https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=GE_Tz-Cq_BQ
And it’s interesting, you know, in, in Tomberg, two things he says on this, this topic, he says, uh, you know, while who came before me were beggars and thieves, right? Meaning all the religions that came before her were beggars and thieves. And the other thing is, behold, I make all things new. So how, how those different systems we could say, and this is what I think Tomberg’s trying to do in his book are, and this is what actually Hans von Balthasar said about Slović is that he, that Slović took all these, you know, Gnostic systems and other things, and he ran them through Christ as in a, as through a purifying stream. Right. And I think that’s part of what Tomberg’s project is in that book is to clean it up, you know, yeah, which is right. Christian did that with Plato, did it with Plotinus, you know, and so I think, and he’s giving people of that esoteric bent a way back in. I remember when I read the book, I said, wow, in my father’s house, there are many mansions because what my problem was before that is I thought I had a very limited perception and understanding of what Christianity is. And I read that book. I said, wow, maybe I didn’t give this thing enough credit. The Catholic church, maybe it didn’t give it enough credit. Maybe I didn’t, I could, I was too busy seeing the version I got in the suburbs of Detroit in a, in a second rate Catholic school and not what’s really there. Yeah. But that’s where actually one of my arguments for Christianity really has been its integrative possibility, because one of the things that I see also in that’s what I call, I don’t know how to call it, like the esoteric split that happened, you know, at the Renaissance or after a bit after the Renaissance is that there, you can see how things, how these, these elaborate and very intellectual systems kind of move up and then you can notice religion becoming more and more sentimental and moralistic and, and less and less understood, you could say. And so, but I think that what Christianity ultimately offers is a way all it, it should be a way all the way through. So it’s like when you stand in a church and you have this painted system of images, right? It’s, it’s, it’s connected to a simple person could go in there and be completely touched and impressed, but then, you know, a metaphysician will walk in and see the map of the universe in the church. So I think that that’s one of the reasons why I, that’s one of the reasons why I tend to, to, to stay within, let’s say the more traditional, the, to talk about the church fathers as much as, as far as saying that make every choose the church fathers. Right? It’s like, it’s, it’s, it’s always the same San Efraim, St. Gregory, St. Maximus. So, you know, and they, they seem to have had all those intuitions that, that, uh, that are in the best of the esoteric systems, let’s say. Well, and that, that’s, and that’s what I think, you know, another re we were talking earlier about why people feel sometimes that the salt is lost in savor, and this is my own experience growing up, you know, I was kind of just naturally interested in mysticism as, I mean, I went to Catholic school and, you know, I wanted to know this person talked to Jesus or the Virgin Mary. What’d they say? What was it like? How did that, how does that happen? And, and nobody wanted to tell me, you know, cause, and I think, um, so what I got instead was, you know, the catechism or kind of a dry intellectual delivery. We had the Baltimore Academy because I think that’s turned more people off Christ, of the Catholic church than the sex scandal. But, but, and, and so it was for me, certainly, I mean, for, for a lot of people, it was an unincarnated experience of Christianity, which is, which is ironic, right? Because, and how, how do you return to that? And I actually, most of my life has been trying to find a way back into the, to that incarnated experience of Christianity. Yeah. And I mean, I see all your, just your daily practices of being a farmer and doing that, I can see when I, when I kind of follow you and see what you’re doing, I can notice that you’re really trying to find that, that lived, let’s say incarnational principle. Yeah. So, and I don’t want to read about it. You know what I mean? Well, yeah, you know, cause I think what happened after that split, you talked about the Renaissance or the Reformation is at least in the West, not only did religion become more and more sentimental, but the other half of it has became aridly intellectual, you know, parts of it. Oh yeah. I mean, I have to hire a thing, right? And, and so, and, and it was, in fact, I was reading in a Florensky, he was, he was talking about the Russian tradition, which is what I love about it is it’s both intellectual and anti-rational at the same time, you know, it’s very intuitive or mystical while it’s being intellectual, which is, you know, you see that probably in Slovakia of more than anybody, you know, who’s, who, who is the model for both Ivan and Aloysia in the Brothers Karamazov. Oh really? I didn’t know that. And I think she said, yeah, that’s it. Actually it’s, it’s in a book written by his nephew that he made that, yeah, because, uh, cause Dostoevsky was good friends with Sloviev. Okay. Yeah. And he based those two brothers on his two sides. That’s hilarious. His totally intellectual side and his, and his deeply intuitive and warm side. Yeah, that’s really fascinating.