Episode 98: Interview with Dr. Phillip Cary

Today's show is an interview Dr. Cary about his new book, "The Meaning of Protestant Theology: Augustine, Luther, and the Gospel which gives us Christ." This is a long awaited discussion after I first read this book over Christmas. We get into some deep theology and philosophy, but all in service of helping Christians understand the surety of their salvation.

Timestamps:

4:49- Summary of the Book

6:35- Augustine’s Platonic Background

15:53- Augustine’s Understanding of Language

26:18- The Three Stages of Augustine

38:09- The Habitation of Truth and Virtue

Episode Transcription

Charles Kim 0:00

Hello, and welcome to a history of Christian theology. My name is Chad Kim, with me this week is Dr. Philip Kerry. Dr. Kerry recently wrote a book called The meaning of Protestant theology, Luther Augustine and the gospel that gives us Christ. And this conversation was quite a fun one for me to have with Dr. Kerry, as I've been aware of his work for several years, using some of his research, and my dissertation, as well as our connection over classical Christian education, because he is the professor of philosophy at Eastern University, but he's also a scholar in residence at the Templeton Honors College, which is connected to program of preparing teachers in the classical Christian tradition. So Tom, Trevor and I are all taught at a classical Christian School. So this is a fun conversation to kind of bring together a bunch of different strands of thought, for me, and also even my own anxiety. So Dr. Carey not only has a great academic background, but he also has a bit of a pastor's heart. So he's worried about or he's writing about worries that people have that come from their theology, and he's looking for resources to help people in the broader theological and philosophical Christian tradition. So this conversation at times gets a little deep and deep in philosophy and theology, but it's always geared for Dr. Kerry and helping people understand their faith better. So I think this is just quite a fun conversation. I hope you enjoy it. I really enjoyed it. And Dr. Kerry was very generous with his time and this hour long interview. So I've kind of teased this one in past episodes, saying that I hoped to have this conversation, and I finally was able to, and yeah, so if you have any thoughts on the conversation, please do let us know. We had a nice comment from Timo to Bala deli, who's said that he really enjoyed our last conversation with Dr. Gavin ortlund. I've had some other good engagements with other author, other people on Facebook. So it's nice to hear those and get those encouragement. And that really just helps us move forward. So thank you for listening. And please follow us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, review us, we also have a Patreon account. And all of those are, you can find on our Facebook page. So thank you for listening, and hope you have a good week. All right. Well, welcome to a history of Christian theology. This week, I'll be talking with Dr. Philip Kerry, who is a professor of philosophy at Eastern University. He also is the scholar in residence at the Templeton Honors College at Eastern University. He has recently written a book that I think actually I got for Christmas. And I have been thinking about it since then. But the meaning of Protestant theology, Luther Augustine, and the gospel that gives us Christ. So Dr. Kerry has written a lot about Augustine. So he wrote sort of a trilogy of works, which I had read as I was doing, writing my dissertation. And then this came out and I was just, you know, fascinated. And at first I had my questions, because he, he has a an interesting way of reading Augustine, and I think it's really helpful, especially as he puts it into conversation with Luther. And I will just say, generally speaking, like, as I was reading his introduction, I really felt like I had an ally and a friend in it, Dr. Kerry, because he recognizes the sort of evangelical anxiety as he turns it, and he wrote another book with with even that, specifically in mind, but he's also aware of the place of Protestantism within the great tradition and with it within this sort of broader Catholic and, and sort of universal church in mind. And so, you know, just for me, as a person who was raised Evangelical, did his PhD with a Jesuit professor, you know, I am a Jesuit priest, it was helpful for me to think through with Dr. Kerry some of these ideas, because I, too, would like to see some, you know, my worlds brought together, but but also that we have something distinctive to offer. So that's really, really the power of what what Dr. Kerry offers in the book, is this idea that that yeah, Protestantism, and especially, and the thought of Luther gave something meaningful to the broader tradition. And so I really appreciate it this book. So welcome, Dr. Kerry.

Phillip Cary 4:30

Well, thank you glad to be here.

Charles Kim 4:33

And so if the title gives a little bit of where you're headed in this book, it is the gospel that gives us Christ. But would you mind just giving a quick, you know, summary of what you were trying to to do with this book and what your like main thesis is?

Phillip Cary 4:49

Right. Well, you landed right at the center of it. I think Luther articulates the notion that the gospel gives us Christ, which is to say A, we are united with Christ, for our salvation and our Redeemer redemption, through hearing the word of Christ in the Gospel, which is an external word. So the way we come to know God and be transformed, is by hearing and believing this external word. And that's, that's something that you don't have to be Lutheran to believe that. But Luther articulates it with a particular power and beauty and pungency that I really wanted to track and understand. Yes.

Charles Kim 5:31

All right, very good. Well, and that's one of the thing you know, we, before we started recording, we were discussing a little bit of our of the background of our backgrounds. And, and one of the things that makes Dr. Carey, an interesting interlocutor for me is that you did your PhD specifically in philosophy. So you have a very lucidity about the way in which you sort of analyze these figures, that maybe is not always the case with other theologians. So I definitely appreciate that. So hopefully, you know, that's, that's kind of one of the things that I think that this book offers, is your clarity and insight into what how the thought actually works. And so how it works for Luther, and in a way in which that it can it can work for us.

Phillip Cary 6:15

Well, thank you. Yeah, I tried to understand the logic of Luthers faith. I mean, sometimes Luther says nasty things about reason, quote, unquote. But he does reason. And he reasons a lot. And it turns out, he uses philosophy when he reasons surprise, and nice to figure that out and understand how it goes. Yeah.

Charles Kim 6:35

Yeah, very good. Awesome. Well, I saw I sent Dr. Kerry a couple questions. And so we're just going to start right in with the first one. So we're gonna get right into the meat of things. So one of the things that you bring out in Augustine is that he has this platonic background. And I think there's been a little bit of a revival among theologians recently in it and an interest in Plato and the the sort of Platonic idea of God and where that comes from the metaphysics. And you are maybe pumping the brakes a little bit on this interest in emphasis in sort of Platonic metaphysics, and it is specifically as it's received by Augustine. So you make a distinction between how Plato understands the metaphysics? And then how are the Platonic metaphysics and then how Augustine applies that sort of epistemological Lee? So in a sense, you want to keep some of the Platonic influence, but not all. So would you mind unpacking that a little bit like how, how this the metaphysics, or maybe important but the the epistemology, maybe less so?

Phillip Cary 7:44

Right? So the Platonic tradition, which includes, broadly speaking includes Aristotle, but also, later, Platanus, like Plotinus offer us a great deal of conceptual resources, which I want to make use of, I think the Christian tradition rightly learns a whole lot from Plato in the game, because Plato in the game is right about a bunch of things. In particular, if we want to think of God as not a bodily material being, then Platonism is more or less indispensable, it's metaphysics of God is going to help us think about God as a non material being, I think, holy scripture points in that direction. But holy scripture is not interested in working out the conceptual details. So for the conceptual details, Plato is somebody to learn from and Plotinus. And Augustine did. The problem, in my view, is when that gets turned into a spirituality. And it gets turned into a spirituality by going from metaphysics to epistemology, metaphysics being the account of the being of God, what it is to be a non material being, and epistemology of course, it's the account of not knowing God. Well, how we know God is a spiritual matter. It's a matter of, of our relationship to God, our spiritual practices, our understanding of what it is to be conformed to God in Christ. And at that point, I want to say, we'd better be following scripture and Plato in the game don't have as much to say. And the problem is that Plato and the gang do have a spirituality. They do deep religious insights. They do give us a spirituality that can be very attractive, and has in fact played an important role in the Christian tradition. And at that point, yes, I want to put on the brakes and say, We ought to be listening to the gospel instead, and there really is a difference.

Charles Kim 9:42

Well, and one of the key elements of that platonic spirituality and especially as it is imbibed by Augustine is the idea of seeing, so seeing becomes this category that Augustine uses again and again, that the Beatific Vision, as It later known is sort of the end of the Christian life that is our eschatological hope is to see God. And so seeing and illumination, these kinds of words become very important for, for Augustine picked up broadly from Plato, and they end up I think, as you understand it, and I think rightly so. And Augustine, they make a very internal kind of move. And so this is something that happens inside one sees with Augustine will say things like one sees with the eye of the mind, once it is cleared from sin, and most especially from Pride. So for Agustin that this is part of what you learn from Scripture and from Christ as the incarnate deity in the form of a slave, is that it clears us of this, of this pride that allows us to see God but it's almost entirely dependent on this notion of seeing. So so that's something though, that that you think maybe is gone too far with Augustine. And that's kind of where Luther comes in and says, maybe we should hear. So could you sort of speak to this idea of why this vision is less helpful? Right?

Phillip Cary 11:15

Right. So the seeing that Augustine wants us to understand, it's not a seeing with your physical eyes, its intellectual vision, it's seeing with your mind's eye, it is indeed, inner vision. And he'll often talk about an inward turn and looking within. But this isn't looking that you don't do with your eyes, you do it with your mind, not your imagination, either. So an example that he'll used. So just so we can get an idea of what he's talking about. He will use the example of imagining a geometrical figure, you can imagine a geometrical figure, like a triangle drawn on a chalkboard, as you're talking about the Pythagorean theorem. And it's drawn in green, let us say on the chalkboard. So that's, that's imagination, you're picturing something that you can see with your physical eyes. And Augustine says, that's not the eye of the mind. That's not intellectual vision, the vision that we need is like, when you see when you while you're thinking about the Pythagorean theorem, and you're having a hard time you don't understand it, you don't understand it, you're you're working on stuff, and then all of a sudden, you say, Aha, now I see it, I see it, I get it. That's intellectual vision. And you're seeing something that is not green. It's not on a blackboard. It's never going to be seen with your physical eyes. But it's an eternal truth. Right? The Pythagorean Theorem has always been true, it never began to be true, you will never cease to be true. It's eternal in the strictest sense. And the place you see it, Augustine thinks is really in the mind of God. Because that's where it originates. Everything that is unshakably true is there in the mind of God. And that's where it comes from. And that's what you're catching a glimpse of when you say, Aha, now I see it. So I think Augustine is really building a spirituality around that experience of seeing, which is not just mathematics, its virtue, its wisdom, its justice, its truth. And you can see why that could be a powerful spirituality. At the root of it, I think, is the notion that you need to see this for yourself. It's not good enough Augustine thinking, to just believe what you're told, if you're in a math class, right, you might start out by believing what your professor tells you and writing the writing it on the on a notebook, but you don't understand it until you see it for yourself. And you can say, Aha, now I see it. So just to push this a little further and get the power of it. Imagine that this aha experience becomes your whole way of being. It's who you are. It's what you are. And you're seeing all the truth that contains all that is immutably and eternally true for all eternity. And that's what you're seeing. And that's I think, what Augustine is thinking of when he when he gives us this notion of beatific vision, the vision of God that makes us eternally happy. He catches a glimpse of it with his mother Monica in confessions book eight, and says, Oh, if that could permanently become our being, that would be well, that's the kingdom of God for a customer. And I disagree. Right. And the reason why is because I think the notion of seeing for yourself is not how we know persons. We know persons by listening, because persons have a right to a say about who they are. So persons knowing persons is different from knowing mathematics. You don't just see it for yourself. If that's how it was, it would be like you know, seeing through a liar when someone lies you want to see through that, but someone who's trustworthy and faithful is someone who's promised you should believe, not try to see through them. And that's what Luther sticking out with the Word of God and the gospel. The gospel is a word with God says who he is. And we should let that get into our ears and into our heart and believe it. And that's how we know who God really is. Because that's God telling us in person, this is who I am. I think so the last point about this, I think that what Luther is doing with this epistemology of hearing corresponds to the way the Old Testament and the New Testament talks about the knowledge of God, based on the Word of the Lord, which comes into our ears into our hearts and changes us. And that I think, gives us a different epistemology than Augustine gets from the Platanus tradition.

Charles Kim 15:53

Right, and one of my questions that I had written out beforehand draws on Rowan Williams. And but but it's this idea that you were just describing that how important listening or excuse me how important the language is for Augustine. And in fact, it will actually in fact, it's not that it's sent, you know, it is a part of what he thinks about. But ultimately, what he wants to do is say that language is not actually all that useful. You need to get beyond language. And this is something he brings out and de magie Stroh, which you actually explore more in your other books, maybe then in the meaning of Protestant theology, but I just had to ask a little bit about that, because it was something that I struggled with a little bit as I was writing my dissertation, which is, you know, what is the point of preaching? Because for Augustine, and de magie Stroh, it seems like, there's not all that much usefulness to speaking, because he has this sort of Platonic inspired idea that really words don't teach. And it's something that you just all it does is recall something that you already know. And so it sort of seems to undercut the usefulness in a way of preaching. And I think this is something you press a little bit in de magie Bistro, and it sort of underlies your rejection in a way of this sort of, again, the beatific vision and this emphasis on on on Plato, you think that this is the place where that epistemology can go wrong? So I pulled this quote out of one of Dr. Will, with Rowan Williams, his essays where he says Augustine is most philosophically interesting when he is least trying to be philosophical. And what I why I find that quote, interesting is in the in the de magie Stroh, he's trying to be philosophical, but the rest of what Augustine says, seems to imply that he might have, you know, we might say more more useful words than he lets on in his, in his very explicit theories. So why would you care to respond any of that, that I get you quite right. And you know, maybe how you think about Augustine and his understanding of language?

Phillip Cary 17:59

Yeah, accustomed to understanding of language, I think is really very different from Luther is Luther, Luther is practically slain by the power of words. Luther, his whole life is about words, and hearing words and speaking words, and he thinks of words as having great power, especially the Word of God. Augustine, not so much. Augustine thinks, quite literally, that we don't learn anything from words. That's what he says, In day monkeys throw his early philosophical dialogue on the teacher is what will translate it. And he's the thesis is that the true teacher is not external. The true teacher does not teach us with external words and language. The true teacher is an inner teacher. It's Christ as the eternal wisdom of God, the eternal truth of God, but not fascinatingly not Christ incarnate. Because Christ incarnate you can only learn about by by hearing about him, right? You can't believe in Christ incarnate without words, any more than you could believe in George Washington if you've never heard of him, right, because Christ incarnate as a human being. So this inner teacher, is Christ in His divine being available to everybody to every rational being Agustin says, possibly in the treatise on the teacher. So I think what he's doing in the treatise on the teacher or damnit keystroke, is he's giving us a platonic account of why Platonic dialogue works as a path to wisdom. Because this comes at the end of an early project. And Augustine is developing, of teaching in the liberal arts as a way to come to the knowledge of God, which makes perfect sense if you've read Plato's Republic, and you The Allegory of the Cave, even Plato's own project of Liberal Arts, which is a way of coming to see the supreme good with the vision of the mind's eye, you climb out of a dark cave and with the intellect, you see this supreme good, which is Plato's God, really. So Augustine, I think, is giving us a very articulate and subtle justification for that kind of teaching and learning. And it is very philosophical. Williams is suggesting I think that the stuff that he's interested in is more like what you get in Augustine sermons, where Augustine uses words with incredible beauty and power, more power than maybe he is willing to admit. Right, Augustine is extraordinarily powerful preacher. And if you if you were only reading Augustine sermons, you would perhaps never guess that this is so very platonic at route. A customer's theory about what words do is very different from the practice, at least. On the surface, that's what it looks like. I think in the end, Augustine is Theory and Practice hang together. But I think Ron Williams is trying to tease them apart a bit and say, look, the power of Augustus words isn't explained by this theory in the Magus drum. In de magie, Austro, it looks like words really just can't do anything. They don't have power, they can tell you where to look. But you have to look and see for yourself. So there's that that theme about seeing for yourself again, what an external teacher does, according to Augustine, is he he tells you look over there look inward, turn inward, turn away from me, because an external teacher can't teach you anything. But let my words direct your attention towards what you can see for yourself within your own mind. And that's a powerful theory, which I think Agustin believes to the end of his days, but you can be forgiven if you think, you know, in his practice of preaching, he sometimes seems a bit more like Luther, because he seems to use words with great power in ways that his theory doesn't really account for it.

Charles Kim 21:48

Right? Well, and that and that would be sort of his own experience of hearing. Ambrose of Milan, right. I mean, he is moved by the words of Ambrose. And that, you know, and that's I, one of the things that I brought up was a quote from, from book one and of the confessions, where Augustine talks about the importance of the ministry of the preacher. So I think that's, you know, it's really helpful. And one of those things that makes Augustine fascinating if he writes over five and a half million words. And, you know, Isidore of Seville famously said that you if you said that you've read all of Augustine, you're a liar. But whether or not he's right, there's so much there about of in Augustine that you can, you know, build a lot of different Augustine ins, I guess, or at least see him at work in different ways that maybe don't always, at least straightforwardly come together.

Phillip Cary 22:37

Well, this is true. There are a lot of Augustine is out there. There's my Augustine is not exactly Rowan Williams is a Gustin, which is not exactly Lewis, Ayers, Augustine and et cetera, et cetera. I think I get accustomed, right. But But, but But that's an argument, right? Because there's so much Augustine. And one can wonder whether his early platonic emphasis is carried through in his later practice as a Christian preacher. I think it is. But it turns out, there's a lot of people who disagree with me on that one.

Charles Kim 23:12

Well, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, let's see. Carol Harrison was on my committee. And so you know, she's very believes like you do that that Augustine is actually more consistent than then some people want to make them out to be like maybe Peter Brown or others. Yep. We're going to take a quick break from our conversation with Dr. Kerry to tell you a little bit about the upper room.org, one of our new sponsors here on the podcast, which will help us continue to bring you interviews and helpful content from the history of Christian theology. There are some daily comforts that just make you grateful and feel more grounded in life, petting the dog, hitting that snooze button, and of course, that first cup of coffee. These are things that you count on every day to help you get where you want to go. Things like the Upper Room, daily devotional guide, you can count on the upper room for daily inspiration, daily community and daily prayer. It is the only daily devotional magazine written by readers ordinary people, people who have encountered God and daily situations. The upper room is here for you every day through your email, a custom app or a printed magazine. Enjoy a free 30 day trial of our email or app service by visiting upper the upper room.org/welcome that is, u p p e r r O M dot O R G slash w e l c o m e upper room.org/welcome To get your first 30 days free. It is inter denominational and written by readers and it has 80 years of history and 5 million readers around the world. So this is a well established organization. So I encourage you to go check them out and get their emails and devotional guides from their website. And now back to our conversation with Dr. Carrie. Well, let's move. So we're about you know, halfway through here. I wanted to get into what part of what makes the books okay. So the book is compelling to me as a person who loves Agustin because of your engagement with Agustin but but it's also compelling to me as a person who grew up with some of the anxieties that you say, have come out of this sort of Augustinian inward turn. And one of the things that's so stark, and I think exactly right, is how you talk about what a God, salvation is for Augustine, and whether or not we actually sort of make it all the way to the end. And this can be a really difficult thing for those of us who are coming from a sort of more modern, evangelical perspective. When we go back and try to read the Patristics, we sometimes don't even realize that we're conflating some of our own ideas with theirs. So this actually isn't one of my questions, but I hope it's, you don't mind teasing out a little bit how you under like, how Agustin understands salvation, and then why that creates certain anxieties in Luthor, and then launches you sort of into the second half of your work.

Phillip Cary 26:18

Oh, boy, okay. Let's think of three stages here. Let's think of Augustine actually, maybe for Agustin Augustinian medieval theology, then Luther, and then the Calvinist and reformed tradition. Yeah. Start with Augustine. Augustine thinks that our goal is to see it for ourselves to say, Aha, I see it when what you're seeing is God as truth. But that's a long journey, it turns out because our minds are not pure enough, right? Blessed are the pure in heart, they shall see God says Jesus. And Agustin grabs onto that and says, Yeah, and we need to purify our purify our hearts. And that's a long process. There's a long journey, to get to the vision of God, that journey is going to follow the path of Christ's Christ is our way to God. But he's the way he's the truth, as truth, he's God as the way he says human example. And we follow Him. The problem is, of course, that we're on the road the whole time. We don't arrive in this life. Augustine says very explicitly, we are not yet saved. He does not think we are ever saved in this life. We are saved in hope, he says, but not yet in reality. And it's a big contrast, which is crucial for the next 1000 years, saved in hope, because that's what that does to hope forgive baptism, but not yet in reality, because that doesn't happen until we have eternal life. And we're safe from all sin, and we'll never fall into sin again. And that doesn't happen in this life. So we're on the road. Augustine thinks that this road is the road of prayer and love. And he's not deeply anxious about this, because he thinks that when you pray for God's Grace, God will will give you grace, you pray in faith, you get grace, it's a regular thing. Think of monks at prayer in a monastery, who, who just grace of delight and log in well, that's how it's now fast forward to, I don't know, late in the 15th century, when a young man named Martin Luther was growing up, and everybody is anxious. They're anxious, because so long as you're still on the road, you're not perfect. So long as you're still on the road, you are still a sinner. Now you pray for forgiveness, you go to confession, and you confess your sins. But the danger is that maybe some of your sins are mortal sins, but not just the daily sins that we pray for, you know, when we say forgive us our trespasses, which we should pray every day, and we should expect that we have little sins to deal with every day. But the mortal sins are called Mortal because they take away the hope of eternal life that you get in baptism. And that means that if you die in a state of mortal sin, you go straight to hell. And people are terrified. In Luthers, Dae Jung Luthor himself back when he was a law student, before he ever became a priest or a theologian, he was out in the field walking back to law school after a break, and he was out in a thunderstorm. And he, you know, a thunderstorm is terrifying, because not only could it kill you the next moment, but the next moment after that you're in hell for eternity, eternally torture. So we pray, St. Dan helped me become a monk, as if you give me just a little bit of time so that I can make sure that I don't have any mortal sins, then say, Dan, I'll become a monk and I'll dedicate my life to the service of the church. But please don't let me go to hell because of this Thunderbolt that's coming next. So that's the kind of anxiety he had As.

But then that changes with the gospel with gospel. It really begins fascinatingly, with the, with the sacrament of penance, where a pastor is supposed to say to you, in the name of Christ, I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. That's the word of absolution. It's modeled on the word of baptism. It's founded on the promise of Christ. And that's what Luther gloms onto and claims to, for salvation and his whole salvation rests on trusting in the promise of Christ. Christ promised that whatever you loose on earth is loosed in heaven. So if someone says, I lose you from your sins, which is what absolution is in Latin, someone says, I lose you or absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That's like Christ Himself, telling you think your sins are forgiven. Yes. Now you don't have to pray to Saint Dan. Now you don't have to worry that the next Thunderbolt is going to send you straight to hell. You have Jesus Christ Himself, promising you forgiveness systems, hang on to that. But here's the tricky bit. Luther also, like Agustin thinks we're not saved yet. Every day, we need to keep clinging to that word, we should be certain that it gives us salvation in Christ. But what we can't be certain of is that we're going to be believers. 10 years from now, you can make a decision for Christ today. And then 10 years from now you give up your faith that happens, it's called apostasy. It happens all the time. And Luther thinks that you really just can't know that you're going to be a faithful Christian, the day you die, you've got to keep hanging on to the promise. So the Gustin on that, both of them think you can't know in advance that you're going to persevere in faith to the end of your days. How could you possibly know that? You'd have to know I don't know that you are predestined to write. This is why predestination for Calvin is a good doctrine. Calvinists who know their Calvin, they like this doctrine, because it's the only way you could possibly rationally believe that you are already saved for eternity. Right? If you're already saved for eternity, you are predestined for salvation, how else could God guarantee that you're going to persevere in faith to the end? So Calvin and the reformed tradition, want to say we're already saved? But how could you know that? Right, you can't know in advance that you're going to persevere in faith, unless there's something called True saving faith, which if you know you have it, you know, you'll persevere. And Calvin actually makes that distinction says, there's this temporary faith, which doesn't last for your whole lifetime, but real saving faith is guaranteed to last. And that's what you know, the Calvinist doctrine of perseverance of the saints, which is once saved, always saved. If you have the true saving faith, you know, you'll persevere, which means, you know, you're predestined for salvation. But that also has its anxieties. There's no, there's no avoiding anxiety because we live in a world of sin and death. So every tradition has its own anxieties, but they placed them in a different way. Catholics have anxieties about whether they're in a state of mortal sin. Luthor has anxieties about whether there's a hidden God who has not predestined him for salvation. Calvin's anxiety with the anxiety of the Calvinist tradition is, how do I know that the faith I have now is really true saving faith and not the temporary kind of faith? How can I know for sure that this is really saving faith? Well, so you're gonna have anxiety one way or another. And one way to understand the difference between people like Agustin on the one hand, and Luther on the other hand, and Calvin, on the third hand, they have different anxieties, their theology shapes, our lives in different ways. So that anxiety is placed in a different place. The flip side of this is to be fair, is that every one of these traditions addresses the anxiety of that particular tradition. If you're a Catholic, and you're worried about mortal sin, you've got a confession. If you're a Lutheran, and you're worried about whether God is secretly your enemy, you hang on to the gospel of Christ. And if you're a Calvinist, and are worried whether you have to saving faith, there's a whole Calvinist tradition of pastoral care, focused on finding assurance of salvation. So, you know, to choose your theology, and you'll be choosing your particular anxiety and the particular kinds of pastoral care that's addressed to it.

Charles Kim 34:43

Wow, that was very helpful. I'm sorry, I launched you into such a, you know, a long winded question there, but that was really helpful for me. I sort of as I was reading the book, I'd sort of forgotten. I was trying to place Luther as more with Augustine or Are with Calvin in terms of how he understands the the salvation well as Agustin would say it, you're saved and hope, but not in reality. And I had actually lumped Luther more in with Calvin thinking that he was a little bit more on this idea that you could have a knowledge of the, of your salvation in the end before. And part I guess that to him part partly what you emphasize in the book and one of the things that is sort of interesting and a little different from the way that I was raised in a more Baptist context, incidentally, is baptism is like for Luther, you look back to your baptism. And that's, that's part of what you emphasize there. You have to trust the promises of Christ. So if you were baptized, and the words were given to you, you are baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. If you trust that promise, then then that's really the that's really all. The only question is, is, is Christ faithful? And that's what you that's what you're trusting in? Is the actual faithfulness of Christ, not whether or not you believe that to be true. Is that that I get that right?

Phillip Cary 36:05

Right. The idea is, you don't put faith in faith, you put faith in God's word, right? Everyone really wants to do that. But I think Luther is more successful at sussing that out and making that make sense, right. Everything depends on whether Christ is telling us the truth. And then we also need to identify what he's telling us. And those are things that when you're baptized, that's Jesus Christ, using the mouth of a minister to tell you that you're baptized in the name of the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit, which means you've have died in Christ, and you've been raised to newness of life in Christ, and you have the promise of Christ. And it's kind of like a wedding vows, right? You might be sometimes unfaithful to your wedding vows. And that happens, you return to the original promise, right? You repent, you return, but you don't have to redo the wedding. Right? It's not as if you have to re marry someone after you've committed adultery, you return in repentance to the person against whom you've sin, and you start living by the promise once again. Likewise, when you sin, what you don't have to do is sort of rebaptised with return to that initial baptism. And you, you hang on to that promise once again, because Christ is like a bridegroom, who is always willing to take back his sinful bride. And the promise is always there, you can always hang on to it. Now, at that moment, Luther does have a moment that he's like Calvin in that the promise is absolutely certain. And this is really important for Luther, when you hang on to the promise of Christ, you should be certain that he will save you. So that emphasis, emphasis on uncertainty is something he and Calvin have in common. For Luther, you got you got to keep on hanging on to that promise every day, in the midst of your uncertainties, you got to cling to the word with Calvin really does think that you can know in advance that you're going to be saved, that you'll severe in faith until the end. And that Luther I think doesn't really give you that.

Charles Kim 38:08

Yeah, that that makes sense. And so, you know, one of the things that, that I began to think about, as I was reading through this is what does so Luther has this phrase, that a lot of people know that at the same time, symbol used to set Bokator at the same time, just and sinner, and it sort of undercuts some of the habituation and virtue. That's pretty important in in, in Aristotle and Aquinas. And, you know, it seemed I was just actually just saw a quote the other day from from Luther where he talks about like, this is the enemy of grace, this whole sort of tradition of habituation of virtue. So that might explain one of my questions, which is, Can Luther have both? Can there be both some kind of habituation of virtue and the truth of at the same time, sinner, and justify, just, and that's sort of hard, it's hard thing for someone who came out of like a more like the classical Christian School world loves to talk about virtues. But one wonders if that's even helpful anymore, if we are actually living in light of Luther.

Phillip Cary 39:21

Right? Let me answer that question in two stages. Because this is a big question for Lutheran theology. And I'm gonna give you my sort of Luther heresy, and then I'll give you a positive view here. My Luther heresy is something where I'm going to say something that most Lutheran would disagree with, but I think it's plain and Luthers text that most friends are wrong about Luther on this point. And this is about the notion of justification as a process. Many Lutherans will look at this thing seem old Eustace advocatuur where Luther says we are at the same time I just and sinners. That's That's what that Latin phrase means. And many Lutherans will look at that and say, that means that we don't really make any progress. Justification is not a process. We're always sinners, we don't really make any progress. Now, when you look at how that phrase shows up and loses early works, he uses it to explain what's happening in the process of justification. It's precisely the state we are in when we're in the middle of a process. Now, fascinatingly, he uses Aristotle to explain that, and Aristotle is going to show up three times in this answer that I give you right now. The first time is Aristotle's theory of process. In a process, you're always in between the beginning and the end. Think of when you're building a house, that's a process. And when you're in the middle of a process, not completed. The Latin word for that is imperfect to us. Right? Perfect. It is Latin for completed. So the house is imperfect. It's not perfected, it's not completed. It's not a house yet. And yet, what is it you're building? You're building a house. So you can point at the house and say, That's the house I'm building? Oh, but it's not a house yet. It's a house and not a house. That's exactly what happens with a half built house. That's the way it goes with any half completed process. You can describe it in terms of the beginning, which which is it's not a house yet. Or at the end. It's a house I'm building. Right? You can describe it in both ways. And Aristotle said, Yeah, that's the in between character of any process toward a goal. Luther is saying quite clearly, that justification is just like that. It's like a process of well, it's a process of going from sin to righteousness. As long as we're in the middle of it, we're still sinners, but we're righteous by faith alone. We have justification by faith alone. But we're still sinners, because have for one thing, we still don't fully believe we're in the process of becoming more and more righteous by faith alone. But we're still sinners by our unbelief. We're in the middle. That's the process. Okay. Now, what Luther? So here's the second stage. Luther emphatically disagrees with Aristotle's notion of habituation as an account of how we become righteous before God. He hates that he'll say it over and over again, Aristotle, that rancid philosopher, he just insert insults Aristotle up and down after using Aristotle's theory of process. When he gets to Aristotle's theory of habituation, he says, Well, that's okay for human righteousness, but for justification before God for becoming righteous before God, habituation is useless, that would be justification by good works, right? We do get habituated, right, Gustin, Luther does not deny work. We're habituated. This This is common sense. We develop habits of course we do. But does that for us in righteousness that the God can look at us and say, there is a righteous person who is virtuous and just unacceptable to me by habituation. Nonsense, says Luther, absolute nonsense, you cannot become just in, by the way, Justin righteous are the same word in German. And in any Greek, Justin righteous, you can't become that way in God's sight, by practice, or habituation, or anything you do. Aristotle's an idiot, right? Of course, you're gonna apply him to ordinary human virtues, you know, civic justice, and so on. Sure, sure. Aristotle's fine for that, but not for justification before God. So how does this process of justification work? If it's not habituation? There's a third, Aristotelian theory, right? We've talked about Aristotle, unprocessed Aristotle on habituation and virtue. But there's another Aristotelian theory that Augustine started Luther will use, which is Aristotle on perception.

Aristotle's theory of perception, the form of what you perceive, enters your mind. So you look at a tree. And the wooden tree is not in your mind. But the form of the tree is in your mind. Right? Luther will use this to talk about how we perceive Christ by the hearing of faith, cheering as a form of perception. So think of how music works when you hear it. Right. The form of a favorite song is in your heart. The same way it's on a CD, or in a radio waves on a radio, right, the very same form, not just an idea about the music, but the form itself is there in your heart, because you can sing it, you know it by heart. That form has formed your heart so they know it and have it right. You have the music itself. You have the favorite song itself, it's there in your heart. Now imagine that Jesus Christ is a favorite song. He's the music that shapes our souls, so that we are formed by the form of Christ. That's how it was and we'll talk about it. He picks this up from Paul in Galatians does chapter four, verse 19, when Christ is formed in us, so it's as if Christ is a favorite song, who forms our hearts into music of God's very being, and reshapes us in the image of the righteousness of God, and the justice of God, and the truth of God and the wisdom of God, all of which is present in Christ incarnate, performing our hearts, like a favorite song. And so that's, that's where Aristotle's theory of perception where the form that's in the thing gets in our guts in our hearts. Luther uses that theory. And that's how we make progress. Better and better at the music, of singing Christ's song. And not incidentally, Luther writes music and he loves music, and he's a musician. That's how we make progress and justification.

Charles Kim 45:53

That's helpful, I want to switch slightly to thinking about sort of applications of some of this work. And in preparation for the interview, I'd read your book and was thinking a little bit about what I would ask you and and at our, at the church that we went to on Sunday, it was a Presbyterian Church. And they use a sort of Calvinist syllogism, like you talked about at the end of your book, where, so after we confess our sins, the pastor said something like, if you are a Christian, and you confess your sins, you are forgiven. And you talk a lot about that sort of, in the Calvinist mold, that if is a really big if, and the great anxiety that a lot of people have, when they sit in this kind of, in that kind of a context. And that kind of a liturgy is the question of if Well, I don't know, how do I know about that? If and, and you talked about the importance of pastoral care and Calvin, so maybe my question would be something like, so Luther is going to have a little bit more of a, he's going to have a different sacrum ontology, but a different way of understanding how the liturgy how what what a priest says, To the sinner, in the congregation is, is more powerful in that it's not really an if it's a command, that one might do something is how you explained it in the book. So could you talk a little bit about like, the, how Luther understands like that, the power of the word for the pastor, and in the liturgy, and how that is, is a sort of a bomb of a an anxious conscience.

Phillip Cary 47:25

Right. So in in a Lutheran liturgy, many Lutheran liturgies begin with confession and absolution. And the word of absolution is not presented conditionally, with an if statement. It simply said, you know, as an ordained minister of the word, I declare to you the entire forgiveness of your sins, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That's the kind of absolution that you get. And of course, you're supposed to believe it. And it's precisely by believing it, that you apply it to your heart. But it doesn't say, Oh, if you believe you're forgiven, because then you have to first believe that you believe before you can believe that you're forgiven. And that's the kind of anxiety that Luther doesn't want. Luther does not want to be looking at his heart ever, if he has to, because you look at your heart and find out to find out whether you really believe you might discover that you're full of doubts. And that makes it very difficult to believe the Word of absolution. Whereas fluther, the word of absolution does not say if you believe your sins are forgiven, it says, Your sins are forgiven in the name of the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit. And that means it would be sin not to believe it. Not only do you have the right to believe that your sins are forgiven, and the Christ is your savior, you have the obligation, because God commands you to believe His Word. So you have no right to think of yourself as a sinner that God hates. You have no right to believe that you're calling God a liar. If you think that you're a sinner that God wants to down. And that's, that builds you up in faith in a very different way from Calvinist pastoral care. You don't ask whether you really truly believe it, you ask whether God is lying to you. And if God is not lying to you, then you darn well better believe that he's your savior, because that's what he said. And I find that myself much, much more edifying and it encourages me and it comforts me and it's a way to build up people in the faith when they experienced their own faith this week. It's not about your faith, it's about whether Christ is telling you the truth. And that's tied to the sacramental theology, as you say, because in the sacrament, someone can say you and mean me. But a sacrament is it's tied to words spoken at a particular time in a particular place, so that the pronoun you can can mean me, as in, I absorbed you and the minister saying that to the whole congregation, in the name of Christ, and that you includes me, so that I don't I have to ask, Oh, how do I apply it to my life? Do I really believe it? If I really believe it, then I can say that I'm forgiven. That's irrelevant. So, and here's the, I guess, the deep point. If you don't think that the sacramental word addresses you in Christ's name, then you're going to have to figure out how to tell whether the word of forgiveness really applies to you. And the way you tell is by telling whether you really believe and are really a Christian, whereas in the Lutheran view, the way you tell is whether it's Christ saying you and meaning me. And that's happens in every sacrament.

Charles Kim 50:37

Yeah, that's very helpful. And as I understand it, you worship in an Anglican context. So that fits a little bit more naturally, as there is this confession and absolution This is a regular part of a more formal liturgy. So for those people who come, I mean, on the one hand, like, you know, as I finished your book, I was like, okay, so if I think Luther is right, you know, if do I have to find a Lutheran church to have this kind of emphasis? Like, do you imagine that this kind of word can be this or this kind of idea about the power of Christ? This idea about the power of the of the promise can be applied in a low church context? Or are we still sort of dependent on a church with a little bit of a higher sacrament topology, and a little more regular liturgy, where that word from where you can trust that that word is from Christ?

Phillip Cary 51:33

Right? Well, yeah, the logic of Luther is faith really, as a sacramental logic, where the word is spoken at a particular time, particularly place can say you and means me. On the other hand, Luther does think that the whole Gospel story, not just the promise, and not just the sacraments, but the whole Gospel story as a way of God giving us Christ. So it is possible to receive Christ through the preaching of the Gospel, where someone's simply telling you the story about who Jesus is. Now, a good preacher, I think, will get get that notion of the notion that it's for you, it's for me, like, you know, For unto us a child is born, says Isaiah, and now that's the gospel. Right? The gospel is there in the Old Testament, and Isaiah, For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. And someone who loves the gospel and gets the gospel, the way Luther does, will preach that with gusto and say, unto you, you sitting here in the pews of the church, this son has given unto you, this child is born, he's born for you, and for your sake, and for your salvation. And you don't have to be Lutheran to do that. You don't even have to have a good liturgy to do that. But it helps, right? It really helps good liturgy. All the ancient liturgies The wonderful thing about them, if they don't, they don't spend much time telling you what to do and how to be a good Christian. They spend all of their time virtually on Christ, right? There's a little bit on the 10 commandments and stuff and some of the liturgies but mostly, it's, it's telling us how God gives us Christ. The Greek Orthodox tradition is really quite good on this is why quite a number of Protestants become Greek Orthodox, because they're, they're just starving to hear that Christ is their Savior, as opposed to hearing, oh, here's what to do to get saved. You make a decision for Jesus. Yeah, you make a decision for Jesus. And then tomorrow, you make a decision against Jesus, right? decisions aren't, don't save us, Christ saves us. And Luther, by the way, hates the notion of Free Will thinks that decisions for Christ can do I ain't gonna do it all, you know, of course, you can make decisions for Christ, but you also make decisions against him. It's called sin. Their decisions aren't what you're going to trust, it's going to be the word of God. And the Word of God gives you Christ in every, every moment of the story, right, from Isaiah to Luke. So Matthew, and someone who, someone who sees that, and hears that and rejoices at it, like, you know, like hearing the music, right? They're getting the music. And they a preacher who hears that has this wonderful privilege, of comforting the anxious, by by reassuring them, it's really true, Christ died for you. Right for You. In particular, he died, he shed his blood for you. And you can trust that because he promised and you don't have to be Lutheran to do that. But if you if you have the liturgy in your ears, I think you're more likely to preach that way. So I think in low church contexts, what will happen is you'll get some preachers who really get it. And some of the hymns, right, there are some hymns that really get it. But it really helps having liturgy because not every preacher gets it. And you can go to lots of churches where the preacher doesn't get it about giving people Christ. I think they don't quite understand that. That's what that's what a preacher can do. A preacher is authorized to give people God incarnate. Not every preacher gets that. But the liturgy does all of the old liturgy they get that, that that's what they're doing. And it's really quite lovely.

Charles Kim 55:04

Yeah, that's very helpful. So we're bumping up right on an hour. I mean, we've been recording for about an hour. We started a couple of minutes late. I had sort of one other question that I was just sort of thinking about as we sat here. Do you have time for one more? Sure. I was just thinking about the fact that like, when I as I said, when I read your book, I said, you know, this was the anxiety that I had growing up as sort of an evangelical Protestant, like, you know, did I really, really believe and did I really believe it the one time and you, as you say, as Luther says, you become focused on your own heart, rather than on Christ, that Luther doesn't want you to do that. But I was wondering, like, you know, could we think about, like, in light of that, like, what are the what are the other anxieties that Luther and sort of this Lutheran emphasis produce? So presumably, my anxieties are because of sort of the, you know, basically, American evangelicalism is fairly downstream of Reformed Calvinism, whether or not they know it, a lot of their, you know, ideas come from that. So. So let's say that that sort of evangelicalism is downstream of Calvinism, what are the anxieties that Lutheranism can produce? Or what other kinds of sort of problems are produced in a Lutheran context? And, you know, I don't want to just go straight to Germany, but like, you know, are there other things that like, yeah, that so Luther, it's sort of an interesting idea how you present the book, it's sort of like, Hey, I know y'all are some of you guys, you know, are downstream of these other anxieties and Luthor is your solution. But then you just think, well, if we're gonna have to go back 500 years, how, you know, how do we How is that a solution for a problem that has come about later? And then what are there other things that will come from it?

Phillip Cary 56:55

Yeah, that's that's an interesting question. Luther clearly had his anxieties. He even had this label for them. He called them on factum German for assaults or attacks. He would wake up in the middle of the night, with nasty thoughts running in his head saying, you know, you're a sinner, God hates you, you don't really believe Come on, don't don't lie to me. And Luther would, which would identify those thoughts as the devil tempting him and say, Go away devil, Christ baptized me. I'm a Christian, because I've got because I'm baptized, right? If you ask me, What are you born again? He'll say, Yes, I'm baptized, that makes me born again. That makes me a Christian devil go away. You don't have a right to tell me that I'm not a Christian. But he had that fight all the time. You know, like every night, it seems, in some of his years. And the theologically, because he doesn't believe in this kind of eternal security. He does have this worry about what you could call the hidden God, the Deus abscond. Ditas, you know, the god of predestination. It could be that God has not predestined him to persevere in faith to the end, he has faith today. But who knows whether he'll have faith the day he dies, you would have to know you're predestined to know that you're going to be a Christian at the end of your life. And Luther says, don't go don't go bothering about predestination, right? You tried to do that, and it will drive you crazy. It will, it will, you know, it'll ruin your faith. So don't think about the God of predestination just hang on to the gospel. But what ends up happening is that every time Luther is seriously confronted with his own sin and unbelief, you can worry about whether you know whether he's going to abandon the faith whether God is going to abandon him. And then he has to keep on hanging on to the truth of Christ's promise. So, the reason why I like, I think, look, there's anxiety is the right anxiety to have is that the cure for it is to ask, Is Christ telling me the truth? Is God's were truthful? Can I trust it? And can I say like God be true and every man a liar, and even myself on my ally, our price is telling me the truth. Yes, that's the right question to ask. As opposed to do I have true saving faith? That question is enough to drive me crazy. I, I think that's just a terrible question to be wrestling with. I'd rather be wrestling with the question, is God telling me the truth? I like that one better. On the other hand, second part of an answer to your question, we have a different set of anxieties most of us than the 16th century. By the time we are done wrestling with Luther, really, the question is not so much, you know, is God going to send me to hell? For some people? That's still a deep question. For many people in our day and age. That's not the the deep question. The question is, is there a God who cares about us? Philippa, lengthen, so that's that that was his big question. Is there a God cares for us? Well, there's a God who gave us his own son and wants us to read See him through the Gospel. And that I think gives us an answer to a different set of anxieties. But it's the same basic structure that Luther has in this notion that the gospel gives us Christ. That key teaching, I think, is the cure to a whole bunch of anxieties. Not going to make the anxieties go away, because we still live in a world where world of sin and death and suffering, but it gives us the right thing to hang on to, which is the promise of God in Jesus Christ.

Charles Kim 1:00:30

I think that's about as good as pleased as any to leave the conversation. So thank you very much, Dr. Kerry. This has been a it was a pleasure reading your book and a pleasure chatting with you for the past hour or so. And I'm sure that it will be beneficial for my listeners as well.

Phillip Cary 1:00:45

Well, thank you. It's been fun talking. Thank you for having me.

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