Here's an entry I did as guest blogger for the NNPCW... Check out Kelsey's writing on www.networknotes.blogspot.com. I'm so proud of my former roommate!
Boker tov, Achiot! Greetings, my sisters!
My name is Amy, I’m in my first year at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and Kelsey has asked me to be your guest blogger this fine afternoon. Like you all, I just finished my last final this morning, a grueling Hebrew exam. I tell you, there’s nothing worse for a student than the sensation that your mind has suddenly liquidated and gone pouring out your ears the afternoon before the end of the semester. However, learning Hebrew has been exciting for me; I love being able to read the Bible in its original language (even though it can be a struggle), and doing so has brought a greater depth to my own spirituality.
In fact, a few weeks ago, I was writing a paper for my introductory theology course on the nature of the Trinity. Defining God in five pages is truly a hefty task. I was struggling with our traditional imagery of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, which we use to define the different ways we see God working. When we describe God with "person" words, those image we have of God project upon God a concreteness and finiteness that isn’t there. They build false separations between the work of the three parts, and create doubts among ourselves and those we dialogue with about whether or not we worship one God, or three. I was struggling to find a way to express the truth of the Trinity without building up those false divisions that can hinder our own understanding.
I went back and examined the call of Moses in Exodus 3:14. When Moses challenges God to define Godself, in order that Moses can respond to those who challenge the nature of the Divine in Moses’s work, God states "I will be what I will be." The God in the burning bush is a God who is defined by becoming and doing and acting in a variety of ways, rather than in anything tactile and concrete. In this verse, God is a verb rather than a noun.
Now, many of you will check your Bibles and say.... "My version says "I Am Who I Am. Why, here, God seems to be a person, a thing you can touch..." My friends, this is where the wonder and horrors of language of take place. Interpretation has played substantial role about God, and has created some limits. In the Hebrew language, there is no present tense, rather only completed actions and incompleted actions. Completed actions are usually translated as past tense, and incompleted actions as future tense. Grammatically, it is impossible in Hebrew to say "I Am Who I Am" for these very reasons. We began to interpret it that way because when Exodus was translated into Greek for the Septuagint, they translated, and in the same action transformed, the verse to the present tense. The Vulgate, the first major European translation of the Bible, used the Septuagint as its model, and so the language of "I am" has continued throughout our tradition, despite its grammatical impossibility in the original language. Indeed, "I will be what I will be" is a more accurate interpretation of that truth that resonated throughout the desert where Moses was exiled.
When I discovered that God refers to Godself as verb, it was if my entire understanding of what God does had been illuminated. As I delved into this new and sudden revelation, and discussed its implications with my classmates, I realized that this understanding had been on nearly every page of the Old Testament, and I had been unable comprehend it because I was limited by language. Where is it, you ask? Why, it is in the very name of God! As some of you may know, the Hebrews had such respect and reverence for the name of God that they were not allowed to speak it. Therefore, whenever the Holy name is written in Old Testament manuscripts, the scribes replace the vowels for the name of God with the vowels for the different words people substitute for it when speaking about God, such as "Adonai," or "Elohim." The only part that has survived of the divined name are the consonants - YHWH. These consonants manifested the third person singular incompeted form of a verb that we have not defined. Indeed, God’s name essentially says "He will do the God thing." Once again, God is defined as verb, as action, as what God does.
That frees us as well to talk about what God does rather than what God is when we talk about the Trinity. When we refer to God as "Father," we are really saying that God acts like a father rather than actually being a father. And there are three patterns of Gods work that we can see in our lives. However, we need to remember that when we talk about those patterns, they are just that, patterns and actions that God takes. Creating God, Redeeming God, and Sustaining God are all examples of actions take by the one loving and true spirit that we all worship and serve.
Mizpah,
Amy
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8 comments:
Dear Amy,
I have read your answer on Kelsey's blog and do intend to respond to it. I have to tell you that because of your answer and my need for a new printer I finally went out and bought a combination scanner, printer, copier and fax, (the fax I may not use) and have spent the rest of the day setting it up. Thank you for pushing me toward something I have needed to do for a while. I will put this on Kelsey's blog as well as yours and will hopefully answer in a few days.
In the love of Jesus Christ,
Viola
Here are the original comments from the NNPCW blog....
Dear Amy,
It sounds like you have been working very hard. May you find some much needed rest during this holy and hopefully merry season of Advent and Christmas. I have some questions and comments about your comments on the Trinity.
1. Why should God's words of self discription be non-concrete if he says, "I will be what I will be"? Does God's actions and sovereignty make God less concrete? (Of course he is not finite, but infinite.)
2. Isn't it unbiblical as well as contrary to the Creeds and Confessions of the Church to assert that the Trinity is made up of parts or that the threeness of God only refers to God's actions?
3. If the doctrine of the Trinity is only referring to God's actions what can we say about Jesus, was and is he really God?
4. The Bible speaks of the relationship between Jesus and God whom he called Father, while even the Holy Spirit is referred to as someone who speaks to the disciples. (See Acts 13)The relationships within the Trinity gives our own relationships within the Church a foundation. Is that possible if Trinity only refers to actions.
"What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of life--and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us--what wehave seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ 1John 1:1-3."
That is all very concrete and very comforting.
blessings in Jesus Christ,
Viola Larson
Anonymous, at 11:02 PM
Viola,
Just dropping a note to let you know that I'll be addressing your questions sometime next week, here in the comments. My parents are here in town for the holidays, so I'll be understandably spending as much time with them as possible, so will not be able to devote the efforts your questions deserve. Mizpah!
Amy
Amy, at 8:42 AM
Thank you Amy, I look forward to your answers and comments.
Merry Christmas,
Viola
Anonymous, at 2:11 PM
Viola,
Once again, I’m dearly sorry for the delay in responding. I do hope you find these answers - maybe Kelsey can give you a heads up that they’ve been posted....
In addressing your first question; when I was referring to God as “concrete,” I was using concrete to mean something tangible, with boundaries, that can be fully captured and understood by the senses. When I hear “I Am What I Am,” it connotes a God that is fully describable and comprehendible. However, “I will be what I will be,” because it is a verb that is incomplete, that has built into that understanding of a lack of fullness in its ability to capture God’s essence, God becomes less “concrete” in the way that I was using the term. I’m sorry if that did not come across.
As for your second question.... I did not say that the Trinity is made up of parts; in fact, that is part of what I was trying to speak against. What I said was that when we used words like “person,” our understanding of that word projects boundaries and divisions upon the roles that God takes. The division of God is unbiblical, and we need to struggle with the language we use, the images we take on, to keep that division, that part-ness, from becoming entrenched and creating confusion. And the concept of the Trinity as three actions is not contrary to the Creeds; indeed, it is inherent within them. Throughout our tradition of referring to the Trinity, we have referred to God as one “substance” and three “persons.” Our use of the word “person” came from the Latin word “persona,” which was a theatrical role. From the very beginning of our discussions of the Trinity, we referred to God as one being, one thing, one substance that took on three roles, three actions, three patterns in our lives. It is this very understanding on which the Creeds were based.
Referring to the doctrine of Trinity as referring to three actions that God takes rather than three beings that God is does not diminish the divinity of Christ. Indeed, I would say that it enhances our ability to understand Christ’s full nature as fully human and fully divine. God’s role as Redeemer was embodied in Christ; however, God was not contained in Christ or limited to Christ during that time period. God did not stop Creating and Sustaining at the time of Christ’s birth; rather, each of these roles was played out continually, all coming back to the same Source. All three roles of the Trinity continue to act, inspired and played out and participating in the same substance. Indeed, this is part of what Christ attempts to teach when he said “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.” (John 14:9-10) In this passage, Christ himself refers to the oneness of substance of the Creator and the Redeemer, while their work, their actions, are taken alongside each other.
Finally, actions themselves are fluid; one leads in to the other and sometimes the lines between them are blurred. Nouns are not the only things that have interrelationship and interaction. And so, no, referring to the Trinity as three actions does diminish the interrelationship or the playing out each of the roles throughout our history. And even as the Holy Spirit spoke to the disciples, in that moment, the Holy Spirit was not constrained to that place. If the Holy Spirit were a noun, a person, those constraints would have been placed upon it. Referring to the Trinity as three actions taken by the same substance strengthens the interrelationship of the Church; we, also, are one entity whose work is being taken on by each believer in many different roles throughout the world.
That said, all language, as a human creation, is limited and unable to fully express the wonder and glory of God. I brought this forth as simply another model, another way to look at the nature of the Trinity and bring us closer to understanding it’s mystery.
I hope that these answers have been clear; I hope that they have adequately address your questions. I would love to hear anything more you have to say. Because this process has (quite lamentably) been delayed, I would appreciate it if you would notify me through my profile here on blogger if you have anything more to add or discuss. Thank you for you questions; they have helped me to wrestle more and understand better my own position. Blessings, and I hope to hear from you!
Amy
Amy, at 5:34 PM
Dear Amy,
Thank you so much for answering my questions. I do, however, have some comments. I hope I am not to long winded.
I am still not quite sure what you mean by concrete. I do believe that it is impossible for us to totally comprehend God, after all God is infinite we are not. But I do believe that in Jesus Christ we see God and understand God’s nature, love and care for us. Of course we cannot capture God’s essence but as the scripture states, “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, he has explained him (John 1:18).” (NAS)
While in your original post you did write, “They build [“person words] false separations between the work of the three parts, and create” etc. you did also write, “I was struggling to find a way to express the truth of the Trinity without building up those false divisions that can hinder our own understanding,” so I may have just misunderstood your thought. But in your answer not only do you refer to the distinctions within God, that is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as actions but also as roles. While I realize that the original word person, “persona” is not quite the same as what twenty-first century thinkers understand when they use that word, still I do not believe the creeds, confessions or scripture agree with your definition. A modern thinker, (Perhaps not a post-modern thinker, but that is a whole other subject.), would understand person as an individual with a will and a consciousness all their own. This cannot be said of the persons of the Trinity. Nevertheless there is a distinction in God that is triune and personal, there is a love relationship between the persons. See John 3: 35; 14:31; 15:9,10. Also the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are co-eternal and co-equal and once again personal. There is of course no action taken by one that is not performed by the other, That is all create, all redeem, etc. but the distinction is not in their action but in their relationship to each other.
Also Van A. Harvey points out in A Handbook of Theological Terms, there was a heretical teaching in the 3rd century called Modalism, in which some “insisted on the complete and undivided sovereignty of God and thereby rejected any distinction in the being of God, such as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” Harvey writes that, for instance, “Sabellius (early 3rd century) appears to have argued that God is one individual being and that the terms Father, Son and Holy Spirit are simply names applied to the different forms (modes) of action of that one being, and therefore, do not refer to eternal and intrinsic distinctions within the godhead.” A long quote I know but it does point out that the idea that the distinctions are simply actions of God is not based in the scripture, creeds or confessions but an ancient heresy. Note that something that is intrinsic and eternal does, so to speak, have boundaries. There cannot have been a time when what it is was not, nor can the nature of the thing change. The Son is eternal, he is always the Son, etc. We also know that God is not evil, therefore, there is a boundary in God that excludes evil.
As to the distinctions in the Godhead being mere roles that also is understood to be heretical. The problem is, roles may be dropped and other roles taken up. There is of course the Oneness Pentecostals who believe exactly this. According to their teaching there was a time when God was Father, then a time that he is Son and then a time when he is the Holy Spirit. In other words they do not believe in the Trinity. You write, “God did not stop Creating and Sustaining at the time of Christ’s birth; rather, each of these roles was playing out continually, all coming back to the same Source. All three roles of the Trinity continue to act, inspired and played out and participating in the same substance.” I agree partly with what you are saying but the way you put it and your terminology are leading to confusion and I believe some misunderstanding. I think perhaps you are attempting to not use the words Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and, forgive me, it tends to mess up theology when the biblical names are avoided. I will try to explain. Although we cannot humanly explain all of the working and being of God, as stated earlier, we are finite, God is infinite, we know about God through his final revelation, Jesus Christ and through the written word of God. If Jesus Christ is God, and so the scriptures and confessions teach, and if the Holy Spirit is God, and if the one Jesus called Father is God, then they are the three personal distinctions in the one God and they are of the same will and consciousness and substance and they all, never cease to sustain, create, and redeem. They do act, but they are not actions. You, yourself had trouble with this idea of them being actions when you referred to John 14:9-10 and wrote, “In this passage, Christ himself refers to the oneness of substance of the Creator and the Redeemer, while their work, their actions, are taken alongside each other.” “Their” is a personal pronoun not an action.
As Andrew Purves and Charles Partree point out in their book Encountering God: Christian Faith in Turbulent Times, “God the Father revealed in Christ and attested in scripture has no sexual identity. Sexuality, after all, is a part of creation, as Genesis 1 and 2 make clear. In any case, using creation as the content for speech about God would be idolatry. The image of God is not reversible! It goes in one direction only.” They go on to state that Trinitarian language for God is meant “to bear witness in Christ, and especially in the cross, to the liberation of humankind from all patriarchal idols and divinized ideologies.” I am over quoting but I will go on, “In Christ and from Christ we inherit the Father as our Father. The gift of the Father to us in and through Jesus Christ is the gift of sharing in the communion of the Son with the Father. Christ shows that the love with which the Father loves him and he loves the Father is for us and in us through himself as we are joined to him through the bond of the Holy Spirit.” May I also recommend the book The God of the Gospel of John by Marianne Meye Thompson professor of New Testament interpretation at Fuller Theological Seminary.
One other thought, I believe the Holy Spirit is personal and to insist that the Holy Spirit is a noun is not to insist that the Holy Spirit is an individual. And it seems to me that to say that the distinctions in God are personal does not confine them to one place unless we are saying they are only human. And yes the body, the Church is one, and yes the members have many roles to play but we certainly are members, persons, individuals that make up the body and I hope we are not defined by our roles but by our relationship to Jesus Christ.
Blessings in the love of Christ,
Viola
Awww... thanks for the shout-out, Amy. I'm proud of you, too!
Viola,
I saw your comment last night and will address it soon. I have a week off from class, so the delay won't be quite as long this time ;) Right now, I have to dedicate myself to common themes in the work of Anselm of Canterbury, Marguerite Porete, and Gregory Palamas.... I hope you're having a blessed day!
Amy
Dear Viola,
Here is the response I’ve been greatly anticipating writing; to aide in understanding, I will define “role” as I use it as a pattern of action taken.
First, you yourself say “A modern thinker ... would understand person as an individual with a will and a consciousness all their own. This cannot be said of the persons of the Trinity.” That is precisely what I have been trying to express about the problems of “person” language in creating false divisions within God. Thank you for stating it so clearly and concisely. The verse you refer to talk about the same interaction I referred to in the last answer about the interplay between roles. I have not, and do not, deny that there is relationship among the three roles; indeed, that relationship is inherent in the their overlap and interaction throughout the continuing process of creation, redemption, and sustenance that point us to our dependence on God.
As I understand it , the key problem with Modalism was that they proposed that three divine roles could not co-exist; rather, that the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer were masks, or modes, that God the Creator could take on and take off at will, with only thing behind it doing the action. They believed that only one of these roles could be taken at a time, so they mocked verses in Scripture where it talks about the interplay between them. The “One-ness” Pentecostals you refer to are a prime example of that philosophy. In the quote you yourself chose, I do explicitly deny that God’s work as Creator or Sustainer ends when God’s work as Redeemer begins, so classification of my theory as “modalist” is inaccurate.
We need to be careful when we compare ideas we disagree with to classical heresies. Heresies happen because they take some part of the truth about God, and blow it out of proportion without referring to the other things we know about God, creating false doctrine. With Gnosticism, that part of truth was the nature of humanity as both a physical and spiritual being, which for the Gnostic became a division of them and an antagonistic relationship between them. With Modalism, that truth was the one-ness of God, with which they denied that God could work in more than one way at any given moment. However, we in our discussions can have a tendency to dismiss those we disagree with by likening them to a heretical strain by failing recognizing how their interpretation of the truth about God was based off of differs from the heresy to which you’re comparing them. This keeps you from truly dialoguing and understanding the point with you’re arguing.
As for your comment stating “it tends to mess up theology when the biblical names are avoided,” you write as if Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were the only “biblical names.” The same role of God referred to as Father (still a metaphor saying that God acts like a Father to us) is the same role that is referred to as a Mother giving birth in Isaiah 66 and as the Planter and Gardener of Eden in Genesis 2. Referring to the first role of the Trinity as “Creating God” encompasses all of these biblical names; the term “Father” does not. Indeed, Elizabeth Johnson writes that when we lift up the terms “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” as the only “biblical names” for the roles of the Trinity, then we commit idolatry by focusing too strongly on one image instead of celebrating the fullness of God who creates, redeems, and sustains.
“They,” as a pronoun, does not only refer to the personal. When someone asks you where your textbooks are, you say “they” are over there without making the books each a person. In the case you quote, the “they” was referring to the roles of Creator and Redeemer.
I hope that this accurately answered your concerns. Thank you, once again, for your attention.
Mizpah,
Amy
As for calling Amy a "modalist" I have two points (which I will probably return to in more detail at a later date:
1. I doubt that she is, for reasons which she idenitified in her last comment.
2. Tossing out labels like that is remarkable unhelpful, because it entails reducing someone's position to that of a known heresy, and then dismissing it as such. That involves two logical fallacies:
a.) ad hominem (against the person rather than the argument) - because you have labelled the person a heretic without having to account for their theory.
b.) strawman - because you have destructed and reconstructed their argument based not on the points they were actually making but the so-called "heretical" points of another group with which you are trying to associate the person.
This mode of arguing also assumes (an assumption which I will have to deal with another time if anyone is interested in it) that the decisions of ecumenical councils are sufficiently authoritative (if not infallible) to apply even to the present day. What I mean by this is that the argument assumes that because a position was labelled heretical at a particular church council it is always and forever heretical.
Aside from finding the "heretical" label unhelpful (as though arguments could be solved by a political process), the assumption that what is heresy at one point is always heresy is historically dubious. There are many, many examples of "heresies" which have been revisted and then adopted by future councils.
That will have to do for now. Again, if there is any interest I will build that argument from history at a later date.
As Amy has asked for it, I will unleash my promised argument from history:
While there have been theological disputations within Christianity for as long as there has been a Christianity in which to have theological disputations, the term “heresy” was introduced to the Christian vocabulary with the advent of ecumenical councils (alluded to in my previous comment). So, to understand heresy (as a designation) we have to ask a few critical historical-theological questions about ecumenical councils, including:
1. When was the first ecumenical council called?
2. By whom was it called?
3. What was its purpose?
4. What role did the designation of “heresy” and “heretic” play in fulfilling that purpose?
5. What became of those groups and ideas labeled as heretical?
Then, after we have answered those questions, if we are to get to the bottom of the ways in which we should approach the novel idea of the Trinity, we must ask another set of questions:
1. Is there a Trinitarian idea in Christianity which precedes the time of the councils?
2. If so, by whom was it held, and what did it entail?
The idea of heresy, along with the Christian emphasis on orthodoxy (right or uniform belief) over and against orthopraxy (right conduct), was introduced with the first ecumenical council, the Council of Nicea, called by the emperor Constantine in 325. This council gather bishops from all over the empire, but its agenda was set and driven by the emperor himself (not yet a baptized Christian!) for imperial/political reasons as much as religious/pastoral/theological reasons.
Constantine was looking for some kind of cultural force to help unify his in many ways divided and fragmented empire. After Christianity had survived more than two centuries of sporadic persecution, Constantine realized that it had the kind of cultural power that he was looking for.
I say this not to discredit whatever faith Constantine may have had, but to explain his motives for calling an ecumenical council. We must understand these motives because they are at the heart of the agenda which drove that council and changed the direction of Christianity.
Seeing Christianity as a cultural force powerful enough to unite an empire, it is no wonder that Constantine, in calling together his council of bishops, sought for some kind of theological unity within Christianity. Heretofore Christianity had tolerated a certain amount of theological dissent. This is in part because Christians were united against a persecuting enemy from without and so did not have time to chase of perceived enemies from within; and in part because there was no uniform or orthodox Christianity to impose itself on all Christian sects.
As the empire stopped its sporadic persecution of Christians, and as the emperor brought together a group of Christians to shape this orthodoxy to which all Christians could be held, it became possible for some groups within Christianity, and some ideas previously tolerated by Christians, to be labeled as heresy.
So, it was at Nicea in 325, under the direction of the Roman emperor Constantine, that orthodoxy and heresy were defined. The first presenting issue for this new orthodoxy was Arianism, which was the Christological view of Arius, who was opposed by the bishop Alexander and his deacon, the great Athanasius.
They had held a long theological argument for years leading up to the council at Nicea, but the way in which the matter was resolved by the council set the stage for how heresy would be treated at future councils. When theological matters are settled by political institutions who desire uniformity over debate, the strength of one’s arguments matters much less than the strength of one’s connections. The political will of the council favored Athanasius and Alexander over Arius, and so their view carried the day.
That would not have been a problem if the council had decided that dissent within the body of Christ could be tolerated, but the council, as it was called to create a uniform/orthodox theology, could not tolerate dissent. So Arianism was labeled a heresy, and all groups which taught or held anything similar to the Christological position of Arius were condemned as heretics and thrown out of the ecumene.
Since that moment one of the roles of ecumenical councils was to label certain individuals, groups, and ideas as heretical, and to condemn them. But, is this the best way to decide theological disputes, particularly given that councils were called and driven not by the collective body of Christ but by the Roman emperor? Particularly given that the emperor was more concerned with unifying his empire culturally under a state-church (the newly orthodox Christianity) than with discerning the best (by which I mean both pastorally and intellectually) doctrine?
The Trinitarian theology which eventually emerged from these councils as orthodox (like most of the theology which emerged from these councils) bared little resemblance to the approach that the earliest Jewish Christians took to the Trinity, or the relationship between God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
Hans Kung, in his Christianity: Essence, History, and Future, in describing the beliefs of the early Jewish Christians, says that their view of “the relationship between Father, Son and Spirit could be described like this:
- God, the invisible Father above us,
- Jesus, the Son of man, as God’s Word and Son with us,
- The Holy Spirit, as God’s power and love, in us.”
It is important for us to remember that this view, which predates the Trinitarian formulations of the ecumenical councils, does not hold that the Son (Jesus) and the Spirit are of the same substance as God, or are co-equal with God. They represent ways in which God has worked, but are not in and of themselves God.
The earliest Christians, who were also Jews (here I mean Jesus’ disciples and the first generation after them, and those of their ilk) were strict monotheists who would have considered the later Trinitarian formulations to be polygamy. Jesus was the Chosen One of God, the Anointed One, the Christ or Messiah. But he was not God in flesh. God was revealed through him, but was not the same as him.
This view would eventually be condemned as a heresy, as a higher Christology carried the day in the councils. But, when the earliest beliefs of Christians about Jesus are rejected as heretical, doesn’t that take some of the sting out of heresy?
When we argue about various heresies (particularly in such abstract ideas about God as the Trinitarian formulas) we are arguing about human ideas about the divine which we rejected generally for political rather than intellectual reasons. In many cases these ideas, which were once rejected and nearly wiped out, have been rehabilitated and reconciled to the church. Therefore when you say of someone’s argument that it can be linked to that which has been deemed by an ecumenical council to be heresy, you are saying absolutely nothing of substance. Instead you are letting a series of meetings which were convened by an emperor for political reasons dictate what counts as good theology. This is no way for the church to behave.
In dealing with Amy’s articulate work on the Trinity we should debate it on its internal merits, always keeping in mind that ultimately each description of God is merely a human idea, and so flawed and limited. But those limitations do not mean that they are unhelpful. The only thing which is unhelpful is labeling them broadly under a kind of heresy and dismissing them uncritically, as though the councils could discern the truth of God any more than we can.
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