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Meaning: Trust and Truth - Kristi Mair and Paul Vanderklay || SLP429 · The Speak Life Podcast

0:06
SPEAKER_05: Hello and thank you so much for downloading episode four hundred and twenty-nine of the Speak Life Podcast.
0:12
SPEAKER_05: My name is Thomas Thurrogate, Media Producer of Speak Life.
0:15
SPEAKER_05: And today we bring you the other session that was recorded at Oak Hill College on the 3rd of September.
0:24
SPEAKER_05: So we recently released a video on our YouTube channel and a podcast episode of Tom Holland and Paul Vanderclay, interviewed by Glenn Scrivener.
0:34
SPEAKER_05: We're having a discussion together at Oak Hill College.
0:36
SPEAKER_05: We now have the earlier conversation from that day, which is with uh Paul Vanderclay and Glenn Scrivener again, and Christy Mare, who uh teaches uh epistemology and apologetics uh at Oak Hill College.
0:51
SPEAKER_05: So it begins with a talk by Christy Mare and then a discussion with the three of them.
0:57
SPEAKER_05: So I think it's a really interesting conversation, and I hope you enjoy it, find it useful.
1:03
SPEAKER_05: Just a heads up there's a bit of a hiss in the audio, and it sounds a little bit distant or like it's doubling up slightly.
1:12
SPEAKER_05: Uh, we tried our best to fix that, but there's only so much you can do.
1:16
SPEAKER_05: It's it's very challenging uh for to record uh audio in the in these kind of live setups.
1:21
SPEAKER_05: So a huge uh shout out to the Oak Hill team.
1:24
SPEAKER_05: Thank you so much for hosting the event and also for recording it and allowing us to release uh the recording.
1:32
SPEAKER_05: So without further ado, I will hand straight over to Christy Mare, Paul Vanderclay, and Glenn Scrivener.
1:47
SPEAKER_04: Christy Mare.
1:49
SPEAKER_04: So knowing, that's knowledge formation, in a way, in a way, is a little bit like becoming friends with reality.
1:57
SPEAKER_04: Some things which are required to become and to be a good friend are also required when we come to know something.
2:04
SPEAKER_04: So we're going to start with a guy called David McPherson, and according to him, so he's an associate professor of philosophy in the states, and according to him, he says that there are two existential stances towards reality, or the given as he refers to it.
2:20
SPEAKER_04: So that means that there are essentially two ways in which we can hang out with, you know, get to know and approach reality.
2:28
SPEAKER_04: And the first one is this.
2:30
SPEAKER_04: The first one he identifies is the choosing-controlling stance.
2:35
SPEAKER_04: One stance we can take towards the given is the choosing-controlling stance.
2:40
SPEAKER_04: All mature human beings adopt this stance to some extent in their efforts to improve their lives and the world around them through controlling, transforming, and overcoming the given.
2:50
SPEAKER_04: However, at the extreme, this stance can give expression to a Promethean project of playing God by seeking mastery over the given.
3:01
SPEAKER_04: Mastery over reality.
3:02
SPEAKER_04: I think if we're thinking more about the malicious kind of mastery of reality, such as you know, disinformation, propaganda, farming, let's think about Twitter farms, that kind of works, doesn't it?
3:15
SPEAKER_04: Um, cover-ups, you know, cults, lying.
3:18
SPEAKER_04: It's also similar to All Wells Double Think, if you've come across this, where subjects are expected simultaneously to hold two conflicting views, even if it goes against their own brain of their personal memory and sense of reality.
3:35
SPEAKER_04: You know, like war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.
3:42
SPEAKER_04: If you've read um 1984, you'll have seen this kind of quote there: to know or not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible that the party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever is necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all to apply the same process to the process itself.
4:20
SPEAKER_04: That was the ultimate subtlety, consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then once again to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you've just performed.
4:29
SPEAKER_04: Even to understand the word double think involved the use of double think.
4:34
SPEAKER_04: So there are some examples of that first stance.
4:37
SPEAKER_04: The second stance is the accepting and appreciating stance.
4:42
SPEAKER_04: And on this, David McPherson writes The other basic existential stance is at odds with this Promethean project.
4:49
SPEAKER_04: I refer to it as the accepting-appreciating stance.
4:52
SPEAKER_04: By accepting and appreciating the given, it imposes limits on the choosing-controlling stance.
4:59
SPEAKER_04: I will argue that the accepting and appreciating stance toward the given should be regarded as primary in several ways.
5:05
SPEAKER_04: And then in his book he talks about specific virtue-limiting ways in which this happens, namely humility, reverence, contentment, and loyalty that give proper expression to this stance.
5:18
SPEAKER_04: So two stances.
6:00
SPEAKER_04: So before we look at his contribution to knowing, I'd just love for you to get to know him.
6:06
SPEAKER_04: Before he moves into philosophy, when he's a scientist, Paulanyi regularly travelled to the USSR during his time in Germany.
6:15
SPEAKER_04: And two years after moving to Manchester, he returns to the Soviet Union.
6:19
SPEAKER_04: And there he meets a guy called Nikolai Bukharin.
6:22
SPEAKER_04: You may have come across him, he was one of the party's leading ideologists.
6:26
SPEAKER_04: And he provided a philosophical, scientific rationale for the conduct of the Communist Party.
6:33
SPEAKER_04: So Bacharin, you know, they're in a room together, they're in the Kremlin, and Bukharin presents to him his official Soviet views on science.
6:41
SPEAKER_04: And that's this.
6:42
SPEAKER_04: Rukharin says that the distinction that's made between pure science, that science which is curiosity-driven, you know, it's knowledge for the sake of knowledge, and applied science, which is goal-driven, it's something which is focused on practical outcomes and applications.
6:59
SPEAKER_04: The difference is that there isn't one, it's an anachronism created by capitalist countries which form the illusion of pure science.
7:08
SPEAKER_04: So what he's saying is, so what McCarron goes on to say accordingly in the USSR, that they were pleased to report that that distinction ceased to reflect any real difference.
7:19
SPEAKER_04: So Polanyi, he shares this conversation and how, in McCarran's view, the lack of distinction in the USSR frees the scientist to pursue their own interests, but owing to the complete internal harmony of the socialist society, they would, in actual fact, inevitably be led to research which would benefit the current five years plan.
7:44
SPEAKER_04: Now, Pliny, he found this quite amusing, and he refers to this as dialectical mystery mongering.
7:50
SPEAKER_04: And it soon, however, though, turned into an overwhelming concern.
7:55
SPEAKER_04: Because essentially what McCarron is saying is that there is no freedom to pursue truth.
7:59
SPEAKER_04: So without freedom for the scientists to pursue truth, that's knowledge for the sake of knowledge.
8:04
SPEAKER_04: Science just becomes a means by which to pursue social purposes.
8:09
SPEAKER_04: It's determined by economic conditions.
8:11
SPEAKER_04: And the physical and political lens of that could and would be devastating.
8:16
SPEAKER_04: And so it's in this, it's due to his experience of totalitarian regimes, both in a form of fascism and communism, as well as his own experience of military warfare he was involved in the Great War, which influenced his thinking considerably.
8:31
SPEAKER_04: And so out of these experiences and observations, what he's seeking to do in his epistemology, which we'll get to in a moment, is to defend a free society against tyranny in all its forms.
8:43
SPEAKER_04: So having met Bucharin, he's utterly shocked.
8:46
SPEAKER_04: You know, that one encounter with McCaren, he's suddenly asking, how can any scientists conduct good research when the outcomes were inevitably determined by the state and serve the state?
8:59
SPEAKER_04: So he became increasingly aware of something that he refers to as the foundational futility of dialectic scientific materialism of socialist theory.
9:08
SPEAKER_04: You know, matter is all that matters, it trusts only material necessity.
9:14
SPEAKER_04: So he learned from Bucharan that the state has an agenda and the scientist's role is actually to support that agenda.
9:19
SPEAKER_04: The state is telling you this is what you will find, and the scientist goes and finds it.
9:24
SPEAKER_04: So what room could there possibly be for scientific freedoms of discovery if, as we've seen, science is formed and founded upon what he refers to as the self-immolation of the mind.
9:36
SPEAKER_04: This leads to a destruction, it's completely self-destructive of knowledge.
9:41
SPEAKER_04: So to provide a solution, a better way of knowing, specifically coming to know, he adopts a form of what MacPherson later dubs the accepting, appreciating stance.
9:53
SPEAKER_04: So he develops an epistemology to kind of remedy what he witnesses in the USSR.
9:58
SPEAKER_04: He wants to defend free and open knowledge, he wants to ensure a free society, free from all forms of tyranny.
10:04
SPEAKER_04: And as he reflects on this, he sees that this begins even before we can say that we know something.
10:10
SPEAKER_04: It starts as we move towards coming to know something.
10:13
SPEAKER_04: So as a scientist, Palañi is saying, how do I actually come to know anything?
10:18
SPEAKER_04: How do I discover anything?
10:21
SPEAKER_04: That is the question.
10:23
SPEAKER_04: How do we come to know?
10:25
SPEAKER_04: That is the question which his epistemology answers.
10:28
SPEAKER_04: So these are the main features, and next slide, please, of tacit knowledge.
10:32
SPEAKER_04: Tacit knowledge is what he formulates and says is lacking from that prevailing view of knowledge.
10:39
SPEAKER_04: And he says what we need is we need a free society of explorers.
10:44
SPEAKER_04: Think about this background, pursuing knowledge for the sake of knowledge.
10:47
SPEAKER_04: You need a community who is going to provide the guardrails for that knowledge.
10:52
SPEAKER_04: You need authoritative guides, those who trustworthily pass on their knowledge to us, whether that's other scientists, parents, teachers.
11:02
SPEAKER_04: It requires something called subsidiary focal integration.
11:05
SPEAKER_04: Now, this is the act of knowing.
11:07
SPEAKER_04: We'll look at this in a moment.
11:09
SPEAKER_04: There's a from or to structure of knowing, which means that the the bodily, the body is it's all knowledge is bodily rooted.
11:19
SPEAKER_04: There is personal participation in our coming to know, which means we start from and to something.
11:24
SPEAKER_04: We don't look above and then down.
11:27
SPEAKER_04: Think about the Enlightenment project here, that kind of um what's that word?
11:32
SPEAKER_04: Detachment.
11:33
SPEAKER_04: Yes, what did you say?
11:34
SPEAKER_04: Objectifying.
11:35
SPEAKER_04: Objectifying, yes.
11:36
SPEAKER_04: Like thinking that you can look over something in order to come to know that thing at a kind of separated distance.
11:42
SPEAKER_04: And this leads to indeterminate future manifestations or IFMs.
11:47
SPEAKER_04: So knowing means that there's more that we cannot specify.
11:51
SPEAKER_04: That's how we know that we know, there's more that we don't know.
11:53
SPEAKER_04: What we're going to do in the last kind of 10 minutes or so is we're going to focus on subsidiary focal integration.
11:59
SPEAKER_04: Now I think it's perhaps the best way, because it's a bit of a tongue twister, actually, isn't it?
12:05
unknown: Um can you say subsidiary focal integration?
12:08
unknown: Subsidiary focal integration.
12:11
unknown: Lovely, thank you.
12:12
SPEAKER_04: Um so once we can pronounce it, um, this I want to ask you another question of what do you do in your free time?
12:19
SPEAKER_04: I think this illustrates subsidiary focal integration really well, or I hope it does.
12:22
SPEAKER_04: Please feel free to shout out.
12:24
SPEAKER_04: What do you enjoy doing?
12:25
SPEAKER_04: What are your hobbies?
12:26
SPEAKER_04: Watching films.
12:27
SPEAKER_04: Watching Paul Fibonacci.
12:33
SPEAKER_04: Um films, films, fantastic kind of films.
12:38
unknown: Anything that's like.
12:39
SPEAKER_04: Any films?
12:40
SPEAKER_04: Wow, incredible.
12:43
unknown: What else?
12:43
SPEAKER_04: Sports.
12:44
SPEAKER_04: Sport, watching sport, playing sports, any kind of particular kind of sports?
12:49
unknown: Um football.
12:50
SPEAKER_04: Football, oh excellent choices.
12:51
SPEAKER_04: I know nothing about football.
12:55
SPEAKER_04: Anything else?
12:56
SPEAKER_04: Nature, nature, okay.
12:58
SPEAKER_04: What about nature?
12:59
SPEAKER_03: Walking in nature.
13:00
SPEAKER_04: Walking in nature, enjoying nature, yeah, lovely.
13:03
SPEAKER_04: Chatting with friends, chatting with friends, fantastic.
13:06
SPEAKER_04: Reading.
13:07
SPEAKER_04: Reading, and what was it called?
13:09
SPEAKER_04: Eat herring.
13:10
SPEAKER_04: Eat herring.
13:15
SPEAKER_04: Reading.
13:24
SPEAKER_04: Um, I could take one of your examples, but um, I don't show my inheritance because I don't actually eat her.
13:30
SPEAKER_04: I don't know what that means look like, so we're gonna go on the iMode earlier, if that's okay.
13:35
SPEAKER_04: Um, which is um if I hadn't broke it, this is what I like doing in my spare time, and that's playing uh the cello, hello cello.
13:44
SPEAKER_04: Now I'm a poor cellist, both literally have a finger to Lisa, please say.
13:51
SPEAKER_04: I really, really don't, I really don't.
13:53
SPEAKER_04: Now you might be thinking, what does playing cello or playing sport or eating herring or reading or watching any film have to do with subsidiary focal integration?
14:08
SPEAKER_04: And how does it have what does it have to do with anything that we've just mentioned?
14:11
SPEAKER_04: Now, according to Michael Polanyi, it has absolutely everything to do with knowing, with coming to know.
14:19
SPEAKER_04: So subsidiary focal integration accounts for how we come to know, which applies to all areas of knowledge.
14:26
SPEAKER_04: SFI accounts for how I came to know to play the cello, albeit very, very badly.
14:32
SPEAKER_04: So, what do you need to play the cello?
14:35
SPEAKER_11: Cello.
14:36
SPEAKER_04: You need a cello.
14:37
SPEAKER_04: Yes, you do.
14:38
SPEAKER_04: So you need some kind of um you need some kind of instrument, something that you'd like to learn, something you'd like to move towards, yes, what else do you need?
14:45
SPEAKER_11: Musical ear.
14:47
unknown: A musical ear, well not necessarily an inclination to learn.
14:52
unknown: An inclination to learn time, did you say?
14:55
unknown: Yeah.
14:57
unknown: Application, did you say?
15:00
unknown: Sorry?
15:01
unknown: Hands, yes, you do need hands.
15:03
unknown: Yes.
15:03
unknown: Instruction from somewhere.
15:04
unknown: Instruction from somewhere, fantastic.
15:06
SPEAKER_04: Yes, so I think neighbours.
15:10
SPEAKER_09: Patient neighbours.
15:15
SPEAKER_04: Um yes, patient neighbours.
15:17
SPEAKER_04: So to play the cello, you probably need, you do need, you absolutely do need, there's no probability match, you need a cello, and you're going to need a teacher.
15:24
SPEAKER_04: So you could probably learn to play the cello on your own, you could watch a YouTube um video sign try, but that will only get you so far because there are particular ways, particular things that you have to do to know how to play the cello.
15:35
SPEAKER_04: You have to, your arm has to be held in a particular position.
15:37
SPEAKER_04: If you hold it in the wrong one, you will create an awful sound.
15:41
SPEAKER_04: You have to learn how to kind of move the bow, cross the strings, you have to know kind of how it is that um what kind of fingering positions that you're that you move your hands into to play particular chords.
15:52
SPEAKER_04: And so what you do is you you are submitting yourself to the authority, the authority of your guide, the teacher, and to the clues of the cello, which is that it's made in a particular way.
16:06
SPEAKER_04: And so as I kind of indwell those clues, as I um as I kind of hold the bow, as I have my hands in a particular um position, as I sit in a particular way, those clues that I follow are subsidiary.
16:18
SPEAKER_04: Now, to begin with, when you're learning anything new, it could be um riding the bike, you are focusing on the subsidiaries like Matt, aren't you?
16:26
SPEAKER_04: You're focusing on the handlebars, the um the wheels, the the brakes.
16:30
SPEAKER_04: But there is a moment of integration which occurs when you actually are riding a bike or I'm actually playing cello and I don't realise that that's what I'm doing.
16:39
SPEAKER_04: And there's no kind of well, there is for bike riding, there is an equation, like some kind of formulae that will tell you what's going on when you're riding that bike.
16:47
SPEAKER_04: But knowing that isn't going to keep you on the bike, there's an unspecifiable um element to coming to know something, which is that as you as you um submit yourself to those clues, there's a moment of integration and there's a greater pattern that opens up before you, which is you know bike riding or playing the cello, and then what you've done, according to Michael Pilani, is you've made contact with reality.
17:11
SPEAKER_04: You're suddenly taken up in that activity, and to the point where if you had to think, What am I doing right now?
17:18
SPEAKER_04: If you're playing the cello, piano, sports, riding a bike, if you think what am I doing, you probably I know I would I'd fall off the bike, I'd stop playing cello.
17:27
SPEAKER_04: I it's just a moment of absurdity.
17:30
SPEAKER_04: So that is subsidiary vocal integration in a nutshell.
17:33
SPEAKER_04: Um so it's the actively responsible human integration of subsidiary clues in their transformative pattern, which betokens a profounder reality.
17:44
SPEAKER_04: Good isn't it?
17:46
SPEAKER_04: Okay, we've just got a few minutes left.
17:47
SPEAKER_04: So another key feature of Pelani's epistemology, this is another tongue twister, is indeterminate future manifestations.
17:54
SPEAKER_04: Again, can you say it with me?
17:55
SPEAKER_04: Indeterminate future manifestations.
17:58
SPEAKER_04: Great.
17:59
SPEAKER_04: Now that is just the formal and fancy way of saying that knowledge involves not knowing.
18:05
SPEAKER_04: In the sense that once you've come to know something, um you don't know how that knowledge will then go on to be applied.
18:12
SPEAKER_04: So I yeah, I've learned to play the cello, but I don't know with whom I'm going to play that cello.
18:16
SPEAKER_04: You know, they could even be, you know, you never thought of doing this, but how many one, two, three, four, four boats playing the cello?
18:22
SPEAKER_04: I think they're playing valero.
18:23
SPEAKER_04: And you never would have thought that that could have happened when you first started to play the cello.
18:27
SPEAKER_04: Or you might play it with another person, or you might play it with two other people, or you might play it in lament, you might play it in protest.
18:33
SPEAKER_04: There are so many ways, unspecifiable ways in which you can then play the cello, eat herring, um, read a book, watch a film, um, etc.
18:43
SPEAKER_04: So coming to know something results in these indeterminate future manifestations.
18:49
SPEAKER_04: Now, this doesn't mean very importantly, that knowledge freewheels.
18:53
SPEAKER_04: It's guarded by the community that scientists, in Pelani's case, cellists, gardeners, um, writers, whomever it may be, theologians, philosophers, and when pursued within a free society of explorers who are curious, they develop and they move the field forward.
19:12
SPEAKER_04: But there are these unspecifiable outcomes to having come to know something or even someone.
19:19
SPEAKER_04: And there's a quote here, I think, from Alanya, which you can read if you'd like to.
19:22
SPEAKER_04: So these IFMs are vital because without them we are left with this Promethean project that um MacPherson referred to earlier: the dominance of the choosing controlling starts to reality.
19:35
SPEAKER_04: So, not knowing is part of knowing and coming to know something.
19:41
SPEAKER_04: You know, that's what it is.
19:43
SPEAKER_04: Um, just as a quick aside, this is what he's doing.
19:46
SPEAKER_04: Colanyi isn't only protecting the formation of knowledge from tyranny from socialist theories, he's also reacting against an intellectual inheritance of the Enlightenment and its materialistic ontological reductionism.
20:00
SPEAKER_04: You know, that you can put everything to know something truly and totally, all you have to do is cut it up.
20:06
SPEAKER_04: You dissect it.
20:07
SPEAKER_04: And he's saying, No, knowledge is more than the sum total of something's parts.
20:12
SPEAKER_04: We often know more than we can say.
20:14
SPEAKER_04: Oh, welcome.
20:16
SPEAKER_04: And we often say more than we can know.
20:19
SPEAKER_04: How do you account for that?
20:21
SPEAKER_04: That is how.
20:22
SPEAKER_04: He's referring to this subsidiary focal integration.
20:26
SPEAKER_04: So, even more quickly, before I summarise and finish, there's a philosopher called Esther Meek.
20:31
SPEAKER_04: She develops Polanyi's work further in many ways, and one thing she sharpens is she argues that reality is person-like.
20:38
SPEAKER_04: So Polanyi doesn't go into that very much, but Meek does.
20:41
SPEAKER_04: And she argues that because reality is person-like, in order to know something, a particular epistemological etiquette is required, which frees the knower to remain in the accepting, appreciating stance and avoiding the mastery-controlling one.
20:56
SPEAKER_04: Because if you're in that, what happens when I play the cello is if I'm playing the cello on my own terms, I'm going to break it.
21:01
SPEAKER_04: You know, even something small, like if I want to play it from the sofa rather than a particular chair, that can cause unspeakable harm to the cello, as it has done in my case.
21:09
SPEAKER_04: So the epistemological etiquette, oddly enough, entails some of the virtues that McPherson listed earlier on: humility, if you remember, reverence, contentment, loyalty, trust.
21:19
SPEAKER_04: So we cannot truly come to know someone and continue to know it or them without good character formation.
21:27
SPEAKER_04: So possibly some of the best knowers, the best experts who are operative in their fields who you may know, who have come they have composed themselves in a particular way.
21:38
SPEAKER_04: They've adopted particular manners, particular epistemological etiquette in a way that they respect and nurture and love their subject.
21:45
SPEAKER_04: And so when you're thinking about trust for a moment, the measure of trustworthiness one possesses is essential to the one who wants to learn something from you.
21:55
SPEAKER_04: Are you a reliable guide?
21:57
SPEAKER_04: Are you somebody that others can trust?
22:00
SPEAKER_04: To both the knower and the known.
22:02
SPEAKER_04: It's as we humble ourselves, she would say, it's as we give our pledge, our commitment to follow the clues, those subsidiary clues, that reality discloses itself in a person-like way.
22:13
SPEAKER_04: So human knowledge, as Pallagi wrote, is but an intimation of reality, it's a hint, it's an indication, it's analogical, as some might say.
22:21
SPEAKER_04: Reality reveals more and more of itself as we adopt this accepting, appreciating stance and our coming to know.
22:28
SPEAKER_04: So finally, here's a quick overview.
22:30
SPEAKER_04: So we go from hubris to humility, we go from these determined preset kind of conditions for knowing to this indeterminate range of future manifestations.
22:41
SPEAKER_04: We go from certainty and saying this produces certain knowledge to saying actually this produces confidence.
22:46
SPEAKER_04: I can confidently say that this is true.
22:50
SPEAKER_04: It goes from tyranny to trust, and we go from the choosing and controlling choosing stance to the accepted, appreciating one.
22:58
SPEAKER_04: So knowing is like becoming, it's like becoming friends with reality.
23:03
SPEAKER_04: You're cultivating a friendship.
23:06
SPEAKER_04: Because what kind of friend stands over, looks down on, controls, masters, stipulates what precisely will happen where and when.
23:31
SPEAKER_04: So now to finish, you may remember these words from The Little Prince.
23:34
SPEAKER_04: It's one of my favourite books.
23:37
SPEAKER_04: And this is where the fox says to the prince, Men have forgotten this truth, said the fox, but you must not forget it.
23:44
SPEAKER_04: You become responsible for ever for what you have tamed.
23:48
SPEAKER_04: You are responsible for your rose.
23:50
SPEAKER_04: I'm responsible for my rose, the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
23:55
SPEAKER_04: But if knowing involves cultivating your friendship with reality, then perhaps another way of phrasing this part of the little prince might be: we become responsible for that aspect of reality which we have befriended.
24:09
SPEAKER_04: You know, I should take my cello to be repaired, and we get to guard the knowledge formation of our own lives and work in tyranny.
24:17
SPEAKER_04: Thank you so much for listening.
24:41
SPEAKER_10: And uh Michael Pollanya is an instant feature on the channel.
24:46
SPEAKER_08: Yeah, Michael Pelany and Esther Meeks have been, if not mentioned, often in the background of a lot of what we've done.
24:58
SPEAKER_08: I love your cello illustration.
25:00
SPEAKER_08: Uh when I was in first grade, uh someone came to school with tiny little violins and put them in front of first graders, and I went home and I told my mom, I want to play the violin.
25:11
SPEAKER_08: And I started playing the violin in first grade.
25:14
SPEAKER_08: We didn't read music until third grade, just repeating the fingers, doing all that subsidiary focal integration, and play the violin for about 10 years, and every now and then when we have no other music available at Living Stones, I pull the violin out, and because I started that at first grade, I can play just about anything I hear.
25:37
SPEAKER_08: Not particularly well because I don't practice and that gets into this.
25:44
SPEAKER_08: Well, thank you for that.
25:45
SPEAKER_08: Thank you for that.
25:47
SPEAKER_08: Usually when I comment on something, I can pause the person.
25:54
SPEAKER_08: So I could pause you at each point, and I wouldn't have to store up everything in my head.
25:59
unknown: That's not very personal.
26:00
SPEAKER_08: So that no, that isn't very personal, like YouTube is very impersonal.
26:05
SPEAKER_08: Actually, on the way here, um, John Van Dong leaned to me at one point on the airplane and said, you know, you're kind of working against your own ends with this YouTube thing.
26:17
SPEAKER_08: And I knew what he meant.
26:19
SPEAKER_08: Because while I'm a YouTuber and um most YouTubers have the goal of accumulating as many followers as possible, as many listeners as possible, for as many hours as possible, a big part of this project, and in fact, this estuary tour has been encouraging people to put down the phones, the tablets, and the computers and to practice exactly what you were talking about.
26:50
SPEAKER_08: Now I know for some of you I I please take no offense here.
26:55
SPEAKER_08: I I don't know, you know, I look at Ginger Bill there, and um if anybody wants to really have a conversation with a very smart man who knows physics and and philosophy and all those things, that's that's that's Ginger Bill.
27:10
SPEAKER_08: But for a lot of folks, philosophy, sort of, oh, we're talking philosophy, wing, off it goes.
27:19
SPEAKER_08: But everything that you talked about, I think not only has a great deal to do to becoming what in society generally we talk about as being a good person, but I think here at a Christian college, people will understand as becoming a Christian and becoming Christ-like.
27:41
SPEAKER_08: Because when I listen to you talk about this subsidiary focal integration, what I really thought about was Christian formation.
27:51
SPEAKER_08: Because Christian formation, similar to me playing the violin, is something that we long to do.
28:02
SPEAKER_08: A lot of people like to look at the end of the book of Matthew as sort of the Great Commission.
28:08
SPEAKER_08: I like to look at the beginning of the book of Acts because the disciples now, after the crucifixion and the resurrection, have Jesus and they have him in front of him, and now finally they continue to reiterate what their goal has always been.
28:25
SPEAKER_08: Now will you restore the kingdom to Israel?
28:28
SPEAKER_08: We've had our geopolitical goal all along, Jesus, and you've been rather frustrating and annoying in terms of where we wanted to go with this, and Jesus sort of dodges the question and says, You will be my witnesses.
28:48
SPEAKER_08: And that, and what he says essentially is that when Christians are seen, that formation of Christ in them is intended to be seen.
28:59
SPEAKER_08: And I think that has everything to do with your subsidiary focal integration.
29:06
SPEAKER_08: Because some of the best Christians I know are being some of the best Christians I know even when they don't know they're doing it.
29:15
SPEAKER_08: And then that also sort of works for sort of the secular version.
29:18
SPEAKER_08: Some of the best people I know are being the best people I know, and they don't know they're doing it because they've taken all of this stuff, and somehow it has gotten into them, and they're probably usually not sitting there with like a five-step program about how to be Jesus and going through them one, two, three, four, five in their minds, okay, I'm supposed to do this.
29:43
SPEAKER_08: Maybe they did that at the first, or maybe they're trying to learn a new thing, such as if you're learning the cello or learning the violin and you want to sort of master a new difficult piece, you have to do a lot of practicing.
29:54
SPEAKER_08: But the knowledge is personal in the sense that it is seen in a person and it flows through a person, and it doesn't look like all of that other controlling knowledge that you opened with.
30:12
SPEAKER_08: Recently, Jordan Peterson did his, I think it was his second or third conversation with Ian McGilchrist.
30:18
SPEAKER_08: And Ian McGilchrist always talks about the left side and the right side and talks about you know, the one hemisphere is of our mind is all about that one particular attempt to engage with the world.
30:31
SPEAKER_08: How much how long do you want me to talk?
30:32
SPEAKER_08: Do we have hours here?
30:33
SPEAKER_08: I mean, this is what I usually do.
30:37
SPEAKER_10: Absolutely.
30:38
SPEAKER_10: We we have uh another uh 40 minutes to go in terms of the whole thing.
30:44
SPEAKER_10: Okay, it's good to know how long the runway is.
30:46
SPEAKER_10: Yeah.
30:47
SPEAKER_10: We're gonna we're gonna have back and forth among us, and then we've got time for for QA.
30:51
SPEAKER_10: Oh, so okay.
30:52
SPEAKER_08: I'll try not to go as long as I go in my commentary videos.
30:55
SPEAKER_08: No, no, not that long.
31:01
SPEAKER_09: It's I mean it's it is the best story ever told.
31:04
SPEAKER_09: Christianity is.
31:06
SPEAKER_09: I mean, whether it's true or not is a different matter.
31:08
SPEAKER_09: But but as a matter of historical record, it is the most compelling story.
31:18
SPEAKER_05: That was historian Tom Holland speaking about mission in the meaning crisis.
31:23
SPEAKER_05: And there's plenty more where that came from.
31:26
SPEAKER_05: With the help of Christy Mayer, we'll be diving into this very topic during the Speak Life Vision evening.
31:34
SPEAKER_05: And you, yes, you are invited.
31:37
SPEAKER_05: It's happening from 8 to 9.30pm UK time on Thursday, the 20th of October.
31:44
SPEAKER_05: To sign up, go to speaklife.org.uk forward slash vision.
31:51
SPEAKER_05: Along with hearing from Christy Mayer and the Speak Life team, you'll get a first sneak peek at our new evangelistic course and you'll be the first to know about our exciting plans for creative evangelism.
32:04
SPEAKER_05: This really is a unique opportunity and it's completely free.
32:09
SPEAKER_05: Whether you've been following Speak Life for hours or for years, whether you live in England or Djibouti, join us over Zoom as we think about the future of Speak Life.
32:20
SPEAKER_05: That's Thursday, the 20th of October, 8 pm.
32:24
SPEAKER_05: Let's tell the greatest story of all time.
32:33
SPEAKER_08: So we have all this knowledge, and we go to a Christian college and we read the Bible, and that tends to be sort of this um this left brain approach of here's the material, master it, maybe memorize it.
32:49
SPEAKER_08: But then there's one thing that I noticed being a pastor among Christian people, it's that it's not always the people who have read all the books that are the best at being Christians.
33:01
SPEAKER_08: They might be really good at quoting Calvin or Luther or Aquinas or Augustine.
33:10
SPEAKER_08: They might even be really good at quoting the Bible.
33:13
SPEAKER_08: But one of the things that I saw was that it was often what I would call the unsophisticated, who became, some of them, not all of them for sure, really good at being Christian.
33:27
SPEAKER_08: And that might strike someone as funny because often those are the kinds of people that, after giving a sermon, if I would go out and say, Well, what was this sermon about?
33:38
SPEAKER_08: It was very humbling because they really didn't have any idea what my sermon was about.
33:43
SPEAKER_08: That's very humbling as a minister.
33:47
SPEAKER_08: And so then you begin to wonder, well, how did these, how did this group of Christians, who on one hand are fairly simple and that they can't master that whole side of knowledge that we tend to prioritize, how did they get so good at this subsidiary focal?
34:10
SPEAKER_08: Integration.
34:13
SPEAKER_08: And the reality was they got it by living among people.
34:19
SPEAKER_08: And they got it by living and relating to people.
34:24
SPEAKER_08: And somehow, uh, an image of Christ was somehow usually transmitted, often by a parent or maybe a pastor or a teacher or a friend, into them.
34:40
SPEAKER_08: Not with a big fat book, not with a lot of theological jargon, but by sort of mapping.
34:51
SPEAKER_08: They saw simple relationships, and when they saw someone who had needs, they helped.
35:00
SPEAKER_08: And when they saw someone who was frustrated, they listened.
35:05
SPEAKER_08: And when they saw someone who was broken to a degree that they knew there were no words that they might have to dispel that grief, they came near and they sat, and maybe they hugged, or maybe they brought a glass of water.
35:24
SPEAKER_08: And the funny thing is that there are a few places in life that we sort of sum up what's really important.
35:36
SPEAKER_08: And I often tell people, I as a pastor I prefer doing funerals to weddings.
35:42
SPEAKER_08: And almost everybody says, well, that's a horrible thing.
35:47
SPEAKER_08: But the truth is that when people get close to death, they begin to look past through their life, and all of that distributed knowledge has come into them, and they begin to sum things up.
36:02
SPEAKER_08: And the kind of knowledge that really matters is all of that formation knowledge about did I love my children well?
36:14
SPEAKER_08: Did I love my spouse well?
36:18
SPEAKER_08: Did I love my neighbor well?
36:20
SPEAKER_08: And all of that stuff, then really counts.
36:26
SPEAKER_08: Um, David Brooks calls it the resume virtue versus the um basically the eulogy virtues.
36:36
SPEAKER_08: And it's a deep irony that to one degree a certain side, like you described at the beginning, all of the data collection and controlling, all the stuff we use to maybe run a good business and manage something well, and all of that is good.
36:51
SPEAKER_08: But it's those eulogy virtues of did they care for me, did they love me, did they listen to me?
37:00
SPEAKER_08: Those are the things that in the end people bring out at the funeral.
37:05
SPEAKER_08: And those are the reasons that they bothered to come to the funeral.
37:09
SPEAKER_08: And so um, it doesn't surprise me that Belanya wasn't valued.
37:17
SPEAKER_08: And it also doesn't surprise me that he's more valued now.
37:21
SPEAKER_10: When you think about those lists of things that we need in order to come to know, this community and authoritative guides and the SFIs and all that kind of stuff, how would you apply that to Christian formation?
37:33
SPEAKER_10: Because it seems like what Paul says would map very well onto all those kind of different criteria that we need in order to come to come to know.
37:42
SPEAKER_10: And a follow-up question is what part does virtue play in their epistemology?
37:48
SPEAKER_10: Do you need to be good in order to know what's true?
37:54
SPEAKER_04: Great questions.
37:55
SPEAKER_04: Um, if I may, may also just respond to um what Paul was saying.
37:58
SPEAKER_04: I I I really appreciated what you were just saying in terms of kind of habit um formation.
38:03
SPEAKER_04: Like the more that we um that we live with particular people, iron sharpened iron, doesn't it?
38:08
SPEAKER_04: And we become more like those, we become what we behold.
38:11
SPEAKER_04: And I think what you were saying earlier on about um particular thinkers, there is, you know, JC Ryle talked about there's nothing more um, nothing more dangerous than overfamiliarity with sacred things.
38:27
SPEAKER_04: But also just to say, I work at a Bible college, so I do think that those those books are really important, and that's why subsidiary focal integration accounts for how you come to know both kind of what Augustine is setting out as well as um what it looks like to live a live a good life.
38:44
SPEAKER_04: It's through watching other people kind of do it.
38:47
SPEAKER_04: So I think what what you're just asking there, Glenn, is such an important um question of what does it look like for us to become more like Christ?
38:56
SPEAKER_04: What role does this play in character formation?
39:00
SPEAKER_04: Um I think in terms of the literature itself, so Esther Meek, um she talks a little bit about it, not hugely.
39:07
SPEAKER_04: Um Michael Polanyi would kind of go there, but they wouldn't really explicitly outline virtues, other than to say that this epistemological etiquette is needed in order for us to maintain a particular posture, as it were, um, towards reality so that we can actually come to know it.
39:26
SPEAKER_04: Because if I'm saying to myself, I have nothing to learn here, I have nothing in which I need to grow or consider, then I'm not going to be open to receiving anything and becoming more myself.
39:38
SPEAKER_04: So I think there are huge overlaps here for character formation, for pedagogy, and a whole host of areas which others have applied his work, uh, Polanyi's work, and um written on it.
39:51
SPEAKER_04: Um but I don't think that's anything that's been articulated as yet.
39:56
SPEAKER_10: Okay.
39:57
SPEAKER_10: Because the question about the subsidiary focal integration, what is it that integrates the different parts of what I know?
40:06
SPEAKER_10: What is it actually that integrates?
40:07
SPEAKER_10: I mean, my my gut instinct would be to say there's some kind of myth, there's some kind of story of the world and how it operates that that becomes the pattern that I lean into when I'm sort of integrating all this stuff.
40:23
SPEAKER_10: But what I mean, because what what actually integrates those different foci?
40:29
SPEAKER_04: That's again, that's so so good.
40:31
SPEAKER_04: I wish I knew.
40:32
SPEAKER_04: I think what what Esther talks about is well, actually, I wouldn't go to Esther for this, so I'd probably go more to um Thomas Aquinas and a guy called Ulrich Ferdinand, I think was his last name, where he they talk about what is the grain of reality?
40:49
SPEAKER_04: What does that look like?
40:50
SPEAKER_04: What actually is reality that we're talking about?
40:53
SPEAKER_04: And they would say it is it is gift.
40:55
SPEAKER_04: Um Esther would say it's it's God and his stuff.
40:59
SPEAKER_04: And what happens is Ulrich kind of reads over the shoulder of Aquinas, where Aquinas is referring to Aristotle and saying that reality is gratuitous, it's a donation because of love.
41:13
SPEAKER_04: And so when we're thinking about how do we actually come to know reality, what is that integration?
41:17
SPEAKER_04: There are particular forms and structures that have been made in creation that we are coming to know, which leaves room for kind of filling and forming and creating.
41:27
SPEAKER_04: So there are lines, there are these particular grains of reality which have been given to us out of love from the Godhead, but there is freedom in what it means for us to apply coming, having come to know particular things.
41:44
SPEAKER_04: So having learned the cello, I could then there's like a moral character to knowing, which philosophers would talk about the um how epistemology, ontology, and and metaphysics all interrelate.
41:59
SPEAKER_04: And so when we come to know something, it is the integration of all three of those corners coming together, which are being revealed in such a way because behind reality sounds God.
42:11
SPEAKER_10: God, yeah, you can say God, yeah.
42:14
SPEAKER_10: Like um, but but that then goes back to what Naquinas would say, or Anselm before him, that knowledge is faith-seeking understanding, that you've already got to have an impression of what reality is before you go out to look for it, because otherwise you don't know what to look for or how to look for it.
42:34
SPEAKER_10: And so if Esther Meik is saying reality's got to be person-like, I take it, does she have any evidence that reality is person-like, or is this a faith position?
42:45
SPEAKER_10: Because it sounds great, doesn't it?
42:48
SPEAKER_10: Reality is person-like.
42:49
SPEAKER_10: I want to befriend reality.
42:51
SPEAKER_10: I could do with friends?
42:52
SPEAKER_10: Great, let's befriend reality.
42:54
SPEAKER_10: Sounds warm, sounds fuzzy.
42:56
SPEAKER_10: Um, but a logical positivist is gonna say absolute nonsense.
43:01
SPEAKER_10: It's only what we can boil down in a test tube.
43:04
SPEAKER_10: Does she have any evidence that reality is like that?
43:07
SPEAKER_10: Or is this a kind of a presupposition that then proves itself to be fruitful as as you assume reality to be like this?
43:15
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I think it's very much the latter.
43:17
SPEAKER_04: So she's working, she's building on um John Frain's work of tri-perspect hybridism, and she's kind of that was her starting point, having studied under him.
43:26
SPEAKER_04: She then comes to Michael Polanyi and says, Oh, hang on, I see something here that kind of triangulates some of this stuff that I've seen over here.
43:33
SPEAKER_04: And so she is working from particular presuppositions.
43:37
SPEAKER_04: Um partly what she's doing is that um there was a big question in Michael Polanyi's life as to whether or not he had any faith commitments himself, and if so, how did that shape his own thinking?
43:48
SPEAKER_04: And what's really interesting is I've as I've kind of come to um come to know him better through his work, I came across this really small article, um, it was probably like three pages long, and in the last couple of sentences.
44:00
SPEAKER_04: And said something like, What I'm trying to do through my work is demonstrate that the poor line scheme of faith and grace is at work in epistemology.
44:08
SPEAKER_04: So I was like, Whoa, what?
44:10
SPEAKER_04: So there are particular faith commitments which is unspecified in Polanyi's formal work.
44:19
SPEAKER_04: His friends then write about him later saying this is what he was trying to do all along.
44:23
SPEAKER_04: It's really contested.
44:25
SPEAKER_04: As for Meek, she in terms of evidence, I think she would say that the clues themselves are the evidence.
44:34
SPEAKER_04: So the way you the reason that we know that there is something more to know.
44:40
SPEAKER_04: What did you say?
44:41
SPEAKER_04: That kind of, I have a sense, that kind of I have a hunch that there's something more, shows us that this world is geared up in a particular way, that it does lead to more.
44:52
SPEAKER_04: It does lead to something.
44:54
SPEAKER_04: And and so she's trying to, again, off the lack of um frame and Pelanyi, show how there is a she talks about covenantal relationship between ourselves and the thing that is yet to be known, or the thing that we have known.
45:10
SPEAKER_04: Again, I think she's she's close friends with Mike Williams, um theologian, and they were in conversation.
45:16
SPEAKER_04: He said, Oh, this sounds a lot like covenants.
45:18
SPEAKER_04: Now she would very um gladly say, I'm a philosopher, I'm not a theologian.
45:22
SPEAKER_04: So I think that's an area that does need to be fleshed out a little bit more.
45:25
SPEAKER_04: Um, but the main evidence she would say is that reality is constructed in the way that it is that it is actually knowable, it is ordered, it is something that we can observe.
45:34
SPEAKER_04: This is what makes the scientific method possible.
45:37
SPEAKER_04: And interestingly enough, logical positivism is actually self-referentially um incomprehensible.
45:44
SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
45:45
SPEAKER_04: So she would say that we can apply that logic to areas of um areas of philosophy and inquiry uh because it has been made in such a way which you cannot say is possible without there being some kind of personal mind behind it.
45:59
unknown: Right, right.
46:00
SPEAKER_10: Now, Paul, you're a Christian Reformed Church pastor, so you love the word covenant.
46:05
SPEAKER_10: Covenant is setting off all sorts of neurons in your in your mind.
46:10
SPEAKER_10: And I I wonder whether being a theologian comfortable speaking in in these kinds of terms has fitted you for this moment in terms of a meaning crisis, in which I think a more logical positivist kind of worldview is breaking down all around us.
46:30
SPEAKER_10: And people people are not trusting, you know, you you mentioned authoritative guides, Christy.
46:36
SPEAKER_10: Um where are the authoritative guides anymore?
46:38
SPEAKER_10: Where is the community anymore?
46:41
SPEAKER_10: In the middle of the meaning crisis, I wonder whether a covenant theologian is kind of what we kind of what we need right now.
46:49
SPEAKER_10: You're the you're you're not the hero we wanted, but you are the hero we needed.
46:56
SPEAKER_10: Have you been surprised at how people in the midst of the meaning crisis are finding their way to a Christian Reformed Church pastor's kind of YouTube channel and making their way towards faith?
47:08
SPEAKER_08: That's very surprising.
47:11
SPEAKER_08: But but covenant, I mean you talked about you talked about love.
47:16
SPEAKER_08: And someone someone once, I heard once someone asked, well, is is a marriage, is a marriage a covenant?
47:25
SPEAKER_08: Is a covenant simply a contract?
47:27
SPEAKER_08: A contract says, as long as you keep up my end of the deal, I'll keep up your end of the deal, I'll keep up my end of the deal, and then we'll be okay.
47:35
SPEAKER_08: That's a contract.
47:36
SPEAKER_08: As soon as you fail me, I'm out.
47:40
SPEAKER_08: That's not a marriage.
47:42
SPEAKER_08: A marriage that is like that probably won't last a year.
47:47
SPEAKER_08: Um covenant is in fact an agreement out of love that seeks to draw seeks to draw a growing better out of the other.
48:04
SPEAKER_08: And um and I think it I think that in, in fact, is the shape of the kind of love that God demonstrates through his relationship with his people.
48:19
SPEAKER_08: And it's a it's a continually disclose uh it can continually discloses the love of God even through the failure of his people to respond adequately to the love.
48:35
SPEAKER_08: And I think in that sense, I mean I love I love the way this type of epistemology is revelatory in a way that the other kind of epistemology cannot be.
48:48
SPEAKER_08: The other kind of epistemology is far more narrow and says, I'm gonna learn these little distinct relationships between these two things.
48:57
SPEAKER_08: In a sense, when God covenants with Israel, on one hand, theologically, you might say, well, God knows everything, he knows they're gonna fail.
49:06
SPEAKER_08: Well, if you just kind of look around at people, you can have a pretty good guess they'll fail.
49:10
SPEAKER_08: At the sermon I preached last week in Germany, you know, they get all the way to Exodus 24, and God lays down the covenant, and people are like, we will do it! And you just kind of like, eh, that's not gonna happen.
49:23
SPEAKER_08: But in the process of that covenant, there's a revelation of the people's incapacity for faithfulness, and in that, the revelation of God's capacity for faithfulness.
49:39
SPEAKER_08: And then you begin to see the love.
49:41
SPEAKER_08: And I think it's exactly that kind of personal knowledge which then gets to be revealed.
49:47
SPEAKER_08: I mean, the time in the desert, they might have learned something about heat, about wind, about how to keep uh livestock alive in the middle of the wilderness.
49:56
SPEAKER_08: Moses probably knew that already because he'd been kicking around out there for 40 years before that.
50:02
SPEAKER_08: But there's this, there's the there's all the things you need to know to actually make a life worth living in this world.
50:12
SPEAKER_08: And yeah, this other stuff is good to know too.
50:15
SPEAKER_08: But again, these are the things that, in my sense, what people really look for, and perhaps part of the reason they've come to my channel, is that's what I want help.
50:26
SPEAKER_08: I want to help people learn that because I think overall, that's what they really want.
50:32
SPEAKER_08: They want to know that they are loved, they want to build the capacity for love, and it's that kind of community that actually facilitates all that other sort of data discovery that we also like to do.
50:46
SPEAKER_10: Christy, as you as you think about mission and the meaning crisis, as you think about um people coming to know God, how how does applying some of Michael Paulany and and and Esther Meek, how does that help you think about helping your friends to befriend the ultimate reality, to befriend Christ?
51:05
SPEAKER_04: Oh, what a lovely, lovely question.
51:08
SPEAKER_04: I um well, I I tend to do a few things.
51:12
SPEAKER_04: So one of the things that I would do um if I was speaking, I don't know, if I had an opportunity to kind of speak for like 20 minutes, if she's very rare, I know, um, is to kind of actually outline some of this and say what are the clues of reality um that are in front of you that you cannot you can't escape from, that that see that there seems to be something more, but you can't account for it.
51:33
SPEAKER_04: You know, we know more than we can tell, we say more than we know, we often live in ways and act in ways um better than we we are ourselves like aware of.
51:43
SPEAKER_04: And God is um he's close to, he's not far from each one of us.
51:49
SPEAKER_04: And so I'd encourage them to look at the clues that are piling up in their lives already, and to think a little bit more as we kind of go through if it's a particular topic, if we're looking at meaning or purpose, um, love, etc., um, where those clues are pointing us, and how sometimes when we follow those clues in different directions, that can actually lead to a greater restlessness, um, a greater dissatisfaction, and and some of that um the sense of loss that many of us are experiencing already in this in this meaning crisis.
52:26
SPEAKER_04: Who is the one who's able to set our lives within particular meaningful parameters that isn't a pragmatic kind of see this fits, but actually undergirds and like vivifies our lives with such colour and beauty that we cannot help but be drawn to and move to and integrate as we receive his spirit to come to know him more and more.
52:50
SPEAKER_04: So I think that would be one way in which I do it.
52:52
SPEAKER_04: Um other ways would be just in personal conversations, I think with friends, uh with strangers.
52:58
SPEAKER_04: I had a really good chat um with a guy who who I don't think he's here, um he lives on the streets in Southgate.
53:06
SPEAKER_04: Um I mentioned him to you, I have his book, uh, I asked for your book to give to him.
53:10
SPEAKER_04: And we were just we were just chatting, and um he just said to me, you know what, I've um I was a big city banker overnight.
53:18
SPEAKER_04: I lost everything, and that just showed me that there has to be there has to be more to this.
53:24
SPEAKER_04: Why am I on the streets?
53:26
SPEAKER_04: Um, as someone who was living kind of like in W1 like a year ago.
53:30
SPEAKER_04: And uh he was like, Yeah, that there must be more, and I have now two or three months before I'm put into some kind of housing where I can actually think about this.
53:38
SPEAKER_04: So I'm just gathering books.
53:39
SPEAKER_04: I've been reading Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and you know, books that I've managed to get from the charity shop.
53:44
SPEAKER_04: Um, please will you help me?
53:45
SPEAKER_04: Like, will you give me some books?
53:46
SPEAKER_04: I was like, Oh yeah, definitely.
53:47
SPEAKER_04: So there's there's a different kind of a token, um, some way in which I can see God already at work in somebody exposing their hunger and their thirst, and Jesus saying, Come and I will give you what you do not have to pay for.
54:02
SPEAKER_04: Um and so in those personal conversations, I think I wouldn't feel like I need to present with them to them the sum total of where those clues are leading, but just what might be the next clue from the clue that I've already seen is is there that I can introduce them to.
54:21
SPEAKER_10: Yes, I mean, because friendships aren't instant.
54:24
SPEAKER_10: So yeah, perhaps evangelism should not be instant either.
54:27
SPEAKER_10: Um, Paul, before before we open up to questions, can you tell us how is it in your experience that people are finding faith?
54:37
SPEAKER_10: Through your channel, through your church, just l let us know the journeys that people are taking.
54:42
SPEAKER_10: And they might be very meandering, they might be very long term, but how are people finding faith?
54:49
SPEAKER_08: My channel began, many of you know, my channel began because I saw Jordan Peterson talking about the biblical, uh, talking about the Bible in his biblical series, and I began to read in comment sections on Reddit and places that people expressed an interest in the Bible.
55:03
SPEAKER_08: And I thought to myself, they're gonna watch YouTube.
55:06
SPEAKER_08: Um, maybe a few intrepid brave ones will go knock on the door of the church and they'll say, I saw Jordan Peterson talking about the Bible.
55:13
SPEAKER_08: Can does that continue here?
55:16
SPEAKER_08: And some churches would hear Jordan Peterson say, huh?
55:21
SPEAKER_08: And the others would hear Jordan Peterson and maybe slam the door.
55:25
SPEAKER_08: And so I tried to do a little bit of commentary on his videos, and then people began approaching me, and they had questions, so I talked to them.
55:36
SPEAKER_08: And then more people approached me.
55:38
SPEAKER_08: And as a small church pastor, I went for years without anybody wanting to talk to me at all because once they hear I'm a pastor, oh, he's gonna stress something down my throat.
55:46
SPEAKER_08: No, thank you.
55:47
SPEAKER_08: It might be worse than a herring.
55:49
SPEAKER_08: Um then people wanted to talk, and I saw that, and I started recording some of the conversations with permission, and then sharing some of the conversations with permission, and in multiple conversations with people, I began to see people becoming Christians.
56:09
SPEAKER_08: And Joe, who lives in the Netherlands, was one of the first ones, and it's funny, we did multiple conversations, and you can just watch the evolution.
56:16
SPEAKER_08: Somebody asked me recently, why are so many people walking away from the church?
56:20
SPEAKER_08: And there's there's always a bunch of reasons, but I thought one of the reasons was a lot of people just sort of have a bag of information that they inherit from the culture, and they've never really looked at any of it.
56:32
SPEAKER_08: And if they'd actually get a chance to sort of pick some of that apart, they might see just how flimsy a lot of their assumptions really are.
56:40
SPEAKER_08: And so just in the process of conversation, in the process of community, people began to be open to more.
56:50
SPEAKER_08: And whereas my church is on a little corner in a bad area of town where there are a lot of homeless people and people all knock on the door looking for food or for gas money or something like that.
57:01
SPEAKER_08: I wondered what would it be if a church was the kind of place where people could come for an honest conversation to explore, just like you talked about, with appreciable openness, just to explore.
57:12
SPEAKER_08: There's not going to be any hard sell.
57:14
SPEAKER_08: We're just going to give them a chance to talk.
57:16
SPEAKER_08: I'm going to do a lot of listening.
57:18
SPEAKER_08: It's basically what pastoral care is.
57:21
SPEAKER_08: And what we've seen in the process is that a number of people have been joining churches, at least become less anti-Christian, or at least imagining that maybe a Christian minister is someone that you can have a decent conversation with.
57:37
SPEAKER_08: And that's a revelation for a lot of people.
57:40
SPEAKER_08: And it's in that way that we have been seeing some people come to faith.
57:46
SPEAKER_08: Other people are still in the zone of, yeah, I sort of would like to be a Christian, but I don't know if I can buy like the resurrection and all that stuff.
57:56
SPEAKER_08: Okay, we'll stay friends.
57:59
SPEAKER_08: But that witness, you will be my witnesses.
58:02
SPEAKER_08: That witness continues to lead to that, John Verveke calls it, the more so.
58:09
SPEAKER_08: And that's that's what we've been seeing, and that's part of the reason that we're we're starting these estuary groups.
58:16
SPEAKER_10: Um you'll be speaking more about estuary groups in the second session?
58:20
SPEAKER_10: Yeah?
58:21
SPEAKER_10: Certainly can.
58:22
SPEAKER_10: Yes, that would be that would be great for you to speak more about estuary groups.
58:25
SPEAKER_10: Um is pretty much everyone here gonna be here for session number two at 6.30.
58:31
SPEAKER_10: Is anyone not gonna be here?
58:33
SPEAKER_10: You can you can talk to Paul.
58:35
SPEAKER_10: Um privately on the couple.
58:36
SPEAKER_10: Or the herring guy.
58:37
SPEAKER_10: The herring talked to you about that too.
58:39
SPEAKER_10: Yeah, yeah.
58:40
SPEAKER_10: Um we can talk further about those discussion books, uh discussion groups with people, and people can also pick up uh Christy's book, More Truth, through there as well, which goes into some of this the clues of reality.
58:53
SPEAKER_10: It's not there?
58:54
SPEAKER_10: Oh, okay.
58:57
SPEAKER_10: You could get my book instead.
59:04
SPEAKER_10: Um yeah, that would that would be a less good option for people.
59:08
SPEAKER_10: But oh well, you you you have Amazon people, you have Amazon.
59:11
SPEAKER_10: Um does anyone have uh questions that they want to put to Christian Paul?
59:16
SPEAKER_10: Um, first over here, we've got a rubber mic coming to you.
59:18
SPEAKER_06: I'll ask Paul.
59:19
SPEAKER_06: Um I remember uh a uh video that you posted, and uh I put in the comment I would love to come to your church.
59:30
SPEAKER_06: And you put somewhere further down the comments, no, you wouldn't.
59:35
SPEAKER_06: So um, can you explain the difference between Paul Van Der Clee in his church and Paul Van der Cley on his YouTube channel?
59:44
SPEAKER_06: And why is there the difference?
59:46
SPEAKER_08: I I don't know that there's a lot of difference between me and my church and me and my YouTube channel.
59:51
SPEAKER_08: It's just that my church isn't what a lot of people expect.
59:55
SPEAKER_08: Because when people look at me and my YouTube channel, I'll talk about philosophy or history or Jordan Peterson or John Verbake, all of these things.
1:00:06
SPEAKER_08: Nobody in my church watches my YouTube channel.
1:00:09
SPEAKER_08: Because nobody in my church really cares about those things.
1:00:13
SPEAKER_08: And what you'll find when you come to my church is probably music you didn't expect.
1:00:19
SPEAKER_08: Maybe some homeless people, maybe some people struggling with sobriety or mental illness, but a lot of people just sort of trying to make their way through.
1:00:30
SPEAKER_08: And so a lot of people, I'm people regularly come to the church because of the YouTube channel and look around and think, what exactly is going on here?
1:00:39
SPEAKER_08: Because this wasn't what I expected.
1:00:42
SPEAKER_08: But what it is in the room is in fact a very fertile personal relationship place.
1:00:50
SPEAKER_08: That is, it takes a lot more patient integration than just watching a video on YouTube.
1:00:57
SPEAKER_08: That's what I meant by the comment.
1:00:59
SPEAKER_10: But you're still very welcome, right?
1:01:01
SPEAKER_10: Yes, you're absolutely welcome to come.
1:01:05
SPEAKER_10: Also, who else?
1:01:08
SPEAKER_10: Um here and then here and then there.
1:01:16
SPEAKER_01: So, how do we protect our own acquisition of knowledge from tyranny in a world where fake news abounds and freedom of speech is not totally okay?
1:01:29
SPEAKER_04: Thank you so much for asking that.
1:01:30
SPEAKER_04: Um that's something that I think I'm I'm still very much thinking about.
1:01:34
SPEAKER_04: I think one of the things that um that Michael Polanyi would say to you is look at your own sphere of influence.
1:01:44
SPEAKER_04: What are the areas in which um you are particularly skilled and that he's put you in in your work, in your personal life?
1:01:53
SPEAKER_04: And as you know more, true come to know more truly those things that you've already come to know, how can you do that in a way that leads to kind of greater goodness and life, those unspecified, kind of indeterminate future manifestations?
1:02:14
SPEAKER_04: So he's saying the way in which we guard tyranny is by saying that there isn't kind of a um a specified axiomatic conclusion for everything that we have come to know.
1:02:27
SPEAKER_04: So the way in which that is lived out is pretty much I think kind of like a summary of the fruit of the spirit.
1:02:34
SPEAKER_04: It's great, isn't it, when you're looking at the Gospels and you see how particularly in Matthew and elsewhere, um, Jesus gives particular kind of um on the Sermon of the Mount, he does give commands, but the way in which we live out those commands is that we we wear them and he specifies and he gives those commands in a way that he doesn't particularly specify what it looks like to be lived out in a in every particular instance of life.
1:03:01
SPEAKER_04: It's just kind of like an umbrella overarching kind of um instruction.
1:03:07
SPEAKER_04: So I think for you, for me, for everybody here, it's considering what are those, what is within my sphere of influence, and what does it look like for me to move into those um areas so that um I don't crush them, I'm not approaching it from that controlling choosing stance, but I have an open hand in what it looks like for me to continue to follow the clues of what this means so that it leads to, so that I'm leading from a place of living out the fruits of the spirit in unspecified, indeterminate ways.
1:03:38
SPEAKER_04: Does that make sense?
1:03:40
unknown: Great.
1:03:43
SPEAKER_10: Like church, like sounds like the place where that kind of happens at a very at a very local level, where you remove yourself from just the immediate kind of drinking from a fire hose kind of social media world into the embodied, ancient, virtuous community.
1:04:02
SPEAKER_10: Um church seems to be, yeah.
1:04:04
SPEAKER_10: And and certainly within actually tyrannical governments down through history and around the world, it's the Christian church that has been that resistance movement, largely by being the underground church.
1:04:16
SPEAKER_04: Right, yes, and through the importance of scripture.
1:04:19
SPEAKER_04: So it depends what angle you're wanting to kind of approach that um that question from, but just thinking about what is what is what we can know truly that we can actually trust and live our lives upon.
1:04:28
SPEAKER_04: That which has been revealed to us by God Himself, breathed out, you know, by His Spirit is Scripture itself.
1:04:34
SPEAKER_04: And so that is how we guard, that's how we discern what is actually tyrannical and not tyrannical, um, what is free and what is not free is as we weigh it up and and look at it through the lens of scripture.
1:04:43
SPEAKER_04: Sorry, I that's it.
1:04:45
SPEAKER_10: Great.
1:04:46
SPEAKER_10: Should we have uh another couple of questions?
1:04:49
SPEAKER_10: We had one there before over here.
1:04:51
SPEAKER_10: Uh sorry, thank you.
1:04:56
SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
1:04:57
SPEAKER_00: Um just kind of posing this question generally.
1:05:00
SPEAKER_00: I find myself reading Christian books um and I think recently trying to read them a bit more prayerfully, but I can't help but feel a lot of the time that I read this information, uh whether that's somebody speaking about scripture or whatever, um, with the intention of becoming more like Jesus.
1:05:19
SPEAKER_00: And I sometimes worry that it just goes in one ear and out the other.
1:05:25
SPEAKER_00: Um and it's kind of links to the SFI that you were talking about.
1:05:29
SPEAKER_00: Do you have anything to say to that?
1:05:31
SPEAKER_00: Is something is that something you can get counted yourself with?
1:05:36
SPEAKER_08: I recommend reading books with people and having a group of people around that you can trust and discuss.
1:05:46
SPEAKER_08: And because as long as you're sort of by yourself with it, there's no accountability, there's no community, and so I would I would very much recommend doing it with others.
1:06:00
SPEAKER_08: And and then discussing and then seeing how it can be applied because I think that way things will actually go from sort of the mental space into your life.
1:06:16
SPEAKER_04: No, I I I agree, you agree that you can see it.
1:06:34
SPEAKER_07: Thank you very much very much for your um talks and comments.
1:06:40
SPEAKER_07: Um trying to formulate my question and probably remember what it was as well.
1:06:46
SPEAKER_07: Um I'm possibly one of the this is for you, Paul, I'm possibly one of the very few people in this room who's never seen you on YouTube.
1:06:57
SPEAKER_07: One of the things that drew me here today was um this was this event was trails to me.
1:07:03
SPEAKER_07: Um and in brackets after your name, it's a pastor to the intellectual dark web.
1:07:10
SPEAKER_07: I think that's what really piques that's what really piques my attention.
1:07:14
SPEAKER_07: And of course you've mentioned Mr.
1:07:16
SPEAKER_07: Peterson, Professor Peterson many times.
1:07:20
SPEAKER_07: I suppose my question is do you ever worry about the perceptions that are made of you in relation to your association with Jordan Peterson?
1:07:37
SPEAKER_08: I I take it into account at times.
1:07:40
SPEAKER_08: Um Jordan has been going to and fro on a lot of topics lately.
1:07:46
SPEAKER_08: Um being a pastor for almost 30 years is I can't be bound by others' perceptions because that's nothing I can really control.
1:07:55
SPEAKER_08: And if people, anybody who's paid any attention to my channel knows what part of Peterson's work I pay attention to, and they'll have a sense of if they're concerned about my politics or any of that, if they watch my channel, they'll have a sense of that too.
1:08:12
SPEAKER_08: And pretty much the case is that if anybody really wants to come after me, they've got about a thousand hours of video to go through, and I don't think they're gonna find anything.
1:08:22
SPEAKER_08: So I don't worry about it.
1:08:25
SPEAKER_08: Thank you very much.
1:08:31
SPEAKER_10: Um I saw the hands go up in this order.
1:08:35
SPEAKER_10: I'm so sorry if this uh leaves me out of you and then you, thank you.
1:08:43
SPEAKER_03: It's a quick question for Kirsty Prince Kirsty, please.
1:08:47
SPEAKER_03: You said there are clues that you will help people see, or they'll begin to see, that will be you just show them one more clue or talk about one more clue, and I wanted you to say more about what are those clues that people are observing about what is inconsistent about life and is lacking meaning.
1:09:03
SPEAKER_04: Thank you very much for asking.
1:09:05
SPEAKER_04: I actually think your book is a great pointer on on what some of those clues are.
1:09:11
SPEAKER_04: Seriously, oh your stop.
1:09:15
SPEAKER_04: Um yeah, so I think some of those clues could be um I have a sense that um that justice is really important to me.
1:09:27
SPEAKER_04: But I can't I don't know why.
1:09:29
SPEAKER_04: And and that's the start of a that's the start of a complaint a conversation, that's a that's a clue there, or you know, I I think equality, or um I think what were some of those other values that throw out some of the things that are compassion, freedom, progress, all that, yeah.
1:09:44
SPEAKER_04: Those, those, so looking at the values, but I think also looking at um people's personal lives as well, um, and to be able to do that carefully and sensitively means that we need to be genuine friends with people.
1:09:59
SPEAKER_04: Um but for example, one of my uh one of I was chatting with one of my my close friends who's going through a really um difficult time, and it there was an opportunity to kind of say this sounds awful.
1:10:17
SPEAKER_04: Have you ever thought about why it is so so awful?
1:10:20
SPEAKER_04: Now you don't want to move them more into kind of that that that pain, um, but it can help to then point them to hope through it.
1:10:29
SPEAKER_04: So I think there are particular things that can can go on in um in our lives and the lives of our friends, which if we're honest in sharing what they are and if they are sharing that with us, again they're kind of clues that we're made for more and are ways in which we can sensitively and at the right time um point to point to the the hope and the ultimate can you call him a clue?
1:10:51
SPEAKER_04: Jesus himself.
1:10:52
SPEAKER_04: Um so I think there are particular ways in which you can go about it.
1:10:56
SPEAKER_04: You know, there's you know think about these intellectual kind of values, but also kind of the personal um values that we hold and the experiences that we that we go through.
1:11:04
SPEAKER_04: How do we account for that and what hope and meaning is there for that, particularly looking at the problem of pain.
1:11:09
unknown: Thanks very much.
1:11:10
SPEAKER_10: As a shortcut, I'm I I often ask people, like, have you ever had a religious experience?
1:11:15
SPEAKER_10: And you know, I've I went to Oak Hill, so you know I don't believe in religion nor in experience.
1:11:20
SPEAKER_10: But but your friend will know what you mean when you say religious experience, and people will constantly say to me, Oh yes, when I held my firstborn in my arms, or when my both my parents died, or what whatever it is, and and put it put it back on them.
1:11:35
SPEAKER_10: Like what are the clues that you think?
1:11:37
SPEAKER_10: I often talk about what gets you thinking, what gets you up, what gets you down, what gets you through.
1:11:41
SPEAKER_10: What gets you up in the morning, what get you down, will get you through the tough stuff in life.
1:11:46
SPEAKER_10: And uh I think that can lead to some really good conversations.
1:11:49
SPEAKER_02: Final question?
1:11:50
SPEAKER_02: Will we have an answer?
1:11:51
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
1:11:51
SPEAKER_02: Um I was really struck by the idea about knowledge indeterminate future manifestation, i.e., the it we haven't decided where this is leading, and I guess conservative Christian pastors immediately hear chaos and heresy.
1:12:07
SPEAKER_02: Um, I was really struck by um what Paul said about somebody knocking on the door of a pastor and saying, I've been watching Jordan Peterson videos, and the door is slammed in their face because the pastor's you know not happy with it.
1:12:20
SPEAKER_02: But I wonder if most people don't even make it to the door of the pastor because they think this conversation's destiny has already been decided, so I'm out.
1:12:28
SPEAKER_02: So my question to you, Paul, is if you were launching an evangelistic course, uh, how would you go about doing it in a way that doesn't feel like people going on that course that the outcome has already been decided, that it will end with some form of orthodox evangelical Christianity?
1:12:48
SPEAKER_08: I would do exactly what I'm doing now.
1:12:51
SPEAKER_08: So you wouldn't bother with the course?
1:12:53
SPEAKER_08: Um I I've got plenty of videos if they want to hear me talk.
1:12:57
SPEAKER_08: And I think I do plenty of evangelism in my videos.
1:13:01
SPEAKER_08: But one of the things that I encourage people to do is get together and start talking and build relationships and friendships.
1:13:10
SPEAKER_08: And um I think what I really encourage churches to do is become spaces where people can do that.
1:13:19
SPEAKER_08: I would go for months between significant evangelistic conversations with regular Californians, and after I opened this video door and after I started meetups, I have more requests for conversations than I can take.
1:13:37
SPEAKER_08: And I can't figure out why pastors don't want groups of atheists, agnostics, and people all over the map within their doors, having substantive conversations, asking questions.
1:13:52
SPEAKER_08: Because as a pastor, oh, you'd really like to know what I think?
1:13:57
SPEAKER_08: Well, this is what I think.
1:13:59
SPEAKER_08: I it's I can't think of a better way to do evangelism.
1:14:05
SPEAKER_10: I've been struck, as we were talking in the car on the way up here, that a lot of both our experiences of people coming to faith have been either by going very deeply into the world of the non-Christian who's got all sorts of questions, or it's been them plunging themselves into the deep weird of whether it's your church in Sacramento or an Orthodox church or who knows.
1:14:31
SPEAKER_10: Um but actually that space in the middle is not necessarily the I I think we tend to think, certainly I tend to think systematically about what is the bridge that I can build from the world over there to make church as little weird as possible.
1:14:50
SPEAKER_10: And it seems to me, my experience, and it seems like your experience, is that that bridge is not really the thing that we should be focusing on.
1:14:58
SPEAKER_10: We should be going very deep into there and then being happy if they plunge in with both feet into the deep weird over here.
1:15:05
SPEAKER_10: But the stuff in the middle, God kind of takes care of.
1:15:08
SPEAKER_10: Got any thoughts on that?
1:15:10
SPEAKER_08: Well, I I think I I do on my channel a fair amount of trying to make the weirdness of Christianity at least accessible.
1:15:20
SPEAKER_08: To say, this looks strange over here, but you can sort of understand it in these ways.
1:15:26
SPEAKER_08: So it's not at least off-putting.
1:15:28
SPEAKER_08: But I think the fact remains that becoming a Christian is not like trying to buy a sensible used car.
1:15:38
SPEAKER_08: It is it is a surrender of one's life, it is a falling in love, it is pursuing a pearl of great price.
1:15:45
SPEAKER_08: And and most of that doesn't sort of look like a nice gentle slope.
1:15:50
SPEAKER_08: And for most people that I find really becoming Christians, it's it's one of those other things.
1:15:57
SPEAKER_10: Yeah, yeah.
1:15:58
SPEAKER_10: Very, very fruitful uh for us all to get you going on next in the next hour.
1:16:04
SPEAKER_10: Um, thank you guys so much for listening.
1:16:06
SPEAKER_10: Christy, thank you so much.
1:16:07
SPEAKER_10: Should we have a round of applause for Christy?
1:16:13
SPEAKER_10: Thank you for following the play as well.
1:16:21
SPEAKER_05: Well, there we go.
1:16:22
SPEAKER_05: Thank you so much for listening.
1:16:23
SPEAKER_05: Hope you enjoyed that discussion.
1:16:26
SPEAKER_05: We've been flooding you with adverts for our vision evening.
1:16:29
SPEAKER_05: We're very excited about it, and uh, we think you'll really enjoy it.
1:16:32
SPEAKER_05: We'd love to have you along.
1:16:34
SPEAKER_05: It's as we've said, it's on the 20th of October, 8 pm uh UK time.
1:16:40
SPEAKER_05: And Christy Mayer, who you heard uh in the discussion in this podcast episode, she will actually be attending virtually to help us think even more about mission and the meaning crisis.
1:16:52
SPEAKER_05: Uh, Glenn Scrivener and Nate Morganlock from the Speak Life team will be speaking to her and also chatting about some of the exciting plans we've got at Speak Life in terms of creative evangelism, things like our 321 evangelistic course.
1:17:06
SPEAKER_05: You'll have a sneak preview of that never before seen by the world.
1:17:10
SPEAKER_05: Uh so we'd love to have you along, we'd love to welcome you to that and have a think together about how we can speak into this meaning crisis, and we have real hope in Jesus, don't we?
1:17:22
SPEAKER_05: Well, that's all from me.
1:17:24
SPEAKER_05: Thanks so much for listening, and see you next time.