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Speaker 1: We have to really realize that.

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Speaker 2: You know, the gods, the Northern God, they die, they end,

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they get eaten by the wolf.

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Speaker 1: Ragnarok ends them.

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Speaker 2: And that's the difference, Like we actually have the end

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of our story is the opposite of that read revelation.

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You have this glorious king that rules forever over a

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city of jewels. It's like, that's the end of our story.

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It's there, It's encoded in the story. And so this

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search for glory and power and just riches their entire

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life leads to their decomposition at the end and being

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eaten by the dark wolf. The life of self sacrifice

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and of giving yourself leads in the story to this

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glorious city, and so you know it's there encoded in

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the mythology.

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Speaker 3: This is Jonathan Peshel. Welcome to the symbolic world.

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Speaker 2: So everyone, I am very happy to be here with

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James or many of you who have watched a gospel

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series of the Exody series have seen James. He's become

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a friend of mine who've done several things together.

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Speaker 1: Of course those series.

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Speaker 2: I was also had the chance to go to England

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and do a tour with him. He is an associate

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professor in Cambridge. He's the chair of the Edmundburg Foundation

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in the UK and also runs the Trinity Forum in

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the UK, which is what I was able to participate

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in when I was there, and I thought it would

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be a great opportunity to have him on. He is

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such an insightful cultural thinker and a very brave person

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in his own context. And so James, thanks, thanks for

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talking to us.

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Speaker 4: It's great to be with you, Jonathan. I'm a huge

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fan of the symbolic world and all the work that

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you do, so just so good to be with you.

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Speaker 2: And so we have been now on the two you know,

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the two Bible seminars with the Daily Wire. Of course,

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the first one Exodus, which was wonderful, amazing, but the

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Gospel seminar, I think we're all a little worried about

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it because talking about the Gospels is so much more

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controversial than talking about Exodus. And so we all came

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in and so I'd like you maybe to tell people

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a little bit about what your experience was of doing

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that with all this together.

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Speaker 4: Well, yes, you're right. I think we all approached it

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with a certain sense of foreboding but also excitement, and

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you know, a sense of reverence, but also yeah, we

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were I didn't quite know what to expect. I mean,

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the first thing to say is that those two Exodus

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it was two Exodus series, and so we spent two

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weeks on those forty chapters, and whereas this project we're

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trying to get through all four Gospels effectively, what was

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it six days.

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Speaker 1: The day to two like in the morning and NF.

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Speaker 4: It was something that's right, and so I was probably

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it doesn't really come across in the series, but we

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were in the studio four hours a day as opposed

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to two hours a day. Everything was compressed down into

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a single week. So it was a lot more intense.

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It was much more you know, it required a lot

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more stamina. I found it was. It was a lot

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more of a kind of an emotional roller coaster two,

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particularly that final day, you know, the last two sessions

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at Golgotha and the resurrection and the trial. We don't

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think we did the trial, go the cruise of fiction

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and the resurrection all in about you know, four hour.

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I think it was almost I think it was a

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single day, and I think we were all emotionally chatted

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at the end. At the end of that day. But

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I think and it was harder to I think with

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Exodus we were able to approach it as this enormously

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important kind of canonical text that was more than merely

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just any other text. You know, we all approached it

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that we had different perspectives, some secular, mainly not, but

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with a.

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Speaker 3: Sense of reverence. But I think with the Gospels there.

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Speaker 4: Was something it was much much more freated, and you know,

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and that's why I think it was so important to

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have Dennis Prager there. You know, I know there was

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some being a little bit of you a few questions about,

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you know, what is Dennis Prager doing there? What was

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John Viveki doing there? Actually, if they had not been there,

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I just I think the whole series would have just

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fallen apart. I think it was wonderful having them there.

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John as a sympathetic secular, quasi secular but not kind

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of hard boiled secular perspective counterpoint, and Dennis there just

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so open, generous, willing to understand, willing to give a

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kind of, you know, mildly critical Jewish perspective. So that

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really held it all together. But yes, it was it

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was a much more delicate tightrope I felt, and I

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don't know if you felt the same.

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Speaker 2: Well, I came in quite nervous about it, and there

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were some issues that you know, because we we weren't

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actually reading the gospels. We were reading this like kind

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of synthetic account of the Gospel, So that made us

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all nervous as well.

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Speaker 1: Everything.

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Speaker 2: There were all these things that were there, but there

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was something again, and I think Jordan sets the tone

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in just in terms of his stance in conversation. I

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think that the tone of the conversation ended up being

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so productive, and.

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Speaker 1: There was a dance.

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Speaker 2: Really, like you said, in some ways, everybody kind of

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knew what it is that they were bringing, and we

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created this in some ways, people could watch it just

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as a model of a conversation people who don't even

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care about the Gospel, to see how can you have

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people that are so far from each other in their

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positions in some cases, but nonetheless be able to discuss

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something that important and controversial.

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Speaker 4: I couldn't agree more. I mean, I think Jordan chad

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it really well, and I wasn't actually sure how he

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was going to do it or how good a job

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he was going to do it. This is basically, it's

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not something he's actually got much practice in the podcast

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the dialogue occasional trialogue podcast format, it doesn't lend itself

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to kind of sharing a seminar of eight nine different

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people over that long period. And I thought he did

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a fantastic job with it. And there was I'm not

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sure what it was. There was a combination of a

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kind of the intensity of a kind of evangelical preacher,

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but with that sort of sympathetic skepticism of the of

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you know, of the psychologist, the clinical psychologists, and the

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kind of and the student of culture and the kind

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of the reader of the cultural ruins. And but I

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think at no point is that, you know, his sense

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of respect.

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Speaker 3: Shone through every conversation.

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Speaker 4: I think he set the tone perfectly for it with

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that that that the sense of seriousness, the sense of reverence,

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but without it feeling because of his own position, overly

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pious or devout or saccharine. And I thought that was

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crucial to the success of this series in particular.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's I think at that point.

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Speaker 2: The last point is important because in some ways the danger,

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one of the dangers that we could have fallen into,

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was a kind of sentimentality exactly, you know, also a

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kind of evangelical space where we're you know, we're trying

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to convince people or confine, convince each other of some

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position or whatnot. And because of Jordan's, yeah, because of

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his stance, I think we were mostly able to avoid

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that in any at all. I think even at some

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point Dennis Prager mentioned, he said, we've been here for

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several days and no one yet has told me like

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how to be saved, you know, and I thought, wow,

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that's a pretty amazing stance. Also because if you actually

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read the gospel, you realize that there's so much more.

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It's actually not that much about that, you know, that's

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not really where Jesus is talking about most of the time.

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But I think that and I had never I think

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I realized afterwards, I had never in my life gone

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through the entire Gospel story in a week.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and so that was an instanding thing to do.

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Speaker 3: It really was.

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Speaker 4: And you know, like you, I was a little suspicious

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when Jordan's circulated that that text of you know, the

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four in one one Gospel, but it reminded me that

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it had been done before in the early Church. There

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was that guidation in about one sixty, i'd done the

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Dea tesser On, you know, folding folding all four gospels

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into one. I remember reading about that when you know,

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in those old debates about when did the canon form

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and how do we know it was four gospels? Well

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that's a really good early date for their being four gospels.

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So actually, and I thought it worked well. I mean

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we could have. I'm sure there are all kinds of

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scholarly criticisms to be made of, you know, the sequencing

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and how can you chart the chronology and so on,

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but I don't think it really mattered. We got the

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basic sequence, the narrative thrust to the gospels, and we

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managed also what you know, we simply had to cut

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out a lot of the kind of duplicate and triplicate

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synoptic material, which would it would of make no sense

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if we'd done for gospels sequentially. It would have been

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an impossible thing to produce. So actually that worked really well.

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And I think the other thing I appreciated. I mean

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we've talked already about you know, John Vivaki's friendly, interesting perspective,

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a mildly skeptical perspective from somebody who'd grown up in

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a church background and hit a Baptist background, So there's

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some very moving exchanges I remember having with him and

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he having with others, and then of course Dennis's perspective.

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But I think what I found especially in Enriching was

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the the ecumenical, sort of synoptic perspectives. You had, you,

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of course with your or your love earning and insights

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steeped and soaked in the Orthodox tradition. We had Bishop Baron,

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sadly only for three days, but I think those those

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sessions were electric. Learnt so much from him. He's got

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such a gift for communication and also for conveying the Catholic,

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you know, an unapologetically Catholic perspective, and that I think

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those provided anchor points. And then there was a sort

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of wooly Anglican takes like a Mine and Professor Hedley

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and doctor Blackwood. But that for a bit of padding there,

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that's a.

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Speaker 1: Little bit bad.

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Speaker 2: But I think that you know you say that, but

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in some ways, both Stephen, all three of you Anglicans

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are deeply rooted in you know, a Stephen who has

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read so much of a Boetius and has a kind

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of a vision towards also Hellenistic culture Douglas who is

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a ner Platonist, and you have also such a sense

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of the mystical aspect of Christianity and also the cultural aspect,

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and so I felt like in some ways I didn't

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even notice. The person I noticed the most was of

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course Bishop Baron, because he really spoke from a position

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of kind of Catholic authority, and I thought it was

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really useful for that to happen, because sometimes you would

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give the theological words that that I, for example, purposely

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avoid because you're mostly talking to kind of half secular,

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half Christian audiences.

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Speaker 1: But I thought it was useful to have that.

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Speaker 2: But in all, I felt really like there was there

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was just this exploratory mode that we were in, and

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and that made it. I think anybody can watch it

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from any faith tradition, not even Christian, and you know,

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be able to enter into the conversation absolutely.

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Speaker 4: And you're right, Bishop Baron was very good at kind

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of enunciating the kind of orthodox theological kind of pronouncements

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and but in a very helpful way and sort of

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explaining how those how those doctrines and dogmas that are

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kind of unfolded and how they were to be, you know,

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found in the Gospels. And I thought that was so useful,

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and I think for me, I mean, it's kind of

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you to say that we're sort of attuned to the

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mystical dimensions of the Gospels, and that's something that's relatively

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new to me. And of course I'm a love Plato

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and have been, you know, very enamored of the Neoplatonic tradition.

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But I think there was it was a shock to

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me as it were, approaching the Gospels from some lens

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other than the sort of traditional lens of you Anglo

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American New Testament scholarship, which is primarily the hermeneutical prism

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of the literal and the historical in the Delubacks, you know,

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the four senses of scripture. And that's what I found

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so so powerful, sort of approaching scripture not just from

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that one prism, but from the other three too.

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Speaker 3: What are they?

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Speaker 4: The the the allegorical, which you were so good at,

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you know, explaining how to and in Exodus as well,

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explaining how you know how to think through the scriptures

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in terms of allegory and symbol and then the mode

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that Jordan I think was especially strong at the what

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do they call it? The tropological? So the moral sense

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of scripture? How how should I apply this to my

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own life or how I ought to do? How do

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I think about virtue? How do I think about moral formation?

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Becoming a better person? And then the mystical what is it?

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The other the final one is the anag the anagogical

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of course, which is, you know, the mystical ascent. You know,

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what is the eschatological horizon and import and direction of

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this text? And I can't tell you, you know, New

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Testament scholarship. I mean, I'm not a New Testament scholar,

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but I, you know, will occasionally go to New Testament seminars,

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and I'll often you know, I keep abreast of New

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Testament scholarship, and it is just toned out. You know,

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you'd be laughed at if you'd brought up those other

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three senses anything other than basically a theological analysis of

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the text or theology or a kind of quite a

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dry textural literal historical analysis. I mean, I did feel,

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and de Louvac does say that that that lair was

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the foundational one, and I felt I was often making

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quite sort of apologetic historical points saying, look, trying to

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bring everything down and say, look, it does matter that

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this happened. It's got a there's a very granular and

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plausible historical context to this. No, the resurrection is not owned.

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Is not just a sort of symbolic awakening in the

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hearts of the of the apostles. It's it's it's it's

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more than just it is more than just history. It's

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the axis of history. And so we shouldn't naively historicize

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it and reduce it to just some other contingent event

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in history. Of course not, but it is at least history.

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It had, it has and we and one has to

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stand by that, and one has to be, you know,

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open to the historical strength of of of the documents,

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which was which had such an impact on me when

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I came to faith twenty years ago. But that's you know,

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in the end, that's kind of limited too. And if

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you want the scriptures to enrich your life and to

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help you think about God, to think about the final

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the first things and the last things, you desperately need

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these other three readings. And that's what I got, that's

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what I learned most from our time, not just in

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the Gospels, but Exodus too.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I really appreciated in some ways the.

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Speaker 2: Voice that you brought that more technical aspects sometimes to say,

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you know, like this is even in terms of the translations,

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in terms of the Greek and bringing it you had

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more of the scholarly approach, because now I don't have

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that at all, Like.

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Speaker 1: I just don't, and I don't.

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Speaker 2: It's not that I don't totally care for it, it's

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just that i'm not. I don't. That's not the thing

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that drives my attention. That's other reason why I care

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for the Gospel. I do believe what you said. I

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do believe that all these things happened. I do, you know,

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obviously I believe that the resurrection is an event. But

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I tend to focus on the typology and the vision,

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the eschatological vision, and so I thought it was just

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and I thought everybody also was able to play with

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each other, because usually, you know, I've had conversations with

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the more kind of historical types, let's say, and it's

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sometimes very difficult to play with each other because we're

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just talking completely past each other, and people think that

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I'm suggesting that none of this happened, that it's all allegory,

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that's all metaphor, and.

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Speaker 1: I'm like, no, no, that's not what it is.

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Speaker 2: But that's what was amazing about the event was that

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we were also because of Exodus. I think we already

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had a we kind of knew, we knew each other,

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and there was already a dance that had started and

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made it easier to have that conversation.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean, in many ways

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I felt it was a sort of fusion or sympthem.

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I mean, I've got this theory. I don't know if

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it's plausible or not, but what you've seen in biblical

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hermineutics over the last what one hundred and fifty years

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is a kind of it's a sort of split. Got

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the stress more fundamentalist evangelical stress on the literal sense

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of scripture, the historical. It's quite monochrome, but it's very

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kind of, very strict, and then and the liberal theology

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has gone in complete the other direction. It's much more.

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It's just allegory, you know, it's just the symbolic. And

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I felt what we managed to do in those seminars

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was to.

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Speaker 3: Not see that as a zero sum game.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, and actually and to see more to it, precisely

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because we're seeing those two together to also be alive

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to the capacity for moral instruction and also for that

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s catological horizon, the orientation to the final vision. And

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I just it was, you know, I found that so galvanizing.

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Speaker 5: Hello, my name is Richard Roland, and I am interrupting

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the construction of the New Symbolic World barn Of podcasting

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to tell you about a new course that is coming

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from the Symbolic World beginning February the twenty fourth. This

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course is called Tolkien and Universal History. So there's a

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famous letter that Tolkien wrote. It's about ten thousand words

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or so to a man named Milton Waldman. Sometimes it

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is called the Waldman Letter or Letter one thirty one,

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and in it he says this, speaking of his efforts

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to create the Legendaria, I had a mind to make

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a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from

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the large and cosmogonic to the level of romantic fairy story.

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The larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth,

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the lesser drawing splendor from the vast backcloths, which I

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could dedicate simply to England, to my country. Later he

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says I would draw some of the great tales in

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fullness and leave many only placed in the scheme and sketched.

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The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and

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yet leave scope for other minds in hands wielding paint

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and music and drama. So this course will begin with

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an exploration of two medieval literary genres, the poem and

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the chronicle, and see how Tolkien used them in his

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early conceptions of Arda. These two genres of literature are

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essential to medieval universal history, but of course, as you

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all know, they're often overlooked as being boring by modern readers,

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so it's easy to overlook their importance to Tolkien's project.

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Then we're going to move on to the linguistic and

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philological framework for Tolkien's Legendarium, which shows us how his

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quote unquote secret vice is the key to Middle earth

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deep sense of place and time. As surprising as it

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might seem, it's also the inn you could say, for

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Tolkien to connect his Legendarium to the Christian story. And finally,

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we're going to look at how he takes all of

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these elements of universal history and works them into the

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modern genre of the novel. So It's been said that

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the only honest response to a work of art is

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another work of art, and that's something I really believe.

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So in our final lesson in the course, we're going

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to do a couple of things. One is we're going

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to look at the application of the genres and methods

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that we.

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Speaker 3: Find in to.

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Speaker 5: The mythopic and universal history efforts of three contemporary fantasy writers,

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including one Jonathan Pago. And there's also going to be

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a little optional writing assignment for those who want to

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participate in some mythopeic efforts of their own. I'm really

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excited about this course. I know that I've done a

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lot around the internet about the works of JR.

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Speaker 3: Or Tolkien.

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Speaker 5: This is completely new material and I'm very excited about it.

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So I hope you will consider joining me February of

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the twenty fourth. You can learn more by going to

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the Symbolic World dot com slash courses, and I hope

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to see you there.

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Speaker 2: And I think that what you're saying brings me in

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some ways to the next thing I wanted to talk about,

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which is, you know, this idea of going beyond this

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opposition right of the literal and the metaphorical all of

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these types of things that are happening. It speaks to

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a culture moment that we're going through. We can talk

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about the re enchantment with there are different ways in

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which we're addressing this, like that we're moving towards a

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post Enlightenment, post liberal world, all of this. You know,

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the Gospel Seminar, the Exodus Seminar was the most popular

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thing that Daily Wire did on their platform, and now

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it looks like the Gospel Series might outdo it. And

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so I want to get your take on that. You know,

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you've been also following this story, you know Rodreer, you

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you know Paul kings North and Martinshaw, all these people

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that are speaking into this moment, and Jordan Peterson as well,

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John Raveaki.

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Speaker 1: So what is your perception of what's happening in our

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world right now?

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Speaker 4: Well, I mean I think we're in a time of

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extraordinary flux. Of course, to state the obvious, a time

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of a real instability, culturally enormous tension.

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Speaker 3: Obviously, all of this is to state the obvious.

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Speaker 4: But I think what early on when I started noticing

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this sort of the waves of the cultural revolution crashing

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into across the institutional landscape here in the UK. This

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is roughly a year two after it started in North America.

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I realized that there was a tendency among some Christians

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and people of faith to kind of, you know, shore

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up a little bit, to get very pessimistic, to kind

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of get awise themselves a little bit. And that's changed,

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I think around twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen. I

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think partly thanks to these more sort of secular profits

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like Jordan and others, or secular profits on their way

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to embracing the sacred, as in the case of a

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Paul King's North or a Martin Shaw. And I, you know,

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I think that there are opportunities here amidst the crisis,

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and I really can see the fingerprints of Providence all

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over these these cultural developments. And you know, if you'd said,

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you know, twenty years ago, at the high noon of

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the new Atheism, a uh before too long, you would

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be seeing, you know, public conversions of very distinguished intellectuals, writers, mythographers,

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celebrities to Christianity, and not liberal Christianity, but Christianity with

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all the weird stuff, you know, and all the all

427
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the bells and whistles and and and I kind of

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wanting to embrace all of that. I think we'd have

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thought you were just completely mad, and so, you know,

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I think it is. It's there are all sorts of opportunities.

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I think I've noticed that the evangelical tradition, certainly here

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in the UK, has struggled to cope with it with

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it or struggle to see some of the opportunities that

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have opened up.

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Speaker 3: And I don't.

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Speaker 4: And I think that probably is to connect back to

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what we were talking about earlier, that that maybe the

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tradition historically, and maybe this is changing now, but historically

439
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their hermeneutic is not open to the enchanted dimension quite

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as much, in as much as it's a little bit

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more skeptical of the allegorical and the proper logical and

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the anagogical and the kind of the final vision. All

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of that is a kind of a restraint there. And

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I think the liberal wings of the church here in

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England have unfortunately disappeared so far down various political rabbit

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holes that have rendered it basically indistinguishable from, you know,

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a secular policy shop, that they've not really been able

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to rise to the to the to the challenge at all,

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which is a source of great sadness that our established

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church has this extraordinary, you know, once in a century

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opportunity I view to address the crisis of meaning and

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to aggret and to address through faith this sense of

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civilizational instability and rootlessness. And you know, I find that

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really heartbreaking. At the same time, I often get emails,

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partly thanks to the Exodus series. I can't remember doing

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anything that has stimulated so many people to get in

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touch with me. I think it's partly because my email

458
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is sort of available. You can look me up and

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write to me at my game of Emails, so I

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probably get the benefit of all the compliments because other

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people are harder to track down. But I've had the

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most moving messages from people all around the world, and

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occasionally some slightly zany takes, but often very reflective, sophisticated,

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moving testimonies about from doctors in their sixties who you know,

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who are searching for God late in life, and who

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found something in the series which which spoke to them,

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you know, which which no, which which a fiery sermon

468
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from a pulpit couldn't just couldn't do they just wouldn't

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it wouldn't work. And I think what Jordan and others,

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and what you and Paul and Martin and others and

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Rod are able to do is to open up just

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less tested, more oblique ways into the faith that don't

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feel you know that they don't feel overly cognitive or propositional,

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but stress a world of beauty, a world that is magnetizing, mesmerizing,

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that is attractive, that helps you to understand Western culture,

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helps you to read myths afresh, to read fairy story

477
00:26:53,279 --> 00:26:58,240
stories afresh. And I think that's just so so powerful

478
00:26:58,359 --> 00:27:02,079
and new. I can't really think of I can't really

479
00:27:02,119 --> 00:27:04,480
think of anything comparable. I mean you might have said,

480
00:27:05,200 --> 00:27:09,079
you know, when you know Lewis and Tolkien were publishing

481
00:27:09,119 --> 00:27:11,799
in earnest in the sixties and seventies, perhaps there was

482
00:27:12,400 --> 00:27:14,920
something going on there, but we didn't see, you know,

483
00:27:15,039 --> 00:27:18,039
it wasn't meeting the need, meeting any particular religious need,

484
00:27:18,119 --> 00:27:23,200
nor did it stimulate any particularly noteworthy phenomenon of revival.

485
00:27:25,480 --> 00:27:28,359
So no, I you know, it's very hard. Things are

486
00:27:28,359 --> 00:27:32,319
moving so fast, and it's sometimes hard to distinguish the

487
00:27:32,359 --> 00:27:37,720
political dimensions and dynamics from the spiritual, you know, the

488
00:27:37,960 --> 00:27:41,319
sort of the meaning vacuum. I mean, they're often obviously

489
00:27:41,519 --> 00:27:46,160
interlinked in lots of ways, but if there's I mean,

490
00:27:46,319 --> 00:27:49,799
it's clear that you know the sort of work that

491
00:27:49,839 --> 00:27:51,640
you've been doing and the work that we've been doing

492
00:27:51,680 --> 00:27:54,799
on the series, and I think the Daily Wire recognizes this,

493
00:27:54,920 --> 00:27:58,359
and the that the popularity of the series for The

494
00:27:58,440 --> 00:28:02,279
Daily Wire relative to their political output, I think testifies

495
00:28:02,480 --> 00:28:06,680
to the fact that Christianity and the great riches, the

496
00:28:06,720 --> 00:28:11,559
imaginative and theological and biblical rich scriptural riches of the

497
00:28:11,599 --> 00:28:14,480
Christian tradition provide a kind of antidote to the chaos,

498
00:28:14,599 --> 00:28:17,440
an antidote to the sense of civilizational instability.

499
00:28:18,400 --> 00:28:20,079
Speaker 2: What do you think of I don't know if you

500
00:28:20,160 --> 00:28:23,680
had the chance to see Paul King's North's First Things address,

501
00:28:24,200 --> 00:28:26,920
where he in some ways also proposes a critique of

502
00:28:26,920 --> 00:28:31,799
that or the dangers of the politicization of Christianity, of

503
00:28:31,960 --> 00:28:35,920
also seeing Christianity as a tool, a civilizational tool, rather

504
00:28:35,960 --> 00:28:38,400
than seeing it as a good in itself. Yeah, I

505
00:28:38,480 --> 00:28:41,000
don't know if you had thoughts on that in the

506
00:28:41,039 --> 00:28:41,480
wake of that.

507
00:28:41,960 --> 00:28:45,160
Speaker 4: Yes, I haven't. Actually I didn't watch it, but I

508
00:28:45,200 --> 00:28:46,839
read it. I think I don't know if it was

509
00:28:46,839 --> 00:28:49,200
an edited or fairly full transcript of it, but I

510
00:28:49,240 --> 00:28:50,920
read it quickly. I'd like to read it again, and

511
00:28:51,480 --> 00:28:56,279
as with everything by Paul, it repays rereading and careful digestion.

512
00:28:57,000 --> 00:29:02,359
As always with Paul, he's onto something. It's provocative, and

513
00:29:02,440 --> 00:29:06,920
I think he's touching on, you know, he's developing a

514
00:29:07,000 --> 00:29:11,200
criticism that we need to take seriously. I was talking

515
00:29:11,200 --> 00:29:16,359
with a very distinguished evangelical here in London, got very

516
00:29:16,440 --> 00:29:20,039
kind of influential guy who was saying how he wanted

517
00:29:20,079 --> 00:29:25,000
to set up a project connected to set up a

518
00:29:25,039 --> 00:29:30,200
project that inspired focusing on the need to restore a

519
00:29:30,319 --> 00:29:36,079
Judeo Christian ethos and foundation to our culture. And I

520
00:29:36,160 --> 00:29:38,920
you know, there's been some debate about this online, but

521
00:29:40,640 --> 00:29:44,519
whenever that term is used Judeo Christian it does feel

522
00:29:44,559 --> 00:29:48,039
as if it's a pawn in some larger kind of

523
00:29:48,119 --> 00:29:50,440
political cultural cultural war game.

524
00:29:50,599 --> 00:29:50,799
Speaker 3: Right.

525
00:29:51,319 --> 00:29:53,799
Speaker 2: I never used that term. If you've noticed, I just

526
00:29:53,839 --> 00:29:54,400
don't use it.

527
00:29:54,519 --> 00:29:55,519
Speaker 1: Well, I'm with you.

528
00:29:55,640 --> 00:29:56,880
Speaker 3: I mean, you got there before me.

529
00:29:56,960 --> 00:29:58,640
Speaker 4: But I'm kind of allergic to it now because I

530
00:29:58,680 --> 00:30:01,400
think of all my Jewish friends, you know, work a

531
00:30:01,400 --> 00:30:04,039
lot with people in Jerusalem for them, but with the

532
00:30:04,200 --> 00:30:08,119
on the vun Bert foundation. I think Judaism. Obviously, Christianity

533
00:30:08,200 --> 00:30:12,519
is so enriched it's just completely unthinkable without Judaism, of course,

534
00:30:13,799 --> 00:30:16,839
and yet it's not Judaism, and it doesn't you know,

535
00:30:17,000 --> 00:30:21,079
it doesn't respect one's Jewish friends to say that it's

536
00:30:21,240 --> 00:30:22,839
you know, there is this kind of fusion. This is

537
00:30:22,880 --> 00:30:25,599
a kind of a weird sort of Utickianism, you know,

538
00:30:26,359 --> 00:30:29,039
a fusing, fusing the divine nature and the human nature

539
00:30:29,039 --> 00:30:31,160
of cries to create a third person. That's a kind

540
00:30:31,160 --> 00:30:33,440
of it's the same sort of problem. But I think,

541
00:30:33,920 --> 00:30:36,119
you know, so that sort of phenomenon makes me think

542
00:30:36,160 --> 00:30:39,680
that Paul is onto something that that Christianity is often

543
00:30:39,720 --> 00:30:43,920
being used as as a kind of in a kind

544
00:30:43,960 --> 00:30:47,599
of instrumental way, as a tool or as a signal

545
00:30:48,480 --> 00:30:53,200
of a need to or or a clarion call to

546
00:30:53,279 --> 00:30:59,039
defend Western civilization and a kind of a cultural stability

547
00:30:59,039 --> 00:31:02,759
that seems to be under threat economically in terms of

548
00:31:02,799 --> 00:31:08,559
demographic changes and all the rise of secularism, aggressively confident secularism,

549
00:31:08,640 --> 00:31:10,599
and so on and so forth. And I think there's

550
00:31:10,640 --> 00:31:17,480
a lot, there's a lot to that, you know, Christianity, yes,

551
00:31:17,519 --> 00:31:23,440
of course, it has nourished our civilization to an unimaginable extent.

552
00:31:25,480 --> 00:31:28,279
Speaker 3: But it's but it is so much more than that too.

553
00:31:28,839 --> 00:31:34,519
Speaker 4: And you know, it's fashionable to mock people like you know,

554
00:31:34,640 --> 00:31:39,440
the great German liberal biblical critics like Bortmann, you know,

555
00:31:40,720 --> 00:31:43,359
but actually I think it probably it's quite good to

556
00:31:43,359 --> 00:31:46,279
go back to someone like Bortman and read him. And

557
00:31:46,359 --> 00:31:51,000
Wrotman basically has this existentialist, Hidigeian reading of scripture where

558
00:31:51,000 --> 00:31:54,039
he talks about or even bart you know, talks about

559
00:31:54,039 --> 00:31:59,640
that sense of existential immediac immediacy and the raw contact

560
00:32:00,799 --> 00:32:04,359
and power of encountering Scripture, never mind all the kind

561
00:32:04,400 --> 00:32:07,480
of arguments about civilization and oh it's so useful for

562
00:32:07,519 --> 00:32:09,880
society and it's so useful for holding the family together

563
00:32:09,960 --> 00:32:13,200
and so on. A kicker Go is also a good

564
00:32:13,960 --> 00:32:16,839
person to read on this, you know. He's great critique

565
00:32:17,000 --> 00:32:22,400
of the kind of cultural complacency of Copenhagen Christianity, you know,

566
00:32:22,559 --> 00:32:25,200
of just it's that this is that we're missing something here.

567
00:32:25,240 --> 00:32:29,200
This is we're missing the kind of the raw power

568
00:32:29,559 --> 00:32:34,400
of contact with Christ, of relationship with Christ. So I

569
00:32:34,799 --> 00:32:40,559
think what Paul is it's an important contribution. I know

570
00:32:40,599 --> 00:32:43,000
it's ruffled a few feathers and it's it's kind of

571
00:32:43,039 --> 00:32:44,359
discombobulated people.

572
00:32:45,000 --> 00:32:46,599
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it's okay, you know.

573
00:32:46,680 --> 00:32:49,319
Speaker 2: And I think that and so, like you said, I

574
00:32:49,319 --> 00:32:51,480
think we have to enter into the conversation. I had

575
00:32:51,480 --> 00:32:53,880
to record a conversation with him about it, which probably

576
00:32:53,920 --> 00:32:54,680
should be out.

577
00:32:54,599 --> 00:32:55,759
Speaker 1: By the time we put this out.

578
00:32:56,759 --> 00:32:59,519
Speaker 2: And and I think that the critique is absolutely right,

579
00:33:00,200 --> 00:33:02,880
you know. But it's it's all it's difficult, it's it's

580
00:33:03,279 --> 00:33:06,160
sometimes it's an image of the difficulty of all good things.

581
00:33:06,839 --> 00:33:11,559
Because you're right that it does offer. It does offer

582
00:33:11,640 --> 00:33:13,920
so much in terms of our civilization. It is the

583
00:33:13,960 --> 00:33:17,000
foundation of so many good things. But we always have

584
00:33:17,079 --> 00:33:19,759
to keep things in the right order right if you want,

585
00:33:20,680 --> 00:33:23,000
if you want the higher good for the lower goods,

586
00:33:23,039 --> 00:33:26,160
then it never works, it never functions. You can't you

587
00:33:26,200 --> 00:33:30,720
cannot make, you know, the worship of God a utility

588
00:33:30,920 --> 00:33:34,640
for the for the the stability of your family, for

589
00:33:34,680 --> 00:33:36,440
your civilization.

590
00:33:36,039 --> 00:33:38,200
Speaker 1: Although it will yield that.

591
00:33:38,640 --> 00:33:40,799
Speaker 2: And so it's hard even in our own hearts to

592
00:33:40,920 --> 00:33:44,759
keep the order properly because we do want all these things,

593
00:33:44,799 --> 00:33:47,039
like we do want our societies to function, we do

594
00:33:47,119 --> 00:33:49,160
want our families to hold together.

595
00:33:49,240 --> 00:33:51,839
Speaker 1: And that it's also okay to want that, and so

596
00:33:52,119 --> 00:33:53,319
it's hard to order that.

597
00:33:53,359 --> 00:33:55,279
Speaker 2: I feel it in myself, like it's hard to order

598
00:33:55,359 --> 00:33:59,680
things properly in my heart knowing that if I that,

599
00:33:59,799 --> 00:34:01,519
if if I am, if I am a Christian and

600
00:34:01,559 --> 00:34:05,880
faithful Christian, that it will have fruit that will won't.

601
00:34:05,519 --> 00:34:07,440
Speaker 1: Just be you know, for my faith.

602
00:34:07,680 --> 00:34:10,920
Speaker 4: You know, yeah, yeah, I mean I we were. You

603
00:34:11,000 --> 00:34:13,719
spoke brilliantly at the ARC conference here in you know,

604
00:34:13,840 --> 00:34:18,039
in London, what was it last year? And I remember

605
00:34:18,280 --> 00:34:23,519
in that conference, that electric panel with Ozguinness and i

606
00:34:23,639 --> 00:34:26,039
Ane Hersey Ali in which I think for the first

607
00:34:26,119 --> 00:34:27,239
time she announced her.

608
00:34:27,280 --> 00:34:29,159
Speaker 1: It was the first time she announced. It was the.

609
00:34:29,119 --> 00:34:30,880
Speaker 4: First time, and we were all and we had no

610
00:34:30,960 --> 00:34:34,119
idea that that was coming. It wasn't it wasn't scripted,

611
00:34:34,119 --> 00:34:37,320
it wasn't planned. But I know she got a bit

612
00:34:37,320 --> 00:34:43,079
of blowback, unfairly, I thought, for instrumentalizing Christianity or saying,

613
00:34:43,119 --> 00:34:45,480
you know, trying to frame her christian her conversion in

614
00:34:45,519 --> 00:34:50,199
the context of a need to defend a civilization that

615
00:34:50,239 --> 00:34:52,400
she'd fallen in love with them, that she'd seemed to

616
00:34:52,440 --> 00:34:55,440
be the you know, the best hope for for humanity.

617
00:34:56,440 --> 00:34:59,800
And I don't you know, my sense is whatever whatever

618
00:35:00,280 --> 00:35:03,280
to God one takes is great if it's at that

619
00:35:03,320 --> 00:35:08,559
gets you to Gosh. You know, sometimes you need instruments,

620
00:35:08,639 --> 00:35:10,679
well you always need you need instruments to do to

621
00:35:10,719 --> 00:35:15,760
do stuff. And and you know, people take all kinds

622
00:35:15,760 --> 00:35:18,559
of different paths to the divine.

623
00:35:18,800 --> 00:35:21,880
Speaker 2: But I want to say something on what you're saying,

624
00:35:21,880 --> 00:35:24,320
because I think that it's really important because when you

625
00:35:24,360 --> 00:35:27,840
think about, for example, someone who becomes an alcoholic and

626
00:35:28,320 --> 00:35:30,480
you know, falls into the worst parts of their life

627
00:35:30,519 --> 00:35:34,000
and you know, hits rock bottom and then turns to God,

628
00:35:34,039 --> 00:35:36,800
you could say, well, there's something instrumental about that as well,

629
00:35:37,199 --> 00:35:40,679
where you want God because you're suffering, and therefore you

630
00:35:40,679 --> 00:35:42,519
you hope that God will answer your suffering.

631
00:35:42,559 --> 00:35:45,559
Speaker 1: And so you have to have sympathy, like you said.

632
00:35:45,360 --> 00:35:48,360
Speaker 2: For people who are dealing with the meaning crisis, both

633
00:35:48,400 --> 00:35:53,519
personally and civilizationally, to see that it is God will

634
00:35:53,519 --> 00:35:56,719
provide a solution to these problems, although we have to

635
00:35:56,760 --> 00:35:59,000
be careful not to make that the final end, because

636
00:35:59,280 --> 00:36:01,239
you know, then it doesn't function.

637
00:36:01,440 --> 00:36:06,719
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think also, you know, maybe Paul and

638
00:36:07,000 --> 00:36:13,119
those whom he's criticizing are are both guilty of a

639
00:36:13,320 --> 00:36:21,679
rather restrictive or you know, a kind of crude assimilation

640
00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:27,880
of Christianity and Western civilization. I mean, you know, it's

641
00:36:27,920 --> 00:36:31,639
all kinds of the very word civilization doesn't really start

642
00:36:31,719 --> 00:36:34,039
to come into common currency until I think, I think

643
00:36:34,280 --> 00:36:37,199
I checked this the other day, late nineteenth century. So

644
00:36:37,800 --> 00:36:40,559
you know, for most of the course of Western civilization,

645
00:36:40,880 --> 00:36:43,840
people in Western civilization did not think of themselves as

646
00:36:43,840 --> 00:36:49,360
a civilization and didn't really think of themselves particularly as Western.

647
00:36:49,400 --> 00:36:51,360
And I just I suppose there are just so many

648
00:36:51,400 --> 00:36:56,480
engines to what's got us to today, to this sort

649
00:36:56,480 --> 00:37:02,039
of post liberal cultural and political moment. And yes, Christianity

650
00:37:02,440 --> 00:37:08,119
almost uniquely distills and fuses and synthesizes is all of

651
00:37:08,119 --> 00:37:10,639
those different currents in a way that I don't think

652
00:37:12,039 --> 00:37:15,920
any other tradition has managed to do. I mean, liberalism

653
00:37:16,400 --> 00:37:20,559
neutralizes the strands, or privatizes or domesticates them. In effect,

654
00:37:21,559 --> 00:37:24,559
it permits them to some degree, but effectively formally clears

655
00:37:24,559 --> 00:37:29,639
it from the public square and formally erases distinctiveness from

656
00:37:29,719 --> 00:37:34,159
human beings and particularly and culture and intellectual traditions and

657
00:37:34,199 --> 00:37:37,639
so on. In this kind of fungible human beings as

658
00:37:37,639 --> 00:37:41,119
fungible blank slates and so on, and so you know

659
00:37:41,199 --> 00:37:43,519
that there is a lot to it. But you know,

660
00:37:43,559 --> 00:37:48,119
it's I think it's it's probably too crude and implausible

661
00:37:48,159 --> 00:37:52,400
to just think of Western civilization entirely and as a

662
00:37:52,679 --> 00:37:56,960
kind of as as a Christian achievement. And I think

663
00:37:56,960 --> 00:38:01,039
it also probably accludes the extraordinary impact that Christianity has

664
00:38:01,079 --> 00:38:03,960
had elsewhere in the world. I mean, you think of

665
00:38:03,960 --> 00:38:06,880
the Christian communities in India, you think of the Christian communities,

666
00:38:06,880 --> 00:38:10,880
what's left of them tragically, in the Middle East you

667
00:38:10,960 --> 00:38:18,400
look at the extraordinary surge of energy, and in Sub

668
00:38:18,440 --> 00:38:23,639
Saharan African Christianity too, and in Southeast Asia, extraordinary things

669
00:38:23,639 --> 00:38:26,360
happening in Southeast Asia and Iran and so on. That

670
00:38:26,480 --> 00:38:33,119
is is having cultural a cultural impact. And so yes,

671
00:38:33,159 --> 00:38:38,159
it's it's think tempting to domesticate Christianity or tempting to

672
00:38:38,199 --> 00:38:41,559
identify it too much as a kind of Western as

673
00:38:41,559 --> 00:38:48,039
a Western phenomenon, even though it's just obviously enriched us incalculably.

674
00:38:48,719 --> 00:38:50,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a great I think it's a

675
00:38:50,760 --> 00:38:54,440
great point, you know. I I'm hoping to go to

676
00:38:54,719 --> 00:38:58,519
Armenia next year, you know, and that's a great example

677
00:38:58,599 --> 00:39:01,719
where the Armenian converted before Constantine.

678
00:39:01,800 --> 00:39:03,000
Speaker 1: You know, even according to the.

679
00:39:02,880 --> 00:39:07,079
Speaker 2: Church tradition that that and the same you have Ethiopian Christianity.

680
00:39:07,079 --> 00:39:11,559
I just had dinner with some Coptic priests last this week,

681
00:39:11,880 --> 00:39:15,639
you know, and the amazing resurgence of even Coptic Christianity

682
00:39:15,679 --> 00:39:18,880
in America and in kind of in Europe and everything.

683
00:39:18,920 --> 00:39:22,159
So you see that, like you said, that Christianity is

684
00:39:22,239 --> 00:39:26,360
not a Western thing, although it has it is at

685
00:39:26,440 --> 00:39:29,920
the base of so many of the things that underlie

686
00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:33,000
our value system. You know. One of the things that

687
00:39:33,039 --> 00:39:36,280
I tried to help people see is the idea of

688
00:39:36,360 --> 00:39:41,039
self sacrificial of self sacrificial love in general, even sometimes

689
00:39:41,039 --> 00:39:44,639
it's weaponized, sometimes it's misused, but the very idea that

690
00:39:44,679 --> 00:39:48,559
self sacrificial love is the basis of our morality, that

691
00:39:48,599 --> 00:39:51,199
we should serve the weaker, that we should put our

692
00:39:51,239 --> 00:39:53,400
strength in service of those that don't have the strength

693
00:39:53,559 --> 00:39:56,679
to do it themselves. All of that can would not

694
00:39:56,800 --> 00:39:59,159
exist without the Christian impetus, you.

695
00:39:59,119 --> 00:40:00,480
Speaker 3: Know, absolutely.

696
00:40:00,800 --> 00:40:04,199
Speaker 4: And of course it's difficult because on the one hand,

697
00:40:05,199 --> 00:40:08,719
you know, we've got we have those who would criticize

698
00:40:08,760 --> 00:40:12,559
us for saying, well, it's not a monopoly of Christianity, right,

699
00:40:12,719 --> 00:40:16,039
I mean, you can believe in self sacrificial love now,

700
00:40:16,119 --> 00:40:18,800
and we can, you know, thanks, but no, thanks to

701
00:40:18,800 --> 00:40:21,719
the Christian influence, we can just see that as self

702
00:40:21,760 --> 00:40:25,440
evident when it's not. It's very far from self evident

703
00:40:25,920 --> 00:40:28,599
had it not been for the historical impact of Christianity.

704
00:40:29,079 --> 00:40:31,840
On the other hand, you've got the emergence of a

705
00:40:31,960 --> 00:40:35,679
kind of Spenglerian Nietzschean right that says, well, this is

706
00:40:35,719 --> 00:40:40,559
part of the problem, this endless stress on weakness and

707
00:40:40,599 --> 00:40:47,840
on fragility, on sinfulness, on self sacrifice. And that's been interesting.

708
00:40:47,880 --> 00:40:50,519
It's not something I expected to see, but I think

709
00:40:50,559 --> 00:40:54,119
it's it's you know, hard to judge these things mainly

710
00:40:54,159 --> 00:40:56,760
online phenomena, but I've picked it up a little bit,

711
00:40:57,519 --> 00:41:00,920
you know, in the in the first world, as it were,

712
00:41:01,000 --> 00:41:04,000
on the on the street and seminar rooms and conversations

713
00:41:04,000 --> 00:41:09,000
with young Zuma types, and there is that kind of

714
00:41:09,039 --> 00:41:13,239
growing skepticism of Christianity as being the kind of hidden

715
00:41:13,320 --> 00:41:17,880
source of the excesses of a kind of hyper progressivism,

716
00:41:18,199 --> 00:41:21,320
workers and whatever you want to call it, a kind

717
00:41:21,360 --> 00:41:24,199
of a fetishizing of weakness.

718
00:41:24,920 --> 00:41:27,760
Speaker 3: And a sort of repudiation.

719
00:41:27,440 --> 00:41:33,320
Speaker 4: Of the kind of resilience and strength and vitalism that,

720
00:41:33,559 --> 00:41:37,960
in their view, flourishing civilizations depend upon.

721
00:41:39,320 --> 00:41:41,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's not that hard to see the difference.

722
00:41:41,480 --> 00:41:41,639
Speaker 4: You know.

723
00:41:41,719 --> 00:41:45,199
Speaker 2: I understand how it's tricky because we have many, many

724
00:41:45,280 --> 00:41:49,119
of the more progressive Christian strains that have taken that position.

725
00:41:49,559 --> 00:41:51,639
Speaker 1: But it's not that difficult to see the difference.

726
00:41:51,679 --> 00:41:55,960
Speaker 2: I really anchor the difference in the Judas story where

727
00:41:56,360 --> 00:41:59,599
the woman comes and washes Christ's feet, you know where

728
00:41:59,760 --> 00:42:01,800
the when is washing christ feet and Judas says, well,

729
00:42:01,800 --> 00:42:04,119
you should give this money to the poor, and then

730
00:42:04,159 --> 00:42:06,920
it says that Judas was stealing the money from the purse.

731
00:42:07,280 --> 00:42:12,519
And so you you can recognize weaponize compassion when it

732
00:42:12,679 --> 00:42:16,800
is wielding compassion in order to get power for myself,

733
00:42:17,119 --> 00:42:18,320
and then that is so easy.

734
00:42:18,320 --> 00:42:19,400
Speaker 1: You can just see it right away.

735
00:42:19,440 --> 00:42:23,480
Speaker 2: When it's using compassion to acquire power for oneself, then

736
00:42:23,599 --> 00:42:26,559
it is the very opposite of what Christianity offers.

737
00:42:26,639 --> 00:42:28,360
Speaker 1: Like if you look at Christian tradition.

738
00:42:28,440 --> 00:42:31,639
Speaker 2: You you didn't you have And it's difficult when you

739
00:42:31,639 --> 00:42:33,800
see these Nietzschean types and you say, well, how do

740
00:42:33,840 --> 00:42:35,719
you account for the entire Middle Ages? Like how do

741
00:42:35,760 --> 00:42:38,480
you count for the entire Christian tradition. We had kings

742
00:42:38,519 --> 00:42:41,519
and emperors and knights, and we had we had Christian warriors.

743
00:42:41,559 --> 00:42:44,119
We had this whole sense of a you know, a

744
00:42:44,239 --> 00:42:47,239
sense of the possibility of power and of end of

745
00:42:47,559 --> 00:42:51,880
regal regal uh regal reality. But the notion was that

746
00:42:52,119 --> 00:42:55,760
higher than that was the saint, the monk, and the

747
00:42:56,159 --> 00:43:00,000
notion that the king had to at least at least

748
00:43:00,039 --> 00:43:03,440
can they say, at least make a gesture towards that, right,

749
00:43:03,480 --> 00:43:06,360
even if sometimes they didn't. And so I just find

750
00:43:06,360 --> 00:43:08,920
it difficult when people say that, it's like it seems

751
00:43:08,960 --> 00:43:11,639
like they don't really know much about history, you know,

752
00:43:12,360 --> 00:43:13,119
proposit there.

753
00:43:13,800 --> 00:43:16,960
Speaker 4: I don't know if you saw last week some of

754
00:43:17,039 --> 00:43:20,039
the effective altruists and and if your viewers will be

755
00:43:20,079 --> 00:43:22,679
familiar with that movement of it. It's a radical kind

756
00:43:22,679 --> 00:43:26,440
of utilitarian movement that says you've got to really give

757
00:43:26,800 --> 00:43:31,119
as much as you can away to those charities that

758
00:43:31,199 --> 00:43:37,519
will maximize the benefit and quality of life. So not

759
00:43:37,880 --> 00:43:39,920
to the charities you choose, but to the charities that,

760
00:43:40,039 --> 00:43:44,239
according to their Excel spreadsheet, do the most good. And anyway,

761
00:43:44,280 --> 00:43:47,280
there was an outcry when the costs of the extraordinary

762
00:43:47,360 --> 00:43:52,880
restoration of Notre Dame in Paris, and there was all

763
00:43:53,079 --> 00:43:56,840
sorts of sort of you know, an outcry effectively that

764
00:43:57,239 --> 00:44:00,760
think how many malaria nets this money could have gone to?

765
00:44:00,840 --> 00:44:02,840
Thinks I think how many lives as this could have saved?

766
00:44:02,840 --> 00:44:05,800
And I thought of the Judas story and when I

767
00:44:05,840 --> 00:44:10,800
saw that, and yes, you're right, there is there is

768
00:44:10,840 --> 00:44:14,079
this sort of year zero mentality everywhere. You know that

769
00:44:14,440 --> 00:44:19,119
maybe I think it's a symptoms it's a disease of

770
00:44:19,159 --> 00:44:22,400
modernity as such. You might say that it's a disease

771
00:44:22,440 --> 00:44:27,239
of the age that defines itself by reference to modernitas nowness, right,

772
00:44:27,320 --> 00:44:31,119
that we that we can't think dia chronically. We can't

773
00:44:31,159 --> 00:44:36,440
think that that concepts and traditions have a hinterland. And

774
00:44:37,679 --> 00:44:39,679
you know, I think that's why the sort of work

775
00:44:39,719 --> 00:44:42,679
that you're doing in Martin's doing, you know, recovering these

776
00:44:42,960 --> 00:44:45,719
older tales, these older sort of patterns of myth and

777
00:44:45,800 --> 00:44:49,079
legend are just so important because they remind us how

778
00:44:49,119 --> 00:44:51,800
strange a lot of our modern assumptions are, as you know,

779
00:44:52,840 --> 00:44:54,920
sort of steeped as they are, and the kind of

780
00:44:54,920 --> 00:44:59,960
tepid waters of secularism. I've got some of my student

781
00:45:00,239 --> 00:45:02,480
here have a WhatsApp group. I'm not allowed on it.

782
00:45:02,519 --> 00:45:04,920
But they're all kind of young, you know, Christian lads

783
00:45:04,920 --> 00:45:09,239
in their twenties thirties, and it's called Knight's Templar and

784
00:45:09,280 --> 00:45:11,960
it's it's it's it's laughing, as they like to say,

785
00:45:12,679 --> 00:45:16,400
it's ironic. But they are also thinking about what does

786
00:45:16,440 --> 00:45:19,199
it mean to be We believe men and women are

787
00:45:19,199 --> 00:45:23,440
different and complementary. What is it to be a non

788
00:45:23,480 --> 00:45:26,679
toxic man? What is it to be to live a

789
00:45:26,760 --> 00:45:30,800
kind of a life of a Christian masculine ideal? And

790
00:45:31,800 --> 00:45:33,599
that means I don't know what it means for them

791
00:45:33,679 --> 00:45:36,239
a lot. They love working out. They do weights, but

792
00:45:36,320 --> 00:45:39,119
not in a kind of not in a pursuit of vanity.

793
00:45:39,119 --> 00:45:41,480
They just think strength is good and God has given

794
00:45:41,480 --> 00:45:43,440
me this body. I'm going to make it, make it strong,

795
00:45:43,599 --> 00:45:46,119
or I'm not going to date this girl. I'm going

796
00:45:46,159 --> 00:45:48,679
to court her, you know, I'm I'm I'm going to

797
00:45:48,880 --> 00:45:51,639
see her for a few evenings and if I think

798
00:45:51,679 --> 00:45:53,519
it's like sheally not going to work out long term,

799
00:45:53,559 --> 00:45:58,480
then I'm gonna honor her by saying, you know, this

800
00:45:58,519 --> 00:46:02,119
isn't working out and will move on. And I find

801
00:46:02,159 --> 00:46:05,559
that really encouraging. I'm not saying this is a widespread phenomenon,

802
00:46:05,559 --> 00:46:09,159
but I'm seeing it among a lot of the young

803
00:46:09,199 --> 00:46:12,920
students that I sort of spent time with in Oxford, Cambridge, London.

804
00:46:13,559 --> 00:46:16,880
And I don't know how to nurture that night, but

805
00:46:17,000 --> 00:46:21,519
one wants to catalyze it. And I think having an

806
00:46:21,599 --> 00:46:25,280
enriched imagination and being able to tap into the great

807
00:46:25,320 --> 00:46:30,239
sources of the Christian imaginative world and so on. The

808
00:46:30,239 --> 00:46:34,760
Patristic tradition too, is very useful. Here is it that

809
00:46:34,800 --> 00:46:37,400
wonderful essay of Bernard of Clervo. I mean it was

810
00:46:37,400 --> 00:46:39,840
a little propagandistic. I think it was Pope Urban and

811
00:46:39,840 --> 00:46:42,719
one of the popes got him to write this theological

812
00:46:42,760 --> 00:46:50,039
events of Crusading. I know that, and that that's quite

813
00:46:50,039 --> 00:46:51,480
a sort of good read, and I mean, you know,

814
00:46:51,480 --> 00:46:52,960
maybe it goes a little bit too far, but it's

815
00:46:53,000 --> 00:46:55,920
a reminder that, you know, it's a repast of sorts

816
00:46:55,960 --> 00:46:58,199
to the Nietzschean vitalist that you know, it's not always

817
00:46:58,239 --> 00:47:00,679
been the case that to be a great is to

818
00:47:00,679 --> 00:47:04,119
be one is to just just fetishize weakness as opposed

819
00:47:04,159 --> 00:47:06,440
to you know, and it's.

820
00:47:06,599 --> 00:47:09,199
Speaker 2: Because it's like there there I don't think there's ever

821
00:47:09,280 --> 00:47:13,719
been a vision of fetishizing weakness, at least not in

822
00:47:13,760 --> 00:47:15,239
the way that we see it happen today.

823
00:47:15,239 --> 00:47:16,719
Speaker 1: It's just not part of Christianity.

824
00:47:17,039 --> 00:47:23,119
Speaker 2: We we admire the we admire the the martyrs and

825
00:47:23,159 --> 00:47:26,159
the idea of self sacrifice, and we hold that up.

826
00:47:26,519 --> 00:47:28,280
Speaker 1: But you know, the the.

827
00:47:28,159 --> 00:47:31,440
Speaker 2: Bodies of the martyrs are finally they're held in the

828
00:47:31,519 --> 00:47:36,519
huge cathedrals that are that hold entire towns together. And so,

829
00:47:36,920 --> 00:47:39,599
you know, the idea that that it's just a it's

830
00:47:39,760 --> 00:47:43,719
just a kind of revolutionary, you know, the way that Nietzsche, uh,

831
00:47:43,800 --> 00:47:48,119
you know, talked about the you know, the the fetishization

832
00:47:48,199 --> 00:47:50,159
of weakness and and of victim and everything.

833
00:47:50,960 --> 00:47:52,800
Speaker 1: I just don't see it. I don't see it in

834
00:47:52,840 --> 00:47:53,880
the history, you know.

835
00:47:53,960 --> 00:47:56,639
Speaker 2: And and it's a misunderstanding of what it is because

836
00:47:56,719 --> 00:47:59,119
in Christ we have these two images, right, we have

837
00:47:59,199 --> 00:48:02,039
the images of Christ as the crucified one, as the

838
00:48:02,039 --> 00:48:04,480
one who really did in some ways lay his life down,

839
00:48:04,760 --> 00:48:07,400
did not resist his enemy and all that. And then

840
00:48:07,599 --> 00:48:09,760
in the wake of that, because of that, he is

841
00:48:09,880 --> 00:48:13,880
also the glorious King, you know. And I've quoted to

842
00:48:14,119 --> 00:48:16,280
some of these vitalists, you know, the text and Revelation

843
00:48:16,440 --> 00:48:19,320
that says talks about him ruling with an iron sptor

844
00:48:19,760 --> 00:48:20,159
you know, and.

845
00:48:20,119 --> 00:48:21,480
Speaker 1: His enemies will be defeated.

846
00:48:21,519 --> 00:48:23,639
Speaker 2: And it's like, you know, there's also that it's also

847
00:48:23,719 --> 00:48:25,079
part of the Christian story, you know.

848
00:48:25,719 --> 00:48:28,719
Speaker 4: I agree, and I think it's you know, I think

849
00:48:28,760 --> 00:48:31,880
the criticism is misplaced. I think it's a lot more

850
00:48:31,920 --> 00:48:36,639
plausible to see the valorizing of victimhood, particularly in kind

851
00:48:36,639 --> 00:48:43,800
of suso economic contexts, as as an extentialis development of Marxism.

852
00:48:44,400 --> 00:48:47,480
I mean, it's complicated, it's a complicated genealogy, but that

853
00:48:47,599 --> 00:48:53,079
seems to me a more plausible source in the kind

854
00:48:53,079 --> 00:48:55,719
of history of ideas over the last two hundred years

855
00:48:56,440 --> 00:49:00,079
that moving from class to identity and so on, and

856
00:49:00,079 --> 00:49:02,960
so far, there's been a lot that's been talked about

857
00:49:02,960 --> 00:49:03,679
and written about this.

858
00:49:03,880 --> 00:49:09,320
Speaker 2: But it's even like in terms of mythology, and we

859
00:49:09,400 --> 00:49:11,440
have to really realize that, you know, the gods, the

860
00:49:11,480 --> 00:49:14,880
Northern God, they die, they end, they get eaten by

861
00:49:14,920 --> 00:49:19,000
the wolf Ragnarok ends them, and that's the difference, like

862
00:49:19,039 --> 00:49:21,679
we actually have the end of our story is the

863
00:49:21,719 --> 00:49:25,440
opposite of that. You read Revelation, you have this glorious

864
00:49:25,719 --> 00:49:29,239
king that rules forever over a city of jewels. It's like,

865
00:49:29,320 --> 00:49:31,800
that's the end of our story. And if you think that,

866
00:49:32,239 --> 00:49:35,519
and because it's there, it's encoded in the story. And

867
00:49:35,559 --> 00:49:40,599
so this search for glory and power and just riches

868
00:49:40,920 --> 00:49:45,639
their entire life leads to their decomposition at the end

869
00:49:45,639 --> 00:49:49,119
and being eaten by the dark wolf. The life of

870
00:49:49,119 --> 00:49:52,280
self sacrifice and of giving yourself leads in the story

871
00:49:52,800 --> 00:49:55,880
to this glorious city. And so you know, it's there,

872
00:49:56,000 --> 00:49:57,280
encoded in the mythology.

873
00:49:57,519 --> 00:50:02,800
Speaker 4: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Absolutely, the great eschatological closure

874
00:50:02,880 --> 00:50:07,199
is one of is one of triumph and victory and

875
00:50:08,239 --> 00:50:11,599
riches and happiness and eternity and so on and so forth.

876
00:50:12,119 --> 00:50:14,639
I wonder, and this is really speculative, but I wonder

877
00:50:14,679 --> 00:50:17,880
whether the fact that the kind of the targets of

878
00:50:17,880 --> 00:50:22,400
those Nietzschean critiques, you know, that sort of that kind

879
00:50:22,440 --> 00:50:29,280
of hyper progressive approach to society and culture, the fact

880
00:50:29,320 --> 00:50:33,840
that it emerges from distinctively Protestant cultures, cultures that have historically,

881
00:50:34,519 --> 00:50:41,000
from the Reformation onwards, tended to emphasize crucifixion, the suffering,

882
00:50:41,639 --> 00:50:47,320
and over and above the final vindication and victory in

883
00:50:48,920 --> 00:50:54,920
the resurrection and underwritten so gloriously and eschatologically in the Revelation.

884
00:50:56,519 --> 00:50:58,559
I wonder if there's something to that. It feels a

885
00:50:58,599 --> 00:51:01,679
little speculative, but I you know, there are differences. I

886
00:51:01,719 --> 00:51:04,880
think if you just look at rates of secularization, for example,

887
00:51:05,440 --> 00:51:10,199
between Protestant dominant dominated countries and Catholic dominated ones, and

888
00:51:10,440 --> 00:51:12,280
I wonder whether and I think.

889
00:51:12,079 --> 00:51:15,119
Speaker 3: It's true that the cultural revolution that.

890
00:51:15,079 --> 00:51:19,199
Speaker 4: We've seen has been has begun really within the anglosphere

891
00:51:19,440 --> 00:51:26,559
America predominantly, and it has not really taken roots quite

892
00:51:26,599 --> 00:51:30,679
as quite as powerfully, and it's going to Mediterranean Catholic

893
00:51:30,679 --> 00:51:33,480
cultures and certainly not in Orthodox cultures as far as

894
00:51:33,480 --> 00:51:34,000
I can tell.

895
00:51:34,360 --> 00:51:37,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, we do have that whole communist period in

896
00:51:37,400 --> 00:51:39,719
Russia that we have to account for, although it does

897
00:51:39,760 --> 00:51:42,559
come from Germany, like I mean, the ideas come from Germany,

898
00:51:42,599 --> 00:51:46,360
but it is it's I think that there is something

899
00:51:46,400 --> 00:51:50,280
about that. I you know, I wrote an article a

900
00:51:50,320 --> 00:51:53,039
while ago about these two images and how they always

901
00:51:53,079 --> 00:51:55,760
the two images in Christianity how to be held together,

902
00:51:55,800 --> 00:51:58,239
and we have to always be careful not to collapse

903
00:51:58,280 --> 00:52:00,639
one to the other, which is the of Man, the

904
00:52:00,679 --> 00:52:03,559
glorious son of man, you know, dressed as an emperor

905
00:52:03,679 --> 00:52:06,199
on a throne, you know, the right hand of God,

906
00:52:06,239 --> 00:52:09,280
the Father, and also the crucified one who laid his

907
00:52:09,400 --> 00:52:11,920
life down. And I think that it isn't holding those

908
00:52:11,920 --> 00:52:15,920
two images in tension that we find the solution to

909
00:52:15,960 --> 00:52:16,440
the problem.

910
00:52:16,440 --> 00:52:17,360
Speaker 3: And we have.

911
00:52:17,320 --> 00:52:20,199
Speaker 2: Our temptations, like everyone has a temptation to go one

912
00:52:20,239 --> 00:52:21,000
side or the other.

913
00:52:21,679 --> 00:52:24,920
Speaker 1: And you know, it's okay to have a tendency, but in.

914
00:52:24,840 --> 00:52:27,079
Speaker 2: Our culture right now we're so ripped apart that we

915
00:52:27,199 --> 00:52:29,440
have to find that that tension again.

916
00:52:29,719 --> 00:52:33,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more.

917
00:52:34,159 --> 00:52:37,119
Speaker 4: And and I think that's what you know, it's frustrating

918
00:52:37,320 --> 00:52:40,480
in the context of the UK at the moment, Church

919
00:52:40,519 --> 00:52:44,440
of England, we've just lost our archbicure of Canterbury. There's

920
00:52:44,480 --> 00:52:48,000
a cloud over the Arch of York such that he

921
00:52:48,079 --> 00:52:51,519
can't even step in to assume the ceremonial roles of

922
00:52:51,559 --> 00:52:55,719
the arch pictures of Canterbury. And part of that is

923
00:52:55,920 --> 00:52:59,400
because my view is the leadership of the Church Vingland

924
00:52:59,440 --> 00:53:03,199
over the last few years has not been talking about

925
00:53:04,679 --> 00:53:08,960
self sacrifice and suffering through a Christological lens and the

926
00:53:09,079 --> 00:53:13,360
ultimate victory and vindication of the resurrection and the glory

927
00:53:13,400 --> 00:53:16,320
of the Son of Man, but has really been chasing

928
00:53:16,360 --> 00:53:22,960
after the false gods of secular political political issues that

929
00:53:23,000 --> 00:53:25,440
are kind of with a little bit of theological window

930
00:53:25,519 --> 00:53:29,360
dressing around them, and I just, you know, it's just

931
00:53:29,400 --> 00:53:35,519
so frustrating. On the other hand, it's you know, what

932
00:53:35,559 --> 00:53:38,800
I see in the kind of institutional failures of my

933
00:53:38,880 --> 00:53:41,280
own church, I think is more than made up for

934
00:53:42,000 --> 00:53:45,840
by the emergence of this. I mean, I call you

935
00:53:45,880 --> 00:53:48,880
guys sort of digital Anabaptists. You know, there's kind of

936
00:53:48,880 --> 00:53:53,159
these these networks across the Internet using the tools of

937
00:53:53,199 --> 00:53:56,599
the extraordinary tools and platforms of the Internet to open

938
00:53:56,679 --> 00:54:01,000
up the riches of the Christian faith. And I mean,

939
00:54:01,039 --> 00:54:03,320
I think it's I see it as sort of a

940
00:54:03,360 --> 00:54:05,400
marriage of tech bros And trad bros.

941
00:54:05,679 --> 00:54:05,880
Speaker 3: You know.

942
00:54:06,000 --> 00:54:08,400
Speaker 4: I think the work that you're doing the symbolic world,

943
00:54:08,400 --> 00:54:10,719
the work that Martin does, and Paul, though he's more

944
00:54:10,719 --> 00:54:15,519
of a technophobe, I think it's a very good reminder

945
00:54:15,800 --> 00:54:18,000
that those of us who are more conservative in our

946
00:54:18,039 --> 00:54:21,559
outlook don't need to see technology as a threat. Yes,

947
00:54:22,000 --> 00:54:25,199
technology can liquefy what we love and what we want

948
00:54:25,199 --> 00:54:28,719
to conserve, it can liquefy our traditions and conventions, but

949
00:54:28,760 --> 00:54:31,480
there are also ways in which can remind us and

950
00:54:32,519 --> 00:54:35,440
excavate them, and remind us of them and help us

951
00:54:35,480 --> 00:54:39,920
to channel them into into our lives through our AirPods

952
00:54:39,920 --> 00:54:42,000
when we're doing the washing up and listening to listening

953
00:54:43,440 --> 00:54:46,039
listening to your podcast about Ragnarok or whatever.

954
00:54:47,039 --> 00:54:48,960
Speaker 2: Do you think I mean that we've seen it now.

955
00:54:49,239 --> 00:54:51,480
I've been waiting for it to happen in Quebec, but

956
00:54:51,599 --> 00:54:54,719
I hear now the reports are coming to me. You

957
00:54:54,800 --> 00:54:57,920
know that it's happening. Which is that in many of

958
00:54:58,000 --> 00:55:00,760
even these progressive kind of Catholic church that are very

959
00:55:01,079 --> 00:55:04,840
Vatican too, but you know, kind of trying to constantly adapt.

960
00:55:05,039 --> 00:55:09,159
These wide eyed eighteen year olds, nineteen year olds just

961
00:55:09,280 --> 00:55:10,719
walking in from the street.

962
00:55:10,840 --> 00:55:13,079
Speaker 1: They have no idea that you know.

963
00:55:13,440 --> 00:55:15,800
Speaker 2: I've heard stories from friends of mine who live in

964
00:55:15,840 --> 00:55:18,280
these little towns and all of a sudden, you know,

965
00:55:18,320 --> 00:55:21,840
the church has been empty and gray haired for ten years,

966
00:55:21,880 --> 00:55:24,639
fifteen years, and all of a sudden, now they're these

967
00:55:24,679 --> 00:55:27,719
strange people just walking in. And so I wonder if

968
00:55:27,760 --> 00:55:29,119
you've seen that happen in the UK.

969
00:55:29,280 --> 00:55:32,519
Speaker 4: I mean, it says really, I'm so glad to hear

970
00:55:32,559 --> 00:55:36,119
that that is happening, and it's actually confirms and sort

971
00:55:36,119 --> 00:55:40,639
of what I've heard anecdotally of what's happening in parts

972
00:55:40,679 --> 00:55:46,360
of the UK. I suppose in Cambridge it's unusual Cambridge

973
00:55:46,360 --> 00:55:48,400
because you've got lots and lots of churches, you've got

974
00:55:48,440 --> 00:55:50,960
college chapels, you've got the evangelicals, you've got catholic I

975
00:55:50,960 --> 00:55:53,440
think it's they did a study, you know, a couple

976
00:55:53,480 --> 00:55:55,039
of years ago that showed that I think there are

977
00:55:55,039 --> 00:55:57,480
more Christians in church on a Sunday per square foot

978
00:55:57,519 --> 00:56:00,760
in Cambridge than anywhere else. But that's a little artificial,

979
00:56:01,679 --> 00:56:03,440
because you know, most of that is the you know,

980
00:56:03,480 --> 00:56:06,639
the fifteen thousand or twenty five thousand students that descend

981
00:56:06,840 --> 00:56:10,440
you know, three times a year for eight weeks, and

982
00:56:10,719 --> 00:56:13,440
so it's hard to kind of get a sense of shifts.

983
00:56:13,480 --> 00:56:19,280
But what I have noticed is a those churches that

984
00:56:19,480 --> 00:56:28,039
stress liturgy plus orthodoxy in belief are becoming more attractive.

985
00:56:29,280 --> 00:56:32,320
We've even just here in our little commune in Cambridge,

986
00:56:32,320 --> 00:56:36,159
we've just basically converted a shipping container into a chapel

987
00:56:36,920 --> 00:56:39,440
and we need to decorate it with icons. So I'm

988
00:56:39,440 --> 00:56:42,760
going to have to get on your waiting list. But

989
00:56:43,440 --> 00:56:46,119
we've started a just a very just a few weeks ago,

990
00:56:46,400 --> 00:56:48,280
one of our young students who lives with us here said, oh,

991
00:56:48,280 --> 00:56:51,320
I'd like to start a morning prayer book of common prayer,

992
00:56:51,320 --> 00:56:54,239
good old traditional book of common prayer, morning prayer two

993
00:56:54,320 --> 00:56:56,920
or three times a week, and he started that. We've

994
00:56:56,960 --> 00:57:00,000
been going along eight thirty and it's more and more

995
00:57:00,079 --> 00:57:03,880
people have been coming and there is something attractive, you know,

996
00:57:03,960 --> 00:57:07,039
to finding that still point of the turning world as Elliot,

997
00:57:07,360 --> 00:57:10,000
as Elliott sort of talks about, and it's almost as

998
00:57:10,000 --> 00:57:15,320
if the more political upheaval there is, the harder life is.

999
00:57:15,599 --> 00:57:17,920
If you're particularly here in the UK starting out in

1000
00:57:17,960 --> 00:57:21,960
your twenties, getting a home is a nightmare. That wages

1001
00:57:22,000 --> 00:57:26,480
are stagnating, job opportunities are dwindling. There is a sort

1002
00:57:26,480 --> 00:57:29,519
of sense of well, what can I put my faith in?

1003
00:57:29,599 --> 00:57:32,800
What can I ground myself in? And it's a sort

1004
00:57:32,840 --> 00:57:37,079
of almost you know, it's a rather bleak one, but

1005
00:57:37,159 --> 00:57:39,880
it is. It's a gateway to the Gospel, that's a

1006
00:57:40,000 --> 00:57:43,280
gateway to the kind of solidity and stability in order

1007
00:57:43,880 --> 00:57:45,239
that Christian life can bring you.

1008
00:57:45,920 --> 00:57:48,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that that's right in some ways, the

1009
00:57:49,280 --> 00:57:51,280
you know, we talk about the meaning crisis, you know,

1010
00:57:51,280 --> 00:57:52,599
but it's a meta crisis.

1011
00:57:52,599 --> 00:57:54,800
Speaker 1: That's how John also approaches it.

1012
00:57:54,840 --> 00:57:57,840
Speaker 2: You know, there are are these things coming together and

1013
00:57:57,880 --> 00:58:00,760
collapsing simultaneously, and and so.

1014
00:58:01,920 --> 00:58:04,639
Speaker 1: There's no there's no, it's not. It is a surprise,

1015
00:58:04,719 --> 00:58:05,519
but it's also not.

1016
00:58:05,599 --> 00:58:08,239
Speaker 2: Surprising once you see it that people are trying to

1017
00:58:08,280 --> 00:58:11,639
find something solid to stand on. And and these young

1018
00:58:11,800 --> 00:58:15,079
especially these young people. You know, we had a you know,

1019
00:58:15,119 --> 00:58:18,920
someone in my parish, some seventeen year old just shows up.

1020
00:58:19,360 --> 00:58:20,000
Speaker 1: He's just there.

1021
00:58:20,119 --> 00:58:22,480
Speaker 2: He took a uber like an hour away from an

1022
00:58:22,519 --> 00:58:26,239
hour away and just came to church. And it's just

1023
00:58:26,400 --> 00:58:28,480
you know it, and I think, I mean, this is

1024
00:58:28,519 --> 00:58:31,440
an orthodox church. It's like very difficult, right, it's not,

1025
00:58:31,719 --> 00:58:35,480
it's not. So it's happening everywhere, and to God, Glory

1026
00:58:35,559 --> 00:58:38,480
to God for that. Hopefully it's something that can that

1027
00:58:38,559 --> 00:58:42,400
can consolidate and you know, and and create a new

1028
00:58:42,440 --> 00:58:43,599
generation of Christians.

1029
00:58:43,960 --> 00:58:46,079
Speaker 4: Absolutely, I mean, I don't think it was just an accident.

1030
00:58:46,159 --> 00:58:49,000
I'm sure that he had got wind of view somehow and.

1031
00:58:48,920 --> 00:58:51,920
Speaker 1: That he didn't know about it. He didn't know that crazy.

1032
00:58:52,079 --> 00:58:53,159
Usually it happened.

1033
00:58:53,199 --> 00:58:56,199
Speaker 2: Usually people that cried to the parish like they they've

1034
00:58:56,199 --> 00:58:57,920
heard about me or they've seen me in videos.

1035
00:58:57,920 --> 00:58:59,960
Speaker 1: But not this guy. He was just seventeen.

1036
00:59:00,360 --> 00:59:02,440
Speaker 2: I didn't even know like what he was watching or

1037
00:59:02,440 --> 00:59:04,320
where he sat, and he just kind of keet walked in.

1038
00:59:04,440 --> 00:59:05,199
Speaker 1: It's pretty, it's pretty.

1039
00:59:05,719 --> 00:59:09,440
Speaker 4: It's wonderful to see. I mean, I just my son Godfrey,

1040
00:59:09,440 --> 00:59:13,920
who you've met. He's what, he's sixteen, and he is,

1041
00:59:14,639 --> 00:59:20,039
you know, he doesn't talk much about faith, but he is.

1042
00:59:21,119 --> 00:59:23,519
He is in church without me. He doesn't like, he

1043
00:59:23,559 --> 00:59:25,280
doesn't like me to go with him, so we go

1044
00:59:25,280 --> 00:59:27,800
to different churches. He goes to his own church in

1045
00:59:27,840 --> 00:59:31,519
the morning on a Sunday morning high Anglican liturgy will

1046
00:59:31,599 --> 00:59:34,000
sort of smells and bells. Then he goes to a

1047
00:59:34,079 --> 00:59:38,519
charismatic evangelical kind of Wesleyan service in the afternoon, and

1048
00:59:38,559 --> 00:59:43,679
he does Calvinists Bible studies on Friday night. And I mean,

1049
00:59:43,719 --> 00:59:46,840
it's just completely non negotiable. He will that he will

1050
00:59:46,880 --> 00:59:51,559
never ever miss it. And I just think, wonderful, it's great.

1051
00:59:51,599 --> 00:59:55,119
I've not really done anything to you know, I particularly

1052
00:59:55,119 --> 00:59:58,840
to catalyze this, but I think, you know, he's a

1053
00:59:58,880 --> 01:00:02,159
young man, he's finding his feet in an uncertain world,

1054
01:00:02,199 --> 01:00:04,719
and these are sources of stability and meaning.

1055
01:00:05,760 --> 01:00:08,239
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I'm so thankful for that.

1056
01:00:09,079 --> 01:00:13,400
Speaker 2: And so last question, you know, you, I think I

1057
01:00:13,440 --> 01:00:15,480
haven't yet announced this publicly. This might be the place

1058
01:00:15,480 --> 01:00:18,559
where I announced it public So the rumor is the

1059
01:00:18,639 --> 01:00:21,760
rumors that the next Daily Wire seminar will be about

1060
01:00:21,760 --> 01:00:22,719
the Book of Revelation.

1061
01:00:24,920 --> 01:00:26,360
Speaker 3: Yes, this is.

1062
01:00:27,119 --> 01:00:30,320
Speaker 4: And I remember you floating the idea and thinking, oh

1063
01:00:30,360 --> 01:00:34,039
my goodness, what is that good? Because there were other options,

1064
01:00:34,039 --> 01:00:37,800
I think in the air. And so I think I'm

1065
01:00:37,800 --> 01:00:41,360
probably even more nervous about tackling that that I was

1066
01:00:41,400 --> 01:00:45,000
about the Gospels. However, I trust you, Jonathan, but I

1067
01:00:45,000 --> 01:00:47,280
think you're going to have to do even more handholding

1068
01:00:47,400 --> 01:00:51,800
than you did in Exodus and the Gospels. But I'm

1069
01:00:51,840 --> 01:00:53,800
really going to I didn't get to prepare much for

1070
01:00:53,840 --> 01:00:55,239
the Gospels, but I think if.

1071
01:00:55,199 --> 01:00:56,960
Speaker 1: You're going to have to prepare for this, my.

1072
01:00:58,719 --> 01:00:59,280
Speaker 3: Goodness me.

1073
01:00:59,480 --> 01:01:02,239
Speaker 4: But there's I mean, there is so much there. And

1074
01:01:02,360 --> 01:01:04,360
you know, for years and years and years I have

1075
01:01:04,400 --> 01:01:07,760
wanted to get grips of that text and well to

1076
01:01:07,760 --> 01:01:09,480
the extent that one can get to growth with it.

1077
01:01:09,719 --> 01:01:14,480
And so actually, you know, having having that kind of

1078
01:01:14,519 --> 01:01:17,559
opportunity is what's going to focus my mind and and

1079
01:01:17,960 --> 01:01:18,880
help me begin to.

1080
01:01:18,920 --> 01:01:22,559
Speaker 2: Trust us to go in and to master at least

1081
01:01:22,760 --> 01:01:25,519
master the content, kind of get a sense. I'm at first,

1082
01:01:25,519 --> 01:01:29,679
I was so nervous about it, and I also advised

1083
01:01:29,679 --> 01:01:31,960
that we shouldn't, you know, but Jordan is like, no,

1084
01:01:32,159 --> 01:01:32,880
that's what we're doing.

1085
01:01:32,880 --> 01:01:36,199
Speaker 1: We're doing revelation. Where can we go from the gospel?

1086
01:01:36,239 --> 01:01:38,440
You know, the only place we can go that will

1087
01:01:38,519 --> 01:01:39,079
be like.

1088
01:01:39,400 --> 01:01:41,480
Speaker 2: And so I'm like, Okay, let's do it, you know,

1089
01:01:41,559 --> 01:01:42,000
let's do it.

1090
01:01:42,000 --> 01:01:43,360
Speaker 1: But if we're going to do it, we have to

1091
01:01:43,400 --> 01:01:45,119
do it. We have to do it properly.

1092
01:01:45,199 --> 01:01:47,199
Speaker 2: And I and I think that it I think in

1093
01:01:47,239 --> 01:01:49,679
the end, now that it's been a few months now

1094
01:01:49,719 --> 01:01:51,480
that I've been thinking about it and working with the

1095
01:01:51,519 --> 01:01:54,400
Daily Wire people on it, I'm realizing that it might

1096
01:01:54,440 --> 01:01:56,760
actually be a great thing. It might actually be a

1097
01:01:56,760 --> 01:01:59,519
wonderful thing for a lot of people to look at

1098
01:01:59,559 --> 01:02:04,000
the a combination of prophetic images, and it will be

1099
01:02:04,199 --> 01:02:06,079
you know, it will bring together a lot of the

1100
01:02:06,679 --> 01:02:09,400
deeper readings that we did in Exodus in the gospel,

1101
01:02:09,400 --> 01:02:10,199
but in this, in this.

1102
01:02:10,360 --> 01:02:14,480
Speaker 4: Vision, absolutely I couldn't agree more. And I'm so pleased

1103
01:02:14,480 --> 01:02:16,960
that you've already kind of started work on doing all

1104
01:02:17,000 --> 01:02:20,360
the hard work and heavy lifting and thinking that will

1105
01:02:20,360 --> 01:02:22,039
help us, will help.

1106
01:02:21,960 --> 01:02:22,559
Speaker 3: Us get through it.

1107
01:02:22,639 --> 01:02:24,199
Speaker 4: But it's also just to go back to what we're

1108
01:02:24,199 --> 01:02:26,400
talking about. Just to bring things back to what we're

1109
01:02:26,440 --> 01:02:29,199
talking about the beginning of the conversation, it's that you know,

1110
01:02:29,320 --> 01:02:33,599
it is impossible to read that text without the allegorical,

1111
01:02:33,760 --> 01:02:36,639
tropological and anagogical spectacles on.

1112
01:02:36,840 --> 01:02:38,320
Speaker 3: I mean, you just you know, what is it that

1113
01:02:38,400 --> 01:02:38,840
you can't?

1114
01:02:39,039 --> 01:02:39,920
Speaker 1: Else? What are you reading?

1115
01:02:40,840 --> 01:02:44,639
Speaker 3: Right? You can't. The great climax of.

1116
01:02:44,639 --> 01:02:50,880
Speaker 4: Scripture is just so so freighted with symbolism and eschatology

1117
01:02:51,159 --> 01:02:55,639
that there's just you know, there's no denying that, you know,

1118
01:02:55,840 --> 01:03:01,159
origin the great Patristic exegetical tradition had it right.

1119
01:03:02,000 --> 01:03:04,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, they could see that in somebody.

1120
01:03:04,079 --> 01:03:05,880
Speaker 2: That's what it leads to, Like you said, it leads

1121
01:03:05,880 --> 01:03:08,039
to this vision that you need all these senses in

1122
01:03:08,159 --> 01:03:10,480
order to understand or else Yeah, else.

1123
01:03:10,280 --> 01:03:12,159
Speaker 1: What are you? What are you reading? And so so.

1124
01:03:12,199 --> 01:03:15,360
Speaker 2: James, thank you so much, thanks for this wonderful conversation.

1125
01:03:15,400 --> 01:03:18,880
Also thanks for your continued participation in these in these seminars.

1126
01:03:18,920 --> 01:03:23,239
Your your courage in the intellectual life. People don't know,

1127
01:03:23,760 --> 01:03:26,960
and I don't think people understand how much courage you

1128
01:03:27,039 --> 01:03:30,039
have in your position to be able to to just

1129
01:03:30,280 --> 01:03:36,000
joyfully stand, you know, in in the traditional vision of

1130
01:03:36,360 --> 01:03:39,679
Christianity of society. You know in the world that you are,

1131
01:03:39,719 --> 01:03:43,519
so we really appreciate your your existence in this world.

1132
01:03:44,199 --> 01:03:46,239
Speaker 3: Calm. Thank you enough, Jonathan, It's been so good to

1133
01:03:46,239 --> 01:03:46,599
be with you.

1134
01:03:47,360 --> 01:03:50,239
Speaker 2: If you enjoy these videos and podcasts, please go to

1135
01:03:50,280 --> 01:03:52,960
the Symbolic World dot com website and see how you

1136
01:03:53,000 --> 01:03:56,119
can support what we're doing. There are multiple subscriber tiers

1137
01:03:56,159 --> 01:03:59,079
with perks. There are apparel in books to purchase. So

1138
01:03:59,199 --> 01:04:01,280
go to the Symbolic World dot com and thank you

1139
01:04:01,599 --> 01:04:02,360
for your support.