Luke Burgis: preference

Transcript context

…The world being enchanted, things and truths being hidden, and the multiplication of intermediaries as a way to get to those truths seem to me much more Catholic, if I had to say, and Sunni Islam seems much more Protestant with an emphasis on the Quran itself. Well, given what you’ve just shared, I probably would be if I learned more about it. Seems to share some elements. The idea that there are truths that are hidden is something I would like to just drill down on just for a second, because in Catholicism, it’s that the truth has basically been revealed fully in the person of Jesus Christ. The alternative to that is Gnosticism, which is generally the idea that there’s always some hidden truth. It’s like Scientology. There’s always this one more thing. If you just learn this next thing, then that’s the pathway to salvation is more and more knowledge. Very interestingly, when I read the parable of the lost sheep in the gospels, where Jesus tells the story of a shepherd that has 100 sheep. One of them goes missing, is lost. He leaves the 99 to go find it and brings it back. There is a Gnostic gospel of Thomas version of that same parable. In the Gnostic gospel of Thomas, the sheep is not a sinner that Jesus finds. The one lost sheep was the smartest sheep. When Jesus finds the one, he does not bring him back to the flock. He pats him on the head and praises him for not being like all of the other sheep, for being smart enough to forge his own way, and to leave the herd and the crowd, and all of the other dumb sheep. Now, that is the Gnostic interpretation, just to be clear. I find it very, very interesting and very indicative of the times that we live in today, where I think people would be more attracted to the Gnostic interpretation than the traditional one. The revelation of Jesus, again, within a Christian framework, it’s not fully transparent. There’s four Gospels. They have some differences, if only of emphasis. There was a period where there’s an Avignon papacy. You can count on the church to interpret, but there’s a claim that there’s two popes, who’s the real pope, which is the real church. One way or another, people had to make up their minds. Isn’t there room again for hiddenness in that framework, even if you adhere to a Catholic perspective as fully as you might try to?…

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