Kind: captions
Language: en
when we're beyond good and evil you know
and all that's left is the will to power
then why are we surprised that the
powerful rise and that they use the
power less for their purposes
when we forget ideas like equality and
rights which are grounded in god why are
we surprised that
death camps follow
the following is a conversation with
bishop robert barron founder of ward on
fire and one of the greatest educators
in the world on the beauty and wisdom
within catholicism christianity and
religious faith in general
this is the lex friedman podcast to
support it please check out our sponsors
in the description and now dear friends
here's bishop robert baron
let's start with the big question
who is god
according to christianity according to
catholicism who's god i'll give you
thomas aquinas definition uh god is
ipsum essay subsistence god is the
subsistent act of to be itself
another way to state that in aquinas is
god is that reality unique absolutely
unique
in which essence and existence coincide
to be god is to be to be those are all
ways of talking about what we mean by
god they are kind of gnomic and that's
on purpose there's almost a zen koan
kind of quality about the way we talk
about god
i'm saying something that's substantive
but it's more in like a via negative
mode it's more like what god is not
because there's nothing in the world
that would correspond to those
descriptions
so anything in the world would be a
being of some type or an event of some
type some particular mode of existence
and god is not an entity
in the world in fact i would say that's
the fundamental mistake that atheists
old and new make all the time is they
think of god
as a big being
when aquinas says that god is not in any
genus
even the genus of being it's one of the
strangest remarks in the whole tradition
but it's really interesting so you say
well at the very least god must be a
being right and aquinas's answer is no
he's not in the genus of being so we
talk about god being beyond being and so
on
to say in god essence and existence
coincide is to say god's very nature is
to be and that can't be true of any
contingent thing in the world
so what i'm doing there is i'm i'm
gesturing the way the tradition does
toward god using language that's at the
same time
philosophically precise and gnomic you
know it's both accurate it's true god
essence and existence coincide what god
is is the same as god's uh active to be
but now what does that mean i'm not
quite sure because nothing in our
ordinary experience corresponds to that
everything in our experience is is a
being of some type so it's
existence received according to the mode
of some essence
that's not true of god
which is why you can't be found in the
world and and that's as i say
the fundamental mistake is uh well i
guess theists are those that believe
there's this being alongside the other
beings in the universe and then atheists
say oh no there is no such being um and
that's precisely wrong that's just a
category error
dawkins i think cites bertrand russell
to the effect that proving the
non-existence of god is a bit like
proving the non-existence of a china
teapot orbiting between earth and mars
no that's precisely what god is not some
entity that's sort of hidden among the
other entities of the universe
god is the reason why there's a
contingent realm at all this is the way
to put it
in more theological language god's the
creator of all things
so if god is outside of our world is it
possible
for us to visualize to comprehend to
know god not utterly of course and i
would say our knowledge begins always in
this world begins in ordinary experience
but i think we can through metaphysical
analysis through philosophical reasoning
can come to some knowledge
of a reality which is transcendent to
our experience so we gesture toward it
i always like aquinas who says the
language about god that we use is
analogical
so it's not it's not univocal meaning
what i say about that you know can or
about this bottle i can say about god no
that makes god an entity at the same
time it's not simply equivocal so if i
say well that thing is and god is i mean
totally different things no no i mean
something analogous so to be god is to
be to be so the real meaning of being is
the being of god the being of that thing
or this thing or the being of galaxies
or subatomic particles would be
analogous to god's manner of being so on
that basis i can make some statements i
can
i can theorize and even at the limit as
you suggest i can visualize
so we have metaphors for god and
the bible is replete with those rights
god is a rock uh you know god's like a
lion god's like this and that or the
bible will sometimes imagine god as a as
a human being walking around you know
now only the crude fundamentalism would
say well that's a
universal accurate
description of god it's an image that's
catching something of god's manner of
being
then
what does it mean
to
believe in god
so there's a word
and we have to limit ourselves to human
interpretable words today
there's a word called faith
what does faith mean so if
we can't really directly know god
you kind of sneak up
to the idea of god with metaphors
better he sneaks up on us because i like
the language of grace god's action comes
first
so if i stay
perfectly within the realm of i'm
seeking with my kind of eagle eyes and
my inquiring mind
i'm not going to find god that way i i
might find a path
that opens up but i would say finally
god finds me and i think then the
language of faith begins to make more
sense
i'm with paul tillich though the
protestant theologian said the most
misunderstood word in the religious
vocabulary's faith
because he said the way we take it
usually is something sub-rational
you know i have i have uh proof of this
i i really know this and i only kind of
believe that like that's just a personal
opinion or impression
but that's to identify
faith with the kind of infrarational and
and that's not it i mean i don't want
something in for irrational i don't want
superstition or or childish credulity so
authentic faith
is is the darkness beyond reason and on
the far side of reason it's it's super
irrational not infrarational
and that's a very important move
at the limit of what i can know at the
limit of my striving and my vision
there's this horizon that opens up and i
think that's true even in ordinary ways
of knowing there's a kind of a horizon
that lures us beyond what i've got
faith has to do more with that kind of
darkness rather than a darkness prior to
reason
the darkness beyond the horizon
prior to reason
first of all the poetry language is
incredible to be to be
you have a million questions yeah go
ahead
i do too
uh so first of all let me just jump
around uh you mentioned to be to be a
few times yeah what does that mean
well to be me is to be a human being
right to be this to be a table this
would be a microphone so it's
i'll use aquinas's language it's the act
of being
poured if you want into the receptacle
of some essential principle so it's got
a ontological structure it's it's an
existent it's a thing that exists
but it's it's existing in a limited way
according to an essential principle
uh
god said well who what's god what's
god's name what kind of being is he
we'll go back to moses now um when the
israelites ask me you know what's your
name what shall i tell them and he says
you know famously i am who i am
but see aquinas reads that as a very
accurate remark so moses is wondering
okay there's a lot of gods and there's a
lot of things a lot of entities which
one are you you got to be one of them so
tell me your name
in philosophical language give me the
essence that receives your act of
existing right
and god's answer blows the mind of moses
and the whole tradition i am who i am to
be god is to be
so i'm not this or that i'm not up or
down i'm not here or there god is that
whose center is everywhere and whose
circumference is nowhere as as the
mystics put it now can i get a clear and
distinct idea of that no and in a way
that's the whole point if i could i'd be
talking about a being of some kind
so to be god is to be to be is to and
that's you know moses take off your
sandals you're on holy ground
so i'm going to go over confidently and
find out what this thing is this burning
bush i'm going to find out
no no
take off your shoes you're on holy
ground because you're not in charge here
you're not in command because if you've
got shoes on
you can walk wherever you want you can
walk with confidence but you take your
shoes off you're much more vulnerable
and that's appropriate when you're
talking about god you know
here's another interesting thing i
didn't think about the burning bush in
this connection before but
it's a bush that's on fire but not
consumed
is beings are competitive with each
other and so i these can't be in the
same place at the same time these two
beings they're mutually exclusive if you
want
but as god comes close to a creature
he doesn't destroy it or consume it
but the creature becomes more beautiful
and more radiant right but and see
compare it to the to the classical gods
and goddesses when when they come
bursting into
life and experience things are
incinerated and people give way and
they're overwhelmed
then there's this biblical idea of god
comes close and sets things on fire but
doesn't burn them up
and that's because he's not a
competitive being in the world if he
were a big being then he'd be in this
he'd be competing
for space so to speak on the same
ontological grid
but he's not like that
so god can come close
and we come more fully alive
now we're starting to gesture toward the
incarnation i mean the central christian
doctrine that god can actually become
a human
without overwhelming the human he
becomes right so i mean that's that's
kind of the next step but the basic idea
of god is non-competitively
transcendent to the world that's another
way to get at it
non-competitively transcendent to the
world so it's beyond being as the source
of being right
let me make it maybe more more um
imagistic i think a really good analogy
would be author to book
right so
uh like tolkien or someone that writes
one of these big sprawling
novels and tolkien is good too because
he creates a whole world he creates a
new nature a new language new history
all that think of you know the thousands
of characters and the plots and subplots
and all of it
tolkien is utterly responsible for every
bit of that story right every character
every plot every subplot every
description he's completely responsible
he's involved in every nook and cranny
of it
but he's not in the story he's not in
the book you're not going to find him as
a character in the book so that's the
category mistake of the atheist in a way
is i'm looking for god he's a character
in this story somewhere no he's the
author of the story
mysteriously present to every aspect of
the story but not a character in it
right
he is deeply in the story somehow he's
present but he's not
um
even if he is a character he's not
really the full embodiment is not a
character
and people inside
the book can't really know about the
author
right
no right well see augustine says god is
simultaneously in timier intima mayo at
superior sumo mayo he's
closer to me than i am to myself
and he's higher than anything i could
possibly imagine at the same time
because he once you get the the insight
that god is is the sheer active to be
well of course that's true so
right now
god is sustaining us in existence true
aquinas says god is in all things by
essence presence and power and most
intimately so
and
and he's nowhere in this room okay
where's god
he's nowhere in this room he's totally
terribly terror we say he's totally
other
same time but once you crack that code
though i think you see it of like why
that would be true i see now i'm getting
from more philosophical language to more
mystical language because all the
mystics talk that way in these high
paradoxes about god's availability and
unavailability
i i've often thought in the bible story
after story god can neither be grasped
nor hidden from
so the first sinful instinct is to grasp
at god's i've got him i've i understand
him i can i can manipulate him no no no
story after story is told you can't do
that well then the other extreme of the
sinner all right then i'm gonna i'm
gonna run from god i'm gonna avoid god
jonah and the whale you know so he he
has the call from god
and he said no no i'm gonna refuse that
i'm gonna run as far away i'm gonna go
to tarshish which meant like timbuktu
for them at the end of the world
god's got that whale swallow them up and
brings them right back where god wants
them it's a you know poetic way of
saying you can't escape the press of god
at the same time tower of babel i'm
going to build a tower up to god i'm
going to i'm going to grab hold of god
no no you can't do either
so live in the space in between those
two things which would be the space of
friendship with god uh
falling in love with god is neither
grasping nor hiding from god
you mentioned
again a lot of beautiful poetic things
you mentioned grace yeah you mentioned
sin
you mentioned reincarnation
is there a philosophical pragmatic way
to start talking about the pillars of
christianity what are the defining
things that make christianity to you
and and broadly speaking uh to those
that follow the religion
you know in a way what we're doing so
far is is a necessary proper duty
because we're talking about god
um what makes christianity distinctive
of course is the claim of the
incarnation so we come up out of judaism
we come up out of this great
monotheistic tradition and you know the
bible itself and all the great
commentators within judaism i think
would agree with this basic theistic
stuff that i've been talking about
taking moses maimonides for example
now what makes christianity distinct
this
supremely weird claim
that god
becomes one of us god becomes a creature
but without ceasing to be god and
without overwhelming the integrity of
the creature he becomes
what we see in the burning bush that
principle which obtains across the board
so the closer god comes to me the more
radiant i become right
but take that now to the nth degree
would be what we mean by the incarnation
the incarnation of the son of god
becoming a creature
in such a way as to make humanity
radiant and beautiful
that's the pillar of christianity it's
the incarnation you know um
and what follows from that is the
redemption of of all of reality so not
just of human beings but in becoming
a creature god
divinizes the world
you know the greek fathers always said
god became human that humans might
become god
and that's a good way to sum up i think
the essence of christianity
why is this such an important thing so
it's a distinctive thing yeah but why is
it so important philosophically
to what it means to be a christian like
what impact did that have on our world
on human civilization on human nature on
our morals of why live
what to live for the meaning of it all
like why is incarnation so important
well i think it's it's massively
important because it's it's the
divinization principle that god wants to
demonize his creation and and sort of in
this concentrated point of jesus of
nazareth but then we talk about the
mystical body of jesus so that goes
right back to paul
as we're grafted on to christ we talk
about that as the church we become
like cells and molecules in an organism
that's the church it's not an
organization that's a that's a
deformation of ecclesiology the church
is this organism that begins with jesus
and then he's drawing
all of humanity but ultimately all of
nature all of all of creation to himself
when the son of man is lifted up he will
draw all things to himself that idea of
the gathering in of a of a scattered
creation so in that way it's at the
heart of it then there's all kinds of
things if god becomes human that means
there's a dignity to humanity which goes
beyond anything any humanist of any
stripe has ever said right ancient
medieval modern contemporary
christianity is the greatest humanism
imaginable
god became one of us in order to
demonize us
the the goal of my life is not just to
be a good person not just to be
you know materially successful not just
to be um a member of society the goal of
my life is to become a participant in
the divine nature and so there i don't
think there is a humanism greater than
that even conceivably so that's where i
think humanism
is profoundly influenced by the
incarnation
uh and just our notion of god as
non-competitive to us that's so
important because i think it's so many
systems from mythology onward you have
these competitive understandings of god
when jesus says to his disciples the
night before he dies i no longer call
you servants but friends it's an
extraordinary moment because every god
right who's ever been served well that's
that's the best we can hope for is the
servant of god
you know i i try to obey you lord i'll
try to do what you want but when jesus
says i no longer call you servants or
slaves you would have said in the greek
there you know
um but friends
i don't know
i can't imagine anything greater than
that becoming god's friend that's a call
to become
one with with god it's possible to
become uh become one with god now i
should mention
you're one of the greatest religious
communicators i've ever experienced a
lot of a huge number of people are fans
of yours you've done
a lot of great conversations you've done
reddit amas which is a very unique
bold
brave thing
and uh on one of them somebody asked um
what's the most challenging of the seven
deadly sins so first what
are the seven deadly sins what do they
have to do with christianity how
essential how crucial they are to uh the
religion and what's the most challenging
in our modern day
yeah to name them uh pride
envy anger
sloth avarice gluttony and lust are the
seven deadly sins
or quote capital sin sometimes uh from
couplet they're the head sins from which
things tend to flow
the most fundamental is pride
uh
probably most people today if you talk
about like vice or you talk about you
know deadly sin they would think about
lust but the classical authors including
dante who does this pictorially
there that's the least of the deadly
sense is lust because it's the one
that's most sort of
dependent upon the body and it's and
it's passions and so on
the most important is pride pride is the
deadliest of deadly sins and it's very
simple to see why
pride is the augustine calls it
incravats and say i'm caved in around
myself
like a black hole right to get into the
scientific
but the black hole to me is a great
symbol you know that
it it's so heavy that draws everything
including light nothing can escape from
it
see that's the center this we're all
sinners uh we're like black holes that
we draw everything into ourselves
so
as a sinner and you know i'll confess
i'm a sinner um the temptation is okay
this is the bishop baron moment and i'm
gonna i'm drawing you now into my you
know world and so on
what that does is it kills us off and it
make it it darkens life
and it makes it small and and heavy and
awful right
it's like
but see compared to the to the
contrasting thing is when you're lost in
a moment
you're not concerned about the
impression i'm making you're not
concerned about drawing the world into
yourself you're not concerned about this
monkey on my back that's always telling
me you know look good and sound right
but you're you're lost in something
you're just you're just talking you know
to a friend and the two of you together
are discovering something true or or
beautiful or you're lost in a movie or
you're lost in a book those are the best
moments in life those are the best
because the least prideful moments right
that's when i the light comes out
i i become radiant because i i'm
overcoming this tendency to fall in on
myself um
dante is so good because the way he
pictures um satan in divine comedy and
you know he's at the center of the earth
so like a black hole that way like he's
at the center of gravity he's at the
heaviest place
and he there's not fire where he is but
ice it's a much much better image that
you're frozen in place and you're stuck
and he's got wings
right and they used to be angel wings
because he's an angel but now they're
like bat wings for dante and they're
flapping
and all they're doing is making the
world around him colder because he's ice
he's stuck in his own iciness and then
he's he's beating his wings over the ice
and making everyone else colder it's a
great image
and then he has this is cool too he has
three faces uh satan
because he's a simulacrum of the trinity
so every sinner thinks he's god so i
pretend i'm god so he's got the three
faces and from all six eyes he weeps
also from all three mouths he's chewing
a sinner he's got cassius
brutus and judas in the three miles you
know the three traitors
but
i thought it it's just a great image of
all of us sinners is we're stuck
it's heavy it's cold we're chewing on
our past resentments we're weeping in
our sadness and we're making the world
around us colder it's beautiful it's a
great so that's pride see that's an
image of pride because satan that's his
great sin pride which is why he needed
michael right mikael who's like god so
that the great challenge to him which we
need all the time is someone to say wait
a minute wait a minute you're not god
but the minute we say i'm god
black hole i now cave in on myself i
suck everything into myself and i turn
into dante satan
so that's a great image that's pride
that's the most fundamental
that's the uber capital sin it's all the
other ones flow from that in a way so in
general empathy humility compassion love
thy neighbor always the way to fight
this the sin of pride right which is why
the masters tend to say this was bernard
saint bernard was asked what are the
three most important virtues and he said
humility tasks humility tests and
humility
because it's the opposite of pride yeah
so
but you know they're bringing aquinas in
again uh because we think i'm humility
i'm no good that's not what it means at
all it means what i was describing
before when you're you're just lost in
something you're just lost in it um my
image i live out in santa barbara and uh
i like to walk on the beach out there
and there's a section of the beach where
they let the dogs you know run free
without leashes
and uh
when you see a dog and
he's well cared for and his master's
right there and and the master's
throwing the tennis ball out and the
surf and the dog goes galloping out into
the surf and he gets it with a big smile
and comes running back
that's that's humility that's an image
of heaven because he's just lost in that
moment he doesn't care about impressing
anybody don't care about
what people think of him he's just lost
in it
that's it that's heaven right
and those moments in our life when we
when we get that it's a little hint of
of paradise but but the trouble is most
of us live frankly most of the time in
various levels of hell
you know and we're and we're dealing
with these deadly sins like envy flows
from pride because if i'm prideful i'm a
black hole i'm in curvature sensei i'm
collapsed in what am i really going to
be concerned about that guy's got more
attention than i am that guy's richer
than i am
that that lady she's got a bigger
reputation than i do and why why don't i
have that right so envy is a very close
daughter of pride
um
anger flows from
why do i get angry the dog isn't getting
angry on the beach when he's running
after the tennis ball but i get angry
all the time sputter with anger when
things aren't going my way and and
you're insulting me and you're not doing
what i want and i'm being hurt my
reputation so anger flows from pride you
know
all of them do all the deadly sins do so
you said i'm a sinner
so we're all sinners yeah
um
you mentioned satan where's the so
there's
heaven and hell
there's god and satan
where's the line
between what it means to be good
and uh
not good enough
or i i hesitate to use the word sort of
uh evil but uh yeah maybe
overwhelmingly sinful
where's the line between hell and heaven
think of them as limit concepts maybe
they're like heuristic devices yes so
heaven would name
this ultimate friendship with god so
think of the dog on the beach who is
just he's fallen in love
with his environment with his master
with the serf he's just lost in it right
he's forgotten himself he's transcended
himself and is now lost in the wonder of
the beauty of that place
now
imagine the limit of that is the is the
friendship with god that we talked about
that i become the friend of god i become
so
forgetful of myself
so lost in the beauty and truth and
goodness of god that i'm
i've i found beatitude right i found
joy the beatific vision we call it uh
that's the limit case that's that's
where we're tending that's where god
wants us to go think of hell as the
limit case in the opposite direction
that's curvature sensei that's the black
hole and we're all sinners meaning we're
somewhere on that spectrum you know we
we have good days and bad days and we
have good moments and bad moments and i
can be drawn toward
sin
what's god's purpose and christianity's
reading is to bring us out of that you
know now where did he go he went all the
way into it to get us out of it it's
like
pulling the sock back out socks inside
out you have to go all the way in and
pull it back out and so
god had to go all the way down
you know and there there's the
trajectory of the incarnation
though he was in the form of god and
this is saint paul jesus did not deem
equality with god a thing to be grasped
that but rather emptied himself and took
the form of a slave being born in the
likeness of men but then
he was known to be of human estate
and he accepted even death
death on a cross and so paul imagines
that the incarnation is this downward
journey
in order to get all of us right all of
us who were stuck
were stuck in our sin
and so again paul says he became sin on
the cross it's a really really powerful
idea he wasn't a sinner because then
he'd need to be saved too he's not a
sinner but he entered into our
dysfunction in order to pull us back out
of it
so
that's a really powerful message
an embodiment
uh uh sort of educating the world about
sin
that said day to day
there's like uh
oscillations in terms of how much
um each human sends and there's a
struggle against that
so
you know that dog that loses himself
on the beach
may have had a lot of sex with other
dogs leading up to that that was uh
maybe not the best dog he could be
leading up to that so how you know if
it's a math equation
what does the final
calculation look like in terms of ending
up in heaven what does it mean to live a
good
life in the end is it
um
the average modest thing you do is is
low can you are you allowed to make
mistakes
yeah uh you know the the the metric is
love
right and love is not a feeling it's an
act of the will
to will the good of the other that's
aquinas again to will the good of the
other as other and see that's the
anti-black hole principle
when i i don't wield the good of the
other as others because if i'm willing
you're good because it's good for me so
uh again you know it's good for you that
i'm on this program i guess i'm willing
you're good but that's cause it's gonna
be down to my benefit right that's just
an indirect egotism
that's why i see love is really rare and
strange that i
really want
what's good for you as other
so not connected to the black hole
tendency of my own prideful ego when
i've broken that
i've forgotten self and i've moved into
the space of your own good that's what
love is now god wants us to be you know
by this they will know that you're my
disciples that you love one another
jesus says so that's it
now i mean life is
ups and downs and back and forth and
we're better or worse at that
the point of the church is to graft us
onto christ that we might become more
and more conformed to love but you know
the final calculus i'll leave that to
god i mean like but but use love as the
metric at the end of the day when you
examine your conscience
did i will the good of the other today
how how effective was i at that
and be just like ignatia loyola be
brutally honest
or was i just willing someone's good
because it was good for me
uh what where where were those moments
where i was like the dog on the beach
yeah see see and and see play at the
what not so much god the lawgiver
surveying and you did you know three of
those and four it's god wants us to be
fully alive
saint irenaeus is one of my great heroes
ancient you know patristic figure and
his famous line is gloria day homo
vivens right the glory of god is a human
being fully alive
see and that gets us over this sort of
obsession with illegalism and did i do
enough and is that that's a big enough
sin and
god wants us fully alive the key to that
is willing the good of the other he he
died
that we might come to a richer
appropriation of that so to be fully
alive
is to be in love with the world or to
love the world
deeply and what love means is the other
is get out of yourself right it's it's
it's the humility yeah getting out of
yourself
that's somehow is not
uh that's not even selfless because uh
the word selfless requires her to be a
self
uh it's it's almost like just letting go
yeah it might talk about like a gift of
self that you you're self aware but you
you give a gift of yourself
yourself becomes not a magnet drawing
things into itself but it becomes a
radiant source of life for others like
mother teresa would have had a keen
sense of herself it seems to me but it
was um
to light other people uh up so that they
might be uh radiant
you know that's the game so i think you
probably articulate it that way too
yeah
i love love it's such an interesting
thing but we have to be hard-nosed about
it like you know your friend dostoevsky
love is a harsh and dreadful thing yeah
right it's not a feeling and our culture
is so sentimentalized love that it's
having warm feelings or doing what
people want and that's not it at all
love is always correlated to the order
of the good because if i'm willing the
good of the other i have to know what
that good is right yeah so a parent that
says oh give the kid whatever she wants
well that's not love that's that's
indulgence or that's sentimentality
but i have to know what the goods really
are if i'm going to will them for you
right yeah i in some sense you're you're
absolutely right a component of love
is the struggle to know the other right
it's to struggle to understand i mean
that's um that's what i mean by empathy
it's the yeah it's not it's yeah it's
not valentine's day romantic gifts it's
uh it's a struggle it's like uh
trying to understand trying to perturb
your own mind and that of another human
being to try to figure out who they are
what they want
what makes them uh
happy what are they afraid of what are
they hoping for and it's like a dance
right dance of conversation a dance of
uh just
shared experiences and all that kind of
stuff and all of that requires for you
to be
i guess um
yeah empathize
and imagine
yourself in their place
and then love that person when you're
living inside that person yeah
several minutes ago about the pillars of
christianity so we talked about god talk
about incarnation but you're getting now
to a third key one
namely the trinity
because
we're monotheists right but we don't
think god is monolithically one we think
god is a play of persons
and the father from from
all eternity
uh by a great mental act
forms his interior word as aquinas puts
it
and that's the law gauss right that's
the verb that's the word by which the
father knows himself and we call that
the sun so the imago it's the image of
the father but then see the great thing
is that imago is not like just a dead
image on a mirror or a dead image in a
pond or something it's
it's a full
reflection of the father's being
he's one in being with the father
therefore the son has everything the
father has except being the father but
that means that the two of them look at
each other
and they're just crazy in love with each
other because
the father is the fullness of being the
son is the fullness of being and they're
so crazy in love with each other that
they this is um
fulton she put it this way that there's
this
they just they love each other with this
sigh and we call that the spiritual
sanctus that's the holy breath right the
holy
sigh of love between the father and the
son
and that's there's one being one essence
we say of god but in these three persons
but all your language about like dance
and play and community
the greek fathers talked about perry
coraces which means god the three
persons kind of sit in a choir together
so they they um they sing together you
know
and and that's why see
christianity is unique in this claim
that god is love so every religion will
say god loves you know in some way love
is an attribute of god god is or love is
a thing that god does sometimes but
christianity is unique in all the
religions in saying that god is love and
somehow
the holy trinity embodies that idea i
mean that yes philosophically has always
been confusing to me
what it means to be
three things
and at the same time be
one god the father son and the holy
spirit
what what is this dance between these
three what what exactly like how how do
you visualize how do you understand this
yeah this this very this very
fascinating essential thing for
christianity the first thing i'd say is
what we already have been sort of
talking about is if you say god is love
and most people probably say yeah i like
that it's a good idea god is love but
it's very peculiar because if he is love
there has to be in his unity
a lover
a beloved and the love that they share
otherwise he isn't loved by his very
essence he would love
it would be an attribute of god
or an action of god but if it's his very
nature there has to be lover beloved and
love shared and the tradition eventually
came to see that
the image i was using before of of the
father his imago the son
well that's born of god's infinite mind
so of of course god has an image of
himself heck i've got an image of myself
that's something i can pull off as a as
a puny little creature god
in his infinity has a perfect image of
himself
and they have to fall in love with each
other what else can they do
because they're in the presence of
infinite good and so
it has to follow that you then have the
shared love that connects them
and that's how we generate if you want
this idea of the three persons in god
let me ask you about the church yeah one
of the defining characteristics of
catholicism
is the catholic church yeah
what is the catholic church
i would say it's the mystical body of
jesus so as i said before it's not an
organization if we do it that way we're
going to miss it it's got organizational
elements to it you know so i'm a bishop
i'm a i'm a office holder within the
church but the church is an organism not
a not an organization so it's a organism
of interconnected cells as i said namely
all of the baptized gathered around
christ missed in a mystical union
that's the church but there's buildings
yeah there's titles sure
uh because it manifests itself
institutionally then but so are the sort
of
heavy things about that all have to do
with pride
yeah sure whatever sexiness of the
buildings yeah no whatever is corrupt in
the church of course it comes from pride
from sin and one thing i like about you
know the new testament is so clear on
that i mean paul is in his little tiny
communities so before there was a
vatican or dioceses or anything
apologies little tiny communities of
christians like in corinth and ephesus
you know
what's the one thing we know about them
is they fought with each other
because paul's always upgrading them and
you know telling them come on would you
people get it together and you know
who's bewitched you and so from the
beginning we've been fighting with each
other because we're made up of sinners
and uh
you know so but one thing we do in in
catholic ecclesiology is the official
name for the study of the church is to
talk about the treasure and earthen
vessels
paul's language again the treasure is
christ the treasure is is
is the love he's bequeathed to the world
that's the treasure that we have but
it's always held in these really fragile
vessels namely us
and so it's gonna be marked by
corruption and stupidity and pride and
everything else
well nevertheless there's a hierarchy
there's titles and so on
if we remove pride from the picture so
the best possible interpretation
of the hierarchy that makes up this one
organism this living organism
what's the
what's the role of the pope for example
what is the role
of uh a bishop for example like what is
the role of the hierarchy in terms of
the broader vision of
christianity catholicism as a religion
i'm a devotee of this guy named johan
adam mueller who was a theologian early
part of the 19th century and he was part
of the kind of romantic movement
and he said the purpose of the pope
is to symbolize and embody and draw
together the unity of the entire church
so he's the personal symbol of the unity
of the church
who's a bishop the bishop is the
personal symbol of the unity of a
diocese
who's a pastor of a parish he's the
personal symbol of the unity of that
parish so he understood it not so much
organizationally as organically again it
was like
what
that around which the pattern organizes
itself and if you don't have that that
unifying figure the community will kind
of facilitate and you see that all the
time without headship we would say
so it's more symbolic and organic than
it is um organizational so symbols for
community but there's such
uh fascinating peculiarities to each
individual symbol
see there's different characteristics
that make up the different people they
have different
ways of communicating they have
different hopes and fears and all that
kind of stuff
what uh
if if they're all symbols
what's the role of the
different peculiarities of those symbols
of being an inspiring uniter versus
maybe a stronger type of
um
more judgmental kind of communicator all
that kind of stuff i mean
can you maybe speak to the human part
of this
of these symbols yeah well i i might
just shift to another image um of
shepherd so that's a classic biblical
image and as a bishop i walk around with
this thing called the crosier which is a
shepherd's staff right so it's the
symbol of the bishop's office
and the crusher though is a kind of um
it's a kind of in-your-face thing in a
way because it's got the
the end of it was meant to hold off
wild animals and then the the crook part
of it was meant to bring sheep back to
the fold right so i walk in with that oh
this is nice look at the bishop coming
in but that's a kind of in-your-face
symbol that i'm here to defend the
church against predators and i'm also
here to draw people in who are wandering
too far away
so that's okay and that's part of of the
role of the hierarchy and the pope and
bishops and and pastors pastor just
means shepherd right then the shepherd
of a parish so that's okay it's not like
just all you know sunshine and light and
what a pretty image uh the the one who
embodies the unity of the community is
also the shepherd
okay but again leaning on the human
thing yeah
the church is an institution
and i don't know if you've heard
but there is an element to power that
corrupts yeah and absolute power
corrupts absolutely as the old saying
goes
um
let me ask you something else that came
up on the reddit uh ama yeah mega
churches and the prosperity gospel and
yeah you've mentioned
that you may not be a fan
what are your views on this and what are
your views in general of money and power
corrupting the heads of these
institutions
uh i don't like the prosperity gospel
because uh the gospel is about
jesus journey into
radical self-forgetfulness on the cross
and he never makes a promise of earthly
well-being can you explain what the
prosperity gospel is yeah the view that
you know if i follow jesus and i follow
god with great trust that i will be
rewarded with
wealth and and position and status in
this world
it might be god's will but i got that
but you know aquinas said this that
let's say i look at a very sinful person
i said kind of he's got a great house
and he's richer than i am and all that
aquinas says yeah but what maybe that's
a punishment because maybe all that is
leading him away from god and actually
that's god's way of punishing him and
the fact that you don't have wealth in a
big house is actually a great gift to
you because now it frees you for doing
god's will so we we can't read
you know god's favor in worldly terms
i would say god's favor is am i
awakened to deeper love then i know that
i'm finding god's favor now god might
decide sure i want you to have this and
that i want i want to provide this to
you fine then i say thank you lord how
can i use it as an instrument of love
see
all the masters talk about detachment
and that's another reason i don't like
the prosperity gospel is though i'm i'm
getting attached now to all these
material advantages
and i'm even seeing them as a sign of
god's favor
let go of all that you let go of it and
use it as a vehicle of love so if you're
rich the right question is okay lord why
did you allow me to become rich so that
what can i do how can my riches be an
expression of love if i'm popular if i'm
healthy
okay why am i popular why am i healthy
how can i use that for your good i'm
sick in bed i'm suffering
okay
lord how can i use that as an expression
of love
so i'd rather measure it that way than
through worldly success that's why i'm
against the prosperity gospel
okay
so there's uh
don't seek worldly possessions but
whatever happens to you
good or bad
seek how that could be used
to increase the amount of love in the
world right the image i i love for this
is the wheel of fortune which is a
device on a lot of the gothic cathedrals
and it's it's this great circle right
this wheel and the top of his is a king
and then it turns this way and the king
has lost his crown and the bottom is a
pauper and then over here is a king he's
a guy climbing up to power right
and then in the middle is a depiction of
christ
and the idea is very simple but very
profound that the wheel is life you know
it's sometimes you're up sometimes
you're down sometimes you have power and
popularity and prestige other times
you're losing it you're going down other
times you've got none of it other times
you're coming back up okay don't live on
the rim of the wheel it'll make you
crazy every point on the rim of the
wheel is a point of anxiety where you
should live is the center of the wheel
where christ is right because that's the
link now to the eternity of god that's
the point of of love
where love can flow through you to the
world and then you can look at the wheel
you're a beatles fan right i think i
discovered that i love the beatles
and the song that always comes to my
mind when i when i think of that image
is john lennon at the end of his life
so a guy that i mean rode the wheel of
fortune like crazy you know he was at
the top of the world in every way
and then beatles break up and he kind of
loses it and then he's at the lost
weekend in the 70s it's the very bottom
when he died he was just kind of coming
back up again but
the song i always think of is watching
the wheels right i'm just sitting here
watching the wheels go round around i
really love to watch them roll because
i'm no longer riding on the
merry-go-round that's right out of the
medieval mystics that he's not riding on
the on the wheel he's just watching it
go round and round that's the point of
uh the greece called apathea and the
latins called it uh uh in indifference
you know
not like i'm blase it just means i'm i'm
detached
from success failure
less success more success i'm detached
from that i'm sitting here watching the
wheels go round and round
because i'm not writing on it anymore
the mystics have always made that
transition
let me ask you a difficult question
about the darker side of human nature of
human power
of
institutions what's your view on the
long history and widespread reports of
sexual abuse of children
by a catholic priest so this is a a
difficult topic but may be an important
one to shine a light on yeah it's awful
you know and it's it's been a problem go
back to peter damien back in the 11th
century was talking about it so it's
been a problem and whenever really
sinful human beings have been in close
proximity to children we've we find this
issue has it been around the church yes
um
has it surfaced in a kind of sickening
way in the last 30 years absolutely
um
i'm glad the church has made important
strides and it has
back in 2002 there was a thing called
the dallas accords where the bishops of
america
put a lot of these protocols in place
that really have been effective
at ameliorating this problem
the numbers spiked in the 70s and 80s
and that's been demonstrated over and
over again and then they fell
dramatically after that so
that's not to excuse anything but to say
i think progress has been made with it
what's the impulse to secrecy
yeah well to protect institutions you
know that's always that's a sinful
instinct uh i'm not all together i mean
sure an institution is worth protecting
but if it reaches the point where you're
indifferent to people's uh
well-being then you're in trouble
so institutions role
should be transparent and honest with
the sins of its members and as itself
sure yeah
so maybe you can speak to the fact
uh as a priest the bishop
as part of catholicism
you're not allowed to marry
you're not allowed to have sex
uh you're
you're sworn to celibacy
what is what is behind that idea
what is the sort of we talked about some
broad stroke yeah
ideas of love
you know what's behind the idea of
celibacy and that's a good way to get at
it it's a path of love so it the church
is always in favor of inculcating love
marriage is a path of love but so is
celibacy
um saint paul talks about someone who is
preoccupied with the things of of this
world and family and those who are free
from that are free or for doing the work
of god so that's kind of a pragmatic
justification for celibacy and we still
i think take that seriously
look at my own life i mean celibacy has
enabled me to do all kinds of things and
go places and and
and
minister in a way that i could not if i
had been married so i get it i get the
pragmatic side but i i'm more
interested in the sort of mystical side
of it um
remember jesus was challenged about the
person who had a whole series of
husbands and and then they all died and
so in heaven which one will will uh you
know which which husband will the wife
have and his answers is in heaven people
don't marry and they're not given in
marriage there's a there's a higher way
of love it's a more radical way of love
it's not tied to a particular but i
think through god is tied to everybody
the celibate and this has been to the
beginning of the church
not as a law but there were there were
celibates from the very beginning of the
church including jesus of course and
paul
um
they sense something that that way of
living
mystically anticipates the way we'll
love in heaven it's a sign even now
within this world of how we will all
love in heaven
so
in that way it's a bit like pacifists um
i'm glad there are pacifists in the
church and i i've known some you know
some very powerful witnesses to pacifism
i'm glad they're pacifists because they
witness even now to how we will be in
heaven when every tear is wiped away and
we beat our swords into plowshares and
you know
heaven's a place of radical peace that
some people even now live it at the same
time i'm glad not everyone's a pacifist
because i i would hold with the church
to just war theory that there's
sometimes all we can do in this finite
world is to is to fight you know uh
manifest wickedness so and just in the
same way there's just sex
well no right i'm glad there are
celibates but i'm glad not everyone's a
celebrity i wouldn't want that i mean
because because uh married love is a
marvelous expression of the divine love
so that's why it's good there are some
and it's always been a small number the
actual experience of it would you
uh the spiritual nature of it is it
similar to fasting so i've been enjoying
fasting uh recently so not eating yeah
uh for several days that kind of stuff
and that somehow brings you
even deeper i'm in general in love with
everything and with nature and
everything i see the beauty in the world
but there's a greater intensity to that
when you're fasting for example
yeah i i might use the language of you
know sublimation or redirection of
energy and all that um
i i think that's true there's a certain
sublimation of energies into um
prayer into
mysticism into ministry
um a redirection of energies
so it's meant to be life enhancing the
same way fasting is it's meant
ultimately to be life enhancing and make
you healthier and happier
so celibacy is a is a path of love and i
think it does involve you a certain
redirection of energies i'd say that
don't you think
do you think
it's a heavy burden
for some humans to bear
some priests to bear is that sure is
that the thing given this
the
the the sexual abuse scandal
um
is that the thing that breaks
no i i wouldn't tie that to celibacy and
that's been uh demonstrated over and
over again there's a priest named andrew
greeley who was a priest from my home
diocese of chicago and
andy did a lot of research sociologists
of religion did a lot of research into
that very question and there really is
not a correlation between celibacy per
se
and the sexual abuse of children or of
anybody so i wouldn't make that
correlation so bad people sinful people
are going to do what they're going to do
i think people
who have a tendency toward uh
abusing children sexually are drawn to
situations where they get ready access
to kids and they get institutional cover
so that's the only thing go through the
list of you know from sports and and boy
scouts etc um and that's been proven
again and again so i would tie it more
to that i wouldn't tie it to celibacy so
the the challenge of course is all kinds
of you said institutional cover there's
all kinds of institutions that cover
for people that don't that do
uh evil onto the world to do uh sinful
things on the world
but there's something about the church
which is um
the as an organism
is supposed to be an embodiment of good
in this world right of love in this
world and
it breaks people's hearts yeah see this
kind of even a small amount yeah uh this
kind of thing happened within the church
it it wakes you up to the cruelty the
absurdity of the world sometimes like
it's it's uh it's back to the
the question of why do bad things happen
to good people yeah why does god allow
this kind of thing to happen
and uh sort of maybe unanswerable do you
have an answer to that question i can
gesture toward it using
rather abstract language which is true
enough
it's completely emotionally unsatisfying
but it's naming it truthfully enough
and it goes back to augustine which is
god
permits
evil to bring about a greater good
now again i know how unsatisfying that
sort of spare austere language can sound
but it gets us off the horn of the horns
of a dilemma you know a queen is you
know when he lays out a question he
always has the objections first so is
there a god well objection one objection
to objection three and he's really talk
about steel manning an argument aquinas
is great at that
um
one of the really steel manned arguments
is that the right grammatical form
one of the what's the past participle
about the steel man um
but one of the best
arguments he formulates it this way
um
if one of two contraries be infinite the
other would be altogether destroyed
and as example from his medieval physics
he goes if there were infinite heat
there'd be no cold right
but god is described as
infinitely good
therefore if god exists there should be
no evil
but there is evil
therefore god does not exist
that's a darn good argument that's a
really persuasive argument and and i
think i've done this for a long time in
apologetics and then in sort of higher
philosophy um that's the best argument
against god
um but here's something before i press
head with it something i find really
interesting i think the three best
arguments against god
all come from within the religious
tradition
namely the book of job
so job he's great i mean he's a great
guy he does everything right he's he's
god's great servant and he and he's
punished in every possible way you know
he has every possible suffering
aquinas's argument from the summa and
then
to your friend and mine uh dostoevsky i
think in the brothers karamazov uh
yvonne's argument when he's trying to
wreck the faith of alyosha
and it's um
these examples drawn they think from
dostoyevsky from the headlines of his
own time
of the most abject cruelty to children
like an innocent child being made to
suffer
how
in god's name could that happen if god
exists and he's all good
so i get it but see the book of job
thomas the coin is dusty these are all
profoundly believing people it's like
when i hear um stephen fry you know the
uh famously atheist
writer he he will bring out this
argument with great authority he does
of you know children with bone cancer
and worms that go into the eyes of
children and blind them before they kill
them and
but he's been preceded by the author of
job thomas aquinas and dostoevsky who
who stood right
think of job in the in the whirlwind he
stands there in the in the whirlwind you
know
so
you can't blame the christian tradition
for not dealing with this problem you
know for like uh
brushing it under the carpet i mean it
has it has stood in the whirlwind of
this problem it's still a difficult
problem to deal with that there's all
this cruelty of the world
it's uh there's a lot of example to
history just
yeah in my own family history with the
soviet union with
stalin
yeah
the
atrocities that stalin has brought onto
its the people of the soviet union
throughout the 20th century is
nearly immeasurable yeah
and yet
when you look at the entirety of human
history you will see progress not just
the soviet union but the entirety of the
civilization throughout the 20th century
and stalin has a role to play
there's a there's a dark aspect to
somehow
evil
helps us make progress
and i don't know how to put that in the
calculation
it's uh i don't you know on the local
scale i want to alleviate suffering i'm
right probably
lean heavily lean pacifist
not out of weakness but out of strength
but man
it does seem that uh history sprinkled
with evil and that evil does somehow
nudge us
towards good
yes sometimes we can see it and that's
where the that's where the idea comes
from that evil's permitted to bring
about some greater good and we can
sometimes really see it
um can we always see it no in fact
typically we don't see it but now you
bring another factor into this which is
the difference between our minds and
god's mind so our minds i mean look even
they're remarkably capacious but they
take in a tiny tiny tiny swath of of
space and time and even like our eyes
can only take in so much of the light
spectrum and these little these little
ape sensorium that we have that could
just take in a a little tiny bit of
reality really
how are we ever in a position to say
oh no there's no possible good that
would ever come from that
even the greatest evil that you know
every dostoevsky and that can conjure up
and stephen fry
still how could we
have the arrogance to say
i know there's no good that could ever
come from that i know there's no morally
justifiable reason why god would ever
permit that because i think that's
hubris
to the nth degree for us to say that
and that's the assumption behind this
claim that
god can permit evil to bring about a
greater good now god understands it
but we're like
we're like little kids you know like a
four-year-old and their parents make a
decision and we said what why in the
world would you do this to me um
this is my pastoral experience years ago
there was a young father and his son was
like three or something and he was in
the hospital for something i forgot what
it was but he had to undergo surgery
right so after the surgery he's in great
pain this poor kid this three-year-old
kid and the dad was there with him
you know holding his hand and you know
and the son this is what the father told
me he said he's looking at me
like what gives here i mean why would
you you love me i i've always assumed
that
and yet you're presiding over this
somehow you're approving of this and
doing nothing to get me out of it right
and he said the kid couldn't articulate
that but his eyes did and his eye and
the father said it was just killing me
because i knew i couldn't explain it to
him
and it's true he could vaguely gesture
toward but the kid didn't understand
surgery and cutting his body and taking
things out of it and that this was gonna
you know make him much better in the
long run
but i remember thinking it's a great
metaphor for us vis-a-vis god is here's
god infinitely loving god who's with us
all the time and we say
what are you doing why aren't you taking
this away from me
and the answer i mean ultimately is
trust
trust me
surrender to me and when we don't that's
uh
get we get in trouble with the old pride
and the hubris and all that kind of
stuff yeah no but trust me what i tell
you i mean i completely get it in my own
life and as a priest you're dealing with
suffering all the time with people in
pain all the time i remember as a young
priest there was a
there was a policeman in our parish so
he had a gun and
inexplicably
no one had any clue he got up one night
shot his son to death and then shot
himself
is in my parish so i went to the uh the
wake i remember i show up and i'm this
young 27 year old goofball priest and i
might roll my collar on and i i walk in
and there were two coffins the two
coffins in the room you know there's the
son and the father and the mother was
there
and she
she went like this to me like like
she saw me okay you're the you're the
religious guy here yeah what and
just by instinct i
i went like that too i'm like
i i don't i don't know what to tell i i
can't i don't have an answer for you
but
but i was there i'm not saying to pat
myself on the back it's just that's
where the church goes
because jesus went there see now we're
gesturing toward a more theological
response the first one is more austerely
philosophical god permits evil to bring
about a good but the theological
response is that's where christ went is
he went all the way down he went all the
way down into our suffering
and see the cross
as the limit case of of
of evil um
humiliation and cruelty and
institutional injustice and
psychological suffering and spiritual
suffering and death it's all there
and that's where the son of god went
and i would say that's why as a priest i
i went there that's my job is to go to
those places you know so that's the
ultimate
answer to the problem
so there is
uh we can't
comprehend it but there is meaning to
the suffering and the injustice we
trusted because
we know on other grounds of god's
existence yeah i i would resist the
claim that well this is such a such a
knock-down argument so now we know there
is no god i would say no
there's all kinds of other rational
warrants for god and so i
i know that god exists i know that god
is infinite love and now i got to square
that with this experience and the way i
do that is by a trusting confidence
that god knows what he's about
you know again i know how how inadequate
that always seems to anyone who's
suffering including myself when i'm in
great suffering
but i think that's the best that we've
done in the great tradition so if you
were to steal man that
case
against god or the existence of god
you find the most convincing argument is
there's evil in the world yeah therefore
there's no god there's too much of it
yeah if i were to steal man that
argument i do what stephen fry does i
would do what dostoevsky's yvonne does i
i would do exactly that i would say
there's just too much and then if you
want to keep pressing it um animal
suffering so we talk about human
suffering but the suffering of animals
over the eons and so on um isn't there
just too much suffering
to be reconciled with an infinitely good
god and that's again thomas aquinas i've
just used his very
steel manned argument
you mentioned that uh again on reddit
somebody asked who your favorite um
communicator of atheist ideas was and
you mentioned christopher hitchens yeah
are there other ideas
for atheism
that you find particularly challenging
well
that's the one it's probably evil the
other objection in aquinas which has a
lot of contemporary uh resonance is
can we just explain everything through
natural causes why would you have to
invoke a cause beyond the causes in the
world so as i'm trying to explain
let's say for aquinas motion causality
you know finality
can i just do that with natural causes
wouldn't that suffice to explain it
so i i get like when naturalists
are speaking or people that are pure
materialists they'll just say no that's
perfectly adequate a scientific account
of reality is utterly adequate to
our experience
um so i would steal man that and say
well show me why we need something more
and to do that you got to get out of
plato's cave it seems to me because that
my objection to naturalism
is it it's staying within
the realm of the immediately empirically
observable
and making the mistake of saying that's
all there is to being that's all there
is that needs to be explained and
long before we get to religion
just stay with plato the first step out
of the cave if you combine it now with
the parable of the line is mathematical
objects
and and i'm with those the many people
that would say
mathematics is an experience of the
immaterial
i've stepped out of a merely empirical
physical naturalistic world the minute i
understand
a pure number or a pure equation or a
pure mathematical relationship
which would obtain in any possible world
which are not tied to space and time
that's the first step out of the cave
and then that leads to the more
metaphysical reflections
for example on the nature being i mean
so i could i could talk about this thing
as a physical object and i can analyze
it at all kinds of levels and follow all
the scientists you know up and down
through this thing and
fine fine but i'm still in plato's cave
i'm still looking at the flickering
images on the wall
but when i step out of that
into the mathematical realm i have
entered a different realm of being seems
to me do you think it's possible for the
cave to expand so large that it
encompasses the whole world meaning
is it possible to is it possible that
we're just clueless right now in terms
of
uh scientifically speaking with most of
the world we haven't figured out yet but
do you think it's possible through
science to know god just to look outside
the world so it's fundamentally the
limit of the empirical scientific method
is that we can't know some of these
very big questions no i i can i love
this i'm not a scientist and i was never
all that good at science you know i was
more humanities guy but i love and
respect the sciences but i hate
scientism and scientism is rampant today
with especially young people the
reduction of all knowledge to the
scientific form of knowledge and i i'm a
vehement opponent of that
there are dimensions of being that are
not capturable through a scientific
method of mere observation hypothesis
formation experimentation etc as great
as that is as wonderful as that is but
it's still i think within plato's cave
and that's not to say it's not real it's
just at a relatively low level of
reality um
you step out of plato's cave when you go
into the pure mathematics
that's right you know that article i
just came across it recently and
discovered this whole literature around
it is eugene vigner's article in 1960
called the
unreasonable
applicability of mathematics to the
physical sciences i think that's the
title of it or effectiveness or
something like that yeah but what's so
cool is you know he's not a religious
man he was a kind of a secular jew
but yet he uses the word miracle like
eight times in that article and because
he just is so impressed by the fact that
high complex mathematics describes
so accurately the physical world and can
be used to to create things and to
manipulate
and why should that be true
that there's something very weirdly
mysterious about that relationship you
know and i would say it's because you
you stepped into a higher order of being
which is inclusive of a lower level of
being that's the platonic approach is
that as you move now i'm going to
different metaphor you move to higher
levels they're inclusive of the lower
levels yeah there's some magic there
that seems to at least in our current
understanding of
science uh to be
not quite capturable even consciousness
the idea of consciousness
can i ask you where do you think the
laws of nature come from so i mean sort
of the vigner question where does the
deep
the deep mathematical structure of
things come from how do you explain that
the mathematical structure
or the fact that the structures is
somehow pleasing and beautiful because
those yeah that's right yes those are
two different we'll do the first one for
i'm just curious where do you think it
comes from
i tend to believe even in terms of
physics we don't really know what's
going on there's so so so much more to
be discovered we're
walking around in the dark trying to
figure out a little puzzles here and
there and we're patting ourselves on the
back and how many puzzles we've
discovered so far even ghettos and
completeness theorem
what are the limits of mathematics
eczematic systems i don't
i don't know what is the purpose of
mathematics what is the power of
mathematics is it just a useful tool to
um
study
the world around us or is it something
deeper that we're just discovering
all i know from my emotional perspective
now i am an engineer i'm a robotics ai
person from an emotional perspective i
just find the whole thing beautiful yeah
but that's really cool to me that's a
very interesting clue
see one of the arguments for god is
based on the intelligibility of the
world this very it's like vigner it's
very peculiar fact it seems to me that
the world is so radically intelligible
why should that be true why should it be
the case that being has this
intelligible structure to it so it
corresponds to an acquiring mind
so aquinas can say that the
the intelligible enact is the intellect
and act meaning there's some there's
some deep correspondence between
this and that
and it's i'm with vigner that's i think
really weird and unreasonable and
strange
now my answer is because the
the creator of the universe
is a great mind and uh has stamped the
world with intelligibility
uh in the beginning was the word right
and the word was with god and all things
came to be through the word
don't we shouldn't picture that so much
it's a it's gesturing in this very
powerful direction
there's an intelligence that has imbued
the world with intelligibility
and and we discover that you know
there's something about the simplicity
of the way the world works that that's
where the beauty comes from
and yes
there's something profound to the
mechanism whatever that is
um god that brought that to be the
thought it into being that the world has
been said when the bible says that god
god said let there be light and there
was like god said again we don't
literalize the poetry but it's
it's very rich that god spoke the world
into being
so that means it's it's been it's been
imbued with intelligibility from the
beginning
they say that you know the condition for
the possibility of the of the western
physical sciences was a basically
christian idea namely that the world is
not god
therefore i can i can analyze it
experiment upon it i can i don't
divinize it i don't have a mystical
relationship to the world it's not god
but secondly that it's it's absolutely
in every nook and cranny intelligible
and those two ideas are correlated to
the idea of creation so it's been
created it's not god's other than god
but yet it's touched in every dimension
by god's mind and when those two things
are in place the sciences get underway
you know i don't worship the world
anymore
but i'm also utterly confident i can
come to know it
and those are theological ideas
well we live in this world
so we can solve quite a lot of problems
of this world by making the assumption
that this world is fully understandable
and we don't need to worry about what's
outside the world in some sense in order
to build bridges and
rockets
and computers and all that kind of stuff
it's only when we get to the questions
that are deeper
about why we're here at all what does it
mean to be good all those kinds of
things do we need to reach outside of
this
world can i introduce another one so i
talked about mathematics i think it's
stepping out of a cave it's stepping out
of just the purely empirical you know
world
but the very fact we use a word like
universe to me is very interesting even
if you say multiple universes to me that
it's like well they're
they're
whatever this the whole is the totality
universem turned toward the one
um
why would we call it that why would why
wouldn't we just call it an aggregate
it's just an aggregate of stuff it's an
aggregate of all but we call it a
universe and my answer from the
classical metaphysical tradition is it's
the intuition of being so
i immediately experience things here the
color and shape and i can measure them
but when i've really stepped out of the
cave
and i've now engaged beyond mathematics
even i'm now into metaphysical
reflection i'm interested not just in
this thing as an object and how it's
colored and shaped and what it's atoms
and quarks and all that are that's fine
but i'm interested now and
what does it mean to say this thing is
real
so what makes this a being
and then what are the characteristics of
being so not from aristotle to heidegger
you know this question of the nature of
being
but see i would say we call it a
universe because it's turned toward the
one of being it's this intuition that
whatever from quarks to galaxies to
whatever
give me a billion other universes they
it would still be existence right it's
turned toward the one
that being unites our experience
and so now i'm at the metaphysical level
of analysis i've taken another step out
of the cave
in plato's language i'm at the formal
level now beyond mathematics level forms
and and the formal is inclusive of the
mathematical which is inclusive of the
physical
and i think that's eugene vigner is that
the mathematical includes the physical
it it is metaphysically prior to it
but here we are sitting in the physical
trying to make sense of why the
unreasonable effectiveness of the thing
that's uh
beyond which is the mathematics my
answer is god and i i don't know a
better answer and i as i read vigner he
wasn't ready to say that
but i think the language is gesturing
who i've read someone recently some very
well-known physicist who said
his answer to vigner's question is
that whoever
is responsible for the universe must be
a mathematician
and i thought yeah that's right
uh let me ask you about jordan peterson
you had a great conversation with him
yeah um he has a complicated and nuanced
view of faith or faith period um he has
said that he believes in jesus the
person and the myth and
some of the the full richness and
complexity that you've talked about
but he's surprised by his faith he's not
sure what to make of it he's it's almost
like meta struggling with what the heck
is faith means he's a super powerful
intellect that can't compute
the faith that he's experiencing so
uh what are some interesting differences
between the two of you or some
commonalities uh in terms of your
understanding of faith
he's a very interesting guy and i've had
a couple conversations with him and i i
do think he's he's moving in the
direction of of faith and his lectures
in the bible are very fine i think he
reminds me of the church fathers because
the church fathers would have looked at
the they call it the moral sense of the
scripture peterson probably called it
the psychological meaning but i think
he's doing a lot of that
he
as i read him and talk to him i think
he's kind of at a kantian level in
regard to jesus what i mean there is
for kant jesus it's not so much the
historical jesus this figure from long
ago it's jesus as an archetype of the
moral life
you know he says he's the image of the
person perfectly pleasing to god and so
jesus inhabits our kind of moral
imagination
as a as a heuristic as a as a a goal
that we're tending toward but the
historical person of jesus for conflict
well let's not fuss about that so much
it's this figure
and as i read peterson especially and
talk to him i think he's kind of there
with
the archetype of jesus and even language
of like live as though
god exists that's the outs all above
kant you know the kind of as if um
attitude and where i oppress him when we
talk is in the direction of no that's
not christianity yet i mean that's
enlightenment
moral philosophy but christianity is
very interested in this historical
figure and very interested that god
really became one of us and he's not
just an archetype of the moral life
he's someone he's a person who's invaded
our world and gone all the way to the
bottom of sin and thereby saved us you
know so the facticity of jesus and the
resurrection so like
peterson will talk about the
resurrection as a as a myth and all that
and you can find that in different
cultures et cetera but i i christianity
um is saying something else so in
christianity when we're talking about
who is jesus it's not just an archetype
right it's not just a myth it's a
historical figure and the very grounded
fact
that god became one of us right is
fundamental to this idea
what christianity is what it means to be
a christian it's the uh
the sin and the love that came here
down to earth
that means we can be one with god so
that's essential it's not just
that's right
you know it always strikes me
the difference between let's say mythic
expressions and the new testament is
it read someone like you know carl jung
and then joseph campbell whom he
influenced and now jordan peterson was
very union and this sort of archetypal
reading of the scriptures and great i
mean i think it's very interesting and
there's a lot going on there there's a
sort of calmness though about it like
yeah the interesting and that's in this
culture and that culture and it's the
form of the moral life and i understand
all that
then you read the new testament
uh whatever those people are talking
about it's not that
they are
grabbing you by the shoulders
and shaking you to get your attention to
tell you about something that happened
to them right
like the resurrection
the myth of the dying and rising god and
how powerful that is and shaping our
consciousness
that's fascinating that's not the new
testament the testament is did you hear
did you jesus of nazareth whom they put
to death god raised him from the dead
and he was seen by 500 and he was seen
by by peter and and and then lastly i
saw him
that's how paul talks it's not the
detached
you know um
psychologist amusing on archetypal
things and i think that makes a huge
difference when it comes to christianity
the intensity of the historical details
are
essential here so if you
you know if you look at
hitler and nazi germany it's not enough
to say well power corrupts and sometimes
so looking at the archetype of hitler
it's much much more important much more
powerful to look at the details of how
he came to power yeah what are the ways
he did evil onto the world
and then then you can get really intense
about
your struggle with some of the
complexities of human nature and power
on institutions and all that kind of
stuff so the historical nature of the
bible we're in historical religion and
we've been it's important we generate
philosophical reflection we can find
common ground with archetypal thinking
and all that we can and the the church
fathers use the greek philosophy and
aquinas uses aristotle and all that's
great but we're in historical religion
and that matters immensely
is the bible
the literal word of god how do you make
sense of the words that make up the
bible i think the best way to get at the
bible is to think of it as a library not
a book so it's a collection of books
right from a wide variety of periods
different authors different audiences
and different genre
so in the bible you find poetry you find
song you find something like history not
in our sense but something like history
you find gospel it's his own genre you
find
uh epistolary literature like paul you
find apocalyptic
there's all this in the bible so is the
bible literally the word of god it's
like saying is the library uh literally
true it depends on what section you're
in right so
parts of like one and two samuel one and
two kings uh
number places the old testament are
there elements of the historical in
there sure but it's theologically
interpreted history it's not like our
sense of history of you know give me ten
thousand footnotes and you know i'm
gonna i'm gonna um look at all the
source material i can possibly find it's
more like ancient history uh like
herodotus people like that um but then
there's poetry and there's myth and
there's legend and there's song and all
that stuff in the bible so
god
breathes through all of it i would say
he inspired all of it right inspira he's
he's breathing through all of it god is
speaking through all of it but he speaks
in different voices uh he uses different
human instruments and he uses different
genre in different types of language so
we have to be sensitive to that when
we're interpreting the bible so the
different instruments are more or less
uh some are more perfect than others no
i wouldn't say that i would say more
perfect i'd say they're just different
it's like a symphony and god's like a
conductor and there's all kinds of
different instruments in the orchestra
and he loves us to breathe through the
psalms i prayed the psalms this morning
i do every day in my in my office you
know that's those are songs they
probably were literally sung most of
them at one point he breathes through um
apocalyptic like we're reading the book
of revelation now in the easter season
and it's this wild and woolly
book it should be filmed by you know uh
spielberg or somebody today
and he speaks through the gospels
the gospels which correspond in genre to
what i call ancient biography
that's the genre of the gospels it's
wrong to call them like mythic or simply
literary they're like ancient
biographies
you have the pauline letters which are
about in all particular cities that paul
was visiting and particular people he
knew so you just got to be sensitive to
the genre all the time
let's return back to human institutions
and talk about
history of human civilization and
politics
so
one question to ask is was america
founded as a christian nation in your
view what if we look at the declaration
of independence what are the words mean
we hold these truths to be self-evident
that all men are created equal that they
are endowed by their creator with
certain inalienable rights that among
these are life liberty and the pursuit
of happiness
it seems like god is breathing through
those words too yeah i think so
you know the founders would be some kind
of combination of deism um certainly
christianity is is coming up through
them enlightenment rationalism all in
kind of a mix you know so you're not
going to find in our founding fathers
simply thomas aquinas or like a purely
you know classically christian
understanding it's christianity
in in those various expressions because
actually i would see the enlightenment
as a sort of um child of christianity we
could talk about that but
having said all that yes i think they
are expressing
at least the residue of a once deeply
integrated christian sense of things
that uh
our rights are not created by the
government they're not uh
doled out by the government they come
from god and and the other thing i find
really interesting is equality because
um
look in classical philosophy political
philosophy plato aristotle cicero
it's not equality for them it's our
inequality that's really interesting
so plato divides us into these three
classes and aristotle says only a tiny
little coterie of property males of
sufficient education should be in the
political life the rest should all be in
private life you know and then some are
suited for slavery so i mean he divides
us dramatically same with cicero and so
on um
where does this come from this weird
idea that we're all
equal i mean how we're not equal in
beauty not equal in strength we're not
equal in moral attainment we're not
equal in
intelligence so
what is it and i think the residue
especially comes through in that little
word
that all men
are created equal
that's our equality that we're all
equally children of god so take god out
of the picture i think
we are going to slide rapidly into
an embrace of inequality now in the
classical world yes
but heck look at the 20th century i mean
when god is excluded in a very
systematic way
i think you saw the suspension of rights
and the suspension of equality like mad
so i think it's very important
that god is in the picture and that
we're a nation under god it matters
enormously that's not pious boilerplate
that's at the at the rational
foundations of our democracy so do you
think nietzsche was on to something with
the idea
looking into the 20th century that god
is dead
that there is uh
a cultural distancing from a belief in
god
yeah you know i'd be so much sympathetic
to jordan peterson's reading of of
nietzsche there namely it's not
nietzsche crowing from the mountaintop
hey god is dead you know it's more of a
lament you know god's dead and we've
killed him
and uh what will happen in the wake of
that
and i think yeah much of the
totalitarianism of the 20th century
follows from that um
that questioning of god and the
dismissal of god from from public life
so i i would be sympathetic with that um
when we're beyond good and evil you know
and all that's left is the will to power
and then why are we surprised that the
powerful rise and that they use the
power less for their purposes
when we forget ideas like equality and
rights which are grounded in god why are
we surprised that that
death camps follow so i think there's a
correlation there for sure
i don't know i believe that there's a
capacity to do good in all of us
and a capacity to do evil and there's
something that tends towards good
whatever that is
i tend to think that if that community
that love that we talked about they find
each other they find
the good
if you don't constrain the resources if
you don't push them if you
uh don't artificially create conflict
through power centers and evil
uh charismatic leaders then people will
be good to each other and
whether that's god or some other source
of deep
um
moral meaning
that seems to be essential for a
functioning civilization yeah
and it's hard i mean that's what humans
are we're searching for what that god is
what that means you know what that
triggers in my mind i wonder if you
agree with this that the modern sciences
drew their strength from their
narrowness and what i mean there is is
they almost completely bracketed formal
and final causality in the aristotelian
sense and they focused on efficient and
material causality and that gave as i
say great strength but from the
narrowness of focus but for aristotle
the more important causes are the final
and the formal causes
and so final causality there what's
drawing us
so for aristotle he'd look at someone
like me and say okay
you're
you have a intelligible structure
and that leads you to seek certain
things for the perfection of that
structure you know
and fair enough that's right so i seek
the good right now i'm seeking the good
of being with you i said yeah i'll sit
down with lex friedman and we'll talk
about deep and important things that's
the good i saw it this morning when i
woke up
now why am i seeking that well for a
higher
reason a higher good you know because i
it's part of my work my ministry is to
you know
the church reaching out beyond itself to
the wider culture and
okay well why do you want that
well because i want to bring more and
more people into into the what i think
is beautiful and true and good in the
church well how come you want that
well because a long time ago i was kind
of myself brought into that realm and
find it very compelling yeah but then
why do you want that well because
ultimately i want to be i want to be
friends with god now i've given you one
example there but but
any act of the will it seems to me
has to be analyzed that way
the will seeks something it seeks the
good right by definition but the good
always nest like a russian doll in in a
higher good right which then nests and
is still higher good
until you come this is aquinas to some
in this sense uncaused cause
an uncaused final cause there has to be
some sumumbonum right some supreme good
that you're looking for
and that's god by the way that's another
i think rational path to god is is every
single moment every day
we are implicitly seeking god
so with your um word on fire ministries
and and the website and the
communication efforts what what what is
the thing you're seeking just you if we
can pause
and uh for a brief moment allow you to
be prideful
or
i'm of course just joking but what what
is your local efforts just a small
little pocket of the world with
smalling quotes
um
with word on fire
yeah it's just using the you know media
especially the new media social media to
get the gospel out so i started
what 20 some years ago just on a radio
show in chicago 5 15 on sunday morning i
had a 15 minute sermon show and i asked
the people in this parish i was at i
said i need 50 000 to get on for 15
minutes at 5 15 on sunday morning and
they all laughed when i proposed that
but they gave me the money so that's how
i got started just doing a sermon on the
radio and then it branched off into into
video stuff and tv
and then i did a
documentary i went all over the world
and kind of told the story of
catholicism so that's how we started and
now i'm using all the new media and
social media but what i really love what
we're doing today is something i really
like which is having a conversation
outside of just the narrow catholic
world or even the narrow christian world
but to look out to the wider culture and
you know who's talking about interesting
things and how can the church engage
there and you know so that's the purpose
of word on fire is
uh overwhelming to face
so many different
sort of atheists than complex thinkers
like uh jordan peterson and some of the
more political style thinkers that
you've spoken with is that uh
what is it dave rubin who's also um
has a
way different world view as well
how is that terrifying is that exciting
to you yeah is it challenging yeah maybe
all the above but more exciting you know
i would say i like doing that i was a
teacher for a long time and taught in
the seminary for like 20 years and so
you know i've been engaging these
questions for a long time i'm a writer
i've written about 20 some books so and
i i write some at a popular level i
write some at a high academic level and
i i like doing all that so i i love
those ideas i love those questions uh
love engaging people and i i find my own
experience you do run into of course a
lot of the
you know vitriol and kind of just
stupidity and all that online and i get
it and religion is such a
magnet for people's hostility for
different reasons so i get that like you
read it we talked about it you have to
wade through you know swamps of
of obscenity and everything but but
i do it i like it and it's worthwhile
because in that reddit experience so
many of the issues that preoccupy young
people i can name them for you exactly
what they are
when it comes to religion how do you
know there's a god so the god question
secondly
why is there so much suffering in the
world
third question why do you think your
religion is the right religion fourth
why are you so mean to gay people so
those are the four things that i i again
and again
come up when dealing with young people i
i've told my brother bishops and priests
about that i said
structure your adult education programs
or structure your youth outreach around
those four questions
uh well let me ask you about gay
marriage how do we make sense
of the love between a man and a man and
the woman and the woman and the
institution of marriage
we love friendship and friendship is at
the heart of things and so nothing wrong
with friendship between you know a man
and a man a woman and a woman but go
back to
aristotle thomas aquinas about natural
finalities and intelligible forms that
there's a certain form
to human being which includes the
physical and includes the sexual it has
a proper finality and so we'd recognize
that finality is twofold both unitive
and procreative and so those two we
recognize as the appropriate expression
of human sexuality so that's why the
church holds to
sex
between a man and a woman within the
context of marriage is the is the right
expression
uh
we reach out to everybody in love and in
respect and deep understanding and
seeking to understand
their lives from the inside so i mean
all of that i agree with the the bridge
building that we need to do to people
like in the gay community and people in
in gay marriage and so on so the church
holds to the
the intelligible structure if you want
of human sexuality and it reaches out to
real human beings always in an attitude
of invitation and love and so on so it's
somewhere in there that the church takes
its stance
and then uh so there's probably
variation in the stances that it it
takes so you're saying the institution
of marriage is about the unitive which
is like the friendship the deep
connection yeah between two humans and
the procreative
so being able to have children all that
kind of stuff
it's interesting so
i is
is uh are gay couples seen as sinful so
does the church acknowledge the love
yeah that's the deep love that's
possible between them i think so yeah
which is why the church says in its
official teaching it's the physical
expression let's say of
of
sexual passion between two men that is
problematic not their friendship not
their love for each other
um so i think yeah we
confirm the first well let me ask you
another difficult topic that's just
unlike the other one like the other ones
we talked about uh that's going on in
the news now as we sit here today the
supreme court has voted to overturn
abortion rights in a draft
majority opinion striking down the
landmark row versus wade decision what
are your thoughts uh
on this first of all the human
institution of the supreme court making
these decisions throughout its history
and second of all just the idea
uh the really powerful the controversial
the difficult idea of abortion
yeah i mean i'm against abortion i i'm
i'm pro-life uh the church recognizes
from the moment of conception we're
dealing with a human life that's worthy
of of respect and protection
especially as you see the unfolding
event of that person you know across a
pregnancy but at every stage we
recognize the beauty and the dignity
of of that human being and so we stand
opposed
to this um the outright killing of the
innocent so that's the church's view
um
again reaching out always in love and
understanding and compassion to those
who are dealing and believe me every
single pastor every single priest
understands that because we deal with
people all the time who are in these
painful situations
but um
that's the moral you know side of it the
legal side i think roe v wade was
terribly decided i think one of the
worst expressions of of american law
since the dred scott decision so
i stand in favor while returning roe v
wade and casey i think they were
terrible the casey decision is is
instructive to me
that
it belongs to the nature of freedom that
that decision says to determine the
meaning of one's own life and even i
don't get the language exactly right but
end of the universe
like it gives this staggering scope to
our freedom that we can determine the
meaning see but that's repugnant to
everything we've just talked about
that
i'm inventing the meaning of my life and
of the universe and so
casey though was instructive in a way
because it it it tips its hat toward the
problem culturally is that i think in my
freedom i can determine everything
my choice is all that matters and i
would say no your choice should be
correlated to the order of the good it's
not sovereign it doesn't reign
sovereignly over being and it makes its
own decisions so i think casey was
terrible law and and it was backing up
roe v wade which is terrible law so i
i'm in favor of the overturning of those
i've spoken out that many times now
it'll return it to the individual states
it's not gonna you know solve the
problem
uh the individual states will have to
decide i just heard yesterday we were up
in sacramento the bishops having our
annual meeting
and so we got the word you know from the
governor and the legislators
that they're going to push for a
constitutional amendment in california
so basically to make any attempt to
limit abortion in any way just illegal
you know
i think that's barbaric you know so i i
stand
radically opposed to that it's such an
interesting line
because if if you believe
that there's a it's a line that
struggles with the question of what is
does it mean to be a living being
or to give life
to something
um because if you believe that at the
moment of conception you're you're
basically creating a human life
then abortion is murder
and then if you don't
then it's a
sort of basic biological choice
that's not
uh taking away of a life
and the gap between those two beliefs is
so vast yeah it's hard
and yet so fundamental to the question
of what it means to be
alive and the the fundamental question
about the respect for human life and
human dignity it's interesting to see
um
and also about freedom right you know
all of those things are mixed in there
right it's a beautiful struggle maybe
the freedom is the most important you
know this sort of freedom run amok or
see you know in in classical
philosophy and theology freedom is not
self-determination
freedom is
the
disciplining of desire
so as to make the achievement of the
good
first possible and then effortless
you know what i'm saying so
modern freedom and the roots of that are
people like william mavacam
in the late middle ages freedom means i
hover above the yes and the no do i do
yes or no and i'm the sovereign subject
of that choice and i will on no basis i
will say yes or no i'm like louis xiv
you know where i'm like stalin or
something you know
but the aquinas wouldn't have recognized
that as freedom
for him it's
i got this desire you know in me i've
got this will
and it's pushing toward the good but the
trouble is i got so many attachments and
and i'm so stupid and i'm so conditioned
by my sin that i can't achieve it so i
need to be
disciplined in my desire so as to make
that achievement possible and then
effortless so
right now i'm freely speaking english to
you and you know we you had the
experience and i've had it too of
learning a foreign language and
don't you feel unfree you know like when
you're you're struggling with a language
when i was over in paris doing my
doctoral work and you know i i was okay
with french but you know my first time
in a seminar there's all these like you
know
intelligent francophones around the
table they're all just and i'm trying to
say my little thing in my awkward french
and
i felt unfree because i
i my desire wasn't wasn't um
directed you know but then over time i
became freer and freer speaker of french
i was ordered more to the good
that's a better understanding of freedom
than sort of sovereign
self-determination
but our country is now i think really in
the grip of that
i decide and that's why the nietzschean
thing comes to my mind of you know the
will to power there's i'm beyond good
and evil uh it's just up to me to decide
god help us
no it's the values that we intuit around
us intellectual moral and aesthetic the
values think of the dog on the beach
again and that you
get ordered to those by your education
by your family by your religion
and that's beautiful that makes you free
now i can freely enter into this so this
sovereign self-determination business
that's not my game
the values come in part from the
tradition
carried through the generations
let me ask you to put on
your wise hat and give advice to young
folks so high school and college yeah
thinking about uh you know what to do
with their life career there's so many
uh options out there
how can they have a career they can
be proud of or even just a life they can
be proud of
i think i say find something you're good
at
because that's from god it's a gift that
god's given you
and then dedicate it to love
you know what i'm saying so
you're good at science or math or sports
or whatever okay i'm gonna use that now
for my aggrandizement for my wealth for
my
privileges and to become famous no no
find what you're good at but now
dedicate it
to willing the good of the other so use
your science and use your mathematics
and use your sports and use your
musicianship
to to benefit the world you know
um
that's why i would say them so find what
you're good at that's that's from that's
a tricky one finding what you're good at
what because it's not just raw skill
it's also what you connect with yeah and
it's also
um like this iterative process of
if you want to add love to the world
you have to
see how can you be effective at doing
that so it's not just the things you're
good at there's like
there's
you know i'm good at building bridges
out of toothpicks i'm not exactly sure
that's going to be useful for the world
then again to push back on that the joy
brings me maybe somehow the joy radiates
out yeah well you're good at what you're
doing right now and and you've dedicated
that to bringing more light and
illumination and and joy to the world
true that was a that was a searching
that's the process of yeah trying stuff
and figuring it out right and
ultimately yes asking the question
how is this making the world at all
better at every step of the way yeah as
opposed to enriching yourself and all
those kinds of things right i think
that's the name of the game you know but
it's tricky and if we don't have moral
mentors and intellectual mentors it
becomes hard and if you tell a kid
that's deadly to me just decide for
yourself just you know just off you go
and and you make your own choices now
you gotta you
your choice has to be disciplined your
desire has got to be directed you know
then you'll find your creative path
everyone does it in its own way but it's
it's a guided
choice your freedom is not sovereign
it's a it's a guided freedom
so in the in the struggle and the
suffering you've seen in the world
let me ask you the
the question of death
have you
how often do you think about your own
mortality every day
and
one are you afraid
of it the uncertainty of it and what do
you think happens after you die sure i'm
afraid of it i mean because it's uh i
don't i don't
know
what's next i mean i i can't know what
the way i know you so of course i'm
afraid of it and i think of it every day
um that's true
uh my prayer life uh compels me you know
we have this the um
the hail mary prayer you know so you
pray the rosary uh now and at the hour
of our death amen now and at the hour of
our death amen
now at the hour of our death amen you
pray the whole rosary if this 50 times
you remind yourself of your own death
but i do i think about it
because it's the ultimate limit it's why
it's it's beguiled every artist and
writer and philosopher it's the ultimate
limit you know question
but yeah i'm sure
i'm afraid of it because it's the
unknown uh
what do i think happens
i think i'm drawn into the
deeper embrace of god's love
you know and that's stating it kind of
in a in a more poetic way um
do you know john polkinghorn's work do
you know that name
john paulken was a very interesting he
just died recently
he was a cambridge university particle
physicist right high high level
scientist
who at midlife
became an anglican priest he left his
job at cambridge and went to the
seminary became an anglican priest right
and then wrote i think some of the best
stuff on science and religion because he
really knew the science from the inside
here's paulkinghorn's account that i've
always found
persuasive he said
what what survives after we die so this
body clearly dies and goes into the
ground or it's burned up or it goes away
right but what's preserved and he says
what aristotle would have called the
form pokemon calls it the pattern so the
the pattern that's organized
the the matter that's made me up over
all these years that's obviously not the
same as it was
even i mean you would know how often
does it all change all your atoms and
cells and you know
there was a the
little you know bobby baron who was
growing up in birmingham michigan there
i could have a picture of him and then
there's me and i said oh this is that
same person well i mean clearly not
materially speaking not at all
completely different
but there's there's a unity to whatever
that pattern is by which
all of that materiality's been kind of
organized you know so paul karen says i
think that pattern is remembered
by god
and remembers the wrong word as though
it's like derivative i mean it's known
by god
and so god can therefore
re-embody me according to that pattern
at a higher pitch what we call the
resurrected body
uh
so paul talks about a spiritual body
his body for sure because he believes in
the resurrection of jesus
um
but it's not a body like
ours from this world it's a it's a
body at a higher pitch
so something
some pattern that's there persists
pattern
persists in the mind of god and then is
used as the ground of the re-embodiment
of me so it's not like i've just become
a platonic form i'm gonna be re-embodied
because the christian hope is not for
platonic escape of soul from matter
that's never the christian hope it's for
the resurrection of the body we say
and he said what a fantastic idea well i
don't know i mean this body is being
reconstituted all the time according to
this pattern right it's not the same
matter
and so
might there be an another sort of higher
material that is
organized according to the same pattern
which has been remembered by god so
therefore we can hang on to the language
of body and soul if you want or matter
and form
but it's
the form remembered by god and then
it in an embodied way by god that we
call
heaven the heavenly state
that's what i hope for that's my
christian faith my christian hope
let me ask you about the big question of
of meaning
we've talked about in different
directions uh from different
perspectives what's the meaning of our
existence here on earth
what's the the meaning of life
love
god is love
and the purpose of my life is to become
god's friend and that means i'm more
conformed to love and so my life finds
meaning in the measure that i become
more on fire with the divine love i'm
like the burning bush is to become more
and more radiant with the presence of
god
that's what gives life meaning
meaning is to live in a purpose of
relationship to a value i would say so
there's all kinds of values as i say
moral aesthetic intellectual values and
when i have a purposive relationship so
right now you and i we have a purposive
relationship to the value of let's say
you know finding out the truth of things
and we're speaking together to seek that
well good
what's the ultimate value the value of
values is god the supreme good right the
supremely knowable the supremely
intelligible is god
and so to be conformed to god is to have
a fully meaningful life
and who's god god is love so that's why
i would fit the package together that
way
you're
adding a lot of love to this world and
which is something i deeply appreciate
and that you would sit down with me uh
given how valley boogie time is is a
huge honor thank you so much my great
pleasure i loved it lex thank you
thanks for listening to this
conversation with bishop robert baron to
support this podcast please check out
our sponsors in the description
and now let me leave you with some words
from bishop robert baron himself which
reminds me of the dostoevsky line spoken
through prince mishkin
that quote beauty will save the world
robert says
begin with the beautiful which leads to
the good
which leads you to truth
thank you for listening and hope to see
you next time