The Saints Will Judge the World

Summary

The Lord of Spirits – "The Saints Will Judge the World"

Podcast: The Lord of Spirits
Hosts: Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick & Fr. Stephen De Young (Ancient Faith Ministries)
Date: December 29, 2023
Description: Exploring the seen and unseen world in Orthodox Christian tradition, this episode focuses on the role of patron saints, the biblical and historical basis for their veneration, and how humans come to “judge the world” alongside Christ.

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Episode Overview

In this engaging episode, the hosts tackle the Orthodox Christian understanding of patron saints and their cosmic role, especially given Protestant objections that this practice is “unbiblical” or reminiscent of paganism. They trace the biblical, Second Temple Jewish, and patristic foundations for the veneration of saints, demonstrate how human beings are called to share in the spiritual administration of creation, and ultimately how the saints “judge the world” alongside Christ. The show blends scriptural exegesis, patristic citations, and practical reflections, concluding with a moving encouragement to enact real spiritual change in daily life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Patron Saints? Setting the Stage

[05:25]
Patron saints are often misunderstood—sometimes compared to polytheism or seen as unbiblical. The hosts immediately address:

• Is there a scriptural or historical basis for patron saints?
• Are Orthodox practices just veiled paganism, or is there a deeper foundation?
  Fr. Stephen DeYoung dismisses the paganism charge outright, promising to synthesize past discussions for clarity.

2. Scriptural Authority & the Shape of Tradition

[07:18–15:00]
The hosts deconstruct the “where is this in the Bible?” objection:

• Scriptures reflect, not codify, early Church practice (see also the Trinity not being explicitly spelled out).
• Biblical texts didn’t spring from nothing; Church practices often predate their explicit mentions in Scripture.
• Early Christian and Jewish liturgical life, like Temple and synagogue worship, had detailed traditions not all found in the text.

Quote:

"To assume that those kind of historic practices were 'based on' ... the New Testament text... [is] not a coherent way of thinking about it." — Fr. Stephen [09:27]

3. What Does “Saint” Mean?

[16:09]
A deep dive into the language:

• “Saint” = “holy one” (Greek: ἅγιος, hagios; Hebrew: kadosh/kedoshim; Latin: sanctus)
• It's an adjective, not a different species—a descriptor whether applied to angels, humans, or God.
• In the Old Testament, “holy ones” refers predominantly to angelic beings (“the council of the gods”).

Quote:

"Holy here is an adjective... It doesn't mean that, okay, this is a holy man so he is like a different species... It's a descriptor." — Fr. Stephen [20:24]

4. The Divine Council – Not Polytheism but God’s Administration

[26:07–38:58]

• The Bible and Second Temple Jewish literature comfortably use plural “gods” (elohim/theoi) for angelic powers, not just for God or pagan deities.
• The word “gods”—in ancient context—means “rulers”; God is the “God of gods,” the ultimate King above all.
• Angelic beings (the “council of gods”) are not independent actors—they administer divine order but are not due worship.

Quote:

“God, capital G... is the God whom the gods, lowercase g, worship. That's part of the argument against paganism... shouldn't you be worshiping the one who they worship?” — Fr. Stephen [48:06–48:20]

5. Patronage, Angelic Administration, and Human Participation

[62:26–64:57]

• God appoints spiritual beings to oversee creation: elements of nature (sun, moon, stars), peoples/nations, and individual persons (guardian angels).
• Not out of necessity, but love—to share divine life, God delegates stewardship.

6. What Went Wrong – The “Fall” of Angelic Powers

[82:26–95:02]
In the episode’s second half, the conversation moves to the “falls” of the angels:

• “Falling” is not just change of location or morality, but a shift in function/relationship—angelic beings cease shepherding humanity toward God, and through spiritual participation, shepherd them toward evil.
• This “fall” creates “vacancies” in the cosmic order, which are not just bureaucratic but existential changes in the spiritual ecosystem.

7. The Human Destiny – Filling the Vacancies, Becoming Spirits

[108:18–114:03]

• Christ, in judging the fallen gods (Psalm 82), reclaims authority and “reshuffles” stewardship to humankind.
• The apostles and the righteous are promised positions of cosmic governance alongside Christ, sharing in “the council of the gods.”
• The saints “judge the world,” becoming new governors of creation, “equal to the angels” (Luke 20:36) and seated on thrones in the divine council.

Quote:

“The idea of sainthood as it's understood within the church... is just part and parcel of this understanding of redemption... You can't sort of follow us up to here and then now say, ‘oh, but human saints in glory don't do any of those things.’” — Fr. Stephen [111:48]

8. What Does It Mean to Be a Spirit? Saints and Koinonia

[129:20–155:38]
The hosts explain “spirit” as a participatory, relational phenomenon—"koinonia" (κοινωνία, deep participation or communion).

• Spirits “animate” or “guide” peoples, places, individuals—not as bureaucrats, nor by sheer force, but via synergy (alignment of wills).
• Christian tradition (“holy tradition”) is the life of the Holy Spirit incarnate as history, not mere rules, but collective synergy with God.
• This synergy is not top-down (forced possession), nor bottom-up (mere collective human will), but a “both/and” reality—an active alignment and participation.

Quote:

"It’s actual synergy... not just top-down... not just bottom-up... but going in both directions." — Fr. Stephen [153:59]

9. Practical Spiritual Warfare: Changing the Spirit of a Person, Place, or Group

[183:31–190:01]
Fr. Stephen offers stirring practical applications:

• Banishing destructive “spirits” and realigning with God happens at the level of individuals, families, parishes, and neighborhoods.
• This spiritual work is enacted in small, repeated acts of love, charity, and community—mowing a neighbor’s lawn, sharing meals, being kind, bringing people together.
• Change is gradual and accumulative; we become what we do, and in so doing, the saints work alongside us.

Quote:

"As we work to follow the angels and the saints... by doing the works of God in the lives of other people... change starts to happen... and things start to change a little more... and people and places and groups of people can be transformed this way. It’s happened before in the world through Christianity. It can happen again in our day." — Fr. Stephen [189:07–190:01]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the Difference between Human Saints and Angels:
  "You will sit on 12 thrones and judge the 12 tribes of Israel." (Fr. Stephen referencing Jesus’ words; [109:36])
• On Biblical Comfort with a Crowded Spiritual World:
  "Jewish communities and Jewish writers are completely comfortable talking about gods in the plural... using that term to refer to angelic beings of both good and bad sorts." (Fr. Stephen [35:12])
• On Human Beings’ Ultimate Vocation:
  "The destiny of those people is going to be the destiny of Abraham—to become like the stars of heaven." (Fr. Stephen [109:06])
• On the Meaning of Salvation:
  "To be saved means to be among those whom the scripture says 'the saints will judge the world'... Salvation itself is about becoming part of the divine council." (Fr. Andrew [177:52])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [05:25] – Addressing common Protestant objections to patron saints
• [07:18–15:00] – The nature of biblical authority and tradition
• [16:09] – What does “saint” really mean?
• [26:07–38:58] – The divine council, “gods,” and ancient cosmology
• [62:26–64:57] – God’s administration: delegate angels, not bureaucratic necessity
• [82:26–95:02] – The “fall” of angelic beings and the shape of cosmic evil
• [108:18–114:03] – Saints as cosmic co-rulers with Christ (“judging the world”)
• [129:20–155:38] – What is a spirit? Koinonia, synergy, tradition, and existence
• [183:31–190:01] – Spiritual warfare: how to change the spirit of your life, family, parish, or neighborhood through ordinary acts

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Tone and Style

The episode is scholarly yet accessible, frequently humorous, and deeply pastoral. Fr. Stephen offers “rants” with wit, while Fr. Andrew’s quips keep things moving. Both display deep respect for the genuine struggles of listeners wrestling with questions of faith and tradition, as well as empathy for those coming from other Christian backgrounds or outside Christianity altogether.

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Conclusion

Main Takeaways:

• The veneration and “patronage” of saints is not an add-on or late development, but the cosmic destiny of redeemed humankind according to Orthodox Christian tradition.
• Saints are not “demigods,” but glorified humans who fulfill the original vocational calling of both angels and humanity: to steward creation in loving synergy with God.
• Spiritual transformation happens in real, practical ways—through alignment of will, action, and love in community, person by person, place by place.

Final Exhortation:
If you want to enact real spiritual change—over yourself, your family, your church, your world—start with small, daily acts of alignment with Christ and the saints. The cosmos changes one act of love at a time.

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For further exploration:

• Book: Religion of the Apostles by Fr. Stephen De Young (esp. on “baptism for the dead” and patronage)
• The Book of Jubilees & Philo’s Special Laws (for background on Second Temple angelology/cosmology)
• Psalm 82 (81 LXX), Luke 20:36, Matthew 28:18–20, and Revelation 4–5

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Share this episode with a friend—“someone who’ll love it and benefit from it” [192:19].

Transcript

[Stephen from Northern California]

He will be a staff for the righteous with which for them to stand and not to fall. And he will be the light of the nations and the hope of those whose hearts are troubled. All who dwell on the earth will fall down and worship him. And they will praise and bless and celebrate with song the lord of spirits. First Enoch, chapter 48, verses 4 through 5. The modern world doesn't acknowledge, but is nevertheless haunted by spirits 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 Andrew Stephen Damick]

Hey, good evening all you giant killers, you dragon slayers, all of you who are recovering from Christmas. Unless you're on the old calendar, you got not quite two weeks left to go. So hang in there, you guys. Christ is born. Merry Christmas. Glorify him.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I think we needed extra time for buy gifts because they forgot.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean it's, That's a good. I mean it's a good reason, right? Unless you're.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or as a Dutchman, if it's because they could get everything on sale on the 26th.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Hey, don't you guys do all your. All your gift props for St Nicholas Day? Is that when the Dutch do the.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, we do it back on s. Class. Yeah. December 6th.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it is the Lord of Spirits podcast and my co host, whom you just heard, Father Stephen DeYoung is coming to you live from Lafayette, Louisiana. And I'm Father Andrew Stephen Damick in Emmaus, Pennsylvania. The forests of Penn. So if you are listening to us live, you can call us at 855-237-2346 and you can talk to us. We're going to get to your calls starting in the second half of the show. And our very own Matuska Trudy will be taking those calls. Tonight we're going to be talking about patron saints, but first, a word from our sponsors. The Lord of Spirits podcast is brought to you by our listeners. Hey, that's all of you and the Antiochian Men. The Antiochian Men, abbreviated Amen, a men's ministry of the Diocese of Miami in the Southeast within the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America will be hosting the first ever Antiochian Men Conference and retreat from March 7th to 9th, 2024 at the Woodland Christian Camp and Retreat center in Temple, Georgia with the theme the Audacity of Manhood, Strength through Virtuous Work. The event will feature guest speakers, outdoor activities, sports workshops, campfire fellowship, and more. Speakers include his Grace, Bishop Nicholas, our very own Father Stephen DeYoung, Father Hans J. That's you, man.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You're gonna be there thinking about it, I guess. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And also Father Jacob Ondoun. This event will incorporate the best aspects of camping, conferences and retreats into a first of its kind experience for orthodox Christian men. Men ages 18 and older. Welcome to Register. Early bird registration is $149 per person, and that includes lodging for two nights and six meals. Man, that's about as cheap as it gets. I was just thinking about that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

To learn more and register, there's two Dutch priests involved. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, there you go. So to learn more and register, go to antiochianmen.org click on the banner at the top. Again, that's antiochianmen.org so this.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This may or not may not become germane at the retreat, but when I was thinking about the outdoor activities and stuff, you know what? There is not enough of anymore in this world.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So many things.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But tell me, Father Stephen. Whittling.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So will this be like a competition? A whittling?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I don't know. I don't know. This is. I'm just thinking about this. It seems to me like whittling is a good productive pastime that is. Has fallen into obscurity in our modern world.

Well, we don't have pieces of wood around.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

People don't carry pocket knives anymore.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You made our conference have a D and D tournament, so maybe you can have forced whittling.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I don't think we'd have to force it. I think just a bunch of knives.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And pieces of wood and magic begin.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, it's wooded. You know, go grab some wood. You know, you can just find wood if you have a handy pocket knife.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There you go.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You might have some trouble getting it on the plane to get out there, but, you know, other than that.

There.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Will be some available. For now, probably not.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Probably not. But we can figure something out. It's not that far from Atlanta.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So yeah, you can go get a pocket knife.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

A big run on whittling knives.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Doesn't have to be this, you know, Swiss army variety or something. You can go for just straight ahead.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Again, where those little kits with the fingernail and toenail clippers and the pocket knife.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

What would the Swiss army have done without those things?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I think it's the key to their victory in every major war they've stayed neutral in.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So tonight, though, our topic is patron saints. We've been asked about this a lot, actually, and especially our Protestant friends might find the orthodox practice of having patron saints for people, places, churches, groups, etc. Kind of weird and frankly, unbiblical. Is it, though? Is there a biblical basis for this element of Christian life? What about those who say that this is just a whitewashing of pagan polytheism? You love alliteration. Calling upon various gods for different purposes. What do we do with the similarities between how pagans treat their gods and how Christians relate to patron saints? So, Father Stephen, are patron saints really just thinly veiled paganism?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Thickly veiled, maybe, or.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No, not at all?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No veiling?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Not even unveiled paganism? Yeah, there's no paganism.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You move the curtain. There's no paganism there.

Yeah, yeah. Tonight we're going to be going back to some of. What we're going to be talking about is going to be sort of bringing together some things we talked about in the earliest episodes of the show.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Between Mexican radio broadcasts and power outages. Oh, man.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Back in the day.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And we're also going to be trying to sort of synthesize that in a coherent way that hopefully will answer some of the questions that we get consistently all the time.

Related to this. Yeah. And.

I don't want to spend too long on this. Not that, you know, you know how I hate digressing, but.

Even the way, like in the intro you just did, this sometimes gets framed.

Right. We have to think sometimes about how things are framed.

Right. Like things needing to have a biblical basis.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

What does that mean?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It means I found it in the Bible somewhere. And on that basis I'm going to.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Do it and I'm going to argue that this is referring to that. And of course, anyone who disagrees with that is going to say, no, it doesn't refer to that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, Right, right, right. Biblical is just a word meaning. I do not agree with your doctrine.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. But this assumes a couple things about a text that aren't possible.

Number one, that a text is not based on anything.

That you could have a text as ultimate. You can't have a text as ultimate.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Because first of all, the rules of grammar.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. The language itself has to be vocabulary.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The language itself has to underlie the text. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Number One. And number two, for example, if this is a text reporting historical events, then those historical events underlie the text.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right? Yep.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The events didn't spring from the text. The text came from the events and give a perspective and interpretation of the events.

Why am I bringing this up at all right now? This is not just me taking a shot at our Protestant friends about the coherency, or lack thereof, of sola scriptura. But to say.

We have to approach this kind of thing when we're looking at a historic practice of the Church, which we know without a doubt is a practice that went back to at least the end of the first, beginning of the second century. Minimally.

Right. Minimally.

To assume that those kind of historic practices were quote unquote, based on, like, the New Testament text is not a. It's not a coherent way of thinking about it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Especially because those texts don't even claim to be.

That kind of book. Like, they're not a manual. Like a Boy Scout manual. Here's how you. Although even Boy Scout manual. Right. You still have to be part of a group that shows you how to be a Boy Scout.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And it doesn't cover every single topic.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That might come up in the life of a Boy Scout.

It makes no claim to be that comprehensive.

But yeah. And the Scriptures aren't even a manual in that sense. So we would expect to find places where practices that existed at the time are reflected in the text.

Right. But based on the type of text that the Scriptures are, we wouldn't expect to find. Well, okay, here's how sainthood works. Here's what makes someone a saint. Here's how patron saints work. Here's Right. We wouldn't expect to find that in the Bible.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It would be weird to find that in the Bible.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. There's almost nothing that is like. And here's how this works, and here's what all this means. Like, the closest you get is Leviticus telling you how to do sacrifices and that kind of thing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Because that is sort of functioning as a manual.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The book of Leviticus is kind of a manual.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Look it up. Here's the details of how you do this.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Although for how to be a lever.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Gaps. Yeah, there's still gaps. Yeah, Still a lot of gaps.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But the Scriptures is a whole other. And that's why. So. Yeah. And so there are all kinds of things. Right. This lies behind all kinds of bad arguments.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like, why does the word Trinity appear in the Bible?

Right. And all these other kinds of arguments. Like, well, there are Places where we can see in the Bible it reflects.

A belief in the Trinity or minimally, something very much like it. Right, right. But yeah, it's not laid out anywhere because nothing is. That's not how the Bible works.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like.

So this isn't either.

Right. This isn't either. So what we have to do is we have to look at how the Bible.

Talks about, uses the word that gets translated as saint. Right. How that word is used, how the people to whom that is applied or discussed, how they're related to, and various other things to determine. Oh, okay. So this is, this is the structure of what was believed and taught and experienced by the, the first hearers of this text. Right. This is, this is how they understood reality to function.

This is how they encountered God, how they experienced God, how they worshiped God. Right. That's going to be reflected in the text and the way the text speaks. The way the text speaks, but it's not going to be like laid out.

In the text.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And.

About to move on from this and segue into our topic per se. But, but the fact, again, that something is not laid out in the text also, therefore does not mean it didn't exist.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Obviously, a lot of things exist in the ancient world that are not specifically put in the text. And we should probably also say that a lot of important things existed that are not laid out in the text.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right. So there was some concrete, detailed structure to temple worship and tabernacle worship and.

Synagogue worship. Right. Beyond what is laid out formally in Scripture.

And the fact that that is never laid out in and early Christian worship in the New Testament, the fact that that's never laid out in detail doesn't mean it didn't exist, that there was no pattern. And it doesn't mean that the pattern isn't important.

Right. Because again, it's not setting out a guide, it's not sending out a manual. And so the fact that the particular way in which humans relate to departed saints in its every detail is not laid out anywhere in the Scriptures, or at least not in any one place especially, doesn't mean there was no such relationship. Right. People just stopped thinking about their dead Christian loved ones. Right. Or right. They did something at funerals.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

Chuck the body in a ditch.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. They had them. Prayers were said. Right, Right.

There was an understanding. And so we're looking through the Scriptures through other means to determine what the shape of that was. Right. Not looking, saying, oh, well, we don't see that laid out in the Scripture, so it doesn't matter. Or there wasn't one.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Or. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We just assume that since it's not stated.

It'S not important. Or does it exist? Right. Or at least we assume the Roman Catholics are wrong. I mean, we can safely assume that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

You had to take a shot at our Catholic friends as well. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, that was. See, now there's levels of sarcasm surrounding that comment. So who's doing a shot at.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I know, I know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I'm just saying.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'm just saying. One of our comments we got on Facebook was.

Someone wrote that she is one of our Protestant friends waiting for more shots.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right next to another, we actually have a listener from Malaysia listening right now. From Malaysia, where it's like 8:16 in the morning. So we're the morning show in Malaysia.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Wow.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

How about that?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I feel like I should have a coffee mug and smile more.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Talk about the weather.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So as I said in the midst of that rant, which may or may not be the last rant of the.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Evening.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We have to kind of start with. Okay, when we talk about a saint, what are we even talking about? Right? Because that gets used in a lot of different ways.

Right. I mean, people will just say somebody's a saint because they were like a really good or really nice person.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's sort of like calling them a mensch. Right. Like there's this.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Or sometimes it's a way of.

Saying that their spouse must be a real nightmare.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. Oh, and we do have guaranteed by being married to me. Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

My wife's day to also guaranteed.

We. We have a listener from Lithuania where it is 2:17 in the morning.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So don't be a one upper Lithuanian dedication man.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

This is someone I know, actually. So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay. Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All the love.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. So this just gets used in these different ways. Right. Or, you know, El Santo, possibly the greatest luchador of all time.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

At least the one who made the best movies.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I was not expecting that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Go look up some El Santo. But they're amazing anyway.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Really? Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, yeah, yeah. They're the Elvis movies of Mexico. Like, nice. Seriously nice.

So. Yeah. And he's of course the same. Or know if we want to really dig in the crates. Right. Roger Moore.

Later on. Val Kilmer, the saint. Right.

It gets used. Gets used in those ways. Some people just hack it in front of any old person from the Bible.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or any old person from the early church.

Like just a title like Mr. Or Sir.

But the root. And the root isn't that well hidden in English, if you know any Latin at All right. Is of course, a holy one. Right.

And if we're talking about Greek, we're talking about aios. Right. If you get icons with Greek inscriptions, you will see this sometimes in a calligraphy where it's a little tricky to make it out unless your Greek is pretty solid. But.

You will see that in front of the names of people and icons.

That is.

Translating kadashim in Hebrew, various similar words in Aramaic.

And you can see cognates. If you know any Arabic, you know kudus is holy.

So this is holiness. Right. I was about to say sanctity. But sanctity is also just the. From Socrates in Latin, which means holy. Right. So, so this is a holy one. Right.

And.

Holy here is a noun or is an adjective. Holy here is an adjective. Right.

Even when it's being used substantively, meaning you could take an adjective and you could use it substantively. Right. To say a holy one, a good one, an evil one. Right.

But it's still an adjective. You just have an implied subject.

Right? Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Holy is not by itself a noun. Right. And the importance of this is that.

When we're talking about whether this is applied to.

A human or as we're about to talk about an angelic being. Right. Or whoever or God is described as holy, Right.

It is an adjective. It doesn't mean that, okay, this is a holy man. So he is like a different species. He is a different thing than just a man.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, he's a man.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. It is a descriptor of that man or a descriptor of that angelic being or a descriptor of God. Right. It's an adjective.

Another example of this.

Much debated in orthodox circles. And nowhere else is at the end of the Lord's Prayer where the adjective evil occurs or the evil one. And is it evil or the evil one, Right. Is it being used substantively is essentially the question. Right.

That, of course, being the opposite.

So originally, where we see this word occur as a substantive noun. Right. Holy one or holy ones.

In the Hebrew Bible, in the Old Testament, it's referring to angelic beings.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

To the holy ones who surround the divine throne.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Glorious is God amongst his holy ones. Right.

And because of that.

So in English, right. This gets translated in various ways. Right. So a lot of times what we're used to is in the Old Testament, it'll get translated as holy ones. In the New Testament, it'll get translated.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

As saints, which makes no sense because it's really. Even though it's Hebrew in the Old Testament, Greek in The new. It's really the same. The same idea.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right.

So a lot of orthodox liturgical translations and things have responded to this by always translating it. Saints.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Sure. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Which then confuses people.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right? Yeah. Which is why you then get the question, wait, can we call angels saint, like Saint Michael? Because they think of saint as being something that is about holy humans. But we'll get. You know, I don't want to steal too much of our own thunder here.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. But we also. We also sing about God being, you know, wondrous in his saints.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's like. Wait, what? Yeah, right. If you read the original and, you know, it's wondrous among his holy ones.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So even amongst the array, the arrayed angelic beings, God is wondrous. Right. Meaning far more wondrous than they. Right. Is the idea there. Right. In English, because we use saints. Does it work out there? And brief mini rant. My pet peeve is in the entrance prayers.

Which were in the liturgy and in vespers, which were at one point translated.

As saying that God resteth in his saints.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Or seen in the holy place or.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, so people got confused by rests in the saints. Like, what does that mean? Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so they looked at it and decided, even though it's in the plural, to translate it as rest in the holy place.

Now, I don't know which holy place they're referring to.

There's a whole series of questions there about that translation. Not just that they're translating a plural, but if you look at the prayers surrounding it. The prayers surrounding it talk.

About God and. Or Christ. Right. Meaning the Father and. Or Christ being enthroned upon the cherubim.

So it's literally God who resteth, like, sitteth on his holy ones.

That's what it says.

N can mean on in. In Greek. For those who don't know anything with Greek.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It could be on or in.

That's what it means. That's my mini rant. Right. Everybody translates that weirdly, and I don't know why. Right.

But.

So. So the idea here is that.

Originally we're talking about angels, and it's translated holy ones. You could do the opposite thing and translate it as holy or holy ones all the time.

Right. So when we say St. Paul, we're talking about Holy Paul the Holy Paul.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Which is literally. That would be a word for word translation of the Greek. Oh, Ayos Pavlos.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. Holy Paul. Paul the Holy Paul the Holy One. Right.

Peter the Holy One. Right.

I'm Reminded of in ideography, Saint God Memorial Hospital. But that's a whole other topic.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But so this is where originally it's angelic beings. It comes to be. Spoilers for our second half. Applied to humans. Right. But starts out as a turn. Now.

We have to parallel this.

Right. With another very common term that's used for those same beings in the Hebrew Bible and in the Old Testament.

And.

That is the term gods.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Which would you be right, with a lowercase G. Yeah, lowercase G, everybody. Lowercase G. Yeah. Hebrew, Elohim in Greek, thei. Both are used in the Old Testament and then, you know, the New Testament, Greek, the.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And so that is often very deliberately obscured in translations.

Because it gives people the heebie jeebies.

Because as we've talked about on the show before, in the 16th and 17th centuries, we came up with this idea of monotheism and then decided that has to be what the Bible teaches.

Meaning there's only one God that exists. Right. And so you get these odd translations to try to cover up where it says that. That, of course, then once you get into the 18th and 19th centuries.

Got people caused the. The opposite reaction of, oh, here's what. They're trying to hide that. Right. The Bible's actually polytheist.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Man, we really are partying like it's 2020 here on the podcast. This. This is literally stuff from our very first episode.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, yes. So we're. We're going somewhere with it, though.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And hopefully I'll maintain electricity, so this will be a little smoother presentation.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. How many hurricanes come to Louisiana in December?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

None. But, hey, weather's doing interesting things right now.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It is.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Imagine how crazy it would be if global warming was real. Anyway.

That comment just got everyone mad. It's called climate change.

Everyone was enraged at that comment. Send your letters to father [e-mail].

So, yes. So this was taken as evidence. Right. Well into the 20th century. They want you to think that the Bible's monotheistic, but really it's polytheism.

And that, of course, especially if we're Talking about the 19th century, we have this overriding presupposition of an evolutionary hypothesis that religion, like everything else, starts really simple and then gets more and more complex over time.

I won't go off on another digression, but. Which is really dumb. Right. It sort of has the idea that, you know.

One day there's. There's a primitive human. Right. With the stick, who comes up with the idea, I guess that he should ask the stick for favors. I don't know how exactly this would work in concrete terms.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. How do you invent the idea of a God?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I don't know of religion where there is none. I don't even know how this works. But in theory, but.

But basically. And that somehow monotheism is way more complex than polytheism.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Somehow.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And then if you go with the originals of originators and perfectors of this kind of theory, that somehow 19th century German Lutheranism is way more complex than like Greek paganism.

I don't follow that either. But yeah.

The argument is that that's the case. And so that.

What you see particularly they would say in the Old Testament is a move from a primitive Israelite polytheism.

That eventually evolves into the modern concept of monotheism.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. And so, yeah, there must be remnants left over. Right. Of their previous polytheistic stuff.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So anything you could find that could be interpreted as polytheistic.

Like gods in the plural or anything even alluding to that. This is the early stuff. Yeah, yeah. And then anything that sounds like modern monotheism, this is very late stuff.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And the fun thing about this is.

That in order for this to sort of be consonant with the biblical texts that we have, you have to decide that in what is literally the most combed over book in human history.

That they somehow accidentally left in all of these references to their former polytheism.

Just their editing is really bad. Like, really bad. Like how many tens or hundreds of thousands or millions of people read it before it, you know, like, or heard it read and said, wait a minute, that's that polytheism, you know, edit that off there, you know, no one noticed, you know, But I mean, but that's, I mean that's how you have that, that's how you have to, how you have to shake it out if you're going to try to make that argument based on text. We talked about archaeology stuff before, but.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

To, to be fair to them, they, they tried to argue that there was some kind of text taboo. Like this is the sacred text, you can't change it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh well.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But part and parcel of their whole argument is that it was edited over time. Right. So the person doing the last editing job could not also have had a text change taboo at the same time. Because he's changing the text. Yeah, right. Like you, you can't do both at the same time. But it's a nicely self fulfilling argument. Right. Because any, anything anybody points to. Right. You point to a text that sounds Kind of polytheistic. And they say, well, that's just, that's early.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And you point to whether it sounds more monotheistic. Well, that's late.

And it's like, well, how do you know that it evolved this way? And they'll say, well, because the early texts are polytheistic and the later texts are monotheistic. And you say, well, how, how do you know that this is an early text? Because it's polytheistic.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So it's a tight circularity.

You're still just making this completely circular argument.

In this self fulfilling prophecy. And worse than that, worse than it just being a bad argument. I mean you could, you could make a bad argument that ends up being correct.

Right. Like I could argue for the truth badly.

So just the fact that this is a horrible argument and a shoddy way of working with the text doesn't necessarily mean the conclusion is wrong. Right. What proves the conclusion wrong is all the actual evidence we have.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

Which if, if this were a true model, you would expect that, that as you go, that later texts would have.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Texts that we know are later. Not that we're just saying, but saying.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Ones we actually know would have fewer and fewer references to God's plural.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, Right. Divine plurality in any sense. Fewer and fewer as you go. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So if we find tax, say I don't know, in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

That we know for a fact were written in the 2nd or 3rd century BC after at least the lion's share of the Hebrew Bible was done, they should reflect that later monotheistic consensus. Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yep.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But if you, if you do the math, which we have them fancy computers who can do this now.

You find that the texts, the, the, the non biblical texts in the Dead Sea Scrolls actually have more references.

To gods in the plural than the biblical texts.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Second Temple Jewish texts use God's plural approvingly way more often than the canonical Hebrew Bible.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. So. And it's not just true of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls are an example. Right. You look at Philo, Philo uses gods in the plural. It doesn't have a problem with it. Josephus, the same thing. What we find is that the exact opposite is the case that by the time you get to the first century bc, the first century ad, Jewish communities and Jewish writers are completely comfortable talking about gods in the plural and using that term to refer to angelic beings of both good and bad sorts.

Right. So the Melchizedek scroll and the Dead Sea Scrolls talks about Melchizedek who's this messiah figure coming with all the righteous gods.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's not talking about the Olympians. He's not talking about. Right. He's talking about the angelic beings, the holy ones of God, the righteous ones, the holy ones of God. This is total, totally comfortable verbiage for them. And it's worth noting.

That they're totally comfortable using this language and talking about angelic beings in this way, despite the fact that they are literally surrounded by, infested with and dominated by paganism.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. So no one had a sense of, oh, we can't say gods because that would confuse people.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. The pagans will get the wrong idea. Our people will get the wrong idea. Right. These same writers are constantly battling against.

Writing condemnations of the idolatry and paganism of their neighbors, the polytheism of their neighbors, against the Romans who are dominating them, against members of the Jewish community who had apostatized into Greco, Greek and then Roman paganism. Right. The same people who are writing these condemnations don't have a problem with using this language.

Right.

And this is important.

Right. Because a big part of the problem surrounding saints and patron saints is squeamishness about language.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And also, like, relatedly, what we might think of as a crowded spiritual world.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. You know, but I've said before on the show, here's another one of those shots. I don't think it's a shot. I think. I think I know some of our Protestant friends hear this as a shot, but I don't intend it as a shot. I intend it as more of an olive branch that I think functionally, a lot of objections to things like this that come from our Protestant friends are based mostly on heebie jeebies.

Right. They're based on that language seems wrong. I'm uncomfortable with that language. I'm uncomfortable with that practice.

Based on their upbringing, based on. On different things. But it's not. It's not based on like. Okay, here I have a rational argument to pit against the argument that you're about to make on Lord of Spirits about saints.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And I mean, this is one of the reasons why we try to focus so much on what the scripture says is because we know that we have many non orthodox Christians who are listening. And this is one of the things that we all respect. We all respect the scriptures if we're Christians, you know, so that's why that's most of what we're doing. That's why I say this is the weirdest Bible study ever.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And so if you. If you look at this and you hear what we're saying and we say, okay, yeah, like, I understand the logic of that case, but I still have this squeamishness about it. That's okay. It's okay. Yeah, it's okay. But we shouldn't make decisions about what to believe and how to be a Christian based on squeamishness. Right. The squeamishness could be overcome. The heebie jeebies could be overcome over time. Right. If that's all it is. If it ends up being. That's all it is.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But it's also very human and understandable to be a little squeamish. I have lots of people coming to the church who, whether it's the Theotokos or saints or kissing icons or whatever, they're a little squeamish about it at first. Right. But.

I don't think that makes you a bad person. And I'm not arguing that. Right. But I also don't think, again.

That that should be the main obstacle to embracing truth. Or. An obstacle to embracing truth.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so, and.

Right there, as we're saying, for the biblical writers, this wasn't even a concern.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The fact that this could be misread or misinterpreted in some pagan way was not something they were deeply worried about. Not because they thought, oh, no one would ever get this wrong or twist this around. Right. It was the exact opposite. Because they knew no matter what we write, no matter what we do, no matter what we say, people will, as St. Peter says about St. Paul's writings, twist them to their own destruction. Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. And in case there was any question about whether that was going to happen or possible, I present to you the Internet.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. Right. In which everything you say publicly will.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Be turned twisted around and turned to destruction. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. So this is just a reality. This is another one of those problems with having a text be the basis of something.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Is that texts require interpretation and can be used as tools or weapons in any variety of ways by people who want to do so.

But so, again, we're pushing for what's behind the text. And so what we're establishing here is that behind the texts, whether we're talking about Second Temple Jewish texts or we're talking about the text of the Hebrew scriptures, there is this robust belief that in addition to the God who created everything, including creating the angelic powers and demonic powers, that there are an array of angelic and demonic powers.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

In the heavens, in the underworld, on the earth. Right.

And these have a particular role, particular roles and relationships with God and with human beings. Right. Such that they're called holy ones, the good ones, at least the ones that actually are holy. And they're referred to even as gods in the lowercase. And so now we're going to bring back again, we're digging in the crates in the old episodes.

But a great quote from philo of Alexandria, 1st century BC Jewish writer who summarizes this. He's commenting in this quote. He's commenting on Deuteronomy chapter 4, verse 19. So we're going to hear Deuteronomy 4:19 first, and then what Philo says about it and the language he uses.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, okay. So here's the Deuteronomy quote. And beware, lest you raise your eyes to heaven. And when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the hosts of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven. So that's the Deuteronomy quote. And here's what Philo has to say about this. And remember the basic rule, everybody commentary is always longer than the original text.

So here's Philo. Some persons have conceived that the sun and the moon and the other stars are independent gods, to whom they have attributed the causes of all things that exist. But Moses was well aware that the world was created and was like a very large city, having rulers and subjects in it. The rulers being all the bodies which are in heaven, such as planets and fixed stars, and the subjects being all the natures beneath the moon, hovering in the air and adjacent to the earth. But that the rulers aforesaid are not independent and absolute, but are the viceroys of one supreme being, the Father of all, in imitation of whom they administer with propriety and success, the charge committed to their care, as he also presides over all things in strict accordance with justice and with law. Others, on the contrary, who have not discovered the supreme governor, who thus rules everything, have attributed the causes of the different things which exist in the world to the subordinate powers, as if they had brought them to pass by their own independent act. But the most sacred lawgiver changes their ignorance into knowledge, speaking in the following. Thou shalt not, when thou seest the sun and the moon and the stars, and all the host of heaven be led astray and fall down and worship them with great felicity and propriety. Has he here called the reception of these bodies as gods an error for they who see that the different seasons of the year owe their existence to the advances and retreats of the sun, in which periods also the generation of animals and plants and fruits are perfected according to well defined times, and who see also that the moon is the servant and successor of the sun, taking that care and superintendence of the world by night which the sun takes by day, and also that the other stars, in accordance with their sympathy with things on earth, labor continually and do 10,000 things which contribute to the duration of the existing state of things, have been led into an inextricable error, imagining that these bodies are the only gods. And then. So we're skipping a little bit here. We must therefore look on all those bodies in the heaven which the outward sense regards as gods, not as independent rulers, since they are assigned the work of lieutenants, being by their intrinsic nature responsible to a higher power, but by reason of their virtue not actually called to render in an account of their doings. So that, transcending all visible essence, by means of our reason, let us press forward to the honour of that everlasting and invisible being who can be comprehended and appreciated by the mind alone, who is not only the God of all gods, whether appreciable only by the intellect or visible to the outward senses, but is also the creator of them all. And if anyone gives up the service due to the everlasting and uncreated God, transferring it to any more modern and created being, let him be set down as mad and as liable to the charge of the greatest impiety. And that's from his special laws 1, 3. One of the things I note here is he both says that you shouldn't think of the heavenly bodies as gods, and also they're gods, but they're under the one, the most high God.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, they're not the only gods.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, exactly. Which, if you remember. Again, this is hearkening back to our very earliest episodes. If you remember that God, in its most basic sense in most ancient languages means ruler, then you can understand how he can both say they're not really gods and they're only subordinate gods. In other words, they're not actually the ones in charge, but they've been put in charge of some things by the one who is in charge. That's what that means. And that's why there's even that phrase false gods in scripture. Like they're false rulers, not that they don't exist, they're just not really in charge.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And that's why we can say back to back, thou alone art God, and among the gods, there are none like unto thee.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. Because it means ruler. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It means he's the only one. And then you said.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And then also, you know, frankly, the word gets used in. In a number of ways, you know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But its most basic sense is it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Makes Moses as a God to Pharaoh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And Philo here uses a variation on the phrase, but God of gods is not just an idiom.

God of gods is also literal. Right. That.

God, capital G. Right. The true God is the God whom the gods, lowercase G, worship.

Right.

And that's part of the argument against paganism. Right. Why are you worshiping them? Shouldn't you be worshiping the one who they worship?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So. Right. And so the picture here that Philo gives is of this sort of divine administration.

Right. And this sort of vast.

Divine economy that includes all of creation. And that there are these spirits that are responsible for collective movement. Right. So he talks about the movements in the heavens, but also on earth. Right. The passing of the seasons, animals. Right. The harmony of the whole order. Right. That this happens through this administration. So I don't know when we've used the term divine council.

Right. Which, by the way. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. Divine council is.

A comportment to squeamishness.

Okay. We're actually talking about the council of the gods, but that'll flip some people out. So divine council sounds, you know, less triggering.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, Right. But I mean, divine just means of gods.

Just forum, guys, the godly assembly.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So, yeah, I don't know. But when we talk about the divine council, I don't know how people picture that. Right. Because of course, we get a picture of that in the call narratives of prophets. Right. Because as we've said on the show, the prophet, according to Jeremiah is the one who has stood. Right. In the divine council.

I think sometimes. And based on that, the primary image that everybody thinks of, and it's not a bad one, but I think sometimes the only image people think of is, oh, you have this throne where Christ is, and then you have all these angels and saints kind of standing around it all the time.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like waiting for him to receive people. Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or waiting for him to interact with them.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Not wrong.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That is a biblical image. But.

Remember, right. Angelic beings are vast cosmic intelligences. Right.

They're actually doing things right. In the cosmos, in. In the created order.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, a royal court, there is a holding of court in which everybody is together. In the throne room. But a lot of what goes on in that court is the king saying, you go do this, you go do this, you go do this.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Or they're often there to report back to the king. Right. Yeah. And of course, again, this is an image.

This is an image.

God is not in one particular place.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Sitting on a literal material throne somewhere with people at a certain actual physical distance from that throne. Right. This is all an imagery and analogical language to express reality to humans. Right.

So we also have to have this image that Philo is giving us. Right. Of the angelic beings who are. Right.

Who are moving the heavenly bodies and the cosmos and involved with life on Earth. Right. And nature and things flourishing and all of these things. Right. The. The music of the spheres, as it were. If you're a fan of Aristotelian.

Physics.

And all this is happening right. When.

When we read St. Luke's gospel here just a couple days ago. Right. An angel appears to shepherd to the shepherds, and then the stars sing to them.

That's literally what it says, because that's.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

What heavenly hosts means. Everybody.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

So we have to. We have to try and keep both of these kind of images around. Right. So this isn't.

This isn't that, like, okay, you know, Clarence the angel, you're in charge of.

Serious major.

So you just kind of keep an eye on it.

Like, report back to me if a comet's gonna hit a planet or something. Right. It. When we say that angelic beings are in charge of these things, we don't mean it in that kind of external way. This is gonna be important for where we're going in this episode.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Because they're not. They don't have material bodies, so it's not like they're stationed at a spot.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like watching or something. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, it gets. In iconography, it gets depicted this way because how else do you depict. How do you depict being that has no material body?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Like, you have to draw something, you know, but don't literalize that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But we have to be serious. And this is included in Philo about the fact that in a way. Right. The stars. Right. These. These things in the heavens are their bodies.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, in a way.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. Right. In a sense, they're what is animating them. Right. And that's why you see in iconography the sun, the moon depicted as angelic beings.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And it's not a. So.

The spirit that we're talking about is what is animating and moving and ordering these things.

This is what we mean by them having this position in the administration or being in charge of this thing. We don't want to externalize the analogy too much. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. It's not like a bureaucracy.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Where there's a department.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Astral bodies department, planetary bodies department.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's funny. It's funny when, you know, when C.S. lewis wants to depict hell, he depicts.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It as a bureaucracy. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's like, okay, I'm on board with that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, it's interesting as you go through time, the depictions of hell. Yeah. So, yeah. It's not. There isn't this bureaucratic thing. There's not like a department of, you know, hey, Bob, you're in charge of the pandas. What's going on? Like, they're not mating. Like, can you. Can you. Do you know, this is it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, Right. This isn't how to think about it. Right.

It's also. Right. Not a democracy.

Right. And this is part of what Philo is telling us. Right. It isn't that all these folks get together and vote, and God is like, well, I guess I got to go with you guys on this one. Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. That kind of council.

It's a royal council, not a.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. Right. There's a king.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There's.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There is a monarch.

The monarchy.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And he's not just the first principle of everything, but. Right. And. And so they are administering his justice and order and. Right.

And it's because of that. That this isn't polytheism. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We had someone comment saying that he was a former Mormon and that polytheism makes him feel extra squeamish, which.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I hear you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I hear you. But this is not polytheism because, number one, you don't worship. Like, this is commandment zero in the Bible. It gets repeated so much. Don't worship those other beings.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Philo just said that. Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But it's. It's also not polytheism because they're not independent actors. Yeah, yeah, right. They aren't. They aren't independent actors. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And I mean, it's worth noting. Like, let's look at some real polytheism, Right? Like. Like the Greek gods. Some of them are children of other gods or whatever. Again, that's not what's represented in a Christian tradition. No. You know, angels and demons are not anyone's offspring. Anyone's. But also, like, one of the things that you see in. In most other. Most pagan traditions is that the gods don't seem to be created with the exception of ones that are like, somebody's offspring. They're just sort of there. You know, sometimes you get creations, but ultimately it's a group of them. They're all kind of there and usually.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No offspring, and they're sort of a turtles all the way down kind of thing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. And there's no one who is ultimately and absolutely in charge forever. Yeah. Like, paganism doesn't succession.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. Paganism has a most high God, but he's not omnipotent. Like, omnipotence is not really a thing in paganism. That is in the scriptures.

You know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right. So just to use. I mean, people know the Greek mythology probably best, right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Yeah. Zeus is the king of the gods, but, you know, he's always causing trouble, and then his wife goes behind his back to get all kinds of revenge all the time and frustrate him and. And mess with him. And the gods are always.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Who are.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

His kids are always fighting with each other.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And playing him off against the other.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

This is a very different picture than the one we just read in Philo.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And that's. And Philo is deliberately differentiating the Jewish view from that. And the differentiation is not that, oh, we believe there's just one God that exists and that's it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's that we believe in a fundamentally different relationship between the true God. Right. And.

The other powers that are his creation. Right. We believe in a fundamentally different relationship between them. And we believe that who the true God is is fundamentally different and of another kind than these other things that are called gods.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Such that he is the God who they worship. Right. They are closer to us than they are to him in terms of being created beings.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. So the question is, since he's absolutely omnipotent, omniscient, etc. Etc. Why bother having. Why bother having anyone else in the administration at all?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Why. Right. And this is an important question because, again.

This episode is really aimed to our Protestant friends not to attack them or belittle them or win an argument to try to help them understand what this is about. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And this is at the core of the question, in some cases. Well, God's in charge of everything, so just talk to him. Right, Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Why do you need to go through anybody else?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Like maybe I could, because maybe there's kind of a. Okay, well, I can buy this angel thing, divine council thing, like, as a bureaucracy. Right. But if it's a bureaucracy, you just go to the guy on top. Right. Why. Why go through the middle management. Right. Like, just.

Bypass all that. Right.

And so we have to. The core of this is again, the reason why God does this. Because it's not out of necessity, right? It's not that there's just some details that he's just too busy. Right. Or like he couldn't.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Do without anything. God doesn't need to create anything, doesn't need us. Right. Doesn't need the world, doesn't need. There is zero necessity attached to this, right? Zero. Zero. Let me repeat that. Zero, Right. I know this is. I know this is. One of the things we harp out of this show is that God is absolutely free. Right? But this is where.

Honestly, this spot is where I think.

Every place where some form of Christianity goes wrong. Goes wrong.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Hmm.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Is by having God not be ultimately completely free.

At some point.

It's different points and it's for different reasons. But at some point, you get to a point in where theology goes bad because you impose some necessity on God.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So that's why I harp on it so much on this show. But in this case, right. Again, there's no necessity. There's no necessity to create anything at all. To create full stop. Or to create anything or anyone in particular. Right? But God has chosen out of love to share his divine life, to share his divine nature, to share himself with creatures.

And the beginning of that, of course, is creating them. Right? And then after creating them, it becomes sharing, sharing his life with them. That's why.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yep, Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so the reason there's a council of the gods, a divine council, the reason why there is this administration, the reason why there are these.

Spiritual beings, right, who are in charge of these things is out of God's love, He creates them and he shares his life, his existence, his nature with them.

And so because of that, we find. And we find examples of this in the scriptures in different places, we find that there are angelic beings who are assigned to elements of the natural order, like the sun and moon and stars in Deuteronomy 419.

Or the devil having been referred to as the prince and power of the air.

We find.

This with reference to peoples.

Meaning people groups.

Groups of people, tribes, clans. Later on, nations.

Have angelic beings or spirits assigned to them. Think of Daniel, the Prince of Persia, right? The Prince of Greece, St. Michael, who is Israel's prince, right. And we find.

Angelic beings assigned to particular people.

What we've come to call, like guardian angels, right?

But who are assigned to shepherd and guide individual people. You read the Book of Tobit with Saint Raphael.

As an example. But this is what you find the holy ones, the angelic beings being assigned to all of these elements. Right. But these are three quick categorizations, Right. Elements of the natural order, people groups and persons.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Have these angelic beings assigned to them as guides, as shepherds.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so that's sort of the state of affairs as we find it when we're talking about the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, the created world. Right. And then, of course, things happen. Those things will happen in our second half.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's right. So we're going to go ahead and go to our first break and we'll be right back with the Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Stephen from Northern California]

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

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Is this world important to God or are his purposes entirely focused on a heavenly hereafter?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Do our physical experiences on earth matters.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or are we just passing through?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Robin Phillips takes up these questions and.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

More in his new book, Rediscovering the Goodness of Creation. From the beginning of creation, God has maintained a consistent plan for the earth to bring this world to perfection under the loving stewardship of men and women. The material world is not evil, as the heresy of Gnosticism taught, nor will the earth be destroyed, as so much.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Of modern Christianity teaches.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The orthodox Christian hope is that this earth will one day be resurrected. This manual for Recovering Gnostics delves deep.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Into understanding God's purposes for the material.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

World and gives meaning to our present day engagement with ecology, culture, art, worship.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Social justice and asceticism.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Rediscovering the Goodness of Creation Emmanuel Recovering.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Gnostics is now [e-mail] that's store.ancientfaith.com we're.

[Stephen from Northern California]

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

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Hey, we're back. Thanks a lot. Voice of Steve. You know, that's one of the books that you plug on this show every so often, the one that we just heard the ad for.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I wrote a foreword for it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Even.

You'Re starting to collect forwards.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Father well, some people, you know, based on a certain other forward I wrote, might think I'd write it for anything. But no.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

What could that possibly be for?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's Actually, only books that I really believe in and Father Andrew's most recent book.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Thank you very much.

What category that's in.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We'll.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We will just leave to the reader. So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Hey, we're back. So, yeah, the first half, we talked about saints of the Old Testament, the holy ones of the Old Testament, which. That's. That's the angels, and we didn't mention it, but I wanted to give a little plug for the Book of Jubilees, which does a whole lot of work in terms of talking about the creation of the angels and then God assigning them to various elements of creation. It's really beautiful and poetic. Cool stuff. Worth reading. Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. At some point.

On our docket, maybe soon we may start doing some episodes about particular texts like that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. That way. So all the people who say we talk about the Book of Enoch all the time but clearly do not listen to the podcast can have something to base that on.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. That one episode where we talk about the Book of Enoch and then move on to other books. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, we do quote it at the beginning of the show, though.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's true. I mean, and the voice of Steve delivers it very beautifully.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. So if you're one of those people who hears the show start and turns off ancient faith radio, you think that's all we talk about.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

Yeah. So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So back into the crates, the musty crates.

Of the early episodes of this program.

So one of our early episodes, I don't know, was it the second or third or something, was about the 5ish falls of the Angels.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I think that might have been episode three, maybe.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay.

It's all a blur.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It is. I mean, and plus, we were so much younger then.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, it's true. It's true. I had about half this much gray in my beard. The show's taking a lot out of me. Anyway.

So in that, we talked about how, you know, we've. We've. Milton has trained us all to think about this one primordial fall of the devil and the angels before the creation of the world. We won't belabor all that again. Don't worry. You can go back and listen to that and enjoy the technical difficulties.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

By the way, I'll just break into that sentence here and say we have an intriguing call.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

A Stephen from California, which. That could describe you.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, I am technically a Stephen from California.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. So Stephen is calling, or at least his phone is from California.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Stephen, are you there?

[Stephen from Northern California]

I am here. Fathers, can you hear me?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, we hear you. Welcome to the Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Are you from Northern or Southern California?

[Stephen from Northern California]

Northern.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay. That's a different state than I'm from.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Were they talking about making it its own state at one point all the time?

[Stephen from Northern California]

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. They wanted to make it in, like, five different states at one point, I think.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, go for it. You guys just do it.

[Stephen from Northern California]

I mean, I don't care. They can do what they want.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Nobody wants San Diego. Come on.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right. So what's on your mind, Stephen from Northern California?

[Stephen from Northern California]

So I was wondering if it was possible to be a heretic but then become a saint.

Because I remember from an earlier episode you talked about.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I.

[Stephen from Northern California]

Think it was Constantine, the emperor, and how he didn't have necessarily.

Accurate ideas about how God worked, but he's still considered a saint. But then Origen, if I understand this correctly, is not considered a saint. So I was wondering, like.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

How that.

[Stephen from Northern California]

Works, and I guess then how that works for all of us. Like, how right do you have to be? If you have to be a certain percentage of right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's a great way to put it.

Well, you know, I'll say this, number one.

Being a heretic. I mean, I know that word gets used in a number of ways, but in its technical sense, being a heretic means you have been condemned by the appropriate authorities for not just thinking or just saying something that's wrong, but teaching it right. Like, you are setting yourself up as a teacher of this heretical teaching. Right? Because, I mean, you know, if you go to coffee hour in any Orthodox church and people start to discuss theology.

You'Re going to hear some heresies, like it's going to come out people. Because people think all kinds of wrong things, and they could. Sometimes they say them, but that doesn't mean that they're teaching them. That doesn't mean that they're, you know, doing that. And. And even if they are teaching it, maybe that just gets sort of corrected by their local parish priest, and there's no council that declares them a heretic.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So. So, yeah, you can't. I mean, there is a certain sense in which you can accidentally do a heresy, but, like, it's like saying, you.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Know.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Am I a traitor to the United States of America, even though I've never been convicted of treason?

I mean, you could be right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's possible. You could be.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But what really makes you a traitor is being convicted of treason, you know? So, yeah, there's a certain amount of juridical definition that comes along with that where there's Actually been someone that's examined you and all of that stuff comes along. Is it possible to say wrong things and also to be a canonized saint? Yes. Yes, it is.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Witness every saint.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right. I mean, everybody says something's wrong, you know, and even sometimes they write it down. I mean, we have saints who, like, they get later in their life, they say, oh, please, you know, please don't read the stuff that I wrote earlier. It's like they themselves admit that they said wrong things early on that might even be heretical in the sense of being a wrong teaching. So it's really about how you end up and how you are assessed by the church. Right. Is what it comes down to being.

That's what I have to say about that. I don't know, Father Stephen.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, well, so I don't think this is technically enough, actually.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay. Thank God.

But I didn't need another notch on my belt. The year is almost over, right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, yeah, it's.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, so last episode of the year.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

A couple things we have to disambiguate. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We'Re talking about heresy and we're talking about sainthood. Right. And.

Those two categories are not identical with saved and damned.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. We have to clarify that first. Right.

Because if we're talking about soteriology, if we're talking about salvation.

The ideas in your head have nothing to do with salvation.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. I mean, every place it says in the scripture what God is going to judge people based on.

It'S not the opinions you post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And as St. James tells us in his Epistle.

All the demons know there's one God. Right? They all know that Jesus Christ is his Son. Right. They all know that he died and rose again. They don't just think it. They don't just. They know it for a fact. That doesn't do them any good. Right.

This is. This is something that comes out of a certain form of evangelical Protestantism. Right? This idea that the ideas in your head decide whether you're a good person or a bad person. This has recently been secularized as woke liberalism, which also believes that what makes you a good or a bad person is the ideas you have in your head.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Worst thing about it is there's no possible repentance. And that dogmatic point of view.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right?

So we're not talking about. So we're talking about saint. So part of the church glorifying someone as a saint.

Is that the church is saying, this is a person to be emulated.

This is a person who shows us how to live the Christian life successfully. Right. The purpose of them being glorified as a saint, them being on the calendar of the saints. Right.

Is that this person's life, they lived in a certain way such that it could serve as an example. This is why you read what Saint Photius the Great said about Saint Augustine. Right. Saint Augustine is a saint, not because the Orthodox Church has embraced swaths of his theology, but because of the Confessions, because of the life he lived. Right. Yeah. So you could be wrong about a lot of things because as we've talked about in the show as recently as last episode, ideas don't cause anything.

You could have all kinds of wrong ideas and still live a beautiful life following Christ.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yep.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And have all kinds of misunderstandings and bad doctrine in your head, which probably.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Describes most of the best people in most parishes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And if you live your whole life that way. Right.

Then that person may very well become a saint.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Usually in the providence of God. If they wrote down any of those mistaken things, they don't get preserved.

Right. They're sort of considered unworthy of the person, and so they kind of die out over time.

St. Augustine was uniquely unfortunate in that regard.

I mean, the man, St. Augustine wrote a whole book just retracting things that he had published.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Against his own will.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Everyone ignores it.

They still quote things he retracted authoritatively. Well, St. Augustine said. It's like he retracted that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So he hasn't gotten that benefit of history. But most saints do. This is also a thing now with many modern saints in that. That process hasn't happened yet.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So you get a lot of quotes from 19th and 20th century saints that sound weird and wacky and that will probably be forgotten about 200 years from now.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Because they'll be considered unworthy of the person who they were. And it's the person who they were that is the saint.

And then heresy. Right. The key thing to being a heretic, a heretic isn't someone who's wrong.

And Father Andrew was kind of getting at this. Right. Arius is not a heretic because he was wrong.

We're all wrong to one degree or another about theology.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Arius is a heretic because he was wrong. His bishop came to him and told him he was wrong, and he said, no, I'm right, you're wrong.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. St. Alexander of Alexandria.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. And then a group of bishops came to him and said, you're wrong. And he said, no, I'm right, you all are wrong. And then all the bishops of the church got together.

Pretty much all of them. A couple from Persia. Right. Said Arius, priest area presbyter Arius, you are wrong. And he said, no, I'm right. All of you are wrong. Right. And that's what makes him a heretic.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And started his own churches dedicated to his wrong teaching.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You become a heretic not by being wrong, but by refusing. Correction.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And by then setting out in your own pride and arrogance.

To create your own alternate church structures. And this kind of thing, that's what makes you a heretic. So a person like that, unless they repent.

Right. If someone like that repented and humbly submitted themselves to the discipline of the order of the church, they could become a saint. But then they would cease being a heretic. Right. By virtue of doing that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yep.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So as long as they're a heretic, as long as they're doing that right, then, yeah, they're not going to be a saint. Example of that would be Tertullian.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Who became a Montanist and left the church, and that's why he's not a saint.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yep.

So does that answer your question, Stephen from Northern California?

[Stephen from Northern California]

I believe so. Thank you very much.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right, awesome. Thank you very much for calling.

So good.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, it's, it's, it's. It's not.

It is relevant to what we're talking about. That will become probably more apparent as we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we can weave it in.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So.

Yeah. This is. This is one of those cases where a lot of times when we get calls on this show, it's for people who are actually tracking with us fairly well so often to give a very direct answer to the question would spoil a bunch of stuff we're getting to down the line in the episode.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So we have to kind of answer it without completely answering it in a way that leads into where we're going.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Masterfully done.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

All right. But so if I do say so myself.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I did that with alacrity.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Going back to that, that ancient episode of Yore about the 5ish falls of the Angels, we talked about how.

Milton's wrong.

And wrong in a different way than most puritans or in an additional way.

And how we see several discrete places in Scripture that refer to angelic fall, what we might call angelic falls.

We're not going to rehash all that now. Right. List them all. The five is fallout. All that. Right. But.

This has raised a bunch of questions. Right. And I think a lot of the questions we get concerning this. Are generated primarily by that word fall.

And what that actually means.

Right? Because, for example, well, if the demons are fallen or Satan has fallen, why do they still seem to be in charge of stuff? Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. What does fallen mean?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Or.

You know, like, because.

Milton, again, right, Fallen means got thrown down into hell, right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Like. Yeah, yeah. You know, some, some people also use fallen to mean and he turns to evil.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. You know, right. That fallen is just a question of a moral turn.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So. So what does this mean?

And I did what I thought was a cute wordplay in the notes I gave Father Andrew. But I won't burden you with that.

That's.

Because I think that would just complicate the issue more. But so.

You have. We'll get concrete with this, right? So you have. We talked about how there are. There were angelic beings, right, that were assigned to elements of the natural order, to peoples like people groups and to persons like people.

What does it mean for an angelic being with one of those quote unquote assignments, right. The spirit is playing the role of animating those things. What does it mean for them to fall?

Right. What is that sort of. I mean, we can't be super concrete with it, right. Like, because it's not. We can't talk about it in material terms. Right. But. But a little better grasp of what that means. So.

We'Ve mentioned, for example, and I think the terms we used, again, this may be part of the issue, right. Is for example, the angelic beings who are assigned to people groups, like after the Tower of Babel event.

Right. Deuteronomy 32. Eight and all that that we've talked about before, that they.

In some cases depending at, like Saint Dionysius the Areopagite.

All of them, except for Israel, didn't perform their intended function, right? All of them, except for Israel fell. And we talked about that in terms of accepting worship from people. And I think that language may be a little too external.

Right. Because I think that language plays into this view that, like, okay, well, this angelic being is like up in the sky somewhere and he's supposed to be kind of overseeing them, and they decide to start sacrificing cattle to him. And he says, hey, this is cool. And so he starts telling them to do evil stuff, right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And that's not where we're going, Right.

That's a little too.

Concrete in the sense of being material. Right.

Whereas.

We may even have experienced. Right. So when we talked. When we've talked about spirits, right? And spirits Animating like a group of people. Right. Or we could even extend this out to a tribal group or a nation. Ancient world.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. How.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Sort of that collective spirit can kind of take a turn.

Right. Can kind of take a dark turn.

And that. That's something that happens and includes the people.

Right. Includes the people taking this turn to evil and to wickedness. Right. But that it's not just. Oh, each individual person who is a member of the Amalekites. Right. Each individual one decided to become a cannibalistic, fornicating murderer all at the same time, independently. And it just. They all did it. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Or, you know, to use a more modern example, every single person of the probably thousands that belong to the Nazi party decided to do Nazi things.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. There's all independently decided. Right, right.

At the same time, they weren't all compelled by some demonic. They weren't all collectively possessed and forced to do those things.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But that there is this shift to wickedness into darkness. Right.

That's what we're talking about when we talk about one of these beings falling is that shift to darkness. I don't. Do you remember Father Andrew, which father it was, who made that comment about the fall of the devil and the animals?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, man. I know it sounds like the kind of thing that Saint Ephrem the Syrian would say, but I am not. Okay. I'm not going to attribute that to him because I don't know offhand.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So somebody will go digging in the crates of past episodes and remind.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There is this idea that.

Yeah, whoever said this.

And it's a speculation. As I recall. As I recall, it's speculation. It's presented as speculation because, hey, sometimes church fathers speculate just like humans do.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

He says that St. Paul does it at one point. St. Paul says, I don't have a word for the Lord out of this. But here's what I think is the best.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Here's my opinion. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Here's my best call.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The idea that there's animal death and plant death in the Garden of Eden.

Kind of as the camera comes up on Adam and Eve, you've already got animal and plant death because.

The devil had been in charge of those that life. And so since he turns to evil, it brought death to them first.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And so what's important to me about. Intriguing quote here. Yeah. Is not. Well, is that accurate or not? Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But look at the way that that father in question is thinking about the issue.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Even if he's just speculating, it is wrong. How is he Thinking about the issue, how is he thinking about the relationship between the angelic power that becomes the devil and the created order?

Right. So something happens with this spirit that is guiding and producing the harmony of the created order. And so that harmony is broken. And so you have animals turning on and eating each other and attacking each other. Right. You have. Right. This is the way of thinking. I think that's important there, that. That underlies this understanding that we're trying to get across.

And so.

In one sense, right? In one sense, when these angelical powers or these spiritual powers rebel or fall or fall or whatever language we want to use, this leaves these vacancies, as it were, Right. In the divine.

This. In the divine economy. Right. In this sort of administration we were talking about in the first half. Right. In that there are not holy ones anymore in those positions because they have fallen from what they were supposed to be doing.

At the same time. Right. They aren't vacancies in the sense that, well, all those demonic powers now get thrown down to hell and don't have any influence or don't do anything.

Right, Right. Even though they're now fallen in the sense of being turned to evil, of having left God's administration having ceased to be, creatures who are administering the will of God in his creation and are instead doing the opposite, are trying to bring about the destruction of God's creation, they are still associated with the elements of the natural order or the peoples or the persons. Right. The people with whom they were previously associated.

Yeah, Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

When the neighbors go bad, they're still your neighbors.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So they are a function and a part and a parcel of.

The disharmony, the broken order, the injustice within the created order that results from sin.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So then.

I'm actually gonna do this in reverse order. So what were they called upon to originally do? Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. They're supposed to be bringing people towards God. That's the job.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. The language that's used for them. For example, in the Book of Enoch that we talk about all the time, they're referred to as shepherds.

The 70 sons of God are referred to as the 70 shepherds.

In the animal apocalypse.

In. In the Book of Enoch, they're supposed to be shepherd. I think Saint Dionysius uses this language too. They were meant to shepherd.

The people groups, the people to God.

After the human fall back to God. Right.

And so this is. This was their purpose. Right. So.

Because we focused on the sun, moon and stars in the natural order at the beginning, you might have gotten this idea of, like, you Know the modern sense of the clockwork universe. And they're sort of. Right. Ghosts in the machine. Right. But this is peoples and people too, with agency. Right, yeah. The national order includes animal life and plant life and. Right. And all of these things. So it's a more dynamic relationship than that. And so it was this shepherding of bringing back into harmony. Right. Bringing back to God, restoring or that was their purpose. Right. And they're guiding to a relationship that within the Scriptures is ultimately defined by the idea of a covenant. And that covenant is over and over again referred to as a marriage.

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Like in Hosea, where.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Where God. God in Israel is a kind of marriage is like the image that you see in Hosea, particularly, but depending on.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Where you are, it could be God and his creation as a whole. Yeah, right. It can be God and Israel as a people group.

It can be God and even an individual soul. Yeah, right. An individual. Well, not individual, but a person.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Because we don't have the idea of an individual yet. Right. And that, that marriage is then expected to be chaste and often isn't on one side. Right. It is on God's side, but often on the other side isn't. Right.

And so then in terms of understanding, again, the fallen demonic powers, we have to understand that as the opposite of this, that they decide to shepherd.

Humanity towards someone and something else. Those who are being shepherded toward God become like God. Those who are being shepherded away become like the demonic powers. And so there are these demonic shepherds. Right. And.

Because we like reading it and because people freak out when we read it and resort to special pleading.

We'Re going to come back to the quote from St. John Chrysostom.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. This Minor Marginal demons, Minor Marginal Church Father that no one's ever heard of.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. We never quote the Church Fathers on this show. Just this once, as I've heard.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. I've heard somewhere. Yeah. St. John Chrysostom. And for those of you who are new, we're being a little sarcastic. He is a major, major, major church father. One of the greatest, actually.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Super important. Yeah. St. John Chrysostom. So this is from.

What'S called four discourses, chiefly on the Parable of the Rich man and Lazarus. This is from discourse number two.

You can look this up on the interwebs.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And that's not. By the way, that's not his title.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, no. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like these are. He gave sermons. People wrote them down. We found them. Right. That's just descriptive. Right. We got four Sermons, they seem to mainly be about the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, chiefly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So this is what he says.

For it is a fact that many of the less instructed think that the souls of those who die a violent death become wandering spirits. And by that he means demons. But this is not so. I repeat, it is not so. For not the souls of those who die a violent death become demons, but rather the souls of those who live in sin. Not that their nature is changed, but that in their desires they imitate the evil nature of demons. Showing this very thing to the Jews. Christ said, ye are the children of the devil. And that's a reference to John 7:44. He said that they were the children of the devil, not because they were changed into a nature like his, but because they performed actions like his. Wherefore also, he adds, for the lusts of your Father you will do so this is exactly that relationship, you know, this sort of in, you know, participation with demonic forces making you like demons.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, Right. And so. And this is a parallel, Right. Our former Mormon friend. Don't get triggered, right, when we talk about theosis, when you talk about deification, the Orthodox Church, we are not saying that there is a change of your human nature into something else.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You remain a human, but you become like God.

Right. By participation in his works. Right. So that we can say God became man so that men might become God.

And this is directly parallel to what St. John Chrysostom says here. Right. St. John Grisasso was talking about a belief that still exists today, by the way. Right. That people who die this sort of violent, horrible death come back and haunt the place and kill all the kids on Elm Street.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, Right.

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And he says, no, that's not it. That's not how, you know, you become a demon. You become a demon by living like one. Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's not that you stop being a human and become an angelic being.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's fallen.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But you become like them. Right. And so you can say that you become a. You could say that they become demons.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And that's what St. John Chrysostom is talking about when he quotes Christ there. Christ is not saying, like, he's not saying all Jews, for one thing. He's saying he's talking to the wicked people in front of him who. Who are happen to be Jews. He himself is a Jew. His disciples are Jews. Like, it's not all Jews. It's the wicked people he's talking to. That's why he's saying that they are, I think it's one of the, you know, that they're children of the devil because they do the work of their father. Right, you know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

Yes. And it's, you know, not coincidental that it's the lusts of their father that they do, because. Right. If the covenant into which we're shepherded by angelic beings is compared to marriage, then this consorting with demons is always compared to fornication. Yeah, right. It's always compared to fornication.

We know that in many cases, like with the giant clans. Right. And pagan forms of worship, it literally involved fornication.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But even when we're not talking about that literal cultic fornication, it's still fornication in contrast to the marriage. That is. Right. Returning to God. Yeah, right.

So, Right. This is sort of the, the state of affairs that comes into being again that we have in the Hebrew Bible in the Old Testament. Right. And then within the prophetic tradition contained therein, there is going to be a solution to this. And this brings us Back to Psalm 82 or 81 in the Greek, which we sing on Holy Saturday.

As the gospel hymn, followed by a certain reading from the gospel of St. Matthew that we're also going to talk about right here in the same context. Again, not a coincidence that these two things are brought together in a resurrection service.

That talks about literally the death of the gods.

God stands in the council of the gods. Amidst of them. He brings judgment.

Right. He says you were to administer the nations injustice. Right. You were to carry out these assignments. You did the opposite. You were wicked.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And you brought them to wickedness. And so now you've been called gods and sons of the Most High, but now you will die like men.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And I just want to add, by the way, because I know that there is, there is also a reading of the psalm which is, you know, perfectly valid as well, which is that it's about human rulers who did not do what they were supposed to do.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I don't think that's a valid reading. But anyway, go ahead.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You don't. At all.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, but I mean, even if, like, even if it, like, even if it is right, like it, it doesn't, it doesn't matter because the point is, is the point that those who are set over others have not done what they're supposed to do and God is judging them, you know, because of that. Right. Even, you know, but yeah, I mean, it's. To me, you can do both of those readings at the same time, and they can both be understood in correct ways.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, but the problem with the other reading is it kind of doesn't make sense with the details of the psalm.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, right. You have to some parts and not others.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

What council of the gods is there that God comes and stands in?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. He doesn't stand in the midst of the Sanhedrin.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, right, right, right, right. And like, yeah, they're gonna die like men. They're men.

Right. So that. That reading just fundamentally doesn't make sense. And that's not the reading Christ takes of it in. In St. John's Gospel. Well, I don't know if we want to go down that rabbit trail right now.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We might need to do. Do a dedicated episode, I think.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I don't know for that. The whole episode.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or at least somebody next call in, show we do somebody call in about that. And I'll, I'll walk us through that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Because there we go. All right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You have to grossly misunderstand St. John's gospel to not understand this is exactly how Christ is interpreting it. But.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. So no, see, where I thought you were going to go is. Oh, right.

That.

You will often see the beginning of. Of Psalm 82 or 81 quoted.

From.

Quoted by church fathers. And then they just make a general comment about theosis.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, right, right, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So a lot of. A lot of.

What did St. John Krasasum say? Some of the less instructed.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Therefore say, oh, well, this psalm is about theosis. As if that solves an issue. Right.

Because I don't even know what that would mean. Because what, the people who have undergone theosis are evil and God's going to kill them.

Yeah, that doesn't make any sense.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We'll get back to that in a second. The fathers are just shorthanding this.

It's so well known that they're just shorthanding it. Right. You're supposed to understand a whole dynamic here.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So that's what happens. And the psalm ends with, this is another thing that is incompatible with the other interpretation with, arise, O God, and judge the earth, for thou wilt inherit from all the nations. Yeah, right.

Which refers to a fundamental that after this judgment against the gods.

This then opens the way to God. And the word inheritance is incredibly important. Israel is God's inheritance.

This is the language that's used in Deuteronomy when the nations are divided.

Is that Yahweh chose Israel for his inheritance. Right. So. And this says that after the judgment of the gods, now there is this shift in God is going to inherit from all the nations. Not inherit all the nations, but from all the nations, which is important if we understand St. Paul. Right. And what's going on with him bringing Gentiles into Christianity.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So there's this shift. Right. And as I mentioned, we. We sing this psalm as the gospel hymn on holy Saturday as the lead into us reading Matthew 28.

The end of Matthew 28, the end of St. Matthew's gospel, when Christ, right before the ascension, says.

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you. In other words, I'm in charge.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, yes. And so the Church has put those in parallel to help us interpret this correctly. Right. That Christ has accomplished what it prophesied.

That Christ has judged the gods of the nations. He now has all authority. And because he has all authority now, he is sending them out to all of those nations.

Right. In order to bring from all of those nations into God's inheritance, Israel.

To become part of his people.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But.

So now we have legitimate vacancies.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right? Yes, there are.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Now, since Christ has taken that authority back. Right.

Those assignments are illegitimate. Right. And so Christ doesn't just say, all authority in heaven and earth has now been given to me. So all those angels are out of a job.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. But included there is the fact that he is now resharing out of love.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. This is a renewal of the divine council.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. It's because he now has all authority that they're going out to bring these people in. And what is the destiny of those people going to be? The destiny of those people is going to be the destiny of Abraham to become like the stars of heaven.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so we get this language of glorification, which is again, language of sharing in the divine life, in the life of the Holy Trinity, in the life of God. Right. Which is now shared with.

The human creation in a special way because of the incarnation and death and resurrection of Christ, the ascension of Christ. Right. And so the particular, when we look at the particular metaphors we get of this, what are they?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's saying to the apostles, you will sit on 12 thrones and judge the 12 tribes of Israel.

It's the 24 elders seated around the throne of God on their own thrones, with their own crowns that they cast down before God.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And we should just reiterate here, by the way, that sitting on a throne and judging does not mean like what we tend to think of, like, in a literal sense of like, oh, this is what I think about this, or this is what I think about that. It's about being in command. It's like sitting in the captain's chair. You're running something here.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. It's the imagery that was used in the Old Testament regarding the angelic beings now applied also to humans.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And as we've commented before, it's not coincidental that 24, with the 24 human elders is a third of 72.

Right, right. So those vacancies, these fallen angelic being, these spirits, are filled by humans. Right. Who in a certain way become spirits. We'll get to that in a second, but not in a second, in a little bit in the third half.

And so.

Just like with the angelic beings.

What would we expect. What would we expect to find based on this dynamic that plays out in Scripture, both in the Old Testament and then is fulfilled in Christ? Well, we would expect.

That the saints in glory, that human saints, human holy ones, we'd expect that they would be assigned to elements of the natural order, to peoples, like people groups, to persons. Right. Yep. We'd expect to find them doing the same thing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Or in the words of Jesus, equal to the angels, that they become equal to the angels. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So doing the same things.

Right. So the idea of sainthood, not just the idea of being a holy person, but the idea of sainthood as it's understood within the church.

Right. Is just part and parcel of this understanding of redemption and this understanding of the bodiless powers of heaven and every. And this arc of the scriptures that we've just gone through, the natural result of it. Right. You can't sort of follow us up to here and then now say, oh, but human saints in glory don't do any of those things.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. They don't become equal to the angels in any appreciable way.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. That's now somehow totally different.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, you got to do something with Luke 20:36 people.

I mean, that's, you know, I had.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Big chunks of revelation and.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right, right. You got to do something. It's not just about like, oh, look how wonderful it is in the next life. I think that's the way that it often is received. Like, it's going to be great, you know, but, but no, it's. The language that's used is. Is a, an active, dynamic engagement, you know, of what saints are doing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And, and, and what's taking place now. Right. And again, Protestant friends, I know many of you and you've heard from other people, right? Other scholars, a lot of what we went through.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And then. But then you get to this thing with the saints and the heebie jeebies set in there. Right. It's like, I don't know, this is starting to get kind of Catholic. I don't know what to do about this. Right.

The heebie jeebies are okay, but again, shouldn't be an obstacle to accepting truth.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You can get over the heebie jeebies over time. Right.

And I don't see a way to break this arc functionally. I don't even see a reason. I don't see a reason to try to avoid it other than just this discomfort.

Right. That's been sort of bred into many people. Right. Which I understand the discomfort and I appreciate the discomfort. Right. But again.

You can't let your spiritual life be guided by comfort and discomfort. That's. That is a way that ends in disaster spiritually.

So a final note here.

One place where we see this manifested very early on.

In the New Testament is St. Paul's reference to the Corinthians to baptism for the dead.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I was just saying we're going to make our ex Mormon friend a little squeamish again.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, I know. That poor guy.

That poor guy. So we're just going to do this briefly. I think we've talked about it on the show before.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We have. And you have a whole. A whole article on your blog about it as well.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There's an article on my blog. There's a section, Religion of the Apostles, talking about it.

But it's very clear when you dig into it, when you look at how St. Paul uses.

The dead as opposed to just dead without the article that when St. Paul uses the article, the dead is referring to like the dead in Christ, right. To departed Christians.

And the word that's used there for. Right. Baptism for the dead is not really in the place of. It's more on behalf of or with benefit to.

And the idea here is that this is literally a patron relationship in the Roman sense. Right. In the sense that there is someone in whose name you do things.

Primarily as an act of humility. Right. Such that the honor for those things goes to the patron.

Right. You're the one doing the work. You're the one doing the things, but your patron, right. In a Romans, it would be sponsoring them and therefore receive the glory for them. But in this sense it's sort of a. Voluntarily. So this is referring to the practice of. Which is obviously still an orthodox practice today, of taking a saint's name at baptism.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And this idea of a patron saint. Right. That you then operate in their name.

So the folks who have. I have to. As a side note, the folks who have criticized religion of the apostles, particularly on this point, when I talk about baptism for the dead, have brought me no end of joy and laugh.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's great.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Because for one thing.

They often say, well, where is he getting this? Where is this coming from? And if you actually go to the further reading bibliography at the end of Religion the Apostles, there are two journal articles specifically on this point.

In there. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's like the bibliography is invisible for some people, I think.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And if you go and read those two journal articles and the titles will. If you just read the bibliography, like not read the books, just read the couple of pages, you could tell from the titles of these journal articles exactly what they're talking about. They're talking about baptism for the dead. Right.

So if you go and read those articles, the footnotes have like everything that's been written about this in the past, like hundred years. Right. Covered in there. Okay.

So first of all, there's two sources there. I also get which of the church fathers say this. And if you, if you go and look this up, say in your ancient Christian commentary on scripture, what you'll find is they don't comment on it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There's one sort of little known church father who comments on it and just kind of says, I don't know what this means. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And then everybody else doesn't comment at all. So St. John Chrysostom just passes over this whole baptism for the dead thing like it's not even there.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Let me suggest to you, why would all of these well known church fathers just pass over it like it's nothing weird when it's so weird to us? Maybe because it wasn't weird to them. Maybe because they knew what it was talking about.

And then.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Third.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And then I'll be done with this little mini rant, I promise. Third, My favorite is when they accuse me of novelty.

So, like, I literally argue that an orthodox church practice is apostolic and they tell me.

That'S novelty. Right.

How dare you show up at this late date and argue that this practice is apostolic.

It's amazing.

Less relevant to my own personal enjoyment of my critics.

And I really need a better class of them. But.

The.

More pertinent and more important, once we understand this idea from very early on of patron saints, this Also helps us understand.

The phenomenon of pseudepigraphy.

Both in Second Temple Judaism and in early Christianity.

That is writing in someone else's name.

Chiefly a saint's name. Right, right.

So, you know, friend of the show, Bart Ehrman, has his book forged.

These New Testament books aren't written by who you think they were written by.

Which is amazing because it's like, you know, this wasn't really written by St. Mark. It's like.

What is St. Mark known for other than writing the gospel?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Why would you attribute something to him?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I mean, let's just call the guy who wrote it Mark. Like, okay, Mark, Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Like, I mean, the reason why people might plagiarize or forge stuff today is because, like, there's royalties at stake, you know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You make money, you make money off of selling books, right? That's a thing. But like in the ancient world, that was not a thing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right.

Yeah. So the idea was, right, amongst a vast swath of pseudepigraphy, now there are things that go on.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So there are gnostic texts where the reason they're being attributed to some apostles that they're trying to claim Jesus actually taught this. Right. So there is some of that. Right. It's not that that doesn't exist. Right.

But.

In many cases at least. Right. What you actually have is something similar to this patronage situation.

Right. And especially with someone who is. Right. Under the, under the authority of someone else. Right. So for example, we're told in the book of Isaiah that Isaiah's prophecies were written down and then later collected by his disciples.

Yeah, okay. And this causes a really simple solution to this whole second and third Isaiah thing.

Right. Because there are sort of differences at the places where they draw the lines. Right. It's like, okay, yeah, so there were three different collections of Isaiah's prophecies and they all got put together into one big one.

You can't sell books with simple solutions though, really.

In the modern day, journal articles have.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

To be written public.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I thought I was going to get a ton of controversy when the whole Council of God episodes about Second Peter came out and I didn't, at least as far as I could tell. I don't know if I'm happy or not.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's because they email me all the.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Complaints, so that could be it. Did you get any?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I don't remember. Oh, I just delete emails that refer to you now. Oh, okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, that's probably sound practice. You probably set up a junk filter just if my name's in it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There we go.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But that it looks for all the world like second Peter was compiled from St. Peter's preaching and teachings by, after his death by some of his disciples. Right.

That explains a whole bunch of things related to St. Jude's Epistle too, that I won't go into here. Right. Or the possibility.

Folks. I said possibility. The possibility that it was someone other than the 1st century Saint Dionysus the Areopagite who wrote the works attributed to Saint Dionysus the AreoPagite.

Right. A person could have taken Saint Dionysius name.

At baptism or as a monastic and be writing in his name and not be lying.

Or trying to defraud anyone, but rather have this patrons relationship where he wants the credit to go to his patron saint and not to himself.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

He was writing. So if it was written in the second or third century. Right. By someone else that attributed him, it's not a case of lying that doesn't discredit the contents. Right. Those are all presuppositions because a lot of pseudepigraphy, at least a lot of this writing in someone else's name was founded on this principle right of giving the honor and the credit to someone else, making oneself a ghostwriter.

So that someone else would get the credit.

Which has a certain asceticism and humility to it that few today would practice.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right, well, that wraps up the second half of this episode of the Lord of Spirits. We're going to go ahead and take our second and final break and we'll be right back.

[Stephen from Northern California]

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

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

What are we to make of the unseen world and spiritual warfare? The Lord of Spirits book version is now [e-mail] written by Father Andrew Stephen Damick.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

To the modern mind, dragons and demons are just the inner demons of psychology. And angels are often reducible to the better angels of our nature, that is to our better human impulses and virtues. Talk of spirits is really about psychology, but to the ancient mind of millennia ago, even up to the pre modern mind of just centuries ago, these are real beings with personal presence who inhabit our world and affect us. Father Andrew provides a distillation and explanation.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Of the material in the popular podcast.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The Lord of Spirits, which he co hosts with Fr.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Stephen DeYoung. Get this brand new book today at store.ancientfaith.com. that's store.ancientfaith.com.

[Stephen from Northern California]

We'Re back now with the Lord of Spirits, the 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 Andrew Stephen Damick]

Welcome back, everyone. We just got a note from a listener in Australia. So welcome, Australia. We're glad to have you on board. And hey, nice to hear that. Plug for the book.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

How are they listening to us? Is it on, like a CB radio in their weapons vehicle?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I don't know. There's this thing called the Internet. It's crazy, man. Right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But, I mean, I'm pretty sure the nuclear war took that out in Australia, based on the documentaries I've seen about life there.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, I have been told that every living thing there is actively trying to kill any humans that come around.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You have the mutants of the wasteland, right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's the reason why my wife will never come with me to Australia.

Because she's like, I don't want to be, you know, And. And on top of that, Australians have also added something called the Drop Bear. Look this up, people. I'm not kidding about this. The Drop Bear, and I think the Drop Bear legend is designed to prevent anyone from. From coming to Australia. Like, it's not like it was not put together by the Australian Tourism Board, we'll just put it that way. So Drop Bears, I.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And I. I have to say, people don't realize how much of a humanitarian Hugh Jackman is.

I don't go to go to that wasteland, right, and go into the battered shell of a theater and perform musicals for them.

Like, I'm there, though. But he escaped. And he goes back.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He goes back. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah.

Welcome back.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Welcome back.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's the third half. He's almost a patron saint of Australia, Almost.

With the love and care he shows to his people.

That's not where I thought the beginning of this half was going to go. But. But there we go. We just had to go in here from an Australian.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

If Hugh Jackman is listening, go ahead and call in and give us information, please.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We want to hear from you. Hey, Hugh, get off of that cloud. Anyway.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Needed more musical references. Sorry, I know. Don't.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Don't get me started.

I can reference musicals.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So.

Yeah, so we dipped our toes in the last half into this a little bit, and now we're going to sort of dive into the Deep end of this.

And that is so concretely pulling in some stuff we've talked about before. What is a spirit? How does a spirit work? How does a spirit relate to those and that of which it is a spirit? Right.

And hopefully, on the way we're going to. This is another area where we get a lot of questions. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And because this is hard to understand. Yes. Well, what we're pushing at here and already this episode, but now, especially here, as we come, you know, toward its climax.

Meaning its ladder.

Nice. This is. This is stuff that we're pushing at, like, at the edge of what humans can understand.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And we're not claiming we understand.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, Right.

So this is. And. And, you know, since we're playing the hits tonight from. From way back. Right.

Part of the problem is that the way we tend to approach this issue, what is a spirit? Especially since we're thinking about the spirits of the righteous made perfect. Right. We're thinking about saints. Right. We're thinking about human saints in glory, is that when we approach it, we're approaching it from the idea from the angle of what is it like to be a spirit?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

What is it like to be that? What will it be like? Right.

If I. If when I die, I'm in that number when the saints go marching in. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, man, that brings me back.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Shout out to Louisiana. Anyway.

Right. We're thinking about what's that going to be like. Right. Is really sort of part of our thinking on that. And.

As is our want.

Don't know what it's like to be a bat.

We can't know what it's like to be a bat which is below us in the created order, let alone understanding what it's like to be an angel or a glorified human.

Which is above us in the created order. Still created, but above us in the created order. Above us in terms of the level of consciousness that we're talking about.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So we can't approach this from what is it like to be a spirit. We have to approach this from what does it mean to be a spirit.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And saying what does something mean? Is fundamentally about how we relate to it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, Right. So we can say what it means to be a bat by giving a bunch of descriptors of bats and how they relate to humans and other creatures.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Because it means, like, everything that means. Means something to us. Like, that's what the meaning is.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Can I say what it's like to be a bat? We can understand what it means to be a Bat. What it means to be a bat is to be a mammal.

With webbed hands, essentially, that form wings that allow for flight. Right. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Right.

That's assessing what we mean when we say bat. Right. Essentially, ultimately it's. What do we mean when we say bat? When we say that is a bat, what do we mean? And so when we say that is a spirit. Right. Where do we say he makes his angels? Spirits. What do we mean by that word? Right.

And we've talked before.

Again, related to the bat, that there are different levels of consciousness.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That until very recently, and by very recently, I mean until the 20th century, for the most part.

The idea of consciousness was seen as a very binary thing. A zero or a one.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Humans have it, nothing else does.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well. Or angels.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, Right. But not animals.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Consciousness was seen as some kind of self awareness or something that like. Or something to do with language or something. Right. That animals don't have.

Right. So Hagel. And he's gonna show up again later. Hegel. Animals are just basically little machines.

They're not aware in any real sense. Right. 19th, even early 20th century people, by and large don't think animals really feel pain or at least the way humans do, because they're not conscious.

Right.

A lot of scientific experiments going on at that time that now we find abhorrent. Right.

But we now understand, obviously, for a variety of reasons that that's not accurate. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That. That animals, for example, have different kinds of consciousness and different levels of consciousness. Right. And we understand that even plants have, as organisms have some kind of rudimentary level of consciousness. Right. They've. They've played the sounds of water near plants and the roots of the plant will start to grow toward the sound.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Sounds like a tape player.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's so weird. Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So there is something that is processing input from the environment and then acting upon it in some way. Right. That's some level of consciousness. Right.

And then we've even talked about how.

Once we go below the level of organisms, one of the first things we notice is that actually the things we think of as organisms like animals and plants and humans.

Are actually.

Not a single system, not a single organism, but are made up of other independent organisms.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Which sometimes interact with systems in other larger organisms. Weirdly enough.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Like Father Andrew loves. When I bring up how our gut flora chemically communicate with the gut flora of other people around us.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Never sit next to me again.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

My gut flora are fascinating. I think they're mainly made up of McDonald's hamburger buns, but anyway.

And liquor, sadly. But anyway.

So.

Right, so it's not just that any given organism is a system, it's a collection of systems. And as we just said, some of those subsystems communicate.

With the environment and some of them are self guided and self processing, right. Within the whole. Right.

And so the consciousness that we ascribe to the organism.

Is really an overarching consciousness of these sort of mini rudimentary. Right. Like my, my, my gut flora may have the level of consciousness of like a plant, right. This rudimentary consciousness, but that's still part of my overall consciousness. Right. And what do I mean by that? Well, trust me, the state of your gut flora can affect your mood. Oh yeah, right. Read some of St. Gregory the Theologians poetry when he was having stomach troubles. He writes about it very candidly.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, there's a good argument to be made that the reformation happens because of gut flora. I mean, it's well known.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's well known.

Right. And so.

The end result is that there is, there is some level of consciousness that arises.

Out of any ordered system that transmits and or processes information.

Yeah. Right. Now by some level of consciousness again, right? Think about the plants, right? Think about very simple animals or things like sea anemones that are somewhere in between, right? We're not saying they all have human consciousnesses, right? We're not saying like I am going to go and speak to the Earth because plate tectonics is an ordered system, find out what the earth wants, right? That's not what we're saying.

We're talking about rudimentary levels of consciousness, but they're there.

And so once we understand that, that there are these levels of consciousness below the level of human consciousness, there's no reason.

Right, for anyone. And now I'm speaking outside of even religious terms, right? There's no reason for anyone of any religion or no religion at all to reject the idea that there could be conscious levels of consciousness above humans, above an individual human person.

Right? There's no reason for that. Now Christianity teaches us certain things about those levels of consciousness, right? Spiritual beings, angelic beings, right? The saints and glory, everything we've been talking about this episode. But.

Even on a purely materialist basis, there's no logical reason to exclude the possibility of those things existing. Yeah, right. In some sense, in some form, right?

So there's this, this higher level of consciousness. And so as the examples we were giving before, right, you have a people group, that people group has a collective spirit, right? There's this collective consciousness of the whole that is not just the sum of the parts.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's some kind of democratic way or something. Right.

That people move and do things as groups, not solely as individuals. Right. And as the examples we gave in the last half.

This is neither.

Neither being forced by a spirit to do something, nor just all of these individual persons all making the same exact choices, bad choices or good choices, all at the same time. Right. Unguided by anything.

So when we've talked about this in the past. Right. We've talked about spirits in this sense in the past. Right. As guiding these spirits who are assigned to elements of the natural order, to people groups, to persons.

One of the main questions we've gotten is, well, does that mean that these spirits sort of like come into existence and cease to exist or they get assigned and reassigned? Right. Like, was there a spirit of like the Prussian people?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Is there.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There's no more Prussia.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Are. Are Egregore is real?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

This idea, do they sort of spring into being? Do they. When some new. Right. You know, like the United States of America didn't exist and then it did. Right. So just like this new. Is a new angel born or get its wings or something, Right. That's now like assigned to it or the spirit that's moving the people.

And ultimately that's the question of do spirits come into existence?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And the answer to that depends on how we define existence.

Right. And I don't mean your. What your definition of is is.

But what it means to come into existence. So the way we usually use that way, I think it's being used in the question, at least most of the time.

Is it's being used. Come into existence as in.

Ex nihilo. Right. Like, previously there was nothing, now there is a thing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. In the universe.

And that.

Idea that. That temporal transition.

Right, between there's this second in time and this place in space that is empty, and then that in another moment of time that space is filled with something. Right.

You can see how there's a problem with applying that to a spirit.

Because a spirit doesn't have.

Material existence that occupies space and time.

Right.

So if you mean existence in terms of material reality, material existence, do spirits come into material existence? Well, no.

Sort of definitionally.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, Right.

But we have to go back to the 5ish falls a little bit here.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. And we have to learn. I'm suddenly reminded of the original Back to the Future movie where Doc Brown says to Marty, you have to think fourth dimensionally.

That'S not what we're saying here. But you have to. Phenomenologically. Phenomenologically.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So we talked about, right. We have these five, four, maybe five. That's why five ish points, right. In.

What would be described as human history, we're not going to get it. Other episodes we've talked about what sense of history we're talking about with the scriptures, but in scripture, at these five points in human existence.

There are points where angelic beings are said to fall. And we talked about what that means in the last half. Yeah, right. And so one of the questions we get then is like, how, how.

Does that mean, you know, the day before the angel was a good angel doing its thing and then that day evil. Right.

And, and we, we've tried in various ways to make the point like. No, because see there, you're assuming an angel is like a human. You're assuming what it's like to be an angel. Right. Angels, because they don't have material bodies, experience time and space differently than we do. And we don't know how differently because we don't know what it's like to be an angel. But we know it's different than the way that we as beings with material bodies experience time and space. Right? But what we're saying when those things are attached to those point in time is that that's when the change, the fall. Right. The shift, however we want to describe it, that's when that shift or change or fall enters into the experience of humanity, the collective experience of humanity.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, we had, we had somebody actually ask on in the YouTube chat.

Essentially, is it the case that every time an angel falls that there's some kind of effect in the world? And my response to him was, how would we know if there was a fall without one? Like, we, we wouldn't know. Like we're not given a. Some book of objective knowledge of things that has no relation to us because.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It'S, it's the effect in the world that is written about in Scripture. Yeah, it's in the, the effect in the human. The world of humanity.

Right. And that's why, as Father Andrew said, we have to think phenomenologically.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Not in terms of metaphysics, in terms of being, in terms of an esoteric sense. Right. Forget Plato, right? We're talking in terms of human experience.

Right. And so the place where humans began to experience this fracturing of humanity, of the spirits of the different nations leading them not toward God, but away, setting them against, to each other, they started to experience. Humans started to experience that after the Tower of Babel.

Right. And so that's when it gets written about.

Right. The humans experienced the failed rebellion of the devil against God in Genesis 3, in the Garden of Eden.

At the expulsion from paradise. That's where that entered into the realm of human experience. How the devil himself experienced that, we can't now.

Let alone how God experienced.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, right, right, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like you could even talk about God experiencing things, right? Like that's beyond any kind of knowledge.

But that's when he went. Right. That's what enters into to the human world. Right. And so.

If by come into existence, you mean come into human experience. Right, Come into the world of humans, then yes.

Then, yes.

There is a spirit that comes into existence at such a point.

At the founding or forming of a nation.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, but. But spirit, again is. Is a phenomenological term, right? It's about relation between beings.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Experiences. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Spirit here is. Yes, is a phenomenological term. It is, Right. And that's how it's usually he makes his angels spirit. He makes them to be spirits. He puts them into this relationship. Right. He being God. Right, right.

So. Yes. And so. And so the saints of glory are made spirits in this sense.

Right.

So.

What then is. We've hinted around this, We've. We've poked around this. We've kind of said what it's not. What is the relationship between a spirit and a person or a spirit and a people group or.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Group.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Or a spirit and some elements of the natural world. The word that's used.

To describe this in scripture and in the Fathers is kenania.

You gonna offend the Greeks, Father Andrew.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'll say.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or like the pronounce it the evangelical way.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Early 80s CCM.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Plug your ears.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Band Koinonia.

Koinonia. I think that actually, I think they said koinonia. Oh, man.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Rhymes with Narnia.

So I didn't do that. Greek people.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's not the way I would normally.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Say it, but said you're a Raspian. Hate mail to Father.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, I don't normally do that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So. Yeah. And. And.

In those circles where that Father Andrew was referring to, where that term was used, it got really watered down to mean like fellowship, like coffee hour.

But this is a much more important term in, in classical Greek, for example, it's used.

This is the term Plato uses to describe the relationship between the forms and things.

Participation to take part in. Right. That's how it's often translated. This is the term.

That St. Paul uses.

When he says, you know what, what the nation sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God. I do not you to want you to become.

Kinonia. I do not want you to become participants with demons. Yeah. Right. So this describes a potential relationship you can have with demons. For St. Paul.

Brought about in part at least through pagan sacrifice. Right. It also.

In the same passage, St. Paul uses the same term to refer to relationship that can be had with God.

Right. But points out you can't have this relationship with both God and demons at the same time.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. One or the other.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

One or the other.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This participation. And what this participation is pointing to.

Is an aligning of wills. Right. Meaning it's voluntary in the original sense.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

An aligning of wills that then brings about an aligning of activities. Right. Meaning energies, synergia, synergy. Right. There's a synergistic relationship.

That is being talked about here. And so one can, through the Spirit of God, through the Holy Spirit, have this kind of synergistic relationship with God in which we align our will with God's will.

We through our activity, participate in his activities, grace the energies, the divine energies.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

What God is doing in the world, we participate in that. We align our will with his. This is the path of theosis, where we become like God. Right. The other option is that we align our wills with a demonic spirit.

Our wills, we align our activities and then the same result that synergy results in, as St. John talked about us becoming like the demons. Right. And brings about our destruction. But so this is this participation works in both directions. Right. Both top down and bottom up. As we said, it's not just top down. It's not that the Spirit comes and possesses a group of people. Right. For example, it forces them to do things against their will and puppets them. Right. God doesn't do that. Holy Spirit doesn't do that on the one side, demons don't do that on the other side. Right. The language we get is shepherding, guiding, etc. Right.

On the other hand, it's not just bottom up. It's not just the sum of the parts. Right? Right. Theosis doesn't happen. Sorry, Pelagius. By human efforts. Right. This isn't something that just we do one way or the other, where we are completely, completely free moral agents. So it is going in both directions. It is actual synergy. Right. And we use still sometimes.

The word spirit in this kind of synergistic sense. Right. So the time of year it is. People talk about the spirit of Christmas. You need to get with the spirit of Christmas. Quit being a sour puss. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Or do you have school spirit?

Which, you know, it's clear that school spirit is not just a bunch of individual people cheering for the football team. Like, there's something more going on there. You know, there's a sense of everyone belonging to the same thing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And being on the same page and there being some guiding. That there is a school spirit. Right. That is guiding everyone and bringing everyone together. Right. Or the zeitgeist.

Right. The spirit of the age. He who marries himself to the spirit of the age soon finds himself a widower. Basic truth. But you can wed yourself to the spirit of the age.

Notice the language there.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. The wedding. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And this kind of understanding of spirit, by the way.

This kind of understanding of spirit, by the way is key to understanding what we mean by holy tradition in the Orthodox Church.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And we've talked about this before a bunch. Right. That, you know, what we don't mean by tradition in the Orthodox Church is a bunch of secret stuff that the bishops have handed down at their consecrations that they don't tell anybody that we claim goes back to the apostles.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The esoterica.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Oral tradition. Read some St. Irenaeus. Right. He'll fix you up on that one.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And this is why, like, there's a famous line, I. I think it's on. In. On the Incarnation, where Saint Athanasius says.

That unless you're living. Unless you're imitating the life of the saints, and obviously that's pointing at the way you live, unless you're imitating the life of saints, you can't understand their teachings.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know, which is you have to align your will with this.

With the holy tradition. And it's not just a big list of things that you get. Right. Like a quiz that you get all the answers. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. So, yeah. So we talk about holy tradition in the Orthodox Church as being the life of the Holy Spirit in the church.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And that sounds fancy and. Oh, yeah. Right. But what. What does it mean? Right. It means that we look back at the church's history.

And we see that there are places where humans were synergizing, were in sync, where their wills were aligned, where their activities were aligned with the Holy Spirit, with what God was doing in the world. Right. That they're being guided by the Holy Spirit. They were speaking, but they were being guided by the Holy Spirit.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Where this synergy was happening.

Right. And we point at those places and we say these places are authoritative for Us in the sense that these places in history serve as guides for us as we seek to do the same thing.

Right. As we seek to do the same thing. So the ecumenical councils.

Certain writings of certain Church fathers, because remember, we don't have all of them. We don't have writings of all the Church fathers who could potentially be considered church fathers. We don't have all the writings of any given church father. Right. We have the ones that have come down to us through tradition.

The copying of the Scriptures right down to the ages, the canon of scripture, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. These are all places where humans were synergizing with the Holy Spirit. And so that fact and that recognition from us means that they're authoritative in guiding us to do the same. Right. As we continue this historical journey of the Church. And so there is a sense in which it is true to say that.

That holy tradition is the Holy Spirit incarnate as history.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That is an absolute, though people.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, as I say that, yes, there are a certain number.

Of the more instructed.

Who probably blanched because they heard shades or the shade of George William Frederick Hagel. Right. When I said that. And there's a ghost that haunts a lot of people.

And so the reason I said in a sense is that when we say that, right. We don't mean what Hegel meant when he said similar things.

Okay. So Hagel, when Hegel talks about spirit, Hegel is actually very clear. He means the Holy Spirit. Hegel was a Lutheran. And if you don't understand that Hegel is a Lutheran, self described. He always insisted he was an orthodox Lutheran. And if you don't understand that he's a Lutheran, you won't understand Hegel correctly because he's really Lutheran.

But he means the Holy Spirit. But, but.

Hegel worked in a, in, in the opposite direction. Hegel understood.

History as having a through line.

And Hegel is vastly influential.

Late 19th, throughout the 20th century in theology and philosophy, just about everything. Right. History has this through line. It's going somewhere, it's progressing in a direction. Of course, 19th century Germany and 19th century German Lutheranism were the peak of that.

At least for that point. Right. He didn't think now it was going to be a valley. Right.

He didn't think history was at an end, but they were the peak then best so far.

So.

But that meant that whatever unfolds for him, whatever unfolds in history, the unfolding of history was the unfolding of the Holy Spirit and therefore the unfolding of God.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. So you know, the times equals the work of the Holy Spirit.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. So he could, having helped found the University of Berlin.

See Napoleon there in person wrecking the place and say, there goes history.

See, Napoleon is history incarnate because he was the one shaping what was going to come next for Europe.

Hagel saw.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Which meant for Hagel that he was being guided by the Holy Spirit.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Which is not what we're saying.

We do, however, as Orthodox Christians, believe that the history of the Church is going somewhere.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. We don't believe that any given generation is the peak of it, despite how sometimes you hear some Orthodox Christians talk as if the 4th century was the denouement.

Or at least much better than now.

Right. But we look through the history of the Church to find these places.

That are authentically part of holy tradition.

We look through the writings, we look through to find these places.

Right. That constitute genuine parts of the tradition and we reject other places.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There are more robber councils than ecumenical councils.

Right. There are a lot of bishops and even patriarchs who aren't saints.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, most of them, actually. Most of them.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And emperors. You have an even worse batting average.

Right. So we, we identified these particulars as being places where people are synergizing with the Holy Spirit. Particular people, places, writings, events. Right. We don't take the sweep as being automatically inspired. But the reason I wanted to spend a minute on this, Right. With Hegel is.

I think most people now, at least in the circles of people who listen to this show. Right. Or at least who aren't, hate listening to this show. I don't think people fundamentally understand how liberal theology works. Right. And this can give us a window into how liberal theology works. Liberal theology is in keeping with Hegel, the Hegel we're rejecting on this show, just to be clear, right. Not promoting liberal theology, but we need to understand liberal theology and how it works. And the reason. I'm just saying liberal theology.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I'm not saying liberal as opposed to conservative. I'm saying liberal in the sense of post Enlightenment.

That doesn't think the Enlightenment was a bad thing. Right.

I'm not post Enlightenment theology. I'm talking about.

Well, let's get to brass tacks. Liberal theology, what it does. And I'm not identifying this. I'm not talking about liberal Protestantism or Catholicism or even Orthodoxy, because there are people in all of those groups.

I think fewer of them in Orthodoxy than the other two right now. I don't know about proportionally with Roman Catholicism. Liberal Protestantism is certainly the biggest Liberal theological movement, but there are a lot of liberal Catholics. But the Roman Catholic Church is awful big, so I don't know percentages, they're relatively few, but there are some within the Orthodox Church and there are of course people doing liberal theology stuff who don't identify with any of those and whatever. Right.

But liberal theology essentially, like Hegel takes.

Whatever point in time they stand at as being the apex of history to that point.

Right. This means.

I've critiqued it this way on the show before, but I'm going to do it again. This means that liberal theology is always innately.

Innately chauvinist, at least somewhat racist.

Colonial. Right?

Because again, you have to take your culture and civilization as being the apex.

Which means the other ones who might disagree with you are somehow primitive, backward, unenlightened, etc. Right. So there's always overtones of that. Right? Always overtones of that within liberal theology. But you take your point as being the apex of history to that point, and you ascribe the developments that have led to that apex as being the work of the Holy Spirit.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So if now we in.

European derived Western culture have a new understanding of gender or sexuality or biological sex or.

Any other ethical, moral issue of who God is, whatever, whatever has developed historically in this Western.

Dare I say, often white right.

Culture, whatever is developed in that culture, this is the work of the Holy Spirit that has brought us to this. Right. And therefore, therefore it is endorsed and, and we reshape our theology based on this. Right? So a new understanding of gender that arises within culture and society is for them the work of God has brought that about within society.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. This is where you hear people use language like the right side of history.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And so it doesn't matter if the person questioning that.

Is from the same culture.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But who says, hey, I don't think this historical. They're doing more like what we're advocating for, which is saying, well, no, we have to sift through this and say what is from God and what isn't.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or if it's someone from another culture who might have another skin color. Right. Might be from another continent.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It doesn't matter who's questioning it. Whoever's questioning it is innately backwards.

Is innately rejecting the work of the Holy Spirit in the world.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. This is also where you hear people stuff like people say things like it's 2023, like that's an argument, it's current year.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. But so this, you have to understand this is their understanding, right. And this is why, trying to take any kind of approach with them of, well, but this previous understanding.

Or.

This thing from the past, no matter what it is, right. Fundamentally doesn't work.

Right. Because they have this underlying presupposition.

[Stephen from Northern California]

That.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Their culture now, at this point in time, is the apex of all human culture and civilization and that God has brought it there.

Right. This is why when I, when you hear me critiquing liberal theology, it's often from what sounds like a liberal perspective. Right? Like.

I'll say to people who express these ideas, right? They'll be attacking, for example, African bishops in their own church.

For not going along. What's nice about me using that example is there are at least three different denominations I could be talking about.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, right. That's right. Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right. Like when they, as white bourgeois Americans or Europeans, attack African bishops and call them backwards. Right. At all of these things, right. You know, for not being on board with their, their new liberal consensus, I, I will call them white supremacists. Right? Because that's what that is, colonialism, Right? That is colonialism, right? That. Yes, right. It's. It's all the things they claim to hate, they're actually doing. Right.

Right. But that's why I, if people hear me critique it that way, I know some people might get confused, right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Like.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But that's why I critique it that way because that's the only critique.

That can function on their own presuppositions.

Yeah, right. That's the only critique that's valid from their. Based on their own presuppositions. Any critique from tradition is going to fall flat on its face.

Right? Because they've substituted, instead of our understanding for tradition. They have this Hegelian understanding of history. And so.

Trying to talk tradition doesn't work. Right?

That's the only kind of critique. And, and that's because ultimately that line of thinking is, Is an uroboros.

Right? It's a snake eating its own tail. Yeah, right. It can't, it's, it's. It's. First principles are incoherent. That's why you can critique their beliefs based on their beliefs. Right? That's because.

They don't fit together. Right? But so, yeah, that at the end, this is the deviant view, right, of how the Spirit works and how tradition works that we need to be aware of.

Right? Because I don't, I don't think we can have productive dialogue with people.

Who have imbibed liberal theology and are coming at things from that perspective.

When we come at them from a completely alien perspective that shares none of their presuppositions.

Right. I. I don't think there's any way for that to be productive other than, you know, maybe just saying you have to abandon everything you think you don't believe, change everything. Which may work sometimes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And maybe if you show them how self refuting their own ideas are, maybe that'll help that happen. Right. But there's a fundamental lack of communication.

Between those who have fallen prey to that kind of liberal theology and the rest of us.

That it would be good for their sakes if we could find a bridge to try to bring them back to the truth. Right. But so that said, as a final digression, right, we come back to a topic that we talked about in our very first Halloween special, which was what, the fifth episode? Something.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, I think so.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And that is the fact that when we talk about replacement in the sense that.

Saints in glory, human saints replace.

Replace fallen angelic beings, that this is something that takes place in real time.

This takes place in time and space. And that's because of this synergistic understanding. Right? So one of the concrete examples we've used repeatedly on the show is Saint Demetrius in Thessaloniki replacing Aphrodite.

As the spirit of the people and of the place and of the polity of the police. Right? And that is something that happened in real time, at least in terms of the human experience of it. Yeah, right, yeah. The phenomenological experience of it. Right. The gospel came there and Saint Demetrius was part of the gospel coming there, right. Started with St. Paul, of course, but. And part of the process. And the people of Thessaloniki began to realign themselves.

Not with Aphrodite. Right. There was a time where it was all Aphrodite and then it starts to move, right? And over time realign themselves with St. Demetrius, who is shepherding them back to God.

Who had aligned himself with the Holy Spirit and by aligning with him, right? Like St. Paul said, imitate me as I imitate Christ. Right. They were brought into alignment with God. Right. And so the Spirit who was motivating them, who was shepherding them.

Right. Became Saint Demetrius and ceased being Aphrodite. This played out in real time, right? And that's what we mean by it playing out in real time in this phenomenological sense, in the lives of people. Right? And so this can, as we've been asked, move back and forth, right? You look at the sweep of much of history.

Since Christ's ascension and it was moving Kind of in one direction with Christendom and everything. Right. And then lately we see that kind of getting wobbly, maybe. Right.

For any given person. Right. A person can apostatize. Right. A people group can apostatize.

A nation can apostatize.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yep.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Can turn from God and begin to be led by something else towards something else.

But that also means they can always repent and turn back.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right, well, as we're wrapping up this episode on patron saints.

You know, the thought that really occurs to me in terms of summarizing my own thoughts about this.

Well, there's really two, and they're intimately connected. Of course. The first question is, what does salvation really mean? Because I think sometimes people might, if you bring up patron saints, especially if they're not from a tradition where this is a thing, again, you know, these are mostly our Protestant friends. I mean, I was raised Protestant myself. This was not part of our tradition when I was in. In that world.

Patron saints might seem like, well, it's this side issue. Like, you know, it's not really. If you're not against it, maybe you, at least you might say, well, it's not really that important for salvation. Right.

So, number one, you know, as an orthodox Christian, I believe that the saints assist in salvation. But that's not really why this is actually important. It's important because.

If you track the whole way, if you track all the stuff that we've said in this whole episode, what you see actually is that this is the trajectory of the Christian.

Right, that to be saved means to be among those whom the scripture says the saints will judge the world, that the life of the age to come is subjected not to angels, but to humans, to glorified humans. Right? And so salvation itself is about becoming part of the divine council, a part of, to use sort of raw, er, language, the council of the gods.

That's what it means to be saved. That's the trajectory of Christianity. That's its purpose, to become as Christ's. Again, I mean, I've referenced this. We've referenced this a gazillion times, the podcast, but it bears repeating. Christ says in Luke chapter 20 that the sons of the resurrection are sons of God and equal to the angels. That is not a side issue.

That's the core. That's right there at the middle, right there in the very center of what it means to be Christian. Sons of the resurrection, sons of God, equal to the angels.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And so when we look at the saints functioning as patrons, as spirits who influence and help to guide.

Particular people, peoples, churches, nations, groups, places, whatever. They are simply doing the thing. That is where the ark of salvation goes. That's, that's the goal. That's the goal of the Christian life is to function in that way, to share in God's stewardship, his love, his care for this cosmos. Right? And so the saints are simply people who are doing it.

And the reason that they're doing it. This is the second question, you know, what do we therefore do now about this?

The reason that they're doing it is because in this life and in the earthly life, that if you're listening to this, you're part of the earthly life, I'm part of the earthly life that in this life they practiced it. In this life, they did it as much as they could.

Now, obviously, their capability magnified infinitely in their passage into the life of the age to come. And that's why we experience them in what seems to be superhuman ways, but is actually not beyond humanity, but is the destiny of humanity like it's the most human way.

Right? We function subhumanly, they're functioning humanly.

But while they were in this life and had to function subhumanly on some level, they practiced this as much as they could. They functioned to put this world into order and beauty and harmony and shepherded themselves and those around them towards God, towards that chaste marriage as we talked about earlier.

And so all the things that we do in order to orient ourselves and our homes, our relationships, our jobs, our thoughts, our libraries, our gardens, our kids, I mean, go on and on, whatever you want to put in there. Everything that we do to do that is formational, transformational.

To become what we see the saints doing. Now.

That'S the goal. That's what it means to be Christian. That is the purpose of Christianity is to be co enthroned with Christ, to be seated on those thrones next to him, to put the world with him in subordination to him, in order.

Just like we see happening in the Old Testament with the angels, just like we see happening very explicitly in Second Temple, Jewish literature, Philo, Jubilees, etc.

Just like we see happening in the New Testament, just like we see happening in all of church history.

That's what the goal is. And so the motivator of our Christian life now is to do that. And the beautiful thing is we don't do this.

In an isolated way. We have them to help us, and we have each other as well to help us. And we help each other.

So that we might Be seated also in Christ, at the right hand of God. Father STEPHEN.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So where we sort of ended up tonight.

Was talking about.

Changing, changing spirits, changing the patron of a place or of a people group or of a person or a part of the world. And.

The most basic spiritual warfare that I think most of us, or at least most of the people listening.

Right now are called.

Is expressly this.

Some of us need to change the spirit that's hanging over us as a person.

There's someone or something that we're following that's shepherding us, that's guiding us.

We may think it's guiding us toward something like success.

Or wealth or recognition or some feeling of fulfillment. It's not.

Shepherding us toward destruction.

And we should know that because as we follow it, as we follow its lead and take its guidance, what we're experiencing is isolation and alienation, resentment and jealousy.

None of which are signs that we're moving in the right direction. And we need to replace that spirit with another.

With one of the saints.

Who will guide us back toward God.

Who will show us the way to live a life in this world.

As many different lives as we live, as many different lives as the saints have led different places at different times.

To make our way back to God in and through this world and through our day to day life.

And some of us, it's not maybe.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Ourselves.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Maybe we're working, not that we've arrived, but we're working toward working our way faithfully back toward Christ, as faithfully as we can.

Maybe not as faithfully as we ought.

But there's a spirit in our family.

That we can see is at work.

And that's the wrong one.

And we can tell it's the wrong one because our family life is marked with.

Squabbling, bickering, resentments, anger, alienation, dysfunction.

We need to find a way to replace that one with another.

It's going to show our family and shepherd our family and how to live together as a family in a way that's pleasing to God and that will help all of us draw closer to God.

Some of us may be we're struggling through it and our family's struggling through it, but maybe our church parish has a spirit that's guiding it, that's not the one whose name is on the door.

Because again, there's division, there's resentment, there's a focus on money.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There'S a focus.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

On prestige, there's a focus on who's getting the attention, who's getting thanked, who's getting applauded. Who has what job.

And the work we need to do in our parish is to work on banishing that spirit.

Bringing back the one whose name is on the door.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Bringing people together to live our lives together as a community in a way that's pleasing to God, in a way that enables and equips all of us to draw closer to Him.

And maybe we've even got a parish that's not perfect, but we're all struggling together toward Christ.

Maybe it's our neighborhood.

Maybe it would be our neighborhood if we knew any of our neighbors.

Maybe it's a Paul that's hanging over it. Maybe it's just people who have given up, people who are depressed, people who are despondent, people who don't have hope. You can tell when you're in that type of neighborhood. You can tell from the litter.

You can tell from the way people's houses look. You can tell from the way they don't greet each other or talk to each other when they see each other.

In all these cases, making that change.

Banishing the one spirit, exorcising the one spirit, and bringing in the other to be followed toward God.

Isn'T something you do with an elaborate ritual.

It isn't something you do by being perfect yourself. Otherwise we'd all be in trouble.

That's something you do by doing little things.

Little, small, seemingly inconsequential things over and over and over again.

It's what happens when you go and you mow somebody's lawn.

When you cook them a meal.

When you see that their kids need new pairs of shoes so you buy them shoes or give them shoes that your kids have outgrown.

When you sit and talk to them and you're kind to them.

When you learn your neighbors names.

Where they're from.

What they care about and what they're thinking and feeling.

Just like with Thessaloniki that example we gave. It doesn't happen overnight, took centuries. In Thessaloniki.

You'Re not going to turn things around on a dime. You're not going to see immediate results.

But slowly but surely, as we work.

To follow the angels and the saints, to follow them back to God, and to do that.

By doing the works of God in the lives of other people, who God has put in our life, has put in our path.

Change starts to happen.

Pretty soon. We're not the only one working on it.

Pretty soon we have help. Pretty soon we have support.

And things start to change a little more. And it goes on and it goes on. And people and places and groups of people.

Can be transformed this way. It's happened before.

It's happened in the world through Christianity. It can happen again in our day, as horrible as we all think it is.

But somebody has to make a start.

Somebody has to start doing those little things.

And if you're listening to this show tonight or you're hosting, it.

Might as well be us.

Those are my thoughts.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Amen. Well, that's our show for tonight, everyone. Thank you for listening. If you didn't get through to us live this time, we'd still like to hear from you. You can email us. The email address is LordOfSpiritscientfaith.com you can message us at our Facebook page or you can leave us a [e-mail] LordOfSpirits and if you have basic questions about Orthodox Christianity or you need help finding a parish, head over to orthodoxintro.org and.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Join us for a live broadcast on the second four Thursdays of the month. Month at 7pm Eastern, 4pm Pacific. When I die and they lay me to rest, I'm going to go to the place that's the best.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

If you're on Facebook, follow our page and join our discussion group. You can leave reviews and ratings everywhere, but most importantly, share this show with a friend who is going to love it and benefit from it. I got that reference.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And finally, be sure to go to ancientfaith.com support and help make sure we and lots of other AFR podcasters stay on the air. Prepare yourself. You know it's a must. You gotta have a friend in Jesus so you know that when you die, he's gonna recommend you to the Spirit in the sky.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Thank you, good night, God bless you. Christ is born and happy New Year to you all.

[Stephen from Northern California]

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.