Show Notes
In this episode of Peaceable and Kind, Derek Vreeland invites listeners on a journey from ancient Athens to Jerusalem, exploring how Greek philosophy, especially Aristotle, has helped clarify Christian faith without ever replacing divine revelation. While reason must always remain subordinate to revelation, the wisdom of Athens can still serve the truth revealed in Christ.
Derek is joined by Louis Markos, Professor of English and Scholar in Residence at Houston Christian University and holder of the Robert H. Ray Chair in Humanities. A prolific author, speaker, and public intellectual, Markos has written over thirty books on topics ranging from classical literature and philosophy to C. S. Lewis, Tolkien, and Christian apologetics. His latest book, From Aristotle to Christ: How Aristotelian Thought Clarified the Christian Faith, is the third volume in a trilogy exploring how pagan philosophy prepared the way for Christian theology.
Their conversation focuses especially on Aristotle’s ethics, the nature of virtue, the role of habit in moral formation, and how Christians can affirm virtue without falling into works-righteousness. Together, Derek and Lou explore how Aristotle can help believers think clearly about goodness, character, and holiness in a morally confused age while keeping Jesus firmly at the center.
Key Highlights
Lou Markos’s journey into faith, philosophy, and literature
Aristotle’s understanding of virtue, goodness, and habit
The role of habit in forming character
The “self-reinforcing cycle” of virtue and habit
How Aristotle helps believers conform their souls to the image of Christ
Book mentioned in this episode: _From Achilles to Christ: Why Christians Should Read the Pagan Classics_by Louis Markos _From Plato to Christ: How Platonic Thought Shaped the Christian Faith_by Louis Markos _From Aristotle to Christ: How Aristotelian Thought Clarified the Christian Faith_by Louis Markos _Mere Christianity_by C.S. Lewis
Louis Markos’ Amazon page:https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001JSBEBG
Louis Markos’ YouTube channel:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1mcYKcQaJDA_a7sFVsHSgg
Has Peaceable and Kind been meaningful to you? Support the show by:
Leaving a review
Giving us a 5-star rating on your podcast app
Sharing this episode with a friend
Order Derek’s new book, Incarnation: 8 Lessons on How God Meets Us, here: https://amzn.to/42jSZAs
Did you find this episode helpful on your spiritual journey? Consider helping us out!
Leave a review
Share it with your friends
Give us a 5-Star rating on your podcast app of choice
Learn more about Derek’s work as a pastor and author: https://derekvreeland.com
Interact with Derek on Instagram, Twitter, Bluesky, or Facebook
Transcript
Narrator: Welcome back. To another episode of Peaceable and Kind. I am your one-man host, Derek Vreeland, and today we have a conversation that I know you are going to enjoy. But before we get there, let me ask. A favor of you. If you like what we’re doing at peaceable and kind, would you be so kind to leave a rating or review on Apple, Spotify, wherever you are listening? And if you haven’t already. Go ahead and subscribe and share this episode or a previous episode with a friend. This is going to be a great conversation. On today’s episode, we’re going to take a journey to ancient Athens. Tertullian, the early church father, who we appreciate so much, he gave us the word Trinity. He once said, what has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? Well, other church fathers would answer Tertullian by saying a lot, and I would certainly agree. I have been convinced that ancient Greek philosophy can help us really think about and clarify what we believe about Jesus and what it means to follow Jesus with authenticity and integrity, but philosophy can never replace the revelation of truth we have received in Him. For followers of Jesus, reason is important. We are commanded by Jesus to love the Lord with all of our minds. but reason is always subservient to revelation. So whatever wisdom we gather from Athens, we must finally submit it to the revelation given to us. In Jerusalem. Alright, so with that disclaimer out of the way, let’s take a trip to ancient Greece. My guest today is Lou Marcos. He is the professor of English and Scholar in Residence at Houston Christian University. where he holds the Robert H. Ray Chair in Humanities. For years he has taught courses on British Romantic and Victorian poetry and prose. He’s taught on the classics, C. S. Lewis, Tolkien. He has written 30 books and authored hundreds of articles on a variety of topics. He is an engaging and popular speaker, lecturing on topics such as C. S. Lewis, apologetics, education, and the ancient Greco-Roman world He is committed to the concept of the professor as public educator and believes that knowledge must not be walled up in the academy. but must be disseminated to all who have ears to hear. And that’s why I have him on the podcast today. His new book on Aristotle is the third book in a trilogy. It’s following behind From Achilles to Christ, Why Christians Should Read the Pagan Classics. and from Plato to Christ, How Platonic Thought Shaped the Christian Faith. This new book, From Aristotle to Christ, How Aristotelian Thought Clarified the Christian Faith, was one of my favorite reads from 2025, and it is the topic of our conversation today. Professor Marcos, welcome to Peaceable and Kind. Thanks, Derek.
Derek Vreeland: It’s good to be on talking about a subject that is near and dear to my heart, bringing Athens and Jerusalem together
Narrator: I think it is time for us to be honest that the very formation of Christian theology really is a blending together of of revelation and reason, what we get from Jerusalem uh and and Athens. And I I just I loved your book. We spoke a little bit before We hit record that you’re a new author to me. The the algorithms on social media brought me your book title. And I loved your book on Aristotle. And I want to jump into it, but before we do that. Tell us a little bit about your Christian journey, and I’m curious, when in your spiritual journey did philosophy and literature become important to you?
Derek Vreeland: That’s interesting. I grew up, I am a hundred percent Greek. All four of my grandparents were born in Greece, emigrated to America about 1930 And uh I uh grew up in the Greek Orthodox Church. I came to know Christ as my savior there, but slowly over my college years, it influenced very much my university Christian fellowship and the whole uh sort of uh small group movement, Bible study movement, God slowly moved me into the evangelical world. But I’ve not lost my love for ancient Greece and Rome or for icons or for any of the richness uh of my tradition. Uh well my tradition and also the tradition of the United States. You know, they that Greco-Roman is so deep there Uh I’ve always been a reader. When when I was an undergraduate, I I double majored in English and history, but literature was my first love. But always I wanted to bring together literature, history, philosophy, music, arts, I was always a uh interdenominational or I’m sorry, interdisciplinary kind of person that wanted to bring them together. Uh I do remember uh having uh one of those great uh high school English teachers, uh and he’s the one who told me that I should be a a college professor in English. And I I said, okay, and I do Uh but I do remember I don’t remember what I said, but I made a clip to him about Plato and he said to me, You can’t say that unless you’ve read the entire Republic. So I went ahead and read the entire Republic. And I don’t even remember if I changed my nine. But I remember that I read it and the joy of the Socratic dialogue. And you know, thank God I started there because starting with Descartes and going forward, philosophy just gets worse and worse and worse and worse I mean it’s ridiculous. If I if I started there, I wouldn’t even care. I mean, there’s good stuff. We of course we have Pascal and a lot of other people, but it’s unbelievable how philosophy you know has changed and it’s I mean remember in Greek it means lover or friend of truth And I’m sorry, but to me, an atheist philosopher is a contradiction in terms. Because if you’re an atheist, there can be no truth, at least no truth with a capital T. And if there is no truth with a capital T, then why the heck are you studying philosophy? It’s just a very, very strange thing. So I’ve been so that’s why, you know, if if there’s a modern philosopher I love, it’s Peter Greg. Yes. I don’t get into all the let A equal this and you know, why doesn’t A just equal A? Okay, I want a a more narrative kind of philosophy that really is seeking truth and doesn’t I mean I i philosophy was really destroyed by Spinoza. I mean this idea that that philosophy is is more true the more close it is to math. Is ridiculous. And by the way, Plato would have said it’s ridiculous, even though Plato lum geometry it was like second after philosophy. But he loved geometry because real geometry is looking for the ideal triangle with a capital T, not earthly shadows and imitations. So I think many of those things just slowly brought me in.
Narrator: And so even though literature is my focus, I always do want to take a philosophical side to ask: what is the good, what is the true, what is the beautiful. Yeah, the transcendentals. And I think that that modern people they hear philosophy and they just think it is only speculative when ancient philosophy was a a a way of of living, a way of of doing life. And it’s funny that you mention a uh high school English teacher, my track coach in high school um encouraged me to take the test to try to get into the senior level advanced humanities class. The the it was called tag talented and gifted humanities. And I told him, I said, coach, I’m I’m I I don’t think I’m smart enough. I can’t do that. I took the test, I got in, and it was in that class that I had my first taste of philosophy because they did units. We did South African literature. We did some of the Romantic poets. But we had this little unit in philosophy. And I just loved it. And it was also that English teacher who told me to write. He said, I think you have something to say. And uh it’s it’s interesting how we’re influenced by by those mentors.
Derek Vreeland: If you ask most English majors why they became an English major, the number one reason is a good high school teacher because literary kind of lives so does history, live or die with the teacher. And by the way, I just remembered as we spoke, I had a teacher like your class on history, and it was called from barbarism to humanism. And I said to him, given that our class started with the Greeks and ended with the modern world, shouldn’t it be called from humanism to barbarism? And I think I think you agreed. I love that.
Narrator: I love it. Yeah, I I I cannot um I cannot say enough about the mentors in my past ‘cause I always feel like I I’m just standing you know, on the shoulders of of giants. And I guess anyone who pays attention to the classics in literature and philosophy say that. But let’s jump into your new book, From Aristotle to Christ And you open the book by saying that you are a proud and fervent Platonist But admit that Aristotle has made some contributions to the Christian faith. And I also appreciate that you give a great overview. of Aristotle because you’re covering his logic, his cosmology, and ethics and politics and art. But I’m most interested in Aristotle’s ethics and his metaphysics. So if we can kind of drill down there, I’d love to have a conversation About how does Aristotle help modern day Christians define what it means to be good in a world that’s just filled with moral laxity
Derek Vreeland: And and and you notice that when you said the names of my books, the first one was how Platonic thought shaped the Christian field. Then I decided to say how Aristotelian thought clarified because When it comes to terminology, what I mean, remember, the the the most systematic theology is probably still Aquinas, and Aquinas is very much in a deal with there would be no Aquinas without Aristotle. Uh and so Aristotle, and in fact, one of the big differences in the two books, in my Plato book, the first half is all about Plato. Then the second half I show his impact on Christians, you know, from the last two thousand years. But when I started to construct the Aristotle book, I said, that’s not going to work for Aristotle. Because he gives us so many different categories. And so what I did with the Aristotle book is it’s broken into five parts. I drew Aristotle’s logic Them show its influence, his metaphysics then show his influence, then his ethics, then his politics, then his poetics, and his rhetoric, because I mean basically Aristotle gave us the modern university. We think of majoring or choosing a discipline. That’s a very Aristotelian idea. He was the one that took all of knowledge and put it into categories. That doesn’t mean there’s no cross-disciplinary stuff, but he is able to show that system. And as I explained in my book, Um even Aristotle have said that logic is not so much its own category. Logic is the foundation for everything else. If you don’t understand logic like the law of non-contradiction, and if you don’t understand syllogisms then you really can’t reason in any of those buckets, including ethics as much as as uh metaphysics. So I I said that is only one Aristotle book that I would choose, even though it would normally be the poetics, because I love the poetics, I’m literally It’s gotta be the ethics. That’s probably the biggest impact that he’s had. And it’s a continuing impact. And you know, even though Uh C. S. Lewis, my mentor, is himself more a platinist than an Aristotelian. He quotes Aristotle all the time. He might even quote him more if you count it up.
Narrator: Oh yeah.
Derek Vreeland: And I’m sure most of your listeners have heard of Mir Christianity. Mirror Christianity Book One is an argument for theism. Book two, it uses the Tau or the argument by by re uh argument by virtue really by morality. Then book two is an argument from theism to Christianity, Lyra Lunticlore. But then book three is all about living the Christian life. And that book is almost as influenced by Aristotle as the Bible. And he’s and he makes no apology for it. Aristotle got so much about virtue correct that we still look to him. In fact, there’s very few mistakes that Plato made, right? And I think Aristotle corrects two of his most, from a Christian point of view, corrects two of his most important mistakes. First, even though Plano had his idea of the Forbes, he still tended to have a lower view of the body, of the soul trapped inside of the body. And Aristotle amazingly gave us the word hylomorphism, kind of a mixture of form and matter, and he talks about He doesn’t say where incarnational means, but he comes as close as any pagan does to doing that. That there is a wind. That’s why, even though Plato plays with reincarnation, only in his myths, but he still plays with reincarnation Aristotle completely rejects it. And he rejects it for partly a reason the Christian would, that our soul and body are a unit. You just can’t separate and throw them apart. That’s an amazing insight. uh for a for a pre-Christian panic. Uh the second mistake that Plato made, and it’s a big one, is his idea that virtue is knowledge, by which he meant if we really knew and understood virtue, we would be virtuous In some ways that had a bad influence on people like Rousseau. That is just false. And Aristotle’s like, you know, I love Plato, but sometimes we have to tell our friends when they’re wrong, okay? And that’s absolutely crazy. The only thing that makes vice, vice, and virtue, virtue is that we choose it. Okay The fact is that it it it’s not a vice and and even you know Paul talks about how the the the pagans are a law unto themselves, right? How else would they be able to do anything wrong? You know, and only the law allows me really to sin. So uh again, Aristotle comes along and explains that, no, no, no, virtue is something that we choose, right? That that’s why Um, the only reason you’re able to have the Nuremberg trials is number one, even though even though Europeans were already very postmodern even then in the fifth forties and fifties Number one, there are moral statements. It’s how uh genocide is wrong. But you still can’t have the Neureberg trials unless you believe the Nazis knew right from wrong and yet they still did the wrong thing It’s all about motivation. And people don’t realize that our legal system is, of course, very heavily based on the Torah, the five books of Moses, and the law. But it’s also heavily based on Aristotle, ‘cause Aristotle helped us to understand the importance of motivation When we talk about the difference between first degree and third degree murder, that is very much an Aristotelian idea because he understands how motivation impacts what we’ve done and and the severity of what we’ve done. And that impacts Aristotle, who impacts Dante and the way he talks about sin and all that sort of stuff, is very, very Aristotelian. of and in fact one of the reasons uh Dante never quite tells us where heresy fits in terms of sins of the soul and sins of the flesh is probably because Aristotle had no idea what heresy was because he didn’t have uh you know systematic theology to to be heretical. So everything you know trainers and everything else is right there. So well let’s go back to virtue. It’s very important and and again But if before you read Nicomach Ethics, if you read book three of Mur Christianity, it will help you to go back. Okay, number one, virtue is not a feeling. It is an action. Courage does not mean I feel brave. courage means even when I’m terrified I stay at my post and I don’t run away. So virtue is an action and it’s an action we choose but then we go a little farther and and that is that if we keep practicing that virtue, keep making the right choice in terms of courage or temperance or justice, Slowly we will gain the habit of virtue. And that is a very famous saying from Aristotle that virtue is a habit. Now here’s the great thing Virtue is its own reward. The more we practice virtue, the more we become virtuous and the more we enjoy. Virtue. One of the worst legacies that has befallen, this particularly has befallen white Christians, particularly Northern European Christians, because of Immanuel Kant. is the idea that something is not virtuous if I enjoy doing it. How many of these, you know, white Christians are working in a soup kitchen and hating and resenting the people And they really and it’s it’s t it’s a terrible and and Lewis fought against that all of his life. No, one of the rewards of virtue is the more you practice virtue The more you enjoy virtue, you start becoming a charitable person. Now we’re still fallen human beings, even after we become saved, we still fall into sin, okay? But we come back And we enjoy this is just so important.
Narrator: The other important thing, Derek, is, and everybody’s heard this, virtue is the mean between the extremes.
Derek Vreeland: So So courage is the mean. So courage is the mean between its lack and its access and its excess. So a lack of courage is cowardice. I think everybody understands that cowardism is cowardice is not c courage. But courage is also not the excess, what we would call rashness or pluckiness or headstrongness, right? Recklessness. That is not. So the image of the berserker soldier who is running in and killing everybody. Is that’s not the classical virtue of courage. That’s recklessness. Courage has to walk hand in hand with knowledge, with wisdom. And that’s the meat. So temperance is obviously not licentiousness, but temperance is also not a rigid asceticist. It’s got to be in between. Now, this is important For Christians and I um Derek, I speak all the time for classical Christian school. A lot of these books are written partly with a classical audience in mind. uh who are reviving all these things and helping to form character, spiritual formation. We talked before about Dallas Ritter and all of that. Spiritual formation is an act. It’s not works, righteousness. We’re not saving ourselves. But we try to move towards sanctification, and this is a process by which we move there. Now If we forget that virtue is the mean between the extremes, we might reduce virtue only to do’s and don’ts. Now, there are thou shalt nots in the Bible, okay? But What we want to move beyond that real spiritual formation is that we become virtuous people who desired virtue. So our job as educators, whether you’re a teacher or pastor, or whatever, our job is to help. Align the student’s soul with reality itself. Okay? Not a rigid asceticism that is anti-humanistic Right? But something that that God’s transcendentals, God’s balance and harmony runs through the cosmos as much as it runs through the human soul. Now that’s not new age, okay? We’re not worshiping the cause. But let me give a metaphor. Now we no Christian can accept this literally, but it’s a good metaphor. Pythagoras, who’s really the guy who came up with it uh in the West, came up with uh reincarnation and influenced Plato, Pythagoras had this cool idea. That you would keep reincarnating, right? Until your soul became so attuned with the cosmos. That you could hear the music of the spheres. That is the music that the cosmos seeks. And when that happened, you joined the cosmos. Now, obviously, as Christians, we reject both reincarnation and the idea of a one-soul. But there is a metaphor, allegory, we can learn from it, as people like Bleephius have learned from that, and that is we are attuning our soul to To the reality that God has put into the cosmos. We are coming. The transcendentals of goodness, truth, and beauty. What they have in common is they’re all a kind of harmony or balance or proper ordering. Right? And and uh uh uh quite uh Augustine famously said uh about this phrase order avorus, properly ordering or rightly ordering the loves, right? That Sin is not desire. Sin is a misdirected desire. All the real desires were invented by God. Satan can’t create anything. He can only take what God created and rip it, destroy it, pervert sin is privation is the famous phrase from Augustine. So all of these things have early origins in Plato and Aristotle, Aristotle especially, but If it’s true, it’s true. I do not think the author of Hebrews was quoting Plato when he said That the earthly temple is a shadow of the temple in the fool of God. I don’t think he was in it. I just think Plato got that right. And the same thing, Aristotle got certain things right. And we know that, go back to what you said in the beginning, Derek, because we have the touchstone of the Bible against which to measure it. So thank God we have what’s called special revelation, God’s direct revelation of the Bible. We can use that to measure the truth of the general revelation that God spoke to all people and that I think reached its height in Greece and Rome.
Narrator: I have to pause this episode for just a moment to tell you that the next two Bible studies in the God and the Neighborhood Bible study series are available for pre-order. Crucifixion: 8 lessons on how God. God saves us and resurrection. Eight lessons on how God restores us, both release on February 17th, just in time for Lent and Easter. Pre-order now. Links are in the show. So when we speak of the virtues, you’re speaking of it as a as an action, I think Aquinas calls virtue an operative habit. And so habit and virtue they they go together. You describe it in your book as a self-reinforcing cycle. So the m and as you said a moment ago, the more that we practice a virtue, the more virtuous we become. One question I have is just about the development of the list of virtues or how we define virtue. Yes. Because for Christians, we can read Aristotle and say, yes, humanity exists for a certain end, a certain good, a telos, and we allow God and Christ through scripture and the church to define that kind of good But I think some Christians will look at Aristotle, read Aristotle, and say, well, he gets some of the virtues right, but he’s He’s missing some. So if we go back into ancient Greece, talk to us a little bit about just the development of the list of virtues, which then in the Catholic Church becomes the cardinal virtues. Right. But give us a little bit of a historical background on that.
Derek Vreeland: Yeah, these these these four classical or cardinal virtues are courage or fortitude, uh temperance, which means self-control. uh uh uh wisdom also often used the by the Latin word prudence and then justice, right? These are the four classical virtues and what distinguishes them from the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. 1 Corinthians 13, these three things remain faith, hope, and love, the greatest is love. What distinguishes them is that To understand fully faith, hope, and love took the special revelation of Christ in the New Testament. That’s a higher that doesn’t mean the Greeks didn’t have words for those, but the higher understanding awaited the full or special revelation of the New Testament in Christ. But the higher pagans, the virtuous pagans, as Dante called them, uh uh Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Virgil, Cicero, these different people The idea was that they were able to aspire to this set of virtues that comes to us through general revelation. And the two places where those virtues are most fully defined are in Plato’s Republic And Aristotle’s Nicomachian ethics. And those who ethics mean they’re the only virtues, but they were seen as the chief virtues. In fact, one of the reasons there’s many reasons why Dante chose Virgil as his guide. But Dante still virtualized the medieval did as the full embodiment of those kind of the farthest we can go on our own steam, okay, with that special revelation. In fact, Virgil was just considered human reason. As you know, uh, Derek, Aquinas often refers to Aristotle simply as the philosopher. Uh and they often did that with Virgil the poet. He was an embodiment of human reason, the farthest we can go apart from direct special revelation of divine drink. Now These virtues do not save us, okay? They do not save us. But look, we need, Derek, we need to get our Aristotle and Aquinas back. Because if you grew up evangelical, then you were you were mesmerized with the phrase, all sin is sin. Well, is that true or isn’t that okay? It’s true in the limited sense that all sin violates the nature of a holy God. But I think the reason we don’t even know it anymore I think we’ve made that into a mantra because we don’t want to be like those Catholics with the road with menial stones. Look, that is simply not true. In fact, I just saw a meet where somebody showed, you know, a bar graph where the bars are different sizes and it said the way humans see sin. And then you saw the top of the bar, the way God sees sin. And it’s like that is not the case. There are sins that are worse. The sins of the soul are worse than the sins of the flesh. Why? Because they tend to keep us away from God and his grace more effectively. Look, when Jesus came The prostitutes and tax collectors folded them and the Pharisees rejected them. Now that doesn’t mean that the tax collectors were not sinners, okay? They were guilty of the sin of the flesh, okay, but they recognized their need and they flocked. So it is clear it it is not the sick who need a doctor, but it is not those who are well who need a doctor, but those who are sick, right? The difference between the Pharisee and the publican or the tax collector, right? So we have to get away from this. Jesus himself, when he said it’s not what goes into your body that defiles you, but what comes out That’s the more that’s the greed and the pride and all those sorts of things. And now we need to be careful. I’ll just use a test case here. People have said, well, homosexuality is a sin of the flesh and therefore less man. Neil, if you told me that a hundred years ago or fifty years ago I would have probably agreed because that that is the understanding. But what’s happened, the evil that’s been done with the LGBT agenda, is they’ve taken a sin of the flesh, fornication. And they’ve turned it into a sin of the soul by saying, Screw you, God, this is white. That so they the LGBT and and the Preachers who have accepted that have done a great disservice. They’ve taken people who caught in uh that kind of self-destructive lifestyle might have come to the Lord. But when you make them identify themselves with that, that’s just as bad as pride or greed or envy or hatred or any of those things. It becomes a sin of the soul that says, this is who I am, and God, you can’t define me. So that that’s something that that really upsets me. Uh and and in fact uh I I I mean, on Judgment Day, I would rather be some gay guy who struggled with his orientation all his life than some rich uh heterosexual white uh uh you know seminarian who has used his seminary things to try to make a self-destructive lifestyle good. That person has got a lot more to answer uh than the poor kid that gave in to his base instincts and whatnot Uh and we won’t even talk about uh what uh uh w what Bor Dorkin has to answer for. We’ll worry about that today. But again We have to remember, Aristotle can help remind us of there is a gradation of sin because of what it does to our soul. And the way it barricades us against God’s light and love and mercy. That’s that’s the real thing. And again, if you want to understand Aristotle, you read Aquinas and then you read Dante. Especially as infirm, but the whole book is imbued with some of the best of Aristotle, including Aristotle’s cosmology, which we’re talking about turning it into. But his idea of a beautiful, ordered, balanced universe that also influenced C. S. Lewis great.
Narrator: And what’s so helpful about the Aristotelian view of ethics is that it is in harmony with what Jesus taught and that it starts from the inside out. It’s not only about our behaviors and actions, though that habituation can shape our hearts and soul, but it starts with what’s happening on the inside. Well Professor Marcos, we are running out of time, but thank you so much. I want to extend an invitation for you to come back on the podcast. We’ll have much more to discuss about Plato, Aristotle. And once I finish Lord of the Rings, Tolkien as well. So welcome if I extend the invitation.
Derek Vreeland: Oh yeah.
Narrator: Yeah, we can we can do that.
Derek Vreeland: I mean and there’s and it this is important stuff, and I think What’s important about it is it’s not just quote academic. This can help us in our spiritual growth in a very real way. We have to practice spiritual growth. I believe it. And and and again, we have to not have a narrow understanding. God’s grace saves us. I have no problem with imputed righteousness. But if we are going to grow into the image of Christ, That is a lifelong thing. That’s that’s why C. S. Lewis was Anglican, but he really liked the orthodox idea of theosis.
Narrator: Yes.
Derek Vreeland: God became like us so we could become like him. Amen. Right? It is it is a long process of spiritual growth
Narrator: and the shaping of a human soul. Amen. And that’s what we are trying to accomplish together through this podcast, Peaceable and Kind, trying to sow seeds of peaceableness. and kindness within our hearts that we might see peace and kindness in our world. Where can people find you online if they’d like to to track you online and follow?
Derek Vreeland: The the easiest thing is, yeah, just just go to Amazon. com, type in Louis Marcos, it’s M-A-R-K-O-S, it’s a Greek name, and all all my books. I got 30 books out, they’re all off there and if you go to YouTube and type in my name, I have a YouTube channel with a bunch of stuff up there as well.
Narrator: That’s the easiest way to get a whole money. All right, we’ll put those links in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining me today. Right. Well that’s all that we have for today. Today, thank you for joining us. Go in peace and be kind.
This transcript was generated with AI and may contain errors.