← The Lord of Spirits
The Lord of Spirits
Commander Shepherd
The strangest and most mysterious of the texts in the ancient Christian collection known as the Apostolic Fathers is the Shepherd of Hermas. How should this apocryphal text be read, and what does it mean?
Loading summary
Transcript955 lines
- [00:00]
A
He will be a staff for the righteous with which for them to stand and not to fall. And he will be the light of the nations and the hope of those whose hearts are troubled. All who dwell on the earth will fall down and worship him. And they will praise and bless and celebrate with song the lord of spirits. First Enoch, chapter 48, verses 4 through 5. The modern world doesn't acknowledge, but is nevertheless haunted by spirits and angels, demons and saints. In our time, many yearn to break free of the prison of a flat secular materialism, to see and to know reality as it truly is. What is this spiritual reality like? How do we engage with it? Well, how do we permeate everyday life with spiritual presence? Orthodox Christian priests Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Fr. Stephen DeYoung host this live call in show focused on enchantment in creation. This the union of the seen and unseen as made by God and experienced by mankind throughout history. Welcome to the Lord of Spirits.
- [01:05]
B
Hey. Greetings, dragon slayers, giant killers and haranguers of hermeticists. You're listening to the 142nd episode of the Lord of Spirits podcast. I'm Father Andrew Stephen Damick, enthroned in the palace of podcasting in Raleigh, North Cakalaki, and with me is father Stephen DeYoung, neck deep in the swarming swamps of Lafayette, Louisiana.
- [01:28]
C
I am, in fact, here. You're here in case there were any doubts.
- [01:35]
B
Where did people think you were?
- [01:38]
C
Somewhere else? Or wholly absent, perhaps?
- [01:43]
B
All of your absences are holy, I'm sure.
- [01:48]
C
Tell that to my high school principal.
- [01:53]
B
You can get a hall pass. We are live, everybody. We're live. Meaning that starting in the second half, Mike eating Spam from the can, Dagan will be taking your calls. The one who brought me up sold me to a certain Rhoda in Rome. Many years later, I met her again and I began to love her. Sometime later, I saw her bathing in the river Tiber and I gave her my hand and led her out of the river. When I saw her beauty, I thought to myself and said I would be happy if I had a wife of such beauty and manner. That was the only thing I thought, nothing more. Some time later, as I was going to Kume and praising the creatures of God as they are so great and remarkable and powerful, while I was walking along, I fell asleep and a spirit took me and carried me through a certain pathless region through which a man could not walk.
- [02:46]
C
But enough about your early 20s. What are we talking about tonight?
- [02:50]
B
It does sound a little bit like my early 20s. Yeah. That's the beginning. That's the beginning of the shepherd of Hermas. And also an excerpt from Father Stephen's diary, a text commonly collected into a volume usually titled the Apostolic Fathers. And if you happen to be making your way through the Apostolic Fathers and you come to this work, you might wonder just what it is you've gotten yourself into, because it's so different from the rest of the texts in that book. But, you know, as you're looking at those texts and thinking of them as a kind of set, you should remember that it's modern editors that stick them in a book together. Right. So it's kind of largely based on their rough contemporaneity. Man, I knew I was not going to get that word right. Contemporaneity in the second century. Although, actually, I think that there is the idea that the Didaki or the Didact is first century. Is that the general convention now? Everyone thinks that
- [03:54]
C
maybe.
- [03:55]
B
Maybe. Okay, that was a very pregnant pause.
- [04:00]
C
You have to build suspense.
- [04:02]
B
There we go.
- [04:03]
C
You know? Yeah, right. From setup to payoff, you've got to.
- [04:06]
B
Indeed, indeed. Actually, in the chat, someone's predicting that we're now a step closer to doing an Enoch episode. But don't you guys know that that could mean the end of the podcast? Is that what you really want? You know, yes.
- [04:23]
C
Perhaps there is already an agreement that that will be the very last episode of this program.
- [04:27]
B
It could be. It could be. So, okay, shepherd of Hermas, who wrote this thing? I mean, who is this? Is Hermes the author?
- [04:41]
C
Yes.
- [04:42]
B
Okay, who is Hermes? Do we even know who this is?
- [04:46]
C
I'm gonna make you drag every bit of information out of me this episode. Father Andrew, stop asking yes or no questions. Yeah, that might be good. You could leave the witness. So, yeah, so it is a person named Hermas. And so then the question is, you know, who dat? That is not a super uncommon name.
- [05:11]
B
Yeah, in the Roman world, a version of Hermes.
- [05:14]
C
Right, Right. And so there is actually a Hermes who is mentioned in the New Testament, and he's even mentioned in the New Testament as living in Rome.
- [05:30]
B
Okay.
- [05:31]
C
And that's in Romans 16:14. So Romans 16 is the end of Romans. St. Paul is doing his say hello to so and so. Give my greetings to so and so.
- [05:41]
B
Yeah, the big list at the end that.
- [05:43]
C
That concluding part of the. Of the Epistle. And he mentions a Hermas there. And so there's a few people, the most noteworthy of them being Origen, who concluded that that was the Hermes who wrote the shepherd of Hermas. And people should note that title. Right. Everybody knows it as the shepherd of Hermas these days, but the actual title of the work is just the Shepherd. Yeah, the of Hermes is like by Hermas. Right, right. Or right. Like if you see the miniseries and it's Stephen King's the Stand.
- [06:28]
D
Right.
- [06:29]
C
Like the title is the Stand. So this is like Hermes the shepherd. Right. John Carpenter's the Thing. So, yeah, origin. Handful of other people concluded that. But we actually know with a pretty fair degree of certainty who it actually was, who wrote it, because of a little text. There is a little text. It's a piece of text that we found. We. This is the scholarly we. That we found the royal editorial. Yeah. It's not like me and a bunch of other kids in a van with a dog. Right. We like scholarship. Right. Found this text inserted in the back of another codex. And it's the text called the Muratorian Canon. And the reason it's called the Muratorian Canon is not that it's like canon, like canon laws, but canon, like, it's a listing of the books of Scripture. So it's a canon list for Scripture. And pretty much everybody dates it now to around A.D. 170, the canon list. And it is the earliest canon list we have that lists the 27 books of the New Testament that now make up everybody's New Testament. That's why it's especially noteworthy. That's why you'll normally see it mentioned in textbooks and secondary literature and that kind of thing. But it also it comments on some other books that some people held to be canonical and others didn't. One of the books it comments on is the shepherd of Hermas, and it says that it's not canonical. But it doesn't just stop there. Right. So, I mean, you'd expect to find with a lot of the Apostolic Fathers, like the Epistle of Barnabas, not canonical. Right. But it goes on and says that it's. It's not reckoned as being part of the canon because it's not apostolic. It was written recently.
- [08:59]
B
Hmm.
- [09:00]
C
By the brother of Pius, the Bishop of Rome, who is now known as Pope Pius I, which would place its writing in the 140s. So if the Muratorian canon's being written around 170 and the shepherd of Hermas was written in the 140s, that would indeed be recently.
- [09:23]
D
Right.
- [09:23]
C
That would be like us writing today about something that was written, talking about something that was written in the early 2000s.
- [09:31]
B
Yeah.
- [09:33]
C
We would Say that's fairly recently. So that's a pretty good peg, right, to hang our hat on. That's roughly contemporary testimony to who wrote it. So there's every reason to believe that that's accurate and that this Hermus is a brother, is Pius's brother, and that Pius was a bishop of Rome. We know from the text itself, including, you heard part of the. In the bit that Father Andrew read that he was a freed Roman slave, it mentioned. The part he read, mentioned him having been sold. That's as a slave. But now he was free because he's going on journeys and things. After having attained his freedom, he, we find out in the course of the text, had started a family and had become relatively, at least wealthy as a merchant. He'd become a member of the merchant class in and around Rome and had done well. Although later the text will also read that at some point he had suffered a kind of financial calamity in his business dealings. And part of what goes on in some of the texts is him sort of reckoning with that and how he understands why that happened.
- [11:04]
D
Right.
- [11:06]
C
The city of Kuma that was also mentioned in that part of the text, that's the place where he receives his visions, is on the road near that city. That city is near modern day Naples, Italy. Not Naples, Florida.
- [11:28]
B
Not Naples, Florida. So he's not.
- [11:30]
C
And so the shepherd, as we mentioned, is the title, and the shepherd is an angelic figure who appears in the text itself with whom Hermas interacts. So the shepherd is both the title and the shepherd is a quote unquote character. We could pause here and talk for a second. Right. Because one of the questions I think is going to be engendered if we don't address it tonight. One of the questions that I think will be asked pretty quickly is how literally should we take this?
- [12:10]
B
Yeah,
- [12:12]
C
right. In the sense of literally, like, I don't know. Right. Well. And I mean that in the sense that, like, are we to understand.
- [12:24]
D
Right.
- [12:24]
C
Like, we understand when we read the book of revelation, that St. John is writing about a vision that he actually had? Right. He had this vision in this place at a point in time. This is a thing that really happened and he records the vision.
- [12:38]
D
Right, Right.
- [12:38]
B
Yeah. Versus Is this some kind of just, like, is it just a literary form? Like he's writing a dream vision?
- [12:45]
C
Right. So are we to understand that this person, Hermes, really had these visions and is recording them as accurately as he can, or is this a literary device where he's using this to just communicate certain things? Right, yeah.
- [13:04]
D
And.
- [13:05]
C
And I'm going to give you the response that you may not be expecting and that's that I think this is meant to be taken literally.
- [13:14]
B
Okay.
- [13:16]
C
I mean, I think.
- [13:17]
B
Yeah, I don't see why not. Like, I don't see what, like nothing about this is unbelievable as a set of visions that a second century Christian might have.
- [13:26]
C
Yes, yes. The only reason to think otherwise is if you have some kind of pre existing theological commitment. So there are folks out there who believe that such visions stopped in 70 AD or at the close of the apostolic era with the death of the last apostle or some variation thereof, and that such things didn't continue happening in the church.
- [13:58]
B
Yeah.
- [13:59]
C
And those views, those various views are generally grouped under the category of cessationism.
- [14:07]
D
Right.
- [14:09]
C
And then views where they don't stop are referred to as continuationist.
- [14:17]
D
Right.
- [14:17]
C
That such thing, the kind of things like this that we see in the New Testament continue through the history of the Church. Ironically, most Pentecostals who you talk to today and charismatic folks who you talk to today will describe themselves as Continuationists. But if you go back to the Toronto Blessing and you go back to the Azusa Street Republic, like all the people who started the modern charismatic movement were all restorationists.
- [14:50]
B
Yes. They believed that it had stopped and that God was doing a new thing in the words of.
- [14:56]
C
Yeah, DC talk in these last days. Right. Because they were also early on, those groups were also very committed to the idea that Christ was about to return imminently and that that's why these gifts had come back.
- [15:12]
D
Right.
- [15:13]
C
But if you want an actual Continuationist view, you can look no further than the Orthodox Church. And to be fair, our Roman Catholic friends also take this view that throughout church history there have been miraculous healings, including people raising the dead. There have been people who have had visions from God. Right. That this is not something limited or confined. So that being our view, I see no reason that the text seems to want to be taken literally and I see no reason to not take it literally on that basis. And whether or not the text is canonical, whether or not it's part of the New Testament, because it's not. And it's clearly not.
- [16:03]
B
Yeah. I don't. Does anyone say that it is not really.
- [16:08]
C
It's clearly not. That has no effect on this question. Us saying that this is legitimately him recording visions he had from God is not the same thing as saying it's part of the Bible. That's another presupposition that a lot of our Protestant friends may have Right. Is that any. Any kind of. Anything that could be called revelation that comes from God is automatically scriptural in some sense? And. No, that's not the case either. Especially not in the Orthodox Church. Right. Where we believe the Holy Spirit has inspired ecumenical councils and there are other things. Right. So, yeah. So all that is to say to preempt that question when we're done, like, is this real? Or however it might be phrased, we are operating under the belief that, yes, it is. That this is something that really happened to Hermas the brother of Pius the First.
- [17:13]
D
Right.
- [17:15]
C
And that he is recording it.
- [17:16]
D
Right.
- [17:18]
C
So the basic structure of the shepherd of Hermas is there are five visions followed by 12 commandments, followed by 10 parables. And it's kind of nested. And what I mean by nested is that the 12 commandments of the 10 parables sort of are the content of the fifth vision.
- [17:50]
B
Yeah.
- [17:53]
C
Which means most of the text is the fifth vision.
- [17:56]
D
Right.
- [17:57]
C
The vast majority of the text is the fifth vision. But you can see that kind of nesting, like in the Book of Revelation. So you get to the seventh trumpet and the first seal gets opened. Right. So the seven seals are nested in the seventh trumpet of the seven trumpets. Right?
- [18:18]
B
Yeah. Hypertextual on some level.
- [18:21]
C
Yeah. So that kind of nesting is not uncommon. Now, that said, I just made a comparison to the Book of Revelation, but technically speaking, the shepherd of Hermas is not apocalyptic literature.
- [18:36]
B
Okay. I mean, it reads that way. Like you at the, you know, the very beginning, you get this. And a spirit came and took me along paths that no man can speak. You know, that kind of thing. Very psychopompus.
- [18:49]
C
I don't know if psychopompus is a word.
- [18:53]
B
It is today, Father. It is today.
- [18:55]
C
Okay, okay. It's like a really arrogant lunatic would be psychopompus. But. And so there are things that we associate. Like Father Andrew just pointed out, there are things in the text that we associate with apocalyptic literature. Like someone having visions, someone being carried by a spirit, this sort of language. But if you think about things that are clear cut, clear cut apocalyptic literature. So the Book of Revelation. Clear cut apocalyptic literature. The Apocalypse of Peter that we did an episode about at one point, I'm pretty sure. Or it was part of an episode, or it had a whole episode.
- [19:48]
B
That sounds right.
- [19:49]
C
Yeah. We've done a lot we've talked about on the show before. We'll leave it there. The Apocalypse of Peter. Clear cut apocalyptic literature. The Book of Enoch, which we have not yet talked about on the show in Spite of that being all we talk about on the show.
- [20:05]
B
We've mentioned the show.
- [20:09]
C
Right. That is clear cut apocalyptic literature, when you look at the sort of structure of it and the nature of. Is about a person led by a psychopomp, led by a guide, going on a journey through the cosmos that is somehow revelatory about deeper levels of reality and then communicating what was seen on that journey. And that's not quite what happens in the shepherd of Hermas. What happens in the shepherd of Hermas is a series of visions
- [20:52]
D
and then
- [20:53]
C
commandments and parables, imagery, these kind of things that are much closer to what you find in the Old Testament prophets. Most of the Old Testament prophetic books are not apocalyptic. There's some apocalyptic portions of Daniel and Zechariah is apocalyptic, so there's some of that. But those are in the. You may have noticed from the two examples I gave. Those are some of the latest books of the Old Testament, right?
- [21:28]
D
Yeah.
- [21:30]
C
And pretty much the latest of the Hebrew Bible. Right. Where you start getting apocalyptic. So that apocalyptic format develops during the Second Temple period. It develops out of prophetic literature, but it's not identical to it. And so the shepherd of Hermas fits more neatly into the genre of prophecy than into the genre of apocalyptic per se. And interestingly, we didn't mention it before, but the Muratorian canon, in addition to saying that the shepherd of Hermas was not canonical because it had been written recently, it also said, described the shepherd as a prophetic book and said the number of the prophets was closed, meaning the section of the Bible called the prophets in the Old Testament was already established by the 140s. You couldn't add to that. Right. And so it was identifying it of being of this prophetic genre. But now that we've said that, this raises another question. Well then, wait a minute. How can we take it literally? How can we, if prophet per se is an Old Testament thing, if that's how we understand what the Muratorian canon is saying and that there aren't any more, and we just celebrated the Nativity of St. John the Forerunner. And is he not the crown of the prophets, he's like the last one, right? Well, yes and no.
- [23:20]
D
Right.
- [23:21]
C
He's the last of the Old Testament prophets. But if you read the New Testament closely, for example, in the Book of Acts, you find this prophet Agabus, who shows up twice in the Book of Acts to talk about prophetic visions. He's received one predicting a famine, the other one, he comes and does prophetic actions Very much in keeping with the way prophets acted in the Old testament to tell St. Paul that he's going to be arrested and have to endure suffering. So there's a New Testament prophet, Agabus, after St. John the Forerunner.
- [24:01]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [24:03]
C
And St. Paul talks about prophecy as one of the gifts of the Spirit in First Corinthians, right?
- [24:11]
B
Yep.
- [24:13]
C
So, and of course, you know, when, when St. Peter preaches on Pentecost and says that Joel 2 has been fulfilled, he says your young men will have visions and your old men will dream dreams. That doesn't sound like he's saying, that's over.
- [24:37]
B
Right.
- [24:39]
C
So this kind of visionary thing, not only is it a fact in our belief as orthodox Christians that this has continued in the era of Christchurch post Pentecost, but that's what the New Testament says. So if we accept those things in the New Testament, then this happening in the 140s with Hermes again is not all that weird. It's not that weird. And so the Muratorian canon is not talking about whether it's legitimate or not, whether it's good or not, whether it's true or not. The Muratorian canon is talking about whether it's part of the New Testament, whether it's part of the Bible. And the answer to that for the Moratorium canon and pretty much everybody else in the ancient church is no, it's not part of the Bible.
- [25:31]
B
Right.
- [25:33]
C
It's not part of the New Testament. So that being said, that it was very clear that it was not part of the Bible. It was still incredibly popular in the ancient church. So you will sometimes hear, in fact, somebody. I don't know, I don't, I don't watch the YouTube chat. So I don't know if anyone's doing this or someone may be getting ready to call in and be like, but wait, I thought it was. I thought there were people who thought it was canonical. Right. And that's going to be because they read something like, oh, it's in Codex Sinaiticus.
- [26:13]
B
Right.
- [26:13]
C
At the end of the New Testament.
- [26:17]
B
It is not a book that defines a canon.
- [26:21]
C
Right, Right. So the fact that you find a Bible codex and it has a text in it, that does not mean that whoever compiled that physical book, that physical codex thought that that was part of the canon.
- [26:37]
B
I mean, if you own an orthodox study Bible, there's a bunch of stuff in there that's not canonical. Yes.
- [26:44]
C
All the notes and the maps, apocryphal and morning and evening prayers in the back.
- [26:49]
B
Yes. All those apocrypha in the orthodox study Bible.
- [26:53]
C
Yes. So that's not right. And so you find that very commonly. And just to talk about Codex side Ianicus in particular, in particular,
- [27:08]
D
the Old
- [27:09]
C
Testament of Codex Sinaic is at the end of the Old Testament, you find a bunch of interesting things like the prayer of Manasseh, which is like a longish paragraph that is on and that is not on anyone's any canon lists of the Old Testament, but it's in there in Codex Sinaiticus. And guess what it is. It's a liturgical prayer in the Orthodox Church. We still use it in Great compline, as usually celebrated. You're probably good. If you go to great compline in the US Odds are good you're going during Great Land. And that's where you hear the prayer of Manasseh.
- [27:45]
B
Right.
- [27:46]
C
But that's in there because it's a liturgical prayer. And if you're paying a ton of money, and it costs a ton of money to get a codex made,
- [27:56]
D
adding
- [27:57]
C
a few pages is a relatively small cost compared to the cost of getting the book done. So getting some of the prayers from church, there's a whole section of essentially all of the biblical odes are added at the end of the Old Testament in Codex Sinaiticus, meaning they've already been like in Exodus 15, you have the Song of the Sea in context, and then it's also reproduced at the end of the Old Testament because it was sung liturgically in churches. All the odes, including the ninth Ode, is there at the end of the old Testament. The ninth ode being the Magnificat in St. Luke's Gospel. That doesn't mean the person who put together Codex Sinaiticus thought that Luke 1 was part of the Old Testament.
- [28:47]
B
I mean, these are liturgical inclusions. I mean, that's what it is.
- [28:50]
C
So all kinds of things get included in codexes and codices.
- [28:55]
D
Right.
- [28:55]
C
And codices that nobody thought were canonical. Okay, so that is not actually evidence now. Well, we'll come back to that, what I was about to say. So you don't really find any church fathers now. Saint Irenaeus is the first earliest church father we have who mentions the shepherd. And that makes a lot of sense since St. Irenaeus of Leon was also writing around 170 AD, around the same time as the Muratorian canon.
- [29:26]
B
Yeah. Basically contemporaneous.
- [29:29]
C
Yeah. And so he's writing about something that came out 25, 30 years earlier. You'd expect him to be the first one to mention it. He's also in the west, obviously. And this is coming from Rome. So.
- [29:43]
D
And.
- [29:43]
C
And he quotes it in a sort of authoritative way, even though he's. He doesn't say it is written. He's not quoting it as scripture, but he quotes it as being an authoritative statement. So that tells you how popular it got, how quickly and how it was viewed almost immediately. Clement of Alexandria and Origen both quote from it authoritatively, although, as we mentioned, Origen was a little confused about who wrote it, but had the text and saw it as an authoritative text. Both Saint Athanasius and Eusebius of Caesarea, Saint Athanasius being the more important one here. For this purpose, recommended using the shepherd of Hermas for Christian catechism and notably
- [30:30]
B
Saint Athanasius paschal letter. Isn't that the earliest list of the 27. Earliest list extant. List of the 27 books of the New Testament.
- [30:42]
C
Well, yeah, where it's proclaimed as don't read any other books. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that shows you. That gives you an idea of the kind of authority it had. So Saint Athanasius saying, use this for catechizing people in how to live a Christian life. Right. Shows you. Well, he doesn't, again, think it's scripture, but he sees it as authoritative and having this important use within the church. St. Jerome makes a comment at one point that because it was quoted against him in something he was arguing about that the shepherd wasn't as popular as it used to be. Very St. Jerome.
- [31:31]
B
I can see that someone's quoting it to him. He's like, look, that text is just not as popular as it used to be.
- [31:37]
C
Yeah. Who reads that anyway? That's so 350, man Coming at me with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you've read much St. Jerome, you can totally. Yeah.
- [31:49]
B
Oh, absolutely. I mean, Jerome very famously is the guy who, depending on how you read it, essentially blames Pelagianism on over consumption of haggis.
- [31:58]
C
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, true story, folks. Yeah. He was from up there, so. But even though St. Jerome talks about how it's not as popular as it used to be, St. John Cashin, who's his rough contemporary, cites it all the time, particularly when he's talking about, like, at his institutes. Well, and at the conferences. But when he's talking about monastic formation and that kind of thing, he cites it just as the pastor, which, of course, he's writing in Latin. So pastor is the word for shepherd. He quotes the pastor just commonly. So it's still popular enough for him. And all the way into the 9th century. Saint Nikephoros the Confessor of Constantinople, who has become probably much more well known in the Orthodox Church due to me mentioning him all the time on this show. And in one of my books
- [32:59]
D
at
- [32:59]
C
the beginning of the 9th century, lists the shepherd of Hermas and his books to be read privately section of his canon list. The text is the most popular between the 2nd and 5th, from the time of its writing in the 2nd century until the 5th century. And a wide variety of church fathers and people will cite it authoritatively throughout that those centuries. And then it still gets cited, but less commonly as you go Forward past the 5th century. It was originally written in Greek. We do not have the whole text in Greek.
- [33:44]
B
Yeah, there's some lacunae here and there, I think, even though we do have.
- [33:49]
C
Right, yeah, in the Greek. Yeah, yeah, in the Greek text. But it was translated almost immediately into Latin, as you might expect, given where it was written. And so we have complete Latin text. So in some cases we could reconstruct the Greek in those lacunae. And we also have translations of it into Coptic, Ethiopic Arabic, Georgian. Get ready for it. Middle Persian.
- [34:23]
B
Yeah. I mean, that many languages spread across that much geography suggests that it was a ridiculously popular text.
- [34:32]
C
Yes, that's. And especially when you consider that the Middle Persian copy was not found in Persia. The Middle Persian copy was found in what's now part of China.
- [34:44]
B
Yeah. Which, I mean, we know that the Assyrians did mission work in that area.
- [34:51]
C
Yeah.
- [34:51]
B
Given.
- [34:52]
C
Given the other texts it was found with, most people think that the. That particular Middle Persian copy was being used by Manichees. But that doesn't mean they're the ones who made it. And that doesn't mean there were also, as Father Andrew just mentioned, Church of the east people operating in that language and through that region as well. But so, yes, that is just a huge geographic and linguistic sweep. The one oddity in there, the language you might have expected me to name and identify.
- [35:26]
B
Yeah.
- [35:28]
C
We don't have any copies in Syriac and no one knows why. There are journal articles about this,
- [35:35]
D
about
- [35:36]
C
why, theorizing, about why the Syriac Church in particular would not have liked the shepherd of Hermis. But we don't actually know. Right. Like, nobody left a note saying, hey, we decided not to translate this into Syriac because xyz. And maybe we will find one. You never know. There may have been one. Just haven't found it because it wasn't as popular there. But it is a sort of oddity that.
- [36:04]
B
I mean, it's also just a reality like texts from the ancient world, you know, we've lost most of them, so who knows, maybe there were a bunch of copies.
- [36:15]
C
Finding a Christian text in Arabic, but not Syriac is weird.
- [36:20]
B
Yeah. Right.
- [36:24]
C
So before we go on and sort of dig, dig deeper into the contents of the book itself, I want to make a comment about maybe some further comments at this point about what we've been talking about with, with canonicity. And we've, We've talked before. I want to get directly at something that we've talked about by about. I mean, sort of around the past. Right. And I want to put a finer point on it. And that's sort of a question. Right. So a lot of our discussions of canon, of the canon of Scripture, regardless of who's having them, whether it's Orthodox folks having them, Roman Catholic folks having them, Protestant folks having them, or discussions between those groups about the canon of Scripture are very much formed by Protestantism, even if. Even if Protestants aren't discussing it, aren't directly involved in the discussion. And so in part, that's because of some history. So it's. A few Protestant apologetic folks online have kind of gotten onto this recently that they're like, hey, wait a minute. Did you know that there's some vagaries around the Old Testament canon between different Orthodox churches? Right. Isn't that weird? Isn't that crazy?
- [38:00]
B
I'm looking for some pearls here so that I can clutch them.
- [38:04]
C
Yeah. Is it that bizarre? Maybe we could use this as a point of criticism and they sort of can't fathom how that could work. But I'm going to argue that the Orthodox Church has never really cared that much about that.
- [38:24]
D
Right.
- [38:25]
C
Like, that hasn't been a big issue for us. And that's why it hasn't happened.
- [38:29]
B
Yeah. Because our understanding what the Bible is is not that it's this set of words from which we derive our religion.
- [38:38]
C
Yes. And that while it is different in various ways than all other books and there are things that are Scripture and things that are not, that doesn't mean it's wholly other. As Christians, we aren't like Muslims or some Hasidic Jews who think that the Torah or the Quran have, like, eternally existed.
- [39:13]
B
I feel like there's going to be some. Some subset of kjv, only IFB people that believe that.
- [39:19]
C
Oh, there are. But I said Christians.
- [39:23]
D
Oh,
- [39:26]
B
already you're throwing aspersions at who's
- [39:28]
C
a Christian, who's not Father.
- [39:30]
B
I hear about you on Twitter. You say these things all the.
- [39:33]
C
I'm just Saying some of those folks are far afield from the Christian religion as it has historically existed on this earth.
- [39:40]
B
Indeed. So.
- [39:45]
C
Yeah. So Christianity does not teach that, including magisterial Protestantism did not teach that. Any of that weirdness. Right, Right. So, yeah. So we didn't feel the need to do that. Rome didn't feel the need to establish an Old Testament canon authoritatively until Trent.
- [40:12]
B
Yeah. Which, I mean, that's late medieval.
- [40:16]
C
Yes. And what was Trent? Trent was a response to Protestantism.
- [40:20]
B
There you go.
- [40:22]
D
Okay.
- [40:22]
B
So, I mean, could it be said that in some sense that the way that we all think of canon is basically because of the Reformation?
- [40:30]
C
Yes, it's because of Protestantism. Yeah, it's because of Protestantism. We had a very different understanding of it.
- [40:37]
D
Right.
- [40:38]
C
Saint Nikophorus, here he comes again with his list.
- [40:42]
D
Right.
- [40:42]
C
It's not just that he listed. Here's the canonical books, here's the books to be read privately, here's the books not to be read. He had a list. He had a sub list in there between canonical, between read publicly and read privately of books that were read publicly by some churches and not others.
- [41:02]
B
Yeah.
- [41:02]
C
In the ninth century. And if you look at that list, there were still churches in communion with all the other churches, part of the one Holy Catholic Orthodox Church, whatever adjectives we want to apply who are reading publicly in the liturgy from the apocalypse of St. Peter.
- [41:28]
B
So technically speaking, which of course is the best kind of correct, Right?
- [41:34]
C
Technically correct is the best kind of correct.
- [41:36]
B
That's kind of correct. The Apocalypse of Peter was being Scripture for those churches at that time.
- [41:43]
C
Yeah.
- [41:45]
B
Big if true.
- [41:47]
C
And for Saint Nikophorus, it wasn't a problem.
- [41:50]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [41:53]
C
We have at least one 12th century codex that has 1st and 2nd Clement in it in the New Testament. Now, you might say to me, but Father Stephen, you just said it being in a codex doesn't mean they thought it was canonical. And I say you're correct. But not only are first and second Clement in the Conex, they're in the lectionary
- [42:22]
B
for the New Testament appointed to be read in church on particular days.
- [42:26]
C
Yes. They're in the lectionary in the 12th century.
- [42:32]
D
Wow.
- [42:34]
C
So that's just a couple examples. Canonicity. And the canon thing is way more messy than anybody wants to admit. And it's way more messy than it can be for Sola Scriptura to function.
- [42:53]
B
Oh, yeah, big time. Yeah. And that's why I was gonna say, like, I know people do it, but I cannot wrap my head around knowing Anything almost about the history of the development of canon and, and thinking that somehow works with sola scriptura. I just, I don't, I don't see how that could possibly be.
- [43:18]
C
But I'm not the one to defend sola scriptura.
- [43:21]
B
I know, I know, I know.
- [43:23]
C
Yeah. And so when you get to the Reformation, it's one of the five SOLAs that you get to. Sola scriptura. Sola scriptura kind of requires not only that there be set books of the Old and New Testament with firmly established borders which hadn't been before that. And so then Rome, you know, makes their own list over against the, the, the Protestant list and the east continues to function as we always have. But it requires, if you know anything about sola script, the doctrine of sola scriptura, the actual doctrine that's actually taught in the Reformation. Those texts have to be self attesting. It has to be clear in some way that those books and not other books.
- [44:20]
B
Yeah. Because no matter how you, no matter how you understand sola scriptura. Right. Whether it's the most kind of reductionist, I read it in my Bible, therefore it's true, KJV only, independent fundamentalist Baptist, or it's the most high church liturgically oriented magisterial Protestants saying it means by Scripture alone and they accept all these other things. When you make it that kind, when you use it as a standard in that way, then it must have clear borders that theoretically should always have been there and cannot be changed.
- [45:01]
C
Yeah, yeah. It should have attested. You should be able to look at historically it attesting to itself.
- [45:07]
D
Right.
- [45:07]
C
In the sense of the reception history. And you don't see that. No, it's way more messy than that.
- [45:14]
B
Yeah. There's not even, you can't even come up with a kind of landmark as trail of blood version of that.
- [45:21]
C
Yeah.
- [45:21]
B
Just not a thing.
- [45:23]
C
And so it doesn't work. And so this is how, as we've said before, the idea of canonicity, especially in Protestant circles, becomes a one or a zero. Either it's Bible and it's 100% true, inerrant, literal, da da da da da da da, or it's zero. Not only is it not Bible, but it's essentially worthless.
- [45:51]
D
Right?
- [45:53]
B
Yeah.
- [45:54]
C
Who cares? Now you may object to me, but Father Stephen, you are straw manning scholar scriptura because the magisterial reformers said there were secondary authorities. There were these various things, creeds, confessions, church fathers, even texts. Right. That have this sort of secondary authority status. And my question, or my pushback on that is always. Can they actually function like that in a Protestant setting, though?
- [46:38]
B
Yeah.
- [46:39]
C
So, yes, the magistrate reform reformers certainly said that. And I think especially Luther and Calvin themselves and even Bullinger and some of the right immediate reformers actually sort of practice that. That's why you can see Calvin, Luther, et al, accepting a lot of things from church tradition, from the church fathers, from other things that latter generations of Protestants and evangelicals now, especially now today, no longer accept. We can start with infant baptism and go from there. Perpetual virginity of the theotokos list goes on and on and on. These things that the reformers accepted that now are verboten and Catholic and bad and anti biblical. If you ask somebody in the present day that Luther and Calvin had no problem with. So. And that's because while they held to this and they affirmed this, nothing can function as a secondary authority. Because semper reformata, you are always able to just read scripture differently and say, no, that's not scriptural.
- [47:54]
B
Yeah. I mean, you know that they're doing this when they say, well, nothing is above scripture. And I'm like, what you mean by that? And maybe don't know you mean by that is nothing is above my interpretation of scripture.
- [48:08]
C
Right, right. Because Calvin, Luther, Zwingli, Bullinger, all would have told you that infant baptism was biblical.
- [48:24]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [48:26]
C
I mean, some of Zwingli's followers.
- [48:28]
B
Yeah, I don't know about Bollinger, but all those guys would have also told you the perpetual virginity of the Virgin Mary was good.
- [48:36]
C
Yes, that's right.
- [48:38]
B
We have actual quotes.
- [48:39]
C
Some of Zwiggly's followers said, I don't see any infants getting baptized in the Bible.
- [48:46]
D
Yeah.
- [48:48]
C
And so they threw the baby out with the baptismal water. I thought that was clever. Come on. Okay. All the kids at home, we'll be
- [48:58]
B
writing that one down to use next time. Yeah, the coffee hour.
- [49:03]
C
So. Right. So that's happened on and on and on as a chain of things. And so you get to where we are now, where you know, the list of beliefs that make up mere Christianity, the sort of non negotiables, the Christian non negotiables. That list gets shorter and shorter every 10 years. It never goes the other way. Nothing has ever been added to the list in Protestantism. But go pick up the fundamentals from the 1920s and see how many of those people would consider negotiable today.
- [49:44]
D
Yeah.
- [49:45]
C
In evangelical circles, 100 years later,
- [49:49]
B
the
- [49:49]
C
list always gets shorter, never longer. So there's not a way for things to function with a secondary authority. Okay, Within. Within Protestantism. So this gives us at the Orthodox Church, two great advantages. Number one, we can let the Bible be the Bible. We don't have a theological commitment that says the Scriptures have to be a certain way. They have to be structured a certain way, they have to function a certain way. Only certain genres can be included. You know, everything has to be literal, everything has to be right. We don't have any of those commitments. We could just let the Bible be what it is. And whatever we learn about canonicity, and, hey, it's a little flexible around the edges. That's not a problem for us. We could just let the Bible be the Bible. We don't have to try and hammer it into a hole. It doesn't really fit through because of our doctrinal commitments. But we also can have something like the shepherd of Hermas function as a secondary authority. So when we talk about these things being secondary authorities, because what I'm trying to be clear on here is I'm trying to bring some clarity to what hopefully every Orthodox listener already has heard from somewhere at some point, is that within the Orthodox Church, Scripture is part of holy tradition, but it is preeminent within holy tradition. So I'm trying to get here into what that means. And what that means is Scripture has a primary authority. It is of a primary authoritative nature. Other things, like the Church Fathers, like even the Councils, like the shepherd of Hermas.
- [51:48]
B
Right.
- [51:49]
C
The Apostolic Fathers have a secondary authority. But what do we mean by secondary? We mean by secondary here. Something parallel to what we mean when we talk about primary and secondary literature in scholarship.
- [52:06]
D
Right.
- [52:07]
C
So primary literature and scholarship, if you're studying. If you're studying Hegel, okay, then primary literature is Hegel's own works. So phenomenology of Spirit is a primary source, a primary text for the study of Hegel, because Hegel wrote it. Books about Hegel or journal articles about Hegel, about the phenomenology of Spirit, are secondary literature. Secondary because they're about. They're interpreting, they're understanding, they're applying, they're working with the primary text. And then hypothetically, you could have tertiary texts too, where somebody's writing a book about a book about Hegel, but we won't go down that rabbit trail. So when we talk about holy tradition being a way of reading the Scriptures, a way of interpreting the Scriptures, this is what we mean by secondary authority. It is full authority, meaning this is the correct way to read and understand the Scriptures. It is the authoritative way to do that. All other Ways to do that are incorrect by virtue of not being this way. But that is secondary to the Scriptures themselves. And that's why you find all of these statements, the statements that our Protestant friends like to point to and try to claim. Our sola scriptura among the Fathers.
- [54:00]
D
Right.
- [54:01]
C
That say things like, the Council of Nicaea was just summarizing and explaining Scripture. It was all based on Scripture. Yes, Right. But it is the authoritative way, inspired by the Holy Spirit, directed by the Holy Spirit to correctly read the Scriptures. Therefore, if you read the Scriptures in some way that denies the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, you are reading the Scriptures incorrectly, and you cannot appeal to the Scriptures themselves because of the Council, because the Council has authoritatively said this is the way the Scriptures are to be read vis a vis the Holy Trinity. So it's not that your conscience and your reading of Scripture are sacrosanct and have the highest authority, as in the right of private judgment. In classical Protestantism, that is actually the absolute lowest level of authority. All authority in the church trumps your personal, private opinion. Right, Right. Everything trumps that.
- [55:19]
B
Yeah. Like, it's amazing to me that people really believe that, honestly, like, sincerely. They really believe what, you know, Baptists would call soul competency, the idea that each person is truly authoritative in and of himself in interpreting the Scriptures. I think it's really, really, really, really clear you can get it wrong.
- [55:45]
C
How many really was that?
- [55:47]
B
That's a lot of reallys. At least four.
- [55:49]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Grammar check won't let me do that. But you got away with it.
- [55:56]
B
Once you've mastered the English language, you can use it how you like.
- [55:59]
C
Oh, there we go. It's like jazz, right? You learn all the rules so you can break them creatively.
- [56:04]
B
Exactly.
- [56:07]
C
So. So, yeah, that's. And so the reason we're talking about that here is I think the shepherd of Hermit is sort of this perfect case for this. We're going to come back to this a little in the third half when we talk about, you know, the importance. After we've gone through some of the contents and we talk about some of the issues and controversies surrounding the shepherd of Hermas, I think it'll be clear why we wanted to talk about this here. But this is a broader issue than just the shepherd of Hermus. The shepherd of Hermes is just a test case.
- [56:40]
D
Right.
- [56:40]
C
For how different parts of the tradition function. What it means that we say in the Orthodox Church that the Scriptures have a primacy of place within holy tradition, but are inseparable from holy tradition. So hopefully that's clarifying for folks out there in TV land.
- [57:01]
B
Well, everybody in TV land. That's the first half of this episode. Lord of Spirits podcast on the shepherd of Hermits. We're going to take a short break, and we'll be right back.
- [57:10]
A
Father Andrew Stephen Damick and father Stephen DeYoung will be back in a moment to take your calls on the next part of the Lord of Spirits. Give them a call at 855-237-2346. That's 855-AF-RADIO.
- [57:31]
B
What's the deal with the legendary mythic stories of the Orthodox Christian tradition? Join Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Deacon Seraphim Richard Ro at the Orthodox legendarium at St. Ignatius Antiochian Orthodox Church in Franklin, Tennessee, July 31 through August 2. Together, we'll hear stories spanning the saints, defeats of dragons to an unlikely saint called the fox. And we will gather together for church and to eat, learn more and register@ancientfaith.com events. That's ancientfaith.com events.
- [58:08]
A
We're back now with the Lord of Spirits with Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Father Stephen DeYoung. If you have a question, call now at 855-237-2346. That's 855-AF-RADIO.
- [58:24]
B
I think that might be the shortest commercial break ever because the guy reading the ad read it really fast because there wasn't a lot of copy to
- [58:32]
C
it and is apparently now referring to himself in the third person.
- [58:36]
B
I mean, I don't know. I didn't write the copy, did I? Maybe I don't remember you.
- [58:43]
C
Bob Dole. Is that what's going on here?
- [58:46]
B
Wow.
- [58:48]
D
Wow.
- [58:48]
B
That's just waves of nostalgia rolling over me with that reference, actually. Yeah. Now I was about to say it's not Bob dole. It's John McCain that I share a birthday with. Not Bob Dole. Okay. In my head, they're the same person.
- [59:03]
C
I think you're becoming him with this whole early bedtime old man vibe you've got going on now.
- [59:10]
B
Oh, Simon, our producer assures me that
- [59:12]
C
I'm not the one who wrote the
- [59:13]
B
copy for that ad. So there we go. I'm not responsible.
- [59:16]
C
The fact that you didn't remember is just one more thing to add to the old Man Dammock list. It's true. I remember the things that are really
- [59:25]
B
important for me to remember now, just a shorter and shorter list, like when
- [59:31]
C
to take your pills and when the early bird dinner ends at Bob Evans, all those important things.
- [59:36]
B
That's right. I mean, you and I are now both old enough to join aarp. Not that I intend to. I would be amused if you had.
- [59:45]
C
Well, no, because, you know, you have to go through the joining thing, and I don't get any discounts till 55.
- [59:50]
B
Oh.
- [59:50]
C
Oh, are you?
- [59:51]
B
Is that true?
- [59:53]
C
Yes.
- [59:54]
B
Huh. It's a trap.
- [59:59]
C
Let me tell you, kids out there, Father Andrew and I are in the worst period of life, right? We got the clicking knees. We got the noises we make when we sit in a chair and get back up.
- [60:16]
B
Yeah.
- [60:16]
C
And we got no senior discounts yet. Four more years. This is just like the opposite. Whatever the opposite of the sweet spot is, the bitter spot. That's where we're at right now.
- [60:25]
B
Although, do you really even want, like, the Senior coffee at McDonald's? I mean.
- [60:29]
C
Yes, I want really discount and free things. Yes, constantly.
- [60:33]
B
No matter how crappy they are.
- [60:35]
C
You don't understand. So my wife and I make.
- [60:38]
B
I don't know what it's like to be Dutch. I don't know.
- [60:39]
C
My wife and I make lists of places in town that give free things on your birthday, and we make the circuit on our birthdays.
- [60:51]
B
Wow.
- [60:52]
C
So levels to this, my friend. Levels.
- [60:55]
B
All right. Well, we do have a caller on the other end of the line, and I mean, the name looks very French to me, so I'm going to say Guillon. Guillon. So either from Canada or California. He just wrote Ca, so I'm not sure which it is. So welcome, Laura Spirit's podcast.
- [61:15]
D
Hi, it's from California.
- [61:18]
B
California. And what is your name? Did I mispronounce it utterly well?
- [61:23]
D
No, that's fine, Guillaume. For American English purposes, Will is fine, too.
- [61:30]
B
So it is Guillaume.
- [61:31]
C
Mike spelled it like Robert Guillaume.
- [61:34]
B
Yeah, yeah, Mike spelled it very badly. He didn't write Guillaume. He wrote Guillaume, like, with an n on the end. Oh. So I'm thinking about firing him. What do you think, Guillaume? Should we fire Mike for his failures to spell correctly French names?
- [61:48]
C
Some of y' all have never watched Benson.
- [61:50]
D
He seemed on top of it. Yeah. I don't know. He gave closure what to expect. It seemed fine. I don't know.
- [61:57]
B
Anyway, we'll just have to review that later. So. So what's up in Calip? See, the thing is, with that French name, I thought it was. I saw that Ca. I'm like, well, this seems like Canada. Seems like Canada, yes. But it turns out you're in California
- [62:11]
D
and there is an Ontario California, not to be confused with Ontario Canada.
- [62:16]
B
Is there a Quebec California? That's the real question.
- [62:19]
D
I don't I don't think so. They hate me in Quebec because my French name, but I cannot speak French actually. So I'm.
- [62:27]
C
Yeah, I'm no good.
- [62:31]
B
Okay.
- [62:32]
C
Ontario, California has a great mall.
- [62:36]
D
Yes.
- [62:37]
C
And is, is. Is. Is the secret airport. Like if you're flying into like Orange county or you're flying into the Inland Empire, it. You have a much easier time getting in and out of Ontario Airport.
- [62:48]
B
You know, there's an Ontario, Ohio and it is also the mall town in its region.
- [62:52]
D
Huh.
- [62:54]
B
Something about Ontario's that makes for a good malls or just makes for malls. I don't know if they're good or not, but. So what is on your mind, Guillaume from not Ontario, California?
- [63:05]
D
Yeah, so my main question is on the shepherd of Hermes. And just by way of background, I feel like with a lot of these texts I was always raised. I was raised Baptist. So I would always hear about these texts and they would just say, well, there's something in all of them and it's heretical. Right. Then when I actually read a lot of them, I kind of felt like mostly people were misunderstanding something that was in the text. The one I heard about the shepherd of Hermas was that. Or the shepherd was that it blurs the lines between the Spirit and the Son. Because when there's the interpretation given of the vision of this woman, it's says. And the Spirit in one place, I think it even says holy Spirit is the Son. And so they say, ah, see, that's, you know, it's blurring the persons. But from what I understand, I think. But my. I have it in Greek, but my Greek is not great. It seems like you can read what they're saying. It's just saying you saw a spirit and that spirit was the Son. And so it's not actually blurring the lines between two persons of the Trinity. And I don't quite know the text well enough to be sure about that. I wasn't sure if perhaps Father Stephen might know.
- [64:41]
B
Yeah, we are actually going to talk about some of this Christology stuff in the third half. But I mean. Yeah, why don't you give at least some response now, Father?
- [64:53]
C
At least a T. Yeah, we are going to get into this more. A little more thoroughly in the third half. But yeah, so. And this is sort of the framework we're going to be getting into in the third half is the question should always be right before you assert that the text is teaching something. Is this the only way you can read it? So that's kind of what you did, right you looked at the Greek and you're like, well, that's not necessarily saying that.
- [65:30]
D
Right.
- [65:31]
C
And there is a perfectly orthodox way to read that, so why would you read it the other way? And so in the third half, we're going to get into a little more about why some scholars read things in certain ways based on certain presuppositions.
- [65:49]
B
Yeah.
- [65:51]
C
What you've pointed to is a good example of that in this text that we're going to develop more there. So you're tracking with us.
- [65:59]
D
Well, that's good, that's good. Do you have a moment for hopefully a quick off topic question, but topics that have come up a lot on the show.
- [66:12]
B
Sure, sir.
- [66:15]
D
So in talking about atonement and there's been really multiple episodes that have hit it from different angles and they've all been really helpful. One aspect that I'm a bit confused about, and I know you mentioned it in one of the episodes, but I couldn't quite follow how it fit, was when it came to the curse. And so it was almost at least the impression I got, and I could be mistaken, was that we don't think of Christ as a substitute in the sense of his death, as Peter calls him, more of an example in suffering. But is there a sense in which, if you're not talking about atonement, if you're specifically talking about the curse, is there a substitutionary element there? Because we don't usually think of ourselves as enduring the curse beyond the fact that I guess we do in the sense that we die. Is death the only part of the curse or the main part of the curse? I guess I'm not sure how to reconcile that part of it.
- [67:25]
B
Yeah. So I mean, the curse is the effects of sin. Right. And okay, dying is not the only effect of sin. Yeah, Dying materially, physically. Right. Obviously spiritual death. Yeah. I mean, all of the things that we suffer in this world are the curse.
- [67:50]
D
Yeah.
- [67:51]
B
So there, there's no. In what sense did Jesus take all that away at this? You know, we're still experienced so that we wouldn't have to experience it at all. I mean, I don't know about you, but I experienced the effects of sin in my life, including my own sin, especially my own sin, but other people's sin as well. So, yeah, I mean, in that sense of Jesus did this so that I don't have to. I. I just, I'm just not seeing it. I'm just not seeing it, you know? You know, as we've. I can't remember which episode it was Father but what we kind of boiled it down to, like, it's clear that we're suffering all these things. And the one thing that some people would essentially say is that Jesus suffered damnation so that we don't have to. But then you have to say that Jesus was damned. And then that introduces a big Christological problem. To come back to. Your first question introduces a big Christological problem is that how can God be damned? How can, you know, you split the Trinity that way? Like that's a problem. That's a big problem. I don't know. We talked about.
- [68:53]
C
Am I remembering correctly?
- [68:54]
B
Father?
- [68:56]
C
Yeah, well, yeah. In terms of atonement. So I'm going to categorize this in terms of fleshing it out rather than disagreeing with Father Andrew, because I'm.
- [69:05]
B
Thanks.
- [69:06]
C
Super charitable every time, as everyone knows, I am super charitable at all times with all people. So. Yeah. So in terms of the curse, so there's what the word curse means biblically.
- [69:22]
D
Right.
- [69:24]
C
But there's also. We need to do a little disambiguating between. So there's the curse, as in, like the curse that Adam receives.
- [69:32]
D
Right.
- [69:34]
C
Which is what Father Andrew was mainly talking about.
- [69:37]
D
Right.
- [69:38]
B
Curse.
- [69:38]
C
In that sense. There's also the curse of the law or the curse of The Torah that St. Paul talks about, and that is included in one of our prayers that the priest does every liturgy. Thou hast redeemed us from the curse of the law by thy precious blood.
- [69:56]
D
Right? Yeah.
- [69:59]
C
And so that's a different thing, right? The curse of The Torah, when St. Paul talks about it, is talking about the curses, like in Deuteronomy, like 29 and 30. Right. Which was basically the prediction of what happened, the exile, right. Israel, in the language of Ezekiel, Israel had died and was dry bones, remember? And the promise was that Israel would be resurrected, but Israel had died as a result of the. The curse of the Torah. Not that the Torah was a curse, but because they did not keep Torah, they received the curses of the Torah. And so that is also within the broad category of effects of sin. That is sort of the definition of curse.
- [70:55]
D
Okay.
- [70:58]
C
And so the question is for Christ obviously is completely free from sin and so is not under the curse. That's why the church has always been clear about the idea that the Theotokos did not suffer pain in childbirth. That's not some kind of docetism that Christ wasn't really born. That's because pain in childbirth is a result of the curse. Right. That Eve received. So Christ's birth is free from that because he is not under the curse. In terms of the curse of Adam, we talk about Christ voluntarily taking upon himself the sinless passions, the blameless passions. So he voluntarily becomes tired, hungry, thirsty. Right? All of those things. The weakness of human nature, that is the result of the curse. That is the result of. Of sin in the world. But so the question for St. Paul, because St. Paul is positing that Christ also redeems Israel, redeems the people of God collectively from the curse of the Torah. But how can he do that? How can he voluntarily take on himself the curse of the Torah without violating the Torah?
- [72:25]
B
Yeah.
- [72:26]
C
And St. Paul's solution to that problem is Deuteronomy said, cursed is everything that hangs on a tree. And so St. Paul's answer is that the reason the particular mode of Christ's death is important, why he chose that way to die, is that by dying, being hung on a tree, he voluntarily came under the curse of the Torah without violating it. And that allowed him then to redeem Israel from the curse of the Torah. So the way in which he redeems is not substitution, it's solidarity, it's participation.
- [73:10]
B
Yeah.
- [73:12]
C
And so we are redeemed from the curse of the Torah in Christ. We participate in Christ. We're baptized into Christ and put on Christ. So it's not substitution, it's participation in solidarity.
- [73:29]
B
There you go. I mean, that makes sense to me. Does it make sense to you, Guillaume?
- [73:33]
D
Yeah, I think so. It was also helpful. I think I was kind of squishing together two senses of curse with, you know, Adam and the curses of the Torah. So I. I think that also helps to parse those. And I wasn't really thinking that way before.
- [73:52]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. All right, well, thanks for your call. We're going to take one more caller and then move on. So we have Eddie calling from Texas. Eddie, welcome to the Lord of Spirits podcast.
- [74:05]
D
Hey, thank you for taking my question. Actually, real quick statement. I just want to let you guys know I'm getting charismated next month on the 12th. And all of it, a good chunk of that is actually because of you guys getting me through a lot of the humps and allowing me to convert to the space.
- [74:23]
B
So thank God. Thank God. Pray for us. Prayer. Congratulations. Yeah, absolutely.
- [74:29]
D
Yeah, yeah. So I definitely want to thank you guys. And then I have a question about I in my mind. And this is where you could probably declare me a heretic if I'm wrong on this, but we don't get to
- [74:40]
B
declare people heretics because we're not bishops meeting in synod.
- [74:44]
C
Well, speak for yourself. I do it all the time.
- [74:48]
D
Yeah, Father DeYoung does it all the time. So I kind of, when I look at extra biblical books that are outside of the canon, you know, like First Clement and, and books like that, I kind of give them a. I kind of stack break them. The letters of Polycarp, the letters of Ignatius, I kind of stack break them. If they're closer to the apostles, I give them a lot of primacy. Where would I put the primacy of the shepherd of Hermas? Because I know, like it almost made it in the Bible. Like would you put that up there with a letter from Ignatius or a letter from Polycarp?
- [75:22]
B
I mean, I, I don't think it's accurate to say that it almost made into the Bible. I mean, we spent the beginning of the show essentially saying no one ever called it Scripture and made. And several made a point of saying it wasn't Scripture. But I mean, I think within orthodoxy, even though we don't have a sense of development of doctrine in this way that like, you know, gradually we came upon the doctrine of the Trinity after having sort of primitive stuff early on, there is certainly a sense that the early church fathers, which is kind of a broad term that sort of encompasses the first several centuries, that because of their use, they have a kind of greater authority. But there's so many exceptions to that that I could lay out. You know, like, you know, St. Gregory Palomas is a figure from the 14th century and he's this towering figure. You know, I couldn't say, well, you know, who needs Palamas? I have St. Basil, although St. Gregory Palamas might well say that himself. But yeah, I mean, I think it kind of depends on what you're using it for. So I would say, especially if you're having conversations with Protestants and trying to explain to them the early church, some of the stuff from the second century is super useful for that because you can say, look, these are the next generation or two from the apostles and this is what they believed, this is what they said. So it's really very helpful for that purpose. I think that's exactly where I was
- [76:59]
D
kind of going with that.
- [77:00]
B
Yeah, yeah. Like I my go to for that is always Ignatius because he's directly connected to the apostles and he reads like an apostle. Like to me he reads like a blend between Paul and John, you know. But yeah, I think it's just sort of what you are going to use it for. That's at least where I would Come down on that. I don't know. What do you think, Father?
- [77:29]
C
Well, yeah, we're about to get into sort of the, the contents, right.
- [77:33]
D
Of.
- [77:34]
C
Of the shepherd. And I think part of it is sort of based on what it is and what it's about. Right. So. And super short, I mean, unbelievably short summary. It's really about how to live a Christian life. If you want the most, the most basic description, right. Like if it was on the shelf at your local Lifeway Christian store, it would be in the Christian living section, right? Like that's the, the sort of like
- [78:04]
D
subgenre parallel, which is like parallel with the dedicate kind of thing.
- [78:09]
C
Even more so. And I mean even more so in the sense that like the DDK is sort of like an early church order. This is very, this reads very much like a second century version of the kind of thing that evangelicals publish a lot of. This is obviously much better in my mind than those. I'm not gonna. I haven't read all of them, so I can't say that any of them, but I tend to lead in that direction, right. In terms of just, you know, how do I live my life as a
- [78:43]
D
Christian,
- [78:46]
C
dealing with very basic ideas of virtue and vice and this kind of thing, right? And like pursue this, avoid that. Right? Like here are traps and passions and sinful temptations you can fall into. Avoid those. Here are virtues and good things to struggle toward and work. Right. It's very much like that. That's why if you've read any St. John Cashin, and everyone should read more St. John Cashin, as, as everyone knows who watches my Twitch stream, I play Cyclops and I tell people to read St. John Cashin. That's basically the summary of the stream. The, the reason he quotes it so much is because he's very much writing in that same kind of genre. Right. And so he, in the 5th century sees the 2nd century version of that as being authoritative and a guide. And he's expanding on that and applying it to particularly monastic settings and his own day and that kind of thing. So it is that kind of thing. Saint Ignatius Epistles or Saint Polycarp's Epistle, like to the Philippians and stuff is a different genre than that. Right. And I don't think the difference is a difference in authority. I think it's a difference in sort of what they're talking about, right. And what they're addressing and what they're focusing on.
- [80:13]
D
Right?
- [80:14]
C
Yeah, it's a different kind of thing.
- [80:17]
D
Perfect. Well, you Absolutely answered. That's actually what I was looking for. You answered the question perfectly, as usual. Thank you, gentlemen.
- [80:25]
B
As usual. I would say as sometimes happens. But anyway, thanks for calling, Eddie.
- [80:31]
C
Yeah, a lot of times I just go off on an interesting ramble. Yeah, yeah, don't answer the question so much as say a bunch of other interesting things.
- [80:39]
D
Right.
- [80:40]
B
Thanks for calling. I have some things I wanted to say.
- [80:43]
C
Yes, you have given me an occasion to propound upon the following topic.
- [80:50]
B
So before we jump into the actual content of the shepherd of Hermas, I just want to give a little, as they would call it, a housekeeping note. I don't know why we call these housekeeping notes, but this is what people say. Yeah. A note about our episodes in July. So there will still be two episodes in July and they will be on the second, fourth Thursdays of the month. However, they will both be pre recorded. And the reason is that Father and I will be traveling me more than him. And so we will not be able to be at the mic on those nights. But what you will get is stuff that we recorded in front of a live audience at the recent parish live conference in Springdale, Arkansas, where we both were a couple of weeks ago. So there'll be two episodes and they'll each start with a presentation from one of us and then there'll be a live Q and A that follows that. So it was pretty interesting, I thought. And there were some good comments and questions from those who were gathered and it was a good time. And I should let you guys know just so you have a sense of anticipation for this. Father Steven's presentation involves mouse habitats. Mouse habitats, yeah.
- [82:06]
C
Let me tell you, I mean I haven't watched it back, but just my memory of as it went on, I mean Father Andrew, as usual, was perfectly acceptable. Did decent job. I was sterling, dare I say magnificent. And that could be taken in different ways. So that is true.
- [82:26]
B
I mean there's a lot of people called the Magnificent in history and for various kinds of reasons. Yeah. So what is in the shepherd of Hermas stuff? Zero segue.
- [82:40]
C
Yeah, you need to work on those, man. You need to work on those.
- [82:44]
B
I know.
- [82:45]
C
You know what is sterling and magnificent? The contents of the shepherd of Hermes. So yeah, so in terms of, I mean we mentioned, we just mentioned with the second caller, sort of the very broad stroke that it's about living a Christian life. The sort of major sub themes we might say of that in terms of things that are really emphasized is a certain understanding of the church. And you'll See what we mean by that as we get into the contents, A particular understanding of the church and the idea of repentance. The importance of repentance. So that said, let us get into the nitty gritty. Yeah, as it were.
- [83:43]
D
So you.
- [83:44]
C
You heard a little. A little piece. Father Andrew read a little piece back at the beginning of the episode. That was already like an hour and a half ago, so I'm sure Father Andrew doesn't even remember it.
- [83:55]
B
Barely.
- [83:56]
C
But. So the. The beginning of the visions is occasioned by him. By Hermes encountering the spirit of Rota once again.
- [84:14]
B
Yeah, Rota.
- [84:15]
C
And as you heard, I find it hard to picture this Rhoda being Valerie Bertinelli somehow, but,
- [84:28]
B
wow, there's a good 80s. It's still hard for me to believe that she was the wife. Is she not still anymore? Is she? Do they or did they. I don't know of Eddie Van Halen.
- [84:40]
C
Okay, That's Valerie Bertinelli.
- [84:42]
B
Is that what you just said? No. Oh, I'm just getting old, I guess. Go ahead. Go ahead. Keep. Keep on keeping on, Father. Just losing my sound.
- [84:56]
C
Did I get it wrong? Did I say the wrong Valerie?
- [84:58]
B
You said Valerie Bertinelli. Sound off in the chat. What did he say? Did he say Valerie Bertinelli the first time?
- [85:03]
C
I could have sworn that's what it might be. That's not the Valerie I meant. Anyway, okay. Valerie Bertinelli was on Too Close for Comfort.
- [85:12]
B
One of us is going insane, and I'm not Rhoda. Okay.
- [85:16]
C
Oh, I'm gone.
- [85:22]
B
Vindicate Me chat. Come on. Come on.
- [85:24]
C
Yeah, I would have made a Schneider joke if I was going for Valerie Bertinelli.
- [85:30]
B
Okay, okay.
- [85:32]
C
Rhoda was Valerie who? I'm gonna be unable to move on from this. I'm caught in a recursive Valerie Harper. Valerie Harper. There we go.
- [85:45]
B
See? You did say Bertinelli earlier. You did. Oh, they're saying you said Bertinelli.
- [85:51]
C
I am way off my game, guys.
- [85:53]
B
Sam, our most frequent caller ever, has confirmed this.
- [85:58]
C
That is extreme authority.
- [86:00]
B
Sam has a secondary authority, at least
- [86:02]
C
in the YouTube chat. Yes, I am way off my game. I met Valerie Harper, not Valerie Bertinelli. He was on Too Close for Comfort. Would have made a straight.
- [86:09]
B
Stop gaslighting me. Fuck.
- [86:10]
C
And Valerie Bertinelli got a divorce.
- [86:14]
B
Yes, that's what I was.
- [86:15]
C
I sounds like Eddie Van Halen way back.
- [86:20]
B
If she had called herself Valerie Bertinelli. Van Halen, I mean, and Van Halen. I mean, that guy's your fellow Dutchman, right?
- [86:28]
C
I think technically Yes. I don't know that he was drank deeply of Dutch culture at any point, but Eddie or Alex, for that matter. But yeah, they were divorced before she was even on Hot in Cleveland.
- [86:42]
D
Like, that's.
- [86:43]
C
Yeah, we're going deep into TV land. That's what happened. I evoked TV land.
- [86:50]
B
And now apparently Eddie Van Halen is only 5 foot 8. That makes me call into question his Dutchness.
- [86:55]
C
Well, he's also deceased, so.
- [86:57]
B
And Alex. Yeah, yeah, and then Alex, six feet, which is kind of short for a Dutchman.
- [87:03]
C
Why are you looking up their heights?
- [87:05]
D
I don't know.
- [87:05]
B
Because we were talking about them being Dutch. The main thing I think of. That's the first thing I think of anyway.
- [87:11]
C
The first thing. You hear a person's name and you're like, I wonder how tall they are.
- [87:15]
B
I mean, being a Lithuanian, I'm the crazy one here.
- [87:18]
C
I'm the crazy one. Okay, this is one of these digressions
- [87:22]
B
that people complain about in the Apple podcast reviews, Father. So get it together. Come on.
- [87:26]
C
Okay, so rolling it back, he sees Rhoda again. I have trouble picturing her as Valerie Harper. There we go. And of course, as you heard reference in Father Andrew's intro, he had had certain thoughts about her.
- [87:47]
B
Yeah. Which he says, and I only thought that you would be a good wife, nothing more.
- [87:54]
C
She's like, when I saw her out of the water. Sure, bro. Right. And so that. Right, is the occasion for. Then the first vision happens. As we mentioned, there are five visions. The first one happens and he sees this elderly woman. And this elderly woman as he repents of having had the. Of those thoughts. He's now a married man married to another woman. As he repents of those Rhodesian thoughts, as it were, he sees the old woman grow young and become a. A young bride. And so the idea here is that in this vision, the old woman represents the church. And so when the people who make up the church, when they are. The idea here is that when they are living in a way that is worldly, they are living in unrepentant sin. The church becomes feeble and weak, Right? And when they are repenting of their sins and when they are seeking after virtue, then the church becomes strong and young and beautiful as the bride of Christ.
- [89:26]
D
Right?
- [89:27]
C
So this is the beginning of. Remember I said, a particular view of the church. The church here is seen as being, on one hand, right. Not separable from the actual Christians who make up the church.
- [89:51]
D
Right.
- [89:51]
C
So it's not the churches as a kind of institution or the churches Abstracted.
- [89:59]
D
Right.
- [89:59]
C
This is not like the heavenly invisible church in some Platonic sense, as opposed to the actual gathering of humans on this earth. Right. This is the church, and the people who make it up are united.
- [90:17]
D
Right.
- [90:17]
C
And so whether they are repenting or not is affecting the character of the church as a whole.
- [90:27]
D
The.
- [90:28]
C
The church here is a collective entity made up of her members. And so it's, it's sort of similar to the way in which Israel is depicted as a woman in the prophetic visions of the Old Testament. Yeah, this is another connecting line. Right.
- [90:53]
B
I mean, like, this image gets picked up a lot in a lot of. Especially later Christian literature. The church as a woman.
- [91:03]
C
Yeah, yeah. So. And we'll be developing this idea of the church more as we go on through the material.
- [91:13]
D
Right.
- [91:13]
C
This is sort of where it's introduced. The second vision then happens in the same place one year later.
- [91:21]
D
Okay.
- [91:21]
C
So one year later, on the same stretch of road, Hermas encounters the same old woman, right, who is a church, and she gives him a book to copy. She says, here's a book, make a copy of it for, for the church. And then she takes it back.
- [91:46]
B
Right.
- [91:47]
C
So he doesn't get to keep it, he just gets the copy. And the basic theme is a warning about the seriousness of post baptismal sins.
- [92:03]
D
Okay.
- [92:05]
C
Now this is if you've, if you've done any reading at all, right. In, in the church fathers from say, the second to the fourth centuries especially, you know, about the various thoughts and opinions and things concerning post baptismal sins. Right. So we read. I don't remember which episode it was, but it was a recent episode where we read a couple of the apostasy passages in Hebrews where it talks about there being no sacrifice for voluntary sins after baptism. Right. And so we know there were people in, in the church in that era who took that very literally. Like, literally thought you could not be forgiven if you sinned after your baptism. And so you get the practice that became very common in the late third and early fourth century of postponing baptism. And then the fourth century church fathers sort of pushed back against that. Yeah, right. And sort of quashed that idea. Right. But there was a very little reading, so a lot of people will, based on this vision and some other things later in the text, will say, oh, well, the shepherd of Hermas is one of those sources that's saying there's no forgiveness for post baptismal sins. That's why it's hammering this post. Most baptismal sins are so severe. But here's the thing. And Shepherd Herbis is a little weird here on this in that it doesn't say you can't repent of post baptismal sins. It says you get one chance to repent of post baptismal sins.
- [93:54]
B
Yeah. Which seems odd if you take that to mean if you sin way twice. Yeah. If you take it utterly literally.
- [94:03]
D
Yeah.
- [94:04]
C
Yeah. It seems super weird if you take it super literally.
- [94:07]
B
Like, why not three times? It seems weirdly arbitrary.
- [94:12]
C
God will give you one after you get baptized, but then that's it. Right. Yeah. And so I would argue that that doesn't make sense and that the way we should understand the one chance. Right. The one opportunity to repent is referring to our life on this earth. Pope, Baptist, post baptism. The idea is that post baptismal sin is very serious, meaning when you're baptized for the forgiveness of sins.
- [94:44]
D
Right.
- [94:44]
C
That means you're starting a new life and you're going to live a different way. Your life needs to change radically.
- [94:51]
D
Right.
- [94:53]
C
In the sense that you need to start avoiding sin and pursuing virtue. Right. But by talking about this chance, the chance it's talking about is your Christian life in this world. This is when you get to repent. That there isn't repentance after death, I think, is what this is aimed at.
- [95:12]
B
Yeah. You have one chance and that chances this life.
- [95:16]
C
Yes. Sinning after baptism is very serious. And so you need to repent of it in this life.
- [95:21]
D
Right.
- [95:22]
C
I think that's really the thrust of what it's aimed at.
- [95:25]
D
Right.
- [95:26]
C
And that reading makes much more sense than the other one. So then the third vision develops a little more and the imagery of the third vision is going to get expanded on in a huge way.
- [95:42]
B
Yeah.
- [95:42]
C
Big portion of the later text is going to return to this.
- [95:45]
B
This is one of the really striking parts of. Of the text, I think, is.
- [95:49]
C
Yes.
- [95:49]
B
This image.
- [95:51]
C
And this is another image of the church. So this is expanding on the view of the church. And this is. The church is a tower that is being built.
- [96:01]
B
Yeah.
- [96:03]
C
And it's being built from stones.
- [96:08]
D
Right.
- [96:09]
B
By angels, which is kind of cool.
- [96:11]
C
Yeah.
- [96:12]
B
And there's even this explanation in there that like, that the angels have care for the. Not just care for, but like help to develop the creation.
- [96:21]
C
Yeah. And they are. As they're building with these stones, they are selecting stones. So they get a stone. Right. And they bring it over and they see if it fits.
- [96:35]
D
Right.
- [96:36]
C
And there are stones that fit well and there are stones that don't that get discarded. Now this is going to get returned to. But the idea obviously, is that the stones are human beings. And we'll come back to this, where this image gets really fully developed, but this is obviously picking up on language like from St. Paul.
- [97:00]
D
Right.
- [97:01]
C
Where the church is built on the foundation of the prophets and. And the apostles.
- [97:08]
D
Right.
- [97:09]
C
And Christ is the chief cornerstone and then it gets built upon.
- [97:12]
D
Right.
- [97:13]
C
Or the imagery of the new Jerusalem in Revelation with the gems and stones that are the apostles and the. Right. So this is that same kind of idea. And we'll come back to this.
- [97:30]
D
Right.
- [97:30]
C
But this idea of the church as a tower built out of human stones.
- [97:35]
D
Right.
- [97:35]
C
Is important. And again, you can see that for the shepherd of Hermas, there's not a distinction between the church as such. Right. The church capital C, and the collection of actual humans.
- [97:50]
D
Right.
- [97:51]
C
Particular humans in a particular place at a particular time who are part of a particular community celebrating the sacraments, et cetera. Right. Those are not sort of two different things. The fourth vision, this is the cool one. This is the one that the Lord of Spirits audience turns out for. So the fourth vision, he sees the Great Beast. Not Jonathan Pageau, despite what the Internet might tell you.
- [98:21]
B
I mean, you are born on the number of the beast. It is clear that you are the beast.
- [98:28]
C
Yes, yes. If either Peugeot or I is the beast, if it's down to the two of us, it's definitely me. So the great Beast, which is a hundred foot long whale.
- [98:43]
B
Leviathan.
- [98:44]
C
Ketos.
- [98:44]
D
Right.
- [98:45]
C
Like. So think like Leviathan. Right. Like whale from Jonah. Right. Hundred foot long, that breathes a swarm of locusts and. Oh yeah, the swarm of locusts is on fire.
- [99:04]
B
I mean, that's pretty, pretty metal.
- [99:06]
C
Yes. It's like the sharks with lasers on their heads.
- [99:09]
D
Right.
- [99:10]
B
I mean, this is the kind of thing that would be in a movie
- [99:13]
C
you would like to watch. Yes, yes. 100 foot long whale breathing out a swarm of locusts on. That is on fire.
- [99:22]
B
Flaming locusts.
- [99:27]
C
And the beast is four colors. Like his sections are four colors. The first one is black. First part is black. The second part is red, but it doesn't say red in the text. It says the color of blood and fire. Because we want to make it more metal, right?
- [99:47]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [99:48]
C
And then gold and then white. And in the explanation of the vision, the four colors are four periods of history. The black represents this world, this sinful world. The color of blood and fire represents the coming tribulation, the great tribulation that is coming. The gold represents the faithful who are refined like gold by the fire of the great tribulation. And the white represents the life of the world to come.
- [100:29]
B
And by the way, also, this is, you know, Lord of spirits fan service. The word that's translated as whale, okay. Is ketos, which is the word that is used in the Greek version of the book of Jonah for the sea monster. So this is very leviathanic kind of, you know, imagery here. You shouldn't be thinking in your head like a humpback whale, you know, that's that. I mean, since when do you see humpback whales breathing flaming locusts? Right, right. But leviathans, on the other hand, they always breathe.
- [101:08]
C
Yeah. I mean that all the time. Yeah, yeah. This isn't like. Yeah, a humpback like George and Gracie, you know, doing whale songs to ward off an alien probe,
- [101:23]
B
which is. I think that that one is tied for. Yeah, that one is definitely tied for my favorite Star Trek film. Along with Star Trek Undiscovered country, obviously.
- [101:35]
C
Wrath of Khan is the greatest Star Trek film ever made. One of these days it's self attesting.
- [101:42]
B
When Christmas. That's true.
- [101:43]
D
Yeah.
- [101:44]
B
When Christmas comes around, I am going to get a wreath and have Ricardo Montalban's face put in the middle of it that I can hang from the front of the studio. So I will have the wreath of Khan and just see if anybody gets it. Yeah, yep, yep.
- [102:01]
C
So, man, just drew the energy right down. Anyway, so four. Yeah, four always has a special place in my heart because it was the first one I saw in a movie theater.
- [102:15]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [102:17]
C
And afterwards we went to a McDonald's and I ate my first Big Mac. Previous to that, I had only had hamburgers and cheeseburgers. But that day, at nine years old, I ate my first Big Mac. That day I became a man. Anyway,
- [102:39]
B
so
- [102:42]
C
fifth vision, this is, as we said, there's sort of some nesting here because the fifth vision, the shepherd appears and the shepherd identifies himself as the angel of repentance. And he has pale white skin, so he's goth, apparently, and has with him the rod of correction. So it's that kind of repentance.
- [103:10]
D
Right.
- [103:13]
C
Discipline going on. And so the shepherd is going to be. I mean, he's not really a psychopomp because they kind of don't go on a journey per se.
- [103:21]
D
Right.
- [103:22]
C
But it's more like some of the angelic beings who appear to prophets. Right. During their visions and like explain things or like the archangel Gabriel explaining things to Daniel. Right. That he sees in visions.
- [103:42]
B
So
- [103:44]
C
then the rest of the text is going to be the twelve Commandments. Which bear no direct relationship to the ten Commandments, by the way, I was
- [103:55]
B
saying you thought they were just plus
- [103:56]
D
two
- [104:00]
C
and then the, the 10 parables. So the 12 commandments. Commandment number one is to fear the one true God who created all things. And fear of God here is defined not as being afraid of God, but as the way you demonstrate fear of God is by exercising self control. Meaning because you have fear and reverence and awe toward God, you try to avoid sin, right. And do good and please God. Commandment two is to become like a child. And this is not just become childish, right? Sorry, Internet, you have not arrived at Christian virtue. It is to become like a child in a particular sense. It's really talking about becoming innocent the way a child is innocent. Because the two ways that's kind of developed is number one, that you be innocent in that you speak evil of no one. You don't, you don't slander anyone, you don't speak evil things about people. And then number two, you give freely to everyone in need, so you give alms, right? The idea here being that an innocent person shares and an innocent person speaks only good things. If you know children, you know that's not what they're like. But this, you get the idea here. Don't be like an actual child, be like a hypothetical innocent child. Commandment 3 is to love the truth and to hate falsehood. And this is not just in the sense of like what you believe or something, but in terms of how you act, right? That you love seeking the truth and speaking the truth. Right? You love honesty and you hate treachery, dissembling, lying, right. Falsehood of any kind.
- [106:21]
D
Right?
- [106:22]
C
And love here means pursue and hate means avoid, detest, run from, keep far from you.
- [106:29]
D
Right.
- [106:32]
C
Commandment 4 is to maintain sexual purity, right? To avoid sexual immorality. But, but if you actually read this section, there, there, there's important, important provisos we have to put here. Because especially when we're talking about some of these ancient texts, Christian and Christian adjacent, right? By Christian adjacent, I mean like stuff from Gnostics and stuff. People make an assumption that maintain sexual purity means. Well, number one, people assume it means be celibate, which it definitely does not here, right. Because Hermes is a married man, right? Right, right. It has kids. And that's seen as a good thing in the text. That's seen as a blessing from God, or they interpret it in a very sort of strict and harsh way.
- [107:29]
D
Right?
- [107:29]
C
But for example, part of what is commanded in this section is that if a Man's wife commits adultery, but she is honestly repentant, he should receive her back. How is that maintaining sexual purity, you might ask?
- [107:50]
D
Right.
- [107:51]
C
Because some people would interpret that as being the opposite, that forgiving her would be the opposite of maintaining sexual purity.
- [107:59]
D
Right.
- [108:00]
C
But no, it's seen as maintaining sexual purity. Because remember what St. Paul said, the marriage bed is holy and undefiled.
- [108:10]
D
Yeah.
- [108:10]
C
And so preserving that marriage bed, it being purified again through forgiveness is better than divorce, even though divorce was permitted for adultery. Because if you break that marital bond, it can't be holy or pure anymore. It's broken. Right. It's not there.
- [108:31]
D
Right.
- [108:33]
C
So this is a very robust view of sexual purity that incorporates marriage, having children, family life.
- [108:40]
D
Right.
- [108:41]
C
And it's talking about maintaining sexual purity in not violating the purity of the marital relationship, for example, by committing adultery yourself.
- [108:51]
B
Right, yeah.
- [108:53]
C
Or doing anything else that would break that bond. Fifth commandment, avoid anger and seek patience. So anger and patience are the two poles here.
- [109:06]
D
Right.
- [109:08]
C
Like truth and falsehood, anger and patience, which is kind of interesting, Right. Being long suffering, in biblical terminology, having a long nose. Have we talked about that recently on the show?
- [109:25]
B
I don't think so.
- [109:26]
C
That's one of my favorite odd biblical idioms. So in Hebrew, a common Hebrew idiom for getting angry is that your nose is hot.
- [109:35]
B
Yeah.
- [109:36]
C
And if you think about it, that's the idea that you're, like, breathing through your nose. Right. So your nose is heating up. And so a related idiom for someone who is very patient and has a long fuse is that they have a long nose. So there. There are these texts in the Hebrew, Old Testament, Hebrew Bible, that talk about God having a long nose. And you're like, what? But that's what's referring to. It's usually translated as him being long suffering.
- [110:09]
D
Right. Him being.
- [110:09]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [110:13]
C
And so, I mean, that seems kind of obvious, but one of the interesting things is the way in which anger is described in this commandment is that anger is a spirit. It's like the idea of anger as a passion that enters into a person and takes control of them. Anger is almost like a demon possessing a person.
- [110:32]
B
I mean, I mean, you know.
- [110:37]
C
Yeah, right. That's kind of how it works. Right? Yeah, yeah. But the danger here is it actually talks about that spirit of anger. If you let it take root and come into you and dwell in you, it displaces the holy Spirit who dwells in you.
- [110:57]
B
Yeah.
- [110:58]
C
And I think there's a sort of deliberate analogy here to what happens with Saul in the Old Testament, King Saul, not Saul of Tarsus. Right. Where remember, he has the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit departs at one point and an unclean spirit comes that he has this sort of murderous rage toward David.
- [111:15]
B
Yeah.
- [111:17]
C
It's the same kind of thing. Right. Whereas patience is one of the fruits of the Spirit. Right, right. And so it's kind of this idea in command. We see this in the shepherd Hermos of. You're going to participate in something, right. There's going to be some spirit at work in you. It needs to be the Holy Spirit, not a spirit like anger.
- [111:39]
D
Right.
- [111:41]
C
Sixth commandment. Some of you will be surprised to learn where this comes from. Every person has two angels on their shoulders. One is the angel of righteousness and one is their angel of iniquity.
- [111:59]
B
I mean, it's just like in the cartoons.
- [112:02]
C
And these angels send thoughts into your head.
- [112:05]
B
It's just like in the cartoons, to
- [112:07]
C
guide you in one direction or the other.
- [112:10]
B
Yeah.
- [112:11]
C
And you need to choose which one you're going to follow. Commandment 7, fear God, not the devil.
- [112:21]
B
Yeah. I mean, does. Does that mean. It definitely can't mean, like be afraid of God, like quaking in your boots and not quaking in your boots about the devil. So I mean, is this fear God in the sense of reverence, like reverence for God and reverence for the devil?
- [112:42]
C
Well, it's talking about that in terms of behavior, in terms of what you do. It's not talking about an attitude or how you think about God or how you think about the devil. So in this context, fearing the devil means the devil is sort of being viewed here as the prince of this world.
- [113:02]
B
Okay.
- [113:02]
D
Right.
- [113:03]
C
And so it's like, are you going to be afraid of what can happen to you in this world? The devil is very much talked about in the shepherd of Hermas, the way Satan is talked about in Job.
- [113:19]
B
Okay.
- [113:20]
C
So he's kind of on a leash from God. But, you know, he can hurt you. He can do these different things to you in this world. He can take things away from you. He could destroy your crops, your wealth, your family, your. Right. Like he could do all those things
- [113:34]
B
and you can sort of hand over the reigns to him.
- [113:38]
C
Right. And so if you're afraid of that, if your biggest fear in life, if your biggest concern in life is not losing those things that you have in this life, you're going to act in certain ways. Right. That's not good ways, in sinful ways. Whereas if the one you fear is God, if what you're afraid of is, you know, standing before the day of judgment and, and being disqualified, right? Then you're going to live your life. That's your deepest concern. Then you're going to is God's view of you. Then you're going to live your life in a certain way and do certain things, and those are going to be good things.
- [114:24]
D
Right?
- [114:26]
C
And so that's what it's getting at when it's talking about fearing God and not fearing the devil is what is your guiding concern? What do you think is the worst thing that could happen to you that you're going to work really hard to avoid?
- [114:44]
D
Right?
- [114:45]
C
Is it something in this world or is it related to God's ultimate judgment of you and your life?
- [114:53]
B
Yeah.
- [114:53]
D
Right.
- [114:54]
B
Yeah.
- [114:56]
C
Commandment 10 is probably the best news for me out of all these commandments, and that is that you should avoid grief and be joyful.
- [115:11]
B
Stepfather.
- [115:14]
C
Yes. So our, the constant giggling. See guys, it's a form of repentance. That's why. That's why. But now avoid grief sounds weird, right? And in the text here, it talks about grief crushing the Holy Spirit. That's the language it uses. Whereas joyfulness is pleasing to God.
- [115:42]
B
Yeah. I mean, there's a sense of quenching the spirit, right?
- [115:45]
C
Yeah, yeah. This is crushing, right? So like I crush your head.
- [115:53]
D
But
- [115:55]
C
the, the, the idea here, because you're like grief. And when he's talking about grief here, he's talking about grief, he's talking about mourning losses in this life. Talk about being sad, including being sad over losing people you love
- [116:13]
D
and animals
- [116:14]
C
you love and all this, right? He's saying that's bad now. He's not saying you're not allowed to grieve at all, right? Like you shouldn't be sad at all when someone you love passes away, right? That's not, that's not what he's saying. But he's talking about how if you just dwell in that grief, if you let grief over losing things in this life, you could also think about not just losing people, but losing a job, losing an opportunity, losing a dream that you had when you were younger that maybe isn't going to ever come true, right? Greed, all those kinds of grief. If you live in that and you dwell in that and it becomes despair and despondency, right? These kind of things. That's what he's saying will crush the Holy Spirit,
- [117:03]
D
right?
- [117:04]
C
That's what he's saying is the problem. And what he's opposing to that is joy. Joy that comes from God, right? And that joy that comes from God, that pleases God.
- [117:19]
D
Right.
- [117:19]
C
Is joy even in the face of suffering and those things.
- [117:23]
B
Right? Yeah.
- [117:23]
C
And we can have that joy if we're Christians, because we know that whatever we lost, whatever loss we experience in this life, if it's someone we loved, it's not permanent.
- [117:34]
D
Right.
- [117:34]
C
If it's a job or a dream or any of those other things, this life isn't forever. Right. We could put this life into a different context, a different focus.
- [117:44]
D
Right?
- [117:45]
B
Yeah. And like, probably for. At least for most of us who are living in the relatively comfortable Western world, especially the United States, probably the. For a lot of us especially. Especially if you don't have any, like, big health problems or something like that. I mean, some of the biggest suffering you might have in your life is related to relationships. And so much of that comes, like you said, it was interesting. You said, you know, you maybe had this dream of your youth, whatever, things didn't quite work out the way you wanted them to, which I think is kind of all of us on some level, probably once you get to a certain age. I'm living a dream, but I know you are. I know you are, you know, so sorry. You know, I'm. I'm probably bumming out the zoomers right now, but. But I think also I'm dead X.
- [118:30]
C
So I don't know how many dreams I ever had.
- [118:33]
B
That's true. We were ra. We were raised, like, forget it. Forget it.
- [118:37]
C
We were relegated. We were born relegated.
- [118:40]
B
The boomers mortgaged everything. Sorry. You know, you. You get nothing.
- [118:45]
C
But.
- [118:46]
B
But I think also that the sense of. In the life of the age to come, that a lot of the broken relationships we have in this life, that I think a lot of people will, God willing, you know, if they're repentant in this life, look at each other and go, oh, I'm sorry. You know, that there's so many kinds of ways that we just don't understand each other now. And so as a result, our relationships never go in the direction we want them to go. And yet we'll understand much better because we won't be held back by sin. I mean, this is one of the ones that kind of struck me and I think is very applicable for us in our time.
- [119:23]
C
Yeah, yeah. And another point that's made here is that when you. When. When you allow yourself to remain in that place of grief and it becomes despair and despondency, that grief, the pain never gets healed.
- [119:40]
B
Right.
- [119:41]
C
It's just continuous and constant. Whereas the shepherd of hers tells us that it's when. When we're living in that joy that comes from God, that comes from the Holy Spirit, that is a fruit of the Spirit. Again, when we're living in that joy, that joy is what heals the pain that brought about the grief in the first place.
- [120:04]
B
Yeah, right, yep.
- [120:08]
C
And sets us free from it. So then Commandment 11 is to discern the prophets.
- [120:17]
D
Right.
- [120:18]
C
Remember the shoulder angels. Right. Well, there's people showing up, presenting themselves as prophets and leaders in the church. And you need to be discerning in terms of which ones you follow, which ones you believe, which ones you hear out.
- [120:37]
D
Right.
- [120:38]
C
And he gives very concrete things. Right. If you. Someone who you should follow is going to manifest the kind of character we saw in the other commandments.
- [120:49]
D
Right.
- [120:49]
C
In terms of speaking the truth, in terms of being patient, in terms of being joyful. Right. These kind of things. Whereas. And here, tellingly, the biggest indicator of the false prophet is he comes asking for money. Not that there's anyone like that at all.
- [121:13]
B
I mean, this is one of the things that shows up in the Didachi as well. No false prophet, if he's basically trying to put the shakedown on you.
- [121:24]
C
Yeah, yeah. Shows up asking for money. But also the opposite. Right. Is deceitful, is treacherous, all of these things. And there's actually an interesting reference here. It talks about. It gives an example when it's talking about the false prophets, the bad guys. Right. Of someone who tries to insert themselves among the presbyters.
- [121:47]
D
Right.
- [121:47]
C
So there's some kind of wandering religious figure, and they try to become one of the elder, one of the priests. Right. One of the presbyters in a particular church. And the reason it's interesting is that as we established, this is being written somewhere in the 140s. And somewhere in the 140s, a fella named Marcion, who you may have heard of, showed up in Rome and pretty much tried to insert himself among the presbyters. So this may be a kind of, without naming him, reference to Marcion as what a bad guy looks like. Right. In terms of false prophets, Marcion, of course, is the fellow who rejected the entire Old Testament.
- [122:37]
B
Yeah.
- [122:41]
C
So then, Commandment 12, the 12th and Final Commandment here is about thoughts that we should remove evil thoughts from our minds, like, not let them take root and develop into things and remove the passions, but interestingly, it says to replace them with good desires. And why is that interesting? Well, if you're familiar at all with Greek philosophy in just about any of its forms, you know that desire was not considered a good thing.
- [123:16]
D
Right.
- [123:17]
C
Just desire itself.
- [123:18]
B
Yeah. You know that the goal is not to desire.
- [123:22]
C
Right. Not to desire, or at least not to yield to desires of any kind.
- [123:27]
B
Desire is the source of all suffering,
- [123:29]
C
you know, all that stuff, and is not good. And so the idea that there are good desires is one of the truly Christian elements of the shepherd of Hermis, where this isn't just giving you. And this is in the commandments. This isn't just giving you kind of virtue, morals through a somewhat Christianized lens. This is a uniquely Christian outlook that there are good desires. Right. And part of this is because the scriptures talk about God desiring things.
- [124:10]
B
Yeah, right, right.
- [124:11]
C
Which is gobbledygook from the perspective of most Greek philosophy. Yeah, right. How could God, who is himself the highest good, desire anything?
- [124:22]
B
Right. And then you get lines like in the Psalms, you know, one thing I desire to dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Know that kind of stuff?
- [124:28]
C
Yeah, yeah. And so that means there have to be good desires. And that's an example that Father Andrew just gave. Right. Desiring to please God, desiring to do good, desiring to, like Hermas, have a family, to be married and have children.
- [124:48]
D
Right.
- [124:49]
C
All of these desires are good desires. So you're not called to replace evil thoughts and desires with a kind of stoicism or indifference.
- [125:03]
D
Right.
- [125:05]
C
But with good desires actively pursuing good.
- [125:11]
B
Right.
- [125:13]
C
And so desire itself is not bad. So this brings us to the final section, the 10 parables. Okay, parable one. And these are all parables in the sense of, like, Christ's parables. And it's the same word in the Greek, it's parabolin. Right. So where we get the English word parable.
- [125:41]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [125:42]
C
So the first parable is about a stranger who is traveling in a foreign land. So a stranger who's traveling in a foreign land doesn't go and buy property in the foreign land. He doesn't lay down stakes. He doesn't settle there because he's planning on returning to his homeland. And so whatever business he does when he's in a foreign land, he's doing it with the purpose of deriving some benefit from it back home.
- [126:12]
D
Right.
- [126:13]
C
And so the idea here is that Christians are. This is picking up on a theme from St. Peter, his epistle, that Christians are strangers in a foreign land in this world. And so we don't lay down stakes and try to acquire things in this world. The things we do in this world, we do with an eye toward when we return to our homeland.
- [126:44]
B
Yeah, right.
- [126:46]
C
At Our. At the time of our departure from this life and in the life of the world to come. The second parable is about an elm tree and a vine. And the vine grows up around the elm tree, sort of uses the elm tree to support itself, right? And then bears fruit. And so this is explained as being a parable about the wealthy and the poor,
- [127:15]
D
right?
- [127:15]
C
Those who are in the world and those who divorce, devour, devote their lives to prayer. So the wealthy person, the person living in the world, doing business in the world, that person is like the elm tree, right? He is solid and he grows himself, but he does not himself bear a lot of fruit. Elm trees don't bear fruit. But the vine, the vine cannot support itself. The vine needs to be supported, and then the vine. And then once supported, the vine is able to bear a lot of fruit. And so there is this symbiotic relationship, right, between the tree, the elderly, the vine, and it's talking about the same kind of symbiotic relationship should exist within the Church between the wealthy and the poor, those who are active in the world, those who devote themselves to prayer. And this is going to end up. You can see how this develops into our understanding of the relationship between Christians who live in the world and monastics, right, within the church, right? The monastics are able to devote themselves to prayer because they aren't required to live in the world and take care of all of those things. But the people who are living in all of those worlds and doing all those things can support the monastics to enable them to be able to do that.
- [128:39]
B
Which, I mean, this is just a pattern set up, you know, with the Levites in the Old Testament. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [128:50]
C
Third parable talks about how when you go out among the trees in the winter, you can't tell in the dead of winter which ones are dead and which ones are alive. You have to wait until the spring, and when the spring comes, the trees that are alive bud and blossom, and those that are dead do not. And so this parable is about how in this world, in this time, right, when we look at people, we can't necessarily tell who's spiritually dead and who's spiritually alive, but at the judgment, the judgment seat of Christ, that gets revealed, right? Then the fruit are. Are revealed. There's gonna be a number of these tree analogies, so get ready for that. The next. The next parable, parable 4 is developing on this, again, some of the same imagery. So in the fourth one is specifically about willow trees. I am no dendrologist So I don't know the details of this, but for purposes of this parable, in the shepherd of Hermis, apparently willow trees, some of them keep their leaves in the winter and some of them don't.
- [130:09]
B
We'll just go with it. Yeah.
- [130:10]
C
So for purposes of this, we'll. We'll say that's the case.
- [130:14]
B
Yeah. Which these are talking about, which means.
- [130:18]
C
So it's talking a particular kind of tree where it's not clear cut, whether it's deciduous or evergreen. Right, Right. It's somewhere in between. Some of them drop leaves and some don't in the winter. And so this image then is talking about when hardships and difficulties come in this life.
- [130:38]
B
Right.
- [130:39]
C
Some people who have acquired virtue, when hardship comes, those virtues sort of quickly fall away. Right. The patience they may have developed to the, the joy. Right. All of those fruits of the spirit that they may have developed, when the hard times come, it kind of all falls away. There are other people who are able to endure those hard times and continue to bear fruit even during the difficult times. And of course, you're called to be the latter, not the former. Parable 5 then. And this one is going to be familiar to readers of the Bible. There is a. There's a master who owns a vineyard and he leases it out to a tenant. And the tenant.
- [131:31]
D
Huh?
- [131:32]
B
I said I feel like I've heard this somewhere before.
- [131:34]
C
Yeah. Although there's a little variation here. Right. So the tenant, he works the vineyard, he works it very diligently, and then when the harvest comes, he receives a reward right. From the master of the vineyard. And here the master who owns the vineyard is God. The tenant is a person identified as the Son of God. And if he works diligently in the garden, then he acquires a reward right. From God. At the end of the day, I think it's pretty clear what that means. But we're going to come back to this because it turns out this ends up being super controversial in modern scholarship. Nowhere else but in modern scholarship. So the third half, we're going to come back to this fifth parable. Parable six. Two shepherds. There are two shepherds. One is the angel of discipline and one is the angel of luxury. Okay, so there are. And people follow one or the other. Those who follow the angel of discipline just follow the angel of discipline. Those who follow the angel of luxury end up getting turned over later to the angel of discipline who disciplines them far more severely.
- [133:03]
B
Might as well just go for discipline to start.
- [133:06]
C
Bingo. So.
- [133:12]
B
So
- [133:14]
C
it's pretty Clear what this is stating. There are people who pursue a disciplined way of life and so continue to have a disciplined way of life. There are those who yield and try to yield to luxury and the pleasures of the world, they end up getting disciplined. But that that discipline ends up being often far harsher when they have to be brought back into line than it would have been if they had just been disciplined about things the whole time.
- [133:46]
B
Yeah.
- [133:47]
C
And then Parable 7 gives us a dramatic example of exactly what kind of discipline we're talking about with those who have pursued luxury. Because he has. In the parable, the angel of discipline comes for Hermas and his family. So the idea here is this is the spiritual understanding we mentioned way back at the beginning that Hermas had experienced this loss of his business and his wealth. And this is sort of his spiritual understanding of it, that the reason this happened, him losing all of this, was him being turned over to the angel of Discipline, that in his wealth, in his happiness over his family, of having all of these good things of the world, he had become lax, he had become prone to sin, and he wasn't living in a disciplined way, in a Christian way. And so these hardships all came upon him through an angel from God.
- [134:48]
D
Right?
- [134:48]
C
In his understanding, in order to bring him back into discipline, bring him back into line for his repentance.
- [134:56]
D
Right.
- [134:57]
C
And that him patiently enduring those hardships would purify him and straighten him out from the sins that he had fallen into when he was living in a more luxurious way. So he receives temporal physical hardships as being repentance and purification. And so they end up being for his benefit. 8th parable, big crowd of people bringing willow branches, sheaves of willow branches, more willow trees to an angel. And the angel is sorting through the willow branches, and some of them are green and some of them are withered and some of them are rotten.
- [135:47]
D
Okay?
- [135:48]
C
So in this parable, when it's explained, the branches are the laws of God or commandments of God. And so the sheaves of branches that are being brought by the people, this represents at the judgment, right? We have all received these commandments. The green ones are the ones that we have kept, right? And followed. So they're alive and bearing fruit, right? The withered ones are the ones that we've sort of kept half heartedly or ambivalently or maybe sometimes and maybe not. And then the rotten ones are just the ones that we haven't kept,
- [136:31]
D
right?
- [136:32]
C
And so all of that is sort of sorted through at the judgment. And now we get to parable nine.
- [136:41]
B
Almost there, folks.
- [136:42]
C
Parables eight and nine are 40% of the text of the shepherd of Hermis. And most of that is parable nine. And so we're not going to go into. We're not going to spend 40% of the episode on Parable 9. If you started to get scared right there, I know Father Andrew did. He'd never sleep again. This would. This episode would be like five hours long. But so parable nine, here's the short version. There are 12 mountains, and those 12 mountains represent 12 types of people. 12 types of Christians, people in particular. 12 types of Christians. 12 types of people in the church. And the mountain range then is a range of people. On one end you have the righteous, right? You have people and bishops are included in this. You have people who have totally devoted the idea being people have totally devoted their life to following Christ and keeping his commandments.
- [138:00]
D
Right.
- [138:00]
C
That's sort of one end. And then on the far end you have apostates and blasphemers.
- [138:06]
B
Right?
- [138:07]
C
And then you have a whole range of people in between. Right, those two. And so once again, angels are building a tower. The tower is the church.
- [138:19]
B
This is.
- [138:20]
C
We said we were going to expand on this earlier. This is the big expansion. There are six angels building the tower. And it says in the text that these six angels represent the six lower ranks of angels who oversee the earth, events on earth and people. Okay, Meaning the higher ranks are concerned with God himself. Right. And they're the highest ranks, the highest part of heaven. This corresponds, by the way, to, in terms of there being six lower orders and what they do to Saint Dionysius. The areopagite celestial hierarchy.
- [139:05]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [139:05]
C
So if you want one more little piece of argument for those of you out there making the argument that it is the Saint Dionysius of the first century of first century Athens. This is written in the 140s. So if it's referencing that, there's another little piece of evidence for you.
- [139:23]
B
You don't have to put Pseudo in front of his name. You just don't.
- [139:26]
C
Yes, put saint on his name. That's what I'm saying.
- [139:32]
B
We have, we have a relic of Saint Denisius the Areopagite at what you refer to as my southern megachurch that I now attend.
- [139:40]
C
Oh, there you go.
- [139:41]
B
All Saints in Raleigh. So come on down if you guys want to venerate Saint Dionysius, everybody.
- [139:48]
C
Which campus are it at?
- [139:52]
B
We're about to become multi, actually. We've been multi site for a while. No Just kidding.
- [139:56]
C
It's at the Durham campus.
- [139:58]
D
Right.
- [140:00]
B
I like to say to people that All Saints in Raleigh right now is very pregnant and probably with triplets. So.
- [140:07]
C
Yeah, there we go.
- [140:09]
B
Yeah.
- [140:10]
C
Is that just because of the agonized wailing that comes out of the. Are you throwing shade at the chanters? Is that what.
- [140:17]
B
No, no, no. The chanters are lovely. They do an excellent job. No, no, it's the. The fact that we need to sprout multiple missions, which we're working on it. We're getting there. Yeah.
- [140:30]
C
So there's these 12 mountains, the angels. There's rocks that are getting hewn out of the different mountains. So if the mountains are types, the rocks are actual Christians, those rocks then get sort of tested. Right.
- [140:47]
D
And
- [140:50]
C
weighed and checked out, and they have to be clothed in virtue. And there's a little bit of a play on words here with dressing stone. When we talk about clothed in virtue and dressing stone, as in preparing it to be put into a stonework, in this case, the tower. In order to touch the tower, the stone has to be clothed in virtue, is the idea. And so they're sorted and they're being put into the tower. And the text interprets the sorting, not as the Last Judgment.
- [141:28]
D
Right.
- [141:29]
C
The process that the angels are doing is not about the Last Judgment, but is about church discipline. So the idea is that part of what's going on within the church is church discipline with the intent of preparing all of these stones to become part of the tower.
- [141:48]
B
Yeah. I mean, there's a thing like in. In the beginning of the text where he first sees the tower and then he asks Rhoda about what it all means. There's a bit in there about certain stones being thrown away, but not very far. And it's the sense of, like, they still need to be prepared a little bit more, you know, and maybe they could be incorporated into the tower, essentially, if they repent, because they represent people.
- [142:10]
C
Right, yeah.
- [142:12]
D
Right.
- [142:13]
C
And so church, this is what happens. The tower is being built on an ancient rock which is the Son of God. Right. So it's being built on the rock that is Christ.
- [142:26]
D
Right.
- [142:26]
C
So you can see all the biblical imagery that's being picked up on here, even though it's being remixed a little. And then once the tower is finished. So this would be at the Judgment, once the tower is finished, the tower is completely seamless, not only in terms of the stones that make up the tower, so you have perfect unity. Right. Of the church. Once this process is done, that's what's being worked toward, but it is also seamlessly united with the rock on which it is built. With Christ himself.
- [142:59]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [142:59]
C
So the church is perfectly one and perfectly one with Christ.
- [143:02]
B
Yeah. There's a lot of emphasis on the seamlessness of the. Of the stones as they're put together, which is interesting. Yeah, yeah.
- [143:13]
D
So
- [143:15]
C
you could say both that the people are part of the church and that they're becoming part of the church.
- [143:25]
B
Right.
- [143:26]
C
They are being prepared for the church through this process. So what this means then, is that. And we're going to come back to this in the third half, which we'll get to shortly, I promise. Stay awake, Father Andrew.
- [143:44]
B
Yeah.
- [143:47]
C
Is that in one way, it's preparation to be. To be part of the church. Right. Ultimately, being found to be part of the church is what it means to be saved in a certain way.
- [144:01]
B
Yeah.
- [144:02]
D
Right here.
- [144:03]
C
Here in the text. And then the tenth and final parable, Hermas gets commanded to bring the contents of meaning, the book we're reading when we read the shepherd.
- [144:15]
D
Right.
- [144:16]
C
The contents of all these visions. Right. To the church. And this re. Emphasis that everything that's been talked about in the text is doable.
- [144:26]
D
Right.
- [144:26]
C
This is not beyond the Christian who is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, et cetera, et cetera.
- [144:31]
B
Yeah.
- [144:31]
C
Not something.
- [144:33]
B
There's this big. There's this big emphasis. I went back and reread, like, I couldn't. I didn't have enough time to read the whole text because it's like about 100 pages in most of the editions. But I read the beginning, just try to kind of re. Familiarize myself with it. And there's often this sense of, like. There's one point, for instance, when Hermas asks Rhoda, like, she says, come sit down with me. And so he goes to sit on the right. She's like, no, you can't sit on the right. You have to sit on the left. And he's like, why? What's the deal? And she says, those on the right are basically those who are perfected, you know, and you're not there yet, buddy, but you can sit. But it has to be on the left for now. Maybe you'll get to the right at some point. And I mean, this is really striking because it's the sense of that repentance is possible and that repentance is fruitful, you know, that it does something right. And so, yeah, this sense that things are doable, like. Like, look, just keep moving. You're not there yet, but you can do this, you know, that's one of the emphases that I noticed as I was rereading it this afternoon.
- [145:39]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's, that's the contents.
- [145:46]
B
Yeah.
- [145:46]
C
And so when we, when we return for half number three, why, why does everybody think there are problems with the shepherd of Hermus?
- [145:57]
B
Why is the shepherd of Hermis so explosively scary? So. Yes. All right. We're going to take our second and final break, and we'll be right back with the third half of this episode of the Lord of Spirits podcast.
- [146:09]
A
Father Andrew, Stephen Damick and father Stephen DeYoung will be back in a moment to take your calls on the next part of the Lord of Spirits. Give them a call at 855-237-2346. That's 8555-AF-RADIO.
- [146:32]
C
A royal life set aside or a crown transformed into something brighter. Elizabeth, Princess Abbess Saint, a brand new children's picture book invites readers into a world where kindness sparkles brighter than jewels and small acts of love ripple into eternity. Walk beside a princess who chooses humility
- [146:53]
B
over splendor, finds joy in giving, and
- [146:56]
C
who turns ordinary moments into something luminous, reminding us that true beauty is not worn, but lived. Elizabeth, Princess Abbess Saint is available now
- [147:06]
B
in our bookstore at store.ancientfaith.com Again, that is store.ancientfaith.com.
- [147:19]
A
We're back now with the Lord of Spirits with Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Father Stephen DeYoung. If you have a question, call now at 855-237-2346. That's 8-55-AF-RADIO.
- [147:36]
B
Hey, we're back. You know, that might be, I don't know if I'm remembering correctly, but that might be the first children's book that's been advertised here on the Lord of Spirits podcast. Am I remembering? What do you think, Father? I don't know.
- [147:50]
C
I don't pay any attention during the commercial.
- [147:52]
B
You don't pay attention. Well, this one actually does have a connection to us, believe it or not, Father, about St. Elizabeth, the new martyr, because the author of it is one of our professors from our common Alma material, Dr. Mary Ford. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [148:09]
C
The
- [148:11]
D
like.
- [148:11]
C
Is there, is there some kind of ancient faith plus where people could pay a couple bucks a month and not have to listen to the commercials? Is that coming soon?
- [148:23]
B
I, I will talk to the marketing team.
- [148:26]
C
Yeah. Because I know, I know you guys, you and your executive office, you sit there just thinking, how can I monetize these, these people?
- [148:32]
B
It's absolutely the case. I mean, it's the reason that I, that I drive A Bentley to work every day. It's true. Yep. Which I alternate with the Hummer that I also own, you know. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, well, we're back and we just went through the contents kind of. I mean, again, like I said, it's like a hundred pages of text depending on which edition you're looking at. So it was kind of a wild, whirlwind tour through the contents of the shepherd of Hermas. And I recommend. I do recommend people read the book actually, like, read this text.
- [149:10]
C
I think that we weren't. We weren't doing this instead of you reading it. We were doing.
- [149:15]
B
No, no.
- [149:15]
C
Hopefully you could read it productively.
- [149:17]
B
Yeah.
- [149:18]
D
Right.
- [149:18]
C
And not just be like, what. That's right.
- [149:20]
B
Right, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's. It's really way more approachable than you might think. I think it. So. And it's okay, like, to read a text and, like, I don't know what half this means, but half of it was pretty cool. Like, that's the beginning of understanding right there, you know, That's. That's fine. So, yeah, we just went through the contents and now we're going to talk about, you know, how to understand this and what some of the objections that people have to this text are. Because I think. I think sometimes when particularly our, you know, our Protestant friends want to dismiss texts from the early church, this is one of the ones that they go to the most and say, well, that's weird and uncanonical and heretical and whatever. And why are you bothering with any of this stuff? You know, that could. That could harm you. It's dangerous. Dangerous. So let's talk about it.
- [150:13]
C
Yeah, well, and also, just so part of why I wanted to devote a whole half of a show to. To what we're about to talk about is I. I think this goes beyond the shepherd of Hermis. I think you see similar problems with other early Christian texts and writings of the Church fathers, where some of the weird scholarly stuff that they do with the shepherd of Hermus is the same kind of stuff they do with other things. So this can be kind of a sort of test case. Right. A way we can approach some of these overall errors in approach and methodology by using the shepherd as an example.
- [150:58]
B
There you go smuggling in larger issues. Father Stephen, what's the matter with you?
- [151:02]
C
Yes, Yes, I am uniting the universal and the particular, whether you like it or not.
- [151:11]
B
Plato, brain, be gone.
- [151:16]
C
So, yeah, so from. From. In terms of, shall we say, criticism or negative or unhelpful approaches to the shepherd of Hermas, we could talk about from a Protestant perspective. Shepherd of hermit is not super popular among Protestants.
- [151:36]
B
Yeah. I mean, if they've heard it at all.
- [151:39]
C
Yeah. And that's for a reason. There are a couple reasons why it's problematic from a Protestant perspective.
- [151:49]
D
Right.
- [151:50]
C
The first one is that good old bugbear works righteousness.
- [151:59]
B
You mean something like repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
- [152:02]
C
Oh, well, this seems to be conditioning your salvation on things like repentance and pursuing virtue and doing good works.
- [152:17]
D
Right.
- [152:18]
B
Like says in the Bible.
- [152:21]
C
Hey, now. Now. Right, yeah.
- [152:30]
D
And
- [152:32]
C
so it depends upon what sort of Protestant you are in part. Right?
- [152:39]
B
Indeed. Yes.
- [152:44]
C
And that kind of thing, how big of a bugbear works righteousness is to you. Right. Because the perspective here is frankly, again, one you get in Scripture, which is that at no point does the shepherd of hermit. The shepherd of hermit doesn't even really talk about what we might today in English speaking countries getting saved. Right. It's not talking about getting. It's talking about the initial thing. It's written by and to baptized people.
- [153:16]
B
Yeah. And there's all these kind of, you know, when Hermas is being addressed by Rhoda or whatever spirit is speaking to him, they occasionally will even call him this righteous man or whatever.
- [153:29]
C
Right, Right. So this is an intra. Right. Church document. It's about how you live as a Christian. It's not about how you become a Christian. It's not about how you first believe in Christ. Right. So none of, none of the works in here are about quote unquote, earning your salvation. Right. Or justification the way it's talked about in Protestant circles. Right. This is four people who have been baptized are in the church. Our Christians are leading a Christian life. How do you do that?
- [154:02]
D
Right.
- [154:02]
C
That's the whole context.
- [154:03]
D
Right.
- [154:03]
C
And so regardless of what you think about how that happens, Shepherd Hermus isn't really talking about that. The shepherd Hermes is talking about. Okay, now that you're here.
- [154:14]
D
Right.
- [154:14]
C
How do you live as a Christian?
- [154:16]
B
Yeah. Which that's the question that absorbs more of your life, I think.
- [154:22]
C
Yeah, well, yeah. And there's plenty of that in the New Testament.
- [154:26]
B
Yeah, yeah. Right, right.
- [154:27]
C
Like the second half of most of St. Paul's epistles.
- [154:30]
B
Right.
- [154:31]
C
That's the second part after the. Therefore. Right. Where he gives exhortations to virtue and this kind of thing and to repentance of sin.
- [154:39]
D
Right.
- [154:40]
C
And fleeing from sin. So it's very much in keeping with that.
- [154:43]
D
Right.
- [154:45]
C
So that really shouldn't, if you contextualize it properly except for some. I mean, there are some. Oh, it's not even extreme. If you're a. If you're a once saved, always saved person, you're going to have a problem with this because there is firmly the idea, the shepherd of Hermes, that you could disqualify yourself from salvation.
- [155:05]
B
Yeah.
- [155:05]
C
Through unrepentant sin.
- [155:07]
B
Yeah. And that's in the tower image especially.
- [155:10]
C
Yeah. So unless you're like a one saved, all is a person. Right. Like, I think even for process perspective, you could accept this.
- [155:16]
D
Right.
- [155:17]
C
And maybe there's even a workaround there. So I don't think there should be just a huge. Just, you know, this is clearly not Pelagian. Right. Like, and the other thing, of course, is, as you might expect, is that from a Protestant perspective, shepherd of Hermis tends to have too high a view of the church from most Protestant perspectives, in that. In that it sees being a member of the church, and even to that extent, being a Christian. Right. As something that is achieved, something that comes at the end of life at maturity or perfection. Right. Rather than as being a status that is sort of communicated at the beginning, a status that is just granted at the beginning of. As the beginning of salvation.
- [156:12]
D
Right.
- [156:13]
C
So Protestantism won't deny that there are things like sanctification and stuff. Right. That there is a Christian life and all of that, but they want that status to be granted at the beginning, not what comes at the end.
- [156:27]
D
Right.
- [156:27]
C
And in the shepherd of Hermas, that's very clearly something that comes at the end. Right. But here's the thing. All of that imagery, both about the Christian life and the stuff about the church, is all coming directly out of the Bible. It's all coming directly out of the Scriptures. We talked about St. Paul using the image of the church being built upon the foundation of Christ. Right. And the apostles of the prophets.
- [157:01]
D
Right.
- [157:02]
C
We talked about that imagery. Right. That kind of imagery of the church. The church being built up is in the New Testament.
- [157:09]
D
Right.
- [157:12]
C
So you may not like the implications, but I mean, it's just sort of developing biblical imagery. That's true of the church, that's true of works in Christian living. As we've talked about, the whole bearing fruit is like a major theme in Christ's preaching, not just in. Right. St. Paul's epistles and stuff, you know, the vine bearing fruit.
- [157:35]
D
Right.
- [157:36]
C
All of this is just directly, you know, a tree bites. All of this is coming from the New Testament. Not just the Scriptures, but the New Testament. And so it seems really difficult to dismiss it out of hand. For those reasons, shall we say.
- [157:54]
D
Right.
- [157:54]
C
And being Written in the 140s, this is a very early witness to how early Christians understood that imagery that is found in the New Testament. Remember what we were talking about at the end of the first half? This is giving us a very early and authoritative way of interpreting that imagery that we find in the New Testament. And if it's, hey, is the shepherd's way of interpreting it, or my way of interpreting it here in the 21st century more authoritative, you kind of got to go with the shepherd on this one. So that's sort of the Protestant issues. The next big category of issues are scholarly issues. So the first caller we had in the second half kind of touched on this a little bit. Where modern scholarship has attempted to derive points of systematic theology from the text of the shepherd of Hermas and then critique them compared to later orthodox theological
- [159:04]
B
formulations, it's just not that kind of text.
- [159:07]
C
Yes. Which in and of itself is weird. Right. And so one of the big examples of this is the Son of God. In Parable 5, I said we'd be coming back to this.
- [159:23]
D
Right.
- [159:23]
C
This is the vineyard.
- [159:24]
D
Right.
- [159:25]
C
And there's the tenant was identified as the Son of God. So the Son of God in Parable 5, it describes the. The pre existent divine Spirit, I. E. The Holy Spirit, who comes and indwells this man, and that makes the man the Son of God by adoption.
- [159:49]
B
Okay.
- [159:51]
C
And so most modern patristic scholars, till pretty recently have said, oh, this is summarizing the author's view of Christology.
- [160:09]
B
Okay.
- [160:10]
C
This is saying they claim that Jesus was a man who was indwelt by the Holy Spirit and made God by adoption. And therefore it has what it would later be called an adoptionist Christology, which of course was later declared heretical right. By the orthodox Church. So this is one of these areas where we can point out some problems with modern scholars. So first of all, even if that statement was about Christology.
- [160:46]
D
Okay.
- [160:47]
C
And we're going to question that in a minute, but even if that is a statement about Christology, why would you think that was all of the author's Christology?
- [160:58]
B
Yeah. It's not a Christological treatise. He's not attempting to set out his full theology about these.
- [161:05]
C
He may have believed all kinds of other things that could be a reference, if it is Christology, let's say if it was Christology, that could be a reference to Christ's baptism when the Holy Spirit descended upon him. And God said, today you are my son, today I have begotten thee. He could just be referencing Christ's baptism.
- [161:24]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [161:25]
C
And he could have a totally orthodox Christology. And just, it just so happens that in this one place, in this one writing, he was referencing Christ's baptism.
- [161:35]
D
Right.
- [161:36]
C
So there's just this assumption. Right. There's just an assumption
- [161:43]
A
that
- [161:45]
C
this is about Christology and this is his whole Christology summarized in this one set. Imagery. It's not even a statement, it's like a parable. It's imagery.
- [161:55]
B
Right.
- [161:56]
C
And we could derive his whole Christology from that. That's a stupid assumption, frankly.
- [162:02]
D
Right.
- [162:03]
C
But then we have to question, is it even Christology? Because remember parable nine with the tower where it's being built on the ancient rock that is the Son of God? How is that view of the Son of God compatible with the way scholars read Parable 5? It's not.
- [162:34]
D
Right.
- [162:37]
C
And so this is where Father Bogdan comes in.
- [162:42]
B
Father Bogdan Bokur for all the kids
- [162:44]
C
at home, by the way, the present day father Bogdan at St. Vlad's probably as we speak.
- [162:52]
B
Yeah, yeah. Right.
- [162:54]
C
And, and, and this, this may be wild for some of you guys who don't know this, but like Father Bogdan's work on the shepherd of Hermus is so important in study of the text of the shepherd of Hermis. He's mentioned in the Wikipedia article about the shepherd of Hermas.
- [163:13]
B
Hey.
- [163:16]
C
Because his work has kind of broken the scholarly consensus about.
- [163:22]
B
Nice.
- [163:22]
C
Because Father Bogdan pointed out a few things that make a lot of sense.
- [163:28]
D
Right.
- [163:29]
C
Number one. Yeah. Adoptionist Christology was condemned. It was condemned very early. Right. Obviously Nicaea rules it out completely.
- [163:41]
B
Yeah.
- [163:42]
C
325. So if the shepherd of Hermas is teaching adoptionist Christology, why is Saint Athanasius recommending it for catechesis? Why are they still reading it in the 5th century and quoting it authoritatively?
- [163:59]
B
Point, Father Bogdan.
- [164:01]
C
Right. Like there are early texts that teach heretical Christology. When the Christology gets condemned, the texts kind of go poof. You don't find people still quoting them.
- [164:18]
D
Right.
- [164:19]
C
When Origen started getting condemned, you still had a lot of people cribbing from Origen, but they stopped mentioning Origen. They didn't quote him, they just sort of plagiarized him, sub rosa.
- [164:34]
D
Right.
- [164:36]
B
Yeah.
- [164:38]
C
So if it's clearly teaching this heretical Christology. So that points to positively the idea that there's got to be some other way that all of those very intelligent church fathers were reading this text other than adoptionist Christology. And then Father Bogdan goes on to make a very good guess at what that way of reading it was. That makes actually more sense that the Son of God in parable five is not Jesus. It's you and me. It's Christians who are sons of God by adoption because we've received the Holy Spirit. See, St. Paul, I say it's such a good suggestion because it's so obviously correct.
- [165:30]
B
Yeah. And very compatible with Saint Athanasius, too. Like, one thing, a lot of people who just kind of quote what they think is a kind of slogan from on the Incarnation, you know, God became man, so that man might become divine, might become God. However you want to translate it, is that. Actually, my late friend Father Matthew Baker wrote a really good paper about this, that theosis is very much connected with adoption by Athanasius over and over in his. In his writings. So, yeah, I mean, he's going to look at this and would read it as theosis.
- [166:06]
C
Yeah, yeah. And it just makes sense. And that's in keeping with the themes of what the other parables are about Christian life. Right.
- [166:18]
D
Yeah.
- [166:20]
C
You're a person, you're a human. You've received the Holy Spirit. You are a son of God by adoption, and now you need to work diligently in his vineyard. And if you do, you will receive a reward at the time of harvest, at the judgment.
- [166:35]
B
Yeah. I think this kind of underlines sometimes the way that we read these. When I say we, I mean, you know, modern readers read these texts as like. Like look at it as a whole. Like, why would he have this whole text about the right way to live the Christian life? And. Okay, we're going to take a little Christology break here for a second, guys, and then go back to the whole Christian life repentance thing.
- [166:58]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, relatedly, there is what the. What the first caller in the last half brought up and that is, is the shepherd of Hermas teaching binatarianism. And you may be used to binatarianism being like the Father and the Son. Right. God the Father and the. The Logos and Christ.
- [167:31]
B
Right.
- [167:32]
C
But no, this would be, as the caller intimated, this would actually be God and the Holy Spirit. And then Christ is sort of the Son of God by virtue of this adoption with the Holy Spirit. And so the Holy Spirit and Christ are kind of, you know, mixed together. Right. And you find this stuff about the shepherd of Hermus in, like, JND Kelly's early Christian doctrines.
- [168:03]
B
Not Jane D. Kelly.
- [168:05]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [168:07]
B
Is it in Quasst as well?
- [168:09]
C
Say it's not Quassed. No, Johannes, you've got to remember, guys, when you're reading secondary scholarly literature about this, especially from the late 19th and early 20th century, best case scenario, you're getting a high church Anglican.
- [168:26]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [168:27]
C
Worst case scenario, you're getting a German,
- [168:31]
D
right?
- [168:32]
C
You're getting Von Harnack instead of Kelly. Right? Oh yeah, that's the worst.
- [168:40]
D
The.
- [168:42]
C
I pick on the Germans because, you know, they picked on my homeland through the entire 20th century.
- [168:48]
B
Tough, but fair.
- [168:54]
C
And so why, why, why are they doing this? Why are they getting this wrong? Why are, you know, and, and they're all agreeing, they're all. How do you get this weird scholarly consensus that Father Bogdan has to come along and like, be like, duh, Right, like. And no, Father Bogdan, I'm not saying that all of your papers on this subject could be summarized as duh, but
- [169:22]
B
you have to say it with the
- [169:23]
C
very, I mean, kinda right.
- [169:24]
B
Refined accent that he has. You know, I don't think you or I are really capable of.
- [169:29]
C
No, no, I could just do the California duh.
- [169:35]
B
So.
- [169:37]
D
Right.
- [169:38]
C
And what is it? Well, it's a presupposition with which you approach these texts. And it's one of the things I've been fighting against, right. Like since Religion of the Apostles. This developmental hypothesis, this evolutionary hypothesis that all of these ideas, ideas of the church developed over time from a very low ecclesiology to a very high ecclesiology. Christology developed over time from a very low Christology to a very high Christology.
- [170:11]
B
New.
- [170:11]
D
Right.
- [170:12]
C
And so what they're doing, and this is why, even though that's the majority of modern scholarship until very recently. I'm sorry, it's bad scholarship because they're reading the evidence through their theory rather than constructing a theory based on the evidence.
- [170:32]
B
Yeah, scholarship 101 kids, they start with
- [170:37]
C
a theory and then the evidence, any evidence, newly discovered text. Right. Any evidence gets filtered through that theory. And so if the shepherd of Hermas is written in the 140s, it can't have a high Christology, it can't have a nicene Christology, because that had not, quote, unquote developed yet. So it must have had a lowered Christology, like an adoptionist Christology. Ah, here, look, if you read this sentence and you take it out of context, that sounds kind of like an adoptionist Christology that fits with our developmental paradigm. There we go. We found more evidence for our theory.
- [171:28]
D
Right.
- [171:28]
C
Horrible scholarship. That's horrible scholarship.
- [171:33]
D
Right.
- [171:34]
C
What you are supposed to do is you're supposed to when you do research, you're supposed to collect all of the available evidence and then you construct a theory by trying to find a theory that accurately explains and describes and accounts for all of the evidence. Another big place where you see this is you will see them dating documents based on how highly developed these things are. You see this a lot with the books of the New Testament.
- [172:06]
B
Right.
- [172:06]
C
St. Paul can't have possibly written his pastoral epistles or why? Well, they have a developed idea of leadership within the church that would have taken time to develop.
- [172:19]
B
Or. Or it's based on the Old Covenant, which had a very developed idea of leadership in the people of God.
- [172:28]
C
That's reading the evidence through your pre existing theory.
- [172:32]
B
Yeah.
- [172:34]
C
And your pre existing principle.
- [172:36]
D
Okay.
- [172:37]
C
So that's not how it's done. And so the reason we're kind of having this again is, I hope this is not just about the shepherd of hers. This is paradigmatic. When you're reading these things, when you're reading secondary literature from scholars, you have to go to this level of cognition and ask these questions.
- [172:59]
D
Right.
- [173:00]
C
Is that the only way to interpret that? Is there a way of interpreting it, like I said to the caller, is there a way of interpreting it where it would be orthodox, actually? If so, why are they. If there's other ways to read it, why are they reading it the way they are?
- [173:17]
B
Yeah.
- [173:19]
C
And is it to fit some pre existing theory of theirs?
- [173:26]
D
Right.
- [173:29]
C
And so it's important that you ask these questions that you don't just say. And especially. And I've said this a bunch of times on the show, but always remember, don't ever forget.
- [173:39]
D
Right.
- [173:40]
C
If someone says X is the scholarly consensus, that doesn't mean it's true. That means that's what all the scholars are attacking right now and trying to disprove.
- [173:54]
D
Right.
- [173:55]
C
So there's a couple other weird things here, as we conclude to point out. So you will sometimes find the odd dispensationalist and they're all a little odd, but. Who goes back to that great beast with the fiery locust breath and everything, you know?
- [174:17]
B
Yeah.
- [174:17]
D
So cool.
- [174:19]
C
Who want to try to read this is. Oh, this is an early source for the teaching of the Rapture.
- [174:27]
B
Wait, what?
- [174:33]
C
Surprising. It's those four colors, right? Oh, and the fact that it uses the phrase the Great Tribulation.
- [174:42]
B
Oh, I mean, that's a dead giveaway. We're talking distant thunder stuff, right?
- [174:46]
C
Right.
- [174:47]
B
Yeah.
- [174:47]
C
Yes. And so therefore, see the gold, the people who are spared the Great Tribulation, they get raptured Right.
- [174:56]
B
Wow.
- [174:57]
C
Now, first of all, it's very clear in the text, if you actually read it in context, that the gold is people who have been refined by passing through the fire and the blood. They have been purified by the Great Tribulation.
- [175:13]
B
Or as Christ said, that he's praying not that God would take them out of the world, but that he keep them from the devil.
- [175:20]
C
Now, before you post Trib Rapture, people get all excited though,
- [175:27]
D
right?
- [175:28]
C
It is also not that. Why? Well, because the way Daniel actually talks about the Great Tribulation and uses that language, it's referring to the persecution that came under the Seleucids, like the abomination of desolation. Right. Antiochus Epiphanies, all of that persecution.
- [175:48]
D
Right.
- [175:49]
C
And so just as St. John does in the Book of Revelation, with no s at the end, people at the Book of Revelation. So also is the shepherd of Hermas using the Great Tribulation to refer to Roman persecution.
- [176:11]
D
Okay.
- [176:11]
C
And so just as he sees, as we've seen in the text, context is everything as we've seen in the text. Just as he sees the hardships of this life, the material hardships of this life as bringing about repentance and purification from sin, he sees the persecution directed at Christians as being purifying when you endure it patiently. So that's what he's talking about. And then the last weird thing is another scholarly thing. Okay, okay, this is, this is. This one is especially funny to me because it's so weird, right? And I checked some things out with this. So just about anywhere you look about the shepherd of Hermas, right? From Wikipedia and AI at these low goofy end all the way up to J And D. Kelly. And scholars, renowned scholars, always have this line about how the shepherd of Herbis is clearly from a group of Jewish Christians who still kept parts of the Law of Moses.
- [177:34]
B
Oh, no, they all say this.
- [177:37]
C
They all say this. And this is weird to me. So I did some investigating. The phrase law of Moses and anything about Moses never appears in the text.
- [177:48]
B
Right?
- [177:49]
C
They refer to the law of Moses, all of these scholars and all of these sources. But law of Moses never appears in the text. Okay, so how have I minded it in there?
- [177:59]
B
Emphasis on doing stuff? Is that the idea? Right?
- [178:03]
C
No, it's the word commandments.
- [178:05]
B
Are you kidding me?
- [178:07]
C
And the phrase, the laws of God.
- [178:10]
B
Wow. I mean, I seem to remember a certain someone saying, if you love me, you will keep my commandments.
- [178:16]
C
Yes, but that's literally it. They're like, it has to be Jewish because they're keeping part of the law of Moses. They're interpreting commandments. Is part of the law of Moses. Okay, but even if they are.
- [178:25]
D
Wow.
- [178:26]
B
Okay.
- [178:27]
C
Unless you're a Marcionite and we've seen this text maybe actually condemning Marcion.
- [178:31]
D
Right.
- [178:31]
C
Unless you're a Marcionite, as a Christian, you keep part of the law of Moses
- [178:41]
B
like the apostles told you to.
- [178:42]
C
There. There are no Christians who believe that the law of Moses was completely abolished and none of the commandments still apply.
- [178:49]
B
Yeah.
- [178:50]
C
Gentile Christians were not all Marcionites. They were not antinomians. So it makes no sense. Right. But it's been hive minded. I think everybody's just quoting each other now.
- [179:06]
B
I mean, that's how the Internet works.
- [179:08]
C
Yes. This weird recursive loop.
- [179:11]
B
Yeah, right.
- [179:12]
C
It just sort of sounds right, I guess. I don't know.
- [179:14]
B
Or this is what I've always said it
- [179:19]
C
like, bizarre. So this is yet another. You gotta ask questions when you read this stuff, folks.
- [179:27]
B
Yeah.
- [179:27]
C
You gotta ask questions of the text, these secondary texts.
- [179:32]
D
Okay.
- [179:34]
C
You know about when you read something about the shepherd of Hermis.
- [179:37]
D
Right.
- [179:37]
C
Do not assume that anything it's saying is necessarily correct. Right. Ask questions.
- [179:45]
D
Right.
- [179:46]
C
Wait, why is that?
- [179:47]
D
Right.
- [179:48]
C
Like I know everything says that, but I don't see that in the text. Right. Never mentions Moses.
- [179:57]
B
Yeah.
- [179:58]
C
And again, what does it reveal? Well, it reveals some kind of weird presuppositions of the, of the. Probably in this case, Protestant scholar who first came up with it. Right. Oh, commandments. Oh, no. Yeah. Christianity isn't about commandment keeping. This must be some, like Jewish Christians. Why would you think Christianity isn't about commandment keeping? Even Luther and Calvin wouldn't have told you that. Read Luther's catech. Small catechism. Right?
- [180:28]
B
Yeah.
- [180:28]
C
Structured around the Ten Commandments as a guide to the Christian life. Like what? But there you have it. Ask questions. People question everything.
- [180:42]
B
So I have a number of takeaways that I could comment on in this episode, but the thing that occurs to me, especially here at the end is I don't know if we've ever discussed this on the show, but you and I have discussed in the past because sometimes we like to read, frankly, as a form of entertainment, we like to read the reviews of the books we've read, but other people's books as well. But you know, you can't help but look at the reviews of your own books. And one of the themes that we've, that you've pointed out, and I've noticed this as well, is that Many of the reviews could be boiled down to I agreed with this book, I did not agree with this book. And that the whole point of reading the book was apparently to see if you agreed with it or not, which is a waste of time in most contexts. I'm sure there's some contexts in which it would not be a waste of time, but it's just a waste of time. And the reason why it's a waste of time is because if you come to a book or any text and the question you're asking is, does this measure up to what I already think, then you are the measure of all things and you didn't read to learn something. I mean, I'm not saying that every book you read is going to be correct. Obviously not. Obviously not. But if the point of reading a book is just to see whether or not you agree with it, then you're basically what you're doing is you're trying, you're giving it a grade. You're, you're the teacher, you're not the student. Student doesn't have to agree with everything a teacher says, but a student does need to come in with curiosity rather than the posture of judgment. And why do I mention all this? Well, I think not just because of all the stuff, you know, that you just went through, Father, about how a lot of scholars come to these texts and, you know, have all these presuppositions that they're bringing to the text, again, basically making it pointless to even read because they came in deciding what they were going to see to begin with, you know, so, so that's one part of it. But also I think that especially looking at a text like this, you know, with these second century Christian texts, particularly with the way that most of us in the west, whether we were raised as Protestants or not, we have these assumptions about what texts are for. But. And it's not just our 19th century German friends that give us these assumptions. There's something actually much more recent than that, which is I think the fact that so many of us, and I hold myself included in this. I mean, I have this problem. Everybody, I think almost everybody has this problem now. Our attentions, attention spans and the focus of our attention, the intensity of our attention has been so truncated by social media addiction. But it's not just social media. It's also the kind of sound bite world that we live in that the, you know, tldr, right. Too long didn't read that. That gets applied now to texts that are only like a thousand words long. This is Too long. I can't read something like that,
- [184:40]
D
or
- [184:40]
B
even a few paragraphs long. It's just too long. I can't read something like that. And so as a result, we're looking for sound bites. And if something presents some kind of challenge to us, then what we're looking for when we approach it is not what can I learn from this, but rather how can I either accept or dismiss this right away, Right? And I think this is why a lot of people look at writings of the early church in this way, and especially one like the shepherd of Hermas, which can seem a little odd if you're not used to this kind of text, right? And even people will say things like this is dangerous to read. Dangerous. You might get some of the wrong ideas like, okay, the likelihood of that happening, I think unless someone is extremely self willed. And you know, often I've even heard that, I've even heard this expressed in that way in orthodox contexts. But I think that most people frankly who pick up a copy of the Apostolic Fathers and even if they're new to the orthodox faith, which honestly, when I read these texts for the first time, I was new almost 30 years ago now, I was new. I was just looking at my, my old copy this afternoon as I mentioned and I looked in the front, I'd written my name in the front and there's no, there was no title in front of my name. I didn't put any, you know, abbreviation meaning I was a layman when I, when I bought that book and read it. Most people are not picking up a book like that and going, how can I enslave myself to these words, right? So I think there's not much that's dangerous about reading something like this. Now what can be dangerous is if you are functioning in an isolated way and you're functioning a self willed way and you're not part of the church and you're not listening to your Father Confessor, then yeah, it could be dangerous. But if that's the way that you're approaching Christian life, your problem is not that you picked up a copy of the Apostolic Father. You have a much bigger problem, which is that you have no sense of obedience or of being part of a community.
- [187:00]
D
Right?
- [187:02]
B
And in our sound bite, short attention span, tldr let me just figure out whether I agree with this or not. Way of approaching the world. What we are doing is condemning ourselves. If we continue to live that way, we are condemning ourselves to a very deep form of loneliness and isolation where we make snap decisions and judgments about everything and every one. I like this one. I don't like this one. This one's canceled. This one's my people, you know, whatever it might be. And so I think that one of the great values of reading a text like the shepherd of Hermas is that we can enter into it. Frankly, even if you haven't listened to a three plus hour episode of Lord of Spirits podcast talking about it, and we've only really, in some ways, just scratched the surface of the things that could be said about this is. It's. It's okay to enter into some of these things with a sense of unknowing, of. Of wonder, of wondering, you know, oh, I wonder what's in here. Let's go explore. Let's go find it out. Let's become a little bit bigger than we were. You know, I think it's okay to encounter something that is weird to us and to be changed by the experience. I don't find that dangerous, especially if we're, as I said, within the context of the church community and living the life of the church. If that is the case, if you're doing that, then this stuff cannot hurt you. But I think the real reason that people feel like it's dangerous is they want to either dismiss or approve of something. And, like, let's just move beyond that. You know, I've got stuff to do. But at some point, if you do that and you just keep doing that, you're going to get to the end of your life saying, well, I certainly made a bunch of judgments, but did I learn anything? Did I get anywhere? Did I change? Did I struggle? Did I ask any questions and actually look for the answers and not walk in thinking, I have them all. Already. So I think that encountering some of these things is a great boon to our humility and our obedience. You know, maybe you read a text like this and you walk away going, I couldn't make heads or tails of that. And that's okay. That's okay. It's good to have that experience sometimes. Just to take the journey. And even. Even if at the end you say, I, I don't know what that was about, that's okay. It's all right. The Bible is that way, too. I think if there's anything that people would walk away from listening to this show, it's that the Bible is a deeply weird book. And that's part of what gives it its power, is that we encounter something strange, something that provokes us and wakes us up and calls us out of our self. Containedness, so that we can actually encounter something other than ourselves and someone other than ourselves. Because we're not the gods of this world. We are not the measure of all things. We're just people. But we're people that Christ came to this earth and suffered and died and harrowed Hades and rose from the dead for. And in the words of the great Yankee poet, that has made all the difference. So that's what I have to say about that.
- [191:00]
C
So one of the reasons I'm always telling people while pwning noobs in Marvel Rivals that they should read more St John Cashin. Is that a lot of his work is in the same vein, as I mentioned earlier, as the shepherd of Hermas. And so much of patristic literature and Christian literature for most of Christian history, in terms of living a Christian life, striving to acquire virtues, striving to avoid sin and repent of sin and pursue following Christ. And that kind of literature, even though it's most of Christian literature, even though it's at the heart of what Christianity has historically been, it is somehow through the machinations of modern evangelicalism and devalued forms of Protestantism that exist in the 21st century, become kind of weirdly counterintuitive. Because so much of, you know, and again, I know America best, so much of American Christianity has become about, like, okay, what are the things I need to do so I can just relax and I'm okay? Like, me and God are okay. Like, what do I have to do? And as at least some of you know, I've been involved in some discussions online. About salvation outside the Orthodox Church and the Orthodox view. And I think sometimes in those discussions that, like, the. Despite not being what I'm trying to say, what. What the other person is hearing is something like, so you're saying in addition to whatever you have to do to be some kind of Christian in general, you also have to join the Orthodox Church in order to go to heaven, right? As if I'm adding, like one more box. You have to check, right? You have to be, you know, because the questions I'm getting are like, are what's. Are what's bringing that out?
- [193:15]
D
And
- [193:18]
C
this was really sort of brought home to me when I saw an interaction between a pretty prominent Protestant leader who was told by someone who was formerly affiliated in a certain way with their ministry that they had become Orthodox, that they had joined the Orthodox Church, they're now an Orthodox Christian. And the Protestant leader asked, why would you give up resting in the perfect righteousness of Christ, because that was sort of the whole orientation of his theology was toward, it's done, you're good, you can rest now, you can have this kind of assurance, you don't have to worry. And it really struck me how foreign that idea of resting in anything was to how the Scriptures, the Bible, talk about the Christian life. St. Paul talking about pressing on toward the prize, pressing on so that he having preached to others, isn't himself excluded.
- [194:44]
D
Right.
- [194:44]
C
Comparing it to running a race, to fighting a battle, this ongoing thing talking about striving to come to maturity, to become perfect, to bring things to completion, to have the fullness of the stature of Christ formed in you. None of that sounds like resting in something that's already done the day after you're saved. None of that sounds like being comfortable and self assured. And literature like the shepherd of hermas and like St. John Cashin's writings that I just happen to be some of my favorites. But all of this other volumes upon volumes of Christian literature throughout the history of the church all sounds a lot more like scripture to me and gets really practical and brass tacks about what it means to follow Christ and seek virtue and bear fruit in Christ and strive to completion and for a reward on the day of judgment. And so I think this literature is important. Texts like the shepherd of Hermas are important, important especially for us, especially for the people listening to this right now in our present age, because the fact that it seems weird and that that approach seems counterintuitive means we need to reprogram ourselves a little. We've been a little over programmed by a religious culture that isn't fully Christian in the full bodied historical sense of the word, Christianity, shall we say, as we all seek to pick up our cross and follow Christ and we all seek to complete the race and strive for perfection and we urge each other on to do so and we help each other in community to do so. We need literature like this to help us understand how to help us understand and find and seek out in the sins that we need to repent of, to know how it is that we can develop certain virtues that we struggle with, like patience or joy in some cases, or loving the unlovable. So I hope that as we said earlier, that this sort of you take this episode not as a substitute for reading the shepherd of Hermas, but as an orientation to help you profitably read the shepherd of Hermas and other similar literature. Yeah, and that's true with all the, the sort of literature review episodes we do.
- [197:25]
D
Right?
- [197:26]
C
Because these texts have a lot to communicate to us and to teach us in a lot of ways to help sort of reshape us into the Christians that we're called to be
- [197:37]
B
Cool. Cool. Well don't forget everybody, we've got a couple of pre recorded episodes coming to you in July, which most of you will not have heard that information. But we'll be back live again in August. But that is our show for tonight. Thank you everyone for listening. If you did not happen to get through to us live this time around, we'd like to hear from you. You can email us at lordofspiritsand ancient faith.com you can send us a message on our Facebook page. You can leave us a voicemail@speakpipe.com LordOfSpirits and if you have basic questions about Orthodox Christianity or you need help to find a parish, go to orthodoxintro.org and
- [198:17]
C
join us for our live broadcasts on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month at 6pm Eastern, 3pm Pacific. I've ruled out an intelligent virus, but it might be a super intelligent virus and it's playing with me.
- [198:28]
B
And if you are on Facebook you can follow our page, you can join our big discussion group and give us us a rating. Thumbs up, Click click.
- [198:37]
C
Subscribe, subscribe.
- [198:38]
B
But most importantly, share this show with one of your friends.
- [198:43]
C
And finally, be sure to go to ancient faith.com support and help make sure we and lots of other AFR podcasters stay on the air. I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favorite store on the Citadel.
- [198:53]
B
Thank you, good night and may God bless you always.
- [199:02]
A
You've been listening to the Lord of Spirits with Orthodox Christian priests, Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Father Stephen DeYoung. A listener supported presentation of Ancient Faith Radio. And I beheld and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders, and the number of them was 10,000 times 10,000 and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and Blessing. Revelation chapter 5, verses 11 through 12.