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Welcome everyone to uh cultivating ideas for the 2024 2025 academic year. Uh My name is Shawn Watkins and I serve as Associate Dean for lifelong learning and cultivating ideas is one of the webinar series that we offer

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both from our department and from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary . It is an opportunity for our best and brightest our faculty to dictate and demonstrate uh their research, their areas of interest and expertise and things that they're

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just most passionate about. And when we think about cultivating ideas, I could not think of a better person to be able to kick start this academic year for us than one of our favorite faculty. Uh

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Doctor Bill Greenway, he is a professor of both philosophy and ethics on campus and is just beloved by our faculty staff and students. Uh Doctor Greenway focuses on contemporary conversations among theology and philosophy and church and

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society. He's especially interested in theology and ecology and spirit and the spiritual life. He speaks regularly at churches, academic conferences and posts in journals like the Christian Century, the Journal of Religion and theology.

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Today, he's the author of four books and his lecture today is based on the final chapter of his book in the light of agape. More realism and its consequences. Sisters and brothers. Uh, welcome

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, Doctor Bill Greenway. Take it away, sir . Thank you, Sean. Um I'll just get going. It's good to see uh, some of you folks, I think I recognize every name and

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it's really good to see you all. I hope you all are doing well. Um I'll just get right to it. I prepared something pretty much verbatim . That's about 2025 minutes, somewhere between 2025 minutes

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and we'll have ample time for um conversations. So let me just get going with that. Mhm. Mhm. Ok. John, you can see that . Ok. Yes, sir. Absolutely. Great

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. We go the flowering of faith in the light of agape in a world dominated by exploitative social Darwinian relations. We need global spiritual awakening and a move away from sectarian understandings of faith. Neither are possible

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if people think faith is irrational or that only one faith can be true. The philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas maps a path to rational and open spiritual awakening. Levinas. A Jew was decisively awakened during five years

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, hard labor captive in a Nazi camp. From the bows of the Nazi horror. Levinas realized nothing is more sure than the moral reality of being taken hostage by the faces of those who are tortured and

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screaming out. Do not hurt me. Do not kill me. Inspired by Levinas I talk about the same reality in terms of awakening to having been seized by agape for every face including one's own. We

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see Children squealing with delight and new fallen snow. We see the shocked faces of the survivors of the tsunami, broken bodies strewn about the background. We are not first objective, detached, neutral and only

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then deciding what we think. No, in so far as we are not by nature or through repeated hardening of heart psychopathic, whether they are scenes of joy or scenes of horror, we are instantly before

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decision nor even reflection, joyful or horrified. The singular passion inflaming our joy or in other circumstances, our horror, the palpable spiritual force over and against which we must exert ourselves. If we decide to

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harden our hearts and react differently. That spiritual force is agape. Agape is the wellspring of good in a moral realist sense. So moral reality is not to list modern candidates a product of what is pleasurable

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, desired, preferred biologically or socio culturally selected for or implicitly or explicitly contracted. Moral reality is rooted in the real force, signified by agape, a force as real as gravity though different in kind.

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Initial defense of agape is best achieved as above through invocation of scenes which provoke joy or horror for even peoples whose philosophies leave no place for realist affirmation of agape are profoundly awakened to it in their daily lives

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, seized by agape. They are joyful when they see Children squealing with the light in the snow and horrified by the anguished faces of the survivors of the tsunami. Psychopaths somehow cut off from agape do exist

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. But they are no more an argument against the reality of agape than people who are colorblind. Are an argument against the difference between red and green. Agape is not irresistible. You can harden your heart

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, but this is a hardening of heart over and against a reality that manifestly is there. But I am unfolding here as existing as really, there is a force as powerful, plain and universal as the

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force we undergo and signify with gravity or curvature in space time. This is a powerful argument for the existence of God in so far as God is love for in so far as God is love, having

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been seized by agape for every face, including my own, is having been seized by God for every face, including my own. In this precise sense , God is as real as agape, as real

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as our joy over Children, laughing and playing in the snow as real as our horror over Children, crying and screaming. In the wake of the bombing . Secular scholars have reacted to my argument negatively because

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of a dogmatic commitment to metaphysical na materialism. So they do not believe in God in any sense and they do not want to believe in God in any sense. Some people of faith worry over my argument

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because this is not yet their particular God, for instance, agape is a real and intensely personal force , but it is not necessarily a person or triune . To be clear, God may be a person

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, God may be triune. But those claims lie beyond the scope of my argument for the reality of God. In so far as God is love in a world, in which intellectual elites are overwhelmingly secular

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. And faith is widely seen as irrational and the argument for the reality of the intensely personal moral force of agape. For God in so far as God is agape is significant, especially if it can also

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provide a basis for communion among the world's faiths. But one might object does not one understanding of God or one doctrine of atonement or incarnation carnation doesn't one have to be right and the other is wrong perhaps

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or maybe divine reality. So surpasses human understanding that no one way of thinking about God or doctrine is adequate. In any case, we should begin from . What is most sure and what is most sure

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is the reality of God. In so far as God is a God, doctrines do matter, but they matter because the point of doctrine is agape. Good doctrines of atonement are good in so far as

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they help us receive understand and live out agape, bad doctrines are bad in so far as they cut us off from or lead to violation of agape to riff on Saint Augustine's ultimate test for doctrine. If

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it's not loving, it's wrong. This wholly reasonable affirmation of the reality of God correlates with a wholly reasonable understanding of faith where faith does not signify believing despite a lack of evidence, where faith names a

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wholly reasonable and good existential response to agape, namely , faith is living out, surrender to having been seized by agape for every face including my own. That is in so far as I do not Arden

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my heart in so far as I live, surrender to having been seized by love for every face including my own. I am faithful, faithful to God , faithful to agape. Remember that our experience of

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agape is searingly powerful when we face evils like the holocaust. So contrary to the modern idea that evil is an obstacle to faith, we are seized by agape with utmost power and conviction. Precisely when we

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face the most horrendous evils. Moreover and surrender to Agape. We are filled with urgent motivation to act . If I am seized in context of horror, I am horrified and immediately moved to resist in context

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of joy. I am joyful and immediately moved to secure the joy since agape like gravity is a dimension of reality, it is universal. So if there is life scattered across the cosmos, the reality of

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a gape like the reality of gravity is manifest to higher life forms across the cosmos. In Christian vernacular , God is omnipresent when I consider agape as a universal force. I also think about people who lived

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along what we call the Mississippi or the Amazon in the days of Isaiah and Micah people who never heard of Judaism or Christianity. And I think about those who lived in those days along what we call the

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Yellow River or the Ganges who never heard of Judaism , just as others across the mountains and oceans, never heard of Hinduism or Buddhism. When I think about isolated peoples across the earth and remember that the

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reality signified by agape has always been as manifest as the reality signified by gravity. I realized that people from all times and places who did not harden their hearts would have undergone agape and developed ways to name

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, understand and respond faithfully. So it is no accident that the profound but bare description of the undergoing of agape is in accord with the heart of Buddhist Christian, Hindu, Islamic and Jewish spirituality and most

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every faith tradition on earth, no doubt, including spiritualities developed among ancient peoples who lived in what we now call the Americas. Obviously, all these traditions have not used the same words Levinas uses has said

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Buddhists use Matri Confucians use Ren, but it it's it is the reality we undergo not the signifier which is essential. These different words testify to the same spiritual reality and the emergence of different words and faith

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traditions among different peoples is no surprise. Again, Agape signifies a force we primordially undergo just as we primordially undergo the force, we signify with natural motion or gravity or curvature in space time. Since we

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are thinking beings, we immediately think are undergoing of reality. And we immediately think our undergoing of ga of agape in terms we receive for we each emerge at specific points in history with diverse cultural linguistic ways

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of understanding a third century Hindu woman woman in what we now call India, 1/9 century Islamic man in what we now now call Saudi Arabia, an 18th century indigenous person in what we now call Argentina,

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which means we all grew up thinking our primordial undergoing of reality and we signify and theorize one dimension of our undergoing in terms of natural motion, gravity or curvature in space time. And we signify and theorize

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another dimension of our undergoing of reality in terms of agape heid matri, because we all find ourselves thrown into one historical and geographic particularity or another. We will invariably identify as faithful people in terms of a

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particular community of faith as Buddhist Confucian Od Nasoni, Jew Muslim sio Wiccan. That is simply reality. And it need not be a problem. As long as being faithful to agape within our own community is

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also about being for what is loving, good and just for other communities in so far as they too are faithful to agape, naming the undergoing of having been seized by Gabe isolates the primordial reality at the

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heart of the great systems of understanding that our Buddhism , Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Zen and all the rest. To be sure all these traditions have carried harmful systemic distortions and have been misappropriated

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to evil ends. But those misappropriations are not consistent with the central texts or teachings or with the character of the saints revered by the world's major faith traditions . For those misappropriations are not in accord with our

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undergoing of agape. This is why no major faith tradition celebrates people who are brutal, selfish, exploitative or destructive. To the contrary, there is massive ethical consensus among all the world's historic faiths about ethical

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issues which affect literally tens of billions of people and other creatures. The idea of an inevitable sectarianism among the world's religions, let alone secular elite's frequent depiction of religions as above all irrational, even selfish sources

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of worldly horrors is neither innocent nor true. For the idea that the world's faiths are fundamentally opposed masks , their shared witness to agape and cuts us off from massive consensus about condemning greed and selfishness. Massive

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consensus about the call to feed the poor, heal the sick, clothe the naked visit and defend the persecuted to work to ensure maximal flourishing and happiness for all creatures, humans, cats, cockroaches, maple

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saplings, all despite living in a world which we will never make perfect global interfaith ethical consensus over such significant matters is so overwhelming that if it were made manifest, say explicitly celebrated in an entry hall of

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the United Nations or as a chapter in standard world history textbooks, it might help to fuel political moment for addressing some of the world's most pressing needs. Unfortunately, the idea that the world's faiths are irrational

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is so powerful among global elites that a tour of the United Nations headquarters in New York suggests the world doesn't have any faith traditions. And the idea that the world's faiths are wholesale at odds with one another

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is so widespread even among people of faith, that the threat of sectarianism looms immediately when I name diverse faiths as if folks like Isaiah said, Hara Jesus , the prophet Muhammad black out as if, if

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they were all to get together, they would want to fight one another. What do we imagine these folks if they were transported together in today's world would say to us about this world, about what is

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needy. What is important about the vast inequities of wealth and power about what our goals and actions and policies should be in order to dissipate sectarian tendencies. It is helpful to think of diverse religions in an

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aesthetic modality, think of diverse faiths and doctrines the way you think of renowned works of art. We enjoy all sorts of renowned symphonies and songs and paintings and sculptures and we celebrate the creation of new and

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different great works of art because of the way in which they enhance our lives in a similar fashion. We can appreciate the many different ways of organizing community and of affirming life and naming and living in fidelity

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to agape that we find within and among the world's great faith traditions, we can think of them as great communal poems written in an attempt to give faithful complex contour to our understanding of and to open us

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to agape. While there are glorious differences in the way various faiths interpret agape and order. Loving lives , diverse faiths agree about the essence of faith being surrendered to agape. So this celebration of diversity does

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not enable ethical relativism. I think this point can be affirmed from within all the great faith traditions, but I will only speak in relation to my own Christian tradition and suggests that when in first John four

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, it jo when first John four says, if you do not love each other, you do not know God for God is love or when Jesus in the parable, the sheep and the goat says,

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if you see someone in need and you do not help them, you have forgotten God. They speak as one with faith traditions across the globe. There are many areas of ethical disagreement within and among the

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faith traditions, but that should not distract us from an amazing range of consensus which if acknowledged, this bears repeating, could have profound implications for social programs and political policies of vital significance for billions. And

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some not only are there no wholesale differences among the whole the world's faith traditions, but much of the diversity among the world's faiths should be celebrated because it multiplies ways of living in loving and just community.

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The same holds for diversity within religious traditions just as the reality and potential of agape is richer in so far as it is faithfully expressed in Buddhist Hindu, humanist, Islamic, Jewish, Navajo, Wiccan and

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other varieties. So say Christianity is richer because it is expressed in an array of Baptist Catholic Episcopal Mennonite Methodist, Orthodox Presbyterian Quaker and other varieties. Again , there is no space here for ethical relativism because

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the source is agape, there can be no celebration of diversity at any point where any tradition violates agape at that particular point. A tradition is wrong and infidelity to agape. We must condemn and struggle against

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that particular aspect of that tradition. Obviously, there are enduring ethical disagreements among reasonable and good people, both within and among religious traditions. But again, areas of disagreement over quandary issues should not lead to

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wholesale condemnation of any tradition nor detract from the significance of the massive overlapping ethical consensus among faiths over what is clearly right to do in the light of agape . For instance, regarding basic truths about what is

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loving in relation to food, shelter, education, health care or autonomy and in response to exploitation, abuse, poverty and neglect. Just for starters, I drew a picture to represent my vision of the

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relation among agape in the world's faiths. They call this the flower of faith blooming in the light of agape at the center of the flower is the fundamental event of having been seized by the reality of agape

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. There is no conceptual content, no beliefs, just the raw blazing reality, the undergoing which after the fact we name and describe in terms of agape . He said, Maitre Wren flowing out from the

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center, the raw undergoing from which they all blossom are the petals of the flower. Each different color . Each pellow represents a different faith tradition. Here , I would include even relatively young traditions like humanism

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. We should include every tradition with agape at its heart. Again, each petal represents a different faith tradition. Each is a different color. And then within each petal, there are different hues of color

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, Cobalt sky and navy hues of blue, which represent different streams of understanding within each faith tradition. For instance, within the multi hued pedal of Christianity and overlapping at many points, especially near the center

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, there would be Catholic Orthodox and Protestant hues. And within the Protestant, there would be Presbyterian Baptist Methodist, Wesley Armenian all hues within the Petal of Christianity. Each of these hues increasingly overlaps with one

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another nearer the center of the flower, which signifies the primordial event of having been seized by agape. Likewise with other panels of faith that is likewise with Buddhism, humanism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism,

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Latter day Saints and Wiccan all the petals with all their hues. That is all the world's historic fades and all the diversity are rooted in the same, undergoing all are flowering from and are the flowering of

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agape. So let us enjoy full confidence in the reality of agape and the reasonableness of faith. Let us live surrender to having been seized by agape for every face of every kind, including our own.

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Let us take joy in being blessed and in blessing others. Let us celebrate diverse and faithful ways of embodying agape in our daily lives. Let us live together as salt of the earth. Thank you,

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Doctor Greenway. My goodness. What a profound lecture . Thank you. Truly, my goodness. All right, you let some additional folks in here and absolutely. All right. Well, Dr Greenway has

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concluded his lecture and we invite folks uh who have questions about uh Doctor Greenway's lecture and his topic overall . Uh Why don't you go ahead and drop those in the chat? Love to be able to hear

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from some folks. We've got about half an hour for a Q and A discussion and we love to hear back from you and Doctor Greenway uh uh to kind of kick us off as folks are thinking through

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some of their questions in light of your very profound lecture. Uh We've been having conversations at least in the department of lifelong learning around um issues of faith and justice, uh diversity, politics, uh in

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particular last night with our, I've been in politics and faith. Um And I love your lecture too . And the reality is that agape really is truly available for all, but definitely can be lacking,

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uh, in a tremendous amount of ways and places , especially around, um, understanding different religious groups or even just a diversity of opinions and backgrounds that can be present whenever there's conflict there. At heightened

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levels, there's a lack of agape. And so I'd love to hear from you, uh, just for a moment again, as folks are generating those questions, uh What are some places in which uh

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as you've looked at what's happening in American society today that you instinctively or reflexively can point to and say there's a lack of agape there. Uh I wish that uh Christians, especially even the people of God

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would have more of an approach, um have more of an agape type approach and that could potentially eliminate some of discord miscommunication and chaos is erupting. In other words, if you look at the grand scheme

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of things that's happening in our country, we're very polarized and divided right now. What comes to your mind around those areas? And if you could uh articulate, yeah. Agape needs to be present here

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. I think if Agape was present in deeper and more meaningful ways uh as a consequence. Uh Yeah , we just, we would have, we would see a lot more shalom and a lot more justice

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. Um mhm Well, of course, you could point uh uh to so many obvious things. So I don't know where to start listing without, you know, inevitably leaving out. So the um I

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think what I'm looking to do with this move is to change a fundamental approach to thinking about the diversity um among um people of different faiths um where faith is construed broadly so that there's um an emphasis on

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what I think is AAA vast uh commonality and consensus about what's loving and good, which remains unnamed. And that then if we would focus on that is what we hold in common and work from what is

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most clear in relation to that and then engage our differences on top of that, that, that, that would help to prevent some of the more, I mean, obviously sectarian and violent sorts of conflicts

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um and clashes. Um So, so right now , I think we actually are very sectarian um in multiple facets. And so that allows us to make others really other, not in a good sense,

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but in a radically other sense and we tend towards uh caricature. Um and, and, and it can fuel um you know, even you see someone not as a, you know, in Christian terms

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, child of God, but as someone who's evil and, and, and I think that is um that, that dynamic and the um the failure to name what's common. So I've been a part of

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communities which are all about their differences and they're focused on, you know, we're this group, that group and the other group. And I've also been on in parts of communities that are similar, that

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have the exact same differences. But their lead foot spin on their commonality and out of that commonality, they debate the differences and, and I guess what I'm doing with this is, is, is,

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and this is part of a uh all my books . I, I didn't go to the final slide where I do the, they're up to six now , six books. This is the sixth one.

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But all of them are part of this single argument trying to argue for the reality of agape. The way I say it in my ethics class is in a typical ethics course in a university. A standard

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thing is to go through one modern ethical theory after another, use them to address one quandary issue after another. And then you come out with the conclusion that all ethics is relative because they all fail,

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they all have failures and so you can have very reasonable, intelligent students. I mean, this is pretty standard in universities. In fact, many so called ethics courses in universities aren't doing actually ethics,

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they're doing um whatever the guild is or um compliance or, you know, this is the legal where , you know, is business ethics means, this is what the law says you have to do.

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It's not ethics, it's legality or compliance or something like that. That, that's the degree to which there is ethics is a lighted in modern rationality. So you have courses like this students come out of

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the course and really reasonable. Intelligence students have this idea that all we ethics is relative, right, which is not innocent, especially if in fact, as I'm arguing, there is massive global interfaith consensus

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about about a host of issues which if we just acted on those, I'm not talking about the things where there's all this debate, I'm talking about these fundamental things that make a difference in people's lives where

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there's all this consensus. If we just change policies in relationship to those, it could make a massive difference in people's lives. But the idea that all ethics is relatives allows people who actually benefit from this

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idea. There's not this common consensus. So when you have these sorts of issues, there's not a census. Well, maybe there, maybe there are realistic limits to what we can do because there's actual

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political and other obstacles. But we all know this would be the ideal. So let's now have the discussion out of that context. No, that's not how it goes. You just have debates from different

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positions with the idea, it's all relative. So , so the idea that all ethics is relative actually empowers those who are benefiting from exploitation of others related to violations, which are related to fundamental goods.

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And this could be unpacked in terms of basic access to food education, just basic safety, health care , all these sorts of issues globally and and what's ironic is at the very same time as you have

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this happening and, and, and, and so it's not innocent and it's not an accident that is so prominent in modern western universities, which are, of course, very much a part of this elite

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system benefiting from the idea that all ethics is relative . Right? At the very same time, you'll have people and I could, you know, if you bring up pedophilia or, you know, white

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supremacy or a host of other things, then they become absolutists, right? They're not ethical relativists at all about a whole host of issues. And so it doesn't make any sense because on the one hand

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, they're ethical relativists. On the other hand, they're complete absolutists, but in a way which is not informed by agape. And so then that becomes , instead of a loving approach, which is then

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, you know, open and diverse ways to addressing these things with and grace as well, that then becomes sectarianism of another sort. Um And, and can view even though the, the ethic is,

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right? So what, what I see out there is massive conceptual, confusing confusion related to the Western systemic alighting of ethical realism, moral realism. That's what I'm talking about in the very beginning when I

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say there's all these surrogates for ethics that modern candidates , none of them are ethical and no one thinks they've all succeeded. So, so we have on the one hand, um what we have on what

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I've painted that in general is a massive, uh , systemic confusion which, which then exacerbates the tensions you're talking about, you know, in, instead of working from common ground and in particular, I'm

00:33:00.070 - 00:33:07.300

saying here and, and I, and I was stunned, I went and toured the United Nations headquarters . It was stunning. It really, you could tour that whole thing. If you were from another

00:33:07.310 - 00:33:21.020

planet and toured it, you wouldn't know Earth had faith traditions. What are the odds of the United Nations realizing its goals, which I think are wonderful goals without being able to integrate people of faith across

00:33:21.030 - 00:33:32.510

the globe. And we're talking about billions of committed people and you're gonna somehow realize these ends while ignoring them all and not connecting with them in, in , in, in, at the same time.

00:33:32.520 - 00:33:44.060

I mean, the UN does tend they work at consensus levels, almost all of the goals. And that's where I include humanism are these humanist goals which actually are common, you know, they're fueled themselves

00:33:44.070 - 00:33:54.000

by agape in a way they can't justify, right ? So they'll go to happiness or they're just stuck , they have no ethical basis for the ethical things they're doing. And because of that, they can't

00:33:54.010 - 00:34:06.660

see the ethical commonality with all the world's faith conditions , which would be a massive resource for them to utilize. Right. So, so this is what's happened in migrant, we have this vision of these

00:34:06.670 - 00:34:22.530

siloed holes, all these differences and this vision is itself a systemic distortion in ideology which protects folks who are benefiting from clear and obvious uh exploitation of others . And, and that's what I want. That's

00:34:22.550 - 00:34:35.720

, that's the meta goal or the, the underlying goal um between this attempt, which that goes to your question kind of at a without isolating particular things . So if I did, if I accepted that

00:34:35.730 - 00:34:47.250

invitation, I'd be kind of accepting an invitation to the sort of sectarianism trying to resist because we tend to caricature and, and do that sort of a thing. So, um yeah, that's the answer

00:34:47.260 - 00:34:57.660

. I have to your question. That's absolutely wonderful , spoken like a true philosopher and an ethicist. I appreciate uh I always try to do softballs to all of our professors as we're getting ready to hear

00:34:57.680 - 00:35:07.290

from um our audience. And so I appreciate you taking the question zooming back out to 50,000 ft and saying, let's begin with people. Let's begin with need and let that be the foundation for our ethics

00:35:07.300 - 00:35:17.310

. Uh A stunning critique I think of the guild of the Academy of our education system of politics. Uh And even in government as well too, reminds me of uh Mortimer J Adler, how to read

00:35:17.320 - 00:35:30.000

a book from 1946. And he talked about how we have so many books that are beginning to come out around character and around ethics, but they all are performative and we've lost some of the foundational issues

00:35:30.010 - 00:35:37.060

that precisely what you're bringing up. So, thank you so much. Just a helpful reflection just to kick us off again. This is a reminder for folks. If you've got questions for Dr Greenway,

00:35:37.070 - 00:35:45.790

we wanna make sure you put those in the chat . If you are feeling confident and want to ask that question, verbally yourself, I'm gonna ask you to both come off of it and also to turn

00:35:45.800 - 00:35:53.910

your cameras on as well too. We're recording, we wanna make sure that we have that recorded for our archives. Doctor Greenway, we do have one question that's come in and I want to read it

00:35:53.920 - 00:36:07.290

to you and we would love to get your thoughts and reflections on him. It says uh are you proposing agape as a transpersonal force that is Buddhists speak of a transpersonal force of light and life? And

00:36:07.300 - 00:36:19.930

how do we make connection between agape being transpersonal and Christianity's emphasis on a personal God? Yeah. And , and, and, and if uh and the answer is, of course, yes. Although I'm

00:36:19.940 - 00:36:31.240

not saying agape is a transpersonal force. And so there is no personal God, right? That would be, that would be too strong a conclusion as well. Uh a conclusion, I don't think Buddhists

00:36:31.250 - 00:36:42.620

are philosophically entitled to and not one all Buddhists would have. I mean, there, there's varieties of Buddhism where there is something like a personal God. What I'm saying is, is, is let's look

00:36:42.630 - 00:36:51.340

at the con finality, right? Because, you know, let's not get lost in the debate, you know, and that's what I was trying to say is God personal or not. Well, you

00:36:51.350 - 00:37:00.980

know, maybe one or the other or, I mean, let's, let's be honest with every religious tradition, which talks about how our ways of knowing are so limited that they can encapsulate the divine.

00:37:00.990 - 00:37:08.460

We kind of say that with one sentence and then say, but God's triune and has these properties, right? You, you, you, you, we've got to be serious about that and say,

00:37:08.470 - 00:37:19.570

well, maybe the divine is such that it, it transcends this personal impersonal divide even. I don't know, maybe not. What I'm saying is, is, do you need to know the answer of

00:37:19.580 - 00:37:30.570

that question to uh to have any um and, and, and to, to have any more surety about the reality you're primordially undergoing of agape, which is, and so, you know, light and

00:37:30.580 - 00:37:39.220

life, I, I find those to be vague terms, right? I don't think that's, I think Buddhists would and of course, Buddhists have, they have all sorts of categories, they fill this

00:37:39.230 - 00:37:49.210

out right in all sorts of ways. And so I think when you think of Siddhartha's four sites, it's not that he just saw these four things and he didn't just see these four things and get worried

00:37:49.220 - 00:38:00.470

about himself. He saw these four things in the light of agape. It's how I would read that , right? He sees the person dying, he sees the person starving the disease, he is moved

00:38:00.510 - 00:38:09.940

and opened up to agape. What I'm saying is , is this is a real and this is where the parallel to gravity comes in. So in my technical arguments, I, I I use Richard Rorty

00:38:09.950 - 00:38:21.950

to make a post representational this argument. Uh so that we don't begin to think of um which gets on the metaphysical naturalism, which makes you think. Well, when we talk about gravity, we're,

00:38:21.960 - 00:38:31.640

we're signifying a reality that's really there. But when we talk about agape, we're signifying a reality which is a socio cultural construct or something like that. That, that just makes no sense. There's no

00:38:31.650 - 00:38:42.910

reason to think that there's no argument for that, right? And, and so what you then you observe is, wait a second, the Buddhists, the Confucians, all of them, it turns out

00:38:42.920 - 00:38:54.070

these classic traditions, accepting some modern ones, you know, like the, the lifeboat ethics of Garrett Hardin, president of the Western Society of, of Social Sciences. An article published of a famous article

00:38:54.080 - 00:39:04.880

on um uh the tragedy of the commons, right ? He, his lifeboat ethics was, you know , once the boat's full, you can't let everyone else in or everyone drowns. So, you know

00:39:04.890 - 00:39:15.090

, the better thing to do is to protect the boat and he says the boat's full, we can't sustain everyone on earth. So what we should do is find those most advanced societies and help them survive

00:39:15.100 - 00:39:25.740

through the great die off. Right. So that's a modern ethic, which is absolutely not ethical. There's no agape there. Right. So, but aside from those sorts of things, which ironically happened

00:39:25.750 - 00:39:39.050

, those social Darwinian ethics which happened in the context of a background, Darwinian metaphysic, there's no accident here. Right. Although most, most, most Darwinians hate social Darwinism and rightly so, so I'm

00:39:39.060 - 00:39:49.260

not against Darwinism. It's a biological theory. When you turn it into a metaphysic, then you've got a different issue, a different problem. So, so, so yeah, what I'm saying here is

00:39:49.270 - 00:39:57.440

, yeah, it's the same fundamental reality. We can isolate it. And then I want to say , you know, there might be ways in which thinking of God is, you know, and,

00:39:57.450 - 00:40:06.640

and it could be also arguments would go where we , we develop in different ways. But, but also as we unpack that there might be ways in which we who are, uh you know, Christian

00:40:07.240 - 00:40:20.220

can read uh Buddhist texts and, and learn about other interesting ways to think about this love which we've not thought of. Um And there may be are ways in which Buddhists can read Christian text and,

00:40:20.230 - 00:40:28.370

and, and have the same thing. But what I don't want to do which has been the modern move, which this might look similar to is a move to a lowest common denominator, right? That's

00:40:28.380 - 00:40:37.970

what I'm not doing. So this is where I'm not doing either for those of you know, either the Yale School of the cultural linguistic model or the Chicago School. Right. Quite right. I'm kind

00:40:37.980 - 00:40:47.900

of doing them both. So I'm saying that and , and it's the same with science, right? So, whether you're doing gravity and you're with Aristotle or Newton or Einstein or some string theorist, um

00:40:47.910 - 00:41:00.590

, you know, you, the reality is there , Einstein and Newton and E and, you know , Einstein, Aristotle and Newton all sitting under an apple tree knew to look out for apples falling on

00:41:00.600 - 00:41:13.500

their heads, right? So the diversity of the theory doesn't move from the kind of basic uh truth that, that they share in common. So that would be the same thing here. What you don't

00:41:13.510 - 00:41:25.650

find is a basic difference between the Buddhist understanding of that force, right? Which I, I think that if you unpacked it in Buddhist terms, you get something very much like being seized for every face

00:41:25.660 - 00:41:37.280

, right? Just as I'm seeing here in Christianity and in Judaism, in other words, right? So that's what I'm saying. This, this is a phenomenology of religious experience, but then of course

00:41:37.290 - 00:41:47.950

, we unpack it right out of our throne situations in all these different ways. And what I want to say then is, is, is as long as we don't violate what is most clearly a gothic

00:41:47.960 - 00:42:01.030

in that fundamental way about which is this massive consensus , then we should see all that diversity, not as oppositional, right? But is uh creative possibilities , different ways of living out of gape and,

00:42:01.040 - 00:42:10.950

and then at these levels, we don't have to say, well, it's either your or my doctrine of God as personal or impersonal. I mean, exactly how sure can we be about that? Right

00:42:12.160 - 00:42:21.950

. I mean, the claims there are immense. I, I can't be nearly as sure about that . It's about the fundamental source of agape, right ? This or that theory of a to who knows

00:42:21.960 - 00:42:30.050

God's triune. Are you gonna really assert this as this has got to be? I know this. How right. So there is a benefit to thinking . I mean, so I, when I unpack

00:42:30.070 - 00:42:43.800

God is Triune, it, it's a meaningful thing to unpack. But in because of the ways in which it helps us to live out unfold and make manifest agape again, that's the test of the doctrine

00:42:44.030 - 00:42:52.270

. So the point is not to get the doctrine for the sake of having the right doctrine, the point of the doctrine is agape. Um And, and when you read, you know, these texts

00:42:52.280 - 00:43:02.630

, you find across these traditions, that's what they're all gesturing to. One other thing. I made a point here that might, might not have been as clear is that especially because the title of my

00:43:02.640 - 00:43:13.970

book is wrong. It's it. I love Westminster John Knox. I appreciate them and they did it for uh sales and legal reasons, but it shouldn't be a reasonable belief. It should be a reasonable

00:43:13.980 - 00:43:25.280

faith because belief is about an affirmation of some proposition , right? I believe God, this, that or the other faith is not about any content. Faith is an existential surrender to the reality of agape

00:43:25.410 - 00:43:36.110

. It, it's, and then you have beliefs about agape. But once you get into those beliefs , well, you know, now you're within the throne, this of your contingency in your tradition,

00:43:36.130 - 00:43:45.860

right? So if any of us, it's hard to know what this mean, but any of us were the same person. But in the fourth century , in Tibet or in the fifth century in China

00:43:45.130 - 00:43:57.420

, you would be thinking in those terms, it turns out you happen, probably most people here to have been born in the 20th century or 21st century , depressingly enough. Uh uh uh uh and,

00:43:57.430 - 00:44:07.190

and within these terms, so you're thinking in these terms that that's just, that's just contingency in history and there's nothing wrong with that because even with that , we can get to this essence of agape which

00:44:07.200 - 00:44:17.810

we can affirm and have confidence in. But then the further we develop out like the more particular my doctrines get right of, of, you know, of, of the various things, the less sure

00:44:17.820 - 00:44:27.050

I can be of them in terms of them being absolute, but also in terms of them being faithful to agape is, is they enhance the, the more I can, you know, because I'm not

00:44:27.060 - 00:44:37.670

making these claims that are now over and against others , right? It's again, think aesthetic. Now , I can just take joy that we have this wonderful, wonderfully developed way of thinking with all this

00:44:37.680 - 00:44:49.360

complexity about these doctrines or about, you know, the 10 fold path or however you could do it in the different religious systems, right? And in , in each of those, the, the only

00:44:49.370 - 00:45:02.620

judge is its fidelity to gape. And then so I can, I can affirm that Jesus is incarnate and God is trying without making a claim because of the way I understand the nature of that affirmation connection

00:45:02.630 - 00:45:13.800

to God. That doesn't mean a Buddhist who's saying something else is not living in faithful connection to God . That doesn't mean, you know, as Wesley loved to say, that doesn't mean Isaiah and Abraham

00:45:13.900 - 00:45:22.510

. We're not in faithful connection of God with God because they didn't think of God as triumph, right ? So that's what I'm trying to do and, and um work out, let me keep going to

00:45:22.520 - 00:45:30.480

the other love that we've got. That's fantastic. Thank you so much, Doctor. We've got time for about one more question. It comes from uh Bryson. He says, uh uh seeing that the

00:45:30.490 - 00:45:45.250

system continues to both divide faith traditions and convince those traditions that we are more different than alike. How can pastors equip people to help in toppling the system ? Do we preach agape through Christ as what we've

00:45:45.260 - 00:46:07.660

been doing or do we need a more intentional in naming this reality and point to other traditions. Yeah . Well, um so we, so, you know, I mean, I think everyone might have

00:46:07.670 - 00:46:20.890

different ways in which they're called to respond to this and to work with it. So I guess the first thing to say is it seems like the impulse to sectarianism, right? To try to think in

00:46:20.900 - 00:46:35.400

terms of my community over and against every other community is incredibly powerful. Um And especially, you know , the, what we see historically is uh you could get this dynamic with communities that are historically oppressed

00:46:35.580 - 00:46:45.570

. I mean, I use schleiermacher for this. So Schleiermacher in early I I is, is before the German nation, right? Principality, Schleiermacher church , his home, his town is overrun by Napoleon

00:46:45.810 - 00:46:57.310

. Um He sees all this brutality, uh the German state is completely weakened and so he has all this stuff that's about, you know, he helps found modern Germany. He gets the university system going

00:46:57.320 - 00:47:09.710

, he writes all this stuff which in context is about giving a sense of identity. Um and uh pride to these people who are scattered and, and diverse. But a century later when Bart's reading him

00:47:09.840 - 00:47:22.350

and one of his Conman's named Bismarck has had uh influence uh you know, 60 years later. And now we're looking at at World War One and, and um you know, uh Wilhelm the first in

00:47:22.360 - 00:47:36.660

this German imperialism, the very things that Schleiermacher said when the Germans were scattered to help give them identity and a sense of, of, of being valuable have become the very thing which now are uh proponent

00:47:36.670 - 00:47:47.180

, they have now turned and they've now moved from oppressed to oppressors. Um In contemporary times, I would say, look at um uh Ortega, right , who, who went from being, you know

00:47:47.190 - 00:48:02.560

, great liberating force to now essentially a dictator or um um uh what's his name in uh Mozambique? Um Mu Mugabe, right? Again, very much a Liberator, all that has become the opposite.

00:48:02.750 - 00:48:17.580

So, so, you know, um uh uh uh there's just what I'm saying here is uh what I do as a philosopher and theologian and ethicist, I look at these big systemic distortions and say what's

00:48:17.590 - 00:48:28.870

going on here at this really deep level, which maybe we can address which over the next, if we can get this going, right? And, and, and I'm actually feeling a lot of momentum

00:48:28.880 - 00:48:37.950

. There's a lot of secular scholars who want somehow to get back to moral realism and can't, so I, I think this is gonna turn, I don't know how or with whom, but, and

00:48:37.960 - 00:48:45.490

this is at this level, you know, I mean, de cartes ideas take a century, schleiermacher problems, take a century, right? But the thing is they make a difference when you give these

00:48:45.500 - 00:48:59.000

fundamentally different ways of viewing the world in the long run, they make a big difference in how people frame the very issues uh they're going at right? In the meantime, there's also folks working in communities

00:48:59.010 - 00:49:08.100

where these other uh dynamics are incredibly strong. And , and so I, you know, I, and, and I don't know, I don't think there's a short way out of this, right?

00:49:08.110 - 00:49:22.230

And so I guess one thing I would say is , you know, lessen your expectations, uh be patient with yourself, be realistic. What people can do, try to always remain faithful to agape.

00:49:22.240 - 00:49:31.910

So maybe always try, try never to caricature, never to stereotype always to, you know, see , you know, I mean, make love your end. Me not just a cute phrase but the

00:49:31.910 - 00:49:42.660

way in which you re remain in agape with your enemy. When I unfold this in my books, in terms of Leo, I and I do this also more recently when I talk about moral injury,

00:49:42.680 - 00:49:54.300

that's what moral injury is. Your enemy is your enemy. You're in a context where you're caught like Levinas was as a soldier in the French army where you're actually shooting and killing other people, but that's

00:49:54.310 - 00:50:08.600

wrong. It's morally wrong. It's a violation of agape even though it's ethically right? Giving you options in real time, right? So, so make sure those tensions are always felt that the enemy is

00:50:08.610 - 00:50:19.820

never, you know, someone you just hate. Now, frankly, in the very moment, I don't know if that's psychologically possible, but in the long run, it's clear it's essential because moral injury

00:50:19.830 - 00:50:31.060

happens when people have done the right thing and killed others. But people are not helping them deal with the violation of agape they have experienced. And right now all the, all the, all the literature

00:50:31.070 - 00:50:40.060

trying to address moral injury, uh the, the dominant little Brits, a guy named Letz is one of the lead people. He still has to say it's related to something the person did wrong because he

00:50:40.070 - 00:50:51.500

doesn't have any space for something that can be. The modern thought has no space for something can be simultaneously, right? Ethically and wrong, morally because they have no moral. You do your calculation,

00:50:51.510 - 00:51:06.320

you figure out what's, and that's just right period that the modern thought is so weak and narrow and simplistic compared to the great religious traditions, right? Which were formed largely by people who had actually killed

00:51:06.330 - 00:51:15.510

other people and were struggling with that, you know , I mean, the depth of those reflections, Paul is a killer and if you read them, you know, he, you know, and,

00:51:15.520 - 00:51:22.890

and, and, and he won't even talk about , you know, it's, we hear from others what happened. Um, you know, in acts Paul just like he won't even talk about his own

00:51:22.900 - 00:51:31.790

conversion experience. The guy's not shy to talk. But when you get to these places, he, he, he, he's curiously, it's so sacred , but so much more so you got to read

00:51:31.800 - 00:51:45.480

between the lines and, and get this back. So anyway, um, so, so this, I think, I think this has the potential to be part of an intellectual movement uh which could be

00:51:45.490 - 00:51:58.590

very powerful in these regards and, and, and form in decisive ways I thought it moves decisively. So it's in some way similar to Schleiermacher, similar to Feuerbach, similar to hick, but it's also

00:51:58.600 - 00:52:08.600

decisively different and also it's scientific and, and I'm actually, it's called the subtitle and everything. It is more realism theory. I'm actually trying to get with social scientists. I can't get people to work

00:52:08.610 - 00:52:16.500

with me on this. And I don't have the , uh, I don't have the, I don't have the knowledge to do social scientific stuff, but I think this should be testable, uh, that

00:52:16.510 - 00:52:25.780

we should be able to discern this reality and moral injury would be my, you know, lead case , right? Where the inability to name what's moral . It's funny they came up with moral, they

00:52:25.790 - 00:52:35.750

didn't want moral, they just had no other word that fit what the soldiers were forcing them to say , but they still have no definition for it. So, so, so that's my little piece is

00:52:35.760 - 00:52:47.180

to work there right with it. What, what , what Sean called 50,000 ft? And a lot of people think 50,000 ft doesn't matter. It does . It does because you fall from 50,000 ft because

00:52:47.190 - 00:52:59.140

you got the wings wrong and, and, and a lot of where we are, it's because of what happened in the enlightenment and, and systemic distortions of the enlightenment and over time they've worked their wheel

00:52:59.230 - 00:53:13.120

and they make a difference in how we frame issues . So we can't even name. Let me use one concrete example, COVID vaccinations, right? Global pandemic, potentially killing millions of people, right?

00:53:13.280 - 00:53:28.460

Should the US have allowed other countries to make the vaccine and issued patent waivers? Or should the US have told those other countries if you, if you make the vaccines and violate the patent waivers, we

00:53:28.470 - 00:53:38.340

will boycott you and punish you financially and destroy your economic systems, right? Every religious tradition in the world would say in that context with that threat. And by the way, if you're actually doing vaccines

00:53:38.350 - 00:53:49.670

to address public health, you make sure everyone gets it so nothing can develop somewhere else. I mean , that's where the, the double talk of the pharmaceutical industry on this, you know, everyone in

00:53:49.680 - 00:53:58.700

the states had to do it as a moral imperative but nowhere else are we gonna have it done as a moral imperative, right? This, this is , you know, and there's a Catholic um um

00:53:58.700 - 00:54:08.030

archbishop in South Africa called it Vaccine Apartheid. Um which it was so, so here's, here's one thing, I mean, I don't want these companies not to make money, they can make profits but

00:54:08.040 - 00:54:22.270

, but they were making plenty of money. But the US government Trump and Biden both told these other governments that if they made the vaccine, they would destroy their economies. And that stopped the vaccine from

00:54:22.280 - 00:54:31.930

being made. There is no question on the basis of any ethical or religious system, what the answer to that question should have been. And we did the opposite. That's what I mean about that.

00:54:31.940 - 00:54:46.570

These are systemic distortions which allow really bright folks. On the one hand to think all ethics is relative . On the other hand to just be a motiv us and uh and sectarian about certain ethical issues where

00:54:46.580 - 00:54:57.910

I would probably agree with them, but not with the way they do it right? And not with their inability to justify it, it just becomes, you know, at that point, it becomes sectarian

00:54:57.920 - 00:55:07.760

in, in the worst possible sense. So, so that's where I see us in deep trouble because of philosophical problems. But I'm working at 50,000 ft , we also need people working at 10 ft,

00:55:07.770 - 00:55:17.780

right, or 1 ft away. And so as a pastor, you might be there and that means you have to adapt to your context and, and maybe only make very small steps forward, but you

00:55:17.790 - 00:55:28.530

meet your people where they are in a loving way , right? The the the point is not to be deceptive, but the other thing is not just to get them to say what we think is right

00:55:28.550 - 00:55:37.550

? If it's a mile ahead of them, right , meet them where they are. But on the other hand, unfolding this love opening up in these ways can make a difference, right? If bad

00:55:37.550 - 00:55:47.780

theology hurts the people who hold it right. They , they think that this is happening to them because they've done something wrong and God hates right. That , that, that's horrible theology. Um, but

00:55:47.800 - 00:55:55.740

you, you know, you, so, so , but that's why I want us to keep track . Let me, um, we're at time and I actually have a class that starts in two minutes

00:55:57.310 - 00:56:05.180

. Let me just say because I see a lot of names here and I think I know them. I do know them all. And so I'm always willing to talk to any of you any other time

00:56:05.300 - 00:56:14.570

. I'm gonna make a youtube video of this. Um And if you see anything that you think I should change it, it hits you. I saw a couple of errors as I did it. But

00:56:14.580 - 00:56:22.160

anything else, content wise, it's a little repetitive . I actually did that deliberately to try and get the points to sink in. Uh But if you have suggestions for me, if you would email this

00:56:22.170 - 00:56:31.610

to me, I would really appreciate it. And if you ever want me to talk or do something like this in other contexts for you all, you know, with um with, with Zoom, we

00:56:31.620 - 00:56:42.540

can do that anytime anywhere nowadays. Uh So consider me open. So with that. Thank you, Sean. I'll let you. Thank you. Thank you, Doctor Greenway. And many just a wonderful

00:56:42.550 - 00:56:54.520

presentation and a, a visceral reminder of the necessity of having a proper ethic. And philosophical foundation before we attempt to lead and pasture and engage in very complex and intricate issues. Thank you immensely again,

00:56:54.530 - 00:57:06.030

Doctor G for kicking us out for cultivating ideas. Uh Join us next week on October 3rd. We'll hear from Reverend Doctor Jen Lord, a professor of homiletics and liturgical studies. She looks found on making

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the most of the font part two of baptismal spirituality . As her follow up to a webinar in our last series in this webinar, we will look at the act of baptism, its rites and theologies in

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order to consider how the church is a community of the baptized and what a baptism spirituality looks like in our storm tossed world. So we will see you on October 3rd, same time, same zoom length

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blessings. Everyone. Enjoy your day and your week