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Hank Unplugged: Essential Christian Conversations

Journey to Reality–Sacramental Life in a Secular Age

Hank Unplugged: Essential Christian Conversations

The Christian Research Institute

Education, Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture

5791 Ratings

🗓️ 11 July 2024

⏱️ 101 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We live in an era deeply shaped by secularism. Because secular ideas are at the heart of our culture, modern people tend to think in secular ways without realizing it—even the most well-meaning of us. How then do we live in, but not be of, a secular culture? We need to understand the enchanted, Sacramental way that the early Christians viewed the world, but we also need to understand secularism. To truly understand Christianity, we must unlearn an entire secular worldview and become participants in a sacramental worldview instead—a worldview that embraces reality as it truly is. How do you explain the Sacramental life of the Church? To the early Christians—and to all ancient people—the idea that physical objects had spiritual power was very intuitive, whereas modern people tend to find this idea difficult, bizarre or even un-Christian. Join Hank Hanegraaff and his guest Zac Porcu for a discussion on these topics. Topics discussed include:  What is Christianity? (4:00); what are the mysteries of the Church? (6:30); what is religion? (10:15); Arche—a foreign unfamiliar word for God (12:15); the Trinity—why do we care about the Trinity? (15:30); what does it mean for God to be the ultimate reality? (17:30); what is the most important thing about Jesus? (19:20); what is the distinction between a secular and a sacramental of thinking? (21:30); what are the Sacraments? are they necessary in Christianity? (32:00); is baptism necessary for salvation? (36:30); the importance of the Eucharist (43:45); the seriousness of the Sacrament of Marriage (46:35); the role of the priesthood in the Sacramental life of the Church (49:25); Chrismation—what does it mean? (52:50); do Sacramental objects—such as relics—have spiritual power? (55:20); are we living in an enchanted world? (59:30); what makes the divine liturgy divine? (1:02:30); why is all liturgical time present time—proleptic (1:05:00); what does the liturgical cycle of the Church calendar reveal about reality? (1:07:00); the relationship between the Bible and Holy Tradition? (1:08:30); the truth about icons—what they reveal about the participatory nature of Christianity (1:12:15); how the existence of evil is an argument for the existence of God (1:16:30); is free will critical to the nature of Christianity? (1:19:15); why didn’t Jesus spare himself from death? (1:22:00); “He Who Is” (1:28:15); repentance is not a momentary act, but a lifelong process (1:29:15); the fallacy of neutrality when it comes to separations of religious belief and how we govern society—separation of Church and State (1:31:15); Journey to Reality—what does it take for us to become real? (1:35:45).

Transcript

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0:00.0

And welcome to another edition of the Hank Unplugged podcast, a podcast that is committed

0:27.4

to bringing the most interesting, informative, and inspirational people directly to your

0:31.4

earbuds. And today, as usual, no exception, we have an incredibly interesting guest who's written a profound

0:41.0

book that I'll talk about in just a few moments.

0:44.3

But this book is titled Journey to Reality.

0:49.1

And it's about the secular or the sacramental life. And it's interesting that I made that error at the very

0:56.6

beginning of this podcast because it's a book about a contrast. I've often said that contrast

1:01.9

is the conduit to clarity. And here in the book you have a contrast as the subtitle makes

1:08.6

plain between the sacramental life and the secular life.

1:13.6

The subtitle is actually sacramental life in a secular age.

1:19.6

And the author is Zachary Perkou.

1:24.6

And in this book, he's talking about essentially two revolutions.

1:33.9

The first revolution took place at Pentecost with the birth of the New Testament Church.

1:40.5

This was the birth in essence of a liturgical sacramental Christianity.

1:46.0

It was a birth that is replete with the notion that you cannot dichotomize

1:52.0

between the physical and the spiritual.

1:55.0

Physical things has spiritual qualities, and spiritual things relate to physical qualities. So you can't

2:03.0

falsely dichotomize between the two. The second revolution was the Protestant

2:09.5

revolution, a revolution which began an ongoing revision of the core principles of the historic Christian faith. And ultimately, this

2:21.4

revolution divorced scripture from tradition. It loose scripture from the restraining fetters

2:30.0

of apostolic tradition, from the creeds, from the councils.

2:37.1

I've often said, and I wrote about this in my book,

...

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