Refuting Gavin Ortland and Reformed Theology w/ Dr. L. Daniel Cantey

[00:00:00]Hallelujah.

[00:00:09][music] Praise [music] you.

[00:00:25]All you [music] [music and singing] pray [music] [music] to >> [music] >> Lord [music] >> [music] >> Glory. [singing] Glory. [music] >> [singing] >> All [music] [music] to Hey, [music] [singing] [music] [music] Oh [music] [music] [singing] [music] >> [music] [singing] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> All right, welcome back ladies and gentlemen. This is Dr. David Patrick Kerry with Church of the Eternal Logos and today I am joined by a special guest and scholar Dr. Daniel Ki, how you doing today, sir?

[00:04:06]>> Hey, I'm doing well. Thank you for having me, David.

[00:04:08]>> Oh, thank you for coming on. I I reached out to you probably what, a month and a half, two months ago, and said, uh, a little birdie whispered in my ear and said, "You have some fantastic research and I should have you on." And so, we actually ended up messaging back and forth, had a really good phone call. You were talking a little bit about what you wanted pres to present today. and I'm very excited to get into your presentation dealing with reformed theology and making really a philosophical and historical argument that I have not heard before and I think there's a lot of originality for the audience today.

[00:04:44]>> Yeah, I think there's a couple of pieces to the argument. I mean, as we're going to see, I have two thesis. One of these thesis is basically a historical survey of division within Protestantism in the Protestant West. And then the second thesis is a little bit more abstract.

[00:05:01]It's a little bit more theological, but it provides a new way, I think, of of seeing the reformation, particularly the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

[00:05:11]>> Right. So before we get into your presentation, because I want to chat a little bit about it before we even go through because we have a PowerPoint today. So we're going to be very professional uh today and detailing his his arguments. But do you mind introducing yourself for the audience? I know you've already you you've kind of made your round. I caught your interview with Ubie Petrus and you've done some stuff with ancient faith. Could you introduce yourself for everyone?

[00:05:39]>> Yeah. So my name is Daniel Kanty. I have taught at the college level for seven years. Um I did my PhD work at Emory.

[00:05:47]I've written a book first John on dosatism and resurrection which is not a book about really the letter of first John. First John is a launching point for a series of essays about the nature of the modern world. So that's what the book is about. It's a book of philosophical theology, but I've published an analogia journal, as you mentioned. I've done the podcast with Ancient Faith, which was a lecture-based podcast. I've been on one or two other channels at one time or another. And my area of study is religion in the modern world.

[00:06:17]>> Yeah. And let me pull up that uh the link for your book on Amazon in case anyone is interested. Um, where did I have that? I had it pulled up somewhere.

[00:06:27]Uh, but just so anybody who's interested, and I'll post the link in the video description.

[00:06:35]Daniel Kanty.

[00:06:38]>> Yeah, it'll be under L. Daniel Ky Jr.

[00:06:40]>> Oh, that's probably why it's not coming up.

[00:06:42]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:06:44]>> Yeah. I ju I just had it up. I must have exited out. There it is right here. So, here's here's the link for anyone that is interested. and let me add it to the screen so you guys can see it real quick. Um, so do support his work. Go check out his his book if you guys are interested.

[00:07:03]And you wrote this when?

[00:07:05]>> Gosh, between 2005 and two 2021. Took me, >> you know, it I first published it in 2016 and then I did a revised and extended version in 2021.

[00:07:17]>> Okay.

[00:07:18]>> Yeah. So, it took a while for the ideas to germinate. And some of the ideas that are in there are what we're going to be talking about today. There's more in the book than what we'll be discussing today.

[00:07:27]>> And you weren't orthodox when you first wrote this, right?

[00:07:30]>> No. No. The book reads like someone who's deconverting from Protestant for a large extent. Like the second half, the the the part that I published in 2021 looks a lot more like an orthodox academic writing. Um, but I tried to do a lot of creative things with the book.

[00:07:49]I mean, there's parables in there.

[00:07:51]There's things I tried to be really artistic as opposed to just sort of dryly academic in the way that I wrote it. So, uh, so it's a little experimental in some ways.

[00:08:01]>> Great.

[00:08:03]So, could you before you even get into it, how did you get into orthodoxy then?

[00:08:07]What during this deconversion process, what took you from a Protestant worldview towards an Orthodox worldview?

[00:08:14]Well, some of it had to do with the division within the Protestant West, which we're going to talk about today.

[00:08:20]Um, a little more interestingly though, I was an I was an officer in the United States military in the early 2000s, and so I'm a veteran of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and I um, you know, it was called Operation Iraqi Frey. Operation Iraqi Freedom. And so I went and I fought for freedom. And then I came back and I thought, did I just go risk my life for this thing called freedom? And we [laughter] don't know what it is exactly like what is this thing called freedom? And you know, outside of the level of mismanagement that happened after Saddam's regime fell, I was left with philosophical questions about what I had done. And so when I went to grad school, my one of my main questions was what is the meaning of modern freedom?

[00:09:05]And you know, I went to seminary like I went went to Yale Divinity School >> and um >> it was in my third year there that I encountered Luther's freedom of a Christian which became this really just central document for me. I thought this is the fundamental statement of modern freedom uh not a political statement but a religious statement and I have to understand what's going on in this document. And so what we're going to see today in the second half at least will have something to do with that. I don't quote Freedom of a Christian, but my preoccupation with that document has a lot to do with how my ideas developed.

[00:09:44]>> Uhhuh. Interesting. So today we're going to be rebutting a little bit of some of the ideas put forth by Gavin Ortland.

[00:09:54]And this is a much more sophisticated presentation argumentation than most people may be familiar with. uh because we're going to be talking about Protestant division, but you're not making the simple argument that, you know, solos scriptor leads to subjectivist individualist interpretations of text, though that is true. You're making a much more systematic argument about Protestantism itself.

[00:10:18]>> Yes. Yes. Particularly in the second half, I'm going to make the argument that there is a form of liberation from nature and ultimately liberation from God that is written into the doctrine of justification by faith alone. So the form of the doctrine of justification by faith alone follows the pattern very loosely of the exodus except it's now God himself who is the pharaoh and in a very subtle way uh in a way that Luther and with him Calvin although I'm not going to talk about Calvin today but in a way that Luther would never himself have recognized or condoned his theology gathers up all of the momentum and the force of centuries of legal development that preceded him and casts them forward towards liberation from God.

[00:11:08]>> So that the promised land, if you will, becomes a kind of liberation from the nature that God has created. And this fundamental metaphysical form of division underlies, I think, much of of what has gone on in Protestantism, not necessarily as an efficient cause, but as a kind of template for where Protestantism is going. There's a new form of salvation in the modern world that in my opinion is unlike forms of salvation that have preceded it.

[00:11:37]>> And we're going to look at the underlying mechanisms for that today.

[00:11:43]>> Right? And Ortland, I mean, you mentioned I in your presentation that we're going to be looking at that he makes the claim that the sectarianism and the denominational division that we see in Protestantism is really an abuse of of Protestantism and it's really not a central feature of it. And the first thesis regarding Protestantism and its fruit being one fruit of division.

[00:12:08]>> You're making the claim that it's actually the abuse is universal and perhaps it belongs to the system of Protestantism itself. And you then use a historical argumentation showing that uh it's not just the denominations, it's not just the various theologies, but look at the wars, look at the political and spiritual and ecclesiological divisions that Protestantism produces.

[00:12:31]>> Yeah. Yeah, there there's division on several levels and you know the word that I use is that it is pervasive. You know, it's pervasive enough to be taken seriously as an intrinsic characteristic of this particular devel of this particular religious development. And you know, I don't want to jump ahead of myself too much here, but you know, there there's a scholar, Hal Burman, who's a legal scholar >> who catalogs a history of his history of modern revolutions. And he refers to the Reformation as the Protestant Revolution >> because that's essentially sociologically what it is. It is a cultural revolution and war comes handinhand with that. Um, you know, I was thinking about it and the early church and the growth of Christianity in the first few centuries AD is one of the few examples I can think of of a form of revolution that did not involve a war on behalf of that revolution.

[00:13:27]>> Right?

[00:13:27]>> You did have political changes, right?

[00:13:29]Constantine eventually legalizes Christianity, but it's not like the Reformation where you have a a cultural revolution and then blood is spilled all over the place in Europe.

[00:13:39]>> Yeah. as a result of that.

[00:13:40]>> Yeah. Continuously.

[00:13:42]>> Yes.

[00:13:42]>> All right. Well, why don't we just go ahead and and then dive into what you got planned for everyone. So, here is the presentation as uh Dr. Kanty goes through. I'll I'll move from slide to slide, but um you want to start on slide two here?

[00:13:59]>> Yes, please. So, um we're gonna we're gonna first talk about the fruits of Protestantism, then we'll talk about the meaning of Protestantism. And I'm using Orland as kind of a backdrop. Um I am trying to counter his claims um as objectively as possible and I want to be as charitable to to Gavin as I can >> um and not mis you know not misquote him or not misrepresent him. So I don't intend to do anything like that at all.

[00:14:24]I just want to say you know here's an orthodox answer to this particular view of Protestantism and this rationale for Protestantism that he that he gives. So to begin in what it means to be Protestant which is uh Dr. Ortland's book he says he quotes Matthew 7:15-20 which states every healthy tree bears good fruit fruit but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. And he's using this as a logic for examining or uh analyzing denominations or churches. Do they bear good fruit or do they bear bad fruit? If they bear good fruit then they're good.

[00:15:03]Uh by fruit, Ortland understands spiritual good wrought by the Holy Spirit in the lives of those responding to the gospel of Christ and being incorporated into his kingdom. This primarily consists of the gifts of the spirit. As Ortland writes, Satan cannot produce virtues. He is incapable of producing joy, peace, goodness, kindness, love for Christ, love for God, love for the Holy Spirit, love for scripture, and love for truth. Okay? So down to the end, therefore such fruit testifies to the genuine work of Christ.

[00:15:30]So in other words, if you have a church, whether it's a denomination or a local church, and they exhibit these fruits, then you have a legitimate denomination or church uh regardless of say whether they're Orthodox or Catholic or some form of Protestant, >> right?

[00:15:46]>> So what I want to add to that in the in the next slide, what I want to what I want to add to that is the question of unity. So how does the question of unity fit into this idea of knowing a denomination by its fruits? So in John chapter 17, Jesus prays the prayer u what's called the high high priestly prayer. He pray prays for those quote who will believe in me through the disciples word that they may all be one as you father are in me and I in you that they also may be one in us that the world may believe that you sent me. And notice there's an evangelistic focus here >> that this the church's unity is a witness to God in Christ going on. And the glory which you gave me I have given them that they may be one just as we are one. I in them and you in me that they may be may be made perfect in one.

[00:16:42]There's a whole lot of the use of the word one here. You really you get the point, right?

[00:16:47]>> Yep.

[00:16:47]>> Uh that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me. And the argument that I make is that if you think about the fruits of the spirit, they are upstream of unity.

[00:16:57]Where the fruits of the spirit are, then there ought to be unity. Right? The presence of unity is a witness of the presence is a witness to the presence of the spirit and its virtues. If you have the the virtues of the spirit, if you have the gifts of the spirit, you should have unity.

[00:17:11]>> So in addition to that, if we go to St. James, uh this is the next slide. If we go to St. James, we can also consider that his words that the wisdom that is from above above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits. Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

[00:17:35]So you have fruits of righteousness, you have unity, you have peace. All of these things go together. They should be in harmony with one another. And I don't think I'm saying anything that Gavin would disagree with. I mean, there's nothing particular.

[00:17:51]>> Yeah, there there's nothing particularly controversial about reading the scripture in this way. It's pretty straightforward.

[00:17:56]>> Now, I would add that oneness of the spirit, faith, and the gospel should also be a oneness of physical or material reality. If you ignore the physical or material reality, then you're you're going in a gnostic direction, right? Christ came uh with both a human spirit and a human body and he saves all of it. He redeems all of it. Right? This isn't a sort of gnostic or or desetic doctrine.

[00:18:25]>> Right?

[00:18:25]>> And so when we talk about what oneness is, there's a certain physical element to that oneness. I I think you know when we talk about the wars of religion in a little bit you would be really hardressed to make the case that Catholics and Protestants who were literally slaughtering each other were somehow one in the spirit the faith and the gospel >> right >> right there that that's a difficult argument to make when people are killing each other >> right >> um so that's you know a little bit of the direction where we're >> well I love the point you're making because the idea that the incarnation is historical the incarnation is literal and you're talking about the visible unity, right? So many apologetic debates with Protestants when you start pushing them on satiriology and the church or ecclesi it's this spiritual it's this um amorphous understanding of of the spiritual church that has no point you know well which one is it can you see it in history can you point to it no it's just all the true believers and that that as you said that doetic almost very gnostic idea uh that doesn't incorporate the material world as a way in which we can see God working in history.

[00:19:36]>> Well, let's let me add a little bit to that.

[00:19:39]>> Okay, >> that so Protestants will say, well, yes, of course, there's a physical reality to the church, but they are they they've made peace on some level with that physical reality being divided, by which I mean people not being in communion with each other or there being various forms of schism or whatever the case may be. But if you follow the analogy of the body of Christ, a body that is divided or a body that is severed, if that division happens pervasively and happens over time is decomposition. I mean that's death.

[00:20:13]>> It's death, >> right?

[00:20:14]>> So you can say we believe in a physical reality but if that physical reality is actually constitutive of the decomposition of a dying thing [laughter] it's just another form of dosatism.

[00:20:27]>> Yes. You know what I mean?

[00:20:28]>> Yeah.

[00:20:30]>> Like it's it's like I mean I don't know I don't want to be morbid or come up with some really some sort of morbid analogy but if you look at a corpse and it's breaking down you can't say there I believe in that body it's alive >> right?

[00:20:42]>> You know um so in any case um let's go on to the first thesis.

[00:20:48]>> Okay >> so thesis one the pervasive fruit of Protestantism through both war and schism is not oneness but division. It is the physical breaking apart of the body of Christ. And how then can the world believe that God sent Christ when we look at the fractious history of Protestantism as the witness?

[00:21:07]>> How is this witness witnessing to the oneness of God in Christ and believers in God in Christ?

[00:21:14]>> Right?

[00:21:15]>> Does this history the question does this history show the presence of virtues that lead to unity? You know, go back to Gavin's point. So where are the virtues here? And as I walk through this historical survey, you know, those who are watching, keep asking yourself, where are the virtues here? Where's love, peace, gentleness, joy? Where are these things in these particular instances? Because they are profound things.

[00:21:38]So going on to the reformation, um during the reformation, uh the western church broke into several factions. These included Lutheran, Calvinist, Zwingian, the radical reformers or the Anabaptists and eventually the Anglicans. These all merged emerged in the 16th century. And you know there were various offshoots.

[00:22:00]The Moravians for example developed you know in the subsequent uh subsequent decades and centuries and there are various other offshoots that historic you know that have been lost to history.

[00:22:10]These are the main ones. They didn't get along with each other enough to be generally on good terms with each other.

[00:22:17]There were strong differences at times between these denominations. Luther and Zwingley were known to not like each other so much. Right. Right.

[00:22:24]>> So, and the Anabaptists had a bad run of things everywhere because they had no local rulers, no princes, you know, no safe no safe havens where they could go.

[00:22:34]>> So, >> you know, in the 16th century too is such a fascinating time in European history because it's also on the heels of the Florentine Italian Renaissance when the hermetic corpus gets translated, >> right? which sets the stage. I often say on on on these live streams that I argue that the 16th century was one of the most magical c centuries in European history because that's where you get the paracel the paracelus alchemy and Henry Cornelius grippa John D late in the 16th century and that uh many of these protestant nations were also had a lot of major thinkers that were interested in in magic hermeticism neoplatonic ideas uh the also right at the height of the Rosacrruian movement towards the end of the 16th century. So that particular century, the 16th century, so many things are going on that are historically important.

[00:23:24]>> Well, it was a revolutionary century in a lot of ways. It's a revolutionary century in in many ways.

[00:23:30]>> So going on to the wars, uh, because the wars start quickly. So in its earliest days Protestantis Protestantism was a revolutionary force that found political expression as soon as 1524 to2 and Luther post his 95 thesis in 1517.

[00:23:46]There's a peasant revolt in these years 1524 to25. Thomas Muner a radical priest and theologian merged his teaching with the peasant revolution in Germany. And Luther by the way did not do this.

[00:23:56]Luther washed his hands of the peasant revolution. He didn't want anything to do with it. But Mooner on the other hand led a peasant army in Thoringia where Luther's reform movement had made many converts. So there were insurrections that were happening and they were fusing themselves with Luther's doctrine and with the religious movement that was involved here, this brand new religious movement. So already in less than a decade we see Protestant ideas getting getting joined and and here not necessarily through their own fault but being appropriated by people who wanted to who wanted to change society and wanted violence to occur >> right >> but it's when we go to the next section when we go to the Schmcalddic Wars [clears throat] from 1546 to 1547 you may say well that's a short war but the league formed in 1531. So these were uh princes from Hess, Saxony and other states and cities that had adopted religious reform. That is the Protestant reform. They made up the Schmalcaldic League. Although first and foremost a defensive alliance, the princes intended that the League would replace the Holy Roman Empire as the source of their political allegiance. So those who adopted the religious reform very quickly took on a political apparatus, made political allegiances in order to change the political order.

[00:25:20]>> And so when we think about Protestantism, you know, bracket all of the theology for just a second, okay?

[00:25:25]You know, bracket solos scriptorera, bracket justification by faith alone, bracket the rejection of the papacy, you know, just set all that stuff aside for a minute. This is a revolutionary movement, >> right?

[00:25:37]>> This is a means for changing the political order. Now, all the theology is there and it's wrapped up in it, but politically you have people who are now going handinhand with this and sincerely believing it in many cases. You know, it's not just a tool for some sort of political power, but sincerely believing the reform and wanting to change their society as a result of it.

[00:26:02]Um, [clears throat] the emperor won the war in 1547. Going on, but religious conflict persisted until the peace of Augsburg in 1555. This is the next slide, by the way.

[00:26:16]>> I'm [snorts] on it.

[00:26:17]>> Okay, good. This enshrined the principle of kuio reio aus religio, namely that the local ruler decides which form of Christianity shall be allowed or banned in his realm. And the Holy Roman Empire at this point is made up of dozens upon dozens of small municipalities each with their own rulers. So you may have like a duke here or a small you small level king here. They're all underneath the emperor. The idea is that the local ruler decides how worship is going to happen in his realm. This is not a doctrine of reconciliation.

[00:26:50]This is a doctrine of you and your folks go this way, me and my folks will go that way. Right? So this is not a doctrine of concord. It's not a doctrine of people getting along with each other.

[00:26:59]This is the initial phase of people dividing so that they can do things the way they want to do them essentially under the reign of the emperor, you know, with some latitude for Protestants to be able to worship in their given areas.

[00:27:14]>> Okay? So there's war and then there's division after the war. That's essentially what we see.

[00:27:21]Then we get to the wars of religion. And these are a few examples of the wars of religion. Dutch Protestants rebelled against Spanish Catholic authority in 1572, beginning a bitter struggle that lasted until the middle of the next century. In France, Calvinism won many converts in the 1540s and 1550s. The first full-scale religious war broke out in 1562. It ended in 1563, but then came out again in 1567. Conflict continued until 1598 when the edict of Na made made Catholicism France's official religion while giving freedom of conscience to Protestants. And I want to say a little bit about how Protestantism entered France. You had Calvin in Switzerland which borders France and they would send missionaries across the border into France. So they were missionizing that area of Europe, that area of the country of France. And so you think that the early Protestants were convinced enough of the rightness of their doctrine that they would do something that was risky by sending these missionaries across the border. And obviously Catholics didn't like that. They didn't like the fact that they're being missionized away from the faith. You Catholic leaders didn't like this. And so you had events like the St. Bartholomew Day Massacre which happened in 1572 where Protestants were just slaughtered >> by Catholics. So, it's really one of the bloodier days of the second half of the 16th century. The English Civil War, a little bit later, lasted from 1640 to 1648 and was followed by two years of complete chaos prior to Cromwell's ascent, prior to Cromwell showing up and and taking control. Uh, we're going to come back to this a little bit in in a minute, but all of these are kind of warm-ups. I mean they're they're very important, very violent and bloody, although not, you know, single continuous wars that lasted for decades and decades. There was a lot of sort of onag again, off-again combat, but they're sort of warm-ups to the main event here. The main event is the 30 years war, >> right?

[00:29:20]>> So the 30 years war, which began with the defenistration of Prague, where Hussite Protestants and Husses uh they actually go back to Yan Hus, who was a protoreformer. He was a pre-reformer before the Reformation. he was trying to make reforms in the church. Um so Hussite Protestants threw a Catholic representative of the emperor out of the window and this was the most destructive conflict as it raged uh in Europe prior to the 20th century. So you have these sort of smoldering resentments between Protestants and Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire which is where this was.

[00:29:52]But when the defenistration happens things just get crazy really quickly. So you have Protestant areas that band together and revolt against the emperor.

[00:30:01]They have some success. Then there is a Catholic repression. The emperor basically says no this is not going to happen and unleashes really really repressive violence against the Protestants. And this goes on for a certain period of time. And then afterwards you have the Swedes who come down from the north. The Swedes are Lutheran. And under Gustavos Adulus, they come down and they wreak havoc all through Europe. And this was in the first two decades or so of the war. The last decade of the war, and this is 16 1618 to 1648, the last decade of the war, things were a little bit more directly political as opposed to being just religious. I mean, France enters for political reasons. And so there was there were a lot of things going on as the war got deeper and the chaos got more and more profound. But this war was one of the crulest episodes in the history of warfare writes historian John Marman involving the horror of seeming of the seemingly endless brutalities that afflicted central Europe. He estimates that four million died from the conflict.

[00:31:07]>> Wow. So you have a reformation, then you have give or take a century of war, >> right, >> ending with 30 years of just unrelenting bloodshed between the sides.

[00:31:24]>> This, in my opinion, is one and a significant one of the fruits of the reformation, >> right? that you have a cultural revolution, the political revolution follows, it spills an enormous amount of blood for its day. When you start talking about wars where millions of people die and I don't really think then there's a there's another example of that until World War I, >> right, >> in Europe. Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there's another >> that's exactly what I was thinking. And and at that time, their population density was not near the beginning of the 20th century.

[00:31:58]>> Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean that you know this wasn't as this wasn't on the Protestants but like as part of the Catholic repression the city of Magde was just destroyed women I mean in the span of I think it was one day I mean the whole city was just leveled there was nothing but ashes left >> when the Catholics finished there and you know again I I want to be balanced here it's it's not like it's not like The reformers Luther and Calvin wanted to start some war so that their form of religion would become the prominent one or foresaw that a century later millions of people would die as a result of this.

[00:32:40]I think Luther would probably be a ghast at some of the things the Swedish army did, >> right?

[00:32:44]>> You know, >> um but this is part of the history of the reformation. These things are tied together that if if a doctrine is born out of peace, joy and gentleness.

[00:33:01]How is it that that doctrine evangelizes aggressively, provokes counterattacks and then responds to those counterattacks by, you know, one adherent or another such that battle upon battle, death upon death happens, >> right? you know, if you're if you're if you're going to be a Protestant and look at history as I was at one point. I was Calvinist for a long time, pretty died in the wool Calvinist for a lot of my youth. And you just have to look at this history and and face it squarely. Um so Marman the historian says something really interesting about this. Um he write or he he writes a year before the 30 years war ended there was a German who wrote in his Bible quote many people say there is no God but we still believe that God has not abandoned us and so the end result of this for many people outside of the death of people involved is that people lose their faith they just they don't necessarily believe it anymore if this is what God does or if this is all done in the name of God which is if nothing else people are doing it in the name of God, then what are we to make of this, >> right?

[00:34:16]>> You know, how do how do we go on believing in this God that these people are speaking for? And when you think about the enlightenment, um when [clears throat] you think about the enlightenment, moving on here, uh Thomas Hobbes writes Leviathan in 1651.

[00:34:32]So, he's an English philosopher, and this is at the end of that two-year period where Cromwell ascends and there's some level of order that returns to England. But Leviathan was written as an attempt to develop a theory of state without reference to God. In other words, if sectarianism or religious conflict has become so bloody that it seems that the problem is reference to God, then how do you form a civil society that does not depend upon divine authority? And that's essentially what Hobbes is trying to do. One of the things he says explicitly about the Leviathan is that Leviath is that the Leviathan that is the the king, the absolute monarch in essence. He is the one who has the final say on all matters of doctrine.

[00:35:18]So the church does not have the final say on them. The Leviathan has the final say on them. Which means that job who thinks that or excuse me, we're talking about England. So either James or William who thinks that someone has got God talking to him. You know that person is not the final arbiter of doctrine.

[00:35:35]You know the king is now. And so there's there's a a different way of formulating society. At the same time Decart in his meditations on first philosophy which was written in 1641 tries to establish one truth. You know and if you've ever had an intro to philosophy course you probably read a little bit of Daycart and Decart says I think therefore I am.

[00:35:55]And this is his one truth. Right. Well, why is he looking for one truth? I mean, 200 years prior, I mean, even though there were issues in the Catholic Church uh in the in the late medieval times, but confidence in the church was such that in the in the prior history, it was such that when people looked for something true, they still looked first to the church. Decart is explicitly not looking to the church. We have to find something true and we don't start with what the church says.

[00:36:26]um a a generation before Decart there's another philosopher Michelle de Montaigne who is a who's a really interesting read who just sort of cataloges all the confusion of his time and so if you read uh if you read Daycart after you read Montaigne it really makes sense you know Montaigne says what on earth are we to do with all this chaos and this confusion what are we to trust and then Decart comes along you know in the next 20 years or so and he says okay I want to find one thing that is true remember in 1641 won. The 30 Years War had been going on for gosh 23 years at this point. Can you tell how many was heard a soldier at the beginning of the 30 years war?

[00:37:07]>> I'm not sure.

[00:37:08]>> I believe that he was and it was during the or leading up to the Battle of White Mountain, the first major battle that he believed he was visited by an angel that set him on the course to develop his philosophy.

[00:37:22]>> Interesting.

[00:37:24]That's quite a claim. That's quite a claim. So I want to I want to talk for just a minute about about Gavin Ortland at this point because you know Orland he points out Cyro Lucaris who was the I believe he was the bishop the um the archbishop of uh of Constantinople or the bishop of Constantinople um who had Calvinist leanings who was of this same you know same uh era >> right so like 1620s 1630s su cy Cyro Lucarus is there and um I think this is really emblematic of what Gavin is doing versus the tide that he is swimming against.

[00:38:05]>> You know the modern tide against Protestantism or the anxiety about division in my opinion springs to no small extent from this era where things were breaking down. Protestants and Catholics are are killing each other.

[00:38:20]philosophers are looking for different ways to form a society. Like Syra Lucaris is is not the main point of this particular era. Okay. He is a sort of oneoff Orthodox bishop who who liked Calvinism. You know, he studied in I believe he studied in Holland or in England, spent some time there, got influenced and and went back to Jerusalem. Um, and he's not emblematic at all of the Orthodox tradition, but these wars are emblematic of the history of Protestantism that has been handed down to us >> and the social order that has been handed down to us as a result. Um, so, all right, so moving on from war to schism. Okay, so we're going to jump around a little bit here. Um we go to the first great awakening which is the late 1730s early 1740s in the United States of America. So this was the time of Gilbert Tennant. He was a Presbyterian preacher in the middle colonies. So think like Delaware, New Jersey, that area, right? There were two factions among the Presbyterians at this time in his local area. There was the new side and Tenant was one of the members of the new side. They preached an emotional appropriation of grace that was exuberant if not violent with groaning, crying and disturbances during worship. So think to yourself like, you know, not exactly uh the extremes of Pentecostalism, but definitely getting there.

[00:39:44]>> Moving in that direction for sure.

[00:39:46]>> Yes, moving in that direction for sure.

[00:39:48]Um and but this was supposed to be the experience of grace. I mean, this is how you knew the Holy Spirit was moving in your heart is that you had some kind of experience along this line. So they're on one side and then you have the old side who criticized this experience as inauthentic inauthentic and considered grace as conducive to peace. So in other words, you've got the people who think, you know, we're going to start a moral reformation. The way we do that is we get people to experience grace in the heart. And how do we know they're experiencing grace in the heart? Well, they have these really violent um emotional and exuberant outbursts that happen during the service. and they actually preached in such a way as to uh to provoke these. So for example, the kind of experience that he that he that he uh that they that they advocated and the preaching terrors that company accompanied it threw congregations into an uproar. And they had this specific tactic. It's called preaching terrors.

[00:40:46]The idea being that you literally like just scare people with hell with the prospect of hell that if if they don't change they will have it or they'll they'll suffer that. And then after this you hold out to them the grace of Christ.

[00:41:02]And so after they've come to the point of this sort of um extreme emotional pressure you know after they come under this then you hand them or offer to them the release. That's what they have. And so this experience is kind of provoked and they explicitly did this, >> right?

[00:41:19]>> So this preaching of this experience also prompted the new side folks uh who spoke of it to criticize their adversary. So Gilbert Tennant preaches this sermon, the danger of an unconverted ministry in the early 1640s. And he's implying that the old side was bereft of grace. So in other words, it's not just that the two sides had a different in tactics or a different in emphasis, difference in emphasis. You actually had new side people saying,"Well, I'm not really sure that the old side are actually elect.

[00:41:51]>> Not really sure that they're actually saved." And just like we saw with Calvin sending missionaries into France in the earlier centuries, the new side folks would send their missionaries into places that already had old side preachers.

[00:42:04]You know, they're they're stirring the pot here. Yeah.

[00:42:07]>> Right. To provoke this experience of grace. So this difference between the two factions which arose not over theology but religious experience alone led to a schism that lasted from 1741 to 1758 and the new side which left the Senate of Philadelphia formed the Senate of New York. So they they eventually had this meeting where things sort of went into an uproar and there it got kind of chaotic this meeting of their Senate and they end up dividing after that and so the new side has their own Senate and the old side keeps the one that was there before. But the really fascinating thing about this is that the new side people were trying to provoke the experience of grace. They're trying to provoke something that they identify with the coming of the Holy Spirit. And so the question is, is it the witness of the Holy Spirit to produce division?

[00:42:56]That's not supposed to happen, >> right?

[00:42:59]>> It go back to the fruits, right? Love, joy, peace, gentleness, >> unity.

[00:43:04]>> Yes. Unity that they may all be one.

[00:43:07]Here you have the first great awakening, which, you know, depending on which historian you read, they'll say, "Oh, this was a time of religious fervor and, you know, great religious outburst and, you know, it's like really good time because the Holy Spirit's really moving." But the folks who look at it that way ignore the fact that there were schisms as a result of this, >> right?

[00:43:26]>> Why is it that the Holy Spirit produces division? I mean, I got to say from a u from a sociological perspective and from a theological perspective, this is really baffling. You know, it's really counterintuitive. Why is this happening?

[00:43:39]>> Right?

[00:43:40]>> You know, just to give a a a historical example, you know, St. Augustine experiences grace in the garden. The next thing that happens to him is he converts. You know, he becomes a monk.

[00:43:49]eventually becomes a bishop. Imagine you experience grace and your experience of grace leads you to divide from the church as opposed to join with it. Um it's again just really fascinating. Why is this here? This is part of the fruit of Protestantism.

[00:44:03]Okay, so moving on to the second great awakening. This period between 1790 and 1830 saw a range of religious movements, small and large, some with longevity and others not. These included the Mormons, the Baptists, the Methodists, the Shakers, the Christians, later known as the Disciples of Christ, the Millerites, who eventually sort of, you know, eventually sort of transformed into the Adventists, and the emergence of the black church, among others. All of this happens in this roughly 40-year period.

[00:44:31]Okay? And the uh the resource for this is Nathan Hatch's book, The Democratization of American Christianity, which despite its long title, is an absolutely excellent book.

[00:44:41]Okay? If you are if you are into church history, I strongly recommend Hatch's book. It is great. Uh it is not a book about schism. It's a book about religious populism essentially, but um it's a wonderful read. Just absolutely good. I can't recommend it enough.

[00:44:56]>> I'm going get it.

[00:44:57]>> So, what's that?

[00:44:59]>> I said I'm gonna get it. I don't have that book. I've never read it.

[00:45:01]>> It is an awesome book. So good. You I mean, if you're if you're into history, it is a page turner. It's just so good.

[00:45:08]>> I'm always looking for a historical page turner.

[00:45:10]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. really really good really good so between 8 and all the quotes that I have here are from Hatch's book okay so between 1800 and 1830 a wildly diverse religious culture made both denominational identity and authority fragile creations Julian Sturdivant a Yale graduate and congress congregational missionary to Illinois in 1829 writes or wrote in Illinois I met for the first time a divided Christian community and was plunged without warning or preparation into a sea of sectarian rivalries which was kept in constant agitation by both legitimate differences of opinion and by ill- judged discussions and unfortunate personalities among ambitious men. and uh the highlighting a sea of sectarian rivalries. That that's that's my highlighting that's not in the original text, >> but I I just think it's a really adequate description of religion along the American frontier and the idea that if you believe in the Bible as your primary, you know, your your essential, if not your sole source of authority, you're going to end up with something like this. This is the testament of American history and I'm going to say a little bit more about it but um again anybody can take up the Bible try to understand it for themselves try to make sense of it and then try to form churches around it or have arguments around it. Right? So whatever is happening on discord in the last few decades or you know the last decade or so was happening 200 years ago. It was happening 200 years ago in the frontier.

[00:46:50]You know, this is not a new thing. So, sectarianism was there not say among Presbyterians, but among people who had nothing to do with Presbyterianism or may have scoffed at it because it was uppidity, you know, the Presbyterians and the and the u the Presbyterians [clears throat] and the Anglicans. They were the more upper class folks, right?

[00:47:10]They were the establishment. But lo and behold, lo and behold, the establishment does not have control because populism is rampant. Right? So, Caleb Rich, this is another example here. Caleb Rich was a Calvinist turned universalist who was bewildered by the competing claims of churches, Hatch writes. And he ends up thinking that he was like St. Paul. He's actually quoted as saying this or he wrote this, excuse me. He wrote that, quote, "The gospel that was preached by me was not after man, for I neither received of received of man nor was I taught it by man, but by revelation of Jesus Christ through the medium of the Holy Spirit." Right?

[00:47:50]So, if you're surrounded by a bunch of denominations and you don't know which one is right, and every other person that you see, it seems, has got some religious idea that they're convinced of, you kind of are left on your own resources. And so, you have to figure it out for yourself. And if you're Caleb Rich who comes to the conclusion of universalism because Calvinist predestination it seems was too much for him in his youth, you know, um he channels the spirit of Galatians and decides that he's going to put himself on a rough footing with St. Paul.

[00:48:24]Remember this is the same time that Joseph Smith was supposedly having his revelations.

[00:48:29]>> Right.

[00:48:29]>> Right. Angels are talking to Joseph Smith. I mean, you can go your own way.

[00:48:33]You can form a new denomination. God might even be speaking to you. Okay.

[00:48:39][clears throat and cough] Um, so a response to this, uh, John Nevin, a traditionalist and representative of Mercersburg theology with Philip Chaff and Orland is a is a big fan of Philip Shaff. He quotes him some in his book. So Nevin was infuriated by the state of affairs. He attacked the no creed but the Bible mantra of the sex of his day. He was quote particularly aware of the gap between a rhetoric that promised to calm sectarian strife and the actual practice of following the Bible which seemed to multiply denominations endlessly.

[00:49:12]>> So the more that you rely on the Bible, the more that you have a a glut, you know, of interpretations, right? There's then the way that I tend to think about this myself, the sort of thumbnail sketch is that you have it's it's an arisatilian sort of model. You have interpretation by one which is more or less Catholicism with the papacy. You have interpretation by the few that would be orthodoxy. Or you have interpretation by the many. That would be Protestantism.

[00:49:38]>> Right.

[00:49:38]>> Right. And so Protestantism says solos scriptora but here you have what that essentially means is that you have no no effective limit on the number of interpreters.

[00:49:50]>> Right.

[00:49:50]>> Right. Those who represent the mainstream will say of course there's a limit. You know we have these limits.

[00:49:54]But in practice, you know, multip denominations keep multiplying, right?

[00:49:59]>> Which calls into ecclesiastical authority. And part of this division is constantly creating a new form of authority based on these diverse interpretations.

[00:50:08]>> Yes. Yes. And you know, where are you going to find authority? Go back to Caleb Bridge again. Where is his authority? He quotes St. Paul and you know it's Christ talking to him and that's where universalism came from.

[00:50:18]>> Right.

[00:50:19]>> So there's a long quote from Nevin that I have here. Uh, what are we to think of it when we find such a mottly mass of protesting systems all laying claims so vigorously here to one in the same watchword? If the Bible be at once so clear and full as as a formulary of Christian doctrine and practice, how does it come to pass where men are left most free to use it in this way and have the greatest mind to do so according to their own profession, they are flung aunderder so perpetually in their religious faith instead of being brought together by its influence. M >> I could not have written this better myself, >> you know, just absolutely. I mean, I want to thank Nevin for pointing out the problem so uh so so wonderfully right now.

[00:51:01]Um just to kind of sum up here, the early American republic was marked by denominations in sex and competition with one another and with more established forms of Protestantism.

[00:51:11]Again, this was not a realm of the fruits of the spirit. I I would make that argument that love, joy, and gentleness were were simply not there in the in a noticeable way. So what one remembers aside and I'm not saying that there weren't peaceful denomin or peaceful churches and congregations here and there, I'm sure there were, but the overall societal ethos was one of competition and confusion. You know, you you can think there was a kind of religious market going on here, right? Where there's competition and people were vying for uh vying for customers, so to speak. Not to be too crass with the analogy, but >> they were there actually Protestants who make that analogy, by the way. Uh yeah, Roger Fininky and um Fininky and Stark are the two academics, but they actually wrote a book where they argue that American religion is a market and the stronger the market market is, the better it is for American religion. So competition is actually a good thing.

[00:52:11]>> Um those are guys who were at Baylor.

[00:52:13]I'm not sure if they're still there now, >> right? Wade Clark Roof's book on the spiritual marketplace talking about this unique phenomenon in America from aological perspective.

[00:52:24]>> Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So rather than believers following the way of unity, each one did what was right in his own eyes. That's a quote from Judges uh 17.

[00:52:34]This is the witness of Protestantism in America. I would argue as much today as it was 200 years ago. So, I'm not really going into the 20th century. I'm not going to say, you know, I'm not going to mention too much about the various Pentecostal denominations or about non-denominationalism.

[00:52:49]Um, you know, all of those things have happened. They're before our eyes, >> right? This is the history that is handed to us. And again, I I'm not saying that Protestantism is 100% division or it's 100% people who are trying to kill each other or 100% people who are splitting churches. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that division is pervasive, >> right?

[00:53:14]>> That it is a recurrent uh you know, periodically, it may be periodic, but it is periodically inescapable fruit of Protestantism.

[00:53:24]>> Yeah. Um, and I think as well, you know, there are a lot of Protestants who are just good people and they go to church, they go to churches with other people who are good people, by which I mean they're friendly and they're responsible and they're sort of taxpaying citizens.

[00:53:40]I mean, they're not bad folks or anything like that. And so, the churches are made up of these, you know, easy to be with folks, but they don't see the history of breakdown.

[00:53:50]you know, they don't see the history of division, this history of fracture as a meaningful fruit, I think, because their experience in their church is comfortable, >> right?

[00:54:00]>> You know, and um so I'm going to let Ortland respond a little bit here uh through Sha and Nevin. I think he's basically, you know, sympatico with those guys. So Sha and Nevin argued that sectarian errors were not intrinsic to Protestantism. Shaft says the sex system like rationalism is a prostitution and a character caricature of true Protestantism.

[00:54:23]>> So that's that's the argument that they make. This is I think a sort of standard, you know, establishment way of looking at sectarianism within Protestantism. You know, this isn't real Protestantism. No, this isn't the magisterial reformation, right? This is something else, [laughter] right? Uh but if sectarianism is not intrinsic to Protestantism, why is it so pervasive? I mean, Orland recognizes it as a disease.

[00:54:48]I mean, he's he's not going to sit here and cheerlead for for for uh for sectarianism.

[00:54:53]But if there's no cure, and if the de disease doesn't lessen over centuries, surely the nature of the organism is at fault, >> right?

[00:55:02]>> At at at the very best, Protestantism lacks the institutional restraint to control the monster it has burned.

[00:55:09]>> Right.

[00:55:10]>> Right. If you've got a virus and you can't cure the virus, there's a significant problem there.

[00:55:16]>> Right.

[00:55:17]>> Right. There's a significant problem. So that is um that I think is all I have for the first thesis. Yes. Uh so that that's it for thesis one. All right. So division is pervasive in Protestantism. Whether it's war or whether it's schism, there's a whole history of centuries involved here. And so I got a couple questions before we move on to the next thesis.

[00:55:42]And >> I'm curious then when I went over your PowerPoint before the stream, one of the thoughts that I had is I was curious what your especially given your military background. How do you connect the modern American milit military industrial complex in the continual warfare with our Protestant legacy? Do you think there's a connection there?

[00:56:07]>> Well, I Okay. The first thing that comes to my mind is the idea of capitalism as an expanding thing that's always looking for new markets and that war is a way of expanding markets.

[00:56:17]>> Um there's a certain >> there's a certain kinship with the Protestant missionary impulse, >> right? Like if you're going to look for new fields for or new harvest fields rather, even if there's churches there already, >> right? So we're going to send our missionaries to go out and spread this gospel and spread this religion. um that missionary impulse and I don't want to draw this line too closely, but you know there's there's an impulse for expansion within the military-industrial complex for the sake of capitalism, right? Historically, right? So, you're going to go into new places and people would make this argument about the war I fought in, right? Like, why did we go to Iraq?

[00:56:55]Well, you know, there's oil there, >> right?

[00:56:57]>> Right. We got oil money to be made. So, this opens up a certain resource for people to make more money, you know? Um, but again, I I think historically I wouldn't I wouldn't have made that argument too strongly. It just strikes me as a sort of superficial kinship when you ask the question.

[00:57:14]>> Well, I mean, when you say that, bringing up capitalist, I immediately think of Max Vber and capitalism and the Protestant work ethic and that capitalism in the market is a way in which one acts out their salvation.

[00:57:27]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.

[00:57:28]Yeah. Vapor. Yeah. Vapor's obviously really, you know, he's really brilliant.

[00:57:32]Um, but I I can see that. Yeah, certainly. I mean, if you're looking for evidences of your salvation, right, which is this sort of reformed teaching of what good works are and those evidence are evidences are in your calling, right? So, they're principally how well you do your job, then looking for new markets is evidence of your salvation.

[00:57:54]>> Right.

[00:57:55]>> Right. Um, so yeah, there's a connection you can make.

[00:57:57]>> Yeah. and and that connected I was writing down notes while you were speaking is when you're talking about the marketing of these various divisions and these sectarian movements. Um, you know, one of the defining features of the American ethos is consumerism. And I couldn't help, and I'm curious what your thoughts are, but I couldn't help but think that it's it's the church shopping in a way, even at the very early onset of the American experiment, that set, especially dealing with the ultimate claims. We're talking about God, we're talking about religion, we're talking about your paradigm, your moral framework. that this idea that you can move and shop, which is obviously ahistorical before the Protestant Reformation, really set the stage for this sort of underlying mentality of consumerism in America. Well, I sort of wonder to myself when that transformation happened because my sense from looking, you know, from from studying history is that the more prevalent attitude, say in the early American republic is not so much about shopping and going where best fits you, you know, like finding the place that's right for you. Okay? It's more genuinely about finding true salvation, right? You know, Rich leaves the Caleb Rich leaves the Calvinist church because it is causing him a great deal of anxiety. He wants to be saved, you know, and so people are moving around because they genuinely want salvation. I think by the time you get into the 20th century, there's that kind of fusion that you're talking about.

[00:59:28]>> Okay. you know, um I just I don't know if it's I don't know when that transformation would have happened, though, because >> you know, when you get into the 18th century, um at the end of the uh at the end of the second great awakening, you've already got non-Christian movements that are proliferating.

[00:59:49]So, you know, um Emerson was writing, Theorough was writing. um is you have people looking outside the church. I mean, you have the transcendentalist movement, right? And you have you have various others. So, the idea of choosing a salvation that is tailored to you, you know, like we're a long we're a long way away from the 1980s, but there's certain seeds of it that are happening there and they're not necessarily happening within Christendom. Like they may be, you know, um but that's not really the story that Hatch tells there. I think there's other sources and uh I wish I could remember the book. The author is Lee Schmidt, but uh it's all about the growth of sort of spir for lack of a better word like spiritual but not religious movements in the mid- 19th century, you know.

[01:00:34]>> Um so I think there's some sort of shift that happens there from the early American republic sometime probably in the 19th and into the 20th centuries, you know, where that consumerist attitude becomes more prevalent because obviously it's what we've got today, right? Um >> but I would just wonder how far back does it go? Yeah, that's what I was curious on what your thoughts were.

[01:00:53]>> Yeah.

[01:00:55]>> And why don't we then go ahead and I'm already on the the uh next slide regarding the meaning of Protestantism.

[01:01:03]>> Okay. Sure.

[01:01:04]>> We'll dive into your thesis number two.

[01:01:06]>> All right. Thesis number two.

[01:01:07]>> And and let me just say before you start, anybody if you have questions, um we're going to take questions at the end of the presentation. So if you have questions, you can send those in. Once he's done laying out his arguments, we'll then take questions if any of you guys have any.

[01:01:23]>> Okay. So, before we get started on this, um I am going to present an argument here for the meaning of Protestantism, more specifically for the meaning of justification by faith alone. That, as I mentioned at the beginning, is a little bit more abstract. And so, it's a little bit more theological. It's not a historical survey, although it does involve some history. Um, and it's a different argument. I'm not aware that anybody else makes this argument. So, if you're one of those folks out there who's really familiar with all the back and forth that happens online, you can add this to your to your bag of of arguments that you're familiar with, I guess. So, [laughter] so anyway, starting again with Ortland, Ortland says Protestantism is the principle of movement of progress in the history of the church. He says that the whole idea of Protestantism is continual reform. This is the glory and strength of the Protestant doctrine referenced in the subtitle of his book uh simple reformanda and the subtitle of his book is the case for an always reforming church. So Protestantism he writes takes its peculiar shape and character in order to serve the renewal and betterment of the church. So I am going to argue in my second thesis that the meaning of the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone, a product of medieval Catholicism, is the division or liberation of man from his nature as God's creature and the elimination of his rest in God.

[01:02:48]>> I should have subtitled this Protestantism is an always revolutionizing religion or an always revolutionizing church as opposed to an always reforming church. um because we'll we'll see hopefully how that plays in. Now, I have in brackets in this slide that Luther's doctrine of justification should be understood in the context of medieval legal development, not of indulgences and Catholic persecution of disscent. And Ortland sees Luther as coming out of these out of uh you the problem with indulgences and Catholic persecution.

[01:03:17]Those things were there. I'm not I'm not denying them. And I think there's definitely a uh a strand of scholarship out there that sees the Reformation uh through the through that lens. But when I was looking for the origin of Luther's doctrine of justification by faith alone, when I was trying to search for what is behind freedom of a Christian, it's not indulgences. There's something else going on. I I frankly think that if you take away the the medieval legal development, you don't have Luther, you know. Um, but we'll we'll get into that.

[01:03:47]I'll I'll make the case here.

[01:03:48]>> Right. But that this is a novel argument because as you said and and I would say the general argument is that it's a response against indulgences.

[01:03:57]>> Yeah. Like Catholic Catholic corruption is kind of the main response. Catholic corruption. Indulgences is emblematic of that. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

[01:04:04]>> It's the big one. And um >> and I get that. I mean it is a corruption. Um >> and there's no doubt that it may have influenced but I when we were talking on the phone before you know this was a few weeks ago. I thought that was a really interesting argument because you were highlighting regarding intellectual history the importance of the scholastic period and this legal emphasis and some of the canon law and how this has influenced the trajectory of western civilization. Something that I probably underappreciate in some of my uh discussions on intellectual history.

[01:04:38]>> Well, you know, um Burman, the legal scholar, he he makes the argument that canon law is the precursor for modern state law. Um I I make the argument in analogia journal that Luther's experience of the canon law is a spiritual precursor. Well, okay, not precursor, but it is a spiritual version of totalitarian law.

[01:04:59]>> So like if you're looking for an experience of totalitarianism, the the basic elements of it are there in Luther's experience of canon law.

[01:05:07]>> So uh you have the church law that then becomes the state law. Verman is really the best resource for that. But okay, so let's get into the argument and I I need to give some background here. Okay, first God creates his creatures with a particular law for their being. All right? And what I mean by law is definition or nature. Okay? So an alligator has a law that makes it an alligator and not an eagle. Okay? A tree has a law that makes it a tree and not a human being. You can look at it and see it has something that defines it. Okay?

[01:05:41]So it has and this is just kind of you know Petristic era natural law theory if you will I'm not saying anything that's you know stepping out of the fathers or anything like that right >> so the law for man includes both his definition as a man that i.e his physical bodily shape um and his spirial or spiritual orientation towards God.

[01:06:01]Okay? So this this law is written into us as what we are supposed to be.

[01:06:05]Another way of saying this in orthodox terms is that you're destined for theosis, >> right? The law is there. You're living out what it is to be human. You know, becoming becoming truly human, we say, right?

[01:06:16]>> So this orientation receives explicit statements in the law of Moses and the commands of Christ. All right? So there is this law that's within us. this law has to do with Moses and Christ. I would argue that the law fundamentally has to do with work and rest. You know, and I'm I'm a little bit different, I think, than a lot of folks out there that I I see work and rest as just these basic biblical categories. I mean, the idea that rest is holy is pretty indisputable. Um, you know, because it says it very clearly.

[01:06:45]>> But the balance of work and rest, I think, has really been obscured in the West for a long time. Um, and I don't think the fathers would disagree about don't I certainly don't think the fathers would disagree with it, but I I think that they don't use those terms directly, you know. Um, but the bearing of burdens is tremendously important.

[01:07:05]You know, what burdens do you bear? How do you have rest from those burdens? I think this is just really central for understanding the biblical message about love and about human relationships. So, let's talk for just a second about the Exodus. And once you see things this way, then the comparison in Exodus between the Pharaoh and God is between a law that does not allow rest versus a law that does allow rest. Okay? So, so many people miss this, David. When Moses and Aaron go to the Pharaoh in the Exodus story, they never ask for the slaves to be freed. They never ask for that. Now, they're going to free the slaves, right? That's going to happen.

[01:07:46]Okay? We know that's God's purpose. But they always say, "Let us go a three days journey into the wilderness to make sacrifice." What is it that they are asking for? And they're not asking for freedom. They're asking for rest.

[01:08:00]>> Right? They're asking for what is holy.

[01:08:02]>> And when what is holy is denied them, when when what is holy is denied them, that's when God kicks into action and liberates them. And by the way, Pharaoh gets this. If you go to Exodus 5, uh Moses and Aaron have made their plea.

[01:08:16]They've made their request. And what's Pharaoh's response? You are lazy, lazy.

[01:08:20]Get back to your labors. [laughter] >> Right. Right. The the the contrast is between work without rest and the request for rest.

[01:08:31]>> Right.

[01:08:32]>> The sacrifice spiritually is our rest in God. Right? That's where our labors cease and God does the salvific work.

[01:08:38]Okay? So when they ask to go and make a three-day journey and to sacrifice, they're asking for physical rest and spiritual rest. And Pharaoh says, "Nope, you will not have it." So that's on one end. Then on the opposite end, after they are liberated, they go to Sinai.

[01:08:54]God gives them a law. And that law has a wellestablished and elaborate sacrificial cult.

[01:09:00]>> Right.

[01:09:01]>> Right. So you've got law without sacrifice or rest and law with sacrifice and rest. And the first commandment uh out of the ten commandments, I mean, I'm sure you know this. I'm sure everybody in the audience knows this, but the first commandment uh that deals with human relationships is resting on the Sabbath. And who rests? Everybody, right? You, your children, your wife, your male and female servant, everybody rests, right? So, um okay. So the question that I am now going to ask given that dichotomy is how did God become the pharaoh?

[01:09:39]This is the question >> right >> historically the argument that I'm going to make is that the divine law becomes the law of the pharaoh.

[01:09:50]Okay? It becomes a law that deprivives man of rest rather than securing it for him. Right?

[01:09:56]>> Right. So that dichotomy between the god between god and the pharaoh and exodus becomes a fusion. And this happens I argue over the latter centuries of the medieval era. So how does this happen?

[01:10:10]Step one, the law is systematized. The Catholic canon law is systematized particularly over the 12th and 13th centuries. Now, this begins with what's called the investature crisis, which is a battle between the pope on the one hand and local rulers on the other about who gets to decide who the bishop is, the local bishop. So, the local bishop was a very powerful position. Up until this time, the local ruler got to pick who the bishop was, but this was corrupting the church in various ways.

[01:10:38]And so, the pope Gregory VIIth says, "No way. I'm the one who gets to choose bishops now." And guess what happens as a result of that? war breaks out.

[01:10:47]>> Right.

[01:10:48]>> Right. So, at the same time that there are wars that are breaking out over this issue, however, you have legal teams.

[01:10:55]For the first time in history, legal experts are required to make arguments drawing from the scripture, from the fathers, from Roman law, from all these varieties of laws. You have arguments that now have to be made about who has jurisdiction, who's actually right to choose who the local bishop is. And this spawns in in its embriionic form. This spawns modern law. It spawns the western legal tradition.

[01:11:23]>> Okay. So, Gratian who uh lived in the 12th century writes his decreedum in 1140 which is the uh the most famous of these collections of law. So decreedum was a collection and harmonization of various legal sources, right? And a whole school of people followed him.

[01:11:40]They were known as the decis. Okay? And so what they did was compound laws upon laws. And where two laws, you know, two stipulations were divergent from one another, they tried to smooth it out and figure out who's right. You know, where where can we make the law uh more coherent, right? And over this process of laws upon laws being collected and analyzed and restated and you know uh collated and whatever else you you know however else you want you might want to determine it. The law is growing. It becomes something organically developing. That's Burman terms. The law organically develops. It becomes larger.

[01:12:18]It becomes universal and comprehensive at the same time that it becomes exact.

[01:12:24]Okay. And so the legal apparatus of the modern west becomes something unique.

[01:12:30]Needless to say, nothing like this happens in in the east. Okay. If people want to ask you, why did we never have a Luther in the in the Eastern Orthodox Church? My response is that we never had the legal development that preceded him.

[01:12:43]Okay.

[01:12:44]>> Interesting.

[01:12:45]>> Yeah. I think most people would say, well, we didn't have the Renaissance. We didn't have the Reformation. We didn't have the scientific revolution. I haven't that. That's very interesting to point towards canon law.

[01:12:56]>> Yeah.

[01:12:57]>> Which actually pre is a precursor to the Renaissance itself.

[01:13:01]>> Yes. This is a precursor to nominalism.

[01:13:03]This is a precursor to the Renaissance.

[01:13:05]This is a precursor to to all of that.

[01:13:07]>> Right. Is what I would refer to, you know, my term for it is the infinitization of the law, >> right? the law becomes this vast incomprehensible thing in terms of its of its stipulations and how these stipulations are being managed and just the compounding and compiling of various kinds of laws. So it becomes something that was unknown here to for and universities spring up as a result of this development. They are part of this.

[01:13:32]So the modern university starts in the 12th century because legal experts were needed. Although it's not solely that I I need to say like there's certain like Bologona was the place for legal experts. Uh you had humanism that was developing at the same time. And the humanists by the way this is a little bit of an aside but they were very critical of the of the lawyers. You know they they didn't like the sort of the emphasis on law. So you know they're obviously they're more artistic. They like poetry you know.

[01:13:58]>> [laughter] >> So, so anyway, um, and I've got a couple of sources here. Uh, Brian Tierney's Crisis of Church and State outlines this really well. And Burman's text, Law and Revolution, the Formation of the Western Legal Tradition. The first volume, he wrote two volumes. They're both massive.

[01:14:14]Um, and the first one is really the one that we're emphasizing here.

[01:14:19]>> I haven't read that book either. I feel like I need to get that one.

[01:14:22]>> Well, yeah, it's it's good. It's good.

[01:14:24]And that the tyranny book is actually a collection of uh original sources.

[01:14:31]>> So it's not just like um it's not just like a secondary text, you know, he actually has like snippets from this or that text from the 1100s or or whatever, you know, and so it's a really good resource. [snorts] >> So all right. So what happens in step two after step one? Well, we have to understand that the law and the systematization of the law has everything to do with scholasticism, right? They go hand in hand. Um, and the dialectical method in scholasticism as well. This law is not only political.

[01:15:04]It's not only ecclesiastical. It's not only about, you know, who gets to pick the bishop. That's the core issue where things start is this notion of jurisdiction between uh secular authorities and church authorities. But this sort of systematization it just infects everything about the law. So it's not only political or ecclesiastical but also moral and spiritual i.e. having to do with salvation. So imagine the systematization of the law influencing how you live your spiritual life and it's applied to the religious conscience particularly to the monks. Okay. So when you become a monk in late you know late medieval Catholicism going to confession and the state of your spiritual life becomes something that causes a great degree of anxiety and my source here is James Mchugh he's a historian he wrote this great little article Simo Eustus at Picaturator in Augustine Aquinus and Luther and uh you know sort of as an aside he makes the observation that the the problem of the angst of the anxious conscience conscious conscience, excuse me, doesn't really show up until the early 1300s, >> which uh on the political level, that's the same time that the papacy was removed from Rome and spent the next 70 years or so in Avignon, >> right? So, you just got a collapse all around of uh of Catholicism.

[01:16:30]>> But at this point, you know, the problem becomes what happens when you go to confession. you know, you have to confess all of your sins and that's not really possible to do. I mean, for the Orthodox folks who are watching this, imagine you went to confession and you had to confess every single thing that you have done, you know, and now all of a sudden you have to draw these strict lines in your mind between, okay, am I just being tempted or have I actually sinned here, you know? [laughter] >> Right.

[01:16:58]>> You know, and you have to remember like every time that you should have done a good thing that you didn't do, >> right?

[01:17:04]>> Right. or every time that you did whatever thing you you have to list all of your sins. And so it's 200 years before we get to step three, which is the arrival of Luther. And Luther is the culmination of this development. Okay, it has been going on for a while. You have legal development, you have the anxious conscious de conscience developing, and then you've got Luther in the early 1500s. So Luther arovs arrives again roughly 200 years later and is the product again of this development. By this time the law had become a tyrant and an oppressor and it was truly the law of the pharaoh. If you know anything about Luther you know that he struggled mightily with the idea of the wrath and the righteousness of God, >> right?

[01:17:50]>> You know that this was like a triggering phrase for him to use a modern term, right? He was terrified. Well, where did that go from? You know, where does the fear come from? I mean, I would hypothesize that the nominalist idea of this terrifying God is an outgrowth of the infinite law.

[01:18:11]>> If you have a law that becomes infinite, that is representative of the will of God, >> right?

[01:18:15]>> And this exacting and comprehensive law, you know, this totalitarian law becomes a kind of becomes a kind of precursor to a totalitarian experience of God.

[01:18:26]>> Right? If if the law was merciful, how could God be a tyrant? But if the law ceases to be merciful, then God himself in the mercy of God falls away and now what stands in the foreground is holiness and righteousness and the things that terrify you. Right.

[01:18:40]>> Right.

[01:18:41]>> So, so with all of this in mind, I'm going to read a long quote from Luther.

[01:18:47]This is from his 1531 Galatians commentary, but it gives a really good example of Luther's own religious experience. in my opinion. I think he's talking about himself here.

[01:18:58]>> Okay. Uh and probably other people that he knows. So let's pretend for a moment, you know, let's walk with Luther through his religious development and see how this goes. Okay.

[01:19:09][clears throat] Therefore, anyone who seeks righteousness through the law does nothing by his repeated actions but acquire the habit of this first action, which is that God in his wrath and awe is to be appeased by works. On the basis of this opinion, he begins to do works.

[01:19:22]Yet he can never find enough works to make his conscience peaceful. But he keeps looking for more. And even in the ones he does perform, he finds sin.

[01:19:31]Therefore, his conscience can never become sure. But he must continually doubt and think this way. You have not sacrificed correctly. You have not prayed correctly. You have omitted something. You have committed this or that sin. Then the heart trembles and can itself loaded down with wagon loads of sins that increase infinitely so that it deviates further and further from righteousness until it finally acquires the habit of despair. Many who have been driven to such despair cried out miserably in the agony of death.

[01:20:01]Miserable man that I am, I have not observed the rules of my monastic order.

[01:20:05]Where shall I flee from the countenance of Christ the wrathful judge? Thus at the end of his life among his weaker, more beggarly, more unbelieving and more fearful than he was at the beginning.

[01:20:17]The law or human traditions or the rule of his monastic order were supposed to heal and enrich him in his illness and poverty. But he became weaker and more beggarly than the tax collectors and harlots. In the end, he is forced to despair. Therefore, it is impossible for men who want to provide for their salvation through the law, as all men are inclined to do by nature, ever to be set at peace. In fact, they only pile laws upon laws by which they torture themselves and others and make their consciences so miserable that miserable that many of them die before their time because of excessive anguish of heart.

[01:20:51]For one law always produces 10 more until they grow to infinity. This is shown by the innumerable sumi that collect and expound such laws. Now this is a direct quote of Luther referencing the legal history that I have explained just a few slides ago, right? Just a few minutes ago. What has it done to him? He joins his monastic order. Luther is a very studious and you know exacting monk. He wants to be the best monk he can be, right? He wants to be saved. And so he follows the rule of his monastic order. But the more that he finds that he's supposed to do, the more that he finds is undone is undone. And the things that are not done overshadow and outweigh the things that have been done.

[01:21:36]So that the little that he has done does not cause the grace of God to draw near to him. Rather, it is so overshadowed by what he hasn't done that he's continually confronted with the wrath and awe and holiness of God as something that is just waiting to condemn him.

[01:21:52]>> Right.

[01:21:53]>> Right. And so if you imagine these vast collections of laws that were being compiled in say the 12th century and now have a history for a few hundred years leading up to Luther, imagine all of those laws being put on your desk and being and and somebody tells you, you know, obey this.

[01:22:09]>> Right.

[01:22:09]>> And if you're and if you don't obey in the slightest of details, you're damned.

[01:22:14]>> Right.

[01:22:14]>> Right. And so Luther is just distraught, right? He doesn't know what to do. God has become the pharaoh. Right? The law of God no longer gives rest. So what is Luther's solution? And and here I just have a little uh a little summary here.

[01:22:31]You know, Luther experiences God quay lawgiver as the pharaoh, right? So what is Luther's solution in the next slide?

[01:22:39]The idea when he has his tower experience is that justification comes by faith alone and Christ is the liberator.

[01:22:47]Christ is the one who takes on the burden of the law. He becomes the new Moses. So if God as lawgiver, you know, Luther really never says God the father that I'm aware of. So I'm just saying God as lawgiver. If that's the pharaoh, then Christ is the new Moses, right? He is the liberator from the curse of the law where the old law binds, accuses, and curses. The law of Christ binds the law that binds, accuses the law that accuses, and curses the law that curses.

[01:23:13]And he actually uses that kind of language in uh in the Galatians commentary. This new law of Christ is the law of liberty which Luther understands as peace of conscience visav the law which can no longer terrify. And so what happens here David is that the template of the Exodus has become the template of salvation.

[01:23:34]>> Right?

[01:23:35]>> Okay. So we see something we see something um going on now. How do we understand God? And this is uh this is the next slide here. If God quay lawgiver is the pharaoh, I'm sorry, God quay lawgiver is the pharaoh. God quay liberator is Jesus Christ. What this means is two things I want to point out.

[01:23:56]Number one [clears throat] is that God is now bifurcated.

[01:24:01]There's two parts of God that are at odds with each other.

[01:24:05]>> Right?

[01:24:05]>> Okay. They are antagonists. All right.

[01:24:08]The second thing that's really fascinating is that the perversion of the law so that it is no longer merciful and restgiving has now made intrinsic to salvation. Like you have to experience the perverted law in order to be saved.

[01:24:23]If you're going to experience grace, you have to come under this law that makes you feel like you're damned. And I want to jump back for a minute to the first great awakening and preaching terrors.

[01:24:32]Right? The idea of preaching terrors comes straight out of the reformation playbook. M >> like you've got to come under this law that makes you feel like you're damned and cry out in agony and groan for the grace of God so that you can then give up all trust in nature, all trust in works and turn fully to Christ. Luther writes, "Experience him for you and me."

[01:24:52]Like appropriate Christ emotionally, right?

[01:24:55]>> Um you've got to have the law before you can have that experience of grace.

[01:25:00]Again, why is there no reformation in the west or I'm sorry in the east? Why has there been no Orthodox Reformation?

[01:25:06]Well, there's no totalitarian law that's developed over centuries and there's no need to escape from that law and redefinition of salvation as escape from that law.

[01:25:15]>> Right.

[01:25:16]>> Right.

[01:25:17]>> Fantastic point.

[01:25:18]>> So, okay. Now, the next point is absolutely crucial. Okay. The law is not only understood as divine law or Catholic canon law. And I've been talking about it in those terms up to this point. But this law is also natural law. Okay? Luther doesn't significantly distinguish divine law from natural law.

[01:25:40]Okay?

[01:25:42]Now if divine law is natural law, if divine law is a restatement of natural law, and if natural law is something that is intrinsic to human nature, in other words, if there's some part of us that instantiates that law, that it is within us, then the pattern of bifurcation that happened in God is now replicated in the human person.

[01:26:07]>> Right?

[01:26:07]>> Okay. So the perversion of the law is now part of us. Like our nature is something that denies us rest. On the other hand, we're destined for grace, right? God made us to to uh to experience grace and to seek him. So liberation from that law is also part of us, right? And you can just sort of see the nasticism dripping off of this, right?

[01:26:31]So, so anyway, if if there is a totalitarian or feronic law that is now human nature and on the other hand, you're destined for escape from that, then grace means liberation from nature.

[01:26:46]It also means liberation from nature uh as God or nature as created by God, which means ultimately you're being liberated from God.

[01:26:55]>> Right.

[01:26:56]>> Right. And so you've got a template for the meaning of justification by faith alone. I don't want to say like Protestantism as a whole, but but the the form of salvation that's really at the core here, >> you know. Um, one of the Luther scholars says that his doctrine of justification is his theology. Like it just basically boils down to [laughter] so anyway, you've got a bifurcation in God.

[01:27:21]And just to put it another way, if man is made in the image of God, then that image somehow adopts that bifurcation, >> right?

[01:27:29]>> And our form of salvation is to live out that bifurcation, right? Um, you know, I put as a question mark at the bottom of the next slide, you know, what's what's the relation of this uh relation of to modern liberation from nature and from God, right? So if this is what we are, well, you know, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that the reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone like caused this historically or caused that historically. I don't necessarily think it's an efficient cause, but I do think there's a good question about whether or not it's a final cause for certain developments. And you know, by final cause, what that means is that all things have sort of a tails or goal. And that there's tails or goal that has a certain kind of causality, >> right?

[01:28:12]>> Right. A certain direction in which things are moving. And I think arisatilian categories are just really helpful here. Yeah. You know, um, >> and so I would I would think of it like that, >> right? And you know, Protestant notions of progress and secular notions of progress as well, very often they just amount to liberation from nature, right?

[01:28:31]If you think about technological progress, scientific progress, um, there's there's a lot of liberation from natural experience that's involved there, right? Uh, and I don't want to go into that. This isn't a you know this isn't a lecture about the modern world per se. It's just about the nature of salvation and the meaning of Protestantism. And I think the meaning of Protestantism is that it gives a fundamentally different form of salvation than what the the ancient world knew.

[01:28:57]>> Right.

[01:28:58]>> And um and ontology itself and how we understand ourselves as beings.

[01:29:03]>> Precisely. Yes. To put it in biblical terms, I'm glad you said that. To put it in biblical terms, the ontology of salvation is gathering. But this is an ontology of scattering, >> right?

[01:29:12]>> Okay. Like that's I I I Yeah, I really like those terms. I use them a lot in the book actually. Um so I'm glad you I'm glad you brought that up. Um okay, so a couple of objections and uh these are things that I say, you know, I think a good studious Lutheran would probably respond to me with this. Uh Luther says that after the experience of grace, the believer obeys out of gratitude for Christ's saving work. Can't this happen?

[01:29:34]I mean, if the law has been just negated somehow if you're freed from it, well, what about the idea that you're supposed to go back to law and be obedient? I mean, Lutheran in practice will do this, don't they? Um, second objection. Luther says that grace only destroys the law's capacity to terrify, not the law per se.

[01:29:51]Um, but I am implying that grace liberates from the law itself as Moses liberate released the Israelites from Egypt.

[01:29:57]>> Right. Using that same Exodus motif.

[01:29:59]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so how would I answer these?

[01:30:04]One sort of combined answer to both objections. It is that the form of the law has changed over the course of medieval history. This cannot be overstated.

[01:30:13]>> And Luther cannot just sort of wave his hand and make that form go away. Okay?

[01:30:19]When when St. Augustine says, "The law that I once feared, now I love," he's talking about human nature that was sick now being healed. And so, he loves the law. The law is never really at fault for somebody like St. Augustine. For Luther, by contrast, the form of the law has been perverted in a way that is contrary to the gospel. Luther makes that intrinsic to his understanding of salvation. And what is more, he can't just change the form of the law. He can't just say, "Well, now the law is merciful." No, it's not. You know, you've adopted into into your form of salvation. And practically, historically, this is a fact that no one has tried to unwind or undo.

[01:31:02]>> Right.

[01:31:03]>> Right.

[01:31:04]>> So if that's the case, then the law is now intrinsically terrifying.

[01:31:08]>> This terror may not always be immediately evident. Right. So think about Luther's example where he starts on his monastic order and he's not terrified at first, right? It's after doing it for several years that the burden becomes un unlivable for him, right? But the argument that I would make is that the law must reveal itself as terror at some point. And there are actually Lutheran scholars who talk about uh you know the Lutheran dialectic and being caught between grace and law and sort of swinging between the two >> as it were. You know, so there's actually some kind of version of this in Luther scholarship. Likewise, if the law is intrinsically terrifying such that terror is constitutive of its form, to enull the form is to enol the content.

[01:31:53]Right? So, you can't enol at the terror of a law that is intrinsically terrifying without enoling the law itself.

[01:31:59]>> Right?

[01:32:00]>> That's the argument. Okay? So, that that's my response to the two objections. Then again, they're both like a little little more abstract, a little more philosophical, I guess, >> but um so last slide is just a summary, two thesis, but that is pretty much it uh for the arguments that I wanted to make.

[01:32:21][snorts] So, one of the takeaways here is I mean looking at some of these reformed apologists such as Ortland and others, um do you think they would even concede especially this onlogical point because this is foundational especially from an orthodox perspective.

[01:32:44]um because your your your objections were more about how the you know regards to the law itself.

[01:32:50]But there is a as we highlighted a massive onlogical distinction here between how we understand um not just the body of Christ but what the point of of us as beings imitating Christ would be. How do you think they would respond to that?

[01:33:02]>> You know, I've really sort of racked my brain about where say a Luther scholar would try to pick this argument apart, right? Um, I think that if they don't accept the idea of natural law being written into us in some way, right? So, let's say for a minute like let's imagine that you're a Lutheran who is a nominalist.

[01:33:24]>> Okay?

[01:33:25]>> Well, it's hard to be a nominalist today. It's hard to deny essentialism because of the craziness that's happening on the LGBT level politically, right? So, the moment you say, "Well, I'm a nominalist, there's not really such a thing as human nature that's intrinsic to it." you're just opening yourself up to all kinds of u all kinds of social objections, right, from Christians. You know what I mean? So, I don't know if they're going to go there, >> right? Um but I think that I I think that they would be really hesitant. I'm I'm not exactly how sure and I haven't come up myself with how they would formulate the idea that um that this is a new ontology for man. how would how they would object to that. I mean the way that I look at it to be honest with you to be honest with you David is that like God gave man a nature and in terms of mobility that nature is say walking or running or you know riding a horse or a carriage or something like that but in the modern world there's a new nature basically automobiles that's overlaid onto the old nature so that like the way that an asphalt road is is paved onto onto the onto the ground right >> and so there's this new ontology that has been overlaid.

[01:34:41]>> Yes.

[01:34:41]>> Onto the natural one, you know, and this, in my opinion, this is the theological root of that.

[01:34:47]>> Um, but yeah, I I I think that in order to be politically safe, they have to say among Christians anyway, to be politically safe among Christians, they have to say, well, there's some sort of natural law. There's some sort of essence, right? Um there is something really >> that's what the the arguments against Jay when he was just on Tucker because he was bringing up how he believed nominalism was a domino effect leading towards a lot of the problems we're seeing in in modern Protestant Christianity and then and then they immediately respond by oh you know we're not nominalists we believe in essentialism and all this different stuff.

[01:35:21]>> Yeah. Yeah. But even among them talking about the division, what how far and how strict they are in regards to their social ethics varies quite differently.

[01:35:31]>> Yeah, it really does. It depends on who you're talking to.

[01:35:34]>> Exactly.

[01:35:35]>> It really it really does. It depends on who you're talking to. But I uh but to you know, just to repeat myself, I guess I I really have tried to think hard about where you would poke holes in this argument. um like where are they going to you know where they where they going to say like no this isn't a new human nature because the historical piece in terms of the development of the law excuse me in terms of the development of law I I think is pretty indisputable >> yes >> and the idea that Luther makes this law intrinsic to his experience of salvation I think is also indisputable you know I I just don't see a counterargument to that especially given his own words um but I think a lot of Protestants are going to balk at the idea that like whoa this is human nature now. Like this is what we've been doing for the last 500 years.

[01:36:19]>> I don't think people are going to like that conclusion. And so, >> you know, naturally, they're going to try to find some way to to disprove it, but I I I'm not 100% sure where they would go.

[01:36:27]>> Yeah, that's what I was trying to that's what the question was leading to. I'm curious because that, you know, I came at this sort of historical trajectory. I I I see it exactly the same way. I love the argument you're presenting regarding canon law and how this is the liberation from the law. But this liberation, I mean, as we talked about privately, this correlates perfectly with my understanding of transhumanism and and why is this uniquely a western civilizational thing? Why is trans the idea that technology will redeem us back to the state of Adam before the fall and bring us into a utopia? Why is this coming out of Western civilization? And given everything that you just presented and seeing it more comprehensively, it's like, well, this is a trajectory of onlogical transformation, you know, let alone we get Darwin eventually you bring up you bringing a new doctrine of what man is as this evolving creature. But all of it, even transhumanism is liberating from that law that >> let me let me let me Okay, let me respond this way. Okay. Um I I haven't talked a whole lot about the different veillances and aspects of the notion of the infinite law. Okay. So uh the way that I put it in the book is that this is an infinitizing of the law. Right?

[01:37:44]>> So let's say that each one of us now has an infinite law within us. What does that mean? Well, Luther experiences it as an infinite burden. Okay? But it doesn't have to be experienced that way because it is infinite. You don't experience it in just one singular way.

[01:38:02]>> Right?

[01:38:03]>> So when you are li think about it, think about it this way. Remember the bifurcation in man where there's a part that is representative of the law and then there's a part that's destined to be uh liberated from that law.

[01:38:13]>> The liberation is itself a form of infinity. So on the one hand nature is something that you suffer as a kind of infinite burden. Although I don't I don't think that people historically looked at their nature and said oh I'm under an infinite burden. It's more like they were sort of uh optimistically looking towards liberation from it.

[01:38:32]>> But when you are liberated, you become an infinite possibility creature. And so rather than the infinity being experienced as burden, it's experienced as possibility. And so when I think about transhumanism or I think about say modern automobiles versus, you know, walking to get to your destination, it is an explosion in the meaning of the possibility of what it is that humans can do.

[01:38:55]>> Right.

[01:38:55]>> Right. So there's there's there's dual sides to what it means to be an infinite possibility creature. Okay? And they're experienced in different ways at different places. Like when I think about, you know, the concept of the infinite in the modern world, I think transhumanism is definitely like a liberation from nature towards some sort of infinite possibility because the boundaries of space and time, i.e. bodily existence, are no longer there to restrain you.

[01:39:22]>> Right.

[01:39:23]>> Right. So you become this. But this is the sort of endpoint like this is the salvation point when you have been liberated from the body as something that is a burden something that is like the way that I like to think about it is that in the 16th 17th and 18th centuries they didn't necessarily think the body was some totalitarian thing they had to escape >> right they were optimistic about scientific progress but now if you took people like you and me who were sitting here in air conditioning talking across a computer screen and you put them back in the 16th century it would be some level of Dante's Inferno. I'm not sure what [laughter] but we would be like, "Oh my goodness, you know, what on earth has happened?

[01:40:01]This is terrible." Um, [laughter] >> but that I mean that's the way that um so I think that that notion of the body as uh as some sort of totalitarian burden or some sort of just unlivable burden is now something that's implicit in our existence at the end. It wasn't necessarily there at the beginning, which I find kind of ironic, but um but that notion of the infinite as infinite possibility, not just infinite burden, I think plays into transhumanism.

[01:40:26]>> Yeah.

[01:40:26]>> Plays into, you know, various forms of uh social and technological liberation.

[01:40:31]>> Yeah. I I I totally agree. And you know, I I think that technology too, uh, why it's unique to Protestant nations and their productivity gets back to vapor and and and this capitalism and the Protestant work ethic. And you look at America and Silicon Valley, I I write about this in my book that once we hit the Pacific Ocean, you know, the frontier ended. What is the new frontier? the no the new frontier is technological possibilities and you then you see it set up right there in Silicon Valley and that sets the new frontier for humanity and that's where we're existing in right now.

[01:41:06]>> Yeah. The new I mean it's a new frontier of liberation, right? I mean it's essentially and and I mean I I think that's really interesting. I like that sort of geographical uh way of thinking about it. You know that that's interesting. It's like we get to the we get to the other ocean now what do we do? Um yeah. Yeah, I get that. Um, I think there's a lot to be said about like the way that I think about this in terms of Luther is his idea of the law of liberty, right? Which he writes about in his work and I think I'd mentioned it at one point in the slides. Uh, the law of liberty is the freedom that Christ gives us according to Luther. And for Luther himself, this was primarily freedom of conscience, right? You're no longer burdened under the law. But the law of liberty as we understand it say in the modern United States has just got these applications all over the place right not not least of which technology >> right yeah I mean transgenderism uh all political you know so many political movements and that lead me to a question I wrote down I was curious like do you see a connection uh because this is one that I've speculated or hypothesized in streams about American political involvement being tied to the Protestant heritage and um how politics act as especially now so since highurch Protestantism is you know not really the dominant strand but especially among the evangelicals you can kind of see aspects of it the MAGA movement that >> that it's almost a sacrament that participating in the political system and American politics themselves almost become sacramental and I was wondering if you see that and if you do how it relates to again the law Okay. So, >> uh let me first say that I I lived in New Haven, Connecticut for three years.

[01:42:50]Politics is a sacrament there.

[01:42:52]>> Okay.

[01:42:53]>> Like without doubt. I grew up in South Carolina. I was, you know, interested in politics, right? I had no idea that people could be so consumed by politics >> until until I lived up there. Oh my goodness. So, so yes, there's that. I I think when it comes to connections between evangelicalism and and politics, I mean, there's a lot of ways that you could go to that, you know. Um, so for example, there's a there's a big strand in evangelicalism that's that's support, you know, support of Israel, for example.

[01:43:26]>> Yeah.

[01:43:28]>> Yeah. I I think also as well you've got um you've got just to go back to Hatch's book how populism as a political impulse has this religious expression >> right so uh you know skepticism of elites >> uh freedom of expression >> uh the idea of the audience being the sort of sovereign you know barometer right of one's truthfulness that's all there in evangelicalism because and the thing is Protestantism It sets the stage, it sets the conditions for this by its lack of institutional control, you know, so you you just basically got this open air for these things to proliferate. Exactly.

[01:44:09]Right. And so if democracy is a realm of freedom of expression, you know, Protestantism is a realm of freedom of biblical interpretation.

[01:44:18]>> Even though, you know, Nevin and Sha and those guys are not going to like that.

[01:44:22]Uh that's just what it is, >> right? You know, I I mean this is where this is where the argument that sectarianism and I'm getting away from politics, so forgive me, but this is the argument where se where the argument for sectarianism as a caricature of Protestantism really falls flat to me because all you have to do is ride down the street and you see the sectarianism, >> right?

[01:44:42]>> And for someone to look at you and say, "Hey, this isn't real Protestantism."

[01:44:46]I'd be like, "Look, man, there's a building right there and there's a building right there and there's a building right there and they all say they're Protestant." you know, like this is the fact that I'm living with. Um but um but yeah, that the various forms of populism and freedom of expression I think go hand in hand with each other.

[01:45:03]>> And just like you talked about the law in the east being, you know, interpreted by the few as opposed to interpreted by the one in the papacy and then interpreted by the many in Protestantism. I've heard so many times Protestants say, "Oh, well, you talk about sectarianism or division. Well, you guys have the Russian church and the Greek church and the Serbian church. And again, to me, it reminded me of that metaphor that you use because we have one theology. There's one body of Christ that unifies it. And yes, there are to me it it appeals back to solving the one and the many, the philosoph we have, yes, different varieties, but it's the same body of Christ. It's the same theology. It's unified in multiplicity.

[01:45:41]Whereas, they don't have unity in their multiplicity. And Catholicism is just all about unity under a singular head.

[01:45:49]>> Yes. Everybody's in communion with each other which makes it one body which is different vastly different from the wars of religion in which people were slaughtering each other or when people break away you know in the first great awakening they break away because of the experience of grace. You know this again like I'm sorry I I cannot put an end to my bafflement at this actually happening historically. But um but yes, the Orthodox are together in communion with each other and the jurisdictions being in this country or that country having national churches. I mean, it's just simplicity of organization, right?

[01:46:25]>> You know, people have to have boundaries. It's not like they're it's not like they're just angry with each other or something, you know?

[01:46:31]>> Right. So, uh I think we have If you guys have questions, send them in. I got one more. Um mine is I'm curious what your thoughts are on the future. I know this is a speculative this I just want your speculation if you feel comfortable sharing it. But you know we're seeing a lot of angst amongst the Protestant apologists right now and obviously we're seeing a massive influx of Protestants into the Orthodox church and this is causing these response videos and these criticisms and saying how or you know you can't be basically Orthodoxy is anti-American in some way. And I've made the the point looking at Pew demographic research that you look at the average age of attendee in America and you break down all religions, not just Christianity, all religions. Uh, Protestantism has the oldest and and then the all the varieties have the oldest average age of attending. Um, I think the the youngest was like in the 50s, mid to late 50s and then Catholicism sort of late 40s. But the only ones that are the three youngest demographics is Eastern Orthodoxy, Islam, and Hinduism >> in the United States. So that is a huge metric in my opinion if you're going to speculate about the future that that's where most of the energy is going to be because that's where the young people are still part of those institutions.

[01:47:50]And so I've been vocal on stream saying that I think Protestantism in a way has already it's already failed. It's in a process of generational collapse.

[01:48:00]>> Yes. Uh because how how are they going to save America when after the boomers are gone or especially Gen X? Um who's going to be there?

[01:48:11]>> Yeah. So so let me say a couple of things on that. Uh number one is that the mainline Protestant church, I mean the liberal Protestant church, they're they're kind of DOA at this point. Like they are just dead on arrival. Uh for the most part they are losing people like crazy.

[01:48:24]>> The second thing is a more scholarly point. uh Burman has uh in the article that I mentioned about the history of revolutions he connects various revolutions with transformations of religion right so the reformation is the Protestant revolution uh then he gets to the revolutionary period the American and French revolutions the religious shift there is dism uh the Russian revolution the religious shift is to atheism and uh you know I've asked myself okay if you think that there's revolutions that are happening and there's religious shifts that occur within them. You know, what's the next religious shift, right? If we're living through some kind of revolutionary time, particularly in the last decade, like what kind of religion now ascends? And just looking at it today, today I'd look at Europe, for example, and I think, okay, uh Islam is clearly getting bigger.

[01:49:16]>> Yeah.

[01:49:16]>> Right. Um the occult is clearly getting bigger as its own kind of religious form >> and Druidism, I think, are the fastest growing in England.

[01:49:24]>> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Right. outside of Islam, of course.

[01:49:26]>> Yeah. Yeah. Outside of Islam. Um, so you've got Islam and you've got occultism and then you've got orthodoxy.

[01:49:35]>> Yeah.

[01:49:35]>> Right. Orthodoxy is like the like and in my mind it's like, okay, if there's another revolution because modernity has these cycles of revolution, >> you know, what religion comes next and is this, you know, obviously I'm orthodox, so I I hope it's orthodoxy, right? you know, but the these are the forms that seem to be growing uh at at the time at right now. So, >> in regarding the the rise in the occult and paganism, um I I've made the claim that this has to do with the problems of modernity itself. Not that the average person is even conscious of this, but I always describe the five pillars of modernity as individualism, rationalism, scientism, technological progress, and democracy. And that really those things defined the modern period. And the promise of modernity, you know, the carrot that got people to go forward was that every generation was going to be successively better and that the opportunities would emerge. Well, that is certainly not true for my generation, the millennials or the Gen Z generation after me. the prospects of owning a home, the difficulties of finding a wife, uh career opportunities, being able to make enough money to become financially successful or or not be stressed out about money in certain ways, uh much more difficult. And so I think young people and and that's why when you look at what religions are young people flocking to, I've made the argument that it's preodern faith systems. So orthodoxy being one >> trad Catholicism but I even during my defense of my dissertation I had a aristoilian uh professor and she was she does like person and neuroscience theories philosophy of mind type stuff and she asked me when I was presenting she said well I have one question why do you claim that orthodoxy is only is preodern and you're comparing it and contrasting with Catholicism Catholicism is clearly preodern and my point was really well after Vatican 2 and you start looking at all these different can you really claim that Catholicism is still a premodern orientation and and she even conceded she's like well you make a good point so paganism right you look at some of the right-wing uh you know political movements and they're promoting like Nordic Germanic druidic paganism these type of things so it's the occult it's Islam which is preodern and there's orthodoxy >> and I that subconsciously or unconsciously, people are trying to find an escape of modernity. And I argue that transhumanism is the endpoint of the modernist project. And so I think when you're talking about these political revolutions, if they adopt paganism, I don't see that as contrasting with this idea of technological augmentation or that technology is going to liberate us. I really see those in tandem. And when you look at some of these transhumanist religions, >> they speak very occultic about what they believe and and the point of man or even you know Crowley's the lima about the will and and manifesting the will and that in the virtual reality or the augmentation of the human body your will will be able to dictate and fulfill all the desires that your heart you know wants. So >> that's why I I would thinking about where the re revolution is going.

[01:52:48]Protestantism I believe is collapsing under its own weight to some degree and it's generational.

[01:52:54]>> There's another there's another scholar um Robert Bella who's a sociologist from the second half of the you know Robert Bella? Yeah.

[01:53:02]>> Yeah. So um Bella writes at one point in one of his essays that Protestantism may end up being a kind of liinal state or like a throughway, you know, because before it you have preodern things, after it you have secularism, >> right?

[01:53:20]>> You know, and he's a liberal Protestant saying this, right? He just sort of realizes that it's a transitional phase towards something else.

[01:53:28]>> Yeah. And um I tend to agree with him on that that Protestantism is [sighs] insolvent enough that people will move out from it as they have already on the mainline the mainline level, right?

[01:53:46]Because you know if you've got the Democratic party, you don't really need a mainline church for the most part. You know what I mean?

[01:53:54]And the way they present their ideas are very much in a sort of spiritual religious rhetoric.

[01:53:59]>> Yeah. Yeah. Very much, very much.

[01:54:00]>> And it mirrors Christianity. You know, the old idea, you know, many social justice is is the the love of Christ, right? We have to deal with the injust they very much repackage Christianity in a digestible progressive form.

[01:54:14]>> Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, history has these examples, right? So if you think about camp meetings during the second grade awakening, I mean these are like these are like 1810 examples of Woodstock. You know what I mean? Like people go out seriously people go out in the woods for a few days. They're having a party. There's really entertaining preachers out there and souls are getting saved and you know this is in Hatch's book by the way which again is great but like it's it's very similar, you know, and the and the elites are like a gasast at it because they feel like it's just totally out of control, you know. Um but yeah, completely. in secularization theory is that you know a the basic pattern and ethos continues past the religious affiliation. So the religious affiliation goes away but you've still got the spirit of your grandparents in your veins. You're just not going to church with it now.

[01:55:02]>> Right.

[01:55:03]>> No. And and that's what I appeal to Taylor and Hobbermas's theory of the post-secular society or the post-secular turn >> that you know Mercil Aliad famous was talking about how man is not homo sapien or homo sapiens sapian he's homo religious >> and that that is the foundation of what man actually is and and I've seen fathers make this argument that man can't help but be religious it's just what do you put as your ultimate value structure and so in my book I argue the reason why I think projecting into the future that the conflict in Western civilization assuming that Islam doesn't just take over much of Europe >> that it's going to be between the preodern theosis of orthodoxy and the apotheosis of transhumanism or technology and that >> in the post secular turn there is no delineate you know you don't have to use Ninian smart seven dimensions of religion to argue that something is religious that in the postsecular turn everything is about ultim Imate meaning con construction. So what is your ultimate meaning? So it doesn't matter if you're a Marxist, doesn't matter if you're a transhuman, there are all religious orientations during the post-secular turn and Charles Taylor and Hobbermas like hammered this down in in the 20th century. And I think it's true.

[01:56:19]>> Yeah. Yeah. No, it's really interesting and I think that the connection you were making earlier between transhumanism and the occult is just really interesting, you know, and it it it seems it seems very much to make sense that uh you know, speaking as a southerner with certain stereotypes, it really seems like a California thing. You know what I mean? Like if there's people out there, they're they're following this and both both the movement towards transhumanism and the leanings towards the occult are there in the same region geographically, you know, as a kind of hub or center for its development. You know what I mean?

[01:56:51][snorts] Uh yeah, it's really interesting. It's really interesting.

[01:56:54]And I I'm inclined to agree with you.

[01:56:56]I'm inclined to think, you know, my my immediate response is, yeah, you've got movements towards things that are highly traditional and then you've got really the next step in the advance of progress, which is completely beyond Protestantism, right? Um, yeah. and and and how could Protestantism deal with where you know western civilization is moving towards and this highly I mean once the internet comes in to place we've seen this perpetual decline and I think again this subconscious or unconscious movement of people is that they're fleeing for something that is preodern which means it's mystical it's communal it's not individualistic it's it's not limited by rationalism science does not define behind all of epistemology.

[01:57:44]And and this is why at first the most appealing I think is trad Catholicism, but that's why people are you see this general progression towards orthodoxy that maybe I'll become Catholic because it's still western. I don't have to give up my European or feel like I'm no longer, you know, Italian or or French ancestry. But then you get into the Catholic Church and you're not escaping the problems. In fact, the Catholic Church is moving forward with it. We see Krislam in Abu Dhabi, you know, the Abrahamic faith center where they have the synagogue, the mosque, and the Catholic Church representing the faith of the future. The Abrahamic faith center. Well, that's accuminism. Well, that's moving towards again perennialism. That means a further dissolution of boundaries. That's exactly what I say I argue that that is the occult psychedelic trajectory of the future. That's why we can't even say man's not an animal or a man is not a woman. All boundaries are dissolving.

[01:58:37]When you see Antifa march, no border, no wall, no USA at all, what what is that?

[01:58:42]It's not just political. It's that there's a mentality of the dissolution of boundaries as somehow the liberation of mankind itself. And see, I think though, I think, you know, looking at that from an arisatilian lens, right?

[01:58:55]Everything is a body. He uses body image all the time, right? And a body that has no boundaries is again a dead body.

[01:59:00]Yeah.

[01:59:01]>> Right. You know, the body has to have some sort of limit in order to uh to take shape, right?

[01:59:06]>> Yeah. Um and so you know my answer to that uh my answer to that is that if you if you can see if you see the scriptures in terms of work and rest and how they limit each other then this is the basic practical form of limitation. It's not necessarily a theological limitation but it's a practical form of limitation. But but no, to get back to the what you're saying about modernity, I mean, I yeah, I agree. It's um it's it's really it's just really fascinating to think about how how the limits have just faded and so much of our struggle is how to rediscover them. I meant to ask you, you know, when people are looking at orthodoxy, what part do you think the moral example of the saints plays in that? Because you listed a bunch of things that draw people to orthodoxy. Um I think and you know coming out of a military context like you're supposed to look up to your officers. They're supposed to be good soldiers or your high-ranking NCOs's you know you're supposed to look up to those guys and there and there are sort of heroes of the faith. Right.

[02:00:06]>> Right.

[02:00:06]>> And you know what do you think the example of saints plays into that because here are people that live meaningful lives. You know pick your favorite 20th century saints St. John Maximovic or you know St. Picios or St. sovereigny or or or whoever, you know.

[02:00:23]Um what do you think about that and how it's playing in? Do you think it's significant or do you think it's one of the lesser uh factors?

[02:00:30]>> I think it's significant for people that already come to the church. So I think the lives of the saints is from and just this is my engagement with mostly young men but general people but mostly young men that I talk to is the the catalyst for orthodoxy tend to be theodysy. First the recognition if they if they weren't Christian or they left Christianity it's the recognition that there's evil and then that sets them on a journey of trying to figure out what's the opposite usually means Christ then means which one then through history and theology it must be orthodoxy and with once they get to the church the lives of the saints and father Peter hears is you know he's always hammering people once you convert read the lives of the saints now they do have role models you know I've been big on promoting a lot of the warriors saying St. Constantine, St. theft in the great um that then you can see what is what is masculinity for for example you know like that we just had 2022 2023 was the red pill manosphere explosion right men trying to deal with the aolings of feminism and much of their prescription though their description of western civilization is accurate what are the prescriptions they offer well you must make as much money as you can you you know you need to get the nice car you got to make sure that you looks backs and that you're the best looking version that you can possibly well it's appealing to the sentiments of the women that they're criticizing. Right? So instead of changing the game and flipping the the game board over and say I'm not going to play the feminist game of you know they talk about hypergamy that women are always looking for the next best option. Well their their solution to that is not to return to tradition to allow God's provident become you know a a man of God and allow God's providence to bring the right person in your life. Well, if that's the game, well, then you got to become the best version that she'll never leave you because she couldn't do better or something to that degree.

[02:02:25]>> Yeah.

[02:02:25]>> So, the lives of the saints offer an example. What is a man? A man is someone who takes on responsibility. A man is something that serves the collective. A man is not focused on himself. Every great man of history was self-sacrificial, indicative of Christ being the representative of what man's tilos is. And so I think a lot of people and I and most most of the young men I've spoke with their first entry into the church wasn't necessarily through reading the lives of the saints but I see the transformation of them and the fronom and becoming more orthodox is that's how you do it. Obviously you learn the theology but if you just have all the rational understandings of the energy essence distinction the loi loi distin logos loi distinction all this stuff well you're still it's all rational orthodoxy it's mystical it's a lived experience in that way getting into the lives of the saints now you have real spiritual role models and I think that is something that protestantism often can't provide >> yeah I think I I agree with you I think that protestantism lacks the role models in general I mean it certainly lacked them when I was when I was a child to be to be a or when I was younger uh to be a to be a sort of role model Protestant was to be a good speaker a good preacher maybe or to know your theology but orthodoxy it seems to me in practice and I've been orthodox for you know 14 14 years now something like that um orthodoxy strikes me as much as anything else as a habit of prayer and a habit of thought >> you know that that is what you are doing >> yeah So, uh, yes, there are disciplines involved. There are rules involved. All of that stuff is important. It has its place. Um, but it's a habit of prayer and a habit of thought.

[02:04:11]>> Yeah.

[02:04:11]>> And so, to learn to be orthodox is to learn the habit of prayer and the habit of thought. And so when I say habit of thought, I mean the internal struggle like figuring out that, oh, I'm thinking complaining thoughts or I'm thinking angry thoughts towards someone or I'm, you know, getting down on myself mentally and realizing that those are temptations. Like having the self-awareness to see that and to stop it, you know, saying prayers or whatever or, you know, I'm thinking hateful things about this person or whatever that, you know, prayer plays into that.

[02:04:42]I think prayer helps us have the the consciousness of that. But um I I think you know if you if you want to say well you know orthodoxy is something that's going to help us be better men which I definitely think it will uh I still think fundamentally the practice is prayer like what does it mean to pray to agree with you >> I don't mean that I diminish prayer in any way.

[02:05:05]>> I don't think you were think I'm just trying to throw my two cents in man. Um [laughter] but um I think the saints are so good because they exemplify it for us. It's not just a book that says here how you here's how you should pray or like reading the scriptures and Jesus went out into the wilderness to pray. Okay.

[02:05:25]Like no you've actually got people who recently in the last century can can show you and talk to you. I mean you know the little snippets that are online whatever you know all the >> St. Sron.

[02:05:35]>> Yeah. So helpful.

[02:05:36]>> I have his book on prayer.

[02:05:38]>> Yeah. Yeah. So good. so helpful.

[02:05:40]>> So anyway, >> no, I told you and that was what Father Michael Markon, he's a a Greek Orthodox priest in Tennessee, came on last week and we talked about spiritual warfare and that was his whole thing is that one of his criticisms of Protestantism or American Christianity in general is that it externalizes spiritual warfare and that orthodox we have to realize that you're the one that is being acted upon.

[02:06:05]You're the one that the demon is acting through. You are you are the vessel of of spiritual warfare. It's not out here, it's in here. And that's why the prayer is so important. He said, "What what are you concerned about? What's going on, you know, complaining about the Epstein client list or anything that happened if you can't even keep your prayer rule?"

[02:06:25]>> Yeah, precisely. That sums it up so well that like the the if you're into current events, the news feed can be like you can look at it daily or whatever. It could just be your daily fix or you can do it for hours if you want to. But if you're doing that and you're not keeping your prayer rule, then the priorities are not in line where they should be.

[02:06:42]You know, the prayer rule should should come first in some way. I read something recently from uh St. Theophon >> where he says, you know, it's good to do a a few prostrations here and there throughout your day. whenever you have a moment, if you're able, stop and do just a few prostrations just to sort of reset your mind, you know, and >> like really I I it takes it takes a certain like you have to be able to do it. I mean, you can't do that if you're in an office full of people, right?

[02:07:13]>> Right. [laughter] Pharisee.

[02:07:15]>> Yeah. Yeah. You can't Yeah, you can't do that. But but it's a really good thing to do just for like getting your mind focused in the right direction, you know.

[02:07:23]>> Yeah. No, I totally agree.

[02:07:25]>> Yeah. Um, Green Emperor had a question for you. Throw in 10 bucks. Thank you very much. Um, oh, Master and Margarita profile pick. That's a great great book.

[02:07:37]Um, could you explain the issue with forensic justification? I have been seeing a lot of Protestants lately say they are being strawman about this issue with them saying that it is not a legal fiction.

[02:07:53]Um, well, okay. Forensic justification basically means that the justification is external like it's placed on you as opposed to internal transformation.

[02:08:02]Right? That I guess is the I guess the argument that perspective is what they're saying is a straw man. Um because I've heard Lutheran say, you know, there's an onlogical transformation. But to be honest with you, I don't know. Okay.

[02:08:18]Luther says that you appropriate Christ for you and for me, which means there is some kind of experience that you're supposed to have. In my opinion, that experience is I was under so much pressure under the law and now I'm released from that. And there is a certain emotional experience that goes on with that. Right?

[02:08:36]>> Um I don't think that that kind of experience like let's say you allow that and you say, "Well, that's forens forensic justification." uh it does involve a kind of religious experience.

[02:08:48]So it is therefore not a legal fiction.

[02:08:50]But does it involve the kind of moral transformation that you see in orthodoxy? Like no. Orthodoxy is a lifetime of transformation that is meant to be salvific in which particularly the experiences of prayer uh open doors to the experience of God over a lifetime.

[02:09:09]Right? So it's a hab it's a it's a much more longstanding kind of habit. It's not a single experience. Um I hope I'm getting at the question well there. I think >> I think that you're just looking at two fundamentally different forms of religious experience right that the very sort of you know early modern you know reformation and post-reformation up to the first and second great awakening kind of religious experience is based on coming under this pressure and then the pressure being released and you have an experience of that right there is a kind of release that's involved and it can be very joyous right I'm sure Luther was very happy after his tower experience but what orthod Oxy is getting at is something very different because you're striving by the grace of God to be a cleansed vessel that the Holy Spirit can inhabit, >> right?

[02:10:01]>> And that happens over years, >> right?

[02:10:03]>> So that it well, okay, I I think it happens over years. Maybe for some people it happens really quickly.

[02:10:08]>> I don't know anyone that's had a an immediate cleansing in which that occurred.

[02:10:13]>> Yes. Um, but it's it's a it's a it's an experience that builds into the future, >> not something that happens at the beginning and then you sort of look back at, >> you know. Um, so so it's a really different form of religious experience.

[02:10:31]>> Um, but I would not say forensic justification is a legal fiction to the extent that it involves a a real experience. There's this real emotional event that happens. I just think the form of that epiphany and >> my followup question for you is and I really don't know the answer to this.

[02:10:47]What is the technicalities in which one is ontologically transformed in their theology? You know we have the energy essence distinction and that can be explicated and and you can understand how the ontological transformation happens toistic theology they have the analogia entice and so you're not really engaging directly with God's love. You know there's an analogy in which you're you're participating in for your sanctification for Protestantism. What what is it that is are they directly engaging with God? I mean, I' i've heard people say that they think that the the Holy Spirit's indwelling in them and giving them, but for those that are the articulators of their theological paradigm, what is the mechanism in that which is actually happening?

[02:11:31]>> You know, [sighs] I've studied the Lutheran pyotists before who are very big on internal experience, but they're more like devotional writers for the most part. They're not theologians. So they're not like thematizing logically what it is that they're experience as I remember what their experience is as I remember them.

[02:11:51]>> So I don't want to speak of something that I don't know. I haven't encountered I have not encountered some sort of systematic exposition of what this experience is along the lines of theosis or analogantis or or energy essences.

[02:12:07]>> Um that's not to say it's not there.

[02:12:09]Okay? So it may be there and I just haven't encountered it but I haven't encountered it myself.

[02:12:13]>> Okay.

[02:12:15]And lockep through and five no comment.

[02:12:17]Thank you very much brother. And K dot gifted a cotal crew membership along with becoming a member. Thank you very much K Dot. And 270 Orthob bro says it's not much but it's something brother. I appreciate your content. Well thank you man. I really appreciate that. And on dono chat Matt Scragggins member of the Logos Academy says sorry it's not more.

[02:12:37]Best I can do right now. Threw in $5.

[02:12:39]says, "Great stream. Thank you, Dr. Kanty." So, um, I think that's it, unless anyone has any questions. Uh, major thank you to you coming on and presenting this. I hope I actually hope that some of the Lutheran or some of the reformed apologists hear it. And I'd be very curious to see what their response arguments are and how how they poke holes in your presentation because one, it's novel. It's not simplistic. It's not your run-of-the-mill criticism of of Protestantism, you know, solos scriptorera uh subjectivism. It's historical and then it's philosophical in regards to the canon law. And I really love that approach because it's something that I told you both privately on the phone and and today that I underappreciated in my investigation of intellectual history. And so I'm very interested in getting into some of the books that you referenced to learn a little bit more about that. and its impact on Western civilization.

[02:13:39]>> Okay. Well, yeah, I hope you found them helpful and I hope everybody who uh who watched, you know, I hope it's I hope this has been good for you. So, >> all right. Well, and also just so we just for clarity, uh I pulled the book up, but guys, go get First John revised and extended on dosatism and the resurrection. Um you can get that with this link right here.

[02:14:03]We'll share it in the live chat. And is there anything else you'd want to promote? Um anything that you while we have the audience or anybody watches this in the future in which they they could >> um if uh if you are in the southeast, I'm going to be talking at the Lwell conference in September.

[02:14:22]>> Oh, nice.

[02:14:23]>> So, there's a handful of other folks that are going to be speaking there.

[02:14:26]>> Um Dr. David Bradshaw is going to be there. Jay Dyer is going to be talking.

[02:14:31]uh few other folks are going to be talking and I will be giving a I'm going to be giving a talk on u the garden of Eden and the state of nature.

[02:14:40]>> Oh, very cool.

[02:14:42]>> So that that should be fun.

[02:14:43]>> Yeah. All right. Well, thank you very much. Do appreciate you coming here and spending the time giving us your time and and the willingness to put a fantastic presentation together. So, thank you very much, guys. Smash that like and I will be back potentially tomorrow or if not definitely Friday. We have a sponsored stream that I'm preparing for on Bolevik communist persecution of Orthodox Christians. So I'm trying to put all that together.

[02:15:10]>> Nice. That's good. That's worth tuning into.

[02:15:12]>> Yeah. Well, there's so much there. I was a little once I began the research a little overwhelmed because where do you start? Uh you know you got Nicholas, the Hollowore, the Pesti experiments in Romania.

[02:15:24]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there's so much to to cover. Um, so I may just do like a general overview and the gentleman who requested it asked to read Father Arcini's book um and his time in the goologs, which I have not done. So, I got to get into that as well. So, that's why it may be pushed back a few days while I try to just cover more ground before getting on here and talking about it.

[02:15:46]>> I'll be sure to watch it when it comes out.

[02:15:48]>> Well, thank you. Thank you very much and thanks again uh for coming today. So, thank you all for the support. Thanks everyone who tuned in and I will see you in the next one as always. Until then, God bless.