Episode 113: AHOCT Interview- Dr. Jonathan Pennington

We continue our series of conversations on the overlap of philosophy and theology with Dr. Jonathan T. Pennington's book Jesus the Great Philosopher: Rediscovering the Wisdom Needed for the Good Life (Brazos Press). Dr. Pennington brings the bible into conversation with the philosophies of ancient Greece and offers a constructive proposal for how the bible can be read philosophically. Thanks for listening!

Timestamps:

5:44- Christian Ignorance of Jesus as Philosopher

12:35- Philosophy and Religion in the Ancient World

22:12- Pennington’s Change of Mind

Episode Transcription

Charles Kim 0:00

Hello and welcome to history of Christian theology. My name is Chad Kim with me this week will be Dr. Jonathan Pennington. Dr. Pennington has recently written Jesus, the great philosopher, rediscovering the wisdom needed for the good life. And this is with Bray zOS press. And this is a book that's under $20, which would probably make it one of the cheaper, cheaper books that I've ever had a conversation on here and on the podcast, usually they're a little bit more expensive. So I really enjoyed this book. I think others might as well. And so we will make this. So you know, so listen to this podcast, and it made me think about going out and get it. I also think I'm going to do a giveaway. So I'm going to make this book a available to someone who I'm going to do some retweeting and reposting on Facebook, and we'll I'll give away the copy that braise those press gave to me. So thanks for listening, and be on the lookout for that. I also wanted to thank Ed Murphy for his kind email, which we received just the other day. And Ed is living in Northern Ireland. And he's an Englishman, but he's living in northern Northern Ireland, and he just really appreciated especially the old format of the podcast, and I've got good news for Edie. I think we are going to have a few more episodes still with Tom and Trevor, although a lot of them will be conversations that I have with scholars. But but I just really appreciated Ed's taking the time to write this long letter. And yeah, we always appreciate hearing from other from listeners. And so thanks. Thanks, Ed, for your great compliment. We will have some other conversations forthcoming. A few of them have been messed up with my Zen caster. So sorry about the delay. But we appreciate you listening. And here's my conversation with Dr. Pennington. Well, um, yeah, so I guess I'll kind of rerecord the the biggest sorry. No, that's great. So I Well, I'd like to welcome Dr. Jonathan Pennington, this afternoon to come on the podcast. And Dr. Pennington is the professor of New Testament and also pastor of spiritual formation and a teaching pastor at sojourn east in Louisville, Kentucky. And he wrote a work called Jesus, the great philosopher, rediscovering the wisdom needed for the good life with Brazos press. And so welcome Dr. Pennington

Jonathan Pennington 2:32

thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me.

Charles Kim 2:35

Yeah. And I was aware of your research for other reasons. But I should say one of the reasons that I had you on though, is we've kind of been doing a series on the podcast, looking at various sort of philosophical sort of approaches to Scripture, or the ways in which philosophy intersects with Christian interpretation. So I was the podcast I just released, that listeners might have heard was with Drew Johnson, who wrote a book called biblical philosophy. Yeah.

Jonathan Pennington 3:05

A dear old friend as well, yes. Right.

Charles Kim 3:08

Yeah. And I learned a lot from him. His his work was very provocative. And I get I kind of gave him a little, a little bit of like, a hard patristic response, I guess, almost not too hard. But like, I was like, okay, as a patristic scholar who deals a lot with sort of Greek philosophical influences, you know, what are we supposed to do with that kind of interpretive tradition? And because Druze is a very, has a very strong position about the Bible in its own right, as a philosophical text, and I had never heard it put in quite those terms. So I was trying to wrap my brain around that a little bit like, okay, you know, I do often think about how do we incorporate the Bible within a larger sort of conversation with like, you know, sort of almost more like what your work actually, I'm often thinking about you dionaea, or the good life, and sort of those kinds of concepts, but Drew was really adamant about like, you know, sort of letting letting the Scripture set the table, even for some of those questions, which I don't think is antagonistic to what you would say. But it's, it was interesting, I really thought provoking. And he suggested I talked to you about this, too. So

Jonathan Pennington 4:16

well, I'm so glad. Yeah, he and I get to hang out some and it's fun now. And of course, in this book I do. The first part, or the second part is an argument to the Bible is a philosophy. But I am trying to put it into this larger context as well. You're right.

Charles Kim 4:31

Yeah, so like I said, I don't think you'd be in an antagonism at all towards this. But also, I like this book, because I suspect this will be part of even your own desire and writing it and even your position. So you're telling me that you've transitioned to this position of spiritual formation at your church, but this is also a book that is probably it's more available to a wider audience, both financially and just at the level like just how you're pitching your argument. And so a lot some of the people I interview on here like I had my friend Ben on and his book was like $120 with whatever Cambridge, know, that was Catholic you, but it's an expensive book. And so it's not really one where I could tell people to go out and buy. But this is a great book for people that are listening to podcast who want to think philosophically with the scriptures. So I was excited to have you on to sort of walk us through that a little bit.

Jonathan Pennington 5:27

Thanks. And I've written expensive big books as well. And this was very intentionally not that and it was nice to be able to, you know, start with Ron Swanson, and have Steve Martin appear along with Justin Martyr and all those so that Yeah, I haven't done that in my other academic books. So this is this is fun for me too.

Charles Kim 5:44

Great. Well, my first question that I sent to Dr. Pennington was, uh, why do so many Christians ignore the philosophical implications of the Bible? And even Jesus as philosopher?

Jonathan Pennington 5:58

Yeah, well, this was, you know, part of my own journey of coming to understand because I think like most people in our culture and time, philosophy is kind of a bad word. Or, you know, if you're not in the academic world, it means unhelpful, you know, like, Ivory Tower, like, not not really helpful. You know, the old joke about, you know, my dad has a PhD as a doctor, but he's not the kind of doctor that actually helps people, you know, like a medical doctor, you know, so. So I think philosophy for most people in general, society is not a very positive term. And so, however, as you well know, and as I suggested in the book, this was a very common way that Christians, early Christians understood the faith as a philosophy. And as Jesus as a philosopher. So for me, it was, you know, I kind of came to it through other work I was doing on the Sermon on the Mount. But it for me, it was, it was kind of a rediscovery of that philosophy is not a bad thing. In fact, philosophy is a wonderful thing. And if we understand it, in the ancient sense, not in the modern sense of it. So I think it is a bit of an uphill battle, to kind of rediscover the goodness of philosophy. That's what I'm trying to do in this book.

Charles Kim 7:13

Yeah. Well, that's great. And I noticed in your footnotes you do mention Pierre hadow and this will kind of dovetail with what was something you just said, but how is philosophy different in the ancient world than in the modern world? What what do we get wrong? How have we gotten our, our sort of word twisted around?

Jonathan Pennington 7:32

Yeah, well, as I always like, say, You had me at a dough, right? In the sense of that, that book was really a turning point. For me. It was one of the earlier books I read on this journey, of kind of rediscovering Christianity as a philosophy and Jesus as a philosopher, because what pure a doe talks about is that ancient philosophy was extremely different. It was extremely practical, and really meant to help people learn how to live well, one of his big arguments is that, and he's not writing, necessarily, from a Christian perspective, he's really just a scholar of ancient philosophy, although he talks about Christianity a fair amount in that context, as well, but but his point is that, you know, we have this distorted sense of what Aristotle and Plato and Socrates were about, we have the sense that these were these guys, kind of, these are my term, you know, lying around on couches, people dropping grapes into their mouths, and thinking, you know, what is the nature of a horse, and, you know, if a tree falls in the woods doesn't make a sound, you know, all these kinds of, or if you know, three people are in a lifeboat, which one do you eat? First, you know, these kind of these, these kind of modern versions of philosophy, you know, or what is the nature of existence, where he says, you know, they did care about those things, they did ask those kinds of questions, some of those questions, but they always did it for a purpose, which is say, how do you live? Well, they didn't do it, so that you could just have a bunch of interesting thoughts to, you know, impress people with at a dinner party or something. They did it so that you could be really practical, like, what does it mean to pursue the good? And how do you actually handle emotions? And how do you think about relationships? And so for me that Vera does work was really, really important to kind of say, oh, that's what philosophy was an ancient world. It was so different than then philosophy in the modern Academy. So that was a super helpful book for me.

Charles Kim 9:25

Yeah, yeah. One thing I like to think of when I'm talking about the intersection of philosophy and religion, and theology is that, you know, for like, even a Karina was called a great philosopher by, by the Catholic oceans, and part of this is because of the way that she lived her life. And so she had a philosophical way of life, which sort of sounds strange to modern ears. But but it's just like you're talking about it's almost as if it's almost closer to modern psychology in some respects, in that psychologists are trying to help people be well adjusted, and what are the things that they're going to do? And, and some of these things come into play for ancient philosophy in ways that that we often ignore at our peril.

Jonathan Pennington 10:10

You know, that's true. It is. I mean, and that's what I wrestled with, like, what is the what's the comparable thing today. And there isn't really anything in modern Western culture that exactly matches what an ancient philosopher was because it was more comprehensive. And I suggest that on the one hand, we have kind of gurus, like Warren Buffett on finances, or Patrick Lencioni, on leadership, or Oprah on who knows what, what books to read, or whatever. And then we have psychologists and therapists who kind of help us. But what's different between an ancient philosopher and a modern therapist, which I think therapy is great. And counseling is great. What's different is that those modern therapists and counselors rarely have a metaphysic, or they rarely have like, a comprehensive understanding of the world. Instead, they just kind of have this piecemeal pro tips, or, you know, maybe some psychosocial theory about human development, which is great. But it rarely would try to make a claim about the nature of reality itself, you know, but that's what the ancients did. They really said, Okay, here's the nature of reality, and therefore, here's the good and how to pursue it. And here are some practical ways to do it. It's truly a comprehensive kind of approach to how to live life so much more than any individual type of person does for modern Westerners, I think.

Charles Kim 11:34

Yeah, very, very well said. Yeah. I mean, it's almost as if, you know, you have to you have to put a bunch of different categories together.

Jonathan Pennington 11:43

And Jordan Peterson, Steve Martin, and Ron Swanson, and Oprah, if you could, like, have them all amalgamate into one person. That's what Aristotle was kind of thing, you know?

Charles Kim 11:54

Yeah, very good. Well, and then that also sort of calls into question what we understand by religion. So I think part of what the book that you're writing to, is to help even people who consider themselves quote unquote, religious, it's not just about how do I get to heaven when I die? Like it's, it's what do you do while you're here? And so, you know, so I think like, we can also have a too small view of religion as if religion doesn't, as if Christianity if we want to call it a religion, and and in some ways that's even limiting itself? And that it is it answers a whole host of greater questions than simply some what so called religious question. So I think is that fair, that's part of what this is trying to get at, like,

Jonathan Pennington 12:35

absolutely affect religions in the ancient world. It's complicated, but they were, were ways of being, at least many of them were there were there were cultic, religious things that were just practices that you went and did for sure. But what a religion in the ancient world was not well, we to be thinking think of today as like, a set of cognitive beliefs, and then just a set of morals are something for them, they would have thought of religion, in these more ancient philosophical terms as a whole way of seeing and being in the world, they would like to describe a way of inhabiting the world. Now, it's, you know, it's more complicated than that. I know if their scholars listening, though, recognize that, actually, the philosophers made a distinction between what they were doing and religions. But nonetheless, I think those are still closer to the, we tend to think of religion. And this I described in the book is only in the vertical realm as my relationship with God, where philosophy was both vertical but also horizontal, like, how do you live in society? How do you structure relationships? And that that, that it's that more comprehensive sort of view of Christianity?

Charles Kim 13:47

Yeah, that's very helpful. Um, so moving into kind of some defining terms of some of the words that come up for you are you die in the NEA or the good life? And so why are those important phrases for understanding ancient philosophy broadly speaking?

Jonathan Pennington 14:03

Yeah, it's so important. I mean, this is exactly why you philosophize in the ancient world, because you were trying to figure out really, what is the greatest human question? How do you really thrive? And really, every ancient religion, every ancient philosophy is trying to answer that. They're saying whether it's by all fertility, fertility, gods, you know, or practices to make us all happy, or other Akkadian religions or something? Or if it's, you know, Roman or Greek mythology, or a Roman or Greek philosophy, everybody's asking the same question. How do you really find flourishing? How do we build a society that flourishes and how do we live as individuals and communal relationships that flourish and so that's what you Jiminy is about I mean, that's Aristotle's term for it. Not only his but that's his big term that drives his entire ethical view. as well as a lot of other Greek and then later Roman people, too. And I, my argument is that actually the Bible cares about the exact same thing. Now the answer the Bible gives to what true United minea, or human flourishing is, is different, in a lot of ways from other ancient religions and philosophies. But it's asking the exact same question it's seeking to answer that in its own particular way. That's big, a big part of what I'm trying to suggest in the book.

Charles Kim 15:29

Yeah, very good. So one one like and just kind of diving into one little particular section, one of the ways in which they that you engage sort of ancient philosophy and bringing into conversation with Christianity is on this question of emotions. And so how can the Christian bring together ancient views on emotions, with the Scriptures to have a more holistic under understanding of, of these emotions? So I think some I think you talk about how we can be kind of reductive about these some of their likes, you know, sort of all bad or all good. But what what is it? What is the scripture has to offer us as we think about flourishing, even in our emotions? So in our kind of non cognitive realm, another area that we might not think that philosophy speaks to, but it certainly does?

Jonathan Pennington 16:22

Yeah, such a great question. And really, those chapters in the book, there's a couple chapters in the book, that deal with emotions. Those were a lot of ways the most fun for me to write and the most life giving, because they're so practical, and they're also kind of intellectually stimulating at the same time. And they really result from what was a shocking thing for me to learn that ancient philosophy, one of the major topics in ancient philosophy was emotions. Like, again, you wouldn't think that way. Because when we think philosophy today, again, you know, I think of like, my philosophy professors at the university, I went to, you know, where they're just saying, you know, again, what is the nature of a chair? And how do you know, chairs exists when you leave the room? You know, they didn't have anything to do with like, the real practical issues of like, what are emotions? And how do I, what do I do when I'm feeling angry, or jealous or something? But this is precisely one of the biggest areas of interest for ancient philosophers, because they cared about human flourishing. And so they realized to live well, you've got to figure out what are these things that we have, that are making us do all kinds of good and stupid stuff, you know, these things that we call emotions. And so the different philosophical schools had very distinct visions and theories about what emotions were whether they were like, these humors are these liquids in your body that cause you to do different things based on the makeup, or whether they were things that were a function of learning to, to think in a certain way. And there's all these other kinds of debates, even as today, people are going to define emotions differently, psychologists are going to tend to define them one way, neurologists are going to define them more chemically, you know, and there's debates even today. And the point is, that it's actually quite instructive to go back to the ancient philosophers and say, what they say about emotions and how to handle them. And then, so I do that in one chapter. And then and to go to modern people and say, what do they say as well, but then to turn to the Bible, because if the Bible is itself a philosophy of life, not just a vertical religion, but a whole philosophy of life, it's quite remarkable to see the Bible has a an incredibly thoughtful, might even say sophisticated view of what emotions are night, not denying their reality, not minimizing them, nor, you know, just saying, hey, whatever you feel is just where you are something there's this very thoughtful teaching Old Testament and New Testament, Hebrew Scriptures and, and apostolic teachings, that talk a lot about emotions, and both affirm their importance morally. And they're important as part of the human experience, part of what it means to be human is to have emotions, and also exhort us to learn to educate them to learn to shape them in certain ways, so that we might experience true human flourishing. So for me, it was really a joy to, to dig into the kind of intellectual side of what are emotions theoretically, and then to turn to the Bible again and see Wow, the Bible is like super thoughtful about what emotions are and very practical to about how to sort of think about them like Jesus teachings about anxiety, and how to process anxiety in these kinds of things. And then the Psalter. I mean, that's the most obvious part. You have this big book in the very middle of the Bible that is just chock full of all kinds of emotions, and prompts and people process Seeing their emotion. So for me those those chapters were really, really joyful to and, and stimulating to work on.

Charles Kim 20:09

Yeah, well, one one word that caught my attention while you were speaking was sophisticated. And that was a word that drew kind of leaned on and a few different times in our conversation about taking the Bible as a sophisticated document. So I think, I don't know if yes, if if there's cross pollination and your work there.

Jonathan Pennington 20:31

Yeah, there's probably we, he, we he and I talk a lot. Yeah, so there probably is some pollination there.

Charles Kim 20:39

Yeah, well, that's Yeah, that's great. It also reminds me to as, you know, as a patristic scholar, the letter of Marcel letter to Marcel Linus from, from Athanasius of Alexandria, and it's on the Psalms. And part of what he's doing is he basically is teaching this person. There's we're not exactly sure who is there. But it's this he has this Imagine sage, who basically tells you how do you read the Psalms in a way that helps you regulate your emotions?

Jonathan Pennington 21:06

Oh, I wish I would have known that that would have been great to look at. I did not know that at all. That sounds wonderful. Yeah. Yeah. So he

Charles Kim 21:13

has some really insightful things to say about how the Psalter contains the entirety of human emotion and how the Psalter can give you the words so that you can process through the stuff that you're going through? It's Yeah, sort of some deep wisdom from from Athanasius.

Jonathan Pennington 21:29

That's wonderful. I would love to get the full link on that. I'd love to see that. And you know, what, what strikes me about that is, I mean, that's what a good therapists or psychologists would do today. Right is sort of, I think a good balance therapists would both affirm the importance of human emotions, and also teach you how to process them. So you might experience human flourishing. Lo and behold, the Christian tradition was already doing that, you know, 1600 years ago, 1718 or two years ago, so that's really neat. Yeah, that's great.

Charles Kim 21:57

Yeah, well, I could definitely send you a link and hopefully my book was St. plaids will be out in the spring that I translated that is one of the things that Oh, wonderful. Yeah.

Jonathan Pennington 22:08

So great. Yeah. Love to see that.

Charles Kim 22:12

Good, good. Well, so one of my change gears kind of questions. Something my my sister's does some marketing, she said, You need to have a unique question that you ask people. And so she so my, my unique question is, what is one thing that you once thought was true, but now think is false, or once thought was false? And you now think is true? And I say it can relate to the research on the book? Or if you want to give me something a little bit broader than that. But but sometimes it's a fun question, just to see, like, you know, what is it in as we're doing research as scholars and thinkers? What are the things that make us change your mind? And why? You know, and how does that process kind of happen? Yeah,

Jonathan Pennington 22:57

that is interesting question. Good job marketing sister. Yes, so I guess I'll just keep it on this topic. Because it'd be easier for me. And that is, I guess, to recognize that happiness, which again, is kind of a weak word in English, but flourishing, or satisfaction, or whatever it is that that is actually something that is really central to the Bible's message. I think that would be I don't know that I would have denied that before. But I wouldn't have been inclined to think that as I think a lot of other Christians would probably be in the same boat I was in before, which is to say, you know, when we think of Jesus's teachings, we think of him saying deny yourself, take up your cross suffer. And so I think a lot of times people read those true teachings of Jesus, and assume then that the Christian life is one that is either not interested in flourishing and happiness, or even opposed to it. And so again, I don't know that I would have said, Yeah, I'm gonna die on that hill before, but I think I would have just had that default setting, that, you know, being concerned about my own flourishing and happiness that's kind of self centered. That's not what Jesus taught. But in the course of many years of study, including on the Sermon on the Mount, I came to see this is exactly what he's talking about. Now, the answer he gives, as I alluded to, before, about what true happiness looks like is pretty shocking, because it actually entails suffering. But it's still really focusing on that. So I think for me, that was a real turning point. And that's really why I wrote this book is to try to kind of help other Christians or non Christians to to just kind of see, you know what, the Bible is really addressing this fundamental human question in a way that I didn't think it did before.

Charles Kim 24:56

Yeah. Yeah, that's great. I had Tyler Wittman on and I think he said something about an ice rink. He said something about where he went to undergrad because it had a hockey rink and he wasn't he was going to go somewhere else. And he changed his mind about where he went to undergrad because he really liked the hockey rink at Boulder, I think is where he went.

Jonathan Pennington 25:13

Okay, well, that's a little bit more interesting answer in my mind sounded like just a book, a book advertisement. Sorry. Maybe that's what No, no, no,

Charles Kim 25:24

no, no, no, I'm looking for what you did. I just always think that was funny. And I figured you'd probably know Tyler, because he was at some very well, while

Jonathan Pennington 25:32

he was he very well. And then partly my encouragement. He followed me many years later to St. Andrews. And I'm very glad he did. He got to be one of John Webster's final students, which was great. And Tyler Tyler's wonderful, I love him. That's great.

Charles Kim 25:47

Yeah. It also turns out that his sister was roommates with my wife in college. So

Jonathan Pennington 25:53

nice. Okay.

Charles Kim 25:57

Very good. So how I got a few more questions here. I don't want to take up too much of your time. But how is a biblical understanding of philosophy broadly considered different from a sort of secular point of view?

Jonathan Pennington 26:12

Yeah, I think it kind of goes back to things I said earlier that, if you mean by secular your view of philosophy, Zoetry mean? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that I think, well, it kind of depends on whose philosophy you're talking about. If you're talking about academic philosophy, it it is pretty removed. From what I'm suggesting the Christianity is really about the ivory tower kind of philosophy that today modern philosophy academically focuses primarily on epistemology, how do you know things, some on aesthetics, a lot of political philosophy. And those things are not absent from the biblical witness. But all of those, again, serve towards this more ancient sense of how do you be truly happy. So that's the big contrast. I think, the reality is, though, there are philosophers out there that are doing something more like Christianity, even with some differences, though, I would think of like Jordan Peterson, if you know that is he's a technically a psychologist, but he really, you know, international best seller of the 12 rules of life, etc, he's, I think the closest thing you'd have to kind of a modern philosopher in the ancient sense, or one of my very favorite people. ln debit Tom, Bo TT O N, who I talked about in the book, as well. He's a very practical, modern philosopher who writes books on love and relationships and work. And what I discovered in the course of this book, through some friends, actually, is that in France, in modern France, philosophers, they're are often actually much more oriented towards practical life. Even academic philosophers, they're like, there's kind of like they have an outward facing practical thing. That is not the case in the rest of continental or American academic philosophy. So I think there are, that's why I said it kind of depends on which secular philosophy. You mean, I think there are some secular philosophers who are doing a little bit more of this in the in the way that Christianity I think is?

Charles Kim 28:19

Yeah, yeah, that's very helpful. Yeah, I think I've heard sort of public philosopher is almost a position in France. And I can't imagine public philosopher, really, you know, that just doesn't have a ring to it in the American context. Hopefully, I think you're a public intellectual, but public philosopher. Not really.

Jonathan Pennington 28:41

Right. Yeah, the French tradition is really and Pierre odo is part of that in the sense that he was just an earlier generation of that, but it for some reason, they've kept that sort of role in society. That I think is super helpful. Yeah.

Charles Kim 28:55

Yeah. Last thing. So you do an interesting sort of reading of the Beatitudes towards the end of the book, how does thinking philosophically help us understand Jesus teaching on the sermon of the mount? So sort of engaged? So this is sort of Jesus getting closer to a philosopher in some ways, what? How does that help us see that in a new light?

Jonathan Pennington 29:16

Well, that's how I came to all of this. I mean, this book in these ideas are really the extension of my work on the Sermon on the Mount. And when I was working, I'm a Matthew scholar by training and then spent spent a lot of time working in the Sermon on Mount particular Matthew chapters five to seven, and then wrote a book called the sermon on the mount and human flourishing. And that is where it all first started to come. To make sense to me is that Jesus's teachings in the sermon are very much wisdom oriented, including the Beatitudes. These which is the Latin word for Happy are the Latin word for flourishing. The reason we call them beatitudes is because their statements of Jesus as a sage wisdom, teach or philosopher, if you will, teaching what the nature of true happiness is. And it's striking that the first teaching of Jesus in the first book of the New Testament, so the first teaching of Jesus in the New Testament are nine statements, nine poetic statements about what the nature of true human flourishing is. And so that kind of sets us off right in the beginning of the New Testament, to understand Jesus as a philosopher and so for me that that was really a crucial turning point is coming to understand the Beatitudes as the technical term for him is Makar isms, that is statements about Makari awesomeness, or flourishing. And as you probably know, the Greek word Makarios is basically a synonym for you, diamond Nia, by the first century, it's the word that's used to describe how to be truly flourishing.

Charles Kim 30:55

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's, that's really great. And I'm actually given a paper at ETS on the Psalm one and Christian early Christian interpretations of Psalm one. So bless it is the man Makarios and it. So it's sort of interesting to see how the Christians take that, but one of them is, is theater of Cyrus sort of late anti keen, so called. And he takes that and he says, connects it to the Beatitudes. And he says, But if Christ is the one who is, is Baotou says Makarios, then he, those of us who participate and share in Christ's nature as Christians are also blessed. So he is, but you know, so he sort of talks about this. And, and actually, it's kind of fascinating, he uses the kind of the language of Theosis, which you wouldn't expect to the language of dividends, like deification, and from an anti keen. So it's, it's sort of interesting, but he says that, because Christ is called that we can ever share in that title. So he sort of goes goes in, you know, it's even more like a lot of what we talked about is sort of like actions and ways of acting in the world. But part of what he's trying to get at is even Christ helps us into those like, you know, so that is grace. And that is, you know, some of the other ways in which God also empowers us to become these things that we aren't. So I thought that was sort of, sort of an interesting way to think about that. But

Jonathan Pennington 32:24

it's really good song. Definitely. Someone is definitely underneath the Beatitudes, you know, and as you probably know it, it relates to the two ways theme of wisdom you see it in Proverbs one to nine, you see in the decay, there's, there's the way of wisdom teaching is always that there's one way that results in flourishing one way that results in destruction. So choose, you know, which my son it's a father saying to a son, a lot of times choose which way is going to result in, in the blessed life. And I think that's exactly what's going on in the Beatitudes. Yeah,

Charles Kim 32:55

well, very good. I really appreciate you taking the time and, and it's been a pleasure talking with you. And I'm, I'm, I really enjoyed the book. I am also a huge Ron Swanson fan. So that was a that was kind of fun to see the connection there. So thanks again, Dr. Pennington for coming on the show and writing this book. And yeah, I think, you know, it's one I'm teaching a class where we do philosophy and theology together. And so there's all like, at the same time, so it might be a good crossover book for us to sort of think through how you know, the way that those two classes overlap.

Jonathan Pennington 33:34

Yeah, that's wonderful. Thank you so much for reading it and having me on. It's a great joy to discuss these things. Thank you.

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