https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=Bt5vWJCe0M0
Could you talk a bit about how Christianity is unique in having a mediator between God and man? Yeah, well, I think that most religions have mediators between the divine and man. However, they understand that. Usually those mediators are prophets, they’re visionaries, they can be like the Pythia, for example, in Delphi who would receive visions. Priests, all kinds of figures, would act as mediators between gods and men. Sometimes it’s demigods, also different hybrids between gods and men. So the idea that there are these mediators between heaven and earth is a pretty normal thing. I think what we see in Christianity is that there’s something, this idea of a perfect mediator. It’s as if there’s this, there’s all these stories moving towards the problem of how it is that heaven and earth connect or how it is that the divine and the human connect. And what we see in Christ is the perfect mediator. And the perfect mediator has a certain aspect which is surprising at the outset. But then ultimately once you start to engage with that story, you realize why it is the way it is. So the pharaoh in the ancient world or many divine kings would have been mediators between heaven and earth. You have characters in the Roman Empire, the idea of the Pontifex Maximus or there are different characters that would kind of play that role. But what Christ shows us is that the perfect mediator between heaven and earth has several aspects to him. One is that he appears as the one who gives himself to others. He appears as the one who’s willing to not just rule over the world but also go into suffering, go into death, reach the ends of all, reach the ends of things, reach the edge of things. And I think that in some ways is the surprise that we find when we discover in the gospel this figure who presents himself, by the way, he really presents himself as a divine figure. When the high priest rips his garment, because Christ compares himself to the figure that is seen in the prophetic visions of the one who stands, who is sitting next to God, like the figure that is sitting next to God in the early times that was recognized already as a divine figure. It was mysterious but it was recognized as a design figure. But the idea that he is the one, he is this figure and that he goes to the poor, he moves to the edge, he helps those that are the lost sheep and all of that imagery which ultimately culminates in the crucifixion. So I would say Christianity is not unique in offering a mediator, but it’s unique in offering what they at least say is a perfect mediator, that it is actually the full union of God and man. And then ultimately what that looks like, what it is, how surprising it is that it appears the way it does. And like I said, through meditation, how you realize in some ways that it actually reveals the way reality works. It actually reveals how the world functions.