Hello, welcome to the Theology Podcast. I'm C.R. Wiley. I'm a pastor and I am a senior editor at Touchdown Magazine. Tom, tell us about yourself. I'm Tom Price. I'm Christian Theologian and Christian. I'm an ethicist teaching both at Gordon Conwell, Theological Seminary and I serve at church in Plainville, Connecticut. Okay, Glenn, tell us about yourself and take us into the show. You're the guy with the topic of the day. Yes, I'm Glenn Sunshine. I'm a retired history professor. I am a long time fanatic for J.R.R. Tolkien and I am working on a book currently that among other things addresses neo-paganism. And the reason why I bring those last two things up is they have to do with the article that I wanted to discuss today. It's called J.R.R. Tolkien, The Christian West and the Temptation of Nordic Theopaganism. It's written by a man named David Engels, who I just really started following a bit. David Engels is a Belgian. He is a historian and a philosopher. He's done apparently a lot of work with non-Western cultures and things like that. But his particular interest is what he calls hissparialism, which comes from the name of the West Wind in Greek. He is interested in Western civilization and what it will take to preserve Western civilization. He sees this as something that is transnational. It's not Belgian national, if they're worse at your thing, or anything of the sort. But it's really he's looking at this as near as I can tell from my limited reading of him thus far at a civilizational level. Yeah, reminds me of who is it Huntington in the clash of civilizations. Yeah. Now, I need to add that David Engels is also a conservative. And he is very much interested in how we, what conservative means in Europe today. One of the comments he makes is we can't turn back the idea that we can go back to the 1980s is fundamentally nonsense because already in the 1980s, the fundamental tenets of progressivism were already embedded in the culture they just hadn't worked their way through. So he's trying to rethink what it would be conservative in the context of Europe. Right. I think it's maybe a little more challenging in Europe just because conservatism in Europe had to do more with the aristocracy, the crown, the established church, those things. Whereas in the States, I think you get almost kind of say it's not an aristocratic phenomenon at all. It's more just a kind of cherishing of maybe our history or something like that. Yeah, conservatism in the States is not interesting getting back to the crown. That's right. The other thing is that conservatism in the States is classic liberalism in Europe. It is an era in which classical liberalism was the thing in enlightenment thought. And America was founded on basically those kinds of principles. Now, we have classic liberalism as opposed to what liberalism is turned into today. And some would argue, like you know, like Shindler and others, that the threads already that have moved away from Christianity and what a fully Christian thing. But that's a whole nother show. But it is interesting that in Europe, you saw, for example, the previous Pope Benedict or Cardinal Rozinger wrote a very interesting book on the roots of Christianity in Europe. And he really saw the desperate need for Christian, you know, re-evangelizing of Christian Europe and recognizing that there are still many echoes of its presence. But for him, it was really the influx of Islam that was going to become the major threat. And the more you think about the way technology thinks of itself and power, Islam almost becomes very, it becomes almost a very, it makes sense once you understand the nature of God as power and will and the nation of technology is grounded in that kind of volunteerism. So there is a worry in Europe for thinking through this question very deeply because they're taking, they're about to take a spiritual journey they all may not be ready for. Yeah. Now, one of the things that he notes that I was not aware of, although it makes perfect sense, is that the reaction against progressivism or liberalism or whatever you want to call it in Europe, among conservatives, many of them are sidestepping Christianity and trying to return to Nordic Neopagonism. So what you see is the rise of these various pagan groups that one thing I know from my research is that heathen groups, which is the term that they tend to use and that least in English, heathen groups are very much focus oriented. They're oriented not entirely, but the vast majority are oriented around a people. So at their extreme, you get white supremacists and things like that and not all of them are. But this idea of sort of an ethnic religion or a national religion or something like that is very, very appealing to them and this is a, you know, there are some people in the conservative stream in Europe who are anti-globalization who evidently see this as a positive thing. And so they're trying, you know, they're, they're experimenting with three turns to a kind of Nordic Neopagonism to distinguish themselves, meaning between the lines, to distinguish themselves from the globalization that liberal thinkers in Europe are advocating the abolition of borders, the abolition of national identity, all of those kinds of things. So the desire to preserve identity feeds into this kind of Nordic Neopagonism. That's very interesting, especially in the way that turned to that rather than kind of like I was just mentioning Christian ruse because a lot of them do read Christianity through it being a universalizing and globalizing vision that doesn't care so much about the particulars of locations. And Christianity tried to walk that balance in a fine way of classically allowing the Christian form and local custom to shape its practices and yet still maintain a kind of, you know, a kind of unity not always done well, but that was one of the problems is just how much, especially with, with connecting it to political states and the rest, it's the colonizing as they like to call it, of spreading out this kind of global interest and eradicating these local identities. And so local identities to get back a hold of them would be to go before Christianity came and started globalizing or universalizing people in their mindset. So in Catholicism, you know, I can remember my days in Boston and it was pretty clear that there were Catholics and there were Catholics and there were Catholics and there were Polish Catholics and there were Italian Catholics and there were Irish Catholics and they had their parishes and those parishes were in neighborhoods that were Irish Polish Italian. And at the same time, there was obviously a connectedness, there was the Roman Catholic Church, but he had kind of some uneasy sort of relationships between the different sort of ethnicities and the practices of faith. So for the longest time, it was the Irish who kind of had a hold on the cardinal seat there, you know. And what was it? Who was it? Who was it? Wasn't there a Portuguese guy who was made cardinal in Boston and he was very unpopular. I'm trying to remember his name. I think it was back in the 60s, maybe 70s. I think it was following the Kush, you know, and you know, cardinal-cushing in case people are wondering who were referring to who was a very colorful Irish figure who had no trouble going into Southy and hanging out in the bars with the boys, you know, and enjoying, you know, some sport telemission. Okay, so, but, yeah, so this relationship between nation, church, you know, get boundaries, borders, it's a, it's a fixing matter. Yeah, the, we heat it out, by the way, he does note that right now the neo-pagan stuff is statistically marginal. But the numbers, well, the movement particularly in Scandinavia is very, very much there. And he's interested in it to a large extent because of the way that paganism and Christianity interacted in creating the West. Now, he is not by any stretch of the imagination claiming that Christianity has become paganized or anything like that, but that it has absorbed the fundamental argument is that everything that's positive about the pagan world has been absorbed into Christianity in creating Western culture. So that's where we're going with it. But there's some interesting, yeah, now what is Tolkien to do with this? Well, let me read you a paragraph here. Tolkien's work because of its complexity and traditionalism constitutes a veritable treasure trove for today's conserved is. And it is astonishing that the opportunities arising from this have scarcely begun to be recognized, especially in view of Tolkien's immense popularity among the young. God is a historical actor, good and evil is non-negotiable values, honor, loyalty, and duty is supreme virtues, clear social hierarchies, gender roles grounded in natural law, insight into the ultimate futility of human hubris. Beauty and suffering is mutually dependent values. Deep mistrust of political institutions combined with hope for the return of the king. Tolkien's world of thought, when examined closely, stands for almost everything that is considered politically unacceptable in the 21st century and could serve as an ideal bridge between the vague longing of modern use and the truth of the Christian tradition. Okay, so that's how he's bringing Tolkien into this. His analysis of Western civilization, as it currently stands, you can practically read this paragraph by paragraph. The guy is really sharp and we will of course link this in the show notes. But his analysis basically hinges on the fact that we've turned our back on all those things. So for example, even after the final remnants of decency, honor, loyalty, familial feeling, and conscience have evaporated through parallel struggle, the consequences of the intellectual dictatorship of so-called universal rights which replaced them are now becoming unmistakably visible. The consequences of rejecting these things are becoming unmistakably visible. From respect for human dignity is derived legitimacy of abortion up to the day of birth. From democracy, a bureaucratic monstrosity such as the European Union, from equality, a dual system in which all problems are attributed to the allegedly uninformed masses rather than to the elites. From the rule of law, cynical legal positivism, from non-discrimination to hunt for old white men, from gender equality, the idealization of the Muslim veil is a feminist victory. From tolerance to the justification of parallel societies and moral decay, from solidarity, the bailout of major banks and so forth. Tolkien explicitly stated that Morgan's orcs and Saramans war machines were nothing more than symbols of a collectivist and mechanistic worldview that arose from originally good intentions. A worldview he at first encountered during the First World War and later during the rise of Tathaly and totalitarian structures and so on. He has got a very dense, he doesn't waste a word, which is particularly impressive considering he's not a native speaker when you think about it. He's got a very sharp and insisive analysis of the state of the world that we're in. And he sees in Tolkien's absorption of pagan virtues into a Christian framework, a way of heading forward, a way that European conservatives, I would say American conservatives could really benefit from. I think that we're going to have to limit ourselves to the original texts because with the films and the stuff that's going on in terms of fan fiction being passed off as like Tolkien's thinking this is a project. In other words, there's a sort of effort to undermine many of the things that he's talking about. Yeah. And the other side of it is if Christianity isn't vehicle through which they get tempered, there isn't going back to the pre-Christian mindset with him. That the modern world and Christianity have shown up. What comes about then is some other kind of ideology will be the vehicle that tempers or doesn't. And this is, I mean, you had already an example with national socialism taking on in a very left-wing political dimension which they fascism, but reading into those aspects of a people, certain aspects of their custom culture, traditions, their folkways, their kind of pagan identity. And then filtering it through a certain kind of ideology and they thought they were participating in the purity of the original Germanic mindset. Yeah, except there are a number of interesting little sidelines on this. I mean, he notes, for example, that we really don't know much about Germanic paganism. Especially when they're trying to create it by excise in Christianity, they're actually eliminating the significant part of what Germanic paganism was because the good parts were absorbed into Christianity. They're all kinds of examples of this. The one that I have cited most frequently is the Marvel Thor movie. So if you look at the origins, I've probably talked about this before, but if you look at the origin story of Thor in the movies, he starts a fight with the storm giants, Odin shows up and tries to calm it down because Odin is really a peacenick, you say. And because Thor has been a bad boy, he loses his power and he has to learn self-sacrifice for the poor or for the weak and so on in order to prove that he is worthy of getting his hammer back. Now, first of all, the notion of Odin is a peacenick is a little bit crazy when you know anything about Odin. He was the kind of guy who would train up a promising warrior, get him to call it elite status and then be trained so that he would die and go to Valhalla and he could have him in his war band. I mean, that's the kind of guy Thor, what Odin was. The idea that Thor would have to give up his strength and die for the weak, Thor was God of strength. I mean, you know, and the idea that Odin wouldn't want to war with the storm giants is this is all ridiculous. Why? Why did they have to do that? Because if they showed the Norse gods the way they were, nobody would root for them. Christianity won. And what we see there is a Christianized version of Thor and Odin. Yeah. Okay. The other example though, going to the other extreme, you can go to a Nordic metal groups, a Viking metal groups. They exist. Yeah, they do. Borguna is one of the big ones. Highland, there are several of them. If you look at the imagery that they use for Viking metal, you will find things like horns, antlers, you know, stuff like this. That has nothing to do with the way Vikings dressed. As a matter of fact, Vikings dressed pretty much like Christians did in the period. Okay. You will find them using throat singing. The Vikings didn't use throat singing. But the argument is these are all pagan. And so therefore the Vikings were pagans. They must have done it. So the idea is to strip out anything that might have any connection to Christianity. Come up with this universal pagan culture which never existed and use that as your image of what the Vikings were like. So on the one hand in Thor, you have the Christianization of Norse. On the other hand, in the among the heathens today and particularly fans of Borguna and so on, what you're getting is anything that is Christian has to be stripped out. Yeah. Yeah. And you kind of have, you know, it's always fun to talk about. We have rock and rollers who listen to the show, but it is kind of fun. Would you even think about the kind of heavy metal in the West, you know, the black Sabbath or Richie Blackmore, the guitars, to, you know, they're always thinking to him, you know, in the dark cape and all this stuff being very satanic or dark arts. I mean, he's playing. He's trying to take medieval Christian music and put that on the electric guitar. I mean, it's been Christianized, whatever, even their whole conception of what is dark is thoroughly through that, through that lens. You, you, and, but you see this, yes, typically with this stuff that goes on, even in Finland, you know, it's, it's, the stuff's been Christianized. Yeah. Well, the way they read the Cali Valin. Richie Blackmore, by the way, has started a new group called Blackmore's Night, which it takes explicitly medieval melodies and things like that, rewrites lyrics to them and performs them. Actually, they're kind of fun. They are fun. Yeah. So here's something to maybe take us in a little different direction. So when it came to the evangelization of Europe and the Christianization of the various peoples, you noted that the best things that were present in those pagan cultures were incorporated. They were intentionally preserved and Christianized. So then, you know, what comes to my mind is how do you do that? And is that something that can only have been done with the original pagans? Or is there a prospect of something could be done like that with the Neopagans, if you get my drift? Yeah. Well, what, let me get to the heart of his argument here because this may be a good, a good point to, uh, to bring that up. He says, when you look at the original pagans, um, they had, well, let me, let me find a good quote here. Um, what you, what you see in the original pagans is a tendency toward tragic self-sacrifice, you know, that that you, you were gonna, you were going to, you're gonna persist, you're gonna fight, you're gonna be strong, you're going to be enduring, you're gonna be all of those things even in the face of the fact that you were going to be defeated, you were going to die. So Beowulf succeeds with Grendel and Grendel's mother, he takes out the dragon but dies in the process. You know, it's actually somewhat like Chinese Kung Fu movies. And most Chinese Kung Fu movies, the vast majority of them have the hero die. And when asked why that was the case, somebody said, if you can win, you, there's no need for courage. Okay, so you, you got a similar idea in the Norseogas and things like that. The, the heroes don't always come out victorious, but what they do is they fight to the end. They, they endure their tough, they do all of those kinds of things, even in the face of impossible odds and nearly certain destruction. That part of that, that, that tragic, well, we would say a tragic hero kind of thing, but that kind of courage and steadfastness and things like that is the prime Norse virtue. Now, the problem is, just like in Greek mythology, you find that there is really no right and wrong in, in the midst of all of this. You know, they're fighting for one side or they're fighting on another that got to make a choice between the two, but it's essentially a toss up. What Christianity gives is a clear right and wrong, a clear good and evil. And so what you need to do is fight like Norse hero, but do it on the side of the good. And this is what creates chivalry. And you see this throughout Tolkien's world that what you have in Tolkien's world is a world of courtesy. It's a world of uncompromising commitment to the good. Even where, I mean, Farah Mir in the original says that he would not use the ring even if he stumbled across it on the side of the road. He would not compromise on that. You know, that that kind of absolute commitment to what is good, what is true, what is noble, what is right, what is honorable, all of those kinds of things. Is what Christianity brings into the equation while the Norse spring into it or the Germanic side of it is this steadfastness even in the face of defeat in everything else. And you know, you just you just fight to the end period. You don't you don't give up on that. So he sees that combination in Tolkien, which I think is absolutely right, but he sees it as at the heart of what what he calls his sparialism, that is to say this attempt to recover the West, he sees that as also extremely important for for what Western civilization has become. The union of the good with the the steadfastness endurance and toughness of the Germanic bacon world. Yeah, it's I mean, it's similar in and you know, finish minds that too, they have a word C-Sue, which you've probably seen or heard, which is similar. It grows out of that that sense of determination that you know, that you know, that can beat the Russians on one side and Germans on the other. And they're coldly on your back. That's right. That's right. And and you know, enduring hardship, but it but it is interesting that the you mentioned and I don't think a lot of us think a lot about that that the notion of evil, the way it's understood by Christianity, was never understood by any philosophy much less myth or anything else. They may have elements, but the notion that Christianity brings with that, it's not a second principle on the same with the good. It's you know, a lot of times I think they were these these the pagan minds that is fatalistic. And so the only kind of way to to kind of show something of we aren't just we aren't just in a sense that we could kind of put our fist up before we go right into where faith takes us, you know, is just kind of the the place where I guess some kind of dignity is expressed in how what kind of view allows them to see that as, you know, putting all your I mean, maybe that's all their left way. I don't know enough about it, but it is very different than than the hope that comes that that evil can be defeated and that having that courage and guts and everything else isn't just about finally giving way to faith, but actually is something that does went out in the end. So even if it doesn't look like it. So this is where I such an enormous contrast with the neo-pagan reality and the pagan reality becomes evident in my opinion, because I don't think when I think of the neo-pagan reality that we're dealing with anything like this, we're dealing with a perversion of Christianity in some respects, particularly with the woke sort of things that go on. And it's driven not so much by heroism, but by Rizantaman, you know, deep visceral envy and hatred of anything superior. So what you have is a Norse, you know, sort of regard for the heroic death is kind of the natural aristocrat. You have somebody who is really better than other people, who is demonstrating his worth through the fact that he fights to the end. You know, he never surrenders. That is something that I don't think we have anything like in the neo-pagan world that we live in. So as I think about our challenge, it's almost as though we're starting from scratch, maybe even, you know, we're in a worse situation in the sense that we're in negative numbers. Yeah, well, let's say, as Lewis said that he would much rather work with a good old-fashioned pagan than with what he was dealing with in his world. And I think you're right, it's gotten worse even within the neo-pagan community. He lets three problems, I think we could add to this, but he lets three problems with neo-paganism. First of all, he said, as he puts it, it's problematic, as he puts it, because the deliberate construction of religion by selectively choosing agreeable elements from the sparse scraps of tradition is, not by chance, reminiscent of the formation of other alternative identities, genderism, veganism, new age, extinction rebellion, and so on, that have splintered the modern world into artificial and parallel societies. So he's describing this as a constructed identity, which I think would absolutely drive them crazy. Yeah, I was hoping to get another phrase there, but we'll stick with crazy. But there are kind of two things that come to mind. You're right along that line. I mean, one of them is that there is this kind of fascination with a lot of the young people shaped by the woke education with other cultures and travel the world, and they don't realize the safety net that a Christianized world through the Enlightenment in its own ways, but has placed things there to where it is safe enough in many ways to go to places that it wasn't once. Now it's not everywhere, but nevertheless, that wouldn't have been there if some of these original pagan places were in place, because it was a very different and brutal world. And in a lot of ways, it's been tempered, and those things weren't tempered by the paganism itself, various paganisms. But there is that other notes, like with the woke, you have the strong emphasis on ideals of equity and justice, and rights, even though they deny there's a human. None of these say, if you keep pushing down that road from the neo-pagan toward the pagan, all of a sudden they get crushed by the powerful forces that Christianity has helped temper that doesn't crush them. Well, Wokeness, as I've argued before, is a Christian heresy, because what it's doing is it's taking ideas that are borrowed from Christianity and distorting them and twisting them and making them the center of the paradise of it. Yeah, this whole discussion reminds me of an encounter I had with a guy years ago who had a childhood in Southern California's parents both taught at USC. They were cultural anthropologists, so he'd been raised in a very sort of, I guess, stereotypical liberal kind of progressive setting. But he was a big guy himself. He played football and was something of a specimen. And he was an Obama delegate. He actually was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention and cast his vote for Obama, and then he traveled the world. And after he traveled the world, he wrote a book entitled, Fist Fights with Muslims in Europe, where he talked about basically the disillusion that he had experienced when he actually went into the world as you just described Tom and saw the world as it really is and realized that the West is best and that we were in the, we were facing the prospect of basically squandering our inheritance and giving our nations away, our lands away, our heritage away, our patrimonial way. And he went alt-right. So he went from one extreme to another. In my conversations with him, I said, have you ever thought about Christianity? He said, there's just nothing out there that appeals to me. I mean, I go to these big-box, emotional, emotive churches with all the music. It seems to be intended to serve the interests of, say, I don't know, older baby boomers or like girls who listen to I Heart Radio or stuff like that. And he's like, I just don't have any interest in that stuff. I get it. Yeah. I totally get it. Anyway, so I don't know what's become of him. I've not talked to him probably. I don't know. It's going like 10 years. So yeah. Well, let me let me let me continue with the three problems with you, pagan, this guy outlines. The second one is rather intriguing. He says it's simply wrong because paganism became a religion, quote unquote, only when it encountered Christianity. Before that, it was an unquestioned collection of disparate rights and legends requiring no faith, but rather practice and tied to the experience of nature so closely that doubts about the truth, quote unquote, as such ideas could scarcely arise. This is one of these things that people don't understand that religion is actually, as a category, is actually a product of Christianity. Because prior to the rise of Christianity, religion was just so deeply entwined, or what we would call religion, spirituality, whatever term you want to use, was so deeply entwined with life. And in most cases with nature, that it was just it was not a separate thing. It was just simply part of culture, part of life, part of everything else. I would argue that the experience of Christianity as a persecuted minority religion that is suddenly legalized at 300 years later creates religion as a separate category because it demonstrated that you didn't need state support, you didn't need cultural support, you didn't need anything, you could hold on to this faith even in the midst of all kinds of opposition and everything else. That puts it in a separate category from culture, from politics, from everything else. And so religion, functionally, is invented with Christianity, or particularly with the legalization of Christianity. Yeah, it's something you could say part of what the Christian faith has is a self-transcending culture. I mean, it allows it to be in all the different cultures, absorb things about it, but also remain distinct. And that itself wasn't. Even Judaism isn't like that. And so that becomes what you're referring to in many ways of what is uniquely defined and becomes the measure of religiosity, whereas before it just, yeah, it was tied much more into just kind of the cults in relationship to a people in their stories. Yeah, so the very idea of paganism as a religion is to road borrowed from Christianity. Yeah, because religion itself is borrowed ultimately from Christianity. And a lot of ways the Muslim world is much more traditional on this regard. They don't consider that there is a difference between religion, culture, society, government, or anything else. It's all integrated. And that's actually much the way. I mean, Islam arose out of Arabian paganism. They did that could probably have a far-toward, declarative against me for that statement, but in at least in the cultural context of that. And so they're operating really, frankly, with a pagan notion of religion that is different from the Western notion of religion. They don't actually have a notion of religion. This is why the sophisticated in the United States, but especially in Europe, are just so dundereheaded when it comes to their sort of relationship with Islam. They treat it as though it's the Church of England or something. And it's not what they're used to dealing with at all. Right. Yeah. And the same thing can be said in a lot of places in the United States today. Yeah, we're nowhere near as far gone as Europe is on this score, but it's, you know, you're seeing times square being taken over by Muslims, you know, chanting a lot of Akbar. You know, so we've got, you know, we've got some of that going on here. Europe is considerably further along, but you know, they, all they need to do is read the history of the Iranian revolution, where they will discover that the Ayatollahs came into power through an alliance between the left and the Islamists. And as soon as the Alamists got into power, they slaughtered the left. That's always the way it works for those guys. It does. Yeah. So it does. So the last comment he makes about criticism, he makes about Neopaganism, is that it's dangerous. And on this level, he's dealing actually at this point, he's introducing things that are spiritually dangerous at this point. As he puts it, dangerous because any genuine contact with a divine, if it is not to remain a superficial lifestyle, is also inevitably a venture into peril. Whoever enters honestly into contact with the divine must reckon with an answer. And one should be aware of that in a pagan context. Such an answer may turn out not only positive, but also negative. Right. So he brings that in. Yeah. The key point here, or what I would, I'm going to again, just read you a paragraph or two. Yet even more essentials of following consideration, paganism was abolished by Christianity almost everywhere in Europe more than a thousand years ago. And any disruptive return to pre-Christian conditions would not only be unnatural, but would also fundamentally, fundamentally misunderstand the very nature of that abolition. Now, here's going to go to Hagle. So pardon me. Hagle already explained that this concept possesses a threefold meaning, not merely negation, but also the preservation of essential elements of the old within the new. And finally, the elevation of those elements to a higher level. And actually, in this case, I think Hagle was right. A return to the pagan status quo anti would therefore not only constitute a regression in every respect, it would also entail the danger of abandoning together with Christianity. Precisely those central elements of genuine original paganism that are still alive today, replacing them and said with a chimerical artificial religion derived entirely from contemporary constructions of thought. Paradoxically, such a fabricated creed would bear less resemblance to the sensibilities of historical pagans than what has in fact been preserved uninterrupted within Christianity itself. Whatever was true, vital and healthy and dramatic paganism has been transcended and thus continues to live within Christianity. Yeah, that was what I was referring to there. And I think the Hagellian insight was along the same lines. But it is interesting that there isn't an access, even if one returns or retrieves to the stories and goes and just sort of tries to practice by living among a people where it's what I think the certain figures you say, you know, you can't have that kind of naivety anymore. Once you become buffered in a way. And this I do think also is sometimes a problem for retrieval mindsets within Christianity. They think if they can just go back and do the practices that were done in the past and and and practice things that somehow they they're going to get, you know, be able to enter into that first naivety. And I think there is where danger lurks because it's similar. It's we create more of what we call a neo than we are really continuing with the right kind of retrieval work. The things that we can take into the present, but recognizing that that we are always part of something that's going on is a is a neo. And that's a good thing from a Christian perspective because it means it has been tempered from a whole variety of things by Christianity doing its work on things. And so but the flip side is the neo today gets or the retrieval gets seen as the pure article from the past and people start trying to practice it. And they're not only incoherent and inconsistent, but I think detached from reality because I think paganism is at least steep than some kinds of aspects of reality where neo isn't. It's a construct. Constructs are manipulatable and destructive. So the I think the thing many of us are longing for if we have what you just described in mind, Tom, is how do we push through this current state of things that we find ourselves in that so many people find unsatisfactory, you know, just in terms of not just the the fraying of society and all of the nuttiness that we see kind of, you know, in our politics and our culture and our entertainment. But how do we how do we get to that that next place where we can be post modern in the the best sense and not just you sort of like I don't know, lurping. Which is what you know what we do. Yeah, you've just asked the million dollar question and if somebody ever comes up with the answer to it, we're going to be in really good shape. But you know, I think that where we have to begin, there's a tendency, I think, among a lot of people who are concerned about this to look at it at the political level, you know, what can we do politically? And the answer is not much. I think that that we really need to do a couple of different things. I mean, this is, you know, my views and you know, take them for what they're worth. But one of them is to develop, I mean, you know, this is Rod Draer, the Benedict option, which doesn't mean what most people think it means. It means developing intentional communities where you you pass on your values to the next generation in a way that doesn't allow the culture to do it for you. You know, which values are formed in community. You've got to you've got to create the communities to do this. I would also add though, you know, I mean, so in other words, it's functionally something that we do in families, in churches, in community. Because that is where the grass, that is ultimately where the culture is formed. And we have the potential to do this and have an outsized influence once we do it right in our communities. And we'll be doing this, of course, in the face of opposition, but that's how it goes. But the second part of it is I think that we need, and this is something I'm very heavily influenced by Martin Shaw on, we need to rediscover stories and we need to rediscover how to read stories. Because part of the appeal of a Germanic paganism, for example, or any paganism is romanticism. And if we learn to read stories in a better way rather than just reading for the plot, we can, I think, address the kinds of interests and desires that people who are drawn toward these neo-pagum things have. And we can do it in a much more healthy way than what they're doing. So those would be parts of the answer from my perspective. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, likewise, I think, I mean, I could put it a little bit differently. I mean, I think we already, and we don't need necessarily, I mean, as a church, we're already intentionally, we're in intentional communities and as Christians, that's why we've been formed the way we think. And so formation is definitely their spiritual formation, the way in which we cataclyze is very important, those things, carrying those out with a certain intention of emphasizing certain things. But I also, I mean, I think, you know, a lot of people argue the, you know, where the real debate is happening on the spiritual level is on issues of fundamental issues that are dealing with metaphysical things. And we haven't learned the vocabulary and metaphys. We've lost it. I think you're right in the sense that stories are the way in which that carry the metaphysic, logos and mythos are integrated. So the stories are the vehicle. That's why we have scriptures. Story, but scripture as a story is, is read in light of the realities it points to. I mean, you have at the beginning of this story, the kind of way you're going to read the rest. And you know, bearish East Barrallo, he in the beginning God, and our K and Hologos, in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the was where God, this is the key to reading the story, right? You know, this is the, the vertical that you read the horizontal, and then you read everything else, you know, in that story. That very first set of symbolic meanings that are inherent in the created order at the beginning of Genesis become determinative for what a human is, male and female, the pro-creative, the way in which time is ordered and all those things. So the metaphysical and the mythological, I'm using mythological in the kind of Louisiana sense, not in the fabricatory modern hyperm of Romanic sense. I mean, those ways of reading and seeing the early church understood that's why it's all over the earliest doctrines. I mean, who would spend all that time with a word like Omo Ucian in a letter unless they realize that something fundamental in the reality level is at stake between that little letter in terms of reality and that governs the very understanding of salvation. And so not everyone can do that. The stories and the moral formation are that, but I think Chris, you're onto it. We don't know how to see right now, even as Christians. We're seeing with a bent and disposition shaped by modernity and technology that our stance towards the world is not one that is seeing with fuller Christian lights. And I think these are all added elements that connect us to reality more fully. But it is a, you know, not only do we need wisdom, we need to be able to see and we need our loves to be formed so that we can see more fully as well. And that's where the formation, catechism and intentional community comes in. Now, keep in mind when you read in the book of Acts, the sermons that you get there, they're all stories. Yeah. They tell the story. So, and the word gospel itself comes from the word good news. So there's an important story element that I think sometimes can get lost in theologizing. Yeah, the story element, and that, but the story and witness, which is a pointing to reality, those two go hand in hand. Sure. And I'm not just in theology here. I just, I want to just point out the role of story that that becomes important in the gospel. And, you know, we instinctively know how to read a parable, but we don't apply that kind of same kind of reading. What does this mean, rather than what does it say? We don't apply the same kind of reading to other kinds of stories. And I think that that's one of the things I'm learning from Martin Shaw, I think, is that that's actually a really beneficial thing to do. And again, this is the way we can actually reclaim the pagan stories in a very real way for the gospel. And, and show with, I mean, Lewis believed that that Tolkien described in the splintered light. You know, there were reflections of light, but it's splintered. Lewis believed that the pagan myths pointed toward Christ. We can, we can, we can grab hold of them and do the same thing and show them that it is show the people who are drawn to neo-paganism that, you know, there's a lot more to this than you think there is. The, well, you remember some years back, George Lindex work, which was very big in the theological world. You probably all had to read at one point or another. It's something the nature of Christian doctrine, it's basically the ground of what became Yale school and like Hower was with the emphasis on narrative and story. The stuff was floating around. This is what they were on to, is that they basically argued, and I was very, I'm very shaped by this. And I think Tolkien and Lewis were promoting this kind of thing earlier, but they were, they were arguing basically that modern world or what you call liberalism, both, you know, classical and, and progressive in theology, took two horns that were offered it because of its narrow vision of reality. One was the propositional, which became the fundamentalist. The emphasis on the purely kind of logical soundness of the statement and are ascent to it intellectually, saying that's true, you know, the, in looking at the Bible that way. These are truth propositions that correspond with reality. We can defend it with reason and our minds can ascent. They can know it. The flip side was the hyper-romantic, the liberal, the one who language was nothing more than the expression of experience and therefore religious experience put into words. So the language could change based on culture and experience changing. And then, then, Lindebach said, but they, you get a hold of, I think, what, classic Christianian, classic religion held in common. He called it the cultural linguistic model, that the language, it's a, like, a culture and a language together. These are, you don't have an experience to which you're looking for a language to communicate. The language and the stories that go with it are forming you to see reality the right way and in dwell the vision. Propositions, you can't end well. This is why we're having such a hard time with classical evangelicals because they hold the right things, but they in dwell the technological world. And liberals have just, they in dwell it too. They just, you know, they just keep reinterpreting the language. So we think conservative Christians who in dwell a progressive world but ascent to intellectually sound propositions are fully different than progressives and they're not really. And we're beginning to see it. It's those who in dwell those doctrines and see reality from within the Dories and Reality visions that we are being formed to see properly and enact ourselves within participating in the reality. So I think Lindbeck was on to something and stories myth and the way in which those are the carriers and the farmers. This is why spiritual formation is so central and metaphysical formation, seeing these understanding things, things through the right kinds of participatory categories matter. Yeah, I think one of the reasons why say contemporary and conservative evangelicals have a hard time with this is that because as you noted the propositions or the substance of their faith, they don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about kind of the kind of the contents of their daily lives except maybe in the sense that I miss my quiet time this morning or something like that. They don't think about the way they cook. They don't think about where they live. They don't think about the people they live with. They're more or less wrapped up in their own personal experience and don't really take much time to consider how our society has isolated them or how our society reinforces a utilitarian approach to things. And consequently, their way of looking at the world is modern even though they say the right things when they're asked questions about the orthosolutus, that kind of stuff. That's right. That's right. But there is this kind of outsideness to what they believe, like you're saying, they're living in one world even though they are sent to another. And it does shape some because it is forming in some. But we're talking a deeper formation that is required by the stuff that is tearing at classic Christian understanding of things. Now we can't take them for granted. And so indwelling them differently and that's beginning to see by the way they form us to see. And I think that's the thing. Our stories aren't neutral. They're forming us. The stories we tell ourselves as a culture are neutral. They're forming us. The stories, like you say, the stories are all around advertisement is a story being told to form us. So that's why that story emphasis, I think, is a big part of it. And that's what a lot of theologians have benefited from moving away from the kind of two options, the enlightenment world gave us. And something closer to what the historic faith gave us, something more integrated with all these elements. And again, Christianism emphasized different ones at different times. But it's done itself best when it's integrated them in the formation we undergo. This is why we were able to discern nature's purposes and ends and engage their rigors of Hellenic philosophy in the world that Christianity went into after being made up predominantly from a bunch of guys shaped by Judaism early on. Yeah, I think this is as though many people who are thoughtful but haven't taken the next step, they can recognize the fact that there's a kind of spiritual dis-ease, but the medicine seems too strong. They just can't take it. So like if you walk into my church, it's not just simply what you hear from the pulpit that communicates. This is a very different church than you've been to your whole life. You walk into the church and there are literally 80 kids, seven years old and younger, 80 of them. And the church is full of really masculine guys. I mean, if we ever were assaulted by the people, I literally have guys who are part of the mixed martial arts academy who attend my church. And they're big guys. So if you just walk in, you're just like, okay, we got the wrong church. We'll go over to this one over here with... But they're not neo-pagans. No, they're not. But many of them are very heavily tattooed. But anyway, so everything about my church, when you walk in, communicates. This is something that is substantial in a way that is countercultural, but not in a creepy sort of like self-propelled conscious way. It's just... It's a very friendly church. It's a church that people can come into and feel welcome. By the same time, there's no sort of ambiguity about American culture and Christianity. It's like, okay, this is different. Let me offer you one other answer to your question. How do you revive? How do you reach this kind of group? And this is from the article itself, and I'm going to paraphrase it. He points out that the Tolkien's core idea in fairy tales is the Eucatastrophe. And the Eucatastrophe occurs when basically all hope is lost and then help comes from a completely unexpected source that saves the situation. It's not quite a deosex machina, but it's this unexpected, unanticipated turn of grace that arrives right when all hope is lost. When Gollum bites off your finger. When Gollum bites off your finger. And actually, he cites Gollum, but they're showing up at just the right moment to break the Battle of Hellenor Fields open. Those kinds of things. And he says that ultimately, we may be in that situation. Yeah, I think it is right. We may be in a situation where all hope on a human level is lost. Now, this is where Germanic paganism comes in. When all hope is lost, you continue to fight. You continue to fight until you are out of the battle period. It's where Christianity comes in. You fight without hesitation. You always support and go for the good. And the merger of the two is what creates the Western ideal. And by the way, he points out that the loss of this ideal can hardly be the fault of Christianity because it was Christianity that created it. But he ends up with, I'll just read you the last paragraph here. Let us therefore hope for a final late autumn before winter for the West, a golden evening in the words of the Odin. And recall that the bitter sweet ending of the Lord of the Rings was, according to its author, intended as an analogy for quote, a restoration of a Holy Roman Empire with its seat in Rome. Well, we're not exactly going to go there, but it would not be the first time in the history of civilization that a terminal phase of decline was swallowed by a final quasi-gustine flowering and religious restoration granting retrospective meaning to the entire preceding course of history. And even if such a hope should ultimately prove illusory, we may still remember amid the ugliness of modern world that this precisely, that it is precisely in heroic failure, that the deepest beauty of existence is born purchased yearly but cheaply as the herald of manway once said of the songs of the elves. At the very least, we should not allow ourselves to be deprived of this final dignity. So he's not saying that we've got a guaranteed comeback, but he is laying out what our responsibility in the world is, I think, very effectively. Yeah, that's a great note to end on. Thank you for that. Anyway, thank you for listening to this episode of the Theology Podcast. We're grateful for your support and grateful that you made it all the way to the end of this episode. And we'd be even more grateful if you check out our Patreon account and the link is in the show notes and we make us ecstatically grateful if you became a monthly supporter. Anyway, that's enough for now. Thanks a lot and bye-bye. Theology Podcast is a ministry of Westminster Presbyterian Church and Battleground, Washington. The Theology Podcast is produced and edited by Wiley Kraft Productions of Nashville, Tennessee.