 You're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit nakedbiblepodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heizer's approach to the Bible, click on newstarthere at nakedbiblepodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, Episode 189, live Q&A from Boston. I'm the layman, Tray Strickland, and he's a scholar. Dr. Michael Heizer with David Burnett, who's also, he's a scholar. So we want to thank everybody for coming out tonight. It's a second live Q&A show and we have a good turnout, another good turnout. So that means lots of questions from y'all. So I'm sure everybody has good questions, right? Okay, questions about my dog are acceptable. Well, we want to briefly go around the room and introduce people starting with Brad. Hey, I'm Brad. I'm from Plainfield, Massachusetts. I guess, why a pug? Why a pug? Because pugs are awesome. I've wanted a pug for years. Yeah. Yeah, and it was finally my turn to pick the dog. So, you know, I got my way. All right. I've got to be Sean. I'm going to be Sean fan, but that's all right. You kind of understand. You just get attached to the, there you go. I always thought it was because the UFO stuff and men in black. No, no, no, no. Well, that did play a part. Yeah. Yeah. Where are you from? I'm Dan. I'm from Westminster, Massachusetts. My question this evening, being raised in a pseudo Christian system, I was always taught soul sleep and the proof text was always Ecclesiastes nine. Um, when I'm witnessing to family members, how do I, what's the best route to refute that? Let's finish going around and then we'll start with that. I'm Adam from Lunenberg, Mass. Hi, Mike. This is Nicole, my wife, and we're from Brockton, Massachusetts. I'm Mike, too. I'm Mike Chu. I'm from Quincy, Massachusetts. I'm Ken from Maldon, Massachusetts. April from Maldon, Massachusetts. Trey from New Orleans, Louisiana. How did you get here? Right. Right. I'm Brittany from Falmouth, Massachusetts. It is. Okay. I'm Michelle and I'm from Falmouth, Massachusetts. I'm Rita and I live in Boston, Maddox, bound. I'm Ali from New Bedford, Massachusetts. All right. So the soul sleep question, well, I'll answer that this way. Here's why it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. A couple of quick reasons. You have, um, you have scenes in scripture where you have these post death or post or, you know, sort of resurrected appearances where you have people that were from the Old Testament era that are deceased and yet they have conversations. Okay. There are things like that that happen. You have first Samuel, 2813. Again, I guess I suppose someone could say, well, they woke, you know, Samuel up, you know, so they can have the conversation. But again, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me because scenes like that are, you know, really frequent in ancient Near Eastern material that are again, sort of not models, but, but very close parallels to those sorts of things. And you don't have a soul sleep situation there. Another issue would be this whole idea of I'm going to go, go meet my father's or I'm going to be, you know, buried with my father's and on the surface that might not sound like much of anything, but archaeologically speaking, when, you know, Israelite, you know, graves, just like most other graves are discovered, you'll have grave goods, things that the, the people burying the deceased person, you know, expects, anticipates, imagines the that person will use in the afterlife. Again, this is very common in Israelite burials. So if this is what they believe that, you know, you die and then you're asleep and you don't really have, you know, any sort of, you know, conscious existence or however we want, we want to describe that on the other side. Why would they do that? Again, if that was their expectation that it's just a long nap, it doesn't, the practice and funerary practices in general don't make a whole lot of sense. So they're, these are just threads that I think sort of can join in the whole idea that it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. You have the, you know, David, I don't know if you've ever studied this, but just the terminology, the sleep terminology again is going to be pretty common for your, your dad. It doesn't necessarily have to mean you're again in some, you know, sleep situation. So again, you got three or four things just off the top of my head that don't seem to be terribly consistent, you know, with the idea. Want to add anything to that? The living know they'll die, but the dead know nothing. Can you clarify what it is that? Yeah, I think, I think the comparison there, again, the way I've, I've seen it taken, this isn't unique to me, is that the dead know nothing with respect to, again, sort of the experience of the living. In other words, the things that you would know in, in, in your embodied life are now, you know, sort of cut off from the dead because they're dead, you know, just, just sort of that thing. Now that doesn't mean that the dead, because you again, you have passages to the effect that the dead or again, resurrected or glorified beings, although maybe you'd want to say something about this, David, a lot of the idea that that we're being watched really refers to angelic activity. You know, we did that episode on, on the, you know, the books of heaven and stuff like that. So I don't know that that necessarily refers to the, the deceased, but you don't, you don't really get the impression that they have a, you know, again, that they have the sort of knowledge that of the embodied life that they did before. In other words, that they just know everything and contract with everything. So again, that's not unique to me, there are others who take it that way because of some of this other stuff. Oh, I was the only thing I'd probably add to that is, in my, in my take on it, is there's not, well, this is a sort of a common trope in scholarship that, that there's not a monolithic sort of view of afterlife in the Bible. It was divergent, especially in the Hebrew Bible. I mean, there's no sort of developed afterlife theology that you see coming out in the New Testament in, in that way. So it's not manifest in that way in the Old Testament. I mean, the best you can get is Daniel. I mean, and you could argue for the language of rising from dust in Isaiah 24, the dry bones in Ezekiel 37 or something, but, but those are being interpreted later as a literal sort of actualization. So you can, you just, what you just said, right, right on me is something else that here's, here's the kind of thing that how much, how much can you draw from it? Okay, the shades are going to meet you when you like Isaiah 14. Okay, so, so in other words, the, the, the shades, the Rafaim are going to meet you, what are they going to do? You know, look over your bed and say, he's asleep, you know, or they're going to wake you up, they're going to poke you, you know, the idea that there's this meeting, and again, there's, there's again, some sort of, what's being said is that, well, you ought to be alarmed at this. Well, why would I be alarmed if I'm just asleep? In other words, there are these implications for the language, but you don't have anything spelled out. Yeah. It's interesting you brought up going to be with the fathers. So you see this, you know, in Abraham's death, right, about going to be with his fathers later, it's not until later Jewish interpreters. So if you fast forward into the like first century, say, Alexandria and Philo, Philo of Alexandria would will say of that text. And this is a common tradition is they'll say that going to be with the fathers doesn't mean like your burial plots with your fathers, it means the father's celestial who rule in heaven. So he's going to join them now. And so I don't do, I think that's implicit in Genesis. No, I don't actually think it's there. But, but the, it's how they're interpreting it later. So there's layers on the Old Testament. So even going to Ecclesiastes, it's kind of anachronistic. So to say that anachronistic, I just mean it's not, we're taking our time and imputing it back on theirs. Because in Ecclesiastes, they maybe Ecclesiastes didn't have a developed afterlife. That doesn't mean they're objectively isn't one, right? So, you know, just because Ecclesiastes may not have some developed eschatology, we wouldn't expect it to. It's kind of interesting because, you know, with, with David's, you know, work that we've, we've talked about about, you know, they shall be as the stars and whatnot. You could see where somebody could be reading these Old Testament texts, which don't say a great deal again about very, they don't lay out a specific afterlife theology, but they, they say things that you can draw implications from. You could see how someone later could be reading that. And again, have in mind, you know, the glorification idea, and then, you know, sort of ask a simple mental question. Well, that was a long time ago. So, you know, maybe we're like part of the eschaton, and then they could sort of glom on, they could apply what's being said to their own, you know, that's their own theology or situation. That's really good, actually, because I think most afterlife, you can push back on this. I want to know what you think about it. I think most Jewish afterlife talk, pre New Testament is eschatology. So I don't think because it's interesting, because you don't have a separate discourse that's just afterlife, right? It's always, it's always, you always say glom dawn. I don't know why you say that. I don't know what that means, but a crude, my vocabulary is not developed. But it's not terribly fast. Yes, whatever. So I think my daughter taught me that vocab lessons with hyzer. So, yeah, the afterlife talk isn't, it doesn't appear to me in early Jewish literature to be a separate conversation than eschatology. So that is interesting, though, because the idea of soul sleep comes from that, I think. This, people are seeing that, they're seeing that, oh, it's attached to eschatology. And so they, it would be natural sort of inclination without more critical eyes on these traditions to think that, oh, that's only in the end time. But we know for sure, before the New Testament that Jews believed all sorts of things about the afterlife. I would only say that I think, what do we mean by afterlife? Do we mean destiny? Because that's what he's talking about with the eschatology stuff. Do we mean destiny? Or do we mean some sort of, you know, conscious existence? Okay, now, the destiny arc is really, is really easy to see because of the glorification language and whatnot. But again, if you go to the burial practices of the time, again, they're doing what they're doing because they think that my aunts, you know, my family member, when they're in the afterlife, which is where they're at now, they're going to find these things useful, where we're going to do these, you know, like food offerings and drink offerings, that there is an idea that isn't destiny, but it is, it's like right now, there's something going on over there. They're part of the spiritual world, but it's never articulated and spelled out. So you have, you actually have two sides of this coin, you got destiny, which is arguably the big one. And then you've got this other sort of sense that, again, there's just something going on over there. But I just don't see, you know, soul sleep as a really, to me, it would be really hard to argue that point, you know, from Scripture, because when I've run across it, what you really see is just the vocabulary, like from the English Bible or an English translation, and people, you know, seize that and they kind of go with it. I think it would be difficult to argue that. You know, a good pathway into that, I think, to sort of, if you're interested in sort of refuting that is people who think that way, like there's just soul sleep and then, you know, something later in the future. I think the presupposition behind that position is that they don't believe that eternal life begins at the coming of the Spirit, because I think that's a big deal in the New Testament. And I think this is where Paul actually gets his idea that death is the end of sin, right? That is that once someone has become, like a pneumatic, they've become a spirited person, you know, that that is a sign of celestial life already in the present. So it's like, you've already started your transformation. And Paul even uses the metamorphosis terms that would be common in Greek, like metaphysical science. It's really interesting, actually, when you do studies on that, you just do a word study on, on 2 Corinthians 3, it'll trip you out. But, but that idea that the metamorphosis for like immortal life has already started in the present. So if that's already started in your physical state for Paul, the assumption is that continues. It's not like you don't start transforming and then like, oh, hit pause real quick, you know, or it's dead. It's bad. It's bad time. Now you'll wake up. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And but, but that's interesting in Paul though, because he's that you can tell that he still has this sort of out of body, after life view. I didn't used to think this, but I'm almost positive now that he thinks this is he has this out of body to afterlife view. But that's not what he's thrusting all the time. He's always thrusting resurrection. So even even the, I don't want to sound like NT right here, because we disagree on so much on this. But, but, but I do agree with the part where Wright talks about that it's not about the afterlife per se, it's about the afterlife, you know. And so I agree with that part, like, like, yeah, that's, that's, yeah, that's actually a good way to put it. So anybody else, even if you do have the, you know, afterlife afterwards, it's not the main thrust anyways. Other questions. In that same kind of that same conversation, what about the words of Jesus when he talks about rich man, the Lazarus, and he kind of lays out this thing with Abrams bosom, Hades, is Jesus just telling a, you know, a unique story? Or is he speaking from experience? I'm not opposed to that, you know, being a parable because that's usually where the discussion's at. I kind of take all of those things and sort of put them in the same bucket that they are ways of talking about the afterlife. In other words, I don't, I don't look at a passage like that and say, oh, well now like we have a, we have a physical description of the afterlife and that we can plot it out on a map and it's got latitude and longitude and we could make a drawing and I think they're all just ways of describing here you go with destinies because it's very obvious in Luke 16, there's a good destiny and a bad destiny. So I think they're talking about destinies and just what happens on the other side, you know, what goes on on the other side. And we, I mean, we still do this now because we have to, we're embodied beings. So we talk about people when they die, when they pass over and that's spatial language like it implies distance and a journey. And again, we're forced to do that because that's the only way we can sort of comprehend that kind of transition. You know, so I think, you know, the biblical writers are doing the same thing and they just do it in different ways. You know, they have, they have different, you know, metaphors for describing, you know, what where a person is now, you know, on the afterlife and what their destiny is going to be and so on and so forth. So I don't, I don't put too much sort of literal stock into it as though I could use this to, to like construct, you know, what it looks like. But I do take it seriously that it reflects, again, this, this notion of there's good, good place in the afterlife is bad place and all that sort of stuff. I want to say so. So yeah, I don't want to harp on whether it's, I think it is a parable, but, but I, and most scholars do. I don't write, but saying it. So this is not a, this is not a mutually exclusive thing though. I mean, just saying it's a parable doesn't mean it has, doesn't have an ontological referent for the hearers. It's just saying that, you know, I'll just put it this way. It's ironic that so many preachers will take that text to talk about heaven and hell when that's not what the text is about. I mean, the text is any, any ontological referent to an afterlife is just playing on language that they already sort of folk know. It's the point of it is the ethics of it. Who is God vindicating? And it's the opposite of what they would assume. That's the point of the text. The point isn't, yeah. The point of the text isn't like, let me teach you this scholarly vision of what heaven is like. You know, it's Abraham's bosom. He's really large, you know, it's like, like, you know, no, no, sorry. He's been working out. Yeah. Abraham's become like, you know, metatron, you know, or something, you know, well, maybe, I don't know. But, but the point, the point is, you know, that's not the thrust of the passage. Who's being vindicated in that text? Right. Yeah, exactly. That's literally Luke's point, and he never shuts up about that. So that's a theme throughout the entire gospel. So to try to use that text, man, I just want to bang my head on the wall. When I read, even commentaries do it, trying to say something about the afterlife with it. I just don't think that's at all the point of it, you know. Yeah, and again, it again, I'm not saying it's not, but it reflects has afterlife speculation quite a quote, but that's as far as I'll go. I won't say anything about it's ontology. If you think about it, again, it reflects what people are thinking, like David said, they sort of have this vocabulary, they have these ideas already, because if they didn't, if Jesus goes into this, and it's right, and it's totally new, they're like, what's he talking about? So again, it obviously reflects a belief, you know, about talking about the afterlife. But yeah, you're right, it's easy to lose the other. So one more thing about that, I think this is a trajectory we miss a lot in these texts is, and you have this in a lot of afterlife texts, actually, is you have these assumed beliefs, who's in on it? You know, how does it happen? All these kinds of things, all this kind of eschatological speculation and early Judaism that goes into the New Testament, that a lot of the ways that that topic gets brought up in the New Testament tend to be subversive. And so they're not, they're trying to reframe how you think about who's there, you know? So a lot of that goes into the conversation. And we all sort of know that when we're doing polemics like that, so like sort of attacking someone's current view of who's in and who's out and reframing it, if that's the thrust of the text, there's only so much you can say beyond it of to like, well, what's the real sort of, what does this mean eschatologically, right? For us, like scientifically or whatever, because they're just not giving you that, you know, it's more about reframing the audience's view of, Oh, well, what, what is going to happen? Who gets some to think about their relationship? Yeah, it's really, I think I would say it's more about ethics than it is ontology. It's not saying that it's not about ontology, it's just saying it's more about ethics. Anybody else? Well, I have my own question, but I want to get to the question to actually my pastor wanted to ask you. He was hoping to come tonight, but some things kind of stopped it. So his question is, what kind of criticism and pushback have you gotten in regards to the work you've done, especially people from different theological camps such as Pentecostals and Evangeligo? Did you see any longtime theologians maybe changed their minds? That's a good, that's a really good question because I actually had a conversation relevant to that two days ago. In terms of reviews, I haven't had any, any substantive criticism, you know, like in terms of, Oh, we just hate this book. And it's just, you know, at the launch rate, nobody's, nobody's doing that. On the popular level, you can look at Amazon. Well, yeah, every everybody gets shot at. So yeah, but don't let me forget that. Because there's something I want to say about that too. So no, the reviews both on the popular level and, you know, appearing in journals like Ben Witherington spent a huge amount of time on it. He had like a nine part review on his website. And, you know, we talked about that and he really enjoyed the book. I've gotten emails, you know, comments, you know, in personal conversation, just across the board, Pentecostals, people in reform, Presbyterian churches, reform Baptist, traditional Baptist, Anglicans. I mean, I just, I mean, I could show you emails from like practically every denomination. It's, which is nice because the book doesn't say anything about denominational distinctives. I'm not, I'm not there to shoot at any of them. And I'm not there to promote any of them. And people actually like noticed that. So that's really rewarding, you know, that I'm just getting a lot of feedback from a lot of places. That's what I really hope to see. Now a couple of days ago, we were on an escalator and Mark Furtado, you know, spied me. Furtado is a, is a Hebrew prof at a reform seminary. And, you know, we've, we've known each other for a number of years because he went out and did some mobile ed stuff for us. But he came, he came over and he said, he said, I just want to let you know, I'm reading, you know, your book now for the second time. He said, I just love it. You know, he actually said it has changed my thinking about several things. And he gave me a few specific examples. He said, but not, you know, I'm doing the second read through. And, you know, now I'm sort of thinking about, you know, what, how I would apply this and how I would, you know, use this or that. So I get that again from a variety of traditions, but there you go. It's, you know, it's two days old. Eventually though, you know, they, the book's been so successful that Lexham is relaunching it. And what that means is they actually hired a publicist to actually do things. It's not just me anymore. And so I've been on several, you know, pretty large shows. I just got booked. If anybody, by the way, if anybody watches this guy, I'd like to talk to you before you leave. I just got booked on the Eric Metaxas show. And, and I, I've, I know the name, but I've never seen the show. And I've talked to a couple of people like who's this guy and like, what does he do? So what I told the people at Lexham is on the one hand, this is great, you know, that you're like relaunching this thing. And it's going to get, you know, wider exposure and whatnot. But I said, you have to realize that it's not just going to like continue to trend up. The haters are going to come out. People are going to read this and hate the book. So you guys got to just be prepared for that. So, you know, I didn't want to like rain on my own parade, but that's just the truth. That's the truth with everything. You know, Walton can write, right. Walton, N.T. Wright, you know, these guys that write lots of stuff, they get shot at all the time. I'm not going to be any different. You know, Walton was, you know, he was a little, little perturbed this week, you know, at some of the things, you know, said about him in a session at ETS, it just happens. And he, he's a big boy. I mean, he knows that. It's not the first time it's happened. That's just the way it is. So I expect, you know, pushback to be what it is. And that's just, that's just going to happen. So, okay, from who, what was, no, I, I, not, not to this point, you know, I haven't, all the, all the published reviews, nobody's like come up to me, you know, and said something nasty. Again, I know that because I use a lot of the published literature, I know who's on what side of different things. But the point is what I'm hoping people grasp, including, you know, again, the people who are going to be critical of it, because they'll surface, is that look, the goal of the book is not to say that Mike has now figured out a theory of everything. That is not the goal. It's also not the goal that to like the book you have to agree with everything every position Mike takes. The goal is what can the text sustain and operating on the assumption that the biblical person, biblical writers, were very predisposed to a supernatural worldview. How would you read this as a collective whole, like a worldview, a framework? And, you know, again, if I can anticipate, you know, objections, it's like, look guys, you know, look fellow scholar, believe it or not, the biblical people are not us. Okay, we are products of the enlightenment. We are, that is what we are, they are not. So if you're like uptight, and you know, you sort of get your knickers and see, I can't complete the phrase, you probably know that one better than I do. You know, if you just get uptight, you know, about, you know, what's going on in the book or what I'm sort of challenging the reader with, too bad, you know, because they're not us, like prove to me that they would have thought the way we do about XYZ passage. That's what I want to see. You know, so that's the overall message, you know, to try to really understand a number of things in the Bible, and also the way they connect, so that the connection points are important to me, sort of why they're there, how they, how this passage would connect to this one, to really be able to do that, you have to, again, have the Israelite in your head, the first century Jew in your head, that means you have to be able to read it like an ancient person would. Now, what we do with that, you know, is, is again, you know, up to us with the application of what, how we teach certain things, how we would, you know, discuss certain things in certain passages today. I understand that. But when the biblical writer wrote this or that verse, or this or that passage, he was not a product of the Enlightenment. What he's thinking is going to be in some ways fundamentally different than the way we think. That's all I'm saying. And to me, that's really, really obvious. But it's going to trouble some people because they've sort of camped, you know, in certain positions, in certain passages, and they just, they don't want to, you know, sort of entertain, you know, those kind of thoughts. So it'll come, you know, let's just wait and see. Did you marry that, your pastor's question to your own question? No, my question is actually, so I'm a first year seminary student right now. I just started this past September. And one of the things, so I've mentioned your material before, and like my pastor got into it, his dad is a pastor, he got into it. It was great. But one of the things that I'm kind of trying to figure out, because I've gotten questions back regarding, well, this material sounds great. We agree with a lot of it. But what's the practical ministry kind of application? And for me in seminary, that's kind of one of the questions I constantly am trying to think of. Like, I can get all this great head knowledge. And just like Paul said, knowledge can puff up. And so, how does the information like done seem around? I think if I think if you understand the way I would answer that sort of in quick mode, is that I believe, and I think the book, you know, shows this, that God's relationship to spirit, spirit beings, his heavenly host, okay, the divine council, all that stuff, serves as a template for the way God looks at us, the way God thinks about us, what we're tasked with, our participation in God's program. If you see those things, then those should generate other things. Participation in God's program, you mean like, not everything's predestined. What we do actually matters. Again, a simple thing like reclaiming the nations. This isn't really new stuff. This is again, this, in some ways, helps us frame what we're supposed to be doing. You know, what is this thing called the kingdom? You know, we again, we, I'm sure David has a lot of thoughts on this, but we, the way, especially in evangelicalism, we think about church and kingdom. It can be very, very, very traditional, very sort of bent on, you know, certain things, certain trajectories. But I just think it argues for sort of the bigness of how we propel God's rule, you know, on earth. And I'm not a theonomist. So that is one place where it's not, you know, we're not looking at to apply. When I think kingdom rule and spreading the rule of God on earth, I'm not thinking theotomy. I'm thinking of actually winning people, changing hearts and minds, and letting the Spirit of God change them, and then they can interact with other people where they're at and repeat the process. It's an entirely replicatable process. So again, I think that the angelic stuff and all that, again, is interesting. And I camp out there a lot. But what I'm trying to get people to sort of think about is, you can learn a lot about the way God looks at you and the way God looks at what he wants us to do and our membership in his family, which takes us into sanctification and evangelism and missions and reclaiming the nations, all this sort of stuff. You can learn to think about that a little bit better, a little more fully, if you understand, again, this angelology stuff. So that's just one trajectory. There are other trajectories in terms of some sort of practical application. I'll just say one more thing. I'll turn it over to David. When I hear that, and I know this isn't what's meant, but when I hear that, it's because I have had people tell me this. This is why I think of it. Well, what's the practical implication? I have had people just point blank tell me, learning all this theology stuff is kind of useless. Theology is useless. It's hard for me not to think of, and I didn't go off on the person that is thinking this, but it's like, dude, how can you say that? That's like being biblically illiterate. How can you think that thought? Because what theology is supposed to do is it's supposed to make you think about your relationship with God, just at a fundamental level, and how God wants to interact with you and what he has planned for you, your destiny, your purpose, who you are. Theology is supposed to do that. Christology, imaging, we're supposed to be conformed to the image of his son, you know, and imaging is a huge concept in the book. So it just seems to me that if we can't sort of connect those dots, then maybe we need to spend more time really introspectively trying to figure out those sorts of questions. My immediate answer when you ask that, because I was a pastor applying this stuff to, the easiest answer to the practical outworking of thinking through celestial hosts over nations is political theology. This is politics we're talking about, and we in the modern West that are a product of the French Revolution, the American Revolution, John Locke, the sort of deistic kinds of views of politics and religion separating church and state, a completely foreign concept to the pre-enlightenment world doesn't exist. Politics is religion in the ancient world, and religion is politics in the ancient world. There's no distinction at all. The cult in a temple is where the king deity rules his land from. It's all politics. That's where the treasury is. That's the IRS of the ancient world is where the god is. So this is political theology we're talking about. If you understand this worldview, it will fundamentally, from the bottom up, reframe the way you think about politics. Who is your king? Just an example of what I'm talking about. So if you think of Exodus, you have an enslaved people to foreign gods, and God says that in this night in the Passover is when I'll judge the gods of Egypt or have victory. What does it have victory over the gods of Egypt? It depends on the translation. The purchase of Israel is a religious, it's a divine sort of situation, but it is a political situation. It's literally delivering them from a false oppressive political regime. They would not be able to distinguish between those two things. That is precisely the language and the theology of baptism in the New Testament. This is how baptism is discussed in the New Testament. It is a new Exodus. You pass through the waters, you're baptized into the name. The new citizenship. The new citizenship. You have been transferred past tense from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of his beloved son. Well, who's in the kingdom of darkness? Every nation not baptized. So if you're a native, you're treated as a foreigner. You're a foreigner in your native lands. You're in exile. This is not your home. Your citizenship is in heaven. You're in the Jerusalem above. This language only makes sense if they literally believe that there is inaugurated king over the world that right now as they're speaking. That's where all the darkness and blindness language comes in in the New Testament. And this is where not to push back too hard against my care, but I don't like when people say, um, build his kingdom or something like that. I hate that language. Cause it's already in place. Yes. The King Basilia to Thayu is the reign of God. God reigns right now. We're declaring a fact. By the way, I'm not denying that. Okay, I know. I know. I just don't like the verbiage because people don't have the teaching to back up what that means. So the building the kids don't use that phrase because what we are announcing a reality, a fact. So we're not doing anything substantial in that sense. So anything that happens is a result of the power of the spirit. So we're announcing a reality that right now people are walking around not thinking and going to the voting booth and doing their normal politics thing and not thinking that right now as we're breathing his air, Jesus is Lord of the whole earth. Yes, exactly. And the, the, the whole already part is where evangelical political theology stinks. It stinks because we're not acting as if Jesus is Lord right now. You know, and so we're not actually facing the sort of apocalyptic pushback from the powers that we might feel if we actually embodied that ethic in the world. And so the question is, we all believe this at our core as Christians is that the proclamation that we make when we go through the baptismal waters is there is another king than Caesar and there is another emperor of the world. And he's one that doesn't slaughter his people. He, he dies for them. And it's the one when he rules, he doesn't say like Caesar's gospel because Caesar has a gospel too. Right. He has you on Galeon that he proclaims and he has messengers he sends out to that preach the Pax Romana Roman peace, you know, you know, we bring peace to the world and the gods have chosen the son to rule the whole world, you know, and you look at things like the pre and inscription that has Augustus as the son of God and a gospel and, you know, peace to the world and blah, blah, blah. And when they hear that gospel, they'll tell them to repent as well. But it's not, it's not, it's not a sort of welcoming to the family. It's like, we're taking this land and we're going to kill you if you're not down. Right. So you have the exact opposite in Jesus's political theology is that he's sitting there bleeding on a Roman cross and saying things like, yeah, I could call down legions of angels right now. And that's again, that's if you're thinking legion in the Roman Empire, you know this language, right? I mean, this is very subversive language to be saying as you're dying on a Roman death tool, you know, I could call down legions right now, but he doesn't and he is reigning in that sense. So the way we think of power, the way we think of rule is so conditioned by this world that we think when the God's kingdom comes, it's just like this, this world's rulers, he's going to crush everybody and blah, blah, blah. But his kingdom did come and no one recognized it. You see, it's, it's, it's the gospel of John. If my kingdom were of this world, you would, my servants would fight. You see, so this, this, so it's political theology we're talking about. Divine Council is about political theology. I actually got, got into that on one live stream that we did at the coffee shop, if anybody saw that. But you know, again, just to, no, just, just the quick path there is I was talking about what, what it would be like if we had a bunch of people that believe so strongly in again, the kingdom of God, Christ's rule, that they were willing to do what the apostles did. Okay. They, they view their task again, not as the exercise of power again over other people, but their task is to again, change hearts and minds, you know, get, you know, people to believe the gospel, to essentially join them in this effort. And they were willing to die for it. If you really think about it, if you have a bunch of people willing to die for that, and people, you know, see this kind of suffering. And again, the old cliche, but it's really not a cliche, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. That's, that's a historical thing where, where people see Christians, you know, being put to death for just being Christians. And that, you know, provokes questions like, well, why, why are we doing that to them? And why are they willing to have it done to them? So, you know, it actually grows as, as Christians are willing to do that. And if you really think about it, that is an unstoppable force, because you can't kill it off. Killing it or trying to kill it makes it grow. It's just an unstoppable thing. But, but we don't really consciously think in those terms. I think I got into that when, when somebody asked a sort of a similar question, and I had blogged about it about, you know, using ISIS as the analogy. And if you're an ISIS, you wake up every day and what, what can I, right, what can I do to, you know, restore the caliphate or whatever? In other words, you're consumed by the thought of serving your God and then doing what, whatever is necessary to accomplish this mission. And on the reverse, you know, if, if we had Christians that sort of woke up every day with that thought, they went to sleep and their last thought was, what can I do tomorrow? You know, but again, it's defined as, you know, the gospel message. If we had the same sort of single-mindedness as these people do, and mass, how could you get rid of that? Yeah, along the lines with bringing in the willingness to die part, just get, I'm not plugging my own episode here. I'm just saying, this is the only thing that makes the resurrection intelligible. It's the only thing that makes it makes sense because the, the, if you attach, like Paul does, resurrection to the death of the powers, which is so interesting that he does that, right? It's in a discourse all about resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, the only narration we get of what the heck is happening as a result of that is the destruction of these rulers. And that's what it means to be resurrected. It's attached to this idea is that it's a vindication of the real authorities in the world and a destruction of the false ones or the evil ones. This is, so it's not like you get to become sons of God with your golden ticket that you cash in in the end. That's not the idea. It's that this, that's inter-Roman's 8, right? Is this idea that the sons of God, they're already walking around. They're already doing the kingdom stuff. So they're already, the whole creation Paul says in Romans 8 is groaning, waiting for the apocalypse, the revealing of the sons of God, not the making of the sons of God, the revealing of the fact that they're there. So you're walking around doing life and then resurrection occurs this last day and it's revealed in glory that these pauper old women feeding all these poor mouths are actually the lords of the world. You see what I'm saying? So it's a completely different way of thinking about who are the real rulers of this thing. So it is very much a political thing that we've de-politicized. So to reduce that, I keep going back to do you really believe this world is not your home? We sing that song, but if you really believe that, well, this is how you're going to be thinking. Of course you're willing to die because, well, this really isn't my home and I'm going to be resurrected and it's the already but not yet. At a crisis moment like that, you're focused on the resurrection event because you're willing to lay down this life because you know the next one is yours to inherit. And if you really think that, if you really believe that, then that ought to be like the most practical thing in the world. What would like be more practical than that? So again, you know, I understand why the question is asked, but again, it goes back to inheritance, sonship, membership in the family. What's your destiny? These are all the major themes of unseen realm because of the major themes of this worldview. Again, it just like Dave said, we all sort of know this already. So it's nothing new, but I think it sort of flushes it out a lot more and anything that will sort of stimulate our thinking to think about that stuff in a different way is good to do because it's really important. We should move on to another question. This came out of a Bible study that I was in a couple days ago and we were reading Jonah chapter one. And after Jonah gets thrown into the sea, it says in verse 16, so the men feared Yahweh greatly and they offered a sacrifice to Yahweh and made vows. And so in this Bible study, each person has to come up with a question. You don't have to, but you're allowed to ask a question about the passage. So my question was, did those men become converts? Did they renounce their other gods and become followers of Yahweh exclusively? And somebody in the Bible study said, well, they would have had to be circumcised to do that. And it doesn't say for sure if they were or not. So we don't really know for sure. But it kind of sounds like they were pretty convinced that he was the God of gods at the end of the passage. And then I was wondering if that's really the case, if you would have had to be circumcised before Jesus in the Old Testament. And then also what about the Gentile women who became converts? What about the Jewish women? Yeah, so read the Jonah verse again. But just start from the first verse, if it's only a few verses in. It was in Jonah 1, right? Yeah. Okay. At the beginning of the chapter? Yeah. Okay. And the word of Yahweh came to Jonah, the son of Amitai, saying, get up, go to the great city Nineveh and cry out against her because their evil has come up before me. But Jonah set out to flee toward Tarshish from the presence of Yahweh. And he went down to Joppa and found a merchant ship going to Tarshish and paid her fare and went on board her to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of Yahweh. And Yahweh hurled a great wind upon the sea and it was a great storm on the sea and the merchant ship was in danger of breaking up. And the mariners were afraid and each cried out to his God. And they threw the contents that were in the merchant ship into the sea to lighten it for them. And meanwhile Jonah went down to the hold of the vessel and lay down and fell asleep. And the captain of the ship approached him and said to him, why are you sound asleep? Get up, call on your God. Perhaps your God will take notice of us and we won't perish. And they said to one another, come, let us cast lots so that we may know on whose account this disaster has come on us. And they cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. So they said to him, please tell us whoever is responsible that this disaster has come upon us. What is your occupation? And from where do you come? What is your country? And from which people are you? And he said to them, I am a Hebrew and I fear Yahweh, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. Then the men were greatly afraid. And they said to him, what is this you have done? Because they knew that he was fleeing from the presence of Yahweh because he had told them. So they said to him, what shall we do to you so that the sea may quiet down for us? Because the sea was growing more and more tempestuous. And he said to them, pick me up and hurl me into the sea so that the sea may quiet down for you. Because I know that on account of me this great storm has come upon you all. But the men rode hard to bring the ship back to the dry land. And they could not do so because the sea was growing more and more tempestuous against them. So they cried out to Yahweh and they said, oh Yahweh, please do not let us perish because of this man's life. And do not make us guilty of innocent blood because you, oh Yahweh, did what you wanted. And they picked Jonah up and hurled him into the sea and the sea ceased from its raging. So the men feared Yahweh greatly and they offered a sacrifice to Yahweh and made vows. Yeah, I mean, I just wanted to get the whole context. So everybody hears it. It's hard to know from that passage, whether we have, you know, I use the academic term, whether we have a bunch of henotheists now, that Yahweh is the biggest and baddest of the deities. You know, in other words, they're not, they're not exclusively devoted to him, like converts. That's, that's more likely, again, just because of the ancient mentality, especially, you know, for a pagan, that's, that's more likely in my mind than the alternative that, well, we're not going to believe, you know, we're not, we're never going to do a religious thing with respect to any of these other gods that we started out the passage calling on because they call them their own gods. So I think it's, I don't think we have enough detail to determine whether we have a conversion here. What at least we have is we have a recognition of, you know, the might of Yahweh and, you know, again, to use our modern way of talking about these things, that could sort of, you know, be a testimony to them or an indication that maybe they're, they're, you know, moving down a path toward that. But I don't think we can really conclude that they've sort of, you know, wound up as being a, like Abraham, you know, a faithful follower of Yahweh, that sort of thing. I think it says a little bit too much. There were some follow-up elements to your question. So my friend at the Bible study had said that the reason that we don't know for sure is because it doesn't say whether or not they got circumcised and that if they were going to become converts they would have had to be circumcised. Yeah, I would, again, I'm going to go back to my, while we were at sinner's sermon again. I think it's, I think it's significant that Jesus uses Naaman and the widow of Zarephath as examples of faith. So as I said in that sermon, I don't know if you heard it, but here's a guy, Jesus uses as an example of faith over against the scribes and the Pharisees. And so if he's good enough for Jesus, he's good enough for me. And what I mean by that is would Jesus really hold up this man and this woman as an example of faith if, again, he didn't think that, okay, now we've switched allegiance here? Because what Naaman, we don't have really any details with the widow of Zarephath. There's very little there. But with Naaman it's like I want dirt because now I'm going to sacrifice only to the Lord. I mean, there are things in the passage that indicate this change of mind in a really black or white sort of way. But here's a guy that he's never going to go to temple. He's going to go back to Syria. He's never going to observe the festivals. He didn't ask the prophet, hey, can I have a copy of the Torah? He's never going to really know much that an Israelite would know. There's no indication he's going to get circumcised and do the feasts and do the calendar, all that stuff. What he knows is really simple, but it happens to be the first and greatest commandment, you know, also have no gods before me. That's his theology. And he's taken that to the bank. He's going all the way whole hog with that. And Elisha says, you know, good for you, you know, take as much dirt as you can carry. Shalom. So this whole business about this assumption that people had to do things in the law to be in right relationship with Yahweh, I think it's just, it's just not correct. It's drastically overstated. And it really is sort of this presumptive kind of thing based on like the New Testament Judaizing content, because that's what they're telling the Gentiles to do. So that sort of gets read back into the Old Testament in these kind of episodes. Rejoice O Gentiles with his people. Yeah, they didn't, that would require them still being Gentiles. Yeah, they were, they were, there was still this category of kind of, you know, the righteous Gentiles. The Queen of the South will rise up in the judgment and judge you. Yeah. We have no record of the Queen of Sheba converting to Yahwism. We know she gave truck tons of money to the temple, like more than Israel ever seen. And because of the wisdom of Solomon, like that, that Solomon's God, man, this is the wise guy ever to bring the treasures to the temple. And so yeah, that is basically worshiping a God in the ancient world. But it doesn't say that she's now a Yahwist and she signed up for her, you know, Israeli calendar. Like it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's, and I think I'm not, I'm not, I don't want to be anachronistic here, but I think the things you see in acts, especially with Peter, I think that's the big one with Peter when he says that it's some realization to him. But because it was a realization to him, doesn't mean it wasn't the case. It's that he just realized this fact is that God doesn't show partiality to those who fear him. And so, and you have the whole God fearing tradition, they're not Jews, but they, men, God of Israel, men. Yeah. And about, about the women, I, there's some, I can't remember which would it might be in Daria, not to boring with the Bible. And I may have blogged about it too. And this is just my take. I think circumcision also was a sign to Israelite women because of the restrictions on marriage. You had to marry a, you know, an Israelite guy, you're going to have your, your males circumcised. So basically every time they have sex, it's like, you know, that you have both a visual, you know, you got this reminder. And it's a, it's a covenantal reminder. And so when we have our, our baby boy, we do the same thing. And we're supposed to marry, you know, within the tribe, you know, so to speak, all that. So it, that, that difference, that practice was not like missed by women. It's still an evident thing in their culture. And they're going to, they're going to learn from that. They're going to have this lesson, this idea reinforced to them. So they're not excluded in terms of the importance of, of the sign. There are a couple of specific things about Jonah too, in that text that sort of stand out in relation to the question, is the vows they take. So that would, those are more than likely have like cultic context to them. So if you're, if you're, it's one thing to like praise a God, it's another thing to make vows to on. So the in, in Jonah's context, and you have to understand that everything is stylistic in Jonah as well. So that's foregrounding, it's like foreshadowing the situation with Nineveh that's coming, right? It's like, and so, you know, the, the only ones praising God in the end are these Gentiles and Jonah's in the sea, you know, it's like they're Nineveh's, he's repenting and there's Jonah complaining out in the tree still, you know, under the tree. So, or the vine or whatever, you know, so, you know, there's, there's a lot of stylistic stuff going on there, where it's kind of like on Jonah. So, you know, depends on how far you want to push it, you know, is Jonah actually trying to say something about like, look at these new Gentile converts, let's focus on them. Not really, no, I mean, but it's, it's not saying that's not important. I actually think the vows thing is very important actually. You could, you could look at some sort of Yahweh devotion now that's established with them. Yeah, I would, I would say that there's, there's at least this impulse, again, this recognition that's going on, you know, and you could mean just to pick up David's point, you could bookend. Okay, the book ends, you know, with Jonah sitting there complaining about why the Gentile conversion. So, if you want to, you could, you could make the argument that, okay, literally, the book ends with this opposition. And then you could read that back, you could read the conversion of Nineveh back to the sailors, you could do that. But again, I would just need more. I need more of an indication for that. So, it would depend on how deliberate you think that is. You know, it would be nice, you know, to see something drawn more specifically from chapter four about, you know, the way they respond to the, to the message of repentance, because in a way, I'd want to see that, but it might be a little unfair, because in that part of the story in chapter one, they're not really asked. You know, there's no like gauntlet laid down that they, this is your demarcation point, whose side, you know, you're on the Lord's side or not. But, you know, you could look at the passage that way, but I would just like to see more. But at the very least, there's this impulse, you know, this they've gained some knowledge away here, and it's pretty serious. And at the very least, you know, that that could, you know, influence their thinking from that point on. So we just, we don't know specifics beyond that. I definitely, I definitely think it is part of the trajectory, sort of the, you know, post-exilic trajectory of Gentile inclusion, as an eschatological phenomena, you know, because he's supposed to go preach repentance. And they do repent, you know, it's like, welcoming of the nation. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's, so there's so much symbolism going on there. But, but that's really significant when you, when you get in readings of Jonah later, and especially with the sign of Jonah, that Jesus talks about, right? It's like, I'll only give you the sign of Jonah. And I always, I don't know, I always wonder about that, because, yes, okay, the obvious three days, and then he comes out, yeah, death and resurrection, that's definitely in mind. I think there's a lot more in mind there, because we're talking about Gentile inclusion is, you know, is happening at the proclamation of the gospel after this occurs, right? And he's the great prophet of Galway. And Jesus, Jesus has tipped, tipped that hand. I mean, we, it's easy for us to sit here already in the gospel before he says that, right? So that's, you know, like, interesting with the gathering. Okay. You know, he's, he's in Gentile territory because, hey, they're raising pigs here. That's really not what like Jews would do. So he'll go to these Gentile places and assert his kingship, his authority. And the claim is pretty obvious. I'm not just here for the Jews. I'm here for like everything. So he's, he's tipped that, that hand a little bit. And you'd say, well, shouldn't the Jews have known that? Can't they read their Old Testament? Well, yeah, they, they, they did have, you know, that and they were probably exposed to it. But still in the Gospels, it's very clear that, you know, Jesus has to teach this to them. Paul even refers to the full inclusion, the full inheritance of the Gentile is a mystery, you know, that so it's hard to know like who got how much of the message when, but I mean, it was there. But you're running into these episodes where, yeah, well, but you don't even need the New Testament for this. Like, I mean, you should be able to pick it up. Right. Isaiah is dealing with this. The Psalms even are read eschatologically this way, which you do see in the New Testament, but already beforehand, they're being used this way. But the prophets clearly talking about the Gentiles coming and take Isaiah's typology and Jonah's after Isaiah. So that, you know, there's probably way after. So there's definitely clear sort of settings that people in a post Isaiah world can draw on already within the Hebrew scriptural tradition that look forward to the Gentiles themselves coming to the Mount of God, not to get the snip snip in Isaiah. It's saying the Gentiles actually coming and saying, yeah, teach me your ways. Now, some Jews would interpret that as, well, this means they're going to surely they must be circumcised. Or if you're a Qumran, they're like the meal that they're eating, you know, or something. There's weird ways of interpreting this in Judaism. But, but, uh, well, and Christianity too, but, but, but the point being is there's already stuff in the prophets that sort of, you know, signals that like the, because all the text that Paul's making these cases for Gentile inclusion as Gentiles, which, by the way, is still a pretty big problem in scholarship. I have friends writing papers on this still. So, uh, but Paul's quoting Psalms and Isaiah and texts from the Torah. So they're already thinking with ancient texts about Gentiles coming as Gentiles. It's just super controversial. You know, you can see why we have most of the New Testament actually is this issue. Put yourself in, let's just say we're, here we are in a synagogue in Asia Minor somewhere, you know, there's this nitwit Paul running around, you know, talking about Jesus of Nazareth. You're, you're going to be opposed. I mean, if you don't believe that, you're going to be opposed to this guy and his message. And so it's very easy to see how to sort of circle the wagons and protect your turf, your identity, taking these Old Testament things and then again, filtering them through your own identity. Of course, if you want to be one of the people of God, then you get circumcised. You do the Sabbath. You do all these things. Even when the passages don't spell that out, they're just like, yeah, they're just Gentiles, again, you know, coming to the Lord to worship the Lord. There's even passages that talk about Gentiles being priests, you know, the most high. I mean, they're just stuff like that. But again, to not, right, not to exclude the notion that the Pharisees and scribes are really, they're just protecting turf. But what I'm saying is you could see how easily they could do that. Paul's a Pharisee. You know, I know. But I mean, yeah, well, that would offend them even more. I'm just saying it just ticks them off because he used to be with them. So he still identifies as one. They're trying. Yeah, when he has to defend his street cred and all that. Yeah. Resurrection is pretty fair single. Well, I know. He's not a sad you see, okay, there you happy. But, you know, you could you could see how they could get there. And then you have the whole Judaizing problem. But it's not a problem that that arises from, you know, these Old Testament passages. I want Paul to still be a Jew. But we look, we look at, you know, we look at the same at this kind of stuff. And isn't it interesting that the way we look at people like, Are you really a Christian? You know, we actually sort of reflexively do the same thing. We make, you know, some work or some, some deed or some ritual or whatever it is. Again, it's like we mimic the Judaizers when we talk about Christians, which is really, yeah. And in our interpretation of ancient Israel, we do the same thing to them. And this is difficult conversation because there's, I'm not convinced that there is a monolithic view on this in the Old Testament. Because there's laws that clearly say one thing. And then you have narratives where they're doing something different. And no one's condemned. So it's just sort of like, Okay, what's going on here. And you have rabbis playing with that later. So, you know, obviously, we're not trying to say this is just, Oh, here's the answer, you know, and get out of jail free card. So it's, it's more complicated, obviously, than that. And so Paul's still seems like he's still working stuff out too in his letters. So yeah, it's a really good question. Paul, because Judy is, because there is no such thing as Second Temple Judaism, you know, singular, right? You know, Paul is going to be saying certain things in certain ways. And he's probably, you know, thinking about a particular strain of Judaism, you know, and there's going to be many of them. What the problem for New Testament scholars is to try to reconstruct that conversation. So we know exactly what Paul is saying to whom, you know, what, what, what context fits, fits which group, what context fits, you know, which sort of way of thinking that you can find in Judaism. That's really, it's called, that's kind of an impossible path. So hard to do that. But, you know, it's, it's hard to reconstruct every detail. We can't. Yeah. Another question. Hey, Mike, on your website, you have this like six part thread on Romans 512. Thought it was great. I've had a hard time trying to reconcile the doctrine of original sin with a just God in, frankly, was just biblical texts in general, like the ones you bring up in Revelation and accountability. And I'm wondering if you'd be able to kind of flesh out the journey of a human being from birth to well, I don't know, accountability or and how that works out. And it just seems to me that I struggle less with that. Because again, my, my view of Romans 512 is not that we're guilty because of what somebody else does. Right. So, you know, and again, you'll find that in Eastern Orthodoxy, you'll find it in certain segments of Baptist circles, you know, we'll take that view. It's, it's a minority view, certainly within anything that could be put into the evangelical bucket like Baptists, but the East is there as well. So if that's the case, then, you know, our accountability for God, I think makes more sense because it's because we sin. So that, that to me answers that particular question. So as far as the journey, I don't know that we have to recount it, Jared, I don't think we could, I don't think we could possibly know when, you know, when like, like God looks at some act that a child does or whatever age, you know, okay, this is, this is a rebellion. This is something in the heart. I just don't think we can know that. But I do think there is a category of innocence because I take Romans 512, you know, the way I deal with in concert with those traditions. So the accountability issue seems to me pretty clear. You know, we're, we're accountable to God when and because we sin, but I can't, I can't sort of create a typology for that. Or I guess part of the doctrine where original sin kind of feeds to the idea of why we sin as well in some threads. And I don't know, it also seems like it's kind of like this holy cow doctrine that if you come against, you're in big trouble. Well, yeah, I've, I've, yeah, I've mentioned, I've mentioned this, this book before. And again, the same caveats don't, if you got into this book and you found out that the author is a Mormon, don't let that freak you out, because he's not doing Mormonism in the book. But when souls had wings, it's the book that's the history, the intellectual history of pre-existence. So he does, there are several chapters that discuss why, you know, church fathers like Augustine sort of landed where they did on that issue. They all held some view of pre-existence. And even Augustine says in several places that, you know, we're still thinking about this, all the ideas are worth thinking about. And, you know, he, he may not be positively pre predisposed to embracing one thing over the other. He just says, I don't know, you know, it's kind of hard. But, but he, he'll shift in his understanding based upon things that are going on around him. And that's the really interesting part of the book that his, his debates, you know, with the Pelagians move him a little bit over this direction and not the other. Yeah, there'll be something else that, that someone else writes that he either likes or reacts to. And then when he, when he stakes out that turf over here, that influences the way he's going to look at something over here, because he has to be consistent. He's, he's really hung up on predestination. And so that, that according to Givens, who's the author, that sort of the thing that nudged him away from the other views of the origin of the soul to a more a tradition, you know, position, because, you know, then his predestination system just seemed to work better. So he actually sort of defaults, you know, to this, there's all this kind of stuff going on in the early church fathers, but because you have certain decisions made in the context of certain debates, and also in the context of interacting with other people that you may like or don't like with what they're saying, if you have a really, you know, high status like Augustine did, the decisions you make are going to influence a tremendous number of people. And you know, you're going to, you're going to build this reputation, and you're going to become the reference point for doctrinal thinking about this issue over here. What did Augustine say? Yeah, it really is going to sort of be this, this sort of unstoppable force within the Western church, you know, because people after Augustine are going to be very hesitant to disagree with them, even though he wasn't always where he landed. Okay. But we sort of lose that debate, we lose the context, we lose the discussion, the question just becomes for us, well, what did Augustine say? You know, and that, and that is another way of asking, what does our church tradition say? Because it's built in part on some important thinkers like, like Augustine. So it, yeah, you know, it's a minority view, but I really do think it just makes the most sense, not the contrary. Well, not in the East, it's not. Yeah, let's, let's, let's be careful when we say minority because in the West, we just pretend that Eastern church doesn't exist. But that, you know, they've had a more consistent theology than the West has. And let's, let's also keep in mind that that question is directly tied to the Eastern view of theosis. Yeah. So the denial of original sin in the Augustinian sense in the West is the vehicle by which you get the high view of deification in the East. It's not that the West doesn't believe in deification. It's just the East is better at it, I think. I'm putting cards on the table. Well, there are a number of, there are a number of listeners to the podcast that are Eastern Orthodox. You know, I had, he doesn't work for Logos anymore. He switched companies, but had a friend there in the building. And that was one of his, his things that really drew him, you know, into listening to the podcast was the Romans 512 stuff. Because again, the only place he's ever heard that is his own context. So, you know, there you have it. I mean, they've been there a long time. And, but in the West, it's, it's dominated by other, other thinkers. Oh, no, I've never really had any discussion with, I mean, I'm sure you're going to have a lot of people, you know, theologians that are, again, part of the Western tradition that aren't going to like it. I mean, that's kind of obvious, but I've never had any, you know, discussion about like, I've never done a paper on it or anything like that. It's one of those things that if you're a theologian, I mean, you know, this view is out there and it's, and you know, where to, where to situate it. So some, I could imagine somebody hearing and say, well, why don't you just be Eastern Orthodox then, you know, that, that's probably where it would go. Another question. So piggybacking on, on this and last week's episode where we're talking about origin of the soul with creationism and traducianism and, and the pre-existence of the soul. What are your thoughts on a fourth path would be the divisible soul. Adam was given the soul by God, Eve inherited her portion from Adam's rib because she would, she didn't receive the breath of God. She was just formed out of Adam's rib. And then through the fall of Adam, we've all received our fallen original sin portion of the divisible soul. I don't know if that would reconcile. Yeah, I would, I would say I don't think Romans, I think Romans 5-12 actually contradicts that. Okay. And the other problem I have is I don't, I don't see, I'm not a trichotomist. I think the Old Testament is immaterial immaterial, you know, division. And I, and I take the, you know, the breath of life, that passage is giving God credit for why we're alive, you know, that sort of thing. I don't think it's like a special, you know, sort of breath, you know, planted into someone. I think it's a, it's a metaphor for God being the source of life, and specifically our life. And I'll admit too, it's connected to imaging as well, you know, because of our status, you know, that it's probably, there's probably part of that that makes it important to maybe connect that divine activity with the human being as opposed to something else. To me, the big obstacle there is Romans 5-12. Well, I think there's a bigger one than that. It's 1st Corinthians 15 in the resurrection body. You just want to talk about 1st Corinthians 15. I mean, he literally says the Somatzikikon, the soulish body, or a body that's demarcated by soul, or is encompassed by soul, or whatever. I don't know how you talk about it. Maybe. Yeah, no, that might be, well, they're both animate. So that's, but he has it in contrastance to Somatzikikon, or Soma numaticon. So the, the, the soulish body versus the pneumatic body or the spirit body. So whatever we translate as soul in Paul, which is, it's just, it's not there. He's, he's saying that he's saying the celestial body. Yeah, it's like the celestial versus the terrestrial one's just gone. Yeah. It's just anything that would be translated as Sikon, which we translate as soul in the Bible is gone. It's not there anymore. Yeah, that's, that's certainly an obstacle. So I'm like, with the only thing you have to translate in Paul that means soul, he says it's just gone and done away with completely. So whatever that means for Paul doesn't exist anymore. So it doesn't mean there's not continuity between like form. It means that the substance is completely different. So yeah, that's very problematic for the idea of soul as some sort of, you know, carryover type thing. Another question. We'll be back on that a little bit, but more on a practical like application stance. But I guess I would just have asked you to talk more about it. Problem that I have with original sin is kind of two things with the idea that God would create us in a way, kind of why we sin. So I know that we all have sin, but why we sin that God would create us in a way that would force us to sin. And then yet, we're accountable for it. I guess I'm presupposing that God is just and I don't find that just. So if you could explain how it is Justin, I'm wrong. I'm glad to. I don't see God as forcing us to sin. Now, what I do see is God creating beings that are like him, but they are still lesser. In other words, we're not perfect and we don't have God's impeccable perfect nature. We are reflections of him. We are not him. So by definition, that that does create the potential for failure, you know, for inconsistent choice when it comes to obedience and stuff like that, you know, we, we could give into, you know, our own, you know, an impulse we have and not be able to thwart it, you know, that sort of thing. But I can see that kind of thing surfacing in a being that's less than God. But that doesn't mean God's, you know, standing behind going, come on, you know, it's time you sin now. Let's get the show on the road here. He's not making it happen. But he's creating us in such a way, such a way certainly that the preconditions for it happening are going to be there. But the only way to avoid that is to pardon the, you know, the sort of, you know, kind of dumb analogy. But the only way to avoid that would be to clone himself. Okay, you know, and that's just not what's going on with human creation. So I don't look at it as God, you know, creating beings and then forcing them to violate what he's saying. But, but the conditions are just there inherently, because we're not him. That's how I approach that sort of thing. My cop out answer would be because I don't think there is a solution to the problem of evil. Theodicy is impossible. The only solution we have is faith in the resurrection, and that's not a solution. It's just faith, you believe. But the cop out version of that would be James says pretty clearly that God never tempts with evil. So the temptation to evil I think is at the root of your question, I think. And I think James just shuts that off from the, from the root, like, no, God never tempts with evil. That's why you have a tempter. So it's the power is other. So which does cause a sort of problem in sovereignty resides in the flesh, though, right? You got that issue, right? But, but if you deal with the whole like, I don't, yeah, I'm going to leave it there because I don't want to get in trouble because there's a lot of people listen to this podcast. Look at, look at, look at who the look at who the tempter is trying to get a job in the future. The tempter is a being also created as an imager, the same creator. You got the plural language of imaging going on in Genesis one, you know, sharing the same set of attributes. But nevertheless, you could say, again, with, with, you know, Psalm eight Hebrews, you know, that humans are lesser, okay, we're lesser, but that being is still not God. Okay, that being is still not God. And so, yeah, you have the same, again, circumstances where this being can act in self interest, you know, wanting autonomy wanting, you know, to be released from the authority of God or whatever, you know, however we would sort of think about or imagine, you know, the motives, and then that being in turn goes to the human and it starts to manipulate so that you have the temptation from the outside. But even that is still in some way attached to lesser Ness. And for the human, you know, you have this external force, James, you know, certainly says that, but he adds, you know, the whole, you know, progression of sin, you know, involving the flesh, you know, Paul says the same thing too. So there are things that are working against us. There are things that are working against us. And, and look, look, why is Christ able to withstand temptations and the weaknesses, you know, like we discussed on the podcast before, well, it's because he does share that, that nature, he is, you know, God incarnate. So that's, that's the thing that separates him from us. And again, all, all that's, you know, super important because of everything that extends from the incarnation. We're, again, I still don't view that as God forcing, you know, sin. But again, how would he prevent, other than like removing free will or cloning himself, how would he prevent that possibility? And that's where that's the inscrutable point, you know, because you can then you have to ask the question, Well, why would God bother to do any of this anyway? You know, you fall back to this, you know, like the theological kinds of answers that God just loves to create, God, you know, wanted to do this or that or the other thing. So that, that to me is, is the more inscrutable point. But it's a, it's a positive point, because what it tells us is that God would rather have made us than not. And that's kind of an important thought. So even though we can't nail everything down, we were left with a thought like that, which is a good thought and an important one. I was just going to ask if it was, if we would be helpful to try to reconcile some of that struggle with thinking about that we inherit Adam's prefall nature. In other words, Adam didn't inherit any quote, fallen nature. And yet he still disobeyed and sinned that free will was there. So it's like an analogy or a template. Yeah. It's correct. So like, we still have that. We always think about what we inherit is a post fall nature. But Adam not having that post fall nature was created quote, perfect, never sinning. And yet he still had a nature that predisposed him to be able to sin. So if we inherit that, then you can see an inherent goodness that God creates us all with. And it kind of reconciles God's justice with his love and, and all of those things. So think of, I don't know if it's helpful to think about it that way. No, I think, I think there's things in there that are certainly worth, you know, thinking about their trajectories there that would probably be helpful question over here. I'm about a third of the way through unseen realm and a practical way that your ministry has impacted me was just a better understanding of evil because I grew up with under Calvinistic teaching. So I read the Bible through that lens. And I don't even know how not to. And I was never told God causes evil and God does this, but I very much grew up under the teaching that he's always in control and he pre pre pre, you know, he foredains everything, he predetermines everything. And as a child, maybe not knowing how to work that out, I just maybe came to subconscious conclusions that God, when evil happens, God, I don't even want to say that out loud, but that God's behind that too. You know, but reading a more, you know, the way you describe Satan's fall and what he did and how he was able to attempt even then Adam and Adam was tempted. That's really helped me to see evil for what it is and how it began in God in his love, creating us with free will. He won't control us. Right? I mean, evil is no less real outside of the orbit of Calvinism. I mean, it is what it is. But again, I struggled with the same sorts of things because that is the logical conclusion in a really sort of, I'll use a nice word in a consistent Calvinist system that those are the thoughts you have to think. I mean, you're just ultimately driven there. And yeah, you know, we can all point to some Calvinist theologian that somehow, you know, tries to get out of that conundrum. But it's really hard to do and kind of kind of be honest with the whole, you know, scheme of things. I think we all have these Calvinistic phases. Yeah, I mean, I did. But it troubled me. You know, it really troubled me. Crying at John Piper sermon. I didn't do that. Oh, I did when I was a kid, man. I came to Bible college thinking I'm like, gonna make everybody Calvinist at Bible college. After a year of like, deconstruction and New Testament survey with Daniel Street, just ripped my mind out of my head and stomped on it. And I was like, okay, I don't know what to believe anymore. So that was that was fun. Did you want to add anything? Well, thank you, by the way. Oh, no, thank you for writing the book. But yeah, also just there, Satan is the cause of evil. We're, we're the cause of evil. We don't make the right choices. We do sin. We do cause harm to each other. But some of it is just so severe like for everyone suffers in their own way. But there are the people who really suffer. They've been, they really go through a lot. They've been raped, they've been beaten, they've been whatever. And understanding God is not, that's not God's will. That's not God's desire. But it happens and he is watching it and it must grieve him. I know that it must. But to kind of reconcile, I think I've been able to also see through your book that through us being the image bearers, we're to alleviate what suffering we can and where to be, where to do all we can. That's part of our job. But also the reality is that there's still evil and suffering and God does see it and watch it. And how will that be? I know it will be redeemed, but it's hard to watch it and it's hard to see it when it's. Yeah. And I think that's why why David said what really makes sense of it is the resurrection. You know, I didn't say it makes sense. Well, you know what I mean, just root, I can't, I can't think of your exact word. Yeah, I said it was my only hope. Yeah. Yeah. I may not have used that word. Well, you said like, yeah, the answer to the odyssey is. Well, I said there is no answer to the odyssey in my. But that's where at least we may disagree. I don't know. No, no, I think it's a good, it's a good statement. You know, you have this world's not our home. Yeah. God, you know, has a people things will go full circle back to Eden, you know, what again, sovereignty doesn't have to necessarily be front loaded. It can, you know, work in the end and it God is still sovereign. You know, even though he wouldn't be, you know, that's not the way John Calvin or somebody else would talk about it. It doesn't make God any less sovereign to have things end up the way he wants them to end. You know, again, because, you know, the outflowing outworking of his plan. So I do think that's an important element. We really need to recapture the lament Psalms in church big time. I mean, almost a third of our Psalms are all lament that don't end happy. There's like, everything sucks. Why do you hate us? God saw him over. And people, you know, you turn on the TV, you don't hear none of that crap. I think Jolo Steen preach. Yeah, everything's great guys. You know, no, it's not my mom just died. Like, you know, no, it's not great, you know, no, but put a smile on your face. Like, no, you know, I thought death was the enemy. I thought we mourn with those who mourn, right? Not rejoice with those who mourn. Thank you. The apostles were always happy though. Oh, yeah, they were real happy. Paul's cheery guy was on top of the world. Regulations. Life was an endless string of victories. No, but I'm serious, like the lament Psalms is they're liturgical. In ancient Israel, they're liturgical in the church. This is still in the church's liturgy. I mean, if you go to liturgical churches, if not, you know, try it. I don't know. But it's interesting. Okay. So, but seriously, the lament Psalms are there for a reason. I mean, and there's so many for a reason, because that expression of just not having an answer and reading every theology book there is on it and still being, I'm just going to say it, just pissed and throwing him across the room is a righteous expression of fidelity to God. Questioning God is actually something he welcomes. One of the most cut me to the core moments I had was with Rick Watts. Rick Watts, you remember? He was a scholar from Cambridge, taught at Regent for years. I think he's doing something else now, but he wrote a book on Isaiah's New Exodus in Mark, which blew my mind. But he was talking about the story in Exodus of the striking of the rock, where there's this trial scene where you've talked about this. God welcomes the elders to question him and invoke his presence over the rock and strike it. And yet, what comes from the rock? It's water that brings life when he's struck. And you have this sort of image in John in the crucifixion. This is when you have the incarnation that God, we look up and see him, the one who's raised up is the one who saves in John. And they strike him and what flows out of him, blood and water. And it's this echo that God is allowing himself to be put on trial. He's letting you question it. He's letting you question him. And it's this filthy sort of questioning. It's not even a righteous one, but he lets it happen. And it tells us something about the nature of God, that it teaches us something about it, about him, that the limit tradition, I'm attaching this to the limit tradition because I think that's a righteous form of questioning. It's okay to cry and scream and yell and where are you? And those are actually righteous expressions of faith. And I don't know why there's so many books written against that, because there's tons of scripture that's like, yeah, embrace that. And there will be times in your Christian life, if you're honest, you'll wake up in the morning saying, is there even a God? And that's okay. I know that sounds crazy for some people, but that's okay. That's what a real relationship is like. Anyone in a real relationship says amen, you know? Well, yeah, it goes back to the assumes a relationship, right? Questioning and unbelief are two different things. Right. And we tend, unfortunately, to conflate those things. But they're two different things help my unbelief. Yeah. You know, again, there's a person who wants to stay in the faith. I mean, as you guys are talking, I mean, the first thought that kind of came up my mind was there was the, I was in a conversation, I think it was earlier, it was actually on our Facebook group. And I think it was somewhere in the context in my head is like, so when I'm hearing you talking about like, you know, why can't why don't we question why don't we scream? A song I've heard from this old band was simply called something to say. And the whole entire feeling and the emotion of that song was basically, I'm afraid to question because I'm afraid one, I'll lose my faith, but also because I'm afraid that I'm going to be all alone, that no one in the church, not even God will come and help me. And a part of me is like, I guess maybe this is not an answer to me is just kind of reflection. This is just with our Western Christianity, we have become so individualistic that when the card times and questions come, we feared that what we were to voice those questions, we would be completely alone and isolated. Yeah, and if you feel that that that's a demonstration of how unlike a family, the church can be, because if it's your own family, you know, you somebody just goes off like that, your first response isn't going to be, well, I guess they just jump ship. And then you don't really, you don't really deal with that person anymore. Of course not. Because they're your brother, your sister, mom, dad, whatever, you're going to try again to help that person, you're going to try to understand what's going on and basically be a son or a brother or sister to that person. That's what would happen in a normal and even a fairly dysfunctional family unit. But it's like in a lot of churches, it's even like more dysfunctional than dysfunctional. And and the analogy, you know, I agree, I think that's really telling one of one of my theology pros and undergrad would would always say, or he taught psychology, actually, he he he'd always say, don't give him a prescription. Yeah, it's like, well, here, brother, just meditate on, you know, John one or whatever, you know, whatever. Yeah, per scripture. Don't don't don't give him a prescription. It's not going to do anything. And you know, we need to recapture on top of lament. Yeah, it's pretty good. I mean, I liked it. It's stuck with me. Are you stole it? I'll steal it now. He needs a copy of that thing. But the idea of lament and presence is is is inseparable. What you said really struck me because I've experienced this in ministry and growing up in the in the sort of Southern evangelicalism. I experienced that same thing is like the kids with the questions were always sort of the ones ostracized out of the sort of the the church party, you know. And so in those who were like struggled with things that the ministers didn't have any training or answers for, they just had to leave and go somewhere else, you know, that could maybe find them answers something. And, you know, I'm thinking of ethicists and stuff that have talked about this that sometimes you don't have to bathe problems in words, you know, there's not like theology or scriptures you can bathe things in and make them better. You just sit with them in the dark and be there like that joke, you know, the best friends are the ones that shut up and don't try to fix the problem and just sit there with you in the muck, you know. And that's the whole idea of presence. This is why the incarnation is so powerful is the idea is he literally comes in and just suffers with us. It's an embodiment of the suffering. It's not saying, I'm going to pull you out of it and everything will be fine. It's no, I'm going to come and soak myself in it with you so that Hebrews, you know, nothing that you have been tempted with have I not been tempted with, you know. So it's that saturation in presence, the fact that you have someone there while you're in the dark is the thing that's powerful and they don't leave you no matter how deep the questioning gets, they're still there. And that's the part that's missing in the church, I think. And it's directly connected to that, what I mean by recovering laments, you know. If you guys have listened to the, any of the Fern and Audrey episodes, that's a large part of what they actually do, you know, with survivors. It's not, and when you listen to the latest one we spent, Trey and I spent, you know, several days with Fern and Audrey last week. And one of the sort of the nice little, you know, quip statements that came out of that was Deliverance Ministry goes looking for a fight, you know, it's confrontational. What they do is completely other than that. They do what he just described. They go through the pain and the events of the pain and all this sort of stuff with survivors. That is a great deal about what they do. And it's so simple and so unspectacular, but it's so effective, you know, in helping the people that wind up on their doorstep. They just do a lot of that. And again, without getting too much into their own story, they were unable. I think it might change a little bit because of the podcast, but they have been unable to have a church participate in what they do, because people just get frightened at the kind of people they're working with. And they're, I mean, they're basically just alone, but they're, they're trying to have these people not be alone. So again, this is what David said is a lot of actually what they do. It's not terribly spectacular. And they're not doing, again, what you think of as traditional Deliverance Ministry looking for a fight, you know, with some demonic, you know, first of all, that's, that's not really the problem. That's very unusual with people. The problem is actually worse. It'd be easier if it was just a demon. Okay, but, but it's someone who's been traumatized by evil over and over again. That's just worse. You know, give us a light case here. You know, let's just get rid of the, you know, they can they that that's why they say that's really rare. Most of the time what they're doing is just helping people through human evil that has afflicted them repeatedly. And that's a lot of work. That's a lot of work. It takes a long time. So it's, it's quite different. But again, it's to me, I hear, you know, what David's saying, that's the example that I'm, I'm sort of closest to because I, I see what they do and we spend time with them and, you know, some of the people they work with. All right. Well, we just want to thank everybody for coming out. Thank you all very much. I want to thank David Burnett for joining us. And we want to thank everybody for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. God bless. Thanks for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit www.nakedbibleblog.com. To learn more about Dr. Heizer's other websites and blogs, go to www.brmsh.com.