Mutatis Mutandis (100th Episode!)

Summary

The Lord of Spirits Podcast

Episode 100: Mutatis Mutandis

Date: September 27, 2024
Hosts: Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick & Fr. Stephen DeYoung
Presented by: Ancient Faith Ministries

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Episode Overview

For their milestone 100th episode, Fr. Andrew and Fr. Stephen tackle the question of “continuity and change” in Orthodox Christianity—and religious tradition more broadly. Building on the previous episode’s sweep through human religious history, they ask: If Orthodoxy is “unchanging,” why do so many things differ—from Genesis, to Second Temple Judaism, to 21st-century practice? Where is continuity found, and how much change is too much? Along the way, they reflect on the “seen and unseen world” in the Orthodox tradition, answer lively caller questions on everything from animal sacrifices to the harrowing of hell, share personal anecdotes, and celebrate four years (and 270+ hours!) of podcasting.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Celebration, Format, and Setup

• The show is broadcast live from the Ancient Faith Ministries HQ in Indiana, with a relaxed, celebratory, and “chaotic” energy (“sheer anarchy,” [02:23]).
• Co-hosts reminisce about past episodes, the show’s unexpectedly long duration, and their adventures (and mishaps) both on and off the air.

2. The “Unchanging” Faith: What Does Continuity Really Mean?

• Key Issue: Orthodox Christianity is often called “unchanging”—yet the details of worship, piety, and organization have changed across eras. So what is continuity, and what counts as a decisive break?
• Fr. Andrew: “The faith which established the universe”—is that literally unchanged? Clearly not in outward details ([04:41]).
• Fr. Stephen: “So, what does unchanging actually mean? Is there acceptable change?” ([04:41])
• Playful banter about “pan-heresy of ecumenism” sets the stage.

Subpoints on Continuity/Discontinuity:

• While there is broad continuity from Genesis to Christianity, there are necessary distinctions. “How much change or variation... makes a discontinuity?” ([10:04])
• The aim is not “perennialism”—not all religious paths are equally valid or identical. Continuity does not erase real breaks or differences.

3. Recap of the Religious Story of Humanity

• Early Human Religion: Even among hunter-gatherers, there’s memory of one God, fading into “sky god” and eventually paganism.
• The Neolithic Revolution: Sedentary life gives rise to “sky father/earth mother” motifs, distinct deities, and sacrifices at permanent shrines ([13:06–14:14]).
• Continuity and Remnants: Figures like Melchizedek—worshipping the true God amidst pagan contexts—show “the preservation of true worship.”
• Axial Age: Rise in literacy, focus on texts, philosophical refinement (in both paganism and Judaism)—Second Temple Judaism emerges ([15:22–16:46]).
• Judaism as Paradigm: Judaism preserves the “one God” line, but with significant shifts. Christianity grows out of Second Temple Judaism, not from outside.

4. Discontinuity Within Continuity: On the Evolution of Worship and Structure

• Textual Examples:
  • Genesis 4:26: Shift from “relationship” to “religion”—people begin “calling upon the name of Yahweh” ([22:01+]), not just individually, but in communities and various places.
  • The move from nomadic, familial worship to multiple groups, some falling away into idolatry.
• City Life as Danger: Settling in cities is seen as spiritually dangerous, though not automatically corrupting (Melchizedek is a saintly king).
• Second Temple Developments:
  • After the Babylonian exile, focus on synagogue, Torah, public reading, copying, and a burst of Jewish literature—setting the stage for Christianity ([33:11–35:01]).

5. The Question of “Primary” vs. “Secondary” Scripture

• The concept that within the canon there are “primary” and “secondary” scriptures, e.g., the Torah’s centrality in Judaism, the Gospels in Christianity ([53:31–54:41]).
• Even New Testament epistles are “interpreting and applying” the Gospels; liturgical practice reflects this hierarchy.

Notable Quote:

“Within the Scriptures there are these relationships... St. Peter already calls St. Paul’s writings scripture while [Paul] is still alive, writing them. So how does that work?”
— Fr. Andrew ([58:44])

6. Paradigms of Continuity: Authority, Worship, Calendar

• The criteria that define religious continuity across generations:
  • Formative Scriptures: E.g., the Torah ➔ the Hebrew Scriptures ➔ the Gospels/Epistles ([62:00+]).
  • Forms of Worship: While external forms (sacrifice, etc.) change, core elements (prayer, gathering, liturgy) remain.
  • Authority Structures: Bishops, presbyters/elders, etc. directly carry over from Jewish and early Christian practice ([69:42–70:46]).
  • Calendar/Ritual Life: Feasts and cycles develop by organic growth, not rupture.
• Differences between “organic development” and “artificial combination” (as found in Gnostic or Neoplatonic syncretism).

7. Historical Case Studies: Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, Arianism

• Gnosticism & Neoplatonism: Represent “artificial” blends of Christian elements into basically non-Christian religions. Lacked organic history, authority, continuity ([124:46–136:21]).
• Arianism: Distorted Christology, but maintained overall authority structures and worship. Thus, a false Christianity rather than a different religion ([137:00–140:21]).

Notable Quote:

“Arianism is not a different religion... but a false or heretical Christianity.”
— Fr. Andrew ([140:03])

8. Salvation Beyond the Perfectly Orthodox

• Salvation is not denied to those in heretical bodies, but their path is harder and the tradition less complete ([144:06+]).
• Example: St. Isaac the Syrian—a “saint within a heretical body” (Nestorian Church).
• God’s grace is not “automatically nullified” by circumstances of time or place—salvation is possible wherever faithfulness responds to God’s revelation (Romans 1, Acts 17) ([147:00–152:20]).
• Heresy is still a problem—“limits what you’re able to do”—but it does not put God in a box.

Notable Quote:

"If you do something good, it is good. Every good act is faithfulness to God and faithfulness to God is cooperating with divine grace."
— Fr. Stephen ([149:07])

9. Orthodox Attitude Toward Change

• Change in outward form is not the same as discontinuity; neither is variation heresy.
• But throwing out the formative body of scriptures is—e.g., Marcionites ([61:37, 61:50]).
• Change is legitimate when organic and rooted in the community’s life and tradition.

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Q&A: Caller Highlights

1. Scripture and Tradition: Sola Scriptura vs. Orthodox Authority ([85:00–98:19])

• Fr. Andrew and Fr. Stephen discuss why a “text cannot exercise authority”; interpretation happens in community. The debate over “infallibility/inerrancy” is imported from Protestant categories and doesn’t always make sense.
• Notable: “There is no brute Bible...It's all been interpreted...The core issue is not Sola Scriptura; the core issue is ecclesiology.” — Fr. Andrew ([93:54])

2. Folk Customs: Animal “Sacrifice” in Some Orthodox Cultures ([99:44–107:04])

• A caller asks about Balkan folk customs resembling animal sacrifice. The priests explain this is “not traditional animal sacrifice”—likely a Muslim influence—and forbidden by canons. Suggestion: Bless livestock, eat together, but don't bring animals in church.

3. National Spirits? CS Lewis, Arthurian England, and Collective Souls ([108:29–114:46])

• Question on “Logres”—the spiritual England in Lewis’ That Hideous Strength; answer: It represents "England as it should be", an eschatological ideal—not a literal angel or demon.

4. Translation Questions in Liturgical Texts ([172:23–181:48])

• Caller asks about English translations of “wicked” vs. “ungodly” in Psalm 1. Guidance: Use multiple translations; don't absolutize one English word—meanings overlap and context in tradition matters.

5. The Harrowing of Hades ([182:59–191:16])

• Caller stumps local Roman Catholic catechists with the question of what Christ did in the grave. The priests point to biblical (esp. 1 Peter 3:19, Psalm 24) and patristic support for the doctrine and explain Orthodox and Catholic positions are similar.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Fr. Andrew:

• “I do this from the church. She’s not even here. I don’t think she even listens half the time. She's done with me. Like, I’ve heard you talk all day. I don’t need any more of this.” ([32:32])
• “Press buttons or walk out. Maybe some of both.” ([02:54])

Fr. Stephen:

• “Before you said 'who’s next?' I was going to introduce myself as Abe Froman.” — referencing a Chicago sausage king and Ferris Bueller callback ([192:12])
• “If you have a false idea of who someone is, then you’re going to relate to them in a way that is distorted.” ([143:21])

100th Episode Banter:

• “We could have a surprise last episode.” “Most of us are not as frankly mean as you are.” ([81:23–81:48])
• “If you want to learn some weird secrets and they’re all true about the life of the Very Reverend Dr. Heptomaster...” — on Fr. Andrew’s bio ([121:59–122:18])

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Important Timestamps

• 00:22–01:06 – Show intro, premise, “the union of seen and unseen as made by God...”
• 04:41–10:04 – What does “unchanging” mean for Orthodox Christianity?
• 22:01–28:00 – Genesis, “began to call upon the name of Yahweh,” the invention of religion
• 31:41 – City-dwellers, Melchizedek, and the perils of civilization
• 35:01–37:05 – Axial Age and Second Temple Judaism
• 53:31–58:43 – Primary/secondary scripture, liturgical implications
• 69:42–71:07 – Worship and authority structures, ecclesia (“church”) in both Old and New Testaments
• 98:54–104:58 – Infallibility/inerrancy and the nature of biblical authority
• 124:41–140:21 – Analyzing Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, and Arianism against the Orthodox paradigm
• 147:00–154:00 – Church boundaries, salvation, and St. Isaac of Nineveh
• 169:19–172:07 – St. Paul’s “trance” in Acts 22 explained
• 182:59–191:16 – The Harrowing of Hell: biblical and patristic evidence

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Final Thoughts & Reflections

Fr. Stephen’s Parting Reflection ([214:12–219:59]):

• Warns against “high info” Christians becoming gatekeepers obsessed with every detail; reminds listeners that being “traditional” is about living in obedience within community—not about being the most correct on every doctrine.
• “Those of us who are high info...often think that we are qualified to make the determinations about what constitute acceptable variation...But most of us are not qualified.”

Fr. Andrew’s Closing Appeal ([222:40–229:52]):

• Describes the modern maze of anxious religious searching—contrasting it with an older sense of being received into a tradition and shaped by it, rather than picking and choosing.
• “This will be a place where you can learn and you could be shaped and you could be formed and you could be transformed and you could be healed and you can be helped.”

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Looking Ahead

• Part 3—promised for next episode—will discuss the paradigm of continuity/discontinuity as it applies to modernism and the current religious landscape.
• Announcement: a Lord of Spirits Conference is coming in 2025 (dates/location TBA) ([212:47–213:30]).
• Fr. Andrew’s new book, St. Paul the Pharisee, to be released soon.

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Closing Words

Fr. Andrew:
“Christianity is a way of being that I can come into and be shaped and formed by. These are all passive words… While I work on all of these other things, these other responsibilities that life presents to me.” ([230:59])

Revelation 5:11–12 closes the episode.

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For Listeners Who Haven’t Tuned In:

This episode is a masterclass in how Orthodox Christianity sees itself as organically continuous with the ancient worship of the one God, even as outward forms change. It’s full of history, spirited banter, accessible theology, practical wisdom, and memorable moments—with space for humor, pop culture, and listener engagement. Whether or not you’ve journeyed through the previous 99 episodes, you’ll find an entry point to deep questions about faith, tradition, and what it means to be “unchanging” in a changing world.

Transcript

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

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.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And they will praise and bless and.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Celebrate with song the Lord of Spirits.

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

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Good evening giant killers, dragon slayers, hunters of the hobgoblin hordes. You are listening to the Lord of Spirits podcast. My co Host, Father Stephen DeYoung is with me from Lafayette, Louisiana. And I'm Father Andrew Stephen Damick. And I'm not in Emmaus. That's right. I am in Chesterton Duneland, Indiana itself, AKA the poor man's Ohio Ancient Faith Ministries headquarters. And I am actually in the same room as our very own Matuska Trudy the Tank Richter. So if you hear her giggling in the background, that is the Tank herself, we discovered in the last few days her secret nickname that she had when she was but a callow youth. And we're live. And if you're listening to us live, you can call us at 855-237-2346 and you could talk to us. And we're going to get to your calls in the second half of the show. But I should warn you that I am going to be the one answering your call. So if you call, you're not going to hear the melodious voice of Matuska Trudy the Tank Richter. Instead, you're going to just go straight to hold and we're just gonna have sheer anarchy. So you better behave here on our 100th episode of the Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Having descended to the heart of the maelstrom and the belly of the beast, you are now drunk with power.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's right. I can do anything. First, they were gonna put me out on kind of the factory floor here at AFM hq. But I'm like, why does Trudy get to be in the soundproof room, taking the phone calls, and I have to be, like, in front of some green screen or whatever the heck it is. Oh, Trudy just walked out. I don't know what's going on. I could just start pressing buttons. This would be really fun. She probably does that normally during this show. We just don't even know.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Press buttons or walk out.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Maybe some of both.

All right, well, this 100th episode is sponsored by the Orthodox Studies Institute at St. Constantine College, which exists to advance the study and application of Orthodox Christianity and faithfulness to holy traditional. OSI is currently offering a live online course on the Book of Enoch, taught by you, Father Steven DeYoung. The course is underway, but by popular demand, OSI has reopened registration. You can catch up on the recordings of earlier classes and participate in live classes going forward.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Live class at this point.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, there you go. To learn more. To learn more, go to orthodoxstudies.org Los Angeles. Registration is now open for OSI's second course, which is Holy Women of Byzantium, which begins in October. You can go to orthodoxstudies.org los to learn more. This is indeed our.

100Th episode. I was going to say 100th anniversary episode. That's right, kids. We've been doing this since 1970.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I know it feels like an eternity, but that's because you're doing it with me.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It kind of does.

But it is our fourth anniversary episode. So over 99 episodes up until now. And we just started talking. We have droned on four, and I checked this. I edited it all up by listening to it once again with a stopwatch. 270 hours, 57 minutes, 21 seconds. That makes the average Los episode about 2 hours and 45 minutes long. Probably would have been longer, but a lot of our earlier ones were.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, because this was supposed to be a one hour show.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I don't remember that. We're like, yeah, It'd be like 45 minutes to an hour.

[Caller or Guest]

Ha ha ha.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Fooled y'. All. So, yes. So this is our hundredth anniversary episode. We're in a celebratory mood, as Father Stephen has said. I do feel drunk with power here being an AFM hq, but we are going to actually talk about real stuff. The word unchanging is a word that's often used to describe Orthodox Christianity. The sinaticon of Orthodoxy even says that Orthodox Christianity is the f faith which is established the universe. A bold statement. Yet if you look at the evidence for Christian worship many centuries ago, it is not exactly the same. As orthodox worship here in the 21st century. And clearly it's very different from what we see in Genesis chapter one. So what does unchanging actually mean? And is there acceptable change? And is this the episode where we finally completely succumb to the pan heresy of ecumenism?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, I think you already did. That's what people say on one of your other programs.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's what people say.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But I will not.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, thank you. Thank you for that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's not because I am some stalwart of the orthodox faith. It's just I'm petty and I dislike.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

People who are different than me. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Before we move on too far from you having descended there and.

Now being just rife with universal power.

That connects to a grievance that I didn't get to air before we started. So now I'm going to air it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, let it out.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Which is not in any way related to the program. So, you know, or our topic tonight. I know you're shocked that I talk about something unrelated, but it is weighty on my mind. So I finally got to play the Mortal Kombat 1 DLC that came out Tuesday. Oh, and the whole premise of this thing, the whole premise of it. Now, look, it's Mortal Kombat, right? So, like, story mode. I'm not expecting Shakespeare, right? I'm expecting different colored ninjas kicking each other. That's basically what I'm expecting. I'm expecting a very thin plot linking together a series of martial arts battles, right? That's what I'm expecting.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But. Right, but, okay, if your premise is going to be that Titan Lord Havoc has gone mad with power in another timeline and is trying to bring chaos and anarchy, as he says, over and over and over again, chaos and anarchy to all the timelines, right? And you could tell he wants chaos and anarchy because all his minions have mohawks.

Right? If this is your whole setup and this is what you're doing through the whole story, then when I get to the final confrontation with him, right, to try to stop him from bringing chaos and anarchy to every universe, he can't say, bah, you've disrupted my plans. Okay?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Because if the highest value is chaos, anarchy, right. Why would there be a plan for one?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The correct response for me would be, you're welcome.

Because you would want that, right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Because that's the goal.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's chaos and anarchy.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's the dream. But he wants it to be his chaos and anarchy.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

This whole thing, right? This whole thing has driven me nuts for a long time. Back in the day on World of Warcraft, there was a guild on our server called Order of Anarchy and it was just like.

Wow. Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Just words.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay, so grievance aired.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay. I'm sure you've been heard.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Come on.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

NetherRealm Studios. You can do better. You only have to do slightly better. We set the bar low on these things, right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. So what we're actually talking about is not related to the Lin Kuei or any other magic wielding ninja forces. Slash.

Cybernetic conspiracy.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Indeed.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But.

But we're kind of in a way picking up on what we talked about last time.

Where last time we went way back into the long ago time.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Even before the distant year 2000.

Even before 2000 BC back to the Stone Age.

And we really were talking about the continuity last time. The continuity of the worship of the true God. Right. In all. In all generations. And so tonight, now we're going to be talking about the fact that. Okay, yes, you talked about that continuity.

But within that we also made the point of various distinctions. Right. Between, for example, different religious forms.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Like between paganism and Judaism and Christianity. So there's not just continuity, there's also discontinuity.

And this begs the question, how much change or variation does it take within continuity to make a discontinuity?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Because we're not saying that all religions are the same man.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Unlike certain very high ranking religious leaders I understood said that they're kind of all a path to God in one way or another.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. But that guy, that guy's always saying wacky stuff. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like God bless him.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, it's good he doesn't have a Twitter account. Actually, I think he does.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

He has like nine Twitter accounts.

[Caller or Guest]

Oh.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

In multiple languages.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Does he post on them though?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, I'm pretty sure it's somebody who works for him. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I wonder if there's like a Twitter leggett.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Ooh.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Anyway.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, so we clearly weren't trying to make this perennialist point even while we were stressing the idea of continuity. So now we're going to talk about where the discontinuity comes in and where that break is.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So last time, just to sort of recap a little because every episode is someone's first.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. I just feel bad for the people for whom this is their first. First. If this is your first episode, go ahead and call in. We'd like to hear from you and just be with. We'd like to walk with you in your confusion.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Don't Ask for a recap of the last 99 episodes though. What do you call in? Because we can't do that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

Best I can do is a paperback book.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or two or three or six. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So last time, Right. And we're gonna. We're gonna. This is our want. We went backwards last time. We sort of worked our way back to the Stone Age. So we'll recap it forwards.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's nice.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So not only will this be a refresher, but if anyone is confused by the last episode.

Maybe this will help. Who knows?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So we started out talking about the very early. Talking about humans in hunter gatherer societies having maintained sort of a conception of the one God who created everything.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Although even within that you start to see some drift in that. That one God starts to become a sky God. And once you start getting a sky God, then you're on your way.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Sky daddy.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Flying spaghetti monster. They had spaghetti. The hunter gatherer. They found it in the wild.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The wet bread. Flying wet bread monster.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You're well on your way to having gods of other things. Once you have a God that you associate is particularly a sky God.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So there's already drift happening, but we don't have what would later come to be called paganism yet.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And we talked about how paganism as such, the kind of paganism that we find being pretty ubiquitous in the ancient.

[Caller or Guest]

World.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You find.

Beginning and growing out of the Neolithic revolution. As people move from hunter gather to agrarian, they start domesticating plants and animals. They start living in one place, growing food.

This is where you begin to see. First you see the sort of sky.

Father, earth mother kind of paradigm emerge. And then as life in settlement starts, you start seeing gods of this, that and the other.

Then you start to see sacrifices happening in distinct sacred places. Right. Rather than people stopping and building altars as they travel.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. There's like shrines, temples, tabernacles.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, not people take pilgrimages to. And then become the sites of settlements, permanent settlements.

You have still within it, you have the phenomenon of nomadism and people who are living nomadically. Still, when you look at their religion, it's still closer to.

Those earlier roots. Right. Which of course we as Christians believe is at least closer to the truth. And we talked about how there's also a thread going through here of people who are worshiping the true God.

[Caller or Guest]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And we see that spelled out not just in terms of from Moses on, but even in Genesis. And not just Abraham. Abraham encounters melchizedek who is someone living in a pagan society, but who is still worshiping the true God.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Which, how does that work? But.

It just does.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's all he deserves. A remnant.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, exactly.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And so then we talked about the shifts in the mid first millennium BC that's referred to as the Axial Age, these sort of shifts that happen really across the world.

Shifts that happen both within paganism, from sort of the de rigueur paganism of the day to paganisms that are in various ways more refined.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, I think like the way that kind of works out in my head is it's sort of intellectualizing on some level. You know, you start getting doctrines and texts and this kind of thing.

To express, as you said, more refined, to express a more kind of verbal, I think, form of religion.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Because there is that move to a focus on texts.

A more intense focus on texts, a rise in literacy rates, and.

That does reshape religious practice. We didn't get into this last time because it wasn't strictly on topic, but something very similar happens in terms of the shift of religion within Europe when the Reformation happens and you have the printing press and you have another huge rise in literacy rates.

That you again have religion becoming more text focused and more intellectualized as a result.

Right. So that's something that happens, but that happened not only within paganism, but as we talked about, that happened within Judaism. And that's part of what produces what we call Second Temple Judaism with the synagogue system, with a renewed focus on the text, particularly of the Torah, but then of the other Hebrew scriptures, and then ultimately has continued into Christianity.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And so we talked about sort of those shifts, but that within those shifts there is this.

Overarching continuity. Right. So to start out tonight.

We want to focus in a little bit on those shifts happening within Judaism.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The way we see what we were talking about last time, last time we were talking mainly about the pagan world. And with broad strokes now we're going to focus in on how we see this reflected, especially in the scriptures, but also within Israelite religion, Judaism and Christianity.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okey doke. So buckle up, everybody. We're doing another massive sweep of thousands. I thought about this a little bit earlier today because I went into Chicago and I went to what is now called the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, but until a year and a half ago was called the Oriental Institute. And I mean, I was looking at artifacts that were literally like 6 to 8,000 years old in some cases, or 4 to 6,000, I don't know, but I Mean, it was, you know, like, I could hear Carl Sagan in my head saying, billions and billions.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's not that old.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's not that old. It's not that old. But, you know, it's that. That sort of level of historical scale that you just can't. You just really can't imagine, you know?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And yet they're human artifacts.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They're human artifacts.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Humans like us, who made them. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Crazy. It was. It was. Yeah, it was wild to see, like, the newest stuff in there was from, I don't know, like, AD 800 or something like that. But the vast majority. And I have to say to everybody, by the way, since I'm mentioning this place, if you're in Chicago, you should check out this museum, because it's basically a Lord of Spirits museum. I mean, it kind of is. Have you ever been to it, Father?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I have not been there.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, you should. Totally. I mean, and it's not big either. Like, you can. You can look at all at a fairly leisurely pace within the space of just a couple hours. But a lot of the cultures that we talk about on this show are represented in that museum. So if you're in Chicago, people go have a look. And actually, having listened to the show, you will find it to be a rather rich experience versus just walking in there cold, without any talk of things like a lamassu, which they have one. I did send you a photo of me standing in front of that thing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Standing in front of. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Fortunately, you weren't posed in a goofy way.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No, I don't. Yeah.

I mean, I was standing literally in the front of an image of someone else's lesser gods. So, yeah, no goofy poses.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Also, if you're in Chicago, you should go and get muffins from Mindy's Bakery.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, duly noted. Just as an aside, muffins from Mendy's.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

So these shifts, as we said.

Are not just present out there in the pagan world, but they're present within Judaism and then with Christianity, and yet. Right. And this is why we're focusing here.

We're going to say there's a continuity.

A very real and strict continuity that's pretty daring, from Genesis through.

Revelation and into Christianity.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We're not going to say these are different religions.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's one religion.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There are shifts that happen. These shifts we've been talking about are reflected in there.

And so that's why we're now sort of refocusing on this when we're talking about what is the latitude, how do shifts happen? Is every shift a change? Is every change a break?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I feel like these are song lyrics you're quoting, but I'm pretty sure they're not. Like, wait, I'm never sure when you're quoting lyrics. So. Because you just. I mean, you speak poetically very naturally. That's what you're.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I also dig in the crates for references.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So, yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

People for centuries will puzzle over what I've created here.

So.

The first one of these shifts that we see reflected in Scripture is in Genesis, chapter 4, verse 26.

So we're not starting in Genesis 1:1 this time, but close a couple pages. And that's in one of. That's in the genealogy of Seth, one of the genealogies there in Genesis 4. Genealogies are everybody's favorite thing in the Bible. But there's this comment about Seth's son, Enosh.

So this is as presented in the genealogy, Adam's grandson.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Says on Enosh, not Enoch. Enosh. Enoch comes later.

And it says that in his day, people began to call upon the name of Yahweh.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Which on its face seems kind of weird. Like, wait a minute, wasn't Adam talking to him? Was Seth talking? Wasn't Abel talking to him?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. Yeah. So, but this is reflecting a shift and calling upon the name of Yahweh, or as it's usually in English Bibles, calling upon the name of the Lord.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Of the Lord. Yeah, but it's.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yahweh always refers to worship. Right. This is, you know, over and over again in Genesis, the patriarchal narratives. You know, he built an altar, and there he called upon the name of the Lord.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That doesn't mean he was just yelling the Lord's name over and over again.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's. He was. Right. He was worshiping there. So we could translate this meaningfully.

[Caller or Guest]

That.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

This is when people started to worship Yahweh, which, again, as Father Andrew said, they weren't doing that before.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. We know that Abel, at the very least. We know that Abel at the very least was doing it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Offering sacrifice.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So it seems strange that it says, and then they began to call upon the name of Yahweh.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

What is it that began. Exactly.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So what this is talking about is a shift that happens as.

Humanity is multiplying on the Earth.

And once you have humanity multiplying and spreading out.

Then you have the beginning of religion.

Before this, to throw some of our friends a bone. It was a relationship, not a religion.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We just had A bunch of evangelicals who loved us until this moment.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But from Enosh on, it's a religion, not a relationship.

Because number one, it's not direct. And number two, we're not talking about just there's one big family on Earth and the head of that family is leading it in the worship of God. We're talking about lots of families, they're spreading out. Right. Therefore you have individual heads of families offering sacrifices in different places. But you also have. When you go over to the genealogy of Cain, we've talked about that a fair amount. We're going to obliquely here touch on giants. So get obliquely excited.

There are other names being called upon.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There are other things starting to be worshiped in the kitty, that saint in.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The city that Cain built over there in Canaan land.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And so there is now we could now talk about religion meaningfully once we get to the generation of Enosh. That's what this is saying. There are people who are worshiping Yahweh, the true God. There are other people out there worshiping other things in different places.

And so we see this pattern that we referred to last time of sort of earlier.

Pre settled religion.

Being.

Preserving an earlier stage.

Of religion.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So Abram is living in an idolatrous.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

City where they've got temples and you know all that going on.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. You got paganism running wild. We're well post Neolithic revolution here by millennia. But.

Notice the situation with Abram. God comes and appears to Abram in person.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Which presumably, I mean, we don't get any records, I should say, of that happening. Like there are times when it says that God speaks to Noah. Right. But is it this in person sense? I don't know that he sees him face to face.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No. Yeah, no, that's Abram and then Moses.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But so.

He'S called this adulter city and is called to leave that city and return to living essentially as a nomad. Not only as he spends years traversing the known world and the Fertile Crescent to get to Canaan, but then even once he's in Canaan, he's not. He doesn't go and move to a city. Lot does. And that goes badly. But Abram doesn't move into a city. Abraham continues to live nomadically on the land and move from place to place.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And as we've said before, this is one of the themes that runs through especially the Old Testament is this idea that.

Putting down roots and building cities is less than ideal, is not the paradisaical life that was given to Adam and Eve.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It may not be bad in and of itself, but it's dangerous.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah.

Most cities mow problems.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. You go there, big city women try and vamp you.

That is an obscure reference. In fact, if you get that reference and you can tell me who said it on television, call in. Don't call in with guesses.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I'm looking over at the. I'm actually looking at the phone right now to see if it's lighting up.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You have to know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You can't Google it, people. You can't Google it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You have to know who said that and where.

And so we see this pattern then in Genesis, that the places where the worship of the true God is preserved.

Is among the Abrahamites.

Like the Midianites, like Jethro Moses, father in law, has preserved the worship of the true God. And some of the Edomites have, but not all of the Abrahamites even, because very quickly we see as we go through the Torah, that the Moabites, now that they've come and settled in the land that God brought them to, According to Deuteronomy 2, the Moabites start worshiping Chemos, the moon God, and other pagan gods.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And I saw some of that stuff earlier. I saw Moabite texts on cuneiform tablets and Shemesh stuff at that museum. I'm telling you guys, it's like a Lord of Spirits museum.

I'm getting no kickbacks for this advertisement, by the way.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I just had a very good time at the museum now.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, the British Museum is better. The British Museum, farther away.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. Yeah. Is possibly the greatest museum in the world.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. But much farther away.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. Yeah, A little more.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And not guilt free, given that everything there is kind of stolen.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Indeed. There's a whole. There's a whole, like, plaque or sign at the front of this museum here in Chicago that actually kind of apologizes on some level for the fact that they have a bunch of these artifacts. But explains like, the laws at the time had an arrangement where, you know, some artifacts were allowed to those doing the excavations and then some were given to the host country. So it was like sort of giving an explanation of, like, no, we didn't steal all this stuff. That's right. We had a deal. We had a licensing agreement. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

They accepted the terms and conditions.

So now Disney gets to kill your wife anyway, living here in 2024.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. So. And as we mentioned. Right, though. Right. So on the one hand, right, you see the Moabites, once they settle, and this is, of course, the big warning in Deuteronomy to the Israelites is that God telling them. Not really warning them, he's kind of just telling them what's going to happen. That once they come into the land and they settle down and they plant their crops and they plant their vineyards and they're living in their cities, that they'll forget about him.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Because they don't need him anymore. They're not dependent on him anymore.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

They'll fall into the paganism of the world. But even that is not a given, because as we mentioned before, Melchizedek is the king of a city.

The city.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Of Jerusalem, and he's keeping it real.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And he still is worshiping the true God. He's still worshiping Yahweh when Abraham gets there.

[Caller or Guest]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So it's not a foregone conclusion that city boats will get in trouble, but it's much. Clearly, it's dangerous. Right. It's more difficult.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There's a tendency, I have to say now, by the way, like, this is the most. Already the most unusual Lord of Spirits episode ever, because instead of being by myself in a dark room, as I mentioned earlier, I am seeing a cross from Trudy the Tank Richter. But I'm also now next to the CEO of Ancient Faith Ministries, Jori Melinda Johnson, who's waving in a vigorous way that none of you can see. But nonetheless, it is true. And so, yes, this is a group effort here.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You have this feeling that you're being watched.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I am literally being watched and listened to.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And this is the most ridiculous thing ever, because everyone knows I'm the one who needs the supervision, not you.

Like, you're kind of fine on your own recognizance. I'm the one who's gonna get us into trouble.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Clearly, we can't trust your wife.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

To keep an eye on you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I do this from the church. She's not even here. I don't think she even listens half the time. She's. She's done with me. Like, she just. I've heard you talk all day. Like, I don't need any more of this.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Exactly.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

This is my break. I've heard. Go to the church and talk to everyone else.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Heard of all this. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So, yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, I am. I am.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Can confirm.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Anarchy in more ways than one.

And I don't even have a plan.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We talked about last time, right? So.

That the. The Axial Age, there is this shift that happens also that sort of produces Second Temple Judaism.

That.

We see a shift from what's called Ancient Israelite religion after the exile.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The return of the land. That's a product of things that happened in the exile. Product of the shift in status.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep. Big focus on the Torah. Like. Yeah, Josiah and all that stuff. Everybody.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Josiah was way before this. But anyway.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, yes. But, but, but, but, yeah, but I mean, it's emblematic of this idea, right, of this renewed focus on texts and so forth.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Sorta.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But so, yeah. So after the return from exile, now Judah is no longer an independent kingdom. It's Judea. It's a Persian province.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep. A shadow of its former self, that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

A Greek Seleucid province and then a Roman province.

But there's this shift where you get the emergence of the synagogue system that happens and the corresponding emphasis on texts and the public reading of texts and of scribal activity and copying and studying and mastering the texts. And this then also, this literacy emphasis then also produces an emphasis on putting things in writing. So this is when you get this explosion of Second Temple Jewish literature, which is recording what was previously oral tradition into these various texts, these various documents around, sort of around and surrounding the Hebrew scriptures. All this starts happening in the Axial Age. But this is a shift and a trend.

That affects everybody everywhere.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, right. As we said in great detail last time, by the way, I have to. I have to share this with everybody. Someone on the YouTubes, the tubes of. You just asked the. I mean, very reasonable question, does Trudy have entrance music?

And when she is finally inducted into the WWE hall of Fame and there's some kind of nook there in the exhibit that's dedicated to.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

They don't have a physical hall of Fame.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Trudy the Tank Richter. Well, well, we have to.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Actually.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, they don't have a physical, but they. Well, okay, maybe a website.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

This is a topic of much controversy.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Will it play the music? Like when you go and click on, you know, the. The Tank exhibit.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I don't know what her music would be. My entrance music is William Shatner's cover with Peter Frampton of Spirit in the Sky.

That is my entrance music.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That is excellent. Yes, that is. And that's on YouTube, by the way. Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

On which song Frampton does indeed come alive.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I think if I had to pick entrance music for myself, it's an even toss up between Chibo Matto's Know your Chicken.

And.

Nerf Herder's Van Halen. I think those. That's where I'm. That's where I am today. Anyway.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'm thinking they just play Pomp and circumstance.

Just being real. I won't tell you what we called.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It when I was in high school band.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Because you're supervised.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I am supervised.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But I'm also much. Yeah. Anyway.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I'm much more restrained than my Very Reverend Dr. Co host.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's not saying much.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Very true.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So. Yeah. So what. What we didn't mention. Right. Last time was that.

The interesting fact that there are a bunch of critiques of the idea of the Axial Age.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So the term is used by everybody now.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, by the way, we just. Your wife just weighed in on. On Facebook.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, is she actually listening?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

She said Thursday nights, he's your responsibility.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, there we go. See, there we go. She is officially, if caught or captured, she denies all knowledge of my activities.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Custody has been transferred.

So does that mean I get your action figures if something horrible happens to you?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No, I'm. Other people.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They're probably laid out one by one in your will.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I bet you wouldn't even, like, clean them with canned air or anything. You would just leave them in a box or something.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Actually, what would happen is my wife would sell them on ebay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There you go. See, it's true.

So.

Yeah. So everybody uses the phrase the Axial Age now to refer to the same thing. To refer to the same period.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Everybody might be a little broad, but. Yes. Yes. Everyone who's talking.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Everyone who talks about it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Most people don't talk about this that often.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Weirdly, on the streets of Chicago today, even at the University of Chicago, I did not hear people talk about the Axial Age.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. But everyone who talks about it calls it the Axial Age. They use that term. Everyone who talks about the topic. Yes. I realize that most people, unlike me, do not think about the Roman Empire every day, but.

Yeah, so. But there was especially. Was first proposed, there was disagreement about.

[Caller or Guest]

It.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And there are still some people who kind of have an axe to grind who will use the phrase. Like, they'll put it in scare quotes, you know, like the religious shifts of the Axial Age in scare quotes. Because they don't say they fully buy it. But where we're going here is one of the main criticisms, possibly the. The most common and prominent criticism of the idea of the Axial Age is that the Axial Age can't really be all that important and can't really be the Axial Age, as in this axis.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Upon which things pivot, things turns. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Because Christianity arises later.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

This has been one of the big criticisms.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And.

This assumes a couple of things.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Number one, you can See why we've spent a lot of time on this show describing in completely objective, non sarcastic terms our 18th and 19th century German friends.

But where the Axial Age is first being discussed and proposed.

By one of our early 20th century German Swiss friends.

You have to understand that academia, the circles in which he's talking about this, are firmly entrenched in this developmental idea of religion. Right. Which of course is all leading up to 19th century German Lutheranism.

And therefore sees the rise of Christianity as.

The most transformative event in world history.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Like the rise of a new kind of religion. And I. Yeah. Not to just pop culture this out a little bit, but. But I recall not, not Civilization 6, but there was an earlier iteration of civilization that as religion shows up in.

Like different religions appear at different points. And it completely uses this idea, this evolutionary idea of religion, like there's earlier forms. And then Christianity is like this almost last one.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Which is kind of a wacky thing to do for Access games.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And it's this, this massive shift and assumed in there, for reasons we've also talked about before, that are related to the fact that they're Germans.

Is this idea that there's this just incredible discontinuity between Christianity and preceding Judaism.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Which I mean, a lot of Christians buy that idea of Marcionites. Yeah. Right. Yes, but they would. But I mean, just to be as charitable as possible to them.

Which I think is sort of my bit in the podcast.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's your job. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

To be as terrible as possible. I think it's this idea that, well, Jesus appears on the scene and that changes everything. There's new revelation that changes everything. Yeah. So it's understandable. It's understandable.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. The problem is when you go past that to demeaning the Torah, the Hebrew scriptures, the Old Testament, marginalizing it, which.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No one in the New Testament does.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Sorry, Martin Luther.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But for our early 20th century scholarly friends on the international stage, they're firmly indoctrinated into that.

That the religion of the Pharisees was this dark and evil thing.

And you know, Christianity is this complete novum, completely different virtually, if not actually a different God.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

And so for them, again, they see this massive discontinuity. And this massive discontinuity is after the Axial Age. So all these shifts of the Axial Age pale in comparison and can't be that important. Was sort of the criticism. But, but, but the critical assumptions in there are fundamentally wrong.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And. And the reason why we know that's the case is by looking closely at Second Temple Judaism.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, yeah. And Second Temple Judaism, the vast variety of forms Judaism took in the Second Temple period and coming to the realization which fortunately, even totally secular scholars, Christian scholars, Jewish scholars, non religious scholars. Right. Of Christian origins, have pretty much all come around to now that Christianity is a Second Temple Judaism.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It is a form of Second Temple Judaism.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That basically, two forms of Second Temple Judaism, Pharisaism and Christianity, which are closely related because Christianity is ultimately a variation of Pharisaism.

Are the two forms of Second Temple Judaism that survived the destruction of the Second Temple.

And are now Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity, respectively.

[Caller or Guest]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And one interesting thing that's come out of me writing a recent book.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, that's right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Everybody keep an eye on the Internet.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There's a book coming out next week, everybody. Yeah, yeah. Which we've told some of you called St. Paul the Pharisee, Jewish Apostle to the nations.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And that I've had some interesting discussions about with some Jewish folks. Is.

That one of the places where you see.

How closely related Pharisaic Judaism and Christianity are is that both Christianity and the Pharisaism that becomes Rabbinic Judaism both want to claim Gamaliel?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There are icons of him, by the way. He's a saint in the Orthodox Church.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Amen.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And he's one of the most prominent rabbis in the Mishnah, which is part of the Talmud.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

More people need to name their kids after him.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Gamaliel.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, that's a great name.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

So, right. These are two closely allied Second Temple Judaisms. That being the two survivors then gradually split off from each other. Read Religion of the Apostles.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Find out all about that.

That's literally the introduction, I think, isn't it? Yeah, that's St. Paul, convert, question mark.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So.

Christianity, therefore, since it is a form of Second Temple Judaism, that means it is a continuation of Second Temple Judaism.

It is.

Fundamentally the same thing.

Now, that is not to say that the coming of Jesus as the Messiah is a small thing or unimportant.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Obviously it is the most important thing to ever happen in history.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But.

We'Re talking about something that was anticipated and expected and prophesied and believed about.

For centuries beforehand within Second Temple Judaism.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. It didn't come out of nowhere, which is why Jesus very rightly, is chiding people all the time, like, hello, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know that if you knew Moses, you would know him.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And then Christianity's focus upon it is a reflection upon it having happened. Right. So, yes, you move from anticipation of this event happening to reflections upon this event having happened. But that's a passage of time. Right. It's not a change in the religion.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. It's not a new religion.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

So, yes, this temporal transition has happened.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But.

That'S it. And so the reason we took the time to come back and do this here at the beginning of this episode, which, yes, technically, we're still at the beginning of this episode.

As these things go for us.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's true.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We're going to use. So there's this relationship then between Second Temple Judaism and Christianity that we just talked about, this relationship of continuity. But within that continuity, there are things that change. Like there's a New Testament now, right? Yep.

There'S. Right. Et cetera, et cetera. There are these things that change.

[Caller or Guest]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But there's this overarching continuity and not a break.

So we're going to use this as sort of a paradigm for understanding how you can have changes and shifts of different sorts without breaking continuity, even within.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The history of Christianity per se.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, right. Later, that's what we're going to apply this paradigm to other such things, which.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I just want to underline this because, I mean, this is one of the fundamental assumptions.

Not just of this, you know, the hundred episodes we've done now, although it super is, but it really like, really, people, if you look closely at the writings of the church fathers, if you look closely at the texts of the services of the Orthodox Church, this assumption is everywhere. And I think if.

Someone reads a radical discontinuity in this, honestly, they're looking at it with Martin Luther eyes. That's just what it is.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Not necessarily Martin Luther. They could be Muslims.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, well, there's that. Exactly. But yeah, I mean, it's this idea of, you know, that. That.

That the Torah is. Is over in some way, you know, which if that were true, I mean, we actually had someone post something like this earlier in the. In our Facebook group today, where they were quoting from Saint Justin Martyr, who was talking about Deuteronomy and was wondering, like, is what he says here about Deuteronomy, you know, where he talks about, you know, these things no longer bind you? Like, is he basically saying, like, that the Torah is no longer in effect? You know, because you could certainly read it that way. But that's frankly a very Protestant reading.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, well. And even more common now, maybe just more common in the circles I hang around in, but which are dodgy circles.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Deeply weird. Yeah, More parallelograms than circles, I would say.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

More a rhombus of a sort.

It's less of the Old Testament, New Testament discontinuity.

Because I think.

We settled this with Marcion. We settled this in beginning of the second century.

Come on. But there is still a lot among sort of out of date liberal scholars and Muslims.

This attempt to drive this wedge between.

Jesus and St. Paul.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That they're doing two different things and that Christianity is this Pauline religion that St. Paul made up. Right, right. Which also has as a feature chucking the Torah in the bin.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And this is not just an extended, you know, pitch for your book that's coming out next week.

[Caller or Guest]

But.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No, it is not.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But everyone should go ahead and buy that book when it comes out if you're interested exploring this more deeply.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But yeah, of the two, I'm the one of us least prone to self shill.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's true. You don't, you're not even on the social medias anymore.

[Caller or Guest]

No.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, so that sort of attempt. Right.

But yeah, so there is this great continuity, but that continuity is not denying that things happened, things that happened were important. Right. And that there are these various shifts. So to kind of break this down, since we're going to be using this as a paradigm.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We're gonna be using, we're gonna be applying this to other things. Right. What are the, what are the important points of continuity that we're talking about? Where are the places where we need to have a kind of continuity.

In order to say that there is an overall continuity despite other things maybe shifting, changing, varying somewhat.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And. And how can you tell when something is in discontinuity?

[Caller or Guest]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And if one of these things is broken now we're talking about something else. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

A new religion.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And this is. And as we apply this paradigm, we're going to be arguing not just like, hey, Father Andrew and I came up with this cool thing.

We're essentially going to be arguing that like as especially the early church fathers are addressing different groups. Right.

This is essentially the model that they're implicitly using, not explicitly. Like there's no church father who. I can quote you, who's going to lay this out exactly the way we're going to lay it out.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. There's no like systematic formula, but implicitly.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. You read St. Irenaeus against heresies. Right. You'll see him making arguments related to these points we're talking about and vice versa. Where do you think we're getting these points anyway?

So yeah, I'm surprised.

Really, folks, instead of accusing me of never quoting the Church fathers. You should be accusing me of plagiarizing the Church fathers for using their stuff and not citing them.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

How dare you, sir.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And if you do the Church fathers better, that's probably what you'd do.

So.

There is an idea.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's all in public domain now, by the way.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And this is. This is going to sound strange and foreign, I know to some people, some Christian people.

That is the idea of primary and secondary Scriptures. And by that I'm not referring to things that are deuterocanonical.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And.

I think the reason people aren't used to thinking this way is because of the deep impact that sola scriptura has made.

On the American culture and, you know, Northern European culture more broadly, where it's spread throughout the world.

Where scriptures are scriptures and everything that's not scripture is not scripture and that's it. Right. But this isn't the way scriptures have functioned in the history of Judaism and Christianity. There are primary and secondary scriptures within the canon. So it's pretty hard to argue.

And be taken seriously by anyone that the Torah doesn't occupy a special place within Judaism.

Pretty bad all the way through. Right. That it is in some way the primary scripture. And then the other, the rest of the Hebrew scriptures are sort of secondary to it because they're all in different ways, reflecting on the contents of the Torah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, Commenting, applying.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Regurgitating.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Seeing history through the lens of it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or applying it, interpreting.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, interpreting it. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And so you have this relationship, and we have built into our liturgical forms a similar relationship within the New Testament.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, sure. I mean, just. Just look at the. Like, set the content aside. Just look at the way the Gospels are treated in the services.

And look at the way readings from the Acts and the Epistles are treated in the services. Right. It's not the same.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And yeah, and.

It'S very obvious. Right. Like if someone walked in and knew nothing about Christianity and they heard the one reading where someone just gets up and does it. And generally in the Orthodox Church, someone who's not even Orthodox can do the epistle reading.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's theoretically possible. I know, I know there's a bunch of people clutching their pearls right now.

But I will give you an ancient example just so you can let go of those pearls so they can be passed on to your grandchildren. It was possible.

In the early patristic period. Actually, I hesitate to use that phrase, but you know what I'm talking about, like 4th, 5th, 6th century to tonsure a catechumen as a reader. Like the guy was designated as a reader and yet was not even.

An Orthodox Christian yet. He's not even baptized yet. But he could be a liturgical reader in the services. Now, I'm not saying that we should do that now, but I'm just saying that this is a thing. This is a thing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. And this is commonly done throughout the Orthodox world. It is carried over from the fact that in synagogues.

Guests are frequently invited to do the Haftarah reading, not the Torah reading.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

A visitor, not the Torah reading.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. They don't get up there and touch the Torah scroll. Okay, but the haftara reading, a non Jewish person. Right. And we've continued that trend and people sit for it. Everyone stands for the Gospel. Only clergy read the Gospel book. There's a procession with the Gospel book, just like there was a procession with.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The Torah placed in the middle of the altar.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right. This is just the case.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Veneration of the Gospel book.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And the New Testament is seen as working fundamentally the same way. You have the Gospels.

Of our Lord Jesus Christ and then you have the Epistles, which includes the apostolicon, the apostolic writings, with all the rest of the New Testament writings which are interpreting and applying.

The birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension into heaven, enthronement of Christ. That's what they're doing. That's what St. Paul says he's doing.

[Caller or Guest]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He's going out and preaching Christ and him crucified. He's preaching about the. He's preaching the gospel. He's preaching the contents of the Gospels.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

This is why it's traditional for homilies in most cases, to be about the gospel reading.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Indeed. That's what the word means. It means the same.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Literally, that's what it means in Greek is the same. He's now going to say the same thing, but in different words.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. And that doesn't mean that they're not scriptures. It just means that within the scriptures there are these relationships.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So St. Peter already calls St. Paul's writings scriptures, St. Paul's letters, and that's why he's still alive, while he's still alive, still writing them at the same time. Right.

So how does that work?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, this gets into how Second Temple Jewish writing worked in general.

Second Temple Jewish writing in general, we talked about.

Within the Second Temple period, there's this burgeoning of all of these other texts sort of around the scriptures that are putting down in writing things that previously had been oral traditions surrounding the scriptures. And these texts.

Were read and used and were treated as holy Books by different communities, but they were always on the level of, here is how we interpret and apply.

The Torah in most cases within our community.

And so for St. Peter.

Looking at the way St. Paul's letters were functioning within the Christian communities, the churches in all of these different cities, he saw them functioning as that kind of scripture.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. He's not saying, I am St. Peter, and therefore I solemnly canonize the writings of my fellow apostle.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He doesn't give a list.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, it's like, oh, yes, I see you guys using them this way. That's what they are.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. And so he understands that's how a certain type of scripture is used.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And so he recognizes. Recognizes that that is in keeping with. Right. Well, in. In Qumran, the Dead Sea Scrolls, one category of the text is sectarian text.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, I saw a piece of a Dead Sea scroll today that was really cool. I sent Father Stephen a photo of it. I was like, ah, it's a Dead Sea scroll.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

A fragment of one.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Yes, yes, a bit. A bit. A bit.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, a chunk.

Right. And those texts were for the organization of the community. Right. So they had this category, and this is an existing category, but those texts that are constitutive of the community.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There, how St. Paul's epistles are, how those early Christian communities came to be organized in terms of their leadership, in terms of their worship, in terms of their way of life, all of these things.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Are being organized in, through these texts. So this is one category of continuity.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Are we using the same texts? This is why it's so important that you don't throughout the Old Testament, because if you do throw out the Old Testament, you're now a new religion.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Congratulations, you're a Marcionite heretic.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You're not Judaism or Christianity. You're something else.

So having this same formative body of scriptures.

Is.

Part of the continuity.

You also have a continuity of forms of worship.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Now, people may point at this and say, people of a certain bent and say, well, wait a minute, Second Temple Jewish worship, they're offering animal sacrifices in.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The temple and only there, only in that one geographic spot.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And Christianity isn't doing that. We're not going to get into the whole argument about the Eucharist being a sacrifice right. Now, I've got a published journal article on that. Go read that.

Right. But.

A couple points.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

About that, things you may not have heard, actually.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So, number one, there were already within Second Temple Judaism.

Forms of Second Temple Judaism that were doing temple things outside the Temple in Jerusalem.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Everybody get up off the floor. I know this is a little shocking. Animal sacrifices going on in places.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The offering of incense.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Going on in places other than the temple in Jerusalem. And it was not being, like decried, spoken against.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

They were not being considered heretics and evil.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And yeah, this was a thing, boys and girls.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So probably the most prominent one was the. The Jewish temple in Leontopolis, which was sort of on the outskirts, in modern terms, a suburb. But they didn't really have suburbs.

Near Alexandria in Egypt, which is basically where most of the Alexandrian Jewish community was concentrated. What was Leontopoulos is now referred to as Tel Yehudi, the Hill of the Jews.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

How about that?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Because there's still that connection there. And there was a temple there.

To the God of Israel. And it didn't even look like the temple in Jerusalem. It was an obelisk.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I'm still trying to picture that in my head. Like, how does that work? Because an obelisk is mostly like the Washington Monument.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, it's an obelisk. They got a door in the bottom.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And the bottom floor is the temple proper.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

They go in and burn incense.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There's two hanging lamps on either side of the door when you go in. It had been a temple to Bast.

The cat God, but when the Jewish community came to predominate in Leontopolis, they turned it into a Jewish temple.

And they justified it using the psalm verse that talks about there being an altar of incense to God in Egypt. But also the way this worked, and we know about this because Philo made use of this. Philo of Alexandria. The way it was viewed was not as a second temple or a second second temple or a replacement for the Temple of Jerusalem.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Judaism 2.5, but it was viewed as.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Sort of an outpost of the temple in Jerusalem, as connected to the temple. So that they would still send money to Jerusalem to the temple. They would still go and make pilgrimage to Jerusalem to the temple, but for sort of day to day stuff.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Because obviously you can't travel from Alexandria, Egypt to Jerusalem back and forth. Right. At this period in history, even today.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That is very difficult.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, but it's difficult. You couldn't do it very often then for day to day stuff, they would go to this one in. In Leontopoulos.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There also may have been. There's a lot of debate about this on Elephantine Island. A temple of Jerusalem. By the way, the temple of Leitopolis was actually the only Jewish temple for three years.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Huh.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The temple of Jerusalem was destroyed in AD 70. The one in Leontopolis was destroyed in AD 73.

And that was when the Roman Emperor ordered the governor to destroy it because he was worried that with the temple in Jerusalem destroyed there in Alexandria, that might become a rallying point for a further rebellion by the Jewish people. And so he had it destroyed three years later. But for three years that was the only functioning Jewish temple in the world.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Sacrifices still being offered.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Elephantine island their may well have been a Jewish temple there as well.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Where's. Where is that exactly? Like that's. Yeah, it's never been there.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's an island in the stream. That is what we are. Somewhere in between. Anyway.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I caught that reference. Thank you. Yeah.

My boss is grinning over here. So she clearly caught it as well.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. So there's basically we discovered on the island we know there. There were some Jews at the time of the exile who went in that direction who were there.

And there is a. The remains of the foundation are there. And the foundation kind of matches the floor plan of Solomon's temple with something that could be a well of souls.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, like in Indiana Jones there is.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Sort of this anticipation that well, this was probably. You can't prove it. I mean if someone wants to say no, I mean you can't prove it but. And also part of what's poisoned the well on why people want to deny it is that it gets used in a lot of conspiracy theories about where the Ark of the Covenant ended up.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, there's the well of souls thing. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So they say like oh see this proves the. They had the Ark of the Covenant with them when they went to Egypt. Right. So anytime something like that gets used in conspiracy theories, scholars are prone to just deny the whole thing on principle to not go there.

But also not sacrificial temple stuff, but non sacrificial temple stuff in terms of the worship that went on in the temple.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, there's other things going on.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Was sort of adapted at Qumran because they had rejected the second Temple as corrupt.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's the Dead Sea Scrolls place everybody.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. They had adapted some of the things. So. And then. Right. So already you have people doing some of the temple stuff outside of the temple, within second Temple Judaism in some groups. And then conversely we see in the Book of Acts that Christians were still making animal sacrifices in the temple in the temple after Christ's ascension, including St. Paul and St. James.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I thought we agreed not to talk about that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh no, we've talked about it before.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I'm just kidding.

Yeah, no, it's it's this. It's this weird lacuna. You know, it doesn't fit the paradigm that a lot of people have of this. These radical disjunctions.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, yeah. Right. And so what you actually see here, again, in worship is a continuity from Second Temple Judaism that Christianity adapts some elements of temple worship in its worship, continues to use the temple until the temple is destroyed. When the temple is destroyed, they go on with their worship, which is basically synagogue worship, plus some adapted temple worship elements.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And I mean, and there's some other big elements, too, that get adapted, like the structure of authority. It's almost the same. It's almost the same in early Christianity.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It gets translated differently.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

In your Old Testament and your New.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Testament, when he says that, that's literally the case.

Literal translation differences. But the words, like if you read the Old Testament in its Greek translation and you read the New Testament in Greek, you'll see the same words getting used.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. So when ecclesia is church in the New Testament and assembly in the Old Testament.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Whereas like in the Greek Old Testament, ecclesia refers to the people of Israel and ecclesia is used in the New Testament refer to the church. But it's. They're just using the same word.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The same word to refer to the same group of people.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But the same thing with. Right. You have the elders of the people, the elders of Israel in the Old Testament, and you have presbyters, which are not like, same word.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's not like they're not analogous to the Sanhedrin. They are the Sanhedrin of the church.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right, Right. And you have the shepherds of Israel.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, dude, that means you and I. You and I are Sanhedrin, Pastor.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You have the episcopy, you have the bishops. Right. There's this direct carryover.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So these authority structures are fundamentally the same in both. Right. And so this is a point of continuity between Second Temple Judaism and Christianity. And then.

You have the ritual life in the calendar.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Many of the same feasts where.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. The calendar originally, the original Christian calendar, is just brought over from Judaism.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. With both layers, the apostles going to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, but what they're celebrating is the resurrection of Christ.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, exactly.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And same thing with Pentecost. Same thing with. And then over time, distinctly Christian feasts get added.

Like the martyrdom of St. Stephen is probably the first one.

And then theophany is probably the second one, and so on.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And so now you might look at the Jewish calendar the Christian calendar and say, these are kind of far apart. I see the connections, but you have to go back to the first century.

And do the comparison there. And that's where you see this continuity. So.

We just described, and we've given this as an example, there is.

A form of Second Temple Judaism that becomes known as Christianity first at Antioch.

And.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And it has continuity with the Second Temple Judaism that came before and ancient Israelite religion. Even though if you look at like you come to a divine liturgy and you go on your time machine back to the tabernacle in the wilderness, the two things you see are not going to be identical. There'll be a lot less blood at my parish this Sunday, for example.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Not like last Sunday or Just kidding.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But there are.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Sorry.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. But there's this continuity. But there are also shifts and movements and the passage of time and different social and cultural settings. So you can have this overarching continuity within these shifts and changes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So that's where we're starting setting up this paradigm. Now. We're going to talk about in the next half after. Are we going to have a clip?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We are going to have a clip.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But before we do the clip. I'm not throwing to the clip yet.

That. Is it Clippy. Is it that little guy with the. No, I think he was fired. I miss the little guy, Frank.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I was never an Ms. Word guy.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But we're going to. In the second half, we're going to take this kind of paradigm and really show how this was applied.

In the early church to a few different groups. And then in the third half, we'll get into how we might apply it today.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, indeed. So in honor of our 100th episode and our fourth anniversary, many of you have clamored for clips.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Is there a clip clamor?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There is a clip clamor from the. Yeah, there is a clip clamor from the Conclave of. See, I'm trying to come up with a further alliteration, but it's not coming to me.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But clip Clamor sounds like a really bad supporting character in a 1940s comic book.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Wow. I'm imagining. Yeah, yeah. Well done. Yeah. So many people have asked, like, could you like, create a clips channel or something like that? And who knows, maybe I'll be able to prevail upon Simon, our manager of the Tube of yous, to do that at some point. But, but, but in honor of this 100th episode, this, this centenary of Lord of Spirits, we have put together a few clips that we think you might enjoy. And so I'm going to ask Trudy the Tank Richter to play. Play the first of these three clips, and then we're going to go ahead and take our first break. So.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And if. If you don't enjoy them, too bad the show's free.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Too bad no one's making you listen to this. What are you doing here?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's free. Get what you pay for.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

What's all this Hate listening that's going on anyway. All right, take us. Give us the dream harp there, Trudy.

So how do you interact more with your angel? Well, number one, you know, a lot of prayer books, for instance, will have a prayer in there called the prayer to your guardian angel. If you don't have it in your prayer book, then you could probably find an orthodox prayer to the angel online somewhere. I'm sure that you can find something, and that's something that I would incorporate into your prayer every day. But, you know, one of the things that actually, I don't know why I started doing this not that long ago. I'm kind of ashamed to admit within just the past couple of years, as I'm going to sleep first, of course, you know, we pray to our Lord Jesus Christ to preserve us and to save us. You know, of course, because we could die in our sleep. But also the next thing that I do then is I specifically say, guardian of my soul and body, protect, free me from all assaults of the evil one this night. And then I also add, because I'm a husband and a father, protect my wife and my children. And I name them in that prayer as I'm going to sleep. Because, you know, you go to sleep, that's a kind of a vulnerable position to be in, and you want the guards up and doing their task in the night while you're asleep. And, you know, that is one of the things that we know that the angels do. That's not all that they're about for sure. We're going to be talking a lot more on this show about what angels are about and what they do. One of the things that they do, of course, is to guard us. They keep us from harm. Not just physical harm, but also spiritual harm. Like there is a war going on. There is a war going on. It is a spiritual reality, and we're participating in it. We're either participating in the works of God and becoming more like him, or we're participating in the works of the devil and becoming more like him. Like the biggest aha moments in my conversations with Father Stephen was when he said, you know that there's basically a thing that's the opposite of theoses. I said, what is that? Demonosis? And he's like, well, I don't know if there's a word for it specifically, but there is. Like, you participate in what God is doing and you become like him. But if you participate in what the dark powers are doing, you become like them, right? So you're always headed in one direction or the other. You don't get to stand still. How do we participate in the reality of our angels? I mean, prayer is the biggest thing, but also just have that sense, I think, especially when you're going to sleep is a good one. But also, you know, when you wake up in the morning to say, help me today, be with me. We're not talking about some kind of flimflammy. I hope angels are watching over you. Like, that's okay to say that, right? But that's kind of not all that they're really about. These are God's armies, his created beings. They're his government in a very real sense. And part of our task is to become like them. The Lord says that the sons of the resurrection. This is in Luke's gospel. Sons of the resurrection become like sons of God and equal to the angels. So we take on their roles. We do the things that they do. Your guardian angel, your patron saint, the one you're named after, the one who's assigned to your parish, is very concerned with the place that your church is in. The beginning is just to acknowledge that, like, they're here. My church is just named after here in Emmaus. Our church is named for the Apostle Paul. It's not just named after the Apostle Paul. He's here. And this place is important to him because we asked God to assign him here. And so we believe that that happens.

Love that dream harp, huh?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Man, you used to drink a lot of caffeine.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Your amps are, like, at 11.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's true. Yeah, it's true.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's true.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right, people, well, we're gonna go ahead and take our first break, but give us a ring. And like I said, you know, since there's no screening of calls tonight, we're just doing it raw, you know, with no processing here in the studio. So give us a ring. We'd love to talk to you about whatever is on your mind. So we're going to take our first break, and we'll be right back with this 100th episode of the Lord of Spirits.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

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 858-552-372346. That's 855-AF-ADIO.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

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 tragically misunderstood sometimes saints.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Serve in the life of the church.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

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.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

As we learn about the extraordinary lives of 20 of the most well known fools for Christ in a series of.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Brief hagiographies available [e-mail] Again, that is.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Store.Ancientfaith.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-AF-RADIO.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Hey, we're back. Thanks for that voice of Steve.

I don't know, should we just hang up our hats since we have done a hundred episodes by the end of this evening? What do you think, Father?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, maybe, maybe.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, I had people ask me whether the last episode was the last episode and it was.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We could have a surprise last episode. You know, I want to have a surprise last episode.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

A lady I know you the last.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Issue of the Walking Dead, but.

Cooler heads will probably.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's right. Most of us are not as frankly mean as you are.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right. You know, last, last episode I talked about.

Richard Rollins and.

Sort of bizarre attempts to combine white Rastafarianism and orthodoxy in his own person.

I feel like now that we're more than six months out from Pageau fest, some of these stories can be told.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

What did Jordan Peterson say to you when no one else was listening?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, we'll get there. But. Okay, okay. I was thinking today, what I was thinking about today was like that was the first time I met Pageau in person.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, right. Yeah. He's not as large as you are. You're like, you are three Peugeots.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

People are. Yeah.

But so, you know, first time I met him in person and, you know, he was a little odd, too.

Maybe not as odd as Ricky, but.

Like, so behind the venue, right. They had this sort of camper or RV thing, like really nice that was there for like the speakers and stuff. When they wanted to go hide, they had like water and snacks in there, right when they needed a break. And so at one point, like we're all trying to find Pageau.

Like where, where is Pageau?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And finally a couple of us, we go into this RV and he's all the way back at the back of the RV.

He's got like 18 different colors of post it notes.

He's got them all stuck to the wall in this weird pattern and he's like moving them around.

Right? Sort of muttering to himself.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

See a push pins.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And so we want. No, no, just post it notes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Just post it notes, okay?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And we, we go up to him, we say, Jonathan, what are, you know, what are you doing? And he turns around at us and he's just wild eyed and just keeps screaming at us, this is art. This is art.

Then we kind of fled out of the rv, right, and waited for him outside. He was in there another 45 minutes.

Like, I don't know what was going on.

But I just thought our listeners might like some of these true stories behind the scenes at Peugeot Festival.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I'm floored. I mean, I don't know what to do with that. Is it because he's Canadian or.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

See, I don't know, I don't know. The culture. Yeah, right. I mean the Cajuns of course got thrown out of.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, Trudy, who is like half Canadian or whatever, French Canada. She's saying it's not. Cause he's Canadian.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like she's claiming that. But we actually apparently do have a caller. Unless she just accidentally hung up on this person. I don't know. So we're going to go ahead and take a caller. Caller, I have no idea what your name is or where you're calling from because again, we're doing this completely off the cuff.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So if this is Pageau, please explain the post it notes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Welcome to the Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Caller or Guest]

Oh, thanks. My name is David. I'm calling actually from Fort Wayne, Indiana.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Your name is David?

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, actually that's my. I was baptized 2022. So I've called in. I was one of. When you had the episode of a panoply of Ben's, I was like three of them.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Nice, nice. I do remember the panoply of Ben's.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

So three of those were my questions. But now I, I don't know, I try to remember, am I David or am I Benjamin? I don't know.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

This is great because this is a good anniversary episode. Call. Yeah, you've got Like a callback here.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's right. Well, welcome back, Benjamin David. Yeah, this sounds like internecine, you know, early Jewish tribal fighting. So this is great. This is perfect. Yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

Well, so speaking of the. Hopefully it's not actual outright inner fighting, but I, I, you know, I listened to Father Young's conversation with certain reformed theologian and a friend of mine recently, like got his book about like the history of the church and stuff. So I gave him Father Damon Cure Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy to kind of, you know, think of like, hey, like this is. There's another way of kind of looking at church history because I haven't, you know, read the other book, but thank you. When I, yeah, so I, I did watch one of this guy's video about kind of like, I think he was talking about like the infallibility of the scriptures and he was going in a bit about like, what does the Bible say about tradition? Like, there's a couple of verses and he's saying, well, basically we have no idea what those traditions were. When he was talking about holding fast to the traditions. And so.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Wow, what a punt. Wow.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah. So, because I was trying to watch a video to have some dialogue with my, my friend, but he kept talking about like the infallibility of the scriptures and stuff. And so I just, you know, that being presupposed as I'm kind of transitioning out of, you know, a Protestant worldview and into an orthodox one. I was kind of, you know, I'm ditching the solas, but I don't kind of understand like where, where things land now with like infallibility and you know, that kind of stuff. So I was wondering if you guys could kind of expand on that idea on and like, kind of, because I don't even remember, like I didn't pay enough attention when I was in Bible college about kind of that whole part of the. Why it became so important to discuss them being infallible. Because I actually was listening to Father Evan Armitas on one of his. I don't know if it was Orthodoxy live or his Bible study, but he talked to something about, he had like a total side comment about that might cause some issue because he said that we don't necessarily hold to the idea or at least the prophecy, understanding of infallibility of the Scriptures. So I'll shut up and listen now, but that's kind of my main.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Even I'm not mean enough to get in a fight with Father Evan.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I've met Father Evan in person. He is very fit. Like he's ridiculously fit. And so even a behemoth slash ogre.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Like yourself, Father Cardio isn't everything, my man.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I don't know, he might know some techniques. I'm just throwing that out there. I'm just throwing that out there.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But it would be like beating up the kindly old man at the grocery store. He is rather nice. I couldn't fight him.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

He's rather nice. Yeah. Yeah. As we were saying earlier, he's so nice that he makes me look like you. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. This is a great question. And I think, you know, speaking as someone who once, long ago in the before times, was an evangelical, although I'm very happy, like a couple of years ago, the number of years that I was orthodox has now passed up the number of years that I was evangelical, which means I'm no longer a convert.

Right.

You know, I think that the reason why there's this push for infallibility, this understanding of that the Scriptures need to be understood in terms of this category of infallibility.

Is because this is understood as kind of a guarantee of their truth. Like, this is the foundation, right. On which the Protestant understanding. And I know I'm generalizing here, but this is generally true. The Protestant understanding about Christianity is the foundation on which it's built. And if you poke holes in the reliability of the Bible, then you have a foundational problem, right? So the category of infallibility is really a philosophical, logical category, right. That there are no errors of any kind, there are no discrepancies of any kind.

Within the texts of the Scriptures. And that's how you know that they're correct.

Right. Whereas I would say that the orthodox understanding of the Scriptures is. I wouldn't say that they're fallible. Right? Like, that's the problem is this duality of fallibility versus infallibility.

That's part of the problem is that whole structure, right? But they are true. And the way in which they are true is the way in which they function within the community of the church.

And I'll also just add, I mean, right before Father Stephen gives his actually. And, you know. But did you ever consider this? I'll also add that we've done a few episodes that are related to this question of how you know the script, how you understand the truth of the Scriptures. And the one that I think is the best place to start is one that we did that was called.

Oh, man, I'm blanking on the title. You know what I'm talking about, Father?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The how and how not to read the Bible.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. How. And how not to read the Bible.

I think that that's really important. And it was. I mean, it was a big learning experience for me because. And it really gave me a very strong sense of the way that the Scriptures are really received within the church. And then we have another one called something like how, you know, stuff is true or something. Something like that. I don't remember exactly now.

But yeah, that's what I would say is this. This problem of infallibility. It's taking a philosophical, logical structure and placing that on top of the Bible. And the big problem with that, of course, is that.

It'S assuming that there's this other standard.

By which what God has given is measurable, which actually puts something above God himself. Right. If God is being measured against something, then shouldn't you worship that something? Because that's clearly higher than God.

You know?

Father.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, I'm sorry, actually.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right, good. Thank you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You kind of confused inerrancy and infallibility.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, did I? Oh, there you go.

Help me out. See, I didn't go to Bible college either.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The core problem here is with the idea that a text can exercise authority.

Which is logically impossible.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Because it doesn't talk to you. Like, a book doesn't sit up and say, stop all that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The point is this. Are we talking about Gavin Ortland?

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay. I was gonna let you do that, being very circumspect.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The point. The point Ortlund is making there is logically incoherent. Right.

[Caller or Guest]

I didn't follow with what he was doing to. I was like, wait, this is. It seems to be missing the point. Like, there's some problems here, but I couldn't, like, put my finger on some of them, but.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay, yeah, and here's why. It's logically incoherent. A text can be authoritative. It could be regarded as an authoritative text. A community can attribute authority to a text. This text is authoritative for us. Right. But the text can't exercise that authority because it can't do anything. It sits on a shelf.

It's not an agent. It can't act.

A written text. A person has to read it, interpret it, and then act based on their reading and their interpretation. And so there's this basic epistemological problem at the core of Sola scriptura, which is you don't have any access to the contents of Scripture outside of your actually sitting down and reading the scriptures in time and space. Right. Which means even if you want to say, let's yield all the points. It's inerrant and infallible in the sense that the wildest evangelical fundamentalist thinks.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That doesn't get you anywhere. Because as soon as I have to read it and interpret it, I'm fallible.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So my sin.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

This is especially pointed if you're one of those folks who believes in total depravity. My sin is going to corrupt the holy text that I read and twist it. Remember we were talking about St. Peter, talking about St. Paul's epistles.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And many things in them that are hard to understand, and people twist them to their own destruction.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Like that's going to happen. Right. So therefore it being infallible and inerrant is irrelevant to the situation. Right. For the authoritative text of Scripture to function authoritatively within the church, for Scripture to have any role in the life of the church, there has to be some kind of infallible context in which the Scriptures are read and interpreted.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There has to be some way in which I can know that the interpretations of the text that I'm hearing are not just something that a sinful human came up with. Right. Because I'm not really hearing the text, even if I read it in the original language, even if I go and read the New Testament in Greek. I learned Greek from a textbook that was written by somebody and I'm using a lexicon that was composed by somebody who had his own biases.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There is no brute Bible, brute fact of the text of Scripture. It's all been interpreted. And so the question. You can't avoid this issue.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Ortland is interpreting the Scriptures within the Reformed tradition. I interpret the Scriptures within the Orthodox tradition. There is no difference.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Epistemologically between how we actually approach the Scriptures when we do it. He won't admit it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Maybe he's just reading what it says.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He's approaching it from within the Reformed tradition. I can play that game, too. I can say I'm just repeating what it said. Right. But I'm reading it in the Orthodox tradition. How do we decide which of those two is correct?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

That's the relativism stuff that I kind of try to deal with with some of my friends on. Because that. That'll be one of the things they'll point out. It's like, well, you know, how do you know if the Holy Spirit's talking to anybody and trying to, you know, or, you know, give interpretation on the Scriptures? You know, some of them, like the kids say, crashed out.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And. And just. By the way, I was gonna say just to correct myself, at least according to the various things that I looked up. Yes, you're right, Father. I did collapse infallibility with inerrancy. Infallibility is the idea that you can't make a mistake. Inerrancy means that there are no mistakes.

Which, I mean, it's funny to think, like, how can a book be infallible? Like, it doesn't do stuff. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

They're attributing agency to it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

They're saying scripture is the sole authority. Like, it functions independently. It just doesn't work.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Sit on a throne and make pronouncements.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. The core issue is not sola scriptura. The core issue is ecclesiology.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's the core issue. Right. And this is what I try to tell the catechumens, the inquirers who come to my parish.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Is there's only one reason to join the Orthodox Church. You come here and you find Christ here.

And if you come to the conclusion that Christ is here and this is Christ's church, then whatever the church is teaching, if this is Christ's church, is the truth.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep. All right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And then you try to explore it and understand it, and that's what we're doing on this show for the last four years, is trying to explore and understand and teach what it is that the church teaches.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Four years, man. We were in our mid-40s.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We're pushing 50.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We were slightly younger than Patrick Stewart was at the beginning of Star the.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Next Generation, but neither of us wears a toupee like I tried to make him do.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, well, I don't think you need a toupee. I could. I don't need one, but I am losing my hair on top. Yeah. Melinda is shaking her head like, please don't get a toupee into a tonsure. This is what clerical headgear is for, everybody. Thank you very much for that call, David. We're going to go ahead and move on to our next caller. Again, I have no idea who you are, caller, but welcome to the Laura Spirits Podcast.

[Caller or Guest]

Hello. Can you hear me?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We hear you.

[Caller or Guest]

Oh, Father. Hi. Christ is in our midst.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

He isn't. Always shall be. What's your name?

[Caller or Guest]

It's Father Tim Curran calling from Cape Cod.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Father Tim Curran. We've met in person before, haven't we? But I feel like it's been a long time.

[Caller or Guest]

Many, many moons ago in Pennsylvania. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, man. How are you?

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, I'm a little under the weather.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Today, but.

[Caller or Guest]

So by your prayers. But thanks for taking my call. I had an interesting one I thought I would run by you guys on the show.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay.

[Caller or Guest]

In my community down here on Cape Cod, I have a lot of people who are from Macedonia.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, man. Are we going to have the whole Macedonian thing?

[Caller or Guest]

I'm just putting it out there.

They introduced themselves to me as Macedonian.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay.

[Caller or Guest]

So I was wondering if either of you have had any experience with this and what a good. What you think might be a good pastoral redirect is.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But are either of you familiar with.

[Caller or Guest]

The phenomenon of carbonia?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, yes.

[Caller or Guest]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

So I've had a couple of requests.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

For things like this.

[Caller or Guest]

Wasn't really sure.

But briefly to explain to the people who aren't familiar with it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Because there's going to be people who haven't heard of this and they're going to freak out as soon as you start talking about it. Father.

[Caller or Guest]

Most likely. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But that's okay because this show, we freak people out sometimes.

[Caller or Guest]

Well, that's why I thought it would be appropriate. So it's. Apparently priests in some Balkan countries and in isolated places will still do animal sacrifices.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Sort of. Sort of.

[Caller or Guest]

It was given to me to understand this was entirely news to me.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Something that looks a lot like it. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It has certain similarities, but also really, really important differences. But also we're gonna go ahead and say this is bad and it should not be done.

[Caller or Guest]

Okay, that's important.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Caller or Guest]

I was wondering what you thought would be a good pastoral redirect to kind of recenter what it is we're trying to do and get away from the.

Honestly, I don't know where it comes from. If this is from a. It must be from a pre Christian understanding of animal sacrifice.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Honestly. Honestly, I think it is a Muslim influence.

[Caller or Guest]

Aha.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Honestly. Because all the areas that it's done were part of the Ottoman Empire.

Not that that. I mean. Yes, yes. Just because there's correlation doesn't mean causation. But that's my sense. That's my sense. ISL practice a formal sacrifice, a form of animal sacrifice.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And if you look at. If you compare the two, they are very similar.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They're very similar. Yeah, it should be set. So, okay, so what is actually being done? This is my understanding of what. What happens in this custom is that an animal, alive animal is brought in and often they're like brought into the church and kind of paraded in front of the aconostasis and then brought outside and slaughtered and.

Cooked and eaten. Right. And so there's Some people that, let's say, see. See. Animal sacrifice. Animal sacrifice.

But important discontinuity, as anyone who's been listening to this show for any period of time will know, the thing is not being cut up on a prothesis table, and it is not being put on an altar, and it is not being burned to a God. Right. So it is not traditional animal sacrifice. It does look like some Muslim rituals.

So, you know, like the core elements, right, are the idea that people want to have a festal meal and they want it to be blessed. And I think that, like, those things are good. Like, that's good. Right. But I think, though, that this idea of what it is that they're doing, especially bringing the animal into the church, which of course, is expressly forbidden in the canons of the Orthodox Church. Expressly forbidden precisely for this reason, because it's like, wait a minute, what are you going to do with that thing when you bring it in there Now? They're not. They're not actually sacrificing it on the altar, right? They're not, but it looks kind of like they're about to, is part of what's going on. So, yeah, I think the thing to do would be to. To talk to people and say, look.

And you can't gather them all together and say, now this is what we're going to be doing. But maybe find the people that are part of that community that are receptive to conversation and to having their understanding stretched a little bit and say, look, what is it that you're looking for out of this? What is the thing that makes this wonderful and meaningful and powerful for you? It's probably not bringing that goat into the building. Probably not. Probably not.

[Caller or Guest]

Which is a lot more. There's a lot more liturgically involved than I envision, Father, that your description of it is.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's my understanding of what it is, and I'm sure there's variations because as you said, it's remote. It's like it's this little village, mountain practice. This is not official. This is not something that bishops are condoning. And I know of bishops that have said, don't do this. You know, it's not happening here in the US as far as I know. I don't know. Maybe your Macedonians are doing this or would like to do it or whatever. Although I'm sure you would know if a goat had entered the church building.

[Caller or Guest]

I should probably say that I've never assented to doing this for anybody.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Good.

[Caller or Guest]

I always tried to redirect, but, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I Mean, I think my feeling probably is that for most people, the big meaningful bit is everybody's sitting down and eating the thing. And, I mean, you know, whether it's goat or lamb or whatever, like, I'm on board with that.

[Caller or Guest]

Absolutely.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And, yeah, there is. I mean, there are some. Again, there's some certain similarities to some stuff that Muslims do, but Muslims aren't, as far as I know, they aren't putting animals on altars and killing. Are they doing that, Father? Do you know that, Father Stephen? If.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Who's doing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

If Muslims are doing that, Putting animals on altars?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, they don't really have altars, per se.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's why I say it's very similar. The Muslim thing is very similar to this in that. Yeah, it's not. Totally.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And I know some people sacrifice in the ancient sense. Like, some people, like, I can't even shop at a halal butcher because, you know, they're doing. But the truth is that, like, what constitutes halal butchering. I'll tell you what constitutes halal butchering. It is a particular technique of cutting the throat of an animal and saying bismillah while you do it, which simply means in the name of God. That's all that. That means. Now, obviously, that Muslim's understanding of God is very different from mine, but, I mean, if someone wants to say in the name of God while they slaughter an animal, I don't personally have an objection to that, but in any event, I'm going to say a lot of other prayers over that animal that's going to do it, what I needed to do, spiritually speaking.

So I don't know anything to add or subtract or multiply or divide. Father Stephen.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, if it was me, I would just go and say the prayers and bless their livestock and then eat a nice meal with them.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right.

[Caller or Guest]

That sounds lovely.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Pretty straightforward. Yeah. Go bless her with a bunch of holy water. Sing pretty.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Then the Book of Needs. We can bless all that stuff. So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, right, exactly. Right, right, exactly.

[Caller or Guest]

Well, that is helpful, Fathers. Thank you. I was imagining that this was some kind of holdover from pagan times and didn't consider that it might have been a.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

People say that, but I don't think that's true, especially because it's not. Again, there's not too far off. Yeah. And it's too similar to stuff that's going on in Islam and in regions where Islam was very present.

So.

[Caller or Guest]

Right, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Of course, again, I haven't done the research to see if there is an actual.

You know, causative relationship, you know, there where you can actually really trace it to Muslim practices. But that is my shooting from the hip educated guess. So. Yeah. All right. All right. Nice to hear from you with Father Timothy.

[Caller or Guest]

Yes, likewise. Thank you.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Thanks for calling. All right, we're going to take one more caller and then roll on with the second half of Lord of the Spirits. So welcome, caller, whoever you are, speaking in the darkness out there somewhere.

Are you there?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Hello?

[Caller or Guest]

Can you hear me?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We hear you. Who are you?

[Caller or Guest]

Hello, my name is Levi.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Levi, yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, we've had two tribes of Israel so far tonight.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's right, yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

Excellent. Well, thanks for taking my call. I've been listening to you guys for a few years now and really, really appreciate the show. I've learned so much, thank God.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

What's on your mind, Levi?

[Caller or Guest]

I have. Well, I've got a question. I'm not even exactly sure how to, how to, how to form. I might kind of stumble through this question here, but I recently read. I'll start kind of with some background. I read the Space Trilogy or the Ransom Trilogy by C.S. lewis with a few of my friends.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Caller or Guest]

And I've kind of been talking about some of really interesting ideas there. And then also I'm also a Pavian, I guess you could say I follow a lot of his, his stuff and some of the themes that I've heard him talk about. And something that Lewis talks about is, is like, I guess it's. I don't exactly know how to pronounce it. It's like Logers or Log Race is like Logris.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. That's the mythical. That is the, the mythical name of the realm that King Arthur rules.

[Caller or Guest]

Right. Okay. And it seems like he talks about like, almost like it's like the spirit of the, of the nation or the people.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. The spiritual England.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah. Right. So I guess my question is, does that represent, does that represent something? First of all, is that something real? And, and is that something that's more like a, is it more like a collective consciousness or a collective soul of the people? Or is it rather more like, is there something like a, like a spirit or I guess an angel that goes with, with a nation? And if so, is it like a, is it necessarily a good spirit or is it, is it. Could, could it be bad? Like, is it demonic or is it, is it one or the other or is it just not real at all? I guess.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

When I make. After you make sense. Wow.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I didn't know I'd get to do modern Arthurian Literary criticism tonight on Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But yay, he is happier than I was when I got the Twin Peaks question.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I'm still processing that night.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay, so obviously that comes up mostly within.

That Hideous Strength, which is the third and final novel, the one that will make you go, what am I reading?

Brilliant work. I mean, it's a sort of take on the Tower of Babel, actually.

So, I mean, the concept of Logris as it functions within that novel, which, you know, Lewis is. He's taking a theme that does exist within Arthurian literature and kind of doing his own take on it. Okay. So it's his own sort of refined, rarefied version of this. All right. Like, if you read Malory, that's not there. If you read, you know, some of the stuff from Middle English, you're not going to see it there. Okay. And definitely not. If you see. If you read the Mabinogian, like, if you read the original, you know. Well, original, ish Welsh versions of these stories, it's not there. But in Lewis's version, Logris is kind of this ideal spiritual Christian England that's kind of present in a certain way. It's sort of like England as it should be. It's an eschatological England. Okay, yeah, yeah, that's what's going on. So it's not, you know, it's the idea of England as ruled by King Arthur, you know, everything in its proper place, all the knights of Camelot doing what they're supposed to be doing, all that sort of stuff. And so, you know, that he is strength, of course, takes place in the modern period. And so therefore it's very much this kind of mythological England also, you know, but it's breaking in is the idea. I mean, Merlin shows up in the, you know, in the story.

All that kind of stuff. Like there's this merging together of Arthurian myth and, you know, 1940s England. I mean, it's wild, wild stuff, as you know full well. But, yeah, it's this idea of England as it should be. England as it kind of could be as a Christianized, a re. Christianized England. You know, it's not just nostalgia. Like, you know, things used to be so great back in the day.

It's not just that, because the idea is that can be this present reality, but it is thoroughly Christian in its character. You know, it's not utopian. So, yeah, yeah, that's the way that the concept works in the book. And.

You know, whether that's like, a good idea. I mean, I think it works very well within the framework of the book. It's necessary within the framework of the book because it's contrasted against the. The civilization that.

I'm forgetting the acronym now off the top of my head.

[Caller or Guest]

Nice.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, yes, the nice. Nice. Yeah, I know. They're so nice. It contrasts against this sort of Tower of Babel civilization. Right. So it's this sort of City of God, city of man kind of thing going on. You know, like, there's all that. It's building on a whole long tradition that's, you know, goes back to St. Augustine, frankly, and the Scriptures, honestly, you know, so it's. It's that. That's what's going on there.

[Caller or Guest]

I see.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Have you read that book, Father Stephen?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay, I have, but I have no real opinions on CS Lewis.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There you go.

I will tell you, though, because I'm rereading it right now. If you really want to read the highest and best of Lewis's fiction, Till we have Faces is the one to read, and I will. Oh, awesome. And I will say to everybody out there in Lord of Spirits land, I'm going to suggest y' all read that as a kind of catechetical companion, because the way that it presents and deals with religion, I think is something that we could all kind of stand to understand a little bit better. So just putting that out there for everybody till we have faces.

All right, thanks very much for calling, Levi.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate your time answering. Appreciate you guys.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Absolutely. All right, so where are we, Father, in this grand.

Scheme of ours? Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Are we doing another clip or are we going to the.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, yeah, sure, let's play clip.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Number two right now. Hey, too.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right, let's hear that dream harp there, Trudy.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know, nerdery aside, and I clearly am one because I consider reading, you know, Ugaritic ritual texts and picking through Esau's genealogy to be fun and exciting ways to spend an afternoon. But beyond that, Nerdery, why is this important at all?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Why is this important to the orthodox faith or theology other than just, hey, it's interesting and fun and neat. I think this actually goes to the core. What we've been talking about today goes to the core of what salvation is.

And here's how I think that is. My father used to tell me about my grandfather, that at one point, my father was watching the Nuremberg trials on television, which were the trials of Nazi war criminals, so sort of the most demonically evil humans, you know, of our. Of our era.

And my father asked my grandfather what he thought about what had happened and these trials. And my grandfather's response was, there but for the grace of God go I.

And usually when we say that, we say that about some misfortune. Someone has suffered, someone has ended up homeless, someone has ended up bankrupt, someone has died at a young age. And we say, oh, there for the grace of God go I. It's God's grace that I have the things I have. And that's not untrue. But my grandfather was saying that about becoming a Nazi war criminal.

He was saying that about becoming this sort of immoral monster who would murder other people en masse and do these other things. And this is how the Scriptures present the demonic and our sin as participation in the demonic. After Adam and Eve have disobeyed, God says, it's not good that man should live forever. Because if we had, if we lived forever in that state, we would have been just like the demons, immortal and immoral, immortal and evil.

And so God gives us this life in this world and our mortality and our repentance to prevent us from suffering that fate. A lot of times our Western Christian friends present salvation as well. God has these laws, we've broken those laws. So he's angry at us or he's compelled by his attribute of justice. He has to punish those violations of the law. And so Christ comes to save us from that. So God has to save us from himself or save us from one of his attributes, save us from his own justice. That's not what the scriptures say. The scriptures say that Christ came to save us from our sins.

Because our sins are destroying us. Our sins are turning us into these demonic monsters if we keep going down that path.

So the truth we have here, when we look at these giants who are the far end of where that road leads, who represent someone, not become like God, but become like the demons, dehumanized and inhuman. We see where the path of sin leads. And it shows us that in reality Christ came to save us from ourselves.

And it gives us a clarity of exactly what that means. So I think this is important. Beyond all the history and the tying things together in the Old Testament and understanding some of the hymns of the church, that's the core. That's the core that despite our sin and wickedness, which is deliberate, despite our throwing in our lot with these demonic spirits who rebel against and hate God.

Christ still loved us enough to come and die and rescue us, redeem us and buy us back so that we could become sons of God. As we've talked about in previous episodes, this shows us the other side. We talked about past episodes, what we're saved to, what we're saved for. This is what we're saved from.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There you go. That old chestnut.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I have no memory of ever saying that. So that may have been an AI generated clip.

Also. I had eight fingers on my left hand in that clip. I know people at home couldn't see, but can confirm.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I think this is the first time we've gone two hours before we've gotten actually begun the content of the second half.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, it's off the rails. Right. I don't know if you're. I don't know if your keepers are gonna stay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I know, I know. Like, there's gonna be where literally, like.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Teresa's just gonna walk out and turn.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The lights off, and I'm gonna have.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

To figure out how to turn all.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This stuff off at the end of the night.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Or we could just keep going.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Just keep going.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Broadcast a thon.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's right. We could have a big telethon and do a bunch of fundraising or something.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I would totally do 24 hours. 24 hours straight live show to raise money for something. Wow.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That would get so, like, punch drunk, weird at the end. Probably just four or five hours in. Actually say nothing about 24 hours in.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Are you at the point your old age where you need to sleep every four or five hours?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, I mean, I'm still getting up. I mean, I'm getting up multiple times a night, you know, so. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You're doing that thing. Yeah, yeah.

I know many such cases.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I know they say sleep like a baby. I'm like, what? Waking up screaming every two hours? Because that's what I remember. That was all like, your poor wife.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So. Yeah. Yeah. Now we're gonna actually start our second half two hours in.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

When you. By the way, when you Suggested doing a 24 hour telethon, Melinda set up and she's like started to do. You could see the wheels turning in her head, like, wait, wait, we can do this. We can.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And then she's like, I will totally do it. We can rotate out co hosts. If Father Andrew is gonna chick.

You go full like Happy Days dance marathon episode. I'll be doing the Russian dance at the end just to stay away.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You are an award winning ballroom dancer.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So that's not made up, by the way. Melinda. That's not made up. He is an award winning. Yeah. If you want to learn some weird secrets and they're all true. About the life of the Very Reverend Dr.

Heptomaster. Is it? Heptomaster. A sextomaster. How many master's degrees do you have?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, I got another one coming in the mail right now.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Is that number six, I think. Yeah. Sex to Master Steven DeYoung. I know that sounds bad, but that would be what it is. You better hurry up and get another one so you can be good in some circles. Yeah, you better hurry up and get another one so you can be the heptomaster, because that has happened and that's cool.

Yeah, you should listen to the interview that I did, I did with you on the Orthodox Engagement podcast.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And even that was the tip of the iceberg.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's right. There's a lot of weird chestnuts in there.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like, yeah, yeah, that doesn't.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

People who knows about my recently victorious blood feud against James Earl Jones.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's true.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I have won by virtue of being alive while he is dead.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Can confirm.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Video of me dancing on his grave. Incoming. And that's not a joke either. I will film that. I vowed many years ago that that would happen, and it will.

But that video could be put behind some kind of wall. You want to do a fundraiser for ancient faith. I'm just throwing out the fundraising ideas tonight. It's the CEO sitting there.

People would donate money to see me dance on. They absolutely will. I think so. I think so.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, Anna Delvey, true name Anna Sorokina was on Dancing with the Stars. So, I mean, come on.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right.

Okay, so second half.

For realsies.

So. Yeah, so in the first half, I know it's a long time ago now that we did the first half of this show, but.

We set up sort of the relationship between preceding Second Temple Judaism and Christianity as a paradigm of continuity with shifts, changes, acculturations, etc. Happening within. So let's just apply that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

As I promised many moons ago, we were going to. To the relationship between Christianity and a few different groups.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So we'll start with Christianity and Gnosticism.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Which is kind of a group of groups.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Which is a catch all category that St. Irenaeus invented. As far as we can tell, they didn't call themselves Gnostics.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

They called themselves various sects like Sethians or Valentinians or what have you.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And he often added like the word so called.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Great. See, sarcasm is Christian. You guys just have to use it correctly.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So these, these two sets of communities, you've got Christian communities, you've got communities that would fall into this Gnostic category.

They encounter each other we have literary artifacts of this encounter. Right. From both sides, actually.

And so we can see, Right. How do they assess, are we the same. The same thing? Are we the same group? Are we doing the same thing? Is there continuity here or has there been a break?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Has there been some kind of break where we're.

Two separate groups, two different ways of life? Right.

In modern terms, two different religions, though we talked about last time, why that's not the best necessarily way to look at it.

So we get using the criteria we set out before. Right. We get from, for example, Saint Irenaeus, one of our earliest statements regarding the New Testament canon based on precisely the issue of what scriptures are they using and what scriptures are we using.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, Yep.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So State of Irenaeus first points out that they reject the Hebrew scriptures. They reject the Old Testament completely.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Bunch of Marcionites.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. So that's, you know, already. But then even beyond that, right. Saint Irenaeus points out, go to all the cities where the apostles were. They use four gospels and only these four gospels, these folks are reading these other things. Right. And those four gospels don't have authority in those communities.

And then he looks at their relationship in terms of their way of life with the material creation. Right. That God has created.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. This fundamental doctrinal issue.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. And Christianity and preceding second Temple Judaism, especially of the Pharisaic variety, embraced the physical creation as good, believed in the bodily resurrection.

One of the things that makes these group, puts these groups into that category of Gnostic is that they reject that. They reject the goodness of creation, they reject the bodily resurrection.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's over the line.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

Christian groups, as we read in St. Irenaeus and others who are writing its andostic groups, have a continuity of authority structures, not just parallel structures. Right. We have parallel structures to what the early church had. But there is a line of apostolic succession that St. Irenaeus and other early fathers already in the second century point to going back to the apostles.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. The authority is invested in the bishops, not simply in charismatic figures who don't override the episcopacy who come and start.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Their own sects, like Valentinus.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. I mean, like charismatic people can function as a corrective. Right. Like in that prophetic way, but they do not override.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, yeah. And when a charismatic figure creates a community around themselves, that's a problem. This is what we used to call a heresy and now call a cult.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, exactly.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Like Montanas forming the Montanus.

They.

Importantly, very importantly, Gnosticism introduces elements.

It is formed what makes these Gnostic groups. Gnostic groups, right. Is that they have brought together elements of Christianity.

And taken that and brought it into what is basically still paganism.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And if you read, like, if you really read the writers, the Gnostic writers, you see what we're talking about, like if you actually take a look and see what they say.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's all kinds of wacky, weird, super complicated structures and cosmologies and. Yeah, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. And so these things have been sort of pushed together a few cases. It's more vice versa. It's. They've, they've taken these foreign pagan elements and brought them into Christianity. Right. Usually it's the other, usually it's more pagan. But there are some examples of the other. But in either case, Right. There is this artificiality to Gnosticism.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There is not this sort of history of development of this being the religion of a particular people who have practiced it and lived it. It is, there is some figure, some founding figure of this or that Gnostic sect who has done the work of smushing these two things together.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He'd be like interweaving these things.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You guys, I got some ideas. Yeah, I mean, that's what he's right. They're like, I have an idea and I'm going to make it into something publicly preach it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Rhetoric.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Get people, get converts. Artificial form communities around it. But it's, it's artificially created. Right. And that's why you have this whole panoply of Gnostic sex, is that each one of the founders is sort of doing their math a little differently.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. As they construct this thing. But they're all sort of artificially constructed. They don't grow out of the life of any people. I mean, it's even compared to paganism. Right. It's artificial.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like paganism has a. I hesitate to use this word, but it's the best word I can think of at the moment. Has an authenticity to it that Gnosticism just does not.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, right. And so.

Right there, this artificial nature of it means that it's not the same kind of thing as Christianity. Right. And not the same religion, not the same way of life. It is still basically pagan. It's just a form of paganism that's been mutated to look a little more like Christianity or incorporate some Christian elements.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We see something very similar.

When we compare Christianity and Neoplatonism.

Now we're talking about more the third century.

Neoplatonism.

If you've heard of it. You know what we're talking about. You've mostly been taught a bunch of bunkum.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, I mean, mostly. It's like, I remember the presentations I heard about Neoplatonism when I was an undergraduate back in the, you know, in the Jurassic period.

And it was this idea that it was just sort of a refined version of Platonism, which is not true. Not historically, actually. True.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No, historically. Porphyry, who was Plotinus's forebearer philosophically, was a fierce critic of Christianity because Christianity in the mid third century was on the rise. And he hated it. Right, Hated it. He liked Platonic paganism. Despised it. And Plotinus.

Particularly in his Enneads. But he is the founder of the school of Neoplatonism, or he is Exhibit A at least.

Then deliberately crafted a.

Platonic pseudo Christianity. He deliberately borrowed Christian language and ideas, the ideas that he believed were appealing to people that were causing them to become Christians. I mean, he didn't care about slaves and women becoming Christians. Like people of the educated classes. Right. The ideas that were causing people of the educated classes to become Christians and tried to incorporate them into what was basically a Platonic mold.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. It was an attempt to compete with Christianity.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. And this is why, when you hear people start talking about, like, orthodox Christianity being Neoplatonic or Neoplatonic influence on Christianity, you should kind of laugh at them because they don't know what they're talking.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

About.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Because it's actually Christianity influenced Platonism and that produced Neoplatonism.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The things you're seeing are Christianity.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. There is a similarity.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Neoplatonism.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. There's a similarity. But it went, you know, the influence went in the other direction.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There are similar arguments made by Daniel Boyarin, by the way, about Middle Platonism and Philo of Alexandria, but you can look that up if you want to.

So, but if we compare Christianity and Neoplatonism in the third century.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Again, you find Christianity has the Scriptures. Neoplatonism rejects the whole idea of scriptures as such.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, right, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Plotinus is not like their Bible. That's not how it works. Plato's Republic is not their Bible. That's not how it works.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Christianity, again, embraces material existence, the material of creation, calls it good, obviously, as any other form of Platonism, Neoplatonism rejects it.

Christianity embraces, again, authority structures within church. There are no real authority structures in Neoplatonism other than, again, charismatic individuals. You know, the wise philosopher, the teacher. The charismatic teacher.

[Caller or Guest]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Like Plotinus, who gathers Followers.

So, as we said, this is introducing Christian elements into Platonism that were foreign elements. And so again, Neoplatonism is artificial.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's a religion that was crafted by people at a time we know when. Right.

It's. It's more like Scientology than it is, like actual Platonism. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We just lost all our Scientologist listeners.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

If we had any Scientologist listeners at this point, I would be flabbergasted.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The Satan's got them.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All guests would be flabbered.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like, lollies would be gagged.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, explain this to me, right? Like, there is no one in the world who enjoys being audited by, like, the IRS or an accountant even. Why would you call your religious ritual auditing? I know, like, that makes no sense.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay, so great.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Come on, guys.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I think if there's any one religious group that we can just go ahead and mercilessly mock on this show, probably the science, it's Scientology. Everyone else we've got, you know, But I mean, hey, if you're a Scientologist and listening to this show, please call. We would super love to hear from you. Absolutely.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Donate money, because clearly you don't mind going deeply into debt for religious reasons.

So those are a couple of non Christian groups in the early church, right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But now we're going to. Let's apply this to a different group.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. A group that describes themselves as being Christians.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Let's apply this to Arianism.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And not just Arianism in the sense of, like, Arius and what he was preaching, not as, like a set of ideas, but Arianism as Aryan Christianity was practiced.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. There were churches that were actual communities. Oh, yeah. I mean, it was big, big time. I mean, they were doing missionary work up amongst the Goth.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. The Goths were, by and large, Western Europe was mostly Aryan. They built churches, they had liturgies.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Aryan churches in and around Constantinople.

[Caller or Guest]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Did you know which was closed by the Storyus.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. I say, did you know that St. John Chrysostom, in order to try to convert Arians in Constantinople, who were largely Goths, he started doing divine liturgy in some of his churches in Gothic to try to win them over, which, like, could someone from the ancient world please have preserved that text for us? But no, they did not.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'm amazed they had the fake cobwebs in the. The white. White makeup.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It was a very hot topic at the time.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, there was no.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Thank you. So Richard Rollins laments the loss of that Gothic divine liturgy. I think three times a Day.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, he would. Yeah, checks out.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. So Arianism and Christianity. So.

Arianism and Christianity have essentially the same scriptures.

Right.

Arianism and Christianity. Right. I'm talking about historical Arianism now. Right. I know Jehovah's Witnesses are Arians, but I'm not talking about Jehovah's Witnesses right now. I'm talking about the Arians with their Arian churches.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Aryan aryans in the 4th and 5th century. Yeah, classic old school Aryans.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. They had, they had basically the same way of life in the sense that they, they didn't differ on important points of morality, ethics.

Right. Even worship structures.

From, from the Orthodox Church at the time.

[Caller or Guest]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean they even, I mean they use the Trinitarian invocations and things.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

They meant something different to them, but they used them.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And they had basically the same authority structures.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep. Bishops, priests, deacons.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Priests, Deacons.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And you know, take the second Ecumenical Council out of the picture where they all got deposed. Right. Then those, those bishops could make a claim to apostolic succession. Right. They had been consecrated by someone who was consecrated by someone who's consecrated. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Now they departed, we'd say they departed from the faith, but they have that same structure there at least.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And so this is why I think there's a difference between Arianism and Gnosticism or Neoplaton for example, in that Arianism is not a different religion, to use the modern terms, but is a false or heretical Christianity.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And I mean the early church fathers treated them that way.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like the big question of course is if they decide to come into the church, how are they received? And Arians are received by profession of faith only. They don't even Chrismate them.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, it's professional faith fathers like St. Basil.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

This is the church fathers and I think that's. Again, we're here trying to understand how the church understands things. This is why, for example, I think St. Basil would not baptize an Arian who was returning to the church, but would definitely baptized a Neoplatonist or a Gnostic. Yeah, no question. Right, Yep. So there's something fundamentally different going on here right now. That doesn't mean. That doesn't mean, that doesn't mean that we're saying that Arianism or being an Arian was not a problem.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Say it one more time, Uncle Steve.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Because having a false Christ means that you have a false gospel de facto. If you're talking about a different Jesus, you can't have the gospel, you can't.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Have your own personal Jesus.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And that means Arianism always lacked the power of orthodox Christianity.

The power of God for salvation.

So we are not saying. We are just making a distinction that the Church has made between a false Christianity, heretical Christianity, and something that is not even Christianity.

Something warped and distorted versus something that is something else.

So this gives the idea that then those Arian churches, or if you want to talk about them collectively, if you want to talk about the Arian Church, that's kind of an anachronism because they didn't really have any overarching structures. Right.

They didn't really build them the way the Orthodox Church did in the sense that there weren't sort of like Aryan patriarchs. You know, there wasn't a patriarch of the Visigoths and the. Right. Like.

But if we want to talk about collectively as the Aryan Church, that would be a heretical body.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And if you're part of a heretical body.

That'S not great.

That's not a great place to be.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, don't do it, you guys.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, try to avoid it if you're part of one now leave. Enjoy the Orthodox Church.

So being part of a heretical body is going to limit. Is going to limit what you're able to do in terms of coming to know God from your perspective.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Because.

If you have a false idea of someone, a false understanding of who that person is, which frankly, most heretical bodies, that's the big question, Right. Is who is Jesus? And they get it wrong. If you have a false idea of who someone is, then you're going to relate to them in a way that is distorted. No matter who it is, Christ or anybody, if you have radically wrong ideas about a person, it's going to affect the way that you relate to that person.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You're going to be taught things that aren't true.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's not going to be helpful to you.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So, I mean, heresy has a very practical effect.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. But.

At the same time, we maintain that you being part of a heretical body doesn't limit what Christ can do.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

He's God.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Let's talk about that for a second in. Yeah. Nothing can limit God. But let's talk about it for a second. In the case of, you know, your peasant. Your peasant Visigoth.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Whose king has converted to Christianity of the Arian type.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And therefore you go to the Christian church in your village, which happens to be Arian, because you're a Visigoth and you don't have options. Okay. Like there's only one church. That's the only Christian church. Okay. It is not impossible for Christ to save that peasant just because he's going to a heretical church.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And I'll go so far as to say it's definitely better that that Visigoth. And I have to say, by the way, I first learned about Visigoths and Ostrogoths from Asterix and Obelix comics that my father brought home from his travels in the Navy.

It is better for that Visigoth to be an Aryan Christian than it was for him to have been sacrificing to Thor. That is. It is better, you guys. It is better. It's not ideal, but it is definitely better.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

Right? But being part of that heretical body is in some ways not going to help him as he seeks to work out his salvation.

It would be better for him were he in an Orthodox church.

That knows the true Christ and is preaching the true Christ.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, wow, we just got a note. I think we have our first. At least that I'm aware of. Our first live listener tuning in from India.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So, hello, India. Yes, we're glad to have you tuning in.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So exhibit A of this. Who we can point to in church tradition is, of course, St. Isaac the Syrian or St. Isaac of Nineveh.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Who canonically belongs, as far as we know, and I know there's some quibbling over this, but as far as we know, canonically belongs to the Assyrian Church of the east, commonly known as the Nestorian.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We're not saying that St. Isaac was an historian.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No, we're saying he was, due to where he lived and when he lived, a member of a heretical body.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He's part of a heretical body and.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The Church has recognized him. Didn't have a lot of choices as a saint.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Caller or Guest]

But he.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, he became a saint through the work of Christ and his cooperation with that work because him being part of that heretical body didn't stop Christ from saving him.

Now, I would not recommend anyone go and join the Church of the east if they want to become a saint.

But we have to reckon with the reality of world history.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And God did not cause people to be born in places in centuries where he was automatically damning them to hell.

Okay? That's been declared a heresy by the Church. Second Council of Orange.

Yes, it always cracks me up when Calvinists. When Calvinists cite the Second Council of Orange about, quote, unquote, semi Pelagianism, when it condemns reprobation as a heresy.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, but basically precludes Calvinism.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, but that. That reprobation is a heresy. Okay. And saying that God had someone be born in mesoamerica in the 12th century where there was no knowledge of Christianity and that means they went to hell for eternity is reprobation.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You are being a Calvinist.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Even if.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You don't think yourself as one or what if you think that you are.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And if there's one thing you should come away from, Laura Spirit's podcast with kids, it's don't be a Calvinist.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Don't do a Calvinism. Not even once.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Not even once.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

See, the thing is, I can pick on the Calvinists because I know they can take it. They say they can. No, no, they can. They can't trust. There's nothing a Calvinist likes more than a good theological row.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Absolutely the case.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Especially if there's some beers involved.

So.

Yeah. So that being the case, right. If that's a heresy, then what has to be true in the positive sense that the Church is teaching is that it is possible for anyone who has ever lived at any time, in any place, to find salvation.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And that's because. And I think this is a really important concept for us to grasp. If you do something good, it is good. If you're doing something good. I mean, it seems weird to say that, right? But there's a whole theological world out there that says that unless you check off certain boxes, everything you do is other garbage. Like that is totally a thing in certain theological. That's totally a thing, right. They'll say, oh, your righteousness is this filthy rags. That's not what that means. But.

A good act is a good act, and every good act is faithfulness to God. And faithfulness to God is cooperating with divine grace. Right. And I mean, to me, one of the prime exhibits of this is in the book of Jonah, right? Jonah goes to Nineveh, of course, having had his arm twisted a lot, he goes to Nineveh and he doesn't even say, you guys, if you don't repent, you know, bad things are going to happen. He just says, in three days Nineveh will be overthrown. Like, he's just. It's just all doom and gloom. And what do the Ninevites do? They repent. And sackcloth and ashes. Right.

Interesting, interesting detail, though we're never told. And history bears out that they did not convert from paganism to become worshipers of Yahweh, the God of Israel. Didn't happen. They continue to be demon worshiping pagans. And yet God not only spares their city because they repented, but then Christ himself in the Gospels, in both Matthew and Luke, holds them up as an example of repentance. And he says, and it's word for word, by the way, in both these Gospels, the men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented of the preaching of Jonah. And behold, something greater than Jonah is here. So it's an interesting point here. A bunch of demon worshiping pagans and there's God in the flesh honoring their repentance and holding them up as an example.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. As we said last time, there is some way that at least some hunter gatherers found salvation.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

By being faithful to the revelation that God had given to them.

And the grace of God in the world, which was tiny, tiny, tiny drip compared to the revelation we've been given. But that just means we're held more accountable.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But this is how we're told God is gonna judge the world. And you could. St. Paul says this in Romans 1, in Romans 2, in Romans 10. This is part and parcel. Acts 17. This is part and parcel of what the New Testament teaches regarding how salvation works. Right. And they're not being a mechanism. So salvation is available to every. Was available to every person who has ever lived. That doesn't mean they all received it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And it doesn't mean that the exact shape of what that faithfulness was was the same.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Depending on more or less, had been revealed. But it was possible. It doesn't possible for medieval Roman Catholics in France, it was possible. It's possible for.

Evangelical Protestants in the United States, it's possible. It was possible for.

Chinese people in the 8th century BC.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Is it possible for Huguenots, though?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It was possible.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It was possible.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

They destroyed the relics of Saint Irenaeus.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I know. Huguenots and Henry viii, man.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. But.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So all of this is to say. But that fact, the fact that God can still save people who are members of heretical bodies is not saying. That does not say anything positive about the heretical body itself.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It does not say anything about the radical body itself. The only thing positive you could say about the heretical body itself is that probably, if it's a heretical body, meaning it is in some way a deformed version of Christianity, there's some Christianity still there. Maybe a lot, maybe only a little, but there's some Christianity still there. And so that Christianity that is still there will be an aid to those within that body who are seeking salvation.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And there I'm kind of paraphrasing Archbishop of Verke, but.

Yeah.

And an interesting note here. An interesting note here.

A lot of people don't know historically what it was that converted the Goths.

Right. Because for a long time, the Goths outnumbered Orthodox Christians. Like St. Ambrose's Cathedral was surrounded at several points by Gothic armies who were all Arians.

What transformed it was not some kind of mission endeavor or public debates on theology or any of that. It was St. Martin of Tours.

St. Martin of Tours was a wonder worker in his life. And God continued to work miracles through his relics after St. Martin's death. And so the shrine where his relics were became a place of pilgrimage and veneration for the Goths, even though they were Aryans.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

How about that?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And so when I said that heretical bodies and stuff sort of lack the power in a certain way that the Church has, this is what I mean.

And the Goths saw it, and it led to mass conversions to the faith of St. Martin.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, I think his relics are still. I think they are still available in tours. I've heard of people that have venerated them there.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There's some here in Louisiana.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, hey, hey. I'm gonna have to make a pilgrimage to Louisiana. Yeah. Only to go to a crawfish boil.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Odd off. Fast day. You can go.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's right, man. All right, well, that wraps up the second half of this 100th episode of the Lord of Spirits podcast. Think of how many hundreds, literally now, hundreds of hours y' all have been listening to us go on and on unto ages of ages.

How about that? All right, we're going to go ahead and take our second and final break, and when we get back, we're going to listen to another question clip, and we're going to talk to some of y'. All. So we'll be right back.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Father Andrew Stephen Damick and father Stephen DeYoung will be back in a moment to take your calls on the next part of the Lord of Spirits. Give them a call at 855-237-2346. That's 855-AF-ADIO.

You've probably heard of St. Raphael Halloween.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

St. Alexander Horovitzky, liturgical translator Isabel Hapgood and other righteous men and women who made their mark on the early development of Orthodoxy in America. But what about the notorious itinerant Bulgarian monk?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Or Father Raphael Morgan, the first black.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Orthodox priest in America? Or Vera Johnston, who served the Orthodox.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Church without renouncing her theosophist roots.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Their stories and many others, some edifying, some appalling, all entertaining, make up the.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Lost histories of the early decades of.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Orthodox Christianity in the continental United States.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Lost histories, the Good, the Bad and.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The Strange in Early American Orthodoxy by Matthew Namie, out [e-mail] faith.com Again, that is store.ancient faith.com.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We'Re back now with the Lord of Spirits with Father Andrew, Stephen Damick, and Father Stephen DeYoung. If you have a question, call now at 855-237-2346. That's 8-55-AF-RADIO.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Welcome back. It's the thousandth episode of the Lord of Spirits. It feels like that sometimes. I mean, and ten thousands times.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Ten thousands of episodes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's right. I feel like we could be a Johnny Cash song.

Yeah. One of my favorite Johnny Cash songs is when the Man Comes Around. Do you know that one?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, that's a.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's a great song.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

How long will you kick against the prick?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I know, I know, man. Johnny Cash.

Right? We have actually decided to call a little bit of an audible on this millionth episode of the Lord of Spirits podcast and.

We'Re going to play the third half clip for everybody and then we are simply going to spend some amount of time talking to y'.

[Caller or Guest]

All.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So just get your calls on people.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And so don't worry, though.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah, We're. We're not chucking.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We were gonna talk about the third half.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, this will be a future episode. Yeah, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We'll be part three in our next episode. So we will come back to it. But the amount of material we had to go through, unless we wanted to make this, the 24 hour marathon was not going to happen.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And since this is an anniversary episode. Episode.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Exactly.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We're having fun. Too much.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Exactly why we're so passionate. Exactly.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So you will not miss out on anything.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Call everybody. And if you get like a busy signal or whatever, it just means that the lines are jammed. But just keep calling. Just keep calling. You know, just like remember, remember Cameron in one of those, one of the best movies ever made? He kept saying, he'll keep calling me. He'll keep calling me.

Rooney.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

If you just dropped that reference, I would have thought you were making a totally out of character Joy Division reference.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No, no, no. I'm near Chicago, you know, so obviously I have to think about one of the greatest Chicago films of all time.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But we were also talking about goths.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I weep for the future. Yes.

So, yeah, let's go ahead and play clip number three there, Trudy, and then we'll start talking to some people.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Need harp first. There we go.

So that's why you would have those chambers underneath the Sphinx. Right. What's now the Sphinx? Oh, and the. The position. Right. People have noted, of course, that when you look at the Great Pyramid of the row Pyramids, how this lines up astrologically with the constellations directly above during certain times of years. So those times of year are festal periods. But more importantly, within the Egyptian cosmology, you have this mirroring of the structures and order on Earth are mirrored in the heavens and vice versa.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, well, it's just like it says in the Psalms or in the, you know, our Father on earth as it is in heaven.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, right. Although this is.

Extended with the idea, of course, that within the Egyptian cosmology you have kind of ongoing, constant battle in heaven. Right. You have Ray and Apophis.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Battling each other every night.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And so the calamities and chaos on Earth is mirroring this kind of calamity and chaos in heaven.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And there's this. I was gonna say there's obviously a fatalism attached to that, which is like the gods are gonna do what they're gonna do, and we're kind of subject to that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. It's that it's going to be mirrored. So the. The astrology can kind of give you a heads up.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But it's not like you can change anything.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. Right. So, I mean, so then how would an ancient Egyptian pagan understand.

I mean, obviously this just could be royals making these decisions, but, you know, the important people deciding, okay, we're going to build this monument in order to participate. I mean, couldn't he have said, you know, well.

I don't want to participate in that. You know, forget that. I'm not going to build this monument that astrologically aligns with all the rest.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Well, that would. I mean, that would fundamentally call into question for the pharaoh to do that would call into question his own identity, which of course, he was projecting as divine.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Because he's the son of Rha or probably, or maybe some other one of the Horus.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

Yeah. So it's. It's sort of his duty. What makes him the pharaoh is the fact that he is doing that. This. That he is doing this kind of. This kind of mirroring.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And so there's. There's continuities and discontinuities between that and the idea of imaging.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. That's crazy. And it's. I mean, as. As a relatively obscure pop culture reference. The thing that suddenly occurs to me is did you ever play the game Age of Mythology?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, but it was a long time ago.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's one of those. What do they call, rts? Real time strategy. And, you know, you can play as the Greeks, you can play as the Norse, you can play as the Egyptians. That's in the original version. They add some other civilizations, I think, later. And you have to accumulate. I can't remember what they call it anyways, it's represented by a little lightning symbol. And you have to accumulate that as one of the sort of currencies you can spend on units. And with the Greeks, you have to put people worshiping at a temple in order to get that. With the Norse, it's actually fighting. Fighting gets you more of that. But with the. With the Egyptians, it's monuments. And the bigger the monuments you build, the more that's generated. And of course, the more that you have, then the more that's generated as a result. And I mean, obviously that's a very just sort of reductionist, gamified approach to this kind of thing. But. But, you know, it's not entirely dissimilar from what you just described with the sense that, okay, if you build. If you're the pharaoh and you build the Sphinx.

This confirms that you're the pharaoh. It. You know, and then confirming you're the pharaoh gains the obedience and favor of your. Your people. Like, everybody's kind of doing what they're supposed to do. And so therefore Egyptian society works the way that it is supposed to work. Just as predictable and beneficial as the flooding of the Nile.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. You've established justice.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And yeah, and yeah, that is sort of the video game version of Sid Meier combined with Sid Roth.

[Caller or Guest]

Wow.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So did I ever tell you about the time that I almost extinguished the eternal flame?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You have, but I don't think you've said this on the air here live.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay. Yeah. Maybe this is the time for the world to know. So obviously we're talking about Egyptians, so it made me think of the bangles as one does. And.

Yeah. So back in 1997, when I was still a stagehand, the initial run of Lilith Fair, which. That's a wonderful Lord of Spirits reference right there, although they mean something very different by it. But the initial run of Lilith Faire came to the big arena where I often worked during the summer doing concerts. And 1997, actually, I did a whole pile of concerts like, it was the last year of the first run of Lollapalooza. It was the first year of Lilith Faire. And so.

You know, so Lilith Fair, of course, was for all of you young people out there. It was a tour of female artists that were a big deal in the mid-1990s, and even some that have been a big deal for much longer than that, among whom, obviously, is Susanna Hoffs. I can never remember. Is it Hoffs or Hoff?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I think it's Hoff.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Hoff, singular. So, yeah, the lead singer of the Bangles. And.

So she was backstage, and I can't remember what she was doing, but she was backstage, and she was kind of near the loading dock. And I was going from point A to point B. I don't remember what it is that I was tasked with doing, but I remember that I had to get there and make it happen quickly, which. Doing production work, doing theater, doing concerts. Occasionally stagehands have to move fast. And so I was going somewhere very quickly. And at the last second, I kind of moved out of the way because she was there. And the thing is that she is not tall. Not even a little bit. Like, she's not even average. I don't know her exact height, but she is a small person.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

She is we.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Exactly. And unlike we. And.

So I'm. You know. But I realized as I turned around, like, if I had not done. If I had not moved out of the way.

Because I was just sort of barreling along, I would have knocked her down like, 10, 15ft of. Or whatever it was into the loading dock. And, I mean, how could I have explained to my friends and family later on that I was the one who had extinguished the eternal flame? Like, I could have never, ever, ever lived that down? So, yeah, so that's what makes me.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Think, you know, now that you've told that story live on the air, now people are going to want to know how I got banned from Stonehenge.

Well, someday we'll tell that story.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Someday. Someday, maybe that'll happen.

All right.

One of my favorite good times indeed. All right, we're just going to open up the lines, so I'm sure we've got some callers there. Do we have callers? I assume Trudy. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Trudy the Tank Richter, everybody. Manning. Manning the.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

See, I'm gonna say this at least.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

10 times the episodes that everybody calls her the Tank.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

If you meet trudy, like an M1 Abrams or like a. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No, I think she's good.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Assuming we're talking military tank. We could be fish tank.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No, I mean, no, like D and D tank.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, okay. Yeah. Like, could be, you know, World Warcraft tank.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Totally. Yeah. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Propane tank.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Exactly, exactly. Exactly. True. So, all right. Hello, caller. Welcome to Laura Spirits Podcast.

[Caller or Guest]

Oh, hello. Am I on?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You're on. What's your name?

[Caller or Guest]

My name is Will from Texas.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Welcome, Will from Texas. What part of Texas are you in?

[Caller or Guest]

Sorry? You say what part? I cut out a little bit.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. What part?

[Caller or Guest]

I'm like five minutes from Oklahoma. Pretty.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, okay. I'm told that Oklahoma is Texas's hat. I've been told that. Is that true?

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay.

[Caller or Guest]

I guess so. I lived in Oklahoma, and we always called ourselves Texas hats. No one does that, actually. I've never heard that before.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Do people fire at you?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It was.

Yeah, it was Richard Rohan who said that to me, that Oklahoma is Texas's hat. So what's on your mind, Will from Texas? Almost. Oklahoma.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah. Scientology. I'm kidding.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

My question. Scientology. Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Dark Lord Zeno.

[Caller or Guest]

My question is about. So in Acts 22, Paul, he's telling this.

And he's telling this story about how he's in the temple in Jerusalem. He has a little trance, like. And that is. What is that?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Is that it?

[Caller or Guest]

Well, I've never seen anybody talk about. I've seen visions, you know, but he specifically says trance likes you cut in and out there.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But I think we got the gist. He's asking about, was St. Paul in a trance? Is that just a translation wackiness?

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah. Are we cutting out a little bit?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But I think we got the idea. You're asking, like, is he in a trans. And what does that mean? Is that what you're saying?

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah. What does that mean? Is it different from a vision? Is it a specific kind of praying? What's going on?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. So what's. What's being translated there is that he was in sort of an extension. He was in ecstasy, meaning he was sort of having a visionary experience.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And this is his conversion story, which.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We know St. Paul had more than once. It happened on the road to Damascus. It happened. You know, he describes it happening in First Corinthians.

This is something that St. Paul had visions while he was in prayer at certain times, and Christ appeared to him multiple times in person, not just on the road to Damascus, but a couple of other times in the book of Acts.

So, yeah, this is something that happened to St. Paul, but it's not like a reflection of some kind of technique of prayer or something that, like, we could use. Or someone could use. Don't. Don't tell certain evangelicals about this because they'll write a book and claim you could do it, too.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Don't try this at home.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Not all evangelicals. I said certain evangelicals.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Certain. Yeah, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There's certain ones.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Not the ones I. Not the ones I grew up with. They don't do this.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Not the better sort. Not the better sort. Yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

So it's like a. It's just like a special revelation.

Meditate.

Just like a special rev.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, he kind of goes into an ecstasy, but it's not like a thing you can schedule on Sunday morning. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So. All right. I hope that's helpful. Will from Texas, almost Oklahoma.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, I appreciate it, guys.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Great. Thanks for calling. Okay, we're gonna go ahead and take another caller. Welcome, caller, to the Lord of spirits podcast, our.

100Th episode, 4th anniversary extrava palooza ganza.

[Caller or Guest]

Hello. Am I on?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You are on. What's your name?

[Caller or Guest]

My name's Timothy. I'm Georgia. Getting hit by that hurricane right now.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, man. You okay, by the way? You all right?

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm up in North Georgia, but we're supposed to be getting some pretty bad winds tonight, so pray for us up here.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Too bad you don't have.

[Caller or Guest]

I wanted to say free Paris.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I was gonna say it's too bad you don't have Pat Robertson to, like, turn it off. Turn it away.

[Caller or Guest]

Okay. I get in trouble around here if I say that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This is Laura. Spirits with your doors closed, the windows drawn.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, Lights are out.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's right, exactly.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Ancient faith radio after dark.

[Caller or Guest]

So my question. And I'm running into this constantly, and I called a few weeks back and asked a question about the onion of pride about. And it's about the translations of words and how they're used today in normal language versus how they were used and have been translated as such. So, for example, we're doing. My priest is leading a study of the Psalms, and we started Psalm 1 this week. And you know, the first. The first. First Psalm 1. Blessed is the man who walks in the. Not in the council of the ungodly. Now, that's my. That is my orthodox study Bible. But my ancient faith, Psalter says, blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked. So, you know, for me, growing up in the south, wicked had a very definite definition. And so just reading it this way without having my study Bible as well, which the reason I'm even bringing this up is because our priest read it out of the Bible. And I was like, well, that's not what my book says. So I looked it up. How does a layman. How does someone who's just trying to educate themselves not fall into this trap where, you know, this word wicked obviously doesn't mean wicked, as in the evil, like wicked, which of the west type of situation. Right. It means other than God, not God's ways, ungodly. But when you, you know. And I guess wicked can be taken that way as well, but it's just in layman's. For a layman that's not studied any kind of translations or any of that, it can get a little confusing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, makes sense. Yeah. I mean, there's a bunch of different ways to translate. Translate.

I mean, number one, there's the Hebrew, which Father Stephen's a Hebrew scholar.

The Greek word that's in the Septuagint is asevon, which literally means impious. Isn't that right? Like, not pious. I think that sounds right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That gets translated ungodly.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, ungodly would be because you could translate tsebassi as godly.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. And then the Hebrew is more common. Rasha. I don't know what that means. I mean, that gets translated as ungodly.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. But that could be. Yeah, raysha, that's. I mean, that could be evil or that's why it's probably getting translated wicked.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

So you see my problem, right? If you guys are debating this one word, how does someone who has no education in this, like, figure it out and understand what the meaning of it without having to call my priest every time? 10 seconds. When I run into a word, I want to make sure I'm reading it the right way.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You're a poor priest.

Well, I mean, I think. Okay.

But let's think about this, right? I mean, number one, you should talk to your priest about how you read the Bible. Obviously, not every five seconds.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I just got to verse two. Father, could you.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

He'd be like, look, I'm trying to have dinner, so could you call maybe tomorrow or. Yeah, but I mean, the point being, right, that when we read the Scriptures, it is okay to read the Scriptures and not have a conversation about every single verse. That's okay. It's okay. But what you shouldn't do is decide that you know exactly what it means and then sort of get puffed up.

And absolutize your meaning and argue with people about it.

And realize that in some cases, multiple translations of a single word can give you different aspects of what's going on in the Scriptures. So the Hebrew original is an Orthodox Bible verse, and the Greek translation is an Orthodox Bible verse, and the Slavonic translation is an Orthodox Bible verse. And English translations can be orthodox. And they may all say slightly different things, and that's okay. And they all function within the church.

To do what needs to be done.

So it's really about the whole matrix within which we receive the Scriptures. And it's not only about an isolated.

Solitary experience of reading the Bible. When you read the Bible as an Orthodox Christian, you read it as an Orthodox Christian with the Orthodox Church, which means that not only do you bring to it your experience of having been in church, your experience of having been taught by your priests and by other teachers, your experience of having been found informed by the church services, your experience of having read the lives of the saints and, you know, whatever else.

But also that you are willing to be corrected if you're reading something wrong, you know?

So, yeah, I mean, ungodly and wicked, like, to me, really, these are two words that can kind of point to the same direction. Now, in English, wicked lands differently than ungodly, for sure. Right. There's something about that word wicked.

But.

Clearly to be ungodly is not good either.

I think they just sort of land a little bit differently for an English speaker is my sense of it.

So I would say both my biggest fears.

[Caller or Guest]

I don't want to take away.

A horrible mistranslation because I ascribe a definition to a word that isn't intended based on the translation from the original text or even the Greek text. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. I mean, some of it is a matter of, you know, different translations come from different periods of English. Right. So like in, interestingly enough, that that Hebrew word, like the King James, for instance, translates that Hebrew word there as ungodly, but translates that exact same Hebrew word elsewhere as wicked in the same translation produced at the same time.

Right.

So it's okay. It's okay. It's going to be okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. It's not a case where the two tribes translations mean totally opposite things, obviously. Obviously. And there aren't any examples of that that I know of in reputable English translations. Now, if you start getting into, like the New World translation with Jehovah's Witnesses.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The Passion translation, or the message King.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

James, the edited version of the King James Bible, the Mormons sometimes give out. Now you're in different territory.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But I think it's just a good idea to not only read one translation.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Just read things that like you did, right. Comparing your ancient faiths, altar and your orthodox study Bible. Right. And generally, if you compare a couple translations, you can kind of, by reading a couple different translations, get the gist of what's going on. Right. Without putting too much weight on one particular English word choice, reading a whole lot into that English word. Right. If you've got a couple of different English words, you could probably, from the two of them, figure out. Okay, right. This is talking about people who are doing. Doing the wrong thing. Right. People who are living their life in a sinful, ungodly, wicked way.

[Caller or Guest]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And from those two translations, you get the gist. Right. And you don't. You know, I don't know if I've mentioned this on the air, but. But I once heard, and I categorize this as the worst sermon I ever heard. I heard a guy who was preaching verse by verse through the New Testament. So he was preaching. Just read a verse, preach a whole sermon on that verse. Right? He read the first verse of the parable of the Good Samaritan, which is a certain man went down to Jericho and immediately launched into brethren, we must be certain in our faith.

[Caller or Guest]

That can't be real.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It was real.

It was real.

But if you have a couple of different translations, you're not going to fall into that kind of trap, right? You're not going to. Because you're going to see different English words that convey the same general idea.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Caller or Guest]

Well, that's actually. Thank you for suggesting that I read out of multiple sources because I kind of. Kind of, kind of grab. Tend to gravitate towards, like, my salt or for the Psalms. Right. Just because it's a solid where I have to look for it in my orthodox study Bible because it's kind of in the middle there. So. But yeah, I guess I need to be more aware of that. And I really appreciate you guys directing me that direction. Push me that direction.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You're welcome. Thanks very much for calling. Thanks for listening.

All right, who's next? Trudy, bring them in.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We don't know who's next.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, we know. That's right. We don't know because these are unscreened, everybody.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Unfiltered.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This is the first time we've done this anniversary anarchy. Yeah, but I mean, you know, but Trudy is ready just like hit the big red button to cut people off if they get out of hand.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, the dump button.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'm surprised she doesn't use that on me all the time.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I've told her to a Couple of times.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But for whatever reason, she has. Anyway, welcome, caller, to the Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's our hundredth episode.

Hello. Yeah, hello.

[Caller or Guest]

Oh, hi. You said. Who's next? I wanted to say my name is Bill Goldberg, but. No, this is. This is Dino from Chicago.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right, Dino of Chicago, welcome to Laura Spears podcast. I think I.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Your reference for the record.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

I might. So the question is concerning the heroine of hell, because, you know, Mel Gibson just recently announced he's going to do the sequel to the Passion of the Christ and to the Resurrection. And that's naturally exactly where my mind went. Because most people think, well, obviously, like, what happens later? So I get all excited. I'm talking to many Catholic friends, some of whom teach ccd, and I told them about what they call the heroine of hell, we call the heroine of Hades. They had no idea what I was talking about, so I was completely dumbfounded. And I would explain to them what we learned from Holy Saturday and a little bit of the Paschal sermon and the icons. And.

Then they come to me and like, well, where's your scriptural support for this? And that's where I kind of was lost.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Wait, Roman Catholics do that?

[Caller or Guest]

That's what they told me. They're like, well, where is this in the Bible?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Uncategized.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Absolutely.

[Caller or Guest]

They teach ccd.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, I mean. I mean, not every catechism Sunday school teacher in the Orthodox Church is up to speed on all. They should be up to speak speed on. I'm just gonna put that out there, right?

[Caller or Guest]

And I felt embarrassed I was in company with evangelical Protestants when we were talking about this, because, you know, I was expecting that from them, but, you know, from. You know, because I asked him, well, what do you guys think happened in three days? And they're like, he just went descended and hell, I go. And he just kind of hung out. Like, what do you think he did? So I. But then, you know, it got more serious, and it was like, okay, well, where. Where is this? In.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

In.

[Caller or Guest]

Is it. Is it just tradition or is this. Is this kind of written in prophecy or what? Because I. I was. I was at a loss as to kind of what I could explain what our teaching was. And it. To them, they just thought I was just making it up, which, you know.

With my personality, they might have thought that I was. Because sometimes I'll say, because I'm Greek Orthodox. You know, we just. We invented everything anyway because we're Greek.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So here's my Greek and Greeks invented everything paradox. I just have to. Since I'm talking to an actual Greek and a Chicago Greek. Right. Are you from Chicago?

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, yeah, I'm from Chicago.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So you are your own ethnicity of Greek. Okay. And you know what I mean, Right. Chicago Greeks are their own kind of Greek. Right. So if it is the case. If it is the case Greeks invented everything, then they would have to have invented being Greek.

And so then how does that happen since they weren't Greek yet and Greeks invented everything?

I'm just throwing that out there for you to figure that one out for me.

[Caller or Guest]

What I'd say is my smart remark back. Well, Greeks is really an exonym. We call ourselves Elynes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Beware of Danan's carrying exonym. All right.

Okay. Okay. So, yeah, there is stuff in the scripture that points to the harrowing of Hades or hell.

You know, Psalm 24, for instance. You know, lift up your gates, so ye princes be lifted up ye everlasting gates, and the King of glory shall enter. And who is the king of glory? The Lord, strong and mighty. The Lord mighty in war. Right. So that has been understood by the church as about Christ coming in.

And busting up the dark Lord's hood.

So there's that. And then there's, of course, also the references to the Holy One not seeing corruption in the grave.

But, like, the real fleshing out of this is. Is not. Is not explicit in the Scripture. You get the dramatization that's in what's called the.

The Gospel of Nicodemus or the Acts of Pontius Pilate, which is my favorite iteration of that. And.

You know, there's a lot of the liturgical material. But I mean. I mean, Roman Catholic catechists, you guys, like, come on, know your own tradition. Hello.

[Caller or Guest]

Well, is it literally different than what.

And what we have, or is it, you know, because I was. I'm always envisioning more of like a battle. And, you know, maybe in. In from an artistic perspective, I'm thinking there's a lot of imagination that, you know, your imagination can go wild because. Because you might not be bounded by scripture, but, you know, what are the minimum kind of elements that Mel Gibson might have? Because, you know, my. I'm really excited about this.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I don't know Mel. I mean, Mel Gibson. Okay. I mean, I appreciate many things that Mel Gibson has made, for sure. Absolutely. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Mostly involving Danny Glover.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But anyway.

He'S getting too old.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But anyway, he is doing it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I know, I know, but. But I mean, God bless him, he is a.

Hyper set of a contest Catholic dude. So, I mean, who knows exactly what it is he's going to do. But, no, I think that my understanding, and I'm not Roman Catholic, so I can't speak for them, but this is my impression. My impression is that their tradition about this is mostly basically the same thing as ours, at least. Yeah, sort of. But, like, their art, for instance, never depicts, like, a pitched battle. It does depict Jesus flattening Satan with the gates of Hades. It does, Right. One of my favorites is the painting by Hieronymus Bosch where you see this really dark, evil, hellish place, and then there's this. And then the door is opening up and is being pushed in by Christ with a cross, like a big pull, and there's light flooding in, you know, and you get like. You almost think that the caption is like, he's coming in, you know, But. But yeah, it's not altogether that different from what. From what we believe. I'm kind of shocked.

[Caller or Guest]

I described it as like a special Forces mission, you know, where, you know, Christ tricked Hades to get. Kind of let him into the door. Like, almost like a Trojan horse type of thing and.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, totally. That's a patristic image. Is that. Yeah, you know, the sort of hell took a body and met God. Surprise.

[Caller or Guest]

Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No, that's.

[Caller or Guest]

And I actually read them the Paschal sermon and they all thought it was awesome. I said, okay, come to north.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It is awesome. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's actually in the catechism of the Catholic Church.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

They call it the Desensus added Pharos. That's the Latin name for it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know, Latin, their language.

[Caller or Guest]

All right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But yeah. And so you don't speak Latin a little differently.

Or tell him to go read Thomas Aquinas about the limbo of the Fathers.

Right. There's like, this sort of. They've developed the Abraham's bosom idea or like the caves in Hades in the Book of Enoch or that kind of thing into this idea that limbos are sort of pockets of hell that aren't as bad as the rest of hell.

Basically is the short version Right. In Latin Christianity. And so there's a limbo of unbaptized infants and there's a limbo of the fathers which is now empty. The limbo of the fathers is where all those folks from the Old Testament went.

Who are going to be saved.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, I've heard a limbo.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. That Jesus went to the limbo of the fathers and emptied it out. Yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Which is not entirely dissimilar from what is in our tradition, but Obviously, the language is different, and the fact that they have this other category of a limbo or different kinds of limbos. That's not what we do. But. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So. But those. And then, you know, modern Catholics will say, well, the limbo thing's a figure of speech or whatever.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. They've kind of disavowed all knowledge, like.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Nailing jello to a wall. But that. That's. Read Thomas Aquinas. That's what you get. Right. Like, yeah, but it is clearly taught in Scripture in First Peter. But you. You have to make. There's an extended argument to show somebody how it's taught that gets into the Greek.

[Caller or Guest]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And some of. Some of St. Peter's Greek word choices and stuff. Right. Like, to prove that that's what it's talking about. But you can prove it. It's just complicated.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Yeah. Does that help?

[Caller or Guest]

I'm Greek, so I just. I just tell them what it says, you know, and then they'll believe me.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There you go.

Yeah. Like, look, I'm Greek, okay? I'm reading the Bible as my language.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

How it goes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's just how it is. That's the Chicago way.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No, the Chicago way is if they bring a knife, you bring a gun, they put one of yours in the hospital, you put one of theirs in the morgue.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's the Chicago way.

[Caller or Guest]

And before you said who's next? I was gonna. I was gonna introduce myself as Abe Froman.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Nice. Yes, thank you. The sausage king of Chicago. Good night. Thank you for calling. Dino. Okay, welcome. Next caller, to the Laura Spears podcast.

Welcome, welcome. It's you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Hello, Hello, Live radio, everybody. Oh, hi.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, hi.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, this is Hunter. I'm a Catholic in Texas, and.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, do you have something to say.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

About Dinosis Added Pharaohs? Do you know about this?

[Caller or Guest]

I was actually kind of reading up on it as y' all are talking about it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's like, wait, this is a thing? Yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

I've actually really come to appreciate Psalm 24, thanks in large part to your show. Thanks God, Abby. All to thank for that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Thank God.

[Caller or Guest]

But, yeah, I was just. I was actually kind of wondering at one in a recent show, one of y' all kind of mentioned in passing the Catholic doctrine of being, like, in a state of grace. And, you know, that's kind of how we're brought up, that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Either you're in or you're out. Did we lose him? Did you hang up on him? Trudy?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He fell out of the state of grace.

He's now lost to us.

[Caller or Guest]

Oh.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I don't know what happened. Oh, I just. I just saw Trudy pushing buttons, and then suddenly he's.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He has a highly attuned sense of irony, given the topic.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You're talking about State of Grace, and boom. All right, why don't we see if we can try to get him back? But meanwhile, we'll talk to the. Whoever the next person is, so. Hello, next caller. You've successfully connected the Lord of Spears podcast.

Welcome.

[Caller or Guest]

Twin Peaks actually. Question.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, oh, yes, I'm going home now.

I was at a retreat last week, and somebody came up and said they had a question for me that they did want to call it about, because it was about. They said, do you have a theory about Lost highway, the David lynch movie? And I was like, of course I have a theory about Lost Highway. But anyway, Twin Peaks question.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right, we'll take the Twin Peaks question. I think we have Hunter was his name. I think we have him.

[Caller or Guest]

Benjul's Labitou.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah. So anyway, so spoiler for anyone who hasn't seen Twin Peaks, but he gets the part whenever Josie Packard dies as, like, the little dancing man.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Or does she die?

[Caller or Guest]

Well, she does. That's. That's a part of the question. That is part of the question, yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay. Okay.

[Caller or Guest]

So we have the little dancing man from the other place who's dancing over. But then before that, you also have Bob, who appears to, like, taunt Cooper. They have a little dancing man. He appears also over the bed. He does a little jig. And then you see Josie's face kind of get, like, mangled into this, like, wooden knob and contorted. What exactly is going on? Because my knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism and street lights and Arthurian legend, I'm coming up short here.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Father, I have to say, before you answer, Father Stephen, I wish you could see the look on Melinda's face right now.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. So the thing you have to remember here is that everything in the Great Northern, all of that furniture, including the bed stand, that she becomes part of, that her soul. Right. Becomes entrapped within, is all cut from the native trees.

[Caller or Guest]

Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. And so this is. This is not just about home furnishings. This is about the forest.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I feel like this show is like the serial iteration of that video game Myst or Riven, you know? Did you play those?

[Caller or Guest]

Alan Wake?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, Alan Wake Came later was influenced by Twin Peaks, so I know it's.

[Caller or Guest]

Influenced by Twin Peaks, but I think it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, I don't know.

[Caller or Guest]

I've never played the Mist. I just know that it's similar to Alan Wake.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, but so that's. That's the key. We're talking about whether someone can escape the woods and escape the trees.

[Caller or Guest]

Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Because. And you have to take, in terms of her actions leading up to that, that end up getting her condemned to that fate, involve her going into the woods in sort of a metaphorical way. You have to think about sort of the.

Mythological views of the first settlers of the Northwest. Right. Who viewed the woods as the place of witchcraft and the place of. The place of evil and the places where deals were made with the devil.

[Caller or Guest]

Okay, that makes a lot of sense.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay.

[Caller or Guest]

And then also is Bob Merlin.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, man. He wants to do a follow up.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No.

[Caller or Guest]

Okay, then I'm.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay.

[Caller or Guest]

That's about it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right, all right.

[Caller or Guest]

You're not gonna say I'm the man of 1000 heresies? Come on.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It goes without saying.

[Caller or Guest]

Okay. All right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay, then. All right, all right. I think Trudy has successfully called back Hunter from the state of perdition.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You have returned to a state of grace.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. Hunter, do we have you back?

[Caller or Guest]

Hey. Yeah, I'm here.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right. Okay.

[Caller or Guest]

All right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

So I guess what I was getting at was just. I know. As far as I know, at least I've been to a few orthodox services. And.

How does. It's my understanding that in order to receive communion as an orthodox Christian, you also need to make a good confession and, you know, do a lot of the same things we do. So I guess what I'm wondering is what, from your perspective, how is the. How is the theology. Different aspects, opposed to the Catholic way of looking at it?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The theology in general of the entire Orthodox tradition, the idea of a state of grace. State of grace.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Okay. Okay. All right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And so the. I mean, the core is not that. I mean, obviously, yes, we do those things and you should do those things. Right. Those are good things to do.

The difference, I think, is in the idea and the problem from our perspective is in the idea that your eternal destiny is determined by whether you happen to die in a moment when you are in that state or at a moment when you're not.

Right. Rather than by the. The overall trajectory of your life.

[Caller or Guest]

Right. Judging the entirety of somebody's life as a whole versus in the moment in which they died.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

In that moment, what state was their soul in?

[Caller or Guest]

Right, right. Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That. That to me, and that's sort of the context, if I'm remembering right, where it came up, was we were talking about the judgment and judging a whole life.

[Caller or Guest]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Rather Than I came up. Yeah. Rather than just your final moment. And I think a view that it's based on the final moment runs into all kinds of problems in real pastoral situations. Right. People with dementia.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Or the fact that almost everybody. Almost everybody that we deal with their end of life now is sedated.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like almost no one gets to do a final confession anymore. Yeah. Really?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So there's. Yeah. And so there's a lot of pastoral issues there and stuff, too. Yeah. And so. Right. Like all the things that the Roman Catholic Church. Well, pretty much. Right. I mean, there are some things, little things we disagree about, but the main things that the Roman Catholic Church says that you should do to be in and maintain a state of grace are all things you should do.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. We're not disagreeing with that part. Right. It's more.

Removing the. The anxiety of. Right. Like when you mess up, as we all do.

Is there, like this critical moment where if you don't get to confession and you get hit by or whatever.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, you know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay.

[Caller or Guest]

Okay. Yeah, that. That makes sense.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And I think a lot of Roman Catholic folks, and including clergy.

Don'T believe that that legalistically. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

And I have to say, like, I don't either. I mean, there was a time in my life where it gave me some anxiety because that's how I kind of understood it, at least on the surface.

You know, and as I've grown up, I've kind of. I think my views become more nuanced. But. Yeah, that is something that, you know. And you bring up a good point about people being.

In end of life care. I mean, I've lost two grandparents and I have another grandparent who.

He'S kind of in that stage right now where, I mean, he's not actively dying, but he's got dementia. And it's like that. That is something that. That's kind of crossed my mind. So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, yeah. Thank you all for taking my call. I appreciate it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Absolutely. Absolutely. Thanks for calling. Okay, we're going to take two more callers and then we'll have some final comments, and then that'll be episode 100. So. All right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And we're going to keep it 100.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right, next to last caller. Welcome to the Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Penultimate.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Hello. Hello. Welcome. Who are we talking to?

[Caller or Guest]

This is Rob from Kalamazoo, Michigan.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Rob from Kalamazoo.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I got people. Not a relative.

[Caller or Guest]

Are you.

A relative of who?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Are you Dutch? Rob, are you Dutch?

[Caller or Guest]

My wife's family is.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know, any familiar Any Huizengas?

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, they're running for office around here right now.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Kalamazoo Huizengas. A lot of them are related to me.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

How about that?

[Caller or Guest]

Fantastic.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They're the. The Other Daymics live in that general region, actually. The Other Daymics, that's where my dad.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Lived as a kid.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

How about that?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Sorry? That was born and lived as kid.

[Caller or Guest]

That's why I've got a lot of Calvinists up here.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Cousins there.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Yep. Michigan weather can do that to you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Being Dutch could do that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That as well.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Weather.

[Caller or Guest]

Right now I'm not feeling very Calvinistic.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's kind of a chicken egg issue with the weather and being Dutch and Calvinism. I don't know.

Rob, what's on your mind?

[Caller or Guest]

The. The Greek word stasis, I think it means to stand.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Standing.

[Caller or Guest]

Yeah, being. Being in hypostasis and eustasis. I wonder if there's anything like to be said about that. If it's really just, you know, pass over it. It's just being used twice.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I don't know.

[Caller or Guest]

Is. Is there anything to be taken away from that?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So hypostasis and what was the other one that you mentioned, Eustace?

[Caller or Guest]

Like the standing up again, the resurrection.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, that's anastasis. Anastasis. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like EB. Stasis would be like standing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, being in good standing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Being in good standing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, yeah. As much as I. Super. I don't. I don't even have my etymology jingle ready to go here. But I mean, as such, as I love like etymologic. Etymologizing words and saying. See, it means this. You can't. Like ipostasis. It doesn't mean something standing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, it kind of does, though.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay, so tell me how it does. Kind of does. Okay, go ahead. Yeah. Like literally standing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Well, the EPO there is under.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Under. Standing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Under what stands underneath.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, I mean, it's metaphorical.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

What, as in what.

[Caller or Guest]

It's translated as substance.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Substantia or persons underneath or. Substantia.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. It's a calc, as they call it. Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. So but it's. This is the substance. Accidents. Right. Distinction in Aristotle is where the term first sort of comes to philosophical prominence is the idea that it's what stands. So accidents are like the appearance. Right. So the substance is what stands beneath the appearance. So it's what something actually is.

Is the idea.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. It's not. It's not standing in a literal sense.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No, no. But it's standing in a metaphorical Sense. And it is what. That's why substantia gets like very literally translated over. And anastasis also standing up from a very literal. Yeah, standing back up again. Right. You've someone who's laying down, stands up again.

Rise, rises to their feet.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Uprising also.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. Before that's used. So with that being used for the resurrection, there's a completely other Greek word that's used when. When the New Testament talks about Jesus rising from the dead. When it says Jesus rose from the dead, it's not using a form of anastasis, it's using a form of eiro, isn't it?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like Exeter guises, I think.

Trying to remember now.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's a row is a form of it. It's a. For that verb. Sometimes just a right is I would be, I rise. But, you know.

Aura would be. He rises. That's Christ rose from the dead. But throughout the Old Testament, you find this a lot in the Psalms. And these psalm verses are used as the procumina in our matin service before the gospel reading, the resurrection Gospel reading, the word in Greek, anasti is used.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And that's an imperative directed toward God, as in arise, O God and judge the earth.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Arise, O God, lift up thy hand and forget not the humble. Right. And that's calling on God to act.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The arise is right. He's enthroned.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He's seated in the heavenly places. The idea of arise is God act again.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He took his seat at the end of creation, calling on God to act again and judge the earth. And so when Christ's rising from the dead is described in the New Testament as the Anastasia to cease. Right.

That saying more than just he stood up again after being dead, it's really referring to this is how God has now acted right again in history.

This is that arising that the prophets and the psalms were calling for is what happens in the resurrection of Christ.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

Like in a very ultimate sense.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. It's happening. Fantastic. Yeah, yeah. All right, well, thank you very much for calling.

[Caller or Guest]

Thank you, fathers.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right, we're going to take one more caller on this, the. The. The hundredth episode, the fourth anniversary episode of the Lord of Spirits podcast. Soon it will become the last episode, but just in that sense of. On our last episode.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, we already promised you like a few minutes ago. A hundred and first episode.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Exactly. There will be at least one more.

[Caller or Guest]

A Screaming Eagle episode.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Welcome, caller.

[Caller or Guest]

Hello.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So who are we talking to?

[Caller or Guest]

This is John from Cleveland.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

John from Cleveland. You named your city Cleveland?

[Caller or Guest]

I. I'M Since I'm the last caller, I will hopefully send this out on a lighter note.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay.

[Caller or Guest]

One that. That Father DeYoung may have an interest in. A number of years ago, the diocese, the Catholic diocese in South Cleveland where I live.

Settled a long and raging argument, and I want to see what your opinion is and what the orthodox opinion is.

Are turtle and alligator meat or fish?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Fish.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, we've had this before.

[Caller or Guest]

Oh, you have?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We have.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I got a ruling on this. Of Mount Athos.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. From an Athol. Yeah, they're.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

When I moved down here because we eat some gator down here.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You can have them on fish days.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, you can have them. Reptile is considered fish any day. You could have fish. You could have.

[Caller or Guest]

It's good, because I live kind of in real South Cleveland.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Cleveland, Tennessee, right now.

[Caller or Guest]

Father DeYoung will understand that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, are you in Cleveland east of me?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Caller or Guest]

I have a 225 area code, so.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, that Cleveland, Yes. Not Howard the Ducks Cleveland.

[Caller or Guest]

No, no, no, no. I'm originally from New Orleans. But that question got. That question raged on in the Catholic diocese in Baton Rouge for years until some. The bishop finally settled it with a decree. Okay. Yeah. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, I'm glad that they care about fasting, you know?

You know.

[Caller or Guest]

Exactly.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That is the second best Louisiana bishops decree I've ever heard of. You want to know the first?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I do. Now I'm intrigued. I want to know the first.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So the first was the Episcopal bishop of New Orleans.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So there were a bunch of churches there that. That would basically sell booze before and after services, like mimosas and stuff.

And. And so some people moved there and showed up at these churches, and they were complaining about all the drinking. Right. And so the bishop sent a letter. This was posted in the church, and it said, you know, recently I've heard many complaints about the selling and consumption of alcohol here at the church. These complaints must stop.

That is the greatest I've ever heard of in Louisiana.

[Caller or Guest]

And that sounds about right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Wow.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Sort of. Whiskey.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Whiskey Pallians. I know. Who's gonna be the first to say that?

[Caller or Guest]

Well, you know, you know the old joke about wherever you find four Episcopalians, you find a fifth.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Caller or Guest]

All right. Well, thank you, Fathers, for everything. Happy 100th. And we'll be listening for you next time.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right. Thank you. And by the way. Yeah, go ahead.

[Caller or Guest]

I was gonna say, Father DeYoung, if you're. If you're ever on my side of the Atchafalaya, talk to Jules. He knows who I am. I'll take you to lunch, Jules.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay. Will you take me to Shake Shack?

[Caller or Guest]

No.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, I don't know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Then.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Mostly about that way, I go to Shake Shack or Wiener Schnitzel, so.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Wow.

[Caller or Guest]

No, no, no, no. I got, I got, I got, I got. I got better places in Baton Rouge for that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay.

[Caller or Guest]

Trust me. Well, thank you all very much. Congratulations. Father's bless. Happy 100.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Thank you very much. Yeah. Before we. Before we wrap this one up, I just want to let everybody know, in case you have not heard, even though we don't have dates that we're going to announce just yet, nor a location that we are going to announce just yet, although both.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No details or information.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Both have been determined, so stop with the lobbying, people. Both have been determined. I know. It's like there's competition, like cities should bid. There we go.

That's right. They should court us like they do Taylor Swift. Right, right. Yes. Just like that.

Yeah. We make a major economic impact. We do. No.

Yes. There will be a Lord of spirits conference in 2025. So I would say save the dates, but there's no dates for me to tell you to save just yet. But they have.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'm telling you where and why and how long.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Again, it happened there. It will happen. There are. The dates have been chosen, location has been chosen. They're just not announceable quite yet. And also, as we mentioned a couple times earlier in the episode next week, Father Stephen's got a new book out, St. Paul the Pharisee. So y' all are going to want to get that. And it'll [e-mail] faith.com. ignore all other outlets before you buy it from there.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There's one they're not ignoring. If you look at.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I know, I know. But we're not going to tell. We're not going to tell. You.

Get it from us. You support publishers and authors better when you buy things directly from the publisher. That is God's own honest truth.

Right. So this episode has been about change.

In the Christian religion, change in the religion of the worship of the one true God and what constitutes legitimate and illegitimate change. And I wanted to just pick up one of the threads that we put down towards the end.

And meditate on that for a minute. And that is that.

It'S very tempting, especially for those of us who are kind of high info Christians, which Lord of Spirits listeners, that might be you.

It's very tempting for those of us that are high info, you know, and I'm not saying that makes us knowledgeable. It's just high info, like lots of info. It's not a good thing, it's not a bad thing in and of itself. It's tempting for us to think that Christianity consists in getting all the information correct.

You know, line it all up correctly, get it all correct. And especially with Orthodox Christianity, where there's so many details.

To look at it as, like, which is the poison M and M in the jar.

You get this one thing wrong.

And.

It'S all bad. You kill your salvation, whatever it might be. It's very tempting to think that way. And especially for those of us who are high and folk Christians, and particularly those who came into the Orthodox Church of our own volition a little bit later in life, not having been raised in it.

To think that that is what consists in being an Orthodox Christian. Like, that's what it means to be Orthodox, to get all these things right, get all the rules, rules right, get all the theology right, get the dogma lined up. I mean, I see. I mean, we've mentioned this before, but I mean, I see endless, endless, it seems, battles on Twitter, or, I'm sorry, X formerly known as Twitter, that's how we have to call it now, that whole phrase, or on Facebook or on social media in general, about very, very specific philosophical questions about Christology or about all kinds of stuff. And by no means am I saying that that stuff doesn't matter. I'm not saying it doesn't matter, but. But.

The context in which those conversations are happening is not a context in which the outcome of those conversations is actually being applied pastorally to people who are trying to live their Christian lives. It's not. It's not. Admit it, it's not.

The context is people who want to be right. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to understand that stuff and get it right. There's nothing wrong with that. Right.

The reality is that.

Most people throughout history who have been Christians, to be traditional, to be a traditional orthodox Christian is not about lining up all the details of tradition and getting them correct. It's not for most of them.

And I would say for the ones who actually made it, for sure, we know made it for sure and are saved.

That we know them so for sure that they're saved, that we call them saints and we put them in our church services and make icons of them, right? The saints. Being traditional means being obedient within the context of the community that God has placed you.

Right. It means.

Doing the things on the ground that actually.

Are helpful to Other people, crucifying your own will, sacrificing your own preferences, putting other people first, right? And I'm not saying that to just like throw out a kind of like, I've actually had people say this. It's just moralism. By no means, by no means at all, right?

But the point is that.

Those of us who are high info, we often think that because we have high info, then that means that we are qualified to make the determinations about what constitute acceptable variation or unacceptable variation. And the truth is that most of us are not qualified. Most of us do not have the authority to do that. And no, vox populi, vox DEI is not a Christian doctrine. It's not. Just because lots of people say something does not mean that that is the voice of God speaking. Lots of people have often said a lot of horrible things all at the same time. There are videos of the people doing this.

The reason why we give this outline of this arc of Christian history and of what we would regard as probably normally as pre Christian history, but as we've tried to insist is actually still one religion, the worship of the one true God throughout all of human history is not so that we can take it in hand and say, aha, I have the skeleton key to work all this out and I can apply it to other people. It's rather actually God willing to deflate some of the inflation that exists.

The tension that exists for people and to realize.

Look, actually the point is to follow God with what it is that you've been given. That is the point. And to realize that it is not any of our place.

To throw condemnation, frankly, at people who are in, as we said, part of heretical bodies. We're not saying they're not a heretical body, right? Like I saw for instance, an orthodox priest talking about a body that, you know, I would regard as having certain heretical beliefs. And he talked about.

That they were living in utter darkness. In utter darkness, right? Like I'm thinking, like, well, number one, who exactly is going to be converted by that kind of language?

Maybe, I don't know, maybe somebody likes to be shocked into it or whatever. I don't know. I'm sure they're out there. But it's also simply not true. It's not utter darkness. Things that people get right, they get right. You can't say it's all darkness because they got this one thing wrong. It's not all darkness. Faithfulness is faithfulness. Remember the Ninevites, demon worshiping pagans who repented God honored their repentance he held them up as examples against people who had all the correct info.

Remember that? Remember the Ninevites.

Everything that's good comes from God. There is nothing good that comes from some other source.

Nothing. Nothing at all. So as we consider this big ark, I think that.

It'S important to bring it always back to that point of, okay, what am I going to do with this? What has God given me to do with this?

And how can I use this information that I've received now in a way that is actually going to be for my salvation, for the salvation of other people? Like actually not just interesting, fun stuff that I can get right now.

But on the ground, you know, where we actually are saved. Love one another.

And love God above all. So, Father, what do you have to say? What do you have to say for yourself? Father Steven DeYoung well, making your way.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

In the world today takes everything you've.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Got.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Folks, especially in, you know, I mean, I always have to speak first and foremost for American society because that's where I live.

But I think this extends beyond that.

People right now don't have an easy road in terms of figuring out life.

In a lot of ways. In previous generations, especially if you go back a few generations, things were sort of allotted and handed to you, right? Your marriage was sort of arranged and your career was sort of arranged and your education was sort of arranged, and you had a, you know, from your birth or shortly thereafter, you had a path set in front of you for you to walk through the world, you know, for the rest of your life.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Basically.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Basically you had a lot in life.

And that is very much not true anymore for the vast majority of us.

If you think you might want to get married and have kids, you got to figure that out. You got to find a person to do that with and try and find the right person you're going to be able to do that with over a lot of years. And how do you figure that out and how do you know and what do I do? And you got to figure out, well, what do I want to do for a living? What will actually pay for me to be able to live? Am I going to have to cobble together 2, 3, 4 things to try and just survive, right, and live, let alone have some kind of quote unquote career that leads to a retirement or something.

And how am I going to qualify myself? Where and how can I get education and how much debt should I take on to do it? It's on and on and on and on and on.

For us, religion including for Christians, Christianity.

Has ended up getting treated very much the same way. It's one more thing you got to figure out.

Now, kind of fortunately.

You may have a default setting on that still. If you're a person who was raised religious, you were probably brought up in some particular Christian or other religious community.

And you could always default to that. You can sort of just keep doing that and take that one thing off the table. But that's not what happens that much anymore when you look at the actual landscape of things. First of all, a lot of people aren't brought up with any religion, so they don't have a default. But even those who are frequently, for various reasons, become dissatisfied with.

That situation. And then either way, you're out into the world trying to figure that out too.

And.

It'S very much framed by our culture, the way our culture frames everything in this consumeristic way where, okay, I mean, I go, I figure out what I think is right and what I believe.

Based on right books that I find convincing and.

Preaching on the Internet or TV or wherever that I find convincing of certain ideas. And then once I kind of settle on what I think is probably right and what I like and what I think it should be like, then I try to find a church that matches that. And guess what? There never is one. So I try to figure out like, well, okay, this, this place has this and that place has that. Well, I guess I'll go to this one because, you know, it's got most of the things and the things it doesn't have I can live with.

At least for now.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And then other things happen later and unsettle that, you know, new pastor, they change the worship style, something else happens, this and that happens. You find out something you didn't know before you change your mind.

And all of this is.

Just this kind of.

Chaos induced anxiety.

Where this burden is being heaped on people as individuals, meaning separated from their communities, their families. No, this is, you have to figure this out for yourself. It's all dropped on people. It's all dropped on people at an age when they're not prepared to do any of it.

But I think some of the callers we had tonight and what we talked about tonight have a lot to do with an antidote for that or at least another way of approaching that.

There is a way of being in the world, there is a way of life, there is a way of worshiping the true God.

That has existed for as long as humanity has existed.

Not identical, but fundamentally the same.

And there are various other ways of being in the world that have sort of fallen away from that over the years.

Whether they fell away from it very early on, whether they fell away from it in the Neolithic revolution, it fell into paganism. Whether they fell away from it at a later period into some kind of religious thing of their own devising by artificially shoving things together, or they fell away from it by following some heretical idea that distorted that true faith, that true way of being in the world, a true way of worshiping God. But there are all these ways that have fallen away from.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

From it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And I think we need to approach. We need to approach. If you accept that that is true, even if you don't accept necessarily that, as I or Father Andrew would say, that that is preserved in the Orthodox Church, even if you don't accept that Orthodox Church part, you accept that that is true.

Then it behooves you not to try to figure all these things out for yourself. Guess what? You don't have to. It's your lucky day. This is one thing you don't have to do that with.

But rather to find the place that practices that way of life. Father Andrew and I believe that is the Orthodox Church that has preserved that.

But, you know, to find it, to find the place where that is and then to place yourself within it.

And then this will be one thing in your life that you don't have to be in charge of, that you don't have to struggle with, that. You don't have to yank the reins on or turn the steering wheel.

This will be a place where you can learn and you could be shaped and you could be formed and you could be transformed and you could be healed and you can be helped.

And as that process happens, the really good news is that process and doing that process within a community of other people.

Who you'll be bonded with as that same transformation and that same thing is happening with them, will also help you a whole lot with all those other things you have to figure out. It won't do all the work for you, but it'll go a long way and it'll help an awful lot with all those other things.

So next time we're going to kind of pick up where we sort of left off. After the second half, we're going to talk about modernism and some other things.

But for now, we need to work on reorienting.

Is religion something I feel figure out and then do as I think best? No.

Christianity is a way of being that I can come into and be shaped and formed by these are all passive.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Words.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

While I work on all of these other things, these other responsibilities that life presents to me.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Amen.

That's our 100th episode, everybody. Thanks for listening. If you didn't happen to get through to us live.

Thank you for that, Father Stephen. We'd still like to hear from you. You can also email us at lordofspirits and ancientfaith.com you can message us at our Facebook page or you can leave us a [e-mail] LordOfSpirits and if you have basic questions about Orthodox Christianity or need help to find an actual parish in 3D World World, head over to OrthodoxIntro.org and join us for our live.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Broadcasts on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month at 7pm Eastern, 4pm Pacific.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And if you're on Facebook, you can follow our page, join our discussion group, leave ratings and reviews in all the appropriate places and some inappropriate places if you like. But most importantly, share this show with a friend who is going to benefit from it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And finally, be sure to go to ancient faith.com stroke support and help you make sure we and lots of other AFR podcasters stay on the air.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Thank you. Good night. God bless you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You've been listening to the Lord of Spirits with Orthodox Christian priests, Father Andrew, Stephen Damick and Father Stephen DeYoung, a listener speaker, supported presentation of Ancient Faith Radio and I beheld and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders, and the number of them was 10,000 times 10,000 and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And honor and glory and Blessing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Revelation, chapter 5, verses 11 through 12.