Episode Transcript
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0:00
[MUSIC PLAYS]
0:27
Hello and welcome to another episode of the (A)Millennial
0:30
podcast. My name is Amy Mantravadi
0:32
and I'll be your host until such time as I
0:34
pack everything up and moved to Bora Bora. Today,
0:37
I'm going to be speaking with Dr. Justin Ariel
0:39
Bailey about his book Re-imagining Apologetics.
0:42
The imagination doesn't get mentioned often in
0:44
the Bible. Psalm 73:7
0:47
warns us about the wicked, saying, "The
0:49
imaginations of their heart run riot,"
0:51
while Jeremiah 23:16
0:52
says of false
0:54
prophets that "they speak a vision
0:56
of their own imagination, not from the mouth
0:58
of the Lord." In both cases,
1:01
imagination seems to be a negative thing
1:03
that draws us away from God's truth, causing
1:05
us to chase after and believe in things he has not
1:07
revealed. However, this isn't the kind
1:09
of imagination Justin is generally talking
1:12
about in his book. The closer biblical
1:14
term for this concept of imagination is
1:16
heart . In scripture, it is the heart
1:18
that is the seat of emotions and desires, whether
1:21
righteous or unrighteous. While the mind
1:23
provides our rational faculty, our decisions
1:25
are always impacted by our hearts. This
1:28
is why God commands us to love him with all our mind
1:30
and heart. The apostle Paul
1:32
writes in Romans 10:9-10 that
1:35
"if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord
1:37
and believe in your heart that God raised him from
1:39
the dead, you will be saved, for with
1:41
the heart a person believes, resulting
1:44
in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses,
1:46
resulting in salvation." St.
1:49
Augustine of Hippo, one of the great Fathers
1:51
of the Church, is remembered for his writings
1:53
about human love and desire. The goal
1:55
for a Christian, he argued, was to have
1:57
rightly ordered loves, which is to say
2:00
desires that are in line with God's will. When
2:02
God draws us to himself, our hearts
2:05
are turned to him and captured by his love,
2:07
which causes us to love and desire him
2:09
in turn. While Augustine was not
2:11
opposed to the use of reason and its importance
2:14
to the development of faith, he also knew
2:16
that human beings are forever animated
2:18
by their desires. The goal of apologetics
2:21
then is not only to convince someone
2:22
of the truth of Christian propositions,
2:25
thus capturing their mind, but to
2:27
draw them to the very experience of being
2:29
a Christian: to make them desire the things
2:31
of God. Our desires drive
2:33
our beliefs and are therefore intimately
2:35
connected with faith. The challenge
2:37
is that those who do not know Christ are still
2:39
driven by sinful desires. As Augustine
2:42
wrote in The City of God, "In order to
2:44
discover the character of any people, we
2:46
have only to observe what they love." Justin
2:49
will offer some suggestions for how we can capture
2:51
the imaginations of our friends and neighbors
2:54
and place them in the path of God's love. Before
2:56
ado is furthered any further, let's
2:58
head to the interview.
2:59
[MUSIC PLAYS]
3:10
And I am here with Justin
3:12
Ariel Bailey, who is the associate
3:14
professor of theology at Dordt University.
3:17
He received his bachelor's degree at Moody
3:19
Bible Institute, his
3:21
MDiv and ThM
3:23
from Trinity Evangelical Divinity
3:25
School and his PhD from
3:27
Fuller Theological Seminary. He
3:29
is ordained in the Christian Reformed Church and
3:32
has served in multiple and diverse
3:34
ministry capacities, most recently
3:36
as assistant pastor for teaching and discipleship
3:39
at Grace Pasadena from 2013
3:41
to 2017. He has published
3:44
peer reviewed articles in the International Journal
3:46
of Public Theology and the Christian Scholars
3:48
Review in addition to several other
3:50
articles, book chapters, and book reviews, and
3:53
he hosts the In All Things podcast
3:55
sponsored by the Andreas Center at Dordt
3:57
University. His published
4:00
works include the book we're going to talk about today,
4:02
Re-imagining Apologetics: The Beauty
4:04
of Faith in a Secular Age, and
4:06
also a forthcoming book, which I understand
4:08
will be called Your Interpretation Is Your
4:10
Life. And you can find him on
4:12
Facebook @drjustinbailey and
4:15
on Twitter @jarielbailey. So
4:20
Dr. Bailey, thank you so much for taking the time
4:22
to speak with me today. I really appreciate
4:24
it. Yeah, it's my pleasure, Amy. Thanks. Yeah
4:26
. And I'm excited to discuss this book.
4:29
I know it's been out for a little while, but
4:31
I was glad to finally get the chance to
4:33
read it and just really appreciated what you
4:35
had to say there. Now I warned
4:38
you, we're going to start out with a couple
4:40
fun questions. So now
4:42
I will reveal that the
4:45
questions have to do with
4:48
a topic I understand you're somewhat interested in,
4:50
which is J.R.R. Tolkien. In
4:53
the past year or so, you've been doing a
4:55
series of YouTube videos called "Tolkien
4:58
Tuesdays." And so,
5:01
as you likely know, there are
5:03
a few ongoing controversies
5:06
or issues of debate within the
5:08
world of Tolkien fandom. So I
5:11
thought I would just ask you your opinion
5:13
and whatever answers you give me we'll consider
5:16
to be the definitive answers on
5:18
these...
5:18
The canonical answer. Ok, sounds good.
5:18
...until such
5:20
time as I have another guest
5:22
who I ask the same questions .
5:26
Ok, sounds great.
5:26
So my first question for you
5:28
is, do balrogs have
5:31
wings?
5:34
No, they
5:37
do not have wings.
5:39
Despite the fact that
5:42
they have wings in the Peter
5:44
Jackson films, you're going to go with they don't?
5:47
Well, I mean, Peter Jackson is sort
5:49
of like a Message translation of
5:50
- well, not
5:53
even the Message translation, because I actually
5:55
quite liked the Message translation. Let's just
5:58
say there are liberties that are taken,
6:00
and I think it works in
6:02
that version, but I don't think that they are meant
6:05
to have wings. Similarly,
6:07
dragons don't have wings other than
6:09
Smaug. Smaug certainly has wings, but most
6:11
of the early dragons in Tolkien's work didn't
6:14
have wings either.
6:17
Glaurung did not
6:19
have wings. However, in the
6:23
last battle when the host of the
6:25
Valar came, I believe then Morgoth
6:28
unleashed the winged dragons at
6:31
that time. So yes, you were correct that most of
6:33
them did not have wings.
6:35
Yeah. So I guess it's possible
6:38
in the way that Morgoth could have
6:41
perverted or taken
6:43
natural things and made them even worse. Maybe balrogs could
6:47
have wings, but I prefer to say no,
6:49
they don't have wings. That's a deep cut. Wow.
6:52
Yeah. Well, I think you're probably correct
6:55
about that. I think that there's
6:57
some compelling evidence that they did not have wings,
6:59
so very good there. We've
7:02
settled that question forever. Now the
7:05
other question I have is do
7:07
you have any opinion on
7:09
what type of being Tom Bombadil
7:11
is and what his origin
7:14
is?
7:16
I mean, it makes the most sense to say that he is
7:18
one of the Maiar, similar to
7:21
Gandalf or other
7:23
lesser - lesser than
7:25
the Valar, but greater than the
7:28
Children. I think that part
7:30
of Tom Bombadil - I mean, Tom Bombadil's like
7:32
Melchizedek in some sense in the Bible:
7:34
the mystery of his character wrapped
7:37
up as it is in Middle-earth itself is
7:39
part of what makes him who he is. And so
7:41
in some sense to name, to answer that
7:43
question is almost to kind of betray it,
7:46
but I guess he doesn't come
7:49
from nothing or come from nowhere. He's part
7:53
of the created world, and so it makes
7:55
the most sense, I think, to classify him as one
7:57
of the Maiar. I'm not convinced
7:59
by people who say that he is
8:02
Aule or someone in
8:05
disguise. I
8:08
guess I understand that in some sense, but I think
8:10
that he's just one of
8:12
the Maiar whose life is wrapped up in Middle-earth
8:14
itself.
8:16
Yeah. I think that makes sense as
8:18
well. Well, I think we've probably by this
8:20
point lost any listeners who weren't Tolkien fans, but I'm
8:26
glad we could get those controversies settled.
8:28
Okay. Moving on to discuss your
8:30
book, which is at this time a more important topic,
8:34
you note that we live in what the philosopher
8:36
Charles Taylor has called an "Age
8:38
of Authenticity," in which one of
8:40
the greatest societal values is following
8:43
one's heart or being true to oneself.
8:45
This means that traditional apologetic methods
8:48
that seek to prove the objective truth of
8:50
Christian claims can fall flat
8:51
if they do not appeal to the
8:53
hearer individually. In
8:56
light of this, you argue that, "What is
8:58
needed is a provocation of possibilities,
9:00
a vicarious vision
9:02
of what it feels like to live with Christian faith,
9:04
a sense of the beauty of faith that is felt
9:07
before fully embraced. For this, the imagination
9:09
is essential." What
9:12
do you mean by imagination here, and how
9:14
does it differ from standard logical
9:16
reasoning?
9:18
Sure. Yeah. I always start answering this
9:20
question by saying what I don't mean, and what I
9:22
don't mean is the
9:24
imagination as escapist: merely escapist,
9:27
something that you go to the movie theater
9:29
just to have the special effects wash over you, lose
9:32
yourself, get away from the real world.
9:35
I think there's a place for that as well, but
9:37
that's not what I mean. I also don't mean
9:39
imaginary, so that you only use the
9:41
imagination to engage things that aren't real,
9:44
in which case - Obviously I think
9:46
the resurrection happened and these things are real
9:48
things, and so to talk about the
9:50
need for imagination and faith wouldn't
9:52
make sense if I use the imagination
9:55
that way. What I mean by imagination
9:57
really is simply the faculty that
9:59
God has given to us to interrogate
10:01
possibilities, and it's
10:03
part of being made in God's image that
10:06
as we seek to cultivate and unleash
10:08
the potentiality of God's good
10:10
creation that we have
10:12
to ask questions like, "What would it be like
10:15
if we did this? What if we
10:18
sort of move in a subjunctive
10:20
mood and ask what's possible?
10:23
Within the limits that I have , what
10:25
can I do? What can I hope for?"
10:27
Imagination is the faculty with which we hope.
10:30
And so I really believe, and I say this in
10:32
my book, is that though we use the imagination
10:34
perhaps to detach from what
10:36
is actual, we ultimately
10:38
are doing that so we can
10:40
grip reality more firmly. So
10:43
I read Tolkien not because I'm
10:45
trying to escape, but because
10:47
I actually think that it makes me live better
10:49
in this world: that it actually allows me to
10:52
live more capaciously. And we're
10:55
always using our imagination. Our imagination
10:57
though can be captive to cynicism
11:00
and fear and despair,
11:02
or it can be captive to faith
11:05
and love and hope, which is
11:07
what comes out of the story that
11:09
we get in scripture and that's supremely
11:12
told to us through Jesus Christ. That's
11:14
basically what I mean. Now for the second part of your question,
11:16
I think you asked what's the relationship with
11:19
the intellect or with reasoning.
11:21
Well, how does our capacity
11:24
for imagining things differ from
11:26
our capacity for just
11:29
reasoning through them analytically, because
11:31
in your book, you contrasted that a little in the
11:33
styles of apologetics and what they're
11:36
appealing to .
11:37
Yeah, and I'll just also say that I'm not
11:39
trying to do away with classical
11:42
or traditional ways that apologetics has been practiced.
11:45
I'm hoping to supplement it with a more holistic
11:47
approach. So C.S. Lewis says
11:49
that the intellect
11:52
takes things apart and the imagination puts
11:54
things together, and so we're always doing
11:56
both all the time. We're taking ideas
11:58
apart, we're taking worldviews apart,
12:00
pictures that we have of the way that things are and
12:03
seeing, "Is this true? Does this actually
12:05
correspond to reality?" And then
12:07
we take all of those things and put them back
12:09
together, and that happens all simultaneously
12:12
and reciprocally. So another
12:14
person that I rely on is George
12:16
MacDonald, and MacDonald says
12:18
that the intellect is like the laborer
12:21
and the imagination is like the architect or
12:24
the imagination is like the visionary
12:26
guy who sweeps across the borders in search
12:28
of new land, but then she
12:30
has to guide her plotting brother intellect
12:32
behind. So you hear
12:35
a noise at night in your house and
12:37
your imagination, whether you want it or not,
12:39
is going to supply you with possibilities
12:42
of what is happening, right? "What is
12:45
that noise?" And then the intellect has
12:47
to now go and test all of those things
12:49
to see what is actually actual - what is
12:52
real. And so we're always using them
12:54
together, the imagination and the
12:56
intellect, but I'm trying to say the imagination almost
12:58
always comes first. We very
13:00
rarely start with ideas. Ideas
13:03
and the exploration of ideas always comes
13:04
after we've had some sort of imaginative
13:07
engagement or glimpse of something
13:09
or felt sense of the way
13:11
that the world is. And so in
13:13
the same way that scripture is not presented to us
13:15
as bullet points just for our intellect to
13:17
absorb but is presented to us
13:19
in all of these different genres - ultimately
13:23
story, right? True story, but
13:25
also poetry and parable and apocalyptic,
13:27
which is trying to engage our imagination and
13:29
actually reshape the way we see the world.
13:32
Not just, say, "Here are 501
13:34
facts about God for you to memorize." Because
13:37
what scripture is really trying to do is to engage our
13:39
full humanity, which includes our
13:41
imagination.
13:44
Well, thank you for that. And I have to tell
13:46
you, as I was reading your book,
13:48
something kept coming back to my mind.
13:52
It comes from sort of a past life of mine
13:54
when I was studying international security
13:56
and security studies. And
14:00
I'm remembering back when the
14:02
9/11 Commission released
14:05
its report - the 9/11 Commission that the
14:07
U.S. Government put together to examine
14:09
what had gone wrong with 9/11 - and the
14:12
quote I'll always remember was
14:14
they said that it came down to "a failure
14:16
of imagination," and what they meant
14:18
by that was that the intelligence services
14:20
- they had all kinds of data.
14:22
They were looking at all the facts, but
14:25
they were unable to imagine
14:28
how someone nefarious
14:31
could take what they were seeing and
14:33
put it to a bad use. So
14:35
that's a negative case of sort of getting
14:38
into someone else's brain through imagination, but
14:41
I think you also described in your book how
14:43
imagination is very key to empathy
14:45
and being able to imagine
14:47
how someone else might view the world
14:49
is definitely a key part of
14:52
apologetics. So maybe a
14:54
random reference there, but it was just something that
14:56
kept popping into my head as I was reading your
14:58
book.
14:59
That phrase - "failure of imagination" - I think
15:01
it's very important, because I think
15:03
that there are so many things that if
15:06
we understand it as a failure of imagination
15:08
rather than a failure of facts or
15:10
a failure of logical reasoning,
15:14
we also have lots of failures of that,
15:16
you know. But Thomas Kuhn
15:19
in his book Structure of Scientific Revolutions argued
15:21
for this idea of paradigm shifts that
15:24
happened in the world of science. And really when
15:26
you're asking somebody to move from a place
15:28
of unbelief to a place of faith, that really
15:30
requires a paradigm shift, doesn't it? And
15:33
so one of the great struggles
15:35
is that there are certain things about Christian
15:38
faith that can only be understood from the inside:
15:41
from a position of commitment. So how do you help
15:43
somebody who's on the outside from
15:45
a position of sort of critical appraisal feel
15:48
what it's like on the inside? It's those
15:51
inside things that actually make faith most compelling.
15:54
And so I think that what you just
15:56
said, the power of empathy and the
15:58
ability to - for example, when you hear
16:00
somebody's testimony, see the world
16:02
through their eyes, see the world through the eyes
16:04
of faith is actually one of the ways
16:06
that we can sort of bridge this gap
16:09
of seeing, "Okay, this is what it would be
16:11
like." And what that does is provides a new
16:13
paradigm that a person can
16:15
look at the world through and
16:17
maybe correct some of the failures of imagination.
16:20
Thank you for that. Obviously
16:23
an important part of apologetics - It gets
16:26
down to how we know what we know and how
16:28
do we discern what the truth is. Drawing
16:30
again upon the work of Charles
16:32
Taylor, you discussed in your book how Western culture
16:35
has changed over the past few hundred
16:37
years in ways that have produced the Age
16:39
of Authenticity. The contrast
16:41
between the Enlightenment
16:43
and Romantic movements - two very
16:46
important intellectual movements in the past few hundred
16:48
years - is particularly important
16:50
to this story. How do you see
16:52
our present cultural moment being impacted
16:55
by each of these movements, particularly
16:57
in our differing notions of truth?
16:59
This is something that you got at in the early chapters
17:01
of your book, and I think it's important.
17:04
Yeah, and I just commend people - anytime you
17:06
start to talk about history, there's always so many
17:08
complexities, so please
17:11
forgive this brief summary and
17:13
go to my book if you want to see a little bit more.
17:16
Yes, please summarize the last half millennium.
17:20
Exactly . So one
17:22
of the reasons I rely on Charles Taylor so much,
17:24
as lots of others have been doing recently,
17:27
is because he has done a really good job
17:29
at critiquing what he calls
17:31
the "subtraction story," which
17:33
is that we needed
17:35
faith and religion and belief
17:37
in God, but now we have science, and
17:39
so we've sort of subtracted all of the things
17:42
that we used to need. And what he does
17:44
is tell us the opposite stories. He tells
17:46
more of an addition story or a construction story.
17:49
And so I sort of compare it to the difference
17:51
between emerging from the cave
17:54
of superstition into the light - That's the subtraction
17:57
story. "Now we're in the light. We've been enlightened.
17:59
We can see the world the way it really is." - To building
18:01
a castle over yourself and then thinking
18:03
that the castle is the entire world, just
18:06
sort of like what happens in The Silver Chair , if
18:08
you've read the Narnia Chronicles.
18:11
And so what you have as the Reformation
18:13
happens is this shift
18:15
in gravity from the Church to
18:17
the wider world, where the
18:19
Reformers really want to take the world
18:22
seriously as the theater
18:24
of God's glory. And so the attention really turns
18:26
outward so that they want
18:29
all places to be holy places
18:31
rather than just some places , all people to
18:33
be holy people rather than just some people.
18:35
It's sort of this discipling
18:37
of every sphere of life, which is really, really
18:39
wonderful and one of the reasons why I'm Reformed. But
18:42
what then happens with that shift
18:45
towards the wider world with the Enlightenment
18:47
is that there begins to be a shrinking of scope
18:50
in which Enlightenment thinkers are interested
18:52
in the world as a closed system. And this is what I mean: you
18:55
build this sort of cathedral
18:57
over yourself and then think that
18:59
the cathedral is the whole world, and you've just
19:01
kind of shut out the sun. You can't actually
19:04
see it, but it's still there. You just enclosed
19:06
yourself in imminence. And
19:08
so they say the world is a closed
19:10
system. It's designed for it. Maybe God
19:12
still did it. You know, you have deism: God
19:14
still is the one who put it all there, but it's this closed
19:17
system designed for human flourishing.
19:19
There's no possibility of miracles, because
19:21
then that would mean that God made a mistake in the
19:24
perfect system that he made, and
19:26
we need to figure everything out. That's, that's the goal
19:28
of the human vocation is to leave
19:30
no mystery , no places
19:32
uncharted, and really to kind
19:34
of figure out the castle. Now, the problem
19:36
with that, of course - one of many problems
19:38
- is that you have cut
19:41
yourself off from that deep sense
19:43
of meaning where meaning is not found
19:45
inside the castle, but outside the castle
19:48
in the wider world. And so what happens
19:50
with the Romanticism, Taylor argues,
19:52
is that what they're trying to do is
19:54
to compensate for all of
19:56
that meaning and depth that has been lost
19:58
through cutting off the transcendent. And
20:01
so rather than turning outward, they turn inward and
20:03
say that we have these unseen depths
20:06
in our souls, in the human person,
20:08
which need to be explored.
20:10
And this is where you kind of get in
20:12
popular forms this idea of following your heart and
20:15
maybe the analogy of now we
20:17
have created some artificial lights for
20:19
the castle that approximate the light
20:21
of the sun, and we're the ones
20:23
who turn on the lights. We're the ones who are sort of the source
20:25
of the lights. And this is where we're kind
20:27
of going now towards the shift of authenticity,
20:30
where all of the meaning is whatever
20:32
quest for meaning that we're on. It's going to always be
20:34
starting by going inward and
20:37
feeling our way in towards
20:39
the world. And so that means the triumph
20:41
of authenticity or really the triumph of
20:44
the Romantic perspective is
20:46
the sense in which the only way
20:48
that something is true is if
20:50
you find it resonant: you feel your
20:52
way in, and it's felt before
20:54
it's known. So that's the
20:56
situation that Taylor argues, and
20:58
I follow it and I agree with him on it. And so
21:01
if you're in that situation, then you have a couple of different
21:03
options of - what do you do? Do you try to
21:05
turn back the clock and say, "No,
21:07
we went wrong with Romanticism,
21:09
the revolutions of the Sixties that kind of took authenticity
21:12
culture wide. We've got to go back
21:14
and discover this enchanted world," or
21:17
do you start where people are and say, "Okay,
21:20
what happens when you follow your heart?" And then
21:22
they need to feel that thinness - the thinness of
21:24
that approach from the inside rather
21:26
than narrating from the outside and saying, "Everything's
21:29
wrong." And so what I've tried to do is to take that second
21:31
approach and to say, if authenticity
21:34
has become a non-negotiable of the way
21:36
that we know truth, how can we still
21:38
do apologetics within those parameters?
21:42
And ultimately it might lead us to
21:44
reject authenticity as the ultimate value,
21:47
but we don't need to start by rejecting it , but
21:49
we can start by actually saying, "Okay, let's follow
21:51
this path and see where it leads us."
21:54
Thank you. I think that was actually a pretty good
21:56
brief summary, so I appreciate it.
21:59
Because of the fallen nature of humanity,
22:02
many Christians will understandably
22:04
be a little skeptical about the power
22:06
or value of the imagination in
22:08
leading people to God, and
22:11
getting back again to what we talked about just
22:13
in our little fun intro, you appeal
22:15
in your book to an argument made by
22:17
Tolkien in his poem Mythopoeia, and I'll
22:20
just read a little bit of it
22:22
here, and apologies to all the listeners
22:25
if I'm not the best at reading poetry.
22:28
In Mythopoeia, which was a poem
22:30
he actually wrote for C.S. Lewis before
22:32
Lewis became a Christian arguing
22:34
about the value of myth, Tolkien
22:36
says that, "The heart of man is not
22:39
compound of lies , but draws some wisdom
22:41
from the only wise," - that's a capital
22:43
'W' on wise - "and still recalls
22:46
him. Though now long estranged, man
22:48
is not h oly lost nor h oly c
22:51
hanged. " And I'll just skip down a
22:53
little to where he says, " Though all the
22:55
crannies of the world we filled with elves
22:56
and goblins, though we dared to build
22:59
g ods in their houses out of dark and light and sow
23:01
the s eed of dragons, 'twas o ur right. Used
23:04
or misused, the right h as n ot decayed.
23:06
We make s till by the law in which w
23:08
e're made." This gets a little
23:10
t o his idea about us being sub-creators, which
23:13
actually he used that term in the part I skipped over.
23:15
So could you elaborate
23:18
on the meaning of this passage
23:20
and this argument from Tolkien and how it supports
23:22
the argument you make in favor
23:25
of a re-imagined apologetics? And
23:27
just a little f ollow u p to that, if you can
23:29
answer: as a Roman
23:31
Catholic, is Tolkien's
23:33
view here at all at odds
23:35
with Calvinist theology or a more
23:37
evangelical theology?
23:39
You know, that's a great question and it's not one I've been
23:41
asked yet. So thank you for that.
23:43
Well, as a fellow Tolkien nerd, you knew I was going to go to it.
23:45
Yes. As you
23:49
mentioned, Tolkien wrote that poem in response
23:52
to then atheist C.S. Lewis, who
23:54
told him that poems and myths, which Lewis
23:56
loved - you know, he says in Surprised by Joy
23:58
that it's like he had to tell two different stories,
24:01
where everything that he loved was false
24:03
and everything that he thought was true
24:06
was empty and meaningless. And
24:08
so he's talking to Tolkien and he says, "Yeah, myths
24:11
and poems are lies, but breathed
24:13
through silver." So they're beautiful lies:
24:16
beautiful, but untrue. And
24:18
Tolkien's response is basically to say, "But where
24:20
does the wish come from? Where does
24:22
the power to dream come from?" And what he
24:24
means by that is that certainly humans
24:26
do lie, as he says in the poem,
24:28
and we make terrible things and we
24:30
fill the nooks and crannies with dragons.
24:32
And you think of all of the things
24:34
that are in Middle-earth. But
24:36
when he says that we are not wholly lost
24:38
or wholly changed, what I take that to mean is that
24:40
we are not irredeemable and that
24:42
there is still something
24:45
remaining. So total depravity
24:46
- for those of us who believe in it, and I
24:48
do - it does not mean that we are as bad as
24:50
we could possibly be. What it means is that we
24:53
are pervasively depraved, which means that sin
24:55
has affected every single part of
24:57
us. And so while the idea of
24:59
being wholly lost might
25:02
make someone think that Tolkien is
25:04
arguing for some less than total corruption, and maybe
25:07
he is - maybe that's what he had in mind
25:09
when he wrote it. I think there are other ways to read
25:11
that and other ways to get the basic
25:14
thing that Tolkien wants, and
25:16
what he wanted Lewis to see. So as a Calvinist,
25:18
the way that I would say it is that though we
25:21
have pursued fallen directions,
25:24
the creational structure is good:
25:26
sort of a Kuyperian way of saying that the
25:29
created structure remains because it's made
25:31
by God. It belongs to God and
25:34
humans have taken it in all of these fallen directions
25:36
and filled the earth with dragons, and yet
25:38
we still cannot escape this
25:41
creational mandate. We cannot escape
25:43
the cultural mandate to imagine
25:45
and to make and to tell stories and
25:48
to dream and to hope, and that's going to be twisted,
25:50
but there's something that is primally
25:53
good underneath it because of its creativeness
25:56
and because of its reflection of the
25:58
image of God. So creation - and
26:01
in this case, the image of God in humanity
26:03
that imagines and makes things
26:05
- does not need to be replaced.
26:08
It needs to be healed. So grace
26:11
does not replace creation
26:13
or nature. Grace heals and
26:15
restores nature, because the creative
26:17
structure itself is good. At least, that's how
26:19
I interpret that passage as a Calvinist.
26:22
And you certainly don't need to be a Roman Catholic
26:24
to believe that. Now Tolkien
26:27
certainly was a very committed Roman
26:28
Catholic and didn't
26:30
like a lot of the things that Lewis would write
26:32
later. But I think
26:35
that the basic point that I'm trying to
26:37
make, the work I'm trying to do by using
26:39
that quote is to say that the created
26:41
structure of imagination is good even if
26:43
our imaginings have become vain: that
26:46
there's something there that God's spirit can
26:49
redeem, that God's spirit can work within
26:51
and redirect and bring
26:53
completion to sort of the hopes
26:55
that humans have.
26:58
And obviously there
27:00
are some important differences between
27:03
Roman Catholic theology and Reformed
27:06
or even broadly Protestant theology,
27:08
but the more you dig into
27:10
it, I think people might be a little bit surprised
27:13
over how much similarity there is
27:15
in some of these areas.
27:17
There can be an impression that
27:20
Roman Catholics have no concept of,
27:22
for instance, what in reformed theology, the
27:25
creator creature distinction,
27:27
or, you know, the need
27:29
for grace and salvation things
27:31
of that nature, the need for regeneration
27:34
by the spirit. I think sometimes there
27:36
can be a sense that, you know, that's
27:38
not part of Catholic theology and while
27:40
they do have different emphases and some
27:42
important differences on theological
27:44
points, I think in this area, there
27:46
actually is a lot of overlap . So that's
27:48
something useful we can draw
27:51
on , um, sort of
27:53
building on that last question. Every
27:56
apologetic method is ultimately
27:58
dependent on the work of the holy spirit.
28:00
You make a good case in this book that
28:02
our beliefs tend to be driven by our
28:04
desires. So for
28:06
Amanda find a Christian vision of the world appealing,
28:09
he needs to have his desires changed
28:11
by the holy spirit. This leads
28:13
to an important theological question
28:15
and really kind of gets at what we were just
28:17
talking about in the last one. To what extent
28:20
is the holy spirit active in this way,
28:22
among those who do not belong to Christ.
28:24
And you addressed this a bit from the
28:27
Calvinist perspective in the book. And
28:29
I was waiting to see if you had mentioned him
28:31
that Neo with this ideas of Abraham
28:33
Kuyper also seemed to be relevant in
28:36
this area. So if you could just talk about
28:38
that a little more.
28:39
Yeah. One of the things that I call the Calvinist
28:41
imagination in the book is the
28:43
conviction that any goodness or truth
28:45
or beauty that we find must have to God's
28:47
presence and action in the fallen
28:49
world. Now there's a
28:51
whole thing. And I talk about this in my book, you know,
28:54
the Protestants can't have good imaginations
28:56
and they can't make good art because they
28:58
don't have a sack , a good enough sacramental view
29:01
of there's too much distance between creator
29:03
and creation for, for there to be any
29:05
sort of meaningful, meaningful work.
29:07
But what Calvinists really do is fill
29:09
that space with a spirit so that
29:11
the holy spirit is the one who's at work drawing
29:13
creation towards consummation.
29:16
So the work of the holy spirit outside the walls
29:18
of the church, I mean, it is mysterious.
29:20
So I think we should be really hesitant and
29:22
careful to identify too quickly
29:25
what we take to be positive developments as,
29:28
oh , that's the work of the holy spirit. And we have
29:30
to be tentative and provisional because
29:32
we don't have any revelation
29:34
in the same way that we do for something
29:36
that happened within the church where we know that God has promised
29:39
to meet us, God has promised to show up. If
29:41
you think about Carl Bart, for example, this
29:44
is what he's reacting to because the Nazi
29:46
regime basically was unopposed
29:49
by the majority of German churches, because they basically
29:51
said all of the progress we've had in Germany.
29:54
That's the holy spirit, the flourishing
29:56
of our country right now, you know , prior to the war
29:58
that's because of God, God is
30:00
the one who has done that, the holy spirit, and they couldn't
30:03
distinguish between the human spirit
30:05
and the holy spirit. So I
30:07
take that as a very important caution. Nevertheless,
30:11
if we believe that God has not abandoned
30:13
creation to corruption, but is continuing
30:16
to work through the spirit to renew and heal,
30:19
then that means that we shouldn't be surprised
30:21
to find the holy spirit at work among
30:24
those outside the walls of the church and in
30:26
especially their longings and losses.
30:28
And, you know, Bobby has this wonderful quote
30:31
that I share in the book about
30:33
the holy spirit being at work and common
30:35
grace being at work in artists
30:38
and philosophers and politicians
30:40
outside, outside the walls of the church,
30:42
wherever we find these sort of signs
30:44
of the kingdom, we have to attribute that
30:46
to God's work. So that's the first part
30:49
of the question. The second part may be
30:51
with, I think you mentioned something about desire
30:54
is that if we start with desire,
30:56
so I start with desire because that's where people are.
30:59
And I think almost always we start with
31:01
either wanting something to be true or not
31:03
wanting something to be true now, wanting
31:06
something to be true. It doesn't have
31:08
any bearing on whether or not it is true,
31:11
but it does have bearing on the way I go
31:13
about the quest to find out if it is true.
31:15
And so that doesn't mean that we need to give our desires
31:18
the final word or the final authority,
31:21
because ultimately our desires have to be subjected
31:24
to scripture and to
31:26
the cross, which is something that none of us would have imagined.
31:29
If we only take desire on its own, then we end
31:31
up with a theology of glory and
31:33
we never have a theology of the cross because we would
31:36
never imagine the situation where we would actually
31:38
need to suffer. But I
31:40
am convinced that when we interrogate
31:42
human desire and we are
31:44
willing to stay with people and ask questions
31:47
and work with desire and allow people to dream.
31:49
And imagine that ultimately what we find
31:51
is that God is not less
31:54
than we imagine or desire, but that God is better
31:57
than we imagined or desire. And
31:59
so that's why I feel quite comfortable working
32:01
within the imagination, the imagined the realm,
32:04
because I know that whatever somebody thinks
32:06
God's better than that. Yeah. And
32:08
so that's where I maybe I've lost the train of the
32:10
question now, but that's where I sort of
32:12
, I'm quite hopeful. The
32:15
imagination has fallen, but it's not more
32:17
fallen than the intellect it's as fallen
32:19
is the intellect. And so that means
32:21
that if we find ourselves in a culture
32:24
where the imagination has been given some
32:26
sort of primacy, yes,
32:28
we will need to critique that. But
32:30
we also are able to start there, start
32:32
wherever people are, which
32:34
is just a basic principle of this theology
32:37
is that you start with the facts on the ground.
32:39
You don't immediately bring in a
32:41
whole different category, a whole different way of approaching
32:43
the world. If this is where people are,
32:46
what resources do we have for addressing
32:48
it ?
32:50
And I think about the, perhaps
32:52
the three images
32:54
that we really have with the holy spirit and the Bible are
32:57
wind fire and a dove.
32:59
And all of those things give me the idea
33:02
of movement of constant motion.
33:04
And when I
33:07
think about what Jesus said to Nicodemus
33:09
in John chapter three, where he described the
33:11
spirit, basically as this wind, that you could kind of
33:13
sense that as blowing, but you don't really know
33:16
ultimate direction. And
33:18
I think that does get, like he said to
33:20
the mystery of how the spirit is working. We
33:22
kind of feel sometimes
33:24
like we're seeing the spirit at work, but
33:27
we oftentimes
33:29
don't know what direction it's going to take,
33:31
or it comes at us in surprising ways.
33:33
So I think that that's a good
33:35
way of looking at it.
33:38
You spend the second half of the book
33:40
focusing chiefly on the works of George
33:43
McDonald and Marilyn Robinson. And you argue
33:45
that both serve an apologetic purpose
33:47
by allowing the reader to enter
33:50
a world where Christian principles
33:52
and the beauty of God are on display. Why
33:54
did you select these two particular
33:56
offers and have they had
33:59
an effect on your own life?
34:02
Yeah. So when I started working on this project, I was
34:04
reading a lot of philosophy and theology,
34:07
you know, thinking through theories of imagination,
34:09
how belief works, what makes belief believable.
34:12
That was a question I asked a lot and
34:14
it finally occurred to me that the best way
34:16
to explore the value of imagination
34:19
is actually to learn
34:21
from people who are experts at using
34:23
their imagination. I meaning poets
34:25
and writers and artists and culture makers.
34:28
Those are the ones who are kind
34:30
of skilled in that area. And so I started
34:32
with this fundamental conviction that we can learn a
34:34
lot from grounded artists, as
34:36
we seek to kind of do
34:39
apologetics artistically or to live
34:41
in a way that is beautiful. Um , so
34:43
I can't even MacDonald who's a 19th century
34:45
writer through CS Lewis and Lewis
34:48
famously said that George
34:50
McDonald , reading George MacDonald baptized
34:53
his imagination long before his actual
34:55
conversion. And I thought that's really interesting. So
34:58
what Magalia did was gave him this taste
35:00
for goodness, his vision of what goodness
35:02
and hope he said, he calls it holiness and surprised
35:04
by joy. And when you read the McDonald , that
35:07
it really is what you encounter is there's this
35:09
holiness that is present. I think,
35:11
in , in Tolkien as well though, there's not a lot
35:13
of explicit like religious things.
35:15
The whole thing is religious. It's just characterized
35:17
by this deep , uh , holiness. Uh,
35:20
and so I began to read McDonald because I
35:22
wanted to understand Lewis . And the
35:24
more I read him, the more that I saw that
35:26
when he was doing was addressing
35:28
the crisis of faith, which during
35:30
his time is the first
35:32
time in the English speaking world,
35:35
in the modern English world, where it
35:37
becomes socially acceptable to be an atheist.
35:40
You had atheist before, but it was always
35:42
socially unacceptable. And they had
35:44
to kind of be really careful and couch
35:46
what they said in particular ways. And so in
35:49
the 19th century, you're seeing all of these, there's
35:51
this whole body of literature, autobiographies
35:54
of, deconversion not unlike
35:56
sort of the ex evangelical thing that we're seeing
35:59
now where lots
36:01
and lots of people were writing these autobiographies
36:03
of walking away from Christian faith. And
36:06
so during this time apologetics
36:09
and the kind of more traditional sense Springs up where
36:11
you have public debates and
36:13
defenders of the faith, and you have William Paley's
36:16
design arguments about the watch.
36:18
And so George MacDonald goes a completely
36:20
different direction and what he does
36:23
instead of giving facts for the intellect, he really
36:25
looks for food for the imagination. And
36:27
so you can read in what it's called is
36:29
realistic novels. So he wrote all of these
36:31
kinds of fairytales. Then you also wrote
36:33
realistic novels and one
36:35
trilogy in particular deals with crises
36:38
of faith, the windfall trilogy, which
36:40
I focus on in my book. And yeah,
36:42
and it just really this beautiful exploration
36:44
of different characters along
36:46
the road of deconversion reconversion
36:49
deconstruction reconstruction. And
36:51
he's addressing those things imaginatively.
36:54
The second author Marilynne Robinson
36:57
was the result of me asking, okay,
36:59
Donald did that, that was the 19th century. Is
37:01
there anyone doing that now
37:04
in a way that has having a wide purchase
37:06
on not just within the Christian community,
37:09
but in the wider public. And
37:11
so Marilyn Robinson was the person that I
37:13
found after reading. There is this New
37:16
York times review of
37:18
the book Gilliad , which won the Pulitzer
37:20
prize in 2004. And
37:23
that book is about an elderly
37:25
preacher who lives in Iowa and
37:28
, uh , looking at the world through these kinds of grace
37:31
drenched eyes. And
37:34
the book was reviewed in the New York times by
37:36
a person who said, I'm an atheist, but
37:39
Robinson helps me imagine a world
37:41
that is fallen yet deeply
37:44
loved by its creator, suffused
37:46
, the divine grace. And I was like, that's exactly
37:49
what I'm looking for is an author
37:51
who can do that. So both
37:53
of these authors have had this incredible impact on
37:55
me. As I tried to read everything I could McDonald
37:58
wrote so much that I have not
38:00
been able to read all of his, his body of work,
38:02
but I tried to read as much as I could by them and just immerse
38:04
myself in them as anyone
38:07
don't always agree with everything they say, but
38:09
they do share this common approach
38:12
of taking the imagination extremely
38:14
seriously. And so I interact
38:16
with, you know, what I agree or don't agree with one
38:18
of the chapters of the book, but , um, I
38:21
think with them in the back of my mind, almost every single
38:23
day. Yeah ,
38:25
Well, yeah, it was enjoyable
38:28
to read about them because I had read
38:30
surprised by joy by CS Lewis. So
38:32
I had read about how George
38:34
McDonald was very important to him, but
38:37
I actually haven't gotten into either
38:39
Rick Giles' work or Robinson's work personally.
38:42
So you kind of made me want
38:44
to go out and read, although now you
38:46
sort of spoiled the ending, so sorry,
38:53
Both are acquired tastes. And
38:55
, um , you know, Robinson
38:58
writes books where nothing happens because
39:01
it's all about perception and seeing
39:03
the world in a particular way and
39:07
MacDonald combined spiritual formation
39:09
with storytelling. So a lot
39:11
of people find his writing to be kind of moralistic
39:13
because he's always kind of, he stops
39:15
in the middle of the narrates , like
39:17
for a long time, but that's kind of like
39:19
the pastoral heart that he has. So
39:22
you can read his fairytales. He doesn't do that in this fairytales
39:24
that much, but his realistic novels , sometimes people
39:26
don't like, so I'll say he's an acquired
39:28
taste, but so is coffee so
39:31
Well, you know, if Tolstoy
39:34
can give you his political opinions
39:37
for our chapter pod chapter,
39:39
that Georgia battle should be able
39:41
to do now is I think
39:43
when you're really good, you can get away with that kind
39:45
of thing. So in
39:48
light of your argument, that novels and
39:50
other works of art can serve as powerful
39:52
apologetic tools, how
39:54
would you assess the art and literature
39:56
being produced by the evangelical
39:59
report and world particularly here in north America are
40:01
Christian universities and seminaries
40:04
doing a sufficient job of training
40:06
students to produce works of excellence,
40:08
or have we essentially seated
40:10
this ground to the secular world?
40:13
Wow, that's a really great question. And a tricky
40:16
question. I mean, as a person who is employed by
40:18
a Christian university, I
40:23
mean, I think the obvious answer is no, we
40:26
failed and we've had a failure of imagination
40:28
to use that phrase again. I think
40:31
in some ways it is precisely because
40:33
we've been unwilling to embrace
40:36
the shift to authenticity
40:39
and we tend to process
40:41
or engage works with culture primarily
40:44
in terms of worldview compatibility rather
40:47
than empathy. So in other words,
40:49
we process culture and say, well,
40:51
do I agree with this? Is this exactly
40:53
the way I see the world rather than
40:55
seeing, okay, this is my
40:57
neighbor who I've been called to love this
41:00
people who made this and the people
41:02
who resonate with it. And maybe I resonate
41:05
with it that tells me something about
41:07
the conditions, the cultural conditions in which I find
41:09
myself in which the church has called to
41:11
now go and present the gospel. So
41:14
I think that, no, we haven't done a good
41:16
job. There are things that give me hope. There
41:18
are always outliers and people, artists
41:21
like Makoto Fujimura is a , is a great
41:23
hero of mine. Uh , contemporary
41:26
non-representational artists . Who's doing amazing, amazing work
41:28
and writing about it from a Christian and from
41:31
a reform perspective. And there are
41:33
bright spots like that. You know, I think of
41:35
Pete doctor , um , other people like
41:38
that, who've worked on Pixar films
41:40
from a place of faith. And so there's
41:42
bright spots. And sometimes, honestly
41:44
you don't always know. Uh , when I
41:46
lived in Los Angeles, I was quite
41:48
surprised to find out as I grew up in the Midwest
41:51
and then moved to Los Angeles, I was quite
41:53
surprised to find out how many Christians there were
41:55
in the industry. And, you know,
41:57
there may be not always the AA list stars
41:59
that you hear about, but they're working on
42:01
films and they're working in production.
42:03
And there , we had lots of them in our church
42:05
and just really trying to be faithful
42:08
in what they're doing in the part of the world
42:10
where God has called them. So there are reasons
42:12
for hope, but I think there definitely need
42:14
to be , um , some paradigm shifts in the
42:16
way that we think about cultural engagement.
42:19
This is part of the book that I'm writing right now
42:21
is really looking for a non anxious
42:24
approach to culture that isn't really
42:26
reactionary, but that is patient
42:30
with cultural works.
42:33
And non-anxious reproach that isn't
42:36
reactionary. That would definitely be in a minority
42:39
approach , I think, evangelicals
42:41
today. And I'm wondering
42:43
if, part of what
42:45
you mentioned there that you were kind of
42:48
surprised coming from the Midwest to get
42:50
to LA and define that there were, you
42:52
know, faithful Christians and the
42:54
film industry. And I
42:57
wonder if that isn't part of the problem that
42:59
we just assume that, oh,
43:01
the only people who would work on
43:03
Broadway or who would do art or whatever,
43:06
are all people who
43:08
are anti-Christian and
43:10
just, you know , completely give it into the sexual
43:12
revolution. And there's some truth there.
43:14
I mean, I have a report Fred , who actually
43:17
spent some time on Broadway
43:19
and told me at the time that, you know, yeah, pretty
43:21
much everyone I worked with was, I mean, she
43:24
didn't have anyone she worked with who she thought was a
43:26
faithful Christian in those days.
43:28
But I wonder if, so
43:30
, you know, maybe our assumption that
43:33
particularly if you live in the Midwest, you can kind of
43:35
assume that New York and LA, you know,
43:37
the big cities, they're kind of dens of iniquity.
43:40
I wonder if that keeps us from
43:43
being willing to engage and
43:45
get involved. And it
43:48
will become potentially increasingly difficult
43:50
for Christians to
43:53
engage in, in certain professions.
43:55
But I think that sometimes
43:57
we sabotage ourselves a little bit in
43:59
those efforts as well. So if
44:02
a person isn't capable of producing
44:05
great works of art or taking up apologetics
44:07
as a full-time career, how might they make
44:10
use of the principles in your book for their everyday
44:12
encounters, with those who need
44:14
to hear the good news of Christ?
44:16
Yeah. So I'll say a couple of things on that. Yeah.
44:18
First of all, I always have, I teach
44:20
a class called aesthetics on
44:23
faith, imagination, beauty,
44:25
and art. And I have a lot of
44:27
students who take it and say, well, I'm not creative.
44:30
And I think what they is, they're not artistic, but everyone
44:32
is creative because that's what
44:35
it means to be made in the image of God, is that
44:37
you have this creative birthright and
44:40
, uh , yeah. To take
44:42
a situation that you've been given and to seek, to
44:44
make it better and more beautiful is
44:46
a natural aesthetic impulse that humans
44:48
have. It's an imaginative impulse. If
44:51
you're in a situation that is
44:53
difficult to imagine how it could be better,
44:55
that's a natural thing that you do. So again, I'll just say
44:57
that even if you're not artistic and
44:59
you're not a person who spends time writing
45:02
or spends time making art
45:04
or dancing or whatever, whatever it is, then
45:06
you can still live a beautiful life, a life
45:09
that is characterized by excellence
45:11
and elegance. And even what
45:14
I'd call electricity, you know, a life that when people
45:16
encounter you, they're like, wow, there is something that
45:18
is really different
45:21
about that person. And so I would just say that
45:23
it means a living a life that provokes questions.
45:26
So Peter talks about be ready to
45:28
give an answer for those who, who ask about
45:30
the hope that is in you. And so when
45:32
was the last time you were asked , um , and
45:34
so have we lived the life that provoke
45:37
the question? It's like, wow, that's, that's interesting.
45:39
Why, why do you live that way? So
45:41
, um, I tell a story at the end
45:43
of the book about my wife, who,
45:46
when she was working in LA, I
45:48
worked at a company where somebody asked her the question,
45:51
why are you going to raise your kids as Christians?
45:54
Why are you going to kind of indoctrinate them with faith
45:56
rather than let them choose what they want to believe?
46:00
And, you know, most
46:02
of us, if we have faith and if
46:04
we have kids especially feel really defensive
46:06
at that idea, because it suggests
46:08
that I'm harming my children in some way. And
46:11
yet Melissa, my wife was
46:13
not defensive or anxious,
46:16
but what she did realize was that there
46:19
is a particular imaginative construal
46:22
of what it means to live with faith that
46:24
this person has. And that's
46:26
the thing that needs to change. And
46:29
so she said, well, you know, actually we don't
46:31
really think about it that way. So what's she doing
46:33
there? She's giving a different picture.
46:35
So you're thinking of it one way, but let me give you, let
46:37
me paint another picture for you. And then she
46:39
said, you know, for us, faith is
46:41
the most liberating thing we've ever experienced,
46:45
and we can imagine a greater gift to give
46:47
to our kids. So
46:49
now what she's done is she has
46:51
framed faith in a particular way
46:53
that is resonant with the thing that this
46:55
person wants, which is freedom, right?
46:57
And that's, that's very much part of the age of authenticity,
47:00
but to say, well, what if the freedom you're looking
47:02
for is not found outside
47:04
of commitment, but actually within it.
47:07
So it's reframing somebody's imagination
47:10
of what faith is and that friend
47:12
or that person was like, Hey , I have never
47:14
heard that before. Tell me more
47:16
about, you know , tell me more about your faith. And
47:18
that's just a very simple example
47:21
of what I think it means to do an imaginative
47:23
apologetic. It's inviting
47:26
an outsider. Well, first it's, it's
47:28
being willing to know some , to sit with someone,
47:30
to know them well enough to understand
47:32
what would be good news to them. And
47:34
that doesn't mean changing the good news
47:37
to fit them necessarily. But it does
47:39
mean in the same way that the gospel writers
47:41
do telling the gospel in a particular
47:43
way, that fits the audience that resonates
47:45
with the audience. So , you know, Matthew's
47:48
written to a Jewish audience. And so it's , Matthew
47:50
is framed in a way that answers the questions
47:52
they're asking. So what does that mean
47:54
when you meet somebody? What are the questions they're asking
47:57
and will it be good news to them? And then
47:59
as I said, like giving them a glimpse of what it's like
48:01
from the inside. So when
48:03
I look at the world, here's what I see here are
48:05
my reasons for hope. Yeah. There's
48:07
all these reasons for despair, but let me tell you why I have
48:09
hope. So that's again, inviting
48:12
empathy and also demonstrating empathy.
48:14
And that's why testimonies, I think have so much
48:16
power and they will always have power because
48:19
they engage you not
48:21
with the critic at the critical intellect, but with the imagination.
48:24
So if I said, oh , let me tell you a story. Almost
48:27
like inside your psyche, something
48:29
shifts, right? Because you shift from
48:31
like, when you listen to a story you're not usually
48:33
being really critical. You're trying to enter into
48:35
the story. It's called the willing suspension
48:37
of disbelief. You know, like when you see a movie. So
48:40
I think it's those, those are the pieces, the basic
48:42
pieces of what sort of everyday conversation
48:44
looks like the wise apologists
48:47
have always known this and I've always done it this way, you
48:49
know, which is why Pascal Pascal
48:51
said already in 17th century,
48:54
you know, you make people
48:56
wish it were true. And then you
48:58
show that it is. Um, and so I think
49:01
that one of the critiques I have
49:03
of the way we've done apologetics is that we're
49:05
kind of standing on the street corner as
49:07
it were shouting. It's true. It's true. It's true. But
49:10
the people to whom we are speaking don't
49:12
care if it's true and it don't
49:14
understand why would this even be good for
49:16
the world if this was true. So
49:18
I think that's the ground we need to plow.
49:20
That's the work we need to do, you
49:23
know, just in our everyday conversations and the
49:25
way we live our lives, make
49:27
somebody say, well, I can't, I mean, Tim Keller
49:29
also says things like this. I can't
49:31
believe that, but I wish I could believe that when
49:34
you've engaged somebody
49:36
on that level, the way
49:38
they go about the quest for truth is completely
49:40
different.
49:42
Yeah. And there are some questions
49:44
that if you don't have the right,
49:47
I guess you could say philosophical
49:49
foundation and groundwork already
49:51
laid. Then when you give some,
49:53
you know, you make a statement like Jesus Christ
49:55
rose from the dead. I think about
49:57
when Paul spoke , uh, on Mars
50:00
hill and he gave that
50:02
great little short survey
50:04
where he appealed to lots of things that
50:06
his audience would understand. And then
50:08
he got to this part where he said, Jesus
50:11
rose from the dead. And they're like, oh, okay,
50:13
hold on. We don't know what, what
50:15
is this crazy thing you're talking about?
50:18
Their philosophical assumptions were
50:20
such that they just couldn't even comprehend
50:23
or come close to accepting
50:25
what he was telling about . And I don't know that that
50:27
was an error that Paul made because
50:29
sometimes, you know, it takes a lot of tries
50:32
and one person has to lay the seed and one person has
50:34
to water it. And it takes a long time to reset
50:36
people's assumptions, but
50:38
that's perhaps even a good case in scriptures
50:41
or detailing what you're saying. So
50:43
I mentioned that you have a new book
50:45
scheduled for release next year, called your
50:48
interpretation is your life. Could
50:50
you provide a brief preview
50:52
of that and discuss how it is
50:54
or is not related to this one?
50:58
Yeah, I think it's related to, it's not, it's
51:01
not so much a book about apologetics
51:04
though. It is a book about the way the church
51:06
and theology relates to culture. So
51:09
that's my basic project is I'm interested in
51:11
the ways that culture shapes, theology
51:14
and the way that theology prepares
51:17
us to care for culture and
51:19
to bear witness to culture. So
51:22
I'm always writing at that intersection
51:24
of the two. And , uh , your
51:26
interpretation is your life is a book about
51:29
theology and culture, putting them in conversation
51:31
and saying that this is a very complex conversation.
51:33
And so what I try to do is go through five
51:36
different layers. So meaning
51:39
than power, then ethics,
51:43
then religion, and then aesthetics, and
51:45
talk about how all of these layers
51:47
are. You could just spend a lot of time
51:49
talking about the religious aspects of culture.
51:52
You could spend a lot of time talking about morality
51:55
and the way that sort of moral frameworks
51:57
are implicit and cultural judgements
52:00
and kind of going through all of these things. And ultimately
52:03
what I'm trying to do is to articulate
52:05
a approach to cultural engagement that
52:08
is non reductive,
52:11
non dismissive, and
52:13
non-anxious. And I think
52:15
that that follows from faith and love
52:17
and hope. So non reductive because of faith,
52:20
because we believe that we live in a world that belongs
52:22
to God, the world in which it's filled with complexity,
52:25
but all things hold together in Christ. And
52:27
so we don't, yeah
52:30
, it's a disservice to , to reduce things.
52:32
And a big problem is , is reductionism, right?
52:35
And we, that happens on all sides
52:37
and people reducing things down to something,
52:39
something very beautiful and complex and
52:41
reducing it down to something simplistic . And
52:43
then second non dismissive, which
52:46
is born out of love for neighbor. So
52:48
we should not dismiss our neighbors
52:51
because we are called to love them. And then finally
52:53
non anxious . And that's born out of the theological virtue of
52:55
hope. So there's lots of reasons
52:57
for anxiety. There's lots of reasons to worry,
53:00
but ultimately if Jesus Christ
53:02
is raised from the dead, you
53:05
don't have to worry as, as a Christian.
53:07
And , uh, and so that means that you
53:09
don't have to fear culture as
53:11
if it could somehow undo the resurrection
53:14
or as if it could undo God's work in
53:16
the world or as if the church is going to sort of just
53:18
like disappear and go out of business
53:20
because of whatever the latest threat to
53:23
the churches, the church has this
53:25
beautiful, broken work
53:27
of God across time and space
53:30
and in all across all different
53:32
challenges. And so I'm just trying
53:34
to articulate an approach that is
53:36
trying to get a sense of the complexity
53:39
of the conversation, and yet
53:42
give hope that we can actually
53:44
make a difference in the way that
53:46
we engage it . And to
53:48
say that your interpretation
53:51
of culture and your interpretation
53:53
of scripture is not just what you think
53:55
about it, but it's actually, when you
53:57
do like the way that you live your life, that's
54:00
your interpretation. Finally,
54:02
the way that you put it all together and make
54:04
a life that is either resonant with
54:07
scripture or not resonant with
54:09
scripture. So that's the basic,
54:11
that's the basic idea. I'm
54:13
still working on the elevator pitch , uh , you know,
54:15
32nd version, but that's what I'm
54:17
trying to do.
54:19
Well, I liked the many times you
54:21
mentioned reducing anxiety because
54:23
in this time of COVID, I think if one
54:25
thing we all need is to step to
54:27
reduce our anxiety and our
54:30
contentiousness. So I appreciate
54:32
that. And thank you so much
54:34
for taking the time to talk with me today. I think
54:36
it's been a very beneficial discussion.
54:38
Yeah. Thanks so much, really great questions. And
54:40
thank you.
54:49
[inaudible] where we arrive at [inaudible]
55:07
[inaudible]
55:09
It was a pleasure to speak with Justin today about
55:11
his book re-imagining apologetics.
55:13
Next week, I'll be talking to Dr. Alex
55:16
sang about the at times uneasy
55:18
relationship between Christianity and philosophy.
55:21
I hope you can join us as we take a deep dive
55:23
into church history. This podcast
55:25
is written and produced by yours. Truly please
55:28
send all complaints by mail to 1600
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55:32
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55:55
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55:57
to him who is able to keep you from stumbling
56:00
and to make you stand in the presence of his glory.
56:02
Blameless with great joy to the only
56:05
God, our savior through Jesus Christ. Our
56:07
Lord be glory, majesty,
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56:11
time and now and forever. Amen.
56:14
Have a great week.
56:16
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