Us to come here once a month. Today im pleased to announce our october speaker, karen swallow prior. She will be discussing a new book, hold it up, its a little one but a good one. Its called on reading well, finding the good life through great literature. In her book she chooses a number of great books of western literature and explores in each one a single virtue like prudence, justice, faith, love, and the results, i can tell you i can attest personally of reading it is you understand the virtues better and you want to practice them in a better way. Shes a professor of english at Liberty University shes won multiple teaching awards. She writes frequency on literature culture ethics and has had her articles of many places, christianity today, the atlantic, the Washington Post and many, many others. In addition to reading well she is an author of another one called booked, literature and the soul of me. In which she tells a story of how her deep love of reading overtime, with that she slowly meandered, thats her word, to a deep love of god. And thats a wonderful book as well. One other one she did was fierce convictions, the extraordinary life of poet and abolitionist. She gives frequent lectures in the spoke at many universities across the nation. Shes a Research Fellow with the ethics and religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist convention. Senior fellow for the ethics and religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist church a senior fellow with the Liberty University center forth apologetic and Cultural Engagement seniorng fellow with the trinity form a member of the Faith Advisory Council of the Humane Society of the United States prayed she completed her phd at the State University of new york, her husband and is from buffalo her undergraduate studies is at elmhurst new york, caret and her husband live in beautiful rural virginia with many dogs, horses, chickens. O please help me welcoming karen swallow prior. [applause] im going to be him with the brief reading from the introduction of my book and that im in a talk a little bit more about the rest of the pages contain. My first book, booked literature in sole of me was a love story its a story of how my deep love of reading slowly meandered into a deep love of god. A retail in the pages of the book how by reading wisely, voraciously and indiscriminately, i learned spiritual lessons i never learned in church or sunday school. As well as emotional and intellectual lessons that i would never have encountered within the realm of my lived experience. Most importantly, by reading about all kinds of characters created by all kinds of authors, i learned how to be the person god created me to it be. A central theme p of booked is reading from promiscuously. Displays is drawn from most formative for me john miltons this is published in 1644 the puritan poet most famous for us epic poem paradise lost makes an argument that would become a Building Block for the modern notions of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. And the track, milton invades against parliamentary licensing orders requiring all publications to be approved by the government before being printed. A legal concept that would later be called prior restraints. Significantly, it was miltons own political faction that was in power at the time. His own people, whom he thought would be in error and hope to persuade to reject censorship. This makes deeply theological argument, one that christians today, particularly those nervously prone to a censoring spirit, would do well to consider. Grounded in protestant doctrine as well as the polarized situation surrounding the english civil war, milton associate censorship with the Roman Catholic church and finds in his reformation heritage a deep interdependence of intellectual, religious, political, and personal liberty. All of which depend he argues, onon virtue. Because the world, contains both good and evil, milton says, virtue it consists of choosing good over evil. Milton distinguishes between the innocent who know no evil, and the virtuous who know what evil is an elect to go do good. What better way to learn the difference between evil and good, milton argues, then to Gain Knowledge of both through reading widely. Since therefore the knowledge and survey advices in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue. And the scanning of air to the confirmation of truth. How can we more safely and with less danger, scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner and hearing all manner of reason. This is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read. But, its not enough to read widely. Ade must also read well. One must read virtuously. The word virtue has various shades of meeting, many of which unfold in the pages of this book. In general, virtue can beat most simply understood as excellence. Reading while is in itself an act of virtue or excellence. And it is also a habit that cultivates more virtue in return. Literature embodied virtue first byma offering images of virtue and action, and second by offering the reader vicarious practice and exercising virtue which is not the same as actual practice of course. It is nonetheless a practice by which habits t of mind, ways of thinking and perceiving accrual. Reading virtuously means first, reading closely. Being faithful to both text and context. Interpreting accurately and insightfully. Indeed, there something in the very form of reading, the shape of the action itself, that tends towards virtue. The attentiveness necessary for deep reading, the kind of reading the practice and reading Literary Works as a poultice skimming news stories or readingrk instruction requires patience. Even the simple decision to set aside time to read in a world rife with so many other choices competing for our attention, requires a kind of temperance. If, like me, you have lived long enough to have experienced life and reading before the internet, perhaps you have now found your Attention Span shortened and your ability to sit and read for an hour or more nil. The effects on our minds of the disjointed, fragmentary, and distant nature of the digitized world and the demand of beeping devices are well documented. Niclas carr explains in the shallows with the internet is doing to her brain that quote the linear mind is being pushed aside by a new kind of mind once and needs and taken information in short disjointed often overlapping bursts the faster the better. Our brain works one way when trained to read in logical linear pattern. In another way when continually bouncing from tweet to tweak, picture to picture and screen to screen. These effects on the brain are amplified by Technology Developers who intentionally builds addictive qualities into programs in order to increase User Engagement as some Industry Leaders have acknowledged. Whether you feel you have lost your ability to read well, or that you never had it at all, be encouraged. The skills required to read well are no great mystery. Reading well is, well simple. If not easy. It just takes time and attention. The virtue, or excellence of literature cannot be understood apart from its form. To read literature virtuously requires attention to the form whether the form be a poem, novel, short story or a play. To attend to the form of a work, as by its very nature an aesthetic experience. The contents of a literary work is what it says, his form is how it is said. Unfortunately, we are conditioned today to focus on content at the expense of form. We read or watch a film or few a work of our. We tend to look for themes, worldviews, gripping plots, relatable characters and so forth. But often neglect the form. Part of the tendency is the fruit born of a culture influenced by utilitarian emphasis on function and practical use at the ask expense of beauty and structure. From reallife relationships and experience how something is communicated is just as important if not more important than what is communicated. Form is what sets literary text apart from informational text in the same way that a painting differs from paint that covers a wall. Same material, different form. M so my explanation in these pages of a dozen or so great works of literature attempts to model what it means to read well i examining the insights of virtues these works offer. I have selected from among my favorite Literary Works some that might help us to understand the classical virtues, the cardinal virtues, the theological virtues, the heavenly virtues. Sometimes the purchasers shown through positive examples and sometimes more often exploratory nature of literature by negative examples. Literary care has a lot to teach us about character. Yet to read well is not to scour books for lessons on what to think. Rather, to read well is to be informed and how to think. In an experiment in criticism, cs lewis argued to approach a literary work with nothing but desire for personal improvement is to use it rather than to receive it. While great books do offer important truths about life and character, lewis cautions against using books merely for lessons. Literary works are after all works of our to be enjoyed for their own sake rather than merely use for our personal benefit. To use our literature instead of receiving it merely facilitates does not add to it. Reading well adds to her life. Not in the way of tool from the Hardware Store adds to her life or tool does us no good once lost or broken. But rather, in the way of friendship adds to our life altering us forever. So i wanted to read from the introduction to give you an idea of what i mean by reading well. What i do and the rest of the book which consists of 12 chapters as i examine one of the classical virtues in relationship or through the lens of a particular work of literature. I want to talk a little bit about virtue in general because it is something that we dont talk about a lot, we may not even know with the virtues are or what they mean. We have such a rich legacy and heritage from ancient philosophy from Early Church Fathers and on about the virtues. As i said in the introduction, the simplest definition of virtue is excellence. We could talk about what aristotle does, different kinds of beings that exist. And take for example a pair of scissors. A pair of scissors is excellent if it does what it was made to do well. A sports car is excellent when it goes fast. So in order to know what constitutes excellence for anything we might be talking about, we actually have an understanding of its purpose or payoffs. So here we arrive at the problem we have in the 21st h century. Today, and the secular culture, we not only agree on what the purpose or meaning of human life is, we often think there is not even such a thing there is no purpose or meaning. So this is the reason why we have lost the treasure trove of the virtues to understand virtue depends understanding our purpose is as human beings. If to recover that as well perhaps by talking about virtue we can make our way backwards. So i do draw on the book very cordial book by Alister Mcintyre after virtue before it disappeared and how and why it is we live in a culture that he describes as being after virtue. Of all of the writings i do draw aristotle the most. He gives us the picture of what each virtue is as he describes it as a mean between two devices and soon extreme of access and extreme of deficiency. Virtue is in the very middle. The very golden mean of those two things. A given example to flesh this out. A given example particularly is so polarized and fragmented, there is a lot of polarization and it is not getting better. I think the idea of virtue has always been a good idea but its so helpful for us in this moment were just defined by polarization. To give a couple of examples, courage is what we mean. Think we tend again in the polarized culture were we think more is better set their somethings good more of it must be better. That is not what virtue is. We think of courage is something you could never have too much of. But no, aristotle says otherwise. An excesss of courage actuallyas becomes rashness because you can be bold or rash but thats not moderated by all the other virtues and being connected to preserving good. Then it is not courage its rashness. He think we see a lot of that in the world today. People dont know the distinction they think if someone does something really gutsy or bold, that must be courageous. That is not virtuous courage if it is too extreme and also if its not tied to the other virtues. Of course the deficiency of courage is more from you your width is cowered in us. But i think we have enough boldness and brashness and rashness today. But reclaiming what that would be would help us with what virtuous courage is. Another example is temperance. We can talk about temperance and herds of our emotions and feelings, aristotle use it very strictly in the sense of tempering our physical appetite or our desire for food and drink. Alt necessary for human life to continue whether its your own human life or human race. So temperance is not, again its an example of our tendency to go towards extreme. Think of temperance today largely as restraint. As with old thing. Thats not virtuous, temperance according to aristotle and others talk about it as putting our natural and good desires in proper order. It is good to desire food. Just not too much or too little. It is good to desire drink because we dont satisfy our thirst we will die. And desiring is good too. All these have to be put in proper order. Eating disorders, those practices that deny our good healthy appetite or vices just as indulging in them too much or desiring them too much is also a vice. But also a desires are not just according to aristotle if you deny it to yourself, would you that a lot, if not yet attained the virtue of temperance because its when you actually have all of your desires and line with what that healthy golden means its a tough one. At least for me. Another example, that shows us how virtue is patients. Patients is the habit of bearing suffering well. If you are live anywhere in this world, youre going to suffer. T there is no choice in the matter. We all must suffer. Nothing we can choose me suffers whether or not we will bear that suffering well. So the way is up virtuous meme is we basically next suffering is part of evil theres all kinds of suffering and only sit in traffic its a form of suffering i know. So we have to be patient. To be patient is to endure evil without committing evil in return. So we need to endure it. Want to make sure as i ended up what i was revising the book making a clarifying point because patients is a virtue that can be a weaponize and people who are suffering can be told to be patient whether time that abused women, or whoever we might be talking about. There can become a point were actually enduring suffering and not doing anything about it or just not seeking justice cannot be virtuous because you are actually committing evil by allowing it to go on too long. Its kind of complicated. We have to be careful come again these virtues can be distorted, misuse and weaponize. I cite the story and ancient story from medieval literature whose husband tests are budging all these horribly cruel things to her like saying hes married another woman discusses baird the suffering. Final example of virtue to talk about a little bit is humility. This is again another one and our tendency towards extremes today think more is better we think someone is humble, exceedingly immodest, we think that showing more humility. Humility, is a golden mean its accurate Self Assessment. So its a steaming oneself neither too little nor too much. Its not humble to think nothing of yourself. Because thats not an accurate Self Assessment from a secular point of view or even more importantly from a Christian Point of view you are child of godr you must see and understand yourself correctly. And not regard yourself too little or too much. So those are just a few of the examples of virtue. I have a whole section on the theological virtues which are a little bit different because the other virtues are natural and they are attainable by all human beings. The supernatural virtues are also, but they actually originate with god and we actually can practice them, attained them only from god. Once we have them, like the other virtues we can practice them and develop them. Those are faith, hope, and love. They come directly from the bible ofle course. Before briefly before i open it up for questions thought it might also be helpful to talk about one of the chapters, one of the works of literature and the virtua talk about in that chapter to see how the whole book works. The virtue of justice which i examine through Charles Dickinsons tail, tale of two cities. Justice was the hardest one for me to it research and wrap mypu mind around and then write about because unlike the other virtues, justice actually all the virtues had to do with one of the person you. You obtaining and practicing these virtues. Justice is a virtue we can be just people or not just people but justice is also with the communities that makes it complicated. There is an individual attainment of the virtue of justice and also a society, Sculpture Community can obtain or not attain political or social justice which i dont mean social justice. Justice. In a societal communal way. Essentially justice is the right ordering of relationships within a community. We have as an individual need to desire that right ordering, and if we are just individuals, we want our society to obtain and protect that right ordering as well. And so in the tale of two cities, we see again this propensity we have as human beings to gravitate towards extreme because the friends revolution is the center of the story. Was a reaction to many years of injustice perpetrated upon the poor and the oppressed by those in power and it was a horrible terrible thing the french revolution came about in order, hopefully, they thought, to correct that injustice. But as we all know, as a result what happened was