Speaker 1: We have to really realize that.
Speaker 2: You know, the gods, the Northern God, they die, they end,
they get eaten by the wolf.
Speaker 1: Ragnarok ends them.
Speaker 2: And that's the difference, Like we actually have the end
of our story is the opposite of that read revelation.
You have this glorious king that rules forever over a
city of jewels. It's like, that's the end of our story.
It's there, It's encoded in the story. And so this
search for glory and power and just riches their entire
life leads to their decomposition at the end and being
eaten by the dark wolf. The life of self sacrifice
and of giving yourself leads in the story to this
glorious city, and so you know it's there encoded in
the mythology.
Speaker 3: This is Jonathan Peshel. Welcome to the symbolic world.
Speaker 2: So everyone, I am very happy to be here with
James or many of you who have watched a gospel
series of the Exody series have seen James. He's become
a friend of mine who've done several things together.
Speaker 1: Of course those series.
Speaker 2: I was also had the chance to go to England
and do a tour with him. He is an associate
professor in Cambridge. He's the chair of the Edmundburg Foundation
in the UK and also runs the Trinity Forum in
the UK, which is what I was able to participate
in when I was there, and I thought it would
be a great opportunity to have him on. He is
such an insightful cultural thinker and a very brave person
in his own context. And so James, thanks, thanks for
talking to us.
Speaker 4: It's great to be with you, Jonathan. I'm a huge
fan of the symbolic world and all the work that
you do, so just so good to be with you.
Speaker 2: And so we have been now on the two you know,
the two Bible seminars with the Daily Wire. Of course,
the first one Exodus, which was wonderful, amazing, but the
Gospel seminar, I think we're all a little worried about
it because talking about the Gospels is so much more
controversial than talking about Exodus. And so we all came
in and so I'd like you maybe to tell people
a little bit about what your experience was of doing
that with all this together.
Speaker 4: Well, yes, you're right. I think we all approached it
with a certain sense of foreboding but also excitement, and
you know, a sense of reverence, but also yeah, we
were I didn't quite know what to expect. I mean,
the first thing to say is that those two Exodus
it was two Exodus series, and so we spent two
weeks on those forty chapters, and whereas this project we're
trying to get through all four Gospels effectively, what was
it six days.
Speaker 1: The day to two like in the morning and NF.
Speaker 4: It was something that's right, and so I was probably
it doesn't really come across in the series, but we
were in the studio four hours a day as opposed
to two hours a day. Everything was compressed down into
a single week. So it was a lot more intense.
It was much more you know, it required a lot
more stamina. I found it was. It was a lot
more of a kind of an emotional roller coaster two,
particularly that final day, you know, the last two sessions
at Golgotha and the resurrection and the trial. We don't
think we did the trial, go the cruise of fiction
and the resurrection all in about you know, four hour.
I think it was almost I think it was a
single day, and I think we were all emotionally chatted
at the end. At the end of that day. But
I think and it was harder to I think with
Exodus we were able to approach it as this enormously
important kind of canonical text that was more than merely
just any other text. You know, we all approached it
that we had different perspectives, some secular, mainly not, but
with a.
Speaker 3: Sense of reverence. But I think with the Gospels there.
Speaker 4: Was something it was much much more freated, and you know,
and that's why I think it was so important to
have Dennis Prager there. You know, I know there was
some being a little bit of you a few questions about,
you know, what is Dennis Prager doing there? What was
John Viveki doing there? Actually, if they had not been there,
I just I think the whole series would have just
fallen apart. I think it was wonderful having them there.
John as a sympathetic secular, quasi secular but not kind
of hard boiled secular perspective counterpoint, and Dennis there just
so open, generous, willing to understand, willing to give a
kind of, you know, mildly critical Jewish perspective. So that
really held it all together. But yes, it was it
was a much more delicate tightrope I felt, and I
don't know if you felt the same.
Speaker 2: Well, I came in quite nervous about it, and there
were some issues that you know, because we we weren't
actually reading the gospels. We were reading this like kind
of synthetic account of the Gospel, So that made us
all nervous as well.
Speaker 1: Everything.
Speaker 2: There were all these things that were there, but there
was something again, and I think Jordan sets the tone
in just in terms of his stance in conversation. I
think that the tone of the conversation ended up being
so productive, and.
Speaker 1: There was a dance.
Speaker 2: Really, like you said, in some ways, everybody kind of
knew what it is that they were bringing, and we
created this in some ways, people could watch it just
as a model of a conversation people who don't even
care about the Gospel, to see how can you have
people that are so far from each other in their
positions in some cases, but nonetheless be able to discuss
something that important and controversial.
Speaker 4: I couldn't agree more. I mean, I think Jordan chad
it really well, and I wasn't actually sure how he
was going to do it or how good a job
he was going to do it. This is basically, it's
not something he's actually got much practice in the podcast
the dialogue occasional trialogue podcast format, it doesn't lend itself
to kind of sharing a seminar of eight nine different
people over that long period. And I thought he did
a fantastic job with it. And there was I'm not
sure what it was. There was a combination of a
kind of the intensity of a kind of evangelical preacher,
but with that sort of sympathetic skepticism of the of
you know, of the psychologist, the clinical psychologists, and the
kind of and the student of culture and the kind
of the reader of the cultural ruins. And but I
think at no point is that, you know, his sense
of respect.
Speaker 3: Shone through every conversation.
Speaker 4: I think he set the tone perfectly for it with
that that that the sense of seriousness, the sense of reverence,
but without it feeling because of his own position, overly
pious or devout or saccharine. And I thought that was
crucial to the success of this series in particular.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's I think at that point.
Speaker 2: The last point is important because in some ways the danger,
one of the dangers that we could have fallen into,
was a kind of sentimentality exactly, you know, also a
kind of evangelical space where we're you know, we're trying
to convince people or confine, convince each other of some
position or whatnot. And because of Jordan's, yeah, because of
his stance, I think we were mostly able to avoid
that in any at all. I think even at some
point Dennis Prager mentioned, he said, we've been here for
several days and no one yet has told me like
how to be saved, you know, and I thought, wow,
that's a pretty amazing stance. Also because if you actually
read the gospel, you realize that there's so much more.
It's actually not that much about that, you know, that's
not really where Jesus is talking about most of the time.
But I think that and I had never I think
I realized afterwards, I had never in my life gone
through the entire Gospel story in a week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so that was an instanding thing to do.
Speaker 3: It really was.
Speaker 4: And you know, like you, I was a little suspicious
when Jordan's circulated that that text of you know, the
four in one one Gospel, but it reminded me that
it had been done before in the early Church. There
was that guidation in about one sixty, i'd done the
Dea tesser On, you know, folding folding all four gospels
into one. I remember reading about that when you know,
in those old debates about when did the canon form
and how do we know it was four gospels? Well
that's a really good early date for their being four gospels.
So actually, and I thought it worked well. I mean
we could have. I'm sure there are all kinds of
scholarly criticisms to be made of, you know, the sequencing
and how can you chart the chronology and so on,
but I don't think it really mattered. We got the
basic sequence, the narrative thrust to the gospels, and we
managed also what you know, we simply had to cut
out a lot of the kind of duplicate and triplicate
synoptic material, which would it would of make no sense
if we'd done for gospels sequentially. It would have been
an impossible thing to produce. So actually that worked really well.
And I think the other thing I appreciated. I mean
we've talked already about you know, John Vivaki's friendly, interesting perspective,
a mildly skeptical perspective from somebody who'd grown up in
a church background and hit a Baptist background, So there's
some very moving exchanges I remember having with him and
he having with others, and then of course Dennis's perspective.
But I think what I found especially in Enriching was
the the ecumenical, sort of synoptic perspectives. You had, you,
of course with your or your love earning and insights
steeped and soaked in the Orthodox tradition. We had Bishop Baron,
sadly only for three days, but I think those those
sessions were electric. Learnt so much from him. He's got
such a gift for communication and also for conveying the Catholic,
you know, an unapologetically Catholic perspective, and that I think
those provided anchor points. And then there was a sort
of wooly Anglican takes like a Mine and Professor Hedley
and doctor Blackwood. But that for a bit of padding there,
that's a.
Speaker 1: Little bit bad.
Speaker 2: But I think that you know you say that, but
in some ways, both Stephen, all three of you Anglicans
are deeply rooted in you know, a Stephen who has
read so much of a Boetius and has a kind
of a vision towards also Hellenistic culture Douglas who is
a ner Platonist, and you have also such a sense
of the mystical aspect of Christianity and also the cultural aspect,
and so I felt like in some ways I didn't
even notice. The person I noticed the most was of
course Bishop Baron, because he really spoke from a position
of kind of Catholic authority, and I thought it was
really useful for that to happen, because sometimes you would
give the theological words that that I, for example, purposely
avoid because you're mostly talking to kind of half secular,
half Christian audiences.
Speaker 1: But I thought it was useful to have that.
Speaker 2: But in all, I felt really like there was there
was just this exploratory mode that we were in, and
and that made it. I think anybody can watch it
from any faith tradition, not even Christian, and you know,
be able to enter into the conversation absolutely.
Speaker 4: And you're right, Bishop Baron was very good at kind
of enunciating the kind of orthodox theological kind of pronouncements
and but in a very helpful way and sort of
explaining how those how those doctrines and dogmas that are
kind of unfolded and how they were to be, you know,
found in the Gospels. And I thought that was so useful,
and I think for me, I mean, it's kind of
you to say that we're sort of attuned to the
mystical dimensions of the Gospels, and that's something that's relatively
new to me. And of course I'm a love Plato
and have been, you know, very enamored of the Neoplatonic tradition.
But I think there was it was a shock to
me as it were, approaching the Gospels from some lens
other than the sort of traditional lens of you Anglo
American New Testament scholarship, which is primarily the hermeneutical prism
of the literal and the historical in the Delubacks, you know,
the four senses of scripture. And that's what I found
so so powerful, sort of approaching scripture not just from
that one prism, but from the other three too.
Speaker 3: What are they?
Speaker 4: The the the allegorical, which you were so good at,
you know, explaining how to and in Exodus as well,
explaining how you know how to think through the scriptures
in terms of allegory and symbol and then the mode
that Jordan I think was especially strong at the what
do they call it? The tropological? So the moral sense
of scripture? How how should I apply this to my
own life or how I ought to do? How do
I think about virtue? How do I think about moral formation?
Becoming a better person? And then the mystical what is it?
The other the final one is the anag the anagogical
of course, which is, you know, the mystical ascent. You know,
what is the eschatological horizon and import and direction of
this text? And I can't tell you, you know, New
Testament scholarship. I mean, I'm not a New Testament scholar,
but I, you know, will occasionally go to New Testament seminars,
and I'll often you know, I keep abreast of New
Testament scholarship, and it is just toned out. You know,
you'd be laughed at if you'd brought up those other
three senses anything other than basically a theological analysis of
the text or theology or a kind of quite a
dry textural literal historical analysis. I mean, I did feel,
and de Louvac does say that that that lair was
the foundational one, and I felt I was often making
quite sort of apologetic historical points saying, look, trying to
bring everything down and say, look, it does matter that
this happened. It's got a there's a very granular and
plausible historical context to this. No, the resurrection is not owned.
Is not just a sort of symbolic awakening in the
hearts of the of the apostles. It's it's it's it's
more than just it is more than just history. It's
the axis of history. And so we shouldn't naively historicize
it and reduce it to just some other contingent event
in history. Of course not, but it is at least history.
It had, it has and we and one has to
stand by that, and one has to be, you know,
open to the historical strength of of of the documents,
which was which had such an impact on me when
I came to faith twenty years ago. But that's you know,
in the end, that's kind of limited too. And if
you want the scriptures to enrich your life and to
help you think about God, to think about the final
the first things and the last things, you desperately need
these other three readings. And that's what I got, that's
what I learned most from our time, not just in
the Gospels, but Exodus too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I really appreciated in some ways the.
Speaker 2: Voice that you brought that more technical aspects sometimes to say,
you know, like this is even in terms of the translations,
in terms of the Greek and bringing it you had
more of the scholarly approach, because now I don't have
that at all, Like.
Speaker 1: I just don't, and I don't.
Speaker 2: It's not that I don't totally care for it, it's
just that i'm not. I don't. That's not the thing
that drives my attention. That's other reason why I care
for the Gospel. I do believe what you said. I
do believe that all these things happened. I do, you know,
obviously I believe that the resurrection is an event. But
I tend to focus on the typology and the vision,
the eschatological vision, and so I thought it was just
and I thought everybody also was able to play with
each other, because usually, you know, I've had conversations with
the more kind of historical types, let's say, and it's
sometimes very difficult to play with each other because we're
just talking completely past each other, and people think that
I'm suggesting that none of this happened, that it's all allegory,
that's all metaphor, and.
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, no, that's not what it is.
Speaker 2: But that's what was amazing about the event was that
we were also because of Exodus. I think we already
had a we kind of knew, we knew each other,
and there was already a dance that had started and
made it easier to have that conversation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean, in many ways
I felt it was a sort of fusion or sympthem.
I mean, I've got this theory. I don't know if
it's plausible or not, but what you've seen in biblical
hermineutics over the last what one hundred and fifty years
is a kind of it's a sort of split. Got
the stress more fundamentalist evangelical stress on the literal sense
of scripture, the historical. It's quite monochrome, but it's very
kind of, very strict, and then and the liberal theology
has gone in complete the other direction. It's much more.
It's just allegory, you know, it's just the symbolic. And
I felt what we managed to do in those seminars
was to.
Speaker 3: Not see that as a zero sum game.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and actually and to see more to it, precisely
because we're seeing those two together to also be alive
to the capacity for moral instruction and also for that
s catological horizon, the orientation to the final vision. And
I just it was, you know, I found that so galvanizing.
Speaker 5: Hello, my name is Richard Roland, and I am interrupting
the construction of the New Symbolic World barn Of podcasting
to tell you about a new course that is coming
from the Symbolic World beginning February the twenty fourth. This
course is called Tolkien and Universal History. So there's a
famous letter that Tolkien wrote. It's about ten thousand words
or so to a man named Milton Waldman. Sometimes it
is called the Waldman Letter or Letter one thirty one,
and in it he says this, speaking of his efforts
to create the Legendaria, I had a mind to make
a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from
the large and cosmogonic to the level of romantic fairy story.
The larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth,
the lesser drawing splendor from the vast backcloths, which I
could dedicate simply to England, to my country. Later he
says I would draw some of the great tales in
fullness and leave many only placed in the scheme and sketched.
The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and
yet leave scope for other minds in hands wielding paint
and music and drama. So this course will begin with
an exploration of two medieval literary genres, the poem and
the chronicle, and see how Tolkien used them in his
early conceptions of Arda. These two genres of literature are
essential to medieval universal history, but of course, as you
all know, they're often overlooked as being boring by modern readers,
so it's easy to overlook their importance to Tolkien's project.
Then we're going to move on to the linguistic and
philological framework for Tolkien's Legendarium, which shows us how his
quote unquote secret vice is the key to Middle earth
deep sense of place and time. As surprising as it
might seem, it's also the inn you could say, for
Tolkien to connect his Legendarium to the Christian story. And finally,
we're going to look at how he takes all of
these elements of universal history and works them into the
modern genre of the novel. So It's been said that
the only honest response to a work of art is
another work of art, and that's something I really believe.
So in our final lesson in the course, we're going
to do a couple of things. One is we're going
to look at the application of the genres and methods
that we.
Speaker 3: Find in to.
Speaker 5: The mythopic and universal history efforts of three contemporary fantasy writers,
including one Jonathan Pago. And there's also going to be
a little optional writing assignment for those who want to
participate in some mythopeic efforts of their own. I'm really
excited about this course. I know that I've done a
lot around the internet about the works of JR.
Speaker 3: Or Tolkien.
Speaker 5: This is completely new material and I'm very excited about it.
So I hope you will consider joining me February of
the twenty fourth. You can learn more by going to
the Symbolic World dot com slash courses, and I hope
to see you there.
Speaker 2: And I think that what you're saying brings me in
some ways to the next thing I wanted to talk about,
which is, you know, this idea of going beyond this
opposition right of the literal and the metaphorical all of
these types of things that are happening. It speaks to
a culture moment that we're going through. We can talk
about the re enchantment with there are different ways in
which we're addressing this, like that we're moving towards a
post Enlightenment, post liberal world, all of this. You know,
the Gospel Seminar, the Exodus Seminar was the most popular
thing that Daily Wire did on their platform, and now
it looks like the Gospel Series might outdo it. And
so I want to get your take on that. You know,
you've been also following this story, you know Rodreer, you
you know Paul kings North and Martinshaw, all these people
that are speaking into this moment, and Jordan Peterson as well,
John Raveaki.
Speaker 1: So what is your perception of what's happening in our
world right now?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean I think we're in a time of
extraordinary flux. Of course, to state the obvious, a time
of a real instability, culturally enormous tension.
Speaker 3: Obviously, all of this is to state the obvious.
Speaker 4: But I think what early on when I started noticing
this sort of the waves of the cultural revolution crashing
into across the institutional landscape here in the UK. This
is roughly a year two after it started in North America.
I realized that there was a tendency among some Christians
and people of faith to kind of, you know, shore
up a little bit, to get very pessimistic, to kind
of get awise themselves a little bit. And that's changed,
I think around twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen. I
think partly thanks to these more sort of secular profits
like Jordan and others, or secular profits on their way
to embracing the sacred, as in the case of a
Paul King's North or a Martin Shaw. And I, you know,
I think that there are opportunities here amidst the crisis,
and I really can see the fingerprints of Providence all
over these these cultural developments. And you know, if you'd said,
you know, twenty years ago, at the high noon of
the new Atheism, a uh before too long, you would
be seeing, you know, public conversions of very distinguished intellectuals, writers, mythographers,
celebrities to Christianity, and not liberal Christianity, but Christianity with
all the weird stuff, you know, and all the all
the bells and whistles and and and I kind of
wanting to embrace all of that. I think we'd have
thought you were just completely mad, and so, you know,
I think it is. It's there are all sorts of opportunities.
I think I've noticed that the evangelical tradition, certainly here
in the UK, has struggled to cope with it with
it or struggle to see some of the opportunities that
have opened up.
Speaker 3: And I don't.
Speaker 4: And I think that probably is to connect back to
what we were talking about earlier, that that maybe the
tradition historically, and maybe this is changing now, but historically
their hermeneutic is not open to the enchanted dimension quite
as much, in as much as it's a little bit
more skeptical of the allegorical and the proper logical and
the anagogical and the kind of the final vision. All
of that is a kind of a restraint there. And
I think the liberal wings of the church here in
England have unfortunately disappeared so far down various political rabbit
holes that have rendered it basically indistinguishable from, you know,
a secular policy shop, that they've not really been able
to rise to the to the to the challenge at all,
which is a source of great sadness that our established
church has this extraordinary, you know, once in a century
opportunity I view to address the crisis of meaning and
to aggret and to address through faith this sense of
civilizational instability and rootlessness. And you know, I find that
really heartbreaking. At the same time, I often get emails,
partly thanks to the Exodus series. I can't remember doing
anything that has stimulated so many people to get in
touch with me. I think it's partly because my email
is sort of available. You can look me up and
write to me at my game of Emails, so I
probably get the benefit of all the compliments because other
people are harder to track down. But I've had the
most moving messages from people all around the world, and
occasionally some slightly zany takes, but often very reflective, sophisticated,
moving testimonies about from doctors in their sixties who you know,
who are searching for God late in life, and who
found something in the series which which spoke to them,
you know, which which no, which which a fiery sermon
from a pulpit couldn't just couldn't do they just wouldn't
it wouldn't work. And I think what Jordan and others,
and what you and Paul and Martin and others and
Rod are able to do is to open up just
less tested, more oblique ways into the faith that don't
feel you know that they don't feel overly cognitive or propositional,
but stress a world of beauty, a world that is magnetizing, mesmerizing,
that is attractive, that helps you to understand Western culture,
helps you to read myths afresh, to read fairy story
stories afresh. And I think that's just so so powerful
and new. I can't really think of I can't really
think of anything comparable. I mean you might have said,
you know, when you know Lewis and Tolkien were publishing
in earnest in the sixties and seventies, perhaps there was
something going on there, but we didn't see, you know,
it wasn't meeting the need, meeting any particular religious need,
nor did it stimulate any particularly noteworthy phenomenon of revival.
So no, I you know, it's very hard. Things are
moving so fast, and it's sometimes hard to distinguish the
political dimensions and dynamics from the spiritual, you know, the
sort of the meaning vacuum. I mean, they're often obviously
interlinked in lots of ways, but if there's I mean,
it's clear that you know the sort of work that
you've been doing and the work that we've been doing
on the series, and I think the Daily Wire recognizes this,
and the that the popularity of the series for The
Daily Wire relative to their political output, I think testifies
to the fact that Christianity and the great riches, the
imaginative and theological and biblical rich scriptural riches of the
Christian tradition provide a kind of antidote to the chaos,
an antidote to the sense of civilizational instability.
Speaker 2: What do you think of I don't know if you
had the chance to see Paul King's North's First Things address,
where he in some ways also proposes a critique of
that or the dangers of the politicization of Christianity, of
also seeing Christianity as a tool, a civilizational tool, rather
than seeing it as a good in itself. Yeah, I
don't know if you had thoughts on that in the
wake of that.
Speaker 4: Yes, I haven't. Actually I didn't watch it, but I
read it. I think I don't know if it was
an edited or fairly full transcript of it, but I
read it quickly. I'd like to read it again, and
as with everything by Paul, it repays rereading and careful digestion.
As always with Paul, he's onto something. It's provocative, and
I think he's touching on, you know, he's developing a
criticism that we need to take seriously. I was talking
with a very distinguished evangelical here in London, got very
kind of influential guy who was saying how he wanted
to set up a project connected to set up a
project that inspired focusing on the need to restore a
Judeo Christian ethos and foundation to our culture. And I
you know, there's been some debate about this online, but
whenever that term is used Judeo Christian it does feel
as if it's a pawn in some larger kind of
political cultural cultural war game.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: I never used that term. If you've noticed, I just
don't use it.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm with you.
Speaker 3: I mean, you got there before me.
Speaker 4: But I'm kind of allergic to it now because I
think of all my Jewish friends, you know, work a
lot with people in Jerusalem for them, but with the
on the vun Bert foundation. I think Judaism. Obviously, Christianity
is so enriched it's just completely unthinkable without Judaism, of course,
and yet it's not Judaism, and it doesn't you know,
it doesn't respect one's Jewish friends to say that it's
you know, there is this kind of fusion. This is
a kind of a weird sort of Utickianism, you know,
a fusing, fusing the divine nature and the human nature
of cries to create a third person. That's a kind
of it's the same sort of problem. But I think,
you know, so that sort of phenomenon makes me think
that Paul is onto something that that Christianity is often
being used as as a kind of in a kind
of instrumental way, as a tool or as a signal
of a need to or or a clarion call to
defend Western civilization and a kind of a cultural stability
that seems to be under threat economically in terms of
demographic changes and all the rise of secularism, aggressively confident secularism,
and so on and so forth. And I think there's
a lot, there's a lot to that, you know, Christianity, yes,
of course, it has nourished our civilization to an unimaginable extent.
Speaker 3: But it's but it is so much more than that too.
Speaker 4: And you know, it's fashionable to mock people like you know,
the great German liberal biblical critics like Bortmann, you know,
but actually I think it probably it's quite good to
go back to someone like Bortman and read him. And
Wrotman basically has this existentialist, Hidigeian reading of scripture where
he talks about or even bart you know, talks about
that sense of existential immediac immediacy and the raw contact
and power of encountering Scripture, never mind all the kind
of arguments about civilization and oh it's so useful for
society and it's so useful for holding the family together
and so on. A kicker Go is also a good
person to read on this, you know. He's great critique
of the kind of cultural complacency of Copenhagen Christianity, you know,
of just it's that this is that we're missing something here.
This is we're missing the kind of the raw power
of contact with Christ, of relationship with Christ. So I
think what Paul is it's an important contribution. I know
it's ruffled a few feathers and it's it's kind of
discombobulated people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it's okay, you know.
Speaker 2: And I think that and so, like you said, I
think we have to enter into the conversation. I had
to record a conversation with him about it, which probably
should be out.
Speaker 1: By the time we put this out.
Speaker 2: And and I think that the critique is absolutely right,
you know. But it's it's all it's difficult, it's it's
sometimes it's an image of the difficulty of all good things.
Because you're right that it does offer. It does offer
so much in terms of our civilization. It is the
foundation of so many good things. But we always have
to keep things in the right order right if you want,
if you want the higher good for the lower goods,
then it never works, it never functions. You can't you
cannot make, you know, the worship of God a utility
for the for the the stability of your family, for
your civilization.
Speaker 1: Although it will yield that.
Speaker 2: And so it's hard even in our own hearts to
keep the order properly because we do want all these things,
like we do want our societies to function, we do
want our families to hold together.
Speaker 1: And that it's also okay to want that, and so
it's hard to order that.
Speaker 2: I feel it in myself, like it's hard to order
things properly in my heart knowing that if I that,
if if I am, if I am a Christian and
faithful Christian, that it will have fruit that will won't.
Speaker 1: Just be you know, for my faith.
Speaker 4: You know, yeah, yeah, I mean I we were. You
spoke brilliantly at the ARC conference here in you know,
in London, what was it last year? And I remember
in that conference, that electric panel with Ozguinness and i
Ane Hersey Ali in which I think for the first
time she announced her.
Speaker 1: It was the first time she announced. It was the.
Speaker 4: First time, and we were all and we had no
idea that that was coming. It wasn't it wasn't scripted,
it wasn't planned. But I know she got a bit
of blowback, unfairly, I thought, for instrumentalizing Christianity or saying,
you know, trying to frame her christian her conversion in
the context of a need to defend a civilization that
she'd fallen in love with them, that she'd seemed to
be the you know, the best hope for for humanity.
And I don't you know, my sense is whatever whatever
to God one takes is great if it's at that
gets you to Gosh. You know, sometimes you need instruments,
well you always need you need instruments to do to
do stuff. And and you know, people take all kinds
of different paths to the divine.
Speaker 2: But I want to say something on what you're saying,
because I think that it's really important because when you
think about, for example, someone who becomes an alcoholic and
you know, falls into the worst parts of their life
and you know, hits rock bottom and then turns to God,
you could say, well, there's something instrumental about that as well,
where you want God because you're suffering, and therefore you
you hope that God will answer your suffering.
Speaker 1: And so you have to have sympathy, like you said.
Speaker 2: For people who are dealing with the meaning crisis, both
personally and civilizationally, to see that it is God will
provide a solution to these problems, although we have to
be careful not to make that the final end, because
you know, then it doesn't function.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think also, you know, maybe Paul and
those whom he's criticizing are are both guilty of a
rather restrictive or you know, a kind of crude assimilation
of Christianity and Western civilization. I mean, you know, it's
all kinds of the very word civilization doesn't really start
to come into common currency until I think, I think
I checked this the other day, late nineteenth century. So
you know, for most of the course of Western civilization,
people in Western civilization did not think of themselves as
a civilization and didn't really think of themselves particularly as Western.
And I just I suppose there are just so many
engines to what's got us to today, to this sort
of post liberal cultural and political moment. And yes, Christianity
almost uniquely distills and fuses and synthesizes is all of
those different currents in a way that I don't think
any other tradition has managed to do. I mean, liberalism
neutralizes the strands, or privatizes or domesticates them. In effect,
it permits them to some degree, but effectively formally clears
it from the public square and formally erases distinctiveness from
human beings and particularly and culture and intellectual traditions and
so on. In this kind of fungible human beings as
fungible blank slates and so on, and so you know
that there is a lot to it. But you know,
it's I think it's it's probably too crude and implausible
to just think of Western civilization entirely and as a
kind of as as a Christian achievement. And I think
it also probably accludes the extraordinary impact that Christianity has
had elsewhere in the world. I mean, you think of
the Christian communities in India, you think of the Christian communities,
what's left of them tragically, in the Middle East you
look at the extraordinary surge of energy, and in Sub
Saharan African Christianity too, and in Southeast Asia, extraordinary things
happening in Southeast Asia and Iran and so on. That
is is having cultural a cultural impact. And so yes,
it's it's think tempting to domesticate Christianity or tempting to
identify it too much as a kind of Western as
a Western phenomenon, even though it's just obviously enriched us incalculably.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a great I think it's a
great point, you know. I I'm hoping to go to
Armenia next year, you know, and that's a great example
where the Armenian converted before Constantine.
Speaker 1: You know, even according to the.
Speaker 2: Church tradition that that and the same you have Ethiopian Christianity.
I just had dinner with some Coptic priests last this week,
you know, and the amazing resurgence of even Coptic Christianity
in America and in kind of in Europe and everything.
So you see that, like you said, that Christianity is
not a Western thing, although it has it is at
the base of so many of the things that underlie
our value system. You know. One of the things that
I tried to help people see is the idea of
self sacrificial of self sacrificial love in general, even sometimes
it's weaponized, sometimes it's misused, but the very idea that
self sacrificial love is the basis of our morality, that
we should serve the weaker, that we should put our
strength in service of those that don't have the strength
to do it themselves. All of that can would not
exist without the Christian impetus, you.
Speaker 3: Know, absolutely.
Speaker 4: And of course it's difficult because on the one hand,
you know, we've got we have those who would criticize
us for saying, well, it's not a monopoly of Christianity, right,
I mean, you can believe in self sacrificial love now,
and we can, you know, thanks, but no, thanks to
the Christian influence, we can just see that as self
evident when it's not. It's very far from self evident
had it not been for the historical impact of Christianity.
On the other hand, you've got the emergence of a
kind of Spenglerian Nietzschean right that says, well, this is
part of the problem, this endless stress on weakness and
on fragility, on sinfulness, on self sacrifice. And that's been interesting.
It's not something I expected to see, but I think
it's it's you know, hard to judge these things mainly
online phenomena, but I've picked it up a little bit,
you know, in the in the first world, as it were,
on the on the street and seminar rooms and conversations
with young Zuma types, and there is that kind of
growing skepticism of Christianity as being the kind of hidden
source of the excesses of a kind of hyper progressivism,
workers and whatever you want to call it, a kind
of a fetishizing of weakness.
Speaker 3: And a sort of repudiation.
Speaker 4: Of the kind of resilience and strength and vitalism that,
in their view, flourishing civilizations depend upon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's not that hard to see the difference.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: I understand how it's tricky because we have many, many
of the more progressive Christian strains that have taken that position.
Speaker 1: But it's not that difficult to see the difference.
Speaker 2: I really anchor the difference in the Judas story where
the woman comes and washes Christ's feet, you know where
the when is washing christ feet and Judas says, well,
you should give this money to the poor, and then
it says that Judas was stealing the money from the purse.
And so you you can recognize weaponize compassion when it
is wielding compassion in order to get power for myself,
and then that is so easy.
Speaker 1: You can just see it right away.
Speaker 2: When it's using compassion to acquire power for oneself, then
it is the very opposite of what Christianity offers.
Speaker 1: Like if you look at Christian tradition.
Speaker 2: You you didn't you have And it's difficult when you
see these Nietzschean types and you say, well, how do
you account for the entire Middle Ages? Like how do
you count for the entire Christian tradition. We had kings
and emperors and knights, and we had we had Christian warriors.
We had this whole sense of a you know, a
sense of the possibility of power and of end of
regal regal uh regal reality. But the notion was that
higher than that was the saint, the monk, and the
notion that the king had to at least at least
can they say, at least make a gesture towards that, right,
even if sometimes they didn't. And so I just find
it difficult when people say that, it's like it seems
like they don't really know much about history, you know,
proposit there.
Speaker 4: I don't know if you saw last week some of
the effective altruists and and if your viewers will be
familiar with that movement of it. It's a radical kind
of utilitarian movement that says you've got to really give
as much as you can away to those charities that
will maximize the benefit and quality of life. So not
to the charities you choose, but to the charities that,
according to their Excel spreadsheet, do the most good. And anyway,
there was an outcry when the costs of the extraordinary
restoration of Notre Dame in Paris, and there was all
sorts of sort of you know, an outcry effectively that
think how many malaria nets this money could have gone to?
Thinks I think how many lives as this could have saved?
And I thought of the Judas story and when I
saw that, and yes, you're right, there is there is
this sort of year zero mentality everywhere. You know that
maybe I think it's a symptoms it's a disease of
modernity as such. You might say that it's a disease
of the age that defines itself by reference to modernitas nowness, right,
that we that we can't think dia chronically. We can't
think that that concepts and traditions have a hinterland. And
you know, I think that's why the sort of work
that you're doing in Martin's doing, you know, recovering these
older tales, these older sort of patterns of myth and
legend are just so important because they remind us how
strange a lot of our modern assumptions are, as you know,
sort of steeped as they are, and the kind of
tepid waters of secularism. I've got some of my student
here have a WhatsApp group. I'm not allowed on it.
But they're all kind of young, you know, Christian lads
in their twenties thirties, and it's called Knight's Templar and
it's it's it's it's laughing, as they like to say,
it's ironic. But they are also thinking about what does
it mean to be We believe men and women are
different and complementary. What is it to be a non
toxic man? What is it to be to live a
kind of a life of a Christian masculine ideal? And
that means I don't know what it means for them
a lot. They love working out. They do weights, but
not in a kind of not in a pursuit of vanity.
They just think strength is good and God has given
me this body. I'm going to make it, make it strong,
or I'm not going to date this girl. I'm going
to court her, you know, I'm I'm I'm going to
see her for a few evenings and if I think
it's like sheally not going to work out long term,
then I'm gonna honor her by saying, you know, this
isn't working out and will move on. And I find
that really encouraging. I'm not saying this is a widespread phenomenon,
but I'm seeing it among a lot of the young
students that I sort of spent time with in Oxford, Cambridge, London.
And I don't know how to nurture that night, but
one wants to catalyze it. And I think having an
enriched imagination and being able to tap into the great
sources of the Christian imaginative world and so on. The
Patristic tradition too, is very useful. Here is it that
wonderful essay of Bernard of Clervo. I mean it was
a little propagandistic. I think it was Pope Urban and
one of the popes got him to write this theological
events of Crusading. I know that, and that that's quite
a sort of good read, and I mean, you know,
maybe it goes a little bit too far, but it's
a reminder that, you know, it's a repast of sorts
to the Nietzschean vitalist that you know, it's not always
been the case that to be a great is to
be one is to just just fetishize weakness as opposed
to you know, and it's.
Speaker 2: Because it's like there there I don't think there's ever
been a vision of fetishizing weakness, at least not in
the way that we see it happen today.
Speaker 1: It's just not part of Christianity.
Speaker 2: We we admire the we admire the the martyrs and
the idea of self sacrifice, and we hold that up.
Speaker 1: But you know, the the.
Speaker 2: Bodies of the martyrs are finally they're held in the
huge cathedrals that are that hold entire towns together. And so,
you know, the idea that that it's just a it's
just a kind of revolutionary, you know, the way that Nietzsche, uh,
you know, talked about the you know, the the fetishization
of weakness and and of victim and everything.
Speaker 1: I just don't see it. I don't see it in
the history, you know.
Speaker 2: And and it's a misunderstanding of what it is because
in Christ we have these two images, right, we have
the images of Christ as the crucified one, as the
one who really did in some ways lay his life down,
did not resist his enemy and all that. And then
in the wake of that, because of that, he is
also the glorious King, you know. And I've quoted to
some of these vitalists, you know, the text and Revelation
that says talks about him ruling with an iron sptor
you know, and.
Speaker 1: His enemies will be defeated.
Speaker 2: And it's like, you know, there's also that it's also
part of the Christian story, you know.
Speaker 4: I agree, and I think it's you know, I think
the criticism is misplaced. I think it's a lot more
plausible to see the valorizing of victimhood, particularly in kind
of suso economic contexts, as as an extentialis development of Marxism.
I mean, it's complicated, it's a complicated genealogy, but that
seems to me a more plausible source in the kind
of history of ideas over the last two hundred years
that moving from class to identity and so on, and
so far, there's been a lot that's been talked about
and written about this.
Speaker 2: But it's even like in terms of mythology, and we
have to really realize that, you know, the gods, the
Northern God, they die, they end, they get eaten by
the wolf Ragnarok ends them, and that's the difference, like
we actually have the end of our story is the
opposite of that. You read Revelation, you have this glorious
king that rules forever over a city of jewels. It's like,
that's the end of our story. And if you think that,
and because it's there, it's encoded in the story. And
so this search for glory and power and just riches
their entire life leads to their decomposition at the end
and being eaten by the dark wolf. The life of
self sacrifice and of giving yourself leads in the story
to this glorious city. And so you know, it's there,
encoded in the mythology.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Absolutely, the great eschatological closure
is one of is one of triumph and victory and
riches and happiness and eternity and so on and so forth.
I wonder, and this is really speculative, but I wonder
whether the fact that the kind of the targets of
those Nietzschean critiques, you know, that sort of that kind
of hyper progressive approach to society and culture, the fact
that it emerges from distinctively Protestant cultures, cultures that have historically,
from the Reformation onwards, tended to emphasize crucifixion, the suffering,
and over and above the final vindication and victory in
the resurrection and underwritten so gloriously and eschatologically in the Revelation.
I wonder if there's something to that. It feels a
little speculative, but I you know, there are differences. I
think if you just look at rates of secularization, for example,
between Protestant dominant dominated countries and Catholic dominated ones, and
I wonder whether and I think.
Speaker 3: It's true that the cultural revolution that.
Speaker 4: We've seen has been has begun really within the anglosphere
America predominantly, and it has not really taken roots quite
as quite as powerfully, and it's going to Mediterranean Catholic
cultures and certainly not in Orthodox cultures as far as
I can tell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, we do have that whole communist period in
Russia that we have to account for, although it does
come from Germany, like I mean, the ideas come from Germany,
but it is it's I think that there is something
about that. I you know, I wrote an article a
while ago about these two images and how they always
the two images in Christianity how to be held together,
and we have to always be careful not to collapse
one to the other, which is the of Man, the
glorious son of man, you know, dressed as an emperor
on a throne, you know, the right hand of God,
the Father, and also the crucified one who laid his
life down. And I think that it isn't holding those
two images in tension that we find the solution to
the problem.
Speaker 3: And we have.
Speaker 2: Our temptations, like everyone has a temptation to go one
side or the other.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's okay to have a tendency, but in.
Speaker 2: Our culture right now we're so ripped apart that we
have to find that that tension again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 4: And and I think that's what you know, it's frustrating
in the context of the UK at the moment, Church
of England, we've just lost our archbicure of Canterbury. There's
a cloud over the Arch of York such that he
can't even step in to assume the ceremonial roles of
the arch pictures of Canterbury. And part of that is
because my view is the leadership of the Church Vingland
over the last few years has not been talking about
self sacrifice and suffering through a Christological lens and the
ultimate victory and vindication of the resurrection and the glory
of the Son of Man, but has really been chasing
after the false gods of secular political political issues that
are kind of with a little bit of theological window
dressing around them, and I just, you know, it's just
so frustrating. On the other hand, it's you know, what
I see in the kind of institutional failures of my
own church, I think is more than made up for
by the emergence of this. I mean, I call you
guys sort of digital Anabaptists. You know, there's kind of
these these networks across the Internet using the tools of
the extraordinary tools and platforms of the Internet to open
up the riches of the Christian faith. And I mean,
I think it's I see it as sort of a
marriage of tech bros And trad bros.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: I think the work that you're doing the symbolic world,
the work that Martin does, and Paul, though he's more
of a technophobe, I think it's a very good reminder
that those of us who are more conservative in our
outlook don't need to see technology as a threat. Yes,
technology can liquefy what we love and what we want
to conserve, it can liquefy our traditions and conventions, but
there are also ways in which can remind us and
excavate them, and remind us of them and help us
to channel them into into our lives through our AirPods
when we're doing the washing up and listening to listening
listening to your podcast about Ragnarok or whatever.
Speaker 2: Do you think I mean that we've seen it now.
I've been waiting for it to happen in Quebec, but
I hear now the reports are coming to me. You
know that it's happening. Which is that in many of
even these progressive kind of Catholic church that are very
Vatican too, but you know, kind of trying to constantly adapt.
These wide eyed eighteen year olds, nineteen year olds just
walking in from the street.
Speaker 1: They have no idea that you know.
Speaker 2: I've heard stories from friends of mine who live in
these little towns and all of a sudden, you know,
the church has been empty and gray haired for ten years,
fifteen years, and all of a sudden, now they're these
strange people just walking in. And so I wonder if
you've seen that happen in the UK.
Speaker 4: I mean, it says really, I'm so glad to hear
that that is happening, and it's actually confirms and sort
of what I've heard anecdotally of what's happening in parts
of the UK. I suppose in Cambridge it's unusual Cambridge
because you've got lots and lots of churches, you've got
college chapels, you've got the evangelicals, you've got catholic I
think it's they did a study, you know, a couple
of years ago that showed that I think there are
more Christians in church on a Sunday per square foot
in Cambridge than anywhere else. But that's a little artificial,
because you know, most of that is the you know,
the fifteen thousand or twenty five thousand students that descend
you know, three times a year for eight weeks, and
so it's hard to kind of get a sense of shifts.
But what I have noticed is a those churches that
stress liturgy plus orthodoxy in belief are becoming more attractive.
We've even just here in our little commune in Cambridge,
we've just basically converted a shipping container into a chapel
and we need to decorate it with icons. So I'm
going to have to get on your waiting list. But
we've started a just a very just a few weeks ago,
one of our young students who lives with us here said, oh,
I'd like to start a morning prayer book of common prayer,
good old traditional book of common prayer, morning prayer two
or three times a week, and he started that. We've
been going along eight thirty and it's more and more
people have been coming and there is something attractive, you know,
to finding that still point of the turning world as Elliot,
as Elliott sort of talks about, and it's almost as
if the more political upheaval there is, the harder life is.
If you're particularly here in the UK starting out in
your twenties, getting a home is a nightmare. That wages
are stagnating, job opportunities are dwindling. There is a sort
of sense of well, what can I put my faith in?
What can I ground myself in? And it's a sort
of almost you know, it's a rather bleak one, but
it is. It's a gateway to the Gospel, that's a
gateway to the kind of solidity and stability in order
that Christian life can bring you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that that's right in some ways, the
you know, we talk about the meaning crisis, you know,
but it's a meta crisis.
Speaker 1: That's how John also approaches it.
Speaker 2: You know, there are are these things coming together and
collapsing simultaneously, and and so.
Speaker 1: There's no there's no, it's not. It is a surprise,
but it's also not.
Speaker 2: Surprising once you see it that people are trying to
find something solid to stand on. And and these young
especially these young people. You know, we had a you know,
someone in my parish, some seventeen year old just shows up.
Speaker 1: He's just there.
Speaker 2: He took a uber like an hour away from an
hour away and just came to church. And it's just
you know it, and I think, I mean, this is
an orthodox church. It's like very difficult, right, it's not,
it's not. So it's happening everywhere, and to God, Glory
to God for that. Hopefully it's something that can that
can consolidate and you know, and and create a new
generation of Christians.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, I mean, I don't think it was just an accident.
I'm sure that he had got wind of view somehow and.
Speaker 1: That he didn't know about it. He didn't know that crazy.
Usually it happened.
Speaker 2: Usually people that cried to the parish like they they've
heard about me or they've seen me in videos.
Speaker 1: But not this guy. He was just seventeen.
Speaker 2: I didn't even know like what he was watching or
where he sat, and he just kind of keet walked in.
Speaker 1: It's pretty, it's pretty.
Speaker 4: It's wonderful to see. I mean, I just my son Godfrey,
who you've met. He's what, he's sixteen, and he is,
you know, he doesn't talk much about faith, but he is.
He is in church without me. He doesn't like, he
doesn't like me to go with him, so we go
to different churches. He goes to his own church in
the morning on a Sunday morning high Anglican liturgy will
sort of smells and bells. Then he goes to a
charismatic evangelical kind of Wesleyan service in the afternoon, and
he does Calvinists Bible studies on Friday night. And I mean,
it's just completely non negotiable. He will that he will
never ever miss it. And I just think, wonderful, it's great.
I've not really done anything to you know, I particularly
to catalyze this, but I think, you know, he's a
young man, he's finding his feet in an uncertain world,
and these are sources of stability and meaning.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I'm so thankful for that.
Speaker 2: And so last question, you know, you, I think I
haven't yet announced this publicly. This might be the place
where I announced it public So the rumor is the
rumors that the next Daily Wire seminar will be about
the Book of Revelation.
Speaker 3: Yes, this is.
Speaker 4: And I remember you floating the idea and thinking, oh
my goodness, what is that good? Because there were other options,
I think in the air. And so I think I'm
probably even more nervous about tackling that that I was
about the Gospels. However, I trust you, Jonathan, but I
think you're going to have to do even more handholding
than you did in Exodus and the Gospels. But I'm
really going to I didn't get to prepare much for
the Gospels, but I think if.
Speaker 1: You're going to have to prepare for this, my.
Speaker 3: Goodness me.
Speaker 4: But there's I mean, there is so much there. And
you know, for years and years and years I have
wanted to get grips of that text and well to
the extent that one can get to growth with it.
And so actually, you know, having having that kind of
opportunity is what's going to focus my mind and and
help me begin to.
Speaker 2: Trust us to go in and to master at least
master the content, kind of get a sense. I'm at first,
I was so nervous about it, and I also advised
that we shouldn't, you know, but Jordan is like, no,
that's what we're doing.
Speaker 1: We're doing revelation. Where can we go from the gospel?
You know, the only place we can go that will
be like.
Speaker 2: And so I'm like, Okay, let's do it, you know,
let's do it.
Speaker 1: But if we're going to do it, we have to
do it. We have to do it properly.
Speaker 2: And I and I think that it I think in
the end, now that it's been a few months now
that I've been thinking about it and working with the
Daily Wire people on it, I'm realizing that it might
actually be a great thing. It might actually be a
wonderful thing for a lot of people to look at
the a combination of prophetic images, and it will be
you know, it will bring together a lot of the
deeper readings that we did in Exodus in the gospel,
but in this, in this.
Speaker 4: Vision, absolutely I couldn't agree more. And I'm so pleased
that you've already kind of started work on doing all
the hard work and heavy lifting and thinking that will
help us, will help.
Speaker 3: Us get through it.
Speaker 4: But it's also just to go back to what we're
talking about. Just to bring things back to what we're
talking about the beginning of the conversation, it's that you know,
it is impossible to read that text without the allegorical,
tropological and anagogical spectacles on.
Speaker 3: I mean, you just you know, what is it that
you can't?
Speaker 1: Else? What are you reading?
Speaker 3: Right? You can't. The great climax of.
Speaker 4: Scripture is just so so freighted with symbolism and eschatology
that there's just you know, there's no denying that, you know,
origin the great Patristic exegetical tradition had it right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they could see that in somebody.
Speaker 2: That's what it leads to, Like you said, it leads
to this vision that you need all these senses in
order to understand or else Yeah, else.
Speaker 1: What are you? What are you reading? And so so.
Speaker 2: James, thank you so much, thanks for this wonderful conversation.
Also thanks for your continued participation in these in these seminars.
Your your courage in the intellectual life. People don't know,
and I don't think people understand how much courage you
have in your position to be able to to just
joyfully stand, you know, in in the traditional vision of
Christianity of society. You know in the world that you are,
so we really appreciate your your existence in this world.
Speaker 3: Calm. Thank you enough, Jonathan, It's been so good to
be with you.
Speaker 2: If you enjoy these videos and podcasts, please go to
the Symbolic World dot com website and see how you
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