A theological perspective on humanity’s longing for the mystical.
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Some species of evil religious persons. There is the over-idealistic person. It's the same as picking one or a few sins and 'never' committing those for the power it gives you over those that do commit them. The ideal is held over everyone's head and they won't allow anyone to break it.. They will not bend. But rather bend everyone else. The ideal is their idol that they now sacrifice humanity to. As it were. 'You must be flexible in your ideals or you become the enemy of humanity.'
"spiritual but not religious" (SBNR) may not be more rational than christianity, but it is in many ways better. It's a step in the right direction to move from christian to SBNR. Tell me the last time you saw someone say they were spiritual but not religious and then try to implement a theocratic dictatorship? I think we need to pull away from a biblical world view. That's the important part. Frankly, I'd rather live in a world with some people who have weird playing cards or horoscopes than a totalitarian theocracy lead by christains.
Good morning from the sizzling SF Bay Area. I deeply enjoyed this conversation. I used to bemoan the Evangelical teachings I grew up with in the 50’s and 60’s. I now value having that perspective in my spiritual tool box. As a “spiritual but not religious” person I have both shared and differing points of view. As a child I recognized the church was flawed and locked in the ancient past, I set off on my spiritual path when my mother, wife and daughter of Evangelical ministers, could not confirm our Catholic neighbors were “going to Heaven.” I started using that identification long before it became a theme, such as Nones. (The daughter of one of my friends is at the heart of that movement.)
CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, Paramahansa Yogananda, Brother Lawrence, among others, were some of my early supplements to Jesus. Along the way I was introduced to the Urantia Book which I studied deeply for many years. This work is what helped open my perspectives on God, Jesus, and the Universe. The Bible became a kind of preamble, written for an ancient world, to an expanded understanding of the workings of the physical world and the immensity of the possibilities of life in God’s beautiful creation. I am no longer in opposition to Christianity but see us as family in service to our best understanding of God and life.
Michael Horton has a wonderful scholarly approach which I appreciate, Hermes!!! Wow, didn’t know that. Thank you, Russell, for another interesting and insightful conversation. Blessings.
Anime and the other boogeymen cited in the video are not the problem; this is laughable. The speakers just can't seem to fathom that the "Christianity" they are presenting lacks any integrity, but the problem CERTAINLY can't be them, so it must be ouija boards!
People simply don't want to have anything to do with "religion/being religious" (the various institutions of Christianity) that are so openly at odds with the teachings of Jesus. Religious leaders, such as the ones displayed in this video, need to shoulder a great deal of blame but so far they haven't been willing to do so.
Ironically, Evangelicals are the biggest Neo-platonists/gnostics around: "the body is just a shell" "the earth is corrupt and passing away so we don't need to preserve it" you're only saved by "personal knowledge of Jesus," "we have all the answers" etc. etc.
As Jesus probably would have said, "It's the hypocrisy, stupid."
You know what’s interesting to me is that I also listen to progressive Christians and agnostics and they say the same thing about you guys lol. It’s like both sides have their blind spots. But I wouldn’t say that agnostics or atheists are just misinformed or haven’t thought it through. There are highly intelligent and reflective individuals that have given lots of thought and study. I identify as a Christian and I am a gay man also and I spent the last 15 years studying the Bible and Christianity and I am pretty certain that being gay and Christian are completely compatible and that there is not condemnation for LGBT people. I won’t really argue against anyone because it’s pointless. It’s does no good. But people are surprised how well I know the scriptures and the Bible and historical Christianity and the early church fathers. I’m well read and well educated. But throwing knowledge back and forth with people seldom does any good. Most ppl have made up their mind to condemn me before we even start.
I work as a healthcare Chaplain my main role is to do spiritual assessments. I think this is an important conversation to have. I think an important point is that we need to define what the person thinks religion is. What they think spirituality is. Because often we are operating on different definitions. Thank you for facilitating this conversation.
Astrology. I am a born-again believer so I do not partake. My mother was a professional long chart astrologer new age.
The three wise men the Magi my Assemblies of God pastor told me some years ago that the Magi were astrologers as I study the scripture that seems very likely true
Christianity is so confusing thank God Jesus is not confusing.
I still won't do astrology. But the three wise men did come to Jesus by way of their astrological endeavors
So I guess I'll just eat my eggs and listen to the rest of the podcast as a nobody who knows nothing about anything
I love you guys a lot,.. NOTE; you guys have great things to share but it sounds like you are college professors talking to intellectual theologians. Please use smaller words and talk like you're talking to human beings who do not have masters degrees in Divinity theology science and human sexuality.
GREAT SUBJECT HERE IN THIS PODCAST
Impossibly overly intellectualized so that it even goes above my head and people tell me I have above average intelligence.
Talk so that normal people can understand you!
TRULY GREAT MATERIAL IN THIS PODCAST…
PLEASE speak like you're talking to a person that does not have a master's degree. You are putting out some awesome material here but the intellectualism the large words are watering it down
I personally need to hear what you're sharing here and I believe and I believe that the church does too but please share in a simpler diction a more easily accessible user-friendly less Masters degree less college professor, please speak more like you're talking to the general population don't change your subject matter your subject matter is great, but you need to talk like you're talking to a 15 year old child because that's how most of us understand things we are not all holders of doctorates in master's degrees most of us listening to this are just people trying to find their way through the contemporary culture while honoring Jesus Christ
What you are sharing here is beyond necessary and is awesome and is ministering to me and my born-again spirit
But it is like swimming through cement and sharks trying to understand you through the highly intellectualized college professor diction which is so complex your message is good your delivery is way too Poindexter way too intellectual for me or the common person to grasp easily I'm listening hard because it's good stuff but I have to pause a lot to Wade through all the overly intellectualized unnecessary use of overly large wordsand making some great ideas sound too complicated for the ordinary person but they're not too complicated if I step back and really listen to what you're saying it's great stuff use more accessible language for the average person that's what I'm asking for and that's what I will not be heard on I know you will not hear me I will keep listening because you have great stuff but it is like swimming through cement trying to get through all the intellectualizing of some great ideas
GREAT MATERIAL, BUT PLEASE TAKE NOTE; I believe you are trying to reach the church for positive change your message is the correct message to invoke that change
The average Born Again believer who attends church and worships Donald Trump, is turned off by over intellectualization too much of the spirit of Poindexter
That's why the church is falling Donald Trump he talks like a 5-year-old even though they know he's wrong at least they can understand him. CAN YOU HEAR ME?
This message in these podcasts can affect tremendous positive change in the body of Christ. But you must talk in a simpler planar language or you will never affect the larger body of Christ just intellectual Poindexter guys like me. The average person that attends church is not that intellectual that's why they follow Donald Trump he's not intellectual.
Your message is great your spirit is right on your diction is almost incomprehensible to the average person. Way way way way way too intellectual way way way way way way way too poor Dexter for the average Republican who worships Donald Trump in place of Jesus Christ to comprehend
The Trump followers are very very simple people. If you talk in this kind of language to them they won't even listen for 2 minutes
I am pushing this issue because the church needs to grow and change. YOU HAVE THE EXACT MESSAGE TO CAUSE THAT GROWTH AND CHANGE TO OCCUR IN THE CHURCH. I guarantee that they will never even try to listen to you as long as you stick to this overly intellectualized form of diction and communication.
You must talk to them the way that Donald Trump talks to them but not with the Donald Trump message. Give them this clear message don't change the message but you must speak to them in a language they can understand you are not speaking in a language that the average Trump follower will ever understand.
The average person who goes to church these days follows Trump not Jesus. If you talk to them in a simpler language maybe they'll start following Jesus instead of Donald Trump can you hear me know you can't the college degree is too thick I can't get through
And that's why the church has forsaken Jesus Christ for Donald Trump people who are intelligent enough to know the truth won't be humble enough to share that truth in a language that the average simple person can understand
Too bad the church really needs to hear what you're saying and they won't hear it until you talk in a language they can understand and you won't do that because it would not be harmonious with your master's degree😂
This was like standing outside the door listening to two seminary profs. They knew exactly what they were saying but in many parts, I heard words but had no familiarity to connect them. I thought of the seven sons of the Jewish chief priest Sceva in Acts, so right off the bat, there were those that saw the spiritual and wanted, but apparently did not follow Christ. Then there was Simon the sorcerer who believed and yet thought he could buy the ability to heal, perform miracles. Was he truly interested in healing and helping or hoping to turn a profit? Whatever, Peter rebuked and even questioned his conversion.
It is very important for Christians to understand many more unbelieving people are in a crisis not with respect to Faith, but with respect to everything they've expected from their own reason that only God is. Modern philosophy was all too successful in creating a reliance the knowledge of God can be expected a function of the self, as if we’re responsible for the effects of the knowledge of God, and too often also by its denial. But this is an illusion and is destroying the very fabric of our society. The next question is what are people going to do about that? Antagonists, especially around the academy want to make it about our faith, because it gives them something that they feel legitimizes emotivism and the implications of the relativism of living for the self as ultimate requires. The effort of those who believe in nothing to want to deny that, and feel they are proving something they believe in needing to position themselves as against those that believe something to do so is no big mystery. Academic institutions have become experts in radical skepticism, an expertise of skepticism they are selling popularly to the public, they feel is necessary to reason that is not necessary at all. There are good things that source critics can provide, critical theory is not one of them. The ability to question whether God really said something, as if of an endless antithesis to evaluating Christianity as a social dogma, downstream of philosophers that evaluated faith as if nothing but a philosophy is wrong, is de facto wrong by any good theological evaluation. Often muddled, but blending of Church and State in unbiblical ways, much more of this has required the church’s permission than we often allow ourselves to see. It is an attempt at the negating of the prophetic witness of the bible as if it is a consequence of our natural reason alone and of some abstract authority it has claimed falsely over God.
There is an absolutizing of human reason extreme modernity has taught itself to take for granted in comparing itself to the bible, this is also where the humanistic/technocratic spiritual is being smuggled in. As if social criticism merits an absolute neutrality that are made in comparison to accounting for human reason as equal to judgement of a divinely inspired text (defining realism as expecting some control over the human mind over experience in the name of reason is not faith, but pagan anti-faith). A myth that there is neutrality in expecting that the content of revelation they insist on relies completely on a purely humanistic/now technocratic evaluation of its context independent of God. Critical theory has used that same false space of accusation to insist the authority of the bible present itself as nothing more than a social theory to merit its validity, the pull is an inculcation of sensibility as ultimate in using our capacity for worship as our own to define. It's about people feeling they can make truth about nothing more than their assumptions with a finality. Historicity becomes a category where everything is won and lost (especially in the way it is being despised) because it is so found despised within the self's contempt in this way, when we feel we could ever fully surrender the God who sees over all of it transcendently without profound loss of morality to our awareness socially. The demand of social justice, and especially so completely proven by our means implies a requirement of radical idealism upon reason to attempt to find that we are equal to what we have only always relied upon God as standing outside of your consensus and could ever be for ourselves what only he apart from all things and above them as judge alone could provide of moral authority and account. That we even could begin to be equal to what only God can provide discourse is a grievous and consequential mistake upon moral discourse extreme secularism is attempting to exact from people of faith. One that also made social criticism feel both ultimate, and so by worldly influence unavoidable to the church, but also has tended to demand too much that we can know the truth about the past only expecting it present itself as a sort of myth, our myth to define. Or else should dismiss history as too dogmatic/a shackling of what our libertarian free will for what we feel capable of proving of ourselves could otherwise offer us. Secular philosophers too often insisted upon this as absolute, but God is no less God of all, both greater in reality than a myth, not less in reality than a myth if he will not present himself as a myth as modern theology/higher critical idealism seems to assume, and so standing over history as only God can, over secularists and Christians alike.
Again, there are good things source critics can provide, critical theory is not one of them, historicity is important and yet should not be pitted against being on God's terms for defining redemptive history, dismissing his supernatural means so as to claim something of the same from God as more a consequence of our reason than of Him. How has Gnosticism gained its influence? I was pondering this from a quote that said of the Patristic Justin (a wonderful Christian), that I think if applied to heretics might be an easy answer to the popularizing of religious heresy to a larger secular social force unknown in origins, but no less assumed. It was said of him that "he was a philosopher, and his philosophy was Christianity." Not that this instinct is always bad, but there is a sense from the very start of those who attacked the faith insisted on this also. That the Faith and so faith should be reduced to just a philosophy to make the means of evaluating it more of a religion of our own invention. The very substance of our faith is being challenged when it is implied we must invent a science to identify an apologetic that deserves salvation so completely by our own rational means that finds skepticism more necessary than reason. That these same overly conditioned, overly socialized political instincts would have us evaluate such as neutral, and a brute politic whereby we are told we must earn that faith that was given to us for free, to merit a claim of truth as to know the truth is to demand Christians must admit the purpose of my faith is to prove other people's doubts. We should never do that. Conviction about holy things is simple and beautiful. Why must we be told we must earn what God has given for free to the heart of sincere faith and repentance to enjoy them. I am thinking about studying more of these things and hope to write something upon more study, but Horton's project is fascinating. It's important that we do not have people inculcate the very principals they are using to defy God and despise faith in the name of a bridge between faith and reason upon our terms. Terms that only God could have accomplished and has given to us without need to earn.
I believe the magic of the sea parting, the magic of kindly spirts and not-so-kindly spirits. I believe in Jesus feeding the masses with a couple of fish and a loaf of bread! I belief that we reap what we sow and karma is a real thing! I don't know anyone who doesn't believe in magic!
Quite honestly from the Christian theist perspective – this claim re astrology and more superstitious time sounds like a bunch of hooey!!
I don't see any more buy-in on astrology, etc today than there's ever been in the past. It is never surprising that a certain number of young people buy into this while they process growing up because it's new and then most of them discarded fairly quickly because they find it's all hooey.
I'm disappointed because I'd like to see CT succeed after their superb Mars Hill expose but the content has got to be far better than what we've got with this particular podcast.
My below comment notwithstanding, there was a superb piece in the very introduction concerning the dynamic of great fear and great opportunity as being fundamental drivers in the American Evangelical community that creates all kinds of emotional tensions and is simply a grift.
I have to give Moore 110% for that one – it is spot on and it's classic cult thinking.
If we lose all disfigurement on resurrection, why was Christ resurrected with his wounds?
This is one of a genre of Christian-based discussions that lament the fact that membership is falling. The participants are pastors/theologians from various Christian traditions: Reformation Protestantism, later brands of evangelicalism, Anglicanism, Catholic, etc. Each honestly and accurately (in my opinion) diagnose the inadequacies of the secularist philosophical waters in which those who leave swim. While each participant strives to be followers of Jesus, what seems to me to be lacking is an in depths examination of their own view of what Jesus taught and what Jesus now wants Christianity to be. Might it not be, I ask myself, that the Lord wants these various strands of Christianity to revisit what they so tenaciously cling to as central to His message? Might they not need to abandon some of their cherished views – sola scriptura and/or church inerrancy? What precisely is the good news? That we were born in sin that would leave us damned unless Jesus saved us; unless we confess that Jesus saved us? Maybe Christianity is being rejected because these world-view do not find any resonance in contemporary society?
And is it possible that it does not appropriately reflect the core of what Jesus actually taught and/o wants of his followers in today's world?
Always interesting. Ah, what confusing times we live in!
Why did Horton agree to talk with this heretic?