Were they all platonic heretics (a look at early theology)?

How influenced were the early church father by platonic and neo-platonic philosophy? Were many of them just Greek philosophers disguised as Christians? Join Josh and Murr as they dive in to discuss the influence of ancient philosophy on the early Christians.

For more about Voices from the Desert, check out our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/VoicesfromtheDesert 

Transcript

Murray (00:00.418)
This, this, Philokalia, Art of Prayer, Art of Prayer, Art of Prayer, Art of Prayer on the noose and the heart. Its introduction is brilliant on that.

Joshua Hoffert (00:04.773)
A good one.

Joshua Hoffert (00:08.944)
Yeah.

Murray (00:10.36)
Okay, hold on a second. I had it with me. It might have went across the room when I went to make coffee.

Murray (00:19.064)
Follow Kaylee.

Nope, there it is. It's just under my chair. There we go. What a pram. There.

Joshua Hoffert (00:27.228)
You know, one of the ways that one of the phrases that shows how you'll have heard this, I've used it, you've probably used it too. That shows just how platonic Christian belief has become in our day and age, which is still like we're, still very much influenced by Western philosophy. And that's right. Is

Murray (00:33.527)
Ooh.

Murray (00:53.114)
for sure.

Joshua Hoffert (00:56.89)
When you, when people say, I'm just a spirit having a temporary human experience, right? Yeah. That would have been something, you know, 20 years ago. Easily. We might've just, you know, spat off thinking, yeah, for sure. Right. We're spiritual beings. We just have a temporary human body.

Murray (01:02.407)
yes, yes. Somebody quoted that to me today actually. Who was that?

Murray (01:21.484)
Yeah, which is...

Joshua Hoffert (01:23.12)
That's platonic philosophy right there through and through. So that's your eschatology. Your, your, or so teary ology is entirely based on Plato's philosophy, not scriptural, not the scripture witness scriptural witness. It's funny.

Murray (01:25.602)
Yeah. Well, it's so funny, you know, like...

Murray (01:39.02)
It's so funny, like just teaching people how to hear God's voice, right? With what they don't, yeah, what they don't understand is all, I mean, really, everybody can hear God's voice. It's platonic theology that kills it. It's just, it's, that's just me. I'm making it up. It's what I want to believe. you know, all the, using the scientific method to test your relationship. And, man, I hit him pretty hard the other day. It was, I was very happy.

Joshua Hoffert (01:52.24)
Yeah, that's right.

Right.

Joshua Hoffert (02:02.853)
Right.

Murray (02:07.47)
So I share this thing about Father Mike, because people didn't quite understand. If they thought the theology through, they might have been able to call me on it. man, it was great. It was like I slapped everyone in the face with a fish. I was so pleased. Father, I said to Father Mike, so why do you guys have Jesus on the cross? He goes, well, I don't know why the Catholics do it. Short version. goes, but you know.

Do you believe that when you see Jesus, you've seen the Father? Yes. So when Philip says, show us the Father we'll believe, and Jesus goes, when you see me, you see the Father. You believe that, right? Yes. So Jesus on the cross is perfect theology. I go, what do mean? What Jesus looks like on the cross is the nature of the Father. And it's like humble. And you can just see people just hit them. Because then their heads, without knowing it, God's angry. He's turned his face away from his son. And that's what they think.

Joshua Hoffert (02:56.048)
Right.

Joshua Hoffert (02:59.451)
Totally. Yeah, totally. Right.

Murray (03:02.814)
And so they're like, if I screw up, I'm going to get punished because Jesus got punished. You know, it's interesting to confront that and just without them knowing that they have a functional belief system back there that is actually influencing their level of shame and guilt in so many ways. It was very fascinating. then, so I mean, yes, he is the perfect, just if this ever gets published, everybody, yes, Jesus is

Joshua Hoffert (03:06.723)
Yeah. Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (03:22.275)
Right. Yeah. That would be.

Murray (03:32.302)
that is the perfect sacrifice for our sin. That needed to happen. But to say that the Father turned his back on his Son. I think it's 1 Corinthians 8, 2 Corinthians 8 says that God was in Christ on the cross reconciling the world to himself. So I'll just leave that just in case anyone ever watches that in the Patreon. I'll just throw that out there to a little bit of balance.

Joshua Hoffert (03:39.098)
Yes.

Joshua Hoffert (03:51.418)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (03:55.61)
Yeah.

Well, people people in the early church, they, they stressed that to its breaking point, and basically just said, the father was the one suffering on the right like that's that's

Murray (04:13.442)
They take it. They deny the Trinity entirely. They go the other way,

Joshua Hoffert (04:16.942)
essentially, yeah, that's right. And, and it's just, that was just the father there. And that was called the particular heresy was called patropassionism. It was the father that suffered on the cross. And, and the early church fathers soundly rejected the notion. And you could say he suffered in the sense that he saw his son dying, and he suffered the emotional trauma in that number, not trauma, it's the wrong term. But you know, his suffering was

Murray (04:26.763)
Joshua Hoffert (04:45.966)
on behalf of the sun, but he wasn't the one who was on the cross.

Murray (04:50.21)
Yeah, because then you would get into the trap of denying the physicality and meaning of Jesus having a physical body. Because then he's just a placemat holding the father without having any value really on his own. That would be where that goes, I guess, as a-

Joshua Hoffert (04:57.04)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (05:02.148)
Right. Right.

Joshua Hoffert (05:06.566)
Totally. Yep.

Murray (05:09.344)
interesting. Wow! It reminds me of the video you sent me of St. Patrick with the two Irish guys talking about...

Joshua Hoffert (05:19.164)
yeah, for so long ago. That's right. Yeah. Let's see. Well,

I'm just looking for a...

A thing.

Murray (05:37.078)
yeah, go ahead.

Joshua Hoffert (05:38.799)
in my notes.

Murray (05:41.39)
I just hope I can ask the right questions here to draw some of this out of you because you seem to have it really well filed away in your head there.

Joshua Hoffert (05:48.669)
it's just filed away. It's filed away. That's the problem. Because I did I studied this fairly extensively. And I will I remember one time I was on the remnant radio. And we were talking about the desert fathers. And we were and we're talking about early church theology and the cons and the the the question came up about I think they asked it that the maybe Josh Lewis asked it about the

Murray (05:52.878)
So are you?

Murray (05:56.472)
Yeah, I'm late.

Joshua Hoffert (06:20.646)
the the play whether the desert fathers had platonistic leanings. And I for some reason we were talking about Maximus a confessor and I remember say I said, Yeah, Maximus, you know, he kind of does in a way. And

Murray (06:41.624)
is that when one of the guys from Spirit of the Radio said, heretic or heresy or something?

Joshua Hoffert (06:45.07)
Yeah, was something like that. Yeah, one of the guys in the comments as was and like an or I think he was an Orthodox priest actually in the comments was heresy. Yeah. And so I was like, Well, I don't think I'm wrong about that. So that's when I started going down the rabbit hole of I want to make sure that I if someone asked me that question again that I so that but that's been a few years back. So all this all this stuff is kind of lingering around there. But but

Murray (06:53.218)
Yeah, my goodness.

Murray (07:01.678)
Joshua Hoffert (07:13.112)
If essentially when you look at Maximus, the schema of how he thought was he used, he used the principles of Plutonic philosophy to break down his biblical theology. Yeah. And it's really, it's similar to Thomas minus. So

Murray (07:26.392)
Yeah, which I think is what... Yeah, which I guess is what confuses everybody because if you take out the concept of the noose and then you look at orthodoxy...

you would really think it's platonic because you're missing the idea that when they say the word intellect, they're not talking about your head. And if you miss that, then it's completely about your mind, which is, and so you really need to get that concept with the Desert Fathers or you get yourself in trouble. Cause like, you just read that quote about Jerome there about the difference of head and heart. So if you read the Desert Fathers and you see the word intellect,

Joshua Hoffert (07:53.102)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (07:59.889)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (08:04.111)
Right.

Murray (08:09.032)
and that's your chief part of your body.

Joshua Hoffert (08:10.468)
Right. It's lost in translation.

Murray (08:14.05)
And therefore, well, they would have to be plaintiff then because they're saying the intellect is the thing when they're not using the word the same way at all.

Joshua Hoffert (08:16.249)
Right.

Joshua Hoffert (08:20.664)
Yeah, yeah. That's true. That's very true. And and in a way the you've got to separate out the

the theory of personality.

Murray (08:36.559)
here. Sorry, I'm gonna, I would like you to respond to this too. It's kind of fitting here. It's from a book I have on the Celtic church.

And it's in the introduction. Well, I'll read it and tell me what you think, but it's a perfect straw man to punch the crap out of if you want to. It just fits right here. Celtic. There it is. Somebody bought me this. Celtic. I'll show it to you. There it is. Celtic Benedictine by Philip Newell. And it's supposedly Celtic prayers, which.

Joshua Hoffert (08:48.284)
Should we save it for the episode as we get a lot as we go?

Joshua Hoffert (09:09.381)
Okay. Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (09:14.97)
And the Celtic monastic tradition was basically a continuation of Cassian and the heavily influenced by the desert father.

Murray (09:20.077)
Well.

Okay, so here, so what do think of this? There are two major features of the Celtic tradition that distinguish it from what in contrast can be called the Mediterranean tradition. Celtic spirituality is marked by the belief that what is deepest in us is the image of God. Sin is distorted and obscured that image, but not erased it. The Mediterranean tradition on the other hand, in its doctrine of original sin is taught that what is deepest in us is our sinfulness.

Joshua Hoffert (09:39.995)
Okay.

Murray (09:53.57)
This has given rise to tendency to define ourselves in terms of the ugliness of our fallen nature instead of the beauty of our origins. Let's see. yeah, okay, I'll just read a bit more. The second major characteristic of the Celtic tradition is the belief in the essential goodness of creation. Though ordinarily is creation viewed as a blessed is regarded as an essence of the expression of God. Thus the great Celtic teachers refer to it as the book of creation in which we read.

the mysteries of God. The Mediterranean tradition on the other hand has tended towards a separation of spirit and matter and thus has distanced the mystery of God from the matter of creation.

Murray (10:35.69)
It's kind of the same thing again, accusing the Orthodox Church of, you know, separating creation, separating this, it's all about sin, when, you know, yes, you want to say the Catholic Church went that way with Augustine, but to say the Mediter- yeah, well the Medi- Yeah, like, it's completely wrong. Like, he's just divided the Orthodox Church, thrown it in the trash can, and-

Joshua Hoffert (10:47.048)
is

But well, that's what he's saying. I'm going to turn you to be the Greek. That'd be the Greek church. That would be.

Joshua Hoffert (11:01.584)
Well, he's not talking about the Orthodox church there. Yeah. The Mediterranean tradition would be the Greek church, not the Greek Orthodox church. That'd be the Catholic church. The Mediterranean is Rome is Greece. He's talking about August. He's, he's throwing Augustine under the bus is what that quote is doing.

Murray (11:03.778)
Well, the Mediterranean tradition, I mean...

Murray (11:16.418)
Well, he's putting the cops!

Murray (11:21.452)
Yeah, but he's not differentiating from the Mediterranean.

Joshua Hoffert (11:23.718)
Well, he didn't use the, he didn't, he didn't use the term Catholic versus Orthodox, but

Murray (11:29.474)
Yeah, he just threw everybody in there and said they're all the same and it is Celtic versus everybody.

Joshua Hoffert (11:33.264)
that. Yeah, so either either he's purposefully obfuscating the whole thing, because it's it's it's I mean, the the Celtic churches is is its origin is the is the Orthodox way, right? It is. Yeah.

Murray (11:46.766)
Well, it's a continuation. Should be. Yeah, that's right. So either he's done no research and just thrown everybody under the bus, which is it looks like he did. So.

Joshua Hoffert (11:55.591)
But here's the problem with, with, with the bigger picture problem is both statements are right. The deepest thing about you is sin. The deepest thing about you is the image of God. You can't, you can't say it's either one or the other. Right. It's, it is like Paul talking about how sin is deep in my members working its way out and I can't free myself of it. So it's, it's not a, it's not a.

It's not a either or it's a yes. And, I think that's what people get, but that's the problem. I just think that people get too caught up in categorizing whether it's this particular strain or this particular string and going the reason why Augustine came to his conclusion. It is, I don't think Augustine was wrong. I don't think Augustine was wrong, but I think any, any

Murray (12:25.408)
Either or.

Murray (12:43.374)
Well, this is a good thing to talk about. mean, there we go.

Joshua Hoffert (12:52.322)
any theory when you press it too far breaks. It's it it's

Murray (12:56.408)
Well, I mean, I guess we could say they're both him and Pelagius are both... Excuse me, if we want to say Pelagius is the continuation of the Celtic Church here.

You know, there's a lot of baggage there, let's just say. But let's just call the Celtic Church in his description. How about we use that word instead?

Joshua Hoffert (13:15.142)
Well, the problem, the way Augustine characterized Pelagius is that polite. So it's not, wouldn't be fair to throw Pelagius into there. Cause the way it well, Pelagius probably gets a bad rap. Cause as any of these things happen, the, the, it's like Nestorius Nestorius gets a bad rap because Cyril was characterizing him. It by his, by a theological heresy was Nestorius guilty of everything. Cyril said, probably not.

Murray (13:30.958)
Yeah.

Murray (13:44.174)
Yeah. Well, with Pal- Yeah. Well, did I ever send you that link from that Oxford professor who wrote that book on Pelagius? It's really- who basically said that everything Pelagius wrote is in complete agreement with the Desert Fathers everything. There's nothing he said outside. And it was Augustine who used him as a straw man to bring in original sin, which was not a church doctrine at all. so, anyway.

Joshua Hoffert (13:44.41)
Was Pelagius guilty of everything Augustine said? Cause Pelagius was

Joshua Hoffert (13:53.155)
I don't think so.

Joshua Hoffert (14:03.536)
Well, what and what we yeah, the only, but the only thing we know, right. The only. Yeah.

Murray (14:12.736)
It's interesting. I like playjays. Sorry.

Joshua Hoffert (14:12.942)
Yeah. Pelagius. Well, the only thing I'm pretty sure the only thing we know about Pelagius's writings are what Augustine quoted.

Murray (14:22.7)
No, there are like three or four documents from him. Yeah. No, no, no.

Joshua Hoffert (14:26.574)
Okay. That's not much though. I, that's yeah. But I, I, I, if I remember right, Augustine's point was he's characterizing Pelagius as saying you can, you can save yourself. Man's inherent goodness can save himself. Yeah. Right.

Murray (14:37.678)
Yes. But Pelagius never said that. But my point is that, you know, if you've been through the life that Augustine had, with all the immorality and not being able to get himself free, you know, he's got a pretty good view of what sin does to the heart. And if you look at, you know, Pelagius coming out of a very strong monastic Christian culture, where he's probably grew up in it, and he saw the development of the goodness of man by...

Joshua Hoffert (14:48.261)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (15:02.385)
Sure.

Murray (15:06.956)
ascetical practices, he also has a very good point. So in some ways they're both using their upbringing and their tradition and their shaping of their own beliefs against each other when they're both right like you're saying, right?

Joshua Hoffert (15:08.721)
Right.

Joshua Hoffert (15:14.392)
Against each against each other. Yeah. Yeah, I think I think there's truth to both claims.

Murray (15:21.666)
So well said is what I'm saying. Well, well played.

Joshua Hoffert (15:24.572)
That's my, that's my, that's the dilemma of being a middle child. You're always trying to play both sides, you know? Yeah. Yeah. That's great. That's right. okay. Let's, let's, yeah, let's, let's dive in. Let's start our episode, right? We'll characterize it with.

Murray (15:32.47)
Yeah, that's funny. There you go. There's your gift of being a middle child right there.

you might have to say that because that's brilliant.

Murray (15:47.062)
All right. I'll keep this. You want me to, well, if you want me to quote that just so as a talking point, we can get to it. We can't. Okay. I'll just keep it close.

Joshua Hoffert (15:54.925)
we'll just see where we go. know, yeah, keep it keep it handy. Yeah. And, and then you can you can you can kind of phrase the question as it was asked to you. And then we'll talk about that right once once we get into that. So yeah, so

Murray (16:12.64)
Okay, I hope I can. So dualism, give me your definition of, because she quoted the word dualism. Give me your definition of whether, are we talking like John Sandra used to talk about Aristillian docetic Gnosticism? know, he used to say that word. Docetic, the realms are separated. heaven's way up here and we're way down there and the two never meet. Like Newton wound up the universe, God wound up the universe and left.

Joshua Hoffert (16:26.41)
for sure. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Yeah, that's what dualism tech technically would be. Yeah. Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (16:40.25)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Murray (16:41.89)
Got it. Okay, that's what I thought. just wanted to make sure that... Because you could even say dualism is head versus noose or head versus spirit. You could divide it there too if you wanted, but I'm guessing that's not the case.

Joshua Hoffert (16:52.56)
Well, yeah, not really. You know, that would be Yeah, that would be more like rationalism. Yeah. Because dualism has to do with a belief of this of the makeup of the world. Yeah. So it

Murray (16:57.294)
That would be more like rationalism.

Murray (17:11.608)
Got it.

Because would be a good question to put in here at some point. I could quote John Sanford and talk about.

Joshua Hoffert (17:19.1)
epistemology, I think would probably be the technical term for what dualism is, it's an epistemology. A way, a way knowledge and information work about how we know and understand and see things and the way the world is constructed. So yeah.

Murray (17:37.474)
Alright, I mean it would be a good question. can say, so how do you, John Sanford used to quote this, blah blah blah. I mean how did, you know, this would be a loaded question. How do you think the Western Church got itself into a point where we see everything so much through Platonic thinking and rationalism that we're missing some of these deeper things? Like that's a loaded question. You should, you you could.

Joshua Hoffert (17:58.383)
Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. There we go. We just answered the question. Kind of. Yeah. Yeah, you could. Yeah. Yeah, we can we can talk about that. Okay, Lord, be with us even more than you are now help guide and direct our thoughts. Let it let it let your presence permeate all that we do.

Murray (18:01.206)
Yes. Very. Yeah. Kinda. I mean, you could you could wax elegantly on like I put the ball in the tee for you and then you could just hit it. OK.

Help. Yeah, this is big concepts.

Joshua Hoffert (18:26.128)
We just ask that you'd rest with us and that you'd rest on the hearts of the hearers, people that are listening, and you'd help us to have a fruitful conversation that would impact the lives of people. Amen. Okay. I guess I'll do the welcome this time. Three, two, one.

Murray (18:37.08)
Amen.

Joshua Hoffert (18:44.346)
Welcome everybody to another episode. was going to say penultimate, but you know, just cause the, I like the word. It sounds kind of fun, but it's always a panel. I guess if we were, yeah. Penultimate episode before always planning for this to be the second to last episode, then it's penultimate. yeah. That's, that's, always thought penultimate men like the top of it, but then I, but it's, No, means the, the one before the last one.

Murray (18:54.648)
Should be heavy metal band.

Murray (19:03.704)
really?

Murray (19:08.16)
I did, that's what I thought it meant too until this very moment.

Joshua Hoffert (19:14.096)
That's what it means. Yeah. So, but this is not words terminology. Yeah. Isn't it just semantics? You know, that's the, that's what favorite thing people say. Welcome everybody to voices from the desert, desert,

Murray (19:14.222)
Oh, so this is not the penultimate. See, this is going to come very into our episode today of using terminology that we actually don't understand.

Murray (19:33.418)
Joshua Hoffert (19:38.224)
Any puppies jumping up?

Murray (19:39.8)
Yep. Yep. I got some sheep dog looks on that one. Yep. No, they laid back down again. Enough to three. They're all sleeping, which is nice, but they are one sheep dog and a one dog sheep. Yeah. One sheep dog. got some dog sheeps. Sheeps. think they're dogs too. Lots of them. They like dog cookies and potato chips very much. You never, you the thing about a dog and a sheep, the big difference.

Joshua Hoffert (19:42.121)
Okay, right. How many are there with you in the house?

Okay. How many are outside?

Joshua Hoffert (19:54.882)
one sheep one one dog sheep.

Joshua Hoffert (20:05.06)
right, right.

What's that?

Murray (20:09.934)
You give a dog a dog bone, they thank you. You give a sheep a dog bone, they attack you. Because in their head, it's like, you got a bag of this in there. know you got a whole bag. I'm coming for the bag. You're holding out. And then they go crazy because you give them one that's like, they don't thank you. They go, they go complete zombie apocalypse. So that's the difference between a sheep dog and a dog sheep right there.

Joshua Hoffert (20:19.812)
Alright, alright, alright. Yeah, yeah, there you go. Yeah.

Right, right.

Joshua Hoffert (20:30.876)
Sure.

Joshua Hoffert (20:34.716)
Yeah. I like that. I guess, you know, getting into semantics and definitions kind of sets up our.

Murray (20:41.922)
Yeah, that's what we're doing today. We've done it twice already and we haven't even got to where we're talking about.

Joshua Hoffert (20:45.804)
I know, don't even know and no even knows what we have docked up yet.

Murray (20:49.486)
everybody very this. hope this will be an interesting episode for you, but I think it's very important because a lot of we're going to talk about belief systems, belief systems, not just belief systems in our head, but belief systems, culturally, religiously. And the reason we're to talk about this, had a friend send me a message the other day in a,

Joshua Hoffert (21:00.55)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (21:09.008)
But first, but first join our Patreon. We have a Patreon. You get more, you get more, you can ask questions, you can criticize us, you can attack us. I don't tell Marie about those kinds of posts that are on there. You know, the ones that quit that criticizes theology and heretic. Yeah. Yeah. But join our point Patreon. We're, love engaging with the audience. It's a way to support, Murray and I.

Murray (21:13.159)
yes! Yeah, you'll get more! Like that's probably where this will be posted.

Murray (21:21.806)
Especially Josh.

Murray (21:25.614)
Ha ha ha ha!

boy. Yes! Erotic! my.

Joshua Hoffert (21:38.884)
And yeah, and yeah, you gain it, gain access to some, some additional conversations, that kind of stuff. So you can find more information about that in the link in the episode description. So there you go. So you were sent a message.

Murray (21:38.904)
Thank you, everybody.

Murray (21:52.718)
Oh, very nice. Very good. Yes, by somebody who is on our Patreon, actually, if I remember correctly. And they are doing a course on healing of the soul, emotions. And in this book that she's reading, you know, Christian psychology book, they talked about the formation of from Plato through Aristotle, of Stoics, and then how this belief influenced the Desert Fathers.

Joshua Hoffert (22:00.133)
Okay. Right.

Murray (22:23.286)
And I took umbrage with that because, well, you'll see. And I guess one of the reasons that triggers me, everybody, so I'm going to need to go get some emotional healing from the very person I'm talking about after because this has triggered me. So, you know, it's interesting with church culture. I had to take a course back in Bible school called Anabaptist Thought because Mennonites are Anabaptists.

Joshua Hoffert (22:40.251)
Ha ha ha ha

Murray (22:51.776)
And we called it Anabaptist rot, which was really bad. And I have a little bit more appreciation for it now, of course, but it's basically straight indoctrination and which, you know, we are all kind of that way. And, you know, if you go back to episode one of Voices from the Desert,

Joshua Hoffert (23:09.692)
It's only indoctrination if you eventually disagree with it. Otherwise then it's just teaching someone to think. It's all in the eye of the beholder, right? Yeah.

Murray (23:13.162)
Yes. So, yeah, there you go. There you go.

That's right. Yeah, exactly. So, so for me, you know, going from, you know, many night brethren, God bless them. I'm still kidding.

Joshua Hoffert (23:27.836)
The left's indoctrinating our children. No, we're just teaching them sexuality and how to think. It's like, you know, it depends on how you talk about it, you know, it's.

Murray (23:30.422)
Yes! there's a lot of this going on!

That's right, it depends on how you talk about it. man, you know, no, it's good.

Joshua Hoffert (23:43.002)
Anyway, sorry, I'm just... We may have, we may just have a whole new episode that we haven't even thought about right there. Yeah.

Murray (23:48.622)
Right there, you just put the ball on the tee and then somebody pulled out a shotgun and I can hear the gun click. yeah. So, you know, I was taught that, you know, basically the church, have the Bible and then maybe you have the first century after that of Clement and that group, you know, that are still fairly normal, theologically sound people. But after that, it's all heretical, all the way up to Luther.

Joshua Hoffert (23:52.974)
Okay. Play Doh desert fathers stoicism. Yes.

Murray (24:17.208)
You know, and to the point they, know, put a lot of fear in you. And, and mainly because of the accusation that there's a desert fathers were rationalist stoics who hated the body. And, you know, that's why they fast. They hate the body. They have to, you know, isn't that what they're doing? Like, and it really put a lot of fear in me in regards, you know, looking before Luther for a long time until, you know, burned out and crashed really, really hard and realize a performance driven.

Joshua Hoffert (24:38.523)
Right.

Murray (24:46.134)
Western culture Christianity just based on the West left side of my brain intellectualism is not getting the job done. And I discovered for myself the desert fathers and the transformation of the soul and the passions and becoming Christ like through, know, you know, these passions are in there. So when I hear criticism now that is not based on any form of reality, but pet doctrine,

Joshua Hoffert (24:54.427)
Right.

Murray (25:14.402)
I get a little triggered because of course my own journey out of pet doctrine has been costly. wanted to talk, you know, Josh and I were talking and we're like, we should really talk about this because I'm not the only one, I'm absolutely sure, that has A, misconceptions of early church theology. Two, how did the early church get formed by Greek thought? Because John in John 1, when he talking about the logos, he is pulling in Greek thought right off the bat in description of Christ.

Joshua Hoffert (25:16.058)
Right.

Joshua Hoffert (25:21.382)
Right.

Joshua Hoffert (25:42.874)
Right.

Murray (25:44.814)
intentionally. So it's intentionally done. And how do we view scripture, the Bible, the Desert Father's inner transformation today when all this Greek thought is kicking around in Western culture and often we don't even know it. So there you go. We're going to dig into some of these thoughts here. Over to you, Josh.

Joshua Hoffert (26:00.669)
Yeah.

yeah, that's very true. Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (26:08.624)
Yeah, you know, the question was essentially, you know, the, the, the, the question that got us thinking was Plato, dualistic interpretation of creation and the stoics flowing from that. And then the desert fathers are influenced by the stoics. And so we have to be a little cautious when

we read that that was kind of the question. Do we think we're the Desert Fathers influenced by Platonism and the stoic and stoicism? That that's kind of the question, right? And, and it

Murray (26:45.154)
Yeah. And I kind of just feel that where does that all go in modern thinking culture, religion, scripture reading, right? It has ramifications.

Joshua Hoffert (26:51.03)
Yeah, yeah, that's right. And so Murray and I got we got on the the recording together before we started recording and Murray goes, I gotta I gotta ask you this question. I would just have two questions for you. The first was inconsequential because it was about podcast statistics. And the second was about and we just started chatting. let's just record an episode about it. And the precursor to that, by the way, is we're kind of doing this off the cuff.

Murray (27:02.946)
Yeah!

Murray (27:08.802)
Yes.

What is about this?

Yeah, cause I-

Joshua Hoffert (27:19.888)
We've done some studying and research in the past, but you're more than welcome to fact check us because some of what we'll be saying is a bit off the cuff. I believe it's well informed, but if we were going to sit down and do a whole series on this, we would have pulled up everything we could and then refreshed ourselves.

Murray (27:31.852)
Yeah. Little rusty. Little rusty.

Murray (27:40.28)
So in other words, everybody, if you have questions about this or you want to talk to us about this, please send us, please message us and we'll dive deeper. And Josh is like a plethora of information here. It's unbelievable actually that he's done a lot of study on this. So, you know, I think we've come to the right place, Mr. Josh Alpert.

Joshua Hoffert (27:44.305)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (27:59.332)
And we'll, we'll, it's, it's, I don't, if I get, if I get, if I miss, if I get any kind of quotes or names wrong, I think the overall gist that we're going to be talking about is, stands true still. so the first thing to talk about, I guess, is, you know, the, the role of Plato or what do we think about when we think about Plato, right? And you've got the three main.

Murray (28:08.312)
Hmm.

Murray (28:27.144)
And you don't mean the rubbery gooey compound that you make Gumby out of

Joshua Hoffert (28:30.491)
No, I don't. Yeah, I remember when I was young we would make it out of peanut butter and you could eat it. That was wonderful.

What's the point of play dough though? If you're going to just eat it, you just might as well make something else. So maybe it was just because kids ate play dough. And so they're like, well, let's make it easier. Let's make it more digestible. So, yeah, we've definitely had the dog eat stuff like that before and it comes out looking like it did going in. So yeah. That thank you for clarifying that. That's just, yeah.

Murray (28:40.621)
Yeah.

Murray (28:49.486)
It's a California thing.

Murray (28:56.066)
Yeah, I've experienced this.

Not personally, but observing. yeah, just, That's what I believe systems form right there, everybody.

Joshua Hoffert (29:07.943)
Yeah, that's that is exactly how they form. That's right. Well, Murray Murray's been eating some play dough, I guess. So play toe PLATO right? Yeah. So you've got the Plato is the first of the the main three Greek philosophers, right? You've got Plato, Socrates and Aristotle. And if I if I recall correctly, I think

Murray (29:11.138)
Thus the Coptic and the Orthodox Church and their misunderstanding.

Murray (29:18.286)
yes, everyone wordplay. Sorry, prophetic guy wordplay.

Murray (29:32.046)
Aristotle yeah

Joshua Hoffert (29:36.975)
The only stuff we know about Plato is from Socrates.

Murray (29:41.844)
what about his book The Republic? Is that not him or is that recorded by one of his students?

Joshua Hoffert (29:46.766)
I think it's recorded by the student. I thought my I could be wrong. I could have mixed the two of them up. Did Plato write anything? I think what Plato was written was was written by Socrates. So

Murray (30:05.23)
You're probably right. I'm sure somebody out there will send us a little footnote on that.

Joshua Hoffert (30:07.707)
Or no, it was Socrates. Maybe it was Socrates that didn't write anything and Plato that systematized everything. I think that's what it is actually. Anyway, so Plato and then Aristotle was Plato's disciple, I think. So Socrates didn't write anything. Plato wrote everything, but what he was writing was what he learned from Socrates, something like that. Anyway, so Plato, we're talking 400s in BC, right? So 400 years before Jesus.

Murray (30:20.76)
Yeah, I believe this is true.

Joshua Hoffert (30:36.763)
really the foundation of Greek philosophy between those three Plato, Socrates and so Plato systematized. I think it's that Plato systematized Socrates philosophy and and then stoicism kind of builds off of that and that the essential foundation is you could probably characterize if we're to do it simply and there's lots of it like Plato has theories of knowledge, how knowledge, how we learn things, all that stuff, right?

And I think there's four main avenues for learning knowledge and love is one of them. Prophecy is another one like spiritual intuition. Yeah. I think there's four main avenues for the way we acquire knowledge. So there's so he had a lot to say, right. But the the the the framework is is between the ideas and the forms. Those are the technical terms that Plato uses. So he separates

Murray (31:12.673)
really?

Joshua Hoffert (31:35.686)
creation into those two those two categories ideas and forms so ideas ideas is essentially the form of categories or the the it's a category it's not like a thought it's it's above the thought so if you look at i have a desk in front of me right so the the desk tape takes its form from the idea that it represents

Okay. So the idea is what permeates all of how creation expresses itself. So we've got the idea and the form, the desk is the form. The concept of a desk is the idea. And the idea always stands above what the form actually is. So the desk can look like any kind of desk, right? Marie's got a desk. I've got a table here, a desk here, right? The desk takes many different forms.

But the concept of a desk, the idea of a desk is what determines the fact that it is a desk. So Plato separate that's, that's, that's where we get the term. We, a, docetic philosophy, I think, right. As the, as the term, so it's dualistic. It's got the, the matter is one thing, but the idea that governs the matter is the other thing. So to Plato, the idea.

Murray (32:46.808)
Doserek, got it.

Joshua Hoffert (33:00.347)
realm is divine. This is God. This is the realm that's above all other realms. And the form is the matter and substance that's taken. And so, you know, when it comes to like Gnostic heresies or Gnosticism in general, it takes the framework of ideas and forms and then superimposes divine beings in a hierarchy of

Murray (33:27.565)
Hmm

Joshua Hoffert (33:29.925)
How do the ideas transpose themselves into the forms? Right? Then you have the, the demi urges and all this that take the, take the ideas and then speak them down and create and all this stuff. There'd be emanations, that kind of stuff. Yeah. That's what, but that's what you would get. Not so much from Plato, but from the, the, the Gnostics, the Gnostics that took that theory of how the universe is constructed and then kind of tried to explain it with.

Murray (33:36.504)
Got it.

So that's the emanation. They talk about the emanations. Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (33:58.319)
mystical religious thought processes, right?

Murray (34:00.6)
Got it. So everyone, the big one on that, I'll just throw it out because I was thinking about it Because eventually this will come up about the physicality of the human body. Because Gnosticism would say mankind is dirty. The physical body is dirty. So in their thinking there was a god and he created this emanation, which created an emanation, which created an emanation like these dea forms. Yeah. Yeah, Plato wouldn't have thought that.

Joshua Hoffert (34:22.586)
Right. So based off platonic philosophy, but Plato wouldn't have thought necessarily like that. Yeah.

Murray (34:28.012)
And the last one created mankind and it had to because it's so far away from God because God is so pure and humankind is so dirty physically that, you know, that's kind of a very gnostic. Former, even the Desert Fathers get accused of this a little bit, which, you know, we'll get to that. But of course it's not true in that regard.

Joshua Hoffert (34:36.006)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (34:42.043)
Yeah.

Yeah. In a way, Plato as a philosopher was monotheistic. You know, it's, it's, he, he wasn't, I don't think he was so much concerned. Now I can't say I'm, I'm a put like a Plato scholar, right? But I don't, I don't think he had a pantheon of gods. A lot of the philosophers didn't, you know, the, religious, the religious representations in Greek and Roman, you know, the Greek and Roman religions, Zeus or, or,

Murray (34:50.189)
Hmm.

Murray (34:56.014)
100 % right on that.

Joshua Hoffert (35:16.016)
That's the Greek one. And then the Roman one is not Mars. Who's the Roman one? Yeah, maybe a stupider. You might be, you know, there's a there's there's superimposed between the two. It's almost it's almost a one for one identical. So those aren't those are like those are like popular popularization of the mythos. Right. That's the kind of the the but that's not that wasn't related to a philosophical system. But with that said, it's

Murray (35:19.741)
Jupiter.

I I think J- Yeah, it's using Jupiter or this name.

Murray (35:36.514)
Mmm.

Joshua Hoffert (35:45.553)
because Plato, the platonic philosophy permeated most of Greek and Roman culture, the way that they conceptualized the gods was very much influenced by that. Right? So you've got gods who are disinterested in humanity and they really represent the, the, the worst parts of the human vices, right? You've got in the Roman

Murray (35:53.816)
society, right? Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (36:13.772)
the Roman pantheon, you've got Mars, right? The God of war who represents anger and power and control, right? And they essentially embody the worst of that. So, or Aphrodite, the goddess of sexuality and beauty and lust, right? All of the gods embody the worst aspects of what we would characterize from an early church perspective, the worst parts of the passions or the sinful urges within humanity, right?

Murray (36:17.037)
Yeah.

Murray (36:24.504)
Hmm.

Murray (36:39.02)
Hmm. Yes.

Joshua Hoffert (36:43.706)
So, and it's funny, you if you think about it, every one of the gods, pretty much in Greek or Roman, the Greek or Roman religion, you could probably relate to a human biochemical response in the sense of

fear, anxiety, anger, lust, desire for power, every one of these is a chemical reaction within us, right? On some level, right? Love.

Murray (37:14.848)
Interesting. So very much like Winnie the Pooh.

Joshua Hoffert (37:19.322)
Yeah, that's right.

Murray (37:21.442)
So, anyway, Tigger's happiness, Piglet's fear, Eeyore's depression, Rabbit's the mind, you know? Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (37:22.908)
Yeah, exactly. exactly. Yep. Totally. They all they all represent stuff like that. It's true. So it's fascinating when you think about that, right? That the human impulses that are that are determined by the, you know, the endorphins and all the stuff that gets released within us, right? Kind of all reflect that. So anyway, that has nothing to play, though, in a way.

Murray (37:36.258)
Yeah.

Murray (37:49.378)
Yeah. Well, I do believe that later, you know, I, again, I could be wrong here, everybody, but I do remember somewhere reading that some of the later Greek philosophers believe that the gods were archetypes of personality. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, just taking.

Joshua Hoffert (37:51.556)
Although the system's built off of that.

Joshua Hoffert (38:04.75)
that's very possible. Yeah, I'm not. I don't know that, but that's very possible. I don't think it's that I don't think it's like I'm like a hidden mystery to go. Yeah, they represent the worst parts of humanity. Yeah.

Murray (38:14.102)
Yeah, it's pretty pretty obvious that and then there's a guy that into the wine guy who I can't remember his name. I can see him in my mind the image of his goat little legs and holding a big glass of wine. Anyway, doesn't matter but yeah, it could be. Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (38:26.574)
that might be Dionysius actually might be Dionysius. I can't yeah anyway yeah there's the god of partying you know right. So yeah so anyway so platonic philosophy separates things into ideas and forms basically in a nutshell and then stoicism is a stoicism is a way of imposing practices upon those ideas so the the way to

Murray (38:33.25)
Yeah, that guy. He was popular.

Murray (38:52.686)
Hmm.

Joshua Hoffert (38:55.292)
purify oneself that you might be, you know, the higher form of humanity is to remove all emotions, because that would be the material, right? That would be the forms would be the would be the emotions that would be the dirty part of humanity. As long as you can remove those things, you can be more godlike with that you're unfeeling and uncaring and unmoved by anything right? You know that the term stoic means to be unmoved by anything.

Right.

Murray (39:25.326)
You know, it's funny because I looked up this quote by, it's just a famous quote by a diogonist, sorry, and because Alexander the Great went to see him because he was very impressed with him, You know, he was the stoic and he came to get a word of encouragement or understanding and Diogenes says to him, could you move a little bit to the right? You're blocking my son. That's, and he was really impressed by that because,

Joshua Hoffert (39:31.888)
Diogenes, Diogenes.

Joshua Hoffert (39:48.516)
Hahaha.

Murray (39:53.634)
You know, here the Emperor comes and he's like, could you just move a little bit?

Joshua Hoffert (39:57.821)
That's funny. I didn't know that one. There's lots of there's lots of great stuff in the in the the stoic philosophers, right? Marcus Aurelius was a stoic philosopher and and the Roman general, right? I think actually did he was he that he become Caesar at some point might have? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, that's right. So he wrote he wrote

Murray (40:00.342)
Yeah, anyway, very famous hood.

Murray (40:09.218)
No? Yeah?

Murray (40:16.504)
Yo, yeah, absolutely.

Joshua Hoffert (40:23.416)
I can't remember what the book is called, but it's stoic philosophy that and the thing is, when you look at stoic philosophy in the first, you know, couple centuries AD, the conversation around practice, and life in general is very similar to it's it's the Christian ethic and the stoic ethic are very similar. Right? They're not they're not you you would like you would read Marcus Aurelius and go, is this guy Christian?

Murray (40:46.379)
Interesting.

Joshua Hoffert (40:53.476)
Right. And there's certain things you'd read that you would go, well, maybe not, but it's very, it's very, there's a lot of overlap there.

Murray (40:53.974)
Interesting.

Murray (40:59.438)
I have an article, I'll just see if I can find it.

Joshua Hoffert (41:03.012)
Yeah. The so so the so the conversation or the question of how much did Platonism and then stoicism influence the desert fathers? It's it or or it if it did, then we need to not listen to them. I think that's the assumption if it did, then we need to listen to the early church fathers, right? The problem with the the

The problem with the characterization and the question is triumph is this in here. I'll just say it this way. Show me someone who wasn't influenced by Plato. Like let's first start there. Okay. Show me someone who wasn't influenced by Plato in, in the hundreds of years leading up to the coming of Christ and the hundreds of years afterwards. And you'll be really hard pressed to find someone who wasn't influenced by Plato. And the, the now

Murray (41:56.526)
Hmm, very true.

Joshua Hoffert (42:00.849)
the Old Testament was largely composed by the time Plato comes around, right? Like the last of the prophetic books. It depends on if you're in the, if you're in the Catholic or Orthodox tradition and have first and second Maccabees and Tobit and Judith and all that in there, then maybe you've got a few intertestamental works, right? But your, your Old Testament is largely put together by the time Plato comes around. So you don't find references to Platonic philosophy in the Old Testament.

But in the New Testament, you find right off the bat with John one in the beginning was the word and the word is with God and the word was God. This is riffing on classic Greek philosophical framework.

Murray (42:44.622)
Here's in the fifth century anthology of Stobius, there's a list of 147 maxims attributed to seven sages of Greece. obey the law, worship the gods, respect your parents, be overcome by justice, know what you've learned, perceive what you've heard, be yourself, intend to get married, think as immortal. If you're a stranger, act like one, control yourself, help your friends, exercise prudence.

Joshua Hoffert (42:57.862)
Right.

Murray (43:13.774)
honor providence, cling to discipline, pursue honor, long for wisdom, praise the good, find fault with no one, praise virtue, practice what is just, be kind to your friends, I mean watch out for your enemies, Jesus would be different there, exercise nobility of character, shun evil, be impartial, guard what is yours, shun what belongs to others, listen to everyone, be silent, do a favor for a friend, nothing in excess, use time sparingly. Anyway, so yeah, you look at those and go, yeah, those, know.

Yeah, I could find a lot of those in scripture. Absolutely. Be a seeker of wisdom. Choose what is divine. Shun murder. There's a good one. Test character. Look down on no one. Be jealous of no one. Be on your guard. Despise a slanderer. Yeah. I mean, there's 147 of these things, everybody. I'm just going to skip them. just so you know, it's like, whoa, there's, you know, no wonder Paul was like, yeah, surprising, surprising.

Joshua Hoffert (43:59.951)
It's it. Yeah.

There's a lot of overlap there. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, it's, going back to, like, like even Jesus went the golden rule, right? Which, which is, is, quoted as like, for some reason, the golden rule has entered into cultural consciousness or our cultural conscious conscience as, the height of morality do unto others as you would have them do unto us. Right.

Joshua Hoffert (44:42.468)
or he's looking for something.

we'll wait for him to get his headphones back in. There we go. No, that's all right. Yeah. So the golden rule is like thinking of the golden rule, right? The golden rules entered into West, the Western conscience as the, the epitome of morality, right? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Right. And then we look at that as but Jesus, Jesus, the thing is that

Murray (44:49.624)
Sorry, had to let a cat in.

Murray (45:03.405)
Mmm, yes.

Joshua Hoffert (45:13.07)
kind of framework for morality or ethical discourse existed long before Jesus, right? You could go back as far as Buddha, and he would say something very similar, right? It's not Jesus was never trying to epitomize morality through the ethos of the golden rule. He was never going, this is how you're supposed to live. He his his whole point is that's kind of the baseline. But the

Murray (45:37.645)
Mmm.

Joshua Hoffert (45:39.13)
The greater framework for morality is to lay one's life down on behalf of others. Right now treating do the one is so focused, right? Doing to others is that so I'm going to treat other people in a kind loving way because I want to be treated in a kind loving way. Right? So

Murray (45:44.994)
Yes.

Murray (45:55.15)
Yes, I would say the Greek maxim, without reading all of them, seemed to point that way.

Joshua Hoffert (46:00.249)
Exactly. It's not, it's not a framework that's unheard of in the ancient world. And, but when Jesus talks about loving the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, he taught, he talks about loving your neighbor as yourself. He talks about, the greater love will no one have, but then this, that a man lay his life down on behalf of another, right? He's elevating the framework for morality beyond the golden rule. Okay.

Murray (46:18.51)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Murray (46:25.955)
Yes.

Joshua Hoffert (46:26.842)
So, but my point in saying that is when he says, do unto others as you would have to, he's calling on the Greek, the Greek, the Greek conscience, right? He's speaking directly to the culture there. That is a cultural ethos that's not inherently Christian, but has permeated the ancient world. And he's bringing it right into his, his teaching on, on what, what a kingdom person actually looks like in the context of, his, his moral framework is.

Murray (46:35.992)
Mmm.

Murray (46:44.661)
Mmm, well said.

Joshua Hoffert (46:56.846)
Yes. And there's a lot more to it, right? Laying one's life down is a lot, a lot, is a, is a higher call in terms of a moral framework than doing it to others as you would have them do unto you. Right. One, one is selfless and one is self-interested and, and one is much more difficult to accomplish than the other. Right. And, and even the, even the 10 commandments, you can find shades of that in Haber-Abi's code.

Murray (47:10.456)
Yes.

Murray (47:18.156)
Yes, absolutely. Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (47:25.782)
in the ancient world, right? So you're talking about a moral and ethical framework in by the time Jesus comes around, that's not unheard of in the the pagan culture surrounding Christianity. And then John, course, incorporating loaded Greek philosophical terms like the logos, Paul in Acts 17, quoting Greek philosophers about the nature of Zeus and then having that point.

Murray (47:25.794)
Yes.

Joshua Hoffert (47:54.148)
on to point.

Joshua Hoffert (48:01.852)
You know, point to God, the father, right. And X 17, right. Yeah. Moves them in that direction. Right. So Paul's obviously very aware of like, okay, to quote something in such a loaded way with so much cultural context to bring the Christian for it. Like he had to really understand.

Murray (48:04.942)
to move them in that direction. Absolutely. Gonna move them along.

Murray (48:21.676)
Yeah, wow.

Joshua Hoffert (48:26.073)
the framework of Roman and Greek society in order to bring because he's in Greece at that point. He's in the area in the area. I guess I don't think that's in Rome. I'm pretty sure that's it was in Greece at that point. That's another one of those things you can fact check me on because I'm not I can't remember it regardless. He's speaking directly to the culture. He's not speaking in the in that's interesting at the beginning of Act 17. He goes into the temple and reasons with the people that Christ is Christ is the Messiah, right? And then

Murray (48:54.19)
Hmm.

Joshua Hoffert (48:56.099)
And then he goes into the Areopagus and reasons from the Greek texts and their philosophers that God is the father who's given us Jesus the son. So he's, he's very, culturally proficient and, seemingly well read when he incorporates that into his, his, his message, you know, his, his talk with the, philosophers at the Areopagus.

Murray (49:06.328)
Wow.

Murray (49:24.066)
Wow.

Joshua Hoffert (49:24.075)
And, and there's a few others in that I can't, I just can't, I think there's a, there's a few, I think there may be a few, is it in Isaiah that are quotes of Greek philosophers, potentially quotes where there's definitely either Isaiah was picking up on them or they picked up on Isaiah. So my point is to, to try and, to try and say, well, Plato influenced this group of people, so we can't listen to them.

Murray (49:43.454)
interesting.

Joshua Hoffert (49:51.298)
is just to misunderstand the framework of society and culture in the in the early centuries of Christian history, because Plato referenced Plato influenced everybody. So if Paul wanted to have a conversation with in the Greek and Roman world, he was going to have to understand Greek and Roman culture, Greek philosophy, Roman philosophy, and he was going to have to be able to incorporate a Christian framework into that. And that's largely what you find following from because the first the

Murray (49:55.468)
Well said, yes.

Joshua Hoffert (50:20.335)
the apostolic fathers, right? First century, following from Paul and John and Matthew and you know, the the 12 apostles, the apostolic fathers are largely Jewish. There's, it's not really until you get to, I think, Tertullian may have been the very the first kind of notable Greek philosopher that became Christian.

Murray (50:45.112)
Really, what year are we talking there with your Chilean? 150?

Joshua Hoffert (50:46.491)
now we're talking like yeah 150 to 250 somewhere in there. He's early on right? Tertullian. So I think he was the first one. And Tertullian was also the one who coined the term Trinity at 160 AD to 240 AD. Yeah, yep.

Murray (50:51.406)
Wow. Yeah.

Murray (51:02.958)
Oh, okay, hold on one second. I have to go to the bathroom. Sorry, I didn't turn the fireplace back on. I just turned it off. Now I'm cold, so.

Joshua Hoffert (51:07.099)
Okay, pause.

Murray (51:13.388)
I'm die. I'm trying.

Murray (51:21.806)
Good night.

Murray (52:56.652)
boy. You know the problem is that when I get older and I don't have dogs I'm so used to talking to inanimate objects I'm gonna look like a fool.

Joshua Hoffert (53:04.219)
That's true. No, that's fine. That's fine. Yeah, no problem. Okay, I can keep I can pick up right where I was. Yeah, yeah, that was Yeah. So, Turtullian Turtullian coined the term Trinity is one of the first ones to use the word Trinity.

Murray (53:07.911)
Sorry about that. That's two bubblies and two cups of coffee. That's way too much.

Murray (53:16.648)
That was a good spot. just thought that was a thought right there.

Murray (53:26.73)
Okay. And that's, mean, a lot of people even in, not a lot of people, but there is a segment of Christianity who already says that's Greek philosophy getting into the church. And you can't find that word in the Bible. And, you know, I've heard that argument. So, which is, we don't even need to go there because it's stupid. So it's pretty clear Galatians 4.60, sent the spirit of his son into our heart to cry his eye before. There's everybody, they're all there. Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (53:41.113)
Yeah, stupid. It's stupid. It's stupid.

Joshua Hoffert (53:47.866)
Yeah. It's it's all it's all throughout scripture, right? It's all there. And we're not that's not our that's not what we're we're not laying out a Trinitarian defense right now. So so Turtullian, one of the first Greek philosophers turned Christian theologian, and that's early again, early on, right? That's really early on. And so that the first few letters that you read in, if in the post the apostles,

Murray (53:57.805)
Yes.

Murray (54:08.258)
That's really early on,

Joshua Hoffert (54:16.419)
sound a lot like the apostles, right? You get the Didache, you get first and second Clement, Clement of Rome, right? You've got Irenaeus. Yeah, probably. Yeah. Irenaeus, right? Against the Heresies. You've got Ignatius of Antioch. So they're largely writing instruction, much like Paul, to clarify some theological misunderstandings and to give pastoral

Murray (54:18.915)
Yes.

Murray (54:23.138)
Yeah. Who's a disciple of Peter, I think. Aaron is, yeah, Aaron is.

Joshua Hoffert (54:46.363)
care to the churches in the various different cities, right? It does really feel like, like, I think it's Ignatius that writes to the Church of Corinth, and it feels like a continuation of Second Corinthians, right, or still dealing with issues and trying to frame things and help people understand. So and then it's, it's, it's Tertullian that really starts the

Murray (55:02.028)
yeah? Wow.

Joshua Hoffert (55:14.031)
the Greek expansion of Christianity, right? I think all of the apostles were Jews, right? All of the church fathers were Jewish. The apostolic fathers were Jewish. And they're having this showdown essentially with Rome, right? Caesar is Lord, no, Jesus is Lord, right? That's kind of the framework of the first.

hundred years of Christian struggle is the persecution there. But then it's when Tertullian starts writing, and he's got a couple books that he writes, where he's arguing against Greek philosophers, because Christianity has now shown up on the scene as a kind of a mover and shaker in terms of a system of thought, right? Well, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, well, because because Judaism was so popular.

Murray (55:42.787)
Mmm.

Murray (56:03.788)
Really, by 150, well-known mover and shaker, for sure, wow.

Joshua Hoffert (56:11.151)
right? It was a it was one of the only religions that were allowed to practice the way that it was that you know, they had latitude to practice their system of religion in Jerusalem and Israel, where lots of other because they were a conquered country by the Greek Empire. And they were by the Roman Empire at that point. And and they were given a lot of latitude, they were a favorite to have a king, right? Like, they had

Murray (56:36.354)
Yeah, Well, the Romans originally were invited in to help protect them against, during the Maccabees, right after the Maccabees. Hey, help protect us against the, like, Greek Empire of the Seleucids, I think? Anyway.

Joshua Hoffert (56:41.987)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

So Christianity and originally, of course, is an offshoot off of Judaism and starts and yeah, yeah. It there's so that the yeah, so you get into two to two to two, and then some of the, the Latin fathers who are starting to starting to characterize and respond to attacks on Christianity from a Greek or Roman perspective, right?

Murray (56:52.302)
And that's how it would have been thought of, hey, during that time this is kind of a...yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (57:14.095)
So they're now speaking as Greek philosophers turned theologians into the Greek culture. Okay. Right. Same with origin. He's his defense against Kelsis where Kelsis starts calling out the how strange Christianity is an origin responsive. The only thing we don't have Kelsis is original book. We only have origins quotes of Kelsis. Okay. So I think Tertullian is it against praxis or praxis a Greek philosopher. So

Murray (57:20.334)
yes, well said.

Murray (57:35.575)
got it. Yeah.

Murray (57:41.794)
Sounds familiar.

Joshua Hoffert (57:42.736)
So there's some arguing going back and forth, right? And, and so what this does is this starts to, Hey, Christianity, the, the platonic influence isn't so much a platonic influence as it is a number of people who were raised in a Greek philosophical tradition. Now speaking to the Greek philosophical tradition using Greek terms to defend Christianity. Okay. So now you've. Yeah.

Murray (58:08.514)
Now, if you don't mind me asking, where's Polycarp in all of this? Because he's a reticent philosopher himself at first, isn't he?

Joshua Hoffert (58:11.877)
So polycarp.

Joshua Hoffert (58:16.607)
He is yeah. So polycarp polycarps dead by now. yeah. So polycarp was

Murray (58:21.264)
yeah, yeah, okay. But he is like one of these original guys, was a Greek philosopher.

Joshua Hoffert (58:26.221)
Yeah, but we don't have we don't like poly all I think the only thing we have that's written it was the martyrdom of polycarp. There's not a bunch of letters by polycarp or anything, right? So

Murray (58:35.278)
got it. Anyway, maybe I'll just, since I brought it up, we'll move on. He's a great conversion story. He's walking in the ocean along, this old guy comes up to him and basically starts to tell him about Jesus. And they have this debate when he's thinking in his rhetorical, Greek philosophical, philosophical thinking. And this guy just takes him apart, this old guy. And he converts. So if anybody you want to...

Joshua Hoffert (58:39.715)
Yeah, he's called a prophet. He's called a bishop. He's called an apostle. Yeah, he does.

Joshua Hoffert (59:02.02)
Right.

Murray (59:04.116)
experience this in a conversion experience that's quite fun to read. Read Polycarp's conversion experience. That will sum this up in a very, you know, easily digestible way. Anyway.

Joshua Hoffert (59:09.402)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (59:17.475)
Right, Yeah, so I'm polycarp. Is polycarp Greek? It must have been.

Murray (59:25.634)
I just remember he was a reticent and that was his job. So he was a philosopher at some level and some paid level, know, professional. And this old guy just takes him to town, rips down his theology on one walk on the beach. It's quite brilliant. I'll have to just read it again, but it's always impressed me.

Joshua Hoffert (59:33.625)
Right.

Joshua Hoffert (59:41.529)
Right.

Joshua Hoffert (59:46.202)
Yeah, he is. He does that there is I was just googling it. There are a couple letters by him that we have. So he died in the about 155. So by the time so Tertullian is not even born or he's just barely a kid at the time the polycarp passes away. So that's that's really the influx of so to say, Platonism or then Neo Platonism, which was characterized by the Greek philosopher plotness, which which incorporates more mystical elements.

Murray (01:00:00.803)
Got it.

Murray (01:00:15.831)
what year are we talking there? Roughly.

Joshua Hoffert (01:00:16.569)
And that's, plotness was, first, second century, believe. so, we might as well just look it up. He was, yeah, third century, second, third century. so plotness, you know, kind of furthers the platonic philosophy in terms of the Greek and role that turns the Roman empire. so, but the,

Murray (01:00:21.848)
Got it. Okay.

Joshua Hoffert (01:00:45.423)
The conversation has already started to heavily lean towards a Greek audience in terms of Christianity, because Christianity's main, main expansion is throughout the Roman empire, right? The Roman empire set the stage for Christianity really to go all throughout the known world, because you finally had systems of road. Like if you, if you think about the perfect time and place, it would have been exactly when Jesus came for this, for this.

Murray (01:01:04.173)
Yes.

Joshua Hoffert (01:01:15.519)
new way of thought and belief to explode throughout the known world. Because before that travel was not safe. The ability to get the interconnectedness between regions wasn't developed. But the Roman culture and language was so disparate and separate. But now you've got an empire that's conquered the known world that has, sis that has, that has the, the

Murray (01:01:17.56)
to explode throughout the world. Yeah.

Murray (01:01:28.664)
Common culture and language. That's right, everyone's speaking.

Joshua Hoffert (01:01:43.974)
predominant language of, of, Latin and Greek and, Greece or Greek have permeated everywhere. Right. And, and the roads are protected and people can travel all that stuff. Right. So it sets the stage for the expansion.

Murray (01:01:58.478)
Amazing. I believe that Roman Empire, if I remember the numbers right, ruled over one third of mankind at that time. This is amazing, right?

Joshua Hoffert (01:02:07.545)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. And and with that said, with that said, the Jesus is the one who was the catalyst for the Christian message to go to the pagans to the Roman world, right? He told them to go. But the apostles were really pretty happy. Yeah, go to the ends of the earth, right? He was the one who said go. So my point in saying that is, in a sense, Jesus didn't

Murray (01:02:24.696)
That's right, that's right, go to the ends of the earth.

Joshua Hoffert (01:02:35.639)
entrust the development of, of early theology to Jewish witnesses solely. He entrusted the development of Christian theology to, the Greeks and the Romans. He did.

Murray (01:02:51.384)
Wow, think about that as a statement. Somebody out there is like kicking their Bible across the room right now.

Joshua Hoffert (01:02:57.697)
No, there were, there are none of the Jewish writers are writing defenses of theology. That's just not the kind, that's just not the, the, the way that the Jewish writers thought they're not writing defenses of theology to the known world and to other cultures. The, the Greeks are the Roman philosophers and the Greek philosophers that become a Christian are right. These are the ones that the reticence, this, they systematize the thought and they

Murray (01:03:12.194)
Yeah, for sure.

Murray (01:03:19.425)
they're reticence. That's what they do. They argue publicly. That's what they do.

Joshua Hoffert (01:03:25.581)
And they codify and they find language to express it that says, how do we express this? And this is where you get creeds. Creeds are not a, are not a result of Jewish thought. They're a result of Greek thought. Now you do have, of course, the creedal formulas in scripture that Paul seems to codify, but Paul was a Roman citizen, right? He was heavily influenced by the Greek culture. Not to say he was, he was definitely Jewish, but, but, but you, you can't, you can't say

Murray (01:03:46.836)
Interesting, fascinating. Yeah, yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (01:03:53.99)
Plato influenced this particular subset of people. So we can't listen to him because Plato influenced everybody. then that subset of people, the Christians spoke into platonic philosophy and that culture in order to show people what Christian theology was like. they used terms and structures that were, that were heavily platonic because they go walk.

Murray (01:04:18.382)
You know, I think, you know, as we're talking about this argument, as far as summing it up in a way that people might get, because we're trying to make the case here that everybody thought platonically. was the air you breathe. It would be like Homer Simpson saying, English, who needs that? I'm never going to England. Right? It's like, we're so influenced by English law, English culture, you know, Magna Carta democracy through the English. We don't even know it.

Joshua Hoffert (01:04:31.343)
Yeah, it was. Yep.

Joshua Hoffert (01:04:39.084)
Yeah, that's right. Yes, that's right.

Joshua Hoffert (01:04:46.639)
Yeah. Yeah. Right. All we all. Yeah, that's right. That's right. It's in the air. We breathe. Yeah.

Murray (01:04:48.312)
But we're never going to England. You know, I mean...

But it's just in the air we breathe. mean, the same way in Plato and the Greek philosophers in Jesus's time in the Roman world. It would have been the same thing.

Joshua Hoffert (01:05:02.319)
Yeah. So, so that's you. Yeah. You have to set this. You have to set that stage before you have any conversation about, you know, the early church fathers were platonic or the desert fathers were platonic or, or, you know, or the, the Catholic churches is influenced by platonic plot. You know, you have to set the stage for just how much the culture, the surrounding culture, that was being won over by the Christian witness.

Murray (01:05:03.288)
That's a good, I'm just helping your argument with as your sidekick.

Joshua Hoffert (01:05:31.067)
Christians were speaking that like you like today, we speak the language of the people we want to reach because we use them. We use metaphors and we use arguments and we structure things in a way that addresses the Western mind. Because why? Because we're trying to talk to people in the West, right? So you, you listen to a theological debate between a, a Christian and an atheist. It's, it's a structured debate, right? You've got an opening point. They both both

Murray (01:05:40.93)
Well said.

Murray (01:05:50.733)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (01:06:00.836)
sides present an opening salvo and, then there's a cross examination that happens, right? You got to ask questions of this guy. There's a cross examination that happens. You got to ask questions of this guy. There's an open and an open dialogue. And then there's Q and a time it's it's it's a framework for a debate. That's how Christian theology is expounded on YouTube today, because that's how you that's the is the framework. The frameworks Western, right? The framework is most definitely not biblical.

Murray (01:06:24.108)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (01:06:30.767)
right to do that in that, like, it's just not even thought of there. But we use that framework in order to win the mind and hearts of people through, through clarifying what Christian theology is all about. Right. So there's nothing wrong with using that framework to try and speak into it. And then to use the kind of terminologies that an atheist or an agnostic would use to speak into it, right. To use, you know, if you started criticizing,

a a what you know some whoever you want to take that said, that's a what's the guy's name I'm thinking of he said he's a English guy, old round. He's awesome. I can't think of his name right now. No, and he will empty right empty right would be one of them right? If you criticize it, say let's say empty right? That's not who I was thinking of. I just can't think of the the I can see his face right now. But yeah.

Murray (01:07:16.927)
to your right? Sorry.

Murray (01:07:28.91)
Trition guy? Okay, I didn't know whose team you were talking about here.

Joshua Hoffert (01:07:32.243)
Uh, he's a Christian guy. Yeah. But because they would reference secular humanism in their debate cycles, right? And then you go, and then, and then you go a hundred years later, a thousand years later, you go, well, you can't listen to NT, right? Because he talked about secular humanism, right? It's like, that's stupid, right? Because he only talked about secular humanism to speak to the secular humanists. And then he used their framework to speak into their framework.

So that's not a, that's not a, that's not a knock against the early church fathers or the desert fathers for that matter. So that's the, that's the, so that's the bigger answer to the question. Did Plato influence them? Yes. He influenced everybody, but they used, they used the framework in order to speak into the culture. Were some of them more influenced than others? Absolutely. And usually those guys were pretty well.

Murray (01:08:20.024)
Well said.

Joshua Hoffert (01:08:30.723)
Like origin was called a heretic in for and thought of as a heretic for hundreds of years. And, and so there was a, there was a lot of arguments over those kinds of things, right? Irenaeus wrote against heresies where he wrote within the framework of a Christian theology, addressing all of the Gnostic heresies that were born from Platonic philosophy. So everything he spoke was about that. And then he characterized the nature of God, the nature of Jesus, all of that stuff.

Murray (01:08:33.507)
Yes.

Joshua Hoffert (01:08:58.757)
through the context of arguing against pagan philosophies that were influenced by Gnostic heresies.

Murray (01:09:03.608)
Which would be John, even the book of John, he's doing that, right? Why he's saying in the beginning was a word and with, you know, coming in the flesh and, because, you interesting.

Joshua Hoffert (01:09:06.595)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Yeah. So, so the the are there. And so then the question, so I think we you know, addressing all that then flowing down to the particular question of, the desert fathers influenced by stoicism and platonic philosophy? Now, for one, and I've said this so many times, it annoys me when people do it. That the desert fathers as a thought system are not monolithic.

Murray (01:09:39.502)
Mmm.

Joshua Hoffert (01:09:39.708)
Okay, neither are the early church fathers. They're not monolithic. There was at least three major centers of study to in particular Antioch and Alexandria and Rome would have been another one. so, and each one had different emphasis that this is why they argued, right? Each one, they either spoke Greek or Latin predominantly argued from that place. Those languages, language helps to determine what your culture is all about. And

influences your culture. So when it comes to like the phileo quay, right, the the the did the did the spirit proceed from the father or from the son and the father, right? That's those are language and semantics between Greek and Latin. That major argument in the early church, right? Yeah.

Murray (01:10:13.827)
Yes.

Murray (01:10:22.358)
Which everyone is a mat. major argument split. One of the reasons the church split into two. What one one of maybe not the main one, but it's one of.

Joshua Hoffert (01:10:29.743)
Yeah, one of one of Yeah, one of one of the one of the big arguments then. And and it's a language thing, right? So so the early Church Fathers are not monolithic and the Desert Fathers for sure aren't monolithic, because there were different centers of study and different ways of thinking and different influences. So in the Desert Fathers, right, you can sure you can find threads of stoic thought that inform ascetic practice.

Murray (01:10:34.508)
and it's loss of language.

Joshua Hoffert (01:10:58.649)
Right? Like I'm, I've got a quote, here where, Abba Daniel, and this is in the, the sayings of the desert fathers. He said in so far, in so far as the body flourishes. the soul declines and in so far as the body declines. the soul flourishes. Right. It sounds a pretty, pretty stoic, right? Is, is, does that mean it's inherently wrong because it sounds like another philosophical system? Well, so does in the beginning was the word sounds like another philosophical system. Right.

Murray (01:11:13.144)
That sounds very stoic, doesn't it?

Murray (01:11:25.644)
Hmm

Joshua Hoffert (01:11:28.091)
So does Paul's speaking is Paul's conversation in the Areopagus and Oxx 17 sounds like another culture that doesn't make it wrong, right? Criticize the idea itself. Don't just criticize where it came from. So is, is Daniel right? That, um, when you gorge yourself, that it seems like the higher capability of humanity to reach out to God is stifled.

Murray (01:11:41.006)
No, well said.

Joshua Hoffert (01:11:57.414)
think we would all agree that that's probably the case. If you go and have a lot of sex and you get drunk all the time and you, you overeat and everything, you're probably not going to know. You're probably going to be injured in your capacity to know God. Right? Like the concept is sound, but it sounds quite stoic, right? So to say, to say the desert fathers is a monolith and say, though they are all influenced by stoic philosophy is, is a complete fabrication because

Murray (01:12:00.131)
Yes.

Joshua Hoffert (01:12:26.579)
One you have like, like the, you know, Anthony the great and his conversation with the monks in Egypt, right? Northern Egypt where they were centralized. and, or, or that's where Vagrius was, right? That's where Ephraim the Syrian was like, and Vagrius probably has more language that sounds like Neo Platonism than

Murray (01:12:45.197)
Mmm.

Joshua Hoffert (01:12:53.423)
Basil the Great who's in Turkey, right? He started all the monasteries in Turkey. So those guys are have entirely different ways of thinking and practicing and characterizing what they're saying. Right? So that doesn't mean that they are anti Christian or un-Christian. Well, because the attack really ends up being there. Well, they're just, they're just Greek. They're not actually Christian. Right? Yeah. Because they believe that the body is evil and the soul is the, is the height of human expression.

Murray (01:13:15.628)
Yes, that would be the attack.

Joshua Hoffert (01:13:23.627)
And, I would, I would criticize that idea that the body's evil, but I don't think a lot of them think that right. Cause I think the, the framework for spiritual practices, aesthetic practices, and there are like, can, we can criticize how hyper some of those practices become right. Excessive. Some of those practice and they did also, they criticize like Cassian goes, don't let anybody go out to the desert and fast all the time because they're either their gluttonous and their fasting.

Murray (01:13:30.862)
No, I don't think so.

Joshua Hoffert (01:13:53.264)
So it's just as bad. He, and he goes, he goes, so you should fast a little every day. And, and every time you eat a meal, leave that meal hungry. Right. So that's not stoic at all. Right. That's, but his point is your body is important and Christianity is an embodied religion. It's an embodied philosophy. It's an embodied way of thinking.

Murray (01:13:53.322)
what a statement.

Murray (01:14:06.049)
Yeah.

Murray (01:14:17.998)
Mmm.

Joshua Hoffert (01:14:18.335)
And all of them thought of themselves, not as escaping the reality of the earth, but as embodying the presence of God on the earth. I think you could model if that, because I think that's that is whether or not they had threads of a Greek thought that informed some of their practices. That's every person that ever lived from the time of Plato on. Okay. Yeah. In the West anyway.

Murray (01:14:44.045)
Yeah, yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (01:14:44.711)
And so so good luck finding someone that's safe then. Right? You're never going to find it. Right? But let's look at the actual ideas presented, criticize the ideas and go, are they do can we find them in Scripture, right? Like, like we were talking earlier, before we started recording about the the tripartite nature of the soul. Where in our charismatic evangelical Pentecostal background,

Murray (01:14:49.41)
Yeah.

Murray (01:15:06.627)
Yes.

Joshua Hoffert (01:15:13.847)
we would have been taught that the soul was made up of three parts, the mind, the will and the emotions, right? That's, know, you can trace that easily, you can trace that back to watchman knee, if not earlier, right? So we can go back and look at those things. And in the Orthodox Church, or and in the Desert Fathers, right, the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church would have the same kind of teaching is the soul is separated into three parts, the incentive part.

the appetitive part and the intelligent part, right? And that's the mind, that's essentially the mind, will and emotions is the, is the, the split, the split, the, the, the incentive parts, the emotions, the appetite of parts, the will and the intelligent part is the mind. And, and then the desert fathers would have tied certain practices into the purifying of those particular parts of the person. Right. That's, they would say fasting.

Murray (01:15:51.16)
Got it.

Murray (01:16:08.216)
Yes. Which where you could say some modern forms of Christianity would say, that right there is why we connect Plato and the Stoics to the Desert Fathers, because they're both dealing with purging the passions, because the body's evil. And then that's where right there, that little statement on the end is where, no, no, no, let's hold,

Joshua Hoffert (01:16:35.395)
Yeah. They're not saying the body. Your hands are so dirty. It's so funny on the camera. Yeah. That's a perfect description. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. That's right.

Murray (01:16:37.176)
Let's back to train up.

I know, like the body's dirty everybody, look at that! I was insulating everyone, my hands are like totally black. Like they're just so dirty. Look at him. So it's a good, we're doing the right episode.

Joshua Hoffert (01:16:50.423)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (01:16:56.003)
Yeah, the idea that humankind is made in the image of God is so profoundly influential in every form of Christianity. And not it is absent in Greek philosophy and Roman philosophy and in Stoicism, right? That the image of God in the heart of man informs everything about Christian practice. And that's true across the board. So

Murray (01:17:07.651)
Yes.

Murray (01:17:23.746)
What is that quote? I mean, sorry to hit you with a quote that off the top. I just believe you have the everything memorized. I wasn't who was it that said if Jesus didn't take it on, it cannot be redeemed. It's something like that, right?

Joshua Hoffert (01:17:28.642)
Hahaha

Joshua Hoffert (01:17:35.567)
Gregory, Gregory, it's the Gregory's Gregory and as he answers, Gregory of Nyssa. Yeah. Everything, everything Christ assumed he healed everything he did not assume he did not heal. That's the that's it's close enough to the exact quote. Yeah. And that was Yeah.

Murray (01:17:38.862)
Can you quote that a little better than I did? You might not get it completely,

There you go.

Yes.

Murray (01:17:52.462)
So in other words, he had to come into a body. If he was gonna heal mankind at all, he took it all upon himself because he loves the body, he loves our nature, our body, spirit, if you wanna go that way. So.

Joshua Hoffert (01:17:57.595)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (01:18:02.138)
Yeah. And that's the entire argument. I mean, that's the argument with, you know, in a way flowing from Arianism, which Anthony the great, like, you know, Anthony the great goes, these guys are struggling. Just have them read Athanasius. Right? Like, like he, they're so concerned with the sanctity of the body. That's the whole point of the ascetic practices is preserving the sanctity of the body as a holy place for the father to dwell, for God to dwell in his creation.

Murray (01:18:17.518)
Hahaha.

Joshua Hoffert (01:18:30.073)
Like, like it says, said of McCurious, a great McCurious became a God on earth because he covered the faults of others as though he did not see them. Right. Like, like that's an embodied and fleshed image of God archetype right there in the desert fathers. And this is a guy that's fasting all the time. He's in the wilderness, right? He's he's his whole purpose is not to prepare the soul to depart into an ethereal place. Right. But this is why they're going.

Murray (01:18:38.243)
Wow.

Murray (01:18:50.094)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (01:19:00.263)
you know, after, after Anthony dies, he keeps visiting them. Like it's an entire framework that, that is not, he's now escaped and he's in the idea is in the realm of ideas that separate from the material plane. No, actually like he keeps visiting them. Right. He's still in fleshed. He's not uninflashed because he died. He's still part of creation coming, coming to them and appearing and giving them instruction.

It's, mean, even, even Augustine talks about this stuff when he does, you know, the soul, the departed brothers that died, you know, they came back in dreams and visions to people and told them various things that were to come. This is like, right. This is another one, right? They're still in flesh. They're not disembodied spirits living in eternal. That's not until way later that we get that kind of thought process. Right. So.

Murray (01:19:39.936)
there's a big topic.

Murray (01:19:51.67)
And that's why everybody that, that, you know, that we get buried and, and our bodies, right, are blessed and because we'll be raised what? Bodily. We're going to be raised bodily because the body is holy and sanctified. And, and see, I think here's where the part of the problem is when people beat up on the desert fathers, well, they fasted and they prayed and they denied themselves that shows that they hate the body. And that's why they're platonic. When, when in fact, what they're trying to do is

Joshua Hoffert (01:20:00.848)
Yeah. Yeah, totally. Totally.

Joshua Hoffert (01:20:15.824)
Right.

Right.

Murray (01:20:21.646)
Purify the body as much as an evangelical would go, know, too much drink and too much fast and stand up all night and watch movies every day is not good for you. Right? We need to purify that.

Joshua Hoffert (01:20:31.257)
Yeah, we may be able to characterize. Yeah. Maybe we could characterize them as being over religious and zealous, right? But, but that's not fair to say they're platonic because they don't incorporate all the elements of platonic philosophy. Their system of thought and their outcome are very, very different. Right.

Murray (01:20:38.296)
Yes.

Murray (01:20:48.876)
Which I think we should pick up next week. Next one, because that's, how are they different? Like how did they develop differently? Why do we confuse this? outcomes matter. Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (01:20:57.539)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, outcomes matter, right? Like, or, or that because they're, it's where you're aiming. Let me just say that, like, well, we can, yeah, let me just say this part, because I left it hanging. And, and then we'll call this to a close. We've been going for a while now. That the, that incentive appetite of intelligent going right back to that, right? And then the the mirror image of that in the contemporary

Murray (01:21:10.21)
Absolutely.

Murray (01:21:16.302)
It's such a great topic, actually.

Joshua Hoffert (01:21:24.965)
teachings of spirit, soul and body and this and the soul is the mind, will and emotions and worth tripartite beings and each one of our each are the being of the soul or the soul the is three parts and it's mind, will and emotion and watchman he tracks that all the way back to scripture right in in the spiritual man he's he lays out lists and lists and lists and lists of this is how the souls described and and and you know like it or not you may disagree with him but he's

Murray (01:21:43.01)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Joshua Hoffert (01:21:54.608)
firmly anchoring this in scripture. Well, that concept is platonic philosophy that it is through and through platonic philosophy, the term, incentive, appetitive and rational or intelligent. Those are the terms that Plato uses to describe the soul. So the mind, will and emotion that that watchman uses describe the soul are just transliterations of those things. Right. So and then but but watchman he goes here at all is in scripture. So where was it first? Was it in Plato?

Murray (01:22:09.325)
Wow.

Murray (01:22:24.096)
good, good thought.

Joshua Hoffert (01:22:24.761)
Right? Was it in scripture? Right? Is it is it just a way of characterizing the the makeup of a person that helps us understand how to divide rightly divide scripture? Right? Is it a from heaven? God said you will have an intelligent you will have an incisive and you will have an appetite of aspect. I you know, I don't I don't know how to answer that. I just I just go well, like it wasn't originally in Plato.

So Plato, Plato may have characterized it that way, but it's not original to him because it's there in the Old Testament before he. Right. Maybe he got it from there, right? Maybe is it, or is it just a way away? A system we put on scripture to try and help us read it. Like it's not, it does. It's just not that important to me to go, there's Plato's thought right there. Well, there's watchman knees thought right there. There's the Old Testament thought right there. So

Murray (01:22:57.24)
Yeah, who knows? Maybe he got it from there. You never know, right?

Murray (01:23:05.089)
We-

Murray (01:23:17.688)
You know, I think where it gets into where, you know, where if we break down into a real practical point and we'll have to come back to this is, is, where if we get down to the thought where Paul says, I beat my body, right. Or he says, I work out my salvation in fear and trembling.

Joshua Hoffert (01:23:32.645)
Yeah.

Murray (01:23:37.304)
That's putting a human effort into, you know, dealing with these things, the insights of the rational and the appetitive. And, and if we go, well, no, that's really, you know, if, you know, we'll have to break this down to an, kind of an evangelical model versus a desert father model saying, well, how much work needs to be put into this? I mean, if you, look at a monist, no, you need to go out into the wilderness and have some significant silence to heal your soul. Otherwise you shouldn't be sent to man.

Joshua Hoffert (01:23:54.746)
Right.

Murray (01:24:05.006)
Well, in our Western culture, is, no, you just train the mind, learn doctrine, and now you're ready to go. Right? Like we really see the two camps right there. Right? And so, but yeah, let's come, you know, let's come back to that. So.

Joshua Hoffert (01:24:11.386)
Right, right.

Yeah, that's right. Right.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so if you, you, if you're going to remove every, um, every description that is mirrored in other cultures and other texts, ancient texts, then you're going to remove a lot of the Bible also, right? You know, so, so let's not play that game.

Murray (01:24:45.474)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (01:24:49.711)
Let's just let's look at the early church fathers and go. Well, what did this one teach? What did this one teach? And then we can criticize the particular idea. But you have to read it within the context and the framework that they're pulling from the people they're speaking to and what they're trying to accomplish. And rather than just going, well, they were all influenced by stoic philosophy. So that means we shouldn't listen to them. Yeah, it's just not it's not

Murray (01:25:00.494)
Brilliant, well said. Oops.

Murray (01:25:14.178)
and then just flush it, which is what my culture did, at least back in the day.

Joshua Hoffert (01:25:18.883)
It's we would we could do the same today. When we have started to really see the the failures of the reformed position. And we could just go, you know, okay, well, everything, everything touched by Calvin or Luther, that's evil. We don't want to, you know, you could, Luther is easy one to do it. Just look at how he treated the Jews. You know, he was he was horribly anti semitic, right? So we go.

Murray (01:25:28.14)
Mmm, yeah.

Murray (01:25:40.99)
yeah, at the Nuremberg trial, they were quoting Luther to prove their position, which is horrible.

Joshua Hoffert (01:25:47.715)
Yeah, exactly. So you're going, let's, let's just not play that game because it's not going to, it's not going to help us come to some kind of, you know, good, good conversation around practice, theology, philosophy, living the way of Jesus and embodying who he is and seeing the world transformed to a better place. Like good luck if you're just going to go and almost into them because of this, don't listen to this because this don't listen to them because of this.

So it's not helpful. I just don't find it helpful. There's lots more we can have we can talk about on the topic.

Murray (01:26:19.47)
Well, it's. Well, yeah, this is I'm looking forward to kicking this ball around. So there we go.

Joshua Hoffert (01:26:26.651)
Yeah, there we go. Well, everybody, thanks for tuning in to listening to, guess it was me rant and Murray Murray goading my ranting on. Yeah. You know, you want to talk to you about this is my dad, actually. My, my dad is the guy to talk about this. So, um, yeah. Yeah. We'll see about that. So yeah. Okay.

Murray (01:26:33.292)
No, it's great. I'm learning a lot too. Yeah, I am goading you a little bit. I must admit.

we might have to have him come on and interview him.

we should do that! I would really enjoy that!

Murray (01:26:52.493)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (01:26:53.945)
Well, everybody, thanks for tuning in. Thanks for listening. We hope this, this was encouraging or at least clarifying to you with some of the, things that you've, the things that you've heard people say. And, if anything, if you leave a little more confused, but intrigued, that's okay. Also. Yeah. Ask questions. That's right.

Murray (01:27:10.69)
Yeah, ask questions. know, we'll break it down and read Polycarp's testimony of how he got saved. That'll help you. It'll personalize it into a story. I'll go read it too. It's been a while.

Joshua Hoffert (01:27:16.697)
That'll help you. There you go. There you go. That's right. That's right. well, God bless and we'll, we'll see you guys next week.

Murray (01:27:28.43)
Bye, everyone.

Joshua Hoffert (01:27:29.286)
Bye.