# Fr. Stephen Freeman | Christian Atheism: God as an idea is no God at all (Preview of Commitment to Reality)

An episode of [Bible Answer Man Podcast with Hank Hanegraaff](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/569236334), 23 Jun 2026, 36 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72602482/hup_ctr_preview_4.mp3

Fr. Stephen Freeman is one of the best there is when it comes to calling out our contemporary world and the false and flattened view of reality which he calls a two-storey universe. The truth is this—we live in a one-storey universe. And it is enchanted. This is a preview of an episode of Commitment to Reality, where Fr. Stephen Freeman joins Dave Hanegraaff to explore how we can recover a a right vision of the universe in an age that has taught us to see reality as cold, secular, and disenchanted For more information on Fr. Freeman’s book Everywhere Present: Christianity in a One-Storey Universe please click here. https://www.equip.org/product/cri-resource-everywhere-present-christianity-in-a-one-storey-universe/ To hear the full conversation, search for Commitment to Reality wherever you listen to podcasts and subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode. You can also watch full episodes and clips on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ACommitmenttoReality

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Welcome to a special edition of Hank Unplugged. I'm Dave Hannigrat.
[0:05] Speaker 1: What you're about to hear is a preview of Commitment
[0:08] Speaker 1: to Reality, a new podcast brought to you by the
[0:12] Speaker 1: Christian Research Institute.
[0:15] Speaker 2: Enjoy.
[0:16] Speaker 1: Father Stephen Freeman, thank you for joining me on a
[0:18] Speaker 1: commitment to Reality.
[0:20] Speaker 2: It's good to be here. Let's get real.
[0:25] Speaker 1: Before we start. Can you just tell everybody who's listening
[0:27] Speaker 1: a little bit about yourself?
[0:29] Speaker 2: Sure? Who are you? I'm a native born South Carolinian
[0:33] Speaker 2: who actually, after being away for a lot of years,
[0:36] Speaker 2: is returned home to Greenville, South Carolina, where I grew up.
[0:40] Speaker 2: I was raised in a very nominal Baptist home. Went
[0:44] Speaker 2: to a little Southern Baptist church down the railroad tracks
[0:47] Speaker 2: about a mile down from my house. My brother and
[0:49] Speaker 2: I used to walk down the tracks to church. I
[0:51] Speaker 2: think mom and dad were glad to get us out
[0:52] Speaker 2: of the house for Sunday morning, but they didn't go much.
[0:56] Speaker 2: Baptized when I was seven years old, I was kind
[0:59] Speaker 2: of moved by him the old gospel, him calling O
[1:02] Speaker 2: sinner come home, and I just remember feeling homesick. I
[1:05] Speaker 2: don't know what for, but I walked the aisle, and
[1:07] Speaker 2: the next week the feature came to the house, sat
[1:10] Speaker 2: with me in the living room and have no memory
[1:12] Speaker 2: of this, but talk with him other than sitting in
[1:15] Speaker 2: there and being kind of awestruck. Afterwards, he says to
[1:18] Speaker 2: my mom, he's only seven years old, but he's saved.
[1:21] Speaker 2: And so I got baptized. The next Sunday evening, I
[1:24] Speaker 2: was I was so short, I had to tread water,
[1:26] Speaker 2: so I kind of say, I was sort of just
[1:29] Speaker 2: bobbed instead of don't you know, just touch me? And
[1:31] Speaker 2: I would sing. Left the Baptist church at thirteen, became
[1:36] Speaker 2: long story that, but became an episco payan at age
[1:39] Speaker 2: fifteen through the influence of my older brother. It was
[1:42] Speaker 2: actually an introduction to beauty from a very plain, kind
[1:45] Speaker 2: of white painted Baptist church to a church full of color,
[1:53] Speaker 2: wonder a sacrament. This is pretty much the old Episcopal
[1:56] Speaker 2: church with the old prayer book and stuff. When I joined,
[2:00] Speaker 2: and it was wonderful, and if you had asked me,
[2:03] Speaker 2: then I thought I was joining the ancient church. So
[2:06] Speaker 2: that's kind of how I approached that. Spent a couple
[2:09] Speaker 2: of years, got involved in the Jesus movement for a
[2:12] Speaker 2: couple of three years. Was involved in a charismatic non
[2:15] Speaker 2: denominational house church. Lived on Commune a couple of years. Yeah,
[2:20] Speaker 2: between high school and college. Went to college at Furman
[2:24] Speaker 2: University in Greenville. I met my wife. Actually we met
[2:28] Speaker 2: in that house church, but we both I returned to
[2:32] Speaker 2: the Episcopal Church and took her with me. We were
[2:35] Speaker 2: married while I was a junior in college. I went
[2:38] Speaker 2: to seminary, an Episcopal seminary in Chicago, and then served
[2:43] Speaker 2: churches in South Carolina. Was in the doctoral program at
[2:46] Speaker 2: Duke after seven or eight years in parish to work
[2:49] Speaker 2: on I did systematic theology under Jeffrey Wainwright and Stanley
[2:54] Speaker 2: howerd was howerd wass Is still I think of as
[2:57] Speaker 2: one of the most refreshing reads of an American theologians
[3:00] Speaker 2: you can possibly pick up. Interesting guy. But my final
[3:05] Speaker 2: episcopal church, I was serving in East Tennessee outside of Knoxville,
[3:09] Speaker 2: Oak Ridge, and served there for nine years. All of
[3:12] Speaker 2: this during that whole time, starting in college, I started
[3:15] Speaker 2: reading Orthodox writings, primarily Russian. There wasn't a lot in
[3:20] Speaker 2: English at the time. It was in the seventies. I
[3:24] Speaker 2: kind of bought everything theological that Saint Vladimir's published, and
[3:28] Speaker 2: it wouldn't fill half a shelf, you know, And there
[3:31] Speaker 2: wasn't YouTube, there wasn't Internet. It was sort of doing
[3:34] Speaker 2: it in a vacuum. So there was a long journey,
[3:37] Speaker 2: a lot of which I was Orthodox. He had become
[3:40] Speaker 2: sort of a touchstone of what is true, and so,
[3:44] Speaker 2: you know, even when I was an Anglicans like is
[3:46] Speaker 2: that correct? Well, I'd want to know what the Orthodox
[3:48] Speaker 2: thought about it, and you know, but eventually at Duke
[3:53] Speaker 2: I did my thesis on the theology of icons, and
[3:56] Speaker 2: so I was already beginning to be toast. The morning
[3:59] Speaker 2: appter after my defense, I woke up, knelt by my
[4:02] Speaker 2: bed in Durham and prayed, Oh God, make me Orthodox.
[4:06] Speaker 2: And I meant two things by that. One I want
[4:08] Speaker 2: to be Orthodox, and two you'll have to make me.
[4:13] Speaker 2: And so there's sort of heal marks dragging me from
[4:17] Speaker 2: there to seven years later when I was received into
[4:20] Speaker 2: the Church. And the course of that seven years a
[4:23] Speaker 2: lot of things happened. One of the most important things
[4:26] Speaker 2: that happened for me was meeting Archbishop Dmitri of Dallas
[4:30] Speaker 2: of Blessed Memory. It was a great missionary and through
[4:34] Speaker 2: him getting to know, the Orthodox Church in America, which
[4:38] Speaker 2: was all English, I mean in terms of language and
[4:42] Speaker 2: you know, sort of Russian flavor in its customs and
[4:45] Speaker 2: its history, but decidedly rooted in America. All I had
[4:51] Speaker 2: ever met prior to that was a very ethnic orthodoxieson
[4:56] Speaker 2: it was easy for me to use that as an
[4:58] Speaker 2: excuse to not do that. So anyway, in nineteen ninety eight,
[5:03] Speaker 2: forty five years old, actually forty four at the time,
[5:06] Speaker 2: I was received into the church and immediately immediately asked
[5:11] Speaker 2: by the archbishop and appointed as a layman because I
[5:15] Speaker 2: was having to do a retread before I could be
[5:16] Speaker 2: ordained Orthodox to start a mission in the Knoxville area,
[5:19] Speaker 2: which I did, and so I had a hand in
[5:22] Speaker 2: starting five different Oca churches over the course of those years.
[5:30] Speaker 2: Started writing. I waited eight years after I was Orthodox.
[5:34] Speaker 2: I wrote a lot as an Anglican, but I waited
[5:35] Speaker 2: eight years after I converted before I wrote again. And
[5:39] Speaker 2: in two thousand and six I started a blog, Glory
[5:42] Speaker 2: to God for All Things, and began writing there and
[5:45] Speaker 2: picked up you know, fairly good readership. Eventually, you know,
[5:50] Speaker 2: published the little book Everywhere Present Christianity in a one
[5:53] Speaker 2: story universe. It largely grew out of my finding ways
[5:57] Speaker 2: to try to communicate and Orthodox understanding of God and
[6:01] Speaker 2: the world, particularly the converts were coming. You know, that
[6:06] Speaker 2: was my bread and butter, and these missions that we
[6:09] Speaker 2: were doing. The Little Book is the one that probably
[6:12] Speaker 2: people know the most, and so.
[6:14] Speaker 1: I want retired people need to know it.
[6:17] Speaker 2: I retired in twenty twenty, having reached an age, and finally,
[6:22] Speaker 2: after a few years hanging around in Tennessee, we received
[6:25] Speaker 2: an invitation to come down to Greenville and are down here.
[6:30] Speaker 2: My parents became my nominal Baptist parents later became Episcopalians,
[6:35] Speaker 2: but became Orthodox at age seventy nine, and they were
[6:40] Speaker 2: members at the parish where I'm now attached as a
[6:43] Speaker 2: retired priest. And so I really feel like I've been
[6:46] Speaker 2: called home and that I'm slowly being gathered to my
[6:49] Speaker 2: father's which is a little scary, hope, slowly, slowly. We
[6:55] Speaker 2: That's so who I am. I write, I talk, you're
[6:58] Speaker 2: write and you talk well.
[7:00] Speaker 1: I mean I joke that we did a podcast. Before
[7:02] Speaker 1: the podcast we got the online and couldn't stop talking.
[7:05] Speaker 1: I told you that I love you, and I mean
[7:08] Speaker 1: thank you. And one thing that really I am intrigued.
[7:13] Speaker 1: Enchantment is all the rage right now, It's everywhere. This
[7:16] Speaker 1: book is over ten years old. How did you get
[7:19] Speaker 1: so far ahead of the curve?
[7:22] Speaker 2: Interesting question, you know, I write a lot about the
[7:25] Speaker 2: topic of modernity on my blog and secularism, which is,
[7:30] Speaker 2: you know, enchantment is just the latest buzzword to talk
[7:34] Speaker 2: about those things. A concept of the world, that there
[7:37] Speaker 2: can be such a thing as the world existing apart
[7:41] Speaker 2: from God. That I mean, secularism is the myth that
[7:45] Speaker 2: God has his fear and we have ours. Alexander Schmemann
[7:48] Speaker 2: writing talks in the sixties that are encapsulated in his
[7:52] Speaker 2: Little Book for the Life of the World. It says
[7:55] Speaker 2: that secularism is the heresy of our time. I mean,
[7:58] Speaker 2: we're always I'm saying nothing new in that. GK. Chesterton,
[8:01] Speaker 2: you know, Anglican who became Catholic, writing in the early
[8:05] Speaker 2: nineteen hundreds. It takes all of this to task. There
[8:08] Speaker 2: are British writers in the eighteenth century, the eighteen hundreds
[8:12] Speaker 2: who identified certain problems that had already come to the
[8:17] Speaker 2: foe and they're beginning to analyze it. So there's Lewis C. S.
[8:20] Speaker 2: Lewis gets into this in various ways, like the abolition
[8:23] Speaker 2: of man and other things, so that all of this
[8:26] Speaker 2: is really just a thread that's been going on for
[8:28] Speaker 2: a long time. You have people right now who actually
[8:32] Speaker 2: think they discovered it, and they jolly will did nothing
[8:35] Speaker 2: of the sort. They're standing on the shoulders of giants.
[8:38] Speaker 2: And I love the recent book that Paul Kingsnorth has
[8:42] Speaker 2: done on the machine, which is frankly just another word
[8:46] Speaker 2: for the same problem, but viewed sort of through the
[8:49] Speaker 2: lens of technology. But in his book he has so
[8:54] Speaker 2: the most amazing. I mean, his footnotes are worth the
[8:56] Speaker 2: entire book. And I think you know how many lifetimes
[9:00] Speaker 2: that you have to read all of this, you know,
[9:02] Speaker 2: digest it, and you know and footnote it for the
[9:04] Speaker 2: rest of us. So I mean, for me, the critique
[9:08] Speaker 2: of modernity. Progress is an idea that belongs to modernity.
[9:13] Speaker 2: But modernity itself is a set of ideas, the philosophy
[9:15] Speaker 2: that occurs during these the last one hundred and fifty
[9:19] Speaker 2: to two hundred years, But it is not the period
[9:23] Speaker 2: of time. I mean times just we just live. But
[9:27] Speaker 2: modernity is a false philosophy filled with all kinds of
[9:30] Speaker 2: wrong ideas. And so I mean, like when I was
[9:33] Speaker 2: studying at Duke nder Harawaz. He said that preaching the
[9:36] Speaker 2: Gospel disabusing people the notions of modernity is the great
[9:40] Speaker 2: task of preaching the Gospel in our times, you know.
[9:43] Speaker 2: So that was sort of news to me. Had I
[9:46] Speaker 2: read him and understood him when I was studying as
[9:50] Speaker 2: an Anglican in seminary, they would have thrown me out
[9:55] Speaker 2: because my arguments against what they were saying would have
[9:58] Speaker 2: been so formidable. They would not have been able to
[10:01] Speaker 2: bear me. As it was, I was simply obnoxious. I
[10:03] Speaker 2: knew there was a problem, I just didn't know what
[10:05] Speaker 2: it was. Yet.
[10:07] Speaker 1: You say about a one story universe, this is one
[10:09] Speaker 1: of the great difficulties of our one story world. It's
[10:12] Speaker 1: not that we live on the first floor and that
[10:15] Speaker 1: that's all there is. It's that we live on the
[10:17] Speaker 1: first floor and we don't know the half of it.
[10:19] Speaker 1: What do you mean by one story universe versus a
[10:23] Speaker 1: two story universe.
[10:24] Speaker 2: Well, it's just a playful set of images to use.
[10:28] Speaker 2: When people talk about God and talk about spiritual things,
[10:32] Speaker 2: a lot of them put it in a spooky place.
[10:35] Speaker 2: And I mean, the most crash way of saying it
[10:38] Speaker 2: is talking about God as the man upstairs, you know,
[10:42] Speaker 2: trying to think of the guy's name. Did a study,
[10:44] Speaker 2: wonderful study. Filmmaker, teacher philosophy at Vanderbilt did a wonderful
[10:48] Speaker 2: study on the nuns ees. Nathan Jacobs. Yeah, yea, Nathan Jacobs.
[10:55] Speaker 2: I know him. He's got a daughter, goes to our
[10:56] Speaker 2: peerish now. Nathan said that what he did discovered was
[11:01] Speaker 2: talking to all these people who had jettisoned their Christian faith,
[11:05] Speaker 2: that over ninety nine percent, he said, he couldn't say
[11:10] Speaker 2: one hundred percent because he didn't ask all of them
[11:12] Speaker 2: the question when he was doing his film. But ninety
[11:15] Speaker 2: nine plus percent believe in ghosts. Isn't it weird? What
[11:22] Speaker 2: is it? What is it? They don't believe in God,
[11:26] Speaker 2: but they do believe in ghosts. What is that? I mean,
[11:28] Speaker 2: it's like they it's not that they don't believe that
[11:30] Speaker 2: there is something spiritual, They just and they don't know
[11:33] Speaker 2: what it is. They just happen to believe in them.
[11:35] Speaker 2: I joke and say that my book is really just
[11:37] Speaker 2: me doing riffs on Alexander Schmidmen tried to talk about
[11:41] Speaker 2: a sacramental world, that it is here, the Kingdom of
[11:44] Speaker 2: God is now and here it is present. Jesus say,
[11:47] Speaker 2: is the Kingdom of God is among you. One way
[11:49] Speaker 2: that I describe it, for instance, that Jesus is the
[11:52] Speaker 2: Kingdom of God walking among us. He is the Kingdom
[11:57] Speaker 2: of God. It's not just some by and by, you know, bye,
[12:02] Speaker 2: and the sky coming sometime like that. He is the
[12:05] Speaker 2: Kingdom of God wherever he is. Jesus says, if I,
[12:08] Speaker 2: by the finger of God cast out devils, then the
[12:12] Speaker 2: Kingdom of God has come upon you. You, So it's
[12:16] Speaker 2: right there. Another way, this is sort of helpful to
[12:19] Speaker 2: open up people's eyes. The longest passage and theology of
[12:25] Speaker 2: the Eucharist in the Gospels is in the sixth chapter
[12:29] Speaker 2: of John, as Jesus is discussing with his disciples and
[12:34] Speaker 2: the people the Feeding of the five thousand. In the
[12:36] Speaker 2: Feeding of the five Thousand story, it says Jesus takes
[12:40] Speaker 2: the bread, blesses, breaks it, and gives it. Okay, those
[12:45] Speaker 2: are four key words. It occurs again the familiar passage
[12:51] Speaker 2: in the night in which he was betrayed, he took bread,
[12:55] Speaker 2: and when he had given thanks, he blessed it and
[12:57] Speaker 2: broke it and gave it to These four things always
[13:00] Speaker 2: been understood as the key verbs. These four action verbs
[13:05] Speaker 2: to take, the bless, to break, to give are eucharistic signals.
[13:10] Speaker 2: I meaning, the sixth chapter of John is a eucharistic gospel.
[13:13] Speaker 2: It's just there now. The weird part about it is
[13:17] Speaker 2: is it's long before the Last Supper, so it occurs
[13:21] Speaker 2: out of order. And I've been rebuked in talking in
[13:24] Speaker 2: some Protestant settings, and someone tried to tell me that
[13:26] Speaker 2: the six chapter John is not about the Eucharist. Even
[13:29] Speaker 2: though Jesus says, unless you eat my flesh and drink
[13:32] Speaker 2: my blood, you have no life in you. You can't
[13:36] Speaker 2: read that as a Christian. You shouldn't be able to
[13:40] Speaker 2: read that as a Christian and not think Euchrist. But
[13:42] Speaker 2: I'll take it this way. Jesus is the Kingdom of
[13:46] Speaker 2: God among us, and Jesus cannot take bread in his hands,
[13:52] Speaker 2: bless it, break it, and give it, and it not
[13:55] Speaker 2: be his body. Because I love the way Emmons said
[14:00] Speaker 2: this is that in the sacraments, we do not take
[14:04] Speaker 2: something and make it to be what it is not.
[14:07] Speaker 2: We take something and show it to be what it
[14:10] Speaker 2: truly is. In the hands of Christ's bread always becomes
[14:13] Speaker 2: his body. So the disciples have been everybody traveling that
[14:20] Speaker 2: Jesus has been eating euchris with him for the whole journey.
[14:24] Speaker 2: But on the night in which he's betrayed he makes
[14:27] Speaker 2: it clear. And even then they probably don't get it
[14:32] Speaker 2: until in the key is the endings of the Gospels
[14:35] Speaker 2: and the Book of Acts. Jesus keeps showing up on Sundays.
[14:40] Speaker 2: He keeps showing up with the meal like you have
[14:43] Speaker 2: later in the day on Pasca on Easter Sunday, the
[14:47] Speaker 2: two disciples on the road to Ammaeus, they're walking along,
[14:52] Speaker 2: and then they are there and they get with him,
[14:54] Speaker 2: and guess what takes some red blesses brexiting gives it
[14:58] Speaker 2: to them, and their eyes were open, and suddenly they
[15:02] Speaker 2: see him, and he was made known to them, you know,
[15:05] Speaker 2: and the breaking of the bread. And people ask me,
[15:09] Speaker 2: why do Christians keep Sunday instead of Saturday as the
[15:14] Speaker 2: Holy Day. Well, actually, in the Orthodox Church, we believe
[15:16] Speaker 2: Saturday is the Sabbath. It's clearly described that and holy
[15:21] Speaker 2: we call the books will say great and holy Sabbath
[15:25] Speaker 2: for Saturday. Sunday, I mean Saturday is Sabbath is Hebrew
[15:29] Speaker 2: for seven And so Saturday is still the seventh day,
[15:34] Speaker 2: but we keep Sunday because it's the eighth day. Sunday
[15:39] Speaker 2: is the seventh seventh day fulfilled. That's the way the
[15:43] Speaker 2: Father's mystically is the eighth day. It has transcended the
[15:47] Speaker 2: Sunday and the Sabbath is fulfilled. What is Christ doing
[15:50] Speaker 2: on the Sabbath, He's in the tomb, or as we say,
[15:53] Speaker 2: the priest will say, and the liturgy it's usually said
[15:56] Speaker 2: quietly in the tomb with the body in heyd's with
[15:59] Speaker 2: the soul on the throne, with the Father and the
[16:01] Speaker 2: Holy Spirit. Was that well boundless Christ filling all things?
[16:06] Speaker 2: And so, but what's he doing on Saturday? Well, he's
[16:09] Speaker 2: also in Haiti. He's trampling down death by death. It
[16:11] Speaker 2: is also Pasca and the whole. Originally Pasca was kept
[16:15] Speaker 2: as a single day's feast. It gets expanded and stretched
[16:19] Speaker 2: out not to make such a big difference between Friday,
[16:22] Speaker 2: Saturday and Sunday. But it's just so big it takes
[16:26] Speaker 2: us three days to do it. But Jesus, everywhere he goes,
[16:31] Speaker 2: he is the Pascal Mystery everywhere, and in the Pascal Mystery,
[16:36] Speaker 2: bread becomes his body, wine becomes his Blood and we
[16:40] Speaker 2: have communion with Him. And you know, to live rightly
[16:45] Speaker 2: isn't to reduce the sacrament to these seven actions of
[16:49] Speaker 2: the Church does rightly speaking, there are an infinite number
[16:54] Speaker 2: of sacraments. The whole world is sacrament. Everything, everything is sacrament.
[16:58] Speaker 1: That's the thing that you get at a lot is
[17:00] Speaker 1: reorientation that we have a false view of reality. I mean,
[17:04] Speaker 1: that's that's why I've gotten so enamored with the whole
[17:07] Speaker 1: conception of reality exists, and it's something that we have
[17:10] Speaker 1: to commit to. Because we don't, we fall into all
[17:12] Speaker 1: kinds of other issues.
[17:14] Speaker 2: And I was thrilled when I saw the name of
[17:17] Speaker 2: your podcast because it actually really harmonized with something I've
[17:22] Speaker 2: been thinking a lot about. That is that as Orthodox Christians,
[17:26] Speaker 2: we proclaim reality. We don't proclaim something else. We proclaim reality,
[17:33] Speaker 2: and so the world is it truly is, So we're
[17:38] Speaker 2: becoming truly human. It's like you've got a lot of
[17:41] Speaker 2: people talking about theosis. We also need to talk about anthroposis,
[17:45] Speaker 2: that we need to become fully human if we're to
[17:47] Speaker 2: become truly partakers of God. And what we see in
[17:51] Speaker 2: Christ is what it is to be truly and fully human.
[17:55] Speaker 2: So he's that as well. But the reality of the
[17:58] Speaker 2: world is to receive reality is to have an attitude
[18:06] Speaker 2: of how do you receive that which is given to you?
[18:09] Speaker 2: I mean to be an Orthodox Christian, which is simply
[18:12] Speaker 2: just to be a faithful human being, is to understand
[18:15] Speaker 2: that everything around you is a gift. The sacramentality to
[18:19] Speaker 2: say that it's sacrament is also that it's given to you.
[18:22] Speaker 2: He takes it, he gives it to us. Reality is
[18:25] Speaker 2: a gift to us. So how do I receive a gift?
[18:28] Speaker 2: I give thanks? Therefore glory to God for all things.
[18:33] Speaker 2: The last words of Saint John Chris system or as
[18:36] Speaker 2: Saint Paul will say in Thessalonians, to give God thanks
[18:39] Speaker 2: al ways and for all things. That is the Eucharistic life.
[18:44] Speaker 2: If Godristo means I give thanks, that is the Eucharistic
[18:48] Speaker 2: life is to give thanks. And so that's a until
[18:50] Speaker 2: we learn to bless God and to bless creation for
[18:57] Speaker 2: what it is, for the reality we've received, and then
[19:00] Speaker 2: we will always not see it for what it is. Well.
[19:03] Speaker 1: I want to talk about the words secular. All too often,
[19:06] Speaker 1: secular is almost seen as synonymous with atheist yep. Why
[19:12] Speaker 1: is that not true.
[19:15] Speaker 2: Well, I mean historically it's not. A secular is an
[19:18] Speaker 2: old Latin word. It's the word in secular seculorum, which
[19:22] Speaker 2: means unto the ages of ages. Secular means the age
[19:25] Speaker 2: and is sometimes used to translate world like worldliness would
[19:30] Speaker 2: be secular whatever, and so it had a meaning. I mean,
[19:34] Speaker 2: for instance, in old Catholic you said you would have
[19:37] Speaker 2: two kinds of priests. You would have a priest who
[19:39] Speaker 2: was religious, and that meant he was a monk and
[19:42] Speaker 2: in holy orders like a Benedictine or something. If he
[19:47] Speaker 2: was a secular priest, it meant he belonged to the
[19:49] Speaker 2: bishop and in just his diocese, and he was not
[19:53] Speaker 2: under a religious order. I mean, those were old uses,
[19:56] Speaker 2: but the words get taken over. One of the things
[19:58] Speaker 2: that happens in the Protestant Reformation is also the rise
[20:02] Speaker 2: of the nation state. And so you have, for instance,
[20:05] Speaker 2: in the Great Protestant Catholic Settlement that ended the religious
[20:09] Speaker 2: wars in Europe, the proclamation was that the church of
[20:13] Speaker 2: an country or state would be whatever the religion was
[20:18] Speaker 2: of the prince. That if the prince was Lutheran, then
[20:21] Speaker 2: it's Lutheran. If he was Calvinist, it's if it's Catholic,
[20:25] Speaker 2: it's Catholic. But it was actually being determined by the prince,
[20:28] Speaker 2: and that was the treaty that was done. And so
[20:31] Speaker 2: you get the rise of the nation states on an
[20:34] Speaker 2: equal or even greater footing than the Church in its
[20:38] Speaker 2: radical form in England, you know, the king just declares
[20:41] Speaker 2: that he is the head of the church. Just nonsense
[20:45] Speaker 2: and heresy. And it gradually over the centuries, with the Enlightenment,
[20:49] Speaker 2: it gets reinterpreted in which it just means not religious,
[20:53] Speaker 2: like secular meaning it's not religious. And so it's easy
[20:57] Speaker 2: to see how that would get confused with atheism. And
[21:01] Speaker 2: though none of the founding fathers would have described themselves
[21:05] Speaker 2: as atheists, they all believed at least in a Unitarian God.
[21:09] Speaker 2: But you know, some of them were Christians of various sorts,
[21:12] Speaker 2: and if they had a notion of something being not religious,
[21:17] Speaker 2: they would simply have meant by that, not tied to
[21:20] Speaker 2: a particular religious confession. It's not until some decades later
[21:25] Speaker 2: the states quit having state churches, and by a state church,
[21:30] Speaker 2: yes they collected churches, was supported by taxes, you know,
[21:34] Speaker 2: But gradually, with the rise of the radical Enlightenment, you
[21:38] Speaker 2: get the notion that secular means having no religion, and
[21:42] Speaker 2: then this is really the very swift move that it's
[21:46] Speaker 2: okay for you to have religion so long as that's
[21:48] Speaker 2: your private opinion.
[21:49] Speaker 1: Yes, it's it's a compartmentalization, that's the big exactly.
[21:53] Speaker 2: And you said no religion.
[21:55] Speaker 1: I will and constantly do push back in private conversation.
[22:00] Speaker 1: Now public I don't think there's such a thing. I agree,
[22:03] Speaker 1: And so this whole concept of neutrality in the public square.
[22:08] Speaker 1: Tell me why that's not possible.
[22:10] Speaker 2: Well, everybody has, even when they are really lousy at
[22:14] Speaker 2: explaining it. Everybody has some kind of a matrix of
[22:19] Speaker 2: meaning what they think life in the world is about.
[22:26] Speaker 2: It may be very shallow, it may be many many things,
[22:29] Speaker 2: but that matrix of meaning is religious. It functions as
[22:33] Speaker 2: a religion. The word religio in Latin means to bind together.
[22:38] Speaker 2: It is your worldview is that which holds your world together.
[22:42] Speaker 2: If you have a worldview, you have a religion. My
[22:45] Speaker 2: worldview is orthodox Christianity. And I'm able to tolerate other
[22:51] Speaker 2: worldviews and recognize them for what they are, and I'm
[22:55] Speaker 2: able to have conversations, including with an atheist. I just
[22:58] Speaker 2: want him to be honest about what he's doing and
[23:01] Speaker 2: to have to admit what he's doing. It takes far
[23:03] Speaker 2: more faith to be an atheist than to be a believer.
[23:06] Speaker 1: But not just honest. This is my big thing that
[23:09] Speaker 1: I've been kind of ranting about forever. I feel like
[23:14] Speaker 1: the whole concept of you having your truth and me
[23:17] Speaker 1: having my truth. Okay, maybe if you substitute truth for belief,
[23:21] Speaker 1: that's a good thing.
[23:22] Speaker 2: But the idea that you.
[23:23] Speaker 1: Can't press somebody on their beliefs, yeah, And I don't
[23:27] Speaker 1: mean in a hostile or antagonistic way. I just can't
[23:31] Speaker 1: believe that. I feel like we're in a unique period
[23:34] Speaker 1: of human history where people aren't forced to really reconcile
[23:38] Speaker 1: the logicality of their beliefs. And you talked about like
[23:44] Speaker 1: how worldview shapes everything. When you have these beliefs that
[23:50] Speaker 1: are so cognitively dissonant, it's no wonder that we're living
[23:54] Speaker 1: in times that are frenetic and chaotic.
[23:57] Speaker 2: Yep. Well, the notion that we all have our own
[24:01] Speaker 2: truth is really a rhetorical move. It's it's not actually,
[24:06] Speaker 2: I mean, logically it can't be. It can't be. So
[24:09] Speaker 2: truth is truth, and it may be that you and
[24:11] Speaker 2: I neither one know the truth. But the truth is
[24:15] Speaker 2: it has a substance. Something is true or it's not true,
[24:22] Speaker 2: but it's a It's a very cute rhetorical move to
[24:27] Speaker 2: say you have your truth and I have mine, and
[24:29] Speaker 2: therefore your mean and bad if you challenge my truth.
[24:33] Speaker 2: That's what that's about. And essentially one of the things
[24:37] Speaker 2: was interesting. When I was studying at Duke. The Marxists
[24:40] Speaker 2: were in their early forms there. This was already happening
[24:44] Speaker 2: in Anglican seminaries, has now spread to all of the mainline,
[24:47] Speaker 2: the old fashioned mainline denominations. You cannot write a paper
[24:53] Speaker 2: and refer to God as he, You must say he
[24:58] Speaker 2: slashed sheet. At least there were professors, I mean at
[25:01] Speaker 2: Duke Divinity. I was not at Duke Divinity, but at
[25:04] Speaker 2: Duke Divinity that was already the rules. And this was
[25:06] Speaker 2: in the late nineteen eighties when I was there. But
[25:08] Speaker 2: I told there was one professor I wanted to study under,
[25:11] Speaker 2: but she required the he she language, and I thought,
[25:14] Speaker 2: nobody can make me write heresy. I won't do it. Sorry,
[25:18] Speaker 2: just can't do it, Not for you, not for anybody.
[25:21] Speaker 2: No course is worth going to hell for so anyway,
[25:23] Speaker 2: no matter how good it is. But it was a
[25:25] Speaker 2: Marxist rhetorical movement. One of the things that was going
[25:28] Speaker 2: on when we were there was actually studying rhetoric, how
[25:30] Speaker 2: rhetoric is used, how arguments are formed and fashioned, and
[25:34] Speaker 2: Marxist rhetoric, not just the economic ideas, but Marxist rhetoric.
[25:38] Speaker 2: How to deconstruct deconstruction is a Marxist ideology, How to
[25:43] Speaker 2: deconstruct the ideas of your opponents, to take them apart
[25:46] Speaker 2: so that your opponent has nowhere to stand. I think
[25:49] Speaker 2: Jonathan Pajoe has something about deconstructing the deconstructionists, or how
[25:55] Speaker 2: to turn postmodernity on its head, and that's a good thing.
[25:58] Speaker 2: That was one of the things I was learning when
[25:59] Speaker 2: I was there. Began realizing that actually Orthodoxy can do
[26:03] Speaker 2: this because Orthodoxy is not born in modernity. It's very
[26:08] Speaker 2: pre modern. And if you're immersed in the Fathers, they
[26:12] Speaker 2: have a worldview that is not formed in shape by
[26:16] Speaker 2: the Reformation or the counter Reformation, is formed in shape
[26:20] Speaker 2: where none of those things were going on. And so
[26:23] Speaker 2: it's good in some ways to learn to be more
[26:28] Speaker 2: and more immersed in our Orthodox faith. Because it'll help
[26:30] Speaker 2: its way to detox from the modern world. Just use
[26:34] Speaker 2: another notion, the detox from the modern world, as in secutor.
[26:39] Speaker 2: That's not our word. Yeah. Secutarism is a heresy. Heaven
[26:45] Speaker 2: and Earth are full of Thy glory. There is nothing
[26:48] Speaker 2: that exists that does not belong to God. Nothing can
[26:53] Speaker 2: exist that does it belong to God. We believe that
[26:56] Speaker 2: everything that does exist is upheld in his exis distance
[27:00] Speaker 2: by God. Even the devil is upheld in his existence
[27:05] Speaker 2: by God. Nothing is self existence. In fact, just to
[27:09] Speaker 2: scandalize your listeners, we believe not only is the devil
[27:12] Speaker 2: maintained in his existence by God, but that the devil,
[27:16] Speaker 2: by nature is good. There are no evil natures. The
[27:23] Speaker 2: nature of a thing is the thing. He has so
[27:26] Speaker 2: warped his will that he acts contrary to his own nature.
[27:31] Speaker 2: In fact, he hates his own existence. As the scripture says,
[27:35] Speaker 2: he was a murderer from the beginning. Doesn't mean he
[27:38] Speaker 2: was created a murderer. It means from the earliest times
[27:41] Speaker 2: he perverted himself into a murderer. He hates our existence. God,
[27:46] Speaker 2: we say, is the author of our being. He hates
[27:50] Speaker 2: our being. He hates his own being. He's the enemy
[27:54] Speaker 2: of God. He's the enemy of being. And if you will,
[27:57] Speaker 2: one of his tortures is he can't make you self
[28:00] Speaker 2: not exists, because existence is God's gift. You and I.
[28:06] Speaker 2: A person could attempt to kill themselves, but they can't
[28:10] Speaker 2: make themselves not exist. You can change you know, you
[28:15] Speaker 2: can change your address from here to there, which you
[28:18] Speaker 2: can't make yourself not exist. Existence is God's gift to us,
[28:22] Speaker 2: and he does not take back what he has given.
[28:26] Speaker 2: It is his own free gift to us. And so
[28:28] Speaker 2: the secutive world, there's no such thing. There's God's world
[28:32] Speaker 2: what we have. And this is for instance, here's another
[28:34] Speaker 2: heresy of America. America says that essentially that the right
[28:40] Speaker 2: of the state comes from the consent of the governed,
[28:44] Speaker 2: that's the authority, and the power of the state comes
[28:47] Speaker 2: from the and so the notion that it gets at
[28:50] Speaker 2: state its power from the people, that's not true. It
[28:54] Speaker 2: cannot be true. You and I have no power to
[28:56] Speaker 2: give to the state. All authority is from God. All
[29:00] Speaker 2: authority is from God. We have a mechanism in which
[29:06] Speaker 2: we rotate our authorities through a process we call democracy
[29:11] Speaker 2: or whatever it is. That as badly as it works,
[29:14] Speaker 2: but it's still just authority, that's all it is. And
[29:17] Speaker 2: if you had a king and we were governed by
[29:19] Speaker 2: a king, if you had an ayatola and you're governed
[29:21] Speaker 2: by an ayahtola, authority is just a authority. And the
[29:27] Speaker 2: problem is is that authority has a kind of divine
[29:30] Speaker 2: character about it. And in America, I hear this all
[29:34] Speaker 2: the time. People will say things like that they believe
[29:37] Speaker 2: in America out to tell people you shouldn't believe in America.
[29:42] Speaker 2: You believe in God, you don't believe in countries. Countries
[29:47] Speaker 2: are not objects of faith. God is the object of faith.
[29:51] Speaker 2: You know. We pray for this country, we submit to
[29:54] Speaker 2: its laws, we elect its leaders, we participate in it,
[29:58] Speaker 2: we debate in it, we do all of those things.
[30:01] Speaker 2: But it is not God. And the problem is that
[30:03] Speaker 2: the state has this authority, this sort of ara of
[30:07] Speaker 2: God about it. And in a world that has described secularly,
[30:11] Speaker 2: we can't talk about this thing very well. And if
[30:15] Speaker 2: you can't name it, you can't talk about it. And
[30:18] Speaker 2: we've gotten rid of the names for these divine things,
[30:22] Speaker 2: and I mean.
[30:23] Speaker 1: Or we've relegated them to abstractions. Why is God as
[30:26] Speaker 1: an idea, no God at all, and why does it
[30:29] Speaker 1: lead to practical atheism or what you call Christian atheism.
[30:34] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just because God is an idea to make believe.
[30:37] Speaker 2: Whose idea is it? It's your idea, you made it up.
[30:40] Speaker 2: Father Maximus Constants one of the best authorities on Saint
[30:44] Speaker 2: Maximus's confessor written a number of books and translated a
[30:47] Speaker 2: lot of his stuff. But he said that we only
[30:49] Speaker 2: know something by contradiction, as in, if it's just my
[30:54] Speaker 2: idea is sort of just an extension of my thinking.
[30:58] Speaker 2: It's only when my idea runs up into something that
[31:01] Speaker 2: it didn't think. If you will, that contradicts it, that
[31:05] Speaker 2: I am perceiving something and I'm dealing with something. Otherwise,
[31:09] Speaker 2: I'm just in a dream world. That you need a God.
[31:12] Speaker 2: I mean, if God is real and true, I know
[31:16] Speaker 2: him by contradiction. Is well. The old timer's an AA
[31:20] Speaker 2: once said, the only thing you need to know about
[31:22] Speaker 2: God is you're not him. That's a place to start.
[31:26] Speaker 2: You're not him. I need a God who can contradict me.
[31:29] Speaker 2: I need a God who can bring me up short.
[31:32] Speaker 2: I need a God who I see his commandments and
[31:36] Speaker 2: his commandments. I would say his commandments revealed to me
[31:39] Speaker 2: who I am. But that's because he sees me in
[31:42] Speaker 2: a way that I don't. There's a need that's imaginary.
[31:46] Speaker 2: My idea of me, and the idea of me is
[31:49] Speaker 2: also doesn't exist. It's not me that's make believe. And
[31:54] Speaker 2: I would go into my more recent book and say,
[31:56] Speaker 2: and most of it's built out of images driven by shame,
[32:00] Speaker 2: and it is in fact. But to know be you can't.
[32:04] Speaker 2: We know Jesus face to face. So one of my
[32:06] Speaker 2: corrections I would make of evangelicals, it's not a personal relationship.
[32:10] Speaker 2: We want. We want a face to face relationship to
[32:14] Speaker 2: know the glory of God. In the face of Jesus Christ.
[32:18] Speaker 2: I see God face to face in Christ, and in
[32:21] Speaker 2: seeing Christ, I see me. It's Christ who makes himself known.
[32:26] Speaker 2: But it's also Christ who makes me known to me.
[32:30] Speaker 2: So I would say, we only know ourselves as we
[32:33] Speaker 2: know ourselves in Christ. And that's a slow revelation. I
[32:37] Speaker 2: has not seen here, has not or has it entered
[32:40] Speaker 2: into the mind of man. The good things God has
[32:42] Speaker 2: prepared for those who love Him, and those are being
[32:45] Speaker 2: revealed to us face to face in the face of
[32:48] Speaker 2: Jesus Christ. Somehow another. It seems better than personal. When
[32:51] Speaker 2: people say personal relationship with Jesus, I think oftentimes they've
[32:55] Speaker 2: got a lot of imaginary stuff in it, you know,
[32:58] Speaker 2: and it's kind of like Jesus as my secret friend,
[33:01] Speaker 2: you know, like a child's little secret friend, their imaginary friend.
[33:05] Speaker 2: And instead, you know, as an Orthodox Christians, you come
[33:08] Speaker 2: into church and you look at him. There he is,
[33:11] Speaker 2: face to face, he sees me. I see him. I
[33:15] Speaker 2: look at him. I pray I see him, you know.
[33:19] Speaker 2: And I would extend that the fathers of the Seventh
[33:22] Speaker 2: Council said, the icons do with color what scripture does
[33:26] Speaker 2: with words, And so I mean, who is it Jesus
[33:31] Speaker 2: face to face that I see. I'd go back to
[33:33] Speaker 2: the gospels. Who is this? Who is this? I volunteered
[33:38] Speaker 2: for a while, I'll call on drug treatment program, working
[33:42] Speaker 2: with people going through it, on the spirituality of recovery.
[33:46] Speaker 2: And this was in These were people mostly there by
[33:50] Speaker 2: the order of a judge. So these were poor people
[33:52] Speaker 2: who couldn't afford fancy twenty eight day programs, and a
[33:57] Speaker 2: lot of them this was East Tennessee, so a lot
[33:59] Speaker 2: of them come out of you know, kind of poor
[34:02] Speaker 2: Protestant backgrounds and they'd heard a lot of angry God
[34:05] Speaker 2: stuff preached out them. I would take them to the
[34:08] Speaker 2: eighth chapter of John and we would go through the
[34:12] Speaker 2: story of the woman taking an adultery. We would look
[34:16] Speaker 2: at the story as well of the prodigal son, and
[34:20] Speaker 2: we go through these just trying to talk to them
[34:22] Speaker 2: about who God is. You know, this imagery, this woman
[34:27] Speaker 2: caught in the act of adultery, so I've always imagined
[34:30] Speaker 2: you're sort of naked and sweaty. They drug her out
[34:33] Speaker 2: into the street and they're having a guys are having
[34:36] Speaker 2: a great time with this one, you know, and dragging
[34:38] Speaker 2: her out in front of Jesus and wanting to throw stones.
[34:41] Speaker 2: They're just, you know, how awful. What does Jesus do?
[34:44] Speaker 2: I mean, he covers her first off, from the accusations,
[34:51] Speaker 2: the accusations, he has refuted them with his words, and
[34:55] Speaker 2: they go away, and he says, woman, where are your
[34:59] Speaker 2: accusers are A where of those who did condemn you? Whatever?
[35:02] Speaker 2: And he says, then neither do I condemn you. And
[35:04] Speaker 2: that's not Jesus saying adultery is okay, that's not even
[35:08] Speaker 2: a question. It's not even a question. The question is
[35:12] Speaker 2: is Jesus lover. Can she be reconciled to God? Is
[35:18] Speaker 2: she a child of Abraham? Does she belong to the
[35:22] Speaker 2: people of God? To that? And then he says to her,
[35:24] Speaker 2: go and send no more, you know. And he doesn't
[35:27] Speaker 2: say or I'll come back, you know, and I'll roast you,
[35:31] Speaker 2: and YadA, YadA, YadA. I mean this is but anyway
[35:34] Speaker 2: I can remember teaching this with these groups and to
[35:37] Speaker 2: be people just tears running down their cheeks because somehow
[35:39] Speaker 2: another they had never heard that, they had never heard
[35:44] Speaker 2: the gospel of a good God who loves mankind. They
[35:49] Speaker 2: had just never heard it.
[35:53] Speaker 1: That was a preview of commitment to reality. To continue listening,
[35:59] Speaker 1: open your POW podcast app and search for commitment to reality.
[36:03] Speaker 1: To follow along for the rest of this conversation and
[36:06] Speaker 1: more just like it. I hope you'll join us for
[36:10] Speaker 1: the journey as we continue making a commitment to reality

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