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Welcome to our feature interview for Insights, the faculty journal of Austin Seminary. I am William Greenway, editor of Insights and professor of Philosophical Theology here at the Seminary. The author of our lead essay for the fall 2020 issue of Insights is Professor Cynthia L. Rigby.

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Professor Rigby is a distinguished scholar and an internationally sought-after speaker on theology, the church, and society. For many years, she was an editorial writer on religion for the Dallas Morning News. She is the author and editor of numerous books, most recently a general editor of Westminster John Knox's 9-volume Connections Commentary series for pastors.

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Her most recent book is Holding Faith, A Practical Introduction to Christian Faith. Professor Rigby has also long been a leader in the American Academy of Religion, serving as co-chair of both the Christian Systematic Theology and the Reformed Theology and History units. She is especially well known for making clear the so what of Christian theology.

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Professor Rigby is the W.C. Brown Professor of Theology here at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. An abbreviated written version of this discussion will also appear in this issue of insights. Let me also say that we will pause briefly at the midpoint of this discussion for the sake of those who may want to divide this interview up into two pieces for use in Sunday school classes or group discussions.

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The title of Professor Rigby's essay, which we will discuss today, is Speak of the Devils, Creative Faith in a Time of Pandemic. Welcome, Professor Rigby. We are looking forward to hearing your insights into facing the demonic. Thank you, Professor Greenway.

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It's an honor to be featured in Insights and to be doing this interview with you. Now, believe it or not, when we first asked you to write the essay, it was back in January of 2020. That's before COVID-19, before the world changed almost overnight, and in ways that make your topic appear all the more pertinent. What made you decide to focus this essay and this journal on demons and the demonic?

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people in churches were always asking me, what about the devil? What about Satan? What about the principalities and powers? What about the Bible's discussion of these things?

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And I started feeling guilty when I said, well, I don't know, but we don't agree with Tim LaHaye. I mean, at some point, we who are mainline theologians and ministers, we who are Presbyterian, have to say what we think. So I decided to give it a try. Now, you begin with a quote from Paul Tillich and stressing creative faith and the importance of being concerned with what is truly ultimate.

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So what is truly ultimate and what are the essential characteristics of creative faith? And what's the relationship between what's truly ultimate and creative faith? Yeah, Tillich is big on this point. He has a sermon that I heard when I was in seminary that always stayed with me.

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It's called Our Ultimate Sermon. And it is preached in relation to the text on Mary and Martha. And Mary has chosen what is better. And Martha, Martha, you are concerned about many things.

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And I don't like that Martha gets dissed in almost every sermon I've heard on that text. But the point Tillich makes, the main point is that we all are concerned with something. All of us have a concern that drives us. And that might not be

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the most worthy ultimate concern. In fact, insert Barth here, Barth and Tillich, I play with a little in the essay. They have, for as much as they have disagreement, they have some agreement. When Barth came to the United States, he thought that some women were too concerned with fashion, that fashion and dressing was their ultimate concern.

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And he named that demonic. Tillich names nationalism demonic. When people's ultimate concern is the state, and Barth also agreed with this, and the neighbors, place the God who is above God with a God of their own making.

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So Tillich is encouraging us to not create idols as our ultimate concern, but always to look to the God who is above all our creations of God. And he thinks when we're living, in relation to not our best ideas about God, but the God who is actually above even our very best ideas. He thinks we're able to live creatively.

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Because in a sense, what happens then is we have a portal to the transcendent. We're limited in our capacity to create only by our own limitations. But being connected to God opens up the possibilities that we can join with God in God's creative activity in the world. Now, you also cite J.K.

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Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, where she has Dumbledore say, we should always call things by their proper names, because fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself. So what are these devils that we should take care properly to name today? Oh, there are myriad right now. In fact, I think this is characteristic of this pandemic period.

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We have racism, but there are riots all over the streets, and black lives do not matter as they should. They matter, and we're not treating them as though they matter. Ageism, People are dying in disproportional amounts who are elderly, who aren't getting the healthcare that they need.

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They don't have the protection from the coronavirus that they need. Racism also affects everything, of course, so that a disproportionate number of people dying of COVID-19 are people of color. Sexism, we have the Supreme Court Justice, issues related to that. Corruption in government, I can spend the whole

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interview just listing things. I'm sure you could too. Corruption in government, maybe trying to keep people from voting or swaying voting or corruption in government. What's the truth?

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Environmental destruction. That's just to name a few. And that's not even naming teenagers having mental illness from being quarantined at home, all of us being a little crazy from quarantined at home.

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All these issues are devils and demons that are affecting us. Can you speak briefly about Catherine Keller's fascinating etymology of pandemic, which you talk about some in the essay, its application to our current global crisis and its relationship to creative faith? Yeah, that's a great question to ask me now, because I've already been drawing upon Keller. She's the one who names all these demons in relationship to the pandemic.

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Pandemonium is what she calls it. That's the title of an article I reference in my article, Pandemic Pandemonium. She starts out saying, I have this intuition that these terms have something in common. And this is very Catherine Keller.

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She's a feminist process, post-process theologian. And she says, what is it? What is it? And it hits her.

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Milton's Paradise Lost is the place where the word pandemonium is invented. So then she does this wordplay. Pandemic means all. Pan means all.

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Demic, dem, dem, democracy, people, all people, all people are affected by COVID-19 in the whole world. But then pandemonium means all demon, demon, all those demons, right? And she says, she points out that in Milton's Paradise Lost, pandemonium is the name given to the capital of hell. by the biblical god Mammon, M-A-M-M-O-N, money.

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So classism is kind of overarching all of this, classism, and the gap between the rich and the poor. So she says, the god Mammon creates hell out of all the demons from the bowels of the earth. And then coats pandemonium, the capital with glitter. with gold.

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And what Keller, the point that she makes is that the pandemic is eroding the gold, it's covering the capital, it's covering the pandemonium, it's covering all those demons. The pandemic is eroding the gold so we can see the demons. And we see the demons and they're everywhere and they're too many, they're too much. And that's about where she leaves it.

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She wrote this in May, and I just think it's pretty prophetic. We're still kind of trying to survive the demons rather than knowing what to do about them. So what's the relation of this to creative faith? Oh, well, we taught, I'll use this example.

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The relationship to creative faith is that we often, feel overwhelmed. Well, we're feeling overwhelmed by all these demons. And we're talking about when are we going to get back to normal?

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Or what is the new normal? We warn each other every day. Watch out. Zoom might be the new normal for education.

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Zoom might be the new normal for church. We've got to survive the new new normal. We've got to be adaptable.

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We have to create adaptive leaders to adapt. And that's actually the antithesis of being creative. To be creative is to recognize the moment. To recognize the moment.

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To be creative is to recognize that the God who created all things and is in the process of creating all things. This is a very Calvin view, actually providentially who's involved. can use us to help conquer these demons, to name them and conquer them. So the moment for creativity is now, because we can see demons that are always there, but usually they're covered over with glitter.

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And if our goal is to recover them, to cover them over again, to get back to normal, or to try to survive until they bury themselves down, underneath some kind of coding, we've missed the opportunity and we've not been creative. That's the connection as I see it, as I think of that. So in a way, the language of new normal or adaptability, it's kind of morally empty or even worse, just stresses adapting in order to survive.

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whatever becomes the norm. But it's not a norm that moves beyond where we've been, making progress over the demons, so that instead of a new normal, we wanted something better. A society that's more good, more fair, more flourishing, more righteous, more God than poor. So that's when the creative faith comes in, not settling for new normal, but figuring out how to

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take advantage of the visibility of the demons to make changes so that the new is better. Right. Yeah. So the new is better and even abnormal, right?

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The kingdom of God, the kingdom of God is not normal. It's not like anything we've seen before. Yeah. It also seems like it doesn't make sense because a lot of times when you think of the demonic and all of these sorts of changes happening, the tendencies get very fearful.

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at which point, survival and self-interest can trump. Whereas to be faithful is not to live in fear of death, but fear of the Lord, which is to be overtaken by awe in God and one in the good. And so a creative faith is a reaction to this is a call for a powerful, empowered reaction, not a reaction index to fear, but a reaction index to fear for the other. I think that's a very good point, is actually the fear of God is underplayed.

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We were so eager to say that God doesn't want us to be afraid that we miss in the biblical witness, then maybe we should be a little more afraid of God. This really connects, Bill, I'm glad you raised this, I think, to what I'm trying to say in the article. So the Philippians 2, after the great kenotic hymn, doesn't say at the end of it, therefore, don't worry, be happy. It says, therefore, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you enabling you to go and to work for God's good purpose.

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So, but I think you're right to think about where is our fear located? Is it located, what are we afraid of? If we're afraid of the pandemic, we're gonna hunker down and try to survive, right?

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And we're gonna wait and try to adapt. And I've looked up, I have a good friend who I'm in an argument with about, she thinks adaptability is a good thing. It's very creative 'cause you have to be creative to adapt. And so maybe there's some play there, but I've looked up adaptable in the dictionary.

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And a lot of times it has this kind of feeling of superseding the panic, like being even-tempered, even when everyone else is panicking. Well, I don't think panicking is a good idea, but maybe wrestling, struggling, being emotional might be appropriate. Resisting, not refusing to adapt if what is coming at us isn't consistent with what God desires.

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Yeah, and often in common talk, especially in light of how we talk about adaptation in a biological sense, to adapt is to find a way to survive. And so again, you get indexed to what's most likely to allow me or me and mine to survive, not what's most likely to maximize what is just and good and beautiful. and we may not survive. I mean, this is biblical.

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This is pretty much, are we willing to not survive for the sake of what's true? And that's a question in the Western world. We don't have to ask that often. But maybe there's even going to be a place for asking that now.

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We're taking a kind of risk. Right. Which sounds like a radical question, but we are. Christians, which means we're based on a religion that's rooted in the cross and fidelity to love, even unto death on a cross.

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So it's not exactly a bizarre idea that you're raising, that survival shouldn't be the ultimate index that we adapt to, but something higher than that. Yeah, we don't aim to not survive, but look at Neville bumbling forward. He rushes forward and he says, Harry's dead and it doesn't matter. That's what he says.

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It doesn't matter. Of course, he knows it matters, but there's something bigger than Harry dying. And then he enlists all the other people who have died. And he wants to be a part of that.

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It's not about him being right. It's about him having the hope that he can participate. And that is good enough for him. And that's how we- Well, that takes me right to our next question, because you stress in the essay that we should be confident God is with us.

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but you also caution us not to march ahead with certainty, but to, and this is what you just said a second ago, to bumble forward despite our uncertainty. Now, what's the difference between marching and bumbling? What is this contrast that you're drawing? Well, you know, when you march forward, you're confident in yourself.

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Even if you say you're confident in God, you're confident in yourself because you follow God. And that can quickly turn into a kind of understanding that God is your notary or your captain or your copilot or your caddy, handing you clubs for what it is you're going to do in the world and accomplish. That's what has caused, that's what's caused, resulted in empire and religious destruction, destruction done in the name of Christ, in the name of Christianity often.

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But bumbling forward, I think bumbling forward is about putting your certainty not in yourself, but in God. But I think as I think more about this, I think I'm trying to say something even different than that, even more than that. It's not only that the certainty isn't in ourself, it's that we're so certain that God, about this bigger thing that we're participating in, that even in our uncertainty, we move forward.

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So I think that's a little convoluted. I think maybe the category that's better is hope. We bumble forward in hope, believing, hoping that God is working evil together for good. and participating in that.

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And I like all of the why questions in scripture these days. Why have you forsaken me? I like the yet I will praise God in Psalm 42. And I like Romans 8, I think I end the article with this, the idea that we're groaning with creation for redemption.

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And And what is it that God teaches us in those moments of groaning, being tempted, even the cross moments? We've spoken of the creative faith, the creative faith that you affirm, but you also warn in the essay against something you call destructive faith. What does destructive faith look like in contrast to creative faith?

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destructive faith looks like when we cut ourselves off from the God who is beyond anything we can ask or imagine for the sake of our own formula. So you can be a religious conservative, a liberal, a progressive, whatever label, and just be kind of set in how God works. So the marching forward might be, well, actually, you could be liberal, conservative, progressive, marching forward, maybe thinking that that you're going to be the army of God, the Lord's army.

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We used to sing a song when we were kids about that. But you can also, you can also on the other end, say, I'm going to march as hard as I can, but I'm not going to be hard on myself if I don't do that much. I'll do my best. But you know, if I just survive, it's okay.

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I'm going to take care of myself. I'm going to engage in self-care. And that can also become kind of demonic. If we are so, if we buy into uncertainty in a way that lets us off the hook of implementing change, that also can become a demon.

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So if we're too certain in ourselves in our own capacity, that can be demonic. But also if we let ourselves off the hook, that can become demonic. Because neither one of those taps into the transcendent power of God. that fills us and lists us into something greater than we ever thought we can do, because that's what God's doing.

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Does that make sense? OK. And I think now might be a good time to kind of pause for those who might want to break this interview into two sections. So I'm just going to do that for one moment.

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And We'll start the next section in a moment. It's a good time to take a break if you want to have a discussion from here on out on what we're talking about. Have fun.

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Okay, and welcome again to our discussion with Professor Cynthia Rigby on Facing the Demonic. This is the second part of the discussion. And you speak of being sucked dry by a demonic dynamic. And you invoke the noted black liberation theologian, James Cone, who says we should struggle against this dynamic because it violates the gift of our creation.

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Can you say more about what Cohn is talking about? Cohn is talking about oppressive systems in which some who are superordinate, who consider themselves to be superordinate to others who are subordinate, are taking power, creative power and agency away from them in order to stay superior. So white supremacy is built on this idea. But what happens is that

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When we talk about power, what is that really? It means that the person underneath who's being sucked dry isn't able to act as an agent in the world, isn't able to create things, isn't able to imagine something different and get from point A to point B because they're so beleaguered by not having enough money, not having shelter, not having food, not having access to health care, not being able to read, not being able to drive while being black or whatever, not being a man. And Cohen says that these demonic dynamics need to be named.

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And he also says that we need to claim victory over them in Jesus Christ. He's very keen on this. He sounds very much like Luther, that we're going to claim victory in Christ, throw the inkwell. He doesn't say throw the inkwells.

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Luther says that, but claim Christ's victory, rise up, and what that looks like is being agents, creative agents in the world and reshaping what the world looks like. So he has a strong Christus Victor model of atonement of the cross. that suffering, this kind of gets at what I've been thinking about the last couple of years. Suffering, he doesn't think suffering is good, but he doesn't want to preclude the fact that there might be something good about it.

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This is highly controversial for a feminist person to say, because we've worked long and hard to get the people who are sucking the others dry to see that suffering is not, you can't just say to a marginalized person, God is teaching you something through your suffering, through your cross, therefore it's okay. But Cohen believes that, he thinks that, but he also thinks that if we preclude the possibility that something, that God is doing something through our suffering, through us being tempted, through the horrific things we're facing right now.

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Then we've shut the system off until it's terms and our faith becomes destructive and not created. He wants us to be open to the possibility. Central to that with the atonement theory is Christus Victor. Christ is victorious, Christ suffering.

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Didn't have something good about it, but to quote Joseph to his brothers when they came in the famine, palace to get money during the famine. And they found out Joseph was in charge. He said, what you intended for evil, God has used for good.

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So I'm pretty influenced by Cone these days. Just one other thing he says in his book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree. He said, Emmett Till's mother, so Emmett Till was the 14-year-old black boy who was lynched for ostensibly catcalling to a white woman. He was profoundly affected by the fact that Emmett Till's mother didn't just say this was awful, but God somehow used it for good, Emmett Till's death.

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But she wanted to hold out the possibility that there was something good about his suffering and death. And you know, that's that gets to be a mess fast, but if we shut ourselves off from that exploration, what are we losing in our spirituality? Or maybe not. And of course, he was lynched in the generic sense.

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He was beaten and then drowned. But. I'm sorry, right? Yeah, but still it's considered in the generic sense of lynching.

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I just wanted to be clear about that. And then what she's saying is something good can come of it, right? Not that there's something good about the suffering itself, but there can be a good result that's made of it. And in a way, she made that happen by requiring them to make the body visible.

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So the horror was not hidden of the ability to cover over. In essence, this connects with what you said before about the demonic covering over. whereas when things are revealed, there can be an energy generated for transformation. In a way, that's what Emmett Till's mother did when she insisted on the open casket and took something that was simply horrible and made it productive of something that was good and powerful.

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Is that kind of, am I capturing what you're saying correctly? I'm trying, I am following Cone in trying to take it a step further. And I might renounce this, but that is what you have said is what I've thought for a long time.

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What Cone says, what Cone says though, and I can't say this about Emmett Till or Black Lives Life experience, but let me switch the example to myself. I preached a sermon last year in the Austin Seminary Chapel on temptation. I ask the question, does Jesus drive us into the wilderness to be tempted?

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And at the time, the Pope was saying, no, God wouldn't do that. And I don't know. I mean, I think basically God doesn't do that. But if I close myself off to the possibility that God could have some

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I don't picture God in a distance hitting smite buttons or save buttons. I think God is right here with us. Well, the text says that the Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness, right? So that's where you're getting that from, the idea that the Spirit actually drove Jesus to that point of temptation.

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That's right. Yeah. I think sometimes we let God off the hook when we say, oh, it's God takes, God has nothing to do with this horrific event. actively, but God can take it and turn it and work it for good.

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I'm suggesting that we at least be open to saying, I don't want to say God causes these things, but that God has a closer relationship than we may have thought. I mean, this is something Christian Wyman is saying in My Bright Abyss, his memoir. People, if you know his work at all, he was a He is a poet, a famous poet, Christian Wiman, W-I-M-A-N, and he has this terminal illness.

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And he goes around to churches, and I've listened to many tapes of his talks, and he'll say, I really tried to get to the hope that nonetheless, I could override my depression and my suffering, and nonetheless, someday I'll be resurrected. And I wasn't able to, he said. But what I've learned is that God is in the abyss. Thus, the title of his memoir is My Bright Abyss, right?

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In the abyss itself, in the darkness itself. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil for you are with me. God's there in the abyss. And the abyss is participating in the life of God too, because we not only believe God came down here and entered into existence with us in Christ, but that

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that Christ brought the cross and all of this suffering back into the life of God. So I am not trying to make an argument that suffering is good, but I'm thinking at what expense to our spirituality if we don't at least have an openness to thinking about what God has to do with the actual event. Maybe the Spirit driving us. And right in this vein, you speak in the essay about the cry of dereliction from the cross.

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My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? Which would seem to be relevant to everything you're talking about now. Could you speak a little more to that and how you understand that in relationship to facing the demonic and suffering? Yeah, that'll help.

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I think Jesus always helps, right? So this is what it looks like. to have creative faith, Jesus. Jesus doesn't just passively say, I'm going to submit to this because I know God must have a secret plan.

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And who am I to question God? That, by the way, is what Calvin says. And I disagree with Calvin on that. It's not what Job does.

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Job, for 42 chapters, argues with God. It's not what Jesus teaches us. to pray. It's not how Jesus teaches us to pray.

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Jesus teaches us to stomp our feet and question God and say, thy kingdom come already. We've been praying this prayer for 2,000 years. Show us the money, right? So Jesus' cry of dereliction, why has thou forsaken me?

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I think, is not only about God being with us in our suffering, because I am by the idea that Jesus is fully divine as well as human, but it's also about the idea that when we have faith, when we have faith, uncertainty and doubt are not only kind of acceptable and human, but actually essential components of faith. Because what faith is about is caring about something, caring about something that's of ultimate concern.

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When you care, it's about something that you're ultimately concerned about. When you can't see it enacted, when you don't see it manifest, you cry out, you ask questions about it. You don't check out. And so I think that uncertainty can actually

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be a cry of faith that I think we neglected in our spirituality in the Western world. We like to fake it and try to smile our way through it. And Jesus doesn't do that. He calls it like it is.

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You speak of daily resubmitting. daily resubmitting in love to being living sacrifices. I'm quoting here, daily resubmitting in love to being living sacrifices. Many feminists and others have been critical of such language of submission.

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Could you speak to that? Yeah, I mean, I mean, it's a different kind of submission. And maybe we should change the word, but it's maybe we should redefine, maybe we shouldn't change the word, but redefine because then we can redeem it.

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Submission that's about getting sucked dry has to go. Submission that robs us of our creativity because someone above us is telling us we're less human, less creative creatures. I mean, we've historically thought that women are less human. Black people are less human in the history of Christendom.

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That's where Cohen says we have to stand up for ourselves. But what kind of submission am I talking about here? Submission that is necessary for relationship to each other and to God. It's the kind of submission that Jesus showed again in the Garden of Gethsemane on the cross, kicking and screaming submission.

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It says, hopeful submission. because it says, okay, I'm going to keep fumbling forward. I'm going to this cross, but I don't like it. I'm going to cry out and I don't like it, but I'll do it because I know I'm not God.

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I worship the God who is above God, Psalm 44. I will yet praise God. I praise God before I will praise God. Hope against hope, I'm participating in something greater than my own interests and my own self.

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So Tillich says we're not uncertain about things we don't care about. We don't bother being uncertain. You don't wake up in the middle of the night. Well, maybe you do, but you go back to sleep.

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But the things that we're justified in being uncertain about are the things we care about. And final question. You are affirming doubt and questioning and bumbling along.

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Yet you end up in the essay expressing confidence that in the end, God's way will triumph. Can you kind of address this tension? Oh, rats. I'm not meaning to say to be triumphalistic.

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I think that's been done many times, and I'm not saying, nonetheless, I will move forward. right? I'm saying that because God has entered into existence with us, and also because God has brought my life, this day, your life, the life of this world, this global pandemic, into God's own life in the symbol of the resurrection, we can learn something about who we are and who God is by way of being unconvinced or uncertain. or asking why.

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So in Romans chapter 8, it says, for I am convinced that neither life nor death nor angels nor devils or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or any other thing can separate us from the love of God that's in Jesus Christ our Lord. So last week I preached a sermon on this text and I asked the question, are you convinced, right? Are you convinced? And typically in sermon, I mean, many of my sermons would say, well, sometimes we're not convinced, but that's all right.

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We're only human, and even Jesus doubted. I'm trying to say something different, that when we say, I'm not convinced, that very experience of being unconvinced, and unconvinced because we're suffering, because things don't seem to be adding up, can also teach us something about being creative agents in the world. I didn't mention if I could throw in, we've got Neville bumbling forward. We've got Mary bumbling forward.

00:38:22.000 - 00:38:39.280

How can this be? She says, how can this be? And she packs a suitcase and goes and visits Elizabeth. I don't think she's convinced that this is going to happen because she keeps pondering, she keeps trying to make sense of everything that's going on, all the horrific stuff, right?

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She suffers. She winds up standing at the cross watching her son die. And I seriously doubt that she just said, whatever, God, God, I must have a secret plan. This is what I'm fighting against in spirituality.

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And then my other favorite character is Don Quixote. in man of La Mancha, who's patterned after Cervantes Don Quixote, but also Father Abraham. Abraham is the inspiration. When God brings Abraham out in Genesis 15 and says, so shall your descendants be.

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Abraham believes God, it says, and it's reckoned to him as righteousness. It doesn't say he's convinced. Is belief being convinced? I'm kind of thinking maybe not.

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Maybe Abraham kind of just bumbles forward. I mean, and I think that's what faith looks like. I think that's what faith looks like.

00:39:35.720 - 00:40:00.960

And I got to stop talking, but I look forward to being in conversation with those who are watching this and reading the article. And I really appreciate the opportunity to think through it with you. Well, and we appreciate, I think, the vulnerability you talk about bumbling along in faith and with faith, but without certainty.

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And you certainly modeled that and risk being vulnerable, kind of at the very edges of your thought, dealing with just vexing questions of how to confront suffering and the demonic and yet remain faithful and creative moving forward. So that is something we all are struggling with now and which many struggle with all the time. So we thank you for the vulnerability and for your reflections.

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Can I say one more thing? Sure. The students all memorized Calvin's definition of faith the first year at seminary. And it uses the language of certainty.

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Faith is the firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ. both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit. And what I like about that definition is that the certainty doesn't lie in us. It lies in God.

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But it's lacking something. So one way to think of what I'm trying to do is to try to fill in what it's lacking. What it's lacking is what not being certain has to do with faith. And I think as long as that piece isn't there, we wind up being, either rejecting God's firm and certain knowledge and God's, I mean, rejecting God's benevolence or overriding it.

00:41:42.240 - 00:42:06.800

And I don't think those things are working. I think it's why people don't come to church anymore, in a large degree, because we're either a bunch of pietistic know-it-alls who say, this is how it works. Or we've given up on God being providentially involved in our lives and rather see God in a kind of deistic fashion at a distance and the responsibility is ours.

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And neither of those are acceptable faith positions. So that's my final thought. Sorry. Okay.

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And in the spirit of this reflection, I'm not going to try to wrap it up in any way, but I'm simply going to express thanks. for your engaging us in this way and hopefully providing fruitful thoughts for the dialogue. Thank you very much for being here. Thanks, everyone.

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Appreciate it. Thanks, Bill.