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Speaker 1: As you say, those are patterns that are there in

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life as well as in the text. And part of

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the value of recognizing the Bible is it illumines those

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life patterns. We can we can begin to see the

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movement of our lives through these Bible eyes.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think that that, to me has

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been the most crucial thing. You know, a lot of

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the things that I do is to help people see

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how the Bible, in some ways is the truest version

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of a pattern that fills everything. You know, it's not

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it's you know, it's actually the pattern of creation itself.

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It's the pattern that God created the world with, and

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therefore it can be found in all things, but in

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scripture definitely it appears in this most pristine form. So

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in some ways it's a it's like a tuning fork,

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even beyond even just the morality, because we often think

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of the Bible as just offering us moral codes. But

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beyond the morality, it's a structural tuning fork for for

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our lives.

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Speaker 3: This is Jonathan Pejol Welcome to the symbolic World.

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Speaker 2: Hello everyone, I am here with Peter Lightheart. I think

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most of you who are watching this will know who

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he is. Peter is the president of the Theopolis Institute.

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He's also written number amounts of books. You know, he's

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been in ministry also for most of his life. And

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so those of you have seen that I've already interviewed

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someone from Theopolis. And what you don't know is that

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one of the very first public discussions that I had,

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I went to the University of Toronto. Someone came right

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up to me. His name is Berl Herniachek, great, great guy.

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He gave me a book by James Jordan called Through

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New Eyes and I never heard of this whole strain

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in kind of Protestant thinking.

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Speaker 3: And I explored some.

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Speaker 2: Of the images, and I thought it was very beautiful

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to see this powerful plunging into the worldview of the

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Bible and kind of taking very seriously all the analogy

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and the typology. And it was similar to the things

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that I cared about. And so I thought it'd be

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a great, great way to continue the discussion with Peter.

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And so thanks thanks for talking to me.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for having me. Jonathan. It's a pleasure to

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meet you and to have a chance to talk to you.

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Speaker 2: So tell me a bit about the origin of Theopolis

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and kind of what the mission of your institution is.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, well you pinpointed a key origin, and that's James Jordan.

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Jim ran a ministry called Biblical Horizons in the Panhandle,

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Florida for many years. I was part of a group

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that did an annual conference for about twenty five years

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down in the Panhandle of Florida, and we explored the Bible.

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We did a lot of work on obscure passages of

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the Bible. We did a lot of work on the

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levitical sacrifices, and on the Temple and Tabernacle. Jim was

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very fascinated by the temple visions of Ezekiel, and so

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he gave lectures on that. Worked together for twenty five years.

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It dawned on me in my mid fifties that we

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were all getting old and we had no institutional setup

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to enable our work to last beyond our lifetimes. Biblical Horizons,

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Jim's organization, was set up as a way for him

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to do his writing and teaching, but theopolos was set

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up in order to capture and then expand on and

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perpetuate what we had done in biblic Horizons. And that's

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a key theme of Theopolis, and that is the trying

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to deepen a Christian's understanding of Scripture. We have various programs.

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Our key program is a fellowship program where pastors and

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seminary students, people who aspired to church leadership go through

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the program, and it's a largely a Bible program. The

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other aspect of it has been a liturgical effort. Jim

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Jordan again is the inspiration for this. When he was

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in Texas many years ago, he started reading writers outside

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of our Reformed Protestant tradition, like Alexander Schmmann, Russian Orthodox writer,

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Jean Donielou Roman Catholic, on Rey de lou Back another

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Roman Catholic, and we started thinking through liturgical issues, still

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within the framework of a Reform Protestant understanding of worship,

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but with these other more Catholic influences. So the one

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part of Theopolis's liturgical theology, so Biblical liturgical theology are

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the two primary things. And our conviction is that the

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Church exists to be to provide living waters for the world.

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The image of Eden, where you've got the garden of

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Eden with waters flowing from it, that image of a

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place of God's presence with waters flowing out that's picked

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up in the temple, it's picked up in Ezekiel's vision

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of the temple. That's the vision that we have for mission.

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But it starts with what happens in the sanctuary. It

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starts with worship. It starts with our understanding of scripture.

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And when we are deeply grounded in scripture, and when

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we're embracing the beauty and the richness of the Bible,

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of worshiping faithfully gathering around the Lord's table, then churches

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of that sort provide living waters that renew the world.

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So that's the basic vision of the Outlus.

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Speaker 2: I like you to take me back to the first moments,

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these first discussions we were having with James Jordan and

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yourself and kind of discovering. Maybe take me back to

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how I don't know how it felt or what it

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is that you were experiencing discovering all of this, Like

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was it a kind of archaeology where you were finding

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it from the text themselves or was there reading you know,

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church fathers or rabbinical writers.

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Speaker 3: Like this, What was the bubbling?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, there were a lot of different influences, some from

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the church fathers, not primarily I don't think, and there

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were some for mother contemporary scholars. I would say again

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that Jim was the main inspiration. He has a has

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a as a biblical imagination that I think is unparalleled,

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and so he was inspiring a lot of our interest

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in it, and we got we got attached to him,

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and we started kind of looking over his shoulder as

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he was reading the Bible, trying to figure out how

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he was doing it, uh, and trying to imitate what

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he was doing.

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Speaker 2: Uh.

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Speaker 1: And then you know, over the over the course of

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a couple of decades, you have a small group of

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teachers that are working together, and we almost developed a

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single mind. We're thinking about the Bible in similar ways.

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We can almost finish each other's sentences. When we, you know,

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make a little, a little passing comment about a passage,

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then we know where it's going to run after that,

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because we're all been working together for so long. But yeah,

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it was it was really more what you called archaeological.

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We're trying to figure out what the text means. Our

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premise are, our beginning, Our beginning premise was, as Jim

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Jim likes to say, the spirit does not waste his breath.

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The scriptures are inspired by the Holy Spirit of God,

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and there's nothing in there that's extraneous. So even the

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things that seem like you could just dispense with them

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are therefore reason. And so coming to the text with

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that conviction, I think that was that's really the basic

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premise of what we were trying to do.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you mentioned going into the difficult texts, you know,

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and that really is in some ways the tests. And

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I understand that like some of the texts in Leviticus,

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you know, some of the stories and Judges, all of

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these maybe tell us one of the moments where you've

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had an insight where you just a story that just

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made no sense, or something that looked completely random or arbitrary,

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and then suddenly that connection. You know you I've experienced

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it too, But I love.

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Speaker 3: Hearing about that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think probably in the Book of Judges

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would be a good place to think about, because one

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of Jim's early works was a commentary in the Book

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of Judges, and so he's a he's favorable to the Judges.

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He thinks of them as Christian heroes, not flawless heroes.

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But Hebrews eleven, the Great List of the Faithful from

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the Old Covenant that includes a number of the Judges.

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So even people like Jeff, whom we think of his

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primarily think of somebody who made a rash vow and

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perhaps sacrificed his daughter. Yeah, he's listed in Hebrews eleven

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as one of the heroes of the faith. So it

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was a there's things in the Judges and one of

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the one of the things that really more of a

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pattern than something that's a single episode, but it's a

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recurring pattern that occurs not only in Judges, but in

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other parts of the Old Testament. You have people who

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are killed by massive head trauma. You have Sisera who

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goes into the tent of jail. She puts him to

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sleep and then pounds a tent bake through his head.

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A couple chapters later, you have a Bimlak who is

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the son of Gideon, and he's attacking a tower and

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a woman tosses a millstone from the top of the

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tower and it crushes his head. You move into First

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Samuel and you have David doing the same thing to Goliath.

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You have these head crushing moments that once you see

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a few of them line up, then you think this,

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this is this is deliberate. There's something going on here.

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And the obvious thing is that that goes back to

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the promise of Genesis three that the Lord is going

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to give to the woman the seed of the woman

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who's going to crush the serpent's head. And so you

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have this recurring theme of head crushing events that that

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was that that's that's a theme where you have, you know,

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an odd way to die that doesn't happen a lot,

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but it seemed to happen awful lot in Bible times

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that people died by massive head trauma. I guess you know,

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something like Leviticus. The things that the things that have

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come home to me are things like, uh, just the

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structure of sacrifice. I puzzled over that. I'm currently writing

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a commentary on Leviticus, and I puzzled over sacrifice for

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a long time. And I suspect it's true generally in Christianity,

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certainly among Protestants, that what we reckon, what we notice

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in the sacrifices is the is the violence of killing.

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You have an animal that's alive in the slice its

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throat and drain out its blood, and then you put

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it on the altar and it looks like a straightforward

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enactment of the cross or prefiguration of the Cross, where

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you have some substitute, some representative dying on behalf of

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the sin. But the recognizing that there's a that's just

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one moment of sacrifice, and recognizing that sacrifice is both

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death and transfiguration, and that the movement is through death

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to transfiguration and glorification. Recognizing that movement of sacrifice was

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what has been a key moment. And if I could

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mention one other thing, one other maybe a good example.

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What Jim I think taught us to do was to

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recognize that the odd details fit into sequences and patterns

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and storylines. So there's this really strange moment after Jacob

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has left Laban's house, Laban's caught up to him. Laban

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didn't want him, Laban has been abusing him for years,

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but now once she's left, Laban doesn't want him to

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leave because he knows he's Laban's been prospering because Jacob's

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been there, and so he catches up with them and

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he says, my household gods, You've got my household gods.

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And they are there, but they're under saddle, and rage

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is sitting on them, and she claims to be having

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her period. Odd little moments says something about the power

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of those gods that they can't even you know, push

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a woman off of them. They can't make any noise,

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they can't say help, help, I'm you know, Rachel sitting

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on me. I'm over here, I'm over here, Laban. But

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it's also an act of humiliation of the gods. And

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once you put it in that context, then you see

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it's part of an Exodus storyline that runs constantly through

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the Bible. You have it in that story where you

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have David Jacob Rother departing from a land of oppression.

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The oppressor chases him down and tries to capture him.

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The gods of the gods of the oppressor are being humiliated,

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and then Jacob goes on and re enters the land,

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and there's a conclusion to that as a re entry

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in the land. The same thing happens in the Big Exodus.

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In the Book of Exodus, a lot of the plagues

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are directed against gods of Egypt. Isaiah is full of

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this when it talks about the great Second Exodus out

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of Babylon and all of the humiliation of the gods.

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He's mocking the gods. Israel still worships idols, and they

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don't realize that they're carving an image out of wood,

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and then they're burning the rest of the wood for

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their to warm themselves and to cook their food. So

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the humiliation of the humiliation of the idols is a

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recurrent theme, but it seems like an odd little detail

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until you see it in that kind of sequence.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I've definitely thought a lot about that story.

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But I am kind of like you when I see

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stories look completely crazy in the Bible, Like I just

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get fixated on them, and I'm just trying to like,

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why is this year, Like why do they mention it?

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You know what, why is this detail worthy of mention

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in the story?

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Speaker 1: You know?

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Speaker 2: And I definitely also in terms of this particular story,

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there seems to be a relationship also with the idea

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that Rachel is bringing back the residues of this world

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into into Israel, and that this is actually related to

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menstruation as well, like it's kind of residue of the

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cycle that it's being carried into the into the land,

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and that will in some ways have repercussions later in

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the story. Of Israel in terms of not destroying the

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old gods and kind of keeping the you know, keeping

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the old things that you should have left behind, you know, right.

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Speaker 1: That's that's a great point once they get into the

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land Jacob Pilsen to put away the gods that they

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brought out of Heron. So there is a moment of repentance,

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but that's that is a recurring thing. Of course, you

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get all the way to the end of Joshua, and

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Joshua in his in his farewell speech to Israel tells them,

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reminds them that they worshiped idols not only in Er

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where Abraham came from, but they also worshiped hotels in Egypt.

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And I think that's the first time we have an

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explicit statement about Israel had succumbed to the Egyptian idols.

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But it's all the way until you know, the conquest

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is over now and they're still clinging to those old gods.

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So yeah, that is definitely a part of the story

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of Rachel.

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Speaker 2: And so I think one of the interesting things, and

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maybe you can comment on this and tell me what

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you think, is that there's a strange moment where, you know,

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if we look at some of the more materialistic approaches

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to reading scripture, like nineteenth century type academics, you know

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that had a very historical minded and very you know.

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There it seems to be that as you take the

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more you take the Bible seriously, like, the more you

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actually want to understand this completely in every detail, in

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every aspect, that you cannot avoid analogy, like you cannot

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avoid using modes of interpretation that use this noticing of repeating,

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repeating patterns. And I'm curious if how you see that

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in relationship to believing that these things happened. You know,

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this is one of the criticism people have about scripture.

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How do you see the relationship between the event aspect

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of the story and this patterning of the of the

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of the stories.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, on the point about analogies within different stories of

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the accounts of the Bible, obviously that's there, and that's

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in some sense that's recognized by the critical scholars that

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you mentioned. What they do with that though, is uh

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dull and unimaginative, not not to mention, just plain wrong.

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You know, if you've got two stories of of you know,

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Abraham deceiving a king, he goes down into Egypt and

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he tells Pharaoh that Sarah is his Sarah is his sister.

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He goes to Garar and he tells a Bimlin the

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same thing. You have those two stories, that must be

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two traditions. They must be competing traditions. And the the

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the editor who put those two together a few chapters apart,

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apparently didn't notice that they're there.

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Speaker 3: Idiots, all these idiots in the past.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, these morons that spend their entire lives reading these

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texts from there since there were babies until their death,

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and they're so stupid that they just stuck these things

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together randomly.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. So, yeah, it's it's a it's a very it's

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a it's a bad way to read it. There's structural

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things going on there, the parallels between Abram sojourn in

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Egypt and Abraham Sojourn and Garar. Within the text, there

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are structural parallels, and then there are nuances of difference

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between the two. I mean, Pharaoh Pharaoh is not. Pharaoh

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is not favorable to Abram. He just chases him out

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in Genesis twelve, get out of here. You brought plagues

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in my house. When you get to Gharar, Interestingly, when

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Beim like, finds out what's happened and why his the

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wives in his household have been their wombs have been

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shut up. He asked Abraham to pray for him, and

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Abraham there first the first time anybody in the Bible

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is explicitly described as a prophet, and it's Abraham who's

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praying for a bimelec. So you have this shift in

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the attitude of the gentiles to Abraham between the time

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in Egypt and the time you get to Garar. And

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if you're just thinking these are two variations of the

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same story, you miss a crucial part of the progress

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of the Abraham story where he's actually having an effect

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and you know, finding a more favorable reception among the

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gentiles later on in the story than he did at

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the beginning of the story. So that was can you

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repeat the second part of your question, because I think

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I've lost it.

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Speaker 2: You mentioned an analogyo, I mean I think that I think

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you did answer the question. The second part was about,

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you know, how people will criticize the event aspect of

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it rightly in the way that you did, where they'll

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say they'll say, well, you know, one of these is

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a version of the other, and stuck them together, you know.

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And you know, I think you definitely answered what you're saying.

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And there's even more to that, which is that it's

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like our lives are made of repeating stories all Like

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our entire lives are constantly like every every wedding, every

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you know, it's like you just every Sunday, every Saturday,

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like every week, every day you go to bed, you

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cover in the morning. And the weird idea that the

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world doesn't rhyme that way, even though your entire life

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rhinds that way. It's such a strange way of seeing reality.

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Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, that's rhyming. Was exactly the word that popped

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into my mind when you first asked the question that

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it's not just the stories that are in the text

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that rhyme, because you could explain that by saying, well,

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you've got the scribal tradition, and you've got scribes who

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know the old stories, and so they're making up news

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stories about people who never existed, about events that never happened,

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but they're using the materials of the old stories just

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to connect them with that tradition. I think, in fact,

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I mean recognizing those kind of relationships. One aspect of

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typological interpretation. I think typology is not merely a way

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of reading scripture, but it's a theory of history. And

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the theory is that history rhymes because God is a

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god of consistent action. God does the same thing over

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and over again. That's on the face of it. In

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the Bible, I mean, when Israel's in exile, when they're

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being oppressed, all they want is another exodus, and they

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keep reminding him of the old Exodus. Do it again

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the way you did it in the past. The other

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thing too. This is another example of that that we

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talk a lot about. Chiasms at theopolis, a particularly literary

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structure where you have corresponding sections within a text. The

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first part of the first part of the text corresponds

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to the second part, to the last part, the second

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part corresponds to the next to the last part, and

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you kind of move into a center. That seems like

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a really kind of weird way to organize a story

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or an argument, it's actually very common in the ancient world.

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It's not just in the Biblical world. You can find that.

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You can find chiasms all over Homer and other ancient texts,

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but it's also, as you say, it's just the pattern

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of human life, the daily pattern of human life. We

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wake up, we have a meal, We work for a bit.

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The center of the whole day is the midday meal.

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We work a little bit more, we have another meal,

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we go to bed, and we sleep, and then we

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start over. Every day is structured like that. Lives are

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structured like that. We begin as helpless infants. If we

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live long enough, we end as helpless virtual infants. And

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you know, those are as you say, those are patterns

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that are there in life as well as in the text.

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And part of what the value, part of the value

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of recognizing the Bible is it illumines those life patterns.

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We can begin to see the movement of our lives

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through these Bible eyes.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think that that, to me has

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been the most crucial thing. You know, a lot of

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the things that I do is to help people see

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how the Bible, in some ways is the truest version

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of a pattern that fills everything. You know, it's not

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it's you know, it's actually the pattern.

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Speaker 3: Of creation itself.

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Speaker 2: It's the pattern that God created the world with, and

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therefore it can be found in all things, but in

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scripture definitely it appears in this most pristine form. So

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in some ways it's a it's like a tuning fork,

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even beyond even just the morality, because we often think

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of the Bible as just offering us moral codes, but

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beyond the morality, it's a structural tuning fork for for

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our lives, you know.

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Speaker 3: So, I don't know if you thought about that a

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little bit.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's the uh. I think that's analogous to

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what John Calvin says early on in his Institutes of

402
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the Christian Religion, which was his major work of theology.

403
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He's talking about the relationship between the created, natural knowledge

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of God that we have and special revelation in scripture,

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and the image he uses is lenses spectacles. So because

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of sin, because of our lethargy for various reasons, that

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we don't see the world clearly, and we need scripture

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in order to in order to recognize what's actually there.

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So it's not that the Bible puts us in an

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imaginary world that's separated from the real world. It's it's

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a gives us a gives us access to the world

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as it actually is.

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Speaker 2: That's a real That's a huge shift because there's a

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there's a kind of unconscious bias that we saw in

415
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a lot of modern I think, uh textual criticism and

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a lot of modern modern even biblical scholars is in

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some ways the lens they have is actually kind of

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modern rationalism.

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Speaker 3: That's their lens.

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Speaker 2: And then they look at scripture with that lens, and

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then they break it down and they cut it up,

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and they.

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Speaker 3: Do all these things.

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Speaker 2: But there is something about the way the Bible is

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written and the way the Bible is functioned in the

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Christian in Christianity from the very beginning, which is closer

427
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to what you're saying, which is you have to have

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to step into the world and then take the Bible

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on as a set of lenses to look at the

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rest of the world with. And that changes completely the

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perspective in which even you the way you approach the text,

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the way you interpret them, the way that you also

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act with a kind of reverence towards the aspect that

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you don't understand, because that's something that you see all

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the time in biblical scholarship, but kind of arrogance towards

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things that they don't that they don't understand. And maybe

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you can take us down this line, because you said

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that this way of seeing has also affected the your

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vision of liturgy. So I like to hear a little

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bit about that, like what are the things that that

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what kind of changes as it's brought you to your liturgy?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, uh uh, this is this is related to that question,

443
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but it's a part of a response to what your

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previous comment, and that is you know, I'm a Protestant.

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We put a heavy emphasis on word teaching, the preaching

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of the Word, and I think in a lot of

447
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Protestant circles what that means is you're using the Bible

448
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in order to extract doctrinal content, or using the Bible,

449
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especially in post Reformation. There's certain strands of post Reformation

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product satism where the primary goal is to extract some

451
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applicable moral exhortation in the medieval terms, where you're trying

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to get out of the Bible's tropology and trying to

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give moral direction. And I'm certainly not opposed to moral direction.

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I think the Bible does give a small direction. But

455
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when I teach, when I teach pastors, when I talk

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about preaching, I encourage people to think of what they're doing,

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not only in terms of telling the truth, trying to

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trying to encourage people and loving good works, but also

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to target the imagination and enable people to see the

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world rightly, that is, to see the world through the

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lenses of scripture. So part of the answer to the

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question liturgy is the way that preaching has done, and

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that preaching is I think rightly targeted not just at

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the will or at the understanding, but also at the

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imagination the other side of it. I mean, we we

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at theopolists, we use and advocate for fairly traditional forms

467
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of liturgy. There if you were to come to a

468
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theopolist event, what we're doing is looks like a prayerbook liturgy,

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similar to a prayer brook liturgy in the Anglican Church,

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similar to a Lutheran liturgy that's not been the primary

471
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that's meant not been the primary mode of liturgy in

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the Reform tradition. So we're something of outliers within our

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own with our own tradition. But there are a number

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of things I think that that that the typology has affected.

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I mean, you just think in terms of uh the

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events of baptism, of the Word's Supper, the two sacraments

477
00:25:51,039 --> 00:25:56,680
that Protestants tended most most all Protestants would acknowledge. Some

478
00:25:56,720 --> 00:26:00,680
Protestants would add, would have several others. Uh, but you

479
00:26:00,759 --> 00:26:05,720
have those are those are biblical rituals. They are biblical

480
00:26:05,799 --> 00:26:11,079
rituals that have this incredibly rich setting around in the Bible.

481
00:26:11,119 --> 00:26:14,599
I mean, you think Alistair Roberts was just here teaching

482
00:26:14,640 --> 00:26:17,039
at our Fellows program and he did a e lecture

483
00:26:17,079 --> 00:26:19,880
on baptism. And if you're going to start talk about baptists,

484
00:26:19,880 --> 00:26:22,440
you're going to start in Genesis one, when the world

485
00:26:22,640 --> 00:26:24,880
is formless and void in darkness over the face of

486
00:26:24,920 --> 00:26:25,240
the deep.

487
00:26:25,240 --> 00:26:28,279
Speaker 3: But the world is above the water right there.

488
00:26:28,359 --> 00:26:31,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, the world starts in water. And then you try

489
00:26:31,160 --> 00:26:33,359
to trace the themes of water throughout the entire Bible.

490
00:26:33,440 --> 00:26:35,839
It's you know, everything is there, that's all part of

491
00:26:35,880 --> 00:26:38,240
our understanding of baptism. But then that all comes to

492
00:26:38,279 --> 00:26:42,519
a focus, all that biblical symbolism and all that biblical

493
00:26:42,799 --> 00:26:47,640
all those biblical patterns, all those Biblical stories are taking concrete,

494
00:26:47,720 --> 00:26:51,839
real form within the church when somebody is baptized or

495
00:26:51,920 --> 00:26:54,640
same thing is true with the Eucharist. When you celebrate

496
00:26:54,680 --> 00:27:00,359
the Eucharist, you're having a meal, but again you're othering

497
00:27:00,359 --> 00:27:04,039
together all these countless meal events that are in the scriptures.

498
00:27:05,119 --> 00:27:07,680
It's you can say, the liturgy is where those where

499
00:27:07,720 --> 00:27:12,000
those types become concrete and real for the Church, those

500
00:27:12,039 --> 00:27:16,519
types of water rescues by water, destruction and renewal by water,

501
00:27:16,960 --> 00:27:20,559
those types of covenant meals, communion with God, all those

502
00:27:20,640 --> 00:27:23,039
all those events of the Bible, they become concrete and

503
00:27:23,480 --> 00:27:24,880
real for the Church. And the liturgy.

504
00:27:25,519 --> 00:27:25,799
Speaker 3: Yeah.

505
00:27:26,279 --> 00:27:30,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, And this is something you know, you talk about

506
00:27:30,359 --> 00:27:32,880
Father Alexander Schmaman. You know, this is something that for

507
00:27:33,039 --> 00:27:37,680
modern people it's kind of hard to understand that the sacraments,

508
00:27:37,680 --> 00:27:41,240
you know, they say the sacrament of communion, it grounds

509
00:27:41,279 --> 00:27:44,200
reality for us, right, that it becomes in some ways

510
00:27:44,240 --> 00:27:47,759
the model for all our other little communions, for all

511
00:27:47,799 --> 00:27:50,440
our family meals, for all our celebrations, all.

512
00:27:50,319 --> 00:27:52,640
Speaker 3: Of these things. They need a peak.

513
00:27:52,799 --> 00:27:56,599
Speaker 2: They need something that holds the meaning of all these

514
00:27:56,640 --> 00:27:57,799
other aspects together.

515
00:27:58,079 --> 00:28:00,680
Speaker 3: And that isn't something that just has weapons in your head.

516
00:28:00,720 --> 00:28:02,960
Speaker 2: Right, It's it's not just like a theory, something that

517
00:28:03,000 --> 00:28:06,640
you have to actively engage in. Uh. And then so

518
00:28:06,680 --> 00:28:08,720
that's all that's true for that. It's true for baptism

519
00:28:08,799 --> 00:28:12,160
as well. Baptism grounds so many aspects of the the

520
00:28:12,319 --> 00:28:14,240
you know, the cyclical aspect of our life, you know,

521
00:28:14,279 --> 00:28:17,400
the waking and the sleeping, the you know, the all

522
00:28:17,440 --> 00:28:19,519
the aspects of our life that are related to death

523
00:28:19,920 --> 00:28:23,160
are are bound in the baptism of.

524
00:28:23,119 --> 00:28:25,319
Speaker 3: Christ and our participation of that.

525
00:28:25,440 --> 00:28:25,599
Speaker 2: You know.

526
00:28:25,759 --> 00:28:25,960
Speaker 3: St.

527
00:28:25,960 --> 00:28:28,240
Speaker 2: Paul says, he literally tells us that we are dying

528
00:28:28,279 --> 00:28:30,319
with Christ and resurrecting with him. You know, it's like

529
00:28:30,359 --> 00:28:32,640
it's related to the Cross. It's related not just even

530
00:28:32,680 --> 00:28:34,759
to the baptism of Christ. It's it's a little image

531
00:28:34,759 --> 00:28:37,440
of what's going to happen later in his life. And

532
00:28:37,480 --> 00:28:40,200
so it's a grounding of our of our reality, and

533
00:28:40,279 --> 00:28:42,559
it's it's not us not just the flight of fancy.

534
00:28:42,599 --> 00:28:43,960
Speaker 3: We actually have to do these things.

535
00:28:44,759 --> 00:28:49,759
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm schmimen Is has been hugely influential on our

536
00:28:50,200 --> 00:28:53,799
when I say our, our theopolis understanding of liturgy. Uh again,

537
00:28:53,880 --> 00:28:56,559
Jim Jordan first introduced me to Shremen's work, and that

538
00:28:56,680 --> 00:28:59,200
will cluster people that were around Jim all read and

539
00:28:59,240 --> 00:29:02,279
devoured it. And when I taught for a number of

540
00:29:02,400 --> 00:29:05,880
years at New Saint Andrews College, I always assigned for

541
00:29:05,920 --> 00:29:10,640
the Life of the World, and very frequently is that

542
00:29:10,720 --> 00:29:12,480
it was a favorite book that the students read all

543
00:29:12,559 --> 00:29:17,599
year because it didn't read like theology. It read more

544
00:29:17,640 --> 00:29:21,000
like poetry than theology. But it's it's yeah, I can't.

545
00:29:21,279 --> 00:29:24,200
It's it's been really formative, not just because it's so

546
00:29:24,240 --> 00:29:27,519
compelling and beautiful, but for the reason you said, you

547
00:29:27,559 --> 00:29:30,559
take these most ordinary things of life. Bread is the

548
00:29:30,599 --> 00:29:34,960
staple food of every society, and that becomes that staple

549
00:29:34,960 --> 00:29:38,119
food of society, of every society, becomes a means of

550
00:29:38,160 --> 00:29:41,000
commune with God. You take wine, which is a more

551
00:29:41,039 --> 00:29:45,559
sophisticated kind of drink of celebration, but still you know,

552
00:29:45,599 --> 00:29:50,279
it's it's universal in some form as a as a festive,

553
00:29:50,720 --> 00:29:54,880
festive drink across across the cultures. And God has assigned

554
00:29:54,920 --> 00:29:58,119
these two very simple things as means for communion with

555
00:29:58,279 --> 00:30:01,960
Him in the liturgy, which is not Uh. This is

556
00:30:02,279 --> 00:30:05,119
Memon's great point. As you know, it's not this little

557
00:30:05,160 --> 00:30:07,599
island of communion in a world where we never commune

558
00:30:07,640 --> 00:30:11,039
with God outside. Rather, what's happening in the in the Eucharist,

559
00:30:11,319 --> 00:30:16,519
inside the liturgy is the concentrated uh form of what's

560
00:30:16,519 --> 00:30:19,799
happening constantly. So in our meals, as you say, we're

561
00:30:19,839 --> 00:30:23,079
communing with God. But then Schmemn says, you know, you

562
00:30:23,200 --> 00:30:26,200
come across the daffodil uh and you're seeing the glory

563
00:30:26,200 --> 00:30:29,599
of God that's displayed, and so everything becomes because the

564
00:30:29,640 --> 00:30:31,839
euchreus is at the center, everything becomes a moment of

565
00:30:31,839 --> 00:30:36,279
possible Eucharist, the possible communion with God, of thanksgiving, of

566
00:30:36,359 --> 00:30:38,720
delight in his beauty and glory. Yeah.

567
00:30:38,799 --> 00:30:41,279
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think for people to understand this, it's

568
00:30:41,640 --> 00:30:44,240
it's something that is part of reality just all around.

569
00:30:44,319 --> 00:30:46,839
You know, you can take simpler example that oh, don't

570
00:30:46,880 --> 00:30:49,240
go all the way up into communion, you know, into

571
00:30:49,319 --> 00:30:52,000
the to the Eucharus or into the sacraments. But if

572
00:30:52,039 --> 00:30:54,960
you take the idea of a like a contract for example,

573
00:30:55,039 --> 00:30:56,160
like a formal contract.

574
00:30:56,160 --> 00:30:58,759
Speaker 3: So you have these moments where you have a formal.

575
00:30:58,480 --> 00:31:01,319
Speaker 2: Contract where you you know, you two people stand together

576
00:31:01,359 --> 00:31:03,839
and sign a piece of paper or shake hands in

577
00:31:03,880 --> 00:31:04,960
a very formal way.

578
00:31:05,519 --> 00:31:06,240
Speaker 3: You know that.

579
00:31:06,279 --> 00:31:10,160
Speaker 2: These types of kind of almost ritualistic moments, they are

580
00:31:10,599 --> 00:31:14,359
the peak of just every day promises that you make,

581
00:31:14,400 --> 00:31:17,279
that you keep, every day moments that you are you

582
00:31:17,319 --> 00:31:19,079
have to promise something to someone or you have to

583
00:31:19,119 --> 00:31:21,240
say you're gonna do something and then you do it,

584
00:31:21,319 --> 00:31:25,440
they normally culminate into these these kind of shiny moments

585
00:31:25,480 --> 00:31:28,440
that become examples of all the daily things that we do.

586
00:31:28,519 --> 00:31:30,359
Speaker 3: So and it's the same for everything.

587
00:31:30,400 --> 00:31:33,480
Speaker 2: Like you imagine, we just had the presidential inauguration. You

588
00:31:33,880 --> 00:31:36,640
have someone who stands and promises and does this really

589
00:31:36,680 --> 00:31:40,839
formal thing, but this becomes a shining example of things

590
00:31:40,839 --> 00:31:42,720
you do every day in your life.

591
00:31:42,960 --> 00:31:46,440
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, yeah, so you have those again in the

592
00:31:46,480 --> 00:31:49,920
reform tradition, we would call them covenant moments or covenant memorials,

593
00:31:50,720 --> 00:31:54,720
covenant experiences that are formative for everything. You go down

594
00:31:54,759 --> 00:31:56,440
to the other level. This is a this is a

595
00:31:56,480 --> 00:31:59,920
pattern that Jim Jordan talks about in Three New Eves.

596
00:32:00,799 --> 00:32:03,599
He goes through the Creation account, and the Creation Account

597
00:32:03,880 --> 00:32:07,960
repeats this same series of actions virtually every day, not

598
00:32:08,039 --> 00:32:11,759
without not without variation, but virtually every day. God takes

599
00:32:11,799 --> 00:32:14,960
the world as it is, God tears the world into

600
00:32:15,440 --> 00:32:20,880
into pieces, changes it, He assigns, assigns new names, or

601
00:32:20,880 --> 00:32:24,720
he assigns, he gives new assignments to things. He puts

602
00:32:24,720 --> 00:32:27,160
it back together in a new form, and then he

603
00:32:27,160 --> 00:32:30,559
says it's good. He enjoys it. And Jordan points out

604
00:32:30,599 --> 00:32:34,640
that that pattern of taking hold, tearing things apart, giving

605
00:32:34,640 --> 00:32:36,920
things new name, reassigning things, and then sitting back and

606
00:32:37,000 --> 00:32:39,720
enjoying is just the pattern of human actions. That's what

607
00:32:39,759 --> 00:32:43,640
we're doing all the time. You're baking a cake, or

608
00:32:43,720 --> 00:32:46,960
if you're writing a book, or if you're mowing the grass,

609
00:32:47,000 --> 00:32:49,200
you're doing you're doing that kind of creative action in

610
00:32:49,240 --> 00:32:52,720
the world constantly. And the Bible gives us what it

611
00:32:52,759 --> 00:32:55,519
did for me. When when I first read through New

612
00:32:55,519 --> 00:32:58,880
Eyes was I just I think I went for months

613
00:32:58,960 --> 00:33:03,319
in this kind of state of elevated awareness that everything

614
00:33:03,319 --> 00:33:08,240
I was doing was replicating the actions of God in

615
00:33:08,319 --> 00:33:11,640
creating the world, and everything I was doing because of

616
00:33:11,640 --> 00:33:14,480
that was altering the world in some fashion, contributing to

617
00:33:15,319 --> 00:33:22,680
the ongoing glorification and ongoing, ongoing fulfillment of the world.

618
00:33:23,759 --> 00:33:26,880
Even the smallest, even the smallest human action are participating

619
00:33:26,880 --> 00:33:27,079
in that.

620
00:33:27,640 --> 00:33:31,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I often say that the text in

621
00:33:31,039 --> 00:33:35,359
Genesis one is not a scientific text. It actually contains

622
00:33:35,480 --> 00:33:37,519
the scientific theory within it.

623
00:33:37,519 --> 00:33:38,720
Speaker 3: It actually the structure of.

624
00:33:38,640 --> 00:33:41,880
Speaker 2: How God creates the world is the macro version of

625
00:33:41,920 --> 00:33:46,559
how the scientist looks at a phenomenon, identifies it, evaluates it.

626
00:33:46,640 --> 00:33:48,240
Speaker 3: You know, and declares whether or not it's good.

627
00:33:48,279 --> 00:33:52,359
Speaker 2: It's like that's how everything we do basically is even

628
00:33:52,440 --> 00:33:56,400
every act of perception. When we're grabbing some a glass

629
00:33:56,400 --> 00:33:59,079
to drink, you know, we're seeing it, we're evaluating it,

630
00:33:59,119 --> 00:34:01,240
we're deciding if it's good, and then we bring it,

631
00:34:01,319 --> 00:34:03,039
you know, we use it in that context.

632
00:34:03,599 --> 00:34:06,759
Speaker 3: Of course, God everything he does is good at the outset.

633
00:34:06,799 --> 00:34:09,039
Speaker 2: But you can see if you take that image in

634
00:34:09,079 --> 00:34:11,960
the beginning and you make match it with what happens

635
00:34:12,000 --> 00:34:14,039
at the end, you can see that there are reflections

636
00:34:14,039 --> 00:34:16,840
of each other. Like God evaluating the world is what

637
00:34:16,880 --> 00:34:19,360
he does in creation. Anybody does at the end as well.

638
00:34:19,400 --> 00:34:22,119
It's just part of how we exist as humans.

639
00:34:22,119 --> 00:34:22,920
Speaker 3: It's wild yea.

640
00:34:24,719 --> 00:34:28,199
Speaker 2: And so I guess my next question is how is

641
00:34:28,239 --> 00:34:30,679
this being how what is your perception of how this

642
00:34:30,760 --> 00:34:33,079
is being received, you know, by the people, by the

643
00:34:33,119 --> 00:34:35,280
people in your tradition, by the people around you. Is

644
00:34:35,559 --> 00:34:38,039
what has been the because now it's been how long

645
00:34:38,079 --> 00:34:39,159
has theopolis existed?

646
00:34:39,239 --> 00:34:41,320
Speaker 1: Now theopolist is eleven years old?

647
00:34:41,480 --> 00:34:42,840
Speaker 3: Eleven years Yeah, But.

648
00:34:43,039 --> 00:34:45,760
Speaker 1: As I said, we had a couple of decades of

649
00:34:46,039 --> 00:34:49,440
prior work that were along very similar lines. That was

650
00:34:49,599 --> 00:34:53,519
that was on a very small scale. The conferences that

651
00:34:53,559 --> 00:34:56,719
we had for those twenty five years were maybe attended

652
00:34:56,719 --> 00:34:59,000
by fifty people if we had a good turnout. So

653
00:34:59,119 --> 00:35:02,239
it was almost like a working group, which was a

654
00:35:02,599 --> 00:35:05,639
It was a It was a very fruitful thing because

655
00:35:05,760 --> 00:35:08,679
the same virtually the same people were there every year.

656
00:35:08,719 --> 00:35:12,679
We were thinking together over these things. Theopolis has a

657
00:35:12,679 --> 00:35:15,079
bit bigger spread. It's it's hard for me to it's

658
00:35:15,079 --> 00:35:17,840
hard for me to judge what kind of effect it's having.

659
00:35:19,679 --> 00:35:23,480
I mean, you could, you could summarize it as some

660
00:35:23,519 --> 00:35:29,800
people are very entranced and energized. There's a this kind

661
00:35:29,840 --> 00:35:33,039
of electric jolt when they start recognizing things in the

662
00:35:33,039 --> 00:35:35,199
Bible and in the world that they hadn't recognized before.

663
00:35:35,559 --> 00:35:38,440
This was the experience I largely had teaching. I had

664
00:35:38,480 --> 00:35:41,400
students who had been going to Sunday School all their lives.

665
00:35:41,440 --> 00:35:43,400
They had all the bits and pieces of the Bible,

666
00:35:44,000 --> 00:35:45,519
many of the bits and pieces of the Bible in

667
00:35:45,559 --> 00:35:48,639
their minds, but nobody had ever put it together for them.

668
00:35:49,079 --> 00:35:55,760
And so showing how parts were formed into coherent storylines

669
00:35:55,800 --> 00:35:58,519
and recurring storylines, and seeing analogies between different parts of

670
00:35:58,559 --> 00:36:02,599
the Bible, just I see light bulbs popping up, going

671
00:36:02,639 --> 00:36:05,960
off constantly in my in my student's head. So there's

672
00:36:06,119 --> 00:36:09,519
that's that's the reaction of some Uh. There's a fair

673
00:36:09,559 --> 00:36:13,320
bit of hostility, as you might expect in certain quadrants

674
00:36:13,320 --> 00:36:17,039
of the maybe maybe especially Protestantism. I don't know if

675
00:36:17,039 --> 00:36:20,199
that's the case or not, but there's a certain hostility.

676
00:36:20,280 --> 00:36:24,519
It's it seems, uh we look Catholic because of our

677
00:36:24,920 --> 00:36:32,360
liturgical our liturgical life. We look irrational and uh and

678
00:36:32,480 --> 00:36:35,039
uh we're playing fast and loose with the Bible because

679
00:36:35,079 --> 00:36:38,039
we're interested in all these uh and digging into the

680
00:36:38,079 --> 00:36:41,000
details and looking at the weird parts of the Bible.

681
00:36:42,039 --> 00:36:45,039
So uh, there's you know, obviously it's a mixed reaction.

682
00:36:45,880 --> 00:36:49,559
I do think that, Uh. I imagine that you've had

683
00:36:49,559 --> 00:36:54,079
this experience and stepping back and just looking at then

684
00:36:55,159 --> 00:36:57,679
the feel of the culture more gently, I'm gonna have

685
00:36:57,800 --> 00:37:01,719
very little sense of no finger on the pulse here. Uh.

686
00:37:02,280 --> 00:37:04,920
But given given the given by total ignorance of of

687
00:37:04,960 --> 00:37:07,119
what's going on in the world, it does seem like

688
00:37:07,159 --> 00:37:10,639
there's a hunger for what's been missing. I know that

689
00:37:10,679 --> 00:37:13,960
you've had, you've had a good response to the kinds

690
00:37:13,960 --> 00:37:16,519
of things you do. I'm thinking. I'm reading through I

691
00:37:17,199 --> 00:37:21,239
McGilchrist's massive book, The Matter with Things Right Now, and

692
00:37:21,280 --> 00:37:24,679
it's not a it's not a theological or overtly Christian study,

693
00:37:25,039 --> 00:37:26,400
but he's doing a lot of the same kinds of

694
00:37:26,480 --> 00:37:29,599
things that we're talking about in the way that way

695
00:37:29,639 --> 00:37:32,079
that you engage the world and the way you think about

696
00:37:32,079 --> 00:37:37,039
the way reality is organized. Uh. And so I think

697
00:37:37,039 --> 00:37:40,320
there's this, there does seem to be this cultural shift

698
00:37:40,519 --> 00:37:42,639
where there's more openness to this. I think there's only

699
00:37:42,679 --> 00:37:45,400
so far you can go if you're you know, go

700
00:37:45,519 --> 00:37:49,159
back to our discussion of critical scholarship on the Bible.

701
00:37:49,920 --> 00:37:53,119
How far, how far can you go? You're you're divining

702
00:37:53,239 --> 00:37:57,840
versus the Bible into multiple different sources. One word goes here,

703
00:37:57,880 --> 00:38:01,400
a few words go there. I mean you're left with sand.

704
00:38:01,440 --> 00:38:02,519
You got nothing left.

705
00:38:03,239 --> 00:38:03,440
Speaker 2: Uh.

706
00:38:03,480 --> 00:38:06,840
Speaker 1: And even with even among Bible scholars who still believe

707
00:38:06,880 --> 00:38:10,239
that you have this shift over to well, let's look

708
00:38:10,280 --> 00:38:11,960
at the let's look at the text as a whole,

709
00:38:12,000 --> 00:38:16,039
as it's actually as it actually presents itself, makes sense

710
00:38:16,079 --> 00:38:19,239
of it. I'm thinking of people like Robert Alter on

711
00:38:19,400 --> 00:38:23,239
Julish Commentator. I think he believes all of the all

712
00:38:23,280 --> 00:38:25,480
of the critical scholarship about how the text came to

713
00:38:25,519 --> 00:38:28,440
be as it is. But what he's interested in is

714
00:38:28,480 --> 00:38:30,599
looking at the text as it as it currently is

715
00:38:30,639 --> 00:38:33,800
and trying to understand. Uh, he's giving a bit of

716
00:38:33,840 --> 00:38:35,920
credit to those editors that they knew what they were doing.

717
00:38:36,519 --> 00:38:41,039
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's that my like I've my default position,

718
00:38:41,360 --> 00:38:43,360
you know, And it's kind of it's a little controversial

719
00:38:43,400 --> 00:38:45,559
because I'm being dismissive, but I just say, Okay, fine,

720
00:38:45,760 --> 00:38:46,840
the editor is the author.

721
00:38:47,159 --> 00:38:48,000
Speaker 3: Just get over it.

722
00:38:48,039 --> 00:38:48,280
Speaker 1: You know.

723
00:38:48,519 --> 00:38:51,320
Speaker 2: It's like then then just stop stop because you know,

724
00:38:51,400 --> 00:38:53,920
imagine if you took like can you imagine if you

725
00:38:53,960 --> 00:38:59,119
took Marvel's movies like the Marvel Infinity War saga, and

726
00:38:59,159 --> 00:39:01,760
then you started watching it and then saying, oh, well,

727
00:39:01,760 --> 00:39:04,000
this little bit of the story comes from like this

728
00:39:04,039 --> 00:39:07,079
little series in the nineteen seventies that Jack Kirby did

729
00:39:07,079 --> 00:39:09,320
with this, and you start breaking it down like every

730
00:39:09,400 --> 00:39:11,840
reference and saying, well, this doesn't hold up at Oh,

731
00:39:11,880 --> 00:39:13,719
this is not a coherent thing. You know, it's just

732
00:39:13,800 --> 00:39:16,840
a bunch of ragtag, you know, things being pulled from

733
00:39:16,840 --> 00:39:19,400
all these different jinny. It's like, what what are you doing?

734
00:39:19,920 --> 00:39:23,400
Why would anybody care about this? It's like the Bibles,

735
00:39:23,440 --> 00:39:26,360
you know, these Bibles that they have all the they

736
00:39:26,440 --> 00:39:30,280
have the little footnotes with like this is part of

737
00:39:30,320 --> 00:39:32,320
this text and this part of it's like, don't give

738
00:39:32,320 --> 00:39:34,199
that to someone in church who is that for?

739
00:39:34,320 --> 00:39:36,599
Speaker 3: It's not for those people. It's a horrible thing to

740
00:39:36,599 --> 00:39:37,239
do to people.

741
00:39:37,719 --> 00:39:41,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean then if you did that, I

742
00:39:41,840 --> 00:39:44,199
mean there would be a case to be made for

743
00:39:44,239 --> 00:39:45,679
all of those little connections you're.

744
00:39:45,519 --> 00:39:47,599
Speaker 3: Talking about, but not in church.

745
00:39:48,360 --> 00:39:51,320
Speaker 1: Yeah. But even if you think about the movie and

746
00:39:51,400 --> 00:39:53,840
you're taking you're trying to extract all the little references.

747
00:39:54,519 --> 00:39:59,119
You can disassemble any text into a collection of intertextual

748
00:39:59,199 --> 00:40:02,280
references into that, but that doesn't say anything about what

749
00:40:02,320 --> 00:40:05,159
the text actually means. Because the text is is what

750
00:40:05,199 --> 00:40:07,880
it is, and you have to account for the text

751
00:40:07,880 --> 00:40:10,480
as it is, not merely trace out its different influences.

752
00:40:10,800 --> 00:40:13,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, even simple as saying it doesn't account for the

753
00:40:13,760 --> 00:40:17,360
text existence, like as simple as that, because it exists

754
00:40:17,360 --> 00:40:20,880
because people cared enough about this text to transmit it,

755
00:40:20,920 --> 00:40:23,559
and breaking it down into all its references does not

756
00:40:23,679 --> 00:40:26,440
account for the text really at the first level of

757
00:40:26,599 --> 00:40:29,079
why the text is there in the first place and

758
00:40:29,199 --> 00:40:31,920
not just has not just been forgotten like all, Like

759
00:40:32,159 --> 00:40:34,159
you know, most texts in the history of the world

760
00:40:34,199 --> 00:40:37,480
are most little our most religions and most fancy like

761
00:40:37,519 --> 00:40:40,000
this one is still around and there's a reason for that.

762
00:40:40,079 --> 00:40:44,559
Speaker 1: You know. I mean, I don't think this is extreme

763
00:40:44,599 --> 00:40:47,800
to say that critical scholarship, I'm not I'm not attributing

764
00:40:47,840 --> 00:40:50,280
this to everyone who's worked in the critical vein, but

765
00:40:50,400 --> 00:40:54,639
I think overall it's a Satanic It's a Britanic delusion.

766
00:40:55,880 --> 00:41:00,159
Is the strangest people from the Word of God, and uh,

767
00:41:01,320 --> 00:41:04,519
you know, not not demonizing the particular practitioners, but I

768
00:41:04,519 --> 00:41:07,119
think overall that's that's the effect of it is to

769
00:41:07,800 --> 00:41:13,199
make turn the Bible into something again. It's it's it's dull,

770
00:41:13,800 --> 00:41:17,800
it's uninformative, it doesn't awaken the imagination. It's just so

771
00:41:17,880 --> 00:41:21,559
much fodder for scholarly disassembly. And that's just, uh, that's

772
00:41:21,639 --> 00:41:22,599
ultimately satanic.

773
00:41:23,000 --> 00:41:25,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, I totally agree, But I love that you're willing

774
00:41:25,960 --> 00:41:27,199
to put it so clearly.

775
00:41:27,880 --> 00:41:28,320
Speaker 1: Of that.

776
00:41:29,280 --> 00:41:32,920
Speaker 2: You know what you mentioned earlier about the change that's

777
00:41:32,920 --> 00:41:35,400
happening in culture, and I think you're absolutely right. You know,

778
00:41:35,440 --> 00:41:39,119
what I see in the younger people is in some

779
00:41:39,159 --> 00:41:42,480
ways because the worldview in some ways. I mean, I know,

780
00:41:42,519 --> 00:41:45,800
if it's the Enlightenment worldview or just the modern worldview,

781
00:41:46,199 --> 00:41:48,920
it's kind of breaking apart. And it's breaking apart as

782
00:41:48,920 --> 00:41:51,719
we're noticing, you know, our societies don't hold together anymore.

783
00:41:51,880 --> 00:41:53,360
Speaker 3: We're noticing that things.

784
00:41:53,239 --> 00:41:55,480
Speaker 2: The cohesion of the of our of our world and

785
00:41:55,519 --> 00:41:59,119
of our life is is fragmenting. You know, people are

786
00:41:59,519 --> 00:42:01,840
you know, can I say that it's awakening in them

787
00:42:01,920 --> 00:42:04,960
the desire to be able to perceive the big story

788
00:42:05,039 --> 00:42:07,360
or the bigger stories. And so I think that that

789
00:42:07,760 --> 00:42:12,079
that is happening, and it's happening in almost every single field,

790
00:42:12,159 --> 00:42:14,639
you know, the whole problem of complexity and the problem

791
00:42:14,639 --> 00:42:17,719
of multiplicity and unity. All of these questions are being asked,

792
00:42:18,119 --> 00:42:22,559
whether it's in science, cognitive science, you know, in organizational theories.

793
00:42:22,599 --> 00:42:23,800
Speaker 3: All of these theories.

794
00:42:23,519 --> 00:42:25,960
Speaker 2: Are trying to account for the what we could call

795
00:42:26,000 --> 00:42:30,199
a kind of vertical causality, right, something that brings multiplicity

796
00:42:30,199 --> 00:42:35,400
together into one. And so because of that, I think

797
00:42:35,400 --> 00:42:38,360
people want the story and they can see it when

798
00:42:38,360 --> 00:42:40,559
they look at scripture. And what also with scripture has

799
00:42:40,559 --> 00:42:42,519
done for us if you take it at a meta level,

800
00:42:42,719 --> 00:42:45,280
the way in which scripture has been one of the

801
00:42:45,320 --> 00:42:48,719
thread that has held Western civilization or you know, for

802
00:42:48,760 --> 00:42:51,639
the past the only thread possibly that has held Europe

803
00:42:51,639 --> 00:42:54,280
together for two thousand years that even they can't even

804
00:42:54,280 --> 00:42:57,320
imagine that Europe exists. Is because even though they fought

805
00:42:57,639 --> 00:43:00,239
all the time, they had this thing that held them,

806
00:43:00,239 --> 00:43:03,360
this this this higher peak that held them together.

807
00:43:03,800 --> 00:43:06,000
Speaker 3: And so people are trying to understand what that is.

808
00:43:06,039 --> 00:43:08,559
Speaker 1: I think so right now, I think there is definitely

809
00:43:08,599 --> 00:43:14,039
a generational uh dynamic to that. Uh and uh I've

810
00:43:14,119 --> 00:43:16,760
encountered that a number of the men who associate with

811
00:43:16,760 --> 00:43:21,760
Theopolis have encountered that we in the early two thousands

812
00:43:21,760 --> 00:43:26,239
there was this big hubbub in reformed churches that in

813
00:43:26,280 --> 00:43:28,519
my mind, it was it has gotten very confused because

814
00:43:28,559 --> 00:43:31,519
it you know, it's a theological debate that's that's carried

815
00:43:31,519 --> 00:43:34,719
out on the internet with all with all of the

816
00:43:34,840 --> 00:43:37,920
uh you know, all of the self restraints and care

817
00:43:38,039 --> 00:43:42,559
that you would expect from an internet debate. Zero. But

818
00:43:43,559 --> 00:43:46,280
uh so, and I think there was there was definitely

819
00:43:46,280 --> 00:43:51,360
a divide. So the the more established people from my

820
00:43:51,480 --> 00:43:55,119
generation maybe a little bit older, but more established pastors

821
00:43:55,119 --> 00:43:58,320
and theologians, we were doing it was to my mind,

822
00:43:58,320 --> 00:44:02,119
it was mainly about uh baptism and the efficacy of baptism.

823
00:44:02,599 --> 00:44:04,559
We were trying to take seriously what you just said

824
00:44:04,639 --> 00:44:07,840
a few minutes ago. Paul says, don't you know that

825
00:44:07,880 --> 00:44:10,960
you have been baptized into Christ, You've been baptized into

826
00:44:10,960 --> 00:44:13,800
his death, You've been buried with Him so that you

827
00:44:13,840 --> 00:44:17,559
can rise the illness of life. I want, we wanted

828
00:44:17,599 --> 00:44:21,119
to say, Paul means that that's what's actually happening in baptism.

829
00:44:22,119 --> 00:44:27,360
That's that's a controversial thing to say in certain certain

830
00:44:27,559 --> 00:44:30,639
Protestant circles, and so there was this older generation that

831
00:44:30,840 --> 00:44:35,159
was very hostile to it. But yeah, the people that

832
00:44:35,239 --> 00:44:39,519
gravitated to the position that we were articulating were largely

833
00:44:39,559 --> 00:44:42,000
the younger generation. I do think that that generation dynamic

834
00:44:42,079 --> 00:44:44,840
is there with all the with all the pluses and

835
00:44:44,880 --> 00:44:48,480
minuses that come with a generational divide like that. The

836
00:44:48,519 --> 00:44:49,719
other the other thing I was going to say, just

837
00:44:49,719 --> 00:44:51,400
to go back to our earlier discussion, I think the

838
00:44:52,360 --> 00:44:57,559
about the critical scholarship and all that. Luke twenty four

839
00:44:57,800 --> 00:44:59,960
Jesus teaching on the Road to Mais has been a

840
00:45:00,159 --> 00:45:03,880
main passage for us at Theopolis, and the thing that

841
00:45:04,679 --> 00:45:07,119
It brings together a number of things we've already talked about.

842
00:45:07,719 --> 00:45:09,960
One of the things that strikes me about that is

843
00:45:10,000 --> 00:45:12,360
the fact that these two disciples walking along the road

844
00:45:12,400 --> 00:45:16,159
to Mais are joined by Jesus. Jesus is there speaking

845
00:45:16,199 --> 00:45:20,519
to them, and they don't recognize him until he starts

846
00:45:20,599 --> 00:45:23,559
talking teaching the Bible, but teaching the Bible in a

847
00:45:23,599 --> 00:45:26,719
particular way. Teaching the Bible is the story of the Christ.

848
00:45:27,679 --> 00:45:30,880
And still they don't recognize him until he breaks bread

849
00:45:30,880 --> 00:45:33,639
with them. So I think, well, in my mind, what

850
00:45:33,719 --> 00:45:35,920
we have in a lot of churches. I'm not talking

851
00:45:35,920 --> 00:45:39,559
about churches that have adopted liberal critical views of the Bible,

852
00:45:40,199 --> 00:45:43,840
but churches that neglect this kind of the typological symbolic

853
00:45:43,880 --> 00:45:46,599
dimension the Bible. Jesus is there. I have no doubt

854
00:45:46,679 --> 00:45:48,880
Jesus is there, But I don't know they think they

855
00:45:48,920 --> 00:45:52,280
fully recognize him because they aren't reading the Bible properly

856
00:45:53,119 --> 00:45:57,320
and they aren't breaking bread very frequently. So it's the

857
00:45:57,360 --> 00:46:04,079
combination of a christ centered teaching and a proclamation of

858
00:46:04,119 --> 00:46:08,480
scripture with the sacramento life. Those two things are the

859
00:46:08,519 --> 00:46:11,719
things that make Christ knowable in the church.

860
00:46:12,679 --> 00:46:15,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's beautiful, that's a beautiful way of seeing. And

861
00:46:16,320 --> 00:46:18,920
you know, related to what you were saying, I wonder

862
00:46:18,920 --> 00:46:21,159
if you think that like one of the things that

863
00:46:21,199 --> 00:46:23,159
I grew up in I grew up a Baptist, and

864
00:46:23,400 --> 00:46:26,440
there was this weird opposition, right, this weird position between

865
00:46:26,480 --> 00:46:29,480
in some ways the liberal Protestants that were dangerous because

866
00:46:29,559 --> 00:46:32,800
they believed all these weird critical ideas and because of

867
00:46:32,840 --> 00:46:36,679
that they basically didn't take the Bible seriously in terms

868
00:46:36,719 --> 00:46:39,079
of their practice. They could relativize all these aspects of

869
00:46:39,119 --> 00:46:41,920
scripture because of this kind of critical method, and then

870
00:46:41,960 --> 00:46:44,280
we had the kind of fundamentalist approach which was like, no,

871
00:46:44,320 --> 00:46:46,880
it's the scripture and everything. But there was this weird,

872
00:46:47,000 --> 00:46:53,400
weird suspicion about allegory, right or analogy. I remember even

873
00:46:54,000 --> 00:46:56,679
my youth pastor, who I love dearly, still love him today,

874
00:46:56,840 --> 00:46:59,800
you know, he said he I found out that in

875
00:46:59,840 --> 00:47:03,800
the Bible says that the serpent was naked. It was

876
00:47:03,800 --> 00:47:05,920
like blowing his mind and he couldn't he couldn't hold

877
00:47:05,960 --> 00:47:06,320
onto it.

878
00:47:06,400 --> 00:47:08,639
Speaker 3: He was like he said, well does it what does

879
00:47:08,679 --> 00:47:09,800
this mean? What does this it mean?

880
00:47:09,840 --> 00:47:12,320
Speaker 2: Like in terms of like Adam and Evening naked and

881
00:47:12,360 --> 00:47:14,079
everything that was like crashing his whole reality.

882
00:47:15,039 --> 00:47:17,199
Speaker 3: But I think that what you're doing. Uh.

883
00:47:17,280 --> 00:47:19,280
Speaker 2: And in some ways, I believe in some ways the older,

884
00:47:19,360 --> 00:47:22,480
more traditional way of actually reading scripture cuts through that,

885
00:47:22,880 --> 00:47:27,119
like right through it because it's saying it both says,

886
00:47:27,320 --> 00:47:30,840
because it's saying. Because we take scripture so seriously, we

887
00:47:31,039 --> 00:47:34,119
have to dive into this type of interpretation because it

888
00:47:34,199 --> 00:47:36,280
is just there in the text. If you don't, you

889
00:47:36,360 --> 00:47:38,920
miss out on some of the beautiful things that God

890
00:47:39,000 --> 00:47:39,760
is doing.

891
00:47:39,840 --> 00:47:40,760
Speaker 3: You know, for us.

892
00:47:40,880 --> 00:47:45,159
Speaker 2: If you if you ignore the imagery that moves from

893
00:47:45,159 --> 00:47:47,360
Genesis to Revelation, you you're missing out.

894
00:47:47,559 --> 00:47:52,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, a great point on the device that you describe,

895
00:47:52,400 --> 00:47:56,599
if the if you have those choices. I'm a fundamentalist

896
00:47:56,679 --> 00:47:59,719
and I've I like to use that term just to

897
00:47:59,800 --> 00:48:01,920
just to shake people up. I've did a series of

898
00:48:01,920 --> 00:48:05,079
books that kind of introduced Theopolis and I called them

899
00:48:05,119 --> 00:48:10,159
Theopolis Fundamentals, just to just to claim that heritage of

900
00:48:10,679 --> 00:48:15,119
confidence in the scriptures as true. Uh. And without any

901
00:48:15,199 --> 00:48:18,840
kind of qualification or hedging, the Bible is true. That's uh.

902
00:48:18,920 --> 00:48:23,079
I believe that. But yeah, you do have this. The

903
00:48:23,400 --> 00:48:27,159
hermeneutics of the fundamentalist movement was tend to be hostile

904
00:48:27,199 --> 00:48:32,360
to allegory, hostile to symbolism. Uh. And it's the grammatical

905
00:48:32,519 --> 00:48:36,960
historical is what's that's where it's at. And I think again,

906
00:48:37,000 --> 00:48:40,239
the the uh story of Jesus on the Road to MEAs,

907
00:48:41,119 --> 00:48:45,679
I think, shows how that that's how dangerous that is

908
00:48:45,679 --> 00:48:49,199
to limit it to that not recognize the christological dimension.

909
00:48:49,400 --> 00:48:51,119
And then I think too of you know, there's some

910
00:48:51,480 --> 00:48:56,159
pretty overt places in the Bible. I think, Uh, you know,

911
00:48:56,280 --> 00:49:01,800
the Gospels, Jesus tells parables, and you hear from experts

912
00:49:01,800 --> 00:49:05,360
on the parables. The parables are not allegories. Don't try

913
00:49:05,360 --> 00:49:08,400
to find one to one correspondences between what's in the

914
00:49:08,440 --> 00:49:11,199
parable and what Jesus means by it. But then you

915
00:49:11,440 --> 00:49:14,719
watch Jesus interpret the parables, you go, oh, well, Jesus,

916
00:49:15,039 --> 00:49:18,199
Jesus seems to think they're allegories because the sower is

917
00:49:18,239 --> 00:49:19,960
the son of Man, and the seed is the word

918
00:49:20,000 --> 00:49:22,000
of God, and the different soils that it goes on

919
00:49:22,039 --> 00:49:24,320
are different kinds of people. That looks a lot like

920
00:49:24,360 --> 00:49:28,679
an allegory. So that if you're going to be if

921
00:49:28,679 --> 00:49:31,639
you're going to be a fundamentalist and believe, you know,

922
00:49:31,760 --> 00:49:34,800
stick with what the Bible actually says, then allegory has

923
00:49:34,840 --> 00:49:37,199
to be an option because it's actually in the text.

924
00:49:37,440 --> 00:49:39,039
That's the way that Jesus reads is parable.

925
00:49:39,400 --> 00:49:41,880
Speaker 2: But I think that the key to at least the

926
00:49:41,960 --> 00:49:45,360
key that I've seen in helping people through this crisis,

927
00:49:45,400 --> 00:49:47,159
sometimes for them like a kind of Criste's some meaning,

928
00:49:47,559 --> 00:49:50,519
is really that typology is the key, and that it's

929
00:49:50,599 --> 00:49:54,239
not that there are allegories that you can just metaphors

930
00:49:54,239 --> 00:49:56,639
that you can just skip play.

931
00:49:56,400 --> 00:49:59,760
Speaker 3: With, and that you can just This is very serious work.

932
00:50:00,079 --> 00:50:03,960
Speaker 2: This is actually comparing stories with each other, yes, noticing

933
00:50:04,039 --> 00:50:09,000
structural relationships and always asking yourself, how does this reveal

934
00:50:09,039 --> 00:50:12,639
the logos in the story moving towards the incarnation? And

935
00:50:12,960 --> 00:50:16,480
when you do that, then it's actually it's quite serious work.

936
00:50:16,559 --> 00:50:18,840
It's something that you can criticize if someone gets it wrong.

937
00:50:18,840 --> 00:50:21,199
It's it's something that you can say, well, you missed

938
00:50:21,199 --> 00:50:23,400
this aspect. Did you notice this in the story? You

939
00:50:23,440 --> 00:50:25,880
seem to be ignoring some part of the story to

940
00:50:26,280 --> 00:50:28,519
make your case. But if you take this part, this

941
00:50:28,639 --> 00:50:32,159
part seriously, then you see what it does. And I've

942
00:50:32,199 --> 00:50:35,480
actually found that this kind of typological interpretation can be

943
00:50:35,880 --> 00:50:37,239
quite quite rigorous.

944
00:50:37,280 --> 00:50:38,320
Speaker 3: If you take it seriously.

945
00:50:38,519 --> 00:50:41,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree with that the yeah, and I wouldn't

946
00:50:41,920 --> 00:50:47,119
make a distinction. I mean historically, when when medieval Western

947
00:50:47,159 --> 00:50:50,519
theologians talked about allegory, I think they were talking about

948
00:50:50,519 --> 00:50:53,519
something very close to what we mean by typology. But

949
00:50:53,639 --> 00:50:57,280
you also have sometimes have these forms of allegorical interpretation

950
00:50:57,920 --> 00:51:00,800
that take you out from the text. You have something

951
00:51:00,800 --> 00:51:03,880
going on in the text, but what means it means

952
00:51:04,199 --> 00:51:07,920
what it's supposed to mean in some other, some other realm.

953
00:51:08,320 --> 00:51:10,559
I think there's there might be a way to get there,

954
00:51:10,559 --> 00:51:14,079
But I think the kind of cross comparison of different

955
00:51:14,119 --> 00:51:17,480
episodes of the Bible and recognizing, as we said earlier,

956
00:51:17,480 --> 00:51:21,639
that the Biblical history rhymes because history itself rhymes, that

957
00:51:21,679 --> 00:51:24,960
God is doing recurrent kinds of things, never identical, but

958
00:51:25,039 --> 00:51:28,199
there's this kind of repetition and spiral and music. I

959
00:51:28,559 --> 00:51:31,400
think I'd like to use musical metaphors to describe it.

960
00:51:31,559 --> 00:51:33,719
You've got a theme in variations, You've got an Exodus

961
00:51:33,760 --> 00:51:35,800
story early on in the Bible, and then you've got

962
00:51:35,800 --> 00:51:39,000
all kinds of variations on the Exodus story, and learning

963
00:51:39,000 --> 00:51:42,000
to hear those or recognize those when they happen. I

964
00:51:42,079 --> 00:51:44,960
think that I think that is, rather than stepping outside

965
00:51:45,000 --> 00:51:47,519
the text to try to find some meaning meaning outside.

966
00:51:47,840 --> 00:51:52,559
I think one of the things people UH might worry

967
00:51:52,559 --> 00:51:56,599
about there is that you're just working internally to the Bible.

968
00:51:56,639 --> 00:51:59,280
It never hits home with life. I think we've already

969
00:51:59,360 --> 00:52:01,639
we've already a rest that. But I think your point

970
00:52:01,639 --> 00:52:04,320
about what you're looking for in the text. What's being

971
00:52:04,360 --> 00:52:07,639
revealed in the text is the eternal Word of God

972
00:52:07,679 --> 00:52:09,599
that has carnated Jesus, Jesus the Christ.

973
00:52:10,119 --> 00:52:13,440
Speaker 3: So it also happens to be the structure of reality.

974
00:52:13,480 --> 00:52:15,960
Speaker 2: It's actually theructure of your experience, of your every day,

975
00:52:16,159 --> 00:52:18,679
all the time experience. It doesn't it it can be,

976
00:52:18,840 --> 00:52:21,599
it can be different from that, because that's the structure.

977
00:52:21,719 --> 00:52:25,599
I mean that structure. The Word created the world. Folks

978
00:52:25,639 --> 00:52:28,880
like the divine logos, the one that's incarnating Jesus is

979
00:52:28,920 --> 00:52:30,840
the one that created the world, and so the world

980
00:52:31,000 --> 00:52:33,920
has a shape which is akin to the Bible.

981
00:52:33,960 --> 00:52:35,800
Speaker 3: It kind of has to, you know, how.

982
00:52:35,639 --> 00:52:37,760
Speaker 1: Could it not. That's exactly where I was going. So

983
00:52:38,039 --> 00:52:41,519
he's the one in whom all things cohere. He's the

984
00:52:41,519 --> 00:52:43,599
one who is with the Father in creating the world.

985
00:52:43,639 --> 00:52:46,800
So yeah, it's so I think that that worry that

986
00:52:47,599 --> 00:52:53,079
typology just kind of it's inapplicable. It's not the case.

987
00:52:53,239 --> 00:52:55,320
I think the other thing, this is a this is

988
00:52:55,320 --> 00:52:59,039
something I learned very deeply from Jim Is then again

989
00:52:59,079 --> 00:53:01,280
going back to the idea of occurring patterns in the Bible,

990
00:53:01,719 --> 00:53:04,639
which are the recurring patterns of life. When you begin

991
00:53:04,679 --> 00:53:08,119
to recognize that, you can begin to see where in

992
00:53:08,199 --> 00:53:11,920
a story arc you might be. You can kind of anticipate,

993
00:53:13,519 --> 00:53:18,639
you know, if you see these recurring exodus stories, are

994
00:53:18,639 --> 00:53:22,400
we still in slavery? Have been We've been redeemed from slavery? Well,

995
00:53:22,440 --> 00:53:24,440
what happened to Israel when they came out of Egypt?

996
00:53:25,719 --> 00:53:29,760
They started complaining they were afflicted by a malachide. So

997
00:53:30,159 --> 00:53:32,039
if we've been brought out of some kind of Egypt,

998
00:53:32,039 --> 00:53:34,320
then those are the things that are on the horizon

999
00:53:34,360 --> 00:53:37,960
for us. Or if we're in a position where it's

1000
00:53:38,000 --> 00:53:42,719
more like a judge's something more analogous through the period

1001
00:53:42,719 --> 00:53:46,119
of the Judges than where the Lord is raising up

1002
00:53:46,159 --> 00:53:48,599
somebody who's going to lead as people out of slavery.

1003
00:53:48,760 --> 00:53:50,960
So you think you begin to see how because the

1004
00:53:51,039 --> 00:53:54,000
Church's history has the same kind of shape, the same

1005
00:53:54,039 --> 00:53:58,159
kind of recurrent shape. And it's not applicable in the

1006
00:53:58,199 --> 00:54:00,800
sense that you know, you can get three points of

1007
00:54:00,840 --> 00:54:03,480
application at the end of the sermon, but it's applicable

1008
00:54:03,480 --> 00:54:06,360
in the sense that you give people this big picture

1009
00:54:06,400 --> 00:54:09,519
of reality in which they can locate their lives and

1010
00:54:09,559 --> 00:54:14,480
they can begin to navigate within the world faithfully because

1011
00:54:14,519 --> 00:54:17,320
they have they're engaging the world through this through these

1012
00:54:17,639 --> 00:54:18,559
biblical patterns.

1013
00:54:18,880 --> 00:54:22,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, and often I think that often the some of

1014
00:54:22,760 --> 00:54:24,440
the texts, like in the Church of other sometimes you'll

1015
00:54:24,480 --> 00:54:28,440
read certain interpretations that at the first level like they

1016
00:54:28,480 --> 00:54:31,239
just seem wild because they really are allegorizing the text

1017
00:54:31,280 --> 00:54:33,760
will say like this is mercy, this is like they're

1018
00:54:33,880 --> 00:54:34,599
attributed to.

1019
00:54:34,559 --> 00:54:37,159
Speaker 3: The virtues or to the vices and stuff.

1020
00:54:37,679 --> 00:54:40,800
Speaker 2: And usually if you take the time to look at

1021
00:54:40,800 --> 00:54:43,440
what they're doing, you realize that there's actually there's actually

1022
00:54:43,480 --> 00:54:47,199
a typological reading underneath, and what they're doing in the

1023
00:54:47,239 --> 00:54:49,800
allegorizing is really just applying it. It's an it's an

1024
00:54:49,840 --> 00:54:54,039
application of the structure now to your everyday life and

1025
00:54:54,079 --> 00:54:56,920
to your struggle with the virtues and the vices. And

1026
00:54:57,159 --> 00:54:59,559
they're not they're not saying like this is the meaning

1027
00:54:59,599 --> 00:55:03,360
of the tech. They're saying, you know, like the simple

1028
00:55:03,519 --> 00:55:06,280
like the hardest example, right, the hardest example is the

1029
00:55:06,280 --> 00:55:06,840
bashing of.

1030
00:55:06,760 --> 00:55:07,840
Speaker 3: The children on the stone.

1031
00:55:07,840 --> 00:55:10,400
Speaker 2: You know that that text that all the atheists love

1032
00:55:10,480 --> 00:55:12,519
to bring up. You know, the idea like I'll bash

1033
00:55:12,559 --> 00:55:16,119
your little ones on the on the stones, and the

1034
00:55:16,119 --> 00:55:18,880
the father say that that's the thoughts, right, It's like,

1035
00:55:19,039 --> 00:55:21,039
it's the idea that you have to you have to

1036
00:55:21,079 --> 00:55:24,440
stop something before it grows and becomes mature so that

1037
00:55:24,480 --> 00:55:26,639
it doesn't so that it doesn't have the strength.

1038
00:55:26,320 --> 00:55:28,679
Speaker 3: Of all the power infancy exactly.

1039
00:55:29,039 --> 00:55:32,800
Speaker 2: And so it's pretty dark because it makes sense in

1040
00:55:32,880 --> 00:55:35,199
the text because that's what the text is referring to.

1041
00:55:35,280 --> 00:55:37,440
It's saying, we're going to and it's it's like it's

1042
00:55:37,480 --> 00:55:40,920
a it's not a moral it's not a Christian moral thing,

1043
00:55:41,000 --> 00:55:44,199
but it's saying, if you have enemies and you if

1044
00:55:44,199 --> 00:55:47,440
you don't kill their children, then those children are going

1045
00:55:47,519 --> 00:55:48,280
to come and.

1046
00:55:48,280 --> 00:55:49,000
Speaker 3: Get you back.

1047
00:55:49,360 --> 00:55:51,320
Speaker 2: And so the application for us today it's in the

1048
00:55:51,400 --> 00:55:53,239
light of Christ and the light of the one that

1049
00:55:53,320 --> 00:55:56,000
gave his life and that sacrificed himself, that or that

1050
00:55:56,079 --> 00:55:59,360
is willing to take you know, evil onto himself. Then

1051
00:55:59,400 --> 00:56:02,559
that becomes an internal struggle to fight the little things

1052
00:56:02,559 --> 00:56:05,159
that are growing that if you don't fight them when

1053
00:56:05,159 --> 00:56:07,119
they're little, then they'll come back to get you. So

1054
00:56:07,199 --> 00:56:10,880
the analogy is completely it's completely coherent, and it's actually

1055
00:56:10,960 --> 00:56:14,039
the best. It's the best interpretation for us as Christians,

1056
00:56:14,079 --> 00:56:16,559
because no, we don't want to go and bash, you know,

1057
00:56:16,599 --> 00:56:19,199
our enemy's children on to rock that that doesn't make

1058
00:56:19,239 --> 00:56:20,719
sense in light of Christ anymore.

1059
00:56:21,400 --> 00:56:28,119
Speaker 1: Yeah, the paradigm that I've fallen into is the medieval

1060
00:56:28,199 --> 00:56:33,159
fourfold method of interpretation. And I realized I had started

1061
00:56:33,280 --> 00:56:37,800
kind of using that pattern, not so much because I

1062
00:56:37,920 --> 00:56:40,320
learned about it and started applying it, but just in

1063
00:56:40,840 --> 00:56:45,760
preparing sermons, preparing for teaching. I mean, the fourfold pattern is,

1064
00:56:45,800 --> 00:56:47,760
you have the literal sense, this is what the text says,

1065
00:56:47,800 --> 00:56:49,880
what it means, You're looking at all the you're looking

1066
00:56:49,920 --> 00:56:52,440
at all the literary tropes and things as part of that.

1067
00:56:53,039 --> 00:56:56,360
But then it also is proclaiming Christ. That's what's called

1068
00:56:56,360 --> 00:57:00,400
the allegorical sense. But then, because Christ also has a body,

1069
00:57:00,519 --> 00:57:03,679
because Christ as members, whatever the text says about Christ

1070
00:57:03,719 --> 00:57:06,719
is also somehow applicable to you and to the church.

1071
00:57:06,800 --> 00:57:08,239
And that's where you get the kinds of things you're

1072
00:57:08,239 --> 00:57:12,440
talking about. You can move from the christological interpretation to

1073
00:57:12,519 --> 00:57:18,239
thinking about virtues and vices and dashing the the uh,

1074
00:57:19,159 --> 00:57:22,800
the infant evil thoughts that curR in your mind against

1075
00:57:22,800 --> 00:57:23,719
the rock of Jesus.

1076
00:57:24,400 --> 00:57:24,639
Speaker 2: Uh.

1077
00:57:24,679 --> 00:57:27,199
Speaker 1: So that that movement I think has been helpful. And yeah,

1078
00:57:27,239 --> 00:57:30,760
I think you're right that a lot of what can

1079
00:57:30,800 --> 00:57:34,880
be easily dismissed as fanciful in the Church Fathers is

1080
00:57:34,920 --> 00:57:38,320
still is operating in something like that vein. It's something

1081
00:57:38,360 --> 00:57:43,199
that's downstream from a type of what what we're calling

1082
00:57:43,199 --> 00:57:44,280
a typeological reading.

1083
00:57:44,800 --> 00:57:47,599
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we I think it's to me has been

1084
00:57:47,599 --> 00:57:50,360
important sometimes to trace that for people because, you know,

1085
00:57:50,480 --> 00:57:52,960
because it's become too obvious. You know, we just read,

1086
00:57:53,119 --> 00:57:55,639
we read the Father. We don't understand just how seeped

1087
00:57:55,639 --> 00:57:58,519
in scripture they were and justide was basically the world

1088
00:57:58,559 --> 00:58:01,039
that they lived in. So sometimes we have to break

1089
00:58:01,119 --> 00:58:03,960
down some of their readings, like I you know, I

1090
00:58:04,400 --> 00:58:07,559
love the Saint Gregor Nissa's Life of Moses one of

1091
00:58:07,559 --> 00:58:10,880
my favorite texts, you know, but sometimes in that text

1092
00:58:10,920 --> 00:58:13,639
he just goes he just cuts right through and says

1093
00:58:13,719 --> 00:58:16,599
certain things that if you read about the first Lange,

1094
00:58:16,679 --> 00:58:19,599
like where does he get this, you know. Uh, and

1095
00:58:19,639 --> 00:58:21,800
it's and it's been my pleasure to say, Okay, let's

1096
00:58:21,880 --> 00:58:25,239
take this and let's let's break it down. Let's show

1097
00:58:25,280 --> 00:58:28,800
how you can get there from a from a strict

1098
00:58:28,800 --> 00:58:32,079
typological reading and then ultimately come to what he's saying,

1099
00:58:32,599 --> 00:58:34,679
you know, to help people say that he's not just

1100
00:58:36,079 --> 00:58:38,880
he's not just mouthing off like he's not just kind

1101
00:58:38,880 --> 00:58:41,199
of making it up as as he goes along. And

1102
00:58:41,559 --> 00:58:44,199
you know, and I think I think it's that's especially

1103
00:58:44,199 --> 00:58:47,280
important to do today, you know, just because our biblical

1104
00:58:47,280 --> 00:58:50,760
literacy in the modern world especially, you know, and and

1105
00:58:50,800 --> 00:58:53,920
this is something in the Orthodox Church which is needed,

1106
00:58:54,119 --> 00:58:57,039
you know, in our situation, because the Orthodox world.

1107
00:58:56,960 --> 00:58:58,360
Speaker 3: Is done like it's over.

1108
00:58:58,800 --> 00:59:01,880
Speaker 2: And so even people that because that are orthodoxictsy in

1109
00:59:02,039 --> 00:59:04,840
America or in Europe, they have the same problem that

1110
00:59:04,880 --> 00:59:07,320
has everybody else. They live in a secular right society

1111
00:59:07,360 --> 00:59:11,079
that doesn't have the Bible and Scripture and the Christian

1112
00:59:11,119 --> 00:59:15,000
tradition as the basic you know mind a worldview in

1113
00:59:15,039 --> 00:59:17,159
which to live, and so they have the same problem

1114
00:59:17,199 --> 00:59:19,639
as everybody else. They need to make those connections more

1115
00:59:19,639 --> 00:59:20,559
explicit now.

1116
00:59:20,559 --> 00:59:23,400
Speaker 1: Right right, Yeah, I think Augusta would be another example,

1117
00:59:23,840 --> 00:59:26,519
and particularly I think of the iterations on the psalms,

1118
00:59:27,519 --> 00:59:33,320
where I mean he did he did not have an Internet,

1119
00:59:33,920 --> 00:59:38,960
an electronic search engine to cross reference the psalms. He

1120
00:59:39,159 --> 00:59:42,239
was doing it all for memory. But uh, he you know,

1121
00:59:42,280 --> 00:59:45,239
he reads a verse of a psalm and within the

1122
00:59:45,280 --> 00:59:48,480
next few paragraphs he is everywhere all over the Bible,

1123
00:59:49,159 --> 00:59:52,719
connecting all kinds of things that this particular verse reminded

1124
00:59:52,760 --> 00:59:57,440
him of. And el, yeah, I don't endorse everything I

1125
00:59:57,480 --> 01:00:00,599
find in Augustine, but a lot of it, a lot

1126
01:00:00,599 --> 01:00:04,400
of it works because because he's, uh, he's working within

1127
01:00:04,440 --> 01:00:09,559
a framework that's uh, Christ centered, chrystological. Uh, he's working

1128
01:00:09,639 --> 01:00:14,000
a framework that really heavily emphasizes the union of Jesus

1129
01:00:14,039 --> 01:00:16,800
the head with the members of his body. So every

1130
01:00:16,800 --> 01:00:19,239
time he sees something about Jesus, he knows it's also

1131
01:00:19,320 --> 01:00:23,400
something about the church. But it's just astonishing that from

1132
01:00:23,480 --> 01:00:28,119
his mind, just his knowledge of scripture, he's able to

1133
01:00:28,119 --> 01:00:31,119
make all these connections, and it seems almost instantaneous.

1134
01:00:31,320 --> 01:00:32,480
Speaker 3: I'm sure it's annoying.

1135
01:00:32,639 --> 01:00:35,280
Speaker 2: It's annoying to know that that so many people that

1136
01:00:35,320 --> 01:00:38,480
had memorized the psalter, you know, like I have nowhere

1137
01:00:38,480 --> 01:00:41,840
near like, I'm it's not even on my horizon.

1138
01:00:42,559 --> 01:00:44,440
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're if you're a Benedictine and you

1139
01:00:45,239 --> 01:00:47,760
sing through the psalter every week, you know, you do

1140
01:00:47,840 --> 01:00:51,119
that for ten years, then uh, you're gonna have all

1141
01:00:51,159 --> 01:00:52,360
You're gonna have all memorized.

1142
01:00:52,599 --> 01:00:55,119
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're just going to have seeped into your into

1143
01:00:55,159 --> 01:00:56,400
your into your existence.

1144
01:00:56,519 --> 01:00:56,639
Speaker 1: Uh.

1145
01:00:57,360 --> 01:00:59,760
Speaker 2: And so what do you hope for, Let's say, for

1146
01:00:59,800 --> 01:01:02,719
the future for theopolis, but also for this vision of

1147
01:01:03,079 --> 01:01:05,119
scripture and how it integrates into our life.

1148
01:01:05,719 --> 01:01:10,360
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, at Theaplist, we see ourselves as a service

1149
01:01:11,079 --> 01:01:15,760
to the church. We're in a particular quadrant of the church,

1150
01:01:15,840 --> 01:01:19,599
but we are we believe that what we have to

1151
01:01:19,599 --> 01:01:23,159
say is valuable to Christians of all in all different traditions,

1152
01:01:23,719 --> 01:01:28,119
and so we we are have a Catholic spirit. We

1153
01:01:28,159 --> 01:01:33,199
want to without We're not giving up on our convictions

1154
01:01:33,000 --> 01:01:37,320
as a particular confessional doctrinal convictions, but we want what

1155
01:01:37,360 --> 01:01:40,239
we do to have to be edifying to the church

1156
01:01:40,280 --> 01:01:43,239
at large. I think that's happening. We have a pretty

1157
01:01:43,639 --> 01:01:47,360
wide readership. We get students from a variety of different

1158
01:01:48,280 --> 01:01:54,239
variety of different churches. In our programs. We've had one

1159
01:01:54,400 --> 01:02:00,760
Orthodox student go through our our fellows program, happy to

1160
01:02:00,800 --> 01:02:02,480
have more, but we've just had the one so far,

1161
01:02:03,400 --> 01:02:09,440
so we have, you know, as far as our hope

1162
01:02:09,440 --> 01:02:13,599
for the churches, we would play some part in reviving

1163
01:02:14,320 --> 01:02:17,960
and renewing a what I think is a very ancient

1164
01:02:17,960 --> 01:02:22,039
way of reading scripture. I think it's been refreshed and

1165
01:02:22,199 --> 01:02:27,280
perfected in some ways in by later developments. But it's rooted,

1166
01:02:27,360 --> 01:02:29,079
as you're talking about in the Church. Father's rooted in

1167
01:02:29,119 --> 01:02:31,960
the New Testament, the New Testaments. We're reading the old.

1168
01:02:33,239 --> 01:02:35,440
But we want to play some role in seeing that

1169
01:02:36,840 --> 01:02:39,639
seep into the church and to deepen the deepen the

1170
01:02:39,639 --> 01:02:44,440
way people read the scriptures. As you know, that's one

1171
01:02:44,599 --> 01:02:48,639
part of one major part of renewal of the church

1172
01:02:48,639 --> 01:02:50,719
in general. I wrote a book a number of years

1173
01:02:50,719 --> 01:02:54,800
ago called The The End of Protestantism, where I made

1174
01:02:54,800 --> 01:03:02,440
the argument the title had a twofold, twofold intention one is, uh,

1175
01:03:02,559 --> 01:03:05,480
what is the goal of Protestantism? To my mind, the

1176
01:03:05,480 --> 01:03:09,119
goal of Protestantism is to renew the entire church. That

1177
01:03:09,239 --> 01:03:11,239
was the That was the goal of the original reformers.

1178
01:03:11,239 --> 01:03:13,719
They didn't want to create a new church. They wanted

1179
01:03:13,760 --> 01:03:17,519
the Roman Catholic Church to be renewed and UH and

1180
01:03:17,679 --> 01:03:22,079
UH reformed by the Word of God. But if that happens,

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if we if we see the Word of God embraced

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01:03:25,280 --> 01:03:29,199
by churches, by all the church, then Protestantism is a

1183
01:03:29,199 --> 01:03:33,480
separate body of churches doesn't need to exist anymore. We

1184
01:03:33,679 --> 01:03:37,719
just have one church. So that renewing of the of

1185
01:03:37,760 --> 01:03:41,239
the of biblical of Biblical typology, and of deep biblical

1186
01:03:41,280 --> 01:03:46,559
reading UH is part of an And we're it sounds

1187
01:03:46,800 --> 01:03:50,559
I don't want to make it sound pompous. We're not

1188
01:03:50,599 --> 01:03:54,280
pretending like we're doing this, we're accomplishing this. We want

1189
01:03:54,320 --> 01:03:58,000
to play some some small role in seeing the church

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01:03:58,000 --> 01:04:00,800
as a whole renewed toward the end of seeing the

1191
01:04:00,880 --> 01:04:06,880
church one with one confession, one mind, one lip, and

1192
01:04:06,880 --> 01:04:09,480
and that I think that's what Jesus desires for his church,

1193
01:04:09,480 --> 01:04:12,280
a church that's drenched and saturated with the Word of

1194
01:04:12,280 --> 01:04:14,840
God and confesses with one voice.

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01:04:16,559 --> 01:04:19,599
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that it's interesting because in some ways,

1196
01:04:19,840 --> 01:04:23,679
you there is a symphony of these types of people

1197
01:04:23,719 --> 01:04:26,960
coming up in different spheres. You know, you talk about

1198
01:04:26,960 --> 01:04:29,440
even people that aren't Christian, like e. Mcgilchris, you know,

1199
01:04:29,519 --> 01:04:31,760
and I think Jordan Peterson plays some role in that

1200
01:04:31,840 --> 01:04:34,480
as well. There are several It's as if it is

1201
01:04:34,519 --> 01:04:37,639
something that's happening right in culture, and the people that

1202
01:04:38,239 --> 01:04:40,880
are moving in the same direction are kind of recognizing

1203
01:04:40,920 --> 01:04:43,039
each other across the island and saying, Okay, we're not

1204
01:04:43,119 --> 01:04:45,440
exactly and we and I think it's also part of

1205
01:04:45,840 --> 01:04:47,880
the honesty of this is to recognize the difference, is

1206
01:04:47,920 --> 01:04:50,400
to say, Okay, I'm reformed, these are these are my

1207
01:04:50,599 --> 01:04:52,360
these are the things that I won't budge on, and

1208
01:04:52,400 --> 01:04:55,800
the same with me, I'm orthodox. But we can recognize

1209
01:04:55,960 --> 01:05:00,039
the places where we come together, and especially in in

1210
01:05:00,119 --> 01:05:04,559
terms of this, this beautiful capacity to see the.

1211
01:05:04,519 --> 01:05:06,480
Speaker 3: Images in scripture play with each other.

1212
01:05:06,320 --> 01:05:10,039
Speaker 2: In this in this dance that animates the world. So

1213
01:05:10,119 --> 01:05:13,199
I'm really excited. I've been I've been excited since I

1214
01:05:13,239 --> 01:05:16,440
discovered what Theopolis is doing. And I think you know,

1215
01:05:16,760 --> 01:05:19,679
uh And interestingly enough, Dean Arnold, who some of you

1216
01:05:19,760 --> 01:05:23,559
may know who watch this channel, he is editing James

1217
01:05:23,679 --> 01:05:26,400
Jordan's Revelation Interpretation, right, and.

1218
01:05:26,360 --> 01:05:28,760
Speaker 3: I think he I think he published. I think it's published. Yeah,

1219
01:05:28,760 --> 01:05:30,119
I think he published it a few months.

1220
01:05:29,920 --> 01:05:32,480
Speaker 1: Ago, right, three volumes He's come out with right.

1221
01:05:32,599 --> 01:05:35,559
Speaker 2: And so so yeah, so this discussion is happening in

1222
01:05:35,639 --> 01:05:38,880
the in the in the back rooms, it's happening everywhere,

1223
01:05:38,960 --> 01:05:41,360
and so you know, and we're we're definitely looking forward

1224
01:05:41,360 --> 01:05:42,599
to seeing it continue.

1225
01:05:42,599 --> 01:05:44,800
Speaker 3: So it's Peter. Thank you for your time and thanks

1226
01:05:44,880 --> 01:05:46,079
thanks for engaging with me.

1227
01:05:46,199 --> 01:05:48,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you, Johnathan. It's been really fun. Appreciate it.

1228
01:05:49,480 --> 01:05:52,320
Speaker 2: If you enjoy these videos and podcasts, please go to

1229
01:05:52,360 --> 01:05:55,079
the Symbolic World dot com website and see how you

1230
01:05:55,079 --> 01:05:56,280
can support what we're doing.

1231
01:05:56,599 --> 01:05:58,880
Speaker 3: There are multiple subscriber tiers with perks.

1232
01:05:59,079 --> 01:06:01,559
Speaker 2: There are apparel and books to purchase, So go to

1233
01:06:01,559 --> 01:06:04,039
the Symbolic World dot com and thank you for your

1234
01:06:04,039 --> 01:06:04,440
support