https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=UIBm-OBO6wI
Okay. Someone should introduce. Okay, so welcome everyone I’ll begin. And I’m, I’m just so happy I’m sorry, I’m going to try not to be giddy. I haven’t been I’ve been able to talk to Paul and JP for a while JP he’s gotten married. I mean, oh wow, right. And so just excited to be here with the two of them again. We’re picking up on an ongoing dialogue we’ve been having around the topic of miracles and related things about intelligibility. And last time we came to a question, and the question, the argument, basically went like this. So the first episode JP presented his work on in on not quite reconciling but maybe that’s a close enough reconciling the idea of the miraculous with the with sort of a neoplatonic view of the intelligibility of the universe, and made use of blue Lewis and other people. And then, and then following Lewis. There was the idea that that central miracle that makes sense of all of the miracles and JP jump in if I’m misrepresenting you in any way, was the was the incarnation. And then I proposed discussing, making a comparison between incarnation and enlightenment, and the idea that enlightenment could be explained in sort of naturalistic terms, and you know talked about people like, you know, Socrates and the Buddha, and, and, and then both JP said that, while it’s plausible and perhaps even proper by misremembering, please correct me to think of Jesus as enlightened that there’s there’s something above and beyond that that goes into the notion of incarnation, which was the idea that the incarnation has an It has a unique ontological status in that it is redemptive of human history and of the natural universe in some important fashion. And that’s sort of where we left it because I brought up the question that that seems to imply a teleology in history and in the natural And it looks at least prima facie, and I could even bring in CS Lewis as an ally here, like the universe does not have that kind of teleology in it. And if history has a teleology, it seems very warped, because it seems to lead to places like Auschwitz. And so that’s basically where we’re at. So first of all, is that a fair presentation of what has happened before? And then JP has, I’m going to turn things over to him because he has recently, well not that recently, but it’s going to be recent to this discussion, written a further response that will be the basis of the discussion we’re going to have today. I just wanted to say, first of all, before we get into that, I’ve been very appreciative of these discussions. I think they’re mutually clarifying in a very powerful way. Yes, that’s true. I really value those discussions as well. And in the response, I’m going to try to outline it. So at the beginning I tried to get a bit clearer on what we mean by teleology and especially its relationship with history. And I think we should note that JP has this all written down and we’ll put the link to his written piece in our notes. And at least on my channel, I’ve also got a playlist with all of these conversations together, so that if someone wants to sort of see them, they can see the development of them. So sorry, JP, go ahead. Thanks. Perfect. And it’s worth saying that some of the things that I’ll say about teleology are, they’re meant to clear sort of the space because I took some time to look into the history, and it started with the nominalism, the fact that the Christian vision of teleology became often warped, it’s tied up with nominalism and how it rejected patterns in general, except for their imposition by minds, be they human minds or the divine mind. So I think you can trace in the classical tradition, for example, in Aquinas, you could put that in Augustine as well, where you can speak of a kind of vertical teleology between, you can say potentiality and intelligibility. Like there’s a drive for materiality, there’s a drive for potential to be informed by patterns, and there’s a drive for patterns to come and down incarnate into potential. It ties up with the terms that we used last time, but this is a kind of teleology that you can see sort of vertically that even happens like outside of time. The intermishing of emergence and emanation that happens at the highest scale is outside of time, like it’s something vertical. There’s no real narrative there if you just sort of leave it at this spot. And in the classical tradition, there’s a great ontology of this going down from the lowest scales of emergence and emanation meeting at the mineral level back in their day. Now we would say let’s say the fundamental particle of physics, for instance, and like this meeting of emergence and emanation keeps stacking up at all of the layers of reality until you get like outside of space and time altogether in God who is like the origin and meeting of emergence and emanation altogether. And from this, you can start to think about what would horizontal teleology be. It would be like an unfolding of like a directiveness in things that happens through time. So the same way that we can say that matter is directed to patterns and patterns are directed to matter. There’s like in time, you’ll see that, for instance, you can make classical examples like a match can be directed to fire if you do such and such things about it. You can see different intrinsic theology in things and something that Aristotle fleshed out well, for instance, back in his day. And when you can see this in this tree, when Aristotle took more place in the West, you can see the same thing happening in Muslim philosophers, by the way, where like this intrinsic theology in things was also associated with etiology coming from the ground of intelligibility, like itself. So in the same way that if the pattern of the match will include some theology in the match that the match will be directed towards certain things. There’s also a teleology going down from the ground of intelligibility, intelligibility itself in the way that it can train the emergence of things within nature. And so you get to associate, okay, there’s intrinsic theology in things, but this can be linked up in the hierarchy that goes up to the ground of intelligibility itself. But what has happened, it’s not exactly like clear what all of the figures were and how this happened. But from what I see, and it’s, I’m sort of basing myself on the work of an American philosopher called David Pasnow, I think from the University of Colorado, and he sort of makes the case that at least you can see very clearly in nominalists that what they will do is deny that there’s any kind of theology in intrinsic in things, they will say that the only real places where we can talk of teleology is in human actions or in divine actions. So rather than having the big hierarchy where there’s intrinsic theology in things, there’s teleology in humans when we decide to do things and also a kind of teleology that is outside of time and space altogether in the ground of being. Now with nominalism, all that you have is human teleology and divine teleology. And at that point, things start to get weird because you deny sort of intrinsic intelligibility of the world, you deny intrinsic theology in the world. So things start to split apart. So I’m not going to go into the framework to split apart. But why I like to go back to this framework is that it allows me to speak of a fundamental union of possibility and intelligibility. It’s the fundamental way that the world works, it’s emergence towards where emanation comes from. So I’m going to go back to the overarching of those two. And what I tried to flesh out in the article is that when there’s a break in that meeting of emergence and emanation, you have, it’s what evil is like it’s the classic conception of evil I think, where it’s an absence of goodness, it’s an absence of a meeting of emergence and emanation somewhere. So what I tried to say then is to take what Nishitani does to explain how to defeat evil, let’s say locally through enlightenment, and I tried to make the claim that what Christ does is sort of same thing but at the highest scale, and that this really only works because of Easter. So if I didn’t take Easter seriously, I don’t think that my claim would work at the moment, but to try and use Nishitani fusing it with the metaphysics that I just discussed, I think what happens is, as you can see that we fall into all kinds of self deceptive, self destructive patterns that break the union of being in intelligibility. So I can confuse all kinds of things and do all kinds of bad things, break patterns in the world, rupture the meeting of emergence and emanation. And what Nishitani explains well I think in this book is that if you try to sort of go down to the depths of that, if you try to see how we are fundamentally made of all kinds of, fundamentally made, I should say, I shouldn’t put it this drastically. Let’s say we fall prey to so many of those bad patterns, we are made up of so many things that turn out to be illusory because they’re negations of being in intelligibility somehow, that you can keep doubting sort of layers and layers of yourself until you get down to the very bottom layer. But Nishitani doesn’t want to stay there, like stop into nality. So what he’ll do is then he makes a move that I think is consonant with the classical tradition, he says that once you get to the ground, what you see is that you can go beyond, like you don’t have to stay there. You’ll see, how does he call it, I have the article right there so I’m going to try to get the exact formula that he called it. So it’s the turnabout from the great death to the great life, the place where you doubt, doubt itself, the place where you sort of let all of the negative patterns defeat themselves, and then what you realize once you get there is, as this happened, you’re fundamentally made of emergence from this nothingness, of emergence from this potential, and you, through doing this, and like I’m obviously saying this propositionally at the moment because I have to, but like this is a real religious experience for Nishitani that is like, this has to be accompanied by all kinds of practice and you have to realize this in yourself. But through this, through negating all of the bad patterns in yourself and communing with the ground of it all, you come to reconstruct yourself with good patterns and you can reach enlightenment where the logos is able to speak through you in a way that is at least a local victory over evil, over the break between possibility and intelligibility. And then what I, what I tried to claim then is that what the Christian narrative does is the same thing but at the cosmic scale, it’s not an individual and psychological victory let’s say, as Siddhartha did, which is already a great thing, like I don’t want to deny it and I want, I’m even happy with saying that, let’s say, the self-sacrifice of Socrates for the logos or the enlightenment of Siddhartha participated in the incarnation. I just want to say that Christ brought this to a higher pitch where he took all of the, like he sort of, in a way, he took all of the breaking, all the possible ways to break the union of being in intelligibility and he took it all upon himself. Like he was subject to like all the negative patterns you can imagine, like he was, he was betrayed by people, he was crucified, all of the rendings of possibility and intelligibility, I think you can see them in the story of Christ. But then in the same way that Siddhartha is able to go beyond after reaching the depths of this, like Christ does it, but at the cosmic scale through Easter and like this ends up being a global victory over sin and death. So it’s the basic idea. I could keep going into more details, maybe it’s worth at least speaking a bit about primary and secondary causality here. So the kind of theology that we get when we speak about this is it’s not as straightforward as we tend to think. Let’s talk about some of the layers here. So it’s possible for a higher form to act through lower forms in a way that doesn’t negate the, let’s say the genuine chance or freedom of the lower levels. So I give a few examples in the article, but let’s say that I’m writing something on a board with chalk. So I’m using the chalk as a secondary cause here. Like I’m not the primary cause really is God, but in this example, like I’m the primary cause of I decide what to write. But I do it through the chalk and the chalk is the secondary cause. I don’t deny the reality that the chalk is writing on the board. It’s just that it’s part of my higher pattern where I write on the chalk. So this can happen at higher levels of reality as well. An example I give is that of a parent. So a parent can freely make their child do their own work for instance, if you know that your child enjoys playing let’s say hockey and eating cookies, like you can tell your child to do their own work, and then they’ll get that or that thing and the child can freely decide to do their own work then. So a higher cause can act as a secondary cause without negating let’s say contingency at the lower levels. And Aquinas is very clear about this that God can cause things to happen necessarily or contingently and that properly speaking like those categories just don’t apply to God himself of necessary or contingent actions. But what this allows me to do is to say that what we see exemplified in the story of the incarnation, the crucifixion and the resurrection is that all things are ultimately brought to intelligibility. So it seems like the emergence of everything that happens within nature is constrained so that you have an emergence towards greater and greater levels of intelligibility, but that doesn’t mean that there’s a kind of determinism at the lower levels. And like there can genuinely be all kinds of evils and terrible things that happen at the lower levels. So Aquinas doesn’t prevent the primary cause of all of it from bringing all things towards himself. So, I think it’s a summary of what the article is. It’s already been a while that I’ve been saying this so I don’t know that I should keep going you probably already have some responses. I think that might help, because I think someone just jumping into this video might, if you read JP’s article I thought your article was amazingly clear and lucid, and even though it is in many ways quite abstract and a little bit esoteric. It’s too inaccessible for readers. So we come to this, you know, part of, you know, part of the crux let’s say between in the conversations that that myself and Jonathan Bejo and JP have been having with you, John, has been this, this question of, to what degree can we trade on. Let’s, let’s call them the narrative faculties of Christianity and other religious narratives usually ancient religious narratives to to to rely on certain kinds of knowledge about the world, because these religious stories are these religious very much leverage narrative, moral valence good versus evil. Understanding teleology in terms of all of this stuff in the world is heading somewhere, it is for something. And, and then, you know, you very much brought in and we talked about miracles and a bunch of other things, but then you know you very much brought in well, is that. So, you know, in the middle of the 20th century, even though it was a it was a, like probably every other century and recorded history, it was a century soaked in blood. And so for some reason with the development of of philosophy and religion in the West, the middle part of the 20th century, the, you know, the, the industrialized killing by the Nazis, and then we should throw on there the industrialized killing of, you know, there are a And the 20th century of which the Nazi genocide is obviously a horrific one but you know Maoist China Stalinist Soviet Union. The Soviet Union genocide I mean there’s so many so much bloodletting in the 20th century that many people came to the point of saying, could is, is all of this suffering in some way. Is this being squared with the idea and the assumption that the story of humanity is finally a good story. Or do we, I had a conversation with a with a young man, not too long ago. Nate, who’s been just back and forth over the line of Christianity, a number of times, and and I kind of summed it up to him this way I said, is being fundamentally and finally evil neutral or good. And I think if you read JP’s piece. Now not only the incarnation but I think in Christianity, the incarnation comes to its culmination in the resurrection. And that’s sort of where we get into this, the miracle element of this and then see us loose his book miracles, which sort of launched a lot of this. His article is his central chapter which is the grand miracle, very much has both the incarnation and the resurrection because it’s in the resurrection, where not only does Christ take on flesh, and I usually phrase it as creation 1.0 in the resurrection. But he now creates in his resurrection, the seed the kernel of creation 2.0, which, and I think you nicely did it in your, in your piece JP creation 2.0 which then takes all of this suffering, and all of this seeming waste pointlessness that that that sort of that I would say at the universe being is at best neutral it doesn’t seem to care about us, or about efficiency or about tell us about any of this, but but in the in the resurrection then all of this comes together and I think you said quite nicely in the piece JP that, you that resurrection then is finishes the argument, I’d say, about the goodness of being. And, and, but that that of course then for many, for whom, especially in the modern period, look at something like the claim that Jesus of Nazareth walked out of a grave, after being dead not just mortally wounded but dead for a day and a half on the third day walks out of that and then Jesus of Nazareth, whom shows up to disciples and then ascends up to heaven. I mean it’s a, let’s let’s Christian should be very honest about this. It’s a big claim. And you know my Jewish friends say the Ascension disproves the resurrection because it’d be a lot better if he was hanging around and we could still kind of poke him in the hands of the side but, and so I don’t know if that kind of helps some of our audience. I mean, JP right now. We got we got Buddha and Nishitani and, and until the allergy and causality but if you read the piece, you’ll I think you’ll and if you read the piece and then listen to JP again which you can do because of this lovely thing we have called video, I think you’ll see how, how it frames And this is a response to John’s question, which is John is by no means alone and I don’t, I don’t take this as an anyway an unreasonable question to look at what we know of the universe and what we continue to know about the universe as if, even if one of us that Christians say are fallen even a Calvinist, you know, total, totally depraved human beings are not as bad as we could be but we’re affected by depravity. Even we could seem to maybe imagine a 20th century without Hitler Stalin and Mao. So, that just kind of set that up. First of all, I think what Paul just did was great. And I emphasize his recommendation not to take anything away from JP’s presentation. But I think reading the article and then go and seeing what I think and seeing what JP said, it would be to to do do justice to his argument. I do like the fact that he has put, you know enlightenment and it’s tiny and intelligibility and emergence and emanation onto the system, and we have discussed those already before. So that’s also not completely de novo if you look at previous videos. So I recommend also looking at the previous videos of there’s some of these terms you’re coming in at some of you at the third, and the third book in the trilogy is always the most perplexing right on so I think what Paul did was also really good. And so, let me first make sure I’m understanding. I want to, I want this to be very much the logos because I love you, you too and I want to be like in good relationship throughout this. What I heard Paul saying is, this comes down to a fundamental question about whether or not being is good. And, and then, and I think that’s really relevant and related JP to the whole question about intelligibility and realness. So that’s one thing. And then there, there, there was an implication there or maybe a piece of position that there’s a connection between the goodness of being, and there being some teleology that is disclosed by a narrative there. Is that, is that okay so far. And that I don’t know what the right adjective is so don’t jump on me but but a pivotal narrative is the narrative of the incarnation and the resurrection, and what that, what it does is, it is not supposed to be. I don’t know what to say. Let me, let me, instead of saying what it’s not let me try and say what it is, because I’m getting ahead of myself. The point of the resurrection is, it is. I don’t want to say proof because that’s not the right word. It’s the final demonstration of the goodness of being within a narrative format is that fair so far if I if I understood that correctly. So, I don’t know JP What do you think. Yeah, that’s all that sounds good. Yeah. Good, because, first of all, that was excellent. Secondly, I want to also reinforce Paul like JP the work that you and Jonathan are doing I keep saying this and people are right, it’s really generous, it’s really innovative, and in some profound ways it’s radical. So one thing in which you and I or I think maybe Paul are radical is that, and I agree with you, I think that nominalism is a fundamental problem. And in so far as it, I would argue. Maybe this is on your behalf maybe it’s not you can let me know, I would argue that the degree to which nominalism has been as insinuated it within the Christian framework, it actually fundamentally undermines Christianity in a profound kind of way. I see what you and Jonathan are doing as really profound. Now, I happen to think that there are good arguments against nominalism largely coming out from the revival of Platonism in a big way. And at some point I’d like to do why I think normalism should be rejected. What one of the problems you have a normalism it comes to its, it comes to its peak and con. Right. We don’t know anything out there there’s nothing out there, and all of the patterns are in here and then you have to ask on. Well, why does the mind have real patterns, and how do you know those. Why can’t you have unmediated access to patterns in your mind. Why can’t you have unmediated access to patterns, right, you get all these problems and then how do you write and how can you possibly do science and how can we understand the past if normal. And so I recommend Berman’s book on this and another, so I won’t go into it I’m just giving some quick stabs of what will I agree that we should reject normalism, and I’m building towards, like, I’m trying to give as much ground as I can, because if you reject normalism, then you’re going to take seriously the proposal that intelligibility is a feature of the world. And that is an radically important thing to say and that’s one of your presuppositions JP, I think, in your argument. Okay, yes yes I need that. Yeah. Yes. I mean, you, and then to bridge the Paul, you have an argument and I keep recommending this book, everybody should read Schindler’s book Plato’s critique of impure reason it is the best book on Plato, I have ever read in my whole career. Astonishing. Wow. Yes, that’s a recommendation. And you’ll be both please speak, you’ll both be pleased to know that he’s a Christian. So, now that I’m not going to try and recapitulate the whole argument but this is the. So, I’ll try and do it gesturally intelligibility and realness are like this. This is this is one of the fundamental ideas. What gender sets is if you see that, that that’s a fundamental kind of goodness. That’s a goodness that’s independent of how things might be helpful to us. And that’s a bit of a distinction what I want to make. I want to give you an idea of what he means the goodness of truth. Right, and we take truth to be a good. Right, in some sense has to be independent of how it could be good for us, or the, or how much we like it or prefer it, or the truth can’t do its job Just, I mean that’s not the complete argument but I’m trying to give it just to it. Right. So there’s this kind of fundamental ontological goodness and of course that’s why Plato calls the ultimate thing principle of reality and intelligibility and realness, the good. Now this is not an ethical good it’s not an aesthetic good, it’s a fundamental ontological good. Is that, is that okay so far. Okay, so, so far, we’re all playing the same game. And that’s good. So, here’s the issue with that, I have right, which is, again, By the way, I would think that there’s analogous arguments in Buddhism about Nirvana and Shinjata being good in that they ultimately afford it ultimately affords the liberation of all beings. And this isn’t a moral goodness it’s a it’s a fundamental ontological goodness. Okay, so here’s the thing. I would want to say, Does that notion of goodness, depend on anything like Aristotelian final causality. Does it depend on things working towards some final state of completion. So what I would propose is that not the case that there’s no intrinsic connection between intelligible intelligibility realness goodness, and any kind of proposal of a progression in either human history or cosmological history. Right. So that’s the question. And then, can you can you say it one more time I’m typing it as you go. So, what I’m proposing is, basically, I’ve tried to get agreement that we were working in the same place we’re rejecting normalism, we’re taking intelligibility serious. It really gives a profound platonic, neoplatonic answer to Paul’s question about a kind of fundamental goodness that’s not a moral goodness, not an aesthetic goodness and I tried to indicate what that might look like like the goodness of why pursue the truth, it has to be good in some way, right, things like that I’m just trying to lay that out. And my question is, given all of that, and I’m trying to give a lot of common ground. Is there any entailment or necessary connection between that ontological goodness, and there being any progression in human history or natural history, it seems to me there isn’t any necessary entailment there. Right. Now, the reason why the Greeks were able to put it together and Augustine and Aquinas sit on this is Aristotle had a notion of final causation that was based on the idea that that goodness expressed itself, even in inanimate things seeking out conditions of improvement. Now, if we, if, if that if that notion and there are other notions of theology, you might want to explore together here, but if that notion of teleology the one introduced by Aristotle assumed by Augustine and Aquinas comes into question. Then, the claim that there’s some intrinsic connection between the goodness of being and teleology comes into question as well. Is that okay so far. And here’s how I would call it into question, which is right. The two things so what Paul already beautifully said it human history, we get, we get Auschwitz, and we get the gulags and the genocides, we get the Cultural Revolution we get the killing fields, we get the Amarnian genocide, we get the genocide of the indigenous people in North America, like, just horrific stuff. Right, lot of it done by the way. It’s not an irrelevant point explicitly in the name of progress. It was justified and done right in the name of progress in some utopic vision. Now, so, history is in question for that reason. The other thing that I that Paul didn’t bring up is our view of the universe has expanded tremendously. And I now know that in terms of material scope, causal power energy. We are absolute minutiae, and both in time and space and causation, both in time and space and also in causation. And so the idea that all of this vastness in time and space was somehow bound up to us seems implausible to me. And also, when you look at the just most of this stuff. It seems not like a. It doesn’t seem like it’s made for us. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case that life has struggled to adapt itself to an otherwise hostile universe. I cannot see evidence of a seeking function in history or natural history. Sorry in human history or natural history, calling it natural history is a bit of a misnomer, but that’s what we ended up calling it so I’ll just go with that. So that’s the that that’s the issue for me. And so I can see. I can. I don’t mean to be condescending, I can see Jesus is Jesus death and resurrection. We’ll put aside. If it’s a miracle because then we’re just assuming something to show something right, whatever that is whatever it means whatever that story means whether it’s mythos and you know I don’t mean that pejoratively, or it was something that could be viewed and photos could be taken of it or something like that. And that doesn’t even seem to be the case because it’s, it’s like the physicality of that is even in the Gospels is very weird. I could even acknowledge that that would be above and beyond enlightenment, maybe enlightenment 2.0 in that it is like, and JP gave me this like the death of Socrates and like the Buddhism like that but there’s something more about disclosing the ultimate goodness of being. And the reason why I’m willing to give that is because that theme runs throughout Christ’s teaching in a profound profound way. And so, and it’s not as present in this credit tradition, or the, or the Buddhist tradition, although Plato does have the idea of the ontological good. Right. But. I’m willing to say that that whatever it is right and I’m trying to be neutral on it and not not disparaging. Right, I’m willing to say, yes, I can see how that could disclose in a profound way. And maybe, you know, historically, even unique way. This fundamental goodness of being. That’s one of the reasons why Christianity and Platonism found each other. That would be a very plausible historical explanation. But for all of that. I don’t see it generalizing for the reasons I’ve given to the redemption of history and the redemption of the universe. So I’ve tried to be as forthcoming as I could, and responsive as I could. I can try responding unless you want to go ahead first of all. I want to hear what you have to say. I’ve got plenty of ideas but I don’t hear you. Yeah, sort of twofold. So, about what kind of theology I want exactly. I don’t need something. I don’t think I need something as I don’t. I hesitate to use the word deterministic, but I don’t want to, I don’t, I don’t want something as directed or deterministic as Aristotle I don’t think I need that. I was trying to appeal to the sort of distinction between horizontal and vertical theology earlier. So I think that, let’s see, all things. I mean, in eternity, like outside of time, if you look at things at the highest of scales, like, things are always, always drawn up towards intelligibility, towards truth. So I think that all these things exist only in as much as they participate in intelligibility. So I think that always happens like at any instant, sorry, in eternity, but in time. I don’t, I don’t need I think this unfoldment to be, let’s say, as straightforward as Aristotle was saying, let’s see. So I think in the article, and I’m trying to walk a very thin line here, because I don’t want to say that the incarnation happens sort of just by accident, and I don’t want to say either that it was deterministic, that like, things just had to fit this way exactly and there was no place for contingency in there. So I want to say that the seed that we see in the incarnation and resurrection realized the Christian narrative, because, okay, and this is tied up to my second part of the second part of my response. First, I want to say, I don’t think it had to happen this way. Like, I think the, the same fulfillment of the same drawing up of all of creation towards one point towards eternity, the same affirmation of the, the fundamental goodness of creation could have been established some other way. But I think that the way it happened now is coherent, and I think it’s what allows me to, like, at least give an answer. I’m not the same so I can’t like, give like a full answer, especially propositionally to the, like, the history part of it. But what I see in the seed of Christ’s own incarnation, I think explains the pattern that has been unfolding since then, because we see the wheat and the tares roll up together. So, the, let’s say Christ’s assertion of the fundamental goodness of creation is tied up with the incarnation also being, in a way, the worst event in all of creation, where all of creation. All of the worst things that could happen to the logos happen to the logos in the, in the incarnation, but I have to non logically identify this with also the greatest events in creation like the greatest phrase towards intelligibility. And I think it’s in, in seeing how that seed grows in history, that I can at least make sense, make some sense, at least for me and I won’t keep repeating that I’m not the same so I can’t fully explain this but like the glimpses I get is that there are saints who follow in that same pattern, where Christ revealed the fundamental goodness of creation, you can sit in the apostles who followed Christ after after the apostles themselves participated in the persecution of Christ, except for John but like the other apostles denied him or like amended them somehow. And afterwards, they were brought up into that pattern into that seed, and they themselves were martyred and like became images of the same thing, and then it kept growing, creating the church, creating churches and then the churches themselves were persecuted and the martyrs and that this grew like this. It keeps growing through these deaths and resurrection. And it’s the weak and the terrors I’m not able to like separate them at least personally and Christ encouraged us to not try to separate them, really. But, like, it seems that like the fundamental assertion of the good goes through sort of capturing all of the bad around itself. So, I mean, Christ did a bunch of things to provoke in a way, the like to, to bring all of the bad towards him, like to bring all the persecution that he like he did this, he brought out the worst in many people by being there. And then it’s what allowed them to reassert goodness, but I think this has been unfolding throughout history so in like the, it’s like the best and the worst keep growing together so the like the 21st century was the worst in many ways, with like all the atrocities that you mentioned, but you also saw a bunch of saints like I have a book here of like a Father Gierion Goldman, like he was a German Franciscan seminarian who like got rolled up into the SS because it was German, and like he refused in all kinds of ways to to participate, and like face death like on multiple occasions as you can imagine kept getting into trouble but like he, you also have there the story of a saint who is like the wheat among the tares there, who did all kinds of amazing things in that story. And then you have John Paul II, who also like faced persecution from the, the Nazis and the communists. There’s the same pattern, the way that the union of being and intelligibility were reasserted in Christ through this weird capture of bad unto itself like keeps spreading, and that’s how I can make I need Easter for that to be like a real victory. So, like the, I don’t know how much it can be viable to people who, let’s say don’t find Easter viable, but I think that if I get it, then I can make sense of like this, this messian folding that we see in history. So, I’m, I want to be responsive and respectful of the fact that you’re trying to draw stuff out and you’re on the edge. We all are on the edge of intelligibility. And so, I don’t want to, like, one, I don’t want to take it. I don’t want to take advantage of that in any kind of inappropriate way. I trust you, John, I trust you. Okay, great. Well I do, I trust both of you to so. I’m just saying as that’s clear because so I again, I see, I’m willing to say, with you, and you extended it beyond the Christian history you did it with the Buddha, I’m willing to say that there. I’m John Hicks use it in his book on the interpretation of religion, there are saints, and a saint is something more than a sage, a saint does this thing of like disclosing in their life, the goodness of being. So, totally. And I think, I think bringing that up as Paul and you have done right now as like we need to we need an account of how this is possible. I think that I think that’s important. So whether or not we come to some final agreement, just getting that out there is an I mean, I mean, it’s like, we need an account of reality that properly accounts for this phenomena where we encounter lives that seem to like the beauty of a sunrise, these lives shock us into the declaration of sort of the inherent goodness of being. Again, I want to emphasize this is not aesthetic or moral goodness, this is ontological goodness, which is, there’s, there’s something about we value realness for its own sake, even if we suffer tremendously to undergo a relationship to that realness That’s what I’m putting my finger on. Right. So I acknowledge all of that and I think it’s important. So, so that’s a common point. Now the point that the second what I hear you and if I misunderstanding you. I hear you wanted to say but beyond that john. There is evidence of, let’s call it the redemptive wave spreading out. And that’s what’s getting out. Right, you were talking about how this spreads out through history, and this is the evidence for kind of a redemptive, like I call it the redemptive wave a redemptive wave, like that spreads out and that’s what’s lifting things towards a better state, and that’s a kind of teleology in the universe is am I getting that part of the argument right, because that’s what I’m trying. Okay. So, so, I guess the issue I have with that. And I don’t want to be unfair, but the church’s history is really checkered in bad in a lot of ways. Right, and, and, like, and so, and you don’t even work in one. Yeah, yeah. And by the way, and towards your point about the weed and the tears there there and I’ve already acknowledged the church has also produced mystics and sages and saints. And so I don’t want I don’t want to do that, the, the, the, you know, the skeptic kind of thing where you, you know you compare the worst of religion to the best of secularity, or anything ridiculous like that I’m not not doing that I’m not doing that. I’m just responding to this specific new argument about the spread, the spread of the redemptive way. And yet when I look at the history of the church. It’s, it’s a really checkered history, and the church has even been at war itself like in some of the bloodiest wars in history, where the where the wars of the 17th century between the Protestants and the Catholics. It’s wonderful that Catholics and Protestants consider together now, and be in fellowship and love each other. That wasn’t always the case. Right. And so, the problem I have with that’s one side that spread seems to be checkered. And on the other side, I see other things spreading in that way to Buddhism spreading that way, particularly, or Islam spreading that way. You know, while acknowledging Jesus as a prophet doesn’t have the same redemptive incarnation theology that you to have. So, I again, that’s the part where the human history really devils me. Sorry for that that was perhaps a bad pun I didn’t mean it. But it’s a good word. But, but again, that’s so first point is the checkered history second other things spread. Third, I have a hard time seeing that spreading into natural history at all. I do. That’s where the spreading argument. I find very difficult, like, in what way. Right. Like, is, is that spreading, so that the, the natural world becomes more and more apparently better than it was before. And so the fourth point is, what would be the evidence that you’re wrong. Right. Like if we said it so that no matter what it counts as this, then that’s not, that’s nothing right, you’re not making an argument anymore you’re just defining it thing. So, the four points I make it’s the spread in history the church’s checkered. Other things have spread. Right. I don’t see how it spreads to natural history, and In fact, going back to the checkered thing. Remember my point that a lot of these genocides were driven by claims of progress and betterment, so I can strengthen my first argument. And then the fourth argument with the fourth point is well what would it what would be the evidence that your proposals wrong. What would it look like if what I was saying was the case that there is, there is an ontological goodness, and there are lives of enlightenment that exemplify and shine that and so we get we get kind of non propositional proof of the goodness of being and Plato is Plato is in line with this because the most the most important demonstration of the goodness of being is Socrates is death. So, I think Socrates is death gives final confidence to his claim that the unexamined life is not worth living. So I’m willing to say all of that which is a lot I think. Right. And then, and that’s consistent. Nevertheless, with all of the atrocities and all of this checkered history, and the fact that the natural universe seems basically, you know, in hospitable to us. So I hope I’m being fair. Oh, I think you’re very fair. I could be a lot more brutal. So I you’re always you’re always very generous, but let me. One of the things that. But one of the things that I often come around to in many of these arguments is the strangeness of the ontological argument. And one of the things I was thinking about with, especially with your, your description here. I just, I’ll just, you know, I’m pretty fast typist you know our view of the universe has expanded tremendously in terms of the material scope we are minutiae and time and space and causation, all of this vastness is somehow bound up to us, bound up to us seems, it seems implausible. It doesn’t seem like it’s it’s made for us. I do not see an evidence of seeking function in human history or natural history, I really like that a seeking function. What I think about, and I think I think it’s important here to recognize that. And even as a Christian. I’m preaching, I’m preaching through Paul now. And, and with the with Paul of Tarsus. I mean faith, when he’s when he’s wrestling with the question of circumcision and inclusion in the people of God, by faith apart from the works of the law. And there’s, there’s within Christianity, always, at least within the Christian narrative on this side of, of the presence the Perusia, which you know I’ve been listening to some interesting philosophy lately and understanding a little bit broader how broad that is and what it meant in some other areas, but but before before the coming of the presence. And that’s very much how it is in Christian theology that the return of Christ is seen as the coming of the presence it’s it’s the, you know, it’s the culmination that until that day. And the best that we can have is is leaning into the future in faith, and I even think of, you know, some of Jordan’s language, living, living as if this story is true right now, and that I think there’s a, I think there’s a degree of faith built into that, that idea. One of the things that I think about in terms of in terms of scope and broadness is, is the relationship between smallness, and I’ll say peakness. We spend most of our time doing mundane things, how many hours do we spend sleeping or eating or, you know, bathing or, you know, doing labor to somehow put food on the table, and and you think about someone, and, and they might come to a point where where they say, my whole life is about this. And even for us human beings, especially those of us who work with our minds and work with our mouths. Anybody watching who perhaps didn’t understand the language would look at us and say, your, your whole life is about an idea. I mean, you don’t see that from space. One of the things that I, you know, one of the things that I, and that and we simply accept that in our in our lives that we can live 607080 years, and, you know, equals MC squared, which is, you know, a line this long somehow gives value to a man’s life. And in fact an entire, entire flow of history which is, which is simply thought, thought and scribbled on land, you know scribbled on paper. You know we’re very strange that way in terms of our valuations of things that that that almost the very small and imperceptible can, as our language says means the world to us. And so, I think about that and I also think about, you know, the strangeness of life, and that it is late like you say john we just even look at our solar system and, you know, CS Lewis wrote space fantasies of creatures on Venus and Mars and we send our little things up there and, you know, there’s dirt, maybe, maybe there’s a little bit of ice left, but seems kind of pointless and, you know, we certainly seem fragile in the way that we’re, you know, living in fires and floods and hurricanes and whatnot today. Yeah. And one of the one of the strange things and I really appreciate JP’s mention of the wheat and the tears. You know, one of the strange things seems to be that, yes, the 20th century was awful. But we recognize it as awful. And we care that it’s awful. And if you read much history. You know before, you know, before Christ. I mean genocide, the end the Neanderthals didn’t, you know, didn’t do a Jonestown. They would probably wipe them out and replace them. And, you know, that’s evidence in the in the, in the genetic, and, you know, I, I sometimes look at, you know, the conversations around the genocide perpetrated by European colonials in North America. There was probably 14,500 years of constant genocide going on the Americas, before the Europeans got involved. Yes, they brought that over from Asia because this is, this is what we do. And it’s a startling thing that we’re now troubled by this, because even if you read. You know, I over my vacation I was reading Tom Holland’s dynasty. And, you know, one of the one of the interesting things about Tom Holland’s personal journey was, you know, he used to revel in the classics and enjoyed it. At some point he began to read it and the more, you know, primary source material he read the more horrified was not just that. This is what we do to each other, but we just didn’t care. And, and the question of, you know, justification. And I’m not I’m not about to, you know, try to exonerate Christians in this, in this march or say that it’s it’s necessarily, you know, uniquely Christian that we have scruples about the suffering because that’s not true. But it’s a, it’s a strange strange thing that that we somehow care about. And we somehow even project on to people often with gross exaggeration and getting all kinds of things wrong. We project upon total strangers a suffering that troubles us so deeply that we will go out of our way to to sacrifice on their behalf. It’s a strange thing we’re doing and and yeah, you know, I look at Tom Holland’s work, and, and it seems hard to deny that a good deal of this happened because not only did this did this strange man walk around getting most of the people who listen to him either excited and eventually pretty angry enough to kill him. But he’s he’s sort of inspired a lot of people to, to give to give their lives in such a irresponsibly sacrificial way that the classical world just sort of stopped. And, you know, people often always try to say well you know it was those, it was those tyrannical powerful church fathers who somehow, you know, used Roman power to wipe out paganism. Most of the evidence is that paganism sort of died with a whimper in some ways sort of like many Christians are many churches are today, especially in Quebec. So, there’s, you know, I don’t, you know, I can’t really answer. And I don’t think in Christian narrative we can really answer the question, short of the peruse a, the, the coming, and I think that gets to your gets to your point john that. What would it look like if. Let’s say I as a Christian minister I’m completely wrong about all of this. And I think it sort of looks like what I think the predominant scientific models say which is that we’ve got this flurry right now of, of small little creatures wanting to ensure their own existence until something big enough finally takes us out. And none of it means anything, at least in that teleological framework, and, you know, then maybe you can blame Christianity for the meaning crisis because maybe we wouldn’t have had our crisis of meaning if we hadn’t got our hopes up. I, you know, those are the, those are the kinds of things that, because, you know, I think you you’ve laid it out quite well john and, you know, these things aren’t alien to me, and, and it’s not like I, I go to bed every night thinking, I need better proof so I can convince everyone I’m right. It’s much more. I look out in space and it’s like, yeah, life is fragile. Yeah, we seem to be cooking the planet. Yeah, we’re, we’re awful, awfully horrible to each other and it’s fairly easy to point to history with Christians behaving badly but I’ve got evidence back here in this room. I get happen regularly, and even more I got evidence in my own skin. So, you know, it’s for that reason that that that I completely understand the, the challenge. Yeah, where I where I always sort of land is, is this pivot on an ontological argument that perhaps, if I can imagine a better world. Perhaps, not only do I have hope for that better world, but I might have at least enough evidence to justify that I’m not irresponsible or reckless with my truth, and that’s, that’s kind of where I land. So that’s a very authentic and well articulated response. I don’t know if I answered any of the philosophy, but, but, but part of your point is this is not and should not be just a philosophical argument, we’re back to what JP said we’re struggling with propositional language to talk about things that ultimately are not processed I’ll try to use a neutral word traditionally, and I of course deeply acknowledge that so I want to I want to state that I think I mean one of the arguments against nominalism. One of the arguments I gave was an argument you gave, which is, and this is a platonic argument which is right that we need we have to account for our ability. Like you said to come into these normative judgments. And remember, and you know, the, the, the sort of secular rationalist all about know you need to also account for your judgments about truth. That’s not just a normal normative term, you can’t put truth over here as an unjustified normative term that somehow you don’t try and fit into your ontology and that’s okay. And then you know, you know besmirch beauty and moral goodness over here that that’s an incoherent point and that’s Plato’s point again and again and again and so I acknowledge that. And I, and like I said, I also acknowledge I think I should talk to Tom Holland someday. I also acknowledge that I try and I hope. I hope you see this, I was trying to acknowledge that there are historical events independent of sort of logical argument in these lives that have an impact that the arguments alone can have I acknowledge that I think that. And, and so I think that’s important. And, you know, I think I want to say that there are these lives that like that, that are are the wave crest of humanity, and they remind us that the water can rise and not only not only sinker, some tortured metaphor around that. And so, and, and, and, and I want to acknowledge all of that. I guess what I want you, I’m going to ask is to acknowledge something, sort of how I find help. If there’s no teleology in a deep sense. And the fact that my actions are irrelevant to something 1 million years in the future means by perfect symmetry of argument, what happens 1 million years from now is irrelevant to the meaning of my life now. And that’s the niche a tiny. If you follow the absurdity down, it can actually do this aspect shift where you realize, wait, the largeness of things actually undermines itself as a way of trying to undermine the value of my small little life, and I get there, precisely I, there isn’t a teleology because if there’s a teleology, then what I do now has to matter, and then it seems like it can’t possibly matter. And that’s how you get the sort of some of the classical arguments for absurdity and meaninglessness. Whereas if you route, so not only like does the teleology, the teleological vision, breed utopias and utopias breed genocides I think that’s a very direct argument. There’s another argument I make over here and I’ve done larger versions elsewhere which is, yes, yes, but if there’s something. I know you don’t find this insulting but there’s something redemptive right and I see Camus trying to do this in giving up teleology, because there’s a way in which it protects lives from the the the Lovecraftian hugeness of things that would horrify us into meaninglessness. And for me, that that that is a profoundly helpful vision. Now I’m not I’m not trying to compete with visions, but I’m trying to say but there’s also something that can also give you, you know, a soothing, you know, in 3am when you wake up, right, it’s like, well, maybe that’s not the way meaning works because if meaning isn’t bound to teleology, then the absurdity undermines itself and then human lives are now protected from that kind of Lovecraftian threat. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but I’m trying to say right that there, there. I mean, many places acknowledged that when we lost the teleological village vision that was horrible. And so I’m not I’m not trying to dismiss, but I’m trying to say there’s something about losing the teleological vision. That’s also good. That’s good because it it removes us from a kind of, like I said, a kind of being crushed by our ability to imagine the scales of things and to try and bear the responsibility on our shoulders of these huge scales of things. So, I don’t know what you think about that I’d be interested in hearing both of your responses to that. I think that’s a very good argument, John. I never heard it put this way. And I think, I think, I think it’s really, it’s a really good argument. If you would, we could say is if it’s if you don’t have teleology, then, like, you can reach enlightenment with Siddhartha and I think that’s great. I think if you want teleology. I think we really need Easter or something like it to show that like this spreading can actually succeed in the face of all of the death that we see. And instead of how I would like to try to respond to your. I really like the challenge you asked to see what would falsify our position. It’s because I’m aware that there’s a trap in the fact that the Christian tradition is so old and so rich that it’s easy to find some symbolism somewhere to explain everything that’s happening. But I’ve, I think I heard you make this point in the Q&A a while back, so I had some time to think about it. And I think one way for the Christian narrative to be falsified for the open Easter to be falsified is like what Paul said. And I think another one is if enlightenment was spread more successfully some other way. Like if we saw like if this progress happened, like outside of Christianity in a way that surpassed what happens within Christianity. I think that this would also be a good counter argument. Like, I just want to acknowledge it. That’s a good point. That’s a good point. So keep going, please. That’s a good point. Because let’s see what Paul said earlier. I think you put Tom Holland’s point excellently where the wheat and the tares grow together. Like the fact that we see there’s all kinds of bad, terrible things happening, but our very perception of them as bad is a sign that there is something special going on. And like this if I think about Peter, for instance, Peter did some of the most horrible. Peter’s denial of Christ is the most horrible thing that Peter could do, but he could only do it because Christ first brought him towards him. So it’s the idea that the corruption of the best is the worst. And I can see that I can see that this sort of trickle. I’m going back to my earlier argument. So I don’t know if I want to be careful not to go around in circles, but like the this wave spreading of elevating, taking something bad, elevating it. And then this good thing, because it’s higher now, can also fragment into something worse. So the Christianity civilized Europe and like transformed, like it took barbarians in Europe and turned them into like a flourishing civilization towards the Middle Ages. But then like this, the fact that Western Europe was so organized, so well structured also gave rise to the terrible things that happened in the 20th century. The best was turned into the worst. And I’m I’m the Christian optimism that goes beyond the denial of theology and I agree, John, that I think your point is great. Like if, if I had come across this 510 years ago, well, it could have been very different. But like now what I see in Now that let’s say the Christian narrative is viable to me, I’m able to track that if I have the resurrection plus Easter, plus I’m able to see the seeds of Easter spreading throughout history. I’m, I think I’m able to respond to the challenge of like seeing what’s happening throughout history. But at the same time, I have to acknowledge that if we saw some other means of spreading enlightenment that was superior to Christianity, then to be a falsification of what I’m saying. And like, but I have to stress just how much things can be bad within the Christian story. And what I said about Peter, I’m seeing as a Catholic who thinks that the Catholic Church is Peter. I appreciate that. Yeah, so I think that the wheat and the tares keep growing together. And yeah, I think I’m just going to keep repeating myself if I keep going. I hope that at least answer some of your questions better than what I had said earlier. I think it’s I think it’s horrible if we sit and we contemplate when Jesus said, it’s the sick who need the doctor. And, oh, you mean us. That’s why there’s so many rotten people in the church. John, I have a question about your, and I don’t want to. I want to say that your your point about releasing teleology and the point of meaningfulness in the release of to teleology. I not only take seriously, but but have experienced. Okay, let me let me say that first. But part of the argument against that there is teleology in, in some ways and maybe I’m totally wrong here so feel free to swat it away. You know, isn’t the horror we experience in viewing the suffering of others that that horror is is energized by teleology is it not. Because when we watch the lives of a Victor Frankles family snuffed out when we watch, you know, millions of young people, even if they’re not killed in some gulag or some reeducation camp, their lives are there somehow they’re somehow colonized and turned into into killers. And the horror we face that our recognition of, of the evil has built within it within it. And I think there are biological assumptions about. Well, the good life for that young person is, you know, reciprocal broadening. And the good life for, you know, Victor Frankles family is, you know, ongoing development of a not of a beautiful young scientist and you know and and this whole career that would be out in front of him. And that if, if, in a sense you give up on teleology, you also in a sense lose the capacity to recognize the horrors of this world, because now suddenly just all is. And whereas we can recognize the value of that. When we when we and ourselves try to unwind the, the thousands of years of of narrative, you know, teleological patterns of thought. We also lose the. We also in a sense lose the, the prophetic spirit within us that sees the horrors of the 20th century and says, life was not meant to be this way, human beings have a dignity, and there’s almost teleology built into that dignity. And my fear is in a sense of that we, if that we by embracing a non teleological perspective, we lose, we certainly lose the suffering. We, but we also lose the capacity to resist the suffering, because in a sense we lose the capacity to recognize it. I don’t know if that’s fair, but I just was a thought that I had. Well it’s a good thought and and and we’ve circled back but it’s circumambulation not just empty circling back to my original question, which I posed from a platonic perspective which is to posit ontological goodness that gives us genuine standards by which we can recognize truth, etc. And yet that does not seem to entail that there’s a teleology unfolding. In fact, one possible response could be, isn’t, isn’t this a better explanation of both things. There’s, there’s ontological goodness, my sense that there is no teleology impels me to action, precisely because if I don’t do anything, the goodness is not going to come to expression. In fact, I increase my efforts because I am not convinced that there’s any force in the universe like like the like the like the light side of the force or something, drawing things forward. I mean, part of what my original question and maybe you’re challenging it. And so, that that’s a good place to. I’m positing the possibility of ontological goodness that doesn’t entail a teleological at four teleological force, because I already said, let’s grant real intelligibility and then let’s grant the real connection interpenetration between realness and eligibility, all of that. And you need that in order to make all the normative judgments judgments but truth and goodness and beauty. And then when we make those judgments, they give us a sense of how things could be, and how things should be. And I think anything is a sense that there’s something driving towards them. In fact, one. One way of saying is, no, it’s precisely because I recognize that things could be this way or should be this way, and that there’s nothing other than me here now and others that are going to bring that about. So, I don’t know, Paul if this is responding to you, but I think the key, I’m hope is, I think we’re coming to maybe the deep pivot point here. Is it possible, and I’m claiming it is and maybe you’re claiming you’re not, and we’re not just disagreeing we’re trying to work this out. I’m claiming it’s possible to recognize that the goodness of being. Without thinking that that goodness is right is teleological in its nature, that it’s driving history forward and driving the physical universe forward. In fact, it seems to have, and maybe this is what JP was trying to get at with secondary causation. It seems to have right it seems to only work. To be through people who are inspired by it. I think it’s like a way of putting this question, it seems plausible to me that if there were no human beings. I wouldn’t see this goodness at work in the world and I would still see all the horrible nature red and tooth and claw and all the horrible suffering going on all around me, and nothing in the natural world and again Lewis points to this, indicating anything that’s all that suffering that all of these organisms are doing for billions of years, and the only place where I see, you know, that things alleviating that suffering, and it’s in your right it’s in the history of Christianity’s people being inspired by the way that we are being in perhaps a way only human beings can be in order to try and make a difference. I’m sorry I don’t know if that’s clear but that’s my that’s my attempt to respond. Yeah, I was expecting you to, I don’t know if I can go I mean I said but you seemed like you had something so you can go. I’ve always got something. That’s why, that’s why I make too many videos for john to watch. Friends, I hope I’m not being up to so difficult them I’m trying. No, no, no, not at all. No. Okay, okay. I guess, and, and I, I wrestle with, if I’m being obtuse because I just find, you know, especially and I love the way JP and his paper. You know I could never do that, that essay like we link below here, like JP did where you have emergence and emanation and, and, you know, non being as potential I mean he just weaved all this stuff together I thought it was, I thought it was beautiful. But, but the. It seems to me, let me ask this question then. Isn’t, isn’t potential by its nature. In some ways, teleological. So that’s a very good question. And now part of what we’ve been doing in this discussion and I think it’s fair, because we’ve been playing with a pretty standard notion of theology. There’s work going on within my colleague at the University of Toronto. Dennis Walsh and yes, all of the important work being done in the world right now is being done at the University of Toronto. And he is trying to indicate that if we’re going to do biology. We have to bring back a kind of teleological explanation, where we talk about not causation but we talk about how things can do. So, this set of factors conduces for this. Right. And in that sense. And this is a very good question, Paul, so I’m trying to respond to it very carefully. Which potentiality is if I is, as I think, Dennis is arguing and a lot of other people Eastman and his work on untangling the accordion not sorry it’s storming here. The potential is real, and there, there, there is a there and this is you know, a platonic whiteheading idea there’s a real structure to possibility. Things are structured so that, you know, possibility doesn’t unfold into actuality in a haphazard fashion, it patterns reliably patterns invariant pattern intelligible patterns. Yes, all of that. Now the thing about that. The thing that we have to be really careful is the temptation to start talking about potentiality, as if it’s actuality, as if it’s making things happen, because that would then be to give up the very point that all of this is based on that potential is radically other than actual and right and should not be reduced to actuality. I mean, this is one of the sins to my mind of the Aristotelian framework. And I think that the Aristotle tries to make potentiality completely dependent on actuality, it’s one of the critiques that Nishatani brings against it, because Nishatani says if you can’t get to that bottom, unless you can realize the reality of the If you can’t realize it, then you can’t you can’t fathom it. And if you can’t fathom it, you won’t understand it and if you don’t understand it, there’s no there’s no way of getting released from it. I think that’s a very profound argument. So, I’d be willing to say that, Again, the relationship between actuality potentiality is neither an actual nor potential relationship. It is something deeper. It’s like the one, or if you want, if you allow me to use your language like God, it’s that Nicholas of Pusa definitely does that. I’ve been reading a lot of him lately. And that idea. But the whole point is that that relationship is itself non teleological. Because if it’s teleological, it’s not intrinsically valuable or good. If the ground of reality is intrinsically valuable, then its value is not instrumentally expressed teleologically. Right. Yeah. Good is total tealic. And, you know, we’re all because says it, you know, and one of his great poems that like you and Eckhart and Angela Solis, yes, you know, the, you know, think that the living without a why is kind of the ultimate, I talked about this in the series, and part of what I think that means is again that liberation from, you know, the burden of cosmic history in a very, very, very powerful way. And certainly what seems to be going on in the cloud of unknowing and other things the mystics report they report a transcendence of that sort of enmeshment. Well, it looks like the maybe the difference we’re getting at is that we can agree about this kind of teleology at the ground of being, we can even probably agree with this kind of teleology in the way that your colleague, Dennis Walsh does and like apply to different organisms and like maybe things that are very low on the hierarchy like maybe. I don’t know, would you agree with John, for instance, that we can say that there’s a, there’s this sense of teleology in the fact that, let’s say, electrons will drive towards protons, for instance. Yeah, so that there, I mean, again, I think there could say that is to say there’s an intelligibility to things is to say there is there are reliable real relationships. This is the anti nominalism right there are reliable real relationships, and all every any possible instrumental good or good for us that we can find is dependent on the the the ontological independent realness and of that intelligibility. And so I would say all of that. But then for me. I guess what I’m trying to say is that seems to now have gotten us very far. Sorry, for me and I’m posing a question that seems to be very far from the idea of redemptive teleology that we started this with. I think it’s going to be just like one layer up, because you. Yeah, because, because you, I think you mean with this sense of teleology you could apply it to like individual humans, if I were even groups like groups can have this kind of teleology to can they like a group can be oriented towards winning the Stanley Cup or something. Well, it would be saying things like groups that organize in this way are much like more likely to survive. So let’s be clear that the kind of teleology that Dennis is talking about is the kind of teleology he thinks is expressed in natural evolution. So it’s usually taken as, I mean, at least classically natural evolution was taken as the great example of non teleological design. Right. So that’s what I said about we have to be really careful about what we mean. When I was talking to Sam about the whiteness of the bear is conducive to the polar bear surviving. Right. Yeah, exactly. And that sort of thing. Exactly. And again, this is deep and profound. This is not trivial. What Dennis is doing means real possibility real constraint, taking intelligibility real patterns rejection of normalism, right, really invoking I would, I would argue, you know, a dialectical vision, erigina not hegelian emergence and emanation this is all real. And I think that’s the important, you know, move that’s happening in the philosophy of biology. I don’t want it’s very important. And if you’re putting your finger on that I think that’s totally legitimate. But like I said that doesn’t seem to be the kind of teleology that’s at home within narrative. You know, john when you were when you were talking about your example. And this is often where I hear where I watch this, you know, even when we’re not speaking about teleological teleology per se, but when I’m talking, you know, as a minister with people about you know, believe in God not believe in God and very common parlance the kind of stuff with, you know, people who go to church or don’t go to church. People don’t have philosophy degrees. This this inflection point, this teleological inflection point I mean I liked how you said it JP maybe another layer up, you know, we’d like to win the Stanley Cup. And now, there’s, there’s a sense of the purpose of that hockey team is to win the Stanley Cup, the purpose of that American football team is to win the Super Bowl, there’s there’s that sort of built in and we sort of map that on to, you know, the purpose of the polar bear is to, you know, is to hunt the seal and to reproduce and all of that. And the, and, and, you know, we’re increasingly I think, I think people are increasingly sort of comfortable. I think you can describe it john with that level of teleology and it’s the, the kind of teleology, if I think about it in sort of a story or mental picture, the kind of teleology that I find people where they sort of say, nope, not that one is, again, that there’s some great mind that has conscious that says we’re going to arrive at this point together. And for us to do this, I got to make sure Vanderklaas is best arguments with john verveke so that he can flip a lot of people from from from skeptic to churchgoers and I mean it’s it’s usually those kinds of stories and when you when you said you know the the point of, you know, that there’s there’s no, then I hear this often, you know, there’s there’s no, there’s no God that’s going to rescue us from climate change or from, you know, and any kinds of, because if there’s, you know, we’re certainly seeing potentiality as a terms of goodness, we’re also seeing in terms of evil, there’s things we wish to avoid as well as the as well as things we wish to attain. And, and it’s, and then the real, you know, a lot of the, the issue stalking our arguments is always, well, how, where are the, where are the gradients of this teleological thinking in terms of mind, you know, and the you know, right now in America we’ve got this, you know, debate about abortion that never ends. And, you know, I just listened to someone arguing that the board, the abortion is because men want to control women’s bodies and I’m thinking, what, what, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have, what mind people have possesses the motivation we talk this way all the time. As if we have these, you know, now we’re going to get into, as if we have these spirits that are that are around and there’s a, there’s an anti abortion spirit whose motivation is to control women’s bodies. And, and that’s the spirit that is possessing, you know, the legislature in the state of Texas or, you know, something like this. We use this language constantly. And, and it doesn’t seem disconnected with a conversation like this, because, you know, this team that is that wants to win the Stanley Cup. And where is that located and how now obviously located within the, within the hockey players it’s located within the coaches, it’s located within the fans, it’s located in the, the, those who own the team it’s located in the league I mean it’s, it’s, it’s distributed out here. And, you know, and part of what’s been so, I think, part of what has invoked the meaning crisis in our culture is that we’ve recognized that at least in modernity we sort of had it secular modernity we sort of had clear lines, and we said, you know, beings with emotion and breath have motivation, and we sort of, you know, excluded everything else from that kind of, of, of teleological behavior and part of what we’re recognizing is that teleology that we’re seeing in the animals that Sam pointed out. And how far does this scale up, and how immaterial is it when it comes to something like the Stanley Cup, because there’s, there’s obviously a mass and that that motivation is tied to status and now we’re getting into Jordan Peterson lobsters and, you know, we’re just swimming in these things. And so then, language of gods and, you know, powers and responsibilities. Yeah, the only language we have available to us to try to account for whatever it is that is trying to control women’s bodies by, you know, resisting abortion or something like that. And I mean, what’s so funny is that we, we live in this one world where we have all these arguments and everybody agrees. But then if you just pause and say, where’s that motivation located and, and how is it manifesting and can we test it and I mean it’s, it’s just all strange So, you know, as we go through this and I think about teleology it’s like, where is the teleology to win the Stanley Cup. And where does that come from. Okay, this, this is a really good point. I’m really savoring what you said, because I mean, I’ve been arguing for the logos, and you know, and the idea that distributed cognition has collective intelligence, and that collective intelligence can, you know, sort of recurse back on itself and move towards collective wisdom. I take all of what you said very seriously. And I, and some of our articles you know we’ve talked about guys. And there’s, there’s a worry associated with that word, you know, that that German word is great because it sits between mind and spirit in this really helpful fashion. How we get the Holy Ghost. Yes, yeah. So, I think your point that there, that there, there’s distributed cognition that has a kind of agency and intelligence of its own, and that in some sense, solves problems and pursues goals. And this is clearly the case, it’s the collective intelligence of a bunch of individuals and a bunch of machine that navigates the ship. Right. And so, if you’re. And I think this is an excellent point if you’re saying, is it possible that is it legitimate not is it possible. That’s the wrong word, is it legitimate because we’re talking about justification here. And I think we’re committed to talk about these upper level things using the language of spirits and gods. And we’re also talking about hyper objects like global warming and evolution is a hyper object. Right. Is it that term why object I mean it’s a, it’s a hyper spirit is it’s a spirit is what it is more than, I mean, I think it’s modernity that wants us to call it an object otherwise we can’t conceptualize it anyway I’m sorry. Yeah, that. Yeah, it’s a board it’s it comes out of object oriented ontology. And there’s a specific historical reason why, because they’re trying to get out of subjectivity as sort of the Cartesian frame, whether or not that’s the most felicitous term, I don’t know, they were also trying to, and don’t make too much of this either. They were trying to sort of co op the metaphor of object oriented programming, and things like that so there’s a history there. Yeah, I think that’s it. So, I don’t think we have to be that committed, but that’s acknowledged that, you know, talking about that that or I would go stronger and you might not go this way, and but I saw but this is me trying to acknowledge so take it in that spirit that when people have been talking about spirits and gods that’s exactly what they’ve been talking about. And that those are real. Those are real entities maybe a better word, real entities real processes, real dynamical systems, etc. And I want to acknowledge all of that and that there could be a kind of teleology to them. The danger. So, the risk is don’t forget that that’s a hegelian term and zeitgeist and belt guys are hegelian terms and they gave us the bloody battle of curse. Right. And so we have to be really really careful about those teleologies. Yeah, and so I want to acknowledge everything you said, and I want to, I want to say that I don’t know if I would go hegelian and see there being a unifying a geist of guys throughout all of history. And hegel tried to do that and as I just said that seemed to have gone disastrously bad in a lot of ways for all of his Titanic brilliance, I think hegel is to product is ism with Thomas Aquinas is to Catholicism. So we’re going to write that one down. That’s good. Okay, so I want to acknowledge all of that I want to, like I said, I don’t know if that’s going to give you what you want, which is presumably a unified guys. It’s interesting though I could see an argument forming where you could make use of sort of the platonic notion of the one, organizing all of the guys in some guys, the fashion. That would be interesting. No, the Neil Platon is did this very much the forms were thoughts in the mind of God and then that expressed itself in reality. So that what the movie just made I think there is a very good move. It’s a very dangerous move, like all good moves would be because, again, you there’s direct linkage between these proposals of our, our, our reverence is that the right word for And the kinds of genocides and horrific warfare we’ve seen in human history, but I do think this is a terrifically good point and I, and I want to acknowledge, you know, this is, this goes back to, you know, earlier work that JP did, trying to talk about those Upper levels. The reason, just to be clear about my earlier objections is that as you move up to those. And this, I mean, so there’s arguments for this and it is not a controversial thing. It is not an uncontroversial thing to say, but we seem to lose consciousness. As we move consciousness. In fact, one of the most intriguing things about consciousness is it seems to be limited to this very specific level is one of the classic problems that people like me try to explain and call it. Why only consciousness here and JP, I don’t want to, I’m not trying to rain on your panpsychism but right. And so most so and you’ll find this, I hope, humorous for the obvious reasons. People who talk about this, these higher levels, talk about them as zombie agents, because they have a kind of, yeah, there’s the joke, there’s zombie, right, but they have very much an intelligence and even a problem solving capacity, and they may even be self directing in some way, but it doesn’t seem we can get independent evidence for them having an independent consciousness. I’d like to try to use that. This is wonderful. This is really really juicy and good. I think with this kind of. I don’t think I need much more than this kind of theology, I. After we spoke last time guys I did read a few of Dennis’s articles, I also really like the conversation john that you did with Brett Anderson. I believe if I get the name right. And since then, I mean it’s been a few months and I’ve been trying to live out Christianity, as close as possible to this notion of teleology. And I agree for instance that the point you made earlier about Aristotle and Aquinas, relying on the very strong notion of teleology. I don’t think I need something that strong for me even to be able to read Aquinas. I don’t think he needs to commit himself to something that strong, because it’s in the same way that once I’m going to try to use. So, just a sense of technology. That’s it once the form of plant life emerges, then it can do says to the emergence of other plant lives. Yeah. Once the once makes possible. Yes, yes. And let’s say once animal life emerges, it will also can do towards the possibility of other animal lives. So once that form exists, then you can invoke a kind of technology towards more of that kind of life. And, like, I think I just need like one more layer. So, once you get to the human with Christ, what I want to say is that once Christ emerges, once you have the crucifixion, like this pattern, this seed of the logo sacrificing himself to show the goodness of all of creation, like this seed is a new kind of life that I need to use towards the emergence of more of that kind of life. So I get the kind of technology, but I think I don’t think I need something let’s say that’s huge and top down coming down like the sense you get from Aristotle, I think I can get Easter with, like, maybe just one layer more than what you have in your ontology. Well, name of this video, just one note just one layer more. Let me let me be annoying then. Because I could take in the previous arguments, I think, including Tom Holland’s argument and say, No, no. All I need is that there was a super organism formed that was able to change a civilization namely the Christianity and the church, and it’s like the team and the team and the spirit, and it moved through history and all of this, to get back to the original point can be explained. I mean this is part of my work in a completely naturalistic fashion, and that would account for the spreading argument. So what Paul positive, I think brilliantly. Also, I could, I could appropriate it and say, Look, like, do we need anything beyond that, you know, the peak performance that no that makes it sound artificial, the peak presence of this, this super saint Jesus seated, a new kind of guys. And that is responsible for all of the things that you see in history and that that doesn’t need anything other than that to explain it any more than I have to posit anything before or beyond the guys of the crew and the machinery, navigating the ship through the ocean. Yeah, yeah, I can see that I very much see that I’ve had thoughts like that. Here’s a fun thing for you to let’s just building on JP is one level more. I mean think about, think about what plants know of us. Think about what the, what the will use Midwestern, we use Iowa farmers think about what those all those Iowa corn stocks know of the farmer. And, you know, there’s a there’s a teleological level above the corn stock but the corn stock doesn’t really know the farmer. And now let’s let’s level up now to the animals and sort of Aristotelian or what do the animals know of us. I mean the animals are sort of all going and here are these, you know, these other creatures that come around and do things and our dogs and our cats and our pets know of us, you know, a little bit but I, my dog died not too long ago and I don’t always often watch this dog and think, What am I in this dog I view of things I’m this, this but but he’s got my dog has a degree of consciousness but I obviously have more consciousness I’ve got way more teleology I mean that’s why that’s why we can play tick tricks on our pets because we’re, we’re thinking a level ahead, but what we don’t see them very well and of course then the next level up is, you know, as, as as the students would have imagined. Well there’s, you know, in the way that the the the corn in Iowa doesn’t see the farmer. We don’t see. We don’t see the. We don’t see the consciousnesses of of those one and we don’t even know how many levels up there are, because not only does the Iowa corn not see the farmer doesn’t see the farmers dog either. And, and, and, in many ways, kind of the, you know, the hints that, you know, you look at ancient cosmologies, this very much the way they saw the world. And to go back to JP’s primary and secondary causation. Yeah, that’s good. You know if I have a, if I have a field and the grass is too high and I’ve got a couple goats. I put those goats and those goats are exercising their agency, eating up all that herbage that I’d like to have eaten, but I set the whole thing up and what are those goats know of me. So it’s it’s just, you know, just one level up. But, but, but the difficulty that we have of course is in some ways analogous to the difficulty of the corn, or the difficulty of the pet. And so we obviously scale, quite a bit dramatically and again the leap between the dog and me is a pretty significant leap and of course, you know evolution likes to suggest that that that leap happened over time and in a strange way, you know that the the world has flowed out. And all of our ancestors you know we we ate our parents are at least plotted their, their genocide, but, you know, it’s just. And then when you think about this in terms of teleological terms, or the ancients would have been very comfortable with that because they’d look around and say, you know, Odysseus is doing the best he can to, you know, you know work the gods against each other and work his favorites and so I don’t know but but then we get into, you know, we’re sort of like we’re sort of like the stocks of corn saying, what are we here for. The dog doesn’t say that we say that and then are there levels up, if we can see levels below are there more up, we don’t know. So, it’s just a thought. Well no it’s a good thought. And they’re there. I mean, I think we’ve already thought of thought about ways in which we’re already even scientifically exploring these levels up and not just the levels down. Yeah. By the way, reductionism is anti nominal list. Just, I just want to be clear about this. Just, just, just to nominalism says there are no levels of realness reductionism says there are levels of realness. That’s exactly what reductionism is reductionism and not normalism are inconsistent with each other. The fact that people put them together as if they happily go together is very problematic because the same way people think that neuroscience and artificial intelligence really sit together very well. No, they don’t. Neuroscience says intelligence is dependent on having an organic brain, artificial intelligence says no it’s not. There’s an inherent contradiction there I teach my students this, I just want to be clear that we were already living in a multi We just put reality at the bottom, instead of on the top but it’s the same logical structure, just inverted. And so that’s one of the reasons why I don’t want to privilege emergence or emanation. So, I thought maybe you can appreciate that argument. So, I think there’s good reason for the levels up. I just gave the argument. Secondly, like I said I think we’re empirically studying this now, the whole idea of distributed cognition collective intelligence collective computation all of this is powerful. The thing that is interesting. You invoke the ancient tradition but I’ll invoke part of the ancient tradition too. And the ancient tradition is, you know, especially the neoplatonic tradition is very clear that those upper levels don’t have consciousness, because of the inherent way in which consciousness is divided, it’s divided against itself, etc. I mean in this these are classic arguments by platinus and others, so that the ancient tradition is very, very ambivalent about whether or not there’s content, there’s good reasons I mean you can, I mean, Dionysus will say things God doesn’t think God doesn’t not think either and then you go what the heck is he talking about. Right. Right. And so, so I’ll, I just wanted to respond at that point. I want to give something again, you, because this I think is something you could say, whether or not. So, instead of maybe an argument from ancient tradition, because I think that’s kind of ambivalent. You could say Paul, maybe on your behalf and if you don’t like it, of course you can, you can, you can disavow it. Distributed. This is an argument that Dan Chiappi and I have made about how the scientists and the rovers together are able to study the hyper object that is Mars and its atmosphere and its, and its history that hyper objects can only be grasped by distributed cognition. There are things that are problems that are only solvable, and in that sense knowable by distributed cognition that are not solvable or knowable by us. Global warming, nobody knows global warming. We study global warming with hundreds of scientists, tons of machines, tons of computers, all in this vast complicated network. That’s the entity that can know about global warming. And so I think you could say, right, one of the things you could say to me is, well, isn’t it plausible that, right, this, these, these, the hyper entities, right, right, they, they, they, they know. I’m still not giving them consciousness, but they know and they solve right problems that we can’t solve. I think that’s very plausible. But then my response to that would be that strengthens my previous point that maybe the entity that right is ultimately responsible for the spreading of the hyper-objects, right, right, right. And so I think that’s the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the word of water he was to put water in the way he was to do that. That’s where I that’s where I don’t mean to be don’t mean to beCan you bring on a Don’t mean to be a Protestant and you can speak If I can’t, you can speak if you want to almost I can’t. You can me ya can speak. I don’t mean to be way Paolo don’t mean to be way Paolo. I don’t need to be Protestants I don’t mean to be Protestants I don’t mean to be Protestants deny it but they Protestants deny it but they act as if they have a act as if they have a church. But I mean both Eastern Orthodox But I mean both Eastern Orthodox But I mean both Eastern Orthodox and Catholicism do do so I’m not invoking something so I’m not invoking something totally for it is the church, the tradition, right? It’s got precedence. It’s got precedence within Christian theology itself. I’d like to try to respond to that because I’m, since we started speaking, John, like over two years ago now, I’ve come to not need pen psychism anymore. It’s not like I found new counter arguments to the arguments I had at the time, but I find that I don’t need them anymore. I don’t need to ascribe consciousness to groups or even God if I have the classical Christian neoplatonist hierarchy where like, as long as I have real patterns above, I can use analogies to talk about those real patterns and ultimately about the ground of all patterns, but I don’t need exactly consciousness. And so this is sort of one side of the question, but the other one, John, when you asked, well, sort of why do we need something more than naturalism with the one more layer argument I was trying to bring out because if I just need one more layer to naturalism, I considerably end up with another kind of naturalism. So why do I need supernaturalism or something else? And over time, I don’t know if I can say that in the same way that Christians could adopt neoplatonism and be Christian neoplatonists, I feel like today I could almost say that I’m a Christian naturalist, but in your sense of naturalism, because I really don’t think, your ontology is so rich, John, that it seems like I’ve been surprised over the discussions that we had where I would bring something like higher level consciousnesses or I would bring out the incarnation and you’re able to sort of gobble up those things in your ontology and like- Oh, gobble up. I hope that I have. I mean, I’m trying, well, part of it is I take seriously what both of you have said to me. I mean, thank you for saying that. That was a compliment and a deep one and I appreciate it. But I also wanna return the credit. I mean, you have also informed and trans, both of you constantly are informing and transforming my thinking. I wouldn’t be, I don’t know if I would, I’m reading this entire history of Christian Platonism, like here’s a mystical monotheism, a study in ancient Platonic theology by John Peter Kenny. I wouldn’t be reading that, I’m sure, if I hadn’t formed friendships with the two of you and entered into dialogue. So I think it’s very much reciprocal. I hope you take this in the right way. I’m trying to push naturalism as far as it can go to accommodate, I mean, I’ve even been trying to accommodate the church and its mission and its spirit in a naturalistic framework. So I’m trying to say that I’m doing that because I’m responding to very good points, not just very good points, very good people and very good lives. And so that’s how I wanna respond to what you just said. It’s really beautiful. It brings back something we also talked about two years ago about existential risks, because it really feels like I sort of try to rest on your position, like to try to, okay, I take John’s position to be a very stable Neoplatonist naturalism. And I try to stand on it to explore deeper into Christianity. And then I come back to you with like some attempts and then we discuss and hopefully we get closer and we both get higher. But I still think that the idea of existential risk is maybe what distinguishes the both of us here, where I’m willing to take some risks of, okay, I’m gonna go with like Jesus really rose from the tomb and there are saints today who can really do miracles. And I’m willing to sort of take that step and then come back down and see how this intersects with naturalism and like the sort of the trajectory that has been unfolding through this gives me a lot of hope and like faith in that path. And I think one of the things I hope is the demonstration that that path is, and I mean this deeply, is intellectually respectable. I mean, that’s one of the things I’m trying to show here, that you are willing to take a certain kind of existential risk that I’m not, but like I’ll use your metaphors, you go up and then come down and then we dialogue and then that changes. And I think it changes in a genuinely dialogos. It changes in a way in which there’s more intelligibility afforded to more people on a more reliable basis. So I think all of that is the case. And like, and your adjective is one I agree with. I think it’s beautiful. And I think it’s beautiful in an important way. I think that, I think highly of both of you and I respect you and the honesty and the willingness to enter into genuine conversation. And so, and I’ve said this before, I have no final foreclosure argument that says, don’t take that risk. You’re stupid to take that risk. I don’t do that because I don’t think such arguments make sense. I don’t think that’s the way to do it. I think that’s the way to do it. I don’t do that because I don’t think such arguments exist. I do what I do. I come in here in honesty, offer you my best, listen to your best and try to be as responsible and as responsive as I can. But, Socratic humility, I don’t know ultimately if that risk you’re taking is right or wrong. And so, I might, I have to follow the truth, the logos as I best see it, as Socrates would say, and follow it wherever it goes. And then where I can’t follow you that way, what I hope I can do is offer you friendship and support so that if that existential risk turns out to be correct, I at least helped you live it. That’s the best I can do. That’s beautiful. I guess I’d just like to add to JP’s shocking admission of a Christian naturalist. I think naturalism is in fact, a daughter of Christianity. And I get there by sort of taking some Tom Holland and some Owen Barfield. Because when Tom Holland begins dominion, he doesn’t start in the first century, he starts with the Hebrew prophets. Because when those Hebrew prophets say, your gods are stock in stone, well, they’re sort of early predecessors of, some spirit of new atheism in some way back there. Very much, that’s totally true. And when Jesus says, hey, you know what? It’s not what you put into your body that makes you unclean, it’s what’s coming out of your heart. This is all through, and this is all through the Hebrew prophets and then into Christianity. And this is in stark contrast to the pagan world. And the Greeks are also kind of weird out there. And so these two weirdnesses sort of found each other. And so, we’re not, I mean, these are, we’re really talking different extensions of this vast tree that have been growing and drawing the connections together. And so I also deeply enjoy this, because the truth is that, for all of us, these questions, these doubts, for very short-lived fragile creatures to ask risk questions is a big deal. And it gets down to the pastoral question you say, is anyone going to rescue me? And I would also add in terms of the, in terms of the reason for horrendous human behavior throughout history, much of that are Christian people saying, God isn’t rescuing me from my enemy. It’s time to preemptive strike and wipe them all out. I mean, that motivation is in there too, in that being our own savior, that’s in Protestant and reform theology, a big part of our problem is we’re our own savior and Lord. And so then when I suddenly have the rights of God, I have the right to take my neighbor’s life. And so these are long conversations that map, and it’s just really inspiring for me to watch both of you bring in Nishitani and some of these even arguments further out in terms of world history. And it’s exciting about the future. Yeah, I’m sort of done. Oh, it’s late for you guys. But I also feel like we’ve come, I mean, we’re not in final agreement, but we didn’t think we would end there, but I also feel this was genuine dialogos. I got to places I wouldn’t have got to on my own. Seems that the two of you had that happen too. And so I just wanted to thank both of you. I think this was a very, very, very, very, very, very good, very good, very, very good conversation. I think this was great. Thank you, John. And thank you, JP, for writing these pieces that keep us going. And again, for anybody who’s just listening to this, read JP’s stuff link below here. It’s I’m very impressed by it. It’s hard to summarize. Yeah, you can do things in writing that would take like two hours to explain verbally. Very, very much. That’s very much the case. you