INTRO
True, we've never before had a nearly-instantaneous, nearly-worldwide network connected to devices in our pockets alerting us to rising temperatures and the temperamental outbursts of tyrants or the spread of malicious insects and viruses.
And being constantly aware of all this can feel disorienting and surreal.
But even so, we're not convinced we should be so quick to call our times "totally unprecedented." Our ancestors weathered tyrants and plagues and renovated their political thought and activity when facing the consequences of previous human actions.
And for those of us within the Christian Tradition, we must always remember that our predecessors took on the challenge of reinterpreting all of reality in light of the singular life of Jesus of Nazareth.
What is not "unprecedented" is humans encountering the unprecedented. And in the midst of our own unique challenges, we unnecessarily feed the bad reactions that can come with fear and uncertainty if we believe we face our challenges alone.
So, in this series, we look at people and moments in the Tradition where those who came before us give us precedents for facing our epoc-shaping tests and tasks.
This time, we take on the questions, "What do you do as a Christian when you have critics, and they're way off?: And, perhaps more importantly, "what do we do when a critic from an entirely different perspective or tradition has a powerful point?"
STORY
Many Christians today in the West find themselves exposed to more differing perspectives and more intense critiques of their beliefs and practices than they've ever had to deal with before. And this, of course, will at times feel overwhelming and provoke anxiety.
But the Christian faith has had its critics from its earliest days. People argued with Jesus and ran him out of town and tried to throw him off a cliff and, well, the climax of our faith's founding narrative is the crucifixion.
And, in certain places, this kind of thing continued for centuries. The earliest followers of Jesus were ignored or ridiculed in public discourses, and you don't get burned at the stake or beheaded or eaten by lions in the arena without your critics.
But we all know that the simple fact of the existence of critics, and that these critics are willing to get nasty or even violent, doesn't necessarily mean the critics understand what they are attacking. Some claimed Jesus was driven by demons and was intent on destroying the Jewish heritage that came before him. Some of the earliest Christians were brought up on charges of cannibalism because, through second or third hand whispers, news of the Eucharist became in the ears some local governors news of some new cult eating flesh and drinking blood.
And judging by some high profile Christian voices in todays media, you might think this kind of egregious misunderstanding accurately represents every point of every differing perspective and every contemporary critic of our faith.
And wouldn't that make things simple -- if everything coming from a different perspective, and especially everything that challenged us, could simply be ignored.
Certainly there is a lot of muddle-headed ignorant nonsense floating around on Youtube and Reddit and TicTock, even the New York Times bestseller list. And when you find this, then there is precedent stemming from Jesus himself, for ignoring or standing against it.
So when you find uninformed, misguided, or spiteful nonsense, feel free to ignore it or to sharpen your mind, prayerfully hone your words, then plant your feet and push back.
But, just make sure you've done your part to listen, evaluate, and truthfully discern that the criticism is indeed wrong or can be ignored without serious consequence.
Because there is not just precedent for Christians being misunderstood or persecuted -- that alone would be a one-sided telling of the story. There is also a strong precedent in the Christian Tradition for the followers of Jesus listening to, and learning from, those coming from different traditions and viewpoints, even their critics. And the sources of this precedent are not just recorded in history annals, but written into the New Testament.
As we quickly noted a moment ago, a lot of the earliest Roman persecution and criticism Christians faced was birthed in ignorance or misunderstanding. But toward the end of the second century, a philosopher named Celsus composed the first informed and sophisticated critique of Christianity to come from a Hellenistic background.
Celsus took the time to understand Christian belief and practice, perhaps better than any critic until Nietzsche, and certainly better than someone like Rickey Gervaise or Sam Harris. And one of Celsus' chief critiques was that Christians spurned and disregard venerable and time-tested traditions.
To Celsus' mind, Greek thought and culture had unlocked so much for humanity, and endured and brought some stability to people through incredibly violent and confusing times, so why would anyone utterly disregard that?
Christians took this claim seriously.
And they were able to incorporate the valid points of this critique without granting total validity to every argument Celsus made, because of the previously mentioned precedented offered by the New testament itself.
To see this, we go back directly in that venerable tradition of which Celsus spoke, at least as far as Aristotle. In his work on Rhetoric, Aristotle explored why some words, even if they were delivered with passion and by someone with the credibility of an expert, would amount to little more than wind. I'm sure you've all head a TED talk delivered by someone with impressive credentials and with gusto that still left you feeling cold. Aristotle explored why this could be, but then some other less impressive speaker could speak words that had the ability to move hearts and minds and change lives.
Emotion and the credibility of the speaker have roles to play, Aristotle says. But he emphasizes a crucial third piece that gaves a speech its umph. This third piece is the substance of the content of the message, and its delivery depends on the way the words are arranged and structured. If the words are ordered well, they meet people somewhere, and the content then takes them to a new place in their thinking, feeling, and acting. This, the substantial and structural element of the words, Aristotle calls the "Logos."
As an analogy, to help us see what Aristotle is getting at, take a series of musical tones, thrown together in a random way ...
... and you have something that's better than noise -- but just barely. If though, you take those same notes, and play with their order ... and the pacing in which they come ...
... and you might hit on a structure that allows those same notes to start to sing together.
And now you have melody.
That's logos.
Previously, the word Logos simply meant word or speech in general. But now, in Aristotle's usage, it becomes something that takes a random, disconnected mess of ideas and images and sounds and rearranges them until you have a speech that matters; the words, little "w," become a Word, capital "W," that has the power to change minds and move people to positive action.
And note the way the ideas of structure, reason, and creative power all come together in Aristotle's one term: Logos.
Now that's one step in the development of this venerable tradition.
Then, a later school of philosophers named the Stoics, picked up on Aristotle's idea and started to see that play of creative power and reason and structure coming together not just in well-crafted speeches, but in the universe as a whole. The Stoics started to use the term "Logos" to talk about the reason and structure that generates and holds together all the finely-tuned systems and organization that make our universe and life possible.
Then about a generation before Jesus of Nazareth, a Jewish man who studied philosophy in Alexandria, named Philo, noticed significant resonance between the way the Stoics talked about the Logos of the Universe and the way the Jewish Scriptures talked about YHWH creating the world. In the book of Genesis, at the primordial origins of all things, there is nothing but God. Then God speaks, "Let there be light," and there is light. "Let there be dry land" and the land appears. One and on, with a divine word, God enables greater and greater beauty and complexity for created reality. In the Jewish Scriptures, Philo said, the Logos is the word God speaks to grant order and power and life to all creation.
Last episode, we emphasized how important it is to hold to the precedent of keeping the Christian faith rooted in it's Jewish heritage. This too is written into our Scriptures. The New Testament has 3 gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, that open the story of Jesus by tying him directly to his Jewish Roots.
But the New Testament also proclaims Jesus as the hope of the whole world. So it also has John. Who incorporates the Hellenistic tradition in his opening of the story of Christ when he says, "In the beginning was the Logos." But John doesn't just agree with Philo. Because he then declares something nobody saw coming when he says that Logos, became flesh.
Today, when it comes to dealing with other philosophies or criticism, like we do with so many other things, we tend to think it all comes down to a sharp either/or. Either we have all the answers already, or we are afraid we come across as having nothing to offer. Either we prove the other perspective is 100% false on all counts, or all of our credibility falls apart.
But once the scriptures like John were integrated into the hearts and minds of the early Christians, they allowed those Christian thinkers to take a wiser and more mature posture. The precedents set in Scripture gave the early Christians an intuitive sense that if something is good, true, excellent or honorable, it will find a place in the story of Jesus's story. Because, even if its human articulation came from a different perspective or tradition, don't we believe the entire cosmos belongs to Christ?
And speaking of John's use of the term Logos in particular, incorporating this outside term into the Christian Scriptures was implicitly a gesture of honor and respect.
But it also brought this term birthed in the world of Hellenistic philosophy into the context of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And anything incorporated into this story is indeed honored, but never left unchanged.
So in the upcoming conversation, Julius and I discuss how Christians working from this precedent could engage Celsus, and other critics, with a genuine respect and openness that allowed them to both learn and articulate more about what has been given to the world in Christ, and also hold to their distinctive perspective and so give unique contributions to the debates shaping their times.
From this, we hope you can find some guidance in how to engage contemporary ideas, learn from criticism, and offer distinctly Christian contributions to the biggest questions being asked in our day.
DISCUSSION
Julius: Welcome back to this episode of “All Things.” This is Julius and Wil, and we are picking up on this new series where we take a look at specifically Christian tradition and what the tradition has to offer us in, like, inviting us to see that… I think, especially in this year, we've heard the word unprecedented a lot.
Wil: An unprecedented amount the use of the word unprecedented? [Laughs]
Julius: …of hearing the word unprecedented in major corporation email newsletters. But I think the aim of this series is to show how the Christian tradition can offer us a way to navigate these times that seem quote-unquote “unprecedented," because there is a path that has been kind of cleared for us by the people who've come before us to help give us the resources to navigate times that seem to us unprecedented.
So looking at these gifts, today we're talking about… I think it was a really helpful part of the story to clarify this concept that I remember encountering at least in school, when I started delving more into scripture and kind of um… like in the gospel of John, this concept of logos.
And that was always kind of, I remember reading like biblical commentaries and… only having a basic understanding of that was a reference to something larger in Greek philosophy about like reason. But what I like about this story is that it really highlights how Christian theology and, like, even the writing of the gospels themselves actively participates in philosophical discourse throughout history—that it doesn't just deny the claims of other thinkers or cultures.
But it actively engages with them. It doesn't just dismiss them and say, “Oh, well, that's all, that's, that's all fake or a garbage or…” But it actually addresses some of the questions of like, “Oh, what about this? These people have said this about the way the world works. What does the Bible say about that?"
Or like, what does, how, how can the Christian faith engage with that? And so, I like that it… this story illustrates how Christian theology can actively engage with these points and point out even places where human understanding harmonizes with what God reveals and affirms about the truth and also points out the way that Christ's life, death and resurrection can expand that understanding, or even push back on some of the points that we take.
So, so far we've explored one side of this conversation in how John incorporates this Greek concept of logos in his gospel account. What was the rest of that conversation like? Like how did the culture and like the philosophical discourse where John was situated in and as the years went on, what was the cultural response to this development like?
Wil: Right. Well, like you would expect from someone genuinely informed and that, that really does value their own ideas, they wouldn't just immediately be flattered because someone could mirror their language. Right? Uh. Yeah. It's not exactly the same, but a decent analogy where we find, you know, something else going on yet again, where we can see, it's not exactly the same thing—it’s not. And the differences do matter, but there is some kind of precedent for what we would recognize as like cultural appropriation.
Julius: Right. Yeah. That's what I was thinking.
Wil: So there were Hellenists that would be like, “Oh, great. You're using our terms, but don't think that that just makes us huge fans of yours. What if we feel like you're stealing? And what if we feel like you're not being true to, or you're, you know, you're being maybe dishonest? Or or that you don't understand really what’s…” that, you know, all this, all this stuff was part of it.
Julius: Yeah.
Wil: So certainly, and the first kind of writings that we would see from outsiders engaging the Christian faith, uh… and especially only the ones that were critical— the outside voices that were critical of this, this growing burgeoning development in the history of religion and philosophy, because again, in today's ancient world, those things were much more integrated seen as one thing then, then we tend to think of them.
Largely the first ones were ignorant. And so there's this a pretty famous— famous in certain circles… famous with, within the theology geeks—of of a local governor named Pliny that writes to the emperor saying, “Hey, encountered this new cult alling themselves Christians… I killed some of them, but I'm writing you to say like, should I have, and should I continue to? Cause I don't really know. What have you heard about them? What do you think of them?”
Right. A lot of it was just, “Hey, this is new. We don't know what's going on. "And so whatever kind of reactions, positive or negative negative, were also largely ignorant. But then towards the end of this second century, so late in the one hundreds, there's a guy a Roman philosopher named Celsus who, who makes it his business to really understand the Christian faith. And he wrote a book called—and this is it's interesting, it's usually translated like “The True Doctrine,” but the word is logos. Right.
So, “The Correct” or “True Logos.” And this is exactly where he hits it, is like “No, no this is the true doctrine,” which also means, unpacking that means this is how you really understand the logos. And to Celsus’s mind, Christians had botched it because in his head… so in, in his kind of Neoplatonic school, you had “ ho theos”which was the God…
The Eternal under originated self existing source of everything else. And the next highest divine principle was the logos. And then below that you have the kind of a descending hierarchy of divine beings. And this is where if they were to place them within there, you know, some of them would place many of the other gods like Dionysius right?
Other divine principles or beings or personalities down below this. But his whole point was this it's, it's like an architectural structure in the spiritual realm. And if that top principle—and if you think of it like a pyramid, right, if you flip that, if that top principle comes down on the bottom, the pyramid doesn't hold right?
That your center of mass on this tiny little, all that mass distributed, wherever on this tiny little point, it's going to all fall apart. Now, that's a, that’s a pretty crass geometric visual that gets at his argument is like, “No, no, no, this is, this is an ontological metaphysical argument.” If the logos if that highest, you know, just below ho theos—if that highest of spiritual principles and to his mind, it was incredibly important that it was a purely spiritual as understood as like in opposition to the physical, if that were to become flesh, everything, all of our reality would come undone from the inside out.
You know, he, he mocks them. He mocks Christians on certain kind of easy points like, “Ooh, why did God become man to figure out what was going on down below? Doesn't God know, everything?” you know, stuff like that. But his real philosophical argument hits at that point. No, no, no. If this were to happen, everything else would fall apart and it's it's so to his mind was logical nonsense. So…
Julius: Right. Yeah. So what's really interesting to me about that in Celsus’s kind of refuting John's take on the doctrine— I guess you can call it a doctrine. yeah… or at least the ideology, the philosophy… I don't know if the Greeks would have called it a doctrine—but like, the philosophy behind, like this principle of logos and Celsus refutes it by kind of calling it an impossibility, like a metaphysical impossibility that if you were to make this claim, that entire, like… that hierarchy is such like a big piece of how the universe functions in this full philosophical, like, um… framework. But. I can't help, but think of how, even with like, talking about the Pliny was like a governor you said, or, or something like that?
Wil: A local governor.
Julius: A local governor. So thinking about how intertwined these philosophies are with like very real power structures. Right. And like… that I can't help, but think of the connection between um… it, it seems like there's a drive to defend this understanding of the world in this kind of hierarchy, because it… to challenge that would be to threaten the power structures that allow these people who are writing to be in places of prestige and privilege. And so, like, we're not just dealing in abstract philosophies here— even though so much of Greek philosophy tries to hide between like abstracting things and like the spiritual world versus the physical world— but to mess with that messes with like how they operate, like in social order.
Wil: Yes. Yeah. There's a, there is a very, very close connection between the way they put up this…or constructed… or I don't want to use terms that are like, have a wholly negative connotation but… erected this metaphysical hierarchy of the gods, you know, from these lesser spiritual beings, personalities, deities, you know… angels, demons, demigods, however you would label them up to the logos to ho theos is, is directly mirrored in the way that they structured their political system in their whole society.
Now the relationship between that is complex. It's not super simple, like, ooh, somebody thought this and then so other people pick this up and say, “Ooh, let's build an empire that mirrors that,” but it goes, it goes back and forth. It's an incredibly complex, you know, relationship throughout history, but eventually, and we'll say this, there was in, in ancient peoples, Hellenistic cultures, a desire to see these things integrated. Right. Their, their philosophy and their theology and the way that they ordered the world.
Julius: Yeah.
Wil: And so you see this kind of like, I don't know… Amway pyramid scheme of the gods? Mirrored in the way they constructed their, their society with Caesar at the top. And it's also right… And it's also telling, like, so one point there's one person up there at the top of the triangle, you know, and it's also telling that…
And in Hellenistic cultures, you would have heard of a son of the gods before, but it would not have been some peasant Jewish carpenter in some relatively, you know, unknown corner of the empire. It would have been Caesar on the throne is the son of the gods. So that would be, if you look for in the physical order, in the political world, where would you look for like the brightest clearest instance of divinity being mirrored in this world? You would look to Caesar up at the top. And then below that would have a hierarchy that, you know, kind of that tapers out like a triangle…
Julius: Mm.
Wil: Like a pyramid… scheme. Pyramid parentheses scheme. Then with more greater and greater numbers of people as the, you know, you get towards the base of the pyramid with like, you know, Caesar at the top and then the senators and the rulers and the soldiers down to the merchants and the slaves and, and peasants down at the bottom of the pyramid. And so when Celsus says, “No metaphysically, you can't have this. Logically, things would come undone from the inside if the logos descended and took on flesh.”
Julius: Hmm.
Wil: Because to his mind, the same thing would happen in the world. Right. And this is, this is exactly why, when people started to see what Christians actually do, they, they were accused of being antisocial. Because they would eat together. And, and slaves and masters would come around the table as one and to their minds when, when the higher descends to the lower you're wrecking the whole order of things from the inside out. So this is like for, for Caesar, Caesar was supposed to instance as clearly as you could in flesh, divinity. So they didn't want a humble Caesar.
Julius: Yeah.
Wil: Right. I know to us, that's hard to imagine because we've been so influenced culturally by the Christian story. And so when we look at like our rulers today, we're all like, “I mean, yeah, a little bit of humility."
Julius: Right.
Wil: Like I know we've got our sides, but wouldn't it be great if someone just had the guts to be honest enough to be like, “Hey, we're all struggling too.” You know, no, we've all got to project this to us.
It's like, “Hey you know…” You see through it. And a little bit of humility would be a good thing, not to the Romans, because if that were to happen, if, if Caesar were to act humble, we'll know, Caesar is the source strength for the empire, and that would weaken our borders. It would weaken our way of life and everything would come undone from the inside.
And that principle holds. If anything, from the higher descends to the lower it's bad for everyone and everything. And so for Celsus like, this is, this is also the political edge to his argument. Is “No, no, no. You can't think of the gods acting this way because if we actually started acting like that, it would be the end of our empire. It would be the end of our culture and our way of life.”
Julius: Exactly. So it, I mean, understood in this sense, “the word became flesh”— the logos became flesh—isn't just a philosophically radical statement for the time, it's politically subversive. Because the logos, like in the place, in that hierarchy, if the, if the highest part like descends to the lowest, and that's kind of like all over Christian scripture and they're like, I think of the Christ hymn and Philippians and how that gets incorporated into all of this it's politically subversive because like that…
If that's what, the reason, the order that orders this altogether does, then what does that mean for that for.. yeah, exactly for Caesar and for like the Roman empire? And, and so it seems like as far as um… I’m curious to hear how you would flesh this out, but in what this offers for us, as we talk about what the tradition offers to help us navigate our times, with the precedent that has been set before us— it feels like part of it is an invitation to look at the ways that our philosophies and ideologies and power structures are all in conversation and inviting Christ to kind of like illuminate that.
Wil: Yes.
Julius: And to point out the places that like, no, this isn't the way that the world works, and that we're protecting certain things in order to protect power. But to remember that like… oh, actually what Christ reveals is that this is how the world is ordered.
Wil: Okay. So yes. Now in pr- this would be, in principle, what this offers us, if we're going to— well, I'll say it this way. In the middle of it, this is what as a Christian, who's obviously putting time and effort into putting stuff out there, what I would say is like my case for it would be to simply state.
This is, this is what it would give as a principle, or a way, a manner of thinking Christianly now in our time. And then just let, what flows out of that speak as, you know, what might or might not compel the listener, you know, in, in a time where you’re having to in a, in a very inten— even though this is what we say, please hear us saying that when we say it's not unprecedented, please don't hear us diminishing it. It is. It's, it's a difficult, it's a challenging, it can be incredibly confusing and discouraging time.
We hope to challenge the language of unprecedented in a way that would encourage. Right to not lose hope. So obviously we're invested, obviously I still believe that this is the best way to make our way through even our world in the 21st century, not just maybe the best thing that was an option a couple thousand years ago. But to state it as a principle and then just kind of let that principle unfold itself and, and be what would or wouldn't convince the listener.
And I could see just as a, as an intro, right. All of this, at any point, especially once you pick one particular subject to really, really do it, justice—it is… there, there are so many complex issues and questions being asked, that to fully sufficiently respectfully deal with each one would take a whole lot of time.
But as a principle with Christ as the way we think, I think—I guess maybe as a way to introduce two prongs, you know, would be on the, on the intellectual side and then on the practical action side… and those would be two sides of a way of life, a Christian philosophy and practice. Right? On the intellectual side, I think it, it gives us hope. It gives the Christian a place to push off of and say, “God can inhabit and speak through the things that are not God.”
Julius: Yeah.
Wil: So what, what Christians did with the logos in saying the logos became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth, that the logos became utterly, totally united with humanity, and they also—here’s the dual move.
They also said that the logos wasn't like the secondary principle just below the highest God. They said the— it's funny. They, they moved the logos in, like finger quote “two directions.”And I finger quote it because the spatial metaphor, you know, it's not like God's actually up there and we're down here, you know, but as far as principals higher and lower principals, Christians moved the logos in both directions.
Julius: yeah,
Wil: They raised, they… they ascended the logos and their worship and their practice all the way up to equality with God. Not the next best thing. Not, not the most reliable messenger, but, but one with God… and descended it to become one of us.
Julius: Yeah.
Wil: And so intellectually, what that does for us is lets us it, it gives Christians a hope and a ground to push off on to believe that yes— we use human language. We use human action, right? Some of us can get so caught up in, “Oh, we long for divine things and wouldn't it be awesome if we could know God and, and we could journey into eternity, but aren't, we stuck here?” Right. And without knowing it, you kind of become a, a Neoplatonist
Julius: Yeah.
Wil: Aren't we stuck here in this body? Are we trapped in just human conceptions, finite words? Right. We've got to use human language and human language is limited. And we've got these human bodies and they're limited. Like, I can only be at one place at one time. I only have so much time before I'm gone. We have to use human action and rituals like, “Oh, so how did…” this lets us know…
If we're trying to just make our way up to God we're stuck or right… It’s… And so God can inhabit what is not God. And that gives us hope for words leading us beyond just words, and ritual leading us beyond just ritual… as far as even just the questions of like agnosticism and making, making choices that we've got to make if we're going to actually live our lives and not just be entertained and numbed to death.
You know, to risk making those kinds of choices that would, that would lead us, you know uh in, in some, in a direction which is super broad, but exactly that's the point to actually go somewhere and not just sit and be fed and entertained.
Wil: Another point on that intellectually, is it invites us to actually… it gives us hope that we can engage the world around us, engage the ideas, our culture—actually converse with it—without the fear, you know, and this could go two ways, you know, depending on where the person stands… Some Christians are really afraid that if you let the conversation in, if you take something seriously, if you…
Some, some Christians—and I don't just mean like, you know, someone with a smartphone—there, there are some Christians getting published in national publications with, with op-ed pieces that seem to be so terribly afraid that if we admit anybody else has anything of value to say anybody… if we admit any other group or camp has wisdom to offer, then that means we're all wrong. And it's all going to come apart from the inside.
No, we have precedent for this. The Christians were able to take the logos in and Celsus, wasn't wrong to say that, “Hey, you've changed this. You've reworked this.” They had. Right? And so w-we don't have to fear that if we, if somebody else has a point, right. If someone has something like we can really, really engage things like critical race theory, we don't have to just fearfully finger point and be like, “Ooh, That's just Marxist,” as if that's a way to just totally write it off.
The Gospel of John was able to find use for the concept of logos. And so we should be the kinds of people that can find use, and wisdom and join in something good and true for the world in our time, too.
Julius: I think this, like, it's not necessarily even just like incorporating ideas from outside of Christianity as if we're kind of like tacking them on to theology as agendas, like taping on like a little like, well, yeah, we'll take on a little bit of Hellenistic. Like it's the logos stuff? Let's tape that onto our theology, but it feels like a real discourse where like, You guys call it, logos, this like this aligns with what we call it this, you know, and this is what we see in Jesus that it's not just like a, okay, look, we'll take pieces of this, but it's a real conversation of like we're all trying to make sense of this and these things that are transcendent of our languages and philosophies.
And that God is big enough to be that it's not like a, yeah, we're not. Adding things and sprinkling a little bit of this philosophy here in a little bit of this philosophy here, but part of the work and the character of being Christian is to be able to see I guess that Christ, I guess if, if we truly believe, believe that humanity is created in the image of God, like the , that means that.
Even our reason, right? Like, like, sure. It, it needs direction, but that like,
Wil: Maybe does this help? That I, my mind as you're talking is going to what I said about why it's important that God can use what is not God. So genuinely God can inhabit our reason, but that also means our reason must be transferred. It's it is it's, it's both God and habits God speaks through, but it, but what is not God that also gives us a necessary cautionary, you know, principle or border or bound that, that if we hold to it keeps us from conflating or mistaking.
Our reason for.
Julius: Yeah.
Wil: And so our reason must always, yeah, it will always be used, but it will also always be caught up and transcended. And in places where it's distorted by sin, fear violence has to always remain open to.
Julius: Yeah.
Wil: Hmm, maybe. So if we've, if we've said a little bit to some Christians that are super afraid of engaging other ideas or seem to in principle, say we can't let any other group have anything right.
To say without feeling like our whole house of cards falls down. If we said something to them, we could also say something too. And I think there there's a, there is something justified in being afraid of just confirming. Just falling in with what's in fashion or what's popular now, or what has it, you know? And so what we'd say the other direction is on this principle, we just bought what is not God, is it won't leave anything unchanged. It won't come in and directly do violence. It won't come in and just destroy and decimate, but it also will not leave anything unsafe. Right. So Celsus was right. If we're looking for a principal that could be, that we could really learn from and build on to engage our, our times.
He was right to say that you've changed what we talked about. You, you're not just like. And if you, you know, he says that over and over again, if they had read Plato they'd know,
Julius: Yeah.
Wil: That this and this, and later Christian thinkers, like Origen of Alexandria writes a long response to Celsius, which is actually where we know most of this from, he keeps quotes Celsus to such an extent that people have nearly reconstructed Celsus his whole, like, just from what origin quotes.
Taken out that and put together like 200 pages of original material that he key extensively quote Celsus in his response to him. And he shows, yeah, I know Plato. I do. I also know where we've changed it and why. And so this is, this is the question. It does bring us to a point of discernment and choice where yes, we can use this.
Yes, we can build on this. Yes, we can affirm and honor what is honorable, but it will also. It won't be left on changed. And so that's where the real decision point is for us as believers. Right. Is this a distortion of what the world knows and has to offer, or is it a development? Is this a violence to a cultural artifact or has it taken that cultural artifact and furthered it and led it towards a greater truer picture of what's good and beautiful.
MEDITATION
Instead of just offering a meditation to wrap up this episode, how about we suggest a bit of homework?
Because Christians have a strong precedent for genuinely engaging the thought and issues of our day, pick a challenging or contentious issue. One that often devolves from respectful argument to spiteful criticism between parties. Perhaps one you've been intimidated by and avoiding. Or one you've adopted strong opinions about without doing your own research.
It's okay to admit this if you're guilty, because I'm pretty sure we've all mixed passion and ignorance, and, further, because the suggestion of this whole exercise is built upon the assumption that you will carry it out by being carried by God's grace.
So name the issue or question, and explore it ... as thoroughly as allowed by the time you have over the next two weeks or so.
And from as balanced an honest place as you can.
Even take the time to fairly engage and evaluate the points of some staunch critics ...
As you go, note both where you find error, and
where you find things that are honorable or compelling.
Because Origen did not agree with Celsus on much, but nobody can say Origen did not read him thoroughly and respectfully or accuse Origen of refusing to say so when he found wisdom in Celsus.
And we suggest you do this not just as a mental exercise to help you win arguments. Not just to carry on the strong intellectual current running though our Tradition. Not just to help you make substantive contributions on vital matters. Because while this precedent does run through names like Origen and Maximus Confessor and Thomas Aquinas and Catherine of Sienna, it does not originate with them.
We suggest this because we believe in it you might find life. And the life offered here by the Christian Tradition, like all genuine life, comes from Christ.
So we invite you to take this on as an act that integrates study and worship and your own formation into the image of Christ.
Because Jesus debated, but always with real people on real points, and never with Straw man arguments. And if doing this, the Logos -- the eternal reason and structure of the Godhead, divine rationality itself -- took on flesh and embraced our world by engaging this person on this issue with dignity and truth and love,
Then you can still find the logos here and now.
In the thick of our confusing and overwhelming times.