Truth Unites - Get To Know Suan Sonna

Episode Date: November 28, 2021

Suan Sonna has become a friend of mine since our debate on the papacy at  Capturing Christianity. He is a brilliant and kind young Catholic  apologist. I found it fascinating to pick his brain about his life,  faith, intellectual development, and theological insights. My favorite  quote came from 53:32: "God is such a deep mystery, and it's a mystery  that never stops giving." Beautiful!  Subscribe to Suan's YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCNjkpXEwIdH-jD8mPJwu_g Truth Unites is a mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

Hey everybody, welcome or welcome back to my channel. Truth Unites is a place for theology and apologetics done in an ironic way. I mean aiming for peace. And I'm really excited to be talking with Swan Sana. I'm going to put a link to his YouTube channel in the video description and encourage people to subscribe. And we're just going to do a fun kind of getting to know Swan. I'm really interested just to hear about your past and your interests and your thought process on so many of these things. So I mentioned your YouTube channel, Intellectual Conservatism. I was curious, what led you to that name? Well, Gavin, thank you for having me on. And once again, you know, I had you on my channel to get to know you more. And ever since our debate on captioned Christianity, I think that we've had a budding friendship.

And so I appreciate that. So the name intellectual conservatism, it arose from my time in high school. So when I was in high school, I had like this weird period where I was a progressive, liberal, democratic socialist. And, you know, I was really hardcore on the Bernie train, 2016, you know, it was a very polarizing time. And I decided to side with all my friends. And so I grew up thinking like, yeah, the liberals are the smart ones. And the conservatives are crazy. They're all, you know, like these right wingers, like, you know, pro Trump and all that. And then as time passed, I started contemplating more the commitments of my Christian faith,

especially on the issues of marriage and abortion. And the more I studied the Bible, and I just tried to do so as honestly as possible, I started realizing that I don't know if I can justify anything but traditional marriage as the union of one man and one woman from the scriptures. And this caused me a lot of, let's say, existential dread, because I started wondering, wait, if I believe this, then what happens to my friendships? What happens to all of the progressives that I've been leading, all the demonstrations I I've done, you know, in favor of one candidate over another. And I remember I talked to my grandmother, my adopted grandmother. So since I grew up in the United States, I didn't have my bylaw to grandparents. I had people who were kind of in the Baptist Church as my grandparents. And she told me a story about my deceased grandfather. And my deceased grandfather, his name was David. And he would take care of this homeless guy who was also homosexual.

and, you know, he would treat him with Christian compassion. He would tell him when he would ask what the scriptures teach, but he did so in such a way that this person knew that they could come to him and find hope, find compassion, find love. And so because of my grandfather's example, I wanted to live a life that has truth and grace. I don't want to compromise truth in order to appear compassionate in order to be accepted and loved by the world, because first and foremost I care about, am I obeying Christ? Because Christ comes first before all things. And so because of my grandfather's example, I finally decided, okay, I can't be progressive anymore because I believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.

I believe it from the scriptures. I'm pro-life. I believe in the dignity of children. You know, I remember when I was still kind of, you know, teetering between being progressive or conservative, I talked to my liberal friends. And I'd ask them, wait, so are we really really? Do we really believe that not all human beings are persons? Do we really like, you know, because I grew up in the tradition that said, everyone has intrinsic moral value by virtue of being human. And that was it, full stop.

You don't have to, you know, be so wealthy. You don't have to be a man or a woman. You don't have to be so cognitively developed or impaired. It's by virtue of being human that you have value. And they actually were troubled by this, some of them. And, you know, we've been, you know, we've been told, okay, being pro-life is anti-woman. You have to be pro-choice to respect the autonomy of women. Don't force your hands on women's bodies and so and so forth.

And then I realized, okay, the whole narrative that I've grown up on is wrong. Being pro-life is being pro-woman. You know, and we have to, as men, make that sacrifice. We can't just abandon women. And so as time passed, I realized that I just couldn't be liberal anymore. And I entered this kind of spiritual waste. where I'm like, man, but I'm liberal now. I mean, I'm conservative.

All my liberal friends have left me. God, what's going on here? And then I ran across the work of Sir Roger Scruton, who's a famous British conservative philosopher. And, you know, he had a documentary called Why Beauty Matters. And in that documentary, he spoke about beauty and poetry and architecture in a way that was just so profound for me. And he talked about how, you know, our Christian. inheritance gave us so much beauty in the world because, you know, our Christian ancestors, they saw that the world was enchanted. It was beautiful. It was brimming with the spirit.

You know, ordinary material things had the power to confer grace. Like there was this whole enchanted view of the world. And so I realized, you know, reading more people like Sir Robert Scruton, reading people like Robert George who helped explain why the traditional view on marriage is not just, you know, biblical, but also intellectually correct. All these, you know, thinkers made me realize that, okay, there is something intellectual to conservatism, and I want to be that curator of bringing the best material together. And so that's why I called it intellectual conservatism. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. And I forgot to say earlier, thanks for having me on your channel. You kind of initiated this, you know, getting to know each other kind of thing, and I love doing it.

And I'm grateful to be friends. And I've learned a lot from, from you as I listen, both your arguments, your great work, but also your sincerity and kindness. So this is a lot of fun. And I'm, it's fascinating to hear your journey there. So in terms of theology, how did your interest in theology as opposed to sort of just, you know, more conservative worldview in general? Where did that begin? Was that early on in your life? Because obviously now, it's clear you have a great interest in biblical scholarship and theology. How did that start for you? Yeah, I mean, that's a good question. So, you know, when I was a kid, I remembered when I was in elementary school and I had friends who had asking me, why are you Christian? And they would bring up questions like, but doesn't it seem kind of dumb to have all of humanity doomed because some guy and some girl ate an apple or something like that? You know, they'd ask me these questions. And at a young age, I was being pressed and I was like, yeah, I want to know the answers to these questions. I don't want to just be, you know, this kind of Crayola Crown Christian, you know, just kind of in the basics, but not getting into the advanced things.

And so, you know, I'd show up to the adult Wednesday night Bible studies. I'd show up to all these things. I wanted to get the answers. So as time passed, eventually there was that explosion of apologetics, I think, in the early 2000s, especially with like William Lang Craig debating Christopher Hitchens and was it Michael O'Connor debating Shabir Ali, like, you know, these big moments in Christian apologetics. And the more I learned about these things, the more I realized that, wow, I'm really interested in the question of where do we get the Bible from? Because for me, scripture is so important.

And so I wanted to know, you know, kind of the human dimension, right? So here I have, you know, my books of the Bible, but where do these come from? Or what's the context? And I remember, you know, when I listened to Shabir Ali, you know, debate Christians or listen to other Muslim objections to Christianity, especially when I'd watch the videos like Nabil Qureshi. There are these questions about like, what are, what is like, did the gospels evolve over time? And so you start off with a Jesus who isn't divine, but by the end of the gospel, John, you have a divine Jesus. or was there divinity in Christ in the very gospel of Mark?

Was it there in the earliest Christian liturgical practices? What do we know from the earliest sources? And so from a very young age, I was interested in those debates. And also it helped that my dad was, you know, it was at that time a seminarian. And so he had all these theology books and commentaries lying around. Okay, fascinating. So you mentioned William Lane, Craig. I've heard you talk in Mike Likona, these Christian apologists, maybe you could

a little more about kind of how did they influence you? What was that phase like as you're learning from them? Oh, I mean, it was so exciting because, you know, it was the first time I've ever really heard anybody make an argument for God. You know, growing up, you'd hear people say like, oh, well, I believe that God exists because look at the beauty of a rose. And I'm like, okay, you know, like not to downplay people who, I mean, I think beauty is a strong argument for God, right? But, you know, or people would bring up like religious experiences. And I'm like, yeah, I mean, so that works really well for you. But, you know, I had Muslim friends. I had, you know, other people, non-religious friends who claimed to have experiences that either entail the existence of God or negated the existence of God. And so I kind of saw that there's a lot of, like, you know, slippery room here.

I needed something more airtight. And so the first argument for the existence of God that I learned was actually the Kalam cosmological argument, you know, whatever begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist, therefore the universe has a cause. So I learned that from Bill Craig. And then the other argument I learned, aside from the fine-tuning argument, was the argument for the resurrection of Jesus by Gary Habermas and Mike Lekona. And reading that book was just incredible. You know, it was the first time that I'd seen somebody make an argument for a historical event in the Bible and especially the most quintessential one, the resurrection of Jesus. And so, yeah, those two thinkers had a huge influence on me.

And even today, a lot of my arguments, you know, they kind of, they've noticed that a lot of my arguments have like a minimal fact structure where I try to go to, like, what's some fact that everybody agrees on? Or what do the scholars, what are they in consensus on? And I realized, wow, okay, so that's Mike Lacona in the back of my head still working. Yeah, it's always the mark of a good professor is when you're doing something later on and you can hear their voice in your head. You think, okay, they did influence me that. So what time frame is this? I mean, are we talking like high school or something like that? Yeah, so the story is not like, it's not nice and straightforward, but But, you know, when I was in elementary school, right, I'm having people ask me the questions.

In middle school, I wrestle a lot more of the existential stuff with God. You know, like, what's my purpose in life? What's the meaning of life? What if there isn't a God? And then when I get into high school, I start diving more into obviously the deeper apologetic stuff, the needy things. Like, you know, is the theory of evolution correct? Did the universe begin to exist? Is the Borg-Guth-Wil-Lenkin theorem enough to prove the beginning of the universe and all these other things?

and all these other things, you know. So I'd say high school is about the time when it really matured, although I had this weird detour, as I explained before, where I started going progressive liberal. And I don't know how it came about. I think it's just like I was so deep in the books. And then I saw like my really intelligent friends, they're all liberal. And so I'm like, oh, of course I'm like a smart guy, you know.

So I'm going to be like them. And eventually I got this weird hybrid and I didn't see it until about 2016. Wait a minute. There's something wrong here. Right, right, right. Okay, interesting. Was your Christian face? intact for that whole period of time or were there periods where you walked away from the faith

or was your faith solid that whole time? So I had ups and downs and I think this is probably, you know, common for a lot of people. When I was in middle school, you know, I was dealing with like, you know, finally growing up, right? And so I had some, you know, some questions about like, man, does God love me? You know, those types of deep emotional questions. But I'd say that the most intense period of doubt was during my sophomore year of high school. During my sophomore year of high school, my adopted grandmother and my adopted grandfather had died relatively close to each other. And so the experience of one dying through cancer, one dying through a stroke was just really traumatic for me.

And it got me questioning the goodness of God. And I even described this, you know, I have an article on Joshua Swami Das' page, Peaceful Science, about how William Lane Craig schooled me on evolution. and it was during this time that I started questioning the goodness of God because of natural evil. And what didn't help was that, you know, on my debate and forensics team, I had this very intelligent guy who later went to Harvard. And he began posing the problem of natural evil to me. But he also began, like, pressing me in the Old Testament, the violence of God, the conquest of the Canaanites. And, you know, it's just like, I'm just getting battered left and right. And I'm just like, I don't know what to do with these questions.

And so I finally declare I'm agnostic. I write to William Lane Craig and I tell him, hey Craig, you know, you help me all this way here, but the problem of natural evil, you know, the history of life is just full of evil and suffering and death. I can't do this anymore. And lo and behold, eventually William Lane Craig responds to my objection and he just rips me apart. And it's pretty embarrassing, but it's kind of funny, looking back on it. But yeah, I mean, it's just brilliant, you know, and I message Craig on Facebook Messenger. And I'm like, hey, Craig, you know, some time has passed. and I realized that maybe being agnostic wasn't the best decision.

So could you make me anonymous? So I asked him to I kind of mark out my name and everything. But yeah, Dr. Craig helped me a lot because he helped me reconstruct my faith. And he helped me see like, okay, what's the, what's a healthier way, you know, to approach these doubts? And obviously, like when you're going through doubt, you feel like you're being beat up left and right. Every time you see it, you know, some hope, like a ray of sunlight, it's being smacked, you know, shut. And so having the friendship of a Dr. Craig, having some annoying nights with Gary Habermass, where I just email him. And I'm sure, like, I feel like I badgered the poor man with just a bunch of emails with all my questions.

Eventually, he sent me to talk to one of his doctoral students about these questions. And, you know, I wrestled with these questions for months and months and I think even a few years. But as time passed, the doubt just stopped hurting so bad. And then I eventually was able to come to terms of everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's impressive how deeply you've thought through so many of these complicated things starting in such younger years. When I was in junior high and high school, I wasn't thinking about email and Dr. Craig and that kind of thing. So in a second, I want to ask about kind of future where your studies and your plans are. But just real quick, before we leave the problem of natural evil, because I think we mentioned this in our last video as well. But I'd be curious if you could just kind of frame kind of what that is and then maybe some of the content of what you arrived upon that helped you through that. Yeah, that's a good question. So, I mean, the problem of natural evil is distinct from the problem of moral evil, right? So, you know, we can point to examples here and there of people

who have done morally horrendous things, a serial killer, Hitler, you name them. And the question is, how could a good God create a world knowing that these things would happen? Like, what justification could you possibly give? And so when a Christian engaged, in that kind of justification, it's called the odyssey. Now, I think with the problem of moral evil, I think that there are plenty of good theodysies, like the free will theodyses, soul building, and so on so forth. But I also think that because you have an agent that is not God, you have a fallen human moral agent, I feel like the blame should be focused on the fallen moral agent and not on God. I mean, you know, I feel like that's just kind of like misplacing your agents,

so to speak, or misplacing the blame. And so obviously, you know, the, I found it easier to deal with the problem morally. Now, the problem of natural evil is different. Because what other agent could you blame except God because he's the one who created the natural world, right? I mean, there are some problems of natural evil. Like, for instance, if you, you know, if you like continue, let's say not taking care of the pipes in a city and then eventually you have lead poisoning in a neighborhood, technically that's a natural evil, but it's obviously connected back to a moral agent. But I mean, you know, take other things that commonly happen in nature like tornadoes, lightning strikes, a forest burning, a fawn dying, right? These sorts of things. Or diseases like cancer or strokes happening in animals. Or just how the history of life and with the theory of evolution just seems so messy and built upon death and death and death and suffering and violence and brutality, you know, and all these other examples. And so how did I come to deal with these problems? Well, for a while I consider.

Younger of Creationism. Because with Younger with creationism, I mean, you have this nice, neat story. Like, everything was good. And then you have the moral agent Adam and Eve to blame for everything, right? And then that's how you get to the problem of natural evil. But I mean, even then, I thought, like, you know, causing natural evil after Adam and Eve for their moral evil, that kind of seemed overkill to me, right? But when I started approaching, and so this gets into the whole issue about my views on

Adam and Eve. And so I believe in historical Adam and Eve. I don't believe in a literal six-day creation period, but that's a whole other topic. And that's got me in the grill for a little bit with some of my fans online. But anyway, I think the first thing that I did was I think I read the problem of pain by C.S. Lewis. And in there, he talks about animal suffering. And he basically says, look, we are human beings. And we receive revelation as human beings, right? And even God comes into the world as a human being. And so, look, Lewis relies upon, you know, the moral theodices working, the theodices for moral evil. But he says, look, we don't know about animals, because we're not animals like the other animals. And so maybe there is a reason, but it's okay

if God doesn't tell us, because that's not our dimension. So then as time passed, I thought about, okay, but then what about the evil and suffering and death in the world, right? And then I look back at William Lane Craig's answer. And Craig's answer on his website, was that what if God created the world anticipating the fall of man? And so rather than having the fall of man kind of just throw everything out of whack, so to speak, God already knew that it was going to happen. And so he creates this small paradise called Eden to kind of play out the drama of how human beings are supposed to live with him. But upon seeing the failure of Adam and Eve, you know, the greatest human beings that were created to represent all of us before God, they fail.

And so, you know, God sends them out of the garden and they see the reality of the world that had anticipated their evil and suffering, or the equal that they would commit. And so, you know, I looked at these various kinds of answers and even, you know, like for instance, what about cancer and all these other things? And I just realized that, you know, these, obviously these are difficult questions, but I think the more appropriate answer is just to be there with the person who's suffering and dying. because look, I find the arguments for God incredibly convincing. And in the person of Jesus Christ, I find the most powerful demonstration of a God who loves us, who wants to heal us, right? And if he doesn't heal everybody, then I trust that he has reasons, right? And so what I'm basically saying is I don't have a full answer for the problem of natural evil,

but I believe I have so many good reasons to trust in God. and I've also seen people in my life die so gracefully with Christ, you know, when they're in the midst of cancer or terrible pain, but they have Jesus. It makes the difference entirely. And so I'm like, look, there's something here that's got to be true. That's got to be working for these people. The other alternative is that there's no God that this is everything, this is, you know, this is the end of human life. Cancer was there from the, you know, you know, cancer is there. There's no answer.

There's no final way for it to all be dealt with. And so, you know, even like the practical arguments, for instance, Marilyn McCourt Adams and even Liz Jackson has used these arguments. But like, you look, the problem of evil should lead us to believe in God because when we look at evil, whether it's natural or moral, we want a solution. But you and I, Gavin, aren't big enough to solve the problem. There's only one person who is, and that's Jesus. And so why would we throw out our only kind of escape hatch, so to speak? Why would we cut the branch that we need in order to make it through this world? And so to me, those arguments made a lot of sense.

And over time, you know, I've read other books like Nature, Red and Tooth and Claw by Michael Murray. Or I think that's Michael J. Corey. Another, or Michael Moray. And then there was another one like Evolution, Problem, Natural Evil by Michael A. Corey. Sorry, I'm getting my authors mixed up my Michaels. But, you know, these books are dense and they talk about laws of nature, fine-tuning. And I started realizing that, yeah, these are huge questions. And so I don't think that, you know, there's an easy answer.

it. Right, right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, but that's a good answer. I'm sure that will be helpful for people who are thinking about that. So what are your, what's your current work and what are your future goals in terms of study? I'm really curious to kind of hear about where your head is at in terms of what you're looking ahead to in terms of where you want to focus your energies. Yeah, so my current studies are focusing on obviously, okay, so I'm really interested in the authority structures of the time of the New Testament. and eventually what they develop into, right, in the history of the church, eventually the mon episcopacy. I'm interested in the legitimacy of this development, the structure of the early church,

and then I'm also interested in Jesus' status as the Messiah in the context of Israel. So, you know, for instance, I've dealt with the argument that, well, it seems as if in the Old Testament God used an institution that is the courts created through Moses to interpret the Torah definitively for the children of Israel. and it seems as if God operates in this way. And so Jesus as the new Moses, you know, he's going to do things like Moses, precisely because that's what Moses prophesied in Deuteronomy 1815. A prophet like me will arise from among you, my countrymen. And so, you know, I made the argument that, well,

Jesus as the new Moses seems to have continued and not destroyed the court structure of Israel. And so I've been interested in the intersection between Christianity and rabbinic Judaism, Second Temple Judaism and Christianity. You know, that's kind of the broad area of study, especially, you know, I think church structure, ecclesiology would be the appropriate way to bracket all that. In terms of future study, I plan on becoming a Dominican prior, and so I'm going to join a religious order probably as soon as I grad upon graduation, you know, I'll eventually join. And I intend to study, you know, to mystic philosophy and theology with them. and then eventually further hone in my work on the papacy in a New Testament. Okay, fascinating.

Okay, very cool. Well, we did our debate, and I know you've been involved in other dialogues with not just Protestants, but Eastern Orthodox Christians and other others. Sometimes those dialogues go well, sometimes they don't, unfortunately. What do you think are the factors that help them go well? Like, in your mind, what does a productive dialogue or debate look like between, let's say, between Catholic and Protestant as we've had? I'd just be curious because, unfortunately, many times, you know, it can go better in some cases than others. And it's worth reflecting upon how do we do that well?

Because it's not easy to do well. So I'm curious for your thoughts about that. Yeah, well, I think that I think it's important to remember that, you know, arguments or debates or conversations, if they're not aimed at truth, then there's no point, right? And so I think the first thing we all have to do is discern, you know, with the opponent that we're going to discuss with, are you really interested in truth or just your ego, you know, just get scoring some points and then escaping, you know, a hit and run kind of deal. And so, you know, when we're discussing something or arguing, what we desire is oneness with each other. and that oneness that unity has to be located on the truth. And so in reality, right, if you have a on onness based on truth, then you have to have love.

And so in the process, like when I'm arguing, you're discussing with somebody, not only do I have to convince them that I think I have the truth, but I also have to be willing to say, oh, but you might have something, Gavin, that's going to make me a better thinker. You know, I have to believe that you have my best interest at heart. I have to believe, Gavin, that you love me and I have to convince you, not only my argument, but that I love you as well. And so unless we have that bridge, that we don't have the freedom to really communicate with each other. Right. Like if I if I'm like trying to defeat you, Gavin, and you make a good point and I'm just then I can't admit that or else then you know, that that deflates my whole purpose, my whole ego going into the conversation. So what makes a good conversation is that when it's based on truth and it exhibits, you know, these intellectual virtues. And I think it's so

important because we often talk about moral virtues like courage, fortitude, you know, justice and all these other things. But we also need to have intellectual virtues. Like, for instance, intellectual empathy, right? So I need to be able to kind of learn your position well enough to see the world from your eyes and then be able to use my perspective to kind of, you know, fine-tune that perspective. I need to have intellectual patience, right? So suppose that maybe I'm not getting myself clearly across. I can't get frustrated and then channel that frustration on you. You know, there are all these other intellectual virtues that you have to consider. And so I think that if people went into conversations, loving the other person that they're talking to and they're aiming at truth, then naturally the other intellectual virtues follow.

Right. So you don't interrupt somebody else. You want to hear the other person out. You don't straw man. Like all these other things, they naturally fall together. Yeah. Oh, that's really good. Do you have thoughts about debates versus dialogues?

Because some people I've heard say, and I totally understand if it's a personal choice, if someone says, well, I prefer to do a dialogue than a debate, that kind of thing. Some people, I know, say we shouldn't do debates. We should only do dialogues. And I tend to think, well, there's space for all kinds of different things. But how do you approach that yourself? Do you think there's place for both debate and dialogue? You know, well, it depends on what you mean by debate, right?

So, you know, I did debate from middle school to high school. And for the most part, you know, it was pretty civil. There were times, though, like, it's funny because, you know, I did this event called policy debate. And so in policy debate, you have a partner, and it's very structured, seven-minute opening statements, seven-minute opening statements, and then you have these rebuttals that are five minutes and then closing statements, right? And eventually it's at a point, like, because it's too structured and it's so rigid, you know, you're panicking. if the person goes on too long or is introducing nuance, and you're like, no, I have to use my three minutes of cross-ex to nail you as quickly as possible or else I'm going to lose the round and so on so forth, right? So I noticed that like when a structure of a debate is too rigid, like, you know,

for instance, it says like, you know, say you have 15-minute opening statements, five-minute rebuttals, 10 minutes cross-examination, three minutes, closing statements, right? And then maybe whatever after that, it gets really nasty. because people are trying to cram with time and they're panicking. So at some point, people are going to complain, well, oh, it's just the person of the best time management skills who's going to win or something like that. Whereas with a dialogue, you know, I think dialogues are great,

but there's something that, you know, I mean, suppose that it's just like a 90-minute conversation. At some point, like, you know, there's so many points there are brought up that it gets disorganized and some points get casually dropped. For me, I don't like that. I like very organized kind of point-by-point response. And so I think the best marriage is like the best marriage is to bring the two together, right? So you know, you might maybe have 20 minute opening statements. You have the dialogue and then you

have five minute closing statements, right? Something like that. That's the preferred structure for me. Yeah, yeah. That's very interesting. That's cool. Yeah. And I love what you're saying about intellectual virtues. Oh, man, that is I really agree with you. I feel so strongly about that. And I don't know what you think. But to me, it just seems like in our culture right now that's especially important because so often the reigning models that we see out there are not practicing patience and charity and so forth so thanks for all of that and then so with that I think a lot of a lot of us recognize so often these dialogues and debates produce heat rather than light yeah so we want to produce light we want to produce clarity you know so in the spirit

of that what are some things or maybe just one thing that you think Protestants can better understand about Catholics. And you've been in both worlds, so maybe you can speak to well. Yeah, yeah, that's a good question. I think the biggest thing that I learned about Catholicism is that it is so Christocentric. And I think a lot of times people think, oh, but you've got the statues of Mary and the saints in your church. You do prayers to the blessed mother. Like, well, how can you be Christocentric? And I think what I realize is that, you know, the reason why, you know, for instance, there's veneration of the Blessed Mother is because we believe certain things about Christ that bleed over into the other people that he loved. You know, I think about Christ is kind of like this light, okay? And so if other things are in the presence of this light, they can't be the same either. They're not just ordinary anymore, right? Anybody who encountered Christ, they always left different. They always left changed if they accepted him. That is not everybody did, unfortunately. But so with like the person of Christ, you know, You know, one thing that I really emphasize in my own research, but even throughout my life, is just the supremacy of Christ.

I want to give Christ all the glory. Whatever good thing I can say about Christ, I want to be able to say it. I don't want my theology to kind of say, oh, well, you know, Jesus was God and man, but he was more man than he was God. No, no, no, no, no. He was fully God and fully man. I want to give Christ all the glory that I can give to him. And so, you know, when I think about Jesus as the Davidic monarch, as the son of David, right? obviously as it stated in scripture in Luke chapter 1, verse 32 to 35 in the enunciation,

I look at, well, who was the queen in the Old Testament monarchies under King David and his sons? Well, he was the mother. And so if Jesus is this son of David, he's this royal heir to the Davidic kingdom, then who would be the queen of his kingdom? Well, it would be his mother. Or even the arguments that I've used for the papacy, such as the Isaiah 22, Matthew 1619 argument, if Jesus is this Davidic king, then that bleeds over into the identity of Peter as this prime minister figure. And so the more that I looked at Catholicism, the more I realized it's so fundamentally focused on the person of Christ.

And it recognizes that that has consequences for the entire world. It has consequences for individual people as well. And think about the Eucharist, right? So Catholics and Baptist especially, you know, sometimes you have differences about this. I know that you said you accepted the real presence, which is awesome. But, you know, I think about a, you know, people will often say, well, that's so crazy, though. You believe that you're eating Jesus. You believe that you're becoming this one reality with Christ by, you know, having this Christian meal.

And my answer is yes, you know, because, you know, Jesus says, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you'll not enter the kingdom of heaven in John 6. And so people will say, but isn't that a difficult thing? And I'm like, yeah, well, that's exactly what the crowd said. a difficult teaching. Even Peter says, Lord, your words are difficult, but your words are life. Who else do we have to go to? And see, that's the kind of spirit that I want to have with the tough teachings of Jesus. Like, Lord, you are God. Who else do I have to go to? Your words are life. And so if you say it that I'm going to believe it, right? Or even the Catholic Church's understanding that it is the body of Christ. Right. And so certain things that are predicated of Christ's body can be predicated the

church. For instance, Christ is infallible. So he shares that authority with his church. And we see this, I would argue, we see this in the scriptures with Jesus sharing, you know, his authority with his apostles. Whoever hears you, hears me, whoever rejects you, rejects me. Who rejects me, rejects the one who sent me, right? So the point that I want to make is that, you know, this view of Christ in Catholicism is not this kind of Christ who is clinging to himself, but it's a Christ who pours himself out into other people. And so just as in the incarnation, you have a God, I mean, you have Jesus who is fully God and fully man, right? You have this kind of incarnational view of the church being both this natural institution, but having these supernatural properties and so on and so forth. And so for me, that's what I find really inspiring about Catholicism, how much it focuses on the incarnation, how much it focuses upon how in Jesus Christ there's that bridge between heaven and earth.

And so, you know, even with the idea of the veneration of the saints, Sorry, I'm kind of going all over the place, right? But even with like the veneration of the saints, like, you know, for the ancient Jews and even for the early Christians, literally, you know, when Jesus ascends into heaven, he literally just is captured by a cloud. For them, heaven was just right above what we see in the blue sky, right? Or something like that. Like heaven was that close to them. Or when you read the writings of the rabbis and the sages, they talk about how all the time, you know, the Holy Spirit would be guiding them. or they talk about how, you know, the court in heaven would help the court on Earth.

So clearly there is this view that heaven and earth are in communion with each other, and they're communicating actively. There isn't the sharp natural, supernatural, heaven, earth, divide. And so this leads to this enchanted view of the cosmos, this view that, you know, creation is not ordinary anymore because Christ, because God entered into it. And so it's not as if creation and God are opposed to each other through Jesus Christ. they can be one reality.

Thanks for sharing all that. And it's a good opportunity for any Protestants watching to do exactly what you just mentioned, where practice intellectual patience and listening, trying to understand sympathetically, so that even if they disagree, they can say, oh, I can see how this makes sense. I can see the beauty of this way of looking at things. So I want to go back. You mentioned arguments for God's existence a few moments ago. I'm curious to ask, based upon working through those, which do you think is most powerful?

And then secondly, which do you think is most useful in our culture right now? Maybe those two answers will be the same argument, but maybe not. No, they're definitely not. You know, okay, so the best argument for the existence of God, in my opinion, is St. Thomas Aquinas' De Ante argument. And so the Dei argument, I think it's best to understand it through the contingency argument. And so with the contingency argument, there's this idea that, look, there are contingent things, right? So nothing exists by necessity. You know, you see a leaf outside and then you see that the leaf is destroyed.

You have a human being in front of you and maybe that human being lives for 70 years and then that's it. Or, you know, if you want to go down the route of like someone like Stephen Pinker, right, I mean, all the species that we see, if evolution happened differently, maybe we get different species, we get all kinds of different biological life, right? So you have all these things that are contingent. There's nothing that really seems to happen by necessity, right? And especially in terms of existence, this is the thing we focus on. there are some things that exist only contingently, right? And well, you know, in order to explain why any contingent thing exists or the set of all contingent things, you either have another contingent thing or you have something that's not

contingent. But the problem is that if you have something that's contingent, then it's just part of the set of things that need to be explained, right? If nothing exists by necessity, things depend on other things for their existence, then where does the existential buck stop, so to speak? Well, then you need something then that's not contingent. And so you need something that's necessarily existent. And, you know, eventually you can deduce the other divine properties from that.

But, you know, the point is that at the bottom of all contingent reality, and I mean, contingency is just so obvious. At least, that might be controversial, but I think it's pretty clear, like, you know, a lot of things don't exist by necessity. They can go in, I mean, they can go out of existence. And so Aquinas then makes this observation. He says, well, let's look a little closer at contingent things. right? He notes that, look, things don't exist by necessity, right? And there's this thing called essence that explains the kind of thing that something is, right? So, for instance, you have a leaf and the leaf has certain properties that make it a leaf. Or as a human being, right, like you have

certain properties like rationality, but you also have the power of locomotion, so on and so forth. And so you have this essence of rational animality that explains all of your properties and unifies them together into a neat package, right? You're not just a bunch of random properties put together. I can very intelligibly tell that you are a human being, a rational animal, and you are really distinct from a frog, you're really distinct from a horse, you know, and so on and so forth. But there's nothing intrinsic to your humanity or humanness that necessitates you have to exist. It has to be given to you, so to speak, right? Take a leaf, right? There's nothing about a leaf or leafness that demands that it exists or, you know, a planet, right? You can use all these other

examples. And so Aquinas makes the observation, well, look, if, if, you know, things are contingent because their essence doesn't entail their existence, right, existence has to be given to them, then we need a place where the buck stops and where essence and existence are not really distinct, you know, that is to say that you could conceivably separate them, but that, no, they actually do come together in one reality, right? So there is this thing whose essence and its existence are not really distinct, but are really one. And that thereby everything else that's contingent, right, it can exist because this thing that is necessary, that whose essence is one of existence can give that thing existence by sharing in its own reality or something like that. And so basically

Aquinas-Diante argument is a more precise contingency argument. And so I found it really helpful and convincing. I don't know how you can deny essences, especially like in the work of David Oderberg and other scholars. You know, the work of Aristotle, the Aristotelian categoricals and so on and so forth, identifying species and stuff like that. Like, I find that just so plausible. Okay. So now that we got to the best argument, I'm now going to get to the most useful one. I think the most useful argument is the argument from desire made by people like C.S. Lewis and others.

But there's this idea, or even, you know, going back to Maryland court Adams, this kind of practical reasons to believe in God, right? But I mean, if you think about it, like, think about the things that we care about most. Objective morality. I care about my loved ones. There's something that just seems wrong about death being the end. And also, if you think about it, too, like human civilizations, like we really need religion or this idea of the transcendent in order to function and live and to bear the suffering of reality. right? And so it would seem so downright absurd if there weren't a God. Like we're wired for God, but there's no God. What else are we wired for, but there's no terminus, so to speak, with that desire.

And so really, you know, the argument from desire is this idea that at bottom, look, there's there's, there's something that if there weren't a God, then these desires would be so absurd, right? And if there is, you know, and if there isn't a God, and we have to kind of suppress that intuition, that no, there has to be something greater. You know, like, you think about people who are, like, one of the effects of sin is that you get so entrenched in it that you stop really striving for the transcendent. You become cynical. You stop seeing the good.

I mean, when you look at people like that, you're like, that's not a good human life. But, like, do I need, quote, unquote, this delusion in order to have a good fulfilling human life that, you know, or in order to run a civilization and a society? And, you know, what helps is that in my, you know, research into conservatism, There are a lot of atheist conservatives who are like, yeah, we need religion, but they have a hard time believing in God themselves, but they recognize this society cannot function without Christianity.

Sorry to sound like someone's grandpa, but I guess that's kind of the truth of matter. Yeah. So, you know, when I look at this argument from desire, I'm just like, this seems to just point so strongly, like, deep within you. Like, you know, the reason why it's so useful is because people are right now today govern so much. their desires. They're governed so much by, like, they want to believe in the good. They want to believe, you know, and so forth, other things. But, you know, they don't trust reason. They don't trust institutions. They think you just have to assert, you know, whatever. But I'm saying, okay, let's take that assertion, you know, power that you have where you declare, you know, like, you know,

for instance, take like how some people declare my body, my choice, as if that's an argument. You know, it's flawed, but that power of assertion is so important for people. And so I'm saying here, how about you reclaim your life from materialism, from atheism, and you assert, no, there is a God, there is objective beauty, there is objective morality, life doesn't end at the grave, there is everlasting hope in Christ. Use that assertion making power to something that's greater, to something that's more fulfilling, ultimately speaking. And so that's why I consider it to be the most useful argument for the existence of God. I'm saying, take all the things that you love and what's going to secure them the most? Only God. Your treasures, your true treasures are the ones in

heaven, not on the earth. Yeah, that's good. Well, I want to send you, if you have any time or interest to take a look at it, my book that came out because it makes a lot of sort of arguments from desire, and I'd love, if you have any time to look at it, be fun to talk about more, because what you're saying really resonates with how I tend to approach these things, too. So that's really cool to hear. So what advice would you give to someone who's doubting? Let's say there's a Christian who's going through a season of deconstruction as is very trendy right now. How would you counsel them to work through that? Yeah, well, I think the big thing that happens in doubt, and this is something that Craig taught me,

is that typically speaking, people doubt because they develop a horribly warped view of God. And I think there's sometimes – so one thing is that, you know, we got to work on one's view of God. But then secondarily, I think that there, usually we get into these really nasty, you know, stages of doubt when we don't take care of our soul, you know. And so, for instance, I'd recommend, you know, like rest, you know, take a break. It's okay maybe to just go a day without reading your Bible, right? Like some people will try to read their Bible seven days a week. That's brilliant. That's good.

But it's okay to take a break. It's not like, oh, you miss that one day. You're going to hell now. No, that's not how it is. I also think that a lot of people have this view that God is just this really stringent bully who's always out to get you, right? And as soon as you make a mistake, he's like, aha, now I see that you're not worthy of my loving grace, right? And so I'd recommend, you know, people read, you know, the parables in the gospels, especially, you know, the prodigal son. That story is simply profound

how it gets at the heart of God, how God is not, you know, you know, God, you know, the father, obviously being God in that story. He's not out looking for the son. to condemn him. He's actually out on the front porch waiting to see him return, and then he runs to him, even though he's wasted his birthright, he's wasted the father's wealth. He doesn't care. And even like when he sees the father, notice what the son says, right? The son says, you know, father, I'm not worthy to be in your house as a son, making a slave, make me a servant. And then the father just kisses him on the cheek. And he says, no, come into my house. We're going to kill the fat and calf for you, right? God is not out here to get us. He's out here. Well, he's not out.

here to get us in the sense of, you know, kind of putting us down. He's out here to get us in the sense that he is madly in love with us. Okay. And so, you know, sometimes some people have heard the gospel express like this. Look, your sins, you down to your core are so disgusting that God had to do something about it. And so he sent his son to die on the cross. But that, you don't die for somebody that you don't love. You don't enter into somebody else's reality, right? into a human body that can suffer and die if you don't love humanity, if you don't love the person. And so I'd say, you know, there are aspects of God that need to be highlighted, such as the incarnation, such as the heart of God and the product of sun story and all these other things.

And so, you know, taking care of your soul, focusing on these aspects of God that I think highlight his heart. And then, you know, I think what also needs to occur is a reordering. ordering of one's theology, right? So some people will say, okay, I'm trying to, you know, I'm trying to make sense of God's, you know, punishments and violence in the Old Testament, but how he seems to be in the New Testament, right? And it's like, well, no, no, no, Jesus is the same God as the God of the Old Testament. And so you have to somehow see how the two go together, right? And one thing I noticed is that, you know, in the book of, what was it, the book of Jonah? It's kind of funny because, you know, Jonah accuses God, the Old Testament God, of being too merciful.

Like, you wouldn't expect that, right? I mean, that's, and then, I mean, literally God is just like, yeah, the people repentant. I'm not angry anymore. You know, it's gone. It's done. It's finished. Or even, you know, in the Old Testament, when you read in the book of Genesis, you know, eventually you hear about the Amorites and the Canaanites, right? And people talk about the conquest of Canaan. Well, if you pay attention to what God says to Abraham when he makes the covenant, he says, look, Abraham, your descendants are going to be slaves in a foreign land for 500 years. And I'm going to let that happen. You know, my chosen people, I'm going to let you be slaves. Why? Because the iniquity of the Amarites have not reached their fullness. So for 500 years, God waited for the Amorites to repent of their sins. And he even, he waited so long and so hard that he even allowed his own chosen people to be slaves in Egypt. And then finally, God said, time's up. It's time for judgment. You know, and so, you know, just looking at these passages in scripture with a new lens, with a new light, I think those are really important. Yeah, it's really good. So when you interviewed me, you asked about classical

theism. And I was sharing about, you know, how my views on that have solidified. I'm curious to ask you about that. What is classical theism and how important is it in your mind? Because this is a big issue right now. Sure. Okay, so what is classical theism? Well, I think classical theism, there are four kind of hallmark beliefs in classical theism, right? One is divine simplicity, divine impassibility, divine timelessness, and what's the other one? Divine immutability? I mean, I see the fourth one. Yeah. Okay, so I can't believe I forgot that for a second. I think at some point, some of them kind of blend in. But the basic idea is that with the God of classical theism, he is not another person like me and you.

Okay. So God is not this immaterial mind who just happens to be omnipotent, omniscient, and have all these powers, right? You know, the theists like Richard Swinburne have kind of used God as this analogy. Or even, you know, Alan Planninga has talked about God as kind of like another immaterial mind that's just super powerful necessarily. you name it, right? But what we say is classical theists is that God is like, he's like, his essence, right, his existence, he is existence itself. He is being itself.

He is the fullness of reality. There's like we can't even begin to kind of describe him, right? Because he's so infinite and wonderful and just the foundation of everything. And so even, you know, as I talked about before, like, you know, things are only beautiful insofar as they imitate the divine essence. right? Because in God, there's the fullness of reality. There's pure act, right? There's nothing lacking in him. As the scriptures say, there are no shadows of turning, right? And so with divine simplicity, it's this idea that like God is identical to his perfections, right? Or his attributes.

So, you know, in God, it's not the case that, you know, you have God who's kind of like the first explanation of everything. And then eventually when you get to God, you kind of have to hodgepodge all these perfections together, right? Like, huh, you know, it would be really cool of God. God was omnipotent, all right, he's omnipotent. Or, you know, you know, something like that. It's this idea that, no, like all these perfections, they just kind of boil down into one reality. That is simply what we call God or divinity or what have you, right? And so, you know, divine simplicity, God is identical to his affections and his attributes.

It's not the case that God is full of beauty. It's like God is beauty itself or even take the utherphrod dilemma, right? You know, does God will something because it's good? or is something good because God wills it, right? So it kind of poses this dilemma. And typically the solution is that God is goodness itself, right? It's, there's a third option you can do. Well, that sounds perfectly wonderful for classical theism, right? That it's not the case that God is good because, you know, he kind of ticks off all the boxes on the morality check, but that he is the standard itself. He is goodness itself. And so you have other things like divine timelessness, right? God doesn't

experience temporal succession. I think this follows from a God who's omnipresent. So to use an analogy, I don't know if you watch the X-Men movies at all. I like to use this analogy. But you remember when Quicksilber, the faster he goes through time, right? The faster he goes through time, the slower he goes through space, right? Or I think that's how you say it. You know, so the more quickly you go through various events, time slows down for you.

That's how I should say it. Right. And so if God is present at all moments, then time would be so slow for him, so to speak, that there wouldn't be time because he's already there in all the places at once. So he wouldn't experience that kind of succession. I mean, that does, I don't think that would negate that he could know, like, what time it is or something like that. But that's another discussion. Or even like divine impassibility. Some people have problems with this, right?

So they'll say like, oh, well, if God's impassable, then he can't have emotions, right? But what I find comforting is that because God in himself, this full bliss, he is fully happy in and of himself, then I can, you know, I think about when Jesus, you know, during the storm in the gospel of, I think it's Matthew and Mark, you know, when the waves are crashing and everything that, did I get that right or is one of the other gospels? When Jesus is sleeping. Yeah. In the gospels, right. And, you know, everyone else is freaking out. They're all scared, you know, and Peter comes down. He says like, Lord, we're about to drown. What do you do? doing down here? And then Jesus is just fast asleep. And he says, like, why have you woken me up, right? I mean, that you see kind of the impassibility of God kind of sneaking through in Jesus because he's not worried. He's not scared. You know, he knows that everything's going to be okay. And so I find comfort in that kind of impossibility of God. But then also in the person of Christ, I do see my own sufferings shared, my own sufferings expressed, and so on so forth. And so yeah, I mean,

so that's classical theism. Now, why is it important to believe? believe, I think it's important to believe because it gives God his full intellectual due. As I said before, my theology, especially my Christology, I want my theology to give God all the glory that can be given to him. So I don't want to have to blunt the glory that I can give to God, right? I don't want to say like, oh yeah, well, God is like really good, but he's not goodness itself. I don't want to say that. Or for instance, God can know a lot of things, but he can't know all things. It's not, I'm not going down that route, right? I want to give God his full glory.

And so in classical theism, you get this God, who is the first principle of all things, who is the cause, right? And nothing moves him. He moves everything else. There's this absolute supremacy and uniqueness to God that I really enjoy and like in that theology. And so I'd say classical theism is important because aside from the philosophical arguments that one can give, like I find Aristotelian tommism very convincing. aside from that, I also think it does give God his will do. And I think the third thing I'd add in is that I think it's much easier to be a mystic with classical theism than it is with other forms of theism.

I think a lot of people, you know, a lot of people have problems with viewing God as this kind of like angry, old, bearded white guy in heaven or something like that, you know. But when you get to a God who transcends all those categories, who is beauty itself, who is goodness itself. You have the room for mysticism. You have the room for, I don't know, just, I mean, one thing that I like about God is that he's such a deep mystery, and it's a mystery that never stops giving. And so every day in my life, if I, if I woke up contemplating God, I wouldn't reach the end, but I'd reach a sweet kind of starting point every single day. It never gets old. That's really good. I was almost pausing to write that down, the mystery that never stops giving.

That's a good phrase. Which is your favorite X-Men movie? Because now we've reached upon another point of common ground we have, because I like the X-Men movies as well. Oh, that's tough. Okay, so for me, it's a toss-up between first class and Days of Future Past. Ah, nice. I would actually say the exact same thing.

I loved Days of Future Past. In my book, I talk about that final scene. Anyway, I shouldn't go on with X-Men. But I also love the first two that Brian Singer did, the 2000 and 2003. I think those are a good starter ones as well. But okay, we'll talk about X-Men another time, too. But so one thing I wanted to ask you about, too, is the value of philosophy for Christians in general, but especially for theologians. Because this is something I admire about the Catholic tradition and think as a relative point of comparative weakness in my tradition, especially as an evangelical.

Not totally, but as a generalization, a lot of times evangelicals don't really value philosophy as highly. why do you think it's important for Christians and especially for theologians to do philosophy well? Well, I think that, you know, the importance of doing philosophy well. I mean, there's so many answers that one can give to this question. I think the first is, you know, Christ causes us to love God with all our heart, mind, and body, and soul, you know, all these things, all these aspects of who we are. And he includes the mind, right? The mind is not something to be thrown out.

And so I think that, you know, if you've done philosophy well, and you, you, you get deeper into the mystery of God, right? I'm speaking from personal experience with the experiences of other philosophers. If you do philosophy well, especially with God, then, you know, God doesn't become this kind of piece of furniture and the rest of your ontology, right? He becomes so wonderful, you know, the starting point of all your thinking, that you just, you know, thinking about God becomes a form of intimacy. And I think that's an intimacy that I think all of us could use, right? Even people who are lay people, right, and they're not super deep into theology or the isms, right? But like thinking about God, maybe using your imagination, thinking about, you know, the nature of God.

All these things are just so enriching. Because, you know, think about, you know, I guess, you know, with you being married, right? You think about your wife, right? You think about, hmm, what would my wife do in this situation? Or you think about what does she love? What does she value? Why does she value the things that she values? Why does she love the things that she loves, right?

All these things, this isn't kind of this cold, kind of doctored looking at your body, right? I think that's the impression that some people have philosophy. It's a way to attain to intimacy through the intellect. And so if you're going to love somebody with all of your humanity, all of who you are, then your intellect has to be part of it. And so I'd say that part of loving God, part of the importance of philosophy, is that it can help you increase intimacy with God. The second thing is that I've noticed that when people don't have an intellectual,

intellectual foundation for their belief in God, they tend to be more in the twos and froes of emotions. Right. So as soon as like something bad happens, they just have to kind of punch themselves and say, no, God is real. God is good. I have to believe this. I have to believe this. And it's like, no, no, no, no. Like if your intellect is convinced that God is good, that God is real, right? That brings you just a whole other level of comfort in these times and troubles. Because you're like, look, I don't know how to answer this question. But I know what the answer can't be. The answer, and I know this with full intellectual conviction, right? The answer can't be that God has abandoned me or that God isn't good or that God doesn't exist. But if you're just stuck in the twos and frozen emotion, then you have to kind of, as I said before, whip and punch yourself into just like, no, I have to believe this because I don't know, I guess it's what my parents have handed on to me. I guess it's what my community has beaten into me, right? No, no, no, no.

that way of doing philosophy that's done well gets you greater intimacy and it also brings greater comfort in times of doubt and it also if you know how to reason well especially you know you're not too scared by doubts right so you know for instance you know if a doubt comes up and you don't know too well how to reason through syllogisms or point out a fallacy in an argument then an argument might sound really plausible and maybe in your stomach you have like this uneasy feeling like I think there's something wrong with this argument, but I don't know. And then you just kind of say, okay, fine, I'll just, I accept the argument is valid or sound or something like that. If you don't have that ability to kind of detect BS, to put it bluntly, right, then you're going to get caught up in it more.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. Okay, I have two more questions. This second to last one, I'm very curious and interested to hear you talk about, and that's your position on universalism. I have no idea what it is, but I know you mentioned this in our discussion. I think I was talking, I can't even remember how it came out, but I remember it came up somehow or another. And I think you've written or researched on this in some way. I hope that's right. Yeah, so I have a paper on my academia.edu page called almost apocodotastasis.

Apocatostasis just being this idea of like a universal restoration of all things, right? So here are my thoughts in universalism. I think that from scripture, you have, okay, so let's go back a little bit, right? So there's scripture and then there's kind of our moral philosophy of God. I think there are these two things that are trying to, we're trying to marry together, right? Because one is that obviously the idea of hell, whatever it is, seems really morally repulsive, or at least maybe just aesthetically impulsive, right? Although I think it should be morally as well.

Like there's something that seems really bad, right, about someone ending up in hell forever. and especially like, you know, everyone asks this as a kid, like, why does it have to be forever? Is it real fire or things like that? When you look at Scripture, and this is really important for me, because I, as I told you in the beginning of the episode, Gavin, I'm not in a position of compromise on Scripture. If the Lord says it, then I believe it. You know, maybe that doesn't sound intellectual, but I don't care. I don't care about sounding smart if someone doesn't believe in the supremacy of Christ, to put it bluntly. But anyway, so what does Scripture say?

Well, I mean, Jesus clearly talks about Gahena. He talks about a place of separation. He talks about fire and destruction. He also talks about darkness. Okay, so this is kind of weird already. We have a fire that doesn't emit light. So obviously Jesus is using certain images to get across the idea to the audience. And obviously, as you know, there's a valley in Israel that is, I think,

literally called Gehenna, right? The place of burning destruction. It's a trash heap, right? And so Jesus uses that image to make clear to the minds of the people, this is what hell is, right? And so, I mean, for them, I think it works. But I think, like, you know, when CS Lewis talks about hell in his own way, I think in the great divorce, if I'm not mistaken, you know, when he uses that image, I think it's totally fine because I think for every generation, what we conceive of as the greatest torment is going to be different, right? The image can change. The concept cannot. Okay. So scripture clear talks about eternal separation. But then it also has these passages where it talks about Christ pulling all men to himself. It has passages where, you know, it kind of sounds universalist to some extent,

right? Or something is being given to all men regardless. And so, you know, as you know, Balthazar, he comes down to the conclusion that, no, these passages genuinely conflict. We can't really draw anything, well, I don't want to straw man him. He knows, he argues they genuinely conflict, and he believes that the option then that we should take is not one or the other, but just a hopeful universalism, that we can hope that each individual is saved, even though perhaps maybe we know that not all will in fact be saved, but we ought to have the hope that each person will be saved. And I think that's totally fine. I think that's what we should be hoping for, right? That's a righteous hope to have. But still, scripture is quite clear.

that there is, like there is a real consequence to rejecting God. There is a real consequence to sin and evil in the world, right? And so on so forth. And so what I do is in my paper, I try to bring together the two kind of views, universalism and kind of this traditional eternal torment model. And the view that I come up with, I call it almost apocodistosis or universal subjugation. but the idea is that everybody will return to God in varying degrees of perfection. So, you know, take a, there's a, there's a doctrine in, I think, platonic philosophy, where it's like all things return back to their source or something like that. I forget the exact Latin for it, but regardless, there's this idea, right, that everything

that's sent out, because it's internal telos is ultimately God, right? Especially human beings who remain in the image of God. he's the one who completes us. Every person will could return to God, and hence all people will be pulled up to Christ, but in varying degrees of perfection. And so, for instance, if you look at the book of Daniel, right, you'll see that some of the saints, there's a hierarchy in the saint, in the sainthood. There's a hierarchy in heaven, where some people have a brighter glory than other people. Well, I make the argument then that I think the reverse can also be said of those who are in hell, right? There are varying degrees of imperfection as well. But the clear demarcation,

between the saint and the damned is this virtue that I call humility, right? So think about in the gospels, Jesus cares so much about this virtue of being childlike, of giving up everything now without question, right? Like you think about how the apostles are portrayed, they hear the voice of Christ, they drop everything, they're in the middle of fishing, and then they just drop out and go to him, right? There's like this childlike self-surrender that God wants so much. And so for the saints, you know, who exhibit this virtue in conjunction, you know, with grace and so on and so forth and participating in Christ, that will clearly separate who is among the saved and who is among the damned, right? This virtue of self-sacrifice that totally exemplifies the self-sacrifice of Christ on the cross, right?

Christ as the son of God. Christ like a slave empties himself without question to the first. father, without question to all humanity. Okay, so there's a clear demarcation between the damned and the saved, but I also argue that I don't think it's impossible for the damned to experience happiness. And so interestingly enough, the church talks about natural versus supernatural happiness. And so now I'm drawing on my tradition. But so supernatural happiness only comes from God, the beatific vision.

as you know it talks about in first john and second peter becoming partakers in the divine nature and talks about being made like him but we shall see him as he is right um this supernatural happiness this beatitic vision is only available to the saints but um the damned can experience a natural but not supernatural happiness in this way okay so obviously i you know i don't think that the damned will lose their bodies or things like that because it says all will rise again from the dead. So they'll be able to experience natural happiness, right? But at that point, there's no longer any mystery about who God is. You know, Paul talks about how all creation will sing and praise to God. I don't see how praising God couldn't bring joy of some sort. But I think that

the dam's joy will be tempered with sorrow as well. Because it's kind of like watching, you know, the girl that you loved and you messed up with in high school, right? Like you messed up the relationship. You watch her now get married to another guy. There's like a joy. joy there, like, wow, she's happy now, but also with sorrow, like, oh, I messed up so bad, right? And then I also think about, and I'll close with this, I think about Moses on Mount Nebo, right? So because he sins, he strikes the rock twice. He can't enter into the promised land. And God, you know, it's a punishment, obviously, because he's not allowed to enter into the promised land. In this case, it would be for us the new Jerusalem that's to come at the end of the age.

but don't you think Moses was happy to watch the Israelites, the saints, so to speak, in this example, enter into the promised land? Wouldn't that have brought him some joy? And so I think, too, the damned will experience joy tempered with great sorrow at watching the saints make it into the promise land. And so that's kind of how I balance it all together. Yeah, yeah, fascinating. Well, I would like to read that paper. Sounds very interesting. So last question is, what do you think will be the topic?

or title of your first book? And I realize this is being a bit presumptuous and assuming you're going to write a book at some point. But that seems like a fairly reasonable expectation because you already write so much. Yeah, well, I originally wanted to write my book on the papacy like, you know, as soon as possible. I've been doing tons of research in that area

and especially the early church. I just love studying Christianity at its infancy. Like it's just so interesting to see what was going on. But, you know, I recently, have been discerning, right, the priesthood. I've been discerning the Dominican order. And I realize that, you know, before all else, my relationship with Christ comes first. Okay. So I need to be a good Catholic, a good Christian, before I'm a good scholar, before I'm everything else, you know. And because my relationship with Christ, that's what I care about the most, you know. And also I care a lot about, you know,

living a life that exemplifies the gospel. So I want to go out evangelize, you know, and, you know, doing apologetics and debates and research and books, you know, that's part of it, right? But there's also the evangelism of just being there for somebody else. And especially for me, like the priesthood, the reason why I find it so appealing is that in the priesthood, I can absolve someone of their sins by participating in the priesthood of Jesus Christ. I can give someone the body and blood of Christ. I can give someone the thing that I love most, which is Jesus, in a real supernatural way. And so I care more about those things than anything else. That's where my heart is, you know.

And also, you know, growing up to, I've seen, you know, people who were so intelligent, right, but they had no heart. They had no soul. I don't want to become that kind of person, you know. And so I'm probably going to delay my book on the papacy for like a doctoral dissertation. But I'm working on just writing out my testimony because I think when I write out my testimony, I can just give the Spark Notes version of my case for the papacy. and I can at least give the people something. But also I think, you know, my story is pretty funny, you know, and I think people would appreciate just learning a little bit more about, you know,

all the mistakes that I made, but also the great triumphs of my life. And so I like to give maybe my conversion testimony. I don't think I've come up with a name for it just yet. I think I called it like, I think I'm calling like home again or something like that. But I'm not sure just yet. But I think that's what my first book is going to be about, my conversion to Catholicism. Awesome. Very cool.

Well, Swan, thank you for this. I find it fascinating listening to your thoughts, and I really appreciate you. So hopefully these will be the first interactions of more to come down the line, whatever that looks like. And maybe just to finish, where can people find out more about you? Like I said, I'll put a link in the video description for your YouTube channel. Anything else you want to share about how people can learn more about you? Yeah, so my YouTube channel, obviously, intellectual conservatism, I have a Facebook page that shares articles on politics. I have a podcast, an Apple podcast under the same name. I have an academia page.

And I'm trying to think about what else. And then obviously, if you just Google or YouTube my name, you can find all the interactions and things that I've done. But there's one last thing I do want to say, Gavin, and that is that, you know, growing up as a Baptist and having my father be a Baptist minister, you know, I've kind of seen firsthand, so to speak, like what a Baptist minister has to go through or any pastor, really. And so I want to say that I appreciate the ministry that you're doing because you really are helping people and you really are elevating souls. And so, you know, I don't doubt that what you're doing is real.

It's supernatural. There's beauty to it. You know, and I want you to know that I as a Catholic, you know, being formerly a Baptist. I don't look down upon you, Gavin. You know, it's kind of funny, not to make this weird. But when I was debating you, I was kind of like, man, I feel like I'm debating my dad, you know. Because I had grown out of beard, you know. Oh, yeah, right, right.

But yeah, Gavin, I appreciate the ministry that you're doing. Yeah. Thanks a lot, Spahn, for saying that. And I feel the same way toward you. And it's awesome to be able to, you know, be friends and learn from each other along the pathway of even where we come from different traditions and disagree on important issues. And we can talk about all of that. But, you know, I take the view we can do that in the context of friendship. Why not?

And why not talk to people of all different kinds? But certainly when we have so many common beliefs as well, you know. I really appreciate what you're saying there. So thank you. Very kind of you to say, okay, everybody, thanks so much for watching. Don't forget to like this video and subscribe. Check out Swan's channel.

Subscribe to his channel. God bless everybody.