Loading...Since I started this thread on the development of the doctrine of the Trinity, I have received the same question over and over again: What about the Holy Spirit? As I’ve repeatedly answered, I can’t really deal with that question until I finish explaining how the “orthodox” view of the relationship of the Father and Son came to be settled.
In fact, that view never was really settled. There were debates for a very long time. But I’ve taken us up through the major issues, up to the council of Nicea, where it was decided that Christ was not a subordinate divine being from eternity past who at some point long, long before the creation of the universe had been brought into being by God, but that he had always existed, along with the Father and was not subordinate to him but was equal to him in every way, “of the very same substance” as the Father.
And so, we have two persons, completely equal, both fully God, distinct from one another, but in some sense the same – equal but not identical, unified in every way but distinct.
OK, it’s a bit of a mind blower. But even so, why did Christianity not simply end up with a Duality rather than with a Trinity?
That question obviously takes us to the Holy Spirit, who became a third person in the Trinity: three persons, all of whom are fully God, but only one God.
I have never written about the place of the Holy Spirit in the Trinity in any context, not on the blog, not in any book or article. I’ve never even lectured on it. That may seem weird, but in fact, the discussion of the Holy Spirit in scholarship is quite sparse in comparison with the discussion of the Father and Son.
My take on the matter is that once the relationship of Father and Son was worked out (and even while it was being worked out) the Spirit as a third element simply made sense and was far less problematic. And I think that’s because of the presence and role of the Spirit throughout the Bible, where it is simply taken as a given that God sends his Spirit to earth and to people on occasion; the biblical authors never considered that problematic or worth reflecting on at length. So let me explain how I think it works in the Bible. This will take a few posts.
The Spirit of God is present already “In the Beginning,” in fact, in the second verse of the Bible, Genesis 1:2.
1In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2The earth was formless and void, and darkness covered the deep. And the Spirit of God hovered over the water.
There are all sorts of problems with translating, let alone understanding, these verses. Hebrew Bible scholars can literally write a book on them. Let me simply mention two problems of translation. The first is a question of Hebrew grammar, whether v. 1 is a complete sentence or the introduction to the sentence (a subordinate clause).
For complicated reasons, scholars today almost always prefer the latter, which means that a better translation is something like this: “When in the beginning, God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless and void and…” May sound strange at first, I know. But it’s an important difference. With this translation, the heavens and earth were not created out of nothing in v. 1 and, when first created, were without form and dark; instead, they were already there in the beginning. That is, God “created” the heavens and earth out of pre-existing material. What was there in the beginning before “creation” was formless, void, and dark. In that case, as well, “the water” was already existing before God “created” anything.
In other words, creation is not ex nihilo – the bringing of the material world into existence out of nothing “Creation” means that God took some kind of already existing dark, chaotic, mass and gave it form, made something out of it.
As I’ve indicated, this translation (“In the beginning, when God began to create…”) is almost certainly what the Hebrew means, as Jewish and Christian scholars of Hebrew now widely recognize. It is not a new realization: Jewish scholars in the Middle Ages already knew that. But our English translations, with the familiar “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” have been long part of the Christian heritage, because that’s how the text was rendered in the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint, well before Christianity arose (by Greek translators who did not recognize this rather fine point of Hebrew grammar), and so it was the version Christians had always been familiar with.
The payoff of all that is that the idea that nothing existed before God created the universe is not actually found in Genesis 1:1, as Christian theologians throughout the centuries have assumed (and many still do assume). This is where they got (get) the idea that NOTHING existed except God before Gen. 1:1. But it turns out that that’s not true. At least for Gen. 1:1.
As an additional note, it is worth pointing out that this view that “creation” involves a God who who “shapes” and “organizes” and “brings coherence out of chaos” is widely known through the cultures of the Ancient Near East. We have numerous creation stories in other cultures (Egyptian, Canaanite, Babylonian) that have a very similar notion, and there is very solid linguistic evidence that the Genesis account is modeled on these others, or at least closely related to them.
The second translation issue is even more relevant to our present concerns about the development of the doctrine of the Trinity. When v. 2 says “The Spirit of God hovered over the water,” it is almost certainly not – in the Hebrew original – referring to a divine being “the Spirit.” The word in Hebrew, rûaḥ, principally means “breath” or “wind.” The passage is not talking about God’s Spirit hovering over the water; it appears to mean that God has sent a wind to drive back the water and/or dry some of it up – just as he does after Noah’s flood in Gen. 8:1 (same word), when he dries up the water that had killed everyone and kept the ark afloat.
The word rûaḥ was naturally translated in the Greek translation as pneuma, which also means “wind” or “breath,” and, like the Hebrew, can also come to mean “spirit.” The logic is that your “breath” is what makes your body alive, and we think of that as your “spirit.” That comes into English as well, in our term “inspiration” (related obviously to “spirit”); when in reference to a person or a writing, the term inspiration means that God has breathed into it, so that the words come from God.
In any event, the early Christians used the Septuagint (Greek translation of the OT). When they read that, they read that “God created the heavens and the earth.” Full stop. And that “Spirit of God” was involved with that creation. So you have God and you have his Spirit. They are not the same but are somehow closely related and both involved in creation.
Connect this to the fact that early Christians came to think that Christ was the one through whom God created all things. I’ll talk about what led them to think so in a subsequent post (spoiler alert: it has to do with Proverbs 8. Check it out!) But that means there were three divine beings there at the creation.
And for the Christians this was confirmed later in the same passage, when God says “Let us make man in our own image” (Gen. 1:26). Note: “us” and “our”! Plural. Who’s he talking to? Who else is back there with the creator God? For Christians: His Spirit and His Son! Whoa! The Trinity is already in Genesis 1!
At least for the Christians. Readers of the Hebrew Bible would never have thought that, or at least they never did.
I will have a lot more to say about the Spirit becoming part of the Trinity. It did not happen because of this passage. But once it happened, this passage was pulled into the discussion as “evidence.”
It’s rather amazing that so much of Christian doctrine seems to be based on misunderstandings and mistranslations. If “right doctrine” and “right understanding” are essential for salvation… ouch.
I understand that the verse should read, “In the beginning, when God began to create…” but I am confused as to how that means that there was already something there. It seems like if God began to create, it could still mean that he began to create from nothing. Maybe I’m missing something?
It’s because of what is said next. There is already a formless and void earth and waters, *before* he says “Let there be light.”
Yes. I see it now. I compared the NRSV with the NIV.
Sorry, Bart! I was asking about the complicated reasons scholars have to read the Genesid 1:1 as an introduction to the sentence (a subordinate clause). (And thus render it as: “When in the beginning, God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless and void and…”) Could you provide me a accessible source which lays out or gives a summary of these reasons? I’d like to read more about it.
I’m afraid I’m out of the country just now and not near any books. CAn anyone else help us out here? I bet the Jewish STudy Bible explains it. Try that?
I think “in the beginning” is the important term. Time begins when god starts creating. There wasn’t anything before that.
And the “waters” in includes the waters of the heavens – the spirit/breath/wind of god is over these waters – its not a natural phenomenon.
It appears there is already a formless and void earth there and waters, *before* he says “Let there be light. (If the waters are in the heavens, then the heavens exist before he created heaven)
In the beginning all that exists is the waters. God creates a firmament to split the waters and calls the firmament “heaven”. Then causes the water beneath heaven to be gathered to one place and the dry land that appears he calls “earth”.
So its the story of how god created the heavens and the earth from the waters. Its these waters that the spirit hovers over in the beginning.
(I think “the earth was formless and void” could just mean the earth hadn’t yet been formed)
I don’t think it can mean that. The earth exists; it simply doesn’t have any form. The image is of a lump of clay that has not yet been made into a cup or a vase or a plate.
Yes but the primordial substance is the waters and heaven and earth are formed from these waters. The spirit of god is hovering over this primordial substance before heaven and earth have been formed from it.
I want to ask why that because the earth is made out of pre existing materials why G could not have made these pre existing materials. Where have I read “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”? Can’t this expression apply here?
Oh, it doesn’t say that he didn’t make them. But when he *starts* creating he does so with what is there already. It doesn’t say that “he made the water and then he divided the water with a firmament”; the water is there when he creates the firmament. I know it sounds very weird, but the idea that God created EVERYTHING out of nothing is modern view. But it seems so natural to us that we assume the ancients thought like that too.
>It appears there is already a formless and void earth there and waters, *before* he says “Let there be
> light. (If the waters are in the heavens, then the heavens exist before he created heaven)
Genesis is a Creation and Flood Myth story derived from other religions that preceded it. Because there was a northern and a southern corpus Genesis has two versions of it. The Holy Spirit is essentially Cognate with Narayana. Now Narayana slept in the Waters of the Milky Way. God is essentially El who is cognate with Brahma.(there is also Brahman like Elohim) From the Navel of Narayana arose Brahma who is the Creator God who then Creates the World. El is married to Asherah or Athirath. (Thirth means water) Brahma is married to Saraswati who is a River.(thus Abraham and Sarah). El has a son, Baal and his wife is Anat. Baal means Son. Brahma’s son is Shiva aka Isha. Anat is Anahita.
Salvation comes through Trinity — All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
I would really like to see all the misinterpretations in the Septuagint which have influenced Christian thinking and practices. (In retrospect, “hovering” seems pretty lame to me.) Has anyone attempted to create an English version of the “Old Testament, “ as Christians know it, starting from the original Hebrew, with the interpretation of modern Jewish scholars? Even better would be a version which showed both the traditional and a modern Hebrew interpretation side by side for comparison.
I’m not sure if you’re asking about the Greek form of the text known to early Christians or the “original” Hebrew known to ancient Jews. We certainly have translations of the oldest form of the Greek OT available; and the problem is that we know know what the original Hebrew said since our manuscripts are so many centuries removed from it. We also don’t have original Jewish interpretations, since our earliest interpretations are from centuries after the originals had been in circulation for centuries. History is nothing if not frustrating….
Prior to Christianity, was there any reference to the “spirit of god” as a divine or semi-divine entity within Jewish or pagan writings? I was wondering if early Christians had a template for the holy spirit in the religious milieu of their time.
Yes, the spirit of God does show up, since it’s already in the Hebrew BIble.
I’ve been reading “Escaping from Eden” by Paul Wallis which is not even close to the caliber of your books but still it has some interesting theories. Without getting into a long description of it, I was wondering if you’ve read or heard of it. Also I would really like to hear your thoughts on some of the ideas presented in the book and if you think he makes a ‘good case’.
No, I’m afraid I haven’t.
Well, I’ve recently heard of him and yes I agree…very interesting theories. For some reason, these ideas seem to get shunned. They certainly make sense to me. How can we say for certain that this overlay or perspective of Scripture is irrelevant. We speak of the supernatural in Scripture all the time! Heaven, resurrection, afterlife, immaculate conception, etc. It seems to all fit the narrative. I can go on about the study of NDE’s, parallel universe, etc. but I’ll stop here.
I guess, with our linear minds, we implicitly think of the “beginning” as a “point in time”, or “a point when time began”, however “in the beginning” could also be interpreted of as a (non-linear) “process” with an indistinct point of initiation. It would seem to accord with the idea that there was already pre-existing stuff there, ready to be formed. Is that a possible reading of the Hebrew text?
Yes, it’s not clear that they author is thinking of teh very beginning of all things, a creation that happened starting in one particular split second. But it sure doesn’t look like it.
Bart: “In the beginning, when God began to create…” is almost certainly what the Hebrew means, as Jewish and Christian scholars of Hebrew now widely recognize. It is not a new realization: Jewish scholars in the Middle Ages already knew that.”
This reading of Genesis is already implicit in the view of Beit Shammai as cited in the Talmud (heavens created first on Day Two). A case can also be made that this reading underlies the prologue of the gospel of John (word = light). The meaning of even the very first word of the bible is strongly disputed. So much for biblical inerrancy!
Bart: “I have never written about the place of the Holy Spirit in the Trinity in any context, not on the blog, not in any book or article. I’ve never even lectured on it. That may seem weird, but in fact, the discussion of the Holy Spirit in scholarship is quite sparse in comparison with the discussion of the Father and Son.”
Stephen, one of our original members who is extremely well-read and very active on the Readers Forum, has long been seeking an in-depth treatment of this very topic. So don’t hold back!
I”m goin’ for it soon on the blog; well, maybe a half dozen posts or so….
I have a question regarding Elohim. Is it an actual plurality or can it also be a majestic plurality?
If only the former, how do we explain Exodus 7:1? Is Moses a plural entity?
It is a plural form and is used to refer to “gods,” but most often it is singular; it’s debated whether it is to suggest majesty of somethihng else.
Plurals, of course, differ in a lot of ways from language to language. I have been informed that “sky” is plural in Hebrew — that you would say “the skies are blue”, not “the sky is blue”. All the more reason why it is somewhat rash to seek metaphysical explanations where linguistic ones may suffice.
Your blog reminded me of something I think I heard from your lectures “After the New Testament: The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers” that early Christians claimed Plato copied from the writings of Moses. It obviously wasn’t based on this writing or interpretation, but, it seems like Plato’s concept of creation fits with your interpretation of Genesis… What do you think?
I read that Plato thought there were aspatial and atemporal blueprints or “Forms” of perfection, as well as, pre-existent matter. And, his creator used these forms as a model to shape matter into this phenomenal world full of beautiful things that were good, in order to mimic the nominal world. And, I remember hearing Dr Phillip Cary mention that the beautiful things in Life are good, but they are temporal, a lower scale of good that will not fulfill us, as the supreme goodness of Wisdom… Proverbs 8.
So, did Christianity borrow from Plato who borrowed from Moses? … wherever those writings was borrowed from. Lol
No, I don’t think Plato’s understanding of creation matches that of Genesis well. The best way to see how radically different they are: read Genesis 1-3 and then read the Timaeus!
We see the Holy Spirit descending on the apostles in Acts, Where does that fit in the time line? We also see it with some Saints and even in Conformation.
I’ll be dealing with that eventually in the thread.
The Christian Holy Spirit seems to share much in common with the Medieval Jewish concept of the Shekinah – namely, the part of God’s presence that is active in our mundane world. Do you see any evidence of possible cross-cultural influence either way?
I don’t know the scholarship on it, but I do know some have thought about the connections.
Dear Bart, could you refer to an (comparatively easily) accessible source for these “complicated reasons”? I’d like to read more about it.
Sorry: when I get a comment I don’t also get the part of a post you’re asking about. So I don’t know which complicated reasons you’re referring to.
I had a guess as to why the Holy Spirit was needed to complete the Christian godhead.
Everyone understand how *one* fits in when talking about gods–a single chief god in a pantheon is well understood. But Christians have to find a place for Jesus and are determined to have him be on equal footing with God, that makes two gods … but *two* obviously refers to a king and consort, which is very much *not* where Christians were going with God and Jesus. Personifying the Holy Spirit to make three would cast a new mold for this new godhead thinking and avoid the problems with *two* gods.
Thoughts? The Holy Spirit as an equal member of the Trinity has always seemed a stretch to me.
(Aside: have you read/watched “Cold Comfort Farm”? The father is a fire and brimstone preacher on Sundays [“There’ll be no butter in Hell!”] and eventually takes his evangelism on the road. He noted that God the Father has a book–the Old Testament. And God the Son has a book–the New Testament. What about the Holy Spirit? Doesn’t he get a book? IIRC, the father hopes to write that one himself.)
Interesting idea. I think the response someone might raise is that we have no record of “consort” language but always “father-son” language, from the outset, based on ancient Israelite notions of God “adopting” a king to be his son. Later in this thread I’ll be getting to the Spirit, at least as I see it. Interesting about OT/NT. But a bit weird that the preacher thinks the NT is the Son’s book and not the Father’s….
I don’t believe the trinity is a blueprint for a complex god. I see the trinity as an expression of our relationship to god. I believe Jesus’s ministry was to bring the spirit back into the laws of Moses. He did not abandon the law but advanced the spirit of the law as opposed to the rigid compliance of the pharisees and sadducees. As such the trinity expresses my growth in life. From following the rules of god as a child to expressing the spirit of god’s intent as an adult.
I have noticed that you really don’t cover the holy spirit or the Trinity for that matter in any of your written work. I have long to ask you about the history of the Trinity. So as you put it, when father and son was worked out having the spirit as a third element was not problematic, then why wasn’t it covered in the council of Nicaea? My main question is did the members of the council of Nicaea knew of the Holy Spirit or was that a later idea Incorporated into the faith?
Yes, I cover the Trinity in my book How Jesus Became God. Nicea was concerned about the relation of the father and son in light of the ARrian controversy; it wasn’t a council called to deal with all the problems. I’ll be getting into how the Spirit got into the mix in later posts.
I wonder why the church stopped at three? Couldn’t the Bible be the forth person of the trinity? Or some other non-material, invisible, weightless, odorless, incorporeal “mind”? If to Christians this proposal seems like science fiction, they will understand why going from monotheism, to duo-theism, to tritheism seems to skeptics to be sci-fi as well.
Incidentally, Dr. Bruce Waltke (Regent College, 1981) taught Gen. 1:1 was a chapter heading.
Thanks for your scholarship, Dr. E.
I guest because the Bible was not thought to be an active divine force in antiquity, or ever as part of God.
Personally I believe there is nothing easy or accidental at how Christianity added a third personage to form a triune image of God since the number 3 was held in high regard in both religious and philosophical thought before the foundation of the Catholic Church. 3 denoting perfection, 3 levels of existence, 3 parts of man.
Wait… Y’all have lost me. In framing our interpretation of the Genesis account of creation, it seems are we all subscribing to the inerrancy of the Scripture. Could it not be that what we read in the creation story is a tale passed on orally through many generations, perhaps not as an accurate account of how creation occurred as much as a testimony to the glorious presence of the Creator in the act of creating?
PS: Believing in the Bible as a Christian and interpreting its text as a Post-Modernist is a tough row to hoe.
I can assure you, I”m not affirming the inerrancy of Scripture. :-). I’m dealing with the question of where later Christians came up with the idea that there was a “Holy Spirit” who was part of a Trinity, and I’m arguing that it goes all the way back to Genesis 1. I certainly don’t think the account is historically or scientifically anywhere near accurate, in terms of what happened.
Dr. Ehrman
Was the concept of trinity invented by early Christians or could one trace it back to triads of gods in mythology ? there have been triple dieties, triplicates and even one god or one goddess in three forms such as Hecate in ancient Greece or Qetesh in near east. From there was it one small step or one giant leap to conceive the idea of trinity?or do you see any connection at all?
I think it was a purely internal development, rooted in the need to see the Son, and then the Spirit, as fully divine, and yet there being only one God.
It appears some NT writers presupposed with minimal elaborate that the Spirit is a separate entity. Yet post-Rabbinic Judaism was firmly unitarian. Could this difference be partly due their respective reliance on Septuagint (which lent a reading of the Spirit as a separate individual) versus the Hebrew Bible?
I think it was more teh experience of the Spirit in the early Christian communities (as I’ll be explaining in other posts)
My interest in this issue, Holy Spirit and Trinity, was the frequency of the phrase Holy Spirit in the Dead Sea Scrolls and not in the Bible. The question being whether Holy Spirit as understood in the Qumran tradition affected its inclusion in Christianity?
I don’t believe there’s much evidence that early Christians were directly influenced by the writings or beliefs of Qumran, no.
I remember from conversations I had when I was a resident in a conservative Bible college that students there were taught the polemic theory of Genesis 1: that the author made intentional allusions to creation myths of surrounding cultures precisely in order to draw a contrast with them and emphasise that other people’s gods are mere created things.
Recently I looked up the college website. There’s only one member of staff I recognise and he was a student in my day…
I know this is more of a theological question but what even is the point of the Holy Spirit (beyond helping out in the formation of the universe) in Christianity? What does the Holy Spirit do after that that either God the Father or Jesus don’t already do? Jesus has the job of being the incarnation, the atonement, and a model for how humans should live; God the Father (as far as I know) is an immortal spirit already, so why does a spirit need a spirit/breath? It just seems like the Holy Spirit is redundant and without any unique purpose or function not already being done by the other two.
In fact if Jesus could do everything it seems like God the Father himself is redundant and Jesus could be governing the universe, even when he’s on the cross or in the tomb.
In tradition Christian thinking the Spirit is the person of the divinity who is here with God’s people now, helping and guiding them in the time before teh Son returns and establishes God’s kindom on earth.
There was no “point long, long before the creation of the universe” (or for that matter, even one shortly before) where anyone or anything at all could have “been brought into being by God.”
God, whether irreducibly singular or comprised of distinguishable persons, exists in the timeless, perpetual now of spiritual eternity.
Time is an integral attribute of the physical plane of existence. Indeed, time and space — and all that both contain — are of a piece, the inseparable yin and yang components of the material universe.
While Frank Sinatra undoubtedly had stars in his eyes about love and marriage, Albert Einstein was spot-on about space and time — you can’t have one without the other. For that very reason physics no longer regards them as separate, but as the unified concept of “space-time.”
Of course, Arius couldn’t have known this sixteen centuries ago. But we have for more than a century now.
Though this Genesis translation is bad news for ex nihilo creation, it eliminates two, longstanding, theological difficulties. First, it simultaneously allows for both a sequence of events (by definition temporal) AND the timelessness of a spiritual eternity. Second, it avoids the “Infinite Regress” conundrum, rendering moot the patently self-contradictory “Uncaused Cause” rationalization.
Taking spiritual and material planes to be co-eternal is a kind of pan(en)theistic theology that does require jettisoning Yahweh (good riddance IMHO), but also blunts Occam’s Razor as an easy, atheist rejoinder.
It merely abandons the god of a primitive, animal-sacrifice cult, recognizing that the physical matter — into some, small fraction of which the one, true God breathes life — are the yin and yang of existence, complimentary halves of an eternal whole. “Till we find our place on the path unwinding in the circle of life.”
And it clarifies what the Word the Father sent into this world meant by: “It is I who am the light over all. It is I who am the entirety: it is from me that the entirety has come, and to me that the entirety goes. Split a piece of wood: I am there. Lift a stone, and you will find me there.”
In a book about western philosophy entitled The Passion of the Western Mind the author Richard Tarnas claims that the Trinity was a rather ingenious invention by what would become the orthodox Christian tradition because while it maintained its monotheistic connection with the Hebrew religious tradition, the Trinity also introduced a sense of plurality in the notion of God which would appeal to the mostly polytheistic Roman world. Although Tarnas’ claim was rather bald since it didn’t come with any evidential support, I nevertheless found the idea interesting since it suggested that Christianity to some extent fashioned doctrines because it served their evangelistic purposes. Do you think there is any plausibility to this suggestion?
Yeah, I think it’s plausible on the whole — but I would not say it was a calculated decision so much as a fairly natural outgrowth of competing views. Since *everyone* had the idea that divinity was multiple in some sense (even Jews) it was not a problem to think of the Xn God as multiple, but with a very distinct twist, that God is one…
Does the concept of the Holy Spirit show up in other belief systems, including the ANE, where it would have been adapted to fit the Christian theological framework? For instance, Zoroastrianism has Spenta Mainyu and Hinduism has the Atman, which reflects the “divine spark” that is in us all as human beings. It seems like the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost is an echo of this same concept in Christian ideology.
No, nothing like the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity.
Dear Ehrman,
Do you think the Apostles believed that the Holy Spirit was God? (As in the Trinity. Jesus and the Holy Spirit are God.) Or did they view the Holy Spirit differently?
Kind regards.
They certainly didn’t have a doctrine of the Trinity. It’s hard to know waht they thought about the Spirit — it appears a good deal in the OT and they had records of Jesus speaking about it. My sense is that they thought it was some kind of manifestation of God sent from God here to earth as his messenger and agent, but they certainly hadn’t delved into the theological complicatoins that posed (just as most people today haven’t)
I haven’t heard many discussions over this topic, but is the Holy Spirit typically considered to be referred to as a woman or as a man? Apparently, Hebrew uses the feminine pronouns and Greek uses the masculine.
The Greek uses both neuter and masculine pronounce, usually the former (since in Greek “PNEUMA” — i.e., “spirit” — is neuter in grammatical gender). Normally I think people call the Spirit an “it” rather than a “he” or “she.” If they do use a gendered pronoun, it’s almost always “he”.
Was Tertullian or any early church member aware that the Trinity doctrine was a paradox?
If so, I would assume that they acknowledged that even paradoxes can be true and continued proposing the Trinity.
Oh yes, Tertullian was very big on paradoxes. His most famous is that he claimed to believe precisely *because” it was foolish.