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David Bentley Hart: The Hardest Question No Religion Can Answer...
January 11, 2025
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I heard you mention that the problem of evil is the most compelling and coherent argument against theism, especially in its challenge to the idea of a benevolent and omnipotent God. So what is the problem of evil?
Why is this such a powerful critique? And then what is your response to said powerful critique? I see. Um, we are starting at the, uh, at the deep end, or at least the, uh, Oh, the problem of evil was simply, uh, the obvious one, the suffering of the innocent, the, uh, pestilence, famine, war, children dying of
Cancer, the suffering of all creatures. I have never been able to accept any of the sort of standard arguments from modal logic or English analytic philosophy regarding materialism. I've never been able to
accept the notion that the materialist picture of reality conforms either to logic or experience, but the argument against belief in at least a benevolent and good or God or belief in any sort of rational order to the cosmos at all from the sheer
suffering of the innocent from the sheer darkness of this world I've never taken issue with. I find it the most powerful and to be honest unanswerable riposte to theism, at least as conventionally conceived. The normal gesture of the religious imagination, of course, is simply to say there's more to it than we understand. There's a good ending beyond it all, but
Given the sheer enormity of the evils we're talking about and their reality within the present, deferring the justification to this to some presumed eschatological future doesn't make the cost any more morally.
I have no answer to it, to be perfectly honest. I've never pretended to. I'm caught on the horns of a dilemma, metaphysically, intellectually. I'm a theist, just because I think that the evidence of reason points in that direction, but the problem of evil I regard as irresoluble in the terms available to us.
What's the difference between the problem of evil and the problem of suffering? Oh, no, it's two names for the same thing. The notion of evil, I mean, the problem of evil, I suppose, also encompasses the reality of human malevolence, you know, as a moral evil as well as natural. But at the end of the day, the truth is that as long as a single child has died of diphtheria in the history of the human race,
the preponderance of the argument, the preponderance of the power of the argument is not one that favors the theistic or at least theistic platitudes. For me, problems that I can't solve, they stick in my craw and I think about them as I go about walks, if I'm at the gym, if I'm laying up at night trying to sleep.
This is an insolvable or insoluble problem. Is this one that keeps you up or is there something else? Well, I don't know if it keeps me up because I'm, I'm a fairly lethargic creature. I can find a, but, but yeah, no, I mean it, uh, it, it leaves me in a, um, an uncomfortable position.
I simply cannot make myself become the metaphysical optimist I might wish to be when confronted with the reality of the suffering of the innocent. It simply exceeds anything my imagination or my reason is able to overcome. At the same time,
You know, I, uh, you know, in other moments I'm aware of, of the beauty and goodness of things, you know, it could be something like a child, uh, at play rather than ill or the sight of a dog. I'm terrifically fond of dogs and cats, you know, and, and this is, but at the end of the day, no, I, I don't think I'll ever comfortably settle into any state of, of,
Firm and fervent and contented faith. So I guess what I'm looking for is there a variety of things that occupy one's mind, whether they're positive or benign or problems. And then the problems come of a sort of philosophical or theological sorts. So I'm looking for, are there any quandaries or paradoxes that you think about almost on a daily basis?
Theologically or philosophically? Well, definitely this one. I mean, you know, this, uh, the, uh, I think, uh, I mean, not, not to wax too confessional here, but right now, you know, I'm suffering from ill health for much of this past year, sort of unexpected descent of a chronic pain condition. So I'm in pain every day.
And without much assurance of what direction I'm going in, you know, and, uh, one becomes conscious in those situations, uh, not that, you know, this is especially unfair because others, so many others suffer so much, but it does make one less inclined to be glib, uh, about these things. I think it's very easy for us to
Place the suffering of others in the back of our mind as merely an intellectual quandary, so long as it doesn't touch us directly, and so long as those most immediate to us and we love are not suffering. Things change fairly rapidly when one has to deal with suffering at closer quarters, not because
Not necessarily because of self-pity, there's always that danger, but because it gives you a keener sense of how you've failed to take sufficiently seriously the sufferings of others. And I don't think I will ever, I mean, I could keep saying the same thing over and over again, and I'm sorry to be repetitious, but the truth is, I believe certain things, I believe certain things intellectually, I believe certain things religiously, but I also
I think that if there's a way of understanding the price that is paid for existence in this world, for the good that we hope lies at the essence of all things or at the end of all things, we simply do not possess the resources to calculate it.
I think, actually, one of the great virtues of the Psalms, to be honest, is how often they're rather bilious in their attitude, you know, how much of them consistent complaints to God. Right. Yeah. Yeah, you can read them and they sound like they were written by modern day. Well, they sound like yourself. It's remarkable because much of the Bible you read and it's
There's plenty of it that's antiquated. Yep. But that's not, it's, it's not a book of consolations and that, that makes it timeless. Oh, there, there's one part and you know this far better than myself. There's this one part that says, God, I'm suffering, I'm praying and all I get is silence. Where are you? Should I just not believe in you or something akin to that or analogous to that? So it's something of a refrain in the Psalms.
David Gordon called you one of the most well-read people in the world. One of? Yeah, I'm sorry. That's kind of him. I'm grateful to have you here, not only for that, but in spite of your health troubles and your suffering that you've chosen to spend some time with me. So thank you for that. I don't know many people who have translated the entirety of the New Testament. So that's pretty cool. Let's talk about that.
You once said that we're fools if we think we understand it, referring to the Bible, and that it's not a unified text. It doesn't reflect a unified theology. What reflects are many different reactions to an event of extraordinary mystery and power to those who are writing about it. Now, my question is, what event are you referring to and how should it be read if it's not unified? Well, the event I'm referring to
is described early on in 1 Corinthians 15. It was simply the experience of the risen Christ. I find it very hard to get past those verses for any number of reasons. Those are the earliest accounts we have of not the resurrection, but experiences of these encounters. They antedate the empty tomb narratives of the Gospels.
and they have a plain documentary quality to them that's extraordinarily convincing. It's also the case that it's always been something of an enigma why it is that Christianity survived the death of Christ, I mean the death of Jesus of Nazareth, but for some supposition that these reports
Are based in a reality when Paul says, you know, he's really one time 500 persons at a time at this experience. And then speaking out of it as his own personal experience coming very late in the day, he too, you know, had had this encounter. Now he doesn't talk about an empty tomb, none of the,
And the empty tomb narratives in the gospels themselves obviously are contradictory. I mean, there's obviously a unified tradition there of the women finding the tomb empty first and all that. But if one were simply going on those stories, they would seem fairly incredible. This Marshawn beast mode lynch prize pick is making sport season even more fun on prize picks, whether
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But what Paul's talking about
Is something else and it's it it it is a very curious thing. I mean many historians have acknowledged this even those who have no stake in in theological claims that All the other patterns of these messianic movements were a great enthusiasm followed by disappointment followed by dissolution disintegration Here alone you had the movement
After the death of its of its you to the founder, uh, taking, taking deeper roots and beginning to spread. And even, and I don't think this is purely hagiography because the evidence suggests otherwise, even many of them were being willing to, uh, to die rather than to deny that experience. You know, there was a famous Protestant or I should say Evangelical.
Okay. Theologian Wolfhard Pannenberg, who converted to Christianity out of his studies, as it was called, Disenschaft, sort of approached historical science, and that he felt that this experience, this event, was a concrete historical datum that he couldn't get past. Now, that's not an absolute
Proof of anything, but it's a compelling one. And as far as I'm concerned, the variety of responses, I mean, to be perfectly honest, you know, any attempt to claim that there is a single unified theology in the New Testament simply requires such a forced reading. That forced reading is often facilitated by traditions of translation, which somewhat suppress, somewhat hide
What the actual language on the page is, is actually saying, well, you know, things that are much less definite in the Greek have been, shall we say cajoled into conformity with the general picture in the translation. But even then it's clear that these, that what we're getting is not a system of belief, not a, uh, in a, in a final refined form, but what we are getting from Paul and others, uh, is a genuine conviction that something has happened.
That has altered the frame of reality and has altered their relation to it. And they're responding to it in a variety of ways using the theological paradigms available to them or the philosophical paradigms valid. And Paul talks about resurrection. He seems clearly to be influenced by say stoic metaphysics to some degree, for instance. Um, but, but it's not a system. So.
You mentioned this word, and I've heard you mention this several times in other interviews, stoic metaphysics. So what is the relevance of stoic metaphysics? What is it? What does it mean? Well, you see, in a sense, it's kind of anachronistic when we're talking about late antiquity to assume that everyone occupied just a single school. As it happens,
All of the different philosophical and metaphysical schools seem somewhat intermingled with one another. Late Platonism had Aristotelian elements, it consorted with Stoic elements, but Stoicism specifically a school of thought, greatest proponents, someone like Propounder, Epictetus for instance, that
I had in one sense it did not make any complete and absolute division between the physical and material understood spirit as a kind of higher element mind as a kind of divine fire God as a kind of divine fire pervading all things understood
The cosmic cycle of existence is one tending towards dissolution and a final great ecpyrosis. So that, you know, there's a structure to history. Now it's a cyclical structure. And so in stoicism, it recurs over and over again, but within, within history itself, within any, it has a beginning, a middle and an end. And, um,
There have been, you know, very good scholarly works on how Paul's descriptions say of the resurrection body also in 1 Corinthians 15 indicate a leaning towards a stoic metaphysics of matter and of the body and of spirit. I mean, we
You know later tradition talks about things like the resurrection of the flesh, but that's something Paul didn't believe in. He meant what he said when he said flesh and blood can't inherit the kingdom of heaven. For him flesh and blood are inherently mortal composite realities of the psychical body, which is often mistranslated as natural body, meaning a body animated, a body that has a psyche or soul or life principle super added to
And he foresees this being transformed into a body composed entirely of spirit so that, you know, it's continuous in one sense, but in another sense, not. Just a moment. So a body composed entirely of spirit. So the way that we think of it, even though we're not supposed to be dualists, but the way that we think of it in modern times is that there's spirit and then there's matter and that a body of spirit is just spirit.
Yeah, well, again, that's modern sort of Cartesian notion, the notion that the soul is a kind of ghost in a machine or something. And some people think it has a kind of antecedent and platonic thought. I think that's mistaken. But in Paul's language, and this is pretty much true of most of the metaphysics of late antiquity, spirit is not
disembodied. That's the wrong way of thinking. It's more like a higher, a more super eminent, a more powerful element. It's what angels are composed of, for instance, or for non-Christians or non-Jews, what gods or demons, the intermediate divinities, are composed of. It is
A kind of matter in itself. It's just not the lower matter of mortal existence below the sphere of the moon, which is susceptible to Genesis and decay. So they don't talk about you having spirit because when someone says you have this, it's as if it's like a purse or a backpack. It's something you have and you can also not have it. So talk about the use that language. Well, there's not, there's not a single
Consistent grammar here. You can speak of in this life, having spirit, having more spirit or not. Um, there are many from, uh, uh, the sort of the things we call the early Gnostic schools may or may not have had this notion of the psychical body or a psychical man as being entirely devoid of the element of spirit.
You certainly get language of that sort in the epistle to Jude, which suggests that there are those who are purely psychical. Again, it's often translated as sensual man or animal man or whatever, but it was a psychical not having spirit, but that's often again translated as not having the Holy Spirit, but that's not what the Greek says. So, uh, again, there's not a single systematic vocabulary or grammar at work, but when we
Try to think of this in terms of either even the later medieval notion of disembodied intelligences. I mean, Thomas Aquinas thought of angels as being disembodied intelligences with no kind of material substrate at all, either ethereal or earthly. And so each angel is its own
species because he's a very much an Aristotelian and what different and what individuates form or speech is, is matter, you know? Well, that's not the way late antiquity thought. They just really didn't have that notion. And of course in the modern age, we have this radically Cartesian notion that, you know, Descartes gave us this picture. Um, he more than anyone else of body and soul as to qualitatively different things, only body.
The material body is an extended substance, a race extensa, and mind is simply race, cogitans, mind or soul, and never, though the two meet, never, never should they be confused with one another. They're entirely different. That's not the way Paul is talking in 1 Corinthians 15. How much can we read into 1 Corinthians 15 if it was just two or three lines?
How can we tell the entire not entirety but a large portion of Paul's metaphysics just from three lines if it wasn't mentioned in other places? Well it is mentioned in other places more elusively such as when he talks about the alderman and the inner man if you look at that it's it's clear that he's or he talks about body and flesh being flesh and spirit rather being it being in
Attention or being at odds with one another. He's speaking much more literally about flow We tend to take the word flesh there and make it into a moral category or something But he but also in first Corinthians 15 is these are not vague and it's not just two or three lines It's but it's maybe seven or ten lines. Sure. He is giving an account of the resurrection body in which he is very specifically denying that it's flesh and blood and
Psychical body one that's animated by by soul and Insisting that it's a body of spirit assume open of not icon There's not and and Explicitly denying the flesh and blood can can inherit the kingdom of heaven these these aren't vague phrases So what we can again is we wouldn't say Paul is a stoic that would be a mistake and
but it was very influential school of thought. I mean, you know, and in its time, and it was also the one morally most consonant with Christian thought. I mean, Paul is a cosmopolitan in the sense that he believes that in Christ, the divisions of peoples have disappeared and he's quite happily a citizen of the empire using its, its apparatus in order to spread the gospel. And he has, you know,
He has no desire to maintain divisions of identity, he thinks, in the event of Christ. Whatever this event is he's reporting, its ultimate significance in terms of human community is that there is this body in which there is neither Jew nor Greek, free nor slave.
Man and woman or husband and wife, even, you know, depending on how you translate that. And Stoicism was very much the ethos of Stoicism was that of cosmopolitanism. It was of, you know, trying to, without absolutely abolishing radical thought was very difficult in the first century, for instance, but, you know, break down the distinction between slave and master and barbarian and civil. And,
And to proclaim a sort of universal family of humankind, a cosmopolis, a city of the, of the cosmos, as opposed to just say Rome and it's abominations of power. So in many ways, when Paul speaks morally, not merely metaphysically, but morally, you can see that if there's a, a pagan school of thought,
Most consonant with with the gospel. He's proclaiming. It's definitely so system Help me in the audience who are modern people not necessarily do lists, but help us understand how the flesh and blood can't inherit The kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God, but the spirit can yet at the same time the spirit is not wholly different than flesh Was it wholly different from flesh? There's a flesh
When in polls, um, language sarks is, uh, a sort of animal constitution, which of its nature, certain things you have to understand it's, it's intrinsically mortal. And for Paul, remember salvation is from death. I mean, he, in the, in the age to come, he doesn't, he nowhere talks about heaven and hell. He talks about a renewed creation age to come of life as opposed to being.
lost to death. The final judgment or the final crisis, the eschaton, is the creation of a new age beyond the reach of death, which means it's not
A creation still in which we would be bound to flesh and blood, but have a different body of a totally different kind, the sort of body that angels have. I mean, you know, even in the gospels, we have Christ speaking of the age to come, we will live as the angels in heaven. Well, we tend to think of that again, very vaguely, but it could, I mean, if he's speaking to Pharisees and what we know of pharisaic
Religion suggests this is the case. What he is literally saying is that in the life of the age to come, we will be physically like the angels. And that means, and again, if you're working within the realm of late, late antique cosmology, that means also a certain liberty from purely terrestrial limitations because angels can live
above the sphere of the moon in the, in the ethereal heavens, you know, we can't, but, uh, but this is the thing that's hardest perhaps from late modern people to grasp is that the distinction between the metaphysical and the physical is not as pronounced in late antiquity as it is in late modernity, but there's a sense in which
Yes, you know that God's transcendent, at the same time, there's a sense in which God's true heaven is the Empyrean above the fixed stars. And in a sense, and when Paul talks about thrones and dominions and powers in high places, he literally means these sort of mutinous angelic sort of beings who
Spiritually, but also in a sense physically separate us from God on high and the Christ has made a way through the heavens and has conquered these powers, you know, so there's still a kind of place with the cosmological and the, uh, the spiritual or metaphysical are, are as yet, uh, not clearly distinguished from one another.
Obviously, we live with very different cosmology, you know. And, you know, again, does that mean that this was all pathetic illusion? They were bound to an antique picture of reality that has been superseded? No, but it means that they're thinking in
The terms of their time to express this otherwise inexpressible experience of salvation in the risen Christ. You personally, David, when you're thinking about the Bible or you're looking at the world, do you have to switch your cosmology? Do you have to switch your philosophy such that you diminish the distinction between metaphysics and physics or physical? Sorry. And
I don't even know if it's a continuum. I mean I think flesh and blood are genuinely abolished for Paul.
How that then is a transformation rather than an exchange of one body for another. Uh, I don't think Paul ever works out exactly. I mean, he sees, he sees it as sort of like a seed, as he says, you know, it's sewn of a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a
But in that continuity something is definitely shed. What he does not believe in is a resurrection of the flesh. Now we have one verse and one verse only in the Gospel of Luke in which the risen Christ says, I'm flesh and bone. I'm not a spirit using spirit there as it was also used in late antiquity just to mean a ghost, a phantom. So again,
The New Testament doesn't present a single picture. For the most part, it seems to me, at least the epistolary materials are closer to Paul than anything else. But I'm not claiming, again, what I would say is that the experience is very hard to deny, that something happened. How the persons of that time understood the experience was of its time.
and was various, but it's quite possible for something to be very real and very concrete and still elude single uniform expression. But today, if we had this experience, we might very well be thinking in more Cartesian terms, you know, or we might, we might not. I mean, you know, we might be thinking in terms suggested to us
By modern physics with some sort of transformation into another kind of corporeal frame made of light or something. The imagination can only accomplish so much and conceptual models have only so much applicability. But what's important to me is that we not
misinterpret the original text for two reasons. One, just for the sake of intellectual honesty, you know, if we're not going to acknowledge that Paul means what he says, you know, and say, Oh, well, no, he believed in, you know, the body of flesh and blood being raised up, but, you know, made immortal and all that, then we're just, you know, refusing to acknowledge that his language doesn't conform to a lot of the later theological language of Christianity.
The other thing is, to me, there's a kind of healthier intellectual hygiene in seeing and recognizing the plurality of perspectives in the New Testament because it teaches us not to be either fundamentalist, but not to think that dogmatically we understand and know. It reminds us that the event
Compels us perhaps, but it's not something that anyone has ever been able to understand with an absolutely exhaustive and convincing language or model to work from.
So David, as a Christian, when you're trying to make sense of the Bible, do you give different books, different weights of credence? So for instance, you would say an example that Mark was written first, therefore what comes in John is likely embellished with a poetic undertone. And so I'm going to, if I'm supposed to take a literalist frame or a more historical frame or whatever frame you may want to take, you're going to evaluate Mark differently than you do John.
And there are disputed epistles, so I'm not going to put as much weight to them as I would say first Corinthians. Well, with with the past rule epistles, Timothy and Titus, there are things that are disappointing when you compare them to Paul's authentic epistles. And then there are things that are quite encouraging about so that, you know, it's a matter of sort.
Um, well, I don't, I mean, it was to say that Mark came first is not to say that it's, I mean, assuming, I mean, pretty clear is probably the earliest of the gospels, but that doesn't mean it's any more accurate or trustworthy than the others. It establishes a narrative framing of Christ that's then taken up in Matthew and Luke. So Mark is part of what gives us the other two synoptics. And that's, um, a framing of, of,
Christ in certain framing of Christ's ministry in certain terms and in a certain way of indicating who he is. Even then, Mark lacks the Logia material, the sayings of Christ that actually give us any firm sense of say his moral teachings for that. You need to go to Matthew and Luke to get a better sense of what the tradition there says. John is clearly from a completely different ambit at
Is a theological commentary on Christ, but, but, uh, doesn't even make the pretense of being, uh, and historical narrative in the same way, except when it does, you know, when suddenly you get very particular information given about kind of say or something, whether it's true or not. Um, I don't know. I mean, uh, I, again, as I say, when it comes to.
The credibility of the claims Christians make, that one chapter in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 has a force that's unique to my mind in the New Testament in terms of credibility. Other than that, since I'm not looking, I mean, I don't regard
scripture as um an index of dogmas um i don't really think in terms of how to weight it i believe that um and when i say the event of christ i don't just mean the resurrection i mean his presence and time and his teaching and all that is indicated uh is
elucidated to a great extent. And then there are great layers of interpretation of it, as in, say, John's gospel, that are precious perspective on it, but that by themselves, if they're not part of this sort of polyphonic testimony, would not be as compelling or as convincing. Because to be honest, Jesus, as he appears in the gospel of John,
It's not, you know, it's not an attractive figure in the way he is in Luke, say. He's not as attractive? Well, I mean, there's very little of the, you see very little, with the exception of the story of the woman taken in adultery, which of course isn't actually originally part of John. It probably was a free floating tradition that would fit better in Luke, but you see very little, uh,
At times you do, I mean you see the humanity of Christ weeping at the grave of Lazarus and all that. But most of it is taken up with discourses and a very, you know, mystical discourses and a very pronounced language of judgment, you know, of discrimination, you know, you're children of the devil, you know, it's light and darkness. Christ in the Gospel of John, we see him not in his aspect as
As the moral teacher of Matthew and Luke, but in the aspect of, of a moment of decision for those who encounter him, is this the face of God or not? And, um, there, you know, it's sort of a, um, the gospel is making a theological comment about, uh, God entering time in a way that separates
Uh, separates light from darkness, but, uh, we hear very little about feeding the poor, about caring for the sick, about visiting the prisoners. We think of the Jesus of John in those terms, because we're thinking of Jesus as he's presented in this, in, in the two long synoptic gospels. And that's necessary. You need this counterpoint. Uh, you need to see the historically concrete figure that who emerges from the sayings attributed to him.
And from the story of this man who comes out of Galilee into Judea speaking on the behalf of the poor and the, and the excluded in order for that light of judgment that you see in John to be something more than just a terrifying, um, and to be honest, somewhat incredible myth. Now let's get to something controversial.
Unlike this. Yeah. So speaking of John, John, the first part of John, the Greek is often rendered in the beginning was the logos or the word and the logos was with God and the logos was God. Now I just brought up this cup here. There's an event that I went to called O'Shaughnessy Ventures. They fortunately gave me a grant to work on something. And over there, someone else was given a grant.
His name is Jonathan B. I'll put a link to his channel on screen and in the description as well. He was telling me, Kurt, in that verse, there's in the Greek, there's something called pros, P-R-O-S. Yes, right, right. And it implies that it implies a moving toward or a facing. Yeah. And that connotes something that's distinct. So most Christians think of Jesus as God.
Not just an aspect of God, but as God, and sometimes I'll even pray to Jesus. But this to me suggests that Jesus is not God. Now, in your translation, again, I'll put the link on screen to your work. You do a similar translation, except God is in capitals. And then at one point, God is in lowercase. So walk us through John one one. Well,
I'm trying to remember the order there, but it's actually, come to think of it, it's a God, the word was or something, but it's not the word there. And I say a God because the actual distinction in the verse that, or at least that the verse seems to honor
Although again, structures of predication have ambiguities in Greek, so, but, Otheos, or Ho-theos as you'd say in Erasmian Greek, the god, is generally the privileged term for god most high in the ancient world, and this is a convention.
pagan and Jewish and Christian thought. And for Christians, I mean, I honestly believe in the New Testament, Otheos is always, always means God in the sense of father, right? But this is the Logos, when it says the Logos was God or God was Logos, the article is missing. There's no, there's no article and that's, and
This was, the word God had a much greater elasticity in the antique world. It could be used, you'll find even, say, church fathers using the term when they're speaking of saints. John of Damascus will speak of saints as they, you know, God. And of course,
Angels became angels were originally gods within a pantheon within an israelitic pantheon. You know, there's just. And, uh, so here, what you're having is an assertion, not of necessarily. Co equal identity, but if continuity, it's still saying the logos is God, but, uh, is not
Equating it there, equating the logos there with God most high, still here the issues begin to arise. And this is quite common right up through the fourth century in Christian thought that's still a very strong, what's considered an orthodox strain of thought, small o.
Especially in the East up until the council of Nicaea and after for a long time afterwards as a kind of, what would you call a subordination assumption that God most high is God in the properties of the fathers. And then the logos is defter of sales. And you find this say in a Jewish thinker like Filo, but also Christian thing. If you can read, say you CBS before Nicaea gives you a pretty clear notion of what, uh, what, what,
Many believe to be Orthodox Christian, which there's not a co equality. There's a continuity, but it's vague. It can even in the case of say, Arianism be, you know, the, the sun can be seen as created. And there's a kind of ambiguity between the notion of creation and generation. Gnima and Gnima spelled slightly differently. That said, um, and the reason for this notion of a secondary God is that God properly so transcendent that he can't.
Enter into direct contact with finite reality, therefore he generates his word, you know, or his secondary God, that the angel of mighty council, the king, the chief of the angels to govern creation and to deal with the lower world. And then the spirit would be maybe God too, but you know, and, but there's a reticence.
About this right up to very late, several centuries along ever to use the term or sales for anyone other than the father. Okay. And yet in the gospel of John, though you have that in the prologue in chapter 20, the apostle Thomas, when he speaks to the risen Christ doesn't, but people think he actually touches Christ rather Christ invites him to touch, but he doesn't.
Instead he falls to his knees and says, Oh, my Lord and my God. And there he seems to be addressing Jesus as God most high. Now this is extraordinary. The gospel of John also is full of statements like, he has seen me, has seen the father, I and the father are one.
So, so while the prologue of John seems to maintain this distinction, this distinction in other ways is breaking down and then climactically in chapter 20, which is probably the original ending of the gospel before that beautiful dream like chapter 21 was added, uh, go so far as to address Jesus as God most high. And
This is the debate going into the fourth century. Is this an honorific? Is he saying this to proclaim that just how high Jesus has been raised in the esteem of the heavenly powers due to what he has accomplished, or is it a statement of who he is eternally? And I could go on a great length of what happened at Nicaea and after, I mean, of course there is the issue of imperial pressure, the new
the newly christianized emperor constantin wanting some sort of uniformity of confession but it's also the case that there's a very real line of reasoning going on there that what had happened in christ and what happens in the spirit is real union with god god the father and such union is possible impossible is something that can't be accomplished by a lesser agency by spirit so if we believe this if we believe
Otheos really is present in Jesus and now Jesus is really present in the Holy Spirit in sanctification and sacrament. Then there has to be an equality that in some sense, you're always dealing with God himself, you know, and that's how the later confession finally coalesced for finally reached its convictions about what the proper language of the Trinity is still.
It would be wrong to falsify the New Testament and pretend that there's a fully developed Trinitarian theology there. There simply isn't. And, um, you know, uh, in the prologue, you're still very much in the world of late antiquity in which there's God most high, and then a secondary, a death through us. Who is in some sense, the reflection of God most high, but it was turned toward the father as the priest leading the liturgy of creation.
Did I hear you earlier say that you could read it as saying Jesus, which is the logos, even though it says the logos, but so the logos was a God instead of the logos was the God. Yeah. Because there's a missing article you said. Yeah. Interesting. But I think, but I mean, the thing is again, we can't think about that polytheistically though. It would be a divine being a divine, but
It's saying more at the same time. Or you also mentioned angels could be thought of as gods from before, but not in the earliest dominant Christology is what scholars call Angelo Morphic. I mean, it was thought to be, and this remains part of the discourse very late in the Christian tradition that Jesus is also the captain of the angels, so to speak, the leader of the heavenly hosts. And there was this notion of the defter of sales as
The core fails the one who leads the heavenly choirs and their liturgy of praise. And so he's turned, he's the one alone who's because a priest will accept in the Nova sort of, but generally speaking, a priest is, has his back to the people because he's leading the liturgy. All everyone turned towards the mystery of God. Right. And this is certainly
A lot of the early, how the Christians well into the fourth century and after were thinking that, that, uh, you know, he uniquely is the highest of heavenly beings, the angel of mighty council, the highest of the angels and also the unique son of the father is leading the heavenly liturgy. This language falls away later as it becomes very much, um,
Well, I can say superseded by the, uh, the formal language of Trinitarian dogma. This is controversial, not because the scholarship is controversial. I want to point out even, you know, people of impeccable orthodoxy scholars have known this. I mean, they're known that Arius was not some strange
Curious anomaly that he was simply an extreme expression of what was regarded by many as the orthodoxy of centuries and there's a reason why after the Aryan controversy. The controversy continued with the you know me and others over you know bishops and priests still committed to this older view that they thought was the correct view that.
It was the Nicene party that was proposing a new grammar, you know, even a new word, homoousios, consubstantial. It's not in scripture and it wasn't in previous Christian usage. But to this day, you say the people, even theologians or people who do Christian philosophy, but who don't study Christian history very closely and don't know late antiquity very well, think that you're saying something
You know that's that's just an opinion that is it's not a minute it's it's it is the hard and fast data at the time and again as i say you can read you can see the change occurring in you serious you just. Read him before the nice in council on on who jesus is and then read him after there's been a change you know.
Yeah, I also don't see it as so straightforward that Jesus himself identifies as God. Now, in these examples, there's John, which is the first part is just some narrator saying that Jesus is God. And then there's Thomas who says, my God, as well as my Lord. But also when you see anything majestic, you go, my God, to me, it's just not so obvious. And also, oh, yeah, well, it could be a fervent expression of praise of God. I mean, that was one of the arguments.
I love that I'm speaking with you, that you know the Greek inside and out. Well, you kind of need to, if you do some of what I do, you need to know some Greek, it helps.
Yeah. And also Jesus said, when you pray, you go to your room, you shut the door. So you do so in private, you pray to the father and our father who are in heaven. Right. And another point he said, you're still in Matthew now. Yeah. And another point someone said, who is good? No, someone said called Jesus good. He's like, no one is good, but the father. And if you ask for anything in my father and in my name, which it seems to me like he's pointing out a distinction between himself and the father.
Yeah, there's one who is good. There are two different versions of that verse. There's the majority text and the critical text. But anyway, yes, the point is, it seems to be saying, yeah. In John, however, again, you do have statements that, again, I don't attribute to the historical Jesus one way or the other. I'm just saying in John, you have theological statements already emerging, which I and the Father are one. Now, again, what is that oneness? What is that unity that he, when he's praying in Gethsemane that he had with the Father before
The ages. Well, you're not going to get a single and the early church didn't have a single answer. And you've got to remember that when Nicaea was the council of Nicaea was convened as yet there was no notion of church councils as having some preeminent and indisputable doctrinal power authority that that too is an emergent phenomenon in Christian history. It's not
It's not something that's okay. Well, we better call our first infallible council, you know, that that that's not what was going on. But definitely, Constantine wanted a clear single voice emerging from what was becoming an institutional support of the empire. Now, speaking of oneness, I prepped for conversations weeks in advance quite extensively. So unfortunately, I can't give you a
The source of this quote that you said, and in fact I'm paraphrasing it so it's not even a quote, but you said that life, consciousness and language are the same. Now I can imagine how consciousness and life have a tie. However, what would be your definition of language such that it's the same as consciousness? Oh, now we're shifting into my recent
Book. You see, now I take off the theological biblical hat, put on the philosopher, philosopher's hat, I guess the mantle. Well, this is about physics, philosophy and consciousness. Yeah. Yeah. Um, well, I mean, I mean, I take several hundred pages of that book to explain what I mean. So forgive me if, if what I say here is, is less than satisfying, but, um, I believe that, uh,
that life and consciousness both examined phenomenologically but also logically exhibit a kind of intentional structure, intentional in the philosophical sense, I don't mean in the psychological sense, but and that language too is nothing but intentionality and
That the existence of language and of language using beings is every bit as mysterious and exhibits the same, uh, causal structure, but also that you can, in a sense, analogously speaking of language, uh, in terms of, of, or you can speak of mind and life, both in terms of language, even in the, you know, in the, in the,
The obvious sense that, um, life has a, uh, an element of transcription and hermeneutics involved between one phenotype and another. And, uh, I think we've known for more than 70, 80, maybe, you know, going on quite a, quite getting near the century mark, but we, at least since the time of Barbara McClintox.
Experiments with maze. We, we, we have much firmer sense of the sort of intentional systems within intentional systems, right up to say experiments, how convincing they are. You can debate, but let's say Michael Levins at Tufts and Xenobots and the power of life.
For curious listeners, I've spoken to Michael Levin four times on this channel. Each one is linked on screen and in the description. The topics include consciousness, bioelectricity, intelligence, emergence, and even the nature of reality itself.
You can debate, but let's say Michael Levin's at Tufts and Xenobots and the power of life to engineer
organic systems towards solutions that are not simply provided by a prior template, but that require kind of hermeneutical plasticity in the cell and gene editing. But there's also a sense, you know, when you think about what is language, I mean, as intentionality, as
Every time you make a statement, if it's a coherent statement, there's an antecedent finality. If you're going to talk like an Aristotelian, there's a final cause, right? And there's a sort of formal cause. And it's that semantic intelligibility that determines the material substrates of sounds or words on the page, just as there's a semantic level of intelligibility, arguably, that determines the way the
Material ingredients of organic life or the the working of conscious processes in the brain. Operate. And that always you know the curious thing I think when you think about it when you actually allow for the reality of intentionality and there's there's a reason why the most radically eliminated list.
Models of mind and of life want to do away with intrinsic intentionality as impossible as that is to do. I mean, it's something like Alex Rosenberg denying that, that, you know, ever anything has ever been about anything else, which he writes a book about. And, uh, it's because the moment that you allow intentionality and intrinsic existence, even in language, which is baffling enough, I mean, there's, there's a argument in the book against
The notion that language can be a purely emergent phenomenon from purely pre-linguistic origins. Too complicated to recapitulate here, but nonetheless, immediately you realize that there's always a kind of, that in addition to the physical space of consequence in which things unfold, there's a noetic space in which
The final, the end and the beginning are both co-present in a sense. They exist in a sort of hermeneutical or noetic space. I think this is why like neoplatonism is a sort of an almost natural reflex of the mind the moment it grants intentionality, why you find a very similar metaphysics in India in putting aside issues of cross pollination.
And then, of course, the unity of that noetic space, you're going to think, well, even that unity itself has to subsist in some sort of higher unity, some true simplicity, some pure source that holds things together as one and yet many. And so you posit sort of the one, the tohen of Plotinus saying,
But, uh, definitely, I think that when you, the more deeply you think about it, the mind, life and language do all pose the same problems to the material is productive process or project rather, sorry. And the purpose of that recent book, all things are full of gods, which is a long book, uh, is to give the reductive
Project it's do i mean there's a voice in there it's it's written as a dialogue and if Estes is allowed to argue for it at great length but i mean the purpose of the book is to show that again and again um all the project does not uh explain this irreducibility or does not reduce this reducibility adequately and it turns out to be the same problem the same irreducibility that you've been mined in life and language
Um, all things are in a sense, uh, intelligible discourse. So in so far as they have structure that has any, I know we're not in teleology is.
The thing we're supposed to avoid and yet it's the thing that's almost impossible to avoid, at least even, even a scientific method, even when we're denying it any ontological purchase, we're using it methodologically and that raises questions of its own, you know, to understand evolution. You're always asking, what was this good for? And then you can say, but of course, all we're really talking about are serial electricians and an evolutionary process, but that's a supposition.
You know, if a method illuminates, why does it illuminate? Well, two thoughts occur to me. One is Brentano's thesis, if I'm pronouncing that correctly. Yeah, I wanted to know if your association with consciousness and language relies on that.
But then you also said something else that's interesting. I want to explore. So I'll just say it and we can explore it later. You mentioned that neoplatonism is a natural consequence of allowing for intentionality, something like that. I don't know how that is the case. So I would like to hear more about that. So as for Brentano, I take it you mean the thesis that intentionality is the mark of the mantle. Yes. Yeah, I believe that when again,
Phenomenologically, you can't separate intentionality from consciousness, from rationality. The notion that you can have consciousness without intentionality, I think can be dealt with pretty brutally, but fairly. Um, the tendency in Anglo American philosophy of mind has been sort of divide and conquer for years. If you can just isolate one thing, like
Consciousness and say that's the hard problem and if you could solve that everything will fall into place I think is an illusion that that they're all the hard problems and also that When mind acts it always acts in you know Concert it's the the things that we want to pretend are separate faculties are in fact just phenomenological dimensions of a single unified act that can't be dissolved and that's part of the reason why we don't have a satisfactory model of mind and
is because we're trying to compose it from parts that we've abstracted from the whole. But in fact, the whole has to exist in its totality for the parts to exist. Uh, so yes, I, uh, the, um, you know, Brenton was understanding of intentionality. I differ from him in certain aspects of it, but yes,
And also it's reflexive nature. The fact that to be conscious is to be conscious of being conscious. So that's not just intentionality is directed towards an ever more transcendental endpoint. That's always eliciting conscious and volitional and rational and intentional acts, but also that intentionality requires this ground of consciousness that's
always founded upon itself that I don't think can emerge from a composite material basis. Again, an argument too long to rehearse here. As for the remark about Neoplatonism, well, I mean, I think it's just that I think if, you know, Neoplatonism, you have the one which generates news or mind in its pure aspect, which is just self-reflection, whereas the one has a kind of super-intellections. It's not reflected.
And from this, the lower aspect of psyche or life or soul. And I think that that when you think in these terms, when you realize that if you, if you go back the other way, say, and you look at life and you look at solar sun or mind or you look at logo, see the language.
And you find yourself unable to get away from the intentional structure. Then you, then, then you allow for the future to be a real cause in the present. Right. For that to be the case for there to be this integrated intentional reality, there has to be. And again, I'm not, I'm not proposing a particular ontology of it. I'm simply saying structurally, you have to think that there's a noetic space.
Noetic realm in which beginning and end are present to one another. You know, that, that, that if I'm going to say, why doesn't it be a sentence? Two plus two equals four. I'm, I'm granting them my ability to make that statement, to communicate it to you, to think grants that the four and the two plus two.
In that noetic space, uh, are already, uh, indissolubly connected to one another causally, uh, consequentially. And then of course you ask yourself the question of what allows for unity at all in, in the many, you know, because how is the noetic space one?
And you begin thinking in terms of a profound simplicity, a unity, a sort of ontological unity, a trans-finite unity, even that traverses everything, that allows everything to be both this, not that, and yet altogether, everything. So all I meant was that Neoplatonism has a kind of natural plausibility to a mind that's thinking in these terms about the structure of life and mind and why
It's really not until the modern period that sort of a purely mechanical notion of nature really gains wide purchase. I mean, you have early schools of great thought like the market, you know, democratists and, um, you know, the, the, the notion of certain aspects of fabricarianism, but these are, these are boutique schools and, um, even they have a kind of,
Unfinished quality to them that admits of ambiguities is only really in the mere modern period that we were able to create for ourselves the notion of mechanism and to do away with a different notion of the causal structure of reality in part because intuitively a mechanism doesn't make much sense to us until we make it make sense to us. And even then it's never to my mind.
Managed to produce a purely coherent ontology. Now there's a strain of Buddhism, one of the oldest schools of Buddhism called Theravada. And there's a particular state called Neroda Samapati. And it indicates that you can have awareness without self-awareness. It's like a bare consciousness event. So does that not
Contravene that every conscious experience needs to be one of self-consciousness But indeed you can have consciousness without the I know that I know Theravada is just one school of Abhidhana or Dhamma Buddhism that persisted in Sri Lanka and Well later Buddhism, you know sort of Condescendingly called Hinayana lesser vehicle Buddhism, but yeah
Yeah, no, I just, uh, I mean, I simply believe that it's, um, how can I put it as a truth about making, you know, having a propositional, uh, claim about the self. It's true to an extent, but otherwise, um, I would say that it's, it's false as far as the actual consciousness goes, that there, there is always,
To be consciousness, to be conscious at all is simply to be conscious of being conscious. There's a kind of paradox in it, you know. There's a kind of what would be an infinite regress if we were talking about a material reality underlying it. And there's no way of consciousness actually to be conscious.
Uh, without that sort of reflexive dimension in it. I think Brenton knows someone's who are so very good on this. Um, and so depending on how you try, how you, how you, how you interpret the early Buddhist claim, uh, depend, depending on that, I would give it limited or no credence. So if consciousness is always directed at something,
So that's intentionality for people who are wondering what the heck is this word that keeps coming up over and over. It's about-ness, so you direct it, you're directing. So if consciousness is always intentional, directed at objects, but that object is always self-conscious, do we get an infinite regress? If you're conscious of X, you're necessarily conscious of being conscious of X.
And you then have a consciousness or you're conscious that you're conscious of being conscious of at infinite. It would be an infinite regress. If you're thinking of this in terms of composite of distinct forces. Sure. And that's the problem with trying to reduce it to material causes. It's a problem trying to reduce it to sort of a purely neurological or material based, because then you will be sort of in this infinite modular regress of
But if consciousness simply is this simple act of self-reflexive awareness, an infinite regress is a specter that can be chased away pretty quickly because what you're doing is you're confusing categories. You're thinking in material composite terms about an activity and an agency.
It simply is what it is. It's like saying, well, what, what, what illuminates the light? You know, I mean, it, it's, it's not a real regress. It would be though. And therein lies the problem with the materialist reductionism of, or one of many problems with the materialist reduction of consciousness. What about pre-reflective experiences like being in the zone or full states where you have awareness and you don't have an explicit self-awareness?
Well, I mean, I think that it depends as a psychological state. Yeah. The psychological state of here I am, David Hart, having this experience at this moment can recede. Uh, but being in the zone or just, you know, in that flow of, of action, there's still in a sense, probably a pure reflexive consciousness. You're just purely aware of awareness. You know, the, uh,
The finite and changeable preoccupations of the empirical self, the psychological self, fall largely dormant, but only to give way to a more immediate sort of reflexiveness. It's not like in those moments of flow you're in a coma.
You know, quite the opposite. There's, there's an immediacy of experience that that's over what that, Oh, you know, when the dancer becomes the dance, you could say that she or he is also becoming the consciousness, the dance becoming conscious of itself rather than the psychological self.
Remaining preoccupied with itself for those moments. It's an escape from that sort of psychological limitation, but it's certainly not an escape from awareness of awareness of awareness. If all consciousness required self-consciousness, how could it be that consciousness came about in the first place? Would the first moment also need to somehow include self-awareness? Yeah, no, again, I'm not talking about
psychological sense of identity self-awareness just being like this moment of consciousness knowing itself as conscious may not take a very hard and fast propositional form but yeah i would say the consciousness does not emerge from the pre-conscious it so to speak descends it fashions life it fashions organism and as soon as there is life there's already mind and consciousness of some kind um uh how
how that is within the structure of life. I'm not going to pretend to understand exhaustively, but I think that consciousness is not an emergent phenomenon, but a super, well, super intending a super forming. I don't know what even want to say supervening because that can be a mistaken for a specific sort of school of thought that I don't agree with either. Um, yeah, I, I don't believe that
That consciousness is ever a fragment of consciousness. It's never just, you know, sensitivity or something. That if it's mind, then it's this integrated act that cannot emerge strongly. That is the important thing. Strong emergence, meaning emerging as something
From a material basis or from a lower basis that is has no other source and yet is irreducible to that basis. I think that's a myth that such a such a thing is cannot be. If it emerged as it emerges in nature in the weak sense, it does so because I think you have to think in terms of something like formal and final causes as well. Again, not as they were.
Let's be honest, in early modernity, all that Aristotelian language was already so badly misunderstood that what was being rejected was just a rival mechanical model. They thought of final causes as sort of attraction, as if these were extrinsic to one another, and between them working out a phenomenon. Whereas, in fact, that's not what the Aristotelian tradition is. It's a completely different set of issues. It's really just talking about the predictable structure of something that is coherent.
Materially be identified substantially has some sort of intrinsic, uh, limit to or end of its potentialities so that, you know, the seed, the acorn isn't going to grow into a penguin. So even though, but, but, but that's an excursus. So excuse me. I would say that, um,
My contention would be that strong emergence is impossible for anything and strong emergence certainly will not explain if life is real, if mind is real, if language is real. If there is such a thing as intentionality, and I think we have good reason to think there is, then the mechanical materialist reductionist project will always
fail ultimately to give a cogent answer to the questions that torment us. So we've been speaking about emergence and consciousness. And for those who are interested in more, you have a book called The Experience of God and that will be on screen link in the description as well as all of your books. And the more recent treatment, which is a larger excursion into these topics is all things are full of gods link on screen and in the description.
How do you see the relationship between consciousness, being and God? A small question, I know. Well, ultimately, I would say that they're all one, you know, that to be conscious, to exist, to be intentionally oriented towards transcendental and all of these are finite participation in the one.
God who is being Consciousness blessed, or to use the Satya Dhananda, the Sanskrit terset, which, or in Arabic, rujut, which done washed, you know, that you can live in Arabic, or analogously in Augustine's understanding of the Trinity, perhaps, you know.
that ultimately these are all in God, one in the same. God is the being of all, the one source of all, mentality, the one end of all, of all longing, desire and intention, and we experience it in a plural way, but ultimately what we experience and seek is one in the same.
So I have some questions from the audience I would like to get to actually. So one here is, you've recently embraced a public and explicit form of universalism, formulating a convincing metaphysical argument for a type of full cosmic theosis. In this view, a finite will cannot infinitely resist an infinite will or the infinite will of God. Now, simultaneously, you've embraced a more explicit
religious syncretism. And according to all reports, it seems like you've ceased participating in Christian tradition. If there are parts of this that you disagree with, you can, you can also talk about that. But the question is, so in a world filled with these people who are saying I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious and there's a diminishing spiritual discipline and tradition, there's relativizing, there's laxity.
What makes your recent positions different than new age gurus? Do you still consider yourself a Christian? Do you advocate that others follow your own religious path? So feel free to disagree with some of the premises as well. We have to wade through the confusions there. I don't know what these reports are that I cease to be.
I have been suffering health problems, I'll admit, so I don't get out of the house to church very often, or at all for the past few months. But that's not a matter of apostasy or tergification or anything.
I didn't say that finite will cannot resist an infinite will eternally. That sounds like it's a contest between God willing salvation for all and humans trying to resist it. That somewhat barbarizes the argument regarding the structure of freedom.
Because I'm purely classical in my understanding of what free will for a rational being is. In fact, the arguments I make there could have been made by Thomas Aquinas, for instance, but he was a double predestinarian. I know some people don't like that term for him, but it's true. And for him, the reason that he didn't have a free will defense of hell, he believed that certain persons were predestined to be saved and the rest had no hope of salvation, derelict
uh, by, uh, the withholding of efficacious grace. So if that's your picture of God, that's fine. But, uh, for, uh, for Aquinas, there really would be an issue of finite will not being able to resist an infinite will as though it was when Elsinando said something, uh, I said something very different. I said that to
that the will that resists God is not a free will by definition. If you actually look at what it would mean logically to say that something is a free choice. And again, I can only direct people to the book that all will be saved. Um, I'm not interested in people who say they're spiritual or not religious, but I'm not hostile to them because I'm not, not my place to judge the spiritual state of others. Um,
And I expect people to believe what they believe. I've said already in this interview, what I believe, and it may seem minimalist to some, it's that the experience of the resurrected Christ described in first Corinthians 15 is very hard not to believe for me. I mean, I find that there's a, a, a plausibility there and a persuasiveness.
And I find in the teachings of Christ something that I think is an epochal shift in human culture that I see as nothing less than divine. That, uh, yeah, there were other schools of compassionate thought such as stoicism, but something really unprecedented is going on in the teaching and in the person and the story of Christ that to me,
It would be implausible not to call revelation. Um, from those two things, the belief that this resurrection experience was real and that this man who was experienced is already an anomaly and one we've never fully adequately
I'll brand it. I mean, it's how much of Christian history is just institutional corruption and the politics of power and cruelty. And as we, we, you know, when we say we are Christians, we're probably making a non warrantedly, uh, pretentious claim for ourselves, but, um, yeah, so I'm not, uh, not really interested in new age spirituality. But I, when I say syncretic,
My thinking, I believe that all schools of human thought are, are open to us. And then the same way that say Greek thought was assumed into Christian thought. Um, I would not be able to live religiously at all, not in terms of Christ. That's true. I mean, I don't know if that's an emotional, uh, truth about me or an intellectual truth. I like to think it's the latter and the former, but the latter.
as giving substance to the former. But I couldn't become a Vaishnav. I have great respect for the piety of those who, and I believe that they're truly loving and worshiping and seeking God. But I can't imagine not seeing God as revealed in the face of Christ and the form of Christ and in this
This genuinely inexplicable historical enigma that the messianic movement of Jesus of Nazareth did not die out and that this first generation of Christians so numerously and so obstinately and so in some cases self destructively refuse to deny that experience.
That said, I don't have much patience for bigotry. If this is simply a conflation of the notion of following Christ with absolutely limiting yourself intellectually, spiritually within the conceptual world of the institution, as you know it, I think you're making a grave mistake.
Intellectually and morally, uh, because I think God speaks to all peoples. What is perennialism and would you consider yourself a perennialist? No, the, the, the name of those who called themselves that are people like again, and, um, shoe on and others. I don't like them very much at all. They, uh, in part because of their, their wretched politics, they're all very,
Sort of arch-conservative believers in hierarchy in the most pompous and, I think, degenerate way. But also because they weren't really, I mean, they made it up as they went along. I mean, Shuon created this sort of esoteric inner core that he said is really there in all the religions.
And so you should follow one of these paths, but of course you should be one of the esoteric ones, which means that you're following shoe on and, uh, his own practices were, you know, you know, he made up these sort of these rather pathetic, um, sort of sexual games he played with, uh, with, uh, it's, it's very, it's, it's that term perennialism associated with them. Uh, but also, um,
You know, I mean, I very much liked when I was young Aldous Huxley's perennial, uh, philosophy, which was just an anthology of mystical texts, uh, many of which weren't available. I mean, you know, to be honest, he, it much wasn't available to him that later became available. Um, but no, I don't, uh, perennialist now, um, uh, I just, uh,
I don't, uh, I don't feel that I have to apologize when I see, say, a Vedantic text on the relationship of creation to God, say, say, let's say it's Vishishtadvaita or something that I think makes a good point that clarifies, um, points of Christian thought. I don't see any reason to, uh, to, to remain aloof from it or deny
deny my gratitude to this, to this tradition. And I certainly don't think that, um, uh, I have any right to claim that, uh, by snobs or trivites or, or Muslims or Jews or Sikhs or others, obviously not with, with Jewish people. I mean, the others are somehow not genuinely
Seeking and being guided by God and enfolded within revelation and within divine love. But perennialism, that was a fake system invented by very dubious man that I find a bit silly and a bit distasteful. To be honest, you'll find people like Steve Bannon are all on board with people like Evola and Gaynor.
Interesting. Okay. I have a quote here from Ian McGilchrist, which you agreed with. So we are experiencing something real. We're not just experiencing a representation and that discrepancy is crucial. Many people think that they've overcome the Cartesian problem by intensifying it, suggesting that we can only interpret reality through a bank of dials, a version of reality. However,
It's not just an instrument panel that we're seeing as if we're closed off in a windowless cell. We are actually making contact with what we mean by reality. Now, just for people who are wondering where is that from? You had a conversation with Ian McGilchrist. I'll put that on screen as well because it's fantastic to listen to. So given this, what do you think about theories that purport to have consciousness first?
But then they still say that what we see is an illusion. It's not actually reality because in some Kantian sense, we can never know ultimate reality. These theories suggest that what we see is distorted. We interact with some watered down amorphous or anamorphic version of of reality by Donald Hoffman or or Thomas Campbell and that we're living in a simulated reality. Although consciousness is first, it's not actually reality that we experience. It's not the same.
I think, you know, as I am in a, in this case, I'm now putting on my hat as writer of fiction. In a novel I wrote, uh, uh, caught Kenna Gaia. Um, one of the characters is quoted as saying of orthodoxy against small low. And this should be understood as sort of dogmatic scientific or, uh, or philosophical orthodoxy.
Is the elevation of a humble half truth to the, uh, or I don't remember exactly the phrase, the grand eminence of a total falsehood. There's a half truth in that. And of course we don't have a full grasp of ultimate reality. And we started this conversation talking about, for instance, the problem of evil. And there are all sorts of things about both the physical and the conceptual. Well, the lie beyond this, but.
Then to say it's all illusion and representation, of course the notion of representation and again taken to a sort of hyper Kantian extreme, that begins to break down, I want to point out, after Kant, even in Kant's last opus postumum, it's already beginning in a sense to break down, but then begins to break down at Fichte, a German idealist.
In returning to this notion that there is a commonality between mind and being, rather than some sort of strange juxtaposition of two qualitatively immiscible realities, the way this would have been put in an antique metaphysics, whether platonic or Aristotelian, for instance, or whatever, is that both what informs
An object of knowledge and the act of knowledge is this one in the same form expressed in two distinct modes. So that there's a real openness of mind to world and world to mind, because both are subsisting in the same formal principle. Right. That's one way of putting it, but I mean, I think what Ian was saying is, is true. And there's a kind of sickness in imagining that our experience of reality is not.
And experience of, well, I want to say the semantic consistency of reality, you know, it's, it's qualities, it's dimensions is upset. These aren't illusions superimposed on a bare mechanical order that, that is, or even a thing in itself to which we have no access. And I think one of the great deconstructions of representationalism of that sort that you'll find in Hegel.
Um, but another, I think in all things are full of gods. One of the few theological thinkers, philosophers I quote or quote early site is Bernard Lonergan, who understands that surfeit of the unknown over the known, not as something qualitatively impenetrable and, and repugnant to the act of knowledge, but simply an as yet undisclosed, undiscovered, uh, more.
a greater depth into which we can yet venture. And the greatest depth of all, of course, would be venturing into God, union with God. Representationalism is in a sense the epistemology of the modern age. It fits within the mechanical model. It fits within the model of
The proper domain of the sciences after Galileo, who is a faithful Catholic, right? But I mean, for him, you know, it's the mathematical quantification of mass and velocity and things like that, which is, in a sense, the proper realm of the sciences. And then after that time, we came into the habit of thinking of the proper realm of the sciences as reality as such. So that there's an occult or numinal reality to which
To which our only approach is one of gratifying and comprehensible illusions imposed by the apparatus of perception. And first of all, I don't think that such a consonance could actually be achieved by material processes to begin with, you know.
But I also think it's, it's just a fetishism. It's just a dogma. It's, um, you know, it's, it's, it's, and a confining and a dangerous one in some ways. David, as we end, firstly, thank you so much for spending so long with me and persisting through your pain. What are you striving for?
me today or really to be honest sorry about that um to be honest all i'm thinking about these days is my health so forgive me i'm not i'm not able to give you a more elevated answer than that um uh striving to uh
Continue to believe even when being forced to reflect on Personal reasons for doubt Why is continuing to believe so important to you Well
Again, there's the intellectual conviction that I've got it right, but it's more, I think we believe for the sake of others, isn't it? I mean, those we love. If it were only ourselves at stake, it really wouldn't matter very much. But, you know, I have a son, I have a wife, I have people I love. And, um, uh,
In addition to the intellectual convictions, there's the structure of hope that says that they are not just momentary accidents in the process of material causation whose underlying basso continuo is despair.
Would you say then what's more important than faith is hope? Well, according to Paul, love is the most important of all, right? Faith, hope and love, these three, but love is the one that abides. So, um, yeah, I'd say that love is what makes hope and faith, uh, worth persisting in.
Don't go anywhere just yet. Now I have a recap of today's episode brought to you by The Economist. Just as The Economist brings clarity to complex concepts, we're doing the same with our new AI-powered episode recap. Here's a concise summary of the key insights from today's podcast.
Okay, so we're diving into this conversation between Kurt Jemmengal and David Bentley Hart. Oh, yeah, Kurt from Theories of Everything. I've seen a few of those. He really gets into it with his guests. Especially does. Yeah. And I mean, in this one, they talk about consciousness, physics, you know, even God. Wow. That's a lot to unpack. It is. It is. But it's really something how heart just goes right into the problem of evil, not like how you normally hear it disgust.
I know what you mean. He kind of throws those typical arguments right out the window, like about how a good God could allow so much suffering, all that. Yeah, exactly. He even says the suffering of innocence is unanswerable if you believe in a benevolent God. Yeah, and he doesn't just talk about it abstractly. He brings in his own experience with chronic pain. Oh, wow. Yeah. So it's really clear that suffering isn't just some theoretical concept for him.
He's lived it it definitely adds like a whole other level of depth to what you say yeah for sure it's not sugar coated at all notes around yeah. Really makes you think there might not be easy answers when it comes to suffering no and then just when you think he's gonna stay in that that heavy heavy space.
He switches gears completely and starts talking about Christ's resurrection. What? Really? Yeah. How does he even connect those two? Well, he argues that early Christianity, you know, how it survived and even grew, especially after, well, you know, after Christ died, it points to something really big happening, like something truly remarkable. Right, right. He even brings up how other movements, you know, with the messianic leader back then,
They usually just disappeared after some initial excitement. Interesting. Yeah. So it's like he's implying that those early Christians, when they said they encountered the risen Christ, it couldn't have just been wishful thinking or anything like that. It really focuses on first Corinthians 15, specifically the accounts, you know, the firsthand ones of being Christ after the resurrection. Yeah. Okay. He says they have this, this rawness to them, almost like a historical document, you know? Yeah.
And then get this, he ties it all back to stoic metaphysics. Whoa, stoic metaphysics. Now that's a curve ball. I know raise. I'm not super familiar with that, to be honest. So basically the stoics believed that spirit was like a divine fire, like a higher element, you know, and it's everywhere. Okay. I think I'm false. So is he using stoic thought to explain the resurrection? Not exactly explain it, but he's using it to help us understand how those early Christians, especially Paul,
Thought about body composed entirely of spirit. Okay. Yeah, I can see that. So like instead of thinking of spirit as this, this disembodied ghost thing, we should think of it more like, like fire. Exactly. It's powerful, transformative, but still part of the physical world. Wow. That's a completely different way of thinking about the afterlife. Isn't it makes you wonder how much our modern understanding of all this, you know, spirit and all that has been shaped by, well, by our own culture and philosophies. That's a good point.
We probably don't even realize how much we're projecting our own assumptions onto those ancient texts. Right. So we've got this honest talk about suffering that a compelling argument about the resurrection and now a connection to stoic metaphysics. It's a lot. Yeah. And this is just the beginning. Hart's ideas get even more radical and mind blowing from here. It's amazing how he can like connect all these seemingly random ideas makes you rethink everything you thought you knew about
Christianity. Yeah, and he's not afraid to challenge those really traditional interpretations. I know, right? Like with John 1.1, the logos. Oh yeah, that part was wild. Yeah, he's saying the usual translation, he kind of shoe horns it into the whole Trinity doctrine, but the original Greek, it's way more open to interpretation than that.
It is and you know, he brings up this view subordination ism where the sons subordinate to the father. Okay. And apparently that was a pretty common view in early Christianity. Wait, so are you telling me that Jesus being equal to God, the father that wasn't always like the view everyone had? Nope, not at all. Heart's point is that the shift to the Trinity doctrine with that whole co-equality thing.
It's a good reminder that these religious doctrines, they don't just appear out of thin air, they come from these
messy historical and intellectual processes. It makes you wonder how many other things we just accept as truth, you know, like without realizing they have these really complex origins too. Oh, totally. And speaking of complex origins, that part where he talks about intentionality and how it connects to life, consciousness and D language, that's where things get super fascinating. Okay. Lay it on me because intentionality is one of those things I've always kind of struggled with, to be honest. So think of it like the aboutness of your thoughts.
Like when you think about a tree, right? Your thought has an object. It's about that tree. Okay, I get that. But how does that tie into life and language? Well, Hart says intentionality isn't just limited to consciousness.
Even living organisms, even simple ones like single-celled organisms, they have a kind of intentionality in how they strive to survive and reproduce. So even at the most basic level of life, there's this inherent direction, like a purposefulness. Exactly. And language, he says, it's inherently intentional too. Oh, so.
Words have meaning because they point to something beyond themselves. Okay, I see you're saying so there's this like this thread of intentionality running through life consciousness and language. Yeah, precisely.
And here's the kicker, the really radical part. He says this intentionality can't be explained by just material processes. So he's going up against like that whole materialistic worldview, the one that's dominant today. He is. He's basically saying that the directedness, the aboutness of these fundamental parts of reality, it points to something beyond the material world. You know, that reminds me of what he said earlier about how scientific methods, they rely on this idea of purpose, teleology, but at the same time, they claim to reject purpose
You know as an inherent part of reality it's like they're trying to have it both ways it is it's like he's saying maybe just maybe our current scientific way of looking at things it's not enough to really understand what reality is and get this he then goes on to say that neoplatonism this ancient philosophy it actually starts to make sense.
when you grasp
It's like he's saying that if we take intentionality seriously, we might have to rethink not just materialism, but like our whole picture of the universe and are placed in it. Exactly. And that's what's so radical about heart. You know, he's not just critiquing little ideas here and there. He's going after the very foundations of how we think he is.
But even with all that, you know, he's not saying he has all the answers, right? He's really humble, intellectually. Definitely. He's not afraid to say, I don't know. Exactly. And he doesn't try to cram every mystery into some neat philosophical box. Yeah. He even talks about how his own religious views have changed over time, how he's embraced this more, what's the word, syncretic approach. Oh, right.
That's where he talks about finding wisdom in all sorts of different traditions, not just Christian ones. Exactly. And he's against that whole like rigid dogma of perennialism. So he's open to truth coming from different places, but he's still deeply rooted in his own Christian faith. Yeah. He says he can't imagine not seeing God as revealed in Christ. There's a real reverence there. Like that story is, well, it's unique and powerful for him. But he also seems to be pushing back against like,
the limits of organized religion, questioning doctrines and interpretations. Like he's saying real faith isn't about blindly following dogma. It's about constantly searching for truth wherever it might lead. And he's not just talking about it. He's living it. He is. He's drawing inspiration from all these different philosophies and religions. It's really inspiring, honestly. It's like so open and curious and always learning and growing.
Totally different from that, like, that intellectual and spiritual rigidity you see so much these days. You know, as we're going through all this, I keep thinking about what he said about love, you know, how we believe for the sake of others, the people we love. Oh, yeah, that really stuck with me too. It's like he's saying faith isn't just this thing you do by yourself in your own head. It's deeply connected to our relationships, our connections with other people. Yeah, like love is, I don't know, like the fuel, you know?
The thing that drives our belief.
those messy, beautiful connections we have with each other. It's like he's saying, faith isn't just about what we believe, but how we live and how we treat each other. Right. So, you know, as we wrap up this dive into hearts conversation, I'm just left with this, this feeling of awe. Me too. Yeah. I just want to keep exploring these ideas. You know, it really has been an incredible journey through some tough thought provoking concepts.
It has. And even though we might not have all the answers, I think the biggest takeaway is that, you know, we got to stay curious. Keep an open mind. Yeah. And be willing to challenge our own assumptions, even the ones we really hold dear. Exactly. Well, we hope this has inspired you to do just that. Keep searching, keep asking questions and keep exploring the mysteries of, well, of everything. Well, as we wrap up this deep dive into heart in this conversation with Kurt Jemmell Gall, I'm just, I know I'm filled with a sense of awe.
And I want to keep exploring these ideas. It has been quite a journey. So many challenging, thought-provoking ideas. It has. And, you know, even though we might not have figured it all out, the main thing, I think, is to stay curious, open to new ideas. Keep asking those questions. Yeah. And be willing to question everything, even the things we think we know for sure. We hope this deep dive has inspired you to do just that. Keep searching, keep wondering, keep exploring. Absolutely. Thanks for joining us on this incredible journey.
We'll see you next time for another deep dive into the world of ideas.
New update! Started a substack. Writings on there are currently about language and ill-defined concepts as well as some other mathematical details. Much more being written there. This is content that isn't anywhere else. It's not on Theories of Everything. It's not on Patreon. Also, full transcripts will be placed there at some point in the future. Several people ask me, hey Kurt, you've spoken to so many people in the fields of theoretical physics, philosophy, and consciousness. What are your thoughts?
While I remain impartial in interviews, this substack is a way to peer into my present deliberations on these topics. Also, thank you to our partner, The Economist.
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which in turn greatly aids the distribution on YouTube. Thirdly, there's a remarkably active Discord and subreddit for theories of everything where people explicate toes, they disagree respectfully about theories and build as a community our own toe. Links to both are in the description. Fourthly, you should know this podcast is on iTunes. It's on Spotify. It's on all of the audio platforms. All you have to do is type in theories of everything and you'll find it. Personally, I gained from rewatching lectures and podcasts
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"text": " Why is this such a powerful critique? And then what is your response to said powerful critique? I see. Um, we are starting at the, uh, at the deep end, or at least the, uh, Oh, the problem of evil was simply, uh, the obvious one, the suffering of the innocent, the, uh, pestilence, famine, war, children dying of"
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"text": " accept the notion that the materialist picture of reality conforms either to logic or experience, but the argument against belief in at least a benevolent and good or God or belief in any sort of rational order to the cosmos at all from the sheer"
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"text": " suffering of the innocent from the sheer darkness of this world I've never taken issue with. I find it the most powerful and to be honest unanswerable riposte to theism, at least as conventionally conceived. The normal gesture of the religious imagination, of course, is simply to say there's more to it than we understand. There's a good ending beyond it all, but"
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"text": " Given the sheer enormity of the evils we're talking about and their reality within the present, deferring the justification to this to some presumed eschatological future doesn't make the cost any more morally."
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"text": " I have no answer to it, to be perfectly honest. I've never pretended to. I'm caught on the horns of a dilemma, metaphysically, intellectually. I'm a theist, just because I think that the evidence of reason points in that direction, but the problem of evil I regard as irresoluble in the terms available to us."
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"text": " What's the difference between the problem of evil and the problem of suffering? Oh, no, it's two names for the same thing. The notion of evil, I mean, the problem of evil, I suppose, also encompasses the reality of human malevolence, you know, as a moral evil as well as natural. But at the end of the day, the truth is that as long as a single child has died of diphtheria in the history of the human race,"
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"text": " the preponderance of the argument, the preponderance of the power of the argument is not one that favors the theistic or at least theistic platitudes. For me, problems that I can't solve, they stick in my craw and I think about them as I go about walks, if I'm at the gym, if I'm laying up at night trying to sleep."
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"text": " This is an insolvable or insoluble problem. Is this one that keeps you up or is there something else? Well, I don't know if it keeps me up because I'm, I'm a fairly lethargic creature. I can find a, but, but yeah, no, I mean it, uh, it, it leaves me in a, um, an uncomfortable position."
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"text": " You know, I, uh, you know, in other moments I'm aware of, of the beauty and goodness of things, you know, it could be something like a child, uh, at play rather than ill or the sight of a dog. I'm terrifically fond of dogs and cats, you know, and, and this is, but at the end of the day, no, I, I don't think I'll ever comfortably settle into any state of, of,"
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"text": " Firm and fervent and contented faith. So I guess what I'm looking for is there a variety of things that occupy one's mind, whether they're positive or benign or problems. And then the problems come of a sort of philosophical or theological sorts. So I'm looking for, are there any quandaries or paradoxes that you think about almost on a daily basis?"
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"text": " Theologically or philosophically? Well, definitely this one. I mean, you know, this, uh, the, uh, I think, uh, I mean, not, not to wax too confessional here, but right now, you know, I'm suffering from ill health for much of this past year, sort of unexpected descent of a chronic pain condition. So I'm in pain every day."
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"text": " And without much assurance of what direction I'm going in, you know, and, uh, one becomes conscious in those situations, uh, not that, you know, this is especially unfair because others, so many others suffer so much, but it does make one less inclined to be glib, uh, about these things. I think it's very easy for us to"
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"text": " Not necessarily because of self-pity, there's always that danger, but because it gives you a keener sense of how you've failed to take sufficiently seriously the sufferings of others. And I don't think I will ever, I mean, I could keep saying the same thing over and over again, and I'm sorry to be repetitious, but the truth is, I believe certain things, I believe certain things intellectually, I believe certain things religiously, but I also"
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"text": " I think, actually, one of the great virtues of the Psalms, to be honest, is how often they're rather bilious in their attitude, you know, how much of them consistent complaints to God. Right. Yeah. Yeah, you can read them and they sound like they were written by modern day. Well, they sound like yourself. It's remarkable because much of the Bible you read and it's"
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"text": " There's plenty of it that's antiquated. Yep. But that's not, it's, it's not a book of consolations and that, that makes it timeless. Oh, there, there's one part and you know this far better than myself. There's this one part that says, God, I'm suffering, I'm praying and all I get is silence. Where are you? Should I just not believe in you or something akin to that or analogous to that? So it's something of a refrain in the Psalms."
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"text": " David Gordon called you one of the most well-read people in the world. One of? Yeah, I'm sorry. That's kind of him. I'm grateful to have you here, not only for that, but in spite of your health troubles and your suffering that you've chosen to spend some time with me. So thank you for that. I don't know many people who have translated the entirety of the New Testament. So that's pretty cool. Let's talk about that."
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"text": " Anything from touchdown to threes and if you're right, you can win big. Mix and match players from any sport on PrizePix, America's number one daily fantasy sports app. PrizePix is available in 40 plus states including California, Texas,"
},
{
"end_time": 851.374,
"index": 30,
"start_time": 825.794,
"text": " But what Paul's talking about"
},
{
"end_time": 880.998,
"index": 31,
"start_time": 852.517,
"text": " Is something else and it's it it it is a very curious thing. I mean many historians have acknowledged this even those who have no stake in in theological claims that All the other patterns of these messianic movements were a great enthusiasm followed by disappointment followed by dissolution disintegration Here alone you had the movement"
},
{
"end_time": 909.991,
"index": 32,
"start_time": 881.425,
"text": " After the death of its of its you to the founder, uh, taking, taking deeper roots and beginning to spread. And even, and I don't think this is purely hagiography because the evidence suggests otherwise, even many of them were being willing to, uh, to die rather than to deny that experience. You know, there was a famous Protestant or I should say Evangelical."
},
{
"end_time": 939.582,
"index": 33,
"start_time": 910.384,
"text": " Okay. Theologian Wolfhard Pannenberg, who converted to Christianity out of his studies, as it was called, Disenschaft, sort of approached historical science, and that he felt that this experience, this event, was a concrete historical datum that he couldn't get past. Now, that's not an absolute"
},
{
"end_time": 967.824,
"index": 34,
"start_time": 940.06,
"text": " Proof of anything, but it's a compelling one. And as far as I'm concerned, the variety of responses, I mean, to be perfectly honest, you know, any attempt to claim that there is a single unified theology in the New Testament simply requires such a forced reading. That forced reading is often facilitated by traditions of translation, which somewhat suppress, somewhat hide"
},
{
"end_time": 998.609,
"index": 35,
"start_time": 968.712,
"text": " What the actual language on the page is, is actually saying, well, you know, things that are much less definite in the Greek have been, shall we say cajoled into conformity with the general picture in the translation. But even then it's clear that these, that what we're getting is not a system of belief, not a, uh, in a, in a final refined form, but what we are getting from Paul and others, uh, is a genuine conviction that something has happened."
},
{
"end_time": 1028.114,
"index": 36,
"start_time": 999.155,
"text": " That has altered the frame of reality and has altered their relation to it. And they're responding to it in a variety of ways using the theological paradigms available to them or the philosophical paradigms valid. And Paul talks about resurrection. He seems clearly to be influenced by say stoic metaphysics to some degree, for instance. Um, but, but it's not a system. So."
},
{
"end_time": 1051.92,
"index": 37,
"start_time": 1028.439,
"text": " You mentioned this word, and I've heard you mention this several times in other interviews, stoic metaphysics. So what is the relevance of stoic metaphysics? What is it? What does it mean? Well, you see, in a sense, it's kind of anachronistic when we're talking about late antiquity to assume that everyone occupied just a single school. As it happens,"
},
{
"end_time": 1076.049,
"index": 38,
"start_time": 1052.346,
"text": " All of the different philosophical and metaphysical schools seem somewhat intermingled with one another. Late Platonism had Aristotelian elements, it consorted with Stoic elements, but Stoicism specifically a school of thought, greatest proponents, someone like Propounder, Epictetus for instance, that"
},
{
"end_time": 1096.681,
"index": 39,
"start_time": 1077.261,
"text": " I had in one sense it did not make any complete and absolute division between the physical and material understood spirit as a kind of higher element mind as a kind of divine fire God as a kind of divine fire pervading all things understood"
},
{
"end_time": 1122.159,
"index": 40,
"start_time": 1097.858,
"text": " The cosmic cycle of existence is one tending towards dissolution and a final great ecpyrosis. So that, you know, there's a structure to history. Now it's a cyclical structure. And so in stoicism, it recurs over and over again, but within, within history itself, within any, it has a beginning, a middle and an end. And, um,"
},
{
"end_time": 1142.159,
"index": 41,
"start_time": 1123.285,
"text": " There have been, you know, very good scholarly works on how Paul's descriptions say of the resurrection body also in 1 Corinthians 15 indicate a leaning towards a stoic metaphysics of matter and of the body and of spirit. I mean, we"
},
{
"end_time": 1168.234,
"index": 42,
"start_time": 1143.985,
"text": " You know later tradition talks about things like the resurrection of the flesh, but that's something Paul didn't believe in. He meant what he said when he said flesh and blood can't inherit the kingdom of heaven. For him flesh and blood are inherently mortal composite realities of the psychical body, which is often mistranslated as natural body, meaning a body animated, a body that has a psyche or soul or life principle super added to"
},
{
"end_time": 1196.118,
"index": 43,
"start_time": 1169.087,
"text": " And he foresees this being transformed into a body composed entirely of spirit so that, you know, it's continuous in one sense, but in another sense, not. Just a moment. So a body composed entirely of spirit. So the way that we think of it, even though we're not supposed to be dualists, but the way that we think of it in modern times is that there's spirit and then there's matter and that a body of spirit is just spirit."
},
{
"end_time": 1224.497,
"index": 44,
"start_time": 1196.766,
"text": " Yeah, well, again, that's modern sort of Cartesian notion, the notion that the soul is a kind of ghost in a machine or something. And some people think it has a kind of antecedent and platonic thought. I think that's mistaken. But in Paul's language, and this is pretty much true of most of the metaphysics of late antiquity, spirit is not"
},
{
"end_time": 1249.121,
"index": 45,
"start_time": 1225.282,
"text": " disembodied. That's the wrong way of thinking. It's more like a higher, a more super eminent, a more powerful element. It's what angels are composed of, for instance, or for non-Christians or non-Jews, what gods or demons, the intermediate divinities, are composed of. It is"
},
{
"end_time": 1277.961,
"index": 46,
"start_time": 1250.367,
"text": " A kind of matter in itself. It's just not the lower matter of mortal existence below the sphere of the moon, which is susceptible to Genesis and decay. So they don't talk about you having spirit because when someone says you have this, it's as if it's like a purse or a backpack. It's something you have and you can also not have it. So talk about the use that language. Well, there's not, there's not a single"
},
{
"end_time": 1304.855,
"index": 47,
"start_time": 1278.558,
"text": " Consistent grammar here. You can speak of in this life, having spirit, having more spirit or not. Um, there are many from, uh, uh, the sort of the things we call the early Gnostic schools may or may not have had this notion of the psychical body or a psychical man as being entirely devoid of the element of spirit."
},
{
"end_time": 1335.401,
"index": 48,
"start_time": 1305.606,
"text": " You certainly get language of that sort in the epistle to Jude, which suggests that there are those who are purely psychical. Again, it's often translated as sensual man or animal man or whatever, but it was a psychical not having spirit, but that's often again translated as not having the Holy Spirit, but that's not what the Greek says. So, uh, again, there's not a single systematic vocabulary or grammar at work, but when we"
},
{
"end_time": 1358.831,
"index": 49,
"start_time": 1335.742,
"text": " Try to think of this in terms of either even the later medieval notion of disembodied intelligences. I mean, Thomas Aquinas thought of angels as being disembodied intelligences with no kind of material substrate at all, either ethereal or earthly. And so each angel is its own"
},
{
"end_time": 1388.797,
"index": 50,
"start_time": 1359.309,
"text": " species because he's a very much an Aristotelian and what different and what individuates form or speech is, is matter, you know? Well, that's not the way late antiquity thought. They just really didn't have that notion. And of course in the modern age, we have this radically Cartesian notion that, you know, Descartes gave us this picture. Um, he more than anyone else of body and soul as to qualitatively different things, only body."
},
{
"end_time": 1417.5,
"index": 51,
"start_time": 1389.48,
"text": " The material body is an extended substance, a race extensa, and mind is simply race, cogitans, mind or soul, and never, though the two meet, never, never should they be confused with one another. They're entirely different. That's not the way Paul is talking in 1 Corinthians 15. How much can we read into 1 Corinthians 15 if it was just two or three lines?"
},
{
"end_time": 1441.169,
"index": 52,
"start_time": 1417.688,
"text": " How can we tell the entire not entirety but a large portion of Paul's metaphysics just from three lines if it wasn't mentioned in other places? Well it is mentioned in other places more elusively such as when he talks about the alderman and the inner man if you look at that it's it's clear that he's or he talks about body and flesh being flesh and spirit rather being it being in"
},
{
"end_time": 1467.602,
"index": 53,
"start_time": 1442.278,
"text": " Attention or being at odds with one another. He's speaking much more literally about flow We tend to take the word flesh there and make it into a moral category or something But he but also in first Corinthians 15 is these are not vague and it's not just two or three lines It's but it's maybe seven or ten lines. Sure. He is giving an account of the resurrection body in which he is very specifically denying that it's flesh and blood and"
},
{
"end_time": 1496.937,
"index": 54,
"start_time": 1469.07,
"text": " Psychical body one that's animated by by soul and Insisting that it's a body of spirit assume open of not icon There's not and and Explicitly denying the flesh and blood can can inherit the kingdom of heaven these these aren't vague phrases So what we can again is we wouldn't say Paul is a stoic that would be a mistake and"
},
{
"end_time": 1525.094,
"index": 55,
"start_time": 1497.773,
"text": " but it was very influential school of thought. I mean, you know, and in its time, and it was also the one morally most consonant with Christian thought. I mean, Paul is a cosmopolitan in the sense that he believes that in Christ, the divisions of peoples have disappeared and he's quite happily a citizen of the empire using its, its apparatus in order to spread the gospel. And he has, you know,"
},
{
"end_time": 1551.169,
"index": 56,
"start_time": 1526.118,
"text": " He has no desire to maintain divisions of identity, he thinks, in the event of Christ. Whatever this event is he's reporting, its ultimate significance in terms of human community is that there is this body in which there is neither Jew nor Greek, free nor slave."
},
{
"end_time": 1580.162,
"index": 57,
"start_time": 1552.073,
"text": " Man and woman or husband and wife, even, you know, depending on how you translate that. And Stoicism was very much the ethos of Stoicism was that of cosmopolitanism. It was of, you know, trying to, without absolutely abolishing radical thought was very difficult in the first century, for instance, but, you know, break down the distinction between slave and master and barbarian and civil. And,"
},
{
"end_time": 1606.34,
"index": 58,
"start_time": 1580.725,
"text": " And to proclaim a sort of universal family of humankind, a cosmopolis, a city of the, of the cosmos, as opposed to just say Rome and it's abominations of power. So in many ways, when Paul speaks morally, not merely metaphysically, but morally, you can see that if there's a, a pagan school of thought,"
},
{
"end_time": 1635.299,
"index": 59,
"start_time": 1607.329,
"text": " Most consonant with with the gospel. He's proclaiming. It's definitely so system Help me in the audience who are modern people not necessarily do lists, but help us understand how the flesh and blood can't inherit The kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God, but the spirit can yet at the same time the spirit is not wholly different than flesh Was it wholly different from flesh? There's a flesh"
},
{
"end_time": 1664.889,
"index": 60,
"start_time": 1635.913,
"text": " When in polls, um, language sarks is, uh, a sort of animal constitution, which of its nature, certain things you have to understand it's, it's intrinsically mortal. And for Paul, remember salvation is from death. I mean, he, in the, in the age to come, he doesn't, he nowhere talks about heaven and hell. He talks about a renewed creation age to come of life as opposed to being."
},
{
"end_time": 1688.166,
"index": 61,
"start_time": 1665.435,
"text": " lost to death. The final judgment or the final crisis, the eschaton, is the creation of a new age beyond the reach of death, which means it's not"
},
{
"end_time": 1715.367,
"index": 62,
"start_time": 1688.985,
"text": " A creation still in which we would be bound to flesh and blood, but have a different body of a totally different kind, the sort of body that angels have. I mean, you know, even in the gospels, we have Christ speaking of the age to come, we will live as the angels in heaven. Well, we tend to think of that again, very vaguely, but it could, I mean, if he's speaking to Pharisees and what we know of pharisaic"
},
{
"end_time": 1742.108,
"index": 63,
"start_time": 1716.51,
"text": " Religion suggests this is the case. What he is literally saying is that in the life of the age to come, we will be physically like the angels. And that means, and again, if you're working within the realm of late, late antique cosmology, that means also a certain liberty from purely terrestrial limitations because angels can live"
},
{
"end_time": 1766.783,
"index": 64,
"start_time": 1742.585,
"text": " above the sphere of the moon in the, in the ethereal heavens, you know, we can't, but, uh, but this is the thing that's hardest perhaps from late modern people to grasp is that the distinction between the metaphysical and the physical is not as pronounced in late antiquity as it is in late modernity, but there's a sense in which"
},
{
"end_time": 1791.067,
"index": 65,
"start_time": 1767.415,
"text": " Yes, you know that God's transcendent, at the same time, there's a sense in which God's true heaven is the Empyrean above the fixed stars. And in a sense, and when Paul talks about thrones and dominions and powers in high places, he literally means these sort of mutinous angelic sort of beings who"
},
{
"end_time": 1817.654,
"index": 66,
"start_time": 1792.005,
"text": " Spiritually, but also in a sense physically separate us from God on high and the Christ has made a way through the heavens and has conquered these powers, you know, so there's still a kind of place with the cosmological and the, uh, the spiritual or metaphysical are, are as yet, uh, not clearly distinguished from one another."
},
{
"end_time": 1846.323,
"index": 67,
"start_time": 1819.087,
"text": " Obviously, we live with very different cosmology, you know. And, you know, again, does that mean that this was all pathetic illusion? They were bound to an antique picture of reality that has been superseded? No, but it means that they're thinking in"
},
{
"end_time": 1874.838,
"index": 68,
"start_time": 1846.8,
"text": " The terms of their time to express this otherwise inexpressible experience of salvation in the risen Christ. You personally, David, when you're thinking about the Bible or you're looking at the world, do you have to switch your cosmology? Do you have to switch your philosophy such that you diminish the distinction between metaphysics and physics or physical? Sorry. And"
},
{
"end_time": 1906.374,
"index": 69,
"start_time": 1876.408,
"text": " I don't even know if it's a continuum. I mean I think flesh and blood are genuinely abolished for Paul."
},
{
"end_time": 1931.323,
"index": 70,
"start_time": 1908.319,
"text": " How that then is a transformation rather than an exchange of one body for another. Uh, I don't think Paul ever works out exactly. I mean, he sees, he sees it as sort of like a seed, as he says, you know, it's sewn of a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a"
},
{
"end_time": 1954.053,
"index": 71,
"start_time": 1933.012,
"text": " But in that continuity something is definitely shed. What he does not believe in is a resurrection of the flesh. Now we have one verse and one verse only in the Gospel of Luke in which the risen Christ says, I'm flesh and bone. I'm not a spirit using spirit there as it was also used in late antiquity just to mean a ghost, a phantom. So again,"
},
{
"end_time": 1983.336,
"index": 72,
"start_time": 1954.514,
"text": " The New Testament doesn't present a single picture. For the most part, it seems to me, at least the epistolary materials are closer to Paul than anything else. But I'm not claiming, again, what I would say is that the experience is very hard to deny, that something happened. How the persons of that time understood the experience was of its time."
},
{
"end_time": 2013.148,
"index": 73,
"start_time": 1984.394,
"text": " and was various, but it's quite possible for something to be very real and very concrete and still elude single uniform expression. But today, if we had this experience, we might very well be thinking in more Cartesian terms, you know, or we might, we might not. I mean, you know, we might be thinking in terms suggested to us"
},
{
"end_time": 2043.387,
"index": 74,
"start_time": 2014.224,
"text": " By modern physics with some sort of transformation into another kind of corporeal frame made of light or something. The imagination can only accomplish so much and conceptual models have only so much applicability. But what's important to me is that we not"
},
{
"end_time": 2073.08,
"index": 75,
"start_time": 2044.377,
"text": " misinterpret the original text for two reasons. One, just for the sake of intellectual honesty, you know, if we're not going to acknowledge that Paul means what he says, you know, and say, Oh, well, no, he believed in, you know, the body of flesh and blood being raised up, but, you know, made immortal and all that, then we're just, you know, refusing to acknowledge that his language doesn't conform to a lot of the later theological language of Christianity."
},
{
"end_time": 2097.705,
"index": 76,
"start_time": 2074.104,
"text": " The other thing is, to me, there's a kind of healthier intellectual hygiene in seeing and recognizing the plurality of perspectives in the New Testament because it teaches us not to be either fundamentalist, but not to think that dogmatically we understand and know. It reminds us that the event"
},
{
"end_time": 2114.65,
"index": 77,
"start_time": 2099.002,
"text": " Compels us perhaps, but it's not something that anyone has ever been able to understand with an absolutely exhaustive and convincing language or model to work from."
},
{
"end_time": 2146.954,
"index": 78,
"start_time": 2117.517,
"text": " So David, as a Christian, when you're trying to make sense of the Bible, do you give different books, different weights of credence? So for instance, you would say an example that Mark was written first, therefore what comes in John is likely embellished with a poetic undertone. And so I'm going to, if I'm supposed to take a literalist frame or a more historical frame or whatever frame you may want to take, you're going to evaluate Mark differently than you do John."
},
{
"end_time": 2170.879,
"index": 79,
"start_time": 2147.483,
"text": " And there are disputed epistles, so I'm not going to put as much weight to them as I would say first Corinthians. Well, with with the past rule epistles, Timothy and Titus, there are things that are disappointing when you compare them to Paul's authentic epistles. And then there are things that are quite encouraging about so that, you know, it's a matter of sort."
},
{
"end_time": 2201.118,
"index": 80,
"start_time": 2171.561,
"text": " Um, well, I don't, I mean, it was to say that Mark came first is not to say that it's, I mean, assuming, I mean, pretty clear is probably the earliest of the gospels, but that doesn't mean it's any more accurate or trustworthy than the others. It establishes a narrative framing of Christ that's then taken up in Matthew and Luke. So Mark is part of what gives us the other two synoptics. And that's, um, a framing of, of,"
},
{
"end_time": 2229.309,
"index": 81,
"start_time": 2201.766,
"text": " Christ in certain framing of Christ's ministry in certain terms and in a certain way of indicating who he is. Even then, Mark lacks the Logia material, the sayings of Christ that actually give us any firm sense of say his moral teachings for that. You need to go to Matthew and Luke to get a better sense of what the tradition there says. John is clearly from a completely different ambit at"
},
{
"end_time": 2259.326,
"index": 82,
"start_time": 2229.974,
"text": " Is a theological commentary on Christ, but, but, uh, doesn't even make the pretense of being, uh, and historical narrative in the same way, except when it does, you know, when suddenly you get very particular information given about kind of say or something, whether it's true or not. Um, I don't know. I mean, uh, I, again, as I say, when it comes to."
},
{
"end_time": 2288.695,
"index": 83,
"start_time": 2260.742,
"text": " The credibility of the claims Christians make, that one chapter in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 has a force that's unique to my mind in the New Testament in terms of credibility. Other than that, since I'm not looking, I mean, I don't regard"
},
{
"end_time": 2318.49,
"index": 84,
"start_time": 2289.633,
"text": " scripture as um an index of dogmas um i don't really think in terms of how to weight it i believe that um and when i say the event of christ i don't just mean the resurrection i mean his presence and time and his teaching and all that is indicated uh is"
},
{
"end_time": 2348.575,
"index": 85,
"start_time": 2319.053,
"text": " elucidated to a great extent. And then there are great layers of interpretation of it, as in, say, John's gospel, that are precious perspective on it, but that by themselves, if they're not part of this sort of polyphonic testimony, would not be as compelling or as convincing. Because to be honest, Jesus, as he appears in the gospel of John,"
},
{
"end_time": 2373.882,
"index": 86,
"start_time": 2350.06,
"text": " It's not, you know, it's not an attractive figure in the way he is in Luke, say. He's not as attractive? Well, I mean, there's very little of the, you see very little, with the exception of the story of the woman taken in adultery, which of course isn't actually originally part of John. It probably was a free floating tradition that would fit better in Luke, but you see very little, uh,"
},
{
"end_time": 2401.988,
"index": 87,
"start_time": 2375.452,
"text": " At times you do, I mean you see the humanity of Christ weeping at the grave of Lazarus and all that. But most of it is taken up with discourses and a very, you know, mystical discourses and a very pronounced language of judgment, you know, of discrimination, you know, you're children of the devil, you know, it's light and darkness. Christ in the Gospel of John, we see him not in his aspect as"
},
{
"end_time": 2431.886,
"index": 88,
"start_time": 2402.363,
"text": " As the moral teacher of Matthew and Luke, but in the aspect of, of a moment of decision for those who encounter him, is this the face of God or not? And, um, there, you know, it's sort of a, um, the gospel is making a theological comment about, uh, God entering time in a way that separates"
},
{
"end_time": 2462.381,
"index": 89,
"start_time": 2432.415,
"text": " Uh, separates light from darkness, but, uh, we hear very little about feeding the poor, about caring for the sick, about visiting the prisoners. We think of the Jesus of John in those terms, because we're thinking of Jesus as he's presented in this, in, in the two long synoptic gospels. And that's necessary. You need this counterpoint. Uh, you need to see the historically concrete figure that who emerges from the sayings attributed to him."
},
{
"end_time": 2492.21,
"index": 90,
"start_time": 2463.456,
"text": " And from the story of this man who comes out of Galilee into Judea speaking on the behalf of the poor and the, and the excluded in order for that light of judgment that you see in John to be something more than just a terrifying, um, and to be honest, somewhat incredible myth. Now let's get to something controversial."
},
{
"end_time": 2519.121,
"index": 91,
"start_time": 2493.046,
"text": " Unlike this. Yeah. So speaking of John, John, the first part of John, the Greek is often rendered in the beginning was the logos or the word and the logos was with God and the logos was God. Now I just brought up this cup here. There's an event that I went to called O'Shaughnessy Ventures. They fortunately gave me a grant to work on something. And over there, someone else was given a grant."
},
{
"end_time": 2547.602,
"index": 92,
"start_time": 2519.565,
"text": " His name is Jonathan B. I'll put a link to his channel on screen and in the description as well. He was telling me, Kurt, in that verse, there's in the Greek, there's something called pros, P-R-O-S. Yes, right, right. And it implies that it implies a moving toward or a facing. Yeah. And that connotes something that's distinct. So most Christians think of Jesus as God."
},
{
"end_time": 2577.261,
"index": 93,
"start_time": 2548.063,
"text": " Not just an aspect of God, but as God, and sometimes I'll even pray to Jesus. But this to me suggests that Jesus is not God. Now, in your translation, again, I'll put the link on screen to your work. You do a similar translation, except God is in capitals. And then at one point, God is in lowercase. So walk us through John one one. Well,"
},
{
"end_time": 2605.111,
"index": 94,
"start_time": 2577.534,
"text": " I'm trying to remember the order there, but it's actually, come to think of it, it's a God, the word was or something, but it's not the word there. And I say a God because the actual distinction in the verse that, or at least that the verse seems to honor"
},
{
"end_time": 2626.015,
"index": 95,
"start_time": 2606.101,
"text": " Although again, structures of predication have ambiguities in Greek, so, but, Otheos, or Ho-theos as you'd say in Erasmian Greek, the god, is generally the privileged term for god most high in the ancient world, and this is a convention."
},
{
"end_time": 2653.302,
"index": 96,
"start_time": 2627.449,
"text": " pagan and Jewish and Christian thought. And for Christians, I mean, I honestly believe in the New Testament, Otheos is always, always means God in the sense of father, right? But this is the Logos, when it says the Logos was God or God was Logos, the article is missing. There's no, there's no article and that's, and"
},
{
"end_time": 2676.783,
"index": 97,
"start_time": 2653.848,
"text": " This was, the word God had a much greater elasticity in the antique world. It could be used, you'll find even, say, church fathers using the term when they're speaking of saints. John of Damascus will speak of saints as they, you know, God. And of course,"
},
{
"end_time": 2703.763,
"index": 98,
"start_time": 2678.592,
"text": " Angels became angels were originally gods within a pantheon within an israelitic pantheon. You know, there's just. And, uh, so here, what you're having is an assertion, not of necessarily. Co equal identity, but if continuity, it's still saying the logos is God, but, uh, is not"
},
{
"end_time": 2723.78,
"index": 99,
"start_time": 2704.138,
"text": " Equating it there, equating the logos there with God most high, still here the issues begin to arise. And this is quite common right up through the fourth century in Christian thought that's still a very strong, what's considered an orthodox strain of thought, small o."
},
{
"end_time": 2752.056,
"index": 100,
"start_time": 2724.36,
"text": " Especially in the East up until the council of Nicaea and after for a long time afterwards as a kind of, what would you call a subordination assumption that God most high is God in the properties of the fathers. And then the logos is defter of sales. And you find this say in a Jewish thinker like Filo, but also Christian thing. If you can read, say you CBS before Nicaea gives you a pretty clear notion of what, uh, what, what,"
},
{
"end_time": 2781.954,
"index": 101,
"start_time": 2752.875,
"text": " Many believe to be Orthodox Christian, which there's not a co equality. There's a continuity, but it's vague. It can even in the case of say, Arianism be, you know, the, the sun can be seen as created. And there's a kind of ambiguity between the notion of creation and generation. Gnima and Gnima spelled slightly differently. That said, um, and the reason for this notion of a secondary God is that God properly so transcendent that he can't."
},
{
"end_time": 2807.688,
"index": 102,
"start_time": 2782.79,
"text": " Enter into direct contact with finite reality, therefore he generates his word, you know, or his secondary God, that the angel of mighty council, the king, the chief of the angels to govern creation and to deal with the lower world. And then the spirit would be maybe God too, but you know, and, but there's a reticence."
},
{
"end_time": 2836.084,
"index": 103,
"start_time": 2808.643,
"text": " About this right up to very late, several centuries along ever to use the term or sales for anyone other than the father. Okay. And yet in the gospel of John, though you have that in the prologue in chapter 20, the apostle Thomas, when he speaks to the risen Christ doesn't, but people think he actually touches Christ rather Christ invites him to touch, but he doesn't."
},
{
"end_time": 2857.21,
"index": 104,
"start_time": 2836.459,
"text": " Instead he falls to his knees and says, Oh, my Lord and my God. And there he seems to be addressing Jesus as God most high. Now this is extraordinary. The gospel of John also is full of statements like, he has seen me, has seen the father, I and the father are one."
},
{
"end_time": 2885.776,
"index": 105,
"start_time": 2857.944,
"text": " So, so while the prologue of John seems to maintain this distinction, this distinction in other ways is breaking down and then climactically in chapter 20, which is probably the original ending of the gospel before that beautiful dream like chapter 21 was added, uh, go so far as to address Jesus as God most high. And"
},
{
"end_time": 2914.838,
"index": 106,
"start_time": 2886.544,
"text": " This is the debate going into the fourth century. Is this an honorific? Is he saying this to proclaim that just how high Jesus has been raised in the esteem of the heavenly powers due to what he has accomplished, or is it a statement of who he is eternally? And I could go on a great length of what happened at Nicaea and after, I mean, of course there is the issue of imperial pressure, the new"
},
{
"end_time": 2943.285,
"index": 107,
"start_time": 2915.742,
"text": " the newly christianized emperor constantin wanting some sort of uniformity of confession but it's also the case that there's a very real line of reasoning going on there that what had happened in christ and what happens in the spirit is real union with god god the father and such union is possible impossible is something that can't be accomplished by a lesser agency by spirit so if we believe this if we believe"
},
{
"end_time": 2973.456,
"index": 108,
"start_time": 2944.36,
"text": " Otheos really is present in Jesus and now Jesus is really present in the Holy Spirit in sanctification and sacrament. Then there has to be an equality that in some sense, you're always dealing with God himself, you know, and that's how the later confession finally coalesced for finally reached its convictions about what the proper language of the Trinity is still."
},
{
"end_time": 3000.708,
"index": 109,
"start_time": 2974.07,
"text": " It would be wrong to falsify the New Testament and pretend that there's a fully developed Trinitarian theology there. There simply isn't. And, um, you know, uh, in the prologue, you're still very much in the world of late antiquity in which there's God most high, and then a secondary, a death through us. Who is in some sense, the reflection of God most high, but it was turned toward the father as the priest leading the liturgy of creation."
},
{
"end_time": 3031.34,
"index": 110,
"start_time": 3002.415,
"text": " Did I hear you earlier say that you could read it as saying Jesus, which is the logos, even though it says the logos, but so the logos was a God instead of the logos was the God. Yeah. Because there's a missing article you said. Yeah. Interesting. But I think, but I mean, the thing is again, we can't think about that polytheistically though. It would be a divine being a divine, but"
},
{
"end_time": 3059.753,
"index": 111,
"start_time": 3032.176,
"text": " It's saying more at the same time. Or you also mentioned angels could be thought of as gods from before, but not in the earliest dominant Christology is what scholars call Angelo Morphic. I mean, it was thought to be, and this remains part of the discourse very late in the Christian tradition that Jesus is also the captain of the angels, so to speak, the leader of the heavenly hosts. And there was this notion of the defter of sales as"
},
{
"end_time": 3087.108,
"index": 112,
"start_time": 3060.179,
"text": " The core fails the one who leads the heavenly choirs and their liturgy of praise. And so he's turned, he's the one alone who's because a priest will accept in the Nova sort of, but generally speaking, a priest is, has his back to the people because he's leading the liturgy. All everyone turned towards the mystery of God. Right. And this is certainly"
},
{
"end_time": 3114.599,
"index": 113,
"start_time": 3087.807,
"text": " A lot of the early, how the Christians well into the fourth century and after were thinking that, that, uh, you know, he uniquely is the highest of heavenly beings, the angel of mighty council, the highest of the angels and also the unique son of the father is leading the heavenly liturgy. This language falls away later as it becomes very much, um,"
},
{
"end_time": 3139.241,
"index": 114,
"start_time": 3115.145,
"text": " Well, I can say superseded by the, uh, the formal language of Trinitarian dogma. This is controversial, not because the scholarship is controversial. I want to point out even, you know, people of impeccable orthodoxy scholars have known this. I mean, they're known that Arius was not some strange"
},
{
"end_time": 3160.418,
"index": 115,
"start_time": 3140.06,
"text": " Curious anomaly that he was simply an extreme expression of what was regarded by many as the orthodoxy of centuries and there's a reason why after the Aryan controversy. The controversy continued with the you know me and others over you know bishops and priests still committed to this older view that they thought was the correct view that."
},
{
"end_time": 3184.599,
"index": 116,
"start_time": 3160.998,
"text": " It was the Nicene party that was proposing a new grammar, you know, even a new word, homoousios, consubstantial. It's not in scripture and it wasn't in previous Christian usage. But to this day, you say the people, even theologians or people who do Christian philosophy, but who don't study Christian history very closely and don't know late antiquity very well, think that you're saying something"
},
{
"end_time": 3207.585,
"index": 117,
"start_time": 3186.817,
"text": " You know that's that's just an opinion that is it's not a minute it's it's it is the hard and fast data at the time and again as i say you can read you can see the change occurring in you serious you just. Read him before the nice in council on on who jesus is and then read him after there's been a change you know."
},
{
"end_time": 3238.353,
"index": 118,
"start_time": 3209.377,
"text": " Yeah, I also don't see it as so straightforward that Jesus himself identifies as God. Now, in these examples, there's John, which is the first part is just some narrator saying that Jesus is God. And then there's Thomas who says, my God, as well as my Lord. But also when you see anything majestic, you go, my God, to me, it's just not so obvious. And also, oh, yeah, well, it could be a fervent expression of praise of God. I mean, that was one of the arguments."
},
{
"end_time": 3267.91,
"index": 119,
"start_time": 3238.746,
"text": " I love that I'm speaking with you, that you know the Greek inside and out. Well, you kind of need to, if you do some of what I do, you need to know some Greek, it helps."
},
{
"end_time": 3295.947,
"index": 120,
"start_time": 3268.217,
"text": " Yeah. And also Jesus said, when you pray, you go to your room, you shut the door. So you do so in private, you pray to the father and our father who are in heaven. Right. And another point he said, you're still in Matthew now. Yeah. And another point someone said, who is good? No, someone said called Jesus good. He's like, no one is good, but the father. And if you ask for anything in my father and in my name, which it seems to me like he's pointing out a distinction between himself and the father."
},
{
"end_time": 3326.92,
"index": 121,
"start_time": 3297.312,
"text": " Yeah, there's one who is good. There are two different versions of that verse. There's the majority text and the critical text. But anyway, yes, the point is, it seems to be saying, yeah. In John, however, again, you do have statements that, again, I don't attribute to the historical Jesus one way or the other. I'm just saying in John, you have theological statements already emerging, which I and the Father are one. Now, again, what is that oneness? What is that unity that he, when he's praying in Gethsemane that he had with the Father before"
},
{
"end_time": 3356.749,
"index": 122,
"start_time": 3328.626,
"text": " The ages. Well, you're not going to get a single and the early church didn't have a single answer. And you've got to remember that when Nicaea was the council of Nicaea was convened as yet there was no notion of church councils as having some preeminent and indisputable doctrinal power authority that that too is an emergent phenomenon in Christian history. It's not"
},
{
"end_time": 3385.947,
"index": 123,
"start_time": 3357.073,
"text": " It's not something that's okay. Well, we better call our first infallible council, you know, that that that's not what was going on. But definitely, Constantine wanted a clear single voice emerging from what was becoming an institutional support of the empire. Now, speaking of oneness, I prepped for conversations weeks in advance quite extensively. So unfortunately, I can't give you a"
},
{
"end_time": 3409.121,
"index": 124,
"start_time": 3386.578,
"text": " The source of this quote that you said, and in fact I'm paraphrasing it so it's not even a quote, but you said that life, consciousness and language are the same. Now I can imagine how consciousness and life have a tie. However, what would be your definition of language such that it's the same as consciousness? Oh, now we're shifting into my recent"
},
{
"end_time": 3437.671,
"index": 125,
"start_time": 3409.531,
"text": " Book. You see, now I take off the theological biblical hat, put on the philosopher, philosopher's hat, I guess the mantle. Well, this is about physics, philosophy and consciousness. Yeah. Yeah. Um, well, I mean, I mean, I take several hundred pages of that book to explain what I mean. So forgive me if, if what I say here is, is less than satisfying, but, um, I believe that, uh,"
},
{
"end_time": 3464.548,
"index": 126,
"start_time": 3439.787,
"text": " that life and consciousness both examined phenomenologically but also logically exhibit a kind of intentional structure, intentional in the philosophical sense, I don't mean in the psychological sense, but and that language too is nothing but intentionality and"
},
{
"end_time": 3492.671,
"index": 127,
"start_time": 3464.855,
"text": " That the existence of language and of language using beings is every bit as mysterious and exhibits the same, uh, causal structure, but also that you can, in a sense, analogously speaking of language, uh, in terms of, of, or you can speak of mind and life, both in terms of language, even in the, you know, in the, in the,"
},
{
"end_time": 3521.937,
"index": 128,
"start_time": 3493.268,
"text": " The obvious sense that, um, life has a, uh, an element of transcription and hermeneutics involved between one phenotype and another. And, uh, I think we've known for more than 70, 80, maybe, you know, going on quite a, quite getting near the century mark, but we, at least since the time of Barbara McClintox."
},
{
"end_time": 3541.357,
"index": 129,
"start_time": 3522.841,
"text": " Experiments with maze. We, we, we have much firmer sense of the sort of intentional systems within intentional systems, right up to say experiments, how convincing they are. You can debate, but let's say Michael Levins at Tufts and Xenobots and the power of life."
},
{
"end_time": 3557.398,
"index": 130,
"start_time": 3542.295,
"text": " For curious listeners, I've spoken to Michael Levin four times on this channel. Each one is linked on screen and in the description. The topics include consciousness, bioelectricity, intelligence, emergence, and even the nature of reality itself."
},
{
"end_time": 3586.374,
"index": 131,
"start_time": 3557.398,
"text": " You can debate, but let's say Michael Levin's at Tufts and Xenobots and the power of life to engineer"
},
{
"end_time": 3617.5,
"index": 132,
"start_time": 3587.807,
"text": " organic systems towards solutions that are not simply provided by a prior template, but that require kind of hermeneutical plasticity in the cell and gene editing. But there's also a sense, you know, when you think about what is language, I mean, as intentionality, as"
},
{
"end_time": 3643.865,
"index": 133,
"start_time": 3618.37,
"text": " Every time you make a statement, if it's a coherent statement, there's an antecedent finality. If you're going to talk like an Aristotelian, there's a final cause, right? And there's a sort of formal cause. And it's that semantic intelligibility that determines the material substrates of sounds or words on the page, just as there's a semantic level of intelligibility, arguably, that determines the way the"
},
{
"end_time": 3672.773,
"index": 134,
"start_time": 3645.998,
"text": " Material ingredients of organic life or the the working of conscious processes in the brain. Operate. And that always you know the curious thing I think when you think about it when you actually allow for the reality of intentionality and there's there's a reason why the most radically eliminated list."
},
{
"end_time": 3702.961,
"index": 135,
"start_time": 3673.626,
"text": " Models of mind and of life want to do away with intrinsic intentionality as impossible as that is to do. I mean, it's something like Alex Rosenberg denying that, that, you know, ever anything has ever been about anything else, which he writes a book about. And, uh, it's because the moment that you allow intentionality and intrinsic existence, even in language, which is baffling enough, I mean, there's, there's a argument in the book against"
},
{
"end_time": 3728.558,
"index": 136,
"start_time": 3703.234,
"text": " The notion that language can be a purely emergent phenomenon from purely pre-linguistic origins. Too complicated to recapitulate here, but nonetheless, immediately you realize that there's always a kind of, that in addition to the physical space of consequence in which things unfold, there's a noetic space in which"
},
{
"end_time": 3752.432,
"index": 137,
"start_time": 3729.07,
"text": " The final, the end and the beginning are both co-present in a sense. They exist in a sort of hermeneutical or noetic space. I think this is why like neoplatonism is a sort of an almost natural reflex of the mind the moment it grants intentionality, why you find a very similar metaphysics in India in putting aside issues of cross pollination."
},
{
"end_time": 3777.244,
"index": 138,
"start_time": 3753.08,
"text": " And then, of course, the unity of that noetic space, you're going to think, well, even that unity itself has to subsist in some sort of higher unity, some true simplicity, some pure source that holds things together as one and yet many. And so you posit sort of the one, the tohen of Plotinus saying,"
},
{
"end_time": 3806.254,
"index": 139,
"start_time": 3778.592,
"text": " But, uh, definitely, I think that when you, the more deeply you think about it, the mind, life and language do all pose the same problems to the material is productive process or project rather, sorry. And the purpose of that recent book, all things are full of gods, which is a long book, uh, is to give the reductive"
},
{
"end_time": 3836.067,
"index": 140,
"start_time": 3807.159,
"text": " Project it's do i mean there's a voice in there it's it's written as a dialogue and if Estes is allowed to argue for it at great length but i mean the purpose of the book is to show that again and again um all the project does not uh explain this irreducibility or does not reduce this reducibility adequately and it turns out to be the same problem the same irreducibility that you've been mined in life and language"
},
{
"end_time": 3852.688,
"index": 141,
"start_time": 3837.159,
"text": " Um, all things are in a sense, uh, intelligible discourse. So in so far as they have structure that has any, I know we're not in teleology is."
},
{
"end_time": 3882.756,
"index": 142,
"start_time": 3854.65,
"text": " The thing we're supposed to avoid and yet it's the thing that's almost impossible to avoid, at least even, even a scientific method, even when we're denying it any ontological purchase, we're using it methodologically and that raises questions of its own, you know, to understand evolution. You're always asking, what was this good for? And then you can say, but of course, all we're really talking about are serial electricians and an evolutionary process, but that's a supposition."
},
{
"end_time": 3905.077,
"index": 143,
"start_time": 3883.114,
"text": " You know, if a method illuminates, why does it illuminate? Well, two thoughts occur to me. One is Brentano's thesis, if I'm pronouncing that correctly. Yeah, I wanted to know if your association with consciousness and language relies on that."
},
{
"end_time": 3932.039,
"index": 144,
"start_time": 3905.384,
"text": " But then you also said something else that's interesting. I want to explore. So I'll just say it and we can explore it later. You mentioned that neoplatonism is a natural consequence of allowing for intentionality, something like that. I don't know how that is the case. So I would like to hear more about that. So as for Brentano, I take it you mean the thesis that intentionality is the mark of the mantle. Yes. Yeah, I believe that when again,"
},
{
"end_time": 3959.189,
"index": 145,
"start_time": 3932.91,
"text": " Phenomenologically, you can't separate intentionality from consciousness, from rationality. The notion that you can have consciousness without intentionality, I think can be dealt with pretty brutally, but fairly. Um, the tendency in Anglo American philosophy of mind has been sort of divide and conquer for years. If you can just isolate one thing, like"
},
{
"end_time": 3989.104,
"index": 146,
"start_time": 3959.804,
"text": " Consciousness and say that's the hard problem and if you could solve that everything will fall into place I think is an illusion that that they're all the hard problems and also that When mind acts it always acts in you know Concert it's the the things that we want to pretend are separate faculties are in fact just phenomenological dimensions of a single unified act that can't be dissolved and that's part of the reason why we don't have a satisfactory model of mind and"
},
{
"end_time": 4014.394,
"index": 147,
"start_time": 3989.718,
"text": " is because we're trying to compose it from parts that we've abstracted from the whole. But in fact, the whole has to exist in its totality for the parts to exist. Uh, so yes, I, uh, the, um, you know, Brenton was understanding of intentionality. I differ from him in certain aspects of it, but yes,"
},
{
"end_time": 4038.37,
"index": 148,
"start_time": 4014.701,
"text": " And also it's reflexive nature. The fact that to be conscious is to be conscious of being conscious. So that's not just intentionality is directed towards an ever more transcendental endpoint. That's always eliciting conscious and volitional and rational and intentional acts, but also that intentionality requires this ground of consciousness that's"
},
{
"end_time": 4068.797,
"index": 149,
"start_time": 4038.848,
"text": " always founded upon itself that I don't think can emerge from a composite material basis. Again, an argument too long to rehearse here. As for the remark about Neoplatonism, well, I mean, I think it's just that I think if, you know, Neoplatonism, you have the one which generates news or mind in its pure aspect, which is just self-reflection, whereas the one has a kind of super-intellections. It's not reflected."
},
{
"end_time": 4089.684,
"index": 150,
"start_time": 4069.48,
"text": " And from this, the lower aspect of psyche or life or soul. And I think that that when you think in these terms, when you realize that if you, if you go back the other way, say, and you look at life and you look at solar sun or mind or you look at logo, see the language."
},
{
"end_time": 4120.742,
"index": 151,
"start_time": 4091.476,
"text": " And you find yourself unable to get away from the intentional structure. Then you, then, then you allow for the future to be a real cause in the present. Right. For that to be the case for there to be this integrated intentional reality, there has to be. And again, I'm not, I'm not proposing a particular ontology of it. I'm simply saying structurally, you have to think that there's a noetic space."
},
{
"end_time": 4149.48,
"index": 152,
"start_time": 4121.323,
"text": " Noetic realm in which beginning and end are present to one another. You know, that, that, that if I'm going to say, why doesn't it be a sentence? Two plus two equals four. I'm, I'm granting them my ability to make that statement, to communicate it to you, to think grants that the four and the two plus two."
},
{
"end_time": 4171.92,
"index": 153,
"start_time": 4150.401,
"text": " In that noetic space, uh, are already, uh, indissolubly connected to one another causally, uh, consequentially. And then of course you ask yourself the question of what allows for unity at all in, in the many, you know, because how is the noetic space one?"
},
{
"end_time": 4202.517,
"index": 154,
"start_time": 4172.619,
"text": " And you begin thinking in terms of a profound simplicity, a unity, a sort of ontological unity, a trans-finite unity, even that traverses everything, that allows everything to be both this, not that, and yet altogether, everything. So all I meant was that Neoplatonism has a kind of natural plausibility to a mind that's thinking in these terms about the structure of life and mind and why"
},
{
"end_time": 4227.739,
"index": 155,
"start_time": 4202.995,
"text": " It's really not until the modern period that sort of a purely mechanical notion of nature really gains wide purchase. I mean, you have early schools of great thought like the market, you know, democratists and, um, you know, the, the, the notion of certain aspects of fabricarianism, but these are, these are boutique schools and, um, even they have a kind of,"
},
{
"end_time": 4256.237,
"index": 156,
"start_time": 4229.019,
"text": " Unfinished quality to them that admits of ambiguities is only really in the mere modern period that we were able to create for ourselves the notion of mechanism and to do away with a different notion of the causal structure of reality in part because intuitively a mechanism doesn't make much sense to us until we make it make sense to us. And even then it's never to my mind."
},
{
"end_time": 4282.466,
"index": 157,
"start_time": 4256.681,
"text": " Managed to produce a purely coherent ontology. Now there's a strain of Buddhism, one of the oldest schools of Buddhism called Theravada. And there's a particular state called Neroda Samapati. And it indicates that you can have awareness without self-awareness. It's like a bare consciousness event. So does that not"
},
{
"end_time": 4309.94,
"index": 158,
"start_time": 4283.285,
"text": " Contravene that every conscious experience needs to be one of self-consciousness But indeed you can have consciousness without the I know that I know Theravada is just one school of Abhidhana or Dhamma Buddhism that persisted in Sri Lanka and Well later Buddhism, you know sort of Condescendingly called Hinayana lesser vehicle Buddhism, but yeah"
},
{
"end_time": 4339.633,
"index": 159,
"start_time": 4310.776,
"text": " Yeah, no, I just, uh, I mean, I simply believe that it's, um, how can I put it as a truth about making, you know, having a propositional, uh, claim about the self. It's true to an extent, but otherwise, um, I would say that it's, it's false as far as the actual consciousness goes, that there, there is always,"
},
{
"end_time": 4365.23,
"index": 160,
"start_time": 4340.606,
"text": " To be consciousness, to be conscious at all is simply to be conscious of being conscious. There's a kind of paradox in it, you know. There's a kind of what would be an infinite regress if we were talking about a material reality underlying it. And there's no way of consciousness actually to be conscious."
},
{
"end_time": 4395.23,
"index": 161,
"start_time": 4366.254,
"text": " Uh, without that sort of reflexive dimension in it. I think Brenton knows someone's who are so very good on this. Um, and so depending on how you try, how you, how you, how you interpret the early Buddhist claim, uh, depend, depending on that, I would give it limited or no credence. So if consciousness is always directed at something,"
},
{
"end_time": 4419.855,
"index": 162,
"start_time": 4396.084,
"text": " So that's intentionality for people who are wondering what the heck is this word that keeps coming up over and over. It's about-ness, so you direct it, you're directing. So if consciousness is always intentional, directed at objects, but that object is always self-conscious, do we get an infinite regress? If you're conscious of X, you're necessarily conscious of being conscious of X."
},
{
"end_time": 4450.572,
"index": 163,
"start_time": 4420.606,
"text": " And you then have a consciousness or you're conscious that you're conscious of being conscious of at infinite. It would be an infinite regress. If you're thinking of this in terms of composite of distinct forces. Sure. And that's the problem with trying to reduce it to material causes. It's a problem trying to reduce it to sort of a purely neurological or material based, because then you will be sort of in this infinite modular regress of"
},
{
"end_time": 4476.544,
"index": 164,
"start_time": 4451.476,
"text": " But if consciousness simply is this simple act of self-reflexive awareness, an infinite regress is a specter that can be chased away pretty quickly because what you're doing is you're confusing categories. You're thinking in material composite terms about an activity and an agency."
},
{
"end_time": 4504.855,
"index": 165,
"start_time": 4477.381,
"text": " It simply is what it is. It's like saying, well, what, what, what illuminates the light? You know, I mean, it, it's, it's not a real regress. It would be though. And therein lies the problem with the materialist reductionism of, or one of many problems with the materialist reduction of consciousness. What about pre-reflective experiences like being in the zone or full states where you have awareness and you don't have an explicit self-awareness?"
},
{
"end_time": 4535.145,
"index": 166,
"start_time": 4506.032,
"text": " Well, I mean, I think that it depends as a psychological state. Yeah. The psychological state of here I am, David Hart, having this experience at this moment can recede. Uh, but being in the zone or just, you know, in that flow of, of action, there's still in a sense, probably a pure reflexive consciousness. You're just purely aware of awareness. You know, the, uh,"
},
{
"end_time": 4559.292,
"index": 167,
"start_time": 4536.186,
"text": " The finite and changeable preoccupations of the empirical self, the psychological self, fall largely dormant, but only to give way to a more immediate sort of reflexiveness. It's not like in those moments of flow you're in a coma."
},
{
"end_time": 4585.964,
"index": 168,
"start_time": 4559.94,
"text": " You know, quite the opposite. There's, there's an immediacy of experience that that's over what that, Oh, you know, when the dancer becomes the dance, you could say that she or he is also becoming the consciousness, the dance becoming conscious of itself rather than the psychological self."
},
{
"end_time": 4615.589,
"index": 169,
"start_time": 4586.647,
"text": " Remaining preoccupied with itself for those moments. It's an escape from that sort of psychological limitation, but it's certainly not an escape from awareness of awareness of awareness. If all consciousness required self-consciousness, how could it be that consciousness came about in the first place? Would the first moment also need to somehow include self-awareness? Yeah, no, again, I'm not talking about"
},
{
"end_time": 4643.387,
"index": 170,
"start_time": 4616.152,
"text": " psychological sense of identity self-awareness just being like this moment of consciousness knowing itself as conscious may not take a very hard and fast propositional form but yeah i would say the consciousness does not emerge from the pre-conscious it so to speak descends it fashions life it fashions organism and as soon as there is life there's already mind and consciousness of some kind um uh how"
},
{
"end_time": 4673.131,
"index": 171,
"start_time": 4644.77,
"text": " how that is within the structure of life. I'm not going to pretend to understand exhaustively, but I think that consciousness is not an emergent phenomenon, but a super, well, super intending a super forming. I don't know what even want to say supervening because that can be a mistaken for a specific sort of school of thought that I don't agree with either. Um, yeah, I, I don't believe that"
},
{
"end_time": 4700.026,
"index": 172,
"start_time": 4673.797,
"text": " That consciousness is ever a fragment of consciousness. It's never just, you know, sensitivity or something. That if it's mind, then it's this integrated act that cannot emerge strongly. That is the important thing. Strong emergence, meaning emerging as something"
},
{
"end_time": 4722.892,
"index": 173,
"start_time": 4700.776,
"text": " From a material basis or from a lower basis that is has no other source and yet is irreducible to that basis. I think that's a myth that such a such a thing is cannot be. If it emerged as it emerges in nature in the weak sense, it does so because I think you have to think in terms of something like formal and final causes as well. Again, not as they were."
},
{
"end_time": 4751.203,
"index": 174,
"start_time": 4723.387,
"text": " Let's be honest, in early modernity, all that Aristotelian language was already so badly misunderstood that what was being rejected was just a rival mechanical model. They thought of final causes as sort of attraction, as if these were extrinsic to one another, and between them working out a phenomenon. Whereas, in fact, that's not what the Aristotelian tradition is. It's a completely different set of issues. It's really just talking about the predictable structure of something that is coherent."
},
{
"end_time": 4776.169,
"index": 175,
"start_time": 4752.415,
"text": " Materially be identified substantially has some sort of intrinsic, uh, limit to or end of its potentialities so that, you know, the seed, the acorn isn't going to grow into a penguin. So even though, but, but, but that's an excursus. So excuse me. I would say that, um,"
},
{
"end_time": 4802.278,
"index": 176,
"start_time": 4777.773,
"text": " My contention would be that strong emergence is impossible for anything and strong emergence certainly will not explain if life is real, if mind is real, if language is real. If there is such a thing as intentionality, and I think we have good reason to think there is, then the mechanical materialist reductionist project will always"
},
{
"end_time": 4830.845,
"index": 177,
"start_time": 4802.705,
"text": " fail ultimately to give a cogent answer to the questions that torment us. So we've been speaking about emergence and consciousness. And for those who are interested in more, you have a book called The Experience of God and that will be on screen link in the description as well as all of your books. And the more recent treatment, which is a larger excursion into these topics is all things are full of gods link on screen and in the description."
},
{
"end_time": 4859.48,
"index": 178,
"start_time": 4831.391,
"text": " How do you see the relationship between consciousness, being and God? A small question, I know. Well, ultimately, I would say that they're all one, you know, that to be conscious, to exist, to be intentionally oriented towards transcendental and all of these are finite participation in the one."
},
{
"end_time": 4884.735,
"index": 179,
"start_time": 4860.077,
"text": " God who is being Consciousness blessed, or to use the Satya Dhananda, the Sanskrit terset, which, or in Arabic, rujut, which done washed, you know, that you can live in Arabic, or analogously in Augustine's understanding of the Trinity, perhaps, you know."
},
{
"end_time": 4914.599,
"index": 180,
"start_time": 4885.23,
"text": " that ultimately these are all in God, one in the same. God is the being of all, the one source of all, mentality, the one end of all, of all longing, desire and intention, and we experience it in a plural way, but ultimately what we experience and seek is one in the same."
},
{
"end_time": 4946.698,
"index": 181,
"start_time": 4917.807,
"text": " So I have some questions from the audience I would like to get to actually. So one here is, you've recently embraced a public and explicit form of universalism, formulating a convincing metaphysical argument for a type of full cosmic theosis. In this view, a finite will cannot infinitely resist an infinite will or the infinite will of God. Now, simultaneously, you've embraced a more explicit"
},
{
"end_time": 4971.903,
"index": 182,
"start_time": 4947.21,
"text": " religious syncretism. And according to all reports, it seems like you've ceased participating in Christian tradition. If there are parts of this that you disagree with, you can, you can also talk about that. But the question is, so in a world filled with these people who are saying I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious and there's a diminishing spiritual discipline and tradition, there's relativizing, there's laxity."
},
{
"end_time": 5000.026,
"index": 183,
"start_time": 4972.671,
"text": " What makes your recent positions different than new age gurus? Do you still consider yourself a Christian? Do you advocate that others follow your own religious path? So feel free to disagree with some of the premises as well. We have to wade through the confusions there. I don't know what these reports are that I cease to be."
},
{
"end_time": 5029.343,
"index": 184,
"start_time": 5000.606,
"text": " I have been suffering health problems, I'll admit, so I don't get out of the house to church very often, or at all for the past few months. But that's not a matter of apostasy or tergification or anything."
},
{
"end_time": 5052.432,
"index": 185,
"start_time": 5030.418,
"text": " I didn't say that finite will cannot resist an infinite will eternally. That sounds like it's a contest between God willing salvation for all and humans trying to resist it. That somewhat barbarizes the argument regarding the structure of freedom."
},
{
"end_time": 5082.449,
"index": 186,
"start_time": 5052.892,
"text": " Because I'm purely classical in my understanding of what free will for a rational being is. In fact, the arguments I make there could have been made by Thomas Aquinas, for instance, but he was a double predestinarian. I know some people don't like that term for him, but it's true. And for him, the reason that he didn't have a free will defense of hell, he believed that certain persons were predestined to be saved and the rest had no hope of salvation, derelict"
},
{
"end_time": 5106.34,
"index": 187,
"start_time": 5083.592,
"text": " uh, by, uh, the withholding of efficacious grace. So if that's your picture of God, that's fine. But, uh, for, uh, for Aquinas, there really would be an issue of finite will not being able to resist an infinite will as though it was when Elsinando said something, uh, I said something very different. I said that to"
},
{
"end_time": 5136.561,
"index": 188,
"start_time": 5107.722,
"text": " that the will that resists God is not a free will by definition. If you actually look at what it would mean logically to say that something is a free choice. And again, I can only direct people to the book that all will be saved. Um, I'm not interested in people who say they're spiritual or not religious, but I'm not hostile to them because I'm not, not my place to judge the spiritual state of others. Um,"
},
{
"end_time": 5163.37,
"index": 189,
"start_time": 5137.244,
"text": " And I expect people to believe what they believe. I've said already in this interview, what I believe, and it may seem minimalist to some, it's that the experience of the resurrected Christ described in first Corinthians 15 is very hard not to believe for me. I mean, I find that there's a, a, a plausibility there and a persuasiveness."
},
{
"end_time": 5190.179,
"index": 190,
"start_time": 5164.821,
"text": " And I find in the teachings of Christ something that I think is an epochal shift in human culture that I see as nothing less than divine. That, uh, yeah, there were other schools of compassionate thought such as stoicism, but something really unprecedented is going on in the teaching and in the person and the story of Christ that to me,"
},
{
"end_time": 5217.619,
"index": 191,
"start_time": 5192.227,
"text": " It would be implausible not to call revelation. Um, from those two things, the belief that this resurrection experience was real and that this man who was experienced is already an anomaly and one we've never fully adequately"
},
{
"end_time": 5246.578,
"index": 192,
"start_time": 5218.268,
"text": " I'll brand it. I mean, it's how much of Christian history is just institutional corruption and the politics of power and cruelty. And as we, we, you know, when we say we are Christians, we're probably making a non warrantedly, uh, pretentious claim for ourselves, but, um, yeah, so I'm not, uh, not really interested in new age spirituality. But I, when I say syncretic,"
},
{
"end_time": 5276.493,
"index": 193,
"start_time": 5247.329,
"text": " My thinking, I believe that all schools of human thought are, are open to us. And then the same way that say Greek thought was assumed into Christian thought. Um, I would not be able to live religiously at all, not in terms of Christ. That's true. I mean, I don't know if that's an emotional, uh, truth about me or an intellectual truth. I like to think it's the latter and the former, but the latter."
},
{
"end_time": 5306.783,
"index": 194,
"start_time": 5277.022,
"text": " as giving substance to the former. But I couldn't become a Vaishnav. I have great respect for the piety of those who, and I believe that they're truly loving and worshiping and seeking God. But I can't imagine not seeing God as revealed in the face of Christ and the form of Christ and in this"
},
{
"end_time": 5337.705,
"index": 195,
"start_time": 5308.097,
"text": " This genuinely inexplicable historical enigma that the messianic movement of Jesus of Nazareth did not die out and that this first generation of Christians so numerously and so obstinately and so in some cases self destructively refuse to deny that experience."
},
{
"end_time": 5370.913,
"index": 196,
"start_time": 5341.988,
"text": " That said, I don't have much patience for bigotry. If this is simply a conflation of the notion of following Christ with absolutely limiting yourself intellectually, spiritually within the conceptual world of the institution, as you know it, I think you're making a grave mistake."
},
{
"end_time": 5400.418,
"index": 197,
"start_time": 5371.442,
"text": " Intellectually and morally, uh, because I think God speaks to all peoples. What is perennialism and would you consider yourself a perennialist? No, the, the, the name of those who called themselves that are people like again, and, um, shoe on and others. I don't like them very much at all. They, uh, in part because of their, their wretched politics, they're all very,"
},
{
"end_time": 5425.128,
"index": 198,
"start_time": 5401.084,
"text": " Sort of arch-conservative believers in hierarchy in the most pompous and, I think, degenerate way. But also because they weren't really, I mean, they made it up as they went along. I mean, Shuon created this sort of esoteric inner core that he said is really there in all the religions."
},
{
"end_time": 5454.343,
"index": 199,
"start_time": 5425.367,
"text": " And so you should follow one of these paths, but of course you should be one of the esoteric ones, which means that you're following shoe on and, uh, his own practices were, you know, you know, he made up these sort of these rather pathetic, um, sort of sexual games he played with, uh, with, uh, it's, it's very, it's, it's that term perennialism associated with them. Uh, but also, um,"
},
{
"end_time": 5483.046,
"index": 200,
"start_time": 5454.821,
"text": " You know, I mean, I very much liked when I was young Aldous Huxley's perennial, uh, philosophy, which was just an anthology of mystical texts, uh, many of which weren't available. I mean, you know, to be honest, he, it much wasn't available to him that later became available. Um, but no, I don't, uh, perennialist now, um, uh, I just, uh,"
},
{
"end_time": 5512.944,
"index": 201,
"start_time": 5484.002,
"text": " I don't, uh, I don't feel that I have to apologize when I see, say, a Vedantic text on the relationship of creation to God, say, say, let's say it's Vishishtadvaita or something that I think makes a good point that clarifies, um, points of Christian thought. I don't see any reason to, uh, to, to remain aloof from it or deny"
},
{
"end_time": 5543.37,
"index": 202,
"start_time": 5513.763,
"text": " deny my gratitude to this, to this tradition. And I certainly don't think that, um, uh, I have any right to claim that, uh, by snobs or trivites or, or Muslims or Jews or Sikhs or others, obviously not with, with Jewish people. I mean, the others are somehow not genuinely"
},
{
"end_time": 5572.176,
"index": 203,
"start_time": 5544.36,
"text": " Seeking and being guided by God and enfolded within revelation and within divine love. But perennialism, that was a fake system invented by very dubious man that I find a bit silly and a bit distasteful. To be honest, you'll find people like Steve Bannon are all on board with people like Evola and Gaynor."
},
{
"end_time": 5598.933,
"index": 204,
"start_time": 5573.831,
"text": " Interesting. Okay. I have a quote here from Ian McGilchrist, which you agreed with. So we are experiencing something real. We're not just experiencing a representation and that discrepancy is crucial. Many people think that they've overcome the Cartesian problem by intensifying it, suggesting that we can only interpret reality through a bank of dials, a version of reality. However,"
},
{
"end_time": 5622.227,
"index": 205,
"start_time": 5599.206,
"text": " It's not just an instrument panel that we're seeing as if we're closed off in a windowless cell. We are actually making contact with what we mean by reality. Now, just for people who are wondering where is that from? You had a conversation with Ian McGilchrist. I'll put that on screen as well because it's fantastic to listen to. So given this, what do you think about theories that purport to have consciousness first?"
},
{
"end_time": 5652.159,
"index": 206,
"start_time": 5622.551,
"text": " But then they still say that what we see is an illusion. It's not actually reality because in some Kantian sense, we can never know ultimate reality. These theories suggest that what we see is distorted. We interact with some watered down amorphous or anamorphic version of of reality by Donald Hoffman or or Thomas Campbell and that we're living in a simulated reality. Although consciousness is first, it's not actually reality that we experience. It's not the same."
},
{
"end_time": 5681.357,
"index": 207,
"start_time": 5655.367,
"text": " I think, you know, as I am in a, in this case, I'm now putting on my hat as writer of fiction. In a novel I wrote, uh, uh, caught Kenna Gaia. Um, one of the characters is quoted as saying of orthodoxy against small low. And this should be understood as sort of dogmatic scientific or, uh, or philosophical orthodoxy."
},
{
"end_time": 5710.384,
"index": 208,
"start_time": 5682.142,
"text": " Is the elevation of a humble half truth to the, uh, or I don't remember exactly the phrase, the grand eminence of a total falsehood. There's a half truth in that. And of course we don't have a full grasp of ultimate reality. And we started this conversation talking about, for instance, the problem of evil. And there are all sorts of things about both the physical and the conceptual. Well, the lie beyond this, but."
},
{
"end_time": 5734.428,
"index": 209,
"start_time": 5711.493,
"text": " Then to say it's all illusion and representation, of course the notion of representation and again taken to a sort of hyper Kantian extreme, that begins to break down, I want to point out, after Kant, even in Kant's last opus postumum, it's already beginning in a sense to break down, but then begins to break down at Fichte, a German idealist."
},
{
"end_time": 5764.428,
"index": 210,
"start_time": 5735.589,
"text": " In returning to this notion that there is a commonality between mind and being, rather than some sort of strange juxtaposition of two qualitatively immiscible realities, the way this would have been put in an antique metaphysics, whether platonic or Aristotelian, for instance, or whatever, is that both what informs"
},
{
"end_time": 5793.439,
"index": 211,
"start_time": 5764.616,
"text": " An object of knowledge and the act of knowledge is this one in the same form expressed in two distinct modes. So that there's a real openness of mind to world and world to mind, because both are subsisting in the same formal principle. Right. That's one way of putting it, but I mean, I think what Ian was saying is, is true. And there's a kind of sickness in imagining that our experience of reality is not."
},
{
"end_time": 5820.589,
"index": 212,
"start_time": 5793.985,
"text": " And experience of, well, I want to say the semantic consistency of reality, you know, it's, it's qualities, it's dimensions is upset. These aren't illusions superimposed on a bare mechanical order that, that is, or even a thing in itself to which we have no access. And I think one of the great deconstructions of representationalism of that sort that you'll find in Hegel."
},
{
"end_time": 5849.701,
"index": 213,
"start_time": 5821.903,
"text": " Um, but another, I think in all things are full of gods. One of the few theological thinkers, philosophers I quote or quote early site is Bernard Lonergan, who understands that surfeit of the unknown over the known, not as something qualitatively impenetrable and, and repugnant to the act of knowledge, but simply an as yet undisclosed, undiscovered, uh, more."
},
{
"end_time": 5873.746,
"index": 214,
"start_time": 5849.974,
"text": " a greater depth into which we can yet venture. And the greatest depth of all, of course, would be venturing into God, union with God. Representationalism is in a sense the epistemology of the modern age. It fits within the mechanical model. It fits within the model of"
},
{
"end_time": 5904.36,
"index": 215,
"start_time": 5874.701,
"text": " The proper domain of the sciences after Galileo, who is a faithful Catholic, right? But I mean, for him, you know, it's the mathematical quantification of mass and velocity and things like that, which is, in a sense, the proper realm of the sciences. And then after that time, we came into the habit of thinking of the proper realm of the sciences as reality as such. So that there's an occult or numinal reality to which"
},
{
"end_time": 5928.268,
"index": 216,
"start_time": 5904.906,
"text": " To which our only approach is one of gratifying and comprehensible illusions imposed by the apparatus of perception. And first of all, I don't think that such a consonance could actually be achieved by material processes to begin with, you know."
},
{
"end_time": 5954.258,
"index": 217,
"start_time": 5929.821,
"text": " But I also think it's, it's just a fetishism. It's just a dogma. It's, um, you know, it's, it's, it's, and a confining and a dangerous one in some ways. David, as we end, firstly, thank you so much for spending so long with me and persisting through your pain. What are you striving for?"
},
{
"end_time": 5988.558,
"index": 218,
"start_time": 5959.292,
"text": " me today or really to be honest sorry about that um to be honest all i'm thinking about these days is my health so forgive me i'm not i'm not able to give you a more elevated answer than that um uh striving to uh"
},
{
"end_time": 6015.896,
"index": 219,
"start_time": 5990.162,
"text": " Continue to believe even when being forced to reflect on Personal reasons for doubt Why is continuing to believe so important to you Well"
},
{
"end_time": 6042.483,
"index": 220,
"start_time": 6016.852,
"text": " Again, there's the intellectual conviction that I've got it right, but it's more, I think we believe for the sake of others, isn't it? I mean, those we love. If it were only ourselves at stake, it really wouldn't matter very much. But, you know, I have a son, I have a wife, I have people I love. And, um, uh,"
},
{
"end_time": 6069.497,
"index": 221,
"start_time": 6044.701,
"text": " In addition to the intellectual convictions, there's the structure of hope that says that they are not just momentary accidents in the process of material causation whose underlying basso continuo is despair."
},
{
"end_time": 6097.91,
"index": 222,
"start_time": 6073.097,
"text": " Would you say then what's more important than faith is hope? Well, according to Paul, love is the most important of all, right? Faith, hope and love, these three, but love is the one that abides. So, um, yeah, I'd say that love is what makes hope and faith, uh, worth persisting in."
},
{
"end_time": 6126.783,
"index": 223,
"start_time": 6104.684,
"text": " Don't go anywhere just yet. Now I have a recap of today's episode brought to you by The Economist. Just as The Economist brings clarity to complex concepts, we're doing the same with our new AI-powered episode recap. Here's a concise summary of the key insights from today's podcast."
},
{
"end_time": 6156.664,
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"start_time": 6128.029,
"text": " Okay, so we're diving into this conversation between Kurt Jemmengal and David Bentley Hart. Oh, yeah, Kurt from Theories of Everything. I've seen a few of those. He really gets into it with his guests. Especially does. Yeah. And I mean, in this one, they talk about consciousness, physics, you know, even God. Wow. That's a lot to unpack. It is. It is. But it's really something how heart just goes right into the problem of evil, not like how you normally hear it disgust."
},
{
"end_time": 6182.21,
"index": 225,
"start_time": 6156.817,
"text": " I know what you mean. He kind of throws those typical arguments right out the window, like about how a good God could allow so much suffering, all that. Yeah, exactly. He even says the suffering of innocence is unanswerable if you believe in a benevolent God. Yeah, and he doesn't just talk about it abstractly. He brings in his own experience with chronic pain. Oh, wow. Yeah. So it's really clear that suffering isn't just some theoretical concept for him."
},
{
"end_time": 6199.326,
"index": 226,
"start_time": 6182.21,
"text": " He's lived it it definitely adds like a whole other level of depth to what you say yeah for sure it's not sugar coated at all notes around yeah. Really makes you think there might not be easy answers when it comes to suffering no and then just when you think he's gonna stay in that that heavy heavy space."
},
{
"end_time": 6223.575,
"index": 227,
"start_time": 6199.735,
"text": " He switches gears completely and starts talking about Christ's resurrection. What? Really? Yeah. How does he even connect those two? Well, he argues that early Christianity, you know, how it survived and even grew, especially after, well, you know, after Christ died, it points to something really big happening, like something truly remarkable. Right, right. He even brings up how other movements, you know, with the messianic leader back then,"
},
{
"end_time": 6251.118,
"index": 228,
"start_time": 6223.899,
"text": " They usually just disappeared after some initial excitement. Interesting. Yeah. So it's like he's implying that those early Christians, when they said they encountered the risen Christ, it couldn't have just been wishful thinking or anything like that. It really focuses on first Corinthians 15, specifically the accounts, you know, the firsthand ones of being Christ after the resurrection. Yeah. Okay. He says they have this, this rawness to them, almost like a historical document, you know? Yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 6281.101,
"index": 229,
"start_time": 6251.681,
"text": " And then get this, he ties it all back to stoic metaphysics. Whoa, stoic metaphysics. Now that's a curve ball. I know raise. I'm not super familiar with that, to be honest. So basically the stoics believed that spirit was like a divine fire, like a higher element, you know, and it's everywhere. Okay. I think I'm false. So is he using stoic thought to explain the resurrection? Not exactly explain it, but he's using it to help us understand how those early Christians, especially Paul,"
},
{
"end_time": 6309.121,
"index": 230,
"start_time": 6281.357,
"text": " Thought about body composed entirely of spirit. Okay. Yeah, I can see that. So like instead of thinking of spirit as this, this disembodied ghost thing, we should think of it more like, like fire. Exactly. It's powerful, transformative, but still part of the physical world. Wow. That's a completely different way of thinking about the afterlife. Isn't it makes you wonder how much our modern understanding of all this, you know, spirit and all that has been shaped by, well, by our own culture and philosophies. That's a good point."
},
{
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"text": " We probably don't even realize how much we're projecting our own assumptions onto those ancient texts. Right. So we've got this honest talk about suffering that a compelling argument about the resurrection and now a connection to stoic metaphysics. It's a lot. Yeah. And this is just the beginning. Hart's ideas get even more radical and mind blowing from here. It's amazing how he can like connect all these seemingly random ideas makes you rethink everything you thought you knew about"
},
{
"end_time": 6355.111,
"index": 232,
"start_time": 6335.964,
"text": " Christianity. Yeah, and he's not afraid to challenge those really traditional interpretations. I know, right? Like with John 1.1, the logos. Oh yeah, that part was wild. Yeah, he's saying the usual translation, he kind of shoe horns it into the whole Trinity doctrine, but the original Greek, it's way more open to interpretation than that."
},
{
"end_time": 6377.773,
"index": 233,
"start_time": 6355.384,
"text": " It is and you know, he brings up this view subordination ism where the sons subordinate to the father. Okay. And apparently that was a pretty common view in early Christianity. Wait, so are you telling me that Jesus being equal to God, the father that wasn't always like the view everyone had? Nope, not at all. Heart's point is that the shift to the Trinity doctrine with that whole co-equality thing."
},
{
"end_time": 6396.834,
"index": 234,
"start_time": 6378.029,
"text": " It's a good reminder that these religious doctrines, they don't just appear out of thin air, they come from these"
},
{
"end_time": 6426.578,
"index": 235,
"start_time": 6397.244,
"text": " messy historical and intellectual processes. It makes you wonder how many other things we just accept as truth, you know, like without realizing they have these really complex origins too. Oh, totally. And speaking of complex origins, that part where he talks about intentionality and how it connects to life, consciousness and D language, that's where things get super fascinating. Okay. Lay it on me because intentionality is one of those things I've always kind of struggled with, to be honest. So think of it like the aboutness of your thoughts."
},
{
"end_time": 6440.418,
"index": 236,
"start_time": 6426.886,
"text": " Like when you think about a tree, right? Your thought has an object. It's about that tree. Okay, I get that. But how does that tie into life and language? Well, Hart says intentionality isn't just limited to consciousness."
},
{
"end_time": 6462.961,
"index": 237,
"start_time": 6441.237,
"text": " Even living organisms, even simple ones like single-celled organisms, they have a kind of intentionality in how they strive to survive and reproduce. So even at the most basic level of life, there's this inherent direction, like a purposefulness. Exactly. And language, he says, it's inherently intentional too. Oh, so."
},
{
"end_time": 6474.411,
"index": 238,
"start_time": 6462.961,
"text": " Words have meaning because they point to something beyond themselves. Okay, I see you're saying so there's this like this thread of intentionality running through life consciousness and language. Yeah, precisely."
},
{
"end_time": 6504.718,
"index": 239,
"start_time": 6474.718,
"text": " And here's the kicker, the really radical part. He says this intentionality can't be explained by just material processes. So he's going up against like that whole materialistic worldview, the one that's dominant today. He is. He's basically saying that the directedness, the aboutness of these fundamental parts of reality, it points to something beyond the material world. You know, that reminds me of what he said earlier about how scientific methods, they rely on this idea of purpose, teleology, but at the same time, they claim to reject purpose"
},
{
"end_time": 6523.78,
"index": 240,
"start_time": 6504.718,
"text": " You know as an inherent part of reality it's like they're trying to have it both ways it is it's like he's saying maybe just maybe our current scientific way of looking at things it's not enough to really understand what reality is and get this he then goes on to say that neoplatonism this ancient philosophy it actually starts to make sense."
},
{
"end_time": 6554.07,
"index": 241,
"start_time": 6524.172,
"text": " when you grasp"
},
{
"end_time": 6573.217,
"index": 242,
"start_time": 6554.36,
"text": " It's like he's saying that if we take intentionality seriously, we might have to rethink not just materialism, but like our whole picture of the universe and are placed in it. Exactly. And that's what's so radical about heart. You know, he's not just critiquing little ideas here and there. He's going after the very foundations of how we think he is."
},
{
"end_time": 6595.418,
"index": 243,
"start_time": 6573.78,
"text": " But even with all that, you know, he's not saying he has all the answers, right? He's really humble, intellectually. Definitely. He's not afraid to say, I don't know. Exactly. And he doesn't try to cram every mystery into some neat philosophical box. Yeah. He even talks about how his own religious views have changed over time, how he's embraced this more, what's the word, syncretic approach. Oh, right."
},
{
"end_time": 6624.753,
"index": 244,
"start_time": 6595.964,
"text": " That's where he talks about finding wisdom in all sorts of different traditions, not just Christian ones. Exactly. And he's against that whole like rigid dogma of perennialism. So he's open to truth coming from different places, but he's still deeply rooted in his own Christian faith. Yeah. He says he can't imagine not seeing God as revealed in Christ. There's a real reverence there. Like that story is, well, it's unique and powerful for him. But he also seems to be pushing back against like,"
},
{
"end_time": 6648.712,
"index": 245,
"start_time": 6625.145,
"text": " the limits of organized religion, questioning doctrines and interpretations. Like he's saying real faith isn't about blindly following dogma. It's about constantly searching for truth wherever it might lead. And he's not just talking about it. He's living it. He is. He's drawing inspiration from all these different philosophies and religions. It's really inspiring, honestly. It's like so open and curious and always learning and growing."
},
{
"end_time": 6676.92,
"index": 246,
"start_time": 6648.712,
"text": " Totally different from that, like, that intellectual and spiritual rigidity you see so much these days. You know, as we're going through all this, I keep thinking about what he said about love, you know, how we believe for the sake of others, the people we love. Oh, yeah, that really stuck with me too. It's like he's saying faith isn't just this thing you do by yourself in your own head. It's deeply connected to our relationships, our connections with other people. Yeah, like love is, I don't know, like the fuel, you know?"
},
{
"end_time": 6688.251,
"index": 247,
"start_time": 6677.5,
"text": " The thing that drives our belief."
},
{
"end_time": 6712.278,
"index": 248,
"start_time": 6688.439,
"text": " those messy, beautiful connections we have with each other. It's like he's saying, faith isn't just about what we believe, but how we live and how we treat each other. Right. So, you know, as we wrap up this dive into hearts conversation, I'm just left with this, this feeling of awe. Me too. Yeah. I just want to keep exploring these ideas. You know, it really has been an incredible journey through some tough thought provoking concepts."
},
{
"end_time": 6741.391,
"index": 249,
"start_time": 6712.278,
"text": " It has. And even though we might not have all the answers, I think the biggest takeaway is that, you know, we got to stay curious. Keep an open mind. Yeah. And be willing to challenge our own assumptions, even the ones we really hold dear. Exactly. Well, we hope this has inspired you to do just that. Keep searching, keep asking questions and keep exploring the mysteries of, well, of everything. Well, as we wrap up this deep dive into heart in this conversation with Kurt Jemmell Gall, I'm just, I know I'm filled with a sense of awe."
},
{
"end_time": 6770.708,
"index": 250,
"start_time": 6741.903,
"text": " And I want to keep exploring these ideas. It has been quite a journey. So many challenging, thought-provoking ideas. It has. And, you know, even though we might not have figured it all out, the main thing, I think, is to stay curious, open to new ideas. Keep asking those questions. Yeah. And be willing to question everything, even the things we think we know for sure. We hope this deep dive has inspired you to do just that. Keep searching, keep wondering, keep exploring. Absolutely. Thanks for joining us on this incredible journey."
},
{
"end_time": 6775.589,
"index": 251,
"start_time": 6771.374,
"text": " We'll see you next time for another deep dive into the world of ideas."
},
{
"end_time": 6804.718,
"index": 252,
"start_time": 6777.602,
"text": " New update! Started a substack. Writings on there are currently about language and ill-defined concepts as well as some other mathematical details. Much more being written there. This is content that isn't anywhere else. It's not on Theories of Everything. It's not on Patreon. Also, full transcripts will be placed there at some point in the future. Several people ask me, hey Kurt, you've spoken to so many people in the fields of theoretical physics, philosophy, and consciousness. What are your thoughts?"
},
{
"end_time": 6816.852,
"index": 253,
"start_time": 6805.043,
"text": " While I remain impartial in interviews, this substack is a way to peer into my present deliberations on these topics. Also, thank you to our partner, The Economist."
},
{
"end_time": 6841.493,
"index": 254,
"start_time": 6819.121,
"text": " Firstly, thank you for watching, thank you for listening. If you haven't subscribed or clicked that like button, now is the time to do so. Why? Because each subscribe, each like helps YouTube push this content to more people like yourself, plus it helps out Kurt directly, aka me. I also found out last year that external links count plenty toward the algorithm,"
},
{
"end_time": 6851.425,
"index": 255,
"start_time": 6841.493,
"text": " Which means that whenever you share on Twitter, say on Facebook or even on Reddit, et cetera, it shows YouTube, hey, people are talking about this content outside of YouTube."
},
{
"end_time": 6880.794,
"index": 256,
"start_time": 6851.561,
"text": " which in turn greatly aids the distribution on YouTube. Thirdly, there's a remarkably active Discord and subreddit for theories of everything where people explicate toes, they disagree respectfully about theories and build as a community our own toe. Links to both are in the description. Fourthly, you should know this podcast is on iTunes. It's on Spotify. It's on all of the audio platforms. All you have to do is type in theories of everything and you'll find it. Personally, I gained from rewatching lectures and podcasts"
},
{
"end_time": 6900.776,
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"text": " I also read in the comments"
},
{
"end_time": 6926.903,
"index": 258,
"start_time": 6900.776,
"text": " and donating with whatever you like. There's also PayPal. There's also crypto. There's also just joining on YouTube. Again, keep in mind it's support from the sponsors and you that allow me to work on toe full time. You also get early access to ad free episodes, whether it's audio or video. It's audio in the case of Patreon video in the case of YouTube. For instance, this episode that you're listening to right now was released a few days earlier. Every dollar helps far more than you think."
},
{
"end_time": 6955.486,
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"start_time": 6927.142,
"text": " Either way, your viewership is generosity enough. Thank you so much. Think Verizon, the best 5G network is expensive? Think again. Bring in your AT&T or T-Mobile bill to a Verizon store today and we'll give you a better deal. Now what to do with your unwanted bills? Ever seen an origami version of the Miami Bull?"
},
{
"end_time": 6973.626,
"index": 260,
"start_time": 6955.981,
"text": " Jokes aside, Verizon has the most ways to save on phones and plans where you can get a single line with everything you need. So bring in your bill to your local Miami Verizon store today and we'll give you a better deal."
}
]
}No transcript available.