 Hello my friends and welcome to the 28th episode of Patterson in Pursuit. I'm your host Steve Patterson and today I've got an interview for you on Christian theology. As with any topic I always like to start with the basics. So with Christianity one of those basic questions is who is Jesus in the first place? Who or what is God? What is the relationship between God and human beings? How was Jesus different if at all from regular human beings? Does Christianity necessarily imply dualism? And one of the questions that came up I really enjoyed in this interview is what is a who? And there's this funny exchange about half an hour in where the English language starts breaking down a bit where you start talking about the difference between who and what. But though it sounds funny the concepts are actually really deep and insightful. As I think I've said before on the show I treat all claims as philosophic claims. It doesn't matter if they're religious claims, astrological claims, claims in physics, claims in philosophy. In my perspective pretty much everything is philosophy. And I also think it's kind of a tragedy that religious claims that have been around for thousands of years are so readily mocked by the intelligentsia. I want to give a platform for anybody to say anything that they like as long as it's logically coherent. And we can use our reason and rational analysis to see if we find the arguments persuasive or not. So I as somebody who's a passionate rationalist I have nothing to fear from examining religious concepts. Some of them are good, some of them are not so good and I think especially by judging some of the feedback I've gotten from you guys on the show I think you guys really appreciate me trying to give an intellectually honest platform for people to talk about different religious ideas. This is something that I certainly didn't get much when I was in undergrad. I know a lot of people didn't. The general assumption on campus was if you're not a scientific materialist then you are superstitious and if you have any religious belief well then you might be irrational or even insane. And speaking of unfortunate experiences in college the sponsor for the show is a company called Praxis. If Praxis existed while I was in college I most likely would have taken at least a gap year to see what the program was about because they specialize in taking young enthusiastic individuals who are either stuck in college or who want to avoid college altogether and placing them into the real world. Praxis is a nine month program that's three months of professional boot camp where you learn actual real world skills that will help you when you get out of college and it's followed by six months of a paid apprenticeship and after you complete the program they contractually guarantee you a $40,000 a year job offer. So that sounds like something that you're interested in. Go to discoverpraxis.com and on their homepage they have a button that says schedule a call. Click it, set up an appointment and see if it's right for you. Now returning back to Christian theology I spoke with Dr. Ian McFarland who is the regious professor of divinity at the University of Cambridge and one of his main focuses in theology is called Christology which as you can imagine is specifically about the central figure in Christianity Jesus. So if you want to listen to how a professional theologian thinks about these things you're going to love this interview. So first of all thank you very much Dr. McFarland for sitting down and speaking with me today. You're very welcome. So I have a lot of questions for you because in my background I come from an evangelical household, very conservative evangelical household and I grew up and I wasn't a big fan of Christianity. I kind of felt like I was indoctrinated, I felt like a lot of the ideas were vacuous, they weren't very clearly articulated and so I'm hoping in this series that I can be talking to intellectuals who have some kind of religious belief whether it's in Christianity or it's in Buddhism or Hinduism and try to really dive into like the philosophy of religion because I think I'm very persuaded by a lot of the things that Jesus Christ had to say. Wow I think it's profound moral truths, you know it's obviously changed the world big deal. However a lot of those moral truths are coupled with metaphysical claims like okay here's this great guy's got these great ideas and then Christians say oh but there's more. This guy is God incarnate, he's come to earth and then they add on a lot of metaphysical baggage. I don't want to dismiss all that metaphysics so I'm hoping that today we can kind of dive into it and see if there's some plausibility there. So the first question I guess is in your own personal world view and based on the research that you've done what is or who is Jesus Christ? Is it a person, a human being just like you and me who had really good ideas? Is it a grand metaphor? Is it literally God who came to earth and has now walked among us? What is your belief on that? Well Jesus is a human being just like you and me which is very traditional Christian belief and he is God among us which is also very traditional belief so both and that's been the majority position of Christians since, well I mean some might argue implicitly from very very early on but explicitly since the 5th century that Jesus is one person, the Son of God the word, eternal word who is made flesh and thus is in two natures and it's really that distinction between nature and person that provides I would argue the coherent metaphysical framework for that traditional Christian claim. Okay so let's dive into that a bit. So the claim is that at the same time Jesus is 100% a human like you and me and also the is also God but what does that mean? Is the creator of the universe is what is it what are you when you say he's also God what is that? God is the creator of the universe the source of all being in fact that's I mean I think if you look historically beginning very early by the end of the 2nd century the the claims for divinity of Jesus which you get from both early Christian and pagan sources reporting on Christianity is that Jesus was regarded by Christians as God and the logic behind that is if you confess Jesus as savior that is the one who can guarantee the integrity of human and for that matter any creature's existence against any possible threat the only being who can have that capacity is God so to to claim that Jesus is savior and not claim that Jesus is God is to engage in a in coherence that which is less than God always has at least one other reality namely God that could block that being's ability to fulfill the promises that is that are made so the confession of Jesus is God is that that is quite clearly quite early and I'd argue that it's origins are so technological that rooted in the in Christian convictions about the capacity of Jesus to save so on the basis of the confession that Jesus saves it the inferences drawn that Jesus is God and then the then the challenge becomes well how could you say that and still confess the one God of Israel and not follow a file of the first commandment and so on and so forth so when you say Jesus saves what does that mean because I've heard that a lot I'm growing up just I don't see it on the billboards to you're saying you're from you spent a lot of time in Atlanta and if you drive through some of the highways there you'll see the words Jesus saves on the billboard so what is that now means saving in Abrahamic traditions religions refers to the again sort of the gold gold line streets and pearly gates and what it means is that the the every threat that confronts human existence is defeated by God so they to me it's it's a it's a it's a confession that's common to Judaism Christian Islam that God is God saves Christians also believe that God saves but they believe that God saves in Jesus it in so far as they're willing to say that Jesus is rightly the immediate object of that trust then it follows that Jesus has to be confessed as equal to God and therefore as God so that when you're shaking Jesus to say and you're shaking God's hand which means to say neither Jews or Muslims would claim even though Muslims unlike Jews would say Jesus is God's word but they just don't see that as having the same metaphysical implications that Christians do so this is interesting when you when you say that that Jesus saves means it's overcoming all of these human obstacles these things that we worry about Jesus what human obstacles but I mean our own sin and things of that sort but also extrinsic things right that that's the part when you were saying that made me think I think oh well what about death I mean if Jesus saves from all these all these things isn't death part of that but then my evangelical upbringing goes oh no Jesus is supposed to have conquered that as well right can you explain that a little bit so I know like in the Bible it claims that you know when you die and you're a believer you're gonna there's gonna be some kind of a resurrection that happens can you explain what that means does that mean that there's a there's the metaphysical position in Christianity is not physicalism right there's you have this physical body and you have this spirit so what we're talking about no is that not right well I mean I mean I think most Christians over time have been metaphysical dualists or anthropological dualists in some sense but I don't think there's anything particularly central to that okay certainly you would have a hard time finding a metaphysical dualism in the Old Testament in the same way that you would in Plato so in the New Testament there there's you know there's there's a contrast between killing the body and killing the soul but I think that's a hard a hard pressed I mean I wouldn't pin my hat to it to dualism because I don't think there's anything I don't think it's heretical but I don't find that to be necessarily a sine qua non of Christian thought so and then when we're talking about my life for example things that when you die you stay dead until the resurrection I don't think there's any evidence he believes that there's a soul that lingers anywhere but for that resurrection then and without the dualism that would mean physical literal physical body resurrection well it means that there's I don't know not according to Paul it's a spiritual body and I don't know what a spiritual body is but I mean I think I think what's key is I mean because there are there are trichotomous anthropologies and early Christian writers there are dichotomous anthropologies I think the key point is which Christianity shares with Judaism and again Islam is that human being is is somatic that it isn't abstractible from from a body now again when Paul says it's raised a spiritual body I'm not I don't know what a spiritual body is the only bodies I know of material but in so far but you know and the New Testament descriptions of Jesus resurrection body as it describes it all kinds of prima facia contradictory characteristics so I don't really have any great sense of what a spiritual body would be but I take it that the hope is nevertheless that there is a that that which makes us that and I think this is important for the ways in which frankly a dichotomous anthropology has been damaging over the history of the church is that there's not a sense in which somehow our real selves are underneath or independent of our somatic selves that who we are is a psychosomatic entity and that's and at some in some way which I have no particular model of in my head part of what it means to be saved is there's an affirmation of that entirety although obviously not under the conditions of physical existence because it's new heaven and new earth and all kinds of other things so but but that to be saved is to be affirmed in one's psychosomatic particularity and not as a soul sort of being rescued from the physical maelstrom okay so if it's the case that we go down this route let's take the the physicalist metaphysics here what would God's existence be if not in the physical body like prior to Jesus or maybe after Jesus if he exists and he's a being but he doesn't have a body wouldn't that imply necessarily some kind of dualism well no because God isn't a thing among that God is transcendent and so you don't God isn't rangeable among the category what that means is God is not categorizable right that medieval quip deus non est ingenere God isn't an entity alongside other entities even if you make the scale you put them at the him being luster them at the top end of the scale God is many the I think the most attractive summative way of talking about God's transcendence as Nicholas of Cousins description of God is not other which is not that God is the same of course or it's not pantheism but simply that you that God isn't rightly conceived as an entity alongside other entities and I think that's really the force also of Anselm's argument in the proslogan that what he's arguing is not that perfection implies existence or as Descartes and Kant thought but that if you're thinking of God as it were abstractly in the third person you haven't really grasped who God is at that point you thought of God like a black swan or whatever I mean something that you can sort of reflect on as an entity alongside other entities whereas God is only known in as God makes God's self known to one as it were in the second person interesting the proslogan is in fact written in the second person I think in that respect so so categories of I mean we use words of God because we can't talk without using words but all our words used of God it to the extent that they're positive descriptions of God apply to God only analogically so to speak of God for example as spirit is not to say that God is spirit as opposed to matter as though like creaturely spirits and matter are but simply to you know I think in that case reflecting on God's incorporeality God's it's it has a negative function as an attribute so I think it's a that's how the incarnation be made metaphysically coherent because you're not thinking of God as something in which case to say that God and humanity were in one person would be at best a hybrid not fully both so if we say that God's existence is transcendent does that not imply then that there is some type of existence that is non physical well except that even existence I think at that point is being applied analogically yeah some type of existence but you have to place an awful lot of weight on the some type I mean because I mean what you want what we what when what I think transcendence in order to interpret transcendence appropriately and I think consistently with the way people like Aquinas interpreted it for example or for that matter the Protestants scholastics and Catholics scholastics too it isn't a contrastive category that's the whole point of the not other in terms of in Cusannas's thought it's not this as opposed to that it's asking you to break out of the kinds of categories that that cause you to think of things in terms of this or that and competitive or contrastive terms this makes me think very much of Eastern ideas that they say things like you know words can't describe the Dow the eternal Dow if you're talking about it you're not actually talking about it because it's non dualism it's not this versus that is there some similarity there are is also the Eastern philosophies kind of pointing at the same well I mean I mean I mean certainly I mean Augustine said you know if you can understand that it's not God right and so it's a it's well established in the tradition I mean the difference between I mean there are lots of differences I'm sure an obvious difference with Taoism is that the Dow is not personal and the Dow is understood I think more like something like the Logos and Heraclitus I mean it's an it's an intra-worldly principle whereas the Abrahamic God is not is the creator of the world but isn't that putting a kind of a label in a category on him to say he is well yeah because you can't because you can't even putting transcendence a category right you can't not do it that the the so in fact although there's an impropriety always and speaking of God in the third person language is language and we're stuck with it so the question is how do you how are you able to honor that talk about God that way and insist that all terms are applied analogically without simply making that I mean that's really I think the objection modern objections to theism since the scientific evolution have said is that well if you're not going to use word univocally then they have no meaning and Christians want to say well we can't coherently use word univocally of God because that's unfaithful to the kind to the kind of entity God is or who God is so on what basis then do we control our use of language mean some people have talked about analogy is and its proper use is simply controlled equivocation how do you do that in a way that is responsible and consistent within the frame with that you're working in so yeah do you do you inevitably apply in using words are you effectively categorizing God yeah sure you are are there ways in which you can do that and guard and sort of speak around what you're saying in ways that indicate the trickiness of this I think there are and good theologians do it well and bad theologians can it idolatry and probably all good theology has bits of idolatry in it because there's a net their inevitable blind spots to any one person's ways of talking so that they certain ways in which they're reifying certain terms or ideas about God are probably invisible and they need somebody else to call them out on it I mean most you know prominently in the contemporary or glass 50 years you know exclusively male language for God and things of that sort which you know was unproblematic for a long long time wait a minute actually that has a whole bunch of implications you haven't taken account of so so we can't necessarily reference God because that implies putting boundaries around him that somehow it's God in contrast to something else but when bringing it back to Jesus at that point we're saying he's God we can't kind of put boundaries around right what I would say is this you can identify God you can't define God you can identify so what is the nature of that identification is it just like a silent understanding no it's about saying this is who God is it's a who question rather than a what question so the I mean again do I can I use what words about God sure I'll say that God is good and one and Trinity and various other things but but none of those are properly speaking definitional the essence of God Christians claim is inethible but God is the one who called Abraham and brought the Israelites out of Egypt and became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth I see so in terms of the metaphysics the incarnation God's I mean Christians claim and and this they'd be in fact there was a lot of interaction between Christians using Muslims in the Middle Ages just on these points God when we say God creates we're not simply in fact we're not even primarily talking about an originary of originating event we're talking about a relation right all things have their being in so far as God gives them being and all things have being only in so far as God gives them being at every point of their existence so that's the doctrine of creation from nothing which is Maimonides the great medieval Jewish theologian philosopher felt was the one thing that one doctrine that Christians Jews and Muslims held in common so that means that God is the sole antecedent condition of every creature's existence at every moment of its existence so how does Jesus differ from you or me right not in the sense that God is any more present in him quantitatively because God's already maximally present everywhere as creator the difference is whereas and so at one level we can say God is the cause of everything that I do in the same way sort of that Shakespeare is the cause of everything that Macbeth does right but Shakespeare is not Macbeth the difference with Jesus is that in this one case this one creature God relates to this creature in such a way as to say I this this creature this creature's life is mine so there is so Jesus is objectively the kind of open do anything you want to him it's human but his identity the who the what remains the divine what is ineffable invisible you know all the things that Christians have saved God but who Jesus is is God so let's go back to the the Shakespeare Macbeth analogy that's really interesting are you claiming that regular humans not non-Jesus non-Jesus humans that we are essentially characters in in the God novel well it's it's it's an it's an analogy but the analogy is what I'm trying to suggest by what the I think the analogy when the analogy isn't original with me I mean Austin Farrow used it other people used it the analogy is helpful and that it talks about how you can have God be the immediate cause of all things and the one on whom all creatures depend on all in all respects at all times while still giving some integrity to creaturely activity so when you're at me here's what the analogy I think has some cash value so if I ask you why does Shakespeare why does Shakespeare why does Macbeth kill Duncan you can give me two kinds of answers right you can say because Shakespeare meant him to and that's perfectly okay but it will not get you a good grade in an English class or you can talk about you know this relationship with his wife and as you know we've heard the witches and his own sense of ambition and that's a perfectly that's the kind of English that's an English class helpful answer right they're both both answers are correct at a different level of explanation right this is the old primary secondary cause distinction so similarly why is it that I'm talking to you right now well because God's making me talk to you right now at the level of primary cause but that's and that's true of everything is happening everywhere but it's a pretty vacuous explanation in terms of anything that you'd be actually interested in you know why am I talking to you right now well because you asked me I try to be a nice fellow and I want to interested in making people know my ideas if they're interested in them and various other things right so so are we like and are we like characters are not we are like them in the sense that our existence depends entirely on God and God is the one who gives that existence and why does God give that existence well Christians want to say because God wishes to share God's being and I guess talking to another novelist but talking to people who write plays and novels they have sort of a sense that this is a you know they have a neat a neat a neat scenario they want to put forward and they do it and that's basically the Christian and again Jewish and Muslim explanation of creation is not necessary to God it's a free donation of being to that which otherwise would have no being even as well Macbeth is crazy historical figure but even as you know David Copperfield would have no existence if Dickens hadn't decided to give it to him so the natural question comes up does this not kind of necessarily imply that there would be no free will in this worldview no because free will is a creaturely category and God creates a world that has a variety of different kinds of causes in it some of which are not mechanical if you want to put it that way natural awesome of which are free human beings angels extraterrestrials maybe who knows some of which are random with certain interpretations of quantum mechanics are correct even as if you look at a novel some things happen because you know rocks fall on people's heads and they get and they bleed and die or whatever some things happen because the characters do them on their own because they're not actually doing well they are I mean in the world of the novel they certainly are I mean you would not you would not I mean again it would be kind of a weird reading of a novel to say that again everything simply happens because the novelist says so you could do that but it doesn't I mean it would be kind of odd to say to to to conflate various kinds of causal mechanisms that are described as all really being is not being different when in fact there you read them as being quite different and similarly to think of God's relationship to the world what God creates are ranges of different causes among which are the free causes of creatures now are the free causes of creatures are the free actions of creatures within God's will yeah they are but the point is again because God isn't simply a big white man with a beard in the sky but God that's the transcendent origin and cause of all that is God is capable of bringing forth free causes as a as God can bring forth mechanical causes and I think it's an I want to make a side light here I think there's something odd to me and I think it reflects a bad sense of analogy to think that somehow it's very straightforward to think of God creating a world in which mechanical causes happen but it's somehow very odd to think of God creating a world in which things can be genuinely free as though there's something less mysterious about why there should be gravity or electromagnetism then free decision I mean the world is not a Rube Goldberg machine right God's relationship to natural causes physical laws is no less mysterious and I would think no more obvious or self evident than God's relationship to free causes I mean I think what the problem is we tend to think of God making the Sun go around the earth go around the Sun is like us putting a satellite into orbit but it's not God's not manipulating levers God is putting the whole thing into being and within that the various kinds of causal processes that are part of creation and the three that I've identified are pretty classical chance freedom and natural cause eight necessity effectively well all of those are relative to creation nothing is necessary or free or random with respect to God if you want to put it that way even as again the novel is all the novelists work but within the novel that's the way the novel works within the world that's the way it works you're not mean are you really free is that what you're asking well if are you really free relative to God it's a bit of an odd question because freedom is a category of creation and God isn't part of creation are you really free relative to the camera or your parents or whatever yeah you are as much as free means anything that's what it means it returning to the the author character relationship on the one hand we could say yes fictional characters could they have chosen otherwise than they do in their the in their novels well kind of but that's that's like a that's a superficial metaphysical level I mean like ultimately like that the you know Harry Potter right since we're we're not that far away from from Harry Potter land here couldn't really have made different decisions right I mean if if you're if you're kind of in the novel it's like okay yes you act as if it's the case and the characters all interact as if the case but ultimately he's not even responsible for anything it's just these fiction and it seems like that's this is kind of a similar worldview in the sense that God is the ultimate author and origin of everything and he from from one perspective it appears for all practical purposes that there's a freedom but in the sense there is this what what perspective are you adopting where there's not freedom the same perspective or I would say there's no freedom in a novel for characters to choose otherwise we we play as if there is well I mean the process yeah but partly that's because you're I mean and this is where the analogy obviously breaks down to extent you can imagine yourself you can imagine yourself as an author you can make up stuff and you know you can sort of say I mean I think it is interesting although that authors generally tend to have the view at least when I talk to them that they're not simply arbitrarily free to do what they want with their characters that characters actually there's an integrity to characters the part of the creative processes to honor however that's however that's yeah but the point is you can't there's no imagining yourself in the place of God which is the only perspective from which that would make sense because to imagine yourself in the place of God is automatically to have mistaken who God is which is namely not you or me or anybody else so I so yeah I mean the analogy I mean breaks down a lot of ways I mean God creates from nothing novelists create based on you know by appropriating materials intellect we already have but that's precisely the point I mean God creates from nothing which means even I mean to sort of push it the whole idea of possible worlds I think from I mean we can talk about that but that makes no sense from God doesn't choose among possible worlds to create rather God's creation is precisely that in which there is such a thing as the actualization of possibilities but it can't be scaled up to God without bringing God down effectively to our set so the our set of circumstances so the novel character is designed to be suggestive of a novel analogy is designed to be suggestive of the fact that there we here's a place where you can see two different levels of operation where there is a set of claims one makes that are coherent and meaningful at one level and there's another level at which they are relativized radically and yeah I want to say that Christian me that human freedom and physical laws and quantum randomness or whatever other causal processes human beings may uncover are with respect to God radically relativized yeah they're all a product of God's gift they're all dependent always are my freedom even as my blood non free pumping of my heart's blood through my body are all intimately dependent at every moment of their activities on God nevertheless freedom is not the same as doesn't mean that freedom reduces to physical cause it means that there's God creates physical causes and God creates free causes both of them are dependent on God but they're different kinds of causes okay so let's let's return back to the Jesus metaphysics this is the thing that I really have I have a hard time wrapping my head around sure we say that so do I it's not an easy it's not an easy issue so the claim is that Jesus was a hundred percent like us in terms of being human so the question I have is do humans have the same capacity as Jesus did for this this unique relationship with God or are we is he it doesn't that and if we don't does that not imply that there's a different metaphysical essence to there's nothing to do with capacity Jesus being God isn't about a capacity it's about who he is your being Steve isn't a capacity you have it's who you are my being Ian isn't a capacity it's who I am now none of us I could end up getting Alzheimer's I would have I would lose a lot of capacity that wouldn't change my identity so then there's no way because I know a lot of Christians talk about like you have God inside of you become a Christian you're supposed to have Jesus or and or God inside of you which Jesus did as a human being but that isn't what made him that I mean Jesus does as we all do faithful things by virtue of the gift of the Holy Spirit that's what made Jesus humanly able to do miracles for example okay and to do his teaching but that's and that's the same that's the same as you and me but that isn't what that that is part of what his vocation was as the person he wasn't getting tangled here the Son of God that doesn't that isn't what made him the Son of God that's what that's part of his humanity okay so that so that so from the beginning then the person Jesus wasn't just like us and then he kind of became God or here and now he was God from the conception from the very beginning yeah now he was God in addition to being just like us well then only in the sense you can use that language if you want to say you're Stephen in addition to being like other human beings if you think it but I would not I want to say that who is a is a is a cat is a is a ontologically different kind of question than what who is an ontologically different kind of question than what yeah okay and that still strikes me as a very do list idea no because there's nothing to do with soul Jesus Jesus had a human soul and the soul was not your identity your soul was part of me if you want to talk about Sunday and I know I'm not deeply committed to dualistic anthropology but I mean this is a classic Christian point Jesus had a human body and a human soul but he was the divine person well so when you use the term who what are you referencing because when I think of who I maybe I'm thinking of what yeah that may be what you are doing and in fact I noticed I wrote an article on this last year and one of my one of the editors at the journal said you know I think here you've actually talked about a who is though or what so you're right but it's a crucial distinction so you're right to raise the to raise the concern who is just that it's who it's the idea it's the identity of the person and something and only what is the identity it's purely daked it's it's this it's it's this one is there a metaphysical essence to the who that's what it is it's the who that's there's no if you make it essence then you're talking about what so here's me the the the so in the Trinity right or the doctor the Trinity what are Christians claiming with that they're saying there's only one God and this God is Father Son and Holy Spirit now if you say well what is a what is a person exactly well then you're breaking it down because of course what Christians want to say is all the attributes of God wisdom goodness holiness glory eternity whatever you want to bring up all of those are equally shared by all the persons so who nests isn't an attribute because if it were then you then you would no longer have one God you'd have three gods right well who nests isn't an attribute but but when we say so it's really it's purely daked it's purely indexical you point to someone I mean Richard of St. Victor divine the person says an incommunicable essence of the divine nature which as far as I can see is a fancy way of saying it's something that can't be defined but when you're pointing at something you're still pointing at you I'm pointing at you I'm pointing at a bunch of skin and blood and bones and hair and eyes and yet I'm pointing at only what and in fact what you see of Jesus in terms of what's what's what's what are the photons bouncing off of it's all what it's all created substance so what do I and so here's where we here's where my dualism gets problem at I can or I go with Wittgenstein and Gilbert Ryle over Descartes I don't infer however a who underneath all that somewhere in your pineal gland or whatever right the who is the one is the one who who is mediated through this stuff but is not identical with the stuff yeah I can agree with all that but does that if it's the case that the who exists right the who is the one who is you to say it I mean there's no hypothesis apart from its instantiation in a nature so there's something but but but the hypothesis isn't a isn't an attribute in the way that any other in the way that other it isn't an accident so when we reference somebody like Harry Potter yeah there's a there's a who kind of but the who doesn't the who doesn't have a different essence than a you and I know exactly because we're the same mean and assuming Harry Potter is a human boy or young man or whatever however old he is by now yeah we have at least we share our common essence but we are we are differentiated as distinct who's but we're both for all human beings yes but you're who this is this is turning English into a very funny sound your who is different than my exactly exactly and we have different hypostatic properties I mean you're you know you're maybe you're taller than me I mean there's all kinds of stuff but however you're who and my who are different I agree with that but they share some quality that Harry Potter suit does not well yeah Harry Potter Harry Potter isn't a real person yeah but yeah so if you were talking about fictional characters the who's analogical I mean there's no I can't murder Harry Potter but what I'm saying is there is a metaphysical essence to a who there has to be because if we can reference Harry Potter as a who but he doesn't have that essence and you and I actually have the essence well Harry Potter doesn't have a human nature so there's so there's a lot he doesn't have a lot I'm happy to say all who's are instantiated as what's there's no free-floating who a who is always a particular kind of who it's you know the angel who or God is a who right God is three who's in fact or yeah three hypotheses but but only one what which is different I don't want to get into that I thought you go ahead I thought you implied before that that God doesn't really have a what because that implies well yeah I mean to talk about divine nature you got to put it in quotes yeah okay and in fact and I think that's one thing that's I think that's important is I would want to know this is getting a gonna get us way it would get its way off but they just put it as a parenthetical comment I think that we are who's only in so far as God addresses us as who's well we're treated as we are we are we are treated as persons by God and that's the cut that's how we become so not simply because a who isn't simply an individual this is an individual in sense of a chair it's not a who right right this is still about metaphysics which is what I want to talk about so do want to explore this so what here's my own personal worldview that the chair is has a so what we reference when we say chair is bits of matter that are arranged in a particular way that we call a chair there's no fundamental chairness that's out there that's a substantiated it's just really a concept doesn't mean that the bits of matter don't exist but the chair is just a concept that seems to be different than what we're talking about beings there seems to be something else there so what I would stress is if there were no minds there would be no chairs it's still a bits of matter you wouldn't have chairs if there were no minds there were no conceptual identification of things you would still have people you would still have beings right yeah you would have individual human entities yeah right so and for me I have that belief and I don't know how not to couple that with the metaphysical dualism and say well therefore it must be well I want to distinguish metaphysical dualism I mean I'm not again if I'm not I think body soul anthropology is theologically adiaphras nothing wrong with it a lot of Christians have held it and there are very different ways to do it you can do it platonically hylomorphism you can do more platonically so on and so forth but what I want to end it when I want to emphasize is that soul is not who soul if soul is part of your what that is human beings are made of body and soul then that's part of your what the who strikes me as a name then if we're saying fundamentally who is about name but it's not simply I mean obviously I can give the chair I can call the chair Matthew it doesn't make it a who right so that's so what what makes finally human beings who's for me in terms of my theology is that God calls us in Jesus as Jesus to be in communion with the divine who's and so it's a it's a it's a that point that are that are it's that is that's what that's when we understand fully what it means to be a human being and to be a who now does that human who let's imagine let's imagine world in which there were no names we didn't have names were there still be who's I guess I'm trying to figure out what would that because because to be a to be for me to be a who is to be called by name obviously what one makes you know how we get that could there be nonverbal names but let's just say there were no names there is no there's no identification of what it was yeah well in that case I'm not I'm I think then you're saying yeah there and you're you're that would be to define it as being there would be no who's that's interesting but the the key point I want to get out with the incarnation just to God is that is that I think this is one thing that Christians have not always been good on is that there's no Christ divinity is not some modification of his humanity it's not because he's got more faith than anyone else he may have but I don't know it's only not because he's taller or faster or because he knows everything or anything like that there's no there's no again there's no scale Jesus has whatever human characteristics God he has which are spectacular to him some of which may be much better than mine some of which may not be so good that isn't what defines who he is what defines who he is is his identity and his identity is is precisely as the second person of the Trinity that's who he is okay not who I am no then I want to talk to about the third person of the Trinity so we're talking about God as the ineffable creator and originator everything talking about Jesus let's talk about this is the ineffable crime and there there's only one only the three persons are all equally creator yeah yeah so there was one formulation of of God which is the person of Jesus so who and what is the Holy Spirit in Christian theology why why add this additional part of the Trinity what does that mean they're just technically right there are no parts to the Trinity the persons aren't parts and they're not added I mean I historically the divinity of the Spirit was the last to be sort of nailed down so I take the point we just want to make metaphysical care so let's back up what is the Trinity the Trinity is the way in which Christians can claim or seek to claim that they are monotheists and confess what they say about Jesus as the Savior okay that's the Trinity isn't the way of trying to think through what what does it imply about God if we confess that Jesus is the one who saves and what they what Christians have came up with and you know you and it's formulated officially in the fourth century but you can see bits of it before then is that to talk about God one has to talk about the one Jesus called Father one has to talk about Jesus and one has to talk about the Spirit partly because in order to talk about Jesus you've got to talk about you've got to have those three names in play okay so why do Christians talk about the Holy Spirit because Jesus talks about the Spirit and those who talk about Jesus early on talk about the Spirit as being the Spirit of God and also the Spirit of the Spirit of God the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of the Son so there are those like that that those locutions are all found in Scripture so somehow Spirit is intimately bound up with the work of God in Jesus and so that's why that's why Spirit language is there now in terms of how does one think about you know how does one talk about the Trinity in ways that are consistent with what Christians claim about the equal divinity of the three because clearly Father and Son are terms defined are relatively defined terms whereas Spirit is not quite so you know Father is defined in terms of the progeny Son in terms of Father that that's pretty clear Spirit seems more sort of peripheral and this has been a particularly in the last 30 40 years a classic sort of issue in Western theology in particular as you know where is the Spirit is the Spirit depersonalized it's not there my own I mean sort of the way I talked through it is the Father I mean the Father is the Father in giving the entirety of the Father's being to the Son and that happens in the Spirit and the Son receives the fullness of the Father's being that is the fullness of divinity and in so doing acknowledges and glorifies the Father also in the Spirit we say in the spirit what does that mean yeah I'm not quite sure I'm not sure yeah inner by but I mean I don't know what what does it mean I don't know the Spirit the Spirit is the one I mean you know the classic way of talking about this in the West is the Spirit is the bond of love between the Father and the Son I think I mean I think that does get into sort of mean again it's impersonal but I think of the Spirit as the witness to the love of the Father and the Son is how I would want to do it but there is a there is a God as I mean the life of God is the mutual interpenetrating relationship of these three which none neither of none of which have any separable or separate existence right so there is God as it were so it's God repeated three times God in the mode of donation the Father God in the mode of reception so divinity isn't simply some sort of a static monad but some sort of an interrelated dynamism and God in the mode of witness of gifted and celebration of gift and reception but those are all coincident it's not like three people sitting around the table not withstanding Rublev's famous icon which is beautiful and I like it but it's not it's you know not try theism Christians wise want to avoid that but the Spirit I mean you know there's a well I think I mean my sense of the Spirit precisely because the Spirit is always defined in Scripture by reference to one of the other two persons is as the one who is again sort of the the witness of the communion of the Father and the Son so in terms of but that's that that really is a pretty that's a metaphor I would throw out as being is I think no worse than any other but not particularly you know a very limited use so well in terms of like the everyday life of Christians it makes sense that they can conceive of God clearly and that they can see Jesus clearly as a human what practically speaking is the Holy Spirit is it something that that because I know in like Pentecostal face there's a there's a idea that like you can feel the Holy Spirit or it can like you have some state of mind that is that is the Holy Spirit it is can you try to can you explain what that phenomena is like is there a actual concrete relationship between that Spirit and regular human beings yeah I mean I would say the Spirit is I mean there's you know Paul famously says no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit right and and when John in well John and first John says test the spirits it's about you test the spirit by saying do they believe Jesus come in the flesh they did it's the spirit but not it's a bad spirit the spirit is whatever in human life generates faithful relationship with the God of Jesus Christ who is also the God of Israel now to what extent is that manifest itself and ecstatic experiences for some people it does I mean they say it does and I certainly see plenty of people who do that for whom I'm convinced that their witness is a faithful witness it's not it's not a way that the spirit moves in my life of course I also people see people who have ecstatic experiences and they met in the spirit who do things that I don't think are very witness to Jesus I wouldn't say that's the Holy Spirit at work of course there are people who are you know very doer and proper and don't have any exact experiences who also claim the spirit and they can do bad and good as well so I think the spirit is the spirit is active wherever people are acting in faith because it is a fundamental Christian conviction I think that all that we do in faith is always by the gift of God which is which the spirit which which is mediated to us through the spirit and so the spirit is always the agent by whom that happens or through whom that happens is there any particular so to what extent does one feel it you know I think that's people talk about their faith in different ways and I don't have any it's not that's not my natural idiom but it doesn't seem to be a legitimate idiom so when you say they're acting in faith what does that mean the faith part does that mean when you're acting with the belief in this other worldview is that when you're acting out of love what does that mean you're it means whatever you're doing you're doing it in a way that bears that intentionally I mean to be faith has to be somehow thematized not necessarily in terms of a prophesied doctrinal form but some senses what you're doing as you're doing it in and as your witness to the good news of Jesus and you and in fact you're not simply thinking that but it actually is the good news of Jesus because of course people can do things thinking it's very good witness where in fact they're not so and this is why spirits have to be tested because simply you know not everyone who says Lord Lord and so on and so forth but where the spirit is active that's what's happening and I think the spirit's witness at you know is often quite compelling and and visible but even where one thinks of I think of the witnesses being compelling and visible for example Martin Luther King say and is in his more heroic moments plenty of people at the time thought it was crazy or demonic or just you know born out of all kind you know negative things and other times people think they're doing you know a lot of devout Christians people claim to be devout Christians and I think honestly believe themselves to be thought Hitler was divine revelation which I don't think was the case so it's not it's certainly can't be reduced to one subjective in there has to be discernment and I think that's part of what the church is about the church is at best the community of mutual accountability that that tests people's claims to be speaking by the spirit or acting in the spirit that is to be acting or speaking faithfully and to have a community to which one is accountable and in conversation with which one attempts to discern what should we be saying what should we be doing is an important part of I think what Christians are about so the spirit is active in that process as well I would say so kind of colloquially alive heard a lot of people say that everybody has a conscience and they say what that is is the spirit say there's this there's this relationship between you know people's conscience and God and that is the Holy Spirit do you think there's is that fair or do you think that's I think everybody has a conscience I wouldn't identify with the conscience with the spirit I think people in good conscience can do horrible things I don't think I don't think I mean I'm for example I wouldn't want to claim that Hitler had a bad conscience I think he honestly thought Jews were insects but that's just wrong so your kind of misses part of my view of sort of sin in the fall was I don't I think yes people have a conscience and I'm not saying God can speak through the conscience but that's that certainly can happen but the I wouldn't I wouldn't identify the conscience in so far as it is precisely a human a characteristic of human nature with the spirit which is precisely not a characteristic of human nature but a gift that supervenes on it I see well on that note I don't want to take any more time but I really appreciate the conversation thank you very much very welcome all right that was my interview with dr. Ian McFarlane I hope you guys liked it there's a lot more where that came from and as the show progresses I intend to have a lot more interviews including thinkers from every faith as I said at the beginning of this episode I treat all of these propositions just as philosophic claims which means I have lots of thoughts I have lots of analysis eventually I'll make sure to do an interview breakdown because I think there's a lot of interesting ideas from this interview so if you like this work you're enjoying this series then you can help support the show just by contributing one or two dollars whenever a new episode is posted go to patreon.com slash Steve Patterson and you can join the more than 50 people right now who are patrons and by signing up you'll get a free copy of my book what's the big deal about Bitcoin in addition to my upcoming book square one the foundations of knowledge so thanks for supporting and I hope you guys have a great rest of your day