And, for a moment, the world of Internet theologians stood still…

I encountered Pete about 18 years ago when I was living in Northern Ireland. I was still a staunch Protestant at the time. In some important ways he helped prepare be for my encounter with Orthodoxy. He challenged a lot of my presuppositions. I haven’t stayed up with him over the last several years so I don’t know how his views have evolved. But I’m glad he’s having some engagement with Orthodoxy.

This was a riveting and insightful conversation, Trey. I was honoured to moderate it, my friend!

Y'know, I think a lot of the difference in realist versus nonrealist forms of Christianity will always be the distinction of the personal knowledge or experience of Christ. Rollins made two points that made me think of this, in response to Trey's point on Hesychasm, the Jesus prayer, he commented that that might end up being like Hegel's unhappy sinner, who accepts his sin but is still unhappy because of it. Additionally, he critiques Orthodoxy that it might be a kind of waiting room theology. But the very heart of Orthodoxy to me, is contemplation. And contemplation, or the experiential grasp of God in unknowing, or perhaps better said, God's grasp of us, is what the immanence of the Kingdom refers to. To tell a personal story, when I first encountered the so-called weak theology of John Caputo the sheer prospect of such an alienated understanding of Christianity where God our Father, Christ our Friend, is genuinely absent, in any real sense, threw me into a spiral of doubt. And amidst this, I stumbled across Thomas Merton's letter to Paul Tillich where he writes, "Have you read St. John of the Cross? IN actuality, his view of faith is a direct plunge into every form of contradiction and "night," the supreme intensification of "existential doubt," in which one's whole being becomes doubt and night, in order to burst out into that faith which is "pure night" to the soul. The dawn is in God." This notion of embracing God in uncertainty, in unknowing, in lack, shot through my mind like a missile, and I tried it, plunging myself to the root of my fear and longing, and like lightning, I encountered God, not as love or goodness or beauty or truth, but as Personal, in pure darkness. I cannot convey it. I can only convey two aspects or qualities of the experience, the pure personhood of the One I was encountering, and the unbounded darkness. Anyway, my point is, that it seems to me Orthodoxy is actually the solution that requires the most courage. IN a kind of facile theism that in overemphasizing dogmatic comforts uses propositions to shield one's uncertainty, they look ahead to a fulfillment that exists only in the eschaton, not believing in the possibility of encountering Christ directly, now, because they are afraid He won't be there to be encountered. And equally, atheism seems to me, to be an impulse to go ahead and just accept the possibility of nothingness, make peace with it, rather than having to go through that awful night of dependence. At least, if one chooses atheism, so to speak, there is control, one can go to their death willingly. But to be suspended in a chasm of darkness in pure faith, anticipating the dawn, not in the eschaton, but in the created time. Orthodoxy is not a waiting room religion because we encounter God now, and the Hesychast is not an unhappy sinner, because he is at rest, but his rest is always moving, climbing, like St. Maximus said. I think the heart of theology must be contemplation, religious experience. If God is not a direct Reality, is waiting to be communed with to reveal His love and mercy to us, then what else do we have? I don't think there is any salvation in simply accepting that the black oblivion of death will swallow everyone and everything we love whole. At the same time, we cannot have a faith that is purely eschatological, about what happens after death as Rollins points out. The middle ground is contemplation, to not deny uncertainty or lack, but to embrace it. "Lord, I believe, help my unbelief!" Every encounter with God is a confession. I think about Pascal in this sense, we would not seek Him if we had not found Him. We know His rest and therefore we ask for the mercy to climb it and love and know Him to a greater extent. I often wonder at the strange phenomenon of belief, to believe a truth so specific and beautiful it confounds the mind in absurdity, a Reality too transcendent to be caught by prpositional objectification But I believe because I've seen. But the mind is confounded because it cannot believe that the Overwhelming Fire of Love is real. And therefore I want to know the Mystery even more. I have seen the glimpses of lightning and therefore I ask God for cleaner eyes that I may be blinded by Light even greater

Would love to see conversation between you, Peter and Jonathan Pageau.

Great discussion. Even dead tired, Trey has a brilliant grasp of both the philosophy being discussed and the deep Orthodox understanding that speaks to it. Well done. I'd like to hear you expound more on the Trinity, as I think that is the most fundamental point of difference here. Orthodoxy posits that behind the glass is not fundamental dis-unity of self, but being itself, in complete communion.

Finally! I've been waiting for this encounter to happen.

This was so excellent Trey! I think you've really put your finger on the main point of tension between Orthodoxy and Zizek/Rollins: is lack constitutive or is it contingent thereby overcomeable? In Surprised by Joy I think Lewis makes a much more compelling argument when he starts not from the place of trying to account for a longing in the heart for something that has no corresponding object in this world (the argument Peter presented), but rather when Lewis starts from trying to account for one's experiences of joy. From these positive experiences of joy he argues (if I'm understanding him correctly) that joy is the affect caused by the proximity of an object that cannot be found in this world in any material sense and that after those moments have passed the joy turns to longing or perhaps we could say loss or this sense of lack. The difference in the arguments here is subtle. But I think it is different. One starts from negativity (lack) ... the other starts from positivity (joy). I also like how Daniel Garner links these experiences of joy as rungs on a ladder gifted to us, not to stay stuck on, but to allow us to climb higher and higher to that object that was the cause of our experience of joy. ... I think he's pulling from Dante. I think you made a similar point in this as well. I like this line from Paul Tillich, "Before sin is an act, it is a state." The question remains is there a God who can/has/will save us from this state? I do think though that Zizek and his emphasis on jouissance as a political factor and all the various ways it gets in the way of us materially emancipating the poor and marginalized is so crucial to in fact live out what Jesus called us to do.

Gracias amigo, escucharé todo el video, no he visto a Peter por mucho tiempo

Now this was a crossover I did not see coming. I'm such a huge Pete fan haha.

Y'all make my head hurt. Thank you.

13:10 *love thru constitutive negativity* “If sin connects with this idea of lack-and maybe sinful activity then is anything you do try to fill the lack right (whether it’s drugs or having a child or doing whatever-anything that you do to try to cover over this fundamental lack). So for me then there’s a connection between sin and ideology, because it’s anything to cover over this lack that we are. Then what’s the Christian answer? […] Forgiveness of debt. To forgive debt isn’t to pay it, it’s to render the nothing, nothing.”

The hat is a fashion move that is lit beyond comprehension.

Amazing

Great conversation, thanks. Does someone knows what verses they are talking about around 1:07:00?

Nice!

"Serpent-worship is, like human sacrifice, part of the psychology of the Fall. The serpent with its tail in its mouth is a perfect emblem of the Selfhood: an earth-bound, cold-blooded and often venomous form of life imprisoned in its own cycle of death and rebirth." - Northrop Frye, Fearful Symmetry

Wouldn’t Rollins position more accurately be described as agnostic Christianity ?

let us get to the bottom of this

Okay I'm slowbrained, but isn't Peter's characterization of inherent negativity something that only makes sense post-fall? Where does this idea of negativity being constitutive fit in pre-fall?

Orthodox people positively discussing Marxism is like Jews positively discussing Nazism. I think the discussion would be more interesting if this was Acknowledged.

Honestly, I don’t understand what this conversation is about…

The void subject harrows hell in a way that the rosy cozy Christian idiom will never be able to do. The disappointing thing about apologists is that they think they're doing philosophy when really all they are doing is defending idioms and worldviews. What they espouse is entirely self-relational in its very discourse, a system of referents which repeat in highly restricted variations-- meanwhile simply assuming/believing that God guarantees the idiom's relation or even pertinence to God. (When really this is just relying on a traditional precedent one let's do all the work of thinking for one.) I suggest the author stop being an apologist for a few years and commit to philosophy instead of committing to an idiom. Actually understand Lacan and Levinas and Agamben and Badiou (or...), instead of running off with a metaphor from C.S. Lewis. I know the folly of youth when it feels itself verbally skilled and flooded with connections and so on. There is a lot of potential here; it would be sad to see it wasted on a lifetime of rosy cozy pious regurgitations. They are a prison too, and the author is smart enough to someday look back and realize this. Trust me, I say this out of sympathy- before your throat is totally jammed shut by the legion of orthodox hall monitors and speech coaches ready to pounce on your talent and tongue for their ends. Salvation may be possible, but only if you disbelieve whatever you say about it!

Radical theology has been out of the interdenominational discussion for far too long.