I agree. I wonder what he could do though with an overtly political interlocutor like Bethel McGrew for instance. I’d like to see dialogos at work in a conversation that challenges “niceness” in terms of content.
John, if you see this, I would love to hear you comment on the value or the centrality of self-identity in one's religious identity. How does conscious, articulable awareness (Polanyi) of...facts? abstractions? relate to the more fundamental/full reality of one's being (act vs potency, perhaps)? In your Thunder Bay talk you outlined these aspects of "things consciousness must deal with": Awakeness - attentive Awareness - capable of receiving info from the environment & recognizing it (memory?) Access - unconscious to conscious, able to "use" info/knowledge (memory?) Authority/authorship - private to me, ownership?, agency over it? Aspectuality - of Environment & Experience or qualia Again, how do these bullet points relate to self-identity? What is the relationship btw self-identity and being (the God-Man relation, maybe). Btw, eager for your talk with Jordan Daniel Wood. The more intellectually interesting Jordan, imo. Not trapped in the either/or-ism of the Exclusivist Religion of the Right Side of History.
I was screaming Dallas Willard for 30minutes... When you finally mentioned him and his influence on Foster I was like "Finally!". Willard also taught a fellow named James Bryan Smith who touched on Simplicity for Christians through the Good and Beautiful series. Dallas Willard would meaningful for VerVaeke to read through and learn about. I would also say that Willard was a paragon in academia who kept the humanities in check. Upon his death academia changed dramatically and the universities are in a spiral.
Happy new year to you and your family pastor Paul 🙏! May the Lord keep you and your family in health and abundant blessings! We, the comment section people love you!!
I always enjoy listening to you two as I feel as if you’re able to articulate the very struggle I struggle through each day. I try to capture it with writings but it’s been challenging to abstract in isolation for extended periods of time. Anyway, thank you both for what you do.
This was wonderful to listen to. Got me thinking about grappling as well, specifically on Greco Roman wrestling where it’s more about stance and upper body instead of attacking legs , or below the belt at all.
You're always such a wonderful foil for John to interact with Paul, thank you both John and Paul for a great discussion that keeps the windows and doors open when delving into ideas and thought that might and most times do end without the participants understanding each other in a respectful manner. Peace
Socrates isn't in competition with Christ, it's best to look at him as a saint, or and _image_ of Christ. I think what *IS* important though, is to understand that what makes Socrates salient or relevant at all in the first place is the framing of Christ (yes, for us now _and_ historically). D.C. Schindler is very evidently using Socrates as an Allegory of Christ.
John Wesley Journo entry, interesting historical anecdote: “Thur. 27 1742. - We left Birstal and on Friday, 28, came to Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I read, with great expectation, yesterday and today, Xenophon’s “Memorable things of Socrates.” I was utterly amazed at his want of judgment. How many of these things would Plato never have mentioned! But it may be well that we see the shades too of the brightest picture in all heathen antiquity. We came to Newcastle about six; and, after a short refreshment”
John’s interest in the common search amongst the Islamic world and Christian world is exciting. The Sicilian Norman Kings clearly inhabited this world. Interesting the unsurpassed beauty coming out of this vision.
What do you mean by pluralism? The novel exposure of individuals (alternately persons) to the wide variety of religious information & worldviews? There is the problem of conflating abstract propositional "knowledge" with being. If all true knowledge is personal. And all personal knowledge is inextricably tied to practice and ritual and tradition. Then, exposure to new propositional knowledge (which I take as potency) is not really such a problem. It's just an expansion of articulable consciousness, and this can only be lived to degree. Because "what you see and hear depends a lot upon where you're standing and the kind of person you are" (ie all knowledge is personal...salience or relevance realization) And one can only see what they are initiated into. Conscious, articulable awareness is connected to bodily awareness (procedural, perspectival, and most deeply participatory). To what degree does one's participatory knowing in the abstract, via screens perhaps, dictate or contribute to the fullness of their being? Their lived reality? Idk. Time will tell. I think the question of the difference between religious pluralism (a la carte buffet of religions for the individual to gnomic-ly choose) and religious perennialism (the tao, all truth is God's truth, anything participating in being is true to some degree) is big.
Great talk, Paul! We need all the virtue in the world and if it's Jesus or Socrates (or both) who inspires you, the world wins either way! :) The doing practice with others aspect brings in a vital part in the new series and it's cool as John mentioned that the Stoa is hosting a place for that alongside the weekly episodes to participate more deeply and with others.
I understand, too, that meditation usually involved the actual reciting of Scripture, and that contemplation is built upon that reception of the truth of Scripture. It is all, of course, focused on the Holy Trinity and pursuit of the fullest possible experience in this life of union with God. The supernatural character of Christian meditation and contemplation is on quite an other level above any non Christian practices, which only serve as pointers to human need for knowledge of the true God..
Doesn’t Thunder Bay demonstrate that pluralism is a good thing? Something not to be feared or be anxious about? IMO Logos pervades the world and if we are open to it pluralism makes us healthier. Vervaeke and Pageau are great book ends to any dialog. I’m no longer put off or threatened by diverse approaches to getting at Logos. 2023 is starting great my friends.
Thunder Bay and the continuing conversation in this corner is wonderful, largely due to the spirit each participant brings to it ...but also to the broader context of plenty and peace. Pluralism can also mean genocide. Don't mistake me - I am anxious, but see the immense value in dialogue.
"Pluralism" is just a step (or a series of steps) on a journey. Good or Bad; we are not wise enough to know the future of it ^^ ❤ But we can do the best we can! ❤
😺I hope JV will start at the beginning, and keep repeating definitions, so those of us who have not learned about Socrates and Plato will not be lost in all the verbiage. There are just too many names and words tossed around without definitions, that my meaning crisis anxiety actually gets exacerbated rather than remedied. 🐿
@@mylesflaig148 I get what you mean. Some of the terms are above me. Vervaeke explains them but I have to watch a lot of his talks to get his meaning. Some of these guys fly at 30000 feet while I hang glide at 1500 feet :)
One major piece that I think is missing in this corner is an understanding of Hermeticism/Gnosticism and its roots in Platonism and how those are foundational for the modern Dialectic method all the way through to the post-modernists. There was an excellent discussion with James Lindsay, Steven Coughlin, and Jay Dyer that I would be happy to link you to.
"Most of the West's picture of Islam is shaped by recent actions" Historical actions too. And the fact that their countries don't look very well put together, even without Western interference. I don't think the name "Eugene" is going to make a comeback any time soon, but I don't think the modern West is really ever going to see Islam as a peer.
I disagree, I think it’s spreading as a way to be “manly”, and in our prisons, music etc has had jumped over ethnic differences. I think there’s a reason the millenialism that moved from Christianity to Deism hopes for it to be a unifier the way we see it in Dune, and Napoleon saw it as something he wished he could use to make a new warrior religion, but knew he couldn’t unless he deified himself with conquest of the East and Russia. I think it’s logic and mystic experiences can be extracted out, just as they have been/are in Christianity in the name of universalist religion and world peace and they will be rife for it as well as they industrialize and continue to lose people to atheism, agnosticism and the nones, and this is also common among second and third generation immigrants of all religions in the west. The stupid delesional manosphere and Tate also show leanings in this direction. Though I question how many of the weaklings living as vicarious alpha males in those areas are willing to make that big of a commitment: some people did eat Tide pods. I also think for a small percentage of men who are actually extremely effective some will sell their culture out to get extra women, and that is an influential percentage of the populace. You see with Aubrey Marcus and Will Smith all the way back to John Dee people who were willing to engage in cuckoldry and esotericism for new women and spiritual power as well. I wouldn’t hold out any naive hopes.
54:40 yeah exactly, since it was written down and time has past, we started to take everything to litterally, and then with power corrupting the soul or the self, we/some people started to use passages to have it their way playing peoples feelings fears... Sometimes we do it ourselves by saying something not thinking about how others receive this or the intentions. I know that many if not most people cant handle a lot of my thoughts or thinking patterns.
You might like to look at, and perhaps comment on, the YT videos on TCTP Truth Sleuths channel: "Dialectical Roots & Its Modern Weaponization" and "Platonic Roots of Marxism & Secret Societies". They touch on current issues and how Protestant and Catholic churches have been impacted. James Lindsay and Stephen Coughlin (and for the Ortho Bros J Dyer!) contribute to the discussions.
That whole line of thinking, while addressing serious philosophy is in a book read on UA-cam called Orthodox Survival Course. It’s part of where Dyer is getting it, but it has been part of their thinking for a very long time now, what Rose does is address perennialism, continental philosophy, naturalist spiritualism and religious but not religious, Nietzsche, and modernity in an updated way because he came from all that, understands it, and can legitimately argue with it in a way most Christians (especially modern western churches without the philosophical chops) aren’t able to. Most just avoid the devil and make a cartoon out of it instead of standing him down in real argument with skin in the game. There are issues I see with people falling into a trap with it f becoming captured by paranoia, Russian sympathizers on Putin and Dugin, anti semitism etc. but he doesn’t advocate that. They lose his nuance due to the shock of what he is saying and look for some worldly solution. He’s still right whether or not people make those mistakes. His Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future is the other one on this topic. They’re on the YT channel Orthodox Reactionary.
@@Ac-ip5hd I have read some Seraphim Rose, and appreciated much of it, while dissenting from some of the erroneous notions that have been maintained in Eastern Orthodoxy. I like his translation of Pomazansky's work on Dogmatic Theology. Isn't Dugin a disciple of the evil Crowley fellow?.
@@anselman3156 I’ve heard he is or was, but I think he’s also Orthodox and might have rejected or tried to “integrate” him. To be honestI read his essay against the west and listened to some stuff on YT back when stuff was happening and Obama was still in. I was more political back then and just knew I didn’t like him and it was bad. I think he’s a right wing Christian Gnostic for some kind of neo Fascism that he justifies with our decay and satanic west.
54:28 "is a christian someone who holds these propositions in their head?" yes. Does *what you THINK you think* (most say believe) about facts (abstractions rooted in a Divided Man or subject-object divided world) reflect reality or being per se?
I'm very much loving this conversation, but all these commercials constantly hijacking my limbic system... Why is it John doesn't have this going on on his channel but is happening here?
44:50 Good grief, yes. Let's stop trying to convert each other. The hubristic assumptions behind "I think that I'm objectively correct about these facts." is obtuse and very unhelpful. *waits for the replies. I'll write them out secretly and see how closely they match*
@@AmidstTheLight85 by initiative, do you mean goal or aim? You will definitely find people who are into mysticism and perennialism (myself & many others), but that's a small arm of the larger body (or the heart ;)).
I believed so strongly in John’s project, Peterson, Jung etc. Thankfully, and thanks to John I was able to get something coherent out of an overload of insight, knowledge, world religions, science, meditation etc. We cannot just go back, but the presentation that none of this is there in Christianity, and something totally new and unifying, and total of all religions, all personal is absolutely necessary is false. The degree the church fathers are full of everything he presents and ancient philosophy and practice is clear. It is the greater discipline and call, that forces discernment and stances to a greater degree than John and modern man are willing is what is rejected, and a sterner line on good and evil. It means certain elements of what John reduces to “serious play” (ie the highest religious experiences that can be demonic) are something that he, and more so Anderson Todd, and even more so New Age and the Gnostic cesspool John’s leaderless discord has become, where ironically the two Christian semi positivist conservatives have taken half the reigns in response (partly due to the fact they are the only ones with the discipline to show up). It’s a doomed project hat falsely posits itself as transcending the prior religions, and John’s good faith will not trump the fact it is part of a false presentation of Christianity that is due to the rationalization of Western Christianity, Protestantism, and chiliasm. It, Jung, Chardin, Mcgilchrist are all chiliastic projects, and even Peterson has it against his will. The use of art in his religion that’s not a religion (demonic art fit for a Tool album not a religion or culture), the tendencies of people in these spheres to occultism, the need for headless gods as the symbol of RATNR mean that it will be amorphous until things get bad enough and men of action take control, who will not be so nice and limp wristed as John and Jordan Hall, Ken Wilbur, David Fuller etc. There is nothing in John or Jordan’s project that will facilitate marriage and child rearing, but much that apologetics can discern and subjugate as gold out of Egypt. John and Anderson can’t even say girlfriend or wife about their “partners” and John can’t even call Foucault necrophiliac pedophile desires evil, we have to learn from it endlessly and integrate post modern critique as if they were the only ones to criticize, and Socrates, Heraclitus, Dante, and Christ didn’t do it better, (and it’s all for the real aim of game b, John’s desire comes out clearly in Neoplatonism being used to trump Christianity when speaking of Giordano Bruno, it’s the same naturalism over Christianity in Hillman and Chardin.) This ally work, dream guides, holy apparitions show themselves demonic and died for me when the Bible’s command to try the spirits and adhere to the dogma and prayers of the original church were employed on them, asking/forcing them to recite the prayers and creeds. It’s a refusal to let go of a child’s toy, which turns modern man into a toy for spirits. And modern “christian” conservatism, neoliberalism, or orthodox monarchism that gets in bed with Duggin’s Gnosticism, or the flat salt of positivism, TLC Protestantism here, charismatic Christianity etc are all just the salt that has gone flat. And since the French Revolution has been fit for nothing but to be trampled. The only way forward is the way of tears. What’s coming out of John’s project is a move that will be co-opted by everything he is truly concerned about. It’s the one world religion of antichrist that will be part of globalism, and a much more corrupt and forceful version of his politics and the Jacobinism he and Chloe limp wristedly critique while excusing. Wether the church becomes Amish, or fights for its true self, or comes in good faith dialogue with John, the shared conciliatory conversation can bring people back, but as he and academia know, his project will convert more and assert itself through new age unification of worldly truth, justified by science and the spirit of the times. I think the discussions should still be had to put the truth out there, and convert as many as possible, but it will be a small number who are capable of accepting it. John knows his Neoplatonic project and science will win the conversation and any stern Christianity that engages it while holding its fixity in this dialogue will lose out to those that become a part of the project and catamite themselves to the universal project.
The insight that Aquinas is perhaps more deeply neo-platonic than Aristotelian is historically well founded. His Primary and secondary education was in neoplatonism taught by the Benedictines who had little grasp of Aristotle because of their times. The Aristotelian venture, is a later development under the influence of Albertus Magnus. To my mind, the Summa Theologiae, is what we today would call a thought experiment and not always a successful one. He is an adventurer who is rightly excited by the European rediscovery of Aristotle, newly out of obscurity from the Muslim world! Intuition is bang on, I think!
I like a lot about f Aquinas, but believe the criticism that he over intellectualised and chopped up Christianity to be true. I believe this put the church on the chopping block of reason in the reformation, and all then all of Christianity was then on the chopping block of the Enlightenment and Age of Reason, and it’s deism was on the chopping block for Kant, whose subjective morality and religious experience are ready to be seized for a mcmindful new age antichrist unification. I think John is more interested in extracting the Neoplatonism over Aristotelian elements for his chiliastic project for a new leaderless way for everyone to have some amorphous community, and personal qualitative religious experience that are only subject to a very loose Eastern/Neoplatonic extraction of morality, that will always lean to relativistic and take a good desire to educate and correct man to a naive stance that goes to far with man’s perfectibility.
It was also partly out of the Muslim world, but also coming out of Byzantium that had the sophisticated archetypal, dogmatic, and philosophical scaling structure to keep it in its place. With Aquinas and Assisi it blew up in our faces in the Renaissance. Dante is a hinge moment that could be used in the proper way prior to it as Pageau states, but it is a clear time of religious inflation and man’s inner divinity using paganism in an improper power grabbing manner over God.
Copied from that About link: “Advised Sequence for Reading Books People often ask, “Is there an order to Dallas’s Christian books? A logical progression?” The answer is, “Yes, for the first five.” There is a definitive order to his first five Christian books; Hearing God, The Spirit of the Disciplines, The Divine Conspiracy, Renovation of the Heart, and Knowing Christ Today. After these books were completed Dallas continued to write on a multitude of subjects concerning discipleship and knowing God and his kingdom. “
Anyone have a starting place to dig into Vervaeke's assertion that Aquinas should be viewed primarily as a Neoplatonist? Books, lectures, etc. Does he cover it in Meaning Crisis somewhere?
But can Vervaeke distinguish between Socrates and Plato? Better call the series "After Plato ..." Jesuits do "lectio divina" ... let that trigger some folks ;-) I can't see much development of Christian thought that wasn't the result of Christian contemplation of not just scripture, but life itself.
Our meaning is found in God through Christ…In our relationship to Him. “Christian selfhood is not defined in terms of who we are in and of ourselves. It’s defined in terms of what God does TO us and the relationship he creates WITH us and the destiny he appoints FOR us. God made us who WE are so we could make known who HE is. OUR identity is for the sake of making known HIS identity.” Acts. 17: 28 “…in him we live and move and have our being..”
Nietzsche made the distinction between the Pre-Platonic instead of the Pre-Socratics. Is Socrates really a Platonist or should he be separated out from the doctrine of the Forms and the Allegory of the Cave? Certainly Heidegger moved somewhere near this turning point. John will need to do something similar if he wants to save his project from Platonism.
how much can the medium take? (Hmm) to balance this question: how we contribute to medium sustainability: enhanced participation. Making one free throw is anti-sin, but what about a game of horse? Or full game? hmmm… what about live audience live mediums with the symphony.
I’ve been listening to you Paul for a while now and I’d like to make some comments that might be interpreted as confrontational but I really am not trying to be. I just want to understand the difference in mindset and worldview: 1- help me understand the difference between propositional knowledge that’s a product of 300 years ago as a result of modernity and the long battles the early Church had with the Nicene creed and the like. The fights over homoosias and homoosios. It seems to me that was very propositional. And then later there is Islam with its own set of propositions. I don’t see a major difference or a new emphasis on propositions that modernity brought. I see your point about the historical grammatical interpretation. But wasn’t that as a result of the corruption of the allegorical? St Jacob of Nisibis from the 4th century wanted to go find Noah’s Ark so people would believe. Their use of allegory doesn’t mean that they didn’t believe it was true and therefore additional interpretations were necessary. 2- As Christians we have been given the command to go and make disciples. Paul travelled all over the place introducing people to Jesus. Through whom they must be saved. The people who believed Paul and put their trust in Jesus didn’t seem to be good pluralists. They refused to participate in “just a pinch of incense” so that we all get along together. They refused to add Jesus to the pantheon of gods. They insisted on the sufficiency and Lordship of Christ, not Cesar. By the way most of this I learned from you. And early Christians were very secretive about their services and wouldn’t let outsiders participate in or even witness communion. While now, in this modern context, we invite people to Church and they get to see it all. And a lot of modern American Churches view their Sunday morning gathering as an evangelistic tool. Can Christianity be Christian without insisting on Christ being Lord? 3- It seems to me that pluralism demand more concession from Christians and, I would include Muslims, than any other religious or non religious group. Because we would have to shed some absolutes. I don’t need to go into what those are. But the question is, can pluralism really exist without universalism? An idea very much loved in this corner. We all end up in the same place anyway regardless of the path taken. Some might have to pay a higher price to get there depending on their performance. Is that the good news? 3- With all due respect to JV, I’m not willing to concede that Shamans and the Oracles are Delphi are in the same category as Elijah, Elisha, and the other prophets. Bavinck, a Dutchman, has a lot to say about special and general revelation. How is it possible to take special revelation and make it pluralistic? I look forward to this new series and I appreciate what JV brings to the table. And if I can learn new practices to deepen my relationship with Christ and my attention to Him, then I say thank you. But I also say, who/what you give attention to matters. Verses about powers and principalities, and making every thought captive come to mind.
It's nice to see vvk with a Christian smile, looks like 2023 is bringing good tidings. @Paul I secretly released a video about the economics of distributed cognition, can you help vvk find it to see how much he understands? I need a charlatan check.
Be Socrates to each other?! more equality doctrine, flat world, denial of hierarchy. Why do we think we can do what Socrates did? Why do we think we need to be able to? If we can do Socrates alone, should we? Should do try to do this by ourselves? Aren't we afraid we'd convince ourselves we had skills that we do not have and cannot be validated (or refuted) from the outside because we did it all on our own? Gotta say, that is the modern problem, we have tons of people who 'learned it on their own' and are wrong about their own skill level, then they get angry and resentful that 'having that skill' doesn't result in the accomplishment of the goal they seek. To be fair, they were given this impression that having the skill would give them the ability to achieve the goal and that they are able to have that skill (two major errors, not just one). No wonder they are angry, rebelling against authority, skeptical, etc. Third way Platonism? Scholarship? Is that a new term for 'made up by pure post modern interpretation by folks who want to be smarter than Plato'? Because that is what I hear. Lots of "I" talk, then a random invocation of 'distributed cognition' - not sure anyone is seeing the contradiction here. No Socratic spirit for me at Thunder Bay, something much more powerful, lasting, interesting and deep. What we have found on the discord server is that people DO NOT want to do the practices together, but they want to do the practices. More importantly, doing the practices together isn't the same as doing them as part of a larger body in fellowship. You cannot just invoke fellowship, it requires a body, structure, authority, leadership and a common aim. Pervasive pluralism indeed - notice the pluralistic talk that is everywhere, this happens when you stress the individual over the hierarchy and your place in the body of nature. Perhaps the wise thing to do here is to point out that there are limits to dialectic with no inside/outside designation that doesn't allow for transformation. Wait, what is this evidence for transformation? While I agree that you cannot understand writings of some of these church fathers without understanding the philosophical tradition they were steeped in, you also cannot understand the philosophical tradition without the religion (which is how the Ancient Greeks seemed to do it, religion first, philosophy second) at least the post 1530 definition of the word, which is more the problem, no one would have questioned the concept of basing everything on the beliefs first and having the philosophy emerge from that. This is puzzling, if we already have practices conforming to the NeoPlatonic tradition, why do we need something else? I mean, it sounds like Eastern orthodoxy in particular has everything you are striving for. Just say'n. What this medium can bear? Or what can we cultivate using this medium? What is 'cultivation'? Do we even know? Is it just throwing seeds out the window of a plane and hoping they'll do something and that it will be good is not what I'd call cultivating. I get why people with a nice, comfortable, correct, complete(ish) framework say 'go to church' but the magic of Peterson is that he gives you a reason to engage with the same things churches are dealing with, so it's not "go to church" (except for the traumatized Christians, see my most popular video called Jordan Peterson - his trick) at all, but it leads there eventually because telling people to 'go to church' doesn't work - any evangelical should realize this through the steady decline of that movement over the years (for lots of reasons for sure) yet they aren't learning what needs learned or y'all would realize immediately why JBP is so popular with the audience that he hits. So this statement about being a Christian if you hold the propositions in your head is the materialism infection in the church. That is a huge problem and does not seem to be taken seriously by Christians in general, the church in particular (which is riddled with materialism) and the population in general. The failure of materialist scientism to explain the world is precisely evidence (if not proof) that materialism is the problem, it causes people to assume that all things can be 'got at' by science (or understood rationally, using logic and reason) when this is just not the case and anyone in science 50 years ago would have readily admitted this. A community took shape around the COVID meditation series? Hrm. Interesting. Perhaps one could explore how that happened and maybe why that happened and learn something from that event. If only all of that meditation series were back up in a playlist online, we could explore more what happened (aside from getting back those excellent Q&As from all the sits). Yes, the religious folks who are stuck in materialism have similar struggles (likely because all humans have these same questions) but they have a different starting point and therefore their path out looks very different. Everyone keeps complaining about no shared this and no shared that, YES, so what makes you think we'll have a shared solution for people who were always in the church and people who were never in the church? What about people traumatized out of faith early vs. those who lost faith much later? These seem like three major distinctions (in terms of starting points, therefore tools, abilities, skills and access or eyes to see) that are work paying attention to and taking more seriously. If pluralism presents a problem, maybes it worth asking if it is good, useful, viable or required. This depends upon how you define pluralism for sure, but yes, that is the question, what kinds of boundaries are worth having? Which need to be preserved (or conserved...) and why? What if meditation is the secular version of prayer to allow folks to understand why prayer might be the way to go? In other words, by demonizing the secular version of prayer you aren't allowing a path into prayer. Both meditation and prayer can afford humility, differently for sure but they can both do this. In the case of prayer, it's explicit, you are submitting yourself to the idea of something outside and above (in some way) you listening (caring) to your pleadings. With meditation you are looking within yourself to discover there are things going on in you that you didn't know about and have an influence on you that you do not now, but can learn to control better in the future. By cutting off this vital first step to people (after all, the materialists are stuck with material cause or material plus formal cause emergence to describe the world) in need of a way out of their particular stuckness which may be different from the stuckness of traumatized Christian (who presumably has different starting axioms, access to symbolic information, appreciation for being is good and understanding of hierarchy) with different tools and skills, however nascent. Oh, so until science did damage to the Christian world, this wasn't foreign to Christianity. Maybe that is a very "Help, I'm science, I'm being oppressed" narrative and not reflective of reality. This becomes a fight over souls for the scientism religion over that framework which (as Jordan Peterson talks about) into which science must be embedded. Brought the bible alive - resurrection? Hrm. Interesting motif. Might be something there. hrm. Christians tried to re-enchant Christianity with the same sorts of practices that the CogSci people are trying to re-enchant the world with (while rejecting the rest of Christianity, mainly the structure, authority, etc.) what a strange random coincidence. If only we could go back to when we had these things. What a joy that would be. Socrates was an annoying skeptic with little else going for him. There is no need to look further for the hermenutics of suspicion, it is the idea that we can question everything and still be 'smart' (a mistake that Socrates did not make, interestingly, he knew that he knew nothing) which is a deep materialist, individualist error. Do love Chezi, but this isn't a brave enough space by any stretch, assuming there is still a space here. We have lots of folks on different crusades with different goals and different implementations fighting over souls (evidenced by all these fights when people want to do different things, if they weren't fighting over souls, they wouldn't care at all, instead of pretending to be attacked by someone leaving, which I'd argue is the opposite of an attack). Love this idea of respect vs. love! Yes, respect is a way of slicing up the world and agreeing on your own terms instead of agreeing in a way that allows people to be different in their completeness (wholeness) as a person.
Quibble on the idea that Islam preserves more of the Neoplatonic tradition. To be exact, the Eastern Orthodox Church preserved those texts in Byzantium, the Eastern Roman Empire, all the way up until the invasion of Ottomans in 1453. That’s 40 years before Columbus sailed to the Americas. Even if they had texts in their own nations that does not eliminate the fact that the Christian East did not, or that Christianity did not preserve those texts. They were simply lost to the West.
I'm a half hour through this and there have been 4 commercial breaks. Come on man, I'm not against baking your bread, but respect the attention of your guests. Can I have a full on 5 min break in the middle? Why 15, 15 second interruptions. It's so damn frustrating.
That surprised me too. Pretty sure the Hassidim are the ones with the black hats and sideburn ringlets and mandatory beards and such. Now I'm confused 😕
I like dr Peterson and Bret Weinstein, im not sure how i feel about John Vervaeky yet, its a dilemma for me... I know i want people to understand my lifes philosophy, (the catperson and dogperson theory/the narcisist/psychopath and empath theory) but i am an outcasted person (now i preffer to not be part of any of the main groups, but i also dont have a lot of money or status. When i want people to know about my theory, i also want them to know its from me/my alter ego swerrem. I have a past with drugs and lots of arrests, and have suffered from all sorts of emotianal problems. I dont want to be famous/have status, but i do want people to know what (parts are) is from me. And if everyone will start to imply my or parts of my theory, my name being metioned and some of the money it will aquire would be nice. I dont need money or status, i do think i deserve some if it gets used and becomes mainstream. I do have a problem with others getting money from my ideas. Maybe you can give me some advise... And i have so much more to share, and questions for dr Peterson but because they dont reply this wonnt get answered... I apready have a bunch of data where i say something, and a day or a few days later they make the exact same comments or claims i made but not responding to me. Most of the time if i think the intentions are good im oke with it, this was my plan to get people to know about it, but sometimes when i hear others speak about parts of my theory and they selfishly only use what they like, i get the feeling i need to do something about it, because it is not theirs and they are abusing it. Maybe you can give me some advice?!
Vervaeke strikes me as one of the nicest guys out there. Sincere and humble heart.
wrong. it's all a façade. He's using that nice demeanor to start his new religion where he is the ruler and dominates the world.
@@WhiteStoneName I saw what you did there …
@@billtimmons7071 Yeah, what i'm always doing--being a truth-teller.
I agree. I wonder what he could do though with an overtly political interlocutor like Bethel McGrew for instance. I’d like to see dialogos at work in a conversation that challenges “niceness” in terms of content.
John, if you see this, I would love to hear you comment on the value or the centrality of self-identity in one's religious identity. How does conscious, articulable awareness (Polanyi) of...facts? abstractions? relate to the more fundamental/full reality of one's being (act vs potency, perhaps)?
In your Thunder Bay talk you outlined these aspects of "things consciousness must deal with":
Awakeness - attentive
Awareness - capable of receiving info from the environment & recognizing it (memory?)
Access - unconscious to conscious, able to "use" info/knowledge (memory?)
Authority/authorship - private to me, ownership?, agency over it?
Aspectuality - of Environment & Experience or qualia
Again, how do these bullet points relate to self-identity? What is the relationship btw self-identity and being (the God-Man relation, maybe).
Btw, eager for your talk with Jordan Daniel Wood. The more intellectually interesting Jordan, imo. Not trapped in the either/or-ism of the Exclusivist Religion of the Right Side of History.
I was screaming Dallas Willard for 30minutes... When you finally mentioned him and his influence on Foster I was like "Finally!". Willard also taught a fellow named James Bryan Smith who touched on Simplicity for Christians through the Good and Beautiful series.
Dallas Willard would meaningful for VerVaeke to read through and learn about. I would also say that Willard was a paragon in academia who kept the humanities in check. Upon his death academia changed dramatically and the universities are in a spiral.
Same.
1:16:20 "real love transcends differences"
The Thing behind the thing, behind the thing.
The unity behind all distinctions.
Happy new year to you and your family pastor Paul 🙏! May the Lord keep you and your family in health and abundant blessings! We, the comment section people love you!!
Vervake really demonstrates to everyone generosity.
God bless and happy new year.
Happy new year!
I always enjoy listening to you two as I feel as if you’re able to articulate the very struggle I struggle through each day. I try to capture it with writings but it’s been challenging to abstract in isolation for extended periods of time. Anyway, thank you both for what you do.
This was wonderful to listen to. Got me thinking about grappling as well, specifically on Greco Roman wrestling where it’s more about stance and upper body instead of attacking legs , or below the belt at all.
Such a lovely intense open hearted conversation 🧡
4:00 Paul drops a wisdom bomb on John. Great work Paul.
You're always such a wonderful foil for John to interact with Paul, thank you both John and Paul for a great discussion that keeps the windows and doors open when delving into ideas and thought that might and most times do end without the participants understanding each other in a respectful manner. Peace
Well put, William!
Socrates isn't in competition with Christ, it's best to look at him as a saint, or and _image_ of Christ.
I think what *IS* important though, is to understand that what makes Socrates salient or relevant at all in the first place is the framing of Christ (yes, for us now _and_ historically).
D.C. Schindler is very evidently using Socrates as an Allegory of Christ.
14:56 haunting highlights pushes people past tyranny of propositions, providing thrill of participation
John Wesley Journo entry, interesting historical anecdote:
“Thur. 27 1742. - We left Birstal and on Friday, 28, came to Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I read, with great expectation, yesterday and today, Xenophon’s “Memorable things of Socrates.” I was utterly amazed at his want of judgment. How many of these things would Plato never have mentioned! But it may be well that we see the shades too of the brightest picture in all heathen antiquity. We came to Newcastle about six; and, after a short refreshment”
John’s interest in the common search amongst the Islamic world and Christian world is exciting. The Sicilian Norman Kings clearly inhabited this world. Interesting the unsurpassed beauty coming out of this vision.
What do you mean by pluralism? The novel exposure of individuals (alternately persons) to the wide variety of religious information & worldviews?
There is the problem of conflating abstract propositional "knowledge" with being.
If all true knowledge is personal. And all personal knowledge is inextricably tied to practice and ritual and tradition. Then, exposure to new propositional knowledge (which I take as potency) is not really such a problem. It's just an expansion of articulable consciousness, and this can only be lived to degree. Because "what you see and hear depends a lot upon where you're standing and the kind of person you are" (ie all knowledge is personal...salience or relevance realization) And one can only see what they are initiated into. Conscious, articulable awareness is connected to bodily awareness (procedural, perspectival, and most deeply participatory).
To what degree does one's participatory knowing in the abstract, via screens perhaps, dictate or contribute to the fullness of their being? Their lived reality? Idk. Time will tell.
I think the question of the difference between religious pluralism (a la carte buffet of religions for the individual to gnomic-ly choose) and religious perennialism (the tao, all truth is God's truth, anything participating in being is true to some degree) is big.
Great talk, Paul! We need all the virtue in the world and if it's Jesus or Socrates (or both) who inspires you, the world wins either way! :) The doing practice with others aspect brings in a vital part in the new series and it's cool as John mentioned that the Stoa is hosting a place for that alongside the weekly episodes to participate more deeply and with others.
Peter Kreeft makes this point too ! (36:09)
Even Happier New Year :)
There is Christian [and Jewish] Meditation: Lectio Divina, or "Scripture-based meditation" (1:02:11)
I understand, too, that meditation usually involved the actual reciting of Scripture, and that contemplation is built upon that reception of the truth of Scripture. It is all, of course, focused on the Holy Trinity and pursuit of the fullest possible experience in this life of union with God. The supernatural character of Christian meditation and contemplation is on quite an other level above any non Christian practices, which only serve as pointers to human need for knowledge of the true God..
Beuty as the way of life
So nice to see John out of his Covid slouch couch
Love the future Arabic Collab. Happy Holidays Paul 💝
Doesn’t Thunder Bay demonstrate that pluralism is a good thing? Something not to be feared or be anxious about? IMO Logos pervades the world and if we are open to it pluralism makes us healthier. Vervaeke and Pageau are great book ends to any dialog. I’m no longer put off or threatened by diverse approaches to getting at Logos. 2023 is starting great my friends.
Thunder Bay and the continuing conversation in this corner is wonderful, largely due to the spirit each participant brings to it ...but also to the broader context of plenty and peace. Pluralism can also mean genocide.
Don't mistake me - I am anxious, but see the immense value in dialogue.
"Pluralism" is just a step (or a series of steps) on a journey.
Good or Bad; we are not wise enough to know the future of it ^^ ❤
But we can do the best we can! ❤
Pluralism is a circumstantial good
😺I hope JV will start at the beginning, and keep repeating definitions, so those of us who have not learned about Socrates and Plato will not be lost in all the verbiage. There are just too many names and words tossed around without definitions, that my meaning crisis anxiety actually gets exacerbated rather than remedied. 🐿
@@mylesflaig148 I get what you mean. Some of the terms are above me. Vervaeke explains them but I have to watch a lot of his talks to get his meaning. Some of these guys fly at 30000 feet while I hang glide at 1500 feet :)
One major piece that I think is missing in this corner is an understanding of Hermeticism/Gnosticism and its roots in Platonism and how those are foundational for the modern Dialectic method all the way through to the post-modernists. There was an excellent discussion with James Lindsay, Steven Coughlin, and Jay Dyer that I would be happy to link you to.
Surprising reference to Dr. kreeft - I never saw him as a culture warrior.
3:00 - so many things to talk about, I didn't get to bring up Defense Against the Dark Arts...
"Dia-Logos" was actually originally articulated by Ratzinger 😄 (7:12)
Modernist heretic Ratzinger dialogued with Marxism.
@@anselman3156 🤣
Thanks John and Paul!
"Most of the West's picture of Islam is shaped by recent actions"
Historical actions too.
And the fact that their countries don't look very well put together, even without Western interference.
I don't think the name "Eugene" is going to make a comeback any time soon, but I don't think the modern West is really ever going to see Islam as a peer.
I disagree, I think it’s spreading as a way to be “manly”, and in our prisons, music etc has had jumped over ethnic differences. I think there’s a reason the millenialism that moved from Christianity to Deism hopes for it to be a unifier the way we see it in Dune, and Napoleon saw it as something he wished he could use to make a new warrior religion, but knew he couldn’t unless he deified himself with conquest of the East and Russia. I think it’s logic and mystic experiences can be extracted out, just as they have been/are in Christianity in the name of universalist religion and world peace and they will be rife for it as well as they industrialize and continue to lose people to atheism, agnosticism and the nones, and this is also common among second and third generation immigrants of all religions in the west.
The stupid delesional manosphere and Tate also show leanings in this direction. Though I question how many of the weaklings living as vicarious alpha males in those areas are willing to make that big of a commitment: some people did eat Tide pods. I also think for a small percentage of men who are actually extremely effective some will sell their culture out to get extra women, and that is an influential percentage of the populace. You see with Aubrey Marcus and Will Smith all the way back to John Dee people who were willing to engage in cuckoldry and esotericism for new women and spiritual power as well.
I wouldn’t hold out any naive hopes.
Where’s John’s sofa?????
amogus
54:40 yeah exactly, since it was written down and time has past, we started to take everything to litterally, and then with power corrupting the soul or the self, we/some people started to use passages to have it their way playing peoples feelings fears...
Sometimes we do it ourselves by saying something not thinking about how others receive this or the intentions. I know that many if not most people cant handle a lot of my thoughts or thinking patterns.
When i am 100% honest and let it all out
@@swerremdjee2769 Circumspection and reticence are useful.
Vervaeke has an AriZona green tea can wisdom poster? a e s t h e t i c
Fr. Richard Rohr uses "Contemplative Prayer" instead of "Meditation." Vocabulary matters, but the practice is what really matters.
You might like to look at, and perhaps comment on, the YT videos on TCTP Truth Sleuths channel: "Dialectical Roots & Its Modern Weaponization" and "Platonic Roots of Marxism & Secret Societies". They touch on current issues and how Protestant and Catholic churches have been impacted. James Lindsay and Stephen Coughlin (and for the Ortho Bros J Dyer!) contribute to the discussions.
That whole line of thinking, while addressing serious philosophy is in a book read on UA-cam called Orthodox Survival Course. It’s part of where Dyer is getting it, but it has been part of their thinking for a very long time now, what Rose does is address perennialism, continental philosophy, naturalist spiritualism and religious but not religious, Nietzsche, and modernity in an updated way because he came from all that, understands it, and can legitimately argue with it in a way most Christians (especially modern western churches without the philosophical chops) aren’t able to. Most just avoid the devil and make a cartoon out of it instead of standing him down in real argument with skin in the game.
There are issues I see with people falling into a trap with it f becoming captured by paranoia, Russian sympathizers on Putin and Dugin, anti semitism etc. but he doesn’t advocate that. They lose his nuance due to the shock of what he is saying and look for some worldly solution. He’s still right whether or not people make those mistakes. His Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future is the other one on this topic. They’re on the YT channel Orthodox Reactionary.
@@Ac-ip5hd I have read some Seraphim Rose, and appreciated much of it, while dissenting from some of the erroneous notions that have been maintained in Eastern Orthodoxy. I like his translation of Pomazansky's work on Dogmatic Theology. Isn't Dugin a disciple of the evil Crowley fellow?.
@@anselman3156 I’ve heard he is or was, but I think he’s also Orthodox and might have rejected or tried to “integrate” him. To be honestI read his essay against the west and listened to some stuff on YT back when stuff was happening and Obama was still in. I was more political back then and just knew I didn’t like him and it was bad. I think he’s a right wing Christian Gnostic for some kind of neo Fascism that he justifies with our decay and satanic west.
I’m looking forward to reading that book, thought he wrote it at first when I downloaded his stuff on archive. What do you find erroneous?
54:28 "is a christian someone who holds these propositions in their head?"
yes. Does *what you THINK you think* (most say believe) about facts (abstractions rooted in a Divided Man or subject-object divided world) reflect reality or being per se?
Which propositions are necessary and sufficient to constitute Christianity?
@@KalebPeters99 none, per se.
I may be misunderstanding you but I tend to agree with John and Paul that it's more about the other Ps
Happy new to you both. Thank you for all your lovely work
Lovely convo gents. Socrates gets a shout out in John Wesley’s sermon 71.
I'm so excited!!!
When is the conversation between john vervaeke and jordan cooper coming??
next week
@@PaulVanderKlay cool!!
@@PaulVanderKlay woohoo, very excited!
I'm very much loving this conversation, but all these commercials constantly hijacking my limbic system... Why is it John doesn't have this going on on his channel but is happening here?
44:50 Good grief, yes. Let's stop trying to convert each other. The hubristic assumptions behind "I think that I'm objectively correct about these facts." is obtuse and very unhelpful.
*waits for the replies. I'll write them out secretly and see how closely they match*
Is there an initiative to this Little Corner? One would have to be open to mystical plurality, would they not?
Turn or burn Luke, the devil is a devouring lion
I wouldn’t mind being converted to your theology, but it’s a bunch of “gobbily goop”
@@AmidstTheLight85 by initiative, do you mean goal or aim?
You will definitely find people who are into mysticism and perennialism (myself & many others), but that's a small arm of the larger body (or the heart ;)).
Perhaps I can convert you to the idea of not wanting to convert others?
I believed so strongly in John’s project, Peterson, Jung etc. Thankfully, and thanks to John I was able to get something coherent out of an overload of insight, knowledge, world religions, science, meditation etc.
We cannot just go back, but the presentation that none of this is there in Christianity, and something totally new and unifying, and total of all religions, all personal is absolutely necessary is false. The degree the church fathers are full of everything he presents and ancient philosophy and practice is clear.
It is the greater discipline and call, that forces discernment and stances to a greater degree than John and modern man are willing is what is rejected, and a sterner line on good and evil. It means certain elements of what John reduces to “serious play” (ie the highest religious experiences that can be demonic) are something that he, and more so Anderson Todd, and even more so New Age and the Gnostic cesspool John’s leaderless discord has become, where ironically the two Christian semi positivist conservatives have taken half the reigns in response (partly due to the fact they are the only ones with the discipline to show up).
It’s a doomed project hat falsely posits itself as transcending the prior religions, and John’s good faith will not trump the fact it is part of a false presentation of Christianity that is due to the rationalization of Western Christianity, Protestantism, and chiliasm. It, Jung, Chardin, Mcgilchrist are all chiliastic projects, and even Peterson has it against his will.
The use of art in his religion that’s not a religion (demonic art fit for a Tool album not a religion or culture), the tendencies of people in these spheres to occultism, the need for headless gods as the symbol of RATNR mean that it will be amorphous until things get bad enough and men of action take control, who will not be so nice and limp wristed as John and Jordan Hall, Ken Wilbur, David Fuller etc. There is nothing in John or Jordan’s project that will facilitate marriage and child rearing, but much that apologetics can discern and subjugate as gold out of Egypt. John and Anderson can’t even say girlfriend or wife about their “partners” and John can’t even call Foucault necrophiliac pedophile desires evil, we have to learn from it endlessly and integrate post modern critique as if they were the only ones to criticize, and Socrates, Heraclitus, Dante, and Christ didn’t do it better, (and it’s all for the real aim of game b, John’s desire comes out clearly in Neoplatonism being used to trump Christianity when speaking of Giordano Bruno, it’s the same naturalism over Christianity in Hillman and Chardin.)
This ally work, dream guides, holy apparitions show themselves demonic and died for me when the Bible’s command to try the spirits and adhere to the dogma and prayers of the original church were employed on them, asking/forcing them to recite the prayers and creeds. It’s a refusal to let go of a child’s toy, which turns modern man into a toy for spirits.
And modern “christian” conservatism, neoliberalism, or orthodox monarchism that gets in bed with Duggin’s Gnosticism, or the flat salt of positivism, TLC Protestantism here, charismatic Christianity etc are all just the salt that has gone flat. And since the French Revolution has been fit for nothing but to be trampled.
The only way forward is the way of tears. What’s coming out of John’s project is a move that will be co-opted by everything he is truly concerned about. It’s the one world religion of antichrist that will be part of globalism, and a much more corrupt and forceful version of his politics and the Jacobinism he and Chloe limp wristedly critique while excusing. Wether the church becomes Amish, or fights for its true self, or comes in good faith dialogue with John, the shared conciliatory conversation can bring people back, but as he and academia know, his project will convert more and assert itself through new age unification of worldly truth, justified by science and the spirit of the times. I think the discussions should still be had to put the truth out there, and convert as many as possible, but it will be a small number who are capable of accepting it. John knows his Neoplatonic project and science will win the conversation and any stern Christianity that engages it while holding its fixity in this dialogue will lose out to those that become a part of the project and catamite themselves to the universal project.
The insight that Aquinas is perhaps more deeply neo-platonic than Aristotelian is historically well founded. His Primary and secondary education was in neoplatonism taught by the Benedictines who had little grasp of Aristotle because of their times. The Aristotelian venture, is a later development under the influence of Albertus Magnus. To my mind, the Summa Theologiae, is what we today would call a thought experiment and not always a successful one. He is an adventurer who is rightly excited by the European rediscovery of Aristotle, newly out of obscurity from the Muslim world! Intuition is bang on, I think!
I like a lot about f Aquinas, but believe the criticism that he over intellectualised and chopped up Christianity to be true. I believe this put the church on the chopping block of reason in the reformation, and all then all of Christianity was then on the chopping block of the Enlightenment and Age of Reason, and it’s deism was on the chopping block for Kant, whose subjective morality and religious experience are ready to be seized for a mcmindful new age antichrist unification.
I think John is more interested in extracting the Neoplatonism over Aristotelian elements for his chiliastic project for a new leaderless way for everyone to have some amorphous community, and personal qualitative religious experience that are only subject to a very loose Eastern/Neoplatonic extraction of morality, that will always lean to relativistic and take a good desire to educate and correct man to a naive stance that goes to far with man’s perfectibility.
It was also partly out of the Muslim world, but also coming out of Byzantium that had the sophisticated archetypal, dogmatic, and philosophical scaling structure to keep it in its place. With Aquinas and Assisi it blew up in our faces in the Renaissance. Dante is a hinge moment that could be used in the proper way prior to it as Pageau states, but it is a clear time of religious inflation and man’s inner divinity using paganism in an improper power grabbing manner over God.
If anyone could direct me to some reading on Dallas Willard I would greatly appreciate it.
The Divine Conspiracy
Copied from that About link:
“Advised Sequence for Reading Books
People often ask, “Is there an order to Dallas’s Christian books? A logical progression?”
The answer is, “Yes, for the first five.” There is a definitive order to his first five Christian books; Hearing God, The Spirit of the Disciplines, The Divine Conspiracy, Renovation of the Heart, and Knowing Christ Today. After these books were completed Dallas continued to write on a multitude of subjects concerning discipleship and knowing God and his kingdom. “
Thanks Paul and Clint
Anyone have a starting place to dig into Vervaeke's assertion that Aquinas should be viewed primarily as a Neoplatonist? Books, lectures, etc. Does he cover it in Meaning Crisis somewhere?
Maybe Father Eric can answer that.
@@PaulVanderKlay Thanks for pointing me towards Fr. Eric. We had an interesting discussion about this on his livestream last night.
But can Vervaeke distinguish between Socrates and Plato? Better call the series "After Plato ..." Jesuits do "lectio divina" ... let that trigger some folks ;-) I can't see much development of Christian thought that wasn't the result of Christian contemplation of not just scripture, but life itself.
At around 50min mark when Vervaeke spoke of how Orthodoxy has preserved Neoplatonic thought Paul’s face went blank- then he feign a smile.
Also interesting what Paul mentioned about congregants not picking up much from sermons and westerners not much into practice of their faith.
Meditation is just a word. We must focus on the Good True and Beautiful.
Our meaning is found in God through Christ…In our relationship to Him.
“Christian selfhood is not defined in terms of who we are in and of ourselves. It’s defined in terms of what God does TO us and the relationship he creates WITH us and the destiny he appoints FOR us. God made us who WE are so we could make known who HE is.
OUR identity is for the sake of making known HIS identity.”
Acts. 17: 28 “…in him we live and move and have our being..”
💧❤🔥
Orthodox Pluralism! That, I think, is what the religion that is not a religion is.
Nietzsche made the distinction between the Pre-Platonic instead of the Pre-Socratics. Is Socrates really a Platonist or should he be separated out from the doctrine of the Forms and the Allegory of the Cave? Certainly Heidegger moved somewhere near this turning point. John will need to do something similar if he wants to save his project from Platonism.
how much can the medium take? (Hmm) to balance this question: how we contribute to medium sustainability: enhanced participation. Making one free throw is anti-sin, but what about a game of horse? Or full game? hmmm… what about live audience live mediums with the symphony.
I’ve been listening to you Paul for a while now and I’d like to make some comments that might be interpreted as confrontational but I really am not trying to be. I just want to understand the difference in mindset and worldview:
1- help me understand the difference between propositional knowledge that’s a product of 300 years ago as a result of modernity and the long battles the early Church had with the Nicene creed and the like. The fights over homoosias and homoosios. It seems to me that was very propositional. And then later there is Islam with its own set of propositions. I don’t see a major difference or a new emphasis on propositions that modernity brought. I see your point about the historical grammatical interpretation. But wasn’t that as a result of the corruption of the allegorical? St Jacob of Nisibis from the 4th century wanted to go find Noah’s Ark so people would believe. Their use of allegory doesn’t mean that they didn’t believe it was true and therefore additional interpretations were necessary.
2- As Christians we have been given the command to go and make disciples. Paul travelled all over the place introducing people to Jesus. Through whom they must be saved. The people who believed Paul and put their trust in Jesus didn’t seem to be good pluralists. They refused to participate in “just a pinch of incense” so that we all get along together. They refused to add Jesus to the pantheon of gods. They insisted on the sufficiency and Lordship of Christ, not Cesar. By the way most of this I learned from you. And early Christians were very secretive about their services and wouldn’t let outsiders participate in or even witness communion. While now, in this modern context, we invite people to Church and they get to see it all. And a lot of modern American Churches view their Sunday morning gathering as an evangelistic tool. Can Christianity be Christian without insisting on Christ being Lord?
3- It seems to me that pluralism demand more concession from Christians and, I would include Muslims, than any other religious or non religious group. Because we would have to shed some absolutes. I don’t need to go into what those are. But the question is, can pluralism really exist without universalism? An idea very much loved in this corner. We all end up in the same place anyway regardless of the path taken. Some might have to pay a higher price to get there depending on their performance. Is that the good news?
3- With all due respect to JV, I’m not willing to concede that Shamans and the Oracles are Delphi are in the same category as Elijah, Elisha, and the other prophets. Bavinck, a Dutchman, has a lot to say about special and general revelation. How is it possible to take special revelation and make it pluralistic?
I look forward to this new series and I appreciate what JV brings to the table. And if I can learn new practices to deepen my relationship with Christ and my attention to Him, then I say thank you. But I also say, who/what you give attention to matters. Verses about powers and principalities, and making every thought captive come to mind.
I hope you don't mind me pointing out the need for spelling corrections. The words are homoousios and homoiousios.
@@anselman3156 iron sharpening iron
@@WisdomFoundry814 That all important iota!
It's nice to see vvk with a Christian smile, looks like 2023 is bringing good tidings. @Paul I secretly released a video about the economics of distributed cognition, can you help vvk find it to see how much he understands? I need a charlatan check.
Sorry guys I like to go in blind. Gonna have to wait after I'm done the series to rewatch this 🙏
Be Socrates to each other?! more equality doctrine, flat world, denial of hierarchy.
Why do we think we can do what Socrates did? Why do we think we need to be able to?
If we can do Socrates alone, should we? Should do try to do this by ourselves? Aren't we afraid we'd convince ourselves we had skills that we do not have and cannot be validated (or refuted) from the outside because we did it all on our own? Gotta say, that is the modern problem, we have tons of people who 'learned it on their own' and are wrong about their own skill level, then they get angry and resentful that 'having that skill' doesn't result in the accomplishment of the goal they seek. To be fair, they were given this impression that having the skill would give them the ability to achieve the goal and that they are able to have that skill (two major errors, not just one). No wonder they are angry, rebelling against authority, skeptical, etc.
Third way Platonism? Scholarship? Is that a new term for 'made up by pure post modern interpretation by folks who want to be smarter than Plato'? Because that is what I hear.
Lots of "I" talk, then a random invocation of 'distributed cognition' - not sure anyone is seeing the contradiction here. No Socratic spirit for me at Thunder Bay, something much more powerful, lasting, interesting and deep.
What we have found on the discord server is that people DO NOT want to do the practices together, but they want to do the practices. More importantly, doing the practices together isn't the same as doing them as part of a larger body in fellowship. You cannot just invoke fellowship, it requires a body, structure, authority, leadership and a common aim.
Pervasive pluralism indeed - notice the pluralistic talk that is everywhere, this happens when you stress the individual over the hierarchy and your place in the body of nature.
Perhaps the wise thing to do here is to point out that there are limits to dialectic with no inside/outside designation that doesn't allow for transformation.
Wait, what is this evidence for transformation?
While I agree that you cannot understand writings of some of these church fathers without understanding the philosophical tradition they were steeped in, you also cannot understand the philosophical tradition without the religion (which is how the Ancient Greeks seemed to do it, religion first, philosophy second) at least the post 1530 definition of the word, which is more the problem, no one would have questioned the concept of basing everything on the beliefs first and having the philosophy emerge from that.
This is puzzling, if we already have practices conforming to the NeoPlatonic tradition, why do we need something else? I mean, it sounds like Eastern orthodoxy in particular has everything you are striving for. Just say'n.
What this medium can bear? Or what can we cultivate using this medium? What is 'cultivation'? Do we even know? Is it just throwing seeds out the window of a plane and hoping they'll do something and that it will be good is not what I'd call cultivating.
I get why people with a nice, comfortable, correct, complete(ish) framework say 'go to church' but the magic of Peterson is that he gives you a reason to engage with the same things churches are dealing with, so it's not "go to church" (except for the traumatized Christians, see my most popular video called Jordan Peterson - his trick) at all, but it leads there eventually because telling people to 'go to church' doesn't work - any evangelical should realize this through the steady decline of that movement over the years (for lots of reasons for sure) yet they aren't learning what needs learned or y'all would realize immediately why JBP is so popular with the audience that he hits.
So this statement about being a Christian if you hold the propositions in your head is the materialism infection in the church. That is a huge problem and does not seem to be taken seriously by Christians in general, the church in particular (which is riddled with materialism) and the population in general. The failure of materialist scientism to explain the world is precisely evidence (if not proof) that materialism is the problem, it causes people to assume that all things can be 'got at' by science (or understood rationally, using logic and reason) when this is just not the case and anyone in science 50 years ago would have readily admitted this.
A community took shape around the COVID meditation series? Hrm. Interesting. Perhaps one could explore how that happened and maybe why that happened and learn something from that event. If only all of that meditation series were back up in a playlist online, we could explore more what happened (aside from getting back those excellent Q&As from all the sits).
Yes, the religious folks who are stuck in materialism have similar struggles (likely because all humans have these same questions) but they have a different starting point and therefore their path out looks very different. Everyone keeps complaining about no shared this and no shared that, YES, so what makes you think we'll have a shared solution for people who were always in the church and people who were never in the church? What about people traumatized out of faith early vs. those who lost faith much later? These seem like three major distinctions (in terms of starting points, therefore tools, abilities, skills and access or eyes to see) that are work paying attention to and taking more seriously.
If pluralism presents a problem, maybes it worth asking if it is good, useful, viable or required. This depends upon how you define pluralism for sure, but yes, that is the question, what kinds of boundaries are worth having? Which need to be preserved (or conserved...) and why?
What if meditation is the secular version of prayer to allow folks to understand why prayer might be the way to go? In other words, by demonizing the secular version of prayer you aren't allowing a path into prayer. Both meditation and prayer can afford humility, differently for sure but they can both do this. In the case of prayer, it's explicit, you are submitting yourself to the idea of something outside and above (in some way) you listening (caring) to your pleadings. With meditation you are looking within yourself to discover there are things going on in you that you didn't know about and have an influence on you that you do not now, but can learn to control better in the future. By cutting off this vital first step to people (after all, the materialists are stuck with material cause or material plus formal cause emergence to describe the world) in need of a way out of their particular stuckness which may be different from the stuckness of traumatized Christian (who presumably has different starting axioms, access to symbolic information, appreciation for being is good and understanding of hierarchy) with different tools and skills, however nascent.
Oh, so until science did damage to the Christian world, this wasn't foreign to Christianity. Maybe that is a very "Help, I'm science, I'm being oppressed" narrative and not reflective of reality. This becomes a fight over souls for the scientism religion over that framework which (as Jordan Peterson talks about) into which science must be embedded.
Brought the bible alive - resurrection? Hrm. Interesting motif. Might be something there. hrm.
Christians tried to re-enchant Christianity with the same sorts of practices that the CogSci people are trying to re-enchant the world with (while rejecting the rest of Christianity, mainly the structure, authority, etc.) what a strange random coincidence. If only we could go back to when we had these things. What a joy that would be.
Socrates was an annoying skeptic with little else going for him. There is no need to look further for the hermenutics of suspicion, it is the idea that we can question everything and still be 'smart' (a mistake that Socrates did not make, interestingly, he knew that he knew nothing) which is a deep materialist, individualist error.
Do love Chezi, but this isn't a brave enough space by any stretch, assuming there is still a space here. We have lots of folks on different crusades with different goals and different implementations fighting over souls (evidenced by all these fights when people want to do different things, if they weren't fighting over souls, they wouldn't care at all, instead of pretending to be attacked by someone leaving, which I'd argue is the opposite of an attack).
Love this idea of respect vs. love! Yes, respect is a way of slicing up the world and agreeing on your own terms instead of agreeing in a way that allows people to be different in their completeness (wholeness) as a person.
Second!!
Hmm, maybe the CoG just started rolling later in this timeline
Quibble on the idea that Islam preserves more of the Neoplatonic tradition.
To be exact, the Eastern Orthodox Church preserved those texts in Byzantium, the Eastern Roman Empire, all the way up until the invasion of Ottomans in 1453. That’s 40 years before Columbus sailed to the Americas.
Even if they had texts in their own nations that does not eliminate the fact that the Christian East did not, or that Christianity did not preserve those texts. They were simply lost to the West.
💚💚💚💚💚
I was hoping to join you on your discord Paul but the link isn’t valid!
First!??
Third
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I'm a half hour through this and there have been 4 commercial breaks.
Come on man, I'm not against baking your bread, but respect the attention of your guests.
Can I have a full on 5 min break in the middle? Why 15, 15 second interruptions. It's so damn frustrating.
I have a sense of what is happening...
😺I think Jacob said he is an Orthodox Jew. Is that the same as an Hasidic Jew?🐿
That surprised me too. Pretty sure the Hassidim are the ones with the black hats and sideburn ringlets and mandatory beards and such. Now I'm confused 😕
I like dr Peterson and Bret Weinstein, im not sure how i feel about John Vervaeky yet, its a dilemma for me...
I know i want people to understand my lifes philosophy, (the catperson and dogperson theory/the narcisist/psychopath and empath theory)
but i am an outcasted person (now i preffer to not be part of any of the main groups, but i also dont have a lot of money or status.
When i want people to know about my theory, i also want them to know its from me/my alter ego swerrem.
I have a past with drugs and lots of arrests, and have suffered from all sorts of emotianal problems.
I dont want to be famous/have status, but i do want people to know what (parts are) is from me.
And if everyone will start to imply my or parts of my theory, my name being metioned and some of the money it will aquire would be nice.
I dont need money or status, i do think i deserve some if it gets used and becomes mainstream.
I do have a problem with others getting money from my ideas.
Maybe you can give me some advise...
And i have so much more to share, and questions for dr Peterson but because they dont reply this wonnt get answered...
I apready have a bunch of data where i say something, and a day or a few days later they make the exact same comments or claims i made but not responding to me.
Most of the time if i think the intentions are good im oke with it, this was my plan to get people to know about it, but sometimes when i hear others speak about parts of my theory and they selfishly only use what they like, i get the feeling i need to do something about it, because it is not theirs and they are abusing it.
Maybe you can give me some advice?!