https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=V2ovqLtWv-E
Do you think that in the Bible, like, there’s an Old Testament God and a New Testament God, and they’re both referred to as Father or kind of in the masculine. I believe there’s some like they pronoun at the very beginning, but it’s usually assigned to a he. Do you think that in the Bible, just off the top of your head, I don’t know if you’ve done any thinking about this, but is there an evolution of the masculine going from an authority figure into the son, like the transit from the father into the empowered son or the sacrificial son? Yeah. And is there a softening of the masculine in that process? Well, I don’t, how can I say this? I don’t think so. I mean, I think it’s important, at least for Christians, it’s important to think that the God of the Old Testament is the same as the God of the New Testament. It’s not like another God. But it is true that the incarnation creates a difference in the sense that the incarnation opens up a space of communion or shows communion to be the manner in which we can become the body of God or the body of Christ or the body of the Messiah. And so there is a manner in which we can, which shows more clearly the way in which we can participate, let’s say in the life of God. And we see that happen in the New Testament. But there are already hints of that in the Old Testament as well. You know, there are these, the classic image is the image of Elijah who goes into the cave and is, you know, he’s distraught and he’s trying to understand the will of God. And there’s this storm and there’s tempest and it says God is not in the storm and the tempest. And then finally, it says there’s the still soft voice and then he hears God in the still soft voice. So there are images of, let’s say, this difference that Christianity is going to bring is there already, is already there in some places in the Old Testament. There definitely is, let’s say, the aspect of rigor, which you find in the Old Testament, the kind of more, let’s say, the harsher aspect of reality is there. Trial. But we have to be careful because we can’t deny that that’s part of reality. You just can’t avoid it. If you try to think that there isn’t a certain harshness to reality or there isn’t a manner in which if you don’t, if you’re not in line, that you’re going to face the consequences of not being in line, then you’re missing an aspect of reality. It’s like if you, I don’t know, if you cheat on your wife and you beat your kids and you start drinking and you do this and you think that there’s no consequences to those actions, it’s like no, reality has, there’s a certain amount of objectivity to the way reality lays itself out. And if you don’t adhere to that, then you’re going to suffer. It’s just going to be inevitable. And the Church Fathers really do represent the idea of God’s judgment as the consequence of your actions themselves. So they don’t imagine God as this, although it can be portrayed that way, but they don’t imagine God as an exterior being that is saying, oh, you did this, now I’m going to smack you around. It’s like, well, if you don’t fix the dykes in your city and then there’s a flood, well, that’s God’s judgment. But it’s also the dykes that broke because you didn’t fix them. The natural consequences of your actions is the judgment of God. Yeah, there’s an Indonesian proverb, I believe, that says, don’t fear God, fear your own actions. Yeah. But it does end up showing you the nature of reality. So you could say something like it does end up showing you the will of God because it’s the way that reality lays itself out. So what Christianity tends to do is to, first off, place the human person and the love of people between themselves and their love towards God is the solution to the problem. In the sense that, like, take the example of a dyke again. If you love your neighbor and you love, let’s say, if you’re a leader and you love the people who are under you, then you’re going to fix the dyke. You’re not going to leave it because you care. And so that love becomes the tool by which reality can be transformed and can become more cohesive, you could say.