Modernism 101

Summary

The Lord of Spirits Podcast

"Modernism 101" – October 11, 2024

Hosts: Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick & Fr. Stephen De Young
Produced by Ancient Faith Ministries

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Overview of the Episode

The 101st episode of The Lord of Spirits dives deeply into the concept of Modernism, its historical origins and developments, its influence on religion—particularly Orthodox Christianity—and its consequences for the practice and understanding of the Christian faith. The episode builds on previous discussions about the continuity of Christian tradition, explores how Modernism leads to various responses (including ideological reactionism and postmodernism), and offers practical thoughts on navigating faithfulness in a modern or postmodern context.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: Continuity & Tradition in Christianity

• (05:08–15:32) The hosts revisit the questions from the prior marathon episode: do Christianity and other religions form a continuity? How do we distinguish between tradition and other traditions that feature Christian elements, like Gnosticism or Neoplatonism?
• Criteria discussed for defining genuine continuity:
  • Scriptures: Which are recognized and used?
  • Authority structures: Is there recognizable continuity in leadership?
  • View of material creation: Positive, negative, neutral?
  • Way of life: Ethos and ethics in action.
• Memorable quote:

  "Tradition is something which forms and is formed in a community, living together and sharing a common life. Traditionalism is an individual person’s ideology, preferences, or view."
  — Fr. Andrew (47:19)

2. Defining Modernism

• (15:32–40:19) The hosts clarify the term "Modernism," decrying its use as a mere insult or buzzword and distinguishing it from simple newness or modernity.
• Core features of Modernism:
  • Individualism: The abstraction of the person from all relationships.
  • Egalitarianism: The assertion that all differences are accidental or historically contingent.
  • Democratization: The belief that all opinions/votes are equally valuable.
  • Pursuit of enjoyment: Leisure and entertainment become central goods.
  • Developmental/historicist thinking: Narratives of progress, and "the right side of history" rhetoric.
• Notable contextualization:
  • Modernist developments include the rise of universal literacy, the printing press, and the conception of human progress, e.g., through Enlightenment and Marxist thinking.
  • Memorable quote:

    "Modernity and modernism arose out of a...rejection of Christianity, out of an attempt to find a basis for civilization apart from the Christian religion in Western Europe."
    — Fr. Stephen (41:40)

• Modernism's infiltration in Christianity reshapes doctrine, worship, and ethics around the individual; injects entertainment and democracy into church life; and results in new, constructed forms (e.g., progressive creeds, artificial liturgy innovations).

3. Modernist Christianity vs. Tradition

• (40:19–59:02) The show distinguishes between Christianity adapting to new realities (eg. using parking lots or microphones) and Christianity being fundamentally reshaped by the spirit of Modernism.
• Engagement with change:
  • Change is not inherently disruptive or heretical; it must be discerned whether it is consistent with the living tradition or imported from outside (i.e., a foreign element).
  • Illustrative contrast:
    • The rise in access to scriptures (due to printing/literacy) is good if kept within the bounds of tradition, but becomes modernist when everyone is a personal authority, equal in interpretation.

4. The Fundamentalist-Modernist Divide

• (59:02–61:57) The hosts trace how the fundamentalist and modernist opposition in early 20th-century American Christianity was, at root, two wings sharing the same modernist assumptions—particularly the authority of science and rational demonstration as supreme.
• Quote:

  "Science proves that God didn't create the world...science proves that God did create the world."
  — Fr. Stephen (60:23)

• Both treat Scripture as data to be processed through modern scientific/rational principles.

5. Entering the Postmodern Turn

• (81:03–101:44; 125:56–148:10)
  • What is Postmodernism? Not “just anything after Modernism,” and not "postmodern neo-Marxism" (a label dismissed as incoherent). Postmodernism grows out of post-structuralism—a critique of modernism’s claims to objectivity, universals, and overarching narratives.
  • Postmodernist features:
    • Language and meaning are inherently unstable.
    • Objectivity is an illusion; all is subjective, perspectival.
    • Universals are denied; only particulars exist.
    • Truth is replaced with “values,” which are just group/individual preferences.
  • Manifestations in Christianity:
    • Study Bibles for every group/“perspective”.
    • Reader-response Bible studies (“What does this mean to me?”).
    • Charisma-driven authority and cults of personality (e.g., anyone with a big enough YouTube following).
    • Ethics become non-credible, replaced by personal “values.”
    • The self is completely “protean” (ever-shifting), summed up as “I identify as X” in place of “I was born that way.”

6. Tradition Versus Reaction

• (148:10–176:04)
  • Merely reacting against modernism/postmodernism is itself often a modernist or postmodern move, manifesting as selective traditionalism, authoritarian nostalgia, or aestheticism.
  • It's not possible to fully “de-innovate” or roll back to pre-modern conditions (“You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube”).
  • The only real solution is rooting oneself in an actual, living tradition practiced in community—a tradition that can form and correct, not a construction based on individual or ideological preference.

7. Living Out Orthodox Tradition Today

• (176:04–210:29)
  • The Orthodox Church offers a bridge between universal and particular, subjective experience and concrete reality.
  • It is not immune to infiltration or perversion from modernist, postmodern, or nationalist spirits, and self-critique is necessary.
  • The path forward is not reactionary “traditionalism” or creating a national (e.g., American) Orthodoxy, but humbly entering into the transformative life of the tradition so that the Holy Spirit changes us—and thereby, through us, the world around us.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On how change becomes a break (08:51):

  "If all of a sudden I tore down the iconostasis and put a rock band in the sanctuary around the altar, where you would look at that and say, okay, that's not Orthodox Christianity anymore."

• On the “individual” as a modern concept (23:01):

  "The basic unit of humans is one...the idea of a person as an individual is that you are looking at them separated from all of their relationships..."

• On egalitarianism (26:03):

  "In the Modern point of view...all of these connections are what make me me. Right. No, it's. We got to figure it out. Abstracted from everything else."

• On the appeal of tradition and traditionalism (47:19):

  "Tradition is the living faith of the dead, while traditionalism is the dead faith of the living." — (citing Yaroslav Pelikan)

• On the failure of fundamentalist and modernist approaches (60:13):

  "The modernist says, Science proves that God didn't create the world; whereas the fundamentalist says, Science proves that God created the world."
  "Those are equally modernist."

• Memorable analogy (164:24):

  "The way you actually should pick the girl you're going to marry...includes both...factual considerations on the one hand and...how you feel when you’re with her and your love for her...That thing that surpasses it is an encounter with Christ. And what does that mean? I can't define exactly what that means to encounter Christ any more than I can define what it was that made me know I should marry my wife Trisha."

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Defining Modernism and Its Features: 15:32–40:19
• Modernist Christianity and Its Dangers: 40:19–59:02
• Fundamentalists vs. Modernists – Both Modernist: 59:02–61:57
• Postmodernism, Post-Structuralism, and Christianity: 81:03–101:44
• What Postmodern Christianity Looks Like: 125:56–148:10
• Tradition vs. Traditionalism/Reaction: 148:10–176:04
• The Path Forward (Detailed Practical Conclusion): 176:04–210:29

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Call-In Highlights

Q: Do angels and demons have souls? (67:01) – Hannah from Nashville
A: No; their nature is not the same as human soul-body composite. Spiritual death for a demon or angel is their separation from God, not death in the human sense.

Q: Modern Gnostic teachings about Jesus/Essenes? (72:17) – Gregory from Jacksonville
A: These speculative and sensational claims are mostly a result of people making connections far beyond what scholarship justifies (and, often, publishers egging them on for sensational content).

“Fact-checking is not all bad. Sometimes you need to check the facts.” (80:07 – Fr. Stephen)

Q: How do I choose the right Church? (154:46) – Harrison
A: Choosing a Church in an age of options is itself a modern act. The real answer is not only in historical or emotional satisfaction, but in a living encounter with Christ in the historical Church (see detailed analogy above).

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Tone and Original Language

Throughout, the hosts intertwine humor, collegial ribbing, pop culture references, and a conversational (sometimes irreverent) yet deeply thoughtful tone.

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Concluding Thoughts

• There is no simple recipe or historical period to which we can escape: every era is fraught, every context dangerous.
• Orthodox Christianity’s path is “stumbling forward, humbly,” allowing both the tradition and Christ Himself to correct, guide, and save us—not through ideological reaction, but through real transformation in community.

"There is no homeostasis where you can just relax...One of those two things will be happening: you'll be being formed by the Holy Spirit, or you'll be being formed by the various spirits active in our world." — Fr. Stephen (205:02)

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Next Episode: The annual Halloween episode airs in two weeks.

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For further questions or help:

• Email: [e-mail]
• Orthodox Christianity info & finding a parish: orthodoxintro.org

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(End of Summary)

Transcript

[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.

[B]

And they will praise and bless and.

[A]

Celebrate with song the Lord of spirits.

The modern world doesn't acknowledge, but is nevertheless haunted by spirits, 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 Father Stephen DeYoung host this live call in show focused on enchantment in creation, the union of the seen and unseen as made by God and experienced by mankind throughout history. Welcome to the Lord of Spirits.

[B]

Good evening, giant killers, dragon slayers, bashers of banshees. You are listening to the Lord of Spirits podcast and my co host, their Very Reverend Dr. Heptomaster. Sextamaster. Did we solve that last time? I can't remember now. It is sec. It is sex, which sounds bad.

[A]

There you go, Hepcat.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Father Steven DeYoung is with me from Lafayette, Louisiana. And I'm Father Andrew Stephen Damick in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, atop the Eldritch tower of podcasting, perched above both a gateway to the underworld and as I have lately learned, a neoteric tattoo parlor. And we're live. And if you are listening to us live, you can call us at 855-237-2346 at and talk to us. We're going to get to your calls in the second half of the show. And guest producer Bobby Lord of Spirits was the name of my acoustic 80s side project band. Maddox will be taking your calls.

[A]

Speaking of which, did you get kind of deja vu there for a second during the intro?

[B]

Yes, I did. It did. I don't know what's going on.

[A]

I'm just.

I don't know about these. These orthodox Media Depot babies, that's all. I don't know.

[B]

I'm a little rusty. Come on.

[A]

Oh, wow. See, we didn't even. We didn't even try to call in.

[B]

Bobby and here he is on the show already.

[A]

That was fast.

[B]

Wow.

Anyway, yes. So a word from our sponsor. This episode is sponsored. And this is a different ad, you guys. It's slightly different. Is sponsored by the Orthodox Studies Institute at St Constantine College, which exists to advance the study and application of orthodox Christianity in faithfulness to holy tradition. OSI's next live course is Tolkien. Gods, Monsters and myth taught by none other than your humble servant.

[A]

What? You teach a class about Tolkien?

[B]

I know. This class starts on November 12 and runs for five weeks on Tuesday nights. To check out the syllabus and to sign up, go to orthodoxstudies.org Los I hope I see all of you there. So last time on the 100th episode of Lord of Spirits, we bored you for three hours and 53 minutes. A new record. And so in that vein, we are going to continue on picking up where Father Stevens so graciously saved us from having our first four hour episode, which surely would have become a five hour episode to be rivaled only by an eventual 24 hour live telethon, which he has also threatened to make come to pass.

[A]

That's not a threat, that's a pro.

[C]

Wrong.

[B]

No. So this is our 101st episode. So where were we?

[A]

I don't remember, man. A lot of stuff has happened since then.

[B]

It's been two weeks. Yeah, I know. There's been hurricanes and that's great. It starts with an earthquake, etc. Etc.

[A]

Airplanes.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Lenny Bruce is not afraid, so he's dead. So that helps, I imagine.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Yeah. So we, we were on, sort of on the verge of talking about modernism.

[B]

Yes. And realized it was gonna be another three hours if we kept going.

[A]

Yes. And so modernism in its various and sundry forms, including post, is gonna be our subject this evening. Yeah. But we're gonna break with tradition and actually start talking about it in the first half.

[B]

What?

[A]

I know we have a hundred episode tradition of not doing that ever, but.

[B]

There was that episode we did backwards.

[A]

We're scoff laws, even the laws that we make ourselves.

[B]

Got to keep it fresh.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

I've got to keep myself entertained at least, even if I'm not entertaining anyone else.

So, yeah, sort of quick review.

To kind of catch us up in terms of what we talked about last time. Because I imagine most of our current listeners, whether live or later, will not be listening to this immediately after concluding that four hour.

Marathon. And even then, they may have gotten diverted in their thinking by the calls at the end. And you know, a certain man of 1000 heresies calling in to ask me questions about Twin Peaks. So to get everybody back, back on the same page, a very short version of what we were talking about last time was talking about.

How do you compare Christianity and other things.

To be more specific.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

It was a Question of. We had talked about in the episode before that even the idea of a sort of continuity of the worship of the true God. The true worship of the true God, starting with the beginnings of humanity.

[B]

Yeah. That literally it's the same religion. It is the same religion at the beginning as Orthodox Christianity now.

[A]

Yeah.

So, you know, a nuanced and, you know, fair claim.

But so within that. That, of course, there are a bunch of obvious questions about that. Right. Because obviously what hunter gatherers in the Neolithic era did.

That we would now.

Retroactively label as religious practice is not identical to, say, the Sunday Divine Liturgy in an Orthodox church.

[B]

Right, right, right.

[A]

So what does it mean then? That if we're going to claim that those things are fundamentally the same in being the true worship of the true God.

[B]

Yeah. That's basically what we talked about the last episode.

[A]

So it's a question of how do we recognize.

Continuities and discontinuities and how much discontinuity do you need.

With sort of the flow of Christianity, the Christian tradition before you're now outside of it?

How do we separate sort of an adaptation to changing way of life. Right. So, for example.

Human civilization has urbanized over the past several centuries. We don't primarily live in farming villages anymore.

At least most of our listeners say.

[B]

Speak for yourself, Father.

[A]

I don't know. Yeah, most of our listeners tonight don't live in farming villages.

[B]

You live in a swamp.

[A]

They live in a city of some size or some kind.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And that has a different economic structure than those agricultural farming villages did. And all kinds of things have changed. And so.

The church, Orthodox Christianity, has adapted to those things. Right. We have parking lots. They didn't have parking lots at the village church.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So there are adaptations. And you could point at those and say, well, that's a difference, therefore that's a change. You didn't used to have parking lots. Now you have parking lots. See, your religion is not unchanging. Your religion has changed. Right.

And we would look at that and say, well, okay, that's kind of silly. Right, Right. That's not a substantial change. That's just an adaptation to.

Life in a new context.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But there are other things that we could do. Hypothetically.

If all of a sudden I tore down the iconostasis and put a rock band in the sanctuary around the altar, where you would look at that and say, okay, that's not orthodox Christianity anymore. That's something else. It may be some other type of Christianity, but it's something. It's not Orthodox Christianity anymore. Right.

And there are things I could do where you would point out and say, okay, that's not even Christianity anymore.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Like if I started putting up statues of Zeus and Athena and stuff, like in the church with the icons, right. You would say, okay, that's not even Christianity anymore. Now, now you're in some kind of paganism, Right.

[B]

You're worshiping a different God.

[A]

Yeah. So we were talking about those differences, right. To kind of give an idea of.

What is a change in an adaptation, what is a break.

With tradition.

[B]

Right.

[A]

What is. What is transformative. And so we talked about when we were talking about other groups that have so, for example, Christian elements or things about them that might look Christian.

[B]

Right.

[A]

The outside and the examples we used last time were Gnosticism and Neoplatonism. Right.

Those things. So they're sort of Christian elements. Right. So Gnostics will talk about a redeemer or they'll talk about a Christ.

[B]

Even salvation, maybe.

[A]

Yeah, they'll talk about salvation. They'll talk about a creator God that's not the one they like, but they'll talk about what? Right. So there are these terms, right. These things and people use. And it's not incorrect to refer to Christian Gnosticism over against other forms of Gnosticism, meaning forms of Gnosticism that have these Christian trappings versus some other ones. So there are forms of Gnosticism, for example, where the redeemer figure isn't Christ, it's Hercules.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. Well, if your deeper figure is Hercules, there's not even a pretense to Christianity. Right. You're firmly within the Greek pagan world. Right.

And so we pointed out we were using three sort of things as our benchmarks. We. And we talked about how in the early church, Christian churches are encountering these other groups in other cities and other towns and other places, and they're trying to determine, okay, this other group that's meeting in this other town, are they a group of Christians like us or are they doing something else? Right. And it wasn't just like, well, they identify as Christians. So, okay, they're Christians.

Right. There was actually, do we have certain things in common? And the three we were using.

Particularly those groups were their view of, well, whether they had. And what scriptures they had.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

What authority structures they had within their group and what their view was of the creation in the material world.

Then also what their way of life was sort of ethical and moral considerations.

[C]

Right.

[A]

And in the case of Gnosticism and Neoplatonism, as much as they had trappings of Christianity in both cases, deliberately.

[B]

Right.

[A]

They really consisted mostly of. For things foreign to Christianity, foreign elements to Christianity. So they had different scriptures, they had different authority structures. They had radically different views of the material world. They practice a different way of life. And so the Christian groups that encountered them, and Saint Irenaeus, for example, writing for those Christian groups, said, no, you're not one of you guys are not part of us. You're not one of us. You're doing something different. Right.

And we talked about how there's a certain sort of artificiality to it, that, as I mentioned, those Christian elements were in Neoplatonism and were in Gnosticism. Deliberately.

[B]

Yeah. They were sort of constructed. Someone's like, I have a good idea. And let's, you know, put these things together. It wasn't something that was revealed, you know, or grew up within a community or anything like that. It was. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

To either incorporate what they thought were interesting Christian ideas or to appeal to the people that Christianity was appealing to in the case of Neoplatonism and try to win them back. It was a deliberate and therefore a kind of artificial thing. And we compared that to. Right. Not like Gnosticism and Neoplatonism to a false Christianity. And the example we used of a false Christianity was Arianism.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Right. Where the Aryans, obviously, Council of Nicaea. Very clear, they're not Christians because they believe in a different Christ.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But. But if you look at those elements I named, they were using the same scriptures, they had the same authority structures. Right. There were Aryan bishops.

They had the same, roughly, view of the material world as Christians did, and they practiced roughly the same way of life morally and ethically. Right. They had the Eucharist, they had a liturgy. Right.

And so.

That was, rather than being something other than Christian, that was a false Christianity.

[B]

Yeah. And they're, you know, they're canonically treated differently than non Christians.

[A]

Right. And so that's why, like St. Basil the Great, for example, would receive them into the church without baptism. Whereas a Gnostic or a Neoplatonist, he absolutely would baptize.

[B]

Right.

[A]

In every case.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Right. Because those are something different. This is just somebody who's part of a false Christian body.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So where we were headed after that was we were going to. And this was way too much to do in what episode we determined, as we stretched into our third hour.

So how. Let's use this kind of framework and understanding to take a look at the relationship between Christianity and Modernism.

[B]

Yeah. And this is not easy because, like, modernism is not a religion. It's not a group, it's not a church, it's not a. Yeah, but I mean, there's not like an. There's not like an organization. Right, right. That you can point to and say, okay, this group, these group. This group is the church of Modernism. And they do, you know, like. It's not like that. It's really, at some points. Oh, yes, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

I mean, they did put up statues of reason after the French Revolution. You could argue the Freemasons are.

[B]

Yeah. Oh, no. Freemasons. But, yeah, but there's not. It's not. You know, in some ways the challenge is different because then challenges in the past where there's clear groups to kind of argue with and compare yourself against and so forth. These are cultural movements.

That steer whole societies, often without those societies really being aware of it, especially as it gets a generation or two on their ideologies. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And as we've talked about before and we'll talk about again tonight, when you're talking about an ideology, what we're really talking about is a spirit.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

There is a spirit that is motivating this.

[C]

Right.

[A]

And if it's a spirit that's not the Holy Spirit.

That. It's not the Holy Spirit.

[C]

Right.

[A]

And so that makes it kind of a foreign thing. But before we could really get into modernism and its relationship to Christianity, we have to talk about what modernism even is.

[B]

Yeah. Because that word gets used. I mean, most people, when they say the word modern, they just mean, you know, the now times.

[A]

Yeah, but. But there's also even modernism itself as an ism. Right. Gets thrown around a lot as a slur.

Right. Like the way liberal gets thrown around as a slur. Now, like liberal used to. And we're going to use it tonight, but it used to actually mean something. Like if someone was a liberal, they believed in certain things.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But now it's just like, you know, you're a liberal. We're going to talk later about how the fact that words like Marxist and fascist now get thrown around all the time. Like Marxist is anyone to my left, Fascist is anyone to my right. You know.

And then they just become slurs, like they're not meaningful words anymore.

[B]

Like, awesome.

[A]

It's like a cuss word. Right? Like, yeah. Or calling someone a jerk, you know, like it doesn't actually tell you anything about the person.

[B]

Right.

[A]

If I say that they're a jerk, you just say, oh, why don't you like them?

[B]

Is bad.

[A]

Like it doesn't convey any information. And so modernism is the same thing.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And so, like you hear modernism just used. Refer to anything recent, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Anything newfangled.

Is modernism. Get that out of here. Right. Did they have that 19th century Russia? No, it's modernism. Right.

[B]

And did they have modernism in 19th century Russia?

[A]

No. And it was better for it.

And so again with the slur thing. Right. Modernism is not just things you don't like.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And it's not things that aren't quote, unquote, patristic. Meaning there aren't these two categories, patristic and modernist.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Into which all things fall. And there's a certain irony about the way those are juxtaposed, because the whole idea of patristic and patristics and the neopatristic movement and all of that is. Is a modern movement.

[B]

Yeah. It doesn't. Doesn't necessarily mean that everything it says or does or is, is bad, but.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It is a reality of the modern world.

[A]

It's resource. It's resource mod. It's advantageous. It's back to the original sources. There's nothing wrong with reading the original sources. You should read the original.

[B]

Right, right.

[A]

Exactly right. But it's just the point is that move is a modern move.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Just historically and philosophically and therefore trying.

[A]

To oppose modernism and quote, unquote, patristic, whatever patristic thinking, patristic. This, patristic. That is a very modern way of looking at things. Right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And modernism is not something that, you know, someone uses certain trigger words in their description.

I couldn't get name the name if I wanted to. So this person will remain anonymous if they're still out there listening. But in the very early days of this show, lo, those many four years ago.

I used the word dialectic in an episode.

[B]

Oh.

[A]

And this is back when I was still on the Facebooks before, blessedly, I escaped. And.

Someone who had listened to that episode was. Was very upset.

And posted something on the order of what do you mean by dialectic? And sort of a rant about Hegel ensued.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And my response, of course, to mollify him was to just say communism.

But, you know, we can all. No matter where you stand on anything. Right. There's words that'll trigger you. Right. Like, you know, someone saying Picard is better than Kirk. You'll get an earful for me. I will be triggered.

You'll hear me mock a man who played a Frenchman with a British accent for half his life anyway, you know, he was younger.

[B]

He was younger. I think I pointed this out recently. He was younger when he started that show than you and I both are now, by just two years. But.

[A]

Yeah, he looked a lot older, though.

[B]

I know, I knew.

[A]

Bald and kind of withered anyway.

Not sort of robust like William Shatner. Anyway. See, I got triggered right there.

Yeah. But so you know things that use certain buzzwords, right. Like just because someone says dialectic.

Just because someone says, you know, uses a term drawn from the social sciences or something, that doesn't mean whatever they're saying is automatically modernism. Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So what is it?

[B]

Well.

[A]

Nobody comes out and says, hey, I'm a modernist.

[B]

Yeah, not anymore, I don't think.

[A]

And here's our modernist manifesto.

With our planks. But there are certain things that we could talk about that are elements, that are views that emerge starting in the early modern period.

That sort of constitute what modernism is. The first, one of the clearest ones is an emphasis on the individual.

[B]

Yeah. That's probably the most foundational of all of this stuff.

[A]

Yeah. Because everything else is dependent on this. And what we mean by individual is exactly what that term means. Individual automobile cannot be divided.

Right. So it is the sort of. The basic unit of humans is one.

[C]

Right.

[A]

But in describing that cannot be divided. That means it's what we arrive at when we divide that person from everything. So the individual, the difference between the idea of an individual and a human person, for example, is that the idea of a person as an individual is that you are looking at them separated from all of their relationships, all their social relationships, family relationships, community relationships.

Religious connections. Right. You abstract all of that. And when you abstract the first of all, you arrive at the individual.

[B]

Yeah. And that then gives rise to this question of who am I?

[A]

When you get.

[B]

Yeah. Which seems like we're so inculcated with this idea that we think that that is the universal question that every human has ever asked himself. But it's kind of not.

[A]

No, no. And when you combine that, as happened in Western Europe, for example, with a bad case of Plato brain, then you think that yourself is this sort of set thing, Right. Your soul within you. And so you get people wanting to go out and find themselves. I'm going to go find myself.

[B]

Yeah. You're this irreducible thing.

[A]

I need to figure out who I am. Yeah, right. Rather than seeing who I am as well. I am the husband of my wife, I am the pastor of my parish, I am the son of my mother, I am the brother of my sisters.

[B]

All those of Relationships that are predicated upon someone else.

[A]

Right. All of these connections are what make me me. Right. No, it's. We got to figure it out. Abstracted from everything else.

[B]

Yeah. And you know, with that, of course, also comes the idea that human persons are basically impermeable.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You know. Yeah. This is why, this is why the noose concept is so hard for modern people to grasp. That it's, you know, that thoughts come in from the outside and are received by the noose. It's because we don't think of thoughts being that way, you know.

[A]

Yeah. And so then taking the next step from this, you arrive at a kind of egalitarianism.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Meaning if we're talking about individuals abstracted from all of these relationships, then they're all kind of not just equal, but the same.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You say, well, okay, this person is rich and this person is poor. But no, no, no, no, no. We're abstracting them from those relationships.

Right. Two infants, Right. Separated from their families, put in a room.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Or two dead bodies. Right. Like where we've abstracted them from everything and so now they're basically the same.

[B]

Yeah. This is why in. Was it the Declaration of Independence or I can't remember if the decoration dependence or Constitution of the United States says, we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal.

[A]

That's Declaration of Independence.

[B]

Yeah, Declaration of Independence, which, I mean.

That has got to be one of the biggest gaslightings. Gaslightings in history.

[A]

Well, they didn't say just all men.

[B]

I didn't mean, you know, males. Males. They meant, they meant humans. Yeah, that's back when men. That's back when men did not just mean men.

Yeah. Because I mean, it's obvious. It's obvious. Like if anyone's ever seen the two of us together.

Like we're both tall individuals. But if you and I were to have a wrestling match, it is clear that we are not created equal. You know, there is no question that you would win because I do not know any kind of special martial arts where I could, you know, defeat someone who is, I don't know, six times my size or whatever, you know, whatever. A human like me compared to a.

[A]

Hill drop a hill like you is, you know, the elbow. That would be.

[B]

That's right. Yeah. We're not created equal. We're just not, you know.

[A]

Right, but so you're an ogre and I'm just a dude from their perspective.

[B]

Right.

[A]

All inequalities and even all differences are acquired. Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

In the Modern point of view. Right. Think Rousseau. Right.

Think John Locke's. Right. Tabula rasa. Right.

So any differences are just historicized.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Well, this person happens to be rich and that person happens to be poor because by happenstance they were born into the families they were.

Right. But there is no difference between them at all as people.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Everything. Everything that separates people is just the vicissitudes of history.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That is all kind of accidental.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, they're reacting against the idea that some people are.

You know, this sort of pagan idea. Right. That, that.

That the elite are just better as appointed by the gods.

[A]

Better people.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Just better people.

[A]

Right, yeah.

[B]

If you're stronger, you're better. You know, whatever. They're reacting. It's that idea.

[A]

But they're going in the other direction. Yeah, right.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

It's like, oh, well, this person is physically stronger than that person. Well, they were able to work out and exercise and they didn't have to this. Or they work this kind of job as opposed to that kind of. Right. So it's all just historicized. Which, which means that if you can re. Engineer that you can transform, completely transform people.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you get the.

Subsequent idea then of equal treatment under the law, which is not the same thing as egalitarianism. But you don't really get equal treatment under the law without egalitarianism, really. Which it's not to be confused with God being no respecter of persons. This is something else.

[A]

Yeah, right, right. This is something else. Right. Because for example. Right, sure, that's. That works with God being no respecter of persons. But how does that work with St. Paul telling us we have different gifts and different callings.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

This says. That's not true.

That's just accidental.

Right.

And not. Not related to the person. Right. At all. This then leads to step one is democracy. Right. But ultimately comes to full flower in Jacksonian democracy.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Which is.

For those of you who don't know a lot of American history, Andrew Jackson expanded the franchise to all males.

The franchise being voting.

As I continue to use antiquated terms, although literally it.

[B]

Means making them French. Yeah, but.

[A]

So. And allowed. Allowed them all to vote, which was seen by the previous fatty fathers is a horrific idea because of course all those pores are the mob out there. Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But that democratization, of course goes further ultimately because it becomes the claim that because everybody is really the same, other than these vicissitudes of history, that everyone's opinion is of equal value. Yeah, right. One man, one vote.

[B]

Yeah. And I mean, and that's, you know, that's why we. Everyone says things like, well, everyone is entitled to his opinion.

And why you get this idea on the Internet, like if you delete someone's comments, that that's kind of some sort of moral wrong. Because of course, everyone's comments are of equal value.

[A]

Right, right. And so, yeah, if we're going to build a road, we should take a vote on how to build it. Hopefully after listening to an engineer, but not necessarily.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because that engineer also only gets one vote, even though he knows way more about the subject. Right.

You also get the idea of the pursuit of enjoyment. That's not what the pursuit of happiness meant in the Declaration of Independence.

That was a sub in for property. That was the right to pursue wealth. Yeah, but, but the idea of the pursuit of enjoyment, the idea of leisure.

And this really kicks in.

With.

Industrialization.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Where you have the idea of a working day.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And then your free time, that you could do with it what you want. Right. But is already starting in the modern period. And so you start to see, theater, for example, originally comes out of religious ritual.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And maintains these ritual elements of these kind of things, like say in Athens, by the time you get to Shakespeare, the 17th century. Right. You're now at the realm of popular entertainment. There are groundlings.

[B]

Yeah. It's. It's for fun.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And yeah. And there's money to be made.

[A]

Yes.

And so this goes for being this kind of communal religious event or communal quasi religious bonding exercise to being entertainment.

[B]

I have to say, by the way, as someone who, you know, you think about the Roman Empire on a daily basis, but I think about William Shakespeare on a daily basis. And it's funny to me though, like as you said, when he was doing his thing in late 16th, early 17th century.

That was popular entertainment. You know, that was the stuff that people went outside the city, you know, that was low. That was low entertainment. But it's so funny that people think of Shakespeare now as being, you know, super hoity toity high stuff.

[A]

I think that's mostly Americans.

[B]

Yeah, maybe.

[A]

I don't know, maybe Sir Ian McKellen said that the Royal Shakespeare Company is basically welfare for out of work British actors.

[B]

Wow. Is that another shot at Patrick Stewart?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

I knew it.

[A]

I didn't think that Patrick Stewart would.

[B]

Be our whipping boy for this episode.

[A]

But here we are. Here we are. Here we are.

So.

[B]

So another.

[A]

Another element that you find within modernism are theories of development. Right. Meaning, as we just said, there's this deep view of egalitarianism and this historicization of differences.

[B]

Right, right.

[A]

And hierarchies. And so that. That means a theory of development is. Okay, well, how did we arrive at these current hierarchies?

[B]

Right, right.

[A]

What is the historical process by which things came to be the way they are with the idea that if we can understand that. And again, modernism, especially once you get into the 19th century and Germany is treating history as Wissenschaft, as a science.

[B]

Right.

[A]

We could determine these laws and we can then steer it to go a way that we think would be better.

[B]

Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with society that can't be cured by progress.

The inexorable march towards things getting better.

We're so much better off. We are so much better and better off because those two things always go together than people in the past.

[A]

Right. And exhibit A of this is Karl Marx. Karl Marx is peak modernism.

[B]

Right.

[A]

He and his friend Abraham Lincoln. But we'll go into that another time.

Throwing rocks tonight is peak modernism.

Because what does he do? Well, he goes historically diagnosing. Okay, here's the move from primitive communism.

Imperialism, feudalism, and now the beginnings of capitalism. Right. Here is how these different social classes have been formed and transformed, how they war against each other, they struggle against each other over the course of history. And so now we've arrived at capitalism and we're here.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And one of the things people don't understand about Marx is that he thought capitalism was the second best idea anybody ever had.

[B]

Yes, that's right.

[A]

He thought capitalism was great, but not the end all be all right. Now we move up to this even higher stage. And for him, the way to do that, now that we've diagnosed, now that we followed through how all this has happened in the past, now we're going to grab the reins of this and we're going to steer it to where we want it.

[B]

Yeah. And, and, and if you're not headed in that direction, then you are not on. And this is a very common phrase, get you here now you're not on the right side of history. Right. That's this idea that there's this move for. And, and you know, very commonly we will say things like, I can't believe that here in 2024, blah, blah, blah.

[A]

Someone is saying, da, da, da, da, da. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

You know, it's like, it's, it's current year. How could this be happening?

[A]

Yes. Yeah, yeah. Although I will say I recently went back and watched one of the best television programs of the 90s. And I was amazed at what you could say on network TV in the 90s.

[B]

Mm. Oh, it's true.

[A]

Like stuff you couldn't even say on Twitter today without getting canceled. Yeah, we're saying odd. Like network.

[B]

I mean, even just 15 years ago, like, yeah, like I would just say, you know, go. Go watch the Office. Which ended, what, in 2012.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, yeah, that. That whole show practically is. Is cancelable these days.

[A]

So things can change pretty fast.

[B]

But.

[A]

Yeah, but so that also then this idea of development also gives you the kind of chronological arrogance and snobbery that we've talked about that our 19th century German friends are so representative of.

And certain 20th and 21st century Americans.

We now stand at the pinnacle.

[B]

We're the greatest country in the history of the world. That is a super modernist thing to say, you guys.

[A]

Everything has been leading to us here now. We are the pinnacle.

Of all of human achievement, culture, and society throughout history.

[B]

That's why all biblical prophecy points at America.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

No biblical prophecy points at guam and.

[A]

Or 19th century German Lutheranism.

We get super mad at other countries when they won't recognize that America is the greatest country in this earth.

Like, it's obvious. Hello.

[B]

So.

Yeah, I mean, I love my.

[A]

Country, but so if that's.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I love the country of Louisiana. Anyway, there you go. The.

That. If that's sort of a broad sketch. Those are elements, at least of modernism. Right. So let that suffice, at least for this evening, because we don't want to go four hours again as sort of a rough sketch of the outlines of modernism.

Where and how do we see that.

Working its way into Christianity.

[B]

Yeah. And it's probably worth at least mentioning that even though, you know, we kind of leveled a few criticisms along the way, we're not saying that none of what modernism talks about or says or thinks about that none of it is true in any way, you know? Yeah, we're just kind of. This is none of it. Yeah, this is. This is its. Its deal.

[A]

Yeah. The idea that 19th century Germany was the pinnacle of human civilization is bunkum. But.

[B]

Okay, that is definitely not true. You did get Grimm's Fairy Tales, and that was nice.

[A]

So.

How do we see modernism in Christianity? And is modernist Christianity in danger of becoming not just a false Christianity, but something else, something other than Christianity? Right. In the way that we were talking about before? Because modernism as such is a foreign element.

To Christianity. Modernism did not emerge out of Christianity.

Modernity and modernism arose out of a. Frankly, to be totally blunt, out of a rejection of Christianity.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Out of an attempt to find a basis for civilization apart from the Christian religion in Western Europe.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, in a lot of ways, it's a kind of ideological Tower of Babel.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And everywhere where modernism has taken hold. Right. It causes a revolution. That revolution is always anti Christian.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

See France. Right. See Russia.

So it is a foreign element. It is a verse. And so.

When Christianity gets reshaped by a foreign element, that's where we start moving into the territory of, okay, this is something else.

This isn't just a false form of Christianity. This is something other than Christianity.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And so you could very easily see how Christianity. We're in the United States, so we're looking at it here. But I imagine other people in other countries.

Of Western European origin or connection or cultural tradition may see this too. How Christianity has gotten reshaped around individualism, around entertainment, restructured a sort of democratic way.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And has thereby become this sort of very artificial thing, this very constructed thing.

Right. People come and write new progressive creeds.

[B]

Yes. Oh, they're horrible too.

[A]

Right. These are not creeds that emerge out of the lived experience of a group of religious people. This is someone deliberately trying to write a new progressive creed.

[B]

Yeah. Like, I've got an idea.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It is artificial or rewritten versions of the Our Father.

[A]

Also very popular.

Or innovative worship styles or elements.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And here's the problem. We're going to get into this more in the third half.

But the response to this.

The sort of trad response. Right. The traditionalist response.

Which is not the same as the response of tradition, but the traditionalist response has basically just been the flip side of the same coin.

So while the modernist wants to reconstruct Christianity according to the tenets of modernism.

The traditionalist wants to reconstruct Christianity in terms of their own personal view of the tradition.

[B]

Yeah. With no one else having a say.

[A]

Over what they think, unless they can claim the majority. And then they appeal to democracy.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Which again. Right. So it's just as modern.

[B]

Right.

[A]

It's just as much as a modernist approach. It's just a preference that looks.

Aesthetically more traditional.

[C]

Right.

[A]

But is not actually part of the tradition. It's just as artificial, it's just as much of a reconstruction and ultimately just as modernist.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And we see then in these groups where Christianity has been reshaped by modern trends, you see, for example, that egalitarianism expressed in sexuality.

In who they ordained, which is just about anybody, because everybody's the same. Remember.

That'S.

And as we talked about, right, you, you look at these areas.

How does Modernism affect the ethical way of life? It becomes a different way of life practiced by Christianity.

Scriptures become a very different thing.

Worship becomes a very different thing. Their view of the world is very different. Right. They actually have a more positivist view of the material created world than Christianity has held. So it's sort of the opposite problem of Gnosticism. Gnosticism, of course, said the whole world out there is all evil, bad, and you should stay away from it, whereas they say it's all good and untainted by any sin.

[B]

Yeah. There's the denial of fallenness.

[A]

Yeah, Right. The noble savage. Right. Rousseau again.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So, you know, so again, all these criteria we're using, it's a different religion, right.

And as we mentioned, right, there's a, there's a difference between the tradition and traditionalism.

Tradition is something which forms and is formed in a community, living together and sharing a common life. Traditionalism is an individual person's ideology or preferences or view.

[B]

Yeah. I really like in his little book, which was, I think, a lecture originally by Yaroslav Pelikan called the Vindication of Tradition, he has a very famous saying that tradition is the living faith of the. Is it the living faith of the dead, Whereas traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. I always love a good.

Chiasmus, but I mean, it's a good shorthand, right? Because tradition is something you become part of, whereas traditionalism is a thing you construct. It really is.

[A]

I'm triggered by chiasms, by the way. I was a kid, I used to get hit and then kicked and then kicked and then hit.

[B]

Oh, yeah, I can see that.

But I think, you know, and the thing is, of course, that traditionalism thinks that it's. Or claims that it's simply being traditional.

But, but, but that. I mean, but if you look at people that are living within the tradition, that is not how they actually function.

[A]

Right. There is an externality to living within a tradition. It's about how you relate to other people.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And the life that you share, the public life. Whereas traditionalism is an internal thing because it's about my internal preferences and my own individual practices, how I want to live.

[B]

And, you know, does this place line up to what I think? If not, I'm leaving and going finding one that does.

[A]

Yeah. And if we're, if we're talking about our modern ideas, right. Liberte, egalitae, fraternite. Right. That liberty is. This is how I Want to live. I want to live a traditional way of life, and I should be free to live that way.

That's very modern.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Kind of inescapable now, understandably. But this is modernism. It just is.

[A]

Right.

So there's a difference between Christianity existing in modern times.

And modernist Christianity.

Because one can practice and be a part of and live within and live out the Christian tradition against any cultural backdrop.

Pagan, modernist, feudalism, whatever.

Right. The question is, what makes modernist Christianity modernist Christianity is that it has been reshaped by modernism, that Christianity has been changed by these foreign elements.

So here's an example of the difference.

Once you get the printing press.

[C]

In.

[A]

The early modern period, you have the proliferation of books and of texts, which leads to a huge rise in literacy rates, especially thanks to Protestantism.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, it's transformative of society and the world.

[A]

Right. Okay, now the fact that. Now that. That is a kind of egalitarianism, that is a kind of evening of the bar. It is no longer only the educated upper classes who can read and who have access to books and texts. And the Bible right.

Now, that has been made available to the common man. Right. And that is a modern thing. But we're not saying that's a bad thing in and of itself.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Where does it cross the line from being Christianity within modernity over into modernist Christianity? Well, Christianity within modernity is. We now all have access to the scriptures. We read the scriptures devotionally, we study the scriptures, we learn from the Scriptures.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But we do that within the context of a tradition that puts boundaries on our interpretations, that can correct us.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

They can tell us we're wrong. Whereas within modernist Christianity. Right. Each one of those people gets a vote as to what the text means.

[B]

Yeah. What everybody thinks is. Is the same, you know, like. Like, yeah, I. I've heard. I've heard of. Of Bible studies that follow these lines as being simply the pooling of ignorance.

[A]

Yeah. Well, there's a really insidious way this works out too. Right. Because you'll get this. Most scholars agree.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

As if that's how we decide what is true. We get all the smart people who have studied this to all vote.

Right. And then, boom, there we go. That's truth.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, Arius could have said that.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

At one point that was true. The majority of the church, as it says, woke and grown to find itself Arian. Most scholars agree that Arianism is true.

[A]

Yeah. That's where you're moving into modernism, where you think truth is decided by sort of Majority vote.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Or, for example, you can have.

A beautiful church building constructed using modern construction methods.

[B]

Yeah, Right.

[A]

Completely modern construction methods. Prefab elements. Right. The whole shot stuff concrete. Have done 50 years ago. Right. Air conditioners, the newest. Right. And use it.

To conduct traditional worship. Right. Worship that arises from within the Christian tradition. True worship of the true God.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You don't have to have, like, a wood church built by hand by the parishioners in order to do that. Right. There's nothing evil about those construction methods. Right. But if you allow that, it's not even evil to have, like, say, a microphone so that the people in the back of the church can hear what's going on.

[B]

I don't know. I don't know, Father.

[A]

I don't personally have one.

But. Right. Because I'm loud.

[B]

But you know that there are. I was informed by a Greek Orthodox bishop that there are prayers for putting the microphone on when you're about to conduct liturgy. And the one that you use on Sunday is their voice has gone out into all the earth. And then the one that you put on for a weekday is the voice of one crying in the wilderness.

[A]

I decline to comment.

[B]

True story.

[A]

Since it was a big.

I mean, not my bishop, but still a bishop.

Right. But on the other hand, if those modern construction elements, those other elements are used to reshape your worship.

[B]

Right.

[A]

If you redesign the sanctuary and the nave.

Of the church.

And into a fundamentally different design that communicates fundamentally different.

Say modern things to people.

Right. If you have everyone sitting in a circle.

Right. That has now changed what's going on inside the building.

[B]

Or you make it shaped like a theater.

[A]

Yeah. Right. That has now changed what's going on in the building. Right.

And so there is. When we're talking about.

Not just technological development, but technology is a good place to talk about this. But this kind of development, cultural development in general. Right. Like the novel is called the novel because it was invented relatively recently.

[B]

Because it was new. Yeah.

[A]

Right. But nobody's like, you shouldn't read novels. They're modernist. Right.

[B]

Because they're new.

[A]

Yeah. Right. So technology here, we're speaking very broadly.

The development of these things. There are sort of two extremes. You could go to the one extreme where you just. Everything new that comes along is from God and is wonderful, and we should just embrace it.

[B]

Yeah. This is where you get some churches now have an online campus of the church.

[A]

Yes. I'm sure there's somebody conducting worship in a Twitter space or something.

[B]

Right? Yeah. It's a thing well, the arms around.

[A]

And give a big hug to any kind of development that comes out of anywhere. It's all progress. It's all good. On the other extreme, you have just every development and every new technology is evil. And from the devil, Right?

[B]

Yeah, like, yeah, there's. There's the Luddite. Yeah, the Luddite view. Yeah. Which, I mean.

You know, like, I'm number one. I'm disappointed that the word is not Ludditism or Ludditism. It turns out it's Luddism, which, I don't know, that sounds. I don't like.

[A]

The guy's name was Lud.

[B]

I. I know, I know. But anyway.

But yeah, like, no one's a true Luddite, like, really anti all technology. Like, as soon as you pick up a rock to do something with it.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

That's you. You did a technology.

[A]

If you're going to be an. An prim, you have to leave the rock on the ground.

[B]

That's right. You can't pick up rocks.

[A]

Yeah, but. So there's an arbitrary point where you cut things off. Yeah. But between those two, there is.

[B]

Using.

[A]

Wisdom and ethical considerations surrounding new technology to figure out how to best implement it. There are some developments that are negative, developments that are actually bad and are actually from the devil.

There are some developments and things that are the good gifts of God, but most developments that come from the human mind, like a microwave oven, is neither.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You could do good things with it, you could do evil things in it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You could use it to cook food. You could use it to torture cats. Right. Like one of these is good, one is bad. Hopefully our listeners know, which is.

[C]

If.

[A]

Not, talk to your local Orthodox priest.

[B]

Maybe a therapist as well.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And so.

To sort of finish up this first half. Right. Coming back to something we've talked about before.

Several times on the show, and this is also part of our segue into the second half where we're going to talk about postmodernism.

And that is.

[B]

That.

[A]

When we think about one of the early uses of modernism, and especially modernism as spoken of negatively.

Vis a vis Christianity, it goes back to the fundamentalist versus modernist debates of the early 20th century.

[B]

Yeah. Which were Presbyterian.

[A]

Right. The fundamentalists called themselves that because they believed in the fundamentals of the Christian faith, which were published in a set of books called the Fundamentals. Right. These were things like the Holy Trinity, the Virgin Birth. Right. These things we believe in. The modernists were, of course, modernists.

[B]

Right. That's.

[A]

And most of them in the early 19th century in the US had been educated in the 19th century in Germany. So they had imbibed deeply from the well of modernism. And there's this conflict. But as we've talked about before on the show, this is just an apparent conflict.

Because ultimately the fundamentalists, who later called themselves evangelical fundamentalists and then fundamentalists became a slur. And so it just became evangelicals.

Were just as modernist as their opponents.

So the example we've given before, Ken Ham, is a prime example of a modernist.

[B]

Yes. Right.

[A]

So the modernist says.

Science proves that God didn't create the world.

[B]

Yeah. Whereas the fundamentalist says science proves that God created the world.

[A]

That God did create the world.

[B]

Yeah. Right.

[A]

That's not different. Those are equally modernist. Because what is adjudicating is modern science.

Science. You're agreeing with the basic presupposition of modernism that science and math can. Are the sources of truth, you know, potentially the sole sources of truth. You're just trying to use the same methodology to arrive at the opposite conclusions.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And you can extend that not just to creation, but to the flood, to the Exodus, to the date of the Exodus, to the. No, no, no, no. We're going to find the scientific, archeological proof.

Because that's how you prove something is real and true.

[C]

Right.

[A]

So this is a point to a danger that we're going to return to in the third half of going to war against monsters and becoming one yourself. Right.

Becoming the thing you hate.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Sort of in pursuit and tilting. You end up, you know, becoming one yourself. But first, we need to talk about not post Malone, but postmodernism.

[B]

All right. Well, with that, we wrap up the first half of this episode of the Lord of Spirits. So we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.

[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 885-5237-2346. That's 855-AF-ADIO.

[B]

The centuries after the Protestant Reformation brought.

[A]

About a radical reinterpretation of The Epistles.

[B]

Of St. Paul, disconnected from any historical reality. But Paul operated during his entire life as a faithful Pharisee within the Roman Jewish world. In St. Paul the Pharisee, Jewish apostle to all nations, Father Stephen DeYoung surveys Paul's life and writings, interpreting them within.

[A]

The holy tradition of the Orthodox Church.

[B]

This survey is followed by De Young's interpretive translation of St. Paul's epistles which deliberately avoids overly familiar terminology. By using words and ideas grounded in 1st century Judaism, de Jong hopes to unsettle commonly held notions and help the reader reassess St. Paul in his historical context. Available now at store.ancientfaith.com Again, that is store.ancientfaith.com we're back now with the Lord.

[A]

Of Spirits with Father Andrew, Stephen Damick and Father Stephen DeYoung. If you have a question, call now at 855-23-7234. That's 855, AF radio.

[B]

Hey, welcome back. It's the second half of this 101st episode of the Lord of Spirits podcast. We're talking about modernism and the modern moderns who love them.

Yeah. So we actually have some, some calls rolling. Well, we had for a second there. I guess we lost them. Oh, well.

All of them, I guess. I don't know.

[A]

There was gone.

[B]

The screen was lighting up and then it went black. You know, someone, someone's like, I haven't. I. No, no, no.

[A]

Do you think, do you think Matishka Trudy, like bribed him to make her look good or something?

[B]

Like, is the fix in.

Magic Trudy the Tank Richter?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yes, I know, I know. It's hard to top her.

[A]

I mean, she's.

Bobby to take a dive.

[B]

It's true, it's true, boy. I mean, I tell you, though, the YouTube chat has been active, people, all kinds of wacky stuff going on in there. Someone just says he has nt Wright's 1600 page study on St. Paul. Tough read. This commenter says the question is, have you read all 1600 of those pages? Have you read all 1600 of those pages, Father Stephen?

[A]

Okay, first of all, there was a gentleman's agreement between all scholars that we were all going to stop after Philemon.

So if anybody's claiming they read the whole thing, number one, they're lying. And number two, they're breaking the Bro Code.

I had no idea there was a.

[B]

Biblical scholar's Bro Code letting us in on, on seek the secrets of biblical scholarship.

So. All right, well, actually, look, callers are coming back now, so. Okay. Yes, yes, yes, they're back. They're back. So we actually have one. We have a caller whose phone at least is from Massachusetts. So. Hello, Yankee.

[A]

Hello.

[B]

Hello. Welcome to the Lord of Spirits podcast.

[C]

Hi, I'm Hannah. I'm actually not from Massachusetts at all. I'm calling from Nashville, Tennessee.

[B]

Oh, Nashville, Tennessee. It's your, your, your phone number is from Massachusetts. Is that where you were when you got that Cell phone.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

I'm one of those people who keeps calling me about my business loan and saying, you need my personal information. Is that why you have a different area code?

[B]

You know, now, I know, though, that whenever I get phone or whenever I.

[C]

Get callers from Massachusetts, I don't pick up because I know they're all scammed.

[A]

Exactly. That. That's why I still have a West Virginia number.

[B]

There you go. Makes it easy. Yeah, yeah, I have a Pennsylvania number. Of course. And so because we are a crucial swing state, according to all the news people, I get, like, multiple political texts every single day.

[C]

Wow.

[B]

Really? It's really irritating. Yes.

[C]

Well, remind me to never get a Pennsylvania number.

[B]

Yeah, well, not during an election year, anyway.

[C]

Yeah. Right.

[B]

Yeah. So, Hannah from Nashville, Tennessee, what is on your mind? What is up?

[C]

Well, okay, so I've been listening to a couple other podcasts about angels and demons and all those things, and I know this isn't, like, directly related to modernism, but maybe a little bit.

[B]

I was kind of wondering, do angels.

[C]

And demons have souls, like a life force that's, like, separate from their spirit? If that makes sense.

[B]

Well, short answer. No. Long answer, Father Stephen?

[A]

No.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

Because, I mean, the soul. The soul is the life of the body.

[A]

Right?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Right. And so it is a valid question because angelic beings do have a certain type of body.

[B]

Yeah. They have bodies of sorts.

[A]

Yeah. But they are not a living soul in the sense that, for example, Adam became a living soul when the breath of life was breathed into him.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

So they don't. Right. So.

There isn't a way for them to die in the way that humans die. Right. Like physical death for a human being, the separation of the soul from the body.

[B]

Yeah. What would that mean for an angel or a demon? Right.

[C]

So.

[A]

So, like, that can't happen to them, but they can die spiritually.

Right. Meaning spiritual death is when our soul is separated from God.

[C]

Right.

[A]

Right. So an angel or demon can die spiritually, a demon in the sense that its soul could be separated from God. Right. Who is the source of life. And that's why it's called death. And so the death, like when Solomon 82 or 81 in the Greek says, you know, you have been called gods and sons of the Most High, but you will die like men. That's what it's talking about.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They will die in that their soul will be separated from God, not that their soul will be separated from their angelic body.

[C]

Okay. Okay, that makes sense.

Cool.

[B]

I hope you and your little Ones are doing well there in Nashville, Tennessee.

[C]

Yes, there. I. I tried to make them as quiet as possible. So thank you for taking my questions. Oh, I was just going to quickly say to Father Stephen, I did meet you briefly at the archdiocese retreat. I was the one with the. I was trying to herd my crazy children in the fellowship hall, trying to.

[B]

Get them out of the way.

[A]

I. I think. I think I know who you are now. Although you'd be amazed how many people that descriptor applies to.

[C]

Well, that's good. That makes me feel better about myself.

[B]

Actually, wherever Father Stephen goes, children do scatter, so it's understandable.

[A]

Well, excellent.

[C]

You should come over sometime.

[A]

Just getting out of my kids.

[C]

Well, thank you so much.

[B]

Thanks for calling, Hannah. All right, you too. You too. We're going to take another call. So we have Gregory from Jacksonville. Gregory, welcome to Lord of Spirits podcast.

[C]

Thank you very much.

[B]

So which Jacksonville are you calling from?

[C]

The Florida one. That dodged Milton. We got a little bit of rain and. Oh, I was gonna say, but that's about it.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

So Big nine from the home of all elite wrestling.

[C]

Yeah, indeed. Truly to all.

[B]

Wow. And the home of Live with the Lows, one of our other live shows here on. On Ancient Faith Radio. The Lows are right there in Jacksonville, Florida.

[C]

I just get. I just get drawn to these. These popular shows on this really popular broadcasting station. You know, I used to go to Father Evans Church, and last episode, you guys brought him up. I was like, no way.

Run into you guys.

[B]

You're doing the tour, huh?

[C]

I am doing the tour.

[A]

You're an AFR groupie.

[C]

I think you're right. I get nervous every time I call in. I get really shaky and, you know, my heart beats really fast, like, oh, my gosh.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

We're like the Grateful Dead now.

[A]

Father Stephen, what are you saying? Stoned?

[B]

I don't think.

It'S better than Fish. The One Fish concert. The One Fish concert that I worked at when I was a stagehand had a whole lot of unnecessary, and, I assure you, unwanted nudity in amongst the spectators. So.

[C]

Yeah, they say folk does that to you.

[B]

Just throwing that out there, so. All right, Gregory, what's up?

[C]

Well, I have a question this time about another sort of modern. I call it a Gnostic heresy, sort of. Even though it's a little different. I've heard a lot of these weird teachings come out of some evangelical groups about Jesus being in a scene which is predicated by John the Baptist being in a scene, you know, from the Dead Sea Scrolls. And after some really light research, I came to understand that, well, that's not possible philosophically. I mean, Jesus preached the resurrection of the dead. It seems didn't believe in that at all. John the Baptist was in the wilderness from the age of what, like three until, you know, his. His ministry. And these things only went out every once in a while. They were still a community. So I was wondering if you may be able to fill me in on if you're aware of this weird new teaching and maybe some words that you would. You would give to some of the people who teach, you know, these. These types of things.

[B]

I mean, Father Stephen, this is definitely right up your alley. You know all about the Essenes.

[A]

What I would say to them is, stop.

Stop it.

Knock it off.

Well, no, I would say all those things, but also.

Yeah, it's so.

People get excited, right? They learn. They learn some things about the ancient world in the world of the Bible and the background in the New Testament, and they're cool things, and they get excited about learning them. And that's natural. That's not like a bad thing. And they start making connections. And making connections is sort of fun and exciting and invigorating and spurs you on to do more study and things. But when you're kind of excited and making connections, there's like a thin line between N.T. wright and Charlie Day in front of his cork board with the strings and the pictures.

[C]

Right?

[A]

And you could very easily fall off the edge of that, right. In the wrong way.

And this is. This is one of those cases, right? So, I mean, even the identification of the Qumran community As Essenes isn't 100%.

Yeah, right.

Most scholars would agree on that. But as we just said the first half, these things aren't decided by vote. They're decided by reality.

Let alone then. But it's like, okay, well, they're out of the desert. St. John the Forerunner is out in the desert, right? There must be some kind of connection. And part of that gets fueled by. I'm trying to remember the name of the scholar. There was an early Roman Catholic scholar who studied very early on, studied the Dead Sea Scrolls. And when he wrote, he did his reconstruction of the community of Qumran, and it was like a Benedictine monastery.

Right? And you could tell he's just. He's understanding it from his own framework, right? His own. You know, but then that, right. Once that's out there, and you're like, well, you know, St. John the Forerunner is kind of this living this proto monastic life there's these sort of proto Jewish monastics out there that there's got to be some connection there. Right? And then, you know.

They, they look at some of the sectarian texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls, so they say, hey, some of this stuff that these texts say, Christ says stuff kind of like that in the Gospels, so he must be connected to it somehow too, you know. And then you get the guys who go the farthest, who are the guys who are like, oh, well, there's this teacher of righteousness who they talk about who was actually like the founder, sort of the leader, founding leader of the Qumran community in like the 3rd century BC but especially very early on, before all the texts had been read and cataloged and stuff, you got people going, teacher righteous. Oh, look, they're talking about him in kind of messianic terms. I bet that's Jesus. Yeah, right. Even though it's wrong century. Right. Like.

So it's a lot of sort of excitement and then sort of making too many false connections just because things seem similar.

And that is, and frankly, another part of the problem is capitalism in that.

Going out and publishing a book about the intricate details of community life in Qumran is not going to sell a lot of copies. Going out selling a book saying that St. John the Baptist hand wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, that, that'll get you on NPR and on the New York Times bestseller list about your groundbreaking theory that changes everything about Christianity.

So people are kind of incentivized to take more and more radical positions on that kind of thing in order to get an audience, in order to get money.

And it's not just sort of the crude, I want to be famous and make money. But even if you're a legitimate scholar and academic, you're trying to attract grant money and stuff. And it's, I need to make my work look important to someone other than me, you know, and part of, part of being a scholar is sometimes you have to accept that your work is only important to you.

[B]

It's true.

[A]

Sometimes you're just researching things because you love them and find them interesting. And there's like eight other people on earth who do, and maybe you'll meet them at a conference someday and you can talk, talk about it, but otherwise.

Right, this, this isn't going to make you rich and famous and, you know, you're even going to struggle to get grants and get, by the way, academia works now. So all of those factors factor in there. But.

You know, and, and you see this all the time with those books Right. Oh, we just found a copy. We translated the Gospel of Judas. This is going to change everything about Christianity. Did it change anything about Christianity?

[B]

I mean, every Easter time and every Christmas time, stuff like this always hits the news wires.

[A]

Right. But it always, you know, oh, this Gospel of Jesus wife. Right. You know, yeah, these things.

Come out and the people who do them are motivated by these factors, right. To, to, to do them. But.

You know, either on the side of buying into them or on the side of getting especially worked up, I know people who, every time those things come out at Christmas, at Easter, this is an attack on Christianity. Right. They get all worked up the other way. Right. And it's just like.

You know, stand back a little. You did the right thing by sort of doing a little bit of research and finding out like, oh, they're jumping to a lot of conclusions and.

Pulling things together, that there's no real evidence of a connection. Right. And that's, that's what you usually find with these things.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

I did some light Google searching. You know, when you said that these, these people who, you know, push these ideas often are, they're, they're not always ill intentioned, but they're, they're jumping from one conclusion to another and they're making connections that are kind of a far fetch. And, and I see that as sort of the danger that I've seen with some of the people who I know or care for that are sort of following this circle that it often leads like, oh, well, you know, it's possible that they also believed in like reincarnation. So they're trying to tie like something that's completely unrelated. A Google search away is like, no, the Essenes did not believe in reincarnation, not even. And then there's like, they get into like Earth magic and power of word and it just kind of opens this like wormhole of all this. Really. What you had an episode talking about this magic, this like quote unquote Christian, that's not really Christian magic. Yeah, it's kind of weird, you know, I wouldn't expect something like that to lead to such places. But that's really the motive for my call is just knowing like I don't want, I want to be able to protect people from that type of technique, that type of villainous, you know, posing as Christian, you know, demonic activity, the.

[A]

Sort of esoteric new age slop bucket where all that stuff gets thrown.

[B]

It's just kind of goofy. I mean, not to, well, it is to be dismissive, but.

Yeah, just dig a Little deeper. People, you know, have a little rigor in the way you think.

[A]

Fact checking is not all bad.

Sometimes you need to check the facts.

[B]

Yeah, Yeah. I gotta look that thing up.

[C]

Sorry for. Sorry for distracting from your episode on modernism. I've been waiting for this one for quite some time. I'm really looking forward to where you guys go with this talk on modernism and Christianity, modern Christianity and understanding that.

[B]

Well, you know, new. New Agey stuff is modernist. Right. It's this constructed, individualist thing. So, yeah, you know, you're not entirely. Not entirely out of our lane. So thanks very much for calling, Gregory.

[C]

Thank you, Fathers.

[B]

All right.

Postmodernism, what is that? Yes, it's just anything that happens after modernism, right?

[A]

Yes. Yeah. Modernism is over. It's done.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

Modernism is over. Now we're in post modernism, you guys.

Yeah.

[B]

So.

[A]

And lots of people use the term postmodernism. Sort of like we had to define modernism. We kind of have to define postmodernism.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because once again, for example, it's not anything you don't like.

[B]

I think that's how it was used. Like, especially like in the early to mid-90s a lot.

[A]

Then there was a lot of that. Any societal trend that was bad was postmodern.

[B]

Postmodern. Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Here's the. Here's my controversial statement. This is going to alienate a lot of people. It's not Marxism.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, Marxism is a modernism, you guys.

[A]

Yes, it is peak modernism. Okay? So there is no such thing as postmodern Marxism.

I know you hear people talk about it, but it doesn't exist. It's a married bachelor. Such thing as postmodern Marxism. And calling it neo Marxism doesn't help. Let me explain why, okay?

Because here's what happens. They say, well, no, it's neo Marxism because they don't believe X, Y, Z, which are constitutive parts of Marxism. They believe these other things instead. So it's. See, it's neo Marxism. Okay, so here's the problem. Let's say I decide right now, I'm going to call Father Andrew a neo fascist. Father Andrew, you're a neo fascist?

[B]

I'm the new kind of person who believes in private ownership and government control of the private means of production.

[A]

So.

Father Andrew then proceeds to say, no, I'm not. And he lays out all the places he disagrees with fascism.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And I say to him, aha, that's why you're a neo fascist.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because if you take away all your disagreements with fascism, You're a fascist. Right, so that's not helpful.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay, so I know some very popular people who I may have. Who I may have shared a stage with this year. Two occasions talk about postmodern neo Marxism, and it's not a thing. Okay? Now, I'm not saying the phenomenon that people are pointing at when they use that term doesn't exist. I'm saying it's not a good label for the phenomenon.

[B]

It's not the right. Not the right word for it.

[A]

It's not the right label to put on it. Right. Because that label doesn't make sense. I understand why they're using that label. Right. Because calling something postmodern doesn't have any bite to it in our culture.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Referring to critical theory doesn't have any bite in our culture. Refer to licensing has no bite in our culture, but calling somebody a commie has some bite. Right? So we got to work Marxism in there somewhere. Okay, I get it. But it really has nothing to do with Marxism. Okay. Like, it's the same way, like just calling a guy upon the. On the right wing, calling him a populist, that doesn't have a lot of bite our culture. Right, but you call him a fascist. Right. That, that one stings a little more. Right. Well, we still using that language isn't helpful because it doesn't actually describe. Right. Or define the person.

[B]

So. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I.

[A]

Post modernists, all of the big postmodernists you've heard of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault were also post Marxists.

[B]

Yes, right. And I mean Marxism when I was, When I low. When I was an undergrad.

These many decades ago now. I was my, My bachelor's degree that I. That I completed because I have. I have an incompleted bachelor's degree as well, but the one that I completed was in English literature. And so I became interested in literary theory, not because I was interested in literary theory, but kind of because I sort of hated it whenever I encountered it and I wanted to understand what was going on. But I. I read a rather good book that, that critiques postmodern literary theory, and it's by a guy named Terry Eagleton who is a Marxist, you know, like. And now he doesn't critique. I mean, it's been a long time since I read the book. I don't think he critiques it from a Marxist point of view in particular. But, but that's, you know, that's his deal.

[A]

He is a modernist, Right?

[B]

He is a modernist.

[A]

Still the modernist guy.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Right.

Postmodernism is not anything other than modernism. Right. So just because someone rejects modernism, that doesn't make them a postmodernist. Right.

And it's not anything that references subjectivity.

[B]

Yeah, right, Right.

[A]

I will take us back once again to the early days of this program.

Where we were talking about the importance of subjectivity in terms of our view of the world. Yeah, right.

[B]

Phenomenology, if you want to use phenomenology.

[A]

That the world is not just made up of what is of the scientific, material, mathematical world, but it is colored in. It is filled in by our subjectivity and our experience. Right. And a fairly prominent orthodox person said we sounded like postmodernists.

[B]

Yeah. Because.

[A]

Because we reference subjectivity.

[B]

Right, right.

[A]

That's not anyone. The idea that someone references subjectivity as having value, that does not make you a postmodernist.

[B]

No.

[A]

So if those things aren't what postmodernism is, what is it? Okay, well, what we call. Steve, what we call.

It's story time, kids.

What we call.

[B]

This would be a sucky story to tell your kids.

[A]

Yes, yes. All right, kids, today we're going to learn about the fact that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What you usually call postmodernism is actually post structuralism.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You say post structuralism.

[B]

Yeah. For family reading time, I'm going to sit down and read them the Illusions of Postmodernism by Terry Eagleton.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So, yeah.

[A]

So if it's actually post structuralism, this then would cause someone to ask the question, okay, what's structuralism?

[B]

Yes, what's structuralism? So once again, it's a bunch of French guys.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Instead of, instead of 19th century Germans, now we've got mid 20th century French.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Saussure, Strauss.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

So.

[A]

Postmodernism.

Doesn'T begin as sort of the full blown movement of postmodern deconstruction at all that it becomes after World War II.

Especially in the early 60s.

It starts out as just a series of criticisms of modernism.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So modernism.

The sort of de facto view of the world in Europe at the time.

Starting at the end of the 19th century, it sort of peaks with Hegel and the Hegelians immediately after him, like Marx, you start getting the reaction from people like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Right. And you start getting these critiques of modernism and those critiques of modernism.

As they start to take hold, as they start to get purchase.

[B]

Right.

[A]

These critiques. And the modernist edifice starts to break apart. Well, you need something to replace it.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And so when we talk about postmodernism or post structuralism, we're talking about that thing that kind of replaces it and kind of. We'll explain here in a minute. Right. But as those critiques begin of modernism, sort of the last gasp of modernism in trying to sustain itself, modernism kind of tries to retool itself in light of those critiques.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That are threatening to tear it down. It tries to reformulate its position sort of the way Plotinus tries to reformulate Platonism as Christianity is really putting an end to it. Right.

So they try to. And structuralism is sort of the last school of thought.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So.

One of the primary attacks.

On modernity is on the idea of objectivity.

And as Father Andrew already alluded to, a lot of this plays out in terms of literary criticism. One of the main places of attack.

[B]

On.

[A]

Objectivity is in language. Language's ability to convey meaning.

[B]

Yeah. You know, ultimately, like the. The post structuralists, the deconstructionists, what they say is that language cannot actually convey meaning. You know, we all are talking around each other, but. But no one is actually communicating because, like, how do you know. How do you know that the sounds you're making are received in the same way that you intend them?

[A]

Well, it's. It's not just that. Right, right. Going beyond that. Right. So you have to look at. So the modernist consensus throughout most of the modern period is the way they saw language working. We'll use writing as an example, is I have an idea in my head. Right, Right. I write that idea down. If I write it well. Right. So they took into account the fact that I could be a lousy writer.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

But if I write it well, then when I give that to you and you read it, you will have the exact same idea in your head.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No noise in the channel. It all comes through.

[A]

I will transferred an idea from my head to your head.

[B]

Yeah. And so, like, what you get through language and what you get with a lot of this kind of post structuralist theory is like, they'll talk a lot about the sign. And, you know, so the signifier or the sign and the signified.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Right. So the. The word is the signifier or the sign, and the signified is the thing that it refers to. And they'll say, well, it's not the same thing. There's a. And you know, Derrida particularly uses this word. He takes the French word difference and replaces the last. Well, the second to last E with an A difference, which to me sounds like exactly the same thing. But anyways, he Spells it differently.

Which, you know, him doing that is kind of a joke. Right. He's saying that it's. He's. It's a very meta, kind of and very French sort of joke, but it's a philological joke. And it's essentially saying that the space between these things is so significant that. That all words, all signs are ultimately arbitrary. And like, it's. It's a way of taking nominalism and really pushing it to the very edge of its limits, you know, And. And so that. So that real communication is not actually possible.

[A]

Right.

[B]

We are all living in a solipsistic box, ultimately. I mean, it's very depressing.

[A]

You're kind of going to an extreme here. Right, I know, I know. But, you know, I want to start with. I want to start with the parts that are actually true and viable. I was gonna say I'm reliving some.

[B]

Of my 90s trauma, studying at a university.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I will say, though, I had this one professor, and God rest his soul, Tom Hester. So for anybody who studied under Tom Hester at North Carolina State University back in the day. Amazing man. He went through all this, explained all this stuff, and he said, you know what that is, that they discovered this distance between, know, the sign and the signifier. You know, the signified and the signifier. He says they discovered sin. Congratulations, you guys, you discovered sin.

I'll leave it with that.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Yeah. I would take this at a more basic level. Right.

[B]

Have a little PTSD from some of.

[A]

That stuff, because, of course, that previous modern theory is bogus. Right. The idea that I just directly convinced. Right, right, right. I'm sitting here on the radio right now.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I'm holding a pen in my hand. Now, when I said that you could have a mental image of my hand holding a pen. Right. But what are the odds that the pen you're thinking of looks like the pen I'm holding?

[B]

Yeah. And I mean, every day. Every day, someone reads something that you or I have written or heard that we've said and misinterprets it.

[A]

Right. Well. Interprets it differently than we intended. Yeah, right, right.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, and, you know, you're. You're pretty decent writer, especially when you get an editor in there or three.

[A]

So.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Even if I give more descriptors about the pen, if I say, oh, it's a blue pen. Right. The more descriptors I give, the closer it may get.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

But will it ever be. Precisely the pen will you ever have in your head? Precisely the Pen I'm holding and looking at, and how would I ever know?

Right, yeah. So that. That critique, Right. So we have this valid critique of the way language works. So structuralism hears that, right? Says, yeah, that's true. Right. You know, I could describe a character. I can spend pages, right? I could be J.R.R. tolkien and spend, you know, 30 pages describing a forest.

And what, 30 pages they will be. Yes. And still. And still the guy reading it may have a different image of it in his head of the forest than I intended.

[B]

Absolutely right. Absolutely.

[A]

So people have to take this on board, right? There's truth to this, right? You can't just dismiss this. Right.

And you can't just pull a Kant like Father Andrew just did and say, well, if that's true, that all communication is impossible, so I reject it, right?

Because that's. I mean, that's precisely Nietzsche's refutation of Kant. Kant is like, well, if X, Y and Z aren't true, then logical thought is impossible. And Nietzsche says, who said logical thought was possible?

[B]

Burn it all down.

[A]

Right? You're just assuming that. You're just assuming that logical thought is possible, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So, right. So they say, we're going to take this on board. And so structuralism then advances the theory that the language itself, or if it's a body of language, like a story in and of itself.

Contains the meaning within it objectively. So it has nothing to do with the mind of the author.

And the mind of the reader. The meaning is there on the page in the words.

Okay? That's structuralism.

Right? So the symbol itself is the thing signified.

Essentially.

[C]

Right?

[A]

So I had an Old Testament professor who is very much a structuralist at one point.

In my lifetime of graduate study, right? And he would say, when you are handing in an exegetical paper interpreting a biblical passage, he would say, if you do your job correctly. You'll also see here why structuralism is a form of modernism. You will be able to get together a Christian, a Jew and a Muslim.

And point at that Old Testament passage and go through the original language with them and say, this is what it means. And they'll all agree with you.

Yeah, because that's just what the language means, right? That structuralism. And you can see how it's a form of modernism. It's this idea that it's objective. It's there on the page. It's there in the language.

[C]

Okay?

[A]

And I've also had Straussian professors and stuff. And.

This can go to crazy places.

Right? Like the sycamore tree at the beginning, sycamore trees always represent death. Supposedly that is a symbol of death. Always. Everywhere. It's hard to do this without some kind of Jungian idea in the background. Right. Because why would be writing about a sycamore tree and Plato in 4th century BC.

Athens Writing about a sycamore tree and the sycamore tree that Zacchaeus climbs to see Jesus, all represent death.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But this is a real professor I had right at the beginning of Plato's Laws, there's a sycamore tree. It represents death. So the whole discussion, we have to frame the whole discussion in the shadow of death. Yeah. Because there's this tree.

That'S mentioned at the beginning.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And you can very see how this can go in weird galaxy brain directions.

[C]

Right.

[A]

Like. Of like the collar, like we were talking about with the collar of making a lot of false connections.

Right. Making a lot of false connections and too many, too many pins, too many strings on the corkboard. Right.

Going down this road. But it was an attempt to salvage objectivity. Yeah, right. It was an attempt to salvage objectivity by putting it into the language itself. And so this is why, when you get the full blown post structuralists, who we call postmodernists, like Derrida, Right. They're attacking language. They're attacking. They have to attack the language itself because their opponents were arguing that the language itself sort of contains the meaning.

[B]

Right. Yeah. That the patterns are objective.

[A]

Right. And let me say there's some legitimacy to that.

[B]

Right?

[A]

Sure. And this is. This is one of the things that drives me nuts and should drive you nuts. You should be suspicious. Right. Anytime any Christian person, for example, says, well, well, if you could read this in the Greek.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The Greek word means this. Right. Why should you be suspicious of that? Well, this person, if they know the original language, why do they think that word in Greek means that?

[B]

Yeah. Because someone told them that.

[A]

Or a book, a lexicon.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Somebody wrote that lexicon.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, it's.

[A]

If it's a lexicate of biblical Greek. This is why I use Liddell Scott. I use the general Greek lexicon, not the New Testament Greek lexica. Because Liddell and Scott, the Liddell and Liddell Scott, by the way, is the father of Alice Little, who Alice in Wonderland was written about.

[B]

Do you have the Little Little. The middle little or the Great Scott?

[A]

I have the Great Scott. Oh, I have an old middle little, but I also have the Great Scott.

[C]

Wow.

[A]

Right. I use those. But even those. Right. Reflect the views of the people. But they weren't particularly Christian. So there's fewer theological biases in terms of the New Testament, but people are coming to it. And the post structuralists are.

[B]

Right.

[A]

People who are putting those Lexica together have biases. Yeah.

[B]

It's turtles all the way down.

[A]

They're not totally objective. Right. There is no. No Greek word, has an objective meaning, is equal to an English word. That's not how languages work.

[B]

Right, Yep.

[A]

Right. Translation is an art you're trying to get at. Right. The usage of that word in a particular context by using a particular English word in that same context. But there's never a one to one kind of correlation.

That's about. So that's what structuralism is. And that's why what we call postmodernism is really post structuralism. It's really. It takes the form. The deconstruction that Derrida is doing, for example, is a deconstruction of structuralism. It's deconstruction.

[B]

Yeah, sure, Right. The basic problem is, yes, you can look at texts, you can look at the world, you can look at whatever and see patterns and so forth, of course, but there is a selectivity of attention, you know, like the patterns that you see are the patterns that you see. It's not the only thing that's there. That's like one of my favorite jokes when someone says, you're just sitting there doing nothing. As I'll say, well, actually on a cellular level, I'm really quite busy, you know, because there's a massive complex set of patterns that are happening in the human body that are totally invisible and maybe are more important than anything else that I'm doing at the moment, you know.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

For example.

[A]

Rest on your laurels.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. And so really what we're talking about when we're talking about postmodernism is the rejection of certain elements of modernity.

[B]

Right.

[A]

The rejection of positivism, meaning the idea. So positivism is essentially the modern idea that we can know things for certain using scientific methodology, and eventually by correctly applying scientific methodology, we can know everything.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I think that that's the basic assumption that a lot of people have without usually saying it.

[A]

Yes, yes. And if you read. Go and read the introduction, the preface, the prolegometer to Hodges systematic theology is that conservative Presbyterian scholar at old princeton in the 19th century. But despite being conservative, as we would use it religiously in terms of his beliefs. Right. And not on the modernist side, more on the fundamentalist side.

For what would come later, he is a dyed in the wool modernist because he says it is prolegometer that the text of scripture is data.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

That if we properly analyze and arrange the data, that theology is a science and the results of correctly doing biblical theology are just as certain as the results of physics or the other natural sciences.

Right. So that's positivism. That's in a religious, in a Christian religious context. That's positivism. Right. This sort of great confidence. And so postmodernism attacks that says that's nonsense.

Right. You can know some things with relative degrees of certainty, but you can't know anything with that degree of certainty. And you definitely can't know everything.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

With any degree of certainty at all. Right.

Postmodernism attacks the idea of objectivity.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And the idea that anyone is ever objective. As we've said on the show, quoting Thomas Nagel, there is no view from nowhere. Okay. Those two criticisms, by the way, I think are pretty much entirely valid.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Right. They have heard me. Way back in the long ago time, one of the conversations I had with Bago, I said, well, one of the good things about postmodernism is it helped destroy modernism. Right. So there's.

So these are, these critiques aren't invalid right now. They're going to go a little further though. Right. So postmodernism is going to say.

There are no universals.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Universals don't exist. There are only particulars.

[B]

This is, this is why a lot of people.

Use postmodernism, that word, as a kind of synonym for relativism.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

All generalizations are false, which is a hysterical statement. Right. But.

I've even heard someone say all generalizations are false, including that one.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Which is amazing.

So, and then based on that, they deny the existence of truth as such.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Meaning some kind of objectives truth, some kind of truth that could be accessed by everyone.

But you notice it's just a series of rejections. It's just a series of critiques. It doesn't actually replace modernism with anything.

[B]

Yeah. It's just burning it down.

[A]

And that's why it's referred to as postmodernism or post structuralism. It doesn't have any actual positive name for itself because it isn't anything. Thing.

[B]

Yeah. And doesn't pretend to be anything really.

[A]

Yeah. It's just a deconstruction of modernism and thus postmodernism. Right.

And so, you know.

We need to double deeper, because the origins, the origins of postmodernism, as, as I mentioned earlier, are really in the earliest reactions against modernism.

That's where the first little pieces, it's just at that point arguments against modernism, as modernism became ascendant and went awry.

And its origins ultimately come out of politics.

Now people are going to get scared, but we're talking about 18th and 19th century European politics.

[B]

If it applies at all to 2024 politics. Let the reader do that on his own.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

Right. So. And it happens in a move to. And a transformation of the political right. Okay. Now as I say that.

If you don't live in the United States, you, you have a general idea of what I mean. If you live in the United States. You don't know what I mean by that.

[C]

Right.

[A]

Because American politics is weird and goofy and basically pro football.

Just two teams. People root for their team.

[B]

Right, Right. Yeah. So, so, so traditional. Right.

[A]

Think of right and left in terms of social issues.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

Your stance on so various social issues.

[B]

Cultural issues, historically and even now, like I would say probably in Europe, to be right wing is to be kind of more monarchist, more.

[A]

You know, we're talking about the period where the right wing were monarchists and supported the landed gentry and the nobility, and the left wing were revolutionaries who wanted to overthrow hereditary monarchies and establish bourgeois democracy. Yeah, like, like that's the right and the left we're talking about.

[B]

Old European conservatism was about like habits and traditions, you know, like conserving things. Like we've always done it that way and, and we should continue to do it that way because we respect the wisdom of the centuries, the collection of the, you know, the things that our people kind of worked out over time as the way we do things. Yeah.

[A]

You know, and here's, here's how foreign this is to the current American way of thinking.

I don't know.

Almost no Americans today would identify the founding fathers of the United States as radical leftists, even though they all were in their time.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Radical in a sense. They picked up guns and shot at British soldiers.

[B]

Right. By these. Yeah, by these.

[A]

Like you don't get more radical than that.

[B]

Traditional considerations. Yeah, right. Yeah.

[A]

So this is very different than the way we use right and left in America today.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So don't assume there's a one to one correlation. Right.

So there is, of course, as modernism begins, there is of course this struggle. And this struggle is also related to the rise of capitalism, where you have. The rise of bourgeois society where you have people who are not hereditary nobility but who become wealthy because you move from feudalism to capitalism. Right. And so these people start to become wealthy they have financial and monetary power, but they don't have social and political power because that's all held by the nobility.

Right. And so the tenants of modernism that we were talking about.

Start to tear at this. They say, well, look, there's no difference between me and the King.

[B]

Right.

[A]

In fact, the King was just born to the previous king. I've worked my whole life and amassed this fortune. Yeah, right. And the policies the King makes, they affect me. He's taxing me.

On my wealth. He's making laws that make it harder for me to do business and trade.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I should be the one making those decisions that affect me.

[B]

Off with his head.

[A]

Right. And it's. When this goes there, when the French Revolution in particular, a little bit with the American Revolution, but then especially the French Revolution, because, of course, the American revolutionaries couldn't get it. King George, if they wanted to. Right, yeah. Guys like Thomas Paine, who got thrown out of Britain for being a radical leftist, were the kind of guys who would have killed the King if they got the chance, but they didn't. But in France they do. And the Reign of Terror starts. Right. And the Reign of Terror starts in the name of Enlightenment reason.

Right.

Liberte, egalitae, fraternity, all of these modernist values. This is an eruption of modernism. And so when you look at the reaction, when you look at Burke in particular, the founding father of traditional conservative philosophy, you look at Edmund Burke's response to the French Revolution, and what does he say? What is his argument against the French revolutionaries, against the Jacobins? His argument is, one of his central arguments is the. That they claim to know universal truth, they claim to have access to universal reason.

And Burke says those things don't exist.

There are only particular people in particular places, particular times, particular cultures, particular traditions.

And that those are the things that have value.

Not these pretended universal rights. Universal right, egalitarianism, none of this. Right. And you could see there the seeds in Burke's conservatism.

Of what will become the postmodern critique of modernity.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

You could see the seeds. Seeds there in seed form. And so.

Postmodernism is actually a way of thinking that far more often conservative people fall into than the opposite.

[B]

Right.

[A]

People who are actual liberals tend to end up becoming modernists.

[B]

Yeah. Because there's a big program to make everything awesome.

[A]

Yeah. And people have a more conservative bent. The danger is that they slip into kind of a postmodern view.

In their attack on. On the modernists.

[B]

Right, yeah, I remember, I remember. Well, I'm see This is. Again, this is bringing up all of my. My. My 90s, my 90s literary theory triggers. But I remember Dr. Hester, whom I mentioned earlier.

[A]

Someone asked with Uncle Fester.

[B]

Yeah. No, not to be confused at all. Yeah. Someone asked him, like, so, you know, because he was describing structuralism, post structuralism, all this sort of stuff, and he's. And. And someone asked him, like, well, what in this view does anything mean then? How do you understand life? And he says. He says, look, if you really boil this down to this. And this is. He's talking about this question of particulars. So if you really boil it down, life is just one damned thing after another. That's. That's what he said. I was like, oh, man.

[A]

On the air.

[B]

Yeah, I know. Well, you know, we could talk about damnation.

[A]

Is it hellfire? And.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But. Yeah, I mean that. But that's.

[A]

But that's.

[B]

Right. Like, it's. It's like when you really embrace this kind of post structuralist stuff, then. Then there isn't any way to interpret or understand. There's no story at all. Right. I mean, this is one of. This is Right.

[A]

People like, that's not how they see things working.

[B]

Yeah. The meaning crisis. Because, you know, what. What story is there meaning?

[A]

Is it out there to be found? Which is a good segue. Right. Where does it come from then?

[B]

Right.

[A]

I'll tell you where it comes from.

[B]

Where does it.

[A]

My friends and I use.

[B]

Well.

[A]

Sometimes I would like to have Nietzsche as a friend. I would never like to have Michel Foucault as a friend.

[B]

Yeah. No. Yeah, Like Foucault and Lacan. Super creepy.

[A]

Yeah. Like, there's not enough. There's not really enough Purell for me to hang around with Michel Foucault.

[B]

Never look up their lives unless you have a strong stomach, people. But.

[A]

But I don't know. Nietzsche seemed fun at parties.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Cool mustache.

Right. So Nietzsche don't live at the same time. Right. So Nietzsche is at the end of the 19th century. And we get a couple of things right from Nietzsche. And Foucault is a Nietzsche. And so Foucault is deliberately building on Nietzsche. Right.

But the couple of pieces you get from Nietzsche that affect this kind of postmodernism. Number one, on the critique level, Nietzsche ultimately argues for. For a kind of perspectivalism.

[B]

Right.

[A]

There is no truth. There's only perspectives on truth. There's no reality. There's only perspectives on reality. Reality. Yeah. So when I describe the pen, I'm just describing how the pen appears to me.

I have no way of even knowing that if you were here in the room with me looking at the same pen, that it would look the same to you as it does to me.

[B]

Yeah. I can't get inside your head.

[A]

Right. And so. Right. He goes down that road. So this idea that there aren't facts, there are just perspectives.

Right? There's. There's no truth out there. There's just perspectives, ideas, viewpoints, interests, desires, Right? That's what there exists. But there are no. There are no facts. There's no shared reality, even. And Nietzsche gives the great man theory of history, or at least a classical example of it. I would say Plutarch has a great man theory of history, but.

The great man theory of history being that there are these certain watershed points in history where a great man comes along and that great man redefines human life and civilization basically by the force of his will and charisma.

[B]

Right?

[A]

So you don't have stories out there that have any meaning or help you discover meaning in the world, but. But you have a great man who comes and tells you a story, and the story he tells you gives you meaning or reframes what the world means and even is right. And so he identifies, for example, Jesus of Nazareth as one of these people.

He doesn't like the way Christianity transformed the world, but it did, right? He acknowledges that it did, right. He hates how it transformed the world, but he acknowledges it transformed the world, right? And his whole thing with the Ubermensch, right, The overman, right, who's coming is. He's talking about the next. There's going to be a next great man who comes and is going to redefine all this now, because he was convinced that the sort of Christian era in Europe was over and by all signs, 125 years later, is still kind of looking like that, sadly.

But that someone was going to come and was going to.

Then, you know, reevaluate all values, was going to come and transform everything. And of course, this invited somebody like Adolf Hitler to come and present himself and say, oh, yeah, I'm that guy.

Right? Follow me. Right? Yeah. Even though Nietzsche would have hated him, like, virulently, but he presents that view, right? And this is very much drawing on these figures like Alexander the Great, Napoleon, right? So the way Michel Foucault kind of develops, that is that Foucault says, well, there are people who are in power.

Regardless of how they've come to have it, they have it and they can use that Power. They could use what he calls force. And force for him is not always like physical force or violence. It could be force of will, force of persuasion, force of personality. Right? All of those things are in the force.

But they come and they define things. So he takes sort of Nietzsche's Great man in Uber Rich and says, well, it's a little more diffuse than that. Right? So like, the king of a country, or even the president or prime minister of a country has to some degree the ability to do that within their own country.

And so they will redefine language, they will invent new language. They will do that, and by doing that, they will reframe the way a given group of people under their power perceive the world.

[B]

Right?

[A]

They will change the world that those people live in, sort of by. By this assertion of force.

[B]

Right?

[A]

And this is. We talked once before, we were talking about madness, the episode where we talked about madness, which I think was one of our Halloween episodes, maybe.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

We talked about some of Foucault's early work on madness, where he visited saint asylums, and he did a lot of actual work on this. And he talked about how the idea of madness had changed historically to mean different things.

Right? That in the ancient world, madness meant somebody was touched by the gods, it was special, and had some kind of secret wisdom. Right. And then later on in the medieval period, he says, you know, shows how madness became this category of.

Opposes the king, right. Is it willing to conform to society's rules? Right.

[B]

This.

[A]

This woman isn't willing to live the way our society says she should live. So she's mad, she's crazy, put her in an asylum. And then it evolved again to what we now talk about mental illness, where. Where we've medicalized the idea of madness. And we talk about it in a very different way now. Right? And so from Foucault's perspective, right, There's. There's no reality that's changed.

[B]

Right?

[A]

But the way in which we view this phenomena has completely and radically been redefined multiple times in human history.

[C]

Right?

[A]

And so this is just something that happens through sort of the force of persuasion, these other things he defines as force. So as we mentioned, there is this correct critique of modernism contained in there about objectivity not being real, that scientific or material reality is. Does not, Is not the same thing as reality as such. There are things that are real that aren't scientifically measurable.

Right?

[C]

Or.

[A]

Or don't subsist in material, but they're still real.

And it is correct that universals are abstractions, whereas particulars really exist.

Okay, this is a. Sorry, Plato and anyone out there who's Plato brained, right? Chair does not exist. They're just a whole lot of chairs.

[B]

Right?

[A]

And we abstract from all those particular chairs to say, well, this is what makes a chair a chair, because this is what they all have in common.

[B]

Right?

[A]

But postmodernism then, because all it has is that critique is, it follows that critique through to the opposite extreme. So whereas modernism will only acknowledge that what is quote unquote, Quote unquote objective, that what is scientifically measurable, that is mathematically quantifiable, that's all that's real.

Postmodernism will say, no, only subjectivity is real.

All of those things are language games that people are playing.

They don't necessarily connect to reality in any way. Everyone just lives in their own subjectivity all the time. There is no reality, there's no factual reality that anyone has access to. Like, sure, there's material reality out there, probably, right? But you don't have any access to it. All you have access to is your perspective, your perceptions of it.

And then ultimately there's this denial that things have natures, that things are anything. Right? That the object, the particular object I was talking about is not really a chair.

I call it a chair because I've decided it's a chair and I'm going to sit on it. But there is nothing about it in and of itself that makes it a chair.

And that then gets applied to humans. There is no human nature.

[C]

Right.

[A]

That is a, any kind of trans, historical, transnational universal reality. Right.

Which obviously causes a lot of problems for your view of humanity. Yeah, Christ's humanity.

So it's this opposite extreme.

[C]

Right.

[A]

So what does, what do manifestations of postmodern Christianity look like? We talked about modern Christianity.

What is postmodern Christianity look like? Well.

Something happened in the early 80s.

And that's evangelicalism, which had been a form of Protestantism. It had been the conservative form of Protestantism, became a political movement.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, right. I mean, that's not all it is, right? No, but, but, but it really, very self consciously there was a sense of like, we need to take back our country, you know, voting bloc, take this country for God, you know, and, and that means, that means politics very, very clearly a political movement.

[A]

Right. And by that, right. Foucault's force, we need to grasp the reins of power and use them to restructure the country the way we want it to be, the way we think it should be the way we believe it should be.

[B]

Right? Yeah.

[A]

And you see the language.

Right? You see the language of values. We've talked about this before on the show, but the language of values showing up within that. The political part of that movement.

[B]

Right? Yeah.

[A]

Not so much in the religious part, but in the political part of the movement, we start using the word value. So we've talked before on the show that comes from Shaler's value theory. The idea being there's a neutral moral landscape out there.

Nothing is really good or bad, but there are things that we value.

We as a particular culture, value.

[B]

I mean, that's practically. You are about to quote Hamlet, literally nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's valuing.

[A]

Right. So, yes, we in our culture, we in our family, we here, we in our community, we value honesty.

[B]

Yeah, Right.

[A]

But honesty is not better than lying objectively, because there's no objective. Right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's just this is what we value. And so you get that language of value. Start talking about family values.

[B]

Right? Values. Yeah. People, a lot of people who talk about those things that's. They wouldn't say that honesty and lying are objectively the same. But we've. We happen to think that honest. We want honesty. But the problem is that language of values basically is assuming that.

[A]

Right. That's the presupposition under that language.

[B]

This is what valuable to us.

[A]

Right. And you can see the difference in approach. So a modern approach to this would be. Here I have all of these studies done by social scientists at universities showing that intact families benefit society in ways. Xyz. Right. We're going to. We're going to put together scientific evidence that's the mod to support the point that this is what we should do. That's the modernist approach, right?

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

The postmodern approach is we believe in family values.

This is what we need to do.

And it doesn't matter what studies show. Get out of here with your studies.

We're suspicious of the studies.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Because you're a bunch of modernists, which means you're probably a bunch of liberals.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Like that's. So get out of here with that.

[B]

Right.

[A]

That's the difference. Right. In approach that postmodernism asserts, just asserts beliefs and values. And when someone pushes back on that assertion, rather than making some kind of argument or trying to prove that their point is true by giving some kind of facts. Right. The postmodern approach just asserts with more force.

Asserts more forcefully.

[B]

Yeah, Right. Which, I mean, why is more Force that's, you know, in a lot of ways that sort of.

Shouting everything down.

Is kind of where we are with a lot of stuff now.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You know, just scream it out. Yeah, right.

[A]

Another example of where we see postmodern Christianity. Have you noticed all the particular study Bibles?

[B]

There's so many study Bibles.

[A]

The Med's study Bible, the Women's study Bible, the Children's study Bible, the Patriot Bible. The Patriot study Bible.

[B]

The.

[A]

With a big American flag on the.

[B]

COVID I know, on and on.

[A]

And not just that, we got to be fair.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Lutheran study Bible, Reform study Bible, Orthodox study Bible. Yeah, see, I don't care, Bobby. I'll just say this stuff on the airline.

[B]

The following does not represent the opinions.

[A]

Exactly. Yeah, put the disclaimer back on.

[B]

Where's that disclaimer?

[A]

Right. Where this isn't present, where the way this is being presented as is here is a fill in the blank view or interpretation or reading of the scriptures.

[B]

Yeah. Aversion.

[A]

Yeah. Not here's what this means.

Right. But here's what this means from this perspective.

[B]

Right.

[A]

That is a postmodern approach.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And also a good way to make a lot of money for Bible publishing houses that print all these dozens of different study Bibles.

[B]

Yeah. Just go to Amazon and type in study Bible and it's just, just keep scrolling, just scroll.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And then when, when you go to.

[B]

A Bible study, the CSB Apologetics Study Bible.

[A]

Yeah, there you go.

[B]

The CSB Everyday Study Bible. Sorry, it just goes on and on.

[A]

You, you, you do these Bible studies in churches and at Christian groups that are basically reader response Bible studies. Meaning they don't ask the question, what does this mean? They say, what does this mean to me?

[B]

What does it mean to me?

Right.

[A]

Here's how this, you know, affects my life. Meaning here's how this interacts with my own subjectivity.

[C]

Right.

[A]

Not what does this mean? What's the danger of that?

Well, whatever your reading is, is rarely going to challenge your subjectivity.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Very rarely do you go to one of those reader response style Bible studies and somebody says, wow, I read this and I realized I was totally wrong.

About xyz.

[B]

Yeah. Right.

[A]

And if you're only using a study Bible that you already agree with, that will never happen.

[B]

Right.

But.

[A]

You get worship that's aimed at not doing something. Right. Where our worship, our ritual is doing something, is accomplishing something, but aimed at producing a kind of religious experience.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Right. We're going to come together and try to have this experience. And if it doesn't happen enough times in a row. We, we go somewhere else chasing that experience again.

Right. But it's this subjective experience we're looking for, not any kind of objective. Right. It's not, I'm going to go and receive the Eucharist, which I know is going to grant me healing of body and soul, the forgiveness of sins, draw me closer to Christ. None of that kind of. It's. I'm going to go and we're going to have a great time of worship and I'm going to leave feeling really inspired.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, and this is the basis for a lot of people asking the question, like, well, you know, what does it mean for me to participate? You know. Yeah, because it's. People are looking to get something out of it, quote unquote, you know.

[A]

And it leads to, in terms of way of life and ethics, you get just this kind of broad tolerance.

That'S based on there being any kind of objective standard. Right. Because.

We can't actually know anything for sure. Right. So. Right. What, well, what does that mean?

[B]

Right.

[A]

What does that mean? For example, if you've got a modernist, if you've got a modernist who's in favor of.

Receiving same sex married people into their, into their church body, right. The modernist will go and give you super convoluted.

Ways of reading all of the biblical passages that seem to condemn homosexuality, but arguing they don't really. Right? They'll give you this huge like. And see, if you look at, if you, if you do a word study on this Hebrew word, this, it refers to temple prostitutes. You get all that from a modernist, right? You talk to a postmodernist who believes in the same thing. The postmodernist will just say to you something like, well, God loves everyone.

Love is love.

Who are you to judge? Right? It's a very different.

Right approach, right? Because the modernist still thinks there's objective reality out there that they have to account for and work around, Right. Whereas the postmodernist doesn't.

And in terms of the self, we talked about how for the modernist yourself, your soul is something, is something fixed. You go and you try and find it. You, you go try to figure out who you are. Right? Whereas in a postmodern approach, the self is completely protean, meaning it's everybody knows who Proteus is, don't they?

You either know Greek myth or you know X Men comics. Come on, you got to know one of the two at least. Anyway, I don't think everybody knows who Proteus is. Protean means ever shifting and changing.

[B]

Yes. Because he's a sea God. He's a sea God, you guys. Right.

[A]

So everything is constantly fluid.

[B]

Kind of a lesser sea God. Not, Not Poseidon, kind of.

[A]

Everything is constantly fluid. It's not who am I? It's who am I now?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Who am I today? Who am I going to be in this situation?

[B]

It's, it's, it's, you know, to use two phrases that we hear a lot. I was born this way versus that's the modernist approach. That's the modernist one versus I identify as. Yes. That's the protean postmodern.

[A]

So the earlier modernist view was, you know, person was born that way. That's who they are. Right. You can't change that. Right. Whereas the postmodern approach is. This is what I identify as. This is how I'm choosing to express myself today. It might be different tomorrow.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So different. Right.

So what, you know, in terms of our assessment, in terms of our criteria, what can we say about postmodern Christianity? Is it false Christianity or is it something else? And I'm going to go ahead and say it's something else. Why? Well, because there's, for example, there are no authority structures.

[B]

Yes. There's not even a continuity of authority structure or, you know, an alteration of authority structures.

[A]

It's just not, there's aren't any.

[B]

It's, it's, it's, it's really just cults of personality in a lot of ways. I mean, that's the worst version of it, but the best version is still like, it's based on charisma and, and ability and whatever. There's no like apostolic succession or any version.

[A]

There's not even ordination, really.

[B]

Yeah, not really.

[A]

Yeah, it's like Mussolini or Kennedy. It's a cult of personality.

But yeah, it's just force of charisma.

[C]

Right.

[A]

If, if I want to be a leader within postmodern Christianity, what do I need to do? I need to create a YouTube account.

[B]

Yeah. Talented, hopefully. Good looking.

[A]

Maybe. Maybe.

[B]

Or say things that make people tune in.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Right.

[A]

That's it.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And if I get enough views, I am now a leader. I am now a Christian leader. I am now a Christian teacher. No one's laid hands on me.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

No one's ordained me. No one's set me aside to this ministry. No one's done anything. I just made a YouTube account.

[B]

Who's, who's the bishop that commissioned me to do this? Who cares?

[A]

And as soon as people turn on me Because I say the right thing, wrong thing, I'm done.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. This kind of authority is taken down by cancel culture.

[A]

Right. But it actually means there's no real authority.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If I can't say anything to my audience that they don't want to hear, I don't have any authority over them.

[B]

That's right. Because authority is about being able to correct people.

[A]

Yeah. So when we say there's no authority structures, not only are there no structures, there's also no authority. There's not either of them.

[B]

It's just force of charisma.

[A]

And yeah. Force it is for. Is exactly what Foucault called force.

[C]

Right.

[A]

They have no functioning scriptures.

[B]

Okay. What do you mean by that?

[A]

Because what I mean by that.

[B]

Yeah. Because obviously, like they're all reading the Bible.

[A]

So the president, that now former president, now I think deceased, actually former president of a reformed seminary in the United States that was not even regarded as all that liberal at the time he was president.

Said to me.

The hardest thing he had had to deal with in his decades of ministry were people who said the Bible says this. And.

And this man said, because the Bible doesn't say anything.

You interpret the Bible as saying that.

[B]

Yeah. So in what sense are the scriptures anything? If that's really the case? Yeah.

[A]

Because they can be anything. And this is why you get this vast swath of identity politics readings of scripture. If you've had the misfortune, the American Academy of Religion is even worse than SBL on this. But African American readings of scriptures.

Feminist readings of scripture, queer readings of scripture. Right. And that's these papers. A queer reading of Ezekiel, chapter three. Right. Oh, yeah, right. And all these things. Now I'm. I'm in favor of everyone reading the scriptures.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Women, African Americans. Right. Even gay people should read the scriptures. Right. But when it's approached in this perspectival, postmodern way of just. Well, here's what it says to me based on my group identity.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Based on my individual identity. This is what this says to me as a fill in the blank.

Right. You're ready to trouble when someone starts any sentence with as a blank.

But as a. Right. This is what says to me as a da da, da, da da. That's implying that the text by itself doesn't say anything.

The meaning only comes out of the subjectivity of the reader.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Which is a postmodern approach. Right. Which means, like that seminary president said to me, the Bible doesn't say anything. Well, if the Bible doesn't say anything, you don't have Scriptures.

[B]

Yeah.

Right.

[A]

Not that function with any kind of authority.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, how could you. How could, you know, the fathers who wrote the creed ever say according to the scriptures, Quoting the scriptures, by the way, when they said that? But. And what does that even mean if it's really just. If it's really just individually subjective?

[A]

Right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, there's. And in terms of material reality, of course, the postmodern. There's no objective material reality out there, bad or good. There is no such thing.

[C]

Right.

[A]

And so these postmodern forms of Christianity are completely artificial because each person is constructing it within and based on their own subjectivity.

Right. Just go on YouTube and watch random evangelical videos.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I was just. I did that today. I watched one where a guy was talking about. Because of my dissertation. It's kind of a pet hobby thing. This guy was talking about why he.

Even though he was raised to believe in penal substitutionary atonement, this young guy no longer believes in it. He's talking about why he believes in it. And it's just a list of things he found troubling about it.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

He gives a list of things he found troubling about it. And then he says, and I did some research. I found out there were other ways of looking at it.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And this particular way of looking at it really appealed to me.

[C]

Wow.

[B]

So it comes down to. I didn't like it, and I like this.

[A]

So there was no what is true. Right. What did Christ do for me when he died on the cross and rose again?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What did he do for me? The Incarnation. That's not the question that's asked.

[B]

Yeah. You know, I mean, it's one of.

[A]

The ways of looking at it. And which one appeals to me?

[B]

I left evangelicalism about 30 years ago, and it really. I mean, it is not the evangelicalism I grew up with. It's just not. It's really gone way down this. This road.

[A]

And so what you have are these foreign elements bearing Christian ish terminology, and it's something else. So if modernism, when it. When it gets to deform Christianity, produces what we might call liberal Protestantism or just liberal Christianity in general, because there are liberals in the Roman Catholic Church, there are liberals in the Orthodox Church, even.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Not a lot. But they're noisy.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Right. Then. Then post modernism produces a lot of contemporary evangelicalism.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And it's a little more insidious.

Because you can very much have postmodern conservatism.

[B]

Yeah. Yep.

[A]

Like, you could identify a liberal by their conclusions.

Right. Whereas postmodernism is purely an issue of method, not of conclusions. You could be a postmodernist and arrive at any set of conclusions. You could be a postmodern trad.

You could say this traditional way of life is what appeals to me. So I'm going to do.

Appeals to me. And I find it useful in certain ways.

[B]

To me, the classic postmodern trad is the kind of.

Person, and frankly, it's usually a guy that, that, you know, like, for him, like liturgics is kind of a boutique shop of cool old stuff. Yeah.

[A]

There are trad wives who approach it in a very postmodern way. There are women who just, this is the lifestyle I want to live.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

You know.

So that's, you know.

So these are currents that are at work. So we're not just saying like, oh, all you evangelicals are postmodernists and all you mainline Protestants are all modernists. We're saying.

There'S a swath. Right. At least as we look at American Christianity, there's a swath of liberal Protestantism and liberal Roman Catholicism and liberals within the Orthodox Church.

[C]

Church.

[B]

Right.

[A]

They have less power to do things in the Orthodox Church. They're still there. That's why they're so noisy. They're always complaining.

Right. And there are plenty of people who approach things in a postmodern way. Right. Outside of evangelicalism. Right. You don't find a lot of postmodernists actually in mainline liberalism because they're all dedicated modernists. That's sort of their whole thing.

[B]

Thing.

[A]

But.

But it definitely is where evangelicalism tends to slide.

And where it has slid over the past several decades. We are also going to be self critical. Yep. Here as we begin. Not as we begin, but in, in the third half. But so now the third half we're going to talk about. Okay, so now that this bleak picture has been painted, what do we do?

[B]

Yeah. So what? So. All right. Well, you've wasted another perfectly good hour of your life on the Lord of Spirits podcast. So we're going to take our second and final break and we'll be right back.

[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-that's 855-AF-RADIO.

[B]

The existence of fools for Christ in the Orthodox tradition mystifies many people, even some within the Orthodox Church itself. People often wonder what purpose these sometimes comical and oftentimes sometimes tragically misunderstood saints.

[A]

Serve in the life of the church.

[B]

Especially given their unconventional and seemingly bizarre behaviors. In Holy Fools by Oswin Creighton, we begin to gain a better understanding of these saints curious manner of serving Christ as we learn about the extraordinary lives of 20 of the most well known fools for Christ in a series of brief hagiographies available [e-mail] Again, that is.

[A]

Store.Ancient faith.com 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-A-F radio.

[B]

Welcome back. It's the third half of the Lord of Spirits podcast.

We're back now. We're back now.

[A]

Are we back now?

[B]

Yeah, I think so.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And we're back. Before we roll on to the third half, we actually have a caller from the Great White north who has been waiting very patiently since sometime near the beginning of the, the second half.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

So. I know, I know. So, Roger, this is your moment.

[A]

How are things in Kakistan?

[C]

Hi, fathers, thank you for taking my call.

[A]

Yeah, what's up?

[C]

As a, as a joke even. Well, I have a question, but as a joke even the, the naturist found a way to justify the, the Bible, their way of life in Christianity. But my question is in last time I asked the question about if Christ would have came even though Adam would not have sinned. And you gave me a perfect answer. But now I have a small question to that is in the New Testament, when they say that Christ had to come and die, are they saying that he had to come or they just saying Christ died for our sins? Like, are they saying he had to come or is just describing what happened for, for sin, like, for.

I don't know if it makes sense or not.

[B]

So you're asking if it was a matter of necessity, is that what you're saying?

[C]

Yeah, within, within the premise of if Christ would have came.

That Christ would have came even though Adam would not have sinned. Because if, if, if they would have said had then, then I'm trying to figure that out. But if they just said he just died, then they're just describing what happened. It's kind of, it's, it's like as if we, we kill him because of our sins and stuff.

[B]

But yeah, I mean, Christ's death, I mean, obviously we're in the, the realm of speculation because we, all we have is the reality we have. Right. But in our world, sin did happen and death is introduced into the world.

I would speculate, and I don't know if any of the fathers have said this or what you would say to this Father Stephen, but that if there had not been a fall, that Christ still would have been incarnate, but that the crucifixion would not have been part of it because there would be no need to conquer death because death would not be in humanity. But again, that's. That's in the world of speculation. Right. I don't know. Father, what do you think?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, that's basically right. Right. I mean, Jesus wouldn't have died because nobody would have died.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

That hypothetical. Right. Situation. Right. So, yeah, so they use.

[C]

They actually use the verb had, like the, like a necessity. Pretty much. Not only he, who's they?

[B]

Yeah. I mean, are you. Are you referencing a specific New Testament scripture, a particular verse?

[C]

Yeah, like 1 Corinthians 15.

[A]

Yeah. So that's the way this is described. The fancy theological term for this is.

Because this gets into atonement stuff is consequent necessity.

Meaning given the way the world actually was right or is right.

This happening was necessary. This is what was going to happen, because the world is the way it is.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But it's consequent necessity because if the world were different, then it would not have been.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Yeah. All right, Roger, I hope that answers your question.

[C]

Thank you so much.

[B]

Thanks for calling.

All right, we do have another caller lined up who just called in, so greetings. Next caller. Who are we talking to?

[C]

This is Harrison. Is that. Is that me?

[B]

Yes, it's you, Harrison. Welcome to the Lord of Spirit podcast.

[C]

Yeah, thank you, Father. Thanks for taking my call. I actually caught in fairly late to the episode, but what I've caught so far sparked a question that's been on my mind quite a bit for a long time, which is.

You know, with this discussion of tradition, modernism, postmodernism, evidence, you know, the text, sentiment, the feelings of what feels right, what am I being led to? So for me, as somebody coming from a Protestant background, I think I've had some exposure to more of the mainline things. Growing up Lutheran and then drifted completely away from the church, came back to a more sort of evangelically four square kind of non denominational ish. That might upset some people, but that was the feeling I had.

Since then. I've been very drawn the last few years to orthodoxy. The more I've learned about it, and I could explain more about why that is if that would be helpful for anybody listening. But.

It'S, it's been a difficult question for me. Are there things I really like about this? And like you said, there are people who, you know, I think I have this temptation to want to do it because it's cool, because I like the way it feels. And I just, a couple of weeks ago went to vespers for the first time and really had a very moving experience that felt, I told the priest afterwards, this really feels like I stepped back in time. And he said, oh, you stepped out of time. Yeah, you got me. But it was, it really was a different kind of feeling. But.

I think I have trouble.

Whenever I start thinking about this, like, do I actually want to commit to this? And obviously it's a long process. But.

How do I know what the right church is?

You know, there are churches that have, can explain the history and apostolic succession and all of that, but when it comes down to it, what do I really have besides the feeling of, is this where God wants me?

[B]

Yeah. And you know, especially within the context of what we've just been discussing, and I mean, a lot of people have pointed this out at various times. The act of making a decision to become an orthodox Christian, as opposed to all the other options in front of you, is a very modern act.

Right, right. And I mean, here's the thing. In our cultural context, it's inescapable.

Right. Like, what else can you do?

You know, most people did not grow up within a context where there are a bunch of religious options.

I mean, certainly, and not even in this way, like in the first century when the apostles were first preaching the gospel, they were in a multi religious context, but not in the sense of like, I'm going to pick which religion I like or I want or I think is the right one. It was rather there's all these gods being worshiped and someone could worship multiple ones. In fact, most people did, you know, they wouldn't say, well, I prefer this one, you know.

So in some ways, in a lot of ways, we're in a historically unprecedented period where people make decisions to join a church. And I don't see a way out of that in America in 2024.

I don't, I don't think it's right for me, especially as an orthodox priest, to say you should just simply stay in whatever you were born in, period, no matter what.

Because that's not, that's not right either, you know.

So I mean, one of the things that I discovered, because I at least for me, becoming an Orthodox Christian, you know, as I've mentioned a couple times in this episode, I was raised evangelical. Although more and more, I have to say, not like those events. You know, it was. It was different. It was simply different. I mean, I was. I was born. Father Stephen and I were both born in the same year in the mid-1970s. So, like. But we weren't. We weren't raised with the same tradition. He was raised Dutch Reformed. I was raised kind of Baptist, ish, you know.

And it was. It was different for sure, in the 80s and early 90s, you know, than it is now. But I nonetheless, you know, I made a decision to leave that and to become an Orthodox Christian. That is a modern act. It's just the way that it is.

And for me, a lot of what I went through at the time was, okay, well, let me try to, as much as I can, kind of turn the clock back on Christianity and go to the beginning and see.

Which groups veered off when, you know, and is there any that stayed that did not veer off, that remain consistent and continuous? You know, and that was the way that I now, almost 30 years ago.

Made that decision, at least mentally, intellectually.

The thing that really propelled me in terms of wanting to truly stay was the power of experiencing orthodox Christian worship.

But ultimately, what I would say to anybody is, and how do I know where to be? Is not an answer that I can give that is going to satisfy an intellectual set of categories.

But rather it is.

If you have met Christ and you are willing to turn yourself over to Christ in this particular place, and he is clearest to you in this place, then I think in good conscience, that's where a person should be. That doesn't mean that I agree that all are equal or that all are right or whatever. I believe that orthodox Christianity is the place for that. But if someone is truly seeking God, humbly, you know, I, I can't fault wherever it is that he happens to be, even if it's not where I. I think he should be yet, you know.

[A]

Because.

[B]

And here's why. Because I know of people who have looked at, like, let's just say, for instance, you know, a lot of people, that it comes down to a question between orthodox Christianity and Roman Catholicism, right? Because they're like, well, these are the kind of the two earliest possibilities, you know, and then some might. Might add on the, the. The. What are called the Oriental Orthodox churches. Like, okay, I've got these three options in front of me. Which one is right? They all have Apostolic, you know, origins. Which one is right? I've known of people who've looked at all the same evidence, like, really read it all, really struggled through it all and made different decisions in the end. And I can't say I know exactly why that is the case. It would be tempting to say, well, this person's just too stupid to understand the differences. Or, or, or, I mean, no, no, this is right. Or too stupid or too uninformed. Right. Like, no, I don't think you really read all the books, you know, or, or that they have an ulterior motive. Well, you chose this one because, you know. Right. I, I don't think that those three things can explain. And I, I, it maybe does explain some choice, a lot of choices people make. But if we're going to assume good faith, then we can't assume any of those three things. Those are things for people to ask themselves, you know, am I doing this in good faith? Did I really, you know, whatever. I will tell you. I.

Really recently learned of a very distant relative of mine, like a third cousin in another country, whom I actually just relatively recently met for the first time. And she told me that she had decided to become Orthodox, which shocked me because I was shocked. We had just met. I thought, well, I didn't talk to you about any of this. There's no way I was actually a factor in any way. And I was like, well, why? And it turned out that she had been stopping at an Orthodox church for years to go and light a candle and pray and just loved it in there.

And I thought to myself, you know what? I cannot fault that even a little bit. I can't. Even though that is not a big intellectual journey.

Right? That is not. It's not.

So that's what I would say all about that. I don't know that that's like a satisfactory answer, but I'm going to hand the baton over to Father Steven and see what he's.

[C]

Yeah, I will say I'm inclined to think that is probably a good answer because it is so unsatisfactory, which seems pretty consistent in my experiences.

[A]

I think that's mostly not with you.

[C]

In particular, but with.

[B]

What did you say, Father?

[A]

I disagree with the vast swath of that. I think you're wrong.

So let's talk about how you decide the, the girl you should marry.

And as Father Andrew points out, you could say, well, that's a modern question, because for most of human history, you didn't get to pick, right?

[B]

Your parents picked.

[A]

So the very idea that you get to pick is. But that's a product of living in the modern world. Right? It's not modernism to pick. Yeah, right. The woman you married, that's just the reality of now you're in the modern world. You have to pick, pick.

[B]

Right. It's where we are.

[A]

I guess you could go to a yenta or something, but.

So. So that's where we are. Okay, so here are some bad ways to pick the girl you're going to marry. Here's way number one, this is modernism.

You say, this is the girl I should marry.

Because she's got this quality and that quality and she doesn't have a lot of debt and she has some money.

[B]

Money.

[A]

And she's from this family and that'll help me with my career and this and that. And she wants to live where I want to live and. Right. Sort of factual investigation, doing math. Right. Like this. This looks like a good match on paper. So I am going to marry her.

[B]

Right.

[A]

It's a horrible way to decide who to marry.

The other side, and this is like postmodernism. I am just really into and quasi obsessed with this girl. So I'm going to marry her.

Even if people who claim to have objective knowledge of us tell me over and over again, it will be a disaster. I am going to marry her based on my feelings, based on the experience I have when I'm with her.

But the way you actually should pick the girl you're going to marry.

Is.

Includes both of those. It's not a rejection of either of those. It includes both of those.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Includes those actual factual considerations on the one hand. And it includes how you feel when you're with her and your love for her. Right. Including romantic love as modern and ideas. That is right. On the other side, those things are included. Right. But it brings those two things together and then surpasses them with something else.

[B]

Right.

[A]

With something else.

I think the same is true with the Church.

On one side, you've got the factual considerations, apostolic succession, history, tradition, unbroken. Right. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Historic church going back to the apostles, all of that.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Books about it.

[B]

Right.

[A]

On the other side, you've got. Here's the experience I have in worship. Right. Here's how. Here's how I feel. Here's. Right. But the reason to choose to be a part of the Church brings both of those together and then surpasses it. And that thing that surpasses it is an encounter with Christ. And what does that mean? Right. I can't Define exactly what that means to encounter Christ, even though I believe I had it happen any more than I can define what it was that made me know I should marry my wife Trisha.

And that happened to me too.

Right.

But that doesn't mean it's not real. The fact that I can't define it or fully describe it. And I tell every inquirer and every catechumen who comes into my parish that there are a lot of reasons why people join the Orthodox Church, but there's only one good one, and that's that you have that encounter with Christ that brings together those two elements and then supersedes them. If you don't have that in my parish, you should not join my parish.

And if you do, then you should.

Just like, if you don't have that with. With a woman, you shouldn't marry her. But if you do, then you should.

Does that make sense? Even though it's not something you can totally define, there's an ineffable quality to it, which you would expect. God.

[B]

Exactly.

[C]

That is what I kind of what I was getting at with my. It's so unsatisfactory. I think it must be right. That has been often my experience with, With, With God has been. You'll know. And I hate that answer. But it's. I think it's. It's true when I. The other thing is I. I was already kind of leaning that direction. So the fact that these two answers, both of your answers have kind of come together into this. Yeah, you'll know. I think that's probably my answer. But I will say, just to sort of add on to both of those, that I think I could see both of both of those extremes, if you want to call them that, leading towards the center. Those are just two prongs that can kind of catch people who go in either direction, either to the intellectual or the sentimental. And I do both at different times and have been really satisfied in both of those ways with the Orthodox Church so far. So, yeah, I'll certainly keep exploring. But I appreciate the answers and just in general, I really appreciate the show and the way YouTube approach these things. It's been profoundly helpful with a number of issues for me. So. Yeah, thanks for taking the time, Fathers.

[B]

Thank God. Thank God. All right, well, the third half. What do we do with all this stuff?

I don't know now, what then shall we do?

[A]

Stuck like Chuck? We're out of luck.

So. Yeah. So.

[B]

Well, should I just be a reactionary, Father Stephen? I mean, that seems like the thing to Do.

[A]

One response to this is, you look at modernism and postmodernism, you look at all these currents, and you just become a reactionary. You just react to it.

[B]

Yeah. Right.

[A]

And this, of course, we talk. We mentioned this back at the very first half, that like the fundamentalists responding to the modernists, when you become a reactionary, you tend to end up assuming what you claim to hate.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You stare into the abyss of the abyss stares back into you.

So, you know.

I hate postmodernism and I hate postmodern Christian worship. So I am going to loudly assert my opinion that we ought to do it this other way and very forcefully, or I'm going to go and try and get a bunch of people to agree with me by giving them really convincing arguments. And then we're going to come and we're going to change it.

In the Church and it's like, oh, whoops, right? You're doing the exact same thing. Right. In your reaction.

[B]

And.

[A]

And it can get even worse. Right. Because you could do things like, for example, if you're reacting against modernism and modern egalitarianism, you could say, well, okay, you're trying to historicize all these hierarchies. I'm going to naturalize them all. Yeah, Right. I'm going to say, no, the people on the top are on top because they deserve to be on the top. They were both to be on the top. God put them on top. And the people on the bottom are there because they deserve to be down on the bottom. And now all of a sudden, you're back to the pagan view of human nature.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, it's literally pagan is like the sense of excellence.

[A]

You know.

You'Re there with either Nietzsche or the Roman Empire before it was Christian. Right. Congratulations.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But you've left Christianity in the other direction. Right. You've overshot.

And you can you become a reactionary, you start engaging in sort of selective totalitarianism. Right. We need to. We need an authoritarian leader to clean all this stuff up. And as long as I get to choose who the dictator is, that'll be fine.

[B]

I know, right?

[A]

Which is like, by definition, you don't elect dictators. Right. That's not how it works.

[B]

It'll be our dictator.

[A]

Yeah. Or you get a kind of like we've talked about with a lot of trads, you get this selective traditionalism where I'm making my own reconstitute. Instead of me making some liberalized egalitarian reconstruction of early Christianity, I'm making my own trad reconstruction of Christianity that may or may not accord with any actual Christianity that's existed in the real world. It could be one from column A, one from column B.

[B]

My favorite version of that that I actually saw, and I was like, that can't be real. But then I was reading it, it was real. Was someone who.

So convinced that we are living in the time of Antichrist. Setting aside, of course, the issue that St. John told us that Antichrist is plural and that he was living in the time of an Antichrist. You know, there's lots of them. He said that the ecclesiology of Saint Ignatius of Antioch, which you've ever, you know, kids, if you've ever read St. Ignatius, you know, he has a whole lot to say about the authority of the bishop.

That the ecclesiology of Saint Ignatius of Antioch doesn't apply anymore because we're living in the time of antichrist. I'm like, St. Ignatius was living in the time of Antichrist. But it's, it's a selective traditionalism. Like, I really like this, but, but, but when there's some guy with, you know, a big title or a big hat telling me what to do, forget that nonsense.

[A]

Wherever the church fathers agree with me, they're important, and wherever they disagree with me, what do they know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You get this very selective, you know, pick and choose and then make your own. Make your own tradition.

[B]

Right?

[A]

And the overall problem, though, with being a reactionary, in addition to everything we just listed, is that you can't actually de. Innovate. You can't actually go back to being a pre modern person.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, even Cher saying, if I could turn back time, but she knows that she can't. Right?

[A]

And so this is that danger I mentioned.

This is that danger I mentioned within conservatism, of sliding into postmodernism.

Because you approach a modernist liberal, they're your opponent, right? You think you're going to reject modernity and go back to premodernity, but what actually happens is you reject modernity and become postmodern.

Because you can't become pre modern. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.

[B]

Right?

[A]

And so you just slide into a postmodern version of conservatism that is just as divorced from historic Christianity as any postmodern left position, as any modernist liberal position.

[B]

Right?

[A]

You've divorced yourself from.

Christianity. So what then is the response? Right. Which we can't roll the clock back.

[B]

Right.

[A]

The answer is the continuity that we were talking about in the last couple of episodes which requires you to be grounded in an actual living tradition.

[B]

A.

[A]

Tradition that's alive today, that is functioning, meaning it's functioning and alive in a community. So you're not reconstructing anything. Right. It's there and it exists and it has exist, and it has this continuity stretching backwards into the past.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And you ground yourself within that tradition. And then once you're grounded in that tradition.

And you're formed by the tradition, which doesn't happen immediately, you have to allow the tradition to form you. You have to submit to it.

[B]

It takes time. It takes obedience. It takes. Yeah, I don't know what I'm doing. You know what you're doing. I'm going to do what you tell me to do.

[A]

But as that happens, as we submit to that and we're shaped by the tradition, then we're able to recognize.

[B]

Right.

[A]

We're able to recognize, for example, what is just a change like we put in parking lots because now people drive cars. Right. But not an actual break in the continuity of traditional versus what is a break in the continuity with tradition.

With what is actually allowing some foreign element, something from outside of Christianity, outside of the living Christian tradition, to come in and.

Twist it and reshape it. You become familiar with the edges of the tradition, and as you're formed and shaped by it. Right. And so there are times when there are changes.

Within the Church.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Within. Within a given person's lifetime, there is something that changes, something that is different.

Right. But it is in complete continuity with the past. It is a native development, not something foreign coming in. So, for example, in the 20th century, in the Orthodox Church, there was a return to people receiving more frequent communion.

[B]

Yeah. And I mean, that was a return after, as far as we know, centuries.

[A]

Right. People had begun to receive the Eucharist very infrequently in most parts of the Orthodox world. And this is not something that was started by Western converts. No, this is a movement that happened within Orthodox countries.

[B]

Yeah. In the Orthodox world and in different places at the same time. Interestingly.

[A]

Yeah, it was a revitalizing every movement. Now, for the person who was alive at that time, that was a change.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It seemed weird, and they had to look at it. They had to decide, okay, is this a native? Is this a shift? Is this a native thing that's native to the Christian tradition, which it was ultimately. Right. That needs to be accepted, or is this a break?

Is this some foreign thing coming in and influencing us and trying to change Christianity? Right. Which it wasn't.

As an Aside, okay, I know there's somebody out there. In fact, I probably know who it is.

Who'S going, what about metamodernism? I read about that on the interwebs.

[B]

What about metamodernism?

[A]

Metamodernism is not a thing.

Okay? It's like streets ahead. It's not a thing. You can't make it a thing.

Okay.

If you go and try and research what metamodernism is, what you'll find on the Internet is, well, this guy uses metamodernism to mean da da, da, da, da da. This other guy uses it to be something totally different. This other guy uses it to be something totally different. So this is a term people are trying to use and define. Forget about it. It's not a thing. Okay? You can't really define social movements while they're going on.

You define them in retrospect. So we were really understanding what postmodernism was like in the 90s, but it was happening in like the 60s and 70s and 80s.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Right. So if there is some other post, post modern period going on right now, 10, 15, 20 years from now, we'll have a good label for it. We'll be able to define it. But knock it off with this matter. Modern. There's some stuff until that.

[B]

I mean, I really do feel like the moment we're in at the moment. Yeah.

Is still pretty, pretty postmodern, you know, because there's so much.

You know, assertions of identity and all this kind of. It's. There's so much of that right now.

[A]

But there'll be a backlash against it and that'll be something. Who knows?

[B]

Yeah, but.

[A]

But you could have a backlash that's just as postmodern. Right.

So, yeah. So.

From my perspective, I hazard to guess, probably also from Father Andrews.

The Orthodox Church has a way of bridging a lot of these.

These issues.

For example, the universal in the particular.

So the Orthodox Church, the church, it is universal. It is the one holy catholic and apostolic church. Don't apologize for that.

But, but it is constituted by particular local churches from different cultures who worship in different languages, who have their own sub traditions.

That are part of the whole. Right. And then also, ultimately it's made up of particular parishes. One of the other things I tell inquirers and catechumens at my parish is you don't join the Orthodox Church. You join an Orthodox church.

[B]

Yeah, this Orthodox Church, this community.

[A]

Because you're a member of an Orthodox Church, you are a member of the, the Orthodox Church. Right. Which is the communion of all of those churches, all those communities.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And so the universal and the particular are there brought together.

[B]

Right.

[A]

The Orthodox Church bridges subjectivity and reality because there is definitely a role for religious experience.

The Orthodox Church is not completely rationalistic, but there's also a belief in a concrete reality. Everything is not up for grabs.

[B]

Yeah. Just because you.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Just because you perceive something doesn't mean that it's not in any way subject to speaking with your spiritual father, being examined, you know, being interpreted, critiqued, whatever.

[A]

That subjectivity is embraced but is correctable.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And that's because it offers an experience that is concrete.

[B]

Right.

[A]

What does that mean? That means that there is an experience of Christ, the one I was just talking about with the caller.

That has been shared by people, frankly, for as long as there have been humans.

Right. Which when he walked in the garden with Adam and Eve, right. Those primitive hunter gatherers who are engaging in true worship of the true God, had an encounter with Christ.

Abraham saw him all the way through. He appeared in the temple on the day of atonement.

He was incarnate, died, rose again, ascended into heaven, appeared at least three times to St. Paul, on and on and on, right. There's this experience that appeared in his uncreated glory to the saints, right. There's this experience of Christ. There's this constant all the way down, right. That is ineffable to a certain extent.

But describable enough in its contours that we can talk about continuity.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Within the tradition that's been handed down.

So that if I feel like I've had an experience of Christ and it doesn't conform to that experience of Christ which has gone on throughout human history, then I know that mine is incorrect, that I'm incorrect, that maybe it wasn't an experience of Christ or maybe I misinterpreted that experience.

That makes it correctable, that makes it critiqueable in other Christian circles, if someone comes to you and says, the Holy Spirit told me X, that's not critiquable.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Can't say. No, he didn't.

Right.

So.

Again, there is this kind of direct spiritual experience.

Right. Orthodoxy is not a cessationist religion where people used to have visions and used to. Used to. Now we kind of don't. We just go about our business in a mostly material world. No, but it also isn't the wild west of spirituality, of just whatever impression I have is unquestionable and is true for me.

Same time, we have to be honest about the Orthodox Church, Father Andrew and I. Right. So these things that we would talk about. Right. You will run into people in Orthodox churches. You will run into liberals.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

There's theological liberals.

[B]

People try to remake the Orthodox Church.

[A]

According to get anywhere. But they're trying.

[B]

No, there's literally. Yeah. By the way, if any of those people are listening, there's literally no mechanism.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

By which the kinds of changes you want can happen. It can't. It's not in place.

[A]

You'll find your. Especially among the catechumen.

[B]

It.

[A]

You'll find your reactionaries.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You'll find them.

[B]

I mean, well, welcome, welcome.

[A]

And you'll find. Hey, we've all got work to do. Right?

[B]

Right. Yeah.

[A]

We're not throwing these people out. No, none of them. Right. You'll find plenty of people who are postmodern is all get out. Right. Wandered around in Orthodox churches. Right. Some of them were born there.

Some of them came in. Some of them were in the process of coming in. Right. You see, you'll find all this. It's not that, you know.

We are a church that produces saints, but we're not all saints, especially me.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And these things are. And beyond just finding folks who are in the grips of those ideologies.

They are. Right. Ideologies, remember, are spirits. Right. They are after the church.

[B]

Right.

[A]

That's not, it's not that you're going to join the Orthodox Church and just be like, okay, well, now I never have to worry about liberalism or postmodernism or actionarianism again. None of these cultural currents will ever affect me again now that I've joined the Orthodox Church.

[B]

There's people who come and they think that that's the case, they're going to escape from all that.

[A]

And that's not the case. That's not the case. That's not reality.

And there are even, you know, some of the temptations, like we talked about the temptation in evangelicalism and the way a swath of evangelicalism has gone into postmodernism and how, you know, mainline liberalism has. Has just gone down the modernism route. And we said that those who go down those roads, I'll put this plain, aren't properly speaking, Christians. They're not practicing Christianity.

Once you go down that road far enough. Right. It is something other than Christianity.

[B]

But.

[A]

And those two may not be big temptations in the Orthodox Church as a whole. But we have our own. We have our own stuff. Like, for example, I mentioned we have local churches. Right. And a lot of those local churches are national churches.

And guess What?

One of the big temptations we face is nationalism.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Where the lines get blurry, you know, and what's the difference? Well, it's the same as all the other things we've been talking about. Right. The church in a given nation should be transforming that nation.

With Orthodox Christianity. But it happens. It happens.

Right. In times and places. Not the whole church, not even part of the church permanently. But there are times and places where parts of the church end up getting influenced by the nation more than they're influencing the nation.

[B]

Yeah. It gets transformed in the wrong.

[A]

The transformation goes in the wrong direction.

[B]

In the wrong direction, yeah.

[A]

Just as big of a problem when that happens as any of the other problems we've talked about tonight.

[B]

Yeah. And you can get. I mean, some of the most. The worst results of that is you can get imperialism. Orthodox nations have been imperialist.

You can get cultural chauvinism, you know, these things. Absolutely.

[A]

Without racism.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and it doesn't make it any less bad just because it's quote unquote Orthodox.

[A]

Right, right. So never let it be said that we're not self critical. Right. We have our problems too. They may not always be the same problems, but we have problems.

[B]

Right.

[A]

The Orthodox Church, we have struggles, we have temptations, we have these things we have to deal with. That last bit about national churches and national is, frankly, I know I've talked about the show before. This is why I'm so down on the idea of an American Orthodox Church.

I know it was a dream of.

Metropolitan Philip of Thrice Blessed Memory, that he, in his lifetime, which didn't happen, would see united American Orthodox Church with respect to His Eminence. I'm glad it didn't happen and I hope it doesn't happen while I'm still alive.

Because right now, the way American culture and society is, and as weak and small as Orthodox Christianity is in the United States, the influence will only go one way if there's an American Orthodox Church.

And that will be American culture coming in and deforming the Orthodox faith.

[B]

Yeah. I think we have right now, if it happened today. We have so much work to do in terms of being more Christian.

You know, And I know some people think they're like, well, we could do that better if we had this. But it's like, there's nothing stopping you from doing it right now.

[A]

Over the last decade, I've been approached by more people in different churches who tell me that their biggest problem and the reason why they may stop going to church is that There are people from the other political party going to that church. Yeah, yeah. Okay. That tells you everything you need to know. An American Orthodox Church would be a disaster.

People can't even set aside their political party to worship Christ, who is the king of everything.

[B]

Right?

[A]

We're not ready. Sorry, everybody, but it's reality. Face it, okay? We need a couple hundred more years. We need to grow a lot. We need to make America Orthodox and then we can have an American Orthodoxy, frankly, is what needs to happen. And it's going to take us a while to make America Orthodox. So get to work. But it's not the goal in your lifetime. You got a lot of work to do.

[B]

It's not the goal in any event. I mean, it's not the goal. That's not the goal. It might be a tool that helps us towards the goal, which is, you know, to become saints, to become. To be Christians. That's the goal, you know. Yeah, Right.

[A]

Go out there if you want to see it in your lifetime, go out there and become equal to the apostles in converting the United States of America to Orthodox Christianity.

There's your job description. If you successfully do that in your lifetime, it may happen in your lifetime.

[B]

Well, I'm working on it, but it's not going to happen in my lifetime. I'm pretty sure. Pretty sure.

Never know.

[A]

But.

[B]

But probably not. So.

Yeah, I know that this episode. So just, you know, some. Some wrap up thoughts. I know that this episode.

I mean, literally, pretty philosophical at points. Although honestly, I mean, we. It was mostly overview in a lot of ways, a lot of. A lot of these ideas.

Which is probably about the most that most of us can take, including me most of the time, despite my forays into reading Terry Eagleton.

But I think that for me, the big takeaway of a lot of this is number one. Even though maybe at moments like this we can step back and see big swaths of history and say, oh, so that's what the problem with everything is.

We still are where we are. You know.

I think of that poem by Tennyson, I think it's called Ulysses where he says, you know.

I'm probably.

Misremembering some of the lines, but, you know, essentially, you know, even though we don't have that strength that we. That we had in olden days, we are what we are. What we are. We are. I think that's the line.

And I think that that's an important thing to remember. Not so we can just throw our hands up and say, well, there's nothing to be done, but. But rather just to take it in humility, say, okay, I'm a modern person, live in the modern period. I see the problems of modernism, or at least some of them, and I'm going to stumble forward trying not to fall in any of the ditches that I'm surrounded by.

I think one of the big temptations is to think that we're special.

In that we have big struggles like this, but we're not. Every historical era and every historical place has its problems, has its big temptations. And we know that people go careening off onto the wrong paths. And we know that in the midst of those situations that people become holy, that people become.

Sons of God.

You know.

There is no golden era. And yeah, it's true, we're not in it, but there isn't. There isn't one. There were certain points where maybe the material situation, the church was much better.

But that doesn't mean that conditions for being saved were better. Doesn't mean that.

For me, if we're going to look to any era of church history.

And find inspiration first, I mean, all of them, right? There's saints in all the eras of church history, and we can find inspiration from all of those saints in various ways. But if there's one, I'm going to pick and say, this is the one that I think we need to hold up first. That doesn't mean we don't hold up the other ones ever. But the one we need to hold up first is the first one is the apostolic period.

Where the apostles are going out into all the world, preaching the gospel, baptizing in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and making disciples of every creature, and teaching them to do all that Christ commanded them.

And it just so happens, I believe that our current era, while not the same in some pretty big important ways, in many ways, because of this.

Postmodern cultural milieu we're in now, I think is much like.

The time of the apostles. It was a very poly religious period with a lot of cross currents, a lot going on, a lot of directions to move in. You know, it's not the modern world where you pick a religion. It's not that. But nonetheless, there was a lot to be confused by and a lot to draw the eye and a lot to draw desire.

And frankly, a lot of. A lot of real decadence and material gluttony of various kinds. We have all of that.

And the apostles went out without any expectation that they were going to.

Be successful in their culture. They went out and obeyed what God told them to do, they went out and they preached the gospel to people. And anyone who listened, anyone who said, yes, I'm on board with that, how do I be saved? They baptized them, they taught them how to be faithful, and then the next generation received that and they passed it on and they passed it on and on and on down to us, the littlest and least of the brothers and sisters of the Christian story.

So I mean, for me, whenever I hear even some of the very depressing stuff we talked about, and I think like, I mean, there's points like we're talking about the privileging of experience, right? Like, I know that when I've talked about orthodox Christianity with people over the last few decades, I know I have made appeals to experience sometimes for people. And I also know, like how problematic that is, but I also know, like appeals to the more kind of intellectual approach and also how problematic that is.

But nonetheless, I have hope because.

It's not me who is really giving them Christ, and it's not even truly themselves who are.

Discovering Christ. It's Christ who has come to look for us. And the way that he meets each person, the way that each person encounters him is, is going to be different and, and mysterious and.

Particular to them, but, but participating in the common experience of Christ that the Church has. And then it's not only that initial experience, then it's an ongoing experience and receiving from other people within the church their experience as well. And receiving all of these things together. I mean, this is how a tradition works.

It's this river running through history that has all of the church in it. And so for me it always comes down to hope. And it's not hope like, well, I hope that happens, but it's this fundamental upward gazing hope where we see Christ. And even though there's going to be stones on the road and ruts to fall into, we step forward, we stumble forward, and we give thanks along the way.

So that's what I have to say.

[A]

I guess upward gazing is better than navel gazing or shoe gazing.

Of the available gazing options.

So, yeah, so this is sort of, this episode.

We sort of did an episode that turned into a two part series that then turned into a three part series.

And.

I think both where we started and where we ended up are very germane to the whole raison d' et of this show. Because this show isn't just a Bible show, right? The raison d' et of the show from the beginning has been that.

We'Re trying to reacquire some of the wisdom that was lost.

In the movement into Modernism, where we gained this incredible knowledge of science and technology, which is all real knowledge, but we lost the spiritual wisdom that maybe we had before in trying to recover that. So discussing what Modernism is is very germane, as is talking about the spiritual experience of Neolithic hunter gatherers, which is where we started out two episodes ago.

But mainly the last couple episodes, what we've been talking about is.

This contrast between.

Christianity between the church as it exists in the world, and that Christianity being a transformative influence on the world in which it exists, versus the that Christianity being twisted and deformed.

By the world in which it exists and turned into something different by these foreign elements that come and intrude. And what we've been saying about church communities.

Applies just as much to me as a person.

So we've talked about, and we talked about tonight that my identity as a person is not as an individual.

And it's not some ever shifting protean self either. But it is the sort of stacked up and meshed web of relationships that I exist in. I'm a priest, I'm the pastor of a parish, I'm a husband, I'm a spiritual father, I'm a brother, I'm a son, I'm an uncle, I'm a great uncle. I'm old.

I'm a friend to certain people, I'm an acquaintance of certain other people.

I'm a writer of books, which is a certain kind of relationship with readers make this podcast. It's a certain type of relationship with listeners.

All of these things make up my identity. Obviously I'm an orthodox Christian within that.

But I can choose. And I have to choose. And more than choosing, it's not just a question of making choices. Often it feels more like a struggle or a fight.

One way or the other.

To allow my orthodox Christian identity.

To be sort of subsumed, to be shifted, to be conditioned.

To be warped or diminished.

By the world I live in with all of its modern and postmodern currents.

Or I can choose to live in a way.

And to struggle in a way in which.

My orthodox Christianity, and by that I essentially mean the presence of the Holy Spirit within me, allow that to transform me and then through transforming me through that web of relationships, begin to transform the world around me.

There is no kind of middle ground there. There is no kind of middle point.

There's no homeostasis where you can just relax and now you know everything's okay and you can go about your business Back to my hobbies. I've got that whole Christianity thing covered. One of those two things will be happening.

We'll be being shaped by one or the other will be being shaped by the Holy Spirit as a person, or will be being shaped by the various spirits that are active in our world, the zeitgeists that are out there pushing at us and wanting to lead us in other directions.

The promise that the Holy Spirit has.

Is that the transformation that the Holy Spirit offers.

To the Christian, to the Christian who struggles, struggles with repentance.

Struggles to do good, struggles to bring forth the fruit of the Spirit.

You've got to tend a garden, gotta tend an orchard. For it to bring forth fruit.

Is, as I said, not only that we would be transformed by it, but that through the web of relationships that connects us to those around us, connects us to our world, that our world and those other people would be transformed.

It's kind of a chain reaction. This is what Saint Seraphim of Sarah was talking about in the famous quote choir, the Holy Spirit, thousands will be saved all around you.

That is our task.

And so I hope, and that's why I put it here at the very end, right, that people's takeaway, everything we had to say about the church and society and history and religion in these episodes as it, as it developed, changed, where there were breaks, continuities, discontinuities over time, throughout human history, all of that is good stuff from my perspective. I think all of it's important. That's why we did the episode episodes.

But if we don't take that and apply it to our own day to day way of life, our own day to day struggle.

To be, as St. Paul says, in the world, but not of the world, to be shaping the world, not being shaped by it.

If we don't apply that, then, you know, this is so much abstract formulation, right? It's knowledge that puffs up. We could think, I'm smart, I understand all of these currents in our culture, but it won't actually profit us anything.

So we need to be struggling harder in our own life.

Against foreign ideas, foreign ideologies and intruders.

Than we do against those intruders in our church.

God will take care of those intruders in our church, Bishops will take care of those intruders in our church, right?

If we take care of those intrusions in our own life through that web of relationships, that will help take care of those intruders in our church.

Because if we're talking about intruders that aren't human, if we're talking about spirits.

Those get cast out.

If we're talking about people coming into our churches who are moved by those spirits.

Then when those spirits get cast out, we transform our quote unquote enemies into friends.

That's part of that transformation, too. That's why we don't throw out our liberals. That's why we don't throw out our reactionaries. That's why we don't throw out our postmodernists.

Because I'm one of those.

Somewhere in there is me, right? Or at least was. Hopefully more was than is.

And that transformation is transforming us all together.

So in summary, yes, hopefully, if you've listened to this, don't just try to apply it to the Neolithic era. Don't just try to apply it to your understanding of what's going on in evangelicalism. But first and foremost, try and apply it to yourself. And as I try it to apply it to myself.

[B]

Amen. Amen. Well, in two weeks will be our annual Halloween episode, but that's all our show is for tonight, so thank you for listening. If you didn't get through to us live, we'd still like to hear from you. You can email [e-mail] you can message us at our Facebook page, or leave us a [e-mail] Lord of Spirits, you have basic questions about Orthodox Christianity or you need help finding a parish? Head over to orthodoxintro.org join us for.

[A]

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[B]

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[A]

And finally, be sure to go to ancientfaith.com support and help make sure we and lots of other AFR podcasters stay on the air. I made a pilgrimage to save the human race, never comprehending the race had long gone by.

[B]

Thank you, good night and may God bless you.

[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, thousands, saying with a loud voice, worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength.

[B]

And honor and glory and blessing.

[A]

Revelation 5, 11, 12.