https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=Tm06_Ti2-9Y
When the Greeks fought each other, they would pray to their own gods, and then they’d have a contest, and they’d see whose god was the strongest. Well, it’s like that in the Old Testament, in the Bible, as we say, but it’s different too, because our God is the only God, right? And that claim, that’s revolutionary in ancient times. I don’t think that claim is being made in the Ten Commandments, because when he says, there are plenty of gods, the gods are there. You have to read this in light of that. This is the God, and these are my people, but I’m still everybody’s God, right? Yeah, he’s the transcendent God. That’s it. And then there are lower gods, like angels and all these other beings. There are lower gods in reality, in the human reality, but they’re not really gods. Well, this is, I think this is- They’re things that are worshiped. It’s a contentious point that I’ve noticed has been kind of hovering in the background. We’ve not really settled it. Are we committed to the idea of henotheism, the idea that there’s a God, God, Yahweh, the God of Exodus 3.14 is the top God, but there are in reality, not just in our human reality, our human imaginations, actual gods, or are we saying this is- You mean in the eyes of the Bible, in the eyes of God, in the eyes of Moses? All of those in some sense. So, okay, so one by one, it’s a very fair question, but analyzing it, so do we entertain the idea that God himself, the creator of the universe of Genesis 1.1, believes there are other gods, or believes that there are things that people worship and call gods? Well, that frames the dilemma nicely. Is it the first or the second? Is it henotheism or monotheism? So there are principalities and powers, there are. I think the Bible is monotheistic. That’s what I’m- Totally with you, Dennis. I know you. And I know the philosophers of religion make this distinction. Is that a philosophy? I think the biblical view, the Lord alone is God. Yeah. And Calvin’s idea, the human heart is a forge of idols. Well, the angels are named gods. We need something. By the text. Principalities and powers, and Paul. Even the word. Yeah, but there’s Dennis, people believe in those things, they do today, reason, science. No, but the angels that God sends are called gods. By whom? I mean, the angels that are in God’s service, sometimes they use the same words. I don’t know that that’s so in the Hebrew Bible. So they’re not called gods. The Jews were not always monotheistic. What about the people who were sent to Abraham? Yes, so they were angels, that’s correct. Right, but they’re on this- They’re on a divine mission. Right, so what are they? Hebrew has no word for angel. What’s called angel malach is messenger. They’re God’s messengers. That’s what angel means too in Greek. Yeah, okay. If you, so is it in the book of Revelation? You guys will know. Where somebody is gonna bow down before emissaries from God and the command is, see thou do it not, I am fellow servant, you see. So I think this one God, I think that, and see, it doesn’t make as much sense of the universe if there are many gods. You know, in Aristotle and Plato, they’re not many gods, right? Well then we’re faced with a thorny problem under those circumstances of how we conceptualize transcendent spirits that aren’t reflective of the ultimate unity. So what do I mean by that? Well, we could take, this is an oversimplification, but we could take a god like Aries, god of war, say, and I’ll do a biological reading of that. You can be ruled by anger. And you might say, well, yeah, but that’s not a god. And I say, well, yeah, let’s just hold on about that. First of all, it’s not only localized in you. It’s everywhere. Like the rage in your heart is the same as the rage in your heart and in your heart and in mine. It’s maybe the same, or it’s a variant on a theme. And it’s the same force that could rage in an animal. It’s tens of millions of years old. It’s a pattern of neurological activation, you might say embodied activation, that’s transcendent and immortal. And it can certainly rule you. And it has an ambivalent relationship to something that’s transcendent, non-biological, because it fleshes out part of the implicate order. And so, like, is rage a god? Is lust a god? Is fear a god? And I mean, those have already always, they have been deified in many cultures. You certainly have gods of Eros in all sorts of cultures, because that fundamental motivational force, which is a spirit that abides within, but that’s also transcendent, has the- Are they god in the biblical sense? I would say- Well, I don’t know. They would be idols. No. Well, yes and no, because they also have a reality, right? They’re higher than us. Yes. In the Book of Daniel, you have- It becomes semantics. In the Book of Daniel. I think we are at semantics. I think we’re at semantics here. So you believe that there are principalities that act upon us, that are beyond human scale, but you don’t like that we call them gods, I’d say. No, we may call them gods. We may call them gods, but they’re not gods. But they have existence. Yes, that’s the supernatal- But we’re fine. We’re a supernatural- Okay, agreed. Okay, agreed. Okay, so basically- It’s just the word. We just don’t like the fact that you use the word god. Then we are agreeing in some sense that we’re going to reserve the term god for the unity- That’s fine. We can use principality for the- And god, since everybody around this table is a child of the Bible, and that means we don’t like to call many things god. Right. I guess my objection was, whether we call them gods or not, they have a proclivity to act like deities. Oh, absolutely. That’s the biblical view of idols, sir. Yes, well- The powers in which we’re making our- But it’s deeper than that in some sense, because you can think of an idol as just an arbitrary human construction. But what I would say instead, it’s not. It’s the raising of a principality to the highest place. And so you say, well, my god is Priapus, let’s say. And many people say that now. In fact, it’s almost mandatory to say that. But less than the highest place. Right. Because god, we’re a capital- Yes, you could imagine demonic agencies being recognized by satanists as something they would bow down before- Yeah, it’s the raise to the highest place. And that’s what we’re objecting to. And there’s no disagreement that we’re not- I wanna know, Dennis, what do you think? Do you have a sense of the notion of principalities or demons? Is this something that you entertain in your worldview? So I’m- We’re giving you hard questions today, Dennis. Yes, indeed, and I’m honored. Is it your, Dennis, or your- Well, you’re the one- You’re sitting here, so I’m asking you and you can answer the way you want to answer. I’m a strict monotheist. There’s one god, end of issue. There are no demons. I will say, though, to my own shock, the last years in the Western world have opened me up for the first time through the belief that there may be a devil. They’re walking around. The demons are walking around in the street now. I’m not kidding. I wish I were. There’s no levity to what I’m saying, but it is almost impossible to explain the rejection of what is good and the celebration of what is wrong so radically and so quickly without recourse to some other force in the universe. And I don’t believe it, because Jews believe, unlike Zoroastrianism, where there are two gods, a good god and a bad god, where there is, Satan is only in Job in the Hebrew Bible and it only means opponent, yes, adversary. But Dennis’ book of Daniel, you have the princes and so on. They have supernatural powers. I agree with you, there’s only one god. Right. But the supernatural powers higher than human powers. So let me… I have to explore that. All right, let me riff on that for a second. So here’s a way of conceptualizing it. Well, let’s do this biologically again. So we can take something like anger or lust. And you might, like psychologists tend to conceptualize those as drives or reflexes or instincts. It’s a poor conceptualization. And here’s why, and I mean this scientifically, a fundamental motivational force that’s transcendent, so it’s shared by all humans, it’s shared by all mammals, let’s say. It’s shared by reptiles for that matter, like it’s archaic. Lust would be that, anger would be that, fear would be that, pain. Those are best conceptualized as personalities. And why do I say that? It’s because they have a viewpoint. They have a telos, they frame emotions. Like the best way to think about anger is a personality. And you know that perfectly well. If you get very irritated when you’re arguing with someone and you’re possessed by the spirit of anger, it changes your perceptions, it changes your emotions, it changes your view of the future, your view of the past. It’s a fragmentary sub-personality that then takes over the whole. And then you could imagine that a malevolent sub-personality, so for all intents and purposes, a demon, is an aggregate of those fundamental sub-personalities that’s integrated in a manner that’s very, very powerful and that partakes of that motivational force. Maybe you’re angry and afraid and resentful and lustful all at the same time, and that’s it. It’s like a very high order malevolent spirit has got you in its grip. And there is a reality to that. Now, we wouldn’t wanna say that if we’re gonna reserve the term God for the highest possible unity, it’s definitely not that. But it’s certainly some, it’s a transcendent principality and it is a spirit and a personality. But the way you frame that, Jordan, is still basically metaphorical, isn’t it? This is still, you talk about being possessed. I don’t think so. I mean, the tradition, I mean, certainly the Christian tradition has demons. Demons have agency. But those demons are allied very closely to our passions. Sure, got it. They’re almost like a cosmic version of the local passion. And there are certain ways in which through the kind of free agency of the individual that they could kind of admit they can conduct themselves in a way that makes them more vulnerable to those kind of external agencies. Right, well, they open the door to it. But would you accept that, Jordan? You would accept that there are, as it were, extrinsic sources that are gonna operate on the psychological structures of an agent in addition to the kind of cumulative weight of all the bad decisions over. It’s microcosm, macrocosm. You have to see the human person as a microcosm and then these cosmic forces. So we are, we, so. Was that what Jordan was setting out? I think that you’re comfortable with that. Well, indeed, it’s complicated too, so imagine that you’re possessed by an aggregate of these motivational states. Okay, well, because then you’re saying motivational states. Let me elaborate it one bit further though, because you could also imagine that there are culturally developed manners in which that aggregate has expressed itself. So for example, let’s take the Columbine Killer, for example. So I read his writings and I was, put myself in his position, let’s say that brooding position on evil. So he allowed himself to be possessed by a set of motivational states, one of which was certainly covetousness, certainly resentment, hatred, powerful dark motivations. But the manner in which that manifested itself also had a culturally conditioned element, right? I mean, there’s a satanic element to it that’s like, it’s like satanic in the poetic meldmesis of malice. Exactly that. And you see this, you really see this with the mass slayers, because they compete with one another. So there’s a subculture of high school shooters underground and they know of each other and they try to outdo each other. And so there’s, and that’s a mimesis of sort. But Jordan, would you go one further? You’re going individual, cultural, microcosm, macrocosm. Would you go natural, supernatural? Well, that’s still a distinction between the way you put it out, Jordan, and the way that. Well, but then I would also say this is where it gets very complicated, is that malevolence that’s a combination of bottom-up biological motivation and then cultural elaboration. And uncultured mimetic effects. Also a reflection of some cosmic form. I think that’s what. I think it is. Okay, Greg, we’re agreed. I think it is. Okay. Wait, wait, wait, you’re not agreeing. I am agreeing. I was agreeing with you because you weren’t agreeing with him. I wanted to tease out the tension between these two. I don’t understand, how is it cut? Wait, we don’t produce anger, we don’t produce lust, they’re outside of us. No, no, you’re not saying that. Well, I thought that I don’t understand what’s being said. I mean, a simple way to say it is that anger in you is similar to anger in Steven or in me. And because it’s similar, it has, there’s a being that’s a, it’s hard to. Anger exists even if you die. That’s right, there’s a good way to say it, that’s right. Anger is something that grips you, and so it’s got a reality that transcends you. Then how do I control it? Why am I responsible? If I act out evenly in anger and anger controls me, I have an excuse. Well, my answer to that would be, It’s the bottom up and top down thing. I don’t know exactly what to say about that, apart from the fact that there are other forces within you, including you, that give you the ability to control it, even if it has some autonomy of its own. Like you don’t have to give yourself over to anger, even though it beckons to you. And you remember in the story of Cain and Abel, think about how that sets itself up. So Cain is resentful and bitter and angry. And the reason for that is his sacrifices are rejected. And then sin sits at his door, like it’s externalized as a tempting spirit, and he has to invite it in. It’s the same idea in stories of vampiric possession, is you have to invite the vampire through the window. So I would say you can open yourself up to this possession or decide not to do it. And there’s an element of free choice in that for sure. And this is why God calls Cain out. And the Cain and Abel story is very ambivalent in some way, because it isn’t exactly obvious why God rejects Cain’s sacrifices. And I love that about the story, because people fail in life, and it’s not exactly obvious why. And they get bitter and resentful about it. And then you might say, well, does that justify, because they’re hurt so badly because they’ve failed, does that justify their vengefulness? And the Cain and Abel story says, no. It sets them up for it. That spirit of sin approaches them, but they still decide whether or not they’re gonna open the door. Doesn’t it say that he brought an inferior sacrifice? Yes, yes, but it doesn’t. So it does explain why God preferred the Abels. No, it doesn’t exactly say that, Dennis. It says that Abel’s sacrifices have the highest quality. And it implies that Cain is lesser, but it never really explains what he’s doing wrong.