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φυσικός (Physikos): The Natural Man Cannot Understand God · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  So if you were a man living in ancient Rome or Greece and you
• 0:03
  woke up 1 morning and decided to, you know, just shave your
• 0:06
  beard, you are not making a simple fashion choice.
• 0:09
  No. Definitely.
• 0:10
  You were not just trying out a new look for the summer.
• 0:13
  According to some of the greatest minds of that era,
• 0:15
  taking a razor to your jawline meant you were committing a
• 0:19
  direct, hostile offense against the very fabric of the universe.
• 0:24
  Which is wild to think about today.
• 0:26
  Right. You were lodging a formal
• 0:28
  physical complaint against the cosmic order, and to understand
• 0:32
  why facial hair carried the weight of a theological mandate,
• 0:35
  you really have to understand the turbulent history of a
• 0:37
  single concept. A single, very specific concept.
• 0:41
  Welcome to Reformed thinking. Today we are taking a
• 0:44
  comprehensive look at a massive stack of source text regarding 2
• 0:48
  ancient Greek words. Those words are Ephesus and
• 0:52
  Fusicos. And when translated into
• 0:54
  English, you know these words as nature and natural.
• 0:56
  We throw those words around constantly today without a
• 0:59
  second thought. I mean, you see them on grocery
• 1:01
  store labels. Right, they're all natural
• 1:03
  ingredients. Yes, or we talk about human
• 1:05
  nature or natural law as if they are static, universally agreed
• 1:09
  upon ideas. But the text in front of us
• 1:13
  tells a vastly different story. It really does.
• 1:16
  Our objective for this deep dive is to track how a word that
• 1:19
  started out describing A literal physical sprouting plant evolved
• 1:24
  into a universal divine principle.
• 1:26
  And then it fueled massive intellectual battles over the
• 1:30
  essence of reality. Yes, and eventually became a
• 1:32
  highly specific surgical instrument in the hands of the
• 1:35
  New Testament writers. So by the end of this
• 1:37
  conversation, you, the listener, will understand the historical
• 1:41
  weight behind these terms. You will see how a simple
• 1:43
  biological observation turned into a tool used to level human
• 1:47
  pride. To trace that evolution, we
• 1:49
  really have to start in the dirt.
• 1:50
  We have to look at the etymological origins of the word
• 1:53
  Fusus the. Actual roots of the word.
• 1:55
  Yes, literally and linguistically.
• 1:57
  It stems from the ancient Indo European root Boo which means to
• 2:01
  become or to grow. That root seems to have spread
• 2:04
  all across map. It is the linguistic ancestor to
• 2:06
  the Sanskrit word Boo, the Latin Foo, and even the English word
• 2:10
  be. Right, so the very DNA of the
• 2:13
  word is tied to existence, but specifically a growing active
• 2:17
  existence. It is an active verbal abstract.
• 2:20
  So it's moving, it's doing something.
• 2:22
  Precisely in its earliest Greek usage, Fusus is fundamentally
• 2:27
  about plant growth. If you read early Greek
• 2:29
  literature, writers use it purely for biological
• 2:32
  development or the external form of something that grew out of
• 2:35
  the ground. I think we have a pristine
• 2:37
  example of this in Homer's Odyssey, right?
• 2:39
  Going all the way back to book 10.
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  Book 10, line 3O3 Yes, Odysseus is dealing with the sorceress
• 2:45
  Cersei who has been turning his men into pigs.
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  As one does in Greek mythology. Naturally, and the God Hermes
• 2:51
  steps in to offer a pharmacological defense.
• 2:54
  Hermes hands Odysseus A curative herb called Molly to protect him
• 2:58
  from the magic. OK.
• 2:59
  And Homer uses the word fusus to describe the visible nature of
• 3:02
  this specific plant. He points out that it has a
• 3:05
  black root and a milk white flower that is its fuses.
• 3:08
  Wow, so it is a purely physical, observable description of a
• 3:12
  botanical specimen. There is no philosophical
• 3:14
  baggage attached to it yet. None at all.
• 3:16
  I am picturing a time lapse video here.
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  You know, a seed violently bursting through the soil,
• 3:21
  pushing upward, sprouting leaves.
• 3:23
  That is a great image for it. Because when I hear the word
• 3:26
  nature today, my mind defaults to a static painting of a
• 3:30
  landscape, a quiet forest, a still mountain.
• 3:35
  But this original Greek meaning is an active verb.
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  It is a biological event happening in real time.
• 3:40
  And that active biological event begins to expand its meaning as
• 3:44
  Greek society develops. By the 5th century BC, we see
• 3:48
  writers taking that concept of a plant sprouting and applying it
• 3:52
  to human beings. OK, so making the jump from
• 3:54
  botany to biology. Yes, the pre Socratic
• 3:56
  philosopher Empedocles starts using fusus as a correlative to
• 4:00
  the word for destruction. For Empedocles fusus means birth
• 4:03
  or origin. He talks about the origin of
• 4:05
  human limbs using this specific term.
• 4:07
  So we move from a black rooted herb sprouting from the dirt to
• 4:10
  a human child being born from a mother.
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  The word is mapping onto physical human descent, right?
• 4:16
  I can see how that leap happens, but this seemingly minor shift
• 4:19
  must have triggered massive practical consequences for the
• 4:22
  average ancient Greek citizen. It absolutely did.
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  It created a strict legal category.
• 4:28
  So. Well, the date of form of the
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  word fuse comes to mean by birth.
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  This becomes the primary mechanism for deciding who is a
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  legitimate heir and who is a so-called bastard.
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  It differentiates legitimate physical dissent from adopted
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  status. So if I am a wealthy Athenian
• 4:46
  merchant trying to figure out who gets my estate when I die,
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  this philosophical word suddenly becomes my legal bedrock.
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  That is the practical reality. The historian Polybius gives us
• 4:56
  a perfect illustration of how rigid this became.
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  He uses the phrase katafusen, meaning according to nature, to
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  describe family lineage within the famous Carthaginian dynasty.
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  What does he say? Polybius notes that Hamilcar is
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  Hannibal's father, Katafusen, by natural physical descent.
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  Meanwhile, Hasterbol is Hamilcar's son-in-law by
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  marriage. Got it?
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  So the terminology creates a hard boundary between blood
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  relations and legal or contractual relation.
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  We have gone from a word about a medicinal urban Homer to a legal
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  category for family inheritance in Polybius.
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  That is a solid, grounded progression.
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  But there is a massive conceptual leap waiting for us.
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  Right, because Ephesus is entirely about what you can see
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  under a microscope. The root of a plant, The birth
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  of a child, The bloodline of a family.
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  How does it turn into a word about invisible human character?
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  That pivot happens primarily when the concept collides with
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  ancient medicine and drama. Thinkers began to realize that
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  physical things have properties you cannot see from the outside.
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  Like hidden variables. Yes, thesis begins to describe
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  the unseen true constitution of a thing.
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  We see this heavily in Ionian science, particularly with the
• 6:03
  famous physician Hippocrates. OK.
• 6:06
  Set the scene for us. If I am a patient in the ancient
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  world and I come down with a terrible fever, the baseline
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  assumption of the entire society is that I forgot to sacrifice a
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  goat and Apollo is punishing me, right?
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  It is a supernatural worldview. That is the exact environment
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  Hippocrates is working in, and he pushes back against that
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  mythological framework. He starts using fusus to
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  describe the true inherent constitution of water, or the
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  true makeup of specific sicknesses.
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  He insists that a disease has a FUS, a natural mechanism and
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  inner working that is independent of divine anger.
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  Hippocrates applies this to the human body in general, looking
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  for the original mechanical makeup of physical phenomena.
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  He is stripping the superstition away from the symptom.
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  He is looking for the invisible mechanics of the body.
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  Precisely. And while the physicians are
• 6:55
  doing this with biology, the playwrights take this exact same
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  idea into the realm of human behavior.
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  To moving from the clinic to the stage, yes.
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  The tragedians like Sophocles grab this concept of an inner
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  constitution and apply it to the human soul.
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  In these ancient plays, Fusus becomes the inner nature or the
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  manner of a person, often reflecting the virtue of their
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  family line. And Sophocles introduces a
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  fascinating ethical dilemma, the concept of abandoning one's
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  fuses. Abandoning your nature.
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  How does a person pull that off in a Greek tragedy?
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  Well, in a play like Philoctes, Sophocles presents a scenario
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  where a character knows what is right but chooses to do wrong.
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  The argument made in the play is that by choosing vice, the
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  person is actually abandoning their fusus.
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  They are walking away from their true inner noble constitution.
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  Right? But if the ancient Greeks
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  believed that acting badly meant abandoning one's true nature, my
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  immediate guess is that they viewed human nature as an
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  inherently pristine good thing. You have a Ure baseline, and
• 7:56
  doing wrong is just a temporary departure from that purity.
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  Some certainly lean toward that idea.
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  Viewing your feces as your proper honorable state based on
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  a noble lineage to do wrong was shameful because it violated
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  that high standard. OK, but the ancient world was
• 8:12
  not universally optimistic about human nature.
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  You had men like the historian Thucydides, who spent his life
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  analyzing wars, political betrayals and devastating
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  plagues. Right, Thucydides is watching
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  Athens and Sparta tear each other apart.
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  He's not seeing a lot of noble inner constitutions at work.
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  Not at all. For Thucydides, human nature is
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  something entirely different. It is inherently vulnerable,
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  mortal, and prone to weakness and self-interest.
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  That sounds a lot more real it. Is very grounded.
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  Human nature is defined by its basic limitations.
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  There are comic writers from the era who mockingly compare human
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  nature to blown up bellows, just empty bags of air waiting to
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  deflate. And this corruptible, weak human
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  nature is constantly placed in direct contrast with divine
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  nature. So you have the frail,
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  corruptible nature of man on one side, and the immortal,
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  indestructible nature of the gobs on the other.
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  But even that boundary gets blurred, does it not?
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  It does. As Greek sophistry develops,
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  thinkers start to question the gods themselves.
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  They distinguish between gods who are divine by their true
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  nature and those who are simply called gods by human convention.
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  Just titles. Right.
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  This intellectual skepticism gives rise to a theory known as
• 9:23
  euhemerism. Let us breakdown euhemerism for
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  the listener because it is a radical theory for the society
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  built entirely on mythology. The theory is named after the
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  mythographer Euhemeris. We have a reports on it from the
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  historian Deodora Sicilus, who explains the belief that only a
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  few gods like the sun, the moon and the stars actually possess
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  an eternal, indestructible nature.
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  Because you can actually see them up there, enduring forever.
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  Yes, the others, the humanoid gods like Zeus or Apollo.
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  Euhemeris argues that they actually share in mortal human
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  nature. So Euhemeris is claiming that
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  Zeus was just a regular guy who had a really good public
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  relations team after he died. That is the essence of it, yes,
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  Euhemerism argues, these humanoid gods were worthy mortal
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  rulers or heroes who did great deeds, died like normal men, and
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  were subsequently elevated to divine status by the convention
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  of human storytelling. They did not have a divine
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  fusus. No, they did not.
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  So even the concept of the gods gets dragged into the debate
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  over what is truly real versus what is just a human label.
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  We have moved from a plant root to human biology, from biology
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  to legal inheritance, from inheritance to invisible moral
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  character, and now to questioning the very fabric of
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  the cosmos. It is quite the progression.
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  It is the perfect collision course for the great
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  philosophers. They have to figure out what the
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  true nature of reality actually is.
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  And that battle over the true essence of reality is kicked off
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  by the pre Socratics. You have Heraclitus, who steps
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  onto the scene with a brilliant cryptic maxim.
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  He says true nature loves to hide.
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  True nature loves to hide. That implies that everything we
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  look at on a daily basis is just a facade.
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  The truth of reality is operating behind a curtain.
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  Heraclitus is arguing that the true being of things is never
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  identical with their outward appearances.
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  The true nature remains constant and dictates reality, but it
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  requires intense wisdom to perceive it.
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  OK, so the moment he introduces the idea of a hidden reality, a
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  fierce debate ignites about what that hidden true nature actually
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  consists of. A massive debate.
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  Let us set up the competitors in this debate.
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  In one corner we have the atomists.
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  Thinkers like Democritus the Atomists offer a completely
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  mechanistic, materialistic explanation of the world.
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  For them, the hidden true nature of all things is quite literal
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  atoms and random mechanics. They're just particles bumping
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  into each other. Yes.
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  Everything you see, feel and experience is driven by physical
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  particles colliding in a void. There is no grand design, no
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  divine architect, no intelligent soul behind the curtain.
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  The hidden reality is just blind contingent physics.
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  It is an ancient version of strict scientific materialism.
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  In the opposing corner. Stepping into the ring with a
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  serious grievance against that idea is Plato.
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  I imagine Plato reading Democritus and absolutely losing
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  his mind. Plato is aggressively opposed to
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  the atomists. In his late work of the Laws he
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  launches a full scale assault against this materialistic view.
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  What is his main argument? He warns that viewing the four
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  primal elements earth, air, fire and water as the ultimate origin
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  of all things is a catastrophic error.
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  He argues that if you attribute everything to random physical
• 12:32
  nature, you are actively rejecting season, art and God.
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  So Plato seems to be saying that blind matter cannot organize
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  itself into something beautiful and rational.
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  He insists that if you want to talk about the primal origin of
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  all things, you have to talk about the soul.
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  For Plato, the soul, not physical matter, not atoms, not
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  the four elements, is fusus in the truest sense.
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  The soul is nature. Yes, the mind, the intellect,
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  and reason take absolute precedence over what the
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  materialists falsely call nature.
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  So we have a total stalemate. Democratus says nature is blind
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  matter. Plato says nature is the
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  intelligent soul. Whenever there is a massive
• 13:08
  intellectual stalemate in ancient Greece, Aristotle
• 13:11
  usually shows up to organize the mess.
• 13:13
  He certainly tries. How does Aristotle handle this
• 13:16
  clash? Aristotle constructs a massive
• 13:19
  synthesis. He tries to build a uniform
• 13:21
  definition by combining both the idea of physical material and
• 13:25
  the idea of intelligent design. OK.
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  How does he merge them? For Aristotle, nature is the end
• 13:30
  product of a thing's development.
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  He calls it the telos, the final goal or purpose.
• 13:34
  To explain this, he uses the analogy of a bronze statue.
• 13:38
  Walk us through the statue. If you ask Aristotle what is the
• 13:40
  fusus of this bronze statue, he will say it includes the bronze
• 13:44
  material it is made of. So the atomists are partially
• 13:47
  right. The material matters.
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  Right, but it also includes the form the artist gives it and the
• 13:51
  final essence of the completed work.
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  You cannot say the raw bronze alone is the nature of the
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  statue, just like you cannot say the abstract shape alone is its
• 14:00
  nature it. Requires all of those pieces.
• 14:02
  Yes, it is the material, the form, and the final realized
• 14:06
  essence functioning together. Nature is the moving primal
• 14:10
  force that brings a thing from raw material to its completed,
• 14:14
  purposeful state. If I can map this onto something
• 14:16
  a bit more practical, it's like building a house.
• 14:19
  If a construction crew drops a massive pile of bricks, lumber
• 14:22
  and nails onto an empty lot, that chaotic pile of materials
• 14:26
  is not the nature of the house. No, it's just a pile.
• 14:29
  Right. The true nature of the house is
• 14:31
  the final completed architectural blueprint realized
• 14:34
  in physical space. The bricks matter, but the
• 14:37
  nature of the house is the finished, purposeful structure
• 14:39
  where a family actually lives and functions.
• 14:42
  That is a brilliant way to frame Aristotle's view.
• 14:45
  For him, nature does nothing without meaning or purpose.
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  It is a force that establishes a wise order.
• 14:52
  He writes extensively that nature furnishes individual
• 14:54
  beings according to their specific ends, seamlessly
• 14:58
  uniting utility and beauty. It's an artist.
• 15:01
  Yes, nature is an artist pushing everything toward its highest
• 15:04
  functioning state. Aristotle gives nature a
• 15:07
  direction, a teleology. This feels like the tipping
• 15:11
  point, because if nature is this wise force pushing everything
• 15:15
  toward a perfect goal, it is only a matter of time before
• 15:18
  someone decides that this force is worthy of worship.
• 15:21
  That is the exact historical progression we move into the
• 15:24
  Hellenistic period, and Fusus is elevated to a completely new
• 15:27
  level. It stops being an abstract
• 15:29
  philosophical concept to debate in an Academy, and it becomes a
• 15:32
  universal deity to be revered. How does that look on the ground
• 15:36
  for the average Hellenistic citizen?
• 15:37
  You see it everywhere in Epicureanism.
• 15:39
  They speak of a blessed nature that rules over all things,
• 15:42
  things providing a sense of cosmic comfort.
• 15:44
  And outside of philosophy? You also see it heavily in
• 15:47
  magical texts and mystery religions from this era.
• 15:51
  Nature is literally personified and worshipped as a female
• 15:54
  deity, sometimes identified with the goddess Aphrodite.
• 15:57
  Oh wow. They are casting spells, writing
• 15:59
  hymns, and invoking the universal goddess Nature to
• 16:02
  bring order or favor to their lives.
• 16:04
  But the most highly developed, rigorous version of this worship
• 16:07
  does not come from magicians casting spells.
• 16:10
  It comes from the Stoics. Yes, the Stoics thinkers like
• 16:13
  Zeno and Crucifus take the concept of Fusus and forge it
• 16:17
  into an ironclad worldview. For the Stoics, nature is a
• 16:21
  rational, immortal deity that administers the entire cosmos.
• 16:25
  Zeno refers to nature as an artistic, creative fire.
• 16:28
  An artistic, creative fire that is an intimidating image.
• 16:32
  It implies something that is beautiful, but also completely
• 16:35
  consuming and unstoppable. The Stoics intended it to be awe
• 16:38
  inspiring. For them, nature and God are
• 16:40
  essentially the same entity. This divine, fiery nature
• 16:44
  permeates every single atom of existence, and it does
• 16:47
  absolutely nothing without a strict rational purpose.
• 16:49
  Of no accidents at all. None.
• 16:52
  Everything that happens from the orbit of the planets to a leaf
• 16:54
  falling from a tree is part of this perfect rational design.
• 16:59
  So if you are an average person living in a stoic society and
• 17:03
  you believe the universe is run by this perfect purposeful fire,
• 17:08
  how do you actually live your life?
• 17:10
  What is the practical application of this theology?
• 17:13
  The practical application is summed up in the defining Stoic
• 17:16
  rule for happiness coined by the philosopher Clanthes.
• 17:20
  He stated that the entire goal of human life is living in
• 17:23
  agreement with nature. Living in agreement with nature.
• 17:26
  That sounds like something you would see stitched on a pillow
• 17:28
  in a modern living room, but I imagine Clanthes meant something
• 17:31
  much more severe. Much more severe because nature
• 17:34
  is perfect, unfailing reason. Agreeing with nature means
• 17:36
  aligning your own mind and actions with the rational order
• 17:39
  of the universe, no matter how brutal that order seems.
• 17:42
  So even in suffering. Yes.
• 17:44
  It means recognizing what is in your control, your own
• 17:46
  reactions, and what is not in your control.
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  Sickness. Poverty, the death of loved
• 17:51
  ones. It means accepting your
• 17:52
  designated place in the grand design without a single
• 17:55
  complaint. This brings us back to the hook
• 17:57
  from the very beginning of our conversation, because the Stoics
• 18:00
  did not just apply this grand cosmic design to massive events
• 18:03
  like plagues or wars, they applied it to the most mundane
• 18:07
  details of daily life, including personal grooming.
• 18:10
  They took it to the absolute microscopic level.
• 18:14
  The Stoic philosopher Epictetus provides a legendary diatribe
• 18:17
  regarding facial hair. The beard argument.
• 18:20
  Yes, he argues that hair and beards are literal symbols of
• 18:24
  God. They are adjuncts of nature.
• 18:26
  He insists that the perfect order and beauty fixed by
• 18:29
  universal nature apply to everything, including the hair
• 18:32
  growing out of a man's chin. So in Epictetus's mind, shaving
• 18:36
  is not just altering your appearance.
• 18:39
  With Epictetus, a man who removes the hair from his body
• 18:42
  is essentially lodging a formal complaint against universal
• 18:45
  nature for making him a man. The beard is a symbol given by
• 18:48
  the divine artist proclaiming your natural constitution to the
• 18:51
  world. And to cut it off.
• 18:53
  To alter it with a razor is to rebel against the perfect,
• 18:56
  infallible design of the cosmos. You know, if I step back and
• 18:59
  look at their premise, I actually admire the logical
• 19:02
  consistency. It is a flawless deduction.
• 19:05
  If you truly believe universal nature is divine, and that this
• 19:08
  divine force does absolutely nothing without a specific
• 19:11
  purpose, then there is no such thing as an arbitrary detail
• 19:14
  that is very not the stars in the sky and not the hair on your
• 19:17
  face. It is a humorous extreme to us
• 19:20
  today, but it shows how thoroughly Fusus had conquered
• 19:23
  their worldview. It was totalizing, and because
• 19:26
  nature became the absolute standard for what is good and
• 19:29
  right, it ignited one of the most intense social and ethical
• 19:33
  debates of the ancient world. Right, because if nature is the
• 19:35
  perfect standard, what do we do about human laws?
• 19:39
  We enter the great clash between fusus, which is nature, and
• 19:43
  nomos, which translates to law, custom or convention.
• 19:47
  This sounds like the ancient version of the debate over the
• 19:49
  social contract. Thinkers are looking around at
• 19:52
  their society, their courts, their taxes, and their class
• 19:54
  structures and asking, are any of these laws based on absolute
• 19:59
  reality or did a bunch of rich guys just make them up?
• 20:02
  That is precisely the critique raised by the Sophist
• 20:04
  philosopher Antiphon. He takes a radical
• 20:07
  deconstructive stance. Antifon argues that human laws
• 20:11
  nomos are essentially arbitrary arranged tyranny.
• 20:14
  Tyranny because the laws restrict what human beings
• 20:17
  naturally want to do, Yes. Antifon claims that the things
• 20:20
  belonging to nature are necessary and real.
• 20:22
  They are undeniable. But the things belonging to
• 20:25
  human law are artificial restrictions designed to control
• 20:28
  people. So he pits them against each
• 20:30
  other. He pits nature and law as two
• 20:32
  warring spheres. What is natural is good.
• 20:35
  What is conventional is a cage. I can see how that logic leads
• 20:39
  directly to some of the earliest concepts of natural human
• 20:41
  rights. If nature is the ultimate
• 20:43
  reality and human law is just an artificial cage, then
• 20:47
  institutions like slavery are suddenly on trial.
• 20:50
  This is where the debate gets incredibly disruptive.
• 20:52
  You have a comic poet named Philemon who asserts A
• 20:55
  revolutionary thought. All men are created free by
• 20:58
  nature. Wow, that is massive.
• 21:00
  If nature makes all men free, then the human institution of
• 21:02
  slavery is nothing but an arbitrary artificial law.
• 21:05
  It is no Moss violating Fusus. That is a staggering ethical
• 21:09
  leap for society whose entire economy ran on enslaved labor.
• 21:13
  When the sophists start declaring that human laws are
• 21:16
  just arbitrary tyranny, how did the heavyweights like Plato and
• 21:19
  Aristotle respond? They spent their whole lives
• 21:22
  trying to build ideal societies. They launch a massive defense of
• 21:26
  law and order. Plato and Aristotle push back
• 21:28
  with the argument that human reason and law are in fact part
• 21:32
  of nature. Aristotle famously declares that
• 21:34
  man is by nature a political animal.
• 21:37
  Meaning that organizing into cities and writing legislation
• 21:40
  is the most natural thing a human being can do.
• 21:42
  Yes. Aristotle argues that our
• 21:44
  ability to reason, to debate justice, and to create civic
• 21:47
  structures is a natural biological endowment.
• 21:50
  Therefore, a just law is not an artificial tyranny, it is the
• 21:54
  highest realization of human nature.
• 21:56
  So the battle lines are drawn, you have what is according to
• 21:59
  nature kind of fusion and what is against nature para fusion.
• 22:02
  And this dichotomy gets applied to every aspect of society,
• 22:05
  especially sexual ethics, right? Heavily, we see this explicitly
• 22:09
  in Plato's late writings, particularly in his work The
• 22:11
  Laws. Plato surveys human behavior and
• 22:15
  condemns certain sexual acts, specifically pederasty and same
• 22:18
  sex relations, as perifusan against nature.
• 22:22
  What is his baseline for determining that?
• 22:24
  Is he appealing to the gods? No, he appeals to biology.
• 22:28
  He bases his argument on the observation of animal behavior,
• 22:32
  noting that such acts do not occur among animals in the wild.
• 22:36
  Oh, interesting. Therefore, he deems conventional
• 22:38
  biological procreation as catafusen according to nature,
• 22:42
  while deviations from that biological mechanism are
• 22:45
  contrary to the natural order. Later, the Jewish historian
• 22:48
  Josephus adopts this exact same Greek philosophical vocabulary
• 22:52
  to condemn sexual relations that violate the natural biological
• 22:55
  design. Josephus using Greek vocabulary
• 22:57
  is the perfect bridge to our next major historical collision.
• 23:01
  Yeah, we have seen how the Greece developed this massive,
• 23:03
  intricate theology of Fusus, but across the Mediterranean, the
• 23:07
  Jewish people have an entirely separate tradition.
• 23:09
  Completely separate. They are not reading Aristotle
• 23:11
  or the Stoics, they're reading the Torah.
• 23:13
  They're relying on divine revelation given to Moses.
• 23:16
  How do these two completely different worlds crash into each
• 23:19
  other? The collision is fascinating
• 23:22
  primarily because of a massive linguistic barrier.
• 23:25
  It is vital to note that there is absolutely no Hebrew
• 23:28
  equivalent for the word fusus. Wait, the Old Testament Hebrew
• 23:31
  language has no word for nature? None at all.
• 23:34
  None. The ancient Hebrew worldview is
• 23:37
  entirely focused on a personal God as the active Creator and
• 23:40
  sustainer. The world does not run on an
• 23:43
  independent, invisible principle called nature.
• 23:46
  So how does it run? It runs on the direct spoken
• 23:49
  word of Yahweh. He sends the rain.
• 23:51
  He grows the grass. Because of this stark
• 23:54
  theological difference, when Jewish texts are eventually
• 23:57
  translated into Greek, or when Jewish authors write in Greek,
• 24:00
  the appearance of the word fusus is highly calculated.
• 24:03
  It is not a casual vocabulary choice.
• 24:05
  It is a strategic move. Very strategic.
• 24:07
  It is quite rare in the Septuagint, the Angel Greek
• 24:09
  translation of the Old Testament.
• 24:11
  You see a notable instance in the apocryphal Book of Wisdom,
• 24:14
  chapter 13, verse one. What does it say there?
• 24:16
  The text calls Gentiles vain by nature for looking at the
• 24:20
  physical world and failing to recognize the creator behind it.
• 24:23
  But the real monumental synthesis of these two worlds
• 24:26
  happens later in the 1st century with a man named Philo of
• 24:30
  Alexandria. Let's examine Philo.
• 24:32
  If there is a central character in the attempt to merge Greek
• 24:35
  philosophy in Jewish theology, it is him.
• 24:38
  Philo was a brilliant Jewish philosopher living in
• 24:40
  Alexandria, Egypt. He was deeply educated in Greek
• 24:43
  philosophy. He knew his Plater, his
• 24:45
  Aristotle, his Stoics. But he was also an intensely
• 24:49
  devout Jew. So he is sitting right in the
• 24:51
  middle of these two worlds. Yes, he looks at the
• 24:53
  intellectual landscape of his day and undertakes a massive
• 24:56
  project. He wants to merge the Old
• 24:58
  Testament Creator with the Greek concept of natural creatrix,
• 25:01
  nature the Creator. So Philo was trying to build a
• 25:04
  bridge between the stone tablets of Moses and the cosmic fire of
• 25:07
  the Stoics. How does he pull off that
• 25:09
  intellectual maneuver? He takes the Stoic idea of the
• 25:12
  law of nature, this perfect rational cosmic order that
• 25:15
  dictates the universe, and he maps it directly onto the Torah.
• 25:19
  Philo argues that the Torah is in fact the supreme law of
• 25:22
  nature. That is an unbelievable PR move.
• 25:26
  He is looking at the Greek philosophers and saying this
• 25:29
  grand cosmic reason. You've been searching for the
• 25:32
  hidden reality Heraclitus talked about.
• 25:35
  We have had it written down in our scrolls for centuries.
• 25:37
  Moses is the ultimate philosopher.
• 25:39
  It is an apologetic masterpiece. Philo claims that when God
• 25:43
  created the world, He established a natural law, and
• 25:47
  the specific written laws of Moses are simply the perfect,
• 25:51
  infallible written expression of that universal natural law.
• 25:55
  But the Greeks might push back and say if Moses wrote it down,
• 25:58
  it's just a human law. It is just no most most it is
• 26:00
  artificial. How does Philo prove that the
• 26:02
  Jewish law is actually the organic law of nature?
• 26:05
  Philo anticipates that exact objection, and he counters it by
• 26:08
  doing something entirely novel with the character of Abraham.
• 26:11
  Remember the biblical timeline? Abraham lived centuries before
• 26:14
  Moses received the written law on Mount Sinai.
• 26:17
  So Philo asks his audience, how is Abraham considered a
• 26:19
  righteous man if he did not have the written laws?
• 26:22
  That is a great trap to set. Abraham could not read the stone
• 26:24
  tablets because they did not exist yet.
• 26:26
  Philo answers his own question by claiming that Abraham
• 26:30
  fulfilled God's laws before they they were ever written down on
• 26:33
  stone because Abraham was guided by unwritten nature.
• 26:37
  He argues that Abraham was a living, breathing embodiment of
• 26:41
  the unwritten law of nature. He turns Abraham into the
• 26:44
  ultimate stoic sage. Yes, he really does.
• 26:47
  By doing this, Philo validates the Jewish faith to a
• 26:50
  Hellenistic audience. He gives the Torah cosmic
• 26:54
  natural credentials. It makes Judaism intellectually
• 26:57
  competitive, even superior, in a world dominated by Greek
• 27:00
  thought. Which brings us to the most
• 27:02
  surprising twist. In this entire historical
• 27:04
  timeline, we have seen Fusus grow from a sprouting plant into
• 27:08
  a philosophical juggernaut, Stoic God, and a brilliant
• 27:11
  Jewish apologetic tool, right? So when we open the New
• 27:14
  Testament documents written in Greek during the 1st century,
• 27:17
  the exact same cultural moment as Philo, we should expect to
• 27:20
  see this word everywhere. It's the most powerful
• 27:21
  intellectual tool on the market. You would expect the early
• 27:24
  Christian writers to lean on it heavily to prove their point to
• 27:27
  the Greek world, but the statistical reality is shocking.
• 27:30
  The New Testament barely uses the word fusus.
• 27:33
  After all that historical momentum, it just drops off the
• 27:36
  map. Out of the entire New Testament
• 27:38
  corpus, the word group appears only a handful of times, and
• 27:42
  this scarcity is a deliberate theological decision.
• 27:45
  The biblical writers are actively rejecting standard
• 27:48
  Greek natural theology. Why abandoned such a brilliant
• 27:51
  PR strategy? If Philo proved you could use
• 27:54
  nature to win over the Greeks, why do the early Christians drop
• 27:58
  it? Because the New Testament
• 27:59
  writers fundamentally reject the idea of an independent divine
• 28:04
  nature that saves or governs people.
• 28:06
  They believe in a sovereign personal Creator who acts
• 28:09
  directly in history, independent of a mechanistic natural order.
• 28:13
  So nature isn't running the show.
• 28:14
  Exactly. Furthermore, they view the
• 28:16
  present natural order as fallen and corrupted.
• 28:19
  So when the Apostle Paul actually decides to pick up the
• 28:22
  word Fusus, it is a highly calculated deployment.
• 28:25
  He is using it as a surgical weapon.
• 28:27
  Let us examine Paul's surgical use of the word Where does he
• 28:30
  deploy it? Look at Romans Chapter 11.
• 28:33
  Paul uses an agricultural metaphor which is very fitting
• 28:36
  given the words ancient origins in plant biology.
• 28:39
  He is talking about the inclusion of Gentiles into the
• 28:41
  promises given to Israel. The olive tree analogy.
• 28:44
  Right. He compares the Gentiles to
• 28:46
  branches from a wild olive tree being grafted into a cultivated
• 28:50
  olive tree. Grafting a wild branch into a
• 28:52
  cultivated tree is a violent biological process.
• 28:55
  And Paul explicitly says this grafting happens perifusing
• 28:59
  against nature. Wait.
• 29:02
  Throughout Greek philosophy, anything that happened against
• 29:04
  nature was considered evil or a cosmic offense.
• 29:08
  That is what makes Paul's usage so brilliant.
• 29:10
  He flips the script. He is reminding Gentile
• 29:13
  Christians that they were wild and alienated by nature.
• 29:16
  Their inclusion in God's promises is an unnatural act of
• 29:19
  sheer divine grace. Oh, I see Paul is saying, your
• 29:22
  salvation is not a natural right.
• 29:24
  It is a supernatural rescue that defies the natural order.
• 29:27
  He takes the biological meaning and applies it to salvation
• 29:30
  history, completely subverting the Greek assumption that
• 29:33
  natural is always the ideal. Where else does he use it?
• 29:36
  In Galatians 4.8, Paul addresses people who previously worshipped
• 29:40
  Pagan deities. He writes that in the past they
• 29:43
  were enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods.
• 29:46
  That is a direct strike against the entire Hellenistic pantheon.
• 29:50
  He just dismantles centuries of mythology with one phrase.
• 29:54
  By nature they are not gods. They have no divine essence.
• 29:57
  Then in Romans 1.26 and 27, Paul uses the adjective form fuzicos
• 30:03
  when diagnosing the depths of human rebellion against the
• 30:06
  Creator. He describes individuals
• 30:08
  exchanging natural sexual relations for those that are
• 30:11
  unnatural. Plucking that right from the
• 30:13
  ancient debates, yes. Here he adopts the standard
• 30:16
  Greek and Jewish apologetic vocabulary, the idea of an
• 30:19
  observable biological order, much like Plato and Josephus
• 30:22
  did, to demonstrate that humanity's rebellion is not just
• 30:25
  against abstract rules, but against the very physical fabric
• 30:28
  of creation. But the most intense use of the
• 30:30
  word, the one that has generated libraries full of theological
• 30:33
  debate, is in Romans chapter 2, verse 14.
• 30:35
  Set the scene for us because Paul is launching a major
• 30:38
  offensive here. In the opening chapters of
• 30:39
  Romans, Paul is systematically dismantling human self
• 30:43
  righteousness. He specifically targets the
• 30:46
  individual who boasts in possessing the written law of
• 30:49
  Moses, the very law Philo worked so hard to elevate.
• 30:53
  Paul points out a radical scenario when Gentiles who do
• 30:57
  not have the law do by nature things required by the law.
• 31:00
  They are a law for themselves. Do by nature fusei.
• 31:04
  That sounds identical to what Philo was arguing about Abraham.
• 31:07
  Philo said Abraham did the law by his unwritten nature.
• 31:10
  Is Paul agreeing with Philo here?
• 31:11
  Is he endorsing the Stoic idea that people can achieve
• 31:14
  salvation by following the law of nature?
• 31:17
  That is the critical junction where many misinterpret Paul.
• 31:20
  No, Paul is absolutely not endorsing the Stoic or Phalonic
• 31:23
  idea of salvation through natural law.
• 31:25
  So what is he doing? Paul's overarching goal in
• 31:27
  Romans is to prove that every single human being, Jew and
• 31:31
  Gentile alike, is utterly trapped under sin and required
• 31:34
  divine grace. So what is his actual angle when
• 31:36
  he says the Gentiles do the law by nature?
• 31:39
  He is weaponizing the concept of autonomy to attack religious
• 31:43
  boasting. The prevailing Jewish argument
• 31:45
  of the day was we possess the written law of Moses, therefore
• 31:50
  we have special status and immunity from divine judgment.
• 31:54
  And Paul says. Paul counters by saying, look at
• 31:56
  the Gentiles. They do not have your scrolls.
• 31:58
  Yet sometimes they do what the law requires just by the
• 32:02
  instincts of their natural conscience.
• 32:04
  They are a law to themselves. I see the trap he is setting.
• 32:08
  If I am an ancient Jewish intellectual, I am using Philo's
• 32:11
  playbook. I am telling the Greeks that are
• 32:13
  written law is superior and Paul takes my prized possession of
• 32:17
  the law and levels the playing field.
• 32:19
  Yes, that is correct, Paul is saying to the Jewish listener,
• 32:22
  your mere possession of the written law gives you no special
• 32:25
  advantage, because even people without the scrolls can
• 32:27
  occasionally figure out the basic moral requirements by
• 32:30
  nature. But here's the catch.
• 32:32
  Neither you with your stone tablets, nor the Gentile with
• 32:35
  their natural conscience, actually keep the law perfectly.
• 32:39
  It is a devastating rhetorical ambush.
• 32:42
  Paul knows the Jewish intellectuals are using
• 32:44
  hellmistic terminology to look sophisticated to the Greeks.
• 32:48
  He takes that exact same terminology and turns it back on
• 32:50
  them. It is a brilliant move.
• 32:52
  He strips away any room for human boasting based on
• 32:55
  religious heritage. He levels the ground entirely
• 32:58
  before a sovereign God. Whether you have the law on
• 33:01
  stone tablets or just a natural conscience, you all fail to live
• 33:04
  up to God's standard. That theological maneuver
• 33:08
  shatters the ancient categories, and this leveling of humanity
• 33:11
  becomes even more stark, almost uncomfortable, in a passage like
• 33:15
  Ephesians 2.3. Let us examine Ephesians 2.3
• 33:18
  because the theological weight of a single phrase in that verse
• 33:22
  is massive. The text in Ephesians is
• 33:25
  describing the spiritual condition of humanity before
• 33:27
  encountering the grace of Christ, the author writes.
• 33:30
  We too were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of
• 33:33
  mankind. By nature, children of wrath, I
• 33:35
  want to zero in on the phrase we too.
• 33:38
  Why is the inclusion of those two words so significant in the
• 33:40
  1st century context? Remember the Jewish apologetic
• 33:43
  we discussed earlier in the Book of Wisdom?
• 33:46
  The standard accepted claim in Jewish thought was that only the
• 33:49
  Pagan Gentiles were doomed and ignorant by nature.
• 33:52
  Because they did not have the covenant.
• 33:54
  Right. The Jewish people believed they
• 33:56
  were rescued from this natural doom by their covenant, their
• 33:59
  lineage, and the law. So when the writer of Ephesians,
• 34:04
  who is a Jewish Christian, says we too were by nature children
• 34:08
  of wrath, he is crossing a massive, controversial line.
• 34:11
  It is a radical, offensive statement to the 1st century
• 34:14
  religious mind. By saying we too, the author
• 34:18
  explicitly includes the Jews. He unites all of humanity,
• 34:22
  regardless of religious heritage, moral effort, or
• 34:24
  biological lineage, under a condition of total intrinsic
• 34:27
  fallenness. So nature is not the solution
• 34:30
  anymore. No, nature here is not a divine
• 34:32
  spark. It is not a perfect rational
• 34:34
  order. It is a state of rebellion that
• 34:36
  justly incurs divine wrath. It is the ultimate equalizer.
• 34:40
  There is no spiritual elite. No one gets a pass because of
• 34:43
  their fuses. Every single person starts the
• 34:46
  exact same deficit. Contrast that stark fallen view
• 34:49
  of human nature with another remarkable text from the New
• 34:52
  Testament, Second Peter 1.4. If Paul and Ephesians say our
• 34:57
  nature is fallen, what does Peter say about it?
• 35:00
  Second, Peter borrows heavily from Hellenistic vocabulary, but
• 35:03
  he points it in a completely new direction.
• 35:06
  He writes that through God's promises, believers may become
• 35:09
  partakers of the divine nature, escaping the corruption in the
• 35:12
  world. Partakers, the divine nature.
• 35:14
  If I'm a Greek philosopher reading that, I'm thinking
• 35:17
  finally a Christian writer who agrees with us.
• 35:21
  We can become gods. It sounds incredibly Greek.
• 35:23
  It plays right into the ancient distinction between corruptible
• 35:27
  mortal nature and incorruptible divine essence.
• 35:30
  But Peter is not talking about shedding your humanity and
• 35:33
  turning into a deity on Mount Olympus.
• 35:35
  What is he talking? About He's talking about a moral
• 35:37
  and spiritual transformation. It is a rescue mission from the
• 35:40
  outside, yes. The new nature is brought about
• 35:42
  entirely by God's promises and God's action, not by human
• 35:46
  achievement or innate natural potential.
• 35:48
  And this brings us to the final and perhaps most fierce battles
• 35:53
  over the word fusus in the New Testament era, the Gnostic Wars.
• 35:57
  The Gnostics represent a massive existential threat to the early
• 36:00
  church, and the debate centers directly on the concept of
• 36:04
  nature. For the listener who might not
• 36:06
  be familiar with early church history, the Gnostics were
• 36:08
  essentially ancient religious hackers.
• 36:11
  They tried to rewrite the code of Christianity.
• 36:13
  What was their core claim regarding human nature?
• 36:16
  The Gnostics were a divorce group, but fundamentally they
• 36:19
  believed salvation came through secret elite knowledge Gnosis.
• 36:23
  More dangerously, many of them claimed that they were saved
• 36:26
  entirely by nature. Meaning they were just born that
• 36:29
  way, yes. They taught that humanity was
• 36:31
  biologically and spiritually divided into fixed classes.
• 36:35
  Some people were just naturally spiritual.
• 36:37
  They possessed a divine spark by their very fuses.
• 36:40
  Others are just physical or animalistic, permanently doomed
• 36:43
  to destruction no matter what they did.
• 36:45
  So the Gnostics are claiming an elite untouchable status based
• 36:49
  purely on their nature. They are essentially saying we
• 36:52
  have the spiritual DNA and the rest of you are just non
• 36:55
  playable characters in the universe.
• 36:57
  That is a very accurate comparison.
• 36:59
  It is the ultimate spiritual arrogance.
• 37:01
  How do the biblical writers respond to this?
• 37:03
  They respond with fierce, blistering polemics.
• 37:06
  We see this specifically in the Book of Jude verse 10 and in
• 37:10
  Second Peter 2 point New. These writers do not politely
• 37:13
  debate the Gnostics. They aggressively mock the elite
• 37:17
  claims of these false teachers. Give us the specifics.
• 37:19
  How did Jude and Peter use the word fusus to take them down?
• 37:23
  Gnostics claim to operate on a plane of high spiritual
• 37:26
  knowledge. Jude counters by saying no,
• 37:28
  these people only understand things.
• 37:30
  Fusa goes by base natural instinct.
• 37:33
  Wow. And second, Peter goes even
• 37:34
  further. He compares these supposedly
• 37:36
  elite teachers to irrational animals, creatures of instinct
• 37:40
  that are born only to be caught and killed.
• 37:42
  Comparing someone claiming to be a spiritual elite to an animal
• 37:45
  meant for the slaughterhouse is a brutal insult.
• 37:48
  It is a devastating, calculated critique.
• 37:51
  The false teachers boast about being saved by their superior
• 37:54
  nature. Peter and Jude flipped the word
• 37:56
  on them, saying You want to talk about nature, look at your
• 37:59
  behavior. You are acting like mere fusica,
• 38:02
  mindless beasts driven by basic physical urges.
• 38:06
  Talk about turning their own philosophy against them.
• 38:08
  They take the very word the Gnostics used to elevate
• 38:11
  themselves and weaponize it to expose their irrationality and
• 38:14
  moral corruption. They completely reject the idea
• 38:18
  of genetic or spiritual determinism.
• 38:21
  Nobody is automatically saved or elite by their given nature.
• 38:25
  Throughout the New Testament, nature is never the Savior.
• 38:28
  Human nature has fallen, and the universal natural world is just
• 38:31
  the temporary theater of God's creation waiting for redemption.
• 38:35
  When you look at the entirety of this history, it demonstrates
• 38:37
  how a single piece of vocabulary holds the entire history of
• 38:41
  human thought within it. We have tracked A staggering
• 38:44
  historical shift. Today we watched a simple word
• 38:47
  that meant the sprouting plant and Homer's Odyssey evolve into
• 38:50
  a medical mechanism for Hippocrates.
• 38:52
  We saw it trigger legal battles over inheritance too.
• 38:55
  Yes, and fuel intellectual wars between the atomists and Plato
• 38:58
  over the essence of reality. We saw it become a cosmic
• 39:02
  rational deity for the Stoics, complete with mandates about
• 39:05
  facial hair. And then Philo used it as a
• 39:07
  brilliant bridge to merge Greek philosophy with the Jewish
• 39:11
  Torah. And in the end, we saw the
• 39:13
  biblical writers use it to level human pride, uniting all of
• 39:16
  humanity as fallen by nature while highlighting that rescue
• 39:20
  only comes from divine grace. It is a phenomenal linguistic
• 39:24
  progression. And I want to leave you, the
• 39:25
  listener, with a final thought to Mull over as you step back
• 39:28
  into the modern world. Think about our current
• 39:32
  society's absolute obsession with things being all natural.
• 39:35
  It is everywhere today. You see it in grocery stores and
• 39:38
  cosmetic marketing and Wellness retreats.
• 39:41
  Think about the popular psychological advice we
• 39:43
  constantly hear to just act naturally or be true to your
• 39:46
  inner nature. Consider how this modern, almost
• 39:49
  commercial faith in nature as a default good might unconsciously
• 39:53
  echo the ancient Stoic worship of Fusus.
• 39:56
  We have essentially repackaged ancient Greek theology and put
• 40:00
  it on a cereal box. That is a very pointed
• 40:02
  observation. And based on the text we examine
• 40:05
  today, ask yourself, how might the New Testament writers
• 40:08
  vigorously critique our modern, unchallenged assumption that
• 40:13
  natural always equals good? Definitely something to think
• 40:15
  about. Thank you for joining us for
• 40:17
  this deep dive.