Pantheon and Pandemonium VIII : Live Q&A September 2023

Summary

The Lord of Spirits Podcast

Episode: Pantheon and Pandemonium VIII: Live Q&A – September 2023 Third Anniversary Episode

Date: September 15, 2023
Hosts: Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick & Fr. Stephen De Young (Ancient Faith Ministries)
Theme: The Seen and Unseen World in Orthodox Christian Tradition – Live Q&A, Third Anniversary Special

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Episode Overview

This special live Q&A marks the third anniversary of The Lord of Spirits podcast. The priests take live calls from listeners, reflect on their journey so far, and revisit memorable moments and core concepts. The episode weaves together laughter, signature banter, and profound theological explorations about the seen and unseen, the nature of holiness, time, sacrifice, and practical Orthodox life in the modern world.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Show Anniversaries and Podcast Origins

• Humorous Retrospective:
  The hosts joke about the show’s genesis, referencing past pitches like "Lord of the Big Giant Rings," and ponder the “end of days” rumors (02:09–05:04).
• Guest Greetings:
  John Maddox and others send in greetings, with playful jabs at the priests' nerdy proclivities and the podcast's success with “giant killers, dragon slayers, scorpion and serpent stompers” (03:54–05:17, 46:41–47:39, 71:07–72:22, 131:19–132:30).

“I have walked away from my PlayStation 5 to come here and do this program, which shows the deep dedication I have to providing quality content to you, the listeners.” – Fr. Andrew (05:59)

2. King David’s Choice of Solomon (Caller: Catherine) [07:15–11:17]

• Why Solomon, Son of Bathsheba?
  • David’s older sons were out of the picture (e.g., Absalom, Amnon).
  • Symbolism: Solomon’s name “Shlomo” means “Peace,” tying to the prophecy that the temple builder would be a man of peace (09:45–09:49).
  • Narrative parallels between the Torah and the Davidic succession—Abel-Seth vs. Cain-Absalom typology (10:02–10:24).

“I’m approaching this question not from trying to psychologize David, right? But from the perspective of what’s going on in the narrative... how the narrative is reflecting on the Torah.” – Fr. Andrew (10:24–10:45)

3. The Book of Maccabees in Orthodox Tradition (Caller: Dylan) [12:00–21:16]

• Awkward Canonical Status:
  The Maccabees are in Orthodox Bibles but not in modern Jewish canons; their martial, zealot traditions became problematic after the failed first-century revolts (15:41–17:28).
• Typology in the New Testament:
  The Emmaus account in Luke echoes the “Battle of Emmaus” (18:03–19:17).
• Spiritual Use:
  Not all of Maccabees is “didactic”—much is historical but gains theological significance via New Testament typology (14:09–14:33).

“Our Old Testament is there... the Old Testament Scriptures are the scriptures upon which the New Testament is a commentary.” – Fr. Stephen (20:14–20:25)

4. Is Prayer a Sacrament? (Caller: Elizabeth) [21:42–28:01]

• Orthodox Approach to Mysteries:
  No rigid category of “sacraments”—everything except sin has potential to be a means of communion with God (23:32–24:32).
• Learning Prayer:
  Prayer isn’t automatic but something one grows into; there are even higher forms (e.g., Elder Emilianos’s distinction between “prosefhi” and “ehi”—active petition vs. wordless indwelling) (25:32–26:02).

“In the Orthodox Church, ultimately... is there something that isn’t a sacrament? There’s a correct answer to that, though. It’s sin.” – Fr. Andrew (23:42)

5. Listener Callbacks, Technical Glitches, and Recaps

• Warm reminiscence about early show mishaps (power outages, dropped calls) and community engagement through clips and repeated listener questions (28:01–32:07).

6. Liturgical Year & Age of the Earth (Caller: Michael) [32:23–43:13]

• Byzantine Anno Mundi:
  The “age of the world” calculated for the Orthodox liturgical calendar isn’t a dogmatic or scientific claim (39:35–41:09).
• Young Earth Creationism:
  The hosts clarify the difference between an ancient mythic worldview and modern “creation science,” stressing the irrelevance of literal age and prioritizing theological meaning (41:17–43:08).

"The Church Fathers... didn’t attempt to determine [the age of the earth] using pseudoscience or a fundamentalist reading." – Fr. Andrew (41:39–42:02)

7. Sacrificial Hospitality, Incense, and Idolatry (Caller: Sam) [116:19–129:19]

• Hospitality in Sacrifice:
  Ritual hospitality in antiquity built a community with the divine but is only appropriate toward Yahweh; angels/demons reject or accept such wrongly-given hospitality (118:18–119:48).
• Incense and Iconography:
  Incense offered before icons is ultimately to God; it's purificatory and not the same as pagan idolatry (120:19–128:34).

“When a censor is waved at something, that is not offering incense to that thing. The incense has already been offered. It’s been sacrificed to God.” – Fr. Stephen (127:55–128:08)

8. Keeping Time Holy in Family Life (Caller: Jesse) [100:14–109:52]

• Holiness in Daily Routine:
  Making time holy is accomplished by marking it out through ritual, customs, and intentional difference, particularly within family rhythms.
• Parenting as Asceticism:
  “Praying with your feet” (102:22–103:30); the parenting struggle to maintain sacredness in the midst of chaos is itself sanctifying.

“They are not in the way. They are the way.” – Fr. Andrew’s confessor, via Fr. Andrew (107:19)

9. Death by Holiness; Trinity and the Unseen [87:03–95:06]

• Death by Holiness:
  Present throughout Scripture (Nadab & Abihu, Ananias & Sapphira, Eucharist per St. Paul), it is not bounded to the Father alone. Christ’s humanity “veils” divine glory, allowing encounter without destruction.
• Voluntary Dynamic:
  Not all who approach unworthily die—sometimes, God’s mercy withholds the consequence; sometimes, as an object lesson, it is allowed.

“Christ’s humanity mediates his divinity to us... in a way that prevents that sort of death by holiness.” – Fr. Andrew (90:45–91:24)

10. Ancient Near East Studies for Laypeople (Caller: Douglas) [73:33–85:20]

• Start with Primary Sources:
  Read OT Apocrypha (Charlesworth), Hesiod, Homer, and Epics.
• Use Secondary Literature for Data, Not Conclusions (80:13–83:13)
• Liturgical Immersion:
  Absorb the Scriptures through Orthodox worship and services available.

“One skill that most people today lack is the ability to read something for information or data, not for conclusions.” – Fr. Andrew (80:13)

11. Sanctifying Time: Sacred/Secular vs. Sacred/Profane [110:06–115:11]

• Ancient vs. Modern Categories:
  Sacred/profane is not the same as sacred/secular. Many activities (like family meals or games) are secular but not profane and can form a sacred rhythm if marked with intentionality and ritual.

“Having fun. We could be praying. We could be reading the scriptures together... but those times can be sacred too, as long as we have this idea that they're set apart and different.” – Fr. Andrew (114:36–115:04)

12. Santa, Subtle Bodies, and Cultural Consciousness (Caller: Athanasius) [142:43–154:47]

• Santa vs. St. Nicholas:
  St. Nicholas is a real person; “Santa Claus” is an idea (a meme), not a conscious being. Ideas can be used instrumentally by people or spirits, but do not have agency themselves.

“Santa Claus exists as an idea... St. Nicholas exists. He is a person. And those are two distinct things metaphysically.” – Fr. Andrew (149:44–150:11)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Everything that comes in threes is perfect." – Fr. Andrew (02:33)
• "Are there non-messianic psalms?" — Fr. Andrew’s mentor, Ed Clowney, riffing on the universality of revelation (24:01)
• "It's not that the world is the matrix, but we're the computer." — Fr. Stephen, on consciousness (98:20–98:32, from the superclip)
• "You have asked God for salvation.... This is what you need for your salvation. And if you wish that were some other way, then you're trying to walk a different path than the one He gave you. They are not in the way, they are the way." – Fr. Andrew’s confessor, via Fr. Andrew (107:19, paraphrased)
• “Join us for a live broadcast... second and fourth Thursdays of the month at 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific. We kind of just gave away the fact this wasn’t the last episode.” — Fr. Andrew (155:39)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Series Intro & Show Anniversary Banter: 00:00–05:26
• Caller: Catherine (David, Solomon & Bathsheba): 07:15–11:17
• Caller: Dylan (Maccabees & Martyrdom): 12:00–21:16
• Caller: Elizabeth (Is Prayer a Sacrament?): 21:42–28:01
• Canonical Issues, Old Testament History: 32:23–43:13
• Incense, Idolatry, and Veneration: 116:19–129:19
• Keeping Family Time Holy (Jesse): 100:14–109:52
• Death by Holiness & Trinity: 87:03–95:06
• Near Eastern Context for Lay Study (Douglas): 73:33–85:20
• Sanctifying Time & Sacred/Profane: 110:06–115:11
• Santa Claus, Subtle Bodies, and Memes (Athanasius): 142:43–154:47

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Tone & Style Highlights

• Warm, playful, erudite, and self-deprecating humor
• Deep, nuanced answers to earnest, complex listener questions
• Frequent references to liturgical and biblical texts, patristic tradition, and modern Orthodoxy
• Willingness to admit uncertainty and open theological questions (“This is 90% conjecture…” - Fr. Andrew, 62:53)
• Invitations to approach Orthodoxy as a living tradition rather than merely academic or dogmatic

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For New Listeners

This episode is an ideal starting point for getting a feel for both the intellectual depth and the unique sense of humor the hosts bring to discussions of Orthodox Christian tradition and the unseen world. It showcases how the themes of enchantment, the communion of saints, spiritual practice, and tradition interact with contemporary life and perennial questions of faith.

Transcript

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He will be a staff for the righteous with which for them to stand and not to fall. And he will be the light of the nations and the hope of those whose hearts are troubled. All who dwell on the earth will fall down and worship him. And they will praise and bless and celebrate with song the lord of spirits. First Enoch, chapter 48, verses 4 through 5. The modern world doesn't acknowledge, but is nevertheless haunted by spirits, 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, the the union of the seen and unseen as made by God and experienced by mankind throughout history. Welcome to the Lord of Spirits.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Good evening giant killers, dragon slayers, scorpion and serpent stompers. You are listening to the Lord of Spirits podcast. My co Host, the Very Reverend Dr. Stephen DeYoung is with me from Lafayette, Louisiana. And I'm Father Andrew Stephen Damick, right next to Cow Country Pennsylvania in Emmaus. And if you're listening to us live, you can call in at 855 AF radio. That's 855-237-2346. And indeed, this episode is all about the calls. So tonight we have the great Bobby Maddox himself taking your calls. So make him good so he doesn't get bored and wander off like he did last time.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Bobby is Matuska Trudy's unpaid intern, right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, so we have to be really nice to him then.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay. All right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Because I mean unpaid, you can just walk off. What are we going to do?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, right? Get fired?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Not give him the community college credits? I guess we could do that. I guess we could fail to fill out the form. And no community college credits for him.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So this is our third anniversary show. So like we did last year, we will be playing some of our favorite show clips to celebrate and maybe some other stuff too. That said though, given that we just finished a series about the end of days, there is a rumor flying around, have you heard this one, Father Stephen? That this is the end of the podcast, end of days, end of podcast, should it be?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And three years, Right. As great pagan philosopher Saint Aristotle told us, everything that comes in threes is perfect.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There we go. So should we just leave everyone hanging for the next 42 days? Unto the Lord of Spirits conference. And does Dan Rather know what the frequency is? What do you think, Father?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So answering those in reverse order, no, but Kenneth does.

And the other question, now we got a couple years left.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay, there we go. Just from the beginning anyway. Yeah, so I can see some calls starting to come in. But before we get to calls though, and see, Father Stephen doesn't know I'm about to do this. So.

Some greetings, some very special greetings for our third anniversary have been sent. And so we've got one Lee Majors.

I'm sorry I did not get the Six Million Dollar man.

[Caller]

Man.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's true.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I think he'd work for less than the 6 million.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Probably. Probably.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I don't know how much less, but.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah, well, we do have the technology, but yeah. So this one comes from the, the, the CEO emeritus of Ancient Faith Ministries, the guy who said yes to, to this podcast. So this comes from, from John Maddox himself.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

John Maddox here.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It was the strangest thing ever. I guess it was. Three and a half years ago or.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So, Father Andrew calls me and says, I've got a great idea for a new live show on AFR starring Father Stephen and me. It's about giants and whatnot. I remember rolling my eyes and thinking to myself something like, here we go again. His last crazy idea had us dramatizing a rip off of Star Trek, claiming there will definitely be orthodox themes to explore. Seeing the less than enthusiastic look on.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

My face, he says, no, I'm serious.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Father Stephen and I are going to.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Talk for three or four hours every.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Other week on a two part show.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That will actually be three parts without.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The listeners even realizing it. So against my better judgment, I asked with feigned interest, what are you going to call this one? He gleefully replied, lord of the Big Giant Rings. Well, I put my foot down on that plagiaristic idea, but reluctantly agreed to let them run with the concept. I have no idea what they ended up calling it. But now here we are celebrating, I.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Guess the third year of the show.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That eventually led to my retirement. Somehow they have an audience, so more power to them. All I can say is good luck, Belinda.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Thanks a lot for that, John.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, I don't know why he's throwing shade at your Star Trek idea. The Orville ended up being a great success. I don't know if you know you're connected to that, but that is deeply, weirdly true.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But nonetheless an oddly good show, kind of in spite of itself, I think, in some ways. So anyway, well, right, so we do have callers coming in. We have. We have Catherine calling from.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, before. Before this call. Oh, oh, do you want to say something?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Hold on. Catherine. Sorry.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

To our listeners, this anniversary episode.

Today as the cool among, you know, Mortal Kombat 1 was released.

I have walked away from my PlayStation 5 to come here and do this program.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Wow.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Which shows the deep dedication I have to providing quality content to you, the listeners. So I just want that to be appreciated.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I am so honored.

All right, well, Kathryn, welcome to the Lord of Spears podcast. What is on your mind?

[Caller]

Well, the fact of the nostalgia of Mortal Kombat 1, playing it in a place called Flintstones in far northern Alberta, Canada, brings back many memories. So thank you for ripping yourself away from your PS5.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

For my deeper there already, huh?

[Caller]

Yeah, yeah. But thank you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, thanks for calling.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Good night.

Just kidding. Just kidding.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

How'd she know I was going to talk about Mortal Kombat? What an amazing coincidence.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

She just pivoted, man. She's pivoted.

[Caller]

You know, there's gifts of prophecy, right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Caller]

I do actually have a question, though. So this has been rumbling around in my mind, and it's about King David.

He obviously had the choice to pick any son that he had.

And I'm curious to understand, why was it Bathsheba and why was it her son Solomon? I mean, he's sort of a symbolic person.

Of repentance. And I'm wondering, did he choose Solomon for.

That sort of thing? The past.

Of, you know, his acts and his sins and repentance and, you know, obviously he had a child die from that, and.

I'm wondering if there's any sort of patristic tradition in that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Wow. I don't know. I mean, I've always thought this is just me and my pure speculative brain. My sense always has been this. This favor for Solomon because he was really into Bathsheba. But I don't know. Father Stephen, what is the deal with all of that?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, I don't think that's how that works.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Like, because which. Which wife you're really into could change when you've got a bunch of them.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That is true. That is true.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's kind of a thing in flux.

Yeah. I think there's a. There's a bunch of things going on. I mean, of course, a number of the older sons got kind of excluded from. I mean, Absalom. Right.

[Caller]

Ammon kind of excluded himself.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or were out of the picture. Right. So this wasn't going to be a primogenitor kind of Situation. Right. Of the oldest son.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So I think David sort of signaled his intent to do that.

When he named Solomon.

Because remember what David is told.

When he wants to build the temple, he's told, no, you know, there's blood on your hands. It'll be a man of peace.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So he has this son and names him Shlomo.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Peace.

[Caller]

Beautiful.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And so I think he was signaling that intent already there. But you also have the situation of.

The child that died, who you mentioned. And so I think there's an Abel Seth thing going on there.

Like, in terms of the. The pattern. Right. With Absalom being more like Cain.

And so it's.

I. I think that's sort of the pattern that you see playing out there. Right. At least in terms of the account in the Scriptures. Right. So I'm not. I'm approaching this question not from trying to psychologize David. Right. But from the perspective of what's going on in the narrative. Right.

[Caller]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

How the narrative is reflecting on the Torah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And is presenting this transition to us.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Does that make sense? Catherine from Alberta.

[Caller]

Well, I'm actually Catherine of the Great White Zephone.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, excuse me. Excuse me.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You've called before the Mount of Assembly.

[Caller]

Well, no, that makes a lot of sense. And thank you. It's been rolling around in my mind for a couple weeks, so thank you.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You're welcome. You're welcome. All right.

Bye. Next we have Dylan calling from Michigan, the place of many of your people. Father Stephen. Dylan, welcome to the Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Caller]

Hey, happy day.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Happy day, indeed. Blessed feast. If you're on the, well, either old or new calendar or whatever calendar you might be using, it's a feast for somebody.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You do pronounce it Dylan and not Dilon, right?

[Caller]

Yeah, it is Dylan. Although my Romanian priest often goes Dylan. So Dylon.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, Dylon is the five greatest rappers of all time. That's an obscure subject.

[Caller]

Yes, that is correct. Yes.

Yeah. So I was asking. I read through Maccabees for the first time in the past month.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All four of them.

[Caller]

No, not the fourth, actually. I'm still on my way.

But what's in the canon?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So.

[Caller]

And so that's the thing. This is reading through it. It's seeing things that itch you the wrong way. Like, I don't know, the pillaging and the, you know, cutting off a fellow's head and putting it on stake. Judah, the hammer over here. And so we've got. We've got the hammer, and this is all in our canon, and it's interesting the Jews don't have it in their canon, even though you'd think the hammer would be the Jewish hero. And so I'm just wondering, going through all of this and like, all these strange alliances with, like, Rome and seeing very, like, talking up the Roman politics and strange stuff in there. And this is scripture. So I'm just wondering what, like, the, how this is integrated into the tradition and how the Father has looked at these figures because. Weirds you out on first glance.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. I mean, the, the most prominent bits of the Maccabees stories, of course, is the, the story of the Maccabean martyrs. Right, right. Which.

[Caller]

And that's the beautiful stuff.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And second Maccabees, which kind of sets up. I mean, I'm totally ripping this off from Father Stephen, but, you know, since I get to talk first.

You know, it sets up the pattern for the way that martyrdom is, is narrated and, and presented in the New Testament and on into, you know, the Christian era. Right.

But yeah, it's, they're, they're interesting stories. I mean, a lot of what's in there, I think.

A lot of it is simply historical narration. Right. You wouldn't necessarily read every single bit and say, ah, from this, I take, you know, this significant theological point. Right. That's, that's my impression of a lot of what's in those texts. Although, I mean, you can interpret all of it that way. Like, you can interpret it in a way that's beneficial to you in a spiritual way.

But it's not like. It's not like Genesis. Right. It's a, it's a different kind of book than that, you know, where almost, especially in the early chapters, where almost every verse you can make major theological points out of. Right. Because it's the basis for so much that later happens. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. Like the Maccabees. I don't know. Are there feasts, Father, where we actually read those texts for the, for the, the feast day? I'm drawing a blank. I don't think so. It's not in our current practice, is it?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Not to my knowledge. Not from first Maccabees. Yeah, we have a feast of the Maccabean Martyrs.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, of course, August 1st.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And that gets into second Maccabees. But.

We don't, to my knowledge, have any readings from first Maccabees any place, or third or fourth. That gets into a whole other confusing realm.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. But first Maccabees, in addition to giving important history, I mean, I think part of the reason why.

It got rejected from the Jewish or they didn't really get rejected, why it didn't end up in the Jewish canon, is that it represents a set of traditions that played out very badly across the course of the first century A.D.

There was a very common.

The common image of who the Messiah was going to be among a lot of common people in Judea. At the time of what we're reading in the Gospels, for example, was John Hyrcanus.

And they saw this in very material terms, a welding together of the king and high priest. In very material terms.

The overthrow of the Romans. This builds up into the Jewish revolts, which, as I've said before, are like the Matrix sequel or the Matrix movies. There were three of them, but everybody only wants to talk about the first one. And they got worse as they went.

[Caller]

Debatable.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Matrix 2, please, Hammer, don't hurt them.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

But. Yeah, and so there was sort of a. Obviously, as the edges of the Ketuvim of the writings are sort of getting finalized, those borders are getting more strictly drawn. In the early second century, in the wake of the Bar Kokova rebellion, the sort of rejection of that whole tradition of zealotry and of the. That kind of idea of the Messiah, I think meant that First Maccabees was not destined to a long and happy life in rabbinic Jewish circles.

Now, part of the reason why I think it's important that we have it in our Old Testament is that.

There are several points in the New Testament.

That are clearly reflecting on and in some cases inverting things that are going on in First Maccabees that if you haven't read it, you don't know about the most obvious one.

Especially since Father Andrew's. Here is the whole episode on the road to Emmaus.

Really, the whole ending of St. Luke's gospel is patterned around verse Maccabees. Because of course, the other place where Emmaus is mentioned, the reason it's relevant, is the battle of Emmaus.

In First Maccabees, which is sort of the climactic battle. So when. When you're talking about these people on the road going to Emmaus, that's like saying they're on the road to Gettysburg.

[Caller]

Right? Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Like there's all of this resonance to it. And they get to Emmaus and Christ wants to go farther, but they constrain him. Right. And right after this sort of celebration of the Eucharist that happens in Emmaus.

It says the way St. Luke's gospel ends is the Disciples are all in the temple praising God.

And then you open up Acts at the beginning of Acts, they are not in the temple praising God. They're still locked away in a room.

So why does St. Luke choose to end his Gospel in the Temple? Well, because that's what happens after the victory at Emmaus is they go and they rededicate the temple.

Right?

And so there's this deliberate contrast, right? And there's this association of the Eucharist with Christ's victory and this sort of reorientation as Christ opens the Scriptures to them on the road to Emmaus.

Correcting their view of all this, right? Because they're downfalling. Because they, oh, we thought, you know, Jesus was going to be the Messiah, you know, but I guess not, right? So he has to reorient them. And so having Maccabees there, you know.

What the, the text is here is working off of what it's, what it's inverting and redirecting, right?

That set of Jewish traditions.

And so insofar as our Old Testament is there, as.

You know.

The Old Testament Scriptures are the scriptures upon which the New Testament is a commentary.

The New Testament is a commentary and an explanation of the Old Testament. And so first, Maccabees actually fits very well because of the way it's reflected upon in certain parts of the New Testament.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Does that answer your question, Dylan?

[Caller]

Yeah, that was enlightening. Right on.

Thank you very much. Quick bonus for Maccabees. Second Maccabees. When you get all those.

Visions of experiences of the horsemen manifestation of God.

It sounds a lot like the angel of the Lord, like Christ Logos among them, or is that just angelic powers or do we know?

Yes, got it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There we go.

Gotta get at least one monosyllabic answer per episode.

All right, well, thank you very much for calling, Dylan.

[Caller]

Right on.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Hear from you.

[Caller]

Thank you very much.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay, well, continuing our tour through the upper Midwest, we have Elizabeth from Wisconsin. Elizabeth, welcome to Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Caller]

Hi, can you hear me? Okay, we can hear you. Okay, super. I've been listening for many years and this question has been on my mind for probably a year now. Our parish actually has a lot of spirits discussion group. And while we're talking about Lord of Spirits Goes to Hell. But anyway, I'm sorry, that's not related to my question. My question is, and, oh, I should preface this by saying I am shamelessly aiming for a trademark one word answer from Father Stephen. Although a knockoff one word answer from Father Andrew would suffice. So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Wow. I'm just quitting now. Good night, everybody.

[Caller]

So in the sense that a sacrament works mysteriously through our cooperation with God's grace, is prayer a sacrament?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, the question I would ask is, what exactly is a sacrament? Right. Because.

I know that this is meditated on a lot in Western Christian theology such that they're defined and there's a number and all this kind of stuff. But I don't know, Father, I don't think there is a theology of sacraments in the Orthodox Church as a category that this list of things falls into and everything else doesn't. I mean, we talk about the holy mysteries, but that almost kind of doubles down on the lack of categorization, Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There you go.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That was just for her sake.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I know.

[Caller]

Yay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So that was the short answer. So the longer answer was yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Monospotic doesn't have to be short.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So, yeah, in the Orthodox Church, ultimately, my answer is, you know, is there something that isn't a sacrament?

There's a correct answer to that, though. It's sin. But that's.

But even that, through repentance, can become a means through which God works in your life. So the sin itself is not a sacrament, but it becomes the occasion for one.

But, yeah, that's a riff on.

My old mentor, Ed Clowney. Someone asked him once if a particular psalm was messianic, and he said, are there non messianic psalms?

But.

Yeah, so, I mean, potentially. So the understanding of the Orthodox Church is that, at least in potency, every aspect of creation and every moment of your life can be a point at which God is working in your life and you're cooperating with his work in your life and in the world.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Now, whether that actually happens, that doesn't happen for me every moment, right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

What? You're fucked.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Like earlier today, like, new Mortal Kombat game. I'm trying to get the new finishers down.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Not.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Not a mystery of God working in.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

My life, not a Sacramento moment for.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

A solid period of time there.

But.

Yeah, so it has the potential to be that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And so obviously prayer, right? Not in some kind of automatic way, you know, ex opera operatum, just you're praying, therefore. Right.

But prayer has the potential to be right. And that's why.

Praying is something that you learn to do.

And it's something that you grow at and become better at.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And there's different kinds of it, too. Like, yeah, I recall, like, Father Elder Emilianos, who just reposed, I don't know, a couple years ago, he made A distinction. He uses the Greek words. He said prosef key and fhi. And that, like, prosef key is prayer. When you're, like, asking God for something and then. And this is how he defines it, and f he is this sort of sense of indwelling wordlessly in God.

And you know that the latter is. They're sort of the higher form, but they're both prayer. But obviously for most people, it takes a lot of work to get good at either, and certainly more at the one than the other.

He's just going to act like his connection dropped.

[Caller]

Sorry, I wasn't sure if you were keeping going. No, that's fantastic. Thank you. Wonderful answers, even though they were a bit lengthy. But it's okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I gave you both versions. I gave you the short version, I gave you the longer version, then I gave you the long version.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And, you know, one of the things that I would say that I think is so important about.

Not trying to reduce sacramental life to, like, again, like, a list of things that fall into a particular category is because when you do that, right, there's this temptation then to regard them almost as, like, talismans or kind of magical, real rituals. And I'm sure you don't have that temptation, Elizabeth. But, you know, since we're talking.

And sometimes people have this idea that. And they almost paganize them, Right. Like, you have to do everything in this exact way, and if you do it a little different or whatever, then it just doesn't work and it's no longer this anymore. But that's not the way that the church actually functions. I mean, that doesn't mean there's not right ways to do things. But.

Yeah, yeah. I don't know. Everything is kind of. Kind of a sacrament. I. I like what Father Alexander Schmemann says in his book for the Life of the World, where he talks about the whole world as being secretly sacramental, and that what the church does is sort of reveal it to be what it really is, what it was meant to be by God. So.

[Caller]

Oh, yeah, I have that book. It's a good one.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's a good one. It's a good one. Bears rereading, I think, once in a while.

[Caller]

Yeah, I agree.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Caller]

Well, thank you very much.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Thank you for calling, Elizabeth. So before we get to our. Before we get to our next caller, you know, I promise that we'd play some clips, some of our favorite clips from previous shows. So.

This is something that was prepared.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Last time we did this.

Oh, wait.

There's a storm here in Louisiana, as happens all too frequently. And my power went out. But we can continue.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Hello?

[Caller]

Hello? All we got to me.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, I. I guess. Father Steven, are you still there?

Oh, I think we lost Father Stephen for just a second there.

[Caller]

Oh, man.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right, well, yeah, I. I don't know what he was about to say, but, Father Stephen, we. Do we have you back yet?

All right, well, we're gonna try to get him back.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, let's. Right, right, before we do that. Okay, I want to call back.

Before all of my electrical chicanery took place.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We try to blow everybody's minds with things that have been staring you in the face.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So, but, so, so here we.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, we kind of lost you a little bit there. Father Stephen, you still there?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, I think. I think Galatians 3, that verse is a good place to start.

They're gonna have this particular strip of land in Palestine and.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right. Father Stephen, did we lose you?

Well, good slide radio, everybody.

He was connected to my. To mine. Bobby. Sorry.

[Caller]

We're.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We're happy.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, there's Father's Day.

[Caller]

Welcome back.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, welcome back. Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, so I don't know where exactly I got caught, but.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So, yeah, hopefully we'll get Father Stephen back here and we can hear the rest of his sentence, but maybe not.

Reconnect with Father Stephen.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

This is the general rule of the.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Show, is don't bring Bobby in. What? And you're doing it. I'm sorry. It's fine. Okay, I'll take you to break. Thank you, Bobby. All right, well, that's how you know it's live radio, everybody, because anything can happen.

So there you go. That was a tribute to some of our very earliest episodes. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know, last time we had an anniversary episode and we played clips. Like, I had thought before that episode that we had some really attentive listeners. Right. I mean, people sponsor transcripts. I thought people. People have told us they've listened to every episode more than once. I thought, you know, for sure they're gonna remember all these clips. And like, I was shocked.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I know so many people were like, what episode was that from? They couldn't remember.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. And so hopefully between then and now, folks have re familiarized themselves with our material.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So there's only these 200 or so hours worth of material to go through.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You know, I mean, it's like five.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Weeks of full time work. Right, Right, exactly. Yeah. It pays in knowledge. Yes. So hopefully folks have caught up. They'll recognize where all of those classic clips are from. I mean, I don't know how those aren't people's favorite clips in the first place.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Definitely some of my faves.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right, well, we do have some more callers lined up. So now we've got Michael calling from the Old Dominion, my natal state. It's Virginia. Welcome, Michael, to the Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Caller]

Thank you, Father, for having me. I have two questions and a brief comment before that. So in. I think it was the Four Horsemen episode.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Is that your turn signal we're hearing in the background? Are you driving?

[Caller]

No, I've been hearing it while I've been on hold for, like, 10 minutes. So I don't know what that's about.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's a metronome. It's here to drive you insane.

[Caller]

And now it stops. I don't know. I don't think it's me.

But anyway, so in. In the four. I think it was the Four Horsemen episode. Father Stephen had mentioned the guy from the Trinity Broadcasting Network who had been discussing the horses pawing at the golden streets and the gold dust falling and all that. So I thought you might be interested to know I did my undergrad at Regent University, which is the TBN and cbn. They're all on the same campus and in the woods behind the TBN building. Like, one of the rites of passages for students is to go back into the creepy woods, and they actually have the statues of the Four Horsemen, like, hidden back in the woods.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, man, I gotta go to Virginia and go check this out.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So what do you do when you go out there and find them? Do you, like, mount one of the four horses or.

[Caller]

I think they would break at this point because they seem pretty old, so I didn't do that. But yeah, they were pretty creepy, though, man.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You got to send us a photo of that. If you're ever back at your alma mater, you got to take us a photo of that and send it in.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Does that make you a member of the Builder?

[Caller]

It's. They do have. Yeah, I'll put it in the Facebook group because they do have pictures of it up. I'll find one. Put it in there. But.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So I like Christian kitsch. It is one of my favorite things.

[Caller]

Oh, for sure, for sure.

But my first question involves Christ's blood during the crucifixion. So I have heard various stories and I don't know the veracity of them, so I'm hoping to get comments on that as well as the effectiveness of this. But I've heard various stories of when Christ was crucified. Either one of two things One, it happened on top of Adam's grave. So then Christ's blood went down on to Adam's body. And the other one that I've heard is that the Ark of the Covenant was hidden under there. And so Christ's blood ended up on top of the lid or the mercy seat or whatever you want to call it. So my question is, is there any position on either of those two stories? And what is the significance of either of those things?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Huh? I mean, the Ark. I've never heard the Ark thing before. The Adam's skull thing is represented in a lot of iconography, for sure. Like often at the bottom of the cross and a crucifixion icon, you see a skull, and that's supposed to be Adam's skull.

But it doesn't make sense to me that it would be the Ark, if only because the Lord is crucified outside of the city, what would the Ark be doing out there, right?

[Caller]

I don't know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I don't know.

[Caller]

Well, the story that I heard was that, like, he got hidden under there or something. And so then that was like the final Day of Atonement thing, where the actual, like, final blood ends up on the. On the covering or something like that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, I. Yeah, I get it. I get that idea. I don't know. Father's vision. Have you heard that? Have you heard of that before? The blood in the Ark thing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So the. The Ark thing, the blood. And the Day of atonement part that you added there at the end is an evangelical riff on an old Templar legend.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, this gets better and better.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So the Knights Templar claimed they had found the Ark there during the Crusades and brought it back to a particular.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Church in Scotland, as one does.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. Where it was supposedly housed for some period of time. And then there's all kinds of. Well, it's buried somewhere underneath it, or, well, it's, you know, got taken somewhere else or. Well, someone took it when the Knights Templar got done in, etc. Etc.

But that's where that comes from. Also see the first Assassin's Creed game.

But the. The first one, the part about Adam, is actually part of Christian tradition going all the way back into pre Christian Judaism.

So in terms of sacred geography.

Jerusalem was considered to be the place where paradise had been.

So Mount Zion. Right, because it became the mountain of God.

Right. It was being the mountain of God that then is the place where paradise is. And so it became the place where paradise always was.

And so.

That then meant that the hill outside the city, right, where Did Adam die and get buried outside? Right. And that's why it was called the Hill of the Skull.

That's where Golgotha comes from, was that was the site where Adam was buried. And that's why that's depicted, as Father Andrew mentioned in the icons of the Crucifixion. The skull. That's Adam's skull down beneath the cross that Christ's blood is running down toward. And if you go to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

And you go downstairs, it's down underneath. You have to wend your way down underneath. There is a chapel of Adam down there at Adam's tomb.

In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So. Well, there you go.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay, cool, cool, cool, cool.

[Caller]

My second question involves.

The. I guess it's called Anno Mundi. But I. So one of the things that Father Stephen had said, if I remember correctly, was that he doesn't take an official position on, like, the age of the earth, because Church had not taken an official position on that. But then in the past month or so, I saw all this stuff on Facebook from different, like, Orthodox groups and entities and other things like that, talking about the liturgical New year and also, like, involving that, like, anno mundi saying it's like something 7,000 or 5,000 or something like that. So I was wondering if you could explain what that is. And, like, is that the Church having a position, the current age of the Earth, or what is that if it's not an official position?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, that's the Byzantine year. Right. And it is. I mean, it is dated, supposedly. So it's dated the beginning of the world.

Based on what people at the time who came up with that thought. And there's no version of, like, adding up all the numbers in the Bible where you get to. What is it? Are we in 75? 20. No, 7532. Is that the year of the Byzantine year?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

3132? Something like that?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it's. It's finally for everybody, because today is old calendar, September 1st.

But I mean, that's. That's what it is. So it was a calculation that was done. I can't remember when this was come up with. Was it like 4th or 5th century, 6th century?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It was. It was Constantine, so.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, okay. Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So before that, the Roman Empire had dated everything from the founding of the Roman Republic.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But post Constantine, it's no longer the Roman Empire really anymore. It's Christ's kingdom and its earthly icon.

And therefore the idea was you have to date it from when Christ's kingdom started.

Which is when he created the world.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So it's not like it's not a theological position from the Church.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. And it's not clear, as you said, it's not clear how that exact number was arrived at, because there is no version of like Genesis from which you can get that number by adding up genealogies or anything like that. That's why modern young earth creationists have a different number.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, it's about 6,000 or so, not the 7,500 or so.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And that's a 25% difference.

That's not an insignificant difference.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But that point of that difference. I know some people don't understand what I mean when I say that young earth creationism is modernism. Right. But that's what I'm pointing at. Right. Because yes.

The Church Fathers, people in the ancient Church, in, in the Roman Empire, the Christian Roman Empire, didn't believe the earth was millions of years old. Absolutely true, Absolutely true. But they also didn't attempt to determine that using pseudoscience or a fundamentalist reading of some addition to the Bible. That's not how they arrived at that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. And so that's what I mean when I say I'm talking about the methods that most modern young earth creationists use are modern methods.

And also I just, I don't find the age of the Earth all that interesting. Yeah, it's not that important to me.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Why? Why exactly?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

If you want to say it's.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, I was going to say it only matters within a matrix of like, we need to use modern scientific empiricism to prove that the Bible is true, and then therefore we can believe all the other things the Bible says is true.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. That's the modernist part. That's a problem. But if someone tells me, I believe that that date is absolutely accurate, it is 75, 31. I'm like, great.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

If they tell me that's when they think humans were created and the Earth is way older than that, I'm like, great.

If they tell or whatever. You know.

If you tell me that death, that human death is not the result of human sin, then we have a problem.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. That's where we run into trouble.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Is that helpful, Michael?

[Caller]

It is, yeah. Because I guess the confusion for me was it sounded like there was an official position on that. And so that's why I was wondering, okay, this is, I guess, not the official position of the Church.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. I mean, here's the thing, it was.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Not declared as dogma at an existential council or something.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There's a lot of things that exist within how the church functions that are not a dogma of the church. You know, I know people who treat everything like that, but that is just not the way it goes, especially when you see that there's variation over time on various kinds of things and there can't be variation on stuff that's actually dogmatic. Not really. So. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you very much for calling, Michael. We are going to go ahead and go to our first break. So we'll be right back with this all live Q and A episode of the Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

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

Ancient Faith Radio is brought to you by our listeners with help from Faith Tree Resources. Have you ever felt distracted or disengaged in church but quite sure what to do about it? Divine the greatest invitation is the newest video course brought to you from Faith Tree Resources and will help you better understand and experience the peace God offers to us in the Divine Liturgy. This four part series, taught by some of the church's most respected leaders, will equip you with resources and tools to help you more deeply encounter the one true God. Whether you're a parent hungry to teach your children or a pastor looking to equip your faithful or someone who wants to learn how to actively be present in the Divine Liturgy, this course is for you. Go to faithtree.org to get your copy today. That's faithtree.org.

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

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Hey, welcome back. Thank you very much for that voice of Steve.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I think I'm gonna have to petition them to change the name to Faithfulness Tree.

Just saying is all.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right. We'll let them know they are out in California somewhere. So yeah, it's definitely early enough for them to be listening. Yeah. Yeah. So once again, welcome back, everybody. This is an all live, all Q and A episode of the Lord of Spirits podcast. And this is our third anniversary episode. And so, you know, earlier we listened to a special greeting that was recorded for us by by John Maddox, the CEO emeritus of Ancient Faith Ministries. And. And now we have another one from one of our. Our very special friends. This one comes all the way from Texas.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Before the clip. Emeritus, by the way, means person who rests upon their laurels.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Thank you very much.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The etymology for those who don't know Latin.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, there we go. All right, so this is a greeting from Texas.

Hello, fathers. This is Richard Rowland down here in Texas, and I just wanted to greet you both and wish you both a very happy third anniversary of this wonderful podcast. I know so many people have benefit for benefited from it, and I just wanted to say that.

Now, listen up here, Friar Steven DeYoung. You may think you're tough, but you haven't faced the likes of me yet. I'm Richard the spider Monkey Rohan, and I'm here to tell you that I'm gonna climb up that tall California redwood and squeeze you till you drop.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You may be a man of the.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Cloth, but I'm a man of the ring, and I'll show you no mercy. So get ready, Friar Steven DeYoung, because when we meet in the ring, it's.

[Caller]

Gonna be a battle for the ages.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Thank you very much, Richard from Dallas.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. So here's what Richie Rollins doesn't understand.

In a normal match, I would have a 50% chance of winning, right? But I'm going to have you in my corner, which means he's going to have, at best, a 33% chance of winning, and I'm going to have a 66% chance of winning. But what he's also forgetting is that I've got his number, which means, realistically, I have more like a 75% chance of winning. And if you take his 33% chance of winning and you subtract his 25% chance of winning, he's got maybe an 8% chance of winning that match. You add my 75% chance of winning and my 66% chance of winning, I have a 141% chance of winning this match.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I was told there would be math.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's the match by the numbers.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right, well, next we have Alexander calling all the way from San Diego. So, Alexander, welcome to Lord of Spirits podcast. What's on your mind?

[Caller]

Yeah. Blessed beast day, fathers.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Blessed feast.

[Caller]

So I have a question about numbers 11 regarding in the wilderness.

And there's, like, a lot of, like, little things. So when they. When the children, the wandering Hebrews first get manna, quail is mentioned that there's. There's. There's quail that disperse from the ground and the children of Israel gather the manna. But then all the way into numbers, they're complaining that they don't have any meat. And obviously. And there's like a contrast made there between eventually here between the manna and the quail that God gives them. But like they're still. When they first get that manna and it says that they have it in their teeth and they're gorging themselves, then a lot of them die. And that the place is called, like the driving. Right now, I can't bring up the.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Passage, but hebroth hataavah. That's my bad pronunciation.

[Caller]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So I'd like to apologize to the Jewish community for what Father Andrew just did. It was.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I'm doing my best. I don't know Hebrew, I assume it's Hebrew.

[Caller]

So the symbolic meaning seems pretty obvious. And church fathers and other adjacent ancient Christian commentators talk about, like, the meat that they're satisfying themselves with. And it seems like, you know, the contrast also made with the manna, like the bread from heaven isn't. They're not satisfied with that and they eat something a little bit more lower, let's say. But what is historically going on there? Just seems like there's something else. I mean, could be. My main part of my question, I guess, is like they're literally livestock herders. They have all the meat and hamburgers that they want with them. What does it mean for them that they're lusting after meat when they. They're literally have herds of livestock with them? And so what is. What is going on there?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, I mean, one thing that occurs to me, and again, I'm spitballing here, but I'm thinking about my ancient Indo European ancestors is having herds of livestock with you doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be slaughtering them to eat them, especially if you're out in a desert where it's hard to keep livestock. Right.

One of the things that actually that made. Now, these are not Indo European peoples, but one of the things that made Indo European people much more capable of surviving on the steps of what is now Ukraine is that there was a little gene switch that flipped that made them able to metabolize milk in the years past infancy. And so they were then able to travel with their livestock a lot further because they could drink their milk and survive off of that. But you wouldn't necessarily want to slaughter them, you know, because once you kill an animal, it's gone. Right. So.

Yeah, I mean, they. They're probably using some of those animals to work. And for various reasons like that, they're not going to just be killing them and eating them because they're not living in a great area, you know, they're wandering in the desert. So that's, that's my, you know, off the cuff analysis. I don't know. Father Stephen. Yeah, give me some actuallys and corrections. And what do you think?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, I, I, as a Dutchman, can live entirely off of dairy products for any period of time.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There you go. The apotheosis of the proto European peoples.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But.

Yeah, so there's, there's a whole through line in Genesis.

That is really setting up his prologue to understanding this in the rest of the Torah. So the first thing has to do with meeting meat eating in general, which is something we've talked about on the show before, how there's this movement in Genesis for, from Adam and Eve eating fruit from trees, which doesn't even kill the plant.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. It's just the plant giving you something, right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Like, yeah, the creation offers itself to Adam and Eve for food.

Then after the expulsion from paradise, Adam has to work the ground by the sweat of his brow to bring forth food. Right. And that ends up, you're killing the plant, you're harvesting the plants, you're uprooting the plants and having to plant again and reseed and, and do all that work, but we're still just dealing with plants. And then it's only after the flood that humanity is, is given permission to eat meat. But that's also when the strict prohibition of eating blood comes in. Right? Because this isn't just license for man to become a predatory right, to become a predator.

And so, and this is intimately related to the fasting rules of the Orthodox Church.

Then how that's understood and the monastic diet and all of that. But.

That diet now, right, as Americans especially now, we eat tons of meat all the time.

Compared to anyone else in the history of the world. So it was, as Father Andrew said, fairly rare for people to have meat outside of sort of major feasts. So that's one piece. The other piece is running through Genesis this theme of the corruption of the city.

Right. Babylon being sort of the archetype.

Babel. Right. But you know, Abram and Lot divide the land and Lot wants to go live first near the city of Sodom and then next to the city of Sodom. And then all of a sudden he's in the city of Sodom and then he's sitting at the gates as one of the town leaders of Sodom.

And so Egypt in Exodus represents the world empire. It is the Babylon of its day, right? It's this civilization that was the greatest superpower at the time. Exodus begins in the sight of the world, but the site of the greatest evil. And so if you read Exodus in the King James version, you'll see all these warnings about them craving the flesh pots of Egypt.

And this is referring to the sort of lifestyle.

Right? This is why this ungodly pagan lifestyle of the cities has some appeal to people, right? There is this lifestyle. They're eating better, right? They're drinking better, they're enjoying this lifestyle.

That promises enjoyment in this world, right?

And so.

That theme.

And that's the place you have the flesh pots of Egypt, that's bringing them together, where you have the meat that's eaten, the meat that's served for food in Egypt, the luxurious food of Egypt. And so when they're craving meat, when they're dissatisfied with the bread from heaven and they're craving this meat, it's not just that it's meat in general. It's not like, oh, I need more protein, right? It's. This is specifically the flesh pots of Egypt that they're craving. It is the lifestyle, it is the relative plenty, the luxury of the city of man, right? Of the world that they're craving rather than being satisfied with what God is giving them from day to day. And God with the quail, for example, will on occasion stoop to our level, right?

And that's a constant dynamic through the wilderness. Wanderings with Israel is despite Israel at any number of points sort of meriting their own destruction, right? And God starting over with somebody else. God condescends to them, right?

Out of love. And so you get that dynamic of condescension with the quail, but.

This sort of demand and craving for this demand of God that God give them this kind of lifestyle.

Is one of the crucial sins there. And this is not something that's foreign to our time.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

In most cases, when things in our life aren't going right, we've been indoctrinated with just enough Calvinism to blame God for it.

Right. God's the reason, you know, I can't pay all my bills this month. God's the reason why I can't. God, why aren't you giving me these things that I need to be happy? Right. That's just a continuation of what's going on with Israel in the wilderness.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep. Does that answer your question?

[Caller]

Yeah, that's great. I was just thinking that there might have Been some sort of idolatrous, like, subtext there that we were missing. But that. No, that. That. That really corresponds with all the symbolic readings too. All right, thank you, Father.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Thank you for calling. All right, well, we have another caller from the Golden State. So, Jason, welcome to the Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Caller]

Hey, Father. Thanks for having me.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, welcome. What's on your mind?

[Caller]

So I was reading in a Wikipedia article about the Seventh Ecumenical Council.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, that has.

Y100 true.

[Caller]

I'm sorry, what? Well, yeah, yeah, for sure. So I'll just tell you what I read. You can correct me or article on the seventh Escue. Medical.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, gotta turn off your radio collar.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Caller]

Oh, I'm sorry.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep. So you're gonna hear yourself as we're hearing you now in a little echo there, recursive loop. That's right. So you're reading Wikipedia as one does.

Seventh Acumen.

[Caller]

So it's giving a proof text for the veneration of icons. And, you know, it goes through some of the verses where it talks about, you know, carving cherubim on, I think, the Ark of the Covenant, which I totally understand how that relates specifically from your first Halloween episode. But then it gets to Genesis 31:34, where it talks about, like, Rachel stealing Laban's idols, and I. I don't really understand how that relates to venerating icons.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, wow. See, that's not where I would go. Is that in the council, Father? I can't recall.

No, I don't.

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, I can't account for wikiality.

[Caller]

Okay, fair enough.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No, but, yeah, talk about. I don't think we've ever talked about Rachel and those. Whatever they're called. It gets translated in various ways.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The household gods.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Household gods. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Well, I mean, what. What do you. I can't think of a way it relates to bad configuration.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Because, I mean, it sounds like she.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'm thinking about this story. She hides them underneath the saddle and says she's menstruating.

[Caller]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Like, that's what happens in the story. So this is going weird places.

[Caller]

Yeah. It was a mystery to me, and so I just wanted to get some insight.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Caller]

So, I mean, my big takeaway is to not trust Wikipedia articles. So thank you very.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because there's a number. So that in the Old Testament, there are a number of places.

Where.

You know, for example, they start worshiping the bronze serpent as an idol, start using it as an idol, and so they have to destroy it. And.

There'S the whole thing with Gideon and His father's idols and then the. His ephod that ends up becoming a snare.

So. Yeah, so there's.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, I'm. I'm. Look, I'm. So I've looked this up just because I'm. Okay, I was curious, right. So I'm looking at the Wikipedia article and it says, I can hear it.

[Caller]

Through my phone and I'm going to sit down on that porch.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Hi, other voice. And it says.

It says that in the fourth session of the council, there's this reference, and it has a whole bunch of just. It's just listed off Bible verses. So obviously, Jason decided to look up what the verse was. And, and. But the reference to this is that. This is from. This is from Edward Gibbon. It was. Edward Gibbon is the source that's given for this. Oh, exactly, right. The decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Now, I don't know. I don't have the text of the 7th Ecumenical Council in front of me, so I don't know.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

What is the specific. What does the specific verse say?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's listed 3134. Where. You know, it's just where it says.

Now, Rachel had taken the household gods and put them in the camel's saddle and sat on them. Laban felt all about the tent, but did not find them, which I don't know. I mean, so here's.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'll try. Okay, this is 90% conjecture.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So the idea of household gods, this is something that continued all the way through pagan Rome. Right. So the. The gods any given person worshiped. And this is a family thing. Again, this is a communal thing, not an individual thing.

Your. Your family had family gods. There might be some God that's a patron God of your family. There might be some famous ancestor of yours that's in the hero category, the sort of demigod category, whether they were actually an ancestor or not. You know, by our modern genealogy standards, the gods of the place where the family was originally from, the God or gods of the place to which the family had moved at some point. Right. And all of those are kind of conglomerated into the gods that were worshiped by a particular family or household extended family, and those would be represented materially through idols. That's what's being referred to in this case with the household Laban's household gods.

And like I said, this continued all the way up to the Roman period. In. In the Roman household, that would be at a hearth. At the hearth, which was the center of the home and the center of Family life there would. That's where those idols would be. That would be the place where the family would gather for their familial worship offerings, that kind of thing.

And so when Christianity comes.

Right. Christianity obviously displaces that. Right. So.

St. Paul goes to Corinth, and you have pagan Romans, not Jewish people in Corinth, but pagans who join the Christian community. Right.

Number one, no more idolatry. Right. So household gods have to go. Right. But what happens pretty much immediately is that it's not just like, okay, so now your family's not going to gather for prayer.

Or veneration or anything in your house anymore. No. Right. But you're going to gather instead to.

Worship God in Christ. Right. And so you have those household gods getting displaced by iconography very quickly.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So. And it's not just those family shrines at the hearth in the Roman world, the walls were covered with frescoes of scenes from Greek myth that had religious importance. Right. Of gods, goddesses, monsters, heroes. Right. They didn't just whitewash the Christians didn't whitewash their walls.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

They replaced these with scenes related to biblical stories. And we know that Jewish homes and synagogues, like wealthy Jewish homes, obviously, but Jewish homes and synagogues had the. The Hebrew Bible for what we call the Old Testament.

And so my surmise is maybe that that verse came up in the context of this displacement.

That sort of the household gods weren't replaced by nothing because household worship continued, but it became household worship of the true God.

Right. And iconography is a different thing than an idol.

[Caller]

Right. Okay, that makes sense.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You know, while you were talking, Father, I found. I don't know. I mean, I'm not doing real research here. I mean, I'm just Googling the Google, but. Yeah, right. I found, you know, the extant extracts from the Acts of the seventh Ecumenical Council went to the session four that's referenced by that article. And I'm not seeing anything in there about Rachel or Laban or any of them. So I don't know if Edward Gibbon, who is, like, not exactly pro Christian or certainly not pro Eastern Christianity, whether he's making stuff up or. Or what? Or what? I don't know. I don't know. I'd have to really read. Read through these. These texts to know if he's making stuff up.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But. But I. But I think there's an important principle here.

In that.

We have to always keep in mind. Like, for example, we talked about this in the marriage episode, right. Where there's this idea out there that Christians post Constantine just had, quote, unquote, Roman civil weddings.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And how that doesn't make sense because there was no sacred secular distinction at the time. They didn't have secular civil weddings.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, that wasn't a thing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Roman weddings were a pagan religious celebration, and so Christians were not having a pagan religious celebration when they got married post Constantine.

So that was transformed by Christianity. So the same is true with this. Right.

There's this assumption that somehow, you know, Christianity came into some. There is some neutral state into which Christianity came.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And that's not the case. Right. So there was family worship going on. Christianity transformed that. It didn't do away with that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Just like it transformed marriage and weddings. It didn't get rid of them.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, it's. It's like. I mean, this is a point we've made in some of our earliest episodes that, you know, the religion of ancient Israel, the religion of ancient pagans, the religion of Christianity from the beginning, are not fundamentally different in terms of the actions that they're doing. In most regards, there are some pretty significant elements of paganism that are not present in Christianity or Israel.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Sexual ritual, for example.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Sexual rituals, yes, exactly. But the offering of sacrifices, the veneration of images, this is all. Everyone's doing this. The question is not, are you doing it or not? But towards whom? With whom are you doing it? Are you doing it towards Yahweh, the God of Israel, or these other spirits that God told you explicitly not to worship?

You know, so it's not that venerating images is right or wrong. It's venerating images of, you know, the holy ones of God is good, but venerating images of pagan demons is bad. You know, that's.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It is not the same thing as idolatry.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Idolatry is not venerating an image of a demon.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Idolatry is the belief that that that image embodies is a body through which that spirit acts and through which you interact with it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, pagans would both venerate images of demons and also used images of demons as idols.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Because they're not.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Venerate just means pay respect to.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Just pay respect. So, yeah. All right. Does that answer your question, Jason?

[Caller]

Absolutely.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right. Okay. Before we take our next caller, we have another greeting. And, you know, I contacted the voice of Steve and I said, please, you know, say something for our anniversary episode. And, you know, so this is what he had to say.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Hey, everybody, this is Steve, and this is the second time in the last month that Father Andrew has pulled me out of my digital multimedia retirement and asked me to record a little greeting for Lord of Spirits because this is the three year anniversary and I'm not gonna do a greeting. I'm actually going to share a frustration that has percolated in my heart for the past three years because this podcast has dehumanized me. This podcast has reduced me to nothing but a voice. So I go around and I meet people and they're like, oh, look at you. You're not just a voice voice. You're a person. Of course I'm a person. You know, I'm a person with feelings and desires and motivations, and I want to. I want to walk through the hills and I want to smell the flowers and I want to sing the song that I want to sing. And I've just been reduced to a voice and an un. And a disembodied voice by this podcast. And it's alienating and it's dehumanizing and it's. And it's. It's done me dirty for a long time, and I'm finally just, like, fed up about it. And now that I have this platform, I just have to vent my frustrations, vent this spleen that has built up for so dang long and. But yeah, happy, happy three year anniversary, I guess. Jerks.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Thanks for that voice of Steve.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, it's good to hear from the spleen of Steve.

But also I am now declaring him the John Cena of the Orthodox world.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Nice.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right, those who know will know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And those who don't, don't, because that's how this podcast works. All right, well, heading down to the southern portion of the United States, we have Douglas from Georgia. Douglas, are you there?

[Caller]

I'm there. Good evening, fathers.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Welcome, Douglas. Welcome to Lord of Spirits podcast. Welcome to our third anniversary episode.

[Caller]

Super excited to talk to y', all and thank you for taking my call. Congrats on three years. And I've been listening since December 2020.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right, fairly early on.

[Caller]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The disconnection days.

[Caller]

Yes. Oh, my gosh.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The pre fiber optic period.

[Caller]

Yes. Right on, right on.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Caller]

So I have my question written down. I want to be clear because this might be a big one, so forgive me, but I feel like this is a good one for the anniversary episode, so bear with me for a second.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay.

[Caller]

My question to you both is this. I really enjoy the many discussions that the show has about the history and context of the ancient near east, the religious environment, and how the scriptures, the prophets, the Apostles engage with the world that they live in. I have some theological education, but I feel, and I'm sure there are many other listeners who feel this way, that we feel unequipped to dive deeper into that area, that field. For example, I've taken Greek and Hebrew. I'm familiar with some of the extra biblical texts. You know, I've had a couple courses where we've looked at Mesopotamia mean Eugaritic texts like the Baal cycle and the Mille, etc. Shout out to Father Stephen, even the poem of the righteous Sufferer, AKA Babylonian Job from a few episodes ago. But I feel like I fall short in going beyond that and often get stuck in contemporary, mostly modern, textual critical schools that want to reinterpret the ancient world through modern lenses. And so to put simply, how can one like myself or who's interested in understanding the world of the Bible get a better context of the ancient Near East? How can a layman get a good starting place to do their own study and to be able to kind of engage with the stuff that's talked about on Board of Spirits? They don't have the opportunity nor the incredible discipline for a formal PhD program, but would love to access whatever is generally available with like a computer or a library. So long story short, how would a layman be able to do the work that y' all do regularly on a regular basis and get some amazing stuff out of it?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I hope that makes sense if you're.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Trying to put me out of a job.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

If you're Father Stephen, you start when you're 16 years old.

[Caller]

True. I'm 29, so I might have a late start.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, I'm afraid you've wasted half your life.

I.

You know, the thing that I would suggest starting with is to read. To read the Old Testament Apocrypha as one of the best places to go. There's. I mean, that's a big bunch of text just right there. Like if you get the Charlesworth two volume set, that's two big books.

So I mean, that is a good place to start for sure.

I know. Another recommendation that we often give is especially if you're not, if you're not able or can't or just don't want to learn the ancient biblical languages.

The Net Bible Full Notes edition is really great because even though the translation is kind of clunky at points, actually, let's just be honest, it's almost all clunky, that translation, but. But what it has is really detailed translation notes explaining why they translated the way they did and giving alternatives as well.

And the cool thing about that is the whole, that whole text, including the notes, is on the Internet for [e-mail] I think is what it is. So that's another good way to begin to take those deeper dives into some of that stuff and at least begin to see the larger world of what's going on there.

But I mean the biggest thing really is just, I don't know, frankly, go to Orthodox services a lot and really focus on what's being sung. Right. I'm not one of these people that says, oh, just go and the services will teach you everything. Because number one, that assumes that you can't even understand what's being said in terms of. Right. Like teaching knowledge that you can think about and talk about and discuss.

So number one, it needs to be in a language you understand. But also a lot of parishes don't have a full, full cycle of services. So it's limited in that regard. But nonetheless there's still a huge amount there to give that sense of the way that the church interprets the Scriptures. So those are the three suggestions that I would give. And Father Steven is now going to tell you where you can learn ugaritic at home.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, if you've studied Hebrew, you actually can pick up ugaritic at home pretty easily.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There you go.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There's a basics of Ugaritic book.

That will basically get. Because all it is is vocalization differences. West Semitic languages are pretty similar. But anyway.

Yeah, in terms of what Father Andrew said, I just want to add also.

The purpose of Orthodox services, especially the Divine Liturgy is not primarily didactic.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, exactly right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Which has an important, a bunch of important resonances including to a bunch of dumb arguments going on online right now. But.

So yeah, I mean, I think to me the biggest thing is to try to familiarize yourself with as much primary source material as you can. And there are big collections, Right. So like Father Andrew mentioned the old testament pseudepigrapha 2 volume set. But you could also get, you know, before the Muses.

That'S Acadian literature, big chunky book.

There are a lot of, there's a three volume series.

For the.

Old, Middle and New Kingdoms of Egypt of primary literature.

And you can find those at libraries. You know, a lot of that stuff, old translations are in the public domain.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And read, read Hesiod and Homer. Like yeah, a lot of people's, a lot of people's knowledge of, of Greek paganism, for instance, comes from like Edith Hamilton and stuff like that. Which is nice. Like, those are nice, those collections are nice. But it doesn't, I mean, it doesn't replace reading the actual texts that ancient pagans were using.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And as you become familiar with all those primary sources in the biblical text itself, you'll start noticing connections and interactions between them. You'll start picking those things up. But you won't if you're not familiar with the primary material. And then the second thing is, when you do read secondary material, which is secondary for a reason.

That includes journal articles from smart people as well as just any, any secondary material.

One skill that most people today lack.

Is the ability to read something for information or data.

Not for conclusions.

Right. So people will pick up a book.

About the Old Testament, you know, and it could be arguing for the documentary hypothesis. It could be arguing for some kind of crazy theory about Yahweh being part of a pantheon with Ellen Bale, you know, whatever. It could be the most liberal, weird 19th century German thing in the world. Right.

You don't read secondary literature for the conclusions. Right. The conclusions they come to. You read it for the data that they're using to build their conclusions.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And often they give you references like, to what, what to go read. Read the stuff that they're reading. Like, there's a book that I was looking at recently because I was, I think this has been mentioned several times in the show the, the ritual search for Persephone that ancient Greek Athenians would, would, you know, engage in. So I want to know a little bit about that. Well, the only book I could find immediately talking about it was one that was completely whacked out in terms of its theology and so forth. But it nonetheless kind of described these rituals. And that's what I was there for.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. And so then between the information you get from the secondary sources and your familiarity with the primary sources, you can then form your own conclusions.

Which may be radically different from the conclusions that whoever the secondary literature author came to, because he started with different presuppositions that he brought to that information.

Right. And so you're bringing a different set of presuppositions. You could look at the same data, you might come to an opposite conclusion.

Right.

But that's the place where you can get the data. And. Yeah, and that's really hard for people nowadays to do because first of all, a lot of people, if they, as soon as they get the impression that they disagree with the book and the author, they stop reading.

[Caller]

Right. Yep.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Because they're like, oh, well, this person is A fill in the blank. They're an atheist, they're a liberal, they're a whatever. They have nothing to offer me. Right. Which is hubris beyond belief, for one thing.

[Caller]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But.

Also it leaves you deprived of the information, the data that you need to form an informed and a sturdy conclusion. Right. Because what happens to, for example, a kid who's just been taught all the answers.

But hasn't been given any of the supporting information.

When they go to college and somebody smart starts interrogating those answers? Right. It falls apart.

[Caller]

That's right. Yep.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know, and that can happen to any of us.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So getting that information and getting it wherever you find it, no matter who it is who's saying something that's true or interesting or informative. Right. Latching onto it and then forming your own conclusions. Because then when someone comes and questions your conclusions, you can walk them through how you got there.

[Caller]

Yeah, that makes sense.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So there you go. Is that helpful?

[Caller]

That's very helpful and I really appreciate it. I feel like there's. There's so much more I could dive into, but it definitely. I definitely relate to the aspect of when you read secondary materials, you tend to kind of jump the gun. You know, you see where the argument's going and not, like, pay attention to the data. I'm sure that's very. That's probably a discipline I could work on, for sure.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. It's funny because, I mean, what Father says is right. I think there's so much polarization right now. So the question that people ask of a text first is, is this person on my side?

You have the book in your hand.

They're not going to win any. They're not going to win any arguments just by you reading it. All right? It's not going to hurt you.

And it's interesting, you know, that this is true, that this is the way people deal with books, because a lot of Amazon reviews, you read almost immediately the person says whether or not they agree with the book.

And almost always that's what the whole review is about, whether they agree with it or not. I'm like, well, if all you do with the book is ask whether you agree with it, then why are you bothering to read? Because you have all the answers already, you know? So. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you very much, Douglas, for calling.

[Caller]

Thank you, bud. Appreciate it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Nice to speak to you. Okay, we're going to take one more caller before we take our second and final break. So we have Willis calling from the true Yankee state, Connecticut. Willis, welcome to Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You're not going to ask him what he's talking about?

[Caller]

I kind of wish my name was Willis.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's Louis, but it's Louis. Bobby wrote Willis. And see, that's what happens when you hire some intern.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He's over there watching reruns of.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Eight Is Enough.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Is that it? Eight Is Enough? Different Strokes. He's been watching reruns of Different Strokes. He's got it on the brick.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's that fuzzy 1980s sitcom brand.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, Conrad Bane's performance is mesmerizing. I mean, I will give you that. Bobby, I understand.

[Caller]

But.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Man.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay, Lewis.

See, it's. Oh, here, I'll give everybody a fancy word. It's called metathesis. That's when you flip two consonants. So, like the word. The name Barkley, you can say broccoli. Right. So, Lewis to Willis.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Charles Brock. Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, that's right. Lieutenant Charles Brock.

[Caller]

Look at that. Didn't expect to learn that. No, thank you.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Metathesis. Metathesis. All right. Connecticut. That's the state my dad's from. So where in Connecticut. Where in Connecticut do you live?

[Caller]

North of Waterbury.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

North of Waterbury. All right. My dad's from Southern Doc's the man. Come on. I'm just. General region.

And your address and your home phone.

[Caller]

Yeah, later, later.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So what is on your mind, Louis from north of Waterbury.

[Caller]

So. Well, hello, Father. So cool to finally call in. Longtime listener. So just cool to actually call in and ask. So I have a question about death by holiness. So something that this show has clearly established, how it's a phenomena in the. In the scriptures, really illuminating the fact that this is a byproduct of the purifying nature of God. Right. So this really led me to start thinking about, you know, like, Christ's appearance on Mount Sinai. Moses can't look at God like the Father. Right. But he could talk to the angel of Lord, but really started thinking about the Incarnation. You know, God walks the earth. Jesus dies with sinners. Nobody's bursting into flames.

So, you know, in fact, sinners are healed. So, you know, it gets a little muddy. I start thinking about the Holy Spirit. So I guess my question is, you know, is death the step by holiness phenomenon? Is this an exclusive quality of the Father? Are there, like, levels to this purifying quality? Yeah, I'd appreciate if you two could, like, rip on that. In regards to the Trinity and how to understand it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. I mean, God is God. So, you know, that's why, for instance.

To eat and drink the body and blood of Christ in An unworthy manner is harmful to you, as St. Paul says. So I mean, that's a direct, that's a direct, obvious reference right there to death by holiness from the Son of God, right?

So, yeah, I don't know, Father, this is such a, such a great core concept of this podcast. Um, and really, I think once you, once you get the idea, you start to notice it everywhere in the Bible, right? And why do certain kind of things happen, like Ananias and Sapphira, lying to the Holy Spirit?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's the example with the Holy Spirit. And, and that's following the pattern from Leviticus, right? So in Leviticus, the tabernacle, right, God comes to dwell in the tabernacle. It's filled with his presence. And then what happens immediately after Nadab and Abihu, right, get.

They'Re on fire for the Lord and they die by holiness.

And then in the text of Leviticus, the Day of Atonement ritual is put into place because of what happened to Nadab and Abba.

To prevent that from happening again.

In a war widespread way in the camp. And then you have the same pattern in the Book of Acts where the Holy Spirit, right, the presence of God comes to dwell within, within the Christian community. And one of the first things that happens, Ananias and Sapphira, death by holiness, right? So the sort of stakes have not been lowered in the new covenant in that regard. In the case of, of Christ's incarnation, this is what's going on, for example, when his flesh is referred to as the veil.

Right? Talking about the veil of the temple.

Right? That Christ's humanity mediates his divinity to us in a certain, in a way that prevents that sort of death by holiness, that allows him to be seen by us and interacted with by us, right? It's not that. See, this is, this is one of the reasons why we talk about.

The humanity of the quote unquote, pre incarnate Christ on the show sometimes, even though that makes everyone's heads hurt.

Because it's not that, oh well, you can't see the Father, but you can see the Logos because the Logos is like less God or something.

Right? That would be Arianism, right?

Christ is not the mediator between God and man in that sense, right? That he is some being that is in between God and man. Christ is a mediator between God and man in his own person.

Right? Because he is a divine person who takes upon himself human nature, right? Our shared human nature. And it is our shared human nature that then allows for that mediation to Humanity.

So that's what.

Prevents people from dying when they look at Christ, Right. Or when they stand in his presence or even are sinful in his presence.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The other thing, right, is that of course there is a voluntary nature to all of this, right? So yeah, Nadab and Abahu did something egregious and died by holiness, but every other high priest who ever went back there was also a sinner.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There you go.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right? I mean, by the time you get to the New Testament high priests like.

So I know we talked about this on the show at one point. Part of the problem with. So for people who don't accept the tradition that when Christ talks about the blood of all the righteous from Abel to Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, Church tradition has always been that, that Zechariah is St. John the Forerunner's father, right. Who he's talking about, who was murdered recently, right. Between the altar and the high place, right? But so for people who don't accept that, the problem with identifying who that Zechariah is is there are multiple priests named Zechariah.

Between or in the intertestamental period who were murdered in the temple.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Kind of makes you not want to send your son's off to be a priest, Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

When the Roman general Pompey, a pagan, annexed Jerusalem, he marched into the Holy of holies, right? So not everyone who went in there unworthily died.

Not everyone who receives the Eucharist unworthily drops dead.

Right? St. Paul says some of you have gotten sick and some of you have even died.

You know, it's not that Christ couldn't have struck dead all of the Roman soldiers and Jerusalemites who were crucifying him if he wanted to.

Right? They could have all died due to their wickedness in his presence. Right? But there's a voluntary aspect to it as well, Right.

And so Nadab and Abihu, Ananias and Sapphira, like Ananias and Sapphira are not the only two people who ever lied to the church about giving money.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Wait, what?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I know not everyone who does it dies, right?

But it happens to them as an object lesson.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

As an object lesson. And that dynamic is important to understand when you're thinking about like the death penalties in the Torah, right. Whether all those people were really expected to be executed or whether the statement that these people are to be cut off from the other people is. Is doing a different kind of work than just mandating the literal execution of every single person who does this. Right.

Or if this is a warning. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Alrighty. Is that, is that helpful to you?

[Caller]

Oh, big time. Thank you very much.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Excellent. Thank you very much for calling. All right, we're going to go ahead and take a break and we'll be right back with the third half of this third anniversary episode of the Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

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

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The Ancient faith Sing Singles Retreat 30 plus is a gathering of Orthodox Christians who are at least 30 years of age and are single, divorced or widowed. The weekend will include daily matins and vespers and Sunday Divine Liturgy. The group will participate in interactive leader led discussion sessions, opportunities for community service, games and social activities, and free time for relaxation and fellowship. The the retreat will be held Thursday, February 29th to Sunday, March 3rd at Antiochian Village. For more information and to register, visit store.ancientfaith.comsingles that's store.ancientfaith.com singles we're back now.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

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

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You know, is it me or did the voice of Steve with that announcement sound just a little resentful? I don't know, I feel like the timbre of his voice changed a little bit there.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I think you're reading it. But I do have to say who I do feel bad for. Somewhere out there there's some 29 year old single person who is feeling totally alienated.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, by that I have heard, I've heard that they're not going to be actually checking ID at the door.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So I'm just putting that out there.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So Ancient Faith is in favor of underage drinking.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No.

Well, that escalated quickly. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I want people to snip these clips and put them on the Internet and get mad.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's right. Well, speaking of clips. So yes, this is our third anniversary episode and we have another, another super clip compilation in this, this third and final half. So here we go.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I was gonna say there were a few great memories I have that weren't in the first one. So we'll see.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's true. That's true. So hopefully this will supply, supply some of that for you. So let's, let's let's dive in. So are you ready, Father Stephen?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, yes, but no. Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's like when you see the doctors shock a dead patient in the operating room and he jumps up gasping and is just like he was before.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No, no, no.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So is this just talking about language?

[Caller]

No.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. No.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And when we say that human consciousness produces the world, are we saying that the world is just the matrix, but we're the computer?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No. No.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But is that the kind of world that Abraham lived in? Father Stephen?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No. No, no, no. Yes.

Last time on Word of Spirits.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Now we insert like a shot of a guy turning a car key and then a long shot of a car.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Exploding or something that there is this idea that ancient Egyptians worshiped onions. Have you heard of this, Father Stephen?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, I am aware of this. Yes. No. Well, and as you said, I think some people's brains after this may go into recovery mode from taking in so many high level ideas.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Father Stephen, was Adam a priest?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, yes, but no.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This is the one episode where I'm allowed to sneeze on the air. What do you think, Father?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, but you're only allowed to sneeze twice in a row. Yes, yes, I am aware of this. No.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No.

There you go. It's the monosyllable. Super clip. Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, we were, we were told by our Lord to let your yes be yes and your no be no.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And you have let it be those things so many times. Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Like a flower in the forest, I have let it be.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Amen. All right, well, callers, it's time to hear from you once again. So we've got Jesse calling from the Bluegrass State. So, Jesse from Kentucky, welcome to Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Caller]

Thank you so much, Father. Can you hear me?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We can hear you.

[Caller]

Awesome.

I was calling because you guys have talked a lot in past episodes about understanding how things are made holy by being set apart or things that are set apart and are used for holy purposes. And that makes a lot of sense, especially when looking at places and objects. But I'm wondering about, especially how practically do you do that with time, especially looking at, like, keeping the Sabbath holy. Keep being able to honor, especially on a feast day, being able to keep feast days holy. And I mean, without getting super legalistic of like, okay, well, we're gonna, you know, just, we have to go to church and there's no video games and you can't do this and you can't do that and like, I don't like, what's the.

Actual, like, manner in which we can approach keeping our time Holy and set apart in a certain way.

Especially in big families, because I have six kids, so keeping time holy is a challenge anytime. So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

Well, I've got four, so I'm two thirds of the way, you know, where you are. Six is magnificent.

Yeah, Right. So, well, let me pass on a little bit of wisdom from my wife. She has a lot of it, actually. So she has, you know, especially since her husband is a priest, when it's time to be in church in particular, that means she's managing the kids largely on her own, thank God. Now, the older ones help with the younger, although not always, as I'm sure you know, as a mother of six. Yes, yes, right. But she.

I hate to speak for her here, but I think this is such a beautiful thing that I've heard her say, especially to younger mothers. She refers to dealing with that as praying with your feet. And apparently there was for a while. I don't know if it still exists, but there was an unorthodox mother's blog out there somewhere. I think she was also a priest's wife titled Praying with My Feet or something like that. And it just refers to just the simple act of having to go in and out of church over and over and over and over again, which I'm sure you've experienced.

[Caller]

Oh, yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, yes. Right, right. So, you know, a lot of times when people want to, like, okay, you arrive at church on Sunday mornings like, this is a holy time. It's set apart. It's holy. How do you do that? You go in, you focus, you be in church, you listen to the prayers, you sing along, you make the sign of the cross, you receive the sacraments. And then a kid starts screeching, right? Maybe it's your child, maybe it's someone else's child, but it's an opportunity for repentance.

But it feels like distraction. Right? And so, you know, the task of parents and of helpful godparents and aunts and uncles and older brothers and sisters is to help train those younger ones to learn how to keep the time holy themselves. And.

That is an ascetical act.

You have to sacrifice your own sense of momentary peace in church in order to train someone else how to be there and be ready to receive what we all showed up to receive. Right.

It's not easy by any means. In a lot of ways, the clergy, we do have our challenges, but in that regard, it's pretty easy for us, relatively speaking. We're generally surrounded by people who are trying to be pretty focused and are doing it Fairly well.

Although clergy can get distracted, too, for sure. But, yeah, if you don't catch everything that's sung or you only hear 10% of the sermon, if that. Right. I mean, my wife has missed many of my sermons, and, you know, God bless her, she doesn't need to hear my sermons. She lives with me, so she has to hear me blow V8 all the time. If you never hear those things right, you are still doing something that is extremely holy. Extremely holy, Right.

To me, the moment that we stand before God, if we can speak about it in this way.

There'S.

Two recommendations I would like to receive at the throne of God. One is from my wife. I hope that she can say, yeah, you can let him be here. And the other will be for my children. And.

If they can do that, then by God's grace, I will have been saved.

And so those of us who live in families, this is our biggest task, is to assist and to participate in the salvation of the people that we live with. Because.

Not only because it helps them, although that would be enough, but also because it helps us. And I remember there was one time, I don't remember if I've said this on this show before, but there was one time I was in confession with my father confessor, and I was describing him, my struggles, trying to live a good life.

And I said something to the effect of, you know, but the people around me make it really hard, you know, like, I could be a better Christian kind of if it weren't for them. You know, that's basically what I said to him. I don't remember the exact words, but that was the message. And he said. He said, you know, all the things you've described to me, all the struggles that you have, right? The. The way that your. Your family acts, the struggles that they have, the failings that they have, the strengths they have. He says, you have asked God for salvation, right? I said, yes. He said, this is what he's given you because he knows that this is what you need for your salvation. And if you wish that were some other way, then what you're trying to do is walk a different path on the one he actually gave you, because this is what you need to be saved. This life that you have said, you know, they're not in the way. They are the way. They are the way, Right? And.

Yeah, I mean, I know full well that when you're feeling exasperated at children or at anybody, it feels like it's impossible to pray. But, I mean, we have multiple. Multiple saints who have Said things to the effect of, you know, one person who offers a single prayer in the midst of the world actually is doing a greater work than monks who live in monasteries and get to pray in peace all day long, which is an amazing thing to say for. And most of these sayings come from monks, you know, so. So they recognize that. That the struggle, the challenge and the salvific value of the difficulties that we have just trying to do the basic acts of prayer and piety and just trying to keep some order.

That. That is a very, very powerful, powerful thing.

I know this turned in kind of a monologue now, but I do have some experience with this, and I mostly have experience watching my wife, who has really, really has worked very, very hard at this and seeing it pay off. I mean, my children range from ages 6 to 16.

So, you know, and I'm not going to say that any of them are always 100%, totally ready to be in prayer or whatever, but as I've watched them begin to love it and connect and so forth, I can see that this is the work that my wife has done, right. And that I've tried to contribute to, but especially that she's done. So I know that's what I would say about that, especially about trying to participate in church life with six children.

It's a glorious thing that you're doing. It really is. It's a holy, holy thing that you're doing.

And you don't know how many lives you're going to benefit by not just the six small people that you're dealing with, but also the people who watch you dealing with them.

The people who watch you even maybe get frustrated and then come back and keep doing it, because that's really important. But then also the many lives that those children will affect as well, that they will pass on. I mean, so it's. It's. It's a grand, grand work. And so it's going to feel like a great quest because. Because it is. So that's what I would have to say to that. Okay, so now my long monologue is over. Father Stephen, I'm going to hand the ball over to you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I don't know, man. I spent a chunk of today's feast digitally disemboweling fictional ninjas.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Finish it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But.

I think part of the problem we have with this concept is that we've been taught to see the world in a way very differently than ancient people and the scriptures do, in that we have in our mind a distinction between the sacred and the secular.

The Sacred and then the things of the world. Right.

In the worst case scenario, that turns into Gnosticism, where the world is actually evil. Right. But there's a. There are much softer versions, of course, that we normally live in, where the world is just kind of neutral at best.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But that neutrality mainly gets threatened by Platonism. Right. Because it's like, well, right now you're having fun, but you could be praying. So is having fun really okay. Right.

And that's fundamentally different. That distinction between sacred and secular is fundamentally different than the distinction between sacred and profane.

Right. And profane was not necessarily a moral category.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So using the restroom is a profane act. Right. Like.

For clear reasons. Right. You make yourself unclean, you have to wash.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And the reason why that is distinguished from the sacred is to prevent mixing the mixture of the sacred and profane is the problem when we take things that are profane and bring them in and mix them with sacred things.

Right. That's when it becomes a problem. So why does this skewer idea of holiness? Well, because.

Most of the world falls into the secular category, if that's the categories we're using of sacred and secular. But most of the world does not fall into the category of the profane per se.

Spending time with your kids playing a board game falls into the secular category, but not the profane category.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right?

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And so part of making, say, a day holy or a time period holy.

Is that we, we do that ritually. And those rituals don't have to be sacred as opposed to secular. They need to be sacred as opposed to profane. So for example, when I was a kid, I wore different clothes on Sunday than I wore every other day of the week.

On Sundays. When I was really little and my grandfather was still alive, we went over to grandma and grandpa's house for Sunday dinner every week. We didn't do that any other day.

We. Later on, when I got older and my grandfather passed away, it was. Grandma would come over to our house. But when she came over to our house for Sunday dinner, we all sat at the dining room table, not the kitchen table where we usually ate. Right. It was different. None of those things are particularly sacred or holy or quote, unquote, religious in the modern sense of sacred secular distinction. But all of those things were actions by which Sunday became a different day for me than the other days of the week.

A few years ago, I tried to have a conversation with somebody who is an atheist. I do. And I don't think I was able to communicate my question because my question to him was, he's an atheist. Never been religious in his whole life. Never been religious at all. And I asked him, what is Sunday like for you? And he was like, what are you talking about?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, is Sunday just like another Saturday?

Like, do you just have, like, two Saturdays? He's like, what are you talking about?

[Caller]

Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Because for him.

There was nothing.

Saturday, Sunday, you know, like, there was no difference for him.

And that's just been ingrained in me since I was a child, so that it has this different character. Even periods of my life when I didn't go to church, sometimes for extended periods of time. Sunday was still different for me.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Because.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That had been built into me by ritual.

When. When I was young. Right. And so there are real practical ways to do that, but we. We can't get too up in our heads about is this really a sacred thing or is this a worldly thing? Right. Well, we're having fun. We could be praying. We could be reading the scriptures together. Right? Sharing fellowship together. Right. Hanging around after church and sharing fellowship and having conversations and getting to know the other people in your community is incredibly sacred.

And in no way profane unless you're telling dirty jokes, which most people don't do at church.

You know, and. And so those things, those times can be sacred too, right? As long as we have this idea that they're set apart and different from other times.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Does that help, Jesse?

[Caller]

Yes, that was enormously helpful. Thank you so much. And I wanted to pass on greetings. We have a lot of spirits discussion group at church, so I'm sure all of them will be super excited to hear another one right now.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

They're going to get to discuss you now.

[Caller]

I know.

So, Meta, I feel like we should.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Pull a Shatner and say, you know, get a life. It's just a radio show.

Anyway, well, thank you very much for calling and greetings to your Lord of Spirits discussion group there in Kentucky.

[Caller]

Thank you.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right, well, now we have Sam. Is he Sam Houston? It's Sam from Texas. I feel like that should be a Sam Houston, Sam from Texas calling. So welcome, Sam to the Lord spirits podcast.

[Caller]

Hello, can you hear me?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, we can hear. You're not Sam Houston, are you?

[Caller]

No, I'm afraid not. I'm in Dallas also, to add to the apologies.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He is in the Republic of Texas.

[Caller]

Yeah, yeah, we're close, but yeah, so of course, long time, first time, very thankful for Lord of Spirits. My wife and I've begun attending Orthodox church. Thanks. In large Part to your work. And we're reading Religion of the Apostles, but I'm trying to understand the view of sacrifice and idolatry you're putting forward. That's young. There are a few things I'm struggling to fit together. You frame sacrificial. Well, he frames sacrificial worship as a form of hospitality towards God when done correctly or towards other spirits when done wrongly. And if I recall correctly, he refers to the spirits that God put over the 70 nations as falling by accepting the sacrificial worship. But if it's just hospitality, why is it wrong for the nations to offer this form of service and wrong for the spirits to accept it? And if I can just throw in a follow up, I notice the hospitable offering of animals and other sacrifices and is often paired with offering incense, like in Kings where it talks about them offering incense to baal. So then why does the seventh council say the images.

Of, like, you know, saints and angels can be offered incense? I'm just a little confused how this all fits together. Thank you for.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All righty. Well, this is good. This is core meat and potatoes stuff. Maybe I shouldn't say that on a fasting day, but.

At least for us new calendar people, if you're old calendar, you know, whatever. Texas barbecue, man, it's Happy New Year.

[Caller]

Thank you.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Okay. Well, number one, it's not just hospitality as a general category other than because otherwise that would mean, you know, having your. Your best bet over for dinner would be idolatry. Right. So it's. It's. That's not all that it is. It's hospitality as to a God which has a particular ritual form. Okay. Yeah. It's not just hospitality in general. So what does that ritual form look like? Well, in idolatry, they set up an idol, they put food in front of it, it gets offered ritually to the God and then either burnt completely for the God or maybe part offer the God and part eaten yourself. And the whole idea is to kind of control the God and get what you want from it. Right. That's what's going on in idolatry. And when you invite that God into your community in that way, then you become like that God. Right. So it's a kind of intimacy, spiritual intimacy, that is only appropriate for Yahweh, the God of Israel. You know, if you offer that to an angel, an obedient angel says no. We see that happen in scripture. Right. They do not accept sacrifices. You offer that to Paul and Silas, they say, no, we're not going to take that. Right. That's what happens in Lystra.

So it's really about this set of actions, and this ritual way is appropriate only to God. With regards to incense, it is within that context of hospitality and sacrifice. But what's happening with incense and icons or even, you know, other humans. Right. Because other people standing in church get sensed when the deacon or the priest comes down and senses them. Right. It's not being offered to them.

It'S been offered to God. Right. The prayer actually says that incense we offer to thee, O Christ our God. Right.

It's been offered to God. So the sacrifice is to God, but then it is used to purify and to make sacred the space and the people. Right. So it's an act of purification. So incense, I mean, incense. The ancient world had. Had this notion. It also. It has the sense of hospitality, not just because it smells nice, but because there's a sense of. It cleanses the air. And there was this understanding that it. That it wards off evil spirits.

Right. So it has this pure. The spiritual purification element. And I think I remember reading recently someone actually. Not that this super matters for this regard, but it's interesting to note that apparently incense also even has a kind of.

Purifying effect on the air with regards to things like diseases that are airborne, that it actually helps to ward off that possibility too, which I'm sure ancient people must have. Must have noticed maybe that as an effect. So I don't know, Father, am I leaving something out or getting something wrong or.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, something of a num. Actually.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay, go for it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I think you've overly differentiated amongst types of hospitality. Okay. The reason I say that is one of the themes when you get into the general epistles in the New Testament is specifically that there are certain people designated as false teachers to whom you are not to offer hospitality.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, right. But not because it's idolatry.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No, but.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right, right, right, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But it's ultimately for the same reason, right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The place to go ON this is First Corinthians 10. And what St. Paul says about sacrifices, including the Eucharist.

Right? What does he say? He says what the nation sacrifice. They sacrifice to demons and not to God. And he says, I do not want you to be. And the word there is Kinonia.

Which is usually translated as participation or partakers, but that's the word we sometimes translate in modern English is fellowship. Right. I do not want you to have this hospitality, this fellowship, this participation with demons. Right. And he says, you can't participate with Christ and with the demons. Right?

So that is. That is the issue there, that, that this hospitality is not just like, oh, we had, you know, the new neighbors over for, for, you know, tuna casserole, right? It's. This is, you know, creating this relationship of community fellowship that we're talking about, and doing that.

With a demon, with an unclean spirit, an evil spirit, obviously, is like a horrible idea, right? And is going to lead to destruction.

Whereas doing that with God is going to lead in a fundamentally different direction.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So this isn't just hospitality in the sense of doing something nice for somebody. This is like community building. The, these communal meals and the sacrificial rituals that surrounded them are what created community. That's what made an Athenian an Athenian was participating in that sacrificial ritual life. This is why there's such a crisis when St. Paul starts going to these Greek cities. And that's why some people start suggesting, hey, why don't they just all become Jews? That'll solve the problem.

Right? But St. Paul says, no, they need to stay Greek. And being Greek needs to mean something different than it used to.

And that's a long process that takes centuries, right? But ultimately, the Greek identity today, part of it is being an Orthodox Christian. Hey, it worked, right?

And so that's fundamentally different than what it meant to be an Athenian in the first century, which meant worshiping Athena and participating in certain pagan vessels. So this is fellowship, this is hospitality, is community building, the building of family bonds among people that you don't want to do with demons, you want to do with God, because we're part of the household of God. In terms of incense, what Father Andrew said is right in the sense that we literally, at the altar, offer the incense to Christ and then the smoke is distributed. So, and this is true not just. This isn't just a biblical principle. This is true in the Torah. This is also true in every other ancient culture.

Because every other ancient culture offered incense. I know it sounds crazy. We've said this on the show before. I know it sounds crazy to your average random modern person to say that the default way of worship among the human species is the offering of incense and sacrifices. But I offer to you, the history of the world is proof, right? Literally every culture on earth, everywhere.

But that that.

Smoke with incense is the product of the sacrifice. And blood was seen in largely the same way.

The blood of an animal sacrifice. That is right. Or with a drink, offering the wine. Right, But. And what does the blood of an animal sacrifice do it has this purificatory effect because by virtue of that animal being designated as the sacrificial animal and used as sacrifice, the blood is moved into the realm of the sacred and therefore has this purificatory effect. The same thing is true of the smoke of incense.

And so in the same way that, for example, on the day of atonement in the Torah, the blood of the goat that's offered to Yahweh as a sin offering is then distributed in a certain way to purify the accoutrement of.

The holy of holies, of the holy place. The smoke of the incense is distributed to purify.

All those present, including those represented there by icons, including the humans there present, who are, after all, the icon of God, the image of God.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There you go, Sam. Does that. That help. Help you understand? Does that work? Yeah.

[Caller]

No, that's very interesting. Thank you.

But isn't the actual wording of the seventh council like of incense and lights being offered to the images according to ancient pious custom, as the auditor paid to the image passes?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Caller]

You know the classic argument, Right, sure.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So the question is not just what does the word say, but what are the actions actually taken?

[Caller]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. So when. When a censor is waved at something that is not offering incense to that thing, the incense has already been offered. It's been sacrificed to God.

Right. We don't say. And we don't even say. We don't even say those words. We don't even say, you know, we offer incense unto you, O holy saint, whoever. We don't do that. We don't say that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Nor the candle. The candle that's lit in front of an icon is not offered to the state.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Offered to. Right. So when. When the council uses that language, it should not be understood in that way, because that's not what the actual actions are.

[Caller]

Okay. Interesting. All right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well.

[Caller]

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much for. For taking the time. I'll. I'll have to. There's a lot to chew on. I'll have to think more about this. As you know, I'm. Well, I am a seeker and just exploring it all. Yeah. But I really appreciate you taking the time. One more question. If I can squeeze in, will you do a show on icons? And if not, are you at least going to wrestle Gavin Ortland?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He's welcome to call in any time or point of his choosing. Take on Gavin Ortland in a wrestling match with any stipulation of his choosing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There we go.

[Caller]

All right, I'll I'll be sure to put that down on his channel.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Pass that on. Yes. All right. All right, all right.

[Caller]

Thank you so much, Fathers.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You're welcome. You're welcome.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right, we're gonna just add that real quick.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

In any pagan context, I mean, East Asian.

Middle Eastern.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

When you see idols, there is an altar of incense attached to them.

Where incense is offered to the idol.

[Caller]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And of course, there was an altar of incense in the tabernacle and in the temple. Right. Now, we in the Orthodox Church offer the incense at the same altar where we offer the Eucharist.

But you do not find an altar of incense in front of icons in an Orthodox church.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Exactly. So.

[Caller]

Yeah.

That'S a fair point because. Yeah, that's what first really alarmed me.

Because I spent a lot of time in Taiwan, and that's the standard way of worship. You buy an incense stick and you wave it in front of the idol, and then you put it in the little urn.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so the. I'd have to. I mean, I'd have to look at the original Greek and see what the verb there is that's being translated as offered to.

It could just be placed in front of or given set before. Yeah, I don't know exactly what the original word there is, but that's something I'd have to look up.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. I mean, offer. Even in English, I could say, can I offer you some dessert? That doesn't mean I'm making a sacrifice of, you know, cherry cobbler to you.

Anyway, fair point. All right. All right. Thank you very much for calling, Sam. Okay, we're going to take a couple more calls, but before we do that, we have one final greeting, and it is indeed from our engineer from. For tonight, none other than Bobby Maddox himself.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Father Andrew. Father Stephen. I can't tell you what an honor it is to have a small part in this, your very final show. It was a really good run, guys. I love the bat stuff. You know, I just wanted to quickly apologize again for not reviewing with you our AFR audience standards way back in 2020. Now, that would have saved us both a lot of headaches, am I right? Yeah. As you were reminded, we have that pesky little AFM wide cap on the number of nerds with whom we're associated, which you guys blew right on past by episode two, didn't you? And it didn't seem like the geeks were ever going to stop tuning in. I tell you what. Anywho, even though Melinda had to cancel the program, and if I can be honest here. She never really liked it anyway. Too much giggling, she says. I just wanted you to know, as you put Lord of Spirits to bed for the very last time, that it was such a joy to spend six and a half hours with you every other week. You guys truly have your finger on the pulse of the American attention. Spanish. I also wanted to say that I look forward to whatever excessively esoteric shenanigans the two of you come up with next. Not on afr, of course, but for someone. Enjoy the night.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So we're going rogue. What do you think, Father?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I think it's amazing that he, like, even though he's here live, theory he pre recorded that so he could just wander off and not pay attention during the actual show.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's true. It's absolutely true.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's what I think is amazing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I don't even know who's taking the calls over there right now. I have no idea.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, it could be a cat.

It could be a cartoon cat, like in a police officer uniform.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right, so whoever is answering the calls.

We have Taylor calling from Daytona Beach. So, Taylor, welcome to what apparently is the final episode of the podcast.

[Caller]

Hi, fathers. Can you hear me?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We can hear you. Welcome.

[Caller]

Great. Thank you. I just wanted to say, before I ask my question, that I've been listening since October 2020. So I'm really excited to finally be speaking with you guys, and thank you so much for everything that you've done with this show.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'm glad you're a longtime listener. But all these people telling us they started in 2020, like, what else did you have to do in 2020?

[Caller]

I mean, I was actually. That's the first time I stepped foot in an Orthodox church. Sorry.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, that's good. That's good.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Awesome.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's good.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Awesome.

[Caller]

Yeah. So my question today is I feel like there's this idea that you.

Which, you know, is this idea of that the original sort of intent. And I know this is summarizing a lot, but the idea of taking the Garden of Eden, paradise, you know, this sort of, like, divine order that God originally created the world with and expanding it outward.

And I feel like this brings, at least for some people and sometimes for me as well, this sort of, like, image of this very, like, bucolic image of gardening as being something kind of meditative and peaceful. And I know from experience.

There'S actually a lot of suffering and frustration involved. So I was wondering how sort of this idea of, I guess you could say divine gardening and divine order.

Contrasts with you know, the consequences. Sin after the fall, in terms of.

Adam and Eve being told that they have to toil for, you know, their food and that the ground essentially, you know, they have to work the ground for their food. I know we're not supposed to be taking that literally, but, you know, how do, how do those ideas sort of. What does that heavenly gardening look like? If that makes sense.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's a great way to put it. I mean, I think ultimately it looks like if, you know, if you read all the way through the Scriptures, right, Ultimately it looks like the new Jerusalem.

Right. So I mean, we do tend to think of, of, of paradise as being this.

You know, like, like.

Those flower gardens that, you know, we, you can go to old mansions sometimes, they have lots of big flower gardens, that kind of thing. But.

You know, it's, it's depicted. So paradise is a walled garden, right? So there is not just, it's not just this kind of untrammeled wilderness. It's cultivated. It's cultivated and it has human participation intended and designed for that. Right. So it's, it ultimately is about civilization, but it's civilization as given by and in concert with God rather than the civilization that Cain created. Creates which is opposite all of that. Right. So, you know, when, when Adam and Eve, it becomes hard for them.

It's, it's an indication that they're still supposed to be working on what they were given, but now it's going to be hard because of their mortality, because of their sin. Right. It's going to, it's going to take work, it's going to take repentance is what it, what it ultimately means. And the beautiful thing is that even when someone gets the point where sin has been cleaned out, that doesn't mean like, okay, bam, now we have paradise. It doesn't mean that actually. It means like, okay, now we can begin in some sense, now we can return to this task, but it will be actually greater than even what Adam and Eve had.

Ultimately, because Christ has come and through Christ is the, all of this as a possibility, right? So I don't know, Father, more to say about that, less to say, correct?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, well, the, you know, as you know, your question kind of contained, right. Adam and Eve have the same mission after they're expelled from paradise. It's just now very difficult.

Now it's a struggle right, to do it. And this isn't just the fault of our first parents, this is the fault of us.

But in part, you know, we've got this Puritan Calvinist thing In the back of our heads, at least as Americans, where when people hear.

What I'm about to say, which is turning the world into a garden is essentially humanizing it, they look at that with horror, right? Because we're all kind of convinced at the back of our heads that humans are totally depraved. And therefore, to humanize something would be like to pave paradise and put in a parking lot or.

You know, turn everything into a giant city or corrupt everything or cause mass extinctions, right? Because nature is good and beautiful until humans show up.

[Caller]

And.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That'S a problem with our view of humanity. That's a problem with our anthropology.

Right? Because the place where we look to see what a human truly is is not Adam and not me, but Christ.

Christ doesn't just show us who God is. He shows us what a human looks like, an actual human.

What we're trying to aspire to be and grow into.

And so turning the world into a tended garden is humanizing it because it's about reestablishing the relationship between us as humans and the rest of the creation that was damaged at the expulsion from paradise and shattered by Cain.

And we see this. We see the image of this in the saints, for example, with their relationships with animals.

Sometimes wild animals, right, who they were at peace with, they were able to live at peace with. Right? Why? Because. Because of their way of being in the world and because of them becoming human in Christ, the relationship between them and the rest of creation was sort of re established.

So that's part of what we're shooting for. And that's not something. That's not a switch we can flip, Right. And it's not something I can give you. Here's the the 10 steps to.

Turning your world into a garden. I'd sell more books that way. Probably.

People like that kind of thing here in America.

But. But it's. It's. So as we work toward being conformed to the likeness of Christ, becoming more like Christ and therefore and thereby becoming more like God, the relationship between us and other people is re established. And the relationship between us as people and the rest of the creation is re established in a way that gives order to it and gives it renewed life rather than the opposite.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Amen. Does that, does that answer your question, Taylor?

[Caller]

Yeah, that does what the show always does, which kind of is lifting my mind out of the material. So I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Thank God. Thank God. All right, well, we're going to take one final question for this evening's live Q&A better be good.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Lots of pressure.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's right. So we've got Athanasius himself calling. So, Athanasius from Nebraska, welcome to the Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Caller]

Greetings from the land. That's not for everyone.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's true.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Do you feel as if the whole world is against you?

[Caller]

Yes. Especially on football Saturdays. Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, man.

[Caller]

It's been a rough 20 years.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's okay. You'll get through it. I mean, you may not win, but you'll get through it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You will survive.

[Caller]

I saw a meme on Facebook the other day that right now, Nebraska football is like living through Groundhog Day, except in hell.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Wow. You know Groundhog Day, that takes place here in Pennsylvania? Actually, I've been to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just too far down the road for me.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So aside from suffering from Nietzsche's eternal recurrence.

What else is going on with you?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

What's up with you, Athanasius?

[Caller]

Well, I have a question about subtle bodies or spiritual bodies.

That have been talked about on the show before. It's kind of an ancient faith cinematic universe question.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay.

[Caller]

Because, you know, another orthodox thinker that's talked a lot about this is Jonathan.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Pageau, and here comes the Civil War part of.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I've heard of him.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Cinematic universe.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I think we should bring the feud back. Actually, I think this might be a good time to launch the feud, since we're going independent anyway.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So I'm pretty sure Pageau is Captain America and you're Iron man in this, Father.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I thought I was Stan Lee. You're messing up the whole thing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Now, this in terms of the cinematic universe of the Civil War.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, okay. Okay.

[Caller]

All right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Anyway.

[Caller]

Okay, well, so a few episodes ago, Father Stephen, I think someone asked about the famous Santa Claus video.

And.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, you're trying to stir this pot, I see.

Go ahead, stir it. No, it's fine.

[Caller]

Well, so.

This question is just interesting to me, and I ruminate on it a lot, and I just wanted to maybe stir this pot a little more to see what both of you think.

Specifically because Father Stephen said something to the effect of, well, you know, I don't necessarily think Santa Claus exists. Maybe like, St. Nicholas does. And.

I've. One thing that Tagot has talked about in some of his discussions of this is that there's sort of like, these beings that are, like, headless bodies.

And what that associated with, in my mind, is taking, you know, when St. Gregory of Nyssa talks about, like, you know, having, like, an angel and a demon on your Shoulder whispering things to you. Taking that and kind of blowing it up to the macrocosmic level.

Basically.

How do I explain this?

It's like.

The. The, you know, the way the St. Nicholas traditions have been received by the Germanic peoples and that, you know, became Father Christmas in England and, you know, Santa Claus now as we.

You know, no Santa in America. Like, you know, when I. If I go to the mall and I see Santa Claus there, like, yeah, I'm sort of like, experiencing.

The being of Santa Claus, but like.

The.

It's like there's this body that is.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Either.

[Caller]

Sort of anagogically pointing back toward the St. Nicholas and through him toward Christ, or.

This large body that, you know, you could say maybe a demon is swooping in and taking control of and pointing people toward, like, greed and consumerism and something like that. And it seems like.

You know, in. In our normal phenomenological existence.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know.

[Caller]

We do experience Santa Claus as existing.

But.

More so as a body. I think trying to just.

Understand what the Orthodox Church teaches on this and what has been talked about on the show before.

I don't know.

What do you think about that?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, okay, I think I got what you're talking about. So, I mean.

Without. I can't say I completely understand all of the ins and outs of Peugeot's arguments about this. Although I've watched the Santa Claus video. We've talked about this before. So the question might be, like, is St. Nicholas right, the saint. Is he making use of all of these cultural elements to do something like, is he using them as a body? Right. I think that that would be a hard sell for me.

Because, you know, Mall Santa is not necessarily conveying Christ to you. Right. Which St. Nicholas is always concerned about doing that because he's a saint, because he belongs. He's a bishop of the church, you know, he's a saint. He loves Christ, he worships Christ. Right. So is there something else that's making use of all that? And I know one of the big questions is sort of, does consciousness arise out of kind of a mass of movements of people? Like, is there a spirit that arises out of it?

I. That suggests that human beings can get together and create spirits like that. We can create beings.

I don't think that's true. Now. Can a spirit.

Influence a whole people all at once? Absolutely, of course. I mean, we've said that many, many times.

You know, so.

Yeah, I think there's a difference between a spirit animating a people and Although, I mean, it's not a huge, huge Difference, necessarily. But. And, and like having a body.

Yeah. I don't know. What do you think, Father? We're kind of getting in some good metaphysical weeds here.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So. Yeah, so I don't, I don't claim to totally understand Peugeot's position. In fact, the last time we talked about it, I explicitly said that.

I'm not entirely sure. And the last time I saw him address this, in fact, if I remember correctly, someone directly asked him about, like.

What, what I said the last time this came up on the show.

[Caller]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

About whether Peugeot thought we disagreed.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And in that context, Peugeot kind of said that he didn't think you should try to nail it down too much. Meaning.

He deliberately is not defining this really tightly. Right. So I'm not going to claim I can define his view more tightly than he thinks it should be defined, but I can lay out what I'm saying. I can try and lay out.

So what I'm saying is Santa Claus exists as an idea.

St Nicholas exists. He is a person. He is a human person.

Right.

And those are two distinct things metaphysically. So he as a person has a body in the sense that we talk about bodies on this show.

A nexus of power and potentialities, Right. He has agency. He is able to act.

As an idea. Santa Claus is an idea. Idea. An idea does not have a body and does not have agency or the ability to act. But a.

An idea is something that can be utilized, Right. It is an instrument.

So St. Nicholas can use the Santa Claus idea instrumentally to do things, but other beings and people with agency can also.

Right? So a, a good hearted human can use the idea of Santa Claus to dress up and go and visit a children's cancer ward, right. To do good to those kids. Another person can use that idea and dress up as Santa and use it to go rob houses, which is totally a thing, Right? Like, and so at Coca Cola can go and instrumentalize those ideas to sell you high fructose corn syrup and caramel coloring. Right?

So an idea can be instrumentalized in, in all of these different ways, but it's not itself has agents have agency because it's not a person. Whereas St Nicholas is a person and so is a person who can instrumentalize those ideas.

[Caller]

Right. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Sorry, go ahead.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, well, and the connection between the two, right? So like I am a person.

Right? I, Father Stephen DeYoung, am a person.

And therefore I have agency, that kind of thing. But there is also an idea of Father Stephen that, for example, listeners of this show Have.

Or readers of my books have. Or my parishioners at my parish have.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And there's not a one to one correlation between the two.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

What?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

They're not the same thing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You mean the things that people say about you on Twitter are not 100% you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And the idea of me can't actually do anything.

Right. But I can use the idea of me to do certain things sometimes. Right. Like I could use the. If I wanted to, I could try to use the idea of me to enrich myself.

Right. I could go around asking people for money, trying to trade on my E Micro celebrity to accumulate some small sum of money. Right.

But other people can use it too.

Right? So someone could go on Twitter and say, well, Father Stephen DeYoung said, and what are they doing when they do that? They're using the idea of me to make some point, to win some argument. Right. To get people mad at me. And on their side, whatever they're trying to use it for. Right. They're instrumentalizing that idea.

Right. So that's another example. Right. Of that. Right. So these ideas exist in the phenomenological realm. They exist. Right. But it's not the same thing as a person. People instrumentalize those ideas.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There you go, Athanas. Does that do it for you?

[Caller]

I think so. I think it seems like.

The ideas are kind of like almost like a fringe or a margin that aren't necessarily part of the body proper.

To use more Padjovian.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. They're epiphenomenal. They arise out of the reality.

[Caller]

Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There you go. I mean, it's like memes. That's what memes are, Right? Memes are epiphenomenal. They get passed around. People use them for stuff.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, various people who have ended up being memes. Right. Like, the meme has very little connection to the actual human whose picture is in it sometimes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. I mean, Father Stephen. Stephen and I have been memed sometimes together.

So. Not that we're encouraging that kind of thing, but, you know, it does happen, so. All right, well, thank you very much for calling from Nebraska, which, you know, it's not for everybody.

But we do like it. All right, Have a good.

Yeah, yeah. Well. Right, okay. Well, that's our third. Third anniversary episode. 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'd still like to hear from you. You can email [e-mail] you can message us at our Facebook page. You can leave us a [e-mail] lordofspirits you can shout into the air. We probably won't hear it that way, though.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And join us for a live broadcast in the second and four Thursdays of the month at 7pm Eastern, 4pm Pacific. We kind of just gave away the fact that this wasn't the last episode.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's true. That said, if you're on Facebook, follow our page, join our discussion group, leave reviews and ratings in all the appropriate places, but most importantly, share the show with a friend who is going to benefit from it. Or, you know, just to irritate them.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, get off Facebook. How old are you even, man?

[Caller]

Come on.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And finally, be sure to go to ancientfaith.com support and help make sure we and lots of other AFR podcasters stay on the air.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And I'm about to start my own TikTok account. So thank you, good night. God bless you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Are you gonna dance?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You've been listening to the Lord of Spirits with Orthodox Christian priests, Father Andrew, Stephen D. And Father Stephen DeYoung, a listener supported presentation of Ancient Faith Radio. And I beheld and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders, and the number of them was 10,000 times 10,000 and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor, honor and glory and Blessing. Revelation, chapter 5, verses 11 through 12.