Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.
Seth Intro 0:10
Glad you're here, and I'm glad to downloaded. You're in for a treat today. This one, I'm just gonna warn you. It's a little bit longer than most, which is why I didn't put a little clip at the beginning. So here's what you have to expect. Nathan Jacobs and I we chatted about Eastern Orthodoxy, and so many other things like it's really hard to concisely describe it adequately in the small little intro here. And so I just really want to get into it. I greatly enjoyed having this conversation with Nathan, and I am fully admitting how much I've no idea what I didn't know. And that bag didn't know it's just getting bigger. And that is, man, I love it. I just personally love it. So here we go. conversation about a road to becoming truly human and a robot to Eastern Orthodoxy. Let's do it.
Seth 1:09
Dr. Nathan Jacobs, welcome to the show. I'm excited that you're here. And since I got the doctor out of the way, now we can proceed from that. And for those of you that don't get that joke, it's because you're not a patron supporter of the show. So you didn't hear all the stuff from beforehand. And that's, that's kind of on you. You can fix that. Anyway. So I'm glad that you're here. Somebody, actually, it's a friend named Drew, sent me a link to your documentary that you did not long ago. And then I watched it and then I watched it again. What's funny is I think I watch it about once a month for the last three or four months.
Nathan 1:43
Really?
Seth 1:45
Yeah, I don't know why honestly, I don't know why lately I've been lately…I just like to watch you paint. (Laughter both)
Nathan 1:54
That's great.
Seth 1:55
What would you want people to know about you if you were like, yeah, so let me tell you a bit about me. This is the important things in the context of a conversation about Becoming Truly Human.
Nathan 2:06
Well, given that I kind of tend to be a hermit, I would prefer that people not know anything about me, which is, which is actually the most uncomfortable thing about becoming truly human for me because I'm actually in it. And so all the caveats, you know, now that you've seen it three times, or however many times you seen it, you know, that I at the beginning, I'm like, look guys, I didn't want to do this, I thought about not doing this and I give that is not a script like that is straight up me saying, I really am uncomfortable with what I'm about to do. And I want nothing to do with this. And I'm only doing this because I think maybe it'll help some people.
And that's why I reiterate at the end. If your takeaway from this is that I really want you to know about me, you really don't know what this is all about. Those are the words but that's sort of the upshot. But anyway, I suppose if people had to know something about me, you know probably the some of the best things that you know some things about me would largely be the fact that I'm an academic and I'm an artist, and that's largely birthed out of just who I am. But it's also it's an important part of my story, right? So as you know, from that film, My story starts out in art school. There's nothing academic about me at that stage in my life. And the academic side is really an outgrowth of existential questions, deep and abiding existential questions.
That in some ways, I actually tempered in that film folks who have not to mention another podcast But folks who maybe know I don't know if you're familiar with Paul Vanderklay, but he's a reformed guy who has a podcast for pastor interviews, all sorts of weirdos, I was one of the weirdos that he interviewed and I actually talked to him in there in very candid terms about like the role of LSD in my spiritual journey. And I don't know if I can say that in church, but I can say that here.
Seth 4:05
You can day whatever you like.
Nathan 4:07
So we've talked very candidly about that. That's something that's sort of hinted at in the documentary, but sort of tempered down a little bit. I just talked about hallucinogens. But it's it's really deep and abiding existential crises that compelled me to start to dig deep into philosophical and theological context and, you know, questions and asking deep and hard questions about, you know, the afterlife and God and free will and all sorts of things like that.
And that's where I become an academic, almost on accident, right? Some people are just, I'm a good student, and I go to college because I'm a good student, I got into a good college because I'm a good student. And I pick a discipline that I really like and maybe I want to become a professor and I'm an academic because I'm an academic because I'm an academic. I was not, anybody who knew me growing up would be like, he does what, right he has a PhD‽
What is it a PhD and you know, in drug use! What is it? Yeah, that would not be what anybody would expect. A lot of people would expect. Yeah, he went to art school that makes sense, you know? Yeah, just a lot of drugs. That makes sense. But he, like went off and studied a bunch of philosophy and theology and to the PhD and like, publishes a lot of stuff. And that does not make any sense.
But I think that's in some ways, also, why if you look at...if you look me up academically, and start to look at my resume, and you know, what sort of things I've published on, you'll find it's very eclectic. It's like, he's published on like, Eastern Church Fathers and metaphysics. He's also published on like, philosophy of art and people like, Sir Joshua Reynolds, so aesthetics and things like that, but he's also published on Emmanuel Kant. And, you know, these, you know, all this sort of stuff; blindness.
And so what's going on? Right? Because usually when academics pick an academic path, what starts to happen is they pick a road, and they stick with it, right? Like, I'm interested in Kant. So I just write about Kant my entire career. But for me, because academics was entirely driven by I have certain questions, and I want answers to those questions. I was never like a proper scholar who went down a proper road of well, you do good in school, and then you go to a good school and you do good med school, and then you take your, you know, GRP, and you go to a better school and, and you like, buckle down in terms of this specific area of concentration, and you build a career publishing on minutiae that nobody cares about, like that's how you do it.
Seth 6:47
(in laughter) Minutaie that nobody cares about.
Nathan 6:49
That's right. “The development of the letter alpha in the Greek alphabet“
Seth 6:56
It matters to somebody, I’m sure.
Nathan 6:58
Right, it matters somebody. So I didn't do that at all. And that's one of the reasons why if you look at my academic work, it's so eclectic. And it's because I'm just following threads everywhere they go. It's why my degrees are all over the place. Right? Well, he's got a degree in art, philosophy, church history, systematic, systematic historical theology. It's because I'm just following questions wherever they lead.
And so that's an important thing to understand about me as an academic is that I really, in some ways, don't really consider myself an academic. I mean, I know I'm considered an academic, I'm a scholar. Some people think of me as a Kant scholar or this scholar that scholar, but it's really I was just a guy who wanted answers to questions. And I followed those questions wherever they lead, whatever state they lead to whatever person to whatever the book they lead to. And lo and behold, at some point, I had a PhD and I was like, I should get a job. And that led to the professorship and all that in terms of the film stuff, that's that's something I've talked about before.
When folks have asked how this all fits together with film, it's actually one of the interesting things about film is it's a nice blend of art and ideas, right. And so that's where Becoming Truly Human as uncomfortable as it makes me and it makes me very uncomfortable. It was actually a really great thing to be able to pull together my aesthetic sensibilities and artistic sensibilities with the sort of scholarly side of myself, and do so in a way that actually does convey the nature of my scholarly journey as something that was deeply you know, embedded in finding answers, as opposed to just being the bright guy who really enjoys studying stuff, you know.
Seth 8:41
That’s kind of the progression of this show, as well is whatever question I happen to have, or whatever I find interesting. I just was really, so it's been helpful. So I've been, I read a lot of books and, I'm sent quite a few books. And then what I'll find is I start reading a book, I'll find a footnote and I’ll go to the bibliography and be like, Oh, that's interesting. And then I'll just get that book. And then I do the same thing over and over. So I don't finish... I usually finish every book for the people that I interview if that's what we're talking about, because I feel like if they wrote it, I should at least know what the heck we're going to talk about in some if some way it just seems fair.
Nathan 9:19
Sure.
Seth 9:20
But outside of that, yeah, I'm very similar of Oh, and then oh, and then oh, this is amazing! And then be like, Well, what about this? I have no idea what I know about this one won't settle down this is all I know about.
Nathan 9:29
Right. Right. Yeah. I resonate with that, because that's also what I loved about I did not read. I was I was terrible student before, you know, the whole academic road. Because I needed some sort of fuel to drive me forward. But the other thing was I, you know, in school growing up, it would be like, well, you should read Moby Dick. But I have no interest in Moby Dick, right? And I remember the first time I picked up a volume of like, systematic theology and I was like oh it's so nice it's topical. I can jump to page 237 and just read that section and maybe if they reference something else I can jump over the other section retro actively figure out what the heck that's about. It was like Oh man, I don't have to read all like 500 pages. That's fantastic. And then I can jump over to another book and compare with this is great. Yeah, so I resonate with that.
Seth 10:29
I also went to art school, I went to school for graphic design and then realized I yeah, I'm not I'm decent at it but I'm by no means an artist at all. Although pretty much all the art for the show and anything else I got art that I hung on the walls in the house. I'm okay at what I'm good at mostly pencil on paper, you know, realistic-photorealistic sketching and whatever. However, I hated working for people, because people would come and say, I really want like digital media. Like I want this. I'm like, Yeah, but who's the audience? What time at night are they really Is it print? Is it media? Is it web? I don't know. If you don't know, we figured you could put something together. You're gonna that's like saying make me a cake. Okay, okay. I don't like yellow cake. Well, you didn't tell me that if you told me that I wouldn't known not to. Anyway. Yeah. And so yeah, I went a different career path, although I've fallen in love with doing this. And the more that I learned, the more that I learn, right, so.
I didn't plan on asking you about LSD or hallucinogens, but in three minutes, can you talk to me a bit about that or five minutes, whatever. I can edit it. I don't care.
Nathan 11:36
So the short version of that is that hallucinate LSD in particular was, I mean, boy, there's going to be multiple sources out there for Dr. Jacobs, his use of LSD now. That's fantastic!
Seth 11:51
Is that sarcasm that's fantastic or real fantastic‽
Nathan 11:56
No that’s sarcasm. So I talked about it in a much more roundabout way and becoming truly human. But basically what happened was the first time I took very seriously death in the afterlife was thanks to LSD. So I used to enjoy, you know, if you ever seen High Times (at Ridgemont High), right, there's this point where, where they talk and they are the different types of stoners, right? And he goes through all the different categories of stoners, and I was the stoner who thought everything. I think it was actually played by Jon Stewart, right where he's like, “everything's better on weed“. He's like,
Hey, man, ever look at dollar bill. Yeah, look, did you have a look at it on weed?
Right, like that's, that's the whole shtick. Now for me, I was kind of that guy now, but it was always tied to my arch, right. So I always had this this tendency of recognizing Well, when I when I, you know, make something I don't get to ever see it fresh because I've been through the whole process in this very, very, you know, intimate way And I don't ever have the experience that other people have of getting to look at it for the first time.
But there was a sense in which was like, Well, if I smoke weed or I smoke opium or something like that, it's like, it's like, Hey, I kind of get to look at it with fresh lenses. And so it was like, I would do that a lot. That was a big part of what I did as an artist. The artistic process and specifically the completion of the artistic process. And LSDof course, was also one of those; I shouldn’t say of course, why was though, of course, but LSD was also part of the things that you know, I would embrace in the midst of that whole stage of life that I was in.
But LSD also is the reason I started taking very seriously death in the afterlife. So I had a bad trip. And one of the things about LSD that is so scary is that it is a roller coaster ride that there's no there's no sobering up right. You buckle into the roller coaster ride, and you're on that ride. You like it. You don't like it. You're on it till the ride is over. And that's hours, right? It lasts hours an hour, this, you know, something like eight hours. And so, so if it goes wrong, that's a very scary thing, because that means it's going to go wrong for a really long time. And it went wrong for me once and I was freaking out. And, I wanted it to end.
And one of the things that I started to think through is how do I make this stop? And the the real struggle for me was, you know, I started to incidentally on LSD, you start to consider possibilities, your range of possibilities expands in terms of what you consider of your inhibitions fall away and things like that.
Nathan 14:41
And, and one of the things I thought is, well, I could kill myself and that might bring it into the experience, but then my next thought was, consciousness is actually not a physical object, like a ball or an apple or something like that. So just because I actually put a bullet through my brain, does that actually mean that my consciousness will stop? That was, you know, a thought. And I started to explore it in my mind it became self evident that conscious is not a material object. So it's not obvious to killing a material object to which it's attached actually brings about an end of consciousness. And what if this continues on? And what if it continues on actually added ad infinitum?
Like what if it carries on into eternity? Like in the soul? Like if I can't actually kill it the way you can destroy an organism and it just continues on in perpetuity because it's not a destructive organism. And I'm in this state of consciousness. What if it just continues on and that's hell, right? Like that was basically the process that happened in my mind. Now, what's interesting is later as I studied philosophy, I realized this is actually what's called the Infinity argument from Plato.
So one of his arguments for the immortality of souls is actually an infinity argument where he's exploring whether or not consciousness itself is something that this material object can be broken apart and destroyed. And he takes it to be self evident that it's not. And so then he goes into this question of whether it's a product of the physical conditions or it's some. So it's an epi phenomenal thing that killing the organism brings an end to consciousness, or whether or not it's its own thing that's independent of that, and so on. And anyway, Socrates concludes that it's its own thing. That is not wed to I mean, it's wed to but it's not dependent upon the physical organism, and therefore, that death of the body can't be the end of the soul. I had never read Plato at that point in my life.
Seth 16:29
But you got there.
Nathan 16:31
But I got there intuitively, just from a bad LSD experience. And so that was the first time I took very seriously the idea that the soul is probably not the body, nor even fully dependent, existentially speaking, on the body and probably persists beyond the death of the body. But then with that, what I also had emerge was an acute awareness. (Begins ticking like a clock) That every second that ticks by is one second closer to death. (End clicking) And so now death is like This train down there on this track that's coming toward me. And the big question is what's on the other side of that?
And also, with the LSD experience, what happened was the concept of hell became plausible. And it became plausible not so much as a location I'm trapped in. There's devils and there's flames and it's terrible. Which sometimes has a plausibility issue for you know, because it seems to mythological or cartoony or whatever it might be, but all of a sudden the concept of hell as a condition of the soul that I can't get out of because I am the hell right? The hell is my own psychological state? That suddenly became very plausible, because I was experiencing it on LSD. Right it wasn't even just a hypothetical possibility. It was like I'm in the midst of it right now. That this hell is only eight hours long question is Could it be longer than that…
Seth 17:55
for infinity.
Nathan 17:57
Yeah, and especially if you can't destroy consciousness, and so that's basically what started me neurotically pursuing questions of philosophy and religion because I needed to know what's on the other side of that train that's coming toward me. And I can't stop it right, I can't stop that train is going to get here eventually. So what's on the other side of that? And that's what started this road. So there you go.
Seth 18:18
Yeah, so someone the other day asked on on social media I came or if it was Facebook or Twitter, it doesn't really matter. Of You know, when you say what the soul is, what is it? And I found myself typing an answer / deleting it / typing an answer, deleting it typing an answer, deleting it. I still haven't answered the question, even though, because, for me, the question became, it's the question of what is the soul doesn't matter? The question is whether or not I realized that I have one. Because like when I'm asleep, that's what I can come back to like when I'm unconscious. And I'm asleep. And I don't dream or I don't remember that I do. That there's a gap in that time. Like, I don't have any consciousness for that time. So do I cease to have consciousness for those hours, if that makes sense? And that's an over generalization and I was like, Well, if I live forever, but I'm not awake during it. Or if I don't know that I'm awake or if awake isn't a thing that exists anymore. That's not living either. Even if I have a “conscious“ that's dormant. And then I would just delete, delete, delete, and I'm still not quite saying it right. Nor do I nearly know what avenue to direct that energy towards. I've been bothered by it for like a week.
Nathan 19:23
Would you like me to weigh in on that?
Seth 19:25
Yes, absolutely.
Nathan 19:26
Okay. So in terms of soul, like the concept of soul in the ancient world, I think one of the things contextually that we oftentimes struggle with is that we're sitting in a Western context where modernity has been very influential on the nature of the discussion. And it's been influential because people like Descartes who does this whole thought experiments of you know, where I doubt everything and he's, he's trying to work backwards to what is you know, “I am the one doubting so what am I” and all that sort of stuff that gets into his discussion and soul and eventually defined soul, in tandem with, you know, with consciousness and thinking, right, so it becomes linked with rationality. This, you know, thinking substance is basically where you end up and then what happens as a result is people tend to link, you know, personhood, soul, and thought, you know, as if they're one thing that's just sort of clustered together.
And then you get into, you know, Science Advances—neuroscience, and the question was, you know, those things, so that clouds the discussion even more, because now it's like, oh, well…now, is it just brain and is not a different thing or is it not? And so, in the ancient world, the answer these questions are a little more basic. And it's basically, soul just meant the life force of a body. So the whole point thing, is there a logical distinction between the life of the body and the body itself? And obviously there is because it's where we have dead bodies with contradiction. We run into a contradiction if we talk about non circular circles, right? We don't run into contradiction talking about dead bodies. That's perfectly logical, you know, concept, no contradiction.
So you have to draw a distinction between the life of a body and the body itself. And they call the life of body “soul”. Now, by implication, of course, you'd say, well, doesn't that mean that plants have souls? The answer is, yeah, they call it a fucose soul, right? That's, you know, the fucose psyche is like, yeah, that's a thing. That's a term they use the soul of a plant, and the soul of an animal and soul of a human.
And you start to realize, Oh, yeah, so a plant is alive. And it has a life force. That's it, because it's a living body. And so it has a soul. And that's what they mean. So in a very basic way, that's what they mean, is just whatever that life force is, that our body has, that at some point ceases. Now becomes a secondary question for them right about whether or not soul is dependent on the body, right or not. And this is where you get into Socrates his argument and the entire discussion of whether it's sort of an epi phenomenal product of the body, like the way a sound is a product of a guitar string. Right? Or whether or not it (soul) has control over the body, right? Which way the dependence is going. And that's what's actually interesting, because we think, you know, we're so smart now, asking these questions that nobody has thought of before. Like, yeah, like, they kind of dealt with those questions pretty thoroughly back then.
And, you know, you go through all the arguments for why they think or why some of the philosophies there's actually disagreements, right. So one of the philosophies think the soul dies with the body because they think it is dependent it's epi phenomenal product. People like Socrates, however, suggests that because in epi phenomenal reality is like with a guitar that produces, an instrument that produces sound, like guitar strings producing a melody. The causality is only one way right and as One way where the melody is affected primarily and fully determined by the causal instrument, the physical instrument.
And so it says the very fact that I can do things like think to raise my arm and it affects and that indicates bilateral relationship between the two, right? I can get stabbed, and it affects my consciousness, but my consciousness can affect my body. He suggests that it's not an epi phenomenal reality, because that would be a purely unilateral causality. And that's one of the reasons why Socrates thinks the death of the body will clearly affect the mind. But it would only be if it's purely epi phenomenal that would that would mean it would cease to exist. So that's why Socrates suggests soul, one of the four arguments for why he thinks the soul survives the body.
Seth 23:50
I'm gonna say this about the guitar argument, and then I'm not going to answer it, because I have other didn't expect to go there. But although I'm liking this a lot However, we don't have that many hours to to do, we just don't. So being that I play the guitar, I know if you hit a certain string in a certain way, it not only makes a noise of itself, it also makes a noise off of the other guitar strings as well, without me touching those strings.
And so with that way, it makes me wonder what my impact of my soul is, if we're gonna talk about it that way on those in direct community with me, or at least close community with me, however, I'm not gonna answer that.
Nathan 24:27
Boy, we could have a lot of fun with that!
Seth 24:28
Not gonna answer that. But yeah, the first thing I thought when you said that I'm like, Yeah, but if I hit the seventh fret of the A string, I know for a fact that it resonates with the E string, and if I mute the A string that E is still ringing, so I'm not gonna it's fine. So the documentary that you did Becoming Truly Human. I think the reason that I do actually, I have watched as many times I have is not because of you it is because of the people in it. How
Nathan 24:56
I’m not offended by that. That's fine.
Seth 24:57
That’s fine. How did you how did you get them. So when people come on to this show there is a certain openness about we're going to talk about things. But it's not video. And so when there's just a voice, there's still a little bit of a mask of you can distance yourself from that. So how do you get, I assume those are all students or how did you get connected with those people? How did they get connected with you in such a way that just stripped bare the, there's that one woman that goes, I'm pretty sure that when I talk about this, my parents, like my mom is just going to feel like I have failed her as a human being. And that's a paraphrase. But I thought to myself, you're aware that she could just hit play right?
Nathan 25:39
Does she have an Amazon account? Because it's so…
Seth 25:45
“click” How do you approach gathering people for conversation about that?
Nathan 25:49
Yeah, so this was a really surprising thing. When we started one of the producers who's credited on it. Joshua Lowery, he's the sort of guy, I don't have this gift, I'm comfortable talking to people who I know want to talk to me, but I'm not really comfortable just going up to a complete stranger and be like, Hey, what's happening?
But Josh Lowery is the sort of guy who can just strike up a conversation with a stranger and he sort of gathers stray humans, like some people gather stray animals like it's, that's what he does. And so anyway, I said, you know, Josh, you're really good at this. I need to find “Nones”, right. So we're going to set up a process where you find him. And Josh would do anything from like, oh, there's an open bar, like there's an open mic night at a bar. And I'm going to sign up for open mic and I'm going to get up on that stage with that mic. And I'm going to start talking about this documentary and say, if anybody can describe what a none is and describe, you know, the religiously unaffiliated in cases like somebody really unfamiliar with a term and doesn't know the documentary is about the religiously unaffiliated, The Nones right.
It's like, it's I'm gonna describe what a nun is. If you fit that category, I'm gonna be over there and I'll buy you a beer and we'll talk, right, like, and so you do things like that. There'd be times when we were sitting there waiting to talk to somebody, and he’s go “hey, that, that bartenders got a really interesting look, he looked great on camera, go find out what his religious affiliation is”, be like, all right, I need head over there. And before you know, he's drink some conversation. And you know, so it didn't matter parties, grocery store, bar or whatever, he would just talk to people. And once he had gotten through that sort of initial phase of getting them to sort of warm up and answer whether or not you know what their affiliation was, if they fit the none category, he gathered basic information and see if they were open to talking to me.
You know, now that didn't mean they were committing to the documentary, but would they be at least open to talking to the director? And so he would create these profiles where you just take a photo of jot down notes. And I'd go through this database who's creating and be like, very interested, very interested, not so interested. And we’d do these follow up meetings. And that would normally be, you know, Josh, and I meet him at an Applebee's or something right? You know, we're sit there and buy him a drink, and only, you know, talk to him about I'd normally go through all the same questions, which were very similar to the questions in the film.
You know, I just asked him like, Well, you know, growing up, what was your affiliation? Were both parents religious, or was just one How often did you go to church? Was it sort of cultural thing? Or did they really believe it? Did you ever really believe it? You know, when did you start to doubt it? And I just go through this sort of chronological thing. And what was interesting was, it was interesting me was that I found that people opened up right away. You know, talking about this sorts of questions. And it seemed that one of the things that was also surprising to me that, came out of that, is that there were a lot of them weren't that grateful by the time I was done interviewing them, which was strange to me.
Seth 29:16
Like to get it off their chest or…
Nathan 29:18
Well, yeah, so this is what they would tell me. They'd say, you know, I'm so that, you know, thank you for taking the time, you know, yeah. And I, okay. Well, and it was essentially what I found out is that if you are somebody who is religiously unaffiliated, right, and so you've, you've been raised Baptist, I don't know, right, and you are no longer Baptist, your parents are Baptists. And they're uncomfortable with the fact that you don't go to church. Who could you talk to you about religion? Right, right. Like you get to talk to your parents? That's a bad idea. Am I going to talk to my friends who are religious, probably not because I fear the same things I have with my parents and probably project on them. I’ve got this new atheist buddy and he's dogmatic. He's basically a religious atheist in the sense that he's going to try to evangelize me and atheism, but most Nones actually aren't atheists.
So, you know, do they really want to have that conversation? Not really. So who do they talk to?
So religious people are accustomed to I talk about religion all the time I go to church, I hear a guy talk from a pulpit about religion, then I hang out with friends who also, you know, practice the religion. And if we have questions, we talked about things, what are you reading? Maybe it's a religious book, that sort of thing. You have conversations about religion all the time, religiously, unaffiliated folks rarely have people to talk to you about religion. In fact, just to illustrate how extreme it is, in many cases, there's this one couple from New York that I interviewed. I loved the couple. There's so much fun. I wanted to have them in the film, but it just didn't work out but they've been married for three years. I think it was….and had never once until that interview talked about whether they believed in God.
Seth 31:03
With each other?
Nathan 31:07
Yeah.
Seth 31:08
That's awkward. No, it's not awkward is not the word. That's interesting.
Nathan 31:12
So, you know, he's like, I definitely believe in God. She's like, I definitely don't believe in God. They look at each other like, Who are you?
Seth 31:21
Are they still married? Is it your fault?
Nathan 31:24
I hope so.
But it was funny because to watch them, like suddenly it was no longer an interview because they're arguing with each other. just walked away.
Seth 31:32
You just walk away and paid the bill and said ...
Nathan 31:36
Here's the number of good counselor. But it was, so that that was shocking to me. I couldn't imagine not only having going through your dating relationship, but a full marriage and been married for three years. Never once it comes up, do you believe in God? Like really? But the more I reflected on the question of if I were not practicing religion in any way. It wasn't a student of religion or anything like that. When what I talked about it probably not often, especially if it's a sore spot, right?
There's a lot of hurts, you know, as the interview show, right? There's a lot of sensitive issues sitting there. With religion if you've abandoned it.
Seth 32:36
I don't want to spend a pile of time talking about the movie, or the documentary. I don't know what you call it, the picture there we go — the moving picture. Because it is easily accessible and people can wrestle with it. And it's, it's well put together so it stands on its own. So if you're comfortable. I'd like to spend a little bit of time talking a bit about where you and your wife ultimately ended up. And I'm assuming that you're still practicing Orthodox faith.
I know next to zero actually, if there's negative numbers, that's about how much I know about the Eastern Church. There's a way there's mathematically that's not possible for me to know a negative amount, but you know what I mean? I'm a banker. That's the career that found me. So, I am reversed mortgaged into the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Nathan 33:25
Okay,
Seth 33:28
So you talked a lot about…hold on, I wrote it down here. Athanasius just kind of, you know, strengthening some of the systems, everything that you wanted, like, this sounds Oh, this is yes. And yes. And yes. And Okay. Yes. And then you just like you seem to have an affinity of Athanasius.
And some of the other early church fathers that are different than the ones that in the western church that we would talk about, you know, Augustine and I wonder if you could just for the listeners kind of break apart some of those, how they spoke to you why that kind of matters, and then kind of how that's reshaped the way that you see God?
Nathan 34:01
Sure.
All right, how much time do we have?
Seth 34:06
Till karate for my son? So you got four hours?
Nathan 34:11
I don't think what maybe four hours
Seth 34:12
I don't either because eventually my four year old will wake up and interrupt the whole thing.
Nathan 34:19
Copy that. So I'll go a little, you know, little by way of, you know, narrative through that. So, picking up on my LSD crisis and, you know, delving into religion after I went through the whole, you know, asking pastors, apologists, family, friends and start reading things obsessively, you know, and this was systematic theologies, this was apologetics manuals, switched majors to study philosophy, you know, so I was now reading philosophers and so on. When I delved into that, even though I was raised in a Missouri Synod Lutheran home by this point, you know, those beliefs eroded I didn't have any sort of commitment to Lutheranism.
I did have a basic belief in Jesus Christ as significant because my mom was deeply into apologetics. And so actually, I knew apologetics better than I probably knew the Bible or doctrine or anything like that, so that it actually made an impression. I went away thinking, I think there's something very reasonable about believing that Jesus Christ is somebody significant, historically. That he's not just an ordinary dude. He really is a wonder worker. He's probably the Son of God, but I didn't really have a concept for what that meant. Right, you know, so I had certain basic, you know, anchoring points in my thinking, where I think there's something significant about Jesus, I think there's something significant about his claim of exclusivity relative to other world religions and some things like that. But beyond that, I didn't really have any commitments.
And so, when I started delving into these questions, I also had a certain amount of pessimism, whereas like, well, it might be that the answers aren't something that I like, right? Maybe we are fated you know, God is terrible, and you know, and all that. And that's just what we're stuck with. And we're screwed and so be it. And so I was open to all those things, right, there was no sort of pie in the sky optimism about anything that I was delving into. And so where I really started, once I got into these things in a very deep way was I wanted to understand a little bit about the historical development of Christianity. And so I delved into Augustine of Hippo because I recognize just from what I knew about church history by this point that he was very significant information of Roman Catholicism and then the formation of Protestantism; I wanted to understand his thought.
And so I devoted years and years to reading Augustine’s thought but then once I started reading Augustine’s thought anybody's familiar with Augustine of Hippo recognizes that his thought is heavily influenced and spires out into other topics like Neo Platonism. So in Augustine’s Confessions, right he talks about Reading certain books of the Platonists and in these books I read not with the exact words but with all the same meaning in intents, you know, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.
And he's referring, probably to Plotinus, although some scholars think it's Porphyry, so then I was like, well, I gotta read Plotinus and I've gotta read Porphyry because they disagree about who he's talking about here. And once you read NeoPlatonism then you gotta read Platonism. And once you're reading Plato, now you're reading Aristotle, and so on, so forth. So it was like, what happened was this program that sort of split into two directions as a result, first of all, he's spending all this time understanding Augustine. And then I was spending all this time in ancient sources, trying to understand the backdrop of Augustine, so Greek philosophy. And then also looking at how it spidered out into, you know, the medieval period.
So I started reading Thomas Aquinas, intensely I started reading Bonaventure, I started reading John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham in terms of later nominal schools. Anyway, so that was sort of this program going on simultaneously where I'm just following these threads. And one of the things that started to happened was I admit that on a on an aesthetic level, right? You know, I was sort of drawn to the the ancient Roman Catholicism, right. There's something cool about the artwork that had already been heavily influential on my thought, right. I was big into Renaissance art. So I knew there was a connection with Roman Catholicism there.
I thought, you know, there's something fascinating about the ancient and about tradition and so on, but it was almost like so I went into it with certain hopefulness that maybe there's something really great and rich here, but as like I peered behind that veil and I started digging deeper and deeper, I got more and more disturbed by it. So rather than being drawn into it as really repelled by it. And I was really repelled partially because first of all I was a little unnerved by, Augustine’s appropriation of neoplatonism I thought I found his love for Plotinus and little odd and wondered if it was in some ways tainting his Christianity.
Nathan 39:22
You know, my views on this are very different than they probably were back then. But that was immediately a little weird to me and troubling. And then also the other thing that was really much, you know, was also rather difficult was I took very seriously the problem of evil, the problem of pain, things like that, as a sort of anti-theology. And thought, you know, and from what I could tell the Christians took it very seriously to. The Christian is dealing with the problem of evil and the character of God was a big part of a true Christianity. But from what I could tell I was not persuaded by the sort of apologetic responses to the problem of evil. And I went away wondering, I'm not sure if Augustine’s God is good.
I think he's powerful, but I don't know if he's good. And, the other thing was, the deeper I got into medieval scholasticism and I started looking at they are wrestling with the way God relates to free will. And I don't just mean predestination. I'm sure a lot of people are thinking ah he’s talking about predestination. Yeah, that's part of it. But in the medieval scholastic period, they start to recognize that the sort of classical rejection of immutability can reference God that God is immutable, that he's outside of time, and there's different meanings of what that would mean, like John Duns Scotus definitely doesn't mean what Thomas Aquinas means but there's there's sort of this odd temporality there. However you interpret that, and that with that, because God doesn't mutate you can't have contingencies Then, you know, there's this real puzzle and medieval period of does God have free choices? And if he doesn't have free choice, do we have free choices?
It’s not just about predestination. It's about just is God basically just a force that sort of does whatever he does, and then everything else necessarily follows? The medievals know, they can't say yes to that. Right? That would be Muhammadian fate, right. That's why they would the terms you start to find, right is they had rejected pagan fate and then they recognize a certain type of fate that they ascribe to the Muslims. And they're like, and we don't want any of these sorts of things. So, so we're not fatalist. But the real problem for them was, if God doesn't have free will, that we can't have free will. And there's this worry about what would be called the distribution axiom where the necessities that are applied to the cause end up extending over and distributing to the effect and so maybe nothing is free. Everything's determined. Everything's sectarian.
Now, they knew as Christians, they couldn't say that because they knew enough about you know, the Christian commitments and the fathers and in Scripture that it seemed that had to be rejected. But, you know, the puzzle was how do you reject that in any coherent way? Right it's one thing to say this is true it's another thing to be justified in saying this is true. And that's what they really struggled with. And I looked at it and I looked at all the different systematic ways of dealing with it and basically I was sitting there going man, not sure this God is good. I'm sure this not sure this God is free. I'm not sure I’m free. I’m not sure the world. You know.
Anyway, it's the other thing with that was also this question of, you know, not just the problem of evil and the problem of fate and the problem of joy and freedom, but it was also, you know, from what I could tell, I was like, this God doesn't seem to be involved in the world. And, I don't mean deism, like oftentimes folks will be like, yeah, the God of the Diests like in modern philosophy or God's clockmaker and he sends it off and things like that. I don't mean that but I mean, was Even though the Christians in the medieval period acknowledged that God works miracles and he does things and all that; and shows up in history there was really a sense in which the model because of the commitments to immutability, so defined, ended up requiring things almost like a computer programming where God acts and time but he acts causally in time and the acts by way of like before ever making anything a certain order crease it just unfold in the like, is that really him interacting with time? Or is that just causally unfolding things
Seth 43:34
Like a big “If This Then That algorithm?
Nathan 43:37
Yeah, and that's basically are sitting here going, I'm not sure this God is good. I'm not sure this God is personal. I'm not sure this God is present, you know, except as in a weird causal way. And I really started to be deeply disturbed by it, and questioned heavily whether it was true. Whether it was true whether it was defensible. Whether it was sort of pagan corruption of Christianity, all these sorts of questions, and I'd like to say that and then I went into like Protestant scholasticism and beyond.
And I was like, reassured that, you know, that the Protestant movement that was supposed to sort of clean house and get rid of all the corruptions had, like, recaptured something. And I was like, I don't actually see that. So I studied at the time, by this time I got to my doctoral work, I was studying under Rich Muller, who's one of the foremost authorities in the world and 16-17th century Protestant scholasticism. And so I knew very well, the fact that, you know, the 16-17th century scholastics were in many ways, picking up, you know, the torch of the medievals. And I recognized sort of the different sort of ways in which they would appropriate this, but modify that and so on.
They were still in the same discussion it didn't matter if they were Catholic or Protestant, right, they were still within that same way. Thinking that same framework and that same way of doing theology. And so that was, again, it was troubling to me. And then if you fast forward, I was starting to entertain because I had these growing convictions that this was false; that God actually is personal in some way active and present in the world. In a way that's different than what I'm reading about in this sort of, you know, scholastic framework. I started to find a peel in certain god of a philosopher so process philosophy, I don't know if you've come across process philosophy?
Seth 45:40
Is process philosophy different than process theology?
Nathan 45:45
Nope, so it was originally developed as a philosophy by Alfred North Whitehead and people like Charles Hartshorne, but then it you know, developed into a theological systems so, you know, David Ray Griffith and others like that, and so I started looking at those guys and saying, I think God is more like that.
But then the problem that was simultaneously happening in my thinking, again with regard to historical Christianity was that I noticed certain evangelicals in the Protestant world like Clark Pinick, Gregory Boyd, and you know, others were exploring open theism and freewill theism and things like that. And they were kind of trying to do process philosophy light. Where it's like, well, we'll remain broadly evangelical, but we'll try to appropriate some elements of the more personal God. And obviously, like, a lot of evangelicals freaked out for like, you know, that's heretical.
And I thought, you know, that only confirmed my worries about that entire way of thinking. So what—this is very long way of saying where I eventually went in my thought was I ultimately crafted, you know, sort of religion of my own making which was largely influenced by process philosophy. So panentheism, right, the god world organism is sort of one big thing God is somehow like substantially present as part of the organism and that God has free will and he sort of interacts with and tries to woo and direct our free will but he's not omnipotent. He's not omniscient, etc, etc.
My favorite book, largely because I found that title so pretentious was Charles Hartshorne’s book, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes, which I thought was a great, great title. And so what I had done is in delving deep into the, this sort of backdrop of historical Christian theology and really delving into the Augustinian tradition in depth, right. This was no superficial delving in. I had been definitively repelled from historical Christianity, and I went away rejecting it entirely. Not that I was ever really fully embracing it right. I wasn't a practicing Christian in that sense. I was doing a philosophical theological exercise, dealing with questions, but I went away going, whatever this is, it's not true. And this over here is close to the truth and that's where I you know, I embraced process philosophy and I had a Jesus of sorts, right? Definitely wasn't the Calcedonian Christ, but I had a Jesus of sorts, and I had a trinity of sorts, and I had a God, you know, who was an organism interacting with the world.
I basically developed this sort of, you know, eclectic, secular, philosophical religion. And, anyway, that took years and years so that spans over, you know, my study of philosophy, church history, systematics and into my PhD work. And what ultimately started happening was the big moment for me that changed everything was when I took this class called Nicea to Constantinople. And so the Council of Nicea is the first of the seven ecumenical councils, Constantinople is the second so it was about that span, right between the first and second Ecumenical Council that frames the Nicene Creed that, you know, churches that say that Nicene Creed say. It's the Nicene-Constantinopalitan Creed really.
And so, I took that class. And while I had read about this period in church history, I had not read the primary sources of the disputes going on there. Alright, as you can tell from the sort of Bibliography I laid out, I spent all my time in primary sources in the Western tradition. And it never occurred to me that maybe there was something wildly different, you know, outside of that tradition. But I took that class, and this was in a in a doctoral class, and it was under a Patrologist, somebody who studies church fathers.
And it was nothing but primary sources, right. So we're reading Athanasius we're reading Arius for reading Alexander of Alexandria, we're reading letters back and forth with the Bishops, and we're reading the actual Council of Nicea and all that. And as I started reading Athanasius, I was so disoriented. Because what I…there's a certain point when you study theology, where you start to master these theological systems, and you're like, “Okay, I know what reformed thought is”. So if I pick up a reformed guy I more or less know what he's going to say about topics, and I find one or two surprises, but more or less, I can sort of predict how this system plays its way out with regard to, you know, any research question. Same thing with Lutherans and Catholics and so on.
Seth 50:46
Yeah, you can skim your way through almost the entire book or whatever.
Nathan 50:50
That’s right yeah until you find something interesting. And then you're like, Oh, that's interesting. I read Athanasius and I was like, I don't know what I'm reading, but whatever I'm reading I've never read it before, right? Like this is something that is entirely alien to everything I know.
And that was exciting and interesting and unnerving all at the same time. And then I'm reading Arius’ response and funny thing is what Arius has to say is more intuitive than Athanasius. At least for me at the time, the way I was thinking, so it's like, I understand Arius much better than I understand Athanasius I wonder if Arius is right in this discussion?
And so over time, I start wrestling through this and I'm thinking like, Athanasius is saying things about salvation that I have no idea what he's saying. He's saying things about the Incarnation that I don't understand what he's saying. And he's making certain arguments about creation and what creation is and how it happens that I don't get. And over time I'd start to wrestle with this and went deep into the texts and trying to figure out what on earth is going on? And I started thinking, Oh, well, maybe if Athanasius means this, then this would follow here and oh that does seem to be what Arius is responding to and I slowly started putting together those pieces. But there was so much that was disoriented. I didn't understand, you know, what he was saying about salvation, about creation about, you know, the incarnation.
Understanding the crucifixion didn't make any sense to me. You know, all this stuff and all these weird terms right, you know that are coming up that are totally foreign to the theological vocabulary I've developed over the years.
Seth 52:31
Like what?
Nathan 52:34
Well, as I expand forward into you know, other writers of the the area like Cappadocians you term find terms like the “divine energies”, what the heck are the divine energies, or the things around God. What, what are you talking about? The divine processions, I mean, I've heard of the Holy Spirit proceeding from you know, the Father, but like, what the hell are the divine processions?
And then, of course, the shocking statement You find it like Athanasius or Basil it's like, oh yeah, God became man so that we can become God. You're like, I'm sorry, excuse me, what?
What does this even mean? And so you know and also like, you know, in terms of salvation Athanasius tended to locate salvation largely in Christmas and the Incarnation itself and not so much in the cross. Now, the cross was significant, but I didn't understand how because again, it didn't fit the usual penal substitution certain models that I'd encountered in a lot Protestants or in Catholicism.
So anyway basically, what started to happen is, as I tried to walk this was the first time in a while I've been really reading theology because I was in new territory, right the first time in a long time where I'm like, I have no idea what I'm reading. And, that went far beyond that class, I obsessively delved into that topic. And those Writers and you know the class walked me through—I mentioned Athanasius, Arius, Alexanderr of Alexandria, but then going all the way up to Constantinople you start reading the Cappadocian fathers. So Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus.
And, what was interesting to me was, as I read them, not only was I finding a theology that was totally alien to everything I'd studied, I didn't understand you, I didn't understand it. I understood enough of it to know or not understanding it. But the other thing was that the more I started to get glimpses of, Okay, now it's starting to become clear, the fuzzy picture is starting to take focus. I started finding that their view of the goodness of God was closer to my own views on the goodness of God. And that the sort of Augustinian way of talking about the goodness of God was alien to them and probably would have been rejected by them. I started to think maybe I think their God actually is good, I started to realize that their view of God-world interaction was very different than what I had read in the scholastics. Their God actually is present active, free, personal and, again, I still didn't understand quite like what some of these terms meant and how this was even possible and how they avoided the sorts of problems that you know, was driving the western discussion.
But what I could tell is it's a different and, and there got actually is present, active, free, personal, you know, etc, etc. And so, suddenly, for the first time in my life, I found myself in first time in this journey, I find my found myself saying whatever this Christianity is, I have far more resonance with it and the possibility of embracing it, hadn’t embraced it, but the possibility of embracing it then I ever have with any other historical form of Christianity.
Seth 56:05
You talk about? And this is a question I struggle with a lot. So bit of context and listeners of the show, or at least longtime listeners will know. So my wife is a pediatric cancer nurse. And so I have a lot of friends, and my wife has a lot of friends and family, that struggle with the problem of evil. And so you talk about you have an affinity for the way that Athanasius handles the problems of evil. Concisely how does he handle the problem of evil? Because I know I get those wrote responses of, you know, God didn't cause this bad things just happen. And yes, we have the other side of you just not do in life, right? Because good things don't happen. I mean, bad things happen to people that aren't good. In other words, but how does Athanasius handle the problem of evil?
Nathan 56:47
Yeah, so it's more than just Athanasius. I mean, I mentioned it in there, because that was the start of seeing the seed of a response. But one of the things that became apparent to me and if people really want to be ambitious, and try to read highflying academic articles on my academia.edu page, you can find my journal articles. And, you know, and there's and, and in there, you'll find, you know, articles on Athanasius and other things like that there's an article in there that deals with it a bit called Created Corruptible, Raised Incorruptible, and that's where I sort of treat that this particular issue, but one of the things that can't and came out and again, that's not the only article that in which I deal with it, but it became apparent that for Athanasius, that what a creature is; I'll do it in full metaphysical way. Okay. You know, basically in Aristotelian metaphysics, you have this distinction between the properties of a thing right what it is, and then the material substratum that receives it right.
So, the agents are dealing with the question of how do you have this phenomena of becoming or generation given the fact that things either exist or they don't, right, and that seems to be a pretty obvious binary, you know, distinction. But generation seems to talk as if something moves through stages of becoming a thing, becoming more real, but things just either are they aren't right, the philosophers really use that to sort of hammer home the idea that change and development must be an illusion. And Aristotle's answer is he introduces something, he introduces the concept of potential and specifically, this is how he defines matter, right. So Aristotle's concept of matter is actually or prime matter is that matter is not you know, it's not particles, you know, it's not atoms, even though those things were already there are particle systems and atomic systems in the ancient world that was nothing new.
But Aristotle's point is if you have an atom, if you have any sort of thing that has real properties, it's already gone through, you know, it's already sort of concretely real. It's more than matter, it's matter with properties. And Aristotle's point is that whatever matter, prime matter, you know, beneath all this stuff is it's pure potential, right? And that's sort of weird concept, how you think about it. I think what I find helpful is thinking about it almost like, you know, at loose bit of fabric that is potentially, you know, in this shape or potentially in this shape, right? The idea is that you take this potential and you can join it with properties, and then you have what's called a Hylomorphic object where you have like, the actual properties concretely manifest in, you know, a material instance.
Okay, so Aristole uses that to explain generation that what you have is matter, properly speaking, is just the potential to be something. And what happens is that matter begins to take on properties. And as those properties manifest, that's what we call it generation, right? So that's why it's matter moving through these stages as it manifesting certain properties. And so that's that's what Hylomorphism is, right? You know, sort of, you know, the material receiving certain properties.
Okay, so that's by way background. Anyway, there's this whole sort of Alexandrian-Jewish reception and people like Philo of Alexandria. And he's not the only one, but who picks up on that concept and starts to talk about that he describes the cause pulling from Genesis that God calls being non vague, right? So he, you know, that, that basically Genesis, what you have is God telling matter to become certain things and you know, those are manifest and matter. And that's what generation is.
And then, that term, that phraseology that Philo uses ends up in, you know, you see it in the New Testament to. So Paul talks about God who calls the being, you know, our calls not being as being right. And then Christians pick that up, it shows up in the Liturgy of John Chrysostom, and things like that, well. Athanasius is using the same concept and so when Athanasius talks about what a creative is, you know, he talks very plainly about just the fact that well, obviously every creature moves from non being to being that's actually from Aristotle's physics. Right? So here's where he talked about this. The Jews had embraced that early Alexandrian Jews embraced it. And so the Alexandrian Christians, like Athanasius also have this concept floating around in your mind, because, you know, Paul mentions it too. So when Athanasius talks about that, one of the things that becomes inevitable is that there's no such thing as creatures just bursting into existence. like God says, Look, let there be horses and boom, there's horse, right?
Nathan 1:01:35
Like, for them, the concept is that the calling of a thing into being, metaphysical necessity, moves through stages of development. And in fact, Arius who says, Well, no, no. I think God at some point in this discussion areas, because he recognizes that this is part of the argument, right part of the argument that Athanasius is using is he saying if The Son of God is a creature the way Arius suggests. And for those who don't know what Arianism is, that's what Arianism is right? The God the Father creates God the Son, there's a time where he's not the father and the son. Athanasius says, if that's true, the Son of God, like is immutable, meaning he goes through stages of developmental generation, right? And then Athanasius starts to go through all these other entailments as well, where he says, and he also has to be accidentally good, like, can't be essentially good. And that means he can also be corrupted. He can move out of being he can become evil, right? Like he goes through all these entailments and those were amongst the things where I was going, whoa, like, What are you talking about? But Arius he gets it right. So in his response, he's like, I don't think the Son of God gets his existence from matter. Okay, that right there indicates he understands what the physics are underneath what what they're talking about. And Arius says, actually, I think it was that the advice of Eusebius or somebody, but Arius is like, okay, no, no. So I think the father creates the son, but he creates an immutable.
And Athanasius says, that’s impossible. Yeah, he's like, no, that's impossible. Now that part right there is really important because what it shows is that what Athanasius is saying, what Alexander of Alexander says, what the council is saying, and the church fathers after them say, not even God can make immutable creatures. In other words, they understand when they talk about what is possible for God, they think they're still sort of certain physics to it. Right? And what this means is not even God can create creatures that are immutable. Not even God can create creatures that don't go through developmental stages. Not even God can create creatures that are “essentially good”. So now that starts to now they're not talking about the problem of evil here, right? They're just talking about basic physics, right? But their physics and the theology of those physics have ramifications, because what starts to happen is, if every creature of metaphysical necessity is of a certain, you know, is a certain way, and not even God can make it otherwise, then you begin to have the beating of explanation for why doesn't God make creatures this way?
If the answer is he can't, that's the start of an answer. And so anyway, I go through there's another article on my academia page called on the Metaphysics of God and creatures, and I actually walk through every metaphysical entailment that comes out of that discussion and the rationale for each entailment. But this is this is probably a good way of backing into a little bit about you. I mean, you asked me what Eastern Orthodox is and how it's different than the West.
Seth 1:05:21
So what you're saying with the problem of evil is God can't create things that are not possibly evil or corruptible. And so that's why evil exists in my room. I, I just wanna make sure I'm not paraphrasing and correctly before you pivot to the Orthodox.
Nathan 1:05:37
Well, I think answering that question and pivoting orthodoxy going to happen simultaneously. Okay. So let's do it this way. What is the Christian religion? Okay, a Western answer, typically, and here by Western I think this is true of Catholicism and true of Protestantism. The critical thing is that God is a judge right. He's a lawgiver. And this is also a judge creatures or subordinate moral creatures especially, are subordinate to those laws and held accountable the laws. Hence the judge part that the human condition that Christianity exists to remedy is the fact that we are fallen right and in some way, found ourselves in a condition of guilt and future judgments that is not looking good for us with our Creator and our judge; and that the Christian religion exists in order to somehow remedy that. Now, there's going to be differences there on how does that happen? Right?
Does Christ atone for our sins and put us right with God even though we're not right in our behavior? Or is it somehow that he gives us grace that enables us to do things that are meritorious before God, more or less, that's sort of the judicial legal framework of the way that the West tends to think. The Christian religion according to let's say, Athanasius and you could read my article just just called Athanasius of Alexandria, its forthcoming in the Blackwell Dictionary of Christian apologists or something like that? I think also on my Vimeo page. Athanasius in the other Eastern fathers see the the creature look, first of all, it's not just a human condition, it's a creaturely condition. And they see it as a cosmic creaturely condition. Because the term corruption right in Aristotle, I mentioned generation as this sort of movement of, you know, properties into material, right?
So the manifestation of a thing comes to be generation, Aristotle has a treatise called on generation corruption. And corruption is just the flip side of that, right, it starts to erode and move out of existence, right? So you see a plant move through a seedling stage until it's fully formed. That's generation. Then it starts to retreat backwards, and road and die. That's called corruption. Okay?
The fact of the matter is that every creature, because it's a creature, is susceptible to corruption and not even God can make it otherwise. Because if what a creature is something who manifests in matter, right? And matter has no properties of its own, just like this fabric can be any number of thing. Even though it receives properties, no properties it receives are native to it, it can release anything that it receives, right because it's just a receptacle. And what that means is that anything that comes into being can go out of being or anything that is generated is corruptible. Okay? So that's a basic and we're not even talking about morally, we're just talking about in terms of metaphysically. Yeah, metaphysical composition, right? That's all we're talking about, or physical composition.
Okay, so that's the condition of plants. That's the condition of animals that's the condition for humans. That's the condition of angels. So any creature that's applicable. Now, the question is, if that's there, as a threat to all of the entire cosmos, how do you ever deal with that, right? And that is the central question of Eastern Christianity. So it's in some ways, yes, the fall of humanity and death and disease and corruptions of various kinds setting in and starting to spread throughout the cosmos is a manifestation of the problem. It's a realization of the problem. The threat is realized, and now active, but it was there before the fall, the threat that Christianity sets out to remedy is there before that ever sets in.
And so for the eastern fathers, the question, the main metaphysical question, is if corruption threatens the whole of the cosmos, just because it's created and every creature, just because its creature is threatened by this, how do you ever remedy that? And for the eastern father's a critical answer, and this is where it gets into all the other weird terminology that I mentioned that I was like, what on earth are they talking about? Their answer is That only by participating in the only thing that's incorruptible can a creature ever hope to escape corruption and that thing, if it's properly called thing is God.
And so critical to the eastern, patristic, way of thinking this is also where I get into I mentioned that they have a much more sort of, I would call it a porous view of reality. So there's a tendency in western thoughts specifically thanks to the enlightenment.
Nathan 1:10:28
Like the, mechanical philosophy is actually what it was called right when the sort of modernist movement decided their anti-Aristotliean, particularly in the anti scholastic push to develop the mechanical philosophy and everything was based on the idea it was, it was a rehabilitation of ancient atomic atomism and particle philosophy. So people like Pier Gusinde, were explicitly resuscitating ancient atomic theories. And it was purely speculative, but the idea was like, well, let's pretend that everything is just composed of atoms and atoms are solid bits of things, because that's how they thought about it back then. And so they just collide, right? They're closed systems that just like run into each other. And how stuff works is just mechanism, mechanistic push pull systems, right? Well as a result everything's a closed system, right? Nothing's porous, because it's all just like, boom, boom, boom, boom, push, pull, right? Like, that's what reality is.
And so of course, like God is just sort of in between things if he's present at all right? Because you and I are closed systems, and we're composed of closed systems called atoms and some silver and the Eastern Church Fathers, they tend to think of things as porous. And so for example, this concept of energia, I mentioned the divine energies, right? energy is a term that Paul uses frequently in the New Testament, and its background is Aristotliean, right. So energia is a term developed by Aristotle doesn't exist the Greek speaking literature prior to Aristotle, if you want to see like the definitive work on this read David Bradshaw's Aristotle, East and West. But he, he, Aristotle develops the term in this concept. And initially, it's just sort of a basic distinction between having and using something like the distinction between a power-Dunamis-and the exercise of power, energia. Right.
So I have the power of speech, right? That's a power I have. I stop using it now. Now I speak right. That's the difference between Dunamis the real power in the activity. So but as Aristotle developed city starts to develop a distinction between kinesis motion and energia. And the reason he develops this is because of his unmoved mover argument, right, this argument for one of his arguments for the existence of God. And the concept is basically that if God is a non mutative, he doesn't undergo generation he doesn't mutate the way I described right, mutated phenomena. How does he do things? Right without some sort of like mutated? Actually, when you and I do stuff we mutate, right? There's neural firings, there's potential to actual movements all over the place. Right? And so he's like, if God's not like that, how does he do stuff?
And so he develops this distinction between kinesis, which is sort of this processive activity, goes through stages, like building a house, right is one of the analogies I think he uses when you start building and you're in the process of building and finish building. And perfect, complete activity that is complete at every moment and seeing is one of those sorts of examples. So when I look at you, I may be seeing in an ongoing sense, but each moment that scene happens, it's complete, right? It's not, you know, successive like that. So Aristotle suggests that God moves the world by energia, not kinesis. Right? He is always pure, complete activity.
In fact, then Aristotle goes on actually says that God just is energia, right? Like, that's all he is. He's pure energy. But what happens is the Alexandrian Jews end up picking up this concept and they develop it a little further, and they start pushing it forward. And because they think it's really useful specifically for talking about something that they see in the Old Testament, which is hard to figure out exactly what's going on, which is the distinction between God's face and his back. Right so you're familiar of course with Moses, show me your glory?
Seth 1:14:30
I can't show you my face, but you can look at my backside. Don't get crazy, don't get crazy!
Nathan 1:14:35
Right. And the question is, what does that mean?
And for people like the way Philo of Alexandria develops it is he suggests that there's a difference between what God is in his essence God super substantially what he is in himself, and the operative power or energia of God that moves the world and acts in time, acts in space. And so on.
And so he picks up Aristotle's term for divine activity, energia. And he draws the distinction between God's essence and his energies, which Aristotle hadn't drawn that distinction. He suggests that his essence is God's face, the energy is His back, then there's good reason to think that that's probably the divine glory and all these sorts of things. Right. So that that's sort of now what also happens as a development in this period is that sort of logical distinction between an essence and an energy you know, it starts to play an important role in things like physics, right with fire, it has operations of heating of lighting, right, but not everything that heats and light is fire, right? So there's a distinction between what it means to be fire-the nature of being fire, and heating and lighting.
And then with that, there develops this concept that maybe energia can be transferred and this is where you get into this porus concept. Right? So I can heat metal up and at some point take it out and it burns and it glows but it is still metal. Right? But it now has within it the operative powers of fire and so there's a transference. And so this sort of things started to come into play in the way that, you know, the eastern writer, the Alexandrian writers in particular thought about the world as a porous place where there's transference between nature's; communing between nature's and, and ultimately, you know, they apply that spiritually.
So how do demoniacs start to do crazy things that you know, humans shouldn't be able to do? They know stuff, they have superhuman strength, whatever it is. And the answer was, they are energized by devils right? And meaning not so much possession in the sense they crawled inside the body and now that puppeteering and things like that, but it's a transference of their operative power to other agent. Yes so kinda like them fire metal but they also used to positively so in Second Maccabees, they would use it in reference to the Maccabeans being energized by the good angels, right? So they use that way. You have prophets, right prophets who are doing miraculous stuff and you know, how do they do that? Right? They're energized by God, right?
And so there emerged this concept of not just a porous physics with regard to physical phenomena and physical nature's you know, certain natures that have an affinity and an openness and a porousness to another but even spiritually, and became critical to how they saw the world. Well, this gets picked up in Paul, but it gets lost in translation. So there's places where Paul says things like,
it's not me who works, but God who works in me.
And this gets into like, all these sort of Western discussions about causality and you know, who's doing what and you know, that sort of stuff, but the terminology is actually energia right, so it's God who energizes me, which in this context means conduit, right. It's a foreign operative power of the divine nature is taking up residence within me and I'm using it, just like the metal uses the operative powers of fire that are resident within it, right? He uses it in the Thessalonians, where he talks about them, you know, doing the works of God and he uses the Middle Voice, so it's ambiguous whether they are doing or God is doing it, and it's probably ambiguous and purpose just because like with a branding iron, right, which is doing it the fire the metal, well, they're both doing it.
And he talks about it, like, you know, God who energizes me for, you know, ministry to the Gentiles energizes Peter for ministry to the Jews, right. But then they'll also use the ominous one in Ephesians. Right. And that he talks about the children rather were energized by the devil, right? So he uses that whole concept. Okay. It's a long road to get to this whole point of saying that part of this whole concept is that you and I, and not just you and I but even objects, have a porous nature which is very different way of thinking about it and then the very Western modernist sort of mechanical notions but that was critical to how they understood the fact that you and I are not just physically porous we're affected and take into us air and water and food and those things become part of us and so on. We're also spiritually porus not just for God but for angels and for even objects are you know. I always like doing the experiment when I talk with this about I have my students run through a thought experiment, saying you buy a new house and you're exploring the new house and you go into the attic and you find a satanic altar. There’s always a gasp and I asked what they would do with it inevitably some student noise says I burn it and this like a UK right like this, not like a very religious school, by any stretch. The question is, well, why is just a table right? And they've just got this intuition. There's some bad juju attached to that…
Seth 1:20:10
And it’s being transferred into the house.
Nathan 1:20:12
That's right. And so all the concepts about like, like cursed places and objects and things like that, that's an intuition. And I know that a lot of you know, people would say, well, that's superstitious or whatever. But, it's so woven into our human intuitions, like even evangelicals who don't believe in relics or holy spaces want to go to the Holy Land and touch something that maybe Jesus touch. And I backpedal and quick, try to backfill that intuition and say, well, it's just because of an interest in history. But I actually think there’s something more than that there might be something here for me.
Seth 1:20:45
We are probably well past the time that I promise you, but I still have two and I have questions. One of them is about relics and it's one that I wanted to ask you about. So the icons in not only the Eastern Orthodox Church, but like the Roman Catholic Church as well and other churches, in the church that I go to, like the best icon I have is a stained glass window. Like, what purpose, for you, to the icon serve? Like is that really drawing on just like the artistic part of you? We're like, yeah, this helps me refocus and see something that I didn't create. And then how does it talk to me or is it something entirely different?
Nathan 1:21:23
Okay. So, let me wrap up that point and tie it to that.
So that very long road I went on, is how they answer the question like, how do you overcome corruption? Right. And the answer was that, you know, prior to the fall, humanity's only hope of overcoming corruption would be to commune with and partake and be energized by God and participate in his incorruptible nature and be metamorphosized as results, right. That's the only hope you have for putting off corruption or end corruption. What about post fall right? This is what how they understand the incarnation, right that in the incarnation, God, the Son of God decides to actually fix humanity from the inside. So He becomes one of us. He joins the divine nature with our human nature, and he remakes humanity, which goes all the way up through his martyrdom, and ultimately, in the resurrection. You see it fully remade. Yeah, that's how you remix it. And now, you know are, you know, the hope of Christianity, the Christian religion is actually to be united to him and begin to participate in that through imitation, ultimately attained of resurrection from the dead. And that's how they understand then when Peter talks about that we escaped corruption by partaking of the divine nature, right? That's Peter says,
Seth 1:22:47
Is that separte from the concept of theosis?
Nathan 1:22:51
No that is the concept; when they say like God became man so that we can become God what they mean is we protected the divine nature. So just like the metal participates in the energies of fire. So we participate in the energies of God. And and that's the metamorphosis that begins here, but ultimately isn't complete until the resurrection from the dead when the body actually fully participates in it as well. Now, that's all actually relevant to icons.
So, in terms of iconography, everything within the Eastern Church Fathers and the Eastern Orthodox Church, which I treat those synonymously , is actually related to one question, which is, who do you say that I am? Right. The big question is the question of how do you understand Christ? And so like obvious that's obvious in Trinitarian discussions; its obvious and Christological discussions, probably less obvious to a lot of folks in you know, when it comes to like, Mary, but that too, is like, what you say about her whoever, whatever title you give to her says something about what you think about Jesus. And so it's there, but it's also in the seventh Ecumenical Council which deals with icons? That's actually the question being dealt with.
So John of Damascus, when he looks at iconography, and is defending the practices of having icons and kissing icons and burning incense before icons, one of the things that he's pointing out is that the exposition of the second commandment, which prohibits the worship of images and things like that. He explains that he points out that God actually exposits or Moses exposits the commandment, you know, in Deuteronomy.
And the exposition basically points out that the reason you're not supposed to make these images, but worship them, is because you heard a voice and you saw no likeness and the Septuagint its homoiōma which is likeness, right? So you didn't see anything it was like, right. And it reiterates that every time it says so don't make any images of things like sun or the moon or animals or anything like that and bow down because you heard a voice but you didn't see any lights. Right. And so the point is, whatever likeness you make, it will be a false likeness because God's invisible, right?
He doesn't look like the sun or the moon, or dogs or cats or humans, right? But John points out, this isn't a prohibition on images because the temple was like, God commands them to make images of things and heavenly things on Earth; like it's filled with that. But the point is, when it comes to God, what's interesting is like the Ark of the Covenant actually is, it actually is an icon, but it's an icon of the invisible God. So how do you make an icon of something invisible? You make an icon of the things around it. So you make an icon of angels that won't look at whatever is up here. So it's an ironic sort of icon. But John's question is, does what is said in Deuteronomy change with the incarnation. And, you know, just contrast Deuteronomy with the apostle John's letter where he says, you know, that which was from the beginning, which we believe done now with our hands in touch we've seen with our hands no contrast that with you heard a voice in so no, like this, right? And John's concern is if somebody opposes images of Christ, now he's fine with like no images of the Father, right? No old man and sky with great beard, like none of that sort of stuff. Right? Like, but if you oppose images of Christ, do you really believe in the incarnation. Right? So for John icons become an important feature of icons of Christ in particular, becoming a core feature of affirming the incarnation. The other icons incidentally have to do with and this would be a much longer discussion but have to do with the Christian recapitulation of Old Testament worship. So the Christian liturgy, specifically the East has always been sort of a retooling of synagogue worship, in a way that reflects the new realities, right. So there's parallels that are then differentiated.
Nathan 1:26:58
So that's a longer discussion, but that's what of the reasons why imagery is always been pervasive in the way that's been worked out because it was also pervasive in Jewish worship. But the point is with the images, Christ, it's, you know, that's part of what it is now then there's these other layers to it, and at least a couple of quick layers, one of them, one of the layers with it would be the fact that there is a metaphysic of relationality of good. And so the metaphysics of relationality, which are really important, think, for example of reflection, right a reflection in a mirror.
The reflection is something substantive, it's real, but what it is is entirely referential. It is the reflection of this. So by nature, it is essentially something that is referential. And so there was a belief that there's a one way connection between images and the actual thing, kind of like the reflection it is the image of right the language of likeness, actually, which is, you know, used. John points out and Deuteronomy, God presumes if you, you know, if you worship the likeness of this thing, you'll be worshipping that thing, right? Because he's not like that! And that's John's whole point is that there's a one way connection there, of dependence of likeness upon the thing it is like, not vice versa.
And so with that, there was also a belief that I can pay homage to the thing that is not present by honoring the likeness of it that is present. So maybe a quick easy analogy would be you know, a soldier on a battlefield who misses his wife and pulls out the photo and kisses the photo right? Like we're not really worried that he's got a thing for photo paper or that he's cheating on his wife with photo paper. Pornography is not normally people go and man people are really into like, you know, LED displays or paper or like we understand that there is something about the image vs what it is imaging? So, anyway, the point is, like, that's, that's pretty critical to how they understand the image. This has to do with not thing, but the thing images.
So I honor the thing that is not physically present or is not visibly present, maybe it's physically present but not visibly present. But via the image that is right. And so that's how I honor it. And then the third component of it all ties back to that other stuff about that I mentioned about energia and the porous nature of things. So and this goes the relics question is that because they have a porous concept of not just humans, the human soul and the human body, but you know even the things around us; and they would point to you know, John of Damascus point stall any number of things from like, Elisha’s bones where you know, man touches them, it comes back to life, right to the Ark of the Covenant, right?
Where you know, dude touches and all so much is too much right? And you can always like I think there's a sort of Western tendency to say that wasn't the Ark of the Covenant that's kind of kind of jumping over the Ark of the Covenant smacking the dude down their covenants just a box of gold, right? But that's not how they saw it. That object is been touched by God regularly because the glory of God descends, and you see that even in how the artifacts are treated in the Old Testament. So like you have artisans who are, you know, powered by God to make these artifacts, and then they're laid out and then Moses blesses them and the glory of God descends, it touches them and now they're holy, and shouldn't, you know, be touched by normal people or interacted with a normal way and that's kind of critical to have Eastern fathers think about this right?
It’s that holiness is actually a transference. It's not just like, well, I make this holy by setting apart and now nobody supposed to touch it or they're only specific interactive. So it's like a functional thing. Holiness is actually ontological reality, God transfers His holy goodness, it takes up residence in it. And that's what made those artifacts Holy God touched them. And you know, they were made holy by communing with him. And so that same processes still using the Eastern Church, that the priest a relic isn't a relic just or like an icon is an icon just because it's a painting of Jesus, it actually is supposed to be set behind the altar and blessed and goes through a process of being kind of set apart as an icon that is holy.
But then with that, there's also a belief that these things that are set apart is wholly they're no longer common, so you don't interact with them as common objects anymore. Right? They two are supposed to be treated with certain level of reverence, just like you wouldn't, you know, hopefully, you wouldn't visiting like the tomb of the Holy Sepulchre like conduct yourself the way you would, you know, at a frat party, right because this is a holy place. Yeah, I probably should change my behavior in this context.
So with other holy objects, you don't treat them as common objects beacuse they've been set apart as holy and touched by God and blessed. But then with that, there's also this recognition that God sometimes does extraordinary things via those objects. So you see, Aaron’s staff buds, right? And that's a miracle. And they actually put it in the Ark of the Covenant, right? Like they set it aside, right, because this is an especially holy thing. And there are any number of stories throughout church history of icons that God has used in that way, right?
Where this icon becomes an icon that people who have you know, the sickness tend to venerate and they get well right. And so they don't suddenly make that an idol. But it is to say that this thing has been set apart as holy is now become a vehicle that is especially set apart for this use and conduit of this activity of God. Anyway, on that little side point there, I think all of that is relevant also to the problem of evil that we talked about earlier. Because part of what happens, I think, is in the problem of evil, not to like, totally diverged. But in the problem of evil, there's a tendency to think about God as an actor on a stage watching, and he should jump in and do this thing. But when you begin to look at the world, the way the eastern fathers look at the world. It's not just that creatures are metaphysical necessity certain ways, and there's certain things that God you know, can't make a creature this way or that. But it's also what you start to see is that God's normative mode of activity in the way He has designed the world is not for him to bypass creatures, but for him to act in and through creatures.
So in that sense, we should not be surprised if sort of, we're thinking about God like electricity that runs through wires and all the wires are rusty and you know, a hindrance to the flow of electricity. God seems hidden and more absent than he should be. Because he is. And he is because the conduits are bad conduits. But then at the same time, what we should see is if the Christian religion is true, and it's possible for those conduits, to be remade, cleaned up and become conduits for God, that you begin to find saints, you begin to find relics, you begin to find these things where God is breaking through, in an extraordinary way. And that actually is what I believe does happen in people like Father Paisios, a modern day Saint. I mean, now he's repose, but you read the stories about him. He's like a prophet of old, you know, the stories about the relics, the stories about icons that are wonder working. So this is where I would say a big difference here is that I think a key apologetic feature of Christianity is not just the question of tying this back to what I said about Jesus, you know, is there reason to think that Jesus was extraordinary and the Son of God and soon question is also did he accomplish what he set out to accomplish?
And the real test of that isn't just whether when I die, God lets me into heaven. The real question is whether any of the would be conduits are starting to be purified and become true conduits for his operative power in the world.
Seth 1:35:24
Since my last question is question, I'm asking every single person this year, so 52 times. And again, I plan to, well, I know if I touch this or not, I plan to talk to people of other faiths as well. So I'm really excited to hear their answers as well. I'm actually really excited to hear their answers. But there's a grand overarching theme. So if you had a student come sit down and your class today and I'm going to phrase your question differently just because of what you do. And they say, all right, Dr. Jacobs, when you say God, what exactly do you mean when you say the divine? What do you mean? So If someone came to you and they said that, like what are you actually intending to say? And I will say the answers have been all over the place. I've really enjoyed them.
Nathan 1:36:06
But yeah, yeah. So again, I mean not to go super academic, but I don't know another way to go.
Seth 1:36:18
You are an academic. So you said you're an artist but you are an academic.
Nathan 1:36:22
Again, I'll set it in contrast with the with the West right? There's a tendency in the west to think of that when you that you define God right? And you start just give attributes, the way you would define a circle, right circle is a two dimensional geometric shape with a flowing circumference all points equal distance from count century, whatever, right? And so you do the same thing with God. And you say, Well, God is you know, the greatest of all possible beings greater than which none can be conceived. And as a result, he's omnipotence right? He can do anything. He's omniscient. He knows everything, etc, etc, etc. The Eastern way of thinking about it, which is my way of thinking about it now is that there are sort of three layers of ontology to be talked, talked about, right. And you can find this in Maximus the Confessor, he talks about that there's God super substantially as he is in himself; the divine nature. Then there are the things around the divine energies of the Divine processions. And then there is creatures. And there's an intersection, right? Of course, nature between this, this the second and the third of those, which we talked about. But this is where the second one I think, is really important to how, how I think about God, drawing from Eastern fathers.
So it's easy enough to tend to think again, you know, to start to think well, I guess the divine energies, divine processions with things around God or things that sort of like, start acting like if they're just God acting when he makes the world there's something like that and then sort of just linked it with the world but Maximus actually identifies the divine energies of precession, as these acts that precede time. In other words, they're there as activities of God before he ever makes anything. And one of the analogies that I think is really, really helpful here to thinking about this, which goes to your question is if I were to introduce you, Bach, and I said, like, Bach is this creative, like, we've resurrected? And he's here and I'm like, he's this creative genius and the wealth of creativity and beauty and I start to use all these sort of long term. And you've never heard of Bach, right? Yeah, well, that's great. But what does that actually mean? What does any of that actually mean?
The best way for me to answer that is actually give Bach a piano. Say, show it right. He starts like playing a movement right? Then you go, wow. But then he's like oh, but that's not everything right and he plays a very different movement; and each movement he plays now you get a deeper sense of like what I meant by that creative depth that's there. And you get a sense of, you know, speed and accuracy you get a sense of nuance you get you know, each movement starts to dry out all these different you know, dynamics of that creative genius and you start to see how deep and rich and and gospel it is and so on. In the same way. What God is his face, right without his super substantially is like that, where we say, well, it is beyond, right. It's beyond, you know, the forums and it's beyond this, and it's beyond that no man could see it and live and chat. But it's also unarticulated, just like Bach’s creative genius. And it's only God's acts that precede time and then in time, begin to articulate it. And so the eastern fathers actually this is a huge difference between East and West, that divine attributes do not actually refer to essential properties of the divine nature. They refer to divine activities.
So God's goodness is actually an act that precedes time. It's an activity just like a movement that Bach plays. God's justice is an act that proceeds time. It's an activity that proceeds time and articulates the divine nature, his simplicity, his, you know, his love, right? All of these things are things that articulate. Now, that's not to say that what God is, you know, super substantially, if you're going to use that sort of terminology has no structure to it, right that that he could be evil or it could be good, right?
Just like with Bach, it's rooted in something that's there, right, the creative genius that flows forth, articulates something that's real and underneath it and give structure to it. But at the same time, he has free choice in how it's articulated, right? He doesn't have to play this movement. And each time he does, he's in some way of manifesting it anew right, and a new dimension of it. And that's how the eastern fathers talk about God's energies or his possessions and things around God as we receive time, is that his goodness, and His love and His justice and on all these things are ultimately free articulations of who and what God is.
And they suggest that that's how we get to know who and what God is just like with Bach, that's how you get to know what I mean by that. And ultimately, that's what starts to happen when he makes the world. So as you start to see the dynamism of the world and the orderly nature of the world, and the more we learn about it through, you know, physics and whatever else like that, you start to see more of those articulations of what we mean by his, you know, depth of wisdom and understanding and so on and so forth. And then even obviously, in the incarnation, right in his miracles and his works in history, you can see it more and more and more and more. Those are the manifestation and articulation of who and what God is. Those are His attributes, right? The free activities that come down to us that precede time and they've come down to us in the making of things.
Seth 1:42:23
Perfect, perfect before you keep going.
Yeah, I usually never run out of memory. I only have two and a half minutes left on my memory card. So before we run out of time, literally physically time, I do want to thank you for coming on. Very much so.
Nathan 1:42:39
My pleasure.
Seth 1:42:40
Yeah, it's Yeah, I usually feel relatively smart throughout today I have not felt that so okay. No, it's a great problem. Um, and I've written down I don't know how many other things to research and dig back up on more so which is what, I love it!
Nathan 1:42:51
Great.
Seth 1:43:00
Thank you so much, Nathan.
Nathan 1:43:02
My pleasure. Anytime, anytime.
Seth Outro 1:43:05
Today's show was produced by the supporters of the show on Patreon and I hope to catch you on Monday. I am so thankful for every single one of you that find value in the show and express your partnership with the show in that way. Remember to review the show it really does help other people connect with the show and the algorithms that drive traffic as people search for God or faith or religion or Jesus or church or atheism or whatever they want to search for. It really does drive people to see the show and so that's a big help. Special thanks again to Salt of The Sound for their music.
Can't wait to talk with you all next week.
Be blessed everybody.