The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - The Birth of Christ ｜ Biblical Series： The Gospels

00:00:00.000 Hello everybody. I want to share an announcement concerning some of my recent work exploring the

00:00:07.640 biblical texts that sit at the foundation of our culture. All of this initially exploded on the

00:00:13.140 public front with the Genesis lectures I recorded in 2017. That was followed some years later by

00:00:20.400 the four-part documentary series I recorded with Daily Wire Plus on the foundations of the West,

00:00:26.860 examining the contributions of Rome, Jerusalem, and Athens. That in turn expanded into our very

00:00:34.560 successful seminar on Exodus and then most recently on the Gospels. All of those, 17 for the former

00:00:43.480 Exodus and 10 for the latter, the Gospels, are now available exclusively on Daily Wire Plus.

00:00:50.100 Joining me for the Gospel Seminar were many of the same stellar intellectual scientists,

00:00:55.400 authors, and philosophers who journeyed through Exodus and the cities of the foundations of the

00:01:01.040 West series, along with some exceptionally insightful newcomers. We wrestled through the stories told

00:01:07.220 by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, examining their historical, existential, and literary significance,

00:01:14.560 deriving from those texts as well a wealth of deep and immediately applicable practical knowledge.

00:01:21.020 Today, you're joining me for episode one of this new revolutionary but tradition-grounded series.

00:01:29.160 The episode stands on its own, but also serves as an introduction to the whole series of 10

00:01:34.700 available at dailywire.com. Consider a subscription there, granting you access not only to the Gospel

00:01:42.300 Seminar in its totality, but to Exodus, Foundations of the West, and to the many specials I've recorded

00:01:49.280 for the Daily Wire Plus, addressing marriage, success, vision, masculinity, and mental health,

00:01:55.840 among other topics. Thank you very much for your time and attention, and for your continued support

00:02:00.920 of my work and of Daily Wire Plus. I look forward to your thoughts on the Gospels. Onward and upward.

00:02:07.360 Gospels. Onward And upward.

00:02:33.620 The Exodus story is arguably the central narrative in the Old Testament.

00:02:56.160 Now, there are many profound narratives in the Old Testament,

00:03:00.160 some which are of equivalent depth, but there's none that have that combination of depth,

00:03:06.620 narrative integrity, and detailed length.

00:03:10.260 And so, and Moses is a great prophet who establishes the law.

00:03:14.540 He's a central figure, and Christ plays the same role in the New Testament.

00:03:18.400 And his passion story has the same delineation of narrative detail combined with profound depth.

00:03:30.640 And so, it's very useful to understand the Exodus story and to understand the Gospel story

00:03:35.920 and to know both of them in relationship to one another.

00:03:39.920 So, that's the purpose of the investigation, is to bring people to the story, including ourselves,

00:03:45.660 and to further our understanding of the text upon which, for better or worse, the West is founded.

00:03:53.660 Hello, everyone.

00:03:58.140 Welcome to the Gospel Seminars, and welcome to all the panelists,

00:04:02.260 all of you who were here before for the Exodus Seminar,

00:04:05.380 and those of you who have newly joined us.

00:04:08.800 I'm very excited about this.

00:04:11.120 It's the day after Easter Sunday.

00:04:12.900 It's a good time to do it.

00:04:13.840 There's a lot of buzz in the world at large about the state of Western civilization

00:04:19.120 and the dependence or lack thereof of that civilization on the fundamental stories

00:04:25.580 from which it emerged historically and conceptually.

00:04:29.200 And it's a wonderful time to be investigating that.

00:04:32.620 And so, we've all come together to take all of you who are watching and listening through that

00:04:37.540 and to learn as much as we possibly can simultaneously.

00:04:42.240 And we're going to open this.

00:04:43.440 I'll have everybody go around the table and introduce themselves, tell who they are,

00:04:48.200 and also why they're here and why they think this is both interesting and necessary

00:04:53.800 for themselves personally and then perhaps also at the broader cultural level.

00:05:00.380 So, Bishop Barron, thank you very much for coming today.

00:05:02.680 My great pleasure.

00:05:03.780 Jordan, thank you.

00:05:04.440 I'm Robert Barron.

00:05:05.480 I'm the Bishop of the Winona Rochester Diocese, which is basically southern Minnesota.

00:05:10.440 I'm also the founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, which is an evangelical outreach.

00:05:15.680 So, I'm here, you know, as a believing Christian, as an evangelist,

00:05:19.460 and I think there's saving power in these great texts.

00:05:22.660 But I'm also here as someone interested in the cultural impact right now of the Scriptures.

00:05:27.860 I think it's fascinating.

00:05:29.340 You played a role in this, that there's been a revival of interest in the Bible.

00:05:33.040 And a lot of my ministry is directed toward the nuns, the N-O-N-E-S, those who have no religion. 1.00

00:05:38.720 But many of them are fascinated by the Bible.

00:05:41.420 So, I'm eager to hear everyone's perspective.

00:05:44.020 And I'm here partially to, you know, try to unlock some of the power of this text for those

00:05:49.120 who have been alienated from religion for different reasons.

00:05:52.140 But just delighted to be part of it.

00:05:54.520 Mr. Hurwitz.

00:05:56.000 Well, I'm honored to be here.

00:05:57.840 My name's Greg Hurwitz.

00:05:59.080 I'm a novelist and screenwriter.

00:06:01.880 In Exodus, I felt a lot like I was at a table with chess grandmasters,

00:06:06.700 which was really cool to see everybody's engagement and finding these jewels that had different interpretations.

00:06:14.360 And everybody, you know, except for Pajot, who never says anything fascinating.

00:06:17.620 And I'd like to say that, you know, a shallow gaze might indicate that there's a lot of similarity among us.

00:06:27.960 And one of the things that I thought was really compelling during Exodus was there's an enormous amount of differences

00:06:32.560 and that the text was really a welcome into the best of inquiry and hospitality.

00:06:38.120 I thought it was incredibly productive.

00:06:40.620 Part of why I'm here is that I think that intellect alone can't grasp the speed and complexity of the change that is upon us now

00:06:49.840 and unconscious projection.

00:06:53.820 And I think that we're seeing the world burn down in some ways to fundamentals.

00:06:58.820 You know, is man smarter than machine with AI?

00:07:01.780 We have wars breaking out at the birthplace of original sin.

00:07:05.040 We're trying to redefine what it means to be a man, male versus female.

00:07:10.880 And I think when we have that level of definitional collapse,

00:07:13.700 we need to go back to forms of thinking and forms of meaning that are different,

00:07:17.880 whether that is sacred, symbolic, spiritual, mythological or religious.

00:07:22.500 And going back to the source means we started with Exodus.

00:07:27.180 You know, a lot of us have been going back to or come from Plato and understanding of Plato.

00:07:32.320 And all sources, all stories are not necessarily equal.

00:07:36.560 And the Bible, this text to me, is a story, and the Gospels in particular,

00:07:41.900 they're like a story with maximal pressure applied.

00:07:45.460 It's like, you know, carbon turned to a diamond where it is fractal and pure.

00:07:49.140 The amount of pressure generationally, historically, and spiritually on the story

00:07:53.480 has condensed it into something that is impossible.

00:07:55.820 And in some ways, the Gospels are, I think, well, in many ways, in many different ways,

00:08:02.180 a perfect narrative.

00:08:03.360 It's a hero story.

00:08:04.300 It's structurally incredibly sound.

00:08:06.220 It's shaped in extraordinary fashion.

00:08:08.140 And it sets the conditions in a lot of ways for the most peace,

00:08:12.160 thriving, and freedom of differences of nearly any other story.

00:08:16.520 And so why I'm here in some ways is I think what we, in the spirit that we're all here,

00:08:20.620 is this is an invitation of sorts to what is a sacred text, to those who might be intellectually

00:08:26.160 reluctant or even have intellectual shame about engaging with a story in a book like this.

00:08:31.620 And a lot of people might be familiar with this sort of light shown through Shakespeare

00:08:36.360 or blasting in the Ode to Joy or in the words of MLK, these sort of safer reflections for the

00:08:43.360 enlightenment or secular mind.

00:08:45.180 And this, of course, is the rock on which Western civilization is built.

00:08:50.240 And I think we're here not just to take it seriously, but to apply our serious attention,

00:08:55.760 which means radical openness and also radical judgment in holding this up as a story against

00:09:01.560 which other stories should be compared if we're borrowing back to what a foundational narrative

00:09:06.500 should be.

00:09:07.440 Dr. Orr.

00:09:08.480 James Orr.

00:09:09.100 I'm an associate professor of philosophy of religion at the University of Cambridge.

00:09:12.120 It's wonderful to be with you all again and to be with new people, too.

00:09:18.800 Look, I think we're all agreed that there is something badly wrong at the heart of our

00:09:23.280 culture.

00:09:25.080 I think if you said 15 years ago at the high noon of the new atheism that we'd be gathering

00:09:31.300 around the table talking about these sacred texts, talking about Exodus, that it would have

00:09:35.080 the impact that it has had and what I think this series will have, too, I'd have thought

00:09:40.660 you were mad, but there is clearly a need for this.

00:09:43.540 There's a yearning for it.

00:09:45.200 There's an emerging coalition of intellectuals, public intellectuals, Jordan at the forefront,

00:09:51.860 John, too, who maybe are not card-carrying Christians, but who recognize the power of

00:09:58.580 Christianity and are beginning to realize that we can't keep running on empty, that it may

00:10:05.120 be the case that we're cutting off Western culture, is cutting off the branch that it's

00:10:09.100 been sitting on, and we're starting to get worried about this.

00:10:13.580 And so I think what we're going to be looking at now, what we're going to be trying to do

00:10:18.400 in a small way, is to look for the taproot, to explore the taproot of Western culture,

00:10:24.320 which is the gospel.

00:10:26.320 It's not just the gospels, it's the gospel message.

00:10:28.280 Paul says the gospel just is Christ crucified.

00:10:32.000 It's a scandalous thought, Christ crucified, scandalous, he says to the Jews, and it's

00:10:36.760 madness for the Greeks, and it was an offensive superstition for the Romans.

00:10:41.420 And I think that is still true today very much in our culture.

00:10:46.760 But Christianity, I think, has been tamed, it's been domesticated, we've become very used 0.50

00:10:52.880 to it as something which is just part of the furniture.

00:10:56.540 It's now expressed very often in the language of the therapeutic, we've moved from sin to

00:11:01.000 syndrome, as one theologian has put it.

00:11:03.900 So I hope what we can do here is to reflect on the scandalous nature of the gospel message,

00:11:09.860 to reflect on why it seems like folly, why it seems so offensive.

00:11:15.900 And with that, to try and inject new life into Western culture, and to learn from the pages

00:11:27.760 of the gospels, to learn from the figure of Jesus, his teaching, to wrestle with who he

00:11:34.980 claimed to be.

00:11:36.880 Looking forward to it.

00:11:37.900 Hi, I'm John Ravicki, I'm an Associate Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University

00:11:43.620 of Toronto.

00:11:44.320 I'm a colleague of Jordan's.

00:11:46.140 I'm here with sort of two hats.

00:11:53.100 One is I'm here as a cognitive scientist.

00:11:56.180 I do a lot of work on the nature of meaning, meaning in life, and how that relates to transformative

00:12:03.360 experience, how it relates to a sense of the sacred, about how it's often carried in non-propositional

00:12:11.320 kinds of knowing, and of course, these are topics that overlap deeply with people's religious

00:12:19.760 lives and the religious practice, and I'm interested in how we can, I'm going to use

00:12:32.680 this word, realize this text as sacred again, because the second hat I'm wearing is, I believe

00:12:38.480 there's a meeting crisis, and I've talked at length about that.

00:12:41.320 And I believe that there's an advent of the sacred happening right now in response to

00:12:47.200 the meeting crisis.

00:12:48.060 I feel deeply vocationally called to be in service to this, and so I want to get into a relationship

00:13:01.260 with this figure that recaptures how Jesus is strange, not in a pejorative sense, but the

00:13:09.620 way I have found Socrates, another one of my heroes, to be profoundly strange in a way that

00:13:14.880 has been deeply transformative for me.

00:13:17.820 And so I'm hoping that in this that I can take a role, I will often, I'm not a believer, I'm

00:13:28.600 not a Christian, I'm not an atheist, I'm a non-theist. I guess the closest name you could

00:13:33.380 put to me is I'm sort of a Zen Neoplatonist. But I nevertheless, I want to listen very deeply,

00:13:42.760 I want to probe very deeply, and I'm very grateful to be here.

00:13:47.180 Mr. Prager.

00:13:48.320 Thank you. It's wonderful to be here with all of you. I'm Dennis Prager, and it's a joy to

00:13:55.820 be back with you. So, I have a slightly different background. I'm a religious Jew. I went to yeshiva

00:14:04.200 until I was 18, 19 years of age, taught Jewish religion at City University of New York, written

00:14:13.240 books on it. I have a five-volume commentary on the Torah, four volumes of which are completed.

00:14:21.700 I'm now working on Leviticus. Wish me luck. It's not the easiest of the five books, but I'm falling

00:14:29.220 in love with it for other reasons. So, I'm here for a number of reasons, one of which is to learn.

00:14:36.860 And I want, I've always found that I learn best from those who believe in the text that we're

00:14:43.440 studying. I had a Buddhist teacher in England when I studied in England, and it was the best way to 0.97

00:14:50.380 learn Buddhism. I'm also here because though I, I'm not a Christian, the death of Christianity 0.66

00:15:00.760 frightens me. It is my nightmare. And I ask people all the time, name me one ideology that has

00:15:10.600 supplanted Christianity that has done good for humanity. And nobody can come up with an answer. 0.80

00:15:17.680 There is a quote attributed to G.K. Chesterton, though it's not verifiable that he actually said

00:15:26.360 it, but it's brilliant. When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing. They believe

00:15:33.260 in anything. And as I point out on my radio show each day, I probably say this once a week, only secular

00:15:42.620 people say men give birth. Not all secular people say that, but only secular people say that. We have

00:15:51.560 entered a post-Christian or really post-Judeo-Christian world of the absurd. One final word. I see Christianity 0.98

00:16:02.800 as a divinely ordained vehicle to bring the world to the Torah. So I have a very pro-Christian, Jewish, Jewish-based

00:16:16.580 view. It hasn't always been done right, but Christians are human, and human nature is awful, or at least not 1.00

00:16:30.120 particularly good. So people can screw up anything. But when done properly, and I think America and

00:16:38.120 Britain have been particularly good, it was Christians who abolished slavery. It's also Christians who made 1.00

00:16:45.760 the Inquisition. I'm well aware I wrote a book on anti-Semitism. And I pray that Christians come forth 1.00

00:16:54.680 now and speak out against a raging anti-Semitism that I did not think I would see in my lifetime.

00:17:02.680 But nevertheless, this Jew, this Westerner, is very frightened of a post-Christian society. 0.88

00:17:13.680 Dr. Headley. My name is Douglas Headley, and I teach the philosophy of religion at the University

00:17:21.680 of Cambridge. And I have a particular interest in Christian Platonism, and particularly one might call

00:17:31.680 the Neoplatonic version of that strand of thought. And from this perspective of my work in the history of

00:17:40.680 philosophy, I've always been struck by the extent of theology as a crucial, no pun intended, backdrop to

00:17:52.680 Western thought. And yet philosophers are often either oblivious to this or consciously ignore it. Now,

00:18:04.680 the Gospel narrative is absolutely central to this Western intellectual tradition. And yet this

00:18:16.680 Gospel tradition, this Gospel narrative is, as a couple of people have already mentioned,

00:18:22.680 both astonishing in its claims and very profoundly familiar, almost too familiar in a sense.

00:18:36.680 Now, you referred to the death of Christianity. I think that's putting it a bit too harshly. But nevertheless,

00:18:46.680 it is the case that Christianity has been through a fiery furnace in terms of the Enlightenment critique of its

00:18:57.680 central claims. Now, I think from a philosophical point of view, from a theological point of view, we do have to take

00:19:05.680 those criticisms seriously and consider the questions of meaning and truth. That having been said,

00:19:17.680 there is, I think, a profound hunger for these philosophical and theological questions that we find expressed.

00:19:31.680 I find personally in an inexpressibly beautiful manner in the Gospels. And so, I'm very much looking forward to the

00:19:44.680 forthcoming discussions.

00:19:46.680 Dr. Blackwood.

00:19:47.680 I'm Stephen Blackwood. I'm the founding president of Ralston College, a new university in Savannah, Georgia. I grew up in a

00:19:55.680 Christian home, reading the Bible, really in a daily basis. And so, these stories, you might say, were maybe the most

00:20:04.680 important frame through which I understood or came to understand, so far as I came to understand it, the world,

00:20:11.680 especially my relations with my family, my younger siblings, nature, the community at large, beauty. It was only

00:20:24.680 later when I went to university that I learned that these stories and the stories of the Judeo-Christian traditions, both in their

00:20:35.680 synthesis with Greek, with the Greek intellectual tradition, really produced Western civilization. That is fundamentally the 0.81

00:20:42.680 synthesis that drives the whole unfolding of the West. My deepest conviction is that human beings matter, that

00:20:53.680 they are made in the image of what is most real and fundamental. And yet, I think it's plainly the case that the

00:21:02.680 dominant ideological positions in our own time are woefully, painfully, desperately inadequate, whether that's

00:21:11.680 reductivist materialism or certain kinds of existential immediacy or the hyper-politicization and activism of

00:21:20.680 everything all the time. You know, the nihilism that there is nothing but power. These are psychologically, morally,

00:21:26.680 morally, theologically destructive in every sense. And so it seems to me there's nothing more important than our

00:21:35.680 rediscovering modes of understanding what the human being is, what we are, and how we can recover our

00:21:46.680 relation to what is most fundamental and real, which we could call, let's say, God. So I'm hoping that this text in

00:21:57.680 all of its power will come alive for us and we'll make some headway in that.

00:22:03.680 Mr. Pajot?

00:22:05.680 So, I'm Jonathan Pajot. I am a liturgical artist, a writer, but mostly I would say I'm someone who loves patterns and

00:22:15.680 loves to show the beauty of the world, the beauty of art, the beauty of stories, the beauty of images. And the

00:22:25.680 gospel is for me the key. It really is the place where these patterns come together. And I often say

00:22:34.680 that, but it's rare that I have the chance to sometimes show it, to be able to point it out so that people can see to what

00:22:43.680 extent the story of Jesus brings all the stories together. And so, you know, it's a huge undertaking.

00:22:53.680 But because we're coming in the shadow of our Exodus seminar, that's the way that I'm going to approach

00:23:00.680 all of this, which is what I'm hoping to do is to constantly help people see that the realities we

00:23:06.680 are presented in Exodus, right? This fractal mountain of the world and how the world comes together.

00:23:12.680 Some of the puzzles that were presented in Exodus and are presented in Genesis actually are brought together into this story.

00:23:23.680 So that is my hope is to hopefully help people that are watching and everybody here see just how precious and beautiful this story is.

00:23:33.680 And the fact that it has become the cornerstone of Western civilization is not an accident of history,

00:23:40.680 but it is through the very nature of the character of Christ, but also his story.

00:23:46.680 So whether the challenge in a way is a, it's pretty simple to state easily.

00:23:51.680 It's that we're trying to cover all four gospels and really just a few hours.

00:23:55.680 We're talking about perhaps the most influential, the most powerful, the most difficult,

00:24:01.680 the most radically unexpected words and stories of all time.

00:24:05.680 And, you know, we're trying to cover it quickly.

00:24:08.680 And the temptation, if I can put it that way, will be to schematize so we can kind of make sense of it.

00:24:15.680 And I think the challenge will be to sit with it in a way that what is most powerful and transformative

00:24:22.680 in these unexpected words can speak to our own hearts and hopefully to the hearts of those who are listening.

00:24:30.680 So I think part of the reason that we're in a crucial moment is because the enlightenment doctrines that have savaged Christianity have also now turned upon themselves.

00:24:46.680 And partly conceptually, but also scientifically, one of the things I've come to understand as a practicing research psychologist is that we see the world through a story.

00:24:58.680 In fact, that's a technical description.

00:25:01.680 A description of the structure through which someone sees the world is a story.

00:25:06.680 It's their story.

00:25:08.680 And we have to see the world through a story because we have to direct our attention.

00:25:13.680 And I think that's been revealed on the scientific side as incontrovertible.

00:25:17.680 I've interviewed many top cognitive scientists pushing on this issue.

00:25:22.680 And the best of the best of them now understand that even our perceptions of objects are micro-narratives.

00:25:30.680 We see the world through a story.

00:25:32.680 All right.

00:25:33.680 So that's radical.

00:25:34.680 That's a radical realization.

00:25:36.680 We can't derive the world from a simple list of facts.

00:25:41.680 That's become starkly evident.

00:25:43.680 We don't even train our AI systems that way.

00:25:46.680 It's just not the case.

00:25:47.680 Okay.

00:25:48.680 So then what's the story exactly?

00:25:50.680 That's the crucial issue.

00:25:52.680 What's the story?

00:25:53.680 Well, maybe there is no story.

00:25:54.680 But if there's no story, there's no point and there's no aim and there's no way of organizing intention and action.

00:25:59.680 And in that chaos, there's nothing but despair.

00:26:02.680 And I think that's also evident, say, neuropsychologically, neurophysiologically.

00:26:07.680 No aim, no hope, and despair.

00:26:12.680 What are candidates for this story?

00:26:15.680 Well, the big candidates that have emerged since Nietzsche announced the death of God is the story of power and the story of sex.

00:26:23.680 Those are good contenders for the throne.

00:26:25.680 But power is the most dismal of stories, except for perhaps the story of hedonism, right?

00:26:32.680 Those two things compete.

00:26:34.680 These two great stories, power and sex, they lead to catastrophic ends.

00:26:38.680 They play with each other.

00:26:39.680 They rotate around each other.

00:26:41.680 They drive us either towards a remarkably unproductive and bitter hedonism that cannot sustain itself psychologically or socially.

00:26:52.680 And then on the power side, well, if everything's about power, then that claim to me is no different than the claim that, like, the spirit of Lucifer rules the world.

00:27:04.680 It's the same claim in the different guise.

00:27:06.680 There's nothing but power.

00:27:07.680 All right, so there's no basis for marriage that isn't power.

00:27:11.680 There's no basis for friendship that isn't power.

00:27:13.680 There's no description of human society that isn't power.

00:27:16.680 It's just all against all, right? 0.94

00:27:18.680 And for what?

00:27:19.680 And not only is that a stunningly hellish and dismal story, I think there's absolutely no evidence that it's true and plenty of evidence that it's not.

00:27:30.680 The religious question, the monotheistic question, could be conceptualized as what could unite even power in sex and something higher and harmonious psychologically and societally.

00:27:43.680 And I think that's what the biblical corpus is about.

00:27:46.680 I think that's what the gospels focus on.

00:27:49.680 And I've come to realize, to understand, not just to believe, but also to understand that it has something to do with sacrifice.

00:27:58.680 And so, to mature is to sacrifice.

00:28:01.680 To mature is to sacrifice the immediate delights of power in the present for the long-term psychologically and the communal broadly.

00:28:13.680 That's the definition of maturation.

00:28:15.680 And there's a spirit that underlies that movement towards integration and community.

00:28:20.680 And that spirit is the spirit of progressive sacrifice.

00:28:23.680 And the gospel story is the culmination of the sacrificial story.

00:28:27.680 And so, I don't understand how it can be true.

00:28:31.680 I don't understand how it can be right.

00:28:33.680 But I now don't understand how it cannot be true.

00:28:37.680 Because the converging evidence that something like the spirit of divine sacrifice animates the world, I think that's, I think we're there.

00:28:46.680 I think that's the realization.

00:28:48.680 Now, what I hope to accomplish in this seminar is to further my understanding of that.

00:28:53.680 Because the story upon which our culture is based, the gospel story, let's say, is deeply mysterious and dramatically peculiar and hallucinogenic.

00:29:06.680 It's a trip.

00:29:08.680 And it's not understandable from the purely rational perspective.

00:29:14.680 Yet, it seems to be right.

00:29:16.680 And I don't know what that means.

00:29:18.680 It's a terrifying thought.

00:29:19.680 That's for sure.

00:29:20.680 The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.

00:29:23.680 That's for sure.

00:29:24.680 If you understand that the gospels call to you to bear the weight of tragedy and malevolence on your shoulders, along with the divine spirit that guides you.

00:29:36.680 There is nothing more terrifying and no greater field of opportunity than that.

00:29:42.680 And so, we've got our work cut out for us, gentlemen.

00:29:45.680 This is one peculiar time and one peculiar text.

00:29:49.680 And I sure hope we're up to the task.

00:29:51.680 Could I maybe suggest, in some ways, the climax of the New Testament revelation is the claim that God is love.

00:29:58.680 I like the way you set that up.

00:30:00.680 If power and hedonism are absolute values, then we're in serious trouble.

00:30:04.680 Put love above both of them.

00:30:06.680 Now, power is directed by love.

00:30:08.680 And what's love but to will the good of the other?

00:30:11.680 So, the sacrificial narrative of the cross fits under that heading as well.

00:30:14.680 But if the ultimate reality is love, then we can find a place for all these subordinate values.

00:30:20.680 If we get rid of love as a supreme value, then we have the serious problem of power unleashed or hedonism for its own sake.

00:30:28.680 So, I think that's the trajectory toward which the entire New Testament is going.

00:30:33.680 That God's name is being in the Old Testament.

00:30:35.680 I am who I am.

00:30:37.680 And Christian theology recognizes that as a supremely high name of God.

00:30:41.680 But higher still is the claim that God is love.

00:30:44.680 And in fact, the Trinity comes from that.

00:30:46.680 You know, if God is love in his own most nature, there must be lover, beloved, and love shared.

00:30:51.680 So, I might suggest that's where the New Testament is going, is love is the supreme value, the supreme reality.

00:30:59.680 Well, it's a hard thing to, what would you say, to come to terms with when that's the claim,

00:31:06.680 but the arc of the narrative of Christ is the worst possible death for the least possibly deserving person and the full encounter with malevolence.

00:31:16.680 Malevolence, right?

00:31:17.680 Out of love.

00:31:18.680 Right, right, right.

00:31:19.680 That's the great expression of love.

00:31:20.680 Right.

00:31:21.680 Right.

00:31:22.680 So, I thought I'd start if you gentlemen are in accordance with John 1 to 4.

00:31:27.680 And because it's one of the most peculiar paragraphs, let's say, in the Gospel account,

00:31:35.680 we could talk about it for 10 hours, which we won't.

00:31:39.680 But it'll set us up to start to investigate the metaphysical foundations of the text as well as the autobiographical foundations.

00:31:51.680 One other thing I'd like to point out to people, perhaps, before we get going from a conceptual perspective,

00:31:56.680 is that Dr. Headley, for example, pointed to the philosophical as part of the understructure of the cultural and made the claim that perhaps underneath that is the theological.

00:32:09.680 And I think that's a nice pattern.

00:32:13.680 It's a nice description of the pattern of conceptualization itself.

00:32:17.680 It appears as though philosophy is nested inside drama.

00:32:22.680 That's a good way of thinking about it.

00:32:24.680 And a verbally portrayed drama is a story.

00:32:27.680 And a story isn't philosophy.

00:32:29.680 It's got a dreamlike quality to it.

00:32:31.680 It's still something embodied and dramatized.

00:32:34.680 And if philosophy emerges from the story and then our other cultural concepts emerge from philosophy, you can see kind of an inverted pyramid with something at the foundation.

00:32:47.680 And the foundation is the story itself.

00:32:50.680 And at the base of that foundation is something like sacrifice in love.

00:32:55.680 And that's the claim that's being made in the Christian context.

00:32:57.680 Now, John opens up with an allusion to that whole set of claims because John does this extremely strange parallel by making the radical and improbable claim that Christ, the Christ of the Bible, who was born in a particular time and in a particular place, a no-account place in the middle of nowhere in an equally nondescript time in some ways,

00:33:25.680 is equivalent to the spirit that gave rise to the cosmos at the beginning of time and has always existed.

00:33:32.680 It's an unbelievably radical way of starting a book.

00:33:35.680 And I'll read the words.

00:33:37.680 In the beginning was the Word.

00:33:40.680 The Word was with God and the Word was God.

00:33:43.680 The Word existed in the beginning with God.

00:33:46.680 All things were made through Him and God created nothing except through Him.

00:33:50.680 In Him was life.

00:33:52.680 And this life brings light to all mankind.

00:33:56.680 The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

00:34:01.680 And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of truth and kindness.

00:34:07.680 We have beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten Son of the Father.

00:34:11.680 And from the abundance of Jesus' grace we have all received blessing upon blessing.

00:34:15.680 For the law was given through Moses.

00:34:18.680 Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

00:34:21.680 No one has seen God at any time.

00:34:24.680 But the only Son who was closest to the Father's heart has made Him known to us.

00:34:28.680 So, I structured this seminar in relationship to a book called The Single Gospel.

00:34:36.680 And he describes it as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John consolidated into a single narrative.

00:34:43.680 That's not an approach without its pitfalls.

00:34:46.680 He compresses and retranslates many of the verses.

00:34:52.680 So, I'm sure there'll be something in that to offend everyone who's listening.

00:34:56.680 For me, it allowed me to enter the single narrative of the Gospels relatively rapidly.

00:35:03.680 And to make sure that we had the appropriate narrative through line.

00:35:07.680 Jonathan, maybe you could start with that.

00:35:09.680 It's a terribly complicated piece of writing.

00:35:12.680 Yeah.

00:35:13.680 Well, the first thing I think it's important to see is that it is definitely referring back to Genesis 1.

00:35:19.680 It's basically giving us a type of account of Genesis 1, which is God spoke the world into being.

00:35:26.680 It's joining it with the Greek idea of logos, which is huge.

00:35:30.680 Obviously, we'll talk about that.

00:35:32.680 But what I'd like to just propose is that what we'll see when we look at the narrative of Jesus is that what's described right there at the beginning,

00:35:41.680 which is that the light that shines in the darkness and the darkness does not recognize it.

00:35:46.680 But just this idea of the light moving down into the darkness is the whole structure of the life of Jesus.

00:35:52.680 You'll see that happening all through his life, which is it explains everything that he does is that he moves from this mysterious meaning,

00:36:00.680 this source of being, and then he moves out into death, into disease, into the margin, into all the things that don't fit.

00:36:08.680 He basically fills the world with himself, but the world does not recognize him.

00:36:13.680 And so that's the first thing that I would say is that as we read the rest of all the other scripture,

00:36:18.680 because people will tell us that that, you know, John is the weird gospel.

00:36:22.680 It doesn't it's not the same as the synoptic gospels.

00:36:24.680 But I think this pattern here is the actual pattern of the life of Jesus that you see all through all through the story.

00:36:31.680 And in some ways the what the story of Jesus and how he does that nonstop and in every single way that you even haven't thought of is going to be the proof of this.

00:36:43.680 That it's like, do you know what that looks like for the light to move down to the darkness?

00:36:47.680 What does that look like?

00:36:48.680 And Christ will show that through his miracles, through his teaching, through through the through the through his crucifixion, all through the story.

00:36:57.680 Can somebody explain to me, because I admit I've wrestled with this as long as I've studied Christianity.

00:37:04.680 In the beginning was the word.

00:37:07.680 I've never fully understood that, especially if it harkens back to Genesis.

00:37:12.680 I don't have an issue with it.

00:37:15.680 Please understand, this is truly a question from ignorance.

00:37:19.680 Is the word when God said, let there be light, is that the word that's being referred to?

00:37:25.680 To some extent, yes.

00:37:27.680 So the idea, the idea is.

00:37:29.680 So what word was at the beginning?

00:37:31.680 The idea is to say, I think this is ultimately the Christian understanding, is to say that the God speaking is not created.

00:37:39.680 When God speaks, it's not not, it's not something else than him.

00:37:44.680 It is in some ways separate from him, but also God.

00:37:48.680 This is coming to, to love that Bishop Barron was going to talk about.

00:37:52.680 That, that God speaking is his own being that is speaking into the world.

00:37:58.680 And there's, there's a, you, you would understand this in the Genesis context, is that there's an insistence on something like the primacy of the process that extracts the order that's good out of potential and chaos.

00:38:11.680 And that's the word.

00:38:13.680 And the, the, the, the Christian insistence is that Christ embodies the pattern of loving sacrifice that characterizes that word.

00:38:21.680 And so that idea is something like the foundation of existence itself is the spirit of loving sacrifice.

00:38:29.680 And that's equivalent.

00:38:30.680 It's the same thing as the word that extracts the order that's good out of potential at the beginning of time.

00:38:38.680 And one way of understanding that more prosaically, I would say, is that imagine the order that you establish in your family.

00:38:48.680 If that little microcosm of the walled garden, your family, to the degree that you embody the spirit of loving sacrifice as a father, then you'll create out of the potential that's your family relationships, the order that's good.

00:39:04.680 And it's sacrifice because, well, that's what you do on behalf of your children, right?

00:39:09.680 You, you put them first, not you.

00:39:12.680 You certainly put them first before your whims.

00:39:16.680 You put what's best for them before their whims too.

00:39:20.680 And so there's an upward aim in that.

00:39:22.680 And all that upward aim is sacrificial.

00:39:24.680 And then, well, then we get to the issue of what constitutes the ultimate sacrifice, which is partly what's explored in the gospel accounts.

00:39:31.680 It's obviously explored in Abraham because Abraham is called upon to make an ultimate sacrifice.

00:39:35.680 But this is an extension in a different, in a different direction.

00:39:39.680 One thing I would say in response to your question is the logos being talked about here is, is the interior word of the father.

00:39:45.680 So the word of creation is more of a word that goes out.

00:39:48.680 But within the Godhead itself, there's an interior word.

00:39:51.680 The father has an imago of himself that we call the son.

00:39:54.680 The father and son fall in love with each other.

00:39:57.680 The mutual love is the Holy Spirit.

00:39:59.680 So we would see from the beginning, this very text, there's a Trinitarian overtone.

00:40:03.680 But it's the word that in a way precedes the word of creation.

00:40:07.680 It's interior to God himself.

00:40:09.680 So the word was God, as it says.

00:40:11.680 May I just add to that in terms of the text, there are two words here that are very difficult to translate into English.

00:40:20.680 And one, of course, is logos, which can mean obviously a word, proposition, meaning, story.

00:40:30.680 The resonance of that word is very rich.

00:40:33.680 But also the word that's translated as beginning, the ache, because in the Greek philosophical tradition, that word is used for God.

00:40:45.680 So, and there are reasons why this should be the case, but the ache is a term which has a very powerful theological meaning within the Greek philosophical tradition.

00:41:03.680 It's the first principle.

00:41:05.680 It's the source of all reality.

00:41:07.680 So, one way of looking at this is to say, well, in the source there was the word.

00:41:13.680 To say, the Trinitarian reading, although that sounds like an absurd Christian interjection of a much later period, you could see that as making perfect sense with just these initial words.

00:41:27.680 John.

00:41:28.680 Yeah, I want to pick up on the fact that there's actually, I call them the four L's about God.

00:41:36.680 There's love, agape, there's logos, there's light, and life.

00:41:41.680 And these are all the identity claims that are somehow circling.

00:41:44.680 And I'd like to propose we slow down a little bit because the familiarity of those terms to us, I think, is masking something more profound going on here.

00:41:52.680 And if we think about all of these, they're pointing, well, to me, they're pointing to something very radical here.

00:42:02.680 They're asking us to get out of a normal way in which we think about reality in terms of stable, substantial, independently existing objects.

00:42:11.680 All of these are inherently relational realities.

00:42:14.680 And think about how profound that is to say that ultimate reality is inherently, ultimately relational.

00:42:21.680 And that, therefore, a relationship to it has to be primordially relational.

00:42:26.680 And this is very, very hard for our way of thinking because we have got into the mode, and for all kinds of historical reasons we don't need, of thinking of, you know, that what there really is are individual things.

00:42:41.680 There's no relationality.

00:42:43.680 This is, of course, normalism.

00:42:44.680 All of that's in our head, and then that gives us a dualism because the mind has the patterns, the world.

00:42:49.680 And there's something going on here in this language.

00:42:53.680 And I want to slow down a little bit and get at, right?

00:42:57.680 These terms are very familiar, and I think that's, I understand why they're there, but their familiarity is actually, in some sense, problematic.

00:43:07.680 Because I think they're, it's easy, like, these are all nouns, and it's easy to think we're talking about four things.

00:43:15.680 These are, these are attempts to disclose, and all four of them, I feel they're playing off against each other.

00:43:24.680 The relation between them is as important as any one of them.

00:43:27.680 And all of them are playing off against each other and trying to call us into a new way of trying to relate to ultimate reality.

00:43:34.680 And so, like, when I try and, because Jesus makes these claims, too.

00:43:39.680 He talks about, I'm the light of the world, abundant life, like, you know, all of this.

00:43:45.680 This, this to me, if I, if I could hear these words again, I could get to a place where I think the idea of, could have more real relevance to me.

00:44:03.680 And so, I, we, we, we live in metaphor.

00:44:09.680 Metaphors aren't fast on the parlay.

00:44:12.680 Like, we've just begun, but I hope this, you know, this discourse isn't too hard, but I hope we understand it.

00:44:19.680 I hope you see my point. I hope you get what I'm saying.

00:44:22.680 Like, try and say anything, right?

00:44:25.680 Right. Metaphor is not an ornament.

00:44:27.680 It is part of the fundamental grammar of our cognition.

00:44:29.680 And these are more than metaphors.

00:44:31.680 These are metaphors that are trying to transcend themselves, and they're trying to point.

00:44:34.680 And I'd like to also, I mean, I'd like to try and make sure we're, we're not only paying attention to the text,

00:44:41.680 we're paying attention to what is the mental framing that's, I'm trying to use a very, that we're bringing to this text.

00:44:47.680 I want this text to challenge me, and I, I assume that's what everybody is doing here.

00:44:51.680 And so, what, what, what is our stance, our orientation towards it, such that we can, we can be appropriate to it.

00:44:59.680 We can really listen to it very deeply.

00:45:01.680 It seems to me that what John, John is establishing a radically, extending a radically non-materialist axiom.

00:45:10.680 He's, he's trying to identify what the core phenomenon of being is.

00:45:16.680 And it's, in this story, it's not material.

00:45:20.680 It's being itself.

00:45:21.680 It's, it's very fundamentally associated, I think, with what modern people would call consciousness,

00:45:26.680 which is a complete, opaque mystery in and of itself, right?

00:45:30.680 John is attempting to characterize the spirit of being itself.

00:45:34.680 And he's, he's making a claim.

00:45:36.680 He's, the claim is it's embodied in Christ.

00:45:39.680 It's the same as the divine principle that generated order at the beginning of time.

00:45:44.680 It's apprehensible.

00:45:46.680 It's foundational.

00:45:47.680 And, and it's also the full expression, fullest expression.

00:45:51.680 This isn't directly in this text, but it emerges.

00:45:54.680 It's the fullest expression of the tradition that's made manifest in the Old Testament.

00:45:58.680 And it emerges out of our primordial stories and announces itself as the principle of being itself.

00:46:03.680 And it seems to me irrefutable that the principle of sacrifice is the basis of sophisticated psychological integrity and community.

00:46:16.680 I just can't see how that cannot be true.

00:46:19.680 And that's being pointed to here as well.

00:46:23.680 Sacrificial love.

00:46:24.680 It's something like that.

00:46:25.680 But for sure the, the light, the life, and the word, they are things that make other things exist.

00:46:33.680 In the sense that light is that which makes things seen.

00:46:36.680 Life is that which makes things move.

00:46:38.680 And word is meaning that makes things happen.

00:46:41.680 And so you can see that the analogies that, that John is putting together are there to say, like, if you don't understand what the word logos is, then light will bring you a little further.

00:46:51.680 And if you don't know what light is, you know, then life will bring you a little further.

00:46:54.680 And like you said, it's not that one of those is actually describing anything.

00:46:57.680 It's that all of them playing with each other are pointing you to the mystery of the notion that there are, that there are invisible movers that make things move or make things happen, make things exist.

00:47:11.680 I think that's helpful.

00:47:13.680 But what I'm saying is like, think about, think about what we're saying here.

00:47:16.680 Imagine going into a room of physicists and saying ultimate reality is love, light, logos, life, right?

00:47:23.680 They're going to look at you and they'll either, well, that's very nice.

00:47:26.680 It's a platitude and they don't really believe it.

00:47:29.680 Right.

00:47:30.680 But they actually get it in their life.

00:47:31.680 They should get it.

00:47:32.680 But that's the point I want to make.

00:47:33.680 But these things are not, they're not out there metaphors.

00:47:37.680 You can't, you can't, you can't do science without these principles of intelligibility.

00:47:44.680 Right.

00:47:45.680 They are, they're, they're right.

00:47:46.680 And so I'm trying to, I'm trying to wake us back up to it's, it's John's not making a scientific claim.

00:47:53.680 I'm not, I'm not saying that that's ridiculous, but, but he's not saying something that's irrelevant to the scientific world.

00:47:58.680 He's making a meta scientific claim.

00:48:00.680 Yes.

00:48:01.680 Right.

00:48:02.680 Thanks, James.

00:48:03.680 That's exactly.

00:48:04.680 And also this can be easily trivialized.

00:48:06.680 That's my concern here.

00:48:07.680 This can be.

00:48:08.680 Oh yes.

00:48:09.680 That's very nice.

00:48:10.680 Light.

00:48:11.680 Yeah.

00:48:12.680 Light of love.

00:48:13.680 Oh, we like love.

00:48:14.680 Right.

00:48:15.680 And, and, and no, this like, imagine, imagine proposing that relationality is that from which

00:48:22.680 things emerge rather than things are that from which relations emerge.

00:48:27.680 Can I jump in?

00:48:28.680 I completely agree with what you're saying.

00:48:30.680 And you're very close to Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI.

00:48:33.680 He's a Trinitarian doctrine turned upside down. 0.97

00:48:36.680 The classical view that said substance is primordial relationship is accidental.

00:48:40.680 Just the opposite.

00:48:41.680 Ultimate reality is a relationship.

00:48:44.680 Hence the importance of in the beginning was the word and the word was God.

00:48:48.680 And take the next step.

00:48:49.680 Aquinas says this, that a creature is a, he says, quidam relatio.

00:48:53.680 It's a kind of relationship to the creator.

00:48:56.680 It has to be.

00:48:57.680 If it's coming into being every moment from nothing, the creature is a relationship.

00:49:02.680 Then I'd link it to Jesus' ethical teaching.

00:49:04.680 Why do you love even your enemies?

00:49:06.680 Because it's not so much substance against substance, but all of us are, whether we like

00:49:10.680 it or not, connected to each other through God.

00:49:13.680 So I think that's really absolutely right intuition.

00:49:16.680 And it's, it's the metaphysics of this opening line.

00:49:18.680 I think it dovetails too in within space and time.

00:49:22.680 It's very interesting, Douglas.

00:49:24.680 You said that in the word for beginning is God, right?

00:49:28.680 And so this goes into John, you know, the discussion of, well, what is a cup, right?

00:49:33.680 A cup is, it's designed for a certain purpose.

00:49:36.680 It is also the purpose and the end of it is also what it's intended to be.

00:49:41.680 And so there's a, there's a circularity too.

00:49:43.680 In God was the word and the word was with God and, and the word was God.

00:49:48.680 That temporally, this is that same fractal thing.

00:49:51.680 That's also being expanded across time and space.

00:49:53.680 That the meaning is embedded in the object as it exists.

00:49:56.680 What its uses and what its end is are all simultaneous.

00:49:59.680 I think that's a connection back to some of your thinking.

00:50:02.680 The other interesting aspects about that passage as well is that what we read as in the beginning is using another very important word in Greek philosophy.

00:50:16.680 And that word is the, which means beginning, which means source, principle, and that usage is also very interesting.

00:50:33.680 So, um, in ancient Greek and the philosophical tradition, the word God is not, so theos or theos is not used for the first principle.

00:50:47.680 The word that is used is this word, ache.

00:50:50.680 So, the fact that we start off this prologue with these terms which resonate with profound metaphysical questions is, I think, of profound significance.

00:51:08.680 You made a comment about this, James, it was you, about this being a meta-scientific claim.

00:51:14.680 And so, I want to add a couple of things to that.

00:51:16.680 So, I watched Richard Dawkins yesterday talk about his existence as a cultural Christian.

00:51:21.680 And he's also, he's not just a cultural Christian ethically, he's a cultural Christian scientifically,

00:51:27.680 because the scientific program itself, which is a very particular sort of program,

00:51:33.680 and only emerged in the context of a Judeo-Christian society.

00:51:37.680 And that wasn't accidental.

00:51:39.680 It makes a bunch, it is predicated on a variety of meta-scientific claims.

00:51:44.680 One is that the logos characterizes the cosmos, which means it's intelligible.

00:51:50.680 Also, that that intelligibility is good, because otherwise the scientists studying the intelligibility of the cosmos

00:51:57.680 could be a terribly destructive force, which is, of course, something that we're afraid of.

00:52:01.680 And is also true if the aim of the scientist isn't proper, right?

00:52:05.680 And that, and that there, it is possible for us to exist in a relationship with the cosmos

00:52:12.680 such that its intelligibility will reveal itself to us if we participate in that investigation,

00:52:18.680 both in the spirit of truth, which is core to the scientific enterprise,

00:52:22.680 but also in relationship to our upward aim.

00:52:25.680 Because scientists don't ever have to say we're conducting this research to further the good.

00:52:32.680 That's just axiomatic.

00:52:33.680 But the reason it's axiomatic is because it's nested in this underlying ethos.

00:52:37.680 I mean, you can easily imagine a science that serves totalitarian claims.

00:52:41.680 I don't think it would last long as a science because it would eat itself.

00:52:45.680 But we've certainly seen that enterprise perverted in directions that take it away from what it is

00:52:51.680 and what it has to be nested in in order to be genuine science and to serve psyche and society.

00:52:58.680 The most incomprehensible fact of the universe is its comprehensibility.

00:53:03.680 That's the Einsteinian thought.

00:53:05.680 The other thing you need is that the world is not God.

00:53:07.680 So the world has to be intelligible for science to go off the ground, but also it can't be God.

00:53:11.680 If it's God, you're going to worship it or you'll keep it at a distance.

00:53:14.680 If it's not God, you know you can experiment, you can analyze and so on.

00:53:17.680 And both those are contained here.

00:53:19.680 It's radically intelligible and it's not God.

00:53:21.680 It's been made by God.

00:53:23.680 I think those two things have got to be in place for the sciences to emerge.

00:53:26.680 Right, right. That's an interesting point, the idea that you can't be scientific if you worship nature.

00:53:31.680 We're actually seeing that played out in the academy now because as the academy decolonizes,

00:53:36.680 there are claims by the decolonizers that the scientific enterprise itself violates the sacred.

00:53:42.680 Right, right.

00:53:43.680 Well, this is what's so interesting from the 19th century onwards up until relatively recently, maybe 10 years ago,

00:53:49.680 you know, the standard discussion on campuses that you would see a Christian union put on would be religion and science.

00:53:55.680 How are they compatible?

00:53:56.680 How do you reconcile the two?

00:53:58.680 When it's quite clear that the paradigm now, it's really the hard-boiled secularist or the hyper-progressive,

00:54:05.680 who is struggling to reconcile the constructive view of reality to the discovered intelligibility of the natural world.

00:54:15.680 So we've seen a huge change here, and I think it unsettles the old materialist paradigm.

00:54:22.680 I think it's, and I think even, I defer to John here, but if you talk to really cutting-edge physicists,

00:54:29.680 they'll be the first to say that matter is a lot more complicated and mysterious than it used to be.

00:54:36.680 And we're starting to see now that structure, that relationality, the mapping of relationality through structure,

00:54:43.680 has a lot more heuristic power within the hard sciences than the old sticks-and-balls physics that you used to learn at school.

00:54:50.680 I just came from such a conference around Imelgur, Chris Work, and there were physicists there.

00:54:55.680 And what the science is, at the bottom, you're getting pure relationality, right?

00:54:58.680 And at the top, with relativity, you have pure relationality.

00:55:01.680 And the scientists are driven by this thing that they can't justify scientifically,

00:55:05.680 but somehow the two theories have to be integrated.

00:55:08.680 They have to be one.

00:55:09.680 And they've been struggling with this for like 50 years.

00:55:11.680 I think part of the problem is they're still bound in a kind of substance metaphysics,

00:55:15.680 even though they're wrestling with a more of a Neoplatonic understanding of reality.

00:55:21.680 Go ahead.

00:55:22.680 Well, we see also this unconscious porting over of nature worship, that nature's elevated.

00:55:27.680 It's the Rousseauian ideal where nature is elevated above man, right?

00:55:32.680 So it gets out of place if you don't have that separation necessarily.

00:55:36.680 And it's almost this porting over of a notion of original sin that elevates it,

00:55:40.680 that we have in some way that makes us inferior to the thing to be worshipped.

00:55:44.680 If it's not differentiated from God, then we worship nature and hold it higher than us.

00:55:48.680 And this, I think, is like the first moving into this crazy proposition,

00:55:54.680 which is that this fellow Jesus of Nazareth, that's where it all comes together.

00:55:59.680 But at least at the outset, what we can perceive is that this union,

00:56:03.680 the place where this comes together is in man, right?

00:56:07.680 Even if we don't come to the person of Jesus yet,

00:56:10.680 we can understand that if we, the capacity, the consciousness,

00:56:15.680 human consciousness in the world that we know is the locus through which all these vectors join together.

00:56:22.680 Yeah, well, that's what I wanted to say.

00:56:24.680 I mean, I'm not making any trespass on the doctrine of the incarnation,

00:56:28.680 but what I was trying to say, look, these things are incarnated in us.

00:56:32.680 They are not just things we're referring to out in the world.

00:56:34.680 They're a body.

00:56:35.680 We understand, we live like it's almost like what Paul says in Acts.

00:56:40.680 In these we live and move and have our being.

00:56:42.680 We are participating in them.

00:56:44.680 But right here it says, right, right in the text it says,

00:56:47.680 But as many as received him, to them gave he the power to become sons of God, right?

00:56:53.680 And so, like, we'll see how this plays out in the story.

00:56:56.680 But, you know, that this is already hinted at, right?

00:56:59.680 That this is our role, that this is the role that humans play are to become sons of God,

00:57:04.680 to become the place where this, you know, the invisible, all of the invisible pattern,

00:57:09.680 love, relationality, all that come together into this anchor.

00:57:13.680 So, are you saying, then, that the microcosm, macrocosm structure

00:57:20.680 is both significant anthropologically and in terms of the theology of the incarnation?

00:57:27.680 Of course.

00:57:28.680 Of course.

00:57:29.680 If you had to pick any kind of being in which these patterns of intelligibility could be united,

00:57:34.680 just as a purely secular matter, what kind of being are you going to choose if not human beings?

00:57:40.680 Again, this is a cutting-edge scientific idea, right?

00:57:45.680 The idea that there's a deep continuity between how life works and how mind works,

00:57:51.680 and we can talk about whatever spirit is.

00:57:53.680 This is what people are now talking about.

00:57:56.680 They're taking it seriously, right?

00:57:58.680 And they should, because we've hit this wall in our ontology in which science is making a picture of everything

00:58:07.680 except the scientist, the living scientist who does science.

00:58:10.680 That person doesn't fit in that ontology.

00:58:12.680 That's a whole, right?

00:58:14.680 And we have to invert our epistemology and our ontology so that we can be proper places.

00:58:19.680 We can find a proper home within that again.

00:58:22.680 And I'm trying to, as a non-Christian, I'm trying to see how this text can be relevant to that challenge.

00:58:31.680 I'm skeptical, not in the modern sense.

00:58:34.680 I'm skeptical in the ancient sense.

00:58:35.680 Skeptical means inquirer.

00:58:37.680 I am Socratic.

00:58:39.680 I'm open.

00:58:40.680 I want to learn and hear.

00:58:42.680 There's an opportunity here because of the diversity of voices.

00:58:45.680 I have a sense of responsibility as a challenge to speak on behalf of the nuns, the N-O-N-E-S's. 1.00

00:58:52.680 Many people who are aware, because they come to my work, they're aware that there's something profoundly wrong.

00:58:59.680 There's a meeting crisis going on.

00:59:01.680 But they do not find an open sense of home.

00:59:06.680 Not that anybody's rejecting them, but they just don't see the established institutions of the legacy religions, the axial religions, as viable for them.

00:59:16.680 Okay, so I'm going to move us now to the first biographical detail, let's say, out of the realm of high metaphysics, and to the story of Zechariah.

00:59:26.680 And so this is the announcement of the impending birth of John the Baptist, and this is really where Christ's story starts on the biographical side.

00:59:37.680 It doesn't start with Christ himself in the Gospels.

00:59:40.680 It starts with John the Baptist, who's an interesting and complicated figure, assimilated by Jesus himself to Elijah, who is the prophet of conscience, I would say, above all.

00:59:52.680 And also, by the way, the figure in the Old Testament who brings the worship of nature to a halt.

00:59:59.680 And so I'm going to read this.

01:00:01.680 The Annunciation to Zechariah.

01:00:04.680 One day, this is John the Baptist's father.

01:00:08.680 One day when Zechariah's group was on duty and he was serving as a priest before God, he was chosen by Luke 1, 5 to 25.

01:00:16.680 I'm hoping that's where it is.

01:00:18.680 I'm using the single Gospels, by the way, in this journey forward.

01:00:24.680 So it's important to know that when Jordan is reading the Gospel text, he's not actually reading from a Gospel, but it's a kind of compilation of different Gospels.

01:00:32.680 So sometimes it starts in one Gospel and then it cuts to another.

01:00:36.680 And so for people that know the Gospels really well, this might be a very frustrating experience.

01:00:40.680 I know even for us at the table, it is a little bit of a frustrating experience.

01:00:44.680 I think most of the people that are Christian around the table would have liked us to either pick one Gospel or, you know, follow a Gospel and then supplement with another.

01:00:53.680 But Jordan is really adamant on going to the single Gospel.

01:00:56.680 And so, you know, I mean, in the end, what's important is we do get through the story of Jesus and, you know, we get through the major events and the major teaching of Jesus.

01:01:05.680 But even at the table, if, I don't know if the camera picks it up, but sometimes we're bewildered because we don't know, we're like flipping through the Bible and we don't know where we are, you know.

01:01:14.680 And so, yes, that's important to understand because even for the viewer, while you're watching it, you'll have a little bit of that experience yourself.

01:01:21.680 One day when Zechariah's group was on duty and he was serving as a priest before God, he was chosen by lot, randomly, according to the custom among the priests, to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense.

01:01:33.680 At the time for this burning, all the assembled worshippers were praying outside.

01:01:37.680 Then an angel of the Lord appeared to Zechariah, standing on the right-hand side of the incense altar.

01:01:43.680 Zechariah was shaken when he saw the angel, and fear fell upon him.

01:01:46.680 But the angel said, Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John.

01:01:54.680 And you shall have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice that he was born, for he will be great in the eyes of the Lord.

01:02:01.680 And he shall drink neither wine nor strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb.

01:02:09.680 And he will turn many of the children of Israel back to the Lord their God. 0.77

01:02:13.680 He will go as a forerunner before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of fathers to the children,

01:02:21.680 and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, and to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.

01:02:26.680 So Elijah calls the Israelites back to conscience.

01:02:30.680 John the Baptist is the forerunner and the announcer of Christ.

01:02:34.680 This is the announcement of his conception and birth.

01:02:38.680 And so, what do we make of John the Baptist?

01:02:42.680 Why is it necessary?

01:02:43.680 Greg, maybe you can start us off here.

01:02:45.680 Why do you think it's necessary in the narrative flow of things for there to be an unroller of the red carpet, let's say, for someone to make the way ready?

01:02:56.680 It's almost like the association with conscience.

01:02:59.680 The conscience is what has to lead the way first to prepare the people to receive Jesus.

01:03:06.680 Because if he just arrives without there being...

01:03:10.680 Look, so first of all, I mean, in a dramatic sense, right, every introduction for dramatic effect,

01:03:16.680 and I know that we're talking about this on different levels,

01:03:18.680 but for the theatrical, the introduction of a character is always key.

01:03:22.680 I mean, you think about in Casablanca, the number of times that Rick is mentioned before his back is turned in a chair,

01:03:28.680 and you see the cigarette smoke and he turns around.

01:03:30.680 Dramatically, and I'm not implying this is merely dramatically, you want to set the stage for the arrival of a major character.

01:03:37.680 And I think you have a culture in which the stage must be set before his arrival.

01:03:42.680 Okay, so you're making two points.

01:03:43.680 One is that one's a psychological point or a theological point, which is that it might be that it's conscience that alerts us when our sacrifices are insufficient or something like that.

01:03:56.680 It's conscience that alerts us to the necessity for a higher form of sacrifice than what we're currently performing.

01:04:03.680 And so conscience is continually the forerunner of the sacred.

01:04:07.680 But then there's a dramatic level here, too, where you need to prepare the ground for the introduction of a major character.

01:04:14.680 Yeah, and we do this all the time dramatically.

01:04:16.680 You have an opening act for a concert.

01:04:19.680 You have somebody...

01:04:20.680 An overture.

01:04:21.680 Yeah, you have an overture.

01:04:22.680 You have, if there's a late night show, they'll have somebody warm up the crowd who's a comedian, right?

01:04:27.680 You have to set the stage.

01:04:29.680 You have to show how bad the situation is, too, before the hero comes in.

01:04:33.680 And that's one of the things that John the Baptist does.

01:04:35.680 He says, you know, it's like, the axe is at the root of the tree, folks.

01:04:38.680 This is it.

01:04:39.680 Things are dire.

01:04:40.680 Everything, you know, you need to repent because the fire is coming, you know.

01:04:43.680 And so everything is in a very dire state, you know, before the main character comes in.

01:04:48.680 It's worth making the point that, I mean, Luke is seen as effectively a Greek physician, having a Greek mindset.

01:04:56.680 He refers back to the Old Testament a little bit less often, say certainly, than Matthew.

01:05:02.680 But it's worth saying that the reference to Elijah is, seems to be a fulfillment of the last two verses of our Old Testament, as it were.

01:05:10.680 In Malachi, which, this is Malachi 4, 5.

01:05:13.680 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord, and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to the fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. 0.93

01:05:25.680 So it's a clear, the sense is that he's fulfilling, that John is fulfilling something, that he's preparing the way for a sequence of events that is going to be a fulfillment of what is hinted at in Malachi in the Old Testament.

01:05:44.980 And the precursor to Elijah, in certain regards, is Enoch, right before the flood.

01:05:50.400 The other thing I was thinking is that there's these different sides, as we're discussing, of what Jesus is.

01:05:55.620 And he also is a man, because if he's not a man, then the story doesn't make sense.

01:05:59.700 And so it comes along to say, why is Jesus baptized?

01:06:04.420 That's a very unusual question.

01:06:05.760 But if there's not a human being who predates him with some moral authority who represents the voice of conscience, then he can't be baptized as a man.

01:06:13.800 He just comes down with a full glory and righteousness and fear of God.

01:06:19.240 Well, that touches on something, Peugeot, maybe you can speak to this.

01:06:23.520 There's a very deep mystery there, because the story of Christ doesn't really get going, apart from some description of birth and youth, which we'll cover, until the baptism.

01:06:33.620 And so that question immediately arises, well, if Christ is the Son of God from birth, why the necessity of the baptism?

01:06:40.880 What does the baptism represent?

01:06:42.620 Why is John a Baptist?

01:06:45.300 What does it mean for him to be a Baptist?

01:06:47.720 And what does baptism signify?

01:06:49.520 Now, there's a lot of work on the anthropology of religion that's focused on this issue.

01:06:54.340 And it's very frequently the case across cultures, anthropologically distributed, that men in particular must undergo a initiation ceremony, which generally bears some symbolic relationship to the modern, to the Judeo-Christian concept of baptism, before they can adopt their full individuality.

01:07:15.140 And it's often associated with something like a passage or re-immersion into the sacred waters or into the chaos.

01:07:22.200 And it's a dissolution into chaos and then a restructuring, right?

01:07:25.860 That's the, that's the, that would be the neurophysiological take on it.

01:07:30.380 Well, so Elijah, so there, in Elijah's, in Elijah, in St. John's story, there are many things that are going on.

01:07:37.620 Now, I think the best way to understand is that he's there to kind of end the, end the world.

01:07:43.140 So you imagine there's, Christ is the new beginning, is a new world, new creation.

01:07:47.780 And then he's there to end that world.

01:07:50.260 And then a new beginning will come.

01:07:52.460 And, you know, in the story of Elijah, it's the crossing of the Jordan.

01:07:55.600 That's where that happens, right?

01:07:57.020 Elijah crosses the Jordan, then he's taken up, you know, and then Elisha receives the spirit of Elijah.

01:08:03.520 And that is also the crossing of the Red Sea.

01:08:05.980 It's the crossing of the Jordan when they enter into Jericho.

01:08:08.600 There's all these images of the crossing of the water that's going down, this undoing of the world.

01:08:12.800 It's the flood itself.

01:08:14.200 Enoch goes up before the flood.

01:08:15.660 This undoing of the world before the new world is born.

01:08:18.940 And so in St. John, you see that happening.

01:08:21.720 You see it also in his Annunciation, which is that it's a recapitulation of all the women of the Old Testament, of the barren women.

01:08:31.260 So you have these old women that haven't had children, right? 1.00

01:08:34.800 This kind of fallen world that God has to nonetheless give grace to, so to perpetuate it, even though it's fallen and it's broken.

01:08:42.520 That's the end of the world.

01:08:43.940 And the Annunciation to Elizabeth, to Zechariah and Elizabeth, and the Annunciation to Mary are like the end of the beginning.

01:08:51.800 She is, Mary is the virgin waters.

01:08:54.460 She's the, and the Spirit of God descends on her like in Genesis 1, where the Spirit is above the waters.

01:09:01.140 So you can see that it's all of this relationship between the baptism, between the birth, the Annunciation to Mary, the Annunciation to Elizabeth are showing the end of a world and the beginning of a new world that is happening.

01:09:13.740 And it's layered, like it's layered in all these different versions.

01:09:15.700 Can I just add something to that?

01:09:16.860 Because that's, I think, the right framework.

01:09:18.960 And I'd add the temple perspective.

01:09:20.680 The very fact he's introduced as the son of a temple priest, his mother's from a priestly clan.

01:09:25.940 So the question is, why isn't John the Baptist in the temple?

01:09:28.720 And part of it, I think, is there's a really pronouncing of judgment on the temple.

01:09:32.940 He's proposing a kind of new temple out in the desert, a new washing. 0.69

01:09:39.820 There are people seeking forgiveness of sins, not in the temple, but from him.

01:09:43.940 And so, and then his announcement in the Gospel of John, when Jesus comes, is, behold the Lamb of God.

01:09:49.940 So he's a radical, is he doing the same thing, do you think, with the temple that Moses is doing after the Israelites leave God with the golden calf?

01:09:59.900 And he sets up the tabernacle outside the center of the community?

01:10:03.480 Is that associated with Jonathan's claim that John the Baptist is signifying the end of the old world?

01:10:10.140 Part of the Messianic expectation was the renewal of the temple, right?

01:10:13.440 So he would gather the nations, he would reign as Lord, and he would renew the temple.

01:10:18.400 So I think it's the beginning of a temple renewal program.

01:10:21.620 And then when Jesus comes, he goes, well, here's the Lamb of God.

01:10:24.000 Here's the one who's meant to be sacrificed in the true temple.

01:10:27.080 And, of course, Jesus picks that up with, you know, I will tear this place down in three days, rebuild it, referring to the temple of his body.

01:10:33.840 So I think that's the liminal thing, too.

01:10:35.660 He's the end of the old temple, the beginning of the new.

01:10:38.160 And if you look at John 1.14, it says, and the word became flesh and tabernacled amongst us.

01:10:44.200 Tabernacled, right.

01:10:45.440 The word there is the verb from skene, which is the tabernacle, which is the word that the Greek translators of the Old Testament used of the tabernacle.

01:10:55.100 And the movement to the desert, to the River Jordan, is a movement from the strictures of law and architecture and ritual, right?

01:11:05.660 It's all a movement out to take it out.

01:11:09.140 But he's also, I mean, John, like from a Christian interpretation, John is also telling people Jerusalem is going to be destroyed.

01:11:16.520 Like he's saying, get ready.

01:11:17.680 This is over.

01:11:18.240 And so when Jesus, when Joshua crosses the Jordan this time, it's not Jericho that's going to be destroyed.

01:11:23.640 It is Jerusalem that it's going to be destroyed. 0.96

01:11:25.560 Like the imagery is really prescient.

01:11:28.340 Moving away from ritual?

01:11:29.560 I mean, John's engaging in a ritual, baptism.

01:11:32.880 Like, what do you mean?

01:11:33.860 Oh, I mean from the conventional ones in the temple.

01:11:36.180 Why is he not in the temple?

01:11:37.340 Why is he in the desert?

01:11:38.660 Why is he committing, you know, baptism?

01:11:41.780 His movement is out from the convention.

01:11:43.480 Like you were asking, why isn't he in the temple, given his background?

01:11:46.840 So he's moving out into nature and into...

01:11:49.100 Is it a radical archaism?

01:11:52.480 No, what I'm asking, I mean, I mean...

01:11:55.260 The old ritual, perhaps I should say.

01:11:56.840 Yeah, it's a new ritual.

01:11:57.480 It's a new ritual.

01:11:58.880 There's a new ritual.

01:12:00.740 That's an astonishing thing to me.

01:12:02.940 Like, if I wanted to, hey, you know what I've done?

01:12:04.700 I've set up a new ritual.

01:12:05.760 Who's, like, that's just, like, that's just a powerful thing.

01:12:09.680 Well, it's not a new ritual.

01:12:11.300 It's a recapitulation of...

01:12:12.480 No, it's not completely new.

01:12:13.180 ...of the Red Sea, of the cross from the Jordan, of Elisha's sending for healing in the Jordan.

01:12:18.960 Like, it's not like he's making it up with his own...

01:12:21.600 No, no, I'm not saying that.

01:12:22.440 ...basically taking all of this and recapitulating it into a...

01:12:24.100 But that's the same thing of the entire story.

01:12:25.920 That's where it's fractal.

01:12:26.760 That's what Jesus does for, you know, Exodus, for Genesis.

01:12:30.160 I mean, what we're seeing is everything is a relation and a fulfillment of the previous rituals.

01:12:35.260 But it is new, and it's a baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

01:12:38.920 That's right.

01:12:39.120 Like, I don't see that anywhere else.

01:12:40.660 Can I ask this question?

01:12:41.960 For Christians, what does that mean to you, to have somebody proposing a ritual that's supposed to give the forgiveness of sins before Jesus has even appeared?

01:12:52.200 So, what happens, the way I understand the baptismal event, let's say, if we can jump to that momentarily, is that it recapitulates the time at the beginning of time.

01:13:04.720 You have the water, which is the tohu vabohu, right?

01:13:08.180 I would say that's the deep pool of possibility.

01:13:11.200 And you have the spirit descend that sets on the water, and that's a recapitulation of the initial state.

01:13:17.960 You can think about that as a neurophysiological transformation writ large, right?

01:13:22.880 It's the dissolution of the old personality, the re-instantiation of the process that brings order out of chaos and the generation of a new order.

01:13:32.220 And so, and it's new in the sense that you said, but it's very, very archaic.

01:13:38.080 The baptismal idea is unbelievably old, right?

01:13:40.380 That initiatory idea, tens of thousands of years old, insanely old.

01:13:44.080 But that is the forgiveness of sins.

01:13:45.920 Right, but...

01:13:46.520 Right, because the, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:13:48.240 I wasn't talking about the baptism by John of Jesus, I think, and even the ritual baptism.

01:13:53.400 I appreciate what you're saying about its psycho-spiritual capacities for transformation.

01:13:58.540 I'm trying to, like, this seems to be, I'm not denying the continuity, but there's an innovation here.

01:14:04.340 And then I'm asking a question, looking sort of from the outside.

01:14:09.140 This seems problematic.

01:14:10.340 How is this the forgiveness of sins?

01:14:12.480 The crossing of the Red Sea is already a forgiveness of sins, because the Egyptians remain in the water, right? 1.00

01:14:19.860 The image is already there, right?

01:14:22.720 When the Israelites cross the Red Sea, the Egyptians remain in the water and the Israelites come out at the end. 1.00

01:14:29.860 It's a willingness to die.

01:14:30.960 So it's the death of the old tyranny.

01:14:32.720 Why was that forgiveness of sin?

01:14:34.180 I didn't follow that.

01:14:34.960 So if you understand sin as transgression, as the thing that doesn't fit, as the thing that isn't towards the purpose,

01:14:41.280 if we get away from just the simple moral, this is good, this is bad,

01:14:45.340 if we understand that what sin is, is that which is not aimed towards the purpose.

01:14:50.320 So you have things that step out of the purpose.

01:14:52.940 That is what the drowning of the Egyptian is, because they are not moving towards Sinai.

01:14:56.660 They're not forgiven.

01:14:57.640 They're not moving towards Sinai.

01:14:58.440 Right, they're not forgiven.

01:14:59.100 No, they're not forgiven.

01:15:00.280 No, no, but the people who pass through are.

01:15:02.340 Well, forgiven.

01:15:03.560 So you have Egyptians inside. 1.00

01:15:04.740 They're saved, but they're not forgiven.

01:15:07.200 I don't, I never understood the Jews on the other side of the sea.

01:15:11.280 Being forgiven for anything, because that's not what's said.

01:15:16.400 It's, they were just saved from the death of the Egyptian army.

01:15:20.640 Well, my sense is that they're comparatively forgiven, because the Israelites and the Egyptians both have to face the chaos of the Red Sea.

01:15:32.380 But the Egyptians are so tyrannical and so bent beyond redemption that that flood of chaos destroys them. 1.00

01:15:41.980 Now, that doesn't mean the Israelites are finally saved, but they're, they at least managed to pass through the chaos alive.

01:15:48.620 And so there's an, that, and what?

01:15:53.600 They established themselves as a new people on the opposite shore, right? 0.75

01:15:58.060 There's a, there is a new beginning there.

01:16:00.620 And that doesn't necessarily signify, signify that they've been washed clean by the, by the chaotic Red Sea.

01:16:09.800 But it does mean that the tyranny that held them back is being demolished by the chaos.

01:16:14.840 Well, they've been washed clean of the Egyptians. 1.00

01:16:16.600 Right.

01:16:16.840 They've been washed, that's a good way of saying that.

01:16:18.600 And if you view them as one organism in a way, and also to be saved is the same thing as to be forgiven from sin in a way.

01:16:25.100 So they're saved.

01:16:26.060 Yeah, I mean, I'm not, I can't find the verse that says that John intended by baptism, the efficacious sort of salvation of people who are being baptized.

01:16:37.960 And he says at various points, he says, he actually draws a distinction.

01:16:41.360 So Matthew says, this is what, 311, I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance.

01:16:47.700 I mean, you're repenting and there's an external mark of your having repented.

01:16:52.160 I take it to mean I baptize you.

01:16:54.060 But the he that coming after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I'm not worthy to untie.

01:16:59.380 Then in John, this is in, let's have a look.

01:17:03.000 This is at the beginning of the opening chapter.

01:17:05.400 He, you know, he says, why are you, he's asked, why are you baptizing if you're not the Christ?

01:17:11.020 And he says, well, I'm baptizing you with water, but there's somebody standing among you who you don't know.

01:17:16.600 So it's a kind of proleptic.

01:17:18.040 The Lamb of God.

01:17:18.860 This is the apocalyptic, eschatological context and one might say mood, isn't it?

01:17:25.640 So maybe this fits in with your setting the scene.

01:17:28.340 Yeah.

01:17:28.960 And this is a period when we know that there were these various groups emerging in this Jewish,

01:17:38.040 context.

01:17:38.900 It's a symbolic prefiguring of...

01:17:41.400 And it's insufficient.

01:17:42.720 It's not.

01:17:43.140 It's only partial.

01:17:43.940 That's right.

01:17:44.300 Well, we do.

01:17:44.780 There are psychological investigations that show, for example, that if people take a bath

01:17:49.740 or a shower, they feel, they declare themselves more morally pure.

01:17:54.000 That's what women do after they're raped. 1.00

01:17:57.000 It's a very powerful imagery. 0.99

01:17:58.600 Right.

01:17:58.960 And it's a removal of contamination, but it's not as profound a removal as could conceivably

01:18:05.480 be imagined.

01:18:07.240 So, okay.

01:18:08.040 So now for the Christians again, why does Christ require a baptism? 0.94

01:18:11.960 Well, he doesn't.

01:18:12.660 Tell him he says he doesn't.

01:18:14.000 Can I try to answer John's question about baptism?

01:18:16.780 I think it draws a lot of the themes together.

01:18:18.960 Our sins are forgiven in the cross of Jesus.

01:18:21.720 They're forgiven in that great act.

01:18:23.560 And when the soldier pierces a side, out comes blood and water.

01:18:27.780 And the church fathers read that as the blood of the Eucharist, but the water of baptism.

01:18:32.220 And they further linked it to Ezekiel's great prophecy that, you know, the shaking of the

01:18:37.020 Lord had left the temple and it'll come back someday.

01:18:40.400 And when it does, that's when water flows forth from its side for the renewal of the world

01:18:44.880 and of the human heart and all that.

01:18:46.500 And I think that's how they read it is from the side of the renewed temple.

01:18:50.440 So when John the Baptist, this priestly figure says,

01:18:53.560 Behold, there's the Lamb of God.

01:18:55.640 There's the one who will be sacrificed and whose very body is the new temple.

01:19:00.480 That's what the baptismal water symbolizes, is the water coming from the redemptive act

01:19:06.120 of Christ on the cross.

01:19:07.640 I bring all those themes together.

01:19:10.040 So is it, is the baptism, the baptism seems to precipitate two events.

01:19:15.800 One is the sojourn in the desert and one is the onset of the ministry.

01:19:19.060 So what's your reading?

01:19:21.120 And Bishop Barron, I'd like to hear your.

01:19:22.560 Well, in Matthew, it's amazing because in Matthew, you really have this, this repetition

01:19:27.880 of Exodus, you know, so, uh, I mean, we'll get to it when we, when we talk about it, but

01:19:32.500 Christ, uh, is chased into Egypt, you know, to flee his brother.

01:19:36.860 And then he comes back.

01:19:40.260 When he comes back, he crosses the sea.

01:19:42.580 He's baptized.

01:19:43.780 Then he goes to be tempted into the desert.

01:19:45.820 And then he goes up the mountain to give the new law.

01:19:48.600 He, that's where he does the sermon of the Mount.

01:19:50.540 And so that is really, the Christians really understand the baptism as this.

01:19:54.540 40 days in the wilderness, 40 years in the wilderness.

01:19:56.880 And so when you see, when you see Christ going in the water, it's a repetition of Genesis

01:20:00.600 one.

01:20:01.060 It's so clear.

01:20:02.480 He goes down into the water.

01:20:03.860 And then it says, when he comes up, the spirit came down upon him as a dove.

01:20:09.020 It's not just that Genesis one, it's also the end of the flood.

01:20:12.100 It's the Genesis one. 0.85

01:20:13.340 It's the end of the flood.

01:20:14.660 It's the, it's Joshua.

01:20:15.900 You know, it's the Israelites going to the Sinai. 0.82

01:20:18.260 It's all of these images of water crossings that are in the Old Testament are recapitulated

01:20:22.540 into this, this image of regeneration, which is the beginning of a, of a new world.

01:20:27.920 But you could say that that's ritually what it is for us.

01:20:31.540 That is that when we go into the water, we come out new.

01:20:35.460 It's the, it is, it is a new birth, a new beginning.

01:20:38.120 Like it's being born again, all of that, all of that imagery.

01:20:41.200 But Christ says that he's, he's doing it for, he doesn't need it.

01:20:45.700 Right.

01:20:46.220 He's doing it for us.

01:20:47.600 He's doing it to show us what is real about himself.

01:20:51.220 Like what.

01:20:51.480 When that's the scandal of it.

01:20:53.260 So from the beginning and even scholars today recognize that the fact that it's in the gospels

01:20:57.580 is scandalous.

01:20:58.320 Why would Jesus, the son of God have to seek a baptism of repentance?

01:21:01.900 So the fact that it's there means that, boy, this really happened.

01:21:05.000 You know, it's one of the stronger arguments, but to Jonathan's point.

01:21:07.980 How do you read that from the human side?

01:21:10.220 I mean, is Christ as a man, does Christ as a man, he obviously,

01:21:15.700 he matures, he matures from infant onward.

01:21:18.340 Does Christ as a man reveal his relationship with God more and more deeply as he progresses

01:21:26.240 even to himself?

01:21:27.560 He's the icon of the invisible God.

01:21:29.380 Now what's going on inside his own psychology, his own human psychology is a famously, you

01:21:33.560 know, controverted issue.

01:21:34.740 He grows in wisdom and understanding.

01:21:36.700 So the gospel says that.

01:21:37.860 That's right.

01:21:38.100 So I think that's really fine to say that in his human nature, to use more technical

01:21:41.480 language.

01:21:42.300 Sure.

01:21:42.520 He grows.

01:21:44.340 Well, and his, and he does go into the desert and encounter Satan and begin his ministry

01:21:49.400 as a constant, well, in his human nature, after the baptism, essentially.

01:21:53.060 And I think that's part of the baptism is the identification with the sinner. 0.96

01:21:56.080 So he stands shoulder to shoulder with sinners in the muddy waters of the Jordan.

01:22:00.720 And anyone walking by would say, oh, there's another one of those sinners, but that's anticipating

01:22:04.200 the cross.

01:22:04.700 That's right.

01:22:05.120 It becomes sin on the cross.

01:22:06.660 And that also explains the question of why do we need John the Baptist?

01:22:10.380 Because we need a human being to stand in.

01:22:13.660 If Jesus is standing in for sinners that he doesn't need, but to show us the path, you

01:22:18.840 need another human being with enough authority to baptize him, right?

01:22:23.180 All the Christians at the table correctly are making clear the references to the Old Testament, 0.97

01:22:30.060 specifically the Pentateuch, the Torah.

01:22:32.800 So I have a question, which is sort of outside of the province of the Bible study, but it's

01:22:39.420 always puzzled me, and maybe you in particular, Maida, because you expressed the fact that you

01:22:44.360 were an evangelist for the faith.

01:22:47.720 First, I never understood why so many Christian groups will only hand out the New Testament

01:22:54.540 to would-be converts.

01:22:56.540 Big mistake, yeah.

01:22:58.320 I agree.

01:22:59.860 I mean, one of the earliest fights the church had was against Marcion.

01:23:03.100 That's right.

01:23:03.600 So the Marcionite heresy that tried to divide the New Testament from the Old, and the church

01:23:07.660 by a very deep and correct instinct, led by St. Irenaeus, said, no, you cannot understand

01:23:13.620 Jesus apart from the Old Testament.

01:23:14.960 So that's a very bad instinct to say, just read the Gospel, you'll be fine.

01:23:20.000 You won't get the Gospel apart from the Old Testament.

01:23:22.660 What's interesting is that Marcion not only repudiated the Old Testament, he cut the four

01:23:27.420 Gospels down to one.

01:23:28.460 That many parts of the New, right.

01:23:30.060 Which was the one he found most sympathetic and free of, kind of Hebrew, the fingerprints 1.00

01:23:35.180 of the Old Testament.

01:23:36.280 But we still fight it today.

01:23:37.860 When people say, oh, the God of the Old Testament, cruel and violent and all that, I love the God

01:23:42.040 of the New Testament, that's a neo-Marcionism, and the church has got to stand against that 0.81

01:23:46.020 just as clearly today.

01:23:47.880 Huge problem.

01:23:48.680 No, I'm glad this is on record.

01:23:50.380 Yes, yes.

01:23:50.940 No, no, I agree.

01:23:51.660 It's very important.

01:23:52.700 Okay, so another very strange occurrence happens.

01:23:55.420 And so after the Annunciation to John's father and mother, we have the Annunciation to Mary. 0.88

01:24:02.880 And I'll read that because it's worth going into, I would say.

01:24:06.180 In the sixth month of Elizabeth's term, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in

01:24:10.360 Galilee called Nazareth, a nowhere town, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was

01:24:15.540 Joseph of the lineage of David.

01:24:17.720 This maiden's name was Mary. 0.91

01:24:19.400 Gabriel came to her and said, Hail, O favoured one, the Lord is with thee.

01:24:23.520 Mary was greatly troubled at these words and wondered what this greeting might mean.

01:24:29.180 But the angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God.

01:24:32.900 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name

01:24:37.280 Jesus.

01:24:37.840 He will be great.

01:24:38.860 He will be called the Son of the Most High.

01:24:41.480 The Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will rule over the

01:24:45.820 house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will have no end.

01:24:48.920 Mary said to the angel, How can this be, since I have never known a man?

01:24:53.520 And the angel replied, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High

01:24:59.240 will overshadow you.

01:25:00.940 Therefore, the child to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God.

01:25:05.920 And Mary agrees to that.

01:25:08.400 Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.

01:25:10.300 Okay, so I want to unpack a couple of things in that from a psychological perspective, and

01:25:15.060 then I'll let the people who are more biblically oriented take it from there.

01:25:18.860 So, the first thing I would, I've got two things to say on that front.

01:25:23.480 The image of mother and child is an ancient image.

01:25:30.160 It predates Christianity. 0.94

01:25:31.940 And the reason for that is that, well, any culture that doesn't hold the image of mother

01:25:37.480 and infant sacred is done.

01:25:39.260 Because that's the very image of love, maternal love, life, reproduction, continuity, sacrifice,

01:25:47.580 all of that. 0.93

01:25:48.400 And so, I think it's either Mary and the infant or the whore of Babylon. 0.97

01:25:54.060 I think those are the directions for women, fundamentally. 0.99

01:25:57.800 And so, there's that from the psychological perspective, is that the sacrificial relationship

01:26:04.560 of mother to infant is core.

01:26:07.320 It's fundamental.

01:26:09.060 Then the next issue is, possibly, that the very definition of feminine, of female, biologically, 0.91

01:26:15.820 isn't chromosomal difference.

01:26:17.900 Chromosomal difference is a reflection of a more fundamental difference.

01:26:21.760 What female means biologically is that sex which contributes more to the reproductive process. 1.00

01:26:26.840 And so, right from fractally, right from the level of sperm and egg upward, the bulk of

01:26:34.580 the reproductive responsibility, especially in its initial phases, is clearly feminine.

01:26:40.020 And so, it is as if, at least as if, it's mother and God producing child with the father

01:26:47.740 donating a trifle, a trifle to the process.

01:26:52.440 Now, in Mary's case, that's obviously taken to the ultimate degree.

01:26:56.580 But at minimum, it reflects this underlying biological reality.

01:27:00.480 It's also the case that Mary, embodying as she does the spirit of motherhood, says yes

01:27:08.360 to the fact of the child.

01:27:11.040 Now, we don't know what Mary's informed of by the angel with regard to the destiny of

01:27:15.980 her child, which is a very brutal and great destiny.

01:27:18.980 But that's the destiny of all children, right, is that, and part of the reason we have a

01:27:23.960 birth crisis in the modern world is because women now look at the world, A, they're unwilling 1.00

01:27:28.960 to make the sacrifice, and B, they think, who would dare to bring a child into a world

01:27:34.600 such as this?

01:27:35.800 And the answer is, well, we've always brought children into a world of death and malevolence.

01:27:42.520 And there isn't a deeper reflection of fundamental faith in the goodness of being and becoming

01:27:49.800 than the decision a woman takes to throw herself wholeheartedly and without reservation into

01:27:56.180 the relationship with her infant.

01:27:58.360 And that's all, as far as I can tell, that's all packed into this story and more.

01:28:03.040 So that's what I have to say.

01:28:04.980 And we're going to get to the, when she meets Simeon in the temple, then we get the fullness

01:28:10.120 of what you're saying, where Simeon tells her, you know, a sword will also pierce your

01:28:15.380 heart, like you are moving towards sacrifice of your own.

01:28:19.320 It's not only your son that will be sacrificed, but you will also...

01:28:21.880 As she brings the presence of the God of Israel back into the temple, fulfilling Ezekiel. 0.64

01:28:27.640 In your read of this, this is typical when we read something and then all of a sudden,

01:28:34.720 after so many times of reading it, something pops up.

01:28:37.260 So, I'm sure, I may be wrong, but the angel describing to Mary whom she will give birth

01:28:46.560 to does not describe him as God, correct?

01:28:50.800 As a divine being.

01:28:53.260 He will be great and he'll be called the descendant of David.

01:28:56.560 He's the new...

01:28:57.000 Right, but that's not a divine being.

01:28:58.800 Yeah.

01:28:58.960 So, is that not interesting or worthy of note that this, that Jesus, if indeed is God incarnate,

01:29:10.260 that that would not be stated by, in the description of him by the angel to Mary?

01:29:18.160 Do you think that's...

01:29:19.100 It seems to me, arguably, that that's implicit in two parts.

01:29:23.660 Son of the Most High, say three parts.

01:29:27.240 Son of the Most High, kingdom will have no end, and the intermediation of the Holy Spirit.

01:29:33.780 So, there's strong pointers in that direction.

01:29:37.440 And so...

01:29:38.160 But you need the whole trajectory of the gospel fully to see it, but right.

01:29:41.560 There are parallels, too.

01:29:43.060 I mean, there's that moment in 2 Samuel where David leaps at the presence of the...

01:29:47.100 Leaps back at the presence of the ark.

01:29:48.840 And some scholars think there's a parallelism here with John the Baptist leaping in the womb.

01:29:53.200 That's just sort of the presence of Mary as the ark.

01:29:55.560 Or it's David's dance in the presence of the ark.

01:29:58.940 She's being treated as the ark of the covenant in the story.

01:30:01.580 Right.

01:30:01.820 Because it says that, you know, the presence of God will descend upon you.

01:30:06.440 And so, the image is that she is the waters, like the Holy Spirit comes down upon her as the waters of creation.

01:30:13.760 But also, the presence of God descends upon her as the ark of the covenant.

01:30:18.000 And then that will...

01:30:18.800 Obviously, these are...

01:30:20.280 The text is going to tease all of these things out, right?

01:30:24.220 Because these are things that you have always had to remember how crazy what we're saying is.

01:30:29.220 It is crazy to say that this man is God.

01:30:32.080 And so, the story slowly teases it out as we move towards the...

01:30:35.400 So, it was deliberate on the part of the angel to omit that.

01:30:38.840 Well, yeah.

01:30:40.640 Or to intimate it.

01:30:41.540 Yeah, to intimate it.

01:30:42.300 Because I think so much of this is, you know, there's so much of the gospel is around doubt.

01:30:48.460 You know, it's like, you know, you go back to with Exodus where Moses says,

01:30:51.540 hang on one minute, Aaron, I'm just going up the mountain and just keep things under control.

01:30:55.740 And then immediately out of sight, it's like, you know, he did his own.

01:30:59.800 Golden calf city.

01:31:00.400 And so, it's again and again with the gospels is the...

01:31:03.280 All the way through, you know, Peter denying Christ three times.

01:31:06.520 I mean, it's all the way through is the doubt and the disbelief even in the face of what is.

01:31:10.800 And so, I think that these intimations are also a way of...

01:31:13.660 Like, they sort of naturally build suspense from a narrative perspective.

01:31:17.160 But they also are trying to move along at a pace that human comprehension can possibly keep up with.

01:31:23.680 If I could just pick up for a second on something, Dr. Peterson, you were saying about motherhood.

01:31:30.060 It's very interesting here, the pattern that is emerging.

01:31:32.860 You know, the angel, an angel comes to both, both, in both situations to prophesy the birth.

01:31:39.940 And in one sense, you know, pregnancy is one of the great examples of fulfillment of nature, right?

01:31:46.240 It's the actualization of the potentiality for motherhood. 0.70

01:31:50.240 And yet, you know, that fulfillment in both cases is a radical self-othering.

01:31:56.400 Both of these sons will die brutal deaths.

01:31:59.700 And so, I think what's being indicated here already in a very fundamental sense is the inherently non-instrumental character of love itself.

01:32:12.540 And so, that you are fulfilled precisely in the transcending of your own fulfillment.

01:32:18.320 And, you know, when Jesus says that my kingdom is not of this world,

01:32:21.600 I mean, it seems to me what the scriptures are speaking to us of already here in the announcement of the angels about the pregnancy and birth of the children who will die deaths that are not for themselves is the radical self-othering that is the nature of self, you might say, the realization of the self in the deepest sense.

01:32:47.580 And you see this in Christ at the very end, this is mirrored on the cross where he is going to say, as his last act, as you might say, reconstituting that family between, in a sense, between Mary and John.

01:33:00.280 So that the ultimate act of self-othering is the principle that is able to bring together some harmony in us and in what is around us.

01:33:11.600 And I think we're also looking at this tragedy, especially in comparison to, let's say, Abraham and Isaac, where his hand is stayed and he gets to keep his son.

01:33:19.540 But the actual end of the Gospels is that the same thing happens with God.

01:33:24.420 He gives his, you know, like in a way.

01:33:26.920 No one stays his hand.

01:33:28.480 Yeah, it goes all the way through, but then he has his son and Mary's also is reunited with her son.

01:33:33.920 And by the way, just on Dennis's point, I think actually it's fairly, fairly clear that, you know, this is the power of the highest.

01:33:48.160 And that's a literal, very literal translation.

01:33:52.540 And also that this is Haggion, it's the holy, the holy thing.

01:34:00.100 And then the Huios Theu, it's the son of God. 0.80

01:34:04.280 So I think actually the, just on to Dennis, this is not any human being.

01:34:10.880 This is...

01:34:11.320 Oh, you see it more clearly in the annunciation to Joseph, right, in Matthew 1, 18.

01:34:17.040 So let's refer to that again.

01:34:18.600 I'll read through that and then we'll go to the birth of Christ.

01:34:21.160 So this is the annunciation.

01:34:23.140 After Mary has been betrothed to Joseph, but before they came together, she would be found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.

01:34:29.720 And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to public disgrace, resolved to send her away quietly.

01:34:36.480 But as he considered these things, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying,

01:34:39.960 Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for the child within her is conceived of the Holy Spirit.

01:34:47.960 She will bear a son.

01:34:48.880 You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

01:34:53.920 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken through the prophet.

01:34:57.160 Behold, the virgin shall conceive, shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel.

01:35:01.380 Which means God is with us.

01:35:03.560 That's a bit clearer.

01:35:04.440 Now, I'm going to speak about that biologically too.

01:35:08.220 And I think the easiest explanation on the biological side is that of paternal uncertainty.

01:35:13.840 And so, in any relationship between a man and a woman, there is always, until DNA testing became possible,

01:35:22.160 but there's always an element of paternal uncertainty.

01:35:24.680 And one of the things that a man has to contend with when his wife is pregnant is that paternal uncertainty.

01:35:33.700 And his willingness to act in good faith is, of course, dependent on the integrity of the marriage.

01:35:40.140 But it's that willingness to act in good faith that actually makes for the solidity of the family.

01:35:45.880 That's a terrible place for doubt to emerge.

01:35:47.840 And so, at minimum, that's part of what's happening in that story.

01:35:54.000 And so, I'll turn, unless anybody has a comment on that, I'll turn to the birth.

01:35:57.760 Well, I just wanted to pick up on what Dennis said, though.

01:36:00.220 I mean, I'm a little bit hesitant of going from the title of Son of God immediately,

01:36:05.480 because Son of God is used of other figures, even figures like the kings in the Old Testament.

01:36:11.860 And secondly, if this story is so central, why is it absent from Mark, and why does Paul never talk about it?

01:36:20.200 That's problematic.

01:36:21.340 I mean, if it's such a central thing that you're claiming it is, Mark doesn't even consider it, and Paul never refers to it.

01:36:27.320 People write towards purposes.

01:36:29.120 And so, there are different reasons why you would include it, and different reasons why you would exclude it.

01:36:35.020 I mean, in the Gospels, it says, I think it's at the end of the Gospel of John, where it says, you know,

01:36:40.080 all the books of the world cannot contain the story of Jesus.

01:36:44.460 And so, if we ask, why is this person saying this detail, and why is this other person not saying this detail?

01:36:50.640 Do you mean to find sonship, the claim that Jesus is the Son of God?

01:36:54.140 I think in a lot of ways, and we've discussed this a little bit,

01:36:57.860 the uncertainty or the lack of consistency across the stories actually makes them more believable.

01:37:04.020 I agree with you.

01:37:05.800 And so, if we were to reconstitute something from historical memory, and every detail lines up,

01:37:11.040 I mean, think about, like, a police investigation, right?

01:37:13.220 If everybody gets the exact same story.

01:37:15.160 Right, a bunch of guys in a heist, and they have all the details in place, you're not going to believe them.

01:37:20.060 And so, part of this is, it's a historical reconstitution, and memory works in different ways,

01:37:25.100 story works in different ways, people are writing the different aims.

01:37:27.920 They had access to different sources, maybe, yeah.

01:37:29.820 It's a good criticism, John, but one of the things that's interesting, because your criticism is,

01:37:35.400 if it's so central, why isn't it replicated?

01:37:37.340 And people have addressed that.

01:37:38.380 But interestingly, despite the fact that it's not replicated,

01:37:42.400 it's also become a really fundamental part of the culture of Christianity, right?

01:37:46.920 Because there's nothing in many ways that people know more about Christ's life than the birth, right?

01:37:53.360 And so, it does seem to speak to something that's very, very deep, despite the fact that those other Gospels,

01:38:01.240 also, they say very little about Christ at all until, well, until the ministries start.

01:38:06.760 And so...

01:38:07.200 I think it's also carried through, though, inherently in the other Gospels,

01:38:10.500 because if Jesus is Jesus, it's not like he has another father.

01:38:14.500 Meaning, by dint of how the characters move and progress in the other Gospels,

01:38:20.300 this is the only conclusion of how the birth could have happened, or else it would be misaligned.

01:38:24.560 I don't know if I agree with that.

01:38:25.940 I mean, he has brothers and sisters, and there's no indication that they're considered half-brothers or half-sisters.

01:38:32.740 Well, no, I think the Greek is adelphos, adelphere.

01:38:36.340 I mean, that could mean cousins, and it's thought to mean cousins as well.

01:38:41.000 And he's referred to as the son of Mary, which is very rare and odd that the patronymic shouldn't be used.

01:38:47.960 So, I think there's quite a strong case for...

01:38:50.580 By the way...

01:38:51.000 Your point is that if Christ is God, then his patrimony is God.

01:38:56.860 Right.

01:38:57.180 And that's implicit in the other stories.

01:38:58.900 And if it's not, the other Gospels would have something to say about it.

01:39:02.400 Or everything wouldn't proceed, and everybody around him wouldn't proceed as if that were the case.

01:39:07.380 I mean, we've got to remember that, okay, maybe the divine sonship theme isn't central in Mark,

01:39:12.700 but I think in all the synoptics, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, at the moment, both of baptism and transfiguration,

01:39:19.620 you have the divine voice saying, behold, this is my son.

01:39:23.580 This is my beloved son.

01:39:25.640 I'd like to answer my own question, which is a classic Jewish way of learning.

01:39:30.700 So, it occurs to me, it's actually very real.

01:39:36.700 He's speaking to a Jewish woman, and the whole context is Jewish.

01:39:42.040 The Lord God shall give him unto the throne of his father David.

01:39:46.380 He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end. 0.96

01:39:51.700 It is all Jewish references.

01:39:53.300 If he'd have said, if the angel had said to Mary, I want you to know you're giving birth to God,

01:39:59.780 she would have thought it was a hallucination, or she had gone mad.

01:40:04.000 This made perfect sense to her.

01:40:06.340 And again, the Jewish context is so central, and that's why I raised my point about only giving out the New Testament. 0.71

01:40:12.440 Yeah, 2 Samuel 7, it's fulfillment of that.

01:40:15.260 So, partly what you're referring to there, perhaps, it's in the analog of what we pointed to before.

01:40:21.980 It's like, well, how much can you spring on one person at once?

01:40:24.900 Yes, yes.

01:40:25.400 Right, okay.

01:40:26.120 Because you see that, I mean, in the entire rest of the gospel, you'll have Christ saying, okay, don't say this.

01:40:31.860 Don't say this, don't say this.

01:40:33.180 Wait, this is not, like, nobody's ready for this yet.

01:40:36.480 Wait, wait, wait.

01:40:37.640 And then as things start to become clear, then the message gets out.

01:40:42.660 It's tied in some ways, too, with him refusing to perform carnival tricks when asked.

01:40:48.540 Right?

01:40:49.040 I'm not going to show proof, whether it's to Satan, whether it's to others.

01:40:52.260 I'm not going to perform for, like, these things need to progress in their own time.

01:40:56.960 That's very important.

01:40:57.900 To me, it was so beautiful in that story, many things, but that Mary's the new Eve.

01:41:01.620 So another Old Testament reference, where Eve grasps the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

01:41:05.900 I'm going to grab this for myself and make it my own.

01:41:08.540 Mary, the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to your word.

01:41:12.020 Right, right, right.

01:41:12.440 And that allows the divine to flow through her in this powerful way.

01:41:16.240 So that's the way the church fathers read it.

01:41:17.720 She's the new Eve.

01:41:18.100 She's not putting herself at the center of creation.

01:41:20.500 And the Latin writers, right, the Latin writers love doing the Ave of the angel. 0.96

01:41:25.640 You know, Hail Mary reverses the Ava of Eve.

01:41:28.720 And it's just a beautiful motif of how the divine flows through you.

01:41:32.400 The lack of pride.

01:41:33.540 Right.

01:41:33.860 The lack of presumption.

01:41:35.040 Mary's pride.

01:41:36.000 Right.

01:41:36.420 Well, when women in the throes of pregnancy do have to throw themselves over to a process 1.00

01:41:42.420 that's really outside of them, right, in a way that men can't understand.

01:41:47.180 I'm going to read the birth of Jesus and the angel's proclamation to the shepherds.

01:41:51.880 Now, the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way.

01:41:56.020 In those days, a decree went out from Caeser Augustus that all the world should be taxed.

01:42:00.240 This was the first census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.

01:42:04.860 All went to be enrolled, each to his own city.

01:42:08.040 And Joseph went up from Galilee, out of the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David,

01:42:13.700 which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David,

01:42:17.560 to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was great with child.

01:42:21.020 And while they were there, the time came for her to be delivered.

01:42:24.060 And she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger,

01:42:28.940 because there was no room for them in the inn.

01:42:31.100 Then Luke 2, 8 to 20.

01:42:33.240 In the same region, there were shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks.

01:42:38.280 By night, and lo, an angel of the Lord appeared to them,

01:42:41.420 and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were very afraid.

01:42:45.200 But the angel said to them,

01:42:46.300 Be not afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which will be for all the people.

01:42:52.420 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

01:42:57.160 And this is how you shall know him.

01:42:59.040 You will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.

01:43:04.480 All right, so there's a variety of things happening there.

01:43:09.040 I'll unpack them briefly, and then we can discuss them.

01:43:11.500 So the first is that Christ is born under the dominion of the state.

01:43:17.740 That's the point of the census and the forced movement of people.

01:43:22.460 The state has a tyrannical element.

01:43:25.140 Every person, even the Savior of the world, is born into a situation

01:43:28.700 where they have to contend with the background tyranny of the state.

01:43:33.700 And then the next part is that...

01:43:36.360 And Augustus is the first god emperor.

01:43:38.440 It's important to understand.

01:43:39.460 Right, right.

01:43:40.060 So that's amplified, that fact, right?

01:43:42.440 Because the Roman state is also degenerating towards a theocracy, right? 0.92

01:43:46.620 Isn't he called weos tutu?

01:43:48.300 Because he's the son of Julius Caesar.

01:43:50.260 So he's the son of the god.

01:43:51.640 Exactly right.

01:43:52.440 So he would be...

01:43:53.180 On all the coins, you'd have...

01:43:54.700 Weos tutu.

01:43:55.760 Filius divi.

01:43:56.780 And in the Greek-speaking part of the world, where the Roman imperial cult,

01:44:00.520 the cult of the emperor, was very, very strong,

01:44:03.040 that's the language that would be used.

01:44:04.740 So we have the genuine god being born at a time when there's a false god

01:44:08.520 who's emerged in the tyrannical state.

01:44:10.960 Classic.

01:44:11.540 That's a classic hero story.

01:44:12.960 Okay.

01:44:13.320 So who's the true god here?

01:44:16.120 Well, it's a babe, right?

01:44:19.020 So is that every human baby with the potential to be...

01:44:23.400 to participate in the redemption of the world?

01:44:25.600 Born in a very lowly place.

01:44:28.080 Well, that's a biological reality as well,

01:44:30.800 because all human infants are incredibly threatened, right?

01:44:35.040 Our infants are extremely dependent.

01:44:37.200 They're very, very vulnerable.

01:44:38.620 We're born under the tyranny of the state.

01:44:40.620 We're born in relationship to nature and even low nature,

01:44:43.700 and that's associated with the manger.

01:44:45.540 So it's the emergence of the highest and the lowest

01:44:49.260 as a counterposition to the false highest that's Augustus.

01:44:52.760 And then that's reiterated to some degree

01:44:55.720 with the proclamation to the shepherds.

01:44:57.440 It's like, well, who gets wind of this?

01:44:59.820 Well, it's not the people of the court.

01:45:02.420 It's the shepherds, right?

01:45:04.540 And the shepherds are an interesting choice, too,

01:45:06.760 because, of course, shepherds,

01:45:08.460 there's a kinship between the shepherd and the prophet

01:45:11.220 all the way through the Old Testament,

01:45:12.560 and that imagery is replicated continually in the New Testament.

01:45:17.660 And shepherds take care of the vulnerable.

01:45:20.120 That's essentially what they do,

01:45:21.740 and they do that independently and responsibly.

01:45:24.260 And so even though they're lowly,

01:45:26.000 they're not because they're types of something much greater.

01:45:30.160 And even though they are low on the socioeconomic totem pole,

01:45:36.280 the fact that Christ's birth is announced to them

01:45:39.720 is an indication of the universally salvific nature

01:45:44.380 of his birth and mission, right?

01:45:47.200 So that's all happening in those little stories.

01:45:49.740 The shepherds are also counter to city,

01:45:51.820 because they're the opposite of civilization.

01:45:54.380 They have these flocks.

01:45:55.460 They move around.

01:45:56.040 They don't stay in one place.

01:45:57.180 They don't have agriculture.

01:45:58.460 They don't have all the things,

01:45:59.900 all the tropes of the city.

01:46:01.720 It's also an answer for the undeniable.

01:46:03.900 In a way, it's the reversal of the cone, right?

01:46:06.500 If a tree falls in a forest and no one's there to hear it,

01:46:09.100 does it make a sound?

01:46:10.040 If the son of God is born in a manger

01:46:11.760 and there's only shepherds around,

01:46:13.040 is he still the son of God?

01:46:14.020 The answer is yes.

01:46:15.700 Right, right.

01:46:16.460 Just two points.

01:46:17.000 Great things from lowly beginning.

01:46:18.680 Just about Augustus and whether fragile

01:46:22.200 or endangered state of the child,

01:46:26.020 Augustus is also the emperor

01:46:31.800 in this period of extraordinary stability

01:46:35.700 for the Roman Empire.

01:46:37.360 So it's also a good time for Jesus to be born because...

01:46:43.080 Pax Romana.

01:46:44.000 Exactly, exactly.

01:46:45.700 So I think there's the tyrant element,

01:46:48.800 the false deity, but also it's auspicious.

01:46:52.140 Augustus, and the second point about his vulnerability,

01:46:57.840 but again, the emphasis on David, right?

01:47:01.200 This is the Davidic house, so it's in a manger. 0.99

01:47:06.900 There's no room in the inn, but the emphasis again,

01:47:10.500 this is the true successor of David.

01:47:14.740 Yeah, and I don't think Augustus is just tyrannical.

01:47:19.000 There's, Augustus is the ender,

01:47:22.300 ending of a civilization-wide civil war.

01:47:25.040 Mm-hmm, yeah.

01:47:25.820 And I think there's, I think there's an attempt

01:47:30.700 to indicate something like a kairos happening here. 0.91

01:47:34.580 That's interesting, yeah.

01:47:35.220 Right, you've got, I'm not denying the tyranny

01:47:39.280 of the Roman emperor, but, you know,

01:47:42.020 Augustus, many historians consider him

01:47:45.040 maybe the greatest emperor, right?

01:47:47.140 And if God had to choose any period in history

01:47:51.500 to leave his authenticating signature on the world

01:47:55.200 in a way that would disseminate and distribute

01:47:58.020 that message as quickly as possible,

01:47:59.820 it's hard to pick a better time than...

01:48:01.840 And so it's like, it's like if you introduce it,

01:48:06.080 it's almost like an enzyme.

01:48:07.500 Like, what's the state in which this action

01:48:10.000 can be most fruitful?

01:48:11.280 And so in a time when everything's filled with sin,

01:48:13.940 he sends the flood.

01:48:14.700 In a time when things are, have a level of stability

01:48:17.420 and there needs to be foundations

01:48:19.060 through which to, even to rise up to condemn him.

01:48:22.500 Because in utter chaos, you can't have so cleanly

01:48:24.940 that the temple and the government,

01:48:28.060 like every aspect of the culture fails him.

01:48:30.000 So they have to be in place

01:48:31.140 in order to render that judgment.

01:48:32.820 It's hard to imagine the Christian message spreading 0.54

01:48:35.140 with the astonishing speed that it does

01:48:37.160 from, say, the early 30s AD to the point where,

01:48:40.360 well, by 64, there are enough Christians in Rome 1.00

01:48:43.660 for Nero to be able to scapegoat the Christians 0.87

01:48:45.700 as a distinct group from the Jews.

01:48:50.560 Yeah.

01:48:51.040 So although, you know, the conditions are...

01:48:53.180 But there is a desire to create a foil, though, I think.

01:48:57.720 You know, because even if we talk about the Pacto Romana,

01:49:00.060 we haven't gotten to the...

01:49:01.180 Right after that, when the angels announce,

01:49:02.940 they say, glory to God and the highest peace on earth

01:49:05.540 of men of goodwill, right, it's trying to say...

01:49:09.940 It is...

01:49:10.580 I think it is creating a foil to the Roman rule, 0.97

01:49:12.960 which is, here's the great emperor,

01:49:15.140 without maybe not necessarily criticizing,

01:49:17.020 but here's the great emperor, here's this peace,

01:49:19.220 but now here's the true emperor that's hidden

01:49:20.980 at the bottom of the world in a cave, in a manger,

01:49:23.500 and that this is through this

01:49:26.480 that the true peace will be found.

01:49:28.580 It's the language of...

01:49:29.700 That's the language of an imperial edict.

01:49:32.300 And actually, it's worth pointing out

01:49:33.720 that the word, the Greek word for good news or gospel

01:49:36.200 is evangelion, which is the word

01:49:39.080 that emperors would send out.

01:49:41.920 Often, it was the emperor's birthday.

01:49:43.580 Yeah.

01:49:43.900 You would send the evangelion to the, you know,

01:49:46.880 towns and villages that worshipped him,

01:49:49.420 particularly in this part of the world.

01:49:51.580 And this was the good news,

01:49:52.780 the good news of the emperor, you know,

01:49:54.720 of Caesar's birthday.

01:49:55.900 There's a clearly, I think,

01:49:57.140 a semi-conscious aping and mimicking

01:50:00.460 of the language of the imperial cult

01:50:03.360 to assert that Jesus is Lord

01:50:06.180 and therefore Caesar isn't.

01:50:08.920 I think it's a formula that in some ways

01:50:10.960 sums up the whole Bible, you know,

01:50:12.180 glory to God in the highest and peace among us.

01:50:15.060 That's how it works.

01:50:16.040 When you give glory to something other than God,

01:50:18.080 then violence breaks out and division breaks out.

01:50:20.600 But if you really give glory

01:50:21.800 to the sumum bonum appropriately,

01:50:23.940 then peace will obtain among us.

01:50:25.600 So the angelic message is that's the whole Bible.

01:50:28.540 It's the whole Bible.

01:50:29.180 Well, that's for sure.

01:50:29.860 I totally agree.

01:50:30.600 And some of that's associated

01:50:31.880 with the glorification of the infant

01:50:33.600 as a center of attention,

01:50:36.340 which is a proper center of attention.

01:50:38.000 Yeah.

01:50:38.440 Right?

01:50:38.760 But it also has to be, like,

01:50:40.220 for it to be the fullness,

01:50:41.780 you also have to have these extremes

01:50:43.120 where the angels appear above,

01:50:45.300 these singing angels, right?

01:50:46.460 The music of the spheres.

01:50:47.600 And then the lowest aspect of reality

01:50:50.100 being connected together

01:50:51.340 so that you say,

01:50:52.620 oh, this is the fullness of God's revelation,

01:50:55.400 the fullness of God's presence in the world,

01:50:57.360 represented by these two extremes

01:50:58.800 with the angels up above.

01:51:00.420 So Jacob's ladder.

01:51:00.900 But what is the Greek again for the,

01:51:02.520 we say host or we say company of angels,

01:51:04.580 but it's like something with army,

01:51:05.880 like stratios or stratios.

01:51:07.660 Yeah.

01:51:08.000 The Hebrew is army. 0.96

01:51:09.620 Pardon me?

01:51:10.100 The Hebrew is army. 0.96

01:51:11.400 Yeah.

01:51:12.040 And I find it so fascinating.

01:51:13.640 So Caesar can dominate the world

01:51:14.900 because he's got this big human army.

01:51:16.540 But in fact, the baby king has the real army.

01:51:19.620 It's an angelic army

01:51:20.400 of these fearsome supernatural realities.

01:51:22.860 So who's going to win this battle?

01:51:24.740 The baby king's going to win.

01:51:26.180 So Bishop, I have a question,

01:51:28.060 which I know a lot of people watching this will have.

01:51:31.460 But I have it too.

01:51:33.660 I agree 100% if we all acknowledge

01:51:37.820 the God of the Bible,

01:51:39.340 it would be a much better world,

01:51:41.340 even a peaceful world.

01:51:42.560 So how do you explain,

01:51:47.140 because it's a very real question for all of us,

01:51:50.460 not just people who claimed to believe in God

01:51:56.340 who did horrible things,

01:51:58.440 but horrible things to other people

01:52:00.360 who believed in God.

01:52:02.840 The Christian wars in Europe 0.84

01:52:06.100 probably precipitated the rejection of religion,

01:52:10.500 ultimately.

01:52:11.460 Yeah, I agree with that.

01:52:12.460 So I'm just curious,

01:52:13.920 and I really am curious.

01:52:15.580 It's not a provocative question.

01:52:17.420 It's in fact,

01:52:19.420 the first book I wrote

01:52:20.780 is called The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism.

01:52:23.460 And one of the nine questions is,

01:52:26.460 if religion,

01:52:28.140 specifically Judaism,

01:52:29.200 is supposed to make people good, 0.72

01:52:31.060 how do you account for unethical religious Jews? 1.00

01:52:34.020 It's one of the nine questions

01:52:35.400 I asked in my first book.

01:52:37.040 The question of people who believe in God,

01:52:40.260 who do bad,

01:52:41.420 I mean, the God of the Bible,

01:52:42.780 that's all I'm talking about,

01:52:44.980 is a very real one.

01:52:46.600 Dennis, let's let that hang

01:52:48.980 and get that back into that

01:52:50.520 when we talk about the Pharisees.

01:52:52.980 Okay, I'm not sure they're the best example of bad God.

01:52:55.580 No, but...

01:52:56.320 Well, but I think the question

01:52:58.020 is specifically addressed

01:52:59.420 in some of the stories of Christ's conflict,

01:53:03.400 let's say,

01:53:03.760 with religious authorities per se.

01:53:05.520 And I think we should address that.

01:53:07.040 It has to do with hypocrisy.

01:53:08.280 Yeah.

01:53:08.660 The idea of saying one thing

01:53:11.300 and doing another.

01:53:12.380 Like, that's the opposite of incarnation.

01:53:15.560 It's like,

01:53:16.220 it's this disjoining of heaven and earth

01:53:18.140 where you have a word

01:53:19.600 and a being that aren't connected.

01:53:22.080 You say things,

01:53:22.960 you think something,

01:53:23.700 you say something,

01:53:24.180 and then you do another thing.

01:53:25.540 Where Christ is saying,

01:53:26.440 no, heaven and earth have to be united.

01:53:28.320 That is what the incarnation is trying to show.

01:53:30.820 We'll spend a whole session

01:53:32.140 on that question in some ways.

01:53:34.200 Okay, so I'm going to go through

01:53:35.680 the lead up to the baptism here

01:53:38.520 and we'll conclude with that.

01:53:39.820 So, what happens in the next few stories,

01:53:42.120 essentially,

01:53:43.020 and I'll compress them,

01:53:44.360 is that Mary and Joseph

01:53:46.860 and the people around Christ

01:53:48.280 are presented with evidence of various sorts

01:53:50.700 that something particularly special

01:53:52.560 is going on here.

01:53:53.360 So, we have,

01:53:54.580 we first of all have the naming

01:53:58.540 and events in the temple

01:53:59.860 when Jesus is presented in the temple

01:54:02.660 and there's a prophetess there

01:54:04.620 who describes his eventual destiny

01:54:07.840 and a prophet there too, Simeon.

01:54:10.640 And so, he tells Mary

01:54:11.820 that her son is destined

01:54:14.940 to do spectacular things.

01:54:16.340 And then after that,

01:54:17.180 we have the gifts of the magi.

01:54:19.140 And these are magicians,

01:54:21.420 magi,

01:54:21.860 magi from the east

01:54:22.940 who have seen,

01:54:24.440 who have analyzed the patterns

01:54:25.840 of the stars in heaven

01:54:27.140 because they're astrologers

01:54:28.460 and have determined

01:54:29.300 that an old age has ended

01:54:31.460 and that would be the age of the ram.

01:54:34.700 And a new age,

01:54:35.940 Pisces,

01:54:36.400 is about to begin.

01:54:37.900 And so,

01:54:38.380 there's signs in the stars,

01:54:41.260 so to speak,

01:54:41.900 that something new

01:54:42.600 is about to be born

01:54:43.560 and the magi come

01:54:44.600 and find Christ

01:54:45.860 and represent

01:54:48.140 and regard him

01:54:51.040 as the fulfillment

01:54:51.820 of their prophetic intuition.

01:54:55.340 And so,

01:54:55.740 that's another.

01:54:56.840 And then we have

01:54:57.600 the parallel,

01:54:59.500 this is a,

01:55:00.120 this is a Old Testament parallel

01:55:02.440 with the flight into Egypt

01:55:04.700 and massacre of the innocents.

01:55:06.460 Do you want to speak about that?

01:55:08.340 Sure.

01:55:08.760 I mean,

01:55:09.260 the interesting thing

01:55:10.800 about the flight into Egypt

01:55:12.120 and the massacre of the innocents

01:55:13.440 is,

01:55:14.120 you know,

01:55:14.420 the story of Jesus

01:55:15.120 is always smashing

01:55:16.940 the Old Testament references together,

01:55:18.980 bringing them together

01:55:19.600 in a way that is absolutely crazy.

01:55:21.860 And so,

01:55:22.260 what happens is

01:55:23.240 when Jesus goes to Egypt,

01:55:25.440 he's doing the flight

01:55:27.280 and return from Egypt

01:55:28.420 at the same time.

01:55:29.720 That is,

01:55:30.640 when Joseph goes to Egypt,

01:55:32.480 he flees his brothers

01:55:33.580 trying to kill him.

01:55:35.300 When Moses leaves Egypt

01:55:37.760 with the Israelites,

01:55:40.080 he's fleeing the Pharaoh

01:55:41.960 that tried to kill

01:55:42.800 the children of Israel. 0.97

01:55:44.180 And so,

01:55:44.600 in this,

01:55:45.300 in this version,

01:55:46.520 the two come together

01:55:47.680 in one story.

01:55:49.120 And there's a third element too,

01:55:50.700 which is also

01:55:51.420 King David fleeing King Saul,

01:55:54.060 who the,

01:55:54.420 the true king

01:55:55.280 fleeing the king

01:55:56.640 that is there at this moment.

01:55:57.940 So,

01:55:58.480 you have this wild image

01:55:59.680 where,

01:56:00.140 you know,

01:56:01.160 the,

01:56:01.480 the,

01:56:01.880 Christ goes into Egypt 0.96

01:56:04.200 in order to,

01:56:05.640 in order to flee

01:56:06.880 the,

01:56:07.480 the,

01:56:07.820 the king

01:56:08.480 in both ways,

01:56:10.340 like fleeing his own brother,

01:56:11.720 but then also fleeing

01:56:12.920 the,

01:56:13.180 the tyrant Pharaoh.

01:56:14.440 It's a,

01:56:15.020 it's a,

01:56:15.380 it's hard even to say it

01:56:16.540 because all the images

01:56:17.320 kind of come together.

01:56:18.340 But this is,

01:56:19.600 we talked about this in Exodus.

01:56:20.660 It's a difficult,

01:56:21.660 it's a difficult situation

01:56:22.880 because in some ways

01:56:24.220 it has to do

01:56:24.960 with the problem

01:56:25.680 of the one.

01:56:27.180 And,

01:56:27.680 and it's,

01:56:28.820 right,

01:56:29.000 it has to do

01:56:29.620 with the problem

01:56:30.180 of the,

01:56:30.560 of the concentration

01:56:31.300 of a generation

01:56:32.240 into one person.

01:56:34.040 It's a little scandalous

01:56:35.280 to talk about it,

01:56:36.100 but I think that

01:56:36.660 that is part

01:56:37.200 of what is happening.

01:56:38.280 So the Magi

01:56:38.940 tell Herod 0.83

01:56:39.780 that a king will arise

01:56:40.980 and Herod determines 0.99

01:56:41.980 to kill all the, 1.00

01:56:43.380 all the, 1.00

01:56:43.960 all the babies.

01:56:45.000 Right,

01:56:45.180 all the babies.

01:56:45.840 And so that's,

01:56:46.400 that's equivalent

01:56:47.640 to what happens

01:56:48.580 in Moses' time.

01:56:50.200 And it's another echoing

01:56:51.440 of the idea.

01:56:52.120 And also Joseph,

01:56:53.400 like Joseph leaving

01:56:54.720 his brothers

01:56:55.300 that want to kill him 0.99

01:56:56.120 into Egypt, 0.95

01:56:56.840 but then also Moses

01:56:58.000 leaving Egypt

01:56:58.920 into the promised land. 0.63

01:57:00.020 Those two get smashed

01:57:00.920 into one image.

01:57:02.160 There's also,

01:57:02.840 I mean,

01:57:03.240 there's,

01:57:03.560 there's extra biblical reference.

01:57:05.480 They're Magi.

01:57:06.020 They're plausibly

01:57:07.880 from the Zoroastrian.

01:57:09.800 Right.

01:57:10.260 And so,

01:57:11.180 and there's been

01:57:11.660 an ongoing relationship

01:57:12.760 between Israel

01:57:14.340 and Persia.

01:57:15.520 And Persia figures very,

01:57:16.980 I mean,

01:57:17.200 I believe,

01:57:18.240 I read somewhere

01:57:18.860 that Cyrus was actually

01:57:20.060 the first,

01:57:20.520 one of the first people

01:57:21.080 called Messiah

01:57:21.760 in the Old Testament

01:57:22.520 and King of Kings.

01:57:24.360 And so there's also

01:57:25.540 that relationship

01:57:26.420 to,

01:57:27.580 and,

01:57:27.660 and,

01:57:27.840 you know,

01:57:28.440 and Zoroastrianism

01:57:30.140 is,

01:57:30.560 you know,

01:57:30.840 is the idea

01:57:31.540 that there is,

01:57:33.960 there's a,

01:57:36.700 that the future

01:57:37.680 has an openness

01:57:38.560 to it

01:57:39.100 and we are

01:57:40.400 a moral battleground

01:57:41.500 in which that openness

01:57:42.600 can be decided.

01:57:43.660 And I think

01:57:44.380 by having the Magi there,

01:57:46.140 there is a recognition

01:57:47.540 of that.

01:57:49.820 So, yeah.

01:57:50.600 But there's also

01:57:51.040 the intimation

01:57:51.700 that's been presented

01:57:52.620 right from the beginning

01:57:53.360 and will be continually presented,

01:57:55.100 which is that

01:57:55.720 it is related

01:57:57.440 to the story of Joseph,

01:57:58.340 something like

01:57:59.160 the stranger

01:58:00.480 will recognize him first,

01:58:02.460 like the,

01:58:03.380 that this will move

01:58:04.660 towards the strangers.

01:58:06.820 But,

01:58:07.000 but it's,

01:58:07.380 it's the opposite

01:58:08.060 also of the Old Testament

01:58:09.340 because the Persians

01:58:10.320 send the Jews 1.00

01:58:11.280 but now the Persians come, 1.00

01:58:13.560 right?

01:58:14.460 It's,

01:58:14.940 it's,

01:58:15.380 it's also an inversion

01:58:16.640 which is trying to say,

01:58:18.300 I think there's something

01:58:19.160 happening about the relationship

01:58:20.700 to,

01:58:21.680 to the Zoroastrian tradition

01:58:24.080 that's being talked about here

01:58:25.360 in an important way.

01:58:26.340 And they are Magi

01:58:27.440 and that that's like,

01:58:28.760 that's really,

01:58:29.440 really important.

01:58:29.620 It's deeply Israelite 0.99

01:58:31.060 that Israel's chosen

01:58:32.080 but not for their own sake

01:58:33.280 but chosen for the sake

01:58:34.180 of the nations.

01:58:34.840 To your earlier point

01:58:35.760 that,

01:58:35.960 I mean,

01:58:36.080 ultimately,

01:58:37.260 that the whole world's

01:58:37.960 come to Torah.

01:58:38.660 Well,

01:58:38.780 that's,

01:58:39.220 you find it in the Psalms,

01:58:40.020 you find it in Isaiah.

01:58:41.300 From a Christian standpoint,

01:58:42.300 here's the beginning of it

01:58:43.220 that as Christ comes,

01:58:44.820 the other nations get interested

01:58:46.080 right away.

01:58:46.720 Shepherds and foreigners 1.00

01:58:46.940 are the people

01:58:48.020 who mark it.

01:58:48.040 They want to come

01:58:48.640 and see him.

01:58:49.540 So,

01:58:49.700 okay,

01:58:50.120 I'm going to close,

01:58:52.220 gentlemen,

01:58:52.580 with this last story,

01:58:54.020 I think,

01:58:54.440 because this sets us up

01:58:55.600 for the baptism

01:58:56.640 and then the flight

01:58:57.460 into the desert

01:58:58.080 which is where we can start

01:58:59.300 our second session.

01:59:02.740 So,

01:59:03.060 this is

01:59:03.460 the story

01:59:06.300 of the culmination

01:59:07.200 in some ways

01:59:07.840 of Christ's youth

01:59:09.020 and this is Luke 2,

01:59:11.220 40 to 50.

01:59:12.460 The young Jesus

01:59:13.140 confers with the teachers,

01:59:14.440 Luke 2,

01:59:14.960 40 to 50.

01:59:15.760 The child Jesus 0.53

01:59:16.820 grew and waxed

01:59:17.740 strong in spirit,

01:59:18.920 filled with wisdom

01:59:19.640 and the grace of God

01:59:20.540 was upon him.

01:59:21.520 Now,

01:59:21.840 his parents went

01:59:22.560 to Jerusalem every year

01:59:23.660 for the feast

01:59:24.900 of the Passover.

01:59:25.560 When Jesus

01:59:26.540 was 12 years old,

01:59:27.740 they took him

01:59:28.180 with them

01:59:28.600 when they went up

01:59:29.540 according to the

01:59:30.140 custom of the feast

01:59:30.940 but after the celebration

01:59:32.360 was over

01:59:32.900 and they were

01:59:33.500 returning home,

01:59:34.880 the boy Jesus

01:59:35.420 stayed behind

01:59:36.200 in Jerusalem.

01:59:37.360 His parents

01:59:37.960 did not know this

01:59:39.200 but supposing him

01:59:40.320 to be in their

01:59:41.000 traveling party,

01:59:41.720 they went a day's journey

01:59:42.560 and then they looked

01:59:43.180 for him among

01:59:43.680 their kinsfolk

01:59:44.240 and acquaintances.

01:59:45.820 When they did not

01:59:46.760 find him,

01:59:48.480 they returned to Jerusalem

01:59:49.400 to search for him.

01:59:50.440 After three days,

01:59:51.300 they found him

01:59:51.840 in the temple

01:59:52.380 sitting in the midst

01:59:53.640 of the teachers

01:59:54.260 listening to them

01:59:55.460 and asking them questions

01:59:57.320 and all who heard him

01:59:58.860 were amazed

01:59:59.480 at his understanding

02:00:00.400 and his responses.

02:00:02.760 When his parents

02:00:03.500 saw him,

02:00:03.900 they were astonished

02:00:04.820 and his mother

02:00:06.020 said to him,

02:00:06.660 Son,

02:00:07.100 why have you

02:00:07.940 treated us this way?

02:00:09.280 Your father and I

02:00:10.240 have been anxiously

02:00:11.180 looking for you.

02:00:12.480 And Jesus said to them,

02:00:14.180 Why did you need

02:00:14.900 to search for me?

02:00:16.180 Did you not know

02:00:16.960 that I must be

02:00:17.680 in my father's house?

02:00:18.660 But they did not

02:00:20.260 understand the significance

02:00:21.300 of these words.

02:00:22.400 So we see a variety

02:00:24.440 of intimations there.

02:00:25.680 We see the young Jesus

02:00:28.620 first taking his place

02:00:29.980 with the learned men

02:00:30.940 in discussion.

02:00:32.500 And that's a prodroma

02:00:34.080 for much of what happens

02:00:35.300 in the remainder

02:00:36.080 of the Gospels.

02:00:37.220 We see the fact

02:00:38.480 that he's exceptionally

02:00:40.180 good at it,

02:00:41.340 enough to hold his own

02:00:43.060 even as a 12-year-old

02:00:44.440 with the learned adults.

02:00:46.760 And that he is also

02:00:49.460 pointing out to his parents

02:00:51.480 who still don't

02:00:52.740 understand this

02:00:53.460 that he's marked out

02:00:54.380 for a very particular

02:00:55.320 form of destiny.

02:00:57.020 And so it's after that

02:00:59.360 that that seriously

02:01:01.080 starts to unfold

02:01:02.100 and that's where

02:01:02.780 we'll pick up

02:01:03.400 when we reconvene.

02:01:05.920 Thank you very much,

02:01:07.060 everyone.

02:01:09.480 And for the Christians too,

02:01:10.880 it's important because

02:01:11.660 the early church,

02:01:13.360 there was a debate,

02:01:14.060 there was actually

02:01:14.520 an early Christian

02:01:15.760 who proposed

02:01:16.720 a single Gospel.

02:01:17.980 He said, you know,

02:01:18.260 we have to take

02:01:18.720 these unwieldy texts

02:01:19.840 and merge them

02:01:20.760 into one nice,

02:01:22.120 clean, coherent text.

02:01:23.480 But the church resisted that

02:01:25.220 because, you know,

02:01:26.360 in some ways

02:01:26.980 they knew that the Gospels

02:01:28.300 were the closest accounts

02:01:30.180 of the life of Jesus.

02:01:31.620 They were handed down

02:01:32.580 through the apostles,

02:01:33.880 through the apostolic succession.

02:01:35.400 They trusted these texts.

02:01:37.180 And they, in some ways,

02:01:38.380 the variety in the text,

02:01:40.340 it is a witness

02:01:41.160 to the kind of energy,

02:01:43.040 you know,

02:01:43.200 like the kind of frenetic desire

02:01:45.460 to get this story down

02:01:46.980 and even the idea

02:01:48.500 that in some ways

02:01:49.760 it represents

02:01:50.340 different perspectives

02:01:51.200 on the same story.

02:01:52.620 So Christ is hidden

02:01:54.080 in the four Gospels, right?

02:01:55.680 He is somewhat more

02:01:57.500 than the four Gospels.

02:01:58.580 That's important to understand.

02:02:00.020 His life is not simply

02:02:01.680 told in those Gospels.

02:02:03.880 We have to understand

02:02:04.500 that he's more than that,

02:02:05.780 but that these Gospels

02:02:06.600 are the right testimony

02:02:07.700 for his life.

02:02:09.040 And they have a reason

02:02:09.800 why each of them

02:02:10.880 have their own thrust,

02:02:12.600 their own narrative,

02:02:14.060 their own emphasis,

02:02:14.900 and that's very meaningful

02:02:16.200 for the Christians.

02:02:16.820 I don't know.

02:02:17.440 But it's their life and the other

02:02:18.320 I hope it's very meaningful

02:02:19.060 for themselves.

02:02:20.080 Sorry, it's that

02:02:20.240 I would say

02:02:20.700 it's very common

02:02:21.340 but I can tell

02:02:22.120 that with the great

02:02:23.220 thing and the other

02:02:23.860 I want to receive

02:02:24.260 opportunity

02:02:24.840 is that

02:02:25.320 to drop are

02:02:26.400 the pitfalls

02:02:27.340 of it.

02:02:31.980 So it's not

02:02:34.700 that you

02:02:35.820 cause

02:02:36.560 thatakes

02:02:38.000 you

02:02:38.500 are

02:02:39.680 having

02:02:41.000 a

02:02:41.420 careful

02:02:42.020 and

02:02:42.820 if

02:02:44.000 you

02:02:44.780 is

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - February 03, 2025

The Birth of Christ ｜ Biblical Series： The Gospels

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