Truth Unites - Response to Lofton and Little on Augustine

Episode Date: November 26, 2021

In  this video I respond to criticisms from Michael Lofton and Keith Little concerning my proposal that Augustine affirmed the Protestant notion of  sola Scriptura. The page number for the Henry May citation is 52. Truth Unites is a mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

A few weeks ago I put out a video on Augustine's view of scripture arguing he affirmed the essential content of solo scriptura, meaning the scripture alone is the infallible rule for the church for faith and practice. And it's been interesting to see the different responses to that video. I put out an initial criticism of some of the initial responses. I think I've just done one video. And then over the last few days, Michael Lofton and Keith, little both came out with a response, and so I'd like to respond to a number of the points that they raised, especially for the people who are following this discussion to try to be helpful to them.

I know a lot of people are genuinely seeking the truth about these things, and I hope these comments could be helpful for them. So this will not be comprehensive. I'm just going to hit five of the major points here, and that'll come up in just a second. Here's one of my patrons suggested I lead off with this quote from the great theologian Michael Scott. I don't remember what episode this is from, but it made me laugh. He says, I don't come up with this stuff. I just forward it along. You wouldn't arrest the guy who was just passing drugs from one guy to another. We were laughing that I could just say, look, I'm just quoting Augustine, but I know I'm interpreting Augustine. So anyways, five things to say. Coming right up.

First thing I want to do is just reiterate what I've argued, especially for people coming in late. And also because, unfortunately, one of the things I've observed in my time on YouTube is that sometimes people don't listen carefully. So even though I was very careful to define Sola Scriptura and to demarcate what I am arguing in relation to that and the implications from that, you still find people responding, and this is not really Michael or Keith right now. But I still see this. I saw it in Williams-Abrex videos, and I see it so much in the comments. So I just want to start by getting clarity at the front end. People respond as though you are, arguing, Augustine affirmed a Protestant view of scripture wholesale, or even as though I were arguing

Augustine was a proto-Protestant. And William, you was using that language. Unfortunately, this is an instance of not listening carefully. I was explicit on this point, both in my initial video and in my follow-up. And it's important to be so clear on this at the front, because this is a deep conviction of mine. The church fathers are not neatly serviceable for polemics. They will challenge all of us. Augustine and the fathers in general don't fit in neatly with any contemporary church or ideology. They will challenge us all in many ways. The question for which I engaged Augustine was a specific one, namely Sola Scriptura, which concerns the question of where do we locate infallibility. Is infallibility ultimately only within Holy Scripture? However,

high, we might estimate traditions, councils, etc. Or can the church speak infallibly as well? Where is infallibility? Okay, that's the question on which I am engaging Augustine. Now, the first thing that I want to observe is that the proposal I have offered is extremely standard, common, non-surprising, very frequent in Augustine scholarship. This is not an eccentric or novel idea. It's very common. It's certainly not universal, but it's a very well and widely represented view of Augustine in the scholarship on this question. So when people react so strongly and aggressively as though this were a preposterous idea, as though it were something that is just an egregious idea, all they're showing is that they're ignorant of, I'm sorry to say, ignorant of the state of

Augustine scholarship. One of the most common articles that gets passed around on this, and helpful to read. It's a little older, but it's really helpful. It's by the Roman Catholic Patristics scholar Robert Eno. He also was a book on this topic, and then if you pick up the Augustine Encyclopedia, he is a number of entries that also, if you're looking for something really brief, his section on authority in that book gives a helpful treatment of this as well. And he does a good job cataloging where the scholarship is at, again, a few decades back now, on this question, and he shows how widely represented is the position for which I am advocating, namely, scripture alone is infallible. Now, he goes on, he, his view is nuanced. He points to the

practical complexities for how it all plays out for Augustine, and he points to various points of inconsistency in his thinking. I think Eno's view is very reasonable. Ultimately, I'm going to argue in just a moment we can reconcile some of these statements in Augustine a little bit more. But even Eno recognizes that ultimately for Augustine, scripture is at the top. Here's how he leads off the article. Quote, in Augustine's view, there was a definite hierarchy of authorities. For the determination of teaching, Holy Scripture was assigned the highest authority. After Scripture came the tradition and practice of the universal church. Finally, there were authoritative organs within the church which possessed decision-making powers.

The most notable of these organs was the plenary council of the Universal Church. Throughout the article, he makes claims such as the following. Augustine is completely committed to the principle that the testimony of Scripture is superior to any other. Councils are subordinated to Scripture. Augustine subordinated everything to Scripture, not only the writings of influential bishops like Cyprian, but also the church's universal witness. This is very common.

This view, this idea that Augustine, for all his high view of tradition and the church, nonetheless restricts infallibility to Scripture alone and thereby subordinates everything, including the church's councils and universal witness under Scripture, it's an extremely common view, it's not an eccentric view, it's not a crazy idea. For this reason, I was very surprised and dismayed to hear Michael Lofton use the following phrases to describe my advocacy for this position. extremely irresponsible, outrageously mishandled, incredibly irresponsible, so forth. Those terms, as well as the general tenor of his video, represents an overstatement.

It's overly aggressive. It's just kind of silly. It wasn't as bad as Williams' videos, which are much more to this effect. I like those guys. I wish them the best. I've only had pleasant interactions with them until this debate. But this needs to be called out because it's really unhelpful. What people try to do is they try to discredit the other side by characterizing it as preposterous. Okay. And unfortunately, it's a very powerful rhetorical tactic. It works. People watching the

videos think, wow, they take it that at face value and they think, wow, Ortland's position must just be absolutely preposterous. It must be, as he's described it, extremely irresponsible, outrageously mishandled, et cetera. And people just won't be aware of the fact that this is kind of standard fair in the scholarship. It's a very common view. And that's very unfortunate. My encouragement for people watching these videos is don't be swayed by these overconfident assertions. People on both sides do that. Don't listen. Either Protestant or Catholic or atheist or any other position, try to push through the bluster and the rhetoric and so forth and listen to the actual arguments being made because often there's a disproportion between the strength of the rhetoric and

the strength of the argument. Interestingly, I've often felt that they're sort of inverse with each other, that when you don't have as good an argument, but you really want to set the person in their place and so forth, you're forced to sort of ramp up your rhetoric even if you don't have cause to do so. So whenever you hear people arguing as though, obviously our side is right, the people on the other side are just incredibly stupid and so forth, be discerning about that. Listen carefully to the actual arguments and then seek out a smart representative of the other side and listen to their response. Let me say in contrast to that, how much I appreciated Keith Little's response, he and I disagree very strongly on this issue. I can feel how strongly he

agrees with me when we're talking about it. And I respect that. He has strong convictions about this. But his video was classy. It was a pleasure to listen to because it was succinct. He just made his points and he didn't repeat himself over and over. He's not doing a response video where you pause the video before the person has made an argument and start rebutting their argument before they're like five seconds in and then you start rebutting. It's always kind of silly. his video was also communicated with grace and humility. And here's the key thing. And this is what I think makes for charitable dialogue.

And then I'll move on. He kept it focused on the arguments, not on the person. That really is the key. I'm convinced to ecumenical debate and dialogue. We've got to just deal with the arguments. Ague. Make your argument. But don't assume about the sincerity of the other side

or go ad hominem. That's really unhomful. So, in that spirit, let me keep the rest of my four other comments just focused on the issues here. Second comment. I want to address what I take to be Michael's primary argument. This has come up a little bit obliquely in my initial response video already. I'm guessing a lot of people didn't watch that. And so Michael was arguing that in Chapter 4 of on baptism against the 9th,

Augustine says that an ecumenical council can place something beyond dispute. And then he was introducing various vocabulary to describe that, such as the adjective definitive, and then he was asserting that this means that it is infallible. We need to be more careful here, both at importing later categories back on Augustine and at probing the meaning of this phrase beyond dispute. The problem with Michael's argument, as I see it, is a confusion between the categories of authority and infallibility. So let me start by just creating some conceptual space for this distinction. Okay, authority is a more practical category that concerns the effect of a decision on church life. It means that it's obligatory. Infallibility is a more metaphysical category that concerns the truth of a decision. It means,

the word infallible means incapable of error. There's all kinds of authorities that are authoritative, they have binding authority, but they're not. infallible. Civil authorities will issue a binding law, but it is not necessarily infallible. Parents over their children, local church leadership over congregants. My ministerial vows are obligatory and authoritative over me, but they're not infallible. And so forth. So as an analogy, if there's a dispute about whether the pitcher's pitch was a ball or a strike, the person who has the authority to make that judgment is the umpire. The coach doesn't have that authority, the players, the catcher, the pitcher, the batter,

no one else has that authority. But that does not mean that, so the umpire can make a definitive, authoritative decision, but that does not mean that they're infallible. Okay. Now, all I'm saying thus far is just to try to create conceptual clarity about that distinction. So now we bring it to Augustine and we ask the question, what does Augustine? mean? When he says a counsel can place something beyond dispute, a lot of people just assume that means infallible. I'm firmly persuaded that that's wrong. Let me explain why. This is one of those

instances where Augustine, reading Augustine only in English translation can be very misleading. I'll put up the Latin phrase here. J.R. King's translation renders it, if at that time the truth of this question had been placed beyond dispute by the investigation and decree of a plenary counsel. Now, if you work through that little clause, you notice there's no adverb. There's no adverbial clause. You could render it more literally as simply if at that time the truth of this question, having been filtered and declared by a plenary counsel, had been solidified. King has rendered the verb solido as placed beyond dispute.

Now, that's fine. I don't object to that within his translation philosophy. I'm sure that's fine. But we just need to have clarity about what Augustine actually. he says here. There's no words like in English, we have the preposition without and the noun dispute. There's nothing like that and that. It's simply those three words placed beyond dispute is simply his translation of the verb solido. The word solido means to make solid or firm to strengthen or consolidate or to fasten together. Now, I did a search in patrilogia Latina for how

Augustine uses this word. I looked at a lot of examples and you know what I found? Over and over and over and over. Augustine will use this word, comparable terms, or even stronger language, for the deliverances of fallible norms. So he'll use language like, you know, settled beyond question, proven invincibly true, most assuredly secure, established by sound reasoning,

and so on and so forth. We could give lots of other examples for the deliverances of fallible authority, like local councils, individual bishops, reasoning soundly from scripture, traditions, that you have good cause to think go back to the apostles, and so on and so forth. There's lots of examples in his letters and elsewhere I could point to for this. Some of the clearest are in this very text on baptism against the Donatists. Even in this very passage, you get that because you've got the lower bishops yielding to the higher bishops. And he talks about then the bishops submitting to the authority.

of the councils and so forth. Well, that doesn't mean they're infallible, but you're submitting to their authority. Later on, in chapters eight and nine of this same book, he'll refer to local councils as having binding authority that dare not be opposed. And he'll talk about Agrippinus, who was a bishop in Carthage in the two 30s sometime around then. I think that's roughly the time the time frame, and he'll say, Agrippinus would have yielded to the authority of a council, whether it had been a local council or a plenary council. You see, over and over in his writings, he'll use language like that. So it is fallacious to assume that because Augustine uses the verb solido to describe the deliverance of a plenary council, therefore the plenary council

is infallible. If that follows, then Augustine thinks local councils and a lot of other. ecclesiastical bodies are also infallible, which is absurd. If I'm wrong and what I'm arguing right now, then Augustine contradicts himself in the space of two paragraphs because he's just said an ecumenical counsel can err, can be corrected. Now, let me address that point. Third comment. Does Augustine actually say that an ecumenical counsel can err? This has come up. So people have argued that, well, corrected doesn't mean like an about face or an actual error, it just means a development or clarification. And people point out the subsequent language about something being hidden and then brought to light. This is a category

error, though. The fact that the particular form the correction takes is through the unveiling of new information does not mean that it's not correcting an error. For example, by metaphor, suppose a jury finds the defendant guilty. Subsequently, new DNA evidence surfaces comes to light, shows they're innocent. Does that mean that the jury didn't make an error? Of course not. The fact that the correction comes through new information coming to light doesn't mean you're not talking about an error. Why should we read the verb corrected here as correcting an error? For three reasons. First, lexically, the term just means that. This is the Latin word amendo. You could translate it as correct, amend, free from fault. It's difficult to

take, to render this verb as meaning simply clarified or developed or something like that. Second, the context. This is the strongest reason. The immediate context, first of all, the whole point of this paragraph is saying, Scripture is confined to its own limits, in the sense that we can know that it is true, but everything that is subsequent to it can err. If Augustine is merely talking about doctrinal development here, he would be changing the topic and undermining the originating point of the sentence at the climactic moment in the sentence. He'd be saying scriptures confined to its own limits, but in contrast to that, lower bishops can err and be corrected by higher bishops. Higher bishops can err and be corrected by local councils. Local councils can err and be corrected by plenary councils, and plenary councils can develop.

You see, it's changing the whole point at the climactic moment. And the whole point of the sentence is even the greatest authorities in the church can air. Therefore, scriptures confined to its own limits. If that's how you read this, as mere doctrinal development, it changes it. It's like saying, my favorite cities in the United States are Boston, New York, Denver, and Australia. At the climactic moment, it vitiates the whole. the whole point of the sentence. The third reason is the surrounding context. Immediately after this sentence, Chapter 4, of on baptism against the Donatist,

begins with Augustine saying, therefore Cyprian would have been willing to correct his own opinion. Does that mean doctrinal development there or clarification? Is he just saying Cyprian would have developed his view? No. Cyprian was wrong. He did in a, and by the way, there's like four occurrences of this verb. One of them is a different Latin word, but there's four instances, two before, two right after, where correction, one is Peter being corrected by Paul in Galatians 2. It's very clear in the context that this is talking about being corrected in an error.

In fact, and every time I can find in the context. So what I want to do here is underscore this point a little further by offering to you all my own translation of this key paragraph. Now my translation is going to be a little bit more literal because I'm trying to draw out the meaning, so it's going to be more clunky. I'm not aiming for readability here, but I want to get as close as we can to the actual text of what Augustine meant. So his voice can be heard. So here it is, and I'll just make some comments as I go.

But who does not know? By the way, that's an interesting way to begin. He's not offering this as a correction to common opinion. He's appealing to common opinion here. Who does not know that the Holy Canon of Scripture, both of the Old and New Testament, is enclosed within its own settled boundaries. That's the assertion. That's a central assertion.

But what does that mean? That's ambiguous. In what sense is it enclosed within its own settled boundaries? Well, he continues. And that it is placed so to all later letters of the bishops that concerning it, it is utterly impossible to doubt or dispute whether whatever stands written in it is right and true, or true and right. Okay, so that's the sense in which for Augustine,

scripture is enclosed within its own settled boundaries, namely infallibility. You can know that it is true. You can take it to the bank. It's not going to deviate from truth. It's certain. But in contrast to that, that the letters of the bishops, which have been written or are being written

after the closing of the canon, are liable to be reproved. Now, that is the governing verb for the four clauses that then follow, crescendoing into the climatic. example, which seals the point, namely even the ecumenical councils or the plenary councils. One of the things people tried to do is they're trying to say, oh, but there hadn't been, there'd only been two plenary councils or two ecumenical councils prior to this point.

But Augustine is giving a hypothetical framework for what is liable to happen. The first three clauses, the first three scenarios that he offers here, individual bishops, lower bishops, yielding to higher bishops, and so forth. those are not history. That's what is liable to happen. So again, if you think suddenly now with plenary counsels, he's talking about history, that would be switching the force of the sentence at the climactic moment. Some seem to, in Williams videos, were just sort of asserting this over and over, but I didn't really hear a clear argument. He seemed to be saying that because Augustine is using the adverb often, therefore this must be talking about history, not a hypothetical framework.

But first of all, that doesn't follow. You can use the adverb often for what is liable to happen. Secondly, this overlooks the fact that Augustine uses this term plenary counsel in a broader sense in a way that is underdetermined with respect to the later distinctions that we would have between more technical categories of what, how do we know it's an ecumenical council, what's the difference between that and a general counsel and so forth. Augustine would not have been thinking in those exact categories in his historical context. I think a good case can be made that Augustine didn't really have detailed knowledge of previous councils.

At one point in his writings, he actually seems to be ignorant of the Council of Sertica in 343. Here's how Eno puts it. He says, some scholars have protested that ecumenical councils could not be the subject of this passage because there had not yet been enough such counsels to speak of their being corrected often. Here again, the fallacy of presuming that Augustine had a clear-cut, univocal idea of an ecumenical counsel is present. So plenary counsel is inclusive of ecumenical councils, but it's of a broader term. The whole point of the passage is to climax into the greatest authorities in the church and show

even those are liable to error. Therefore, scripture is contained within its own limits with respect to infallibility. If plenary councils don't ever err, if they're infallible, that undermines his originating point. The scripture would not be settled within its own boundaries. If Augustine didn't believe that, if he didn't believe in Soliscriptura, if Augustine believed the church possessed infallibility, not just authority, but infallibility. There's lots of ways he could have qualified his language to allow for that. He doesn't do so. Now, if you still disagree with me on this, here's my challenge for what I think would advance the discussion. give me a way Augustine could have said it.

How could he have articulated that the scripture alone is infallible? Because if you can't say a way he could have said it, I would suggest then you're not open to the possibility that he did say it. Because again, I don't know how this could be clearer. Fourth comment, I want to address what it means to read things in context. This is something that came up in Keith's response a number of times with my other quotes. Two points. Number one is I'm all for contextual reading, but this can become a smokescreen to evade the meaning of particular sentences.

So here's a metaphor. Suppose that two historians are arguing about whether Thomas Jefferson or John Adams were greater presidents. And one of them says, I mentioned this already to Keith in our Twitter back and forth. And one of them says Jefferson was the greatest man of his generation. And a newspaper reports, wow, this historian thinks Jefferson was the greatest man of his generation. generation. And someone says, well, he didn't really mean greatest man. He just meant greatest president because that's the context.

The context of the discussion was just the greatest president. You see the problem? The presenting occasion for a statement in the surrounding context need not prohibit the statement asserting something of broader or more universal relevance. So in his reply to Faustus, Augustine will talk about our writings, but then he'll proceed. to make this broader statement of about all productions subsequent to apostolic times. And he's perfectly entitled to make a broader statement, even though it's in that context. And again, if he had believed in infallibility in the church, there is lots of ways he could have

qualified his language to say, well, not all post-apostolic productions. There isn't a distinct boundary line. The church can speak infallibly. He could have said that. I'm not aware of any occasions in Augustine's writings where he'll speak of the church. is possessing infallibility. The second way we can know for sure that Augustine isn't merely limiting his statement to the scripture is over individual writings, because that's Keith's argument that in this context, he's not making as universal a contrast, is look at the rest of

Augustine's writings. This is the irony in this criticism. See, reading Augustine in context, it doesn't just mean reading individual sentences in relation to paragraphs, paragraphs in relation to chapters, chapters in relation to the whole book, though it certainly does also mean that. It also means reading each book in relation to the other books that that author wrote. And if you just look at what else Augustine said, he's very plain. That is not just writings that the scripture is over, it's everything. For example, in the context of the Donatist controversy, to the extent that bishops support the Donatist cause, Augustine is happy to say, quote,

neither should the Catholic bishops be followed when they are wrong and hold an opinion contrary to the canonical scriptures of God. He's not talking about writings there. He's talking about bishops, living people. In other passages when he's writing against Cresconius, he'll talk about how the scriptures were given us that we might freely by them settle all writings and debates. He'll talk about in other writings about the scripture being even over dreams, and visions. So it is very clear that Augustine is not merely setting scripture over writings. He's setting scripture over everything, not just because he says that, but because he explicitly identifies all these other authoritative bodies that the scripture is superior to.

Bishops, councils, ecumenical councils, dreams and visions, you know, anything that goes on in the post-apostolic era, including God himself showing up and speaking to you in a dream. dream is subordinate under scripture. Another point that I have here is about how Augustine actually functions. To read Augustine in context means to look at how he actually treats things. And Augustine, a very common approach for Augustine is this. He'll say, if you've got a universal custom, or if you have a tradition that reliably goes back to the apostles, then you go with that. But if something is unclear, like right now I'm doing a study on purgatory, so I'm listening to how Augustine argues against Origins Universalism, an over and over and over.

over again, he's saying, we must not base our opinions on the wobbly foundations of human opinion. Show it to me in the law. Show it to me in the gospel. Show it to me in the Psalms. Show it to me in the writings of Paul. This can only be established by the clear testimonies of canonical scripture and so on and so forth. I'm just paraphrasing. But that's how he frequently functions.

Fifth comment, and I'll be brief on this because I don't want to go on too long. I just want to disambiguate this topic of Sola Scripura from other things that keep coming up. People frequently bring up the sufficiency of Scripture and then you get into material versus formal sufficiency. That's really a separate issue from Sola Scriptura. Obviously they have a relation to each other, but they don't stand or fall together. I do think Augustine has some statements that kind of challenge those categories because of the adverb plainly in this quote I read in my initial video. but that's really a separate topic. Also, the Deutero Canon.

People keep bringing up the Deutero Canon. So people are saying, well, Augustine affirmed the Deutero canon, therefore, like, that's somehow a problem with my argument for Soliscriptura. Look, these are separate issues. One concerns which books are in the Bible. The other concerns, what's the authority of those books over the church? Did those things do not stand or fall together? You could affirm a 66 book Bible and affirm Soliscriptura.

You could affirm a 66 book Bible and deny Soliscriptura. You could affirm a 73 book Bible and affirm Sola Scriptura. You could affirm a 73 book Bible and deny Sola Scriptura. You could affirm the canon that's pretty operative throughout the East, where you've got basically all the Duderian canonical is excluded except for Baruch and the letter of Jeremiah, included in the book of Jeremiah, and Susanna included in the book of Daniel. It's a very common patristic canon,

and either affirm or deny. They don't stand or fall together. So that point is really actually irrelevant to this question. Okay, my final concluding comment is simply this. I've been reflecting on why did this video generate such aggressive responses? Not all of them were aggressive. As I said, Keith's video, lots of the other comments, totally fine. I don't mind people offering good faith, charitable criticisms in the slightest.

I think that's productive and good. I actually think arguing respectfully is radically countercultural, and I'm a big believer in that. There are a few things I respect more than calm disagreement. But I've made a lot of videos, and I've been curious, why did this one generate more responses? I'm not sure. And I don't want to judge any one particular person's motives. But I wonder if some of that, for some, is because this feels kind of threatening to think of Augustine affirming Soliscriptura. Because of the stature of Augustine.

I mean, Augustine wrote more on the church and authority than all the other church fathers combined. And partly because I think people have become accustomed to carry. caricaturing and lampooning Sola Scriptura as though it were a silly idea. So if this whole thing feels kind of threatening, I just want to say as a closing comment for people who are undecided, for viewers who are struggling with this or maybe for Catholics, I do appreciate the fact that I understand that my videos can feel like maybe they're attacking you, even though that is not my intention. I actually have great admiration for the Catholic tradition.

I'm not intending simply to attack it. But I do appreciate that it can feel like that, and I know what that feels like. Here's something that can help us. We have to find our identity in Christ, not in our church tradition. And when we do that, we can work through these issues more calmly. We can hold our church tradition a little more loosely and hold Christ more tightly, and that's very freeing, because then what happens is you become more open to simply following the truth wherever it leads.

And I truly think I can say this, that I've been through enough struggles, especially in relation to my apologetics work, and I've found such freedom and joy and apologetics. But having been through all that and worked through that, when it comes to these things, I honestly can truly say, if I became convinced that I shouldn't be Protestant anymore because of the truth, I truly would do that, truly.

Honestly, like I've been through worse, you know? Like, I'd be happy to change traditions. I don't think that's going to happen. I'm settled in Protestantism through my studies. but I also appreciate and I respect people who are in a different place. But here's the thing. If we cling to Christ more than our church tradition, we can be sort of free to simply work through these things

and it not be this hyper-intense, aggressive conversation and we can simply follow the truth. It's very freeing to just say, you know, I'll follow the truth. Now, I'm sorry if that comes across as condescending. I didn't mean that for any of my interlocutors, like the people I'm responding to. That's more for viewers who are wrestling. but I wanted to say that because I hope that could be helpful for people. I know people, these issues create angst for people.

I understand that. I appreciate that. It should if you're wrestling with it. But if you hold on to Christ and keep seeking truth and say, you know, I'll follow the truth wherever it leads, it's actually incredibly freeing. All right, I'm going to stop there. I hope that this is helpful for people watching. I probably will not respond further unless there are responses or further

things that come out that introduce new points that really could benefit from being addressed. So this will probably be it for me. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you so much to my patrons for being so kind and supportive and kind of helping me think about these things and how to try to respond in a gracious but firm way. I really appreciate that. Let me know what you think in the comments. God bless you.