Metamodern Spirituality | Further Reflections on Integrating Modernity in Metamodern Christianity

By request, I offer some more responses/reflections on my chat with Paul VanderKlay as it relates to integrating the genuine insights of modernity into a metamodern Christianity. These responses are to comments about the discussion that were posted on Paul's channel.

0:00 Introduction
1:14 "Aren't you just a modernist?" Response to @newglof9558
4:08 "What is 'real'?" (on the reality of "body"/"spirit" etc.) Response to @CNArtDesign and @TheRationalCarpenter
33:52 "What's your telos?" Response to @andymurphree
36:41 "How can we know the good?" Response to @pik377
41:41 "Are you saying we just have to get stuck with historical criticism (like you did)?" Response to @ryanalderson7133
44:48 "Isn't historical criticism just hubristic nonsense?"* Response to @anselman3156 and @xaviervelascosuarez
1:00:16 "Why not trust tradition?" Response to @ButterBobBriggs
1:08:54 "Isn't modernity worse than tradition?" Response to @ddod7236
1:13:23 "Be nice." Response to @Neal_Daedalus
1:15:54 Conclusion

It wasn't Reuban but Esau. Gen 26;34-35 (P), then all of Gen 27 (J), then Gen 27;46 (P)

[RichardCosci]

Thanks Brendan for taking the time to respond to people’s questions, concerns and being triggered. I really appreciate the historical/critical methods and insights.
I try to share these methods and insights with some of my Christian friends and find that usually they are very closed minded.
I am very impressed with the way you answered the comments. I am learning from you how to be kind, respectful and interested in others thoughts, while still making a case for your own ideas.
I really appreciate what you are doing! The leaven in the dough. Keep up the great work!

[zoomerpastor]

Hey Brendan, thanks for making these videos! I'm sure they take a lot of effort and energy, especially when others have a wrong impression about you. I first watched the Jordan Hall video and then Paul's video.
I'm in seminary right now, and I see a similar attitude right now in class, with more focus on postmodernism, existentialism, archetypes, and psychology and less focus on modernism, textual criticism, and other topics that you brought up in the talk. When I was in undergrad for theology, before the Jordan Peterson moment, every class focused on how to address modernism, but now it is about addressing post-modernism, and I bet in the future it will be something different, whether it is meta-modernism or something else.

[Sheepgoat]

My kid asked me "daddy, is Santa real?"

I said "depends on what you mean by real son"

He said "motherfucger, you told me the story. What do you mean by real?"

[paveli]

With regard to "real" question, I think Paul was trying to expand the definition of "real". He does not dismiss narrow modern definition, he expands the definition and includes it. Historical aspect is significant, and if you add experiential, spiritual and etc, you get a "real" that is more real than a modernistic idea of "real".

[rigelthurston]

Brendan, I have watched all three of your videos—the original discussion and your two follow-ups. I am impressed by your courage to dive into the frothy waters with critiques and pile-ons coming from all sides, yet responding to them all with such grace.

I can really relate to Paul’s story of Job, whether that was a transmutation of the biblical story or a true one, I feel like he is describing a proto-integral energy that is in the air.

By the way, I love your answer to the question “what is your Telos?” I hope one day that becomes common parlance.

[MarkDParker]

(1:13:25) you're displaying a great deal of equanimity in response to the "hive mind." Do you meditate/practice mindfulness?

[mutedplum]

maybe one of the first people to be meta-modern: Carl Jung from the Red Book: 'If I speak in the spirit of this time, I must say: no one and nothing can justify what I must proclaim to you. Justification is superfluous to me, since I have no choice, but I must. I have learned that in addition to the spirit of this time there is still another spirit at work, namely that which rules the depths of everything contemporary. The spirit of this time would like to hear of use and value. I also thought this way, and my humanity still thinks this way. But that other spirit forces me nevertheless to speak, beyond justification, use, and meaning. Filled with human pride and blinded by the presumptuous spirit of the times, I long sought to hold that other spirit away from me. But I did not consider that the spirit of the depths from time immemorial and for all the future possesses a greater power than the spirit of this time, who changes with the generations. The spirit of the depths has subjugated all pride and arrogance to the power of judgment. He took away my belief in science, he robbed me of the joy of explaining and ordering things, and he let devotion to the ideals of this time die out in me. He forced me down to the last and simplest things."

[jerrysobota]

I'm sorry to see all the shade. You encapsulate man's quest to reconcile the modern and the transcendent.

I am fascinated that you seek the same question that Felix, Pilate and countless before you wrestled with - "Did Christ really physically resurrect from the dead?".

It can't be proved by historicity or pragmatism alone - which I think is your point. What would you consider the burden of proof to sufficiently answer the question beyond doubt?

[mcnallyaar]

I am grateful to you for taking the time, and undergoing the labor, to sift through these criticisms and offer your clarifications to us.

[chrisyoung]

It’s kind of wild how off some members of the TLC seem to be about what Brendan believes.

[thefridaymorningnameless]

Hello I’m Chad the Alcoholic and would love to get in touch with you to share a conversation about metamodern topics. Would you be interested?

[DamienWalter]

Is this Brendan responding to Paul responding to Brendan? Or Brendan responding to Paul responding to Brendan responding to Paul?

[xaviervelascosuarez]

(You have such a cool name!) Thank you so much for taking the time to address my comment, which sounded more like a rant (sorry if I exceeded my allowance for sarcasm).
I hate to be (or to come across to be) the one with all the answers, but the truth is that I do believe I have answers to many (if not all) of your questions, and I’m not sure that a YouTube comments section is the most conducive medium to do such a thing… I’ve come across some atheists who—I’m not kidding—refused to read my answers because they were too long!
Anyways… Maybe I’ll just enunciate the questions you raise and, if you’re interested, I’ll take the time to proceed, here or, if you prefer, via email or any other way.
I’m just going to comment briefly on the subject of “reality” which I find fascinating, and then enunciate the questions raised in the section where you specifically address my comment/rant.
If you’ve been listening to Pageau, you should be familiar with the idea that reality is hierarchical. Reality comes not only in many flavors, but also in different levels: some levels are “more” real than others or less contingent than others, if you will. I like to use the example of a writer and his book, and I hear you are in the process of writing one. That book started as an idea in your head. That’s when the book began to come into being—a book in somebody’s mind has more reality than a book in nobody’s mind (which has no reality at all). It was, to be sure, a very precarious reality, entirely contingent upon you. When you started writing, the book moved up onto a higher level of reality. Now, the existence of at least part of it did not depend entirely on you, but it could be gleaned from ink and paper (or a lot more likely, from bytes in your hard drive). Another level of reality will be achieved when it is published: its existence (or reality) will not depend entirely on your head and bytes in a hard drive, but it will be sustained by millions of copies (hopefully). If, before print, your wife had read the draft, the book had already achieved another level of reality (now it would be in two heads, and not only in yours). But when it becomes a bestseller and read by millions, the book will have achieved one of the highest levels of reality that a book can achieve.
You probably heard Paul Vanderklay using the expression, “monarchical vision.” I’m not hundred percent sure that I get it right, but it could be interpreted as the very common pitfall, that tends to beset the brightest minds (the previous presumptively pretentious comment was the stick, this is the carrot): to automatically (and uncritically) assume the position of the monarch. When analyzing the physical world and all reality derived from human activity, it makes sense to assume that one inhabits the highest possible level of reality, looking down on the universe as a King surveys his kingdom. Never mind that the universe, in all its vastness and complexity, has a knack for knocking us from that high horse, but one cannot even start philosophizing without first coming down from it.
The Socratic injunction to humble oneself (“I only know that I know nothing”) gestures at this dire need for a profound humility before even tackling the deepest questions. To assume that our precarious existence occupies the highest level in the hierarchy of realities, that we are the standard against which all other realities should be measured, is most emphatically not the way to go about. And I’m not only referring to you (or I) as an individual person. Even the existence of humankind is terribly precarious, a speck of dust in an incommensurable universe (and expanding by the day), and a mere second in its history’s timeline. So, it’s not a good idea to carelessly climb up the steps to the throne and sit on it as if it was the most natural thing to do.
In other words, the error that most (if not all) the atheists make is to see the levels of reality through the lens of our reality. To be fair, I heard many Christian apologists make the same mistake. To ask if Christ is real like Santa Claus or real like us is definitely not the right question. Jordan Peterson intuits this conundrum when he makes reference to “archetypal realities” as something vaguely more real than our individual realities. I don’t necessarily agree (depending on the meaning of his words), but those archetypal realities may well be there just to point us towards the most real reality of all, a reality that it is not just a step above ours, but infinitely above. Christ is human like us and, like us, a historical reality. But Christ is also more than that. Christ is the Logos of the Father, and all of creation is created in Him, through Him, and for Him.
I know that the resurrection will very likely never be considered a historical event, because it is not something that Christ does as a human. It is, to be sure, a tricky subject, that might get me in trouble even with my fellow Christians: Christ resurrected from the dead, I have no doubt about that. But his resurrection was not a way back into human history, like Lazarus’ or other resurrections. He was raised glorious. His body was still his body (with wounds and all) but it was nothing like our bodies. It was a body transformed by the glory of the only begotten Son of the Father. If Christ is who he said he is, the resurrection is not by any stretch a “miracle” in the sense of a rationally inexplicable phenomenon. The true miracle, the truly inexplicable phenomenon is His incarnation as a human being like us. There is something very contrived, very shocking, about the Word in whom the entire universe is being created from all eternity, the infinite being of the one who contains it all being contained by a human zygote in the virginal womb of Mary. Jesus is, indeed, the standard of all reality, since all reality is created in Him. He is the Truth, and all the realities of the universe become more real as they approach the full potential of their being, which is in Christ. We too can access higher levels of realities. We can become more real progressively, like your book, as we are fashioned into who we really are. The better aligned we are with Christ, the closer we are to be our most authentic and genuine selves. An unpublished book will never reach its full potential. Only a published book can achieve its highest level of reality and be read by the millions. There is just one print that holds the true type of ourselves, Jesus, and we cannot be published, let alone read by the millions, if we are not in connection with Him.
I ran out of time. I will follow up another day, if you’re still interested.

[williambranch]

In a progressive frame ... modernity is great, we will reach the Omega pint any day now ;-) Christianity, not heretical, is regressive. Things getting worse in a non-obvious way, since Eden ;-( (

[DaestrumManitz]

Please, more on your concepts of telos, with an incorporation on the relationship of the “hidden hand” in nature, possibly venturing into a Process Philosophical extrapolation of divine luring. I am fascinated with the explanatory views of inherent meaning and purpose in natural selection with the negated connotation of a “decision maker”. But let’s not be coy everyone. It will take nothing shy of a grand synthesis to bridge the “ugly ditch” and embrace a metamodern orientation.

[dianagoddard]

Umm a lot of visceral pushback as you say. How do we lick the honey from the razors edge? A lot of identification perhaps unless you can hold the Tonos as JV would say can beca slippery slope

[Adam-lfo]

Regrading the reality of Jesus and other gods I think Paul and Jonathan Pageau would grant the reality of other gods, as a matter fact he did at some point. Whether Jesus is the Logos incarnate and part of the Trinity that is up for debate (imo). However, we can say for certain there was a historical person named Jesus and following his death a religion was created. The Body of Christ is Christendom so in that mode there is a Christ.

[acuerdox]

11:40 you sure spend a lot of time responding to a rhetorical question, the commenter understands this concept already.

[acuerdox]

47:45 that's just the thing, it's not going to be meta mothern in orientation, the meta modern is a compromise, the real tellos is christ, not the metamodern christ.

[acuerdox]

1:04:38 and it was at that moment that brendan just lost everybody XD
trying to trust first and foremost, the receive tradition, is what this is all about.