GOD: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher - The Podcast

196. Two Philosophers Wrestle with God - A Dialogue: NEW BOOK RELEASE

• Jerry L. Martin, Scott Langdon, Richard Oxenberg

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In this special episode of God: An Autobiography, The Podcast, host and Creative Director Scott Langdon introduces Two Philosophers Wrestle with God: A Dialogue, a highly anticipated publication that extends one of the podcast’s most profound and celebrated series. This book captures the thoughtful, philosophical dialogue between Dr. Jerry L. Martin and Dr. Richard Oxenberg, as they wrestle with some of the deepest questions of existence: Who is God? What is the nature of reality? Can we understand ultimate truth?

Through this 12-session dialogue, Scott highlights pivotal moments that explore paradoxes, theology, and epistemology, including pressing topics such as the nature of God, the problem of evil, and the future of spirituality. Join us for an intellectual and spiritual journey that bridges faith and philosophy, and don't miss the release of this thought-provoking new book!

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Scott Langdon 00:17: This is God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. A dramatic adaptation and continuing discussion of the book God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin. He was a lifelong agnostic, but one day he had an occasion to pray. To his vast surprise, God answered- in words. Being a philosopher, he had a lot of questions, and God had a lot to tell him. Episode 196.

Scott Langdon 01:25: Hello I am Scott Langdon, Creative Director and host of God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. This week, we take a slight detour from our regular programming schedule to feature something very special to all of us here at the podcast. If you've followed this program for any length of time, you're probably familiar with one of our most popular series of interviews Two Philosophers Wrestle with God. This series of episodes turns out to be even more rich in content than we had initially imagined, and today we're celebrating the completion of the capstone of this project: a beautiful print edition of these episodes in book form, edited by our very own copywriter and editor, Amanda Horgan with Laura Buck, our fantastic producer, overseeing layout and production for the entire publication. This brand new book, Two Philosophers Wrestle with God- A Dialogue is a beautiful and interesting read all on its own and can serve as a wonderful companion piece to God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher, and I'm really excited for you to get the chance to read it. Join me now as we take a closer look at Two Philosophers Wrestle with God- A Dialogue. I hope you enjoy the episode. As many of you know, this podcast was originally created to be the audio adaptation of God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher, which you can always find by beginning with episode 1 of this podcast and concluding with episode 44. But after that project was complete, we felt compelled to keep going, to continue to delve more deeply into what it might mean to not only tell God's story but to also live out our own stories in a more meaningful way by seeking to understand this very personal aspect of God.

Scott Langdon 03:10: Prior to the birth of this podcast, Dr. Jerry Martin was interviewed by another philosopher and professor, Dr. Richard Oxenberg. Jerry and Richard sat down twelve different times to record their discussions, which were spearheaded and prepared beforehand by Richard. The two discussed Jerry's book God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher, in a deeply meaningful way, subjecting the work to the difficult questions that must be asked of it if we're to take this revelation from God to Jerry seriously. While gathering ideas for how to proceed with God: An Autobiography, The Podcast, it didn't take us very long to see all the value in working with the audio of these discussions and presenting them in audio form here on this program. So we took Jerry and Richard's 12 conversations and presented them as 24 episodes, with each discussion split into two parts and presented in consecutive weeks. Why do something like this to begin with? Well, here's Jerry explaining what he had in mind In this clip from episode 57, the first in this series of episodes. Two philosophers wrestle with God.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 04:20: What every author most wants and needs is a really good reader, and it's harder to come by than you would think. I use the word author advisedly, since God: An Autobiography reports mainly what God told me rather than things I said, and those are reported verbatim, you know, from the notes I took as I prayed. What's remarkable about Richard Oxenberg is both his preparation for reading such a book and his keenness in exploring and questioning it. He's a professor of philosophy and world religions, has read the God book more carefully than anyone I know, including me, because I find he often will cite passages, things God told me that at that moment I had you know put out of mind.

Scott Langdon 05:17: Richard brought a point of view to the discussion that was not dissimilar to my own, but certainly more refined and articulate, so spending time to edit and streamline the initial recordings and mold them into podcast episodes became such a treat for me. I was, in a sense, sitting at the feet of two very intelligent and sincere professors of philosophy who were attempting to get to the heart of some very important matters, and Richard certainly came prepared. Here's Richard Oxenberg.

Dr. Richard Oxenberg 05:49: The title of your book is God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher. I'm assuming that if God chose a philosopher to tell His autobiography to, then He is not going to be averse to some philosophical questions of that story. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin: Yes, exactly

Dr. Richard Oxenberg: What I guess I'm hoping we'll be able to do is basically just have a conversation, a series of conversations about the book. I'll bring up questions that it raises in my mind and we can talk about it. That's my thought.

Scott Langdon 06:29: Discovering early on that the impetus for writing God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher, was rooted in a love story, Richard starts things off by having Jerry talk a bit about his story and his love for Abigail, his wife, and what prompted Jerry to be able to be open to such an encounter with God. 

Scott Langdon: Over the course of the next five sessions. Richard asks Jerry about the revelation itself and what the experience was like, prompting a natural curiosity about the purpose of such a revelation in the first place. As Richard and Jerry get deeper into the chapters of the book, they delve into the questions surrounding the nature of God and divine reality. From there, Richard invites Jerry to take a step back so they can examine this revelation from a broader perspective. Here's Richard in a clip from Episode 74, the Big Picture.

Dr. Richard Oxenberg 07:35: What I thought would be helpful would be to kind of get the overall metaphysical picture, the big big picture, and one of the reasons for that is because I've been looking at this and thinking about it and trying to understand the implications of it, one of the things that I've realized is that when you look at it within the context of the whole picture, things come together in a way that they don't necessarily come together when you look at different things piecemeal. There's both a familiarity and an unfamiliarity, in the sense that God is spoken of in often, many, very often, in a sense that is reminiscent, let's say, of the biblical God, and the God who speaks to you professes to be the God of the Bible as well as other things, and yet, at the same time, the picture we get of what the universe is and what God is is really quite different from the standard Western conception of the Almighty God who is in control of everything.

Dr. Richard Oxenberg 08:49: And just what the implications of those differences are, I think are very significant in terms of what we get out of this book. And I think we may get to those implications a little bit more clearly by looking at once again the big picture.

Scott Langdon 09:07: In examining the big picture, it should come as no surprise that among the many age-old problems to be addressed would be the problem of evil. It's an important question and Jerry and Richard tackle it head-on.

Dr. Richard Oxenberg 09:20: The problem of evil. 

Dr. Jerry L. Martin: Yes

Dr. Richard Oxenberg: And talk about the way that your book responds to and addresses that problem, which I think it addresses it in a very interesting way.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 09:35: It comes up repeatedly in different contexts without ever pausing. In my mind at least, I never saw a definitive “solution.” It's a problem, you want a solution. But it does give hints and different perspectives at different points in the conversation with God, and maybe you see a pattern to that that I haven't yet noticed so much.

Scott Langdon 10:06: Richard does see a pattern and the two philosophers explore that notion as Richard's exploration of Jerry's book continues to unfold. Their discussions continue with a dive into the nature of human beings, with a broad look at world religions and a more concise, if not also broad, look at Eastern religions specifically, specifically. The last quarter of the episode series, the 10th, 11th and 12th meetings, brings the focus of things back to the practical in a what-does-all-this-mean-for-my-life kind of way. In their last meeting together, Jerry and Richard wrap up their dialogue by postulating what we can take away from God's revelation to Jerry in terms of how we might live our lives better, both individually and collectively as cultures, and be more in tune with God's will.

Dr. Richard Oxenberg 10:58: Maybe the most distinctive thing about the book is the way in which it would affect if we were to accept it the way that religious people think about themselves and their relationship to other religions.

Dr. Richard Oxenberg 11:12: You know, I was looking at I think it was the theologian, Alan Race who first came up with the typology of religions being seeing themselves as either exclusivist, inclusivist or pluralist, where exclusivism is the view that one religion is correct and all the others are not, and inclusivism is the view that they all are kind of saying the same thing and can be rolled up into one universal religion, at least that's the way that I've heard it expressed. And pluralism is the view that each of the religions have some aspect of the truth, they all reflect some dimension of the truth. But it occurred to me maybe a fourth way of thinking about it, which maybe we could call complementalism the view that and this seems to be what's expressed in the book the view that the religions are distinctive, they're not all the same, they can't simply be folded into one another. But, on the other hand, the new approach to religion that is being suggested by the book is not simply that each different religion respect one another, but that they learn from one another. They recognize each other as complementary. Here's a sort of piece of a bigger puzzle.

Dr. Richard Oxenberg 12:39: And when you put them together, you get something more complete than you get when each of them are separate. And that's not only, it seems to me, significant from a theological point of view, but also from the point of view of religious practice the idea that people can begin to benefit from the practices of other religions. The quote in the book that struck me as central is on page 358, “You stand on the threshold of a new spiritual era, a new axial age in which, for the first time, spiritually attuned individuals will draw their understanding of spiritual reality not just from scriptures of their own religious tradition, but from the plenitude of my communications to men and women.” So if that idea were to become current in all the different religions, it would radically change the way in which the religions relate to one another, the way in which religious people think about themselves and the way in which spirituality is pursued in the world.

Scott Langdon 14:02: It was such an honor for me to work with these 12 dialogues between Jerry Martin and Richard Oxenberg, and it's my pleasure now to share with you my excitement for this brand new book, version Two Philosophers Wrestle with God- A Dialogue. Be sure to head over to godanautobiography.com to learn how you can grab a copy for yourself. Thanks for joining me this week for this special episode. I'll see you back again right here next week when we return to our regular programming with a terrific edition of What's On your Mind. This is Scott Langdon. I'll see you next time.