This talk is brought to you by the Tamistic Institute.

For more talks like this, visit us at tamistic institute.org.

Before I start on this second talk, I wanted to say a brief word about philosophy,

because we've obviously impressed upon you how important we think it is.

But I want to say that that's not a unique,

a feature that's unique to us. It is, for example, part of the standard curricular formation

of Roman Catholic priests that they have to study philosophy for at least two years before they even begin their theological studies.

And it's not something that is a new development.

It's a strong part of the Western tradition, and not without reason.

St. Justin Martyr, for example, argued that Plato had read the Old Testament.

I don't think that he did, but what he found there shocked him that when he was reading Plato, that it seemed so strongly to coquere with the Old Testament.

I think it was St. Cyril of Alexandria, but don't quote me on that,

who said that Greek philosophy was like a Third Testament.

In any event, what I'm getting at is that I do, this is, these thoughts were inspired by the Q&A session that followed the last talk.

And in particular, I started thinking about biblical interpretation and how you do, in fact, need a sound theory before you even begin to interpret the Bible.

And I wanted to recommend a book to you in case you're interested on this.

This book is by a man named Jonathan Pennington, who is a Baptist biblical scholar.

And he wrote a book that's called The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing.

And human flourishing, this term flourishing

is a translation of a Greek term,

eudaimonia, that's normally translated as happiness.

But this is an explicit reference

...