The Flâneur and the Philosopher A podcast by The Natural Theologian

Ross Byrd joined and King Laugh and I this week to discuss preparation for the gospel. Ross commented a couple of months ago on one of my essays that Jesus did not spend his ministry planting the seed; he spent it tilling the soil:
“The truth (the seed) is simple and plenty. The problem is the lack of fertile soil. Jesus came to till the soil, to play the long game—not just to give us the truth, but to make sure the truth could go in.”
Our discussion highlighted the importance of patience and incremental growth in understanding and accepting the truth. We also touched on the limitations of light switch-like conversions and the need for a gradual journey of becoming. We are embodied and in time; we can’t have an angelic, aeviternal view of conversion.
Our conversation ranged over other areas, including the sacred-secular divide, whether episcopal church government might solve some things, and the journey from wonder to work and back to wonder again.
Ross Byrd runs Surf Hatteras, a premier summer surfing camp for teens, and teaches theology for the Virginia Beach Fellows. He writes Patient Kingdom here on Substack; go give him a subscribe! He stepped back from being an associate pastor seven years ago to devote himself to these other callings full-time. He lives with his wife and four children in North Carolina.
Ross’s Comment on my Jordan Peterson Article
Ross’s Article:
Sound Bites
"Jesus' ministry is almost more about soil-tilling than seed-planting."
"The truth itself is so simple. You miss it because it's simple, not because it's complicated."
"Conversion is not a moment, but a process of becoming."
"It wasn't going to be very easy to do that in the Episcopal Church."
"We're not just handing you the reins of the sermon. Why don't we just the priesthood of all believers for those things - until and unless you show spectacular competence."
"What is the validity of 20-somethings being given church office?"
"It's a holiness that has to do with the way that the Spirit moves upon His people and the way that Jesus promised that He would when two or three are gathered in His name."
Chapters
Part I: The Master Soil-Tiller
0:00 Introduction to Ross
1:21 Soil Tilling in Jesus' Ministry
07:51 Patient Preparation v. Truth-Bombs
15:53 The Role of Time and Embodiment in Conversion
24:50 Salvation by Information Alone
Part II: From the Pastorate to Surf-Camp
40:06 Ross’s Story: From the Pastorate to Surf-Camp
48:44 The Bourgeois-Boomer-Baptist Booby-trap
Part III: Ecclesiology: Episcopal or Egalitarian?
56:47 Ross Challenges Us on Ecclesiology
1:15:03 The Holy and the Common
Part IV: Maturity
1:39:26 The Grandfather and the Second Naiveté
Last Week’s Episode:

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This week, the King and I spoke with Dr. Lawrence Feingold, professor of theology at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary, a Roman Catholic seminary in St. Louis, MO. Professor Feingold is the author of The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas and His Interpreters, among other books. He trained in Carrara, Italy as a classical sculptor, alongside his wife. Both were converted to Christ while in Italy, where Dr. Feingold then studied theology for nine years. The fruit of his study was The Natural Desire to See God, a rebuttal of five decades of interpretation of Aquinas known as the Nouvelle Théologie, stemming from theologian Henri De Lubac.
Traditional Thomistic interpretation had held that man’s supernatural end - the beatific vision, seeing God - transcended human nature; it exceeded what human nature was capable of on its own. God could have created man in a state of pure nature, not offering him the beatific vision, without any injustice to man. Even if man had not sinned, the offer of a supernatural telos was an act of grace, a free offer of something not deserved.
In parallel with Protestant Neo-Orthodoxy, the Nouvelle Théologie argued that human nature could not be understood apart from its supernatural end. Human beings, in virtue of their nature alone, had a supernatural telos. This conclusion led some interpreters, including John Milbank, to an explicitly Christian politics, denying the possibility of any liberal neutrality. All thought about secular things and all political activity must be based on explicitly Christian principles.
In The Natural Desire, Dr. Feingold argued for a return to the traditional Thomistic synthesis. Man has, by nature, a desire for the good itself, a desire that nothing created can satisfy. But man’s supernatural end is disproportionate to his nature; it transcends his natural end and only comes to him as a gratuitous offer.
My own project parallels Dr. Feingold’s in its reaffirmation of nature in Christian theology; see my book, The Natural Theologian. I reject the Nouvelle Théologie and radical orthodoxy for the same reason I reject Christian presuppositionalism, worldview-ism, and coherentism: They ignore the goodness of created, finite human nature in itself and the possibility of natural human knowledge.
In the interview, we discuss Dr. Feingold’s own path to faith, including how a love of Christian art paved his way to Christianity. We discuss the Catholic debate over the natural desire to see God and its theological and cultural implications. Finally, we discuss how I am attempting to appropriate some aspects of his view for Protestant theology - and to reject others. The discussion closes with an exchange on whether Christ’s grace, in addition to restoring nature, also exceeds and elevates it.
Enjoy this conversation of The Flâneur and the Philosopher.
You can also listen to this and previous episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
Chapters
* Introduction 0:00
* Dr. Feingold’s Conversion 2:08
* Art as Preparation 8:34
* The Bifurcation of Art and Theology 15:38
* The Creator and the Creature 22:51
* The Retreat from Nature 28:29
* De Lubac’s Position 32:40
* Aquinas’s Position 39:09
* Platonic v. Aristotelian 48:24
* De Lubac Again 1:00:52
* The Gratuity of Creation 1:07:10
* Brainless Slugs 1:15:50
* Practical Implications 1:24:39
* Natural Law 1:33:31
* Protestant Doubts about Grace Elevating Nature 1:36:51
* The New Commandment 1:45:53
* The Sacredness of Secular Life 1:49:04
Resources
Dr. Feingold’s The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas and His Interpreters
De Lubac’s Surnaturel, or The Mystery of the Supernatural
Steven Long, Natura Pura: On the Recovery of Nature in the Doctrine of Grace
St. Francis De Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life
John Paul II Fides et Ratio and The Theology of the Body
Music: Lofi Study Musician: FASSounds Site: https://pixabay.com/music/beats-lofi-study-112191/
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Today, Samuel Barnes, author of Missing Axioms and The Iconoclast, joins the King and I to discuss the role religion, the secular, and identity play in the political right. The conversation begins from our dueling articles, my “Toward a Religious Right,” and Samuel’s “Against a Merely Religious Right.”
In my essay, I argued that, if the political right, conservatism, does not make its object the conservation and continuation of a religious heritage, then its adherents will tend to identify the object of conservation as a racial or ethnic group. In order to preserve both morality and a kind of universalism, the Right should be religious.
In Samuel’s essay, he argued that the Right is not merely concerned with the preservation of a religious heritage or any philosophical proposition. It is also concerned with the preservation of peoples in all their particularity - as the Québecois are concerned with their ethnic identity, the Welsh with theirs, the English with theirs. These are fine-grained, historic ethnicities, not races, mind you.
It should be noted that Samuel is himself English, and that the divide on the Right we are discussing is partly due to differences between the US, a propositional nation, and the countries of Europe.
What follows is a lively exchange about the nature and purpose of politics, from first principles. Enjoy this episode of The Flâneur and the Philosopher.
Remember you can also listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and watch on YouTube.
Chapters:
2:00 - What is the right preserving?
10:00 - Is politics a godly or an earthly thing?
22:00 - Is effective change through politics anyway, or through culture, ideas, and religion?
29:00 - Is preserving ethnic identity a goal of the right?
43:00 - Does the Right have a positive vision of the good life? Or are we merely against things?
53:00 - How can the Right save us from the tyranny of pleasure?
To learn more about our guest, Samuel Barnes, visit samuelbarnes.com.
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On this second episode of “The Flâneur and the Philosopher,” independent philosopher Daniel Garner joins the King and I for a lively discussion of the question of elders. While many churches have elders, we lack a reliable method of cultivating elders from the raw material of laymen. Christian discipleship and growth into maturity are, more often than not, left to chance.
Probably, our churches’ difficulties in cultivating elders are related to our society’s disintegration, loss of belonging, and glamorization of youth with its beauty and ignorance. Garner, author of the magisterial work of social philosophy Belonging Again (Part 1 is available here, and Part 2 is soon to be released) brings sociological and philosophical tools to bear on the question. In the end, he suggests that an elder is someone at the intersection of a dweller and a cultivator of free speech - part hobbit, part wizard.
You can also listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube Podcasts, in addition to here on Substack! And if you missed last week’s episode, check out “Make Sermons Short Again” with Jack Prophesy.
Enjoy this conversation of “The Flâneur and the Philosopher.”
For more on Daniel, see his website under “O. G. Rose,” his pen name together with his wife Michelle. Check out his YouTube channel and his Twitter. Find his books on Amazon, including Volume 1 of Belonging Again. You may also enjoy his interview with me on my book The Natural Theologian: Essays on Nature and the Christian Life.


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This is the first episode of my new podcast, “The Flâneur and the Philosopher,” together with my friend King Laugh.
Putting it in a nutshell, “The Flâneur and the Philosopher” is a show in which a lover of wisdom and an ambulatory social critic seek the good through friendship and conversation.
One of our driving questions is whether the church is and how it can lead people to live examined lives, leading to spiritual maturity. I explored some of the limitations of contemporary Reformed theology, seminary, and being a theology nerd in previous essays.
Let My People Prophesy
The question this episode is whether revering the sermon as the central act of Protestant worship limits spiritual growth. Our guest, Jack Prophesy, argued as much on Twitter this week:
Strong words.
King Laugh and I put Jack’s critique to the test and explore ways that the church could better embody the priesthood of all believers.
You can find Jack’s links here: jack.prophesy.com
Subscribe to King Laugh here to inspire him to write a Substack finally!
If you enjoy the podcast, share it with someone!
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This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joelcarini.substack.com/subscribe