Thank y'all so much for this discussion, and also Dr. Tipton's teaching on Van Til's Trinitarian Theology. This has been so helpful to me regarding the Son and Spirit having an underived essence, that is not communicated by the Father, and that the eternal begotteness and procession are according to their persons and not the one undivided essence. This closes the door to any hint of subordination in the Godhead. I hope this teaching will be adopted more and more in the Reformed community. I appreciate y'all and am enjoying and being edified greatly the more I learn.
Idk if Dr. Tipton fully fleshed out the divergence between Calvin and the majority of Reformed scholastic thinkers who would have a distinct view of the communication of essence from Calvin’s articulation. It may be good to use more Reformed scholastic sources in these reviews besides Calvin in the future, especially since we have more of their writings in circulation today.
The main goal here was not to treat that issue you raise but simply to try to clarify Calvin's ruled grammar of predication regarding what is common and what is proper in the Trinity (as a sort of sidebar). On the historical side of things, Brannon Ellis argues persuasively that while differences do exist, there was not a sharp departure from Calvin among the Reformed Scholastics. Turretin represents a good example of that point (see Calvin, Classical Trinitarianism, and the Aseity of the Son for a very helpful treatment in terms of historical developments). While Turretin affirmed the communication of the essence (while seeking to integrate his own view with Calvin's), he did not hold to Thomas' view of the temporal processions (or invisible missions) of the Son and Spirit as they underwrite the sacramental communication of deifying grace to the rational creature (understood as a participation in the personal properties of the Son and of the Spirit) in their Reditus to the Father. That is the central point to grasp and to keep in mind.
@@vanttil101 thank you for the reply! I am familiar with that work, as it’s the standard treatment on Calvin’s view in my estimation. Certainly, the way Thomas or Bonaventure set their systems, either the Summa in expanded form or Breviloquium in concise form, with the ordus, regressus, fructus movement of a system with determined Trinitarian and Christological form and content is distinct from Reformed systems emerging from their dual principia. I was merely seeking to point out the divergence in Reformed thought on these trinitarian issues from Calvin, perhaps unrelated to your intention of instruction, since his view was a minority view. If I am not mistaken, even bellarmine thought Calvin was wrong on this issue, though not heretical for it, so although I don’t express this doctrine the way Calvin does, I do not think he has jettisoned eternal generation wholesale. When people like Turretin say, “all generation indicates a communication of essence on the part of the begetter to the begotten…the same numerical essence is communicated without decision and alienation…” it merits the conversation that by “the Reformed after Calvin” who articulate it the same way he does, we mostly mean late 19th-20th century Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed streams which echoed him, not necessarily other contemporary reformation/post-reformation authors. Nevertheless, I would say this video is some of the best content that RF has discussed. Profiting from it!
Yes, Calvin and the Reformed scholastics on that topic is a sidebar discussion in our video and in the course. In the forthcoming course, we argue that trinitarian theology structures the Summa from its beginning to its end and decisively shapes every doctrinal locus it touches. The thoroughly trinitarian theological system of Aquinas orbits around, and explicates the organic link between, the eternal processions of the Son and the Spirit and the rational creature’s participation in those eternal processions through the deifying grace conferred by the temporal missions of the Son and the Spirit, as that grace elevates the temporal creature above his nature to a share in the eternal processions themselves. To retrieve Thomas' theology proper--his doctrine of the trinitarian Exitus and Reditus--entails a retrieval of his entire system. The genius of Thomas is such that to retrieve his trinitarian theology, his theology proper, is to retrieve his system in its seamless, integrated, ingenious totality. So thankful this proves profitable!
I think the issue is the holding to a slogan of “The Great Tradition” without the necessary qualifiers. But Thomas’ Doctrine of God taken in isolation from its greater systematic context can pave a road that needn't be contemplated (at least without a proper guide). I think this is a fair and much needed critique by Dr. Tipton.
It will take time for some to digest it. I believe many love the idea of retrieving Thomas. But we must first be aware of and understand the integrative character and theological entailments of his trinitarian theology of divine and human processions-his back door mutualism consists in the rational creature's participation (through the invisible and visible missions of the Son and of the Spirit) in the divine processions themselves. That is the reason why the rational creature must be reproportioned above his nature to see God as God sees himself, know God as God knows himself, and love God as God loves himself in the divine processions of the Son and the Spirit.
Have been listening to your Vos Group Lectures since they began and appreciated them immensely seeing that Vos' "Biblical Theology" was one of the first books (other than the Bible) which was introduced to me shortly after my conversion in 1982. Now, I'm thrilled to be introduced to Thomas Aquinas and his "Summa Theologica" as it always sat on the shelf along with the other 54 volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica's Great Books of the Western World (vol.19 & 20) which has given me years of pleasure, although I always felt that the "Summa" was just too much for me to handle. Now maybe I'll take a second look at them! I have recognized that Calvin has refered to Aquinas over a 130 times in his Institutes. Greetings from B.C. Canada.
Not a fan of Aquinas in any way but appreciated Lane’s research and perspective nonetheless. He sure does get worked up regarding those evangelical mutualists :) Thanks for the continued good work brothers.
BTW, we note in the course that Bonaventure advocated for a "hierarchy" in the Trinity on the basis of the Father as the "fountain of deity" for the Son in the action of eternal generation. Emery's discussion of that in The Trinitarian Theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas is fascinating.
@@vanttil101 “The Hidden Center: Spirituality and Speculative Christology in St. Bonaventure” by Hayes is a good source on that subject showing how Christ is the hierarchy in his thought. The brill volume on Bonaventure goes into decent detail on that aspect of his trinitarian theology as well. Good to know you guys are discussing it!
@@jacobcarne8316 Emery is talking more about the way that for Bonaventure the processional relation of paternal priority (and the Father as the fountain of deity for the Son) entails hierarchy in the immanent Trinity. That is his question/concern.
This is so great. Because of your criticisms of Thomamism, but also of Theistic personalism, it’s helpful when you lay out the larger landscape to connect the dots. Having read Schleiermacher and other absolute idealists I’m wondering how your deeper Protestant conception holds to classical theism without the monistic problems that it usually entails. I agree with many criticisms of volunteerism and theistic mutualism. But fundamentally I don’t see how classical theism avoids another kind of pantheism. If God is unchanging without a will that can bring creation into existence exnihilo and temporally, then creation is eternal along with God. At root , whether it leads to other problems or not, that is what the theistic personalists are trying to avoid. Van Til and Bavinck admit the accusation, but deny the pantheistic implication, by appeal to a kind of systematic biblical necessity. That there is no other option except to accept that God is absolutely unchanging and necessarily exists yet he create the world which is contingent and does not necessarily exist. This is the same view that Thomas gives in his contra gentiles about the eternality of the world. He says its follows philosophically, but denies it on biblical grounds. If we assume that the Bible teaches God’s absolute immutability (something I would question with respect to his will of creation) and that the world is contingent, then we must defend this tension as a biblical mystery. Is the double affirmation a decent summary of what you mean by the deeper Protestant conception?
Here is a helpful place to begin thinking about the issue you raise. More to say, of course, but this is foundational. ua-cam.com/video/6_VARW06yg4/v-deo.html
@@vanttil101, Thanks very much this is right on point. What I can't seem to get around is that the eternal/temporal relation that classical theism holds, is itself a correlative relation. While Van Til, and I honor him greatly and would desire to agree with him everywhere I can, denies all correlativisms, it is exactly this relation that is required by immutability. An eternal God, not just of character and promise, but of every will, requires an eternal creation. How is this to be avoided? Pantheism is strongly protected against in Augustinianism and Calvinism because of its biblicism, but in so far as both inherit the platonic eternal/temporal philosophical frame work, pantheism will always be a threat. For this philosophy is in tension with the biblical teaching of a temporal act of creation. It is not just modernism with its mutable God that results in pantheism (at 26:54), but its the premodern platonic view as well. Let me see if I can put a biblical thought forward. What if the biblical view is that God is unchanging as to his intellect and knowledge of himself, as well as to his promises (thus Israel is not consumed). But as to God's will to create and as to his knowledge of creation--these are acts which God decided upon from the foundation of the world. That is, God has the capacity to decide between a multiplicity of good options. There is no imperfection in such a choice. And with his infinite wisdom could he not make up a whole history of the world, and thus bringing such knowledge into existence at once, which is now immutable in his creative decree, and then implement it in an instant of creation. True, God would have his own divine time, and there would be a true before and after of the creation, but this pneumatic time would be nothing like ours, but merely the space between his decisions, whenever those might occur. perhaps, God has only made one such decision in the planning and execution of this world (who has known the mind of the Lord?). But there would be a true before and after of creation as revealed in Genesis and Hebrews. In this view, I would say that divine immutability as required for God's aseity, moral character, and necessary being is maintained. God's natural omniscience is maintained. God's elective knowledge is not partial or incomplete but total and comprehensive. Knowledge of creation is not something he learns passively or from the outside, not in spite of but because it is his very act. He willed this knowledge into existence as a plan through the Logos and then he speaks it into ontological existence. True, in this view we abandon the eternal/time dichotomy of Plato and the use of it as the marker of the creator/creature distinction as put to use by Van Til and we reformed. But we don't do this to get rid of the creator/creature distinction but to make it more sure and complete. We remove the ontological leaking between the two, the dialectic that sits at the very base of the relation between eternity and time. We deny both the platonic eternal world and the Hegelian divine flux. Instead, we affirm that God is the sovereign creator, who is a-sei in himself, all knowing, and in whom all creation finds it source, yet there was a time when creation was not. God makes sovereign choices in his own being and apart from any creaturely time, yet he has an analogical time and will in himself. What do you make of such an outline? What is its major fault? To my way of thinking, it contains a mystery in that God has an unchanging will and being, which eternally grounds his intellective volitional being which is free to act according to his nature. This interplay is where the mystery exists, rather than in the Eternal God/Temporal creation relation. But is this mystery the better mystery? Is it the more biblical mystery? If Plato was biblical then with Plato we should go, but if not, then why force immutability into his mold only for the sake of tradition? Even if it be it so grand a tradition as united both Augustine and Origen?
@@vanttil101, I shall, though sometimes it seems even among friends we easily tangle ourselves. I would agree with your criticisms of Oliphint (47:36). The mistake there is that he is using the incarnation as a model for the addition or taking into God's being another mode of temporal action. But that is a mistake because the principle issues with immutability is not with the doctrine of the incarnation, but with the doctrine of creation as a whole. Bavinck is correct, we should not say God is ignorant when he asks of Adam in the garden. The notion of a divine self-limitation of God's knowledge makes no sense at this point. Even on the view I have proposed above, we need a two-natures in one person Christology to address the Logos/divine omniscience and Jesus’ limited human knowledge. To try and solve Christology and issues of theology proper all at once, as Oliphant seems to attempt, is to confuse issues besides being too much to bite off. But there is a need to explain God's knowledge of the future which he has not yet decreed prior to creation. Such knowledge does not yet exist. That is what needs to be explained. But we have an orthodox explanation in God's sovereign decree. The only adjustment is that the decree is not eternal and timeless, for the creation is not timeless. The decree is in God's own mental/volitional time. And this leads to analogically temporal moment of creation. But there is no self-limitation of God’s knowledge on this view. God simply adds to his natural knowledge with the knowledge of his decree. Something to consider. I know it conflicts with your way of seeing it, but I hope you see that I'm trying to solve a problem that I have not been able to solve on the Platonic framework of Augustine. I would hope you can appreciate my dilemma. Few people seem to have the patience for these ideas. I believe you get it and I think your objections and faithfulness to Van Til are commendable. I know it has had its costs. You have my respect. The Lord bless you for following your conscience.
@@jrhemmerich I recall almost identical comments from our episode from the Van Til Group on God's knowledge of the world. Perhaps you could try to commit your thoughts to an article or a small book and get some feedback. You will most likely get a lot of pushback from the classical Reformed tradition represented by the likes of Bavinck, Vos, and Van Til. You will also likely find some favorable responses from those who advocate some species of a dipolar theism. While I commend the classical Reformed view that you criticize, I appreciate your thoughtful engagement. All the best!
Love you, brothers! Thank you for being an excellent example of how we should interact with folks like Matthew Barrett, etc.
Thank y'all so much for this discussion, and also Dr. Tipton's teaching on Van Til's Trinitarian Theology. This has been so helpful to me regarding the Son and Spirit having an underived essence, that is not communicated by the Father, and that the eternal begotteness and procession are according to their persons and not the one undivided essence. This closes the door to any hint of subordination in the Godhead. I hope this teaching will be adopted more and more in the Reformed community. I appreciate y'all and am enjoying and being edified greatly the more I learn.
A wonderful lecture!
This is spot on.
Excellent! Thank you for this!
Idk if Dr. Tipton fully fleshed out the divergence between Calvin and the majority of Reformed scholastic thinkers who would have a distinct view of the communication of essence from Calvin’s articulation. It may be good to use more Reformed scholastic sources in these reviews besides Calvin in the future, especially since we have more of their writings in circulation today.
The main goal here was not to treat that issue you raise but simply to try to clarify Calvin's ruled grammar of predication regarding what is common and what is proper in the Trinity (as a sort of sidebar). On the historical side of things, Brannon Ellis argues persuasively that while differences do exist, there was not a sharp departure from Calvin among the Reformed Scholastics. Turretin represents a good example of that point (see Calvin, Classical Trinitarianism, and the Aseity of the Son for a very helpful treatment in terms of historical developments). While Turretin affirmed the communication of the essence (while seeking to integrate his own view with Calvin's), he did not hold to Thomas' view of the temporal processions (or invisible missions) of the Son and Spirit as they underwrite the sacramental communication of deifying grace to the rational creature (understood as a participation in the personal properties of the Son and of the Spirit) in their Reditus to the Father. That is the central point to grasp and to keep in mind.
@@vanttil101 thank you for the reply! I am familiar with that work, as it’s the standard treatment on Calvin’s view in my estimation. Certainly, the way Thomas or Bonaventure set their systems, either the Summa in expanded form or Breviloquium in concise form, with the ordus, regressus, fructus movement of a system with determined Trinitarian and Christological form and content is distinct from Reformed systems emerging from their dual principia. I was merely seeking to point out the divergence in Reformed thought on these trinitarian issues from Calvin, perhaps unrelated to your intention of instruction, since his view was a minority view. If I am not mistaken, even bellarmine thought Calvin was wrong on this issue, though not heretical for it, so although I don’t express this doctrine the way Calvin does, I do not think he has jettisoned eternal generation wholesale. When people like Turretin say, “all generation indicates a communication of essence on the part of the begetter to the begotten…the same numerical essence is communicated without decision and alienation…” it merits the conversation that by “the Reformed after Calvin” who articulate it the same way he does, we mostly mean late 19th-20th century Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed streams which echoed him, not necessarily other contemporary reformation/post-reformation authors. Nevertheless, I would say this video is some of the best content that RF has discussed. Profiting from it!
Yes, Calvin and the Reformed scholastics on that topic is a sidebar discussion in our video and in the course. In the forthcoming course, we argue that trinitarian theology structures the Summa from its beginning to its end and decisively shapes every doctrinal locus it touches. The thoroughly trinitarian theological system of Aquinas orbits around, and explicates the organic link between, the eternal processions of the Son and the Spirit and the rational creature’s participation in those eternal processions through the deifying grace conferred by the temporal missions of the Son and the Spirit, as that grace elevates the temporal creature above his nature to a share in the eternal processions themselves. To retrieve Thomas' theology proper--his doctrine of the trinitarian Exitus and Reditus--entails a retrieval of his entire system. The genius of Thomas is such that to retrieve his trinitarian theology, his theology proper, is to retrieve his system in its seamless, integrated, ingenious totality. So thankful this proves profitable!
Backdoor Mutualism! Epic (distinction ). Thank you for this very enlightening and thought provoking discussion.
I think the issue is the holding to a slogan of “The Great Tradition” without the necessary qualifiers. But Thomas’ Doctrine of God taken in isolation from its greater systematic context can pave a road that needn't be contemplated (at least without a proper guide). I think this is a fair and much needed critique by Dr. Tipton.
It will take time for some to digest it. I believe many love the idea of retrieving Thomas. But we must first be aware of and understand the integrative character and theological entailments of his trinitarian theology of divine and human processions-his back door mutualism consists in the rational creature's participation (through the invisible and visible missions of the Son and of the Spirit) in the divine processions themselves. That is the reason why the rational creature must be reproportioned above his nature to see God as God sees himself, know God as God knows himself, and love God as God loves himself in the divine processions of the Son and the Spirit.
Have been listening to your Vos Group Lectures since they began and appreciated them immensely seeing that Vos' "Biblical Theology" was one of the first books (other than the Bible) which was introduced to me shortly after my conversion in 1982.
Now, I'm thrilled to be introduced to Thomas Aquinas and his "Summa Theologica" as it always sat on the shelf along with the other 54 volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica's Great Books of the Western World (vol.19 & 20) which has given me years of pleasure, although I always felt that the "Summa" was just too much for me to handle. Now maybe I'll take a second look at them! I have recognized that Calvin has refered to Aquinas over a 130 times in his Institutes. Greetings from B.C. Canada.
How do you spell the modern theologian mentioned at 11:50? I can't find a Thomist named Emory online. Thanks
Fr. Gilles Emery, O.P.
Not a fan of Aquinas in any way but appreciated Lane’s research and perspective nonetheless.
He sure does get worked up regarding those evangelical mutualists :)
Thanks for the continued good work brothers.
An interesting figure in this regard is Bonaventure with his trinitarian and Christological structure and content of his Breviloquium.
BTW, we note in the course that Bonaventure advocated for a "hierarchy" in the Trinity on the basis of the Father as the "fountain of deity" for the Son in the action of eternal generation. Emery's discussion of that in The Trinitarian Theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas is fascinating.
@@vanttil101 “The Hidden Center: Spirituality and Speculative Christology in St. Bonaventure” by Hayes is a good source on that subject showing how Christ is the hierarchy in his thought. The brill volume on Bonaventure goes into decent detail on that aspect of his trinitarian theology as well. Good to know you guys are discussing it!
@@jacobcarne8316 Emery is talking more about the way that for Bonaventure the processional relation of paternal priority (and the Father as the fountain of deity for the Son) entails hierarchy in the immanent Trinity. That is his question/concern.
@@jacobcarne8316Very nice.
This is so great. Because of your criticisms of Thomamism, but also of Theistic personalism, it’s helpful when you lay out the larger landscape to connect the dots.
Having read Schleiermacher and other absolute idealists I’m wondering how your deeper Protestant conception holds to classical theism without the monistic problems that it usually entails.
I agree with many criticisms of volunteerism and theistic mutualism. But fundamentally I don’t see how classical theism avoids another kind of pantheism. If God is unchanging without a will that can bring creation into existence exnihilo and temporally, then creation is eternal along with God. At root , whether it leads to other problems or not, that is what the theistic personalists are trying to avoid.
Van Til and Bavinck admit the accusation, but deny the pantheistic implication, by appeal to a kind of systematic biblical necessity. That there is no other option except to accept that God is absolutely unchanging and necessarily exists yet he create the world which is contingent and does not necessarily exist.
This is the same view that Thomas gives in his contra gentiles about the eternality of the world. He says its follows philosophically, but denies it on biblical grounds.
If we assume that the Bible teaches God’s absolute immutability (something I would question with respect to his will of creation) and that the world is contingent, then we must defend this tension as a biblical mystery. Is the double affirmation a decent summary of what you mean by the deeper Protestant conception?
Here is a helpful place to begin thinking about the issue you raise. More to say, of course, but this is foundational. ua-cam.com/video/6_VARW06yg4/v-deo.html
@@vanttil101, Thanks very much this is right on point.
What I can't seem to get around is that the eternal/temporal relation that classical theism holds, is itself a correlative relation. While Van Til, and I honor him greatly and would desire to agree with him everywhere I can, denies all correlativisms, it is exactly this relation that is required by immutability. An eternal God, not just of character and promise, but of every will, requires an eternal creation. How is this to be avoided?
Pantheism is strongly protected against in Augustinianism and Calvinism because of its biblicism, but in so far as both inherit the platonic eternal/temporal philosophical frame work, pantheism will always be a threat. For this philosophy is in tension with the biblical teaching of a temporal act of creation. It is not just modernism with its mutable God that results in pantheism (at 26:54), but its the premodern platonic view as well.
Let me see if I can put a biblical thought forward. What if the biblical view is that God is unchanging as to his intellect and knowledge of himself, as well as to his promises (thus Israel is not consumed). But as to God's will to create and as to his knowledge of creation--these are acts which God decided upon from the foundation of the world. That is, God has the capacity to decide between a multiplicity of good options. There is no imperfection in such a choice. And with his infinite wisdom could he not make up a whole history of the world, and thus bringing such knowledge into existence at once, which is now immutable in his creative decree, and then implement it in an instant of creation. True, God would have his own divine time, and there would be a true before and after of the creation, but this pneumatic time would be nothing like ours, but merely the space between his decisions, whenever those might occur. perhaps, God has only made one such decision in the planning and execution of this world (who has known the mind of the Lord?). But there would be a true before and after of creation as revealed in Genesis and Hebrews.
In this view, I would say that divine immutability as required for God's aseity, moral character, and necessary being is maintained. God's natural omniscience is maintained. God's elective knowledge is not partial or incomplete but total and comprehensive. Knowledge of creation is not something he learns passively or from the outside, not in spite of but because it is his very act. He willed this knowledge into existence as a plan through the Logos and then he speaks it into ontological existence.
True, in this view we abandon the eternal/time dichotomy of Plato and the use of it as the marker of the creator/creature distinction as put to use by Van Til and we reformed. But we don't do this to get rid of the creator/creature distinction but to make it more sure and complete. We remove the ontological leaking between the two, the dialectic that sits at the very base of the relation between eternity and time. We deny both the platonic eternal world and the Hegelian divine flux. Instead, we affirm that God is the sovereign creator, who is a-sei in himself, all knowing, and in whom all creation finds it source, yet there was a time when creation was not. God makes sovereign choices in his own being and apart from any creaturely time, yet he has an analogical time and will in himself.
What do you make of such an outline? What is its major fault? To my way of thinking, it contains a mystery in that God has an unchanging will and being, which eternally grounds his intellective volitional being which is free to act according to his nature. This interplay is where the mystery exists, rather than in the Eternal God/Temporal creation relation.
But is this mystery the better mystery? Is it the more biblical mystery? If Plato was biblical then with Plato we should go, but if not, then why force immutability into his mold only for the sake of tradition? Even if it be it so grand a tradition as united both Augustine and Origen?
@@jrhemmerichGlad it helped. Keep at it!
@@vanttil101, I shall, though sometimes it seems even among friends we easily tangle ourselves. I would agree with your criticisms of Oliphint (47:36). The mistake there is that he is using the incarnation as a model for the addition or taking into God's being another mode of temporal action. But that is a mistake because the principle issues with immutability is not with the doctrine of the incarnation, but with the doctrine of creation as a whole. Bavinck is correct, we should not say God is ignorant when he asks of Adam in the garden. The notion of a divine self-limitation of God's knowledge makes no sense at this point.
Even on the view I have proposed above, we need a two-natures in one person Christology to address the Logos/divine omniscience and Jesus’ limited human knowledge. To try and solve Christology and issues of theology proper all at once, as Oliphant seems to attempt, is to confuse issues besides being too much to bite off.
But there is a need to explain God's knowledge of the future which he has not yet decreed prior to creation. Such knowledge does not yet exist. That is what needs to be explained. But we have an orthodox explanation in God's sovereign decree. The only adjustment is that the decree is not eternal and timeless, for the creation is not timeless. The decree is in God's own mental/volitional time. And this leads to analogically temporal moment of creation. But there is no self-limitation of God’s knowledge on this view. God simply adds to his natural knowledge with the knowledge of his decree.
Something to consider. I know it conflicts with your way of seeing it, but I hope you see that I'm trying to solve a problem that I have not been able to solve on the Platonic framework of Augustine. I would hope you can appreciate my dilemma. Few people seem to have the patience for these ideas. I believe you get it and I think your objections and faithfulness to Van Til are commendable. I know it has had its costs. You have my respect. The Lord bless you for following your conscience.
@@jrhemmerich I recall almost identical comments from our episode from the Van Til Group on God's knowledge of the world. Perhaps you could try to commit your thoughts to an article or a small book and get some feedback. You will most likely get a lot of pushback from the classical Reformed tradition represented by the likes of Bavinck, Vos, and Van Til. You will also likely find some favorable responses from those who advocate some species of a dipolar theism. While I commend the classical Reformed view that you criticize, I appreciate your thoughtful engagement. All the best!
"As to the Trinity, you cannot improve on Thomas." Matthew Barrett. Simply Trinity. p.143. 😂
Stunning, is it not?
Wow