The NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - A Christian Primer On Magic In Fantasy⧸Entertainment ｜ with Joe Rigney

00:00:00.000 All right, listen, guys, I get it. Many of you are unable to financially support this ministry

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00:00:39.980 For several decades now, Christians and conservatives alike have surrendered the 0.78

00:00:45.720 hill of media, entertainment, and the arts. Christians have gotten rather lousy when it 1.00

00:00:52.940 comes to telling good stories. I think that in our desperate attempt to hedge our bets, 1.00

00:00:59.540 to keep from being defiled by the world, we've surrendered things like fantasy and magic. That's

00:01:07.700 one of the things that we're going to talk about in particular in this episode of Theology Applied.

00:01:13.520 What is a Christian view of magic? How should Christians feel about certain fantasy novels that

00:01:20.140 contain elements of magic, like the Narnia series or the Lord of the Rings. Our special guest is

00:01:28.020 Dr. Joe Rigney, and I think you're in for a treat.

00:01:33.240 Applying God's word to every aspect of life. This is Theology Applied.

00:01:42.880 All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied. I am your host, Pastor Joel

00:01:47.220 Webin with Right Response Ministries. And in this episode, I'm privileged to welcome for the first

00:01:52.840 time as a special guest, Joe Rigney. Joe, would you go ahead and introduce yourselves?

00:01:58.260 Yeah. Yeah. There's only one of me. Yeah. No, I'm the president of Bethlehem College and Seminary

00:02:05.540 here in Minneapolis. I was born and raised in West Texas and moved up here after college in 2005

00:02:13.440 uh, in order to do a pastoral apprenticeship here at Bethlehem. And then, uh, we thought we were

00:02:18.440 coming for two years and then, uh, we ended up staying around now for 17, my wife and I. And so

00:02:23.020 we raised three boys here. Uh, so we got 13, 11 and four. And, uh, I was a professor for 12 of

00:02:29.760 those years and then have been the president now for about two and, uh, and love it. I'm also a

00:02:34.360 pastor, uh, at a, at city's church in St. Paul. Uh, and, uh, and I write for desiring God pretty

00:02:41.220 regularly. Great. Um, did you, did you actually know Tim Cain? I think he might've done a similar

00:02:48.340 pastoral internship around the same time. Yeah. I knew Tim back in the day before he, uh, he's,

00:02:53.160 uh, uh, came up here, did a residency and then, uh, it's now out in San Diego. Uh, and, uh, yeah,

00:02:59.500 we've been out there to see them a couple of years ago when we first planted our church,

00:03:02.600 kind of went out and did some, did some stuff there, but yeah, I love Tim and Molly. Cool.

00:03:06.520 Yeah. I, I was, I pastored and planted a church in San Diego for a while and then handed it over

00:03:11.120 and I knew Tim when I was there.

00:03:12.340 Yeah, that's great.

00:03:13.820 All right, so what we wanted to discuss

00:03:15.760 is your book, Live Like a Narnian.

00:03:20.260 Can you give our listeners,

00:03:22.120 if they haven't read the book,

00:03:23.240 just the brief synopsis

00:03:24.820 and your purpose of writing the book,

00:03:26.120 what you were trying to accomplish?

00:03:27.840 Yeah, that was the first book.

00:03:29.500 I've written about five or six books now.

00:03:31.500 That was the first one,

00:03:32.360 and it was the most fun.

00:03:34.640 The other ones have been work.

00:03:36.060 That one just kind of I pulled and it came.

00:03:39.020 uh so about 10 years ago i'd been kind of teaching classes on uh on narnia uh kind of here in the

00:03:45.120 church and uh and at bethlehem and had just kind of lots of thoughts about the ways that um these

00:03:52.160 books had shaped me as a christian um not just as sort of you know i read them as a kid with my

00:03:57.040 my mom uh and then i remember picking them up again in college probably to avoid homework it

00:04:02.140 was like hey i've got a paper to do and that book over there i'm gonna go read some some narnia

00:04:06.400 instead. But really kind of beginning like 07, 08, kind of really got back into them more as like

00:04:12.460 legitimate literature, not just sort of children's stories, but that there's really

00:04:16.840 profound things happening that Lewis is doing. And so began to put some of my thoughts together,

00:04:23.420 taught some classes on it, and then put together a book that was basically how does living like a

00:04:29.120 Narnian basically mean living like a faithful Christian? What do these books do? What do they

00:04:34.240 get into your bloodstream as a kid, because I think that's what Lewis is intending for them to

00:04:38.640 do is he's writing stories that children will love and they do, but that also are doing things to

00:04:45.240 them that are shaping them, molding them, setting trajectories, habits of their mind, habits of

00:04:49.160 their heart, so that when they grow up and they sort of encounter Christ, if they're raised in a

00:04:54.720 Christian home, they've maybe known Jesus all along, but there's a way in which they've been

00:04:58.060 prepared to know Jesus more deeply. And then as adults, there's stuff in there that I find that

00:05:03.520 I'm like, this is the most profound thing I think I've ever read on this subject.

00:05:07.060 And it's in a children's book.

00:05:08.980 And so basically that book was an effort to, in a couple of short chapters, kind of two

00:05:14.280 or three chapters per chronicle, just kind of lay out some of those lessons, some of

00:05:19.120 those truths and the way that those seven books have shaped me as a husband, as a father,

00:05:25.900 as a pastor, now as a professor.

00:05:28.660 That was the basic goal.

00:05:30.840 Cool.

00:05:30.940 So 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.

00:05:46.540 One 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.

00:05:57.820 um with with that idea of free narnians do you do you see that the narnian experience as being

00:06:04.760 a freedom that comes from a plural pluralistic society or do you see it as no the freedom comes

00:06:10.580 because there's clearly one king over all of it yeah um it's it's the latter it's it but it's an

00:06:18.220 interesting way that lewis does it so narnia you know people wrestle a lot of times with you know

00:06:22.280 how christian should we think about it is it an allegory and lewis says it's not an allegory he

00:06:27.060 calls it a supposal so it's basically imagine that god became incarnated in that world just

00:06:33.060 like he became incarnated in this world but that world has talking animals what would that what

00:06:36.820 would that be like so just it's kind of it's that kind of imaginary deal but it actually is

00:06:40.840 structured a little more like the old testament in some way so narnia functions in its content in

00:06:46.300 its in its world um the kingdom of narnia is like israel um and then there's sort of these friendly

00:06:51.380 nations that are next to it like arkenland um which would be sort of like you know remember

00:06:56.560 when the king of Tyre helps Solomon build a temple.

00:07:01.060 And so this is like, they're not Israelites, but they're friendly.

00:07:04.180 And then there's sort of the great nations around it that are more of the threat. 0.99

00:07:07.660 So you've got Kalorman, which is, you know, 0.90

00:07:10.180 Lewis depicts very clearly as a kind of Middle Eastern Turkish empire type place

00:07:15.820 that worships other gods and is tyrannical. 0.98

00:07:19.740 And there's a despotism built into it.

00:07:22.040 And then you've kind of got the giants to the north,

00:07:25.200 um which are their own sort of um you know uh different different animal so the kingdoms are

00:07:32.200 set up that way in a very kind of old testament sort of way but the the in terms of narnia itself

00:07:37.800 i think it's i think it's in the line the witch in the wardrobe after the four kids become king

00:07:42.840 it basically says they made good laws and basically minded their own business um you know

00:07:47.120 kept people from from being busy bodies um and so there is a way in which the sort of political

00:07:52.880 picture in Narnia is one driven by we serve Aslan, Aslan governs, and yet there is a real

00:08:01.300 sense of freedom and liberty that is a sharp contrast to Kalorman with its more slavish, 0.97

00:08:09.260 servile, everybody's, you know, there's hierarchy in Narnia, but it's more of the dance 1.00

00:08:14.880 versus the goose step where, you know, you're at the bottom and so I can step on you,

00:08:21.340 you have to bow and scrape um that sort of thing and and lewis seems to think that the kind of god

00:08:27.800 you worship shapes the kind of social order you'll have um and uh and that comes up pretty

00:08:33.380 most clearly i think in like voyage of the dawn treader is a good example where you know as they're

00:08:38.780 journeying and they get out some of those islands and they've got slavery on them uh and and there

00:08:43.420 the slavery is presented as sort of a progressive thing like hey this is sort of progress this is

00:08:48.440 um you know you can't turn back the clock the the governor gumpus um of jackson's you can't

00:08:53.700 turn back the clock um this is progress man and uh and caspian's like uh yes we can and and sets

00:09:01.420 everybody free and so there's sort of that like progressive element there uh within uh of course

00:09:06.780 in his boy you get the contrast with the the colormans and and the narnians when they show up

00:09:11.740 one of the things shasta notes as they're walking through the first time he sees narnians he is one

00:09:16.320 but, or he's Arkenlander, but he sees Narnians is that they're walking with like a free swing

00:09:20.260 in their arms. They're, they're, um, they, um, they're whistling. They have, you know,

00:09:25.740 the colors of their clothes is very different and they just seem to have a different quality

00:09:29.940 about them. And he said, uh, they, they look like they were ready to be friends with anyone

00:09:34.540 who was friendly and don't give a, it didn't give a fig for anyone who wasn't. And which is

00:09:39.700 basically my philosophy of friendship in a nutshell. It's like, I want to be friends with

00:09:42.860 anyone who's friendly and i don't don't give a fig for anyone who's not and so there's there's that

00:09:46.600 quality that comes from who their lord is who their king is um that runs all the way through the books

00:09:53.060 yeah yeah um no i like what you said in terms of you know the god shapes you know the god that you

00:10:00.000 worship shapes the way that you live um thinking of like you know even the last battle with you

00:10:04.660 know tash versus yes um versus aslan what do you know i i'd be remiss if i didn't ask you uh what's

00:10:11.240 take on you know where lewis talks about i forget the the character's name but the individual you

00:10:15.960 know he's been serving me aslan this whole time but by a different name yeah so emeth uh the

00:10:21.880 the faithful clorman um i do think lewis thinks something like this is true um and uh and that

00:10:28.400 sort of i don't know if you call it like the noble pagan idea i think that he thinks is there a way

00:10:32.740 um he kind of he kind of is in that stream i do think it's important to recognize though that in

00:10:38.560 it is more this is like an old testament world more so than a new testament world in some kind

00:10:43.320 of weird way like there's no narnian great commission like there's no you know go go

00:10:47.840 therefore and make disciples of aslan everywhere you go like they're not the narnians are not

00:10:52.020 called to go evangelize the clormans there's not quite the same new testament thing happening and

00:10:57.580 so the the rules are set up a little different so is this more like um the queen of is is emeth

00:11:04.400 more like the queen of sheba who eventually finds her way to solomon's palace and emeth just finds

00:11:08.200 away. So there's a little bit of that. I think I heard Doug Wilson one time say this isn't a swing

00:11:13.960 and a miss, but it is a foul ball on Lewis's part. Okay. So it's like, yeah, okay. That's probably

00:11:20.220 not the way it is, but that's, but Lewis probably did think something along those lines, or at least

00:11:24.960 hope for something along those lines. Right. Right. Okay. Well, so one of the things that

00:11:33.520 you talked about was um you know before we started recording was uh in the silver chair um puddle

00:11:39.400 glum and his kind of pessimistic spirit but uh the way that he stands up uh to the witch you want to

00:11:45.840 flesh that out for us a little bit yes this is something i've been working on there's a chapter

00:11:49.120 in live like an artian where i i talk about this this really important scene and i just think as

00:11:54.740 time has gone on you know that book's been out for about a decade almost now and that scene has

00:11:59.720 become more profound. And there's layers and depths to it that I don't think I recognized

00:12:03.940 when I wrote it. And I'm trying to work those out. But the basics of it is, there's sort of

00:12:10.900 a modern narrative that Christians buy into that says, the world in the old days used to be

00:12:17.200 enchanted. Middle Ages, Reformation was an enchanted world that believed in both the physical

00:12:22.940 and the spiritual, angels, demons, fairies, dryads, all of that sort of stuff. And then

00:12:28.320 the enlightenment came along modernity came along and basically disenchanted the world

00:12:32.540 and it basically debunked all of the all of the spiritual stuff and there's a kind of common

00:12:38.700 narrative that christians do and that and that then for us as modern christians are always kind

00:12:42.320 of going how do we re-enchant the world how do we re-enchant it the world was enchanted then it was

00:12:47.020 disenchanted and now our call in the 21st century is to kind of re-enchant it and uh that's a pretty

00:12:53.060 common uh you know max weber has that as a kind of his disenchantment thesis and uh charles taylor

00:12:58.440 kind of leans into that with some of his stuff on a secular age the interesting about lewis is that

00:13:03.200 he actually doesn't think that he thinks not that the world has been disenchanted but that we've been

00:13:08.620 put under a dark enchantment so as he thinks about modernity it's not that the world used to be

00:13:13.360 enchanted now it's not it's that the world used to be enchanted sort of in a good way well or

00:13:17.640 semi good way there's dark spirits there too but that now what we experience as sort of the drab

00:13:23.660 dullness of modern life is actually itself a kind of dark spell like we're under the spell of a dark

00:13:29.360 sorceress and so in silver chair he kind of depicts this is there in underland and the prince prince

00:13:35.000 really has been under a spell for you know 10 years and then he gets that they rest set him

00:13:39.040 free and then she comes back and she starts trying to put him to sleep and um and so she's got some

00:13:45.420 some magic powder she throws in the fire it gives a drowsy smell that kind of gets into your blood

00:13:50.180 and the more it gets into you the less you notice it and the more you're kind of coming under the

00:13:53.240 spell um she's playing a little bit of like soft music from from from thing happening and then just

00:13:58.560 starts asking them questions and the questions are basically uh sort of the modern ideologies

00:14:03.920 that we see around us that basically say um religion is just a fairy tale um for children

00:14:10.180 to help you cope with the fact that life is hard and you'll die so you know and or that um

00:14:15.500 god is just a projection of human ideals and desires into the sky so in the in the story it's

00:14:21.740 um you know what's uh what's a lamp she says what's the sun they talk about the sun and she

00:14:25.960 says what's the sun what's that what are you talking about and and they say well have you

00:14:28.900 seen a lamp and she's like yeah it's like well a sun is like a big lamp in the sky that hangs

00:14:33.920 from the sky and she's like oh no see you just took a lamp and you imagined a bigger and better

00:14:38.500 lamp. And then does the same thing with, with the Aslan, with Aslan the lion and says, what's a

00:14:43.780 lion? It's like a cat. You like cats? Yeah, of course I love cats. Well, a lion is like a big

00:14:48.300 cat with his mane, you know, terrifically strong. And she's like, oh, see here again, you're just

00:14:53.260 taking things from my world, the real world, the sort of physical world that you can see,

00:14:57.440 and you're just projecting it. And this is the sort of thing that guys like Freud and

00:15:01.300 Feuerbach and some of those, you know, late 19th, early 20th century thinkers would say is

00:15:06.460 All 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.

00:15:13.760 And then as we get older, we sort of realize dad's not strong enough to do that.

00:15:17.280 But I still have this sort of psychological need to be cared for and somebody to be looking out for me.

00:15:21.860 Things are going to be OK. And so religion is basically a projection of that desire, fear, wish into the sky.

00:15:28.700 And so now we have God, our father. That's sort of like the debunking of religion.

00:15:32.980 And 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. 0.76

00:15:43.520 And it's playing on a reality that's basically true, right?

00:15:46.480 That there is a connection between divine fatherhood and human fatherhood.

00:15:49.600 It's just got the projection the wrong way, right?

00:15:51.760 She 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?

00:16:00.480 Your dad is like a is meant to be a mini representation of God.

00:16:04.180 That'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.

00:16:09.660 That'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.

00:16:16.720 So there is a real connection that's just got it backwards.

00:16:18.720 and uh and so that's sort of this modern enchantment and and lewis presents it as the um

00:16:25.140 the the children and puddle glum and the prince all basically start to fall under the spell and

00:16:30.100 they go to sleep that they and there's a relief as they go to sleep as they kind of give in

00:16:34.360 it feels like oh this feels good to kind of give up to to the truth of things or or quote unquote

00:16:39.520 reality the real world um and she gets them to sort of repeat the catechism she says things like

00:16:45.200 there is no sun and then they echo back there is no sun there never was any sun there never was

00:16:51.040 any sun and so there's this way of like the repetition of it sort of reinforces the enchantment

00:16:55.620 and this is this is very similar to the way that you know you go to a um you go to a museum you go

00:17:00.640 to you watch anything on tv and just sort of the godlessness is sort of assumed and you're supposed

00:17:06.140 to repeat back the narrative you you repeat back every science documentary right 65 million years

00:17:12.620 ago, right? You're going to have all, they're going to, they're going to recite the story.

00:17:15.880 They're going to recite the catechism and they're going to expect you to recite it back. And that

00:17:19.300 becomes a kind of mythology. This is how Lewis actually talks about it in some of his essays

00:17:23.140 is it's like a mythology. Evolution is a modern myth. He has an essay called the funeral of a

00:17:29.000 great myth in which he says, the real appeal of evolution is not to your reason, but it's to your

00:17:34.660 imagination. It's a, it's a mythological, it's the underdog story, classic underdog story of,

00:17:39.780 you know this black void cosmos and then life kind of pops up and like the little he's the

00:17:45.560 infant hero who's going to struggle against all odds and overcome it's like rocky but like life

00:17:50.640 and then he does it again when like now you have humanity with like these giants and you know 0.90

00:17:55.740 dragons and monsters and like this little bitty biped is going to be the one that rules everything

00:17:59.540 and and it's appealing to all of the pathos and that grandeur of a myth and that's actually what

00:18:05.860 captures our imaginations and becomes the background furniture or the mood music in the

00:18:12.280 story that sort of shapes us and that even Christians can kind of fall prey to. We can

00:18:16.240 start to fall asleep. So there's this really great, it'd be an exaggeration to say this,

00:18:21.820 but not much of one. It's probably the most profound analysis of modernity that I've ever

00:18:27.140 read. And it's like 10 pages in a children's book written in the 1940s. It's just this amazing

00:18:34.240 thing and then you know the the the glory of it is then how puddle glum you know as everybody's

00:18:40.900 finally you know giving in they're succumbing to the enchantment puddle glum breaks it right by

00:18:46.180 sticking his foot in the fire and having this you know glorious act of defiance uh so it's a it's a

00:18:51.080 beautiful picture uh i think of what what the struggle of faith is in the modern world and how

00:18:56.440 we can fight together that's great um as you were talking about you know sigmund freud it made me

00:19:01.440 think of, I think it was R.C. Sproul who once was commentating on that and saying that, you know,

00:19:06.100 one of Freud's, you know, popular, more popular arguments to kind of dissuade people from the

00:19:12.200 notion of God was to say that, you know, God was invented in the imaginations of men because like

00:19:17.700 what you were saying about fathers, right? So it's like, I have an earthly father. He's my hero. I

00:19:21.860 start to get older. I see his flaws, his deficiencies, his inability, you know, to care for

00:19:27.660 me when I'm a 30 year old grown man. But I still have this, you know, innate need for protection

00:19:34.320 and provision, a father figure. And so I'm projecting from, you know, from fathers on the

00:19:39.860 ground to, you know, this divine father in the sky, rather than the opposite, which is actually

00:19:44.800 the truth that there is the father of lights from whom every good and perfect gift comes.

00:19:49.220 And, and our human fathers are actually meant to be a reflection of the one true father of all.

00:19:56.040 And so all that being said, you know, Freud is making that argument.

00:19:59.780 And he says, you know, that the reason why people invented God or the notion of God is

00:20:04.020 because as they're getting older and those kinds of things, they recognize, you know,

00:20:08.160 and it is kind of that fatherly, you know, in the protective sphere, they realize that

00:20:12.560 there are certain threats that cannot be appealed to, right?

00:20:16.700 So if there's a mugger or a robber, you know, or a murderer who finds you in a back alley,

00:20:21.940 um there's there's he's an evil man a malicious man but he's a man there's um there's personhood

00:20:27.480 there and so there's something that you could actually appeal to you could plead for your life

00:20:31.440 you could beg you could try to barter or trade or i'll give you all of my money if you spare my life

00:20:36.420 um but how do you barter with a storm you know how do you how do you appeal to um to the better

00:20:42.880 nature of uh of cancer you know and like you you don't and so then what people did was they tried

00:20:49.620 to take these impersonal threats that are inescapable, like a storm, like famine, like

00:20:56.600 a drought, like cancer, like sickness, like disease.

00:21:00.660 And, you know, and as humanity was facing, you know, whether it be a plague or whatever

00:21:05.120 it might be, these natural disasters, they needed to find a way to personify them so

00:21:10.740 that there would be something, someone, namely to appeal to.

00:21:14.960 And so the notion of God was invented out of the imaginations of men, um, to, so that

00:21:20.480 they would at least have some sense, some silver lining, some sense of hope in the midst

00:21:24.820 of desperate situations, you know?

00:21:27.200 So there's a famine and even, you know, the pagan notion, it's still a deity.

00:21:31.240 It's not the true God, the triune God, but this sense of, well, if, if we make enough

00:21:36.200 sacrifices, then, you know, then the famine will go away, you know, or that propitiation

00:21:40.700 kind of idea, you know, that, um, that there's a God, uh, this, the storm is, is, um, there's,

00:21:47.360 there's a person in the storm, um, you know, or behind the storm. And so the storm is this

00:21:53.440 inanimate object that can't be appealed to, but there's a person behind it. And, uh, the gods

00:21:58.080 are angry or this God is angry and we need a propitiation and atonement, a payment, um, to

00:22:04.420 satiate his wrath. We've done something wrong. And if we can satiate his wrath, that at least gives

00:22:09.940 you this sense of hope, other than, you know, the alternative being that there's just a vicious

00:22:15.320 hurricane and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it except for a hunker down and just

00:22:19.380 and then wish upon a star, you know, just, you know, hope for good, you know, good luck. And so

00:22:25.660 that was Sigmund Freud's idea. But Sproul, I like what he said. He said, if that were the case,

00:22:29.880 that would explain the invention of many gods, but it would not explain the invention of the

00:22:35.400 Christian God. And he uses, you know, the example of the disciples on the boat with Jesus in the

00:22:40.720 midst of a storm and Jesus, you know, he speaks, he has authority over wind and waves. But the

00:22:46.420 problem with Sigmund Freud's theory is that the disciples, it says there was a great storm and

00:22:50.780 they were afraid. But then after the storm is calmed by Jesus, it says they were exceedingly

00:22:56.560 afraid. So now they're actually more afraid because what they're afraid of is no longer the

00:23:01.540 storm, but this God who has power, who's more powerful than the storm. The Christian God is a

00:23:08.160 terrible are his judgments, right? He is a God to be feared. He is a fearsome God. It's a terrible 1.00

00:23:14.100 thing to fall into the hands of the living God. And so the triune God, the Christian God would not 1.00

00:23:20.000 be a logical answer to the fear of inanimate tragedies and calamities like a storm. You would 1.00

00:23:28.360 want to come up with a nice god you know sugar and spice and everything nice but the triune god

00:23:33.420 of the bible is is not that god um he's actually more fearsome and so anyway sprawl was arguing and

00:23:39.440 saying that um freud's you know his theory doesn't account for the triune god um the only thing that

00:23:45.580 accounts for that is the fact that he's real yeah it's true yeah the uh lewis has some great um

00:23:51.780 essays where he he tackles this you know one thing he notes and this is this is actually a precursor

00:23:56.100 to um some of the conversations we have about either whether it's post-modernism or um critical

00:24:02.220 race theory or some of that that sort of stuff lewis is dealing with the subjectivism that kind

00:24:06.920 of runs through all of that and uh so when dealing with the freudians or he actually uses marxists as

00:24:13.300 an example who basically try to debunk ideas by showing the psychological needs that they meet

00:24:19.320 so the freudians have that one the marxists say you know you're all a part of the class or whatever

00:24:23.500 Now we would do identity politics in the same vein. And they basically say that the trick is assume that your opponent is wrong.

00:24:31.340 So 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,

00:24:39.860 what sort of, you know, it's a power play or you, you know, you believe that because you're a man or whatever.

00:24:45.420 And and then once you've kind of shown the psychological conditions that led them to accept it, you can then dismiss it.

00:24:54.360 And Lewis says, that's a fun game, but can we all play?

00:24:58.120 Like, there's a way, like, that's a universal acid.

00:25:01.900 Because do the Marxists have psychological needs that their philosophy is meeting?

00:25:07.320 Does, you know, do the Freudians? 0.74

00:25:09.380 Everybody, you know, if Christianity is sort of a wish fulfillment dream, 0.96

00:25:14.300 religion's a wish fulfillment dream, we don't want to, we're going to die,

00:25:16.980 we want to survive after death, and we want God to look out for us.

00:25:19.480 So it's wish fulfillment.

00:25:20.740 He says, well, aren't there fear fulfillment dreams too?

00:25:23.500 um, like that it works the other way. And, and might there be some atheists who don't want God

00:25:29.700 to be there? And that's precisely the ground of their atheism in terms of how they came to believe

00:25:33.840 it. And his point in sort of turning the tables is not to say, these are reasons to not be an

00:25:39.160 atheist. He's to say, this is a stupid way of arguing. This is assuming it's a fallacy. He 1.00

00:25:45.160 calls it vulvarism. He invents a name for it called vulvarism. Um, and he says my, the, the

00:25:50.520 The 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.

00:26:07.940 And she responded to that by saying, you just believe that because you're a man.

00:26:11.900 And Bolver said, you know, the world will be at my fingertips.

00:26:16.340 I don't actually have to disprove anybody.

00:26:18.580 I don't have to deal in questions of true or false.

00:26:20.860 I just have to explain why someone might believe something from in psychological terms and then treat it as refuted.

00:26:27.940 And then the world will open up. And so Ezekiel Bulber became one of the makers of the 20th century.

00:26:33.660 Right. So Lewis Lewis names this fallacy and says Christians can play this. 0.98

00:26:37.860 It actually can be useful sometimes in pastoral situations like are your doubts, say if I'm dealing with someone who's dealing with doubts,

00:26:44.940 Are 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?

00:26:54.760 Right.

00:26:55.340 That like that we do motivated reasoning is a thing, but it doesn't actually tell you whether something's true or false.

00:27:01.480 And 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.

00:27:13.940 and then therefore you won't see anything.

00:27:16.780 If you see through everything,

00:27:18.480 everything becomes invisible

00:27:19.740 and you don't see,

00:27:20.920 you're just, you might as well be blind.

00:27:22.780 Right.

00:27:23.660 It's funny because even,

00:27:25.060 so yeah, first like,

00:27:26.780 hey, that's a fun game.

00:27:27.700 Can I play too?

00:27:28.680 So like that, you know,

00:27:29.880 that you can, you know, 0.82

00:27:30.640 Christians can play the same game, 0.89

00:27:31.820 but even with that, 0.99

00:27:32.740 and it is a logical fallacy.

00:27:34.020 So Christians have to do more than this

00:27:35.560 in disproving false, 0.53

00:27:38.360 you know, false truths.

00:27:40.100 But even by that standard,

00:27:42.860 by that standard,

00:27:43.660 I 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.

00:27:55.020 They're inherently, they're not evil.

00:27:57.700 There'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.

00:28:13.660 Um, Freud is it all three of these, the need that that's being trying to be met is, um,

00:28:20.640 is basically in a, um, assuaging of, of guilt for desiring something that's actually not

00:28:27.120 a virtue, but a vice.

00:28:28.040 So like I would say, you know, in the case of Marx, it's, um, it's, it's condoning envy.

00:28:33.920 Yeah.

00:28:34.500 In the case of, of Freud, it's condoning lust.

00:28:37.660 In the case of Darwin, um, I think it's, uh, condoning guilt, um, right.

00:28:43.060 Like that God doesn't exist. And therefore man is the measure of all things. You know, I can,

00:28:48.000 I can do these things where the gospel doesn't condone guilt. The gospel covers guilt. It pays

00:28:54.320 for guilt. It deal, it actually deals with guilt. You know, that like the Christian faith, you know,

00:28:59.500 there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, but, but the gospel is not a guilt

00:29:04.480 free zone. As a Christian, I feel more guilt now for, for my sin than I, than I did before I was

00:29:11.100 saved. The difference is not that we live in a garden that's a guilt-free zone. It's just that

00:29:16.520 there's a tree that I can go to, to have my guilt actually paid for and dealt with. And so I actually

00:29:23.800 have a heightened sense of guilt as, you know, post-conversion than I did before, but I have a

00:29:29.700 place to go. And so anyway, so I was just thinking that as you were talking. One other question that

00:29:38.280 I'd love to hear your thoughts on because part of the frustration for me is, you know, so we

00:29:45.220 talked a little bit before we hit record, you know, my, my, you know, personally, my theological

00:29:49.420 convictions, I would be more in the Kuyperian sense. And when I say Kuyper, like there's plenty

00:29:53.900 of things by Abraham Kuyper that I don't agree with, but I say I'm Kuyperian in the same way

00:29:57.620 that I say I'm a Calvinist, right? I'm one of the few individuals who've actually read John

00:30:01.880 Calvin's Institutes. And I don't agree with everything that Calvin says, but when someone

00:30:05.980 says they're a calvinist they're not saying i agree with every jot and tittle of the institute

00:30:09.700 right they're saying i agree with the five points yeah and and every square and then kuyper's it's

00:30:15.580 every square inch exactly so when i say i'm kyperian i think there's a lot of good things

00:30:19.540 that kuyper gave us but i mean it's funny like it's some of the kuyper's sentiments are what i

00:30:24.660 would consider to be anti-kyperian like he kind of has a pretty low view of art as an example

00:30:29.800 you know and i'm like wait that's not kuyper you're not keeping it with kuyper and you know

00:30:33.640 but anyways, so Kuyperian is every square inch. Exactly. So all of Christ for all of life,

00:30:38.260 not just the home and the church, you know, but, but every sphere of life, we want to see the

00:30:43.100 gospel and the law of God in its first use, revealing our need for a savior. Its second

00:30:47.940 use being a restraint, a shield, you know, against not changing the heart, but, but holding

00:30:52.080 back outward manifestations of sin that the world would be a better place to live in. And the third

00:30:57.000 use that, that the law of God, we delight in it, that the law of God is bad news in its first use

00:31:02.840 that it shows us we need a savior, but it's not bad news in the third use. We delight in the law

00:31:07.040 of God. It's a compass, a guide, a lamp unto our feet, showing the Christian how to respond

00:31:12.320 in love. If you love me, you obey me and how to respond in love out of gratitude for the free

00:31:18.980 salvation we have in Christ alone. And so all that being said, my point is, you know, with this

00:31:24.000 Kuyperian, you know, applying the law and gospel to every sphere of life, I'm constantly talking 0.89

00:31:30.980 about the need for Christians to redeem the arts and culture and media and entertainment and

00:31:36.600 everything in medicine. My goodness, we need Christian doctors and politics to be sure and 0.98

00:31:42.140 all these things, but particularly with the arts and media and story, right? Christians have gotten 1.00

00:31:47.060 really bad with story. You know, conservatives are really bad with story. And I think part of

00:31:50.800 it is like the Ben Shapiro sentiment, right? My facts don't care about your feelings because we

00:31:54.960 have the true content. We don't feel like we need to dress it up just, but, but a lot of people

00:32:00.200 aren't won, won over by pie charts. You know what I mean? Pie charts, like maybe true, but it's not,

00:32:06.160 it doesn't grab, you know, it's, it's gotta be that the Puritan view of the pulpit, right? Light

00:32:10.720 and heat, you know, the pathos, you know, of, of, of the preacher and, and that's the way God

00:32:16.400 created us. And so with that, you know, I'm constantly encouraging Christians, make stories,

00:32:20.660 let's make movies, let's, let's write books, let's, and not just books on, you know, penal

00:32:25.640 substitutionary atonement, praise God. And I'm sure there's more work to be done. Charles Hodge

00:32:30.700 seems sufficient to me, but let's write fantasy. And this is what I come up against is I've noticed

00:32:38.760 that it's a very, very thin margin. If you had like a Venn diagram, the circles barely overlap.

00:32:45.060 There's your progressive individuals, non-Christians, unbelievers, and then some of them

00:32:50.220 may be professing Christians that are unbelievers and some professing Christians that are just in

00:32:54.200 sin and confused. And then, you know, so the progressive circle and then the conservative

00:32:58.480 circle and not all conservatives are Christians, but, but I would argue more, many more in this

00:33:03.900 circle are actually, you know, Christians. And then, and then the place where it overlaps is

00:33:08.400 where I'm trying to live and where I'm trying to encourage others because most of the people in

00:33:13.560 the conservative circle are, have the bunker mentality. Jesus is going to come back on

00:33:17.220 Thursday. The world is destined by God to only get worse and worse until he does. And that

00:33:23.100 eschatology influences the way they live in the world. And so when you think of like,

00:33:27.620 you know, like independent fundamental Baptist would be an example, you know, like, you know,

00:33:33.080 you don't, you don't drink or chew or date girls who do, you know, and we're not even going to go

00:33:37.700 to movie theaters. And I've noticed that like, so I'm highly theologically and culturally and

00:33:42.200 politically conservative. And so I attract my ministry, my church, I'm a local pastor as well.

00:33:47.040 we attract people who are, you know, anti-vaccine for COVID, which I, I'm anti-vaccine for COVID

00:33:53.140 also, you know, but, but people who are much, much more anti, you know, certain things than I am. 1.00

00:33:59.480 And then I start talking about the need for, I want to see Christians write fantasy books with

00:34:04.440 magic, like Narnia. And some of the conservative guys lose their mind. They're like, like, there,

00:34:10.560 there are a lot of Christians who are very conservative. They like me because my conservative

00:34:14.400 takes on things um but they they won't like this episode there's people who watch this and be like

00:34:19.420 joel is pro narnia yeah yeah that's witchcraft right talk talk about how can yeah what's a

00:34:25.840 christian argument for you know what i mean can you help me with that yeah yeah for sure um you

00:34:30.120 know there's a chapter in live like a narnia where i talk about you know lewis does the deep magic

00:34:33.760 and deeper magic and and uh and thinking through more clearly what do we mean by magic um i think

00:34:40.660 that if um you know many of the things that we know there's there's a all christians believe at

00:34:46.760 some level in magic because you believe in miracles right if magic just means um an exertion

00:34:52.860 of power that's sort of unexplained and undefined like in other words you don't you don't know the

00:34:56.620 mechanism you don't know how it worked you just know that it worked um jesus healing someone or

00:35:01.040 multiplying you know there was a little bread and then there was a lot of bread um that that there's

00:35:06.040 an element of if you saw that if you if you like right now if you walk down the street and someone

00:35:11.040 was like you see you know 5 000 people on a hillside and a guy's got a little bowl of bread

00:35:16.180 and fish and then all of a sudden everybody's eating you're going witchcraft that's magic now

00:35:22.720 now i'm saying that not to say jesus was some kind of you know um sorcerer or something like

00:35:27.840 that what i'm saying is that the exert that kind of exertion of power um in the scriptures um is

00:35:34.080 can be good. Like, and it's, and it has to do with what's the source of the power? Who's wielding

00:35:39.640 the power? What's the purpose for which they're wielding it? All of those kinds of questions

00:35:43.020 become relevant. Is it, is it a power that you have sort of like as a person that like is,

00:35:48.600 you're over it, like it's a power over, or is it a power of like under, like, you know,

00:35:53.780 God, I thank you that you've, you hear me. And then here we go. So it's an answer to prayer and

00:35:58.320 an appeal to ultimate divine power. So, you know, I love what Nate Wilson says that the first wizard

00:36:05.400 duel in literature is in the book of Exodus. You know, Moses with, you know, with a staff that can

00:36:11.460 turn into a snake walks into Pharaoh's court and, and then you have a wizard duel between the

00:36:16.760 sorcerers of Egypt and Moses and there, and it's, you know, for the first couple of rounds, it's

00:36:21.800 tit for tat. He does it, they do it. He does it, they do it. And then at some point he does it 0.50

00:36:25.860 And they're like, we can't do that.

00:36:28.940 Right.

00:36:29.740 Watch out, Pharaoh.

00:36:30.800 And Pharaoh doesn't listen.

00:36:32.000 But like there's that escalating.

00:36:34.120 And in both cases, you have sorcerers tapping into demonic power.

00:36:37.820 But then you have Moses, the servant of the Most High God.

00:36:40.280 You have Moses, the servant of Yahweh.

00:36:42.180 And it's a wizard's duel.

00:36:43.300 It's like it's actually the foundation in sort of like the Western imagination for that scene.

00:36:47.700 Gandalf, Dumbledore, all of those guys.

00:36:50.480 Like what's the original?

00:36:51.320 It's Moses with his magic staff.

00:36:53.960 I'm thinking of the Red Sea now. 0.96

00:36:55.320 you know the israelites have already passed over and now the egyptians are trying to do it i'm just

00:36:59.320 picturing moses saying you shall not pass right puts his well and all he does does is and i mean

00:37:05.840 you see this in the battles you know like in the when the israelites are fighting amalekites

00:37:10.140 and you know joshua's down there fighting moses up on the mountain with aaron and her and it's

00:37:15.140 like as long as his arms are up they win he gets tired and they lose and it's like right like win

00:37:20.760 lose win lose and it's that and you're going what what is god made the world that way god made the

00:37:26.140 world that way and moses is not over that power as though he's the master he's the servant that's

00:37:31.980 how moses is most consistently i'm about to preach hebrews for our church hebrews three uh for our

00:37:36.740 church and moses is the servant of the lord that's his fundamental title he's under he's in god's

00:37:41.780 house and it's christ who's the son over god's house and is the sort of source of that power

00:37:47.760 So 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.

00:37:55.260 There's, you could say, godly magic.

00:37:57.380 And 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.

00:38:07.080 It's supernatural. It's spiritual. All of that.

00:38:10.440 all that um that's fundamentally different than what the necromancers and the sorcerers and the

00:38:15.280 guys drawing circles in the ground and doing x's in their attempt to manipulate dark powers into

00:38:21.120 giving them power so that they can lord it over others this is one of the places where lewis

00:38:25.420 actually says um he he talks about the fact that uh you know in the science and magic were both

00:38:34.680 birthed at the modern science modern science and magic the heyday of magic were the same time the

00:38:39.400 guys who were doing chemistry were also doing alchemy trying to turn base metals into gold

00:38:43.680 the guys who were doing astronomy and you know hey galileo and topernicus and these guys trying

00:38:48.140 to figure out the orbits are also doing astrology right these these different we just give them

00:38:53.660 different names now because one of them succeeded in the sense of discovering the way god made the

00:38:58.380 world and the other didn't or at least didn't consistently enough right i'm sure dark powers

00:39:03.660 used it. And Lewis recognizes the family resemblance between our science and technology,

00:39:10.620 especially our technological science, where our goal is to sort of take reality and shape it

00:39:16.160 according and bend it to our will. So reality- Which is really just pushing back against the

00:39:20.600 curse. That's what that is. It's the dominion mandate. It's exercising dominion over the world

00:39:26.480 that God gave us, but the world that is under a curse and resisting man's stewardship and dominion

00:39:32.440 and finding tools technology just being a high powered tool to to ultimately to to push back

00:39:38.680 against uh the curse yeah so that's the good element is the sort of dominion but but faithful

00:39:43.980 dominion means cutting with the grain of reality as opposed to trying to you know sort of you know

00:39:50.740 it's kind of like if you work with you're like you can you know and i'm trying to turn it but 0.82

00:39:54.860 then you just break it and so that's the you know when you think about the transgender sorts of 1.00

00:39:59.120 stuff that's what that is is it's reality is plato and it needs to bend to my wishes and i can break 0.99

00:40:05.720 i can there's no grain of reality that i'm trying to cut with and if i cut with the grain then

00:40:10.680 everything works that's dominion that's godly dominion right but so the way i was just gonna

00:40:15.740 say the way that i communicate that is uh the distinction between pushing uh back against the

00:40:19.840 curse on nature versus pushing back on nature itself that's exactly right it's exactly right

00:40:24.720 When 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.

00:40:50.980 You're not going to beat nature.

00:40:52.700 nature is stubborn and will have her revenge when lewis you know of course in that hideous

00:40:57.880 strength that's his his space trilogy is sort of his attempt to do this kind of fantasy

00:41:02.920 sci-fi um you know the uh that he is strength is a fairy tale for grown-ups and it is this kind of

00:41:09.720 um the contrast is between those who sort of want to cut with the grain of reality and have true

00:41:14.640 dominion and then between the nice sort of the bad guys in the book who are tapped into dark powers

00:41:20.800 um in the name of science and are trying to like reshape reality into their own in based on their

00:41:27.620 own instincts and impulses and whims uh and in the abolition of man lewis unpacks that in sort

00:41:34.000 of prose form this is what you're talking about with the imagination so lewis knows hey i'm going

00:41:37.600 to do these lectures very academic lectures on education and uh the conditioners of society who

00:41:44.040 are trying to take man under their wing and reshape humanity into their own image and all

00:41:48.040 that kind of stuff. He can do that in three lectures and say, this is a fundamentally

00:41:51.520 different view of education than what's come before us. Old education was about us conforming

00:41:57.100 ourselves to reality. This is about bending reality to the wishes of men. Those aren't the 0.73

00:42:02.000 same. And so that's, he does the prose version, but then he says, you know, I need to be able to

00:42:07.320 like sort of incarnate this, express this in a form of a story. And it will stick with people

00:42:12.960 like those images in the story and the narratives and the plots will have a kind of punch

00:42:17.760 that simply a lecture lacks.

00:42:20.540 And so this is one of the reasons,

00:42:22.160 you know, here at Bethlehem,

00:42:23.200 like I love teaching classes on Lewis

00:42:24.820 because what I'll do is it's like,

00:42:26.320 hey, let's read the fiction version

00:42:27.540 and let's read the prose version

00:42:29.180 and let's compare.

00:42:30.780 And then we're going to hit both the reason

00:42:33.180 and the imagination.

00:42:35.120 We're going to get both to the head

00:42:36.540 and to the heart

00:42:37.400 because you see Lewis make the same arguments,

00:42:40.680 commend the same virtues,

00:42:42.380 blast the same vices,

00:42:44.260 show all of the same things.

00:42:45.920 I can show it to you in an essay.

00:42:47.760 and i can show it to you in a fantasy novel or a fairy tale or whatever and it's in seeing both

00:42:54.460 of them you see it better and then as a result our students are able to to live better they're

00:42:59.180 able to like navigate the world with with a greater degree because it's not simply intellectual

00:43:04.080 but like their imaginations have been shaped and molded that's one of the things we love to do

00:43:08.120 that's great yeah and i think that's that's what i'm getting at is that you know i think we've got

00:43:12.520 um, plenty of essays, not enough fantasy novels, you know, at least in recent, you know, American,

00:43:20.100 you know, the West, it just seems like we've kind of surrendered that hill, um, to the pagan and,

00:43:26.420 uh, and said, we'll keep the essays. We'll keep, you know, the theological treaties, but you can

00:43:31.900 have, uh, you can have the arts. And, uh, and I think that that's a mistake. One other thing I was

00:43:37.080 going to say is, uh, I kept, as we're having this whole conversation, I keep picturing my mind, um,

00:43:42.520 the debate from once upon a time is probably 15, 20, I don't know.

00:43:46.800 It's old at this point, 15 years or so, but it was Driscoll and Wilson.

00:43:51.540 And it was on cessationism versus continuationism. And, you know,

00:43:55.860 and so I'm a cessationist. I'm, you know,

00:43:57.660 I adhere to the 1689 and I understand there are some guys who say you could,

00:44:01.200 you know, but I, I, I feel like the 1689 is cessationist. And so,

00:44:05.340 so I raised, you know, cessationism, you know, five years, six,

00:44:10.080 seven years ago, I wasn't always a cessationist. I was raised in the vineyard church. The church

00:44:15.600 that I planted in California, actually in the very beginning was a vineyard church. And then

00:44:20.100 we became an Acts 29 church. And then we left Acts 29 and just became a confessionally reformed

00:44:25.460 Baptist church. And so all that being said, and that's kind of where I've landed and where I am

00:44:28.860 today. So I'm on the cessationist side of things, but one of the things I so appreciated about Doug

00:44:33.800 was, you know, I think some cessationists are, I think I'm persuaded this is the correct,

00:44:40.860 you know, theological position, but some cessationists, it's like, it affects their

00:44:46.140 whole person, their whole, you know, their personality. They're, they're just not a lot

00:44:49.980 of fun. They're, they're, they're grim. They're, you know, they're dreary. They're, you know,

00:44:54.000 like puddle glum, you know, like whereas Doug Wilson is, you know, he's, he's jolly. And,

00:44:59.880 you know, and so like, you know, as he's having this thing with Driscoll, it's like, uh, you know,

00:45:04.460 this debate and back and forth, he, he gives Driscoll like almost like, uh, ammunition that

00:45:10.980 you typically wouldn't want to do in a disagreement with someone, you know, where he's recounts this

00:45:15.320 story of, of a phone call that he, you know, had with someone and how he basically knew that that

00:45:20.320 was going to happen ahead of time because he had like a dream or, you know, whatever. And, you know,

00:45:24.380 driscoll of course is saying prophecy yeah it's called prophecy you know and and at the time when

00:45:30.200 i watched i was like yeah driscoll get him you know yeah that's profit and and i didn't have

00:45:35.160 the categories that i have now um but the retort that wilson gave was like i live in god's magical

00:45:41.020 world um and that that's not to say you know without making a strong argument because i assume

00:45:45.960 that you're a continuationist is that correct yeah and so we would disagree on this and so i'm not

00:45:50.060 even making an argument for cessationism at this point i'm just stating the position that i hold

00:45:54.240 but I liked that like, here's, here's a guy who is a cessationist who believes there's no new

00:45:59.200 revelation. Um, and yet, and that was one of the hardest things I think for me was, um, I didn't,

00:46:05.100 it was like Calvinism. So cessationism, Calvinism, similar in my testimony, when I came into reform

00:46:10.060 doctrine, one of the hardest things was I felt like I had to surrender my personal testimony.

00:46:15.280 Um, but, but one of the things that helped me tremendously was having an older brother in the

00:46:21.020 faith who had been reformed for, for, for longer than me and helping me realize you don't have to

00:46:28.460 surrender your testimony. What you have to do is see it through a new lens. All these things. So,

00:46:34.340 so where you were seeking after God, he was drawing you and calling you and wooing you when

00:46:40.400 this, when, when, so the same things happen. You don't have to give yourself a lobotomy.

00:46:44.820 you know it's the same things those things were real but but you need to you're seeing them now

00:46:51.420 through a new lens and so for me you know like things like well I really felt like God spoke to

00:46:56.260 me in this way where I felt like but then having categories and say I don't have to throw out the

00:47:01.000 baby with the bath water discernment is still a thing you know and so on you know and living in

00:47:07.160 God's magical world is still a thing and as a cessationist miracles are still a thing I just

00:47:12.440 personally don't hold to a worker of miracles who on demand, you know, can, can slap a river and it,

00:47:18.040 and it crosses, you know, and healing is, I pray for healing per James chapter five, the elders,

00:47:23.860 take them to the elders and anoint them with oil and, and, you know, and lay hands on them and pray

00:47:28.100 and the sick person will be made well, but healings versus healer. And, and so that was so

00:47:34.300 helpful for me coming into, you know, a cessationist position, which I personally think

00:47:39.480 is more conducive with a, with a confessionally reformed position. Um, but, but not having to

00:47:45.040 discount every experience that I had and say, well, I must've just been, um, I must've just

00:47:51.620 been underneath a spell of manipulation from emotions. And, uh, and I just thought that that

00:47:56.740 was so interesting as we're talking about magic. And as we're talking that like Doug Wilson,

00:48:00.680 here's the cessationist giving, in my opinion, more credence to, to the magic of God's world

00:48:07.060 than the continuationist was in in that particular moment any thoughts on that yeah i think that's

00:48:12.900 right and i think you know some of the debate on those two sides often is a matter of definitions

00:48:17.660 you know what yes what a cessation is trying to keep out of the conversation and what are

00:48:22.400 continuation is trying to get on and so there's actually frequently um you can find more common

00:48:28.440 ground than you find because we're all supernaturalist like the common thing that's

00:48:32.460 what that's what doug was getting at with the god's magical world is we're supernaturalist

00:48:36.560 which means not just supernaturalists in the sense of there's a heaven someday and God's up

00:48:41.680 there somewhere. But then like the entire universe is shot through with divine agency and not just

00:48:48.560 divine agency, but with other kinds of agencies. Like we believe that angels are real. We believe

00:48:52.600 that demons are real and we don't know a ton about them. And sometimes people can speak more

00:48:57.260 dogmatically about what they know about how angels and demons work than maybe is biblically warranted.

00:49:02.360 But 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.

00:49:19.720 We 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.

00:49:25.900 There's things, you know, it's like there's things into which angels long to look.

00:49:28.620 there's things right for us. We're like, Hey, so that whole thing where Daniel prays and then

00:49:33.400 Michael comes, but then he's like, you know, like I'm up in Persia for like a half, you know,

00:49:38.060 a couple of weeks and had to fight that guy. And now I'm here. Um, we're like, can we have

00:49:42.780 timeout? Like we have some details. I'd like to write that down. Um, but we don't get that.

00:49:48.060 God doesn't give us that because, and I think the reason is you don't need to know that in order to

00:49:52.520 live faithfully. What you do need to know is that that's real and that you're wrestling with

00:49:56.540 principalities and powers when you fight your sin when you resist temptation and and that god is

00:50:03.100 active right that god is present even when he doesn't seem to be and i think this this is another

00:50:08.020 thing maybe with with the narnia chronicles that i found so helpful um and it's actually from that

00:50:12.260 the silver chair the silver chair is the one book of the seven where aslan never actually appears

00:50:17.200 in narnia itself he's in his own country up on the cliff but he never comes down into narnia

00:50:22.880 he only gives them their assignment sends them and then they come back there whereas the other

00:50:28.280 ones he always comes into Narnia himself like he leaves you know he leaves the fight or he he

00:50:32.100 rescues whatever um he doesn't actually come down and I think that they're Lewis is intentional

00:50:36.640 there to kind of say this is a this is a book of sort of divine absence this is a book of Aslan's

00:50:40.800 absence but the point is he was guiding them anyway all along he was like they're as they're

00:50:46.740 making they're blowing it left and right like missing the signs missing the signs missing the

00:50:50.040 signed. And it's like, Aslan's guiding them anyway. He's going to accomplish purposes anyway.

00:50:55.120 Right. He is there. It makes me think of, you know, the Voyage of the Dawn Treader with Lucy,

00:50:58.840 you know, she does the spell that makes invisible things visible. And all of a sudden Aslan appears

00:51:04.080 and, you know, and he essentially says, what makes you think that I wasn't, you know, I was here and

00:51:09.040 I keep in step with my own word. So you're reading my magic book. This is my spell. This is my,

00:51:16.060 you know, and, um, I'm not going to contradict my own word. And so, um, you made, I didn't come

00:51:21.260 to you. Um, I've been here the whole time and you just made me visible by using my own word.

00:51:26.280 And so like that he's, that he's always there. So I completely agree with you. The last thing I

00:51:30.720 thought about, maybe we can end here, but just as a fellow post-millennial, um, yeah, the, the power

00:51:35.800 between, uh, angels and demons. And, and for me, I'm, I'm old fashioned in the sense that, you know,

00:51:40.520 like I, I just, God wrote a book and I believe the book, you know, and so I believe in, I'm not 0.95

00:51:46.840 a biblicist and, you know, in taking that too far. But I believe in six literal day creation. 0.83

00:51:52.700 I believe in relatively young earth. I believe, I believe in Nephilim. I believe in the sons of

00:51:59.840 God, that they weren't kings and princes, but that they were angels. And per the usage in the book

00:52:05.120 of Job, sons of God, and that they saw that the daughters of men were attractive. And, and I see

00:52:09.860 that as one of Satan's ploy, whether it be, you know, Herod at the time of Christ, you know, 0.53

00:52:13.960 and killing all the boys or Pharaoh, killing all the Hebrew boys or the Nephilim. I see what I see 0.55

00:52:19.260 again and again and again is, is Satan knowing the prophecy given in the garden that, you know,

00:52:26.320 that the woman will have a seed and he's going to crush your head and Satan trying to pollute

00:52:31.180 the line of the seed. He's trying to stop the messianic lineage from happening. And so he's

00:52:37.360 doing this by trying to take out whole lines of people or corrupting even bloodlines. And I think

00:52:42.640 that's part of what's going on with the Nephilim and these kinds of things. However, the post

00:52:47.520 millennial piece, I think that demonic forces are still at play. That is still very much a thing.

00:52:54.320 But I think part of the reason why Jesus in his earthly ministry before his crucifixion and

00:52:58.480 resurrection is casting out so many demons is almost to say that, you know, showing so much

00:53:06.980 the extent of Israel's rebellion, the extent of a demonic presence at that time that Satan is at

00:53:15.140 large. But, you know, the parable of, you know, if you're going to plunder the house, you must

00:53:19.200 first go in and bind the strong man at the cross and resurrection of Christ, that the strong man

00:53:24.740 has been bound and he still has some minions at work. And Satan still does in a sense prowl

00:53:31.880 around. I would argue maybe a shorter leash. But, but I guess part of what I'm getting at is we live

00:53:37.860 in a magical world. Demonic forces are apart. That's one kind of magic in this, you know,

00:53:42.860 different agencies, but it does seem as though that has been severely limited. You've got the

00:53:48.200 third Reich as Wilson would say, that could be measured in a matter of months, but you don't 0.92

00:53:52.920 have Babylon. You don't have Assyria. You don't like something, something objective switched in

00:54:00.040 real human history would you would you agree with that yeah that's a good question um i think as

00:54:06.580 long as it's not a so i i do think that the spread of the gospel does inhibit limit restrain

00:54:15.500 uh even maybe in prison in certain ways how you know again how the mechanisms of how this works

00:54:20.760 i don't know um the work of demons insofar as the gospel spreads and everything and but i don't know

00:54:26.760 that it's a um it's not a um fixed reality like once you've taken the territory it's now taken

00:54:34.620 for good so um in the sense of i agree at one point north africa was largely christian right

00:54:41.120 it's where augustine lived there and now it's not um and so the and i you know i think that uh

00:54:47.720 a plausible understanding of islam is both as a sort of a christian heresy it's a knockoff of

00:54:53.320 christianity um right also demonic influence there um in that kind of imprisonment and so 0.70

00:54:59.640 and so with that there was sort of like a it is a pitched battle and so even you know with our

00:55:04.740 um hopefulness about the penetration of the gospel between the first and second coming of christ

00:55:09.240 um there's room for um you know moving the battle line forward and then having and then having times

00:55:15.600 where it's in retreat and part of that retreat i guess if if as we're is if the gospel is spreading

00:55:21.360 the demons are subdued through our rebellion and apostasy um right they get they get let out again

00:55:29.320 the the the gods come back and i think in some ways when you you see that at some level in

00:55:35.140 the post even the post-christian west where um there's a sort of a reassertion of pagan of

00:55:41.880 paganism and uh and uh you know i've been talking friends about you know the ai everybody's talking

00:55:47.440 an AI chatbot thing. And I'm like, if that thing does start talking back to us, Christians should 0.95

00:55:51.560 not be like wrongly freaked out. It's like, well, what would, what a great mechanism for demons to

00:55:56.300 use. Right. Like, it's just, it's just technology. Why wouldn't they be able to manipulate it? And

00:56:00.820 so if it does seem like, Hey, it has a mind of its own, like it actually might. Um, that's not

00:56:05.900 a crazy thought that like, like, you know, you're, you're, you just think you're asking Google,

00:56:09.600 but like, so those are all, I think on the table because, because we're Christians and we believe

00:56:15.660 that the world is suffused, not just our own body is suffused with a spiritual reality,

00:56:20.560 the soul, the material thing that survives the death of the body. And so also there's other

00:56:27.360 kinds of spirits out there and we don't need to fear them in an absolute sense, but there needs

00:56:33.420 to be like an acknowledgement of they're on the table and they're at war. And so we too have the

00:56:39.560 same sort of zeal, which is first and foremost about our own holiness. I love, you know, it's

00:56:44.960 important to remember that the only the weapon that the devil has against us um is only the

00:56:51.460 weapons that we give him as christians at this point right like his greatest weapon condemnation

00:56:56.100 god disarmed him disarmed the principalities powers they don't have that weapon anymore

00:57:00.900 so now it's all trickery manipulation power games but like he who is in us is greater than he than

00:57:07.340 the one who's in the world that's that's the promise so we don't need to fear but we need to

00:57:10.700 actually live into it through our own uh devotion and holiness and pursuit of of christ amen and

00:57:18.660 even apart from demonic influence with like chat gpt i think of um it's just one more example that

00:57:26.200 uh you know for me within the presuppositional framework that uh that nothing is neutral and

00:57:32.640 that um that you know that i so you know right now the point that we're at with narrow ai you

00:57:38.600 You know, we haven't, it's not AGI, it's not transhumanism. 0.52

00:57:42.580 So I personally, my position is I think some of these things actually are impossible because man can only, we're lowercase C creators.

00:57:48.920 God alone creates X in the helo out of nothing.

00:57:51.120 We can only take the materials in the world and in the cosmos that God gave to us.

00:57:54.440 And I think there's a lot more we can do.

00:57:55.720 I think, you know, the sky is the limit.

00:57:57.600 There's materials that we haven't even gotten to.

00:57:59.240 You know, some moon, you know, floating around this planet over here that has some kind of, you know, precious metal that can create this.

00:58:06.260 You know, like, so I, I think, you know, the sky's the limit with that.

00:58:09.240 I personally don't think that, um, that, that we'll ever be able to create AI at the point

00:58:14.060 where it's sentient.

00:58:15.040 Right.

00:58:15.600 Um, but even apart from that, even in the realm of narrow AI and what we, the developments

00:58:21.960 that we currently have, you can see that, um, you know, you can see that if, if there's

00:58:27.300 not a demonic imprint on it, which there, there may be, um, there's certainly, um, a

00:58:33.440 man's imprint on it.

00:58:34.900 uh, chat, chat GPT is not neutral. Um, uh, it's, it's created by certain men and they built into

00:58:42.720 it, um, a framework, a certain blueprint, certain codes that it cannot, you know, it can't, it can't

00:58:49.340 say this because that would be offensive. It can't say that. Um, if it, it's funny because I feel

00:58:54.020 like if it actually was made in, in a, and they actually did it in a completely neutral way,

00:58:59.700 um then i i think that chat gpt would be one of the uh the best apologists and evangelists and

00:59:05.880 which you know because it would it would have no choice uh people would ask questions you know and

00:59:10.420 and people have already kind of hacked it and and and done some funny things where they're like you

00:59:14.480 know uh what's the best way you know um to to solve the energy crisis and you know and it's like well

00:59:19.960 fossil fuels duh you know and then they have to go back in and say oh you're not allowed to say

00:59:24.960 that oh never mind not fossil fuels that's way too logical it makes way too much sense you know

00:59:29.480 so it must be this other thing. So anyway, so I say that to say that, you know, I think that

00:59:33.720 with technology, apart from even the demonic possibilities, there's certain people have to

00:59:40.000 realize that nothing is neutral. The person who makes something, they're imprinted on it. They've

00:59:46.760 built it in such a way that they're giving it commands. They're giving it guidelines and a man

00:59:51.980 is either for Christ or against him. And, and that's reflected, I think, in everything that

00:59:56.700 people do and so it's great yeah all right any uh final words for us if not tell tell people how

01:00:02.460 they can follow you tell people a little bit about uh your seminary and give us a sign off

01:00:07.800 yeah good uh i'm on twitter i don't i use it mainly to promote our school so i'm not i may

01:00:13.320 not be the most engaging follow but joe underscore rigney there uh i write regularly for desiring god

01:00:18.340 and yeah we have a college and a seminary undergrad and and graduate programs uh we're

01:00:22.820 intentionally small school here in minneapolis at our college we teach great books in light of

01:00:26.620 the greatest book for the sake of the Great Commission. And so some of what we talked about

01:00:29.620 here today is a pretty good snapshot of the sort of thing that our faculty love to do with students

01:00:35.240 in order to shape them so that they're rooted in Christ and ready for the world. We want them to

01:00:39.620 be mature adults who are ready to witness for Christ with wisdom and wonder for the rest of

01:00:44.720 their lives. And that wisdom and wonder are both integral to it. We want them to know their Bibles,

01:00:49.420 to love their Bibles, and then we want them to be in awe of the world that God made and equipped

01:00:53.500 to, to face, uh, to face it, both the good and the, and the bad. And then we have a seminary,

01:00:58.340 of course, where we're training shepherds, uh, intentionally small cohorts of students.

01:01:02.320 We take about 16 guys a year. Um, so the four years program, about 60 guys total in the seminary,

01:01:08.100 60, 70 guys. And, uh, they go through that program together and get their Bible, learn to preach.

01:01:13.300 Uh, we, we major on, we want to create preachers. We love preaching the word. Um, it's one of,

01:01:17.980 you know, John Piper's greatest legacies, I think will be his handling of the scriptures.

01:01:21.380 and so we're seeking to create more pastors like that.

01:01:25.800 And so if any of your listeners are interested

01:01:27.740 in either college or sim, bcsmn.edu

01:01:32.100 and our team would love to talk to you.

01:01:34.560 Great, well, thanks for coming on the show, Joe.

01:01:36.420 Yeah, thanks, Joe, it was great to talk to you.

01:01:37.700 Can I be frank with you for just a second

01:01:39.340 right here at the end?

01:01:41.000 Look, some of you guys,

01:01:42.180 you're financially supporting this ministry

01:01:44.100 and from the bottom of my heart, I say thank you.

01:01:47.460 I cannot thank you enough.

01:01:49.700 However, some of you, you just can't afford it.

01:01:53.780 In fact, some of you, you shouldn't afford it.

01:01:56.860 Let's be honest. 0.91

01:01:58.180 I mean, we're living in Joe Biden's ridiculous economy. 0.96

01:02:01.900 Our nation and our totalitarian political elites lost their minds over the last three 0.91

01:02:09.300 years due to COVID.

01:02:11.360 We have written checks that we simply cannot cash.

01:02:15.300 It doesn't matter if people change the definition of a recession.

01:02:18.880 We are living in a recession right now regardless.

01:02:23.640 Some of you are struggling to afford a carton of eggs at the grocery store.

01:02:28.580 You cannot support financially this ministry at this time, nor should you, but you could

01:02:34.960 still help us tremendously.

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01:02:42.660 Leave us a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform, iTunes, Spotify, whatever that

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The NXR Podcast - March 07, 2023

THEOLOGY APPLIED - A Christian Primer On Magic In Fantasy⧸Entertainment ｜ with Joe Rigney

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