https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=GyrhM1BnoCM
So Anders Vralstad says, Hi Jonathan, in your recent conversation with Jordan and John, you discussed the primacy of narrative. Can you still man John’s UN point to where you’ve used the part? Also, when would the Exodus Seminar drop? Yeah, November, that’s when it’s dropping. So yeah, I think John really, I think John really expressed his position very powerfully. And I think that I’ve been thinking about it ever since, you know, and I’m hoping to have more discussion with him about that. I think that what he’s describing is that there is a a nomological order of beings. That is, there is… So let’s say like the relationship of beings to each other in categories is not narrative, right? It has its own existence. And that existence is the categorization of scientific categories. It’s something like laws, it’s something like, you know, genealogies or whatever. Like these structures exist and they themselves are not narrative and they have a value. So I think that he’s right. And I think that it should, I think it’s probably important not to confuse the narrative with the nomological. So to me, that is the best case of what he’s making. And I think that he’s right. That there’s no doubt about that. Now, but, here’s the but. I think that one of the things that wasn’t addressed in that discussion is that I believe that the nomological order has to be teleological. That even the nomological order has to be ordered in reasons why those categories exist. That it’s not just about a neutral categorization, but that the categories are embedded in a hierarchy of reasons. And so I think, I haven’t asked John directly, but I think he would probably agree with that. And that if he agrees with that, Jordan actually, man, Jordan actually said something very powerful in that discussion, which just went by. And it’s like, I don’t think I even noticed it on that evening. And then I rewatched it and I was like, Jordan caught on to something. And he said, he said, science is if then. And so he says the if is narrative and the then is is narrative and the then is nomological. And I was like, and I was rewatching it. I was like, oh man, that is so powerful. It’s like. So the nomological order is teleological, but I still do think that the teleology is anchored in purposes. And because those purposes cannot help but be human purposes, we could say ultimately, that I think that it still makes the case for for say, Maximus’s position. And also it makes the case for the if has to be bound in a kind of story that is why do I care about this in the first place? Like if I want to do this, then that is then this is the categorization because beings have indefinite angles and definite possibilities of how to come to them. Right. There’s so it’s like the restraining of the facts that you need, the restraining of the external parameters that you need in order to attain the nomological order does nonetheless. I don’t see how it can’t be bound in the human story. Now, it doesn’t mean that the other that the nomological order is completely vanishes in front of the other one. Like it means that it has its own real kind of existence, but I think you see it so you can see it in the in the story of Exodus. Right. So it’s like the law is presented in a story. In a story. So you can see it in the story of Genesis. So in Genesis, there is a nomological order which is presented right at the outset of the Bible. So God sets up like you could create the hierarchy of beings with the, you know, with the stars and the sun and the moon and the, you know, and the birds and it’s so there’s this order of being and it goes all the way down to chaos and all the way up towards towards heaven. But it is bound in a story of conscious seeing and evaluating the good. And it ultimately is created, at least in the Christian understanding, it ultimately all this ends up being created for man in the middle and to for man to be the one who mediates between all of this and his story. So that’s the best I could do for now. But yeah, it was it’s actually really helped me to be a little baby, hopefully be more subtle and more careful in the way that I talk about things. So yeah, John’s good for that for sure. He’s really brilliant.