Are Modern People Waking Up to Spiritual Truths? Michael Horton Responds to Jonathan Pageau

This transcript has been lightly edited from an automated transcription for clarity and readability. While we've worked to preserve each speaker's words faithfully, errors may remain.

1. 00:00

   Fr. Andrew Damick

   This stuff is real, right? They discover like, this is real. A thing happens when I do this. And that can be very intoxicating.

2. 00:10

   Jonathan Pageau

   Yeah, of course.

3. 00:11

   Michael Horton

   It can be. I remember just a few years ago being in Varanasi, the capital of Hinduism, and watching the priests call down their gods, demons. And this is not a play thing. They actually were. And the brother I was with, he was warning me not to keep looking at this one guy who had white all over his face. He said, he's a shaman, and that white all over him is the bone dust from the bones of the burning bodies. And I never felt the presence of evil more in my life than the overnight experience I had there. I just wanted to get out of there. There really is a devil. There really are demons. And when people go looking for them, they'll come right along.

4. 01:14

   Michael Horton

   Hi, my name is Mike Horton. I teach theology and apologetics, and I want to take a look at somebody I've come across recently, Johnathan Pageau. He has some really interesting things to say. He is Eastern Orthodox, very into the mystical side of Eastern Orthodoxy, and he is having a conversation with an Orthodox priest. Let's take a listen.

5. 01:35

   Jonathan Pageau

   One of the things though that's amazing about the, let's say, the moment that we're in in terms of the meaning crisis is that we're following patterns that are bigger than us. Like, it's not just, it's not just about this or that person doing this or that or believing this or that, or Jordan Peterson or Richard Dawkins or anything. Yeah, it seems like, you know, in some ways there was a veil pulled over people's eyes for a few centuries where it was for many people, it was impossible for them to perceive the meaning and the deep meaning and the deep realities of spiritual existence. They could understand it in a kind of, how can I say this, like a mythological way where they understood the images. Like we talk about angels, but it's like, wait, so these beings that are in the heavens. And so people continue to believe it in that way, like in an almost, I wouldn't say superstitious way, but a very simple, like a simple kind of believer's way–

6. 02:29

   Fr. Andrew Damick

   Yeah.

7. 02:29

   Jonathan Pageau

   Which is fine for a lot of people. But the intellectuals stopped knowing what these things were about. And it's like, so God comes to the earth, and then he walks, and then he dies, and then I'm going to heaven? Like, what? What are these causality? Like, this is a crazy thing.

8. 02:43

   Fr. Andrew Damick

   Yeah.

9. 02:43

   Jonnathan Pageau

   But what's happening, I think, is that in some ways there's something in the culture, there's something happening in general which is breaking apart this veil, like opening the veil, and so that people are now able to perceive what it means for there to be agencies beyond human agency.

10. 03:00

    Michael Horton

    I think that's interesting. I think he's right. It's a fascinating observation that, you know, you had this era, especially in the Enlightenment, where people basically thought that there is a roof on the world, that there may be a God beyond it, but God doesn't really get involved in this world and certainly doesn't act Upon people, and there aren't angels and demons and spirits, and a tendency just to reduce everything to what we can see and hear and touch. But the Word became flesh, the Gospel tells us, and we handled him. We saw him. We heard him with our ears. There isn't a kind of wall between the unseen world and the visible world. God can enter it whenever he chooses, and he entered it to the point of becoming one of us. But the problem is we think that we're the only ones here. The danger, however, is swinging to the other side of that spectrum and saying, well, now we're open to anything and everything. Let all the spirits in. And we can become superstitious. We can become so mystical that we forget that the Word became flesh. It's not about spirits entering into our world and into our lives. It's about God becoming flesh in our world and in our history, and then giving us his Holy Spirit to indwell us, not so that we can have mystical encounters and fuzzy experiences, but to lead us to Christ.

11. 04:45

    Jonnathan Pageau

    What it means on us, like what it looks like for agency to act on humans. What would it mean for someone to be ridden by a demon or to be affected by these spiritual powers that, you know, influence us, right? And you can see it breaking, like even with C.S. Lewis, you can kind of see it happening in the '50s. It's already kind of— there are little cracks, but now it's like opened up. But it's dangerous because most people are not going to go Christian. Well, most people are going to go weird, weird, you know, stuff.

12. 05:18

    Michael Horton

    That's exactly what's happening. I mean, the statistics tell us this phenomenon of spiritual but not religious is really not atheism or agnosticism. It's an abandonment of the Christian God, the triune God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It's de-Christianization. But it's not secularization in the sense that people stop believing in anything. In fact, as G.K. Chesterton once said, when people stop believing in the God of the Bible, it's not that they stop believing at all, but they start believing in anything and everything.

13. 06:01

    Jonathan Pageau

    Because all of a sudden it's like, oh, I have access to this. So let's take psychedelics. I have access to this. So let's, you know, try to have mystical visions of whatever, like completely without any discernment. Uh, and that's a—so it's—we're looking down a dark path mostly, I would say.

14. 06:18

    Fr. Andrew Damick

    I think so. And I have a few things to say. Number one is I think that a lot of people don't realize how much we are subject to the thoughts of philosophers who have been dead for a century or two. You know, how much they affect culture, how much we think their thoughts without even knowing that they've been passed on to us from them, which it's a normal human thing, right? But when, when the thought is not Christ anymore, it becomes other things. But also, yeah, I think that there's a lot of people who've discovered, as you said, like they take psychedelics or they get into the occult or Wicca and they discover this stuff is real, right? They discover like, this is real. A thing happens when I do this. And that can be very intoxicating.

15. 07:11

    Jonathan Pageau

    Yeah, of course.

16. 07:13

    Michael Horton

    It can be. I remember just a few years ago being in Varanasi, the capital of Hinduism, and watching the priests call down their gods, demons. And this is not a play thing. They actually were. And the brother I was with who is a very solid biblical pastor, he was warning me not to keep looking at this one guy who had white all over his face. He said, he's a shaman, and that white all over him is the bone dust from the bones of the burning bodies. And the last time I brought a pastor here, he was a Presbyterian pastor, and he was, you know, kind of skeptical about what's going on, but interested in just sort of seeing what another religion was doing. He started talking to that shaman and he came up and he told him everything about his family, naming names. And I never felt the presence of evil more in my life than the overnight experience I had there. I just wanted to get out of there. It really was an oppressive thing. There really is a devil. There really are demons. And when people go looking for them, they'll come right along. Sometimes we just ignore them. We, we, we have this sense that we aren't really affected by any agency outside of this world. We go on about our business, but people are really dying to have some connection with someone or something, a spiritual being or force. Beyond this world. And that's not going to lead many of them to Christianity, but some. And we have to be ready to encourage them and welcome them to a place where God actually does show up every week. And every time people pray, talk to him, he talks back through his word. And he actually gives us places into our hands the bread and the wine, the body and blood of Christ. And he actually baptizes us. He gives us a bath and a good meal. He makes us part of his family. And these people, these strangers now, they're my brothers and sisters I'm going to be spending eternity with. This is where we should be looking for the sacred, in the places where God has actually come to us.

17. 09:51

    Special Offer

    We can only do what we do with the support of our generous donors. Our donors support us not primarily because they know our content and programs are biblically faithful or because they trust that we're good at what we do. These things are necessary, but they aren't primary. Our donors primarily support us because they too long to see reformation and renewal in the church in our day. Our donors know that theology matters and that God's word is central, that knowing God and seeing everything in his light is vital when so many have lost their way. If you share this passion, we invite you to partner with all of us in pursuit of this shared mission to teach and model the practice of historic Christian theology to the glory of God. Support us with a donation of any amount today by visiting solamedia.org/donate. That's solamedia.org/donate.

18. 10:53

    Fr. Andrew Damick

    This is real. And I've been told all my life it wasn't real. And wow, it's real. But it's like, okay, yes, it's real, but it may not be good.

19. 11:00

    Jonathan Pageau

    That's right.

20. 11:01

    Fr. Andrew Damick

    It may not have your best interests at heart. You know, yes, you're talking to a spirit. What is that spirit? I mean, it's suddenly all of these things in the scriptures about test the spirits. Wow, how applicable is that old stuff? It's so applicable, you know. However you want to conceive of it, there's a reality that we are. And I think this is where I mean, I'm not deeply read in philosophy because that was just never my thing. But I know about the sense of the naked Cartesian soul. This idea of, as Charles Taylor calls it, the “buffered self,” right? Like, that's the way we think of ourselves. And then we discover, wait a minute, I'm actually permeable.

21. 11:36

    Michael Horton

    This is a very important point that Charles Taylor makes in both his books, Sources of the Self and A Secular Age. This idea of the buffered self, I find it so interesting as a metaphor. Buffered in the sense that, you know, used to be an open self, a permeable self. That, yeah, there's a difference between the visible and invisible worlds, but again, there isn't a roof on top of our world. That God enters it, he's free to enter it whenever he wills. He sends his Spirit into the world. He sent his Son into the world. And there are angels. as well as the devil and demons. And there's a war going on. Paul tells us in Ephesians six that we wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers in heavenly places. I mean, that's not a joke. That's reality. We do wrestle with evil forces, but we have the word as the sword of the Spirit. We have his gospel. We have the righteousness of Christ imputed to us. And this is the good news that we can hold on to and no longer be the buffered self, no longer imagine that we are sort of in a cocoon wrapped around a kind of secular fog that doesn't allow us to look up and look out to other agencies than those we can see and feel and touch. That's how we get out of the buffered self thing. Get out of our cocoon. Stop looking inside yourself for your meaning. Look outside yourself with banners flying and a great army coming to save and coming to announce glory to God in the highest and peace on earth, goodwill toward men. That is the announcement of all of heaven's angels when our Savior came into the world.

22. 13:47

    Fr. Andrew Damick

    That's dangerous and exciting and interesting. And I don't know, talk about that a little bit. Like, what does it mean to be permeable beings in the midst of a crisis of meaning? Or like, you know, Charles Taylor—I want to talk about this question of the age of authenticity that he describes too. And it seems like everyone's heading for: Try to be as authentic as possible. You know, what's the saying? You do you.

23. 14:09

    Johnathan Pageau

    Yeah.

24. 14:09

    Fr. Andrew Damick

    Right? Isn't that all about like, whatever it is you are, just go ahead and be that. But no one seems to know who they are.

25. 14:16

    Johnathan Pageau

    It's not a—yeah, it's not a real authenticity. It's almost like an inverted authenticity because the “you do you” actually usually means something like whatever whim you have, you act on that whim. It's like, that's not you. You're, you're not your whim. You're not your desires. You're not your thoughts. And that's what traditional, not just Orthodoxy, but almost every single traditional religion will tell you that. It's like, you know, you're not that feeling, you're not your thoughts, that you are—there's something behind that, you know, there's intelligence, like that would be the word that we use in the West, or the nous, or, you know, the—there's something behind which, which is beyond all this, all this noise, you could say. It's not that the noise doesn't participate in you, it is a manifestation of you, but it's not—you're not that.

26. 15:00

    Michael Horton

    Yeah, we have souls. We aren't meant to be disembodied souls, but during the time between our death and the resurrection, we will be disembodied. The soul can live without the body, but it's not meant to. And the body— the soul will be renewed along with the body at the resurrection, together, joined forever. Really interesting point, I think, that Jonathan Pageau makes here when he says that people, you know, talking about authenticity, it's not really authenticity because it's just a whim or a feeling. It's not something deep, real. It's just sort of what you feel like today. I think one thing I would say about that is it's not even that. We think we're being authentic. We think we're doing ourselves. You do you. We think we're doing that, but actually we're doing what we've been programmed to do by marketers. We're actually following people we have been linked to by our algorithms, by our choices. And yeah, maybe we made a choice somewhere along the road to listen to this podcast or go down in that rabbit hole, but now, you know, it's making decisions for us and leading us deeper and deeper into what may have been originally, a whim.

27. 16:27

    Johnathan Pageau

    So we have this problem right now, which is that people are looking for spirituality, but they confuse all the levels. It's like we've just lost the wisdom. And so they confuse like some experience or some feeling or whatever. I mean, we've been misled for so long, you know, even all these German theologians who talked about religious feeling, like as if that's what religion is about, you know. And so we're kind of messed up because the—so it's like the veil is being torn or the veil is being opened up again, and all of a sudden people are able to see or to participate in these spiritual influences.

28. 17:04

    Michael Horton

    Yeah, C.S. Lewis has a great line about this. He says, you had some, something pulling on the rope that you were holding, and then you realize that there was actually somebody behind it pulling you toward himself. That's the thing. It's not just, you know, I feel this hunch. I feel that I'm holding this rope. I experience whatever my imagination comes up with. There really is a God behind experience. And you can't really have wise experiences, good experiences, apart from there being truth. Only if you're really dealing with someone who exists and has told us how we can know him can we experience him in a way that is discerning and wise.

29. 17:57

    Johnathan Pageau

    But we've lost the normal hierarchy that the ancient world used to be based on. And so, no, people don't know how to differentiate a demon from an angel. They don't know how to differentiate something which can still cause a kind of ecstasy. Like, you know, you can fall into a trance if you go to a rave, and you can kind of enter into a spirit and then completely lose yourself in a rave. But that's not That's not the equivalent of taking communion. It's not the equivalent of doing the Jesus Prayer, although both can lead to types of ecstatic, of ecstasies, you know. And so anyways, so this is the issue that we have.

30. 18:37

    Michael Horton

    Yeah, the problem is not experience. The problem is not even the mystical union, that good night. That's really the heart of the Gospel, that we are united to Christ who is God incarnate. That's a mystical union, the union of Christ as the head with his body, that mystical body, his church. There's lots of mystery in Christianity. There's lots of room for experience. That's not the problem. The problem is whether we follow mysteries that we like and that we create. And experiences that we think will give us a high, or whether we actually experience the one true God who's known in Jesus Christ.