The LIE about Modern Philosophy | ft. Dr. Nathan Jacobs & Dr. Chris Firestone

Okay. Hey everybody, Nathan Jacobs with the Nathan Jacobs podcast here with you. Those of you who follow my channel regularly, you notice that we've moved to this new format which I had promised about doing these more concise videos, things that are more in the 25 to 45 minute range. And we've been dropping those every Thursday. But as promised, I said we weren't going to completely stop doing the long form content. So, here on this Tuesday, we're going to be going ahead and dropping an interview, a longer form interview. So, uh, those of you who have looked at past interviews, you might remember a character that I talked to named Chris Firestone, Dr. Chris Firestone.

And if you haven't heard of him or watched that old interview, which we can link to below, uh Chris is originally a former philosophy professor of mine and then churned colleague. We ended up teaching together uh after I had finished my PhD. And in addition to that, we've worked on co-authored essays. We've done co-authored books, co-edited books. And so Chris is a long-term friend, a long-term mentor, a long-term colleague uh in the area of philosophy. And uh Chris happened to be driving through Nashville. He had planned actually to come to Nashville in order to get some time with me.

He had figured out that I'm a busy guy and if you want to get an interview with me, you might have to actually just physically show up and corner me. And so Chris decided to do that. And so uh today what we're going to be looking at is we're going to be looking at one of those interviews. Now, Chris is a guy who's all about the journey. And so, what he originally wanted to interview me about was about my journey in three areas really, three areas that he watched me go through. One of those areas is, you know, my academic journey becoming a scholar. The other one is my journey in spirituality that ultimately led me to Eastern Orthodoxy.

And the third thing is he watched me on my journey as an artist and how you move from me being a fine arts painter drawer guy into being a filmmaker. And so that was Chris's original plan and that occupies the first two of the interviews that we did. The third one was kind of unexpected. Chris is a Protestant evangelical and so he wanted to have a dialogue about really the relationship between various Christian traditions and the church or at least my perspective on that sort of thing as an Eastern Orthodox Christian and what that means in terms of religious dialogue. So that ended up being the uh the third interview within this series.

So, uh, with that, we're going to jump in here today with part one of this threepart series, uh, with Chris Firestone. I'm Nathan Jacobs, and this is the Nathan Jacobs podcast. And I'm Dr. Chris Firestone of the Firestone Files. It's coming at you right now. Enjoy. All right. Well, welcome everyone to a special episode, a joint episode of the Firestone Files and the Nathan Jacobs podcast. I'm Nathan Jacobs and this is the Nathan Jacobs podcast. Ah, and this is the Firestone Files. Well, you were um so kind to enough to put me up for a couple of days. I come out to see you here in Nashville and let me take over your living room. That's where we're broadcasting from here.

And um I would have I would have offered to let you use my set, but it really is made for straight on single person. It would it wouldn't have really counted it. Truth be told, we tried. You were kind enough to let me set a few things out, but uh they weren't going to work uh in that I think tailor made studios. too much too much effort and not enough day off. I was realiz here at her living room. Nice living room by the way. I appreciate it. And um I knew I was going to have to come here, stay a little while to get a little bit of your time. You've been super busy on all sorts of projects and things.

And uh for me to get this unique time, I you know, I had to roll up my sleeves and drive down here. My daughter took my car and I'm really on my own for a couple days. So, it's sort of cool to have you here and to be able to talk with you. So, it's good to have you. I mean, Mike, we were calculating the other day like how far it goes back, right? It's 27 years. 27 years. Yeah. My first year at Trinity. Mhm. Was 1999. I hadn't finished my PhD yet. I was ABD.

You might say in the British system it's a little different but that's the fact involved with institution for those who are not academic right and uh air dropped at Trinity for my first post and my first class was with Nathan Jacobs not Dr. for Nathan Jacobs, just an average undergraduate. At least that's what average Chris Well, everybody starts out as average. Okay. And um 27 years ago, I do remember that moment. And uh actually, I'll never forget it because as we're sitting here talking, what came to me is the fact that they had me teaching a course at first semester called uh contemporary philosophy. Can't believe it. I remember. Oh, I think I know where you're going.

And it was baptism by fire because I had a What I didn't know was I had a couple of several extraordinary students there. First of all, one of them is a Supreme Court justice in Wisconsin. Now, Nathan Jakes and another uh Nathan in there and some other students. And um you guys were an extraordinary group. I I'm still to this day wondering how I survived that experience because it was postmodern philosophy basically. Um and you guys took that very seriously in the town. Yeah. So if I'm remembering correctly, I think all of us were like, well, here's this new guy. We're doing postmodern philosophy and we just decided to get pretty postmodern and deconstruct the normal classroom. So I remember where I was.

I went outside the classroom. It was a lower basement classroom and there were like these window wells and so I sat in the window well looking into the classroom from the outside. So you were the guy on the outside of the classroom looking it through the screen. We had another student just inside the screen who was having to sort of translate or to share what you were saying because not everybody in the other corner. We had somebody under a desk, somebody facing the corner. I think the guy facing the corner is now Supreme Court justice. I think his name is Brian Hagenort. He was in that class as well. Anyway, we we had some unique students. I didn't know it at the time.

It was my first post. Yeah. Well, funny thing is in that class I remember throughout that class there was always which this is actually pretty was pretty common in my own doctoral stage where there'd be somebody who's designated student who's designated to read the you know do the reading do a presentation basically like you know basically almost like a conference paper style summary of what the reading is and then sort of facilitate the conversation from that point forward in this seminar style I asked I think it was uh who's it uh who was No, it's Dr. That's No, no, no. There's a graduate student who was uh taking the course.

I don't know if he was auditing it or what, but he wore a suit that day. Yeah. And he was speaking, I think, on Yeah. on ironically. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember he was a really straightblazed divinity school student who like looked around like what is the shenanigans happening in this room. And what was funny is you roll with it. And so I I I distinctly remember a moment where I was making a point counterpoint to something that was brought up and he looked at you like am I supposed to respond? What what's going on? The guy outside the window.

I remember you saying well I think he raises a good point and you just went on like nothing was happening and he was befuddled like what is this is chaos mats but of course you know um it wasn't like none of us were serious I think actually that's the irony all of us were serious I was budding metaphysician and I remember the other Nathan was definitely sort of a nian postmodernist type you know anyway we all had different sort And we are all in different places philosophically and it was a capture for us. I think a lot of us were very serious in there about the discipline.

And just to put it in context for me, I'm just coming out of a PhD program, first teaching gig. I'm thinking traditional classroom. I walk in and these guys are all over the place embodying the sort of postmodern vibe of the class. And uh it's one of those I don't know moments in a teaching career where you you either become the stuffy come on guys pull it together get back in here. Get at the table or you say you know what that's clever. Let's roll with it.

So I decided to go with the ladder of the two. um being an assistant professor at the time and uh little as I know that that was just the tip of a majestic iceberg really of our relationship going forward. Oh yeah. I mean I I'll just say like the fact that you chose that road was really important to me and the reason is cuz whenever I talk about my journey academically, spiritually, which the two were intertwined, um I was not a convention student. I wasn't going to college to get a degree and get a job. I was I had left the school that I went to for those instance. I went I went to art school, right?

That was my passion. uh when I went into crisis and spiritual journey that's when I switched to setting philosophy which no longer had anything to do with the practicality they had to do with answering me most important questions you understand and so I was on a I was on poor journey and and that's why I was studying philosophy for personal reasons and what I remember it was it was critical to me that I found different professors who seem to understand that you were Bill Moulder uh was another Sure. Um, and he was so he was on kind of on the theology side of things. You were on the philosophy side of things.

And I think you recognized or seemed intuitively recognized that I was here asking questions and following the research program because I was up a journey following one question to the next. And what was great was at a school like Trinity, you were able to facilitate independent studies, be able to loose with requirements for classes because I had my own research program and all that was critical to how I grew academically, how I ended up growing spiritually, all those sorts of things. And so had you been the stuffy professor, look, this is by the book, this is the classroom.

Uh I mean I'm sure I would have presented occasion I had taken all my other classes but it wouldn't have been the sort of relationship that I turned into. It wouldn't have been nearly as beneficial to me. I don't think the there's an interesting I don't know if it's an irony as much as it is a uh two sides of a coin meeting because if you were a traditional student would be where I was where I am today and we'll talk a little bit about that. Jared just a little housekeeping here. I kind of want to start out with kind of tracking with our journey together and then look at um the academic specifically.

Now all this stuff is going to come out and I get that but just by way of order in my mind look at the academic then the the spiritual journey and the artistic journey is maybe three different phases but I want to start out with kind of how we did here just talking about how we got to know each other and where we went from here. Yeah. Uh, and so I mentioned that because over the course of those two years and I got to know you, you were raw. You you to be honest, you more of an analytic guy at the time. Oh, 100%.

And what would you remember the one time I came to you and we had developed what was it like 105 point something? It turned into like 120. Yeah. Yeah. I knew that uh cuz we spent time together and you you presented these arguments and I and I had presented short forms of these arguments but you were synthetic in taking pieces from different thinkers, different arguments that were being made, historical arguments that we were talking about and then you put it together in this massive I guess it was an ontological argument for the existence of God. Yeah.

Well, it was a very strange using like the Hegelian, it was using dialectical, it wasn't Hegelian dialectical, but it was using certain dialectical reasoning in order to develop this one proof. Um, you know, yeah, it was I that was a copy of it. But we spent, as I recall, in those two years, we spent far more time outside of the classroom just working on arguments and presentations and various other things. I was already in the publishing slash uh uh conference world and I said, "Man, I got to get this guy into that world. If you were just chomping at the bit to do whatever he said, just point the way and put me out there and I'll get it done." Yeah.

Um, one of the ones that comes to my mind immediately is is the conference circuit. We, you and I, and I think it was Brian Hagedorn and Nathan, those three went out to Boston uh for a trip together. Was that the American Academy? religion. It was the American Academy of Religion Earl. I think that was the that was probably the first one. And I remember actually we walked in this massive. So anybody who's never, you know, if you never never been to the American Academy of Religion, which I'm guessing majority of people here have listened to, it it is basically an annual conference and it has people literally from all over the world.

I mean thousands upon thousands of people that'll converge on a massive location when you have all these different academic papers in all sorts of disciplines. philosophy, religion, church history, you know, animal studies, right? Like it's whatever. It's like all over the place in terms of impossible subd discipline you could imagine. Yes. Everything from analytic theology or metaphysics or whatever it is to, you know, who knows what. And so what was fascinating to me as an as as this undergrad was to realize, oh, I've read this guy or I've read that guy or this guy that I know is speaking there. Somebody's here talking about a book that they're writing that's not yet out but it's set to be publishing.

I realize, oh, like this is the actual living breathing academy where the conversation that I'm reading about and engaging is just taking place. And I do remember the first time we walked into the hotel lobby in was we almost immediately just walked straight into a session. Nick Walter store, Nicholas Walter, uh was speaking there and I remember us going in and finding a seat someplace and he finishes talking and you know, okay, we're going to open up the questions and me just being who I am like, you know, in this room of all these academics and professional scholars and he is an undergrad being like, "Sure, I'm going to ask you Walter Sto a question." I mean, I knew who he was.

And uh and Nick is being who he is also like took it you know seriously whatever it is that I asked that noticeable what I asked. But that was right there started realizing like oh this is a living and breathing conversation. Yes of of you know philosophers and that was that was the time when I think all of this sort of you know mentoring and doing unconventional things went beyond far beyond just the walls of Trinity. and went into a lot of unconventional books in the broader publishing oil conference circuit and all the rest. Well, you and I have talked about some of those stories. I know the the myth of the enlightenment if anybody has that one on the Nathan Jacobs podcast.

We should we should probably link to that. That's where we did our first uh conversation. Yeah. So, those are a couple of the highlights, but there was so much more and that's why I wanted to have this conversation as a followup to that. Um, you went on and you did I mean I think I think what I remember most about our journey was the willingness of you and some of your classmates really to work with a guy of a higher generation you know 10 years 15 years on from you.

Um that impressed me because I didn't know that that was a thing but I was all for it. uh as a teacher I felt like that is the holy grail of teaching but not every student is is ready for that willing to but you were and uh we did a lot of uh not only thinking and writing and stuff but just talking in these journeys we took together and so just another little bit of context I had not finished my PhD right at that point Trinity was kind enough at the time to allow me to to take the job and finish up And I submitted in 2001. It was right around the time when you were wrapping up. I guess you were finishing under that.

What? What was it? 2001. Oh, yeah. That was great. And so I submitted that. Oh, actually, didn't I skip my graduation go with you? Well, that was the other thing is when I went on that journey, I was nervous. I had this young student who I've been working with on a variety of you know smaller project paper projects and uh I said why don't I just buy him a ticket to come with me and you said ah sure let's do it that's crazy and so in 2001 you went with me out to Edinburgh to what they call a viva which is the oral examination and I I just super appreciated the company my wife didn't want to go and I said you mind if I bring the Jake she says sure why not and So, I'm nervous.

I go into this room and uh it's one of those situations where I came out of that viva and you were there. Mhm. And you said, "How did I go?" Okay. You know, so that's great. And then they called me back in and we found out that someone told me I knew him. Yeah. The guy named Peter Burns. I was burn which happened on Burns night. said burn by burn or burns night. Yeah, Bernie's night for those who don't know. I know. Uh I guess he's a poet, Scottish poet. And so in Scotland they have burns night where you eat haggus and read poetry and read poetry. We ended up doing that that night that is over.

We had hers which I never had before and you know talking about burn and we sensed the irony that you burned by burns on burn. Yeah. And I needed some irony. I needed some laughter because I was inside as you know some distraught uh because he effectively said either you take a master's degree or you rewrite this thing as effectively. I mean there were a lot of other ways potential but none of them in the end would pan out. Mhm. Um, but yeah, I almost felt like you took that as an opportunity to say, you know, I can come alongside this guy and grow leaps and bounds by helping him get to the finish line. Yeah. Yeah. No. Well, I mean, I remember I remember us you you sort of desparing me um and me at least trying to encourage you and say, "Hey, Chris, you know, look at me like look what you've done as a professor, you know, to me, you know, and uh and so I was trying to encourage you that you're on the right path.

Don't don't let this stumble, you know, this bump in the road, you know, throw off or taint, you know, switching and accomplishing." I remember that. And then I think that the big thing was the big aha moment. I think we had already started having conversations about comp because you were doing prep work. Yes. Um and so um the timeline is a little hazy, but here's at least some of the details that I recall and you can you can jump in and correct or whatever, but I do remember you had been prepping for this defense because you had written on Mango Kant his philosophy of religion. you had written in defending the theologically affirmative view.

You're doing less exit Jesus of Gant and more sort of looking at readers of Kant who see something affirmative to try to give some sort of triangulation of how you might approach Kantologically affirmative way. Uh and then but you anticipated because of I don't know preliminary notes or something given to you that you should actually look at K's religion within the boundaries of your reason and deal with that text. So I remember you were prepping for that. Yes. And that was where he would just hand me a text and be like, "What, Nathan?" Yes. You do a lot of you do a lot of historical theology stuff like what what do you think he's talking about?

And he'd read me stuff and be like, "Oh, that's Augustine's distinction there. That's you know that's Aquinus that he's referring to there which it was right like these are things that Kant is tacidly referring to just presuming his audience would know this but in the academy today most people I mean things have become compartmentalized actually something that um forget which essay it was whoever did shelling I think it was in our books who was Nick Adams was it also had but Nick Adams had talked about Nicholas Adams, Nick Adams had talked about um the fact that there was this compartmentalization within academia. And so the problem is people who studied philosophy never studied theology, but guys are studying study.

Um you know, and so and and so it was interesting because you had in some ways, you know, experienced that part of here you are studying Kant and Kant's referring to Augustine Aquinus and you didn't have to study Augustine. Well, that was issue that was the what I thought genius of my approach was I was using theology as a way of reading content. If it had if if the interpretation of K had a certain effect on theology, it would either show itself to be truly content or it wasn't. And uh if Peter Burn is out there, I would love to know his answer to this. And this is this was a Pete Burr because I had done this exact same argument as bystander.

I had done the exact same argument that I used in my first uh PhD dissertation. Yeah. sends it into King's College where he is to the uh religious studies and he gave it rave reviews and published this was one of my first public I think it was my second publication and that was on that basis was the reason he was one of my external examiners because I thought he was really positive to this approach but in the PhD format what became clear is you got to read the religion text and you can't do what you're doing without exoding that text well the relevance is of course what was starting to happened was because I was hungry, right?

I was already doing all these conference papers, which I don't know if we'll talk about that or not, but I'd been doing all these conference papers. I've been looking for a way to break through and start to do a first publication. And um and so, you know, since you were asking me all this stuff about Kant, I started actually engaging Kate, my first insight concerning something you might do with the religion text. Um, and so I I wrote an article and that one ended up being accepted for an edited volume. They that was my first publication. But then as part of that, I started to move toward executing the text and just meticulously going line by line through the religion text.

And so when all of a sudden Peter Burns, he realized that was the crux of it. There was this opportunity to say, "Well, we're tied at the hip at that point. I've been dealing with this text." Well, we, you know, student, you know, we're going to we're going to circle back to your academic journey because there's some fascinating stuff I'm tempted to ask you about right now that I won't. But I do remember actually two key moments that you may recall. One was very early on in McDonald's. We we hung out at McDonald's and talked philosophy a lot back in those days. And that's when I was reading K to you and you were you were executing it for me on the fly. my club.

Holy smokes, you're right. Um, so that was one moment. Um, and then the the the other one was in Minnesota. If you remember this, we were at a restaurant downtown Minnesota. I had been hammered over the head in this PhD program, as you know, and could not find a new thesis. you know, we were just, you know, hitting ideas back and forth how and you were trying to encourage me. This is a Gordian knot, but it can be untied. It doesn't have to be tied, right? And we were just brainstorming and it was something with regards to book owner book two, religion. Oh, I remember this as where we go, Eureka. Maybe there is a thesis here. I actually I think I remember.

So there was there was this critical moment within the interpretation. So to to provide a little bit of context for people who have never encountered our research which I'm sure probably the largest one there uh um Kant's religion text is broken into basically four books. Um and you know to give a basic structure uh nothing terribly controversial here that book one is about what he calls radical evil which basically reads like some form of original sin um which is peculiar for Kant or at least what people presume about Kant. Book two seems to be about this Christlike figure called the prototype. Um and so what's going on? Is this Jesus? Is this not Jesus? Is this a Jesus-like figure?

But there's some sort of redemption motif here related to this figure. Book three talks about moral communities that sound an awful lot like building a church. Yes. Um around moral converts and then book four is this looking at you know the New Testament and you know comparing what we've seen in 1 through3 with the New Testament. Um and that seems to be talking about things like priestcraft and you know all all these other specifically religious things and so um that's kind of context and this book is generally considered by most K scholars to be incoherent. You know either it ends up being reduced to some form of symbolism and it doesn't really add much to Kant's philosophy.

People like Nick Walter sort of seem to think it's actually incoherent where K's contradicting himself in various ways. Yes. um he wants to say odd implies can you know which is always attributed to Kant's moral philosophy and yet now we've got original sin radical evil in book one and things like that and so there's a lot of these things that just seem anomalous if you know anything about Kant's philosophy and everything about our project was trying to read it coherently now the funny thing is for me my attempt to read it coherently had nothing to do with Kant's studies at large for me it was just whenever I read somebody I try to read them coherently Right.

And so I was always and so if I was running into a place where Kant seemed to be contradicting himself or saying something that's nonsensical, I presumed I'm the problem, not Kant. Right. And so I try to find which is not common in K studies these days. And it's precisely because of this compartmentalization I think that you were talking about earlier. Yeah. And so and truthfully I think it's not common in a lot of areas of academia. The work I did on Livveness, oftentimes people are fine with, you know, pointing out what they see as these obvious problems where Livveness wants to say this, but he obviously can't. And it's like, okay, you really think Livveness is that dumb?

Pretty sure he's one of the most brilliant philosophical minds in the history of I mean, maybe there's a way forward here, but um anyway, so I think that's something that academics do a lot. Yes. today for some reason. But um anyway, but that was critical because I think going back to the conversation, if I'm remembering the conversation you're talking about, I was running into a conundrum that Nicholas Walterf himself pointed out, right? That right Kant is talking about, you know, this original sin being a personal choice. Yes. But at the same time, it's universal. Yes. And it applies to the whole of the species. Yes. And looking at that just on the face of it just didn't seem coherent.

And I remember you were batting around all sorts of possibilities and then something and you and what happened was I remember I remember you me saying look Chris the only way and this just sounds way too weird. I was like, but the only way I see to make sense of this is that Kant actually thinks that the species like the abstract the abstraction that we call humanity like what Aristotle would call a secondary substance or what Plato would consider to be a form. Yes. Because man is free, that form must have free will. Yes. And and there must be sort of like a primordial pre-choice. Yes.

To decide whether or not we're going to be morally upright or morally corrupt because when it comes to making rules about morality, Kant's convinced that you only have one choice. You either adhere to everything the moral law says or you don't. And that's the choice. And I think I remember saying, Eureka, I think we have a way forward. Well, and I I I do remember and I remember it's because you were like, we're going to find a way forward. So if that's the only answer, then that's the answer we're running with. And I was like, all right, we'll run with it. And I think the thing that was interesting was that began to unlock a whole slew of interpretive possibilities.

Cuz it started to unlock things like, well, a lot of people are complaining, he seems to be suddenly referring to Jesus for no reason. And I was like, and I was raising the point of going, maybe he's not referring to Jesus if we're talking about forms. Yes. Right. Like maybe this is the form of perfect humanity, the prototype. and and it and those were click moments for me because I had made a lot out of the conflict of the faculties that we had two different perspectives here and the fact that he's not talking about Jesus that makes a lot of sense to me.

Well, and I think the thing that really was, you know, solidified that was when we we stumbled on, I think it was we were looking at his uh lectures on metaphysics and he started to talk about certain mystical forms of platonism where the forms are alive and you could even participate in them and all of a sudden the language mirrored what people presumed was just prologue to the gospel of John sort of stuff and it's like well it is that but it also mirrors a lot of what he says about platonism. So interesting. And so that was like one of those moments. And then I I discovered after our book, this is one that I've I've never published, but I I discovered it.

I was like, I should do an article, but it's just too much work to do an entire article just to get this out there. So it's out there now in this form. Um but I remember discovering that there were pamphlets circul circulated in KE. Yes. This is the cabalist. Yeah. that was using like Adam Cadman which is basically like uh you know um this is sort of thing you can find in like Pho of Alexandria where he draws a distinction between heaven man and earth man so Adam means earth man right and so he suggests well maybe there's a heaven man right so the archetype of perfect humanity and that gives way and that ties in with his logos theology and so that's the sort of thing that St. Paul is picking up on where he's like, you've been made in the image of earth man.

You need to be remade in the image of the man of heaven. And that sort of, you know, earth man, heaven man, you know, started to be actually picked up by certain rationalist philosophers as a way of arguing basically from platonism rather than from the Bible or history for a form of Christologology to try to procilitize Jews in the day. Yes. And so I was like, this is interesting. This is actually an entire strategy used by certain rationalists. Uh and and I wonder if that sits in the background of what Kant's doing. Yeah. I mean that's that sort of confirming kind kind of material. Yeah.

Where you thought if you're on the right track, it's going to be give you some explanatory power in other areas. This is one of those things where you kept finding stuff. I remember you did that with uh with uh um who's that uh German? And um you talking about less less. Yeah. With lessing. You were looking at less. You were looking at the Cabala stuff. You it's all here. He's obviously drinking from these waters and he is putting it into the transcendental. Well, that religion that Cababala, you know, like the whole Adam Cadman, which is the term like the Adam Catman is the heaven man, earth man stuff.

Um I actually first encountered it in livveness and Khan obviously was a lienitian in his early philosophy. So I was like, well, Livveness is aware of this and he's talking about this. Yes. And so I was like, okay, so that's interesting because at least we now have a a plausible intellectual genealogy for where he would get this from. Yes. And how that would influence his thinking.

Well, see that that kind of stuff got me going here because a it felt like we were on the right track after searching for so long for me anyway to find a way to un tie this Gordian knot in in in this way is a you know an interesting and the more we unpacked it the more uh explanatory power seem to have um and we're going to tell that story somewhere down the road u but um let me let me jump into one other I mean on the same trajectory. Yeah, there was a time then we had this insight, we're going to be working on this thing. I immediately said, "Look, Nathan, if you want to come alongside me, I could use the support.

I'm not going to publish this thing without you." So, we it ended up becoming in defense of K's religion down the road, but for now, it was a thesis that needed to pass a PhD test. Well, do you remember that before that we were trying to publish essay forms of it? Yes. in order to have give you something that you could cite and you know something. Yeah. I remember that grew and it grew and that thing became a beast. Yeah. So I remember the that you loved puns. I always hated them.

Groaned and rolled my eyes but this pun became beating the conundrums in in K religion was the name of the essay. reading the and I remember we sent those around and what was interesting is you know we do we send them to journals and again for people who aren't familiar with the academic world when you send an essay to an academic journal they do blind reviews right to outside people from the field to give assessments usually they're experts or they've been in the field a while and and based on the refereed feedback they decide whether to publish or reject or request a rewrite yes and the first few times we tried to publish it there was always a split decision. Yeah.

Um where somebody's like, "This is actually really interesting." And then somebody's like, "You can't read Kant this way. This is nonsense." Right. And and it happened again and again. And I do remember um was it Harvard Theological Review or was it the University of Chicago? University of Chicago was the Journal of Religion people. Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay. So that was the one that it had been forever and we were like what is going on? They finally we we gave them I think it was a 60 or 70 page manuscript on beating the conundrums.

I think it was because we we had two parts because we thought that part one which was book one and part two which was on book two we thought it was important that you read those together. Yes. Right. And so we were submitting a very unusual proposal which is that we want both essays published as separate essays. We did that. They after a fairly lengthy time they got back to us and my memory was like nine months was that a number of the people on the committee including I think the head of the committee absolutely loved the read and there was a significant group bifurcated committee that said no this is not Kant and they didn't want this to go forward. Yeah.

So my recollection is when they gave the report back cuz it was a very long letter. They were because they were very apologetic for how long it took. They solicited two blind reviews, split decision. Yes. Solicited two more blind reviews. Split decision. Held a committee meeting based on the reviews. Split and finally decided to not publish. But find that letter. Yeah. But they were basically like look guys, anything that's that's splitting the world like this, you're on to something. So just keep on moving. Yeah, that was very encouraging.

It was encouraging and I believe they gave us some language in some of that too which is a great reason to submit to these journals is that they actually intellectually engaged the material very deep level and I don't know who they were. There's all blind review but clearly they knew their con. Yeah. And they I remember them talking about you guys are making the argument for rigorism in the first book and you and I looked at each other.

Yeah. we are contest because that word but that word wasn't really in our vocabulary at the time but it became very important to our vocabulary but that came out of that process of engaging the academy in this way um as we continued to develop that um I don't know if you remember another journey we took I had a wedding to go to in Florida oh I remember this and when I skipped my master's graduation. Is that right? That's when you skipped your master's graduation. I said, "Nathan, what if I buy you a ticket to Orlando with You said Orlando?" Yeah. Yeah. Because that'll give us 5 hours to drive. Cuz this was the the wedding was in Key West, Florida. Right. Right.

So, time on the plane. We'll have a car ride. We don't need to fly to Miami. We just fly to Orlando. We'll drive all the way and we'll get a lot of work done. Which we did. Uh we we flew into Orlando and we as was our strategy in those days, one of us would drive, the other would type, the other we'd switch and the we we'd go back and forth. What we didn't realize was it was a lot farther journey than we had anticipated. Guided us a lot of time to write. Um but it also meant I had to drive like 100 miles an hour for most of the ride. That's true.

And then you ended up depositing me on the beach where I just kept working. We were off on that thing. And at some point I was sitting there like it was nighttime. I'm like, man, where is Chris? I thought I thought you forgot about me. It's one of those because it was on an island. I couldn't get back. It was but but I think what it showed was the importance of being I think we self-consciously knew that we were a new age of scholar and the old scholars were ivy tower types. These new were people because now I had a laptop. you had a laptop. Those weren't hadn't been around all that long at that point, believe it or not.

Um the internet hadn't been around all that long. Um and um we uh we just knew that the journey was where good ideas happen and we could record them and so forth. And we did a ton of that. I don't know how many essays we wrote. Yeah. Yeah. There was another time, maybe you remember this one, where I don't think they're the same time, but maybe you can help me remember where we actually wrote two or three essays for Philosophia Christie on one drive. Oh, yeah. And that was because you you had we had done one together and you said, "I think there's a second essay here. Here, start writing this up." Yeah. Well, I think that was because Yeah. What happened?

I mean, I think this was one of these where by this point, you know, we were deep into publications. Um and uh we I think we had done a conference paper, you know, we had done a panel discussion related to Kant and religion and things like that with the Evangelical Philosophical Society, which is the society that oversees the journal Philosophia Christi. Yes. And I think they were ready to move toward publication and we had we're like, okay, so we got to take our essays and turn them into some form of publication. And then that's where Yeah. I I I do remember where I was like, Chris, I think I think we could sneak in a third one, too.

And it was because we had just finished up our research on book three of K's religion where I was like, you know, we've been talking about how this relates to religious pluralism and so on. We should actually do a quick essay on Khan, the Christian religion since we have we've already done the research to put another essay. Yeah. And so we we wrote that up and slipped it in and with the package and we're like, "What do you guys think?" And they loved it. So, so I I do remember my buddy James Joiner who teaches at Northern Arizona University when he was I don't know if this is true or not, but when he saw he saw that issue and he met me, he's like, "Man, I've seen your stuff before."

He's like, "In fact, I think I think you're one of the only people I know of who's ever published two essays in the same issue." Philosophia Christie referring to that one. Honestly, when I was sitting in the car and we were wrapping up our essays and you said, "Let's do another one." I couldn't see a reason why we shouldn't. But you were always an envelope pusher. I was. Yeah. I mean, again, that episode on uh the myth of the enlightenment, we talk about pushing the envelope at the conferences, but even in these publications, you were saying, "Man, let's go, man. Push. This idea's got legs. Let's keep writing." And uh and we did. And uh that that worked out well.

They they published all of that. And so uh we were beginning to sort of blossom and I think we're on the leading edge of what they were calling this new wave of Kant interpretation. Oh yeah. Yeah. And um really I think pressing those those those boundaries. Now you ended up using this experience to write an essay called Kant's prototypical theology. Yeah. That was that first essay that I mentioned. That first essay. And you then submitted that for a your PhD applications. And I remember that was one of the one of the people on the committee who I met later, a guy named I think John Cooper. Is that right?

Oh, who said he'd read that essay in committee and that's the reason why he he took you. Oh, really? Okay. Because he loved that essay. That's great. Um, and so that was part of the journey. So, I was utilizing all of your theological acumen to try to get through this PhD program, which after a long history in 2005, I managed to pass. So, that was a big thumbs up, a big plus. You used some of this stuff to get into uh Kelvin Theological Seminary for your PhD, right? Yeah. Yeah. And uh continue on. And that's where I think, tell me if I'm wrong here, but I believe that's when you kind of finished up your con stuff and began moving into livveness more.

Is that right? Yeah. No, that's right. So, I mean, the thing was I had no intention of being a con scholar. I still don't even consider myself a con scholar despite having written a book that, you know, I think all K scholars are aware of. But, well, this is a rather ironic because I consider myself a con scholar, but I think you know more about Kant than I do. So, here we are. But, you know, the the the funny thing was like I because I was a metaphysician, I still am. And I remember when I talked with you about that early on as an undergrad, you were like, "Oh man, you can't I didn't know you could do metaphysics after after Khan."

I was like, "I don't know what Chris is talking about." And so I basically saw it as, you know, I I I don't think it's true that you can get rid of metaphysics, but you know, if that's the rumor, you can't do metaphysics anymore, I better spend some time with Kant in order to figure out why on earth anybody would say that, right? And and so I was really getting to know Kant because I saw him as a barrier to what I wanted to do, right? Well, what I was already doing intellectually for my own benefit, not programmatically. And I should be clear that's that whole thing that I talked about before where I was like this for me wasn't an academic enterprise.

This was primarily personal, existential, spiritual in nature. And so since so much of that, my natural bent in that journey was already metaphysical to be told like you can't do that. And I'm like, why not? And so I felt like I had to do that. And then but then also with academia, I was like, if I just sort of jump from here to there to whatever, um then nobody's going to know when I if I apply for a job because I'm now I'm at dissertation like doctoral stage. Um people are going to be like, what do you do? Do you do theology? Do you do philosophy?

So I decided to look for somebody who would be a bridge between what I was doing with historical theology and what I had done with God. uh what we had done with Kant and um and Lin made sense because Kant was Linitzian so we're still in that modern philosophy vein but my entire reading of lenes was that linen is misread because he should be read with the scholastics the medieval scholastics and some prology and then also the post-reformation scholastics yes and so it made a nice natural bridge because it was like okay I'm still doing philosophy livveness but I'm doing it by drawing on historical theology which I also do.

And so it seemed like the most natural way and then to sort of move from livess into what I want to do. Now eventually I didn't care. I was like I don't care whether academia says I shouldn't write on you know this or that or whatever. I just did what I wanted to do. But um but at the time I was looking for that bridge point and I think that's why I ended up focusing on on livveness. Yes.

Wilt which became I don't know if that's on camera but up there that book that that lives book up there uh it's not my dissertation just so you know my dissertation's over there but the dissertation I just I sort of wrote and that created the baseline for the research that I said okay I now know the book I would like to write on livveness and that's where I ended up writing a totally different book and that is the book that I I always wanted to write so yeah I I was uh was amazed when you moved into a whole another subculture of philosophy to take on another uh another piece of that puzzle.

Now we've talked about the bridge book which is the uh persistence of the sacred in modern modern thought. Yeah. And you wrote on liveness, I wrote on Kant, but the whole point was to show, hold on a second, this is happening in Kant, it's happening in livveness, is it happening anywhere else, right? And we started asking people and I think we told that story before, but that book kind of blew up into something much bigger than we thought it would be at the outset. Yeah, that was a that was a really important work.

Um yeah we don't have to tell the whole story um here but I think the short version is worth telling which is basically that we had started to raise this question of saying okay there's this general myth that's out there that like you know everybody was religious and superstitious and then modernity rolls around and all of a sudden people were like you know what we can do we can use this thing we have called a brain and we can think about stuff and poke and prod it and all of a sudden they became atheists and there's sort of like obviously that's a caricature, a severe caricature of it.

But there is sort of this sense that like with the enlightenment, there emerges this philosophical movement that quickly puts to death all of these theological inclinations. And looking at Kant on our reading of Kant, that's absolutely not true. Yes, I was looking at liveness. I'm like 100% not true. And we we had our suspicions about others. Yeah, you know, I'd been teaching Deart for a while and I go, I remember my professor at UN ofI, he didn't read books, you know, three and four at all. Book one and two of the cart's meditations. Yeah. So, we just started putting out feelers to different guys.

I mean, and significant guys, guys like John Codingham, who is one of the main translators of Deart, guys like Peter Hodgson, um, who is one of the main translators of of Hegel and so on. And we were just immediately inundated with emails that said, "Yes, 100% you are correct. These guy that these to read these guys without God is like trying to read Aquinas without theology, right?" And um and and basically they're like, "I've always wanted to write this essay." And some of those guys just in break neck speed turned around. Here's the essay. And you're like, "We were going to give you like nine months to a year and all you got it back to us in three weeks. What happened?

There was a Yeah, there was a a wild thing that happened. I don't know if we should put this on. Yeah, why not? Let's tell a little bit of this story. We got that book together. The whole book. Oh, right. Within two or three months, it seemed like it might it might have been four or five, but it was done and we sent it off to Notre Dame Press and for whatever reason, it took like two years to pay. Yeah. There was there was an there was an editor there who was kind of a problem in terms of backlog of stuff and it became a real problem where we were worried we were going to lose people a lot of the contributors like is this ever going to be published.

Yes. Anyway, I think it we eventually had to go to like the top in order to like strong like push it through and which was weird because it was contracted it was done. What's the hold up? Anyway, well, what I appreciated about your contribution to that whole experience was the high bar that you consistently maintained for everybody in those essays. Oh, yeah. And um it came out a few times and sometimes nearly bit us in the rear end.

I think in particular when we were at the communas scholarship there in Kelvin, we spent two summers there working on books and stuff and uh one of the essays that we got just wasn't quite I think he pulled it out of his computer and uh it was I I can't remember it was on Thomas Reed and um no it wasn't the Thomas Reed that was Coonio right his was good that was me just overstepping was a young naive undergrad. Um, no I not an undergrad.

I was a I was a doctoral student but still I had sort of applied a certain rigorous expectation regarding a certain form of setup and you know he rightly sort of chastised us for heavy-handed editing on that one and you know we said sorry right but um it was it was actually the Thomas Hobbs one and that one too. Yeah.

So I remember that was one where we where about that one where basically we we had said it wasn't up to up to snuff and we needed it to get up to snuff right and and I remember the contributor was like I don't really have time I didn't realize we were doing like dissertation you know level research he was a president of a university remains unnamed here but he didn't have the time to but so he graciously bowed out um saying like I you know this is what I got you know I don't have time to turn it into what you're asking for. And we said, "Okay."

But then because we noticed all of his footnotes were of Al Martinik, which just went to Al Martinik. And Al turned around a great essay. He produced I also remember I also remember was it Snoblin? The Newton essay. Yes. Yeah. That one was that was a beast. That was a beast. And it was And he you know he was very apologetic cuz he was like trying to say everything at one time. Yeah.

He's like he and he knew he was self-aware that it wasn't it's not a very clean organized essay and he's having trouble landing the plane basically right and I remember completely restructuring and stitching together that essay into its final form and he was like man this is great feel like I should give you co-authorship on the well those two stories are yeah are interesting because some scholars look at it as you're really helping a really helping thing and others say maybe you stepped on my toes. Yeah. Um but the bottom line is and this I think the lesson I learned in that process was these contributor volumes need to be coherent and they need to tell a story.

And um if those essays aren't doing that, they're not they're not helping the volume. And so we need to find a way to navigate that politically and and academically. And you were really good at that, helping some guys to turn it up and put turn the screws up and and get a really good essay and others bow out gracefully or not so gracefully. And um but we did and we were able to get a coherent volume and that volume was so good. It not only had a choice book award, a choice seal given to ital for best book in the but then we were invited to do a session at the American Academy of Religion in Chicago as I recall. Yeah, that's right.

And we did we put together a great panel and uh that was an experience in itself because Phil Clayton is another great scholar who did Spinosa in the book responded to us and then he came after both you and me uh in that as for our takes on linenets because yours was um I don't think you were like you hadn't written your book yet or anything. No, you just made a suggestive contribution. He said you can't do that with linets. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it was pretty early in my my livveness research. It was an exposition. I took one of Livveness's earlier essays and I I just sort of executed it. It was very much like what we had done with Kant.

So it's not a surprise that you know early on in my research with Livveness that that's the we met with a lot of resistance early on in these sub fields of philosophy because we were demanding more theological acumen in the interpretive process and we're just not finding it generally. Um, and in in the case in Phil Catton's case against mine, I was arguing against non-realism in con studies, right? And uh he took issue with how I think I was treating Keith Ward in that essay. Anyway, it was a fascinating experience. But the bottom line is we were having all sorts of momentum in our intellectual journey being invited to these various venues to support these new ways of thinking about these past thinkers.

And I think if I can tell me if I'm refraraming this correctly or at least partially correctly that writing the persistence of the sacred book made us realize there are bigger forces at work and that the situation the academy was in is not all its own fault anymore. It's just a rut it's gotten into this secularized rut as it were. And we were seeing it everywhere in all of these fields. These guys simply not knowing enough theology, simply not being charitable enough in the way in which they read history and understand that these guys are not trying to give an esoteric read or to plate sensors or anything like that, but they are genuinely trying to find answers to the big questions.

And uh I think that's part of what I got out of that whole process of working with you on some of these things and seeing it flesh itself out in the academy. Yeah. And uh that's right. And that was that was super cool. So in this whole process, you end up becoming kind of the poster child hire at Trinity College. Right. Right. Yeah. So I go from meeting you at Trinity and then I'm back to teaching at Trinity. Yeah. So you got your PhD, you come back to Trinity. Mhm. And by poster child, I mean you Well, actually before I had finished my dissertation, just like you ABD. Okay.

And you finished that was Yeah. that and that was because I just decided I was I was up to I was ABD, right? So in my context, what that meant is I had finished all my classwork. I had finished all of my language exams. I had finished all of my exams in terms of disciplinary exams and I had an approved dissertation topic that I was working on. And so I'd been doing that and I was like, I'll just take a flyer and put, you know, put out some applications out there on the job market, see if anybody bites.

And I ended up because I had I had significant I mean by this point in defense of K's religion was published right uh it had been nominated for the American Philosophical Association's book of the year right like I had all these essay publications I mean who knows how many conference papers I had a pretty good CV like pretty good resume as far as as far as uh you know candidates would go and on that first round I think I got I made it into you know like the sort you know, final candidate pool, you know, whatever it was, five, three, whatever at I I several schools. I remember Bethl was one. I think Westmont was one. Um I can't remember. I think there was Yeah.

Biola was another one. And so I remember you catching I tell told you this. Yes. And then I think you went to Steve Pointer who was the interim dean at Trinity. I said, "We got to hire this guy while we can." And just for timeline sake, we had published I had passed my PhD in 2005. We had published in defense of K's religion around 2007 as I recall. Yeah. 2007. And you were finishing up your PhD at Kelvin at the time. And times were good. 2008. Yeah. We had momentum at Trinity. We make this higher. I go to bed. I say we got to get this guy's a poster child for what we're trying to do here at Trinity.

Um, and Steve, correct me if I'm wrong, but Steve was shrewd enough to say, "Well, well, Chris, we can't compete with a package that we would offer him with those schools, but do you think we could get him if we got in quick, right?" Yeah. And I was always just a gem for us. Yeah. And so my recollection was that was a strategy. I was told like, "We're going to post a job, apply for it, we're going to close the position in a week." Yes. Yeah. And then we're going to take you out and interview you and make you an offer. And it was like a whirlwind. Like I want to say it was like in 3 weeks posted to me for everybody. Everybody's happy.

And as I recall, I signed a contract. Um it's important to the story. You uh you were everything we hoped you would be. You were not only a researcher, academic, writer, and so forth, but you were a great teacher. and uh your classes in um in B what was it? Bible biblical interpretation. I think I think I did like a historical theology or something like history of Christian thought. Anyway, they were well attended. Oh yeah. And uh everyone seemed to be happy and then 2009 hits and those and I'm I'm going to be interviewing down the road here. Maybe I will have already done it.

I don't know how I'm going to publish these these uh interviews, but um you see how institutions, Christians, administrators react when times get tough. And in 2009, time got tough. Yeah. And um in your case, I don't know if I'm going to butcher this, but as I recall, they were going to make cuts in in the university. And they laid out what they call the golden parachute for a bunch of people to to retire. And if somebody would retire in the Bible philosophy world, then old Nathan Jacobs would keep his job. And nobody retired. Yeah. And um they ended up saying, "Look, if nobody retires, then we're going to have to let him go."

And uh that was a deep sadness for me at the time. Mhm. Because I think Steve Pointer was right. He knew you and I were going to take be be kind of a dynamic duo in the in the world in which we moved and yet we couldn't hold it together in light of these bigger forces. Yeah. I mean, so I I mean, my recollection of it was first of all, it was a very strange thing in terms of the time I was hired because I signed the contract and then the housing crisis hit, right? And the economy crashed and like all the jobs disappeared simultaneously. Yes.

Uh and and in fact, people had to get let go at a lot of universities because of that that economic downturn. And I remember Trinity had was facing like needing to cut staff and stuff like that. And the only guy in the entire university who couldn't be fired was me even though I hadn't even started it because I was the only person with a cont signed contract for the because you had the And so I showed up under weird circumstance cuz I I felt like I was perpetually sighed by people who are like you're you know we lost so and so because of you and I'm like look I I remember because I had to go to a faculty meeting and I had to apologize to the faculty because people were losing their job and I had encouraged them to hire you early and uh and it became that rock that couldn't be moved and uh people were losing jobs.

I don't know if it was a direct onetoone correspondence. No, but for one person maybe it was, but we don't know which of those many people who were fired it was. Uh, but you're right. Then later it was I taught there for a couple of years and then I was sort of blindsided by the whole like last like I'm waiting for my contract for the next year and they basically the interim dean Steve had been moved out and somebody else had been moved in and they were like we're not going to renew your contract and I was horrified cuz I was like well you know how it's too late for me to get a different academic job. What are you doing?

And that's when it became really apparent that they were trying to coersse I mean I don't know if I should say that on the internet but you know it's you know that that it was they were trying to sort of dangle me over the flames and be like come on take the golden parachute and Jacob keep his job and and that was sort of the subtext of conversations that I had with at the time the president who was like look I'm going to be honest Jacobs I think it's stupid for any university to let you go, right? I think you're the best teacher here. I just recommend you just keep your chin up. You never know what happens. Somebody retires, right?

And it was this this conversation just dripping with subtext where you're like, "Okay, I see what's going on here." And so that's obviously, you know, it couldn't you can't say it directly like that, but you know, it was pretty obvious to everybody. And I remember Steve saw he was like, "Look, this isn't about Jacobs, right?" like this is going to be a trend, right? This is a this is a shaking at the time, right? This is this is a bad sign of things to come. And didn't he like publicly stand up and say that he would resign unless they changed the decision and they're like, "We accept your resignation." Wasn't that how he ended up? My goodness, I'd forgotten about that. Yeah.

They ended up giving him a part-time job or something like that. Yeah. Um, and graciously they did give you, as I recall, a one-year deed. Yeah. Basically, once they did the chicken, like they're playing chicken, you know, we're going to let Jacobs go. Anybody going to retire? And once they cross that line, Yeah. they're like, "Okay, here's one more year contract. Go find a job someplace else." And that's when the Gatling gun came out and all of a sudden they're closing departments and firing people. And Steve is right. Right. this is a this is not about Jacobs. This is a sign of something to come. And so that's that was the sort of beginning of the end of the Yeah.

I I in in my side of that story, not only did I do the have to do the Miaulpa with the faculty. Um but I went I went in to uh to see Janette Sha. Oh yeah. At the time. Remember Janette? And I said, "Uh, Janette, if they if they really wanted to keep Jacobs and they really wanted to shake up the department, why didn't they just can the whole department?" Mhm. And she looked at me and she said, "I don't think they thought of it." Yeah. Or they thought that this other plan, right, the golden parachute offer. Yeah. The irony is I wonder if because the next year what they started doing was canning department.

So I wonder if Are you awakened to them to a strategy they they had already canned I think chemistry at the time as I recall and I said why did they can chemistry canned chemistry you can't do that right it was crazy anyway those were tough times for sure you ended up going on to other exploits I think you ended up at John Brown for a while and then you um University of Kentucky University of Kentucky and then there was a moment and maybe you could help me remember this but There was a time in there where you were being sent on a new journey. Uh you were always going to be the academic.

You always kept the academic chops, but you began to look at things like film and other things. And partly is we're going to talk about that when we get to the uh art stuff later, but some of the film stuff that we had done at the time. But uh you you were you were you were migrating and I had a decision to make. We knew the academy was shaking from 2010 onward and you came to me and said, "Rissa, why don't you join me in this little film world exploit I'm going into. Are you going to stay at the academy, watch the ship go down?"

Well, I kept on I mean, that was one of the things I kept on nudging you and all the way up until the present, you know, what you're doing where I was like, "Chris, look man, you're you're forgiving and faithful to a a fault."

And I'd seen this time and again, right? like where I'd seen certain academic relationships or something like that where it was like anybody else would have like cut this relationship a long time ago seen that it's turned toxic you know I know that you're a forgive and like bygones be bygones you got thick skin and all that I was like but there's also you got to consider right you know what's in the best interest of what you're trying to accomplish here on this earth and so I was always looking for obviously I was always following adventures and and I was also trying to just as an aside for myself,

trying to figure out how to put together these different pieces of this spiritual side of myself with this artist side of myself with this academic philosopher side of myself and it always felt like these awkward pieces of how do you possibly balance those or bring those together? And so I was my journey was was oftenimes trying to sort that out. Yes.

Um whereas you know I think with yours I was going you know Chris even if you're you're convinced you're you know a teacher and a scholar you know however it is that you see yourself what about impact right you know and that's where I remember even at you know in the most recent phase when you were trying to figure out what life post trinity looks like you had options that were pretty standard run-of-the-mill like I'm gonna go keep teaching philosophy to school I'm going to retire and that's it. And I was like, Chris, is that really what you want to do?

Like with your time here, you know, doing the Braveheart speech, you know, you as I look back, you don't want to fast forward too quickly here. But as I was making my way out of Trinity, eventually about 10 years a stories we were talking about, it was you and it was my son, Matthew Firestone, who were both pretty sure that you need to take some more risks. Yeah. Rather than go the traditional route. We know, we've already seen what the traditional route does. It has some upside, but is it to have a future that that you really want? Right.

Well, and I think in general always, and I don't know how much of this is your natural disposition or how much of this was my friendship, you tell me, but I was always trying to look for ways of shaking things up as you mentioned, pushing the boundaries with with books, whatever it might be. But it was always even internal to Trinity. I was always like, Chris, what could we do? They've got a MA they've got a grad school. You know, if we did this and we put together this proposal for like trying to build a joint BA philosophy degree that would be a pure philosophy degree as opposed to like a philosophy of religion which you could get at the Divinity School and things like that.

Yes, we tried to help, you know, we had the certificate program idea. We had all these different ideas and we'd push them and I was always sort of pushing you to rock the boat and right I was really rather than me bringing the proposal I was leveraging your existing relationships with Janette. You know I'm the newcomer here at the university. She put me on a committee that was the think tank to for these things and I did rock the boat. Yeah. And they were just not biting right. And that was actually one of the things that I had always come back to you. I was like, "Chris, you know, you keep on, you know, fighting the good fight there at Trinity.

You give good ideas, you let them get shot down, you give another good idea, you let them get shot down." I was like, at some point, why don't you leave Trinity and find greener pasture where maybe somebody believes in your ideas and you might be able to do something, right? And so, so that was I mean that was always there in my mind as far as trying to and that's that's where I say like the whole like having a thick skin and forgiving and staying in those relationships. I I truthfully I think you probably stayed at Trinity longer than you should have.

Well, I think I think what one of the differences when we're going to talk about the spiritual stuff down the road was I had I'd kind of come into spiritual maturity at TEDs as a student. Teds being Trinity Evangelical Divinities, right? the other half this the graduate side of the college there and I was committed in a sense to trying to help it survive and to thrive. Yeah. No, I saw that. And um and so I also had kids in school and I also had the elder position at North Suburban Church there in town.

I felt like Nathan as I mean you were as tempting a guy to to to to to just walk the journey of life with because I knew we could we could do some great things but I I I also had these other things and I had to make a decision and um you went in I guess more into the you know script writing film writing world and all of that and I said you know what I'm going to roll my sleeves up and try to save this institution. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think you also had a sort of you had a greater loyalty to Trinity, right?

And there there's a sense in which I mean I think what you've got a decade on me or something like that, right? Um and so I think the thing is like I was first drawn to Trinity because I had been reading people from a certain generation there. Right. And that's how I first ended up going to the campus when I realized, oh, I'm I'm doing this spiritual journey and reading a bunch of stuff and some of these people are at this campus that's 30, 45 minutes from where I grew up. So, I just started showing up and making appointments during office hours to talk to some of these scholars who eventually were like, are you are you a student here?

And it's like, no, I just showed up because I read your book, right? Like, and so I I was doing that sort of thing. But I think, you know, the thing is I started to realize that, you know, pretty early on that even though I had an appreciation for Trinity and its history, the present realities versus its past heyday were, you know, were a little there was there was a transition happening here. Yes. And I think the thing is like I I pretty quickly sort of looked at it I think after I had been there teaching and things like that and saying look I think the heyday of the school has passed whereas I think you had a greater memory of its heyday. Yes.

And believed that it could be brought back. I think there were other guys like Thomas McCall right Tom McCall who's a great analytic theologian. Yes. He had great hopes for for bringing it back and and him as a hireer I thought was a good move in that direction but I know he was David Louie from the Lutheran world as well.

And but I think he too ran I think guys like Tom ran into you know disillusionment too when they were like they had I think it was Oliver Crisp who they could have hired and you know the the old guard didn't want him there right and and that's where Tom was like you know they're still talking about dispensationalism and premillennialism and I think that's when Tom realized like there's a certain strangle hold of a remnant that is never going to grow into what it needs to be. I there's certain lessons in life that you learn, you know, through the years. The the old guard was incredible. The 80s in the 90s.

Um, you know, I'm thinking of Harold OJ Brown and John Woodbridge and really that whole crowd that DA Carson, Clark Pinnick was there. That whole, ironically, the open movement, Montgomery was there, even Gistler was there at some point. They had interesting personalities. Yeah. Like even if you didn't like their work, there was unquestionably the people who were shaking up certain conversations were there. They were movers and shakers and and they attracted a lot of these rogue scholars like you and me to their to their shores to think maybe we can do the faith learning integration reason and and and and and work through issues together.

I think one of the things, tell me if I'm wrong here, but one of the things that you found when you finally arrived and you started making those encounters were they weren't quite as amanable to freethinking as you had thought they would be. No, they were a little bit more the old guard. They had made their splash. They were big in the field, but they weren't necessarily still on a journey to find answers, right? Yeah. No. And I think that's where maybe the old guard is the right term for it is that they they saw themselves as towing the line with a certain set of fundamentals.

It they felt like a form of fundamentalism where it was like there are certain fundamentals that they held on to that needed to be towed and they saw their job as mainly holding the ship steady in that direction until a younger generation would come in and keep the ship headed in that direction. And the result was it just that you encountered that intellectually. I I encountered it administratively when I was trying to put these new programs in and I'm thinking I'm getting no traction, no buy in, but why? Everybody on the outside seems to see this is a great idea.

But we weren't able to to to to shake the old guard as it were and get the kind of uh changes we were hoping for. No, it's true. And so we moved on. And that really was a trigger in your life in a sense that you said maybe there's not a home in the academy proper for me and maybe I should be looking into the film writing and expressing the intellectual stuff more creatively. Well, that's why I think it's interesting that you want to talk about three different journeys because there is a sense in which obviously all three are happening simultaneously in my life. They're all sort of organically intertwined in a way that's hard to separate. Yes.

As we keep on bumping into them right here. Um and yet at the same time they are very distinct clearly laid out story arked right journeys. And so when I look at it you know I think you know on the one hand there was this academic trajectory that's happening. Um, and I was I was starting to wonder I was I mean I'm late to the game relative to YouTubers, but I was starting to wonder like if there's the possibility of greater impact and greater free thought if you say I don't care about the academy. Right. Right. And not to say that I don't care full stop. I don't do academic publications. Obviously I still do journal articles. I do lectures. Yes, I do. Yes.

Now, but saying I don't care whether I have the academyy's approval or whether I'm even teaching in an academy, right? I I've built my credentials. I've built my reputation. I'm I am a scholar and I can go into this and and candidly, you know, starting to think in terms of saying there's a certain snobbery that happens in the academy concerning somebody like say C. Lewis, right? We all know who he is. lots of us like him, you know, think he's brilliant, but yeah, I mean, you wouldn't cite him in an essay, right? You know, and that sort of thing, even though it's like why not, right?

Like would chair of what medieval literature at at Oxford, you know, it's like he was a great scholar and a brilliant mind. But so that snobbery happens in academia. But I sat here and I thought, well, truthfully, if you wanted to do inventory of legacy and give me your best scholar, you know, scholar scholar who stays as a professor and writes books and whatever, and let's compare his legacy to CS Lewis and who had the greater impact and who has the more lasting legacy. And I think Lewis would, you know, hands down, hands down be the guy. He's still being read, right? The rest of them aren't. Yeah.

And also even if you know some people in the academy there's some you know you have this fraction of scholars or academics or students who read certain people everybody leads reads Lewis and so like in terms of the breadth of the impact too is also much more significant and I think it was because I had done this documentary becoming truly human which I'm sure we'll talk about when we get to the the film side of things but um or the art side of things and I had started to see the impact I was meeting people who I had never talked to who are man you changed my life with that movie like really I've never even seen you before right and that was awakening me

to this fact that you know I could talk to the general population about these topics and like not in the way CS Lewis would because I'm not CS Lewis I talk to them the way Nathan Jacobs would because that's who I am right right but I did notice I am capable I have a skill set to take complex lex ideas and make them accessible to a broad audience. So I'm capable of doing that. Um I have the backlog of training and knowledge and history of ideas like Lewis did to bring forward into that. And I also have this odd skill set having to do with storytelling and film making.

And so suddenly for the first time certain things started to crystallize for me in terms of all of those different those different journeys. Like I had just become Eastern Orthodox. this was, you know, moving out of the first film project into a second and it was bringing together all that I had learned in terms of, you know, history of ideas. And so I think that was really a culmination moment where those three journeys converged in a critical way. Do do you see your story as unique or do you see it in this light?

I mean we often times when we talk about Kant being the first traditional academic who was in the institution did philosophy there was paid by the institution and so forth prior to that all of those people we talk about they're not you know professors per se we're now at an age and we started seeing that when we went on some of those journeys together and doing philosophy in the marketplace and all of that right but you are the embodiment of I And is this a unique thing or do you think this is the direction things are going where you can make a living doing film you can and in in and other things but still write books in the academy and still be on the

cutting edge intellectually. I mean I think that there I I think there is a certain crisis happening with regard to the academy right like obviously the traditional form of higher education is of questionable value to a lot of people. they're sitting there going, I think we've been sold a false bill of goods here. Um, so that's happening. The the business side of it is becoming increasingly less viable. Part of the way of solving that seems to be diluting the product. So that now we've got to, you know, now that student, right? Right. The student is a customer. We got to keep the customer happy. Get a college degree.

And in terms of the professors you're bringing in, people who went that route because they care about ideas and they're passionate about that. Um are just being asked to like not be researchers because we just need basically manual laborers basically, right? The the academic equivalent of that where we just need a guy who's out there, you know, teaching this class because somebody's got to teach the class. So, we're actually looking for people who aren't scholars because a scholar has in his head this crazy idea. He might want to do research and have some time off and we got somebody we got to work to the work to the bone.

And so, like I think in higher education there's a lot of things that are happening there that are throwing it into crisis and that's why you see all of these different um explorations of well what's a new model? Obviously, we've worked on that a little bit. Yes. Uh a little bit. But um but in addition to that, you know, I think you have that happening there.

In addition to that, what you're starting to see is in the YouTube space or in the podcasting space that some of the people who in terms of like the broader philosophical, historical theology, theology, philosophy, religion space, all these areas, you have people who are not trained academics who aren't experts in their field but are having a bigger impact than the experts because of YouTube and people just searching and listening and watching at, you that their reach is more impactful if they're if they're engaging, if they're interesting and so on. And so you see this entire parallel sort of popular intellectual world emerging. Yes. And I do think um there is a question I think I here of like how these two things pan out. Yes.

I think it is possible that you start to see a movement toward some sort of convergence of those. Now, I I don't think that necessarily means the academy collapses or that you cease to have non-scolar YouTubers or something like that. I'm not suggesting that the convergence means that one or both die unnecessarily. But I do think what you might see emerge is the fact that you know people and I I think you are seeing this right that certain people who are building a YouTube audience start to become higher educ like they go to higher ed things in order to get the degree and add to it the credentials and the research and maybe they carry their audience with them into this elevated way.

I think that's one way in which you'll start to see it manifest. And lo and behold, those people probably won't go for a professorship someplace. Yes. Or if they do, they don't need to. Right. That's a good that's a good word. I'm seeing that in some of my interview candidates here. Yeah. And then I think you'll see in the other direction certain academics like myself who start to go shoot in terms I can reach a lot more people by talking to a broad audience through podcast stack and whatever else.

Well, you definitely uh encouraged me in that direction by going to Champion Christian College because that was it's a school a little bit more entrepreneurial mindset, a little more engaging culture mindset, international mindset, and um I'm free doing a podcast with them. I mean, they they they look at the academy in in a little different light. And of course that freed me up to take on the Turning Point USA opportunity at Prep Year with Charlie Kirk. And Charlie Kirk is one of these guys saying the very same thing. The academy is not a value proposition anymore. It's just not doing what it's supposed to be doing. Mhm.

And um and so that interestingly allowed me to stay in the academy, but began to dip my toe in the world of podcasting, in the world of Turning Point USA, in the world of engaging culture in a way that isn't just in the ivory towers, right? Um that is a little bit more requiring more of the whole person rather than just a head on a stick. you know, you you the your your other aptitudes and your other relationships matter in this new way of doing uh academics. Yeah. And so I think you're right. I do think we are going through a a new phase of the academy and and it's very different now.

And I think one of the things you're going to start to see which is actually quite beautiful um is that as a professor you always look for those students who actually care about the topic. I mean, if I if I were to break down your average, let's say you've got 30 people in a class, right? Uh you'll you'll have like one or two who are borderline antagonistic, right? And then you'll have a large swat, the clear majority, maybe 70% who are kind of apathetic.

They just have to be there. and you're leaning into that remaining like like 30% 28% whatever it is uh that seem to be engaged right and interested and obviously you love when you get that like very small percentage who's really invested right like really invested and and that is that's the thing you look for now what's interesting is when you move into the podcasting substack whatever it is space because it's not a program right nobody's there because they have to fulfill a gen G gen ed requirement, right? Like nobody's there for that. They're there because they're interested. What's interesting is it's all people who are interested in learning. Yes. And this is this is actually part of the irony, right?

You know, when Aristotle defines liberal arts, uh the liberal arts part, art being a skill or a craft. Yes. What makes it a liberal art is that it is not enslaved to a certain end. So if I need to learn how to make wheelbarrows, that's only valuable to the extent that wheelbarrows are valuable to society and it's pragmatically tied with that wag making wagon wheels ceases to be a valuable skill set when we don't use wagons anymore. Right. And so that's an enslaved art whereas something like philosophy which is an end in itself is a liberal art. Yeah. No. And so so the irony is that the way the academy has for so long sold itself probably since the GI Bill um you know it's it's sold itself as a value proposition that says we'll help you get a job.

And so ironically it's taken the liberal arts and enslaved them to the utility of getting a job. Well I mean a lot of what you're saying is resonating with me in this prepar program because the whole point and the reason Charlie got behind it was it's a condensed thing. We're not giving a degree. We're simply giving them the foundations for for whatever pathway they want to choose. And what I found was that the 34 students who showed up wanted to be there because they wanted this one-year experience intensive and now they can make a life plan and go out and do it. And the degree, great. If not a degree, great.

I'm I'm not beholden to needing to have that paperwork in order to make a difference in life. Well, this is what I think is interesting about this though is that ironically the true liberal arts space is now the podcasting public intellectual space. Interesting. Because nobody who's showing up to listen is there for the utility of getting a degree. They're there because they see it as to their own benefit to hear these conversations trying to educate themselves. Yeah. And so it's interesting that you have various um people offering classes who are popular podcasters or YouTubers like let's say a Jonathan PJO or a Steven D. Young um who can get massive class sizes, but it's not for credit. It's not even the length of a class.

There's not even homework or any of that sort of stuff. It's just basically a a seminar style lecture series that people will pay to show up to to learn. How many times in the traditional classroom do you have to spend three or four weeks raising the question, making people interested to see the value of it? Suddenly, if hopefully 28% light bulbs go on and you get there, but in the podcasting space, they're there, the light bulbs already on. They're hungry to figure out what is the answer to that question you keep raising in that real, you know. Yeah. So, I mean, and that and that's where I see what I see here is I don't know exactly how it's going to pan out.

Um, but I do suspect that people who have always gotten into the world of ideas like me and like you because they think those ideas matter, those questions matter. I have a suspicion that the pure liberal arts people, the pure liberal arts space is going to move into a non-deree granting space. Yes. Now, I think the question that's going to open up for the market is, yeah, but what if I want to go far enough to get a degree, right? And so, that's going to start to raise that question of is there a way of bringing those two worlds together?

But I think right now what you're seeing is you're seeing the traditional academy, you're seeing the sort of podcasting, YouTube public intellectual space and you're starting to see a gravitational pull from both directions to some sort of unity where you're seeing like I said YouTubers who are suddenly now want to get a PhD so that they're a scholar and they bring their audience with or people coming from the academy who are leaving the academy go there and they're sort of landing in that same space. Interesting. Um, and I think that space that is emerging is the true liberal arts.

And like I said, I I do think that's the trajectory of, you know, public of of really sort of the the the true discourse about ideas. Yes. Um, how that's going to pan out in the long run, how that's going to relate to degree granting, all that, you know. I don't know. I know that our company Profer has some ideas about that, but you got some good ideas. That's right. Well, I have to say that watching you have the courage to leave the academy proper, go out, conquer a new culture sphere, it's called film and art, and then get into the podcasting space. And I've watched a lot of your stuff on the Nathan Jacobs podcast, and um it was inspiring to me.

I'm thinking, my goodness, I mean, clear, articulate, uh, helpful to questions I've asked myself. And I got to thinking, hold on a second. I got to follow this guy into this world. And, uh, you know, I'm probably a year behind you and, um, and and have a different, you know, motus operandi, you might say, in terms of what I'm trying to accomplish. But um still I love that theme of mentor protege flipping to mentor protege. Um I think that that there's something poetic. There's something right about that.

And uh I'm just glad I'm able to go along for the journey, watch it happen, watch it unfold. you've been a great resource for me in terms of counsel over the years because even though you left those spaces, you knew enough about them to to give wise counsel and to uh help me walk through some very difficult circumstances and um and now here we are and the two podcasts coming together into one here and uh just just delighted by that outcome. Yeah. And see where it goes from here. Me too. Well, we will see where it goes from here. It's it's interesting. So, all right. All right. Well, that is a a pretty big sweep.

There's a lot of good stories between you and me um throughout those spaces, but uh that was uh what I you know, just giving uh you know, a a taste of our relationship through 27 years now, right? And um love to get back and look at the academic, look at the spiritual, look at the artistic with you if you're willing to do that. Absolutely. So, cool. Well, that's it for the Firestone Files and the Nathan Jacobs podcast. I'm Nathan Jiggins and this is the Nathan Jigs podcast. So cool. All right. Well, thanks for coming. Yeah. The Christian East and the Christian West share the same creed, the same scriptures, and yet they are worlds apart.

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