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So let's just assume that we're not going to be able to, just by the fact that she has so many words in her book, invoking logos.

I think we can all agree we're never going to escape it that we need to find a way to mix these two things.

Is it fair to put limits on where logos need not tread within religion and spirituality?

Can we do that? Can we say that here's where you go too far when you start trying to bring the intellect into the religious experience?

Or here are areas where the intellect is not welcome.

Let's start with Joyder.

See, yeah, I like the room and the music too.

I mean, in my comments, I didn't mean to give the sense that, you know, I don't see intellectual practice as a form of spiritual discipline because it is, it is.

It's not something that's really valued within contemporary Mormonism to a great degree, but it sure is.

You know, the theologians I learned to really love and admire spent time with in my own scholarship, you know, are people like Jonathan Edwards who, you know, who after mastering, you know, incredible amounts of intellectual content, we're finally pushing themselves to use the medium to the medium of language to not betray what they had experienced.

And so he comes down to sweetness, right? He's a thinking man. He's an intellectual with theologian and he directs us to the taste, right, to sweetness.

So there's a way in which I think intellectual practice done with humility and with dedication leads to greater experiential depth, not greater than other peoples, but for the person who feels called to do the intellectual work.

Does that make sense? I'm not prioritizing or preferring one path to another.

I'm just saying for those of us who have who wake up with these inclinations or these callings or these, you know, burdens of being intellectual types, like why not?

Yeah. I want to reserve some space for the intellect within all this. Yes, please.

What about just the simple exercise of trying to demonstrate scriptural historicity? Is there, is there ever a place for that or a value?

Well, here's my bigger intellectual question and forgive me for just hopping in is, you know, what is the state of Mormon intellectual life right now?

Where do we find ourselves in this book? How do we position ourselves in relationship to these great world historical conversations?

You know, if we, you know, Mormon is reading this, we are not in the index, we are not even in the narrative.

Where do we place ourselves now? Historically, we put ourselves like, you know, we can find a page that's about the moon, the Joseph Smith, right?

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