Jonathan Foster invited me on his podcast today.
Here’s a rough transcript of our conversation:
Jonathan Foster
Listeners of podcasts and watchers of YouTube's people out in the internet. Thanks so much for hanging out with us today. We are continuing what I'm calling season eight, where we're talking about open and relational theology, and we've had a lot of great conversations already, but I'm really excited to have my friend Matthew David Segall. I mean, that, that's a nice biblical name, man. Matthew David.
Matt Segall
Yeah. I thank my mom for that one.
Jonathan Foster
You're, you're off to a good start. Matt and I have had a chance to interact a little bit virtually. We have a bunch of mutual friends and I, I love Matt's stuff. He's a thinker first and foremost, and that thinking kind of manifests itself in writing and in speaking, he's a professor, he's a philosopher where he is applying processes influenced open and relational theology, thought across the natural and social sciences, including lots of thoughts about consciousness and lots of thoughts about artificial intelligence.
Good lord, I wish we could get into all of that today. We probably won't be able to. He's a professor at California Institute at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco and the chair of the Science Advisory Committee for the Cobb Institute. So I just want people to know we're not messing around <laugh>. This is the real deal here. My favorite, well, the thing Matt, I found most helpful is your YouTube channel, which is footnotes2plato. So for people listening or watching footnotes2plato, that's the number two. And I think that's your website too. Your substack is just Matthew David Segall. Right.
Matt Segall
It’s Footnotes 2 Plato as well.
Jonathan Foster
Yeah. Oh, okay. Sorry. It pops up in my email as well. If people look for footnotes2plato, they're, they're not gonna go wrong. Right? <affirmative>, they look for that. But I've really enjoyed, like I've searched, I I've listened to multiple of your podcasts, you know, when you've been guests in different places, and I've been on your YouTube and probably my favorite is the Alfred North Whitehead video you made a couple years ago. I think it was March of 2022. And I have definitely listened to that more than three or four times.
Hmm. Great. Super helpful. And, and for people listening and they're trying to dip their toes into it, I think it's, I think it's 'cause there's just not a lot of stuff like that out there. It's, you feel like you go from zero to 60 or super fast, which is probably part and parcel of Whitehead stuff anyhow.
But I played that video a bunch of times and also a series of videos from our mutual friend Andrew Davis. And that was, that was really helpful for me when I started dipping my toes into all of this. But the last thing I wanna say is, the thing I appreciate most about you is your, basically your vibratory presence. It's always very patient and gracious. I, some of that I'd like to say is a part of the process open relational world, but I don't know that I can claim all of that.
Some of that's probably the work that you've done personally. And I, I just love that. It's one of the things I really do love about open and relational theology (ORT) is like coming out of evangelical world and there was a lot of really good stuff about evangelical world, so it wasn't all bad, but there was a lot of stridency and a lot of trying to prove who's right and who's wrong, black and white. And little by little over the last 5, 6, 7 years, I've, I've been able to let go of a lot of that stuff. And a lot of it's 'cause of people like you who are, who are really gracious and, and I appreciate that.
So anyhow, thanks for being with us, man.
Matt Segall
Thanks very much Jonathan for that introduction. And yeah, been looking forward to this for quite a while. So glad we could connect and yeah, let's see where we go.
Jonathan Foster
See where we go. And you're in, you're in Northern Cal, I assume
Matt Segall
<affirmative>. That's right. Small town in Sonoma County called Sebastopol.
Jonathan Foster
I love that area in a some parallel universe. I'm living there. What is the math, by the way? What's the latest math on parallel universes, does it actually hold up? Is it possible?
Matt Segall
Well, I don't know the math, but in terms of the physics, the multiverse theory? Yeah,
Jonathan Foster
Yeah.
Matt Segall
Or I mean there's different forms of it. There's the many worlds interpretation of quantum theory that people like Sean Carroll hold forth about. And then there's the multiverse theory, which is, you know, that infinitely many universes have come out of the quantum void or what have you. And we just happened to be in that one that, that led to life and intelligence. I think both of these forms, whether multiverse or many world's hypothesis are an example of ontological overflow, which is to say materialism, in an effort to avoid having to think again about the place of consciousness in the universe, is willing to conjure up all sorts of absurd hypotheses.
And these two are an example of that. You know, talk about Occam's razor going out the window. You know, you're gonna conjure infinitely many other universes. Just so you can explain this one as random. I, I don't like them <laugh>.
Jonathan Foster
That's really interesting. Well, I was just looking for some way for me to live in Northern California.
Matt Segall
<laugh>
Jonathan Foster
That's <laugh>. I just, that's why I had to vet it with you, so, oh well. Oh, well.
Matt Segall
Sorry to burst your bubble
Jonathan Foster
<laugh>. That's all right. Hey, I thought I'd start with our mutual friend Andrew Davis. He was on the show a few weeks ago, and we had this great conversation about the transitions that our culture is in and have has been in. He calls 'em Whiteheadian transitions. And the way we kind of framed it was like, these are really important things to be aware of because it opens us up to new ways of thinking about all kinds of stuff, not the least of which is theology, which is kind of what I'm most interested in that, but I'm interested in, in all of it.
And that's part of the reason why I love your stuff. 'cause your inter interdisciplinary thinking is really helpful with all of it. But I thought maybe I'd read a few transitions to get started and it, let's see if one of them strikes you that you would want to comment on. I won't read all 10 of 'em, but here's a few of 'em. We talked about the move from dogmatic thinking to dynamic thinking, the move from passivity to creativity, the move from decadence to adventure.
Here, I'll just give you one more: pessimism to possibility.
Any of those you want to comment on, like in terms of this is, this is why it's really helpful to be aware of process influenced open and relational thinking, because we're in the middle of these moves, dogma/dogmatism to dynamicism, passivity to creativity, decadence to adventure, pessimism to possibility. I know I'm putting you on the spot.
Matt Segall
Yeah, well, I can try to say something about each of those. On dogmatism to dynamism. Well, there seems to me, at least in the little corner of the internet that I tend to pay attention to, which is not the evangelical world, really. Or you know, I'm familiar with Tom Oords work and open and relational theology and that movement, which is very exciting. But I, you know, just wasn't raised in that context and have come to Christianity and to theology later in life, like in my early twenties, after having gone through a, a sort of a Buddhist phase, you know, trying to teach myself to meditate and consuming a very westernized form of, of Buddhism, of course, in my late teens.
But yeah, dogmatism has always been something that I've resisted. And in the little corner of the in internet that I'm, you know, part of which there's a bunch of integral theorists and metamodernists and liminal web people, and probably borders on like what used to be called the intellectual dark web and stuff.
And you know, I, I don't wanna approve of all the people that get involved in these different circles, but in these, in this community of communities, there's been this marked shift toward an interest in Christianity. All of a sudden some people are publicly converting. And a lot of the times that's to some more traditional form, whether it's to the Catholic church converting to, to Catholicism or to some form of orthodox Christianity.
And it's, it's a return to a view of religion and a embrace of what, to me feels like dogma, which, you know, dogma in the original sense just was, it's like true belief, right? And these are things that over thousands of years have been, you know, mulled over by, by countless generations of people. And so the best spin we could give to a dogma is that, hey, look, this is deeply considered, you should probably take it seriously.
Right? On the other hand, you know, it can get wielded like an idol and you lose the spirit of, of these teachings and just start obsessing over the particular wording, the letter. And, you know, so much of, of what I find valuable in that transition to the Gospels from, you know, this long history of prophets and and whatnot in the Old Testament, is the shift from law to love.
And it's, it's not just about obeying the law outwardly, but like, well, how do you feel in your heart? And so, you know, there's already something dynamic in the Gospels and that new revelation in a sense that allows us to overcome dogmatism. But I think as religion comes back into the public sphere in, in different ways, and you know, that's been true in politics for decades now, since, you know, the sort of moral majority or sort of conservative religious right, the religious right coming in, going back to Reagan and whatever.
But I think that's accelerated now in different ways. And religion is going to have a role to play in public life. And so the question is, is it going to be this dogmatic form obsessed with law, or will we be able to, to tap into a more dynamic form that's, that's rooted in love and understanding the symbols and teachings of the world's wisdom traditions and, and, and religious lineages in a way that's fluid and adaptable and not like flimsy and, and totally relativized, but yeah, relevant to contemporary life and the needs of human beings today, you know. The Sabbath, the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. Right, right, right. And then, yeah, in terms of decadence and adventure, I think every civilization that we have records of has these, goes through this cycle. And contemporary western or modern western civilization does seem to be in its decadent phase. And so, you know, the question becomes what future might there be for, for human beings beyond the death of a particular more or less European mode of existence on the planet? Which for better and for worse, in some ways, has and often violently created this global economic system, and at least the beginnings of a planetary culture. And so, you know, as this old kind of colonial way of connecting the world dies, there's a need to imagine a new form of civilization and a new source of motivation for human beings that's not just to glorify the empire or our nation or our race, or our political party or whatever, but to, to really go on an adventure together as earthlings, as human beings, to imagine the future in a way that's gonna need to be radically different, you know, from what we've done so far, and yeah, that that's gonna take, you know, a sense for the possible and a, a faith in the possible.
And we need, you know, there's so much skepticism and cynicism and pessimism nowadays because our institutions are failing and there's just very little trust in, in these established institutions, government, corporate, to, to function adequately, whether that's because of bureaucracy or corruption or both.
And, and so how do we rediscover and, and, and trust in what's possible beyond the decaying institutions that we are all rightly so fed up with and, and pessimistic about.
But I think it, and it's not just that we need a sense of possibility for how to better organize ourselves socially, but you know, we need a renewed sense of the possibility of our own human existence and, and human capacity as individuals, you know, like, what can I know and what can I do and, and who can I become? There's a lot of depression. There's a lot of a lack of basic self-esteem that manifests in, in, in, in the search for forms of compensation for that deep sense of self hatred that, you know, a lot of people have because of just poor schooling parents who weren't ready.
I mean, what parent is ready I but <laugh> who just were barely, weren't even adults themselves, you know? And so there's a lot of traumatized people that don't, that lack a sense of their own potential. And so yeah, shifting to the dynamic, creative, adventurous sense of possibility is of urgent need right now.
Jonathan Foster
Yeah. Well said. I think so. And what I've discovered is process open relational thinking is a really nice paradigm, a really nice way to move into that. That doesn't mean that there aren't other spaces to do that, but it's been, it's been natural. I started to say fun. Some of it hasn't been fun, but it's been meaningful and insightful to kind of reconnect or to connect with what some of the things I was intuiting, like the spirit of adventure love. And I'm not saying we have a corner on love, but it feels like, like when you talked about, I was thinking of this when you were talking about, not, what did you say?
You didn't say wishy-washy or, or relative. Relative, yeah. Yeah. One of the really in meaningful things that I've done in my life for the last few years is Yeah. Is to re-approach love, and to think of it, and, and, okay, what is going on? What is an uncontrolled love? What does that mean? And what does that require of a divine and require of humans? And so the word consent, the concept of consensual, the consensual idea has been like, super important.
And, and the more you think about it, you realize actually this is a more robust, stronger, in many respects type of love than of course the dogmatic crowd wants us to think. I find that very interesting, that game that kind of gets played all the time.
Matt Segall
Right. Yeah. It's, that's shift from force to persuasion.
Jonathan Foster
Right. That that was one of our other transitions we talked about too. So let me, let me change subjects. That was just a, that was just like a softball, that was just a warmup of questions.
Matt Segall
<laugh> Alright.
Jonathan Foster
I was reading recently in Your Physics of the World Soul, which was, remind me, was that your dissertation turned book, or was that
Matt Segall
It was actually one of the sort of, we call them comprehensive exams before the dissertation that I expanded. And yeah, edited.
Jonathan Foster
I knew it was something to do with your PhD work. Yeah. But so Physics of the World-Soul for people who were interested by the way you did that through SacraSage, and I'm editing lots of books at SacaSage, so I'll get little plug out there. You said Whitehead prophetically recognized what is finally starting to be acknowledged by physicists today that post-classical scientific cosmology has passed into an epicyclic phase of theoretical development. So this, I, this was a new word for me, epicyclic, and it's kind of caught my imagination. Mm. But you're talking about the idea of here between quantum theory and the theory of relativity, and these are two different ways to see reality that can't really be reconciled with each other. Can you maybe explain, I know we're on audio here, so some people might now, but it's more of a word picture. Mm. But what, what might be happening with that concept, that phrase and, 'cause I have a question. I'm gonna, it's, I'm going somewhere with it.
Matt Segall
Well, so just briefly, epicycles were a geometrical trick that Ptolemy, the ancient Greek astronomer, developed to save the appearances as, as it used to be said. Which is to say, you know, the planets appear to move in these loop like patterns. If you track them night after night, over a year or two or three or many years, the outer planets move much more slowly, right? So they go retrograde, the outer planets less often, the inner planets like Mercury and Venus more often, and Mars. And so seeing these wandering motions, Ptolemy as a good Aristotelian, and, and, and Platonist said, okay, well, there must be some underlying order or symmetry here and following Aristotle who said that all perfect motion, and in the heavens, the heavenly spheres, all motion is perfect. Whereas in the earthly terrestrial sphere, there's wayward motion and things get more chaotic.
But in heaven, everything should be perfect circles. And so Ptolemy, using his geometrical imagination devise this brilliant geocentric conception of, of the solar system, whereby the movements that appear to us to be retrograde, or these loops are actually just the planet's not only moving in circular orbits, but upon that orbit, another circle is added. And so the planet's moving around in, in on its circle, and then there's deferents, and you get circles on circles. So an epicycle is more or less a kind of mathematical fudge to make what we observe become the expression of some underlying order. So if we observe a seemingly wandering motion, which is what planet means in Greek, it's actually just the expression of this underlying perfectly circular motion. And so, in the context of contemporary cosmology, scientific cosmology, because quantum theory and relativity theory don't fit together, you know, one, just as an example of why they don't fit together, relativistic theory describes a space-time continuum. And quantum theory describes the ultimate nature of reality as being discrete or discontinuous. And so how the two fit together is, is an ongoing research project. And there's dozens of different attempts to do this from quantum gravity to string theory. But you know, the problem is that it's very difficult to confirm which of these models is true.
And when it comes to cosmology, there's the so-called Big Bang Theory, which nowadays involves theoretical constructs like dark matter and dark energy. And dark matter is a mathematical fudge, like an epicycle created to save the appearances, the appearance, the observation. When we look at other galaxies, the stars around the edges of those other spiral galaxies are moving much more quickly in their orbits around the center of the galaxy than would be expected if the only mass was visible matter.
Right? And so, in other words, Einstein's and Newton's understanding of gravity led us to expect much slower motion of those stars, than what we observe. And so what's the solution? Well, it can't be that our theory of gravity is wrong. We have to invent a bunch of invisible dark stuff that explains the missing mass. You just plug that into the equations. Then the stars are moving at the right speed. Similarly with dark energy, it's another epicycle in the sense that we observe an accelerating rate of expansion, or when we interpret—I shouldn't say we observe that. We interpret that based on what we do observe, which is a red shift in, in the light coming from certain stars, which through various means, astronomers attempt to determine the distance between stars. And it seems like, at least as the theory suggests, that the stars and, and the galaxies rather, that are further away from us, have a larger red shift, which is interpreted to mean that there's an accelerating expansion of the universe.
Now, what's observed and what's a theoretical interpretation gets really sort of complicated here. But the basic idea with this epicyclical nature of contemporary cosmology, is that there's a lot of theoretical elaboration and a lot, a lot of maneuvering of what are called the free parameters in the equations of physics to get them to conform with what we observe.
And we're no longer dealing with a simple explanation of observe phenomena. We're dealing with a heavily mathematically elaborated attempt to fit the observations to the theory. The theory, strictly speaking of the Big Bang and everything with dark matter, dark energy. It's been falsified many, many, many times. But it turns out that, you know, science can just adjust the theory to fit the new data and continue to act as though it, it's the correct theory.
And that's, I think there's a lack of imagination. And we're waiting for that next Einstein, or you know, Neils Bohr to, to grasp the gestalt and come up with a simpler account that would do away with all of these mathematical fudges, with all of these epicycles. So that's a little bit longer than I was hoping, but that's the basic idea.
Jonathan Foster
No, it's super fascinating. So the epicycle was created as a way to give us something to observe, to help our brain understand some of this stuff. What we just, we don't understand, is that a way of saying it
Matt Segall
To, to fit what we observe to, to a model,
Jonathan Foster
To fit what we observe to a model. Yeah. So since I read that a few weeks ago, I, I've been thinking of epicycles in lots of different things, and I've been, I've been seeing this, like the complexity of a particular thing, maybe a person or maybe a politic or a a nation or a community, and then in my brain, like close my eyes and I'm seeing all these other things orbiting around it in multidimensions. And I'm, I'm just finding that word picture, like really helpful.
But it's interesting to hear you talk because epicycles are, they may not be exactly what's going on, but they're helping us match up what we're observing. And that's so true in reality. And so where I want to go is of, I wanna say something about theology, something about the cross, and just see if you have any input on this.
And if you don't, that's totally fine. But like, and I think maybe 'cause it's been Easter and Lent season that we just came out of. So I've been thinking a lot about the cross, and I've had a lot of questions from folks about other ways to think of the cross, other than the one Americanized Christian Western way, which has to do, it's just transactional. It has to do with bloodshed. And it's something I categorically reject, which all, all of a sudden, you know, of course puts you on the outskirts with a lot of Christian folks.
So, and I'm not the only one doing this, but I've been trying to say, no, there's all these other ways to see what happened on the cross, which was a very real event 2000 years ago, meaning somebody named Jesus died there. That may have, that may be about all we know. But so now I'm thinking in terms of all these, what sometimes they're called atonement theories and epicycles that are rotating around it, that we're, we're concocting.
I don't know if we're concocting all of 'em, but maybe we're concocting them to help us understand the cross. Some of them, I think maybe they are reality, but you can correct me if I'm not thinking of it correctly. But like, so I'm thinking in terms of, one of the things that rotates around is this idea that whatever's going on with the crucifixion, it reveals the scapegoating mechanism. And I'm a, I'm a Rene Girard guy, so I'm kind of deep into the mimetic theory and scapegoating stuff. So that might be one of the things orbiting around the cross.
Another thing that's orbiting is the way, like, it's so obvious the way the powers joined together in Herod representing the financial system, Pilate representing the politics, Caiaphas representing the religious system. They all joined together in unison. And as Gerard talks about unanimity minus one, like, there's, there's nothing quite like the power of being in unison, but you, you always gotta get rid of one, you know, the scapegoat.
So that might be one of the things that's rotating around this thing we see in the cross. Another idea, I mean, there's dozens of 'em, but another one might be just that this brown skinned Hebrew man was committed to identify with the marginalized, you know, like he became a, the text says he became a friend of sinners. That was one of the things, can you, can you imagine that being a friend of sinners? That was the one, one of the things that got him in trouble, on and on, like all this different stuff.
So I'm, I'm seeing it as this epicyclic thing, like, like the cross is this observable thing that happened. And then there's all these theories, although some of that I just said I think are more than theories. But here's the last thing I said all that to ask you about this, and you can comment about in the previous stuff too.
But one of the things rotating around the cross for me has been this idea that Jesus, who I think was an embodiment of love. And you know, Christians wanna say he is the son of God. And I'm not sure, he never references himself as a son of God. But let's just say that he was embodiment of love or the Son of God, either way, whatever else is going on, Jesus experiences the despair on the cross in ways that really surprise all of us. 'cause you wouldn't think the Son of God would do that. And if Jesus is reflective of God, Jesus goes to his death saying, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? So as a relational thinker, I reject the idea that God was separate from this event. So I have to accept that the divine was interconnected with this. So what does it mean that, that God in Jesus, or Jesus in God, or both in this entangled way, are experiencing this deep rupture, you know, like this, like this tear.
In philosophy, you know this better than I do, but you know, we may talk about a lack, like there's this void, there's this gap, there's this insecurity, this anxiety, which are all might be synonymous terms. And so I've been trying to play with a theology, and I don't think I'm the only one, but I'm trying to play with a theology that has a breach in it, a tear in it, and to try to come up with more things revolving around the growth to try to identify better.
But I, I, I was really curious if you had any comments about this, and if your thoughts, either from your more philosophical bent or, or from Whitehead, and which might be philosophy too, or it might be physics, math bent, you might wanna comment on the divine having a gap, having a break. Hmm. The, the, the phrase is, and I know this isn't novel with me, and I'm not sure if this comes from Hegel or somebody, but it's the, it's the HOLE, the hole within the whole, the H-O-L-E, inside the W-H-O-L-E.
Matt Segall
Yeah.
Jonathan Foster
And so I'm constantly trying to articulate something that's happening at the cross.
Matt Segall
Well, yeah.
Jonathan Foster
That, that might better give a better picture of what the reality of the divine is. Something like that.
Matt Segall
In the Kabbalah, God is described, the Godhead is described as creating through an act of self-annihilation to open up a space. There's a self-emptying or kenosis to, to open up a space for the creation. And so the crucifixion is in some sense, a repetition of that perhaps at a, at a higher octave. There's a recreation of, of the world and, indeed, of God, occurring in that moment. And that act of creation actually requires God to become a human being, become an atheist on the cross, and then die.
And what does that mean? Well, that, that, that old form of relationship between God as something utterly transcendent and beyond in comparison to earthly humanity has, has been transformed. And now, I mean, this is, this is just my, my reading, maybe it's quite heretical, unorthodox and everything, and, and worse. But <laugh>, the idea of, as I understand it would be that, you know, now it's, it's not that God is dead in some sort of flat way, or just secular or nihilist kind of sense, but that, that God, through the incarnation and through the death and through the bleeding into the earth, and really becoming one among us as human beings, now it's up to us to resurrect the spirit of the divine in our communal life together.
Jonathan Foster
And, and can I, can I just interrupt real quick, I think I agree with that. What does it mean to resurrect the spirit of the divine, if the divine has a continual breach in it? A continual rupture, a continual, I don't love “self annihilation.” That sounds like violent towards self, but yeah. But that idea, what, what does it mean to resurrect something in your thoughts? I'm not saying you or me have the exact answer, I'm just, I just find it super interesting and I'm trying to, I'm trying to come up with language for it.
What does it mean to resurrect the thing that keeps dying or that has the possibility of death in it?
Matt Segall
Well, I think it means that for human beings to love one another, whether whatever form that love takes friendship, romance, a colleague, you know, the love is beyond death. In other words, you, you're not loving some of the sensual physical qualities of that person. You're not just loving some of, even their mental attributes that they're good at this or that. What you love, if you love, is their, their soul or their spiritual nature. You love that part of them that doesn't die.
And so it's, it's a calling to a higher form of relationality that's, that's not merely rooted in some selfish craving for a temporary pleasure that you can't, that you don't take with you when you die. And it's not that we know what happens when we die, but I think there's something about the nature of love and this deeper form of love that can compels us to relate to one another in a way that transcends our own finite bodily existence, at least in this particular life.
And, you know, again, it's not about having some knowledge about what happens after we die. It's just through love and its transformative power, that we no longer feel threatened by it.
And so much of what ails our societies and inhibits our capacity for sociality and, and social coexistence has to do with, I think the fear of death and the denial of death, which, which leads to greed and avarice and all of these other social maladies. I think they ultimately stem from the fear of death.
Jonathan Foster
Can I read for you Hebrews 2:14? I wasn't, I wasn't planning to read the Bible, but I, I think what you're saying is in alignment with this, and you may already know this, probably do, but “since the children have flesh and blood, he too,” this would be the Christ “shared in their humanity, so that by his death, he might break the power of him who holds the power of death,” that is the devil, “and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”
That's basically what you just said. Yeah. Nice job, <laugh> nice commentary on Hebrews 2:14 and 15.
Matt Segall
Thanks for connecting it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.
Jonathan Foster
Sorry to interrupt you. I just thought that was cool.
Matt Segall
But in terms of, you know, I think the, the whole history of theodicy, or the attempt to figure out why, why there is evil and, and, you know, sort of reconcile that with a God who's supposed to be loving and all good and all powerful, I think theodicy has often been epicyclic in the sense that it's, it's an attempt to explain away suffering and in a way that's not ultimately satisfying. And there's something about the crucifixion and the death of God or the Son of God, but, you know, one God, three persons, or however you wanna think about that. There's something about that event, which is not a theory, but, but here we can draw on the original Platonic sense of theoria, which was related to theater, which for the Greeks was, was a, was a sort of public religious event where there was a opportunity for catharsis or a sort of shared suffering through the artistic expression of their own, the deeper meaning of their own coexistence.
Right? And so the Christ event, the crucifixion as a theoria, as an opportunity to participate in, in this transformation which is occurring, that gets us beyond just this attempt to rationally, logically justify how it is that there should be evil, because this is how God works. I mean, like, one of the best examples of theodicy is Leibniz, the early modern philosopher. You know, he would say that we live in the best of all possible worlds. And, you know, God created the world in, in a way that because of, you know, just logical incompatibilities and whatnot has this, what we call evil in it. But just the idea that, you know, this is the best of all possible worlds is a, is a logician’s way of resolving this question. Whereas the Christ event, or the crucifixion in particular, I think is, has a different pathos, a transforming pathos. And we can't logically explain it. It has nothing to do with some intellectual form of justification, even to try to think of it as some kind of sacrifice or, or a transaction or exchange. I mean, no, no, that's, you're bringing economics into something that, that is actually spiritual.
Jonathan Foster
Right? Can I add to, I just want to comment on like, I always feel checked, I shouldn't say always. Sometimes I forget and I feel really bad. So I need to be, remind myself more often that at its core, maybe kind of what you were saying, like, screw the theories for a second. At its core, and this is what Gerard helped me see more than anything, it's, it's, it's a innocent man being murdered by the powers.
And whereas most of our world operates by certain myths, the mythic structure, certainly of Jesus' day, and it still exists, it's just we're more modern mythic. But the mythic structure in Jesus' day, whether inherited from the Greeks or wherever was, was that the, was that the victim was actually guilty. But in the Jesus story and the New Testament, at least I think seven times there, there's that really important phrase: This man was innocent.
This man, you know, was not guilty of the crimes that have been laid on him. And so at some level, like it's embarrassing. Like, I should just stop talking about it. It's a freaking murder by the powers, and this is what we do, right? And so to create all these epicyclic things around it, it's almost an exercise of missing the point
For me. I'm not, I'm not saying necessarily for other people, like, I just need to pause and <laugh> think about that more. The problem is there's still all this other stuff going on because, you know, it's such a complex interesting thing, but I don't know, something you said made me think that I, I just, I need to remember that.
Matt Segall
I mean, it's a murder, but also I, I feel like just as Jesus was friends with the sinners that, you know, as he says on that last night, on Good Friday, right? That forgive them for they know not what they do. And forgiveness is such a core teaching here, right?
Jonathan Foster
Yeah. He's saying that on the cross Yeah. While they're doing it to him. Yeah,
Matt Segall
Yeah, yeah. <affirmative>.
Jonathan Foster
Yeah. So forgiveness itself is something that helps us define reality, define what's going on, even though it's an abstract thing that you can't quite grab. But it's also something that very much you have to enter into.
Matt Segall
Yeah. And it's forgive others and forgive yourself. And almost the depth of forgiveness that transcends that very dichotomy between self and other.
Jonathan Foster
Say more about that.
Matt Segall
Well, just in the way that Jesus relates to the Father.
Jonathan Foster
Hmm.
Matt Segall
There's two persons there, and yet not. I think when we love someone, we are in some sense coming into unity, but to maintain relationship, there still needs to be a distinction. But still, forgiveness is… we cannot be a self, nor can we come into relationship to others in a loving way without that, without forgiveness.
Because I mean, you know, I was talking about sort of the lack of self-esteem that I think plagues people, you may, you might feel, you know, it might on the surface feel like everyone's super inflated and, and egoism is running rampant, but it's actually a very shallow form of compensation that that runs wild. And that underlying that is this deep sense of insecurity, right? Because we don't feel like we're deserving of love, and we don't, we can't love others because we, we, we want to blame them for what afflicts us.
And so, yeah. It's, that's forgiveness. It just runs so deep. It's, it's really right at the core. Everything spills out from our ability to forgive. And, and again, a way that is, is deeper than, than just forgiving ourselves for being sinners or falling short or forgiving others for hurting us, for harming us or for harming others. But, but forgiving, again, at a level deeper than even that distinction between self and other, it's like how we overcome that division almost.
Yeah. I mean, hopefully what I'm gesturing towards makes sense. I know it's kind of inchoate.
Jonathan Foster
No, it's, part of it is, that's the reality. Gerard has this great line you were talking about lack and insecurity and the anxiety. He says it's that he's trying to describe this human condition that we all, you know, it's a common denominator. We all feel it at some level. “That dark country of anxiety, that subsists within us and whose action upon us never ceases.” I love that line.
Matt Segall
Which is why forgiveness is every day <laugh> again. Yeah. It's not just once and done <laugh>
Jonathan Foster
Right. It's not, it's a dynamic thing, kind of like some of the stuff we're talking about. Yeah.
And it's trying to live in that space of knowing that's who I am as a human, and that God a, a relationship with God doesn't fix that. It doesn't fill the gap, you know, complete that lack, that breach. 'cause there's always that just a bit of Yeah. Insecurity and agitation there. I think that's a part of what it means to be human. I, I suspect for our humanity to evolve. You mentioned something like that earlier, which I appreciated. I suspect for humanity to evolve all of our religions need to be infused with more grace and forgiveness of ourselves and other of others. It's more than I suspect. I think, I'm pretty much banking on that. But I'm not very, I'm not very, I still, I gotta get better at it myself.
Matt Segall
Yeah. I mean, I, yeah. That's, that's, that's the, the collective task. Like, we can't do it by ourselves. I mean, this is part of what I mean by it's beneath the split between self and others. Like we can't actually fully do it by ourselves because we all need to do it together, <laugh>. Right. Because like, if, if I forgive everyone, but they don't forgive me, well then that's eventually gonna make, because I'm human, that's gonna make me be like, well, fuck this. I'm putting up with you, you know, like, what are you doing? Right, <laugh>. So yeah, it's definitely a, a one for all in all for one type of thing. <laugh>
Jonathan Foster
<laugh>. Yeah. Individuals and interdividuals at the same time. Independent and interdependent at the same time. Which we, we don't do a great job of. But that's another thing that open relational theology, I think helps us with, it helps us stay in community, in connection with other people. It doesn't mean that we're, I mean, we still at, at certain scale, we're, we're, we're an individual, but another scale, like you're saying, it's constantly within the whole. That's fascinating.
Matt Segall
Yeah.
Jonathan Foster
Tell me about, when I first started hearing about this idea of ingression and, and, and concrescence and this thing that's coming from, I mean, I've heard you talk about, you know, you, you'll use Platonic, like the eternal, what am I trying to say? Eternal
Matt Segall
Objects.
Jonathan Foster
Yeah. Eternal Objects or forms, that ingress into a subject's life that wants to become a, a superject. Is that, is that right? Is that the movement where it's all going? Is that, so where I first heard that I thought of my Wesleyan background. I thought of prevenient grace, grace that goes before us, that is ingresing. I, I don't know why. I don't know why it has to be prevenient grace. I think it's just grace, grace. I don't think there has to be special quality to it.
Mm. But do you, is that, is that a way to think of, is it heretical to think of grace as a, as an eternal form or, or eternal form as grace that's constantly ingressing in our lives and influencing us?
Matt Segall
No, I like that. Whitehead's way of construing the situation in his terms is that we relate to this realm of possibilities or eternal objects, which are akin to the platonic forms or ideas, we relate to it always mediated by God. Like the ideas don't just exist out there free floating in, in nothingness. They, they exist in the mind of God or in whitehead's terms, in the primordial nature of God.
And that primordial nature of God is, Whitehead describes the relationship between that divine mind and the forms as one of envisagement. So the divine is envisaging this realm of possibilities. And through that envisagement giving it some ordering, and it's a, it's an aesthetic ordering, it's a moral ordering, that tilts possibility as such, just infinite possibility, it tilts that realm of eternal objects as he refers to it, toward Value with a capital V, towards beauty and goodness and truth, towards love.
And we as finite creatures relate to that realm as envisaged, as envisaged by God through what Whitehead calls the initial aim. And this is every moment of our experience, every concrescence is inaugurated by its reception of this gift or grace from God. This initial aim, which is sort of the finite repetition of that infinite envisagement. And as repeated for our finite situation, it's providing a sense of relevance and relevant novelty to get each moment of our experience started and oriented amidst the entirety of the past and the welter of alternative possibilities that exist for us to ingress so as to interpret that past.
This gets really metaphysical and heady really quickly. But the basic idea, I think is summed up beautifully in this statement Whitehead makes, in his book Religion in the Making where he says, God, in the role of this initial aim is like a mirror held up to each creature to reflect back to it its own greatness, its own ideal possibility, in other words. And God is not determining that the creature must realize that ideal, but it, this initial aim, this whisper from God, this, this grace, this gift, is, it provides us with that opportunity to bring more beauty into the world, more goodness into the world.
And you know, how we respond is a function of our own self-creation. Because Whitehead does have this radical, radical democratization of creative power, right? So God is not omnipotent in the traditional sense anymore. God's not determining what happens.
God is, you could still say God is all powerful, but power here becomes a two-way street. It's relational power, in other words. And that means it's, it's just as receptive as it is active, right? It's the power to be in relationship. And so rather than God being an all powerful creator, I would say God is an all powerful relator, right? We can still say omnipotence and all powerful if we want, if we construe it in this way. This is the power of love, not the power of force, right?
And so, as this all powerful relator, you know, God is luring us toward what, what would be most beautiful moment by moment. But we are self-creating beings.
And yet Whitehead says every act of creation is a social effort employing the whole universe, right? So to say we're self-creating beings is not to say we're out of relationship. We create one another. We create ourselves out of one another. And in our superjective nature, which is, you know, what we become after our subjectivity is achieved: we perish. Whitehead would say we die and we become superjects. And it's only in our death, as we die to our own subjective immediacy, that we become superjects or objectively immortal.
This is all Whitehead's language. It's only in that death and perishing, in becoming superjects, that we can affect the future. And so all of our moral acts, in other words, we decide to do something in the present, but we won't be there as the same subject to see how we affect the future as a result of the decision we make in the present. Whitehead says, “no thinker thinks twice.” We're becoming new in each moment, we're creating ourselves and we're creating the others who are in relationship with us moment by moment.
And so grace plays a huge role in all of that. To the extent that we are able to create a more beautiful world together. It's, it's a function of divine grace, meeting our own creative agency and response to that grace. Yeah. So yeah, there’s a nice mix of poetry and metaphysics there. <laugh>.
Jonathan Foster
No, I, I love it. That's good stuff. It made me think, you know, we may not see, we won't probably see the effect, the way we're gonna affect the world, our choices. Who knows what they'll turn into, maybe me think of when Jesus talks about, you're, you're gonna do greater things than I'll ever do. Like that makes sense in the context of what you're saying. Yeah. Because as he perishes, he's, he's, I'm thinking of waves, you know, vibrations.
Like he's, he's moving all that forward. And we're, if we're open to that, we're catching that, and then we're living, we're living in harmony with that. Right?
Matt Segall
Absolutely.
Jonathan Foster
Yeah. I think that'll preach man.
Matt Segall
<laugh>. Yeah. <laugh>
Jonathan Foster
Yeah. Oh, I was gonna ask you, how do you respond? I mean, there's a couple things. Lemme just ask you this one. I I, I get this asked a lot, and so I have answers, but I I'm always great at answers. How do you answer when someone talks to you about this persuasive love and the fact that God doesn't control, which I'm so thankful to have discovered all of this. Like it really kind of saved my, my soul really? Probably, and physically it might have saved my life too, but God doesn't control.
I think love is patient. That's a biblical term, biblical phrase that I'm down with, I'm committed to, but there's no guarantee. So how do we know love is gonna, I'm not even sure I'm asking a question. Well, how do you, how do you respond to that? How do you know how, is there any, yeah. Is it, is it all just a big risk?
Matt Segall
How do we know we're saved?
Jonathan Foster
Yeah. Where is it going? What's gonna happen? What, what's the, the future? How do we know? Here's the, here's the main piece of the question. It is justice. How do we know justice is gonna be served to those who have been, who have, who have suffered from the unbelievably unjust things in this world? If God can't force it to happen, how is there any assurance of justice
Matt Segall
On some level, I don't know that we would be satisfied if God could force it to happen. Because what we really want is for those who have done us harm and who have done harm to others, to realize that themselves and to apologize. We want to be able to forgive <laugh>. And so I don't know that we would ultimately be satisfied with punishment and revenge. It's not, ultimately, it's not satisfying.
I don't think it's what we really want. It might be a form of immediate gratification…
Jonathan Foster
I think you're right. I think it's hard to say that to someone Yeah. Who has just been abused. Right. But I, but I kind of think you're right. Yeah.
Matt Segall
Healing is not revenge.
Jonathan Foster
Right?
Matt Segall
And, but it is a risk. I mean, the creation of the world was a risk. What Christ, what Jesus Christ did was a risk.
And nobody wants a story, to live within a story where the end is already known and written.
And this is not just a story, at least it's not one that's finished <laugh>. Right. And I think that element of risk is just essential for love to, to be, because if, if it's determined, if it's forced, if it's staged, if it's set up in advance and you're just going through the motions, it's like, that's not what we want.
Yeah. We want love as an act of freedom that's, that could have been otherwise. And that, you know, the possibility of failure is part of what makes success of value. And so you can't, you just can't have, you can't have a, an adventure without that possibility. Yeah. And that's easy to say. And I know, you know, when we're, when we're deeply suffering, when we're in pain, when we've been harmed, when we're victims of injustice, you know, these words may fall flat
But, you know, I think it's important to be able to, when not in those intense forms of suffering, to be able to take in, and it's not that the suffering is irrelevant, I mean, that needs to be spoken to directly. But from a, from a place of, you know, a bit of remove from the extremes to be able to take in the whole picture and, and have a, a more balanced view of this.
And to just really understand what, what we ultimately really want is, is to be healed and not to just continue the cycles of vengeance. Evil cannot be defeated by force. Because what happens when you, when you attack evil in an attempt to subdue it violently, what happens? Evil takes root in you. It spreads.
Jonathan Foster
Beware the monster, lest you become the monster.
Matt Segall
So when Jesus says, turn your, turn the other cheek, that's a very difficult teaching. But evil eats itself, evil can only destroy itself. And as soon as we project it out onto the other and seek to defeat it, we become it. That very act of projecting it out is evil. That's what evil is. That's what it does.
Jonathan Foster
Well, and it's funny too, the way you're talking about it reminds me again, that evil lives by the myth that it can control, that it can force an effect to happen. But you, but you can't, you can't really control anything. I mean, you can heavily influence some stuff, right? So evil is also lack of patience. Like, I'm going to, you know, I'm gonna exact my vengeance. Yeah. It's funny how it works on several levels.
So yeah, evil is a type of fake guarantee.
Matt Segall
Yeah. Yeah. It's the pursuit of coercive power or non-relational power, which can't and doesn't actually exist. I mean, this is why evil's often described as a nothing, as a lack, because there's some way in which it's, it has no independent existence. And I think, you know, evil can become a positive force that, that, that needs to be contended with. And the resistance that is, is that it provides, is actually has an educative role for the soul and, and for human beings.
But, you know, I guess it's all in, in the dosage, so to speak. And that, you know, we need to, on some level, in order to not relate to evil as something we might be able to defeat by exerting our control over it, to realize that, that this adversarial energy is on some level, like Judas turning in Jesus to the Roman soldiers. It's like Jesus needed Judas to do that. <laugh>, that's what needed to happen. Judas is forgiven by Jesus at least. It's like the snake in the garden has a role to play. There wouldn't have been a Christ if that hadn’t happened.
Jonathan Foster
You know, would it, would it be okay to finesse that a little bit and say that Judas, that Jesus didn't need Judas specifically to do that, but that Jesus responds to this coercive move of evil with a counter move. It, it just, it happened to be Judas doing that. Right? I just wouldn't want someone to think that, oh, that, I know you're not saying this, but I wouldn't wanna listener to think that what we're saying is that God had premeditated this thing that Judas did specifically.
Matt Segall
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Didn't mean it that way. And, and yeah, some orchestration of each detail, this person who does that or whatever, but, but just that, you know, you, that deed of betrayal actually functions as a crucial moment, you know,
Jonathan Foster
Yeah. It's crazy when you think about it like that, that move and then love, I think part of the answer is love always has a counter move. Yeah. Love is always, yeah. It's like indefatigable. It just never gives up. Yeah. Sometimes I say there are no, when people ask about the risk piece and the guarantee, and so I've said, there are no guarantees except the guarantee of love.
Matt Segall
Right? I kind of like that. Right. And love doesn't mean there's no loss. It doesn't mean that there's not tragedy.
Jonathan Foster
Right. You know? Right, right. So that's, that's our guarantee. That's the piece somehow to help humanity evolve. We have to lean into that.
Matt Segall
Yeah. Yeah. Do you know, have you read any Tolkien, like Lord of the Rings?
Jonathan Foster
Yeah.
Matt Segall
So have you read any of the Silmarillion?
Jonathan Foster
I tried, man, it's like reading Whitehead <laugh>.
I think I tried about most recently, like two years ago. I'm like, I gotta, I gotta do that.
Matt Segall
Well, just his creation story of Ilúvatar or the All-Father and the Ainur, the angels, the host around the All-Father, and, and the way in which there was one particular Ainur or angel Melkor who, as God was creating, as God was spinning out these, these, these, these beautiful songs and, and, and this harmony. And all the angels were just rejoicing in this. And then one of the angels who was particularly talented—you know, this is very close to the Christian mythos—but one of the angels Melkor decides in an attempt to glorify God, to do something more creative, you know, let's, let's work a new tune into this.
And some of the other angels start to follow Melkor. And, and there's disharmony and, and, and discord thrown into the mix. And heaven starts to teeter. And what Ilúvatar does is just, you know, brings forth another harmony that includes the discord that Melkor had brought forth.
And it's unimaginably more beautiful because of the disturbance that Melkor had introduced. And that keeps happening a few times. And the, the creation of the physical world and everything is a, is a spinoff of, of this, this call and response where Melkor initially as an attempt to glorify the divine becomes a little bit selfish about his own ability to be more creative, you know? And, and while Ilúvatar can always out contextualize that effort, it, it leads into space and time basically.
<laugh> Yeah. And this whole drama of God's relationship to the creativity of creatures. But love always wins in the end. There's always like another harmony that can atone for, and in other words, unify what had for a moment there been a bit discordant and everyone, all the angels and the, the creatures are like, oh no, this is it like this really is gonna fall to pieces, but nope. Love is able to encompass it.
Jonathan Foster
Love wins in the end, and all the endings after that.
Matt Segall
<laugh>, right? <laugh>, yes.
Jonathan Foster
Just keeps on going. Oh man, this has been so much fun. I've listened to you so much in my head, so it's really fun to, when I say listen to my, in my head with my headphones on, like, you know, taking a hike, listening to you on a podcast. So it's really fun to, to actually do it in person. Well, as close as we can in person. And thanks so much for your work. I've got a whole bunch of other stuff to talk about, but we, and ask you about, but we should probably save that for another time.
Matt Segall
We'll, we'll do a part two and maybe three. And I appreciate, I really appreciate, Jonathan, the questions that you brought. I don't get to talk about this stuff too often, and so thanks for creating that space.
Jonathan Foster
Well, thank you for, for answering. I love interdisciplinary kind of stuff and thinking when I get with a thinker who's really good at this, and then asking them just slightly off kilter because it's always super interesting and everything you said was interesting, but it was all worth, especially that ending part there and just thinking in terms of, yeah, love winning and the discordant harmonies and things that are, that evil or whatever we want to call it, is introducing. But that love is still just, it's not over yet, right?
The world hasn't ended yet, or time hasn't ended yet and so there's always hope. Always hope. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well I hope people will find you. Search for Footnotes2Plato, Matthew David Segall. My most biblical name we've ever had on the podcast. <laugh> <laugh>. Alright buddy, it's great to see you.
Matt Segall
Thanks Jonathan. You too. Thanks a lot.
You had me at Golgatha as Tzimtzum not economics in proximity to the Silmarillion. And I was birth-motherless for many decades. I found her. In Sebastapol. Thus Eden. Ha!
Thanks for this.
Really enjoyed this and these were my highlights ...
"There's a self-emptying or kenosis to, to open up a space for the creation. And so the crucifixion is in some sense, a repetition of that perhaps at a, at a higher octave. There's a recreation of, of the world and, indeed, of God, occurring in that moment."
"And what Ilúvatar does is just, you know, brings forth another harmony that includes the discord that Melkor had brought forth."
"Love wins in the end, and all the endings after that."