Thomas Magbee (2:26)

Yes, I remember.

Graham Donaldson (2:27)

And we also. There was one episode. I can't remember which one it was, but in our. In between, we. I. We sort of were asking the question and the question that one of you guys said or that came up somehow and has stayed with me was did Christianity perfect Rome or did Christianity destroy Rome? And that's sort of been a question that. That's a not a new question about in the Christian history. But that is anyway. So Paul Kings north is given this lecture against Christian civilization and he is. He's essentially saying that like any idea of trying to kind of like re. Inflate a lost Christianity in the west to save the west is a fool's game. That's his sort of his thesis. So we'll look at that in a second. Paul Kings north, he's an interesting guy. He wrote his almost like his sort of testimony or conversion story on first things. His background was that he was a pretty hardcore left wing environmentalist, like the chaining himself to trees kind of guy of the 90s, like Greenpeace. And religiously he was full into like ancient English. He's British or Irish. Is he Irish or English? I actually don't know. But he was full into like sort of the ancient traditions of like the English Isles paganism. Right. So there's still pagans that like do Stonehenge and all that kind of stuff. Although they've kind of got a. I.

A.J. Hannenberg (3:55)

Feel like Stonehenge has fence around it.

Graham Donaldson (3:57)

Has fence.

A.J. Hannenberg (3:58)

Has like they probably don't get to use actual stone.

Graham Donaldson (4:00)

They do. They do get to. Yeah. Yeah.

A.J. Hannenberg (4:01)

Are you serious?

Graham Donaldson (4:02)

Yes, they do.

Thomas Magbee (4:02)

For.

Graham Donaldson (4:03)

Yes, they get to. Do they. On the solstice, like wacky pagans will be able to show up and do services at Stonehenge. I'm almost positive.

A.J. Hannenberg (4:11)

Oh, I'm googling this.

Thomas Magbee (4:12)

Yeah. I mean last time you went was 2006.

Graham Donaldson (4:14)

Yeah, 2007.

Thomas Magbee (4:15)

So yeah.

A.J. Hannenberg (4:16)

Your last pagan ceremony gave my best goat.

Graham Donaldson (4:19)

I'm so. So no. Anyway, so he sort of grew. He sort of your typical kind of like modern atheist and then kind of like dabbled into like woo woo stuff and like Zen Buddhism and you know, pick any kind of like environmentalist cliche relig just sect. He probably dabbled in it and then really got into sort of, you know his, that sort of paganism of the, of the, the Druids and, and that kind of stuff. And then the way that he tells it, there was one ceremony that he was going to go to at night and he just physically couldn't do it and he had been having dreams about Christ and, and almost like physically couldn't go.

A.J. Hannenberg (5:01)

There are photos of the pagan ceremonies.

Graham Donaldson (5:04)

Thank you.

A.J. Hannenberg (5:04)

It looks like like a music festival.

Thomas Magbee (5:06)

But you're interested. Is that what's happening right now?

A.J. Hannenberg (5:09)

Yeah, it depends who's playing.

Graham Donaldson (5:11)

Just kidding. So. And he sort of like physically couldn't go to this stuff and sort of felt himself being drawn to Christianity and he couldn't really explain why. Has a wonderful article where he. Where he talks about his conversion. I think the name of the article is the Cross and the Machine, which is like awesome.

A.J. Hannenberg (5:26)

Anyway, I listened to them in the 90s.

Graham Donaldson (5:28)

Yeah. So. And so he's really interested in. Yeah, so that's where he's come from. And so he does this Erasmus lecture called against Christian civilization because his big. If you had to sort of pin him on. On something that he believes in regards to the modern world. He thinks, and I think a lot of editors at first things agree with him, that in our cultural moment something is ending culturally and something is coming culturally that we are in some sort of. Between. We're in some sort of like transition period between maybe the end of what we would call modernity to. To some sort of new thing. Whether that's like the nation states of the 19th century Or. Or whatever it is that like you know, the excesses of the modern world with its technology and it's the financialization of everything. And, and Paul Kings north looks at this and says like this is. This is a civilization that. That doesn't have staying power and is kind of falling apart now already. Like we can agree. I mean I want to give his sort of argument and then we can kind of talk about it. So don't necessarily. And I know you think I'm grouchy, but I don't necessarily agree. Don't. I don't.

Thomas Magbee (6:40)

Yeah, I do, I do.

Graham Donaldson (6:43)

I am not positing this because I think King's north is right on everything. But it was an Erasmus lecture. And well, he basically is like, well let's keep going, maybe it'll make sense. So he has this thing. Let's read his sort of thesis statement of his article.

Thomas Magbee (6:59)

Graham actually printed out this. This s. This lecture.

Graham Donaldson (7:02)

Yeah.

Thomas Magbee (7:02)

So you have it in front of you, but you also did it landscape.

Graham Donaldson (7:05)

I did for. By mistake.

Thomas Magbee (7:06)

Oh, I was wondering if that was intentional.

Graham Donaldson (7:08)

No, no.

Thomas Magbee (7:08)

Okay.

Graham Donaldson (7:10)

So. So he's talking about his viewpoint on this, on our modern time. So let me read these two paragraphs here. A few decades later, the British historian Arnold Toynbee echoed Spangler's prediction of collapse in his own painstakingly developed cynical mode of the rise and falls of cultures. His vast multi volume work, A Study of History, examined 21 civilizations across the span of human time seeking common reasons for their rise and fall. 19 of those 21 civilizations, he Toynbee concluded, collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now. Note that this now was quite some time ago. Toynbee died in 1975. I have taken to Colin the strange, dissolving, increasingly nihilistic moment. We are living through a, quote, culture of inversion. We can best understand the process, I think, by simply observing that our elites today are focused overwhelmingly on inverting the culture that we took for granted when I was growing up. The inversion takes many forms and can be found in almost every crevice of society now, from the curriculum in schools to the output of the Disney Corporation. Turning everything on its head is the work of the west today. Kind of think I know what he's getting at there, but he doesn't like go off and explain what he means by this culture of inversion. But I think what he kind of means is that a culture whose forward momentum is based on the like destruction and criticizing of things that have come before it, that it is not a culture that is like producing a positive vision of life, but is sort of like devouring through the past positive vision of life. And that's kind of its essence. Do you think that's fair, what he's getting at?

Thomas Magbee (9:06)

Do I think it's a fair summary?

Graham Donaldson (9:08)

Do you think that that's what he means by culture of inversion?

Thomas Magbee (9:10)

I think that's what he means by that. I think whether or not he's right, you probably agree with this 100%.

Graham Donaldson (9:17)

I don't know. I mean, I think there's definitely elements to it, but is the battle lost? And that's kind of his question. So. And then he says, okay, this is what's happening to Western civilization. And the definition that he gives of Western civilization is one that he takes from a medieval historian that says there has never been a unitary organization of Western culture apart from that of the Christian Church, which provided an effective principle of social unity behind the ever changing pattern of Western culture. There was a living faith which gave Europe a certain sense of spiritual community in spite of all the conflicts and divisions and social schisms that marked its history. So the Western. This is a historian named Dawson. The west was a religious construction. It was the creation of Roman Catholicism because to delineate between the Western church and the Eastern church after this, after various schisms. And so then his big question he's asking is, I know I'm reading a lot from this essay, but I kind of want to read his thesis. He says, if the Christian faith is the basis of Western culture, what happens when that faith retreats or rejected? And he makes reference to another Christian historian named Tom Holland, who wrote a book called Dominion, which is probably another episode we should do at some point. He says another historian, Tom Holland, demonstrated in his book Dominion, it was Christianity that formed the Western mind. When such a sacred order dies, there will be upheaval at every level of society, from politics right down to the level of the soul. This, I think, is where we are. And I'm hardly the only one to have noticed. In fact, almost everyone who is paying attention has now by. Has by now noticed. Some of those people, in response have come to a conclusion. Since Christianity was the basis of the Western culture of ours, and since this culture is now sick or even dying, the way to revive it must be to revive Christianity not so much as a religion, but rather as a social glue or even as a weapon. What we need, we increasingly hear from many different quarters, is a return to something called Christian civilization, regardless of whether the Christian faith is in fact, true. At a certain level, this may appear to be an attractive narrative, but I believe it to be a deadly mistake. So that's sort of. His thesis is that if you. If we look at sort of the culture around us and say, there's something about this idea, there's something sick and dying in Western civilization. And. And Western civilization is built on. Chris, on the Christian, on Christianity. If we revive Christianity, we save the West. And he says that doing that is the wrong game. That if you do that, that is. He says that is a. What does he call it? What did he just say?

Thomas Magbee (12:04)

Deadly mistake.

Graham Donaldson (12:05)

A deadly mistake. All right. Do we have any initial thoughts so far?

Thomas Magbee (12:09)

I feel like I need to hear more. Not sure I have the full argument at this point.

Graham Donaldson (12:14)

AJ's doing his. He's minute 15 into 40 minutes of silence.

A.J. Hannenberg (12:18)

So, yeah, I think my. My initial issue is that any organization that thinks the way to health is to revert to a previous state rather than, like, push forward to something new. Like the people who are like, I gotta recapture the magic of yesteryear are. Are the ones who never quite get it. Does that make sense?

Graham Donaldson (12:38)

I know what you're saying.

A.J. Hannenberg (12:40)

I don't think as a. Like, it would take a deep systemic crisis to even get close to reviving a Christian state.

Graham Donaldson (12:50)

He's saying that ultimately, when you hear people say we need to sort of revive Christian civilization, basically what he's saying is what they really mean Is we need to sort of double down on modernity and fight modernity's fight to the death. And what he means by modernity is he means a growth economy, technological progress, and those are sort of the.

A.J. Hannenberg (13:15)

But do we want those things? We don't want those things.

Graham Donaldson (13:17)

I He says we don't want those things. He actually thinks that modern life and Christian values are incompatible. Which is maybe even more of the fiery, the fiery point that he's getting at. So he kind of has two arguments that he's going through. One he says if you have public intellectuals who say who cares if Christianity is true or false?

Thomas Magbee (13:36)

Who cares?

Graham Donaldson (13:37)

We need its ethic to fight against the. He. He quotes. What's her name? Shoot. The. The wife of Niall Ferguson. What's her name? Ian Hirsi Ali. That's right. So he quotes. So Ian Hersi Ali. She's a public intellectual and she sort of in the early 2000s became kind of famous for her anti fundamentalist Islamic take during the war on terror. And everyone kind of labeled her as, as Islamophobic. And she wrote an article saying like why I'm now a Christian. And her reasons why she was now a Christian had nothing to do with. Didn't really. Or they didn't really talk if it did. Her main point was that we need to sort of establish the Judeo Christian ethic to fight against the rise of like communist China, global Islam and woke ideology like that. And then therefore Christian faith is going to be this bulwark that fights against this sort of three pronged thing. And that was the reason why she was sort of advocating for it.

A.J. Hannenberg (14:47)

So she was a Christian ideologically.

Graham Donaldson (14:48)

But yeah, and also he also Kings north even quotes talking about Jordan Peterson who makes a lot of the same arguments saying like who cares if it's true or false? It's like a good thing for young men to believe, to get them like to establish in this grand tragedy that is life. And King's North I think rightly says Christians cannot, you can, we should not put up with that. The faith is not weak. We people can't just say I want the fruits of Christianity, but I don't, I don't want the belief of Christianity, I don't want the practices. Or maybe if you want the practices, you can't have the fruit without the reality of it. So Jordan Peterson, you know, whether or not he believes in God, he says, well, Christianity is kind of like get some nice outputs. And King's north is saying if we are going to ad. If we're going to sort of like adopt some kind of civilizational Christianity in hopes of getting the outputs. He thinks that that's going to be a wrong, the wrong game to the wrong sort of war to fight that Ali and Peterson are only putting on the mythos of Christianity for the coming war. And he thinks that that's, that's, that's not right. He thinks that that's sort of actually against Christianity in general. So he's got that one argument. And on that argument I'm, I kind of.

Thomas Magbee (16:03)

Yeah, you're sold.

Graham Donaldson (16:04)

I'm sold. I believe with that. I agree with that, that Christianity is not sort of a, sort of a competing a mythos that is in that, that only exists in competition against communism, some sort of like social Marxism or, or Islam. Like that's not what Christianity is. It's not just God didn't just give an identity for us to continue to combat other identities.

Thomas Magbee (16:27)

Right.

Graham Donaldson (16:28)

So I agree with him on that. But then he even gets into and fundamentally says that Christianity, seriously considered, cannot coexist with our modern world, with our modern way of life. And he says, well, even so he, he goes to the Bible and he says when man, when God made man, he put man in a garden and, and had man tend the earth, commune with man and, and sort of live this agrarian, not even agrarian because we weren't even farmers live this sort of like almost hunter gatherer, not even hunter, a gatherer lifestyle.

Thomas Magbee (17:10)

Humans, it turns out, were created as vegetarian gardeners.

Graham Donaldson (17:13)

Yes. So that's, that's what he says.

Thomas Magbee (17:15)

Yeah.

Graham Donaldson (17:15)

And when the fall.

A.J. Hannenberg (17:17)

So the vegetarian thing I have come to find out is maybe foisted upon it. It says, I have given these all the green things, you know, for food. It never says don't eat the animals.

Thomas Magbee (17:28)

Sure.

A.J. Hannenberg (17:29)

Just, just, just a thing to think about is like, I can't find that in the text.

Graham Donaldson (17:33)

Anyway, here's where I think maybe we can start getting into some disagreement, maybe my disagreements. But the whole point of this episode is not to like say what Donson thinks about this. It's just sort of point this out and talk about like this is a tension that exists. And why does this exist on classical stuff? Well, a lot of classical Christian schools have this kind of idea in the back of them that we are educating students either to go off and fight in the culture wars or to quote, regain or save Western civilization. And he wants to make the argument of like, how did Western civilization come about? And that may actually be the way to save it. And it's not the way that Peterson and Ollie were talking about. And it may not be the way that our schools are setting it up to be.

A.J. Hannenberg (18:16)

Anyway, what's this argument about how to save it?

Graham Donaldson (18:18)

Well, we'll get to that.

A.J. Hannenberg (18:18)

Okay.

Graham Donaldson (18:19)

It comes, he. It comes to a reading of what happened at the end of the Roman Empire with, with the monastics and the mystics, but we'll get to that in a second. So this is his reading of God's relationship with human institutions and civilization. When we disobeyed, what happened? Farming happened, work happened, hunting happened, metal work happened, murder happened, cities happened, civilization happened. It was all a deadly result of our fall. So already there's a theological point that he is saying that, like civilization and cities and government are a result of the fall. And there is a. There is a theological position that says that government institutions are necessary because of sin. I can't remember what it's called. And that's contrasted to someone like Thomas Aquinas that says there would have been a. There would have been government if the fall hadn't happened.

A.J. Hannenberg (19:18)

There already was government and there was.

Graham Donaldson (19:19)

Government before the fall happened. So King's north doesn't apparently agree with that. He thinks that civilization is a result of that. Cities and work and farming and. And metal work is a result of the fall. And that is an interpretation of the Old Testament for sure. And that is a theological position that some people in Christian history have held. But it's not like. That's not. Not settled science. No, it's not. That is a. An open theological question, because you could just as clearly, you could just as easily say, well, God actually comes and establishes a way of life for the Israelites. God actually wants a temple built for him. God establishes a city that comes down at the end of history. God praises metal workers and has them adorn his house of worship. In, in the Old Testament, God creates and says, you will be my nation. You will be my people. And seems to establish Israelites as a nation. But Kings north sort of glosses over that and jumps to the book of Samuel where the people say, we want a king. And Samuel says, you don't know what you're asking for if you don't. You want God. And they're like, no, we want a king. And he says, well, the king's going to take your boys and fight him in wars. He's going to take your crops, he's going to take your money. And people are like, we want a king anyway. And he concludes his reading of the Old Testament is at the. This is King's north. At the very least, I think we can say that this God of ours has an ambivalent relationship to humanity's earthly power structures. And then he, towards the end of the essay, he goes on and says, what if? Does. Yeah, does what is when we talk about trying to save Western culture and civilization and therefore to do that we need to sort of emphasize Christian practices and Christian religion in culture. He then asked the question, is the modern way of life that we have compatible with Christianity? And he says this to find out we might hold up the stated values of our own civilization against the famous list of the seven deadly sins. The list was compiled in the sixth century by Pope Gregory I. How is Western civilization doing today at fending off these sins? And we've definitely had a. An episode on this. And I realized that part of this is cut off, actually. This is. Can you read it?

Thomas Magbee (21:58)

Yeah, yeah. You want me to start with? Pride is celebrated everywhere. Pride is celebrated everywhere. Pride in nations, status, wealth, ethnic groups, identity, religion. We have a month long festival named for it. Greed is the basis of our economy along with envy. It is the cornerstone of the idol of our time, the universally worshipped God known as economic growth. If we were neither greedy nor envious, the economy would collapse in five minutes. Wrath is the fuel beneath the culture wars and all of our political factions. As for lust, find me a billboard or a film or a song or a brand of shoes that doesn't piggyback on this most primal human passion. It is perhaps behind only gluttony in its ubiquity. Even sloth has been monetized. How else could something as oxymoronic as a leisure industry even exist?

Graham Donaldson (22:40)

Thanks. And then he says our entire civilization then not only fails to resist these deadly sins, but but actively encourages them. They are the very basis of its existence. This surely is what. Oh, it's somebody that he used as an example early in his speech and many other critics like him, many of them Christian, have been able to see. Are Christianity and modern civilization opposed and irreconcilable on this basis? I think we can say unequivocally, yes. So this is his argument is that sort of the modern growth economy and the way that we have society set up culturally, that seem to be encouraged. The seven deadly sins. He says if we actually created a Christian civilization that fought against that, like took those deadly sins seriously and tried to create an environment or a culture or social practices that removed those seven deadly sins from people's lives, we would actually be at war with the current culture that we have because we would be choking off the. Its oxygen or whatever. And then, and then he continues to go on and mention that the teachings of Jesus himself are no basis for building a civilization. When Jesus says to abandon your dead father and let the dead bury the dead and follow me, to not store up your grain in barns, to not carry about tomorrow, to give away all that you had to the poor to. And he says if you sort of take those commands of Jesus seriously, you know, that's sort of, that's no way to run a city. Right, right. And so in that sense he's sort of saying that like a lot of the commands of Jesus are anti civilized or uncivilized because if you did, if everybody did them, you would not have a, a functioning city. And in many ways this reminded me of, of the Grand Inquisitor, when the Grand Inquisitor so. And also the temptation of Jesus in the desert. So which he makes reference to in his speech. He doesn't make reference to the Grand Inquisitor, but he does make reference to, to the temptation, the desert. The devil shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the earth and says quite provocatively, this has been given to me. I have authority over all of this. Which is already kind of a wild thing for the devil to say.

Thomas Magbee (25:13)

Right.

Graham Donaldson (25:14)

If it's true, he says, I have authority over all the kingdoms of the earth. Worship me and they're yours. And Jesus says no. And in the Grand Inquisitor narrative, A.J. you're the expert on this. Why does a Grand Inquisitor take issue with Jesus saying no to the devil's offer of getting authority over all the. Do you remember?

Thomas Magbee (25:36)

Is it because he could have fed everyone?

Graham Donaldson (25:37)

Yeah, it's because he could have fed everybody that like if, if Jesus agreed.

Thomas Magbee (25:41)

He could have done so much better. If he take a deal.

Graham Donaldson (25:43)

Just use, think of all the good. Use the ring for good.

Thomas Magbee (25:46)

Yeah.

Graham Donaldson (25:49)

And so Jesus of course says no. But the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky's story has, has, is mad at Jesus because he's like, listen, you could have ended suffering, you could have ended misery. You could have Jesus, you could have set up Christian civilization if you had said yes. And Jesus says no. And so King's north holds it up and says, if Jesus says no to all the powers of the earth, then what are, what are Christians doing saying that they need to have earthly power.

Thomas Magbee (26:15)

That's good.

Graham Donaldson (26:16)

It's good.

Thomas Magbee (26:17)

I think he's conflating a lot of things.

Graham Donaldson (26:19)

I think he is conflating a lot of Things and then to answer it. So let's sort of see where he goes with this. Let's get to AJ's last question, which was, okay, so then what do you do? He says, I believe there is wisdom to be found for us in this disintegrating age. Not in crusading knights or Christian nationalists, not in emperors or soldiers, but in the mystics, the ascetics, the hermits of the caves and the wild saints of the forest in the desert. These were the people who built a real Christian culture. So did simple everyday lovers of God in the world who tended to the poor and the sick for no reward. As the gates of Rome were breached by gods, as Ireland and England were invaded by Vikings, as the Ottomans overcame Constantinople, as the Communists dynamic cathedrals and crucified monks, they kept on. And then.

Thomas Magbee (27:13)

You want me to read the rest of the paragraph?

Graham Donaldson (27:14)

Yeah.

Thomas Magbee (27:14)

They did their work. They did not fight for civilization. They fought for Christ. And they fought not with swords, but with prayer and with active love for their neighbors and enemies. Without that love, the devil wins, he.

Graham Donaldson (27:26)

Goes on to say. And so his reading of why the Church grew in the first century at all was that it was the Christians who stayed behind in the plague ridden cities to take care of the dead. It was the Christians who took care of the discarded babies of the Roman elites who didn't want to. If they gave birth to a daughter, they're like, well, I don't want another one of those. And they left them exposed. The Christians took them in and raised them. And the Christians obviously were willing to die during the midst of the persecutions. And then he says, culture, I sometimes thinks are built by accident. If at the heart of all cultures is a sacred jewel, a revealed truth, if all cultures have a spiritual essence, well, then it comes from spiritual work. The monks built the west just as surely as the soldiers did, and they built the more enduring part. Christian civilization, wrote the liturgical artist Hilary White recently, is the secondary fruit of Christian mysticism. And then he quotes A quote by C.S. lewis where C.S. lewis says revision religions devised for a social purpose, like Roman emperor worship, or modern attempts to sell Christianity as a means of saving civilization do not come to much. The little knots of friends who turn their back on the world are those who really transform it. And so his conclusion is that the way to sort of, if we really do want to save the west, or not even save the west, if we really do want to have sort of, if we really do want to have anything, what do we do in this time of declining Confusion. And his argument is that there's, there's prayer, love service and sort of a return to Christian mysticism, a turning one's back on the world and then from that turning one's back on the world. He says when that happened the first time it happened after the, when Rome fell and all of its sort of like magisterium of the Roman Empire being this Christian thing that was going off to perfect the world, it fell apart. What created the next, what created the next Christian age was this thing that nobody could have guessed. And it was this society of the Middle Ages built out of the mysticism of the desert fathers and the monastics. And then that middle aged society existed until it got co opted and decadent and sort of turned into, you know, the Renaissance which turned into the industrialism which turned into modernity. And so his view is that like what we're looking at now, what modernity is right now is this like mush. He doesn't put this, this is more. My theory is that what modernity, what our modern world is is this amalgamation of like Christianity of Europe and you know, technology, a belief in sort of technology in the classical world of the Renaissance and all this thing and all of this stuff sort of pushed together into institutions of sort of the English legal world. And he says it's falling apart and the way to revive it is not to sort of fight for some sort of idea of Christian civilization, but it's almost like to turn one's back and retreat and just sort of like embrace the coming Dark Ages and be Christian mystics in hopes that something can come out of that. And he said, who would have guessed of the revival of the Russian church in the midst of, of communism, like for the Christians when, when the communists were blowing up all the cathedrals and crucifying all the monks, they would have thought this is the end of history. But 70 years later kind is Communism is gone or is at least not what it was and Christianity remains and is and that and Eastern, Eastern Orthodoxy is sort of on the ascendancy. And so he's like that is the way to do it. And they didn't do it because they doubled down and fought for Christian civilization. They kind of retreated to almost these like mystical lives of just like white knuckling, keeping the faith going in the midst of, of destruction. Anyway, so that's his argument is that any kinds of attempts to save the west through like a recapturing of Christianity and maybe even if we're going to be a little self critical, the classical education World he is skeptical of and thinks that that is what, a deadly error and that what we should be doing is presumably retreating from the world and focusing on lives of prayer and contemplation in hopes that from that a new vision of the. Of the Christian future can take shape. All right, that's, I think, as my. My best attempt to kind of. To give justice to his. His position.

Thomas Magbee (32:25)

Do you want to. Do you want to start with your response, or do you want A.J.

Graham Donaldson (32:27)

To.

A.J. Hannenberg (32:28)

About 40 minutes in?

Graham Donaldson (32:29)

Yeah, let's go for it, A.J. let's. Let's see. Well, okay. Some. Some criticisms. One, by saying that. That civilization and government and farming and cities was the result of the fall, I think is too easy a reading of the Old Testament. I think I agree sort of with Aquinas, that there would have been a structure of government that was pre Lapserian. I know that. That, you know. And so this idea of. Yes. So natural government is not just to mitigate sin. Natural government is something that exists in the positive, not just in the negative sense.

A.J. Hannenberg (33:05)

Yes.

Graham Donaldson (33:06)

So like the natural family. So in that sense, like, if Adam and Eve did not sin and they reproduced and you had a nation of sinless beings on earth creating the garden, you would have had organizational structures, and God would not have been ambivalent.

A.J. Hannenberg (33:21)

Even talks about, like, Adam naming the animals and ruling over them and being a student. Like, there's all of these things. Like, clearly there was government before the lapse.

Graham Donaldson (33:28)

Yeah. So he kind of falls into that more like Hobbes or Locke Enlightenment idea that civilization, or even Rousseau, that civilization is a. Or that that government structures is a necessary evil to reign in man's excesses. And I don't think that's true. I think that there was a positive government in the old test. And yes, I agree.

A.J. Hannenberg (33:49)

Are there other criticisms?

Thomas Magbee (33:51)

You're walking away like you're done.

Graham Donaldson (33:52)

Oh, no.

A.J. Hannenberg (33:52)

I was gonna get that hot sauce. I just want to taste some.

Thomas Magbee (33:54)

Wait, what?

A.J. Hannenberg (33:56)

That's all? It's just sitting over the table, tempting me. I wanted to try the hot sauce.

Thomas Magbee (34:00)

Do you want to say.

A.J. Hannenberg (34:02)

I was wondering if there were more. You said there were some criticisms. Is that the only one you have?

Graham Donaldson (34:06)

There's that one. The idea that our entire basis and mode of life is incompatible with Christianity because of the seven deadly sins. I don't think when he says that our entire economic system is based on greed and envy. I don't think it's also. I don't think it's fair.

A.J. Hannenberg (34:22)

I think it is based on debt, but I don't think it's the same thing.

Graham Donaldson (34:24)

I think you can have a.

Thomas Magbee (34:27)

You, Siri, come on, that's bad.

Graham Donaldson (34:29)

I think you can have a positive vision of economic activity that isn't just based. That doesn't just fan the flames of sinful desire. I think it's hard. I think, Fang, the flames of sinful desire is going to come a lot. But, but just to say because. Because the system has created excesses, people creating something and selling it so that they can continue to create something. That mechanism in and of itself is not sinful. It's like saying alcohol is not molecularly sinful. It's just the. The misuses of it are. Christ turned water into wine, his first.

A.J. Hannenberg (35:10)

Miracle and good one.

Graham Donaldson (35:12)

So it's like the actual buying and selling of goods at its core, sinful. And I don't think it is. But he sort of. He. He seems to conflate the two and say that it is. And so I wonder if we went through all of those sorts of things. Like, is. Is wrath really the basis of our government structures? No, it's not. At least it shouldn't be. Our. Our government structures is based on, like.

A.J. Hannenberg (35:32)

The dudes who are working on the roads aren't exactly doing that because of wrath.

Graham Donaldson (35:36)

Even when. Well, let me just read this little section that I've been teaching in my government class from Madison's Federalist Papers, number 10. When he talks about. So let's see if we can find it. See if I can. Where he talks about. Sorry, I realized I didn't have this. Right. Ready to go wrath or what? No, it's just about, like he says, what we need to do is we need to be electing people. Oh, here we go. We should be electing people and passing laws, passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens whose wisdom may best discern the true intent of their country and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial consideration. Right, this sort of like, at its founding, at least in the early days of the American experiment in the American Republic, there was a belief that we are going to establish a country wherein people who love justice are going to be put in positions of make of passing laws. And to say that because that may have degraded over 200 years and we now have really embarrassing, like, screaming matches of these, like, Senate hearing committees, it's again that same argument, like, is civilization as an idea inherently sinful? Or is it just that, like, we employing it have done poor jobs of maintaining it? And my position is we have done poor jobs of maintaining it. And it sounds like King's north is saying at its very conceptual level, God is against it. And I don't think that's true. I don't think that's true.

Thomas Magbee (37:30)

He says his thing is that God is at best ambivalent.

Graham Donaldson (37:34)

At best ambivalent.

Thomas Magbee (37:35)

He clearly shows opposition to like the monarchy. Right? Opposition to there being a king.

Graham Donaldson (37:40)

That's right. Yeah.

A.J. Hannenberg (37:41)

I was thinking about this. This is one of my. So as you were talking, I was writing down my beefs for the 40 minute mark. So one of them is that sins have always infected culture because since have always infected man, our culture is not unique in that there's. There is sin. Right. If you look back at almost any of the cultures, you could level the same. You know, the seven deadly sins are part of what we do, criticism. Like look at the Vikings. Was greed not a part of their world? Lust for things? Right. Greed was the very foundation of their culture. Right. They raided other civilizations as of yet. We haven't invaded Canada as of yet.

Graham Donaldson (38:18)

So Vikings did.

A.J. Hannenberg (38:19)

There's. And the Vikings did. Yeah. And so if we're, if we're talking about that like the seven deadly sins being an integral piece of our culture, I, I think that they have reared their ugly head in every culture because they rear their head.

Graham Donaldson (38:31)

But that's also his point is that they've rear their head in every culture and he's saying can there be, can there be a distinctly Christian civilization or is because culture is going. Because sins are going to shoot themselves through culture. Like Christians shouldn't play the game of trying to create civilization.

A.J. Hannenberg (38:50)

But his recommendation is to create smaller Christian civilizations almost by accident.

Graham Donaldson (38:55)

Yes, if he wants us turning your back on the world.

A.J. Hannenberg (38:57)

Yeah, if he wants us to create, you know, monasteries where monks can flourish. There are no more regulated places than that. That is civility at its highest. Right. That is civilization. And if that's his solution, I mean I am sympathetic with his notion that we cannot take this whole nation and make it once again a Christian community.

Graham Donaldson (39:15)

Yes, I'm sympathetic to that too.

A.J. Hannenberg (39:17)

I don't think, I think he is right in saying that that is a fool's errand to try to make this a Christian centered, Christian based nation. But I do think it's a little bit silly to say that civilization is bad as an solution is to create civilizations on a smaller scale. Like that seems a little silly to me.

Graham Donaldson (39:36)

I think he's. I think you're right in saying that like what he is ascribing for is a, like a, like a massive distilling down to smaller Christian communities. And I bet if we actually pushed, if you were able to push Kings north, you would probably agree with that. I don't think he would say people need to be isolated or like the monastics also didn't have families and children. I don't think he would go that far. So I, I do think if you sort of like asked him real practically how this works out, he would give you some kind of vision of like the small localized Christian parish working together.

A.J. Hannenberg (40:12)

I was going to say. So what he wants is the church and we have that.

Graham Donaldson (40:14)

Yeah, but, but it's almost like he wants that and nothing more or anything more than we have is going to is, is like the church should not be backstopping its failings. The church should almost be like working in the margins or in the half spaces of those of civilization to sort of right the wrongs that the civilization does wrong, which is. So if civilization is always going to exploit, the church is supposed to be there to, to, to mitigate the exploitation as opposed to the church should be coming in and helping prop up the exploiting civilization.

A.J. Hannenberg (40:52)

Yeah, but I mean, it sounds like what he wants is the church and are we not doing that? Like our church is not having food drives and helping the poor and making disciples, which is the Great Commission. It just seems like he wants the church to be better than it is that that seems like his call is like Christians do this and, or maybe just to prevent the church from saying we need to overhaul this whole government of the entire nation and make it a Christian nation once again. And I'm sympathetic to that, but I don't know that we need to do much different than we are already doing. Which is.

Graham Donaldson (41:21)

No, but the thing is, what he wants to fight against is, is us saying like we are going to adopt or hold up or, or encourage Christian activities and Christian principles because they're the most effective tool to push back against the present enemies of communism or woke.

A.J. Hannenberg (41:45)

Ideologies or oh, so basically don't have Christianity. Stay out of that tussle. Like that ideological fight that's happening in the media and everywhere else.

Graham Donaldson (41:54)

He says he wants Christianity to not be part of that tussle.

A.J. Hannenberg (41:57)

That's what I'm saying. Yeah, he wants that. I'm sympathetic to that.

Graham Donaldson (42:00)

Or if they are part of that tussle. They're not part of that tussle of like aligning themselves with modern civilization. They're part of that tussle by removing themselves from civilization to pray and be mystic and contemplate. And I think that rubs a lot of people the wrong way. Like if that's, if, you know, I.

A.J. Hannenberg (42:18)

Don'T know that, like mysticism and contemplation. I think as long as you couple those with real activity in your community, like these ideological battles happen every, you know, in the media, but what's actually happening in the nation is individual activity within a community. And as long as we are, as a church focused on those things, like, I'm happy, I'm happy not to submit Talking heads to the news. Yeah, so I'm sympathetic with some of his stuff. I just think he, he ends at that place in a. I don't know, it seems, it seems more inflammatory than it has to be. And also, like he says, we want to preserve the West. We like this culture, our current culture is the logical conclusion of the West. Like it's. If we're talking about Western culture, we are Western culture right now. And so what exactly are we preserving?

Graham Donaldson (43:05)

What he's saying we shouldn't be preserving this.

A.J. Hannenberg (43:08)

Well, which iteration does he like? I mean, what is he trying to harken back to? That would be my question. Because if we're talking about, say, Britain during the Plantagenets, I wouldn't exactly call that the culture that we want, where everyone is after power and killing each other. And it's tribal and I don't think we want that. We also don't want the Vikings or maybe the culture of the 1300s. So it seems like he wants a very specific notion of culture. And what he wants is virtue. And I think that's found in the church.

Graham Donaldson (43:33)

Well, I think it's fine. I think it is helpful that when people say, oh man, we need to have a return to Christian values or even classical schools, because like this, this a lot there are classical Christian conferences that have like the tagline saving the west as its tagline. And that is very much in sort of the, A lot of the. I'm sure there's headmasters of schools that are like, I'm creating students who can go off and can recapture this kind of lost glory days of the Western civilization that we've lost now. Because look at all the excesses and look at the fighting and look at all the pornography and look at all the violence and whatnot and, and, and tech running away with our children's lives. Like we need to go back and return to something, to a glorious classical past. And his point is not. His point is you're not going to Be able to go back and retain a glorious past. If you actually want to build a Christian future, you almost need to reject this dying animal that we have right here, get out of its way as it's dying, retain Christian practices in the small scale and then, and then know or have faith that a new sort of Christian vision of society is going to come out of it. Some sort of Christian society that is, you know, that that is compatible with modern technology and, and the world that we're going, that we have on the other side of whatever is coming. I mean, you could also just not agree with King's north and, and, and think that, that we're at the end of some great thing.

A.J. Hannenberg (45:12)

But I mean, I, Yeah, I mean.

Graham Donaldson (45:15)

I think that's the Benedict option is what he's talking.

A.J. Hannenberg (45:17)

Yeah. And it's what I try to do every day with my students. Like if, if preserving the west and his ide. Teach our students the great ideas and then also try to hand them virtue, I'm on board with that. I do wish the taglines of some of those acc. You know, the like conferences you have of classical schools was instead of saving the west.

Graham Donaldson (45:37)

It would be so combative, teaching our.

A.J. Hannenberg (45:39)

Children virtue and handing, out, handing down the great ideas.

Graham Donaldson (45:42)

So do you think, A.J. then we should have or Thomas Deegan weigh in on this? Do you think that we should want our students to then go off and try to reform institutions? I'm thinking again, I'm going back and I'm thinking of this in regards to the Thomas Moore episode we did before. Like, do we want to go off and can we reform if the, if the institutions of the west are degrading, which is King's North's position, should we be going back and trying to, trying to, you know, like Nineveh, like we, we were talking about in the, in the in between episode. Like, should. Can. Can the institutions repent and buy another lease on life? Sounds like Kingsnorth says no. But what do you think, Thomas? Like, should we be encouraging students to like, try to go off and bring back our public and private institutions from the brink?

Thomas Magbee (46:35)

I don't know if I buy them. I probably don't buy the premise off the bat, but let me. This is King's North, I think. Did you read the part where he uses the phrase defend the West? I think you picked up the paragraph after. So I just wanted to read this. Our work is not to defend the West. This is what he says. That's idol worship. Our work is repentance, which means transformation. We have to be prepared to die and thus reborn. I'm speaking as someone who is most of the time afraid even to contemplate what this might demand of me, which is very good. Yeah, I think he. I hear all the points that you all are making. I do think that we need to. We should be on watch for the deadly sins. And I think that there are unique temptations to living in 2025 that didn't exist in 2005 or 95, or pick whatever decade, or pick a few hundred years ago. Pick a five. Yeah, pick a five. There are unique temptations to a given time. And I just had this in my mind of long time ago when I first came across Thomas Merton, was really fascinated with this idea of monasteries and monks and really, like, loved that idea and so spent a lot of time thinking about what it would look like to be a monk and like, go into that life. But that's not what I'm called to. I'm a husband and I'm a father and I'm not ever going to be a monk in a monastery. And so it's fine to, like, think about what it would look like if things were better. But I think AJ's points are kind of around the, like, what do I do tomorrow? And if I believe in this argument, I kind of give up. Right. And I don't think that is right. And I don't think that's what people should do.

A.J. Hannenberg (48:15)

Yeah, I was going to say, I think we are called as Christians to do a couple of things. Make disciples and to be virtuous and follow Christ, then if those things are reformative, to answer Donaldson's question, like, should we go into these places and reform them? I think, you know, being a person who is making disciples, who's being virtuous, you may get promoted and then those things will suffuse themselves into the institution and like that. That is our call. And to quote Steinbeck, this is one of my favorite quotes, he says, evil must constantly respawn while good, while virtue is immortal. Vice has always a new, fresh, young face, while virtue is venerable, as nothing else in the world is. Like, no, it's not a flashy solution to say, go and keep on doing. Like, keep on making disciples and being virtuous. It sounds like Kings north ends in this place. But I don't think it should be one of resignation. I think it should be continuing to do the call that Christians have been called to for forever.

Thomas Magbee (49:14)

Yeah.

Graham Donaldson (49:14)

When it comes to the monastic thing, I think this is answered with the idea that the body is one with many parts. Like, are there people who should turn their backs on society, turn their backs on marriage, turn their backs on family formation and be people who go off and in their lives kind of live a. Like, screw you guys, I'm going to the woods. No. And like some sort of idea of prayer and contemplation as a model of resi. Of. Of like turning away from the evils of the world. I definitely think that there should be that people for who they should live their lives that way. And I think that that ends up being. But not, not everybody.

A.J. Hannenberg (49:57)

Sure.

Graham Donaldson (49:57)

And the, the. The benefit of that is that their, their lives are almost being lived as sacrifices of examples to the rest of us. And that's how the, that's how the mystics were, is that everyone came into visit them and said things like, holy crap, you're living this crazy aesthetic life in the woods. What can you tell me about God? And he'll say, you know, and you would. He would give some. An answer that could be taken back to the community and would strengthen the faith of the community. I think that's an important thing. But equally as important is I think like Dossy FC has the idea that, that extreme people are either going to be criminals or monks. Right. If you are like Ross Colin Coff, if you are such an extreme person that you are going to live completely out of your convictions, well, when your convictions are I want to get what's mine, you're going to go off and murder somebody. And when your conviction is God is God and I am not, well, then you're going to go off and live out that conviction by being. Rejecting everything and living in the woods. But not everybody is an extreme person. Rasumakin is not an extreme person in Crime and Punishment and Russ Kolnikov's sister Dunya is not an extreme person. They go off and get married and live, you know, their, their sort of. Their, Their life together. And Raskolnikov doesn't. So I think there's. I think King's north is right in saying that if we are living through a degraded time morally that the church should be looking for people who are going off and trying to keep the, you know, making sure that the faith doesn't get caught up and swept up in the passions of its time. And if that means that there are people that need to remove. Remove themselves from the streams and flows of those passionate times. And that's a good thing.

Thomas Magbee (51:46)

Right?

Graham Donaldson (51:46)

But that's. Not everybody can't do that, nor should everybody do that and if you had like, if you had a family, you don't abandon them. Right. Like Thomas, you should not go and do that.

Thomas Magbee (51:53)

Correct. But also, but aging. But just even that list of like these are how the deadly sins infiltrate into our modern age. He's not wrong.

Graham Donaldson (52:05)

He's not wrong.

Thomas Magbee (52:05)

Like can wrath be the motivation for political fights? Yeah, 100%. But then. So there are things we need to deny ourselves.

Graham Donaldson (52:13)

That may be, but so could high minded justice.

Thomas Magbee (52:16)

That's right. But there's probably TV you shouldn't watch. There's probably music you shouldn't listen to. You probably should pray more and watch less, watch fewer movies. Like those are things that are true. And so Yeah, I think AJ's right to frame this as like it's not no civilization, it's smaller civilization. And so people should, you should. If for Christian listeners, you should have a church that is close to where you live that you're like really involved in. Right. So these aren't like radical things, but they're necessary things if you're going to like maintain sanity.

Graham Donaldson (52:45)

Right. Yep. Anyway, that is the, the episode. So it is, it is a, the reason I put it out there is because yeah, it's pertinent to our ideas of school. I think he is highlighting a coming, a growing movement that exists in Christian circles that I think is worth highlighting as a potential blind spot in contentious times. So like, you know, if he, he lists Ali's concerns about sort of the, the, the great forces, the great forces that fighting against the west of like the rose, the rise of global Islam, totalitarian communist China and cultural Marxism as these great things. Whether or not you think that those are dangers or that those are, you know, sort of enemies or whatever you want to call it. I think he's right in pointing out that the argument is not a militarized or a, A, A sort of a crusading Christian faith that's fighting back against that even despite all the memes you see online. But it is that sort of, yeah, a distilling down into, into, into deep and robust Christian communities, which is scary because there's not a lot of them. And one of the questions that we had in our, on our AMAs was a question about sort of the movement of, of young people in regards to the denominations and being born out of maybe the weakness of, of modern churches. Not really sort of being sufficient in giving people a vision of the Christian life that can fight against the seven deadly sins of the modern age, but maybe even sort of like either pooh pooh them or even worse, lean into them. So anyway, so I think King's north is. Yes. I don't agree with everything that he says. I think he's a very challenge. I would encourage everybody to go and listen to the lecture because we only gave a little bit of it. But I think. I think Ajay's is. His pronouncement is right. Is that. Yeah, it's. That it's a smaller civilization. And.

Thomas Magbee (55:03)

Yeah.

Graham Donaldson (55:03)

Anyway, those are the. That's the episodes. Any. Any final thoughts? You got any. Any other little zingers you want to get in there?

A.J. Hannenberg (55:10)

No, like a waka waka.

Graham Donaldson (55:13)

That's not what I mean. I mean, like, are there any other avenues that we haven't.

A.J. Hannenberg (55:18)

I don't think so. I, you know, I hate to do that thing where I'm like, well, God's just asking us to keep on being faithful. And like, you know, I feel like my answer's never revolutionary here. But it, you know, it does. Evil always has a fresh, new, young face.

Thomas Magbee (55:34)

And there. But there's something to the. Like, you all work at a private Christian school. Like, you all are a part of a smaller community that is, like, intentionally. There's this cool part, but there's the discipleship component. You all are doing something more than just kids come to your class and you teach them for a few hours a week. So I think you all live out in a way that is much closer to what Kingsnorth is arguing for. Maybe I want to talk about that more in the. In between, but I don't know if that's what you have in mind. When you say there aren't a lot of places like this. Like when you say there aren't a lot of Christian communities that.

Graham Donaldson (56:09)

Yeah, well, I was just thinking of.

Thomas Magbee (56:10)

Or churches or.

Graham Donaldson (56:12)

Yeah, a lot of modern churches. People are like, I could just get the sermon online.

Thomas Magbee (56:20)

That's right. That's right. Yeah.

Graham Donaldson (56:22)

So, yeah. Anyway.

Thomas Magbee (56:23)

All right. This has been Classical Stuff. You should know. You can find us online at classicalstuff.net you can find us on x.com at classicalstuff. C L-S S C A L Stuff. You can find us on Patreon. Patreon.com Classical stuff where we record in between episodes after each of our main episodes. We're going to record one right now to continue the conversation. We also have monthly AMAs. We just recorded one of those today.

A.J. Hannenberg (56:47)

And you can find some of our old episodes that we've deleted from our mainstream. Like some of the stuff I'VE done that I'm embarrassed of. I leave up for the patrons.

Thomas Magbee (56:53)

Have you actually deleted stuff? Oh, yeah, I think I have one that I recorded during COVID that we deleted from the main feed.

Graham Donaldson (56:59)

Also.

Thomas Magbee (56:59)

It's one of my Dante episodes.

A.J. Hannenberg (57:00)

Yeah. And I think I had one about some stuff from Poe and like. Yeah, there's definitely episodes.

Graham Donaldson (57:06)

Deleting episodes.

Thomas Magbee (57:06)

Well, Squarespace has a limit on the number of episodes we can have, so I think.

A.J. Hannenberg (57:09)

Do they really?

Thomas Magbee (57:10)

Yeah, I think three or five hundred. Yeah, it's all Graham's episodes, weirdly enough.

A.J. Hannenberg (57:14)

So we might. We might have to.

Thomas Magbee (57:15)

I think we'll have to at some point.

A.J. Hannenberg (57:16)

The other great thing is that Patreon now has an option to go to, like, post for a podcast. So we might already have hosting with Patreon.

Thomas Magbee (57:25)

I think they also let us. I think we can sell individual posts. I wonder if we should do that for AMAs so people can, like, try them out, but.

A.J. Hannenberg (57:31)

Oh, we can.

Thomas Magbee (57:31)

We could try to talk about that anyway. Yeah, we put all that stuff on Patreon. You can support us there and get access to a ton of content, everything AJ just said. Plus we have some recordings of conference talks or trainings at Veritas, just like things that we've done outside of the podcast that are posted.

A.J. Hannenberg (57:47)

You can also chat with us there. Chat with us there.

Thomas Magbee (57:49)

It's such a good deal. Let's all go sign up.

A.J. Hannenberg (57:52)

Even the $2 one gets you all that. It doesn't get you in betweens, but.

Thomas Magbee (57:55)

Most of the stuff, it gets you access to. The chat.

A.J. Hannenberg (57:57)

Yeah, the chat.

Thomas Magbee (57:57)

Just two bucks a month, so check it out. It's great. You can email us, the guys@classicalstuff.net, we'll read your email, we'll try and reply. I don't know. We do our best, but we read it, so there's that. So thank you all so much for listening and we talk with you all again soon. Bye.