From Humanity to Fulness the Mormon Way

Speaker 1

I’m very pleased to introduce our final keynote speaker, Richard Bushman. He retired as the Governor Morris Professor of History at Columbia University in 2001, and then came out of retirement in 2008 to accept a position as Visiting Howard W. Hunter, Chair of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University. He is the author of Joseph Smith, Rough Stone Rolling, and the co-general editor of the Joseph Smith Papers. He chairs the board of directors of the Mormon Scholars Foundation, which fosters the development of young LDS scholars. With his wife, Claudia Bushman, he is the father of six children and twenty grandchildren. He has been a bishop, mistake president and patriarch, and is currently a sealer in the Manhattan Temple. His talk is entitled From Humanity to Fullness: The Mormon Way. Please welcome Richard Tushman.

Richard Bushman

Sort of make a connection I’d written in this my opening paragraph, these words, there is something liberating in the very name of this group. It seems to be an invitation to think beyond ordinary human limitations. And then I said, I plan to join their ranks tonight. But after hearing this day of papers about the rights of sentient machines and words like polygenders, and that I might live to 150 years if I wait long enough. Up, I realize I’m a very timid conservative Latter-day Saint. Probably don’t belong here at all.

Richard Bushman

I have thought of various uh subtitles to my somewhat obscure formulation from humanity to fullness, the Mormon Way. To clarify my intent, I thought of adding questions such as Is science eternal? or Are there laboratories in heaven? From those clues, you might deduce that I want to reflect broadly on the relationship of science to the Mormon view of the world, and that is indeed my aim.

Richard Bushman

I’m not at this point interested in the more common approach to the relationship of science and religion epitomized in the title of Andrew D. White’s 19th-century treatise, The History of the Warfare of Science with Theology. There’s plenty of that in Mormonism, in the conflict over the DNA evidence about Indian origins or the nature of the papyri from which Bukhu. The Book of Abraham was translated. Conflicts like this need to be attended to. Mormons should never bury discomforting scientific facts. But these controversies tend to fade over time as the strong positions taken by the antagonists are modified and adapted. No one that I know of worries about the age of the earth, a question that really troubled religious people 150 years ago. A few Latter-day Saints are still concerned about organic evolution, but not many. Seventy five years ago was a major conflict, no more. These issues demand attention, but turn out to be less consequential in the long run than they seem at the time.

Richard Bushman

I am interested more in another aspect of the science-religion relationship that is speculative and controversial. but not contested. It is playful and provocative rather than argumentative. I am thinking of the strain of Mormon thought running from Parley Pratt through Bre H. Roberts, that sees Mormonism and science as not only compatible but harmonious and mutually reinforcing. These thinkers, among them John Witzow and James Talmadge, believed that Mormonism was uniquely capable of assimilating the scientific world view, and in fact, the two, Mormonism and science, shared basically the same view of the physical universe.

Richard Bushman

Parley Pratt struck this note in the first chapter of The Key to Theology. Theology is the science of communication, he began, meaning by communication and revelation from God. but it is also the science of creation, of life, of faith, and spiritual gifts and finally the science of all other sciences and useful arts philosophy, astronomy, history, mathematics, geography and of all matters of fact in every branch of art or research. Those are his words. He drew no boundaries between science and religion. Theology was a science, and science was theology. Pratt did not get very far in explaining how this worked out in practical terms, but he participated fully in the nineteenth century’s enthusiasm for science.

Richard Bushman

Ellen G. White, the leader of the Adventist movement in the second half of the century, shared that enthusiasm. The word science appears over 1800 times in her writings. Most of the references in the spirit of Pratt. Everything religion, religious, was a science, and true science always they say true science was entirely compatible with religion. Mary Baker Eddy wrote in the same vein under the title of her masterwork, Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures. Despite the conflict over evolution, the mid nineteenth century was a time when the promise of science and the hopes of religion could be envisioned as intertwining and mutually reinforcing.

Richard Bushman

That picture darkened as the century wore on, the deep conflict between the evolutionary conception of human origins and Biblical ideas of creation came to appear more severe than was comfortable. By Andrew White’s time it was possible to reconstruct a historical tradition of ongoing warfare. from the time of Galileo to the present, with a religion opposing scientific truth at nearly every important juncture. the Copernican conception of the solar system, the geological estimations of the age of the earth, and finally the descent of the human species with many lesser conflicts along the way, such as vaccination for smallpox. At every turn, religion appeared to have been to have opposed scientific truth in defense of its dogma. and its ecclesiastical power. By the turn of the century, nineteen hundred, instead of promising a productive collaboration in the pursuit of truth, the words science in religion evoked images of mortal combat, combat with the soul of the world at stake.

Richard Bushman

Mormon thinkers, however, did not follow other religionists into this battle. Rather than despairing of science, early twentieth century Mormons embraced it more enthusiastically than ever. In his 1915 manual for the Melchizedek Priesthood Quorums, John Widsoe explained that a rational theology, the title of his book is based on fundamental principles that harmonize with the knowledge and reason of man. In nineteen fifteen, of course, the knowledge and reason of man meant science. Witzow, who had a modest scientific education himself, was sure the principles of his religion and science harmonized. By modern philosophical standards, Witzow did not probe very deeply into the relation of these two systems of thought, but he was carried along by an immense confidence.

Richard Bushman

Here are his words. Man must learn of the universe precisely as it is, or he cannot understand his place in it. The words precisely as it is imply a complete openness to fact, whether religious or scientific. Witzer was sure he could accept anything that came along in scientific or personal investigations and build on it. In fact, his view of eternal progression, the great Mormon doctrinal innovation at the time, was of intelligence gathering information. The primal entity was imbued with will. This was Witzo’s argument. Here is his words. It was by the exercise of their wills that the spirits in the beginning gathered information rapidly or slowly, acquired experience freely or laboriously. His description of original spirits sounds suspiciously like amoeba emerging from the slime, the exercise of the will upon the matter and energy within reach and en enable the intelligent beings little by little to acquire power

Richard Bushman

Both Witzow and Roberts based their confidence on the Mormon doctrines of what Witzow called eternalism. By that he meant that Mormons did not postulate a creation out of nothing, the critical act of God. On which belief had been based for centuries. Instead, Mormons believed that matter, energy, and intelligence were all eternal. and had been simply organized by God. As Witzow put it, the Gospel holds strictly to the conception of a material universe. That put Mormonism in the camp of science as contrasted two traditional theologies which had imagined a metaphysic that was entirely extraneous to science. Within this material universe, Witsu placed a God who had learned and was learning like all other intelligences.

Richard Bushman

Here’s a few words, a few more words. In the beginning, which transcends our understanding, God undoubtedly exercised his will vigorously. and thus Green gained great experience of the forces lying about him, as knowledge grew into greater knowledge by the persistent efforts of his will. His recognition of universal laws became greater until he attained at last a conquest over the universe which to our finite understanding seems absolutely complete. That’s the end of his words. It was easy for Witzel to believe science and religion were compatible because God Himself was a scientist. He had achieved his position through interacting with the forces around him until he gained sufficient knowledge to regulate the universe.

Richard Bushman

Roberts elaborated Witzel’s perspective in the early chapters of The Truth, the Way and the Life, his thwarted attempt at a Mormon summa theologica. completed by the early nineteen thirties but not published for sixty years. Roberts hoped to follow Thomas Aquinas in attempting to build a theology purely by reason, starting from ground zero. Aquinas had said that if you will grant that something exists, he would bring you to God using only the tools of reason. Roberts did not strip away quite so much in his construction, but he did want to start with common knowledge. How we can reason but from what we know was a starting point. A phrase he repeated over and over again. How can we reason from but what we know? A phrase I’ve heard a lot, something like it, to day. By what we know, Roberts assumed with Witzow the facts as they were generally understood by science and common experience. With no theological premises about God or Revelation. From that base, he worked his way through common Commonly accepted astronomical findings to the solar system and the stars.

Richard Bushman

Mormons reading these early chapters sense at once that he is building toward the notion of superior intelligences existing in some remote sphere, who generously choose to communicate with their lesser brethren on earth. That was indeed where Roberts was headed. But in pursuing that track, there came to a point where he knew he must go beyond the facts as they are commonly accepted to get to his destination. His steps beyond what we know, meaning scientific knowledge, to what can only be known with approximate certainty, is only to be found out by the process of radiocination, as he said. Such things can be known, as he put it, up to the point of moral certainty, by which he meant what common sense feels must be true, or how things had to be. This method allowed him to conjecture about millions of other planets inhabited by benevolent beings, but there, again, he must stop. He had extended the bridge between scientific knowledge and Mormon theology as far as he could by radiocination.

Richard Bushman

From there on his conjectures became mere possibilities. Here’s how he put it Surely what we have observed about the universe and the probability of millions of other worlds than our own being inhabited by greater intelligences greater than those of our world would tend to the conception of the possibility of their sending forth a revelation, as we have supposed. That is the climax of his rational excursions. The possibility of revelation from benevolent superior beings on other worlds. From there on, he moves to the biblical tradition of Revelation.

Richard Bushman

I admire Robert’s grand theological enterprise. He nobly undertook To construct Mormon theology from the ground up. He followed a path that only a Mormon, I’d suggest, could trod. Because Mormonism embeds God so completely in the physical universe, there is no thought of a God outside of time and space with a footing in eternity. Robert’s God governs from a planet within a solar system, somewhere in the vast expanses of the sky. Is every bit a part of the universe we know. Roberts went beyond Witzow’s abstract eternalism to demonstrate how Mormons might concretely envision a material God within the world science has constructed.

Richard Bushman

I’m less concerned to test the validity of this theology than point to it as the inheritance of modern Mormon transhumanists. Even though they have largely been forgotten, Roberts and Witzow are, of course, your ancestors. They make your speculations possible. even though their views of science and religion have receded, did recede after the nineteen thirties. It became increasingly apparent, especially as the evolution debate heated up in the church, that science and Mormon theology were not only always going to be peaceful bedfellows.

Richard Bushman

Writing in 1940, Lowell Benyon adopted the view of science and religion now most common among everyday Mormons. Though an admirer of Roberts, Benyon did not see science and theology as occupying the same sphere. Weaving science and religion together to create a unified picture of the universe was antithetical to Benyon’s thought. Religion was one approach to life, and science, philosophy, and art were others. Here are his words No person can comprehend the whole of life in its beauty, depth, and breadth, through a single one of these human interests to the exclusion of others. Science and religion occupy different realms, each with its own purpose. Let each field of human endeavour speak for itself, he wrote, emphasizing his point with an exclamation mark. They may conflict, but each one must be allowed to perform its own functions, harmonized by granting to each its due, rather than integrating them. Science, as he said, gives us a description of the world in which we live, thereby enabling us to reckon with the forces at play. Religion is focused on the meaning, purpose, and why of life. What Jared has talked to you about: how do you find meaning? It helps man to aspire to the more abundant life of God. His plea to his student readers was not to give up religion when conflicts arose, but to respect the good that could come from each approach.

Richard Bushman

I sketch in this historical background to remind transhumanists of their theological heritage as Mormons. Probably few modern Mormons share Witzos and Roberts’ confidence in the full compatibility in science and religion. On the whole, we probably are more with Benyon. But I think that some Mormon transhumanists still are interested in exploring the possibility of continuity. by which I mean a path leading from our current scientific and engineering efforts to the powers of godliness. Is there a smooth curve between here and there, between humanity and fulness? Is intellectual progression in the hereafter in some way a continuation of science as we know it now? These are the questions Roberts and Witso would appreciate.

Richard Bushman

We all know the theology that fosters this aspiration, besides the doctrine of eternal progression as propounded by Ritzo and Roberts. There’s the scriptural assertion that the same sociality that exists among us here will exist among us there. Mormons commonly believe that heavenly life is an exalted continuation of earth life. Why should that sociality not include scientific investigations? Hence my initial question, are there laboratories in heaven?

Richard Bushman

Furthermore, Joseph Smith’s assertion that God was once a man Perhaps the Prophet’s greatest heresy encourages us to think that along the course to godliness, human achievements are not trivial. The suggestion of laboratories in heaven, however, may dampen our enthusiasm for continuing scientific inquiry. We may talk of making and governing worlds, but we don’t necessarily think of test tubes and electron microscopes in the afterlife. We have some hesitations about carrying it that far. Will we have to run experiments in heaven to learn how to make worlds? where there’ll still be research centers producing scientific papers that are published after peer review in scientific journals where we still have to collect data, form theories, debate among ourselves, and only gradually settle on standard models We pause when we take the analogy this far, and it is this hesitation that I want to explore in the remainder of my talk.

Richard Bushman

No Mormon can test the Scripture that says, My ways are not your ways. We hold with Jacob that it is impossible that man should find out all his ways. Human knowledge comes nowhere near God’s knowledge. God’s science permits Him to create universes. He can organize matter, manage big bangs, perhaps lots of them. and devise worlds that foster human life. His science must be light years beyond ours. We are in elementary school. He is at the farthest reaches of graduate school and beyond. My question is what will happen when our pitiful human science confronts his advanced divine science? Even if we allow that we are on the path that leads from our current science to divine knowledge, how will we deal with the gap between the two when we come into the presence of God? I can imagine three responses.

Richard Bushman

The first is what I call the textbook approach. By this I mean that the vast accumulation of divine science will have been recorded in books, and we must study them to catch up. We can imagine Richard Feynman sitting in the library for a thousand years reading the books. perhaps emerging from time to time to play Brian Greene and explain to the rest of us what he has learned. Under the textbook model, scientific exploration as we now process Practice it will give way to scientific study as boys and girls in high school and college do it. We won’t need laboratories or theorists to push us into new realms. Human science will come to an end as we bow before divine science and humbly try to catch up.

Richard Bushman

The second model I am labeling investigative learning. On this view, we will indeed be light years behind God in our knowledge But to catch up, we won’t revert to studenthood again and learn from textbooks. We will learn in laboratories rather than libraries. The best way to enhance our knowledge will be to keep on investigating with teams of scientists exploring every corner of the universe to figure out how it works. The job of discovering and disseminating will continue much as it does now. Scientists will continue their labors to acquire knowledge of creation by experimenting Theorizing, debating, testing. This is the divine pedagogy. God doesn’t tell us everything He knows, He helps us to learn it for ourselves.

Richard Bushman

This is an appealing model, but it has one shortcoming. It leaves us with the feeling that all the while we are struggling to find out, the answers are already there in the back of the book. If God would only give us a break, His angels could tell us everything we need to know. We labor away on our projects that were carried out eons ago. Our learning is like is an exercise like high school chemistry lab. We’re not really discovering new knowledge, but learning old knowledge for ourselves. Science is more like a guessing game where we try to dope out what the masters of the universe already know.

Richard Bushman

This problem can be partially overcome by a third model, what I’m calling plural science. Under this scheme, our science is truly our discovery. It approaches the understanding of matter and energy in its own way. It has the potential of understanding everything, but is distinctly our own. Elsewhere there may be other sciences that go a long way toward understanding the same phenomena in other ways. Each of these sciences has advantages and virtues that are its own and so worthy of developing. They hold all the promise of bringing us godly power in their own ways. So rather than halting our investigation when we reach the other side, we will be instructed to carry forward our researches and elaborate our science as far as it will stretch. We may practice comparative science under this heading, holding conferences to learn from each other about differing solutions to particular problems. We won’t abandon our earthly science in favor of other sciences, because we will value the virtues and potentialities of the earth approach. we will feel a divine mandate to learn all we can by our own lights, and indeed have divine support in our undertaking.

Richard Bushman

To the question, is science eternal? we would have to give a qualified answer. The project of science is eternal, to figure out how the universe works and can be managed, but the approaches, the formulas, even the mathematics May take different forms to reach similar ends. Our science will be one variety, a species of a universal inquiry.

Richard Bushman

I’m rather partial to this third model because of its compatibility with the Mormon belief in many revelations coming to people all over the world. Everywhere God seems willing to bring us along in our own way, allowing us to cultivate our own fields and draw close to Him as best we can within our own cultures. The radical idea of many gods invites Mormons to think pluralistically. We are in some sense united in one great cause, the cause of the divine order. But the end we seek is not uniformity, but fullness. We want to pursue the potentialities of our various natures, to achieve fulfillment in our own ways. We pray that spiders and hummingbirds will fulfill the measure of their creations, and hope the same for all of our brothers and sisters around the globe. Why not for many populations on many worlds, perhaps in many universes, each one following the Spirit of God to a fullness?

Richard Bushman

You can see that I have taken full advantage of the transhumanist license to speculate freely. Probably only in a congregation of Mormon transhumanists could such thoughts be voiced. It had to be Mormon because we are the ones to narrow the distance between God and man, and thus to sponsor B. H. Roberts’ attempt to go from what we know to what God is in one smooth motion. It had to be transhumanist because we are charged in this organization to explore this very boundary between human science and divine achievement.

Richard Bushman

But my cluing question has to be, Is this serious or is it just fun? It certainly is fun to let our minds roam in these realms, just as science fiction is fun, or missionaries have fun pondering mysteries. Is it also serious? Or to put it another way, does it make any difference how we think about the relationship of science to our religion? Is anything important at stake? I think there is at least one serious question underlying my excursions today, and that question is the one I voiced at the beginning.

Richard Bushman

Is science eternal? Our scientists today discovering truths that will last, that will give us access to elemental truths Or, to put it more d dramatically, are scientists exploring the mind of God? Does he think scientifically? On the one hand, we might say no, and no man knoweth his ways save it be revealed to him, Jacob says.

Richard Bushman

Science is only partial or human truth. It is useful for instrumental reasons, it makes us more comfortable on earth through applied science, and it gives us a queer take on the universe. But it is not eternal.

Richard Bushman

On the other hand, is it possible that God is revealing himself to scientists in their investigation? Is it not consistent with our belief that God would disclose his mind to inquiring humans? via inspiration. Certainly Roberts and Winsoe considered science to be true, and by that I mean true like from God. Probably most educated moderns feel the same. Don’t Mormons generally believe that scientists are discovering how the universe actually works? Scientific truths come as close to absolute truths as anything we have, many would say.

Richard Bushman

Choosing between these alternatives is of great importance, because if we accept science as eternal, that is, as accurately describing how the universe works, We are by that admission validating human reason. We implicitly affirm that the best human thinker can acquire eternal truth not via a prophet, but via a human inquiry, through a collective of scientists. Once we open that possibility, that human reason can discover eternal truth, we are in a different world.

Richard Bushman

We don’t have to accept every product of reason as eternal, every philosopher, every poet, every social scientist as speaking for God or revealing truth. But we have to accept the possibility that humans are capable of discovering eternal truth. Truth is out there in the realm of human reason. It may be hard to find, it may be obscured and distorted, it may be buried in error, but truth is there.

Richard Bushman

This may be more of an admission than most Mormons care to make, because it means if we are to know the truth, we must read more than Scripture. We must not just absorb, but sift, evaluate, discern, and judge the works of human re reason. We must be on the hunt for truth all around us, not just in church. It is not enough to say that we have the most essential truths, the basics for salvation, and the rest can be learned in the libraries of the afterlife. The admission of truth and reason demands that we pursue it now, just as Scripture demands to be read and evaluated for its truth. We must seek out of the best books even by study and also by faith. It is a larger burden than most of us care to assume.

Richard Bushman

but we don’t have to bear it alone. The search for eternal truth, like the scientific enterprise itself, is necessarily collaborative. We can spread the work around. A community of seekers can work on the problems we cannot assume ourselves. If my reasoning is sound, this is serious business. We cannot at any time see this communal endeavor as trivial or incidental. It may be fun, but it is also significant. As the Scriptures tell us, if there is anything virtuous, lovely, or good report, we must seek after these things. That is an essential part of going from humanity to a fullness in the Mormon way. Thanks.

Speaker 1

I get to assert moderator’s privilege and ask the first question. The the models that you presented as possibilities all seem to presume a relatively abrupt entrance into the presence or libraries or laboratories of God. What do you make of the idea that if our scientific endeavors have anything to do with attaining godliness, that that is actually a very gradual entrance into the presence of God, does that change those models? I don’t think so.

Richard Bushman

I think that either way, you have to confront the possibility that it’s all waiting there in God’s mind, and we’re just trying to pick up as much as we can as we go, or we have to learn it by our experimentations. or that we have a unique science of our own. So I actually posit the idea of a gradual Initiation into the mysteries of godliness in my models. I think that’s very much a Mormon way. Don’t we say, you know, it’ll be forever to for we’ll become like God. So I think that’s that I think should be a foundation for our view of things.

Speaker 3

So you talked about how our science and the science of countless other planets or races having their own value and having their own approach and collaborating and adding to and all adding together to their own unique value. Do you think also that that would that would itself add to even God’s Knowledge in God’s science?

Richard Bushman

Theo, you’re raising the question, is does God have it all or is He He learning more? I think the tradition of Roberts and Witzow, which I’m positing as your legacy here, says God would go on learning. To come to a point where you would no longer exercise your will and gain more information would in a way be a sad moment in life. or in God’s life even. So what form that knowledge would take it you know, it’s beyond our conception. But uh an end of learning, who wants to be in that kind of a heaven? It would be uh a dull spot indeed.

Speaker 4

We have a question from one of our online followers. Is religious deferential worship of a mystical deity evolving? through expansion of knowledge of the ultimate nature and the workings of the universe into reverential acknowledgment of the greater intelligence of a of a greater but ultimately obtainable state of being.

Richard Bushman

Is that from a Latter-day Saint? We don’t know, it just says MTA 7778. Yes, he just said yes. It’s allowed to be a little bit of a message. Well, I wonder what kind of letter to Sandy is because I thought he has run on sentences? Because my impression is that Maybe there is no normative Mormonism, but certainly it’s a a very strong tradition that, of course, we’re in this evolving mode of learning rather than sort of a mystical worship of God. So I think I’m not sure we’re moving into it. I think it’s a maybe it’s a tradition that needs to be revived from time to time, but it’s been in Mormonism for a long, certainly since King followed. I’m going to take another question and I want to ask you a question.

Speaker 6

I was just wondering, I guess Whitstow died in 1954, and that was 60 years ago when That’s sort of your the last person you sort of mentioned here other than Wal Benion. And I was wondering if you could maybe comment on why we haven’t had similar leaders in the last

Richard Bushman

Mm-hmm. Well, I think the problems have got harder in the last sixty years. Uh witsows and uh Roberts’ confidence While informed, it seems nonetheless naive. It didn’t begin to really cope with the real problems. And though we object to all the opponents of evolution in the middle of the century, They didn’t make a point. There is some clash there. There’s something that had to be worked out. And I think I’ve been very impressed by people here who have said, I don’t want to say something that cannot be based on evidence. There’s a real sort of experimentalism view of things. And I think once you get that sort of that serious point of view rather than just broad brush pictures, you have to just be slower, and it takes a lot of effort. And I just think it’s asking too much of any general authority, even those who are maybe a trained physicist, to deal with all the problems this group has had. This group has its own mission, its mission. is to take the place of Robertson and Whitstone. And I’m not just pandering. I mean, I really play that.

Richard Bushman

Oh, my question to you is, it came up in your talk. Is your name Ryle? Yeah, okay. This is a Saved by Works group. It really believes that we can do anything. If you just give us a little time and enough research funds, we can pull it off. My question is, Is there any room for grace in your theology? Yes, absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 7

I mean this would be very much a a personal approach to it. Um obviously my the fact that mine’s a reluctant one perhaps implies that Really is, and that’s where part of my own reluctance has always come from: is thinking about where that grace comes in and where it fundamentally comes down for me. Is it’s much the same type of grace that I hinted at in my father’s talk about the spiritual redemption aspect. That while we have to be endeavoring to repent, change, it’s an acknowledgement that we’re only really able to do so because we’re in a relationship with God who we feel has reached down and given us that hand of fellowship. And I think as we as we look, at least for me, the potential of looking at trying to do everything, it’s fundamentally based for me on the idea, again, that God has Invited us to do so and given us the confidence that he will be there in some way, and the way in which his grace will manifest itself I don’t know, and I can’t assume it. My wife often says we need to, like Brigham Young, say, work as if, pray as if everything depended on God, and then work as if everything depended on us. But it’s an acknowledgment that to me, God is needed in all of it, I guess, is how I feel about it. That God’s grace is what A gives us the hope that as we are always groping in the dark for what’s the next step That the next step’s worth doing, and that it’s doable, and that it’s not just a vain effort. I think it’s the avoidance of nylon. I mean, I just know for me, it’s very much There’s a reason why it’s Mormon and not just transhumanism. Okay, that is a good statement. There’s another statement over there. Very briefly, we’re basted out of time.

Speaker 8

I think OSP and the critique we were given from Evangelical friend, and that is tells two biblical stories. The first is the Tower of Babel. And it involved a group of people, and really the Tower of Babel is a technological story when you understand it. These people had bricks, gosh dang it, and they could make mud break bricks, baked bricks. So they could build towers taller than anyone could before them. And they were so full of their own technological prowess that they were going to build a tower to get to heaven. And they were going to save themselves without grace. So the power of Babel really is a story of works without grace and the failure of that approach. The other story From Noah’s Ark. And so, whether these are myths or whatever they are, they’re worth talking about. And Noah’s Ark is a story of salvation by grace. And works. Because if Noah didn’t build the ark, he would have drowned. But God made him build the ark, so he built it. And the ark is an analogy for the temple. It’s covered with pitch, kaphar. There’s an atonement reference in there in the Hebrew. It’s pitched with pitch and covered with sealed with oil. There’s an anointing analogy in there. And through the anointing, there’s a Messiah analogy in there. Salvation and the three levels become the three rooms of the temple. And through the salvation of what they build, they’re saved. And so You don’t end up saving yourself. But if you don’t have the grace, you don’t end up saving yourself. And I don’t see any reason to be in conflict or should be.

Speaker 5

I I one set salt, it’s not the affordability to work, great. The givenness of life, as Adam Miller would put it. Thank you again.