hi my name is James cut singer and you're listening to Catholic versus Orthodox tell the listeners a little bit about yourself if you would please who you are what you believe in how you came to believe what you believe Who am I I was until last year when I retired for health reasons a college university professor of religion philosophy at the University of South Carolina where I'd taught for 38 years educational background Cornell College and Harvard I grew up in was raised in a very vacuously liberal Protestant Church in the Midwest where basically the doctrine was Jesus was nice and you should be nice to niceness consisted largely in activism social justice work very little understanding of doctrine or transformation or what it actually meant to be a Christian frankly and it was in college that I first discovered something more substantive interesting the Christianity probably did make some sense in my high school years I've been sending off for books about yoga and Zen and Sufism which is Islamic mysticism because I was totally bored but the Protestant church knew there had to be more but again it was College that I thought well hmm there may actually be hidden treasures in the depths of the Christian tradition that the analogous to parallel to some of the things that I'd read about in Buddhism Hinduism Sufism etc so that became interesting to me and then a large part of my work in college consisted in well extracurricular reading I guess you could say in the father's the patristic material especially Agustin but then also in many of the Eastern Church Fathers Gregory of Nyssa Gregory theologian the Cappadocia Maximus the Confessor and by the time I had graduate school I was really convinced for scholarly reasons I guess you could say at that point that the East had better arguments for their position than did the Catholic and by extension Authority or either of the Protestant West I always ask my guest about early childhood the first encounter with God and religion probably when I was nine we lived in a on a farm rural area northern Illinois so I can remember quite vividly sitting next to a bed of tiger lilies orange and the only way I could put it I guess at the time was that the entire sort of universe became Tiger Lily I don't know what you would call that exactly some kind of absorptive mystical experience contemplative experience I had not prepared myself for it it just sort of happened and then I remember my mother said afterward that something happened you didn't know what had happened somehow I went from being her son to being her grandfather I was nine so that was I guess maybe a an important event I don't know if you know this about me but I came to God through solipsism hard solipsism where I actually was convinced that I am the only being and that my body is an illusion and the other is an illusion the truth to that you know depending on who you think you are there is a deep self all of the capital asks if we're speaking in Sanskrit we'd call up the Atma which is in fact the only real thing but your ego was not of course the only real thing but David Ross is not the only thing that exists yeah I still believe in solipsistic odd of solipsism I've seeded my place to the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob he is the only person that can say I am you know being answered to the question that Moses poses on Sonya whom should I say has sent me I am that I am outside the contacts all up system doesn't mean of course something quite different to most people but yes of course yes god is the only person of whom we can predicate the subject and not have a tautology mm-hmm do you mind if I just ask you some philosophical questions now I'm often when I argue with atheists in the comment section of YouTube videos it's not very highbrow stuff but a lot of the accusations I get against me are that I use circular reasoning and the only comeback I can think of is that yeah we'll all good reasoning a circular do you agree and if not why not well I don't know that I can I don't understand what you're saying exactly I think that you have to start in truth and then come back to truth I think of truth as one as United in God that everything is one in God everything comes from God and everything goes back together simple truths which serve as premises perhaps and syllogisms or arguments of various kinds leading to conclusions which amplify deepen that premise into something far more substantial and compelling so I don't think that's exactly circular yet there could be a subjective progress or learning but the way I see it is there is that pure white light and then there's the prism and that the rainbow that comes out the other side and any component part any frequency with the nice colors they're all real and they're all meaningful as unique and separate colors but there's absolutely no way to deny that they come from white light and they're going back to white light in terms of a religious perspective on the rainbow that we have in creation everything comes from the white light everything's going back to the way you like to say anymore I think I do understand actually it's a blue efya says consolation the philosophy where I think at one point lady philosophy says something like she says something boethiah says well that's circular and she says well of course so you ought to read that I forget whether it's the fourth or fifth book of the consolation of the philosophy oh okay can you talk to me a little bit about your prayer life what is it like and how do you advance and do you take two steps forward and one step back sometimes there isn't always just half a step half a step half a step forward Oh Lord of mercy there's a lot of back and forth there's a complexity to the psyche that requires diligence self attention and we've got a lot of stuff in us that has to be deprogrammed you have to be decoded from a lot of habits and we're in different states different days our minds are able to focus to different degrees different days in my case in part depending on how physiologically physically I'm doing that day how many drugs have got in me and through a chemo radiation treatment etc we are psychosomatic beings that the whole thing is affected top down and bottom up there's a so Mattos icuk and a psychosomatic relationship you see what I mean here well yeah then it's it's it's complex but I mean to simplify a much larger discussion the prayer life consists in the canonical prayers of the church the Orthodox Church I have a prayer rule as it's called in orthodoxy as do most Orthodox laya them and I'm not unique in that respect that by the way I would say is one of the differences as I see it at least between contemporary Orthodox Christianity and Novus Ordo post Vatican to Roman Catholicism that there's much more of an emphasis even at the level of laity even in the parish church on everyone having a disciplined self-discipline prayer life so again back to me in my case it consists of the canonical prayers of the church then followed by use of the Jesus Prayer I'm sure you're familiar with that Lord Jesus Christ under God of mercy on me coupled so far as I can with my body with prostrations so bringing the body itself into play with what's going on in the mind what's being said with the mouth and that in turn then followed by silent sometimes called noetic where mental prayer coordinating the Jesus Prayer with the breath and then finally deepening that even further to a silent openness to God perhaps bringing the sense of God's presence into different parts of the body focusing perhaps on the forehead the heart the relationship between the head and the heart and coordinating that with the breath so I mean these this is a sketch I wouldn't want in this context to say too much more I'm not a star X I'm not a spiritual master or a teacher and I wouldn't want this to be construed as me telling people what they should be doing you see but that that's a brief kind of outline of what I try to do myself you mentioned the head hair connection that's always something I've been trying to nurture like get connected there's a bit of a disconnect recently I've been thinking a lot about the fact that we are made in the image and likeness of God meaning that we have the use of reason and freewill and all if the Orthodox agree with that but that's the Catholic definition of having been made in the image and likeness of God is that we are rational and we have free will so the Orthodox I think would say sure sure and let's add then also the body because the image of God the Econ in the Greek the image of God is none other than our Lord Jesus Christ in whose likeness were made and the understanding in the Orthodox world would be that um Christ being God the Incarnation is actually an eternal reality it did take place yes 2,000 years ago on one level but then his revelation 13:8 I believe says the Lamb of God was slain from before the foundation of the world so in the divine perspective there's always been a coming of god into the human condition so that we can actually say christ was incarnate in some way pre creation of man who being made in his image was made in His image rationally volitionally and corporeally yeah i intuited that as a Catholic that Christ is first in everything and so he is the model he's not only our model in terms of the love of God but in terms of construction of the human form yeah but I want to just talk about the reason and freewill it seems to me that the will is much much much more important than the reason because we'll never be damned for being wrong or making an error or believing a lie or anything like that but we will be wrong even if we believe the truth if we believe it with bad will with ill will we can be in danger of eternal damnation so it seems to me that the will is more important than the reason is that fair to say I wouldn't say that that's a they're equally important I guess I mean to insist obstinately unbelieving X is a use of the will you're choosing to do something of course heresy as you know etymologically means choice so I choose individually myself to go against what the churches taught that's a heresy so I'm using my will but but what I'm using my will to do is to assert or affirm a belief a truth something that my intellect tells me so the two I think work hand-in-hand it's two sides of one coin okay yeah we can't really separate them no also I'd want to make a distinction I guess but I'm not sure what you mean exactly by reason in the Greek vocabulary there's a distinction to be made between the word noose which means something like intellect and the word beyond the way which means discursive reasoning or argumentation so news is the direct apprehension of a transcendent essence without having to argue as it were to and beyond Oh eeeh is a use of argumentation again or discursive propositions to get to that truth so if my reason 1 means the Anoa I would want to add intellect as also coming into play at this point were made in God's image insofar as we have not only the capacity for argumentation but also the capacity faculty for direct apprehension of God experientially yeah I think reason includes memory and intuition I just heard a talk by someone a Catholic that was talking about memory and they were saying a lot of interesting things about how essential memory is and I seem to remember in the confessions that st. Agustin talked about memory and how it allows us to string together a thought that was in the context of time like how are we now and what is the past in the future and how do we string together thoughts so memory do you have anything to say about the Faculty of memory in relation to religion well just so just to piggyback on what you just said for Agustin memoria is not just with reference to past it's also as you said a way of stringing together binding together in some way past present and future the Greek equivalent is an omnis s and in this is the more common pronunciation of the term which has to do literally with raising the mind up so many says that part of the word is from the word for mine I'm not has to do with uplifting so for example in the liturgy when one says do this in Hunnam nisus of me he's not simply with reference to something that's past historically though it is in fact past historically that christ pronounced the words of institution at the mystical supper but it's also a reference to the transcendent or eternal reality again of the of the incarnation of Christ's redemptive work on the cross and of his resurrection I mean all of these things are being remembered it's interesting actually in the Orthodox liturgy in the anaphora or the part of the service having to do that includes the words of ins God is being thanked for creation incarnation redemptive work of Christ on the cross and thanked for the second coming as if it had already occurred because it has you see so yeah the both memoria and an ominous has spread much more broadly than our term in English memory mm-hmm I have many things I want to talk about what about Christian unity it's very important to me that we become united in Christ what kind of approach do you think would actually work to bring about unity among Christians that's the biggest question so far and I've got no idea let's just stick with Catholic and Orthodox right we can leave the Protestants off to one side and certainly other religious traditions I think off to one side from my point of view at least the primary obstacles to Orthodox Roman Catholic reunion and Inter Communion are doctrinal and character and I distinguish the word I guess doctrinal from theological in other words there are theological positions speculations classical authors on both sides of the fence who formulate things in different ways and I think probably a lot of that can be solved or resolved by dialogue but there are certain dogmatic or doctrinal things that stand out that I think just our obstacles I don't know how to overcome the obstacles number one would be the Roman Catholic understanding of the Bishop of Rome's universal jurisdiction and the infallibility as you know I'm sure you know this the the Orthodox ecclesiological model is far more conciliar than monarch achill and it's understood that bishops together in Council have infallible authority to promulgate doctrine but didn't know one of them and of course classically the problem for the Orthodox is that the Western Bishop the Bishop of Rome as it were went off on his own unilaterally making some statements that ought not to be done it needs to be patriarchs bishops meeting in Synod together inspired by the spirit to promulgate doctrine so that would be one question that would have to be in some way resolved I know back in the 90s there was a Melkite Catholic bishop elias's oak bee who came up with a statement a two-prong profession of faith which he thought could maybe help bridge the divide between Rome and the Antiochian Orthodox the Mel kites are kind of in the middle position their liturgy is entirely Orthodox Antiochian but they're in communion with Rome he was trying to figure out a way to bring this together two points to his profession of faith number one I believe yeah everything that the Eastern Orthodox Church teaches number two I'm in communion with the Bishop of Rome has the first among equals according to the understanding of the Holy Fathers of the East prior to the sysm well that sounds pretty good from an orthodox viewpoint it's basically saying bishop of rome you've got total rights in the West that's your domain that's your diocese but leave everybody else alone in the East you can't tell them what to be doing about things it didn't fly you didn't fly either from the Antiochian point of view and then Pope emeritus Benedict the 16th meant Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger pushback against it as well and these kind of local efforts toward unity really can't go anywhere there needs to be a far larger dialogue etc etc both sides push back against that that would be number one issue for me papal primacy how to understand what it means Quinn in 1870 in declaring the doctrine of papal infallibility it was said that the Pope speaking ex cathedra has a right to promulgate doctrine which is II reform a bowl elf and without the consensus of the church well the Orthodox go whoa whoa whoa whoa wait a minute if without the consensus of the church you mean the church is not a democracy and everybody shouldn't be voting on this cool that's fine we believe that if it means you shouldn't be talking to other bishops about this we're going no this is not this is not the way it was done in ancient times that would be number one probably for me the next doctrinal issue would be the whole question of purgatory the Orthodox are on board with the notion of after death sanctification purification but as I understand it at least purgatory in classic Roman Catholic doctrine is also connected to temporal punishment which the Pope has a right to remit either he in whole or in part and the Orthodox go away in a minute we're talking about sanctification why would you want to remit that why reduce the number of years and why call it a punishment why not just say that we're transforming the person were only that he was transformed on this planet but that would be an issue for the or that ice to try to understand that one to the Orthodox do not have any form of indulgences whatsoever you know with the brief time I think maybe 16th or 17th century when there was a kind of from the Orthodox point of view unfortunate lat and the influence on some of the Eastern teachings where there was a kind of maybe a brief practice of something like that but no the Orthodox renounced that entirely they say no no no that doesn't make any sense it's for God to indulge it's for God in His wisdom to say that this soul you've been purified enough at this point thank you and now I can admit you to the full bliss of the of the heavenly life but no not a not a human being on the plan that's make any sense to an Orthodox Christian can you pray for the holy souls in purification after death oh yeah no we would say certainly that um the prayers of the still-living are very important for the departed soul and especially liturgies in which they're commemorated absolutely for sure yeah yeah yeah you're helping them but you're not determining as it were this is the length of time that you need or something like that and then thirdly is the infamous Filioque issue the adding of the and the son to the third article of the Creed and you know for me and myself I would say there are ways to parse that I think maybe it's a gimmick and a theological issue where you could say okay I believe in the Holy Spirit the Lord the giver of life who proceeds from the father and the son in the sense that the spirit proceeds from the father through the son but just to leave it as it is and then especially to remember that historically he was simply inserted by the West in the Creed without consultation with the East these goes you know you just you don't mess around with the creed that way and I think even you know Pope now st. john paul ii recognized that and was willing to himself step back from the Filioque as a kind of olive branch to the east I can just tell you right now unless the West were completely to extinguish the Filioque from the Creed there'll be no no unity it's just a historical problem it's been around too long too much acrimony too much argumentation nobody's gonna go into Union as long as that's there yeah what about acumen ISM what is accumulative for the East you tell me what you mean by the word and we'll go from there acumen ISM is dialogue with those who are outside of the visible holy roman catholic church but the church teaches that although there is no salvation possible outside of the holy roman catholic church there are sell mythic elements of the church outside of the church and the way that I like to think of this is Noah when he was building his ark he was wandering around inviting people in spreading the message and there were cults to Noah that sprung up and it just so happens that only eight people got on the ark but everyone was invited and accumulative message of Noah where people are exposed to these saving messages like he's handing out flyers like there's a flood coming get on the ark and for me that's a human is immune ISM is the saving elements of the one holy roman catholic church outside of which there's no salvation there are elements of that church outside of the church and they're working to bring people into the church the Orthodox would would would be in favor of that understanding and that use of the cuman ISM of course with a view to helping people see that the Orthodox Church Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church and helping the Catholics to recognize that so witnessing to in dialog with but not for the sake of reaching some sort of latitude area and Via Media where you give up some stuff and I give up some stuff when we come to the middle no Orthodox would agree about that yeah what about the Jews in my religion all the Jews will be saved and then the question becomes who is a real Jew right I will not renounce his promise to the to Israel yeah sure yeah but it's taught in the Catechism of the Catholic Church that this is not just some poor tech fancy that the Jews will all come in as a body can you just talk about the Jews generally how are they seen in the East are they seen as enemies that crucified our Lord are they seen as God's chosen people or how are the Jews seen number two as God's chosen people and the Orthodox construe the Orthodox Church is the continuation of Israel in other words the Orthodox would say were the Jews were the continuation of the promise in fact and yeah God will graft the Jews on to the saving well even as the Gentiles have been grafted on as it were to the Jewish stock the Jews will in turn benefit from the the redemptive salvific work of Christ among Gentiles and will be saved as well the key chapters I think maybe you're thinking of are actually Romans 9 through 11 and it begins well really an eight I suppose we've got to like stuff about predestination and foreknowledge and God making it doesn't God have a right to create pots they did then smashes and all that kind of stuff but by the time you get to Roman's 11 Paul has resolved the issue he's been wrestling with for those last several chapters and says God has consigned all men to disobedience that he might have mercy on all in other words the Jews are gonna be brought back in as well this actually opens the door to the whole question of universal salvation so are the Jews going to be saved well from a universalist standpoint and you've got various Saints in the Orthodox East who were Universalists the answer is sure the Jews will be saved and the Hindus and the Buddhists and the Muslims and the atheists though it's going to take them a while to come around and they may need a lot a long post-mortem purification before they actually get the picture the Jews are not hip so facto enemies of Christ and me more than you and I are we're enemies of Christ and our hurts when we sin and when we act consciously against what we know that he wants of us but no they're nuts it's interesting you know Christ on the cross asks says to God forgive them they know not what they do and you wonder what's the antecedent of them well it had to have included it seems to me Caiaphas Pontius Pilate Judas because all of them were acting in a kind of ignorance they didn't really get it and we're therefore in need of forgiveness are you do you have Universalist leanings oh yeah oh yeah more than leaning there's not a Universalist sees it not condemned by your church no that's kind of a false understanding of things people sometimes say the fifth think you medical council condemned it but it's not really true dogmatic position of they were frankly if I did the east of the West on the question of universalism which is why one of your great theologians hans von Balthasar can write a book called dare we hope that all men be saved answer yes I don't want anyone to go to hell but my church teaches me that hell is real and it is possible to go there you you agree with that much right well it's possible to go there the question is whether hell is eternal but that we can think of God is a truly loving being who is goodness itself consigning someone to torment and misery for eternity based upon finite culpability and mistakes in this life and that doesn't make any sense at all to me that just seems to me nonsense do you believe in Satan and do you believe that he will be saved there are angels who rebelled against God for reasons of national and ignorance and who hold themselves in the final analysis be forgiven and saved yeah so yeah I believe in the salvation of Satan and the demons what percentage of Orthodox share your view is it the majority would you say or no oh no but this is certainly an openness in the East that that you don't find in the West there's a strong minority position of Orthodox Christians beginning again in the early patristic era with Gregory of Nyssa Isaac of Nineveh Maximus the Confessor big name for us all the way down to the 19th century Sergei Bulgakov 20th century some North abducts authors as well significant figures in other words among them canonized saints but it's an already viewpoint do you understand those who oppose universalism why they're so determined to insist that hell is eternal and real I think it's a miss reading of scripture in part and then theological positions that are indurated in them by ages of misunderstanding so for example you don't really find much if anything in the letters of Paul to suggest that there's some kind of eternal damnation what you do find are a lot of passages that suggest universalism in the in the Gospels you find some language of Christ concerning eternal perdition eternal fire eternal punishment that in each case the adjective eternal is the Greek word io Neos coming from the word the noun I own which is our Aeon in Eon is an age an age that can be very lengthy in extent but insofar as it's an age it comes eventually to an end so it's not endless perdition fire and Punishment its perdition or fire a punishment last thing until the end of an age now what that might mean how long that might be is a different question of the course but it's not eternal there are other words that could have been used in the Greek IV on other words it could have been used adjectives to describe the punishment if in fact Christ had meant it's always gonna be the case that you're tormented forever and that's not what I in only just means a degree hmm I think without an eternal hell there is no basis for morality in this short life because we can say well I'm gonna get there anyway I'm just gonna take the long route I'll see you there see in heaven later because it depends on whether your motivation to be a moral or an ethical being a good being is based upon fear of Papa or whether you recognize as I think everyone will eventually recognize being good is good for me it actually helps me flourish it actually contributes to my own growing happiness to be less and less selfish and more and more selfless to be more and more open to others to be far less ridden by the habits and the the slavery of selfish indulgences when I begin to recognize that I say that morality isn't actually something that I'm gonna I'm gonna like and that's finally a better motive than fear beer actually is actually just another egoic thing actually if you think about that you know I don't want to get crushed I don't want to get tormented I wouldn't want to be in his shoes to be tormented it's still kind of an egoic thing and he'd go he go testicle thing and its own funny way so I know I know I don't think that's right I think there may be people that are more easily quickly motivated by the fear of punishment I don't know me meet me there are actually the early church fathers like Nyssa Gregory of Nyssa who taught a doctrine of the universal salvation we're a little bit guarded about that and when they would preach to the the hoi polloi to the masses they would often talk about you know you need to be careful here there's going to be post-mortem pain and maybe that was an important you know way of motivating incentivizing a certain group of people I don't know but it just doesn't finally make any sense I listened to your and something but I also listened to one other piece you did about different religions and how they're all good and they all have mystical components and this sort of thing can you just talk about the essential goodness of religion sincere and authentic religion I'm not talking about Scientology or some other cult but real religions I had a philosopher on my show recently who is a philosopher of religion and I asked him what is religion and he said there's no definition no one knows we're scratching our heads no one has any idea I don't think that's true but that was his answer but I'll ask you what's your answer what do you think religion is and what is that essential core of the different mainstream religions that you look to and as a good thing well it's play etymology here religio means to bind back so religion connects us back to our source connects us back to the absolute connects us back to the transcendent and ultimate however construed and however named now Brahman Allah God and it provides us with a set of doctrines but also a set of sacraments a set of ritual behaviors contemplatively ritual practices that assist us in regaining a relationship to that reality every religion that I've ever studied every True Religion authentic religion sees it as being a combination of God's in Christian language preethi me and grace God's revelation to man but then also calling up a man to respond in some way the Greek term for this is sinner year or sinner J we are co-workers with God one thinks of Philippians two 12 and 13 work out your salvation with fear and trembling , for God does it work within you every religion says that the absolute is working in some way to bring man back into union with him but man must cooperate with that and do something too so I mean you know that there's the classic aphorism Apple thumb that you find in the East especially and Irenaeus athenais Shahzad became man that man might become God every religion says the same thing you know Nirvana became samsara that samsara might become Nirvana Atma becomes Maya that Maya might become Atma the transcendent enters into the imminent in orbit the imminent might regain its its relationship to the transcendent the up comes down that the down might go up they all say the same all the true ones do I mean and for me the evidence for the truth the cell diffic advocacy of these other traditions I study well I guess it's twofold I read their scriptures I read the writings of their great masters and teachers and I see all kinds of fascinating parallels it can't be historically explained but it just seemed to be saying the same thing irrespective of contact between the cultures but then secondly the lives of the great saints in those traditions you know look at somebody like Mansoor haha Lodge great Sufi saint who was crucified by the exoteric Muslim authorities for saying ha nul ha which in Arabic means I am Allah well he discovered that deep deep deep stealth unity between himself and God and they flayed him and crucified him for it but I mean he was clearly Christic kind of figure I mean it's something been done like that to him and if he was a Christian you'd say well the great saying of course he's a great saint and he'd go lessness selflessness I was on stage oh maybe 10 years ago now with the Dalai Lama never been that close to someone of that stature and just to see this guy up close I was a few feet away from him had some dialogue with him through a translator just childlike just totally uninhibited in front of a thousand people and CNN cameras and just you know cleaning his glasses kind of looking around and just it was just they just didn't know ego they're just totally transparent and I'm going there's got to be something right about what this there's the newer you know he can't just think it's not a nut he's a good man so we get by their fruits you shall know them well what the heck I have to say there's something going on there what about the New Age movement and Gnosticism those are two related ideas can you just talk about your impressions well when I hear new aged I think dawning of the Age of Aquarius and we've got a whole new dispensation here now and the old religions are bankrupt and we need to have something like Scientology or whatever it is I think that's nonsense Gnosticism I mean there's ancient sectarian Gnosticism in the early church which taught that matter is bad and a bad god it created the world and all that kind of stuff well that's silly but you know you're in a us second century major church father writes a book called against heresies the larger title of which is the refutation and overthrow of all knowledge all gnosis falsely so-called implying that there is a true noticed us a true Gnosticism a true way of being a gnostic so gnosis just means knowledge it means someone who has by God's grace and his work achieved a certain maturity and who longer no longer simply believes in things but has actually come experientially to know them and be transformed by them that's good gnosis we should all behave toward that kind of Gnosticism hmm what about the Baha'i faith have you heard about that yeah don't know too much just know that they're a kind of Oh spread this exactly they say the BA who Allah they call him a prophet his teaching hasn't away surpassed and supplanted the older traditions that they see themselves also I think is in some way incorporating the good of all those other traditions can a synchronistic and character get some pieces of things there you know the bajas are actually a Muslim heretical group I mean the kid came out of Islam and the traditional Muslims regard them as heretics hmm do you think that the more educated you become in any field the more divided and separated you are from everyone else on the planet because you become specialized you have your pet theories and it differs more and more the deeper you go the more it differs from your friend your best friend in high school who took a slightly different path intellectually and he's studying his thing deeper and deeper and deeper and you're just growing apart do you think that education separates us because that's not what Plato said but it seems to me to be the case well yeah some people Plato's Plato's understanding of Education was radically different from what you get in the contemporary college or university contact he was educating the soul and I don't think they're doing now they're trying to get out of college to get a good job and make money I guess that's the main thing these days perhaps pet theories divide the Plato's education and remember it's a my utak education designed to draw out Edie do Cara means to lead out what is already in the soul and to expose it and how the person you know come to terms with it individually experientially not inserting information and data of some sort of recondite kind that can help you be a better hedge fund planner or you know IT manager or something like that so those kinds of education the modern kind may divide the Plato's was I think meant to unite and dinner for centuries yeah so at the end I don't know if you know but at the end of my interviews I asked my guests to give a little closing thought just something pleasant nice a little message of hope for the listener do you think you could say something to my listeners to inspire hope in them so far as I am concerned there's only one real question finally why is there anything other than God and the answer and it's a hopeful answer I think is there isn't all you got to do is all you got to do got to do is all you got to do