Saint Constantine the Great

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Lord of Spirits – “Saint Constantine the Great” (March 10, 2023)

Hosts: Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick & Fr. Stephen De Young
Podcast Theme: Exploring the seen and unseen world as understood in Orthodox Christian Tradition

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Overview

This episode delves into the nature and spiritual origins of kingship, particularly as manifest in the Orthodox Christian tradition. Using the historical figure of Saint Constantine the Great as a focal point, the hosts explore the biblical and theological roots of Christian monarchy, the “sacrament” of coronation, and how authority—both sacred and secular—should be understood in both past and contemporary contexts. The episode includes myth-busting about Constantine, examines his impact on church and civic life, and reflects on the relevance of Christian kingship today.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Biblical Foundations of Kingship (09:00–54:00)

• Kingship Originates With God:
  Kingship is shown in Genesis and the Torah as an extension of God’s own kingship, not merely human government:
  • God’s Sabbath rest (Genesis 2) is the enthronement of the divine king (09:22).
  • Covenants in Torah mirror ancient “suzerainty treaties”: God as the great King, Israel as His vassal (11:11–16:31).
• Distinction from Pagan Models:
  Israelite kingship is not divinized, unlike neighboring cultures:
  • “The king is not another class of being…it’s not like the Sumerian kings list where the kingship comes down from heaven.”
    – Fr. Stephen De Young (28:12)
  • Kings are “eldest among brothers,” responsible for justice, not exploiters or demi-gods.
• Role & Responsibilities of the Ruler:
  Deuteronomy stipulates that the king must:
  • Be an Israelite
  • Not amass weapons, wealth, or wives
  • Write and read the Torah under priestly supervision, remaining humble (22:06–27:33)
• Iconic Role:
  Kingship as “icon” (image) of God’s rule—responsible for justice (mishpat) and functioning as an intermediary serving both God and people (34:46–36:25; 38:08–41:53).

“The king and his court functioning as an icon... is a deliberate and drastic departure from the pagan nations where kings were not icons of the gods, but actual idols—the embodiment of the gods.”
— Fr. Stephen De Young (38:08)

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2. Transition from Old Testament Kingship to Christian Empire (59:09–1:36:28)

• Roman Aversion to Kings & Rise of the Emperor:
  Early Rome detested kings (“tyrants”) and built checks & balances; Augustus sidestepped this by taking the title “Imperator” (military victor) instead of “Rex” (king) (61:23–67:01).
• Constantine the Great – Myth Busting and His Christian Reign:
  • His Conversion:
    Constantine’s conversion was real, evidenced not by emotion, but by his radical changes as emperor: halting pagan rites, exempting clergy for prayer, closing gladiatorial games, respecting Christian worship, outlawing crucifixion and facial branding (92:56–101:23).
  • Notable Quote:

    “He [Constantine] stopped branding criminals on the face because it defaced the image of Christ in man.”
    — Fr. Stephen De Young (99:09–100:34)

  • Nicaea Myths Debunked:
    The Council of Nicaea did not decide the biblical canon, invent the deity of Christ, burn Arians, move worship to Sundays, or create the Roman Catholic Church (103:06–112:01).
    • “...intelligent people regurgitate this stuff [Nicaea myths] that has no basis in history.”
      — Fr. Stephen De Young (71:44)
• Role at Councils:
  Constantine presided not as “secular meddler” but to maintain Christian unity for the empire (121:16–122:44).

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3. Christian Coronation: The “Sacrament” of Making Kings (1:37:57–1:55:56)

Detailed Outline of the Byzantine Coronation Rite (Late 14th Century, Manuel II Palaiologos):

• Physical Memento Mori:
  Stone masons present marble to remind the emperor he is mortal (142:02).
• Prayers & Liturgical Chants:
  The patriarch prays for a just reign and chants "Holy, Holy, Holy," linking kingship with the divine council (142:39).
• Anointing & Crowning:
  • Emperor is anointed with chrism in the sign of the cross and crowned by the patriarch.
  • Empress is crowned by her husband, not the patriarch (143:53–145:08).
• Receiving the Eucharist:
  • Emperor enters the sanctuary, is vested, and senses at the altar during the Great Entrance.
  • Receives Holy Communion from the patriarch, with the empress also communed within the sanctuary (166:09–169:48).

Key Insights:

• The coronation rite features ordination-like elements—prayer, anointing, vesting.
• Receiving communion this way underscores the ruler functions as a minister with a spiritual office—not a mere civil official.
• This “ordering” reflects God’s kingdom even if the officeholder is flawed.

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4. Political Theology in the New Testament and Today (1:46:00–end)

• St. Paul’s Political Teaching:
  All governing authority derives from God (“there is no authority except from God”), and rulers are “God’s servants” even if pagan (Romans 13:1–7, 147:24).
• Christian Life in Non-Monarchical Systems:
  While Christian monarchy is rare today, the principles persist:
  • Christians are called to honor governmental offices as icons, not for personal virtue but due to divine responsibility (149:46).
  • Notable Quote:

    “If you go back to Aristotle’s Politics, politics is just the ethics of life and community together.”
    — Fr. Stephen De Young (190:54)

• Modern Implications:
  • Monarchist nostalgia is not practical, and the reality of monarchy was usually harsh for ordinary people.
  • The Orthodox tradition lacks developed social ethics for democracy—issues like voting, individual responsibility, and communal ethics are unresolved (173:19–178:12).
  • Christian engagement with politics now requires applying kingship ethics—pursuing justice, respecting office, exhorting toward righteousness.
• Communal Life as the Arena of Christian "Politics":
  • The hosts urge listeners to build genuine Christian communities marked by order, justice, and mutual honor, even outside old political forms (193:21–195:34).

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Kingship as Image, Not Idolatry (38:08):
  “David is an image of God; Pharaoh is an idol of Horus.”
• On Constantine’s Laws (99:11):
  “[Constantine] said branding criminals on the face disrespected the image of Christ in which each person is created.”
• On [Orthodox] Politics Today (190:54):
  “Politics is just the ethics of life and community together.”
• On Hope vs. Cynicism (182:38):
  “If we look at history with triumphalism, then it’s going to go very dark, because that’s really about power. But if we look at it with hope, then we’re looking for Christ because He is our hope.”
• On Our Call Now (193:21):
  “Nothing is stopping us from actually living communal lives anymore… Maybe that’s what politics actually is—at least what Christian politics actually is.”

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Important Timestamps

| Timestamp | Topic/Quote | |-------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 09:22 | Sabbath as divine enthronement and the start of kingship | | 22:06–27:33 | Deuteronomy’s commands for Israelite kings; humility, Torah, icon vs. idol | | 34:46–36:25 | Justice, rulers as icons of God, mutual responsibilities | | 61:23–67:01 | Roman aversion to kings, Augustus as Imperator | | 92:56–101:23| Constantine’s Christian policies and legal reforms | | 103:06–112:01| Nicaea urban legends debunked | | 142:02–145:52| Byzantine coronation rite (manual II Palaiologos) | | 147:24 | NT teaching: rulers as God’s servants, Romans 13 and the meaning for Christian life | | 190:54 | “Politics is just the ethics of life and community together.” | | 182:38 | “If we look at history…with hope, then we’re looking for Christ…” | | 193:21 | Challenge to live communal Christian lives now |

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Conclusion

Saint Constantine the Great did not invent new Christianity, but rather fulfilled a hope at the heart of the biblical tradition: a transformed kingship serving Christ’s reign, ordered around justice and theosis, rather than pagan patterns of domination. Today, while monarchy is mostly absent, the call for rulers and all Christians—no matter the system—to act as icons of divine justice, to honor offices, and to create communities of righteousness remains. The episode closes with a pastoral exhortation: the hope of Christian kingship points to Christ the King and saints who rule with Him, and our politics are to be lived out as the communal pursuit of holiness, justice, and peace.

Final Word:

“The fundamental reality…is something we can at least taste when we take seriously the fact we’re living together and want the life that we live together to be one of good order, holiness, righteousness, and therefore justice.”
— Fr. Stephen De Young (195:20)

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For full references, stories, and in-depth analysis, listen to the episode or consult the detailed transcript.

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.

The modern world doesn't acknowledge, but is nevertheless haunted by spirits and angels, demons and saints. In our time, many yearn to break free of the prison of a flat secular materialism, to see and to know reality as it truly is. What is this spiritual reality like? How do we engage with it? Well, how do we permeate everyday life with spiritual presence? Orthodox Christian priests Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Fr. Stephen DeYoung host this live call in show focused on enchantment in creation, 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 Scorpion and Serpent Stompers. You are listening to the Lord of Spirits podcast. My co Host, Father Steven DeYoung is with me from Lafayette, Louisiana and I'm get over here.

Thank you.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Sorry, I heard Scorpion.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Wow, that's a blast from the past right there.

Please don't finish me.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Brutality.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. And anyway, I'm Father Andre Minimaeus. You know that if you're listening to us live, you can call in at 855-AF-RADIO. That's 855-237-2346 and Matuska Trudy should be taking your calls and we will get to them in the second part of our show. Lord of Spirits is brought to you by our listeners and also by Chrysostom Academy. A lot of you listeners out there work from home. We know that if you're telecommuting you could probably live almost anywhere you like. If you're a parent of school age kids and you're like me working from a virtual office, then one of your big considerations for where you live is where your kids go to school. I love living in Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. Part of why is because my kids go to Chrysostom Academy and it's a pan orthodox classical school with elementary through high school students. It is on a beautiful 55 acre wooded campus with a creek running next to it, has the highest academic standards and it is focused not just on educating the mind, but forming the whole person in Christ. So if you don't live here yet, think about moving to the Lehigh Valley and sending your kids to Chrysostom Academy. And even if you don't telecommute, our local Economy is growing and it's producing jobs. So maybe one of those could be for you. We've got eight Orthodox parishes in our metro area. You can visit chrysostomacademy.org to see what I'm talking about.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Also, you do have to be a little careful there because I'll be the name. Well, no, this, this time of year, the whole, you know, Peeps production is ramping up.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's true.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

So just be a little careful that you're not taking an Easter related peep temp job.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, they do make Peeps that might.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Not stick around for you.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's absolutely true. We are the home of Peeps. Also, though, we are still selling tickets for the Lord of spirits conference on October 26th through 29th, 2023. Right now only commuter tickets are available because we have sold out the lodging at the Antiochian village. You maniacs. You can go to store.ancientfaith.com events to get your ticket and there actually aren't even that many left, so get a move on.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

You can like sleep in your car in the parking lot, take kind of a sink bath. There are these bathrooms across from the. No, from the dining hall.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Please don't do that.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Go goblin mode. On the whole. The whole conference.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Please don't do that.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

I just said. I just said someone could. I didn't say should.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Please don't. Yes, they could. They could do a lot of things.

Right, so. Orthodox Christians around the world were collectively puzzled when it was announced on social media recently that King Charles III of the United kingdom and France, 14 other Commonwealth realms, what was at his upcoming coronation going to be anointed with Chrism that had been blessed by the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem and also the Anglican archbishop in the same city. In between the hubbub and guessing games over whether what happened was some kind of Khan celebration, some might have been startled to discover that the word chrism turns out to be usable for any kind of anointing oil, not just the kind used at baptism. Does this mean that Charles is going to be anointed the Byzantine emperor? Yes, we will leave that.

We will leave that to the excitable to debate. Right after Father Stephen just gives away the answer.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

No, Sorry, sorry. Spoilers.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Come on. It turns out, though, that we at the Lord of Spirits podcast, we're already going to be talking about the making of kings. So thanks King Charles, thanks Patriarch Theophilus, and thanks Archbishop Hossam Naom for. For the alley. Oop. So where does kingship really originate anyway? Father Stephen? Is it Divine right of kings. Is it primary future.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

We should clarify, right, that there actually was not a con celebration.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No, I didn't see any actual photos of a con celebration, but people were.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Well, there's actually video. There's video of the whole thing on the tiktoks. So you just have to find a zoomer to show you the tiktoks and you can see the whole thing. I've been avoiding TikTok very careful and. Yes. So as far as I could tell, that the Anglican archbishop was primarily there to convey the blessed oil back to.

Great Britain.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's nice of him.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah.

So. And the reason for that also, by the way, is that.

Charles's father, Prince Philip, was part of the Greek royal family.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. I mean, he was an Orthodox Christian, although he became Anglican, of course, I think sometime before he married.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Required to by law.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

By law, yeah. Right. If you want to marry this particular person, you have to become Anglican. But Charles's grandmother, though, she ended up her life as an Orthodox nun. So how about that?

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yes, yes. And the olives were taken from. Used for the oil, were taken from a grove near where she's buried on the Mount of Olives.

[Caller Robbie]

Very nice.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

So that's why the Patriarch of Jerusalem was involved in all this at all. So technically, Charles is also a descendant of the Greek royal family.

On his father's side.

Because otherwise no one's going to listen to what we say. They're just going to be vexed by the Pan heresy of ecumenism and won't be able to take in the knowledge that we're about to drop.

So also, I wanted to note, because I know our last episode was a little bit brain breaking.

That once we are done with our sacrament series.

Which, I mean, that could be a while, Right. We're at eight and counting. But once we eventually are done with the sacrament series, we are going to return to this topic of the soul.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So hang on, everybody.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Talk about what it means to become a spirit. That's the teaser. Oh, man, I'm going to drop out there.

But so now back to Back to Kings, back to tonight's topic, which we'll invariably get to in the third half or near there too.

We talked a little bit about the anointing of kings in the episode in which we talked about.

The concept of the Messiah.

Which we. I'm sure we had a clever title to, but I don't remember it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, because that's what Messiah means. It means an anointed one.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

The Anointed one. And so we talked About. And so within that, we talked about anointed kings. But so tonight's episode where we're talking about.

One of the sacraments, one of the holy mysteries, the Orthodox Church, which is the consecration of the emperor, that's where this is going.

We need to start by sort of revisiting obviously the, the rite of the consecration of the emperor has its beginnings in the consecration of kings and in kingship itself, right. Which begins the Old Testament. And so if you're following your generic Lord of Spirits episode planner, we're starting at Genesis one.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Hey.

Surprise, surprise, surprise.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yes. Everyone is shocked.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Technically we're starting in Genesis 2, verses 1 and 2. Really?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's true. Because this is Sabbath stuff.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Sabbath stuff, right. And so we've talked about this before on the show that, and this is potentially ruining Sunday school, that, you know, the way we tend to think of, you know, on the seventh day.

The Lord completed his work and he rested. We tend to think of that in terms of like, wow, that was tough, making a whole universe in six days. So now I'm going to take a break.

And of course that's not what's going on, right? God did not need a break. But when it refers to God resting, that is him resting, meaning being seated upon the divine throne, right, to preside over now his creation, which he has completed creating.

And so this theme of kingship of God is the king over creation starts right there at the get go. And so we talked, we've talked about before how the Sabbath then, the weekly Sabbath, the Sabbath year, right? But the Sabbaths that were commanded in the Torah were for Israel to participate not in God taking a break, but to participate in the kingdom.

Right? To, to participate in God's reign. That's why it was at the end of the week, right? Because it was pointing forward, right, to, to the coming of God's kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, right?

So that that kingship is established there. And the way in which the, the Torah itself and several significant portions of the Torah function are. And I know we've talked about this before on the show, but we need to come back at it again from this angle is as Covenant documents, right? We talked about the, the Hebrew word is berit, the Greek word is diatheke, that often gets translated in English now as testament rather than as covenant. And so.

A lot of folks have a bifurcation in their brain where when you say Old Testament, New Testament, they think about divisions of the Bible like part one and part two of the Bible when really that means old covenant, new covenant, Right? Those are the same terms, right. And so the Old Covenant, the original covenant, Right. Is a covenant document. And not just in general, but of a particular type. When we hear covenant, we tend to think of like, oh, well, it's like a contract, it's like an agreement, right? If we hear the word testament, we think like, oh, last will and testament. It's like a legal document.

But the actual pattern in that we see in the Torah and in significant sections of it is patterned after a particular type of sort of treaty document from the ancient Near East. And we found a bunch of examples that match up really closely in Hittite documents. A lot of these are written in Luvian, but they're Hittite documents. They're what are called suzerainty treaties or suzerain vassal treaties. They are a type of treaty document that was issued by a king to his vassals. So this king is someone lesser, right? So this king has now taken control of a number of cities. He's like the great king. Those cities have their own rulers. But now since he's in charge, he can now give his terms to those rulers who are now under his authority.

And the particular pattern.

In broad strokes, we won't go too deeply into this right now, tonight, but in broad strokes, the pattern is that those begin with an identification of the king, of the great king.

And a sort of historical recounting of who he is and what he's done, and particularly what he's done on behalf of.

The vassal. Then it outlines the vassals responsibilities, his duties, right to the great king. And then at the end, there is a section of, here are all the good things that will happen if you do what you're supposed to do. And then here are all the bad things that will happen if you don't do what you're supposed to do.

And one of the really obvious places where you can see this pattern within the Torah is in the Ten Commandments, what we now call the Ten Commandments, which are in Exodus 20 and then again in Deuteronomy 5.

And those begin with right, I am Yahweh, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, right? So here's who I am. Here is what I have done for you. Now here are your responsibilities. You have no other gods before me, you will not make a graven image, etc. Etc.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right?

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

It's less obvious in the Ten Commandments, right? The blessings and curses, though there are a few listed in there, right? That you honor your father and mother so that your days may be long in the land that Yahweh or God is giving you. Right. So there are some contained. But if you want to see sort of a very full example of this pattern, the entire book of Deuteronomy follows this pattern.

The book of Deuteronomy begins with a historical sort of prologue. In the middle it has commandments, and then it ends chapters 28 through 30 with a series of blessings if those are kept and curses if they are not.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, which we talk about that in some detail in the blessings and curses episode.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah, so.

But so this is the pattern. And so the very pattern within which God first reveals himself to Israel here in the Torah is following this pattern of presenting him as the great King.

Now, that said, that said.

We are.

So most of the folks who listen to this show, there are a lot who don't, but the majority, the simple majority, are in the United States.

Another big chunk are in the UK and Commonwealth countries. You know, the show's in English, so that will tend to happen.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And we have a chunk of Australians.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yes, we do.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We have Australians who listen.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Probably a Commonwealth country. Yeah.

Right. And so in all of these places, the popular Christianity, as it were, is either Puritan or heavily influenced by Puritanism.

And Puritanism is not overly fond of kings. America is of course, worse about this than the other places I mentioned.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's kind of our, our whole founding deal here in America.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah, we're not quite as bad as the French, but it's kind of our raison debt. Yeah. And so that has colored the way a lot of us have been taught the Old Testament, where it is very much presented as if before a few chapters into the book of Samuel.

Israel was sort of ruled directly by God as king, and that's how things should have stayed. But man, those no good Israelites, they demanded a king from God and that was bad. And he gave him one. And then David shows up and is really good at it. I don't know how that works into the narrative, but.

That's very clearly not true if we read carefully. Right. Because as we just mentioned, the whole book of Deuteronomy is patterned in the form of this treaty from the great king. Right. The references I'm making here are deliberate. Let the listener understand.

But Deuteronomy contains within it Deuteronomy 17, 14, 20, which are explicitly commandments aimed at the human king who is going to reign over Israel, which there isn't.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

One for a while yet.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

There wasn't one for a while yet, but. So this was not something unforeseen by God.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, they haven't entered the promised land yet, but this is kind of on the verge. That's when Deuteronomy is delivered.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

The idea that there will be one particular vassal that only.

Are all of the Israelites, or the Israelite elders or the prophet or a judge are vassals who are receiving the Torah. But that there is going to be one particular vassal king who is going to have particular responsibilities.

Above and beyond the responsibilities given to other Israelites is right here in the middle of.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

The statement of the Old Covenant. Right. So that, of course, raises the question of what is going on then in like, First Samuel or First Kingdoms 8.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And we talked about this in a previous episode a little bit, but just to repeat it here, at least, in summary, the problem wasn't that they wanted a king. The problem is that they wanted a king like the other nations. And specifically, yeah, I was gonna say.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Who'S gonna lead them in the battle? Because, like, they weren't winning the way they wanted to. And so it's like, well, we need to get one of those kings because look how winning they are.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right. So they had just suffered this defeat where they said, hey, we're gonna go into battle just of their own decision, and we're gonna take the Ark of the Covenant out in front of us and then we'll win because we have the Ark of the Covenant, so God will make us win.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And of course, that didn't work out so good for them, and they lost the ark and everything.

But rather than getting the message that they were supposed to get from that, the message they got was, well, I guess we can't count on God to help. Right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. I mean, this is one of the big themes in the scriptures of, like, you know, do it yourself. That doesn't work out well. You know, like, I have my own plan, I have my own ideas, despite what God has said to do, like just.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah, yeah, this compounds it, because this is. I'm going to go into business for myself, and then when it doesn't work out, I'm going to blame God. Right, that's so.

And so this is what's going on there. And this is why God says to Samuel, right, they haven't rejected you, they've rejected me. Right. This is the problem there. Not that they were going to have a king, Right. In general, but so.

That passage In Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 17, 14, 20, sort of lays out Right. Here are the particular commandments directed at the king. This is who the king over Israel is supposed to be and what he's supposed to do and not do.

Yep.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So I'm going to read this, and it's. It's not one verse, it's a few verses. So listen closely, everybody. Starting with verse 14. When you come to the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it, and then say, I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me, you may indeed set a king over you, whom the Lord your God will choose one from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you who is not your brother. Only he must not acquire many horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the Lord has said to you, you shall never return that way again. And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold. And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law approved by the Levitical priests, and it shall be with him, and he shall read it in all the days of his life. That he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes and doing them. That his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children in Israel. I mean, there's a few things there that are certainly different from the kind of the kings of the nations.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yes. Yeah. Right. And so, first of all, the king has to be an Israelite.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

They can't decide, like, hey, King of Moab seems to have it going on. Right. Let's. Let's just become vassals of his. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And.

The thing about the horses, right. Acquiring many horses, it's not just that, like, kings collected horses. That's obviously both a mark of wealth, but primarily because it's going to talk about silver and gold. This is military power.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

They didn't have fighter jets. They didn't have tanks. They had horses that pulled chariots. Right.

And so.

Temptation to go back to Egypt to make some kind of deal, temptation to.

Just, in general build a large standing army, because what's that going to do? Well, we've talked before about Deuteronomy and the Laws regarding warfare. They're not supposed to be committing offensive warfare.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. No. Conquering to increase their territory.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah. They're not supposed to be trying to set up the Israelite empire. Right. Which is take over the world.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Which is again, crazy in ancient world's terms. Like, of course you would do that if you could. Like, that's what.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

If you could.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, everyone did. Yeah. There's no united, you know, passing resolutions, telling you please don't do that, or else we'll say please don't do that again.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right. And.

Obviously acquiring many wives. Right. We know where that's going to go with Solomon and even with David, frankly.

And trying to. To obviously hoard great wealth.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Rather. Right. As opposed to all that. So that's kind of a picture of what the other nations kings were doing. Rather.

He'S supposed to make a copy of the Torah for himself.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Which means he needs to learn to read and write in order to be able to study specifically the Torah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And that approval by the Levites. Right.

Means that it's not just. Again, he's not. Here's the scriptures. Go into business for yourself. Right. Where he could use it to justify whatever he's going to do in his rule and that kind of thing. But he's being guided by the priests. He is under spiritual authority, even as he is the highest.

Governmental authority underneath God himself.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And they're probably checking to make sure that he actually copied it. Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You know, like. Okay. And it says, you know this law. Right. So I mean, that's a whole copy of the Torah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah, yeah. And then, and then that is because the express purpose is that in learning the commandments, in keeping the commands, in following the way of life that's outlined in the Torah, his heart will not be lifted up above his brothers.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Yeah. Again, very different from the kings of the nations.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And so not only is he not to do these sort of material things in terms of wealth, military power, wives. Right.

But he has not to, even in his heart.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Even even in his own thinking, think himself better.

Than the other Israelites.

He has this particular role, but he is not better. And this is especially important when you consider that the kings of the neighboring nations, including Pharaoh back in Egypt, were worshiped as gods.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

They most definitely were above the rest of the Egyptians.

Right. Pharaoh was a God. His family, they were divine. That's why there was so much.

Intermarriage, shall we say, within the royal families in all of these city states and in Egypt.

Because you couldn't marry a commoner because they were just humans. And so this is a dramatic departure from that. Right. So the king is not sort of another class of being. He is not a higher being. It's not like the Sumerian kings list where the kingship comes down from heaven.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. He's not a demigod. He's not a son of a God. None of that stuff.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

He is. Well, son of God does become a royal title, but in a different sense.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yes.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah. And so he is essentially the eldest brother.

Right. The other Israelites are his brothers. He is just sort of the eldest brother. And so a lot of people will say that St. Paul. Right. One of the issues people have with St. Paul is that when you read the Gospels, especially the Synoptic Gospels, Christ is constantly talking about the kingdom. There's all this kingdom language, king language.

And then people will say, well, St. Paul doesn't use.

That language. Right. And while you can make that case, if you're just going by Greek words, conceptually, when St. Paul is using the language of Christ as firstborn among many brethren of Christ as the son of God and our adoption as sons and heirs of God. Right. This is appealing to the way in which covenantal inheritance was understood. The eldest brother inherits everything and then distributes it Right. To the other heirs. And so in the same sense, the king is functioning as this elder brother. He has these particular responsibilities before God. He is sort of the vassal of vassals. Right. But.

He is an intermediary figure in the sense of having an added set of responsibilities both toward God and toward his brothers.

Not as being a special class of human or more than human. Right.

So after.

Deuteronomy, you get Joshua, where Joshua sort of carries on.

Moses role, which is a sort of kingly role in the sense that Joshua is the one leading into battle. Joshua is the one, as Moses had, who is in charge of the various judges and elders of the people and that kind of thing. But then you get into the Book of Judges proper, and there is this refrain over and over again that in that day there was no king and everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Yep.

Which is not to say, like, you know, it was just beautiful anarchic freedom.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yes. And everything was great. Sorry, anarchists.

In Judges, at least that's not a good thing. Right. That's. That's. Everything's a mess. Right. And how is that working within the Book of Judges? Well, we've talked before a lot about what justice is biblically. So justice mishpat Right. Is when everything is in its proper place, everything is related.

Properly to everything else, and everything is functioning peacefully and appropriately and in good order.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

That's justice. And so.

Since we don't have someone doing that, we don't have a person who's sort of maintaining justice, establishing the state of justice and then maintaining it. You get this series and Judges of escalating cycles where Israel, or in judges, usually some part thereof, some tribe or tribes within Israel fall into disobedience.

And then come because of they fallen into disobedience. God removes his protection from them and they get conquered by some outside force, Midianites, Philistines, whomever, Moabites.

And then God raises up a judge who doesn't hear any cases.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

The judge's job is to judge, meaning to reestablish justice. He comes in, overthrows the oppressors, and then the cycle repeats.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And as you go through the Book of Judges, the cycle gets worse and worse and more and more violent and bloodier and bloodier and the deliverance gets shorter and shorter and more and more partial.

Right. Because there is no one to sort of establish and maintain an appropriate status quo of holiness and justice and peace.

And the Book of Judges is using that as the argument for this is why we need to have a king to be that person who does that, to be the one who establishes divine justice and then maintains it in the face of sin and injustice within Israel.

Because I mean, God was doing that in the Book of Judges. Right, but to disastrous consequence.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Whereas when you have a king, and so there is someone, for example, who is enforcing the Torah, so there is someone who, when you get caught stealing, is now making sure that you pay the restitution. Right. And repent, rather than things getting so horrible that Israel gets conquered. Right. There is a maintenance of justice.

Within the kingdom. And so the king is not sort of doing this independently. It's not that, oh well, once they get a human king, he does that, so then God doesn't have to.

It's that the king is functioning as an icon of God, as the great king.

And his court is sort of functioning as an icon of the divine council.

God shares his rule over his creation with first the angelic beings and then later humanity.

And the same way the king, obviously his rule is administered by these people. Right. And this is an icon then of God and his.

Government of the creation. And that sense of icon or image works in both directions.

Meaning on one hand, the king and the other members of his government have a Responsibility to image God in what they're doing. So it's God's justice that they're enforcing, not their own whims, not their own preferences, not their own power, not their own authority. Right. But God's.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And then the people have a responsibility in turn to treat them like icons of God and his divine counsel.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right. To venerate them.

To honor them in that way. Even if. And this is why. Right. Even if the king is a dishonorable cuss. Right. And there are plenty of those in the Old Testament, if you've read very much of it. Right. In fact, most of them. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And that's in case I forget to come back to it later. That's going to stay true. Most Byzantine emperors and most czars are not saints. Right.

Not even close.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. They often kind of the opposite, actually. Yes.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right. So this veneration is not. Oh, this is a good king. David is a really good king. So him will venerate. But Saul.

Jeroboam. Right. As the icon of God. Right. You honor. You give respect to that office because by doing that, you are honoring, giving that honor and respect to God.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. It's like my dad used to say when he was in the Navy, he would say, you have to salute what's on the collar, even if there's nothing above it.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah.

There you go.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's one of my favorite sayings from when my dad was in the Navy. I'm sure it's still probably used.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

So that's. And again, this is. This is all. This is all, by the way, again, I don't want to go back into all this topic, but this is all venerate means.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Honor.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

It's just giving something. The respect that's. The respect that's due to it. The honor that's due to it based on what it is.

So.

Another important point, though, is that the king and his court functioning as an icon in this way or in both these ways, in both directions. Right. Is a.

Again, a deliberate and drastic departure from what's going on in the other nations or in the nations where the pagan kings are not icons of the gods, they're idols in the sense that the king himself is one of the bodies of the God. He is an embodiment of the God.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Offer him worship. Not just respect. Worship like you're offering sacrifices to. He's receiving sacrifices.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right. And so David. Right. Is an image of God.

Pharaoh is an idol of Horus.

To whom the people offered worship.

Right. You will find lots of people proclaiming praises To David in the Old Testament. That's not idolatry.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. I mean, we should remember, like, if you say. And I would never say this, but if you say that Stryper is the greatest rock band of all time, you have venerated Striper just by saying that. So just putting that out there, everybody.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

What if you call a particular striper cover band the greatest striper tribute band of all time?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I would be willing to do that.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Okay. Would you not have to listen to all striper tribute bands first?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You might. I mean, how many.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And are you up for that? Is any human up for that?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There is actually a friend of mine named Ed Bell. So, Ed, if you're listening, I know he's probably already done it.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

So it is the lead singer of Striper, Ted Cruz.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's the big question.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And. Or the zodiac killer, anyway.

Yes, but so we see. We see. We see this attitude of veneration very clearly in the story. Stories, the whole narrative where David is on the run from Saul.

Where David will have nothing to do with killing Saul.

The whole idea that he is the Lord's anointed. He is the king. Right. Therefore, he is the image of God's authority.

Anything David did to him.

Right.

Would be effectively doing that to God.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And so he is not willing to do that. And in fact, this. This goes all the way up to when the Amalekite who saw Saul die goes to David and claims he killed him. To claim a reward, David cuts him down where he's standing.

Right. For having claimed to kill Saul, even though Saul's trying to kill David.

Made several direct attempts on David's life. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

You'll still have nothing to do with this. This is. This is part of where we're getting this. This isn't just me. Hey, he's orthodox. He's got to try to shove that icon stuff into everything. Right. No, this is there in the text.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

This is how David understands Saul's kingship. Right, Right. And therefore his own kingship and how the. The scriptures understand kingship.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And so this.

[Caller Robbie]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Obviously, as we mentioned, we talked about different anointed people, especially kings, when we were talking about the Messiah in that previous episode. And so technically, the anointed king, David is the Messiah in that sense, he's the anointed king. Right. And so we also understand.

Especially the Davidic kingship. And this was very clearly understood.

Before Jesus of Nazareth was born right on this earth.

It was very clearly understood that David was the icon, the image of the Messiah who was going to come.

Right. We see people in the Gospels again, especially the Synoptic gospels, who cry out to Jesus for healing. And as an expression of their faith, they call him the son of David.

Right. That's calling him the Messiah. They understood David is sort of this image, this icon of the Messiah who's going to come. And so then there's going to be this natural transition in understanding afterwards. We're not jumping there quite yet, but after the coming of Christ that kings post the advent of Christ.

Are understood as icons of Christ. Right. Looking back, but we'll get into that more as we move forward.

So a couple more notes sort of on, on Old Testament kingship. One important thing, and we talked about this quite a bit in the Melchizedek episode, is that of course, priest and king are divided.

In the old covenant.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. There's no priest kings.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right. And that's as opposed to everywhere else, Right. Where there were priest kings. And that's up to. And including the Roman emperor was the Pontifex Maximus. Right. He was the great high priest of the Roman Empire who had responsibilities to himself, offer sacrifices. He didn't just pay for sacrifices. Get priests of pagan gods through sacrifices. The Roman emperor was responsible to do sacrifices. We'll come back to that.

But now we talked about, we've talked before how that division goes back to Moses and the issue with circumcising his son and how sort of the, the eldership and the Levitical priesthood was also separated later at the Golden Calf.

And you could see sort of the, the.

The real power of this division. Right. When Saul's sort of final failure is that, remember, he gets impatient with Samuel not showing up in time and decides to go and offer the sacrifices himself.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Which makes him behaving exactly like one of the pagan God kings.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right.

Not exactly like.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, okay, sorry, but I might be being a little hyperbolic.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yes. He didn't receive sacrifices himself.

But he did act as a priest king, shall we say, illegitimately. Right. Of course, how that's ultimately reunited.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

In Christ.

In a certain way. We'll, we'll talk a little more about that later too.

And of course.

With this role, as we already saw a little bit in Deuteronomy 17, with this role as.

The king, as the oldest brother, as the icon of the kingship of God, the icon of Christ on earth also meant that the king is held to a higher standard and to a higher judgment, faces a greater judgment.

This is a basic principle all through the scriptures, including in, in the New Testament. Think about Christ saying from him who has been given much, much will be required. Everything St. Paul says about. Not many of you should presume to be teachers.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

This is especially true, of course, of. Of the kings. And what we see when we look at the way the prophets come, both in what are sometimes called genre wise, the historical books, the former prophets.

When the prophets come to confront kings there, and also within the latter prophets, the prophets proper, when they're talking about the kings and leaders and rulers of Israel and even other countries, other nations.

The basis of judgment is basically what is laid out in Psalm 82 or 81 in the Greek, which is the basis on which, as we've talked about that psalm before, the. The gods of the nations are judged, the spirits.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. I mean, like the first verse of Psalm 82, of course, it says that God stands up in the divine council and renders judgment. Right. And then it says what the basis of the judgment is. Like, this is kind of like reading out the charges against them. And also like, this is what you should have done. Right. So here's what it is. Starting with verse 2. How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Give justice to the weak and the fatherless, Maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute, rescue the weak and the needy, deliver them from the hand of the wicked? So the idea, of course, is that these fallen gods, these fallen angels, have not been doing what he told them to do, but instead have been judging unjustly and giving partiality. You know, they've been favoring the wicked.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right, right. And not protecting the people. Yes. And so the role that was assigned to these angelic beings.

At.

Babel, at the dividing of the nations, was to shepherd them in general and in particular to shepherd them back to God. Right. Saint Dionysus the Areopagite, talks about this too, as we've mentioned before.

And they fail to do it. But this pattern, this is the same thing the prophets condemned the kings for. And so we see that the kingship has this kind of angelic ministry to it, meaning it is also the job of any given king, Israel's king especially. Right. But also the kings of the other nations to shepherd those people and to shepherd them ultimately back to God.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So it's a salvific role.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right. And that's why we see this pattern when it talks about the saints in heaven who experienced the first resurrection in Revelation, or when it talks about the saints in the new heavens and the new earth. This language is Used of reigning, ruling and reigning right of being enthroned with Christ being part of the divine council that is paralleled with angelic ministry. Right. But you also have this ruling, reigning kingship government language. Right. And those two things bleed into each other.

So the, the, the king.

Ultimately, ultimately, to sum this up, what you ultimately get at with the king's responsibility, starting with learning and studying the Torah and keeping it fully in, in serving as the image of God on earth to establish justice.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

In performing this function that was otherwise assigned to the angels, ultimately the command that's given to the king is theosis.

Right? That's the ultimate.

Command. That's, that's given to the king. And this is part of why Christ then is the ultimate king because he is in his person, the perfect bringing together of our human nature and God.

And the divine nature are united in his person. And so he is the ultimate king by perfectly fulfilling that. Right.

So yes, the king was particularly, particularly called to that. And this is why.

You see in the language regarding saints in the new covenant in the New Testament, again, you know, St. Paul saying, do you not know that we will judge angels? This connection to the, the, that the.

Those of the church are a royal priesthood, right? This connection of kingship already kingship within the kingdom with Christ as the king and us as vassals, this is also deeply connected to the theosis language.

Of our salvation.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, I mean, you know, Saint Athanasius in his on the Incarnation, which a lot of people like to quote that one line, you know, God became man, so that man might become God or become divinized or whatever. But like the whole.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Snappy. It is a.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It is snappy. Yeah. I mean, don't put it on a bumper stick or whatever, but. Although, you know, maybe put it on a bumper sticker, but someone has.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah, someone has someone.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. But like the whole, the whole argument that he makes is it's couched within language about adoption. You know, that, that, that's, that's where this comes from. It's not some floating doctrine about, you know, experiencing the Holy Spirit. It's within the context of adoption as sons of God.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

So. Yes, yes. And if sons, then heirs.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, indeed.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right. And so.

As I mentioned, this isn't just a question of Israel's king.

This is every king, right? Every king. The kings of the nations, the corrupt ones, the evilest ones, right.

All had power and authority given to them by God. He was the source of any power and authority they had and therefore were responsible, had this higher level of responsibility.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, I mean, Jesus. Jesus says that to a pagan ruler. Right. He says that to Pontius Pilate. Right. When he's standing in front of him. John 19:11. Jesus answered him, that is Pilate. You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin. In other words, that all power is derivative.

But, you know, ultimately, where does all that power come from? It comes from God. God permits even the bad kings to be the king.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yes. And then holds them accountable.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

At the end.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And.

So this pattern of kingship from the Old Testament and the way it's used and continues into the New Testament.

We'Re going to be moving on mostly in the east, as is our want. But when the Western Roman Empire collapses. Right. When that collapse happens in Western Europe and new social structures have to be built.

It'S very natural, it was very natural for the Christians there to return to this tradition and to bring back anointed kingship as the form of government based on this pattern within. Within the Scriptures. Right. How should we organize ourselves? Well, you know, spoilers. You're not going to get democracy out of the Old Testament.

Or even really.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The New Testament, nor out of medieval Europeans in general.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

No, no. They're not going to come up with this.

Don't come at me with this Athens stuff. Don't come at me with this Athens stuff. That wasn't real democracy.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Anyway, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, so the one last thing I wanted to say before we go to break about this is, despite what you may have heard, you know, as we just said about democracy, there's a certain very popular film that once said you don't vote for kings.

But actually.

In Anglo Saxon England you did. Although you probably didn't. Well, it depends on.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Someone did.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, someone did. But it wasn't. It wasn't the average guy, you know, it wasn't. It wasn't the average elf out in the fields. Yeah. No, it would be.

The nobles. Often the lower nobles included the bishops, the abbots, the dukes, the earls, the thanes. They get to vote for the king. It's not primogeniture in Anglo Saxon England. And the reason why I point that out, so they have a big meeting called the Witan Yamut. So the Witan is all sort of the wide.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Easy for you to say. Yeah, it is.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But they would have a. They would vote. Right. I mean, it would sometimes be the son of the previous king, but not required. But the reason why I point all that out is because at the ceremony where he becomes king, the king has to swear a bunch of oaths that are considered to bind him to the people and require him to do certain things. And so it's, it's a Christian notion of kingship. It's different from the kind of kingship of just might that is the pagan style. Right. There's this sense of responsibility to the people. And of course, the fact that he gets elected, there's that sense of responsibility too. Again, as they say about feudalism, in democracy, theoretically it's your vote that counts, but in feudalism, it's your count that votes. So that's kind of true in Anglo Saxon England. But yeah, this idea that the king is responsible, he's not just the biggest guy who can do whatever the heck he wants.

All right, well, that said, let's go to our first break and we'll be right back with the second half of the Lord of Spirits.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

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

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Ancient Faith Radio is brought to you by our listeners with help from faithtree Resources. Are you anxious to grow in your faith but struggle to carve out time for spiritual disciplines like prayer or reading holy scripture? You're not alone. That's why faithtree Resources created the Encounter app. This completely free app for your iPhone or Android device is designed to make the daily habit of prayer attainable for everyone, no matter how full your schedule is. The app also includes daily scripture readings that allow you to listen to the passages being read aloud. So whether you've got a long commute to work or have your hands full with kids, the Encounter app makes it easy to get into a daily rhythm of prayer and reflection. Join the thousands of Orthodox Christians around the world who gather daily to pray for the church as the church. Download the free Encounter app [e-mail] that's faithtree.org we're back now with the Lord.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

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]

Thanks, Voice of Steve. I actually might be next week seeing the voice of Steve and the whole person of Steve, really, Because, you know.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

I was gonna say, I don't know that you'll see his voice per Se.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I see a voice. That's actually a line from Midsummer Night's Dream, if I remember correctly. I see a voice.

So there you go.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

That was deliberate irony, though.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's true. It's true. Wait, there's irony in Shakespeare? I have no idea. Yeah. Welcome back. It's the second half of the show again. You can give us a ring at 8.55afraidio. Again, that's 855-237-2346. So we spent the first part talking about kingship in the Bible, and now we're going to start talking about kingship as we start to move through history, particularly Rome, because, you know, that's one of the big questions, not the only question in orthodox church history, but it's certainly one of the big questions about how community is organized within Christian history. So the Roman Empire, it is. But let's go to before they were an empire at all. Right.

And they're just starting to be beating on the Etruscans.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah.

So, yeah, we're actually. We are going to get to the title of the episode in the second half at least.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. That's crazy.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

So, yeah, we hear your feedback and. Okay, Gotta be honest, we don't do anything about it, but we do hear it occasionally.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I read it. So.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

We are. We are going to Rome or Rome Word. Right.

And so before we could talk about, as we just alluded to St. Constantine.

And I know there are people who flinch every time I say that. That's part of why I say it so often.

We have to talk a little bit about the whole concept of the Roman Emperor. Right. And the Roman Empire as such. Right.

So Rome, not built in a day, as it turns out.

Took a long time. Yeah.

And so Rome in particular was not a big fan of the idea of kings.

The earliest early kings of Rome, in their own understanding of their history, were referred to as the tyrants. That's where we get the word the tyrannis.

And so those were the battle days.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Six separate tyrants. That's what I say.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

We're not controversial. There we go.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's the motto of the state in which I was born. Six Semper tyrannosaurus.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Siding with the assassins. Siding with the assassins. Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I'm just putting that out there.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

We're talking about, say, Constantine the Great. You don't need any more street cred with that faction. Okay. He's not a tyranny.

So Rome then forms a republic centered around the Senate. And the Senate was sort of deliberately constructed in order to have a distribution of power. So that power would never sort of overly conglomerate in any one person. Right. So you have different roles, like the console, like you have these different roles, but there's always two, three. A lot of times these are chosen by lot. There are different methods at different periods of Roman history by which even when you have to have somebody who's kind of in charge, you make it a couple people and you pit them against each other in various ways. Right. To sort of make sure nothing gets out of hand. And this, of course, if you're familiar with American history or you've ever been to Washington, D.C. and looked around, you know that the. The Roman Republic and the functioning of the Roman Senate was sort of the deliberate basis of the American system of government. Right. They were the same way. Try to make it unwieldy and make it difficult for any particular person to do anything.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. I mean, they're not. When they're not getting things done. That's by design.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yes. That's a feature, not a bug, according to framers. Right. So. But the Senate had this too. Right. And so this is why.

Right. When you get to Julius Caesar, you get to Caesar at first, you know, the same kind of ploy. He's sort of pitted against Pompey. Right. As the other great general. Pompey's out annexing things in the East. Caesar's out dividing Gaul in three parts. Right. And.

We try to. To. To. To play them against each other, but ultimately Caesar is the cannier player and commits the great crime of ambition.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's beating.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

He wants to be the guy.

And so the Senate doesn't like that. And I really wish we were doing this episode next week on the Ides of March. It would be perfect. But he gets stabbed 23 times. Right. On the floor of the Senate at.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

To Britain. Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And Right. Thus always to tyrants. Right. That's.

Not exactly always, because it's only one more generation and they get one. So.

This kind of then repeats itself in the wake of Caesar's death. You have Mark Antony, who was his heir, you have Octavian, who is his nephew, pitted against each other.

Octavian wins the battle of Actium. He becomes Caesar Augustus. He succeeds where Julius failed. And now we have a Roman Empire.

The Senate sticks around. There is still a Roman Senate, but for most of the history of the Roman Empire, they're not doing a whole lot right.

Yeah. They're mostly. It eventually devolves into rich people with titles. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. They're just kind of a nobility of sorts.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah, yeah.

So.

The Title Emperor. Right. So, but even. Even with this being the case, even with Augustus now having basically total power and the people following after him in the Julio Claudian dynasty, and then afterwards wielding pretty close to ultimate power later on, much later in the history of the empire, as we're going to talk about here in a minute, they fall back into old patterns of sort of dividing up authority again, having an emperor in the west and one in the east, and Augustus and. Right. Trying to pitting them against each other on purpose. Right.

But even. Even when Augustus is fully feeling his oats, even when he's having.

Aeschylus, like, rewrite the history of the empire to focus on him as the coming to fruition of all of Roman history, he's not able to take the title king for himself. Because Rex just not happening.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, yeah, that's the bad title. We don't. I mean, he's more king than they ever were, but still, don't call yourself that.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah. So the title becomes Imperator, which is where we get Emperor.

And Empire ultimately, too. Yes, yeah, yeah. Which goes from Imperium. Right. But the. The Imperator before.

Caesar is a military title that was awarded as an honorary title after a general had won a great victory in war. So imperator literally means like commander, the one who commands, or the one who orders, the one who puts an order, like musters an army. Right. But because of the context in which it was granted, that was granted after achieving these great victories, it came to have sort of the connotation of conqueror. Right. Like the victorious general.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And so if Imperator is sort of the conqueror, the orderer, then the Imperium is the conquered or ordered area. Right. The region that's under his. His command, under his orders. Right. Under his law, giving.

And so the empire grows. There's a number of administrative issues, really. There was always an Eastern and Western Roman Empire.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

As we just mentioned, Caesar was in the west and Pompey was in the East. Right. There were always. There were cultural differences with. With the way Greek was used, although Greek was used even in the Western Roman Empire for a good while.

And other cultural differences. But it becomes sort of formal, administratively formal, later on, as we mentioned, you get an emperor, you get an Augustus in each half. You have sort of these four figures who have different powers. Again, trying to break things up.

But.

Now the aforementioned St. Constantine arrives, and not a saint yet.

And inherits the title of Augustus in the west while he's in Britain from his father. When his father dies and decides that he is going to.

Roll things back and he's going to become the emperor. Emperor. He's going to become the single emperor, the monarch.

Of the Roman Empire. And so now we're going to talk about St. Constantine and we're going to be doing now a lot of myth busting.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yay.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Because there is this ironic thing where St. Constantine is literally the best documented emperor in Roman history.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. I mean we know we have more evidence about his life and all the things that he did than any of the rest of them. So anything we have want to say about St. Constantine, you kind of, you got to look at that evidence.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yes, we have the text of every law he issued as emperor. We have the text of nearly, as far as we could tell, nearly every letter, official letter he wrote as emperor. We have all of these multiple biographies from contemporaries who lived at the same time.

We have all of this documentation about St. Custody. And yet somehow, somehow every bizarre wild conspiracy theory on earth.

That you can think of has been attached to say, Constantine somehow by somebody somewhere. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But the vast majority of them are just made up.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah, they're just made up. And so as we go through, as we talk about some of these.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

If.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

We, if we have an idea of where this might have come from, like sometimes it's like, okay, well this idea seems to be based on a misunderstanding of X. Right, we'll talk about that. But there's a lot of these where there's no X. Right. There's like, there's just no way on earth to come up with this. It's just nonsense, just.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But conspiracy theories.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

But some of this stuff, you know, we're calling it nonsense. We're calling this like intelligent people regurgitate this stuff. Some of this stuff that has just no basis in history.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

It's, it's amazing to me, right, that, that.

Especially when they're, you know, go a couple emperors down the road, right. Like Constantius or something. Right. Like somebody less documented pitted on him. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

But anyway.

So.

Of course the first, the first thing we need to Talk about with St. Constantine is the vision he has.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. This is kind of when he sort of really steps onto the stage of history for most people.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right. And this is related to his conversion to Christianity, which is what we're going to talk about next.

And.

So this is before the battle of the Milvian Bridge, which ends up being the decisive battle in terms of him defeating his.

Co emperors, shall we say, just for the sake of ease of argument. Right. That's the other claimants Right. To the imperial throne.

And so he has. Now, there are different accounts of this. So Eusebius of Caesarea, who's the Eusebius who wrote the Ecclesiastical history.

Was like the biggest simp for St. Constantine in the history of Earth.

Really. It's depressing, right. It's like, pull yourself together, man. When you read some of the stuff he writes about, about St. Constantine and I'm someone who calls him St. Constantine and I feel this way reading Eusebius.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

So a lot of stuff sounds very embellished, shall we say? We. So we also have an account of this dream from Lactantius. Lactantius is more reserved about this kind of stuff.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

In terms of my own approach to this stuff, if both Eusebius and Lactantius talk about it, I think it's on secure footing. Right. To go with.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And Eusebius record some stuff that's just weird.

Like he has before St. Constantine became a Christian. Eusebius has him in Britain having this vision of Apollo and Apollo predicting he's going to reign for 30 years. And you're like, Apollo, like what?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. It seems a little odd. I mean, because Eusebius is. I mean, he's a little bit of a wacky Christian, but he is a Christian.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

What's up with that?

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah, And. And notice folks. Notice folks who rely on Eusebius a lot. He's not Saint Eusebius.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No. He's a historian. He's an important historian from the period.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Well, he wrote theological stuff, too. That's important in various ways. But he was at least a semi Aryan. Right. He was not.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

An orthodox Christian.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

But, you know, being. Being. Being a bit heretical does not mean you're wrong about history. Right. Doesn't mean you. You can't say true things about events that happened in your own time.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

So. So he's an important witness. Yeah, yeah. So I look for Eusebius, Lactantius crossover when it comes to. To St. Constantine, and both of them record him. So with Eusebius, there's multiple visions and different things happening, but both of them have him. Before the battle of Bilvia Bridge, he has this dream in which Christ appears to him and tells him to put a particular sign on the shields of his men.

To protect them in battle. And so Eusebius. It's kind of vague as to exactly what this is. Right. It's just sort of the sign of the cross.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

So you're not saying. But Lactantius describes it in some more Detail as the key row symbol. Right, Key. The key and row being the Greek letters. Right. The key looking kind of like an X in English. And the capital row looking is the thing that looks kind of like a shepherd's crook. Like it's hooked over at the top and they're superimposed over each other. You've probably seen this symbol. Yeah, You've probably seen this symbol in the Orthodox Church and. Or the Roman Catholic Church still uses it.

Not with the keys and everything.

Sorry, Vatican, but. But just the. The symbol of the key in the row, which, of course, are the first two letters in Christos and which also forms a cross shape.

And so this.

Saint Constantine did this. Saint Constantine won the battle. Saint Constantine became emperor after the battle because of this. He issued the Edict of Milan, the Edict of toleration that.

Legalized Christianity. But all other religions, too. Right. To be fair, granted, broad legal toleration. But it wasn't just like, okay, we're not going to persecute you anymore. Because within the Roman Empire, persecution was always sort of localized at different times in different periods. Right. It wasn't just perpetually we're killing all the Christians we find for 300 years.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, yeah, it was kind of sporadic and local.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Sporadic. Right. So it wasn't just, hey, we're not going to do that anymore. It was also. Right. Property that had been seized from Christianity for being an illicit religion was returned. Right. There was restitution made from the Roman imperial government to Christian clergy, Christian institutions. Right. Christian people.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And, you know, this is not the. This is not the point, of course, at which Christianity becomes, like, the established official religion of the Roman Empire. That doesn't happen for 50 something years under Theodosius.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Close to 70.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

So, yeah, two generations pass before that happens.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, exactly. So actually, so before we move on to the next point, we have someone who's calling in, so we've got Robbie on the line. So. Robbie, are you there?

[Caller Robbie]

I am here. Can you hear me?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We hear you, Robbie. Welcome to the Lord of Spirits podcast. I'm glad you called because someone recently asked, you know, whether. Whether it was no longer a live show with actual callers. And I said. I said, well, I guess it's done then. So you've saved the show. Welcome back.

[Caller Robbie]

Yeah, I think there's just so many episodes to work through now that.

People.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Are still trying to get caught up. Yeah. So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right, Robbie. So welcome. And what is. What is your question for us this evening?

[Caller Robbie]

Yeah, thank you. So, first of all, I'm A big fan of the show. Thank you for everything that you guys do. But, yeah, my question is about kind of this idea of coronation.

As a sacrament. I know you guys are going to talk a lot more about this, so maybe I'm jumping the gun, but I specifically wanted to ask. There seems to be this conflict. I don't know if it's a conflict or a development, a change or something, where early on it looks like the patriarch is crowning the emperor and. Or later like the king and the king of Yugoslavia or something. But then.

Later it seems as though, like the. The tsar and I don't know, maybe some emperors you would know better.

Kind of purposefully crown themselves seemingly as a symbol of their authority comes directly from God and not through the Church. At least that's what I've read from people who talk about this. So I don't know that that's kind of one of the parts that kind of doesn't sit well with me. It seems like if it's a sacrament, it should be like a sacrament that comes from the church and everything, and why the flip flop? So I don't know if you guys know anything about that, but that's always been a great curiosity to me, ever since I started looking into this stuff.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, well, so. So actually, at the end of this half, we're going to take people on a little walk through a particular coronation ceremony for an empress. So hang on to that, that'll be fun. And it's one of the later Byzantine emperors, but. But I am. I can't name any names off the top of my head, so maybe, you know, Father Stephen. But I. I have remember reading about some European kings that do crown themselves. You know, there's a sense of.

You know, that there's this. This sense that, as you said, you know. Well, that's mine. I'm the person with the power here anyway.

So, you know, gimme. But I would say, though, that in general, the standard is that, you know, the king is crowned by whoever the chief bishop in his realm is. That's what typically occurs.

Certainly. I'm sure that's what we're going to see, you know, not too long with King Charles iii, is that the Archbishop of Canterbury is going to put the crown on his head, you know, that it's not something he does for himself. I don't know. Father Stephen, do you know of any Christian kings that are crowning themselves?

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah, well, so.

There'S, of course, I mean, famously, there's the Charlemagne argument about whether he crowned himself or not. Yeah, I knew that was a little fuzzy, but, but, but also. So in terms of, of Robbie's direct question.

A lot of people now, I mean, this was. Everybody Learned about this 20 years ago when I was coming into the church, but apparently nobody does now, or at least I have reason to believe that a lot of people haven't about what happened from the 16th century on with the Russian church.

That. Right. I mean, Peter the Great gets rid of the patriarch.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, there's no Patriarch, there's just the Holy Synod.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right. And he does that deliberately to pattern the government of the Russian Orthodox Church after the government of the Lutheran churches in Germany.

And then in later periods they bring in Jesuits to teach at all the seminaries. Right. So there's this period of time where.

The Russian Church gets subjected to the Russian state.

Those tsars are not super pious people in the sense of Orthodox piety, at least. Right.

And so a lot of the traditional practices of the Orthodox Church.

Get subjugated to the whim of the emperor or empress, if we're talking about Catherine. Right.

And so lots of things happen like that because the church did not have the power. Well, obviously you can't have the czar getting crowned by the patriarch if there isn't one.

And so lots of things like that happen. Lots of things even by people who are saints. They're saints because of how they live their lives. Right. But you have texts coming out of Russian seminaries and Russian church officials at that time where you find Lutheranism or Roman Catholic, Jesuit theology, or at least terminology all over the place. Right. And it's not that they were heretics, it's not that they weren't really Orthodox, they were. It's just the time they grew up in the education they received. That's the terminology they learned. And so in their lives, they're clearly practicing the Orthodox faith in a true way.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Or at least the truest way they could, given the material realities of the time and place that they lived. And that's why they're saints. But.

A lot of the outer forms in that get subjugated to the whims of some very not holy people in the Russian civil government, which really.

The further you go into the modern age is deliberately trying to compete with and pattern itself after the modern governments of Western Europe. That's sort of an inferiority complex.

And so, yeah, a lot of things like that unfortunately happen. I mean, we're in part eight of our Sacrament series. But if you go to a lot of the theological manuals that are published during that period when the Jesuits are teaching in all the Russian seminaries, they'll say there's seven sacraments and they give the Roman Catholic list. Yeah, Right. Whereas if you look at older stuff or. Or Orthodox stuff that's coming from places not affected by the Russian crown and what it's doing, you'll see longer lists. You'll see lists of 10, lists of 12.

But. So, yeah, I would chalk up those incidents with the Tsar to that same kind of.

Foreign spirit from Europe making intrusions into the. The civil government of Russia. And that isn't, to me, any kind of argument against the Orthodox faith because, I mean, there are iconoclast emperors within the Byzantine Empire.

At least one of the emperors was a monothellite. There's emperors with all kinds of different sympathies all through. You know, and the iconoclast emperors were killing people and torturing people for having icons, you know.

So there's no guarantee that any given emperor will be a saint, that he will respect the church and subject himself to the church any more than there was any guarantee that the king of Israel would actually read the Torah and try to practice the commandments. Right.

So, yeah, yeah, you're right that those things happened. And I think that spirit, that modern spirit from Western Europe that infected the government of Russia for centuries is.

Responsible for it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There you go.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

That's my take, at least.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Does that help, Robbie?

[Caller Robbie]

Yeah, that's very helpful. Thank you, Fathers. I love the show. And, yeah, my wife and I are actually in the process of. And my son of joining the Orthodox Church right now. So a lot of that is because of you guys. So thank you.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Thanks be to God. Thanks be to God. All right, well, thank you for calling. Okay, so the question now that I know is on everybody's mind is did Constantine really convert to Christianity?

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There you go.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Good night. Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's been a while since I did one of those.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah, so.

Yeah, this is. This is.

One of those things. So the part of the problem. Part of the problem is the kind of ludicrous level of presentism.

That'S presupposed when this topic is even addressed by contemporary people, including scholars. So the question, as it is commonly asked in the present day, did Constantine convert to Christianity? Is understanding conversion to Christianity as a combination of some kind of emotional experience or feeling with him, changing his ideas or beliefs about certain things.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

So a bunch of problems there. First of all, as people who listen to this show know, that's not what conversion is.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. You're not Judged by, you know, Christ is not going to come in the end to judge how everyone feels in their heart.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah. Or what everyone thinks in their head.

So that's a problem. It's a bigger problem for anybody who's trying to work as a historian, because how on earth can you determine the feelings in someone's heart and the ideas in their head?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Like, good luck with that. Right, Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, there's no point in the canonical tradition regarding conversion or the baptismal service where anyone says, you know, how do you feel? Or like, are you sincere? I mean, there is a line, of course I believe in him as king and God, but that's really, like, I'm faithful to him as king and God. Like, this is what I'm going to do, you know? Right, yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And so the main. All of the main arguments that are made by people.

Not all, most. We'll get to the other one in a little bit. The main arguments that are made for why, when. When somebody's going to say he didn't really become Christian are all examples of where he tolerated Roman paganism.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right. So he lets. He doesn't burn down all the pagan temples.

He doesn't.

You know, require all the senators to convert to Christianity. He doesn't.

Immediately say, no more coins with pagan symbols on them. We're going to print Jesus on all the coins now or something.

Right. So he doesn't do those things. Right. And therefore he didn't really become a Christian. The presupposition there, of course, is that Christianity is completely intolerant.

The presupposition there is that if he was really a Christian, he would have immediately gone on a witch hunt.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Outlawed a lot of them. Yeah. Kill them all.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah. Which falls a category of what? Right. Because there aren't a bunch of Christians around in the third century, even at the depths, the bitterest depths of persecution, who are writing things, talking about how, oh, we need to get revenge. One of these days we're going to get power and we're going to go and kill all these pagans the way they killed us and torture them the way they tortured us. There aren't any Christians writing those things because that's not how Christianity works.

Right. We have a rich theology of martyrdom that was taken over from the Jewish concept of martyrdom in the Second Temple period.

Okay. We're not looking for. We're not. We're never looking for revenge. So why would you expect Constantine to do that if he became a Christian? Right. That's just a prejudice that a Given person has against Christianity and a caricature of Christians that they have. And since Constantine doesn't turn into that after his conversion. Oh, he must not have really converted.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Kill them all or else you don't love Jesus.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yes. Colossally stupid argument. Right. Colossally stupid argument or set of arguments. Right.

But so if we look at the only thing we have access to what St. Constantine did after his conversion and as we already mentioned, we have unparalleled access to all the things he did.

It paints a very different picture of change right off the bat. Right off the bat.

St. Constantine establishes himself as the sole emperor of Rome. He is now Imperator. He makes, he assembles a Roman triumph, Right. Which was a large military procession, like a huge military parade.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, it's a.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Into the city of Rome victory parade.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That you do after you win.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right. And so he organizes this, marches into Rome and all the ones in the past. Right. The emperor marches into Rome, proceeds to the temple of Jupiter on Palatine Hill and there as the Pontifex Maximus offers sacrifices to Jupiter in thanks for his victory and his enthronement, St. Constantine marches into the city and goes directly to his palace. Right. Does not pass Jupiter Temple, does not collect 200 dead goats or whatever. My analogy is breaking down.

He goes directly to his residents.

Did not offer the pagan sacrifices.

Now our folks who want to say, I mean that in itself is, is, is a huge piece of evidence that the conversion was real.

Right. The fact that he breaks with centuries of tradition by not giving thanks to Jupiter for his victory and instead giving credit to Christ. That alone. Right. Is monumental as a break. So our. No, he didn't really convert people.

Their response is. Well, technically his victory was in a civil war.

Not over foreign enemies.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, I mean if you're going to make that claim, then you have to show that no Roman emperor ever did that kind of thing when being victorious in the civil war. And you know what they did?

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah, Augustus sure celebrated.

And this wasn't just a one off for St. Constantine. It isn't just, oh, that one time. He didn't offer pagan sacrifices. Right. He himself never offered any more pagan sacrifices despite having been a priest. And he never tried to offer the Eucharist himself.

Meaning he abandoned the priesthood, which pagan.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Priesthood, which he had by right of being the emperor. Right, yeah, yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And that included he ended pagan sacrifices before his armies went into battle and instituted having Christian priests come and offer the Eucharist.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, that's a big deal.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

He.

He issued a law that Christian clergy within the empire were exempt from public service. There were a couple different types of public service in the Roman Empire. There was, of course, military service, but there was also just sort of public work service where you get kind of drafted to do work of the community. Right. Labor.

That you're eligible for.

Christian clergy were exempted from that so that they could serve the liturgy and commemorate St. Constantine at the liturgy in prayer. Because this is where the word liturgy comes from. It means public works.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

So the Christian liturgy, Christian prayers, Christian worship was reclassified by St. Constantine as public service.

Offered to the empire. So they were immune from all other public service when he built Constantinople.

St. Constantine built Constantinople and made the pagans pay for it.

Literally. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

He.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

The Christians were exempt from the tax. He made pagans pay the tax. And this caused. This was a sort of passive aggressive way to close down pagan temples because he took as tax money the money that would have gone to those pagan temple endowments. And so a lot of the pagan temples ended up closing because they couldn't afford to keep functioning because their money was going to build Constantinople, which was the first city built in the history of the world with no pagan temples in it.

And yes, that includes cities in ancient Israel, as we unfortunately know from the Old Testament. Yeah, right, right. That's.

No pagan temples within the city of.

Constantinople ever.

In 325, he shut down gladiatorial combat.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Which you know, that thing that he did in life will echo into eternity.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yes. And you. And you are not entertained.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

They're making a sequel to that movie. Did you know that?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I did not know that.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Russell Crowe is not in it for obvious reasons. Spoilers.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Les Misgab was not the sequel to. Anyway.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

No, no, that doesn't work, man. Back to the drawing board with that film theory.

So Saint Constantine also outlawed crucifixion as a form of capital punishment.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

He did not outlaw capital punishment.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

That's hanging. Gotta be honest here. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And I'm sure some people were getting their heads cut off by swords too.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Probably. Yeah. But it was mostly hanging instead of crucifixion. But he got rid of crucifixion because he said it was disrespectful to Christ. Them to crucify people.

One of the most interesting laws he issued was he issued a law that slaves and convicted criminals could not be branded except on their feet.

Right. So one of the punishments in the Roman Empire for being convicted of certain crimes. Right. Or when you were a slave, to mark you out as a slave, was you would be branded and they would generally brand you in a very conspicuous place because the idea was you don't want this slave to be able to cover it up and escape. You don't want.

You know, criminals to be able to disguise the fact that they were convicted of this crime. You want them to be permanently marked. So they generally rebranded in the face.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Because that was really hard to cover up. And. And in that law, St. Constantine explicitly says that the reason criminals and slaves can no longer be branded on the face is that branding, the branding of the face, the disfigurement of the face, disrespected the image of Christ in which the person was created.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's amazing. It's not just like this is cruel or whatever, but like it's actually a theological reason.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yes, yeah. That that person is in the. Even the slave, even the convicted criminal is created in the image of Christ and therefore you cannot disfigure him in this way.

So, of course.

Right. There's a collective case there for how he's ruling and how he's thinking after his conversion that I think is entirely compelling. Right. I'm not saying he had all of his theology worked out correctly. I'm not saying. Right, right. But in terms of. Right. This. This pagan who's now become the most powerful man on earth. Right. Claims to have become a Christian. Let's look at how he governed.

There's. This is, I think, conclusive evidence that he was at least trying to be a Christian. Yeah. He was at least trying to figure out what that meant. No one was making.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No one was making him do this stuff. And it was probably in his. In terms of just, you know, shoring up his power and stuff. It was not in his best interests, you know, to change these kinds of policies that had always, always kind of sort of worked for Roman empires, emperors, you know, to aggregate them.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

They're not like a bunch of powerful, wealthy Christians who are going to repay him for doing this.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No. Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Because before the edict. Before the edict under.

Diocletian. Right. The Roman government seized all the Christian property. Right. Christians had nothing. They're being tortured, they're being mutilated. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

So, yeah, that whole dog don't hunt. So probably, though, the most famous Christian thing that St. Constantine did was convene the Council of Nicaea.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Here come the conspiracy theories again.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. There's so many of these. I feel like we should just do like, you know, lightning round naming them off.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All the things that the.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Well, some of them require a Little more explanation.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's true.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

This is. This is like, what? I don't even know how many I've listed here. Is this like a top ten, top eight, something like that? Because we could go on forever listing if we tried to list every weird Council of Nicaea conspiracy theory.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay. So I'm going to just throw them out, and if you have something you have to say about a particular one, then just say it.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right. Okay. So the Council of Nicaea did not. I feel like there should be a little bell or something. Ding. Did not decide what's in the Bible.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

That I have something to say about.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah. So this is common. Right. All kinds of very intelligent people say this. Right. And it's just entirely an urban legend that there was some kind of canon, either of the Old or New Testament or something that was decided at Nicaea that they decided some books were in and somewhere. It did not happen. It was not even discussed at the Council of Nicaea. Now, this is one of the ones where. Where.

Like, I have a theory maybe about how the misunderstanding that started the urban legend. Right. But the more I investigated it, the more I found that that's not at all what happened. So you will find.

Testimony that after the Council of Nicaea, St. Constantine requested 50 copies be made of the Christian Scriptures.

Right. So my thought is someone reading that sort of tried to connect the dots and said, well, wait a minute. Like, those copies must have had a table of contents and therefore, de facto. Right. That's a canon list. So. Right. Like, maybe that's where it came from. But as I investigate more, I discovered upon further research that he actually commissioned 50 gospel books.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So. Yeah, there's just liturgical gospels that.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

The four. With the four Gospels and that's it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yes. Yes. You can't get a canon list from the four Gospels. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Y.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And the four Gospels had been established as the four Gospels at least since the middle of the second century. St. Irenaeus talks about it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So this is at least 200 years. Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yes. He didn't decide which gospels were gospels. Right. Okay, back to the list. The Council of Nicaea did not.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Also did not. Ding. Create the Roman Catholic Church.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Sorry.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay. Did not ding. Cover up Jesus secret family. So these Mary Magdalene conspiracies. Yeah. Did not change the identity of Jewish people.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

What's that about?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Actually, I don't know what that's about.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Well, there's variations of this. There's. There's English people. Were the real Jewish people. There's.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, okay.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

There's black people were the real Jewish people.

There's a whole series of those where St. Constantine declared the people who we now know as Jews to be Jews and some other group that actually were the original Israelites to not be anymore.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Wow.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Which didn't happen.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right, all right, all right. So British, Israelism, etc. All right. The Castle of Nicaea did not. Did not. Ding. Burn any books, any churches or people.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yes, yes. There was a functioning Arian church in Constantinople for another century after the Council of Nicaea.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

How about that?

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

For a hundred years, Nestorius closed it.

Until when he was the archbishop of Constantinople. Yes. So.

There was what, right there in the imperial city? Arians. Right. Arians were not getting killed. They were not getting burnt. St. Constantine spent the rest of his life trying. Well, the rest of Arius life, actually trying to get Arius to be reconciled to the church. Writing letters to Arius, writing letters to bishops, trying to heal this thing. So not only did he not go and start killing all the Aryans. Right. Like, he was trying to see if we couldn't figure this thing out. Right, yeah. So. Yeah. So he didn't have to burn any books because they didn't decide on the canon.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, right. Exactly.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Exactly.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay. So relatedly, the Council of Nicaea did not force Constantine's theology on anyone because he might have been kind of a semi Arian.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah. All indicators are that the decision of the Council of Nicaea regarding the deity of Christ is not. Actually was not Constantine's personal opinion at the time of the council.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There you go.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

All right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The Council of Nicaea did not. And this should be really obvious, everybody, but anyway, did not proclaim Jesus to be divine rather than merely human.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Well, it's not obvious to Dan Brown.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I know, I know. That's the thing is people say this. They're like, oh, the Council of Nicaea invented the idea that Jesus is God. I'm like, this is God, Right. Excuse me.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

The Ariads. The Ariads thought Jesus was God.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

They thought. Yes, exactly. They just thought he was a God rather than the God.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, the big debate in the first couple centuries especially was not so much how or is he God, but rather is he human?

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Well. And in what sense is he divine?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

In what sense is he divine?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. Okay. The Council of Nicaea did not. Ding. Move Christian worship to Sundays. I mean, read. Just.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Sorry, Ellen G. White. Sorry, Ellen G. White.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I think that's two episodes in a row where we've got.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

No, it was Barry Baker, Eddie Last. Oh, that's right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And the fact that you can't tell white woman heresy arcs apart is some kind of racism. And I have to call you on it publicly.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Maybe I should read my own book.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah, that would help.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You know, I wrote it down in my diary so I wouldn't have to remember.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

So. Yeah. So that didn't happen. The Lord's Day. It's in the pages of the New Testament that Christians were gathering on the Lord's Day.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

The first day of the week.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Sunday, right now. Now, that's it. This one, though, I have, is one where I have a theory again.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So there's actually a possible basis for.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

This, a possible basis of complete misunderstanding. Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay. Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And that's that, say Casati did issue a law making.

Sunday the first day of the week, the Lord's Day. We'll just say the Lord's Day. Right. Kara Key. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

A.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

An official day of rest, meaning.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

What that functionally meant. Right. If you were a farmer, you didn't get any days of rest. Right. But which was most people. But in cities, government offices, for example, the bureaucratic offices of state. Right, the government offices, government functions were shut down on the Lord's Day. Right. Because everyone, including the government officials, including the emperor, were in the liturgy. Right.

Except this is another one of those interesting little tidbits when you read the law. There was one government office that stayed open on the Lord's Day, and that was the office of manumission. If you wanted to free a slave, you could go free a slave on the Lord's Day. That's the one civil government function are allowed to do.

That's pretty. And once again, testimony to, you know, this is the only testimony we have to the thoughts and feelings of St. Constantine. Right. But that he understands something going on there.

With the Lord's Day and the Resurrection and what's that about?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Nice.

Okay. The Council of Nicaea did not begin the practice of baptizing babies.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yes, yes. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Did not.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Sorry. Certain groups of Baptists. That's not all Baptists.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's true.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

There are a lot of Baptists who are good, reasonable people who have some understanding of church history.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, there's a few folks out.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

There, though most of the Baptists that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I was raised with have never even. I mean, and it's not their fault, but they've never even heard of the Council of Nicaea.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's not their fault. No one ever told them about this. Yeah. And finally, the Council of Nicaea did not have the option to change the mode of production in the Empire, which seems like a kind of abstruse thing for us to. To.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You know, deny. But. But people have said this like, you know, they had a chance to get together and vote, like, to end slavery. They could have done that.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yes. People have said this recently. Very well educated, very smart people in public who know a lot. Who. If I name names on this show. Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Who.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

If I name names on this show, I would name. But I don't do that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Especially when I'm about to say something is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard in my life.

So.

Yes. Yes, A very wise, smart, intelligent person. And then a bunch of other at least reasonably intelligent people, like, retweeted this and praised this. It's like the most brilliant thing ever said about how everyone's looking.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This Twitter is now.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah, I don't care. I'm calling this. I'm saying this person said one of the most colossally stupid things I've ever heard. And you can tell him that I'll explain it to him in person.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

This was a horrible missed opportunity because they could have. They could have ended slavery, they could have ended poverty in the Roman Empire. Right. Like, they could have just voted to do that. Right. Like, let's just completely change the economic system under which the entire Roman empire functions by 300 bishops voting on it. Yeah, right. Bishops voting. Right. Yes, yes. Like, about something that the council was not convened to decide. Right. Remotely.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And. And has no jurisdiction over.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right. But there's multiple levels to how dumb this is. So the first level of how dumb it is settling.

Like, we just said.

That would have worked if they tried it. Right. Like, that was actually a possibility.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, we should. By the way, we should not say that we're, like, pro slavery or anything. It's just like, no, this was not a possibility at this time.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

That was not something they could do. Now, there were people at this time, for example, like St. Gregory of Nyssa. Well, a little after this time. But St. Gregory of Nyssa.

Two subsequent Paschas in his sermon told his people they had to free all their slaves because it was morally wrong for them to claim to own another person created in the image of Christ. We just talked about how the manumission office was the one office open on the Lord's day. Right. So, yeah, clearly Christianity was going to end slavery. But you can't do that in, like, a day by a bunch of bishops voting. Right. Because an empire is a complex economy. With sources of labor and value generation and these kind of things. You can't just like flip a switch like, okay, now we're going to be capitalists, right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, and you know, let's face it, when was the last time that, you know, like an agreed statement voted on by bishops became immediately effective to everyone who possibly read it, like, oh, yes, yes, that's not. That's. I wish, you know, like, I wish.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

But, but no, so, but, but there's a deeper level of dumb. There's a deeper level of dumb. At that deeper level of dumb is not understanding that there are.

Material preconditions for ideas to emerge.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right? So.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Part of the reason they could decide to become a capitalist democracy in 325 at the council of Nicaea is that they had no idea what capitalism or democracy were, right?

These ideas did not exist yet. Right. You can't have capitalism really until you have the idea of enclosure and until you have the idea of commodity production.

At the beginning of industrialization, which didn't exist yet. Right. Like the ideas on which those later ideas were built did not exist yet. Right? So yes, people like St. Gregory of Nyssa could look at the institution of slavery and say, this is wrong, and say to individual people, you need to not participate in this.

Right? But if St. Constantine, let's say they'd taken a vote to end slavery and St. Constantine said, you're right, I hereby issue this law, Slavery is over, Everyone is free. What happens the day after?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Who's farming food?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, I mean.

Just doesn't.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right. Like.

This, this requires massive restructuring. So not only.

Could they not have done it, right. But they could not have even conceived of doing it in 325 AD. So the idea that somehow was a missed opportunity, that they are somehow blameworthy, the fathers of the Council of dicea are somehow blameworthy because they're being too narrow minded and just focusing on this theological stuff and not, you know, our important, you know, bourgeois liberal values. Right. Is ridiculous and absurd and one of the stupidest things that's ever been said publicly Anyway. Anyway, yeah, they couldn't have done that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

This would have been. This argument is like saying that Vatican One in the middle of the 19th century should have voted to abolish the Euro, which didn't exist yet. Right? That's right. Anyway, yeah, rant over. I think this is the first time I've gone on a full on rant like that on the show, but people who live with me hear them all the time.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. On this, I'VE heard you rant on whole Council of God a couple times. Times.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Okay, fair.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah, fair.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So there's some things that the Council of Nicaea did do. Yes.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Now the positive. Let's focus on the positive.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. We don't need to get into super detail here, but I think it's just important to kind of debunk a bunch of that stuff. Okay. So, yes, the Council of Nicaea did, you know, make a ruling against Arianism, though not strictly because there were still some semi Aryans kind of around.

The Council of Nicaea did establish how you're supposed to date, Pascha.

The Council of Nicaea did codify the findings of a bunch of preceding local councils. Let's see if you actually read the canons, they'll say, and this council and this council and the Council of Nicaea did establish the very important precedent of actually holding ecumenical councils. So that's why we call it the First Ecumenical Council.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right. And they of course tied that back to Acts 15 in the council of Jerusalem. But. Oh, yeah, this is a different conception. Right. The idea didn't come out of nothing because as we just said, ideas don't come out of nothing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But yeah, they use that same language. It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us. And.

That formula gets picked up then, you know, by the other ecumenical councils.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right, right. And so they're, they're building on something. But this then establishes the pattern that's going to be used going forward.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And you know, a part of that pattern that a lot of people aren't happy with and that probably is responsible for a lot of those urban legends at all that we've been talking about is the fact that the emperor, in this case St. Constantine presided at the council.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Called it. And then presided. Right. And so again, this is a prejudice that's wormed its way deep into our brain of the idea of separation of church and state. Right, yeah. If you're an American, if you're not an American.

You may not have separation of church and state per se, but the modern world, the modern west at least, definitely has an idea of a sacred sphere and a secular sphere. So there's the church and then there's the secular. Right. So there's the church authority and the secular authority. Right. And so if you have that paradigm in your head, then, hey, the emperor, he's this secular authority and he's coming in here to meddle in the Church's business. Right. Which he shouldn't be involved in because he's the secular authority. Right.

But of course, 325. We don't have any of those concepts yet again.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. I mean, we've also literally just stopped having an emperor who was the chief priest.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yes.

He's the first one to do it this way, even to separate it this much. Right, right.

So.

So, so this idea has not. Has not developed yet. But if we look at why St. Constantine says he called the council, he called the council because he wanted to preserve the peace of the empire, the peace and unity of the empire.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Not because he was dabbling in theology, not because he wanted to weigh in on one side or the other, not because he wanted an imperial church that would do his bidding. Right. It was because there was this theological issue that it seems like he didn't entirely understand at the time that was deeply troubling the empire, causing civil discord, strife, lack of unity and his job as the emperor, Remember, justice. Everything in the right place, everything functioning properly, everything good. He's concerned about this. And so when you look at the canons of the council, you see the canons are aimed at the communal life of the church and thereby the communal life of the empire. Yeah, Right. And so this falls under his concern. Right. That said, it is the bishops who decide the issues. He calls the bishop together to decide these issues to preserve the peace and unity of the empire.

As we mentioned a couple times Now, St. Constantine's theology, his own personal theology.

You know, seems like he was probably some kind of semi Aryan. Right. Not a seminarian. Not all seminarians are semi Aryans.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Some are.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Some are, yeah.

So.

It'S hard to totally tell a lot of the case. A lot of times you'll see people very confidently saying that he was a semi Aryan. But the people, the main reason they're saying that so confidently is that they're thinking of, like, Eusebius of Nicomedia and Eusebius of Caesarea, who are semi Arians, who were in his inner circle.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And wasn't it Nicomedia who baptized him? Is that right?

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Nicomedia was sort of the bishop of Nicomedia was sort of the imperial chaplain for a while.

So there, there's. So there's an element of guilt by association there. Now, I'm not saying he wasn't. Right, but I'm saying we don't know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

We don't have. Again, we don't have access to his inner thoughts and feelings.

But, you know, he probably was somewhere in that range because these are the guys he's hanging around with. And Right. As. As I mentioned before, he's trying to find some way to mediate this dispute. Right. He's not just falling on the Nicene side and saying, arius, you're no good, you're a heretic. He's still trying to reconcile things for the rest of Arius's life.

Now, we do have the closest thing we do have to a sort of direct window into his theological thinking is he actually delivered what is commonly titled the Oration to the assembly of the Saints.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And you can look that up.

Online. There's five or six different public domain translations of it. It's all over the place. There's lots of really interesting things there that, again, are very confirmatory toward the idea that this guy is at least trying to figure out how to be a Christian. Right. And be the emperor.

But, you know, it's not long enough and detailed enough. It's not like him presenting a systematic theology either, where you could figure out what he believed on all these different issues. But the key elements is speaking from a very Roman perspective in the sense that he's. He sees Christ as sort of the one who has delivered the Roman world, the gentile Roman world, from idolatry.

So there's a lot of.

Distinction made there. Idolatry as an evil, the pagan worship as an evil, over against Christ as the Logos. Right. Bringing true knowledge of God Right over against idolatry. But he gets into some nuance. He has kind of a nuanced critique of Plato in there. He has.

He talks about a number of different things, and he ends up sort of the. The last part of it is he's taking these ancient Roman pagan texts that he says are from the Sibylline books. It's hard to tell if that's true.

Because the sibling books were kept secret and stuff. So I'm sure he thought they were from the sibling books, but whether they actually were or not is tricky. We've talked about those before on the show, but which he interprets as being prophecies of Christ that were given to the Roman civilization to prepare them for the coming of the Gospel.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

So that's also f. It's sort of a fascinating document. And like I said, it's not a systematic theology. You're not going to figure out whether he's a heretic or not from it.

In this case. But again, it gives further evidence that this guy's at least.

Trying to think and function as a Christian. And what does now. Now that Christ had quite literally kind of appeared in his life Right. How do I need to reorient things? So I mentioned that aside from the, hey, he didn't kill all the pagans, so he must not have been a Christian. The other big argument is, and this is actually, this has a little more teeth to it, is the fact that after his conversion, he was manipulated politically into murdering his wife and his son.

Which is bad. That's bad, yes. Those are horrible sins.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And horrible crimes.

So we have to remember, though.

That saints are saints.

Based on how they end up.

Not based on having been like, perfect their whole life.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

So, you know, St. Paul tells us he's responsible for a bunch of murders.

David was responsible for a murder.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

People are responsible for murders. That's not to say, oh, don't worry about it. Right. That is a grievous sin. So then what you have to look for in his life are signs of repentance.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

If we're going to talk about him as a saint. And so.

That brings us to his baptism.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. And legendarily goes, you know, on his deathbed. Right. So like he's.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So so little of a Christian. He waited until almost he was dead.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yes. Yeah, that's the. That's the.

One of the raps he gets.

So.

That'S not entirely true. So people will also. They'll generalize, generalize past.

Just Saint Constantine himself and say, oh, well, everybody.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Everybody got baptized on their deathbed because they thought there was no forgiveness of sins after baptism.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

A lot of that is semi imaginary.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

I'm not saying no one did that. Right. But with St. Constantine in particular, we know he wasn't doing that because St Constantine, near the end of his life, was preparing to begin an Eastern military campaign.

Meaning he was going after the Persians. And this is a whole subtopic that.

This episode's gonna be a long one, but I don't have to be this long. Get into relations between him and the Persian Empire. But there was an exchange of letters between him and the Persians, and there were issues with Persian. The Persian Empire's persecution of Christians. There were a couple of Persian bishops who were at the Council of Nicaea. It's the whole thing. But. So he was going to begin this campaign in the east, and his plan was that on his way to the east to begin to lead this military campaign, he was going to stop off to be baptized in the Jordan.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. He wanted it where Jesus was baptized.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah. And.

The then bishop of Alia Capitolina, formerly known as Jerusalem, was going to be one of the participants who was baptizing him. It was going to be a big thing. Right. So he had this all planned and then he got gravely ill. And so that campaign, at least under him, never happened. We won't talk about Julian the Apostate, his Eastern campaign and what happened there. But.

So that campaign never happened. And so he ended up, because he was sick, they baptized him where he was. Right. And that it ended up being his deathbed. Right. But that is because he got sick before the planned baptism and after he received that what's sort of an emergency baptism, he refused to put back on the imperial garb.

And refused to issue any more laws. He would only wear his white baptismal robe.

And so he spent his last days in repentance.

So all of this stuff goes into the understanding of him as Saint Constantine. Right. And.

Yes, his life is very different than that of.

Saint Seraphim of Serav. Right. Or any number of other saints. Right. But the saints live different lives.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right.

St. Constantine's a little more Old Testament saint, maybe, than it's definitely not a monastic saint. Right.

But.

Yeah, yeah. So through all of this, through how he conducts himself. Right. Because again, he's figuring this out. How does one be a Christian Roman emperor?

Right. How does one going. Go from being.

The at least semi divine right. Possessed by a genius, Right. Semi divine king and high priest of the Roman state.

To being a Christian emperor.

Ceding spiritual authority to other people. Right. He's figuring out how to do this in his own life. But what he sort of figures out is the beginning of sort of the template, sort of the pattern for what a Byzantine emperor, what a czar later is supposed to be like and how they're supposed to function.

Right. Vis a vis the church. And so people may have heard the term Symphonia. Right. Speaking with the same voice that's used to describe the Byzantine emperor, the correct role between, like the patriarch and the emperor. And again, sometimes we read into that our idea of the separation of church and state or even our idea of like, sacred and secular spheres that are two different things.

And that's not really the distinction between the two in their authority. Right. So the actual distinction is, for one thing, as we mentioned, the emperor cannot perform sacraments.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Including, as we mentioned with the caller, he's not supposed to perform his own coronation. Right.

He. He can't celebrate the Eucharist. He can't. Right. Do any of those things. That is not an authority. Right. That he has. We talked about what the monarch's job is in the first half.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

From the Scriptures, establishing and maintaining justice. Right. And the proper functioning of communal life. Those are his authority, serving as the icon of Christ. Right. In both senses. Right. So he has a ministry. He has a type of ministry, but it is not the same as the priestly ministry. Right. And so they function together in symphony. They are to function together in symphony in the same sense that a bishop and a priest and a deacon are supposed to function together in symphony.

Right. Those three have different ministries, but they should all be functioning together on the same page and speaking with the same voice. We're just adding in the monarch who has this other separate ministry. Right. But which should be acting in concert pun kind of intended with the others. Right.

And so now when we move into the third half, we will get into the sort of nitty gritty, we'll get to the actual topic and talk about the actual coronation of the emperor. And then.

After that sort of very practical side, we'll talk a little more about the way in which coming out of the New Testament.

How all of this that we've been talking about informs our understanding of things like government and politics and those kind of things. Things which I'm sure will be super non controversial with everyone.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, we will take a short break and we'll be right back with more Lord of Spirits.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Father Andrew, Stephen Dick 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.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

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[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The subject of Christ's significance, life and.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

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[Father Stephen DeYoung]

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[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Make a valuable addition to every Christian's library. The Story of Jesus is now available in paperback and ebook at store ancient faith.com that's store.ancientfaith.com we're back now with.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

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]

Welcome back, everybody. It's the third half of the Lord of Spirits podcast. And we're talking about the Making of Kings. This continues our series on sacraments. This is sacrament number eight. Where will we end? I don't know. I really don't know. But not here, not now.

So. All right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Without ever knowing the way anyway.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Where were they going?

Yeah. Yes, yes. Well, we'll be talking now about someone. The road that he walks on is. Is not paved in gold, but he. He could have made that happen if he wanted to. Rich, powerful guy, so. Right. So in doing some of the research for this show, we came across a really interesting text which is called Russian Travelers to Constantinople in the 14th and 15th centuries, which, I mean, every kid.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Should have this on his shelf.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And don't yours, everyone? Most people. Yeah, absolutely. We all read this in middle school.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right. It's not as exciting as Gulliver's Travels, I must say.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That is true.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

But more pertinent to the life of the church than Dollar's Travels.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

A little bit more. Yeah. So the editor is George P. Majeska. I don't know if it's Maeska or Majeska, but I want it to be Maeska. And so the book is actually a collection of, like it says on the label, you know, Russian travelers to Constantinople in the 14th, 15th centuries. And one of the travelers that he quotes the act, he actually includes the source material and then there's commentary and stuff is a text called the Journey of Ignatius of Smolensk. And this is from the late 14th century. So this is getting towards the end of the Eastern Roman, AKA Byzantine Empire, is when Ignatius of Smolensk makes this visit to Constantinople. One of the fun things about these travelers is that they go on these trips and then they write down the stuff that they saw. Often they are the only people writing these texts that we have, because sometimes the people who are living there don't ever bother writing it down because, like, well, everybody knows what happens or whatever.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

So anyways, what's cool, we should be clear, right? We just talked about St. Constantine. So he's the beginning of this. Right. So he didn't have a Christian coronation because he sort of became emperor, right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

By inheritance and then conquest. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, this is like a thousand years later now. More than a thousand years.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

This is a thousand years later. This is the other end of the Byzantine Emperor. So this is sort of the. The full flowering in terms of the. The. The rite of coronation in terms of this sacramental.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Coronation of the emperor.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And so this one. So he witnesses the coronation of Manuel ii. Paleologos, who is not the. The ultimate emperor, meaning the last. He's not the penultimate emperor, meaning next to last. He is the anti. Penultimate emperor. Next to next to last.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

You just wanted to use that word. That's all that was.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I do not get to use that word every day.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Well, you need to study Greek more because then. Because you define where you put the accent mark, whether it's on the alt.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The anti penult.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

The penult or the anti penult.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

So he's number three from the end, and he reigns from 1391 to 1425. So most of this is from Ignatius of Smolensk, but there are some other details from other sources included in this. So this is a rough outline of what his coronation actually would have looked like. So before they start the coronation proper.

Stonemasons walk up to the emperor and they show him chunks of marble. I'm not kidding about this. They show him chunks of marble and they say to him, what sort of tomb will your majesty order for himself?

The idea being like, you're going to die, so as he's about to be crowned the most powerful guy in the world, you're going to die. Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

So that, as Deuteronomy says, his heart will not exalt himself above his brethren.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. And so then there's this idea, then there's prayers that are said that he's going to establish a righteous empire. A righteous empire.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

The idea of establishing justice. Yeah. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So the patriarch of Constantinople and other clergy, then they come out of the altar and they go up to the ombo, which is that in most churches now is the space right, kind of right in front of the holy doors. They go to the ambo and they invite the emperor to join them. Right. So he comes up and the patriarch reads a prayer for the success of the emperor's reign. And then he chants, holy three times. Holy, holy, holy. So that sort of connects it, right, with the divine council, where we hear the thrice holy hymn. The people then they start chanting the holy over and over again. And while they do that, the patriarch anoints the head of the emperor with chrism in the form of a cross.

And then so then after that happens, the crown of the emperor is brought out from the sanctuary from the, you know, the holy place, or we sometimes we call it the altar by two deacons. They bring the crown out, and then after that, then the empress's crown is brought out by relatives or by two eunuchs. I'm not sure whether there's eunuchs around, but there are eunuchs.

And they then escort her to the center of the church. So she's not up on the ambo where her husband is. She's in the. Out on the Celia away is probably kind of roughly the center of the church up towards the front, though, still.

And then this is an interesting detail, and I want to look this one up because I'm not really sure what this is about. But the patriarch first puts a hood on the emperor's head and then he places the crown on it, and then he chants Axios three times. So I mean, it's looking a little bit like an ordination in some ways.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Not quite the same, but it's similar. They're clearly elements. Yeah, he's receiving an office and a ministry.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Ignatius of Smolensk says that the patriarch puts a cross in the emperor's hand. This is probably a scepter with a cross on top of it. Right. So it's a cross scepter.

And then the patriarch and the emperor descend from the ambo to the celaya, which is where the empress is. Right. And the emperor then crowns the empress. So you can see her role is quite different. You know, she does not receive all this stuff from the patriarch. But it's her husband then who gives.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Her the crown and shares it with her.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Sort of like a presbytera.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, there you go. And so then the emperor then places a gold wand decorated with gems into her hand. So it's kind of a scepter, but not quite the same thing. And then the emperor and the empress then go back to their thrones and the deacons intone acclamations for the royal family. God grant you many years. And that's. That's the. The order basically, as Ignatius of Smolensk, with some details from other sources that this scholar has put together for us, that's essentially the order of the coronation of an emperor with the anti. Penultimate emperor before the fall of Constantinople. Yes.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And this is during the liturgy, if I'm correct. Right, yeah. And so then.

As with many sacraments, there is sort of a culmination in the reception of the Eucharist.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, we'll talk about that in a little bit.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

By the. The emperor and. And empress. Yeah, which we will.

We will get to.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We'll get to that.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And people will be puzzled and dismayed. But you'll make it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It'll be great.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

We'll stay with you. We're here for you.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We'll be ruining both sort of Sunday school. And all the things that the babushki. Yay. Tell you.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah, told you. Yeah.

So.

Right. So here we have clearly expressed within the ritual.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And those connections to an ordination. Right. That, that again there's this ministry, there's this office being received by the emperor. But that is not again, just something that grows out of.

The practical matters of St. Constantine and the emperors thereafter. This is something that has its root back in St. Paul.

Specifically in what St. Paul says about the governing authorities, which of course in his day was the Roman Empire and the Roman Emperor.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Pagan. Pagan.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

The pagan ones. The pagan ones who were persecuting the church. Yeah. Beginning to at least who had killed Christ. Right.

Romans 13, specifically verses 1 through 7 where he talks about this.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. I'm going to read this off. Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God. And those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed. And those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good and you will receive his approval. For he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection not only to avoid God's wrath, but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes. For the authorities are ministers of God attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them. Taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed. Respect to whom respect is owed. Honor to whom honor is owed.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right.

So you see a couple elements there. One, as we were just referring to, that the civil magistrate. Right. In this case, the Roman authorities are God's servants.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And that's. And that the power, including the power of the sword, which is what a Roman emperor later had St. Paul killed with, is given to them by God.

And so we see this element, that's the one side of the ruler as icon and as minister. And then St. Paul goes to the other side, Right. Which is that veneration and honor, right and obedience, which is owed to the other way. Again.

Not based on the goodness or right, anything, any other qualities of the particular ruler, but the fact that they are the person who is in this position of God given authority. Right. And this mostly a lot of the majority. I wish all Orthodox people had this understanding with clergy. Right. That, that the respect that we pay to a bishop or to a priest or a deacon. Right. Is not based on their personal qualities, but based on the office they've received from God. That God is the person who will judge them and deal with them regarding how they've used that office and authority they've been granted. St. Paul is saying the same kind of thing is true of the governmental authorities because they also have this office from God and this responsibility from God. And this is St. Paul's position that he takes here is over. Against.

The increasingly popular array of Jewish positions at this time toward the Roman government that generally get categorized as zealotry.

St. Paul has his own period of zealotry against the church. Right. But it's not the quote, unquote, political zealotry that, for example, is going to lead to the Jewish revolts are going to get Jerusalem destroyed. Right.

There are, of course, three Jewish revolts, but much like the original Matrix trilogy, everybody only wants to talk about the first one. And they get worse as they go.

But so, and this is so common, we see this reflected, right. Two of Christ's disciples, St. Simon the Zealot, obviously is labeled as a zealot, but this is also actually what Iscariot seems to mean in reference to Judas.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

He was one of the Sicari, who were an extremely militant zealot group that literally spent their time assassinating Roman officials.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Look this up. People, they carried around daggers.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So they were kind of ready at any time to stick it in some guy's back.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

When they got the opportunity to kill a Roman, they took it. Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So Judas might have been one of these people.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah, it seems like. Seems most likely that that's what that's referring to, man. So.

This position is increasingly popular. This is why Christ gets asked whether it's lawful to pay taxes to Caesar.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Because there are from extreme militancy. Right. Murderous militancy all the way to people who become tax collectors who are complete collaborators. Right. This range of positions within occupied Judea and Galilee at this time. And.

St. Paul takes the position we outlined. And for St. Paul, that doesn't mean just like slavish obedience. Right. So when the Roman authority says no more preaching the gospel, he's still going to preach the gospel.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Right. You have to obey God rather than man.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right. But what it does mean, his position does mean, is that then he will voluntarily accept the consequences of that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. If you're going to.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Including Ultimately, yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, if you can resist the government, you don't complain. You accept whatever happens to you.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right. And so when that means he gets executed, he goes to his execution and becomes a martyr. Right, right. He doesn't try to get people to break him out. He doesn't. Right.

So.

I think in part this position that St. Paul takes is influenced by his past. He was born and spent his early years in Tarsus, and at one point after his conversion, not immediately after when he went to Arabia, but after went back to Tarsus for a period of time, probably at least a couple of years. And Tarsus is an interesting city and community. We won't spend too much time on it right now. But what's primarily interesting about it in this regard is that during the whole contest, so Tarsus is kind of in the crook where Asia Minor, what's now Turkey, meets the Levant. Right. Like what's now Lebanon. Right. Like in the crook there. And it's at the mouth of a river, so it's kind of centrally located there and became this strategic position.

So, like Antony and Cleopatra mustered their troops there for the Battle of Actium, for example.

But in this regard, what's important is during the. The rivalry between Caesar and. And Pompey, Tarsus and its surroundings, including its very large Jewish community.

Were deeply loyal to Caesar, to Julius Caesar.

And when they did that, Caesar took notice of it and he made Tarsus a free city, which gave them a bunch of tax exemptions and other things.

And he issued a mass grant of citizenship.

Not only to.

The officials in the city itself, but also to the prominent members of the large Jewish community who were his supporters in the area. This is how St. Paul ended up being a Roman citizen. Right. He tells. When he's arrested in Jerusalem in acts, he tells the centurion that he received his citizenship by birth, which means likely his grandfather, based on the timing, was one of these Jews at the time who received Roman citizenship from Caesar. And then you're able to give that to your descendants.

And the prominence of the support from this Jewish community is what led to the toleration of Judaism, not only in the area, but ultimately in the whole Roman Empire.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Wow.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

This is why the Jews were relatively. I mean, there were always issues. Caligula was crazy. Tried to put a statue of himself in the temple of Jerusalem. Right. There were things. Right. But on the whole, and Claudius expelling the Jews from Rome. But on the whole, Jewish communities scattered around the Roman Empire could gen Were generally exempt from having to engage in pagan Sacrifice from having to do these things, they were able to sort of live out their own lives within the larger community, keeping Torah. Right.

But so that's the way of life that St. Paul experienced as a very young man and then again later in life. And so he had seen an example. I think this colored his view of the Gentiles and the Romans in general, too. He had seen that they were not entirely unreasonable, they were not animals. He had seen that if one was willing to give honor and respect to authority, not 100%, but a lot of the time, you would be allowed to, as he says in the pastoral epistles, live a quiet and peaceful life in godliness and sanctity. Right. You pay your taxes, you meet your obligations, you show the respect that these people deserve, and they basically leave you alone. Right. And so that seems to have colored his position because that's sort of the position he takes for Christians, of how Christians should try to live in this pagan world. Right. Is the same kind of thing. Give respect to who it's due, pay your taxes. Right. Do good in your community.

Right. And good things will follow, or at least they'll mostly leave you alone. Right.

But St. Paul also had a game plan. This is also very clear both in Acts and in his epistles. And the culmination of that game plan.

The end game of it, was that he wanted to preach the gospel to and convert the emperor.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. He's always trying to get there.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yeah. Trying to get to Rome. And when he gets arrested, he's like, well, I'll appeal my way there. Right? Here's my chance.

And.

We know while he's under house arrest, ultimately in Rome, he's talking to. He's got members of Caesar's household and stuff who he's talking to. Right. He's trying to get that audience. He's trying to bring the emperor to Christ. Right. And for part of that time that he's thinking that you've got emperors like Caligula and Nero, right? So these aren't like nice people or sane people.

He's essentially trying to convert the Antichrist to Christianity. Right. Like, he's trying to.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Wow. Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

This guy was proclaimed himself a God, right? This guy who is.

And he's going to try and get him to become a Christian.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

What happens with St. Constantine when he converts? Right. Is St. Paul's plan coming to fruition?

This is, again, not this radical thing that the apostles never could have conceived of. Right. They very much could conceive of it. Right. Maybe not of everything that would happen afterwards, but they could conceive of a world in which that could happen, and that if that happened, how much of the world would then become Christian and how would the world change and how would idolatry cease? Right. So this is very much in tune with.

The first century gospel. So there's not this great disjunction, Right. That. That almost all of those conspiracy theories and a bunch of others we didn't mention are based on, that Christianity was going in this one direction, and then Constantine comes and derails it and takes it in this other direction. This was the direction. Yeah, yeah. So now all that said. All that said, now's the big letter. I know out there. Yes, I know out there there's a whole bunch of folks who identify as monarchists who got super excited that we're going to be talking about St. Constantine and the coronation of the emperor.

Okay, we gotta talk, guys.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Huddle up.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

You may have noticed there aren't actually really any more monarchies.

Not in the sense we've been talking about anymore in our world today.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. I mean, there's a handful like Brunet and Oman, you know, Saudi Arabia.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Like, these are not even that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Monarchs.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right. They're not Christian monarchs. Well, so you've got, on one hand, you've got countries who still have royal families as sort of figureheads. Right.

That's not to say they don't have certain social and cultural roles and responsibilities, but just in the sense that they're not actually governing the state. Right, that's right. So soon to be. I don't know, is he soon to be King Charles III or is he King Charles III? I don't know. He gets coordinated like 15 times.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, he is King Charles. But the crowning doesn't happen until sometime in May, if I remember correctly.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Okay.

Or, you know, the current king of the Netherlands, who's named Willem, like almost all the other ones.

Hey, if it works, it works. You have people who are essentially dictators, like some of those people you just mentioned, where there's no sacramental character to what they're doing. Right, right. There's no. There's no. You know, there's a big difference between Stalin and the czar. Right. Like both. Both of them, in a certain sense, had absolute power, but not really doing the same thing. Right. Even a bad czar was doing a fundamentally different thing. He was just doing it badly.

Or, you know, very common now, especially the west, is you have councils with no king.

Congresses and parliaments and. Right.

And the current situation, in almost all of these places is the result of a series of revolts and revolutions, most of them bloody.

And, and violent. Right. And you know, so it's not that we sort of have peacefully evolved to a higher place than monarchy. It's, you know, blood soaked history of kings getting murdered and that sort of thing.

And.

Again.

I hate to tell everybody, but.

In the real world it's not coming back in our lifetime.

But we're not going to end on a depressing note like that. Yeah, we're not going to end on a depressing note like that.

So what? Right.

We don't have monarchy. We definitely don't have a sacramentally coordinated emperor or king. Who's the head? Who's the actual head of state? The functioning head of state.

So can we just scrap this episode? Why did we bother doing it? Just a historical curiosity. Right.

For nerds.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And yes, I know, I know that in like 38,000 years we'll have a God emperor, but I won't be around then.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It'll be half, half, you know, gigantic worm or whatever.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

So I was. No, I was. Anyway, wrong franchise.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I understand.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

So, so. But we do still have a civil magistrate, right? We do still have people in various governmental positions of authority.

What can we take from this and apply it to them? Right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And so we're going to start at a place, and I want to be clear before we start at this place.

That we're about to talk about how the Emperor and the Empress received the Eucharist. We are not saying that your local government officials should receive the Eucharist this way with their wives or husbands, even if they're orthodox. Just to be clear, Even if they're orthodox, we're not saying you should do this, but we're going to look at this and then we're going to take some lessons from this.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Okay. So as we mentioned, sort of the culmination of that service that Father Andrew read through described is when they received the Eucharist.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So the way that this works is during the cherubic hymn in the Divine Liturgy. So, you know, this is when the clergy and the altar servers are about to make the procession of the, you know, of the unconsecrated bread and wine into the sanctuary. So during the trubicim, the Emperor enters into the sanctuary through the holy doors, AKA the royal doors. Although this is one of my little bugaboos. Those are not the royal doors. Royal doors are in the back of the church.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

The Emperor just walked through them. That was pretty true.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's true. But anyway, Touche, touche. Yeah. He enters into the doors that are at the center of the khanestasis. So he's, you know, walking straight up to the altar.

And.

His wife, she enters through one of the deacon's doors, the south. So she walks right up into.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

What do you use to enter.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Spit takes across the country.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's right. As people just heard, that ceremonial entrance of the empress into the holy place.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Yes. Behind the altar. And you know who got really mad about this? And it started all their problems. Nestorius.

Second time he's come up. Wow. He got mad about the empress coming. Coming and receiving communion in the sanctuary. And she defended herself by saying, well, the Theotokos entered into the temple.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Mic drop.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

But please, I went into the Holy of Holies. And Nestorius, rather than just saying touche, said, you shouldn't call her Theotokos. And it all went south from there.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. So when they go in. When they go in, the Emperor gets a little felonian put on him.

So, you know, all you young men in the Slavic traditions, when you become readers.

You'Re being vested like the Emperor for like a hot minute.

But yes, the Emperor gets a little felonian.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Do not exalt your heart above your brothers.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Indeed. Yes, that's right.

And they hand him a censer. And the Emperor stands at the altar, next to the altar, and he senses, while the clergy bring the bread and the wine into the altar. So he's sensing.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

As the great entrance.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah, at the great entrance. Yep, yep. And so then fast forward a bit into. In the liturgy, when it's time for communion, the Emperor, he receives the Eucharist from the Patriarch. Notice he does not go get it himself. He receives it from the Patriarch, and he communes along with all the clergy. So he communes at the altar with the clergy, and then the empress is communed within the sanctuary. So she's there, she's inside the holy place, but she's not like at the altar with the clergy, but she's communed within. And so that's how the Emperor and the Empress, at least at this later Byzantine period, received Holy Communion.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right. And again, we're not saying that you should do this with your local mayor and his wife or her husband.

Right. But what does this, once again emphasize?

That this is an office and a ministry.

That is the key element that this is emphasizing. Right. They're not communing as laity. They're communing as.

People with offices from God within the church. And so Even though, again, we do not communicate our civil magistrates this way.

This idea that the authority that the civil magistrate has, whether he's the mayor, whether he's the tax assessor, whether he's the President of the United States, whether he's the prime minister, is given to them by God. Right. They are, in a sense, a minister of God.

With responsibilities. Right. To promulgate, again, not their own will, but the law and commandments of God. And to serve as image in those two senses. Right. That they are to image the rule of Christ over the earth. Right. By how they conduct their office. And they are honored. They are venerated by us as those who have been given the authority to do that. We pay them the respect they are due even when they're lousy.

Again. See David and Saul.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, exactly.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right.

So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Even if Joe Biden comes to kill me, I will say, why are you coming here to murder me, Mr. President, don't you have better things to do?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But meanwhile, welcome to Louisiana. Would you like some? Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

So.

Now, that said. Right. That sort of gives us at least a little flavor of irrelevance for all this.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Even if we aren't really currently, and as I said, within our lifetimes, we're not going to really practice this sacrament, this mystery of the Church.

There's still an issue.

And this issue I want to at least point out.

Because this is something.

The Church has not done yet. And I think part of the reason the Church hasn't done this yet is that.

The Orthodox Church. So it's only been a little over a hundred years since Russia had an emperor.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And they were under Communism for most of that.

Vast swaths of the Orthodox Church are under Islamic governments.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

So the Orthodox Church does not have a long history of living in liberal democracies. Right. This is a relatively recent thing for us. And.

Since the fall of Constantinople, Modernity Rising has generally been greeted by kind of apocalypticism in a lot of Orthodox sources. Right.

So there hasn't been a lot of attention given to how do we function long term in this new structuring of the world. Because the fact that we have this new structuring of the world was taken to be a clear sign that it was about to end. Right? Well, yeah, assuming it doesn't end in my lifetime, which, of course it could. Right.

We have to figure out how to function. And there's a.

Living in a democratic. I won't say a democracy, really. It's a democratic system. Right. Republican system, whatever we want to strictly call it.

The kind of democratic system presents a fundamental puzzle to Christian ethics and Christian social ethics that we haven't really paid much attention to. Yes. There's for reasons working through that I just described. Right, and what do I mean by that? Well, in a sense, right. If.

You'Re voting on things, Right. If you're in some cases directly, more often indirectly, in a sort of representative sense, right. Voting on issues, that. That means every person is a magistrate of sorts.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So we all should be being communed up inside the alt.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

No, not what we're saying.

Yeah, but it's sort of everyone is and no one is. Right. But clearly there's a fundamental difference between me and the President of the United States or the Prime Minister of the uk.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

In terms of functioning as a magistrate, even though, like there are ballot propositions in Louisiana that I can vote on and if they win the vote, they go into force of law. Right.

So that's a different structure. Right. And the whole structure of rights. Right. So let me give an example. There's a whole question, right.

Should a Christian vote?

People come down on different sides of this.

Right? Like.

Should I vote at all? Right. If, if the available candidates who theoretically could win the election are all problematic.

Should I not. Should I not vote? What if that's always kind of true? Should I just never vote?

Or is there some kind of responsibility? Does that being a magistrate of a sort mean that I have a responsibility to exercise that power, which would of course have come from God, and therefore do. Am I, Should I vote? Do I have a duty to go and vote and exercise that power in some sense. Right. This is not something that has been fully thought through in terms of the orthodox tradition.

And part of the reason for that is like when the United States government was found, it was deliberately designed after the pre Christian Roman Republic.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And then if we do conclude that you either should or at least can, or it's indifferent for you to vote.

Theological approach, how do you vote?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, yeah, because, because like, you know, you vote for a candidate.

Or, you know, maybe you can vote for much more narrowly, like a, a referendum, a proposal, you know, proposition or something like.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

That, or a party or depending on your system.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, right. And. And maybe you can endorse some. Some of the things that'll happen as a result, could happen as a result of that vote and some things that you cannot endorse or again, you know, there's the problem of.

What if you vote for someone and then they do something other than what they said they were going to do are you responsible for that because you helped put them in power.

Right. So, I mean, it's just, it's. It's complicated from a Christian ethical point of view.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And at least for most of the people listening to this, maybe not all, but for most of the people listening to this, there's not somebody or a party you could go vote for whose platform is orthodox Christianity.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. No. No.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right. So this is a whole complex series of issues.

Right.

That we still need to wrestle with and still need to sort out.

But we can take an overall approach.

So within, for example, the. The Christianized Roman Empire. The Christian Roman Empire.

What did, you know, clergy and people do, especially a good example is when they had bad emperors. Right. When they had. We're under one of the bad ones. Right. And what you see is you see a veneration of the office, you see honor and respect being given. You see the pattern by St. Paul, and then you see the clergy and the church as a whole and even the laity then exhorting those people who find themselves in power to govern rightly, to govern righteously, to govern with justice.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And that approach, at least, is one that we can directly take regardless of our system of government. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

That we could both be respectful of the authorities, keep the laws until up to and until they conflict with God's law, and.

To continue to exhort those who are in power to utilize the responsibilities they've invested with, the authority and power they've been invested with by God in the manner that God has called them to use it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Amen.

All right, well, we're here at the end.

So.

I have so many thoughts about a lot of the stuff that we've been talking about in terms of where you could kind of go with this.

I think that.

One of the biggest temptations, I think, particularly for people who convert to the orthodox Christian faith and discover at least even some piece of all the stuff we've just been talking about with regards to emperors and kings and stuff is to really want that. Wow, it looks great. It's so glorious and shiny.

Despite the fact that, of course, the vast majority of even orthodox Christian monarchs were not great.

And sometimes people pine for monarchy and it's like, well, well.

Number one, that's not going to happen, like you just said.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

But also.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Most of us, most people living under a monarchy are not the important people. Most people are living way down at the bottom. Right. And that can be for our salvation.

But.

I think that the vast majority of Orthodox Christians or any Christians or whoever is listening to this, are not pining for monarchy, are not monarchists, are not ideologues along these lines. Most are probably just asking the question of, well, how am I supposed to understand all this? And how am I supposed to make sense of the fact that.

Largely speaking, most of these monarchs have not been good people.

Or even decent people in a lot of cases? What are you supposed to do with that?

You know, I think one of the things that, as I've studied history over the course of my life that I've discovered, and I think particularly in the last several years, as I've made a deep study of some particular times or places of history, is that you kind of have two choices of where you can land in terms of being a Christian and reading this kind of stuff and trying to understand it. One is that you can become very cynical. And certainly people do, right.

That often there's a pretty bad track record. And I mean, you know, you don't even have to just look at kings and queens and emperors and empresses. You can even just look at clergy.

There's often a pretty bad track record. So that's one way you can become cynical. You can say it's all just bunk or forget it, I've had enough. But the other way is the way that I prefer, and the one that I think is actually the Christian way, honestly, which is to look at all of it with hope. Hope.

And our hope is in the king of kings, right? The scripture, at the same time that it says, put not your trust in princes or in sons of men, also says all these things about good kingship. But it's not to say that even David is the end, is, you know, the point at which all of this has become what it's supposed to be. Because not even he who's man after God's own heart, not even he was the one that all kingship was pointing towards. That's Christ. Christ is the one. And so our hope is not a hope in any particular government system. It's not a hope in the rise of a pious, saintly, holy, orthodox emperor.

That's not what it is. And honestly, I mean, I had this thought a number of times when we were preparing for this episode, which is, you know, let's imagine here in America that there's a king. What kind of king would America generate?

Probably most of us would not want her to live under that king. Not great.

So, you know, that aside, though.

The point of all this is to point us towards Christ. And so.

What do you do in the meantime? I think One of the things that you discover, especially as you study church history in particular, is that while there is the grand game of power and borders and territories and riches and all this kind of stuff, while that is always going on in this life, there is a more important story that is also going on. And it's not that these two stories have nothing to do with each other, they have everything to do with each other. But it is that the story of the saints who are sort of the through line of all of this, that is going to be revealed at the end of time as the story of those who are in a sense really ruling.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

Right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's the saints who, as the scripture says, judge angels to whom the world to come is subjected. Right? They're the ones co reigning with Christ. And they show us what that looks like by doing it. You know, what does it look like for the saints to reign in glory? It looks like what they're doing for us right now. You know, they are intercessors for us before the throne of God. They also help to minister and to manage this creation in concert with God.

And.

The more that you look at even the very, very dark chapters of history, I think the more. And if you look at it really, really honestly and, and seek out the face of Christ in this, then you will see that there's always hope. Sometimes it feels kind of buried, but there is always hope. There's always hope. And if we look at history and if we look at.

Questions of.

Kingship and monarchy and government with triumphalism, then it's going to go very dark. It's going to get super dark, because that's really about power. But if we look at it with hope, then we're looking for Christ because He is our hope. He is the hope of the hopeless, the Savior of the storm tossed. And I think that's the way that many of us, especially at this point right now in American history in particular, again, I know that lots of our listeners are not Americans, but most of y' all are, and certainly in other parts of the world too. So even if you're not American, that it can feel pretty hopeless. It can feel pretty storm tossed. There's a lot of nutty stuff going on, dangerous stuff, despairing stuff, depressing stuff. And yet we always have our hope in Christ. Always, always.

Above all other people, Christians should be joyful. And our joy is possible because Christ is king. He also has sub kings under him. And inasmuch as our government officials are showing that as icons, thank God, we still need to honor them and respect them and obey them in as much as they don't tell us to disobey God.

But ultimately it's the saints who are really those co. Reigners with Christ. And everything points finally to him. Father Stephen.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

So there's a sort of unique paradox.

In contemporary life, which is that at the same time.

Everything is hyper political and everything is apolitical.

And what I mean by that, we may be more aware of the hyper political side, right?

All of a sudden, where you buy a chicken sandwich and who gets cast as the Little Mermaid is a political act of some sort.

Everything, every movie that comes out, every TV show that comes out, every announcement of anything, any opinion, any performance, any song, any anything.

Is.

Folded into a weird partisan politics thing.

At the same time, though.

Really, things are completely apolitical because.

None of that continued churn of lining up on either side of literally everything ever produces any change in the world, ever has any kind of actual effect on anyone's real life.

And it churns through so quickly that we, we can't even remember half of these things.

Right? Like, you know, the, the, the, the profound angst over, like the Captain Marvel movie. Anybody remember that?

This was something we needed to argue about before anybody even saw it. Now nobody cares.

And on the apolitical side, you know, when you look at people's social media, everybody sort of identifies as things. There are all of these sort of political labels, right? Some of the folks who got really excited about this episode might label themselves monarchists. You got people out there who are, you know, anarcho capitalists. You got people out there who are anarcho primitivists who dream of living in the woods with a rock or something.

You've got people like me who are radical anti centrists. You've got Marxist, Leninist, Maoist tankies, right? You've got all these people who put all these labels on themselves and sort of performatively issue these statements on social media as their, quote, unquote, political identity. But it's just sort of an identity, sort of, you know, like being a jock or a stoner or a goth in high school, right? Like you, you put this thing on yourself or, or if you're, if you've decided to identify with more mainstream politics, right, you repost things and you line up on either side of everything. But.

None of that has anything to do with what politics actually is. If you go back to, as is my want, say, Aristotle's politics, right? Politics is just the ethics of life and community together.

And we may not be able to recreate in our present day the kind of biblical and traditional model that we described in today's episode. But we can certainly exercise.

Christian.

I don't want to say morality, but Christian ethics, right? A Christian way of life, a Christian way of being in the world.

You could follow the teachings of the Orthodox Church and the way of life that the Orthodox Church represents in community with each other.

The biggest barrier to that right now is not that the Christian ethic is so hard to follow.

Or not that we don't love and care about the other people who go to our church. It's that we aren't actually living communal lives at all.

We're all isolated, signaling our respective stances on things, performatively on social media.

We're all sort of consuming media and or chicken sandwiches to indicate where we stand on things and that we're a good person and not one of those bad people. And we're not engaging with each other. But there's also.

Nothing stopping us from doing that in the sense that no one is going to physically halt us from going down to the church, to staying there and talking to people, to helping people there who need help, visiting with each other in each other's houses, spending time together, addressing issues in that community, addressing issues in the broader community around us. I'm not talking about whole nations. I'm not even necessarily talking about whole cities. It might just be neighborhoods. It might just be, hey, you know what? A lot of trash gets left on our street. Why don't we go out and pick it up together and spend time together doing that? And maybe while we're out there, we'll actually meet some of the other people who live next door to us and who live in our area, who we've never talked to, and we don't know their names. And maybe when we talk to them and they talk to us, maybe they might become part of our community and our church community.

And maybe we can start to transform this thing. And maybe that's what politics actually is, at least what Christian politics actually is.

And those things can start small in a few places. They can actually grow very quickly.

Places could be transformed very quickly.

And before you know it, the world we live in, maybe not the world out there, maybe not the world that's funneled to us by cable news and through the Internet and over social media, but the world we actually live in, once we go out and start living there in community, can be very transformed and very different.

And we could feel very different about it and about our lives, and we can feel a sense of connection that we've lost. And even if we don't have a single human king to represent Christ to us in terms of the civil authority.

There are all kinds of people in our community.

Who have leadership qualities, who have expertise in different areas.

Who can both represent Christ and the way of life in Christ to us, and who are worthy of our respect in return.

So even though this is a sacrament, we've just described that, as I already said, probably no one listening to this is going to get to participate in during our lifetimes.

The fundamental reality of it, the work of God that it represents in our communities and our communal life, is something we can at least taste when we take seriously the fact that we're living together.

And that we want the life that we live together to be one of good order, of holiness, of righteousness, and therefore of justice.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Amen.

All right, well, that is our show for tonight. Thank you for listening, everyone. If you didn't happen to call us live this time, we'd still love to hear from you. You can email [e-mail] you can message our Facebook page. You can also leave us a [e-mail].

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

LordOfSpirits.

And join us for our live broadcasts on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month at 7pm Eastern, 4 Pacific. Even if you are the King of rock and there is none higher, if.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You'Re on Facebook, follow our page, join our discussion group, leave reviews and ratings everywhere, but most importantly, share this show with a friend whom you know is going to love it.

[Co-host or Guest Speaker (likely Father Stephen DeYoung)]

And finally, be sure to go to ancientfaith.com support and I'll make sure we and lots of other AFR podcasters stay on the R even if sucka MCs call you, sire.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Everyone, please read WB Yates the Old Stone Cross. Thank you, good night. God bless you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

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