Reviving Faith with Metamodern Spirituality and the Future of Christianity | Brendan Graham Dempsey

Brendan Graham Dempsey is an author and speaker specializing in metamodern spirituality, exploring the intersections of traditional faith and contemporary thought.

How can ancient faith traditions adapt to the complexities of the modern world?

In this episode of Voices with Vervaeke, John Vervaeke and Brendan Graham Dempsey explore the potential for metamodern spirituality to breathe new life into the Christian faith. Dempsey shares his transformative journey from traditional beliefs to a metamodern perspective that integrates ancient doctrines with contemporary thought. Their discussion addresses challenging issues such as historical and postmodern critiques of the Bible, the complex relationship between faith and science, and the psychological underpinnings of religious practices. This conversation aims to rejuvenate our understanding of Christianity and enrich our engagement with reality, setting the stage for future dialogues on the essence of God and the sacred.

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"I'm interested in the ways that spirituality begins to dovetail with the sciences, where that antagonism many of us are familiar with is transcended and healed in a profound way." - Brendan Graham Dempsey [00:04:00]
"We need the language of explaining because the language of explaining is the language of science. If we don't have a properly cultivated language of explaining, the gulf between spirituality and science will remain. That is one of the significant drivers of the meaning crisis." - John Vervaeke [00:15:33]
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0:00 Introduction: Brendan's Christian Roots and Academic Journey
06:20 Modern and Postmodern Biblical Critiques
10:15 Metamodern Christianity and Its Challenges
13:40 Training vs. Explaining in Religious Contexts
20:45 Bridging Historical Jesus and Imaginal Christ
43:05 Faith, Maturation, and the Interplay of Training and Explanation
51:50 Imaginal Recovery and Theological Continuity
01:02:45 Navigating Order and Chaos: Spiritual Growth Dynamics
01:27:30 Conclusion: Exploring the Numinous - God, Sacredness, and Ultimate Reality

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The Artful Scaling of the Religion that is not a religion w/ Layman Pascal & Brendan Graham Dempsey

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Ideas, Authors, and Works Mentioned in This Episode:
Metamodernism
Transcendent Naturalism
Jesus of Nazareth
Biblical Studies
Postmodern Critiques
Nietzsche
Foucault
Derrida
Spinoza
Plato
Xenophon
Aristophanes
Solon
Aristotle
Henry IV, V, and IV (Shakespeare)
Shakespeare’s early works
Plato's Socrates
H.G. Gadamer
T.S. Eliot
J.R.R. Tolkien
C.S. Lewis
G.W.F. Hegel
J.L. Schellenberg
J.Campbell
C.Jung
Jordan Peterson
Jared Morningstar
Dr. Johannes A. Niederhauser (Halkyon Academy)
J.A.S. Kelso
Paul (Apostle)
Brian McLaren
D.C. Schindler
Paul Vander Klay
The Language of Coaching by Nick Winkelman
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Thank you for watching!

[juanjvvictorjohnson]

Who bores with great patience the objects of his wrath? Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm, to satisfy a desolate wasteland? “Even if the Terrestrial Morning and the Ocean Dawn were to stand before me...this Ark will leave on time. Put on your willful choice, pick up your petrified wood, unseal the thunder and don't miss a train called Hope.

[alexvatoussis]

I also think that a new dialogue between John and Jonathan Pageau would be fruitful in discussing these topics because I think he feels the same way in many respects, most especially with prioritizing the imaginal Jesus over the historical one.

[Zirrad]

People stringing words and concepts together until they feel good about their preconceptions.
Waste of time compared to other videos in this channel.

[notloki]

i had two conversations with people in the last few months who were convinced i was posessed by demons... one rabbi and one baptist. the kicker was that each one of them believed the other guy was posessed by demons also!

got me thinking in a loop about the ontology/phenomenology of the numinous, and what evolutionary/social advantages and disadvantages these beliefs afford. this video came just at the right time to help me conceptualize these issues. i appreciate it deeply.

[PresidentFoxman]

7:20 I think this is a great example of how an understanding of wisdom has been lost. Truth claims are very different from wisdom. Wisdom can contain paradox and not break from the pressure

[MoeGar-ee]

“Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth where the others are men’s myths: i.e. the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call ‘real things’. Therefore it is true, not in the sense of being a ‘description’ of God (that no finite mind could take in) but in the sense of being the way in which God chooses to (or can) appear to our faculties. The ‘doctrines’ we get out of the true myth are of course less true: they are the translations into our concepts and ideas of that which God has already expressed in a language more adequate, namely the actual incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. Does this amount to a belief in Christianity? At any rate I am now certain (a) That this Christian story is to be approached, in a sense, as I approach other myths. (b) That it is the most important and full of meaning. I am also nearly certain that it really happened…" C. S. Lewis

[alexvatoussis]

This is great work, and more of the like needs to be done if we’re to make sense of the place of Christ in our age, and I believe that we must make sense of Christ.

[DeepTalksTheology]

Are either of you familiar with Kevin Vanhoozer’s work on hermeneutics? I don’t know if I’d go as far as to consider him a metamodern theologian but he is someone with some fascinating engagement with the modern and postmodern hermeneutic traditions that is seeking to acknowledge the contributions and blind spots of both.

[FlashTrance]

Thank you for the discussion. I do not see any solution in focusing on Christ as an imaginal figure, though. Perhaps for those who are not truly rooted in the tradition. After all, many people are coming to your same conclusions outside of Christianity, but none of them as far as I am aware are contending very well with the historical reality of the orthodox tradition. As a tiny example, we have extra-Biblical letters/writings from Church fathers who were disciples of the apostle John, like Polycarp. Then we have writings from others who were students of Polycarp, like Irenaeus. And so on and on to today. The teachings and martyrdom of these people, and even more importantly of the modern-day saints who have followed after them, isn't imaginal. It's very real (like in a solid, material sense) and can't be hand-waived away.

The apostles and their students believed and taught the fleshly incarnation and resurrection of the Logos. Without this, theosis becomes impossible, and frankly being Christian is foolish. Christianity would become just another religion with moralistic claims competing with all the other religions to be the "best cope" of them all, and it would fail terribly against much better copes like Zen. Philosophy wins the day, because it transcends all of this by looking down on it with a scientific lens, pulling it apart to figure out how religion is helping people to cope. But I'm not here to "cope". Philosophy can't speak about true communion with the living God, because this is logically impossible without the paradox of the union of God and man (heavenly and earthly, symbolic and literal, etc.). Hence, there is no imaginal Christ without the historical Christ, nor vice versa; to think otherwise is to speak about something other than Christ and Christianity.

[JCGriffith]

Curious if either you of you have engaged with Ken WIlber's work much? I know I saw John interact with him briefly in an interview with one of the founders of Extinction Rebellion awhile ago, but haven't seen anything since. His Integral Theory seems to be one of the most thorough frameworks to map out the developmental stages/perspectives and explore how they might be integrated. His latest book that came out last week "Finding Radical Wholeness" also takes a special focus applying that lens to Christianity. Really curious if you're already aware of that work and if so if you find it useful, or have any significant critiques of it. Anyway, great episode!

[bonnittaroy]

"The traditions are designed around an obsolete psychology/cognitive science" -- not too harsh. We need spiritual practices designed for the kinds of body-minds we are today, and religoius ideas that can solve the kinds of problems we face today, both existential (perennial) as well as ecological (planetary).

[Neceros]

🎯 Key points for quick navigation:

00:00 *🎙️ Introduction to conversation with Brendan Graham Dempsey, discussing metamodern spirituality and Christianity*
00:55 *🔍 Main topics: metamodernism, new conception of God, metamodern Christianity, and understanding Jesus of Nazareth*
02:17 *🛣️ Brendan's spiritual journey: from conservative Christianity to crisis of faith through biblical studies*
03:40 *🔄 Metamodern spirituality as an integration of traditional, modern, and postmodern insights*
05:56 *📚 Overview of modern and postmodern critiques of the Bible, including historical accuracy and multivocality*
09:22 *🏫 Discussion of the gap between seminary education and congregational understanding of biblical critique*
13:56 *🗣️ Distinction between language of training (for spiritual practice) and language of explaining (for academic understanding)*
17:50 *📖 Example of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery: balancing moral lesson with historical textual analysis*
20:35 *🤝 Metamodern Christianity aims to integrate the value of both historical analysis and spiritual pedagogy*
21:17 *👥 Addressing the challenge of reconciling the "historical Jesus" with the "Christ of Faith"*
22:40 *🔄 Jesus extended his identity beyond historical existence, as evidenced by "where two or three are gathered in my name"*
23:34 *🔍 Distinction between historical reconstruction and reverse engineering in understanding religious figures*
24:44 *💡 The power of historical figures like Socrates comes through tradition, not just historical accuracy*
26:47 *📚 Gospel of John example: spiritual power transcends historical accuracy of Jesus' words*
28:50 *🌱 Christianity's truth unfolds and grows through time, not just confined to its original form*
30:27 *🖼️ Narrative identity: reading mature personality into earlier states, applicable to understanding religious figures*
33:25 *🎭 Shakespeare example: retroactive imbuing of greatness to early works, paralleling religious tradition interpretation*
37:04 *🧩 Complexity theory: emergent properties reveal themselves over time, not apparent in the original state*
38:38 *🧠 Reconstructive memory: constantly rewriting past experiences in light of present understanding*
40:16 *🔮 Christian tradition as teleological, orienting towards the future rather than just preserving the past*
42:07 *👥 Paul's concept of Christians as "body of Christ" aligns with idea of tradition evolving and embodying Christ's spirit*
44:00 *🌟 Faith redefined as imaginal orientation towards spiritual maturation, rather than just belief-holding*
45:52 *🧭 Faith provides orientation towards reality using non-propositional senses of realness*
46:34 *🔬 Faith must align with best available science and history while providing spiritual orientation*
47:56 *🌱 Maturation requires balancing objective reality with subjective orientation*
50:26 *🔄 Recognition of training and explanation languages emerges from spiritual tradition itself*
52:43 *🔍 Imaginal thinking allows for "recovery" of reality, enabling deeper understanding*
53:24 *🧠 Traditional theology bound to obsolete psychology; updating it can re-empower spiritual opening*
55:29 *✝️ Christ as symbol helps reconstruct path towards spiritual goal while maintaining continuity*
56:50 *👤 Internalizing moral exemplars crucial for genuine maturation*
58:24 *🔁 Ideal spiritual journey includes expected shifts in relationship to the Divine*
[1:01:32] 😨 Acknowledging the terrifying dimension of the numinous in spirituality
[1:02:29]⚖️ Religion's role in balancing protection from and confrontation with the numinous
[1:04:20] 🌀 Complexity as hybrid of order and chaos, essential for optimal functioning and growth
[1:06:26] 🧗‍♂️ Spiritual growth involves confronting chaos to achieve deeper relationship with reality
[1:09:16] 🎨 Beauty as a marker of encountering the edge of spiritual growth and reality
[1:10:42] 🔄 Religious language should bring people to the "crux of criticality" for spiritual growth
[1:12:31] 🛡️ Standard forms of religiosity often keep people comfortable but may hinder spiritual challenge
[1:14:35] 🏛️ Secularism as an attempt to tame the numinous and avoid religious conflicts
[1:17:34] 🔓 Metamodern spirituality aims to "unlock" both secular and religious orthodoxies
[1:20:33] 🔭 Metamodernism seeks to integrate multiple perspectives for a more comprehensive worldview
[1:23:57] 📈 Spiritual growth as a developmental process building on previous stages
[1:25:46] 🌀 Ongoing perspectival complexification as a way to better couple with reality's complexification
[1:27:21] 🌱 Discussion of whether God itself is evolving along with human understanding
[1:29:36] 🎯 Introduction to Schellenberg's concept of "thin description of strong transcendence"
[1:30:44] 🔍 Non-theism as rejecting both thick description of theism and weak transcendence of atheism

Made with HARPA AI

[Joeonline]

The so-called 'postmodern critique' that John discusses was already made by Johann Georg Hamann - a Christian - in opposition to his friend Emmanuel Kant centuries ago...

[briandoyle]

Can someone give a basic explanation of why people avoid rudolf steiner and anthroposophy in these discussions?

[PerfectHandProductions]

A brilliant discussion. Please keep these coming.

[matthewparlato]

Schindler's primacy of beauty, centrality of goodness and ultimacy of truth is such a homerun it made it to the white board of my mechanic shop

[sketchesoharlem]

I always love when you have discussions that directly involve Christianity. One thing I would love to see is a series or deep dive on a specific work of Scripture itself. In my opinion, we often discuss the meaning crisis and its definitions, but I think it’s possible to introduce secularism into the tradition of Scripture through a historical-critical reading of the text.

Two key insights have significantly helped me with my relationship to the Word:

1. Understanding that Paul’s writings were the first to appear.
2. Recognizing that Mark was the first Gospel written, in the context of the destruction of the Temple by the Romans, and was intended to guide the Jews who no longer had a physical place to be in the presence of God.

Regarding Paul, Albert Schweitzer’s book "The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle" helped me contextualize Paul's writings by understanding him as a Jewish-Christian mystic. He may have been the first writer to internalize Jesus as his sage. As for Mark, I was greatly helped by Mark Tabor’s online course “Creating Jesus: Why Mark's Gospel Was Forgotten?” I believe that examining the texts directly in a historical-critical sense, as these two scholars have done, is the type of theological study you, John, have emphasized as crucial for the future of the Christian tradition.

At 1:11:45 Brendan called this work of finding meaning "dangerous" and the "impasse" of religiosity, also that we need to be challenge and unsettled. In Mark, when the Spirit cast Jesus into the desert, the same greek word used for desert is the same greek word used for the desert that Jesus went into when he left the crowds for solitude and prayer. This is what I think about when Brendan says that we need to face the paradox that is the story of Jesus head on, and let it disorient us in order for us to find proper footing.

Very much appreciate this discussion, can't wait to see more on your channel.

[whiteinge]

I really enjoyed this. Thank you. I'm looking forward to part 2.

[GreenManorite]

Brendan, Metamodern Christianity needs a scriptural defense in the language of fundamentalist Christianity. This is not because you believe that is the sacrosanct form to express Truth, but as a sincerely ironic demonstration of reading growth back into the tradition. Personally, I think this is fully appropriate as the whole of Scripture is about the emerging relationship with God both at the individual level but also at the societal level. I think John starts in on this with his scriptural references and it should be continued.

By way of example, Christ himself reveals in the Hebrew scriptures continuity with Himself. So embedded in the Scripture itself is the notion that one builds new relational context between the Sacred text and emerging reality. Something like John 18:36-38 is just asking for a postmodern to metamodern reading.

[abableeah]

This is humanity coming into self-consciousness. We must bite the bullet, but we don't have to die.