https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=6Aj4KuYOPl4
Welcome, everyone. This is my video in response to the excellent video made by Dr. Jordan Cooper that critiqued an episode from My Awakening from the Meeting Crisis that was directed at Luther. First of all, I want to thank Dr. Cooper. His critique was respectful. He first sets a context, expresses appreciation for the overall argument, the overall series. He presents his points carefully, cogently, in a linear manner. At times, I could tell he’s a little frustrated with my reading of Luther. That’s fair enough. I don’t have any criticisms of that. I think he showed respect, restraint, and rational responsibility to the issues. I want to thank him for that, because that’s an exemplary of the kind of discourse that we should be engaging in as we try to build bridges for addressing the meeting crisis. It does no help to simply insult me or just sort of do the textual version of shouting that I’ve just completely misrepresented Luther or that I’m a liar. I can’t respond to those. How could I, other than to shout back, no, I’m not? Dr. Cooper doesn’t do any of that. It’s clear. He makes it clear what he’s saying so that it’s possible to respond to him clearly. He does it in detail. He does it in order. All of this is how the academic game should be played. I think there’s something more going on there. I think Dr. Cooper is not just trying to score academic points. Why would he? We’re not even in the same discipline. There’s clearly deep, committed, and authentic belief behind what he’s saying. And so I want to respect all of that. I really do. And I want to respond in kind. So what am I going to do? Overall, I’m going to make sure we’re not talking at cross purposes. I think there might be a deep way in which we are. And I’m going to propose that. I’ll invite Dr. Cooper to say what he thinks of that proposal. I will actually be replying to criticism because I think even beyond removing the potential for the fact that we might be talking at cross purposes, there are criticisms. And they need to be addressed responsibly and respectfully. I only ask for the same thing, that I not be thought of being a liar or manipulative. I will try to be as honest and clear as I can, as Dr. Cooper has been. Finally, I do want to actually afford dialogue by making arguments and by asking, sometimes hard, but nevertheless, legitimate questions. So I’m going to review how I think, and I think this is the important place to start, why there might be a serious way in which we’re talking at cross purposes. I want to reply to criticisms. And I want to afford dialogue by making clear arguments and asking clear, maybe difficult, maybe challenging, but nevertheless, legitimate questions. OK. How do we remove the chance we might be talking at cross purposes? I want to get clear about the kind of argument I was making. It is a historical argument I was making. I was making a derivation argument. In a derivation argument, you derive the implication from claims made by people. Propositions are claims. So I’ll also say derivations from propositions. And you also draw out the consequences of exemplary action. So that’s what I mean by a derivation argument. You see why it’s historical. You’re looking for implications and consequences. The point of a derivation argument, or at least one point, one important thing a derivation argument can do, is showing that a way of thinking, what I often in my series call a grammar, a way of thinking, can be deeply influential, even if many of its explicit claims or propositions are rejected. These kind of arguments are extant, even within the Christian community online. So Tom Holland has a very famous version of this argument going. And it’s been further developed by Paul VanderKlay. And Holland goes on beyond his book Dominion to develop it in some recent videos. And it’s the argument that basically secularism and atheism are derivations of Christianity. Paul VanderKlay goes one point, at one point goes so far as saying, these people are sitting on a branch that they are cutting off beneath them. Very strong claim. There’s a similar claim made by Pagio that science is nested in Christianity. He has a video to that effect out there. He and I, and he independently, have made arguments how wokeism is derivative from Christianity. You have in philosophy Heidegger’s critique of Nietzsche that he was merely inverting Lutheran Christianity rather than escaping from its grammar. This notion of a derivation critique I actually get from Nietzsche. Heidegger also famously makes the critique that Plato is the originator of nihilism because of an important term in metaphysics that he attributes to Plato. Notice in my own series, I pointed out Descartes was trying to alleviate the anxiety of the scientific revolution. And yet his arguments have had the implied disastrous dualisms that as a consequence have resulted in a rise in skepticism, et cetera. These are all legitimate forms of argument. Now notice here that derivation arguments are different in an important way from certain ways we think about how we analyze something. What do you mean by that, John? What I mean by that, well, what’s coming to mind is Hegel’s very famous quote. The owl of Minerva only takes flight at dusk. And what did Hegel mean by that? Hegel meant that very often it’s only a long time after something when we have a lot of its implications and consequences unfolding that we can truly understand its historical significance. That means that often people at the time or near in time to the historically important event don’t really grasp its significance properly. This is certainly the case for the early Cartesians. They may be textually interpreting Descartes correctly, but that doesn’t mean they are seeing the consequences. They were seeing some of them. They had an inkling that the mind-body problem was going to be a very significant problem. And they were trying to wrestle with it, but they didn’t see how this was going to unfold completely. Similarly, the case for Hegel. Hegel’s totalizing system, and this is as many people make this accusation of Hegel, seems like a reasonable precursor to totalitarian ideologies, certainly to Marx, plausibly to the right Hegelians, the authority of Satan, of fascists, et cetera. And that, of course, has world-shaking significance that ends up on the Battle of Kursk in 1943. Is Hegel foreseeing or intending the Battle of Kursk or that ideological warfare that drenched the 20th century in blood? I don’t think so. But are there elements within his thinking that plausibly implied this and therefore are important contributors to its emergence? Most people would say yes. Notice something here. There are certainly theological differences between atheists and Christians. Surely that’s a non-controversial thing to say, right, or between religion and science. Most atheists would vehemently claim that they are not Christians. Most scientists would say that atheists are not Christians. Most scientists would say Christianity is irrelevant to them. And theologically, they’d probably be correct. Does that undermine Tom Holland’s argument? Does that undermine Paget’s argument? No, because I think Paget and Holland are making derivation arguments, not theological arguments. And I think that he’s not making a historical claim and ultimately not a theological claim. And it’s not clear if he’s simply equating them or that there’s a relationship between them that he hasn’t fully explicated. That’s fair enough. But that doesn’t mean that his argument is negated or that it shows the historical importance of Christianity to our normative framework or for science, that the historical importance for Christianity to our epistemic framework. And these are important arguments to be made because they afford the possibility of common ground and discussion across the divides between the atheists and the theists, between the scientists and people who are religious adherents. And so these arguments are important. They’re legitimate and they’re important. Now, theologically, you can restrict your interpretation of Luther to how it was taken up by Lutherans and give priority to Lutherans who are in temporal, close in time, proximity to Luther. This is completely legitimate. But in response to that, I’m invoking a classic distinction in the social sciences. This is between emic. It comes from the word phonemic and etic from from from phonetic phonetic phonemic and phonetic. OK, phonemic are differences in sound, phonetics are differences in meaning. What it means in this context when it’s generalized is when you’re talking talking from the emic perspective, you’re talking from within a framework. You would have to in this case, you’d have to be a Lutheran or at least something in close proximity theologically to a Lutheran. That would be the emic. Etic is to talk from without someone who is not a Lutheran, perhaps not even a Christian. And Dr. Cooper acknowledges that I am very, very clear about this. This distinction is important. What I’m arguing is the theological argument is emic and legitimate, but the historical argument is also legitimate because it’s from a different perspective, the etic perspective, a perspective that is very important, very important as I keep sorry, I want to keep emphasizing for building bridges. Now these arguments don’t have to be kept separate from each other. It’s a distinction. It’s not a law. There are arguments that integrate the two together. One that had a terrific influence on me in generally and specifically in my interpretation of Luther is Tillich, who was a Lutheran and therefore belongs in the tradition, was a theologian and therefore is within. But nevertheless, he derived what he thought were the rational consequences of Luther’s position on faith, for example, and on sin. Faith was turned into something like existential acceptance. Sin was turned into something like the meaning crisis, suffering that. And then Tillich did that because he was trying to reread Luther in a way that would make him relevant because this was part of Tillich’s theology that if a thinker wasn’t relevant to the questions human beings were most authentically posing, then that thinker becomes irrelevant, even theologically. Now, people can disagree with Luther about that theological point. I’m just trying to make a case for that, that it is possible to integrate the two together. So what Luther did was he derived consequences and implications for Luther in order to bridge to the meaning crisis, in order to afford both a negative critique and a positive proposal about Luther. As I said, this has had quite a bit of influence on me. So Dr. Cooper could very well be right that I misrepresent Luther theologically. During my life, when I was in a period of trying to return to Christianity, largely because of the influence of Tillich, by the way, I joined a Lutheran church, first a very conservative one, and then I moved to a more liberal one because I was wrestling. I got very involved. I was on the inside. So I’m not claiming to be a Lutheran theologian. That’s ridiculous. But I am saying that I have a little bit of the emic, I have a little bit from the inside and how things were being explained to me at that time. Now, again, that doesn’t mean that those people explaining Luther to me were right about Luther or theologically correct. I’m not claiming that. And so I’m not denying that I might be speaking out of ignorance, but I was speaking honestly of the experience I had and the influence of a particular Lutheran theologian, namely Tillich. I’m saying this because people kept asking, where’s John coming from on this? But to return to my point, Luther could very well be right that I misrepresent Luther. Sorry, Dr. Cooper, Luther would be very right too, but Dr. Cooper could be very well right that I misrepresent Luther theologically. And I’m also not saying by invoking this distinction, I’m not saying, I’m not implying that theological arguments are irrelevant to addressing the meaning crisis. I’m not saying that either. I take Tillich’s theological argument, probably because it is integrated with the derivation argument, as being an important response to the meaning crisis. And I devoted time to Tillich and called him one of the prophets in the biblical sense of the meaning crisis in my series. All that being said, it’s possible that there are legitimate implications and consequences of Luther that were not taken up by Lutherans, but were taken up by non-Lutherans. It is surely frequently the case that people are in error, deep, unrecognized error about they are implying by what they’re saying and the consequences of what they’re doing. I mean, for me, this is one of the core ideas of the whole Socratic project, the Socratic Ancestors. People would claim this and then Socrates would derive the implication and lead them to positions that they didn’t agree with and therefore get them to more seriously reflect upon, this is the whole point of a poria, how they are actually holding these beliefs. So I take it that that Socratic proposal is a legitimate one. I’ll repeat it again. No secular atheist would ever say that they are speaking from the grammar of Christianity. Unless they found the derivation argument plausible. These derivation arguments are legitimate and are important. It shows that there is such a relationship and therefore there’s a real possibility for better discourse between the non-believers and the believers. Now what is not fair to me is to, not just to me, that’s sorry, that’s egocentric. What’s not fair, I think, is to accept derivation arguments like Paget and Hollens and Van der Klaes that benefit Christianity and reject, because they are derivation arguments, those that are critical of Christianity. You can’t have it both ways. For example, Luther’s anti-Judaism, it is not right, for example, to call Luther an anti-Semite. He’s not making a racial argument. He’s making a religious argument. But nevertheless, the anti-Judaism, I think, is quite clear and pronounced. It is one of the reasons why, and I’ll be honest about this because I’m trying to be honest and clear, it’s one of the reasons I dislike Luther. But let’s try to be really fair about this. Luther’s anti-Judaism. Does that mean Luther is a Nazi? No. Definitely not. That is a mistake. He is theologically not a Nazi. That is just false. I dislike it when people do that about Luther’s a Nazi. No. But did his anti-Judaism afford the rise of Nazism in Germany? Probably yes. Both of these things can be true. I propose to you that they are true. My mistake in my video, and to be fair to me, I was doing this implicitly and I didn’t explicate this. So that’s first of all a mistake. And there’s been three years since then, and I’ve been able to get clearer about what I was doing. But nevertheless, it’s a mistake. More importantly, I did not place enough weight on the positive derivation arguments. I mentioned them, that Luther leads to the rise of democracy, the separation of church and state, that he importantly affords the scientific revolution, which I think is a good thing, even though it has really negative consequences. Was this, were any of these things part of Luther’s theology? No. But my mistake is I didn’t really give much weight to those. I mentioned them, but I backgrounded them. And that leads to an overly, I think this is the right word, hostile reading of Luther. Part of it, I think, was innocent in that I was emphasizing the rise of the meaning crisis and the loss of meaning, and that’s a very negative thing, so I was drawing out the negative things. Part of it was, like I said, Luther sort of irks me. His style and his anti-Judaism irk me. And that’s sort of like, eh, maybe that’s relevant, maybe it’s not. So I think the first point is innocent, an innocent error. The second is, the third, I think, is clearly illegitimate. What’s the third error? And I think my second and third error overlap in ways that are difficult to tease out for me. But my emotional pain surrounding sort of strict and conservative Protestantism and the way Luther had been presented to me in multiple churches across multiple denominations, that was influencing me and making me be, again, I think the right word is hostile to Luther. It’s an important thing to make criticisms, even sometimes harsh negative criticisms, but to make them as much as possible from a love of the truth rather than a dislike or perhaps even hatred. I don’t know if I hate Luther, but you know what I’m trying to say here, of a position. So I also made a mistake in that I did not make explicit the connections between Luther and Tillich, even though Tillich was a profound influence on me. I think I said it generally in some point, maybe not even that episode, but that’s not enough. And what I surely should have done is when I was doing Tillich at the end, draw upon re-reading of Luther and show how that afforded a positive response to understanding and sorry, a positive response to and an understanding of the meaning crisis. Sorry, that’s what I wanted to say. With respect to the meaning crisis and the positive derivation arguments, especially the ones that Tillich makes, I’m going to make amends for this mistake. There’s a book form of Awakening from the Meaning Crisis coming out. We’re doing a lot right now. It’s definitely coming out next year. And what I’ll do is I will be putting more discussion of the positive derivations of Luther and also drawing more upon explicitly explicating and explaining, making use of the Luther-Tillich connection in the response to the meaning crisis. So that is my attempt to try and make amends for the mistakes I had made in that episode. I think Tillich’s re-reading of Luther opens up a possibility. I’m not making argument by authority or asking Dr. Cooper, well, you must accept this argument from Tillich because he’s a Lutheran and he’s a Lutheran theologian. I’m not doing that. But it does suggest that there is a re-reading of Luther, perhaps following from some of what Tillich is doing, that draws upon his more positive implications and consequences for the meaning crisis. I would ask Dr. Cooper if this is the case. There’s a sense in which responding to me and just sort of saying I’ve misrepresented Luther is insufficient. Now, that insufficiency is probably just because of time. Dr. Cooper didn’t have enough time to develop more points. But what I would need to see with respect to my project and in dialogue with my reading of Tillich and my reading of Tillich’s reading of Luther is a re-reading of Luther that is a positive response to the meaning crisis that is not merely a repetition of standard Lutheran doctrine. I’m not saying it has to be de novo. I wouldn’t be arguing that at all. It would have to be a proper derivation argument of some important kind. Now, I do not think it is fair to me. In this instance, it’s about fairness to me, not just fairness in general. I do not think it is fair to me to say that Luther is repeating theological themes in Augustine, St. Augustine or Augustine and St. Paul, as if I didn’t notice that or wasn’t aware that this was sort of standard Pauliner Augustinian doctrine. I was explicitly arguing for a continuity of a theme from St. Paul and St. Augustine into Luther. Dr. Cooper may not agree with that theme, but nevertheless, I was drawing a continuity. This is a theme of self-loathing. I see and I argue for there’s a kind of self-loathing in St. Paul, St. Augustine, etc. I pinned, but it’s not a sole example. I found the comments from the Luther episode of a person that had been profoundly affected by this. They had independently from me or anything else also had this experience of this element of self-loathing. I certainly saw it a lot and I found it in therapy within me. Now, notice that’s not a theological argument I’m making. It’s a psychological argument. But the psychological argument is not irrelevant. Could self-loathing distort a more explicit position? I think this is clearly the case in St. Augustine. Let me try and explain it. Luther is an Augustinian monk. He’s deeply living this kind of life in some ways. Augustine is a template. He rejects it to some degree. To say that Augustine had a deep influence, and many of it, much of it probably implicit, not explicit on Luther, I think is a safe thing to say. So here’s what I want to say. What is the point of the confessions? If not to show, there’s a narrative and all the discussion about narrative here and its importance. There’s a narrative that shows that a lot of neoplatonic philosophy helped Augustine. In particular, for example, it helped Augustine to realize that God was not a corporeal thing. And Augustine makes it clear that that was necessary for him to be able to come to Christianity. Notice the language that I’m using. It was a neoplatonic experience that prepared and afforded him for conversion. This narrative has become so exemplary of such significant implication and consequence, it has been taken up culturally as a narrative template for our redemption stories. It’s provided a culture to, sorry, a grammar to the culture that would not consider itself explicitly Augustinian. Nevertheless, this is an important thing that happened. And Augustine’s the source of that. Notice that this narrative allows Augustine to do something. It allows him to argue that Christianity is the completion and the fulfillment of the Platonic tradition, that in Christianity Christ is the logos that Platonism was seeking. I think this is a very good explication of the narrative of the confessions, Augustine’s confessions. But he seems to come to a conclusion from all of his mistakes, from his sexual addiction. I was always licking the open sore of lust. Is that the case? Is everyone a sexual addict? That seems to be an overgeneralization, at least psychologically so. He concludes from his mistakes, his compulsion to sin, and his inability to sustain the mystical vision. He doesn’t say the mystical vision is false. As far as I can tell, he says, I can’t sustain it. There’s some gravitas, there’s some gravity that pulls me down, always, inevitably. Which is what he concludes, by the way, the original sin. But he absolutizes this gravitas, this pulling downward. And I propose to you that one of the reasons why he absolutizes it is because of the super salience it was given to him by his self-loathing, by that kind of wanting but not liking that is at the heart of profound addiction. He confuses sufficiency and necessity. I would argue. All the transformations in the narrative are necessary, but not sufficient for him coming to Christianity. Now, this gets us into the important issue that, and this was a mistake on my part, it was deeply in my mind. I can say that honestly, but I did not draw it out explicitly. I guess I decided at the time that it would be too sort of doctrinally specific, and I was trying to make a more general point. Perhaps that’s a mistake on my part. I think I should have talked about it more explicitly. This gets us into the important idea of synergism. Synergism means working together. It means that two things are in some sense causally interpenetrating, causally affecting, also constraining and affording each other. It’s a very important idea. Now, why am I bringing this up? Because synergism is the position that human beings do things that are necessary, that participate in their salvation, but are not sufficient. Now, this is not, by the way, some strange and bizarre reading. This is an idea that came to explicit formation in the Roman Catholic thinker Erasmus. And of course, there’s the famous debate between Erasmus and Luther, and this is one of the things they were debating about. I’ve been in continual discussion with Bishop Maximus of Patagonia. Amazing. I’m going to release some of the videos of those discussions about Eastern orthodoxy. And he told me explicitly that the patristic fathers use the word synergy. They use three terms as deeply interconnected. And this is the point I’m trying to get to synergy, interpenetration and participation. This is the notion of participation. The platonic notion. And I want to I want to read you a passage from Platonus, who I think is one of the great explicators of what participation means in the platonic and neoplatonic tradition and participation is properly a platonic idea. It originates in Plato. So I’m reading from the time is his, his, his essay, basically, his treatise, basically, on beauty. I want you to remember beauty because I’m going to talk about the three transcendental three transcendental the true, the good and the beautiful. These are the things that are regarded as the most universal and important signs pointing towards God’s nature. Or the nature of ultimate reality, if I was to speak more neutrally. So he’s talking in this he’s talking about beauty. For the eye must be adapted to what is to be seen. The eye must be adapted to what is to be seen. So the eye has to shape itself in order to see what is need to be seen. Now, adaptation is a synergistic relation. So think about it classically in Darwin. Adaptation is both the environment and the biology of the organism mutually causally interacting and affording each other so that they fit together. Adaptivity is a properly synergistic relation. No eye that has not become like unto the sun will ever look upon the sun. So notice what participation is. It’s this adaptivity and we know something by being it. That’s what participation is. It’s sharing being with something. Now, you don’t fully share being because that would be identity, but you share being in more than just a symbolic or linguistic sense. There is an actual ontological sharing of being. This is why I sometimes say participatory knowing is knowing by being. Nor will anyone that is not beautiful look upon the beautiful. Okay. What is John doing? What is he going on about this for? I am showing you three different traditions, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, both considered Christian and a non-Christian, but one that is in the historical tradition coming from the originator of participation. Plato, Plotinus, one of his greatest interpreters, that participation implies synergism. The Neoplatonists were very, very clear. That what they did was not sufficient for realizing. Henosis unity with the one, but they thought a lot of things were necessary and there’s a lot of dispute with the neoplatonism about the degree of that necessity and what kind of things have human beings have to do. This is a very subtle thing. But it’s an important thing. Participation implies synergism. And Luther explicitly. I’ve read a lot of secondary sources, they seem to support me on this, rejects synergism. Participation says there is something in human beings that recognizes and loves something in all human beings that recognizes and loves the true, the good, and the beautiful. Is the recognition complete? In fact, that’s why love is important. Love tells you that there’s recognition, but it has not come to a full realization. Presumably, that within us which can recognize and love naturally recognize and love that which is true and good and beautiful is what gives us our dignity. And also explains how we are seeking. Remember the confessions for God. If you don’t have something like this and this is this is properly part of the platonic tradition because I’m going to invoke Plato here. If you don’t have something like participation you face Mino’s paradox. Mino was a dialogue written by Plato. What’s Mino’s paradox? I don’t have some knowledge. Now if I completely lack any knowledge of what I’m seeking for, the knowledge I’m seeking, if I have no capacity to at least in an important fashion partially recognize it and love it that will guide me, then I face Mino’s paradox. If I’m a blank slate, for example, like Locke said, John Locke, then I won’t recognize it when I see it. If I completely don’t have it. Well, in order to recognize and see it, maybe I have to fully know it. Well, that would mean that I would never learn anything. I’d never seek it. See that’s those two alternatives point us inevitably towards something like synergism to overcome Mino’s paradox. If I have nothing in me that can recognize and love it, I can’t possibly find it or recognize it if I perchance if it randomly comes upon me. Why would I? How could I? And if I already have it completely, perhaps Plato thought this, it’s unclear what he means. Does he have fully in any ideas? Then there’s no reason to look. There’s no reason to explore. There’s no explanation for why Augustine is doing his torturous journey of seeking in the confessions. The Platonists are aware of this. They have they need to avoid. So there must be something in us that love lovingly recognizes the good and the beautiful. If that’s not operative in us, we are not participating as cognitive agents in a process. Neil Platonists argued that all of this is necessary, but not sufficient for returning to the one. The one was their name for ultimate reality. The advent of the one is not forced by us, nor is it forced upon us. It is not forced by us, nor is it forced upon us. We cultivate. Notice that word when you’re cultivate. Cultivation is a synergistic term. I do things that are necessary, but not sufficient for making the plant. The plant has to take on a life of its own. We cultivate the appropriate. Listen to the word appropriate. Ready for shaped for the appropriate receptivity. Receptivity is a feature. It was a feature emphasized by the Neoplatonists. Things have to have the appropriate receptivity or it makes no sense to explain how they overcome Minos paradox. People talk about this and they sort of talk about this as a way of talking about Augustine. They say, you know, that we have a God shaped hole in our heart and we’re restless until God fills that hole. What I’m saying is the shape of the whole matters. If the shape of the whole was indeterminate, then anything could potentially fill the hole. But the shape of the whole constrains what can possibly fill it. That is an important thing. And if we come to realize, as I argued through all of the meeting crisis, that we should equally be talking about constraints as well as causes, then this matters. This is important. The shape of the God shaped hole is important. It’s consequential. It guides us. I would argue. Participation implies synergism. Therefore, by modus tollens, a basic rule of logic, if P then Q, not Q, therefore not P. By modus pollens, if you reject synergism, as Luther did, you must reject participation. Now, does Luther say this? Does he say things the opposite to this? I don’t doubt that. But now what I’m doing, I’m drawing out the implication of a core thing that he claimed. A thing that was radical, that sent him apart from Roman Catholicism, that set him apart from Eastern orthodoxy, that set him apart from the Neoplatonic tradition. Now, I take it, I took it, and I still take it as an entailment, a strong implication, a necessary implication, that if participation is impossible, not present, not possibly present, then participatory knowing is not possible. That’s my argument. I want to add to this, things I said elsewhere in the series. Belief is not an action or an event. This is Ryle’s great critique in the concept of mind. I’m not saying that everything in the concept of mind was correct. But what he pointed out is, because the word believe is a verb, we think it indicates an action. And so, believe this. But belief isn’t an action. Pick a belief you’d like to have, that you don’t have right now. I would like to truly believe that everyone loves me. I’m doing something here a little sneaky. I’m sort of sneaking in narcissism as an idea. And I’ll come back to that. I’m trying to be a little bit playful here. I sometimes I’m getting a little bit earnest, so I try to throw a little bit of playfulness in, and I’m making myself the narcissist. I want to believe that everybody loves me. I can imagine that. I can wish it. I can desire it. But I can’t just believe it. Like, what would I do? What am I doing? Belief isn’t an act. And if you take the formation of belief out of its participatory context, all that’s left to you is propositional assertion. I believe that. I’ll say it. I’ll say it again. I’ll keep saying it. I believe that. I believe that. I believe that. That’s all that’s left to you. That’s all that’s left. Now, did Luther understand it that way? No. But that’s not the point I’m making. Dr. Cooper says that Luther understands faith as the presence of Christ. Is that participation? If not, is it just the kind of presence that Christ had when he was on Earth? Because many people he was present to, but they don’t come to have faith in him. Is it the way the logos is present to all of reality? That notion, I’m sorry, much more has to be said to clarify it and show me how it is something distinct from participation. Because if it is to cover for participation, then Luther is just contradicting himself in an important way. I want to be clear again. Luther did not say this, nor did he intend it. Yet it is an implication of his reading of Augustine and his rejection of synergism. These are two important features of what Luther is presenting to the world. I, putting my neck on the line, I do not see an explanation of participation that does not entail synergism. This is what is needed to address my point that Luther contributed significantly to the advent of propositional tyranny. Is Luther a propositional tyrant? I’m not saying that. Just like I’m not saying he’s a Nazi. But did he afford the rise of propositional tyranny? I think the argument I made indicates yes. Notice this holds whether or not he was anomalous or merely influenced by normalism. That part of my argument, I don’t think I ever said Luther was anomalous. I think he was influenced by normalism because his teacher was a clear anomalous. He rejected his teacher. We often reject our teachers, but we are still deeply enmeshed in their grammar. Again, Nietzsche’s father is a pastor. He explicitly rejects Lutheran Christianity, but he’s bound in the grammar because all he does is invert it. Heidegger’s critique is brilliant. I don’t know. That issue is like I’m willing to concede that that point is debatable. I think I’ve just made a case that it’s not essential to the argument I’m making. What I invite, and this is one of these hard questions or requests, I guess, from Dr. Cooper, is an explanation of participation that solves, addresses Mino’s paradox, and does not entail synergism. That’s what I would request. That’s what I need to see in order to feel that my argument has been appropriately responded to. This brings me to a related point. Luther’s doctrine of what has been called total depravity. Luther doesn’t say this. I admit that. I admit that. Dr. Cooper says that it is unfair to attribute this to Luther because he makes an important distinction between our relation to God, a supernatural relation, and our relation to the world, a natural relation. In fact, I think at one point he says something along the lines, Luther is a mass of contradictions unless you make this distinction. This is a central distinction. A lot of Dr. Cooper’s critique and response to me is pivoting on this point. What am I understanding him as saying? Supernaturally, we are worthless, but naturally we have worth and dignity. I hope that’s a fair reading. This, of course, is very relevant to Luther’s take on reason because that’s the area that I was concentrating on, Luther calling reason a whore. The idea is something like supernaturally reason is a whore, but naturally it has dignity and worth. Now, I am aware of this distinction and Dr. Cooper notes that I seem to be aware of it, but I don’t give it the emphasis he does. I have a question here. Does our natural capacity for lovingly, but not sufficiently, and that’s what love actually entails, recognizing the true, the good, and the beautiful, play a role in our coming to God? Does our natural reason, reasons capacity for loving, and in the Platonic system, love and reason are bound together, so I’m not doing something unfair here. Reasons capacity for lovingly, but insufficiently, recognizing the true, the good, and the beautiful, play a role in our coming to God? Is not reason the loving recognition of the true, the good, and the beautiful is what I’m saying, and does that play a role in our coming to God? If yes, then I think you are committed to participatory knowing, you’re committed to synergism. If no, this is what I will argue, then it has no real dignity, since it does not move us in the direction of that which is truly, most really, the true, the good, and the beautiful. In fact, reason would be distorting and taking us away from what is the source, the ground, the reality of the true, the good, and the beautiful. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have it both ways. Reasons dignity is a sham dignity in the natural world, because it’s ultimately illusory in the really important sense that it is distorting us and not in any way taking us towards the true, the good, and the beautiful, the source. If it’s not taking us towards the ground in the direction of the source, the origin of the true, the good, and the beautiful, it’s not properly taking us into or towards the true, the good, and the beautiful. So it’s a sham. It is self deceptive. How could it possibly be the source of dignity? Unless it is actually truly orienting us, not sufficiently, but necessarily towards the true, the good, and the beautiful. That dignity that Luther says reason has in the natural world. Is it that important? It certainly does not save us from everlasting torture. Everlasting. Think of the proportionality here. Oh, it has dignity, but not enough to, you know, give us any, give God any reason for not condemning us to everlasting torture. The fact that it contributes to our damnation. It is not purely that crushes any instrumental value it may have here in this life. This is an issue of relevance here. I want you to compare what I just said about Luther to this following thing. In relation to his commanding the ship, the captain of the Titanic was a failure. But he was a fantastic success in the social life aboard the Titanic. If the first is true, does the second really matter in our evaluation of him? You see, what you actually have with this two worlds doctrine is absurdity. In Nagel’s argument about what the absurd is. The absurd is when you have a cosmic perspective that undermines your local here now perspective. That’s what absurdity is. It is the clash of those perspectives. I do not see anything but that clash in what is being proposed here. And therefore, this is a cause of absurdity. I do not deny that Luther made this distinction. I do not deny that he clearly thinks this solves this problem. I do deny that it blocks the implication that one’s reason does not have real worth. I don’t see how it does that. And I’ve given you my reasons for that. Is this denial of reasons worth this, as DC Schindler would put this, this missology? Is it a precursor to nihilism? I think so. Many people made that argument. DC Schindler, who is a Christian, clearly makes that argument in Plato’s critique of impure reason. Notice who he’s talking about, by the way, Plato. So that’s my reply there. I’m sorry. I don’t. I’m not. I hope I’m not being obtuse. I hope I’m not just being stubborn. I’m trying to lay out clearly a line of argument in how I see it and why I think the distinction that Dr. Cooper says everything pivots on doesn’t work, doesn’t doesn’t save Luther from these implications. I don’t deny that Luther made the distinction. I don’t deny that he believed he’s addressed this problem. I don’t deny that Lutherans believe that Luther addressed this problem sufficiently. I have given you my reasons why I don’t find the response sufficient. That’s a different thing than saying I just misrepresent Luther. That’s not fair. Now, this brings us to the related point of arbitrariness. I think here, Dr. Cooper may be misinterpreting me because of the way he talked. I was talking about the arbitrariness, not from our perspective, but from God’s perspective. And I clearly say that at one point. If God chooses to save me rather than Tom, and it’s not because of any differences in our participatory love and recognition of the true, the good and the beautiful, then is God’s choice not morally and epistemically arbitrary? That seems to follow for me. Now, there seems to be a response, like, well, God doesn’t do that. God chooses those who do not reject him. I’m worried here about an equivocation because there’s two senses of not reject. There’s a logical sense, which is like people in ancient Greece did not reject the gospel because they did not hear it. So they could not possibly reject it. If in order to save everybody, all that’s needed is that they don’t reject the gospel, then don’t present the gospel. So that’s an ad absurdum, right? I’m not saying that that’s what people should think. I’m saying you can’t mean not reject any purely logical sense. That’s an absurd thing. It’s ridiculous in the face of Christianity, so nobody should be making that move. That’s what I’m saying. Right. So there has to be something that’s beyond rejection. We have to be talking here about active acceptance, active acceptance, and then we’re back to the problem. Right. Do people actively accept because of any participatory synergism or is it a complete act of grace on God’s part, a gift, an undeserved gift? Perhaps what people might think is, well, maybe there’s a stage in between, and there is psychologically between not accepting and rejecting or accepting. There’s this neutral place where I’m neither accepting nor rejecting. Yes, people can be in that state. I think that’s a reasonable description of Augustine in the confessions, by the way, but I’ll put that aside. So let’s say that what’s meant is there’s this neutral position in which they’re neither rejecting or accepting that makes you receptive to the grace. Unfortunately, that is still synergism. Unfortunately for the Lutheran position, as I’m drawing out its implications, not as what Luther stated. And if you reject that, modus tollens, then you’re rejecting, right, that this makes any difference. If you reject this synergism, you reject the proposal that implies it. And then we’re back to God’s action being arbitrary. Why that person, not that person? And as I said, from our perspective, it’s absurd because we do not in any way participate in our conversion. Is that not to say that it is forced upon us? Yes, we cannot force it. But is that not to say it is forced upon us? How are we? How is it not force? The alternatives are things are forced upon us. Beliefs are forced upon us. We are deceived into them or we are persuaded into them. Can’t be persuasion. Clearly, when somebody wouldn’t be saying God’s deceiving us into it, we’re forced into it. That’s absurd and arbitrary. I think Calvin saw this problem and he solved it. I don’t agree with the solution because I don’t agree with the premises. But I think he saw this problem and he solved it by double pre-destination. He drew out the implications. Now, this is putting me into water. I don’t want to wade in and I’m not going to be drawn further into them. I’m stating that right now. I am not going to get drawn into inter-dofprimal arguments between Christian denominations. I’m not. In that sense, my position is etic from the outside. I’m not going to go any further on this because if I do, that will start to be taken. I think what I’m saying will be taken up in that way. And in consistency with what I’ve been arguing, I have to be responsible for how things could be taken up. I want to move to another point, individual conscience. Dr. Cooper says that Luther claimed that he wasn’t just making his interpretations on the basis of individual conscience, which is, I remind you, knowing yourself, but authorized by the church to teach. So it’s not a completely subjective thing. Luther received objective, at least intersubjective, authorization by the church. It was not just Luther’s individual conscience, his personal subjectivity. I have no doubt that Luther said this. Dr. Cooper’s knowledge of Luther is clearly greater than mine. But the problem is that defense turns by implication into the odd claim that the church authorized Luther to undermine the church’s authority. I doubt the church did that. And that would just be a performative contradiction. That makes no sense. Luther remains an example of individual conscience. This helps to explain, I would argue, this is a consequence. As a consequence, this would help to explain the continual and accelerating fragmentation of Protestantism. It fragments and continues to fragment and accelerates in its fragmentation. That’s just indisputable historical fact. His example plausibly exemplified the kinds of things that drive the fragmentation. Did he want this? Did he intend this? No. But his individual conscience, his enactment of it, not his propositions about it, his enactment about it, his doing it indeed, notice that phrase, exemplary and therefore driving of the fragmentation. That’s a plausible causal hypothesis. Did that individual stand, influence Galileo and Descartes and help drive the scientific revolution? I’m not the only person that claims that. Many people say that Luther’s example helped encourage people like Galileo and Descartes. Are there deep historical causal connections between the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution? Yeah. Again, that’s a very plausible thing to say. Did Luther intend, want or argue for any of this? No. I’m not saying that. I didn’t say that. And I shouldn’t like absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence, right? Don’t confuse those two together. But if it is the case. And if Protestantism and science are taken by two successive superpowers, Great Britain and the United States into the world, then this has world consequences. And therefore could plausibly drive, contribute to, not be the sole cause of or not be the proximate cause of the meeting crisis. In a similar vein, I did not say that Luther was a narcissist or that he proposed narcissism. That’s ridiculous. I didn’t say that. What I said was that he afforded a cultural cognitive grammar of narcissism. That’s why I use the phrase training in narcissism to try and convey that. This is what I see. This is what I’ve been arguing. I see a self-loathing projected outward. Even a cosmic reading. Self-loathing, a sense of worthlessness that drives one to seek undeserved attention and love that is due to some mysterious feature of myself, not due to any effort or reasoning on my part or virtue on my part. And only this all encompassing undeserved attention and love will alleviate the internal suffering. That, I’m sorry, I guess I’m being a little bold here, but that’s the structure of narcissism. That’s the structure of narcissism. Once God is removed from the Lutheran equation and is possible that the arbitrariness and the absurdity helped to contribute to the removal, I pointed out that very shortly after, within a century of Luther, you have Shakespeare, one of the titanic minds of the time. And God has withdrawn to being an arbitrary, absurd, supernatural force. So if you remove God from the equation and perhaps the implications of Luther and the Reformation helped to contribute to that, then that grammar turns into narcissism. That’s my point. Now the Lutheran may say theologically, yes, but if you put God into that, then it’s not narcissism. Yes. Granted. But is the historical pathway that I’m drawing out implausible? I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s any more implausible that saying the atheists are running the cultural cognitive grammar of Christianity, or that science is ultimately running the cultural cognitive grammar of religion. This is difficult. I try to be playful, self-deprecating as much as I can. I’m trying to do that again right now to reinvoke that spirit. Luther is a pivotal figure. All pivotal figures are inherently liminal. That’s why they’re pivotal figures. They belong to the old and to the new. They’re in betwixt and in between. And therefore, it’s almost inevitable that our interpretation of them is ambiguous. So are there readings of Luther other than mine that are defensible? Of course. That has to be the case. That has to even logically be the case. The underdetermination of any theory by its finite data set. Okay. Now, a couple things that I can’t reply to. Dr. Cooper may claim that his faith gives him a privileged view from the inside. Emek. And that reading from the outside necessarily misinterprets the view of Luther. That could be theologically correct or incorrect. I’m not in a position. I’m not a Lutheran. So I can’t, I can’t. There’s no other way to find out. And that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to find out. I’m trying to find out if I’m a Lutheran or not. And if I’m not, but I’m not, I’m not a Lutheran. I’m not a Lutheran. I’m not a Lutheran. So I’m not a Lutheran. so I can’t, there’s no way I can respond. The problem I have with that, of course, is that would prevent discussion. It would mean that only the Lutherans get Luther right and that everybody else, right, gets him wrong, but in a way in which no one has access to Luther in order to determine if the claims made by the Lutherans are correct. This is a problem you can get into. And so I don’t think Dr. Cooper’s doing that. I mean, if he was doing that, he would need to make the response. He would just say, my faith is other than that and therefore I’ll just ignore Vervecky. But I don’t think he’s doing that. I think he actually wants discussion. I’m taking him in good faith, as I think he deserves to be, and therefore I’m now formally inviting him to a discussion about the arguments I have made, the questions I’ve raised, the requests I’ve made, and the invitations I’ve extended. I’ll leave it open to whether or not that should be on my channel or perhaps neither on his nor mine, but a neutral channel. Perhaps not completely neutral, but at least relevantly neutral. Paul VanderKlay, we tried to set it up that way. I’m going to push hard. I’m going to request Paul right now and request Dr. Cooper that perhaps that would be the best. I would prefer that. If I go on Dr. Cooper’s channel, I fear I may get too aggressive and he will be bound to be politely receptive because he’s the host. I fear the reverse would be the case if he comes on my channel. I do not think that we need to be aggressive. I’m actually trying to get it into a balanced place where we can most plausibly enter into good faith discussion. I hope to enter into dialogus about this. I hope to be reading. I’ve just got his book. Well, I got it a bit ago. I’m just going to start reading it. Sorry, Dr. Cooper. The delay. I’ve been extremely busy. I know you are too. I’m not justifying my explaining. I have his book on the true, the good, and the beautiful, which resonates with … I haven’t read it, but he clearly loves Platonism and Neoplatonism. I think people have said this about him. I know Paul said that to me about him and others have. I would hope we could also get into a convergent discussion about our shared love of Neoplatonism. Anyway, that’s my best attempt to give, I hope, a fair, responsible response and responsive response to Dr. Cooper. For everyone else, as always, thank you so very much for your time and attention.