What Caused Secularization? Yale Historian & Michael Horton on Radical Mystics and the Reformation

Summary

Podcast Episode Summary

Podcast: Know What You Believe with Michael Horton
Episode: What Caused Secularization? Yale Historian & Michael Horton on Radical Mystics and the Reformation
Date: January 27, 2026
Host: Michael Horton
Guests: Dr. Carlos Eire (Yale University), Caleb Waite (Sola Media)

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the roots of secularization and the persistence of enchantment and miraculous claims in the modern era. Drawing from their extensive historical research, Dr. Michael Horton and Dr. Carlos Eire discuss how supposed radical mystics, rather than mainstream Protestants or Catholics, have shaped modern spiritual attitudes. The conversation ranges from the Reformation's challenge to miracles, through the persistence of spiritual ecstasy, to the contemporary popularity of New Age spirituality and its implications for Western society.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Opening & Introduction (00:38–03:49)

• Caleb Waite introduces Dr. Michael Horton (the usual host, now guest) and Dr. Carlos Eire.
• Both scholars’ works challenge the narrative that modernity purely equates to rationalism and a loss of enchantment.
• Dr. Eire summarized as a specialist in mystical phenomena and miracles in post-Reformation Europe (“They Flew: A History of the Impossible”).
• Dr. Horton’s trilogy examines the "spiritual but not religious" phenomenon, tracing its roots from ancient mysticism to modernity.

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What Drove Their Research? (05:15–10:00)

Dr. Carlos Eire:

• “All of my work has focused on the way in which the visible and invisible relate to one another in religion...” (05:19)
• Lifelong fascination with how societies interpret the natural and supernatural.
• Persistent questioning of historical testimony—how likely is it all is fabricated, especially given religious penalties for lying?

Dr. Michael Horton:

• Inspired by Oxford lectures critiquing traditional religion and exalting mystical, heterodox strands:
  • “That was the trigger for me... That’s how that happened.” (08:31–10:00)

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Miraculous Claims After the Reformation (10:00–21:06)

Dr. Carlos Eire:

• Miraculous events like levitation and bilocation spiked after the Reformation due to both polemical and procedural reasons.
  • “My approach is to ask the question, very rational question. How likely is it that 100% of these testimonies...are lying?” (15:43)
• Enhanced evidence from canonization inquests: strict, sworn testimonies from witnesses who believe in hell/purgatory.

Notable Cases:

• St. Teresa of Avila:
  • Ordered nuns to “hold her down” during ecstasies; nuns convinced they could not restrain her (17:29).
  • Ecstasy while cooking with the last bit of olive oil—adds believability due to mundane detail.
• St. Joseph of Cupertino:
  • “Hundreds and hundreds”—even a visiting Lutheran duke converts after witnessing levitation (19:44).

Michael Horton:

• Draws a parallel with Sarah Pierrepont Edwards (wife of Jonathan Edwards):
  • "I repeatedly flew out of my chair... feeling I had left behind my body as an empty shell and should, as it were, drop into the divine being..." (22:45)

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Renaissance Florence & The Hunt for Spiritual Ecstasy (24:24–28:57)

Michael Horton:

• Florence post-Black Death—social turmoil and fear of death fueled interest in astrology, Hermeticism, and esoteric practices.
• Marsilio Ficino: Saw no real difference between priestly, medical, and “natural magic” roles.
• Magicians often vied with the Church for spiritual authority—Church tried to draw the line but often compromised.
  • “There was a sense that the magicians were competing with the Church for magic...” (27:14)

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Skepticism and Superstition in Early Modern Europe (29:50–34:14)

Dr. Eire:

• Catholic skepticism of miracles predates Protestant Reformation—Inquisition investigates and often debunks peasant visions in 16th-century Spain, dampening reports.
  • “Reports of visions...dwindled because everyone knows...the Inquisition will come and grill them.” (29:50)
• Magic—black or white—remained widespread; late medieval Europe was not fully “Christianized,” full of “superstitions, pagan holdovers, and even some dark stuff.” (31:16)

Michael Horton:

• Debunks “Whiggish” myth of credulous premodern versus skeptical modern:
  • “...people in earlier ages may have been more open to supernatural activity...but they weren’t any more gullible than we are...” (31:52)

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Modern Spirituality: From Religion to Crystals (36:12–41:49)

Dr. Eire:

• Younger audiences are more open to non-materialist, enchanted worldviews.
• "Human beings are inherently religious...our species might as well be called 'Homo religiosus.'" (37:15)
• Scientific discoveries (e.g., quantum physics, theories about consciousness) are undermining strict materialism.

Michael Horton:

• Many moderns are “natural supernaturalists”—spiritual but without God external to the universe.
• “What I see is a reaction against both materialism on one hand and supernaturalism on the other, and the triumph of a kind of...natural supernaturalism.” (40:47)

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Radicals & Forgotten Shapers of Modernity (45:09–51:04)

Michael Horton:

• Modernity owes more to radical “weirdos” (Anabaptists, spiritual individualists) than to either mainstream Catholics or Protestants:
  • "Modernity is more the product of the so–called weirdos. For instance, the radical Anabaptists..." (45:44)
  • "They wrote the first Bible criticism volumes...to shift authority from an external source...to the inner light, the inner divine self." (46:24)
• Impact of figures like Thomas Müntzer, Sebastian Franck, Caspar Schwenkfeld, Emanuel Swedenborg.

Dr. Eire:

• Ginzburg’s Menocchio: A simple miller with radical cosmology. "The poor man...keeps coming back to face the Inquisition." (48:59)
• Radical beliefs, often persecuted, foreshadowed modern Western religious individualism.

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Did the Radicals “Win”? Reconsidering Weberian Secularization (52:25–61:10)

Michael Horton:

• Critiques Max Weber’s “disenchantment” thesis—modernity, if anything, is re-enchanted in a non-Christian sense.
• “This idea that we're disenchanted is crazy. And if you look at the statistics today, people who move from traditional Christianity to ‘spiritual but not religious’ become more superstitious, not less.” (54:29)
• Protestant and Catholic metaphysics more aligned than supposed: both open to miracles, debating mostly over scriptural authority and the purpose of miracles.

Dr. Eire:

• Protestant Reformed tradition (especially Zwingli) uncomfortable with matter/spirit unity, preferred more spiritualized, less material piety (e.g., in Eucharistic theology).
• Protestants largely adopted Catholic demonology regarding post-biblical miracles—if they occur, they’re probably demonic.
  • “While Protestants rejected much of Catholic theology, they simultaneously accepted Catholic medieval demonology almost 100%.” (57:32)
• Metaphysical debates persisted over the relation of finite/infinite, especially in Eucharist controversies.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Dr. Carlos Eire:
  “My overarching question in this book is: historians should pause before they reject certain kinds of testimony as necessarily being false in some way...How likely is it that 100% of them are lying?” (15:35–16:34).
• Michael Horton:
  “Modernity is more the product of the so-called weirdos...The utopianism...all of that had more of an impact on modernity than either the Magisterial Reformation or the Counter-Reformation.” (45:44–46:34)
• Carlos Eire:
  “Human beings are inherently religious...I've often argued our species is called ‘Homo sapiens,’ might as well also call it ‘Homo religiosus.’” (37:10)
• Michael Horton:
  “People in earlier ages may have been more open to supernatural activity...but they weren't any more gullible than we are...” (31:52)
• Michael Horton:
  “This idea that we’re disenchanted is crazy. If you look at the statistics today, people who move from traditional Christianity to ‘spiritual but not religious’ become more superstitious, not less.” (54:29–55:00)
• Dr. Carlos Eire:
  “While Protestants rejected much of Catholic theology, they simultaneously accepted Catholic medieval demonology almost 100%.” (57:32)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introduction & Background: 00:38–05:15
• Motivations & Research: 05:15–10:00
• Miraculous Claims & Levitation: 10:00–21:06
• Renaissance Mysticism & Magicians: 24:24–28:57
• Skepticism and Superstition: 29:50–34:14
• Modern Spirituality & Science: 36:12–41:49
• Radical Reformers & Modernity: 45:09–51:04
• Disenchantment, Weber, & Modern Superstition: 52:25–61:10

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Conclusion (62:26–63:07)

• Caleb Waite thanks both guests; recommends their recent books for understanding the contemporary “sprawling enchanted age” and the search for spiritual ecstasy.
• Both Dr. Eire and Dr. Horton thank the host and audience.

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Takeaway:
This episode urges listeners to rethink standard accounts of Europe’s secularization, highlighting how fascination with the miraculous and the mystical remains deeply embedded in Western culture—from Renaissance magicians to today’s New Age trends. Both skeptical and faithful, modernity is less disenchanted than it is differently enchanted—and historians, theologians, and all curious minds need to account for the persistence of the impossible.

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Recommended Reading:

• They Flew: A History of the Impossible by Carlos Eire
• Magician and Mechanic (trilogy) by Michael Horton

Transcript

[A]

The five SOLAs of the Reformation brought essential truths of salvation and purpose into clear focus. These truths are just as critical to Christian life today as they were 500 years ago. Rediscover their meaning and relevance in our newest booklet, the Five the Central Truths for a Modern Reformation. Inside, you'll explore each of the five SOLAs. Grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, Scripture alone, in God's glory alone, and why they still matter today. Support our work with a gift of any amount and we'll send you a copy. Visit solamidia.org offers to get yours Today.

[B]

We don't want to live in the village green. At the end of the day, we can all leave and return to our houses of worship. But our goal is to encourage conversational theology in the village green where we can rub shoulders with Christians from different traditions and expressions.

[C]

Hello, my name is Caleb Waite. I'm the director of content at Sola Media. And today I have the pleasure of interviewing the usual host of this program, Dr. Michael Horton. Good to see you, Mike.

[B]

Good to see you, Caleb.

[C]

But we're also joined by a very special guest. We're honored to welcome Dr. Carlos Ayer, historian from Yale University. Dr. Eyre, thanks so much for joining us today.

[D]

Oh, thank you for the invitation. My pleasure, yes.

[C]

Both of you have published important works in history around early modernity, spirituality, mysticism and the Reformation around that time period, which is the subject of our conversation today. Dr. Horton is the J. Gresham Machen professor of Theology at Westminster Seminary, California. He's the founder of Sola Media, author of many books, and his new book is out now, Volume two in his trilogy on the spiritual but not religious movement. The book is called Magician and the Roots of the Spiritual Not Religious Phenomenon from the Renaissance to the scientific revolution. And Dr. Ayer, you wrote a blurb for Dr. Horton's work.

[D]

Yes.

[C]

You said this is a marvelously engaging and eye opening reassessment of the Western world's transition to modernity. Later on, you say. All in all, this is a stunning achievement. Dr. Carlos Ayer is the T. Larson Riggs professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University. He specializes in the social, intellectual, and religious and cultural history of the late medieval and early modern Europe, with a focus on both the Protestant and Catholic Reformations. He's the author of multiple books, including the War against the Idols, the Reformation of Worship From Erasmus to Calvin, the Early Modern World, which won many prizes, including the R.R. hawkins Prize for the best book of the year from the American Publishers association and the award for the Best book in the humanities. And we're going to speak with him about his book, they Flew, A History of the Impossible. He has also ventured into the 20th century, writing on the Cuban Revolution in his memoir, Waiting for Snow in Havana, which won the National Book Award for nonfiction in the United States in 2003. And his second memoir, Learning to Die in Miami, explores the exile experience of being in the United States. And notably, all of his books are banned in Cuba, where he has also been pronounced, I believe, an enemy of the state. Is that right?

[D]

Yes. Well, the legal term is enemy of the revolution. The state is never called the state or the government. It's called the revolution.

[C]

Very capital R. So, Dr. Ayer, your work, they Flew, A History of the impossible. Dr. Horton, your work. Magician and mechanic, they share many surprising stories that counter prevalent assumptions and narratives about modernity, namely the idea that there's been this kind of march of history through time and that humanity has gone from a primitive and superstitious culture in ancient and medieval eras to now a rationalistic and scientific era free of religion and its dogmas, free of magic and that sort of thing. And the focus of your works, in my assessment, seem to run parallel in interesting ways. Some of your answers to what some might call the problem of. Of modernity are different, and we'll get into some of that. But first off, what made both of you interested to research and write these projects? Dr. Ayer, you say you've spent over 40 years working on this, and Dr. Horton, nearly 30 years working on your trilogy. What has fascinated you about these themes?

[D]

Well, all of my work, from my dissertation on, and my dissertation was my first book, War against the Idols. All of my work, my academic work, has focused on the way in which the visible and invisible relate to one another in religion, especially, you know, in the history of Christianity and especially the history of the Reformations of the early modern period. How individuals and societies have interpreted the relationship between the natural and supernatural, that's always been my fascination. So therefore I, you know, I've gravitated towards the miraculous because that is one area that has not, I didn't think, had received sufficient attention. The project for they Flew was conceived in a very, very fuzzy and inchoate way in 1983, and the book was published in 2023. So I didn't continually write for 40 years on this book. I did a lot of other things. But it's a good thing I waited to do it until this point in my career because I touch on subjects that could have had me branded as unfit for teaching at an academic institution of higher learning, get tenure first. And then, as one reviewer put it in the very first sentence about they flew. This is a deeply unserious book. So it's a good thing I had tenure. And not only tenure, but also, you know, I'm in my 70s now. They don't like to kick old men out of their offices prematurely, so I'm glad I waited. These impossible miracles that I focus on, they're all 16th and 17th century, some 18th, but, you know, these are things that are not supposed to happen. And I was trained to study religion as a functionalist, which means that you can only speak about the function that certain beliefs or events serve. Socially, culturally, politically. You can only talk about the function, but you never should ask the question, well, did this really happen? Even if you put quotation marks around, really, did such things get. Can these things happen? Have they happened? My overarching question in this book is historians should pause before they reject certain kinds of testimony as necessarily being false in some way. Either false because they're lies or false because they're. People are easily fooled or have different perceptions. Faulty. Faulty perceptions of reality.

[C]

Hey, Mike. And what caused you to start research and writing on your project?

[B]

Yeah, well, I was working on a completely different project for my dissertation. And while I was doing that work in Oxford, I went to a series of lectures by a professor who filled the largest public classroom. And what he was doing was drawing a Venn diagram with various circles of the four great religions and trying to show that it was the heterodox, more mystical wings of those religions, the more occult, if you will, versions of those religions that meet at the center.

[D]

And.

[B]

And so here I was thinking, isn't this interesting? Number of us went out afterwards and middle aged, white upper class professor in the west telling all of us what our real religions were. And it was very exclusive. He was very critical of traditional religion. And so I started to. I think that was the trigger for me where I started to lose interest in my dissertation and started going to every lecture I could around this subject. And from then on, as Carlos says, it's not like I was working on it exclusively. I was doing a lot of other things, but I kept going back to that and using up my sabbaticals for it. And so that's how that happened.

[C]

Excellent, Dr. Ayer. You focus on, in your work, well attested miracles, and you specifically focus on eyewitness and public reports of levitation and bilocation. Notably, accounts of these miracles seem to reach their Height after the reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries. Could you share a few examples of these involving figures such as St. Teresa of Avila, and then maybe explain what you think these testimonies reveal about this particular period in history?

[D]

Right. Levitation is hovering above the ground at various distances and basically you are escaping the law of gravity in some way. That's an ancient phenomenon and it's, it's very common phenomenon in world religions. As a matter of fact, when I would tell colleagues, experts on Asian religions that I was working on this project, their response was usually, yeah, so what? Yeah, of course, yes, this is normal. And in Christianity, levitation begins to appear in the early Middle Ages, it's a side effect of mystical ecstasy. Always in every Christian account, it's a physical side effect of, of spiritual ecstasy. But there tend to be more reports of levitation in the later Middle Ages, and then they begin to spike in the 16th century after the Protestant Reformation emerges and the evidence changes. But before I get to that, bilocation is being in two places simultaneously, or being seen in two places simultaneously, which is also an ancient phenomenon, world religions. But in the case of Christian history, that too is a physical or transphysical phenomenon linked to ecstasy. And all of these individuals who levitate or bilocate that I've studied, they are people who have trained pretty much like athletes in the realm of prayer. They've devoted their life to almost non stop, or in some cases, non stop praying, and also self discipline, including fasting, cutting back on sleep, and all such things. So these are highly trained individuals. It just doesn't happen to quote, unquote, average or normal individuals. But back to the testimonies, what happens in the 16th century, and I can get back to this. You know, Protestants, when they emerge, they deny that these things could be caused by God and insist that if any such thing happens, it's from the devil. Or they argue that in most cases these are just lies. These things don't happen. So of course the phenomenon has a polemical edge both ways. For Protestants, it's a way of proving that Catholic Church is the false church because the devil is doing all this stuff for Catholics, proving that they are the true church. Of course, the argument is, no, no, this is this, this can be from God, not in all cases, but it can be. So we have more accounts, but the evidence that we have is different in the 16th and 17th century than the evidence we have from the Middle Ages. Because in the Middle Ages where we read about these things, we read about them in the lives of the saints, Right, hagiographies. So these are texts in which the author is trying to convince you that this person was special, had a special relationship with God. Modern historical standards, you know, this is biased literature. What changes in the 16th century is that the Catholic Church revamps the process for canonization and beatification, the two steps. You become a blessed first and then you become a saint. And not only it revamps the whole process, but the most important part for a historian is that very, very detailed questionnaires are prepared and circulated to all the people who might have known this person who's up for sainthood. There's a section always on miracles. Did you see a person perform any miracles? People have to swear on their souls, on their eternal destiny, that they're telling the truth. So my approach is to ask the question, very rational question. How likely is it that 100% of these testimonies, most of which come from deeply religious people who believe in hell? How likely is it that 100% of them are lying? Or how likely is it that they're all deluded? I mean, this is very difficult to explain. It's what William James called a wild fact, Right? It's like a square peg that won't go into a round hole. How do you account for mass hallucinations or, you know, mass hysteria is another very commonly used term. But what I focus on is not the mass hysteria or hallucination, but the question of truth telling. You can end up in hell and in the Catholic mindset, right? God forbid you walk out the door and you get hit by lightning without having gone to confession just after you lied to the canonization inquest. You can go straight to hell, and everybody knows this. Or if you confess and you're forgiven, you might spend extra time in purgatory for lying about something like this. So I think the possibility of lying is lessened. So using these inquests as evidence, I think the question then reverts back on those who say that all such accounts are false. The question reverts to them. Would you dismiss evidence on these grounds for any other kind of phenomenon from this many people? Should they be dismissed offhand, all of them, 100% as false?

[C]

Understood. And just so our audience could have more, a couple concrete pictures, could you share some of the examples from St. Teresa of Avila and St. Joseph of Cupertino?

[D]

Sure, sure. My favorite for St. Teresa, she is the Mother Superior in her convent. She has been experiencing these flights, as she calls them, or gifts Marcelis. And she orders the sisters in her convent next Time you see me going up, try to hold me down, or if I go up, pull me down. And there are repeated testimonies in the canonization and beatification inquest. These nuns testifying to the fact that she did go up, but they couldn't restrain her and they could not pull her down. But one of these events involves Teresa being in the kitchen cooking with a frying pan. And she goes into ecstasy with this frying pan on her hand. But the frying pan contains the last little bit of olive oil the convent had, and they were worried the oil might spill. And all of this, these details are in the testimony, which to me adds a level of believability to it. It's a detail that, why would you invent something like this? Plus, we have Teresa's own testimony. She's one of the very few people who have levitated, who has written about what it feels like for this to happen. And she actually begged God to stop it because it was bringing too much attention to her. And maybe we can come back to this. There's always as Protestant charged, there's always the possibility the devil might be behind. So this was placing her in a very peculiar position where she might, you know, and she was being watched by the Inquisition. So Joseph Cupertino, even more, more extreme levitating. No one that I have read about has ever risen as high or actually flown from point A to point B, backwards and forwards more. No one's done so more than Joseph of Cupertino. Hundreds and hundreds, actually. They stopped counting after a while how many times this happened to him. But my favorite Joseph of Cupertino account of levitation is, and it's a strange one, there is a Lutheran prince visiting Assisi where he has been placed. Joseph. What's this Lutheran? Actually, Duke of Saxony. And not just because there were two Saxonies, not just any Saxony, but the very same Saxony that Luther emerged from. What's he doing in Italy? Well, he's there. He has heard about Joseph, so he's definitely there to see him see this. And lo and behold, he does get to see it. And Joseph flies over his head and he converts to Catholicism, convinced that this is not demonic.

[A]

Right.

[D]

And very little has has been written about John Frederick of Saxony and his conversion. You know, I'm hoping that at some point in the near future, someone will start doing the digging.

[B]

The experience, especially of Teresa of Avila, is so parallel to the experience I have read of Sarah Pierrepont Edwards. Jonathan Edwards WIFE Yes. And she was worried. She would be not even worried she said, I don't care if I'm run out with pitchforks. Because there was kind of a controversy that was aroused by her visions and her agitations, as she called them. She said things like this infinite beauty and amiableness of Christ's person and the heavenly sweetness of his transcendent love, so that the soul remained a kind of heavenly Elysium, and did, as it were, swim in the rays of God's love, like a moat swimming in the beams of the sun or beams of his light that come in at the window, and the heart was swallowed up in a kind of glow. And she talks about having these experiences since she was 6 years old. An example, seeing many people moved. After a Wednesday afternoon sermon, she was, quote, overcome by a vision of heaven that I lost all bodily strength. And yet for three hours, she exhorted everyone in the church, both men and women, which was not usually done. And she said, I repeatedly flew out of my chair, leaping, speaking in a loud voice, bodily agitation and convulsions. It seemed to me I must naturally and necessarily ascend thither. I could not keep in my chair any otherwise. That as they held me down, I was constantly endeavoring to leap or fly, feeling I had left behind my body as an empty shell and should, as it were, drop into the divine being and be swallowed up in him.

[D]

Yes. Yeah, yeah. I actually have a less dramatic quote from Sarah in the flu. It's more referring to what it feels like inside her for this to happen. But, yeah, I love this one with the leaping and flying. Absolutely.

[C]

You know, Dr. Horton, in your work, the history you're tracing is when the hunt for spiritual ecstasy leads people into strange pursuits, as it were, leading people into all kinds of practices. So in volume two of your work, Mike, you go from volume one, Alexandria, Egypt, the birthplace of Neoplatonism and Gnosticism and other philosophies. And you're going to the Renaissance in Florence. So what was the cultural and intellectual scene in Florence at this time? Who was Marsilio Ficino? Why was there such a widespread interest in astrology, alchemy, Hermeticism? Why were people hunting for spiritual ecstasy through these things in Florence at this time?

[B]

Lots of reasons, but one example is the fear of death. And I think that's what united the cultures of ancient Alexandria, the late Middle Ages with the Black Death and subsequent periods, when there's a kind of convulsion of social unrest. A lot of revolutionary movements arose before the Reformation. What we could say are precursors to sort of Communalistic revolutionary impulses arose before the Reformation. And in fact, the Magisterial Reformation reacted against that as much as the Church of Rome. But the Black Death stole away whole populations, including in Florence. Florence was decimated so much that the banking system collapsed. And so that's when a lot of groups even returning to Gnosticism, so much as they understood it, various extreme heterodox groups arose in that milieu. And you had people like Savonarola, who claimed to have visions in which the Virgin Mary gave him basically the keys to the Kingdom of Florence. And eventually he was burned at the stake because his prophecies didn't come true. But I think that that's one of the reasons why Ficino, you know how to gain life from the heavens. His dad was a doctor, doctor to the Father of the fatherland, Medici and Cosimo Medici. And Cosimo was young Ficino's patron. So he really didn't see any difference between his being a priest, a doctor of the soul, and using natural magic as a way of healing the body and the soul and society and so forth. So he returned actually to the ancient texts of Alexandria. He claimed to perform, not only believe Orphic doctrines and translate Orphic doctrines, literature, especially the Corpus Hermeticum, the body of Hermetic works, but to practice what he called Orphic rituals. And, of course, that's where the Church said, you're crossing the line. Who are you praying to? Who are you singing to? Who are you praising? Is it Dionysus and Orpheus, or is it Christ and the saints? And so, in a sense, it was, as Anthony Grafton has argued this really well. There was a sense that the magicians were competing with the Church for magic, at least that's how even before the Reformation, many people saw it. And at the time of the Reformation, that was the critique, as Carlos points out, so well, that they had crossed the line. You know, the Church had been very vigilant in trying to keep that line from being crossed. But even popes like Alexander brought Hermeticism and neo paganism right into the heart of the Church. That line was crossed again and again. And so the Counter Reformation was in some ways as much of a reaction against superstition as the Reformation was. I don't know if Carlos would agree with that. But there was a real pushback, probably because, as Carlos points out, in the 16th and 17th century, you have a spike in supernatural claims, miraculous claims, and that the Church has to be wary of just being gullible and accepting any and every testimony.

[A]

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[D]

And you know, the skepticism about miracles in general, or visions and apparitions on the Catholic side predates the Protestant Reformation. And a case in point is what happened in Spain in the early 16th century, which is that anyone who claimed to have had a vision, especially if they were lay people and especially if they were peasants, which was very common throughout the medieval period. You know, some peasant would say, oh, the Virgin Mary visited me, she had this to say. They all start being processed by the Inquisition and questioned about details. And actually the Inquisition decides that most of these cases that they're handling are fraudulent. And as a result, there's a beautiful book by William Christian Jr. On this apparitions in late medieval and Renaissance Spain. And reports of visions by the mid 16th century have dwindled because everyone knows if they go running to their parish priests, tell them that an apparition has occurred, the Inquisition will come and grill them. So yeah, they cut back on this. But you know, magic itself, magic of all sorts, white magic, black magic, all this, it's everywhere. It's everywhere. It's throughout all of Europe. Which is one of the reasons that French historian Jean Deloumeau argued in the 70s, 1970s, beginning of the 16th century, when the Protestant Reformation began, Europe had yet to be fully Christianized. Wow. Scratch anyone and under the skin you will find many, many superstitions, pagan holdovers, and even some dark stuff.

[B]

Caleb mentioned the march of history, Whiggish interpretation, that no matter how critical social histor are of that, they still bleed the Whiggish narrative. There's this presupposition that a lot of historians have that people were gullible until science came along. And the fact is, people in earlier ages may have been open, more open to supernatural activity, to miracles, but they weren't less superstitious than our own time. And furthermore, they weren't any more gullible than we are about purported miracles. In fact, when the miracle of miracles, Jesus, resurrection. The disciples didn't believe when the women came and brought the testimony that Jesus had been raised and Thomas had to put his hand in Jesus side. So it's not as if suddenly Einstein comes along and we have a rational world that doesn't take miracle claims at face value.

[D]

I agree. Well, it's a bit of prejudice and also anachronistic in a way, for anyone here in the 21st century or even back in the 20th century, to project their own materialist interpretation of how people saw the world, which includes, of course, all of these people being either liars or very, very easily fooled. I like what you brought up, Mike, about Thomas having to stick his hand in Jesus side, especially feeling the holes in the fingers is one thing, but he wanted to stick his hand in Jesus side. His hand. That's such one of these details that just jump out at you like the frying pan in Teresa's hand. They're added as a bonus testimony.

[C]

I think.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Thank you, Mike. That's exactly where I was heading to. And so, one more question. I know you both are writing works of history, but I'd be interested to see if you speculate with me on some of the sociology of this just for a moment before we dive back into the books. I think there's. There is a lot of modern folks today who are wrestling with this interesting tension, I think you both note, and one is they're comfortable with the challenge to a dogmatic materialism. They're comfortable saying maybe, yeah, there's something else out there, whatever it is. Mike and I being in California, people are definitely interested in the impossible here. But the kind of things that maybe is more trendy is tarot cards. Astrology is alive and well. It's definitely in vogue. You have people, when they think about enchantment in the world, they like that. But what they're thinking of here is crystals, Wicca. Mike, you're kind of tracing the idea that modern people are still superstitious. Dr. Ayer, in your work, you've said, yeah, we're modern, but we have also these. This superstitious side, and we're postmodern. So we don't maybe care so much about saint miracles, but we're definitely interested when witches fly because they're the minority, oppressed, of course, group. So both of you elaborate on kind of that tension we feel today when we're kind of drawn to a enchanted spiritual life. But that that drawing for modern people today doesn't really push them towards religion, the Bible or the church. It pushes them maybe towards crystals and tarot cards and that kind of thing.

[D]

Yeah. Well, what Mike has is a subtitle, the Spiritual. I'm spiritual. I'm not religious. Right, yes, that is definitely out there. But what I have found in speaking about my book and public appearances is that the younger the audience, the more receptive it seems to be. And I think, Mike, you're nodding, so you've had the same experience. There is a generational difference that I note, and it's very sharp difference. And, well, I attribute it to two things too. Like you say are we're all superstitious. Human beings are superstitious or they have. They're drawn this way. Calvin said the same thing. Begins his institutes with basically, I call him an armchair ethnographer or anthropologist, you know, diagnosing why it is that human beings are inherently religious. I agree with that. And it's not. I don't agree with it because Calvin says, I think it's a common sense observation that religion is a human phenomenon. And I have often argued in public and in private that, you know, our species is called Homo sapiens. Might as well also call it Homo religiosus, because what's this? One of the things that distinguishes us from the rest of creation of creatures is religion. Yes. And even in the caves of Altamira and those that are even older than Altamira, you know, anthropologists have discovered religion. It's a natural human instinct. But I see something else happening, and I see it happening in various media, but even in books published by distinguished academic presses, which is the fuzziness of reality that is being discovered by science at the astrophysical level, at the subatomic level, and in many other instances, calling into question dogmatic materialism in all of its forms. That in fact the human mind, the scientific mind, has now come up on so many instances where it seems. And some scientists seriously debate whether we're living in a hologram.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

Basically the film the Matrix, which is a retelling of Plato's allegory of the cave, that this is what is happening. And there are so many books and articles now on consciousness and mind being the actual ground of all reality. So there is a scientific as well as a kind of instinctive pull towards religion. There is this scientific discovery that leads to puzzlement and the questioning of dogmatic materialism.

[B]

Yeah, I've seen the same thing. It's ironic because they may still say they're materialists, but they're actually idealists. It turns out that they're panpsychists there is one mind that is real, that all reality is a part of. And what I find is you either have supernaturalism, which is Christianity, there is a God who created the world ex nihilo. He transcends the world absolutely. And created the world, governs the world, redeems the world, and so forth. And so within that, of course, there are miracles. And then there's natural supernaturalism, which is basically, there is no God outside the world, outside the world, who creates and provides and performs miracles and so forth. Rather, nature itself is miraculous. And then you have materialism, you have naturalism. What I see is the naturalists and the natural supernaturalists now combining against traditional theism. Jan Assman calls it the Mosaic distinction. I am Yahweh. There is no other God. Of course, the Gnostics said that that was the bad creator God who said that, jealous God. There is no other religion. There is, you know, only Yahweh worship is the true religion, whereas all the other religions, they said, yeah, there are parallels of our religion in every culture. Here it's only in Israel is God known. And from there on Christianity just carries that forward. And what I see is a reaction against both materialism on one hand and supernaturalism on the other, and the triumph of a kind of not just among New Age people and so forth, but wide swaths of intellectual and popular culture for natural. Supernaturalism. Do you see that too, Carlos?

[D]

Oh, yes, very much so. Very much so. But what I see is that, you know, the. Unlike the aggressive atheists of the late 20th century and early 21st century, these folk are much less aggressive in their dismissal of the Mosaic distinction. Yeah, they're much less aggressive in taking down or criticizing that. As a matter of fact, I know several personally who are really indifferent to that. Fine, if you want to see it that way. That doesn't contradict my own thinking on these matters. Maybe there is, because some of them who I know, people I know personally who think this way, let's put it this way, there's an open mindedness in these people. About three people I know who are like this, who think like this, there's an open mindedness that you tend not to find in aggressive atheists. We don't see it as much anymore. I think it was. Was it Dawkins who very recently said that he considers himself a cultural Christian. Cultural Christian. Was it him? Yeah. Yes, yes. Yeah. But he's saying that in response to the overt privilege being given to Muslims in England. As he sees it, they're getting too many Concessions. They're trying to turn UK into an Islamic culture. That's why he reverts back to saying, yeah, I'm a cultural Christian. And he actually, if I remember correctly, bemoans the loss of the Christian cultural and intellectual heritage. So he used to be nothing but aggressive.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's still condescending towards the actual doctrines per se. But you're right, if there's a good thing about Christianity, it's more of an ethos rather than a dogma. Now back into the history for a bit before we close our time. Catholics and Protestants during the Reformation and that period both had high views of external authorities, the Church of the Scriptures, the sacraments, and the people we're talking about today who see religion and these kind of mystical, autonomous spiritualities, they don't really see a difference, but they're more attracted to whatever is maybe more autonomous. Right. They're not interested into those external authorities that both Catholics and Protestants held dear. Who were some of the radical figures in this time? Because normally the story's told where it's only Catholics versus Protestants at this time in history, but really there were radical and fringe figures in and around Catholic and Protestant circles who were some of these radicals. What were the briculars, their teachings? What were some things that they picked up on to support their views of being away and distinct from those external institutions?

[B]

Well, one of the subtexts in my project is that the traditional histories that carve up the eras into periods led by traditional figures, let's say, have left out the, the people they thought were weirdos. And I think actually modernity is more the product of the so called weirdos. Weirdos, for instance, the radical Anabaptists.

[D]

Yes.

[B]

If you read Marx and Engels, it was in East Germany before the wall came down. They had statues to those guys. Yes, Thomas Munser, you know, a great example I actually think. And it was the Anabaptists who wrote the first Bible criticism volumes trying to show the errors in the Bible so that they could shift authority from an external source, whether the church or the Scriptures, to the inner light, the inner divine self. And all of that, all of that, the utopianism, everything, all of that had more of an impact, I think on modernity than either the Magisterial Reformation or the Counter Reformation.

[D]

Wow. Yeah, well, you know, they're usually labeled as being, quote unquote, ahead of their time, these weirdos, right? Yes, and for good reason. Yes. You know, Thomas Mutzer, if you were there in East Germany, you might have seen the Five mark note.

[B]

I did, yeah.

[D]

On it.

[B]

Yeah, I had it. I've lost it, but I had it.

[D]

Oh, what a shame. And on the reverse side it had a thresher, which is an overt reference to one of his sermons in which he says the harvest is at hand. And what he means by that is he's calling on the peasants to go and kill all the landlords. So it's very appropriate for the DDR to put him on the file. He should have been on the 100 mark note. But then that means you're self enriching, so that would have been a problem. But yeah, I think of Sebastian Frank especially.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

Utter, utter edge of the radical Reformation.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

Who called the Bible the paper Pope and actually comes out and says, you know, even a Turk can be a better Christian than a Christian or something like that. I'm paraphrasing. Yeah, right, I'm paraphrasing. And he doesn't want a church. Caspar Schwenkfeld, ironically, didn't think that the church should be established given all the religious divisions of the age. But his followers established the Schwenkfelder Church. Again, that impulse. Right. But only recently I started to read into and also some of the texts of Emanuel Swedenborg, who's later boy, he is the prophet of the new age. And then I found all the websites. On him and his work.

[B]

Well, think of how popular the Swedenborgian church was in Boston right up to the time of Henry James Sr. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau. They were all in some ways William James.

[D]

In some way William James too. Yes. Yeah. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And not only that, I actually did a little bit, tiny bit of research. Took me about a half hour. The turn to Unitarianism At Harvard. There was a long string of presidents from mid 19th century until like the 1930s. Every president of Harvard was Unitarian, at least very overtly or less overtly, but they all were Unitarian. And then the classic example that comes up also is the character, the main character in this book, Cheese and the Worms by Carlo Ginsberg. Simple Miller in northern Italy, in the Friuli region, who gets hauled in by the Inquisition because he goes around saying crazy things to people, weird things, crazy things about how the world came about that all contradict the Genesis narrative. And the Inquisition comes after him for making these statements. But the poor man, he can't control himself. He never shuts up and he keeps coming back to face the Inquisition. But the title of the book is a reference to the cosmology that this manochio had, which is that the world is eternal and the world that we know now just emerged naturally from some primordial goop, he says, much like worms come out of cheese, if you wait long enough. And the thing is, the inquisitors keep asking him, where did you get these ideas, like thinking there has to be some intellectual who comes up with these things? And he keeps telling them, from my own head, I came up with these ideas. Right. And we're talking about late 1500s, early 1600s. A very simple miller somewhere is talking, just like Sebastian Frank or Jacob Bohme or Jacob also. Yes, yeah. Or much later, Thomas Paine. My own mind is my church.

[C]

Wow.

[D]

Direct quote from Tom Paine.

[C]

Wow. And that really explains it. And I'm going to try, in our last few minutes, try my hand at an ecumenical olive branch, as it were, between Catholics and Protestants here, because we hear narratives sometimes from Roman Catholics to say they seem to pick up on a version of Max Weber saying the Reformation is the reason for a disenchanted materialistic culture. Secularization is the Reformation's fault. And likewise, the Reformation was very skeptical of the spiritual miracles purported by many Catholics, as you have dutifully noted, Dr. Ayer. However, it seems like the Reformation and the Counter Reformation, neither of them won. It seemed like the radicals and those on the fringes won and defined the modern mind. Why can we agree that neither the Catholics or Protestants are, to quote, unquote, blame for modernity? And why did the radicals win, as it were?

[B]

Well, I think, first of all, the whole idea, I argue in my third volume, which won't be out for a while, that I go right straight at. It's assumed throughout the others, but go straight at the Weberian thesis of disenchantment. It's actually the demagification of the world in German. And so if you look at the history of how it evolved, it didn't start with Max Weber. It started with a romantic, Schiller, Schlegel and other philosophers. When they said disenchantment, they meant that Christianity had disenchanted the world. We need to come up with new myths. And in doing so, they went back to old myths. Greek, Roman, Orphic, another Renaissance, sort of like Ficino, another revival of this underground phenomenon. And Weber is an error, I think, to that. So when you hear disenchantment, really what it is is the effect of the Jewish and Christian God driving away the gods of the ancient paganism, just seething beneath the crust of Christendom. And we need to go back to that kind of, you know, what we would today call, I guess, New age kind of spirituality. That was Weber's own spirituality. I have a whole chapter on how so many liberal theologians, scientists, Nobel prize winning scientists, and Weber himself were involved in a gnostic summer camp in Altona, Switzerland that included Freud and Carl Jung. Carl Jung, of course, was at the heart of it.

[D]

I love this.

[B]

This idea that we're disenchanted is crazy. And if you look at the statistics today, people who move from traditional Christianity to spiritual but not religious become more superstitious, not less. They believe more in astrology, more in nature being divine and so on and so forth. So I don't think the difference between Roman Catholic and Protestant Reformation, I mean, forget modern Protestants, I don't think that the medieval church and the Reformers had a different metaphysics. I don't believe that they had a different epistemology. I think for them the debate was number one. What were the biblical miracles? Those don't match the ones that a lot of people are claiming today, like levitating or bilocation and so forth. They all pointed to the credibility of Jesus and his mission. And the apostles perform miracles to certify that gospel. And the charismata, the gifts that the Holy Spirit gives, Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12 are all for the building up of the body, not for identifying super saints and their heroic virtue. And so the emphasis on grace, I think was a big part of that. And then secondly, if Christ has come, the canon is closed, then we don't need those miracles. Even the ones that you do find in the book of Acts, they might happen, not closed off to it, but we don't need them. Someone asked Calvin, well, where are your miracles to certify your message? And he said, turning water into wine at the marriage, cana in cana, the resurrection of Jesus, healing of the blind man and so forth. We don't have a new gospel. This is the same Gospel that was certified in the past. So it was a debate, I believe, over exegesis and theological commitments, theological presuppositions. But metaphysically, Christians, Protestant and Roman Catholic were open to supernatural interventions and intrusions, the freedom of God to do whatever he wants, miraculous healings and so forth.

[C]

Continue, Dr. Ayer, how would you nuance some of that?

[D]

I would nuance it a little differently because I think that there is a metaphysical component to the Protestant critique of Catholic piety. Right, and I agree. I mean, I've had exchanges with several scholars since my book came out about this point. Which is that, yes, the cessation of miracles is a tenet, particularly of Reformed Protestantism. Yes. And you can trace the line back to Zwingli all the way through Calvin to Zwingli, that miracles were not necessary after the death of the apostles. And I agree with Mike that, you know, deep down, yes, there's a metaphysical affinity between Catholics and Protestants with this difference, which has two parts to it. Number one, while Protestants rejected much of Catholic theology, they simultaneously accepted Catholic medieval demonology almost 100%. So miracles, quote, unquote, these are works of the devil. That's part of the cessation of miracles argument. Right. But the other is that the Reformed tradition feels uncomfortable about connecting matter and spirit or the divine and creation. And Zwingli actually had a formula. Whatever you invest in the material, you detract from the spiritual. But of course, this is part of his campaign or crusade to straighten out piety. Medieval piety is just too materialistic. Way too materialistic. And that's what he wants to clear out. So he does engage in a little bit of metaphysics, including the principle of finitum non est capax infiniti. The finite cannot ever contain the infinite. A point raised regarding the Eucharist, whether Christ can be present or not. But, yes, And I agree with Mike 100%. And I started laughing when he told me about the. All of these characters from the late 19th, early 20th century practicing occult religion. Yes. Zauber is the German word here. Sauber. It's magic. But, yeah, you know, I'd never thought about this, but the Romantics. Yeah, they give a special spin to Zauber, which. And actually it was Weber himself who translated entsauverung or disenchant as disenchantment. That's his English. His choice of English words. And now I know why it was intentional, because it's demagification. But then it calls to mind Schiller's poem, which is the text of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the final choral section, the fourth movement, Joy Freud, Schnegalter Funken. Beautiful spark of the divine. And then the other line. Deine Zauber bin den Wieder. Your magic binds us together. Schiller uses Zauber magic that way. Joy has a enchantment power. Right. So thanks, Mike. You have added so much depth. You have added so much depth to the context of where this playing around with Sauber by someone who's a native German speaker. Right. Picking the wrong English word because it's not the wrong word. This is precisely what he means. Right, Absolutely. Yeah.

[B]

Thank you for that and your comment on Zwingli, I totally agree with. I think Calvin and the Eucharistic controversy brought this to a head. Calvin said, who with a right mind wouldn't agree with Luther over Zwingli? He really wasn't influenced by Zwingli and was deeply troubled by his metaphysical dualism and so had a very different. There are two sort of reformed traditions, a Zwinglian one and a Calvinist one. But, yeah, I agree, Zwingli was a mess.

[D]

Well, Zwingli, you know, like everyone who has. Gets their foot through the door first or second. Yeah. They. They have to think on their feet. Yeah. As things erupt around them. Same thing for Luther, too. Yeah.

[B]

And he was indebted to late medieval Neoplatonism swinging.

[D]

Yes. Through Erasmus.

[B]

Through Erasmus, yeah.

[D]

Yeah, definitely. But, yeah, they didn't have sabbaticals, these guys, during which they could formulate their theology. No, they had to do it on the fly.

[B]

On the fly, so to speak.

[D]

Yes, indeed.

[C]

Well, thank you both so much. Dr. Ayer, thank you so much for joining us. This is very helpful. And both of your works I commend to our audience. Pick them up. They Flew. A History of the Impossible and a Magician and mechanic from Dr. Horton. As our enchanted age continues sprawling on and people continue to hunt for a spiritual ecstasy through their own esoteric pursuits, your research and work helps us make sense of some of it all. So thank you both again. Until next time.

[D]

Thank you.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

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