One of the things that it is very difficult for people to understand is the
notion of the fall the idea that humans, that the world, that creation
is somehow fallen. It's very difficult for second people to understand that. But
I do believe in fact that people experience that every day and that it is
in fact the idea of being fallen is in fact deeply knitted into the very
structure of their experience, everyday experience. You know, even in their own
criticism of religion, this structure of fallenness is inserted. It's what I want
to do is I want to look at all of that, think about it,
and hopefully give you some examples that will help you understand why we talk
about the notion that creation, that humans are fallen, and what that means.
This is Jonathan Pejel. Welcome to the Symbolic World. And so if
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One of the issues of the Fall, one of the things that makes it
difficult for people to understand what the fall is is a criticism that I brought
to many of the secularists is that in some ways they struggle to see their
position, they struggle to see where they are, and you know, and
you see that, for example, in the Enlightenment. You can see that
in Voltaire's criticism of Christianity. In some ways he criticizes Christianity for not doing
what he thinks that should be done, for not doing the good that he
thinks that should be done. And he sees the Enlightenment and kind of enlightenment,
the movement towards Enlightenment, as doing the good things in the world that
should be done. Now, the problem with that type of thinking is that
if you say that, you nonetheless have this sense that there's a gap,
that there's a gap between what you think should be and what is in the
world. And that gap is very particular, it's very strange because if the
world is fallen, like I mean not even I won't use the word falling.
Yet, if the world is meaningless, if the world doesn't have telos,
if the world isn't bound in higher intelligence and purpose and reason, then
where does the gap come from? Why do we have this sense of the
distance? Now, on the other hand, if on the opposite side,
if the world is created by God, by a loving God, and you
know that it is full of meaning and tailors and purpose, then why is
there a gap? Then? You know? And this is of course something
which can be explained by the notion of the fall. Now, the Gnostics,
they perceive that, right. You can see that in gnostic heresies,
in gnostic thinking, where people notice the difference between what they think they should
be and their current state, and so what they have to posit is that
the world itself is born in some evil, that creation itself is evil,
that the world itself is intrinsically fallen, and that we have to escape the
world into some higher sphere, to some spiritual state in order to be able
to escape the reality of the world. Now, this of course is also
a problem, because then why does the world exist, So you have to
posit that the world is evil in itself, and that the cause of the
world, you know, wherever it is. If you imagine some dark you
know fall in God is the cause of the world. But you still keep
putting the problem further back. At some point there has to be some kind
of cosmic faull which accounts for the gap. Now, can the God only
be evil and this is something that you can see, or can the world
just be dark, meaningless and without purpose? And that again that causes the
problem that I mentioned at the outset, which is if so, then where
does our moral sense come from? If the origin of all things is simply
dark and you know, nihilistic ultimately or evil or either way you want to
think about it, then where does our sense that something is wrong and that
we should do good? Where does our capacity to judge morally come from?
This, of course, is the problem with Voltaire himself. This is what
Tom Holland has pointed out in his book Dominion that ultimately what Voltaire does is
he does a Christian criticism of Christianity. He has kind of taken for granted
Christian point of view and criticizes Christianity with it, and so we have to
be able to account for this gap. Now, this is really a good
way to understand it. Now, if people struggle to go with the story
of the fall of Adam Adam and either we find in scripture or the fall
of the Angel, that we find in more kind of extra biblical sources as
the cause for the gap and a way to enter into an explanation of the
gap, then you nonetheless have to account for that gap. And this is
a serious problem. You have to be able to understand why it is that
we experience the difference. Now, a good way to understand it is that
in terms of our existence, our existence is bound in purpose. This is
something that we've been talking about all the time, like what Jordan Peterson talks
about the idea that and I've talked about this myself, and John Dravaki talks
about this, which is, you know, this Cogsi idea that what you
see in the world are purposes, like what you see in the worlds are
paths towards action, and so every identity that you perceive is put into a
hierarchy of identity and a hierarchy of purpose, and things appear as obstacles or
tools in order to get to your purpose. And so the very structure of
the way reality presents itself seems to have at least the possibility of the fall
in it. And what do I mean by that? What I mean is
that if we see the world in telos, if we see the world through
purposes, that is, you know, I have certain purposes that are important
to me as a human and I establish my map of the world the identities
that I perceive in that hierarchy. First of all, then all my perceptions,
all my identities are participating in the sense of distance from purpose. And
so you can see how that is akin to the fall, which is the
perception that there is a gap between my state and the state that I want
to be. And this is of course what Dante describes in The Divine Comedy,
the way that even classical philosophers talk about the relationship the motor of aeros,
right, the motor of desire, which moves us in our lack towards
the tellos that presents itself to us, and we find rest in that movement.
So, of course it sounds very abstract at the outset, but it's
very very practical, which is that you know I have to go to the
store to go shopping. I see the door, and now I experience the
my I experience my purpose as a kind of suffering. That is a very
small suffering, but it's a suffering that is in the sense that I am
now not in line with my purpose. I have to cover the gap between
what it is that I'm aiming at in my current state. And you can
say that that is a definition of suffering because you are not in your control
of the situation, right the aim that you have is not manifested in the
world. There's a gap between that, so you suffer and that suffering.
It's a very small suffering, but it is a suffering of desire that if
I suffer my distance from the door, and now I move towards the door,
and once I reach the door, then I am absolved, like I
am healed. I find rest from that suffering. Now, of course,
that suffering, you could say, or that desire is embedded in more and
more desires, so that you know, I'm always kind of moving from purpose
and tailos and desire into other purposes and tailos and desires, and so our
very perception of reality and our very engagement with reality seems to account for the
gap that's distanced between my state and the state that I'm looking for now.
Of course, we can see that in a proximal way, right, which
is, you know, I need to go to the store, and then
I have this this little process of that'say, covering the fall and moving towards
the light, moving towards the reason, and then finding rest in that in
that purpose. But of course, uh, you know, all of these
are you can also see it in a more kind of abstract way, which
is, what is the purpose of my life? What is the purpose of
my you know, you know, the purpose of my job? You know,
is it just to make money? But then why am I making money
if it's you know, if I if I want to have pleasure, but
then that pleasure is serving what purpose exactly? There seems to be something in
us which is constantly let's say, yearning, and so you could describe it
in many ways. You can talk about the whole, the God's shaped hole
in the human being, and that God shaped hole is that gap. It's
the gap between the good that I perceive, even in intimation, these higher
goods that I perceive, and my state of distance between the two. Now,
the story of Genesis is in my you know, opinion, is in
my perception. The best way to understand this gap, you know, because
it is to become conscious of the distance. You could say that the knowledge
of good and evil is in some ways to become conscious of your existence and
a kind of duality of inside and outside, a duality of me and the
purpose. There's this duality of the fact that I see the good and identify
myself in the place of bad, and now I have, all of a
sudden, I'm in this weird position where I have to cover that distance.
And so this it's the act of self consciousness itself, which is related to
this problem of all of a sudden seeing myself and seeing my distance to the
good that I am, that I'm pursuing. And so the description of one
of the facets of the description of the fall in Genesis is related to the
very, very desire to explain that distance within us and to make it and
to help people understand that. It's related to self consciousness, it's related to
duality. It's related to the perception of good purpose tellos reason and bad,
which is distant sinfulness, you know, the the missing the mark being far
from the mark, being far from the thing then that I'm aiming at,
right, it's the distance between the two. And this is of course exactly
describing Genesis. Now the question is how do you cover the gap? And
this is of course what Christ comes to show us. But it's not a
very pleasant one. At least that the outset it doesn't seem very pleasant.
Is that in some ways we have to say yes to the dying. We
have to say yes to the state of death that we're in. Yes in
the sense that we have to die on purpose instead of dying per in,
you know, on act accident. We have to sacrifice everything towards the aim
that we have, and that in that sacrifice, the suffering will become more
than suffering. It will be a kind of attractor, a kind of thing
that sucks us into the good that we're aiming at, and we will find
a type of joy in the suffering, not a kind of masochism, not
an enjoying of the suffering, but a joy in knowing that we suffer in
order to come closer to the purpose that we're aiming at. And that definitely
seems to be the path that Christ takes and the path of the martyr.
You could say, of course, the martyr is an extreme version where all
of a sudden the martyr has to issue all their proximal goals. All there's
little goals, right, the goal of feeling my belly, the goal of
having a family, the goal of doing this and that, and they end
up, let's say, being willing to suffer all the lack of those little
goals in order to be able to reach the highest purpose. You know.
And then you realize that once you realize that, you realize that you do
that all the time. Actually that in fact, that structure of being willing
to suffer in purpose towards proximal goals, it's something you do, right that
people who train, or people who learn to write, or people who learn
anything. When you're learning, you are suffering. I mean, it's we
have to be careful how we take this suffering in the sense that we are
sacrificing our time and energy, and there's a kind of a pain that is
submitted to a higher purpose. But if we know what the higher purpose is
and we're moving in that higher purpose, you know, with a kind of
consciousness of our situation, which is a consciousness of the distance between the two.
Then that suffering can be a kind of joy, and even the discipline
of learning something, the kind of sacrifice that you put into the higher things
can become a type of like a type of glory and a type of joy.
And that's what we ultimately see, of course in the Martyr as the
ultimate example, which is everything, his whole life, everything about them.
They're willing to sacrifice and to give up all these proximal goals in order to
look at the highest goal. And you could say that in the Fall of
the Garden of Eden, this is particularly true because Adam and Eve, when
they eat the fruit of the Knowledge of good and evil, they have access
to the tree of life, and so they perceive far more before they ate
the fruit. You know, it's like they couldn't see the tree of life.
This is of course the way it's presented in sant Ephraim, the Siring
especially. You know that it was a kind of barrier for the tree of
life. And once they took the apple of the knowledge of good and evil,
then they saw the good, and then they saw it from the position
of distance, and then had to cover that distance in pain. And they
refuse us to suffer. They refuse to die at that moment, and that
brought about the entire loop of human history and everything about it. But Jesus
seems to show us a different way. But for sure, what's important to
understand is that they the image of the fall. Of course, there's a
moral element to it, you know, because we usually experience that in morality
terms, like we see the good that we want to do, and then
we realize that we're not doing it, and we see the consequences of not
doing it, and so we suffer from our sinfulness because we can't get to
the good we want, you know. But this is true of everything.
It's not just true of moral questions. It's true of all aspects of moving
towards purpose. Every time you move towards purpose, you will have that problem
of the gap between where I want to go and where I am. And
no matter how much of a secular risk you are, even if you refuse
to accept the story version, the mythological imagery and the image of the falling
of the angels because of pride, the image of the taking of the fruit
for wheneself, you still have to be able to account for that, and
then that causes a problem because usually what happens when people don't try to account
for it is they end up being a kind of critic of religion, critic
of Christianity, you know, a critic of the religious aspect or moralistic aspect
of the world while ignoring their own position, not knowing that they are unconsciously
perceiving that good that's calling them, and they're using the light of that good
to criticize the failures of the current the current models. But then they don't
try to account for that, and they don't try to make it part of
their worldview, and they don't have a way to make it part of their
worldview. Because if we're just a bunch of random, you know whatever,
particles hitting each other and there is no sense that there is a structural relationship
between our state and what we're perceiving is being good, then yeah, then
we're deluting ourselves. And so I know this was a little difficult, but
I've been thinking about this for a long time, So please tell me if
if this is clear in the comment section. I would love to see what
your thoughts are, because I'm trying to refine this argument obviously, and then
hopefully you know, if there are ways to improve what I'm saying. I
will try to take another path of this and try to get it even clearer
and better. But I'm really on the edge of my thinking with this.
This is this is really kind of pushing my thinking as hard as I can,
and you know, as much to the edge as what as what I
can. And so I thank you for your attention, I thank you for
your support, and I will talk to all of you very soon, bybye.
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