Greetings, dragon slayers, giant killers. You are listening to the 130th episode of the Lord of Spirits podcast. Why you're still here is a mystery to me. Uh they have nowhere else to go. I know, there's a thousand channels and there's nothing on. Um nevertheless, I am Father Andrew Stephen Damick, and with me is the professor and confessor to the stars. I used that joke last time, but I still like it.
Father Stephen DeYoung. And we're not live. We're celebrating Christmas like most of you. Father Stephen is getting is it Chinese takeout? Or Vietnamese? What is it you normally get on Christmas? No, we go you have to go to the Chinese restaurant and eat there with the local Jewry. Oh eat in. Eat in. I see. Yes. Okay. All right. All right. The j whole Jewish community is there. I'm not joking.
This is not some kind of anti Semitic slur. This is an accurate thing. There are always Jewish people there. Yeah, gather together. Yeah. Yeah. So I've been told that's for two reasons. Number one, they're open, but number two, actually, apparently you could find kosher food pretty easily at a Chinese buffet. Huh. Although I feel like Chinese buffets have been going down over the years in quality. Is that the case with yours or is it just here in Pennsylvania?
Well I just there, Pennsylvania I mean, the one I used to go to in Hamlin, Pennsylvania, uh was literally a Chinese buffet next door to a closed pet store. Wow. This is an amazing beginning for this episode. This is just a fact. I'm not saying anything. I'm not conjecturing. I'm just saying factually that's where it was located. Uh northeastern Pennsylvania. How we love you.
Well, the great gatekeeper Mike only plays wingspan to gain, is not gonna be taking your calls this time because as I mentioned, this is a pre-recorded episode. That said, over the years the gate is inacceptable and therefore must not be kept. The gate is shut. Um we've gotten a lot of questions about exactly what it means. when God appears bodily in the Old Testament. And we've said this is the incarnate Christ. We have resisted using this word preincarnate.
Um this is kind of a a mind-bending thing for for human beings to consider. So for our Christmas episode, we're actually gonna be dedicating the whole time to exploring this question closely. So Um, you know, let's let's start with a a a spicy take, Father. You say that time and space don't exist. Does that mean that lunchtime is also an illusion? Yes. All right. And further, that means as a corollary, you can eat and drink whatever you want at any time you want.
At any because time and space and calories presumably do not exist. Kilo calories you want to have pancakes? At 8 PM, do it. Yesterday You want to have a double Western bacon cheeseburger from Carl Jr. for breakfast? Do it at 8 A.M. Doesn't matter. Plus you're not fooling anybody by putting tomato juice or orange juice in your vodka. You're still drinking early in the morning. Wow, this is having a very, very dark beginning today. Um
But yeah, so we are we are talking about the incarnation. How is that dark? People are celebrating. Good. I'll let's let's say that. Yeah, that sounds good. Um We are talking about the incarnation. This is Christmas. We're not gonna it is about drinking. The Puritans told me so. That's why they don't celebrate it. That's true. As m maybe not by your definition, but friend of the show, Deacon Sarah from Richard Rowland would say
Have the kind of Christmas would outlaw. He may be your friend, but it's not your friend. The man of the man of a thousand aliases. Uh true. It's true. But yeah, we should say that you're not gonna walk away from this episode like understanding the incarnation or having explored every single dogmatic aspect of it. Yes. We're gonna fail at our mission terribly. Yes. But the point here is to talk about this particular question of the incarnation as it relates to time.
Um which is not an not an easy thing to to master and and And I think largely am I correct in thinking that the church fathers largely don't uh address this kind of directly? Uh I think they do. It's just those aren't the passages people read. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So this is this is this is one of those things because, you know On my Twitch stream lately, I've been getting a lot of questions about particular things in St. Augustine. Hm. And what I keep having to point out
Is that people don't actually read Saint Augustine, right? Our Protestant friends quote mine Saint Augustine. Yeah. Like they invented that, right? So when you point out just basic things. Like they're saying Saint Augustine believed that everyone is born with the guilt of Adam's sin, and you point out, you know, hey, when when St. Augustine talks about sin
Does he talk about it in terms of juridical guilt? Well no, he doesn't, right? Or like on our last episode when we pointed out, you know, he he says pretty clearly that God doesn't control human wills when he's talking about astrology and city of God. Yeah. So d how are you saying he's a predestinarian? Yeah. Bunches of these things. And so even even leaving aside
All of the stuff from the Church Fathers that isn't translated, because people don't find it interesting, or just haven't gotten to it. Even what is translated into English, people read on certain subjects. Right. They're looking for And not others. And the stuff that seems confusing, uh, they don't read. And so you get this phenomena that happens to the host of this program a lot where we say something
Uh, we don't give a thousand tedious footnotes. How dare we? A bunch of people pop up and we're like, Oh, you're speculating and making this stuff up and then someone who's actually read things pops up and is like, uh no, actually, this is and you know Mm much like the Samson thing, where we literally only say about him what the church fathers and the scriptures say about him. Yes. Yes. This happened when I gave that. that uh talk involving Nietzsche at Peugeot Fest.
Right. Almost immediately somebody popped up in the in the YouTube comments when he released it and said, This is just Father Stephen speculating. This is an Orthodox teaching And then it took about five minutes and a Romanian person was like, this is all from the Philokalia and started listing like authors. All that is to say, yes, actually, if you if you go and study how the church fathers talk about the eternity of God. Yeah. Uh, you actually do get what we're gonna be trying to convey.
tonight. Yeah, and also just the the obligatory plug for George Mazzaridzi's Time and Man, um, which you know deals with a lot of this and kind of related contextual stuff. Yeah. So yeah, this is not this is actually something that they're fairly but you have to be reading for it. Um, and if you have other presuppositions, right, this is the other thing.
You come to the text with a presupposition that eternity means an endless succession of moments in the past and future. We'll talk more about this as we go forward. But if that's what you're just assuming eternity means then whenever you read the word eternity in an English translation of the Church Fathers, you're just gonna assume it means that. Yeah. Endless time. Uh people don't take the step of saying, okay, how is this author using this work?
It's not necessarily what I think this word quote unquote dictionary definition means. Yeah, I mean it's it's much like the way that uh frankly A a a lot of fundamentalist and many other Protestants read the Bible like, Well that's what it says. You know, they'll just point at something like that. Yeah.
Yeah. Even when they disagree, both sides will say that. Because they're just making those assumptions based on their presuppositions. So we have to if we're gonna talk about what it means For Christ's humanity is To become eternal. By being united to the second person of the Trinity, which is another way of stating our topic for this evening. Right. We have to break that down. We have to start with, okay, what does eternal mean? Hm.
What does it mean to be eternal? Cause there are multiple definitions of that, or multiple ways of understanding what that means. Could mean. Uh, that are mutually exclusive. So that's where we're gonna start. We're gonna start with What does it mean for something to be eternal?
Uh what does it mean for something to be timeless? We're not talking about Tony Storm primarily here. That's a reference that Father Andrew didn't get, but he just chuckled at anyway. Uh I feel like I'm getting it. Uh keep talking. It sounds familiar to me, but I don't know. Oh I doubt it. But okay. Okay. Yes, and so we do begin with uh time and space don't exist. I think actually I think it flipped a switch in my head that was like Tony Stark. But it turns out this is not the case. Yeah.
So when we say time and space don't exist, right? And people say, What? Uh or they say dude uh'cause they're intoxicated. Um We have to we have to even break that down a little bit too. What does it mean to exist? And here's a teaser. By the time we're done with this first half, we're gonna talk about the fact that God doesn't exist. Dun dun dun. So Which we'll the church fathers say that.
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Saint Maximus the Confessor says exactly that. But so what does it what does it mean to exist? Right. And what we usually mean by exist in our in our common parlance is uh something exists. if it exists externally to a subject. We've talked about this before on the show, and I know we're already getting some people's brains sploaty, but uh if I look at the wall of my office here, right? As we've said on the the show before, the color, which I can't describe because
I'm a I'm a dude. Uh but it's greenish. It's not one of those ancient people couldn't see blue. Father Stephen can't see No, no. It's just a kind of green gray th thing that I'm sure there's a name for. But I don't know it because I'm a dude. Um But anyway, that color does not actually exist. Because uh if I wasn't here looking at it, right, color. Remember the mantis shrimp. Uh color
Only exists as a relationship of perception. Right? There are certain wavelengths of light that are reflecting off of that wall. striking the human eye in a certain way to produce that color, right? But no human eyeball, no color. No light in the room, no color. Right. Right. So the color doesn't have external existence. The wall itself does. I can turn off all the lights, close my eyes, try to walk through the wall, I will hit the wall.
100 out of 100 times. Yeah, I mean the things that you see are literally a thing your brain is doing. That's what seeing seeing is. Right. How you're interpreting it. But there is an actual existence out there, right? It's not a hallucination. If it was a hallucination, I could walk through the wall. Okay. So we'd say the wall exists, the color of the wall does not exist in the same sense as well.
The color of the wall exists in my consciousness. And specifically my consciousness,'cause another person with different eyes looking at it might see a different color. We can all think of like that goofy dress photo and things like that where
There are things where some people see something one way and other people see something another way, even though they're looking at the same thing. Or even that Yenny oral thing that you is an aural question. Yeah. Yeah. Or just, you know, hey, somebody who's red, green, colorblind.
Because our walls are kind of greenish. Right. They're gonna see it. They're gonna be like greenish. There's it's gray, right? Like so that's what we mean by exist, right? And so when we say time and space don't exist. What we're saying is that uh the categories of time and space are categories of human experience, like color. uh and not things that objectively exist without any people there, right? Without an observer. Right. And we we've all Uh frankly notice this with time.
People who want to argue with me on this point would say, Well, no, time exists. Time passes at one second per second, right? It's a it's a uniform rate. Da da da da da. Of course we know from physics it doesn't move at a uniform rate. It moves at different relative rates. Right. But but even beyond that, even beyond that, just in our own personal experience, right? Because that's what we're talking about is our personal experience.
You've had periods of time that seem to take longer or that seem to be shorter. Even though objectively an hour is an hour, right? Sometimes an hour if you're really involved in something seems to go by very quickly, and sometimes an hour if you're less involved like you're sitting in a Zoom meeting, uh That seems to drag on forever. Yeah. Right. Uh, even though quote unquote objectively an hour is an hour. Um
And again, we're not going to go into all the physics, because neither of us is a physicist, and that's just cringe when people try to do that. But hopefully folks have had enough high school slash college physics that they know, you know, at least some basic Einstein stuff. The exp that experienced difference in the passage of time can become quite literalized in certain circumstances.
Um and and also that time and space as categories are intimately connected. So part of the issue here is that this is this is just a thing that's hard to wrap our head around. Yeah. So there is for example Scientifically, an edge of space. Which is like w we know that's true, and they'll say things like the universe is expanding but but into what?
Like what is there space beyond space that it's expanding into? Right. Well that's what people assume. Yeah. That there's just sort of this endless succession of points in all directions, right? Uh but that is actually not the case scientifically. There is an edge of space. And our brain can't wrap our head around that because we're like, okay, so you come to the edge of space, right? We're at the very edge of of space. Uh well so what if you go one inch further?
And you get told there is no inch further. You're at the end of space. You're at the end of inches, right? And our head cat wrapper at it. And and this is the same problem we have, right? To tie this back to our point tonight, right? That we have thinking about time. And creation, for example. Right? So if we say, okay, God God created time. And space, obviously, right? He created everything, right? So we're gonna say God created time and space. Okay, so God creates time.
What about like ten seconds before that? Right? And our brain can't fathom there were no seconds before that.'Cause if there were ten seconds before that, then that would be the beginning of time. Right. Right. Yep. So the the the finitude of time and space is something that's very difficult to wrap your brain around. But the fact
The fact that the human brain has trouble to say, sorry, William Lane Craig. Uh This is one of the if we're getting past him being the the fractally wrong panheretic to uh William Ray Lane Craig, the bad philosopher, um he's the kind of guy who says that uh If you can't if something is it doesn't work for human logic, if you can't wrap your brain around it, then it's not true. Wow. I mean I would think that that should be classified as extreme hubris. Yeah.
Just to put it mildly. Well, he believes God can't do logically impossible things. Wow. You see. Um I'm telling you, guy is wrong about everything. Right. There's nothing he is right about. Um So uh you could say, well he's right that a god exists. It's like, well yeah, but the one he thinks exists is the wrong one. The one he thinks exists doesn't. Yeah.
But contra that, seems like anyone said so, especially anyone coming from the Christian tradition, right, would say, well, obviously there are things regarding God, especially, that the human mind cannot comprehend. The fact that something is incomprehensible about God to the human mind. Actually maybe evidence that it's true. It may actually go the other way. Right. Um that we should expect God.
And his ways to be beyond human comprehension,'cause he he told us they were. Yeah. Um and so that's okay. My ways are higher than your ways, except for when you don't understand them. More specific. Well that was just true because he was talking to Broadsage people. See now we're modern people. We're so we have the the science and the logics. And so now now we can understand everything.
I mean just go the next step, go full full Hegel and be like, we're we're practically God ourselves, you know? Um so that said, the actual reason why we can't comprehend those things. Right. So so the we've we've kind of made two points so far. And we're trying to take this slowly and deliberately'cause I know it we know it's brain breaking. Point one, time and space exist really within Human subjectivity within human experience, not external to it. And number two
Uh that they have borders, like a beginning and an end, right? There's borders to space. There are borders or endpoints to time. And That's true even though the human brain can't really wrap its head around the fact that there are borders to space or or time, and that's because, right? The the second point is because of the first point. Because space and time exist within the realm of human experience, they're part of the grid.
Through which we understand all of our experiences. So categories of time and space are part of the grid before and after. Right? Near far. Right, movement. change, all of these things are part and parcel of how we experience and interpret everything we experience. So when you're asked to imagine experiencing something That falls outside of that grid you can't imagine or understand it.
Right. We don't have the c categories of thought for it. Yeah, we don't have another set of categories that we would have to use to right. Um and so yeah, just just basic things like our understanding of cause and effect. Uh cause and effect. Understanding of cause and effect presupposes number one, a temporal sequence, right? Like if if one thing happens uh and then another thing happens a hundred years later.
And you wanna say thing one caused thing two. You've got to establish a whole chain of events, right? Like all set up all the dominoes in between the two to connect them, right? Cause we assume there's gotta be a a connection in time. And if they happen on other sides of the planet, right, then uh yes there are sides to the planet throwing strays at flat earthers. Um
You've right, then you're gonna have to establish, right, in that chain of causes also crossing the distance, right? Someone or something is gonna have to go from one place to the other place and carry that causal That causal chain, right? And You know, David Hume came out and said cause and effect don't strictly speaking exist'cause they're not strictly speaking observable.
Right. But even he admitted, but yeah, you kind of have to assume cause and effect or you know, you you can't live and function, right? Like as as a human, right? Um so Even someone who wants to try to make the argument can't really escape these categories of thought and experience. Right. You can't really escape or get out get outside of that grit.
When we're saying that time and space aren't things, uh not in the modern usage, that's not a thing, but in the very literal sense of you can't like grab some space Or hold on to some time. Right. Um What we mean is that they're the description of a relationship between things. Right. If you're talking about time before and after For example, if you're talking about space, over, under, and we all we all accept. So for example, space, spatial terms.
We all kind of accept that those are relative. Less like you're a flat earther and then you're like How there be people on bottom of globe, right? Um but like we accept that if you go out in space there's not an up and a down really. Right? Like South America is South America. Because it's like toward the South Pole, not because it's on the bottom of the earth. It's funny to me how in almost every um sci fi movie or T V show
They always turn left or right or turn around or whatever. You know, like there's still your advantage in the Mutara Nebula. Yeah, they're treated like sailing ships, basically. Yeah. Yeah. Like there's an up and a down. And when they approach Earth, Earth is always oriented north to south, you know. Right. Um like a globe. Um yeah, yeah. When there's there's no reason to, right? I mean Antarctica you could say is the top of the world just as easily.'Cause top and bottom is completely relative.
Right. The uh so we we all accept that. Again, unless you're like a defiant flat earther. Uh we all we all accept that that those things are kind of relative. And, you know, like we said, when you start getting into physics, you kind of start finding out that weird things happen with time too. But we're not, again, here to talk about science.
Per se, we're here to talk about God. Um, so when we're talking about eternity, what we mean by eternity, we're really talking about what it means when we ascribe uh that.
quality to God. We say that God is eternal. If you've been wondering why so far we've been talking about time and space instead of just time, it's because Hopefully, as you've already seen, the two are intimately connected and thinking about it in t terms of space is at least a little easier than thinking about it in terms of time for us. We're gonna start using space and then analogise from that over to time to try to help explain this. And ideas like distance in space.
Uh, we're speaking from the point of view of a finite creature because everything created is finite. Um and so for us, we And everything else we know that exists, right? From other people to chairs to globes. Two. Windows two. Atmospheric gases, right? W when we say those things exist, part of their finite existence is that they fill a certain series of points in space. They occupy a series of points in space.
It could be big or small, right? Relatively more, relatively fewer points in space. No, we're not getting into Xeno's paradox right now of how much space is a point. Um But uh the idea being whatever unit of measurement you want to use, right, there is a finite quantity of space taken up by the volume of the object. Right. And for it to occupy as a finite object.
uh including a human body, for it to occupy another series of points in another place, uh that finite object has to cross the intervening points in space. And then it can go and occupy another set of points in space. Going from occupying one set of points in space through the intervening points in space to occupy another set of points in space is what we call movement. Right. Uh that is something moving. And it moves because it's finite.
And so it has to cross all of those points in space in between to get from one to the other. And we can then measure that movement in various ways as to direction, as to continuity. Most common one we use is speed. Right. How much time is elapsed? while it is crossing from one set of points to the other and crossing the points in between. Okay. So that's that's your basic, right? Your your finite objects, which includes pretty much every created thing. So then we talk about God
And we say that God is omnipresent. So as God's eternity is to st is to time, God's omnipresence is to space. That's the analogy. So we say God is omnipresent and what do we mean by that? Because there there are different ways that someone could see that. Yeah, I mean when we think about presence, uh we probably think about like a a a human person, you know, being in the same room with us. Um and then we say God is everyone. Yes. Yeah. And so you could say, well, okay, someone could imagine
Uh like the the m the Monty Python prayer and meaning of life, that God is just really, really big. God is just huge and he's s sort of spread out through the whole universe. Right. So So he's occupying sort of all of the points. He's just so big that he occupies all of the points in space, right? Um and that's what we mean when we say he's omnipresent. But that's kind of weird if you push on it a little bit.
Yeah, I mean in in some ways it kind of reduces God to being like like a pagan god, just a really big thing. Yes, he's still a thing. Right, he's just the biggest thing, right? And also it it it definitely depersonalizes him, right? Okay, there's there's some element of him in this room Right. But does that correspond to like
A human toe, right? Does that right? You know what I mean? Like that's not a right. And that isn't really the idea. Like there's there's some piece of God here that we could reach out and theoretically touch. Is that usually what we mean when we're talking about God's omnipresence? We usually mean he's there In person, right? Like,'cause then you could interact with him, right?
Um the whole God, as it were. Yes. Someone could also say, well, it just means that God is everywhere at once, right? Like the whole earth is just packed. With a nearly infinite number of identical Jesus Christ. Right. Just sort of all at once. Right. You know? Yeah. So that everybody can interact with him. Right. Like I a that again, that's that's weird, right?'Cause that makes it seem like there's just more than one of him. Like instead of the Holy Trinity you've got
A nearly infinite number of persons that all have a hive mind or something, which is not the doctrine of the Trinity at all. Yeah. I mean this kind of re this kind of reminds me of the joke with the the Father Guido Sarducci joke where he says You know, if if God is uh invisible in a spirit and I'm made in the image of God, shouldn't I be able to turn invisible?
You know, it's it's this kind of thinking, right? Which I mean it's I it I I guess it makes sense, right? Because this is the finite human mind trying to grapple with The presence, the power of God, you know, the infinite. Yeah. Yeah, that's weird, right? So well w well what do we mean then, right? And we would definitely say that even though, you know, people will talk about the Holy Spirit moving or something, they they're they're using that
As an analogy. Yeah. Right. Like we we don't literally think God has to cross intervening space. Like we wouldn't say, you know, I In the liturgy, say Christ is in our midst, right? And then they say the same thing two minutes later in Mettery, Louisiana. And that means
Christ has, you know, two minutes to get from here to there, right? Like no, obviously, that's dumb, right? That's that way, right? God doesn't have to like move from place to place and cross all the intervening space where you can like measure his speed, right? So that doesn't make any sense, right? Yeah. And that that part really brings us to the crux of the matter, is that we're talking about God's omnipresence. What we're really talking about is the fact that unlike us, he's not finite.
Right, which is just an apathetic thing to say. He's not this. Right. He's not finite. Meaning what we're really saying is, unlike us, he is not occupying a particular set of points in space. Right. Even all the seconds. Even all the points. Even all of them. Right. He is not occupied. So what we're ultimately saying is Uh this is what uh Saint Dumetrus Staneloy means when he talks about God's attributes being supra essential.
Right, is that what we really mean when we say God is omnipresent is that these spatial categories that we use to describe our own experience and to describe, you know other objects in the world uh that we encounter, those categories don't apply to God. Because God is not a thing in the world. He doesn't exist in the way we do and the way created things do, right?
If we understand that regarding spatial categories, they just don't apply to God. That's what we mean. Now let's turn to ideas of eternity. Right. And there are uh some weird views of eternity, but here it comes again. Plato brain. Most of Western thought has got its ideas about eternity. At least the more the more subtle ones. The the the actual better ones. So, you know, we're gonna say Plato was wrong, but he was more on the right track than some folks, like William Lane Craig. Um
So in terms of what eternity is. How did I know that when we did a when we do whenever we do a an episode on Christology on s on any level, you're gonna mention William Lane Craig a number of times. I'm going to relentlessly bash William Lane Craig. Yeah. Um Dr. Craig, if you're listening, please uh send us an email. We'd love to hear from you. No, he he won't. Yeah. I know. I know. He does this whole he doesn't debate his fellow Christians thing.
Yes. So he doesn't get called on as heresies. But as I've said many times, I don't consider him to be my fellow Christian. So he can debate me, it would be fine, uh on any topic. Plato's idea of eternity Right. Is essentially stasis. This is a problem. Right. But The reason for that is what is what is time in terms of how we use it. Time, the way we most commonly use it, is a way of measuring change. Right? Think cooking time. Right? Think how old is somebody.
And so uh for Plato, timelessness then must equal changelessness, because you would have to have time in order to have change. Therefore, for some anything that is truly eternal has to be completely unchanging and therefore unmoving, because even movement is a kind of change, right? Movement requires time, speed, right? So you get this idea of stasis. No movement, no change, no activity, no nothing. Okay.
And this in the Platonic period, that is not St. Augustine's fault, but which was triggered by St. Augustine in the West. gets adapted into particularly in Latin theology uh the concept of God. Well, it may not immediately be obvious why that's a problem,'cause you may be saying to me, Well well no, God doesn't change. And that that's correct, right? God doesn't change. Uh and we just said God doesn't move per se in a literal sense, right? Uh
So that's not a problem. Uh it becomes a big problem when you get to God doesn't act. God doesn't do anything. Yeah. Because this is where you get the idea in Latin theology of absolute divine simplicity. For example. Yeah. That God is act as pure.
Yeah. And you know I'm a fancy lad, because I could have just said pure act in English, but no, I use the Latin. For some reason the the Latin phrase is pure act is the one. Yes. Right. And s and so uh This idea, right, that that God is unchanging Builds in then the kind of Platonic idea that leads to the development in Latin theology of the idea of created grace. And this is why Latin theologians who are being consistent reject St. Gregory Paul.
And we'll even accuse him of being a polytheist and a heretic. Uh, because um they have this firm belief that God cannot act, and therefore he needs a created intermediary. Through which to act. Yeah. So for Plato, this is simple, but you can see how as Plato gets adapted into religion, like in Neoplatonism. You get this kind of quasi-gnostic series of emanations, right, from the actual God who is in stasis, right? And the things that are acting are sort of derivative.
Um you can see how that deforms your view of the Holy Trinity. You can see, right, if you're just thinking about it a little bit, right, you can see how you get these ideas. Created intermediaries, you can see where you get Arianism. I mean, all of this stuff uh is in some sense is fruit of this poison tree, right? This idea that Uh eternity is some kind of stasis and therefore God and true eternity
cannot directly act, cannot do anything, cannot move vis creation at all. Now, what's a better way then of thinking about God's eternity? Right. And this is why we spent the time talking about Omnipress. So just like the way we think about space and distance, the way we think about time is conditioned in our human experience by the fact that we're finite. Right. In the same way that we exist at a certain series of points in space, we exist at a certain point in time.
That point in time just sort of keeps rolling forward, right? Time zero. Yeah. Uh see there's a next generation episode reference for it. You're welcome. Yeah, it just flows in that one direction. And you say, Well, okay, it just flows in one direction. I could move in lots of directions in terms of space. Well, you could, but imagine this. Imagine someone did a bunch of research on you, uh, like Palantir is doing right now as we speak, um and decided to map your movements for your whole life.
They could draw one line with an arrow at the end and trace all of your movements your whole life. So your your physical movements in space are not all that different than your movement through. In fact, as we said, they're they're connected, right? And you only experience them in one direction because we're fighting. Um and as we mentioned, time, we think of mostly terms of growth and change, right? The sundial, the shadow, moves, right? The position of the sun changes.
Right. And we use time to describe right. Seconds, minutes, and hours are kind of arbitrary divisions. Right. They were done a very long time ago. That's why they're in base sixty math. Right. Um But they're arbitrary divisions, right? If you have to if you have define a second, uh one sixtieth of a minute. Right. You can only uh they they only make sense with reference to each other. There isn't something out there that's described by it. Yeah. Right. But so
The place where we start then to understand God's eternity is that God does not exist at a point in time. Nor does, as we said with space, does he exist sort of simultaneously at all points in time? He doesn't exist at a point in time any more than he exists at a particular point in space. Right. Because he doesn't exist in that way. He's not finite. That also means Right. For God to do X at one time and do Y at another time, he does not need to cross the intervening moments in time.
He doesn't have to sit and wait any more than he has to go from one place to another place and cross all things. He points at time. And God is not sort of spread out through time, obviously. Right. Like there's part of him here. And then three days from now it'll be a different part of God, right? Um That makes sense. It's just that temporal categories do not apply to God. Okay. Now, if we follow this out, this is our ultimate sorry Calvin.
But let's not pick on Calvinists. This is also sorry Arminian. Yeah, because it's all based on this kind of idea that God is subject to linear time, that God is somewhere along the timeline, that time is bigger than God, so to speak. Not only not only does God exist at a point in time, he exists at the same point of time that I do, at the same time that I do. Yeah. So he's like making predictions. It's just he's way better at it.
Right. So if if someone told you, if someone asked you where is God, or if you asked someone where is God, and their response was, Well, he's up in heaven. Like he's occupying this space that is somehow up. Yeah. Like parallel to the earth down here. Right. You would be like You don't mean that literally, right? And if they said no literally, then you'd you'd write you'd be like, uh Okay. They say, Oh, God is just on this parallel time track to ours. Yeah.
And not only does no one ask any questions, not only does no one say you don't mean literally right, they're like, Oh yeah, yeah, no, that's true. This weird assumption that God experiences time the same way we do. Right? That he's existing in this moment. And and why do we say this is the ultimate sorry Calvinists and sorry Arminians and sorry You know,'cause of course William Blake Craig is a Molinist'cause he can't be normal, right? Um Yeah.
Right. Sorry, Molinists. Um, sorry, open theists, sorry, I mean, on and on, right? Yeah. All of these. Positions in Western theology all have as a basic presupposition that God exists at a point in time. The question does God know what's going to happen in the future is an incoherent question. It is an incoherent question. There is not an answer to it because it's not coherent.
Okay. It's like asking what color something is in absolute darkness. There is no answer because it it the question does not make sense. It's like asking what color is the number five? Right. It's a category error. Yeah, it's an incoherent question. There is no future for God. God is not finite. He does not exist at a point in time with more points of time, potentially infinite points in time ahead of him. That is absurd. Okay. Speaking analogically cool. Right.
Uh whatever you we have to speak analogically. We have to speak anthropomorphically of God sometimes. That's what we got. And God speaks to us that way sometimes, right? To help us understand. Because we're humans. And as we said, we can only understand from our finite perspective. But thinking that that's accurate, that that is literally accurate, right?
Is preposterous. Okay. So saying God chose people in advance for salvation is incoherent. Saying that he made that choice based on his foreknowledge. Equally, if not more, incoherent. Saying that he's learning as he goes. Incoherent. Yeah, deeply incoherent. Right, because he doesn't go. Okay. Saying that he foresaw all the possibilities that arrange them like playing three card Monty'cause you're a weird molinist like William Lane Craig is incoherent.
Sorry. Like this is all just incoherent. It's not serious. It's not serious, guys. I know you've been having these arguments for hundreds of years, but you've been wasting your time. Bad news, okay? It's all incoherent. There is not a future for God. There is not a past for God. For God either. Yeah. Like you do you think there's a past for God like where he can look back and be like, oh, you know, hey, what would have happened if I had done uh this?
Like what? Right? You the God you're talking about is just a giant person. It's just a giant human. Yeah. Right? With more in common with the pagan conception of God than the Christian conception of God. But notice also, notice also, I was careful to do this. We're not arguing for Plato. We're not arguing for spheres and circles and tight circles and any of that. We're not arguing for any of that either, right? Like this is not Platonism. Right? Plato Plato got it wrong.
Right. Uh as well. Maybe in the other direction or down a different side channel. Right. Temporal categories don't apply to God. There's not a before and after for God. Uh as God. All that cal pro and anti-Calvinist literature you've spent all that time reading was a waste of time. You should have been playing Marvel Rivals or something like that. Um the the the I I think that part of the reason why A lot of this language gets used for God is that
in some way or another it's found in the scriptures. But the problem is when you when you flip the the the lens around or whatever you want to say and s and and rather than using it as This is human beings' experience of what it's like to interact with God, instead say this is what it's like for God to be God. Right, you literalize it. Like talking about heaven as being up there or something is fine unless you're serious.
Right. Like if you run it to someone I'm sure they're out there'cause flat earthers are out there who really believe that the heavens are a dome and God has a literal throne sitting on top of it. Right, we would say this is a wacky person, right? Because hey, yeah, the Bible speaks that way. All over the place.
Right. But it's speaking that way poetically and by analogy, not literally. Right? The sky is not a literal hard dome. Yeah. God does not sit on a literal chair that is sitting on top of said dome. Right. Right. And uh pretty much no one thought that. It's not that, oh yeah, that's what all those primitives thought, but now, you know
Modernists like Father Andrew and Father Stephen. Now they say, you know, uh, that's just an analogy. No. No no everyone understood. People ancient people were not stupid. Yeah. Okay. They they they were just a s I mean, read the poetry of the Psalms. It's great poetry. Okay. Like they understood poetry. Illusions, imagery, they understood all this. Okay. They were they were had had the same kind of mind that you have. Yeah. So all that said.
All that said about God's timelessness. Temporal categories just don't apply to God. Before and after don't apply to God. There is no future for God. There is no past for God. Right? God does not at a point in time. He does not experience time as a succession of moments the way we do, right? Uh infinite or otherwise, going backwards or forwards. Um At the same time, Contra Plato, uh
God does, and this isn't just an analogy. God does in the scriptures, as is recorded in the scriptures, and in the history of the church. God acts at particular times. He does things at particular times. And that's not just a time thing. It's also a space thing. God is in particular places. Right? This is that weird puzzle we've pointed to a bunch on this show where it's like Well yeah, God is omnipresent, but he's also like really present in the tabernacle and the temple.
He's like extra there. And you're like, wait, what? Right? Like, how do those two things fit together? That's where we're going tonight, right? Uh God acts at particular times and in particular places. And is present in particular places. God enters into human experience. Now at no point can we try and figure out what it's like to be God and how God experiences this, because that's we funnel you don't know what it's like to be a bat, let alone God. Right?
But we have this tension because as Luca said, God has God, the divine nature, right? God spatial and temporal categories don't apply. Those are categories of human experience. Nonetheless, God appears to Abraham in a particular place at a particular time. He appears once a year in the tabernacle and then the temple, bodily, even at a particular time. So we have all of these episodes in the Old Testament.
Where, despite God not existing in the sense of occupying points in time and space, where God is described as and talked about as occupying points in time and space. Right. That's a human experience. Right. So how how do we bridge that gap? Right? How could both of those be true? How does that work? And that's what we're gonna get into in our second half. Alrighty. Well, we are gonna take a short break and we'll be right back.
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And we're back. This is the second half of this special pre-recorded Christmas episode of the Lord of Spirits podcast. We're talking about The relationship of the incarnation of Jesus Christ to time. And in our first half, we I don't know. How do you even summarize all that? But we kind of walked We talked about what eternity is. Yeah, what is eternity and what does it mean for God to be eternal.
Yes. The temp temporal categories and spatial categories don't apply to God. Yeah, that's basically the summary. You know, th yes, there is language in scripture that refers to God functioning in time, but that's a human experience. And we shouldn't, unlike the Calvinists, unlike frankly, a huge amount of Western soteriology,
consider that God is subject to time, especially not linear time. So there we go. That's a good summary. Right probably. Doesn't exist at a particular point in time and space. But
Bil Tazard does talk about him doing things at particular points in time and space. Uh and in bodily terms, right? Is in occupying a set of points in space at a point in time. Yes, and so now We're going to talk about the incarnation because the fact is, if we really understand the incarnation, which William Lane Craig doesn't, I'm just gonna bash up the whole epithet.
It's a dead horse, I know, but I'm um at least on this show. But um if you understand the incarnation, right, then the incarnation provides us the key To unlocking that dilemma completely because the incarnation of Christ is the entering of God into human experience. The definite article. Yeah. Right. The entering of God into human experience. And we mean that in several senses. Okay. So we mean that it is the paradigmatic entering
Right. It is the peak, it is the pinnacle of God entering into human experience. But we also mean it's the basis for all of it. Right. All of it is the incarnation. Yeah. And this is the only way to take on board the actual language of scripture. Especially the New Testament. Right. No one has seen God at any time, says Saint John. But the unique God who's in the bosom of the Father has made him known, right? He's not saying ignore all those passages of the Old Testament where people saw God
He's saying that was Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. Right? Um so Christ and in particular The incarnate Christ is the means by which Right. That is possible through the whole testament. To get at more what we what what we mean by that, there is a basic problem. a basic foundational problem in, for example, Judaism and Islam. There is a fatal flaw religiously, theologically speaking. And that is that
Neither Judaism nor Islam can explain how God can communicate and interact with humans. Okay, what do you mean by that? How can God within right uh Rabbinic Judaism, non Christian Judaism? Yeah, we're not talking ancient Judaism here. We're talking myths. Yeah. communicate about himself to humans.
Truthfully. Yeah, they so that humans can have some kind of understanding. They would probably say he he speaks, but he talks to us. Okay. So human language Finite historically contingent human language. is capable of accurately describing God. I mean that would have to be the claim. Well, well, no, there is a way they try to get around this because that's obviously a flawed claim. Right.
Right? That that's well, yeah, that's a problem. Right. God is they would agree with Christians that God is ineffable. Right. That that God cannot be accurately described in words in general. Right. But so how do they try to get around this? Well, you have to have an eternal language. So what you do is you take a language, the case of Rabbinic Judaism, Hebrew, in the case of uh uh Islam, Arabic, specifically the Arabic of the Quran.
Right. You take the text itself, in the case of a lot of Islam, and in the case of a lot of rabbinic Judaism, the Torah or the Quran, and you make that eternal. Yeah. So you say, well, it's not a finite human language. It's divine language. And because it's divine language, it can accurately carry Right, uh God's God's self-revelation. Here's the problem with that. That doesn't solve the problem. Right? Because the core problem was you have humanity down here, finite.
You have God up above, metaphorically, right? Infinite. All you've done is taken language as a go between and moved it from the human side of the divider to the God side of the divider, you haven't broken down the divider. Yeah. And and doesn't and doesn't rabbinic Judaism even um say that the Torah itself exists before creation. Yes. Islam says that about the Quran too. Yeah. Some forms of Islam. Yes, yeah.
So here's what I mean by that not solving the problem. We just move to the other side of the divide. Like, okay, now you've got a divine language that is eternal and infinite and therefore able to convey God. How can humans understand that language? Right. I mean that's You've just moved the problem. Yeah. We we we understand it. We understand it as like like um apparently some in rabbinic Judaism will say that um
that Hebrew becomes kind of limited at the Tower of Babel. But I mean, that just essentially says that there's a human Hebrew and a divine Hebrew. you know, and that are related somehow. That is it bridged. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. And and of course then there's there's also just the very uh kind of obvious linguistic problem which is that w we can you know, linguists, especially philologists
watch these languages change over time and, you know, have derivative elements and even stuff that's in the Torah, right? Like there's loan words in the Torah. Yes. Which is kind of a problem. It's not even totally clear that the Quran is in Arabic. It may be in Aramaic. Yeah. Yeah. An Aramaic dialect. It's not actually Arabic yet.
Yeah. So that means it's on a line of linguistic development. I mean textual criticism presents big problems for both of those traditions if you're gonna focus on those texts in that way. Yeah. And so This is a massive problem. And it's a problem pagans didn't have, right? Because pagans don't didn't worship don't worship infinite gods.
The gods they worship are finite. So a finite god who's just bigger, right, essentially, can reveal itself to a finite human just I mean, there's no issue there, right? That's why we we we singled out or doubled out, uh uh Judaism and Islam, because Judaism and Islam, rabbinic Judaism in Islam talk about an infinite God. Right? So they have this problem of how does an infinite God communicate with finite humans?
As Christians, we have the solution to this problem, right? It is in the incarnation correctly understood. In which God, the fullness of God, the infinite God, Not a subset of God, not a reflection, not an emanation. The fullness of God, the fullness of deity, everything it is to be God, right? becomes finite, becomes man. Yeah. Becomes a mediator, bridges the divide. Well, and even I I recall in in the long ago times when I was an undergraduate studying English literature.
that um one of my bolder professors talked about modern problems of language and uh you know like like uh deconstructionism and all that kind of stuff and said you know that A lot of these writers, they point to the fact that
the word and the thing that it's referring to, or to use the technical language, the signifier and the signified, um, that there's a gap between them, that that when you say something, that doesn't convey the thing, that just sort of points to the thing. And um Uh he said that what a lot of these guys don't contend with is that Christ is the word who means himself.
Um that there is uh th that likewise that there's no gap between again to use this technical language, signifier and signified, that he actually does um He's he is God's spoken word, fully revealing himself, not by just pointing at something else, but by being himself. I don't know if I'm re if I'm expressing that well. But I I found that to be a useful way of of trying to understand what is very difficult to understand.
Right, yeah. Yeah. So this is yeah, so the point of the incarnation there, right, in the relationship between sign and things signified, is that uh And this is one of the rougher passages of Saint Augustine, uh but he kind of talks this way at one point. Um this is w again, the correctly understood incarnation. Redoctron of the Carnation as Christianity has historically taught and believed it and dogmatized it accounts.
Right. Uh says that Christ is not a human person or Christ's humanity considered as a separate thing is a pointer to who God is. Right. Or a representation of who God is. Right. But he is God. Right. Right. Um and and not at the expense of each other. Right. Um but so now that we've repeatedly used that phrase, incarnation correctly understood.
Obviously we could do a hundred episodes on this. This is already kind of I mean, we've done more than one episode on Christology before. This one we're taking a particular trajectory, right? But just to quickly sort of summarize. What we mean by Christology is it's sought by the church, right? Is that this there is a second person of the Holy Trinity, right? The Son. Right? Son. the divine logos, right? The word or wisdom, right, of God. Uh that uh he is
begotten of the Father without reference to time. So this is another thing. There's no before. Right. He's begotten, he's generated for the Father, but with no there's no before and after. I mean the most you get is like before all ages. But ages is a reference to time itself. Yes. So it's outside the boundary of time, right? Um So there's no before and after right, the the son is begotten. Yeah. Right. That's and that's what the fathers all say. Again, this isn't a weird modern thing. This is
All the way back, right? Everyone who disagreed with Arias, right? Um and so, and he is the express image of the Father. Everything the Father is, he is. The only difference between he and the father, right? The only difference between them is that he is begotten and the father is not. And that divine person Is made man. That divine person takes upon himself human nature. And we talk about.
Him taking upon himself human nature, again, there's some sloppy talk about this, right? People will say, Oh, he takes a human nature. This is sloppy talk. Right. 'Cause you say he takes a human nature, that makes it sound like a human nature makes it sound like a thing. Right. Like he adds this thing or he attaches this thing to himself or himself to this thing, right? Uh which, sorry, William Lane Craig, is not how this works. Um
Right. Human nature is something that all humans share. The way the divine nature is something that the three persons of the Holy Trinity share. Okay? So he takes upon himself our shared human nature. What is the nature? Well, we've talked about this on the show above. Right. The earlier language, the older language. So nature is a physis is a Greek term. It really comes into Christian theology through Saint Paul using it. It's not used in the Greek translation of
The old Christian Old Testament. For the most I mean, we're not gonna get into it. There's an edge case, but uh it's not really used as a concept. Okay, that the older language was bought. And if you've been listening to this show for very long, you know how we define a body, in this case a nature, that it's a a uh gathering of powers and potentiality. Sort of a cluster of powers and potentialities, um, a nexus of them. And so
Christ is a divine person, possesses the divine nature, powers, potentialities, right? All of that of God. He adds to that the full set of human powers and potentialities, which includes a human body. Which includes a human soul, William Lane Craig. Yeah. Which includes That's the heresy he's especially known for, is this And includes uh a human will. And include right, all of that, right. That also includes what are added
Right. He takes upon himself what are called the blameless passions. We've talked about this before. This is a distinction the fathers make. Right? So there are sinful passions, anger, lust, right. There are also blameless passions, like getting tired. Or hungry. Yeah. Hungry, thirsty. Right. Um and would include passions the way we think of the passion of Christ, right? Being able to be injured, harmed, right? Um Christ voluntarily accepts those Right. He allows those to happen to him.
Right. Um, but again, that is additive. Right. That is added and why am I making this big point of additive? Well, so there there's a lot of folks out there Some of them well meaning, some of them clueless. uh who The use of the word kenosis in Philippians too, like way too seriously. Oh, yeah. They'll say stuff like, Well, he set aside being God or he set aside his powers as God or like uh no. No, no, stop it. Stop it.
Does not stop being God. Right. He in no way stopped being God. At any point. Right. He was everything he always was. Plus. Right. Plus these human powers and potentialities, plus allowing himself to suffer these blameless passions. Right. That's what I mean by additive. Plus. Right. Um there's the prayer that we say a lot as priests. Uh talking about uh Christ when he died, when his human soul was separated from his human body, uh, that Christ we say that Christ's body was in the grave.
His soul was in Hades harrowing it. And he was on the throne with the Father and the Holy Spirit. In the grave of the body, but in Hades God. In paradise with the thief. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, filling all the so he didn't stop being God. Okay. And the reason part of the reason I think why people go down that road is Again. Humans rejecting what's beyond their understanding. Right? Which is, well, wait a minute, how could he be like omnipresent? Yeah.
And standing there. Right. Well in Galilee. And walking from place to place, cross it like we just said, infinite crossing points in Right. How can he be infinite and finite at the same time? Yeah. And I and I think one of the things that probably gets people into trouble with regards to this. When they're w when they are reading it right, in the sense that they realize that Kenosis does not m mean that he stopped being God or he's less God or anything like that.
There's the language in scripture of of him being the same yesterday, today, and forever. And then also the language in our hymnography of that he is incarnate without change. Um so it is correct to read that as meaning, look, he's still God in every way, completely. He's still the son of God in every way. But as we'll see. It actually means more than that.
Uh yeah. The emptying is about his suffering and his humiliation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. That's what they're right. Emptying himself. Even unto humbling himself, even unto death, right? Death on a cross, his humiliation, his suffering, his death. That's the emptying it's talking about. Uh not that he right stopped being God. Yeah, take it a little too literally is the problem. We have trouble understanding how he could be finite and infinite at the same time.
Yeah. How he could be everywhere and also well, there he is at that synagogue at Galilee, and now he's walking from Capernaum to Beth Satan. That's the way God is described all through the Old Testament. Yep. That's right. As being both everywhere and in the Holy of Holies. Or both everywhere and sitting down at the table with Abraham. Right. On and on and on. Yeah. Right.
Walking over with Abraham to look at Sodom and right. That's the way he's described all through the Old Testament. If we didn't understand the incarnation until the incarnation is revealed to us in the gospel. Until the incarnation is revealed to us, that is just a mystery. That is just a contradiction that makes no sense in the Old Testament.
That God is presented as infinite and finite at the same time, that he is presented as being unable to be seen and then he's seen by people at the same time. These all of these things are just these contradictions and paradoxes in the Hebrew Bible. And when the incarnation is revealed to us, all of a sudden
We see how that's possible. Yeah, I think it's all of the language we're referring to right now that comes from the councils and stuff is descriptive. Yeah. It's just a long series of Oh yeah, I I think it's worth underlining, and we'll talk way more about this, but it's worth underlining the language that you just used about the incarnation being revealed to us. Um it's almost like I did that deliberately. There's a madness to my method. Um so right and so we have God
Right. This also solves the problem we were talking about with Islam and Rabbinic Judaism, because God is now able to be seen and touched and spoken with and interacted with by humans. He is revealed. Christ's humanity is the bridge, right? Between God and man. Literally. Right. Um So a and further this explains how we've talked about this before would uh you go all the way, way back in the long ago time to our episode about God's body.
Right. We talked about how a lot of times we get it backwards. People will say that the Bible uses anthropomorphic language to describe God. Right. But really from the perspective of the scriptures. from the perspective of man being made in the image of God, right? Actually it talks about humanity in theomorphic terms. Yeah, so so my right arm is just a lesser reflection of the strong right arm of God. Right. Yeah. Right. Which is the reality. Right. So
Uh at the beginning of our first half, we sort of pose this problem, right? The problem of God being described in the Old Testament, throughout the scriptures, as being both sort of finite and infinite at the same time. This half we talked about how the incarnation solves that. Okay. And now, as we come back to the temporal element, we come back to time, we're gonna sort of narrow in on a particular aspect of this problem. And that's gonna be what we talk about in the third half. And so here's
Here's that sort of sub problem, right? Uh Christ in his post-resurrection appearances, right? One of the common features and if you go to Mattens regularly, uh Sunday Matins, uh you hear all of these over and over again. Which you should gospel readings. You should go, you guys. There are some churches where you look out at the beginning of matins or throw And there's no one there. Um, I have to just give a nice little shout out to the church in
Raleigh, North Carolina, where I'm about to go. Last time I was there, I looked out at the beginning of Mattins. There was like eighty-five people standing there waiting for it to begin. I was like, Am I in the twilight zone here? How is this a thing? But then there were probably three hundred and eighty seven people once the liturgy started. That's right. So and say that there is there is no what outside the Orthodox Church. There is no parking outside the Orthodox Church. Yes. Um Yes, sorry.
So the uh so but but a common feature in all of these, right, when Christ appears to his disciples. is and this is twofold. Part one is handle me in see, which was we literally heard this past Sunday. Uh Handle me and see, for a spirit has not flesh and bones that you see that I have. Right. So and another very you know, Saint Thomas is another variation of that, right? See the wounds, put your finger right, touch me, right? I have a physical body.
And this is presented as proof that Christ is really risen from the dead, that he's not a spirit, he's not a ghost, his he's really still embodied, right? And then the other piece of that is Christ eating in front of them. Right. Eating fish, eating a honeycomb, right.
These things and these are all there. Every pretty much everybody agrees. That's why they're there. They're there to show that it's a bodily resurrection. He has experienced the bodily resurrection. Okay. And Obviously implied and in some cases outright stated is that if this was a spirit, like God or an angel or something, or a ghost, uh
You could not touch it, and it could not eat. Right. But remember back there in the Old Testament, some of those times when God was described as finite, we we see him touching people and eating. Right. Yeah. Um and and relatedly, there's the question of Like like the you know, we already made reference to the hospitality of Abraham. If you keep reading that passage and pe especially the the beginning of the chapter that follows, um you know that it's
It's God and two angels who have showed up and sat down. And so you might well ask the question, like, okay, well, this says that they they all ate. Um what does that mean exactly? So you're saying, well, God is eating because Of what we're about to talk about, but the angels, what's going on there? And there is actually an explanation for this, not found in that passage, but elsewhere in the Old Testament scriptures.
Namely in the book of Tobit, where the archangel Raphael accompanies uh some of the main characters and The question is raised, hey, you know, buddy's in disguise as a human. Um, you know, hey, buddy, what's the deal with you eating if you're just an angel?
Um, because they all agree, you know, angels don't eat. And uh the archangel bas says, Well, it just appeared that I was eating. You know, there were this is just an illusion. And so Taking that paradigm and applying it to the hospital of Abraham, what you get is God eating, because he's got a human body, and two angels appearing to eat at best. Um so but yeah, we'll we'll obviously break out all the rest of that stuff as we go. But so d to put a finer point on this, okay.
Uh what is this problem? Because this may not seem like a big problem to you at first. Okay, whatever. You know, God's God. He can do whatever he wants, right? Okay. Imagine you're arguing with a docetic. Okay. You could do this with the actual original Jewish docetists or you could do this with any n just about any Gnostic who has a Docetic view of Christ. Gnosticism comes from Do Keo uh
To seem or to appear, right? And the idea is that they believe that uh Christ just appeared to be human. He was not actually incarnate. Okay. And the Docetus says to you, especially if it's one of the originals, the Jewish Docetus, they say to you, Okay, yeah, uh Jesus in in the Gospels, right? They're gonna say to you, Jesus in the Gospels is just a theophany like the Old Testament.
Right. Right. W what what is the argument? What is the argument that all the church fathers use against that? He ate, he drank. People physically touched him. He had physical wounds. So if the Dasis says to you, Yeah, look here, the Old Testament. Here's God eating and drinking and touching people. The angel of the Lord. They let's say they agree with you. The angel of the Lord is Christ. Sure, the angel of the Lord is Jesus. That's the same person. And look, when he appears
Before the quote unquote incarnation, quote unquote before the quote unquote incarnation, right? He they'll say to you, uh, he touches people and eats. So, see, that is a proof that uh he was really incarnate. Yeah. That's why there's a problem. That's why there's a problem here. Yeah. Yeah. And the counter argument by the fathers.
the same it's no he him eating and drinking and touching people proves that he's incarnate period yep yep all right well on that bombshell we're gonna take our second and final break and Ancient Near Eastern texts. The Baal Cycle portray the pagan god Baal as a remote hero of a revolution, worshipped and glorified for his long string of victories.
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From these scriptures, the figure of the devil emerged within Jewish and Christian tradition. Father De Jung works through the Old and New Testament passages that refer to various Baal stories, and he surveys Baal worship through followers of the world. Beliefs, religious practices, and liturgical life. In these pages, we will see that the figures of Baal and the Devil, the Prince of Demons, are one and the same. To find this book and others like it, you You can go to store.
AncientFaith.com Again, that is store.ancientfaith.com Hey, welcome back. It's our special Christmas pre-recorded episode of the Lord of Spirits podcast here, December 25th, 2025. Something kind of beautifully numerically rhyming about that. And we're talking about the incarnation of Jesus Christ and its relationship to time in particular.
So um we just finish the second half um talking about the the handle me and see problem, the fact that uh Christ points to the materiality of his body as proof of his bodily resurrection and Then we connect that of course to the fact that there are handle me and see moments in the Old Testament as well. um that that God does things that are experienced materially through
a body. Um there in the Old Testament. So we're gonna then talk about exactly how that can be. How it is how is it that handle me and see um can show up in both Old and New Testaments. So where do we go from here, Father? Well, so we have to talk about another aspect of the incarnation. Okay. Um in the last half we talked about the incarnation sort of from the top down, right? The movement downward of
the divine person of the sun, the divine logos becoming man. Uh and now We need to go at it from the other direction, moving upward, i.e., that Christ by taking upon himself our humanity, uh and Christ being God, deifies our humanity. Hmm. So what does that mean? Yes. The downward movement that we talked about last time, uh, or last half, uh is the prerequisite, right, of the upward movement. Christ comes down to us so that he can then elevate us. And this is right there In the New Testament.
Locus classicus for it is Ephesians four, nine and ten. All right. So in Ephesians four Verses nine and ten, we read this in saying he ascended, what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. And often when this is translated it's put into m parentheses, um, as a kind of aside. Do you think that's right that it should be in parentheses?
I no. No.'Cause certainly in the the you know the the the manuscripts that there's no parentheses. There's hardly any punctuation at all. Yeah, no, he's just repeating his argument essentially. It's an an a apposition as as uh the Yeah, there's a downward movement, then an upward movement. This is standard Remember St. Paul's thinking in a Semitic language. So parallelisms, right? Um but this this idea, right, if you're familiar even vaguely
With Orthodox theology, uh, Saint Athanasius on the Incarnation, famous quote, God became man so that man might become God, right? Um, that uh The purpose of Christ's descent was The elevation of humanity. Yeah. I mean in the verse right before this it talks about it says
You know, when he ascended on high he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men. Yes. Which is well, uh we we'll we won't go down that rabbit hole right now. Right. Uh Saint Paul does something interesting with the old testament quote there. But Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're tempting me to rabbit trail. Maybe this will be our next one.
I I not only have to keep you on task, but keep you generating new episodes so that people can have those five more years that you you promised, what was it last time or the time before? I made no such promise. It's my recollection. But um So uh The uh this is also expressed St. Basil the Great expresses the same thing, talking about uh man being created in the image of God as man being that being, that created being, that is commanded to become God. Hmm. Right. Now, obviously such a thing
Right. Or Saint Peter saying that we become partakers of the divine nature. Such a thing is only conceivable because of Christ in the incarnation. Right. I think about it once again. If we just take St. Basil's statement literally. Okay, you are commanded, become God. What's step one?
Yeah. Right. So this is clearly not the way some of our Protestant friends would like to read it anytime they hear commanded, right? Works righteousness or something, right? Like what would be the works that you do to become God? Right. Well and and even like Even within the pagan context, I mean number one, pagans do not understand God. in any of the terms that we just talked about. Right. Right. For them, gods are just very basically very big, very powerful.
Not humans exactly, but it's just how do you get big? Yeah, exactly. And and certainly humans do become gods in uh in paganism. Most of course do not. It is a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little fraction of a fraction of a fraction who get to do that. And but the the great works that people do Um, don't gain them godhood. It is that the gods see the works you do and say, Ah, we will give godhood to this one.
You know. Yeah. Yeah. But all they're giving you is like more power. Right. You don't become the infinite God. Because there is no infinite God in that in that frame. The ones who would grant it are finite. Right. It's just like you can join their club. They don't have themselves, right? Um But so this is only possible because of Christ. It's only possible because of who Christ is, that in Christ's person he is perfectly united.
God to humanity. That then makes it possible through God's grace, through divine action. Right, for people uh to become God. And we're gonna talk about what that means. But a piece of that on the way, right, is What Saint Basil the Great says regarding the creation of man in God's image, he's commanded to become God. As we've said, that's only possible because of Christ's incarnation. So even though Christ's incarnation had not been revealed, nobody knew about it directly, right?
At the time of the creation of the world, because at the time of the creation of the world, the creation of man, obviously there was nobody to know it except God himself, right? Like Duh uh but right uh Christ's incarnation then is being posited by Saint Basil, right, and how he understands what being made in the image of God means.
that Christ's incarnation is the basis for the creation of humanity. Yeah. Which Which is the reason that for the promo image for this episode, we and we've used this before in other contexts, but uh the icon is of Christ creating Adam. in um a a big mosaic um from before the great schism and
If you look at traditional Orthodox icons of the creation of Adam, it's Christ creating Adam, and they have the same face, that they look like identical twins. So that Christ is himself, as you said, the basis for the creation of Adam. Right. Right. And so what the fathers say and what we're saying here is that Christ is the cause of the creation of humanity in all senses. Yeah. Right. In the sense of purpose, right? Because humanity is created with the purpose
We talked about the image of God in terms of purpose, right? Of deification, of himself and the world, right? Transfiguration of the world. That's only possible because of the incarnation. So the purpose of Adam before the fall, the purpose of him being created. Right. Requires the incarnation to be true. Or it's not possible.
Right. So in terms of purpose, in terms of being the one who actually did it, the efficient cause, that's Christ too. Right? All things are made through him. Without him was not anything made that was made. That includes humanity. Right. Uh the the formal cause, right? Christ's humanity is the paradigm for humanity, our shared humanity. We share it with him, right? So his humanity is logically prior to Adam's humanity. Right. Say say that again for all the kids in the back.
Christ's humanity is logically prior to Adam's humanity. Yes. Yep. Adam's humanity is a reflection of Christ's humanity. Theomorphic. It is the image, yes, of Christ's humanity. Theoanthropomorph. I don't know how to work that out. Yeah. If you want to do a deep dive into this. read Saint Mark the Ascetic in the Philokelia where he talks about the uh uh Kyriakos anthropos, the uh Yeah, the Lordly Manly Man. Um so we were talking about uh Christ
resurrection body uh at the end of the last half, right? In terms of this problem. Right. um or proposed problem, right? Uh that it could be handled and touched, right? That he eats. Right. But something else that you very clearly see in those same resurrection appearance accounts of Christ. In fact it's a a point is made of this, is that uh Christ's resurrected body Has a different relationship with space than his body did uh before his crucifixion.
Yeah, it's clear that for instance he just appears in rooms Um with the doors being closed. The d the doors being closed, a a detail that is mentioned very explicitly in that text. Explicitly, yes. That Christ did not cross all the intervening points in space to get from point A to point B. And also that Whereas
I was gonna say All through the Gospels we see him walking from point A to point B. Yeah, and getting tired and all that kind of stuff. But also as we covered um in our episode about the post-resurrection appearances. Um that for whatever reason a lot of people don't recognize him, that he seems to look different than he used to. Yeah. If you want to know more about that, go go back and do the archive. Yep, yep, yep. We talk about that recognition. Um, yeah. And so his humanity, right?
uh including his human body has a different relationship with space than it did before. And this of course is what Christians have always pointed out. Uh here's another sorry Calvinist. Uh the the early Calvinist tradition had a big problem with this, uh saying to uh Luther, the Lutherans, uh hey, but uh How can Christ's body be on all those altars and all those churches at the same time?
If it's a human body. It's like so let's let's not even talk theologically. Let's look at the resurrection appearances, right? Like Christ does not need to cross intervening space, like he can be. Right, Christ is everywhere. That includes his humanity. So but within Calvinist theology there's this thing called the extra Calvinisticum, where they literally argue that Christ's divine nature is everywhere and his human nature is only in one place.
That Christ's body is seated at the right hand of God, which is seen as a place. Somewhere in three D space. And so his divinity extends farther than his humanity. And even Martin Luther could see that was a Nestorian, but our Calvinist friends Uh don't or don't care. Um But yes, right. So Christ is everywhere. It's the whole Christ, right? Who is everywhere. Um
So, what does that mean? Well, you know, just to use straight theological terms, that means Christ's humanity is now participating, partaking, right, of his Divine omnipresence, right? Uh qua divinity, spatial categories never applied to Christ, right? And now his resurrected body. Right. His resurrected human body, his resurrected humanity, right? His ascended humanity. Uh spatial categories no longer apply to his humanity either. Yep. Right.
So that's space, how about time, right? And so what we're positing here, what solves this whole problem, what the father saw, is that the same way that those spatial categories, that spatial finitude no longer applies to Christ's humanity, right? Temporal categories, which never applied to Christ quad divinity, also no longer apply to his humanity.
There's no before and after. Therefore the incarnate Christ can create Adam. The incarnate Christ can eat with Abraham. But it is true still true that he became incarnate in the womb of the Thaotok. Those two do not contradict each other. Yeah. In any way, shape, or form. Yep. Right. Because human nature is created infinite, but in union with Christ, become Infinite by partaking of the divine nature. And so when we think about, right, we're told over and over again in the New Testament that.
Our future destiny in the bodily resurrection as humans, what that looks like, what our salvation looks like in the life of the world to come, is something we can't fully comprehend now, right? Something we can't fully understand. Probably because parts of it involve things being infinite. Right. Uh but the resurrected Christ is always posited. His humanity is always posited as our window, our glimpse, right, of what that will be like. We will be like him.
Right. And so this means we have to change our thinking about what eternity looks like for us. So it doesn't make sense for us. To view eternity as just, oh, we're gonna have an endless succession of moments going into the future. So that's not what eternity is for God, right? And us being made eternal is us coming to partake in divine nature. It is us becoming like Christ, like Christ's humanity, and Christ's humanity is not experiencing an endless succession of moments.
Yeah, and and even if we like if we posit that that's what the life of the age to come is for humans. Then it's essentially saying that the the dividing wall between God and man remains. That the incarnation didn't happen. Didn't do it. Yeah. Yeah. And it's certainly not some kind of platonic stasis. Yeah. Staring at the orb or otherwise. Um longtime listeners will know what I'm referring to. Uh longtime Roman Catholic listeners will probably gnash their teeth at that again. Yes. Yep.
Uh it is it is also not like a big circle, like a big cycle that repeats itself, right? Like Yeah. Just the same thing. It's none of that. It's none of that. Well what is it? Well we don't know. That's where we started, remember? We only know what it's like to be finite. Yeah. We don't know what it's like to partake of the infinite. I mean we're promised that that's what we're gonna do. There's
We we get glimpses of it in this life. You know, but it's but it's just glimpses and you can't really grasp it. What is it like to not occupy a particular point in space? To not have to cross intervening distances to get from one place to be in one place and then be in another place. I mean the closest I don't know what that's like. The closest that human beings get to that Um in in any kind of I don't know palpability, as it were, is some of the ecstasies of the saints.
you know, um yeah. St. Paul being caught. But they didn't tell us what that's like. Right. They didn't. We just we occasionally get testimonies to it. You know, even St. Paul when he describes his experience of being caught up um He says he heard things that are that cannot be uttered by humans. Like, ah like, oh he's about to he's about to lit tur you know, open pull back the veil and let us know what it's like. Yeah, could you utter a little bit, buddy?
But no no utterances? It's'cause I think it's because it's unutterable because it's not a thing that could be said. Right. It's not a thing that we as finite could can understand until we're there and we're doing it. Right. Like, yeah. Um and so we just have to accept that there is no model based in our finitude that explains the infinite. There can't be definitionally.
Yeah. Right. Um but the other place where we see this and think about this and where this has to shape our thinking is in terms of the saints. So one of what I was going through in whole Council of God, the Book of Revelation, one of the things that broke people's brains is that I pointed out That according to pretty much all the earliest interpreters, this is pretty well locked in, the twenty-four human elders who St. John sees. worshiping in heaven, right, are the twelve patriarchs
Right, from the tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles. Everybody's like, Oh yeah, okay, that makes it you know, twenty four, twelve apostles, twelve. Yeah, that makes it a lot of things. But but if you pause for a second, you may remember that Saint John is one of the twelve apostles. Right. So he was seeing himself in glory.
He was seeing himself in what was, from his perspective, as a finite human, the future. But it's not presented as seeing the future, it's presented as seeing the present. And then you remember Saint Paul says in Ephesians that we are already seated with Christ in the heavenly places. Yeah. Right. So this isn't an idea that had to develop. The idea of timelessness, as we've been talking about it tonight.
Is one that you can conceive of just by negation. Just here's what we experience. God is not that. Right? You don't need a developed, really super developed philosophical system, right, to get Right. This also answers the the uh really silly objection that some of our sillier Protestant friends sometimes use, which is how can the saints hear all those prayers? Here's why I say this is silly. Right. They're positing that the soul of a departed saint.
Uh hears prayers based on sound waves passing through the atmosphere. Right. At at the speed like seven hundred and seventy five miles an hour from you to them. Is anyone claiming that No, no one is claiming that that's how the Saints hear prayers. Right? Like, no one literally no one thinks that. Right. Why would a departed saint not be able to hear five people praying at the same time? They're not hearing with ears. Right.
Um this is again projecting our finitude. It's assuming they have some kind of blue force ghost body or something and heaven. Right. Right, like or something. I don't I don't know. I don't know how that would work, but uh yeah. Um so Yeah. We see in the Saints. And the Saints, right? Saint Nicholas kept for a long time kept popping up places. Yeah, even while alive. Out at sea. Yeah. Uh
We have appearances of saints, right? Um you know, folks, especially folks who aren't Orthodox get all excited when when we say that Theotokos has shown up somewhere, but like there's lots of other saints who show up places, right? Um Saint John Glimmick is Saint John of the Ladder when he was the abbot of the monastery at Mount Sinai, like had Moses stop by, had li I mean A whole bunch of saints, right? Uh this this is part of Christianity.
Right. And why can they do that? Well, because as Saints, right. Their humanity has been conformed to Christ's humanity, which is perfectly united to divinity, which means it is no longer finite, it is partaking of the infinite. Growing to the fullness of the stature of Christ. Yeah. And so yeah, hopefully this episode because we get lots of questions because we keep alluding to it in different episodes.
uh this idea of the relationship between the eternal and the incarnation. And people, hmm, huh? Huh? Right. And uh Uh, I think the first time I mentioned it on the show, uh, Peugeot mentioned that he had been listening to that and was like and thought to himself, Will Father Steven go there? And then of course, like the Kool Aid man, I just burst through the wall and yelled it. Um Oh yeah. We thought it appropriate.
in the Feast of the Nativity. It's an obvious connection to the incarnation of Christ. Now would be a good time to spend a little time. This may be one of our shorter episodes actually. Um we stayed kind of on task. Um But to lay out sort of the argument and the understanding behind that instead of just alluding to it and tantalizing the listener. Yeah. Uh
So hopefully not that we've exhaustively explained it. Uh there's plenty to ruminate on, but I think we've laid out sort of the basic concept, yeah. At least as clearly as we've ever done. Yeah. I like the fact that for this episode the place that we ended it is with the saints because um it's one of the principles of Orthodox theology that Christology and soteriology
are distinct and yet completely indivisible theological discourses, as it were. Not that they're reducible to discourses, but you know what I mean. Um that if you understand who Christ is. then then we understand who the saints are. And we also understand what our own task is as Christians. I this is you know, we we've only only done a couple of uh sorry Calvinists for this episode. But I mean this is one of the problems this is this is the problem. Well
I shouldn't say the problem. This is one of the many problems with Calvinism, is that Calvinism, of course, is mainly the thing that most people think about it is that it's a soteriology, right? Monergism. And I mean, there's literally websites. with that as their title, pushing Calvinist soteriology. You know, the idea that it is God alone and g God is the only one doing anything about salvation.
Right. Um but the thing that they don't seem to realize is that whatever you posit about soteriology has uh an analogue, not just an analog, a basis in your your Christology. Um so if monergism is true about soteriology, then monoenergism must be true about Christology. In other words, That Christ has only one energy, meaning that he's not actually really human. Because if he doesn't have human energies, he has only divine energies, then he's not fully human.
And so that's one of the big reasons why Calvinism tends towards Nestorianism, because it posits this kind of disjunction between the divine Christ and the human Jesus, not explicitly. Not explicitly. Most Calvinists would not affirm Nestorianism. But nonetheless, it's baked into the soteriology.
Where that's really important for most Christians who, thank God, don't care about those particular debates, um, is that When we begin to understand the incarnation as eternal and as manifesting at a particular point, as revealing at a particular point in human history, then we see what the Christian life is about. It means that we're not going to be able to It's not only about what will happen in what is for us the future. In other words,
Do I go to heaven when I die? Which of course we've talked about ad nauseum, why that is not a correct eschatology. But you know what I mean. It's not just about what happens to you when you die. Although it is about what happens to you when you die. But that the infinite God and the infinite possibility of human exaltation, elevation, salvation, deification. is available to us right now. Right now.
One of the things that is said by kind of pop anti Christianity is, you know, you're gonna live this whole life this particular way, hoping that something will be different for you after you die, that you're gonna get rewarded in heaven. Right. On nothing. Certainly our experience here and now is that there's elements in the future, that the life of the age to come is to come, that it's not now, but it is also now.
The basic gospel message repent for the kingdom of God is at hand doesn't mean it's just coming next. It means it's present. It's present because Christ is the kingdom of God. He is the king. And so his kingly influence, his kingly reign is. Is wherever he is. And so, inasmuch as we are in Christ, as it says in Scripture, the kingdom of God is within you. And When we begin to grasp that or just at least to acknowledge it, what that does for me and maybe it does for you, listener, is
uh inspire a sense of of wonder in you. Wonder that the infinite God, the God who is beyond time, beyond space, who cannot be captured, who cannot be understood, whose ways are are higher than our ways. That God enters into the womb of his mother, the Virgin Mary, that in that entrance he becomes truly man. And that he's born. And in this feast we see him not just a baby in a manger, but we see God in a manger.
We see the one whose will upholds all of creation as the most vulnerable, helpless thing. state of what it means to be human. And that's astonishing. And also, because as I said, Christology and soteriology always go together, but also that as we participate in him, as we are faithful to him, as we partake in him. That we begin to transcend the boundaries of our createdness. And I find that a profoundly Comforting and even relieving thought.
That the mercy of God is such that the sins that I have, the weaknesses that I have, the utter failures that I have, all of the flaws that I have. Are transcendable by kneeling at the manger of Christ, kneeling at the altar of God, giving my life. to him, obeying his commandments. That in that We, to use the language of the church fathers, become uncreated, become God. And because we are finite, then that means that it is an an infinite road.
that this life is not the only time of progress in this. but that the life of the age to come is also a life of of progress. See the great love that God has for us. It's impossible to imagine, impossible to fathom, and yet here we are. And that's why even the greeting that we have in the Orthodox Church, which comes from one of our greatest sets of hymns, the canon for the nativity, contains within it everything that we just said, actually, in in um in a very compact form. Christ is born.
Glorified. That the infinite one is born. that he is human and we glorify him. We glorify him because he is God. And in glorifying him, then we also participate in his glory. So that's what I have to say about all of that. Yeah so of course. Being an Antiochian priest, right, we also say Christ is born, glorify him in Arabic. And uh Once I learned that, you know, it was a relief to me'cause I found out when all those people were calling me Mij Noon, they were wishing me a Merry Christmas. Um
There's a there's an inside baseball joke that a small portion of our listeners will get. And um and you can always spot the Egyptians because they call you Mugnun. Mugnun. I thought o I thought about spoiling the uh the series finale of the good place as an intro, but I'm not gonna I'm not gonna do that. I'm not I'm not gonna I'm gonna resist my my darker urges in this regard. Um not spoil it. But I think one thing that's often missing when we talk about time.
Uh is because we're kind of in denial of this, is the relationship between time and death. You know, we we made a lot of comparisons this episode between temporal categories and spatial categories, categories of time and categories of space. And In spatial terms, you know, the the spatial term that becomes a problem is distance. Distance between people, distance between things. Becomes a complication. But you know, we're We've g we've got a lot of techne to help us overcome display.
Whether we're talking about, you know, airline travel to physically cross great distances, high speed rail, whatever. Or we're talking about the internet, right, means of communication that we have. to cross physical distances and reconnect people and things. But uh we're sort of powerless in the face of time. And in terms of the relationship between time and death, time kills everything. Every moment in our life ends. Sometimes that's good, right? Moments of pain, agony, mourning, horror.
Difficulty, struggle, those moments end. They die. But so does every moment of beauty, peace, love, and joy in our life. Because we're finite. Time rolls on. Things end. Right? And that's a constant, right? We can't we can't bring people back to life. At least I can't. Some of the saints can in some select cases, but you know what I mean. We can't return to a better moment in the past. It all just sort of goes away.
And in in the face of that, then there is this failure when we think about what the resurrection means. The resurrection of our bodies, the resurrection of the world. Because frankly, if you talk to most people who identify as Christians, First of all, they won't even be talking about the life of the world to come or the bodily resurrection, they'll be talking about going to heaven, right? But
You talk to them about the positive version of the afterlife, right? The good place. Um what eternal life looks like. And the idea you get is that well. I'm gonna live forever, but sort of, right? Because especially if they're among our Protestant friends, but even among a lot of our Roman Catholic friends, and unfortunately even some of our Orthodox friends probably who have partaking of this. Um
They've had baked into them to one degree or another that most of their identity is sin. Right. Even if they don't believe in total depravity, right, as such. Right. They have this idea that pretty much every aspect of their personality and their life and everything is touched by sin. And and w why that's a an issue is that the them who they think is going to live forever, right? The me who's going to live forever, how much is that actually going to look like the actual me?
Once you take everything sinful out of it, when I've been told that almost everything I do and think is sinful. But so something corresponding to me or some version of me Is gonna experience some endless succession of moments in s someplace nice. Everything's just gonna be nice. Happy forever. That's not a lot of hope. It's definitely not what scripture teaches, fortunately. Uh that's not Christianity. But that's that's not a lot of hope either. Right? That's uh
But the consequence of what we've talked about tonight is different than that. It means that the promise of the resurrection, not just of ourselves, but of the whole creation, Of everything God created, it doesn't just all go away. Is it all of those moments, all of those times, all of those places, all of those things? Everything that was good, everything that was beautiful, everything that was joyous, every experience of peace. While it seems to have died to us in our finitude in this life,
It is all going to come back. That is all going to be made eternal. And all of the other stuff that dies, that time kills, pain, suffering, sorrow, difficulty, all that stays dead. All of that is gone. And everything that stopped you and I, everything that's been holding us back, everything that's been making it a struggle and making it hard, we're just straight out stopping us and blocking us. From being good.
From being joyous, from being at peace, from being beautiful, all those hindrances, all those difficulties, all those barriers are going to be gone, and we're going to be free to be those things. And free to be those things eternally in a state where time will never take them away.
Time will never draw them to a close. Time will never separate us from each other. That's the promise that we have in the resurrection of Christ. That's the promise that we have in Christ taking our humanity into himself. That's the promise of theosis. That's the promise of salvation. That Christ and who he is, as we participate in him being born on this day as you're hearing this. That's what it's all about. So that's what I Amen. Amen.
Well that's our our Christmas special. Thank you very much everyone for listening. Um Uh we love to get email and um messages through Facebook and so forth. Uh so you can you can contact us at Lordofspirits at ancient faith.com. You can send us a message through our Facebook page. You can also leave us a voicemail at speakpipe.com slash Lord of Spirits.
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