Latest / Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture / When Your Interpretation Becomes the Authority | The Diagnosis

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When Your Interpretation Becomes the Authority | The Diagnosis · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian on
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Doctor James Spencer. I'm joined by doctor Hiesh Pharma, and
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: we're going to continue our series on the different diagnoses,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: the forces and conditions that tend to narrow the Church's vision.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: And so today we're talking about a phenomenon called inversion.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: And what I mean when I say in version is
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  Speaker 1: that our interpretive grids sort of take over authority from scripture.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: So we've all tended to see this happen.
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  Speaker 1: We've got some sort of a strong conviction about a
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: particular way of interpreting one verse or even the whole Bible,
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  Speaker 1: and we decide that that interpretive grid is the only
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: interpretive grid. We start thinking in terms of absolutes as
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: opposed to thinking in terms of plausibility structures. And so
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  Speaker 1: I have a lot of convictions about different Biblical verses.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: I'm sure I Shoush, you do too. But I also
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: recognize that a lot of times I I don't have
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: everything figured out. And so I may think that a
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: particular interpretation is plausible or even more probable than others,
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  Speaker 1: but that doesn't close off space for other interpretations to
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  Speaker 1: come in there.
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  Speaker 2: And so it was interesting this week.
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  Speaker 1: I was just having a little back and forth conversation,
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  Speaker 1: which I very seldom do on social media LinkedIn if
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: LinkedIn even counts as social media anymore.
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  Speaker 2: This gentleman was asking.
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  Speaker 1: About the difference between Jesus and the Word of God. Right,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: don't we put our faith in Jesus and not put
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: our faith in the Word.
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  Speaker 2: And how does authority work? And you know, those kind
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  Speaker 2: of things.
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  Speaker 1: And I gave an answer, and then he came back with, well,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: what happens when Christians disagree? Who's the authority then? And
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  Speaker 1: I said, well, the authority doesn't actually change, right, God's
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  Speaker 1: Word is the final authority for life and faith, So
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: the authority doesn't change.
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  Speaker 2: We do.
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  Speaker 1: And what we recognize is that even though we may
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  Speaker 1: have convictions about these various texts, we may ascribe to
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  Speaker 1: a particular tradition that holds to a one position or another,
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  Speaker 1: and in that sense, we put ourselves under the authority
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  Speaker 1: of that tradition.
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  Speaker 2: But at the end of the day, we need to be.
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  Speaker 1: Recognizing that the Bible is the final authority for life
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  Speaker 1: and faith, and that doesn't change just because we can't agree.
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  Speaker 2: And in those.
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  Speaker 1: Places where we can't agree, we need to be thinking
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  Speaker 1: through whether or not we can actually.
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  Speaker 2: Negotiate with one another.
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  Speaker 1: Appropriate ways for us to think through the text and
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  Speaker 1: come out the other side with disagreements, but not disunity.
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  Speaker 1: And so I think that there's a sense in which,
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  Speaker 1: as we ask these questions, we are really talking about
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  Speaker 1: the authority of scripture in a lot of ways.
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  Speaker 3: And my.
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  Speaker 1: Discomfort a lot of times is that sometimes we take
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  Speaker 1: scripture and we subsume its authority under a particular interpretive grid,
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  Speaker 1: or we hook them so closely together that you couldn't
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  Speaker 1: pull them apart, and I think that creates more factions.
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  Speaker 2: Within the community of faith than we really need.
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  Speaker 1: So I'll leave it there and let you kind of
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  Speaker 1: wax philosophical for a minute.
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  Speaker 2: They're ashes.
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  Speaker 3: Philosophical is the word that comes to mind. The strength
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  Speaker 3: I think of the way that you're describing inversion is
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  Speaker 3: that it gives us a picture that.
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  Speaker 4: There's a lot to work from here. Yeah, because there's
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  Speaker 4: a lot of things that can immediately come to mind.
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  Speaker 3: Right when we think of inversion, we're thinking maybe upside down,
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  Speaker 3: we're thinking of the wrong thing on top, And I'm
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  Speaker 3: not sure that that's necessarily the way to think about it,
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  Speaker 3: right though. I get the benefit of that because it
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  Speaker 3: can be really easy to say, well, your tradition or
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  Speaker 3: your interpretive framework, or your imagination what have you.
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  Speaker 4: Has a lot of baggage time to it. So we
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  Speaker 4: just have to get back to the text.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 3: The way that people tend to think of the reformations
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  Speaker 3: sola scriptura, right, that it's scripture and only scripture. We're
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  Speaker 3: getting rid of all these other things, or the way
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  Speaker 3: that as much as I like him, sometimes I fear
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  Speaker 3: and t Wright when he does is well, you're asking
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  Speaker 3: Reformation questions and I'm asking first century questions. Okay, maybe,
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  Speaker 3: but you're doing so from the for him twenty to
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  Speaker 3: twenty first centuries, and so you're really asking twenty the
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  Speaker 3: twenty first century questions too, right. And what I want
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  Speaker 3: to emphasize here is in version can't mean everyone else
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  Speaker 3: has interpreted baggage, but me and my crew we got it,
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  Speaker 3: that's right. I think what it points to is a
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  Speaker 3: failure to recognize that there is Okay, here's the fancy
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  Speaker 3: philosophical word forgive me everyone. We have a hermoneutical spiral
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  Speaker 3: or circle or feedback loop that's at play right where
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  Speaker 3: hermonutics says. The primary question is not necessarily how do
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  Speaker 3: I know that I know? But what is the process
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  Speaker 3: of understanding? And the way that I understand is inherently
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  Speaker 3: the drawing of things into my categories, my linguistic my
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  Speaker 3: language based categories. Right, So when I look at the
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  Speaker 3: lawn and identify something as a weed, I'm not saying
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  Speaker 3: anything actually about that green leafy thing with that certain
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  Speaker 3: kind of flower over and against the other green leafy
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  Speaker 3: thing with the flower that I do want or that
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  Speaker 3: I deliberately planted. Right, That those entities, those creatures in
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  Speaker 3: the garden and in the lawn, don't communicate with each
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  Speaker 3: other or view each other in those sorts of ways,
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  Speaker 3: or view themselves. It says something about me, says something
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  Speaker 3: about more than me, my community that has come up
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  Speaker 3: with a certain way of categorizing some of these versus others. Now,
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  Speaker 3: the goal here is to say, well, let's do away
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  Speaker 3: with the weed. Obviously there are reasons we've come up
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  Speaker 3: with the category, some better, some worse, Right, But the
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  Speaker 3: bigger question, hermoneutical question, is how did we arrive at
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  Speaker 3: this point and how does it affect that.
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  Speaker 4: We read the text?
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  Speaker 3: So I think when we're talking about this feedback circle.
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  Speaker 3: When you say in version, what I hear as having
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  Speaker 3: gone wrong is a failure to recognize that we have
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  Speaker 3: this feedback loop. Right, I encounter the text, but I
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  Speaker 3: already already encounter it from somewhere with some set of linguistic, conceptual, whatever.
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  Speaker 4: Categories that I inherit.
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  Speaker 3: Right, But those things can hopefully be challenged by the
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  Speaker 3: text and therefore begin to morph my categories, or maybe
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  Speaker 3: over time, as I engage with others interacting with the
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  Speaker 3: same text, even add new categories, or change categories or
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  Speaker 3: remove some categories. But then that should always lead me
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  Speaker 3: back to the text. And I think that that feedback
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  Speaker 3: loop is what's broken in what you're describing as inversion. Right,
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  Speaker 3: there might be the naivety of how I come to
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  Speaker 3: the text next, and there's a presumption of what I
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  Speaker 3: see in the text must obviously and clearly be true. Right.
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  Speaker 3: What the height of American evangelicalism in the early teen
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  Speaker 3: hundreds in Upstate New York would say, it's me and
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  Speaker 3: my Bible and the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit has
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  Speaker 3: led me to all truth. And this is what I
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  Speaker 3: have the Holy Spirit, and this is what I've come
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  Speaker 3: to understand so this must be the truth, and it
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  Speaker 3: doesn't work out so well when you have one hundred
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  Speaker 3: people saying that same thing and coming to one hundred
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  Speaker 3: two different conclusions.
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  Speaker 1: I agree that that is an excellent way of describing
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  Speaker 1: what I'm talking about when I'm talking about conversion or
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  Speaker 1: I'm sorry inversion inversion.
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  Speaker 2: And part of what I like about it is that.
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  Speaker 1: And I think this has always been a tension as
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  Speaker 1: I've thought about this issue.
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  Speaker 2: We always have to hit the ground.
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  Speaker 1: So when I was when I was an administrator in
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  Speaker 1: higher ed right, I knew that there were times when
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  Speaker 1: I just had to make a decision, and even though
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  Speaker 1: more discussion would ultimately be needed, you never really got
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  Speaker 1: to the bottom of an issue. In other words, there
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  Speaker 1: were always going to be some questions that were left unanswered,
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  Speaker 1: some perspectives that could be explored more deeply, you know,
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  Speaker 1: some areas of thought that we didn't, you know, just
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  Speaker 1: drill down to the very bottom of.
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  Speaker 2: But you didn't always have that kind of time. You
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  Speaker 2: had to do something.
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  Speaker 1: It couldn't just all be sitting around and thinking philosophically about,
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  Speaker 1: you know, what we should do next, Like, sometimes there
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  Speaker 1: just had to be a decision made and I tend
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  Speaker 1: to view what we do with scripture in sort of
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  Speaker 1: a similar manner, in that we are asked not just
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  Speaker 1: to know things and master scripture in a way that
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  Speaker 1: doesn't leave any room for doubt about what we understand
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  Speaker 1: about it or the interpretations that we have of it.
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  Speaker 1: We're asked to live it out, and that living it
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  Speaker 1: out requires us to wrestle with texts. It requires us
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  Speaker 1: to be in conversation with others. But then it also
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  Speaker 1: requires us to sort of put boots on the ground
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  Speaker 1: and actually move a bit. And I think that what
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  Speaker 1: you're describing that sort of hermeneutical spiral. It doesn't deny
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  Speaker 1: that you have boots on the ground, but it does
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  Speaker 1: require you to say, just because I put boots on
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  Speaker 1: the ground doesn't mean that I never circle back and
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  Speaker 1: reevaluate what's going on. It doesn't mean that I have
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  Speaker 1: to just keep trotting this way for the rest of
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  Speaker 1: my life, that this was the final decision I've ever made,
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  Speaker 1: and now all I have is this trajectory and this
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  Speaker 1: cadence and this way of walking. Right, you can always
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  Speaker 1: turn around and reflect and realize, oh, I should have
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  Speaker 1: been going ten degrees northwest as opposed to ten degrees northeast,
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  Speaker 1: and you can make those adjustments. And I think that's
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  Speaker 1: a crucial part of what I wanted to get at
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  Speaker 1: with invert, because I feel like sometimes we're closing ourselves
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  Speaker 1: in right. That problem of narrowing applies here to this
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  Speaker 1: notion of an interpretive grid, because these tend to close
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  Speaker 1: us off from opportunities that may actually be there. We
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  Speaker 1: just can no longer see them or unwilling to entertain them,
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  Speaker 1: because we become more committed to a system of thinking,
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  Speaker 1: a system of understanding the text, a set of interpretations
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  Speaker 1: of various texts that then require us to think of
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  Speaker 1: various aspects of the world as more relevant than others,
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  Speaker 1: and we close ourselves off functionally to almost everything else.
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  Speaker 1: And so I'll use a weight room analogy because that's
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  Speaker 1: what I do.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: It's similar to going into the gym right and just
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  Speaker 1: doing beach muscles, but realizing that you also need to work,
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  Speaker 1: you know, some of the smaller muscles of the back
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  Speaker 1: and show because those are actually going to keep your
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  Speaker 1: joints healthy.
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  Speaker 2: And so even if you just want beach.
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  Speaker 1: Muscles, like big arms, you know, big chests, big shoulders,
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  Speaker 1: whatever you still have to do some other things to
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  Speaker 1: make sure that as you're building those other muscles.
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  Speaker 2: Your body doesn't just fall apart.
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  Speaker 1: Those other pieces have to be there, and I think
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  Speaker 1: that what happens sometimes is that we go full force
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  Speaker 1: on the beach muscles neglect everything else, and that is
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  Speaker 1: going to produce to in some degree, a broken body.
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  Speaker 1: It's going to give us more aches and pains than
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  Speaker 1: we really need when we could just throw in a
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  Speaker 1: few other of these exercises and attend to them appropriately
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  Speaker 1: and realize more than we're.
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  Speaker 2: Getting out of our current quote unquote workout.
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  Speaker 3: So I'm intrigued by that analogy. I'm trying to think
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  Speaker 3: as I think about the theoretical weightlifting that I'm not
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  Speaker 3: really going to do, that makes a lot of sense
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  Speaker 3: when I think about hermeneutically what that entails. Do you
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  Speaker 3: have some carryovers to our conversation that would we immediately say, yeah,
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  Speaker 3: I get that.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, let me think through Deuteronomy. I believe it's twenty
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  Speaker 2: nineteen and twenty. I think I'm getting that right.
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  Speaker 1: I don't have my Bible pulled up right here, but
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  Speaker 1: maybe i'll check it real quick while well hand the
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  Speaker 1: mic over.
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  Speaker 2: But in Deuteronomy. I believe it's twenty nineteen and twenty.
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  Speaker 2: Israel has given instructions regarding conquest.
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  Speaker 1: They're going to go in and they're going to take
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  Speaker 1: over these other lands. They're supposed to conquer seven other nations.
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  Speaker 1: And at the end of these instructions, God says, by
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  Speaker 1: the way, you're going to find these fruit trees, don't
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  Speaker 1: destroy the fruit trees. You can eat the fruit trees,
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  Speaker 1: but don't just destroy the fruit trees.
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  Speaker 2: What a fascinating little verse.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, I believe that's Teronomy twenty. I recall that.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, so fascinating little verse. Right.
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  Speaker 1: My guess is that people did not memorize that verse
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  Speaker 1: in I Wana. My guess is that it's not one
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  Speaker 1: that's going to roll off the tip of people's tongues.
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  Speaker 1: Even I have trouble, and I've been studying this, I
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  Speaker 1: couldn't remember what chapter and verse it was. Right, This
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  Speaker 1: is not John three sixteen, this is not Romans twelve
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  Speaker 1: one and two. This is this odd little verse buried
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  Speaker 1: down deep in the conquest narratives of Deuteronomy that gives
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  Speaker 1: us so much to reflect on and think about when
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: it comes to what dominion is, How Israel's movement into
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  Speaker 1: the land was to preserve the natural elements of that
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: land so that they could survive there. It just gives
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  Speaker 1: us all these different elements of theological reflection that most
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  Speaker 1: of us it is not intuitive that we would do
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  Speaker 1: just like hopping in and reading the letters of Paul. Now,
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  Speaker 1: what am I not saying. I'm not saying that there's
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  Speaker 1: a problem with the Letters of Paul, right. What I
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  Speaker 1: am saying is that you have all these other little
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  Speaker 1: muscles that if we read them, you know, if we
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  Speaker 1: worked them out right, if you went in, hopped in
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  Speaker 1: and read Deuteronomy, read some of those laws in Leviticus,
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  Speaker 1: read the weird sections of numbers. We usually think of
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  Speaker 1: those as negligible. But what I'm suggesting is, I think
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  Speaker 1: their core, because what they would do is they would
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: add texture and challenge some of our settled interpretations when
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: we run into a verse like that, or even believe
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  Speaker 1: it's Deuteronomy seven.
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  Speaker 2: I've been studying some of the conquest narratives.
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  Speaker 1: Deuteronomy seven talks about God is going to give the
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  Speaker 1: Israelites the land little by little, why so the wild
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  Speaker 1: animals do not outnumber them?
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  Speaker 2: What is that?
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  Speaker 1: Like those are interesting things that take a settled opinion
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  Speaker 1: where we think, oh, I got this, I know what
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  Speaker 1: the Bible's about, and then you run into these verses
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  Speaker 1: and you go or maybe I don't. Maybe I don't
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  Speaker 1: fully grasp everything that I've got there, And now I
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  Speaker 1: have more room to think.
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  Speaker 2: I can open up my interpretive grids.
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  Speaker 1: Can I can re evaluate those texts and my understanding
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  Speaker 1: of the Bible as a whole. So that's one example
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  Speaker 1: of this sort of not working out the beach muscles.
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  Speaker 2: In this illustration.
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  Speaker 1: The beach muscles would be something like Romans, right, and
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  Speaker 1: the smaller muscles that still need to be there to
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  Speaker 1: keep the joints healthier, like Deuteronomy seven and twenty.
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  Speaker 4: Okay, this is good. So the Deuteronomy twenty one.
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  Speaker 3: The reason I was able to say that's Tudoriny twenty
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  Speaker 3: is I actually used that passage. I'm sure it shocks
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  Speaker 3: you that I was using God's care for trees with
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  Speaker 3: my class, but I wanted to try to make the
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  Speaker 3: point because we have these questions, legitimate questions that surround
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  Speaker 3: the conquest narratives, and especially in a postgenocidal age right
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  Speaker 3: where we've seen so many atrocities in the world. It's
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  Speaker 3: an understandable question that arises as God commanding genocide. And
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  Speaker 3: we have this strange dynamic that appears in Deuteronomy twenty two.
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  Speaker 3: Strange dynamics. One is this near far business or perhaps
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: that starts in chapter nineteen that I wanted to highlight students.
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  Speaker 3: But the other one was the trees one, because I
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  Speaker 3: could guarantee that these students who are familiar with these
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: debates never once noticed this strange tree command. Yeah, and
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  Speaker 3: I think you're right about that, and I want to
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  Speaker 3: see you and I want to raise you even a
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  Speaker 3: little more to the beach muscles that we often tend
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  Speaker 3: to include worksite Galatians. Yeah, I forget the exact chapter.
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  Speaker 3: It's the chapter Paul is recounting the Jerusalem Council and
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  Speaker 3: that he had to confront Peter and he was then
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: given a commission by Peter and James to be the
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: one who takes the message of Jesus to the Gentiles,
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  Speaker 3: and that part we know. But at the conclusion of
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  Speaker 3: that same section, at the end of the chapter, and
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  Speaker 3: forgive me, it's what chapter four or something like that,
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  Speaker 3: Paul also says, and they instructed me to help the
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  Speaker 3: poor m which I already do.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's like.
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  Speaker 3: A double thing there, Like no one that I ever
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  Speaker 3: here preached this passage or talking about this passage ever
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  Speaker 3: mentions that tag at the end as if it's just
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  Speaker 3: an adendom add at on and not part of what
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  Speaker 3: Paul saying and what the commission to him was. Never mind,
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  Speaker 3: the second part of that is, by the way, I
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: already do that, So I'm just gonna keep doing it.
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  Speaker 3: But they just affirmed that might doing that is good
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  Speaker 3: and right, and to your point, we think in terms
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  Speaker 3: of doctrinal flexing. But that changes a lot, right because
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  Speaker 3: the ways that I've heard presidents of Bible colleges, pastors,
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  Speaker 3: Christian leaders talk about such things as helping the poor,
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  Speaker 3: they're always at best, extra things when we have our
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: other ducks aligned. At worst, it's what those liberals do.
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  Speaker 3: And here we have Paul, you know, the chief the
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  Speaker 3: chief trainer in our Biblical weightlifting project, telling us, not
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  Speaker 3: only is that something that the commission that the council
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  Speaker 3: commissioned him to do, but he already doesn't.
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  Speaker 4: Right.
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  Speaker 3: So I think that's that's a beautiful way of saying it,
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: and I think that changes everything, not just because it
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: adds more to our picture, but it actually to your
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  Speaker 3: point of recalibrating. Might mean that we have to actually
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: rethink what we're doing with these passages that we see
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: them as first and four almost about some sort of
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: abstract doctrinal discussions. Now, don't hear me as saying no,
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: discussions are important. But I'm not sure that they have
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: the level of intensity in the Biblical text, maybe not
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: even in the imagination of these Hebraic thinkers who aren't
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: thinking as Greek philosophers that we've given them to be
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: in subsequent church history. But when we think about your
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: inversion category and what that might mean in terms of
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: the hermeneutical circle or spiral, however we want to put
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: it again, it tells us that what we're doing with
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: the text has to be attuned in some ways to
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: hearing from the text, and not just simply going in
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: with our lenses attuned to the sorts of data that
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: we're looking for. Right, you're inclined to see only the
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: things you're looking for, if you're inclined to only see squares,
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: if your glasses are shaped, your lenses are shaped like squares. Right,
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: But there might be a lot of ovals and circles,
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: and you know, various other polygons that we're missing out.
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: I think is kind of the point.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, just to sort of dovetail a little
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: bit more on this, I had a conversation on Christian
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: nationalism and dominionism here fairly recently, and one of the
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: texts that I brought up was Deuteronomy too. Deuteronomy has
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: a lot of rich texts related to the conquest, but
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: Deuteronomy too is actually God saying you shall not go
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: in and dispossess the Moabilides. And so what we see
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: here is at the beginning of these sort of conquest narratives,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: the instructions that are given, at least with regard to
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: the conquest, is that one thing that is often missing
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: in Christian nationalism and dominionism is what are our limits?
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: What aren't we supposed to do? That It's almost always
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: framed in terms of the positive. Here's what we're supposed
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: to do. We know what we're supposed to do, but
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: there's never any thought given as to what we're not
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: supposed to be doing. What are we supposed to restrain
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: ourselves from? Because God has given that to another people,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: and the fact that we can't answer the question should
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: give us pause about how sure we should be about
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: the positive aspects that we're asserting. This is what we
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: should take over, this is how we should proceed. If
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: we don't understand what the limit is, it's unclear that
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: we really understand what the movement forward should be. And
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: I think Deuteronomy two and then into Deuteronomy seven and
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: Deuteronomy twenty, that whole conquest sort of all those different
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: conquest texts woven together. What you begin to understand is
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: that that the Israelites conquest instructions can't really form conquest
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: instructions for us, That these are very different things, and
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: that because we don't have the full picture, it's it's
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: very difficult for us to sit back and say, oh,
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: this is something we should be doing now. I use
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: that as an illustration just to say this is I
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: think that there's a way in which that sort of ideology,
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: that interpretive grid of dominionism and Christian nationalism have inverted,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: and so they no longer have to check in with
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: the text. Deuteronomy too means nothing to them right there,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: It doesn't factor at all. And if it does it's
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: it's quickly addressed and then swept under the rug. There's
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: no wrestling with it. And and I think that that
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: is a that is a good illustration of the way
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: the way I see inversion working a lot of the
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: time is that you have these counter narratives within the
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: text that are not that are explained away. And now
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: all I have to say. Sometimes I think it's very
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: difficult to interpret the Bible and not have some of
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: those texts right, and it just is like none of
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: us have a full handle on this thing we call
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: the Bible. At the same time, when I come to
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: a verse that I can't explain, I think I tend
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: to lean on the side of restraint. Let me not
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: advance as quickly as I might have on the things
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: that I felt sure about, because I've got this piece
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: over here that is really telling me something very different,
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: and I don't know how to explain it yet. And
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: so I think there's this sort of on the gas
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: off the gas kind of analogy that we need to
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: have right that we're on some level, we've got to
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: move forward in advance. We're trying to follow God somewhere,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: and you know, when we think we're following along with him.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: It's appropriate for us to make those steps. But at
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: the same time, I think there's a way for us
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: to sort of zoom past God, decide what our trajectory
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: is going to be, and ignore all of these other
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: texts over here that are saying something completely different to us,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: then go full speed ahead. And that subtle inversion puts
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: us in the driver's seat. It sets our agenda as
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: God's agenda right in a bad way.
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: And.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: It almost makes it so that God's word is not
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: determining our steps. We're determining our steps, and then we're
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: justifying it with God's word. That to me is sort
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: of the essence of conversion of inversion.
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: So I think on a parallel round that also entailed
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: the attempt avoid inversion or to counteract in version, entails
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: not just looking at these smaller muscles and Deuteronomy and
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: Leviticus and taglines andificaalations, but also interpreters that sit outside
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: of our traditions, both today and in the past. Right
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: because I think one of the things that you mentioned,
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: which was that we can't fit every single one of
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: these these little narrative structures into our theories or interpretive grids.
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: And the reason for that is frankly, because it isn't
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: it is an interpretive framework, right to take something that's
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: a collection of wisdom, literature and narrative in letters and
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: parable and some history like thing. And only what I
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: mean by history like is it's not doing the history
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: the way that we see the modern enterprise of historians
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: doing history. That's all I mean by history like apocalyptic literature, revelation,
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: like all these different sorts of modes of discourse that
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: are joined together in one larger narrative continuity, let's call it.
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: None of those things are philosophical discourse meant to give
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: us abstract principles, whether ethical or doctrinal. That's a megaframework, right,
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: the sorts of things that we think of in terms
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: of our modern rubrics that we use to discern whether
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: things are good or bad, theology right or wrong, theology right, orthodoxy,
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: orthopoxy versus heterodoxy and heteropraxy. So to arrive at those
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: other structures, it is an interpretive process. And those are
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: interpretive frameworks. And because of the nature of them, they're
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: not able to hold together. These various kinds of let's
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: call them genres or forms of discourse.
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: But what's interesting is that what often distinguishes these interpretive
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: frameworks is which elements or which directions or pathways within
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: the text one group ends up taking hold of and
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: holding as primary, and doing so can radically change the
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: way that we see in the text, right, whether that
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: be how do we understand justification by faith? Is it
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: justification by faith alone? Does that mean faith and belief
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: for themselves intellectual works that need to be done away
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: with as well, right, like that's a luther thing. Or
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: is justification by faith such that you show your faith
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: by doing as especially James, but also.
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: Really Paul talks about it, and Jesus talks.
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: About going to lend us to this broadly speaking Roman
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: Catholic way, right, And we can go on and on
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: and on. I think what's important within this is that
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: we have to be able to have the discipline to
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: hear those from other traditions without that immediate knee jerk
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: reaction of writing the snarky notes in the margin, so
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: to speak. And I have in my mind the image
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: of myself in grad school where I hated a particular book.
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: It was a history program.
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: I hated this historical work that I was working through,
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: and I wrote these snarky notes in the margin, and
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: years later I went back to it was thoroughly embarrassed
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: as I looked at it, and I said, snarky, My
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: snarky notes betrayed that I didn't actually understand fully what
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: this historian was saying. Because I actually think this historian,
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: whether or not I fully agree with them, was onto
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: something here, and I failed to be able to understand
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: it because I was too busy with engaging in some
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: sort of apologetic exercise with him, but without him present.
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: Right. But I think that that's how this inversion happens.
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: We're so worried.
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: About the other or even that third group, right, and
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: that third group is probably the one that needs the
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: advocating for right interpretively without saying everything goes right.
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: But that's the juxtaposition. That's the back and forth.
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: That's that we take, we get shaped, we take back
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: to the text, we get shaped again, right, so on
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: and so forth.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think this is largely what we mean
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: when we say the Bible is, or at least this
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: is largely what I mean when I say the Bible
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: is the final authority for life and faith.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: It's final.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: I don't know that we ever reached that finality, but
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: it does provide a set of constraints and guardrails for us,
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: and we need to be able to discern when we're
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: outside of those constraints and outside of those guardrails. Oftentimes
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: we think about that in terms of just strict heresy.
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: You know arianism or you know modalism.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: Like my mind goes back to that fantastic little video,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: the animated video the two Irish guys talking about the Trinity, right,
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: like one of my favorite videos of all time, I think.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, I think there's
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: also another way to air. I won't call heresy, but
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: there's another way to err in this, and that is
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: being too narrow. I think we see this in Act seven.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: It's a passage I think we've talked about on another podcast.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: But essentially what happens there is the people are accusing
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: Stephen of preaching against Moses and the temple and the law,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: and Stephen, instead of addressing those points one by one,
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: comes back and says, well, let's just take a look
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: at this. Let's look at all the different times that
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: God interacts with his people and works on behalf of
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: his people outside the land. Abraham's called outside the land,
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: Moses's call from Midian. There's holy ground in you know,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: in the under the burning bush in Midian. Right, even
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: when Solomon builds the temple, we all know that God
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: does not actually dwell in a house made by human hands.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: God transcends these human structures. And so what are we
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: really talking about here? This is all within our tradition.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: All of that should have been a parent It wasn't
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: anything even radical. Right, He's basically showing different place names
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: and going God did stuff in Egypt, for instance, And
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: so he's showing them, like all these different times that
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: God works outside the boundaries that they themselves have set.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: And he's trying to help him understand that they've narrowed
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: God too much, that their interpretive lens has become like
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: blinders essentially. And at the end of that.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: Speech that he gives, what's fascinating is Stephen looks up
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: and sees Jesus standing next to the throne, glorified his opponents.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: It says, they shut up their ears, run toward him
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: and stone him, and so they clog up their sense
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: organ so they can't hear.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: They can't.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: They don't want to hear this from him, They don't
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: want to see this anymore, they want this to be gone.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: And I think that's the opposite error that we don't
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: often really deeply consider. There's certainly a going outside of
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: the boundaries sort of heresy that creates its problems, but
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: I think there's also a resetting the boundaries to narrowly
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: problem that we don't often address. But that is I
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: think well illustrated in scripture and part of what can
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: come out in our interpretive process if we're not careful.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: I think we have to sort of balance and negotiate
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: these boundaries in a way that we're not on the
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: other side of the fence outside in heresyland, denying something
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: that Scripture is saying from an assertion perspective, like I'm
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: going to say that the Bible teaches X, Y or Z,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: and it really doesn't. But we also need to be
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: careful not to be so far inside the fence where
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: we're saying we're going to say that the Bible can't.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: Teach X, Y and Z, that it can only teach
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: these things.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: And creating a little box for scripture to sit in
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: both ways are diminishing of scriptures authority in ways that
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: I think Christians want to avoid.
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, agreed. And a further note, I think regarding our
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: quick footedness to arrive at conclusions of heresy, along with
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: the way that we tend to minimize the ways in
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: which scriptural narrative is a development. And I don't mean
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: that as a development from all the New Testament. I
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: mean even the writing of Galatians is one whole letter.
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: Writing Romans is one whole letter. To understand the conclusions
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: that Paul's making, you got to understand the development, right,
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: the same with every book in the Bible. Well, Similarly,
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: the conclusions of heresy in church history, they're developments. There
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: are no historical heresies even in the period, especially in
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: the period of the Unifying Church, that the church arrives
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: at that conclusion overnight, every single.
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: One of them.
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: We're talking quite literally years of discourse, involves many, many
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: voices in a church far less fractured, expanding many geographical
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: places to arrive at those conclusions, and sometimes even quite
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: literally decades of discourse and revisiting and lots of councils. Right,
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: even when we think of the Seven ecumenical councils. There
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: are dozens of councils in addition to those, often that
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: lie in between the ecamenical councils in which these things
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: are being hashed out, and the conclusions aren't always the
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: conclusions that the ecumenical councils eventually end up reaching. Right,
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: So I think we need to be slow with that heresy.
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: It doesn't mean there aren't such things as heresies, but
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: I think to your point, heresy should not be that
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: first button we reach for, and we certainly shouldn't be
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: the ones who live in our in our armchair, or
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: in our traditions, who get to decide once and for
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: all time for the Universal Church what is and is
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: not heresy, right.
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: Because it's never how it was decided. Right.
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: The people of Antioch didn't get to decide what heresy
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: was anymore than the people of Alexandria, anymore than the
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: people of her own But secondly, to your point, there's
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: always been variety in the readings.
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: Of the text.
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: Right, I'm go and even think one of the passages
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: that stands out to me Thomas Aquinas's commentary Hebrews, the
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: ways that he marches through that and he says, here's
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: what and he'll often say, here are four other interpretations
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: of this passage, and he'll make it very clear none
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: of them are heretical, even if he doesn't agree with
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: some of them, and he explains why right.
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: If you've ever read it, you know he's never.
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: Afraid to go into incredible depth and analytic clarity to
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: show you why he doesn't agree with something. But he's
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: very clear at distinguishing between when he doesn't agree with
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: something because he thinks he has good biblical and philosophical
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: and theological reasons to disagree, and those conclusions that the church,
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: not him, has declared his heresy. And he airs much
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: more on the side of if you disagree with me,
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: I think you're wrong. And here's why heart stop right
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: than he does. I'm saying, oh, you're outside the boundaries
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: and heresy things that are heresy more than him and
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: more than his place, and.
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: Time got to decide that. And I think that's instructive, right.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: I think so too, I think, and you'd probably know
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: the history better than I do.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: I I've always sort of wondered and never bothered to
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: check some of the quote unquote.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: Heresies and the quote heretics that advance them. My impression
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: is that they were part of these conversations ongoing, and
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: then ultimately, as the church decides these things are heresies,
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: they either opt to change their views or not change
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: their views. In other words, they're they're convinced by the
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: dialogue that they're in the wrong, and they pivoted so
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: that what they once thought became a heresy, but they
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: don't actually become a heretic, or they decide to dogmatically
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: hold these things even after these decades long conversations and
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: ongoing dialogue, and then decide to stick with them and
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: become themselves heretics. I don't know whether you have any
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: insights on how often that happened or what right. I'm
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: not asking for stats, but I can envision people sort
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: of as they're navigating these things and trying to figure
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: all this out.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: There are some really tough questions, and so it's not
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: odd to me that people would come up with ideas
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: that end up once they're sort of worked through, they
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: don't actually work. This isn't what we were saying. That's
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: not odd to me. Yep.
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: So two examples chiefly come to mind. I'll start with
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: the later one first, and that that's the Augustine versus
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: Pallagious dialogue slash debate that turns into the Church's declaration
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: in the West, especially on original sin and the way
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: that it's taught, the way that I've often taught it,
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: because it's shorthand and you're trying to move through a
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: lot of material. It's Augustine versus Pallagius, Augustine's arguments when
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: Augustus is able to declare Polyagias a heretic, and that's
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: not quite right, right, it's not Augustine who got to
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: say Pelagius is a heretic. It's the Church that said ultimately,
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: Augustine's points are the ones that we feel make the
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: best sense of the Biblical narrative, and Pelagius's points, which,
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: in a nutshell, we're dismissing this idea that we ultimately
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: had some sort of impediment within ourselves to keep us
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: from the grace, from fulfilling the sorts of things that
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: allow the grace of God.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: So, for Pelagius, the issue was singularly environmental. It's what
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: we needed was the right environment. If we fix the environment,
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: we fix the ability of people to be able to
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: make the right decisions and follow the right path to God,
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: which ostensibly makes grace outside of us. Right. Grace is there,
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: but grace is environmental, and Augusta's position was no, there
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: is in fact an impediment within us, whatever you want
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: to call it. Right for him, it's privation. Don't need
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: to go into that, but it's the lack of something.
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: We're missing something, and that's that fundamental connection to God
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: is severed because of the fall. But it's the Church that, ultimately,
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: over the course of a long period of time of
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: this debate happening, that ultimately comes to the conclusion of
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: we signed with Augustine. And the Pelagian view is a
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: heretical position, but Pallagius is part of that conversation, and
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: Plati just has the opportunity to say, okay, fair, the
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: church is spoken. Not to my knowledge, and I'm hazy
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: on this one. I don't think he took that option.
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: I think he chose to remain outside and that was
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: his choice. But the Church gave him an opportunity. But
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: equally as important to your question is that it's not
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: as if the Church then dug itself into the trench
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: of Augustine's position and held it thenceforth forevermore. In fact,
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: in many ways, what brings it's not the only issue,
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: but one of the things that brings up the theological
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: issues of the Reformation is a sense from some of
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: these reformers, especially the Luthers and the second generation folks
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: like Calvin, that Augustine's position had been compromised upon and
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: we'd slipped into a new kind of let's call it
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: semi Pelagianism, right, because that's the language that they were using. Now,
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: is it the case that the Church had slipped from
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: an entrenched position in Augustine, or in Augustine's theology, back
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: to Pelagius and reaffirm something theoretical, Or is it more likely,
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: which I think is the case, that the Church never
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: actually baptized, so to speak, Augustine's position. They saw his
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: arguments against Pelagius as setting up sort of the operating
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: terms aid to work through. But the Church in and
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: of itself, by and large took a variety of positions,
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: some of which were on one extreme Augustine, but some
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: of which were much softer, which they were still affirming
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: those basic tenets of the bondage of the will without
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: having this sort of hard line let's call them predestinarian,
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: sort of total depravity kind of positions that come out
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: of Augustine by the time.
• 41:54
  Speaker 4: You get to a Calvin for instance.
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: Right, I think that's really instructive, because that's that's a
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: long and implicated conversation that we can't do justice to here.
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: But it's to say that there's a lot going on,
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: there's still variety, there's far from an entrenched position, and
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: involves a lot of voices, right that passed through this
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: period that we think of as the Medieval Renaissance or
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: the Medieval an early version of the Renaissance that begins
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: to reignite these conversations. The other debate that comes to
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: my mind real quick is the one that we think
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: of as the Aryan heresy, where they in three twenty
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: five the Council of an Icia condemned the arian position,
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: but it does so using certain philosophical language that was
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: frankly loaded and not really settled as theological discourse, and
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: so that actually created bigger problems because now it sounded
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: like the Church was actually affirming some other version of
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: Arianism even as it was rejecting the full on Arianism,
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: so it gives to a neo Aryanan group that's much
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: more philosophically astute than areas. It gives rise to these
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: distinctions between what we think of as the Hamasseans and
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: the Hamoyusians, which the short version of that is it
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: was a language and philosophical category problem, and it didn't
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: take until it took until.
• 43:17
  Speaker 4: Three eighty one. So we're talking my Mathers r.
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: Fifty six years later where the church finally says, okay,
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: we get our missteps of the language, so now we're
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: clarifying our language.
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: And the clarified.
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: Position was actually far less precise in some ways than
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: the original, but it's because they recognize that more precise
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: position in three twenty five actually created a whole other
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: set of problems that they didn't mean to create.
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: So it was a.
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: Deliberate loosening of what they were doing with the language
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: while reaffirming what we're certainly not saying is that Arius'
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: position is okay.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's really helpful because I do think
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: it illustrates On the one hand, you know the fact
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: that they loosen the language back up suggests that they're
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: recognizing that they'd gone too precise, too narrow, they'd hem
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: themselves in too much, and that they were, we might say,
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: more sure about their position than they deserve to be sure.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: And so that precision suggests that they really thought they
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: understood what was going on, or were really reacting to
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: something in their environment right in that discourse and trying
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: to close something down. But the willingness to go back
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: and fix it says an awful lot. I think that's
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: actually really helpful. And on the Augustine and the Pelagian
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: sort of piece of this, what I find fascinating is,
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: you know, the way you describe pelagiaus it's something in
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: our environment. We still have conversations today about something in
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: our environment. So while we don't I don't know that
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: we'd want to call structural evil conversations Pelagian. But my
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: guess is without having read all of Pelagius's stuff, right,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: my biggest exposure is from the King Arthur movie that
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: Clive Owen was in. But I've actually read Augustine, but
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: I haven't read Pelagias. But my guess is that if
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: that's part of what he's talking about, he's also onto something.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: But once you start pulling that stuff too far, it
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: becomes aberrant because you begin to leave other things out.
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: And so, just having read Augustine, for instance, his Confessions.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: There's a line in there, it's one of my favorite lines.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: He talks about these offices that men occupy, where they
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: are essentially drawn to the well done, well done of
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: other men. And so in that little statement you have
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: sort of the environmental because he is talking about this
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: office that exists, but he's also talking about the lack
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: within man. They're working together there, and so I think
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: that there's just a realization that we need to have
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: that we tend to think of these heresy orthodoxy as
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: really sharp lines, and we have the benefit of years
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: of discussion and dialogue to do that. But the reality
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: is that a lot of this stuff was wrestled to
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: the ground over decades and still leaves room for us
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: today to argue about the jots and tittles of it.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: Even if we stay within a broad doctrinal position, there's
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: still a lot about those doctrines. I mean, I even
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: think about the conversations we've had recently about the Kenosis
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: and Gregory of Nissa's difference from more standard Canotic Christology.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: It's fascinating stuff, and you can see how it would fit.
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: But nobody's denying the doctrine of an errancy or I mean,
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: the doctrine of the kenosis, right, They're both construing it
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: in different ways, and I think in some ways we've
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: lost the ability to do that, at least in certain circles.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: I would say, just from my Old Testament theologian context,
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: the one that always pops into my mind is the
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: creation narrative.
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: The creation narrative.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: You have some people who, if you're not a seven
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: Day you know, Young Earth creationist, you're reading the creation
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: narrative incorrectly, and just from an Old Testament perspective, I
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: sit back and say, look, I'm not sure that's the case.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: I think this narrative is doing something quite different than
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: affirming a very specific historic, historic viewpoint of when the
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: Earth was actually created. I don't think dating was ever
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: the issue when these things were written.
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: And in saying that, I'm not trying to sidestep the
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: dating issues, although it's certainly not my specialty. But what
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: I am saying is that there's more here. There's more
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: here than that, and so just because someone doesn't come
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: to the same conclusion on that issue doesn't mean that
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: they're disrespecting the text. It may mean that they're looking
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: at the text in.
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: Its other in its sort of excess of that these
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: different ways of seeing it. And so I don't think
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: even the way that I would read Genesis one to
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: one through two three, which is not necessarily the way
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: that a Young Earth creationist would want me to read
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: that text, I don't see it as being an aberrant viewpoint.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: There are a lot of scholars who read it in
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: a very similar way that I would, and I don't
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: really want to be closed in to the same ways
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: that Young Earth creationists read that text.
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: I think it's too narrowing. I think that creates more
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: problems than it solves. Isn't negating their position, that's suggesting
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: that their position is too close, and that if they
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: would open it up a bit, there's probably a richness
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: there that they would discover that is lacking.
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I appreciate your bringing up that conversation because I
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: think it helps me clarify to your point, the Augustine
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: Pelagious dynamic and that and in a way that carries
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: into that conversation to your point, the church wasn't saying
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: no to structural evil in our language. When they said
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: no to Pelagius, they were saying no to Pelagius stalling
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: the conversation and refusing to accept that there is an
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: impediment of sin that exists within us, right within our hearts.
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: That was the problem. It wasn't a rejection of everything
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: else Plagia says, right, And so to that point, to
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: this day, that's an important part in the way that
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: the Church articulates things that can't just be reduced to
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: Augustine's remark. Augustine's remarks to players, and.
• 50:11
  Speaker 4: It's not doesn't mean that Augustus was rejecting.
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: What we would think of as structural evil. His big
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: issue was to point to the impediment that exists within
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: our heart and the bondage of the will that eventually
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: the reformers also will take up and extreme forms. Right,
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: But that doesn't foreclose against being able to say there
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: are elements at play here that are important to the
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: I think that speaks to the creation element here, because
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: what's really interesting about this creation debate, as you know,
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: is that it begins in a particular time and place
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: that's politically and socially charged. If you go back to
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: the le even the late eighteen hundreds before this issue
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: was pulitic charged in the same way. The sorts of
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: figures that many many would see as traditionalist, right, the
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: Charles Hodges of the world, the bb war Fields of
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: the world, don't have the sort of emotional concerns at
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: play here.
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: In fact, Charles Hodge goes so far as just to
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: take for granted that the earth is millions of years old,
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: And yet he's one of those people seen as the
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: defender the old Princetonian right, the defender of traditional ways.
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: So what happens in the rise of the creation debates
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: is often less about textual engagement and more about broader
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: social movements that are underway that set up postures and defensiveness. Right,
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: there's a desire to say that the Bible is trustworthy,
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: and that begins to take the text to a degree.
• 51:55
  Speaker 4: That frankly just isn't done in the text. Right.
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: We've talked about in other context, Genesis won is a
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: sinatic text, right. It's a written to Israel and Sinai,
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: and it's written as a precursor to understanding who this
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: people group of biblical Israel is that God has called
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: out to do a specific work of redemption through that's
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: supposed to be not just for their good, but for
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: the ends of the earth, all the nations. Right, and
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: so the telling of the Creation story is in some
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: sense meant to be a telling of what God desires
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: as the way that He organizes the world that sets
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: itself in contrast to the ways that the kingdoms of
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: the Earth, especially Pharaoh that they're leaving has organized the
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: earth and setting up this contrast, then it helps us
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: understand what biblical Israel was supposed to be that arguably
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: never realized, arguably.
• 52:53
  Speaker 4: A very different conversation.
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: Than a modern conversation about radiocarbon dating or counting genealogical cycles.
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: It's just not the point of the text. Now.
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: It doesn't mean you can't have instillary judgments from that,
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: But to look at the text in those sorts of ways,
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: does that inversion work of it now ties ties textual
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: understanding and interpretation into social moments.
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: I used to try to illustrate this for students this way.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: I would say something like, over the weekend, I went
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: to the hospital to visit my wife. Am I trying
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: to prove the existence of hospitals. With that statement, I'm
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: really not I'm conveying something that I did over the weekend. Now,
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: am I assuming a hospital exists?
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: Sure? I'm assuming that something there is something called the hospital? Right?
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: And then you notice, well, why was I visiting my
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: wife at the hospital? You know me well enough to
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: know that my wife works at a hospital, so you
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: might assume, oh, okay, she was working and James went
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: to visit her. That's nice, But she could very well
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: have been checked into the hospital as a patient and
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: I needed to go a.
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: Visitor for that reason.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: There are these layers within this communication right where we
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: can infer things. There are reference there's a way to
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: which all these different words correspond to a reality behind them.
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: But unpacking them requires us to think through all the
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: different contextual clues. It requires us to think about the intention.
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: What was the intention of this speech? Many of the
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: times that's implied in the grammar. Right, If I don't
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: say there is such a thing as a hospital, I'm
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: probably not trying to demand that you accept that there's
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: this thing called the hospital. It's more of a passing reference.
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: And so I think that when I do that with student,
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: it sort of helps them understand that there are some
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: things that are layered into any of our communications that
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: we've got to unpack, but they still aren't the point
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: of what's being said. And so I think a lot
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: of times what ends up happening. And again I think
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: this has unfortunately been tied in with inversion in ways
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: that I don't think it necessarily needs to be, is
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: that as we're trying to determine the reference, once we
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: decide what that reference has to be, and being in
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: very intentional with that language, Once we decide what that
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: reference has to be, there's no other way to read it.
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: It just has to be this, And we begin to
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: lose then what's actually being done in the text? What's
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: the text trying to do to us?
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: That speech act theory would call it the ilocutionary force.
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: What is this text trying to do to us? What's
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: it really sort of pushing for?
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: That's it's much easier to do, I think, on the
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: level of a one sentence, just like the one I've given,
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: But when we start to look at discourses more broadly,
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: it's very difficult, I think, to discern how do we
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: parse out all of these different reference and understand how
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: these different discourses, longer passages Genesis one one through two three,
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: what's that whole thing trying to do to us? What's
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: it trying to convey? Whether, where's it trying to push us?
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: Those are the bigger interpretive questions that when we start
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: to close this stuff down, those I feel like get
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: lost first, and they may be some of the most
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: important things we could ever dig out of the text.
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: It's really understanding how these big swaths of scripture are
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: trying to push us towards something different. I think, you know,
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: if we were just to read, you know, that Genesis
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: one through four, let's say, which is usually the unit
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: in between those totodotes, if we were to read those
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: as just historical narratives, I think we're missing something, missing
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: something big. They're obviously symbolic and sort of forward looking
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: in ways that if we don't notice, we're really going
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: to miss a lot of what's going on in those texts,
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: and so I just think we have to be careful
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: not to There's this great book written by Ronald Bert.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: It's called Brokerage. Enclosure has nothing to do with biblical studies.
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: It's all about navigating organizations and what Ronald Bert says,
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: is the people who are able to broker the structural
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: gaps within an organization move let's say between when we
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: are in distance education, let's say distance education, between moving
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: in distance education to moving to the market department, crossing
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: that structural gap, moving from distance learning to the IT
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: department and crossing that structural gap. People who can do
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: that are going to be at a much higher risk
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: of having good ideas. That's almost a verbatim quote from
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: Ronald Burt. And I think we're in a very similar
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: situation here right when you talk about we've talked about
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: going to other texts, right, reading these other texts that
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: aren't usually read, incorporating those back in. We're talking about
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: looking at theologians that may differ from us, that hold
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: these sort of more you know, interesting positions than we do. Right,
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: they're different positions than we might hold, understanding them where
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: they're coming from deeply, you know, grappling with their positions.
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: Looking at the historical theologians, and you know this structural
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: gap in time that we have with them. I think
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: the better we can bridge those structural gaps, the better
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: ideas we are going to have about the Biblical text,
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: and to me, that's just sort of makes the whole
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: thing worth it. Even if you sit back and you say, well,
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: I feel kind of unsettled with all my you know,
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: I don't have like a clear interpretive grid that I
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: can hold on to and say this is mine and
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: it's closed off, and you know, I could put it
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: in a little lunch box and carry it around with me. True,
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: you do not have that, but I think you're at
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: risk of having better ideas about the biblical text, and
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: that to me seems like a great trade off.
• 59:40
  Speaker 4: This is very related to conversations and creativity.
• 59:43
  Speaker 5: At this point, we have no time to get into yeah,
• 59:46
  Speaker 5: but what I do want to say quickly is that
• 59:48
  Speaker 5: the idea of broker and gaps, the business of that
• 59:52
  Speaker 5: is very much related, I think to the ways that
• 59:54
  Speaker 5: we think.
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: You know, as you get older, you start to get
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: more solidified understandings, often reasons in the sense that you
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: have a greater and greater grasp on things. But as
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: you get more solidified understandings, your opportunity for creativity collapses
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: because you're no longer engaging as charitably with those things
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: that are outside of your systems. Right, And I think
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: about that in contrast to children who are often much
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: less sure about the definitiveness of these lines. Right. I
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: have a daughter who's incredibly creative and also incredibly analytic,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: and we're taught that those things are two different ways
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: of being, that the analytic ones are not the creative ones.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: But I think actually the creative analytic.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 4: Ones are the ones who do the most interesting things. Right,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 4: And I watch her.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: She'll walk over to the bag that has all the
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: recycling stuff that is getting ready to go out, and
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: she starts pulling them out, And my immediate inclination is, no,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: leave it alone. That's more garbage. I'm trying to take
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: that stuff out. But you stop, you wait, you watch,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: you listen, and you realize she's doing some really interesting stuff.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: She's taken that recycling and she's made she's done her
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: science experiment with them, or she's done crafty things with them.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 4: Incredible. But that's a capacity that we tend to lose
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 4: as we get older.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: That maybe the commission to close us out is to
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: fight that capacity, not because we don't want to have
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: interpretive context, but because we need to constantly realize that
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: whatever interpretive structures we're forming that are better and better informed,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 3: are still far from fully informed and need to be
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: written in pencil.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: We need to be able to erase them or erase lines,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: and to think about something new, right, not think of
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: the newer work that's being done in crimodgy ways, but.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: Neither just simply accepting it. Right.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: That's the hermoneutical spiral of constantly reevaluating, constantly.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: Allowing the text to speak to the situation.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: And that's where the good creative energies will come back,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: and maybe we'll find there a fewer things to fight about.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 4: Without giving up the faith, without giving up.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: Scripture says as the place we turn to right as
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: the authoritative voice and understanding what God is at work doing,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: but not necessarily assuming that we've got to figure it out.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's right.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: I love the creativity angle, and we'll we'll have to
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: talk about that more.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: In a different episode.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: I'm reading the book you recommend it on beauty, and
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: she talks about in there.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: I'm blanking on her name right now.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: I apologize with Natalie Karn's Beauty. She talks in there
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: about the shift from artists to artisans and the different
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: ways that creativity comes to be not just what you
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: can do with some you know, with raw materials, but
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: how you can think something new into existence. And I
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: think often as we consider creativity, we can fight that
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: creativity because we are so afraid of bringing something new
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: into existence. But the reality is that when we're doing
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: this with biblical studies, we're always looking at the text.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: We're trying to look at the text with new angles,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: and in that way we are exercising this sort of interesting.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: Mix of analytical tools, analytical site with a creative mind
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: that says, I know I haven't understood the full pattern
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: that God has given me, and I sure would like to.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: I think there's something to that, so well, we'll have to.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: Get into that in another episode. But you're right, we're
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: kind of out of time today. But Bro, this is
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: a great discussion. I appreciate it. And inversion is I
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: think one of those things that we have to watch
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: out for, and I think especially we have to watch
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: out for it as we amp up our technology, and
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: that'll be the next episode that we address. The next
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: condition we address is amplification and the way that technology
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: tends to amplify us and amplify our capacity in good
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: and bad ways. And so we'll think about application in
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: the next episode. But thanks everybody for being here, Thanks
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: Ashish again for the conversation, and we'll catch you all
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: in the next episode of Thinking Christian.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: Take care,