00:05:30.940So one of the major themes that, you know, pops out of the Narnian series is, you know, a free Narnian, that, you know, like freedom and, you know, not being a Talorman or, you know, like a slave, but being a free Narnian.
00:05:46.540One of my questions, I guess, is with that, you know, I always think of the book of James and, you know, the law of liberty and that freedom, you know, G.K. Chesterton is, you know, freedom is found within the bounds.
00:05:57.820um with with that idea of free narnians do you do you see that the narnian experience as being
00:06:04.760a freedom that comes from a plural pluralistic society or do you see it as no the freedom comes
00:06:10.580because there's clearly one king over all of it yeah um it's it's the latter it's it but it's an
00:06:18.220interesting way that lewis does it so narnia you know people wrestle a lot of times with you know
00:06:22.280how christian should we think about it is it an allegory and lewis says it's not an allegory he
00:06:27.060calls it a supposal so it's basically imagine that god became incarnated in that world just
00:06:33.060like he became incarnated in this world but that world has talking animals what would that what
00:06:36.820would that be like so just it's kind of it's that kind of imaginary deal but it actually is
00:06:40.840structured a little more like the old testament in some way so narnia functions in its content in
00:06:46.300its in its world um the kingdom of narnia is like israel um and then there's sort of these friendly
00:06:51.380nations that are next to it like arkenland um which would be sort of like you know remember
00:06:56.560when the king of Tyre helps Solomon build a temple.
00:07:01.060And so this is like, they're not Israelites, but they're friendly.
00:07:04.180And then there's sort of the great nations around it that are more of the threat.
00:07:07.660So you've got Kalorman, which is, you know,
00:07:10.180Lewis depicts very clearly as a kind of Middle Eastern Turkish empire type place
00:07:15.820that worships other gods and is tyrannical.
00:07:19.740And there's a despotism built into it.
00:07:22.040And then you've kind of got the giants to the north,
00:07:25.200um which are their own sort of um you know uh different different animal so the kingdoms are
00:07:32.200set up that way in a very kind of old testament sort of way but the the in terms of narnia itself
00:07:37.800i think it's i think it's in the line the witch in the wardrobe after the four kids become king
00:07:42.840it basically says they made good laws and basically minded their own business um you know
00:07:47.120kept people from from being busy bodies um and so there is a way in which the sort of political
00:07:52.880picture in Narnia is one driven by we serve Aslan, Aslan governs, and yet there is a real
00:08:01.300sense of freedom and liberty that is a sharp contrast to Kalorman with its more slavish,
00:08:09.260servile, everybody's, you know, there's hierarchy in Narnia, but it's more of the dance
00:08:14.880versus the goose step where, you know, you're at the bottom and so I can step on you,
00:08:21.340you have to bow and scrape um that sort of thing and and lewis seems to think that the kind of god
00:08:27.800you worship shapes the kind of social order you'll have um and uh and that comes up pretty
00:08:33.380most clearly i think in like voyage of the dawn treader is a good example where you know as they're
00:08:38.780journeying and they get out some of those islands and they've got slavery on them uh and and there
00:08:43.420the slavery is presented as sort of a progressive thing like hey this is sort of progress this is
00:08:48.440um you know you can't turn back the clock the the governor gumpus um of jackson's you can't
00:08:53.700turn back the clock um this is progress man and uh and caspian's like uh yes we can and and sets
00:09:01.420everybody free and so there's sort of that like progressive element there uh within uh of course
00:09:06.780in his boy you get the contrast with the the colormans and and the narnians when they show up
00:09:11.740one of the things shasta notes as they're walking through the first time he sees narnians he is one
00:09:16.320but, or he's Arkenlander, but he sees Narnians is that they're walking with like a free swing
00:09:20.260in their arms. They're, they're, um, they, um, they're whistling. They have, you know,
00:09:25.740the colors of their clothes is very different and they just seem to have a different quality
00:09:29.940about them. And he said, uh, they, they look like they were ready to be friends with anyone
00:09:34.540who was friendly and don't give a, it didn't give a fig for anyone who wasn't. And which is
00:09:39.700basically my philosophy of friendship in a nutshell. It's like, I want to be friends with
00:09:42.860anyone who's friendly and i don't don't give a fig for anyone who's not and so there's there's that
00:09:46.600quality that comes from who their lord is who their king is um that runs all the way through the books
00:09:53.060yeah yeah um no i like what you said in terms of you know the god shapes you know the god that you
00:10:00.000worship shapes the way that you live um thinking of like you know even the last battle with you
00:10:04.660know tash versus yes um versus aslan what do you know i i'd be remiss if i didn't ask you uh what's
00:10:11.240take on you know where lewis talks about i forget the the character's name but the individual you
00:10:15.960know he's been serving me aslan this whole time but by a different name yeah so emeth uh the
00:10:21.880the faithful clorman um i do think lewis thinks something like this is true um and uh and that
00:10:28.400sort of i don't know if you call it like the noble pagan idea i think that he thinks is there a way
00:10:32.740um he kind of he kind of is in that stream i do think it's important to recognize though that in
00:10:38.560it is more this is like an old testament world more so than a new testament world in some kind
00:10:43.320of weird way like there's no narnian great commission like there's no you know go go
00:10:47.840therefore and make disciples of aslan everywhere you go like they're not the narnians are not
00:10:52.020called to go evangelize the clormans there's not quite the same new testament thing happening and
00:10:57.580so the the rules are set up a little different so is this more like um the queen of is is emeth
00:11:04.400more like the queen of sheba who eventually finds her way to solomon's palace and emeth just finds
00:11:08.200away. So there's a little bit of that. I think I heard Doug Wilson one time say this isn't a swing
00:11:13.960and a miss, but it is a foul ball on Lewis's part. Okay. So it's like, yeah, okay. That's probably
00:11:20.220not the way it is, but that's, but Lewis probably did think something along those lines, or at least
00:11:24.960hope for something along those lines. Right. Right. Okay. Well, so one of the things that
00:11:33.520you talked about was um you know before we started recording was uh in the silver chair um puddle
00:11:39.400glum and his kind of pessimistic spirit but uh the way that he stands up uh to the witch you want to
00:11:45.840flesh that out for us a little bit yes this is something i've been working on there's a chapter
00:11:49.120in live like an artian where i i talk about this this really important scene and i just think as
00:11:54.740time has gone on you know that book's been out for about a decade almost now and that scene has
00:11:59.720become more profound. And there's layers and depths to it that I don't think I recognized
00:12:03.940when I wrote it. And I'm trying to work those out. But the basics of it is, there's sort of
00:12:10.900a modern narrative that Christians buy into that says, the world in the old days used to be
00:12:17.200enchanted. Middle Ages, Reformation was an enchanted world that believed in both the physical
00:12:22.940and the spiritual, angels, demons, fairies, dryads, all of that sort of stuff. And then
00:12:28.320the enlightenment came along modernity came along and basically disenchanted the world
00:12:32.540and it basically debunked all of the all of the spiritual stuff and there's a kind of common
00:12:38.700narrative that christians do and that and that then for us as modern christians are always kind
00:12:42.320of going how do we re-enchant the world how do we re-enchant it the world was enchanted then it was
00:12:47.020disenchanted and now our call in the 21st century is to kind of re-enchant it and uh that's a pretty
00:12:53.060common uh you know max weber has that as a kind of his disenchantment thesis and uh charles taylor
00:12:58.440kind of leans into that with some of his stuff on a secular age the interesting about lewis is that
00:13:03.200he actually doesn't think that he thinks not that the world has been disenchanted but that we've been
00:13:08.620put under a dark enchantment so as he thinks about modernity it's not that the world used to be
00:13:13.360enchanted now it's not it's that the world used to be enchanted sort of in a good way well or
00:13:17.640semi good way there's dark spirits there too but that now what we experience as sort of the drab
00:13:23.660dullness of modern life is actually itself a kind of dark spell like we're under the spell of a dark
00:13:29.360sorceress and so in silver chair he kind of depicts this is there in underland and the prince prince
00:13:35.000really has been under a spell for you know 10 years and then he gets that they rest set him
00:13:39.040free and then she comes back and she starts trying to put him to sleep and um and so she's got some
00:13:45.420some magic powder she throws in the fire it gives a drowsy smell that kind of gets into your blood
00:13:50.180and the more it gets into you the less you notice it and the more you're kind of coming under the
00:13:53.240spell um she's playing a little bit of like soft music from from from thing happening and then just
00:13:58.560starts asking them questions and the questions are basically uh sort of the modern ideologies
00:14:03.920that we see around us that basically say um religion is just a fairy tale um for children
00:14:10.180to help you cope with the fact that life is hard and you'll die so you know and or that um
00:14:15.500god is just a projection of human ideals and desires into the sky so in the in the story it's
00:14:21.740um you know what's uh what's a lamp she says what's the sun they talk about the sun and she
00:14:25.960says what's the sun what's that what are you talking about and and they say well have you
00:14:28.900seen a lamp and she's like yeah it's like well a sun is like a big lamp in the sky that hangs
00:14:33.920from the sky and she's like oh no see you just took a lamp and you imagined a bigger and better
00:14:38.500lamp. And then does the same thing with, with the Aslan, with Aslan the lion and says, what's a
00:14:43.780lion? It's like a cat. You like cats? Yeah, of course I love cats. Well, a lion is like a big
00:14:48.300cat with his mane, you know, terrifically strong. And she's like, oh, see here again, you're just
00:14:53.260taking things from my world, the real world, the sort of physical world that you can see,
00:14:57.440and you're just projecting it. And this is the sort of thing that guys like Freud and
00:15:01.300Feuerbach and some of those, you know, late 19th, early 20th century thinkers would say is
00:15:06.460All of us, when we're kids, have fathers who take care of us and they provide for us and they protect us and they love us.
00:15:13.760And then as we get older, we sort of realize dad's not strong enough to do that.
00:15:17.280But I still have this sort of psychological need to be cared for and somebody to be looking out for me.
00:15:21.860Things are going to be OK. And so religion is basically a projection of that desire, fear, wish into the sky.
00:15:28.700And so now we have God, our father. That's sort of like the debunking of religion.
00:15:32.980And so the witch is just running this play on them with sort of the music in the background and something in the air that makes that make sense.
00:15:43.520And it's playing on a reality that's basically true, right?
00:15:46.480That there is a connection between divine fatherhood and human fatherhood.
00:15:49.600It's just got the projection the wrong way, right?
00:15:51.760She says we're projecting human fatherhood into the sky, whereas the scriptures teach us that God is projecting his fatherhood down through your dad, right?
00:16:00.480Your dad is like a is meant to be a mini representation of God.
00:16:04.180That's why, you know, around here at Bethlehem, when we talk about child rearing, we talk about be the smile of God to your children.
00:16:09.660That's the heart of fatherhood is be the smile of God to your children as a sort of projection of divine fatherhood into your family.
00:16:16.720So there is a real connection that's just got it backwards.
00:16:18.720and uh and so that's sort of this modern enchantment and and lewis presents it as the um
00:16:25.140the the children and puddle glum and the prince all basically start to fall under the spell and
00:16:30.100they go to sleep that they and there's a relief as they go to sleep as they kind of give in
00:16:34.360it feels like oh this feels good to kind of give up to to the truth of things or or quote unquote
00:16:39.520reality the real world um and she gets them to sort of repeat the catechism she says things like
00:16:45.200there is no sun and then they echo back there is no sun there never was any sun there never was
00:16:51.040any sun and so there's this way of like the repetition of it sort of reinforces the enchantment
00:16:55.620and this is this is very similar to the way that you know you go to a um you go to a museum you go
00:17:00.640to you watch anything on tv and just sort of the godlessness is sort of assumed and you're supposed
00:17:06.140to repeat back the narrative you you repeat back every science documentary right 65 million years
00:17:12.620ago, right? You're going to have all, they're going to, they're going to recite the story.
00:17:15.880They're going to recite the catechism and they're going to expect you to recite it back. And that
00:17:19.300becomes a kind of mythology. This is how Lewis actually talks about it in some of his essays
00:17:23.140is it's like a mythology. Evolution is a modern myth. He has an essay called the funeral of a
00:17:29.000great myth in which he says, the real appeal of evolution is not to your reason, but it's to your
00:17:34.660imagination. It's a, it's a mythological, it's the underdog story, classic underdog story of,
00:17:39.780you know this black void cosmos and then life kind of pops up and like the little he's the
00:17:45.560infant hero who's going to struggle against all odds and overcome it's like rocky but like life
00:17:50.640and then he does it again when like now you have humanity with like these giants and you know
00:17:55.740dragons and monsters and like this little bitty biped is going to be the one that rules everything
00:17:59.540and and it's appealing to all of the pathos and that grandeur of a myth and that's actually what
00:18:05.860captures our imaginations and becomes the background furniture or the mood music in the
00:18:12.280story that sort of shapes us and that even Christians can kind of fall prey to. We can
00:18:16.240start to fall asleep. So there's this really great, it'd be an exaggeration to say this,
00:18:21.820but not much of one. It's probably the most profound analysis of modernity that I've ever
00:18:27.140read. And it's like 10 pages in a children's book written in the 1940s. It's just this amazing
00:18:34.240thing and then you know the the the glory of it is then how puddle glum you know as everybody's
00:18:40.900finally you know giving in they're succumbing to the enchantment puddle glum breaks it right by
00:18:46.180sticking his foot in the fire and having this you know glorious act of defiance uh so it's a it's a
00:18:51.080beautiful picture uh i think of what what the struggle of faith is in the modern world and how
00:18:56.440we can fight together that's great um as you were talking about you know sigmund freud it made me
00:19:01.440think of, I think it was R.C. Sproul who once was commentating on that and saying that, you know,
00:19:06.100one of Freud's, you know, popular, more popular arguments to kind of dissuade people from the
00:19:12.200notion of God was to say that, you know, God was invented in the imaginations of men because like
00:19:17.700what you were saying about fathers, right? So it's like, I have an earthly father. He's my hero. I
00:19:21.860start to get older. I see his flaws, his deficiencies, his inability, you know, to care for
00:19:27.660me when I'm a 30 year old grown man. But I still have this, you know, innate need for protection
00:19:34.320and provision, a father figure. And so I'm projecting from, you know, from fathers on the
00:19:39.860ground to, you know, this divine father in the sky, rather than the opposite, which is actually
00:19:44.800the truth that there is the father of lights from whom every good and perfect gift comes.
00:19:49.220And, and our human fathers are actually meant to be a reflection of the one true father of all.
00:19:56.040And so all that being said, you know, Freud is making that argument.
00:19:59.780And he says, you know, that the reason why people invented God or the notion of God is
00:20:04.020because as they're getting older and those kinds of things, they recognize, you know,
00:20:08.160and it is kind of that fatherly, you know, in the protective sphere, they realize that
00:20:12.560there are certain threats that cannot be appealed to, right?
00:20:16.700So if there's a mugger or a robber, you know, or a murderer who finds you in a back alley,
00:20:21.940um there's there's he's an evil man a malicious man but he's a man there's um there's personhood
00:20:27.480there and so there's something that you could actually appeal to you could plead for your life
00:20:31.440you could beg you could try to barter or trade or i'll give you all of my money if you spare my life
00:20:36.420um but how do you barter with a storm you know how do you how do you appeal to um to the better
00:20:42.880nature of uh of cancer you know and like you you don't and so then what people did was they tried
00:20:49.620to take these impersonal threats that are inescapable, like a storm, like famine, like
00:20:56.600a drought, like cancer, like sickness, like disease.
00:21:00.660And, you know, and as humanity was facing, you know, whether it be a plague or whatever
00:21:05.120it might be, these natural disasters, they needed to find a way to personify them so
00:21:10.740that there would be something, someone, namely to appeal to.
00:21:14.960And so the notion of God was invented out of the imaginations of men, um, to, so that
00:21:20.480they would at least have some sense, some silver lining, some sense of hope in the midst
00:21:27.200So there's a famine and even, you know, the pagan notion, it's still a deity.
00:21:31.240It's not the true God, the triune God, but this sense of, well, if, if we make enough
00:21:36.200sacrifices, then, you know, then the famine will go away, you know, or that propitiation
00:21:40.700kind of idea, you know, that, um, that there's a God, uh, this, the storm is, is, um, there's,
00:21:47.360there's a person in the storm, um, you know, or behind the storm. And so the storm is this
00:21:53.440inanimate object that can't be appealed to, but there's a person behind it. And, uh, the gods
00:21:58.080are angry or this God is angry and we need a propitiation and atonement, a payment, um, to
00:22:04.420satiate his wrath. We've done something wrong. And if we can satiate his wrath, that at least gives
00:22:09.940you this sense of hope, other than, you know, the alternative being that there's just a vicious
00:22:15.320hurricane and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it except for a hunker down and just
00:22:19.380and then wish upon a star, you know, just, you know, hope for good, you know, good luck. And so
00:22:25.660that was Sigmund Freud's idea. But Sproul, I like what he said. He said, if that were the case,
00:22:29.880that would explain the invention of many gods, but it would not explain the invention of the
00:22:35.400Christian God. And he uses, you know, the example of the disciples on the boat with Jesus in the
00:22:40.720midst of a storm and Jesus, you know, he speaks, he has authority over wind and waves. But the
00:22:46.420problem with Sigmund Freud's theory is that the disciples, it says there was a great storm and
00:22:50.780they were afraid. But then after the storm is calmed by Jesus, it says they were exceedingly
00:22:56.560afraid. So now they're actually more afraid because what they're afraid of is no longer the
00:23:01.540storm, but this God who has power, who's more powerful than the storm. The Christian God is a
00:23:08.160terrible are his judgments, right? He is a God to be feared. He is a fearsome God. It's a terrible
00:23:14.100thing to fall into the hands of the living God. And so the triune God, the Christian God would not
00:23:20.000be a logical answer to the fear of inanimate tragedies and calamities like a storm. You would
00:23:28.360want to come up with a nice god you know sugar and spice and everything nice but the triune god
00:23:33.420of the bible is is not that god um he's actually more fearsome and so anyway sprawl was arguing and
00:23:39.440saying that um freud's you know his theory doesn't account for the triune god um the only thing that
00:23:45.580accounts for that is the fact that he's real yeah it's true yeah the uh lewis has some great um
00:23:51.780essays where he he tackles this you know one thing he notes and this is this is actually a precursor
00:23:56.100to um some of the conversations we have about either whether it's post-modernism or um critical
00:24:02.220race theory or some of that that sort of stuff lewis is dealing with the subjectivism that kind
00:24:06.920of runs through all of that and uh so when dealing with the freudians or he actually uses marxists as
00:24:13.300an example who basically try to debunk ideas by showing the psychological needs that they meet
00:24:19.320so the freudians have that one the marxists say you know you're all a part of the class or whatever
00:24:23.500Now we would do identity politics in the same vein. And they basically say that the trick is assume that your opponent is wrong.
00:24:31.340So just assume it. They're wrong. Their beliefs are false. And then rather than refute, you explain how they came to believe it, like what motivated them,
00:24:39.860what sort of, you know, it's a power play or you, you know, you believe that because you're a man or whatever.
00:24:45.420And and then once you've kind of shown the psychological conditions that led them to accept it, you can then dismiss it.
00:24:54.360And Lewis says, that's a fun game, but can we all play?
00:24:58.120Like, there's a way, like, that's a universal acid.
00:25:01.900Because do the Marxists have psychological needs that their philosophy is meeting?
00:25:20.740He says, well, aren't there fear fulfillment dreams too?
00:25:23.500um, like that it works the other way. And, and might there be some atheists who don't want God
00:25:29.700to be there? And that's precisely the ground of their atheism in terms of how they came to believe
00:25:33.840it. And his point in sort of turning the tables is not to say, these are reasons to not be an
00:25:39.160atheist. He's to say, this is a stupid way of arguing. This is assuming it's a fallacy. He
00:25:45.160calls it vulvarism. He invents a name for it called vulvarism. Um, and he says my, the, the
00:25:50.520The mythical founder is Ezekiel Bolver, who, when he was five years old, overheard his parents arguing and his mother seeked to refute his father, who was maintaining that, you know, the two sides of a triangle, you know, the angles of the triangle equal the other angle or whatever it is, you know, some kind of mathematical theorem.
00:26:07.940And she responded to that by saying, you just believe that because you're a man.
00:26:11.900And Bolver said, you know, the world will be at my fingertips.
00:26:16.340I don't actually have to disprove anybody.
00:26:18.580I don't have to deal in questions of true or false.
00:26:20.860I just have to explain why someone might believe something from in psychological terms and then treat it as refuted.
00:26:27.940And then the world will open up. And so Ezekiel Bulber became one of the makers of the 20th century.
00:26:33.660Right. So Lewis Lewis names this fallacy and says Christians can play this.
00:26:37.860It actually can be useful sometimes in pastoral situations like are your doubts, say if I'm dealing with someone who's dealing with doubts,
00:26:44.940Are your doubts pure and simple intellectual questions, or is it, you know, you've been sleeping with your girlfriend and it would be really convenient if God wasn't real?
00:26:55.340That like that we do motivated reasoning is a thing, but it doesn't actually tell you whether something's true or false.
00:27:01.480And so Lewis sees clearly through this kind of smokescreen of the Freudians and the Marxist and the subjectivists who try to reduce everything down and says that's that can't be all there is because you'll just see through everything.
00:27:13.940and then therefore you won't see anything.
00:27:43.660I feel like the triune God would win, even though it's a flawed standard, because, you know, when you think of like the need for a father, the things that we've referenced earlier, these are virtuous needs.
00:27:57.700There's nothing inherently morally wrong with, you know, the need for protection, the need for provision, the need for a father, the need for love, the need for purpose, the need for, you know, whereas you think like just Marx, Freud and, you know, Darwin, if we took those three.
00:28:13.660Um, Freud is it all three of these, the need that that's being trying to be met is, um,
00:28:20.640is basically in a, um, assuaging of, of guilt for desiring something that's actually not
00:36:55.320you know the israelites have already passed over and now the egyptians are trying to do it i'm just
00:36:59.320picturing moses saying you shall not pass right puts his well and all he does does is and i mean
00:37:05.840you see this in the battles you know like in the when the israelites are fighting amalekites
00:37:10.140and you know joshua's down there fighting moses up on the mountain with aaron and her and it's
00:37:15.140like as long as his arms are up they win he gets tired and they lose and it's like right like win
00:37:20.760lose win lose and it's that and you're going what what is god made the world that way god made the
00:37:26.140world that way and moses is not over that power as though he's the master he's the servant that's
00:37:31.980how moses is most consistently i'm about to preach hebrews for our church hebrews three uh for our
00:37:36.740church and moses is the servant of the lord that's his fundamental title he's under he's in god's
00:37:41.780house and it's christ who's the son over god's house and is the sort of source of that power
00:37:47.760So all of that, there's a kind of theological thing there that underneath that when we think about magic, there's faithful magic and unfaithful magic.
00:37:57.380And if you just put it in an appeal to power for the good of others from the God who made the world, if you just do that and you say, OK, now call that magic for a minute.
00:38:07.080It's supernatural. It's spiritual. All of that.
00:38:10.440all that um that's fundamentally different than what the necromancers and the sorcerers and the
00:38:15.280guys drawing circles in the ground and doing x's in their attempt to manipulate dark powers into
00:38:21.120giving them power so that they can lord it over others this is one of the places where lewis
00:38:25.420actually says um he he talks about the fact that uh you know in the science and magic were both
00:38:34.680birthed at the modern science modern science and magic the heyday of magic were the same time the
00:38:39.400guys who were doing chemistry were also doing alchemy trying to turn base metals into gold
00:38:43.680the guys who were doing astronomy and you know hey galileo and topernicus and these guys trying
00:38:48.140to figure out the orbits are also doing astrology right these these different we just give them
00:38:53.660different names now because one of them succeeded in the sense of discovering the way god made the
00:38:58.380world and the other didn't or at least didn't consistently enough right i'm sure dark powers
00:39:03.660used it. And Lewis recognizes the family resemblance between our science and technology,
00:39:10.620especially our technological science, where our goal is to sort of take reality and shape it
00:39:16.160according and bend it to our will. So reality- Which is really just pushing back against the
00:39:20.600curse. That's what that is. It's the dominion mandate. It's exercising dominion over the world
00:39:26.480that God gave us, but the world that is under a curse and resisting man's stewardship and dominion
00:39:32.440and finding tools technology just being a high powered tool to to ultimately to to push back
00:39:38.680against uh the curse yeah so that's the good element is the sort of dominion but but faithful
00:39:43.980dominion means cutting with the grain of reality as opposed to trying to you know sort of you know
00:39:50.740it's kind of like if you work with you're like you can you know and i'm trying to turn it but
00:39:54.860then you just break it and so that's the you know when you think about the transgender sorts of
00:39:59.120stuff that's what that is is it's reality is plato and it needs to bend to my wishes and i can break
00:40:05.720i can there's no grain of reality that i'm trying to cut with and if i cut with the grain then
00:40:10.680everything works that's dominion that's godly dominion right but so the way i was just gonna
00:40:15.740say the way that i communicate that is uh the distinction between pushing uh back against the
00:40:19.840curse on nature versus pushing back on nature itself that's exactly right it's exactly right
00:40:24.720When we push back against sickness to expand lifespans of people, which has happened just in the last 150 years, you know, and like when we put, you know, find cures for diseases, like we're pushing back on the curse, which when you're trying to turn a little boy into a girl, you're pushing back on nature itself, which is the basic plot line for every, you know, sci-fi horror movie, you know, Jurassic Park, like life finds a way like nature.
00:42:47.760and i can show it to you in a fantasy novel or a fairy tale or whatever and it's in seeing both
00:42:54.460of them you see it better and then as a result our students are able to to live better they're
00:42:59.180able to like navigate the world with with a greater degree because it's not simply intellectual
00:43:04.080but like their imaginations have been shaped and molded that's one of the things we love to do
00:43:08.120that's great yeah and i think that's that's what i'm getting at is that you know i think we've got
00:43:12.520um, plenty of essays, not enough fantasy novels, you know, at least in recent, you know, American,
00:43:20.100you know, the West, it just seems like we've kind of surrendered that hill, um, to the pagan and,
00:43:26.420uh, and said, we'll keep the essays. We'll keep, you know, the theological treaties, but you can
00:43:31.900have, uh, you can have the arts. And, uh, and I think that that's a mistake. One other thing I was
00:43:37.080going to say is, uh, I kept, as we're having this whole conversation, I keep picturing my mind, um,
00:43:42.520the debate from once upon a time is probably 15, 20, I don't know.
00:43:46.800It's old at this point, 15 years or so, but it was Driscoll and Wilson.
00:43:51.540And it was on cessationism versus continuationism. And, you know,
00:43:55.860and so I'm a cessationist. I'm, you know,
00:43:57.660I adhere to the 1689 and I understand there are some guys who say you could,
00:44:01.200you know, but I, I, I feel like the 1689 is cessationist. And so,
00:44:05.340so I raised, you know, cessationism, you know, five years, six,
00:44:10.080seven years ago, I wasn't always a cessationist. I was raised in the vineyard church. The church
00:44:15.600that I planted in California, actually in the very beginning was a vineyard church. And then
00:44:20.100we became an Acts 29 church. And then we left Acts 29 and just became a confessionally reformed
00:44:25.460Baptist church. And so all that being said, and that's kind of where I've landed and where I am
00:44:28.860today. So I'm on the cessationist side of things, but one of the things I so appreciated about Doug
00:44:33.800was, you know, I think some cessationists are, I think I'm persuaded this is the correct,
00:44:40.860you know, theological position, but some cessationists, it's like, it affects their
00:44:46.140whole person, their whole, you know, their personality. They're, they're just not a lot
00:44:49.980of fun. They're, they're, they're grim. They're, you know, they're dreary. They're, you know,
00:44:54.000like puddle glum, you know, like whereas Doug Wilson is, you know, he's, he's jolly. And,
00:44:59.880you know, and so like, you know, as he's having this thing with Driscoll, it's like, uh, you know,
00:45:04.460this debate and back and forth, he, he gives Driscoll like almost like, uh, ammunition that
00:45:10.980you typically wouldn't want to do in a disagreement with someone, you know, where he's recounts this
00:45:15.320story of, of a phone call that he, you know, had with someone and how he basically knew that that
00:45:20.320was going to happen ahead of time because he had like a dream or, you know, whatever. And, you know,
00:45:24.380driscoll of course is saying prophecy yeah it's called prophecy you know and and at the time when
00:45:30.200i watched i was like yeah driscoll get him you know yeah that's profit and and i didn't have
00:45:35.160the categories that i have now um but the retort that wilson gave was like i live in god's magical
00:45:41.020world um and that that's not to say you know without making a strong argument because i assume
00:45:45.960that you're a continuationist is that correct yeah and so we would disagree on this and so i'm not
00:45:50.060even making an argument for cessationism at this point i'm just stating the position that i hold
00:45:54.240but I liked that like, here's, here's a guy who is a cessationist who believes there's no new
00:45:59.200revelation. Um, and yet, and that was one of the hardest things I think for me was, um, I didn't,
00:46:05.100it was like Calvinism. So cessationism, Calvinism, similar in my testimony, when I came into reform
00:46:10.060doctrine, one of the hardest things was I felt like I had to surrender my personal testimony.
00:46:15.280Um, but, but one of the things that helped me tremendously was having an older brother in the
00:46:21.020faith who had been reformed for, for, for longer than me and helping me realize you don't have to
00:46:28.460surrender your testimony. What you have to do is see it through a new lens. All these things. So,
00:46:34.340so where you were seeking after God, he was drawing you and calling you and wooing you when
00:46:40.400this, when, when, so the same things happen. You don't have to give yourself a lobotomy.
00:46:44.820you know it's the same things those things were real but but you need to you're seeing them now
00:46:51.420through a new lens and so for me you know like things like well I really felt like God spoke to
00:46:56.260me in this way where I felt like but then having categories and say I don't have to throw out the
00:47:01.000baby with the bath water discernment is still a thing you know and so on you know and living in
00:47:07.160God's magical world is still a thing and as a cessationist miracles are still a thing I just
00:47:12.440personally don't hold to a worker of miracles who on demand, you know, can, can slap a river and it,
00:47:18.040and it crosses, you know, and healing is, I pray for healing per James chapter five, the elders,
00:47:23.860take them to the elders and anoint them with oil and, and, you know, and lay hands on them and pray
00:47:28.100and the sick person will be made well, but healings versus healer. And, and so that was so
00:47:34.300helpful for me coming into, you know, a cessationist position, which I personally think
00:47:39.480is more conducive with a, with a confessionally reformed position. Um, but, but not having to
00:47:45.040discount every experience that I had and say, well, I must've just been, um, I must've just
00:47:51.620been underneath a spell of manipulation from emotions. And, uh, and I just thought that that
00:47:56.740was so interesting as we're talking about magic. And as we're talking that like Doug Wilson,
00:48:00.680here's the cessationist giving, in my opinion, more credence to, to the magic of God's world
00:48:07.060than the continuationist was in in that particular moment any thoughts on that yeah i think that's
00:48:12.900right and i think you know some of the debate on those two sides often is a matter of definitions
00:48:17.660you know what yes what a cessation is trying to keep out of the conversation and what are
00:48:22.400continuation is trying to get on and so there's actually frequently um you can find more common
00:48:28.440ground than you find because we're all supernaturalist like the common thing that's
00:48:32.460what that's what doug was getting at with the god's magical world is we're supernaturalist
00:48:36.560which means not just supernaturalists in the sense of there's a heaven someday and God's up
00:48:41.680there somewhere. But then like the entire universe is shot through with divine agency and not just
00:48:48.560divine agency, but with other kinds of agencies. Like we believe that angels are real. We believe
00:48:52.600that demons are real and we don't know a ton about them. And sometimes people can speak more
00:48:57.260dogmatically about what they know about how angels and demons work than maybe is biblically warranted.
00:49:02.360But like the little glimpses we get is that like there's this whole other world sort of intersecting with ours that involves battles and fights and warfare, that involves temptations, that intersects with our own personal lives, that affects our bodies and our minds and all of these sort of things.
00:49:19.720We get these little glimpses and we go and as Christians, we have to go, I may not be I don't have the bird's eye view of that.
00:49:25.900There's things, you know, it's like there's things into which angels long to look.
00:49:28.620there's things right for us. We're like, Hey, so that whole thing where Daniel prays and then
00:49:33.400Michael comes, but then he's like, you know, like I'm up in Persia for like a half, you know,
00:49:38.060a couple of weeks and had to fight that guy. And now I'm here. Um, we're like, can we have
00:49:42.780timeout? Like we have some details. I'd like to write that down. Um, but we don't get that.
00:49:48.060God doesn't give us that because, and I think the reason is you don't need to know that in order to
00:49:52.520live faithfully. What you do need to know is that that's real and that you're wrestling with
00:49:56.540principalities and powers when you fight your sin when you resist temptation and and that god is
00:50:03.100active right that god is present even when he doesn't seem to be and i think this this is another
00:50:08.020thing maybe with with the narnia chronicles that i found so helpful um and it's actually from that
00:50:12.260the silver chair the silver chair is the one book of the seven where aslan never actually appears
00:50:17.200in narnia itself he's in his own country up on the cliff but he never comes down into narnia
00:50:22.880he only gives them their assignment sends them and then they come back there whereas the other
00:50:28.280ones he always comes into Narnia himself like he leaves you know he leaves the fight or he he
00:50:32.100rescues whatever um he doesn't actually come down and I think that they're Lewis is intentional
00:50:36.640there to kind of say this is a this is a book of sort of divine absence this is a book of Aslan's
00:50:40.800absence but the point is he was guiding them anyway all along he was like they're as they're
00:50:46.740making they're blowing it left and right like missing the signs missing the signs missing the
00:50:50.040signed. And it's like, Aslan's guiding them anyway. He's going to accomplish purposes anyway.
00:50:55.120Right. He is there. It makes me think of, you know, the Voyage of the Dawn Treader with Lucy,
00:50:58.840you know, she does the spell that makes invisible things visible. And all of a sudden Aslan appears
00:51:04.080and, you know, and he essentially says, what makes you think that I wasn't, you know, I was here and
00:51:09.040I keep in step with my own word. So you're reading my magic book. This is my spell. This is my,
00:51:16.060you know, and, um, I'm not going to contradict my own word. And so, um, you made, I didn't come
00:51:21.260to you. Um, I've been here the whole time and you just made me visible by using my own word.
00:51:26.280And so like that he's, that he's always there. So I completely agree with you. The last thing I
00:51:30.720thought about, maybe we can end here, but just as a fellow post-millennial, um, yeah, the, the power
00:51:35.800between, uh, angels and demons. And, and for me, I'm, I'm old fashioned in the sense that, you know,
00:51:40.520like I, I just, God wrote a book and I believe the book, you know, and so I believe in, I'm not
00:51:46.840a biblicist and, you know, in taking that too far. But I believe in six literal day creation.
00:51:52.700I believe in relatively young earth. I believe, I believe in Nephilim. I believe in the sons of
00:51:59.840God, that they weren't kings and princes, but that they were angels. And per the usage in the book
00:52:05.120of Job, sons of God, and that they saw that the daughters of men were attractive. And, and I see
00:52:09.860that as one of Satan's ploy, whether it be, you know, Herod at the time of Christ, you know,
00:52:13.960and killing all the boys or Pharaoh, killing all the Hebrew boys or the Nephilim. I see what I see
00:52:19.260again and again and again is, is Satan knowing the prophecy given in the garden that, you know,
00:52:26.320that the woman will have a seed and he's going to crush your head and Satan trying to pollute
00:52:31.180the line of the seed. He's trying to stop the messianic lineage from happening. And so he's
00:52:37.360doing this by trying to take out whole lines of people or corrupting even bloodlines. And I think
00:52:42.640that's part of what's going on with the Nephilim and these kinds of things. However, the post
00:52:47.520millennial piece, I think that demonic forces are still at play. That is still very much a thing.
00:52:54.320But I think part of the reason why Jesus in his earthly ministry before his crucifixion and
00:52:58.480resurrection is casting out so many demons is almost to say that, you know, showing so much
00:53:06.980the extent of Israel's rebellion, the extent of a demonic presence at that time that Satan is at
00:53:15.140large. But, you know, the parable of, you know, if you're going to plunder the house, you must
00:53:19.200first go in and bind the strong man at the cross and resurrection of Christ, that the strong man
00:53:24.740has been bound and he still has some minions at work. And Satan still does in a sense prowl
00:53:31.880around. I would argue maybe a shorter leash. But, but I guess part of what I'm getting at is we live
00:53:37.860in a magical world. Demonic forces are apart. That's one kind of magic in this, you know,
00:53:42.860different agencies, but it does seem as though that has been severely limited. You've got the
00:53:48.200third Reich as Wilson would say, that could be measured in a matter of months, but you don't
00:53:52.920have Babylon. You don't have Assyria. You don't like something, something objective switched in
00:54:00.040real human history would you would you agree with that yeah that's a good question um i think as
00:54:06.580long as it's not a so i i do think that the spread of the gospel does inhibit limit restrain
00:54:15.500uh even maybe in prison in certain ways how you know again how the mechanisms of how this works
00:54:20.760i don't know um the work of demons insofar as the gospel spreads and everything and but i don't know
00:54:26.760that it's a um it's not a um fixed reality like once you've taken the territory it's now taken
00:54:34.620for good so um in the sense of i agree at one point north africa was largely christian right
00:54:41.120it's where augustine lived there and now it's not um and so the and i you know i think that uh
00:54:47.720a plausible understanding of islam is both as a sort of a christian heresy it's a knockoff of
00:54:53.320christianity um right also demonic influence there um in that kind of imprisonment and so
00:54:59.640and so with that there was sort of like a it is a pitched battle and so even you know with our
00:55:04.740um hopefulness about the penetration of the gospel between the first and second coming of christ
00:55:09.240um there's room for um you know moving the battle line forward and then having and then having times
00:55:15.600where it's in retreat and part of that retreat i guess if if as we're is if the gospel is spreading
00:55:21.360the demons are subdued through our rebellion and apostasy um right they get they get let out again
00:55:29.320the the the gods come back and i think in some ways when you you see that at some level in
00:55:35.140the post even the post-christian west where um there's a sort of a reassertion of pagan of
00:55:41.880paganism and uh and uh you know i've been talking friends about you know the ai everybody's talking
00:55:47.440an AI chatbot thing. And I'm like, if that thing does start talking back to us, Christians should
00:55:51.560not be like wrongly freaked out. It's like, well, what would, what a great mechanism for demons to
00:55:56.300use. Right. Like, it's just, it's just technology. Why wouldn't they be able to manipulate it? And
00:56:00.820so if it does seem like, Hey, it has a mind of its own, like it actually might. Um, that's not
00:56:05.900a crazy thought that like, like, you know, you're, you're, you just think you're asking Google,
00:56:09.600but like, so those are all, I think on the table because, because we're Christians and we believe
00:56:15.660that the world is suffused, not just our own body is suffused with a spiritual reality,
00:56:20.560the soul, the material thing that survives the death of the body. And so also there's other
00:56:27.360kinds of spirits out there and we don't need to fear them in an absolute sense, but there needs
00:56:33.420to be like an acknowledgement of they're on the table and they're at war. And so we too have the
00:56:39.560same sort of zeal, which is first and foremost about our own holiness. I love, you know, it's
00:56:44.960important to remember that the only the weapon that the devil has against us um is only the
00:56:51.460weapons that we give him as christians at this point right like his greatest weapon condemnation
00:56:56.100god disarmed him disarmed the principalities powers they don't have that weapon anymore
00:57:00.900so now it's all trickery manipulation power games but like he who is in us is greater than he than
00:57:07.340the one who's in the world that's that's the promise so we don't need to fear but we need to
00:57:10.700actually live into it through our own uh devotion and holiness and pursuit of of christ amen and
00:57:18.660even apart from demonic influence with like chat gpt i think of um it's just one more example that
00:57:26.200uh you know for me within the presuppositional framework that uh that nothing is neutral and
00:57:32.640that um that you know that i so you know right now the point that we're at with narrow ai you
00:57:38.600You know, we haven't, it's not AGI, it's not transhumanism.
00:57:42.580So I personally, my position is I think some of these things actually are impossible because man can only, we're lowercase C creators.
00:57:48.920God alone creates X in the helo out of nothing.
00:57:51.120We can only take the materials in the world and in the cosmos that God gave to us.
00:57:54.440And I think there's a lot more we can do.
00:57:55.720I think, you know, the sky is the limit.
00:57:57.600There's materials that we haven't even gotten to.
00:57:59.240You know, some moon, you know, floating around this planet over here that has some kind of, you know, precious metal that can create this.
00:58:06.260You know, like, so I, I think, you know, the sky's the limit with that.
00:58:09.240I personally don't think that, um, that, that we'll ever be able to create AI at the point