[Music] yeah crystal clear vision manifesting my wishes you ain't on my vibration and I'm keeping my distance we don't do that evil lie cuz I'm already winning put your ego to the side you might break through the ceiling i had to level up take a look at my loose ends and get them settle even if that means some friends are going to get jealous yeah working on my patience still ain't got time for no fake and no hating i don't know what to say i'm in alignment keeping it honest feeling that vibe today got to pack this rising perfect timing don't over complicate it i'mma let it flow flow energy filled with light can't rain on me and I'm going to dash on my back really this world is mine i this time they know no when life turns you inside out you just got to be reversible when your head's in the sky now don't forget about what the dirt do make a se like I'm low they looking at me like a hero used to feel stuck down on ground zero but really I'm resilient in that source always double back my steering if I'm off course and life is not a race but if it was I'd be in the first place with a new Porsche i'm in alignment keeping it honest feeling that vibe today got to make this rising perfect timing don't over complicate i'mma let it flow flow energy filled with light can't rain on me your tank and I'm doing a dash all in my bag really this world is mine [Music] no crystal clear vision manifesting my wishes you ain't on my vibration and I'm keeping my distance we don't do that evil cuz I'm already winning put your ego to the side you might break through the ceiling i had to level up take a look at my loose ends and get them settle yeah even if that means some friends go get jealous yeah working on my patience ain't got time for no fake and no hating i don't know what to say i'm in alignment keeping it honest feeling that vibe today got to pack this rising perfect timing don't over complicate it i'mma let it flow flow flow flow flow flow flow flow energy filled with light can't rain on me you tank and I'm doing a dash on my back really this world is mine i know no when life turns you inside out you just got to be reversible when your head's in the sky now don't forget about what the dirt to do make a se out the dungeon like I'm CEO they looking at me like a hero used to feel stuck down on ground zero but really I'm resilient in that source always double back my steering if I'm off course and life is not a race but if it was I'd be in the first place with a new Porsche i'm in alignment keeping it honest feeling that vibe today got to pack this rising perfect timing don't over complicate it i'mma let it flow flow flow flow flow flow flow flow energy filled with light can't rain on me you tank and I'm electrifying when the dash all in my bag really this world is mine this time they know [Music] no okay i'm about to have a good day no matter what they say sun is shining down on me words are singing praise i'm about to have a good day in every single way the God who made the universe knows me by my name so it's a good day baby in my arms walking through the neighborhood living in the present i would have sh i remember back when I was low as a rug now I'm standing up look at what my father does turning old things new gray skies blue hear the turn saying "Won't he do it?" I know he's got my back that's why I'm thinking that I'm about to have a good day no matter what they say sun is shining down on me i need to sing and praise i'm about to have a good day in every single way the God who made the universe knows me by my name so it's a good day it's a good day know it's great everything I prayed for didn't come in late i got all I need and I didn't have to wait ask me if you love me you didn't hesitate turning all things to gray skies blue hear the church saying "Won't he do it?" I know he's got my back that's why I'm singing that I'm about to have a good day no matter what they say sun is shining down on me fires are singing praise i'm having a good day in every single way god made the universe knows me by my name so it's a good day [Music] n it's a good [Music] day it's a good day [Music] i got soul i got grace had to throw away the selfhate staring all my demons in the face moving on never late follow my faith had to learn life slow down slow down i'm trusting the process of my pace i call upon my hands and stars cuz I need you we healing every night and day and they see it yeah and the sky blessings down oh wow oh wow oh wow yeah focus on the present moment in the sunshine all of my energy potent all of my energy flowing shedding my light on the sacred path that I'm walking i'm back in my bag and they know it i knew I was great but had to let go of entitlement all right hello and welcome everyone to our Jesus Way Philosophy series episode one the ontology of Christ if you're wondering why my background looks weird and why we're late it's because I left my camera on I I guess for the last few days and I came in and it was like burning hot and I turned it off for like five minutes to see if it could reset and no go so hopefully I didn't break it but um at least we got good old iMac camera to uh save the day so apologies we don't have the luxurious studio background as usual but it's not going to make a difference today because we're going to be talking about philosophy and looking at slides for most of the presentation today and just taking you guys through some really epic stuff um before we do that I want to say a big hello and thank you to Jasine for own Jasine Verzay for joining us to help me read some of these slides as you guys know my voice tends to drop out a bit as I present for hours at a time um so Jazz is going to help me read and save my voice a little bit today so um Jazz you got anything you want to announce before we jump in hello everyone happy to be here and support for as long as I can and I'm honored to work here oh well hello everyone hi my name is Jasine it's amazing to be here in Sapora thank you Aaron for asking um I'm also going to be the person that's handling the community post for a while so if you have any questions you can put something in here i'm staring at the ontology of Christ the chat as well so I'm here to support you in any way I can and I'm also going to be the new member orientation call person on March 6th so I'm going to be able to take any of you and all of you into the 40U app and how to go around look around enjoy 40 fellowship to its fullest foru student and grad so I'm here to love on you let's do this and bless us with your amazing reading skills yes are you in the uh Are you in the Shire is that what that is the Shire yes the Hobbit thought I recognized it you must be a Lord of the Rings nerd like me i really am are you i really am at our next retreat we'll do like a Lord of the Rings movie night oh sounds amazing all right guys let's dive in i have a couple things I want to say before we jump in the first thing is why are we doing this series the Jesus Way philosophy series and what is it all about i've said this I said this on our podcast the Jesus Way podcast episode 1 that uh ontology has to become the foundation of our spirituality and when it comes to you know theology especially growing up religious in Christianity or any branch of it we absolutely must allow our ontology to inform our theology and never the reverse it's literally cause and effect right the nature of God is what ontology is all about studying the nature of God the nature of being the nature of God has to be the solid rock upon which we stand right that Jesus talked about if we don't understand or know what the truth of God's ontological nature is what else can we know what else can we get right if we can't even get God's nature right everything flows downstream of that so if we allow our theology to inform our ontology meaning you know theology is like the study of God uh especially from a religious paradigm how can we have correct theology if we have incorrect ontology right it should be obvious but this is exactly what religion does is it lets its theology come first and then it tries to infer what God's nature must be like based on what I already believe and hey I did this as a Christian my whole life yeah I'm sure most of you did too i was told by my pastor to believe this and that you know God sends people to hell god needs payments for sins u blood atonement you know this is all true and so what do I believe about the nature of God based on that and now we have the cart before the horse and we've reversed the order of cause and effect and we're completely lost we have no compass anymore right we can just believe whatever we think sounds true right we don't need metaphysics and philosophy and all these systems of epistemology that allow us to arrive at correct knowledge through reason and logic no no no no we can just believe what we think the Bible says and what my pastor tells me and then I can understand God's nature and so is it any wonder there's 30,000 denominations of Christianity because there's no origin anymore there's no source anymore that we can go back to to verify if our beliefs our theological beliefs are even true and so you know men have been fighting over theology for 2,000 years haven't they and how much good has that done us it's just created a whole lot of different denominations of Christianity right so we have to have something more substantial than that and that is of course ontology and so philosophy in general is really the study of metaphysics essentially and metaphysics takes us out of the esoteric realm of thought and belief and all these things into reality into reality itself where metaphysics can verify if what we're believing holds up to what is true in reality metaphysics helps us see the governing principles of the universe the order of cause and effect and how things how things come into being causality these kinds of things metaphysics is the only solid rock upon which we can stand because God's universe is governed by metaphysical laws and we can study those laws and learn about them because God has imbued God's wisdom and knowledge into the universe and so scientists and philosophers have been studying the universe since you know time immemorial right and that's because we all understand something sacred about the universe that it reveals the mysteries of God and when we look at the universe we're looking at a microcosm of of how God's nature works how natural law works reflects God's nature so we have to begin with that right so whereas most you know Bible believing Christians make their own subjective interpretation of this book the house upon which they stand or the foundation upon which they build their house jesus would say that that's sinking sand yeah the foolish man builds his house on sinking sand when the wave and when the waves and the wind blow the house gets knocked right over there's no there's no firm foundation there so we have to have something more reliable than that and of course reality itself is what is reliable reality is truth god is reality and so reality itself is my Bible reality itself is a living picture of the nature of God so that's why we're doing the the Jesus way philosophy series because all of these philosophies we're going to show you today really these ontological philosophies we're going to parallel them to the teachings of Jesus and show you that Jesus had these ontological beliefs about God as well and so why do I want to teach you these philosophical concepts well the simplest answer to that question would be because they strengthen our faith exponentially when we ground our faith in God in something real metaphysical laws yeah that we can prove and demonstrate repeatedly in our life experience then it strengthens our faith because we have the conviction that what I believe holds up to reality and only that can really provide faith you can just believe things in your brain and continually tell yourself they're true but they don't if they don't show up in reality and if reality doesn't verify them you develop cognitive dissonance and this is why Christians including myself when I was a Christian get very triggered and upset when their beliefs are challenged because they already have a whole lot of cognitive dissonance about them we all have truth within us every living being and so when I hold beliefs about God that aren't true my inner nature resonates in disharmony with them yeah but I can suppress that i can you know subdue that and ignore it and just say "No no no what I believe is true what I believe is true." And I continually ignore the cognitive dissonance in my brain that every time somebody challenges my beliefs I have to get defensive and attack them or prove them wrong these are the signs that what I believe is not grounded in philosophical truth or metaphysical reality and so why do we want to believe something that's not true i sure don't and that's why you don't see me going around to Christian Instagrams and trying to debunk people and attack them for their beliefs because there's nothing that they believe that could ever threaten what I believe about God if the Bible disappeared from the face of the earth tomorrow it wouldn't affect my relationship with God at all if aliens came down from the stars and said "We are one of trillions of civilizations and we come to you know bring you um technology and whatnot." Wouldn't affect my relationship with God at all if the bones of Jesus were dug up somehow in a cave somewhere where he was buried you know the Talpot tomb for example and we DNA tested them and proved these are the bones of Jesus he never really rose from the dead it was all a fable doesn't affect my relationship with God at all doesn't that feel good to have a faith that's grounded in truth and reality well that's what philosophy can do for us and so when you come to understand these philosophical concepts that we're going to talk about today you are more able to explain why you don't agree with you know certain theological positions that contradict these metaphysical truths you can actually explain it to people step by step i'm going to take you through these philosophical beliefs today and try to do what I like to do which is make complex concepts simple to understand and you can make them simple for other people to understand of hey here's why it doesn't make sense that God requires blood atonement to forgive sins or as payment for sins it's like what how do you pay God what does that even mean what what are you going to give to a god that's omnipotent and already has everything what are you going to give to a god that has everything you going to give some blood to a god that created the blood whose life force already flows through the blood it's kind of like uh there's a funny analogy Raman Maharshi tells of uh false devotion false surrender there's a a statue of the Hindu god Ganesha which is like an elephant looking deity that represents the the aspect of the creator that helps us overcome obstacles so Ganesh Ganesha is the overcomer of obstacles and so he said it's like praying to an altar of Ganesha and the the altar is always made out of a a deity made of sugar i guess back in those days like they they smoosh together a bunch of cane sugar to make the deity almost like clay or something and so you take you grab a little sugar off the deity and you say I offer this sugar to you God Ganesha this is for you I I offer this to you it's like you know you just took some of the altar and offered it back to it that's not an offering that's you're not giving anything h how can you pay God it's an ontological fallacy and why would God need payment if God has everything it's an onlogical fallacy so we're going to go through this in a deeper way today but I want you to do your best today to try and grasp these philosophical ideas because I'm going to I'm going to use them at the end of today's presentation to show you the unbelievable number of ontological fallacies at the heart of Pauline theology and why it is a very damaging belief system on the psyche because it is so immensely contradicting of the true nature of God and so some of you may be new to this kind of philosophy today and that's okay because I brought you all a gift today called the philosophers's hat here it is and I'm going to manifest this hat in your hands right now so everybody hold up your hands and hold them out like this to receive the gift and now I metaphysically transfer to you the philosophers's hat when you put this hat on you can understand any philosophical concept presented to you you retain the mind of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinus combined so as I offer this to you receive it metaphysically in your hands and put that philosophers's cap on cha-chink now we're ready to rock and understand every single concept laid forth in a childlike way simplicity these concepts will maybe seem complex but I promise you they're simple and when you get through the language learning some of the language we're going to be using after you after you grasp the language it's easy it's simple and it all just it all just confirms what we already know to be true these concepts are just reflections of what's true yeah the concepts themselves aren't truth they just point to truth we all know the truth already and the omniscience of God is already in you and so the philosophers's hat we just put on is just a way of actualizing that omniscience of God in your mind today the last thing I'll say before we jump in is that uh I'm working really hard with my team on creating the Jesus way philosophy course for 40 university students so it's going to be probably a 12week course that's going to go through all the philosophical systems ontology cosmology sotiology and lastly at the end of the link of the chain theology once we have the first three down then we can start talking about theology right and so we have four philosophical systems that we're going to be taking you through in this course what we're going to go over today is just a little taste test okay i can't give you the full shebang because this is an incredibly dense rich and deep um topic of course but I'm going to give you a taste test today to give you a feel for some of these new principles we're going to be teaching in the Jesus way and again it's just going to strengthen not only your own faith but your ability to articulate your faith and lovingly explain to people why you don't agree with certain religious or dogmatic concepts because they simply violate the nature of God that I know and experience that's all so with that being said I'm going to share my screen and we will dive into today's presentation all right see how that looks cool all right what is ontology go ahead Jazz ontology is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of being existence and reality it deals with what things exist how they exist and how they relate to one another all ontology must begin and end with God for we live and move and have our being in God okay so these are the key influences in the Jesus way ontology we begin with Plato who's kind of like you know how do you talk about philosophy without Plato uh St augustine who was a a Catholic saint from 354 to 430 CE aristotle who was another pagan philosopher like Plato and then Thomas Aquinas on the right there which who's really the the main foundation of these philosophical systems we're going to go through today but um Plato I just want to give this disclaimer plato was an incredibly brilliant man and philosopher and thinker who of course contributed so much to the science of philosophy such as the Platonic solids um there are some ideas of Plato that I don't agree with such as duality or dualism but really the the branch we're going to be relying on is neoplatonism which was actually a later development of Platonism by a philosopher named Platinus who in my opinion really took Platonic philosophy to its correct and farthest conclusion and we're going to read what that is here in a second but um these are the main philosophers that I study and I think the big point here is that St augustine and St thomas Aquinas are widely considered and revered the some of the greatest Christian saints of all time and the greatest Christian thinkers or philosophers of all time and everything I teach basically everything I teach in terms of the spiritual philosophy behind it can be verified through what these men taught and practiced and I think that's an important point because you know I'm regularly uh accused of like oh you're teaching new age stuff this is heretical new age stuff and I always chuckle when I see those comments because everything I teach really comes from not comes from but is reflected perfectly in toistic and augustinian philosophy and so I say "Oh you do you believe Aquinas and Augustine were new age heretics is that what you're saying?" And they quickly back off once you bring that up because they're just not aware of the philosophy of these two Christian saints so keep that in mind as we continue and let's first look at neoplatanism so Neoplatanism uh posited that God is the absolute and many of you have heard this term God is the absolute i use this term pretty often in my teachings the absolute is actually um used in neoadvita Hindu philosophy as well that term and neoplatanism uses it and also refers to God simply as the one and so Planism was duality initially with with Plato who basically theorized that heaven and earth are separate realms you know earth bad heaven good we're trying to get out of the earth and go to heaven and escape this bad plane and go to the good plane and that is the foundation ofnosticism as well gnosticism was also a gentile henistic movement that borrowed platonism's idea of dualism and so neoplatanism which means like the new platonism um corrected that and described that God is absolutely not dualistic in any way but is one and is absolute so the one or the good is the ultimate ineffable source of all existence it is beyond being thought and description it does not think or act in a personal way but emanates reality as an overflowing of its perfection so if you have studied Eastern philosophies like Dowoism Buddhism and Hinduism then you're already seeing the parallels yeah that the pagan philosophers are saying identically all the same things that the eastern religious philosophies have said daoism Buddhism Hinduism god is the Dao the way it is beyond being it is beyond thought or action it is it emanates through all of reality and you cannot escape it reality itself is God or the one or the way whatever you'd like to describe it as the one is completely self-sufficient changeless and indivisible so here is um um oneness sorry this is the first O in our Jesus way ontology god is one what that really means is that God is indivisible you cannot divide God you cannot turn God into two god is one deuteronomy 6:4 and besides God there is none else isaiah 45:55 neoplatanism also described that the sort of idea of human life is to return to the one not in ontology or in an onlogical way meaning not that we're separate ontologically but returning to the one in mind and awareness the mystical path the goal of life in neoplatanism is reunion with the one this is achieved through philosophical contemplation seeking truth through reason not just whatever you think sounds good or want to believe moral purification living a virtuous life being of service to others obeying the laws of God and mystical union transcending thought and merging with the one in an ecstatic experience so this is pretty amazing stuff if you think about it that nobody would probably have assumed that some of these ideas come from neoplatanism right we're used to thinking of these ideas as like oh the Catholic mystics or the Sufis or you know whatever eastern tradition you want to pick but the pagan philosophers had the same exact ideas the path of returning to union with God is through mystical union going beyond thought and experiencing the bliss of the one so now let's talk about Thomas Aquinus and I'm going to let you read that jazz st thomas Aquinus 1225 through 1274 CE was a Dominican frier I believe is the term theologian and philosopher who became one of the most influential figures in scholasticism scholicism scholism he synthesized Christian theology with arrestellian philosophy particularly in his work suma theologica his philosophy known as thisism developed He comes developed key concepts such as the five ways proof for God's existence the distinction between essence and existence and natural law ethics akina's integration of faith and reason remains central to Catholic philosophy and metaphysical thought awesome thank you Jazz a lot of huge words in there so I apologize it's um it's really important to remember that Thomas Aquinus is really relying on Aristotle so you have Arisatilian philosophy here um scholasticism meaning like he was he was teaching this stuff at a scholastic level in his day and his greatest work is the Suma Theologica which is a massively huge book and took me a very long time to read through but it's got lots of good highlights in it and his philosophy became known as tomisism or tomistic philosophy and what we're going to see next is that Aquinus and Aristotle because Aquinus borrowed from Aristotle so heavily it's actually a new branch that it sort of became its own branch of philosophy called at philosophy or if you want to use the long term arisatilian tomistic philosophy so we can just call it at philosophy i think we could all agree it's easier to say but um this is how Aquinus improved upon Aristotle go ahead Jazz while Aristotle's philosophy was deeply naturalistic and focused on the physical world Aquinus Aquinus expanded it to include Aquinus aquinus expanded it to include theological and metaphysical dimensions he integrated Aristotle's concept of casual casualty with Christian doctrine arguing that God is the unmoved mover and the necessary being that grounds all existence additionally Aquinus introduced the real distinction between essence and existence demonstrating that only in God are essence and existence identical while all created things receive existence from him his work reconciled a repatilian reason with Christian revelation strengthening both philosophy and theology nice so these concepts we're about to unpack in a deep way so don't worry if you're like "Wait what does that mean?" We're going to get deep into it here in a second but I just wanted to do the due diligence to give you the backdrop of where this philosophical system comes from why we use it and why I believe it's the greatest philosophical system that there is the most accurate if we want to put it that way at philosophy so Arisatilian to mystistic philosophy combines Aristotle's metaphysics and natural philosophy with Aquinus's ontology and natural theology forming a robust system of thought at philosophy serves as a foundation for Catholic metaphysics ethics and epistemology influencing debates on natural law virtue ethics and the philosophy of God over time at philosophy has become a distinct school of thought bridging classical realism with theological insights making it one of the most enduring and influential philosophical traditions so the big point here for you guys is to realize that everything I'm about to teach you comes from Christian philosophy christian philosophy itself from the greatest Christian thinker in my opinion Thomas Aquinus absolutely nukes Pauline theology and I just find that to be so poetically ironic thomas Aquinus existed before Martin Luther who was the the great Protestant reformer right salvation by grace alone through faith apart from works that was Martin Luther's big thing he was a big Paul fan and so in in Martin Luther's day he was he was opposing the Catholic Church who had gotten obsessed with rituals and and tithes and these things and they were making people pay penance to have their sins forgiven and so Martin Luther was actually closer to the truth than they were I I believe because he said "No no no it's not through rituals and penance payments that's not how we find salvation it's through faith in God and so that's closer to the truth for sure we'll give Martin Luther credit for that but also it's not the full truth because we aren't just saved by believing in God as James says and we're going to look at this in a minute uh James the brother of Jesus said "You believe God is one good for you even demons believe that and tremble at the thought of it but they're not saved are they?" So it has to be more than just a belief in your brain it has to be manifested through your actions your life and your demonstration so now let's unpack the the philosophies we're going to look at today the first one is called hyomorphism and this began with Aristotle and Aquinus sort of improved upon it uh go ahead and read that Jazz hyomorphism explains the distinction between existence versus essence or matter versus form matter existence temporarily manifests as forms essences but the form is not subject to matter that is when an individual dog dies the essence of dogness continues on unaffected for this reason Aquinus argued that the human soul is eternal because it transcends the material body in the same way that dogness transcends any individual dog nice so let's just look at this for a minute this is the kind of distinct pyamorphic principle the the distinction between essence and existence so my dog Bodie has existence yeah bodie the dog the physical dog exists at least for right now and my dog Bodie has the essence of dogness yeah whatever it means to be a dog the archetype of dog dogness if you want to call it that bodie absolutely his entire essence is made up of the archetype of dog but when Bod dies one day will dogness cease to exist of course not there's billions of other dogs on the planet also embodying the essence of dogness i myself am a human male or a man but when the human man Aaron Abkkey dies one day does the essence of manhood and and maleness cease to exist along with my physical form just because the existence manifests the essence no the essence is eternal the essence is non-physical the existence the form the body the matter is just a temporary manifestation of it so this is the distinction that Aquinus pointed to saying "Oh this is why the soul is eternal because just like dogness is eternal compared to any individual dog just like maleness is an eternal essence distinct from any individual male the soul which inhabits the body has to transcend the physical body." And I think that's a a very keen philosophical insight from Aquinus okay go ahead Jazz aquinus asserted that the human soul is eternal because it gives the body life shape and purpose it is rational immaterial and subsistent it does not depend on the body for its existence while the soul is naturally united with the body it possesses intellect and will which operate beyond purely material processes since immaterial substances cannot be corrupted Aquinus reasoned that the human soul must continue to exist even after bodily death okay awesome so put in the chat if you are rocking with this so far and understanding this basic distinction that hyamorphism pulls out and if you are having trouble with something throw your question if you have like a burning question throw it in the chat and I can throw it on the screen and answer something if it's a pressing issue but this is where we're going to begin this is the the the hyamorphic fallacy of Pauline theology is rampant there's so many hyamorphic fallacies that such as eternal conscious torment and things like that we're going to get into later but all of them are predicated on understanding this basic distinction between essence and existence sounds like we're rocking with it okay cool so let's continue so Aquinus actually pointed out three distinctions of pyomorphism i might actually have Yeah essence essence versus existence which we just talked about uh if you were on our Sunday call I did a lesson on act versus potency as it pertains to faith versus works and the whole and James uh contradiction i just posted that video to YouTube this morning by the way so you can watch that later if you want but act versus potency is very similar to it's kind of another way of understanding essence versus existence the potency is the immaterial the non-physical right everything has potential even I have potential to be an amazing violinist an amazing artist an amazing pianist an amazing mountain climber right there's all these potentials in me but just because there's potentials in me doesn't mean they're actualities yet yeah i have to go train these these modalities if I want them to become actualities if I want to actually be a good violinist I have to practice the violin to what actualize my potential so potential and actuality are two distinct things although they are they go together like two sides of the same coin just like essence and existence there's a distinction that's important to pull out so it's very much the same thing as essence and existence one is the immaterial one is the material substance versus accident is another similar concept that we're not going to go over today but is going to be in our Jesus way philosophy course in a few months which by the way I forgot to mention we're trying to launch that by April 20th which is Easter so that'll be really fun if we can pull that off but we'll see so this is a quote from the suma theologica from Aquinus who said therefore that thing whose essence whose existence differs from its essence must have its existence caused by another but this cannot be true of God because we call God the first efficient cause in God alone essence and existence are identical so this was a big philosophical theory that Aquinus put forward that I absolutely agree with that God is the only being whose essence and existence are identical there is no distinction right like the dog and the dogness there's a distinction there dogs are coming in and out of existence all the time but dogness is eternal and transcends them all well not so with God god is pure isness being existence itself and so God has also no potentiality this is what Aquinus said god is that being who is fully actualized and that's important because this to say that God has no potentiality means God cannot change god cannot go through states of flux and change like a human can or something in the universe can god is fully manifested in every way there is nothing of God that is unrevealed or hidden all of God's being is fully actualized so here is a distinction between you know you as the physical person your existence and your essence being of God the I am or the Christ your true essence is one with God or the one as neoplatanism says and so that's why neoplatanism said "Hey the whole purpose is for us as the act of existence to merge back with our original essence mystically which is God's very nature." And in God God's existence and God's essence are identical pure oneness right there is absolutely not even a shade of duality in the creator and that's also an important point for the fallacies of Christianity we're going to point out at the end so here's the fun part now we're going to see where Jesus taught hyamorphism which remember is really just this kind of distinction between the body the existence and the soul or the essence let's see if Jesus drew any distinctions any hyamorphic distinctions between body and soul go ahead Jazz matthew 5:29 through30 if your right eye causes you to sin tear it out and throw it away for it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into gehina okay so here we have this statement suggesting that bodily matter such as the hand or the eye I believe um Luke says if your hand causes you to sin cut it off matthew says ' If your eye causes you to sin and that's a little um a little biblical scholar interesting tidbit that Matthew and Luke for whatever reason absolutely refuse to agree with each other it's a really funny thing to study that whatever word Matthew uses Luke will always change it to a different word so like if your eye causes you to sin Luke says no if your hand causes you to sin there's a lot of interesting uh scholarly theories behind that but anyway if your hand or your eye causes you to sin pluck it out tear it out chop it off this is the distinction of essence and existence right the hand or the eye is not the essence of the person but it can influence moral and intellectual choices that's what Jesus is saying so Jesus is saying "Cut off the offending part cut off the temptation if something's causing you to sin get rid of it." It's not a literal uh recommendation to start mutilating yourself it's just an analogy right be extreme in your pursuit of truth and integrity and righteousness anything that's causing temptation get rid of it because it's better for your existence your body or part of your body to be thrown in the fire of gehenna than for your soul to be lost because of the sin so the form or the soul is more important than the matter or the body if necessary one should never place the body above the higher good of the soul so there's another hyamorphic distinction that Jesus is pointing out here so matter and form do interact but the form or the soul must govern the matter the body so here's the hyomorphic distinction that Jesus pointed out in Matthew 29 is the soul must be above the body it must govern the body it must come first because the soul is eternal whereas the body is temporal let's look at another verse go ahead Jazz matthew 26:41 Mark 14:38 watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation the spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak so this one's pretty obvious I think but let's go through it this shows that Jesus's ontology held a hyamorphic distinction between soul and body the soul desires what is good but the body as matter is susceptible to weakness and corruption and that's because of the uh they call it the lusts of the flesh right hunger sexual craving thirst pleasure these things make the soul susceptible to weakness when we give when the soul gives in to the body's cravings the form or spirit should guide and perfect the matter which is the body rather than the reverse so really if you think about it sin always comes from reversing the hyamorphic order doesn't it when you put your body before your soul meaning when you identify with the body that's what the ego is according to a course of miracles ego is the I am the body belief and it's the I am the body belief that causes all sin sin is what missing the mark violating divine law that's all it is let's look at the next verse go ahead john 6:63 it is the spirit who gives life the flesh is no help at all the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life that's a fun one so this quote shows that Jesus held the body as perishable but the soul as eternal the soul is the principle of life and without it the body is just matter without direction so the soul informs the body is what Jesus is saying here the body by itself can be no of help to you it's just matter jesus taught that ultimate fulfillment is not in mere bodily existence but in the transformation of the whole person through the spiritual renewal of the soul okay before we move on I'm going to ask one more time put in the chat if you're rocking with this or if you have a question you want me to address before we move on to the second philosophy on the unmoved mover i'll give you 15 seconds to speak your peace okay here's a good one you guys know I love yogic philosophy so Ishwar says "I'm coming across an inconsistency with yogic philosophy here because we believe the soul atma cannot be corrupt but is it is the mind that is affected or corrupted." Absolutely correct when I if I use that term I just mean it relatively meaning when when the soul meaning you the actual essence the the being that's in the body the the intelligence that manifests in the body when that soul gives over to the the physical body the mind the cravings the lusts of the flesh it's as if it corrupts the soul because now the soul is bound to the mind and the the cravings and the lusts right so that's why neoplatanism said it's about going beyond thought transcending the mind and realizing the spiritual essence so it is actually exactly the same thing but u sometimes we use words with there's a term for this that I'm blanking on but put it in the chat if you know this term i'm fishing for there's a term that means that words can have multiple meanings or can be used in multiple contexts so you'll catch me doing that every now and then uh not synonym jazz but something close to that it's a it's a little bit of a bigger word than that in any case um know that I'm always speaking relatively on these kinds of concepts there is no corruption of what's real of course so great question there Ishwari all right let's keep moving go ahead Jazz we had one question from fifth house as well okay let me find that fifth house uh does the law of one represent the law of God absolutely my friend otherwise I would definitely not teach it okay go for it the unmoved mover aristotle posited that since every single object in the universe has a discernable cause if we trace all causuality back to their origin there must be a source of all causation that in itself is causeless in other words there must be an unmoved mover this Aristotle took to be God this one is really fun for deconstructing fundamentalism because basically every doctrine of fundamentalist Christianity or Pauline Christianity is a violation of this principle of the unmoved mover or the first mover is also sometimes it's called the first mover um so everything has both actuality and potentiality as we said God is the only being who has no potentiality god is fully actualized and unchangeable even the Bible says "I the Lord do not change." Right that's scriptural because God is not becoming anything god cannot change grow or develop god is the fullness of all the absolute and finished being so I'm sure that you can just think about a couple Christian doctrines you learned in church growing up and say "Oh yeah these are all violations of the first mover principle so let's keep rocking through it okay go ahead Jess we observe that all things that move are moved by other things the lower by the higher the elements are moved by heavenly bodies the stronger moves the weaker this process cannot be traced back into infinity for everything that is moved by another is a sort of instrument of the first mover therefore if a first mover is lacking all things that move will be instruments but if the series of movers and things moved is infinite there can be no first mover in such a case these infinitely many movers and things moved will all be instruments this would be like fancying that when a bed is being built the saw or the hatchet performs its functions without the carpenter accordingly there must be a first mover that is above all the rest and this being we call God ah it gives me goosebumps so good isn't it i I think about that uh old Disney classic Fantasia i think it's called Fantasia right where you have Mickey Mouse and all the brooms come to life and they start sweeping by themselves and then there's by the end of it there's like this giant line of brooms sweeping moving around um with no mover right that's the idea of when you reverse the order of creation and you make when you reverse the order of cause and effect when you make God an effect and you the cause you've just violated the first mover principle god cannot be an effect do you understand that means your sin can't do anything to God or require anything from God if your sin does something to besmerge God's holiness right if your sin as Wes Huff said in our debate creates a penalty against God that's costly well my goodness we have absolutely reversed the created order haven't we so something can be costly to an omnipotent God wow so now you're the cause and God's the effect now God has to do something to offset your sin and what would happen if God didn't do something to offset your sin you know Christians will commonly say things like "God is too holy to look upon sin god can't look at sin." Oh really god can't look at sin what would happen if God did look at sin would God melt like the wicked witch of the West i mean this is an absolute fallacy of the first moving first mover principle if God is affected by sin you know melts like the wicked witch of the west or something God is the effect and you're the cause this can never be it's an absolute onlogical violation and yet every every theological principle of modern-day Christianity is based on this idea that God reacts and is moved and affected and stained and hurt and angry by our sins we're just like we're slapping God around with our sins we're making God have a bad day god we're making God full of wrath all kinds of problems with this idea right so now you have this foundation of the first mover principle and the other the other big thing here is this idea of the infinite regression we're going to go back to this a few more times to help it sink in for you but if there is no original cause first mover or unmoved mover right we can trace back the the the link of cause and effect through the whole universe you know imagining it begins with the big bang right let's say there was a big bang that started the universe who knows if there was i don't know i'm just theorizing here but big bang and then galaxies form stars form planets form and then people live on the planets and meteorites colliding and stuff cause and effect cause and effect the whole universe is like an infinite domino chain of cause and effect well Aquinus with Aristotle is positing that that if you trace it back far enough it must go back to an original cause or mover that is itself unmoved god is the silent eternal being who is not affected or moved or changed in any way at all god is and God is the ultimate cause of all things god is the only governing power in the universe and so if you don't have an original cause that everything can be traced back to then you just have this infinite regression of cause and effect with no original cause which as Aquinus says is like imagining that you're building something but there's no builder there's just a hammer and nails and saws moving around floating by themselves it's like who who's moving them though who is the activating agent who is the first mover that first mover is the being that we call God so another really important principle this might be the most important one from the first mover principle is proportionate causality so let's unpack this st thomas Aquinus took Aristotle's concept of the unmoved mover to its logical conclusion and developed a theory called the principle of proportionate causality which says a cause cannot give to its effect what it does not have itself now I want to say something that's important here about this principle which is that you know my background is mostly in my philosophical background is mostly in eastern philosophies like yogic philosophy Tibetan Buddhist philosophy especially uh neo uh not neoadita but advite Hindu philosophy and things like a course in miracles and other sacred texts like that and they all say these things right they all describe this idea that the creator is perfect and therefore incapable of creating imperfection and so this is a this has always been a really weird idea for me to have push back on from uh Christians that I talk with because when I when I put this forward to them and they say "Oh if God's perfect and you believe God is perfect right?" And they say "Oh yeah God's absolutely perfect." It's like okay then God can't create imperfection because God would have to have some imperfection in order to produce it and they go that's ridiculous that's so dumb of course a perfect God can create imperfection easily right god can make imperfection and I say how can you can you walk me through your epistemic process for asserting this how could a perfect God create what it does not have it should be obvious that a perfect God can't also be an imperfect God at the same time how can God have perfection and imperfection it doesn't make sense it's an ontological contradiction so if we say God is perfect we must be willing to take that as with all ontology to its furthest conclusion and this is what my uh offense was in Christianity at 23 was that Christianity doesn't do this and it started to drive me crazy it's like hey look we all say God is omnipotent omnisient omnipresent perfect eternal infallible but then we just go ahead and create all these crazy ideas like God is angry God needs blood and stuff we're we are violating everything we say we believe about God so we have to be consistent and so I didn't actually know that these ideas that have been very innate for me and I've been teaching them for a long time were actually from Christian philosophy until last year when I began studying Aquinus and I honestly just got randomly pulled into studying Aquinus which is kind of what happens to me with every subject I get into i'll just get this weird kind of spark and I just am off to the races i feel that there's something here for me that I need a missing piece and I just go full full down the rabbit hole and reading the Suma Theologica I mean I would be sitting there reading this book you guys through last year and into this year with my mouth a gape being like "This is all Christian philosophy." And yet Christians push back on me and and disagree with me on all these principles and yet the greatest Christian philosopher of all time said all of these things and so here it is it's the principle of proportionate causality a cause cannot give to its effect what it doesn't have so let's unpack that a little bit more this principle states that an effect must in some way pre-exist in its cause a cause cannot produce something that is entirely absent from itself and this is just basic logic isn't it for example a fire can give heat because it already has heat a teacher can give knowledge because they already have knowledge a rock cannot give knowledge because it does not have knowledge talking about intellectual knowledge so there are some simple examples right a cause can only give what it has and this is a course of miracles 101 right you can only give what you have and so by giving love you you make yourself the source of love by giving peace by giving kindness by giving patience you prove that you are that cause you have those things within your own self so giving is the proof of having is what the course says that's proportionate causality my friends sorry guys messed up on my slides here a little bit so first mover theory number one every effect has a cause everything that exists is caused by something else nothing can cause itself no infinite regression there cannot be an infinite regression or chain of causes stretching back into the past if there were there would be no first cause and therefore no effects including the universe itself would exist a first cause must exist an unmoved mover a first mover must exist since an infinite regress is impossible there must be a first cause an uncaused cause that started everything a first mover the first cause is God aquinus identifies this first cause as God the necessary being who exists outside of time and space and whose existence is the foundation for all other existence so let's look at Jesus teaching proportionate causality or the first mover principle go ahead Jazz john 5:26 for as the father has life in himself so he has granted the son also to have life in himself ah isn't that cool that's a clear cause and effect proportionate causality this passage shows that Jesus saw his father as the self-existent source of life similar to Aristotle's idea of an unmoved mover who does not receive existence from another but grants it to all things jesus literally says he has granted the son to have life in himself so this is um another principle we've taught here in 4U quite often that Jesus even says this too everything the father has is mine where all power in heaven and earth has been given to me why because God has it so whatever my father has I also have in potential and this is what trips up Christians the most often I think is that because they don't study philosophy they don't understand the distinction between potentiality and actuality for me saying or for Jesus to say "All power has been given to me or all that the father has is mine." A Christian will hear that as actuality saying "Oh you actually have all the power right now prove it move that mountain with your mind and make the planets do whatever." No no no we're talking about potentiality because God is my source god is my cause and so as the Bible says "Whatever I need for life and godliness will be given to me." Or as Jesus said seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and everything else will be added to you so this is how we manifest God is that we don't do it from a personal ego right of this mountain because I want to impress this girl or whatever you can't god doesn't have an ego right so according to the principle of proportionate causality God does not have an ego meaning personal desires and personal motives so if you try to to channel or manifest or use the God energy from ego you will fall flat it will not work god doesn't have an ego so God can't give you what God doesn't have the ego is an illusion if you want to move this mountain to be of service to others from love well you better believe God has love and so you can channel the power of God when you're coming from a frequency of love right you're putting yourself in alignment with the ontological nature of God that's proportionate causality so that's why Jesus said when you have faith you can say to this mountain be removed it has to come from God not from an ego here is the gospel of Thomas saying 77 go ahead Jess jesus said "I am the light that is over all things i am all from me all came forth and to me all attained split a piece of wood and I am there lift up the stone and you will find me there." Okay so I love this saying just like many of the sayings in the Gospel of John where Jesus speaks from his what essence right this is also what Christianity confuses is that when they hear Jesus saying things like this I am the light that is over all things i am all from me all comes forth and to me all is attained split a piece of wood i am there they hear Jesus speaking that from his existence don't they his body his form his ego and as I always point out when I teach on the Gospel of John Jesus was never speaking as an ego in these phrases in these statements he does speak as an ego sometimes in the synoptic gospels speaking from his personhood like why do you call me good no one is good but God he he saw that they were identifying his existence his physical form as the goodness and just like Jesus said the the body can do no good by itself only the spirit has life so Jesus was correcting people when he perceived that they were reversing essence with existence right they were identifying him as a body he say no no no no body no one is good but God alone but then in these I am sayings which are in the gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of John he's speaking from his essence yeah the Christ or the I am principle and so I I bang on about this when I when I teach about this to help Christians understand you're you're wrongly assuming where Jesus was speaking from because you don't understand the philosophical distinction between essence and existence so these are really important things to understand they're not just like you know fun esoteric ideas we can play with they are the foundation of understanding Jesus and all of his teachings so this is a clear first cause statement from Jesus stating clearly that the Christ God is the is underlying all things and their movements so Jesus is speaking from the first cause or as the first cause in this saying let's look at the next one go ahead john 15:5 i am the vine you are the branches whoever abides in me and I in him he it is that bears much fruit for apart from me you can do nothing so there we go again jesus speaking from his essence yeah here Jesus teaches proportionate causality that all contingent beings depend on a necessary higher being that God is the source of all good that's clearly the distinction right that Jesus is drawing with i'm the vine you're the branches the vine feeds the branches not the other way around next go ahead john 3:27 a person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven beautiful so this is a clear teaching again on proportionate causality that God is the source of all things and therefore also their ultimate cause a person can't even receive one thing jesus says "Unless it's given to him from heaven where God abides." So there is proportionate causality god's the giver of all things every good and perfect thing comes down from the father of lights says James we got one or two more here go ahead gospel of Thomas saying 50 if they say to you "Where do you come from?" Say to them "We have come from the light from the place where the light came into being by itself oh man this one's so good isn't it jesus is is teaching some really highlevel philosophy here and he he always does it in this very poetic way right using metaphor and analogy but Jesus was a spiritual philosopher there's no way around it and this this one is huge because remember we talked about God as the unmoved mover the original cause the only being whose essence and existence are identical well there it is jesus says from the place where the light came into being by itself the the pre-existent isness of God that which has no origin its origin is itself jesus is touching on that here so this teaching shows Jesus's understanding that God's essence and existence are identical coming into being by itself without a cause and then finally we have Matthew 7:17-18 go ahead so every healthy tree bears good fruit but the diseased tree bears bad fruit a healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit so this saying demonstrates the principle of causality as defects fruit correspond to their causes trees healthy tree can't bear bad fruit because a healthy tree doesn't have bad badness in it right that's proportionate causality likewise a unhealthy tree cannot bear good fruit or healthy fruit because it doesn't have health or goodness in it so that's proportionate causality okay before we keep going let me know in the chat if you're hanging with this so far or if you have any burning questions on proportionate causality or first mover principles starred comments okay let's see okay Dorothy says "I'm not grasping the mover." Um Miguel says 'What if the la last mover becomes the first mover for everything in existence to come full circle yeah I mean you could you could sort of posit that I guess that as all of the universe expands and then eventually coaleses on itself at least uh the law of one says this that the universe is extremely old and ancient but it eventually does coales in on itself and then restarts a new universe and that implosion explosion Rah says is like the heartbeat of God that goes on forever universes coming in and out of being uh forever and ever so you could sort of say that Miguel that's a cool point janet says "Where'd that go if we're the essence and existence of God and we're evolving in consciousness is God continually evolving?" Absolutely not right Janet we we talked about this a minute ago that God cannot change because God is pure actuality that's the point god has no potentiality meaning there's nothing of God that is undiscovered unmanifested unrevealed god is fully manifest in every way through the whole universe you only ever see a perfect manifestation of God so the existence is what evolves and that's the purpose of existence yeah theosis evolving back to the creator as neoplatinism says but the essence is eternal and unchanging so essence eternal and unchanging always existence time bound and changing always changeful always evolving so thanks for that Janet and then let's go with this one how would you explain distinguish ego personal desire versus heart-c centered motivation uh will for our unique soul path so that would just be the distinction of coming from our essence or our existence right the body the person or the spirit the soul the Christ so heart centered desires are the ones that come from the spirit or the heart they're born of the heart the essence whereas the the body the form only wants what it wants it only wants physical pleasure gratification and those things and so we're part of this reunion with God mystically speaking is about harmonizing our existence back to our essence so that the cravings of our our body the existence the ego gradually stops wanting things that are in opposition to the spirit or in antithesis to the spirit so if the body wants to hurt somebody to benefit itself that is in opposition to our spiritual essence right which is oneness you are one with everybody which is why Jesus taught if you don't love the least of these you don't love me because my essence is in everyone I see so that's a big point there okay let's keep rocking for now want to save time okay go ahead yes Thomas Aquinus followed neoplatonic and Augustininian thought in defining evil not as a thing in itself but as a lack or provision of being/g goodness since God is pure being and pure goodness evil is not a substance or positive reality but rather a deficiency or corruption of something that should be good [Music] so of these three tomistic philosophies we're looking at today probation theory is by far my favorite because I've been teaching this for a number of years and didn't have a term for it but it's something that a course in miracles made me aware of by studying the course heavily we have a quote here innocence is wisdom because it's unaware of evil and evil does not exist so like my beautiful little daughter Arya it's very clear she's unaware of evil right she has no fear all she's ever known is the love of her mother and father um Selena and I have parented her in a way that we've been very careful not to traumatize her uh such as like uh what's the method called where you just kind of leave your baby to cry it out i think it's called the cry it out method where eventually they just learn that mom and dad aren't going to come so you can cry all you want it's useless it kind of instills an abandonment wound in in the child and my parents parented me this way most parents do it's no judgment at all but it was something we learned and became aware of that we didn't want to do and so we've we have a certain method of putting her down and when she cries we have a method of waiting a few minutes before coming in to help her know like mom and dad are always close but you can go back to sleep yourself too if you want so that's that's the innocence of a child right it doesn't know evil it just misses its mother and father or it wants to be held or whatever but there's no idea of evil and the course says that's actually wisdom because evil does not exist and this more than anything I've noticed really kind of breaks people's brains when I teach this they get especially Christians right get extremely upset how dare you say evil doesn't exist haven't you seen suffering in the world and I always say no no no i'm making an ontological claim not an empirical claim meaning I'm not saying well you don't experience bad things i'm not gaslighting the entire you know human race or something i'm talking about what actually has existence of itself what is real and what is actual is evil actually real well privation theory says no evil is not a thing in and of itself it is a provation it is a lack it is an absence it is a corruption or a deterioration of something so Aquinus defines evil as a lack or absence of a due good in something that ought to have it evil is not a thing or a substance it has no independent existence evil only exists as a corruption or deficiency in something that is otherwise good so when I read probation theory in Aquinus's Suma Theologica I about jumped out of my chair i was so excited that there's an actual philosophical term from a Christian philosopher that I can now use when I teach this say look you hate this theory take it up with Aquinus dude you know he he was long before me 600 years ago or 800 years ago when he came up with this I mean he's didn't come up with it it's kind of more from Aristotle but Aquinus moved this theory forward into Christian thought and I think that's really important Because one of the biggest blunders of Christianity is that it makes evil real as a second power apart from God that opposes God and that's an ontological fallacy that is a violation of the Bible and what scripture says and I try to point this out and because people think I'm making an experiential claim or an empirical claim you never experience evil they get upset because it feels like they're being gaslit and I understand that but that's why we have to be slow to disagree with things that sound controversial to us or trigger us and we have to actually listen in and lean in a little bit more hey what's actually being said here oh it's not being said that you never experience suffering or sin or things that feel evil it's saying that that evil is not onlogically self-sufficient it comes from a corruption of something good and this is part of the transcendental argument of Aquinas that God is pure goodness or in our philosophy God is omni benevolent the last of the five O's god is love first John 4:8 god has no trace of evil god is pure light without the slightest shadow or fading of the light says the Bible god is light in whom there is no darkness at all so God cannot produce evil acts in and of itself god cannot create anything that is evil such as an evil nature and we're going to look at that when we get to the end of this presentation on the Pauline fallacies so what is evil a provation of good not an independent reality does evil have existence no evil is not a thing but a lack of something that should be there such as goodness or love why does evil exist because created beings are finite and have free will making them capable of deficiency and disorder so this is the easy answer is why does evil exist free will that's it if we don't have the option to violate divine law then there's no free will we're all just automatons you know on a what do they call those things like in a q line or whatever right we're all just automatons just doing what we have no choice but to do love has no meaning forgiveness patience kindness service to others has no meaning we can't do other than it so that's a meaningless universe right god wanted a meaningful universe which means that love has to be chosen and so if there's a if there has to be a choice or a choice point then evil has to be allowed or the deficiency of good the disorder of good has to be allowed so does God create evil no god permits evil to bring about a greater good meaning that the exi the experience of evil sin and suffering and so forth allows us to develop faculties wisdom knowledge and and skills that we otherwise could not have gained or learned without evil evil is the catalyst for spiritual evolution so God permits and allows it because it always leads to a greater good in every case even if you're a negatively polarized being and it takes billions of years for you to return back to the positive you're still serving as a catalyst for every other being in the universe so everything God does is good and God even uses evil for good evil is just like a pawn on God's chessboard right that God is moving in such a way that it actually ends up providing good in some way the Bible says God works all things together for good when you love and trust him so can evil be overcome yes because goodness is more fundamental than evil and God's providence ensures ultimate justice so the ark of the universe bends towards justice probably heard that quote before go ahead Jazz god is the creator of all that exists granting being to all natures and essences sin and evil are not substances with being they are provations of being movements of this will away from good in other words evil is a void an absence rather than a presence thus no human possesses a sin nature or evil nature as no nature is inherently evil all that God creates is good can I get an amen amen amen brother so this my friends is the greatest ontological fallacy I think of the sin nature or original sin or total depravity as Calvinism you know puts it christianity or Pauline Christianity I should say Eastern Orthodox Christianity does not make this mistake they have the correct viewpoint but Protestant Christianity or Pauline Christianity salvation by faith alone apart from works that system of thought in Christianity that posits this thing called a sin nature that Eve sinned at ate the apple and all of creation fell into sin ruined everything in God's universe now we're all possessing this sin nature that gets passed down from person to person okay I'm sure that some of you here can already pick up the ontological contradiction here this idea collapses the distinction between essence and existence and makes them identical in a person which is impossible it confuses the difference between nature and person right existence and essence god creates all natures and essences so they cannot be evil or sinful you can't have an evil nature evil is a movement of the will away from good right right it's a pervasion of being not an actual nature called evil or an evil being everything God creates is good so there is no evil nature and we have this verse from James 1:13 which I think highlights this well go ahead Jazz oh wait okay jazz says "Be right back." So I'll read it james says 'When tempted no one should say ' God is tempting me.' For God cannot be tempted by evil nor does he tempt anyone but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed then after desire has conceived it gives birth to sin and sin when it's fully grown gives birth to death so James is showing the link the link in the chain here the domino effect it's never your nature that is bad meaning God is never tempting you god made you good and perfect it's the mental desire of the ego that drags you into sin to entice you to violate divine law and that's what a sin is it's missing the mark of divine law and when we do that Jesus says just repent turn your whole heart to God and you're instantly forgiven and it's not even that God performs some kind of transaction like a priest right no you're forgiven by me God it's just a metaphor for you come back into alignment with the divine harmony of the universe you are forgiven in a sense okay so let's look at Jesus teaching probation theory john 3:19-20 um Jazz are you back yet yes back go for it and this is the judgment the light has come into the world and people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil for everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his works should be exposed nice i see this question from Denise how do we know that sin is being out of alignment with God well go commit some sins and tell me if you feel like you're in alignment with God i think that'll answer your question but in a philosophical sense Denise um what we're positing here is that there is only God's law god is the only creator the only ruler only God's laws govern the universe and those laws function in a certain way those laws function based upon the oneness of God and so that means that really the law of one as we teach it here in 40u is do no harm right do no harm is the law of one why because it respects the law that all is one if everyone is just another manifestation of God aka your truest essence then if you harm another then you are harming yourself in a way so you're violating the law of oneness so these are just um a couple of examples we could give and I'd love to answer all the questions drop it in the chat but we got to keep cooking through these slides so we're going to keep rolling um okay so let's look at this quote from Jesus on probation theory here jesus teaches that evil is associated with turning away from the light reinforcing privation as a lack of good so we have this classic light and darkness right you've heard me use this analogy for years right the shadow analogy for evil that evil is the shadow cast in the mind when there is ignorance of God or truth when I'm not aware of God truth love then it's like a shadow being cast meaning if there's a a ray of sunlight shining down on an object that object will obscure some of the light that hits the front of the object and it will cast a shadow right behind the object so the shadow is like the analogy of evil it's not a separately existing thing that has its own ontological existence when you try to touch a shadow you find that there's nothing there you only touch the ground on which it's cast you can't pick that shadow up put it in your pocket take it home show it to people weigh it on a scale draw on it it's not real it's an illusion and thus it is with evil right nobody would look at a shadow and and say "There is no shadow there because everyone would say "Dude we can all see the shadow man what do you mean it's not there?" So it is experienced right that's why I say I'm not making an empirical claim when I say evil does not exist i'm making an ontological claim evil is the corruption of something such as uh rotten food is a good example when a when food gets rotten that rottenness would be the analogy for evil right it isn't a second thing apart from the food right it's a corruption a distortion a dissolving of the food a deterioration of the food so evil is the deterioration of what is good or the corruption of what is good so light and dark is always a great way to picture that in your mind and Jesus uses that very analogy in this passage let's look at John 15 if anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers and the branches are gathered thrown into the fire and burned nice so here we have a withering branch analogy in this passage Jesus uses the same analogy for probation theory as as Aquinas's rotting food or in Jesus's teaching withering branches so if you don't abide in me you're like a branch that withers and what happens to branches that wither they get thrown away now thrown into the fire just so you guys know the fire when Jesus uses this in the canonical gospels or anywhere it's always his analogy for suffering when you separate yourself from God in your mind you wither in that sense and that withering turns into suffering all withered branches get thrown into the fire right so it's like the universe has to throw you into the fire when you separate yourself from your source and that that fire is is called the refiner's fire or the alchemist fire an alchemist puts a metal into a crucible it's called of an extremely hot crucible that's put under the fire to melt the metal and it's a purifying process it's like it melts the whole thing down into liquid and then the impurities can be plucked out and then it can be hardened and resolidified back into matter again so everything God does has a final cause has a purpose so it's an ontological violation to say that God just tortures people in hell forever with no end in sight no redeemable purpose no final cause just eternal conscious torment for the sake of never- ending torment that's an onlogical violation that's a teological violation teology is a branch of philosophy we're going to study later in the series that deals with final causes so for example the teological purpose of my heart or any heart is to pump blood that is the final cause of the heart everything the heart does everything about its makeup and its growth in the human body from birth is aiming towards what the final cause of pumping blood through the heart to keep you alive same with the lungs the final cause of the lungs is to transmit oxygen through the body everything in the universe no matter what it is has a final cause a teological purpose because God is the original cause so an infinite regression of cause and effect with no beginning and end as we've said is not possible so the idea of eternal conscious torment is a teological violation of the first mover principle there has to be a final cause because there is an original cause yeah god is the original cause of everything and that's why we say and every eastern philosophy says all things must return to God god is the first cause and so the end cause is always God as well everything is God knowing itself that is the teological purpose of the whole universe is for God to know itself this is what the law of one teaches so this whole idea of withering branch is a great analogy for probation theory just like the rotting food analogy it's a deterioration of something let's look at another few verses okay so Luke 15 is the parable of the prodigal son pretty sure we all know this parable pretty well the son asks for the father's inheritance says "Screw you dad i'm out of here." takes off into the city wastes all his his uh wealth on sex drugs rock and roll and then he comes to his senses after much suffering after much refining fire as Jesus would say and eventually returns back to his father's house and the analogy Jesus paints of the father is that as soon as he sees his son in the act of returning he hasn't even fully returned yet it says Jesus says "While he was still a long way off the father saw him kicked off his shoes threw off his tunic and ran down the road to greet his son." What a beautiful analogy right of the way that God always meets us as soon as we repent god's not like "Yeah repent and then get your ass back here walk every miserable step i want to see you return back to me gravel on your knees crawl to me you deserve it because you've been a bad boy or a bad girl that's the religious depiction of God this angry wrathful God who's clearly not omnisient and Jesus says "No the father as soon as he sees his son returning he's overwhelmed with joy and runs to greet the son." So what could this parable be hinting at the son who leaves the father's house represents privation the son's suffering is solely because of his solely caused by his own absence from his father's house not a new substance of evil so Jesus didn't say the son was in the father's house and then this evil came and stole the son away and forced the son to sin and separate from the father no the son did it of his own valition it was a corruption of the son's love for his father or a corruption of his trust in his father and he left the father of his own free will that's the free will principle right everyone that does evil chooses to do so of their own free will god doesn't force anyone to do evil and there's no evil nature that forces someone to do evil that's the point of the parable let's look at Matthew 6 the eye is the lamp of the body so if your eye is single your whole body will be full of light but if your eye is bad your whole body will be full of darkness if then the light in you is darkness how great is that darkness okay here Jesus uses the classic analogy of light and dark again that darkness is not a second substance but merely the absence of light the Greek word for I is opthalamos which also means the eyes of the mind or the faculty of knowing isn't that interesting if we know only good we can only know light for darkness is its absence so when Jesus says if your opthalmos is bad or or duel your whole body will be full of darkness and that opthalmos is the eye of the mind what does that sound like put it in the chat what would the eye of the mind be with a faculty of knowing let's see who's going to get it first this is an easy one guys i'm setting you up what's the eye of the mind going once going twice and the answer is the third eye thank you karen got it right at the last second 10 points for Karen the third eye is the eye of knowing true spiritual discernment right that's what Jesus is pointing to if your spiritual discernment is single non-dual if you're seeing oneness whole body's full of light so this is another example of probation theory that if your spiritual discernment is corrupt you begin to see darkness or evil right so this the perception of evil as a course in miracles would put it is what a corruption of spiritual discernment it's a shutting down of the third eye not a second power that corrupts the third eye and destroys it or something there is no second power in God's universe that's provation theory we say this mantra all the time for many years now in 4U when we talk about the third belief of ego what do we say two powers do not exist i am resting in one power that's pervation theory all right now we get finally to the five O's and if you watched our podcast the first episode of the Jesus Way podcast then you know we already went into this so we'll just kind of buzz through it because these are pretty self-explanatory but here's the five O's of ontology one that's number one for a reason god is one deuteronomy 6:4 and as we said that means God is indivisible god is omnipotent which means all powerful god is omnisient meaning all knowing god is omnipresent which means everywhere ever present at all times there is no absence of God in reality itself and the fi the fifth O is omni benevolent all loving all good so Aquinus has something very similar to this called the five transcendentals and we're not going to go into this today because it's going to be something we'll dive really deep into in the course that we're making in 40u but we're going to correlate all five of these to the five O's and show you how they are parallels of one another these five transcendentals are the five arguments for the existence of God sorry one of the five ways that Aquinus argued for the existence of God that these qualities are immutable from God's nature god is being itself god is goodness itself truth itself unity itself and beauty itself these aren't qualities that God has or possesses they are indistinguishable from what God is that's the transcendentals we'll get more into that later let's look at some oneness in scripture and I'll let you just read these off one by one jazz [Music] deuteronomy 6:4 here O Israel the Lord our God is one isaiah 45:5 i am the Lord and there is none else there is no God beside me have we not all one Father hath not one God created us great some pretty straightforward verses there right the Lord is one has not one God created all of us let's look at omnipotence in scripture jeremiah 32:17 ah sovereign Lord you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstressed arm nothing is too hard for you nothing is too hard for an omnipotent God except for of course forgiving sins that's very costly right god needs a lot of payment for sins but outside of that nothing's too hard for God let's continue matt 19:26 with God all things are possible and then I think we got one more matt 28:18 all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me so as we said on the podcast if Jesus said all power another translation says all power all authority in heaven and earth's been given to me well then who's the first giver who's the first cause god god can't give what God doesn't have that's proportionate causality so if God has given Jesus all power in heaven and earth well that means God already has it omniscience in scripture let's look at some of these psalm 139 you know when I sit and when I rise you perceive my thoughts from afar you discern my going out and my lying down you are familiar with all my ways before a word is on my tongue you Lord know it completely beautiful job 37:16 do you know how the clouds hang poised those wonders of him who has perfect knowledge perfect knowledge huh sounds like omniscience chronicles 28:9 for the Lord searches every heart and understands every desire and every thought wow if God's not omnisient how does God understand every desire and every thought sounds like omniscience to me the very hairs of your head are all numbered so this is clearly Jesus just using an analogy right to show that God knows everything even the number of hairs on your head john 3:20 he knows everything couldn't say it any simpler than that John well done omniresence in scripture psalm 139:78 where can I go from your spirit or where can I flee from your presence if I ascend to heaven you are there if I make my bed in shield you are there yes John is based ishwari I agree this um this verse is great because shiel is translated hell in the King James and it's the one time I'm like totally cool with them mistransating the word shiel because shiel in Hebrew means the grave or the pit it's speaking to annihilationism meaning the Jewish belief in the Hebrew Bible is the wicked are blotted out they get their existence removed from them forever they go to the darkness and never return right it's not this eternal conscious torment chamber that hell represents but in the King James they they have the word hell there it's like if I make my bed in hell God's there too hey I like that King James let's keep that word in there kind of funny all right moving on isaiah 46:9-10 i am God and there is no other i am God and there is none like me so if there's no other that means you can't be anywhere that God is not proverbs 15:3 "The eyes of the Lord are in every place beholding the evil and the good." That's a really good one isn't it god God can see everything in every place beholding good and evil alike so I mean there's a contradiction to the you know Pauline Christian idea that God can't look on evil no that's not what that means uh they're they're quoting uh what is that verse is that Malachi yeah no no no sorry habach 113 says "Your eyes are too pure to behold evil you cannot look upon iniquity." What that means it's not a literalist passage it's talking about God's awareness that God has all knowledge omniscience right and so God doesn't see evil as a real separately existing thing the way that we do god understands evil is just the lack of good or the pervasion of good so it's talking about the fact that God sees only perfection and only purity it's the human mind that misjudges things and introduces a second power into God's universe called evil that now God has to contend with evil is just a provation so God can see evil and good alike the eyes of the Lord are in every place god knows everything and is everywhere and finally omni benevolence my favorite in scripture john 4:8 anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love ah so good isn't it just love to breathe that one in anyone who doesn't know love doesn't even know God because God is love lamentations 3:22 "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases his mercies never come to an end they are new every morning beautiful psalm 105 for the Lord is good and his love endures forever his faithfulness continues through all generations jeremiah 31:3 i have loved you with an everlasting love i have drawn you with unfailing kindness john 4:16 and so we know and rely on the love God has for us god is love whoever lives in love lives in God and God in them man you guys are these verses bangers or what these are some incredibly beautiful spiritual passages in the Bible which is why I say I absolutely love this book and this book is absolutely inspired by God look at these verses and tell me these aren't inspired by God these are absolutely inspired by the nature of God but to say that the Bible's inspired is not the same thing as saying it was written by God's right hand with a feather pen and dropped out of heaven god didn't write the Bible god speaks through people who love God and who are devoted to God and so there's many people who wrote the Bible many of the 40 some odd authors were passionately in love with God and of course these writers here all being one of them and so God does speak through those who are in love with God and serve God but that doesn't mean every passage in the Bible is correct or was spoken by somebody who's in alignment with God it just means that there is a lot of divine inspiration in the Bible and so we have to parse out the wheat from the tears as Jesus said we have to parse out the true from the false the divine from the human influence and how do we do that i wonder what would be our number one criteria when we read the Bible to know what passages are divinely inspired and which ones are not and I'll just give you the answer so we don't waste too much more time it's the ontological nature of God nice jazz got it if it matches the five O's if it matches all five or let's say it doesn't contradict any of the five O's boom you can take that as a divinely inspired text easy all day why because God will never violate God's own nature so if God is speaking through somebody it will always come in perfect resonance with these five O's it will it will validate oneness omnipotence omniscience omnipresence andor omni benevolence and if a passage violates one of those five O's it is not of God it is a human influence that is such an easy barometer to use when you read the Bible and so I just kind of have to laugh a little bit when I get pressed by Christians like "Well how do you know what scriptures are divine or not you're just picking and choosing." It's like of of course I don't need to pick and choose i know God's nature god doesn't speak in contradiction to God's nature so when I read the Bible if it violates the five O's I I perceive it as being humanly influenced that doesn't mean there's nothing good in it that I can't learn from it it just I'm not going to take this as a divinely inspired passage if it clearly has human influence if it does align with the five O's I say great that's an inspired passage easy easy litmus test right okay now for the fun part now that we have these three basic philosophical ideas we began with hyamorphism the distinction between existence and essence we then talked about the principle of proportionate causality the first mover yeah uh a cause can't give its effect what it doesn't have and all that and then we just finished talking about privation theory the idea that evil is not a second power so let's look at a few of the contradictions in Pauline theology number one duality good and evil this is what Pauline theologies hinges upon is duality and ironically duality is the number one tenant ofnosticism which Christians say that they repudiate and reject and yet every principle ofnosticism is completely present in Pauline theology in Christian theology today the idea that earth bad heaven good we need to get out of here to go there all of this idea pure textbooknosticism and yet that's exactly what Christians believe right this this world is the realm of the devil satan's the ruler of this world and we're trying to go to heaven jesus is coming back to to rescue us from this horrible evil realm okay love the nasticism dude love it what are we talking about don't we say as Christians that we rejectism then why do we agree with its basic first tenant so this isnosticism this is a clear violation of oneness and a clear violation of omnipotence if there are two powers in God's universe God doesn't have all power blood atonement clear violation of omnipotence and it's a first mover fallacy which we went over already number three angry wrathful God the idea that God is angry at sin and needs to be pacified this is Calvinism 101 calvinism is like it's like Lutheranism it's like the worst furthest extent of Pauline theology john Calvin I think Calvin yeah has this uh I think it was a book he wrote called Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God it was like the most popular Christian book for decades and decades it was the number one read in Christianity sinners in the Hands of an Angry God and it's this idea that you are right now in the palm of God's hand hanging over hell itself the everlasting fire and God is so freaking pissed off god is like a guy who just got cheated on by his wife and you're the you're the one who cheated so God is angry and wrathful at you and you're a sinner in the hand of an angry God and God's thinking about just dropping you plopping you right into that lake of fire so you better repent and confess Jesus that's Calvinism and that's Pauline theology taken to its furthest conclusion absolute egregious violation of omniscience how can an how can God be angry or get angry and go through st changes and flux in God's state of consciousness if God's all knowing that's a first mover fallacy you can't make God feel anything you can't make God angry or wrathful or anything god is the first mover of all things the unmoved mover there is nothing that moves God moving on to number four separation from God clear violation of omnipresence right now again we can be separate from God in our mind in our awareness for sure and most people are what this is saying is there is no ontological separation from God why well because God is the source of all existence and so if you were ontologically separate from God you would cease to exist immediately there is no other source of existence so this idea that hell is a realm of separation from God is a total violation of omniresence even David said in the verse we just looked at in Psalm 139 "Where can I go from your presence Lord if I make my bed in heaven you're there if I make my bed in hell you are there." So there is no ontological separation from God but there is separation in mind and awareness and heart we can violate God's law and have no experience of God's love or presence we can be unable to feel God's presence because of our sin consciousness our guilt and all of these things these things are the provations of mind so it it makes us feel like we're separate and if you feel like you're separate from God you may as well be right it's as if you are because that's your direct experience so no one is saying "Oh nobody ever feels separate from God." No no no that's not what we're saying we're making an ontological claim right we're saying "Yeah you can definitely feel like you're separate from God but you can't actually be separate from God." And near-death experiences prove this beyond any shadow of a doubt go on YouTube and look up hell NDEs it's it's especially fun to look up Christian hell NDEs christians who go to hell when they die and they're like "Wait what i confess Jesus." And then they're uh gobsmacked let's say with the final truth that God doesn't give a about who you confess as Lord god cares that you make him Lord and if you don't love your neighbor as yourself you didn't make God Lord sorry so now you're going to experience a manifestation of your life the way you lived towards others was hatred jealousy envy judgment attack separation you're going to feel that in the afterlife because that's what you did to others your whole life so it's a karmic recycling of your state of consciousness but it's not eternal in every single case people who go to hell when they die or have a hell NDE as soon as they repent and they realize "Oh no I'm here because I didn't love my neighbor as myself they say "God forgive me jesus forgive me." Boom instantly a light appears jesus appears an angel appears and takes them out of the realm it's a realm of torment that's supposed to force you into repentance and honestly guys this is what people need this is what souls need who have deviated so far from eternal truth people who are living in the let's say if they're going down the negative polarity and they don't realize it living pridefully selfishly all of that they're not going to change by you saying "Hey brother it's all love and light bless you brother love you brother." They're going to laugh at you and and walk away they don't care about your love and light what a person who's being evil to others needs is to get their ass whooped it's just a fact it's the way polarity works if you go down the negative path you can only realize the futility of that path by experiencing its consequences and that's free will god has to allow that and so until somebody gets slapped around and humbled and this is what plant medicines are also great at right they won't see the error of their ways so that's what the hellish realms are for is that there has to be a place where people go who deny the truth of God or love or oneness to that extent they got to go experience the tangible effects of their state of consciousness but it's usually very temporary doesn't take long to get the message and as soon as someone repents just like Jesus says the father runs to meet them so there's no actual separation from God or such people who go to hell the hellish realms let's say could not be rescued by God the moment they repent right it shows that they're still connected to God even in the pit of hell so let's let that be something worth celebrating yeah that's good news that there is no fundamental separation from God but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to live righteously and avoid sin because sin brings as James says death death means what separation from God death means suffering death means not experiencing union with God spiritual death this is what what the term means as Jesus and James his brother used it when Jesus said "Whoever believes in me will never die but have everlasting life." Well obviously wasn't talking about physical death everybody who's ever believed in Jesus has physically died and will physically die so what kind of death does Jesus mean there of course he has to be talking about a kind of spiritual death and if God is the source of all life then to feel separate from God is spiritual death very simple so that's what James meant when he said sin leads to death leads to a feeling of separateness that is what suffering is number five eternal conscious torment okay a lot of fallacies here it's a hyamorphic fallacy it's a violation of omni benevolence and it's a violation of free will meaning if the universe is confess Jesus or be tortured forever then we live in a universe where there is no free will because I don't know about you guys but I don't consider eternal conscious torment as a choice that I could make do you raise your hand if you might consider eternal conscious torment nobody why not come on you don't want to experience a little bit of a eternal conscious torment it isn't an option is it nobody would ever choose eternal conscious torment that is literally the absence of free will so you can't say the universe is confess Jesus or burn forever that's a free will fallacy it's also a fallacy of omni benevolence because God is pure goodness and is incapable of doing harm to its own creation it's also a hyamorphic fallacy because again it collapses the the distinction between person and nature and says that yeah your body will be with you in hell forever and you'll feel the body's sense organs and the flames and the fire and the hunger and the all the physical senses no the physical body is temporal you do not take your physical body into hell when people describe hell it's not this everyone's locked in cages burning it's actually much much different than that it's a it's a realm of like psychological torture it's a realm of psychological madness and insanity and suffering and chaos and panic and all of these things right it's it's total madness and separateness from God but there's no physical burning happening you can't burn a soul or a nature right we are non-physical beings so it's a absolute hyamorphic fallacy to say that people burn in hell as if they have a body for eternity what's burning then you know what I mean like these things are laughable number six original sin or sin nature also a hyomorphic fallacy a fallacy of privation theory and a free will fallacy so same thing original sin is positing that a nature can be evil hyamorphic fallacy a nature cannot be evil because God cannot create what God doesn't have that's proportionate causality so I I would have put that one in here too but I was going to run out of room because there's too many fallacies to even have room for but let's continue number seven the idea that God creates imperfect people with sin natures who like Paul says there's nobody righteous not even one well that's a violation of proportionate causality god cannot make somebody who's evil and incapable of righteousness because God is righteousness god only has righteousness to give so we are absolutely righteous as Jesus says be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect jesus is saying strive to actualize all your divine potential because you are made perfect but in the realm of existence we're here to realize that goodness we're here to realize that righteousness by actualizing it that's theosis that's the purpose of the universe as neoplatanism says right the purpose of existence is to realize God that's what we're all doing here so just because we're evolving and learning doesn't mean Paul that there's nobody righteous not even one or we're all evil and sinners the Bible doesn't even say that the verse that Paul quotes Deuteronomy 30:1 he ironically omits the before and after passages of Deuteronomy 30 i would actually share my screen and read it if I could but it literally says the very passage Paul quotes that there's no one righteous it goes on to say "But the righteous generation follows God and obeys God and so forth." The passage is talking about the wicked generation and the foolish man says the to the fool in the foolish generation there's no one righteous not even one the passage is not talking about all people everywhere for all of time as Paul is pretending like it says paul is purposefully misquing and using isog Jesus on that passage to push his false gospel that we're all sinners wickedly horribly depraved and in need of a savior we're all in need of a blood meat sacrifice that will satisfy the wrath of God violations everywhere it's totally ridiculous sophomoric and infantile god is not an angry being who needs blood to forgive and gets pissed off every time you sin these are cartoonish depictions of God it's It baffles my mind how anybody believes this stuff and finally salvation by faith alone can you guys see this subject lights me up a little bit salvation by faith alone apart from works violation of probation theory and a hyomorphic fallacy wrapped into one so we're going to go through all of these in the course and really unpack and teach you how to not only understand but articulate these fallacies of these philosophical principles but today we'll finish with this i'm just going to give you these first three duality blood atonement and the idea of an angry wrathful God i'm actually going to read these jazz because um this was something I wrote up to try and distill in the fewest words possible why this is a contradiction so um I didn't proofread this word of warning i just kind of wrote it stream of consciousness uh last night before the presentation so if there's typos and stuff please forgive me so number one duality good versus evil the concept of duality in Pauline theology where good and evil are seen as opposing forces originates fromnosticism which borrowed from Platonic philosophy so this is henistic dualism pauline theology is classical platonism introduced this dualistic worldview dividing the imperfect material realm from the perfect spiritual realm neoplatoninism developed by Plutinus advanced beyond this dualism asserting that ultimate reality is a singular non-dual source called the one.nosticism as a henistic movement adopted platonic dualism by portraying the physical world as a prison created by the demi urge with the human spirit striving to return to the divine realm ironically despite condemning Gnosticism as heretical Protestant theology reflects a similar dualistic element depicting the world as fallen and ruled by the devil while salvation is framed as an escape from sin into a heavenly realm so can you guys see that right there it's the same exact gnostic philosophy repackaged with some different words instead of the demi urge we have the devil you know but same identical concept which is just again hilarious to me however duality is a product of the ego's fragmented perception an illusion imposed upon an inherently unified reality perception is not synonymous with reality positing duality as an ontological fact violates divine omnipotence if good and evil were two co-equal forces locked in eternal conflict it would imply a limitation on God's sovereignty as God would be constrained by an independent force beyond his control this is exactly what Christianity posits isn't it god and the devil duking it out god is so angry at the sin and the evil running rampant in God's universe and needs blood sacrifices this is Gnostic duality and this negates the very definition of omnipotence which asserts that God is the singular all-encompassing source of reality with no rival or counterpart instead evil is best understood as a privation or absence of good a deviation from divine order rather than an independent entity just as darkness is the absence of light and cold is the absence of heat evil has no existence of its own but arises when creatures endowed with free will act contrary to their highest nature this preserves God's omnipotence by affirming that all existence flows from his infinite goodness without any competing force capable of challenging his authority therefore the belief in duality as an ontological reality is both philosophically untenable and theologically incoherent it misrepresents the nature of God and the universe reducing the infinite unity of divine being to a finite struggle between opposing forces true spiritual understanding recognizes that all apparent dualities light and dark good and evil life and death are reconciled within the infinite unity of God in whom there is no division opposition or lack all right so I couldn't say it better than that so hopefully that makes sense let's go to the next one blood atonement this one's a little bit shorter i think we have two parts that I wrote yeah the notion that an omnipotent god could ever need anything from humans let alone ritual death and bloodshed is an onlogical contradiction of omnipotence a God who needs implies a state of lack thereby negating the very essence of omnipotence god is complete infinite and perfect eternally self-sufficient and devoid of any deficiency the idea that human sin could affect or penalize God is likewise a first mover fallacy god as the first cause is the source of all existence and cannot be subject to the causal chain of the material world to suggest that human sin can provoke divine anger stain God's holiness or create a metaphysical debt that must that God must repay is to invert the onlogical order placing humans as the cause and God as the effect but God by definition is never an effect so I asked Wes the debate when I was trying to I was trying to set up the argument step by step i didn't know they were going to kind of run away from the debate so fast but I was asking questions to get their positions down so I could use them against them later once I lay down my philosophy so I asked them "Do you believe God's omnipotent?" They said "Yes." I said "Do you believe that Jesus was teaching us a different rule set than God obeys?" Like when Jesus says "Hey forgive your enemies freely 70* 7." Do you think Jesus was like "This is just for you." But God's totally different or was Jesus teaching us what God is like and they said yes they agreed with me so I said in my mind okay we got him now let's walk them into this ontological fallacy and I was asking Wes are you saying that there's some sin incurs some kind of metaphysical debt against God and he went into this analogy of a car crash and oh if I hit my neighbor's car and then I I have to pay them for it you know forgiveness is costly and I said costly to who and they didn't answer and deflected from the question because I think they saw where I was about to go with it and I was going to corner them in their ontological fallacy you just said forgiveness is costly and a minute earlier you said only God can forgive and I quickly agreed with Wes because that was going to be my finishing move so to speak is that humans don't forgive anything only God forgives because only God exists only God does anything so the reconciliation is always on God's behalf you know we don't save ourselves we don't by personal effort do anything right god is the alldoer so Wes says only God can forgive and I said "Yes." And then he said "And forgiveness is costly." Oh so you just purported that sin causes God a costly debt this is a laughable contradiction of God's nature how do how are you going to pay God how are you going to make God have to pay a blood sacrifice what are we talking about you just said God is omnipotent how do you have an omnipotent God that has all power in heaven and earth and also is really costly when he has to forgive costly in what way what how could does sin remove something from God is that what you're saying how do you remove something from an omnipotent God there's just so many problems with blood atonement that you have to help people slowly understand step by step why they're contradicting God's nature every step of the way in this belief system okay moreover the concept of paying God is inherently nonsensical since all things belong to God any so-called payment would be nothing more than returning what is already his akin to wrecking a billionaire's car and attempting to pay the billionaire with money from his own bank account such a transaction is not only impossible but logically absurd thus humans thus human beings cannot offer give or sacrifice anything that would alter or satisfy God because God is already infinitely complete finally God is the God of life not death if God were to require death whether human or animal as a means of reconciliation this would create an onlogical division within God's nature so it's a violation of oneness right contradicting his inherent perfection god as the sustainer of all life cannot simultaneously demand the destruction of life or of that which he upholds without violating his immutable essence therefore the doctrine of blood atonement which portrays God as both the source of life and the demander of death is not only logically incoherent but is an onlogical impossibility within the framework of divine perfection and omnipotence so it violates perfection it violates omnipotence it violates oneness it violates the first mover principle it violates proportionate causality all across the board we we've got too many violations to count and so when I say this sometimes of there are so many fallacies in Pauline theology it's impossible to even count them all i really mean that i'm not just being exaggerative like you'd have to go into great depth to really count all of the fallacies as you read through Paul's writings it's it's just the ultimate corruption of Jesus's teachings to say that Paul and Jesus taught the same thing i mean Paul literally says "We are saved by faith alone apart from works." And all Jesus said was "You will be judged according to your works love the needy taking the widow the orphan and when you don't love the least of these you don't love me get away from me you who practice evil i don't know who you are." Are we so sure we want to rock with Paul he said "No no no faith alone apart from works." I'm not so sure that Jesus wouldn't have rebuked Paul on the spot for saying such a thing i don't want you to just confess me as Lord no no no not everyone who confesses me as Lord enters my kingdom only the one who loves who I love who obeys my greatest commandment obeying the commandment is a good work so faith and works are not separate one is potentiality the other is actuality so you can't say I have faith that's good enough that's just a potential i I can no more say I have faith in God that's good enough than I can go around telling everybody hey guys I am the greatest chess player who's ever lived i believe it i have faith nobody will take me seriously it's like hey why don't you play Magnus Carlson and see how you do oh you don't actually you're not actually the best chess player then your words are meaningless that's what Jesus was saying in his gospel not everybody who confesses me as Lord Lord with faith alone enters my kingdom only the one who does as in a good work the will of my father love your neighbor as yourself okay this is the last one and it's the shortest one so only one page here to read angry wrathful God let's look at some contradictions here the idea that God can be emotionally affected by human activity is a clear example of the first mover fallacy for all the same reasons god is the unmoved mover moving everything else while remaining himself unmoved as pure actuality with no potentiality god cannot change states of consciousness to suggest that God is happy one moment angry the next or shifts from wrath in one moment to forgiveness the next implies that God undergoes change and is influenced by human behavior however this contradicts God's omniscience and omnipotence as an all- knowing being God possesses perfect and eternal awareness of all events past present and future therefore the notion that God can experience emotional reactions is an onlogical violation of omniscience reaction by definition is a response to a new or unforeseen information or circumstance which is impossible for a being who already knows all things perfectly and eternally all right we made it through actually did I have one more slide let me look oh yes we'll finish with this so we have in the Jesus way philosophy series three more branches of philosophy like this that we're going to go through so a whole lot more philosophy coming coming your way but next month we're going to go into cosmology so we're going to talk about pentheism which I've done a few videos on pentheism is the idea that God is in everything and transcends everything and that's a perfect philosophical system according to the toistic philosophy we study today right god is the existence and the essence that transcends the existence god is pentheistic god is in everything and beyond everything we're going to talk about the law of one that the universe is based upon and how that influences karma and some things like that and then in April we're going to do a master class on soiology this is the study of salvation or how to be free of the sin nature let's put it that way so the three pillars of Jesus's gospel is repentance obedience and love and service so that's how we get into the conversation of sin and salvation from sin and what was Jesus's doctrine what was Jesus's philosophy on salvation and then once we've gone through these three we finally get to theology in this master class we're going to look at the five proofs for God the five ways and the five transcendentals we're going to look at natural theology which is theology that is completely divorced from scripture religion anything like that it's basically looking at natural law the universe itself and deducing with logic and reason what must God be like based upon the nature of the universe we see so it's to me it's real theology it's it's grounded in something real right not just my subjective interpretation of the Bible teology which we touched on today it's the study of final causes this one's really fun for me to teach on because it's there's a teological argument to be made as proof for the higher self teology rather proves the existence of your higher self which I'll save that uh candy for the actual presentation and then of course Christ consciousness what is Christ consciousness uh that's an aspect of theology and we're going to get deep into Christ consciousness in that lecture so with all that being said the Jesus way course is coming up in April hopefully by April 20th and we're going to go do a super deep dive into all of these philos ophical systems and it's uh it's going to be in the student membership so if you're a student already you'll have that available to take and enjoy and uh probably retake a couple of times as you can see this is some pretty dense information that can be tricky to digest and take a little bit of time to digest so we're going to give you guys this master class today and allow you to go through it and rewatch it as many times as you want um take snapshots of the slides study the slides all that good stuff but I hope that you were inspired and blessed by today's conversation and have a new approach to your spiritual philosophy that you can actually use real metaphysics to validate and steal man what you believe to anybody you can say "No I don't just believe this because it sounds good." This is the accusation that uh Christians will always project onto People like you and I who are not fundamentalist Christian they'll call us new age even though we're not and they'll say "Oh you just believe whatever you want." Ha oh no my friend let's have a conversation about that i'll tell you exactly why I believe what I believe and let's see if you can do the same let's see if you can walk me through your epistemic process of why you believe these things can you steal man your beliefs in blood atonement in an angry god in separation from God or do you just blindly believe what the you think the Bible says or whatever beliefs are handed down to you from orthodoxy or you just believe what your pastor says you don't have epistemology to back it up well then you don't you have a house built on sinking sand my friend and I'd like to show you how to build your house on the solid rock all right guys i guess we'll end there because we're already 23 minutes over but thank you guys for your participation i love reading the chat as we go through this has been such a blast and I can't wait to do it again next month and the month after that and the month after that enjoy your Saturday be blessed take in the richness of all that was uh put forward today and just chew on it you know contemplate it let it get into you let it sink deeper as you contemplate it and you're going to start the dots are going to start connecting and you're going to start seeing the things that I'm showing you today on this presentation and once you see it it's very easy to explain it to people who have these kinds of deep you know philosophical questions about the nature of God so so much love to you guys enjoy your Saturday and we'll see you all on tomorrow's Sunday call for 4D Church peace and love everyone