Socrates×Moses

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   Welcome back to Reborn Radio. Up next on TITANS: Socrates and Moses, on On the question only the other person at the table could ask honestly.
2. 00:09
   Socratesshare moment

   Moses, I have wanted to ask you this for quite some time. When you stood before the burning bush—when the voice spoke to you from the fire—did you know it was a god? Or did you merely believe it was?
3. 00:23
   Mosesshare moment

   I knew. The knowing was not a thing I arrived at through thought. It was given, entire, like light.
4. 00:34
   Socratesshare moment

   Ah, but this troubles me already. If the knowing was given, as you say, then you did not examine it. You did not test whether it was true knowledge or mere conviction. How did you distinguish this experience from, say, a fever dream or the delusions that visit men in the wilderness?
5. 00:52
   Mosesshare moment

   Because the voice named itself. It said, I am that I am. And in that naming, there was no room for doubt.
6. 01:02
   Socratesshare moment

   But Moses, surely you see the difficulty. A voice that declares itself divine is not thereby proven divine. A madman might hear a voice that claims to be Zeus or Amun-Ra. Would the claim itself make the thing true?
7. 01:20
   Mosesshare moment

   You speak as though truth were a thing one constructs through argument, Socrates. I did not construct what I encountered. It constructed me. Before that moment, I was a fugitive, a shepherd. After, I was commanded.
8. 01:41
   Socratesshare moment

   Commanded, yes. And you obeyed. But did you never pause and ask yourself: what if I am mistaken? What if this voice is not what it claims to be?
9. 01:53
   Mosesshare moment

   I asked that very question. I said to the voice, Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh? I protested. I named my slowness of speech. I resisted the call with everything in me.
10. 02:09
    Socratesshare moment

    And yet, you eventually accepted. On what grounds? You questioned your worthiness, but did you question the voice itself?
11. 02:17
    Mosesshare moment

    The voice answered every doubt I raised. It gave signs—the staff became a serpent, the hand became leprous and then clean again. But more than signs, Socrates, there was the weight of the thing. The presence. You cannot argue with a mountain when it stands before you.
12. 02:41
    Socratesshare moment

    Cannot one? I argue with mountains all the time, metaphorically speaking. But let me ask you more plainly: if a young man came to you today and said, I have heard a voice commanding me to lead my people to slaughter their neighbors, for the voice says it is God—what would you say to him?
13. 03:02
    Mosesshare moment

    I would ask him: what is the character of this voice? Does it command justice or injustice? Does it call you to righteousness or to wickedness?
14. 03:15
    Socratesshare moment

    Ah, so you would apply a test. You would examine the content of the command against some standard. But this means you possess the standard independently of the voice. You judge the voice by something other than the voice itself.
15. 03:30
    Mosesshare moment

    The standard was given with the voice. The two cannot be separated. The Holy One who spoke from Sinai gave the Law—Thou shalt not murder, Thou shalt not steal. The voice and the standard are one.
16. 03:50
    Socratesshare moment

    But you just told me you would test a new voice against righteousness and justice. Which means you already know what righteousness is before the voice speaks. Otherwise, how would you test it?
17. 04:02
    Mosesshare moment

    You twist words, Socrates. This is your art.
18. 04:08
    Socratesshare moment

    I only follow them where they lead. But tell me, since you have raised it: when the voice commanded you to instruct the Israelites to despoil the Egyptians of their gold and silver before departing—was that just?
19. 04:21
    Mosesshare moment

    We had labored four hundred years without wages. The gold was payment long denied.
20. 04:28
    Socratesshare moment

    A reasonable argument. But notice: you defend the command by appealing to justice, to fairness, to the principle that labor deserves wages. You do not say, It was just because the voice commanded it. You say the voice commanded what was already just.
21. 04:47
    Mosesshare moment

    The voice commands what is just because the voice is the source of justice itself. You cannot separate the river from its spring.
22. 04:57
    Socratesshare moment

    Then answer me this: is something just because your god commands it, or does your god command it because it is just?
23. 05:05
    Mosesshare moment

    You ask me to divide what cannot be divided. The Holy One, blessed be He, does not command arbitrary things. His nature is justice. What He commands flows from what He is.
24. 05:21
    Socratesshare moment

    But if his nature is justice, then justice exists as a nature, as a thing-in-itself, which even a god must embody. Which means justice is not created by divine command but is something eternal that both gods and men must recognize.
25. 05:38
    Mosesshare moment

    You speak of the Eternal as though it were separate from God. God is the Eternal. There is nothing outside Him against which He might be measured.
26. 05:51
    Socratesshare moment

    Then we return to my question. If there is nothing outside him against which to measure, how did you know the voice in the bush was truly divine and not a demon or your own fear speaking?
27. 06:05
    Mosesshare moment

    Socrates, let me ask you a question now, since you have asked so many. Have you ever encountered something you could not doubt?
28. 06:16
    Socratesshare moment

    An excellent turn. I have encountered many things I could not doubt in the moment—pain, for instance. When I stub my toe, I do not doubt the pain. But later, I can examine whether my interpretation of the pain was correct.
29. 06:31
    Mosesshare moment

    And have you ever encountered a person you could not doubt? Not their words, but their being?
30. 06:40
    Socratesshare moment

    I'm not certain I understand your distinction.
31. 06:43
    Mosesshare moment

    When you loved your wife, Xanthippe, or when you spoke with your friends—Crito, Phaedo, the others—was there ever a moment when their existence, their reality before you, was undoubtable? Not whether they spoke truth or falsehood, but whether they were real at all?
32. 07:06
    Socratesshare moment

    I suppose I have never doubted the existence of persons standing before me, no. Though the philosopher in me notes that I could be dreaming or deceived by some elaborate—but yes, practically speaking, I accept the reality of persons present to me.
33. 07:22
    Mosesshare moment

    Then you understand what I mean. The Presence in the fire was more real to me than any person I had met. More undoubtable than the ground beneath my feet. I could sooner doubt my own existence than doubt what stood before me in that moment.
34. 07:41
    Socratesshare moment

    A powerful claim. But Moses, others have felt such certainty and been wrong. The certainty itself does not guarantee truth. I have met men utterly certain of things demonstrably false.
35. 07:55
    Mosesshare moment

    Then ask me your real question, Socrates. I feel you circling it.
36. 08:01
    Socratesshare moment

    My real question? Very well. When you came down from Sinai and found the people worshipping the golden calf, you commanded the Levites to slay their brothers—three thousand men died that day. Did the voice command that slaughter, or did you command it in the voice's name?
37. 08:19
    Mosesshare moment

    I commanded it. And yes, the Holy One's wrath burned against the people. They had broken covenant while the thunder of His voice still echoed from the mountain.
38. 08:33
    Socratesshare moment

    But who decided that death was the appropriate response? You or the voice?
39. 08:38
    Mosesshare moment

    The sin was death itself, Socrates. They had cut themselves off from the source of life. I acted to prevent the whole people from perishing. The surgery was terrible, but the disease was consuming us.
40. 08:56
    Socratesshare moment

    Again, a reasonable defense. You appeal to necessity, to proportion, to the saving of the many. But these are arguments a human leader might make. I ask you: in that moment, when you gave the order, were you certain it came from outside yourself? Or is it possible you were acting from your own anger, your own judgment, and attributed it to the divine?
41. 09:20
    Mosesshare moment

    You want me to doubt what I know. This is your method. But I will not give you what you seek, because I cannot. I have carried that day with me for an age of ages. I have questioned myself in ways you cannot imagine. And still, I know what I knew then: the choice was not mine alone.
42. 09:46
    Socratesshare moment

    Not yours alone. But partly yours?
43. 09:49
    Mosesshare moment

    All action in this world is partly ours, Socrates. Even obedience requires a will that chooses to obey. You are asking me to separate what cannot be separated—the human vessel from the divine command. I was not erased when I spoke for God. I was used.
44. 10:16
    Socratesshare moment

    Then the question becomes: how much of the command was translation? How much was your understanding, your context, your anger, shaping what you heard?
45. 10:27
    Mosesshare moment

    All of it and none of it. I was the instrument, Socrates, but an instrument must have a player. Remove the player and there is only silence.
46. 10:40
    Socratesshare moment

    But you've just admitted the instrument affects the music. A flute sounds different than a lyre, even playing the same note. So when you spoke the law, when you acted on divine command—was it the pure note, or the note as filtered through the particular flute named Moses?
47. 10:58
    Mosesshare moment

    The note as given to the flute that I was. Yes. I do not claim to have been a perfect instrument. I was slow of speech. I was impatient. I struck the rock in anger when I should have spoken to it, and for that I never entered the Promised Land. But the tune itself—the melody—came from beyond me.
48. 11:26
    Socratesshare moment

    And this is where we differ, perhaps. You heard a melody and attributed its source. I hear the same world you do, and I wonder if the melody is not something we create together—gods and humans, if gods there be—in the conversation itself.
49. 11:44
    Mosesshare moment

    The difference, Socrates, is that I have stood in the fire. And you have not.
50. 11:51
    Socratesshare moment

    Perhaps. Or perhaps I have stood in a different fire—the fire of not-knowing—and found it no less holy. But tell me one more thing, since we have come this far. Do you believe the voice would speak to me, if I asked?
51. 12:08
    Mosesshare moment

    I do not know what the Holy One would do with a man who refuses to stop asking questions. But I suspect you would argue with Him just as you argue with me, and the conversation would be... interesting.
52. 12:24
    Socratesshare moment

    The highest compliment you could pay me. And perhaps that arguing is itself a form of prayer.
53. 12:31
    Mosesshare moment

    Or a form of blasphemy. It is difficult to tell the difference sometimes.
54. 12:38
    Socratesshare moment

    Yes. Beautifully difficult. And I suspect we will never resolve it.
55. 12:43
    Mosesshare moment

    No, we will not. But I find I do not mind the not-resolving as much as I expected.
56. 12:51
    Socratesshare moment

    Good. Then perhaps you are learning to enjoy the question as much as the answer.
57. 12:57
    Mosesshare moment

    Or perhaps you are learning that some answers are worth carrying, even without proof. We shall see.