How to Read Like a Medieval Person - with Richard Rohlin

In this episode of the Universal History series, Richard Rohlin presents a talk about 4 things we must take into consideration in order to think like a pre-modern Christian. This is a primer for approaching old texts like Beowulf, the topic of our upcoming online course on the Symbolic World website.

THE BEOWULF COURSE

We are excited to present our very first online course hosted directly on The Symbolic World website!
Richard Rohlin and Jonathan Pageau will build on their popular Universal History series by offering an in-depth exploration of the Epic Poem, Beowulf.

You are invited to participate in this 6-week live online course every Thursday starting on Thursday, September 7th, at 2:00pm Eastern Time. Each session will be 2 hours long. The course will conclude on October 19th. (Note: No class on September 21th.)

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Timestamps:
0:00 - Preview
0:44 - Intro music
1:08 - Introduction
4:35 - C.S. Lewis
7:09 - Modern VS Ancient
11:10 - Tourists in the Church
15:11 - 1) Authorship and textual "errors"
20:16 - Why do we have 4 gospel accounts?
22:52 - What is a book? Pre-modern, Modern, and Post-Modern
30:13 - Authorship
33:11 - Transmission
37:40 - 2) The meaning of words and things
55:47 - 3) Heaven above, earth below
1:04:00 - Moved by love
1:5:25 - Space and time
1:7:39 - The metric system
1:10:20 - Chronos and Kairos
1:17:11 - Meaning in hindsight
1:20:55 - 4) The anthropocosmic vision
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📱 SOCIAL MEDIA

My intro was arranged and recorded by Matthew Wilkinson.

[makaminsk]

Richard Rohlin is an absolute treasure.

[jimmieoakland]

When you get older, you often look backwards and your assessments of what was good and bad reverses. The difficulties you cursed as bad luck, and the hard times you sought to avoid are now seen in a more positive light as the experiences that benefited you the most. Conversely, the illicit pleasures and the indulgences, the prizes and the conquests that were so important to you then are now looked upon as either a waste of time or things that actually caused grief in your life. It's amazing how the present can alter the past.

[battleowl]

You got me by the title not gonna lie! We need a Pageau-Rohlin book on universal history!

[xaviorjimenez]

In my humble opinion, this is by far the best episode.

[francestaylor]

1:08:27 - I majored in physics and even I think the way they determine the meter is really crazy. It is based on the measurement of light and how far it goes in a specific amount of time and that’s what a meter is supposed to be. It’s unintuitive.

I will say the cool thing about astrophysics is that we measure things in astronomical units (the distance to us and the Sun) and all stars are compared to our Sun so everything is measured in Solar masses. We do this in astrophysics because otherwise it’d just be large numbers that don’t make sense to us.

[jennablue]

only 20 mins in. God is good. This aligns beautifully with what's been on my heart.

[zachvanmeter]

In The Brothers Karamazov the Devil did say that he and the demons adopted the metric system.

[johnstewart]

Many scientists thought science was reading or revealing the mind of God or God's methods. But, science is a best guess. It always an approximation of actual reality or a tool for predicting the future.

[elenav.]

This was very edifying. This is, so far, my favorite of the Universal History series. It should have probably been the first because it addresses so well where it's all coming from. Thank you.

[panoramicprism]

I almost refuse to use math and rulers to measure anything. I eyeball it and use strings. It feels right to me, and my brother, who is VERY technical in his thinking, hates it. But now I can say I am just getting medieval. Sweet.

[barbararey-constantin]

Cradle Catholics and Catholic converts often quote C.S. Lewis too! Thank you for this wonderful episode. God bless all who made it possible.

[ZachACraigRE]

Absolutely loved this. You two are a treasure-trove of interesting ideas. I studied philosophy in college and read my way into Christianity. Stuff like this provided a lot of depth to that journey.

[chrisw]

I wounder how much of Medieval thing, is really the natural way people think. It seems to me that all per-modern cultures though like this. I remember thinking like this as a child, but with less complexity

[joyplanta]

Richard you’re a blessing thank you and Jonathan you’re a good listener. The example you give us is a life lesson. Thank you!

[mrcookiethief]

"The metric system is demonic."
Richard being America as always

[johnmadany]

For woodworking and carpentry the English system works great! It makes sense to keep cutting units in half. In my workshop I wouldn't use metric because of its inconvenience.

[bodenschatz]

THANK YOU! The CS Lewis quote on sex being secondary to gender (from That Hideous Strength, in a conversation when Jane meets The Director maybe? Can't find it just now) - it unflips the error conservatives makes and unwittingly proves their point better than their own arguments. That Hideous Stength is more timely a novel than a living author is likely to compose.

[JakeBowenTV]

Wow. The bit at 17:47 about providential "errors" is incredibly illuminating. That two minute aside just cleared up so much uncertainty and misgiving about how the corpus of Christian thought builds over time. Yet another modern bias I didn't know I had.

[Lascts]

Would love to hear more about good and evil versus cause-and-effect. This is really foundational perspective building. We need good and evil language to actually deal with the moral ambiguity of things like sexual deviancy/ addiction/ and other phenomena that have existed since time immemorial.

Modernity psychologized all these things, and took away good/evil perspective, enabling us to use ideas like like Vice and temptation to help guide us

[shireboundscribbles]

I love the idea of the moon being the boundary point of changeable things. So you have the stars that do not change (except for the occasional falling one that seems to abandon that status), the moon that changes, and then the earth.