The naïve and increasingly common assumption that reason and faith are incompatible is simply at odds with the facts of history. The revelation in the Hebrew Scriptures of a reasonable Creator imbued Judaism and Christianity with a conviction that the world is intelligible, leading to the flowering of reason and the invention of science in the West. It was no accident that the Enlightenment took place in the culture formed by the Jewish and Christian faiths. Join us as we talk with Dr. Sam Gregg about the unique role of faith and reason both at the foundation of Western civilization and how both are necessary for a society to flourish.



More About Our Guest

Portrait of Samuel Gregg

Dr. Samuel Gregg is director of research at the Acton Institute. He has written and spoken extensively on questions of political economy, economic history, ethics in finance, and natural law theory. He has an MA in political philosophy from the University of Melbourne, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in moral philosophy and political economy from the University of Oxford. He is the author of several books, including For God and Profit: How Banking and Finance Can Serve the Common Good(2016) and Becoming Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and How America Can Avoid a European Future(2013). He is a regular writer of opinion-pieces which appear in publications such as the Wall Street Journal Europe; First Things; Investors Business Daily; Washington Times; American Banker; National Review; The Stream; Public Discourse; American Spectator; El Mercurio; Australian Financial Review; Jerusalem Post; La Nacion, and Business Review Weekly.


Episode Transcript

Scott Rae: Welcome to the podcast Think Biblically; Conversations on faith and culture. I'm your host, Scott Rae. Dean of faculty and professor of Christian ethics at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. We're here today with Dr.Sam Gregg, who is the director of research for the Acton Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Born and raised in Australia, educated at the University of Melbourne, a doctor of Philosophy from University of Oxford in the UK and has lived in the United States here since 2001. So maybe not exactly a total citizen of the world, but pretty close.

Samuel Gregg: I feel like a citizen of the anglo-world.

Scott Rae: In the anglo-world, yeah. He's the author of several books. In fact if we were to list them, it would take way too much time here, but there are two that I want to point out. I think might be of particular interest to our listeners. The two that I found the most helpful of your books are your book entitled Becoming Europe, which is a fascinating work and subtitle Economic Decline Culture and How America Can Avoid a European Future.

But the one, that in my view, is the most helpful of all your books, is your book on banking called Forgotten Profits; How banking and finance can serve the common good. I may have a question or two about that as we go along. Sam is an expert on the global economy, both the ethics and the economics of the global economy. As I like to put it, the good, bad, and the ugly, of the global economy. But I'd like to start with that. Let's be clear right at the beginning, what do you mean by globalization? What's the definition of that?

Samuel Gregg: Well, typically when people talk about globalization, they usually mean, today, they usually aim the habits and institutions of the market economy. And my take on it is slightly different. Globalization clearly, today, involves a universalization of certain habits, certain institutions, certain expectations that we associate with the market economy. But at a broader level, I think globalization is about the universalization of anything. Whether it's an idea, a habit, an institution, a way of proceeding, a philosophy, a religion, anything that becomes something that people from all cultures, all backgrounds, can in some way partake of and contribute to. So for example, ideas I think, a good example of something that becomes globalized very quickly for better and for worse. Christianity is a very good example of an idea, beliefs, a way of thinking about the world, certain claims about religious truth that really are global.

No one would describe Christianity today is predominantly a Western European, or European, or even Atlantic thing. It's a global religion. It's really, truly universal. When I talk about globalization I always stress, at the moment in our present pointed history, it manifests itself economically.` Global integration, global markets, global financial markets, people trading across barriers of nation, et cetera. That's how it manifests itself today. But I think there are many ways and different things that universalized themselves. And that's what I think globalization is ultimately about. And it can be for better and it can be for worse.

Scott Rae: Okay. We'll get into for better for worse here in just a minute, but let's just be clear about this. The main elements of globalization in today's economy are what?

Samuel Gregg: Well, I think first of all, free trade. The removal and sometimes breaking down of barriers to people, individuals, and companies within particular nations trading relatively freely with people living in other nations. Trade is not a new thing in human history. Trade is something that's been going on from the very beginning of time. But what's particularly interesting is that since, I guess the early 1980s, we have seen concerted efforts by governments from around the world, both the left and the right by the way, to try and reduce trade barriers between countries. So removing things like tariffs or removing things like subsidies, that's one manifestation. Another manifestation of it economically in our world today, I think, is the internationalization of financial markets. Once upon a time, up until relatively recently, financial markets tended to be, they were in one sense global or they were not as integrated as they are today.

Technology's had a lot to do with that. People trading in a place like Beijing can trade in real time on Wall Street. People on Wall Street can trade in real time in the London Stock Exchange, et cetera. So that sort of financial integration I think is very, very important when it comes to understanding the speeding up of globalization. Also the rapid movement of capital around the world, it's just a lot faster now that can have some good effects. People can move very quickly to invest capital where they think there's going to be a significant profit, but it could also produce a herd mentality whereby people think, "Oh, because Warren Buffett's do it, we're doing it. We should all do it."

Scott Rae: So runs on the bank can take place in a matter of seconds.

Samuel Gregg: Of course. Whereas before it would have taken, you know the news to get across from America to Europe a little longer.

Scott Rae: Now you maintain that our current global economy is not actually the first one?

Samuel Gregg: Correct.

Scott Rae: When was the first one? And you also maintain that, that first one actually did come to an end.

Samuel Gregg: It did.

Scott Rae: Tell us about that first one. And what was it like and how did it happen that it came to an end?

Samuel Gregg: Well, I use this as an example when I often talk about globalization to say that there's nothing inevitable or deterministic about globalization. Different forms of globalization can come to an end sometimes very quickly before we even know it. And the 19th century global economy is a good example of that. This emerged following the Napoleonic Wars where the works of Adam Smith started to become more widely read among educated North Americans and Europeans. And this produced an intellectual impetus on the part of governments, interestingly, to more or less remove trade barriers. In many cases, just unilaterally, just saying we will trade with anyone. In other cases it involved treaties whereby different countries would agree to progressively lower trade barriers between the participants in a particular treaty. So what you see all through the 19th century is a rapid diminution of protectionist policies. The removal of subsidies, the removal of legal protections or what some people would call privileges for particular occupational groups, which we used to call guilds, et cetera, and this produced an economy which in many respects was more integrated than it is today.

We today, think of ourselves as living in a relatively integrated global economy and that's true, but in many respects, the type of global economy that existed in the 19th century was far more integrated, far more free trade and far less protectionist than the one we live in today. Why did this come to an end? IT came to an end because if the thing called the first world war. So in 1914, when the world went to war, that obviously meant that suddenly people weren't trading freely across national boundaries as they had been before. Interestingly, two years before that, a philosopher named Norman Angel, I think his name was, wrote a book saying, in 1912 saying, the world is so economically integrated that we will never have a global war ever again. And two years later, that's exactly what happened. And from then on, after the second or first world war countries moved very directly towards policies of protectionism, tariffs, subsidies. So between 1914 and 1945 you no longer had an integrated global economy. You had a highly protectionist, highly subsidized economy, existing pretty much everywhere throughout the world.

Scott Rae: Now, Sam, I hear people saying that very same thing today. That we have such an integrated global economy that it's just simply too costly. That it's too costly for a business, for companies to go to war. For example, people have said "this explains why there's been relative peace between India and Pakistan" for somebody else, because it would be much too costly for business. I mean, is that, is that, is that true? Is that largely what you think is responsible for keeping that peace?

Samuel Gregg: I have a number of thoughts about that. As a Christian, of course I'm not a determinist. I don't believe anything is sort of inevitable in terms of this happens then it's impossible for war to break out. Human beings are weak, human beings are sinful. I really do believe that we shouldn't rule out the possibility that people and nations will occasionally go to war. Now it's true, I think, that when you have economic integration between countries, it creates significant incentives not to go to war.

Scott Rae: That's a good way to put that.

Samuel Gregg: That's one way. On the other hand, people like Eden Smith, who of course is really who made the first profound, systematic intellectual case for free trade. He pointed out that when countries engage in free trade, they become wealthier, they become stronger, they can have bigger militaries if they want. And he, for example, was not at all convinced that the growing wealth that would come through free trade would necessarily lead to greater peace.

He even said things like, "look, it means that wealthy countries could grow even wealthier and lots and lots of countries will be able to maintain quote unquote armies and fleets long distances away from themselves." And it's also the case that when countries become very wealthy, they can afford to go to war for longer periods than they otherwise would have in the past. So while I'm inclined to think that economic integration does create the type of dynamics that you described, I wouldn't assume that this rules out any possibility of war. In fact, it's sometimes the wealth that is accrued through free trade gives countries more resources than they perhaps otherwise might've had to spend on building big strong armies and name.

Scott Rae: And Adam Smith foresaw that?

Samuel Gregg: Oh yes, he said this, and he's very clear about this. He wasn't a person who said universal peace through free trade. He said, "look, it will reduce tensions to a certain extent, but some countries may become so wealthy that they decide, we can afford to go to war for a couple of years."

Scott Rae: So maybe it's not that costly?

Samuel Gregg: Right.

Scott Rae: Now, today, you to look at Brexit, you look at a lot of the discontent that got Donald Trump elected today. I think it's pretty clear that not everybody's a big fan of globalization.

Samuel Gregg: Correct.

Scott Rae: What would you say are some of the reasons why people are not fans of globalization and maybe, I suspect, there might be some myths and misunderstandings in there, that are part of that too.

Samuel Gregg: I think that's right. Free trade is a bit of a counterintuitive argument, right? People think, how do I become wealthy by just simply trading with another person? Or they think things like, surely we should just trade with people we know within our own countries. There are some misperceptions and and economics I often say to people is, it's not the easiest discipline in the world to get your mind around. I mean, cause it requires you to think a little counterintuitively about a lot of things. So that's one thing. A second reason I think is that pre-marketers like me, have not been very good at dealing with the fact that not everyone wins from the process of free trade. That there are people in the short term and medium term, for whom things don't necessarily work out so well.

If you're in a particular industry, and the country's opened up to free trade and suddenly the country is working out, what's it's comparative advantage and what's not, suddenly it may be that particular parts of manufacturing in the United States are no longer globally competitive. Which means that some people are going to lose their jobs, and maybe they're 50 years old or 55 years old or 60 years old and they can't easily just go off and start a start up in California. It's just not that simple. That's one thing. There are casualties from globalization. That's not a reason to, I think, stop the process. I happen to think that overall in the longterm it's most beneficial for vast majority of people, but too many people have ignored the fact that there are casualties. Too many free traders, pre marketers like myself have been too quick to just say, well, this will all work itself out in the long term.

Thirdly, I think it's very true that when you open yourself up to global markets, it means disruption. It means less degree of security, right? Because you're having to think that you can't just assume that the government is going to subsidize this industry anymore, or there's going to be protective tariffs to protect your particular crop against others. And not everyone deals with disruption and uncertainty the same way. Some people exalt it, and some people love it. They think this is great, "I can be individually if it's keeping me on my toes." Other people, however, they value security more and I'm not making a value judgment about either of these things. I think people are just build to either be sort of more Liberty inclined or more concerned about security.

Most of us are somewhere in between, but some people really value security, particularly if they come from backgrounds that have been particularly poor or they've had experiences of what economic insecurity is like. I understand, for example, why many Europeans a little nervous about freedom in general, because they've had a pretty miserable 20th century. So you can understand why they would be yearning more for security rather than Liberty. Okay. I don't think that's an argument against increasing economic integration, but I do think these are examples of why many people are finding the process of globalization, stressful, disruptive, it changes the way, in many cases, entire towns have lived lives for generations, and the process of transitioning to new forms of economic life is not easy. Again, it's not an argument against economic integration, but I think we need to think about these things and how to address these types of problems if one wants to see this economic integration continue.

And I think a lot of people have basically assumed that it would just take care of itself. Well, clearly it's not.

Scott Rae: It's not happening.

Samuel Gregg: It's not happening.

Scott Rae: So as a Christian, as you look at the globalization of markets through a distinctly Christian worldview, how do you assess the good, bad, and the ugly from a distinctly Christian view of the world?

Samuel Gregg: Right. Well, I think that Christianity brings a lot of different things to do this discussion. One thing, which I often talk about, is that Christianity has a strong universalistic dimension. Remember we talked about globalization at the beginning of having this universal listening?

Scott Rae: Yeah, the globalization of the gospel.

Samuel Gregg: Right. Exactly. I mean, Christianity is not a "let's stay at home and sit in our hotel room and just pretend the world's going on." No, we're supposed to go out and evangelize. And that evangelization doesn't stop at the borders of ancient Israel. It doesn't stop at the borders of Europe. It doesn't stop at the borders of North America. It's global. So Christianity, in that sense, has a universal outlook. And the truth that it proclaims about there is one God and Jesus Christ is savior, that humans are designed in a particular way, these are universal messages. They're not just messages that only Europeans can understand or Westerners, anyone can literally understand these sorts of things. So there is this very strong universal dimension to Christianity. On the other hand, Christianity also has tended to be, I think generally speaking, relatively respectful of the different cultures and different societies in which it's entered.

Paul gives us a good example of this, right? He's very good at adapting his message, the same message, to different audiences. When he talks to a group of Jews in the synagogue, his language is very different from when he talks to the philosophers in Athens. So Christianity has this very strong emphasis upon being respectful of the particular. Christianity also says that patriotism is a good thing. Love of country is a good thing. Now all those things play into many of our contemporary debates about economic globalization, about nationalism, about how we think about the global and the national at the same time. So from that standpoint, we can say a number of things. One, to the extent that globalization makes us more and more aware that we're all human, that there are no subhumans, there are no superhumans, there are just humans. That's something that Christianity has emphasized from the very beginning. That's one thing.

The second thing is that Christians are obviously supposed to be concerned about our brother and sister in poverty, and I don't think it's... Well, I think it's very clear that economic globalization has reduced poverty significantly across the globe. Now it's uneven, I think most of the economic poverty reduction has occurred in East Asia and China. Not much has happened in Africa, but is the world less poor overall as a consequence of globalization? Yes.

Scott Rae: Certainly. That's true.

Samuel Gregg: That's certainly true. There are even many people who would describe themselves as somewhat politically on the left, who would freely acknowledge this. So to the extent that Christianity emphasizes the need to deal with this problem of poverty, then obviously I think globalization, empirically speaking, it does reduce poverty, so that's a good thing.

On the other hand, I think Christianity would also remind us that we can't lose sight of the economic wellbeing of those who are members of our own nations. A good example would be to say something like, well, people are getting out of poverty in places like India and China, but is this at the expense of people living in West Virginia or somewhere like that? And Christianity presumably will be telling us that we can't forget those people who actually sort of physically close to us who are members of our own nation, who are members of our own country. We can't just forget about those particular individuals as this process goes on. So I think a Christian would say there are people who are casualties of globalization as well, and we need to be attentive to their needs and helping them to make transitions to them, the type of economic arrangements which will enable them not to become wards of the state, not to become fallen into the trap of welfare dependency, et cetera.

I also think that another thing that Christianity brings to the table is it has the same view that human nature is the same, that culture is important. Culture makes us particular differences between people, but Christianity emphasizes that mankind is one. This is what many of the missionaries used to talk about. And to that extent, Christianity can help us not fall into the trap of what I would call the type of narrow-minded xenophobia, where we become afraid of the stranger. We become afraid of the refugee. We become afraid of the economic migrant. But it would also say that those people who migrate to a new country or are refugees, they need to respect the laws of the country that has preceded them. Christianity has always paid a lot of attention to honoring the government.

Christians don't view government as a sort of inherently negative institution. Paul talks about this, Paul tells us to honor the emperor. He doesn't say worship the emperor.

Scott Rae: That's right.

Samuel Gregg: He says honor the emperor. So government is a legitimate authority and when it comes to many of these questions that are flowing out of globalization today, people moving into a new country or migrating to a new country, they need to understand that they need to obey the laws of the country that they're going into. Christianity would say yes, that's exactly right. Is Christianity pro-globalization, anti-globalization? I don't think it's either. I think it brings a set of principles which Christians can use to assess, as you said, the good, the bad, and the ugly of globalization to ask what's in conformity with the gospel, what's not, what Accords with what reason tells us, and what doesn't accord with what reason tells us.

Scott Rae: Let me take this just a little bit of a step further. It's very common to hear politicians, pundits, say that we have a moral obligation to keep American jobs and American.

Samuel Gregg: Right.

Scott Rae: How do you evaluate that from a Christian worldview?

Samuel Gregg: Well, I don't think jobs come with the sort of national label attached to them. What Christianity says about something like jobs, because that work is something that humans are designed to do. We're not created to be passive and that's very clear from the very verses of the scriptures, right? Even before the fall. Before the fall, humans are working, we're called to till the earth and whether that's in a particular country, I think is sort of not really the point. That's sort of an incidental thing. Where it happens is not so important. What matters is that human beings are working.

The second thing I think is that what you just described, reflects a type of a static view of things. The patterns of employment are changing all the time in every country, regardless of how open they are or not to trade. Jobs that existed 20 years ago, the typewriter salesman, doesn't exist anymore. Poison bugging industry doesn't exist anymore.

Scott Rae: Fax machines.

Samuel Gregg: Fax machines, I was excited this perfection the other day someone asked me for a fax number and I thought, I don't think I've used a fax for maybe 10 years. In other words, in a creative economy, and Christianity talks a great deal about human creativity, there's going to be churn, there's going to be disruption. You can't assume that a job, in a particular business, in a particular state, in a particular country is going to be there tomorrow, let alone in five, 10, 20 years time. What matters, I think, is whether any society's able to design an economy in such a way that it provides bountiful, plentiful, and ongoing employment for people.

It's not so much important whether a particular job is outsourced to Mexico. What matters, in the case of the United States, is that there is more and more opportunity for work growing. We shouldn't be thinking about this in terms of, one job is a static thing and it's being shifted off offshore. It might be, but maybe that also creates space for people to find the comparative advantage to build a new business and create new jobs that happen to be based in America.

Scott Rae: That's a great point. Now, one of the things that I think has been most disruptive here, both in the U S but particularly in Europe, as a result of the global movement of jobs...

Samuel Gregg: And people.

Scott Rae: And capital, but if it's the movement of people. You argue that there's a consistent pattern to migration, but this produces huge challenges.

Samuel Gregg: Absolutely.

Scott Rae: So help us understand that.

Samuel Gregg: Well, I think we now live in a world in which the movement is underway. There are lots and lots of people moving. Some of them are refugees. I'm thinking, for example, Christian refugees from the Middle East, the persecution of Christians there is terrible and people are getting up and leaving. There's a lot of Arab-Christians living in the United States for a reason. They're fled from persecution.

But most of migration that occurs today is what's called economic migration. So these are not people who are refugees, these are not people who have been persecuted, these are not people who are suffering because of their faith or the ethnic origin, they're leaving because there's little to no economic opportunity for them in their home country. So they're getting up from places in say, Central America, in Africa, and then moving to countries where they believe they can find work and develop a life of dignity, perhaps build a family, send medicines back home, et cetera. This is going on everywhere and that's the majority form of migration today, is economic migration. But this does produce a lot of challenges. Because many people are moving from countries where there's one predominant culture and they're engineering into a country where the culture is utterly different.

Scott Rae: Completely.

Samuel Gregg: Completely different. And we're also seeing situations where the countries who are losing their young people, so the young people are leaving, that creates big challenges for those countries. Because they're losing a lot of what economists would call human capital. They're also losing people who are willing to take risks, and people who are willing to take risks are very important for economic development. So when we talk about migration, we often think of, well the clear difficulties it creates for destination countries, mostly North America, Western Europe, et cetera. That. clearly creates problems, but it also creates problems for the countries that are losing people as well. So that's one thing.

I think another dimension of this, of this particular particular migration changes that we see happening in the world today, is that we have to ask ourselves, why are people moving? And they're moving because they're seeking economic opportunity. And we know that economic opportunity tends to be associated with countries that have strong rule of law, strong private property rights, and a respect for economic freedom. So that's why people are wanting to go to the United States, Canada, Australia, they're not going to China. Even though China is experiencing a relatively high degree of economic prosperity for the moment, no one wants to go and live there. You don't find that lots and lots of people from Africa getting up and saying, "I want to go and live in China and I'm going to cross lots and lots of deserts to do that." They're going to other places. So what that tells us is that there are many people who are moving because of economic opportunity. And they see that in some of these countries which have these stable institutions.

The flip side of that is there are some people who are moving to particular countries because they know, this may sound uncharitable, but they know they can access welfare relatively easy. And that's maybe one of the biggest differences between experience of migration in the United States today and that in Europe. It's very clear that a lot of people are going to Europe because they know that if they get into particular countries, they'll be able to access the welfare state, and that's not good. It's not good because then economic migrants become welfare migrants.

Scott Rae: Dependents.

Samuel Gregg: Dependency. And that's not good, it's not good for them. And we also know that, we know this is true because we know that European governments are now changing laws to try and limit access to the welfare state because they know that this is not a longterm healthy characteristic that they want to see develop in their societies. So I think, when most people come to the United States to migrate, when they migrate here, typically they start off with one or two jobs and gradually start working their way up the economic ladder.

By contrast in Europe, many people who migrate to Europe now, are not getting jobs, they're on welfare. So the number of people who migrated to Germany in 2015, I believe it was when Angular Merkel said, "come on in," et cetera. I read a statistic the other day that 90% of those people, so this is four years later, do not have a job.

Scott Rae: Oh, ouch.

Samuel Gregg: This is not good. This is not a healthy situation. It's not good for the longterm stability of Germany. It's not good to have large numbers of people, who already come from cultures that are very different from European cultures, who are unemployed and are presumably starting to get angry about that. And it's also not good when they don't assimilate. I mean, one of the geniuses of America, I think is that everyone becomes an American. That doesn't mean that you reject your heritage. It just means that, no, this is my allegiance now and I've become part of the United States and I adhere to the norms of this society.

In Europe that has not happened. It's a very, very different situation.

Scott Rae: Sam, one last question on this. What out there in the way globalization is going, gives you hope and encouragement? What are some of the good things that we can look forward to in the years to come?

Samuel Gregg: Well hopefully it will continue to see reductions in poverty. Hopefully it will see reductions in poverty and those parts of the world where there has been less of that development. I'm thinking particularly in Africa. I mean economically speaking, I think the future looks relatively good for the majority of people. I don't want to downplay the negatives because we've talked about that and I think they're real, but we shouldn't lose sight of some of the economic positives.

A second thing I think is that it does provide new opportunities for evangelization. It really does. Because when countries start to open themselves up to the world, it's an opportunity for Christian missionaries to go into these countries as well, and to help spread the gospel. Another thing which I find interesting, and maybe you've noticed this as well, is that even a place like communist China, which has had this sort of limited opening up to the world economically, it's interesting that it's precisely in these special economic zones, that were somewhat opened up to the world in the 1980s, and which you become wealthier and which people have gotten out of poverty are also the areas where Christianity is growing. And I've tried to think of what about that? Why is that the case? And the best I can come up with is when you give people some degree of economic freedom, you have to give them some freedom to think, to contemplate, to wonder about the world.

And when people get out of back grounding poverty sometimes then, they have the opportunity and time to be able to think about the bigger questions of life. It's really hard to do that if you you try to survive day by day, but if you're living in a society where suddenly, okay, I don't have to worry about how I'm going to feed myself and my family tonight, suddenly I'm in a position where I can start to contemplate bigger questions, and maybe I even start to see things like my work and my creativity is part of a bigger design. So I think that's a very hopeful sign that... Because I often think that globalization is often seen as well to the secularizing force, et cetera. But I think when you look at countries that have opened themselves up to globalization in that way, certainly in developing countries, the opposite tends to be the case. Here's another, is this globalized world we are living in, is becoming more religious. Western Europe and parts of North America are the exception. They're not the rule. If you look around the world, the world is becoming more religious. And I think that globalization has some indirect responsibility for that.

Scott Rae: That's a really interesting observation about that connection between poverty being alleviated and having the personal bandwidth now to entertain some of life's most significant questions that give rise to the gospel. I think that's a part of what our listeners and what the church ought to be attuned to and be praying for.

Samuel Gregg: Absolutely.

Scott Rae: As the global economy continues to expand. So Sam, this has been incredibly insightful stuff. I so appreciate the work that you've done, not only in economics, but in theology and philosophy and it's so well integrated and how how you see the world through the lenses of a distinctly Christian worldview is very encouraging. So we're really grateful for you taking the time to reflect on some of these questions on the global economies that are not easy questions.

Samuel Gregg: No, I often say that if you're looking for simple answers, I'm not the person to speak to, and you're probably not the person to speak to either.

Scott Rae: But I appreciate you being clear, but also being nuanced and admitting that things are complex when they are. And that the global economy is unbalanced, been a lot of good things, but it's definitely a mixed thing. And there are downsides to, that as the church, we need to be attentive to. So much appreciated for you taking the time to be with us and for your insight on these what I think are some pretty difficult questions.

Samuel Gregg: Thank you. It's great to be with you and maybe I'll come back someday.

Scott Rae: Well, this certainly merits a follow up to some of the other stuff that you've been thinking about and writing on. This has been an episode of the podcast, Think Biblically: conversations on faith and culture. To learn more about us and today's guest, Dr. Sam Gregg, and to find more episodes, go to biola.edu/thinkbiblically. That's viola.edu/thinkbiblically. If you've enjoyed today's conversation, give us a rating on your podcast app and please do share it with a friend. Thanks so much for listening and remember, think biblically about everything.