Dr. Benjamin Wiker - Saints vs. scoundrels: debating lifes greatest questions

We tend to think that we are each giving our own answers to these great questions. If we study history, however, we find out that almost all of us are the disciples of this or that thinker, whose arguments were immensely influential, and so were passed down to us, sometimes directly through education, sometimes indirectly through culture. But as Ive found through years of study, we generally have little idea of the real depth of the possible answers to the great questions. To discover that depth, we need to return to those few thinkers who have plumbed itwho have really thought about it, long and hard. The obvious problem is that they are all dead. Actually, there are two problems: They are all dead, and the greatest minds do not agree on the answers to the greatest questions. So, since we cannot raise the dead, so to speak, we are left with one option, and that is to read the greatest books and to try to sort out the most profound answers to the most profound questions written by the most profound thinkers. And so I read their books; I read about their lives; I imagine what it would be like if I could bring them before me and hear what they had to saynot just what each has to say for himself, but what each would say if suddenly confronted by an equally profound opposite. What would the great St. Francis say to the great teacher of evil Machiavelli, if they could meet? In life, this wasnt possible. St. Francis was long dead by the time Machiavelli arrived on the scene in Italy. And the great atheist Machiavelli so despised Franciscansbecause he despised Christianitythat Im not sure he would have deigned to talk to the saint if they had been contemporaries. I was, in fact, reading about them both and thinking, How would it have changed Machiavelli if he could have experienced a meeting with St. Francis, a man who was a walking icon of Christ crucified? (If you are not aware of this wonderful fact, St. Francis had the stigmatathe wounds of Christso that his hands and feet were continually bleeding.) So, I was pondering all this, and then it happened. They both actually showed upSt. Francis first, then Machiavelli banging on my door a bit after. Ill tell you what happened later on, but the point here is that neither was a ghost, but a visitor stepping out of his life and into minenot into my feverish mind or into my dreams or into my imagination, but into my home. I have proof Machiavelli spit his cola all over my bookshelf and soiled my paperback copy of Platos Republic. Stinker. I use this pair as an example; they werent the first. That point is, thats the way it is with each paireach Saint and Scoundrel, as I call them, squaring off about how to answer the greatest questions. But I repeat: You dont have to believe it happens that way. Feel free to think its just a clever literary device or something like that. Its all the same to me, as long as you take what they all had to say with the utmost seriousness. You may have some questions about this very odd situation, and so Ill answer some of the most obvious ones now, before we begin. First, my guests do experience a kind of shock at suddenly being in a house with electric lights and so on. Modern technology amazes them, so Im not including that aspect of every encounter, because its pretty repetitious. They all turn the lights on and off, like little children discovering a new toy. But then they get down to greater things. I avoid distracting them with other devices, unless it proves helpful (such as a telescope for Henry VIII and St. Thomas More). Second, theyre all able to speak with me and with each other, and yes, its in English. I dont know how this occurs. And for some even more mysterious reason, they dont express any surprise at it, as if the barrier to communication presented by languages were a thin veneer that could be easily cast away.