So you think he's smart because you don't understand what he's saying? I have a feeling you've been cheated and taken advantage of many, many times in your life.
@@sledzeppelin Your ad hominem fallacy is embodied in a misunderstanding on a basic compliment. So, the second part of your statement is, indeed, a projection.
I like his response to the empirical opinion that the social, psychological and physical needs created in man by evolution negate intransmissible(to a third party) interactions with the Spiritual or Divine/God. As Maximus the Confessor, David and others have discovered, a relationship with God is truly a cultivation of charity/love within the heart. Brad Jersak speaks of becoming more self-giving, radically forgiving and a profoundly compassionate, co-suffering lover of people. Theologians speak of sanctification and the Fruits of the Spirit becoming the essence of our nature, i.e., love joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. This is "the intimacy of a pure embrace" and the construction of some knowledge and understanding of an infinite Being, whose essence is Love. It's not transmissible in words but is definitely observable in action. Acts of self-giving and compassion still bring us to our knees and offer some hint of what awaits us, the day when we no longer see in a mirror dimly but face to face.
Hart is so clear and deep, and generous. Helps me budge, spiritually. Bob, your questions may challenge Hart, but that's always in the service of the big quest, and not to be defiant. Thank you - these are mighty significant conversations.
Somewhat surprised he did not mention the liturgy as a way of knowing God. This includes encountering God in the Scriptures and in the Eucharist. Perhaps the deepest way we can know God is in the Eucharist.
Please explain because I would like to experience this and have presumably been hindered from it by my Protestant upbringing, which just left me chastising myself every time I "took communion" for not feeling anything.
@@GreenWeasel11 it’s not really about generating feelings. We take Communion because Jesus commands us. We participate in the crucifixion of Christ. We die with Jesus and rise with Jesus. Except a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies ……… I am crucified with Christ an I no longer live, Christ lives in me. In Communion we take in the Christ who lives in us. This is true even though we may not have a feeling every time.
@@adrianthomas1473 Oh. Well that's disappointing. I mean, surely at least something is happening in your subconscious, or at least in the spiritual realm, right? But then it would just appear to amount to a sort of magic.
@@GreenWeasel11 why disappointing? We participate in the death and crucifixion of Jesus - and by taking in the bread/body and wine/blood we know that he lives in us. The life that we now live in the flesh we live by faith in the Son of God who loves us and gives himself for us. We then pick up our crosses and follow. It’s a joy.
@@adrianthomas1473 well…we don't need the sacrament to have the knowledge, do we? Again, if that's the case, it's little more than some kind of occult ritual, isn't it?
"There is no contradiction between the physical and the spiritual" is somehow where the answer may lay. I find Hart erudite, compelling, and provocative. As for myself, I live in constant despair after a lifetime of searching of never finding an answer before I die. 😥
"A God defined is a God confined."--Swami Rama Tirtha." "Why is it so difficult to find God? Because you're looking for something you've never lost."~~Meher Baba
Here is the thing: If everyone in the world was colorblind and all of a sudden some started seeing color, how could they describe it? Alan Watts said they might try to describe yellow as a warm feeling but such a description would not be the actual experience of yellow. Nowadays some colorblind people can be cured and some literally cry saying "I never knew!" "All paths take you to the purification of the mind. The impure mind is opaque to truth; the pure mind is transparent. Truth can be seen through it easily and clearly."--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. Perhaps you have heard of Plato's Allegory of the Cave? In Advaita Vedanta no faith is required. Check out some of the videos by Swami Sarvapriyananda.
God is Consciousness. If indeed you had no Consciousness you could never have made such a statement. Your very statement is an assertion of the existence of God.
@@VedantaKesari Again, you're simply defining god into existence. I do not deny consciousness exists. We have lots of evidence of that. What we do not have evidence of it some supernatural entity who created the universe. I could define atheism as "communication" and say "you're an atheist and you've just proven it by posting a message." See how stupid a little trick that is?
Kind of like multiple dimensions. If you can infer there are 9 dimensions, that would mean there are 6 more apart from our own. Due to our limitations it's imposible to comprehend the dimensions ahead of our own. God is a whole other ballpark, speculation is about as far as it goes I suppose. (Just an opinion here, will most likely have a different view farther in the future.)
From Messengers of God in every religion... "The door of the knowledge of the Ancient Being hath ever been, and will continue for ever to be, closed in the face of men. No man's understanding shall ever gain access unto His holy court. As a token of His mercy, however, and as a proof of His loving-kindness, He hath manifested unto men the Day Stars of His divine guidance, the Symbols of His divine unity, and hath ordained the knowledge of these sanctified Beings to be identical with the knowledge of His own Self." -Writings of Baha'u'llah
Not exactly, the Trinity is a speculative metaphysical account of God's nature derived from a philosophical approach to reality, scripture and the Christian experience of salvation throughout the history (particularly the early history) of the Church. It is thus a kind of knowing of God by God's effects, and thus it must be caveated, like Hart said, by a sense in which it ever transcends the contents of human knowledge. Despite this, it can be positively affirmed as the horizon within which all things exist and have their being, it is just that that horizon can never be fully fleshed out in detail, because of its infinity. But all that is only to talk of the intellect, and not the spirit, of the human being. It is part of the Christian experience to know God in spirit, but that knowledge is the knowledge of spiritual union, not of *knowing about* something, and is talked of in the mystical tradition as being without image or concept. At least, that is my present understanding of it all.
I got your bible with commentary. The orthodox. It stated 2 reasons for the rift with Roman Catholic and Orthodox as being 2. The Pope and alteration of apostolic teaching. The Holy Spirit proceeding from the father vs from father and son. Today's reading in 1Cor. Clearly state he is from the son. Sat. 17th of September 2022. The Pope? Well there has been some better and some not so much. Same as orthodox clergy I'm sure. Great book on temporary hell, btw. TY
Jesus taught the Our Father prayer. Who did he pray to in the garden before his ordeal? Father. So isn’t God Father? Accessible in the sense of a child turning to “him” again and again. I simply do not get God at all and maybe I’m just not supposed to. Thank you for at least delving.
Nobody can simply come to God, but God comes to humans in due time. There are speculations possible which number goes against ad infinitum, literally... The day you are given to encounter God you perceive his human face, with a name you have already herd - Jesus Christ. And then you can never lose God again, for He is mostly in your mind. And you recognize that you can live with more questions than answers. And you discover that knowing God includes another gift, as Phil 1:29 reveals - besides believing in Him, there is also suffering for Him. PS: Knowing God is far from being automatically happy like having found "the ultimate drug for happiness" - the opposite is true: you get new senses for reality, and this might be very sobering...
i respect the man,i respect the mystery but at some point during his explanations i feel exasperation setting in because it seems to me it all begins to transmute back into faith.I`m somewhat embarrassed by my atheist friends and their rudeness toward believers but i must confess to the temptation myself when i see a willful momentum encouraged to bridge the void and into personification.I think that if we have to posit something outside time and space then that something could be anything/s.As i get older of course i want to be reunited with loved ones in the hereafter otherwise its all for nought..that`s a powerful feeling,an exquisite and tragic pain verging on the sublime.Love is the only way.
"I think that if we have to posit something outside time and space then that something could be anything/s." - That is not true. What people describe as the nature of God has very real consequences; many positions end in philosophically illogical positions, which to me says that God can not be certain things.
@@alifarley8766 It is difficult to get past our presumption of centrality. It is a kind of hubris to suggest we are at the center of creation, God's children.. When the cosmos is vast beyond our imaginings.
@@hotstixx have you considered that it's not hubris to claim that we are essential to Creation, but rather unwarranted shame (the flip side of hubris, and just as bad) that makes us feel that we can't be?
@@GreenWeasel11 Either way,the problem remains unresolved.The theist point of view is both fantastical and parochial and for me at least, will always be unknowable.Agnosticism appears to me to be the most reasonable position to adopt.
You can believe in God all you want and in any way you want but it would not make a particle of difference for the future of humanity. The belief in God runs along the spectrum of madness disguised as normality. From being an illusionary self satisfying comforting belief, all the way to dying, killing, and getting killed in the name of God. Those in power will use the credulous beliefs of the masses against them as they become automatons hence pit them against other automatons who do not share their religious beliefs. God, as we believe God to be, is a relic of the past. It was past on to us from generation to generation and as long we believe in this retrograde God, nothing will change for the better. There is a difference between loving God MORE and loving him BETTER. We cannot love God better unless we understand the nature of God better from all the mystic traditions who dedicated their entire lives towards spiritual awakening. It is they who have better eyes in which to see that God cannot be conceived because God is beyond all categories of thought. And because of this, we should STFU about who we think God is. What we really should be doing is learning what it means to be MORE human- not MORE THAN human. When we shed all our character defects, our neurosis, our personality disorders, it is only then that we can get closer to the divine within ourselves.
La trinité mon interprétation? a l'époque personne ne pouvait expliquerle fait que Marie ait pu enfanter sans relation sexuelle. Pour les Païens de l'époque adorateurs des divintés antiques l'explication logique est Dieu ait pris Marie comme épôuse pour lui donner un fils un Dieu comme les Dieux Antiques... Jésus est né parce que Dieu a envoyer l'Ange Gabrielle pourt lui mettre dans son uterus un enfant je ne rentre pas dans le détail parce que je n'ai pas étudier la question... aujourd'hui avec la science on voit que l'on peut mettre une femme enceinte sans relation... L'Ange gabrielle est l'esprit descendu mettre l'enfant dans l'uterus d'une vierge pure La relation sexuelle imaginaire nest aujourd'hui l'explication d'un Dieu qui dit soit est la chose est... Le Fils parce qu'à l'époque les Dieux étaient vu comme des hommes D'ailleurs j'ai lu dans la genese dans une Bible au début de la création les fils d'Adam étaient sur terre et ils virent les fils des Dieux ils se marièrent ave pour créer l'humanité je n'invente rien Hors nous savons aujourd'hui que l'HHomme descent de l'Homme genetiquement cellule après cellule d'une femme et d'unj homme donc comme un programme informatioque tout le code reside en ça La trinité est zaujourd'hui en contradiction avec la science est sa logique si Dieu est il ne peut-être qu'un unique et éternel et échappe à notre univers car s'il est dedans il en n'est pas le créateur logique non? Donc Dieu est un et un seul eternel et endehors de sa création il n'est ni mal ni bIen il est plus que ça nous n'avons pas les mots pour le décrire nous savons qu'il aime le beau donc il ne peut être mal il est juste donc il peut punir à vous de devellpper...
I don’t disagree entirely but I think DBH misses a central element of the Christian message about knowing God. As Jesus said, “If you have seen me you have seen the father.” It does involve an intellectual aspect of coming to understand Jesus. But goes deeper. I think we come to know God in a concrete (non-mystical) way when we live out the cross. This was the message of Paul. “I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord … I want to know Christ, and the power of his resurrection and fellowship of his sufferings” (Phil. 3). As we seek to “live” kenotic, cruciform lives, we begin to experience the nature of God, and we come to know more deeply the essence of who God is. We draw nearer to God. The more selfless, sacrificial, the more we walk with and among the marginalized, we come to “know” the essence of God. We participate in God. In one sense, paradoxically, it was on the cross, in his feeling of abandonment of God, that Jesus was closest to the identify and nature of God. And the cross is the ultimate expression of the divine nature. Trinitarian love. We are to become partakers of the divine nature through following Jesus to the cross - giving up our lives with and for the marginalized (Phil 2:5-11; 3:5-12; 2 Pet. 1:3-4). And enemies. In this we begin to understand and know - through our lived experience of sacrifice - the divine nature. And this includes love for enemies; love for the other (not just near kin or friendships). Imperfectly, of course. But we do. We are in process. Becoming. It is dynamic. Now, of course, such lived experience of selfless sacrifice for the Other may be lived out by individuals in every part of the world, regardless of their belief system. In that sense, wittingly or unwittingly, they/we come to know something of God. So there is a concrete, bodily (lived experience) way of knowing God. This is the counterintuitive path to knowing God. Not going up to reach God (as in the Tower of Babel), but going down as a servant, among the least of these, on our knees, that we draw closest to and come to know God.
So Hart gives no practical steps from his own experience. He quotes Maximus the Confessor who says the thing to do is ‘cultivate charity in your heart’. That’s it’s a journey of cultivating this charity in one’s heart. However, no practical steps are given for knowing God in my opinion. I love listening to Hart, but feel he lacks the ability to give practical advice to the community at large.
The same "practical steps" that would be applied to cultivating charity towards another person can be applied to God. (Actually, cultivating charity for other people IS one of the primary ways we cultivate charity towards God (Mark 12:30-31)) For a Christian, practical steps involve: 1) Time with God (prayer) 2) Serving those in need 3) Obeying Jesus, which includes the intimate partaking of His body and blood which he gives for us to eat 4) Seeking to know him - and this can take on as many forms as there are individuals - we can seek God in literally anything we do.
@@williamkuevogah5112 it takes about 10 seconds to say something like “I have my kids take a few minutes each night to reflect on what they are grateful for that God allowed to happen during the day.” That’s quick, practical, easy for anyone to do. If it’s done properly, it will help the person grow spiritually because they are persistently contemplating how their Creator is involved daily in their life. I was hoping Hart would give actual, practical advice for his answer. I do agree with you that the interview clip could be longer. Actually if he had an entire full length interview about practical steps for spiritual transformation it would be a good workshop too 👍
@@jasonb4321 well, you can get pretty far just following Dallas Willard's advice, even if Hart isn't exactly teaching a seminar on spiritual formation.
not really. She could be your imagination. The people you think you are proving it to can be your imagination. Your wife could be the only non human experimental robot in the universe and not your wife. So on and so on. Now if you mean to say that empiricism has some strange claim to truth no other method of has, then i would simply state that empiricism can't be empirically proven.
@@JoshuaHults I could prove she's not a robot (assuming a robot is constructed differently from a human); I can prove my wife exists even if she is, indeed, a robot. I can also prove she exists, then add a caveat "This is what I can prove within the bounds of my reality. This may all be part of my imagination." You can add all sorts of caveats to everything you believe (simulated reality, etc). As long as it is internally consistent and you acknowledge the possibilities then I don't think you've done anything wrong. Unless, maybe, there is sufficient evidence to show your wife is in your imagination yet you still cling to it, which is how many people see the concept of God.
@@jimmorrison4291 " i could prove she's not a robot (assuming a robot is constructed differently from a human)" it's not, this is future tech, this robot was made in every way to look like a person. Secondly how would you go about asking your wife to open her insides up for you to take a look? Lol...."i can prove my wife exists even if she is a robot." 2 assumptions are being made here, 1 that the robot is not just your imagination, or a hologram. 2) that the robot is your wife. You may have married a woman or a hologram lol and had them switched as a science experiment. Then it follows the person you are living with is not your wife. The argument right gt now is not about reasonable faith and blind faith, the argument is about certainty and non certainty a proof can't exist in a false narrative. I can't prove big foot is spinning the globe by assuming big foot is spinning the globe and then coming up with "proofs" for this. These "proofs" would not be proofs because they assume the very thing in question.
@@JoshuaHults But with the robot thing, is there any difference between the sophisticated robot and my human wife? Whether I am capable of detecting it or not
You're exactly the target audience of DBH's book _The Experience of God_ : the thousands of gods of polytheism and the one God of Christianity, Judaism, Islam etc. are not at all the same kind of thing.
+@@MagnificentFiend "the thousands of gods of polytheism and the one God of Christianity, Judaism, Islam etc. are not at all the same kind of thing." They do share that they are all man made. Man creates god(s)....History is full of examples.
@@ricksmith3442 I'm late to video, BUT just so you know, an atheist can't disprove God any more than a theist can "prove" him. And just for the sake of objectivity, there is actually ALOT of factual evidence for the God of the bible. Not to mention completed and specific prophecy to factual historical events.
