Pantheon and Pandemonium VI: Live Q&A May 2023

Summary

The Lord of Spirits — Pantheon and Pandemonium VI: Live Q&A

Episode Date: May 12, 2023
Hosts: Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick and Fr. Stephen DeYoung

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Overview

This special live Q&A episode features Fr. Andrew and Fr. Stephen taking a wide range of listener questions on Orthodox Christian approaches to the seen and unseen world. The conversation moves through atonement theology, biblical exegesis, Trinitarian thought, the meaning of the image of God, the nature of miracle claims, Orthodox liturgics, and modern spiritual practice—all colored with the hosts’ signature banter and deep dives into scripture, church tradition, and philosophy. Notably, the hosts emphasize Orthodox distinctives while graciously handling challenging queries, offering brain-bending moments for both laity and theologically seasoned listeners.

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Notable Quotes

• "Prophecies are not predictions of the future... Prophetic utterances are speaking for God."
  — Fr. Stephen DeYoung [55:46]

• "Repentance is a miraculous thing. If something is an icon of the Mother of God, I don’t care which chapel it’s hanging in, it is an icon of the Mother of God."
  — Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick [169:20]

• "The surest sign that a miracle is false is that someone is presenting it to you as proof of their own authority... Woe to the generation that asks for a sign."
  — Fr. Stephen DeYoung [170:01], [171:26]

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Key Discussion Points by Section

Opening & Theme (00:00–06:30)

• The hosts introduce the episode with a reading from 1 Enoch, emphasizing the tension between the secular and the spiritual.
• Light-hearted banter and jokes about musical tastes set a welcoming, familial tone for the Q&A format.

Penal Substitution & Atonement (06:30–19:22)

• Critical Analysis of Penal Substitution Theory:
  • Caller Paul asks where Orthodox theology diverges from the Protestant popularization of penal substitution.
  • Fr. Andrew: Christ suffers the consequences of sin (the brokenness of creation) but does not "experience God's wrath" as if being punished by the Father.
  • Fr. Stephen: Penal substitution creates Trinitarian and Christological problems—"You would have to have the Son suffering His own wrath" [14:01].
  • Double Jeopardy Problem: If Christ bears punishment but the unsaved are punished too, God punishes sin twice; only Calvinist limited atonement or universalism can handle this internally.
  • Orthodox models focus on restoration and participation, not legal satisfaction or divine sadism.

The Image of God, Human Nature, and Christology (19:47–26:44)

• Iconography and the Image:
  • Is humanity’s form derived from Christ? (Are we, in some sense, modeled after the incarnate Lord?)
  • Fr. Andrew: Cites Genesis’ Septuagint, suggesting humanity exists "according to the image"—that is, patterned after Christ.
  • Fr. Stephen: Patristic discussions note that Christ creates human nature itself, some even posit this occurred at the Incarnation or on the Cross—a "brain-breaking" trans-historical mystery.

Covenant, The Law, and the Torah (27:31–38:05)

• Distinguishes between covenant formats, the Decalogue, and the origins and structure of the Torah.
• Fr. Stephen: Explains why ancient formats mandated two copies of a covenant.
• Addresses the misreading fostered by Western scholarship regarding Deuteronomy’s origin.
• The Torah is the five books of Moses, structurally reaffirmed throughout Jewish and Christian liturgy and teaching.

Phenomenology, Concepts vs. Spirits, and Popular Culture (38:09–50:31)

• Are Santa Claus and Fictional Characters "Real"?
  • Discussion of Jonathan Pageau's arguments about the "existence" of Santa and whether cosplaying makes Luke Skywalker as "real" as Santa.
  • Fr. Stephen: Differentiates concepts (no agency) from spirits (agency). Santa as a concept can't act; St. Nicholas as a saint can.
  • Fr. Andrew: Participation in the narrative of Santa is social, but not ontological.

Biblical Exegesis: Moab’s King, Prophecy, and Human Agency (53:45–63:02)

• The Sacrifice of the Moabite King’s Son (2/4 Kingdoms)
  • Caller Michael: Did Moab’s king defeat Yahweh via human sacrifice?
  • Fr. Stephen: Prophecy is contingent on faith and human cooperation; Israel’s army lost because they were faithless, not because Chemosh (pagan god) "won."
  • Themes: synergism (cooperation with God), not divine fatalism or monergism.

Patronage, Relics, and the Cross (64:24–72:49)

• Are Material Objects Like the Cross "Spirited"?
  • Cross has unique spiritual significance, bridging relic and symbol.
  • Addressed patronage in churches named for feasts (Dormition, Resurrection), concluding that “matrix” of saintly intercessions is normal.

The "Western Grid" and Orthodox Mindset (73:29–78:30)

• Do Converts Need to ‘Replace’ or ‘Erase’ Old Theological Spreadsheets?
  • Fr. Stephen encourages not just swapping answers, but genuinely reorienting the framework of understanding in Orthodox terms.

Church Continuity, The Fall, and Human Priesthood (78:42–84:01)

• Unbroken Continuity of the Church:
  • Genealogies of Seth and Shem in Genesis serve to show a continuous remnant, not an "institutional" succession as in apostolic Christianity.
• Hypostatic Union and Eucharist:
  • Luther’s analogy of Christ’s union with the Eucharist is rejected—leads to "all bread is Christ’s body", a heretical error.

The Soul, Substance, and Patristic Theology (108:51–114:58)

• Is the Soul a ‘Thing’?
  • Fr. Stephen explains the limits of English language; nature and soul are not "things possessed."
  • Advice: Read patristic criticisms of originism to clarify the Orthodox perspective.

Daniel, Prophecy, Typology, and Rome (116:07–126:31)

• Is Daniel’s 4th Beast About Rome or Hellenistic Empires?
  • Fr. Stephen details the compositional complexity of Daniel and Jewish/Christian interpretive threads.
  • Jewish sources pre-Christianity interpreted the 4th kingdom as Rome; prophecy fulfills at multiple levels and times (not a one-to-one future prediction).

Liturgical Practice and the Meaning of Sacraments (130:41–143:53)

• Monastic tonsure for non-monastery priests is examined—ideally ties to increased asceticism.
• Holy Water as Sacrament: Unlike Eucharist/Unction, holy water’s consecration is for all creation, not only for Orthodox.

Miracles, "Proof," and Discernment (163:03–175:01)

• How Should Orthodox Understand Roman Catholic Eucharistic Miracles?
  • Miracles occur in all traditions; using them as apologetic "proof" is misguided.
  • Fr. Stephen: "The surest sign that a miracle is false is that someone is presenting it to you as proof..." [171:26].
  • Christ warns against sign-seeking (Matthew 12:39). Miracles must point to repentance, not institutional self-justification.

Saints, Theosis, and the Restoration of Creation (150:50–162:31)

• Accounts of saints flying, bi-locating, or communicating with animals signify advanced theosis—a foretaste of the resurrected state, not magic nor a reset to pre-fallen conditions, but maturation toward God’s intention for humanity.

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Memorable Moments & Humor

• Musical banter & "Hamilton paradox":
  Fr. Andrew: "Rap isn’t music. So I know they call it a musical, but just putting that out there." [04:11]
• Lively audience participation:
  Cycling through listeners named after apostles, requests for readings from Beowulf, and references to Texan culture (“Are the stars bright late at night?”).
• Trivia & references to pop culture:
  Star Wars canon ("There are only three movies!"), D&D jokes about the Lord of Spirits Conference (LoserCon), and Tolkien’s "Letters from Father Christmas."

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [07:11] – Opening caller: Penal substitution, atonement theory
• [19:47] – The image of God, Christology, and creation
• [27:31] – Torah, Covenant, and The Law
• [38:09] – Concepts, Spirits, and Popular Culture
• [53:45] – Moabite King’s sacrifice; prophecy and agency
• [64:24] – Relics, the Cross, and the unseen
• [73:29] – Reorienting theological understanding post-conversion
• [78:42] – Genealogies, unbroken remnant, priesthood
• [108:51] – The soul: substance, language, and patristic critique of Origen
• [116:07] – Book of Daniel, prophecy, Rome vs. Seleucids
• [130:41] – Monastic practice outside monasteries, holy water’s sacramentality
• [163:03] – Eucharistic miracles in apologetics, discernment, and Orthodox cautions
• [150:50] – Saints, theosis, miracles, and the maturation of creation

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Tone and Advice

• Original Tone: Warm, humorous, deeply engaged with both tradition and lived experience; patient but unafraid to challenge both questioners and common misconceptions.
• Advice for Listeners:
  Orthodoxy is not just a set of “right answers,” but a whole way of living and perceiving; miracles and spiritual phenomena are invitations to repentance and transformation, not institutional self-affirmation or mere apologetic ammunition.

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For more, listen to the recording or join the next live Q&A—just be ready for more than a little wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey theology!

Transcript

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

He will be a staff for the righteous with which for them to stand and not to fall.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And he will be the light of the nations and the hope of those.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Whose hearts are troubled. All who dwell on the earth will fall down and worship him.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And they will praise and bless and.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Celebrate with song the lord of spirits. First Enoch, chapter 48, verses 4 through 5. The modern world doesn't acknowledge, but is nevertheless haunted by spirits and angels, demons and saints. In our time, many yearn to break free of the prison of a flat secular materialism, to see and to know reality as it truly is. What is this spiritual reality like? How do we engage with it? Well, how do we permeate everyday life with spiritual presence? Orthodox Christian priests, Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Fr. Stephen DeYoung host this live call in show focused on enchantment in creation, this union of the seen and unseen as made by God and experienced by mankind throughout history. Welcome to the Lord of Spirits.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Good evening. Giant killers, dragon slayers. Christ is risen. He truly is risen. You are listening to the Lord of Spirits podcast. My co Host, the Very Reverend Dr. Stephen James DeYoung is with me from Lafayette, Louisiana.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, not yet.

[Caller]

Not yet.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's next. That's what I run out of PhDs to get. I'm going to, that's true, do law school just to keep double.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Dr. Bayans postgraduate postdoctoral.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, get that Esquire there.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Master Doctor, I don't know, is there something above? Well, anyway, right. And I'm Father Andrew Steven Damick in Emmaus, Pennsylvania. If you're listening to us live, and I hope you are, you can call in at 855-AF-RADIO. That's 855-237-2346 and Matush Ka Trudy is going to actually have to work tonight. She's going to be taking your calls. That's what she's going to be doing all night long. Just your calls. Because it's an all live, all Q and A show. We haven't had one of these since our second anniversary show last September when we played that clip about leprechauns. Good times. So listeners, dear listeners, I'm going to make you a deal. There's two options we can do tonight. Option number one is that you can call and we'll keep answering your messages, your questions. Or I can instead read from the fragment of the version of the Passion of St Christopher which is found in the Beowulf manuscript in Old English. And Father Stephen can offer commentary. So what will it be? Will it be your cause or Will it be minus strictest hallendes, Christes aktuer tisig un unsnotur. I love that word unsnotor. It means unwise. But it looks like unsnati. But it's unwise.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There's a flaw in your plan here.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, is there?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There's a certain segment of our audience that would probably like to hear that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's true. I mean it literally was St. Christopher's Day just two days ago. So like this is, you know, like all the symbolic world people. This is their week long festival or whatever. Right. They're all wearing their dog headed masks and stuff.

And there's a handful of people that would love to hear it in Old English.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You should have threatened them with like Proust.

That would have been the way to go.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I have some other. Yeah, or you know, I could read like Derrida or you know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So here's, here's. Before we get any listener questions, assuming they're. They're lining up.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

They are lining up. Actually they don't want to hear me read from the passion of St Christopher in old English.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I have a question for you, sir.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh. Oh boy.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So given.

[Caller]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So sort of my two, my A and B statements for my syllogism are A, Father Andrew loves musical theater.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

B, basically true.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

B, Father Andrew hates rap.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's basically also true.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So what happened with Hamilton for you?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, well, I mean it's pretty easy to solve that because from my point of view and don't at me bros and scissors. Rap isn't music. So I know they call it a musical, but just putting that out there.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So okay, so that. So, so the B statement.

You know, was.

Right. Rap music is for you, an oxymoron.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Correct.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That is where you would break that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's right. I mean that I say this.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The Hamilton paradox.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Every time I say this, it breaks the heart of Jamie Bennett. But he has a very big soft heart, so he can handle it. He can handle it. So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, the whole last episode was secretly.

I'm gonna let people in behind the scenes, behind the curtain. The last episode about the soul of Lord of Spirits was actually secretly a project by me to see how many Public Enemy sub references I could get into a single episode of Lord of Spirits.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I know, I know, I know. So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And there were a lot of them. So now everyone can go back and re. Listen just for these Easter eggs martyric.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Existence in doing this show.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So what Father Andrew has taken away hip hop heads. I return to you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right, well, we do have A bunch of people lined up. In fact, it is a full call board, so other people calling right now probably can't even get through. But first, we have Paul from Texas. Paul, Are you the same Paul we talked to last time?

[Caller]

I am indeed, Father.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You made it again. You got through.

[Caller]

I've been real go getter about this.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Are you wearing a cowboy hat this time?

[Caller]

I am not. I apologize.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Do you remember the Alamo?

[Caller]

I do, always.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Are the stars bright late at night?

[Caller]

They are not in the city, tragically, but elsewhere.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I learned that song from Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Just kidding. Just kidding.

[Caller]

Just kidding.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It does feature in that film, though.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, prominently.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's right. So. All right, well, welcome back, Paul, to the Lord of Spirits podcast. What is your question?

[Caller]

Well, first, please let me clear my name and apologize to all of our Oriental Orthodox friends. I am so sorry. I have since learned that the proper way to refer to this distinction is either Chalcedonian or non Chalcedonian.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay.

[Caller]

Unfortunately, I did not have that before.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, you know, over time. Over time. Over time, these terms have evolved. And I mean, like non Chalcedonian can also refer to the Assyrian Church of the East, AKA the Nestorians.

Because they're also not Chalcedonians. But. But yes. I mean, so Oriental Orthodox is the kind of general term in English that you usually hear these days to refer to those particular churches. So. Yes.

[Caller]

Well, I just wanted to put out an apology to everyone that I may have upset.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They added him, I think.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All you. Yeah, that mob out there, who's. Who's beating down Paul's door. You can back off.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Through the window, he's gotten his repentance on.

[Caller]

Okay. So.

I had to super condense this, so I hope I have still managed to make sense of it. So we understand that the cosmos has a proper order and that it's been violated. When sin was introduced, setting aside the fallen angels, when man fell, at least the cosmos got set out of order. God must restore it. Just like God does not lie, he does not go against himself, and he wants it to be what it's supposed to be. And justice, properly understood, is. Is the restoration of that proper order.

Now, justice, when it's meted out, begets a kind of consequence, because there's just. There's going to be some aspect of restoring it to proper order that occurs, that is often negative.

And it seems that that's just a necessary aspect of it. Would I be, if. Correct me, at any point along this road if I'm wrong. But if it seems to me that God's wrath is really the feltly negative consequence of that justice, of that putting things from out of order back into their proper order. And so since sin brought everything out of order and Christ's sacrifice for us.

It seems as though he bears the kind of painful consequence of that. Not entirely. We still have our own consequences. We still pass through fire in the end, whether we're saved or not. But it seems like he bore the brunt of the negative consequence and that in doing so justly, appropriately, the Father makes him judge. And it goes from there to whether he forgives or does not forgive, depending upon his mercies and our repentance. Now, what my issue is is that, and part of this was probably from coming from the Protestant, you know, origins that I had as a Christian. But I hear a lot of negativity about the penal substitution theory and, you know, about the way Protestants view the theories of atonement and all that. And I agree with a large part of that. I think that the critiques are very valid. But it also seems to me that what I just loosely described also fits the penal substitutionary theory. Atonement that Christ did bear the wrath of God, that he did suffer for our sake and kind of take the punishment for our sins in order to save us from it.

I have trouble understanding how if we can just leave aside the kind of connotatively negative view that the penal substitution provides us of God, you know, with his fists bald and shaking and stomping his feet and angry and having to hurt something to feel better, that if we could just leave that aside and kind of look past and through the specific legal terms, that that does still describe the process of things being out of order, justice having to be restored or mitigated for things to be restored, there being a negative aspect of that and Christ taking that for us, if we would just partake in his life and then being restored.

My question is how in what way does the penal substitution not align with that? If we set aside the negative view of God, we tend to think of with it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay, I think I followed you most of the way there. It was really a long series of semicolons, I think.

[Caller]

Sorry, I tried to condense a lot.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It was like a Greek sentence.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, right, exactly.

He's like his name saint here, like Saint Paul.

Okay, so, so here's the couple of things that I, I, I would say about what you said. So the, the God's justice, right, is experienced the term wrath is the experience of God's justice by being put right when you're wrong. Right.

And so the idea then that Christ.

Is experiencing that.

Doesn'T make sense because he's not wrong in any way. Right. But he does experience the consequences of sin. Right. And that's the term where it says he became a curse for us. Because the curse that's in creation is the consequences of. It's the damage that's done by human sin. And, you know, if you recall from Genesis, where God comes to Abraham and they make the covenant and he has Abraham cut those animals in half. Right. And makes this sort of path in between them. You know, this is based on this idea that, you know, when, when this covenant is made that the person walking in between the parts, it's this. It's essentially saying, like, if I break this covenant, then this is the. These are the consequences I'm going to suffer. I'm going to be like these, these split animals if I break the covenant. Right. But what happens when God makes the covenant with Abraham is that he doesn't have Abraham, who is sort of the vassal in this arrangement. He himself walks through it in the form of this burning torch to say that he's going to take upon himself the consequences of the covenant being broken.

And so Christ's suffering on the cross is that. That he's receiving the damage that's happening. It's not that God is saying, well, I got to whoop somebody, and it's going to better him than anybody else.

So Christ is not being put right because he is righteousness himself, but rather he's suffering the consequences of our sins, you know, because of the way that we put the world out of whack and the, the damage that's done and all that kind of stuff. That's my. That would be the way that I would respond to what you said. I don't know, Father. What? Yeah, what do you got?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I would nuance what Father Andrew just said a little bit, but I'm not going to focus on that. Yeah, I think the problem with anything.

Approaching penal substitutionary atonement, there's a bunch of them. And this applies to what you laid out, too. One of the biggest ones is a trinitarian problem.

What does it mean to say that Christ experienced his own wrath?

[Caller]

That would be rhetorical. Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No, I mean, I'm not. It can be rhetorical. I'm not trying to put you on the spot.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That Paul answer. Because. Because Christ is God. And one of the ways in which this is original Trinitarianism, right, is that.

The, the persons of the Holy Trinity, the hypostasis share one energy, one activity, right? So you don't have, you can't have.

The Father's wrath being wrathful at the Son.

Right? The wrath of God is. The wrath would be the wrath shared by all three persons.

Right? So you would have to have the Son suffering his own wrath. You would have to, like a certain three initial person on the west coast, separate, like the human body of Christ from the divine Son, right? This creates Christological problems, trinitarian problems, right? That's the biggest issue there. But it also, the other big issue or another big issue is.

Any kind of penal substitution only works if you're a Calvinist or a universalist or you're Karl Barth and you say, porque no los dos, right?

Because.

Right, because otherwise you have.

He would have said it in German, but you have, you have God punishing sins twice otherwise.

Because if, if Christ bears the consequences instead of me.

But other person, and we're assuming here for the sake of argument that I am saved in the end.

And another person is going to suffer those consequences of his sin himself in the end, then.

That would mean that when Christ died, he suffered for my sins and not that other person's. So for Calvinists, that's easy, right? They say, yeah, Christ died for the sins of the elect and that's it, right? Limited atonement. Or if you're a universalist, you could just say, yeah, he died for everybody's right? So nobody goes to hell, right? Nobody suffers God's wrath, right? Everyone is set free from it. But aside from those two options, you get into this really weird sticky territory.

Of, well, you know, you could take like a classical Arminian approach and say, well, God looked down the corridors of time and saw who would of their own free will get saved. And then Christ died for those people's sins because he knew who they would be. But now you've got God inside time and looking into the future, which is weird.

And when Calvinists say the only consistent way to be an Arminian is to be an open theist, they're kind of right.

So there come to be a lot of issues there. And then the last issue I would point to is that one of the most common.

SOPs that I see given by orthodox folks to some kind of substitutionary atonement, like they'll say, oh, we believe in substitutionary atonement but not penal substitution. It's like, well, okay, you know, you're trying to you know, be ecumenical in a good way and be, you know, ironic, which I should probably do more of, but.

I don't think I will.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The problem is the way they usually describe that is they say, well, see, we deserve to die and Christ died, so we don't have to. But last I checked, I'm still gonna die.

So then you have to say, well, wait, are you talking about. About physical death or spiritual death? Because if you're talking about physical death, yes, Christ died a physical death, but I will, too, right? And if you're talking about spiritual death, then go back to all of our trinity problems. Because spiritual death is being separated from God. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Christ does not die a spiritual death.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So even that, I mean, I get why people want to do it, to try to be ironic. It doesn't really work. So I think it's better rather than trying to say, hey, isn't there some way that we can accept this? To just say, hey, you know what? We have better models, understandings that accord better with what scripture teaches and just sort of positively teach those instead.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There you go, Paul.

[Caller]

I definitely. I think I track. I'm pretty sure I do. I'll have to go back and listen again, I'm sure. But.

Thank you very much, fathers. I appreciate it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You're welcome. You're welcome.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Thank you, sir. Wear another disguise if you call back in.

[Caller]

No promises.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay, well, we next have John calling from Michigan. John, welcome to the Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Caller]

Hi, Fathers. Thanks for having me.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We had Paul and John. Let's see if we can get all 12 apostles by the end of the.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Episode or just the George and Aringo.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, there you go.

[Caller]

That's awesome. So I've been a long time listener, and so I guess this question kind of encompasses a number of different episodes, maybe related to, I guess, the soul and the body, and particularly what it means to be made in the image of God.

One thing you said a while back really struck Me, where St. Constantine banned branding on the face because that was the image of Christ on. On all of us. And so what? That kind of got some wheels turning, I guess. And so I was thinking about.

Just what it means to be made in the image of God. I think usually people think about that in terms of the soul, the intellectual soul. But then, I mean, not to go off on a tangent, but I think there is a lot of arguments that could be made about how our physical anatomy is at least reflective of our intellectual soul. So anyway. But then to kind of circle back to something else you talked about. Which like, with iconography of God and Adam in the garden, God is obviously depicted as Christ, right? The way Christ looked at the Incarnation. So anyway, I guess all this kind of leads up to my question being something along the lines of.

Normally I would have thought that Christ the incarnate Christ looks like we do, because that's just what humans happen to look like. Right. But now I started, I started wondering, what if it's the other way around, right? What if humans, quote unquote, happen to look the way we do? Because in some way you could say that that's what God looks like, and obviously in some way is a big qualifier there. But anyways, wondering what your thoughts were on that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, I mean, one of the ways I've heard this talked about is, you know, in the, the Septuagint version of, of Genesis.

Where it says that, you know, that man is made in God's image. The word that's used there. And I don't know if this is true. I'm not a Greek scholar, so, you know, throw me under the bus if you have to. Father Stephen, it's great.

Is the, the word that's used there in the Greek is katah. So like, according to, or along the lines of, you know, so let us make man according to our image. And the way that I've read that parsed on some occasions is, well, well, you know, who is the image of God? Well, Christ is the image of, of God. And so the idea then that Christ is in some way the template for humanity. So it's not that humanity looks like a God kind of in general, but that humanity is based on Christ in particular.

Right. And so you get a kind of a whole chicken and egg theological issue there. But, but I mean, I, I, I feel like it works, which, I mean, yes, you don't want to start theological comments with the phrase, I feel, but.

But hey, it's just a podcast, people. You could just say stuff.

Yeah, I mean, that, that makes sense to me because, because, you know, like, the Incarnation, this mystery that we don't understand, that becomes manifest to us at a particular point in time is still trans, historical.

And that's why we depict Christ walking in the garden. That's why we depict Christ, you know, in all kinds of situations in the Old Testament.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's not, it's not anachronistic. It's, it's, it's a diff, it's, it's beyond Kronos.

[Caller]

You know, that's that part that's really cool. Yeah, that's Great.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. So that's. I mean, that's my way of kind of parsing it out. When people ask me about that stuff, that's generally what I say. So I don't know, throw me under the bus. Father Stephen, let me have.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No, I don't. I don't have to on this one.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, great.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I'm sure. I mean, the night's young, but that's true.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We still got a long ways to go. The.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So the real los. Old heads may remember way back in the long ago time, back when my power was going out and I was huddled somewhere trying to reconnect. Were you there for that, John?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Did you listen to that period?

[Caller]

I definitely did, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We talked about how the texts that are usually.

Discussed in Scripture, they're talking about God.

And presenting him as having a human body that's usually described as an anthropomorphism. Right. These are. These are anthropomorphisms.

They're presenting God as if he were a human and that the reality is actually the opposite in terms of what the scriptures teach, that humanity is theomorphic.

And.

Just to take this to the next level of brain breaking, because, hey, why not, right?

There is an interesting discussion that goes on in the Fathers.

About when human nature was created, not when the first human was. Adam was created, but when human nature was created.

And most of the answers say Christ did it.

Some of them at the incarnation.

Christ created human nature.

[Caller]

Whoa.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Some of them? Some of them on the cross.

[Caller]

What?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So wait, are you saying the wibbly, wobbly, timey, wimey stuff is not something we're just making up here in the.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No, it's not. And it goes. The rabbit hole goes deeper than that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And someone who has cataloged a lot of the later case of Christ creating humanity on the cross for another unrelated reason. But someone who's cataloged a lot of those is Father John Behrman.

He was working on different issues when he did it, but he's cataloged a bunch of the church fathers speaking in that way.

[Caller]

Awesome. Wow. Well, that's. I was not expecting an answer like that. That was amazing. Thank you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I was gonna say. Are you okay there, John? There was this little pause.

[Caller]

Yeah, yeah, No, I just try to take it all in, but. No, that was awesome.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Me too, bro. Me too.

All right, well, thank you very much. By the way, just out of curiosity, where in Michigan are you? I have some familiarity with that hand shaped state.

[Caller]

Oh, right on. Yeah. I'm in the Lansing area. I'm actually in Hillsdale in particular.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh. Oh, do you go to that school? Do you go to Hillsdale College?

[Caller]

No, no, I just. I just live in the town here.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, all right, Very good. All right, well, thank you very much for calling, John. Next we have Emilian calling Emilian, welcome to the Lord of Spirits podc.

[Caller]

Thank you, Father. Do you hear me?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, we can hear you.

[Caller]

All right, I see the reason.

Okay, so if there is no problem, I actually have two questions.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Sure, that's no problem.

[Caller]

The first one, and I'm glad that you brought up the idea of the covenant.

I would like to disambiguate several things regarding the covenant and the law. So actually, in Romanian, there is a problem, because all these things that I'm going to talk about are translated as law, and.

You might get easily confused because of that. So I understood what a covenant is and this idea of cutting a covenant, and.

I find it fascinating. And.

I want to know that ten Commandments.

Are sort of the central part of the Law of God, of the Torah, because the people of Israel also received commandments apart from them. So we have several instances in the Book of Exodus. For example, in Exodus, chapter 24, before the people are sprinkled with the blood of the covenant, we are told that Moses wrote God's commandments in the Book of the Covenant. And then in Deuteronomy, we have what is called the scroll of the Law, which seems to be the same thing. And this Moses.

Commands the Levites to place at the foot, I think, of the Ark of the Covenant. And I think this is the same book that the kings are required to copy for themselves, to make a copy for the phone themselves. So I would like to know.

Which one, if any of these is the Torah, and if any of this is the book of Deuteronomy, as I have heard before. So what do you think?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

My understanding is that the Torah is the first five books of the Scriptures. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. I almost forgot for a second there. That's all of it together. It's not any one subset of commandments. Right. Isn't that right, Father Stephen?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, yeah. So, yeah, there's. There's. So there's a bunch of interesting things going on here. Yeah.

So the. The Ten Commandments, which is really more like the ten words, that's where we get Decalogue, right.

That appears in Exodus 20, and Deuteronomy 5 gets repeated. There is sort of a microcosm of the commandments as a whole.

And the way that's expressed is that the typical covenant format that was used for a berit, right, for the kind of covenant that we're talking about.

Had a certain format. It begins with introducing the suzerain, the ruler, the high king, right, Introduces himself, says what he's done, what his accomplishments are. It then lays out the.

Duties and responsibilities of the vassal, and then has the consequences for.

Obedience and disobedience.

And so you see that format in the Ten Commandments, right? Starts out, I am Yahweh, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who he is, what he's just done for them. And then he gives the commandments, here's your responsibilities, right? And included in that in several places are those blessings and curses, like, honor your father and your mother so that your days may be long in the land the Lord is giving you.

One of the reasons why Deuteronomy is sometimes treated as a separate unit, textual reasons, not weird academic reasons, but textual reasons why Deuteronomy is treated as an independent entity is that the whole book of Deuteronomy follows that same format.

Including ending with the blessings and curses in chapters 28 through 30.

So you have sort of the 10 commands presented as a summary of the whole thing.

You then have the whole thing, and then you have devturos, nomos, right? Deuteronomy, the second law, the second Torah, right? Where it's sort of all reiterated again as one. As one unit by Moses and sort of his parting sermon to the people of Israel. So it gets restated in various lengths and various abbreviations repeatedly within the Torah, which is the five books.

So.

In terms of what was put at it, put in the ark of the covenant.

Usually people read the tablets and think, in fact, people will even teach the Ten Commandments this way, that, like, the first four were on one tablet, and then the other six were on the other tablet.

Like God ran out of space or something on the first one. But in actuality, it's two copies of the same thing. We know this from the way covenants of that type were ratified at that time in history. And so normally.

When a high king would give a covenant to a vassal, one copy of that covenant would be kept by the king so that he could consult it and know his responsibilities. And the other copy would be taken to the temple of a God and put at the feet of the idol, because that was seen as calling on that God to bear witness to that agreement, right? If it should happen that it would be broken in the future. So in the case of the Covenant at Mount Sinai, both copies are taken and are placed in the Ark of the Covenant, because that is the footstool of the throne of God. So it's at the feet of God. There's no idol, right? But it's at the feet of Yahweh, the God of Israel. And the second copy is held by the king, which is Yahweh, the God of Israel.

Then that gets in Deuteronomy, as you mentioned, that gets slightly adapted. Once there is going to be a human king in Israel who is going to be an icon of God and his kingship. He is then to make a copy of that, right? He is to make a copy of that. And so the reason why you've heard that that was just the book of Deuteronomy is that critical scholarship, our 18th and 19th century German friends.

Of course, believe nothing even remotely vaguely looking anything like any part of the Torah was around when Moses was around, if he even existed from their point of view. And everything was written much later. And so they take the story of Josiah recovering the book of the Law, King Josiah, who's a saint in the Orthodox Church.

The story of him recovering the book of the Law, which had been lost.

Not meaning they didn't know where it was, just meaning nobody was paying any attention to it. The wicked kings before him were ignoring it and didn't care about it when he recovers it. They reinterpreted that story as, oh, no, Josiah made it up.

And that version that Josiah made up is the book of Deuteronomy. So that's based on that kind of weird critical theory. Now, the actual evidence, the actual concrete evidence for that doesn't exist. There isn't any.

[Caller]

Right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But that's their hypothetical reconstruction. So it seems pretty clear, right? Because the commandment to make a copy is to make a copy of the Torah. That's what it literally says in the Hebrew, right? That commandment is in Deuteronomy. So if it was just talking about Deuteronomy, it would have said, make a copy of this book.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But it says to make a copy of the Torah, right? The whole. The whole unit.

And again, there is zero evidence, zero concrete evidence that the five books of the Torah ever circulated separately. The only reason, the only thing anybody has to pin Deuteronomy being a separate thing on is the fact that it has its own internal structure. But that doesn't mean that it's unrelated, just the fact that it has a certain structure. Genesis also has a certain structure that's different than the structure of the other four books. Genesis is framed around this phrase. This is the book of the generations. Ela Toledot in Hebrew. Right. And the other four books of the Torah don't have. Don't use that as a framing device. That doesn't mean it's unrelated. That just means it's structured a little differently because the contents are a little different.

So I hope that gets at what you're asking in terms of what's what with that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Does that make sense, Emilian?

[Caller]

Yes. Yes, it does help.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay, good. You said you had a second question.

[Caller]

Yes. This one is a bit weirder, but maybe he can answer it. So it has to do with an older video of Jonathan Pageau where he talked about the existence of Santa Claus and Tooth Fairy. So basically, he said that Santa exists because we talk about him, because people dress up like him. And there are stories, there are movies, songs, decorations, and all these things about him, so we know what he does and what his.

Role is. So he said that, for example, the people who dress up like him and act like Santa in a mall, for example, talking to kids, these people are parts or extensions of his being or of his body. And I thought about this idea of body as an axis of powers. And I'm curious if basically these people are.

His power, let's say those powers.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. So, I mean, I've. I've watched. I've watched that video. I can't answer for Jonathan Pageau, but.

My understanding of what he's trying to do with that is essentially to make a phenomenological argument, you know, that people are experiencing this phenomenon called Santa Claus, and they're experiencing it through.

You know, a guy in a mall or whatever else. Right? Or they're experiencing it through someone answering their mail, or they're experiencing it through presents that show up under the Christmas tree that are said to be from Santa Claus. Right. And, you know, that's a real experience, and people do group that together as being an experience. Now, certainly, there's different ways in which people experience that. You know, a kid who's been told there is this man who's going to show up at our house in the middle of the night and come through the chimney and leave prisons and is experiencing it differently than the dad who is reluctantly bringing his kids to see the mall Santa because they asked for that, you know, but nonetheless, there is this.

This common experience that people are having, right? And then to say, well, he doesn't exist is essentially to say that there is no experience. But that's not true. There clearly is an experience. That's my understanding of what the argument that, that Jonathan Pageau is making. I mean, honestly, I'm much more comfortable just talking about St Nicholas of Myra, who exists in all the ways that are much easier to talk about. But it may be that on some level the love and the kindness of the Saint is in some way being participated in through this other phenomenon.

[Caller]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'm not going to go so far as to say that Mal Santa is part of the body of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. I don't know that I would say that.

[Caller]

My question is actually about Star Wars.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

About Star Wars?

[Caller]

Star wars, yes. And you referenced it several times during this show. And it really pained me that Father Stephen said that.

The canon in Star wars doesn't really matter because it's, it's fictional. But I thought it all happened a long time ago in a galaxy.

But the idea is that if we can have this phenomenological experience of Santa Claus, for example.

Can'T we say the same thing, for example, about Luke Skywalker? Because there are stories about him, people, cosplayers, impersonate him, you can talk to him, basically. So what exactly is the difference? Is it the fact that Santa is based on St. Nicholas and the other one is based on anyone?

What is the difference between a fictional character who is impersonated by someone and something like Santa Claus?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's an interesting question. Well, Father Steven, since you said that canon doesn't matter in the Star wars universe, I'm going to let you go first.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, that may have been a cope, given most of the Star wars movies I've seen recently, to say that canon doesn't matter. I'm still pretending there's only three movies.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'm still recovering from certain episodes of the most recent season of the Mandalorian.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, so that may have been a cope on my part.

Yeah. So I've never, I've never spoken to Jonathan Peugeot about this directly. I have the impression, to be honest, this almost came up at one point in an episode. I have the impression that this is a place where I disagree with him.

Which may or may not be true, because like I said, I haven't talked about it with him. Right.

So like I watch a video of his, I say what I think about it, and that's sort of two halves of a conversation, but it's not an actual conversation. Right.

And I think it's because.

If I'm correct in my read of what he's saying. Right. It Seems to me that he is treating, for example, Santa Claus as a spirit.

[Caller]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

As opposed to a concept. And the difference between a concept and a spirit, the way I'm using it, is that a spirit has agency and a concept doesn't.

And so I think that distinction is where potentially he. And I disagree because I don't think.

That a concept like Santa Claus or Luke Skywalker or Captain James Tiberius Kirk, as opposed to the person of William Shatner, the greatest man alive.

Right. I think they exist as concept, but I don't think they have any agency.

I don't think they can act. I don't think they can produce effects. Yeah, they exist as ideas. So I would agree that Santa Claus exists, but I have the impression, and again, I could be reading this wrong. I'd have to talk to him about it directly or. Hey, Jonathan, if you're listening right now live, call in.

But.

That, I think would be the distinction for me. So, yes, I would say Luke Skywalker exists as a concept, but I don't think the concept Luke Skywalker has agency to affect things in the actual world. I think the concept of Santa Claus or Luke Skywalker, I think what a concept does is a concept is used instrumentally by people. So the agent would be me, and I would take the concept of Luke Skywalker or the concept of Santa Claus and use that. I would use that instrumentally to produce certain effects.

Right? So I would dress up like Santa, right. In order to use that Persona as an instrument to accomplish certain things in the world. But I would not be embodying an existent spirit of Santa Claus and having that spirit operate through me. That's, that's the distinction. I, at least potentially, I potentially see here, because I don't think. Now, St. Nicholas is right, a spirit, right? So that's a different case. So Santa Claus may not be the best example because of that connection. But if I go and cosplay as Obi Wan Kenobi, right? Like, I don't think an existent spirit, Obi Wan Kenobi, is going to be acting through me. I think I'm going to be dressed as Obi Wan Kenobi in order to accomplish certain things, to use that Persona in a certain way within a certain certain social setting.

So, yeah, that's, That's, I think, a difference.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So I'll add two things. Number one, I would like to see you dress up as Santa Claus.

Number two, and perhaps more importantly, my beard's pretty.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Getting pretty white. I could pull it off.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah.

And. And, you know, a Little talcum powder or whatever can make up for the rest. But. But I. You know, to address the question of. So I'm tracking with what you said, Father Steven. I agree with everything you just said.

But. But. So within that frame, then I think there is a difference between people dressing up as Santa Claus and all of the whole matrix of that concept versus, you know, going down to. I can't remember which you know, amusement park in. In Florida where you can meet Star wars characters. Right. And that the way that people participate in Star wars is very different than the way that people participate in the Santa Claus side of things for Christmas, or if you're Dutch, it's just, you know, the presents are on December 6th, as I'm. I know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

On St. Nicholas Day.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Because there's a. It's a much deeper cultural experience that's going on with Santa Claus.

And there's a lot of investment in the idea that we should at least tell young kids that this. There. There is this spirit, there is this person coming into our house to do this thing. Whereas no one says that to their kids about Luke Skywalker or whatever. Now they might, you know, be at the amusement park and say, oh, look, look, kids, it's Luke Skywalker. You know, that was so great. You got to meet Luke Skywalker. Right. But that'll last for five minutes. That's very different than the participation that happens with Santa Claus. So. And I think the differences of degree in this case, there's a. It's much deeper and richer with Santa Claus. There's a lot more going on there.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But that's time, too.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, exactly. There's been a lot more time, you know, to do that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But even when. When you look at it, when Santa Claus, as we have him now, first shows up in the Conde Nast stuff, he. He. It's very clear he was being instrumentalized in a certain way. For example, at first, the reason saying Santa Claus brought the presents was to keep kids from begging their parents for stuff.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right?

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And to kind of remove it was kind of a offense against sort of the open materialism that has now overtaken Christmas.

You know, that was like, oh, no, this is. This third party is intervening here, so write him a letter. But, you know, who knows? We'll see.

[Caller]

Exactly.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I much prefer.

I don't know if anyone's out there as a, you know, a fan of a certain British author. He wrote a book called Letters From Father Christmas, which he wrote for his kids.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Why are you misgendering J.K. rowling. I'm not anyway, I was just being ironic. Nevermind. Forget that.

[Caller]

Thank you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's good, though. I like that subtweeting on your part.

Yeah. So Tolkien has this book, letters From Father Christmas, which is that's the whole conceit of it, is that Father Christmas is sending letters to Tolkien's kids and, and he's telling stories. And it's really, really fun. Actually, I highly, highly recommend it. So I don't know, Emilian, does that answer your queries?

[Caller]

Yes, it does.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right. Well, thank you very much for calling in and Christosan viat.

All right. Well, we are going to go ahead and take our first break with this half of the Lord of Spirits and we'll be right back with more of your calls.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Father Andrew Stephen Damick and father Stephen DeYoung will be back in a moment.

[Caller]

To take your calls on the next.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Part of the Lord of Spirits. Give them a call at 855-237-2346. That's 855-AF-RADIO.

Hi, do you know me?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'm Fr.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Stephen DeYoung. My new book, An Introduction to Extra Biblical Literature, is now available. A lot of Christians today divide ancient Jewish and Christian literature into two categories. What's in the Bible, what's not in the Bible? Christian east, however, has traditionally had a third category, a middle category, books that are read privately in the home. The Greek word for that is Apocrypha. These texts from the centuries before and the centuries after the incarnation of Christ that go beyond even the larger canons of Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches reveal to us the religious world and theological framework of the apostles and early church fathers. In this book, Apocrypha, I survey these works which connect elements of liturgy, scripture, iconography, patristic writings. Familiarity with these works will enhance readers understanding of the breadth and depth of the Orthodox Christian faith. Buy your copy of An Introduction to Extra biblical [e-mail] faith.com that's store.ancient faith.com we're back now with the Lord of Spirits with Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Father Stephen DeYoung. If you have a question, call now at 855-23-7-2346. That's 855-AF-RADIO.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Hey, welcome back, everybody. We got a question from some somebody on on the Facebook's asking, you know, are the the call lines not working because they keep getting a voicemail message. And the truth is, is if you get that message, that means that the lines are full. What you should do is keep calling, don't Leave a message. Don't, like, leave a voicemail. We won't get it. Just. Just keep calling. So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Because if you want to win those monster truck tickets for Saturday night, you have to be the 101,027th caller.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's true. And if you don't call, I have in front of me a copy of the Shape of the Liturgy by Dom Gregory Dix, which I can read to for everybody tonight. So, I mean, it's a hard to find book. It might be worth it.

So anyway, what we do call her.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Are we going to leave me doing Troy McClure on that commercial just unsaid.

I'm just going to pass over that in silence.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Nice. I am TV's Troy McClure.

All right, well, we've got Michael on the line. Michael, who's right here in the Keystone State. So, Michael, welcome to the Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Caller]

Thank you. Christ is risen.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He truly is risen.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, good. It's not the Michael I thought it was. I was gonna be.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Wow.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Podcast people are gonna go crazy.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Which Michael are you?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Thank you for being a different Michael, sir.

[Caller]

You're welcome.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So what's on your mind, Michael?

[Caller]

Yeah, so I had a question. The Old Testament passage, fourth Kingdoms, chapter three.

So here's my question. In Fourth Kingdoms, chapter three, we read of an alliance of kings. They began their invasion of Moab after Prophet Elijah prophesied, quote, you shall smite every fenced city, end quote. Everything is going according to Elijah's prophecy until the armies reach the last city in which the king of Moab burns his own son alive on the wall as an offering in a desperate attempt to entreat the God of Moab for victory. So in the last verse, it says, a great indignity. Or some translations it says, wrath came over the armies of Israel and they retreated. It almost seems like the Moabite king burning his son alive on the wall as an offering for victory actually worked. The Moabite stone uncovered in 1868 seems to suggest that this is a celebration of the King of Moab's victory over the people of Israel. St. Jeremy Assyrian said that God may have actually taken pity on the king of Moab. He even goes as far as to say that this sacrifice may have even been received by the God of Abraham. So my question is, was Elisha's prophecy overturned? Was Yahweh really defeated in battle? How are we supposed to understand this passage?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'm going to just kick this right to you, Father Stephen.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Sort of. No, I'll explain.

So this is One of those places where we have to remember that prophecies are not predictions of the future.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Prophetic utterances are speaking for God. So, for example, the book of Jonah.

Jonah, when he goes to Nineveh, there's no. If, there's no conditional statement.

It'S God's going to destroy this city in a few days. That's it. No, if you don't repent, no nothing, right?

He just announces this is going to happen. And then of course they repent and it doesn't happen.

And then Jonah says, man, I knew this was going to happen if I came here, right? He says, I knew I was going to come and announce this. And then you were going to follow through because they were going to repent and you'd accept their repentance.

In terms of Elijah's prophecy, all of these are contingent. All such prophecies and promises are contingent on obedience, right?

And all sort of oracles of doom are dependent on a lack of repentance, right? So otherwise. Otherwise there would be no point in announcing it in advance.

[Caller]

Right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So it's announced in advance to say, okay, the soldiers of Israel going into battle should, right, put their trust in God that God is going to give them the victory, right? And so what happens?

The verb there that gets variously translated, right, as whatever overtook, right, the Israelite armies after the sacrifice, the public, this public display, it's passive. It's something that happened to them, right? Without God being described as the agent.

And then they take the action, the verbal action of retreating.

So what's being presented is that they were supposed to put their trust in Yahweh, the God of Israel, who has said, you will have victory. That doesn't mean they didn't have to go fight, right? That didn't mean they didn't have to go fight the battle, right? That meant they were supposed to stay in the battle no matter how bad the battle looked, no matter how bad things got, they were to be faithful. They were to put their trust in God to give them the victory, right? But when they saw the king take this extreme action, which culturally, right, is. I mean, obviously is an extreme action, but this is. This is sort of the ultimate thing because it's the king's son, it's the heir to the throne, right? This is sort of the ultimate thing you could do to get your God, in this case, Chemos, right? On. On their side, the Israelites then were filled with fear and retreated. So they have showed faithlessness, right? They did not trust God to give them the victory they thought, oh, no, we're in trouble now.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Kibosh is going to come get us. Right. They've got their God on their side, and so they retreated. And so they failed and they lost. And a lot of people died. Right. Because they didn't put their trust in God and in the words. In the words of his prophet.

[Caller]

So they could have won, but they chose not to.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, if you remain faithful and kept fighting, God would have given them the victory. But they didn't.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And if, like, if you read what, what Elisha says.

He says you shall attack every fortified city and every choice city and shall fell every good tree and stop up all the springs of water and ruin every good piece of land with stones.

Where does it says, put the Moabites in your hand? Yeah, yeah. This is a light thing. In the sight of the Lord, he will also give the Moabites into your hand. And then he go on, goes on and says, you got to attack everybody and do all this stuff.

But yeah, it doesn't mean, as Father said, it doesn't say, you will be victorious no matter what.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It doesn't say that.

So.

[Caller]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The reason I ask is a while back I heard a very interesting take on this that. Because a lot of people believe in a lot of different gods, even today. I know you both know that. And some are using this passage as a proof text that Yahweh is not the supreme God and that he can be defeated. And I'm wondering what your response would be to that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I would say read the rest of the book.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. The text doesn't say that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right.

I mean, that's the ultimate response because everything is framed. That's part of the purpose of what's going on in 1st and 2nd Samuel 1 and 2 kings, or 1st through 4th kingdoms. Right. Part of the theme there is that.

All of the good things that happened to Israel are because they were faithful to Yahweh, and all the bad things that happened to Israel are because they were faithless to Yahweh.

And that it is not. I mean, the theme is the exact opposite of that. Right. Because the whole purpose of writing these books at the time of the exile of Judah was to say, hey, don't mistake this to think that Marduk beat Yahweh. That's why you're going into exile in Babylon. You're going into exile in Babylon because Yahweh is sending you there.

Right. So that reading of that story is pulling it out of context. And reading it in the exact opposite way that, that those, that those of the themes of.

The themes of those books. But this is also a good. See the point that people leave out there say that any pagan who uses this is secretly a Calvinist.

[Caller]

Right, Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Because they see human events as being the product of divine puppet masters. Yeah, right. Who are the only ones acting. They're monergists. Right. Whereas this text is a prime example of.

Synergism. Right. Yes. God makes promises to us and gives us his grace and he acts in the world, but we have to cooperate with that God coming and saying, I'm going to give you the victory in battle doesn't mean we're just going to show up and the army will all be dead already.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We could just take their stuff.

[Caller]

Yeah. There's a pagan view of faith, which is this is what's going to happen and there's nothing you can do to change it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, Yep, exactly. All right. Does that answer your question, Michael?

[Caller]

Yes, it does. Thank you very much.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right, thank you very much for calling.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Next we have to be a bunch of really angry Calvinists because they're going to say I just called them pagans. And I did not just say Calvinists are pagans. I said that American neo pagans are Calvinists.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Let's make everybody.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

Just so we're clear on what I said.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. Exactly like this time I'm aiming my barbs in this direction. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so we've got Eugene calling from Minnesota. Eugene, welcome to the Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Caller]

Thank you.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I think I know who this is because I don't think there are that many Eugene's in Minnesota.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There's not a lot of.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I could be wrong.

[Caller]

Actually. I am. I am Eugene iii. So. And my son's name is Eugene as well. So there. There's at least four. Okay. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All in all in Minnesota.

[Caller]

Yeah. Well, actually one of them in Colorado, so. No.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

What's wrong with that one?

[Caller]

That's a long story. Anyway.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

What is up, Eugene in Minnesota, the third?

[Caller]

Well, Minnesota is up.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Just about everywhere.

[Caller]

Yes.

Also my question is.

So we have many hymns and prayers that are directed towards the cross. So my question is, does the cross have a spirit or an angel that's associated with it? And did it before the crucifixion, like when it was a tree in the woods, did it have a spirit and it was purified or something like that? Or who. What exactly are we praying to when we say help me forever most precious and life giving cross of the Lord. Father Andrew, please feel free to make references to the dream of the rood and or ent as you see fit.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

See, I know which Eugene this is.

I could tell from the call board. I was like, I know who this is.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I think mere weeks ago, he may have been hanging out with a couple of my godsons.

[Caller]

Oh yes, that's true. I was. They're great people.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

How about that? Well, okay. I mean, the dream of the rude is a good example, right? Because in the dream of the rood, the cross is actually talking, right.

And I, I don't think it, I mean, I don't know. Correct me if I'm getting this wrong, Father, but I, I don't think it's correct to say that there is a kind of.

Spirit or angel of the cross that we're talking to, but that when we say, you know, help me life giving cross to the Lord, it is a prayer to Christ. Ultimately, you know.

There are, I mean, we sometimes do address.

Inanimate objects.

You know, and, and like even within the dream of the rude, it's, it, the whole thing is pitched as a dream, right? That this is, that this is a, an image, you know, the dreamer is speaking and saying, I saw the cross and the cross said this and so forth. But the whole thing that the cross talks about in there is all about Christ. It's not about some kind of independent agency.

So that's my understanding is that it is poetic language that is ultimately addressed towards Christ.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I don't know you have anything to add or subtract or divide there, Father.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So yeah, so the case of the cross is interesting.

And unique, right? So.

Cross talk, like the dream of the root actually goes back much earlier than that. The Gospel of Peter has the cross walking around and talking, there you go, direction.

So on one hand there are typically.

Especially the older you go in our liturgics and that kind of thing, there are distinctions made. So for example, in the dismissal, we say by the power of the precious and life giving cross.

[Caller]

Yeah, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Rather distinguishing it from the saints who were naming, who were asking Christ to save us through their prayers. Right. It's the power of the cross, not the prayers of the cross.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So there are those distinctions made at the same time.

At the same time. When you look at how pieces of the cross are used.

As relics.

Right.

Other than other.

Material objects directly related to the crucifixion.

The nail, trying to think, the crown of thorns, right. Like the lance. Right. Those kind of things.

That those relics.

Occupy a place that is closer to the relics of human saints.

Than to.

Like, I don't know, the Holy Grail. If we had it right.

Now, you could say, well, that's because they're sort of, in a certain way, the relics of Christ himself. Right. Because, of course, he rose from the dead. So we don't have.

[Caller]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But I think there's. I think there's something else going on.

[Caller]

There.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And I'm inclined to think that trying to verify relics of the true cross is kind of a pointless exercise, because I think they all kind of are based on use. Like we talked about.

The Ship of Theseus episode.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And that. And that means that there is some kind of spiritual reality associated with the cross that they're participating in in some way.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And that might be what we're describing when we describe the power of the cross.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

In the baptismal service, we say that the. The cross is. Is terrible unto adversaries. Right. The sign of the cross, just its image.

[Caller]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The way that's used. Yeah. So I. I think.

I think the cross occupies among inanimate objects, a unique place, because I think it's even different than, like, the Ark of the Covenant.

For example.

This unique place.

This unique and foundational place. And you find traditions that connect it, like, materially.

To the tree from paradise.

Yeah. So I don't know.

That I could define exactly what that means, but I think it is in a different kind of space than any of those other relics or material objects.

[Caller]

Okay. Yeah. I like the mystery, the unknowing that you're putting forth.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Apophatic answer to your question.

[Caller]

There you go.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The root of unknowing. Yeah.

[Caller]

Nice.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Not to mix Old English and Middle English literature too much. I know, I know.

[Caller]

Any English is good English.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well.

Okay. What's your other question, Eugene? Come on, people are lining up behind you.

[Caller]

It's related. So there are patron saints of churches, but some churches are named after, like, the Dormition of the Mother of God or the Transfiguration or the Resurrection. So is it the same thing with. It's the power of the resurrection that's the patron of that church or something like that. Or is it just Christ himself?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, it can vary. Like, I know, for instance, a church named for the Holy Trinity that has Saint Cuthbert as their patron.

[Caller]

Oh, sweet. That's my patron saint.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, so there you go. Well, why didn't you say your name was Cuthbert rather than Eugene? I don't know, but might have been.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Scared he would cuddle good names.

[Caller]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No, I Mean, it's really just about what that community does, you know, I mean, I believe most. Most. You know, even though churches have, like, a saint they're named after.

I mean, like, the Dormition of the Mother of God. It's easy. The patron is obviously the mother of God. Right. But. But even though they, you know, there's usually a saint they're named after, that's not the only saint they venerate. And so, in a very real sense, every church, every person has multiple patron saints, you know? Yeah, there's not just one. There might be a main one, but. But there's not going to be just one, like, exclusively. Right. So. So, yeah, it's. It's. It's a, you know, a kind of a matrix of saints that are serving in a particular place.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right.

Sodre Charas. All right. Thank you very much, Eugene, for that little dose of old English. Okay, so we've got Phil calling from South Carolina. Phil, welcome to the Lord of Spears podcast.

[Caller]

Hey, Fathers, how are y'? All?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, you are definitely from South Carolina. We're great.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We're fixing to answer your questions.

[Caller]

Well, this question goes back, way back yonder, to episode six, His Ministers Flaming Fire.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Caller]

And Father Stephen, you mentioned something about the.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The what you called it the western.

[Caller]

Grid, and you had to get rid of the western grid, and I didn't really understand what you were talking about.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, I think that's. I think that's. Back when I was talking about spreadsheets, I had this ax to grind with Excel.

No, I think this is a long time ago. So, I mean, I may have just been wrong also, you know, that long ago. But I think what I was getting at with that was, so sometimes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

When.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Folks come into the Orthodox Church and we have sort of a background and a way, we've learned over time to look at things, especially when it comes to sort of theological and religious topics. The analogy I was using was like a spreadsheet or a grid right. Where you have, okay, here's salvation, here's.

Eschatology and the end of the world. Here's.

Doctrine of God, here's Christology, here's this, here's that. And so when people come to the Orthodox Church, they become inquirers, they become catechumens, they enter the church. Sometimes we approach it as, okay, well, I've got this spreadsheet. I just need to find out what the orthodox answers are and plug those in instead of the old answers.

Right. So I used to think that salvation was by faith alone, but Now, I think it's by, like, faith and works or something, right?

And we just try to. We just try to plug different answers into those same slots, right? And in order to really understand what's going on with orthodox Christianity, in order to. I mean, we could say the same thing about the Scriptures, right? We have a way that we view the world we live in and the way we read literature that's published today, and we could come to the Bible and try and read it the same way. Right? And we get all kinds of weird results, right? Because the Bible was written in a different time, in different cultures and different places.

And so what we really need to do is rather than trying to find the right answers to plug into the grid or the spreadsheet that we've already got, we need to get rid of that spreadsheet and try to approach it fresh. And that's very hard to do. Right. That's something that takes time and work to do. And we have to kind of question our assumptions, Right? Our assumptions and our presuppositions and say, well, wait a minute. Is that really true?

Right. Or is that just how I've gotten used to looking at things, you know.

So that we can really understand.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Scriptures, the faith, sort of on their own terms? That's what I think, or at least I hope now. I was trying to get at then.

[Caller]

I think I understand. Yeah. Because I've. I've. I'm a catechumen in my local Orthodox parish, and I've been listening to y' all since you pretty much started. And I. It has.

How to say this? It has reorient oriented.

My views a lot. I came out of the Anglican Church, and.

A lot of things have gotten shifted in my points of view, and I thank you all for that. I mean, you all have really been eye openers for a lot of that, but I think I understand now what you're talking about. About just.

Finding correct. I don't know if correct is right word, but.

That's the only thing I know how to say. This correct, correct things, that correct orientation and views, I guess, is the way to plug those things into your clean new spreadsheet.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Or just dump the spreadsheet entirely.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Use a word processor. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. All right. Well, thank you very much for calling, Phil.

[Caller]

All right, thank y'. All. And y' all have a blessed evening.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You, too. Well, we've got a call board that is full of Southerners, so next we have William in Tennessee. So, William, welcome to Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Caller]

Thank you. It's good to be here, Father. It's good to keep Southern representation going.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Caller]

I too have two questions, if that is all right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, absolutely. Sure.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

What's your second question?

[Caller]

All right, so my second question is.

I guess I can flip the order.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, well, no, I meant your first question was, is it okay that you have two questions.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Three questions.

[Caller]

I have two questions, if that's all right, which is a statement, not a question.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I don't know.

I think he's smuggling in a question there.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, but go ahead.

[Caller]

So.

My first question is on the unbroken continuity of the church, which I'm going to list a number of beliefs. I'm pretty sure that we hold first as a setup. So we proclaim that there is a visible church, the church militant. We say that the church is Israel and has an unbroken continuity with Israel. And I'm pretty sure we say that the entirety of the visible church cannot go apostate. We also have saints in early church writing saying that the church was created before all things. So with those down, my first question is, if Adam and Eve were part of the visible church, what slash, where is the unbroken continuity of the church militant from Adam and Eve to Abraham, especially in light of the first and third fall of man?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So I. Here's the problem that I think is with that frame.

It's the idea of a sort of.

I'm trying to think about the best way to put this. Like. Like you're looking at Genesis and trying to say, okay, where's the succession of laying on of hands that we talk about with apostolic succession in our time? Right. Like, so clearly that's not there. Right. So in what sense is the. I mean, I've even read people say that the church is uncreated. Right. Which means that it's. It's fundamentally the church is a divine experience that humans are having. I don't know that's the best way to put it.

And if that's the case, then, you know, then that kind of eliminates this problem that you have between Adam and Abraham. Right. Because God didn't leave. But I think it's. It's. It's to take certain kinds of language about the church and trying to transpose them onto other.

Frames where it doesn't quite work. Right. There is this continuity, but it's not a continuity in the way that apostolic succession is a continuity. Right. That instead that they're both participating in the larger picture of God working in the world with his children.

If that makes sense. Does that make sense?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I. On the other hand is a challenge accepted.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay, great.

[Caller]

All right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This is what the genealogies of Seth and Shem are.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah.

[Caller]

Okay.

And.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And Melchizedek is another example of this.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Melchizedek is somebody who should by all rights be a pagan. He's named after a pagan God. He's the priest king of a pagan city.

But he's still worshiping God Most High. He's still worshiping Yahweh. He's still worshiping the God who created the universe. So even beyond those genealogies, there were still people.

Who still knew to the true God, aside from him having revealed himself to Abraham. So even during that period when we have those genealogies, we know where God was and we don't know where he wasn't.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right, right, yeah. What I was trying to say is it's not that there's this like, there's not a laying on of hands where there's a sense of like, okay, it's with this person here, I'm going to hand it to you. But the sense that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Not an institutional priesthood.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah, right. There's no. That the world has never been vacant of people who worship God. You know, that's. That's never been the case, you know, since Adam was made.

[Caller]

Right, yeah. It wasn't so much about the institutional priesthood because I think it was talked about before beforehand. The elders of the family, the patriarchs were the priests. So there was a priesthood. It just wasn't the Levitical and then the apostolic priesthood until the Levites and Christ.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And you have these people presented as saints, like Enoch, in the genealogy of Seth.

[Caller]

Yep, yep.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. So that's what those genealogies are doing. They're showing you the line of. Right. Those who are worshiping the true God through those periods, despite how bad everything was getting in the line of Cain, there was still the line of Seth, the remnant.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay, so it's your second or third depending on how you count it.

[Caller]

Question the second, because I counted. Right.

So back in the Thanksgiving episode.

You mentioned that Luther had this concept of the Eucharist as having a relationship between the hypothetic union of Christ's two natures with the bread and wine. And so that was super problematic, but we won't go into that here. Okay, so why is the hypothetic union of Christ's two natures with bread and wine super problematic?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, because if you say that the union between, say, Christ's body and the bread.

Is the same kind of union as the Union between Christ's divinity and his humanity. Right. Then that would mean that as a hypostatic union, right. Christ was not united to a man.

There was not a human person to whom a human hypostasis to whom the divine hypostasis of the Son was united. That's not how hypostatic union works. Right. The divine person of the Son took upon himself human nature. So for his body to be united to bread in the same way, that would mean he would not be united to a particular piece of bread, a particular hypostasis of bread. He would be united to the nature of bread.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Which means bread can be saved.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, no, it would be that all bread would be the body of Christ.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And all wine would be the blood of Christ.

So the analogy.

Massively breaks down there. Right. So I mean, points to Luther for the analogy. He was trying to find a way to have the real presence directly in the elements, so that Christ's body and blood were received through the mouth. Over against the Calvinist tradition, which went a different way. And I say Calvinist tradition because nobody except Calvin has ever really had Calvin's view of the Eucharist.

But. And so he. And he was trying to work with a christological analogy.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And the reason he was trying to work with a Christological analogy is that he was getting called a utician by the Calvinists. He was being accused of.

Because.

Luther taught that Christ's body was ubiquitous. Meaning it's everywhere. Right? Everywhere. That Christ's divine nature is. His human nature must be also. And that includes his human body. Right. Whereas the Calvinist tradition teaches that that is not the case.

That Christ's human body is a human body and therefore it is only in one place. That place is at the right hand of God.

This is what they teach. So I don't know what that means, frankly, but Luther responded that the right hand of God is everywhere. So.

But. And then they refer. Have what they refer to as the extra Calvinisticum, which is the idea that there are places where Christ's divinity is present, but his humanity is not. Calvinism teaches this.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Wow, excarnation.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And this is why the Lutherans, while they were getting called uticians, right. Eutyches believed that Christ's human nature was sort of dissolved into his divine nature like a drop of water falling into the ocean. Right? So that's what they accused Luther of, because they said, well, if you're saying his body is everywhere, then it's not a human body anymore anymore, Right? You're a utician. And he responded by calling them Nestorians. They're saying, you're separating Christ's divinity and his humanity with the extra Calvinisticum. So Luther's trying to hold on to that. Right. He's trying to hold on to something closer to Chalcedonian Christology. Right. His Christology is better. And he's trying to navigate these accusations being thrown at him by the Calvinists. And he still wants to maintain the obvious scriptural truth that the elements of the Eucharist are the body and blood of Christ. He also has a lot of problems with the Roman Catholic version of transubstantiation. So he's trying to avoid that. And he uses this hypostatic union language as a compromise. And as I said, it doesn't work because of the way the hypostatic union works and the difference between nature and hypostasis.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, I mean.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Christ becoming incarnate as bread. I mean, that's the only.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, sort of. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Impanation. Yeah. Not incarnation, but impanation.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And by the way, because I just don't care anymore, there were a bunch of people during the pandemic who are Orthodox, some of them priests, some of them professors, who are going around using Luther's analogy.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, yeah, I remember that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

In terms of the Eucharist.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And this was specifically condemned at two councils in Constantinople in the 17th century as heresy.

And the people who are proposing it are under the Patriarch of Constantinople. So this is their council. So if you hear anyone, no matter how well esteemed they are, no matter how smart and well educated they are, who is Orthodox proposing Luther's analogy, you can tell them, hey, you might want to go back and read some of those councils. To be fair, they haven't been translated into English. You got to read them in Greek. But.

It'S the case. But, yeah, it doesn't work.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Some enterprising grad student out there. Get your translation.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Get your. Yeah. Get those translated. Irritate your professors. If it happens to be one of the people who was saying that publicly.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Hey.

So I don't know if that was more than you were looking for, William, or less, but hopefully it was in the ball.

[Caller]

That's right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, good, Great.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The Goldilocks solution.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you very much for calling in, William.

[Caller]

Thank you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right, now we've got someone with a name after my own heart, Andrew calling from North Carolina. I mean, that was literally me at one point in my life. I was Andrew from North Carolina.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Check off another apostle also.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There we go. That's right. It's true, Andrew. Welcome to Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Caller]

Christ is risen, fathers.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He truly is risen.

[Caller]

Okay, well, I share a little, a little more with you, Father Andrew, than just having your name. This is your sponsor.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, hey. This is my godfather, everybody.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, he's calling. I'm actually. You too.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, man. Hey, you know, you've had your sister and your mom call into the show, Father.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, come on, at least I got it. It's true.

[Caller]

Okay, well, anyway, my question has to do with, you know, it's interesting that, that you're talking about Luther being called a, called a heretic by the Calvinists and stuff. I had a similar situation. I, I, In a kind of a pan Christian. It's basically a Christian apologetics toastmasters club.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay.

[Caller]

And to make a long story short, we were talking about sin and we got onto the thing about man being given clothes of skin made out of skin. So I got to the point and I thought, oh, geez. And you know, Father, Father Stephen mentioned this, you know, that some of the fathers thought that.

The whole, the whole idea of God giving Adam clothes of skin has to do with the, the pre fall body being transformed into the body after the fall.

And one of the people said, One of the people. First of all, I went into this thing about, he used to live in Utah and he knew a lot of Mormons and he said, you know, you're dreading. And this, what's really weird about this is this group is really cool. I mean, we may not agree with each other, but everybody respects each other. And this, he's, this guy's fairly new. And he said, you're treading on the verge of heresy. And I'm going, what? Well, I'm going in my mind, what. But it's, it's like.

So I was almost ready to tell him we mean heresy, but I held back. So did I mess it up? Did I. Was there something there? I mean, he made some reference to the Mormons believing that. Well, you know, the Mormons believe that angels fell. We had the body of angels and then we fell and then we had, you know, we got the bodies we have now. So I guess that's why he thought I was on the verge of heresy. So my first question is, my first question is, did I screw up?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, there is no. It is a straw. Yeah. No. I mean, there's a strong thread in the church, fathers, that human, human bodies change with the fall.

[Caller]

Right, Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You Know, and that. That's. And that there is, you know, that garments of skin refers to that it's not about, you know, here's some leather outfits, guys.

You know, that. That it's. That there's this fundamental change in human bodies. Not that we become material because Adam and Eve are created material, but there's a change in the way that the body is.

[Caller]

Yes. Yeah, that's exactly the point I was trying to make. But anyway, this fall preceding that was, I don't know, with a lot of evangelical Protestants. They like to get it. Since they're really into the substitution atonement, they're going, look, look, God had to kill something for man to have. They were really into that. Anyway, so my next question.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Ask them. Ask them to show you a sacrifice in the Old Testament where they wore the leather around.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They'Re saying, that's a sacrifice.

But go ahead.

[Caller]

Yeah, so my second question is, hey, what is this thing with the Mormons believe? I mean, what freaks my. What freaked this new guy out?

Let me.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Let me add one piece on the first thing before we get into.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's been a hot minute since I studied.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay, well, I could get into the Mormons too, then after this. Yeah, yeah, go ahead, Go ahead, Father.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Something to take them to in the Bible, because if this is, you know, other kinds of Christians, they may or not be. May not be impressed with the church fathers.

Is to take them to First Corinthians 15, like around verses 53 and 54.

Where St. Paul talks about the resurrection, and he talks about the mortal being clothed upon with immortality.

And the corruptible being clothed within corruption. He uses that same clothed language about the resurrection.

[Caller]

Oh, wow. Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And eternal life and the transformation of our bodies. That's the chapter where he's talking about our resurrection bodies. So you could kind of take him there and say, see, this is the reverse of what happened back then. And it's that same clothing language.

[Caller]

Right, right, okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Garment language.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

I mean, with regards to the Mormons.

Number one. And I know we have some Mormon listeners, so. Hey, Mormon listeners. Which I think is amazing. I'm so happy that they're listening. But one thing I should say about Mormonism is that it's a bit of a moving target, doctrinally speaking, like, oh, boy.

They revise their teachings every so often. And this is just part of their religious way. Like, it's just. It's the way that it is. It can be frustrating even for faithful Mormons.

So my understanding of the thing that you're talking about is like there's this notion of this pre existence, right, this premortal existence, and then we get into this mortal existence. In some ways it's almost like origins kind of idea about pre existing souls that kind of get dumped into bodies not exactly the same, but it certainly is kind of originistic in certain weird ways. And there's actually a number of things I think, and I don't know if anyone's done any studies on this. It would be an interesting paper or book maybe to read. I'm not an origin scholar, so I'm not qualified to. But I mean, there's a lot about originism which I think is reflected in Mormon theology. The key thing that I found when trying to parse my way through Mormon theology and the problems that I see with it. I mean again, our Mormon listeners probably should have no, no big surprise that we would see problems with Mormon theology is that fundamentally in Mormon theology everything is uncreated.

So everything, including God. Right. Is just a rearrangement of pre existing stuff, which is why human beings can become.

Just as God. As God is. Right?

[Caller]

Oh yeah, okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, and there was this saying. Now it's largely considered to be like on the outs, but there was this saying by one of the early prophet presidents Snow. I can't remember his first name off the top of my head now, but you know, as.

Man is God once was, and as God is man may become. Which is a weird, like there's this weird parallel to the whole Athanasian saying, right.

That God became man so that man might become God. In fact, there's a whole school of thought within Mormonism attempting to show that the church fathers are basically teaching Mormon exaltation.

But there's some significant differences between that and the doctrine of theoses. The biggest one being that we do not regard God as having been a man in the sense of he used to be just a man and now he got to be God. Good job, God. Right. You know, that's not our teaching at all. But yeah, I think that that's part of what's going on. There's a whole different metaphysical matrix that's being used in Mormon teaching, which is really interesting to try to get a handle on, but it's got some very fundamentally different presuppositions to it than with Christianity.

[Caller]

That's what I thought. And you mentioned, you mentioned something about origin and he may have been picking up on that. And just. Anyway, so it just. I'd never been challenged like in this group. Like I said we're all pretty cool. I mean, I did a. I did a talk on icons, and while most of the people there were cringing, they were. They were. They were pretty cool about it. They were. They were respectful, nice.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I think the. I think the key difference on this very particular point with Mormonism is so for Mormons, the population of this world.

Everyone was born from, they don't just believe in a heavenly father, they believe in heavenly mother.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So there's actually a God and a goddess.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yep, yep.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Who gave birth to. Everybody's gonna be alive, and then so for them, the fall that that person was referring to is a fall into materiality.

[Caller]

Right, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So becoming material was the bad thing. And that plays out, I think, in the way in which asceticism is practiced within Mormonism.

[Caller]

Oh, yeah, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The things of the material. Right. No alcohol.

[Caller]

No.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Caffeine. Even though there's some exceptions to that now.

Right. All that it's very material world denying in terms of the form of the asceticism. And that's related to that. Whereas for the church fathers, for St Paul, for the scriptures, what we're talking about is not a fall into materiality, but a fall into mortality.

[Caller]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That it's our mortal flesh that's subject to sin and to temptation and to the lusts of the flesh. Now there's been a change in our body. Not. We used to be immaterial, and now we're material. And being material is bad.

[Caller]

Oh, yeah. As a matter of fact, I just got done reading Robin Phillips's new book on the creation.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The first three pages of that are brilliant.

The rest is good, too.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That would be the foreword that Father Stephen wrote.

[Caller]

Oh, yeah. I was going to say. I was trying to remember who wrote the word to this.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right, well, thank you for calling. Very nice to hear from you.

[Caller]

God bless you, Fathers.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right. Okay, continue.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That is a good book, by the way.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Robin Phillips, our stroll through the South. We've got David calling from the Old Dominion, the Commonwealth, Virginia, the place where I was born. David, welcome to the Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Caller]

Thank you, Father.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

What is on your mind?

[Caller]

Yeah, so I noticed during the service on Holy Thursday evening, there's a very interesting prayer after the Psalms. It says, when your glorious disciples were enlightened at the washing of the feet before the supper.

Was just wondering what the connection, if any, that language has to the prayers that are said when somebody is baptized. The idea of washing and then enlightenment. And then that prayer also goes on to mention Judas subsequently being fixed in his greed after his partaking of the supper. Sort of paralleling that language to, you know, partaking of the Eucharist onto condemnation.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, that is a cool reading of that hymn and I think very apt.

I don't know what else to say other than good job.

But, yeah, I mean. Yeah. That, you know, the connection of. Of water and illumination. And I. I think. Isn't there this, like, it's not explicit in the Gospels, right, where Christ baptizes his disciples, but isn't there this traditional idea, Father, that that is a thing?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, so. So the washing of the feet is in St. John's gospel.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And.

Interestingly, St. John's gospel is the gospel that doesn't have the institution of the Eucharist. Right. It has the foot washing instead. And the Eucharist itself gets skipped.

In his narration. But also in St. John's Gospel, St. John makes it very pointedly that though.

After the death of St. John, after the imprisonment of St. John the Forerunner, Christ's disciples were baptizing, that he himself was not.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Hmm.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But I think an important thing is the. The little dialogue that we gloss over between St. Peter and Christ during the foot washing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Where St. Peter, as usual, is sort of St. Peter is always trying to figure out the right answer, like what he's supposed to say, and he keeps getting it wrong in a very human way.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Caller]

So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So Christ comes to wash his feet. He's like, oh, no, you can't wash my feet. I should your feet. And then Christ is like, well, if I don't wash your feet, then you'll have no part of me. And then he's like, oh, well, in that case, wash everything. Wash my head. Wash my whole body.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. He's like, no, you're already clean. You just need your feet washed.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. You have already been cleansed. And someone who's already been cleansed just needs their feet to be washed. And then when he's done, cleansing is.

[Caller]

The baptism of John.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, he says at the end that he has done this to set an example, as I have washed your feet, you need to wash each other's feet.

[Caller]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so I think this is actually tied to repentance after baptism.

Right. And that you've been washed, you're clean.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And this is. I mean, this is connected to mitzvot or not mitzvot. Mikvot.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Mikva.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, I confused a mikvah and a mitzvah.

But to mikvote, to write people, you would have to ritually wash Right. But if you're clean, you've been walking on the road, it's just your feet that have gotten dirty. You've been out there in the world and your feet have gotten dirty.

You're not sort of starting out at square one. Right. But that. That you've picked up out there in the world does need to be cleansed.

And the disciples of the church, they do it for each other.

[Caller]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I think this is St. John's way of describing the same thing that St. Matthew is describing in chapter 17 and 18 of his gospel, in terms of the forgiveness of sins.

After baptism being mediated through the community of the church because they're washing each other's feet. Right. Christ doesn't say, you should go and wash other people's feet in general. He says each other's.

[Caller]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so I think he. I think. And I think this hymn is connected to that, that this is talking about.

Repentance as a kind of second baptism.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The way that, say, Saint Simeon the New Theologian will talk about Tears of repentance as a second baptism.

That. That this is now something that we provide for each other within the community of the church.

[Caller]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Whereas.

Judas walks away in his darkened and is sort of the prototypical one who receives unworthily, which is one of the big meditations of that service on Holy Thursday.

Right. He's sort of the archetypal, unworthy recipient of the Eucharist.

And that sort of thrusts him further into darkness rather than enlightening him.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Yeah. All right. I don't know. Does that answer your question, David?

[Caller]

Yeah, Yeah, I think so. So, I mean, the washing of the feet seems to be more of a parallel to bearing one another's burdens rather than the establishment of another sacrament or another baptism for the disciples.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, it's an extension in a way of baptism. You know, confession is often called a second baptism, you know, so it participates in that in a renewing way. So. All right, thank you very much for calling.

[Caller]

Thank you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right, now we're going to take. So now we're breaking our Southern streak. And now Luke from Michigan. Luke, welcome to the Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Michigan. We've had some Michiganders. We've had a Minnesota caller. They are so far north that I think they compensate for multiple, like, Virginians and Tennesseans, especially if, like, I don't.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Know if is Luke. You're not in the Upper Peninsula, are you, Luke?

[Caller]

Nope. Lower.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, okay. That's okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You're a troll then.

[Caller]

We've got the hand that's right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You live underneath the Mackinac Bridge.

[Caller]

Point to the hand, say, here's where I am.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's true. It's true. Well, welcome, Luke. What is on your mind?

[Caller]

Christ is risen.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Truly, Indeed, he truly. Absolutely.

[Caller]

A number. A number of your recent episodes have referred to the soul as the life of the body, sort of juxtaposed against a thing. I. I understand that we don't accept everything Plato said about the soul for sure, but as I've read saints like Gregory of Nyssa and John of Damascus, it kind of seems, at least from how I've read it, it kind of seems like the soul is more like an immaterial thing that communicates life to the body instead of being that life itself. In particular, reading some of the Christological debates in the 5th through 7th centuries, you often see this analogy being used pretty much by everybody in different ways of the soul and the body coming together to form one human being.

So I'm just. I'm trying to understand.

This. This sort of terminological way that the show has been using it because it. I guess I'm a little confused because it seems like the soul is an activity of the body in this system rather than an essence or something like that. So am I misunderstanding something you guys have said? I know you have a whole episode on it, so forgive me. Or can you point me to an orthodox work that might help me kind of reconcile this thing?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's straight to you, Father Stephen.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay, well, part of the. Part of the issue is.

You know, we're reading things in English, and the English language tends to reify everything, meaning it tends to make. We talk about everything as if it's a thing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's a very Anglo Saxon thing to want to do.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

And here I'll give another example. How many times have you heard someone or read in an English translation of a theological work that Christ has a human nature?

[Caller]

Yeah, yeah. You see that for sure.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And that speaking of his human nature as if it's a thing. Right, right. But if you understand his human nature as a thing that's attached to this other thing that is his divine nature. You're an historian.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Sort of by definition.

[Caller]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But even when we try to think about. No, no, no. Right. We say theologically. The theologically correct way to think is he takes upon himself human nature, which he shares with us.

That's not something our brain is used to thinking about because we try and turn it back into a thing. We try and turn it back into his body, just His Physical body, or we try to turn it back into. Right. Like, that's not how we're used to thinking about things. But a nature, very clearly in Greek is not a thing. It's like a directedness of being.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But you read any English translation of Aristotle, things have natures. Again, as if natures are things possessed by.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Something.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

And so the same thing happens with the soul, when we translate into it and talk about it in English, is it kind of gets reified in a way.

That everything else does our will. As if our will is a thing that's inside of us. Right. Rather than.

A movement of the soul, which is how it would almost like state Maximus.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Saint Max was literally describes, like movements of the will. These are movements of the soul.

And then when we hear the word praise, movements of the soul, we're like, okay, so the soul is a thing and it moves. Right. Well, that's not what he means. Right. He doesn't mean this object is physically moving through space. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So that movement is even sort of. Sort of analogical. Analogical language.

And I think, frankly, the best things.

To read to kind of understand this is. And there's plenty of these out there. Read the patristic condemnations of origin.

Where they talk about how Origen viewed the soul.

[Caller]

Are you talking like the 543 anathemas? Not.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Not just those, there's those, but there's also before that, pretty much everybody, centuries before that, had to declaim origin.

I know there's a lot of Originists out there who want to act like, oh, everyone loved origin until that mean Saint Justinian came along. But that's absolutely false. Right. So you can read St. Jerome.

And him talking about the heirs of originism. They're all over the place. Right. During the. The fifth century especially. And.

Even those. There's problems with how, you know, we even have joked on the show about, you know, your soul being a sphere. Right. Because that's how it's translated in English. Origen didn't actually think your soul was a sphere. That's referring to a whole set of ideas in Plato.

[Caller]

Yeah, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

About the sphere as the perfect form and all of these things. Right. So that's a way of getting at this Platonic understanding of the soul that Origen was holding to in denial of Scripture. But I think if you read some of those, the differentiation they make between Origen's view of the soul and the Christian view of the soul will help disambiguate this a little. Not completely, because this is Hard to talk about in English or any other language, but will help at least separate those in your mind a little bit, some of the distinctions between the two.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, you've got some homework.

[Caller]

Sounds good. Thank you. I'm looking.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

He asked for something to read, so.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's right. Exactly.

[Caller]

Exactly.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right, thank you very much for calling. All right, continuing our tour of the frozen north, we've got Robbie from Wisconsin.

[Caller]

Hello, Fathers, can you hear me?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We hear you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Welcome to the Lord of Spirits podcast. Christ is risen.

[Caller]

Oh, true. Oh, now I have to make a decision, don't I?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Sorry, I'm making it hard for people.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Just say, you betcha.

[Caller]

Well, I'm going to a Greek church, so I'm going to just skirt around the whole problem by saying alethosa nesti.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay. Although, you know, I do know some Greeks that say alithoso kyrios.

[Caller]

Oh, man.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's truly.

[Caller]

It's a thing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Caller]

Okay. Well, truly, he is risen. He has risen indeed.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But why you gotta ambiguate everything, Father Andrew?

[Caller]

I'm not trying to make enemies right now.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I do have a degree and a half in English literature, so, I mean, this is how books get written.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's your job. Yeah, yeah.

[Caller]

But Father Stephen knows, like a thousand ancient languages, so.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Are there a thousand ancient languages? Depends on how far back you go.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Do you count dialects?

[Caller]

Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. If you're going to count dialects.

[Caller]

Anyway, I do have a question. Yeah, yeah, wonderful. So I've heard both of you talk before about Daniel and kind of just almost, just briefly mentioning how the fourth beast is Rome. And so I'm sure.

You guys are possibly aware that there's this whole way of reading that where, you know, it's all about the Seleucid empire or kingdom and all about Antiochus, Epiphanies and everything. And I think definitely towards. You get. When you start to get towards the end of Daniel with some of those other prophecies about the kings of the north and south.

And.

The ram and the goat.

And whatnot. It really does seem like that is kind of directly talking about the time of the Seleucid and Ptolemaic kingdoms. My question.

Is.

Is the fourth beast slash the bottom, the iron and clay part of the statue earlier in Daniel?

Are those sort of directly referring to the Seleucid Empire and Antiochus, for example, as the little horn or something? But then the fathers, such as Jerome and others who interpret it as Rome are kind of elevating that and kind of seeing that type of figure and that type of kingdom and that type of empire fulfilled in Rome, or are they really seeing it as a direct.

Are they really seeing it as like, no, Daniel is talking about Rome, like there is a succession of empires and it ends with Rome. And if that's the case.

You know, why, why then at the end of Daniel does it seem to flip back or am I even understanding that wrong? So I don't know, maybe if you could just talk about that. Because I also know that, for example, with like the abomination of desolation, there's, there's a way of reading that which is the abomination of desolation is Antiochus sacrificing a pig on the altar. But then Christ talks about the abomination of desolation as future tense. And so is that him saying that know that did happen and but it will be kind of fulfilled again or ultimately in what's going to happen to the, to the temple? Or is he just saying, no, that's one to one talking about what is going to happen. Does that make sense?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

What do you think, Father? Does that make sense?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So.

Where to start? So you are correct in terms of the Ram and everything that is referring. And the abomination of desolation is referring to Antiochus iv, Epithophenes and the.

Seleucid dynasty. So one thing we have to remember with the book of Daniel.

Is that.

It is politely a composite book and impolitely a complete mess.

In the sense that. Right. And you can get, you could very quickly, even as purely an English reader, get a sense of this by comparing Daniel in the Orthodox Study Bible to Daniel in any other Bible.

[Caller]

Right, Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There are these extra chapters.

[Caller]

There's the Aramaic sections of the Hebrew version. Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It begins and ends in Hebrew and then the middle chunk is Aramaic and it changes at a seemingly random point in the first case in the middle of a story from Hebrew Dharamaic. And if you're into this, I at one Point wrote a PhD seminar paper on this and wasted a lot of my life. But.

The theories out there, because no one knows the theories out there. There's a, there's a Dutch scholar who has spent seemingly his whole career just on this, on why are the Aramaic parts in Aramaic and why are the Hebrew parts in Hebrew?

Because there's all these theories. There's theories that it was originally all in Hebrew, but the Hebrew was lost except for the beginning and the end. And so they filled in with the Aramaic version, or it was all in Aramaic originally and something Got changed in Hebrew and everything else. And it's deliberate. And this is why. And it's deliberate. But no, that's why there, there's a huge debate about when Daniel was even written.

So whether it was all written at the same time.

And people who think. There are people who think it was all written in the second century. And so some of them even think it might have been originally in Greek and then parts of it were translated into Hebrew and Aramaic. So it's everywhere. It's all all over the place.

And it's very clear when you read it. I mean, again, even just reading it in English, even just reading, not leaving the Greek version out of it, that you have a series of sort of discrete stories, right, that, that aren't. It doesn't directly form a narrative, right? You have, you have these stories regarding Daniel, then you have the story of the three youths who are sort of friends of Daniel, and then you have a series of visions that Daniel has, right, that sort. It goes in this apocalyptic direction. It's kind of a different genre.

And it moves through a long span of time.

From Babylon into the Persian Empire.

So all that is to say.

It can. It can be a mistake to try to say, okay, well, here in this chapter, in this vision of Daniel, it's talking about the Seleucids. Therefore, when he's interpreting Nebuchadnezzar's vision in this chapter, this has. This dream of Nebuchadnezzar's has to be commensurate with this vision that Daniel has in this other chapter. And that's not necessarily the case.

Those can be discrete prophetic visions, discrete prophecies talking about.

Different but overlapping things.

So.

I think it's pretty clear that the iron and iron mixed with clay is Rome.

And this isn't just a case of Christian interpretation. This is a case of pre Christian Jewish interpretation. Okay, so we have Jewish texts that are interpreting this as Rome and that were interpreting.

And.

Jewish folks will fight you on this. But it's historically demonstrable that the bit about Daniel predicting the number of years between himself and the Messiah coming the weak. Yeah, yeah. Is not a Christian innovation. It's not us Christians trying to read that back in. There's a reason why in the first century BC in the first century AD there were all these people showing up claiming to be the Messiah.

There's a reason why the Jewish revolts happened in the first century A.D. and that's because there were Jewish people reading it that way, reading Daniel that way and saying now's the time. And there was this kind of messianic fervor. Now's the time when the stone is going to come and destroy the Roman Empire. Right. And grow into a mountain. Right. They were reading it that way. And so Christians took that reading over.

Non Christian Jews obviously decided, well, that was wrong. They said clearly Bar Kokba wasn't the guy. Right. So we were reading that wrong. It sort of scrapped that mode of interpretation, whereas Christians kept it because.

[Caller]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It works for us.

And you find that even that language was even used in some of the paschal hymns I noted this year of Christ being that mountain that grew to encompass.

The earth using the language from that vision.

So yeah, so I would say that's pretty clearly Rome and the succession of empires. And that's not just a later church fathers thing. They're continuing a line of interpretation from pre Christian Judaism that Christianity kept and kind of got scrapped as incorrect by other Jewish communities. Last bit, I think in terms of what you asked is the abomination of desolation. That is what Antiochus the Fourth Epiphanes did. That is also something that is going a pattern that is going to be fulfilled in the future according to Jesus by the Antichrist, who we are going to talk about in one month.

Two episodes from now on. Lord of Spirit.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You just heard it here first, everybody.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We're going to talk about the Antichrist in June if, if the Second Coming doesn't happen before that.

[Caller]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Unless he stops us.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's right. Let's see. Antichrist gets us.

All right, Robby, I hope that that was helpful to you.

[Caller]

Okay. Thank you, Fathers.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You're welcome. You're welcome. All right, we're going to go ahead and take our second break and we'll be right back with the third half of the Lord of Spirits.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Father Andrew Stephen Damick and father Stephen DeYoung will be back in a moment.

[Caller]

To take your calls on the next part of the Lord.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Lord of Spirits, give them a call at 855-237-2346. That's 855-AF-RADIO.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

This year's Ancient Faith Women's Retreat with the theme the following Christ in Grief.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And Joy will be held November 9 to 12 at Antiochian Village.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

For details and to register, visit store.ancientfaith.com events.

[Caller]

That's store.ancientfaith.com Events.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

A new edition of the Good Samaritan.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

A first of its kind catechism written specifically for young people to communicate the.

[Caller]

Unchanging truths of the orthodox faith, is now [e-mail].

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

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 Andrew Stephen Damick]

And we're back. Man, Elisa Bielettis Davis is sure getting a lot of voiceover work these days. It's a bunch.

Since she. Since she plugged her event. We should plug our event. So, everybody, the end of October, October 26th through 29th, the Lord of Spirits Conference, aka LoserCon. Because, you know, L O S E R. Yeah, yeah. Happening at the Antiochian Village as well. That's just the place you have these things. And I think there's like somewhere between 15 and 20 tickets left. There are people who have started renting cabins up at the camp to come to the. The conference. So come, everybody. There's gonna be a D and D tournament. Of course, that's Father Steven's one request he didn't ask for.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That was not a request. That was a demand.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, excuse me.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That was the condition for me to come.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I was trying to spin you as nobler than you are.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, don't do that.

You'll be disappointed.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, it's true. Yeah, it's gonna be a great time. I probably will see at least one person in a bat costume. I mean, I fully expect to see more than that, but I mean, what are the odds that it's not going to happen? That's probably pretty small. So. Yeah, again, [e-mail] events and you can get your ticket. There's no more rooms available at the Antiochian Village, but you can get a commuter ticket and go get a room wherever you like. Or you can also get a commuter ticket and separately rent yourself a cabin for you and seven of your closest friends. Or it could just be you. It could be just you.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or stay at the RV park nearby.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's totally a thing as well.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or sleep in your car at the Sheets down the road.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, you can't do it in the parking lot at the Ention Village, but if you could work something out with the sheets. More power to you. Sheets has Cheerwine, by the way. Southerners. Southerners. The sheet says Cheerwine, so I'm just putting that up there. If you come, you can get your Cheerwine.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's a pretty nice fried dipping sauce, I must say.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Free her.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And water for your tires and car also.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. So my final threat for the evening, if people don't call is to read from the sagas of the Icelanders, and you can hear me mispronounce old Norse names.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So that's just a minor threat.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. So we do have Rachel calling from Kansas. Rachel, welcome to the Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Caller]

Hi. Excited to be here. Big fan.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Is this the Rachel that I met in Dallas?

[Caller]

Yes, indeed it is.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I knew it. I could just tell by the way your name said Rachel from Kansas on the call board.

[Caller]

Yeah, it was Rachel from Kansas whom you met in Dallas by way of Dallas. Rachel by way of Dallas.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's right.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Well, Rachel, welcome to Lord of Spirits podcast. What is on your mind?

[Caller]

All right. Well, I really enjoyed the recent series you guys did on the sacraments. I found that very informative and interesting. I did come away with two questions specifically hoping you could have some insight for me.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay, we'll give it a shot.

[Caller]

The first one I had was about monasticism, and I was kind of wondering, what is the purpose of conferring the monastic tonsure on celibate priests outside of the monastic community context? Now, I have no doubt that that way of life requires a high deal of asceticism, but doesn't seem to have kind of leaving the world aspect that the episodes seem to think to allude. That was pretty indicative of the purpose of the monastic tonsure. So priests who are still involved in parish communities and diocesan leadership. I was just kind of curious what the purpose was there of involving the monastic tonsure.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, I mean, I've. So this is definitely a thing. You get these higher monks or egumans and so forth, who are just serving in parishes and not living in monasteries and probably just have their own apartment, their own house.

Some of them used to be in monasteries. So there is that living connection with monasticism. But a lot of them know, a lot of them. And so here's the ideal. The ideal is that they get that tonsure so that they then have a form of life which has a higher intensity of spiritual discipline. So that they can to. To. To make up for the fact that they frankly don't have a. A wife at home saying, what is the matter with you? Which is a really important thing that, that wives do for husbands.

Because the secret about men as they age is that they get weirder.

And if there's not a wife there.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Telling them, man, my wife is going to be gone when I get home.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

What's the matter with you?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Then she thinks I'm going to get weirder than this.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's true. But you Know, it's a mitigating experience to be married as you get weirder and older.

But monasticism can also help to prevent the weirdness in a different way. Although monks can definitely be weird. I've known some weird monks, but. But the point being that they don't have the asceticism of family. And so they're taking on this other, this other form of asceticism that I would say is the ideal so that they live as monks. And usually if they're living in that way they are connected to a monastery, they gotta. Had to get tonsured somewhere and would have this living connection with the monastery, maybe visiting every so often, certainly being instructed, instructed by maybe the abbot or some other spiritual father. I also know at the same time there are some, God bless them, who go through the tonsure as pure formality and do not live as monks.

That makes zero sense to me. I don't know why anyone would do that.

But that is a thing. But I also know some that do essentially live as monks. Maybe they don't take on every single form of the, the outward discipline. Like for instance, they may cut their hair and, or their beards. Normally inside a monastery, a monk does not cut his hair or beard unless it gets really in the way, which, you know, that's a thing. But, you know, sometimes when a monk lives outside the monastery for a while, even if they're from a monastery, they may choose to cut their hair and beard just because, you know, living in the world, maybe they have a, like a secular job or something like that. It can require that. But. Yeah, so there's kind of a range I've noticed in those who do that. I mean, obviously I'm married, I have four children, so I don't know what it's like to live like that. But I have noticed I've known some.

Celibate priest monks who are not in monasteries who basically live like monks. And then I've noticed some that it's just a title and doesn't really seem to actually be part of their life. And I mean, that's between them and their bishop, ultimately, and God. But that's what I have to say about that.

Anything you want to add, Father Stephen?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, I'll go ahead and court controversy.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right, go for it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So part of this is a modern deviation from the historical pattern, to be honest.

So the historical pattern was that the clergy at a parish church in a village or something were married.

And monastic clergy were at monasteries.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And bishops.

Generally, if they weren't at A monastery in residence, they would have monastics living around them. Right. Like St. Augustine famously did that.

Because they were generally monastics.

And when you start getting to the modern period, you start getting more and more exceptions to this. If you read the writings of modern orthodox saints, many of them decry this and say this is a bad idea.

That this makes it really hard on monastics having to be a monastic living in the world.

Right.

And there's also a variation in practice, like in the US in different jurisdictions. So there are some orthodox jurisdictions in the US where most ordained single men are expected to be celibate but have not received monastic tonsure.

And then in one of those jurisdictions, I'm thinking of if they get made a bishop, they get tonsured on the way to being made a bishop. Yeah. In another one, I'm thinking of some of the bishops have never received monastic tonsure.

So there's, there's now a difference in modern practice in that regard.

And as I said, not me, modern saints have said this is very dangerous and very difficult for the monastic person to not be in that monastic environment. And I think frankly, recently it's gotten even more difficult and more dangerous because we've got folks who are monastics who seem to be spending a lot of time on the Internet.

And I'm not in charge of them. I, I'm not going to tell them to get off the Internet any more than I tell everybody to get off the Internet. But I mean, not in particular, not by name. You know, I'm not in charge of them to where I could order them to get off the Internet. But it seems to me to be very dangerous for someone who's trying to live a monastic way of life to spend a lot of time on the Internet.

Because of how bad it is for everyone to spend a lot of time on the Internet.

So I think we've got to be honest in the sense of being self critical. And I have criticized, again, who cares? I'll just be honest. I've criticized the Roman Catholic Church in particular for being kind of one thing on paper and one thing in actual practice. So I think we, if I'm going to criticize that, then I think we as orthodox people have to be honest and say, yeah, there's one way things are supposed to work on paper. And in our modern contemporary practice, a lot of times it doesn't work that way. And it's not always good that it doesn't work that way.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You said you had one more question, Rachel.

[Caller]

I do. Okay. So my second Question was about holy water. So your episode was the first time I'd heard it referred explicitly as a sacrament. And I was curious about what's different about holy water as opposed to holy unction or the Eucharist, for example, where they're restricted to just those who are in communion with the church. But holy water seems to be a lot more accessible to those outside the church. I've heard of non Orthodox Christians getting their homes blessed with holy water. And then at theophany, the water is there for kind of everyone. So what makes it more, as a sacrament, more safe for those outside the church to also participate in?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, and even when, if they're just, if they happen to be in church when holy water is being sprinkled around on people.

[Caller]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know, like the priest doesn't see. Now, are you Orthodox? Are you literally. It's just, you know.

[Caller]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Get everybody as much as possible.

I mean, I, it's, it's, it's the usage. Right. I mean, we tend to think of sacraments are these things that are the reserve for Orthodox Christians, but that's not like a constituent element of a sacrament, especially because baptism, hello, we give to only to non orthodox Christians.

[Caller]

True.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know.

So it's just the question of what is this used for? So holy water is used for blessing creation.

Right. So, I mean, you know, whatever, we use it to bless everything.

So I, I, yeah, it's, it's, it's just like, it's like, it's like saying, well, you know, if, if holy unction is for the forgiveness of sins and for the healing of, you know, of body as well, couldn't we just trade it out and say, well, we're just going to give unction today instead of the Eucharist? Because theoretically the Eucharist is also for the healing of the soul and body. Right. Shouldn't they be interchangeable? But they're not because the way in which they're used is different. And the whole rite around each one is set up differently as a result of that, you know, you read the actual prayers that are indicated. Like if you listen to the.

Prayers for the great blessing of the water, which we talked a little bit about, they go on and on, which is why we didn't read the whole thing. It really is about this cosmic scope.

Of God working in the whole creation. Right. So, I mean, that's what I would have to say about that. I don't know, Father Stephen, you got something else or more or different?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, yeah, I mean, related to that, I think it's the. Right. So, for example, the Eucharist and unction include. Unction includes not only the blessing of the oil, but the administration of the oil.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. So when I'm giving the Sacrament of holy Unction, most of the time I'm not consecrating the oil.

I have oil that I save from Holy Wednesday, and I go and visit someone in the hospital and anoint them with that oil. Right? So for that person in the hospital, the sacrament is the being anointed.

Right?

Same thing with the Eucharist, Right? The. The sacrament of the Eucharist is not just the consecration of the gifts, it's also the giving of the Eucharist, Right? The administration to. To the person. Whereas with the blessing of holy water, the sacrament is the blessing of the water.

It is the sanctification of the water, not its administration. Okay, so that water that's been blessed is then used for these other things. Right? And that's a difference. And we use that water to go and bless other things. Right? So my. My parishioner has a business, right. They have a restaurant. I go and I bless the restaurant and I throw holy water everywhere. Right. It's not like, okay, now only Orthodox Christians are allowed to come in here and use the equipment and. And eat the food, right? It's blessed for everyone. And.

This makes the great blessing of the waters an important and holy water an important sacramental reality. Because this is a place where we see the fact that the church has this role in relation to the entire world.

[Caller]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That the whole world is blessed through the church.

Even those who aren't within it.

[Caller]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And this is a place where we see that where there's. There are other sacraments that are internal realities of the church community.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Does that answer your question, Rachel?

[Caller]

Absolutely. I always come away with a lot more to think about.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's what we like to hear. All right. All right, thank you very much for calling. Okay, well, next we have Dan representing Indiana. Dan, welcome to Laura Spears podcast.

[Caller]

Thank you. Fathers had a question about Genesis. Something that kind of came out from reading the Orthodox Study Bible.

Specifically, when it talks about the tree of life.

Being planted in Genesis 2, it basically says the. The tree of life in the middle of paradise or in the middle of the garden. And then later, when Adam and Eve have.

Are trying to hide. When they're trying to hide from God.

It says they hid in the middle of the tree of the garden. I think is how it's rendered in.

In the Orthodox Study Bible. I'm familiar that word there the to salon could be, you know, like collective, like the woods. And I know other translations use that, but it jumped out at me because it's singular and it's. Other English translations of the Septuagint have the singular tree there, too. And it kind of got me thinking, like, is this. You know, you will surely die to avoid the implications of that? Adam and Eve then hide in the midst of the tree of life? Or is that reading way too much into the text? And if so, if it's not, who else has thought that in church history? And where can I learn more?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, wow, that's an interesting question. So this is Genesis, chapter three, verse eight.

Yeah, I mean, the. The.

The way it usually gets translated is plural, like among the trees.

And I'm looking at the.

I don't know if you have this in front of you, Father, but.

It'S.

[Caller]

A genitive singular in that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

In that case, Father.

[Caller]

But it could be collective, and that's kind of what I'm. You know, maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it's interesting that there's multiple English translations using the singular there, and I was wondering if there's a reason for that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

I'm checking something in the.

Original Hebrew because I think there's two different prepositions there. I already checked Genesis 2, so I'm checking Genesis 3.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I don't think there's any variation of the Dead Sea Scrolls. I'm looking. I'm checking that, too.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Just checking out the Dead Sea Scrolls. Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Hey, there's a website.

Yeah, I.

[Caller]

Is it Byzantique or is it something else? I've been looking on the web for something and curious if you found something I love.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Say that again.

[Caller]

I'm just saying if you found some source for it. Really love to learn where.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, I mean.

Knowing a little bit about the way translation works.

I mean, since. Since I. I guess. And, you know, I don't read Hebrew, but Father Stephen does. It is plural in the Hebrew.

Yeah. I mean, the word that's there in the Greek is. Is xilu. Right. Which is. Is just wood.

You know. So, for instance, Christ is said to be. And you know, in the. The 15th antiphon of matins of Holy Friday.

The very famous hymn, he is hung upon the tree. He who suspended the earth of the waters is suspended on the tree. But what it says literally in the Greek is He's suspended on epixilu. I think that's the. I'm not sure if that's the correct declension, but.

But it's the same word. Right. Upon the wood. So, yeah, I don't know. I wouldn't read too much into it as a singular, suggesting that this is the tree of life or something like that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. The Hebrew. In both cases, the preposition is batok, and batok actually literally means between.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so it's translated the first time. It's. It's batok hagan. Right. Literally between the garden.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But that doesn't make sense in English.

[Caller]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so the tree is. We don't say the tree of life was between the garden to make sense of it. We say it's in the middle Right. Of the garden. Whereas in Genesis 3, when they hide, they hide. Batok eights, which is literally between the trees.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And then in the Greek, it just says, in the middle of the wood of paradise.

Literally.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So I wouldn't.

I wouldn't necessarily think that. And especially because.

Later on in Genesis 3, it talks about, hey, we need to keep Adam and Eve away from that tree. That's the whole point of their expulsion from the garden.

I would think the dialogue would play out differently if they were hiding at that tree and say, trying to eat from it. Right. Because of God's concern that they not. Right.

Come anywhere near it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, you would think that the dialogue would be more like, did you eat from this tree?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Or get away from that tree? You don't know what I mean. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So sorry to disappoint, Dan, but, I mean, it's an interesting idea.

[Caller]

No, not at all. That makes sense, and I really appreciate your thought. Thank you very much.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Do live textual criticism.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It is good to find. It is good to find those things and test them. So you're going at this in the right way. It's just when you find things, you got to test them, and some of them will pan out and some of them won't.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Exactly, exactly. So cool question. All right, we're going to take just a couple more so that Father Andrew can go to bed.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Wimp.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I know, I know. Well, hey, I'm an hour ahead of you, so. But of course, you don't sleep ever.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Six and a half hours. I'll say.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right, we've got Hannah calling from your home state of California. So, Hannah, welcome to the Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Caller]

Hi, fathers. Thank you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

What is on your mind? We're listening.

[Caller]

So I'm listening with my daughter Libby, and we've just started over at Sons. Well, we're. We just finished Sons of God Equal to the Angels. And.

It got us thinking about. So Libby's also going to participate in the St. Nino pilgrimage in Georgia. And we've been about.

St. Gabriel and found out that when he was a child, he flew.

And that got us thinking about other miracles in the lives of other saints, like Saint Porphyrius levitating during Divine Liturgy and Saint Philip being transported to the Ethiopian Eunuch or from the Ethiopian Eunuch. And we were wondering if these are completely supernatural, like, contrary to the human nature, miracles, or if they can be seen as kind of a what to expect when expecting the resurrection.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, well, yes. And the first one, in the sense that this is not normal for most human beings at this stage in human history.

[Caller]

Right. Are they. We're kind of wondering because in. In the. The Sons of God episode, you talked about theosis. And so we're wondering if these are sort of signs of theosis.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. They're behaving normally for saints.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. It was. It was said about St. Nicholas, you know, the St. Nicholas who came up earlier, that he could be in multiple places at once or move very quickly, you know, even in his. Even in his lifetime. And we saw, you know, Christ, of course, after the resurrection, could just sort of go through doors without opening them. Yeah. I mean, this is. This is normal saint behavior.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. And we shouldn't see it as, like, superpowers, right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, no, no.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I now have the power to bilocate. Right.

Like duo damsel in the Legion of Superheroes.

It's. It's.

It's the way it's described. Like, you gave good examples. Right. Like with. With St. Philip in the Ethiopian Eunuch. Right. This is a thing he experienced, but it's not like he could just teleport when he wanted to or something. Right.

That this is part of his experience of God. And with God. And when you're that advanced in your experience of God, those kind of things become normal for you, which are incredibly strange to us.

[Caller]

Okay. We're also kind of wondering, like, if these were things that were. Would have been normal for humanity before the fall.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I. So on one hand, we weren't corrupted. Right. But on the other hand, Adam and Eve also were immature.

So.

I. I don't know. There's no indication in Genesis that. That they were doing that kind of thing. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There's related questions. Right. So the fathers, some of the fathers don't even think there was any real span of time.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or any long span of time between.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Creation, expulsion, of course, that's within the realm of. We don't even know how they experience time right before.

But it is important. It is important that.

The. The life of the world to come. Our bodies after the resurrection are not just a return to what was.

[Caller]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They are the fruition of God's plan for what was. So it isn't that that would have been normal for Adam and Eve, right. Man and woman before the Fall. It's that that would have. If, hypothetically, the fall hadn't happened, that would have become normal for them over the course of their lives with God.

[Caller]

Okay. So when we're thinking about, like, the restoration of creation, it's not. It's not a going back to what was before the fall.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's not restoring beyond, beyond that.

Beyond that. Right? So think about. Think about Adam and Eve as like infants, right. That, you know, an infant can't walk yet. Right. At some point, mature human nature will allow them to walk. Right. But they're not there yet.

[Caller]

Okay. So we were also along the same vein, thinking about Adam and Eve in the garden, talking with animals, and wondered if that was another aspect of the resurrection.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Narnia.

[Caller]

Yeah, pretty much.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I love those books.

Wow. This is actually harder, I think, than the rest.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I got this one. If you want me to.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'll go for. Go for it. Go for it. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, I mean, the only actual wardrobe, the only actual example we get of that is the serpent. And the serpent, of course, is not just a snake.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But. But so in terms of talking, right. I mean, animals don't have vocal cords. Right. They can't. Right. But they do have ways of communicating, even with. Yeah.

[Caller]

And we were thinking about other saints who have befriended animals and communicated with animals on a level that we can't really normally, but they. Without words, Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

St. Seraphim's bear couldn't make human language speak Russian, but they communicated with it. Yeah. And that is a product of the enmity between humanity and the rest of creation, is a product of the fall and of sin.

And of death, really, ultimately, because animals have to fear humans because we're predatory now.

And so when you have a saint who is drawn close to God. Right. St. Seraphim the bear was not afraid of St. Seraphim.

And did not have to be hostile to him. Right. And so we see lots of saints in various ways who are at peace with the animal, creation and the rest of creation. Right. Because that enmity caused by sin and death and violence. Right. Has been overcome in them by Christ.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, you've got, you know, St. Gerasimos and his lion Saint. Saint Kevin and the bird that nested in his hand.

She had to keep his hand out for a long time.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Hey, it's in the.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's in the life of St. Kevin of Glendalough. So, you know, it's right there. Yeah. All right.

[Caller]

Okay. So what. Yes, what. What is your best advice for moving in that direction towards a lack of enmity with animals and, you know, allowing God to perform miracles in your life?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know, One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from the late Father Alexander Atty.

Who was a priest in Kentucky for a long time and then became the dean of St. Tikon Seminary for a while until he got cancer. He said, make the place you're in into paradise.

And the great thing about that advice is it's so multivalent. You can apply it in so many different ways. Right. I mean, but one of the most immediately applicable, I think, is a really. A dedication to beauty.

Our American culture has us always casting our minds and our gaze outside of where we are. Like, we're always looking at imagery of other people who live thousands of miles away from us, you know, like, you know.

And.

And so I often, you get, like. You can kind of notice this. Like, I. I live in a neighborhood with lots of houses, and you can walk around. You can tell the ones where the people kind of live inside the house and just, like, mow the lawn. And then people that are working on the space around their house to try to turn it into a little paradise in one way or another, you know, to their. To their degree of their ability.

And I think that. That, like, putting everything in order and dedicating it to beauty, even small beauty. Right?

Like that. We don't have to be the best at every single thing that we do. We can still.

Dedicate ourselves to doing it as best as we can. Like, people like, well, I'll never be able to sing. Sing like Taylor Swift, who is actually from. Not very far away from where I live. You know, she's from the town of Reading, which. Reading is a perfectly nice city, but it's, like, not a glamorous place to be from. But she's from Reading, Pennsylvania. But nonetheless, you can still sing with your family, and music can be part of that paradisaical way of living in your home. You know, like, there's all these ways of doing it. It's. It's about shaping the space. I always love noticing the way that monasteries are shaped. And one thing I've noticed is that women's monasteries tend to be much more aesthetically interesting in a lot of ways than men's monasteries. I mean, there are some excellent male monastic gardeners, don't get me wrong. I mean, I went to Athos. I saw some amazing stuff. Stuff there. But frankly, women's monasteries are just much sort of nicer to walk around in. And it's funny because, I mean, these are people that all have the same vocation, but it manifests in different ways according to the personality that are people that are there. They're turning their place into paradise. It's why you want to just stroll around and pray, because they made it that way, you know, so those are the things that I would say about that. But also, you know, that. That a significant piece of it being about trying to heal the hurts of the people in your home and those around you, because that's what paradise is supposed to be as well. It's supposed to be healing.

[Caller]

Okay, well, thank you very much. Christ is risen indeed.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Truly, verily, he is risen.

[Caller]

We say in truth. He is risen in truth.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Nice. I've never been to a parish that does that.

[Caller]

Oh, come out to California.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Even though it's a foreign country, as far as I'm concerned, I do have a passport.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I don't know if I can go back. I've got warrants.

[Caller]

Come visit St. Xenia's Monastery. It's a little paradise.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There you go. All right, thank you very much for calling, Hannah. All right, we have one final caller, and it's Olivia from Texas.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The pressure's on.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That'd be better. Be good. Olivia.

[Caller]

Oh, can you hear me?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We hear you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Welcome to the Lord of Spirits podcast. Hopefully we didn't intimidate you with all of that pressure.

[Caller]

No, no, I just. I can't tell when it's. When I'm just listening or when you can actually hear me, when it goes from one to the other. But thank you for having me on and for taking my question. I'm actually a very recently Chrismated as of yesterday Orthodox mission.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Awesome.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So you're still, like, glowing with it.

[Caller]

Yes. There's actually a beam of light following me around everywhere I go.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Did you take the name Mid Pentecost?

[Caller]

I didn't.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay, good. That would not be a good one.

[Caller]

Heavily considered, but did not go with that. I went with Tatiana of Rome, actually.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Nice. A fine.

[Caller]

So. But my question is actually not really along those lines. It's just something that I've been very curious about. My fiance comes from a Catholic background, and I am from a Protestant background. And just in all of our discussions and.

Maybe quarrels here and there, one of the things that was kind of brought up in evidence of the truth of the Catholic Church in all these discussions was some examples of eucharistic miracles. And I just. I mean, there's a lot of accounts of them happening all over the world, and there's video footage, and sometimes they even get specimens tested in labs and they find that it's real human flesh or blood or, you know, it all lines up. And I just, like, don't know how to compute that. I don't know what to make of it. And I don't know if there's an answer to this question. But I was just curious if anyone in the orthodox realm has a stance on that or has any insight to share on how to kind of process what's going on there.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. You know.

Right. I know that people often treat miracles this way. Like, look, we've got a miracle. That means everything else we do is right.

Or we're the real deal.

So, I mean, that ought to work if one can show that miracles only happen within that one group.

You know, even if you accept that, that's a proof of the rightness of that group. Right. Setting that question aside, like, is that what miracles are for?

But the reality is that there are miracles observed in a lot of places. You know, I like you, I have a Protestant background. I grew up the son of missionaries, and I talked with a lot of other missionary kids, and a number of them told me tales from the mission field, which, assuming they weren't all lying to me, were definitely miraculous stuff.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And.

I've experienced some things in my life as well. I mean, I've. I've watched mer streaming icons. Like, I stood there and watched an icon stream so much myrrh that it began to just flow onto the floor. You know, I watched it actually literally form on the glass of the case. Not that it oozed onto the glass. It formed in the middle of the glass.

You know.

You know, I venerated the. The hand of St. Mary Magdalene, which they have at Simono Petra monastery in Athos, which is not only incorrupt, still has a flesh on it, still flexible, but is warm. Right.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And these are all orthodox contexts. So should I say, well, let me line up my miracles against your miracles, and that's my apologetic, you know. But what about the Protestants that are having miracles? What about the Hindus who are having miracles? What about the Muslims that are having. You know, like, it goes on and on.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So I think it's a really bad apologetic.

I wouldn't, I, I would not take it as being proof of anything.

If, if it is a miraculous thing, there's a couple of possibilities. One is that it's from the evil one and it's designed to harm people. Another is that it's from God and it's designed to call people to repentance. The real test is whether people are repenting, you know?

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And.

I think we've said on this show before, if I recall, or maybe I was somewhere else, I don't recall, but, like, there are good things that happen outside of the boundaries of our church. Right. Like, so. Which, I mean, seems like an obvious thing to say, but I like to give an example that I think is a little bit shocking. Father Stephen mentioned Jonah earlier and, you know, the repentance of the people of Nineveh.

So they really repented. You know, it's mentioned in the New Testament that they did. Right. That they're going to rise up as witnesses against, against unrepentant people. Well, here's the funny thing. There's no indication that Nineveh ever turned to worshiping Yahweh.

So these are pagans.

But they did repent. They did successfully repent so that God did not smash their city.

So, you know, repentance is a miraculous thing. I mean, so, so, yeah, I, I, I think as an apologetic, it's just, it's just a, I mean, I understand why people like to, to use it because, like, wow, that's really great. You know, that's amazing.

But, but when you start to ask questions of that as an apologetic, it really starts to fall apart.

I would just simply say that it's evidence that God is working in a lot of different contexts, you know, and, you know, if someone's repenting, that is repenting. If, if something is an icon of the Mother of God, I don't care which chapel it's hanging in, it is an icon of the Mother of God. You know, like, it's, it is what it is.

So, you know, apologetics need to be done on other grounds.

I don't think that that's a good ground. I don't know. Father, do you have anything you want to add to that?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Here comes Bad Cop.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I'm about to get a bunch of people mad at me again.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's great. See what you did, Olivia?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I don't mind.

[Caller]

I'm just trying to bring the best question of the night, I guess.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, well, I, There you go.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So Christ said concerning people who wanted miracles to prove that something was true.

Woe to the generation that asks for a sign.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There you go.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Woe is kind of under translated in modern English. That's accursed.

Actually, the closest thing to woe is damned.

Condemned.

And one of the big differences between the Orthodox miracles that Father Andrew just mentioned and some other miracles that people present is I don't know of anyone Orthodox who's ever trotted out the hand of St. Mary Magdalene to say, look, this is proof that Orthodoxy is true.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. That's not what the Simonopetro monks are doing with it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And I'd be willing to bet money, I'm saying this as a Dutchman, I'd be willing to bet money that if they tried, that it would decay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It would no longer be warm.

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We have to remember what Christ taught us about miracle workers.

Right. But Lord, we cast out demons in your name and work miracles and healings. Be gone. I never knew you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The surest sign.

That a miracle is false is that someone is presenting it to you as proof of something of their own authority.

They want you to follow them. They want you to believe them because of it.

Beware. This is why I'm going to get people mad at me. If you look at when the Eucharistic miracles in particular in the Roman Catholic Church started.

It'S the 16th century.

When Protestants showed up.

[Caller]

That is interesting.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All of a sudden, these start happening to prove to the Protestants that they're wrong.

They especially start in France.

There are a number of these kinds of miracles in the West, Eucharistic miracles being a prime example, the stigmata being another one, that when they have occurred in the east, they have been seen as signs of God's judgment and wrath.

Not as positives.

[Caller]

Wow.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So I'm thinking, for example, of the story of a certain Romanian priest who was a plant, a government plant from the secret police. He was not a Christian. They planted him as a priest. He was celebrating the liturgy and looked at the patent and saw bloody human flesh.

This was a sign of God's judgment on him. He ended up actually becoming a Christian and ended up being a martyr when he turned on his handlers during the Communist period.

So for us, some of these signs are signs of the exact opposite thing that they're sometimes presented as in the West. I know this is going to get a bunch of Catholic listeners mad at me, but I'm sorry, this is the truth.

From an Orthodox perspective, when those things have happened in the east, we viewed them as Signs of God's wrath and judgment, not as positive miracles. And we do not believe in presenting miracles as proof of the truth of something or the authority of someone. And that goes right back to the Scriptures. No one ever does that in the Scriptures, least of all Christ.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. He often tells people, don't tell anybody about this or everybody out of the room. I mean, that. That happens a lot. It's not, everybody gather around. I'm going to do something big.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So that kind of apologetic use is a sign of a very flawed mindset. I'm not saying this about the person who's presenting them to you.

I don't know him in particular. Right. And I don't know. And I'm sure he's getting this. He's not getting this from his own mind. Right. He's hearing this from other people.

[Caller]

Right, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And the people he's heard it from. This may have been in the context of, like, youth ministry and like, hey, see, our faith is real. Look at this report of this miracle and that miracle. They're not even using it in that kind of apologetic way.

[Caller]

Right, right, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They're using it kind of an internal way.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You know, to try and help keep kids in the faith and, you know, that kind of thing. Right. So, I mean, you could come by this mistaken view honestly.

But it is a deeply mistaken way of looking at these things ultimately.

[Caller]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Send your hate mail to Father Andrew.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Ancient Faith.

Calm, and they will.

All right. Does that help, Olivia?

[Caller]

It does. I think that that's going to help me a lot in just kind of wrapping my mind around the concept. And, I mean, I already thought about. I guess I thought about other miracles in that way, that kind of open way, like God can work wherever he wants to work. It doesn't have to be within the confines of one church, but for some reason, this specific kind, just because I guess, of how it had been used or, you know, there will be articles written or videos shared on the Internet. I don't know why. It just kind of perked my interest, and I couldn't really figure out what was going on there. So I think this does help a lot in just kind of wrapping my mind around all of it as a concept and.

Basing it back in Scripture for sure. So thank you very much.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you very much for calling.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. When you say you had a vision of the Theotokos, I'm ready to believe you when you tell me as soon as she appeared, she said, I am the Immaculate Conception. I'm dubious that's all I'm saying.

Bam.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right.

Well, I thought that was a very. That's. We're done. We're done. Good Q and A episode. We're going to do one more Q and A. Our next episode is going to be Q and A, but it's going to be a pre recorded one with speak pipe voicemails. So we've got a bunch of them lined up and we're gonna play that for you next. And then, you know, in June, we're gonna be talking about the Antichrist and.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The son of Belial, the mark of.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The lawless one, the mark of the beast, all that kind of fun stuff. Yeah, yeah. Should be a hot, hot summer.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Break out your old VHS tapes from Jack Van Impe.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, yeah, I'm gonna get out my.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

My Clarence, get ready to record over them.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right, well, that is our show for tonight. Thank you very much everyone for listening. If you didn't get through to us live this time, we would still like to hear from you. You can email [e-mail] you can message us at our Facebook page, or you can leave us a [e-mail] LordOfSpirits and.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Join us for our live broadcast. Except for the next one on the second and four thirds Thursdays of the month at 7pm Eastern, 4pm Pacific though you can come live and watch I think the stream or the premiere or whatever. The thing is, I think you'll be live. We won't be. We'll be memorized.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. If you're on Facebook, you can follow our page, join our discussion group, leave reviews and ratings everywhere, but most importantly, share this show with a friend who's going to benefit from it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And finally, be sure to go to ancient faith.com support and help make sure we and lots of other AFR podcasters stay on the air air and email Father Andrew to join the class action lawsuit against me for my hurtful words.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Thank you, good night, God bless you and Christ is risen.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You've been listening to the Lord of Spirits with Orthodox Christian priests, Father Andrew, Stephen Damick and Father Stephen DeYoung. A listener supported presentation of Ancient Faith Radio and I beheld and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders, and the number of them was 10,000 times 10,000 and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, riches and wisdom and strength and.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Honor and glory and Blessing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Revelation chapter 5, verses 11 through 12.