The Flâneur and the Philosopher (A podcast by The Natural Theologian)

This is the first episode of my new podcast, “The Flâneur and the Philosopher,” together with my friend King Laugh.

Putting it in a nutshell, “The Flâneur and the Philosopher” is a show in which a lover of wisdom and an ambulatory social critic seek the good through friendship and conversation.

One of our driving questions is whether the church is and how it can lead people to live examined lives, leading to spiritual maturity. I explored some of the limitations of contemporary Reformed theology, seminary, and being a theology nerd in previous essays.

Let My People Prophesy

The question this episode is whether revering the sermon as the central act of Protestant worship limits spiritual growth. Our guest, Jack Prophesy, argued as much on Twitter this week:

Strong words.

King Laugh and I put Jack’s critique to the test and explore ways that the church could better embody the priesthood of all believers.

You can find Jack’s links here: jack.prophesy.com

Subscribe to King Laugh here to inspire him to write a Substack finally!

If you enjoy the podcast, share it with someone!

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On this second episode of “The Flâneur and the Philosopher,” independent philosopher Daniel Garner joins the King and I for a lively discussion of the question of elders. While many churches have elders, we lack a reliable method of cultivating elders from the raw material of laymen. Christian discipleship and growth into maturity are, more often than not, left to chance.

Probably, our churches’ difficulties in cultivating elders are related to our society’s disintegration, loss of belonging, and glamorization of youth with its beauty and ignorance. Garner, author of the magisterial work of social philosophy Belonging Again (Part 1 is available here, and Part 2 is soon to be released) brings sociological and philosophical tools to bear on the question. In the end, he suggests that an elder is someone at the intersection of a dweller and a cultivator of free speech - part hobbit, part wizard.

You can also listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube Podcasts, in addition to here on Substack! And if you missed last week’s episode, check out “Make Sermons Short Again” with Jack Prophesy.

Enjoy this conversation of “The Flâneur and the Philosopher.”

For more on Daniel, see his website under “O. G. Rose,” his pen name together with his wife Michelle. Check out his YouTube channel and his Twitter. Find his books on Amazon, including Volume 1 of Belonging Again. You may also enjoy his interview with me on my book The Natural Theologian: Essays on Nature and the Christian Life.

Today, Samuel Barnes, author of Missing Axioms and The Iconoclast, joins the King and I to discuss the role religion, the secular, and identity play in the political right. The conversation begins from our dueling articles, my “Toward a Religious Right,” and Samuel’s “Against a Merely Religious Right.”

In my essay, I argued that, if the political right, conservatism, does not make its object the conservation and continuation of a religious heritage, then its adherents will tend to identify the object of conservation as a racial or ethnic group. In order to preserve both morality and a kind of universalism, the Right should be religious.

In Samuel’s essay, he argued that the Right is not merely concerned with the preservation of a religious heritage or any philosophical proposition. It is also concerned with the preservation of peoples in all their particularity - as the Québecois are concerned with their ethnic identity, the Welsh with theirs, the English with theirs. These are fine-grained, historic ethnicities, not races, mind you.

It should be noted that Samuel is himself English, and that the divide on the Right we are discussing is partly due to differences between the US, a propositional nation, and the countries of Europe.

What follows is a lively exchange about the nature and purpose of politics, from first principles. Enjoy this episode of The Flâneur and the Philosopher.

Remember you can also listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and watch on YouTube.

Chapters:

2:00 - What is the right preserving?

10:00 - Is politics a godly or an earthly thing?

22:00 - Is effective change through politics anyway, or through culture, ideas, and religion?

29:00 - Is preserving ethnic identity a goal of the right?

43:00 - Does the Right have a positive vision of the good life? Or are we merely against things?

53:00 - How can the Right save us from the tyranny of pleasure?

To learn more about our guest, Samuel Barnes, visit samuelbarnes.com.

The Natural Theologian is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This week, the King and I spoke with Dr. Lawrence Feingold, professor of theology at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary, a Roman Catholic seminary in St. Louis, MO. Professor Feingold is the author of The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas and His Interpreters, among other books. He trained in Carrara, Italy as a classical sculptor, alongside his wife. Both were converted to Christ while in Italy, where Dr. Feingold then studied theology for nine years. The fruit of his study was The Natural Desire to See God, a rebuttal of five decades of interpretation of Aquinas known as the Nouvelle Théologie, stemming from theologian Henri De Lubac.

Traditional Thomistic interpretation had held that man’s supernatural end - the beatific vision, seeing God - transcended human nature; it exceeded what human nature was capable of on its own. God could have created man in a state of pure nature, not offering him the beatific vision, without any injustice to man. Even if man had not sinned, the offer of a supernatural telos was an act of grace, a free offer of something not deserved.

In parallel with Protestant Neo-Orthodoxy, the Nouvelle Théologie argued that human nature could not be understood apart from its supernatural end. Human beings, in virtue of their nature alone, had a supernatural telos. This conclusion led some interpreters, including John Milbank, to an explicitly Christian politics, denying the possibility of any liberal neutrality. All thought about secular things and all political activity must be based on explicitly Christian principles.

In The Natural Desire, Dr. Feingold argued for a return to the traditional Thomistic synthesis. Man has, by nature, a desire for the good itself, a desire that nothing created can satisfy. But man’s supernatural end is disproportionate to his nature; it transcends his natural end and only comes to him as a gratuitous offer.

My own project parallels Dr. Feingold’s in its reaffirmation of nature in Christian theology; see my book, The Natural Theologian. I reject the Nouvelle Théologie and radical orthodoxy for the same reason I reject Christian presuppositionalism, worldview-ism, and coherentism: They ignore the goodness of created, finite human nature in itself and the possibility of natural human knowledge.

In the interview, we discuss Dr. Feingold’s own path to faith, including how a love of Christian art paved his way to Christianity. We discuss the Catholic debate over the natural desire to see God and its theological and cultural implications. Finally, we discuss how I am attempting to appropriate some aspects of his view for Protestant theology - and to reject others. The discussion closes with an exchange on whether Christ’s grace, in addition to restoring nature, also exceeds and elevates it.

Enjoy this conversation of The Flâneur and the Philosopher.

You can also listen to this and previous episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

Chapters

* Introduction 0:00

* Dr. Feingold’s Conversion 2:08

* Art as Preparation 8:34

* The Bifurcation of Art and Theology 15:38

* The Creator and the Creature 22:51

* The Retreat from Nature 28:29

* De Lubac’s Position 32:40

* Aquinas’s Position 39:09

* Platonic v. Aristotelian 48:24

* De Lubac Again 1:00:52

* The Gratuity of Creation 1:07:10

* Brainless Slugs 1:15:50

* Practical Implications 1:24:39

* Natural Law 1:33:31

* Protestant Doubts about Grace Elevating Nature 1:36:51

* The New Commandment 1:45:53

* The Sacredness of Secular Life 1:49:04

Resources

Dr. Feingold’s The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas and His Interpreters

De Lubac’s Surnaturel, or The Mystery of the Supernatural

Steven Long, Natura Pura: On the Recovery of Nature in the Doctrine of Grace

St. Francis De Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life

John Paul II Fides et Ratio and The Theology of the Body

Music: Lofi Study Musician: FASSounds Site: https://pixabay.com/music/beats-lofi-study-112191/

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Ross Byrd joined and King Laugh and I this week to discuss preparation for the gospel. Ross commented a couple of months ago on one of my essays that Jesus did not spend his ministry planting the seed; he spent it tilling the soil:

“The truth (the seed) is simple and plenty. The problem is the lack of fertile soil. Jesus came to till the soil, to play the long game—not just to give us the truth, but to make sure the truth could go in.”

Our discussion highlighted the importance of patience and incremental growth in understanding and accepting the truth. We also touched on the limitations of light switch-like conversions and the need for a gradual journey of becoming. We are embodied and in time; we can’t have an angelic, aeviternal view of conversion.

Our conversation ranged over other areas, including the sacred-secular divide, whether episcopal church government might solve some things, and the journey from wonder to work and back to wonder again.

Ross Byrd runs Surf Hatteras, a premier summer surfing camp for teens, and teaches theology for the Virginia Beach Fellows. He writes Patient Kingdom here on Substack; go give him a subscribe! He stepped back from being an associate pastor seven years ago to devote himself to these other callings full-time. He lives with his wife and four children in North Carolina.

Ross’s Comment on my Jordan Peterson Article

Ross’s Article:

Sound Bites

"Jesus' ministry is almost more about soil-tilling than seed-planting."

"The truth itself is so simple. You miss it because it's simple, not because it's complicated."

"Conversion is not a moment, but a process of becoming."

"It wasn't going to be very easy to do that in the Episcopal Church."

"We're not just handing you the reins of the sermon. Why don't we just the priesthood of all believers for those things - until and unless you show spectacular competence."

"What is the validity of 20-somethings being given church office?"

"It's a holiness that has to do with the way that the Spirit moves upon His people and the way that Jesus promised that He would when two or three are gathered in His name."

Chapters

Part I: The Master Soil-Tiller

0:00 Introduction to Ross

1:21 Soil Tilling in Jesus' Ministry

07:51 Patient Preparation v. Truth-Bombs

15:53 The Role of Time and Embodiment in Conversion

24:50 Salvation by Information Alone

Part II: From the Pastorate to Surf-Camp

40:06 Ross’s Story: From the Pastorate to Surf-Camp

48:44 The Bourgeois-Boomer-Baptist Booby-trap

Part III: Ecclesiology: Episcopal or Egalitarian?

56:47 Ross Challenges Us on Ecclesiology

1:15:03 The Holy and the Common

Part IV: Maturity

1:39:26 The Grandfather and the Second Naiveté

Last Week’s Episode:

The Natural Theologian is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This week, Joel Carini and King Laugh are joined by Michael, author of Build the Village, a publication about building community beyond mainstream institutions.

I came across Michael through his engagement with Aaron Renn’s cultural commentary, but as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. (Michael wrote this review of Renn’s recent book, Life in the Negative World.)

In my judgment, the LDS church is an interesting example of a church that has already adjusted to “the negative world,” i.e., adopted a minority mindset and practiced a kind of large-scale Benedict Option for over a century.

Our conversation explores the topic of building Christian community and the role of individual initiative within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and how this can be replicated for evangelicals.

We also discussed the importance of intentional parenting and the role of fathers in passing on faith and values to their children. We had an excursus on the creation of culture and music within the Christian community. We concluded with a discussion on the need for rites of passage and intentional guidance for boys as they transition into adulthood.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or watch on YouTube.

Takeaways

* The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints emphasizes strong social fabric and tight-knit community, with members actively supporting and serving one another.

* Lay leadership and individual initiative play a significant role in the LDS Church, with members taking on responsibilities and actively participating in the community.

* There is a need for churches to bridge the gap between young people and older generations, creating shared experiences and connections outside of traditional church assignments.

* Churches should offer unique experiences and opportunities for youth, providing them with something distinctive and appealing that aligns with their interests and values.

* Fathers play a crucial role in passing on faith and values to their children, and their emotional warmth and closeness have a significant impact on faith persistence.

* Rites of passage and intentional guidance for boys are essential in preparing them for adulthood and teaching them the skills and values necessary for a successful life.

* The church and community should provide opportunities for men to interact, lead, and debate, allowing boys to witness and learn from these experiences. Separate yourself from the unhealthy homeschool culture to foster independence.

* Create a vision of family life that goes beyond negotiating roles and responsibilities.

* Find meaning in ordinary life and prioritize everyday tasks.

* Cultivate a sense of human flourishing and train children for their future roles.

* De-optimize your life to prioritize family and home.

* Take an intentional and customized approach to family life.

Sound Bites

* "Latter-day Saints have a strong culture of individual initiative and proactive service within the community."

* "Lay leadership in the LDS Church allows for a sense of shared responsibility and reduces the burden on the bishop."

* "The transition from youth to adulthood can be challenging, and more can be done to support young men during this critical period."

* "When the adults in the room take their own cultural making responsibilities seriously and together offer the youth of the church an experience, the youth are generally gonna respond well to that."

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction and Background

08:11 - The Importance of Individual Initiative in the LDS Church

23:52 - Challenges in Protestant Churches: Bridging the Gap

27:21 - Creating Unique Experiences for Youth

32:01 - The Role of Fathers in Faith Transmission

32:53 - The Negative Impact of Pop Culture on Dating and Relationships

34:28 - Creating a Christian Alternative to Pop Culture

51:40 - The Importance of Rites of Passage and Intentional Guidance for Boys

01:01:20 - The Role of the Church and Community in Shaping Boys' Development

01:07:27 - Fostering Independence and Preparing Children

01:14:55 - A Vision for Family Life

01:20:43 - Finding Meaning in Ordinary Life

01:26:22 - Cultivating Human Flourishing and Training Children

01:29:41 - De-optimizing Life: Prioritizing Family and Home

01:35:50 - An Intentional and Customized Approach

The Natural Theologian is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dr. Joseph Minich, residential teaching fellow at The Davenant Institute, joins King Laugh - before you go further, subscribe to his Substack, Laughing with God - and Joel Carini this week on The Flâneur and the Philosopher. Our topic is the ideology of Mark Dever’s Nine Marks ministry. While on the face of it, designed to limit the pastor’s authority to the word of God, we detect in Nine Marks’ teaching an unjust accruing of authority to the sole preaching pastor.

Dr. Minich tells us about his review of Jonathan Leeman’s Political Church, an account of church authority arising from Nine Marks’ ministry. Leeman, in that book, attempts to argue that pastors have a spiritual authority, less than that of God, but greater than that of any congregant with a Bible. But is that the nature of church office and church authority? Or is there no spiritual distinction between clergy and laity?

King Laugh and I also present our critique of the ideology of expository preaching and the church-focused Christian life. It is laudable to aspire only to preach what is consistent with biblical teaching. And yet, in so restraining the pastor, we deny the capacity and duty of exercising human reason and judgment, which are the only way to apply Scripture to the messy complexities of concrete life. Given that the pastor is not the expert on life in all its complexity, this also opens up a parity among wise, mature Christian individuals: the priesthood of all believers.

This summer, Dr. Minich will be offering a course at Davenant House, “Reading the Bible and the World: Protestant Wisdom Foundations I.” Learn more and sign up here.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or watch on YouTube.

Sound Bites

* "They have tried to make it possible to do so with imbeciles by making the process of arriving at that so simple that you could train a 20 something to do it effectively."

* "There is a conflation of what really ought to be authority, where you need wisdom, you need to be able to judge, to govern, you need to exemplify the things that you're talking about versus leading, which is usually a matter of gifting."

* "They speak with an absolute authority because the minister, if they deviate from this, is perceived as a rogue."

* "You're outsourcing your own judgment, whether your moral conscience or your intellectual firing, rather than them turning around and saying, hey, you should read books and also it's really hard to know things and it could take a while to really know something and do that, grow."

* "There's a lot there, and the pastor who says on bioethics, I am a little bit beyond my wheelhouse - Mr. Christian with an MD, you have some insights here, but you also need some philosophy because being a doctor alone doesn't help you just realizing like the complexity of all the different types of knowledge."

* "The appropriate way to approach it is that the pastor is really just the end stage of any godly man in the congregation who meets the qualifications."

* "Don't come ask me everything. Actually, you grow wise."

* "The church and its leadership can become like the kind of boyfriend or husband who makes you need them so badly. It's almost abusive."

* "If the way that you are engaging with the people you love and serve is that they can't do anything without you, that's the opposite of what you're supposed to be doing."

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Background

02:05 Personal Background and Involvement with Davenant

06:22 Critique of Jonathan Lehman's 'Political Church'

13:17 The Dangers of Clerical Caste and Man of God Syndrome

23:24 Equipping the Saints and Cultivating Independent Thinking

28:08 The Parent-Child Dynamic in Pastoral Relationships

36:18 The Dangers of Dependency on Pastors

37:55 The Limitations of Pastors' Expertise

39:20 Cultivating Wisdom and Knowledge Among the Congregation

41:30 The Role of Pastors as Informational Vending Machines

45:42 The Importance of Raising Up New Pastors Within the Church

49:53 Focusing on the Practical Aspects of the Christian Life

53:05 The Relationship Between Authority and Submission

58:23 The Role of Pastors in the Lives of Congregants

01:00:53 The Anxious Relationship to Knowing

01:03:45 The Responsibility of Congregants to Cultivate Wisdom

01:06:40 The Growth and Development of the Congregation

01:11:03 Cultivating Wisdom and Independence

01:12:58 The Role of Elders as Guides

01:13:54 Accountability and Humility in Leadership

01:16:28 The Role of Parachurch Organizations

Subscribe to Laughing with God, by King Laugh!

Buy My Book:

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Colton Beach joins us to speak about his experience as a gay Christian, committed to the traditional Christian sexual ethic, in the church. For Colton’s personal backstory, check out his interview with Preston Sprinkle. I learned about Colton when we both attended our first Revoice conference in June 2023, which I wrote about here.

We talk with Colton about the analogy between accepting chronic illness and admitting one is gay. We ask why Reformed, gospel-centered churches revert to a prosperity gospel when faced with same-sex attraction. We ask questions about the goods of celibacy and marriage in the Christian life.

Central to our conversation is the theology of sanctification or Christian spiritual growth: Does growing mean being tempted less, or obeying more even if temptation continues? Was Jesus Christ an asexual, or a man subject to the desires and infirmities of our human nature? The implications are many and deep.

Read Colton’s Writings.

Check out Revoice, where Colton volunteers.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or watch on YouTube.

Check Out King Laugh’s Latest:

Read My Book:

Dr. Miles Smith IV, Associate professor of history at Hillsdale College, joined the King and I for a conversation about what we can learn from Ex-vangelical narratives. “Ex-vangelicals” have been deconstructing for several years, whether to leave the faith altogether or to become a different kind of Christian. In all cases, the object of critique is the particular subculture of 80s and 90s evangelical Christianity.

With historical perspective and Protestant conviction, Dr. Miles Smith IV agrees with much of the ex-vangelical critique, but with a different conclusion: Historic Protestantism was never well-represented by 80s and 90s evangelicalism. That movement was much more shaped by history, politics, and sociology than the faithful would like to admit.

As always, our conversation came back to the church, pastors, and laypeople, but with new insights about the 20th century rise of American Protestant clericalism. Enjoy this enlightening discussion with Miles Smith.

He followed up by publishing an essay, “Reading the Exvangelicals,” yesterday at Mere Orthodoxy.

By the way, Miles has just released a book addressing questions of Christianity and the pre-Civil War era of America: Religion and Republic: Christian America from the Founding to the Civil War.

Check out Miles’ X account as well: https://x.com/IVMiles.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or watch on YouTube.

Books mentioned:

Jon Ward’s Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Failed a Generation

Mike Cosper’s Land of My Sojourn: The Landscape of a Faith Lost and Found

Andrew L. Whitehead’s American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church

Sarah McCammon’s The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church

Sound Bites

* “What was weird about 80s and 90s American evangelicalism that's not representative of say historic Protestantism?”

* "If you're my age and guess what, you don't have anything to go back to, your kind of choices are, okay, maybe the world was right and evangelicalism lied to me about the world or..."

* "Evangelicals talk all the time. It's actually their sacrament, right? Like the, because of course the, the, the primacy of the preached word is so important."

* "Just live the faith. They're not really checking in on what you're doing."

* "Where did the professionalization of the ministry come from?"

* “There’s no universal competency that comes with a collar.”

* “The ‘professional Christian’ idea is a 20th century phenomenon.”

* “What is the good life? Well, the good life is to love your neighbor as yourself.”

* “The church is the building.”

* "The church, the gospels don't have a lot to say about politics."

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Book Discussion

02:17 The Rise of Ex-Evangelical Memoirs

11:53 The Conflation of Leadership and Authority in Evangelicalism

23:16 The Role of Gurus and Celebrity Figures in Evangelicalism

27:28 The Importance of Prudence in Christian Decision-Making

30:47 The Pitfalls of Professionalizing the Ministry

32:24 The General Nature of Admonitions in the Church

33:30 The Professionalization of the Ministry in the Early 20th Century

36:14 The Influence of Scientism and the Darwinian Framework

38:10 Socioeconomics and Church Growth

52:59 Redefining the Concept of a 'Dying Church'

59:36 Exploring Christian Nationalism

01:00:07 Integrating Different Disciplines into Theological Discourse

01:01:34 The Misconception of Theology as Sociology or Politics

01:02:32 The Church's Role in Saving Souls

01:03:56 The Church's Stance on Politics

01:10:07 Evangelicalism: Politics vs. Theology

01:15:21Fostering Love and Community in the Church

It was my and King Laugh’s privilege to speak with Dr. Nigel Biggar about doing theology from experience.

In his recent book Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning and in previous books like In Defence of War, Dr. Biggar’s biblical and theological erudition has been matched by his philosophical rigor - and especially by his knowledge of history. Doing work that not even historians dare to do, Dr. Biggar has brought moral wisdom, especially from the Christian tradition, to bear on contemporary debates.

At the same time, his engagement with history and empirical observation of the human condition has brought experience to bear on Christian theology. We discuss the consequences of Bible-only theology and the need to advert to empirical sources. The legacy of colonialism is considered, and the need to avoid ideological thinking both of the secular progressive type and the insular Christian kind.

Dr. Biggar is Emeritus Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford. He is the author of many books, including In Defence of War, Behaving in Public: How to Do Christian Ethics, and What’s Wrong with Rights?

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or watch on YouTube.

Read King Laugh’s Letters to the Seven Churches of Pine County

Like a latter day apostle John, King Laugh has been composing seven letters to the churches of Pine county. Therein, you will find love for the church and biting critique, not unlike the letters of Revelation, or the prose of the wittiest satirists. Read carefully!

My Song and My Book

Meet with Me

Talk with me for thirty minutes about anything theological, philosophical, or personal related to my writing and podcasting at The Natural Theologian.

I also offer consulting on getting into Ph.D.’s and related academic or intellectual career advice.

The Natural Theologian is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The flâneur and the philosopher are joined this week by Jack Wilkie, author of the Church Reset Substack, and of a book by the same name, Church Reset: God’s Design for So Much More. Jack was previously a pastor in the Churches of Christ but has since focused on his writing ministry and his podcast, Think Deeper.

Jack recently wrote a post titled, “Why I Won’t Be Encouraging My Sons Toward Ministry.” We discuss with him why this is, and why he left pastoral ministry himself.

We discuss the nature of the pastoral role as well as the current pulpit supply-chain, taking uprooted young men and placing them around the country in a Christian brain-drain. We consider the sacred-secular divide this creates and offer some alternative models of church and discipleship.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or watch on YouTube.

Takeaways

* The current system of filling pulpits in churches is flawed and disconnected from the rest of the church community.

* There is a need for a more organic, homegrown approach to leadership development in churches.

* Small churches should focus on training and equipping their own leaders instead of relying on hiring pastors from outside the congregation.

* The emphasis should be on the quality of leadership and the growth and maturity of the church, rather than the size of the building or the number of attendees.

* Finding the right church involves considering factors such as the spiritual health of the congregation, the influence on family and children, and the opportunity for active participation.

* Disciple-making is the responsibility of every member of the church, and it involves training and guiding others in their walk with God.

* Churches need to move away from a consumeristic mindset and prioritize hospitality, community, and a focus on Christ-likeness in everyday life.

* The church should provide guidance and wisdom on practical matters of life, such as parenting and finances, in addition to theological teaching.

* Unity in the church requires a balance between specific requirements, expectations, and encouragement, while respecting individual differences and preferences.

* Churches should prioritize roots and generational connections, encouraging families to stay close and passing on wisdom and values to future generations.

Read King Laugh’s Latest

Check out the latest from King Laugh’s publication, Laughing with God.

My Song and My Book

Meet with Me

Talk with me for thirty minutes about anything theological, philosophical, or personal related to my writing and podcasting at The Natural Theologian.

I also offer consulting on getting into Ph.D.’s and related academic or intellectual career advice.

The Natural Theologian is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dr. James Orr, Associate Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the Faculty of Divinity of the University of Cambridge, joins the flâneur and the philosopher for a wide-ranging discussion of the philosophy of nature and Christian involvement in politics. We first discuss Dr. Orr’s interesting path from the practice of law to a professorship in the philosophy of religion.

Following an introduction to Dr. Orr’s career, the conversation divides into two parts: A discussion of the philosophy of nature, the object of much of Dr. Orr’s academic work, and a discussion of his Christian involvement in political discourse. Through both parts of the conversation, the question of whether the natural realm can be understood, at a first pass, without God remains central.

Concerning the philosophy of nature, Dr. Orr has argued for a Neo-Aristotelian account of nature, on which the various substances that make up the natural realm possess natures and causal powers. This is contrast to the popular secular Neo-Humean view, which says that what appear to be natural laws are merely coincidental regularities. But it also contrasts with a popular Christian occasionalist view, on which created things have no causal power but are mere puppets, whose strings God pulls.

However, in the political sphere, Dr. Orr argues that the philosophy of liberalism, in both its modern and classical varieties, has run out. The project of a neutral state governing the common life of communities with competing metaphysics, religions, and conceptions of the good, has failed. The divides between worldviews and communities are too deep to be bridged by purportedly neutral and fair procedures, apart from any cultural or metaphysical backing. Accordingly, Christian involvement in politics must be forthrightly Christian, even while allowing for and requiring charity toward those with whom we disagree.

Enjoy this interesting conversation with a leading Christian philosopher.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or watch on YouTube.

Dr. James Orr is Associate Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the Faculty of Divinity of the University of Cambridge. He is also a chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation, which heads up the National Conservatism conference, on the board of directors of the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation (Scruton is my favorite philosopher), and a fellow of the Trinity Forum Europe, an Christian ministry to graduate students and university faculty.

He argued for conservatism against (classical) liberalism in written and filmed debates on Triggernometry. I recommend his “What Is Conservatism?”

Theological Epistemology Course

If you are interested in the questions we discussed in this podcast, especially the discussion of how nature points to God, you will have an interest in my new online course “Theological Epistemology,” offered through a paid subscription to this Substack.

Links to the first three lectures are available below, as well as the course syllabus. In addition, you may access one lecture as a freebie, since Substack allows free access to one paywalled post.

1. What Is Theological Epistemology? An Introduction

2. Bertrand Russell Refutes Cornelius Van Til

3. The Epistemology of Arguments for God, Ancient and Medieval

And coming soon…

Lecture 4, The Epistemology of Arguments for God, Modern and Contemporary

The Natural Theologian is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts, consider becoming a free subscriber. To access course lectures and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” - 1 Corinthians 13:11

Have you ever been in a conversation with someone and thought, “This is a conversation I used to have. It’s even one I used to put a lot of stock in. But I no longer think it’s where the action is really at”?

There are some ways of dealing with ideas, of speaking, and of thinking that we have to learn from and then move beyond, argues this week’s podcast guest, Matthew Stanley. Stanley calls these “transitional discourses.” Psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott had argued that children utilize transitional objects, like their thumb, blankie, or stuffed animal to replicate the security of the mother as they transition to independence. What if some forms of intellectual practice are like that as well?

Thus, the goal of the transitional object is to fall away. Eventually, the blankie is forgotten, folded up, and tucked away in a closet somewhere. The transitional object has served its role faithfully when it can be left behind, signaling that the child has internalized those functions which the transitional object had to supply externally.

The question becomes though, what happens when our transitional object stick around to long? And could certain discourses and regimes of practice in a religious community serve the role of something like a transitional object in people's lives in the broader process of their becoming more human?

-Matthew Stanley, “Transitional discourses and getting (un)stuck”

Listen to the podcast The Flâneur and the Philosopher on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or watch on YouTube.

Matthew Stanley is a writer at Samsara Diagnostics and Samsara Media whose work sits at the intersection of psychoanalysis, Buddhism, and Christian theology. A graduate of Wheaton College, he is the author of Ideology and Christian Freedom: A theo-political reading of Shusaku Endo's Silence (yes, like the Martin Scorsese film) and a book of poetry, Every Sunset is a Moonrise: Faith, Poetry, Finitude.

Our discussion is based on his article, “Transitional discourses and getting (un-)stuck,” which was also a video presentation at Philosophy Portal.

My New Song

Check out my new song, “Nothing Matters.” It’s a pop-punk track about what I call Christian nihilism.

My first pop-punk release was “Common Ground,” about the reasons we dehumanize those with whom we disagree.

Theological Epistemology Course

We’re seven lectures into my first online course here at The Natural Theologian. “Theological Epistemology” is a course about revelation and reason, faith and science, biblical and natural theology.

Previous Lectures

* What Is Theological Epistemology? An Introduction

* Bertrand Russell Refutes Cornelius Van Til

* The Epistemology of Arguments for God, Ancient and Medieval

* The Epistemology of Arguments for God, Modern and Contemporary

* The Order of Being and the Order of Knowing

* The Context of Contemporary Epistemology: Foundationalism, Coherentism, and Empiricism

* The Theological Case for Fideism

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In the context of secular, individualist culture, the American evangelical church has put a premium on marriage. Yet critics from within and without evangelicalism have accused Christians of treating marriage and the nuclear family in idolatrous ways.

Our guests this week, David Frank and TJ Espinoza, argue that the church has neglected forms of kinship beyond marriage and the nuclear family - which is particularly damaging to same-sex attracted Christians, like themselves. David and TJ are the co-hosts of the podcast “New Kinship” where they discuss life as celibate, gay Christians and the possibilities of kinship, community, and belonging that remain for them.

King Laugh and I are straight Christians, both married with children. However, we have witnessed kinds of marriage and family idolatry that affect us as well. Nuclear families are often separated from their extended families. Marriage and family are often taken to be a fix-all, rather than one of several crosses to bear. The marriage relationship is often assumed to bear too much weight, one’s spouse one’s only friend.

Together, we discuss ways that the church could support married and unmarried people alike by expanding its vision of community beyond marriage and nuclear families. Enjoy!

Listen to the podcast The Flâneur and the Philosopher on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or watch on YouTube.

Aaron M. Renn wrote in a 2018 newsletter, “Marriage is normative for Christians and the vast majority of Christians are not called or suited for a celibate life.” Aaron has mounted a cogent critique of talk of marriage and family idolatry. Churches can often call things “idolatry” that are just natural human desires, and significant ones. See his article on “Christian buddhism.”

Aaron’s critique was in the back of my head as we had this conversation. I’ve come to think that there is truth on both of these sides, and truths that are needed in particular contexts. In the urban church, a reminder to prioritize marriage rather than individualism and career is quite important.

Yet in our prioritization of marriage, we must not give in to the modern “romantic” view of marriage that ignores the possibility of intimate friendship, the need of extended family, and the possibilities of kinship outside of family. We must not whitewash the experience of bearing and raising kids; both celibacy and marriage are callings and crosses.

Links

New Kinship: Substack | YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify

David and TJ Interview Me! “Weigh and Consider the World: Joel Carini on Nature, Truth, and Side B”

The Four Sides, A, B, Y, X: Four Christian Views of Sexuality

Before You Go:

My Music:

My Online Course:

My YouTube Channel

(Click on image for link)

My guest this week on The Flâneur and the Philosopher is Simon P. Kennedy, author of Against Worldview: Reimaging Christian Formation as Growth in Wisdom (Lexham Press).

In his book, Kennedy argues that the current understanding of worldview is faulty. It envisions a Christian worldview as something that can be downloaded and deployed at the outset of Christian education. On the contrary, Kennedy argues that a Christian worldview is something that is built gradually by the process of education and exploration of God’s world.

After reading and reviewing Kennedy’s book, I had to have him on to discuss where the idea of a Christian worldview goes wrong - and what it still gets right. We discuss its ties to philosophical idealism and presuppositional apologetics, try to sort through Kuyper’s contribution, and explore an alternative, which he and I agree is Christian realism.

Enjoy the conversation! You can also watch on YouTube or listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just search for “The Flâneur and the Philosopher.”

Simon P. Kennedy is a Resident Fellow at the University of Queensland and non-resident fellow at the Danube Institute. He writes on X at @spkenn1 and at Academia.edu at https://uq.academia.edu/SimonKennedy.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

7:16 The Presuppositionalist Phase

17:45 Where Worldview Goes Wrong

24:55 What’s Up w/ Kuyper?

32:46 A "Combat Concept"

40:05 Christian Realism

49:07 Simon's Secular Scholarship

57:14 Worldview in Negative World

1:01:42 Jordan Peterson

1:05:25 Reception in Moscow, Idaho

If you missed it, watch our last episode where King Laugh and I spoke with the hosts of New Kinship to sort out whether there is such a thing as marriage and family idolatry and, if so, what it is.

In his opening address to the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), Jordan Peterson argued that the Christian foundation for civilization is this:

“Reciprocal, voluntary self-sacrifice.”

Peterson illustrated with the form of sacrifice we all learn first:

When a child learns to make a friend, he learns necessarily, the principle of sacrificial reciprocity.

“I have a turn, then you have a turn. I have a turn, then you have a turn.”

The sacrifice there is that it’s not always my turn.

And that sacrificial reciprocity is the…foundational principle of the reciprocity upon which even the most primordial forms of society…are predicated.

Reciprocal self-sacrifice is fundamental to political society. The kind of sacrifice Peterson praises requires us to transcend hedonism and self-absorption.

[Last week, I reacted to Peterson’s ARC address in this post.]

Societies that cannot establish reciprocity and the ability to sacrifice one for another, and one’s present for one’s future, remain mired in hedonism. Collectively, they remain in barbarism.

To achieve civilization, humans must rise to the level of reciprocal self-sacrifice:

The principle of voluntary upward self sacrifice [is] the foundation of the community, as the foundation of abundance itself, as the precondition for the trust and reciprocity that enables us to compete and to cooperate so that we can produce societies that are endlessly productive.

Now many criticize Peterson for instrumentalizing religion, either for psychology or politics. (Last week, subscriber Paul P. sent me this Catholic example.)

This criticism misses the mark, though not because Peterson’s focus transcends psychology or politics, but because Peterson is right about psychology and politics.

But there is one place where Peterson errs.

At least in this speech, he interprets the fundamental principle of Christianity as reciprocal self-sacrifice. Reciprocal sacrifice, like that of the child above, exhibits natural justice, the kind of mutuality and “giving to each his due” on which political society is indeed founded.

Yet, following the great opponents of civilizational Christianity, Tolstoy and Kierkegaard, Paul Kingsnorth has argued that the Christian ethic is not the kind of mutual back-scratching that founds a civilization and leads to GDP growth. It is a kind of self-sacrifice that incurs loss and is folly from a worldly or civilizational perspective.

And in this, Kingsnorth et al. have more than a grain of exegetical truth:

If you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. (Luke 6:33-35)

We could update it: “If you sacrifice five minutes with your toy in order to gain five other minutes with your toy, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that.”

In other words, the ethic of reciprocal sacrifice, i.e., natural justice, is not the distinctively Christian ethic. It is the natural law. And even sinners, Gentiles, and non-Christians often abide by it.

What then is the distinctively Christian ethic? And how does it relate to reciprocal sacrifice and the natural law?

The New Commandment

Christ frequently affirms that what he is teaching does not abolish but fulfills the old law and the creation order:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. — Matthew 5:17

“Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” — Matthew 19:4-6

He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. — Matthew 19:8

Jesus reaffirmed the moral law, of the Old Testament and of nature.

However, at a crucial juncture, Christ told his disciples that he was giving them a new commandment. If he is to be believed, this commandment was not in the Law and the Prophets. It was not man’s duty by nature. And it is not something that even sinners do.

What is it? “That you love one another:” (John 13:34b).

[Brakes screeching]

Hold on, Jesus.

That’s not a new commandment.

It’s in Leviticus 19:18: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

You, Jesus, said that it was the second greatest commandment and, together with “Love the Lord your God,” it summed up the Law and Prophets (Matt 22:36-40).

You can’t actually mean that that commandment is new.

That is a very natural reaction. But there are two problems with it.

* In the next verse, Jesus says that, “By this, all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).

But wouldn’t it just make you a good Old Testament Hebrew if you loved your neighbor as yourself? It wouldn’t mark you out as a disciple of Christ.

Exactly, so Jesus must be talking about something more.

And,

* You cut me off when I was quoting the first verse: “That you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34b-c).

“Just as I have loved you.” But wait, Jesus says these words as he’s about to go to the cross to offer his life for the sins of the world.

And Jesus’ sacrifice is radically new in human history.

Jesus’ death was the ultimate act of self-sacrifice. It was not an act of reciprocal self-sacrifice. It was not mutual.

In fact, moments later, Jesus predicted that Peter would not lay his life down for him but deny him three times (John 13:38).

Jesus sacrificed himself for us without expecting anything in return.

And in his new commandment, he asks us to do the same for one another.

The Natural Law and the New Commandment

Now Jordan Peterson might be correct that reciprocal sacrifice is the foundation of civilization. Civilization requires individuals to make sacrifices for each other and for the community as a whole. It rewards these sacrifices with mutual benefit, safety, and prosperity.

But what if Paul Kingsnorth et al. are also correct that Christ’s new commandment demands something at odds with political and economic prudence?

In fact, it appears that they are.

Political peace, for instance, is built on mutually assured destruction.

But Christ says, “Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matt 5:39).

The modern economy is built on lending at interest, based on expectation of repayment.

But Christ says, “Lend to them without expecting to get anything back” (Luke 6:35).

Natural justice is built on short-term sacrifice for mutual benefit, doing good to those who do good to us.

But Jesus says, “if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. … But love your enemies, do good to them” (Luke 6:33, 35).

Peterson correctly identifies the ethic that gives a foundation to civilization.

But Kingsnorth correctly identifies that the kind of sacrifice Christ commands contradicts that ethic.

If this is so, then there is an irreconcilable tension between civilization and Christianity.

Tension or Extension?

But the objection to this conclusion comes from Christ’s own lips:

I did not come to abolish [the Law and the Prophets], but to fulfill them. (Matt 5:17)

The new thing Christ brings, both in his atonement and his example and ethic, does not contradict or abolish the law. (Think both Old Testament law and natural law.)

In theological shorthand:

Grace does not abolish nature, but restores and perfects it.

The new commandment doesn’t subtract from the old commandments, Jesus says. The new commandment fulfills and adds to the old:

“For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 5:20).

Christ’s new commandment is not in tension with the old; it is an extension beyond the old.

Jesus Christ asks of us even more than Jordan Peterson does.

Three Ways Christ Asks More, But No Less

You can see the new commandment extend beyond the natural law in various dimensions of Christ’s teaching.

i. Marriage and Celibacy

Christ reaffirmed the creation ordinance of marriage, calling the Pharisees back to the first and second chapters of Genesis (Matt 19:1-9).

But he also opened up the possibility of celibacy as an honorable path for the Christian, one that will be greatly rewarded (Matt 19:10-12).

Christ’s reaffirmation of marriage indicates that Aaron Renn is correct to caution the urban church against overplaying the goodness of singleness and underplaying that of marriage and family.

But Christ’s extension of blessing to “eunuchs” indicates that Grant Hartley and other members of Side B, and Sam Allberry are also correct to argue that the church has idolized marriage and family, neglecting the good of celibacy.

(King Laugh and I explored the controversial idea of marriage idolatry with David Frank and TJ Espinoza in this podcast episode.)

We must obey God’s natural law with regard to marriage and sexuality, but we can and must also transcend it.

ii. Christian Economics

On economics, Christian defenders of free market conservatism are right to defend the moral legitimacy of mutual exchange in a market economy. At the same time, critics of economic libertarianism are correct to highlight market failures and inequality of bargaining power in labor markets. So far, natural justice.

But purveyors of redemptive entrepreneurship are also correct to argue that Christian entrepreneurship can and should go beyond fair, mutual exchange. As managing partner at Praxis Sajan George argues, while ethical entrepreneurship argues for “I win, you win,” redemptive entrepreneurship holds to the principle of “I lose, you win.”

Rather than being contrary to good business, to practice “self-disadvantaging meaningful sacrifices” requires good business abilities to carry out (Tanner Gesek’s words). One unskilled in business might choose, out of Christian piety, to incur a loss; but, this could simply end his business and ability to exercise generosity and self-sacrifice.

Kingsnorth recounts this reply and responds to it:

After all, as one critic pointed out, if we don’t create wealth, how are we going to distribute it to the poor?

Sheesh. Give me Tolstoy any day of the week. — Paul Kingsnorth, “The Vagabond King”

While easy to dismiss as a kind of capitalist cope, the principle is inescapable.

Even the smallholder or the urban homesteader must make a living in order to live the simple and generous life.

iii. Immigration

The apparent tension between the natural law and the new commandment has broken out into the political domain in debates over immigration.

Christian and non-Christian advocates of, in the US, not enforcing immigration laws and, in European nations, restricting Muslim immigration appeal to compassion and self-sacrificial love as reasons to be more liberal on immigration. Christians appeal to Old Testament provisions for the stranger and the foreigner and to Christ’s teaching.

Meanwhile, some Christian advocates of immigration enforcement and restriction have appealed to the natural law, to natural limits, and to the ordo amoris as reasons to maintain the integrity of national community prior to aid to non-citizens. Brad Littlejohn’s “Theology of Immigration” (First Things) is a great example of this. Vice President J. D. Vance’s famous remarks are another.

There doesn’t have to be tension here. I have been reflecting recently that I grew up with a vision of faith that was very focused on helping the poor, the minority, and the immigrant.

But I never once thought or heard another Christian even suggest that this had implications for national immigration policy until I was in a graduate degree.

Why? Because the biblical and the Christian call is to love “the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you” (Lev. 19:34). It is not to allow anyone who desires to enter the borders of your polity to do so.

A state may have many reasons to allow and even encourage immigration. The Christian openness to love of others beyond the circle of one’s natural attachments will undoubtedly have some implications for Christian thinking about immigration policy.

(And the economic libertarians have, I think, even superior arguments against right-wing restrictionism.)

But what levels of immigration should be permitted and how strictly laws should be enforced are questions of political prudence, not Christian principle.

In this case too, the new commandment does not subtract from the old commandments and from the natural law; it adds to them. In addition to living in accord with natural justice, exercising reciprocal sacrifice, we must exercise self-sacrificial love.

But even as Christ asks more, he asks no less than Peterson and the natural law:

“These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others” (Matt 23:23).

Sacrifice and the Social Good

At present, then, Jordan Peterson is flattening a significant dichotomy within biblical teaching:

The principle of self-sacrifice, embodied in Christ’s passion, is not that of reciprocal sacrifice, on which civilization is indeed founded. It is something more.

But true self-disadvantaging sacrifice does not contradict reciprocal sacrifice, but extends beyond it.

What is more, a venerable, if recent tradition argues that even the truly Christian principle of sacrifice without expecting a return contributes to political well-being.

Hannah Arendt argued that the principle of Christian forgiveness is necessary to put an end to adjudication of past misdeeds. Conditions of natural justice require forgiveness that is indeed willing to leave some wrongs unrecompensed.

René Girard argued that social peace requires the sacrificial scapegoat. Cycles of retributive justice and tribal warfare can come to an end only through sacrifice.

And I would argue that natural justice and finite human flourishing are increased by the costly good works Christians and others perform that will never be repaid in this life. In fact, the willingness to do good for the community that will not be repaid is at the heart of the role people like Socrates and Peterson play.

Peterson’s rise to prominence was precipitated by a willingness to suffer harm for the good of the community. His courage was rewarded with fame but also punished with criticism, slander, cancellation, and eventually, nearly-fatal health complications.

Peterson’s sacrifice, I would argue, was never reciprocal. While he may have been rewarded, including financially, nothing can recompense the loss of scholarly and clinical reputation, the physical suffering, and the withering criticism to which he has been subjected.

In his own person, Peterson displays a kind of sacrifice that goes beyond the reciprocal.

And that kind of sacrifice, “the sacrifice that tends towards the ultimate,” is required to restore a broken and faltering civilization.

Christ himself indicated that self-disadvantaging sacrifice would not be temporally useless:

Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.” (Mark 10:29-30)

This is Christian civilization: “Houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions.”

And it is a prelude to the city, the civitas, even the “civilization of God” to come.

Watch the Video:

Nigel Biggar, former guest on The Flâneur and the Philosopher among other honorifics, shared today his lecture, “The Spirit of Truth: The Call to Intellectual Public Service.”

Dr. Biggar was Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford from 2007 to 2022. This January, he became a baron and a Conservative member of the House of Lords.

Lord Biggar of Castle Douglas (as he is now known) is a modern example of the intellectual man of action and a Christian realist. I was very inspired by his words, in which he commended and justified this very calling to his audience:

I am aware that I opted for an academic career partly because I have a certain personality: quite cautious, wanting time to observe and reflect and work things out, unwilling to decide until fully ready, careful to cover and protect every angle, averse to risk. (Well, at least I used to be!) Such a personality develops a characteristic set of virtues, of course, but it is not well suited to making momentous and risky decisions under intense pressure. I have a great deal of respect, therefore, for other people, no less intelligent than I, who have chosen—or been fated to choose—careers and roles that are heavy with front-line responsibility and light with the leisure to reflect. I sympathise very greatly with those whom Reinhold Niebuhr nicely called “the burden-bearers of the world”.

Those of us whose personality inclines us toward study may relish the virtues of slow, careful thought. But we must not look down on those who shoulder responsibilities that require quicker decision-making on matters of great weight, risking error.

Yet, in sympathizing with those in power, many worry that intellectuals will become but tools of power:

[When] Cian O’Driscoll…wrote that just war theorists like me are inevitably part of “the war-machine” that we are trying to constrain, and that we therefore stand in danger of coming so close to the flame of power that we get burnt by it, I protested. I understand what he means. Institutions do acquire a momentum of their own—sometimes perverse—that is hard to stop, and well-meaning individuals need to take care lest they get carried away. Nevertheless, it struck me that where Cian saw a machine, I saw faces—the faces of friends in public office, who are, I think, more morally reflective and sensitive than the average citizen, humbler, less sanctimonious, and who have shouldered responsibilities and taken risks that academics like me have chosen careers to evade. It is widely recognised among academics that remoteness from the exercise of executive power yields the important advantage of critical distance. What is less recognised is that it also occasions a grave temptation—a temptation to relish too much the self-flattering role of righteous prophet, to indulge in wishful thinking, to daydream among the ‘what-ifs’, and never to grasp the necessary nettle.

The intellectual’s critical distance can also be an occasion of pride and self-righteousness.

A few paragraphs later, Dr. Biggar references Augustine as a theologian keenly aware of the dangers of making ethical and political judgments, especially when lives, and one’s own ethical purity, hang in the balance.

But:

Augustine did not flee. He did not run away. He stayed. He continued to shoulder the responsibilities of bishop, which, as the Roman Empire crumbled around him, were increasingly those of government. He kept up pastoral correspondence with military tribunes like Boniface and Marcellinus, whose Christian consciences were troubled by what they had to do. With them he lamented the tragic dilemmas of political life, but he did not flinch from facing them. He staggered onward, rejoicing.

And note: none of this prevented Augustine from developing the prophetic critique of the Roman Empire that became The City of God. He stands, therefore, as a shining example of one who took the risk of coming close to the flame of power and yet was not consumed by it—of one who risked played pastor and yet could still play prophet.

In our youth, it is easy to criticize those in authority as pawns in a system. Especially as an intellectual or academic, one can wield one’s faculties of judgment upon others, while evading judgment ourselves. Having not yet assumed worldly responsibility, no one could pin any blame upon us for compromise with the system.

But the task of mature manhood is to unite thought and action. Having reflected and come to judgments that are truly one’s own, we must embody those thoughts in action. In doing so, our thoughts must themselves compromise with the messy reality in which we live.

The man of action is, therefore, a sinner. Bonhoeffer writes:

“Jesus took upon Himself the guilt of all men, and for that reason every man who acts responsibly becomes guilty. If any man tries to escape guilt in responsibility, … He sets his own personal innocence above his responsibility for men, and he is blind for the more irredeemable guilt which he incurs precisely in this.” (Ethics, 241)

Bonhoeffer, good Lutheran that he was, comforted us that the doctrine of justification by faith frees us to sin boldly, as we must.

Please give “The Spirit of Truth,” from Lord Nigel Biggar, a listen (or a read).

The Natural Theologian is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Lord Biggar now writes a Substack, The Biggar Picture. Give him a subscribe!

Watch my and King Laugh’s interview with Dr. Biggar, “God Is in the World, Not Just the Bible,” here:

Or read my previous commendation of Dr. Biggar’s work, “Check Your Sources: Theology from the Bible and Experience,” and my philosophy of Christian Realism.