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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
PJ (00:02.691)
Hello and welcome to Chasing Leviathan. I'm your host, PJ Weary, and I'm here today with Dr. Joshua R. Brown, Associate Professor of Theology at Mount St. Mary's University. And we're talking about his book, Aquinas and the Early Chinese Masters, Chinese Philosophy and Catholic Theology. Dr. Brown, wonderful to have you on today.
Josh Brown (00:23.571)
Thank you, PJ. It's very nice to be here. Thank you so much for the invitation to chat with you.
PJ (00:28.561)
So we talked a little bit about this right before we jumped on. Why this book? For me, it's such an imaginative leap, such a really cool leap to engage through Thomism into classical Chinese philosophy. So where did that journey start for you, and why this book?
Josh Brown (00:47.438)
Well, you know, all academic books have their own weird genesis and, you know, the pet projects, the academics are a bit weird. So mine started with my dissertation research. I'm a Catholic theologian, but I grew up Southern Baptist in North Carolina, which I never really knew Catholics or people of Chinese descent, actually, ironically enough. And then I met and married my wife, who's Malaysian Chinese.
which was a whole new world of learning how to celebrate Chinese holidays and actually try to speak Chinese at home. I'm not very good at it, but I try. And then a couple of years in that, when I was studying for my doctoral work, I had to write a dissertation and we started to actually have children. So I faced this prospect of having to, you know, like I was, I was then Catholic. So I'm like, okay, I have to raise children who
are both gonna be Catholic and there's this Chinese part that our family now has, I know nothing about really experientially. So I started the way that nerds would do it. And just like, study Chinese philosophy and try to pull these things together. And so that led to my first book, which was on Hans Oswald Balthasar and he was a Catholic theologian in 20th century and incorporating Confucian philosophy.
namely, filial piety into his theology. And so this book really came out of that experience in the sense that I had tried to do a comparative thing of drawing resources into Balthazar to kind of expand and develop his theology. And I always liked Aquinas and I thought Aquinas in Chinese philosophy just made sense of the project. You know, how do you actually do that? And the fundamental problem with that is
As I'm sure a lot of the audience will know Aquinas is not a perfect system, but it is a very coherent system. It's very kind of airtight, you know, and it's hard to say that he didn't consider, you know, this aspect of human nature enough, you know, to, you know, it's hard, to, to fix Aquinas, you could say. So I had to think of a different way of, of, of doing what I wanted to do, which was to put these two in conversation. And so the way I landed on it was eventually to.
Josh Brown (03:13.314)
we get to ask a question, which is, let's imagine Aquinas would have had the ability to access and read the text of early China, the way he did Aristotle and the Neoplatonic philosophy, right? What would he have thought about what he found? And I was like, well, okay, I'm certainly not Aquinas and he certainly couldn't read Chinese, but I can try to imitate his mannerisms, intellectually speaking, and try to, you
do what he might've done in some small way, right? So that was really the genesis for this book is trying to follow Thomas's example of how to think about non-Christian traditions in a theologically compelling way, I'd say.
PJ (03:59.939)
So you're using Thomistic logic in a broad sense or Thomistic reasoning to dialogue with Chinese philosophy. Is that a?
Josh Brown (04:09.354)
In a certain respect, so ultimately my goal is to develop the capacity for what I call Chinese Catholic theology. Now, I say that because obviously I'm not Chinese in ethnicity or anything like that. So what I mean by that is a kind of Catholic theology that takes seriously the philosophical, intellectual, however you want to label them, the resources of Chinese tradition.
as part of the soil which can grow a compelling, fateful Catholic theology. So that's what I want to do. And so the idea is that Aquinas is able to find in Aristotle resources for articulating Catholic truth. that's really important, right? Because he doesn't baptize Aristotle. He actually rejects a good deal he finds from Aristotle. He finds Aristotle lacking in certain respects.
But he has the Pauline exhortation to test everything and hold to what is good. He does that with Aristotle. It was kind of like, well, okay, he does that really well. So what can I learn from him to do that with Chinese philosophy? And in some respect, there's that heavy borrowing from the Thomistic reasoning and the Thomistic system, because that's how you gain access to it. But because I clarified this, had an anonymous reader.
who mistook the project as trying to fit Chinese philosophy into like a Thomistic box. That's not what I was trying to do. Yeah, we really tried like, really like, really trying to just embody what would it be like to read Chinese philosophy for theological reasons, the way that Aquinas read Aristotle and like follow his model for that and articulate what that can be. So I don't know that exactly answers that question.
PJ (05:42.333)
Right, right.
PJ (06:01.111)
Yeah, no, no, it's like as a faithful Catholic. mean, and I obviously you don't you don't have a better exemplar for a faithful Catholic than Thomas Aquinas, right? So that's that's who you're following. But you're trying to read Chinese philosophy as a faithful Catholic. One, I deeply sympathize. I think my my wife would laugh at this.
Josh Brown (06:15.884)
Yes.
PJ (06:25.433)
you're trying to figure out what to do with your family, so you start reading more philosophy. That is definitely the way that I would approach things. So I did not realize I had such a personal application for you. That's fascinating.
Josh Brown (06:31.356)
Yes.
Josh Brown (06:37.206)
Mm, yeah.
PJ (06:40.601)
Obviously, want to respect the privacy of your family, but how have you felt that it has helped you personally? mean, was the original kind of, not the total original goal, but there was that application there.
Josh Brown (06:48.558)
Yeah.
Josh Brown (06:54.446)
It's kind of funny, I sometimes tell people that, and when it came to the actual philosophical interest in writing about Confucius, so I became interested in Confucianism as a kind of way to get at Chinese values and things. And what happened was, I imagine as a theologian, I imagined I would just write books about Balthazar the rest of my life. And then the funny thing was, like, of instrumental reasons for turning to philosophy to help my family and things, and I just fell in love with Chinese philosophy.
like I honestly, now I consider myself, you know, to think out of a very Confucian way about things, you know, and, because at the same time, right. So I would say not just for my family, but just broadly speaking, you know, I find myself drawing deeply upon the mongse or the xunze or these classical Chinese texts, to actually think about, you know, certain, the moral life and my cultivation of virtue that I'm not very good at.
You know, and there's plenty of good wisdom for that in Confucianism. And also things that I learned to value. So my early research was on filial piety or xiao in the Confucian tradition. And I've noticed my radar attention to the filial duties that I have that I feel like I fall short in regarding my parents and my family are heightened. My concern to
to give my children the possibility of enacting proper relationships between their mother and myself and each other according to family structures, right? Those are kind of very ways that my own thinking about how the family works has become very Confucianized, you could say. So yeah, I think in so many respects, I've noticed that how reading Chinese philosophy has enriched
my life, both in terms of domestic things, but also as a Catholic theologian, it's really been a beautiful thing.
PJ (09:01.129)
I also grew up Baptist, and so I feel a deep desire to illiterate. there is something really...
Josh Brown (09:09.004)
Yes, I was a Baptist pastor for a while. I know what you're talking about.
PJ (09:11.795)
there you go. You have to literate. So the Catholic Confucian really does have, or the Confucian Catholic, however you want it to, but has a really nice ring to it. It's interesting. You mentioned Hansur's on Balthazar, but I feel like that's slightly off topic, so I won't. I have his, I believe it's on Beauty, his systematic, his one series, The Glory of the Lord.
Josh Brown (09:20.184)
Right, Yeah, it does.
Josh Brown (09:38.754)
Glory to the Lord. Beautiful book.
PJ (09:41.621)
Yes, I have that downstairs, maybe that's a different, you know, when you write your Hans Erzvon Balthasar book, then I'll have you back on. can talk about that. So you wrote it kind of out in six chapters and each one has a different topic. So you started with heaven. Why start with heaven? And what did you glean and what were you able to incorporate from the Chinese conception of heaven?
Josh Brown (09:57.826)
Yes.
Josh Brown (10:10.648)
Well, so yeah, in terms of the book itself, the way it's structured is basically two chapters on each part of the Summa, right? So the Summa Theologiae, Thomas Aquinas's, know, Magnus Opum in certain respects. You know, the first part deals with God and God's self. The second part with human nature and ethics. And the third part, Christ in the church. Yeah, you know, essentially that's a basic structure. And so, yeah, the first part is
on heaven concern the Chinese conceptions of the divine or how Chinese philosophy can aid theological reflection on God's nature. So that's where those come from. And there are of course, if you mentioned heaven, so for those who are interested in such things, the Chinese term is tian, which means, you know, it's often translated heaven with a capital H. Some people argue for a very naturalistic conception of heaven as though it's just, you know,
nature personified and not really a deistic concept. There's other ones like in Protestant Christianity in China, they tend to emphasize the use of either shun or spirit or shangdi for God. But in Catholicism, going back to Matteo Ricci, there was always this recognition of resonance between the Confucian notion of heaven and the tian and the
Catholic notion of God. actually the Catholic notion, the doctrine of God or name of God in Chinese tradition today even is primarily Tianzhu or the Lord of Heaven. And so you could say one thing I get in the book, there was this classical debate about whether or not God can be called Tianzhu or can be called just Tian. And the Kangxi Emperor in China, he
Speaking against a papal legate for heaven's sake, really great story to get into. But anyway, he actually kind of affirms that the classical Chinese idea of Tian and the Catholic idea of God are more or less in dialogue together. They're on the same kind of vein, right? They're not exactly the same, but they're in the same kind of dialogical zone, right? And so the chapters on Tian were in a way kind of, you know, unpacking that
Josh Brown (12:38.432)
way of connection. And so what I do, one of them looks at Mengzi, who I've argued for a while now has a very robust conception of heaven or Tian as a theistic, deistic kind of force. Especially for Mengzi, it's as Tian as a providential force guiding the cosmos. It's really profoundly there in there. And then the other text I talk about in chapter two of the book is the
Sorry, I have a stutter. The matzah, right? Which is one of the most clearly theistic kind of texts. So the matzah understands Tian as this divine force that loves everyone and it's heaven's love of everyone that grounds ethical prescriptions for caring for everybody else, right? In the simple right version.
And then there's a central chapter of the matzah is called on Tan's intention or Tan's will. Right. And so what I do in the chapters then is to take these kind of like for for manza, especially the idea of Tan as a providential force and matzah as Tan's as having will or intention that we ought to attend to. yeah, again, imagine Aquinas is having read these texts and what would he have seen there that kind of
both resonates with the Christian notion of God or helps us articulate the Christian notion of God or is very different from the Christian notion of God, right? So that's the kind of structure of the chapters. So I don't want to ramble on. So I'll pause and say there's more questions you want to get into about those particular aspects.
PJ (14:19.885)
That was great. So why is it just because it's been classically translated this way? Why translate it as heaven if it has this providential force? Like that does, I mean, and maybe it's because there is like less of the idea of agency. Is that part of the reason why? I'm trying to understand why it's not translated as God generally.
Josh Brown (14:33.422)
you
Josh Brown (14:43.288)
Well, I mean, in part, think because so James Legge, who was a Scottish missionary and started kind of the modernist analogy, at least in the West, you know, I think he always translated his heaven with the capital H. In part because so the terminology of Tian is found in the late Zhou dynasty, which is around time of Confucius's life. There are texts that speak of an earlier period or from an earlier period.
Josh Brown (15:14.646)
It's still Joe, but it's the...
the Western Zhou dynasty, like some of the odes and the books, writings in classical China. And they all speak of like Shangdi, which literally translates to the emperor on high. like Legg tends to translate Shangdi as God. So that's part of it, I think, is he thinks Shangdi is a much clearer analog for Deus, right? Than is heaven. But also,
Heaven has multiple meanings or Tian has multiple meanings, right? So one meaning is it's contrasted to the or earth So Tian Di means like heaven and earth, right? And it can mean like the sky, right? And so like for example, the modern Chinese a term for weather is a Tian Qi, right? So it but kind of like, you know, the celestial sphere in Latin, you know, it does speak to
PJ (16:04.172)
Okay. Yeah.
Josh Brown (16:12.91)
the higher levels of the natural order and can be a metaphorical reference to the supernatural or transcendental sense.
PJ (16:21.581)
very similar to the way that heaven is for us. that's, okay, I'm under, okay, yes, that makes sense.
Josh Brown (16:25.038)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, granted, this is part of the argument. I don't always, you you could spend a couple of hours arguing about how to treat heaven, whether it's naturalistic force or not. So I do some of that in the book that, but I have another book that I do more of that work in that I co-wrote and I'd point people towards that as a, if you're interested in those conversations, that's another book I could talk about. But in this context, you can see things like this.
Josh Brown (17:01.89)
So like for Mungza, right? There's this classical passage in Mungza book five. So for those who don't know, the Mencius or the Mungza is one of the major classical texts of the Confucian tradition. And so he talks about things like there's a succession narrative of kings, classical sage kings. And the story goes that this kingship passes from King Yao to King Xun.
Mengzi deals with the question of, okay, how did the kingship get passed down? Did Yao, the one of his disciples asked, did King Yao kind of pick King Xun and say, I'm not gonna make him the king? And there actually, were some contemporaneous histories or just after histories that say exactly what happened, that he selected him and gave him the kingship. And Mengzi says, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yao did not choose Xun. He couldn't because that's not his ability. It was heaven.
who accepted Shun, and heaven is the one who made him king. They say, okay, but then it raises the question, okay, well, how did heaven make him king? Right, so is the heaven just pulling him out, saying, I this guy? And then there comes a very famous line, Camboyen, that heaven does not speak, right? So heaven is a kind of providential force that's guiding how things go, but it's not a, you say, personal deity, perhaps in this sense, right? Well, this is.
Question I asked him a book like it in what sense are we talking about can as a daily, right? So Ted heaven doesn't speak it dies, but doesn't speak. So what does it do? How do know what Tevin heaven wants? Mung's says that King gal puts King Shun or Shun into employment He has him heading up the rights of sacrifice to the spirits and the spirits are pleased. He has him oversee economic
judicial judgments for the people and the people are pleased. And with the spirits and the people being pleased, that is the sign that heaven has accepted Shun. So you have this, I talk about this, this kind of weird moment, right? So Tian is both this force that really truly is governing all things. And yet it's also, it doesn't speak, it's not set apart from the world in the way that Christian theology would demand, you could say. So it's a bit more subtle. And
Josh Brown (19:24.524)
I think this is to your earlier question, right? Why don't we pick up on these things a lot? think because, especially after the enlightenment, you're probably not prepared to deal with those kinds of subtleties of, you know, the, what'd you say?
PJ (19:39.713)
agency.
Josh Brown (19:40.886)
Well, I was thinking more in terms of an enchanted world, right? Yeah, maybe something like that. But okay, yeah, sorry, I paused.
PJ (19:54.893)
Well, yeah, no, no, it's great. And what's interesting is there's subtleties to us, but for someone who lives in that system, there would be obvious things, right? that's... Forgive me, just a little bit of background here. What time period are we talking about for this?
Josh Brown (20:14.924)
Right. Yeah. So Confucius himself lived near the end of the, what we call the spring and autumn period. So around, let's see, was it 6th 5th century BC? Mungza is closer to what we call the Warring States, or in the Warring States period. So you're looking like 4th to 3rd century BC. That's fairly close, but within that era. So the texts that I deal with in the book all come from before the Han dynasty.
you know, so they're all pre first to second century BC, mostly, at least as far as we know, right? So some of the texts do kind of, there's an uncertain lineage of the textual history themselves. So some may be composed or edited in the Han. So we don't really know for sure all the time. So that's the caveat, but otherwise, yeah, that third to fourth century BC area is what we're looking at.
PJ (21:10.507)
And what time period was the emperor responding about? Because it sounded, I think you said he was responding to a papal legate. that?
Josh Brown (21:18.83)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This was in the early 1700s. Yeah, yeah.
PJ (21:22.583)
Okay, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, and I'm reading God's Shadow, and it references a very small, and maybe I'm getting this incorrect. I am literally just pulling this out of random side reading I did, but that there is a history in early Chinese culture of, not obviously post-Confucius, because he's even before the time of Jesus,
Josh Brown (21:41.602)
No worries.
PJ (21:51.651)
But there is a Christian tradition in early Chinese history, considerably before the West comes over and meets.
Josh Brown (22:01.826)
Yeah. Yes. Well, yeah. So this is, I don't know, just to be clear to the audience, I don't deal with the book, but I mentioned these things. So yeah, there are various theories about when exactly Christianity arrives in China. There is a theory, I'm not sure how accepted this is, but a theory that Thomas the apostle actually makes it. And it's based on some discovered archeological pictures that people found. I'm not necessarily convinced by that, but
Whatever. But at least the earliest kind of lasting community that seems to have been founded was in the Tang dynasty. like the, I can't remember the exact years that Al-Abuyid made it, but between the sixth and eighth centuries AD, there was a church of the East that is the Syrian, sometimes called the Nestorian church, had a missionary community that made it there and seemed to have made it for a while. Then you have the Franciscans.
after the voyage of Marco Polo, they send Franciscan missionaries like John of Montecovino gets there in China and the Yuan dynasty, which is the Mongol dynasty around the 13th century. The thing though about that is worth noting is that they only really focus on missionary work to the Mongols. They don't really put anything in Chinese language or the Han Chinese people as they're called ethnically. So it's really
at least the first Catholic engagement with Chinese culture is Michel Rugiere and Matteo Ricci in the end of the 16th century. Right. That's the first one. But yeah, so the end, but when they get there, fascinating enough, there are Chinese Muslims, there are Chinese Jews, there are Orthodox traditions in China. And more specifically things like the Orthodoxy in Russia.
find his way to China about 50 years or so after the Jesuits. So it is far more complicated than people often think.
PJ (24:11.383)
Yeah, yeah, Forgive me. I know I've got a little bit off topic, but it was a fascinating... I don't know if you're familiar with the book, but the idea is that Christopher Columbus, the reason he wanted to sail around to India and China, which of course he kind of like melded in his head, was because of Marco Polo's tales and he wanted to pincer what he saw as the Muslim threat in the Ottoman Empire. so, yeah, it's... Anyways.
Josh Brown (24:15.854)
No, no, no.
Josh Brown (24:36.513)
fascinating, yeah.
PJ (24:38.849)
I don't know how historically good it is, I'm obviously not like an expert in that, but it sold well, so I mean it has to be least somewhat good, right? That's definitely the way we measure scholarship. Yes, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's, anyways, that's a whole other thing. So, apologies, I got off there, but I did think it's interesting, because even as you're talking about Chinese philosophy, most of what you're working with though is like obviously pre-
Josh Brown (24:42.861)
Right.
Yeah. God's shadow. Is that what the name of the term? Okay. I'll that up.
Josh Brown (24:58.524)
No, no, worries.
PJ (25:08.249)
pre-christian by virtue of like, it's before Christ even came around.
Josh Brown (25:09.57)
Yes, Yeah. Well, the reason for that in part because, you know, there is, how would you put this?
There are certain kinds of forms of Chinese Christian theology, Catholic theology that, you know, they focus on just dealing with like church teaching or Christian doctrine in Chinese ways and adapting to Chinese political situation, for example. And I think that's perfectly legitimate and fine. But there's also a strong tradition, it makes perfect sense, of having to engage the recovery and rereading of classical Chinese texts, right?
Like the earliest, not only did missionaries do this, but the very earliest Chinese intellectuals who converted to Catholicism did this. And so in some respects, my engagement with heaven, I was getting this earlier, my engagement with heaven in the book is really driven by a kind of theological concerns and debates that are inherent to the Chinese Catholic, like...
tradition, right? Is it the worldview, right? If you're going to be take Chinese culture seriously and take Catholic theology seriously, I think you have to deal with these kinds of questions. you know, there's a certain way in which I don't think there's been the way that I explicitly go back and do a, I try to do a fine tooth comb kind of reading of the Chinese texts, very, careful readings. Like you don't see a lot of that per se, but I think the kind of general engagement with
these ideas and taking them seriously as part of a.
Josh Brown (26:51.214)
a coherent dialogue about the reality of God. Right? I think that is the case in Chinese Catholic theology. Right? And so you could say with that sense, I'm actually not that concerned about whether or not, you know, secular philosophers of Chinese thought agree with my reading or not. What I care about is there's this whole Chinese Catholic tradition that wrestled with these texts. And I'm interested in trying to improve and join in on the fun of that.
PJ (27:08.013)
Yeah.
PJ (27:19.193)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we talked a bit about heaven, a little bit about heaven's will. And I would like to spend, I think, the bulk of our time, kind of those last two chapters, this idea of the sage connecting with the idea of Christ and the idea of filial virtue, which you yourself mentioned has been very personally impacting. But also I could see a lot, for some reason that kind of clicks in my head as being a place where there's a lot of crossover.
Josh Brown (27:38.274)
Yeah. Yeah.
Josh Brown (27:47.714)
Yes.
PJ (27:49.283)
But you deal with two different conceptions of goodness and man's moral nature in the third chapter. Can you talk about those two different types of goodness and how you interact with them?
Josh Brown (27:55.234)
Yes.
Josh Brown (28:04.012)
Well, so yeah, I thought this was a stroke of genius on my part. I not often pat myself in the back, but I thought this was great. yeah, can stop being humble. No, so there's this classic debate in Chinese philosophy within Confucian tradition between Mengzi and Xunzi, who is just after him. So you mentioned you had a person talk about Confucian ethics before.
PJ (28:13.345)
I love it.
Josh Brown (28:32.246)
And so they seem to seemingly have fundamentally different perspectives on this. So, Mungza says that ren xing or human, we could translate xing as nature. It's not a perfect term. I translate it as moral nature to alleviate for some of that. It's not quite natural in the way the Latin works, but yeah, close enough. Close enough for our purposes here. So he says that ren xing is good.
And Shunzi says Ren Xing is corrupt or evil. So yeah, they're at odds, right? Apparently. But when you look at Dilit, so the idea was to have like, what would it be like for Aquinas to read this debate, think about it very deeply? And would he have sided more with Mengzi or Shunzi? How would he have negotiated this? Right? So on the one hand with Mengzi, who I'm sympathetic towards a lot, I teach Mengzi quite a bit.
What he means by the idea of renshin is good is that there is a kind fundamental inclination towards goodness. And I think what it actually really means by that is we, what it means to flourish is to have more virtue, to be good is to flourish, right? And there is something in us that kind of like the Christian tradition or Catholic tradition thinks about as like the kind of principles of natural law, like the inclination to do good and avoid evil.
Now we have a kind of pre-natural sense of that doing what is right, good is flourishing for us. And among the things that essentially you have to explain human wickedness as kind of either cutting off or going against those kinds of capacities that we're made for and we flourish, we're meant to intended to like grow into, to flourishing. So he uses an analogy sometimes of, we have
These moral feelings in us, like compassion, for example, we have a moral feeling of it such that when we see a child about to fall into a well, we all feel like alarm, like, my God, right? We're like, you you have the people beside you have a little car bump bumpers, right? You're like, you you jump, right? And so you have that kind of compassion and such a feeling in you. And that's a sprout. So he says, heaven gave you that feeling that becomes this initial little budding of virtue.
Josh Brown (30:59.63)
And if you cultivate that properly and grow it properly, you'll become benevolent. That is ren, which is the cardinal virtue in Confucianism. So in that sense, being virtuous is the natural outgrowth of the plant of the human soul, we could say. And so when we don't become virtuous then, is that because we've been ourselves, is it because we've lived our best lives, or because we've undergone a horrible, horrible problem?
That's what he wants to say by saying human nature is good. Xunzi, he wants to say that actually the situation is that, emphasizes the ritual traditional Confucianism, right? And education, right? So he said, essentially human nature by itself, almost like Hobbesian to be honest, at some points, right? We're kind of greedy. We want things a lot from other people. have unrestrained.
uneducated, unformed desires. And that's not great. It's chaotic. But his solution is not, you know, the Leviathan threat in the state, right, so much. Well, in a certain sense, but although it's the rulers who understood human nature, understood Tian, heaven, or the Tao of heaven, and they understood how to flourish. And so what did do? They instituted proper rituals that
PJ (32:08.663)
Yeah
Josh Brown (32:27.466)
He uses an image often of like taking when you make an arrow, right? Like a crooked piece of wood and you turn it over the steam and it straightens it, right? That's what Confucian education and rituals do to Shunzi, for Shunzi. So his whole thing geared towards saying, wrenching is not good. It is made good by artifice, by the wisdom of the ritual sage to actually make it good. So that's their fundamental difference.
And in some respects, they both see flourishing in moral virtue. They just have different points of emphasis, I think, in how they get there. And so in the chapter, I say that in many respects, Aquinas would probably side with Mengzi about general kind of ways we incline toward virtue, the way that Aristotle would say that the function of man is best lived out in moral virtue. That's a very Mengzi kind of thing.
I think but also I think Aquinas would say that Manchunza when it comes to like sin and the brokenness of the human heart Bingo and Mungza doesn't say nearly enough about that. I think he would say so yeah that is to I think Aquinas would be a very he would love this debate I think I think he would find really really compelling things on both sides Even if he eventually sides a bit more with Mungza
PJ (33:51.193)
And this is out of left field, but I had a guest on to talk about the different ends and purposes of man that, from the Roman Catholic view, there's that debate about whether there's one supernatural end or there's a natural and supernatural end. And I'm Presbyterian, so of course I was like, well, there's only one, right? Like, even as you're talking about this, like, it sounds like a familiar, you know, like...
Josh Brown (34:03.118)
Mmm.
Yes, yes. Yes.
Josh Brown (34:12.44)
Yeah.
PJ (34:19.321)
Is man totally depraved or is he, you know? I always love finding, I had a professor who went into Indian philosophy, kind of as he wanted to, was a philosopher of religion, and found a lot of the same arguments that Hume made about how we don't have identity because we don't know that these memories are ours. So it kind of like breaks it down.
Josh Brown (34:19.917)
No, yes.
Josh Brown (34:38.926)
Mmm.
Josh Brown (34:46.943)
Yeah
PJ (34:48.025)
In the Indian tradition, it's like it's all a dream we could wake up at any moment and so there's not this continuous identity And so I see I see something similar here. It's like I'm really I mean totally different context, but we see In some ways this is this is a fundamental difference You see like of course Aquinas is going to go more with the mungja like like you have Calvin is gonna be if I'm saying it correctly shunza like
Josh Brown (34:53.826)
Well, yeah.
Josh Brown (34:58.733)
Yeah.
Josh Brown (35:10.243)
Yeah.
Josh Brown (35:14.498)
Yeah, Yeah. I think that's actually this is a rabbit trail, but it's appropriate in this case, you mentioned the dream thing. Actually, there is a so what I don't do the book, I don't deal with Taoism only because I don't know if Aquinas would have been as found as compelling in some respects because there's things like there's a very famous story of in the Zhuangzi, which is a Taoist text about this man.
PJ (35:15.371)
Yeah, like a hundred percent that's gonna be Calvin, right?
Josh Brown (35:42.862)
who's having a Zhuang himself dreaming that he's a butterfly. And then he wakes up and he says, I don't know if I'm a butterfly dreaming I'm a man or a man who's dreaming he was a butterfly, right? And I think so in Confucianism, there's this kind of answer about metaphysical realism, right? That is not accepted by other Chinese traditions. I think this is part of the thing of Aquinas. There are similar commitments that underlie the moral visions there.
PJ (35:52.355)
Right.
Josh Brown (36:11.63)
in a way that say like Aquinas and Calvin have a lot in common, certain commitments that are in common, and yet they can also then branch off into their own kind of very different interpretations of human nature, for example. So yeah, there's definitely a kind of complexity like that that is very resonant, definitely.
PJ (36:30.009)
With that, when we talk about the two different ends, so one interpretation of Catholic theology from what I understand is that you have a natural end for man and a supernatural end for man. With mongja, would that be a little bit more of that take that obviously our love for virtue, and you said it in a lot of ways, like the Aristotelian view, is kind of...
bent towards that natural end and then Aquinas would come along later and add the supernatural end? Is that a good reading here?
Josh Brown (37:03.693)
Well, way that Catholic theologians who use those terms, right, they usually refer to things like, you know, the pursuit of the cardinal virtues, which are, you know, natural virtues that we can acquire through moral effort, right? That is a natural end. And so to accomplish the life of virtue or in Confucianism, because to become a junzi, which it means a moral gentleman, It'll be a kind of a natural end or natural happiness.
right, because you are fulfilling what your nature is, you know, ordered to be. And then supernatural happiness is fulfilling that in unity with God. And like, so like in Catholicism, the sticking point, right, is that, well, I mean, but isn't like even like the life of virtue, the life of reason, or reason ordering the human soul, isn't that ultimately ordered towards God as well? Like, so can we really speak about a natural happiness cut off from that?
actual enjoyment of God, that's where you get the sticky points. But certainly for Mengzi, he doesn't have that conversation. Right? I mean, so there's certainly like life after death and stuff in Confucianism that people often neglect. The spirits live on, spirits are still interacted with. But certainly that notion of it's man's end to unite with Tian. Mengzi wouldn't have understood that kind of notion of seeing things.
PJ (38:08.653)
Right. Right.
Josh Brown (38:31.662)
Right. So yeah, I think from a Catholic perspective, certainly you'd say this is a natural kind of happiness. It is the natural form of happiness of trying to just live the flourishing life as best one can. Now granted, just to throw a wrench in this little bit, one fun thing is, yeah, in Confucianism, ultimate kind of, so the Junze is like the moral gentleman. It's like a man of virtue. It's an ideal.
PJ (38:48.441)
I love wrenches. Go for it.
Josh Brown (39:00.174)
But there's actually other steps of ideals. So it's like most people that's what we can achieve. But people like Confucius or the classical ancient sages, they, they accomplished becoming sages. Actually, the word for sages are shangren. And ironically, or not ironically, I don't know why you would put it, the Catholic tradition in China uses the word shangren to describe the saint who also attained, you know, unity with God and being to the vision.
PJ (39:23.747)
Hmm.
you
Josh Brown (39:29.622)
So there's a way in which there's a kind of, if the moral gentleman, just morally rural virtue is a kind of accessible kind of natural happiness for Mengzi, right? There's room to think that the Shunren or the sage is something a bit more than that. Not quite supernatural happiness, but maybe like a natural happiness to like a exponential degree, right? And certainly Chinese Catholics thought that there was resonance.
between what the Shongren is in the classical period and what the church teaches saints are. So yeah, it's, there's things to be said about that maybe more. But yeah. Yes, yes.
PJ (39:59.639)
Right. Yes. Yeah.
PJ (40:12.503)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, like you said, yeah, it's an ongoing conversation. So I just want to go back just to this, think a relatively simple question. That's always dangerous to say. What is Ren? You called it this cardinal virtue. What is Ren in the Chinese tradition?
Josh Brown (40:31.906)
Yeah, yeah. Yes, So see you.
I can see it. Yeah, I've on my shoulder the character up here, Actually, this is helpful because I didn't expect to do this, right? But the radical for the word Ren, it often translates benevolence or humaneness because the radical is another word, Ren, which means human. And this is the radical for two. And so Ren as a virtue,
PJ (40:47.001)
I love it.
Josh Brown (41:07.082)
or I obviously
PJ (41:08.217)
Forgive me. Forgive me. What is a radical? Is that a linguistic term?
Josh Brown (41:11.086)
The radical is like, it's a... The way Chinese is written is that there are some characters that take different forms, like radical forms, and they become the root of the graph for another word to extend meanings. So in this case on the this one, it's the left-hand strokes are another form of the character for the human being.
PJ (41:38.585)
Mmm.
Josh Brown (41:39.57)
And then actually a lot of characters that all start with that graph and they all mean something usually connected with human person in some respect. And so, well, that didn't point to the idea of that benevolence, could say, or usually kindness has been compared to agape or charity before. It's the virtue of how we love and care for others and for
later Confucian tradition especially, at least, it was seen as kind of the central virtue that makes us human, right? So the way we care for other humans is living out the human role, human place in the cosmos, right? And so that actually ties back into the Mengzi piece, because Mengzi thinks that essentially becoming virtue is becoming ren.
It's something that heaven or 10 has has, it wouldn't say designed, but has given us resources to become like heaven has given us these moral emotions, this, these beginnings that if we cultivate, then we will become rent. will become truly human. Right. And in a certain sense, our goal is to truly become that it's almost like, you know, you're a presentation. don't know if you have this in your background, but like John Paul the second and his familiars consortium letter, he says, you know, family become what you are.
That's the mission of the family to become what it is. Similar for human beings. Become what you are, Mengzi might say. You are a human, now become that and you actually flourish, performing your function and living as you want in the cosmos. So that is the cardinal virtue of Ren. There's a lot going on in that.
PJ (43:28.075)
Yeah, yeah. How does it compare and maybe contrast with Arete, the kind of Aristotle notion of excellence, which is often like the end of being human?
Josh Brown (43:35.982)
Yeah. What usually we would contrast a rete to another word in Chinese, which is fun word actually, because on the one hand, it's based in the character for, is not this. So there's a word that means to have or possess something, which is pronounced, right? And
PJ (43:47.82)
Okay.
Josh Brown (44:04.718)
The graph for the word I'm talking about virtue is different, right? But it has a similar idea of possessing a certain kind of character or, and also like a royal charisma to encourage people to love and be governed by you. So that usually speaks to it, the kind of excellence of the moral cultivation we've completed that allows us to live in the world and to be and do good.
Right. That's usually considered the dog. And you can say that Ren benevolence is, I mean, yeah, it's more related to things like, I mean, well, okay. So the cardinal virtues, prudence, temperance, fortitude, injustice, justice. It's in the ballpark, you could say. But for, Mungza, like Ren is, is, is especially indicative of having completed the life of virtue. Right.
So maybe you could tell it this way. When you have completed using developing irete, developing the virtues that make you able to navigate life well, a central concern you would get right along the way is benevolence or humanness. So we can sign that you are a man of irete, even though it's not necessarily irete itself. Does that make sense?
PJ (45:29.379)
Sorry, can you repeat that? Like, yeah.
Josh Brown (45:30.99)
So like, Ren would not be excellence per se, but it will be signed that you are a man of excellence if you have Ren. Yeah.
PJ (45:34.723)
Yes.
It'd be all, okay, along the way. Got it, yes. You said that very clearly. I just had to wait for my brain to catch up. Thank you.
Josh Brown (45:45.774)
No worries, I have a slow mind myself.
PJ (45:49.945)
So I want to make sure, you know, I want to be respectful of your time, but I want to make sure we talk about this idea of the sage and the way that it is. In my notes, I don't have the equal sign, I have the equivalent sign or the, you know, like the wavy equivalent. Yeah. I think it's equivalent to, can't remember, there's a difference. Approximation, yes. Because it's not the same, but...
Josh Brown (45:58.188)
Yes. yeah, ironically.
Josh Brown (46:08.088)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the way you, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, That's way I use it anyway. Approximation, that's the right word. Yeah.
PJ (46:19.821)
I would love to talk about that in filial virtue before you have to take off for the day. if, can you talk a little bit about how the sage, you find that useful to talk to dialogue between Chinese philosophy and Catholicism.
Josh Brown (46:23.97)
Yeah.
Josh Brown (46:29.078)
Mm, yes.
Well, so in the chapter that have, so I look back at Shunz's idea of the ritual sage, you know, because there different ways in which sages function in Confucianism. Some as a teacher, that's the Philopiety chapter. And one is the initiator of rituals that lead us into flourishing for that way. So in some ways, I'm signaling that I really do find a lot in Shunz that's worth dealing with. I'm not interested in getting rid of Shunz at all. Right.
And so what I do there is I think about this notion of the sage who develops rituals that lead us into flourishing. That sounds a lot as a Catholic, like the priesthood of Christ who institutes the Eucharist that guides us into the participation in the life of the Son and into the overarching story of God, salvation. So essentially looking at
a quietist in his reading of Hebrews, right, as that great treatise on Christ's priesthood, using the sagehood to kind of configure a, what you call it, a Chinese Catholic account of Christ as priest, right? So what we call them, we call them a ritual sage. And when we got through that is to understand, I'll go this way, in the modern period, we might understand like a very sociological conception of rituals, right?
that their only meaning was symbolic, right? That they had some kind of coherence to a religious group, right? Or, you know, that what Jesus does, the Eucharist, right, is important as a kind of initiative right of belonging and kind of symbolizing the way the church comes back together around the table, you know, that kind of stuff.
Josh Brown (48:33.292)
I said, no, no, actually, but think about it Jesus is in perfection as the God man, as the human nature united with the divine nature, right? His humanity in acts of kind of sagehood, right? And as a sage, he actually has developed or put into practice rituals. So at the Last Supper, Jesus undergoes an act of ritual sagehood, instituting the ritual, the Eucharist, and baptism. You're getting there as well, right?
that helped to rectify the human person and lead us into the flourishing that God has in store. Right? I think like, if you think about the Eucharist in that way, at least for me, it's like, you kind of moment, right? So, and that's necessarily completely novel. Other Christians have noted those kinds of things. But I just think it's like, wow, that's a really powerful, compelling way of thinking about what's happening at mass, you know? So that's kind of where that comes from.
PJ (49:17.805)
Yeah, yeah.
PJ (49:33.737)
I don't want to speak for your theology. But as we look at even Eastern Orthodox, and I think you find these resources in Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, have obviously the institution, like literally the sacrament of the Eucharist. And then you also have, would his work as a ritual
sage also apply to his baptism and his kind of active obedience, or rather, maybe I believe that's often called passive obedience, that he had lived his life up to that point and been a perfect human.
Josh Brown (50:19.63)
Well, actually, so the obedience stuff you mentioned, my first book deals with that. So I meant to see if I can avoid getting into that too deep because that's actually the central question in the entire book, Christ obedience as son. goodness. I think so the way I deal with the book, it's been like, you know, a year since I turned the book over to be published. So I can't remember all the details of what I say there. But in essence, I would say so the Catholic perspective, at least.
all the seven sacraments all flow out of Christ's passion. Right? So they all instituted by him in like a formal sense. You know, you could look at like wedding at Canaan and stuff like that for signs of the formal institution. But certainly in terms of the material, the cause of the sacraments as causes of grace, they all flow out of Christ. Right? And so it's out of his sacrifice on the cross that actually becomes the
the source of the seven sacraments and the grace that they have. So in that sense, certainly, all the sacraments, including baptism, are enactments of Christ's ritual sageship, I would argue. I mean, certainly, like in my other book, I would say something like the baptism of Jesus. We should understand it in terms of his obedience as the Son, Loving obedience of the Son.
And yeah, I think that in as much as Jesus undergoes baptism in order to establish the norm of the sacrament for the church to come, I would think you have to...
I would be compelled to explain that in terms of ritual sages. It seems a fitting way to describe it.
PJ (52:07.501)
Yeah. Yeah, that's him in many ways becoming the ritual sage. That's not him enacting the rituals. Am I understanding that correctly? Okay, yes, that makes more sense. Yeah.
Josh Brown (52:14.373)
Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. So it's more like, yeah, because like for students are like the ritual, the sages, right, are the ones who kind of, they're more like kings who put the rituals in place, right? It's not necessarily that they, well, yeah, it's more a kingship kind of activity as well, which I'm very fascinated by the Dr. Christ kingship is this. So like as king,
He sets up these rituals that his people utilize to find flourishing. Right. And in that sense, yeah, certainly. I think that is a fitting analogy.
PJ (52:53.241)
So, well, I kind of enjoy this kind of coming full circle that in many ways Jesus' is him being chosen by heaven.
Josh Brown (53:04.781)
Let me think about that a little bit.
Josh Brown (53:12.526)
Well, mean, okay, so certainly to help the audience, right? So yeah, what I would say as a, a Catholic theologian, what you, the only thing about that we'd want to clarify is, let me see, what we want to suggest adoptionism, which was a Harris in the early church that Jesus was like human and then became like adopted as the son, right? Yeah.
PJ (53:17.271)
Yeah. You can help me too. I have no idea what I'm doing. Yeah.
PJ (53:39.383)
Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Yes. Yeah.
Josh Brown (53:41.646)
So like I say, I'll some in the, it may not, you don't know that tradition made things we're talking about. So, but certainly a kind of, which I think is actually really important to say, Jesus is, Jesus is divine son. The baptism of Jesus is a kind of ritual idiom by which we articulate Christ, Christ's sonship, right? And so it's not like Percy Jackson series, right? Where the,
PJ (53:47.577)
Very useful.
PJ (54:08.451)
Hahaha
Josh Brown (54:11.062)
the gods claim them and they finally figure out who their father was. It's like we can say, well, Jesus, according to Luke at least, he would have known who his father was before, known as identity. But it's kind of like there's an actual, I might be talking about my previous book, Jesus actually attends to the language of rituals. He actually uses the language, right? He knows they're actually really important. And so for that reason, that ritual, satehood, is not creating a new reality of his sonship.
But it articulates that reality in a really important way. And by the way, mean, it's not as as Presbyterian, you'd appreciate this, right? When St. Paul talks about our adoption as sons and daughters of God happening in baptism, that's not unimportant. know, that's other, know, sonship and rituals go together kind of thing.
PJ (54:56.739)
You're right, right, right, yeah. Well, it's the...
Yeah, it's the start of his ministry, right? And so it's the ritual start to his ministry, but that is different from him enacting the rituals. So it's, yes, or instituting, excuse me, instituting the rituals, yes.
Josh Brown (55:04.876)
Yes. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, And your point, so you think about it terms of ecclesially is like the sagehood that institutes it for others. But Christologically, that is in terms of Christ person of work, I think that language of being chosen by heaven is actually very fitting, right? Because there's the annunciation of God's election or God's presence or wherever you want to say it on Christ.
With the course of difference being that in this case, heaven does speak. Right? So, yes, yeah.
PJ (55:42.425)
Yeah, right. Very different. Yes, in this case, heaven spoke very clearly. But I mean, I think you're going to find that difference consistently that heaven speaks in, yeah, Thomistic. So I want to be respectful of your time. Can we talk a little bit about the filial virtue? And you this is interesting because you talk about verse 21, verse 22 of Matthew 8.
Josh Brown (55:52.258)
Yes. Yes, yeah.
Josh Brown (56:00.862)
yeah, yeah, we're good.
Yes, yeah.
Josh Brown (56:12.376)
Yes.
PJ (56:12.575)
leave the dead to bury their own dead, which does not sound very Confucian. I'm not gonna lie. I don't know a lot about Confucianism, but that doesn't sound very Confucian.
Josh Brown (56:16.792)
Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I mean, so this is actually, this is maybe my favorite chapter to write at least, you know, and that's all, I know what we're talking about books really. they're really for your own, you know, your own joys about things. but, but no, mean, so I read that, that passage, it always was like, man, like if I'm, know, when you take Confucianism seriously, cause Confucianism, the acts of figal piety,
The most important ones, while your parents are alive at least, are to nourish them when they're sick, and care for them when they're old. And then when they die, you're supposed to bury them and mourn them properly, and then continue to sacrifice to them properly. like the sacrifice thing is like the ultimate and most important kind of philopiety. And I was fascinated by this, right? Because when Matteo Ricci and Ruggieri went to China,
They actually translated the, the, probably the fifth or sixth commandment, right? The sixth commandment, About obey your parents. They used the word, shi'a or filial piety to translate the biblical conception of obeying your parents. And I was just, you know, fascinated, but okay, if you're Confucian, what, like Jesus says there certainly seems to contrast with, with what we have, right? And there are other like real tensions that like Ritchie himself notes about.
Philopiety and Confucius and Catholicism. But that was one that just fascinated me. And so the way that the chapter works out, and this is spoiler alerts, I guess, is, know, actually, I was fascinated to realize that Aquinas is far more attentive to the importance of like, I mean, Aquinas would say, if you walk out of reading Matthew eight and think that Jesus is saying, don't worry about bearing your parents, who gives a crap?
You're absolutely wrong. Right? He said, no, no, Jesus is very attentive to the importance and the virtue necessary in bearing one's parents. And he's talking about a very specific kind of tension that this would-be disciple has. Right? But Aquinas wants to say, no, no, have to think about the important moral virtue of bearing one's parents. And so I think actually what Aquinas does is his explanation of Matthew 8
Josh Brown (58:43.466)
renders that passage far more defensible from a Confucian perspective, right? And it helps you see the, in a certain sense, the beauty and wisdom of the Confucian tradition about the bearing and mourning one's parents, but also how the wisdom of Jesus, how do you put it? In a certain respect, right, it is the foolishness to the Greeks and those who don't believe, right? And in other respects and deeper respects, it is utterly compelling.
in light of the best wisdom of the world has to offer, maybe. We can have both of those things together, maybe. don't know, maybe we can parse that out some more if you'd like.
PJ (59:23.309)
Yeah. Can you talk a little bit more about what Aquinas's interpretation is? How he would explain that?
Josh Brown (59:30.988)
Yeah. So for one thing, so Aquinas, points out in the context, know, the Divisio textus, right? So Aquinas just walks you through every single verse in his commentary on Matthew. And he points out that the person who asks Jesus permission to go bury his father, he says it's different from the person who came before, who was rejected before in that part of Matthew's story, right? So that whole, all part of Matthew's
gospel is about preparing us for challenges to living discipleship to Christ. And there's one person who kind of is interested in simony. He wants to buy the discipleship of Jesus. And so he's like not an authentic, genuine seeker, right? And the other guy though, he's more virtuous. And in other words, for Aquinas, the fact that he wants to bury his father is a sign of his goodness and virtue.
That's actually really important. He comes with earnest intentions and we see that because he desires this naturally good act of burying his parents. that connects to Confucianism because things like Shunza and Mengza both point out, well, brief story. Mengza's story about this is that there were people who used to, before they buried their parents, right, they would just allow the dead person to just stay in the ditch, whatever.
It's fine. Right. So he says there was a group of people, they were, they're working, somebody fell dead. Who cares? They came back the next day and they saw that the foxes had come and little bugs and things and had eaten the corpse and their hearts were startled and they were crying and they're like, no, you know, like they found out they actually did give a crap about the dead person there. and so in other words, that there's a kind of, and Chunja says a similar thing.
there's a kind of natural inclination that humans realize that the dead must be given honor and love and care. And we can't just throw them in the ditch. We actually have to do this right to complete our humanity. And so that kind of, the would-be disciple that he just sees, I have to care for my father's corpse. I can't just abandon and do what I want following Jesus around. That's like, he's actually a good guy. And the problem with him,
Josh Brown (01:01:55.904)
of this would be disciple corner quietness is that, he doesn't realize that the doing the burial properly, which Confucianism would agree with, right. Requires you to be attached to all kinds of things that to possibly distract you from your purpose. Right. you know, can you go to deal with the estate and the bear process itself, all the rituals of mourning, right. You were to do it. Well, you have to kind be distracted. And for most of us, that's not a huge problem, but
When Jesus is alive, he has three years from ministry. It's like, we gotta go. Maybe we have time to hang around with this, right? But that's one aspect. And also, of course, is the fact that there would be disciples.
Josh Brown (01:02:41.186)
Keep at it.
Josh Brown (01:02:45.582)
His kind of fundamental problem is not realizing the call of Jesus is not to abandon his father per se, but to prioritize the kingdom. Right? And so you could say that he faces the either or. Do I bury my father or do I pursue the kingdom? It's like we got to pursue the kingdom. Whereas like when we bury people today in masses or Christian burials,
you know, we're burying as part of following the kingdom, right? So we don't face that division. And so his point is that Jesus is not denigrating burial. It's that in this specific instance, it becomes either or. And in that instance, we have to, you know, prioritize the kingdom, Or discipleship and following, right? But in all other instances, we actually should recognize the full beauty and goodness of burying our parents well and actually strive to do it well.
PJ (01:03:45.827)
Yeah.
Well, I want to be... We're kind at the end here, so I want to comment more. let me ask this final question for our audience after having listened to this episode.
Josh Brown (01:03:56.46)
Yeah.
PJ (01:04:01.847)
What is one thing you'd have them do or meditate on throughout this next week after listening to this episode?
Josh Brown (01:04:09.742)
Well, you know, the easy answer is pray for our souls that we can, you know, attain normalcy or something. I don't know. No, no. In a serious vein. No, I think in a serious vein, think, I mean, certainly, you know, praying for the church in China and all those who are part of that work would be beneficial for those who are so inclined. In terms of meditating, I think it's worth
PJ (01:04:18.275)
Normalcy.
PJ (01:04:28.93)
Hmm.
Josh Brown (01:04:38.43)
One thing that both the Qhulainis and the Chinese masters have in common is
How do you put it? The highest form of courage, as the master Zengzi puts it, the highest form of courage is to look within oneself to see if one is rectified. And if you are rectified, if you are morally where you ought to be, then you go ahead, regardless of the obstacles in your place, you have to go forward. If you look inside yourself and realize you are wanting, then you fall away. So the greatest form, the most important form of courage, you could say,
is to seek the full moral cultivation of virtue and try to become the very best that we can be or are called to be. So I think meditating on, especially for Christians, meditating on how God is calling you to not just salvation, but also sanctification, which are more related than we like to think in some circles.
And for those non-Christians, right, to think about how the pursuit of truth and pursuit of virtue go hand in hand and how they can and should take center stage in our lives, perhaps.
PJ (01:06:03.875)
Tremendous answer. Yeah, yeah, right. no, tremendous answer. Dr. Brown, it's been an absolute joy talking to you today. Thank you.
Josh Brown (01:06:03.948)
when we're not listening to great podcasts, right?
Josh Brown (01:06:14.07)
No, thank you. I appreciate it.