Episode 25: Blessed are the Pure in Heart

Christopher and Riley return to the topic of the Beatitudes, this time discussing the fifth of the eight Beatitudes, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). They explore what it means to be pure in heart and even how to purify one’s heart, in a wide-ranging discussion including insights from Plato’s tripartite theory of the soul in the Phaedo and the Republic to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, to medieval Muslim mystic al-Ghazali’s Alchemy of Happiness. to ancient and modern scripture. The discussion ranges from the personal to the political, including the City of Enoch, the New Jerusalem, and Zion as the “pure in heart” (D&C 97:21), including a discussion of how to build Zion from the inside out through justice in the soul and in the city.