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So our task is semester is too pick a wisdom text. What is wisdom? Love of wisdom is of course what philosophy should be if it's going to be true to its name. But what is wisdom

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? one classic answer. Fear of the Lord. But what is Fear of the Lord? If the essence of the law is summarised in two commands? The first of which is to love the Lord.

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Your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind would not Fear of the Lord somehow be to love God with all your strength, Heart, soul and mind. But how do you love God

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with all your heart? Soul, strength and mind And why fear the Lord? Why I love God ? Because the bible says so you know why I believe the bible because it's a smart wager with a

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potentially massive payoff. Okay, because that is what we and ours have always said. We should do . Thank you. Why I love God for that matter. What precisely does the word God signify in

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that sentence? What are you naming when you say God and why do you even believe God exists? Do you have some argument that is itself. Why smart, reasonable, compelling Indeed. Considering all the

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pain, random suffering, violence, and injustice that fill our world, would we not have to be naive or perhaps willfully ignorant to look at the world and say it is wise to fear and love anything

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that remotely deserves the honorific God? These are philosophical questions. They are reasonable questions. If there is wisdom in faith, then it needs to respond to these questions. What does wisdom have to say?

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Mhm. Well, today, the general conclusion, even among people of faith is nothing convincing as a result, even among people of faith, wisdom is considered incapable of grounding, founding, establishing or awakening

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, wholly reasonable faith. There seems to be nothing plain about it. Indeed, for many faith means , by definition a leap beyond the evidence, beyond what is warranted, beyond what is generally considered to

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be reasonable and good. As a result, wisdom literature is now seen as something of an exotic category , and few people think of Paul's letters as wisdom literature. Mhm. But paul is all about wisdom

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. Paul is a contemporary of jesus. These are the earliest writings in the new testament, paul has no new testament to appeal to and his sensual appeal in the old testament. His exemplar faith is Abraham

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who himself had no law or old testament to appeal to, but responded directly to God. That is Abraham, like Paul is reliant upon general revelation upon wisdom. Mhm. Now Paul claims that what can

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be known about God is plain because God has shown it that ever since the creation of the world, God's eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things

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God has made Paul places this claim right at the front of his letter. This claim about the knowledge of God pertains to those who have hardened their hearts and made themselves full fools. So how much more

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clear and plain must paul? Think the nature of God is to people of faith? These verses are not a digression, and this is not a claim we can bypass about this knowledge of God, which

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paul takes to be obvious, which paul's presuming God fearing readers will understand to be obvious. This claim is the ground and the foundation of every claim he makes in the balance of the letter. Now,

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insofar as we do not realize how this knowledge of God is obvious to us. And let me be clear that I think this knowledge actually is obvious to our hearts, but at the moment, do the

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influence of modern Western rationality? We do not enjoy the comfort of knowing it with our minds insofar as we do not realize how this knowledge of God is obvious. We have been swept away by the wisdom

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of our age, by the rationality of those who claiming to be wise become foolish tragically futile in their thinking. They purported any enlightened minds clouded, but here we are, it does not seem obvious.

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Where can we turn clearly? Whatever paul is thinking is related to the law in some positive sense, and related to jesus in some positive sense. And near the end of romans paul, and one of

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its only references to a saying of jesus says that all the commandments, all the Law can be summed up in this word, Love your neighbor as yourself . Okay, now believe it or not. Over

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the last decade, a host of the most avant garde philosophers in europe and the United States, most , all of them atheists, enlightenment thinkers to the core have been writing commentaries on paul, and they

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seize upon this saying Love your neighbor as yourself, as a sign of Paul's radical break from Jesus, for as a sign, paul is deliberately starting a faith that is radically different from jesus, For paul

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has dropped jesus first summary statement, Love your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength in other contexts. One imagines these same philosophers would bulk at drawing so massively significant conclusion from silence,

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but they like this conclusion for them. They can argue that essentially, paul like them, has no need deposit God in any sense, and they know that would be senseless, positing God, it gets

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worse for without God. These enlightened philosophers proceed to read love your neighbor as yourself backwards and upside down , Since the only love modern Western thought noses. Airless desire, perhaps good I desire for others.

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But nonetheless it root my desire to desire. Desire something for others. Since desire is a rose. Desire for self is the only sort of love. They can make sense of. They have to read

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love your neighbor as yourself backwards. That is they think it's simply obvious that you have to begin with love for yourself. For there's no more basic and powerful love than this then. And this is the

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move they love and paul to their credit. You need to universalize this love. You have to love everyone else as much as you love yourself. And the conviction that you must do this. The demand

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that everyone do this is faith which is now rooted in you. Your decision, your conviction over the necessity of universal izing love of self to love for every neighbor. So backwards because it starts with love

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of self and upside down because faith, the conviction we should love everyone as much as we love ourselves is now rooted in us, not in God. At this point, they're understanding becomes you mean for

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given the absolute priority of my love for myself, they can't begin to explain why I would decide to love everyone else as much as I love myself, even if you can provide a personal idiosyncratic reason for

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why you would prefer such a thing on what basis would you impose this universal demand upon anyone else? No answers to this question are forthcoming and notably hasn't aside for colleagues, this is essentially a return to

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19th century utilitarian theory and Cedric's 1906 still unresolved dualism of practical reason. Yeah. Mhm. Moreover, all of this is utterly absurd. Given our daily experiences, it is significant that when jesus unfolds the

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meaning of love your neighbor as yourself, he tells a story the story of the good samaritan, notably insofar as that story depends upon listeners discerning the general revelation of an obvious truth jesus to is depending upon

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general revelation. So the parable of the Good samaritan is another piece of wisdom literature and the general revelation of the plain truth conveyed by the parable of the Good samaritan is utterly contrary to the backwards, upside

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down, confused wisdom of mainstream modern Western rationality. For the answer to the question who proved neighbor absolutely does not begin with love of self, there is nothing about anything the samaritan does that is self interested

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and no part of what inspires us in. The story of the good samaritan involves us thinking of how he acted in self interest, which he decides to universalize. To the contrary. The story portrays the

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samaritan taking considerable risks and time as he cares for the wounded man. The essential dynamics are unfolded with extraordinary position by a different 20th century Western philosopher. Another jew thinks the whole law can be summed up

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in love your neighbor as yourself, namely, This won't surprise you. Emmanuel Lebanon as who unfolds the dynamic of love of neighbour in terms of our being hostage to care and concern for the faces of others

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. What we recognize in the samaritan is someone who has been seized by the face of another insofar as we do not harden our hearts. This is the love by which we are seized in both wondrous and

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horrific circumstances. We see the survivors of the shooting or the tsunami or the flood. We see fearful , silenced immigrants laboring and dangerous jobs. We see desperate families crowding boats to cross the mediterranean elderly Greeks

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lined up in front of bank machines. And we are seized by care and concerned by love for those faces. In those awful circumstances are having been seized by. Love is immediately manifest in our grief and

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protest. Or perhaps the circumstances are joyous. We see a little girl laughing joyfully at her birthday party , the smiling newlyweds descending the church steps, hand in hand. And we are likewise seized by love

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for those faces, and now we're smiling and joyful for them. Whether we are seized by love for faces and context of horror or of joy, our response in so far as we do not harden our

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hearts is not a product of our decision, our reason, our initiative, our obedience to some biblical passage to the law. What are some philosophical ideal insofar as we do not harden our hearts. We

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are directly seized by love for the faces of others . And let me be very clear, we are not directly seized by the faces of others. We are directly seized by love for the faces of others

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. We are seized by love, which is to say, insofar as God is love, We are seized by God for others. This is why Jesus says that when I have not hardened my heart,

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when I have surrendered to having been seized by the faces of others, and I've comforted them, or clothe them, or visited them in prison or fed them. I have comforted, visited fed God,

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not because I have done these things for God, or in obedience to some idea of God or some sacred text, because I have surrendered in obedience to the direct manifestation of God of a gap for others

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. This is Livanos is how God comes to the human mind, invisible yet eternally powerful as love for the face of every other. And this is how you love God with all your heart, soul strength

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and mind, by surrendering to God, surrendering to love for every concrete face before you. With all your heart soul strength in mind. This is why paul sites only love your neighbor as yourself, not

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because he is rejecting Jesus, love your God with all your heart, soul strength and mind, but because following jesus, consistent, not only with Jesus is teaching, but with the faith of jesus,

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Paul recognizes the spiritual unity of the two commands The concrete way one loves God in this world is precisely by surrendering directly to God to love for neighbor. This is the faith of jesus, the faith steady

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and proven publicly, even when jesus arrives at the proverbial moment of truth, death, even death on the cross. The cross, the symbol of imperial terror, designed to terrify people into hardening their hearts

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, to terrify people into valuing nothing more than their personal survival. Keep quiet. Keep your heads down through the faith of jesus, the symbol of imperial terror becomes the symbol of new life. The life

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of those who have died with jesus and already are raised to new life. To live beyond the terror of the cross, To live life's in surrender to having been seized in and by the love of God

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, to love life and fidelity uh to live in fidelity to love. That speaks for all and acts against exploitation and oppression and insofar as people since the creation of the world, have not hardened their hearts

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and had been seized by love, seized by agape , seized by God for the faces of every creature of every kind and so far as they have lived , faith live surrender to love for every other,

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live surrender to God for every other lived having been seized in and by love for every other in times of wonder and times of horror. In. So far as people since the creation of the world have

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not hardened their hearts, but surrendered to having been seized in and buy lover love for every creature of every kind. God's eternal power and divine nature. Invisible though they are, have been understood and seen

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through all God has made. This is all perfectly reasonable. Even obvious. There's more in the moment when we are seized holy in and by love for the faces of others. We are seized by love

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. We ourselves, we too, are seized by love by God, by the God who is love We receive the love of the As yourself. That transcending love for self, which is in no way

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a selfish love, no way a love of ourselves for ourselves, but love for ourselves, to which we surrender. Love for ourselves, which we receive as a gift. The very same love to which

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we surrender for others. There's more especially as more as you remember that on the Damascus Road, we're not talking about paul, We're talking about Saul. In other words, we're not talking about Livanos,

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the relatively innocent, jewish victim. We're talking about Heidegger, the Nazi, the one who remembers holding the cloaks while Stephen was stoned to death, saw the militant, the killer. Most of us can

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think of ourselves as pretty good Paul could have no such illusions. So in the moment when Saul surrendered to having been seized by love for every face he reneges recognized to asymmetrical reality simultaneously in that moment when

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he surrendered Holy to having been seized in and my love for the face of others, he realized the essential, horrible, awesome reality of his violation of the face of Stephen and so many others. So

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in the utterly clear light of surrender to that love , he experienced fear of the Lord full awareness of the awfulness of that violation simultaneously in that self forgetful moment of wholesale surrender to love for others, surrendered

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to God for others. In that moment of faith he experienced no condemnation for and received the as the self. He himself found himself seized by love. The surrender having been seized in and my love for

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neighbor, wherein oneself is simultaneously seized by that love . In that moment of being seized, paul found himself seized by love and known as beloved. I think this is why paul talks neither about the justice

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of God, which would suggest that justice is the final word nor about the Grace of God, which may suggest that justice is wholly lost, but about the righteousness of God. We're in, one surrenders

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to the awesome fullness of having been seized by infinite love through each and every face. We're in the awfulness of one's violation of faces resounds fear of the Lord couture while simultaneously symbol. The final word is

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not judgment but transcending love useless. The love, which brings both the basis for judgment, but simultaneously the love, which brings conviction over God's transcending benevolence , alpha and omega to us that is surrendered to

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having been seized in. And my love brings the free gift of yes, of life wherein we are reckoned righteous. This is not essentially a matter of biological life and death, but if spiritual living and

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dying, the ability to live with joy to glory and new lives in the spirit and surrendered having been seized by love in that moment, recipients of love for others and ourselves as we glory in this love

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and others for ourselves, we're we are enabled to glory in this love for others and ourselves, after helping to stone Stephen, after leaving our neighbor is hungry, lonely and depressed, The righteousness of God

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names the transcending love that convicts us about evil, even as alpha and omega, it allows us to affirm ourselves is reckoned righteous in the free gift of that same transcending love Now is not all of this

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wholly reasonable and good, Are we not speaking of what, After all we can be known of God . Should we not rejoice over our faith That puts the radically transposed symbol of the cross at its center

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, baptizes its members to new life in the spirit through participation in the death of jesus christ. Should we not conclude it is wise about the realities of this world and about the eternal power and divine nature

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of God. Is this not a wisdom we see in the saints and at the heart of all the world's great faith traditions? Is this not a wisdom that even the self proclaimed atheist philosophers, who are

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confusingly trying to appropriate paul and who are doing so in large part out of concern for the widow, the poor and the oppressed, for reasons they cannot make sense of Is this not a sister wisdom they

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could recognize? Are they not unwitting sheep? Have they not surrendered to having been seized in and by love for every face? Even as their minds clouded by worldly wisdom, they are cut off from true

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understanding, and so the ability to glory fully in the love of the Lord paul is right. We have no need to be ashamed of the gospel, the power of God for salvation. For everyone who

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has faith, that is for everyone who surrenders to having been seized in and by God by a gap by love and who thereby receives the free gift of grace. Mhm. A closing caution before my final

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paragraph, obvious but worth saying it is not wise to celebrate or focus ourselves upon wisdom. The sooner these sorts of arguments are unnecessary and can be left behind, the better. What is really wise is

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to seek every more fully to live surrender to God . That is to strive every more fully to live fidelity to having been seized in, in love, in my love for every concrete face before us to

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imitate with all of our heart. Soul strength and mind. The faith of jesus christ. This is how we love God with all our heart, mind , soul and strength. This love is not from

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us, it is to us from God, the gift of God, the power of God for salvation . For everyone who surrenders to the love of God , so clothe yourselves with the saving faith of jesus

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christ live, surrender to having been seized in and by love for all the faces that surround you. Surrender to love for every flower of the field, every sparrow for everyone glorying in a new day and

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surrender to love for all who are hungry, naked , sacred, scared, rather exploited or forgotten. Thank God and glory in this faith in this holy reasonable plane, firm and certain knowledge, it's playing

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reasonable and certain as any knowledge that we have this knowledge that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers , things present things to come nor powers, heights , depths nor anything else in all creation can separate

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us from this love of God I'm in. Mhm