 Hello my friends, welcome to the 36th episode of Patterson in Pursuit. I'm your host, Steve Patterson, and Merry Christmas to all my listeners. In the spirit of Christmas, I'm going to be doing an interview breakdown today of a conversation I had with a Christian theologian at the University of Cambridge. And I'm happy to play the part of Scrooge. This is a conversation that I had with Dr. Ian McFarland, who teaches at the University of Cambridge a few months ago, and part of the reason that I like my own version of Christianity is because there's a very high value of truth and a very high value of love. And sometimes this mixture of truth and love comes out as hard truths. And so this is the first breakdown that I've done of any theological interview so far, and I'm going to give you some of my honest thoughts. Some reasons why I'm not particularly persuaded by theology in general and some of the issues I have with, in this particular case, this version of Christian theology. So before we dive into it, I want to give you kind of a year-end breakdown and thank you for everybody that's been listening and supporting the show, sharing it with your friends, enjoying some of the commentary. We're up to over 70 patrons on patreon.com-steve-patterson, who are demonstrating their support for the creation of a rational worldview. And just a few weeks ago, I started a private Facebook group for patrons, and we've been having some great conversations. And what I've noticed is there's a lot of various opinions in that group, as one might expect. So I get a lot of feedback from people who are radical aggressive atheists, from people who are radical and aggressive Christians, and everywhere in between, saying that they appreciate my honest commentary. So I've kind of taken turns week by week of maybe upsetting different groups at a time. I had several interviews defending and inquiring about Christianity in a very open-minded way. And now I'm a bit overdue for what you might call an attack on this type of Christian theology, which I think if you value truth and you value love, then you have to be honest. And so here we go. Okay, to start, let me give you some of my thoughts on theology in the abstract, and then you'll see it manifested many times in this conversation in the concrete. One of the biggest issues, maybe the biggest issue, that I have with any theology that I've investigated. I don't really have a good word for it, but it's something like a lot of philosophic clutter. So outside of Christianity, like in Buddhism, for example, you have the the noble eightfold path, which is eight, you know, different ways of achieving Nirvana. And in Hinduism you have, you know, I don't know how many chakras there are, but a dozen different chakras that are all different colors and different locations in your body. In Judaism, Judaism is filled with all the millions of different rules that you're supposed to follow. Each one has its own peculiar significance and justification that's supposed to be a central part of the theology. And I have a very strong repulsion to this kind of philosophic clutter. There's all kinds of, I'll put it this way, there's all kinds of arguments that theologians make that only theologians find satisfying. And if you disagree with some of the foundational ideas, as I always come back to on the show, if you disagree with some of the foundations, then they're just talking, they're just responding to one another. It's like a bunch of arguments and words that are specifically designed and hyper-myopically focused on arguments that nobody except the theologians make. Like, why is the noble eightfold path eightfold? Why isn't it ninefold? Oh gosh, if you ask, I don't know, a Buddhist theologian, although I'm not just picking up Buddhism here, they're probably actually pretty good on this. But who knows how many hours, how many doctrines and dogmas they're going to invoke to say, no, no, it's got to be the eightfold path. It's like, well, I mean, you're just, okay, you're just coming up with a bunch of really complex ideas that you might find internally satisfying and maybe this very insular peer group finds satisfying. But for somebody outside the system, I just don't find it compelling in the slightest. So that way of viewing theology comes up many times in this conversation where he's talking about theologians that have been, you know, talking about Christianity for 2,000 years and using a bunch of jargon that nobody really cares about, doesn't really get at the foundations, it's just satisfying their own criteria for what makes a good argument. And I don't mean to imply that this is exclusive to religion, it's not. I think every part of anybody's worldview has intricacies and taxonomy, but it's especially pronounced noticeable when you're talking about religion and theology. So, you know, what does it mean to be sanctified? Oh, well, sanctification means this and this and this and this and there's this scripture supporting this evidence and this theologian from the sixth century said it was this and so therefore that's what it means and this is the standard accepted idea on the topic. And so there's just a million things like that. As we dive into it, I'm going to keep coming back to it. I really need a word for it. Maybe by the end of the show I'm kind of doing this extemporaneously. Maybe by the end of the show I'll have some word I can pin down to say that's that ornateness or something. All right, so let's start with the first question. 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 fifth century that Jesus is one person, the Son of God, the word, turn the word, who is made flesh and thus is in two natures. Okay, hang on a second. This is the first example. These terms, the Son of God made flesh. Okay, what does that mean? I don't know what the Son of God is. Now, I'm sure that means something to Christians who believe this theology. I'm sure that's like, yeah, Jesus is the Son of God, and that's like a that's like an uplifting thing, and that's a central part of the theology. Well, what does it mean? I don't know what that means. 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, it is also God, but what does that mean? Is the creator of the universe is what is it? 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 second century, the the claims for divinity of Jesus, which you get from both early Christian and pagan sources before reporting on Christianity, is that Jesus was regarded by Christians as God. Okay, so this is a great, great setup here. Okay, so creator of the universe is synonymous as the same person, is Jesus? Okay, listen to the argumentation why? 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 incoherence. Okay, okay. To claim Jesus is Savior. Okay, so it's like we're saying that Jesus is God because we're saying that Jesus is Savior? What? This seems like a very backwards way to go about talking about Jesus being God. Is Jesus God? Yes or no? Yes. Okay, why do we believe that? Well, because Jesus is Savior. Well, okay, what do we mean by Jesus is Savior and why do we think that Jesus is Savior? This is precisely what I'm talking about. Oh, of course Jesus is God. Jesus is Savior. It's like, well, that does, to a Christian, that means something. Jesus is Savior. Well, that means something. To somebody who doesn't already, isn't already in the theology, it's like what? If I were going to argue from my own, you know, pseudo-Christian or whatever you want to call it, my own personal Christian perspective, I would say something like this. You could make a case, a purely rational, philosophic case, to say what Jesus is God means is something like this. There is some type of first cause. Let's say it's a creative force that brought spatiotemporal existence into being, the physical existence as we think about it. That creative force requires a mind. That mind, like your mind or my mind, has certain properties and certain attributes and Jesus, for whatever reason, was expressing the mind of God. Jesus had the mind of God. In other words, Jesus was this personification, whether or not he was physically existent or if he's a story, it doesn't really matter. Jesus is a manifestation of love. Love being something, which as I've briefly talked about before, I consider to be divine. So in that respect, Jesus is God. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, Jesus has the mind of God. And here's another part, which is part of my own belief system, is to the extent you can act like Jesus, to the extent you can act out of love, to the extent you can have that mindset, you are in effect having the mind of God. Wow! So we hear all these things, like if you're listening to theology, have any background in whatsoever, you hear these terms, mind of God, Savior, sanctification, grace, all these terms that are ill-defined. From a theological standpoint, my disposition is to say, screw them all, they don't make it make any sense. My thought is to say, okay, look, I have personally experienced something which I consider divine, namely love, true love. That requires me to give some kind of philosophical explanation for it. Why is it the case that I've experienced this love mindset? And it makes sense, historically speaking, to say, okay, this person, as I read about him, Jesus, what he did and what he said makes me believe that he also had that love mindset. And what he was saying is that love mindset is God, that is that original creative force. Boom! Now we've got a connection between this creative force, the person of Jesus and the individual who wants to live in accordance with that mindset. So that's my own, you know, super abbreviated theology of trying to answer these questions. I've no, my suspicion is to think that this is heresy, that it breaks the orthodoxy, but I don't really care about satisfying the criteria and the framework that the Christian theologians set up, I just don't find their game persuasive. Okay, so I'm getting ahead of myself, let's have him finish that particular sentence. 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. The promises that are made, that this is the properties that are of God because he's got to fulfill the promises that are made, like I, I don't care about the promises, now we have to justify promises and why we're trying to have promises that are filled so that we can call him savior. I just don't find any of that compelling. I find that entirety of what the theologian is trying to do with Jesus just useless. So the confession of Jesus as God is that that is quite clearly quite early and I'd argue that its origins are soteriological. So what does that term mean? That rooted in the in Christian convictions about the capacity of Jesus to save. So on the basis of the confession that Jesus saves, the inference is 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. What? Okay, who gives a shit about those things? It's like playing this game, you know, all right well we have the ten commandments, we have the saviorism that we have this person, well he meets this criteria but we're gonna throw out make up a word about soteriology or whatever and say look, he is savior which means then that he must therefore be God but we have to be very careful so that we don't violate the first commandment which is that you thou shalt not have no other gods before me. It's like okay so that's one approach to trying to understand Christianity or Jesus or God or love or anything like these. That's one approach but as somebody who's interested in rational philosophy as somebody who's interested in you know clear thinking and not trying to avoid the framework that other people pose philosophical issues in I just think what about this idea? What if we don't care about fulfilling the criteria in like Judaism? Judaism they've got all these criteria for what the savior will be and if you're a Jew maybe that's relevant but if you're not a Jew who cares? If I were somebody who didn't already have the beliefs that I do though of course I'm open to changing them, if I were just investigating oh what's this Christianity stuff and I came across these ideas I'd be like move on you know swipe left or what a right or whatever the heck it is. Serious question, serious question I don't mean to be mean to anybody or I especially Dr. McFarlane it was very kind of him sitting down and speaking with me but who among you who's not a Christian? I'm speaking to non-Christians out there. Who among you listens to this interview and if you haven't listened to it go back and listen to it it's episode 28. Who is convinced by this? Who listens just to go you know what I didn't get Christianity before but now you know that makes a lot of sense to me yeah you know I was missing that detail the puzzle I was worrying I was thinking in my mind you know oh well how could Jesus be savior and not God that was the reason I wasn't a Christian because I couldn't wrap my head around it and now now I get it you know oh that piece of the puzzle's in place yeah I am persuaded by Christian theology but my suspicion is that there's a big fat zero in terms of the total number of people whose beliefs who are non-Christians whose beliefs were budged at all at least in the Christian direction I can perfectly understand if people were nudged in the opposite direction of like Christian another demonstration perhaps that Christian theology is playing a bunch of games and doesn't make much sense unless you agree with the way that they set up the issue about trying to argue that Jesus must be God because Jesus is savior. So when you say Jesus saves what does that mean because I've heard that a lot in my lifetime growing up Jesus I don't see it on billboards too you're saying you're from you spend a lot of time in Atlanta and if you drive through some of the highways there you'll see the words Jesus saves and big billboards so what what does that mean yeah I mean uh saving uh in the Abrahamic religions refers to the again sort of the I mean you know not you know gold gold line streets and pearly gates I mean what it means is that the the uh every threat that uh confronts human existence is defeated by God so it means 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 and insofar 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 is saying 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 um that is having the same um metaphysical implications that Christians do okay so the natural question for me would be what's this what's this hullabaloo about saving why and I may be I'm talking out of ignorance here because I don't know the answer to this so please somebody correct me if I'm off base is the only reason that the Abrahamic traditions believe that saving is a thing that happens is because of divine communication is it the case that the only reason that Jews set up their framework for what savior means and all this is because they have a positive belief that God communicated to Moses in the desert and that's kind of the foundational ideas we have this belief that there's this divine communication that God himself said I will save you therefore there must be a savior therefore Jesus is a savior therefore Jesus must be God is that is that the line of reasoning is that all this comes down to believing that God actually communicated to these people in the desert not to say by the way I don't want to snarkly dismiss the idea they may very well be that God communicated to lots of people throughout history I'm not I'm not mocking that I'm just saying it seems very peculiar to me that all of this the Christian uh you know the central figure in Christianity is Jesus and all of it would come down to an assumption that some things that happened in the desert thousands of years ago in the way that God communicated to some Jews in the desert means that Jesus is a big deal because he's got to be savior so therefore he's God that just seems odd to me okay so then we have a quick back and forth about dualism and my assumption was that Christianity kind of implies dualism and he was saying no that's not necessarily true so I asked him a question about you know physicalism is physicalism compatible with Christianity the idea that everything is fundamentally reducible to spatiotemporality 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 a 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 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 deos non-est ingenuity God isn't an entity alongside other entities even if you make the scale you put him at the him being mooster him at the top end of the scale God is really the I think the most attractive summative way of talking about God's transcendence as Nicholas of Cusa's description of God as 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 aha maybe that's the case I don't exactly know what that means well here's another alternative maybe we can say something like God exists if we're to I find it much more rationally compelling to say that God is an existent it doesn't mean that or necessarily curtailing God's power just means God is something to say I hate the word transcendent to be honest though sometimes maybe it can be used carefully um transcendent comes up a lot when you're talking about mathematics comes up when you're talking about philosophy of mind comes up when you're talking about theology and from my examinations transcendent is often synonymous with magic he's a god is magic what does that mean well it doesn't really mean anything because you can't really describe it that's the point of the word transcendent I mean maybe I just see no reason I to me that's a statement that says reason cannot touch this therefore we can't say anything else about it I'm not persuaded by that because I see no reason why I see no reason why reason has these kind of impenetrable barriers I find it much more persuasive though maybe it's philosophical heresy or theological heresy to say God exists if God exists if he exists he has properties and probably means that he doesn't have other properties for example he doesn't have logically contradictory properties because those are properties can't can't be existent a lot of times is where you get crossover with discussions about infinity people say God is infinite of course in my evaluation infinite is a similar word to transcendent the way that most people use it it's another word for magic infinite sets are magic sets and they have properties that don't make any sense but that's okay because they're magic God is infinite which means that God doesn't really make sense or God might have properties that seem logically contradictory but that's okay because he's magic i.e transcendent i.e infinite that's okay we just have to accept it or we can have the perspective which is my perspective would just say let's not shut off our rational faculties and accept that our reason has found an impenetrable wall that we cannot possibly get past we say maybe we're thinking about things incorrectly if we have to throw the transcendent label around if we have to use the term magic or infinite maybe it's the case that we've made an error maybe we can actually conceive of existent things as being existent things now of course i have a belief in the existence of God or i should say i have a belief in non atheism and it's really hard to work out the implications of what that implies so i could see an argument to say you know we have to be extraordinarily careful where we put the boundaries up around God but my disposition is to say okay let's be careful in doing so not let's not even try to do so because we use this term infinite or magic or transcendent which means we shut our minds down and just have faith that we can never conceive of the truth about the nature of the matter we use words of God because we can't talk without using words but all our words used of God 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 it has a negative function as an attribute so and i think incidentally that's how the incarnation can 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 and to my mind of course you know we use the word fully hybrid that you know christian theologians might balk at that idea that we have some hybrid God and man thing rather than fully God and fully both but that's a criteria that i just don't care about it makes absolutely no difference to me whether or not Jesus is a hybrid versus Jesus is fully God and fully man whatever that means and again that's because i reject this categorization of things being important because God is savior so we have to preserve the meaning of God being savior which implies x y and z i just whenever i don't share those assumptions so i don't need to go to those conclusions i think there is some truth here and and what he's saying is no God is spirit well that doesn't mean we've put all of the qualities and metaphysical essence of God together and what he is is spirit i agree i think that would be a mistaken way of trying to conceive about a clear conception of God but i think it's very easy to slip from you know this is not a full metaphysical identification from what God is into which i i think is his position is there is no metaphysical classification for what God is by definition it seems i don't know is it i wonder is if this is a heresy to say you know God exists God is an existent i wonder if that would be considered you know an unorthodox heresy or if people would be comfortable saying that i really don't know the answer so i ask him kind of a similar question and going back to the dualism issue so if we say that God's existence is uh transcendent does that not imply then that there is some type of existence that is uh 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 uh i mean because i mean what you 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 Protestant scholastics and Catholic scholastics too um it isn't a contrastive category that's the whole point of the not other in terms of in Cusannas's thought uh it's not this as opposed to that it's asking you to break out of the kinds of categories that that uh cause you to think of things in terms of this or that in competitive or contrastive terms okay but can't we come up with various descriptors of God according to the the theology that would be in light of this or that so if we say something like God is transcendent that means it is not the case that God is not transcendent right if we say God is good whatever that means isn't that saying it is not the case that God is not good or God is not evil it seems like by putting any descriptors on especially if you just are talking about strict logical necessity you are also putting negative descriptors saying it is true that x means that it is false that not x this makes me think very much of eastern ideas that they say things like you know words can't uh 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 or is also the eastern philosophy is kind of pointing at the same well i mean i mean it is i mean certainly i mean agustin said you know if you can understand that it's not God right it's a it's a it's well established in the tradition okay if you can understand it it's not God i wish we could give that a little caveat to make it more palatable like if you can fully understand it it probably isn't God i would i would like that a lot more right an incomplete definition doesn't mean that this thing cannot have a complete definition so if God exists i would say he exists with all of his properties in all of his entirety therefore if if you had the mind for it right if you had literally the mind of God then you could unfully understand God does God understand God if so God is understandable that doesn't mean he can be understood by us or we can understand all of his properties i'll i'll grant some kind of maybe let's say there's a limitation on our knowledge about it sure let's go that far but that doesn't mean God is fundamentally ununderstandable especially if his mind he should be able to understand himself the i mean the difference between i mean there are lots of differences i'm sure an obvious difference with Taoism is that the Tao is not personal and the Tao 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 this strikes me just as a simple inconsistency with what he said prior saying you know we can't say he's this as opposed to something else but he just said God is creator as opposed to the intra-universal principle of the Logos and Heraclitus so it seems like we put some parameters about what God is and what he is in with properties he has and what he doesn't have 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 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 to theism since the scientific evolution have said is that well if you're not going to use word genivically then they have no meaning and Christians want to say well we can't coherently use word genivically 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 i mean some people have talked about analogies 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 all right well i'm going to have to side at least in my disposition with the industrial revolutionists here because i'm i'm not going to say you know we have to have a perfect objective definition for everything i don't think language works that way but on the other hand i'm not comfortable saying look we're trying to describe something but it isn't something it's this honestly it's this mysticism it's an appeal to mysticism it's a fundamentally mystery we're trying to vaguely hint and point at some particular truth but we can't say it explicitly because that's the nature of the truth i tend to think well look if you can't say it explicitly even in in you know many words then it's probably the case that you've made a mistake the mystery is not fundamental mystery of the universe the mystery is just a function of the imprecision of one's own concepts if you can sort things out if you can sort out the puzzle then you know the the apparent mystery and paradox evaporates at least that's the case with every other field that i've investigated whenever you get to this what i would call something like appeal to mysticism or appeal to vagueness of language it's just a function of the imprecision of thinking and almost universally what happens is you bump up into that vagueness you see it in people talking about quantum physics you see it all the time in mathematics you see in theology people say oh well that's the depth that's the profound ideas are those which cannot be directly stated so if you're talking about you know infinite sets and is it the case that you can have a whole be the same size as the part of a whole yes yes that's possible because infinity because magic and say well that doesn't make sense they go no no you don't understand it doesn't seem to make sense but that's part of the profundity of it it's illogical according to your finite area logic but that's why it's so beautiful and so profound because it transcends that type of logic it doesn't make sense on one level but once you abandon your particular logical parameters then you'll see the beauty of it and at this point in my life even even though i you know i have a positive belief in in god i have a positive belief in the inaccuracy of physicalism i just persuaded by argument appeals the mystery and vagueness at all and especially because when investigating religious topics i think they can be articulated rationally like i said earlier you know the connection between god jesus and human beings i've got a pretty dang satisfying explanation for that that doesn't invoke any theology it doesn't invoke any appeals to scripture doesn't invoke any mystery or any ambiguity of language pretty dang straightforward and from my perspective is why i believe it is way more compelling than any of this so we can't necessarily reference god uh 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 him 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 um uh it's a who question rather than a what question so uh 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 uh but none of those are properly speaking definitional the essence of god christian's claim is ineffable okay so i'll play a little devil's abdicate with myself here the essence of god is ineffable well well this isn't actually devil's abdicate this is this is a way that i think you can rescue that idea i could say something about my own essence right if you're talking because i like i've said before i'm a dualist i think that my person is not my body it's something separate my being is not my body therefore it cannot be physically spatially temporally located it's something separate so yeah my essence too is kind of ineffable but in fact i think this when you understand the nature of what language does i think a great many things are ineffable qualia in general the the experience of feeling things or the feeling of seeing red that's kind of ineffable you can describe it in certain ways you can give analogies you can appeal to your expectation that other people have experienced same things but the actual nature of a particular experience is not something that can be captured with language now you can tell a story you can appeal to another mind but yeah i would say qualia in general is ineffable if that's what we mean by ineffable then i have no problem with that a great many things are ineffable but if what is meant by ineffable which i suspect is the majority of the time is i can't even talk about it because magic then how can one be persuaded to what is one appealing if the way that you gain this understanding is ineffable but god is the one who called abraham and brought the israeli side of egypt and became incarnate in jesus of nazareth i see so in terms of the metaphysics the incarnation gods 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 um god when we say god creates um we're not simply in fact we're not even primarily uh talking about an originary of originating event we're talking about a relation okay we're not talking about an originary event we're talking about a relation i don't know what it means 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 mymonides the great medieval jewish theologian philosopher felt was the one thing that one doctrine that christian jews and muslims held in common okay well i guess i i guess according to that criteria i probably would not be either a christian muslim or a jew because i don't think that's necessary i can imagine a circumstance in which god creates and then doesn't participate in the creation anymore or i can imagine a circumstance in where what he said is true where god creates and then the creation is only sustained in existing by him willing it to be so or something like that i can perfectly entertain either and i don't see i don't see the the reason or the justification for believe having one belief orbit over the other though my suspicion is it has again something to do with some theological claim that they care about 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 isn't that mental gymnastics why in the world if we're trying to understand and have any kind of like rational grappling with you know this relationship jesus god human why would we say god is no more present in jesus than he is in me or in a rock because we're all creation it sure would seem like god the love mind said as i would put it the love mind the creative mind was a hell of a lot more present in jesus and maybe even synonymous with the mind of jesus than us regular blokes 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 mcbeth does right but shakespeare is not mcbeth uh 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 in essence god created himself or an instantiation of himself so we have creator the god person creating but being fully a part of his creation in every part of his creation except one part of his creation he said that part's actually me or another hypothesis that the person of jesus either found a way himself as a started as a regular human being and found a way or started as some kind of you divine human being that was able to communicate to channel to be like to live in accordance with the creative mind the rock does not have the creative mind i in my best moments in my deepest loving moments have that creative mind i have i would the way that i would put it is i have experienced the same exact mindset that jesus had for very short periods of time and i would say that is ultimately the goal the highest goal of the individual the highest state of human existence is to be in that state of mind that state of mind is something that it's been talked about for thousands of years that is accessible to me but i don't do it very well jesus did it very well and from the record seems to be that he did it all the time so in effect because he was constantly in that state of mind he in effect was god or or fully embodied the god mind from the beginning then the person of 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 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 a you're a steven in addition to being like other human beings if you think but i would not i want to say that who is a is a uh is a is a um ontologically different kind of question than what okay so now we get into some really interesting ideas about the difference between who and what who being the person what being what the person is now in my metaphysics i think that everything that is existent is a what it is a something a person is a what or maybe i should say a person has a what you can't reference persons without referencing a something that is the person i don't believe that there are existent things which are not what but that's actually not his position so we get into a really interesting conversation here 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 let me be what you are doing and in fact i notice i wrote an article on this last year and uh one of my one of the editors at the journal said you know i think here you've actually talked about a who is the or what i said oh you're right i changed the language um who i mean but it's 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 it's the identity of the person um uh and what is the identity 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 i mean the the so essentially he's saying the who is a label that he is purely daked it's something it's essentially a word the who has no what which leads to really really interesting conclusion so in the trinity right or the the doctrine of the trinity uh what are christians claiming with that they're saying there's only one god and uh this god uh is father son and holy spirit now if you say well what 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 knows 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 knows 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 defined the person as 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 yeah i mean and this is the problem so 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 i'm pointing at only what and in fact what you see of jesus in terms of what's what's what's what's what are the 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 where i go with wittgenstein and gilbert ryle over dickhart i don't infer however a who underneath all that somewhere in your pineal gland or whatever right uh the who is the what is the one who who is mediated through this stuff but is not identical with the stuff 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 okay the who is the one who is you yes i totally agree with that however the the one who is me still is a something i'm not just a name i have a what i have some type of essence otherwise i couldn't be referenced i would just be a name i'm not just a name or so i think um 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 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 yeah but the who but yeah so the who doesn't the who doesn't have a different essence than a you and i who no no no no no exactly because because we're the same meaning assuming harry potter is a is a human boy or young man or whatever however old he is by now um uh 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 your who this is this is turning english into a very funny sounding note your who is different than my who exactly exactly and we have different hypostatic properties i mean you're you know you're maybe i don't know you're a little taller than me i mean there's all kinds of stuff but however your who and my who are different i agree with that but they share some quality that harry potters who does not well yeah harry potter harry potter isn't a real person yeah so i love that that's like the the the best philosophic sentence ever your who is different than my who well it's true and this is the point that i'm making that dr mcfarland has a who i have a who harry potter sort of has a who there's a difference between all of the who's he and i share something that harry potter does not and that is what harry potter does not have an independent existence we are distinguishable from harry potter is that we're not fictional objects we have independent existence we are an independent what 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 but what i'm 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 what he doesn't have a what he doesn't have a what i'm happy to say all who's are instantiated is what's there's no free floating who a who is always a particular a kind of who it's you know it's a what about 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 do you guys follow that because i didn't that seems contradictory to me and what's really interesting uh and i find this when examining any worldview or any philosophy really any claim is you know you have this edifice of knowledge and then packed into that edifice really deep down near the fundamental as you get into some of these ideas where at the beginning of this conversation i never would have thought i know probably with anybody that a central part of all of this his particular theology is the distinction between who and what it's essential if if this what we're talking about right now if this isn't fleshed out if this is what his claims are are inaccurate then a great deal of all of these claims fall apart and i would say i think he's completely mistaken because as we're about to get into a conclusion i find patently absurd and therefore how much of this theological edifice should just be thrown at the garbage can because the the conception in that theology is that who's and what's have this different interplay between them that i i think is wrong but i don't want to get into that. 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 that i would want to know this is getting is going to be this way it would get its way off but just put it as a parenthetical comment uh no no no it's not going to get his way off and i'm afraid this is another thing that i noticed when having conversations not just with professional intellectuals but everybody is when you start getting this is this is the central part of the whole conversation where it's like red hot wowy here it is and he goes well you know i don't want to really get into that well you know we're going to be dragged down a rabbit hole it's like no no my suspicion is that you see you just contradicted yourself because you said god is three hoes and one what and i said wait earlier you said god had no what is it well i mean yes i mean you got to kind of put the what in quotes and then we're moving on that smacks of logical explicit contradiction i think that we are hoes only in so far as god addresses us as hoes we're treated as we are we are treated as persons by god and that's the cut that's how we become 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 i do want to explore this so here's my own personal worldview that the chair is has a so what 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 say is if there were no minds there would be no chairs you'd still have 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 uh yeah you would have individual human entities yeah so this part i agree with you you'd still have human entities but but what i want to end 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 the who is not what 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 um uh for me uh 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 so it's a it's a that point that are that are it's 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 mean human who let's imagine divine who's all right so this is kind of the setup for what i consider to be the central flaw in his theory let's imagine world in which there were no names we didn't have names would there still be who's um i guess i'm trying to figure out what would that uh because because to be a to be uh for me to be a who was precisely to be called by name obviously what one makes you know how we could could there be nonverbal names right but let's just say there were no names there was no there was no identification of what it was yeah well in that case i don't i'm not i'm uh i 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 okay ridiculous i'm sorry that's just completely ridiculous and i think a demonstration of where this theory is wrong so he's said in that segment that one which i think this is a contradiction he said i could call a table or a chair a who i could call it matthew but that doesn't mean it's a person if that side note is true that implies that the who the person lacks the wetness of the who so the reason that a table doesn't become matthew a person is because it doesn't have that metaphysical essence of a person so that would be my point and then it it concludes with something i found flabbergasting when i said it at the moment but i tried to be polite that is what you're saying that the who is identical with the name yes does that mean that if god didn't name anybody in a universe without names there would be no who's and he goes well yeah i guess that's what you'd be saying okay now that then therefore your ideas silly because he's literally saying that what it means to be human is to be named to be named is to be the human the human person the human being is a name and god gives us a name and therefore we're a human being i see no reason to think that this is true that this even makes sense that this corresponds with any of our experience the only way that i think it's the only worldview puzzle into which that idea fits is something that is radically i would say dogmatically theological where there's some to be supposed to be some profound truth to say wow what it means to be a human is to be named by god oh my goodness that means something profound i think it's utterly ridiculous obviously you are a something you are a person and what you are your essence the reason that you are something different from a table called matthew if your name is matthew you're the human called matthew is because you have a what that is separate from your name and though i'm sure this comes across as strong and oh i'm going to push push fellow interviewers away look i don't care the purpose of this podcast is to accurately communicate my own pursuit of truth my own evaluation about these arguments as i encounter them and this one in fact i even did a video on facebook after i was done with this at cambridge i thought this is this is utterly ridiculous here's this guy i'm sorry this is nothing personal absolutely nothing personal this is something about the structure of academia and the way that humans operate here's this guy at cambridge a professor at cambridge who's got his own office you know who knows how many classes he teaches supposed to be some intellectual some into you know some influential person in the history of you know christian philosophy or christian theology and all all of his massive amounts of knowledge i mean he has you know a thousand more probably ten thousand times as much knowledge about the history of christian philosophy and christian philosophic ideas than i do because he's read immensely more than i am on the topic all of it comes down to this idea this idea of the distinction between the who and the what is utterly central to his christian theology and it comes down to a positive belief that if god had not named you if you did not have a name you would not exist because the entirety of human existence is having a name the name is what you are now this is one of the reasons that people get pushed away from theology in general this is not unique to christian theology at all this is the reason that people get pushed away because you you bend over a lot of theologians bend over backwards and say really remarkable and outlandish things and then you get you know you kind of get pushed up against the wall there's some idea like this and and out my dad used to do this all the time when i would talk to him about theology out spurts an absurdity that somehow somehow still treated as like a respectable idea as like oh well that's yes that's a central part of christian theology is your entire essence is your name that you were you not to have a name then you wouldn't exist oh yes of course now that was a rant i apologize for dr mcfarland he's listening to this you're totally justified in sending me a nasty email but this is my honest evaluation of the ideas i find it out really absurd now that's not to say i in any way that all theology is absurd that all you know that there's no good apologetics out there i don't mean to imply that but this i think is an excellent example for everybody to see where apologetics and theology goes arrived because this is somebody teaching at cambridge who knows more than you know factually knows way more than your average you know pastor can talk circles around them and yet this is the kind of ideas that you get but that's where i should end it on this very happy christmas edition i'm sure i've offended a lot of people in a sense it gives me i'm obviously angered by these ideas because i find them preposterous but it gives me encouragement because this is an open field right i'm seeing uh it's like if i were a chess player and i you know surveyed the field of the competition and all of them were throwing chess pieces at one another and they didn't know how to move the pieces on the board i would think okay this is an opportunity i can step in and and get some you know good good chess done i feel the same way about theology right as somebody who believes in god a radically different conception than maybe standard orthodoxy i find it a very ripe field for being able to bring rationality logic common sense and a very anti-dogmatic anti-establishment um unorthodox approach to some ideas which at the very core i think there are some of the most important truths in the world you know i i will say on the one hand i will say what i have said about this christian theology and this manifestation of it on the other hand i sincerely believe that for human beings some you will find some of the most profound and important ideas of all time with the writings uh and the recorded writings of jesus so there's a lot of work ahead and i'm glad to have you guys along for the ride if you appreciate this kind of commentary and you would like not only for there to be more interviews like this interview breakdowns like this but also you'd like to see some of my own ideas on the topic so you want me to talk more about my views on christianity or on religion on god in audio format or article format you can show and demonstrate your support by going to patreon.com slash steve paterson and becoming a patron of the show and a patron of the creation of a rational world view i know there's a lot of people out there because i get you guys's emails that think similarly to me that you see the truth of of what a lot of religions are getting at but you're nauseated by the academic jargon and ridiculous obscurity of most theology i know you guys are out there so let's band together let's try to create someday not in the near future but someday something akin to a rational theology all right that's all for today i hope you guys enjoyed this episode i hope it made you uncomfortable and challenged you in a way that you value and i will talk to you next week