https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=_dmfzUUmVvU
Okay, so what is the big idea then behind symbolism? What do you mean by symbolism? And you know, how does that actually play out concretely, you know, when we’re just living our daily life? Our mundane lives. Yeah. So I think, and this is some, I mean, you probably told it, we, I’m sure we 100% agree on this. It’s like, there’s a problem that we had in, I would say, 19th century type Christianity, and then early 20th century Christianity is, because of, because of materialism for some reason, there’s this tendency to emphasize the, this historicity aspect. Like, it’s like, you know, people go out into the desert, they find these statuettes, and they find these old texts, and, you know, they’re having all these technical arguments about whether or not something happened, and how did it happen? And, and, you know, like, is Moses, is that his actual name? Or is it like a name that was handed through tradition? And all these type of arguments, which I always found just so boring. Like, I just found them so boring when I was, when I was younger, and didn’t care much for that. But then there was also this other strain up here, which was kind of liberal Protestantism, which was trying to show these patterns in scripture, and how there’s literary patterns in scripture, and they were even doing it in a way to discount the historicity of it, right? So it’s like, I can see a pattern in the story, therefore it didn’t happen. And I just remember, even when I was super young, like 17, I went to this conference about the flood, and I’m standing in front of this, like, you know, it’s like, post grad, whatever student giving us a lecture on the flood. And she said, there’s a version of the flood in every single culture. And then she said, that’s the proof that it didn’t happen. And I was like, what? What does that jive together? Like, how is it that this is a universal story, but you’re using it to tell me that the Bible story isn’t true? And I’m like, there’s something missing here. And so then I came to really understand symbolism, just basically as the patterning of reality, you know, we experience the world through patterns, there’s no way around it. You know, if you want to tell the story, there has to be a beginning and an end. And therefore, the way in which, let’s say, the infinite details of the world condensed together, has to be teleological, and therefore, it has to have a structure. And that structure is not is the structure of your life is the structure of everyday life. Now, the difference between your everyday life and, let’s say, a movie or a movie and a Bible story, is that there’s a condensation which happens. And there’s also like a focusing on stories that are epically manifesting that truth, right? And so like the stories in Scripture, they’re made out of the same stuff as your everyday life. It’s just that they point them, you know, it’s like a burning, shining light on on how God reveals himself in the world. And so that’s the way that I understand symbolism. It’s interesting that you mentioned that your brother was reading Jewish texts, when you were kind of working on this, working through this stuff together, because one of the things that really strikes me about certain trends within contemporary Orthodox Judaism is the way in which they emphasize the fact that the mundane is precisely where we should expect to find God most intensely, right? Because if the world was really created in its entirety by God, then we shouldn’t expect to find him more so in the kind of obscure esoteric parts of the world, but it’s in the most common things in creation that we meet God most directly. So, you know, but that being the preeminent example. But there has to like, I think that I think that that’s probably true. But there’s also a reality to the reason for tabernacle worship, for example, is that the structure of tabernacle or temple worship is there to focus, like it’s there to kind of focus so that you can see it. And so the problem, I think that’s because I hear that a lot, like you hear that in kind of in kind of new agey circles, right? It’s like God is everywhere and all that stuff. And I think that’s true. But, you know, there’s a reason why we have a kind of hierarchy of an order of manifestation, you could say. So it’s so that it’s to help us encounter God, you know, even in our daily lives. So I think both are true. It’s like on the one hand, you know, tabernacle worship and temple worship, and also, let’s say the order of a church, you know, the hierarchical order of a church is in some way like a type of anchor that will help you engage with God’s presence in the world in a more concentrated and powerful way so that you can then in your everyday life, you know, have these moments of surprise where, you know, the grace of God just pops and just shines and you have these these moments of revelation in everyday everyday experience. Yeah, so it’s a way of focusing your eyes to see the world as it really is, would you say? Something like, yeah, focusing your attention in general and your body and everything and your your attention is a good way, a good way to use that word. Yeah. Yeah. So you’ve made a fair few videos on kind of biblical theology or what I would consider, you know, biblical theology. How would you say that, you know, this project relates to some of the stuff that’s been done by anthropologists like Mary Douglas on Leviticus or stuff like that? What is the relationship between biblical theology and what you’re doing? I mean, I think what I’m doing, what I’m doing in some ways is just connecting, like that’s what I think I’m doing. And so, you know, if you look at, and I don’t want to cast any stones or anything, but like, let’s say you look at something like the Bible project, for example, like what they’re doing is great, like they usually get it right, like so many times they get it right. But then once then you’ll hear sometimes as if there’s all they get it right in terms of the pattern and the story and the structure, like the cosmic structure in which the Old Testament is written. But then they all often will then express a confusion at like how our world isn’t like that, right? It’s like, so here’s the structure of the Old Testament, here’s how it works. And it’s like, well, you know, we understand it, but now like we basically don’t live in that world. And I think what I’m trying to do is to tell people, no, you still live in that world. You really do still live in that world. And not only that, but if you just have, if you direct your attention in a certain way, you will notice that you still, you can still have the same experiences and insights that are described in those texts. Yeah. And one of the things that’s striking to me about what you said about the way in which people argue against the historicity of certain texts is that it seems to me that when you look outside of scripture, if you look at, you know, just Christian history, there are certain moments in Christian history, which would lend themselves to being written in a typological or symbolic way. So, you know, the Battle of the Melvian Bridge, you know, it has these analogies, which are very strikingly parallel to what we read in Exodus, but it seems to me that the narrative itself lends itself to that kind of analysis. Yeah. And then what happens, which was hilarious, which you could imagine a historian saying, well, that must not have happened because it’s too much like the flood story. Like it’s too much like, not the flood, but the crossing of the Red Sea. Yeah. There’s an interesting, like there’s something that happened about 10 years ago, which is a good example of this. So it’s sad because it is related to our situation now and it’s sad. So when Pope Francis was first elected, he had the ceremony. I don’t know if you saw it. He was standing there and he had on his right hand, a boy dressed in blue and on his left hand, a girl dressed in red. And both of them, they let go of these doves into the air. And the reason was because they were praying for peace in the Ukraine. Okay. So they were praying for peace in the Ukraine and they let these doves go out in the air. And as soon as the doves were released, a white bird and a black bird attacked the doves within seconds. And this is all like, there are like pictures of this. It’s just something that everybody experienced. And so you could say, really? Like if, is that not like an actual mythological event? I mean, that’s a mythological event and it, and it not only is it mythological, but it’s showing itself to be truer and truer as time progresses. And so would it, would, if you told that story to a, to a kind of 19th century historian today, like in 10 years, would they, they just tell you, no, that didn’t happen. Cause it’s way too mythological in its structure. Yeah. If you read, you know, Josephus’s Jewish war, it’s just filmed with these kind of narratives of all these omens which were happening and things. And just recently, you know, in relation to Ukraine, who knows what’s actually going to happen, but I’ve saw people sharing this video of this huge murder of crows, which was flying over Kiev and people, you know, were kind of spooked by it, but there’s something in the wiring of the world which seems to actually create those correlations. But it’s, it’s, it’s funny because people, some people who’d listen to this would think, okay, now I goo-goo magic, right? And so, but it’s interesting to think like the people who say that what happens is, is because they think that human beings actually don’t exist in the world, but they think that human beings don’t exist in the world and that the structures of human meaning are not connected to the way the world actually reveals itself. So because of that, they can’t, they can’t comprehend how there’s a relationship between natural patterns and natural processes and things that happen and human consciousness and human meaning making, right? You don’t think it’s weird when like a bird knows when to fly south. Why do you think that’s weird? You don’t think it’s magic. Like he doesn’t, he doesn’t, he doesn’t, so if humans have a capacity to intuit patterns and to, and they have ways of showing that, like why is that so weird to you? I don’t know why it’s so weird. you