Christopher is joined by guest co-host Shiloh Logan to talk about the history of “Satan” from the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible through today. This is not a theological discussion but a historical discussion of how the idea of Satan has evolved. Shiloh and Christopher use scholar Ryan Stokes to show how the idea of “the Satan” was understood before the Jewish captivity in Babylon, how that changed and was possibly influenced by Zoroastrianism, and how the Dead Sea Scrolls solidified the idea of “Satan” that made it into the New Testament. Christopher and Shiloh also use scholar Elaine Pagels, to expand on how our idea of “Satan” affects and influences our view of the other and justifies us in our view. They conclude with a discussion of “Satan” through a Jungian lens, and conclude that the first step in improving our views of the other and our society lies in integrating our own “shadow.”
In this episode Christopher and Riley introduce Abu Hamid al-Ghazali and the most accessible abridged translation of one of his most beloved works, The Alchemy of Happiness, itself an abridgment by al-Ghazali of his magnum opus, The Revival of the Religious Sciences. Known as “The Proof of Islam,” Al-Ghazali is the second most important figure in the Islamic tradition after the Prophet Muhammad, and the most important theologian and mystic of Islam. He is also an acknowledged intellectual influence of perhaps the most important theologian in the Christian tradition, St. Thomas Aquinas. In The Alchemy of Happiness, al-Ghazali gives us a typology of the soul of man as possessing a set of divine attributes that both connect us to the base instincts of animals and yet set us apart as God’s crowning act of creation. Al-Ghazali commends spiritual discipline to his disciples, while cautioning that the checklist of command-keeping alone only brings us to the threshold of mystical communion with God. For Latter-day Saints, interested in “truth, wherever we may find it”, one could not do much better than Al-Ghazali. ...
In this episode, Christopher and Riley discuss one of their favorite religious texts, an excerpt from the Mahabharata, called the Bhagavad Gita. This seminal Hindu work introduces the various forms of Yoga as an allegorical discourse between the warrior prince, Arjuna, and the reincarnated God, Krishna. Contrary to the Western understanding of Yoga, this has less to do with stretching muscles and more to do with stretching the soul. Christopher and Riley share some favorite commonplaces from their reading and offer their interpretations as a starting point for those wanting to explore the beauty and great value of “the Gita.” ...
Riley and Christopher and guest, Travis Patten, go all the way back to Classical Antiquity to explore contemplation from the incubation practices of Presocratic philosophers Parmenides and Empedocles—something like today’s sensory deprivation tanks—to the influence of the Late Antique philosopher Plotinus on the mystical traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Plotinus’s invitation is to “withdraw into yourself and look” to see that “we are not separated from spirit, we are in it” since “to set oneself above intellect,” rather, “ is immediately to fall outside it.” ...
