Episode 136: Brian Gronewoller on Augustine and Rhetoric

This week we do a deep dive into Augustine's rhetorical theology. We talk about the ways Augustine as a rhetorician framed his theology in different ways using the tools he learned from his particular trade. Dr. Gronewoller's book, Rhetorical Economy in Augustine's Theology (Oxford University Press, 2021) has many fascinating elements, but we focus mainly on how rhetoric helps Augustine better explain the problem of evil. 

Timestamps:

2:29- Rhetoric in Understanding Augustine

14:44- Theodicy and Rhetoric in Plato

28:04- Theodicy and Evil

44:54- Logical Models and Scripture

1:00:52- Rhetorical Economy v. Rhetoric

Charles Kim 0:00

Hello, and welcome to a history of Christian theology. My name is Chad Kim. This week, I will be talking with Brian Gronewoller, who recently published rhetorical economy and Augustine theology with Oxford University Press. So this will be a conversation on a kind of an in depth conversation on Augustine, his background, the kinds of things that he was reading, and what influenced and shaped his thought, especially as it relates to rhetoric. So the study of, of how one speaks well before people which Augustine was a teacher of, and witchy, in some fashion or form, basically was his whole life, although he was a preacher in the church, not necessarily a public speaker, in front of crowds like he did before the Emperor, as he talks about it, and confession. So Brian kind of helps us think through why understanding his background can help us read his theology better. You'll notice about halfway through the conversation, that there's kind of a break, and then Brian kind of comes back on and apologizes. So we recorded this podcast over two sessions, because he had an emergency and had to leave. He is fine. And everything's okay. But yeah, so so it does, there's that little point in the middle. So just be aware of that. Sorry, for the delay of getting out to do podcast. It has been a busy semester, as always. And Grant, who has been working with me is away at Oxford. So. So yes, it's basically just been me and I haven't had the time that I would like to devote to the podcast, we did have a really gracious a review on iTunes. So when the right speed says this is such a great intro to history of theology does a great job of introducing primary sources, and tying that to modern church practice. So just want to thank that. They thank him or her for their comments. So if you wouldn't mind, give us a rating and review on iTunes. I'm given to understand that it helps people find the show. But yeah, so sorry for this long intro. But we have our conversation with Brian coming up here. And we will we've got some more coming up on on the show. We'll talk with somewhat about violence and the Old Testament, we'll talk about worship, we've got a few different things that are in the hopper. But but those will be a few a few weeks out. So thanks for listening. And here's my conversation with Brian. Today on the show. I've got with me, Dr. Brian Groenewald. Dr. Gregory Waller has, every time I grow molar, do I say

Brian Gronewoller 2:29

it's spelled with a no, but it's pronounced like it's an A, at least in my family circles it is. So that's how the grown Wallers pronounced it.

Charles Kim 2:36

Okay, grown Waller rhetorical economy and Augustine theology with Oxford University Press. And that was in 2021, I came across Dr. Graham Walters book, Brian's book, because I was, you know, I do research on Augustine. And I was like, Oh, this is interesting, someone who's taking seriously, Augustine is rhetoric in his theological framework, and so I just wanted to, I actually reached out to Brian, to ask him some questions. And then I realized, Hey, we should just have a podcast, where I talk to him. And as we've gotten to know each other, turns out we are very similar in any number of ways. And he has a passion for Latin and living Latin, he is Presbyterian, and I go to Presbyterian church now. And so I, you know, it looks like we've got a whole, a whole host of commonalities. So yeah, this will not be for the faint of heart. If, you know, for those of you who are not deep in the guts, then this might be a hard one, but I'm going to enjoy it, I know that

Brian Gronewoller 3:44

we will do our best but no, thank you for having

Charles Kim 3:47

me a lot. I

Brian Gronewoller 3:47

just appreciate you taking an interest in my work. And really anybody taking any interest in it? It's I know when you do academic work if you're kind of out on your own for a long time. And so it's, it's fun when other people join you. Yeah, on it. So yeah,

Charles Kim 4:02

well, let's, I think we'll go we'll go with the like, more heart of the book. And then I would like eventually to backtrack a little bit of how you came to Augustine, but let's let's just start right in. So, you know, how can you give a brief synopsis of how rhetoric helps us understand theology in Augustine? Like, what why is rhetoric kind of one of your entry points into analyzing a Dustin's thought?

Brian Gronewoller 4:33

Yeah, I mean, the the simple answer to that would be because, you know, he he was a rhetorician or an orator, however you'd like to say it for for so long. He spent so many years of his life training and we know how training kind of comes up with you songs that you've memorized ways of doing things that you do. I know, the students I teach now, that are even in their 30s and 40s and 50s. Some of them at master's level, they, when I haven't write papers, it's funny because sometimes I'll explain exactly what I want in the paper, but they just write the same kind of paper that their view been used to writing from way back when they were in elementary and, you know, in middle and high and in college, and so they have these memories and these kind of ways of being and ways of living that they've developed. And Augustine for, you know, as everybody knows, for a significant portion of his life was a public speaker was, you know, was a mentor taught it was just very gifted at it, you know, that's what got him all the way to Rome, and then Milan was just this this talent. And so when he becomes a Christian, you know, along the way, everybody kind of knows he picks up, you know, masochism. So he's looking into different religions. He defends manic a ism for a while, and then he, he reads the books of the Platanus, which are really discussed a lot in his journey. And theology and philosophy have always been really kind of tied together in a lot of ways. And so when you when you study, as you know, Chatwin you kind of work through how you when you become a scholar on this, right, you read just lots and lots of, of the Bible, of course, you read lots and lots of scriptural interpretation by the earlier Christian authors, like, you know, where would Augustine be getting certain ideas, you know, might be getting from Ambrose, like with his Christology, he gets a lot from Ambrose, and you just kind of learn all these different things. Then with philosophy, right, you know, it first, you know, all this Platanus stuff that he might be using for Platonism. And stoicism becomes really popular with the study of Augustine. And now you get to, and I was just wondering, at one point, I was like, you know, where's the rhetoric come in? Because most of the rhetoric seems to come in on how he forms his speeches, which will make sense it's how speeches are formed. But really, for me, sorry, to get back to your original question, I was just a lot of throat clearing to get to the point where, you know, I, I think if you want to understand him more fully, which I think is the goal, we have to kind of add rhetoric to this because it was an important part of his life, he continues speaking for the rest of his life, of course, through his sermons. And not that rhetoric is dominating him, or he's making, you know, Christian ideas or his theological ideas, bow to the ideas of rhetoric is especially common, especially consciously that he's doing that. But there's just forms and patterns and ways of thinking that he's going to bring from that world into his world of kind of as he's constructing his different theological points of view as he's constructing his interpretations of Scripture. And so I think, you know, I don't know that studying all of rhetoric would help you. I'm not sure that becoming a rhetorician is necessary. I don't think that one has to memorize quintillion. You know, God bless the person who tries to do that there's a lot in quintillion, it's very long. Or, you know, Cicero, but you know, we know Cicero's impactful on him, we know he brings some of Cicero stoic philosophy, you know, with him, at least he uses stock models to think through things. So it makes sense that he's also using other models to think through things. So yeah, so really, my book is just I think, in one sense about one way in which understanding one thing like this one concept from rhetoric, which is rhetorical economy, helps us to understand the Gustin thought in several different areas, if that makes sense. So it's funny, I'm trying to sift through my head, as I'm answering this, like the, the book itself is so tied to how I got to it, how I came about it, what I became interested in, because I am very much, you know, interested in theology, I came, actually, my original goal was to study kind of, to sift more through Augustus political thought, I, Political Theology would be the term but Political Theology can sometimes mean something today that it didn't mean back then. But it's theology as it related to politics and nations and states and how Christians should act within them. That's kind of what I went to do my PhD with, in a hat when I when I went to Emory. And I kind of just stumbled on the rhetoric stuff during one of my doctoral qualifying exams. And it just really, really was interesting to me. So yeah, so that's, so I think to understand him, you have to understand, like if you're missing rhetoric, at least, you're possibly missing a whole world or a whole genre, like a whole world of literature, in which there are some answers to you know, this is interesting. Why does Agustin do this instead of that? Why does he explain the scripture this way instead of that way? What's the logic he uses behind that? And I think there's more there than there is just in the you know, here's how read Eric says you should construct a speech. So look at his sermon like, therefore we see why he does the sermon this way, which is, is often at least traditionally been not the only way. But But by far the most dominant way in which rhetorical evidence has been used in the study of Augustine to better yet better understand him. The other one is, of course, by far I'm putting in that scriptural interpretation exegesis hermeneutics. It's been used that way too, because the other thing with rhetoric, right is that for a lot of folks, texts are just written speeches. So the construction of a text and the construction of a speech kind of go hand in hand. And I was trying to move beyond that to more. You know, how it was guiding the thought. The thought is thought itself, not just the way in which he was wanting to portray his thoughts, or the way in which he was taking the thought of Paul and interpreting the thought of Paul according to how a Arataura would do it.

Charles Kim 10:58

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's, I think that's what makes your, your work interesting is you come to realize, I mean, not not just in your work, but but when we you read a little bit about ancient rhetoric, that it is ultimately a quite a way of thinking like, you know, we tend to, you know, say that philosophy is about thinking. But the hard thing when you go back to the ancient world, like we, you know, you use the phrase Political Theology. Well, you know, that's not a construction that Augustine would know. And so you know, and really theology they owe Gaea is as a very specific kind of meaning. That that is not how we, you know, broadly speaking, how we talk about theology today. So there's always this difficulty of trying to exactly pinpoint, well, what is Augustine doing? And, and so is it? Is it a rhetorical thing? Is it a philosophical thing? Should we still classify him as a theologian? Because that's how, you know, he would seem to us, you know, so I think, you know, and hopefully we can get dig into this a little bit, but you were able to bring some of these like structures and the architectonics of rhetoric and show how those things help Agustin view the world and view scripture, because of because of that, those kinds of patterns of thinking.

Brian Gronewoller 12:24

Yeah, well, I remember I just something that you said that made me think of this is, is the way that Augustine doesn't conceive of things the way we do nowadays. One of the things he doesn't conceive of it is the way like a university is set up. And I remember I was sitting in the library, pits that library at Emory. Shout out to them. Everybody Pitts is awesome. I love that library. And IT staff. It I was sitting there one day, and I was like, you know, how do I explain? Because I was trying to explain what I was doing to certain people and they're like, Yeah, but But isn't that and, and they were trying to explain but you know, philosophy over here, theology over there, like you said, not just theology proper, but just, you know, theology is a whole, the way we think we can see. And I was trying to, like, explain the way that Augustine sees the world. And I was like, you know, you know, in Augustinian, the study of Augustine, we have like the br 65 section like that's where the theology, Augustine texts go in the library. But then you have the B section, right, which is you might get well this book is deemed to be Augustine, but philosophical. So it's just the B section. And then there's other sections, you have to run to you, sometimes within a library. And then on Emory's campus, at least, not all this stuff would necessarily even be in one library. Like sometimes I had to run over to a completely different library to get a work. Because the way we kind of think through things now, the way we kind of organized ideas now is a model that he didn't think through where to him, it's all like, meshed together and integrated. And so for him like to have a philosophy department over there, and maybe like in the modern world of communications departments, which would be part of rhetoric, or maybe a law school, which is kind of another part of rhetoric, you know, to have these all in different places is just odd, because to him, it kind of all integrates not that they're all, you know, not different, you know, he understood mathematics is different than, than some other things. But to him it, it all integrates. And so part I remember when I was I think, at least it's been a while since I've even looked at the book, but I'm pretty sure I left it still in the introduction, just kind of being like, you know, this is an us problem, not a him problem. Because for him, it's all together. And we kind of have to, like, get out of our modern mold and kind of recognize that. I remember sitting in the library thinking about and having that aha moment of like, oh, oh, yeah, like this is it this is the problem is the way we we organize knowledge nowadays, right? Because it's Plato. You know, Plato's Phaedrus, is it? Is it philosophy certainly, is it theology? I mean, you know, there there is God's show up, you know, Gods show up throughout Plato's work. And so you know, even the philosophy theology distinction, I think is really fraught, I guess, the way we come through it nowadays. So yeah,

Charles Kim 15:12

well, so one place, one place that you kind of, maybe we could drill in and sort of see how rhetoric affects his thought was on on your final chapters on theodicy. And so it was so you know, one of these, like, perennial difficulties in theology is the problem. And, and really, it's, there we go again, right. It's a problem that goes back to philosophy. And so it goes back to Plato, right, the UniPro dilemma. And so you can you know, you could basically trace this question, far back before people thought about theology as its own discipline. Nevertheless, sort of theodicy is this question of a good we have a good God and evil and how do these work together? And you try to show how how rhetoric can kind of help Agustin think through how this is even possible, or, you know, maybe not a perfect solution to theodicy, but at least like, we see the the evidence of his rhetorical training in his exposition of this problem. So could you say a little bit about how rhetoric works for him there? Yeah, I think

Brian Gronewoller 16:28

I'd love to i, the hard part is, I might have to explain a little bit about how it works in the other things, because

Charles Kim 16:35

the evil part,

Brian Gronewoller 16:37

chapter you picked up on the evil chapter that, you know, I'm calling it the evil chapter, it's chapter. It's the last chapter. It's the chapter that was the most fun to write. It's the shortest, so it's the fastest to read for anybody. But that's the chapter. I'm always if people are like, what's it about? Like, what's something interesting? I was like, oh, yeah, chapter five. That's, that's, um, but so there's, there's this concept called economy in rhetoric, which of course, okay, this is the Greek for house. And kind of MIA, in the Greek, of course, would be, you know, like,

Charles Kim 17:11

what a well,

Brian Gronewoller 17:12

a well ordered thing like, like, how is the house to be ordered, and this is a pretty common in an ancient thought is how the house is to be ordered. And, you know, it's maybe how we order other things. So it shows up in in quintillion, particularly, you get this well ordered speech, right, that and so he comes across, like, how do we order speeches. And an order kind of is this weird thing that a well ordered, something can hit both at the level of the broad level of ideas. So like, you know, I'm going to order I'm going to put this movement before that movement, but it also hits it the order of words, right. So like, when you get down into the minuscule, like, am I going to put this word before that word, or after that word? What brings the most impact for a lot I want to say, and so you get these things that are considered economically arranged, erect. Yeah, economically ordered, or an economic, economically arranged speech. And so quintillion is trying to get this idea into the minds of people. And it seems to be something that is there that or is kind of something everyone's aware of, that everyone is way, an overstatement. I know as an academic not to say that a lot of people seem to be aware of it, and to various degrees, which is the better trip. And so you have this, this idea of arranging and so when Augustine starts to face questions of, or starts to think through ideas of God's we might use Providence, we might use it at some point, I guess, and of course affirming predestination. When Augustine is trying to think through the way that God has ordered things, we see, what you'll start to see is you start to see Augustine to explain the way it's done, I guess one believes that it's done. But the way he the way he explains it is he seems to pull in this rhetorical concept of economy and apply it to God and God's arrangement of kind of everything. So So to get us there. I kind of go into in order to kind of talk about how Augustine uses that idea in, in history in like creation, like top to bottom and then history kind of first to last, in a sense, again, because the book is meant to kind of just show like, look like there's a lot of examples I'm going to give you like two or three deeper readings that show you it's in his thought on time, and it's in his thoughts or history, I think is what I call it, not meaning what Augustine meant with history as a genre of literature, but like history, meaning all that ever was or is or will be on the timeline. And then creation meaning kind of all that is kind of in a slicer in a moment. And so So anyways, what I started to find is when he's trying to, like how does God order everything the way he wants it top to bottom, even if you go back to Genesis, I guess incense you use this rhetorical concept of arrangement to explain it like things are fitting toward each other in certain ways. Even if we can't figure out how they're fitting to each other to God, they make sense. And so he arranges them all in a way that makes sense at the moment. That's the best in the moment, even when we don't know why. That we can't understand it. Why? Well, it's because and you know, he pulls on architectural examples and other examples, like we're a statue in a temple, and we just can't see how the rest of the temple is organized. Or we're a syllable and a speech. And we just don't know how the rest of the syllables go, we can't even see that the whole thing is beautiful. Because in the park, it looks ugly, especially in moments when we're suffering and things like that just in the way in a speech, you might use an ugly word, or you might use an ugly something. Because that actually ugly word actually makes the whole thing beautiful. But you have to wait to consider it as a hole. Yeah, and so. So when he thinks through that with creation, for instance, there's this thing in my head, I'm trying to keep in mind to mention, maybe I should just stop and give a print that parenthetical mentioned here. What Augustine does with rhetorical economy is not so different from what happens with the Trinitarian debates. And this does not make it in my book, but a way to explain it is that there's a difference between believing something and being able to explain it. Yeah. And so we see this with like Justin Martyr, who has like, if you read Justin martes texts, he seems to affirm a trinity. But as like my advisor, Anthony Brigman, kind of points out and what it was in his first book, like, but Justin, can only explain ability. If that makes sense. You can only explain that. And you get these problems over the first couple 100 years of Christian theology, where nearly nearly everyone, not everyone affirms a Trinity they affirm like this, but they can't explain it. And so the problem comes down to explaining it. Yeah. And it takes them hundreds of years, you know, and then it takes them from 325, when they think they get it right, you know, it's a 3d one that really kind of get well this is as much as we can explain, we can't explain any more than that. But this is what we have in the in the, in the version of the Nicene Creed we have now. That's kind of what the usefulness of rhetoric is, in the same way that you see, the usefulness of philosophy can be when you're like, Okay, I believe this to be true in Scripture. And scripture might not tell me too many of the howls, or it might hint at some of them. But this idea I take from somewhere else actually provides a structure by which I can weave together all these scriptures that seem to be giving me little hints. And therefore I can now explain it. So I probably should have started with that just to kind of be like, Well, why is this useful? It's useful in this way, in that we get like logical models we pull in, we use to explain things in the same way we do nowadays, we just don't recognize often that we're doing it. And for most Christian authors, and Ferguson, especially they're trying to do it in a way that is faithful to the Scriptures. But then explains the Scripture. So they don't want the model to kind of overrun the Scriptures. And it can for certain authors when we read that it can happen. And right, it comes down to the question of when is there a good synthesis? And then when is synchronizing going on? Right? When does Yeah, you know, when it's kind of bad and when it's kind of okay, and fine and often good. So moving back to Agustin what we see is he'll explain creation as a text, right creation is a book can you actually refers to creation as a book a few times. And working with this hesita hesitate to use the word analogy, because it's such a loaded word. But it may be, but it's not adjustable stration because the illustration itself actually contains, if you look more deeply into the illustration that contains the actual logic is somewhat in the way that Plato's cave, right? It's an illustration, but it also contains what he's trying to say about education within it. So it's not just an illustration. So it's not merely, I guess, in that sense, an illustration. But there's more to it, there's actually there's meat to it. The meat is actually in the illustration, so to speak. So when you when you get rhetorical economy, what you do is first you see that he's talking about creation as a book. And so he talks about how all things are well arranged by God, they're ordered in the way they should be right. And you can go back into philosophy and you see certain things in philosophy also, right, like the human's head is on top of the body. Augustine will talk about how the body itself is well arranged. And he'll be he'll be going from there. And he'll be using both philosophical and rhetorical sources, kind of in the way he thinks through that. But he comes to this kind of well arranged thing like things are arranged the way they should be. And so when he's trying to explain how God is in control of all that is from creation onward that it's perfectly arranged. In fact, it's the most economically arranged thing ever, to a humanity that looks at it and goes, this thing is way out of sorts. He's trying to explain it. Well he uses this model to say, Okay, here's how it's well arranged, these little pieces go together. And it's not even been thought through it just the little pieces level right like fissure in water because they breathe water. So look Behold, they're in water. If things go where they should go, he moves on from there then to say, Okay, so the history he'll talk about history as a speech. While speech is right, a text is just another form of speech in the ancient world. So he's doing the same thing. He talks about how things are there. The funny part with the speech, though, is when we start to talk about history as a speech, he starts to recognize how things look different, right? And so if you get into essence theology, our temporality is a huge part of it. And part of our temporality is the fact that we're in state we're unstable, right? Our instability is a huge part of that. And so eventually, with the the evil chapter, you get to get into with the will, and how the will is that way. But he's just kind of talking about everything possible that you could possibly talk about. And creation is not only perfectly arranged, or economically arranged, right in creation on this one axis, but on the axis in which it moves through time, as everything is changing in a way that humans can't understand on a second to second or millisecond to millisecond basis, the entirety of creation, He is affirming that God is provident over all of that. And then he's trying to explain well, you know, well, how, and his explanation there gets a little more interesting, because you just can't possibly see things in the future, right? And we don't know things from the past. And so how can all this stuff work? Especially when you get to really awful things? You know, how does that work? Really good things? Or, hey, how does this person who right now seems like really a classical classic problem, John, Chris Austin brings it up in his sermons, you know, what? We're on Lazarus, and the rich man like, Well, what about this person who seems like they've got a great life right now,

nothing's ever gone wrong for them. And I guess it has kind of hold the whole, like, well just wait. And then the just wait extends to eternity, like, well, just wait, and maybe wait longer. But you'll see that everything fits together the way it should. Everything fits together with the way that God's built the universe, everything fits, fits together with the gateway that God says that the universe should, and I'm using universe here just kind of mean everything that is was will be in whatever moment, they're in the it will all fit together perfectly, you just kind of have to move out from this tiny version of whatever you see, to being able to see all of it. And so it all fits together. And then he brings in different ideas like antique baton, he brings in other ideas throughout it from rhetoric to explain how certain things that seemingly don't fit together do that and set up his staff in that sense. So yeah, yeah, sorry. I feel like I've been monologuing for a bit, I need to stop it. But that that just kind of gets us up to the evil. And so, so yeah.

Charles Kim 28:04

One of the things that I was, I was just trying to pick out something from your book that could kind of, you know, a perennial problem that Christians have, which is how do we talk about theodicy? How do we talk about evil? And I have another question that I want to ask you actually, about. Agustin 's education what that means for his understanding of philosophy? That's more sort of technical historical question. But it actually came up in a sort of a back and fourth exchange I had at a conference paper once. So I was just gonna get your own kind of take. But, um, because Because actually, because what you're trying to do in the book, one of the things that you're trying to show, is that sort of framing Augustine, within his rhetorical education, can help us see what he's up to. Right. So when he's trying to think through, how do we view the problem of evil? How do we view God's relationship to the universe into evil, if we understand what he's doing and rhetoric, and some of the things that he's using our order and fitting this and some of these other kind of rhetorical phrases, if you understand how they work in that kind of language, it can, it can, you know, give us a different perspective on the problem of evil. So that was I was just trying to make that kind of connection to Augustine thought, like, and what why is that a helpful way? You know, both for Augustine or and maybe why did he think that would be a useful thing for for the people that he was writing to? Yeah. To understand evil in that way. Yeah.

Brian Gronewoller 29:44

No, that's, that's probably great. So so if we can Yeah, if we're starting from that point, that's fantastic. I'm glad we're able to Yes, whatever we had started and, and if anybody's listening to this, just so they hear me say it to you, thank you for letting me go. I had a family emergency I had to run to so it's been about About a month at this point, or maybe a little less than that, but we're finally back to it after the holidays. But thank you for your understanding. No prob. Yeah. So with Augustine, like, from a position of someone of faith, for instance, like the reason to understand for me, and for most folks like so like, why do we do this with historical theology is to understand what a historical person said, better? Well, why do we do that? Well, we do that because that historical person, especially in theology, is trying to interpret the Bible. And so the really the end game is how do we understand the scriptures better, so that we understand God better, so we understand ourselves better. And so we're searching for little nuggets there. And with Augustine, it's kind of like doing Shakespeare, right? If you're doing a literature degree, like you pick someone who's been picked through with a lot of things. And so, I know I talked last time about rhetoric and how rhetoric hasn't been picked through as much. But But yeah, so I so I found this idea of economy as just like a a logical model by which Agustin could explain how something how something that is various and up and down, and good and bad analysis, like can be ordered together into a speech or a book, and he'll talk about at least another part of my book, I get into the concept of anticipatory con, which I on purpose, talk about it as anti photonic, not antithesis, although that is one of the translations of it. Because he is doing some stuff like you might see with antithesis, but he's not quite doing the same thing all the time is what people might hear when they hear antithesis, but

Charles Kim 31:35

you don't want to connect him to Hegel. No, yeah,

Brian Gronewoller 31:37

well, take us a little later. Right, like we have Words have meanings for us now. But they didn't necessarily have like, they're like, the people, if they're listening to this won't know, before we were talking about analogy, like, what does analogy mean now versus what it meant, you know, to Thomas Aquinas versus what it meant, you know, in the one hundreds, and so you just have different like, who meant what, by what, when, but people don't think through that whenever you say a word. Now they just, it's what they know it as. And even scholars, right, even a scholar of the Reformation will hear something different than a scholar of medieval theology than a scholar of patristic theology than a scholar of systematic search scholar of modern. And so I think that's hard, but but one of the things I found, I guess, and I think you were really insightful to pick up on it, and the most fun chapter, which I think I said this last time, just to reiterate, like, for me, it was like, my most fun chapter to write was the fifth chapter, which is the chapter on theodicy, because what it seemed like to me, and what I argue in the chapter is that he is pretty well known that Agustin scholars have kind of worked out certain things about how Augustine works out, like, like certain Gordian knots and stuff, I think I use the phrase Gordian knot even in his theology. And so I guess he has these kind of two antithetical understandings. One is that God has created everything right, like he affirms ex nihilo creation. So he created, right created Satan, which is, of course, a classic theological problem, right? So and so it gets in holds this idea that God created everything. And at the same time, he holds that God is not the source of evil. Right? Like, you know, Satan, or, or murder, like you created humans and humans murder. So how has gotten on the creation? Like so God is, in one sense, the chronologically prior, but not the producer of these things? And so I guess I was trying to work that out. So what scholars have figured out in the past, right, is that first he employs this definition. And scholars will say, right, that it's similar to the Platonic tradition of evil as like a gradated form of non being so like, like, evil is like you got the 100% being what you should be what is good, and anything from that is actually being less than, and so evil. In that sense, it does not have being not not to say that, you know, when someone murders someone else, something didn't happen. It's just the evil itself doesn't have its own being in this sense. And Augustine is using that more of a vague sense than you might get being vague might be the right wrong term he's using in a different way than you might get the term being being used. I shouldn't repeat that, then that we weren't being was used maybe 1000 years later, or even now and so. So he, he does this is he said, Okay, he was not substantial. Maybe that's a better way of saying is evil doesn't have substance. The second thing he does is that he routes the source of evil in the will. And so that's the source of evil for Augustine. And in a sense, Augustine kind of, in that sense, that that does provide us the logical understanding of how Augustine works out these two antithetical things right. And so, and this is nothing new like this isn't anything. A lots of people have worked through this for me, I think in my book, I just work a little bit on what gr Evans has done with it. it a little bit with some other summaries and stuff. It's, there's a long list of literature on Augustine on evil. What I found was that I was working as I was working through this was that rhetorical economy by providing a logical model that allows you to understand how things can be ordered. The things that are various and things that are good and bad things that are all these things, how they can be ordered together, rhetorical economy, in a sense, gives Augustine a logical model that explains a problem that comes after he solves this. So So now that we know that this has solved at least within his thought, of, well, the source of evil is in the will. And not it's not a substance thing. So when God creates everything substance, like substantially, really evil really comes out of the human will, it's a, it's a falling away from rather than something that is itself. So when you go this way, the this new problem was kind of introduced into his system. And that's this, that once you admit that there's a lack of something that has its source outside of God, so to speak, even if it's a lack of something that has its source outside of God. You have to let's see here, um, he needs to, I guess, then account for in his system. How God then remains provident over that which is not sourced from himself, if that makes sense, because he affirms probably the providence of God. And this is kind of typical of theology is that theology is, in some senses, it's an attempt, I would say, like, in the tradition I'm in and such, it is an attempt to explain the scriptures. But often, you get something where like, well, you know, so like, with Agus, at the time that the scriptures say the Providence got his providence overall thinks he's omnipotent, in a sense, and, and you get all these other senses there, we understand his understanding on predestination I, not to get into that, but like, just Providence category for him of just providence. So if he's gonna affirm that, and he says, what Scripture says that, and it says this, and he's reading Paul and others when he says, and scripture says that the source of evil is in the will. So it's not like he's sitting there going, I'm saying it's in the will. It's like, Well, Paul saying it in others. Once he gets there, he's like, Well, how did those two scriptural things work together? And often what theologians do is they're trying to figure out something that makes sense of the scriptural texts you have, how do you draw the picture with the dots? Right, the data points that you have, how do you draw the best picture? And so philosophy? Previous theologians, the tradition, even for Augustine, often these provide options for you to think through maybe this? Maybe this explains that maybe that explains it. And what I argue in the fifth chapter is that for Augustine, rhetorical economy, explain and kind of unties that new nuts. So how is God provident over something that he is not the source of, even if it's a non being thing? Right? So like, how is he provident over someone who chooses to murder someone else. And so, as I work through the chapter, it's really it's there's, there's this one part where the first part of the chapter ends with a, I believe a suggestion. And it's a little bit of a move into being like, well, we can already see rhetoric in this field. Because I think, right at least, it seems and I think, I think I ended with the word suggests, right? It's, it's not enough evidence there to say that strongly there but suggest that you actually have Augustine thinking of creation, and the arrangement of creation, actually patterning on it on on Genesis, his contra medicae against the mana case that he's there that he he actually uses two things that like, you know, arrangement really deals more with the second principal part of rhetoric and then sometimes the third, but really what you see is inventing in when to read or invention, or creation, and kind of that mapped onto God is like Well, step one, you invent the material, the stuff and then tap to start putting in an order that you can kind of see that at least in on 135 of Genesis, it gets the mana key. So I kind of do that and start with that. But you know, really the real thing I'm getting to is when you get to the reading that I do have on free choice three 927 and that is this idea where he's, he's working through it basically in there I just do a close reading to try to show readers how he's using rhetorical concepts are there for show that he really is mapping rhetorical economy on to this and I think in an earlier article, even a way I had described it as if you add if you imagine A god as Homer and and Homer is writing the Iliad. And Homer writes that Agamemnon steals and I'm her name is running away from me at the moment. Achilles is bracing for more, but but yeah steals her right? So then Achilles stops fighting. Well, I mean, Agamemnon is not the greatest king when you read the Iliad. And so Agamemnon might qualify as an evil action.

Now, the source if Homer is a person, Homer is the source like oldhammer has written this. But if you could almost get outside of it, I think what Augustine is trying to do is to get you to imagine, and Augustine doesn't talk particularly about this, I was just trying to do this as a thought experiment. So I think, yeah, note of an earlier article. So just imagine this, you almost have to imagine that Agamemnon has a freewill, right? And in Agamemnon's freewill, he chooses to do this. But as the choice is made, as the things are being choice chosen to be done, what the author then can do, and what you know, what Homer then in that sense, can do can immediately order it within where he wants the story to go. And, and that seems to be kind of what Augustine is doing is that Augustine can, you know, Ferguson, of course, God is Providence over all things, but he can even take choices that are evil choices that God clearly wouldn't want a person like, wouldn't make a person make. And he takes that evil choice, that evil action and he somehow fits it into his greater threat tapestry, or in this sense, his greater speech, which is all of history, or his greater book, which is all creation. And he he weaves it in. And so the concept of Antipa time, for instance, is you you almost have maybe Agamemnon do that so that you maybe can see how much better Priam is as a rice because Priam, then against the backdrop of, of Agamemnon just looks like a much better king. And now I'm not, I'm not a class assistant. So some classes might listen to the passivity like, man, you do not know what you're talking about. So I am totally please forgive me, email me, you can find my email on website. So I'm happy to understand that better but that's my small understanding of it. And if that if that doesn't work, we can map it onto something else but But anytime you have, like you have you know, Sauron in The Lord of the Rings exists, in a sense, to show you the goodness like Gandalf looks so much better. They're both what are called My er you like if you if you're a nerd like me, and you read that. Right, but but one is gone one way one is gone. The other Tsar Oman, in particular, right has gone one way in one's gone, the other and the badness of the fullness of one reveals to you. And actually, against that backdrop, the other one shines even brighter. Right? And so so we, you know, we can argue theologically about, you know, why would God do that? Why would God allow that even to happen? So we're trying to, but Augustine seems to take it and say like, this is how it all weaves together. We got so God Ferguson and God remains prominent in the way that an author would remain prominent because he just takes the thing that the character unlike Homer, the character has its own will, the character makes its choice. He just weaves it right in. You know, I think it's, I think, got employed has an article on this summon judicial rhetoric. And I talk a little bit about judicial record rhetoric in my, in my book, but there's this also this sense of judicial rhetoric of, of a rhetoric actually at times has to take, it has to create a narrative of their own, out of what's happened. And so about a lawyer, right. So judicial rhetoric is just what we think of almost now as law. And so it's an aspect of rhetoric. And so what you have to do is you take the events as they happen, you take the facts of the case, and you weave them together into a narrative and of course, narrative, right, if you're Cicero, you're trying to get Caelius off, you know, off of his case, but you weave them into a narrative that is beneficial to you. But you're actually weaving actions that someone else did have their own freewill. And you're trying to weave that into a narrative that makes sense. That's even more maybe in a sense, like what Augustine is trying to do, when he's talking about like, Is that Is that also can be called Right? Like, that can be an economy, that can be the weaving together of the text into something. In that sense, so in that sense, the text would be the speech you're gonna give or the defense, the defense speech or the prosecutorial speech. And so, so that really seems to do it. And it was it was funny, because it just an aha moment for me. When I was reading it. I was like, Oh, yeah. Oh, wow. Like, that's just, it's just this logical model. And so a lot of times folks are like, what does it mean? What does it do? And you're like, well, to understand what it means what it does, you just have to understand that a lot of times patristic authors and especially Augustine, you because I know him better than the other authors. He's trying to explain how these scriptures go together. And sometimes between them is just a logical model that you find, you know, so like, like, you might find Plato's concept of evil is not substantial, you know, and you could use that or incorporate that. You know, we see in Aquinas, we say Aquinas with the rediscovery of Aristotle, using Aristotle, in a way, I don't think Aquinas in any way is sitting there saying, I want Aristotle to override the Scripture. I think he's saying, well, we got the scriptures, and we're trying to explain them. And there's some gaps. And Aristotle helps us to fill in the gaps or helps us to explain, like, what's the thread that holds us together? And logical, you know, certain logical models can help to create that. We're going to be thinking with that, like, for instance, if you study doctrine of the Trinity, if and if the listeners have studied doctrine of the Trinity, you know, if you read Lewis Ayers his book, like, really, you need to be reading some of the background of what's going on between Nicaea and Constantinople, you need to read what's going on in 362, and some of the Alexandria and you need to read this stuff, you need to, you know, realize like, they're struggling like Hypostases, right, like, like, the term that the Scripture doesn't usually affect, unless I'm wrong. And it's Forgive me, it's a vacation day to day, but I don't believe scripture ever uses the term Hypostases. And it doesn't

Charles Kim 46:10

use it in that way.

Brian Gronewoller 46:13

Have used apostasy as, you know, when you've been deemed heretical. And you get in the sense of like, how do we do this? How do we do that, but then they're like, Okay, we're gonna just by hypothesis, we're gonna mean this. But then they start working down this road, if you've read errors, you get down this road and kind of the last night they have to unwind before 381 They can make sense of things, is, you know, what Ayers is named? Inseparable, right? Operations of the Trinity? Like how does how do all three act and evil every one action that one does, especially when you see things like the baptism of Christ, things where it seems like we're all doing separate things? You know, how do you work that together? And basil has one answer, and Gregor Nyssa has another, but you have to kind of get how in separate bowl operations work to answer a question about that, that helps you thus explain when the scriptures seem to portray something with Patricia is like when John one portrays Christ is God is one God and Christ, you know, and so you know, in the sun or the word, right, the word is also God, but there's one God. So you're trying to explain scriptures, but these logical models sometimes help you. And so really, with with rhetoric, that's what I was looking for is is just are they using rhetoric at times is Augustine using rhetoric, the same way that most authors that we might see might use philosophy. And to add to that, Augustine is from this camp that's more like from Cicero's camp that probably comes more from maybe I Socrates, in a sense, where in a sense, the red store is not a sofas the rhetoric, does philosophy, who loves wisdom, and does all of the hard work of learning what is true and good, and then for Cicero, then turns around and having now determined what is the good, then turns around, and kind of unlike Plato's person in the Republic, or in Plato's polis, but in this republic, doesn't just go off by themselves and gaze at the goodness, but instead turns around, and then uses it for the Republic, right for the good. Yeah, by trying to convince people to come to the better. rhetoric is just the way at which you take words and you accommodate them. Once you've discovered what the good is you accommodate them, to others to persuade them to the better. And then Augustine famously, if he studies homiletical strategy takes Cicero's concept. And I might have mentioned this in the first half and just switches it. And so he, I guess it takes it then just switches it to the soul. Like once once you've done the philosophy and understood what is good. And for the Christian, that's understand what the Scriptures mean, you then take that and you try to seduce the soul to something that is better. Preaching is and so I guess my accessory on that. And so for Augustine, he's in this camp where I don't think rhetoric is really so much split from philosophy. It's usually a tool of communication, but it's like step two in this two step process. So whereas we want to separate, we're like, Okay, we're gonna do our rhetoric stuff over here and all our philosophy stuff over here, that is more like, you know, Plato, maybe when you read Gorgui, awesome, at least because I don't play it. There's a different Plato, sometimes Plato's thoughts different, but when you read Gorgias, you have Plato, you know, probably presenting like it was, you know, rhetoric is not very good. Although I should say, Kevin Corrigan, I know Kevin and Kevin's pretty convinced the PLATO leaves open that there can be a true and good rhetoric. So I want to say that and I'm actually when whenever he's here with me, I'm convinced of it, but he because he knows more of it than I do. And so I'm like, oh, yeah, that doesn't, right. But I can't, I can't, you know, reproduce what he says. But because of that, I think what you've got is is for Augustine, it's all just together. It's all like part of rhetoric is that philosophy. And I think if I'm not wrong, I think it's Socrates that actually never calls rhetoric, rhetoric, he calls it philosophy. And, you know, you've got Cicero, who is pretty grounded in stoic philosophy and writes, you know, he, you know, and friendship and he's writing these things. But the very act of writing something is rhetoric, right? And right, and he famously goes to someone other than the Stoics, to learn rhetoric, because he doesn't think stoic rhetoric is very helpful. And so, so So I think just for Augustine, in his mind, it's all together. And I think for us in our specialized University world, it's separated. And so sometimes we have to work. And so to me, at least, it was fun when I started reading more rhetoric, discovering a couple patterns that I was like, Oh, this pattern looks exactly like what Augustine is doing here. And, yeah, when you read, and it's funny, because there's a few places, I'll say, like, hey, it is here. And it's in Plato, like you could also see this, like, in certain philosophers, when they say, this, and this, like, you know, the, the idea of a general can get the view, I can remember that was the philosophy or you've got the day architect Tura. So even with that, you've got that from I think it's Vitruvius that you have in there that's talking about, like, you know, like, like ordering architecture. So I guess we'll talk about a temple and like the statue doesn't understand why the statues placed where the statues placed, doesn't see the whole temple. But the architect sees it all, and understands why all of it is where it is, you know, the general sees why it's all there. And so both in quintillion rhetoric, and in a lots and lots of philosophic philosophers that you read from the ancient world, they'll talk about the body of the unity of the body and the structure of the body. And so I have had some folks that I've been talking to him, they'll say, Well, yeah, that's in philosophy. And you're like, Yeah, that too. Like, it's in both, but it doesn't actually sometimes uses language, it's much closer to the rhetorical stuff, which will make sense because he's, you know, he's, he's doing philosophy, but he's also highly trained in rhetoric. He's making his money doing that. And so, so yeah, sorry, I just kind of gave a lot there. But

Charles Kim 52:03

well, that's no, that's it's very, yeah, it's very helpful, I guess. Yeah, I be one, I had a few different things as you were going, like, just biblically, it felt like when you were talking about, you know, order fitting this how God responds to our will. All I could think of was one of my favorite quotes from the end of the Joseph cyclogenesis. What what man intended for harm God intended for good? And it's so there's sort of just like, how is it that, you know, both of those things can be true? Because sometimes on a logical level that you know, or like, if you're, if you're trying to do a certain kind of, like, logical level that feels like how can both of those things be true? And and, you know, that's what Augustine is trying to answer.

Brian Gronewoller 52:53

Well, in for him, it's all abdom. It's all like, and he'll use different words when he's going through there. And they're, they're words that can be as philosophically the words that they're also using the rhetorical tradition, but it's all fitting. And I feel like that's a like that's a he'll he's gonna he'd be willing to die on if he was here with us. But he's, he would also just quickly follow it up by saying, and we just can't see it. Yeah. And that's where he gets into, I believe it's de musica, which comes up in one of the earlier chapters. That was one of the more interesting reads for me to just kind of really get into how foot feet like work together and stuff is when he's really just doing that. He's bringing some theology into his writing on music, especially in the later books. And he'll talk about how like, we're just a syllable in time. If you think about a syllable, like, if you just take your favorite song, and just sing it through, and then just stop on one syllable. Like, imagine there's nothing and then there's just that one syllable. Like, if that syllable was self aware, and I this probably sounds weird, but this is kind of where I think he's going. He's like, the syllable is self aware, it'd be like, Well, I don't understand why this like, why am I here? Why am I this note? Why does it go this way, it's like the syllable has to come into existence and die. For the end, he actually says die, so that the rest of it can keep playing out and you don't judge the whole thing until you get to the end. And then you look at the whole song, and you go well, from beginning to end, while it's a beautiful song. Whereas if you put one note and you were to judge one note, like a law, like, it's like, well, was that a beautiful song or not? Like we don't know. Like, how could you?

Charles Kim 54:28

Yeah, that's also Yeah, that's right. It's about Ecclesiastes three where they use the tapestry image, sort of, and it's sort of like, you know, it's a it's almost like, you know, we don't get, we don't get to see it from the perspective of, of, you know, the person who's creating the tapestry. And we're just like an individual string in the tapestry. We don't know why our color contrasts with the others or fits with the others or

Brian Gronewoller 54:52

Yeah, well, and Augustine will also use it to talk about like moments in time, like, like, think about the best day you've ever had that you're like As humans, we want it To stay he's like, but that's ridiculous. Like, yeah, like you don't want the same syllable to stay for in your tie. So he'll actually use analogies for multiple things. When he's talking about or metaphors if we want to say that instead just depending on how the ancient world wouldn't break it up, but he, he'll use them he even say different things. But yeah, like, like, as a statue in a in a temple, I might not understand why. You know, I, I'm from a lower middle class family, I grew up digging ditches, you know, my, my students always find that funny, but it's like, I think they assume because I teach I adjuncts sometimes it can learn now. And they're like, Oh, your memory, like you clearly grew up with, like, more? And it's just like, oh, no, no, like, I, I was in a ditch. Like, that's what I was. But there are moments I've even asked in my own life, you know, God, why, if I have like, I just love reading theology. I love reading, like, I love reading Latin. I love doing all this stuff. You know, why was I in a world where like, the school I went to didn't do Latin. I had great teachers, we just didn't have Latin, we didn't do classics, in a sense. You know, we had one class called classics, but it's not what you think of in like, a British sense of classics. So a lot of this reading I've done on my own, or I didn't graduate school and later. And so you, you know why, and I could drive myself crazy going why and, and Agustin will just say, Well, you just, there's a reason, because the Scriptures tell us that God never like, God doesn't do anything without a reason, like, and God, you know, with with a good reason, right? It'll Yeah, and all that. In fact, there's I wish I could remember exactly where it is. You might remember, but when he talks about frogs, and he just he talks about frogs, he's like, I just can't, I cannot figure out why frogs exist because they're such a nuisance for him, right? Like, I guess we wouldn't think of him that way. But if you don't have thresholds and your doors, you know, it's like them hopping in your house. And we actually didn't have a house at one point that they were coming up through the galley, I can't remember how they were getting in there. And I think we finally found like a small hole in like, the ceiling or something. But we would just come up and our daughters were living upstairs in this attic area. That was nice, but it has its own bathroom. But every now that we're here is shriek and because they'd be in the shower, there'd be like a tree frog on the side, you know? And now with modern understanding of biology, like we understand, like, why the dung beetle why the mosquito, I suppose, but I tend to think of like mosquitoes, like why mosquitoes in a better way, God could have done that. But Augustine is whole point is like, well, if you look at it all, like clearly it's broken now like, like the world has fallen, the creation has fallen, in a sense, but But when it's created, everything has a function and a form and a purpose. And so Augustine just believes that. And so he's going to work through this idea, where it's like, well, everything, if we could step back and see it all it makes sense. And so if you presume that, then you can take rhetorical economy and match it on to almost anything and say, Well, you know, if you look at it in the hole, everything's been economically arranged.

Charles Kim 57:54

Yeah, and I know, I don't think you'll like this. But also, it did remind me I was an undergrad philosophy major. And so it's been a long time. But it also, it sort of sounds like what you're describing, though, when you use your Agamemnon example, was, was middle knowledge, modernism. I don't mean to say that, that's your reading of Augustine, but the way that that came out, I was like, that sounds like how, yeah, if I remember my undergrad philosophy correctly,

Brian Gronewoller 58:31

and I, you know, I probably need to look into it more to see if because not to say that Augustine couldn't be doing something raw, like Augustine, I'm not saying is inspired the same way that other people might be inspired when, you know, they write and Augustine would say that he's not, you know, inspired the same way he writes with error. But but it usually and I should you, that's a good chance to clarify that. That's just my like, it's kind of like this.

Charles Kim 58:52

But ya know, I, that's just

Brian Gronewoller 58:56

my like, this is the best way I can get it across without it being for perfect. So it's kind of like this. So I should I should, if I said it more strongly earlier, I should back off and say that I didn't mean to say that strong. So usually I say it's similar to this, but this is the best. This is the best example. Because he never gives an example really? Yeah, how that might work. You just kind of talked

Charles Kim 59:17

again, I don't mean to accuse you of being a bad scholar. It was just like that was just pinged in my head.

Brian Gronewoller 59:25

It's also where Augustine believes that as the human is making the choice in the moment, that God is not passive really like so even when I say words like allow which I know I said earlier like that's one of the things you have to be careful of is like, well, in our understanding we say words like allow, but I think he got some would say like God is making an active choice to let that person make choices. That person is choosing what they want to choose. And God is letting them choose what they want to choose. But there's like an action and there's not like just this past have like, well, it's kind of let them do whatever. There's actually. Other I don't think this solves the Odyssey. Right? Like, one of my professors used to always say, there are many explanations for theodicy, none of them are pleasing, like none of them are fully pleasing or fully satisfying. I think the way he would say, which I which I would agree with, and I think Agustin would agree with to, because we're statues in one part of the temple, we're syllables in the song, we don't get it all. On top of the fact that we have limited knowledge revealed to us in Augustus model that there's been limited knowledge revealed to us, we have fallen, we have a fallen ability to understand it even right, so after the fall, and so we're broken in a sense that way, too, whereas, yeah, so it's, it's so yeah, but no, I can get where you're going. Even when I was explaining earlier, I was like, I probably need to be more careful about how I explained this. No,

Charles Kim 1:00:52

I don't think I don't think on this podcast, someone's gonna, like, you know, call your book into question or something, but, but I also I really appreciate you brought in, like, you know, again, like just thinking back to, it gets been so wrong, but like, thinking about so soft sofas, versus re re tours and like that, you know, like that's, uh, you know, to help for contrast, you know, where we're like, just to think about, you know, like, mean, you know, again, are sort of going back to my undergrad days where you didn't want to be the sofas, get that out of here. Were philosophers. And, but but then, you know, by the time that I was doing the PhD work, I was like, really fascinated by rhetoric. And so what is the difference there? And I think you highlighted that well. And so how, and how, what is the connection between all of those, and it's a continuous conversation. So I thought I thought that was very elucidating Well, I think, you know, this has been extremely helpful. And that puts us right about an hour, which is usually how long my author interviews go. So it's there. I mean, you know, I use I like to give my guests the last word. Is there anything else that you'd like to, to say on Augustine and the fittingness? of rhetoric? Or, or even, you know, was it like, how it was beneficial to you? Personally, I don't know where, where you'd like to end on but,

Brian Gronewoller 1:02:18

ya know, I think like, so So for me, as a practicing Christian, of course, when I'm reading stuff like this, like I said, maybe toward the beginning of this half, like I am kind of looking for at times, like what's a better interpretation? I'm not treating it, you know, as a scholar, I kind of at times have to be like, Well, I'm this isn't devotional. But there are moments things strike me. And it's just like, wow, like, that's actually a really good interpretation of Scripture, or one, I need to think through and chew on a bit, because I've just never heard it presented this way. And so I think there's some texts in there that are fascinating. I do think it's an interesting way, if you're part of a denomination, or a Christian tradition that does affirm Providence to try to understand how God puts this all together. Even pastoral Lee, as I've spoken to some friends of mine that are pastors, they've actually kind of used this in their own lives, that they're in their own ministry, as they're kind of talking through folks. And with folks, like, you know, why might this thing be happening right now? Yes, it might be happening. And it's unfortunate it might be happening, and not in a way to minimize it, because I want to be sensitive to that right now. But just to kind of help folks get an idea of like, Hey, it's okay. You don't have the perspective to understand everything. Yeah. And so I think for some reason, in a sense, like rhetorical economy kind of helps them pull together, you know, just kind of like it does for guessing. Like, here's the logic behind how these verses how these theological concepts for working with fit together is that from God's point of view, being the author who's outside of times, times of winding, he's unwinding and and it will all make sense. And it might not be even in this lifetime, when you understand why it all makes sense. You know, you can see that in Augustus confessions with some of the stuff. Yeah, it feels like you know, he gives you a sense that the only time you might understand it is looking backward. But even then you don't fully always understand why that's the case. So So I think that was helpful for me. I mean, I would encourage if anybody is out there, you know, I think you know what, where my epilogue goes is it's just like, you know, you know, cameras don't work on this. darles doesn't work on this ploys don't work on this Raphael camp. If he ever hears this, forgive me. I think it's TOC zk. Oh, Taxco. It's a name I don't know how to pronounce. You know, there's, there's, there's many other authors I haven't mentioned that have started to pick up on this. And of course, there's a large amount of literature on how this has affected a scriptural hermeneutic and how it's affected how rhetoric affected his, his homiletics. And not the scriptural hermeneutic isn't part of your theology. But but when you're thinking like, again, I need a better word that substance like the substance of how he's thinking through things like creation, and these different aspects of his doctrine. It just seems to me and then the epilogue But I get to you is just seems to me like based on the work of all these other scholars what they've done. And now what I've seen, I think it's just a rich place for people that are looking to do more research to help us understand better what Augustine was saying. And what Augustine was doing, because it's, even if it's not at a conscious level, it's very much has to be kind of at a subconscious level for him, and you know, I can't remember if I mentioned this in my first podcast, but I used to work for this organization where I would do stuff with teenagers, and I always speaking in front of teenagers a lot, a lot weekly, if not more for years, and years and years, before I went to finally do my second master's, and then to go to the PhD, and what I found is in my teaching, even without thinking about it, sometimes I'll process things the way I did back then, or I'll think, you know, like, Oh, hey, you know, a good way to get this idea across is to use this thing that I've never seen a professor use, but I've done before this way, like it just as funny. Because it's just, I don't even think about it's just something that just pops up. It's just there. And maybe later, I'll be like, oh, yeah, I used to do that when I was working for that organization, or, you know, went really well when I did this way. And then I just, I just change it for what I'm trying to do here. I think, you know, that's just again, that's just me talking more the homiletics style, if the teaching style, but I think it can affect other aspects of your thought. And I do think there's, I think there's a lot of work to be done, to kind of figure out all these things that are there. And I feel like like, at least my work just hit the tip of the tip of the iceberg of one thing. You know, I haven't thought about it, but one of my members of my committee, because this, this is based on my dissertation research, chapter five, or initially, originally it was going to be on like a reading of confessions to show how Augustine uses rhetorical economy through confessions. And he said, Well, I will happily in a year. Take your Happy New Year, I think he said, how he phrased it really funny. It was good nature of it was like, Oh, I'll accept your admittance of defeat in a year when you're just way too much to do in one chapter. And I think he was right. So I'm not sure I'll ever get to it. But at one point, I thought, you know, that'd be like a standalone project, probably 70 pager, where you just kind of work through it. So I think there's just a lot even with what I did a lot to be done a lot to work through, to help us understand the guest and veteran and why I understand the guest and better well, you know, at least for the Christian to better understand the Bible better. But also, because I guess, after Paul and before Aquinas, in the Western tradition, at least, is probably the most influential interpreter of Scripture. from that period, not not that everything he says is there, but it's very, very influential. And so we use whether you realize it or not, you use paradigms, that he either coined the phrase, or he had borrowed it for someone else, but people learned it from him, or he started with something that became something else and give you that way. So I think it's very important that we keep understanding Him, as well as other people that are part of the tradition that we are that we're in at least those of us who are Christians, but thank you so much. Thank you. I just it was just really touched and humbled that if anybody even ever paid attention to all the work I did, and it was just warmed my heart. I was like, oh, you know, somebody's read it, and they wanted to talk about it. And I appreciate you letting me take some time just to chat about this. So thank you so much. Well,

Charles Kim 1:08:31

Brian, thank you for being on the history of Christian theology with you

Transcribed by https://otter.ai