Episode 108: Interview with Dr. Ben Heidgerken

We are pleased to welcome our friend and historical theologian, Dr. Ben Heidgerken. Dr. Heidgerken recently published Salvation through Temptation: Maximus the Confessor and Thomas Aquinas on Christ's Victory over the Devil with Catholic University Press. We discuss his work, comparing the Western emphasis on grace in anthropology and salvation to the Eastern with writings of Maximus the Confessor. We hope you will enjoy this conversation as much as we did. Thanks for listening!

Timestamps:

4:20- What is Humanity?

17:57- Incarnational Submission

22:50- Maximus’ Discourse

36:30- Maximus and Chrysostom

59:48- Self Deception

Charles Kim 0:00

Hello and welcome to a history of Christian theology. My name is Chad Kim. With me this week will be my friend, Dr. Ben Hi gherkin, who recently wrote a work called salvation through temptation. Maximus the Confessor and Thomas Aquinas on Christ's victory over the devil. Dr. Hager, Ken and I went to Princeton seminary together. And now we're both teaching in different seminaries ourselves. Dr. Hager, Ken is at St. Paul Seminary in the Twin Cities. So it was great to get to catch up with him and hear about his research that came out of his doctoral program. And in our conversation, we discuss mostly Maximus, the confessor, his position on the Temptation of Christ, and how exactly Christ is tempted by the devil and what that means. But Dr. Hyperkin also mentions as an interesting phrase, he talks about the incarnational logic of Christ coming to earth and he says that you can overcome overcome something by undergoing it subverting it. So we talk a little bit about that. Dr. Jai Gergen also talks about emergent complexity and his sort of journey with that concept. So there's a lot of good stuff in here. That's more than just his book with Catholic University Press. But But I do highly recommend that book in addition to the conversation. I would also like to mention that we had two very nice comments this week from two separate guests, one, William Varley has said, as a missionary Nazarene, Anglican, by background, I'm studying philosophy and I can safely say this is my favorite podcast, spelled with a British spelling. Thank you so much. And we also had a nice comment from Meg Elizabeth, who said, Thank you so much for this podcast, this was exactly what I've been searching for. I appreciate the denominational perspectives, and you're engaging discussions. I'm on episode 22. And I can't can't stop listening. So it's nice to hear that some people are going back through the catalogue and learning something from our conversations there. We did have a less than, I don't know, complimentary comment on on iTunes. Someone said that. We give UCB successful RIA run for his money in our low capacity. So apparently, we talk a lot in the early podcasts. But some are finding them enjoyable. So yeah, if you if you have any comments, if you've appreciated the podcast, we do love hearing from listeners and love to engage with listeners. So please, please do write us on our Facebook page. Leave a comment, rate us and review us on iTunes. Even if you feel the need to tell us that we talked too much. Although we have sort of changed formats a little bit doing more interviews recently. So yeah, so we appreciate hearing from you all and I think you'll really enjoy this conversation. We are working on a few other interviews that are will be upcoming Jacob would wrote on nature, Grace Aquinas and Enrico lubok. So we'll think a little we'll get to talk a little bit about race or small theology. And yeah, I think that'll be a really good conversation. I also hope to have Dr. Drew Johnson on who just wrote a book called biblical philosophy. So we do have a lot upcoming on the podcast. We appreciate your patience, as I tried to get I'm the only one doing these interviews now. And so it takes me a little while to get them out. But I do try to get it out as quick as I can. So thanks for listening. Without further ado, my conversation with Dr. Ben Hi gherkin. So I'm here with longtime friend, Ben Hi gherkin, who is just recently wrote a book salvation through temptation, Maximus the Confessor, and Thomas Aquinas on Christ victory over the devil. Like many books that I discussed on this podcast, short titles, right. Dr. hiker good, teaches American church history at St. Paul seminary. And he and I both went to Princeton seminary. And little did we know what kinds of things that we would write about for our doctoral dissertations at that time? I think it's fair to say, I'm not sure that I knew that I was even going to be writing one when I was there. But here we are. So welcome, Ben.

Ben Heidgerken 4:17

Yes. Thanks for having me.

Charles Kim 4:20

So I I've as I normally do, I've sent some questions to Ben beforehand. So we're going to kind of work through those. And I thought I would start off in a little bit of a maybe odd place. But, you know, I guess we could say serendipitously my nephew asked me on Sunday he was listening to I it turns out to be a vet brothers. So we were listening to the A vet brothers. Brothers. Yeah, I think my sister says that Satan pulls the strings is the is the song okay? And so my nephew says he's six and he says, Uncle Chad. Why does this Some say the devil is in my head. What does that mean is the devil in my head? And so I had to think about this for a minute and call upon my CPE training, my Clinical Pastoral Education Training. And I asked him, What does he think it means? And we went through some different things and but I thought I would start there for Ben because this is an important departure for Maximus and Aquinas as they think through what it means for Christ to save humanity. So what exactly is that humanity that Christ is saving? And how is he combining it? You know, how does he come into the human and and and redeem it? So Ben, how would match and adore Thomas Aquinas respond?

Ben Heidgerken 5:49

Well, first of all, you have a precocious six year old nephew. I have a seven year old son and I've sort of avoided demon talk with him by large though a couple of times I have sort of like hinted at it with him like, he's a bad guy out there. No, but, yeah. So a six year old? Wow. Yeah. That's a good question from a six year old. Yeah, I mean, the heart of the book is in its own way, as is, as you've noted, there, in your own way, at least reflection on Hebrews 415. Right. We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who has been similarly tested like us in every way, yet without sin, something like that, depending on translation. And the difficulty here right with this devil stuff? Well, the gospels that have very clear indications that one of the things that's doing the tempting of Jesus is to devil. And then the question becomes, well, if Jesus has been tempted like us, doesn't that mean that the devil is the one doing the tempting in our case, as well? And it's a difficult question to answer how, how much power so to speak. Christians have assigned to the devil in these affairs. And Maximus, for in his trajectory, tends to give the devil I suppose you'd say give acknowledge would probably be the best word for the devil a pretty significant role for the devil in human temptation. In fact, I'm arguing in the book between sort of more Western readings of Maximus and what I take to be a more natural kind of ascetic Greek trajectory for thinking about his reflection on temptation and sin. In some recent studies of Maximus, there's been a tendency to try to favorably compare Maximus with Agustin on. So to say, for instance, that Augustine and Maximus some of these western authors have been arguing, they think quite similarly on these issues of temptation, and anthropology and the ways that human beings are broken by sin. This is right the concupiscence sort of language and Augustine that turns into in the later Latin tradition is called the former is Makati the tinder of sin is what I like to translate that as, um, and those Western trend interpretations tend to downplay the devil, and all of that. But Maximus wants to say no, no, no, I mean, at least all of the his trajectory has everything that precedes him that I found at least, wants to play up that connection between human temptation and human sin. And what's at the heart of that, at the end of the day, is maximises intuition that the human person is still fundamentally good. And, and that's the thing that is sometimes the hardest to see when we're thinking in the West about Augustine. And even the later Latin tradition sometimes is pretty pessimistic about what human beings are. To say that we are broken is pretty good as far as sometimes it seems. As we are able to get, but Maximus is really trying to defend the human person and say no, the human person is still fundamentally good and even naturally, even in their fallen condition naturally inclined toward God. And that's, yeah, that's a unique thing. Like, we don't hear that. I don't think we hear it as often as we should. In the West.

Charles Kim 10:26

Yeah. But he seems to he seems to indicate, at least as I understand it, from your reading that but there's also like, you know, the devil can sort of present images to us, it has a very sort of active role. And now one of the other questions that I have is about this difference between interior and exterior, as we tend to conceive it in the West, and within and without, which is how you sort of describe Maximus. So maybe we could go there, like, is the you know, is the devil tempting us within? And what does that mean? So is the devil kind of how do you know sighs? Yeah, it's like, on the one hand, you're right, I definitely see Maximus having that wanting to recover, recover or emphasize the goodness of humanity and not a not just sort of see this brokenness all the way down all the way through. So we're totally lost, and totally without any kind of divine connection. So, you know, yeah, maybe, maybe go there. So, let us it like,

Ben Heidgerken 11:29

so. Again, in the West, I'll use Aquinas as the example here. Though, he's, again, preceded by others, like, the Peter Lombard is an important predecessor in this regard. They, he was a saint Victor as well. But all of these folks are, especially in their Christological thinking, they want to be able to say, here's the stuff that Jesus was in control of, as a human as a deified, human, right, hypothetically, United person, to the huge the humanity that he had. And they want to say that if Christ was tempted, He was none of that interior space within him. That was doing the tempting because then it's like Christ is like, split into like, he's, if we wanted to use like a really Christological analogy, you say, maybe something like a Nestorianism would sort of prevail, if we were to say that, like, Christ is in conflict with himself. And, you know, in the 20th century, like, there have been figures, like, you know, even Carl Bart comes pretty close to saying things like that in the 20th century that, but he's trying to preserve that affirmation of Hebrews 415, that Jesus was tempted like us in every way. Well, we're tempted from ourselves, he was as, and so therefore, Jesus was tempted from himself to write, but the the risk there is that Christ is sort of the seams are starting to fray. Right? So, um, but but for someone like Aquinas, and Hugh and Peter, those folks are insistent that there is an interior space that's free from temptation for Christ. And that the exterior temptation that he experiences then is that from with, you know, without, right, it's not him. What's doing the tempting is something else, it's the devil usually. And, yeah, in most cases, it actually ends up ultimately being traced back to the devil, even when it's coming from other human beings. For some of those authors, now, that you know, and for someone like Aquinas, he says pretty explicitly that that temptation from outside exterior temptation means that Jesus had the ability to, you know, he could not be like, physically accosted by the devil. Even though Aquinas at one point does say that, perhaps the devil may have carried Jesus around in his temptations. He did that by his own volition. Jesus allowed himself to be carried in those instances. And so there's definitely no insinuation for Aquinas of the devil into Christ's mind. Right that the devil never does anything to Christ's headspace. Um, yeah, so that's what that means for for Aquinas for the Temptation of Christ to be exterior For Maximus, he's allows the devil so to speak further into Jesus. He allows, for instance, that human activity is sort of a contested battleground, even for Christ in this life. Because for Maximus, again, the passions are maybe emotions, you would say something grossly equivalent to that depending on your audience. I don't know how technical to get, but they Yeah, yeah. And our emotionality is a source of sometimes discernment for us, right, as human beings, we have to figure out, I have I have a feeling or a sensation and, and what do I do with it. And for Maximus, he's gonna say that if there's really something that is wrong, so to speak, in any of those desires, or temptations

that it tried to really can be traced back to the devil, the devil can work inside of us to an extent in those thoughts, those feelings, those emotions, um, and because he also wants to maintain consistency with Hebrews 415, he's willing to say that the same kind of thing is what happens to Jesus. Jesus, has this interior experience of the devil kind of working on his head. Yeah. And so that the, the moral discernment that Christ has to go through is quite similar, I would argue, and I do argue, to that experienced even by other sort of speak fallen human beings.

Charles Kim 16:52

Right? Well, and I think that's part of what you find to be sort of compelling as I understand it in maximises presentation such that, you know, this is not for the Christ so that we have not well, and as you, as you also argue, we have not only an exemplar, that is we have someone not only who can sympathize with our pain with our struggle, even our struggle with the devil, and in an almost we might say more in more interior space, like so. Not only can Christ identify with that, but actually his victory over that also empowers us. So as I understand it, this is, you know, this is actually something to, to rejoice in almost as like, okay, it's not like at first if at first, it feels scary. Well, wait a minute, if the devil could get that close, I don't like that. But then at the same time, it's saying, Well, yeah, but actually, that's part of the power of it. Because Christ actually redeems that transforms that, and offers us not only someone who can understand and sympathize, but someone who can transform it, is that right?

Ben Heidgerken 17:57

Right. Right, who actually, and this is the sneaky part, right? That incarnational logic is weird logic, right? It's a logic where you, you overcome something by going under it, right? Like you, you beat it, by submitting yourself to it. And, and that it's such a backwards way for us when we think about power, right? In American discourse, even especially as goes today. It's backwards, right? I mean, we are we think of power differently, and right, Christ, Christ says, No, I overcome it, by allowing it by allowing myself to undergo it. And the very fact of Christ's being confronted by the devil is the moment in which he defeats him. Right. And, and that becomes the moment in which other human beings then participate in their own temptations when they also overcome their temptations. Right. So it's almost sacramental, in that sense that Christ, because he has experienced those temptations, other people, when they are confronted with their own temptations. Maximus would say still demonically, so to speak, right, that they that they participate in that same central combat that Christ engaged with in his own human lifetime. And Christ was the first and only to overcome those temptations perfectly and thereby, like, cast bind up the strong man, so to speak, right that it seems another sort of New Testament image there, right. That is, it is indeed and empowering thing when we finally when we do realize exactly what Maximus is really up to in this. Yeah, claim.

Charles Kim 20:11

Yeah, I guess we could refer to Romans here, right? Romans five. So all were dead and Adam and all were made alive in Christ. Right. So this is part of that living and participating. Right. So one of the words use there's is participation, which is something that that I never really had a full grasp on metaphysically in most of my Protestant theological education, but spending time with a good Jesuit, and, and Augustinian, you know, he sort of recovered that notion of participation, so we're able to participate in Christ's overcoming through his sharing in our humanity, we have a share in his victory.

Ben Heidgerken 20:54

Absolutely. And I can make an apology there too. For all of my Protestant friends, I understand that participation language is not always the most comfortable there. Nevertheless, I do think it is the sort of natural language that someone like Maximus is speaking, in an instance like this.

Charles Kim 21:16

Yeah. That's good. Um, let's see. So let's see. We talked a little bit about it within without what you are, I'll go Yeah, so maybe, well, I even I guess, in some ways, covered number four, but was this more than exemplary Maximus? So, you know, we talked a little bit of participation in that grace. I mean, one thing that Maximus talks about you, you sort of mentioned it briefly, but like I, you know, I sort of wanted Maximus to find a way to talk about grace. And, you know, because I'm a thoroughgoing Protestant, the Augustinian, you know, whatever, in the Western tradition, he doesn't quite use that. But he does mention sacramental, you do talk about the place of the liturgy. And, and actually, one interesting thing that I had never really conceived of, in quite these terms, was sort of the, within the, the moment of the Eucharist, you sort of talk about as almost an oasis or, you know, it's true sanctuary. And we're truly, you know, protected and truly free from the patient from the moment when one receives, and I think that's a beautiful image, like, why do we come? Why do we come to to the liturgy while we come to escape and find solace in defense? Yeah, absolutely. Maybe speak a little bit about you know, that

Ben Heidgerken 22:50

yeah, maximum. So here to write Maximus is doing some things that, again, are not very familiar. In much of the West's discourse on Grace, one of the most, I found most profound and most important claims that Maximus makes in this regard is the idea, for instance, that virtue is natural. Not even like, so in other words, he's using the word nature in a way, that seems again from like an Augustinian kind of concupiscence direction, like almost completely backwards, right? He would say that, like Augustine would say, like virtue is, like, it's, it's a very hard thing to attain. It's not something that comes to us naturally. Augustine would say that's not natural. But Maximus is insistent that if we really do recognize who we are and what we are, that nature is again oriented toward the divine. And that in when it comes to right action, that in a sense, God always has given us what we need in order to overcome, right. So in that sense, like, grace is part of nature almost for the way that maximises thinking about this, right? Yeah. Like it's not Palladian right. I use the word you know, I'll get out in front of that a little bit, right. Like he recognized but grace is pervasive grace of grace is everywhere. For Maximus and, and his again, his fundamental intuition here is to make sure that God's good creation remains on God's side. Right that God is not going to create something that is indifferent toward the divine. And by by calling virtue natural. He's really trying to say that. Well, we are still created in God's image and likeness. Yeah. And, yeah, it has some weird consequences for the way that he ends up talking about grace. Grace is but grace is pervasive grace is everywhere. It doesn't make it less real or necessary. Yeah, it's, it's it's in our bones though. It's in the air we breathe. I don't want to overplay that too much, I guess. But that's, that's my defense, at least for the way that he approaches these issues. Yeah, the sacraments absolutely are a necessary essential part of baptism. For sure. He's he connects. You know, for some of the early earliest Christian literature, I'm pretty convinced that baptism was always conceived of as a, an exorcism. Right, first and foremost. So like, even at Qumran, for instance, I even in the pre Christian Era, baptism, the baptismal rituals of Qumran I think are primarily in terms of an exorcism. And I think the Christian early Christian tradition that also has that. So yeah, there's like a power that's being conveyed, it transfers an individual from the powers of darkness to the powers of light. And there's grace there. Right? That is grace. That is, also I'm going to fall back on my word participation again, right? In Christ's victory. When when an individual participates in those things, but also in not just sacraments, but also in excuses, right, in undertaking the moral struggle as well. The the disciplining of the body, I guess, is a way for us to also participate in the final victories that Christ also accomplished in his own human existence. Very good.

Charles Kim 27:23

All right, well, here comes our sort of change of pace question. So one question we've been starting to ask on the podcast is, what is one thing that you believed to be true or possibly false? But if changed your mind on and what caused you to change your mind on this? And so I always say, this could have come in the course of writing this book, or if you, you know, feel like you want to go something bigger, or something outside of academics altogether. But I was like, it's an interesting window into even, you know, just the process of life. But especially academic research, oftentimes, we changed our minds. I know, I've changed my mind multiple times. The older I get, the more I think, like, man, what was I doing back then? But anyway, so I'll

Ben Heidgerken 28:10

love the question. And I'll try to do one that is at least tangentially related to the book because I'm this will get us kind of into the broader issues about like, Why talk about the devil at all, like, because, you know, I've never seen him. Like, it's at the same time, you know, like, there's a lot of stuff out there today that is like fascinated with the demonic. There's shows out there supernatural, my students come to me and say, like, yeah, like, I'm in this class, because like, you know, there's all these really cool shows about angels and demons out there right now. And, you know, people are really fascinated with the idea of a devil. And, you know, and there's even like, I suppose, some research is indicating, you know, there's a pretty significant rise in things like witchcraft these days, like people are really interested in, not necessarily because of the devil, usually, it's because of feminist interest. Right? It seems to me at least, that witchcraft is often associated with sort of bodily autonomy for women, but they there there's, there's still this kind of curiosity around the spiritual right around the spiritual phenomena. Um, that we don't we can't get rid of it. Like it just keeps coming back. Yeah, so this is a long way around this, but one of the things that back at Princeton you know, I took some classes with vets and fun STN and Oh, shoot. Was a Gordon. Oh my gosh, am I gonna blank on his name? Anyway, Graham? Yeah, Gordon Graham, that's it. That's, thank you. Yeah. Um, and in some of that material, right, they're very scientifically engaged individuals like very much sort of attuned to, and, you know, deep thinking minds on issues of like evolution and what it means to be human, in a scientific mindset today. And in a lot of that, that coursework, I remember thinking, being more or less convinced at the time, that emergent complexity was a sufficient understanding of the human soul, essentially, that, that we in fact, don't need to talk about souls at all, right, that there's this attempt to try to overcome this body and mind dualisms of the past to try to assert the unified singularity of the human person. And I mean, by the end of my time at seminary, I was pretty much at a place where I was comfortable saying, Yeah, we don't need to talk about souls anymore. We can just talk about the emergent Lee complex material being that humans are. And that was a position that is connected then to the stuff about spirits and demons, because like, well, if you don't need human souls, why do you need? Like, what even would be a non material spirit? Like, I don't even know what such a thing would be. If we're saying that, like consciousness is now really like, actually just a function of matter, then like, there's no such thing as a spirit, or an angel or, you know, our demon, then. Yeah. So I, how did I get? I mean, my journey away from emergent complexity has been one that I think it just, to me, it feels like the emperor has no clothes on emergent complexity, like, it's a fun word game that they come up with to say, look, well, wood, there are these emergent li complex properties that like material organisms have, like consciousness, right? But so, you know, consciousness now is a function of atoms, like so atoms have the property of consciousness, I, I'm really, I have a hard time understanding exactly how you think like carbon, the atom of carbon,

actually is supposed to be have the property of consciousness. Because if it's if atoms are all there is, you know, like, we've created these verbal entities that were saying don't really have an ontological basis, but I don't understand what that would be like what that means anymore. So you know, the consciousness of of this carbon thing is what I mean, I don't see how it's really different from just saying soul still, and meaning it. I don't know. Like, why we can't just mean it. I understand that there's problems around like, how immaterial substances can move material bodies. Bobble, I understand that. Okay, okay. It's tough. Nevertheless. Um, I just don't think we can get away from Soul discourse. anymore. I think we need to be willing to say soul and mean soul. Because? Yeah, I mean, the properties that we have, have to be traced back to something real about us. And maybe maybe emergent complexity, people in the audience can clarify my errors on this issue. But

Charles Kim 34:15

I don't know who they would be precisely I don't know that much about the emergent complexity explanation for sole talk. The only I mean, I've, you know, I've heard sometimes sometimes I will use the phrase perhaps haphazardly, that language sometimes seems like an emergent phenomena. It is not something that is planned. But it's something that we, you know, is clearly complex. And, you know, because well, I always use it when I'm explaining to my students why there's an opponent, and students hate the opponent. And they're like, why would anyone create a language with an opponent? And I have to say, Wow, other than talking no one creates languages. is that sometimes? Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Heidgerken 35:10

So it's in its own way, though, what I just said is it is also sort of an apology for the traditions. Thought about non material spirit as well. right to say that well, there is. There's really something to be said about the way it the tradition is thought about. beings that are not connected to, to matter. Yeah. And there's a there's a real need, I think, at a certain level to think about and talk about, I think we experienced it even existentially, again, in modern this modern sort of fascination with the spiritual. Yeah, it just, you know, comes up it's natural, so to speak, natural religion has it all over. Right. Animism, like all we're always fascinated and looking for spirits in the world around us. And it just at the anthropological level, it just something that we do.

Charles Kim 36:18

Sounds like they're having fun, at least that.

Ben Heidgerken 36:20

Yeah. We have our youngest is a Barker, apparently. Whatever.

Charles Kim 36:30

That's all right. No worries. All right, well, let's, we'll keep up with an idea that was quite, quite interesting. So I use, you know, you kind of gave me a little preview that maybe you don't have as much to respond to here. But I just thought I would draw a connection to a previous guest, Samantha Miller, who wrote on John Chrysostom. She wrote a little bit about the devil. So we've had some devil talk here. But she wrote a lot about the stoic influences on Chris system. And his the phrase what is up to us? And the NAWIC will answer she she also traces the stoic route, which Ben does. For Maximus, it just it just struck me that we might ask, to what extent is Chris's stuff being read by Maximus? Because that was not really part of your part of your I think you said maybe one or two footnotes, just curiosity. I mean, as I also said, I mean, sometimes with these things, it's hard to figure out, okay, what are we going to call sort of something that he's read? Or that he's influenced by at what's just sort of in the water? Like, what is just like, these phrases that just recur? And it doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, Maximus was reading Chris system, or they were reading the same stoics? Maybe they were maybe they weren't? Maybe it's just the phrase. But anyway, so feel free to respond. Thirdly,

Ben Heidgerken 37:57

you're fine. So I was actually just kind of digging around looking for the footnotes where I do mention Chris system. I've got one, at least I found on page 42. Just now. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Right? Like how, for whether Maximus read Chrysostom. I couldn't find explicit citation or explicit reference. And I didn't find any other literature that had connected Maximus with Chrysostom. In my own research, so that is one of those unexplored avenues for the time being. But as far as the stuff about stoicism is concerned, absolutely. I mean, the stoicism i when this somewhere in those first couple of centuries of Christianity, we get this synthesis of, of Platonism, with stoicism into this Neo Platonism platonic system. And Plotinus, right, if I'm remembering this correctly, um, and it just from there, it just gets into the water. And it's it shows up everywhere, from there on out. That and it's important essential framework for early Christians when they're thinking about moral responsibility and culpability because, I mean, the stoics give us this great language of thinking about the realm of responsibility in this category of right what is up to us? Don't pay me an hour of your day Greek is probably better pronunciation wise, at least the mind right. But what is up to us right in the stoic tradition And it's it's everywhere. I'm not surprised to see that it's reflected in Chris system. Because Christians are always worried about the realm of moral responsibility, as they're concerned about pursuing the good. Oh, yeah. And the stoics really did prove, you know, even if the Platanus said that they did it in an inconsistent and untenable way. The stoics really did give the Western traditions, Christian tradition, at least, a language to speak about moral responsibility. Right. So, Maximus together there, yeah. Yeah.

Charles Kim 40:51

Well, it's, it's an interesting point, because we've had, I've had a few guests, I had Hans bear Smith, on talking a little bit about Christian Platonism. And Philip carry talking a little bit about the influences of Platonic thought. But you know, we tend to call it that platonic thought Neoplatonic thought, and it can be easily overlooked to what you just said, this degree of synthesis that there actually was among the schools like Augustine is aware that there are different platonic schools and or excuse me, different philosophical schools, and he will kind of the, you know, you tend to get a hierarchy of essentially, the academy, and then the Lyceum, and then and then stoicism, the Stoics, and then Epicurus. And that, you know, you find the hierarchy, like, these are the gradations. These are the good ones, these are the bad ones. But what tends to happen is the parts that they that they find useful, I mean, even Augustine seems to have stoic categories for the way he understands cognition, and language. You know, he's he manipulates them to some degree, but it's there.

Ben Heidgerken 41:55

They're all I mean, they're all plundering Egypt, so to speak, I guess, right? That they're all just sort of like borrowing whatever, they can find this useful. But there's also for Maximus, I steered clear, at least in large part of citing any, like purely philosophical sources, because there is also this kind of tendency, especially I see it actually in Maximus is corpus moments where he'll talk about the outside philosophers. And he describes them pretty critically when he's using that kind of language. He, he, in some cases, is not even aware, it seems I guess, of some of the pagan sources, maybe for some of the ideas that he's using. Because on the one hand, like if a Christian says it, he kind of tends to trust it. But if it comes from a pagan source, he's a little bit more skeptical about it. Right from the start? Well, I don't know about that, you know, it comes from these outside philosophers. So, you know, I don't even right, he wouldn't have even had that distinction between, well, the only distinction he would have had here would have been between Christian and non Christian. And not between, like theologians and philosophers. Well, right, right. Right. And that's the hardest part for us. I think, in many ways, it's hard for me to conceive of it that way. But yeah, he's not interested in. He doesn't see these sorts of bifurcations of, of knowledge into the natural and the supernatural. And that's like, that is a repeat of the same thing I said earlier about virtue being natural, and the human person being oriented toward the divine, naturally, all of that is of a piece, right? He doesn't, yeah, so there's no philosophy for him apart from theology. Very good.

Charles Kim 44:02

All right, well, one of the other things that this is a little bit more interpretive, and it was just something like that I've been struck with before, but is this notion in the patristic sources that whatever human activity or you know, we sort of call it emotionality a little bit, and maybe those are slightly different. And actually, this might be the place where they become a little bit different, you know, we're very comfortable. In the west or, and, and modernity was talking about, like, the head being the place where one thinks, and the heart being the place where one feels, and I you know, I remember even growing up like one of the, my sort of spiritual mentors would help me, you know, think through he's like, Well, you're very heady, but you need to make it you know, you know, you know, heartfelt faith, not just had faith. And that was something that we sort of worked through and it was just very clear. You think and reason with your head and you feel with Your heart. And for Maximus as for many of these patristic sources, those are happening in the same place, it seems. And you know, you can't, you can't just you know, and nowadays I wonder if we just let the heart run free sort of have and that. And that's like, you know, whatever comes from there is good. And you should almost be suspect of what comes with your head. Maybe this is the influence of Freud. I don't know, there's some sort of ego super ego kind of thing. I'm not really sure.

Ben Heidgerken 45:32

Yeah, when I think of like modern, I was kind of when Inside Out came out, do you know that movie? Have you ever seen that one? It's one of those Pixar movies. It's like a chart. It's the inside mental life of like a young child. And, yeah, I mean, it does some interesting things. It definitely recognizes the need for discernment of our activity, emotionality, whatever you want to say, here, I'm not sure how to distinguish those rates still. But I'm in the film to write, like, all of the emotions that the child has are good, right? That there, it's actually you know, there's like, anger and there's sadness, and there's happiness, and there's joy, you know, there's like, different than the name all of the emotions and they're all characters in the movie. In that way, it's a way to what I see that film doing positive that is positive is helping us recognize and integrate our emotionality in a holistic human way to say, yeah, yeah, that we, we can't say that what it means to be human is simply to think. Right, and what it means to be human is to have this complex and sometimes deeply chaotic kind of experience of thought, and embodiment. Right, and all of the emotions and feelings that come with it. So yeah, the the connection between those, right for these patristic sources is, is pretty important. It's sometimes even hard for me to distinguish, in for instance, in some of Max's predecessors, what counts as a thought and what counts as an emotion? Because for instance, for origin? Well, he calls luggages. Boy, right, these thoughts is what we would usually translate that as, um, it seems to me that they have a pretty deeply affective components a lot of the time. Right, that they're about, like, and these thoughts to be clear, sorry, for, for origin, are often associated with demons and with temptation, so that they're often things that you're not supposed to do. And they, there yeah, there's this deep complex of, of just humaneness. Right, like, we have experiences of desire that are connected with our thought patterns. And and that's, that's just what it is to be human. Right? You don't, we aren't one of these things, and we aren't the other thing, either separately or in like, apart. We're all of it at the same time. And I think maybe origins way of talking about luggages why these thoughts helps to recognize that the connection that there is between our thoughts and our, in our feelings. And yeah, Maximus for him, his part two is also Yeah, he, I don't distinguish clearly in my material on Maximus, at least, between a temptation that is like an affective or emotional on the one hand, from temptations that would be sort of just just thoughts or just just an idea, just an idea or something, right? Because they're too deeply connected, I think, in human experience, and then he recognizes that in this instance, that they're just too deeply bound to one another. Yeah, so Oh, Right. I mean, I don't know where, you know, I haven't thought about the sort of metaphors that Maximus uses here. I'm not sure if he has a location for thought and a location for, for feeling at all. I just don't know, I guess. But yeah, I my, my intuition would be that his his distinctions would not be the ones that we use today.

Charles Kim 50:24

Yeah. Yeah. And I don't really, I wasn't really sure where I wanted to go with that other than it's, you know, it's,

Ben Heidgerken 50:30

it's an interesting question. I like it. Yeah,

Charles Kim 50:32

I was really struck with your conclusion. Because you, you know, as with a lot of, sort of, you know, these studies of thinkers, you know, there's not a lot of like application as it were to the present day, but you do a little bit of your conclusion. And you, you say, a very provoking line to me. So this is in 291. And the conclusion in dealing with the mind as an object, instead of a subject, it's effort to describe human behaviors may be wholly accurate, but it cannot prescribe, it can no longer tell us what we must do what we must avoid, oh, wait, I missed the line above that, without an avowed relationship with ethics, psychology, ceases to aid, personal discernment. So you're talking a little bit about, you know, sort of modern psychology and then sort of ethics and we sort of separate these things. But the key thing from here, me here, is this the mind is object versus the mind is subject, and how that plays into it, you know, in ethics, being this question, not just what is the right thing to do with the dollar bill that we find on the sidewalk? But But where is our life going? What are we here for, right, this broader, truly, you know, ancient conception of ethics? So I just asked you to expound on that line and maybe tease that out a bit.

Ben Heidgerken 51:56

Yeah, I appreciate that you found that particular part of the text, it's the only moment where I mean, it was a late addition to the book, and it's something that's come up. The reason it's there is largely because of my teaching undergraduates. So with my undergrads, they they come to these issues of religion and religious discourse, with these bifurcations between what they think of as fluffy dubby like religious thinking, and cold, rigid facts of science. They think that, well, science is true sciences, accurate, sciences, inerrant, so to speak, as far as it goes at least. And perhaps even right, the sciences all, you know, for the more positivist of the students, it's all we really can know. And it's really not very much done either. If I'm, if I'm Frank, I suppose. So, what ends up happening, I think, in modern psychology, is this this transferal of that scientific reasoning? into human headspace, right? Like, where are we, we tend to want to, like treat our brains as an object, right? We poke at them, we prod them, we, we do experiments on undergraduates about them. You know, it's like, Look, I'm not obviously I'm not a modern psychologist, I don't know anything about MRIs or any of that stuff. So all due respect, right? Where we're, it's due here, because there is something properly scientific about the study of the human mind and the human brain. Nevertheless, all the way back to the enlightenment. The problems, it seems to me is that while the Enlightenment thinkers tended to exclude all of that ethical space, from a description of reality, right, they wanted to say, well, here are the things that are real in the world number, right color, maybe, you know, whatever, right like, but it's a pretty limited set for many of them. And ethics, and certainly like, ethical judgments about the world. We're not part of it for a lot of those Enlightenment thinkers, right. So in order to be scientific for them, meant to deny essentially the reality of ethical judgments about the world. And so, insofar as we have that sort of enlightenment mindset and much of scientific discourse today, there's there's oftentimes an attempt to say what I'm doing it Even in my study of the human mind and of the human brain is not ethical. It's not related to ethics at all, because it's not about because ethics aren't part of what I'm doing. Right, there's, um, it's a, I mean, it's a, to me, that's, that's a carryover from the enlightenment that I think just simply can't be maintained, it's the problem is our problem. If you want to think you know, some of the more technical discussions around it, right? You can never get from a description of the way that things are, to a description of the way that things should be. Right, you can say all of the facts about a thing that you want, but it never transfers into a statement. While this is how it should in fact, be. Right? So we have, instead, we have a lot of instances, discussions of abnormal psychology, right? And in modern discourse, but you don't say that that's wrong, right? You know, and look, I get it, I don't want to get too far down into this. Because I realized that I'm gonna get myself in trouble if I say too much here, right? Because? Well, I just mean, like, you know, you never want to say that someone's real psychological worries and concerns, or their fault or something, right. That's not what I'm trying to say. I'm just saying that we need to recognize it, no matter what our headspace is. And however we diagnose it, even scientifically, so to speak, we need to recognize that that's in the plane, and in the realm of ethical discourse. And I think that modern psychology is an academic discipline, just like any other. And my experience of academic disciplines, is that we have a lot of ways of justifying our own actions, and that our egos oftentimes get bound up with our research. And like, what, in this way that the ancient monasticism I would say, has something that modern psychology does not have, which is to say, that these ancient religious communities had, so to speak, checks and balances, they had mentor relationships that were explicitly ethical. Right? They were about ethics between elder monks and novices, right. I mean, these are relationships that were formed on moral formation, right? They were built on moral formation. And they recognized that both master and student could be self deceived, right, and that they tried to correct and work around those things. In that process, even, you know, like, the monks recognize, for instance, that you need to pick a good master for yourself, you can't just pick anyone, right? So even there in the selection of your, who you're going to attach yourself to as a novice, like there's, there was concern for ethics. Yeah. And usually, like, when we think about, like, you know, who am I going to pick for my dissertation director, like in religious studies just as much as in psychology or whatever, right? Like, it's about, well, who's gonna help me get a job? Like we're not worried about like, whether they're a good person? Like, it's just like, I mean, we should be. But it just academia does not lend itself to thinking about these issues, the way that ancient while religious communities allow allowed and perhaps even today's continue to allow, yeah. Again, none of this is to disparage modern psychology. I think it does important to necessary things in our in our ethical thinking. Nevertheless, it uses this language of objectivity in a way that I think obscures certain necessary ethical considerations.

Charles Kim 59:48

Yeah. I think that's helpful. I you know, it's funny one other thing that just sort of struck me, even in the book, but when you read a lot of the ancients They really were worried about self deception, and worried about self deception in ways that I don't know that we are anymore. Like, you know, I mean, I come from the Showbie. State. And so, you know, we're very, like, we're very sure about things that are presented to our senses. And the, you know, the monks were not. Maximus was not a Gustin was not you know, and so they were always trying to find a way in a way to recognize ways in which they might be deceived. And how they could figure out if they were right or wrong. In a way. Absolutely. And it's, it's an interesting thing, because, you know, in the modern world, if we don't, we don't tend to think of ourselves as able to be deceived in any way at all.

Ben Heidgerken 1:00:48

I think, like, right, it's the sort of Cartesian Cogito ergo soon stuff, right? Like, there's if I mean, human subjects are the only authority we have left, and I am only this particular human subject. So that's the only authority I have left to turn on. Turn to Yeah, so like, right. I mean, if we don't, if we can't trust that, then what the hell can we trust? Sorry. That's kind of where we, but that's what how we think. Right? Today, at least then? And it has it comes to do along with today, the crumbling of authority structures, left and right. I mean, I'd mean that both metaphorically and politically as well. Right? Yeah. Um, we just, there's nothing left. We don't trust anything anymore. Um, and, yeah, so I'm some sort of recognition of human community as essential, and human trust, as essential to human existence is something that we just, we just don't have, we don't know. Yeah, we don't have.

Charles Kim 1:02:09

And I think one of the things, it's one of the things that I see you highlighting in the book, and as we talk to, is that it actually provides another sort of interesting benefit, although it might tell us that we're self deceived. It also, you know, that that can feel scary, it's ultimately beneficial. It's ultimately saying it's okay. Because we're here, and you know, and so it's it is opening yourselves up into community in a vulnerable place. But that's the trust part is to say that we're actually here to reorient you to what is real, and to what is true, and to what is good. And, you know, I like I worry about solipsism with language, a lot of the times like where I see our language is getting more and more anchored to us and tethered to us. And I say, you know, at some point, we will have no work communication, it will be essentially lonely. Because if we only think that the only kinds of good language or language that we create, well, it ultimately ends in you being hopelessly alone

Ben Heidgerken 1:03:13

conversation of one.

Charles Kim 1:03:14

Yeah. And it's an it's a delicate balance, you know, between I think that, you know, ingenuity can be good and creativity can be good, but it's always within the Nexus untethered to community at large that could say you may be deceived, or that may not be good. And that's a positive thing, because this is what this is what binds us to that group. And so that's yeah, and about, yeah,

Ben Heidgerken 1:03:41

Twitter can do that. But it doesn't do it very well, because it doesn't, usually only through mockery, right. And it doesn't without sympathy. Um, and that's one of the unique things I think about religious community. And I'll say specifically, in this case, Christianity, right with Body of Christ. It gives, it creates the space in which we can both be sympathetic to one another, or with one another, and also allow ourselves to criticize one another. Right? And that's a that's something that's almost impossible to imagine, in our modern society, that you can actually love someone and criticize them at the same time. We Yeah, it's and in that way. Yeah, the, all of this discourse around the demonic and the Christian tradition. Tries to point to that broader nexus of human existence, to say, wherever we try to identify the devil, we're in it together, right like even If the devil is inside of us, we're in this together. And we can help each other by uniting ourselves to the source that overcame it. For us something about the title there probably.

Charles Kim 1:05:20

I, I have I think that's as good a place as any to end the conversation. Well said, I listen to a podcast sometimes called econ talk, and eat and Russ Roberts always ends his conversations. He says, My guest today has been bed hiker, thank you for being a guest study, cut talk. And I wanted to do that there because he's always really good at getting his guests to end on a really good note. Really good note, I wanted to say this has been a hiker, kid. Thank you for being a guest on history of Christian theology, but thank you.

Ben Heidgerken 1:05:56

It's been good to chat with you. Yeah. Blessings, I want to

Charles Kim 1:06:01

thank you. Thanks for listening to history of Christian theology. My name is Chad Kim. We'll be back next week with my conversation with Danny how on Aquinas in original sin. And as I said earlier, we have a few that other podcasts which will be our interviews which will be on the docket. So thanks for listening. Rate us review us on iTunes, and we appreciate it. Have a good week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai