Between Nature and Grace

Derek Rishmawy, James Wood, and Joseph Minich trace the nature-grace debate from de Lubac's challenge to neoscholastic "pure nature" through Blondel, Bavinck, and Betz's Christ the Logos of Creation — asking what's actually at stake: the gratuity of grace, the coherence of theological anthropology, and the twin dangers of secular dualism and pantheist collapse.

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Chapters

• 00:00 - Introduction: Why Nature and Grace?
• 02:30 - The Debate in Context: Neo-Calvinism, Catholic-Protestant Dialogue, and David Bentley Hart
• 05:00 - James on De Lubac: Challenging Pure Nature and Extrinsicism
• 08:30 - Blondel, Desire, and the Political Consequences of Separation
• 11:30 - Derek's Five-Year-Old Explanation: What Is Actually at Issue
• 13:30 - Joe: Natural Ends, Supernatural Ends, and the Beatific Vision
• 16:00 - Steel-Manning the Two-Tier View: Gratuity of Grace
• 18:30 - Bavinck, the Donum Superadditum, and Terminological Convergence
• 22:00 - The Neo-Calvinist Peril: Immanentizing the Eschaton
• 24:00 - Reception History: Did De Lubac Get Thomas Right?
• 27:00 - Betz, Chavarra, and Philosophy's Openness to Theology
• 31:00 - Participatory Metaphysics and Non-Competitive Freedom
• 33:30 - Derek's Worry: The Pantheist Ditch
• 36:00 - Horton's Trilogy and the Irenaean/Origenist Distinction
• 39:00 - The Two Ditches: Extrinsic Dualism vs. Pantheistic Monism
• 43:00 - Desire, Idolatry, and the Hook Into the Real
• 47:00 - Was the Incarnation Part of the Plan? Creation in Christ
• 50:00 - Closing Thoughts: Bavinck's Affirmations and Where to Go Next

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This episode is brought to you by Lexin Press, who publishes books that love the word, love the faith, and love the church. Lexim Press was recently acquired by Baker Publishing Group, and there will be more news to follow. Our April book of the month is Gospel Education, Jesus as Lord of the Classical Christian School by Nate Walker. You can receive a 30% discount on this title and all previous books of the month by visiting BakerBookhouse.com backslash pages backslash Mere Fidelity. You can find that link in our show notes and get 30% off of our book of the month from Lex Impress. My name is Derek Shmounley. I'll be your host for today, and I'm joined by regular cast and crew members James Wood and Joe Minnick. Good to see you, fellas. How y'all doing?

SPEAKER_03 0:56

All right.

SPEAKER_04 0:57

I'm good.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Today we are excited about our conversation. It's one proposed by Joe on the subject of get this, Nature and Grace. And since it's Joe's subject, and it's not something I have ever written about or formulated a thought on, um, Joe, why don't you take it away and set us up for a conversation here?

SPEAKER_03 1:18

Yeah. Yeah. One of the reasons I wanted to set it up is because I've been reading a bit on it, because I'm I'm doing some background reading for some writing I plan to do in engagement with uh folks like John Betts, who recently wrote um Christ the Logos of Creation, an essay in analogical metaphysics, very, very interesting and stimulating work on this and adjacent subjects. But um throughout my whole intellectual, theological, philosophical pilgrimage, and I think this is true for Derek and for James as well, uh, I think we've all, like many pastors, like many people, kind of bumped into nature-grace issues. And you kind of hear it kind of in the waters, right? It's like somehow neo-Calvinism has something to do with nature-grace. And um, there's some reform supposedly, and I'm not uh uh questioning that yet, but uh some supposedly distinctively reformed account of nature and grace that maybe is a different than a Catholic account of nature and grace. And so you hear one conversation over there, and there's some recent conversations around the uh emergence of uh reappreciation of Richard Baxter uh kind of saying, oh, the reform took a particular account of nature and grace over against the Catholics and you know, these sorts of things. But then in other contexts, and um people are uh, you know, hearing David Bentley Hart talk in some funny ways, maybe, and people are um uh confused about what to do with some of these recent books he's written for for good reasons. And in the background is also, again, some nature-grace disputes. And so um, from all of these kind of backgrounds, there's all these places, Roman Catholic and Protestant dialogue, but also um metaphysically ecumenical dialogue, interestingly, where metaphysicians across the Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox spectrum, uh, more or less playing within the same conversation, are trying to do some work that actually has some perhaps some significant purchase for conversations future forward. And so uh basically this conversation is floating around everywhere. People are um all see it as doing something paradigmatic and uh principial, where if you kind of move it wrong, somehow everything downstream goes wrong, or at least that's that's one way of thinking about it. And uh, we all know more or less in the background, and and I suppose then this is meant to be sort of an informative episode, meant to be us thinking about this, us talking through it, even our own contact with it. I suppose Derek and I, maybe our bit best contact with it, was through reading Bob Ink. We're both big Bob Ink appreciators, and nature and great stuff shows up all over Bovink, and so you you start to get the sense, okay, this is a significant distinction that we need to understand relative to the tradition and such. And um, in any case, we all know that in contemporary discussion, DeLubach, you know, his name floats around, right? Somehow in the 20th century discussion of this topic, whoever you are, um, all the nature-grace discussion floats around, goes back to his post before, etc., whatever happened with DeLubach. And uh, as one of our friends recently put it, every time I read something for De Lubach, I'm like, oh, that makes sense. Every time I read something against De Lubach, I'm like, oh, that makes sense. Uh, but our good brother James here has done some real significant work in DeLubach. And um uh yeah, I guess more or less I wanted to start the conversation by passing it to James and just kind of maybe give people some 20th century intellectual history context about why DeLubach was such a big deal in this conversation when he went on the scene, what was thought to be at stake basically, and uh what he was doing, and then why was that such a big deal, who was reacting, and kind of what what conversation did that make that is uh being kind of everyone's feeling epiphenomenally out there in the in the conversational waters.

SPEAKER_04 4:53

Yeah, th thanks, Joe. Um I'll make a couple preliminary remarks before I jump into that. Is um um I I laughed when you said, you know, we assume, and you were just like setting up the conversation, like we assume that there's a reformed account of H and Grace that might seem to be uh um in opposition to the Catholic account. And I think what uh this discussion will expose is there's not one single Catholic account, right? So Bluebach is offering a view uh that is contested uh and still contested to this day. Um so that's one thing that's and I think you were I think you would can you would agree with that, and uh these issues are really complex. And yeah, they are doing a lot of work for a lot of people. They're you know, often people think the argument is over once they say, well, we just have a different account of nature or grace on whatever it issue is they're trying to debate. And I think first of all, that's just silly. I think that's that's too meta. I mean, I think some you know, but oftentimes it is just working at that real meta level where it kind of gets around the actual issue under debate. And and I think that's relevant to me, also. I'll just say, is um I did do my dissertation on Dulubak, but I explicitly tried to avoid this particular question because it's such a humongous can of worms. I told I left with Peter at my very first episode on our on the Civitas podcast. Peter was like, Well, what does Dulubak think about nature and grace? I was like, Peter, I didn't want to focus on that in my dissertation because it's just like a never-ending debate. And I and now, so I'll introduce his relevance, but I think also I imagine all of us want to move on from just uh the DeLubach reading on nature and grace, and what do we think about nature and grace? Why do we think this topic is relevant? And I think because one of the reasons I even hate the topic itself, oftentimes uh not here, but just with other debates, is a lot of the debates are okay, what does Dulu do we get Delubach right about getting Thomas right about nature and grace? And I'm like, I just want to talk about nature and grace. Like, what do we think? Uh so anyway, um, so Delubach's relevant to this, though. Yeah, and and I think um, Joe, you brought up an that book by Betts, and his his book is mostly focusing on trying to introduce Eric Shavara to um who whose name is impossible to spell. And if you have never heard somebody pronounce it, you wouldn't know that's how it's pronounced. But uh, but he uh he also developed a very similar view of nature and grace uh prior to Dulubak. And so Dulubak arises on the scene contesting the predominant view of nature and grace in Catholic circles of his day, but he's also inheriting or continuing in the train of what other people were doing, like Eric Givara and also particularly Maurice Blondell, who is a philosopher. And Maurice Blondell was a philosopher who challenged the pure nature ideas. That's maybe the best angle in. Is there something called pure nature? And a lot of scholars of that day basically were radically going beyond what, and this is what Blondell and DeLubach argued, going beyond what Thomas would say about nature and grace. They're they're actually radicalizing it. Thomas might have proposed some hypothetical thing called pure nature. Uh, but DeLubak and Blonde is like, well, but then other people are saying they're actually making that do too much work. And the problem is there is no such thing as pure we don't live, no human lived in this pure natural state that is that for which the supernatural is irrelevant, for which grace is irrelevant, for which God is irrelevant. And so what they were trying to challenge is, hey, like in uh uh Blondell's term that DeLubach picks up is extrinsicism, which basically is this radical separation of nature and the supernatural, where you can conceive of those as two completely distinct realms that don't inform one another. And and it was fascinating for DeLubach. One of the reasons why he started to toy around with these ideas was not just abstractly, it was very concrete. This had political consequences. Because basically, once you set up this kind of like separate schema, it's easy to start he he sees this as contributing to the emergence of secularism. It's then easy to think that we can order the world without reference to God, the church, religion, Christianity, uh supernatural truths, etc. And he thinks that that's profoundly problematic. Uh, and it leads to secularism, which ultimately results in certain forms of like neo-pagan idolatries that emerge on the political scene. So for him, that's where a lot of it came from. And then, but this this then set up a whole century of debate that's still with us today. Did did DeLubach so he said he was actually going back to read Thomas behind the Thomas, he was being more uh a careful reader of Thomas and the the nuances in Thomas uh behind the people who are interpreting him. And really, you could say he was trying to go back to the Augustinian roots of Thomas. Because for for DeLubach, he's he's very probably more Augustinian than Thomas, Thomistic. And the I'll give you two quotes that are near and dear to uh DeLubach's heart from Augustine that relate to this is Augustine's restless heart. So the the human person is constituted by uh this in this restlessness, this desire for God. That's the opening lines of confessions. Very Ecclesiastes, right? There was this kind of vacuum, eternal vacuum in the human heart, Calvin idol factory, etc. So that's one. And then the other Augustinian quote is um one of my other favorite quotes from confessions that is less familiar, is that God, where Augustine's praying to God, God, you are nearer to me than my inmost self. Yeah. And and so, so if God's nearer to me than my inmost self, that affects my understanding of what the human nature is, what my nature is. God is closer to me than me, than I am to me. And so those are really um very irrelevant, very kind of pregnant, pregnantly significant uh Augustinian lines that inform Blue Box views.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

I'm gonna go back just and I'm gonna put on my explain it to me like a five-year-old hat. And for those of us who have been following, and maybe not we're not all up on it, just to be clear that the the conversation around nature and grace, for those who are maybe not up on things, is about the the conversation about the relationship between essentially human nature as it's constituted and created, and kind of divine, supernatural, or even redemptive actions that either elevate or complete or are thought to um what's thought of as perfect, like bring to its final conclusion. And so part of the argument is around in a sense, can human nature stand on its own? Does it have its own kind of integrity as a created reality, with its own uh kind of created lower tier, this worldly ends and purposes that are intelligible without reference to what we might call the realm of grace, or in for some folks supernature, like the divine action or God Himself or uh God's works and so on and so forth. And so that's like the fuzzy um you know, five-year-old uh explanation of how are we relating nature and grace? Are the other way to put it this is essentially um is human are are humans essentially uh can you make sense out of their lives without reference to God for very long intelligibly? Um is that is that what you'd think about.

SPEAKER_03 11:57

Yeah, and I think without without reference to God. And it no, it's not a pushback, because I think it would just be filling out the picture. I think everything you said is actually correct. And one way to fill it out would be uh even on maybe the the strict two-tiered account where there's sort of man's natural ends and his supernatural ends, there's gonna be the claim man has some natural reference to God relative to a natural knowledge of God. And so maybe there's even natural religion, natural, and you, you know, hyphen, hyphen, hyphen, all those things, um, with the claim that there's kind of a coherence there without supernatural revelation, a kind of orderedness of those things, and the way um I think some writers are gonna put it an intrinsic umia in nature that must be fulfilled, as it were, in the particulars of some supernatural revelation. So there's not that intrinsic openness of nature to supernature in the sense that supernature um is is that that something in nature is actually not fully actualized without the advent of supernature making it full. And the and the reason there's that's the that's thought to be a big error. What's thought to be at stake there is if nature sort of quote quote requires supernature, this is the way to think about it, uh, or at least that's that's the way it's sometimes put, um, in order to be fully itself, something like that. Um, then then it then effectively you have kind of the anthropology, at least this is one critique of a Pelagian. One of the things at stake, that the thought behind kind of the metaphysics of Pelagius is that uh Adam be a nature is intrinsically ordered to grace, or that Adam by nature is an intrinsically capable of the full beatitude. And uh the theology of grace was not just a soteriological uh critique of Pelagius, but actually a metaphysical critique of Pelagius, that there's something actually, and um and there's more distinctions to be made. But the the point is, is even on, and you see this, for instance, just last comment I'll make to add to the relevance of this. You see this, for instance, in uh something like uh Christian nationalist movements today. Uh some of the discourse there, and this isn't meant to be a critique, it's just where do you see some of these things play out? Uh some of the discourse there on some sides will, you know, kind of be open to a sort of civic sense of religion that really is within that lower tier. Um, uh a civic religion that really is within that lower tier.

SPEAKER_04 14:19

I'll just throw one more line in here, too. I forgot to say, I mean, I mentioned the Augustine lines, but Deluoac's famous phrase that then carries a lot of weight in the discourse is the natural desire for the supernatural. And so that and he begins, that's where he and Blondell both begin. They both begin with desire, which is really fascinating. It's very phenomenological, like on from the ground up, like that that you just observe human persons and they desire these things, and you keep kind of doing like a you know, reductio, keep trying to get behind the the cause. What what are you really desiring? Well, what you're ultimately longing for is God. Uh the desire beneath all the other desires is God. And and they would just say, like, look, that's just the call to God is constitutive of the human person. And and you the human person can't ultimately be satisfied apart from that. And and often like when I when I read this, and I know there's debates and we can get into the abstractions, but to me, that just sounds really biblical, to be honest. I mean, uh, the the heart is the idol factory, you've exchanged the creator God for the creature, and that's that ultimately won't satisfy you. Broken cisterns, Jeremiah, like this to me just makes a ton of sense, is what the Bible says with a theological anthropology. And so uh in the and and so there are certain people who are very critical of it, of Dulubak on this, and they're doing kind of what you were mentioning, Joe and Derek, is you know, part of the reason is they're also there they they have political ambitions uh that are doing a lot of the work uh driving their some of their conceptual um distinctions. And one of the things is they they basically also want to say, and this is one of the Dulubak's claims, so I'm not just projecting this on contemporary people, but even DeLubach's own contemporaries, was they they basically want to separate the political from this the spiritual, the supernatural, that these matters don't aren't relevant. And you shouldn't curb your desire for national glory based on your religious sensibilities. And you can kind of exert all of your loyalties, longings, and and find them fulfilled there. And DeLubach was very, very critical of that. And that's one of the reasons why I still think this is relevant today.

SPEAKER_01 16:26

What's this so let me ask, what's the steel man here? Because I, you know, my relation to some of these traditions, I I got these at secondhand partially to from uh Bob Ink and other contemporary discussions and so on, and I've gone back in the tradition a little bit more, and I have a I think a greater appreciation for some of the logic, though, of a slightly more slightly more two-tier uh conception. Like so I know Junius has an account of nature and supernature and the the gifts of grace uh and the gifts of glory and the gifts of nature that you know I don't know that I don't know that Junius was has was animated by some of the same uh motivations that um you know the the the French nationalists that were that uh Dulubac is criticizing, nor the contemporary Christian nationalist movements, that sort of thing. Like, so I I'm what's the what's the steel man what's the steel man of of like no, we actually we we really do need a concept of maybe not absolutely pure nature in the most aggressive like later neo-Tomist sense, but that that distinction there need that that line is helpful and when you start to make it fuzzy or you don't um you you don't observe it, uh what gets lost, right? Uh one of the arguments is perhaps the graciousness of grace is uh is lost, right? Or uh I mean steel some somebody steel man that for me.

SPEAKER_04 18:07

Well, I'll I'll I'll steel man, but it won't be against DeLubach, because I think the arg de Lubach has all the resources to address all of that.

SPEAKER_01 18:14

I mean he he's I know I know he's he's not wrong except for all the papistry, but so just Yeah, but I mean like he like for I'd just say like he is so strong on both the distinction, they are distinct.

SPEAKER_04 18:26

Nature and grace are distinct. Um the hetero heter heterogeneity, that's a constant theme. The and I'll just introduce the before you know, moving on from DeLubach in a minute, but the best author on DeLubach's views on these matters is Jordan Hillibert, uh, Anglican guy, uh wrote a great book, The Drama of Human Existence. He's the most accurate representation of the nuance in DeLubach's thought that I've encountered. A lot of people are encountering, they're they're critiquing DeLubach through Milbank's read on DeLubach. And I just like, don't do that. Like, go to DeLubach himself. The heterogeneity is there, the distinctions are there, and also the utter gratuity of grace. Like, because and the thing, so in he's emphatic on this, God does not owe to nature grace. And that would be like so that'd be a lot of the concern that these figures would have in their reading is like, well, are you denying the gratuity of grace, like such that it's owed to the human person now, or are you denying the distinctions? And if you deny the distinction between nature and grace, then this conversation makes no sense. It's incoherent, right? Because then what is nature to which grace meets, which grace is meeting? So I just think that those are all there, but that would be the steel man is like you got to affirm the gratuity of grace, like God, God doesn't owe anything to man, uh, doesn't owe that grace. And Lubak will constantly talk about this as the double gift, like the first gift of creation, the second gift of deification or sanctification or salvation, all the different terms. And he's very emphatic multiple times. It is an oh.

SPEAKER_03 19:47

Yeah. Yeah, and one of the things that I it is felt to be at stake, I think, is um uh it's interesting. Some of the what James just said is also present in Bavank. Bavank is going to be fairly critical of a concept of pure nature and the way that they're going to think of the Donum Super Adatum. The kind of the at least the the Catholic construal as he construes it at the time, of the donum super adatum, and honestly come up with an account that's not terribly dissimilar to what you might find in a Delubach. And in fact, one of the critiques, and this is where you could you could probably feel the critique of the pure nature guys, one of the critiques you could see is that um look what happened to neo-Calvinism. They develop a concept of the eschaton that gets rid of the beatific vision and now just thinks of glorified resurrected bodies. See what happened is now the order of grace got lost, and we now confuse grace and nature. And what we're missing is there just what happened is we actually didn't bring grace back down to nature. We just glorified nature and forgot about grace altogether, and we forgot about the beatific vision. And that's part of what's go at stake there is to say nature is not capable by its own movement of the beatific vision. A sentiment with which everyone agrees, but effectively what everyone winds up having to do is still say the very fact that, say, James and Joe and Derek are destined for the beatific vision as opposed to my hairbrush means there's something about human nature as opposed to my hairbrush that has a capacity that's open to be, even if we're all, you know, a woman can't be pregnant except by somebody else activating a potency, and we cannot have the beatific vision except a potency be activated, but there's a kind of aptness for it that is inflected in our desires, those very desires Augustine talks about, that are kind of the umbilical cords connecting us all the way back to the source. But it's thought to be at stake that if we over have a sense that nature can as it kind of of itself get there, we've actually collapsed grace altogether the gratuity of grace altogether. That that could serve right, Derek. Um even if we avoid it, even if God has to do something for us to get it, we've on some other level gotten rid of the gratuity of grace.

SPEAKER_04 21:58

Yeah, that I'll add to that that that The dangers of like an a a very simplistic account of this, um, are one of them would be that that neo-Calvinist danger, the the peril there, which is and Dubach was very sensitive.

SPEAKER_00 22:11

In the second half of his career, this was the thing he was most sensitive to was kind of immunitizing the Eschaton, like uh, you know, uh basically, you know, viewing grace everywhere and and nature is capable of grace all the time, everywhere.

SPEAKER_04 22:26

You lose that specific specificity of Christ, the church, the sacraments, all these things. So he was like in his second half of his career, this is where he critiqued Joachimism, which that's another, we won't get there. But second half of his critique, he was very critical of this stuff. That's that's one thing where you just kind of like get way too this worldly in a weird way. The other thing, if you lose the distinction, this would be what people would be concerned about, is that grace gobbles up nature, like that that you lose nature also. And so this is some of the some of the critics would be like, well, now we can't even be concerned with politics or something like this because we're so heavenly minded, right? Like, and all the natural distinctions go away. That would be that would be the steel man critique. That and I just don't I don't again, I don't think do we but we move on from Dulubag now, but that would be the critique of this more integrated account, I think, also.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

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SPEAKER_03 25:24

You know, he's my DeLubach friend. And uh I'm reading stuff way after the Lubak that is like like um the book uh James and I have been discussing recently, John Betts Christ, the Logos of Creation, and maybe inheriting a sense of um a conversation that's been very rich and long involving Bernard Lonergan and many other, many other luminaries. Um and there's even them online, it might be worth even putting in the show notes, if possible, an 80-page summary of the history of the concept of pure nature, which is also a history of this very debate over the concept of nature and grace. And uh, if I recall, this 80-page summary makes the claim that uh the distinction actually originates in Chatan. Uh uh, it's not something Thomas ever says explicitly, but it's a kind of an aporia in Thomas, uh uh a debate among Thomas about how to resolve something in Thomas that that that out of which the notion of pure nature emerges and then takes on its own kind of reception history, which uh which then DeLubach challenges. And this is why there's kind of a back to Thomas movement. Um, what's interesting is by the end of this summary, and this is after major critiques of DeLubach by major people like Lawrence Feingold. Feingold is a very, I mean, he's a very, very, if you want to see the critique of DeLubach, Feingold is just sort of one of the heavy hitters. Um, this gives an enormous reception history of sort of this whole debate, but it sort of lands up saying everyone now agrees that DeLubach was basically right about the natural desire for God in Thomas. And that was a very interesting thing to read, that after a very long debate, it seems like there is a near consensus that Thomas really does, however, you whatever whether you think he's right or wrong now, and that's the normative, not descriptive claim. Whether you think he's right or wrong, DeLubach fundamentally gets something right about Thomas, and that is in Nathan man all the way to the abyss of him is a natural desire for for the beatific vision. That's Thomas.

SPEAKER_01 27:23

So my my thing is I don't I don't think that that's all fine, that's that's good. I'm wondering whether or not that settles um you know, I I guess that is the question, and that's that's been the historical question, but the the the kind of argument around whether or not we might say there is a nature and a super nature and that nature is aimed at grace and so on and so forth it doesn't doesn't necessarily rule out a couple of tiers, right? Um it just means you say that actually some of that stuff that you know the the really hardliners put in the in the upper tier, actually there's a corolla there's a corollary or corresponding element of that in the lower tier, and it's it's really a far more unified, although distinguishable thing. Um and I I guess I'm I'm still I'm still uh I'm still struggling with why it caches out the way it does. So argument of I I understand I understand why this stuff matters to some degree in the Roman Catholic Protestant debates. We've got the the the super added gift versus original righteousness, the effects of the fall. Like if you if if original righteousness is uh part of nature versus if it's if it's if it's meant to be some some added thing, then then when it's lost, you've got this mostly intact nature there uh that isn't maybe quite as damaged in the fall. And so the work of the Holy Spirit and regeneration, all that kind of thing, is a is a different sort of thing. So I I understand I understand why put it this way, I understand why Herman Bobink was angsty about some of this stuff in arguing for grace in the fall and redemption. Um but outside of that, I'm I'm I'm still I'm still lost here. So Joe, where where is it that you what what what's the question that's animating your your interest here um I I think actually it's a very good question, and I think probably um the book um we've mentioned a couple times here already, John Betts's Christ, the Logos of Creation is a good because he he gets into interesting questions about the sacrament, the nature of the relationship.

SPEAKER_03 29:50

So I teach philosophy and so the nature of the relationship even between philosophical knowledge and theological knowledge, the um the uh the nature of the openness of reason to fulfillment by revelation. And I think getting it deep, deeper, deeper, maybe rich conceptual understandings of what even it is to have an account of reason and what what where do we principially locate where theology perhaps transcends reason without punting, these sorts of things. Shavara in particular has a deep and fascinating account of the very rhythm of the logos and the human mind, the very dialectic of mind that sort of shows up all through the history of thought. Um, and likewise, even in the history of the Christian tradition. And so one of the things these guys are starting to do is even uh as a conversation, it's it's it's within this world that this conversation is happening. Look at a lot of the antimonies in the history of the, I don't want to sound like a Kantian there, I apologize, mom. Uh, looking at all the conver the the conversations in the history of the Christian tradition, um, and and looking at them as a dialectic. You know, why is it that something like Calvin and Arminius always shows up and the Jansen is always shows up? What is it about our the inadequacy of the way in which we've been able to state freedom uh within the history of the true the Christian tradition? Is there something about, is there something kind of unachieved here? Uh and a lot of this at the at the backdrop is a is a style of thinking about what philosophy does, what the place of theology is. Um and then also there there are creature creator discussions at the you know, one of the most complicated discussions in the history of the Christian church, of course, has been exactly how to say everyone agrees we're not God and God is not us in the when we actually nail it down. I know David Bentley Hart likes to say this, but you know, once you nail into the wall in various ways, he's the question is is like, is he a tier two-tiered Thomas after all? When you when you start to like, you know, pull apart, pull apart like the the fact that you actually do have to make a distinction between God properly speaking and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he loves to scandalize, nevertheless. Um, uh, nevertheless, one of the things that is at stake in this debate is exactly how to say, if we could, if we could put it where it's being discussed sanely, how do we say the creature-creator distinction that we all always already agree on? We all agree, everyone should agree that the creature and the creator are distinct in some radical way that we need to be able to say adequately. And this discussion is highly impactful ultimately when you sort of get into the weeds of it, on exactly how we say that precisely in a way that's satisfying to the mind and in a way that we might not always be used to, but is very much within the tradition. And that's that's a that's a part of the conversation as well.

SPEAKER_04 32:38

Yeah, Bet Betts does a good job in the book, even highlighted the reformation. You brought it up. This debate, these issues really surfaced on the debate over human freedom, right? And and and that's gonna be really relevant. You see the cat, the value here of this issue. Like you're gonna have to come up with some account. And if you have this very strong two-tiered or separated theology on these matters, or dualistic theology or whatever, you often uh when it comes to human freedom, you have a competitive notion of the human will and the divine will. And I think there's a lot of reasons to critique a certain just like dualistic competitive notion of those. And because like our will is renewed and sustained and made possible by the divine will. It's not like the divine will comes and just supervenes over our will, but uh makes it possible for us to uh receive and respond. So there's that kind of issue. And I also think there's the issue of like having, I know this is gonna sound super nerdy, but Joe's been sounding nerdy as well, so I can do it.

SPEAKER_01 33:36

Dog, that's that's ship sailed.

SPEAKER_04 33:38

Is uh is a participatory metaphysic, right? Like if you understand being is also grounded in God, it has no independent existence. Like it it it is sustained at every moment by God. And I would even say by Christ, we can come to like a Christological metaphysic. Uh uh at every single moment, like it can't exist apart from God. And insofar as it does try to exist apart from God goes into non-being, blah bada bing, bada boom, you're in some sort of more integral relationship between nature and grace than these strict two tiers.

SPEAKER_01 34:12

So part part of what's part of what's tricky here is the the the the there's there's the metaphysical layers. So we when we talk about freedom, I I've always kind of um distinguished between you talk about just actual metaphysical, you know, freedom of the will in terms of, you know, libertarian compatibilism, etc., at the level of divine knowledge, divine sus sustenance, all those sorts of things. But then there's moral freedom, right? I actually I think that I think that that kind of that kind of distinction tracks in terms of the you you might you might have a libertarian account that still has moral bondage, so to speak. Or I I think that's conceptually possible. And again, when it comes to to grace and the and the God-human relationship and all those sorts of things, there there is there is the moral need for grace and and and and a strongly morally inflected forgiveness, mercy, uh divine renewal of a of a of a of a of a damaged moral will. But then there is the metaphysical inflection of metaphysical dependence moment by moment on God. And part of what I get antsy around some of these discussions is I do like, I mean, I have a very strong uh dependence relationship. I I don't like competitive accounts of divine and human freedom. I also do not like fuzziness uh fuzzy accounts of participation such that and this is where the the nature supernature year gods line starts to worry me, is uh precisely the you know, the anti-extrinsicism m move towards intrinsicism that some pe when organicism, whatever, that some people uh don't have uh enough of a seatbelt on to keep them from going into pantheism or pan-entheism. Right. And that's where that worries me a bit more, and I start to want to have some of those clearer um extrinsic relations between God and man to some degree. If that if that if that if that puts it in perspective for you, I mean God is holy and we are holy by relation to him. We are holy only in relation to him, and yet our holiness, and and there's a sense in which our holiness is is is utterly derivative. It is his holiness, as it were, but it is not his holiness.

SPEAKER_03 36:46

Like his holiness is it is as derivative as we are, because we are nothing but a relation to God in one sense.

SPEAKER_01 36:53

And um Yeah. So th this is this is where all of the the hyper-organic, hyper uh non-instrinsic, you you start to look at uh you you the the the fuzziness that that James says DeLubac was worried about on the back half of his career is a lot of what I'm worried about, because I think that the push in contemporary culture right now generally is I mean, so you there's a there's tendencies towards a couple of different kinds of paganism, right? So there's there's the pagan dualism, but then there's the pagan pantheism, right? And and that that to me is is often more of my my my worry of finding God in all things, including my desire to you know sleep with my neighbor or whatever it is, and the the transcend the the cosmic transcendence of of my consumer impulses, you know that that element is what's more concerning to me.

SPEAKER_03 37:53

And I think this is I think this is totally legitimate. This is totally legitimate, and I think it's that's why it's important for us to get to to get at this as a metaphysically grounded claim that doesn't disappear into a sentimental formula. For instance, Augustine's, you know, might you're hard or restless until they find their rest in the in you is a deeply metaphysically grounded claim, not just a sentimental flourish on Augustine's part. And I'll get to that in just a second. Um, the kind of concern you're having, Derek, is very similar to Horton's concern in his recent trilogy on kind of the divine self, right? It's right there. There's a whole there's a whole history of maybe a blur of this distinction, maybe along an originist line if you want to look at it that way, and maybe a more clear distinction along an Irenaean line, if you want to make that distinction. I think Horton is going to tell the narrative somewhat that way. And I'm I'm not sure I totally agree with Horton's narrative, but it's a brilliant, it's a brilliant series that I'm just I love every page of it. And it's uh it's a very important series because it it is forcing us to get back at the principles to get at this question. And the problems if we get it wrong in in in this other direction are exactly what Derek said, which is it does in fact get converted exactly, exactly into this kind of pagan whatever. And this is why, even if, you know, um, let's say that we'll bracket for the second, exactly how uh what does David Bentley Hart actually think when you push him to the wall? Whatever the he thinks, he knows what people think he's saying. He knows what it comes off to say, oh, you are all gods. And I think there's a scandal being created, even if there's qu even if there's distinctions to be made, and you can you can technically say such and such over here, it is something almost nobody is going to, a distinction almost nobody's actually going to be able to arrive at to say coherently. And what they're going to fill in to what you are saying, the formula you're giving them, is in fact extraordinarily problematic.

SPEAKER_04 39:47

Yeah, I I I think I think the rhetoric is an important point here that you're bringing up there, Joe, is there's a dangerous way, there's an irresponsible or reckless way to have these kind of conversations. And I'm I'm okay saying I think David Bentley Hart himself is doing some of that. Um, and I I think that's very different. And he's actually really dissatisfied with Dulubak because he thinks Dulubach's still playing it safe or something like that. I and and like, and there's not enough clear, you know, you know, the funny thing about clear lines, sometimes being overly precise on mysteries is a problem, you know, because sometimes you have to live there, there's a certain point you do have to come to paradox and and you have to kind of say two things at once. And it's not exactly there's not going to be an exactly perfect way to harp to explain the relationship between. And I think Dulubak is trying to live into that minute. His his one of his key terms is paradox. Like there is a paradox here, and at a certain point you kind of come to that and you have to say it, and that makes Hart dissatisfied because he he does kind of want to go to a little bit more monistic route, which is Dulubak was constantly trying to avoid that.

SPEAKER_01 40:50

And I think that's a little more. A little more? I read that I read his last Christology book.

SPEAKER_04 40:55

Yeah. And uh and then, but so yeah, and and then so there's a reckless, there's reckless rhetoric. And I think the the responsible way to engage this debate, if you're if you're gonna get into it and you and you think, okay, I don't want to be, I don't want to follow there's there are two ditches. And I think almost every responsible person, like Betts, I think Glubach uh and others are trying, and DC Schindler, uh, who's another person that uh Joe and I share an affinity for, is you have to order one of my one of my favorite lines in Betts' book that gets at this is you want to order both the radical ordering of nature to grace and the equally radical disjunction between them. Like, and he even says that that disjunction can only be bridged by a kind of death to life. And I think all the best thinkers are saying something like that.

SPEAKER_01 41:38

So neither, neither, neither the one nor the other, but a third thing, maybe a third way.

SPEAKER_04 41:42

That's right. We got it in for today, but it's not every time it stops. It's neither over here extrindesis dualism or or this kind of pantheistic monism. It's it's this it is a and I think a participatory metaphysic, which is similar to what the is trying to avoid both of those ditches. And I think various people are are doing it with different terms, but I think once you start to notice that, I think that it gives you a certain charity. Like I think a lot of people are trying to say that. They're trying to avoid those two ditches, and they're doing it with different terminology.

SPEAKER_01 42:13

Well, and that's that's something I've noticed that is is is part of it, is that is that element of uh is just that element of like how much of this is actively terminological and semantic. And like, okay, I we we all have these like five pieces that we want to put, and like, okay, I'm putting I'm putting three over here in supernature and two in nature, and you're putting three in nature and two in supernaturature. And oh, you're we know that these component pieces need to be there before.

SPEAKER_03 42:41

There is no question, there's no question that a lot of the this is why that reception of literature right is 80 pages long. Uh it's because there's a lot of that going on. There's a lot of, we're talking past each other, you know, some sometimes people, it's there's, you know, just semantic problems. Sometimes there are principial differences. And the way, yes, this isn't a metaphysically rigorous way to put it, perhaps, but somebody like von Balthasar will say something to the effect of uh, you know, creation is uh a share in God's being given away to what is not himself. Uh, you know, it's these sorts of statements that they're trying to get your mind and and Chevara uh, you know, it's funny, I went to Catholic University and the student building I knew as the Priz. Uh that's what all the students called it because nobody knew nobody knew what a nobody knew who Chevara was. I didn't know who Chevara was. And so you kind of vaguely hear about him, and it's like, oh, this is a significant guy, I guess. But so when I first heard him, I thought it was Priziwara, because I didn't know Polish. And uh I but anyway, Chevara. This is one of the significant things is he he he locates that movement, though, that movement to paradox it in principial location. It's not just let me punt when it's convenient. It's actually what is the nature of the human mind? What is the we can know that, and we can know the kinds of things the mind can achieve and why principles. Principially, can the mind not say something about this? That's precisely where paradox is invoked. And he, he really, he really puts these places, he puts these comments in a principial place. And my the last comment I'll make for the for the evening is um uh just as in being, so as in freedom, just as there's this mysterious participation of our being uh in God's being, however we want to say that, and we do need to say it carefully, so do the does the older um formula want us to think of our participation of our will, our freedom as a participation in God's freedom. Uh it's a participation in God's freedom, as it were, given away to what is not himself, if we could put it that way. What is at stake in this debate relative to that? It's easy for us to just say our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you. But what somebody like a DC Schindler is wanting us to get out of that, and this is really what the whole tradition is getting out of that, is that our minds and our wills are not firing into the dark. We think of freedom in the modern world as just firing off into the dark. It's just having options toward, you know, whatever out there. But what at the point is is to say there's a fish hook in your mind all the way into the true, which is God, and a fish hook in your will all the way into the good, which is God. And everything that passes between you and that destiny is simply a face of God in some mode. God giving himself away in some manner and some imitation, some likeness to himself, some perfection, apt to be desired and open to be known by the mind. And the passing through of those things in the mind and in the will is the human journey to God, actually, through the created order, the destiny of which is God. And idolatry is simply the mind and the will stopping and saying, I found God in the in a in a in an icon, in a face of God. And but what's at stake there is then to say, at the very root of you is is this openness to what is beyond nature, to something that nature does not have precontained. I'm already open and desiring and firing toward the whole of God, the beatific vision. And there's it's thought to be a problem in various modes. But what's at stake also is to say, then you are hooked into the real. What it means to be a human is to have at the very depths of you a hook in you that's all the way into the depths of the very real. And that's what it means. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 46:14

I think you you brought up um, and I was thinking about it earlier about the philosophy theology related. That's another major that's actually how Blondell gets into the conversation. And it's very DC Schindler, his particular set of interests, along with the political, is I I think another where you see the relevance of this debate is how do you conceive of the relationship between philosophy and theology? I mean, uh uh, and I I think everybody, when you really start to press it, it's extremely confusing. It's not obvious. What does theology just come in and give all the answers and now fix all the problems that philosophy uh, you know, got itself caught up in? Or does philosophy have something actually, is it integrally related to theology and actually has something to contribute to the task, et cetera? Like, uh, you know, what is the relationship between these two? Blondell will say it's like, you know, philosophy generates all these conundrums and these questions, and it creates a sort of like deep longing and vacuum that theology then does come in and speak to those things in a in a very in a in a way that's informed by this, you know, revelation, this supernatural sphere. But theology actually benefits also from those questions that are that are brought up.

SPEAKER_01 47:24

No, that that's that's all very helpful. I I I have been playing devil's advocate. I I do know why it's important, but um I do often I feel the tension here of of how much equivocation and how much uh how how often this this issue is related to a lot of the issues we're arguing about, and then it's also made as a it's it's it's made into, as we've already mentioned, that that overarching meta issue that uh sometimes distracts us from like the the the more uh relevant issues at hand, like the more the more concrete problems. Uh the the lack of concreteness to these discussions sometimes is is uh is is a challenge, whereas I think uh perhaps uh a more pictorial thing of uh asking simply, you know, did Adam know God is a Trinity in the garden before he fell? And would he have would God have revealed it? And would would that you know th those sorts of things actually kind of make things more concrete to or to um uh ground the discussion in some ways that give me something to fight about?

SPEAKER_04 48:35

Yeah, yeah. So um not not that specific thing, but it it you know, the Adam stuff is is relevant. I think for a couple points here I'll just throw in because we're coming to the end. Is uh uh is there grace in the garden? You know, like and what and if so, what kind? And then we need to be specific. But like I I would say at least one in one sense, I mean, and we forget the dawn of soup. That's gonna get too complicated. Like, was there grace? Was was God did Adam deserve God's presence already? Um, did he merit it? You know, okay, I mean that's a big question. And but also, did he receive revelation? He did. Don't eat from this tree, you know. Uh, and he received revelation right away. And and August, and you know, okay. But the other thing I related to Adam and a metaphysic also that's I think really relevant to this topic that is has yet to be um explored sufficiently. It's one of the kind of my like bigger projects I want to engage in. You mentioned concreteness. Another way I would want to make this conversation concrete is not just talk about nature and grace, but creation in Christ. Like, where's Christ in this? And I I'm really interested in the in a conversation that tries to also figure that question. Like it, you know, you get to Colossians one, and you know, all things were made through the the word, John, John one, Colossians one, and they're held together by the sun, and they're for the sun, and all things are to be conformed in the Romans 8, to be conformed in the image of the sun. And this gets to the big question that's popping up now that I think is extremely relevant. I hope it's like the next phase of the nature-grace debate is this whole like, was the incarnation part of the plan all along? And I think that's a that's really relevant to this, and that will shape a lot of other questions.

SPEAKER_03 50:14

Yep. While while Bavink denies that, I will make my last comment that uh that Bobink is actually good on this. Uh uh. While Bavink, while Bavink, while Bavink, I think, possibly is wrong in some of the things he denies, maybe in some of the denials, what he affirms in in under the guise of nature and grace, I think is still quite reliable. Uh, and still really, you know, uh uh not, you know, most of um I don't think there's like a great deal of error in in the his positive affirmations on the issue.

SPEAKER_04 50:51

Yeah, he's a little uh people might know I I reviewed Sutanto and and Brock's uh primer for first things on and I I bring this up. I I think Bob Ink is a little fuzzy on these matters. Um and part of it is because the radic I I think one of the problems in a lot of these debates is how we're positioning relative to our interlocutors. Is um so so if you want to say, well, grace restores but doesn't perfect or doesn't elevate nature because you really don't want to sound like the Catholics for certain reasons, I think you already you foreclose certain probably important conceptual debates you need considerations you need to have. You know, you get to this because then he will say things like we go, grace takes us beyond the garden. Well, how does that that was that was that's confusing of is it just restorative or not?

SPEAKER_03 51:36

I mean, like And that's the thing is he's just putting it underneath and even says our covenant of works is kind of doing what Donum Super Additum does. He he he doesn't he doesn't fully he he re and this is kind of what Derek said sometimes it's a terminological thing, and that's the thing is the actual picture underneath of Bobbing's rearrangement of the terminology is not so different because he has an account of the beatific vision and the resurrected body, and and he doesn't have that as kind of deeply extrinsic to man ultimately. He just he there's other discussions that make him arrange the terminology differently.

SPEAKER_04 52:10

Yeah, we go beyond the guard, and most evidently uh obviously by the fact that we have the spirit of the risen Christ in us. Amen. Amen. That puts us a very in a very different place.

SPEAKER_01 52:21

Well, yeah, I mean that was the whole that was the whole point. I mean, uh, this was actually Matt Matson's dissertation on this was really helpful in in terms of Christ takes us where Adam was supposed to go, not just where he was before.

SPEAKER_03 52:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 52:34

Restored to our destiny. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:36

Yeah. Anyways, guys.

SPEAKER_04 52:38

But then why say grace doesn't perfect or I mean again you rule out too many other considerations that make it that make the discourse it unnecessarily intractable. I think that that would be one of my issues. Yeah. Why can't it be restored to our perfection?

SPEAKER_01 52:53

This is this is why we should just talk about the doctrine of God all the time, like I want to. So um, guys, hey, thanks for this discussion. I uh this is very kind of high-quality old school mere fidelity discussion where we talked about a lot of issues, not sure we really landed, hopefully muddled things, hopefully clarified them a bit. But I did learn some, and I'm I'm really grateful to you, James and Joe, for uh for patiently um expositing on this. We'll we're we're obviously gonna return to this issue because again, we've seen it touches so many other issues. So I think we're we're we're gonna we're gonna come back around to this. We'll probably finally give James uh a super lapsarianism issue uh episode some someday in the next year. We'll pick a book and read it and argue. But um for now, if you've listened to us thus far, uh and this was a blessing to you, uh thanks for thanks for listening. And then uh feel free to rate and review us, share us on iTunes, uh Spotify, that sort of thing. But for now, this has been Mere Fidelity.