381 - James Orr - Christianity Beyond Civilization

The Symbolic World

Jonathan Pageau

Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture, Education

4.8 • 824 Ratings

🗓️ 2 March 2025

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

I had a wonderful discussion with James Orr. Dr Orr is Associate Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. He was also one of the panel members for the Daily Wire Plus Exodus and Gospels seminars, which we discuss in this video. We also talk about our difference approaches and perspectives on Scripture, the current cultural shift and Christianity becoming more mainstream, the risk of instrumentalizing Christianity, Paul Kingsnorth's talk "Against Christian Civilization", and more.

Watch the Gospel Seminar on Daily Wire Plus: https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-gospels

My discussion with Paul Kingsnorth, Western Civilization Is Already Dead: https://youtu.be/FrjdaVol2TA?si=D6A3mm3WXj5f2i4W

Paul Kingsnorth’s First Things talk: "Against Christian Civilization" | 2024 Erasmus Lecture: https://www.youtube.com/live/Y3hMSZqatHI

James Orr links:
- https://www.divinity.cam.ac.uk/directory/dr-james-orr
- https://x.com/jtworr

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Timestamps:
00:00 - Coming up
00:47 - Intro music
01:11 - Introduction
01:57 - James' reaction to The Gospels seminar
05:04 - JBP mediating the panel discussion
09:25 - Members of the panel
11:55 - Approaching Scripture from different perspectives
15:23 - James' scholarly approach vs Jonathan's analogical approach
20:37 - A time of flux
28:18 - Paul Kingsnorth's First Things address
32:44 - Instrumentalizing Christianity
38:52 - Self-sacrificial love
41:39 - Recognize weaponized compassion
43:11 - Fetishizing weakness?
48:22 - The end of the story
51:34 - Technology
54:45 - New people coming to church

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	we have to really realize that, you know, the gods, the northern God, they die, they end,
0:04.9	they get eaten by the wolf.
0:06.6	The Ragnarok ends them.
0:08.8	And that's the difference.
0:09.8	Like, we actually have the end of our story is the opposite of that.
0:13.7	You read Revelation, you have this glorious king that rules forever over a city of jewels.
0:19.8	It's like, that's the end of our story. It's there.
0:22.2	It's encoded in the story. And so this search for glory and power and just riches, their
0:29.5	entire life leads to their decomposition at the end and being eaten by the dark wolf.
0:36.6	The life of self-sacrifice and of giving yourself leads in the story to this glorious city.
0:43.0	And so, you know, it's there encoded in the mythology.
0:45.9	Yeah.
1:02.0	This is Jonathan Peugeot. Welcome to the symbolic world. So everyone, I am very happy to be here with James Orr.
1:15.2	Many of you who have watched a gospel series or the Exodus series have seen James.
1:19.3	He's become a friend of mine.
1:20.8	We've done several things together.
1:22.0	Of course, those series.
1:23.5	I also had the chance to go to England and do a tour with him.
1:27.4	He is an associate professor in Cambridge.
1:29.3	He's the chair of the Edmundberg Foundation in the UK and also runs the Trinity Forum in the UK, which is what I was able to participate in when I was there.
1:38.3	And I thought it would be a great opportunity to have him on.
1:40.3	He is such an insightful cultural thinker and very brave person in his own
	...

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