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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
PJ (00:03.79)
Hello and welcome to Chasing the Viathan. I'm your host PJ Weary and I'm here today with Dr. Janet Soskis. She is the William K. Warren Distinguished Research Professor of Catholic Theology at Duke Divinity School and the Professor of Philosophical Theology, Emerita Fellow at Jesus College, University of Cambridge. And we're talking about her book today, Naming God, Addressing the Divine in Philosophy, Theology, and Scripture. Dr. Soskis, wonderful to have you on today.
Janet (00:32.91)
Thank you. Nice to be here.
PJ (00:36.13)
So the first question that I generally start with is, why this book? Why did you feel this book needed to be written, and why did you feel personally that you needed to write it?
Janet (00:46.702)
Well, it was a long gestation with this one. I've been working on it for quite a long time, thinking about the issue. And so there's a number of tributaries that flow into the final river to the sea, as you say. But I think it was being struck actually by something that Derrida mentions. I know you've done another interview on a book on that. And
Of course, he's not a philosophical theologian or a theologian at all, but he says in one of his essays that he notes that all the mystical texts begin with invocations and prayer. And he points out, well, of course, this is necessarily when you're speaking of God because you're always in danger of misspeaking. How do you address the divine? You have to pray for the grace to do so properly. And this struck me. And of course,
I recognize that that's exactly the way, for instance, Augustine begins his confessions by beseeching God to give him words. And you realize that's not just epistemic, it's not just about knowledge, it's doxological. It's whenever you are addressing God in prayer, as Augustine is doing in the Confessions, the whole book is a big prayer poem to God, there's a danger of
of idolatry because we're all as it were persons of unclean lips as the prophets say that how do you speak about God? So I was struck by this and if you look back to the various of the texts we call mystical you'll see they begin with this kind of invocation and so the difficulty and then I noticed that pre-modern philosophers of religion or theologians were much more exercised in how it is we could name God.
than how it is that we could know that God exists. And it wasn't just as we might readily think, oh, because they just assumed God existed in those days, they didn't feel the need to prove it. It was rather they thought that it's a big thing to be trying to name God, because any kind of naming implies a circumscribing, perhaps a delineating of the essence, and you can't do that.
Janet (03:05.898)
with the deity, not with idolatry. So this just got me interested. And one thing I'll say more before taking up all this interview with your first question is, I know there was a very interesting article again by a French thinker, Jean-Luc Marion. And he pointed out that Descartes in his famous effort to prove his own existence and doing so by proving the existence of God.
PJ (03:13.858)
No, you're good.
Janet (03:36.278)
and his own subsequently, he also derives from this various qualities of God, eternal, immutable, omniscient. And he says at the end of this, Descartes, these are all things that the theologians would agree with. These are all titles. Except that they aren't, because the theologians, although all these terms are used, they're even used in scripture, eternal, immortal, invisible.
But none of these pre-modern thinkers thought you could demonstrate these by reason alone, which Descartes did, which Locke did, which a number of modern theorists do think, and the whole modern trajectory of philosophy of religion. And there's another interesting thing that Marion says, that prior to Descartes, these things were discussed not as...
as divine names and they were anchored within the divine names tradition and there were the not just theologians but and philosophers but ordinary people understood there were hundreds and hundreds of divine names and they were used in prayer and liturgy and so on these it struck me they become and here i move from Mero to myself these become reduced in the early modern period these divine names to just a few eternal and mutable and invisible
omniscient and they're not called names anymore, they're called attributes. So attributes clearly are different from names. Maybe I'll stop there because you might want me to ask a question about why that's so, rather than me monologuing on.
PJ (05:13.61)
Yeah, I actually had written down to ask the difference between names and attributes, but before we go there, I am interested in the distinction, or perhaps the conflation, of philosophers of religion and theologians. What is the difference between a philosopher of religion versus a theologian, or are they really, do you think, the same thing, just kind of historically transmuted into each other?
Janet (05:30.701)
Mm-hmm.
Janet (05:42.69)
Well, I think it depends on who you're asking. These are all terms of art, right? Yeah, you know. Yeah. Often within philosophy of religion, you find there's a parallel to philosophy of music, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of science. It's applying a rigorous analytic or discursive process to a particular area. I think...
PJ (05:47.876)
Well this is academia right like this like yeah, of course right like
Janet (06:13.622)
philosophical theology, which is what my chair at Cambridge was, philosophical theology, is interested in the philosophical problems that are generated within a religious tradition itself. And so there you still need the tools of a philosopher, but the prompt is different, as it were. So for instance, if I go back, well,
to names and attributes. Do you want me to go back there or do?
PJ (06:45.258)
Well actually, even before you go there, you said analytic or discursive. I don't want to get too in the weeds, but that's kind of interesting to me. Do you see those as like two different ways of doing things as kind of the same? Are those synonyms for you or do you see two different approaches, analytic and discursive?
Janet (06:47.381)
Yeah, sure.
Mm-hmm.
Janet (07:06.942)
Well, I see a lot of complementary techniques. I mean, I'm trained, I did my doctorate at Oxford. I'm trained in the analytic tradition. However, I worked a lot with Paul Ricoeur, who's in the hermeneutical tradition. I've in this book used some phenomenology. I don't really think that one should, it's horses for courses really. You, in one of the chapters of this book.
I go into kind of analytic philosophy of language because that's appropriate for what's needed in that chapter. In the final chapter, I use more hermeneutics and phenomenology. So I don't really approve too much of camps. I'm glad I had the training I did do in analytic philosophy and philosophy of language. That was really my primary, my first work was in philosophy of language. I wrote a book on metaphor.
But metaphor naturally escapes a lot of the confines of a rather, of a strict analytic philosophy. Indeed, when I went to Oxford because it was full of philosophers of language, but I wanted to work on metaphor and religious language. And frankly, at that time, I might as well have said, I wanted to work at fairies at the bottom of the garden because no one was interested in either of those. Now I shouldn't say no one, there was one philosopher of science.
who was my supervisor along with the philosopher of religion who was very interested in metaphor. But at that time, philosophers of language weren't interested in metaphor at all. So these different schools have different moments, different times, different concerns. And they're all necessary. If you want to do something like philosophy of mind, the analytic tradition is probably pretty useful. If you want to do thinking about religious language and prayer.
praise and all these categories, I think you're going to have to broaden out a bit.
PJ (09:05.258)
Yeah, even like as you're talking, I'm like, well, I can see why you ended up working with record, right? Like, that's my own background is in philosophical hermeneutics. So like I did, I read Gottem, or I read record. And that's because like, I ended up going somewhere, and one of the professors did continental philosophy, and I went for him. And then I found out that most of them were analytic philosophers. And I wanted to do.
Janet (09:10.773)
Right.
Janet (09:14.934)
Right.
Janet (09:18.594)
Yes.
PJ (09:32.086)
you know, hermeneutics and philosophy of art. And like you were saying about metaphor, these are things that are probably more suited to a discursive approach. And so I could see why you ended up where you did, right? That makes total sense to me. But that takes us to that broader question. And, you know, as you talk about metaphors, I can see how it leads into this discussion of names versus attributes. Talk to us a little bit about that.
Janet (09:57.174)
Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, apart from the fact that there are hundreds and hundreds of divine names and the list of attributes gets very restricted and incomprehensible to most people, you can see that attributes to us and to most Western European languages, most languages, attributes or their cognates suggest qualities someone or something has.
weighing 500 pounds or having red hair. It suggests a quality someone has, but names just don't suggest any such thing. A name may be Peter, a name may be mom, a name be you there. Names are means by we call upon someone, we summon them, we upbraid them, we reproach them. So names are.
about being in relation and their naming is a human activity, naming profoundly reaches across all our activities. I think it deserves philosophical, probably more philosophical attention than it gets. So certain things, if you view them as attributes, eternal, it becomes a quality God has. And so I think what happens in early modernity
is there's a tendency for better for worse to go for proofs that the existence of God and that generates certain attributes and think that those deliver God. I mean, frankly, John Locke does this. And in Locke's corner, for Locke's defense, he was a devout Christian. He really coming out of the wars of religion,
PJ (11:39.663)
Mm.
Janet (11:53.686)
The idea of having a demonstrable proof that was neutral, that didn't rely on scripture, didn't mention Jesus at all, was highly desirable. But of course what you get, Locke is a particularly, I'm afraid to say, a particularly crude example of this, because he says, well, we prove God exists and we get a number of qualities that are qualities we admire in a man. And we just sort of magnify them up, bounce them up a lot.
And then we've got, you know, an account of God. So this is deism full stream really, and it's making God a big jumped up man. And of course, in the past 30 or 40 years, all kinds of people including a lot of feminist theologians have leapt on this and say, the Christian God is, you know, just the wizard of Oz, he's this hateful figure. How can you worship a God who's immortal and invisible and eternal?
Although I would consider myself a feminist, I certainly couldn't go along with all these criticisms. I do think they, however, accurately affect a kind of rough deism that's in the air in modernity that probably a lot of Christians as well as anti-Christians just take is Christianity. I mean a good anti-Christian example of this is
Richard Dawkins, who's made a living out of saying the Christian God is this big jumped up guy who beats people with a stick. And you know, so I really felt a need to respond to this and to say, well, no, that's not where it comes from. For instance, let me go through with, I mentioned Augustine already.
for Augustine to say God is...
Janet (13:50.834)
omnipresent doesn't mean like a big gaseous thing. It means that at every stage in Augustine's life, God was present even Augustine says, because he only comes to a full Christian confession later in life, even when Augustine did not know that God was there with him, God was there with him because there's no place God is not, no time God is not. God's...
reality as the creator is there in every place and every time. So this is not a steely sort of God looking down through a big magnifying glass at us, but rather what it means for God to be creator and present to God's creation. I mean, actually the doctrine of creation turned out to be crucial in this book, so, but maybe we'll come to that.
PJ (14:39.05)
Yeah, I noticed that. And forgive me for kind of ruminating here. And some of this is just to make sure I'm on the same track, but some of my own thoughts on this.
PJ (14:51.166)
I really struggled with the idea of God being immutable in respect to what we see in scripture. And then when you think about what it means that God is unchanging, and you talk about this with the apophatic theology and this idea of circumscribing, I'm trying to bring together two different things here. One is this idea that
PJ (15:20.398)
Naming God as you talk about it seems to be to give us a way forward, right? Like to live a to creatively and I mean that in the creation sense not like just artistic inspiration though that's part of it, but to creatively move forward into a Not more than a good life a godly life while at the same time you have this and a very modernistic
Janet (15:35.83)
Mm.
PJ (15:51.114)
circumscribing, especially following the wars of religion, where it's like, well, we know that way doesn't work, right? It's very negative. And so when we look at the way that works with something like immutable, immutable is a very strong answer to heresy.
Janet (15:59.926)
Hmm.
PJ (16:13.654)
when really what we're talking about is that God is faithful. Like from a logical standpoint, it's like when God is so far above us, when he says yes, does he really mean yes? And the answer of course is, he does. When he says yes, he means yes. When he says no, he means no. He is immutable, unchanging, right? Does that fit with what you're talking about with Augustine? It really goes back to him being faithful, which is a...
Janet (16:17.43)
Mm-hmm.
PJ (16:41.306)
positive attribute a relational attribute and there's this but there's Especially following the wars of religion. There are a lot of people saying well, that's not how we do it Right and a lot of times they were sometimes they were not correct and sometimes they were correct You're like, I don't know how you're trying to live, but that's not working. Can we try something different? Is that a fair way to approach what you're saying?
Janet (16:44.927)
Mm-hmm.
Janet (16:52.6)
Yeah.
Janet (16:56.813)
Thank you.
Janet (17:01.486)
Yeah. Well, I don't really dwell on the wars of religion, but I think what we understand is the, have to understand is the locus of the divine names and most profoundly, and I'll come back to immortal and invisible and eternal, that
There's a consensus from very, very early on amongst Jews, Christians and Muslims that God is unnameable, strictly speaking. And the reason for this is because of what these faiths believe in about creation. And by this, I don't mean seven days, I mean that God is the creator of everything. This is the way the creeds begin, creator of everything, visible and invisible, that God created.
all things. And there were early debates in the church because obviously you're going to have some smart aleck platonists say, well, if your God made everything, did he make space and time? And the answer to this from the first and second century already is yes, God created everything because they realized that matter and time are functions of one another. I mean, we didn't need modern physicists to tell us this. So, so
all these things, God creates space and time, so God's relationship to the all is different from ours. And that, frankly, banjaxes a lot of religious language. I can't say, for instance, that...
PJ (18:41.17)
I'm so sorry. I forgive my American ignorance. Did you say band jacks? What does that mean? Okay. Thank you.
Janet (18:48.462)
Mm-hmm. It completely blows it up. I think, okay, yeah, okay. And because if I say, I cause this coffee cup to move from my left hand to my right hand, and then I say, and of course God calls the universe to come into being, but I then have to qualify that, of course, outside of space
Janet (19:19.638)
I mean, all my actions in terms of moving a coffee cup or, you know, adjusting the lighting in my room are within space and time. So cause for God cannot be the same as cause. It doesn't mean that God doesn't cause the universe to come into being. We have to use that language, but we realize it's stretched and somewhat different. Now, a very good example of this, getting back to Locke again and the early modern.
PJ (19:19.678)
No, no it's really not.
Janet (19:47.51)
use of the attributes would be eternal. Because eternal was something that ancient philosophical theology amongst Aristotle and Plato understood God to be eternal. But Aristotle's God, Aristotle, none of the ancient philosophers had the doctrine of creation from nothing or
Janet (20:17.486)
and Judaism and Islam. So Aristotle, for instance, believed that God
Janet (20:27.474)
God wasn't a creator God, God was a kind of destination in Aristotle's scheme. God was a prime mover, source of movement. But Aristotle believed that God had existed everlastingly backwards and forwards, but also that the universe had existed everlastingly backwards and forwards. In fact, he thought, he grasped, I think, the notion of creation ex nihilo, but he thought it was ridiculous. He said, from nothing, nothing can come.
And of course, I think a modern physicist would say the same. If you've got really nothing, really, really nothing, no space, no time, how would you have anything? Now, that's not what the Jews and Christians thought. They thought God created everything from absolutely nothing and did so volitionally. However little we understand that, that is, it was, it was not something that God had to do, as in some Platonic schemes where
the world just emanates from God, like the rays emanate from the sun, rather God did this volitionally. And so within Christianity and Judaism and Islam, I'll just say Christianity from now on, to say God is eternal doesn't mean God lasts a long time backwards and forwards, but that God is the creator of time and so present to all time. And so Augustine can say that every time in his life, God was all there. And you can do the same for immutability. And I think you're absolutely right.
that immutability is, these words come from scripture. And that's the other thing that all these terms are anchored in scripture. And they, what it captures is God's loving kindness, God's loving kindness to Israel and then to the Christian church, you know, but this faithfulness of God and the profound faithfulness of God as creator. I mean, one of the beautiful, I think beautiful,
examples of this from a writing of a mystic is that of Julian of Norwich where she has this sort of understanding. She seems to see the world as a small thing the size of a hazelnut in the palm of her hand, in the palm of her hand, not God's hand, palm of her hand, and she marvels that it's so fragile and little and it still exists. And then she says, and it came to me
Janet (22:49.926)
it exists because God loves it. So it is simultaneously an altogether contingent, altogether fragile, but altogether secure in its existence because it exists because of the love of God. So I think that's quite a nice way of expressing what the doctrine of creation means and how it anchors into our lived lives.
PJ (22:52.675)
Hmm.
PJ (23:14.954)
Absolutely. One of the doctrines, though I think its naming comes later, you see it, I've actually been reading Origen and Chrysostom, and forgive me, I can't remember where I read it. But in one of those two, I was like, oh, that is probably Origen, because it was in his first principles. But I was like, that's the doctrine of accommodation, right? He was talking about God
talks to us in human language, which is, it's going to fail because it's human language. And not that God will succeed regardless, like that's the, God himself is infallible, but he is talking to us in, when you get to Calvin and beyond, you're talking about baby talk, right? He's like,
Janet (23:45.099)
Yes. Yeah.
PJ (24:08.326)
And this kind of goes to, you know, the whole banjaxing of, sorry, I'm just gonna steal that now, that's amazing. The banjaxing of religious language is that religious language is ultimately baby talk for humans from a God who transcends the bounds of our language. And can you speak, how does the doctrine of accommodation fit into this whole picture?
Janet (24:29.939)
Yeah.
Well, I wouldn't even say it's baby talk. I mean, that's too close. Babies, I've got a 14 month old granddaughter living with me at the moment and well, she's not actually talking yet. God, the point is God knows us fully, right? So I think here, take you back a bit, the real revelation to me, so to speak, speaking figuratively was,
PJ (25:03.288)
Sorry, go ahead. I was like, the podcast just got totally more interesting. Yeah, you're like, I had a vision. No, no, I'm sorry, go ahead.
Janet (25:04.586)
I know. Fylo.
Janet (25:09.806)
I'm sorry. Well, sometimes these things come in funny ways. So was the Philo, who's a contemporary of Paul, Jew, Alexandrian Jew, Greek speaking as most Jews of the Mediterranean basin were, and a commentator on his own scripture. And he wrote a treatise on naming God, well, on naming, on the change of names. And
PJ (25:28.259)
Cough
Janet (25:40.419)
It was very influential on all subsequent Christian writers, on the Cappadocians and the Medievals and so on. But Philo there really understands he's what we call a middle Platonic philosopher. So he's not neoplatonic. I know you've talked about that. He's middle Platonism. By this time...
philosophy, you know, we have access to all these books of Aristotle and Plato, but they had a melange. It was already a mix of these things. And he was, you know, an educated person. I was going to say an educated man because they were all men. The uneducated man would do grammar and rhetoric and so on. And he does this. He's as a standard for an educated Jewish person of his time. But he's very, very clear about where he will depart, say, from Aristotle or where he thinks the
all the philosophers known to him or Plato. And it is really over this doctrine of creation because he believes that God creates everything. He believes, including space and time, he believes that this means our talk about God is going to be intrinsically troubled, our naming God. Now he will say it's our naming God. And in antique grammar, to name something you have
presumed to delineate its essence. And as a Jew, he knows this is heresy. You can't delineate the divine essence. Yet as a Jew, he knows he has to name God. Why? Because in Hebrew, a Hebrew expression for prayer is to call upon the name of the Lord. So he has to call upon the name of the Lord. So how is he going to do this? And he goes back to Moses and the burning bush, which all the subsequent Christian writers will do too. And Moses asking,
God calling Moses first and then Moses asking for a name and getting a sequence of names. And from this, Philo concludes that God, strictly speaking, isn't nameable by us, but by divine condescension, you could say, accommodation, God gives us names by which we can name him. They don't still delineate the divine essence, but they are.
Janet (27:59.118)
given and how do we name God? We don't name God by what God is in God's essence because we can't know that but we name God through God's mighty acts. So one of the names for God that's given to Moses, he's given the Tetragrammaton of course but it's also I am the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. So that's a name that anchors God within the relationship to the ancestors of Moses. So this is a really important text in there and I think within the
PJ (28:08.676)
Hmm.
Janet (28:29.034)
what I would call in the book the divine names tradition because although we've sort of lost it, so many of the early fathers wrote books about the divine names, they were between philosophy and spirituality and doxology that many, many wrote on them, we tend to just reduce it to just a famous one by pseudo Dionysius, but no, many of them wrote it and, and it's always
coming back, the names that they cite all have to be names taken from scripture. And the same is true of Islam. They all have to be taken from the Quran and the Quran and the suras because of the dangers of trespass, as a way of misnaming. So I think that's very interesting that there's a grace, there's a grace because of our need, we have to call upon the name of Lord. So we're given these names. However, once they're given, as it were, then.
It's not as though philosophical reflection ends, but it's almost the beginning of what must it mean for God to be eternal? What must it mean for God to be immutable and so on? So I don't want to get rid of those titles. I don't want to even get rid in some sense of talking about the attributes, so I prefer not to use the language, but to house this within a different understanding.
PJ (29:49.162)
Absolutely. So you moved past the Tetragrammaton to talk about the god of Jacob and Abraham, Isaac.
Wonderful that I put those out of order. Okay Abraham Isaac and Jacob, excuse me how does the The Tetragrammaton which I could see how that plays more into the attributes per se like that modernistic thing But how would that play in a pre-modern mindset this? You know to say it as revelantly as I can I am that I am this That how does that play out in a knit this pre-modern naming scenario?
Janet (30:23.254)
Yeah, sure.
Janet (30:29.554)
Yeah, yeah, no, really, really good question and very important. And I think the first couple of chapters of this book sort of are about that. Because the first chapter is, is the Christian God a metaphysical monster? Sort of the second chapter is naming God at Sinai. And so in this encounter, where Moses is called by name,
and then trying to squirm out his obligation to go and tell the Pharaoh to release the Israelites, asks God for a name. And it's obviously very perplexing in the back. But God, it's interesting that God gives Moses not just one name, but a sequence of names. And I am the one who is, I am the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.
And the Tetragrammaton, which of course is the four letter name of God, which Jews don't articulate, and so I won't articulate here either. I'll just say Tetragrammaton, the name. And it's incredibly important because the name, and I think this is too little recognized, and I don't think I fully recognized it until I got into this book, is the Tetragrammaton is the
proper name of Israel's God like Fred or Frank or PJ. You know, it's not like God, there are other Hebrew words for God. It is proper name of Israel's God. And as we know, not articulated often Jews classically and even today will say Hashem, they'll call God Hashem, which means the name. So they'll call God the name. But the Tetragrammaton, as you know, is really
It doesn't have a meaning just like proper names don't strictly have meanings, but it suggests the Hebrew verb to be. And so it's a gloss. It could be rather the other things like I am the one who is, is a gloss on the tetragrammaton. So I am who I am as we get it rather ponderously. Looks big and metaphysical, doesn't it? But
Janet (32:55.054)
I am who I am. The Hebrew scholars tell me it's much more, I am the one who is with you and will be with you. So it's a name of presence and it's a name of promise. And it's just what you need if you're going to take a group of truculent Israelites through the desert for 40 years. So it's, I am the one who is with you and will be with you. But from very, very early on and already in the Talmud,
PJ (33:03.137)
Hmm.
PJ (33:12.634)
I'm gonna go get some water.
Janet (33:25.258)
We're associating this, as Christians would, I'm the one who is, with the creation narratives in Genesis. And we're saying as does Spilo, that God is the one who truly is and all else comes from God, that we are creatures. God, now that is the origins, as it were, the fontan origins of believing that God is being itself, which you're alluding to.
So it's God is the one who truly is. I'm not imposing that on the Talmud, but they're definitely connecting the one who is with the creation narrative. God is the one who is, and then the rest of what we are, creatures, is contingent on God's grace. So I don't think that these titles like I Am Who I Am do buy into the deistic model at all. I mean, I think...
They did if we thought of it as perhaps we're intended to do, not just in English, but if we forget the, if we don't have access to the Hebrew and we've got just the Greek or the Latin, Latin ego, sum, qui, sum, very ponderous and wow, right in your face. And that's been milked by a lot of people to criticize the God of the Bible as being
just this big overpowering bully, but I don't think it's that at all. I think it's that I'm the one who is with you and will be with you. And that's the line that I think we see traced in people like Gregory of Nyssa or St. Augustine. He understands God as the great I am, the one who is. And in fact, it's interesting, Augustine at one stage in his sermons is talking, he's talking about one of the Psalms and he gets back to Moses. These people randomly get back to Moses, all kinds of places.
PJ (35:19.182)
Ha ha ha!
Janet (35:20.338)
and talks about God is the one who is. And he says, don't worry, he's saying to his congregation, don't worry if you don't understand this, think of what it means for you, Christ, he is the one who is, he is the I am, the one who is. So it all looks up.
PJ (35:37.462)
Yeah. Well, and so and you talked about how because we cannot delineate God, we have to take the names of God as acts of God, if I understand you correctly. And I'm going to take a leap here with a chain of thought. And I'd love just to hear your thoughts on it. But when you talk about the modernistic approach, we talk about Descartes, you talk about Locke.
They're often starting with us, right? I mean, famously with Descartes, you have the I think therefore I am. Then you have Locke, and you're talking about this very crude, but very ultimate deism, right? This idea that they are just bouncing man up to a greater form of man. And in many ways we are creating God.
Janet (36:25.326)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
PJ (36:33.498)
Greek philosopher who talked about that we just create God in our image. But that's what they're doing, right? And I'm really struck by the weakness of the deus god and how open it is to this feminist critique because it's a very... like when you talk about someone who's making something and then just lets it kind of run to evil, I mean, I can't help but think of like this greater image of...
Janet (36:38.539)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
PJ (37:01.718)
God is a man who's done his work and is sitting on the couch with a beer, right? Like he's like and that's is that Yeah, he's like I did what I was supposed to I'm just gonna let it run its course So we'll see what happens and that's not I mean that is not the God who is with us, right? And so is that a I mean even as you talked about this overwhelming bully you use the term metaphysical monster Is that seems to be kind of a this central concern for you that we see?
Janet (37:05.854)
Exactly. Having a few beers, whatever.
Janet (37:18.22)
Mm-mm.
Janet (37:25.056)
Mm.
PJ (37:30.638)
this very relational, very covenantal, and even that's hard for people to understand because most people when they think covenant, they think contractual, which is not the same thing. Am I following along with what you're going for here, this more relational God and how the modernist really by flipping to starting with the individual really has tried to delineate and circumscribe God? Is that a fair—
Janet (37:39.65)
Mm.
PJ (38:00.355)
Way to approach this?
Janet (38:00.607)
Well, I think there's been a tendency, and not just in Locke, but in some kind of neotomism and so on, if we want to go down there, scholastic tomism, to begin with reason and want to prove everything about God and then demonstrate these qualities and then go out there and leave all the other prayer and Christ bits for later. And I don't think that's the way that works in the best classical theology.
PJ (38:20.11)
Hahaha
Janet (38:28.082)
in there I'd put Aquinas and Augustine, a number of other people. And it's partly perhaps because in the modern period philosophy has been so dominated by epistemology. Now if you think back to the doctrine of creation as I've been describing, thinking about what it means for God to create everything and the profound implications of that for God's holding everything at being, as you say, at every moment, at all times, not just
having done so a long time ago and then sitting back, but every moment is the moment of creation for God. So this means there's possibilities for what we call miracles all the way along the line. It's not as though that's God's created everything in a fixed causal order. And now he just to do anything has to poke a big stick into the world. So God's presence to the world is complete and is complete as creator.
So I think that all these things are altered. And I think that what one finds, if you think about creation ex nihilo, I know that a lot of Protestants really shudder because I have a number of evangelical Protestant students who tell me this, that shudder when the word metaphysics is mentioned, oh, and you know, Calvin had, you know, he was worried about metaphysics, although he did allow, it was quite useful in driving out the heretics. I seem to remember he says that in the Institute somewhere. But...
PJ (39:44.186)
Ha ha ha!
Janet (39:55.758)
Once you've got this whole thing, did your God create everything? Yes. Did God create even space and time? Yes. You've got a metaphysics, but a Christian metaphysics. It is not taken over from antiquity, as some theologians wrongly have said. It is distinctly Christian and it's a rupture. It's a rupture in Western metaphysics because the whole relationality of everything.
Janet (40:25.462)
is changed by understanding that we are creatures and related to the creator. So I think then that we need to recover Christian metaphysics and many other philosophical theologians are working on this now. But it shouldn't be regarded as a scary foreign thing to do. It's intrinsic, I think, to thinking of what it is to confess God to be the creator of all that is.
And we need to, yeah, go on.
PJ (40:56.506)
I'm not... Excuse me, go ahead.
Janet (41:00.354)
Well, I'll give you a small example of this, this incipient deism. And I completely understand it. About one of my students was saying.
that they wanted them to come up with a more materialistic version of the doctrine of the trinity because our world was so materialistic and we couldn't relate to an immaterial god. So this was you know not a student who you know it's a student. So I asked well a number as well
Janet (41:43.558)
what do you mean by materialistic? I don't think you mean that God should drive a Lamborghini. You know, she didn't mean that. But she said, well, you know, immaterial God relating to a material world. And so I think the answer to that is God is not immaterial. Angels are immaterial. God is not a creature at all. We've sort of lost a lot when we stop thinking about crowns and dominions and angels. What we've lost is the ability to see.
PJ (42:05.124)
Mmm.
Janet (42:13.09)
that God is not an invisible or immaterial creature. God is the creator and is totally present to, but outside this temporal sphere, but because of that also totally present to it. So throughout the book, there's a kind of a descant of that God's ultimate see and intimacy are one. It is because God is not a very powerful figure that God can be closer to me than my own hands and feet. Right? So.
That's what I want to get to. And what's excited to me about this book was the bringing together, and I think it's there in the subtitle, which actually the publishers gave it, not me, addressing the divine in philosophy, theology, and scripture, because I really want to bring philosophy of religion back to scripture and theology. So that's what I'm trying to do. And I think too that philosophy,
A lot of philosophy brings you close to spirituality because you are aware of the godness of God and your contingency is a creature nonetheless wholly loved by God, which is a wonderful thing to think about.
PJ (43:35.306)
As I've been reading through the early Church Fathers, I was reading through the letters of Cyril of Alexandria. And one of the things that really struck me as he was dealing with heretical opinions in his diocese was, which I believe that was the term he was using or the term that was translated, I'm not reading the original Latin or Greek.
But one, he starts with those prayers and those invocations and the acknowledgment that he is not fully capable to deal with these issues without the help of God. But the other thing is something that, as we talk about coming back to scripture, is we see in 1 Timothy, and this is something that I feel is missing.
in a lot of today's theology or philosophy of religion is that the goal, what is he, you know, Paul tells Timothy, tell people to stop preaching heresy or to even like false doctrines, myths and endless genealogies. Such things promote controversial speculations rather than advancing God's work, which is by faith.
The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith. And this idea that the point of Cyril of Alexandria's work is very clearly, like he talks about how much he loves the person he's writing to. And there's just this heavy, and I hate even using the word ethical because there's this academic and like study of aspect to it. But what I'm talking about is there is a loving aspect.
Janet (45:12.433)
Mm.
PJ (45:16.642)
that needs to be returned to theology. That is the end goal of theology is truth, but is truth aimed at love and truth as its own thing. It's like, oh, I just want the knowledge. It will become twisted. And forgive me, I had one more note because I have not seen the part, you mentioned something about Calvin talking about metaphysics guarding against heresy. But one of the things I appreciated about
Janet (45:43.734)
Yeah.
PJ (45:46.05)
Calvin is, I have not read through the entirety of the institutes, but one thing that really struck me was he, and I'm paraphrasing here, but he says, if it's true, it's true. Light comes from God. So if it's true, it's God's truth. And so, and that's, I think that's another, that goes along with what he's talking about with metaphysics. He's like, he has this fear of it, probably because he's, even this concern of like, it's not necessarily loving.
Janet (46:01.215)
Mm-hmm.
PJ (46:14.282)
and it can just become like this endless people who are proud, but that the end goal is how can we better love people? And that should be the end goal of all truth. And I think that's something that, I don't know. I don't know if that's the end of this entire discussion. And by that, I mean the goal of this entire discussion. But as we talk about the modernistic approach, it does seem to often be knowledge for knowledge's sake.
So I'm sorry, I know I talked a while there, but I'm curious, what are your thoughts as you hear that?
Janet (46:45.792)
Yeah, well, of course, I do think what I'm doing and what we're talking about is entirely modern and there's a picture of Moses on the front of the book, I think very attractive and someone, a friend wrote to me and said, oh, it's very traditional pictures, it's a very traditional book. Well, you know, in a sense, Christianity is quite traditional. But
But it's also, it's about call and response. Nothing is more contemporary in life. I mean, actually a lot of French phenomenology is about call and response right now in a different key. But I think that this...
Janet (47:26.734)
one thing that struck me again with Moses and with Moses's athrenity in the book again, I felt I was spending so much time at the burning bush and I actually wrote, well, in the time of writing this book, I wrote a lot on creation X Neola. I also wrote a book called Sisters of Sinai that was the true story of two wonderful Presbyterian ladies who just went out to St. Catharines and discovered an ancient manuscript of the Gospels in Syriac.
So I spent so much time around the burning bush, but Moses is such a figure because Moses is a figure for desiring God. Moses always asking to see God's face. And Moses, most beloved, Moses is one of the few people in scripture that God describes as a friend. And Moses asked to see God's face. And this is only allowed, you know, the famous
hide in the cleft of the rock and God passes before him, proclaiming his name, but Moses only sees God's backside, which is apparently quite frank in the Hebrew. So, but, you know, people, Phyla will mention this and Gregory of Nyssa in his life of Moses following Phyla will say this, and Gregory says a lovely thing. He says, even dearly beloved Moses, most beloved of God.
wasn't allowed to see God's face. He sees God's back. But then Gregory says, well, our Lord, here Gregory means Jesus, our Lord didn't say those who want to be my disciples go ahead of me, but those who want to be my disciples follow me, and those who follow see the back. So it's a rather nice thing.
PJ (49:15.885)
Right?
Janet (49:17.946)
But he also, Gregory has a strong sense of the mystery of God that is always desiring and they will cite Paul again and again, yearning and seeking. So there's a strong element of desiring. And I think maybe what happens in the early modern period is because of the wars of religion and needing to score points off different Christian groups, bad, bad thing to do, and then needing in modernity to defend Christianity against attacks by atheism.
we move into this more, we cease to think about the desiring element that you've articulated, I think too, that loving God is about seeking God, seeking God's face, seeking always, seeking always. And that introduces an element of modesty to what we're on about. And I think introduces a way to think about what theology is. So theology can't be just
writing down of all the facts about God according to me, you know, it can't be that. I think there was a nice quote from the Greek Orthodox theologian Andrew Louth in the introduction where he says, I'm talking about how naming God is a practice, the practice of theologia, where theologia is not knowledge about God.
as knowledge of God through contemplation, prayer, and above all praise. So that's got to be a grounding of our theology, and it doesn't mean that it can't be rigorous and it can't be analytic and appropriately so. But what's it for? It's not for putting God in a box. If anything, it should free us from thinking that we can do so. There's again, a wonderful quote from Augustine, I think in the Dei Trinitrate, where he says,
from the very fact that we don't understand ourselves. We can only imagine how much we don't understand God, but that doesn't mean we don't know God. It doesn't mean we don't love God. It doesn't mean we don't know God's saving, loving, saving acts. We're brought back again and again to scripture.
PJ (51:30.238)
Yeah, even as you talk about that quote from Augustine, the first thing that came to mind was, if my wife would be displeased if I tried to just capture her merely in facts and considered that a relationship, how much more... You know, like, if I was like, well, I got you figured out, honey. I have this list of 50 things, you know, I don't think she would appreciate that. Like, how much more this creator who created from nothing, created from emptiness, like, the idea I'd have that...
Janet (51:52.017)
Yeah.
PJ (52:00.334)
fully encapsulated. Dr. Soskis, go ahead.
Janet (52:02.186)
And the wonderful thing that this God is precisely the God who bends down to speak to Moses. You see, that's where these two things come together. This is not a God who can't be present to the world. This is a God who is entirely present to the world at every moment. And of course, this dwelling of God with man. There's a wonderful book by the Jewish philosopher Michael Wishgarad, where he points out, I think correctly, that the Christian doctrine of the incarnation would be impossible without Judaism, because it comes from this idea.
PJ (52:07.097)
Yes.
PJ (52:15.872)
Hmm.
Janet (52:31.99)
that God could be present while being, as it were, the Holy One is there in the Moses story. It's there in the idea that God is in the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire. It's there in the idea that God dwells in the tabernacle. It's there in the idea that God dwells in the temple. This idea is already there, framing what will become in Christian terms, the doctrine of the incarnation.
were called tabernacles amongst human beings.
PJ (53:03.574)
Yes, literally in John 1, right? It uses that verb for tabernacle-ing, yeah. Dr. Soskos, I want to be respectful of your time, but it's been awesome having you on. If you could leave our audience with one thing to contemplate this week, to think about as they walk around after listening to this, what would it be?
Janet (53:07.882)
It does.
PJ (53:28.363)
No pressure. Ha ha ha.
Janet (53:30.215)
Well, pressure. Well, I've already said, ultimately, God's ultimacy and intimacy are one, but I noticed in your podcast, and your description that you're concerned for the truth. And I think the same and Augustine said the same truth is one, we where we find it, it is truth and to be confident, confident seekers after truth, and not
if you're a Christian, be frightened about what that might mean for you. But to just go forward seeking and loving and trusting that all will be well.
PJ (54:08.35)
What a wonderful way to end. Dr. Soskos, it's been a real pleasure today. Thank you.
Janet (54:12.406)
Thank you very much, PJ.