Abigail L. Rosenthal is searching for a way out of a life that no longer seems to be working. Then she meets Suzanne.

Suzanne speaks with unusual authority. She wants to be perfect. She calls herself a Gnostic Christian. She seems able to move through difficult situations without fear, without losing her femininity, and without accepting the limits that govern everyone else.

Abigail is skeptical, but she is also fascinated. Suzanne appears to possess something Abigail desperately wants: a way to rise above the slow, grinding consequences of ordinary life.

What begins as curiosity soon becomes much more serious. Abigail starts experimenting with Suzanne’s belief that spirit alone is real and that the obstacles of everyday life may not be as solid as they appear.

She thinks she is conducting a thought experiment.

In fact, she is undergoing a conversion.

In this episode of Married Philosophers Discuss Confessions, Jerry L. Martin and Abigail revisit the moment when Suzanne’s strange spiritual worldview stopped being merely interesting and began to reshape Abigail’s life.

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Join the discussion and explore a life lived philosophically.

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Dr. Abigail L. Rosenthal is a distinguished philosopher, educator and author of Confessions of a Young Philosopher, (following the tradition of Augustine and Rousseau, but from a woman’s perspective, with illustrations) and of A Good Look At Evil, Pulitzer-nominated.

Through her platform, Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column, Abigail engages her audience with thought-provoking blogs and podcasts, discussing among other things the fascinating intricacies of women’s lives and shedding light on contemporary experience. Her philosophical and other articles span a wide range of topics which can be found in academia. She is also the editor of The Consolations of Philosophy: Hobbes’s Secret; Spinoza’s Way by Henry M. Rosenthal, her late father.