Thinkspot Interview with Dr. Stephen Blackwood

[Music] hello everyone I've got the great pleasure tonight to be here on line with Bishop Baron a Catholic bishop a man that I admire for his only as gifts as a communicator but his ability to speak to the heart of questions that are right at the foundation of human life thank you so much for joining me tonight bishop my pleasure thanks for having me on look forward to the conversation well let's say let's get right into it and you know I think that we can we can go we can go straight into let's skip the first steps and go right right to the right for the seventh that is you know we're living at a time in which there's a widespread belief that Athens and Jerusalem to use a shorthand or completely opposed that either you can have rationality and an empirical science and you know really kind of things you can really know or you can have the whole world of religion and myth and ritual but that those are those are fundamentally in commending take a few minutes and go right into some of the what what are the most let's call them foundational views or beliefs or truths as the Christian religion understands it of the Christian religion and I'd love to hear you speak about how you understand those in rational or universal terms and we can touch on a number of other things we're going to let this go wherever it goes let's start off with Felix do you accept that fundamentally you have to choose between reason and revelation no I don't accept that and in some ways my whole career has been predicated upon the rejection of that view which you know you used a thens Jerusalem going back to Tertullian who made that famous demarcation you know what has Athens to do with Jerusalem very much in his mind in favor of Jerusalem you know if you've got the faith you've got divine revelation why would you mess around with these you know questionable philosophers and I'm delighted to say the mainstream of the Catholic tradition has always stood a thwart that position you see a certain revival of it I must say with the Reformers very bright men Neal Luther Calvin but you find some of that same quality of disdain for the philosophical tradition the Catholic tradition at its best has not walked that Tertullian route and that we've seen a deep congruence between faith and reason they simply upon the insight that God is the source of all being and all truth and therefore whatever the science has discover is from God is a reflection of the divine mind so in that way revelation and recent can never be out of sync with each other they represent different modes of knowing different degrees of knowledge if I can use that term from Jacques mary tan and in what in some ways you know Tertullian is at the root of this problem but also our current version of it is very much of a modernism born of a religious fundamentalism that I would trace back to the maybe late 19th early 20th centuries that has been been a terrible source of mischief in my judgment and it's it's led to this driving of a wedge between faith and reason so I hope gosh if I can make one contribution as a sort of public intellectual as someone that tries to articulate the faith in a in a public way it would be to revive the congruence of faith and reason tradition so that's the source of a lot of mischief that division I certainly agree with you I had pleasure of giving a lecture at the University of Cambridge in the Faculty of Divinity a couple of weeks ago and and this this was very much at the heart of what I was what I was approaching in that lecture you know I'd love to ask how you see the the influence of relative to this question how you see the influence of the ancient Greeks of the Greek philosophical of the Greek let's say broadly speaking intellectual tradition which of course is very fundamental to the working out of to the interpretation by the early Christians of what they thought their religion was about could you say a few words about about that because I think one it's very clear is that is that the someone like Augustine for example would would never have accepted this division between an Athens in Jerusalem and and not nothing northern would the ancient ins have accepted the related an opposition between religion and reason yeah and you know I go back to Yosef rosti the sixteenth but when he wrote his great introduction to Christianity he said the early Christians made an option for law boss over mythos and that everything flowed from that and what he meant was in trying to articulate the faith the early fathers tended not to go with the mythological tradition they went with the philosophical tradition because they saw a greater congruence between allah gauss revelation tradition and the LA Coste tradition behind greek philosophy and so think of the option of all those those early figures both east and west among the father's whenever they embrace the lagos theology they tended to embrace the same time of Lagos philosophy and that's where this great congruence of faith and reason ultimately comes from without that move that choice of Lagos over mythos you don't have Thomas Aquinas you don't have this great scholastic tradition so I some ways I think Rossi you put his finger on a source of mischief if if we opted for mythos over logos then we end up in this totally bifurcated space and religion deals with something which really isn't true you know it might be uplifting might be edifying might be interesting might be engaging your imagination as the myths do but it wouldn't be true the way philosophy claims to be true but it was a fateful and in a very positive way a fateful decision that the early fathers made for law goes over mythos now relative to that and relative to the way you characterized our contemporary situation excuse me dating back to let's say post enlightenment notions of truth and things of that sort one of the things that I see to be a stake at stake here is whether in material things can be known not and so one of the the let's call it pretensions or assumptions of a certain kind of reductive a certain kind of reductive scientism or however we might call it is that you know the only thing that can be known is matter in its motion the very the very knowing that knows that matter in its motion the very principles of say you know mathematics for example which upon which science relies that reductive empirical account can give no account of why those things yeah it can get to be doing thinking know kind of realities upon which it depends so what I'd like to ask you is say a thing or two about that if you like but connect that to the conception of the law goes because you know we what is the law goes for the logo so everyone like might pronounce that for the ancients as it is take and as it is taken up by by the by the Christian tradition yeah and your point is very well taken scientism which is rampant today I mean I see it both in the high culture but also in my popular work dealing with people and at the apologetic level it's rampant among young people precisely as you put it the assumption that the only legitimate form of knowledge is that which is de Rivel from the scientific method but the problem is you suggest correctly is it's perfectly self refuting because the one thing you can't verify empirically and do experiments then is the claim that only that kind of truth is valid and so just by its very nature its self refuting and see what's happened in my judgment is scientism locks us back into Plato's cave so go right up at the beginning of philosophy in the West Plato's absolutely seminal move to describe the journey from the cave to the realm outside the cave means you escape merely the realm of the empirically verifiable so the people who are chained inside the cave and Plato's famous image right who see the flickering images on the wall well that's all of us dealing with this world of immediate sense experience which is would and real no question about that but it's real in a very passing contingent even essent way what Plato is doing was leading his adepts by a series of exercises I would say physical spiritual and and psychological exercises to get out of the cave and to move into a higher form of consciousness whereby you come in contact with dimensions of reality which are not observable and which can't be experimented on and see that's the classical pre-modern thought took that for granted what happened I think tragically with the rise of the physical sciences though I wouldn't blame it on the sciences in themselves but these philosophical moves that precluded effectively any escape from the cave now read someone like Charles Taylor today and and the idea of the buffered self right which is his description of the way most people are today buffered from any contact with the transcendent I would say those are people stuck in the cave and one reason they're stuck in the cave is this ideological scientism which has precluded the minds quest for higher dimensions of reality so we talk about material spiritual if you want but I might talk of more and more intense expressions of being so for Plato going from the sensible world to the world of mathematical objects to the world of the forms represents this journey into ever more intense expressions of being again the greatest minds in the pre-modern world took that for granted took that assent of the mind for granted that's what's missing for a lot of people today and it's doing not just intellectual damage it's doing real spiritual damage to people because we're not meant finally just for the cave so that's that's my somewhat more elaborate and answer to your first observation Lagos speculation I would say Lagos go back to Heraclitus of people like that Lagos represents the fundamental intelligibility of the real which is one of the most important intuitions of classical thought that being as the medieval said ends as she belay right being is knowable being has in its eligible form now that can be something as simple as a Iraq a basic sensible thing has a intelligible structure but then you move up by steady progress to higher and higher modalities of intelligibility and what runs through all of it is precisely log on it's some kind of divine reason so seen as reflective of God's intelligent purposes I mean that vision of the world that I would hold to as a Catholic thinker but I'd say also is a classical thinker a lot of that is missing from the I mean let's face it marvelous Sciences we all reverence the sciences and what they've accomplished but a scientism has blocked our access to these far deeper and richer expressions of the real I think what's so so powerful and important what you're staying among other things is that this is not a move away from knowing so one might associate yeah rightly I think you might science with a a disciplined and rigorous and and self-critical approach those are the I just lost contact with you there we are there we can are you back and I lost Rio go ahead go back yeah keep going great one might listen one might culturally associate you're the lab coat or the the discipline to sell the criticism the objectivity of the sciences I think you know rightly with all with at least in it when they're working well with the hobos with all those characteristics what would I take you to be saying which I think is so important is that we're not leaving those things behind self-criticism careful shrewd hard going analysis as one moves up let's say in the platonic language you mentioned the cave as you well know there's other famous allegories or metaphors is of is of the line where you have on the one side kinds of being and the other font other other side forms of intelligibility or apprehension adequate to those forms of being and you move up roughly as you said from you know sense to imagination to math or rationality and then to a higher form of an non let's say non non linear or not not precisely discursive but more intuitive knowing in intelligent but was later called it as you know intelligentsia so so what I'd like to get a sense of is it have you say another word or two about is is relative to a sort of logos conception of things that we might see both in Greek philosophy and in let's say that the first words of the of the Gospel of John all things being made in and through and by the word that is to say the all things being fundamentally intelligible what I'd like to ask you about is is what is the form of think what are the kinds of things that we are knowing about so let's say that we take very simply matter in its motion as the remit of the sciences at some level if that's all we can know then we have no access to thinking carefully and shrewdly and power we about say love or Redemption or beauty or truth it know for even thinking itself so and and you pointed out the consequent reductions of our own Souls ourselves if we've cut off that that whole horizon of thinking so I'd like to I'd like to ask you to turn to to say a few words about what we are as human beings by nature and what are the let's say higher forms of knowing in perception that we we can come to through through that as you say that sort of ladder of thinking that that intellectual assent yeah and we both been talking about about Plato and then implicitly about Aristotle and the different degrees of knowing from the like physics to mathematics to metaphysics I would add than as you're suggesting beyond that the mystical way of knowing somewhat is somewhat corresponding to Plato's you know knowledge of what lies beyond the beings right the form of the good but everything you laid out is right that all the classical subject matters of philosophy are missing from a scientistic or purely materialistic worldview so I've often sort of cajoled people that are stuck in that complete ideological scientism tell me how the sciences inform us in regard to the question of what makes something beautiful well we say that's a beautiful work of art and you can analyze you know the chemical makeup of a painting or you can look at you know the the process the physiological process of seeing and all that business but that's not going to answer the question what makes that picture beautiful what makes a city just what's the very nature of knowledge as you say correctly what's the nature of the soul finally what's the source of all existence I mean those are all questions that the mind entertains don't tell me those are uninteresting questions because the mind naturally entertains them but it can't get at them using simply a scientific method that's why I feel strongly about this very often we pitch the thing as like science versus religion well we need recover are all those mediating disciplines associated with philosophy because philosophy is a way of knowing it's a rational path but not a scientific path because for a lot of people I think especially young people today to be rational and to be a physical scientist are coterminous right that's what it means to be rational is to do things in a scientific way and I want to say yeah look at our tradition that shows all kinds of forms of rationality that are not scientific forms of rationality it's the you know Cardinal Newman saw this the 19th century it's the aggressiveness of the sciences that is the problem is that the sciences in themselves but as sort of epistemological aggressiveness that is has worked a lot of mischief today in the minds especially of of young people so I would say the recovery of the philosophical tradition is very important if we want to get to the further question of science in relation to religion yes I think I think that's completely right and I would perhaps with the table for another conversation but I'd love to hear your thoughts on what are the intellectual influences that have led to a worldview widely held right now that we cannot know things that are immaterial I trace it back to figures like harps and others in the mid to the early mid 19th century and the denial that there is any realm of the immaterial or the transcendent there's no there's no reality to those things they're all just projections of our imagination you know religion makes man man makes religion religions not make man as as as Marx puts it himself say a word or two before we go back to some other questions here say a word or two about the damage you know as a as a you know at one time a priest and now a bishop you are very I imagine very often in pastoral and past relationships with people who come to you with you know the the the the hardest and most difficult and perennial and most universal problems in human life whether it's it's love or health or suffering depression I I know enough priests to know that you see it all I'd love to know let's put it positively not just what is the what are the limitations of this worldview but let's put it positively what is the hunger that you that you see in the soul or let's just say in the human being at the most profound level what do we seek as human beings what is that what is the nature of what we are looking for we're seeking a higher love so the the soul is ordered to love and so it goes out from itself and it loves whatever it comes across I mean that's our the scientists are born of a love for for knowledge a love for the truth and goodness and beauty of the world but the soul keeps going it's not satisfied with that it wants higher forms of love because it corresponds to higher types of being and finally I would argue with st. Augustine here that the soul is restless until it rests in God so what we're finally hungry for is absolute truth and absolute beauty and absolute goodness and any attempt to limit that results in a great deal of frustration and soul sickness and I would speak now you know one of the old terms for a priest in French we talk about a key of a like the key of a duff's you know the curie of ours and in the old days we spoke about accurate so usually the associate pastor was called the curate well those terms from come from kora right care because what the priest did was kora Annie mahram the care of souls and I've always liked that phrase that's the priests job so we have you know physicians to deal with the the health of the body we have psychiatrists and so on to deal with the health of the psyche but who cares for the soul and and that's classically the role of the Cure it's the key of a the the priest who addresses the issues of the soul what's the soul hungry for what goes wrong with the soul how to fix it and think of this I mean prior to the turn to the sciences most of the great minds in the West went in for sole doctoring so I would read the great text of theology and spirituality under that rubric there texif Cora unnie mahram but when you bracket the question of soul you forget about soul you don't even think it exists well I tell you the soul asserts itself in suffering and that's where we come in often to do Cora unnie mahram care for the soul and that's where religion comes in and that's been true I'm not just about Catholicism but that goes back to the beginning of humanity that we've been we've had a religious instinct I think it's a very troubling sign of our time that arguably for the first time in human history certainly in the West we now have a very significant part of the population that brackets religion and religion is unimportant and we're unaffiliated we just don't care about it well trust me the soul still cares about it and it'll cry out in anguish if it gets frustrated you-you-you-you spoke about one that the soul wanting to be filled by or let's say satisfied in relation to fulfilled by not simply momentary things but you know absolute things absolute truth absolute beauty what what in the world does that mean that you know when what I want to hear is is is to put in a universal form in the language that that that doesn't as you need are that doesn't involve your particular Christian doctrines or views or or let's say your creedal statements what is the nature of the higher fulfillment you know Agustin speaks about you know that human being at being an Imagi Dei and an image of God what does that mean such that you know how do you have really the question I wanted to get to here Bishop is what is human fulfillment as an activity in this life what does it look like and not simply well-adjusted but deeply satisfied fully let's say activated turned on actualized human being you know what what are we aiming what are we aiming for when you speak in this language of absolute love and absolute truth yeah maybe I start with st. Irenaeus one of my heroes who said Gloria Dei homo of events right the glory of God is a human being fully alive so I would say when we're fully alive meaning all of our powers and capacities are awakened and ordered to what ultimately fulfills them that's what gives God the glory because we're wired for God I would say it's the quest for the unconditioned I'll use I'm trying to stay away from more explicitly religious language I'll use more Conti and language but that was picked up by many of the theologians in the 20th century dust on the Dinka the unconditioned is what is finally calling out to the mind as it knows particular things and go back to plato's cave if it's knowing the the particular sensible objects then it escapes from the cave and it knows mathematical objects and then it knows the forms but then what's it looking for ultimately it looks up toward the Sun right which mind you it can't see directly that you can't look it can't stare at the Sun it's the light by which you see everything else but yet the mind wants that the mind is is ordered to it the form of the good which is beyond being well that's the Sun budino that's the unconditioned as the will for example seeks the good and it seeks it here and there it seeks justice and seeks higher forms of justice but what it finally wants is unconditioned justice it wants the good in itself the same with the beautiful I seek beautiful things I want to create beautiful things I want to celebrate and propagate beautiful things I go to higher and higher forms of beauty think of the way you get a kid to move from you know maybe some simple thing he finds beautiful to higher and higher forms of it but what the soul wants is the beautiful itself unconditioned beauty now keep Leto in mind none of those unconditioned forms can be seen directly in this life but in this life I'm ordered to particular forms of the good that true in the beautiful the unconditioned is something that attracts me and blinds me at the same time now I'm a I'm a Catholic bishop I'm talking ultimately here about God God is what's luring and drawing all of my faculties and powers all the elements that make up my soul it's driving my mind see which is why you'd never play the game of let's put your mind to sleep you know faith is opposed to reason that is just nonsense it's reason now fully awakened and aware of its proper limits within this framework of experience it's the will fully awakened but now aware of its proper limits within this framework but yearning beyond whatever it can know or will in this life that I think is a properly spiritual framework for a happy life you know so I'd say to the scientists the artists the poets the politicians the seekers after justice go off you go do all that you can but then also unleash your soul's desire for the unconditioned form of those three great values that's I think what it properly textured spiritual life looks like that's beautifully put Bishop one of my favorite lines from Oh all the films I've ever seen is aligned by the great sprinter Eric little and cherries fire pinkies right into his stir yeah and he wrote and he says you know I know God made me for a purpose but he also made me fast and when I run I feel his good pleasure that's a kind of a paraphrase yeah I've yeah I always I've always found that in that there's there's a kind of a vocation of what you we all know it feels like when you're giving yourself over to the higher and deeper things from which from which you know meaning fundamentally is to ride you know one of the things about the sort of called meaning crisis in the moment it is that no matter how existentialist people might want to be or be think of themselves if the self was capable simply of generating meeting on its own it would it would never lack for it it would just endlessly have all wired but but I want to I want to push you something and really get to what it sort of easy to be the nub of the matter here because you talk about the unconditioned and our longing a restlessness for what is what is richer higher true or deeper absolute and I think that language speaks to people because I think it's in us to to be fulfilled by the perception then coming to know things that are actually transcendent hearing but in the here and now but that how they are in the hearing is what I want to push you on here I want to ask you listen we all know those great moments in life when you know you fall in love or it's a beautiful evening with friends and and and you know nice glasses of wine or you're you're on you're on the beach and an astoundingly beautiful day or you're you're sheltering from a great rainstorm or or you you you you've been touched by forgiveness in your life or so something like you by a friend yeah those moments you think this is what it's all about I'm really I'm really living I want to I want to it's easy to believe in those moments that there is a coherence a coherence between the infinite and the finite between the immaterial in the material that the true the and the human let's say but man so much of life you know we're struggling we have we people get sick and die we we we do we let ourselves and others down and painful and sometimes terrible ways we we have to deal with the difficulties of sometimes demeaning work or difficult work or or our own psychological struggles what you know seems to me at the heart of the Christian religion is the claim that God that that the God the divine and the human come together that that that at the the lowest darkest moment is not simply a lost unreconciled Bowl at the loss tun reconcilable thing that that can can never that that you might say Aristotle's conclusion to put it one way is alas he says in the tenth book the metaphysics that life that I've just been sketching out that would be a life too high for man we can't live that life of contemplation we're always going to fall short of that how do you understand precisely our distance from those things and is that distance redeemed yeah I mean you've said so many things are all them but in right and each one would deserve a semester course you know to to address you know let me be again maybe with CS Lewis who said God's existence is felt or no they put this way the the longing for God is felt more in the great and pleasant moments of life than in the suffering moments of life and what he meant I think was what you were just describing these wonderful moments of of great pleasure of great honor of great achievement right but what inevitably happens is even as we bask in the joy of those moments deep down we know it's not enough they pass away so right you're on the beach and there's this gorgeous sunset going on and unsurpassable beautiful but then in a matter of minutes our so it is gone and it's gone forever that lovely dinner with friends and everything's clicking and the conversation is great and you're in you're feeling this deep connection and then it's over it's precisely at those moments the best moments that you feel that aching longing for something more now certainly in the negative moments too when you realize how how limited life is and how unsatisfying it is that to awakens the soul for something more and of course in itself that's interesting isn't it why do we perceive certain things as bad because in comparison to something else something we know it should be otherwise you know it should be it should not be like those that comparison is born of a very deep perception of the ultimate purpose of things so I would say both the negative and the positive speak finally to the longing for something more you were hinting then finally at something very profound is we have to move outside of philosophy for this but the Christian claim that in Jesus dust in bedding - right the unconditioned comes so deeply into our conditioned state of affairs ceasing all of it and that's the symbol of the cross of dust unbowed inta the unconditioned reality going all the way into god-forsaken us going to the limit of human degradation and loss and alienation from God and thereby redeeming all of it showing the ultimate purpose of all of it Jesus in his OpenTable fellowship with saints and sinners think of the festive Christ Jesus healing the sick Jesus reaching out to the poor all those kind of wonderful positive and then Jesus entering into the fullness of alienation suffering pain on the cross is dust on the Dinka the unconditioned God embracing the totality of our humanity so that's the ultimate Christian answer to this how would I put it not this dilemma but this this tension that's that's ingredient in human life but both the negative and the positive signaled the longing for God no question about it so you you're speaking there beautifully about the the Christian idea of the Incarnation that that God Himself became man in the form of Jesus Christ what lived on earth died was crucified and resurrected and ascended to heaven in in a nutshell that's the story I take it that what is going on there is the claim that that even that that if God is not present to us in the distance from God if if the infinite is not present in the finite if if our if our very failings cannot themselves become doorways or points of access to the to the yonder then it all falls apart after all we live 99% of our lives in in that sense of distance let's say so if that's the if that is that if the Christian view is that indeed all things are taken up wholly and absolutely with no exceptions whatsoever into the divine activity let's say that which we maybe come to in a minute we can touch on the Trinity the question that I have is this if Christians believe that that was revealed at some point in and through the Scriptures and through Jesus life on earth and and that the later that the apostles and all of that they believe that that truth is revealed well must it not have though perhaps that was not understood in that form must that truth if it is indeed true already have been true in earlier times and points in history and must it not still be true for all people at all times everywhere even if they do not themselves understand it in the language of Christ or even perhaps believe in Christ so what I'm trying to press here is how do we come to encounter if that is a universal and sovereign principle God or the UN bedankt as you call it the the the the transcendent absolute here in our broken finitude nope think I lost Egan oh oh can you hear me oh there we go now I got you where did I go okay okay I sure when I lost you but my question is essentially if the if what are people can leave true yeah how do we how do we encounter how do we encounter day to day the the the infinite or the transcendent in the very midst of our let's say our crosses our disappointments our sicknesses yeah I mean again you're raising a lot of interesting issues I mean first of all I I wouldn't agree with the claim that let's say because it's it's already universally the case that God is a God of love who invites all people to life in his name that therefore everyone's okay we don't really need the Christian revelation something happened in Jesus I mean something happened God changed the world God made something possible that wasn't possible before and there I talked about being grafted on to Christ to use Paul's language the church the community of those gathered around Jesus the mystical body of Christ what's what's on offer to people is to be drawn into that intimacy with God made possible in Christ and so I take very seriously Proclamation evangelization missionary work I don't think it's true that everyone's already okay you know I think there's something truly offered that was new and fresh hence the good news of the gospel that's still good news and still has to be proclaimed and heard afresh now when you've heard that I come in accept it enter into the dynamics of the mystical body of Jesus and you'll find this reconciliation and salvation so I would take that very seriously we're moving in away from a philosophical frame of reference to a properly theological one but the necessity of real evangelization I don't think Jesus in other words I'm not saying you were saying this explicitly but I was I was catching the overtone of you know one archetypal expression among many that there's all kinds of different archetypal expressions of of the absolute coming into contact with the finite I think there's something distinctive and unique about Jesus and the historicity of it matters enormous ly that it happened and we're called now to join in the dynamics of that across our own history so again now we're moving into into the area of evangelism and of what we call ecclesiology or the participation in the church yes well I what one could pursue this question further insofar as as as you know fundamental to any rational religion whether it's Plato or Agustin is the view that God himself does not change and so what is illed in the Incarnation mm-hmm must have been true already of God and in some sense you know Christ you know that well others slain before the world began is one of the ones that won some language that one might use to describe this you know all things being made in and through the word as the Gospel John puts it of course yeah this is one of the reasons that you I take it you take evangelism is so important and one of the reasons why I think think serious encounters with serious things are so important because a great deal does depend on how we come to understand them if as you're saying earlier if we eliminate the idea that anything transcendent our material can be known well have lives are pretty damn impoverished now where if we can accept what it means seriously to cereals they become infinitely infinitely enriched so I'm not suggesting that the ways we understand these things are somehow immaterial or to use the word immaterial in a different sense or or arbitrary or there's simply a series of archetypes but rather that you know you know one of the ways this comes out for example in in Dante and others you know abraham believed and it was credited under him as righteousness so even in the Christian account by what's movie Old Testament there must have been some sense that the mediation that I take it you see to be revealed in Christ is already an active principle even if it's not understood if I can put it that way yeah or I'd say there are rays of truth in all the great religions and the great philosophies you can find hints and echoes of this fullness so I never want to move into the stance of you know Christianity right everybody else wrong oh yeah this is the true religion versus false religion that's too stark there are all kinds of elements of truth and Judaism is a prime example obviously Christianity is simply a further you know is born of that parent religion so we'd find all kinds of points of contact and it's true in the other great philosophies and religions yet there's a fullness on offer in Christianity that is worth taking very seriously so it you're on a you know you're kind of skating on an edge there between a sort of indifference ism or relativism and then a sort of religious absolutism I would say there's a fullness a completeness of revelation on display in Christianity but elements of which are are also on offering other great religions and that's the basis for ongoing conversation is to find those points of contact and we were doing it earlier talking about philosophy and all we were doing there was mimicking the Church Fathers you know here I'm a bishop for the church as as John Chrysostom was as Agustin was and they spoke philosophical language of their time and so we were speaking philosophically good those are points of contact important ones but then my purpose as an evangelist is to lead people to what I would perceive to be the fullness of the divine revelation but beginning with the points of contact and you know I think those are our key moves yes and certainly you know as you were saying earlier I mean there's a certain sense in which the clang is profoundly a universal one insofar as it is making the claim that God Himself is truth and that all things are made in and through that unintelligibility as you said earlier and so from that review any thing that is true is yes because it is sustained by that you might say that divine intelligibility or known in that if so you know there's a certain version of Christianity you certain evangelical version that would say well there's there's kind of there's there's Christian music and then there's non-christian music and there's kind of there's a good there's a it's a kind of manic II ISM there's a there's a good form of this in a bad form of this but certainly the theological II I'd say Orthodox Christian view is that all things that are good are simply you know there is nothing good that is outside of the that say the divine the divine economy oh that bit speak of which let's let's move on to you were talking about this notion of the Incarnation that that in in and through the life one can come to know that that that that transcended that Boone Boone bidding tells you what's the German word how do you put that they own cause everything to the only thing said Linda dictate my German mind my German is a select here at the moment am so but let's turn to say you what is the relation between that idea that in time and change one can come to participate in something beyond simply matter in its motion and what Christians call the Trinity I mean that just seems so far out for many people but but I take it that what's moving there is a a very deep theological account of what reality itself is yeah good and you're coming to the to in some way central and most beguiling mysteries in Christianity but you know in a way everything we've been talking about in this past hour has been about the Incarnation we're talking about the longing of the finite for the infinite we're talking about the journey from the material to the immaterial we're talking about a passion for union with the transcendent with Dustin Vedanta with God that's built into the human being the Incarnation now to lest it seem like just this strange metaphysical outlier to see it rather as the fulfillment of this longing which is in Co Italy present in every one of us why was it that when that message of incarnation was announced people didn't say well that's a bunch of nonsense what led people to say no that that's right that that strikes me as right but God would have done that because God is placed within us already and it's present in every quest for the true of the good the beautiful everything else the transcendent its ingredient in the frustration we feel when the best things in life fade away so quickly all of that you might say is implicitly a longing for the Incarnation which is why when it's announced we say yes that's it that's what I've wanted all along I think that makes the Incarnation much less anomalous and like a strange metaphysical exception in some ways it's it's a longing that's altogether intelligible I should say it's it's a mystery intelligible in light of our deepest longing here's a second take on the Incarnation so God became human without ceasing to be God and without compromising the integrity of the human he became that's a way to state it formulaic Li but in Jesus two natures we say divine and human came together without mixing mingling or confusion that's the Council of Kelcey so divinity and a creature meet in a personal union but in such a way that they are not in competition with each other that signals something extremely important about God namely that God is not finally competitive with his creation so you think of any two creaturely things that there there's a mutual exclusivity about them you know the the podium becomes a sh only by being burned and destroyed the the one animal becomes the other but only by being devoured right there's a there's a mutual independence exclusivity about creatures but now we say in Jesus God becomes a creature but without overwhelming or destroying or compromising the creature he becomes that means God exists in such a way that he's non-competitive with his creation this I would argue is behind all these distinctive Christian claims but God is not so much a being but use Thomas's language God is if some s a subsistence God is the sheep or active to be itself God is not ends tsumo in Aquinas the highest being because the highest being would be in competition with lower types of being but God is not like that God is if some si who can come infinitely close to his creation without compromising his creation the great biblical image by the way for that is the the burning bush so Moses teased the bush on fire but not consumed and from that image from that thing comes the voice of God well what's being communicated there is that the closer God gets to the world the more the world is rendered beautiful and it's not compromised it's it's not burned up that idea reaches its fulfillment its full expression in the Incarnation and that in turn is the ground of all Christian humanism seems to me there's nothing of the human that has to be put down or denied in order for God to become close to us and that now doubles right back to the beginning of our conversation the glory of God is a human being fully alive awaken the mind awaken the will awaken every power in you that's what God wants so I those are a couple ways to unpack I think some significance of the Incarnation may I just quickly follow up on that bishop and ask and ask young so would you you know in our popular in our popular culture Catholicism and Christianity general is associated with the kind of body hating guilt you know always you know beating you up and and renouncing you know the the the pleasures of this world and what would you is that is that a miss under hi I'm suspecting you know well you wouldn't you wouldn't you wouldn't accept that account of things but I really want to give you a chance to to positively refute it and and and if that's if that's what you think yeah I'd be happy to I begin with Hilaire Belloc you know the famous little couplet wherever the Catholic Sun does shine there's music and laughter and good red wine that's the Catholic Sensibility and it's it's grounded in the metaphysics that I was just articulating about God's non-competitive transcendence to the world where's the character come from well some probably bad Catholic teaching and bad Catholic of witnessing to the form of the Christian life but see what what is Catholic moral theology trying to do it's trying to bring everything in life under the aegis of love because love is what God is right and we're hungry for God so everything should be brought under the aegis of love what's love is to will the good of the other now take that rubric and read the Church's teaching on sexuality is it a hatred of the body no that might be Plato it's not Catholicism is it a hatred of sexuality no that might be man icky ism or that might be Gnosticism it's not Catholic Christianity what it is is an attempt to bring human sexuality under the aegis of love now read john paul ii they're so good and those those issues we want to structure human sexuality in such a way but it's geared not toward the pleasure of the ego but is geared toward radical gift that's how you understand all of the you know prohibitions that are built into catholic teaching around sexuality but to read it as a Puritanism or mana key ism or Platonism or Gnosticism that's completely wrong headed I'd read it as a philosophy or theology of love or of radical self gift and then I would say furthermore I'll get a little defensive here look around our culture and you tell me that that rampant sexual Liberty nism has made everybody happy I mean give me a break when I look around all the Catholic Church hung up on sexuality that they're so repressed and making come off it look around our society you tell me that our past sixty years of complete sexual freedom has just made everybody blissfully happy I mean I can go through will need another hour but I mean the sheer suffering visited upon the human race by an undisciplined sort of rampant self-satisfying sexuality so I guess I you're sensing I get a little defensive around that claim but to your original point the puritanical reading has nothing to do with authentic of biblical Christianity it I I'm very glad to hear you you you you put it that way of course that's that very much Mayan meeting that the the taking up of the Greeks in the way that we've been speaking as the Christians understand that through the Incarnation leads to a profound affirmation of this world in this life the joys of this life let me ask you two last questions Bishop this we've just been speaking very beautifully about you've said that we're made for love and that love you use the language of is is self gift or self giving or even radical self giving I'm wondering if you could say a bit more about what love is is self giving and and and and perhaps touch on what forgiveness is in relation to that yeah I I go back to the classic Thomas Aquinas definition to love is to will the good of the other and then I like some contemporary people have added as other because but we can often do is you can even will the good of the other but for your own sake so so that indirectly it my tree down to your benefit but to love is to break out of that sort of black hole you know that where everything gets referenced back to your ego to love is to say I truly want your good and that's an extraordinary move it's a very rare attainment of the spirit and we call it within in Christianity a theological virtue because it's of God it's what God is now forgiveness is a modality of love why because it's willing the good of the other not willing my own satisfaction that will come from revenge so if I'd been hurt there's a kind of satisfaction I get from nursing that grudge of seeking revenge that's seeking my own good but if I say no I really want your good period for your sake then of course it'll manifest itself as forgiveness Jesus on the cross as he's being crucified saying to his torturers Father forgive them is the great archetype of that right it's it's it's in some ways the purest expression of love because you're willing the good of those who have harmed you and so there's no good you could possibly indirectly cull from that it's a purely ecstatic act if you know what I mean it takes you out of the the realm of self reference so that's how I'd relate those two that's beautifully said would you go so far as to say that that you're the way you put that to you know to move beyond love is simply a let's call it an alignment of interests or something of that you know I'm you scratch my back and I scratch mine you know they or let's say a kind of narrow reciprocity let's put it that way yeah to move beyond that to loving some the other as other and indeed even to forgive them when they have hurt you is that in a sense to you is what's moving is what's happening in that precisely if I can put it this way in the kind of philosophical language for the self to participate for us as individuals to participate in a kind of infinity because we are we are not being narrowed or defined by but by that limit but giving ourselves over to something that is beyond the limit well yes because it's a theological virtue it can't be something that you have bitchu it yourself toward so think of the the cardinal virtues you know in classical philosophy you can habituate yourself to become more courageous and more just and more prudent and so on but you can't really practice your way to love because it's a participation in the way that God is it's I'd use the language of grace it's the reception of a grace of a sheer gift it's a way of being that I can't attain to by my efforts but I can participate in through the acceptance of grace and to that degree yes it's something infinite because it's it's of the very nature of God to exist in that way that's why it's deeply mysterious love is a deeply mysterious thing when it's when you actually see it showing up hmm it's interesting because I would have I would have understood this perhaps in the way that I think I think Dante does which the habituation and even there's habituation even in the theological virtues and so insofar as we can develop a habit of say self self self giving or a habit of forgiveness or a let's call it a stance in the world and I understand of course in the way you're saying and as Dante himself would that to do that is precisely to have a stance of receptivity because we can't simply I think Dante would say do that all on our own but but but I suppose I'm wondering whether we can be habituated in those things say a word about that if you like him that I have a final question yeah I wouldn't say if it because that makes it a natural virtue that I'm getting through my kind of attainment I think we can buy a steady openness stand ready to receive grace but but there is something anomalous and strange about it where you could say to a kid let's say no no let's really work on this make you more courageous and by putting you gradually into you know dangerous situations and habituating you to do you know the right thing under pressure etc I can habituate you toward justice by doing just things but you can't at least in the Christian take be habituated to faith hope and love they're given through grace now there can be as I say that's that steady openness of the will toward receiving them but they come they come as a gift not as an achievement yes well let's resume that another time because again in my reading of Dante I would say that who I think is relying on Thomas there in terms of the see the Luke's glory I the the light that enables our vision and they say the whole logic of the Paradiso it's not simply a passivity we're we're we're coming to actively will I think we dont't say through grace through through gift although there would be gift for him I think even in the natural cardinal virtues you know the the the the natural light isn't it the in the comedy I think it's the way the I'll have to get this right but the the way the the the shadows of moon and the shadow the light cast can quote I'm afraid I can't quite get the image right but that the even the natural virtues are undertaken you might say in light of the infinite divine economy all things you might say are in light of of that I'm moved by that as as the words of the last the last words of the the Paradiso are effort yeah you're touching a very nicely question because you have in Thomas the natural virtues but you've also got the what he calls the infused virtues and there's a kind of supernatural prudence courage justice etc so there's that's another level of the virtues yes but it's a faith hope and charity though are not to be understood as they correspond virtues of the faculties of memory or being knowing and willing essentially of the faculties of knowledge and love so it seems to me there's an activity in those but let's yeah let's go ahead and reply to that but III have a have one last question for you which maybe maybe maybe it is a way of linking where we've been back to where we started and and and certainly give you a chance if you want to say something about about the activity or habituation I think we're I actually think we may agree on this but we're talking about a technical language of what you take a ooh a Shinto mean and really like what I do but I don't think being there but ya know an operation with Grey's I mean there's the classic Catholic thing you cooperate with grace but it's not a question of of activity in the natural sense you know which Aristotle would have articulated there's something really new on offer but sure that's because God's not competitive with us so the openness to grace is not as you correctly suggest not like sheer passivity and sort of a natural way like I'm just totally passive to whatever you're doing to me because when God acts it awakens it awakens the best in me and so on so I certainly agree with that as a cooperation with it yes yes they so this is a this would be a conversation I love to pursue over a bottle of wine and we can talk about how good Dante and is to take the Aristotelian ethical standpoint in France Norman in love what they would take to be a much fuller revelation but let me return to where we started and draw this to a circle you spoke beautifully about what means to be sort of fully activated as a human being and you also spoke about the need for the the recovery of the philosophical tradition in order to perceive higher and in fact more fundamentally no err no knowable truths and the corresponding degradation of our humanity without those higher forms of knowing what advice to you if two people who say man you know I just I've got a I've got to get a better grip on what's really real and and I want to understand what I'm doing I can't just start I don't know I I don't believe in I don't know the the the the creed or the Christian religion or any other religion but I know that that I want to have a fuller encounter with what's really real in my life I want to go on that ladder of ascent that they're talking about the the movement upward an inward or towards true reforms of love and encounter with what's true and beautiful and good can you just just say in words of how you advise people to start where you are to move to higher and truer forms of of knowledge and love yeah I like that question and it does bring us back to the beginning which is good to as I mentioned Plato offers not so much a doctrine that's to read him in a very modern sort of way he offers a set of exercises seems to me to get us out of the cave and to get us to higher points in the line etc I've done this with people who are very secularists very materialist but let's say they're deeply interested in mathematics and I'll say well let's start looking at mathematical truths that are timeless and spaceless and transcend matter even something as simple as a number what is that number in itself or a geometrical form what is that it's a type of being for sure and you're finding delight in knowing it but it can't be placed in time or space it's not a particular way mathematics has broken you out of the cave now keep going and then I would draw and maybe draw someone into a more philosophical modes of thinking these give you access to realities that can't be pinned down in that empirical scientific way I've always loved Thomas Aquinas his word mondo Dook Co which means a leading by the hand and he said that philosophy has that function visa vie theology it's a it's a leading by the hand let me let me take you and show you some things and I think we can still bring people through a set of spiritual exercises that are designed to awaken their minds and Will's you know to something beyond their ordinary experience so I would start with those and show them the great masters have them read the great masters in these various areas and and you know let's try to break out of the buffer itself this little narrow cramped space that ideological scientism has locked us into would you just say one more word one more word about this you know I know that you and I both spent some time with with Jordan Peterson and one thing that I found so moving in Jordan's account of many people who come to him is how they're they're just they're just desperate for a few crumbs of care and and then a few gentle words of advice about you know how how to discover the rich meaning that's present in their lives I love to hear you say a word or two more about the the Spiritual Exercises I mean I think there's a sense when Jordan tells people to to clean their room you know yeah he's something of have a kind of taking responsibility for the self that's what deep spiritual principle but you could say a word or two about Spiritual Exercises and then maybe in conclusion you mentioned the great masters you know if if someone has read almost nothing of the theological philosophical literary tradition or very few things could you just tell us in conclusion a few books that you have really found your deeply illuminating yourself yeah you know here's the most fundamental spiritual exercise engage in the simplest act of love love breaks us out of this narrow eco just by its very nature once you grasp the definition of it well open yourself to that will the good of the other do something about it now read much of the New Testament under that rubric is Jesus inviting people into a stance of love even love of enemies which is meant to bring us into this altogether new space I've done that with people past early who feel lost they feel depressed or they're they're dry you know I'll say every day perform the simplest act of love and and I think you'll find your life changing in terms of the Masters you know one that comes to my mind and as we were talking and it's a really good place to start because it's a book that's quite short and punchy is st. Bonaventure great book called the minds road to God the attend Auraria mentis in Deum and he has that tripartite move and you were actually drawing attention to it there you go out you go in and you go up so you go out to the world to its intelligibility to its beauty to its you know truth and you see a reflection of God you go in and to your own soul and we spent the last hour talking about that it's the longing of the mind and the will which finally leads you up to this reality which which is reflected in the world and in here but it's not restricted to those realms but transcends them so that's a little book it's maybe 75 pages but I find it to be very helpful beginning book another one I still love for beginners is CS Lewis's mere christianity I think is a great way to get just sort of oriented to the Christian thing mmm-hmm thank you very much for that and I know I know that we've we you have noted a very busy day afternoon ahead of you they're out there in the west coast I'm very grateful for the time you've made for this conversation and for the the participation that you have that your participation on things bought generally this is an interesting experiment which I think is made precisely for these kinds of conversations about things that cannot be approached in a one or two minute sound sound by Jim so I'm thinking very much for your time I hope we might speak again and onward and upward I'd love it thank you for having me I really enjoyed it

Channel: Bishop Robert Barron

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Id: 4nBX2jtxGgY

Length: 71min 56sec (4316 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 23 2019