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Thank you. This has been enjoyable.

Dr. Wright is talking about something written of long ago but nearly forgotten.  St. Francis spoke vibrantly about the interpenetration of heaven and earth, and out of this theology directly comes consequences in the context of the medieval problem of universals.  Example:  The concept of Haecceity (this ness), from the works of John Duns Scotus, a member of the Franciscan Order.  One wouldn't expect such respect for the individuality of things from such a spiritually robust tradition as the tradition of St. Francis -- usually thought by most people to be very romantic, abstract and general -- but it follows once you probe it carefully and come to understand it.

The wonder that enchanted Francis when he looked at the birds and the sky wasn't materialism, even though he was looking at birds and sky.  It transcended materialism in a way reminiscent of Daniel 3:57-88.   This expression of joy, thanksgiving and wonder was definitely not the world of Plato's forms and formulas or Aristotle's univocal categories.  What Francis perceived was each thing in itself, having flowed from the hands of God and perceived in an act of prayer and thanksgiving where heaven joins earth by the power of the Holy Spirit.   Just like in the excerpt from Daniel as well as many other places in Scripture.  Francis wasn't as much a whimsical tree-hugger as he was a vernacular theologian.

Science as we know it began with the likes of Roger Bacon who was a Franciscan, and his contemporaries working well within in the Franciscan tradition.  The Franciscan order is permeated with this deep understanding, but historically, Franciscan theologies were pushed aside in favor of the Dominican/Thomist ones which used Aristotle and Plato as primary inspirations and source materials instead of the Scriptures.  (There were actually big arguments about these source material issues in the 13th century, but we've mostly forgotten about that too.)

At the time of the Reformation, Thomism was in ascendance in the Roman Church, and so virtually all denominations that emerged from the European Reformation took this with them as a central assumption, to the neglect of the alternate theologies that existed.  The Franciscan theology is an alternate theology which still exists, and has never been refuted even by the Roman Church, although the Dominican one has been institutionally mandated in all its teaching functions since 1879, with the declaration Aeterni Patris (Pope Leo XIII).  The Dominican one is easier to teach and more amenable to a system that wants doctrinal definitions above all. <shrug>

Looking forward to this Justin. Though to Tom’s point - I wonder if the real distortion and difficulties we face come from nominalism, not Neoplatonism.

The conventional gridlock between Right and Left obscures the truly critical divide in human thought: the conflict between traditional and modern cosmologies. Historically, major spiritual and cultural traditions across the globe held that the cosmos possessed an inherent moral order—that nature and the good were deeply intertwined. Modern philosophy shattered this consensus. By decoupling nature from morality, modernism reimagined the world as a blind, amoral mechanism "red in tooth and claw."
This rupture fundamentally transformed politics. For modern thinkers across the ideological spectrum, the public square was emptied of objective concepts like the common good or the summum bonum (the highest good). Politics and nature were reduced to a theater of war, competition, and brute survival. This is the essence of modern Realpolitik, captured perfectly by Machiavelli and Clausewitz, who both viewed politics and war as the same struggle for dominance fought by different means.
Structurally, this modern worldview is built upon a naive epistemology that treats immediate sensory perception as the sole metric of objective reality. This narrow focus triggered a series of profound cultural and philosophical splits: cosmology divorced nature from morality; metaphysics separated mind from body; and freedom was redefined as the mere unconstrained will of the ego (incurvatus in se). When reality is fractured this deeply, the ultimate casualty is the logos—universal reason—leaving a vacuum filled by irrationality and nihilism.
The political consequences of this shift are devastating. When nature is stripped of moral boundaries and ethics are viewed as purely artificial social constructions, truth becomes infinitely manipulable. Power alone dictates reality. Any regime or individual can claim the absolute authority to determine good and evil, operating on the hubristic Nietzschean premise of "I shall not serve."
Stripped of natural moral groundings, the 20th century became the most politically catastrophic era in human history. The rise of totalitarianism on both the Right and the Left was the direct result of this modern divorce between nature and morality. As Hannah Arendt brilliantly observed, the ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the true believer, but the person for whom the distinctions between fact and fiction, or true and false, have completely collapsed.
Ultimately, modernism failed to deliver on its secular promises. While naturalism, empiricism, and scientism promised humanism and liberation from the constraints of the sacred, they instead delivered oppressive political leviathans and deep existential confusion. Like the barren fig tree of scripture, the modern project proved hollow, turning the holy precinct of human existence into a transactional marketplace.
"We have learned that the question about the meaning of life is not a symptom of maladjustment, neurosis, or confusion; it is a genuinely human question... The Enlightenment tradition offered us liberation from the burden of the sacred, and delivered us to a world without order, without meaning, and without moral foundation." (Leszek Kolakowski, Modernity on Endless Trial (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 9)

Thank you ❤

I'm so looking forward to Tom's Homecoming book!! Please let us know when that's coming out 😃

11th commandment. ''Thou shall be nice.''

I like Jesus as the CEO...Love listening to this...

"What The Bible Says About Covenant" is an excellent book describing the continuities and discontinuities of how God established the framework of His relationship with Man from the Old Testament (covenant) through the New Testament (covenant) and the mission of the Church to preach the gospel, good news of Jesus. About 300 pages, author, Dr. Mont Smith.

Sugestão; Aqui é o Brasil .
Por favor precisamos de vídeos traduzindo para o português.

The library of the legendary.

Yes!  Miracles happen!!

For belief in God to be critically grounded — rather than naive or merely notional — it requires the convergence of the three conversions:
(1) intellectual conversion
(2) moral conversion
(3) spiritual-religious conversion.
Religious conversion supplies the actual ground — the "efficacious" reality being
believed, prior to any articulation of it.
Moral conversion frees the belief from being a mere projection of self-interest or a
psychological wish-fulfillment (the Feuerbachian worry) — without it, "God" risks
being what satisfies rather than what is genuinely of value.
Intellectual conversion prevents the belief from being tied to naive realism — either
demanding empirical verification of God as "a thing out there" (which sets it up for
easy refutation) or collapsing transcendence into picture-thinking. It's what lets
belief survive as a genuine judgment rather than a confused mixture of feeling and
mistaken epistemology.

I wager that if these concepts of freedom, free will, nature and super-nature, morality and teleology … are understood correctly according best Thomism and Critical Realism … many problems & disputes in Oakhamian Nominalism & in the legions of confusions in philosophical Modernisms & metaphysics would be at one stroke be resolved …

Thank you, Justine and Tom.
The question that always comes to me is, what do we do with the knowledge and wisdom that Tom presents to us as followers of Jesus.  He certainly teaches us so that we "may be thoroughly equipped for every good work".
On politics, perhaps we should take our perspective from our position in the Kingdom of Heaven, recognizing that left, right, or central they are all of the world.  Once we see that, politics becomes something to be reconciled to God, not outlets for our views.  Perhaps too simplistic, but it does help me understand things a little better and to not get caught up in the rush of appearances.
On miracles, if we see a need, ask God to act.  That is, become "doers" of the word. Praying in humility and love does overcome many of the issues of some "being healed and others not".  Again, it may appear to be simplistic, but it is what Paul and James teach.
Again, thank you.

00:42:00 This is a very important point. We tend to focus on my individual temptation to a sinful thought or deed, but we miss the participation in a word I learned from Tom Holland: "Religio". How many alcoholics haven't begun their descent by participating in bachanalian parties where drunken revelry happens communal. Even Tim Keller's discussion of Idols of the Heart, makes sin a personal, inward inclination.  My guess is that if we look for communal, public acts of idolatry, we will begin to see them in modern life.

The power of religion is it's moral imperative. All religion promises peace with our fellow humans. Only Christianity promises peace with God. And only through the cross of Yeshua. But the cross also has a moral imperative. Many hide behind the cross and are justified by the cross but ignore it's moral imperative. The just shall live by faith. My thing is to serve the poor and live by faith. It's as close to Yeshua that I can get. And I am content and very happy. The Lord bless you!

In his  dismissal of the natural-supernatural distinction,  I wonder  what NTW would make of the accumulating evidence from Consciousness studies, Near Death Experience  studies,  the work of Gary Habermas  and scientific writers like Dr Bruce Greyson??