Bishop Robert Barron: Christianity and the Catholic Church | Lex Fridman Podcast #304

1. 0:00 – 0:45

   Introduction

   1. BBBishop Robert Barron0:00

      When we're beyond good and evil, you know, and all that's left is the will to power, then why are we surprised that the powerful rise and that they use the power less for their purposes? When we forget ideas like equality and rights, which are grounded in God, why are we surprised that death camps follow?

   2. LFLex Fridman0:20

      The following is a conversation with Bishop Robert Barron, founder of Word on Fire and one of the greatest educators in the world on the beauty and wisdom within Catholicism, Christianity, and religious faith in general. This is the Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now dear friends, here's Bishop Robert Barron.

2. 0:45 – 14:25

   Who is God?

   1. LFLex Fridman0:45

      Let's start with the big question: Who is God-

   2. BBBishop Robert Barron0:49

      (laughs)

   3. LFLex Fridman0:50

      ... according to Christianity, according to Catholicism? Who's God?

   4. BBBishop Robert Barron0:53

      I'll give you Thomas Aquinas' definition. Uh, God is ipsum esse subsistens. God is the subsistent act of to be itself. Another way to state that, in Aquinas, is God is that reality, unique, absolutely unique, in which essence and existence coincide. To be God is to be to be. Those are all ways of talking about (laughs) what we mean by God. They are kind of gnomic, and, and that's on purpose. There's almost a Zen koan kind of quality about the way we talk about God. I'm saying something that's substantive, but it's more in like a via negativa mode. It's more like what God is not, because there's nothing in the world that would correspond to those descriptions. So anything in the world would be a being of some type or an event of some type, some particular mode of existence, and God is not an entity in the world. In fact, I would say that's the fundamental mistake that atheists, old and new, make all the time, is they think of God as a big being. When Aquinas says that God is not in any genus, even the genus of being, it's one of the strangest remarks in the whole tradition, but it's really interesting. So you say, "Well, at the very least, God must be a being," right? And Aquinas' answer is, "No, he's not in the genus of being." So we talk about God being beyond being and so on. To say in God essence and existence coincide is to say God's very nature is to be, and that can't be true of any contingent thing in the world. So what I'm doing there is I'm, I'm gesturing the way the tradition does toward God using language that's at the same time philosophically precise and gnomic. (laughs) You know, it's, it's both accurate, it's true. I- in God, essence and existence coincide. What God is is the same as God's, uh, active to be. But now what does that mean? (laughs) I'm not quite sure, because nothing in our ordinary experience corresponds to that. Everything in our experience is, is a being of some type. So it's existence received according to the mode of some essence. That's not true of God, which is why he can't be found in the world. And, and that's, as I say, the fundamental mistake is, uh, oh, I guess theists are those that believe there's this being alongside the other beings in the universe. And then atheists say, "Oh no, there is no such being." Um, and that's precisely wrong. That's just a category error. Uh, Dawkins, I think, cites Bertrand Russell to the effect that proving the non-existence of God is a bit like proving the non-existence of a china teapot orbiting between Earth and Mars. You know, no, that's precisely what (laughs) God is not, some entity that's sort of hidden among the other entities of the universe. God is the reason why there's a contingent realm at all. This is a way to put it. In more theological language, God's the creator of all things.

   5. LFLex Fridman3:45

      So if God is outside of our world, is it possible for us to visualize, to comprehend, to know God?

   6. BBBishop Robert Barron3:54

      Not utterly, of course. A- and I would say, uh, our knowledge begins always in this world, begins in ordinary experience. But I think we can, through metaphysical analysis, through philosophical reasoning, can come to some knowledge of a reality which is transcendent to our experience. So we gesture toward it. I, I always like Aquinas who says the language about God that we use is analogical. So it's not, it's not univocal, meaning what I say about that can, or about this bottle, I can say about God. No, that makes God an entity. At the same time, it's not simply equivocal. So if I say, "Well, that thing is and God is," I mean totally different things. No, no, I mean something analogous.

   7. LFLex Fridman4:35

      Mm-hmm.

   8. BBBishop Robert Barron4:36

      So (laughs) to be God is to be to be. So the real meaning of being is the being of God. The being of that thing or this thing, or the being of galaxies or subatomic particles would be analogous to God's manner of being. So on that basis, I can make some statements. I can, I can theorize, and even at the limit, as you suggest, I can visualize. So we have metaphors for God, and the Bible is replete with those, right? So God is a rock. Uh, you know, God's like a lion, God's like this and that. Or e- the Bible will sometimes imagine God as a, as a human being walking around, you know. Now only the crudest fundamentalism would say, well, that's an (laughs) univocal, accurate des- uh, description of God. It's an image that's catching something of God's manner of being.

   9. LFLex Fridman5:25

      Then what does it mean to believe in God? So there's a word, and we'll have to limit ourselves to human interpretable words today.

   10. BBBishop Robert Barron5:37

       Mm-hmm.

   11. LFLex Fridman5:37

       There's a word called faith. What does faith mean? So if we can't really directly know God, you kind of sneak up to the idea of God with metaphors.

   12. BBBishop Robert Barron5:50

       Better, he sneaks up on us. 'Cause I, I like the language of grace. God's action comes first. So i- if I stay perfectly within the realm of, "I'm seeking," with my kind of eagle eyes and, and my i- inquiring mind, I'm not gonna find God that way. I, I might find a path that opens up.... but I would say finally God finds me, and I think then the language of faith begins to make more sense. Um, I- I'm with Paul Tillich though, the Protestant theologian, said the most misunderstood word in the religious vocabulary is faith.

   13. LFLex Fridman6:22

       (laughs)

   14. BBBishop Robert Barron6:22

       Because he said the way we take it usually is something sub-rational. You know, I have, I have, uh, proof of this. I, I really know this and I only kind of believe that, like I... that's just a personal opinion or impression. But that's to identify faith with the kind of infra-rational, and, and that's not it. I mean, I- I don't want something infra-rational. I don't want superstition or, or childish credulity. So authentic faith is, is the darkness beyond reason and on the far side of reason. It's- it's supra-rational, not infra-rational. And that's a very important move. At the limit of what I can know, at the limit of my striving and my vision, there's this, uh, horizon that opens up, and I think that's true even in ordinary ways of knowing. There's a kind of a horizon that lures us beyond what I've got. Faith has to do more with that kind of darkness rather than a darkness prior to reason.

   15. LFLex Fridman7:18

       The darkness beyond the horizon, prior to reason, y- first of all, the poetry of your language is incredible, to be, to be.

   16. BBBishop Robert Barron7:25

       Yeah.

   17. LFLex Fridman7:25

       I have a million questions. (laughs)

   18. BBBishop Robert Barron7:27

       Yeah, go ahead. I do too, and that's-

   19. LFLex Fridman7:29

       Uh, so first of all, let me just jump around. W- uh, you mentioned to be, to be a few times.

   20. BBBishop Robert Barron7:34

       Yeah.

   21. LFLex Fridman7:34

       What does that mean?

   22. BBBishop Robert Barron7:36

       Well, to be me is to be a human being, right?

   23. LFLex Fridman7:39

       Yeah.

   24. BBBishop Robert Barron7:39

       To be this, to be a table, to be this, to be a microphone. So it's... I'll use Aquinas' language, it's the act of being poured, if you want, into the receptacle of some essential principle, so it's got a ontological structure. It's, it's an existent, it's a thing that exists, but it's, it's e- existing in a limited way, according to e- essential principle. Uh, God, so well, who, what's God? What's God's name? What kind of being is he? We'll go back to Moses now, um, when the Israelites asked me, you know, "What's your name? What shall I tell them?" And he says, you know famously, "I am who I am." But see, Aquinas reads that as a very accurate remark. (laughs) So Moses is wondering, "Okay, there's a lot of gods and there's a lot of things, a lot of entities, but which one are you? You got to be one of them, so tell me your name. In philosophical language, give me the essence that receives your act of existing," right? And God's answer blows the mind of, of Moses and the whole tradition, "I am who I am." To be God is to be. So I'm not this or that, I'm not up or down, I'm not here or there. God is that whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere, as, as the mystics put it. Now, can I get a clear and distinct idea of that? No.

   25. LFLex Fridman8:55

       (laughs)

   26. BBBishop Robert Barron8:55

       And in a way, that's the whole point. If I could, I'd be talking about a being of some kind. So to be God is to be, to be is to... and that's, you know, Moses, take off your sandals, you're on holy ground. So I'm gonna go over confidently and find out what this thing is, this burning bush. I'm gonna find out. No, no, no. Take off your shoes, you're on holy ground 'cause you're not in charge here, you're not in command, 'cause i- if you got shoes on, you can walk wherever you want, you can walk with confidence. But you take your shoes off, you're m- much more vulnerable, uh, and that's appropriate when you're talking about God, you know? Here's another interesting thing

   27. NANarrator9:30

       (laughs)

   28. BBBishop Robert Barron9:30

       ... but the, I didn't think about the burning bush in, in, in this connection before, but it's a bush that's on fire, but not consumed. Is... beings are competitive with each other, and so I, uh, these can't be in the same place at the same time, these two beings-

   29. LFLex Fridman9:44

       Mm-hmm.

   30. BBBishop Robert Barron9:44

       ... they're, they're mutually exclusive, if you want. But as God comes close to a, a creature, he doesn't destroy it or consume it-
3. 14:25 – 19:13

   Christianity

   1. LFLex Fridman14:25

      You mentioned, again, a lot of beautiful poetic things. You mentioned grace.

   2. BBBishop Robert Barron14:30

      Yeah.

   3. LFLex Fridman14:30

      You mentioned sin, you mentioned incarnation. Is there a philosophical pragmatic way to start talking about the pillars of Christianity? What are the defining things that make Christianity, to you and, and broadly speaking, uh, to those that follow the religion?

   4. BBBishop Robert Barron14:51

      You know, in a way, what we're doing so far is, is a necessary propodeutic because we're talking about God. Um, what makes Christianity distinctive, of course, is the claim of the incarnation. So we come up out of Judaism, we come up out of this great monotheistic tradition, and, you know, the Bible itself and all the great commentators within Judaism, I think, would agree with this basic theistic stuff that I've been talking about. Take a Moses Maimonides, for example. Um, now, what makes Christianity distinct, this (laughs) supremely weird claim that God becomes one of us, God becomes a creature, but without ceasing to be God and without overwhelming the integrity of the creature He becomes. What we see in the burning bush, that principle which obtains across the board, so the closer God comes to me, the more radiant I become, right? But take that now to the Nth degree, would be what we mean by the incarnation, the incarnation of the Son of God becoming a creature in such a way as to make humanity radiant and beautiful. That's the pillar of Christianity. It's the incarnation, you know? Um, and what follows from that is the redemption of, of all of reality. So not just of human beings, but in becoming a creature, God divinizes the world, you know? The Greek fathers always said God became human that humans might become God, and that's a good way to sum up, I think, the essence of Christianity.

   5. LFLex Fridman16:23

      Why is this such an important thing? So it's a distinctive thing-

   6. BBBishop Robert Barron16:26

      Yeah.

   7. LFLex Fridman16:26

      ... but why is it so important philosophically to what it means to be a Christian? Like, h- wha- (laughs) ... What impact did that have on our world, on human civilization, on human nature, on our morals of why live, what to live for, the meaning of it all? Like, why is incarnation so important?

   8. BBBishop Robert Barron16:46

      Well, I think it's, it's massively important because it's, it's the divinization principle, that God wants to divinize his creation and, and sort of in this concentrated point of Jesus of Nazareth. But then we talk about the mystical body of Jesus, so that goes right back to Paul. As we're grafted onto Christ, we talk about that as the church. We become like cells and molecules in a organism. That's the church. It's not an organization. That's a, that's a deformation of ecclesiology. The church is this organism that begins with Jesus and then he's drawing all of humanity, but ultimately all of nature, a- all of, all of creation to himself. When the Son of Man is lifted up, he will draw all things to himself, that idea of the gathering in of a, of a scattered creation. So in that way, it's at the heart of it. Then there's all kinds of things. I- if God becomes human, that means there's a dignity to humanity which goes beyond anything any humanist of any stripe has ever said, right? (laughs) Ancient, medieval, modern, contemporary. Christianity is the greatest humanism imaginable. God became one of us in order to divinize us. The, the goal of my life is not just to be a good person, not just to be, you know, materially successful, not just to be, um, a, a member of society. The goal of my life is to become a participant in the divine nature. And so there... I don't think there is a humanism greater than that, even conceivably. So that's where I think humanism is profoundly influenced by the incarnation. Uh, and just our notion of God as-... noncompetitive to us. That is so important because I, I think in so many systems from mythology onward, y- you have these competitive understandings of God. When Jesus says to his disciples, uh, the night before he dies, "I no longer call you servants, but friends," it's an extraordinary moment. Because e- every god, right, who's ever been served, well, that's, that's the best we can hope for, is, (laughs) would be as the servant of God.

   9. LFLex Fridman18:47

      Mm-hmm.

   10. BBBishop Robert Barron18:48

       You know, I, I try to obey you, Lord. I'll try to do what you want. But when Jesus says, "I, I no longer call you servants," or slaves, he would have said in the, in the Greek there, you know? Um, but friends. I don't know. I can't imagine anything greater than that, becoming God's friend.

   11. LFLex Fridman19:04

       That's a call to become one with, with God.

   12. BBBishop Robert Barron19:08

       Yeah.

   13. LFLex Fridman19:08

       It's possible to become, uh, become one with God. Now, I should mention,

4. 19:13 – 36:43

   Sin

   1. LFLex Fridman19:13

      you're one of the greatest religious communicators I've ever experienced. A lot of... a huge number of people are fans of yours. You've done a lot of great conversations. You've done Reddit AMAs-

   2. BBBishop Robert Barron19:25

      Yeah.

   3. LFLex Fridman19:25

      ... which is a very unique-

   4. BBBishop Robert Barron19:26

      Yeah.

   5. LFLex Fridman19:26

      ... bold, brave thing. And, uh, on one of them, somebody asked, um, what's the most challenging of the seven deadly sins? So first, what are the seven deadly sins? What do they have to do with Christianity? How essential, how crucial they are to, uh, the religion, and what's the most challenging in our modern day?

   6. BBBishop Robert Barron19:51

      Yeah. To name 'em, uh, pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust are the seven deadly sins. Or called capital sins sometimes, uh, from caput. They're, they're the head sins from which things tend to flow. The most fundamental is pride. Uh, probably most people today, if you talk about, like, vice, or you talk about s- you know, d- deadly sin, they would think about lust. But the classical authors, including Dante, who does this pictorially, eh, they're... that's the least of the deadly sins, is lust, 'cause it's the one that's most sort of, uh, dependent upon the body and its, and its, uh, passions and so on. The most important is pride. Pride is the deadliest of the deadly sins. And it's very simple to see why. Pride is the... Augustine calls it in curvatus in se. I'm caved in around myself, like a black hole, right, to (laughs) get into the scientific... but I... the black hole, to me, is a great symbol. You know, that it, it's so heavy that it draws everything, including light. Nothing can escape from it. See, that's the sinner. That's the... we're all sinners. Uh, we're like black holes, that we draw everything into ourselves. So as a sinner, and, you know, look, I'll, I'll confess, I'm a sinner, um, the temptation is, okay, this is the Bishop Barron moment, and I'm gonna... I'm drawing you now into my, you know, world and so on. It... what that does is it kills us off, and it make... it, it darkens life, and it makes it small and, and heavy and awful. Right? (laughs) It's like... a- and... but see, compared to the, to the contrasting thing, is when you're lost in a moment, you're not concerned about the impression I'm making. You're not concerned about drawing the world into yourself. You're not concerned about this monkey on my back that's always telling me, you know, "Look good and sound right." But you're, you're lost in something.

   7. LFLex Fridman21:43

      Mm-hmm.

   8. BBBishop Robert Barron21:44

      You're just, you're just talking, you know, to a friend, and, and the two of you together are discovering something true or, or beautiful, or you're lost in a movie, or you're lost in a book. Those are the best moments in life. Those are the best because they're the least prideful moments, right? Th- that's when I... the light comes out.

   9. LFLex Fridman22:00

      (laughs)

   10. BBBishop Robert Barron22:00

       I, I become radiant because I'm, I'm overcoming this tendency to, to fall in on myself. Um, Dante is so good because the way he pictures, um, Satan in Divine Comedy, and, you know, he's at the center of the earth, so li- like a black hole that way. Like, he's at the center of gravity. He's at the heaviest place. And he... there's not fire where he is, but ice. It's a much, much better image that you're frozen in place and you're stuck. And he's got wings, right? And they used to be angel wings, 'cause he's an angel, but now they're like bat wings for Dante, and they're flapping. And all they're doing is making the world around him colder because he's ice. He's stuck in his own iciness, and then he's, he's beating his wings over the ice, making everyone else colder. It's a great image. And then he has... this is cool too. He has three faces, uh, Satan, because he's a simulacrum of the Trinity, so every sinner thinks he's God. So, "I pretend I'm God." So, he's got the three faces, and from all six eyes, he weeps. Also, from all three mouths, he's chewing a sinner. He's got Cassius, Brutus, and Judas in the three mouths, you know, the three traitors. But (laughs) I always thought, it, it's just a great image of all of us sinners, is we're stuck, it's heavy, it's cold, we're chewing on our past resentments, we're weeping in our sadness, and we're making the world around us colder. It's beautiful. It's a great... so that's pride. See, that, that's an image of pride, 'cause Satan, that's his great sin, pride, which is why he needed Michael, right, Mikael, who's like God. So the, the great challenge to him, which (laughs) we need all the time, is someone to say, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. You're not God." But the minute we say, "I'm God," vroom, black hole. I now cave in on myself. I suck everything into myself, and I turn into Do- Dante's Satan. So that's a great image. That's pride. That's the most fundamental. That's the uber capital sin. It's... all the other ones flow from that in a way.

   11. LFLex Fridman24:06

       So, in general, empathy, humility, compassion, love thy neighbor-

   12. BBBishop Robert Barron24:11

       All of 'em.

   13. LFLex Fridman24:11

       ... is the way to fight the s- the sin of pride.

   14. BBBishop Robert Barron24:14

       Right. Which is why the masters tend to say... this was Bernard. Saint Bernard was asked, uh, "What are the three most important virtues?" And he said, "Humilitas, humilitas, and humilitas."

   15. LFLex Fridman24:24

       (laughs)

   16. BBBishop Robert Barron24:24

       Because it's the opposite of pride.

   17. LFLex Fridman24:26

       Yeah.

   18. BBBishop Robert Barron24:26

       So... but, you know, there bring Aquinas in again, uh...'cause we think, "Oh, hum- humility, I'm, I'm, I'm no good." That's not what it means at all. It means what I was describing before, when you're, you're just lost in something.

   19. LFLex Fridman24:37

       Mm-hmm.

   20. BBBishop Robert Barron24:37

       You're just lost in it. Um, my image... you know, I, I live out in Santa Barbara, and, uh, I like to walk on the beach out there. And there's a section of the beach where they let the dogs, you know, run free without leashes. And, uh, when you see a dog, and...... he's well cared for and his master is right there, and, and the master is throwing the tennis ball out into the surf, and the dog goes galloping out into the surf and he gets it with a big smile and comes running back. Th- that's, that's humility, that's an image of heaven, because he's just lost in that moment. He doesn't care about impressing anybody, he doesn't care about, uh, what people think of him. He's just lost in it. That's it. That's heaven, right? And those moments in our life when we s- when we get that, it's a little hint of, of paradise. But, but the trouble is most of us live, frankly, most of the time, in various levels of hell, you know, and we're, and we're dealing with these deadly sins. Like envy flows from pride, because if I'm prideful, I'm a black hole, I'm in curvatus unae, I'm collapsed in, what am I really gonna be concerned about? "That guy is getting more attention than I am. That guy is richer than I am. Th- th- that, that lady, she has got a bigger reputation than I do. And why, why don't I have that?" Right?

   21. LFLex Fridman25:46

       Mm-hmm.

   22. BBBishop Robert Barron25:46

       So envy is a very close daughter of pride. Um, anger flows from ... (laughs) you know, why do I get angry? The dog isn't getting angry on the beach when he's running after the tennis ball, but I get angry all the time, sputter with anger when things aren't going my way, and, and you're insulting me, and you're not doing what I want, and I'm being hurt, my reputation. So anger flows from pride, you know? All of them do, all of the deadly sins do.

   23. LFLex Fridman26:10

       So you said, "I'm a sinner." So we're all sinners.

   24. BBBishop Robert Barron26:15

       Yeah.

   25. LFLex Fridman26:16

       Um, and you mentioned Satan. Where's the ... so there's heaven and hell, there's God and Satan, where's the line between what it means to be good and, uh, not good enough? Or I, I, I hesitate to use the word sort of, uh, evil, but, uh-

   26. BBBishop Robert Barron26:39

       Yeah.

   27. LFLex Fridman26:39

       ... maybe, uh, overwhelmingly sinful. (laughs) Where's the line between hell and heaven?

   28. BBBishop Robert Barron26:45

       Think of them as limit concepts, maybe, they're like heuristic-

   29. LFLex Fridman26:48

       (laughs)

   30. BBBishop Robert Barron26:48

       ... devices.
5. 36:43 – 38:27

   The Trinity

   1. BBBishop Robert Barron36:43

      But Christianity is unique in all the religions in saying that God is love.

   2. LFLex Fridman36:47

      And somehow, the Holy Trinity embodies that idea. I mean, that-

   3. BBBishop Robert Barron36:52

      Yes.

   4. LFLex Fridman36:52

      ... philosophically, has always been confusing to me.... w- what it means to be three things and at the same time be one God; the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. What, what is this dance between these three? What, what exact... Like, how do, how do you visualize? How do you understand this? (laughs)

   5. BBBishop Robert Barron37:15

      Yeah.

   6. LFLex Fridman37:15

      This, this very, this very fascinating essential thing for Christianity.

   7. BBBishop Robert Barron37:20

      The first thing I'd say is what we already have been sort of talking about, is if you say God is love, and most people probably say, "Yeah, I like that. That's a good idea. God is love." But it's very peculiar because if he is love, there has to be in his unity a lover, a beloved, and the love that they share. Otherwise, he, he isn't love by his very essence. He would love. It would be an attribute of God or an action of God. But if it's his very nature, there has to be lover, beloved, and love shared.

   8. LFLex Fridman37:49

      Mm-hmm.

   9. BBBishop Robert Barron37:49

      And the tradition eventually came to see that. The, the image I was using before of, of the Father, his imago, the Son, well, that's born of God's infinite mind. So of, of course God has an image of himself. Heck, I've got an image of myself. That's something I can pull off as a, as a puny little creature. God, in his infinity, has a perfect imago of himself. And they have to fall in love with each other. What else can they do? Because they're in the presence of infinite good. (laughs) And so it has to follow that you then have the shared love that connects them, and that's how we generate, if you want, this idea of the three persons in God.

6. 38:27 – 48:24

   Catholicism

   1. BBBishop Robert Barron38:28

   2. LFLex Fridman38:28

      Let me ask you about the church.

   3. BBBishop Robert Barron38:30

      Yeah.

   4. LFLex Fridman38:30

      One of the defining characteristics of Catholicism is the Catholic Church.

   5. BBBishop Robert Barron38:37

      Yeah.

   6. LFLex Fridman38:38

      What is the Catholic Church?

   7. BBBishop Robert Barron38:40

      I would say it's the mystical body of Jesus. So as I said before, it's not an organization. If we do it that way, we're gonna miss it. It's got organizational elements to it, you know, so I'm a bishop, I'm a, I'm a office holder within the church. But the church is an organism, not a, not an organization. So it's a organism of interconnected cells, as I said, namely all of the baptized, gathered around Christ mys- in a mystical union. That's the church.

   8. LFLex Fridman39:07

      But there's buildings.

   9. BBBishop Robert Barron39:09

      Yeah.

   10. LFLex Fridman39:09

       There's titles.

   11. BBBishop Robert Barron39:10

       Sure.

   12. LFLex Fridman39:11

       Uh-

   13. BBBishop Robert Barron39:11

       'Cause it manifests-

   14. LFLex Fridman39:12

       Or is that-

   15. BBBishop Robert Barron39:12

       ... itself institutionally then, but-

   16. LFLex Fridman39:14

       So are the sort of heavy things about that all have to do with pride?

   17. BBBishop Robert Barron39:19

       Yeah, sure. Whatever is corrupt in it.

   18. LFLex Fridman39:20

       The sexiness of the buildings. (laughs)

   19. BBBishop Robert Barron39:22

       Yeah. No, whatever is corrupt in the church, of course, it comes from pride, from sin. And one thing I like about... You know, the, the New Testament is so clear on that. I mean, Paul is... In his little tiny communities, so before there was a Vatican or dioceses or anything, Paul has these little tiny communities of Christians, like in Corinth and Ephesus, you know. (laughs) What's the one thing we know about them? Is they fought with each other. Uh, 'cause Paul's always up- upbraiding them and, you know, telling them, "Come on, would you people get it together?" And, you know, "Who's bewitched you?" And so from the beginning, we've been fighting with each other because we're made up of sinners, and, uh, you know. So one of the things we do in, in Catholic ecclesiology, is the official name for like the study of the church, is to talk about the treasure in earthen vessels. Paul's language again. The treasure is Christ. The treasure is, is, is the love he's bequeathed to the world. That's the treasure that we have, but it's always held in these really fragile vessels, namely us, and so it's gonna be marked by corruption and stupidity and pride and everything else.

   20. LFLex Fridman40:21

       Well, nevertheless, there's a hierarchy, there's titles, and so on.

   21. BBBishop Robert Barron40:25

       Yeah.

   22. LFLex Fridman40:27

       If we remove pride from the picture as the best possible interpretation of the hierarchy that makes up this one organism, this living organism-

   23. BBBishop Robert Barron40:35

       Mm-hmm.

   24. LFLex Fridman40:36

       ... what's the, what's the role of the Pope, for example? What is the role of, uh, a bishop, for example? Like, what is the role of the hierarchy in terms of the broader vision of Christianity, Catholicism as a religion?

   25. BBBishop Robert Barron40:52

       I'm a devotee of this guy named Johann Adam Müller, who was a theologian early part of the 19th century, and he was part of the kind of Romantic movement, and he said the purpose of the Pope is to symbolize and embody and draw together the unity of the entire church. So he's the personal symbol of the unity of the church. Who's a bishop? The bishop is the personal symbol of the unity of a diocese. Who's a pastor of a parish? He's the personal symbol of the unity of that parish. So he, he understood it not so much organizationally as organically again. It was like, um, what? Uh, the- that around which the pattern, uh, organizes itself. And if you don't have that, that unifying figure, the community will kind of fessibrate, and, and you see that all the time without headship, we would say. So it's more symbolic and organic than it is, um, organizational.

   26. LFLex Fridman41:47

       So symbols for community, but there's such, uh, fascinating peculiarities to each individual symbol. To... There's different characteristics that make up the different people that have different, uh, ways of communicating, they have different hopes and fears and all that kind of stuff. What, um... If, if they're all symbols, what's the role of the different peculiarities of those symbols, of being an inspiring uniter versus maybe a stronger type of, um, more judgmental kind of communicator, all that kind of stuff? I mean-

   27. BBBishop Robert Barron42:28

       Yeah.

   28. LFLex Fridman42:28

       ... can, can you maybe speak to the human part of the s- of these symbols?

   29. BBBishop Robert Barron42:34

       Yeah, well, I, I might just shift to another image, um, of shepherd, so that's a classic biblical image, and as a bishop, I walk around with this thing called a crosier which is a shepherd's staff, right? So it's the symbol of the bishop's office, and the (laughs) crosier though is a kind of, um... It's a kind of in your face thing in a way 'cause it's got the-... the, the end of it was meant to hold off wild animals, and then the, the crook part of it was meant to bring sheep back to the fold, right?

   30. LFLex Fridman43:01

       Mm-hmm.
7. 48:24 – 55:11

   Sexual abuse scandal

   1. BBBishop Robert Barron48:25

   2. LFLex Fridman48:25

      Let me ask you a difficult question about the darker sides of human nature, of human power, of institutions. What's your view on the long history and widespread reports of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests? So this is a, a difficult topic, but maybe an important one to shine a light on.

   3. BBBishop Robert Barron48:45

      Yeah, it's awful, you know, and it's, it's been a problem go back to Peter Damian back in the 11th century was talking about it. So it's been a problem and whenever really sinful human beings have been in close proximity to children, we've, we find this issue. Has it been around the church? Yes, um...Has it surfaced in a kind of sickening way in the last 30 years? Absolutely. Um, I'm glad the church has made important strides, and it has. Uh, back in 2002, there was a thing called the Dallas Accords where the Bishops of America put a lot of these protocols in place that really have been effective at ameliorating this problem. Uh, the numbers spiked in the '70s and '80s, and that's been demonstrated over and over again. And then they fell dramatically after that. So th- that's not to excuse anything, but it's to say I think progress has been made with it .

   4. LFLex Fridman49:36

      What's the impulse to secrecy?

   5. BBBishop Robert Barron49:38

      Yeah, well, to protect institutions, you know, and that's always, that's a sinful, uh, instinct. Uh, I mean, not altogether. I mean, sure, an institution is, is worth protecting, but if it reaches the point where you're indifferent to people's, uh, wellbeing, then you're in trouble.

   6. LFLex Fridman49:52

      So institutions' role should be transparent and honest with the sins of its members an- and of itself?

   7. BBBishop Robert Barron50:01

      Sure. Sure, yeah.

   8. LFLex Fridman50:02

      (sighs) So maybe you can speak to the fact, uh, as a priest, a bishop, as part of Catholicism, you're not allowed to marry, you're not allowed to have sex. Uh, you're s- you're sworn to celibacy.

   9. BBBishop Robert Barron50:21

      Mm-hmm.

   10. LFLex Fridman50:22

       What is, what is behind that idea? What is the sort of... We talked about some broad stroke-

   11. BBBishop Robert Barron50:28

       Yeah.

   12. LFLex Fridman50:29

       ... ideas of love.

   13. BBBishop Robert Barron50:31

       Yeah.

   14. LFLex Fridman50:31

       Uh, what's behind the idea of celibacy?

   15. BBBishop Robert Barron50:33

       Well, and that's a good way to get at it. It's a path of love. So it, the church is always in favor of inculcating love. Marriage is a path of love, but so is celibacy. Um, Saint Paul talks about someone who is preoccupied with the things of, of this world and family and those who are free from that are freer for doing the, the work of God. So that's kind of a pragmatic, uh, justification for celibacy. And we still, I think, take that seriously. I look at my own life. I mean, celibacy has enabled me to do all kinds of things and go places and, and, and, and, uh, minister in a way that I could not if I had been married. So I get it, I get the pragmatic side. But I, I'm more interested in the sort of mystical side of it. Um, i- i- i- remember Jesus was challenged about the person who had, you know, a whole series of, of, um, husbands and, and then they all died, and so in heaven, which one will, will, uh, you know, which, which husband will the wife have? And his answer is, is, "In heaven, people don't marry and they're not given in marriage." There's a, there's a higher way of love. It's a more radical way of love that's not tied to a particular, but I think through God is tied to everybody. The celibate... And this has been from the beginning of the church, not as a law, but there, there were celibates from the very beginning of the church, including Jesus, of course, (laughs) and Paul. Um, they sensed something, that that way of living mystically anticipates the way we'll love in heaven. It's a sign even now within this world of how we will all love in heaven. So in that way, it's a bit like pacifists. Um, I'm glad there are pacifists in the church, and I, I've known some, you know, some very powerful, uh, witnesses to pacifism. I'm glad they're pacifists because they witness even now to how we will be in heaven when every tear is wiped away and we beat our swords into plowshares and, you know, it... Heaven's a place of radical peace that some people even now live it. At the same time, I'm glad not everyone is a pacifist 'cause I, I would hold with the church to just war theory that there's... Sometimes all we can do in this finite world is to, is to fight, you know, uh, manifest wickedness. So-

   16. LFLex Fridman52:46

       And just in the same way they're just sex? (laughs)

   17. BBBishop Robert Barron52:49

       Well, no, right, I'm glad there are celibates, but I'm glad not everyone is a celibate.

   18. LFLex Fridman52:53

       Yeah. (laughs)

   19. BBBishop Robert Barron52:53

       I wouldn't want that. I mean, 'cause, because, uh, married love is a marvelous expression of, of the divine love. So that's why it's good there are some. And it's, it's always been a small number.

   20. LFLex Fridman53:03

       The actual experience of it, uh, would you... Uh, the spiritual nature of it, is it similar to fasting? So I've been enjoying fasting, uh, recently, so not eating-

   21. BBBishop Robert Barron53:15

       Yeah, yeah.

   22. LFLex Fridman53:15

       ... uh, for several days, that kind of stuff, and that somehow brings you even deep... I'm mean, generally, I'm in love with everything and na- with nature and everything, I see the beauty in the world, but there's a greater intensity to that when you're fasting, for example.

   23. BBBishop Robert Barron53:31

       Yeah, yeah, I, I might use the language of, you know, sublimation or redirection of energy and all that. Um, I, I think that's true. There's a certain sublimation of energies into, um, prayer, into mysticism, into ministry, um, a redirection of energies. So it's meant to be life-enhancing the same way fasting is. It's meant ultimately to be life-enhancing and make you healthier and happier. So celibacy is a, is a path of love, and I think it does involve, yeah, a certain redirection of energies. You could say that.

   24. LFLex Fridman54:03

       Don't you think... Do you think it's a heavy burden for some humans to bear-

   25. BBBishop Robert Barron54:11

       Sure.

   26. LFLex Fridman54:11

       ... for some priests to bear? Is that-

   27. BBBishop Robert Barron54:12

       Sure.

   28. LFLex Fridman54:13

       ... is that the thing given this, the, the, the sexual abuse scandal, um, is that the thing that breaks humans?

   29. BBBishop Robert Barron54:22

       No, I, I wouldn't tie that to celibacy, and that's been, uh, demonstrated a- over and over again. There's a priest named Andrew Greeley who was a priest from my home diocese of Chicago, and Andy did a lot of research. He was a sociologist of religion, did a lot of research into that very question, and there really is not a correlation between celibacy per se and the sexual abuse of children or of anybody. So I, I wouldn't make that correlation. Uh-

   30. LFLex Fridman54:44

       So bad people, sinful people are going to do what they're going to do?
8. 55:11 – 1:06:55

   Evil

   1. LFLex Fridman55:11

      So the, the challenge, of course, there's all kinds of, y- you said institutional cover, there's all kinds of institutions that cover for-

   2. BBBishop Robert Barron55:18

      Yeah.

   3. LFLex Fridman55:18

      ... people that don't......that do, uh, evil onto the world, that do, uh, sinful things-

   4. BBBishop Robert Barron55:24

      Sure.

   5. LFLex Fridman55:24

      ...after world. But there's something about the church, which is, um, the, as an organism s- is supposed to be an embodiment of-

   6. BBBishop Robert Barron55:32

      Yeah.

   7. LFLex Fridman55:33

      ...good in this world.

   8. BBBishop Robert Barron55:34

      Right.

   9. LFLex Fridman55:34

      Of love in this world. And it, it breaks people's hearts-

   10. BBBishop Robert Barron55:38

       Yes.

   11. LFLex Fridman55:38

       ...to see this kind of, even a small amount-

   12. BBBishop Robert Barron55:40

       Yeah.

   13. LFLex Fridman55:41

       ...uh, this kind of thing happen within the church. It, it wakes you up to the cruelty, the absurdity of the world sometimes.

   14. BBBishop Robert Barron55:48

       Yeah.

   15. LFLex Fridman55:48

       Like, (laughs) it's, it's, uh, it's back to the, the question of why do bad things happen to good people?

   16. BBBishop Robert Barron55:56

       Yeah.

   17. LFLex Fridman55:56

       Why does God allow this kind of thing to happen? And, uh, so maybe unanswerable que- do you have an answer to that question?

   18. BBBishop Robert Barron56:04

       I can gesture toward it using rather abstract language, which is true enough. It's completely emotionally unsatisfying, but it's naming it, uh, uh, truthfully enough. And it goes back to Augustan, which is God permits evil to bring about a greater good. Now, again, I know how unsatisfying that sort of spare austere language can sound, but it gets us off the horn of a, the horns of a dilemma, you know. Aquinas, you know, when he lays out a, a question, he always has the objections first. So is there a God? Well, objection one, objection two, objection three. And he's really, talk about steel manning an argument, Aquinas is great at that.

   19. LFLex Fridman56:44

       Yeah.

   20. BBBishop Robert Barron56:45

       Um, one of the really steel manned arguments... Is that the right grammatical form to... (laughs)

   21. LFLex Fridman56:51

       (laughs)

   22. BBBishop Robert Barron56:51

       One of the... What's the past participle about the steel man? Um...

   23. LFLex Fridman56:54

       (laughs)

   24. BBBishop Robert Barron56:55

       But one of (laughs) the best arguments, he formulates it this way. Um, if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. And his example from his medieval physics, he goes, "If there were an infinite heat, there'd be no cold," right? But God is described as infinitely good. Therefore, if God exists, there should be no evil. But there is evil, therefore God does not exist. That's a darn good argument, that's a really persuasive argument. And, and I think, I've done this for a long time in apologetics and in, in sort of higher philosophy, um, that's the best argument against God. Um, but, you know, here's something that before I, I press ahead with it, something I find really interesting. I think the three best arguments against God all come from within the religious tradition.

   25. LFLex Fridman57:43

       Mm-hmm.

   26. BBBishop Robert Barron57:44

       Namely, uh, the book of Job. So Job, he's great. I mean, he's a great guy, he does everything right. He's the, he's God's great servant, and he, and he's punished in every (laughs) possible way. You know, he has every possible suffering. Aquinas' argument from The Summa, and then to your friend and mine, uh, Dostoevsky. I, I think in The Brothers Karamazov, uh, Ivan's argument when he's trying to wreck the faith of Alyosha. And it's, um, uh, uh, these examples drawn, they, they think, from Dostoevsky, from the headlines of his own time of the most abject cruelty to children, like an innocent child being made to suffer. How in God's name could that happen if God exists and he's all good? So I, I get it. But see the book of Job, Thomas Aquinas, Dostoevsky, these are all profoundly believing people. It's like when I hear, um, Stephen Fry, you know, the, uh, famously atheist writer, he, he will bring out this argument with great authority. He does, of, of, you know, children with bone cancer and worms that go into the eyes of children and blind them before they kill them, and... But he's been proceeded by the author of Job, Thomas Aquinas and Dostoevsky who, who stood right... Uh, uh, think of Job in, in the whirlwind. He s- he stands there in the, in the whirlwind, you know? So you can't blame the Christian tradition for not dealing with this problem, you know, for like, uh, um, brushing it under the carpet. I mean, it, it has, it has stood in the whirlwind of this problem.

   27. LFLex Fridman59:23

       It's still a difficult problem to deal with that there's all this-

   28. BBBishop Robert Barron59:26

       Of course.

   29. LFLex Fridman59:26

       ...cruelty of the world. It's, uh, there's a lot of example through history just, uh-

   30. BBBishop Robert Barron59:33

       Yeah.
9. 1:06:55 – 1:18:16

   Atheism

   1. BBBishop Robert Barron1:06:55

   2. LFLex Fridman1:06:55

      You mentioned that, uh... Again, on Reddit, somebody asked who your favorite, um, communicator of atheist ideas was a- and you mentioned, uh, Christopher Hitchens.

   3. BBBishop Robert Barron1:07:05

      Yeah.

   4. LFLex Fridman1:07:06

      Uh, are there other ideas, um, for atheism that you find particularly challenging?

   5. BBBishop Robert Barron1:07:15

      Well, that's the one is the problem of evil. The other objection in Aquinas which has a lot of contemporary, um, resonance is...Can't we just explain everything through natural causes? W- Why would you have to invoke a cause beyond the causes in the world? So as I'm trying to explain, let's say for Aquinas, motion, causality, you know, finality, can't I just do that with natural causes? Wouldn't that suffice to explain it? So I-I get like when naturalists, uh, are speaking or people that are pure materialists, they'll just say, "No, that's perfectly adequate. Uh, a scientific account of reality is utterly adequate to our experience." Um, so I-I would steel man that and say, "Well, show me why we need something more." And to do that, (laughs) you gotta get out of Plato's cave, it seems to me. Because that- that- my- my objection to naturalism is it- it- it's staying within the realm of the immediately empirically observable, and making the mistake of saying that's all there is to being, that's all there is that needs to be explained. And long before we get to religion, just stay with Plato. The first step out of the cave, if you combine it now with the parable of the line, is mathematical objects. And- and I'm with those, the many people that would say, "Mathematics is an experience of the immaterial." I- I've stepped out of a merely empirical, physical, naturalistic world the minute I understand a pure number or a pure equation or a pure mathematical relationship, uh, which would obtain in any possible world, which are not tied to- to space and time. Uh, that's the first step out of the cave. And then that leads to the more metaphysical reflections. For example, on the nature of being, I mean, so I could- I could talk about this thing as a physical object, and I can analyze it at all kinds of levels and follow all the scientists, you know, up and down through this thing and... Fine, fine, but I'm still in Plato's cave, I'm still looking at the flickering images on the wall. But when I step out of that into the mathematical realm, I- I have entered a different realm of being, it seems to me.

   6. LFLex Fridman1:09:28

      Do you think it's possible for the cave to expand so large that it encompasses the whole world? Meaning, is it possible to... Is it possible that we're just clueless right now in terms of, um, scientifically speaking, with most of the world we haven't figured out yet, but do you think it's possible through science to know God, to-

   7. BBBishop Robert Barron1:09:49

      No.

   8. LFLex Fridman1:09:49

      ... look outside the world? So it's fundamentally the limit of-

   9. BBBishop Robert Barron1:09:52

      Yeah.

   10. LFLex Fridman1:09:52

       ... the empirical scientific method is that we can't know some of these-

   11. BBBishop Robert Barron1:09:56

       Yeah.

   12. LFLex Fridman1:09:56

       ... very big questions?

   13. BBBishop Robert Barron1:09:57

       No, I- I- Again, I love the sc- I'm not a scientist and I was never all that good at science, you know, I was more of humanities guy. But I- I love and respect the scientists, but I hate scientism. And scientism is rampant today with especially young people. The reduction of all knowledge to the scientific form of knowledge, and I- I'm a- a vehement opponent of that. Um, there are dimensions of being that are not capturable through a scientific method of mere observation, hypothesis formation, experimentation, et cetera. As great as that is, as wonderful as that is, but it's still, I think, within Plato's cave. And that's not to say it's not real, it's just at a relatively low level of reality. Um, you step out of Plato's cave when you go into the- in pure mathematics. That's right, you know that article, I just came across it recently and discovered this whole literature around it, is Eugene Wigner's article in 1960 called The Unreasonable Applicability of Mathematics to the Physical Sciences. I think that's the title of it.

   14. LFLex Fridman1:10:51

       Mm-hmm. Or- Or Effectiveness or something like that.

   15. BBBishop Robert Barron1:10:53

       Something like that, yeah.

   16. LFLex Fridman1:10:53

       Yeah.

   17. BBBishop Robert Barron1:10:53

       But what is so cool is that, you know, he's not a religious man, he was a kind of a secular Jew, um, but yet he uses the word miracle like eight times in that article. And 'cause he just- he's so impressed by the fact that high, complex mathematics describes so accurately the physical world and could be used to- to create things and to manipulate. And why should that be true? Th- there- there's something very weirdly mysterious about that relationship, you know? And I would say it's because you- you've stepped into a higher order of being which is inclusive of a lower level of being. That's the platonic approach, is that as you move... Now I'm going to a different metaphor, you move to higher levels, they're inclusive of the lower levels.

   18. LFLex Fridman1:11:33

       Yeah, there's some magic there that seems to, at least in our current understanding of science, uh, to be not quite capturable, even consciousness, the idea of consciousness.

   19. BBBishop Robert Barron1:11:45

       Can I ask you, w- where do you think the laws of nature come from? So, uh, I mean, sort of the Wigner question, w- where does the deep- the deep mathematical structure of things come from? How do you explain that?

   20. LFLex Fridman1:11:57

       The mathematical structure or the fact that the structure is- is somehow pleasing and beautiful 'cause those are different-

   21. BBBishop Robert Barron1:12:04

       Yeah, that's... Yeah.

   22. LFLex Fridman1:12:06

       Those- those are two different...

   23. BBBishop Robert Barron1:12:07

       No, we'll do the first one for, well, I- I'm just curious necessarily, where do you think it comes from?

   24. LFLex Fridman1:12:11

       I tend to believe, even in terms of physics, we don't really know what's going on. There's-

   25. BBBishop Robert Barron1:12:15

       Yeah.

   26. LFLex Fridman1:12:15

       ... so, so, so much more to be discovered. We're, um, walking around in the dark trying to figure out little puzzles here and there, and we're patting ourselves on the back on how many puzzles we've discovered so far.

   27. BBBishop Robert Barron1:12:27

       Yeah.

   28. LFLex Fridman1:12:28

       Even Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, what are the limits of mathematics' axiomatic systems? I don't- I don't know what is the purpose of mathematics. What is the power of mathematics? Is it just a useful tool to, um, study the world around us or is it something deeper that we're just discovering? Uh, um, all I know from my emotional perspective, now I am an engineer, I'm a ro-

   29. BBBishop Robert Barron1:12:55

       Right.

   30. LFLex Fridman1:12:55

       ... robotics AI person. From an emotional perspective, I just find the whole thing beautiful.
10. 1:18:16 – 1:20:51

    Jordan Peterson

    1. BBBishop Robert Barron1:18:16

    2. LFLex Fridman1:18:16

       Uh, let me ask you about Jordan Peterson. You had a great conversation with him.

    3. BBBishop Robert Barron1:18:19

       Oh, yeah. Yeah.

    4. LFLex Fridman1:18:20

       Um, he has a complicated and nuanced view of faith, or faith-

    5. BBBishop Robert Barron1:18:25

       Yeah.

    6. LFLex Fridman1:18:25

       ... period. Um, he has said that he believes in Jesus, the person, and the myth, and some of the-

    7. BBBishop Robert Barron1:18:32

       Yeah.

    8. LFLex Fridman1:18:32

       ... the full richness and complexity that you've t- talked about. But he's surprised by his faith. He's not sure what to make of it.

    9. BBBishop Robert Barron1:18:39

       Yeah.

    10. LFLex Fridman1:18:39

        He's, he's almost like, uh, meta struggling with, with-

    11. BBBishop Robert Barron1:18:42

        Yeah.

    12. LFLex Fridman1:18:42

        ... what the heck is it faith means. He's a super powerful intellect that can't compute the faith-

    13. BBBishop Robert Barron1:18:48

        Yeah.

    14. LFLex Fridman1:18:48

        ... that he's experiencing. So, uh, what are some interesting differences between the two of you, or simi- commonalities, uh, in terms of-

    15. BBBishop Robert Barron1:18:56

        Yeah.

    16. LFLex Fridman1:18:57

        ... your understanding of faith?

    17. BBBishop Robert Barron1:18:59

        He's a very interesting guy. A- and I've had a couple conversations with him. And I, I do think he's, he's moving in the direction of, of faith. And his lectures in the Bible are very fine, I think. Uh, he reminds me of the church fathers because the church fathers would've s- looked at the, they called it the moral sense of the scripture. Peterson probably called it the psychological meaning. But I think he's doing a lot of that. He... A- as I read him and talk to him, I think he's kind of at a Kantian level in regard to Jesus. What I mean there is, for Kant, Jesus is... It's not so much the historical Jesus, this figure from long ago, it's Jesus as an archetype of the moral life. You know, he says he's the image of the person perfectly pleasing to God.And so Jesus inhabits our kind of moral imagination as a, as a heuristic, a- as a, as a, a goal that we're tending toward. But the historical person of Jesus for

    18. LFLex Fridman1:19:51

        Yeah.

    19. BBBishop Robert Barron1:19:51

        ... Kant is like, "Well, let's not fuss about that so much." It's this figure. And as I read Peterson especially and talk to him, I think he's kind of there with the archetype of Jesus, and even language of, like, live as though God exists. That's the als ob of Kant, you know, the, the kind of as if, um, attitude. And w- where I sort of press him when we talk is in the direction of, "No, that's not Christianity yet. I mean, that's enlightenment, uh, moral philosophy." But Christianity is very interested in this historical figure and very interested that God really became one of us. And He's not just an archetype of the moral life. He's someone, He's a person who's invaded our world and gone all the way to the bottom of sin and thereby saved us, you know? So the facticity of Jesus and then the resurrection. So, like, Peterson will talk about the resurrection as a, as a myth and all that.

    20. LFLex Fridman1:20:45

        Yes.

    21. BBBishop Robert Barron1:20:45

        And you can find that in different cultures, et cetera. But I- I, Christianity, um, is saying something else.

11. 1:20:51 – 1:23:37

    Jesus

    1. BBBishop Robert Barron1:20:51

    2. LFLex Fridman1:20:51

       So in Christianity when we're talking about who is Jesus, it's not just an archetype.

    3. BBBishop Robert Barron1:20:56

       Right.

    4. LFLex Fridman1:20:56

       It's not just a myth. It's a historical figure. And the very grounded fact that God became one of us-

    5. BBBishop Robert Barron1:21:04

       Right.

    6. LFLex Fridman1:21:04

       ... is fundamental to this idea of what it, what Christianity is, what it means to be a Christian. It's the, uh, the sin and the love that came here down to Earth-

    7. BBBishop Robert Barron1:21:16

       Yeah.

    8. LFLex Fridman1:21:16

       ... means we can be one with God. So that's essential. It's not just-

    9. BBBishop Robert Barron1:21:19

       Yeah.

    10. LFLex Fridman1:21:19

        ... an archetype.

    11. BBBishop Robert Barron1:21:20

        That's right. Y- you know, i- it always strikes me the difference between, let's say, mythic expressions and the New Testament is... (laughs) Read someone like, you know, Carl Jung and then, and then Joseph Campbell, whom he influenced, and then now Jordan Peterson, who's very Jungian, and this sort of archetypal reading of the scriptures. And great. I mean, I think it's very interesting, and there's a lot going on there. There's a sort of calmness, though, about it. Like, yeah, interesting, and that's in this culture and that culture, and it's the form of the moral life and, mm-hmm, I understand all that. Then you read the New Testament. Uh, whatever those people are talking about, it's not that. They are grabbing you by the shoulders and shaking you to get your attention to tell you about something that happened to them, right? Th- like, the resurrection, you know, the, the myth of the dying and rising God and how powerful that is in shaping our consciousness. Mm-hmm, that's fascinating. That's not the New Testament. The New Testament is, "Did you hear? Did you... Jesus of Nazareth, whom they put to death, God raised him from the dead, and he was seen by 500, and he was seen by, by Peter. And, and the, and, and then lastly, I saw him." That's how Paul talks. It's, it's not the detached, you know, um, uh, psychologist musing on archetypal-

Episode duration: 1:54:31