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Can a nation be "Christian" without Christ? · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

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Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly propicient at telling stories that
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Speaker 1: deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become
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Speaker 1: as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast.
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Speaker 1: I'm doctor James Spencer, and through calm, thoughtful theological discussions,
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Speaker 1: Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the
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Speaker 1: world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions
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Speaker 1: that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now onto
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Speaker 1: today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey everyone, welcome to this
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Speaker 1: episode of Thinking Christian. I'm doctor James Spencer. I'm joined
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Speaker 1: by doctor Ashish Varma, and today we're going to be
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Speaker 1: discussing an article from It's a magazine journal First Things,
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Speaker 1: and First Thing's been around for a long time and
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Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about this article by James Wood,
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Speaker 1: who is an associate professor of religion and theology at
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Speaker 1: Redeemer University in Canada, and he wrote an article titled
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Speaker 1: in Defense of Cultural Christianity. As some of you may know,
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Speaker 1: I've written on my concerns with the use of Christian
1:07
Speaker 1: to describe things for which Christ is not essential, things
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Speaker 1: like Christian nation, Christian nationalism. I find that descriptor to
1:17
Speaker 1: be highly problematic for a number of different reasons. And
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Speaker 1: so this article really caught my eye and I sent
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Speaker 1: it over to Ashish who also read it. And we've
1:27
Speaker 1: got some we've got some problems. So we're going to
1:30
Speaker 1: talk about those problems today in the podcast and uh,
1:33
Speaker 1: and see what we can do with it. Maybe maybe
1:35
Speaker 1: it'd be good if we can kind of start just
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Speaker 1: having a dialogue and making sure that we outline appropriately
1:41
Speaker 1: his general argument.
1:43
Speaker 2: Ashish, what do you think like it's a good place
1:45
Speaker 2: to start.
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Speaker 3: I think that's a great place to start.
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Speaker 1: Okay, go for it. Let's uh what did you think
1:51
Speaker 1: he was trying to do?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, at his base, it was something of a
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Speaker 3: defense for a particular kind of political theology. I was
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Speaker 3: reading it in which our faith should enter into our
2:07
Speaker 3: public life. And on that baseline, I would say that's
2:11
Speaker 3: probably unarguable. Right if we say our faith is what
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Speaker 3: it is, something that encompasses our very being, postures, our
2:20
Speaker 3: very ways of engaging with society, our families, with everyone
2:25
Speaker 3: and everything, then I suppose at that basic level he
2:29
Speaker 3: ought to make a case to that degree. Now I
2:33
Speaker 3: think he takes it, takes it further than just simply
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Speaker 3: making a case for one's faith shaping one's public life
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Speaker 3: to a particular rendering of public life following a political model. Right,
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Speaker 3: So what I mean by that is that there's been
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Speaker 3: I think it's worth putting meat on the bones ear
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Speaker 3: to say that we live in a society in which
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Speaker 3: we have a pretty clearly demarketed way of thinking about
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Speaker 3: Christian political engagement. It doesn't mean everyone thinks the same thing,
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Speaker 3: but there's a reason that a pretty standard eighty to
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Speaker 3: eighty five percent of especially the evangelical population, votes in
3:18
Speaker 3: one particular way. Yeah, has one particular set of issues
3:23
Speaker 3: that has become the voting block, to the point where
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Speaker 3: if someone violates those issues, you often hear it said
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Speaker 3: that this is I'm a single issue voter on this point,
3:35
Speaker 3: and we know what the issues are. No need of
3:37
Speaker 3: getting into that just yet.
3:39
Speaker 1: But you have.
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Speaker 3: Also a very vocal group of people who want to
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Speaker 3: say I'm a Christian. You can't take away from me
3:46
Speaker 3: that I'm a Christian and I vote very differently and
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Speaker 3: I don't see things now. It's a vocal group. It's
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Speaker 3: a consistently minority group. It's a group that you get
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Speaker 3: the sense wants to be able to make headway and
3:59
Speaker 3: become a bigger group, but for whatever reasons, consistently remains
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Speaker 3: in the under fifteen percent part of the Christian population
4:09
Speaker 3: publicly right, but because of their criticism that's pretty vocal,
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Speaker 3: and some pretty prominent people, so that the author James
4:18
Speaker 3: would also among other people he references, Oh, I've suddenly,
4:24
Speaker 3: it's embarrassing, I've forgotten his name. Suddenly, the theologian with
4:28
Speaker 3: the Southern Baptist.
4:29
Speaker 2: Convention, El Mohler.
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Speaker 3: No, no, no, the one who was the head of
4:34
Speaker 3: the Ethics Commission, Russell.
4:37
Speaker 2: Mooreus Russell Moore, Russell Moore. Yeah, so he.
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Speaker 3: References him, and he clearly sets himself in opposition to
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Speaker 3: someone like Russell Moore. But there's some prominent people like
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Speaker 3: Russell Moore right where he wants to sort of posture
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Speaker 3: against what you get the sense of it's a defense
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Speaker 3: in some sense of that eighty to eighty five percent
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Speaker 3: voting block, and I think there's a lot of assumptions
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Speaker 3: that take place within that. But he's trying to draw
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Speaker 3: in what good and benefit can we get out of
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Speaker 3: being that voting block and being that political group who's
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Speaker 3: tied to a particular political form of being, while at
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Speaker 3: the same time acknowledging that doesn't mean that all the
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Speaker 3: people that are represented by the group or that appeal
5:23
Speaker 3: to the group. And I think that the elephant in
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Speaker 3: the room is very obviously to him President Trump. Sure,
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Speaker 3: he mentions those leaders who may not live up to
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Speaker 3: our moral standards, but still position themselves to be a
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Speaker 3: defender of those standards. To me, it's pretty clear he's
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Speaker 3: talking about people like Trump, especially where he's trying to say,
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Speaker 3: can we continue to vote in this particular way and
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Speaker 3: have a political identity in this kind of way that
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Speaker 3: more or less aligns with a eighty to eighty five
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Speaker 3: percent while acknowledging that we can still say, sure, Trump
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Speaker 3: doesn't morally live.
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Speaker 2: Up to our expectations.
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Speaker 3: To me, that's sort of the that's my reading. Does
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Speaker 3: that seem fair to you or do you think I'm
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Speaker 3: being overly ungenerous?
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Speaker 1: No? I think that's that's about where I land on
6:14
Speaker 1: it as well. I think that the only thing I
6:18
Speaker 1: would add is his what I see as his underlying
6:21
Speaker 1: thesis is this idea that the good, the true, and
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Speaker 1: the beautiful are good, true, and beautiful on their own terms.
6:30
Speaker 1: They don't need to be justified by, for instance, conversion
6:35
Speaker 1: or revivalism or a you know, this sense that they
6:42
Speaker 1: should be able to conform people to a particular mode
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Speaker 1: of not only behavior, but a being. And so I
6:49
Speaker 1: do think that's an undercurrent within the piece that he's writing.
6:54
Speaker 1: So for instance, he'll he talks about David French a
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Speaker 1: little bit and his position to putting or his concerns
7:04
Speaker 1: about putting the Tank Commandments in schools. I would freely
7:08
Speaker 1: admit I've written pieces on this. I have concerns about
7:12
Speaker 1: putting the Tank Commandments in schools. I have concerns for
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Speaker 1: different reasons than either French or would suggest. But ultimately,
7:22
Speaker 1: what he's playing with in French is that he's saying
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Speaker 1: that French is arguing that when these ten Commandments are
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Speaker 1: put up in schools, what they create is hypocrisy, people
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Speaker 1: who are performing something that they don't really believe.
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Speaker 2: Now, when I looked.
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Speaker 1: For the article of French online, what I found was
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Speaker 1: he's really arguing that, or at least in this piece,
7:48
Speaker 1: he argues that there is a Christian mysticism that he's
7:53
Speaker 1: concerned about, and that Christian mysticism involves this notion that
7:58
Speaker 1: if we put the Ten Commandments up in school, it
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Speaker 1: will have such an aura that you know, conveys itself
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Speaker 1: to students that they will automatically somehow become Christians.
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Speaker 2: Right. So this sort of magical aspect of the.
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Speaker 1: Ten Commandments, like what conjures up in my mind is
8:15
Speaker 1: when the dude at the end of Raiders of the
8:18
Speaker 1: Loss Art touches the arc of the Covenant and his
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Speaker 1: face melts off.
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Speaker 2: Right.
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Speaker 1: So it's that sort of aura and magical aura that
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Speaker 1: the tech Commandments put off and French seems to be
8:29
Speaker 1: arguing against that.
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Speaker 2: Would want to say, no.
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Speaker 1: If you've got the Ten Commandments in the classroom, the
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Speaker 1: students are introduced to these things, and that introduction can
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Speaker 1: then lead them to recognize that the good of Christianity
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Speaker 1: is not simply good but also true. He actually makes
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Speaker 1: that point later in the piece, not necessarily about the
8:48
Speaker 1: Ten Commandments, but about Christianity in general. And so I
8:53
Speaker 1: think he's got a real concern that Christians not decouple
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Speaker 1: themselves from the good, the true, and the beautiful, however
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Speaker 1: partial and however I would say, non theological in public life,
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Speaker 1: that they continue to recognize that.
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Speaker 2: But ultimately I think.
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Speaker 1: He then collapses what is a necessary distinction in my
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Speaker 1: mind between the partial understandings of the good, the true,
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Speaker 1: and the beautiful that we can gather from creation more generally,
9:27
Speaker 1: and the sharpening and further constraint of that that comes
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Speaker 1: with the self disclosure of God and allows us to
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Speaker 1: see as Christians and recognize that Christ is actually an authority.
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Speaker 1: I don't think he does a good job throughout the
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Speaker 1: article of really recognizing that there is a true distinction
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Speaker 1: there and that collapsing that distinction, even in using something
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Speaker 1: like Christian culture, is deeply problematic and doesn't do I
9:59
Speaker 1: think he argues that it tends to do. So that'd
10:02
Speaker 1: just be my sort of additional two cents to throw
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Speaker 1: in there on top of what you noted.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's worth also mentioning the kind of
10:12
Speaker 3: narrative he's working with here.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, there are.
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Speaker 3: A number of authors. It's pretty common narrative that he's
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Speaker 3: taking for granted, and it goes something like this. You know,
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Speaker 3: there there was the Roman Empire, and in that Roman Empire,
10:26
Speaker 3: this thing emerged that we know of now as the
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Speaker 3: Christian faith, and that Christian faith, though initially was in
10:32
Speaker 3: some sort of position of opposition right or some sort
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Speaker 3: of position of minority not in power, and over time
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Speaker 3: that Roman Empire becomes Christianized and becoming Christianized, this thing
10:45
Speaker 3: emerges that we can think of as Christen dumb, where
10:49
Speaker 3: there's this interesting interwoven reality between what's ultimately papacy and throne.
10:55
Speaker 3: There's a vying back and forth. But what emerges from
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Speaker 3: that are these collection of Western and Northern European nation
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Speaker 3: states that owe their identity especially to the working out
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Speaker 3: of a particular logic of Christian culture. And that sets
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Speaker 3: forth an idea that becomes the United States of America,
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Speaker 3: and certain certain Christian principles form not just the moral
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Speaker 3: fabric of what we think of as the Western world
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Speaker 3: and the the USA in particular, but also a larger
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Speaker 3: project that becomes something of a blessing to the world.
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Speaker 3: He doesn't use the word blessing, but he speaks of
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Speaker 3: the gains of this kind of civilization that are due
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Speaker 3: to the effects of Christian moral reality. That's right, and
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Speaker 3: that sort of thing, whether or not explicitly acknowledged, enables
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Speaker 3: the Western world and especially the US, to become leaders
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Speaker 3: in make the world in some sense a better place
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Speaker 3: for everybody. But over time there's a degradation and you
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Speaker 3: start to have a slipping from those moral Christian principles,
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Speaker 3: and the result is the awakening of he actually uses
12:13
Speaker 3: the word awoke reality. And because that you have now
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Speaker 3: a slippage from that better version of civilization where people thrived,
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Speaker 3: and now you have a group of people, especially through
12:30
Speaker 3: media and political avenues, are trying to recover through policy,
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Speaker 3: through political theological ways of being that image of the
12:41
Speaker 3: Western world and again particularly the US tied to that
12:45
Speaker 3: Christian moral framework. And sometimes that is meant an alliance
12:50
Speaker 3: with leaders who don't fit that in their active life,
12:55
Speaker 3: but they do fit it in terms of ideologically what
12:57
Speaker 3: they want to put forth. And he says, of course,
13:00
Speaker 3: the perfect is if the leaders both ideologically in the
13:04
Speaker 3: right place and morally.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, but if.
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Speaker 3: I only have to pick one, well, then we'll pick
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Speaker 3: the ideological and deal with the fact of the moral.
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Speaker 3: And that justifies a larger movement to re christianize the
13:18
Speaker 3: moral framework, because ultimately the good that comes out of
13:23
Speaker 3: that could be that people become followers of Jesus in
13:28
Speaker 3: the process. Then he has his anecdotes of people that
13:30
Speaker 3: have successfully become followers of Christ because of that moral framework,
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Speaker 3: and that's very explicitly the narrative he's working with. I
13:39
Speaker 3: flushed it out a little bit more than he does,
13:41
Speaker 3: but he doesn't make any qualms about making sure you
13:44
Speaker 3: know that he's working with that kind of narrative.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and so I agree with that.
13:49
Speaker 1: I think part of the rupture of that narrative that
13:53
Speaker 1: I would sort of tease out and that I've been
13:57
Speaker 1: pretty actively working on but don't have, like.
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Speaker 2: I haven't done all the research on it. Right.
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Speaker 1: But in the intellectual history of liberalism, I believe it's
14:08
Speaker 1: MiNet who wrote this.
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Speaker 2: He talks about the.
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Speaker 1: Possibility of liberalism, liberalism principles, the notion of human rights
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Speaker 1: being claimed by the church, particularly the Catholic Church, but
14:25
Speaker 1: Christianity more generally only really being an option after the
14:32
Speaker 1: church's political power has been broken. And so I find
14:37
Speaker 1: that to be a really interesting notion because it does
14:43
Speaker 1: so disrupt this sort of continuity that you describe in
14:46
Speaker 1: this narrative Ashish, right, where it's a linear move all
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Speaker 1: the way through to America and now we have these
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Speaker 1: Christian principles that have been inculcated into the governing system.
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Speaker 2: What I am sort of.
15:02
Speaker 1: Finding as I do more and more research on this,
15:05
Speaker 1: is that it's possible that within that what otherwise seems
15:11
Speaker 1: like a contiguous narrative, what we've actually had happen is
15:16
Speaker 1: a new humanist philosophy has come into play that we
15:22
Speaker 1: would generally call liberalism.
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Speaker 2: Liberalism is the notion that individuals have rights.
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Speaker 1: What I mean by it is that liberalism is this
15:31
Speaker 1: notion that individuals have rights, that individuals have freedoms, and
15:35
Speaker 1: that there is a sovereign individual who sort of owns
15:38
Speaker 1: their destiny, let's say at times that has been couched
15:44
Speaker 1: as yes, they own that destiny within a certain ought right,
15:49
Speaker 1: that they ought to act in these certain ways. That
15:52
Speaker 1: there's a sort of either a theological or social obligation
15:56
Speaker 1: that constrains what that looks like. But ultimately the underlying
16:01
Speaker 1: philosophy of liberalism doesn't claim any of that. Those are
16:04
Speaker 1: things that are put on top of liberalism I think
16:08
Speaker 1: as restraining devices. But what we really end up with
16:12
Speaker 1: is something akin to what we see all the time
16:14
Speaker 1: in judges, is that the people are doing what's right
16:16
Speaker 1: in their own eyes, and they have to be pulled
16:19
Speaker 1: back occasionally to this sort of more yooistic understanding of
16:25
Speaker 1: what life is supposed to look like. The point is
16:29
Speaker 1: that that disruption in that continuous narrative that you've just
16:33
Speaker 1: laid out, I think is really crucial and highlights this
16:36
Speaker 1: notion that Christianity and Christian language, theology, biblical versus all
16:43
Speaker 1: those kind of things may have been, and I would
16:46
Speaker 1: say probably have been co opted into liberalism as not
16:53
Speaker 1: necessarily a means of control.
16:55
Speaker 2: But I like the way Robert Bella.
16:57
Speaker 1: Puts it when he talks about American civil religion is
17:00
Speaker 1: that he says that American civil religion wasn't necessarily anti
17:03
Speaker 1: cleric or militantly secular, but it's using and employing, co
17:08
Speaker 1: opting this Christian language and religious language into its articulations
17:15
Speaker 1: in order to avoid friction with religious groups and to
17:19
Speaker 1: advance national aims. Now, we could frame that as you know,
17:25
Speaker 1: in the conspiracy theory sort of approach, as you know, oh,
17:29
Speaker 1: we're all being manipulated and this is horrible, or whatever.
17:32
Speaker 1: I think the simpler way to put it is there's
17:34
Speaker 1: a counter discipleship movement, that is, government that has no
17:41
Speaker 1: particular vested interest in conforming people to the image of Christ,
17:48
Speaker 1: to the insofar as doing so would undermine its own authority.
17:55
Speaker 1: And so there's this weird dynamic that I think would
17:59
Speaker 1: really miss it, which is, yes, we can still identify
18:03
Speaker 1: the good, the true, and the beautiful in our everyday life.
18:05
Speaker 1: That's an appropriate thing for us to do as Christians.
18:09
Speaker 1: I think we're part of our calling is to recognize
18:11
Speaker 1: reality and goodness, truth and beauty would be part of
18:14
Speaker 1: that reality.
18:17
Speaker 2: But there's also a.
18:18
Speaker 1: Way that the narrowing, the partial recognition of the good,
18:25
Speaker 1: the true, and the beautiful becomes a counter discipleship movement
18:29
Speaker 1: that's forming people away from conformity to Christ and encouraging
18:35
Speaker 1: them to settle for a partial understanding of goodness, truth
18:38
Speaker 1: and beauty that Christians just simply can't embrace. We have
18:43
Speaker 1: to point beyond it. And so that's a little bit
18:46
Speaker 1: of rambling on this Ashish. I'll let you parse that
18:49
Speaker 1: out a little bit.
18:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't see that as rambling. I think that
18:54
Speaker 3: sets up an important contrast. What you're pointing out, whether
19:01
Speaker 3: you're meaning to or not, sets up a real question
19:05
Speaker 3: as to whether his narrative, that this implicit narrative that
19:08
Speaker 3: what is working from yeah, is a correct narrative. Yeah,
19:14
Speaker 3: Because His version of it is is that we've had
19:16
Speaker 3: a slippage, right, and having that slippage from this otherwise good,
19:22
Speaker 3: good program has meant that there's been a need to
19:27
Speaker 3: have a certain alliance with those who might fail personally
19:32
Speaker 3: and their moral ability to live up to what is
19:35
Speaker 3: good and true and beautiful. But the policies that they
19:39
Speaker 3: have affirm those things. And so we compromise. And we compromise,
19:46
Speaker 3: not least because the long term is important, but also
19:49
Speaker 3: because perhaps that compromise for the sake of the ideological
19:54
Speaker 3: might bring about the come to Jesus moment, the real
19:59
Speaker 3: come to Jesus mond right, for those who are otherwise
20:03
Speaker 3: on the right side of the ideological boundary. Yeah, and
20:06
Speaker 3: I think what you're describing forces us to reckon with
20:09
Speaker 3: is that story. Is that narrative correct, because we can
20:12
Speaker 3: narrate this actually in a very different way. I don't
20:17
Speaker 3: think at the moment that's the time to provide the
20:20
Speaker 3: full scale alternative narrative. Yeah, but we'd have to ask
20:26
Speaker 3: why is this narrative or that narrative or some other
20:29
Speaker 3: narrative the correct one. And what we need to get
20:32
Speaker 3: into is the nitty gritty of is the story is
20:37
Speaker 3: the presumption is the optimism of what is the true,
20:40
Speaker 3: the good, and the beautiful? Really all that good, all
20:43
Speaker 3: that true, all that beautiful, right, And I think we
20:47
Speaker 3: can draw that into question YEA. For one, I think
20:54
Speaker 3: an anecdote that seems completely unrelated might be the way forward.
20:59
Speaker 3: And I both belong to a generation where our parents
21:03
Speaker 3: were the Beatles generation, right, Yeah, And I've noticed something
21:09
Speaker 3: over time. I've never really had an affinity for the Beatles.
21:12
Speaker 3: Please forgive me anyone listening out there. Yeah, And I
21:15
Speaker 3: don't know if you and I have ever had this conversation,
21:17
Speaker 3: but I've I've found that the vast majority of let's
21:21
Speaker 3: call them my light skinned friends have have this special
21:27
Speaker 3: place in their heart for the Beatles. A Beatles song
21:29
Speaker 3: comes on and they get excited. The mention of the
21:34
Speaker 3: Beatles comes on, they get excited. Or I love to
21:37
Speaker 3: ask my students this question just sort of as it
21:39
Speaker 3: get to know, you exercise if you had one song
21:41
Speaker 3: you could listen to for the rest of your life,
21:43
Speaker 3: only one song, don't have to listen to it every moment,
21:45
Speaker 3: but one song? What would it be? The Beatles frequently.
21:50
Speaker 2: Pop up in that list interesting, and I.
21:54
Speaker 3: Find myself in the position of I I don't dislike
21:56
Speaker 3: the Beatles. In truth, right, then, with the exception of
22:01
Speaker 3: a handful of really popular ones, if a Beatles song
22:05
Speaker 3: came on, I wouldn't actually know that it was a
22:06
Speaker 3: Beatles song. Yeah, yeah, now is my Could you interpret
22:12
Speaker 3: me as disliking the Beatles, Sure you could, yeah, But
22:17
Speaker 3: what would be more faithful of an interpretation of what's
22:19
Speaker 3: going on with me is that it just doesn't have
22:22
Speaker 3: the same sort of emotional existential pull on my heart,
22:27
Speaker 3: not least because even though I belonged to the same
22:30
Speaker 3: group who grew up having their parents listen to the Beatles,
22:35
Speaker 3: I didn't actually grow up listening to the Beatles. If
22:39
Speaker 3: I heard a Beatles song, it would have been on
22:41
Speaker 3: accident and I wouldn't have known it was the Beatles, right.
22:46
Speaker 3: And case in point would be I've known of the
22:48
Speaker 3: Yellow Submarine since I was very little. It wasn't until honestly,
22:52
Speaker 3: I was a grad student that I knew that that
22:54
Speaker 3: was a Beatles Beatles song, right. Conversely, what I grew
22:58
Speaker 3: up with was really the the popular people of the
23:05
Speaker 3: same variety in in Indian cultural music, right.
23:10
Speaker 2: Yeah.
23:10
Speaker 3: So if you come to my house. You'd, you know,
23:12
Speaker 3: my sister and I like to joke about this, you'd
23:14
Speaker 3: be hearing RODJ. Kapoor or Judged It sing. My dad
23:16
Speaker 3: had all of these albums that were he had just
23:19
Speaker 3: there were albums he made, especially when CD burners became
23:23
Speaker 3: a thing, and it was just Judgas Thing one, Judgus
23:26
Speaker 3: Thing two all the way up to like ten, and
23:28
Speaker 3: you'd see them randomly sitting around. So our joke ended
23:32
Speaker 3: up being, look, I found it judg just sing eight
23:34
Speaker 3: eight right. But truthfully, when I hear and it was
23:39
Speaker 3: my father's music. But when I hear that music, I
23:42
Speaker 3: do actually get that nostalgia today, whether it be him
23:46
Speaker 3: a RODJ. Kapoor or what really gets me ticking is
23:50
Speaker 3: the beauty of classical Indian music, you know. Now, I
23:54
Speaker 3: say all this to say that there's a very particular
23:58
Speaker 3: way of being in the world that all of us
24:03
Speaker 3: just experience by default. Right, We can't experience life in general.
24:07
Speaker 3: We always experience life in particular, and whatever is that
24:11
Speaker 3: goes into the formation of those particular ways of being
24:14
Speaker 3: in the world are going to have an emotional pull
24:17
Speaker 3: on us. Because again, we don't know things in general.
24:20
Speaker 3: We don't know things intuitively in the abstract, we know
24:23
Speaker 3: them through the formation in places, in time, with people contexts, right,
24:29
Speaker 3: and we call those things together cultural ways of being. Now,
24:34
Speaker 3: I bring all this to say that the way that
24:36
Speaker 3: what is describing his narrative reflects, I think a very
24:40
Speaker 3: particular cultural way of being in the world that actually
24:44
Speaker 3: finds itself quite an opposition to the ways that many
24:48
Speaker 3: other people have experienced the world. Yeah, I'll be specific
24:52
Speaker 3: with this one now, right. I remember when nine to
24:55
Speaker 3: eleven happened. Obviously for a majority of Americans, it was
25:01
Speaker 3: a very emotionally elevated experience, but the way that fallout
25:08
Speaker 3: came from that was very different from very different people.
25:10
Speaker 3: The very day of that, I was a student at
25:13
Speaker 3: the University of Iowa. I had a friend who was
25:18
Speaker 3: Indian like me, and he had that big thick beard.
25:22
Speaker 3: And we Indians we can grow big thick beards very young. Right.
25:26
Speaker 3: I was the guy in my high school basketball team
25:28
Speaker 3: with the full goateee like I was the envy of
25:32
Speaker 3: other people because of how I could grow facial are
25:34
Speaker 3: At this point in time, it was my friend who
25:36
Speaker 3: had the full thick beard. South Indian, which generally means
25:41
Speaker 3: a lot darker than me, but there were stereotypes built
25:45
Speaker 3: around that perception. Dark skinned, big thick beard, and he's
25:48
Speaker 3: on campus transportation and he's being yelled at by his
25:55
Speaker 3: fellow students, our fellow students to just go home, and he,
26:00
Speaker 3: you know, he was He was not one to back
26:03
Speaker 3: down from sarcastic moments, and so he'd reply in a
26:07
Speaker 3: way that I just kept telling him, Dude, you can't
26:10
Speaker 3: say that they're gonna they're gonna kill you. They might
26:12
Speaker 3: actually kill you. But his response was to Clinton, Iowa,
26:15
Speaker 3: you want me to go home to Clinton, Iowa? Why,
26:19
Speaker 3: you know?
26:21
Speaker 2: Yeah?
26:22
Speaker 3: And while I didn't experience that on the bus, I
26:24
Speaker 3: was clean shaven, so I didn't have some of those
26:27
Speaker 3: stereotypes that people were interpreting in certain kinds of ways.
26:31
Speaker 3: Every single time I would go and still to this day,
26:33
Speaker 3: I go through the airport by myself, I get randomly selected.
26:41
Speaker 3: Right now, why is that the case, Well, it's frankly,
26:45
Speaker 3: because there's a way of being in the world that
26:48
Speaker 3: is very much tied to our particularity, and it's tied
26:51
Speaker 3: to all these metrics for being in the world. And
26:55
Speaker 3: so I remember in this moment someone getting really rowled
26:59
Speaker 3: up about how America because lost its way and we
27:01
Speaker 3: need to go back. And one of my friends said,
27:03
Speaker 3: I just asked him, I just an honest question. What
27:05
Speaker 3: is this previous context you're talking about that we've slipped from?
27:10
Speaker 3: And he said, well, it's pre Obama. I said, okay,
27:15
Speaker 3: well this was during Obama's the Obama presidency.
27:19
Speaker 2: Yeah.
27:19
Speaker 3: I said, that's strange because pre Obama was still nine
27:21
Speaker 3: to eleven and ever since nine to eleven, this is
27:23
Speaker 3: my experience. And then I began to actually go through
27:27
Speaker 3: other sorts of things that were pre Obama and pre
27:29
Speaker 3: nine to eleven, which were not particularly good experiences, that
27:32
Speaker 3: were largely based upon people would look at me and
27:34
Speaker 3: have certain presumptions. Yeah, I was being refused service in
27:40
Speaker 3: businesses where was the person who's refusing service made no
27:44
Speaker 3: qualms about making it clear it's because she looked at me,
27:48
Speaker 3: and the way I look right. This is these are
27:54
Speaker 3: to get at Wood's thesis, or at least the undercurrents
27:57
Speaker 3: of a thesis that actually trouble me. That I want
28:01
Speaker 3: to say, for all of the things that he wants
28:03
Speaker 3: to point to, he wants to point to these particular
28:05
Speaker 3: moral values that come from particular ways of embodying Christian morality,
28:10
Speaker 3: Christian tradition, Christendom that represent a way of being in
28:15
Speaker 3: the world for him, that actually quite truncate reality. Right.
28:18
Speaker 3: What about those of us who, from that same supposed
28:22
Speaker 3: reality actually experience the exact opposite of what we want
28:26
Speaker 3: to claim the person a message of Christ is all about, right,
28:31
Speaker 3: whether that be racism, whether that be the malformation of
28:35
Speaker 3: gender politics, whether that be colonialism. Right, maybe the idea
28:40
Speaker 3: of Christendom is actually not what he makes it to be.
28:42
Speaker 3: In other words, the good is what I want to
28:45
Speaker 3: draw into question here that he represents in a particular
28:49
Speaker 3: kind of triumphalistic way that I'm not so quite sure
28:53
Speaker 3: is in fact the way we should be identifying the
28:57
Speaker 3: person of Christ.
28:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's good, and I think I see that in
29:02
Speaker 1: a couple of ways in this essay. The first one
29:04
Speaker 1: is his citation of Kuiper, where he talks about Christianity
29:10
Speaker 1: being a Christian culture, being one in which Christian ideas
29:15
Speaker 1: have had a significant influence.
29:18
Speaker 2: I really hate that definition.
29:21
Speaker 1: It makes no real sense to me because it gets
29:23
Speaker 1: at the way you've described it. That understanding of christian
29:29
Speaker 1: opens up all of these sort of deformations of christian
29:34
Speaker 1: It has no in other words, it's decoupled from any
29:38
Speaker 1: sort of governance that would preclude some of the negative
29:44
Speaker 1: practices that you're kind of gesturing to and talking about
29:48
Speaker 1: in your life. I think that what happens is when
29:52
Speaker 1: we talk about that Christian Christianity or Christian culture as
29:56
Speaker 1: a culture influenced by Christianity, what we're really saying is
30:00
Speaker 1: a culture that has decided that they're incomplete understanding of
30:04
Speaker 1: the good, true, and the beautiful is going to serve
30:07
Speaker 1: as if it's complete. In other words, there's an early
30:12
Speaker 1: closure of the question of what is good, and I
30:15
Speaker 1: think that in that early closure, what you end up
30:19
Speaker 1: with is you end up with something that This is
30:22
Speaker 1: a guy to my dissertation on Jeffrey Olic. He talks
30:25
Speaker 1: about this in terms of collective remembering, and part of
30:29
Speaker 1: what he's reacting to is an earlier collector remembering scholarship.
30:33
Speaker 1: They would refer to it as the collective memory, and
30:37
Speaker 1: he argues that this is a reification or freezing of memory.
30:44
Speaker 1: When memory is really something that's organic, it moves, we
30:48
Speaker 1: never quite capture it the whole way, and so he
30:51
Speaker 1: develops these sort of counter theses to help people understand
30:54
Speaker 1: cultural or collective memory in more of a process relational
30:59
Speaker 1: sort of a way. And I think that we need
31:02
Speaker 1: probably something very similar to that. When we're looking at
31:05
Speaker 1: the good, the true, and the beautiful, it is not
31:08
Speaker 1: that the true, the good, and the beautiful are changing.
31:12
Speaker 1: We don't determine the good, the true, and the beautiful.
31:14
Speaker 1: We recognize them. And so the process relational method that
31:18
Speaker 1: we use to sort of move through this, the particularities
31:22
Speaker 1: that we need to identify. The moment to moment realization
31:26
Speaker 1: that we don't have as strong a conception of the good, true,
31:29
Speaker 1: and the beautiful as.
31:30
Speaker 2: We thought we did.
31:32
Speaker 1: Is why we need the process relational method. It is
31:36
Speaker 1: not that the true, the good, and the beautiful are
31:38
Speaker 1: just up for grabs. It's that they're so expansive and
31:44
Speaker 1: complex that we can't grasp them in one bite. These
31:49
Speaker 1: are not in a moose boosh, they're you know, sort
31:51
Speaker 1: of a seven course meal, and so we're eating them
31:53
Speaker 1: across time. And I think again, to sort of push
31:57
Speaker 1: back up to that bigger claim, what does it mean
32:00
Speaker 1: for Christ to have authority over all things, including the
32:04
Speaker 1: determination of the good, the true, and the beautiful. This
32:07
Speaker 1: is even a prior question that would never quite I
32:11
Speaker 1: think gives due credit to in his conception is that, yes,
32:17
Speaker 1: these partial views of the good, the true, and the
32:19
Speaker 1: beautiful can produce good things. I think it's impossible for
32:25
Speaker 1: something that God has defined as good, true, and beautiful
32:28
Speaker 1: not to produce something that is that we could identify
32:31
Speaker 1: as a positive benefit. The difficulty is that as those
32:36
Speaker 1: partial understandings are coded back into a culture, what ends
32:42
Speaker 1: up happening is there's a negative influx or a negative
32:46
Speaker 1: pressure that's also created that deforms the way we understand
32:51
Speaker 1: the world simply because we're dealing with partial information. And
32:57
Speaker 1: so there's this ten that I feel and would that
33:02
Speaker 1: I think he's creating this sort of inappropriate closure, which
33:06
Speaker 1: I think is what you're pointing to to some degree.
33:09
Speaker 2: That's my summary, at least of an aspect of what
33:11
Speaker 2: you're pointing to.
33:13
Speaker 1: It's this inappropriate closure that then is used as a
33:17
Speaker 1: basis for everything else that comes after. And to my reading,
33:25
Speaker 1: what we're really left with here is we're left with
33:29
Speaker 1: a cultural construction. And this will draw on some of
33:33
Speaker 1: like Kevin Flat's work or Philip Rife's work, where culture
33:38
Speaker 1: is transliterating the sacred order into the social order. If
33:45
Speaker 1: that sacred order is not fully understood or understood in.
33:49
Speaker 2: A robust fashion.
33:53
Speaker 1: And recognized as being more than any culture could actually
33:56
Speaker 1: contain or transliterate, I think culture would work better. There's
34:02
Speaker 1: a humility in that sort of admission that we're not
34:06
Speaker 1: capable of understanding fully the sacred order, and so we
34:09
Speaker 1: have to keep adjusting ourselves to it.
34:12
Speaker 2: There's a fine tuning that happens across time.
34:15
Speaker 1: I think what I see and would is a tendency
34:18
Speaker 1: to say we understand the sacred order, our culture just
34:23
Speaker 1: needs to transliterate that, and then our social order would
34:26
Speaker 1: reflect it. And that's the part of it that I
34:29
Speaker 1: think is very problematic and why I have a lot
34:32
Speaker 1: of trouble. My entry pointed to this is a lot
34:35
Speaker 1: different than yours. My entry point is I have a
34:38
Speaker 1: lot of trouble calling that Christian. I do not understand
34:44
Speaker 1: how we can sit back and call any culture Christian
34:47
Speaker 1: or people cultural Christians right in the sense that they
34:52
Speaker 1: are have an affinity toward what he calls I think
34:56
Speaker 1: the the civilizational benefits of Christianity. I think I can
35:05
Speaker 1: enjoy the benefits of a lot of different things, I
35:07
Speaker 1: wouldn't necessarily attribute that description to myself, right, I enjoy
35:13
Speaker 1: the benefits of capitalism, What I really call myself a capitalist,
35:17
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that's the designation.
35:18
Speaker 2: That I want, even if other people would give it
35:21
Speaker 2: to me.
35:23
Speaker 1: Right, and so in that as a tension, it may
35:27
Speaker 1: describe certain aspects of how I operate, but it's certainly
35:30
Speaker 1: not my aspiration to be the greatest capitalist on the planet.
35:35
Speaker 1: At the same time, I do enjoy certain of the
35:37
Speaker 1: civilizational benefits of that system, same way I would say
35:41
Speaker 1: about liberalism. And so how can we apply that same
35:44
Speaker 1: logic to Christianity When to me, what Christianity is is
35:50
Speaker 1: a wholesale giving over of oneself to Christ. And so
35:56
Speaker 1: definitionally it doesn't make sense. And I think substantively it's
36:01
Speaker 1: not just a word game in my estimation, it's actually
36:04
Speaker 1: a substance problem that these that term in and of
36:09
Speaker 1: itself reflex of reality that gets lost in what Wood
36:13
Speaker 1: is saying here.
36:15
Speaker 2: So I absolutely agree with you.
36:19
Speaker 1: I think that the way I'm articulating at that inappropriate closure,
36:23
Speaker 1: that that closing off the good too soon, and assuming
36:28
Speaker 1: we understand what it is, is a big part of
36:32
Speaker 1: the problem that I have with woods Essa here.
36:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, I might use the word foreclosure to describe what
36:38
Speaker 3: you're talking about.
36:39
Speaker 2: Fair. Yeah, that's good.
36:41
Speaker 3: And just to be specific, let's use the example you
36:45
Speaker 3: just gave of capitalism.
36:47
Speaker 2: Yeah.
36:48
Speaker 3: I think the sort of move that what is making
36:51
Speaker 3: would be to say that capitalism is one of the
36:53
Speaker 3: cultural goods that come out of a particular, particularly Christian
36:57
Speaker 3: way of organizing society. Right. And the criticism that at
37:02
Speaker 3: least I'm wanting to make is that way of constring
37:07
Speaker 3: things already elevates capitalism to the good, and that would
37:12
Speaker 3: be the foreclosure, right, Yes, And so now any critique
37:16
Speaker 3: of that, and I think you have as well. But
37:19
Speaker 3: I've certainly seen where any attempt to criticize the sorts
37:23
Speaker 3: of programs that capitalism has created, the sorts of emphasies
37:26
Speaker 3: and loves that it has created, results in people saying, oh, well,
37:30
Speaker 3: you're filling in the blank, and that's just heretical, that's
37:33
Speaker 3: not Christian. But I want to say alternatively, and I
37:39
Speaker 3: think this goes in line with what you're saying, capitalism
37:43
Speaker 3: as a particular good, and I mean that in the
37:45
Speaker 3: sense of a thing that comes out of a program
37:50
Speaker 3: is not necessarily a good. Now, I'm not going to
37:54
Speaker 3: foreclose and assume that it's not good, but just to start,
37:58
Speaker 3: it's not inherently good, not least because the thing that
38:02
Speaker 3: it comes out of is not Christian. It comes out
38:05
Speaker 3: of a particular program that, actually, I would argue contra
38:09
Speaker 3: to the way that Wood is thinking. It comes out
38:12
Speaker 3: out of a cultural program of civility that actually undermines
38:16
Speaker 3: some of the key tenets of what the Gospel calls good.
38:20
Speaker 2: Yeah.
38:21
Speaker 3: Right, It foists itself upon another, it creates hierarchical versions
38:25
Speaker 3: of society. Now, does that mean I'm advocating being done
38:28
Speaker 3: with capitalism.
38:29
Speaker 2: No.
38:29
Speaker 3: I think there's a conversation to be had there. Sure,
38:32
Speaker 3: But I'm not going to assume that capitalism just is
38:35
Speaker 3: the good and that's what he's doing. That's the foreclosure.
38:38
Speaker 3: And I'm not going to assume anything that opposes capitalism therefore,
38:42
Speaker 3: which he would have to do, is therefore an attack.
38:46
Speaker 2: On the good.
38:47
Speaker 3: No, there might be real critiques to be made there,
38:50
Speaker 3: and that's where we have the beginning of a conversation
38:52
Speaker 3: that can now understand the good and plurality. And I
38:55
Speaker 3: think it's important to have the good and plurality, not
38:57
Speaker 3: because we're advocating this sort of thing in which we
38:59
Speaker 3: see say, well, now anything has the possibility to be good. No,
39:02
Speaker 3: absolutely not. There are things that are absolutely not good.
39:05
Speaker 2: Right.
39:08
Speaker 3: But what we can begin to recognize, and I think
39:11
Speaker 3: this is actually more biblical of a principle than what
39:14
Speaker 3: he's laying forward, is that the Book of Acts begins
39:18
Speaker 3: with this notion that the Gospel is something that is
39:21
Speaker 3: not a bounded set reality. The question that governs the
39:25
Speaker 3: Book of Acts is does Jesus as the Messiah that
39:30
Speaker 3: whether or not it was ready for it, whether or
39:32
Speaker 3: not it was recognizing of it belongs to the fulfillment
39:36
Speaker 3: of the covenant with biblical Israel yep as a blessing
39:41
Speaker 3: to the nations. Does it require people therefore to enter
39:45
Speaker 3: into the covenant specifically with Israel or is there a
39:51
Speaker 3: gentile aspect of fulfillment that's at play here? And if
39:56
Speaker 3: there is a gentile aspect of fulfillment, dear, does it
39:58
Speaker 3: create second class citizen right, which which gets you to
40:01
Speaker 3: temple imagery in the Old Testament, where you have courts
40:04
Speaker 3: that are available to different people, and that creates a
40:07
Speaker 3: far and a near dynamic.
40:11
Speaker 2: And the book.
40:11
Speaker 3: The message of the Book of Acts is first and foremost, No,
40:15
Speaker 3: it does not create a linguistic singular. That's really important,
40:22
Speaker 3: right chapter two, the miracle at players that everyone within
40:25
Speaker 3: their own tongue. Here's the message that the disciples are
40:28
Speaker 3: preaching in the power of the Spirit, which I take
40:32
Speaker 3: to be a really powerful message to begin to break
40:35
Speaker 3: down the sense that even Jewishness would be one singular thing, right,
40:39
Speaker 3: because all the people present in that moment are Jewish
40:41
Speaker 3: people in diaspora.
40:43
Speaker 2: Yep.
40:44
Speaker 3: But that leads the way into recognizing in the Book
40:47
Speaker 3: of Acts, the opening up of that covenant is actually
40:49
Speaker 3: meant also for the gentiles, not as second class citizens,
40:53
Speaker 3: but as people who can come on their own terms,
40:56
Speaker 3: which inherently then if I can use that musical imagery
40:58
Speaker 3: I had before, it makes it possible as a metaphor
41:03
Speaker 3: anyway to begin to say, people who grew up with
41:05
Speaker 3: music like the Beatles can recognize in the Beatles good music. Yeah,
41:10
Speaker 3: while people who grow up with judget thing right might
41:14
Speaker 3: think of Doublin music as good music. And it's okay
41:18
Speaker 3: that I don't really care one way or the other
41:20
Speaker 3: about the Beatles. I don't dislike them I just don't care.
41:23
Speaker 3: And it makes it okay that someone who grew up
41:26
Speaker 3: loving the Beatles couldn't care one less about Judge thing
41:29
Speaker 3: or Dublin music or Sitthoud music. Right that there's the
41:33
Speaker 3: possibility of good now to be realized in each as
41:38
Speaker 3: a particular way of being in the world, and neither
41:42
Speaker 3: can foreclose upon the other. Now, the very trajectory that
41:46
Speaker 3: what gives us actually does do just that that foreclosure
41:50
Speaker 3: not just in the present but historically. The very idea
41:53
Speaker 3: of Christendom is a magisterial, overpowering way of thinking that
41:58
Speaker 3: goes to the nations and says the role of uh,
42:02
Speaker 3: the role of Christendom is to colonize the nations to
42:06
Speaker 3: make them more like us. And the justification of it
42:09
Speaker 3: right down to Papal bull is to say that this
42:14
Speaker 3: is what enables us to be able to bring the
42:16
Speaker 3: grace of Christ wherever we go. Yeah, but that forecloses
42:21
Speaker 3: now even on the good in a way that contradicts
42:24
Speaker 3: the Book of Acts, and so at its heart, I
42:26
Speaker 3: think the very starting point that what is working from
42:29
Speaker 3: there presumes a certain kind of thing about the good
42:32
Speaker 3: that's foreclosed that causes him to miss why someone might
42:38
Speaker 3: actually say the cultural goods that he's referring to, that
42:41
Speaker 3: he wants to recover, that he's willing to compromise on
42:46
Speaker 3: the particular morals for the sake of the larger ideology,
42:48
Speaker 3: might itself actually not be a good Yeah.
42:54
Speaker 1: And I think the there's a couple of things I
42:57
Speaker 1: want to I want to throw in here. Number one,
42:59
Speaker 1: your point about acts, I think is absolutely right. I
43:01
Speaker 1: think is Stephen's speech in the way that he tries
43:04
Speaker 1: to you know, he's accused of speaking against the law
43:06
Speaker 1: of Moses in the temple, and then he narrates throughout
43:09
Speaker 1: Israelite history all these ways that God acts outside of
43:12
Speaker 1: the land, outside of the Temple, outside you know, with
43:16
Speaker 1: non Jews, you know, all these different areas. I think
43:19
Speaker 1: that's really crucial to understand what he's doing there. He's
43:23
Speaker 1: creating this sense that the Jews have closed off God
43:27
Speaker 1: to the Temple, They've trapped him there, as if he's
43:29
Speaker 1: a genie in a bottle and the temple they go
43:32
Speaker 1: and rub it and then ask God for wishes and
43:34
Speaker 1: he grants them. And Stephen's like, no, this is never
43:36
Speaker 1: how God has worked. You're missing it. You've narrowed it
43:39
Speaker 1: down too far, and in narrowing down too far, now
43:43
Speaker 1: you've lost the ability to discern these other things that
43:45
Speaker 1: God is doing. And that's why you're really missing Messiah,
43:48
Speaker 1: That's why you're missing the movement of the Spirit. And
43:51
Speaker 1: so that narrowing is really crucial. That foreclosure where is
43:55
Speaker 1: what we're calling it, we could also think of it
43:57
Speaker 1: in terms of narrowing. So I think that's a really
44:01
Speaker 1: crucial aspect here. I think the other side of this
44:04
Speaker 1: that I would say, and this is where I think
44:07
Speaker 1: would is maybe getting caught up in his polemic a
44:10
Speaker 1: little bit too much. I think what he's really genuinely
44:16
Speaker 1: trying to say is that.
44:21
Speaker 2: Christians need to recognize reality.
44:23
Speaker 1: Right, if I had to just summarize what I think
44:25
Speaker 1: is most basic underlying thesis is is that Christians need
44:29
Speaker 1: to recognize reality that's getting caught up in all of
44:34
Speaker 1: these other things that you're talking about, that's getting caught
44:37
Speaker 1: up in this idea that and when we recognize the reality,
44:41
Speaker 1: then we're going to see that liberalism is correct, or
44:44
Speaker 1: that you know, capitalism is correct, or that you know,
44:47
Speaker 1: we could really call this legitimately a Christian culture. And
44:51
Speaker 1: I think where I see that coming out is in
44:54
Speaker 1: his discussion of two things. One and I'll start with
44:59
Speaker 1: this one first because I think I want you to
45:01
Speaker 1: comment on the second one. But number one, there's this
45:06
Speaker 1: notion that the governing body should be opening space for
45:11
Speaker 1: the church to be the church, and that this like
45:16
Speaker 1: we would call this religious liberty in the United States, right,
45:19
Speaker 1: But this, this willingness for the governing body to in
45:22
Speaker 1: some way, shape or form protect the church is one
45:25
Speaker 1: of the functions of the governing body that it performs
45:28
Speaker 1: when it's performing well, and this is sort of a
45:31
Speaker 1: minimum standard for a governing body, right, you know, if
45:35
Speaker 1: you're going to have a quote unquote good governing body,
45:39
Speaker 1: this is just one of the things they have to do.
45:43
Speaker 1: My concern with that is obviously not that I hate
45:46
Speaker 1: religious liberty and I think we should get rid of it.
45:49
Speaker 2: But that.
45:52
Speaker 1: We're The way this tends to get framed is we're
45:55
Speaker 1: fighting awful hard for something that is evident is not
45:58
Speaker 1: going to hold. And so that notion of a government
46:02
Speaker 1: that is going to cede authority to the Kingdom of
46:05
Speaker 1: God and without ever acknowledging Christ is sort of it's
46:11
Speaker 1: very brittle, and I think we see this in something
46:15
Speaker 1: like the Book of Revelation, where you know the economic
46:18
Speaker 1: and political forces as well as the false religion combine
46:22
Speaker 1: in order to sway people away from.
46:25
Speaker 2: These are the peoples who live on.
46:26
Speaker 1: The earth, right, who dwell on the earth. These are
46:29
Speaker 1: the folks who are going to vehemently oppose and reject
46:32
Speaker 1: the Gospel. And this is that sort of negative formation
46:35
Speaker 1: that I think would doesn't give enough credibility to So
46:40
Speaker 1: can God use a Nebekinezer and a Cyrus in order
46:44
Speaker 1: to produce good things in the empire? Is it possible
46:48
Speaker 1: for God to intend something different than Joseph's brothers who
46:54
Speaker 1: sell him into slavery in Egypt?
46:56
Speaker 2: Of course it is, Of course it is right.
47:00
Speaker 1: God can do all of those things, and he can
47:02
Speaker 1: do all of those things simultaneously. I'm not sure how
47:05
Speaker 1: that's a defense of a cultural Christianity. So what I
47:10
Speaker 1: want to be careful to say is that I'm not
47:12
Speaker 1: saying that God can't use the cultural Christianity. I'm simply
47:16
Speaker 1: suggesting that assuming that we have a cultural Christianity does
47:20
Speaker 1: not mean that God is going to use it positively
47:22
Speaker 1: in every case, nor does it mean that there is
47:25
Speaker 1: not a negative feedback loop that we should be very
47:28
Speaker 1: wary of, because cultural Christianity has, in my estimation, a
47:34
Speaker 1: diminishing a way of diminishing the Church's witness.
47:39
Speaker 2: So I throw that in there sort.
47:40
Speaker 1: Of as a, I think, an extension of what your
47:42
Speaker 1: argument is. But the one that I really like to
47:44
Speaker 1: get to, and i'd like to hear your comments on,
47:46
Speaker 1: is he speaks of the idea of I'll say, faking
47:52
Speaker 1: it till you make it habituation with regard to virtue, right,
47:56
Speaker 1: And so the idea is that this is the way
48:00
Speaker 1: he argues it. I think I'm being fair that as
48:04
Speaker 1: people behave along the moral as people behave in moral ways,
48:10
Speaker 1: even if they don't believe that behanding in a moral
48:13
Speaker 1: way matters, or even that the moral that they're behaving
48:16
Speaker 1: toward is real, there's the potential for them to cultivate
48:21
Speaker 1: that virtue within them. So I can pretend to be courageous,
48:26
Speaker 1: and at some point down the road, the more I
48:28
Speaker 1: pretend to be courageous, I'll just become courageous. I don't
48:32
Speaker 1: necessarily disagree with that, right, but I also think, again,
48:38
Speaker 1: when I think of that notion of habituation, it's hard
48:40
Speaker 1: for me to get Pierre boards out of my head. Right,
48:44
Speaker 1: the habitist that is structured into a society that chases
48:47
Speaker 1: after a capital, and so the habituation to which we
48:52
Speaker 1: ultimately conform. It seems to me that we're very seldom
48:56
Speaker 1: conforming to a theological virtue, let's say, a full and
49:03
Speaker 1: complete understanding of that virtue, right, And I don't mean
49:07
Speaker 1: that in an absolute sense, but a full and complete
49:10
Speaker 1: understanding of that virtue that sits above our social structures and.
49:13
Speaker 2: That we can aim for. Right.
49:16
Speaker 1: What we're generally conforming to is some sort of a
49:19
Speaker 1: selected or nuanced understanding of a given virtue that still
49:23
Speaker 1: allows us to interact within the social constructs in which
49:27
Speaker 1: we're apart.
49:28
Speaker 2: Right.
49:29
Speaker 1: So there's a level of aggressiveness, for instance, that an
49:32
Speaker 1: NFL alignment has to exercise, and they can do that
49:36
Speaker 1: to a certain level. But if they were to take
49:38
Speaker 1: their helmet off and hit someone with it, that goes
49:41
Speaker 1: beyond the level of aggression that is habituated to the realm.
49:45
Speaker 1: And so that's what I mean by saying that there
49:48
Speaker 1: are these levels to what we see, and there's a
49:50
Speaker 1: structure within which we exercise these. To me, that's where
49:54
Speaker 1: we're habituated to.
49:57
Speaker 2: And to think.
49:58
Speaker 1: That that habituation will ultimately lead to something like acceptance
50:04
Speaker 1: of Christ isn't impossible, but it's certainly not something that
50:09
Speaker 1: I would argue in defense of a Christian culture. I
50:15
Speaker 1: think that's a leap for me. So really interested here
50:19
Speaker 1: in your comments on any and all that, But I
50:21
Speaker 1: know the virtue side of things, I'd really be interested
50:24
Speaker 1: in hear your comments on that.
50:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, So what is drawing upon Jennifer Hurt with his
50:29
Speaker 3: claims theological ethicist at Yale and particularly her book Putting
50:34
Speaker 3: on Virtue, where basically her argument really truncated. So not
50:39
Speaker 3: that Jennifer's listening to this, but in the case she is,
50:42
Speaker 3: I understand that I'm truncating, Please forgive me. Basically, her
50:47
Speaker 3: argument is that there's a continuity and that same sort
50:50
Speaker 3: of habitist Bordeo kind of way that you're talking about,
50:53
Speaker 3: there's a continuity that leads us from what historically one
50:58
Speaker 3: might call not that she's using precisely these distinctions, but
51:02
Speaker 3: the cardinal virtues, which are natural virtues, the formation of
51:05
Speaker 3: the habits onto proper motives and character into theological virtues,
51:12
Speaker 3: which traditionally are often seen as the work specifically of
51:15
Speaker 3: the Spirit through by work, through the Church and administering
51:19
Speaker 3: the Word and body of Christ and blood of Christ. Right,
51:24
Speaker 3: and that one then leads into the others. So why
51:26
Speaker 3: do we have traditions and cultural ways of doing things,
51:31
Speaker 3: for instance, for children in the church. We do them
51:33
Speaker 3: because we trust that polay acting of sorts gets us
51:40
Speaker 3: somewhere into beginning to habituate the right ways of being
51:44
Speaker 3: in the world that hopefully but doesn't necessarily lead to
51:47
Speaker 3: actually virtue for virtue sake, doing good for the sake
51:51
Speaker 3: of good. Right. I think that there's some basic things
51:57
Speaker 3: about what she's saying that are helpful in a right right.
52:00
Speaker 3: They speak to the ways in which we think about
52:03
Speaker 3: raising children that we can't guarantee certain results. They think
52:06
Speaker 3: about ways in which we'd like to see cultural values
52:09
Speaker 3: at play, right, even as there's something not automatic about them,
52:14
Speaker 3: and I don't think she sees them as automatic either.
52:17
Speaker 3: I do think there are levels of discontinuity also at
52:20
Speaker 3: play that she doesn't spend enough time affirming. If I'm
52:23
Speaker 3: reading her correctly, I think some of the discontinuities that
52:26
Speaker 3: the work of the Spirit does bring about an element
52:28
Speaker 3: of grace that can't be reduced to the formation of
52:33
Speaker 3: habitasts culturally, personally, socially, familiarly, or anything like that. But
52:38
Speaker 3: what he does is what does is he takes what
52:40
Speaker 3: she's doing and he wants to import that into rationale
52:45
Speaker 3: for creating a certain politically governed cultural Christian set of ideals.
52:51
Speaker 3: And I'm not sure that that move is one that
52:55
Speaker 3: Jennifer Hurt would be comfortable with. It's at the very
52:58
Speaker 3: least something I'm not comfortable with, and not least because
53:01
Speaker 3: of so sociologists who I believe is still at the
53:05
Speaker 3: University of Virginia. James Davison Hunter, for instance, wrote a
53:10
Speaker 3: book called To Change the World, and in that book
53:12
Speaker 3: he argues that one of the things that Christians actually
53:17
Speaker 3: in this country, especially those in the more evangelical vein,
53:21
Speaker 3: have tried to do, is to take upon themselves the
53:23
Speaker 3: notion if we change people's ideals, if we set up
53:29
Speaker 3: their right way of thinking ethically and doctrinally, we will
53:32
Speaker 3: begin to change who they are. The thinking there is
53:34
Speaker 3: very much what is arguing the habit forming reality of it.
53:39
Speaker 3: And his point that he tries to make, and he
53:41
Speaker 3: shows it with quite detail, is it's not clear that
53:44
Speaker 3: we can ever really point to whole scale to this happening, Right,
53:50
Speaker 3: So what has a couple of anecdotes, but they're just
53:52
Speaker 3: that they're anecdotes. Whole scale, it just doesn't work that way.
53:57
Speaker 3: Quite to the contrary, actually, right, think about the decades
54:01
Speaker 3: within which evangelicals, the conservative Christian movement, including Catholics, have
54:06
Speaker 3: worked to overturn Roe v. Wade, and when that finally happened,
54:12
Speaker 3: far from people saying, you know what, you were right
54:14
Speaker 3: after all, the policy is now what it is, and
54:16
Speaker 3: you were right and let's work with them. No, right,
54:20
Speaker 3: If anything, other movements were actually that were far less
54:24
Speaker 3: politically motivated, were far more successful. So, for instance, for
54:27
Speaker 3: all of the touting of Trump as the guy who
54:29
Speaker 3: was protecting the social ideas of Christianity, his first term
54:35
Speaker 3: as president saw more abortions per year than the Obama
54:40
Speaker 3: presidency does as the one who was a pro choice president,
54:44
Speaker 3: which is frankly begged to differ on the question of
54:47
Speaker 3: whether dictating policy was the way to begin to form
54:51
Speaker 3: habits within particular people.
54:54
Speaker 2: Right, right now, what was it.
54:56
Speaker 3: That caused fewer abortions in the Obama administration. I'm not
54:59
Speaker 3: sure about that, but I just know that the numbers
55:00
Speaker 3: say that apparently policy is not the actual way into it.
55:05
Speaker 3: So I think the Hunter idea is that policy has
55:09
Speaker 3: never been the way to change people's minds or hearts.
55:14
Speaker 3: If anything, it sets up reaction, right, It sets up
55:17
Speaker 3: election cycles, sets up political maneuvering, It sets up different
55:21
Speaker 3: ways of strategizing how to flip the script. So I'm
55:26
Speaker 3: not even sure, just on the practical level, that the
55:29
Speaker 3: sort of thing that Davison or sorry that Wood is
55:32
Speaker 3: arguing here is in fact correct. And I think that's
55:37
Speaker 3: for good reason. And I think that part of that
55:39
Speaker 3: good reason is that the sort of thing he's advocating
55:43
Speaker 3: as a cultural Christianity, I would actually argue is not
55:45
Speaker 3: very Christian if what we mean by that is the
55:49
Speaker 3: life and way of thinking of Christ. But in addition
55:53
Speaker 3: to that, I don't think the ways of Christianity and
55:57
Speaker 3: the ways that Jennifer heard is arguing can be grafted
56:02
Speaker 3: on to a social discourse, not least because and the
56:06
Speaker 3: words of Augustine, the loves are different.
56:09
Speaker 1: Right.
56:09
Speaker 3: The early Church recognizes us very quickly that the love
56:12
Speaker 3: of those who came to Christ was a love dictated
56:17
Speaker 3: by a person in a way of being, namely Jesus
56:21
Speaker 3: in his way of being in a kingdom that was
56:23
Speaker 3: so radically unlike the political motivations of empire building.
56:29
Speaker 2: Yeah.
56:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, that you had to recognize that being in that
56:33
Speaker 3: society meant living in some sense in distinction from its goals.
56:39
Speaker 2: Yeah.
56:40
Speaker 1: And I think Veronica Ogol actually captures us pretty well.
56:44
Speaker 1: In her book on Augustine, City of God. She talks
56:47
Speaker 1: about Augustine's conception as being there are political orders that
56:52
Speaker 1: can make a society sicker or healthier. Now I would
56:57
Speaker 1: amend that, I think that's the word she used, but
57:00
Speaker 1: I would amend that in just say, there are political
57:03
Speaker 1: orders that make society sick in certain ways that others don't,
57:07
Speaker 1: and healthy in ways that certain others don't. I tend
57:11
Speaker 1: to shy away from the healthier, sicker, better, worse kind
57:16
Speaker 1: of categories because I.
57:17
Speaker 2: Think they assume a little too much.
57:20
Speaker 1: But I think your point is still the same, and
57:23
Speaker 1: it's this idea that because the orders are different, And
57:28
Speaker 1: this is to me the crux of the problem with
57:30
Speaker 1: Wood's defense of Christian culture or even cultural Christians. Here,
57:35
Speaker 1: there is no such thing as a Christian that is
57:39
Speaker 1: not at the very least seeking to live under the
57:43
Speaker 1: full authority of Jesus Christ, under the full authority of
57:46
Speaker 1: the trying God.
57:47
Speaker 2: This is the shamah.
57:49
Speaker 1: This is you know, the greatest and the greatest commandment
57:52
Speaker 1: in the second which is like it. This is a
57:56
Speaker 1: a willingness to devote oneself fully without reserve to God.
58:02
Speaker 2: Now are there? I always like to bring this up.
58:05
Speaker 1: It's like old Testament guy, Right, You've got the law
58:09
Speaker 1: and it's like, Okay, you're supposed to obey the law perfectly.
58:11
Speaker 1: This is what it means to, you know, be fully
58:15
Speaker 1: devoted to God. And I would say, well, yes and no, right,
58:21
Speaker 1: like the Jews are not trying to obey the law perfectly.
58:25
Speaker 1: If that were the case, right, if you had to
58:28
Speaker 1: obey the law perfectly in order to be in covenant
58:30
Speaker 1: with God. This sacrificial system, now all of a sudden
58:33
Speaker 1: becomes unintelligible. Embedded within the laws the mechanism to fix
58:38
Speaker 1: the problems and mistakes that humans make over and over
58:41
Speaker 1: and over again. And this is why the human high
58:45
Speaker 1: priest must make This is Hebrews. This is why he
58:48
Speaker 1: must make restitution for his own sins, a toment for
58:51
Speaker 1: his own sins along with those of the people, and
58:54
Speaker 1: so what we see in this and I think this
58:56
Speaker 1: is more the framework that I wish would head you.
59:01
Speaker 1: What we do see in Hebrews is I think an
59:04
Speaker 1: interesting conception of something good gesturing towards something better.
59:09
Speaker 2: To use the Hebrews language.
59:11
Speaker 1: Right, But that goodness is not something that we sit
59:17
Speaker 1: back and say, Oh, I'm so grateful that we have
59:19
Speaker 1: a high priest who has to also offer sacrifices for
59:22
Speaker 1: his own sins, and I'm so happy that I get
59:25
Speaker 1: to be in the outer Court, not in.
59:26
Speaker 2: The Holy of Holies.
59:28
Speaker 1: No, these things were intended to push us beyond where
59:31
Speaker 1: we were. They were symbols given shadows and copies given
59:36
Speaker 1: to help us understand that there's a better reality that
59:39
Speaker 1: we're pushing for, and that this trajectory that we're on
59:42
Speaker 1: is leading us to something greater and better, more transcendent. However,
59:45
Speaker 1: we want to say that woods argument doesn't quite get
59:50
Speaker 1: there for me, in part because he collapses the distinction
59:55
Speaker 1: between Christian and non Christian and in so many ways
59:58
Speaker 1: throughout the throughout the piece. And so do I think
1:00:01
Speaker 1: that there is a sense in which any culture can
1:00:08
Speaker 1: exhibit or allow the good to come forth in ways
1:00:13
Speaker 1: that it would eventually lead people to Christ. Sure, I
1:00:18
Speaker 1: don't think that's unique to a Christian culture. I think
1:00:23
Speaker 1: that is embedded in every culture. That you can see goodness, truth,
1:00:26
Speaker 1: and beauty in every culture. And so I don't see
1:00:31
Speaker 1: that the idea of defending a Christian culture is necessarily
1:00:36
Speaker 1: different than defending the idea of any other culture. And
1:00:41
Speaker 1: that's why I want to try to get down to
1:00:43
Speaker 1: this other basis that I think would is really sort
1:00:46
Speaker 1: of trying to get to but doesn't quite make it
1:00:48
Speaker 1: in this article, which is that any time Christians can
1:00:53
Speaker 1: recognize the good, the true, and the beautiful within the world,
1:00:57
Speaker 1: that's a right and salutary thing to do, right, because
1:01:03
Speaker 1: we are supposed to recognize reality God's the self disclosure
1:01:08
Speaker 1: gives us a different perspective on what reality actually is.
1:01:12
Speaker 1: It does not mean that we are satisfied with that reality.
1:01:16
Speaker 1: It often means that as we recognize that good, true,
1:01:19
Speaker 1: and beautiful, we're supposed to point beyond that to its source,
1:01:22
Speaker 1: which is the Triyan God. And so I think we
1:01:25
Speaker 1: can't get caught up in these cultural patterns. I usually
1:01:28
Speaker 1: liken it not she used to. If you've ever played
1:01:30
Speaker 1: with a light right, you use the beetles, I'll use
1:01:32
Speaker 1: the light right, light right, Okay. Light Bright was the
1:01:36
Speaker 1: children's toy. It had a light box. You'd put a
1:01:40
Speaker 1: like a cloth sheet over it that would block the light,
1:01:45
Speaker 1: and then you'd have this peg board that you'd poke
1:01:47
Speaker 1: these colored pegs into and you could create different patterns
1:01:51
Speaker 1: and so like on the commercials when I was a kid,
1:01:52
Speaker 1: I remember, you know, they made these like cool dragons
1:01:54
Speaker 1: or a puppy or whatever, and wherever the wherever the
1:01:58
Speaker 1: colored pegs went in, the would shine through those pigs. Well,
1:02:02
Speaker 1: the pegs aren't the source of the light. They're just
1:02:06
Speaker 1: creating the patterns through which that light behind it is shining.
1:02:11
Speaker 1: And so I think of culture in the way that
1:02:14
Speaker 1: I think of a light bright. God is the source
1:02:19
Speaker 1: of the goodness, truth and beauty. That's the light shining
1:02:21
Speaker 1: through the back. Culture is creating the patterns through which
1:02:26
Speaker 1: aspects of that light come through. And so you can
1:02:30
Speaker 1: have all these different patterns.
1:02:31
Speaker 2: That you can make.
1:02:32
Speaker 1: You can make a rooster, you can make a windmill,
1:02:33
Speaker 1: you can make a dragon, you could pick a dog,
1:02:35
Speaker 1: you make whatever pattern you wanted to make, just a
1:02:37
Speaker 1: zig zig zag kind of thing. Once you start making
1:02:42
Speaker 1: that pattern. Some of God's goodness, truth and beauty is
1:02:45
Speaker 1: going to shine through, and it's going to be different
1:02:49
Speaker 1: than other cultural patterns. But the culture is not the
1:02:53
Speaker 1: source of those things. The culture is just opening up
1:02:58
Speaker 1: spaces for that to shine through. What we need to
1:03:01
Speaker 1: do as Christians is recognize, hey, this is a portion
1:03:03
Speaker 1: where God's truth is shining through.
1:03:06
Speaker 2: We need to now amplify that.
1:03:07
Speaker 1: Point people behind the colored peg to the light box
1:03:10
Speaker 1: that's actually making that light. Hopefully that makes sense to
1:03:14
Speaker 1: people if they've ever seen a light bright before, but
1:03:16
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to describe a light bight.
1:03:19
Speaker 2: On a podcast. That's what I'm realizing.
1:03:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll have to look that up see if I
1:03:24
Speaker 3: have an image now of it in my mind. But
1:03:25
Speaker 3: I think what I'm understanding, it's fitting to me that
1:03:29
Speaker 3: this as its basic operating mechanism light. Yeah, because I
1:03:33
Speaker 3: think the sort of reality you're describing is about the
1:03:37
Speaker 3: transfiguring reality.
1:03:39
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:03:39
Speaker 3: Right, when we think about the transfiguration of Christ, we
1:03:42
Speaker 3: can't lose the particularity of Christ that Jesus was the Messiah,
1:03:46
Speaker 3: meaning he was a Jewish man who walked on Jewish soil,
1:03:50
Speaker 3: eating the food that belonged to that area, inhabiting the
1:03:53
Speaker 3: customs and the ways of being of that area. It's
1:03:56
Speaker 3: non negotiable and irreducible to see Jesus in any other ways,
1:04:00
Speaker 3: and as the Jewish Man who was the Messiah who
1:04:02
Speaker 3: opens up his very flesh to the nations. But the
1:04:08
Speaker 3: process of opening himself up was itself a transfiguring of Jewishness.
1:04:13
Speaker 3: Yeah right, So it wasn't just simply I received Jewishness.
1:04:18
Speaker 3: I accept that Jewishness, and I now affirm it for
1:04:21
Speaker 3: everyone in the world. It's a transfiguring it to raise
1:04:25
Speaker 3: it above itself and to create the possibility of every
1:04:28
Speaker 3: place being able to be transfigured in light of the
1:04:31
Speaker 3: light that is Christ. In light of course, it is
1:04:34
Speaker 3: a prominent metaphor then, not just in that event, but
1:04:37
Speaker 3: in for instance, the way the Gospel of John talks
1:04:39
Speaker 3: about Jesus.
1:04:40
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, well, this is good stuff.
1:04:45
Speaker 1: Where We've gone a long time on this and I
1:04:48
Speaker 1: feel like we've beaten James Wood up sufficiently.
1:04:52
Speaker 2: I will just say this.
1:04:53
Speaker 1: I came across this article and was excited to read
1:04:56
Speaker 1: it because I listened to the Civatas podcast and I
1:04:59
Speaker 1: think they do really great work on there. I've heard
1:05:01
Speaker 1: James would talk a good bit and I would say
1:05:04
Speaker 1: this article.
1:05:06
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have pinned this as his work.
1:05:08
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem reflective of a lot of what he
1:05:10
Speaker 1: talks about on the podcast, and so i'd encourage people
1:05:13
Speaker 1: This is not hey never read James wood stuff or
1:05:18
Speaker 1: anything like that. This is just one of those moments
1:05:20
Speaker 1: where we both really happen to disagree with him and
1:05:24
Speaker 1: feel like he needed to build more nuance and put
1:05:27
Speaker 1: more thought into certain areas, and so we're offering critique.
1:05:31
Speaker 1: But I really do appreciate a lot of what he
1:05:33
Speaker 1: does on the podcast, and I would encourage people to
1:05:35
Speaker 1: check out the Sypathos podcasts. They're interested in things like,
1:05:39
Speaker 1: you know, post liberalism in the role of the church,
1:05:42
Speaker 1: which I'm sure so many of you are.
1:05:45
Speaker 2: Right.
1:05:46
Speaker 1: Again, I'm showing that sort of level of geekness that
1:05:49
Speaker 1: only seems to come out on the podcast. But I
1:05:51
Speaker 1: do want to say that because I think that oftentimes,
1:05:54
Speaker 1: whenever we're critiquing the content, it can feel like we're
1:05:57
Speaker 1: critiquing the person and we're really not doing that.
1:06:00
Speaker 2: We're just interacting with.
1:06:02
Speaker 1: The ideas and hopefully being as collegial as possible. So
1:06:07
Speaker 1: that if James would wherever to listen to this, he
1:06:09
Speaker 1: could sit back and say I understand their arguments and
1:06:12
Speaker 1: could see how I can improve my thinking on these matters.
1:06:15
Speaker 1: So we'll leave it there, but encourage you to check
1:06:20
Speaker 1: out first things, I encourage you to check out the
1:06:23
Speaker 1: Civitas podcast.
1:06:25
Speaker 2: Obviously subscribe to Thinking Christians.
1:06:27
Speaker 1: Why will be having more of these conversations coming up,
1:06:31
Speaker 1: But ultimately this has been I think, a good conversation
1:06:34
Speaker 1: and an encouragement and so thanks Ashiesh for that, and
1:06:37
Speaker 1: thanks everybody for listening. We'll catch you on the next
1:06:39
Speaker 1: episode of Thinking Christian. I just want to take a
1:06:42
Speaker 1: second to thank the team at Life Audio for their
1:06:44
Speaker 1: partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you
1:06:47
Speaker 1: go to lifeaudio dot com, you'll find dozens of other
1:06:50
Speaker 1: faith centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer,
1:06:53
Speaker 1: Bible study, parenting, and more.