have been changed
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: by it, right? Rather than what you are going to
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: a place to impose yourself. Now, I'm not saying don't
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: go on vacation and don't be tourists, though maybe Kavanaugh is.
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: Maybe we should have asked him that. But what I
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: am saying is that as we think about this chasm again,
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: to begin to think less in terms of citizenship, right?
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: You and I are citizens of the United States. We
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: have certain rights that come with that, certain privileges that
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: come with that. We have certain baggage that comes with that.
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: But the goal is less to think in terms of
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: what are my rights and what are my privileges and
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: what are my baggages with that citizenship. It's more to
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: think in terms of as I also have that citizenship,
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: what might my ultimate polity of seeking to further and
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: be formed by the loves of the city of God be?
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: What might that enable me to enter in as a
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: pilgrim into another space in order to be able to
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: see this space as a place ripe for transformation? In
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: this case, not because I'm transformed, hopefully, by Washington, D.C.
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: Let's just give a little peapolitics name to it. But
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: rather that I might be able to enter into that
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: place carrying back with me what I've already received on
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: this pilgrimage into this hope of the blessed assurance of
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: something better, right? That that's more, that's eternal, that, that
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: reflects the loves that are ordered for the thriving of
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: all with no exclusion, with all possible inclusory, right? Possibilities.
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: Does that make sense?
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: It does.
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: And I'll, I'll throw this in and I know we're
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: getting close to time, so we won't be able to
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: delve into this necessarily, but I wrote a piece a
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: while back on, and I, I compared, I talked about
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: Las Vegas and I said, Las Vegas is probably the
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: most honest place in the United States because it's not
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: giving any, it's not giving any artifice, right? Um, come
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: to Las Vegas and you get to see the New York,
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: New York, the fake New York, New York, the fake Paris,
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: the fake, you know, you get to, you get to
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: eat food from around the world. That's all sourced right
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: there from Vegas. Um, um, You know, it's a place
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: of excess. It bills itself as a place of excess,
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: and it's not pretending to be anything but a place
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: of excess was.
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: Sort of my point.
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: I think the, and it's not like, oh, Vegas is
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: full of virtue then, and we should all just gravitate there.
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: No, that's not what I'm saying.
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: What I'm saying is that if we look at Vegas
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: and we say, okay, that's the most honest place in
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: the United States, what we have to admit is that
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: all these other cities, all these other places that we go,
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: We need that pilgrim mentality because they're deceptive.
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: They're going to try to pull us into.
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: Something that we shouldn't be pulled into and that we
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: really don't want to be pulled into. We want to
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: be there as a blessing to that place, as opposed
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: to having the experience of that place and allowing the
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: experience of that place to just form us with no
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: governors around it. As the pilgrim, we go in and
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: we are looking to benefit that place. And as we
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: do that, as we go out on this pilgrimage, it
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: seems to me that being a pilgrim, that analogy that
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: you're drawing out, is a much.
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: I'll use this term, although I'm not sure I really
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: mean it, safer way to travel. Because we have a
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: clarity of vision about what it means to be a
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: pilgrim and what we're trying to do in a given place.
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: it gives us additional resources to resist what that place
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: is trying to do to us that would turn us
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: from being pilgrims into citizens or turn us from being
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: pilgrims into tourists.
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the sort of thing I was trying to say.
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: I think you said it much more succinctly. Thanks for that.
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: I think one final thought from me that relates to this.
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: I've been thinking a lot about the provision of God
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: and you mentioned piqued it again in my mind when
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: you mentioned just the reality that what the church has
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: is the inexhaustible reality of the Holy Spirit that we
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: draw from and that enables us. This Holy Spirit, this
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: Holy God that gives us of His own abundance, that
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: speaks in Psalm 23 of filling our cups to overflow,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: though we have walked through the valley of the shadow
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: of death. This is a promise that's amazing. And I
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: think we're very ill equipped to see it. So I
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: was talking to a friend the other day and I
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: was expressing how through certain trials in my own life,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: I've actually come to a place in which I have
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: less anxiety over things like finances. Right. Um, then I
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: once had, and I was relaying some experiences in which, um,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: I have no recourse to explain provision, but by saying
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: God did this, right? Some pretty incredible things that were
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: just blew me away and that set you at ease.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: But what's remarkable to me in this notion of provision
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: is that while it's easy to gravitate towards the financial
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: element of it, the nature of provision in scripture is
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: is rarely actually straight financial. Now, we live in a
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: world of this technology of the financial that's meant to
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: carry within it the potential energy of what we can
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: then use it for for a variety of things. And
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: in that sense, it makes sense to think of provision
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: in some sense like that. But it's really much richer
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: and deeper, right? You think about the sheer absurdity of
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: Elijah in the midst of a famine, a famine that's
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: been brought about by the unfaithfulness of Israel, being led
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: by God to this secret brook that he's able to
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: drink from, while crows bring him food.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: What?
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: And that comes right before he goes to the woman
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: of Zarephath, and God then blesses that woman by allowing
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: her jars of oil and grain, not to overflow, but
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: just to never run out until the harvest comes. There's
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: a provision in there that I think we have not
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: enough audacity to expect from God, and that I think
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: that speaks to the atrophy of our own resonance with God,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: that faith muscle, right? Our understanding of the sheer abundance
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: of the love of God. We're too worried about minimizing
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: the chasms and playing by certain rules because we're worried about,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: will we have enough? Will we have enough money for
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: our church doors to stay open, for institutions to stay open?
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: Will we have enough on my own individual play? Will
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: I have the relationships be fulfilling to me in the
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: way that I want them to be? And arguably, and
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: so this gets back to that conversation with a friend,
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: one of the things he said to me was, you know,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: it's interesting to see that when he works with an
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: organization in what many people think of as the developing world,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: which I don't love that language, but that's maybe for
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: another time and place. But what he said is that
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: Christians there he find far less anxious, even though they
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: quite literally every day are thinking about what's the next
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: thing they'll get. But there's been such a development of
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: that faith muscle that the Lord does, in fact, provide,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: regularly provides. And it's not this occasional thing. And as
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: a result, the anxiety just isn't there. And there's a
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: joyfulness there, right? And he said that to me. And
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: I just thought, to a certain degree, through the things
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: that I've had to deal with, I can understand that.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: And I haven't even had to understand it to that degree.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: How much more can this faith muscle be developed? where
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: it's not just simply let go and let God, that
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: sort of thing, Jesus take the wheel. It's that I'm
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: active and faithful and present with the things that are
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: before me today, not anxious, knowing that the Lord will
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: be faithful. And I think that pilgrim's mentality can be
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: deeply enriching then as we think about how to operate
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: with that big peapolity and not reduce it all to
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: the little peapolity while still being engaged. This isn't a
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: call to Amishness.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: Right, right. No, there is something....
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: I wrote a little piece on the Lord's Prayer, you know,
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: give us this day our daily bread. There's something freeing
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: about just asking for what you need that day.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: And I think it would produce.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: That mentality, maybe not that reality all the time, because
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: I realized that people do lack, right? So I don't
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: want to be flippant with that. But I think the
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: mentality of saying God will give me what I need
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: for the day would really draw us away from the
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: sort of anxieties we tend to exhibit around little P politics.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 3: It would just change the way we think about it.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 3: And that is, again, sort of to draw us back
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: and close this out. I think that's what Augustine is
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: talking about when he's talking about the city of God.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: It's those sort of ideas, that deeply enmeshed sort of
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: notion where we are immersed within the love of God
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: and learn to think and act and respond in the
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: world differently than a love of self could ever cultivate.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: And I think Veronica Ogle pulled that out beautifully in
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: her episode. I think we've talked around it and to
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: it today. And I'd just encourage listeners, if you didn't
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: listen to the episode with Veronica Ogle, I'd just encourage
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: you to do so.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: Pick up her book. The link to that is in
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: the show description. And I think you'll really enjoy it.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: It is an academically written book, but I found it
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: sufficiently accessible as a non-Augustinian expert. You may have to
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: Google a few Latin terms, but you'll get there. Nothing
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: wrong with Googling Latin. But this has been a great
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: conversation and I think a fitting one as we continue
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: our Faith and Politics series. So thanks, Ashish. Appreciate the conversation. Thanks, everybody,
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: for listening. And we'll catch you on the next episode
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: of Thinking Christian.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: Take care.