Glen's channel is one of the good ones in my book 😉 there's always the temptation of sensationalism, but I think Speak Life does a pretty good job of being substantive and wholesome.
Yeah the Swinburne situation was sad. To be honest, his arguments and assertions did feel pretty disjointed and unpersuasive to me (from memory, without having rewatched it). It sort of felt like he wasn't having the same discussion as the other three, and I wonder if that demonstrates how an academic can be formed by their environment and milieu to the extent that they struggle to speak on the same plane as someone who enters the academy a couple decades later?
Would love to hear your thoughts on either or both as well!
Good questions Eliot. I think we are digging into what "belief", "commitment", "surrender", "acceptance", and all the other words we use to describe the mysterious crossing into a state of regeneration. Perhaps everyone's experience of that is somehow different, or perhaps we just use different words to describe the same experience. A christian would say this is the moment the Holy Spirit does the work in our hearts and minds, and Jesus described this work as "like the wind" - we cannot see it, but we see what it does. For CS Lewis, this happened during a bus ride - a non-Christian when he got on the bus, and a Christian by the time he arrived at his destination. Perhaps this hasn't happened for Alex yet because of point Andrew Klavan makes in his book "The Truth and Beauty" - he's trying to understand Jesus' philosophy instead of trying to get to know Jesus the person. Engaging so deeply as we do in thinking about God, we easily forget that God is not a philosophical thought framework but a person we need to know. Alex hasn't had a religious conversion experience yet because in his heart he hasn't repented, made Jesus as Lord of his life, and begun to live accordingly. It's not enough just to believe that God exists, or that he thinks a Christian philosophical framework is true. Jordan Peterson has said a number of times that he "lives as though God exists, which is the same thing as belief". He might be right about what "belief" means, but that's not enough to be a Christian - it's a necessary but not sufficient condition. What else is needed is repentance, surrender, acceptance, commitment - however we want to describe it.
Thanks for these thoughts, Ian. I've had it in mind to read Klavan's book at some point.
I appreciate your comments. I wonder if Alex's follow-up question might be how someone can repent, make Jesus Lord of his life, and begin to live accordingly, when he doesn't think God exists at all. Do you see a paradox in the idea that we can't know God until we surrender to him?
I don't see a paradox here, but I do see some necessary first steps followed by progressive steps that are part of any growing relationship. Believing a person exists is a necessary step to "knowing" that person, if by "knowing" we mean to begin a relationship with them. If belief is a combination of some knowledge about the person combined with trust (faith) in our sources and faith in our ability to know such persons, then some belief is a necessary threshold to begin any relationship. Such knowledge and faith, giving rise to a resulting belief, can be imperfect and even scant, but can still be sufficient to support taking a next step in a relationship. Meeting a life partner can be a good illustration of that process. But there is a significant difference between knowing someone and giving them control of your life, but this is what God asks us to do. In fact as Christians we're told to do this daily, offering our lives as a living sacrifice. However, we're inclined to see these things as linear process steps (1. believe God exists 2. surrender with repentance) because at a minimum it helps us understand the process. But doing so we are thinking only with our heads, while God works on the heart, and we need to recognise that the Holy Spirit working on someone's heart is not constrained in the same way as our heads think. In the Charles Wesley hymn "...my chains fell off, my heart was free..., I rose, went forth and followed thee..." We should pray for the Holy Spirit to loose the chains on Alex's heart - the chains Alex and others put there with a multitude of locks.
Really enjoyed this! I’ve watched the clip with Alex and Weller as discussed on Glen Scrivener channel (which, despite Glen’s insistence, is probably one of the “Christian reaction channel” Alex joked about) and watched the discussion about morality. I agree it was sad to see Swinburne in such a state and treated that way. Would love to hear your thoughts on his arguments and how they were received by the audience.
The respect you show to the people you discuss, ranging from Mikaela to each of the philosophers to your readers is beautiful to see. Your natural intellectual gifts have been well nourished by this reverential posture.
It makes me wish you lived here and we could sit and talk for endless hours over many years about things like this.
Responding in Substack is better than nothing, though it drives home Plato’s concerns about writing. Allow me to make some sweeping observations in bullet points, each of which reflects decades of wrestling.
First, I deeply respect Alex’s posture and openness. If I were cynical and distrusting I would say it is well-calibrated to appeal to the rising generation, which thrives on uncertainty. Because I am temperamentally gullible and trusting, which I believe is the intended state of the human spirit, I simply admire it and hope it continues to lead him to ever deeper insight. I fear that it may trap him in Kierkegaard’s aesthetic stage, but it seems he has already taken the leap into the ethical and found it tolerable, so maybe he’ll complete the journey.
Second, in the matter of a leap of faith: either I completely misunderstand Kierkegaard on this, most other people do, or SK himself was wrong, but I don’t believe that a leap of faith is irrational in an anti-logos sense but only in a Cartesian sense.
The Meno makes it more than arguable that Socrates sees a leap beyond rationalism into Logos itself as a precondition for reasoning.
As you well know, there are different kinds of knowledge because there are different kinds of senses that perceive different kinds of realities. Each sense is cultivated only by use. Mature people train the senses by using them and become better able to discern what those senses reveal.
Physical senses show us the physical world. Intellectual senses show us the order and forms that arrange it. Moral senses show us how to live in it. Social senses show us how to achieve honor in it. Spiritual senses show us how to engage with the spiritual world.
Here’s the thing: you only use a sense of you 1. Believe (before thought) that the senses sense something that is there, 2. Believe that the senses are adequate to the task.
If I’m blind I won’t try to see. If I’m leprous I won’t touch. If I’m dead I won’t try to distinguish Lennon’s key shift in the line “in my life I’ve loved you more.”
I know the last one is true because I am musically deaf and I never knew such a thing took place until I read it.
But when I read it, being gullible and trustworthy, I believed the author. And then I listened for it and, wonder of wonders, my believing the author made my senses come alive.
Faith, therefore, is not unique to religion. It is a precondition for all perception. It’s just that when everybody believes the same thing and when we are honored for believing what they believe or shamed for disagreeing we don’t need to be aware of how much our understanding rests on faith.
I’ll stop there because you are a careful thinker and if I keep going I’ll give you too many inconsistencies to process in a reasonable amount of time. Keep on thinking and writing! You bring out the best in your readers.
My reason finds that last point troubling as well, but then I’ve come to realize something I no longer can deny: we already know most things, but many of the things we know we don’t believe. Faith is not arbitrary: real faith just acknowledges the obvious.
The problem is realizing that things are obvious, that we can’t not know them.
I’ve also come to believe that Hebrews 5:14 is the single most practical guide to Christian education: its goal and its means, while 5:12 and 13 show us why we don’t educate that way.
You're right that what we know and what we think we know might not always match up. Discussions like this one always make my human limitations so clear to me.
Thanks for these thoughts, and for the excessively kind words.
I respect Alex's posture too. I think you're right to point out that his approach appeals to his peers (and maybe in one sense he is a microcosm of that generation, which certainly is uncertain, although I'm not sure it's thriving!).
The way you talked about senses is helpful and clarifies the issue. For some (including Alex), the idea of a "spiritual sense" feels quite foreign. So when asked what he makes of it, I can understand why Alex responds that he doesn't seem to have one. How does he go about beginning to experience something with a sense he's never exercised before? How could he be confident he isn't imagining what he has been told to expect?
But I think your musical analogy helps somewhat on that front, and I'll have to think more about it. You're right that faith is essential to every action and perception, and Esther Meek makes that point well. Sometimes I find that very troubling! But maybe it helps humble us in a healthy way too.
Glen's channel is one of the good ones in my book 😉 there's always the temptation of sensationalism, but I think Speak Life does a pretty good job of being substantive and wholesome.
Yeah the Swinburne situation was sad. To be honest, his arguments and assertions did feel pretty disjointed and unpersuasive to me (from memory, without having rewatched it). It sort of felt like he wasn't having the same discussion as the other three, and I wonder if that demonstrates how an academic can be formed by their environment and milieu to the extent that they struggle to speak on the same plane as someone who enters the academy a couple decades later?
Would love to hear your thoughts on either or both as well!
Good questions Eliot. I think we are digging into what "belief", "commitment", "surrender", "acceptance", and all the other words we use to describe the mysterious crossing into a state of regeneration. Perhaps everyone's experience of that is somehow different, or perhaps we just use different words to describe the same experience. A christian would say this is the moment the Holy Spirit does the work in our hearts and minds, and Jesus described this work as "like the wind" - we cannot see it, but we see what it does. For CS Lewis, this happened during a bus ride - a non-Christian when he got on the bus, and a Christian by the time he arrived at his destination. Perhaps this hasn't happened for Alex yet because of point Andrew Klavan makes in his book "The Truth and Beauty" - he's trying to understand Jesus' philosophy instead of trying to get to know Jesus the person. Engaging so deeply as we do in thinking about God, we easily forget that God is not a philosophical thought framework but a person we need to know. Alex hasn't had a religious conversion experience yet because in his heart he hasn't repented, made Jesus as Lord of his life, and begun to live accordingly. It's not enough just to believe that God exists, or that he thinks a Christian philosophical framework is true. Jordan Peterson has said a number of times that he "lives as though God exists, which is the same thing as belief". He might be right about what "belief" means, but that's not enough to be a Christian - it's a necessary but not sufficient condition. What else is needed is repentance, surrender, acceptance, commitment - however we want to describe it.
Thanks for these thoughts, Ian. I've had it in mind to read Klavan's book at some point.
I appreciate your comments. I wonder if Alex's follow-up question might be how someone can repent, make Jesus Lord of his life, and begin to live accordingly, when he doesn't think God exists at all. Do you see a paradox in the idea that we can't know God until we surrender to him?
I don't see a paradox here, but I do see some necessary first steps followed by progressive steps that are part of any growing relationship. Believing a person exists is a necessary step to "knowing" that person, if by "knowing" we mean to begin a relationship with them. If belief is a combination of some knowledge about the person combined with trust (faith) in our sources and faith in our ability to know such persons, then some belief is a necessary threshold to begin any relationship. Such knowledge and faith, giving rise to a resulting belief, can be imperfect and even scant, but can still be sufficient to support taking a next step in a relationship. Meeting a life partner can be a good illustration of that process. But there is a significant difference between knowing someone and giving them control of your life, but this is what God asks us to do. In fact as Christians we're told to do this daily, offering our lives as a living sacrifice. However, we're inclined to see these things as linear process steps (1. believe God exists 2. surrender with repentance) because at a minimum it helps us understand the process. But doing so we are thinking only with our heads, while God works on the heart, and we need to recognise that the Holy Spirit working on someone's heart is not constrained in the same way as our heads think. In the Charles Wesley hymn "...my chains fell off, my heart was free..., I rose, went forth and followed thee..." We should pray for the Holy Spirit to loose the chains on Alex's heart - the chains Alex and others put there with a multitude of locks.
A brilliant hymn :))
Thanks for these thoughts, Ian.
Really enjoyed this! I’ve watched the clip with Alex and Weller as discussed on Glen Scrivener channel (which, despite Glen’s insistence, is probably one of the “Christian reaction channel” Alex joked about) and watched the discussion about morality. I agree it was sad to see Swinburne in such a state and treated that way. Would love to hear your thoughts on his arguments and how they were received by the audience.
The respect you show to the people you discuss, ranging from Mikaela to each of the philosophers to your readers is beautiful to see. Your natural intellectual gifts have been well nourished by this reverential posture.
It makes me wish you lived here and we could sit and talk for endless hours over many years about things like this.
Responding in Substack is better than nothing, though it drives home Plato’s concerns about writing. Allow me to make some sweeping observations in bullet points, each of which reflects decades of wrestling.
First, I deeply respect Alex’s posture and openness. If I were cynical and distrusting I would say it is well-calibrated to appeal to the rising generation, which thrives on uncertainty. Because I am temperamentally gullible and trusting, which I believe is the intended state of the human spirit, I simply admire it and hope it continues to lead him to ever deeper insight. I fear that it may trap him in Kierkegaard’s aesthetic stage, but it seems he has already taken the leap into the ethical and found it tolerable, so maybe he’ll complete the journey.
Second, in the matter of a leap of faith: either I completely misunderstand Kierkegaard on this, most other people do, or SK himself was wrong, but I don’t believe that a leap of faith is irrational in an anti-logos sense but only in a Cartesian sense.
The Meno makes it more than arguable that Socrates sees a leap beyond rationalism into Logos itself as a precondition for reasoning.
As you well know, there are different kinds of knowledge because there are different kinds of senses that perceive different kinds of realities. Each sense is cultivated only by use. Mature people train the senses by using them and become better able to discern what those senses reveal.
Physical senses show us the physical world. Intellectual senses show us the order and forms that arrange it. Moral senses show us how to live in it. Social senses show us how to achieve honor in it. Spiritual senses show us how to engage with the spiritual world.
Here’s the thing: you only use a sense of you 1. Believe (before thought) that the senses sense something that is there, 2. Believe that the senses are adequate to the task.
If I’m blind I won’t try to see. If I’m leprous I won’t touch. If I’m dead I won’t try to distinguish Lennon’s key shift in the line “in my life I’ve loved you more.”
I know the last one is true because I am musically deaf and I never knew such a thing took place until I read it.
But when I read it, being gullible and trustworthy, I believed the author. And then I listened for it and, wonder of wonders, my believing the author made my senses come alive.
Faith, therefore, is not unique to religion. It is a precondition for all perception. It’s just that when everybody believes the same thing and when we are honored for believing what they believe or shamed for disagreeing we don’t need to be aware of how much our understanding rests on faith.
I’ll stop there because you are a careful thinker and if I keep going I’ll give you too many inconsistencies to process in a reasonable amount of time. Keep on thinking and writing! You bring out the best in your readers.
My reason finds that last point troubling as well, but then I’ve come to realize something I no longer can deny: we already know most things, but many of the things we know we don’t believe. Faith is not arbitrary: real faith just acknowledges the obvious.
The problem is realizing that things are obvious, that we can’t not know them.
I’ve also come to believe that Hebrews 5:14 is the single most practical guide to Christian education: its goal and its means, while 5:12 and 13 show us why we don’t educate that way.
You're right that what we know and what we think we know might not always match up. Discussions like this one always make my human limitations so clear to me.
Thanks for these thoughts, and for the excessively kind words.
I respect Alex's posture too. I think you're right to point out that his approach appeals to his peers (and maybe in one sense he is a microcosm of that generation, which certainly is uncertain, although I'm not sure it's thriving!).
The way you talked about senses is helpful and clarifies the issue. For some (including Alex), the idea of a "spiritual sense" feels quite foreign. So when asked what he makes of it, I can understand why Alex responds that he doesn't seem to have one. How does he go about beginning to experience something with a sense he's never exercised before? How could he be confident he isn't imagining what he has been told to expect?
But I think your musical analogy helps somewhat on that front, and I'll have to think more about it. You're right that faith is essential to every action and perception, and Esther Meek makes that point well. Sometimes I find that very troubling! But maybe it helps humble us in a healthy way too.
This might also help Alex, (who is featured as the video) https://youtu.be/JMjz_V-DmJE?si=54ENHU0kyirxVFrd
I've been meaning to watch this for days! Thanks for the reminder!