#211 - Joe Loconte

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1:00Hey, folks, welcome to the program. You can tell by my glasses that I'm probably on the West Coast. I'm dressed like a mogul, not like a literary guy from the East Coast, but like, you know, making films now. I'm Dino Dillarentus, Jr. or something like that. And I have as my guest today are our friend, my friend, Jola Conte. But if you don't know Jola Conte, he's an author of many tremendous books. He's been my guest on this program many times. He's an educator. He's a filmmaker. And today we're going to talk about any number of things. Jola Conte, welcome back. Quick, be back. Thanks for having me. Let's get it now. Well, listen, in case people aren't impressed enough with who's this Jola Conte guy, let me give the ultimate credential.

2:01This is the ultimate credential. Right. Socrates in the city, you know, my daughter's pretty much running it at this point. And I think she's planning for my death by finding other people who could interview besides me because you know, pop takes a fall. He's not what he used to be. So we found two spectacular people and you've got to be way better than me to qualify for this. And we got Mary Harrington, who's done a number of spectacular interviews for Socrates in the city. Now we got my Gumbah, my friend, the educator filmmaker, author, genius, Jola Conte. Seriously, Joe, congratulations on being what we call officially a Socrates contributor. We're just so looking forward to these interviews you're going to be doing with people. Well, thank you, Eric. It's a great pleasure and privilege. I am looking forward tremendously to the interviewing process with a constellation of stars. Yes. You got to, you got to step in because pops in the hospital.

3:04All right. Popped in the hospital. Yeah. All right. Enzo is going to deliver flowers. Enzo the baker for your father, your father. All right. And up. Vinnie was no neck. You're going to be fine. I know. Enough with the Godfather nonsense. So Jola Conte, you, you have done a lot of work on a lot of things, but I want to talk to you today. You and I really bonded initially overseas, Louis. And I want to talk to you evidently, there's a new version coming out of the line, the which in the wardrobe. Hollywood has tapped Greta Gerwig to be the director. And Greta Gerwig, I would not have chosen her as the director of the Narnia films for reasons that will become immediately obvious when we find out that she has chosen a moral street who identifies as a cisgender woman to be the voice of Aslan, the Christ figure.

4:05So Joe, what happened? I guess it shows us the depth of the problem, this, this symptom. There's another symptom of this cultural, moral, spiritual crisis that we're facing that we. It's not even wanting to respect the author, the author's intent. You can put all the other stuff aside, cultural war issues aside. It's just why not actually try to respect the author and what the author produced so that deliberate disrespect is part of what I find so maddening about this. Well, it's interesting you say that because there's a number of levels to discuss here, right? The Christopher Nolan version of the Odyssey, there's levels, right? I mean, the first level for me is that is the, what I would agree with you is just pure disrespect. You know, to say that Helen is, you know, blacker than Wesley Snipes and so is Clytemnestra

5:07and then one of the Homeric heroes on the battlefield is Ellen Page, who is a woman. They're already up front in a sense challenging traditionalists and viewers, people who just say, look, I just want, you know, I want Shakespeare, give me Shakespeare. Don't give me some like fancy version of Shakespeare, Homeric, give me Homeric, but this is a more dramatic example of that, isn't it? Because Lewis wrote about the very issues that come up when, when, when, in other words, this is not as, as though we're dealing with just some artist, we're dealing with a guy who wrote essays on the very subject of why men or men and women are women and we shouldn't have women as priests and that kind of thing. Yes. Yes, it's like we are now in a place where our various cultural elites will, will use and abuse these great works from the past, whether it's classical literature, whether it's somewhat more modern 20th century literature, use these great works, these great themes, which they

6:11know have, have an appeal and impose upon them their own postmodern sensibilities. That's a strange place to be as a culture. So this is a frontal assault, no question about it on, on some of the core tenets of the Christian faith. You know, Eric, you and I both old enough to remember back in the 80s that flap over, I hate to use this expression, but it's what they called it, piss Christ. It was the putty of crucifix in a jar of urine, the so-called artist Mr. Serrano. I mean, this kind of frontal assault on the Christian faith, it doesn't need to be challenged. We can talk about perhaps how I'd like to challenge it as you and I go along with this conversation. I'd like to throw a jar of art in the artist's face, but here's the thing. Here's the thing. You and I also remember, I think this might have been the 90s that somebody created a portrait

7:12of Mary using elephant dung. Okay. Now, let's be clear, folks, that a lot of artists, including people that I would consider friends, people who are serious about their Christian faith, I think twist themselves around to try to defend this stuff in a tortured way. But I think you have to see things with simple common sense. It is designed to be provocative. That's number one. It is not, oh, I didn't realize. No, no, they realize precisely what they're doing. When Andre Serrano immerses a crucifix in a jar of urine, he's doing it principally to be shocking and provocative. This is not somebody who is a talented artist on the level of Picasso who could do photo realistic, genius paintings, but chooses to do cubism. No, this is somebody who does not have that talent. His talent is, how can I be shocking and provocative? So you almost wonder why they think of themselves as artists or it really underscores what's

8:17happened to the art world. So this isn't anything quite like that, but it seems to me the same thing that Greta Gerwig and whoever is producing this film is in a very calculated way. And I would say a cynical way of trying to be provocative and just the fact that we're talking about it right now. Now, I would say this to me is so offensive that people must not see the film, but I think most people would disagree with me on that, but I feel that. It's kind of like that strike three, Aslan as a woman, I'm sorry, that's strike three. Yeah. And to add what you just said, it goes even deeper, doesn't it, Eric, in that what we're seeing across, across so many sectors of society is this fundamental rebellion against the moral order that God has created for us for our good, for our blessing. So the idea of authority, of maleness and femaleness as God given things, a station in life

9:23to which you are asked to submit a moral order that you're asked some and to submit to. This is so offensive to so many people that they're going to do whatever they can now to rebel, to push back in all kinds of art forms, music, etc. So this is simply, I see, man, that's a symptom of that fundamental rebellion against the natural order that God has created for our good, right? Well, as usual, you've, you've honed in beautifully on the issue. This is an attack. I would go further and say, it's an attack on God because God is the author of this order, this natural order. Yes. And to attack him, you have to attack the natural order. So attack the very idea of male and female. I've noticed this a lot, Joe, as well, when I mean, typically you see it put forward by taking every male figure and making it a female figure or something like that. But another way it's subverted, typically I guess in the traditional order, the natural order, you have the man,

10:27you know, Jesus is the man. He's crucified. He sacrifices himself. He's the hero. And then in tradition, for forever, we have seen the mother and child, the mother and child, the mother and child. Women are traditionally portrayed in this way nurturing the mother with the child. There was something sacred about the mother, the Madonna, and the child. Really beautiful. Again, part of God's natural order. And you'll notice how that has gone out of the cultural vocabulary. The mother and child, it used to be everywhere. It used to be iconic. Yes. We, we, we no longer see the mother and child as though women have, as though whoever decides these things has tried to push women out of the category of motherhood as though motherhood is demeaning. Yes. No, I think you're, you're absolutely right. And think about the impact it's having on young people. And this is what concerns me, especially as an educator, as someone who taught there at the King's College in New York City for a decade, interacting with young people,

11:30the sort of confusion that it, that it so's, we are so awash in lies and propaganda. And for young people who are grounded now, it, it absolutely is contributing, I think, to the sense of confusion, psychological trauma, stress, anxiety. There is a connection between medicated young people. And the, I would say, amoral messages, absolutely confused and nihilistic messages that they are bombarded with on a daily basis, right? Well, that's the, again, you're, you're hitting the nail on the head. It is fundamentally confusing. I mean, it's even more confusing to younger kids who, they, you know, they're, they're, they're, I think almost of a, of an infant who, you know, at three months or whatever is trying to focus, trying to come into the world and, and what are colors and shapes and whatever. And as the human develops, you know, at some point, you realize that this is mommy. That's daddy. Daddy is, is strong and tall. Mommy is nurturing and soft and

12:36surrounds me and daddy. You know, these are the most basic things. Yes. As we're creating in God's image and as we develop, all that stuff is being challenged. So to, to talk to a little kid about, hey, what gender do you pick is profoundly confusing. I mean, I see it as a kind of violence, actually. I hate when people use the word violence metaphorically. But in this case, it's it's very similar. It does a violence to the development of the child. And so here, you just have Hollywood piling it on with the woke nonsense. Again, by, by, by making a aslan using a woman's voice. Now, I don't know, maybe for all we know, you know, Meryl Streep has taken up smoking. Maybe it's a gravely woman's, but we don't know. But it's just a very strange choice. She's not going to have a gritt, a grittigarbo voice. And this is going to be sort of gender neutral, a gender neutral aslan. Yeah. Said in a kind of 1970s psychedelic mode. I mean, it's just so bizarre. You couldn't have really

13:38just imagined this kind of story happening. Even just 10, 15 years ago, but here we are culturally. So it's like, it's almost as if they broke through a dam, the moral norms of violated. And then the water is just gushing faster and faster and faster. And it's not clear how you, how you put on the brakes. And again, it's interesting. One of the traditional things too is this idea of the man as the sacrificial hero, right? When you watch a movie, I just watched the movie pressure about World War II. Those are boys dying on the beaches. Those are boys dying on the beaches. There's no women dying on the beaches. Those are boys going into German machine gun fire. Those are boys. Those are young men sacrificing themselves. They're the ones that die. Women suffer in childbirth. So this is not to say one group suffers more than the other, but these are traditional ways we've perceived men and women. And the travails in life of men and women

14:41are usually quite different. But again, you see this blurring of the line here because Christ as the sacrificial figure, as this heroic figure, to say that, well, maybe could be Meryl Streep, you know, a 74 year old, however old she is, woman could be the, it deliberately confuses those fundamental norms or boundaries, I should say. And I guess the thing too is the scripture is pretty clear that women, God wants women to be tough and strong and resilient and courageous. And they'll express those qualities in different ways than men will. But the Bible is filled with women who are absolutely admirable and tough and courageous. More courageous than I tend to be. I can tell you that. So by not appreciating that fact, it just further just further confuses the whole story, you know, that lie from G. K. Chesterton, if you go against the grain of the universe,

15:42you're going to get splinters. And we are so going against the moral grain of the universe now. And we're seeing the damage right before our eyes in one generation after another of our young people. But Hollywood is just, they are all in on this all in. So we need to push back. I'm working on a film project. As we speak, a token Lewis film project trying to get this thing off the ground, a documentary about these two remarkable men, authors, Christian friends, and how they face the greatest cataclysm of the 20th century, World War II, how they did that in friendship and use their Christian imagination to push back. That's a film that needs to be made where we're hunting around right now for our supporters. But that's a, that's a number of discussion for another day. I want to see the Christian community invest in films like that. And to do more than simply critique, we've got to push back with an alternative vision for the human story. Don't we Eric? When we look at the headlines coming out of Iran and Israel right now, the fog of war is real.

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17:47things. This other version is confusing. It's innervated. I keep talking because I keep talking everywhere about my book on the American Revolution. I keep saying that. Listen, the true story of the American Revolution. It's an amazing story. The good guys win against all odds. And the job of the viewer or the reader is to celebrate and to go along for the journey like if you're watching a rocky movie, right? But when I watched the PBS version, Ken Burns, you know, did his 12-hour documentary series on the American Revolution, it's like what we're talking about. It's innervated. It doesn't feel free to celebrate in the traditional way. It has to tell the other side of the story. In a way that muddies the whole thing and you walk out thinking so was America coming into the into the world? Was that a good thing? You don't know that it is. And I keep saying it's like watching if they get a remake of Rocky instead of doing a remake of a line, the Witch in the War, Drogue. If they did a remake of Rocky and you kind of walked out of the theater like, I don't

18:49know who the good guy was. It was kind of a, you know, they both had their stories. And you think, well, you've completely gutted the story of Rocky, you know? I mean, at this point, they probably would make Rocky, I don't know, a humpback female boxer or something like that. Or I don't really, or a wrestler. But what happens is it muddies the narrative, the heroic narrative. And we need the heroic. And this is why you and I love Lewis and Tolkien. Boy did they understand that, but they understood it at the very time that it was already going away. So now that's here we are talking about it, you know, in 2026. But you know, and I know that in the 1930s and 40s, these two great men were already pushing against this narrative by creating their own heroic narratives, traditional heroic narratives. That's exactly right. And let me supplement that with this. Lewis and Tolkien reflecting, I think, the scriptures, there is a realism that they bring to their

19:52stories. These are heroic stories, but there's a moral realism. The characters are flawed. They're not cut and dried. They're not black and white characters. There's good and there's radical evil. But the good has to struggle, right? The good isn't perfect. The good is flawed. So there's a moral realism to their stories. You know, there's a line that Lewis wrote in a letter to Tolkien. And he said, my entire philosophy of history hangs upon a single sentence of your own. Wow. What sentence? Do you want to know? Uh-huh. I'm sorry, I'm running out of time. No, I'll tell you what it is. Oh, come on. It's the Lord of the Rings. And I've got it in my head pretty close. He says, um, quote, even Lord of the Rings, this is Gandalf speaking to Frodo about the struggle for Middle Earth. There was sorrow then too and gathering dark, but great deeds of valor that are not holy vain. Great deeds of valor that are not holy vain, right? These two men just like the script.

20:55Wow. Triumfilism, right on the one hand, and they avoid cynicism. There's a there's a middle ground, a Christian middle ground recognition. You have to, you have to repeat that what a beautiful sentence, even if you didn't get every word exact, it's pretty close, but please repeat that. That's a beautiful. So this is a line from Tolkien that that Lewis said it meant everything to him. So say it again, the entire philosophy of history was summarized in this line. There was sorrow then and gathering dark, but great, but great deeds of valor that were not holy vain. That's pretty close. It's not exact, but it's pretty close. And that is great thinking about that we're not holy. We're not holy vain holy in vain. No, that we're not holy vain, not, not somehow useless, not holy vain, not useless. They meant something. They brought about a good. Yes,

21:56they was struggling. Yes, there was failure. But boy, this did not lead to nothing. This was about something that really mattered. There was realism. But think of the, think of the equation there, right? In other words, this is to me, you know, why Lewis would key into it and why Tolkien would write it. But so sorrow and gathering, so there's darkness, there's evil in the world. But great deeds of valor that were not holy in vain. In other words, yes. Many great deeds of valor on some level are in vain. But the very, the very idea that someone is doing them is not in vain. And then some of them are not in vain. In other words, we're in a struggle. We're in a war. It's not easy to win. Even when you win, I keep saying this constantly with the American Revolution. If you said to Washington in 1770, he said, Hey, you're going to win. He would say, okay. And meanwhile, men have

22:56to suffer and die and bleed and suffer and die. That's this, that's the reality. But it's worth the struggle. We have to struggle. And anyway, that's so, that's so beautiful and so important. So, I'm so glad you responded to that quote the way that I did when I first read it. I was stunned, you know, in my work on Lewis and Tolkien, I encountered that letter. And that, that his entire philosophy of history, he said, hinged on that sentence from the Lord of the Rings. It helped to explain his own approach to thinking about our civilization, Western civilization, worth defending with all of his problems, not in vain. That's a moral realism that I think, especially when young people are exposed to that, it helps to inoculate them from cynicism and look how cynical so much of our culture has become because they've lost sight of these truths, right? Well, and actually, you know, to bring it back to Lewis and Tolkien, you talk about them

23:59in World War II, but I mean, you've written about this and thought about it infinitely more than I have, but the idea that both of them experienced the horror of the first war, the horror of the trenches, if anybody had been teed up for cynicism and nihilism, it would be they. And yet somehow they dug deeper than, you know, many of the shallow poets and artists of that era went deeper than simply complaining about, oh, you know, we yeah, we were led to war, whatever they went deeper than that. They didn't get stuck in cynicism. So that's to me why they're great because they were tempted to cynicism and nihilism, tempted to say, oh, yes, it is in vain. It's all a sham. It's all nothing. That's right. They were tempted to that, but they they they came out the other side and created what I would argue is the greatest art of these century, which is an extraordinary statement.

25:04Yes, now, and I think the faith perspective is crucial on this. And you don't have to be a Jesus believer to see this at the end of the day. What is Lewis writing when he's in the trenches in the First World War when he's an atheist? He's he's writing incredibly cynical poetry. Let us curse our master air we die. The good is dead. Let us curse God most high. That's Lewis in 1919. But he has a great change in his life. I cannot believe I've never heard that that line. Wow. I mean, we know, I said he was tempted in that direction. That that's made obvious by what you just quoted. That he was not a believer. That's right. He saw the horror of it all. And we have I mean, you know, I feel like the 20th century is a record of people who got stuck there. And of course, there are many at the end of the 19th and middle of the 19th century who got stuck there, who cursed God and who came to a very dark calculation. But Lewis somehow moves past that,

26:09obviously talking his past that and they give us this heroic literature. So that's why, you know, in the hands of Hollywood and the Greta Gerwig to take Aslan, who's the ultimate example of this heroic sacrifice. And to say, up, it could have been a woman. It's like, well, you're missing a few things here. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure they will not even get the basic story right at the end of the day. They'll they'll miss things through what the story is even about. Right. So we've got a huge challenge on our hands. I think part of the way that Lewis and token were able to come out of that very dark time and not become dissolution. Yes, there's the faith perspective. That's crucial. But the other thing too, Eric is their education. These guys were grounded in that classical medieval Christian literature philosophy. And that that gave them a kind of moral bedrock. As they're now evaluating the world that they're living in. So bail wolf is probably token's most

27:12favorite piece of literature. The story of this great ancient hero right going up against Grendel Grendel's mother, the dragon, right. Heroism, heroic sacrifice for a noble cause. And for Lewis, his favorite work, I think, from antiquity is Virgil's the need. So we have these stories that are really realistic about the problem of evil, the temptations, the personal moral failures, but heroism is still a no it's a true and valuable and noble thing. It's not for nothing. And they hung on to that, I think, in the teeth of the 1920s and 30s when they're just a wash in cynicism and gloom. I mean, there's there's no data about it, which which I don't know if I mentioned earlier, but it makes them all the more heroic because they are, yes, you know, each of them single handedly going against everything going going against the tsunami of what would become the woke nonsense we're living in today. But it was the same thing. This was the beginning

28:17of that deconstruction of the of the deep narrative of Western civilization. Yeah. So I think you could argue that partly what what explains what's happening now with this a travesty of a narnia film being produced by Hollywood. You could argue that a lot of these creative types, they've become disillusioned with Christianity with faith with religion and substitutes. You want a substitute religion. What however you wanted to find that it's nihilistic itself absorbed. It's deeply materialistic. It's transgender. It's a substitute religion in part, I think, because many of these guys would just become disillusioned with Christianity. And maybe it haven't, haven't ever experienced authentic Christianity, the authentic gospel. So that's a problem. Disillusion it opens the door to all kinds of radical ideologies. Just as we showed in the 1920s fascism, communism, scientism, Freudianism, substitute religions, right, Eric?

29:21Absolutely. And it just occurred to me on top of that. They're ashamed of the Christian narrative. In other words, well, because they have taken in, usually a somewhat false version of it, or a caricatured version of it, they're ashamed of it. But you have noticed, and I have noticed they can't invent a new reality. So they have to twist reality. They have to subvert. So instead of coming up with a new epic story or a new fairy tale, a new narnia, they take Louis's narnia and they subvert it and they twisted to their own ends is what Christian Nolan did with with Homer's great epic. Although it's, I think probably it will be worse than that. It'll be more of a travesty than that. If we're starting with this or I mean, it's interesting because to lead with the idea that Aslan is going to be voiced by a woman, it's really to telegraph your

30:22punch basically to say, this is where we're coming from. Get ready for a rainbow colored fantasy. And it's a stunning lack of creativity for supposedly the creative types, you know, and Hollywood and elsewhere. Where's the creativity in that? It's just propaganda. It's and propaganda is never interesting and entertaining. Almost never. Let's put it that way, right? So we're going to get this propaganda's vision. Go ahead. Go. I'd love to know the backstory and maybe we'll get it in the months ahead of how it is that Hollywood makes these decisions because the line that which in the wardrobe that came out, I don't know, is it 15 years ago now or something? It's a while ago. It was really wonderful. It was really quite wonderful. It was made by Walden Media, which was backed by Phil Anshuts, who's a Christian who wanted to make these kinds of things. So you kind of have to wonder how this came about, how they got the rights to do this. That's to me, scandalous right there. How

31:26do they get the rights to do this? But then who made that calculation that? Well, we got nothing else. Everybody's heard of the line, the which in the wardrobe. Most people are aware of it. So let's make that. You know, there's a lot of this remaking going on in Hollywood. They don't seem to have the creativity to come up with anything new. So there's a lot of this going on. But just to get the backstory of why they felt they wanted to make it in the first place if they're only going to subvert it. Yeah, there's some kind of ideological agenda, which is clearly a work because they know there's a large audience, Christian, conservative audience that would love to see a film, a Narnia film that's faithful to the story. That movie would make plenty of money. I mean, they know that, but they're doing this instead. That tells me they're driven by an ideology. And that's worth reflecting on. So we need to push back respectfully with a right spirit, with a Christian spirit and offer the alternative Christian vision, the Christian story in film and literature, etc. Which you and I are both

32:32engaged in in our own ways, right? Well, that's exactly right. And you know, to go back to this idea that Lewis was himself fighting against this in his day. So it is ultimately or more fundamentally disrespectful to him than anything because he wrote even even in the line, the witch in the wardrobe, even in the Narnia Chronicles, he is being explicit about gender roles, men are men, women are women. That's even in Narnia. It's not just in essays that he wrote, but it's right baked into the story of Narnia. And it would be very important to him. This is not a side issue. This is not oh well. You know, you could, you know, this times when you can quibble, this is not quibbling. This goes to the very heart of his vision. So again, you have to wonder how this came about. What rooms in Hollywood? What were they talking about? Who's making this decision? Yeah. And let me just emphasize

33:35your point. It's a good one. Really important. Lewis and token both. They are deliberately pushing back against these destructive ideologies that are showing themselves in the 1930s. In 1936, Lewis and token had this, I think now famous conversation where Lewis turns to token and they're very upset with the modernist literature and all the the gloom and doom and cynicism. Lewis turns to token his nickname for token was tolerance. And he says, well, tolerance, if they're not going to write the kinds of stories we want to read, we'll have to write some ourselves. And they make a literary pact. Lewis will write a space travel story, token will write a time travel story. token never finishes the time travel story, but he publishes the Hobbit, starts working on the Lord of the Rings. Lewis writes the first of the space trilogy out of the silent planet, deliberately pushing back against the ideologies of their AIDS. I think you're right. Lewis will be a Paul. That's movie adaptation. Paul. Yeah. You just you really you really have to wonder if the people

34:40who control the Lewis estate, you know, I hope they got a lot of money to sell the heart and soul of Lewis's artistic vision to people who would do a thing like this. I really wonder what it is that's going on there, but it's it's it's fascinating. Joe, unless we have any further thoughts on that, we can we can talk about other things as well in our remaining few minutes. Sure. I'm I'm ready ready to go anyway. Go ahead. Go ahead. Good. Well, first of all, how can people find you to help fund what you're doing on Lewis and token or to know of your work? What's the best place people to find you? Go to my website, www.JosephLocanti.com. Locanti.locointee. JosephLocanti.com. And you'll see the film projects that I'm up to over there. And this is one of them now. And thank you for the that invitation, Eric. It would not take a lot of money to make a great feature length documentary about Lewis token and war, the second world war. We could do it for probably $1.2 million. We

35:44priced it out. And we're ready to go. You've priced it out. Well, okay. So are you working on anything just in the minutes we have left having to do with the Venetian Republic? Can we talk about the Venetian Republic? Yes, let's start that. We can pick it up another another setting. I just came back from a sunny Italy from Venice with my film team. And we're going to have out next year a one hour one hour one and a half hour feature length documentary about the Venetian Republic. And it's amazing achievements that we need to recall. I'll name the three of them. First of all, to Republic. So there's a measure of political freedom government by consent, right? Longest Republic in history. Second, intellectual freedom. It's the center of publishing in the 1500s in the Middle Ages intellectual freedom and third economic freedom. I mean, this is a maritime republic. So free market capitalism is the engine driving this thing. So it's no accident that Venice alongside Florence are leading the Renaissance. This great explosion

36:47of artistic intellectual achievement. So we'll tell that story. La Conte, running around in a gondola over there in Venice. What could go wrong? Clenchi, actually. So I have to ask you, we've talked about this a little bit on this program some months ago. But what are the roots? Because when I wrote about the revolution, I'm looking at the reformation and the puritans that everything comes out of there. But of course, we have a four tastes. We have four tastes of these things in previous eras. And this is a singular example of that. Where do the Venetians get these ideas? From where do they get their ideas about liberty? We would call it liberty of various kinds. That's a terrific question. We'll unpack it in the film. But one of the sources, believe it or not, is ancient Rome when it was a republic because the mythology, part true, part fact of the

37:47Venetians, these are Romans who are fleeing the barbarian invasions. And they wind up in this lagoon. And they do kind of almost the impossible. They build homes on top of stills in this marshy lagoon. So there's a sense of independence. They were never conquered. And a great sense of freedom and independence, they reinvent themselves as a people. And once they do that, that's key. They're not going to let anybody rob them of their political or economic freedom. They're very determined to hang on to it. So there's an example of Rome. And then also we have to say quickly, it's associated with the evangelist mark. You'll see in Venice all over Venice, this symbol of the lion holding a book. The lion is a symbol of mark the evangelist power, strength, courage. The book he's holding is the scripture. It's Mark's gospel. So the city always identified with the evangelist mark and the gospel story at some level. The sense of, hey, we're on a divine mission here to maintain our

38:49independence or creativity, et cetera. That's a piece of the answer. I'm always fascinated with the idea that, you know, if God created the universe in reality, there's no escaping him. And there's only, you can discover truth in various ways. Sometimes it's explicit, but other times it's just, you know, if I'm reading Homer, Homer is not a Christian world, but to the extent that it reflects reality and truth, which are unchanging, it is Christian, or it's pointing to the Bible, even though it's existing apart from the Bible, because the world of reality was created by the God who gives us the Bible. So it's fascinating to me when you see these, you know, kind of echoes of truth in a world where maybe they weren't explicit about it. They wouldn't have spoken maybe in the same way that the founders, the men of the revolution, John Adams, and all of them would have spoken about inelienable rights. But they're still coming

39:50from a point of view that somehow we know freedom is better than slavery. It's just fascinating to me how you get these echoes throughout history. But then for reasons unknown to us, they culminate in these moments, the founding of this country, and at other times it becomes more explicit. But I'm fascinated with the Venetian. So what was there? How long did their Republic last? It lasted about a thousand years, and then really it comes to a crashing end in the 18th century with Napoleon. But I love the point you just made, Eric, about it's a generous approach to the Christian faith that there can be aspects of the truth, pieces of the truth, pointers to the truth in all kinds of cultures and all times of history. The light I love from JR Token when he's describing other myths, ancient myths that point to the great myth that became fact, Christianity. The phrase he

40:51uses is splintered fragments of the true light. Splintered fragments of the true light, I think that's a good, healthy biblical way to approach just our modern life. There are all kinds of signposts to God, to the gospel, to truth. And as Christians, it seems to me part of our task is to identify those and lead people to discover them as well, right? Well, because I've been rereading Homer, I keep noticing it. I keep thinking my goodness in something that was written many centuries BC and that I didn't have any direct connection to the Israelites in Israel. You have people talking about what is noble and what is ignoble. I mean, maybe not using the word ignoble, but what is noble? What is right? And to be generous, to be kind, to be known for that. I mean, Odysseus is known for that. And it's why he had, you know, they say he's kingly, noble. And it's interesting that if you're human being,

41:56whether you like it or not or whether you acknowledge it or not, or whether you're explicitly, consciously aware of it or not, you're created in the image of God. And that's going to be reflected. It's simply inescapable. And so we see this in some ancient literature. And I'm just fascinated with that idea, because some people, of course, we have to say, would say, aha, these ideas are not Christian ideas. Look, we see it in all these other cases. And I would say, well, that doesn't really, that doesn't solve the issue. The truth is truth. Yes. I mean, just think about Dante's great epic work, you know, the divine comedy. Who is the guide taking him to the underworld? It's Virgil. Virgil, who gave us the need and other great works, the splintered fragments of the true light. They can take us up to a point, but at the end of the day, grace is required. So, but we can, as as the scripture says, God speaking to the Jews in Egypt, you can plunder the Egyptians, plunder the Egyptians,

42:57sure, but don't set up idols. You know, that's interesting. It's possible. A choir, which you can. But yeah. And then there's some people would say, Virgil, come on. Virgil was never baptized. Therefore, he's in hell. Very simple. Socrates never baptized. He's in hell. Homer, you know, it's kind of funny. It's that simplistic. I would say high bound theological view of things that misses it. And it's important that we that we talk about that sometimes, that people, people we want to be generous. We don't want to be foolish. We don't want to be ecumenical to the point that we say, well, there is no truth. And who's to say, of course, there's a truth. But I think that when we're talking about some of these things, we, it takes, I guess the word is discernment to just have discernment to try to, you know, parse what is good, true, and beautiful, and how far that goes. And where does it come from? Absolutely. Discernment is the great word to use here. And think about it for our Christian friends

44:00who love the works of Lewis and Tolkien. It's good to emphasize they could not have produced those works had they not had the perspective that you just described, a generosity of spirit and discernment, drawing from the ancient world, the medieval world as raw material for the worlds they're going to create. Take all that away. There is no chronicles in Arnia. Take away the classical medieval world. And there is no Lord of the Rates. Well, as usual, I've, and I found this very enjoyable and edifying Joe LeConte. People can find you at Joseph LeConte, L-O-C-O-N-T-E. Joseph LeConte.com. Joe, I look forward to seeing more of you in person, not in person. However, I get to see you. Thanks for coming on this program. Congratulations on being, I can raise to the level of being a Socrates contributor so that you know what? Should I die, no one will notice.

45:02They can be who? Eric, who? Oh, yeah, I think he used to do Socrates once by the time, but now we got these other folks. Seriously, I'm just so excited to have you aboard. People will see your interviews with various illustrious figures at Socrates in the city. Thank you so much, my friend. Thank you, my friend. Great to be part of the team. Look forward to more conversations. Today's show is brought to you by Grace Presses Metals in an industry that can be confusing Grace believes in doing business differently with Christian values, transparent pricing, and a focus on straightforward gold and silver bullion, not high markup collectible coins. They even publish their spreads directly on their website so you can see the numbers before speaking with anyone. Learn whether physical precious metals may fit your financial plans at mtaxismetals.com. That's mtaxismetals.com. Nick Eek laser, this stunning tour. The thoughts of death, I don't like to dwell on them for longer than like 10 or 15 hours a day. So November 19th, Yamabah theater. No wonder women rushed to have kids

46:08were being trained for it since we were kids. They're like, here's a baby doll. Here's an easy bake oven. I got one of those. I stuck my head in it. I was like, I want out of this narrative. Tickets on sale now at Yamabah theater dot com. Don't miss Nick Eek laser. Yamabah theater.