Metamodern Spirituality | Trans-Paradigmatic Christianity? (w/ Jordan Hall)

Following a recent conversion to Christianity, Jordan Hall offers his perspective on the Christian worldview, its orienting beliefs and how they inform (and affirm) ways of being in the world. Brendan brings his own background of being raised in and and leaving the church to the conversation, trying to gain deeper understanding about how one can affirm Christian doctrine in the context of a metamodern world.

0:00 Introduction
2:47 Faith and Understanding: Christian Propositional vs. Participatory Knowing
15:36 Beyond a "Religion vs. Reason" Debate
20:26 Jordan's Reasons to Believe: Scripture, History, 1st Person Experience*
30:36 Jordan Not Impressed by Naturalistic Challenge to the Resurrection
35:56 Notions of Gospel and Sin: Faith Changing Behavior --- For Good or Ill
41:53 Jordan's Rejection of Naturalism and His Faith in Christian Historicity and Ontology
52:21 (Brendan Has a Lot of Responses He Won't Get Into in This Context)
53:07 Self-Confirming Faith: Reciprocal Opening in Other Faiths?
1:02:32 Excursus: Historicity and Hermeneutics of the Doctrine of the Trinity
1:08:52 Self-Confirming Faith: Pathologies in Self-Justifying Beliefs
1:16:20 Self-Confirming Faith: Participatory Knowing and Confirmation Bias
1:27:53 Conclusion

*Brendan meant to say "premodern" epistemological framework at 21 38

[ben-sanford]

Thank you both. It is refreshing to encounter Christianity from your (combined) perspectives. I have been longing for this quality of understanding and have spent much of my life trying not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It gives me hope.

[jeffbarney]

Brendan I am very impressed by your willingness to avoid the debate I know you want and are so capable of having in favor of a posture of the question(s) and letting Jordan unfold his transformation. Jordan's thinking here aligns very much with what we/I was trying to express in our conversation with you. Thank you for this it is a lovely service.

[moodbox_no]

This is deeply clearifing for my endover to develop my understanding and relationship to the ultimate. Greatfull.❤

[suppression]

Wow Jordan Hall you have some serious insight!

[jennysteves]

I do love these conversations, but I find myself drawn toward such intellectually fine-tuned explorations only after I’ve been anchored elsewhere (the practice of life and relationship including meditation and prayer) by parables and koans.
I used to require intellectual understanding. It often now, for me, impedes the flow. Post Covid brain, perhaps.

[moodbox_no]

46:40: MMM... There is the start Point of the new paradigme of Becoming attuned with the really real. The intelligibility of the relational phenomenology Jordan is laying out is phenomenal. Beautiful. Deep resonance. There is the Silk Road, right there <3

[sloseabass]

Thank you, each and both. This was a pretty casually splendid conversation. It helped to "shine the morning up nicely", . . . thank you, again, for that.

[ArtemZen]

Love the questions you asked and how you held the conversation. Bravo Brendan 🙏

[TheExceptionalState]

@14:12 - Belief is never unreal, it might be misleading or even incorrect, but it is never unreal. People who would claim such a thing have little insight into how much belief steers their actions, feelings and thoughts in their own lives.

[christianbaxter_yt]

Damn Jordan! “The propositional is extremely light” 😮 : ) 15:45

Because of the fellowship of the Spirit ♥️

[MarmaladeINFP]

I was raised in the Unity Church, which is New Thought Christianity and came out of the progressivism of 19th century evangelicalism. It's the same denomination that Marianne Williamson is a minister in. They don't do baptism nor require dogmatic groupthink in the form of credal affirmations, loyalty oaths, doctrinal submission, clerical hierarchies, etc.

It's less a religion of faith than of gnosis. The basis of practice is through personal relationship and personal experience, in that one is encouraged to spiritually question and experiment. The individual is not to believe in God but to know God. And this is considered directly accessible to everyone. This is why it's often called Practical Christianity.

But its motivating principle is a vision of divine love, abundance, creativity, and openness. It's maybe closer to the Pauline tradition as carried forward by Valentinus into the early Church. Also, it emphasizes the Pauline view of Marcion who denounced the Old Testament god as different from Jesus' God. It's part of another less well known Christian tradition.

[CrystallineWyvern]

Great talk, glad you and Jordan were able to connect. I have a lot of sympathy with you and still resonate with much of your questions and concerns, coming from Vervaeke's corner of the corner, and Jordan has been a major role model for me in this kind of space. Having gotten baptized last year Jordan's conversion was a great encouragement for me. Listening to your talk with Nate at Grail Country right now, I definitely recommend David Bentley Hart's The Beauty or the Infinite; it was really helpful for me in situating the postmodern and its (along with perhaps some versions of meta modernism) subtle imperialism of (apparent) neutrality, as well as approaching religion and theology and Christianity from an aesthetic (but still metaphysical) view with an appreciation for the particular without being straightforwardly "premodern" or nostalgic. Have you read Hart at all? He and John Milbank were key in making me take Christianity's worldview more seriously. Thanks for the work you're doing and really happy to see the dialogue you're entering into with TLC.

[nicklaurence]

Thanks for having and sharing this conversation 🙏. I wonder if either of you have come across Cynthia Bourgeault's work, particularly on the Trinity, which describes within a larger (Gurdjieffian) framework how the trinity is continually participating in the creative unfolding of reality. Would be interested in your thoughts on it, it seems to me quite similar to how you're describing the trinity's ongoing and complexifying involvement in creation Jordan. And she speaks directly to that concern you talked about at the end Brendan, of the wobbles that can ripple out from a distortion in the source code/map, how that can self-correct if we understand the trinity within this larger framework she describes.

[MarioSpassov]

Great talk. Jordan will have a far-easier time to convince other fellow atheists of his version of Christianity than other actual Christians though.

[givenhawk]

1:12:49 here he is pointing to it. The individual human mind does not ascertain these truths. It is a work of the spirit which is both the source of our being and utterly other and beyond. The propositions are like little token representations of the applicable truth to our human world, but their Substance is prior-to.

[TheExceptionalState]

The enlightenment and the scientific process is a faith based project. Had they not believed in the idea of knowing God through reason and hence investigating nature itself neither would have come into being.

[givenhawk]

12:03 it's not merely rational, the Metanoia and the derived propositions are imparted by the Spirit of Truth

[Rsvohi]

Great conversation. Jordan’s trans-paradigmatic view has a great utility for people today. The idea that all truth must align or only be discerned by scientific naturalism is a limitation of modernity. Can it yield a deep meaningfulness? I don’t know, but suspect not.

Scientific truth is a profound blessing. It seems there are other, perhaps deeper and more profound blessings as well.

[moodbox_no]

28:44 : Verveake: "The is so much i cannot see for all of the facts" The Socratic Humility from After Socrates series ep. 10B. It's very convergence with what I hear, became an issuse on your relationship with Christianity, Graham...

[tgrogan]

Citing Jonanthan P. as an expert in anything besides Iconography is absurd IMO. Can he even read Greek? There are competent people in Classics/Philosophy departments who are experts in Neo-Platonism. Why aren't they referenced?