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Augustine - Enchiridion and Morals of the Catholic Church with Joseph Lanier and Travis Montgomery · Christians Reading Classics

• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: I cannot express, my beloved son Laurentius, the delight with which I witness your progress in knowledge, and the earnest desire I have that you should be a wise man, not one of those of whom it is said, Where is the wise man?
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Where is the scribe?
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: Where is the disputer of this world?
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: But one of those of whom it is said, the multitude of the wise is the welfare of the world.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: And such as the Apostle wishes those to become, whom he tells, I would have you wise unto that which is good and simple concerning evil.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now, just as no one can exist of himself, so no one can be wise of himself, but only by the enlightening influence of him of whom it is written.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: All wisdom comes from the Lord.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: So wrote a classic author everyone knows, Augustine, the bishop of Hippo, in a book of his that most people perhaps do not know, but they will after listening to this conversation.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: Its title is Enchiridion, or The Handbook, sometimes also referred to as the Handbook of Faith, Hope, and Love.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Christians Reading Classics, a podcast from Muir Orthodoxy.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: I am Nadia Williams, books editor at Muir Orthodoxy.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: And today I am excited to talk about two of Augustine's shorter works on the virtues, NK Radion, and also Morals of the Catholic Church, with Joseph Lanier and Travis Montgomery.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Joseph Lanier received his PhD from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and he is associate pastor of Fairview Baptist Church in Apex, North Carolina.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: In his spare time, he is adjunct professor of theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: So Joseph, thank you for being here.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: Great to be with you.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Also joining us is Travis Montgomery, who also joined uh holds a PhD from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: He is Assistant Professor of Christian Studies and Assistant Dean of the Global Campus at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: So Travis, thank you for joining as well.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks so much, Notting.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's great to be here.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: So why are they reading Augustine's lesser-known works on the virtues right now?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I can answer this question for you in brief, and we'll get to details as we talk.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: But one reason we're having this conversation is that together, they are the co-authors of a fascinating new book, Every Perfect Gift, Classical Virtues for Christian Formation, published by BNH Academic.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: And if you look in the index of their book, Augustine gets more mentions than anyone else.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: They explain their overall aims in this book as follows.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: The next seven chapters of this book will explain each of the seven virtues from the perspective of moral theology.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: We will consider the nature of each virtue, their relation to each other, and their role in Christian formation.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: We have said that Christian formation in between the first and second appearances of Jesus is a way of being and becoming human.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yet, as an exercise in moral theology, we must pursue this study of human virtue with constant reference to God.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: As we study the seven virtues in this book, we will seek Christian formation that is conformed to divine revelation and transformed by divine grace.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm looking forward to diving in.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: This is the perfect summer beach reading.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a podcast about reading classic books.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: So first I have to ask you, what is a classic?
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_03: So we we have a little footnote about this in the book because, as you know, there are a few different ways to define this.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_03: And we put classical in the subtitle and almost invited critique by doing that.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_03: Because when you talk about virtues, sometimes people specifically use the word classical to refer to the cardinal virtues because they are thinking of a specific period of antiquity, right?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_03: And so sometimes classical is this specific period of antiquity.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, we mean it in a more broad sense, which is probably a novel way to say it, but but oldies but goodies.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_03: You gotta forgive it.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_03: I'm from like rural Missouri, but but things that have stood the test of time that have earned a hearing because they weren't just significant, influential to a parochial age or to a specific sect, but broadly to human formation and human interest, and especially to Christians who have such an interest in being and becoming human.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_03: So works that have stood the test of time for their significance to human formation, especially as understood in a, I think, a Christian worldview.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, there is a third way to use it, which is everybody from church history who agrees with me.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and that's not the way we like to use the word classical in our book.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_03: And so we like that middle one.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, similar similar uh as Travis.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um I didn't grow up with uh a solid classical education, though it was still good education, but it wasn't introduced to the classics until college.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, so it was sort of a late bloomer there.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: But when I think about this question, I think about um the different categories of like music or literature, movie, or even sports, you know, like Jordan's Game 7 in Utah when you had the flu game.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: It was just a classic sense of the word.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but yeah, agreeing with Travis there, uh something that stands the test of the time, but particularly something that is true, good, and beautiful.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I think those three transcendental qualifiers are really helpful uh in determining um, yeah, what is a classic there?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: Essentially, for Christians, in this regard, it's fascinating to consider that our definition is actually similar to what Plato would have said.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: And yet, of course, we go deeper.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I want to hear a little bit in connection to all of this about your own intellectual journeys.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what kind of experiences shaped you as a reader and thinker?
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, basically, what are you bringing to this project?
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, I didn't know what I was reading when I opened up C.S.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_03: Lewis as a high school student.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_03: I read the gamut of kind of broadly evangelical, trendy stuff, whatever that was, you know, the Rob Bells and the Francis Cheans, uh, and learned a lot from my conventional Southern Baptist Church.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, loved the Bible.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_03: I think I knew a lot of Bible, especially memorization, uh, which is such a helpful foundation, still, uh, my foundation.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_03: But Lewis just had a way of saying things that, though I had to reread maybe a little bit, uh, immediately seemed to be tapping into something timeless, powerful, not trendy, uh, and nevertheless really important and vital.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_03: And so I didn't know what that was.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I it didn't really open up some new door for me of reading all of his references.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_03: I just read a bunch of Lewis while I was kind of continuing on in uh kind of broad evangelicalism, which had so many merits.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then I went I went to a Bible college that was actually a Campbellite Bible college, which meant no theology classes and church history was pretty minimized.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if that was the position of my professors, but that was definitely the curriculum.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_03: So I took all these hours of Bible, and I'll tell you, when I got to seminary, I could out-exegete just about anybody, but I was catching up on uh classical doctrine of God uh in a lot of areas.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_03: And so seminary was so formative for me to kind of backfill my understanding of Christian theology and the Christian tradition.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_03: So, so helpful, so informative uh reading.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Athanasius and Anselm and Aquinas and even Herman Bobink and some of these was just blowing my mind and realizing these guys have way more in common with each other over 1800 years than I do with any of them.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_03: And so that was a helpful recognition.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_03: And so since then, I've just been trying to eat up as much of that as I can.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_03: I think I see Fagels' Iliad up there.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, I am trying to get through uh the 1890s Iliad right now, uh, and and hopefully onto the Odyssey and again backfilling now a little bit some of these classical things.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_03: But for Joseph and I both, I mean, uh Augustine has been this central figure in thinking about virtue.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_03: But Aquinas was probably the gateway of that because he's just written so much about it.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, so systematically about it.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_03: And so for me, it was reading Aquinas on virtue, recognizing that this is a common thread through much of the Christian tradition, especially reading Augustine.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_03: But I mean, it's even a mere Christianity.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_03: What Lewis thought was mere Christian moral ethics, moral formation was these seven virtues that nobody in Sunday school, God bless them, had ever mentioned to me.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_03: And so that was part of my story.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_03: And it's not surprising to hear that Augustine is top of our references, but I'd never actually looked at that.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_03: So it's fun to hear it.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, my intellectual journey is kind of similar, but more focused on when I came to Saving Faith as a senior in high school.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I grew up in rural Alabama uh and gospel preaching churches, but somewhat insufficient in discipleship, those sort of things.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but came to Saving Faith through the preaching of the word from John 10, uh, was struck to the heart, knowing I needed my good shepherd.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: And uh when I went to college, I grew most intellectually, not so much in the classroom that happened, but more so in that local church, in those few brothers that I ran around with and met with and read books with and thought deeply with.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: I remember sitting in, you know, different classes in college and uh was not paying attention at all because my focus was on those conversations through text message with, you know, long paragraphs of argument and proofs and those sort of things.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so a lot of that journey started there and then just grew exponentially while in seminary, also because of that local church and those brothers around me.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um but I I think the intellectual journey with virtue in particular sort of took shape most when reading John Webster's uh God Without Measure, Volume 2, on Virtue and Intellect.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh there he's sort of synthesizing Augustine and Anselm and Quietus and those classics.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but his chapter on suffering was like the key moment of pivot.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: And that's when Travis and I started chatting about this idea, um, how we can minister these things to our local church, uh, how this affects our preaching and teaching and discipling, how this affects us as husbands and fathers.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but yeah, it was John Webster in particular, his his chapter on suffering that uh was really formative for me.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and Augustine, of course, was pastoring a church.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: We forget that sometimes.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: And uh yeah, that's um, and we had a conversation about this on this podcast earlier this year with uh Joey Sherrar, whose new book, The Augustinian Pastor, looks at that aspect of Augustine.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Augustine is someone who was like a pastor of real people in a real local church, and of course, the real local churches where virtues are learned, applied, tested, and so on and so forth.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about this.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: Why is Augustine writing these books?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess we might as well start.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, do you want to start with the Inchoridion first?
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, sure.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_03: Well, uh, yeah, even in your excerpt, you know, it it is a letter to Laurentius.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_03: And uh I love that because so much of what he writes is in the context of polemics uh against heresies, not everything, but so much of it is uh morals of the Catholic Church, you know, that we'll talk about in a minute is uh, and this is uh someone who, from what I understand, maybe his brother had got caught up in the Donatist controversy, and he just asks Augustine, who's in his 60s and of an established figure, would you just write me a short little summary of everything that matters in the Christian life?
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, which I maybe he was well to do, or maybe he was just an earnest new convert or whatever it was, but pastors can uh certainly sympathize with those sorts of questions.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_03: Could you just explain like divine sovereignty real quick?
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so he writes this handbook, which you know, academic publishers today may have lost sight of the fact that a handbook has physical limits in the ancient world.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there's only so long it can be.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, even in the excerpt you read, I mean, he's quoting scripture left and right, and he frames the entire thing biblically.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_03: And so I love that.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_03: I love that we have this kind of positive, short summary of what Augustine would say is the sum of Christian living, and it's so saturated biblically.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_03: Even the shape of it, faith, hope, and love is a Pauline triad.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_03: The way he fills it out is, you know, the summary of scripture and the creeds, the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, all he's doing is giving people a guided tour, uh, condensed explanation of what scripture teaches is a Christian life in response to this brother who simply asked, uh, maybe there was, again, some patronage involved or something we don't exactly know.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but nevertheless, pastorally, he just gives him this summary.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_03: And I have to say this, he, because of the physical limits of the handbook, the love section is like three pages because faith and hope took up the first two-thirds or more of the book.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_03: And so he gets in, he goes, This is all I have time to write about love.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_03: And so he doesn't, he doesn't exactly finish it, which I just love so much.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_03: And it's a very Augustinian thing to do.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_03: So I think which tells you too, this wasn't him grandstanding on some occasion where he's gonna write some magnum opus.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_03: He's just trying to address this request.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and yet out comes this, you know, really glorious text.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it's um again, this realistic aspect of Augustine, the pastor.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe he's busy, of course.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that's part of our challenge with a lot of these ancient letters, especially, or other treatises, that like, what is this supposed to be?
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: But the idea that the letter didn't have to be super polished, uh, didn't have to flesh out absolutely every single idea.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: And put it in this context, we realize there's a real person on the receiving side of things, someone who is earnest and desiring to learn of the virtues.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I love your parallel that this is like somebody pulling a pastor aside.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, can you explain this fairly complex doctrine in brief?
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: Why do you think that we don't hear about this one as much?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: Do we just not know how to categorize these kinds of writings from Augustine?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_03: That's a good question.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure some of it is just he's written so much.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and so to to to know his whole catalog is, I think, probably difficult in its own way.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um, uh, you know, when you get into discussions of virtue, he he's got, you know, a couple of paragraphs in in City of God that are really important because he's gonna call pagan virtue, he doesn't exactly say splendid vices, that's a little bit of an urban legend, but he's talking about that idea.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_03: And so he's gonna address virtue along the way in Civitas, but uh here he's writing positively.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_03: And so for one thing, he's a little less spicy than normal.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_03: And I think maybe there's some of that.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_03: But besides that, I mean, he's got these other really uh, of course, important works.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_03: And so you just can't get to them all.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm sure it's not any uh want of virtue on the reader's part that we avoid it.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_03: I think uh maybe we have some uh desire for the more uh polemical stuff.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_03: But but nevertheless, I think one, it's a simple writing.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_03: He really is just going over a creed.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's uh very likely the creed used in his church.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and he's not explaining in the depth that he'll explain in other places, but the way that he's explaining it framed by a virtue uh is I think so helpful.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_03: So it's got a unique benefit in that way, but it's stuff he said elsewhere.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um, exposition of the Lord's Prayer.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_03: I don't, I don't know whether he's done elsewhere.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, I certainly do not know his entire uh his entire works, but maybe someday.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but you know, I I think maybe it could read as a little simple.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_03: And so that could be part of the uh the lack of love.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but I'm sure also people are just really busy working on the bigger books.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_03: And so we'll just give them the benefit of the doubt and be charitable.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's fair.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you could spend months reading City of God.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's well, let's talk about morals of the Catholic Church.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's a different sort of work on the virtues.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I found morals in in the research, and uh he's he's writing it similarly uh when as Travis said with Incrition with the Donatist, this is in relation to the Manichaeans, and particularly their uh misuse or misunderstanding of the scriptures, particularly the the Old Testament and use of piety and those sort of things.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, he says in the opening chapter uh something to the effect of uh their making show of chastity and abstinence, which is so very Augustinian.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um but his his main point there is to show that uh the happy life or the good life isn't in contradiction to Scripture's way of of holiness.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: And he says, in order to have a truly good and happy life, you must follow God, who is the chief good.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um and it's one of those works that uh not only do I continue to come back to it, but every time I do, I find my my own soul even more inflamed with affection for God, uh, who is our chief good.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I, as I tell some of the members here at church, you know, reading those who have come before us is very similar to how we would go to one another in the local church to teach us how to read scripture or to address a problem we may be having.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I find those brothers and sisters who have gone before us in the same way as those discipling us through their writings.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_02: And this work by Augustine even there of chapter 14, uh, it's just entitled, We Cleave to the Trinity, Our Chief Good by Love.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we love God by the love which he loved us, you know.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um Yeah, so I think Morals of the Catholic Church is an interesting book because he's on the one hand, he's he's you know, uh somewhat quickly and easily refuting the Manichaeans, but doing so in a very affectionate uh scriptural way, uh, that maybe catches you off guard, but in the end, just leaves your heart aflame for for the God who is your chief good.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that's beautiful.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: So we have um so we have two different areas where or two different occasions where Augustine uh wrote on the virtues sp with a specific aim in mind.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he knows his audience each time.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: So in one case, this particular man, Laurentius, and in the second case, um refuting the Manichaeans, but of course, with a much broader audience than just the Manichaeans in mind.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so we have in both of these instances Augustine trying to get to like the bigger picture of virtues and God's people, uh, who they should be rather than who they are at this very moment.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Now, one point to which you keep coming back in your book is that the virtues are a way for us to be more human in a way that is conformed to God.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: So the idea of we're made in the image of God.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: So becoming more human really is actually bringing us closer to who God wants us to be.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um so let's talk about this.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Perhaps um it might be if you're up for it, let's walk through the seven virtues.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_03: We've done a little bit of that.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'll I'll begin with faith, hope, and love.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and and leave the cardinals, the classical virtues, depending on who you're asking, uh, to Joseph.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_03: But I joke that, you know, I did a Bible PhD and he did a theology PhD.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_03: So that's why I got the the biblical virtues.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_03: Now, the whole point of morals of the Catholic Church is that the cardinal virtues are just love putting us in order.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, nevertheless, uh, you'd have to do a little bit less apologetical work for the faith, open, love because it's just right there in the text.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it's just this Pauline triad comes up.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: Many times, also in Hebrews, so make of that what you will.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but nevertheless, uh, there's an order to it that's fascinating to me.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_03: I love any time that good thinkers can demonstrate to me that there's a system of some kind in the scriptures that maybe isn't written out as a technical system, but obviously the way that the authors are talking about expresses this.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_03: And that's so much to me the benefit of reading old thinkers on scripture, so much the benefit to me of theology helping us to read scripture.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: And so faith, hope, and love is one of these.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_03: The faith is not hope, and hope is not love.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and yet these things have to go together.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: So Galatians 5 very famously says, you know, we await the hope uh that we're waiting for.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and in the meantime, faith is expressing itself through love.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, that is the the only thing that counts, not circumcision or uncircumcision, Paul says, not the uh posit aspects of positive law underneath the old covenant, uh, but faith expressing itself through love.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, he's gonna develop that theme throughout Galatians and elsewhere to explain that's what really counted under the old covenant was that faith expressed itself in love.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and that's what's really gonna count in the new covenant, though the positive law is different, is of course gonna be faith expressing itself in love.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, what are these things?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_03: Very brief definitions.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, faith is believing in God.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_03: Augustine's handbook does a great job explaining this.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there's believing there is a God, there's believing what God says, which is sometimes by like the Reformed Scholastics and others call historical faith, meaning, yeah, I believe that the scriptures reveal truth to me, but that's not the same thing as in my meeting, entrusting myself to God, such that I would, for example, be willing to sacrifice my only son, such that I would be willing to live as a sojourner on this earth.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_03: All these biblical examples we get of faith uh show us a person who's entrusting himself, entrusting herself to God as the greatest good, the highest and chief good, uh, which makes you do things that look a little crazy.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_03: So uh that's, I think, uh the first piece.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, for us that means faith in Jesus Christ through the gospel.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's being in Christ that that connects us to the life of God by the Spirit.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_03: And so there is no genuine Christian faith that isn't faith in Christ.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_03: So there's faith in Christ, then there's hope in God's promises.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_03: Uh hope is forward-looking, of course.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's it's something you would want, it's desirable.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_03: It is something that's not easy to get, it's an arduous good.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's desire for an arduous good.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_03: And in our case, it's a desire for good that only God could possibly give us.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, to see God, the the the the visio dei is the the chief promise.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_03: Now, of course, it's kingdom, it's resurrection, it's new creation, but all of these are nothing if we don't get to see, to be whole to God and to be made like Christ.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_03: And so hope is actually for us not just hard, but impossible unless God guarantees it, and He does, that those who continue in faith will see God.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, the meek will inherit the earth, that's great, but the pure in heart will see God, and that's what we long for.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_03: And so we have this hope, and hope won't disappoint us because the Holy Spirit shed abroad God's love in our hearts.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_03: And then we have love, of course, which is the chief thing.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_03: You know, faith, hope, and love, these three abide.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_03: But the greatest of these is love because it's love that believes and love that hopes, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_03: So, what is it actually that compels us to entrust ourselves to God?
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's a love for God.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_03: What is it that actually compels us to believe and to trust in that future hope, to yearn for it, to live as if it's coming?
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's a love for the God that we're going to see someday.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_03: And so the greatest is love.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_03: And and most have exeged first Corinthians 13 to explain that faith won't be necessary because it will be sight, and hope will no longer be necessary because it will be reality.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_03: And uh yet the love that we have had for this invisible God, these promises that we have not yet cashed in on, uh, will remain, will still be in love with him.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, the most surprising thing to me in writing any of this, though, was that love for God and love for neighbor are not fundamentally different acts of the soul.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_03: So they're very different objects.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and of course, you must love God to love your neighbor rightly.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_03: And yet, the basic sense of love throughout the scriptures and and most of the Christian tradition explains it, is just the move of the soul toward a good, right?
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_03: And so, of course, you need to be moving toward the chief good, or else you're gonna put all these other goods in the wrong order.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_03: You're gonna have disordered loves.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_03: Nevertheless, what it challenged me with was not just to affirm intellectually that God is good, or affirm intellectually that creation is good, but to genuinely have an affection for God, which I know I'm supposed to do.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a good evangelical.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but as a good evangelical, I sometimes forget that I ought to have an actual genuine positive affection and delight in the things that God has made and called good.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_03: Now, there's so much danger there to look out for.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_03: We have to be rightly ordered, we have to be willing to forego earthly goods.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, often, uh, reason sets us toward the mean.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and Joseph will talk a lot more about that.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_03: And so we can know how to balance the varied goods of this world.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_03: Nevertheless, we are actually supposed to love our neighbor.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_03: We're actually supposed to enjoy and delight in, even if we can't affirm and delight in our neighbor's sin, the harm our neighbor does to us.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_03: We are nevertheless supposed to affirm our neighbor as an existing thing, because things that exist are participating in some way in God.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_03: And so we are supposed to at least affirm the goodness of our neighbor.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, Augustine does a great job explaining the distinction here between uh what we would say is maybe affirming our neighbor ontologically, but not morally, perhaps.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_03: And so we don't love his the evil in him because we actually love him in that he exists as a being made by God and made for God.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_03: And so faith, hope, and love, these things abide, and there's an order to them, and they they tee us up very nicely to think about okay, so then how can we live in this world of choice, of pro and con, of limitations?
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_03: And Joseph is going to tell us how to do that.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, your original question is about humanity or being true human.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and I think that's so important in relation to who we are as as uh those who are God's treasured possession in Christ.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_02: If we are united to Christ by his spirit, then there's a sense in which uh we are then able to be truly human because we have been renewed by Christ.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so that that notion of being uh guided by God's word and then transformed by God's grace and his spirit is so important when you think about these four cardinal virtues, because at the outset, if you're unfamiliar with them, they could seem sort of ethereal or subjective even.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_02: But when Augustine defines them as just four forms of love in relation to the chief good, then we're able to sort of put meat on the bones or or put these hands to work.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_02: So he says, uh, temperance is love giving itself entirely to that which is loved.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a uh there's a restraining, he says, or even a quieting of the passions within us for the sake of the good.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_02: Fortitude is, he says, love readily bearing all things for the sake of the loved object.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_02: And that adverb there of readily bearing all things for the sake of the good is one of the reasons why I really love John Webster's chapter on suffering and why fortitude is that one that I learned the most in.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, particularly as we wrote this just a few years after my dad died from a quick battle with brain cancer.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_02: And just the lingering effects of grief after that.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we had just um had our first kiddo.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_02: She was only six months when he died.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so I was sort of thrust into fatherhood without a father, you know, uh moving to a new job in another state, not having a dad to call and think through issues with.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, my wife has chronic illness, both in joints and spine and intestinal and all over her body.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: So the Lord has providentially placed us in this season of suffering, affliction in a particular way.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but that notion of readily bearing all things for the sake of the good shows that fortitude isn't this sort of you know, put your head down in the sand and just grit your teeth and bear it.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: There is a humble confidence, a confidence that is uh not fear-driven, but rather love-driven.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_02: And this this sort of humble confidence is just it's otherworldly, it can't come apart from union with Christ.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so yeah, 42 is the one that I learned most in.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_02: Justice, uh, Augustine says, is love serving the loved object.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_02: And here I think we get the most sort of anthropological sort of grit to it.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, like Travis said, greatest commandment, love God and love neighbor.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: If God is love and we're made in his image, then our very makeup and being was made to love.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_02: And if we're not loving, then we're not being truly human, not only in ourselves, but also for the sake of the other.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so um yeah, that that one's interesting to connect the Noah covenant to there in Genesis 9, where um God makes a covenant with Noah in the world, he sort of brings order to chaos for what end?
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's for the end of the gospel so that we can be united to Christ and be truly human once again.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um so justice is is is throughout the biblical narrative, but I think particularly uh when you look at the sort of structure of the covenants with relation to Genesis 9.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_02: And then finally, maybe most importantly, the mother of the virtues, that of prudence.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_02: Prudence, Augustine says, is love distinguishing with sagacity between what hinders it and what helps it.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I found this most fascinating there in Hebrews 5.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_02: So, right before the sort of apostate chapter in chapter 6, uh the author says, But solid food is for the mature, for those whose senses have been trained to distinguish between good and evil.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, of course, this comes right after his articulation of God finally speaking authoritatively, his son, who is our high priest, who sympathizes with us and our weaknesses, of whom we now have him in the heavens making intercession for us right now, you know, making sure that we make it home.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_02: But making sure we make it home involves us being able to distinguish between good and evil.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: And uh that virtue of prudence isn't merely this sort of like intellectual uh right reasoning, rationale, intellect, whatever, uh, but it's well-ordered reason for well-ordered action.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_02: If there's no well-ordered action, then you're not actually thinking well.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, so all these really do go together, as Augustine says, they're four forms of love.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but yeah, that that notion of prudence as mother and and fortitude as that humble, love-driven, uh, readily bearing all things for the sake of the good, uh, were really, really important for me as I was writing this stuff.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: And the point you brought up, let me see if I can articulate this as an articulate question.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um the point that um this is not just an intellectual exercise, neither for Augustine, nor of course for you guys, but really um for everyone who studies theology, there is sometimes in evangelicalism, sometimes we have a little bit of an anti-intellectual streak uh that obviously like we're trying to push back on here, that you can study uh serious theology, you can read these really earnest, um, and especially like really good old uh theological texts and make them practical for your life.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: So, what would you tell your readers, especially people who may be like regular people in the pews and not just pastors or seminarians?
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I I would echo Augustine what he says there in uh I think it's chapters like 11 to 15 or something like that of morals, where he's relating um not only the Christians' uh uh ability to not be separated from God, but also their conformity to Christ.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_02: He grounds both of those things in God's immutability that because God is unchanging, so is his promises to his people.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_02: And those promises to his people include, you know, what Peter writes in the second epistle.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um, he says, we've been granted these very great and precious promises uh because of Christ, and then he says, you know, supplement your faith with virtue, goodness, and self-control and love.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so I would just want to encourage Christians and and and members maybe in my church, uh, that this life of virtue isn't something additional, isn't something that you're, you know, yeah, we're saved by grace, but then you add to your grace by virtue.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, no.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_02: That the life of virtue is the life of grace.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we if you are in Christ, you've been given his righteousness by imputation of the second Adam, then this is just part and parcel of what it means to be a Christian, that you're living predictorally, you're loving one another in justice, you're readily bearing all things for the sake of the good.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_02: And uh your ability to quiet and restrain those passions of the flesh that Paul talks about there in Colossians 3.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but interesting there in Colossians 3, he turns it, uh, so right, he begins the chapter looking heavenward where Christ is seated, and then he says, uh, put to death the things of the flesh.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_02: And then in 12 through 17, he turns it corporate.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_02: He says, These things aren't just for you to mentally assent to and sort of keep to yourself.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_02: No, your your restraining of the flesh is for the good of the other, is for the benefit of the church.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why we are then able to sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to one another, because we can't really contain the joy that is set before us in Christ, that He is at the right hand of God making intercession for us, you know, making sure that we make it home.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_02: And we could help one another do that readily and with great joy.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate the joy aspect of it.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: It is important.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: We forget that sometimes.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean, uh, it's so helpful to think through, yeah, even our own churches as we think about this.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_03: Because I could think of my life and come up with plenty of examples of places where vice has hurt and virtue has helped.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I want to grow.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_03: But I do think you're right that there is something like an anti-intellectual streak in evangelicalism.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_03: That's not, you know, a contested question, that's a pretty well-established thing.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_03: And nevertheless, there is a it has been historically a great focus on piety.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_03: What what I what I hope people see is that piety does assume, though, uh a spirituality and a doctrine, right?
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_03: So there's there's a there is an ethics underneath our piety, whether we recognize it or not.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_03: And it might be an incoherent ethics, it might be an ethics that says you really should vote this candidate in, but nothing in this world matters anyway, because you're going to heaven.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that would be an incoherent ethics.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_03: That's not an ethics that can really account for human experience or the whole council of God.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_03: And so one of the things I would simply say is as you try to work through some of the more the thornier practical issues that you already care about, like how should I think about politics?
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I we're not going to extrapolate in this book or in this podcast all the way to policies and in the modern US or something like that.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_03: But there has to be something underneath all of that.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_03: And what's underneath all that can either be coherent or incoherent.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_03: It can either match up with scripture or not.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_03: And so let's start by saying, what does scripture say is the basic of the Christian life?
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_03: And if the basics of the Christian life really are faith, hope, and love, and then love through prudence, putting us in order and putting us to work in these cardinal virtues, then let's start there and let that inform our spirituality.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_03: And uh it's it's an eminently biblical approach to Christian spirituality, whereas others that might seem to be uh less theological might actually borrow more from modern self-help manuals or they might borrow more from Eastern meditation, et cetera.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_03: And those are things that uh read it, weigh it, discern it, sure.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_03: But if we have a framework from which we can begin that's eminently biblical, like these virtues are, then we we know that we're we're building on a good foundation.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_03: We're building on the foundation that Christ would have us lay because he's the one who gave us this word for our good to equip us for every good work, First Timothy says, about about the scriptures.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_03: And so I would just want to uh try to persuade people that these virtues are the a biblical approach, the biblical framework for Christian morality and spirituality and formation.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_03: And so, of course, we expect that I'm gonna get more of the Bible into this framework, if it's a biblical framework, rather than having to excise certain parts of it and really focus on the ones I like.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_03: I'm going to fit more of life into this framework instead of having some things in my framework and other things that I just kind of try to do my best with.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's a little bit esoteric.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_03: I think even more practically, I would say every single moment.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_03: So take, for instance, the spirituality that says practice the presence of God.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_03: Brother Lawrence makes this famous.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_03: Of course, it's not, he doesn't start with that.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_03: There's many Christian monastics and mystics and others.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it's something that deeply impressed upon me as a teen, trying to understand my faith.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_03: And frankly, it's something that's uh in certain ways still helps me tremendously today to just be thoughtful all the time that God is present, that God is working for my good, that God has a plan for this moment.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_03: There are uh vicious ways to approach that, ways where I want to circumvent wisdom by saying, God, tell me exactly what to do in this moment.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, that was a part of my story growing up.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_03: The Lord had to tell me what shirt to wear.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, well, it's amazing how when you tell the Lord what he has to do, he'll stop doing it uh and he'll he'll make you feel your inferiority.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, so we want to be like God in what we'd call his communicable attributes.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_03: We want to stop trying to be God in what we would call his incommunicable attributes, stop trying to be omniscient, stop trying to be omnipotent.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_03: And so Christian spirituality is not a way to circumvent being human.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's not a way to become like God in a serpentine sort of a way.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's a way to become like God in a servant sort of a way, like he became one of us, right?
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_03: And so I would want to convince people that this is a biblical approach to spirituality, that all these thorny issues that you're trying to find a proof text for have their root in something way more simple, which is entrust yourself to God, that he is in this moment present with you in his power for your good.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_03: Put your hope in God that there is no heaven till heaven.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_03: So this thing that you're worried about can't steal ultimate joy from you.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_03: This thing that you aspire to will not ultimately satisfy you.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_03: I want to convince them to love God first, no matter what it costs them in this life, because that's the only thing that can't be taken away from them.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_03: I want to encourage them to love their neighbor, not just a general sense of benevolence or a disordered kind of uh pity and charity toward people across the world when I'm not willing to be kind to my coworker.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_03: But like the Good Samaritan, when in God's providence I am brought near to someone, whether they're like me or unlike me, I want to get nearer to them that my inclination is to commune with others, and that insofar as it depends on me, and insofar as they have a need, I come nearer to them as the Lord allows me.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_03: And by definition, when I come nearer to my neighbor, I go further from people who aren't my neighbors.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_03: And so I can only love certain people, I can only love in certain ways, I can only love in certain times, I can take off the immense pressure of being the Messiah, and instead I can be like the Messiah and go help that one.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_03: And so I would want to encourage people so much of what vexes them about the Christian life, whether they are apathetic or they are anxious about their morality, uh, the Lord has already provided for in this framework of the virtues.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_03: And it's meant to free them, it's not meant to be burdensome to them.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_03: Virtue is power.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, Latin vertus is basically just power.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's the power to live a godly life no matter what comes to you.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_03: And so virtue isn't supposed to make you feel weak, it is actually God strengthening you, and He is the one who's able to strengthen you to His glory, as Romans 16 says.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's what I would say.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_03: You got me preaching.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sorry, I didn't even have alliterated points.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_03: But but that's how I would want to encourage somebody is this isn't esoteric, this is every day, and it's so much better.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: Than all of what I've been trying my whole life and all the stuff you're probably trying your whole life.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm reminded of um one of Augustine's favorite pastors from antiquity, uh Cyprian of Carthage.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, when um there was a pandemic in the mid-third century, uh, Cyprian delivered this pretty fiery homily, or uh it became a treatise later that circulated on mortality, where he was reproaching people from his congregations who were asking him, it's like, uh, so we'd like to die a martyr's death.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: So can we please, like, is it okay for us not to care for our sick and dying neighbors so we can save ourselves from martyrdom?
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: Cyprian um was not impressed.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's so poignant.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_03: And that's that's so many of us, right?
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_03: I want to do some great thing for God, so I can't do this small thing for you right now.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_03: Uh such an inverted kind of love, um, which is really has it self for the main object of love rather than God, right?
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_03: We submit ourselves to whatever he's gonna bring us today.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_03: I even see some of this.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_03: If I could just give a little like, I love that this movement of classics and classical education is happening.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure you would share this concern with me that I think that there is the possibility that for some of us, it is a desire to be somewhere else.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_03: It could become.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_03: So if classics are a different place, rather than the history of the place I'm in now, you you understand the difference.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, so I think Tolkien, I think the Lord of the Rings, and like the most amazing thing about that story is that it's not even the most important story in the world he built.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_03: The most important stories in the world he built already happened.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_03: And the people in the care, the characters in the story don't even know if their story is going to be important.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_03: And that's so that's so central to Lord of the Rings, right?
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_03: And so if classics are just the history of the trees in the forest that I live in, then I think it is a love for my neighbor to love the classics.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_03: If the classics are some other world that I wish I could escape to because I don't really like people today or I hate this internet age we're in or whatever, uh, then it's not love.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's not a virtuous love for classics.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_03: And so I'm I I know what you're trying to cultivate here is the former, but I think that's exactly the sort of thing I want to be a, I would rather be a martyr who gets the bubonic plague so that I can live in some other time, rather than deal with uh my kids in their screen time or deal with my neighbor who's just like AI brain addled or whatever.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_03: I have no love, no benevolence, no compassion for for these ills, but I would totally go, you know, burn at the stake during the Reformation or something.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: And these are poignant contrasts, and of course, like there are small versions of them that we're dealing with every day.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: And perhaps it's uh good for us to remember as you guys exhort that we're small.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_03: We can only do so much, yeah.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_03: So we should do what we can.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_03: This is so great.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_01: This is so great.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: So on a related question uh note, I wanted to ask both of you, and Joseph, you were kind of getting into uh this earlier uh a few minutes ago, but what virtues did you learn from writing a book on the virtues?
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, as I mentioned, uh fortitude was mine.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um that notion that fortitude is not fear-driven, but rather love-driven.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh fortitude is also a humble confidence and not a sort of arrogant one.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so that that contrast of um you know, sometimes fortitude or courage, bravery can be conceptualized as this either dominant figure who's really crass and hard-nosed, or it can be the quiet one has, you know, his head in the sand, it's just it just enduring.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but as we know, virtue strikes the balance between uh deficiency and excess, encourages that humble confidence.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, because, yeah, as we just mentioned, we are woefully insufficient and incapable of doing all these things ourselves, which is why virtue uh in this lens of union with Christ is so important.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, that we are so very dependent on God and his grace in Christ and the fellowship we have with his spirit to actually endure.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I just recall, you know, Paul there in Romans 5, when he's about to articulate wonderfully that Christ is our second Adam, he does so in a way that that combines endurance and hope together.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I s I just keep going back to the fact that hope there is not necessarily a verb per se, but it's a noun.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's a thing that we have, you know.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so we can whatever whatever life and God's providence throws our way, whether it's suffering or affliction or grief or pain, or whether it's the good things of life, you know, it's that humble confidence that because God is immutable, what he said he will do, he's actually going to do, you know.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_02: And this is what characterizes saving faith in Romans 4 of Abraham.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, so fortitude, I'm still learning about fortitude with uh, you know, being a young father, uh being a young husband, uh, getting into those nitty-gritty practical things of everyday life.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_02: But there's so important to conceptualize fortitude as that humble confidence that is purely love-driven.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_02: Because then you're you're able to uh endure those things, as Augustine says, readily, that you're eager and ready to to bear those very, very difficult things that life is going to throw your way.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_02: And you're not able to eagerly and readily bear those things because uh you're so confident and and courageous, but because the second Adam has already gone ahead of you to provide that hope for you.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's so good.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_03: It's no good.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_03: For me, I mean, learn so many things is such a helpful process.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_03: Certainly at the beginning, thinking a lot about fortitude, just uh not uh I I had not written a book, I had written a dissertation, which is not the same thing because people read books.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but Joseph had had written a little, but really I I think I was borrowing his courage to even pitch the book, uh, and then to move forward and like, is this good?
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_03: Should we write this?
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_03: And so having someone else to to encourage and and out of a love for him in a way.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_03: But but honestly, the the one that surprised me was studying love.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I just much like Lewis writes his four loves, and he starts out by saying, you know, I wanted to write about need love and gift love.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_03: And then I studied and realized that wasn't, that's not really how it works.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and if you haven't read that, anybody listening, please go.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_03: It's just such so humble, it's so helpful.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_03: He had this preconceived notion of how love works, and then he goes and studies and said, I wrote a very different book because that's not actually true.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and that's helpful to me.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_03: But so, yes, Lewis is four loves, but really Joseph Pieper, uh, or Joseph Piper, I don't know, J.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_03: Pipes, however we're going to call him, has written extensively on faith, hope, and love, and on the cardinal virtues.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you what you like that, Joseph.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_03: And uh he he endures me in love.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and but just this inescapable uh part of love, which is affection and admiration and enjoyment, that that that love produces joy and peace.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, I'm fine with the patience, you know, the gentleness.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_03: I understand that you need to do those things to be loving, but that you must enjoy to love challenges me as someone who can often get through doing what I know I'm supposed to do out of maybe a feigned fortitude.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_03: I can I can put up with this because I know I'm supposed to do it.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_03: But if fortitude requires love and love requires joy and enjoyment, then all of a sudden I have to be willing to look a little silly.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_03: I have to be willing to open myself up to disappointment.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I have to be willing to expose my joy to someone else who could potentially try to manipulate it or make make light of it.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, there's so many reasons we don't allow ourselves to to enjoy, or at least not to enjoy in any kind of public or exuberant way.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm definitely one of those.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but it it it it handicaps our love.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_03: And so that was it remarkably helpful to me.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_03: I'm coming out of a season of doing a lot of my duty.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_03: We we had kids born uh in the NICU, spent several months there, and one has profound disabilities, and we we know how to get stuff done for our kids uh round the clock sometimes.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and of course it's because we love them, but learning that it's like I should enjoy my life and try to enjoy my life and do things that I like to do.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, even saying it, I feel like what will people think of me even saying that?
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_03: Because it sounds so silly and selfish.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_03: But in in reality, there's there's no love that doesn't rejoice and enjoy.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_03: And that's of course why it's in God first.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but nevertheless, uh for God's sake, loving loving this life and loving this world to whatever degree we can.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_03: And so that has been a challenge to me.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_03: It's the chapter I walked away from going, okay, I learned this.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_03: Now I have to go do it.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and that has been my goal ever since we submitted the book.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, has been to try really hard to go enjoy people and life, uh, even when they're difficult.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: So the Christian intellectual life, again, is always very practical.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_03: Hmm.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_01: These ideas we love.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: We don't just love them for the sake of loving ideas.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_01: We love them because of people who reflect these ideas in our lives.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, one final question for you both.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_01: What classic book do you wish you had written?
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_01: And why?
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_03: I'll jump in.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_03: If we can count Lewis, I've mentioned him a lot.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_03: I know we're talking about Augustine today.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, I just don't think I could ever write anything Augustine wrote.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't necessarily think that about Lewis, but he, he, he uh is a kindred spirit, and I love him, and it probably his Abolition of Man.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um now I love uh I would have said the Ransom Trilogy or Till We Have Faces, which I think is his best work ever, Till We Have Faces, in my opinion.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but I think I'd be miserable at trying to write fiction.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_03: So I'll go with Abolition of Man.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, one, it's so prescient.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_03: Two, it's so timeless.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_03: So on one hand, he he seems to predict 2026, right?
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_03: On the other hand, he's just saying objective aesthetics means objective ethics, and objective ethics means you're gonna give way to your base passions.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and if the head doesn't rule the belly through the chest, then the belly's gonna rule and you're not gonna overcome nature, you're gonna be overcome by nature and you're gonna destroy the world.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so fascinating.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, he basically does what Anselm did for uh substitutionary atonement for the incarnation, where he says, I'm gonna set aside scripture, I'm gonna take as a fact uh the incarnation, and then I'm gonna try to reason out it, reason it out.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_03: He essentially does the same thing for why there must be an end of the world.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_03: He basically says, There will be an end of the world.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_03: Let's take that as a fact.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_03: And here's why there must be an end of the world, and he does so without real reference to scripture.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um, he doesn't say that's what he's doing, but I think that's essentially what he's doing.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so, you know, why will God judge the world maybe could have been a title.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, mine is is definitely John Budnon's Pilgrim's Progress.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I I open the chapter on fortitude with the the portion of the narrative where Christian in uh encounters mistrust and timorus.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, of course, those two pilgrims are going the other way that that that Christian is going.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_02: And um yeah, I was reminded of it uh while preaching uh Esther Four uh a couple of years back here at Fairview.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_02: And obviously, Esther Four is that chapter where uh Esther is caught with that decision of a crossroad where if if she's going to intercede for her people or not.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_02: And uh she is struck with that choice of whether to go forward with some sort of resolute hope that God's going to keep her safe, or is she gonna, you know, cowardly draw back back into her queen's chambers and where she knows that she is, quote, safe.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so when they encounter one another, mistrust and Timorus, uh, they say, you know, we're we gotta go back to the city of destruction because there are two lions ahead, and they're going to uh they say, presently pull us apart, you know, kill us.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_02: But as Christian gets there, he's he almost turns back himself, but then the porter at the lodge says, you know, basically, oh you have literal faith, do you not see that they are chained?
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and uh that just describes so much of the Christian life where those present fears that are sort of in front of us uh in our immediate vision that we lose sight of uh looking heavenward, where the one who is in control, the one who is sovereignly providential, uh has those very fears that are in front of us that are chained.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_02: And uh yeah, we're able to make forward way to the celestial city.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, so Pilgrim's progress is that one for me.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's timeless, it's true, it's good, and it's beautiful.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_01: A true American classic.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Joseph and Travis, thank you both so much.