Welcome to the launch of the Center for the Social Scientific Study of the Bible here at St. Mary's University College. The Center was the brainchild of Professor Philip Essler, and those involved in social scientific criticism of the Bible will have no problem figuring out why, as he is and has been for quite some time a world leader in that area. As the founding director, I want to express my unabashed excitement about St. Mary's investment in critical research into the Bible and the worlds in which it circulated. Although the Center serves in some ways as an outward face of the institution, it also serves with an inward turning face. As a Catholic institution of higher education, the critical study of Christian Scripture is a highly important endeavor for us as a community. And there is no reason that St. Mary should not have a leading voice in this international discussion. The Center is a strategic means of stepping closer to that end goal. This past year, I've served as the Center's midwife, seeing it through the proposal phase, and this phase ends officially with the launch tonight in Professor Barclay's lecture. We did earlier this week, or last week, have a soft opening on the school's website. So if you get time, I encourage you to go to www.smuc.ac.uk. We're filming this to put it up. And to look under the Centers at the page for the Center for the Social Scientific Study of the Bible, is that address will show you that I've already recruited an impressive international team of internal and external affiliates associated with the Center. These affiliates serve an official role as a pool of resources for me as the Director, and also as a pool of resources for postgraduate research students. Those present tonight include Dr. Perry Brogue of St. Mary's, Mr. Tarsisius Mukuka of St. Mary's, and also Dr. Catherine Southwood of St. Mary's slash Oxford. I express my thanks to each of you for the time that you have offered to invest in our students and in this Center. Our plan is to host a conference at least once a year, every year and a half, and the website will keep you updated on the progress and the news for that. And I'm also happy to report that in our first year we already have underway a collaborative research project with colleagues at the University of Edinburgh and at Humboldt University at Super Lynn. And that this is part of a successful grant application for a British Academy lever-hume grant. The future's bright. In terms of broader research agenda, social scientific criticism of the Bible can span from narrow topics like applications of cultural anthropology to specific biblical texts to broad topics like the economy in the Mediterranean Basin. I intend for the Center to embrace them all. And on that note, I'd like to introduce our main speaker, who has shown a capacity to move seamlessly in various applications of social scientific criticism to the New Testament in its world. Professor John Barclay is currently Lightfoot Professor of Divinity at Durham University, a position he's held since 2003. Prior to taking up this post, he also served as lecturer and senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow. Professor Barclay also serves as the editor of the prestigious New Testament studies journal and as editor of the Early Christianity and Context Monograph series. He's published extensively in the social history of early Christianity, Judaism in the Mediterranean world, and especially Pauline theology. In 2007, he also contributed a new translation and commentary of Josephus' interesting apologetic tract contraepian for Brill Academic Press. Professor Barclay's publications in these areas are, in fact, so extensive that while reviewing them for this introduction, I crawled into a corner, pondered my own inadequacy, and drank cheap beer. Our lecture tonight comes from his most recent work on the Apostle Paul and Gift Theory, which is part of a two-volume work forthcoming from Erdman's Press. He claims that this work goes, quote, beyond Sanders and the New Perspective without returning to Luther or traditional Protestant understandings of grace, end quote. As a non-mainline Protestant working quite happily at a Catholic institution, I say, great, I think. I need to add one more impressive note of introduction. Professor Barclay has supervised at least 32 PhD students to completion. That is extremely impressive. Even more impressive is the way they speak of him. I know several, and I know that they would, to this day, run through a wall for Professor Barclay. The relationship between a PhD supervisor and his or her students is a complex one, and I think that the loyalty of your Dr. Kinder says volumes about you as a scholar in person, Professor Barclay. Professor John Barclay exhibits some of the precise qualities of research and professionalism that the Center for the Social Scientific Study of the Bible hopes to foster, and so I am quite happy to welcome him to launch our center with a lecture on Paul and the Gift, Gift Theory, Grace, and Critical Issues in the Interpretation of Paul. Well, thank you so much, Chris, for your very warm welcome, and it is a great honor and a great pleasure for me to be here tonight. I'm quite old-fashioned in my teaching methods like I have a handout, and I think this sort of fits this context. Don't you think it would be strange otherwise? So I have a handout for you, and I think I've got enough here. If not, I've got more here. Let me just distribute a few of this time as well. Let's give you a sense of where we are in the lecture and a sense of the progress that we're making. But it is a great honor for me to be here at the launch of this center, the Center for the Social Scientific Study of the Bible. This center, I think, with enormous potential to give leadership to the study of the Bible, not only in the UK, but on a far wider scale. I guess since the Second World War, the social sciences have spread in influence across the whole of the Western intellectual landscape, and it's a sign of their significance that sociological and anthropological concepts are regularly deployed in all sorts of historical and literary disciplines. Their benefit for the study of religion has been evident since the days of Weber and Durkheim, although those in the traditional heartlands of theology have not always welcomed their contributions. I think myself the fear of the social sciences as a reductionist or even anti-theological discipline has now largely subsided. Even among those who would insist that theology remains for those within the Christian tradition a kind of master dialogue, a master discourse, sociology and anthropology have proven their capacity to enrich the study of religious traditions at least as a complement to other methods of analysis. Within biblical studies, the first experimental uses of sociological or anthropological theory in the 1970s were sometimes perhaps too wooden or too dogmatic in their use of social scientific resources, but it's clear to most that those resources can be successfully applied to biblical texts as literature and as history, at least on three conditions. That is, so long as there is sufficient data to analyze, so long as the theories or models deployed have cross-cultural applicability, and so long as one allows the biblical and ancient evidence to modify tools deployed not to determine results, but to raise questions and to challenge assumptions. Is that ability of the social sciences to open up fresh angles of vision on long familiar texts? In a mode and an idiom that also resonates with our contemporary context that makes this form of inquiry so fascinating and so fruitful. For me as one who has benefited from the sociological and anthropological literature in a kind of eclectic but always grateful fashion and who is delighted to have anthropologists of religion among my colleagues in Durham, I'm convinced that the sort of interdisciplinary freshness that this produces is precisely what will make this centre so valuable for biblical studies and for theology as a whole. What I want to present for you today are some samples of the sorts of benefits I have found from immersing myself recently into one famous field of anthropology, the anthropology of gift, and the questions it has opened up for me in the study of the apostle Paul. The fact that my title uses the word gift, not the traditional Christian term grace, is itself significant. In fact Paul's term that we have come to translate by grace, the term carous, is the normal Greek word for gift or favour or benefaction. Used by all Greek speakers in antiquity, pagan and Jewish in relation to both human and divine gifts. And those perhaps some benefit in avoiding to begin with at least the term grace since it comes loaded with so many connotations from later Christian controversies. Paul and the gift, my title gestures as some of you may recognize to the famous founding essay in the anthropology of gift by Marcel Maus called Simply Le Don. In another vein it signals the fact that Paul understands the gift as the gift of Christ as we shall see. In this lecture I want to attempt three tasks. First to survey some features of the anthropology of gift and some features of gift giving in the Greco-Roman world in which I include ancient Judaism to set a historical context for understanding Pauline as well as other early Christian discourse about gift. Secondly to outline ways in which gift giving can be what I call perfected that is extended in an absolute or extreme form for the sake of definition or for the sake of rhetorical advantage. And third to sketch in their outline some of the ways in which these angles of perception on gift open up I believe Paul's understanding of gift giving with human and divine. So let's start with the anthropology of gift. Let me make clear at once that by gifts I am including favors and benefactions, material as well as social, everything by which people benefit one another on a non-legal voluntary basis as part of an enduring personal relationship. Thus broadly defined we are speaking of a sphere of personal relations in ancient societies crucial to security as well as to social success. A sphere still important but more limited in scope in modern urban western culture. Marcel Mauss's famous Essay sur le Don from 1925 is right to leave regarded as the seven old treatment of our topic and it has spawned a vast array of anthropological research in subsequent decades. I should say I'm going to pronounce his name Mauss although I know since he was French one should really say Mauss but when I say Mauss it makes me think of the Inspector Mauss and since his name is spelt in the German fashion I'm going to pronounce him as Mauss apologies if any of you purists here are offended by that. In this Essay uneven but immensely suggestive Mauss took care to use detailed and historically specific ethnographic evidence but he constructed from it a synthetic hypothesis about a core characteristic of archaic societies which he called the system of gift exchange. Mauss identified three key elements in the system the obligation to give the obligation to receive and the obligation to return. Each of these three interdependent moves carries the force of social necessity since they constitute the most important bonds of human society and of course of relations between humans and gods. Families and groups he argued are tied together internally and externally by the offering and receiving of gifts and unwillingness to receive gifts and our willingness to receive a gift would be of course a sign of hostility or mistrust. Since things are never completely detached from those carrying out the exchange the mutual ties and alliance that they established are, he says, comparatively insoluble. Now Mauss set out specifically to explain the obligation to return a gift. Whence comes the pressure, he asks real even if not legally enforceable whence comes the pressure for the gift to be reciprocated to an equal if not greater value. Why is it that a gift is received as he says with a burden attached? His answer is that the thing or service given is not detachable from the person who gives it and that that tie with the donor can be acknowledged only by a counter gift. Mauss thus observed that his analysis requires a kind of scrambling of the categories and values which have come to be associated with gifts or their opposites in modern western culture. As he puts it, the concepts of law and economics that it pleases us to contrast liberty on the one hand obligation on the other liberality, generosity and luxury on the one hand or savings, interest and utility on the other these he says it would be good to put into the melting pot once more. Thus he insists that gifts can be both voluntary and obliged both disinterested and interested both free and compulsory and if we find this confusing or even nonsensical the problem he insists lies with the categories that we have invented. The boldness of Mauss's essay includes the suggestion that the economy of gift exchange that he identified in archaic societies also lies at the root of Indo-European society and can be traced at least in Shadowy outline in the early texts and customs of Indian, German and Roman culture. He thus suggests not an absolute contrast between different cultures of gift but a kind of trajectory by which western culture has evolved out of a common what he called total system of gift into what we now have are more differentiated domains and practices in which gift is only one segment. Now it will be a mistake to use Mauss's analysis of archaic societies as a kind of model applicable to every relation of gift. As we've seen he's acutely aware of cultural developments that have changed the role and even the understanding of gifts over time. But his work continues to generate fruitful questions for the analysis of gift relations, their functions within society, their relation to other domains and the values and power dynamics with which they are loaded. Mauss also draws attention to the cultural relativity of modern assumptions about gifts which are liable to distort our perspective on the past. The history of the anthropology of gift since Mauss is extremely rich and varied and I can't rehearse it here. Despite disagreements about Mauss's precise explanation of the obligations caused by gifts everyone has agreed that recipients of gifts are under a strong though non-legal obligation to make some return for a gift even if only a return of gratitude. Is this return in order to preserve one's honour? Or is it out of self-interested desire for some further gift? Does it represent the power of the donor which lays on the recipient the requirement to return? It seems impossible to decide between these forms of explanation. It's best to conclude more generally that the return of the gift represents the desire to what is called reproduce social relations. Each party to the gift relation is in some sense produced by the exchange between them and social relations can only be maintained or reproduced in the continual motion of exchange. In this sense a counter gift is rarely the end of a relationship. It's liable to constitute rather a form of giving again adding to the gift relationship a continuing forward momentum. What we need to be aware of is a peculiarly modern construction of the gift which idealizes the gift that has no return. The unilateral gift which exerts no force of obligation and has as we say attached for an interlocking set of social, economic and political reasons which have banished gift from the normal economy and from the political realm linked with ideological attempts to purify the gift from what we call self-interest from which Luther and then Kant had a formative influence we have come to idealize what we call the pure gift as a gift without return without any hint of reciprocity or any quid pro quo. Derrida for instance famously reflected on what he called the impossibility of the gift which is always circulating but always also attempting to break with the circle that it creates absolutely refusing the gift. According to Derrida as you may know a gift is only a true gift if I get no thanks for it if I do not congratulate myself for giving it no one knows I gave it if there's no possibility that some advantage might leak back to me. Thus the only pure gift in Derrida's terms is anonymous, unrecognized useless and preferably given in and with my death. Now that's a striking example of the modern transformation of the gift which Mauss had already noted as a peculiar mutation not an inherent or natural concomitant of gift. In other words the advantage of engaging with the anthropological discussions precisely that it brings into questions into question such perceptions and ideals that are taken for granted in modern discussions of gift or indeed grace. Now of course if we're trying to study Paul or other early Christians and the assumptions of the biblical texts we still have to determine their social contours which were not the same as the traditional societies which take up most of Mauss's discussion. Now I can only here sketch the outlines of obviously a large and complex picture but I thought I'd give you a little text to get us going which I put on the handout it's all the more interesting since it's not a philosophical or analytical treatment of gift but reflects the common sense of the Greek farmer this is from easier to work and date. Invite your friend but not your enemy to dine especially be cordial to your neighbour for if trouble comes at home a neighbour's there at hand. Measure carefully when you must borrow from your neighbour then pay back the same or more if possible and you'll have a friend in time of need. Shun evil profit for dishonest gain is just the same as failure. Love your friends visit those who visit you and give to him who gives but not if he does not. We give to a generous person but no one gives to someone who is stingy. The man who gives ungrudgingly is glad at heart rejoicing in his gift but if a man forgets his shame and takes something however small his heart grows stiff and cold. Now in its common sense ordinariness this advice shows acute awareness of the vulnerability of everyday existence taking care in reciprocal relations not only makes life pleasant it makes it more secure it's important to be generous and glad heartedly so but also discriminating and cautious to give to the stingy to those who cannot or will not give back will be as useless as as is put elsewhere sowing seeds in the seam. A reputation for grasping is dangerous when you are the recipient of the gift it's crucial to give a well measured return if possible with sufficient increment to place your friend under obligation when you need his aid. Such ordinary reciprocal favour excludes exact calculation but it requires a rough awareness of who's under obligation to whom. Nevertheless these are gifts the exchange of services they're not a trade in goods and it's crucial that they are suffused with the warm sentiments of friendship. Throughout the Greek world we find the same broad dynamics of gift giving and gift reciprocity at the ordinary level of support among friends and neighbours as the Greek saying goes one hand washes the other it's the Greek equivalent of you scratch my back I'll scratch yours one hand washes the other we find the same in the asymmetrical relations between civic benefactors and their city communities where benefaction is reciprocated by public honour which the elite value above everything else. The same in the sponsorship of associations by wealthy families eager to gain public prestige the same in the Roman relations between senatorial patrons and their clients the same of course in the privileges granted by emperors to Caesar loving cities whose grateful return took many forms of honour including veneration or worship. The gods were of course part of this network of reciprocal exchange as in the normal cycle of human reciprocity it's not always clear or necessary to be clear where the cycle began sacrifices to the gods can be figured as return gifts for benefits already given or as gifts of inducement for benefits to be given in the future or as both at once. The common representation of Greek and Roman religion as do or today's I give that you should give is right to recognise the reciprocity ethos of ancient religious practice but it's wrong in putting one sided stress on the human giver as the initiator of the gift cycle and in suggesting perhaps accrued commercialism in the transaction. Just as friends are engaged in continuous cycles of benefit exchange without calculating who started the process or totting up precisely what each benefit is worth so Greek and Roman and Jewish worshippers gave honour, gratitude and gifts to God or the gods to recognise and continue the bonds of benevolence between them always with the potential that the relationship may go sour. Among other things such gifts made clear who were fitting recipients of the favours that the gods would distribute to worthy that is to pious and grateful partners in such an exchange. Gifts are designed to create bonds they are in Seneca's view what holds society together they're not unilateral they are very rarely anonymous and they always expect though they cannot demand a return the weight of this obligation to return is clear from for instance letters of gratitude which frequently use the language of debt it's also evident in the suspicion that public figures who receive gifts may take on resulting obligations that clash with the public interest, the problem of the bribe in fact there's no special term for bribe in antiquity it's just a normal word gift for the issue. Because gifts produce ties they also normally, carefully distributed as we saw from that little quote from Hesiod, a giver should be generous but not indiscriminate since no one wants their gifts to appear random or unjust and you don't want to give to those who won't return nor to tie yourself to people who will diminish your social capital so all our ancient sources literary and non-literary speak of the gift to the worthy Digny in Latin or Axi or in Greek that's not a diminishment of the gift it's precisely what makes it a good gift of course not all social relations are built on gift there's plenty of trade in the Greco-Roman world plenty of contract, loan payment of wages and other commercial forms of exchange that differ from these not because they're unilateral but in ethos for gifts it matters greatly who you receive them from why they are given and in what spirit they are given with a spirit of goodwill gifts like trade or pay involve reciprocity in all these spheres there is a common structure of quid pro quo what distinguishes the sphere of the gift is that it expresses a social bond a mutual recognition of the value of the person it's filled with sentiment because it invites a personal enduring and reciprocal relationship and ethos often signalled by the use of the term carrots let's pass on now to my next section on the perfections of gift or grace as a complex about central form of social interaction gifts have been the subject of reflection and of experimentation in many different ways on a number of occasions we find people thinking the gift to an extreme drawing one or the motif associated with the gift to a point of radical expression or perfection perfection is a term used by Kenneth Burke to refer to the tendency in cultural traditions to draw out a concept to its end point or extreme whether for definitional clarity or for rhetorical or ideological advantage we speak of a perfect storm where all that makes a storm stormy is combined in an extreme form or of students perhaps as a perfect nuisance where the obstacle is the most tenacious and aggravating of nuisances I'm sure students speak of staff in the same terms but even without the adjective perfect we are sometimes inclined to draw out a concept to its logical conclusion or ultimate production concepts are generally balanced by other accompanying or limiting concepts which inhibit their extreme expression but any definitional project is likely to use reductions generalisations or polarities in order to express some true sense to ask what something is by definition invites its expression in an absolute or pure form this tendency is all the more pronounced when rhetoric requires some extreme or antithetical construction scholars like to think of themselves as usefully engaged in the world but a hostile observer might dismiss our academic contributions as purely academic drawing the adjective academic to one end of the line extreme with a sense having no relation to ordinary reality rhetoric here as elsewhere creates extremes absolutes and disjunctions employing polarity or paradox to set otherwise compatible notions into conceptual opposition in some Christian quarters those who truly live by faith live without predictable material support such as salaried employment interpreting the common motif of faith thus and drawing it to an extreme forges a polarity which other Christians would neither recognise nor welcome perfections can thus serve a kind of ideological function one way to legitimate oneself as the bearer of a tradition and to disqualify others for oneself the true or proper meaning of a traditional concept such that others are not simply limited in understanding but fundamentally in error what they mean by X is non-X once it has been defined in a particular perfect form this perfecting tendency is always possible but not everywhere actualised where perfections occur they generally serve the purposes of definitional clarity but not in a symmetric they are especially likely to arise in relation to God since God ends perfectism concepts used with reference to God are likely to appear in their most complete, extreme or absolute form in connection with gift God's gift or favour will be imagined as the ultimate gift the complete expression or very definition of the concept for this reason we are likely to see God's gift or grace a variety of linguistic signs marking the perfection of this concept God operates we say in pure grace or by sheer grace God's gifts are utterly free or totally gratuitous or by grace alone since perfections thrive on polarities they are often marked by negations divine grace we say is unmerited, unalloyed indiscriminate unstinting or unconditional of course such claims about God are rarely theological niceties they serve you might say the interests of those who deploy them that's to say nothing either positive or negative about the truth of such claims but it alerts us to the possibility that in perfecting divine grace in one form or another a struggle for power may be at work now because gift giving is a multi-faceted phenomenon there's more than one way in which gift or grace can be perfected the attitude or character of the giver is one facet the form of the gift another the relationship between the giver and the recipient another again to speak of the perfect gift may be to speak about the sheer benevolence and disinterest of the giver or about the quantity of the gift or about the manner in which the gift is given and its effects because of this complexity there's no single form in which gift or grace is perfected and no necessity that a perfection of one facet will entail a perfection of others in fact I think one may distinguish at least six common perfections of the gift and I've listed them on your sheet I would like to find seven wouldn't that have seven perfections so if you can help me find a seventh I'll be very grateful but I found six the first possible perfection superabundance concerns the size significance or permanence of the gift we're concerned here not with the content of the gift but with its scale the larger and more all encompassing the gift the more perfect it may appear anthropologists were early fascinated by the extravagance of gift giving in traditional societies with big men proving their superior status by the overwhelming scale of their giving the same phenomenon can be traced elsewhere not least in the extravagant largesse of rulers in the Greek and Roman era it was natural that the gods or gods should be considered supreme in this respect giving all things always from the complete abundance of divine self-sufficiency thus Seneca speaks of the lavish and unceasing prevalence of the gods and lists the enormous benefits they pour out day by day in the gifts of nature the language of excess abundance and superabundance is also ubiquitous in the Jewish philosopher Philo's depictions of divine gifts more emphatic in fact in Philo than even in Paul secondly singularity in this form of perfection attention shifts from the scale of the gift to the spirit is given by singularity I refer to the notion that the givers soul and exclusive mode of operation is benevolence giving is here perfected in identifying goodness as the soul and fundamental attitude of the giver in antiquity scrutiny of the givers spirit was a favorite topic for philosophers such as Seneca who were also likely to stress the character of the gods or god as singularly or purely benevolent reacting against the ambiguous morality of Greek mythology Plato insisted that the divine being the highest form of being was also morally the most perfect and being purely good god does only what is good and beautiful in this tradition Seneca speaks of the god's benevolence as derived from their nature the necessity of their being their gifts are perfectly good they can do nothing else one can trace the impress of this assumption on Jews who were trained in the Greek philosophical tradition thus Philo is careful to insist that god is the cause only of what is good while god could of course do anything what he wills is what is morally excellent indeed Philo's philosophy is governed by the rule that the fountains of god's eternal gifts should be kept free from not only what is but also what is thought to be evil very careful to say god never causes evil at least not directly thirdly priority here the focus lies on the timing of the gift which is perfect in taking place always anterior to the initiative of the recipients this chronological fact has many connotations as the initiating move the prior gift is not a reaction to a demand or request and is thus spontaneous in its generosity it's not obliged by a previous gift it's thus absolutely free it signals the superiority of the giver who is not in the subordinate position of returning a gift parents were often figured in this way as the benefactors of their children their absolute priority made it doubtful in fact whether children could ever get even in return by extension god as the source of life was considered the first giver and this priority was perfected as a supreme expression of gift phylo is once again a good representative of this particular perfection it's fundamental to his religious philosophy that god is the source, the beginning and the cause of every good thing god is the soul, the primal and the most original cause of the world this is for phylo an essential counterweight to human pride with its insidious tendency to take credit to itself the core of piety for phylo is the recognition of divine causation expressed in gratitude and thanksgiving to god the whole of life should be characterised by recognition of divine priority and grace fourthly incongruity as we've seen because gifts form social bonds it's normally emphasised in antiquity that the gifts should be given generously but selectively with care taken that the gift is given to suitable worthy or good recipients it was always possible to argue however that such a limitation of the gift was less than fully generous a perfect gift might be figured as given to all without condition given without regard to the worth of the recipient thus a hyper-generous benefactor might advertise the fact as we find on ancient inscriptions that he distributed food and wine to all the citizens and to the resident foreigners and to all who held property in the country since quote he wanted there to be no one who did not share in this philanthropy Seneca emphasises that a benefactor should not be overly choosy regarding the recipients of his gift but should take a risk on the unworthy and he cites in support the significant giving of the gods even here however Seneca introduces some qualifications lesser gifts like the corn doll might be given to everyone but more significant gifts should be more carefully placed and although the gods give benefits even to the ungrateful they intend them only for the good there's a long discussion about why God makes the sun shine like on a day like today even for bad people I believe there are some in Strawberry Hill and he says well if he could God would make the sun shine only on you good people but unfortunately he can't do that so it has to be the sun shines for everybody but if he could he would be more selective it's easy to see how it's possible to perfect the incongruity of a gift the gift given even to the unworthy as supremely excellent to take account of prior conditions of worth fifth efficacy turning to the effect of the gift perfect gift may also be figured as that which fully achieves what it was designed to do once again this perfection is common in relation to God since divine agency can be taken to ground encompass and even cause the activity of the human recipient of grace thus Seneca discourages any boasting regarding human inventions since he says it is God who draws forth from the secret depths of our being our various talents Philo is anxious to trace virtue to the agency of God the soul's capacity to conceive of God is in breath by God in creation and human virtue human virtues are sown by divine gift in this connection Philo is normally content to speak also of the vigorous activity of the human agent but in one fragmentary text he extends the efficacy of gift or grace to the point of human passivity attributing all to the sovereignty of God sickly non-circularity is a gift defined as gift by the fact that it escapes reciprocity that it escapes the system of exchange that characterizes sale or reward or loan such as the modern theory as I've explained of the pure gift I've argued that this was not the common conception of gifts even good gifts in antiquity gifts were certainly distinguishable from loans or purchase by the fact that no return could be demanded or enforced but they were not detached from every notion of return indeed they could fulfill their function as gifts only if they were not unilateral Philo might argue that one should not have expectation of a return or for the sake of a return and they could represent the most important return as non-material the recording of honour or the display of gratitude but it was rare to find the gift perfected in antiquity as a one way unilateral donation it's not to say this form of gift was completely unimaginable in antiquity because the gift could never guarantee a return a gift might always, of course remain unreciprocated or fruitless the use of the adverb, the Greek adverb dorian in the sense of in vain or to nil effect his testimony to that possibility dorian meaning gift once again this form of perfection was most likely to apply to the god since they need no return and could therefore give without its expectation Seneca can portray the gods as benefactors living without pay and without any advantage to themselves a benefit he says should carry no price tag we have the gods for free even here for however for free means for no material benefit rather than without any form of return since Seneca is elsewhere clear that the gods both deserve and desire the gratitude offered by humans now as our classification has shown the six different forms of perfection there's more than one way in which gift or grace can be perfected and each of the six types of perfection outlined can stand on its own to perfect one facet of gift does not imply the perfection of any or all of the others so one could speak of divine gift or grace as super abundant or absolutely prior without implying that it's also incongruous with the worth of the recipient alternatively God's grace may be figured as holy and completely incongruous without at the same time being pure in the sense of seeking no return it's not uncommon for certain perfections to cluster together but these six perfections do not constitute a package to adopt one is not to adopt the rest so two authors may each perfect the motif of grace but may differ widely because they draw different facets of this concept to its end of the line extreme common perfecting terms can mask deep differences in meaning to speak of pure grace may mean its singularity God is nothing but benevolent or it may mean its non-circularity God's grace seeks no return or indeed some other of its six perfections to describe God's grace as free could mean many things that it is unconstrained by previous circumstances in our terms prior or that it's given irrespective of the recipient's worth in our terms incongruous or that it's free of subsequent expectations in our terms non-circular so indeed it might be some combination of these three even the epithet unconditional can be ambiguous it could mean without prior conditions thus incongruous or it can mean without resulting obligations thus non-circular so I'm encouraging you every time you see people use the word free grace or pure grace or unconditional gift you need to say what exactly do you mean by that because they often mean very different things under apparently similar terms right let me finish by suggesting in the briefest outline how all this might relate to Paul Paul's antithetical modes of expression and his polarizing structure of thought have led interpreters of Paul down through the ages to find more and more perfections of the theme of gift in Paul's theology or to perfect his perfections to greater and greater extremes Marcian the second century radical Paulanist forged a synthesis between Paul's emphasis on the benevolence of God and the philosophical concern to clear God of causing harm or wrong so he perfected Paul infiology in terms of the singularity of grace God for Marcian is good and perfectly that is only good can't be imagined as judging anybody or causing any harm Augustine would have none of that God judges justly and condemns justly he does not perfect the singularity of grace but Augustine was captivated by Paul's theology of gratia as the Latin translates it and his successive re-readings of Romans let him to emphasize above all the incongruity of grace God's gift without regard to the worth of the recipient now his great enemy Pelagius also believed in God's grace in the sense of the priority of grace that God gives us all we need for the moral life in advance of our efforts but Augustine insisted on the incongruity between the human sinner and divine grace and also insisted more and more to the grace in effecting and preserving the believer's response so here you have a classic case which not the case that Augustine believes in grace and Pelagius doesn't they both absolutely believe in grace but they believe they perfect it in different ways and Augustine's perfections of grace in terms of incongruity worried Pelagius sick and a vice versa Pelagius's definition of grace worried Augustine Luther to skip down a few centuries Augustinian in many respects sought to break totally with the notion of a repeated circularity of grace and return nervous of Augustine's language of merit Luther insisted on the non-circularity or unilateral character of divine gift God gives, needing and wanting and nothing we do thereafter effects or elicits a further gift from God indeed for Luther human giving is to follow suit in a kind of non-circularity this is clear of all self-interest and is I think Luther's theology one of the roots of the modern western notion of the pure unilateral gift today developing this varied heritage Pauline scholars compete with one another for radical and complete theology of divine grace for some Paul didn't speak or didn't really mean to speak of God as a judge who might condemn in a neo-Marsianite perfection of grace God is all benevolence and if Paul seems to say other things that must be, because he's quoting other people for others emphasis must be placed on the efficacy of the call of God in Christ better for them to read the ambiguous phrase Pistis Christu as the faithfulness of Christ rather than as the more traditionally faith in Christ lest it seem that faith is a human step independent of God's prior grace for others again it's dangerous or unfortunate to speak of the believers obligations to God God's grace needs and demands and whatever believers do in response to God's grace is done surely freely and from the heart without a hint of obligation or debt see the influence of different perfections of grace still having their impress on Pauline interpretations of Paul if we disaggregate these various possible perfections of grace and except they do not have to be a package deal it may be possible to see which are really characteristic of Paul and which have been loaded on to him by later interpretation for myself I think the central and characteristic feature of divine gift in Paul which he identifies above all with the gift of Christ is its incongruity as we've seen it was not necessary or even always attractive to construe divine giving as a gift to the unfitting or the unworthy but this was what Paul emphasized in multiple ways and correlated both with his own experience and with the practice of the Gentile mission in this mission the people who on ethnic moral and social grounds would be considered unlikely recipients of God's benefits turned out to be those who had in fact received God's spirit in this light we can place Paul better I think within his Jewish context as Ed Sanders and others have rightly emphasized everyone in ancient Judaism believed in grace in the sense that they believed that God was benevolent and likely to be the first and effusive giver in a structure that Sanders called covenantal nomism but that's not the same as saying that God gives without regard to worth in fact I think there were differences of opinion even dispute among second temple Jews about the validity of figuring God's grace and incongruous gift to the unworthy Paul is rare they're not quite alone in making this the centerpiece of his theology and as we've noted this fitted exactly the conduct and experience of his Gentile mission Paul then is not to be contrasted with a works righteous great grace less Judaism but his distinctive emphasis on the incongruity of the Christ gift means that we cannot say that there is no difference at all between Paul and his fellow Jews on the subject of grace what about human gift giving I think that Paul has no problem thinking about Christian obedience as indebted to divine grace as he puts it we are under grace although in his view believers are transformed and newly empowered by the experience of the Christ gift so that what they do is in a sense only passing on the divine gift when he thinks about human relations of gift and return he is not encumbered by modern pure gift anxieties about for instance anonymity or about blocking or deflecting the return the Gentiles he says Gentile Christians are under obligation to return material gifts for the spiritual blessings they have received and when the Corinthians contribute to the collection for Jerusalem they can expect to have some return for the churches both immediately and in the future Paul is not embarrassed by this as if this return would in some sense pollute or diminish the gift with an element of self interest as far as he is concerned reciprocity and mutuality in love is the core of all Christian social relations so that what's of benefit for the other will also be in some form or another of benefit for oneself in the same vein Paul can insist that the gifts he wants from the Corinthians are to be voluntary and cheerfully given while he exercises forms of persuasion and inducement that look to us to border on coercion we are reminded of mouse's instinct what we modern westerners tend to regard as polar opposites disinterest and self-interest or freedom and obligation are typically in gift relations conjoined and mixed and if we find this confusing or self-contradictory the problem may lie more with us than with ancient gift givers and gift theorists such as Paul in fact I believe it may be precisely only by getting away from certain modern notions of altruism and disinterest that we can build again healthy and mutually beneficial forms of social interaction in our contemporary individualized West well I have ventured far and wide in the attempt to illustrate how one particular strand in anthropology the anthropology of gift could help illumine and clarify the poor line language of gift or grace there's no single model here more a set of sensitivities and questions which have been used by historians in all sorts of contexts ancient and modern and which I find helpful when applied to Paul in a carefully contextualized form anthropology has here been mixed with history and theology and a bit of literary theory Kenneth Burke in a kind of eclectic mix but I hope it's shown a tiny fragment of the sort of potential in the center being launched today I am delighted to make this contribution to its beginning and now in the spirit of the gift I look forward very much to your observations, criticisms and questions by way of return thanks very much


The fear mongering. The half-truths. Believe it or not, there's a simple reform we can enact to make elections more bearable for voters. It's called Ranked Choice Voting, or R-C-V, and it could change our politics for the better. Here's a quick refresher on how it works, using some pets owned by my colleagues here at Inequality Media. When you head to the ballot box under Ranked Choice Voting, instead of voting for just one candidate, you have the option to rank candidates in order of preference, first, second, third, and so on. So if you're stuck between two preferred candidates for a position, you can spread your preferences out in hopes that one of them wins. I really like Daisy, but I think Beatrix might be a better choice, so I'll rank Beatrix first and Daisy second. When ballots are counted, if none of the candidates gets an outright majority, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and their votes are redistributed to their supporter's second choice candidate. This process continues until a candidate receives over 50% of the vote and is declared the winner. Congratulations, Beatrix. Pretty cool, huh? It's also good for a whole host of other reasons. Implementing RCV could have the added benefit of making our elections, well, nicer. Take the recent election in Alaska, for example. It's so funny that even in this race, people actually hold our friendship against us. Compare that to what we see in places without RCV. Far left, John Fetterman, is too far left. He's dangerously liberal on crime. In a ranked-choice voting system, candidates are less likely to engage in this kind of mudslinging, because they're not just trying to be a voter's first choice. They also want to be the second choice of voters who are backing their opponents. This can motivate anyone running for office to be more inclusive and appeal to a broader range of voters, helping to connect people who don't always agree on every issue. RCV also allows us to exercise our right to vote without feeling like we're compromising our beliefs or simply voting for the, quote, lesser of two evils. We could vote for the candidates we like most rather than voting against the candidates we like the least. RCV could also open the door to voters casting their ballots for more third-party candidates. Even if your favorite candidate from your preferred party is not favored to win, that person could still be your first choice without you feeling like you're giving up your vote entirely. If your candidate doesn't make it to the final round, your second or third choice could still end up winning in the final tally. Rank-choice voting can even change the kinds of people who run for office for the better. Potential candidates wouldn't have to avoid running for fear of splitting the vote or spoiling a close election, allowing for potentially more diverse pool of candidates to run. Again, look at Alaska, where voters used RCV to elect Mary Peltola to Congress, making her the first Alaskan native and first woman to represent the state in the U.S. House. Lastly, Rank-choice voting saves everyone, you, me, elections officials, time and money. There would no longer be run-offs, which can be costly and often have lower turnout, which means election results that are less likely to reflect the will of the public. There's a reason why RCV is starting to sweep the nation. It's currently being used by 13 million voters across the country. Rank-choice voting makes elections less painful, less expensive, and can help make our government more inclusive and responsive to what people actually want. Maybe you can organize to make Rank-choice voting a reality where you live.


The Cavalcade of America, sponsored by E.I. DuPont de Nemours and Company of Wilmington, Delaware, make her a better things for better living through chemistry, present Lovely Lady with Ted D'Costia and Edwin Jerome. Before we begin our play, here's a suggestion that'll help you do a good job if you're planning to redecorate a room in your home. Try DuPont Speedyzy wall finish, the new easy to use wall paint. You just thin Speedyzy with water. It covers walls with one quick coat even covers dingy wallpaper. For less than three dollars you can make the room look like new with DuPont Speedyzy. Every day we read the headlines of the war and the headlines and the stories which cataloged the campaigns are pointed at mass operation. The Great Raids, the huge sea battles, the mighty fire power. But behind the headlines seldom finding their way into the stories of the turning points on which the campaigns often hinge. Sometimes these turning points are the result of an accident or luck, but more often they are the result of alertness and ingenuity and work. Tonight our DuPont Cavalcade is the factual story of one of those turning points that vitally affected an American division and perhaps decided the fate of an entire army. The DuPont Company presents Lovely Lady with Ted D'Costia as Private Manelli and Edwin Jerome as the General on the Cavalcade of America. On a mountain in Sicily the commanding general of an American division is in conference with the colonel who is his chief of engineers. Bill, I have called in to give you the G2 report. Yes, I can't overstate how serious the situation is. Our fifth armored division is in plenty of trouble up ahead. Our intelligence shows the Germans will counterattack Wednesday. We've got to get to that division's aid by then. Give us four days. We'll move up a dawn. March order will be out in an hour. And do you intend to move the entire division, General? That's right, Bill. I'd hate to see the casualty lists if we're not there to reinforce that armored group. Well, this should be a nice little change for us. It was a cinch to move 15,000 men in Africa. All we had down on the desert was space. That's right, Bill. All we got up here is no space. We've got to move 3,000 vehicles. Why, there are miles along that road where we'll be traveling single file. That'll be awfully embarrassing when one of our trucks breaks. No embarrassment, Bill. Pitch it off the cliff. Oh, we'll make out all right, but there are going to be problems. Well, I can't remember when there were any problems. We had our troubles landing at Casa Blanca. There wasn't any express highway into Bezetti. We'll always have our troubles getting to the enemy. Big part, sir. Meeted action method, classification secret. C.G. River for Orange. Previous instructions amended. Intelligence shows enemy counterattack begins Tuesday. You'll arrive at Rendezvous one day earlier than planned. Well, General Eisenhower solved all our problems. We're not moving up tomorrow morning. We're moving up tonight. I'll alert my advance party immediately. We've got to be ready for mines, roadblocks, washouts, and landslides. We may reach every one of those obstacles. Well, I don't care how many obstacles we reach, as long as they don't stop it. 100 yards from the general's tent. There are other men of action holding another conference. This one is presided over by Private Manelli. What I want to know is, what are we sitting up to with our nose stuck in the clouds for? Ah, them brass hats. Always slowing down to catch their wind. We ain't ever getting the Italy sitting here in our toe case. Well, I suppose they got a lot of problems up ahead. That's a real narrow road for one thing. Maybe room enough for only one vehicle. Suppose one of those vehicles breaks down. For such a vehicle, I got one answer. Throw it off the cliff. Take the driver out first. Well, it seemed like if we were down in the desert, there they'd have some excuse for holding us up. But up here, where we're all bunched together, right, it's a sin. Ah, they'll figure out some excuse. They'll blame it on logistics or some other headquarters where nobody can understand. Now, you know Manelli, those fellas haven't had the same advantages you had. Maybe they have reasons that sound good to them. Maybe they're tired. I don't want to hear no excuses. My barber back in the states, give me a girl to look out the napple. Excuses do not interest me. The way I figure it, we have about two weeks to make this move. Now, we're to take it slow as they move those big cranes out first and follow them a couple of days later with a tea. You remind me of a guy back in his thickest. Oh, here we go again. He was always arranging for the midgets to follow the giraffes in the parade. Are you giving us that circus routine again, Manelli? You don't believe me? Come see Manelli, the tightrope walker. Manelli defies death on the high wire. Come on, you don't believe me? You don't believe I was on the high wire? I don't believe you were ever in a high chair. I wish I knew how long they were planning for us to be back here. I don't know whether or not to put shells in the foxhole. There's only one way they'll ever get anywhere. Move forward. Let me take lovely lady. Put me in lovely lady and send me forward. I love jambos. How many times I gotta tell you guys don't call me jambos? I used to be a tightrope walker, not an elephant. Have all regiments reported to the Senate? Yes, sir, the last just came in. They're all standing by. How about the artillery? Colonel Monroe reports that 155 is ready for march orders. Contact regimental commanders. Yes, sir. Master, sir. And put me through to regimental commanders on a conference hookup. Yes. Now, hold on. Oh, uh, come in, Bill. My engineers are hauling at the least, General. When do we pull out? Immediately. What about that tunnel up ahead? Oh, not a prayer. It'll be sealed up tight. It's a simple demolition job for the Nazis that never skipped that. You all set the clearance? Oh, we'll clear it. That's good, because we'll be there at dawn. 50 miles and seven hours? That's right. And, uh, Bill, don't worry. If we get a ticket for speeding, I think I can get it fixed. Sir, I have the regimental commanders on the phone. All right, I'll take it. Gentlemen, this is your verbal substitute for a published march order. Observing all security precautions, this division will move out at once. My single command is that nothing, nothing, must delay this division. That's all, gentlemen. Good luck, and let's get out of here. Bill, thanks, man. If you want to get someplace, get up and go. You must have heard us talking. That's a long one, Ellie. I have to get my men loaded. See you later, kid. Got a kick with that camera. You guys are sure lucky being up ahead with the advance party. You wish lovely lady and I could be up front. Where do you got enough to do to clear out? Write a letter home. Sure. Give my love to the sword swallow. Okay, wise guy. Can it, fellas. Here's the canal. Thanks. All right, men. As you are. We've got a tough job up ahead. Got to open up the mouth of a tunnel. This unit will roll at the head of the column. And I want bulldozers to go up with it. Did you say bulldozers, sir? Yes, we'll need the tractors up front. You mean you want my bulldozers, sir? If you drive one, yes. You mean you want lovely ladies, sir?  Forgiving, Colonel. Most of us fall in love with girls. Manelli fell in love with a tractor. Come on, Manelli. Get that bulldozer moving. We're going to get that hunk of junk out of there. Come on, lovely. Come on, lady. Don't fail me, darling. Come on, baby. Pay no attention to them rambles. That's it, sweetie. You can do it if you try. That's it. Here we go, lady. You and me leading the parade. We certainly covered ground during the night, General. You're making good time. Well, sir, one thing that'll hold us up, that tunnel. You ought to be there in an hour. Now, let's see. 515, the advance party's there just about now. Far out ahead of the column, the chief of engineers and his advance party wind cautiously along the road shelf of the Sicilian cliff. At this point, the lofty narrow trail juts out over the sea. The vehicles have barely a foot of clearance. Well, Captain, we'll be getting to it just around this bend. Yes, sir. Holy smoke. Do you see what I see? Sure. There's the tunnel. Yes, there's the tunnel, but it's open. You're right, Colonel. Oh, they must have blown the other end. No, they didn't. Look, daylight, right through. Wait till the general hears about this. What's the story, Bill? General, it's incredible. The tunnel is open from end to end. You can see for yourself. Mine? Oh, plenty of mines, but we've just finished clearing them. How'd you do it so fast? Well, the tunnel floor is rocked. Those mines stuck out like tulips. It was a sin. You checked every foot? Yes, sir, we have. The side, roof, nose, sign, and an explosive charge? Absolutely none. I'd be willing to stand in the middle of that tunnel until our last vehicle is through. Well, that won't be necessary, Bill. Hop in with us. Right, sir. All right, driver, let's go. What a great this is, waltzing through this tunnel without any problems. Let's go through this tunnel without any delay. Why, we just picked up 24 hours. Do you remember Hitler ever making us a present of a day? Well, maybe we were crowding them. I just don't like the smell of this.  Maybe, but if I know anything about the way the German army fights, they neglected that tunnel for a reason. The reason being, we've got them on the run. Why, the whole road shelf is gone. I've never seen anything like it. Let's take a look at this. Empty space. And the blue Mediterranean below. They've blown it right down into the sea. A whole chunk of road. Well, I've got to admire this one. Well, stop, General. Stop dead. That gap must be 200 feet wide. How far down would you say it was? About 20 stories. Well, we were prepared to cross any obstacles on this road. Yeah, but they blew the road away. I guess we didn't crowd them enough. Lieutenant. Yes, sir. Take a radio message. Don't bother to code it. Send it in the clear. There's no news to the Nazis. Ready, sir? Commanding General Mediterranean Theater. Division halted. German demolition of roadshelves complete. Impossible to get troops and vehicles down to sea for water passage around Gaff. Hurry, hurry, hurry to wait, wait, wait.   How do you like that? There's a hole in the road. A lousy little hole in the road holding up 15,000 men in a senior arena waiting for me and Naples. General's a nice guy, but sometimes I think he's getting awful bad advice. There's no need calling the halt here. You're 100% right. Some of them brass hats are dreamers. They see a dinner plate in the road, they got to stop to see if it's a mine. They don't look at things with a practical and a fine.  Sure, that lovely lady put some date in it. Oh, of course, Manelli wouldn't have any trouble at all. Not Manelli, the tightrope walker. Just let them flip a cable across and he'd walk it. Manelli couldn't walk a six-lane highway. Okay, you cynics. Anyway, I got my own answer. Sling a bridge over that trapdoor and let's get going. That's it. We've been putting up bridges ever since we hit Africa. Timber, trestle, fixed trestle, semi-permanent steel treadway. Let them name it. Sure, nothing stopped us yet. Maybe we're underestimating this thing. There may be difficulties we don't know about. Difficulties? Difficulties is our business. Impossible move troops and equipment up sheer mountain cliffs. Uh, come in, Bill. Yes, sir. No alternate route to Rendezvous. The vision is regular bridging equipment unsuited for situations. I hate to interrupt, sir. Ah, yes, Bill. I believe my engineers can put a bridge across that hole. We've been scouting for lumber and I think we've got enough to put up a timber trestle. Timber, eh? Mm-hmm. How soon can you begin construction? Oh, I'd say about six hours. Were you settled for four? Well, all right, sir. Well, that means you'll start at noon. How soon before it's ready? General, the division will be across that gap in three days. We're allowed for a 24-hour delay to clear the mouth of the tunnel. That chunk of empty space up ahead is now the mouth of the tunnel. Therefore, we'll get the bridge up in 24 hours. What? General, you're not serious. Well, sir, a bridge has to have support. My men have got to dig them right into vertical rock. Lives of an awful lot of troops depend on our getting to that armored group up ahead. This can be the turning point of our whole campaign. I'm aware of that, sir. But 24 hours, you're asking for a miracle. I'm not asking, Bill. I'm merely ordering. You are listening to Lovely Lady with Ted de Corsier as Private Manelli and Edwin Jerome as the general on the Cavalcade of America sponsored by E.I. Dupont de Nemours and Company of Wilmington, Delaware, maker of better things for better living through chemistry. Our Cavalcade play tonight is the story of an American division in the invasion of Sicily, the story of an insurmountable obstacle that faced that division and the way the division overcame it to mark the turning point of the campaign and perhaps decide the fate of an entire army. As our Cavalcade play continues, the division has been halted by a deep chasm that crosses the mountain trail where the Germans in their retreat had blown a huge section of the road into the sea. The commanding general has ordered the bridge to be thrown across that chasm within 24 hours. In the opinion of the engineer colonel, the general has ordered a miracle. Merely ordering a miracle, ordering something unique in the experience of a highly skilled engineer colonel, ordering the spanning of space with no starting point. Just build a bridge. You know what that means? It means a complicated and technical series of steps. It means taking what these men learned back in Georgia and putting it in practice over here in Sicily. Building a bridge means seating the envan, placing the abutment, building the support. It means setting the trestle, laying the springer, laying the side rails. It means these and a dozen more, all of them difficult at any place and time. But on this precarious cliff, building a bridge means America winning a war. Hey, Louis, get that hook in there. Can it wound holes? Pass me that wire, will you Harry? Ready down there? This thing is feeding the stuffings out of us colonel. Those supports won't stay put. They've got to stay put, Captain. That's all right, sir. We've been working over eight hours and haven't built the supports yet. Drill deeper into that rock, that'll have to do it. Building a bridge is one thing. Building it is another. I think the general's order is pretty unreasonable. Well, maybe. But if it weren't for a series of such unreasonable orders, this division would still be wallowing around outside of what is downtown. Look. Over there, at the side of the road. I don't see anything but mountains. Well, the old man is sitting there against that mountain. He's been sitting there ever since he started, rooting us on. What are you going? Well, if you want that bridge by noon, I'd better get back to the men. What? You can't get the lead out of it. Manelli, your country needs you. Stop the yapping, these timbers ain't too thick. Some army. A bulldozer man lugging planks around. This thing you know they'll be replacing me with a whack. Marlowe, when was the last time you were up till three in the morning? Last night. It was a good hour. Maybe we should go to the Riviera for a rest. Hey, look out ahead of you. Side of the road. That's the general sitting there. Gosh, nearly forgot. Hey, Manelli. Manelli, step easy. Now what are you guys whispering about? I need no work. All right, gold brick off the road. What's that? On your feet, the old man wants this bridge by noon. But you don't want to work it out of the way. The old man. Sorry. Sorry. Some dog faces just got our talent for doing no good. I can't see a thing over here. Hey, Joe. Blow that light this way. Coming up. I can't think the least they do is arrange for a full moon. How much longer we got to go? It's four thirty. Seven and a half more hours to make it. Take up on that winch, Morrissey. Not much more cable left. Hey, Ruben, I'll show you a cigarette winch. Okay, but watch this. When you drop half a dozen in the ocean already. Okay, let's have it. Got it. Thanks, fellas. This is what building a bridge means. It means the voices of men through the night calling to each other, encouraging each other, helping each other. It means teamwork, ingenuity, guts and sweat. It means a magnificent display of one type of American power that Germans didn't figure on, work power. And with an hour to go, building a bridge means, next to the last step, drift to make. The great gap in the road shall have a block long, two hundred feet deep. There's almost content. Wooden supports now jut out from the rock cliff. Another set of supports jut up at an angle to meet them. These two must be fastened together before the floor boards of the bridge can be laid across. Well, sir, we almost made it. What do you mean, Captain? Almost. We're free. We're late, Colonel. We're just ready to drift in the trestle to the support. Well, it's eleven o'clock. We still have an hour. Hammering those pins in is a pickless job. We've thought of the set up scaffolding to lower a man with a jackhammer over each support one at a time. That'll take all afternoon. Four hours anyway, sir. We'll save that time as much as we can, sir. We've tried. Really tried. Go away, follow me. I beg your pardon, sir. Yes, what is it? I don't mean to be critical, Colonel, but this is not a very intelligent way of doing it. What do you do? Well, I wouldn't take the time to set up a scaffold. I'd send a certain man out on those planks with his jackhammer. He could finish the job at no time. We'd be rolling over by noon. Those planks are only two inches wide.  Oh, maybe an ordinary man, sir, but not me. You see, Colonel, I can work those planks. Forgive him, Colonel.  Like a high-prop walker or a high-wire man. The vibrations from the jackhammer would throw a mountain goat off balance. Sure, Colonel, but I'm no goat, and I can do it. All right, soldier. The general ordered a miracle. Good luck. Look at that guy. He's going nuts out there. He's going to fall. What a splash he's going to make. He's going to fall. This is for kids. Two-inch board. I could walk it blindfolded and without a umbrella. These guys should have seen me when I was performing in the circuit. A Keegan, a Skoggy, a Duke in the Western Circuit. My name and type that big. Manelli the Magnificent. Manelli in his educated tone. Just like in the circuit. He's going to fall.  Don't scare him. He's going to make it. Son of a gun, he's going to make it. Come on, Manelli. Go to it, boy. I am right in the middle. Enough of it. Turn around like the old days. Now, Mr. Jackhammer, let's get this show on the road. Here's one for eight hours. One for going. And one for rolling. There. Secure all around. Didn't think I could do it, huh? I could give him a better show if I only had my umbrella. Manelli the Magnificent. Get him some. Now for the next one. I told you he'd do it. The guy's a genius. I didn't think it could be done. Son of a gun, he was a high-wire man, Colonel. Well, I'll be... That's the greatest act I've seen since the hippodrome. One minute to noon, General. The bridge is completed. We're going to send a jeep over for a test run. Great job. Yes, thanks to that crazy soldier why he went out on those planks. What's that man's name? Private Manelli. I beg your pardon, Colonel. Okay, Manelli. What have we done now that's not very intelligent? Well, Colonel, it's not that exactly. It's just that a jeep is too light and won't prove nothing. Now, if you send me over and lovely lady, it'll mean something. If that bridge will hold a bulldozer, it'll hold anything in a division. Well, it's true a bulldozer is. Thank you, sir. I knew you'd see it my way. I've got room for a passenger. Corporal Manelli. Corporal? Holy gelito. But, General, you can't come. If this bridge don't hold, we're going right down at the ocean. Well, if it's strong enough for you, Manelli, it's strong enough for me. Soaring dear. Come on, lovely lady. Here we go. Thank you, Ted Ducosta and Edwin Jerome. Now, here is Ted Pearson speaking for the DuPont Company about peacetime explosives in wartime. Invasion left Cherbourg Harbor a tangled mass of wreckage. The retreating Germans destroyed everything they could. Docks were a mass of broken stone and twisted steel, sunken ships and wrecked crafts underwater cluttered the harbor. But we needed a port. It was just because we needed a port and the which to funnel men and supplies that we had landed on the beaches near Cherbourg in the first place. Tangled, jammed, cluttered, smashed as it was, we had to be cleared for traffic fast. So as they had done earlier at Naples, Navy Seabees and Army engineers went to work. And in less than 48 hours, supplies were being landed in Cherbourg Harbor. Dynamite is not a military explosive. It can't be used, for instance, in a gun. But one stick of 60% gelatin dynamite, one small stick, 8 inches long and not much thicker through than a broom handle, will move a couple of tons of rocks. Works that might otherwise require long hours of labor can often be done far more easily with dynamite. One of the most powerful tools that man commands. It's because dynamite has this superhuman ability to get heavy work done in a short time that every United States Army division in the South Seas uses tons of dynamite. You've seen pictures of some of the things dynamite has accomplished for our forces in the South Pacific. One outfit out there had to build an airfield in jig time with no raw materials other than the coral of which their island itself was made. Dynamite dug the coral, providing the material for a hard, smooth flying field. Another common and very important use for dynamite in our country and in tropical areas is the drainage of swamp. Here sticks of dynamite are planted in a row, then fired to dig a ditch of the needed depths and widths. Dynamite is also doing other jobs, quarrying, rock to build roads, selling trees and removing stumps to build airports. It's removing boulders, deepening harbors, breaking up derelicts, and doing hundreds of other jobs to help men shorten the war. Whether it's clearing and rebuilding harbors like shearbergs, draining swamps in the South Pacific, or constructing hydroelectric dams at home, many of the war's heaviest, hardest construction jobs have been speeded by dynamite, peacetime product of the DuPont Company, maker of better things for better living through chemistry. Next Monday evening, Cavalcade presents the conquest of Kleinheim, the story of the centuries old fight against malaria, dread killer of mankind. The story also of a brilliant scientific victory in a research laboratory that enabled two young Americans to cancel out of great Japanese military success. Tonight's Cavalcade play was written by Daniel Taradash and Julian Blaustein. The orchestra and musical score were under the direction of Donald Borey. This is Roland Winter sending best wishes from Cavalcade sponsor EI DuPont du Namours and company of Wilmington, Delaware. American industry is an urgent need of forge and foundry workers. The need has been heightened to emergency proportions by the invasion. Husky, healthy men of any age whether without foundry experience are being asked by the Warman Power Commission to enroll for a 90-day period to bring production up to quotas. Men who qualify will be given a release from their present job providing it is not one of critical urgency. And at the end of their 90-day stint will be returned to their present status. 20,000 men are needed at once. Men taking the jobs will be making a real contribution to the war in a time of critical need and will receive good wages. All applicants are invited to telegraph collect to forge and foundry chief Warman Power Commission giving their name, address, present employment and draft status. Men who qualify will be notified in a day or two. The Cavalcade of America came to you from New York. This is the National Broadcasting Company.


This is stock number 21T67, we are here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, you're new and use Dodge and Dodge Durango headquarters. Today we are, I am excited to show you this brand new 2021 Dodge Durango in the all new reactor blue color for 2021. And this vehicle has the 3.6 liter Pentastar V6 motor, it's going to get you 25 miles per gallon on the highway, 18 city for a combined total of 21. This one also has the premium one group and it has the black top package on it as well. We shoot all of our videos in 1080p, 60 frames per second, so if you have HD capabilities on your computer, tablet or smartphone device, turn them on right now because it is the best way to check out the looks and styling and color of the vehicle before seeing it in person as well as the options on this particular vehicle. And if you'd like to check out all the photos on this Durango in the upper right hand part of your screen is a link to our website, click that and check us out there.  That's how you get those rims and it has Pirelli Scorpion Verde 26550 R20 tires. These are an all season tire on here. You do get that sport hood. That's a $1495 option comes with the LED headlamps, LED running lights. This one has the technology group which gives you the adaptive cruise control and lane departure. The black top package also gives you the black on the back of the mirrors here. Enter and go system. We'll take a look at the original window sticker. Feel free to pause this. I'm not going to go through everything but just some of the main points on here. You can see it is a 2021 Durango GT black top all wheel drive. It has the 3.6 liter 8 speed automatic transmission and then your optional equipment is right there. The customer preferred package to BE which is $4,000 I'm guessing that's the GT package there. Everything there is standard but since this one has some extra add-ons on it like the technology group which is a $2495 option. You get the advanced brake assist, reinsensitive wipers, lane departure and full speed collision warning plus and adaptive cruise control with stop. Black top package is $1295 you get those rims and the badges and the exterior mirror backs. Premium one group $2495 is this power sunroof navigation black roof rails integrated cross bars on those roof rails nine alpine amplified speakers with subwoofer. You get the Sirius Guardian 4G LTE and then this one comes with the all new Uconnect 5 10.1 inch screen on here so that's pretty cool we'll check that out in just a little bit. You also get the second row tumble chairs which is $1195 performance hood is $1495 and the all season tires are $395. Blind spot and cross path detection is $495 your total MSRP is $53,925 it has a three year 36 bumper to bumper five year 60 powertrain and if you'd like to get your summit price in the upper right hand part of your screen is a link to our website to see all the rebates and incentives on this particular Durango 25 highway 18 city 21 average and then your crash test ratings they only have side and rollover rated which is side is five stars and three stars on the rollover they redesigned the dash on these for 2021 and we'll get into that in just a little bit we'll finish the outside walk around point out that it does have the four wheel disc brakes you get those backup parking sensors the dual chrome tipped exhaust you get those blacked out Durango logos and GT logo the LED racetrack tail lamps there once we get it get all the lights on get it running we'll check all those out those third row seats do fold down they go down pretty nice and flat and when you put both sides down and that second row you have a nice area to haul extra stuff and they go down really easy and then to get them up you just grab the strap and they come up really easy as well not much effort there storage and back here that's your subwoofer right there and then your jack tools are in there as well you get this down you press this button it'll beep at you three times and then it begins its descent you do get LED license plate lights and a backup camera back here this one has the capitalist fuel fill has the heated mirrors with the blind spot monitoring you also get the directional signals on there inside the GT package gives you the black leather and suede interior you get the titanium stitching on there as well factory floor mats auto headlamps tilt and telescopic steering wheel power windows power locks power mirrors you get this kind of carbon fiber trim on the doors does have memory driver seat and then you have this black chrome trim throughout the interior here and we'll hop inside and take a look at the instrument cluster and radio so you get the big seven inch LCD display there got the digital speedometer has the compass you can put time miles to empty all that good stuff on there has the heated leather wrap steering wheel cruise controls and adaptive cruise controls on the right Bluetooth and information center controls on the left and then on the bottom it's the flat steering wheel you get the paddle shifters as well and then this is the all-new 10.1 touchscreen radio you get kind of two screens here this setup very similar to the 8.4 except you know it's of course wider and I'm sure if you wanted to make this full screen you can just by pressing that this is also where your backup camera shows up you can do your comfort here if we turn the ignition on everything becomes accessible notice you do get the dual climate controls right there you can do your heated seats heated steering wheel there and then you can check out the backup camera at any time and then you can fold those headrests down and back which is pretty cool and yeah you do get AM FM and Sirius XM radio capabilities on this vehicle down here you get your dual climate controls more tactile controls if you don't like using the radio up there and you also have more tactile heated seats and heated steering wheel controls your start stop capabilities sport mode eco mode stability control obviously your hazards lane departure warning and your parking sensors you can turn those off and on you do get two usb's two usb c's and an aux jack eight speed automatic mechanical shifter there the keyless entry with the remote start they didn't change that but I really do like the dash on here it's nicely laid out looks really good I like all the controls there the space down here to put cell phones and stuff is really cool as well and I think on the you can get the option for a cell phone charger here as well too not on this particular one but notice the black chrome around the radio and everything but you also can do android auto and apple carplay on this vehicle you can add the devices and stuff like that and I'd have to play around with the radio a little bit more to get it to show you everything on it and we could probably do just a video on that radio anyways you have the power sunroof up here your home link buttons for your garage door security systems and lane systems map lights and you do get sos and assist buttons in that rearview mirror we'll take a quick look at the back seats they didn't do much for redesigning the back seats or anything still the standard derango back here you get the tumble seats which I believe are 1195 or right around there for getting the tumble captain's chairs back here these seats do fold down like so and they fold up like that to get to that third row and you get a third row two-seater back there as well these back seats are heated and you do get 115 volt 150 watt plug-in back here and two more usb jacks you get that carbon fiber on the back door there as well and the child safety locks and as promised i'm going to do one more final walk around with all the lights on here I would personally like to thank you for checking out the video today and hopefully from this hd video you will have been able to tell just how good looking the new reactor blue color is and check out all the options on this particular derango gt all-wheel drive with the black top package and I'd like to thank you again for checking out the video and to see more pictures of this derango or one of our other 450 new and used cars trucks scvs minivans wranglers you name it we got it go to our website www.summitauto.com full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle from two locations all at summitauto.com and if you'd like to check out more hd videos you can go to youtube.com slash summit auto remember to like subscribe and share on this video and all the videos that you see there in fact in a second you will see link to subscribe to our youtube channel on your left it links more dodged derango videos like this one on your right if you have not been to our website on the bottom link to this video on our website or this vehicle on our website click those check us out and we're super excited to be offering the 2021 dodged derango gt all-wheel drive black top in reactor blue metallic thanks again for checking out the video


You have informally counseled many couples who've been struggling in their marriages, and you like to focus on tools rather than on the failure. So what kind of issues have you noticed that typically arise in marriages that are struggling, and how do you turn that ship around? You know, probably the number one thing that I just see, I'm seeing organically, and I tell my children to do the love for this and to thank Allah if they have this, which is unfortunately many people struggle with the inability to self-reflect. And if anyone out there was listening to this or you or me, if any of us are the type who are able to hear criticisms about us ourselves and to hear feedback and to hear more than one person kind of say the same thing about us and to think, okay, maybe I'm the common denominator, maybe there's something I need to work on regarding myself. That is a huge blessing if people are able to do that, because for the most part what I see is people aren't able to self-reflect. They're not able to take criticism. They get defensive, they go on the offensive, and we're the heroes of our own narratives, and we want to be told how great we are all the time. And so it's very hard when somebody holds up a mirror and shows us that maybe we're not perfect, and that's what marriage does. Marriage holds up a mirror and shows you what you need to work on, but you have to be willing to look at that mirror and be like, okay, this is what needs polishing. This is what needs refining. Whenever people are struggling in their marriages, I always say there's his truth, there's her truth, and then there's the truth. It's not ever... It's very rare that there's a clear good guy and a bad guy. Very rare. So usually when there's physical abuse involved, then it's like, yeah, okay, that's a deal breaker. If somebody's physically abusing another, then it's clear that a person needs to get out. But other than that, most things, inshallah, can be worked on. So the ability to self-reflect and to take criticism, I think, is a huge thing that people need to be willing to bring to the table. So can you state some of the things that you've seen and the kind of advice you would give in a specific situation? Yeah. So I knew of a couple where literally the people in my home, what they would say about the wife is that when she comes into a room, she lights it up. Just this really outgoing personality, really friendly, just the life of the party. And her husband obviously fell in love with that quality with her of her. And together, they were a very dynamic couple and everybody enjoyed being around them. And then one time, she had me come over. And I did notice, I remember asking her, did you just move in? I thought she had just moved into her apartment, but she had actually been living there for a few years. And the reason I thought she had just moved in is because there was a lot of stuff lying out. There was things that looked like they needed to be put away. There were boxes, there was piles of dishes in the sink. It looked, it was pretty chaotic in her apartment. And it looked like somebody's in the midst of moving in and getting set up. I didn't think beyond that, but then later she took me into confidence and was telling me about some struggles she was having in her marriage. And what it came down to was that her husband wanted domestic bliss. He didn't just want the partying wife. He didn't just want the person to have fun with. He wanted a home where it was calm and it was peaceful and it wasn't chaotic and meals were cooked and things were picked up. He was out working. She was home. They had a kid. And what she said to me is, she said to me that one of the things he said to her was, if I needed a clean undershirt, I know I couldn't rely on you to be able to get that for me, to be able to provide that for me like a clean undershirt. And her response to him was, even a maid could do that. What I give you is so much more than that. You and I have a good time together. I'm good to your family. I'm good to your friends. Like everybody enjoys our company. That was her love language, right? Like being there as far as talking and hanging out. But what he was trying to communicate was that he needed something else. So I actually, at that point, I was probably maybe 10, 15 years into my own marriage, I actually saw myself in her because I saw similar qualities between us and I had I know my husband had also expressed certain requirements or certain wanting me to shape up in certain ways. And so I felt like what I was witnessing in her was like allah guiding me to what I needed to work on in myself. So I really encouraged her and I was like, come on, we can do this. And maybe she even talked to me because she saw herself in me. But unfortunately, she wasn't able to change. Like she would try and she said her husband even said to her, like, I know you're going to try for like a week, but then you're going to give up, you know? And so she would try and she would like get into the cooking, the meals and having a and tidying up. She'd get her mom and sisters over to help her clean up the place. But then it would go back to how it was. And she was coming to me quite a bit to talk to me about her issues. And what I was seeing on social media was that she was out with her friends a lot. Like she was going, you know, she was flying to other states to celebrate people's birthdays and bridal showers and whatnot. And her husband was home with a kid.  What are you doing leaving and going to another state to party, you know? Unfortunately, you know, she she it takes so much work to change. Whenever somebody tells me that another person has changed overnight, I don't believe them because and I've had people try to convince me, oh, he's a different person now or oh, she's a different person now. Like she went to this one class or she moved away or he moved away for six months and he's a totally different person now. I don't believe it because it takes a lifetime to work on yourself. I mean, there's issues that I'm still working on myself from childhood. And it's a day to day struggle, nobody changes overnight. And but the what I always tell people is you're allowed to make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. It's part of being a human being. But what matters the most is what you do to to repair after the mistake, right? Like how you plan to grow, how you plan to change and everybody can forgive mistakes. What they can't forgive is the same mistake being made again and again and again. And so that's why when my husband told me at that phase in our lives, 1012 years into our marriage, that he needed certain things from me that I needed to deliver on. I had to take that seriously, because if somebody's taking the time to talk to you about what they need, it behooves us to listen, you know, because nobody else is going to come bring the warning bells for us. So what you've said echoes what I've read in many marriage books that you can be the most charismatic, beautiful, fun woman that there is. But if you not, for example, ironing his shirts and putting a meal on the table, it's not going to mean anything. So that's interesting. But when it comes to then change, so as you said, the person relapsed, so then it takes time to change. It then requires having a spouse who's also been patient to support you in that period of growth and change where, you know, one will jump off and slack, slack off, right? Yeah. Yeah. No, definitely. It is a two way street. And that was one thing I always, that's one thing I appreciated about my husband, because when he told me he needed more from me after we had that conversation, he would act like he never even saw the flaws, you know, and once he had the conversation, he didn't bring up the past mistakes, and then he would act like he didn't even see whatever was lacking in me, which would then allow me to kind of start to relapse again, because I would start to think that, you know, he's not noticing or I'm getting away with it or what I'm doing is good enough. So it was the second time that he talked to me about the same issues that I realized, no, this is serious. Like he's not blind. He does see and he needs more and I have to deliver. And so Alhamdulillah, you know, it took, it took more than once for me to get it. But Alhamdulillah, it didn't require him to say it 10, 12, 15 times because there is an end to people's patience as well, you know, and so both parties have to realize that. Have you seen issues between couples related to gender dynamics and roles? For example, the man not being very manly enough or the woman being too masculine? Yeah, I've, unfortunately, there is this whole thing going on in our society where men are being emasculated and many men are, you know, they don't feel respected and they don't feel like they're in charge. And so they feel like, well, okay, if I'm not needed, then I don't need to deliver. And so, you know, there's some basic, basic needs that each gender needs from the other. And one of the primary needs women have, even if she's highly educated, even if she's really successful, even if she's earning a lot of money, she needs to know that her husband is capable, and that her husband can provide, and that if tomorrow she wasn't working and wasn't earning that she would be in good hands, right? Like her husband would be able to take care of the family. And so I do see that if the husband isn't providing, then the wife loses respect. And probably the number one indicator that a marriage is on its way out, you know, on its way to being over is when you see that a spouse is contemptuous of the other spouse. When you see that they're rolling their eyes when the spouse talks or they're getting annoyed or they don't respect them or don't agree with them and openly contradict them, openly laugh at whatever they're saying or, you know, put it down. Oh, that's so painful to witness because it's a very clear indication that this probably isn't going to survive. Because it's very few people can tolerate that can tolerate feeling like they're just being tolerated, you know.


What shoe are you looking forward to coming out in 2023? So far, the Jordan 8 Playoff. Ooh, that's a nice one. What shoe are you looking forward to in 2023? Probably the Jordan 1 Olive Lowe coming out, Travis Scott. I ain't mad at that. Good shoe. What shoe are you looking forward to coming out in 2023? The Year of the Rabbits, for sure. The Jordan 1 Lowe's. I like that.


Okay, so let's try this one. It says, silver crystallizes with a face-centered cubic unit cell 0.407 nanometers on an edge. Calculate the atomic radius of silver. So, remember, face-centered cubic atoms on each one of the corners, but also atoms on each one of the faces. Okay, so when we do this one, you've got to remember the formula. So it's 4S or R. So it gives us, in this case, S, right? Because it says that the unit cell has 0.407 nanometers on an edge. So that edge is going to be S, 0.407 nanometers. Okay, and we can actually just do this in nanometers because it doesn't give us any instructions as to what unit it wants its radius in. So the radius of silver is going to be S square root of 2 divided by 4. Let's put it in picometers just for fun. But since we said picometers, let's convert it into picometers. So a good conversion to remember is one nanometer is 100 picometers. Any questions on that one? In your unit, you might see these in its angstroms, and that's 1 times 10 to the negative 10. So it's another length.