Transcript: AAC — 27 Nov 2025 (Q&A)

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Welcome to the At Any Cost Podcast.

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I am Corey J.

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Mahler, and this is the 27th of November, 2025.

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It is Thanksgiving Day for those of us who are in America, at least, for our friends around the world.

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I know that you celebrate that on other days, but for us here, it's Thanksgiving Day.

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This is the fifth Q&A episode of 2025, and I have a handful of questions here.

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I have some other questions I see in the chat as well.

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So, again, let me know if there are any audio or other issues.

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I did sign up for ReStream, so hopefully that will have solved all of those issues going forward.

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I know that...

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Excuse me.

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I know that KIK is not working.

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I am not certain why.

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I think maybe I'm sending it too high of a bitrate, and it is objecting to that fact.

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So starting off, we have a question.

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Someone says he cannot hear.

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Sounds great on X, can't hear on YouTube.

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Okay.

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Let me check that.

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It's not reporting any issues for me in Restream, but that doesn't mean that they don't have any.

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Can someone on YouTube tell me if you can hear me or not?

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Loud and clear on X, that's good.

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Works fine, the sound, okay, good.

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I guess maybe you're having a problem on your end there, not on my end with regard to the sound.

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So check your settings.

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At any rate, it seems to be working, so I will move into the questions then.

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I will try not to sniffle into the mic.

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I do have a little bit of a cold, so I will try not to share that with those of you out there.

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Thankfully, I can't actually share the cold with you, but I'll try not to share the sniffling.

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The first question is about Roman Catholic Mariology, and I will read through the question first here.

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I've been discussing various topics with some Catholic friends, and as the only Lutheran I am usually going for against one, it puts a burden on me to know their doctrine well in order to be able to know why it is wrong.

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Mary is coming up soon.

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This was briefly covered here and there in Passing in Stone Choir, true, but I am curious as to the specifics of Roman Catholic Mariology, particularly modern, as most of these accretions became binding after the Reformation, which is true, I'll go into that, the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption to Heaven, etc., though others like Perpetual Virginity were believed in Luther's time, though still accretions, also true.

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Exactly how wrong are the Roman Catholics?

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What is the best steel man of their views?

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Which arguments would be most convincing against them, though I fear anyone with a presupposition of Magisterial Invalidity will not be able to budge on an issue?

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That's generally true.

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So the question here with regard to Merriology, really there are essentially four doctrines here that are going to be relevant.

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One on which all Christians have to agree, and then the others are going to be various stages of you don't have to agree, or you should not agree, or you cannot agree.

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And the first one then is Theotokos.

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And that is defined in 431, although it's been the holding of Christians, the belief of Christians from the very beginning.

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It simply means that Mary is the God-bearer.

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That's what Theotokos means.

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And the reason this came up and was officially defined as a dogma, as a doctrine at a council was, this was the Council of Ephesus, incidentally, was because there were those who were arguing that she was only the bearer of Christ in terms of his humanity, and only Christ as a created creature.

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So in other words, it's Arianism.

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And so obviously as Christians, we have to reject that because that is false.

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That's not what we hold.

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Christ is God.

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He's fully God and fully man.

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And so Theotokos, you cannot object to that as a Christian, because that is simply right teaching with regard to Mary's role.

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She is indeed the God bearer, because she bore Christ and Christ is God.

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The second one would be perpetual virginity, or semper virgo, if you want to use the Latin, called by various names.

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That is defined in 641 by Pope Martin I.

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And there have been those who have held to that down through Christian history, but that is when it became an official dogma of the Roman Catholic Church.

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And so, the problem with semper virgo, and we have gone through that, just so you know, it's the Lateran synod, and it's canon 3 of that synod, if you want to go and look at that document.

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But the big problem is, how do you define marriage?

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If you don't understand what marriage is, then you are going to be okay with semper virgo.

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If you understand what marriage is, you are not, you have to reject it.

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And the reason for that is that, what does scripture say?

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Always look at scripture for these issues.

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Scripture says, Joseph is a righteous man.

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And scripture says, do not fear to take Mary as your wife.

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Well, that's a command from God.

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A righteous man obeys a command from God.

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Scripture calls Joseph righteous, commands him to take Mary as his wife.

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There's only one way you can take a wife.

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We were very clear on that in a number of episodes, not least of all the one on marriage for Stone Choir.

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And so, Semper Virgo is at odds with that.

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If you understand the nature of marriage, you cannot believe that Mary was a virgin for her entire life.

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And also, just reading scripture plainly says that Christ had brothers and sisters.

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Now, the Roman Catholics will argue that those were cousins.

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The problem is, the scripture doesn't say that.

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Greek has a word for cousins.

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It's not always used, and this is where perhaps we can steel man their argument.

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There are times where a cousin is called a brother.

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We even do that today, perhaps less so than the Greeks would have done, and probably less so than the Old Testament Israelites would have done.

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However, the word for cousin exists, it's not used.

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It simply says, brothers and sisters.

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That is what they were known as, and not only that, but they're called that later on as well, because you have them in important positions in the church, and they're called the brother of Jesus and things like that.

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So, if you just read scripture and take the language plainly, it's very clear that Mary had other children.

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And also, that makes perfect sense, because children are a blessing from the Lord.

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Why would God not bless his own earthly mother?

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Now, that's not to say that you cannot be a Christian and believe this.

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You're going to be in error, because you have misunderstood what marriage is, and you have misunderstood some parts of scripture, but you can still be a Christian and believe in Semper Virgo.

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There are plenty of Christians down through history who have believed that, and there are Christians today who believe that.

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I reject it, obviously.

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I don't believe in it.

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And I think that it raises other problems, because again, the central problem is it misunderstands marriage.

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So if you get marriage wrong, you're going to be able to defend Semper Virgo, but if you get marriage right, you'll find that you have to reject SV.

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The next dogma is jumping a bit here from 649 to 1854.

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This is the Immaculate Conception.

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Now, if you are dealing with some Roman Catholics, they may try to argue that it is from 1476.

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Now, that particular document, the problem with it, is that it doesn't actually define it as a dogma.

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This is important for the Roman Catholics.

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For those who are not in Roman Catholic land, perhaps some of this is irrelevant, because we don't have ex cathedra pronouncements as Protestants.

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They do.

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And so, the 1476 document does not define it as a dogma, and one of the ways that you can look at this is that in 1849, the Pope asked the bishops for a definition of the Immaculate Conception.

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Well, if he's asking for a definition of it, it can't be a dogma, because that one have already been defined.

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And so, it's actually in 1854, with the document is called Ineffabilis Deus, that is when it is established.

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And then, one of the other ways that we can know this is that in 1904, 50 years later, it is celebrated as the 50th celebration of the establishment of the dogma.

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And that is by Pope Pius X.

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And so, very clearly, you can see, this was not established until much later.

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This is not from the early church.

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This is not ancient.

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This is the 1800s, the mid 1800s.

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And so, if they want to argue for that, they're going to have to argue that this was something that was revealed or just missed in scripture.

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And the problem, of course, is that it is fundamentally at odds with scripture, because scripture says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

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That includes Mary.

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Mary was a sinner.

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Mary did not believe in Jesus in the way that she should have, initially, because think of what happens in the pages of scripture.

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She and Jesus' brothers, incidentally, come to take him away from what he's doing because they believe he's lost his mind.

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That is not fully believing in him as your God and Savior.

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Now, it's not to say that Mary didn't have some idea, because you have things where it says that she cherished these things in her heart, and clearly she had some idea, but she did not fully understand.

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It seems very clear from the pages of Scripture.

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And so, Mary was a sinner.

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She needed a Savior.

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And in fact, I think it's an insult to Mary to call her sinless, to say that she was without sin, because that's to minimize the work of Christ.

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And I don't think Mary would want that, because Mary did eventually recognize the nature of Christ and his role and what he did.

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And part of it is that he was her Savior as well.

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And so, the problem with the immaculate conception is that it's just a false teaching, it's just wrong, because all those who are naturally conceived, which means a man and a woman, are born with original sin.

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Original sin is transmitted that way, because that's just how God designed the universe, how things are designed.

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You received original sin in your conception.

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In sin did my mother conceive me, as it says in the Psalter.

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That includes Mary.

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Nowhere does it say in the pages of Scripture that Mary was born without sin.

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Nowhere does it say that she was saved from original sin, which is basically what the Roman Catholics hold.

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This is a doctrine that is necessary for them, because it builds up to other things.

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And it's going to build up to worse things in the future, because I'll get into it now, but this is sort of not the main four.

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This is something, a minor doctrine.

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Doctrine, not doctrine, it depends on which Roman Catholic you ask.

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There are those who will call her the Mediatrix, or the Co-Redemptrix, which is just blatant heresy.

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You cannot possibly believe in that, because there is only one mediator between God and man, and that is Christ.

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And so, in order to build up to that doctrine, which is where they're going, they will eventually make that a dogma.

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In order to build up that, they need to say that Mary was without sin, because otherwise she can't be co-redemptrix.

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And so, this doctrine is a necessary part of that foundation for something much worse in the future.

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This is one that you have to reject as a Christian, because it just goes plainly against the words of scripture, and it is going to produce poisonous fruit.

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And then the final one is the assumption of Mary, which sort of flows naturally from the other things they believed, and that is 1946, actually.

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That one is very recent.

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And it's in a document entitled, I'll just give the English name instead of the Latin, Virgin Mary, Mother of God.

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And so, that is actually, that's the one that asked for the definition, it's 1950, it's four years later.

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It's actually defined as a dogma in 1950, so four years after 1946.

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I misspoke on that first date.

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So, this is obviously quite recent.

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And the problem here is that it's just nowhere in scripture, and we don't have the ancient church testifying to it either.

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I think it's pretty clear that the ancient church would have said, oh, by the way, Mary just disappeared into heaven one day.

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Because that was something that happened in the Old Testament.

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This is not something that never happened.

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And so, if she had been assumed instead of dying, it would have been noted.

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It's kind of noteworthy if the mother of God disappears into heaven one day, if she doesn't die.

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We don't have that testimony from the ancient church.

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And so, this is something that is necessary.

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It flows necessarily from the other things they believe with regard to Mary, but it is very modern, and it's simply not supportable by either scripture or history.

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Then, of course, you have the queen of heaven bit, which that should make you uncomfortable, because the queen of heaven is the name of a demon, and heaven doesn't have a queen, because Mary is not the wife of God, which is what they sometimes try to argue.

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That's nowhere in scripture.

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That's just whole cloth, made out of whole cloth.

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Complete nonsense.

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Incidentally, the east holds to that one as well.

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Slightly different formulation for the east, but you don't have to argue with that one as much when you're dealing with Roman Catholics, because it's not officially a dogma yet.

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And so, it's really just those core four.

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And so, in summary, theotokos, you have to accept it, because that's the teaching of the creeds, it's the teaching of the scriptures, it's the teaching of Christianity.

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Semper Virgo, you should reject, because it's false with regard to marriage.

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Immaculate Conception, you must reject, because it is explicitly contrary to the clear teaching of scripture.

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And then the Assumption of Mary, honestly, that one's really neither here nor there, it's just, it's part of this cloth they're building, this tapestry that's going to lead to worse things, but there's no proof of it, and there's no real proof against it.

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We don't have like the grave of Mary, we can say, well, no, Mary didn't get assumed into heaven, because there she is.

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And we also don't have the testimony of the ancient church, and we're all saying, she was assumed into heaven.

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So that one is just a weird myth they've made up.

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So that sort of covers the answer to that particular question.

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So I'll move on to the second question.

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This one is about Christianity in the Third Reich.

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Let me pull up the actual wording of the question here.

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I was hoping you could speak on the state of Christianity in the Third Reich.

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Growing up, I was fed the line that the confessing church was full of good guys, everyone's fed that line, who stood against German Christians.

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Over the past several years, it has become obvious to me the confessing church was full of men who were less than orthodox.

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I am aware of the issues of men like Bonhoeffer, but I was surprised to find that Sassa was weak.

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He very much was on the issues of the young earth and some other things as well.

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I have started reading the book on positive Christianity, put out by Sacra Press, but I have not gotten very far yet.

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Ultimately, my question is, were there any orthodox teachers in Germany during the 1930s and 1940s?

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And so, of course, I would recommend finishing that book.

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You can also just read the 20 Theses of the German Christians.

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I am the one who translated that.

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It's available on my website as well.

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I'll put a link in the show notes for that one.

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The question of were there orthodox teachers in Germany is yes, there were.

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In fact, there were much better teachers in Germany than basically anywhere else at the time, with regard particularly to Lutheranism, but Christianity generally.

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And some of those names, there are people who would definitely immediately know those names.

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The one that would be most known by, including many American pastors, would be Kittel, K-I-T-T-E-L.

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And the reason that that would be known is because they probably have his books on their shelves, because he produced a multi-volume series basically on church history and theology that everyone still uses, despite the fact that he was very pro-national socialist.

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So he's still used, he's still read, and he was a sound theologian confessional.

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There is, of course, a caveat that I'm going to give with regard to any of this, because I'm never going to give just a blanket.

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That everything this man said was perfect, and he is the perfect theologian, because no one is.

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Everyone's going to have something he believes was a little off, or something he could have worded better, something like that.

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That's obviously true with many.

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And that's true with these men as well.

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So you also have Eilert and Althaus would be two other men I could name for orthodox Lutheran teachers in this period.

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They're small things with which I would quibble, but by and large, these are orthodox teachers of the Christian faith.

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But the real answer to the question, that's sort of the preliminary answer, the real answer is that there were thousands, because there were many faithful parish pastors who day in and day out taught the faith truthfully under the Third Reich.

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Because Christianity was not persecuted, Christianity was not attacked, they were building churches, they supported the churches, it was a Christian movement.

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And so you had many thousands of men who were orthodox, small o, orthodox, teachers of the Christian faith in the Third Reich.

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And you're not going to know those men's names because they just did their duty day in and day out.

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Because a parish pastor is not supposed to be known really outside his parish, because that's his duty, he has a flock God has given him to take care of, to look after them, and that is what he's supposed to do.

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And so you have many faithful men in Germany and other parts of Europe at this point in time, and you'll never know their names until you get to paradise, and then you'll get to meet them.

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So yes, the answer is there were many faithful men, including some well-known theologians, including some your pastor probably has on his shelves.

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Particularly Kittel would be the best example of that.

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I guess I'll answer next.

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I saw a quick question in the chat just before we started here asking if I saw that Doug Wilson had responded to my debate with James White, and the answer is no.

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And I may not read it because I honestly don't care.

00:20:21.228 --> 00:20:26.268
But the larger question there sort of is, are those men even relevant anymore?

00:20:26.268 --> 00:20:26.948
And the answer is no.

00:20:28.068 --> 00:20:44.228
Doug Wilson is sort of vaguely relevant in his tiny little bubble at this point, and that influence is shrieking, and also just the fact that how much longer he will be alive is an open question, because he's getting older and he's not in the best of health.

00:20:44.228 --> 00:20:48.488
To be quite frank, he should lose weight.

00:20:48.488 --> 00:20:56.108
It's Christian to tell him that, because if you have a supposedly Christian brother, which I hope that he will repent and come back to the fold, I don't think that he will.

00:20:56.268 --> 00:20:58.928
But I wish that he would.

00:20:58.928 --> 00:21:07.828
It is one of your Christian duties to tell him, you need to lose some weight, because it's bad for you and it's not fitting for someone in the office of pastor.

00:21:07.828 --> 00:21:14.748
But both of those men have chosen to sort of set fire to their legacy and become irrelevant.

00:21:14.748 --> 00:21:18.808
And so they can do whatever they're doing off in their corner.

00:21:18.808 --> 00:21:20.848
They're not part of what we're doing going forward.

00:21:24.188 --> 00:21:32.148
The next question is about the Nephilim, which this one comes up occasionally, so I may as well answer it here.

00:21:32.148 --> 00:21:37.468
Do you hold to the Sethite, Kingly, or Angelic explanation for the Nephilim and their tribes?

00:21:37.508 --> 00:21:45.968
Do you think a better understanding of the Angelic explanation is that the angels or watchers use genetic manipulation instead of genetic contribution to their offspring?

00:21:47.748 --> 00:21:51.768
This is one of those questions where we do not fully know the answer.

00:21:51.768 --> 00:21:59.928
I don't think we can fully know the answer until we get to Paradise, and even then, it will be irrelevant because by then, who cares?

00:21:59.928 --> 00:22:07.808
But insofar as speculation goes, I can certainly say, angels are spirit beings.

00:22:07.808 --> 00:22:16.728
They are permitted to have a body, a physical body, only when God permits it, and it seems like only for very specific tasks.

00:22:16.728 --> 00:22:20.548
So, you can think of the angels who visited Sodom and Gomorrah.

00:22:20.548 --> 00:22:25.368
They were physical, but God gave them something specific to do.

00:22:25.368 --> 00:22:28.288
That's why they had bodies at that time.

00:22:28.288 --> 00:22:31.428
Did they have bodies in the sense where they could have produced children?

00:22:32.668 --> 00:22:33.828
I don't think so.

00:22:33.828 --> 00:22:35.608
I don't think that they did.

00:22:35.608 --> 00:22:42.608
I don't think, I certainly don't think, that God would permit demons, fallen angels, to produce children.

00:22:42.608 --> 00:22:45.068
They are a different thing from what we are.

00:22:45.068 --> 00:22:48.768
And so, I don't think there's biological compatibility there.

00:22:48.768 --> 00:22:53.508
I don't think that the Nephilim are children of angels and human women.

00:22:53.508 --> 00:22:58.828
I think that it's speaking of the wicked versus the elect, the righteous versus the evil.

00:22:59.748 --> 00:23:05.028
And could there be manipulation with regard to fallen angels?

00:23:05.028 --> 00:23:13.568
I think that's probably true, because we know that demons can influence the physical world in certain ways.

00:23:13.568 --> 00:23:16.068
The question is, where is the line?

00:23:16.068 --> 00:23:17.808
I don't know where God drew that line.

00:23:17.808 --> 00:23:21.468
God did not give us the rules of engagement for demons.

00:23:21.468 --> 00:23:23.408
It might be nice to have those.

00:23:23.408 --> 00:23:27.448
It would certainly help figuring out what's demonic and what's not.

00:23:27.448 --> 00:23:28.608
But we don't have those rules.

00:23:28.888 --> 00:23:31.708
And so, we don't really know.

00:23:31.708 --> 00:23:35.288
Scripture is not particularly thorough on this point.

00:23:35.288 --> 00:23:37.488
And it's not to say that scripture should be thorough.

00:23:37.488 --> 00:23:40.428
It's to say that we don't need to know.

00:23:40.428 --> 00:23:43.248
If we needed to know, God would have told us.

00:23:43.248 --> 00:23:55.008
And so, I know that men get very interested in the Nephilim and things like that, and all these parts of scripture where it's left open and vague, and it draws people in.

00:23:55.008 --> 00:23:56.868
I think it's best to just leave these things alone.

00:23:58.228 --> 00:24:00.988
There's no reason to get invested in this stuff.

00:24:00.988 --> 00:24:03.728
It's not important to your faith.

00:24:03.728 --> 00:24:07.808
It's not going to change anything with regard to your faith.

00:24:07.808 --> 00:24:14.088
And in large part, this stuff is so far in the past that it is essentially irrelevant at this point.

00:24:14.088 --> 00:24:15.348
Is it interesting?

00:24:15.348 --> 00:24:21.148
Perhaps, but there's no knowable answer in this life.

00:24:21.148 --> 00:24:32.168
And so, there's no amount of investigation where you're going to arrive at a definitive answer and so it is a distraction where you could spend that time on better things.

00:24:32.168 --> 00:24:36.728
So I think the short answer is that can demons influence the physical world?

00:24:36.728 --> 00:24:38.108
Sure, we know that.

00:24:38.108 --> 00:24:40.048
Demonic possession is a thing.

00:24:40.048 --> 00:24:43.948
And so, could they influence genetics as part of that?

00:24:43.948 --> 00:24:44.988
Maybe.

00:24:44.988 --> 00:24:46.468
We don't know.

00:24:46.468 --> 00:24:57.928
I don't think that you have hybrids though, because again, angels are spirit beings, not human beings that have a human body and then like a super soul or something.

00:24:57.928 --> 00:24:58.628
So it doesn't work.

00:24:58.628 --> 00:25:04.088
The biology doesn't work there for the half-breed thing, which is basically fan fiction.

00:25:04.088 --> 00:25:05.528
You have the Book of Enoch and things like that.

00:25:05.528 --> 00:25:07.848
You're talking about Jewish fan fiction.

00:25:07.848 --> 00:25:10.828
And so, I'm not going to put much stock in that.

00:25:13.568 --> 00:25:19.308
The next question is about evolution and some related things.

00:25:19.308 --> 00:25:32.128
In the Stone Quire episode where you discussed evolution being debunked by natural selection, being deleterious, it's more specifically that the mutations are deleterious.

00:25:32.128 --> 00:25:38.408
Does this point to the first men being visibly similar to Europeans or Americans?

00:25:38.408 --> 00:25:43.148
We have the largest set of possible physical characteristics when compared to non-Japathitic races.

00:25:43.148 --> 00:25:44.788
That's true.

00:25:44.788 --> 00:25:49.468
Eye color, hair color, things like that, particularly regarding coloration.

00:25:49.468 --> 00:25:50.168
Yeah, exactly.

00:25:52.188 --> 00:25:57.508
So, I think we can probably fairly conclude that Adam was fair-skinned.

00:25:57.508 --> 00:26:00.328
Can we say what shade of fair-skinned he was?

00:26:00.328 --> 00:26:01.388
I don't think so.

00:26:01.388 --> 00:26:03.368
Scripture doesn't tell us.

00:26:03.368 --> 00:26:15.888
But if you look at dark skin, that is an adaptation with regard to exposure, particularly to high levels of ultraviolet radiation, because it protects you from that.

00:26:15.888 --> 00:26:17.168
We all know that.

00:26:17.168 --> 00:26:21.568
Blacks can sunburn despite the fact that many of them don't even know that.

00:26:21.568 --> 00:26:30.748
They can sunburn, but it takes them longer, which makes perfect sense, because they're supposed to live in an equatorial region, not areas that get snow.

00:26:30.748 --> 00:26:40.648
And so, for those of us who are native to areas that do, in fact, get snow, we need lighter skin because we need more of those wavelengths for vitamin D and various other health reasons.

00:26:40.648 --> 00:26:51.968
And so, the adaptations don't make any sense for atom in the state of perfection, because ultraviolet radiation wasn't a problem.

00:26:51.968 --> 00:26:57.548
God didn't set it up so that in the world pre-fall, you could have had skin cancer.

00:26:57.548 --> 00:27:01.108
And so, protection from ultraviolet would not have been a thing.

00:27:01.108 --> 00:27:14.328
So, it does seem to follow that darker skin tones that are part of evolution post-fall would not have been part of atom, except insofar as they were possible in his genome.

00:27:15.288 --> 00:27:19.868
And so, again, you get the evolution due to the loss of information over time.

00:27:19.868 --> 00:27:34.708
And this also follows because we have descriptions of some of the sons of the sons of the sons of sons of Noah, depending on where exactly it is in the timeline, and they're described as being fair skinned.

00:27:34.708 --> 00:27:40.848
They're described as being able to blush and things like that, which only those of us who have fair skin can blush.

00:27:40.848 --> 00:27:47.648
Yes, you can have the physiological response, in those with much darker skin, but you don't see it.

00:27:47.648 --> 00:27:51.168
And so you would not comment on it, because it's not something that's visible.

00:27:51.168 --> 00:27:59.368
And so when we're dealing with the men in scripture, we're basically dealing with almost all men who are in fact fair skinned.

00:27:59.368 --> 00:28:08.308
We would recognize them as having a European style phenotype or an ancient Mediterranean phenotype.

00:28:08.308 --> 00:28:19.128
Because all of the areas around the Mediterranean and ancient times, those men were fair skinned, with the exception of those who came from other parts deeper into Africa for trading and purposes like that.

00:28:19.128 --> 00:28:23.728
So, for instance, we do have Ethiopians in the Old Testament.

00:28:23.728 --> 00:28:29.888
We have some of them who traded with, and actually it's one of the reasons they had Christianity very early on.

00:28:29.888 --> 00:28:34.608
They were in trading relationships with Old Testament Israel.

00:28:34.608 --> 00:28:40.048
So they had access to the scriptures and things like that, which basically no one else did at the time.

00:28:40.048 --> 00:28:41.328
They would have been dark skinned.

00:28:41.608 --> 00:28:45.828
The Ethiopians were dark, they're called Ethiopians because it means burnt face in Greek.

00:28:45.828 --> 00:28:47.348
They were dark skinned.

00:28:47.348 --> 00:28:51.868
But by and large, the men in scripture are fair skinned.

00:28:51.868 --> 00:28:53.688
Christ was fair skinned.

00:28:53.688 --> 00:29:02.208
He probably had light brown hair, he probably wasn't blonde with blue eyes, but he had fair skin and light brown hair.

00:29:02.208 --> 00:29:09.208
That's the most likely thing given the period and the artwork that we have from those shortly after that period depicting him.

00:29:10.708 --> 00:29:18.428
So with regard to Adam, yes, he was fair skinned, but I'm not going to guess he was pale, copper, whatever it happens to be.

00:29:18.428 --> 00:29:22.668
He wasn't black, is sort of one of the short answers there.

00:29:24.848 --> 00:29:29.508
The next question is about the descent into hell.

00:29:29.508 --> 00:29:32.628
Let me see where that one went.

00:29:41.367 --> 00:29:43.467
I think the question has disappeared.

00:29:47.987 --> 00:29:58.487
Well, I know what the question is about, so I can just answer the question and then link to it when I figure out where the question is actually gone.

00:29:58.487 --> 00:30:05.187
But the question is basically, what was the descent into hell?

00:30:05.187 --> 00:30:12.687
Because obviously the creed speaks about he descended into hell, the third day he rose again from the dead, et cetera, et cetera.

00:30:12.687 --> 00:30:20.127
And this is one of those questions on which there is disagreement among Christians.

00:30:20.127 --> 00:30:31.987
There is not disagreement among Lutherans, incidentally, because we all hold to the solid declaration on this one, and the solid declaration of the formula of Concord is very clear on this point.

00:30:33.867 --> 00:30:37.127
Let me just go ahead and pull that up so we can look at it.

00:30:38.127 --> 00:30:39.747
I will read part of it.

00:30:42.247 --> 00:30:45.767
So, Christ descent into hell, this is Article 9.

00:30:45.767 --> 00:30:49.687
I will just read the second and third paragraph.

00:30:49.687 --> 00:31:00.827
And we simply believe that the entire person, God and man, after the burial, descended into hell, conquered the devil, destroyed the power of hell, and took from the devil all his might.

00:31:00.827 --> 00:31:05.527
We should not, however, trouble ourselves with high and acute thoughts as to how this occurred.

00:31:06.147 --> 00:31:16.847
For with our reason and our five senses, this article can be comprehended as little as the preceding one, how Christ is placed at the right hand of the Almighty Power and Majesty of God.

00:31:16.847 --> 00:31:21.447
But we are simply to believe it and adhere to the Word in such mysteries of faith.

00:31:21.447 --> 00:31:30.647
Thus we retain the substance, the sound doctrine, and true consolation that neither hell nor the devil can take captive or injure us, and all who believe in Christ.

00:31:31.567 --> 00:31:50.967
And so, the teaching here, and the important distinction, so between Lutherans and some other Christians, and I think this is obvious from Scripture and obvious from the Creed, the descent into hell is not part of Christ's state of humiliation.

00:31:50.967 --> 00:32:07.207
And if you're not familiar with the theological terms of these, the state of humiliation is basically, depends on which sense you're using, but it's either his entire time on earth, or it is the trials and tribulations of the last few days of his life.

00:32:07.207 --> 00:32:16.607
But at any rate, it is his suffering, it is his being cursed in the place of sin on our behalf.

00:32:16.607 --> 00:32:21.047
And so you have the state of humiliation, and then you have the state of exaltation.

00:32:21.047 --> 00:32:24.627
The descent into hell is part of the state of exaltation.

00:32:25.447 --> 00:32:29.567
It is him going to hell and declaring his victory.

00:32:29.567 --> 00:32:32.647
He's preaching, which is one of the things that Luther says about it.

00:32:32.647 --> 00:32:40.747
I don't have the quote here, but he is proclaiming his victory to the devil and his fallen angels, and perhaps also to those in hell.

00:32:40.747 --> 00:32:49.487
Lutherans don't hold to the release of those in limbo because we don't hold to limbo being a thing.

00:32:49.487 --> 00:32:51.067
The Roman Catholics are going to hold to that.

00:32:51.067 --> 00:32:52.227
That's going to be part of their argument.

00:32:52.347 --> 00:33:00.547
But the big division is whether you hold it to be part of the state of humiliation or part of the state of exaltation.

00:33:00.547 --> 00:33:10.347
And I think that from both the creeds again and scripture, you clearly have to argue, you have to believe that it is part of the exaltation.

00:33:10.347 --> 00:33:15.727
And the clearest warrant for that is what does Christ say on the cross?

00:33:15.727 --> 00:33:16.627
It is finished.

00:33:17.607 --> 00:33:30.747
Well, if the descent into hell is part of the state of humiliation, then it is part of his work, and then it's not finished, which would contradict what he said on the cross.

00:33:30.747 --> 00:33:34.987
So I think you have to conclude, it is part of his state of exaltation.

00:33:34.987 --> 00:33:38.347
It's proclaiming victory, not part of his suffering.

00:33:38.347 --> 00:33:40.067
He didn't go to hell to suffer.

00:33:40.067 --> 00:33:42.507
He went to hell to proclaim that he had won.

00:33:47.187 --> 00:33:52.587
Those are the questions that I have for today written down, but I saw a few in the chat.

00:33:52.587 --> 00:33:55.147
I'll scroll back and see if I can find those.

00:33:57.867 --> 00:33:59.067
Oh, yes, that's...

00:33:59.067 --> 00:34:02.347
I found the descent into hell question is in fact in the chat.

00:34:02.347 --> 00:34:06.407
So I will copy and quote that in the show notes.

00:34:12.588 --> 00:34:19.468
Will you address the contradictions between James and Paul around salvation through faith versus works?

00:34:19.468 --> 00:34:22.548
No matter how many times I read it, I cannot reconcile the two.

00:34:22.548 --> 00:34:33.848
I commented on that last week, actually, and I can go over that just briefly again, because it's always a point that comes up, and it's worth addressing.

00:34:35.568 --> 00:34:46.228
The issue between seemingly the contradiction between faith and works is sort of an order of operations.

00:34:46.228 --> 00:34:48.308
You are saved by faith.

00:34:48.308 --> 00:34:50.608
You can be saved only by faith.

00:34:50.608 --> 00:34:57.608
And the reason you can be saved only by faith is that it is faith in Christ, and that is what saves you.

00:34:57.608 --> 00:35:02.608
Because you are saved by works, but you're saved by Christ's works, not yours.

00:35:02.608 --> 00:35:05.708
Because sin is an infinite debt.

00:35:05.708 --> 00:35:16.208
And the reason that sin is an infinite debt, and the reason I have to explain this is because this is an understanding that has fallen away in modern times because our legal system has become so corrupt.

00:35:16.208 --> 00:35:25.608
But we used to understand that the nature of a transgression is partly incumbent.

00:35:25.608 --> 00:35:32.788
It relies partly upon the nature of the person against whom the transgression was committed.

00:35:32.788 --> 00:35:44.588
Another perhaps clearer and easier to understand way of saying that is that the person you wronged matters for the nature of your transgression, your crime, your sin.

00:35:44.588 --> 00:36:05.888
And the best example of this, and the one that I usually use, is we used to understand that there were different kinds of treason because there's high treason, treason committed against your sovereign, and then there's petty, which is just the French for small, not petty in the sense of what we think of petty these days, petty in the sense of lesser.

00:36:05.888 --> 00:36:14.448
So not high treason, not against the king, but petty treason against someone in a position of headship over you.

00:36:14.448 --> 00:36:23.808
The most common version of that would be either your local lord, or if you are a woman, your husband, or if you're a child, your father.

00:36:23.808 --> 00:36:31.768
And so the transgression is worse because it is committed against someone to whom you owe a certain sort of loyalty and duty.

00:36:31.768 --> 00:36:40.748
And we would also recognize that a crime committed against your own child is worse because you owe them a particular sort of duty.

00:36:40.748 --> 00:36:45.468
In the case of sin, the transgression is against God.

00:36:45.468 --> 00:36:49.268
God's dignity is infinite because he is God.

00:36:49.268 --> 00:36:57.508
And so the transgression that is sin is infinite because of the nature of the one against whom you have transgressed.

00:36:58.228 --> 00:37:03.848
And so it is only the infinite work of Christ that can be set in the scales against that.

00:37:03.848 --> 00:37:07.228
That's why nothing you do to never save you.

00:37:07.228 --> 00:37:14.888
It's why those who are in hell are there for eternity because they have elected to refuse Christ's gift.

00:37:14.888 --> 00:37:17.368
They have elected to refuse faith.

00:37:17.368 --> 00:37:21.608
And so what they are doing in hell is paying off their debt.

00:37:21.608 --> 00:37:25.048
The problem is their debt is infinite, and they are finite.

00:37:25.048 --> 00:37:28.668
And so it can never be paid in full, and so hell is eternal.

00:37:29.888 --> 00:37:37.308
And so you are saved by faith, but you are not saved, in the word of James, by faith alone.

00:37:37.308 --> 00:37:50.908
What he means by that, I know it sounds crazy to hear that coming from a Lutheran, but what he means by that is that a faith that is alone, a faith that does not produce good works is not faith.

00:37:50.908 --> 00:37:51.828
It's a dead faith.

00:37:51.828 --> 00:37:52.788
It's not a living faith.

00:37:53.408 --> 00:37:57.248
And so, again, that's one of the reasons that we put the things we put on the challenge coin.

00:37:57.248 --> 00:38:00.388
I lifted one up and I showed it last time.

00:38:00.388 --> 00:38:04.848
But a good tree produces good works.

00:38:04.848 --> 00:38:10.828
And so, if your faith is living, your faith is the good tree producing those good works.

00:38:10.828 --> 00:38:17.548
If your faith doesn't produce good works, it is producing bad fruit, which is, say, the absence of good works.

00:38:17.548 --> 00:38:18.768
It's a bad tree.

00:38:18.768 --> 00:38:20.248
It's a dead faith.

00:38:20.248 --> 00:38:21.328
Dead faith can't save you.

00:38:22.108 --> 00:38:24.308
And so, there's no contradiction there.

00:38:24.308 --> 00:38:28.748
You just have to understand, again, sort of the order of operations.

00:38:28.748 --> 00:38:34.168
You're saved by faith, and then because your faith is living, it produces good works.

00:38:34.168 --> 00:38:37.648
And we should also look at good works as a gift from God.

00:38:37.648 --> 00:38:41.768
It does say that good works were prepared beforehand, that you should walk in them.

00:38:41.768 --> 00:38:44.688
God is the one who set up these things for you to do.

00:38:44.688 --> 00:38:59.948
But one of the reasons he did that is because you can look to the good works that your faith is producing and be assured of your salvation because you recognize that your faith is living and producing those good works.

00:38:59.948 --> 00:39:02.208
So it's actually, it's good news.

00:39:02.208 --> 00:39:06.148
It's not law, it's not saying you must or you will be damned.

00:39:06.148 --> 00:39:15.748
It's saying, look at the consequences, the produce of your faith and recognize that yes, you do indeed have a living faith.

00:39:15.748 --> 00:39:17.528
It is a faith that will save you.

00:39:17.528 --> 00:39:18.928
And so there's no contradiction there.

00:39:19.668 --> 00:39:25.608
It's just necessary to understand the different authors are teaching different things.

00:39:25.608 --> 00:39:28.668
What Paul is teaching is how you are saved.

00:39:28.668 --> 00:39:32.088
What James is saying is don't be a hypocrite.

00:39:32.088 --> 00:39:36.888
Don't say, well, I'm a child of Abraham, and so it doesn't matter what I do, I'll be saved.

00:39:36.888 --> 00:39:39.168
He's doing the same thing that John the Baptist does.

00:39:39.168 --> 00:39:42.988
God could raise up for Abraham's sons from these stones.

00:39:42.988 --> 00:39:46.228
You have to have a living faith, and a living faith produces good works.

00:39:54.628 --> 00:40:03.028
Can the tree of knowledge be translated into a racial or genetic way, much like sowing seeds and bearing fruit are reproductive terms?

00:40:03.028 --> 00:40:05.128
Does eating the fruit mean race mixing?

00:40:05.128 --> 00:40:06.668
I don't think so.

00:40:06.668 --> 00:40:10.748
That starts to get into sort of Christian identity kind of territory.

00:40:12.068 --> 00:40:17.428
And I don't think that that is anywhere warranted in the text.

00:40:17.428 --> 00:40:23.308
So race mixing is a problem that is addressed in other places in scripture.

00:40:23.948 --> 00:40:31.128
It's addressed when the foreign wives are said to be put away because they're leading men into idolatry and other problems.

00:40:31.128 --> 00:40:37.608
It is condemned, quite frankly, in a number of different places, but the key one would be the fourth commandment.

00:40:37.608 --> 00:40:40.008
Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother.

00:40:40.008 --> 00:40:44.428
Of course, the rest is that may go well with you, and thou will live long in the land, etc.

00:40:44.428 --> 00:40:47.828
So it's a commandment that has a promise, right?

00:40:47.828 --> 00:40:59.148
And one of the ways that you honor your father and mother is by honoring their fathers and mothers, so on and so forth, back into the mists of time.

00:40:59.148 --> 00:41:06.268
And one of the ways you do that is preserving one of the most important things they gave you, which is your blood, your race.

00:41:06.268 --> 00:41:15.148
Because if you marry outside your race, you're going to have children that don't look like you, that don't look like your parents or your grandparents or your great-grandparents.

00:41:15.148 --> 00:41:19.208
You're going to have squandered that patrimony that was given to you.

00:41:19.928 --> 00:41:24.068
And so, it is dishonoring your father and mother.

00:41:24.068 --> 00:41:34.308
That is the most important argument with regard to opposing miscegenation, is that it is ultimately a violation of the Fourth Commandment.

00:41:34.308 --> 00:41:36.588
It is a violation of other things as well.

00:41:36.588 --> 00:41:53.408
Obviously, I could talk about the philosophical issues with regard to destroying that which is beautiful and just eliminating a particular group of people because God created the races of men, and so, absent a compelling moral warrant, you should not get rid of them.

00:41:53.408 --> 00:41:58.208
And I have to add that caveat because obviously, he commanded the Canaanites to be destroyed.

00:41:58.208 --> 00:42:02.928
That was the destruction of a race, right?

00:42:02.928 --> 00:42:05.968
That is permitted under certain circumstances.

00:42:05.968 --> 00:42:22.768
And so, the general rule is that you should not destroy that which God has created, because the destruction of that which is good, and everything God creates is good, is evil, absent a compelling moral warrant, because of course, we are permitted to, for instance, execute murderers.

00:42:22.768 --> 00:42:28.928
That would be the destruction of something that's good, but we're compelled to do that because of the moral warrant.

00:42:28.928 --> 00:42:35.548
And so, that's one of the philosophical arguments against miscegenation, it's the destruction of the beautiful and the good.

00:42:35.548 --> 00:42:43.528
But, no, I don't think that the tree of knowledge and that is a matter of race and race mixing, it's a different thing.

00:42:51.218 --> 00:42:54.378
Just trying to scroll and see if there's another question in the chat.

00:42:55.618 --> 00:43:00.698
Need to have someone collecting these for me so I can have a screen displaying them.

00:43:02.318 --> 00:43:11.218
My question wouldn't let me post, but is there, are there issues being friends with someone who is three quarters European and a quarter Jewish?

00:43:13.278 --> 00:43:21.858
I don't think there's an inherent problem with that, but the problem is, why are you still calling yourself Jewish?

00:43:21.858 --> 00:43:27.878
Why would a person who is a Christian refer to himself as being Jewish?

00:43:27.878 --> 00:43:51.018
That raises some questions, because someone who has truly converted is going to have totally and completely rejected that identity, because that identity, and yes, I mean it in the fullest sense in this case, not just the modern sense of the term, is founded wholly on rejection of Christ.

00:43:51.018 --> 00:44:07.278
This is why it is different when a Jew converts versus anyone else in the world, basically, because no other group is founded on a rejection of Christ and the Word of God.

00:44:07.278 --> 00:44:28.878
That's not a central part of any other group, and so when European pagans converted, yes, they had to give up their false gods, but they didn't have to repudiate their people and their history because it wasn't a foundational tenet of any European group to hate Jesus, to believe that he's boiling an excrement for all of eternity.

00:44:28.878 --> 00:44:42.318
That is central to the identity of what it means to be Jewish, and so they have hurdles that others do not, they are required to do things that others are not required to do to truly convert from that.

00:44:43.078 --> 00:45:09.498
We used to have, in the Confirmation Rite, and in the Baptismal Rite as well, in the Lutheran Church, explicit instructions for Jews to condemn the history of their people and to reject those things, because we recognized there was a difference for them because of the group of which they are part, because of the evil of their race historically.

00:45:09.498 --> 00:45:14.238
Guess I'll try not to get banned on YouTube for this one, but we'll see how that goes.

00:45:14.238 --> 00:45:17.338
So there are differences when it comes to that.

00:45:18.898 --> 00:45:31.578
If you are a quarter Jewish, an eighth Jewish, you need to stop identifying as Jewish, because if you are still identifying as that, you are still clinging to that identity.

00:45:31.578 --> 00:45:47.598
And again, that identity is intimately linked with the wickedness of rejecting Christ, calling down that curse upon yourself, and being part of that people, that foundational identity is rejecting and blaspheming Christ.

00:45:47.598 --> 00:45:54.258
There is no way you can continue to identify as that and have truly converted to Christianity.

00:45:54.258 --> 00:46:02.918
It's one of the reasons we went through in the Septuagint series, and we are looking at the history of Jews who have converted or supposedly converted.

00:46:02.918 --> 00:46:04.818
In most cases, it was a false conversion.

00:46:05.598 --> 00:46:13.478
But the ones who truly converted basically immediately went to the authorities and said, Do you have any idea what these Jews are doing in your territories, in your lands?

00:46:13.478 --> 00:46:17.238
Do you have any idea what these people are doing, how evil and wicked it is?

00:46:17.238 --> 00:46:18.978
That's a true conversion.

00:46:18.978 --> 00:46:26.638
It's a fundamentally different thing from just professing with the mouth and then doing nothing.

00:46:26.638 --> 00:46:31.478
Because there are plenty of conversos in history, there have been vanishingly few who have truly converted.

00:46:32.818 --> 00:46:40.238
And so, yes, there is a particular issue that is represented there with regard to Jewish converts to Christianity.

00:46:40.238 --> 00:46:53.078
And I think we all recognize that, because we have seen many, even recently, high-profile supposed converts to Christianity who have stabbed Christians in the back the first opportunity they had.

00:46:53.078 --> 00:46:58.338
And so, this goes back perhaps to the issue of faith and works.

00:46:58.338 --> 00:47:00.018
Is it living faith?

00:47:00.018 --> 00:47:01.158
Is it producing good works?

00:47:01.738 --> 00:47:05.038
Or is it producing no good works and rotten fruit?

00:47:05.038 --> 00:47:06.798
Because then it's a false conversion.

00:47:09.638 --> 00:47:13.518
Thoughts on the alliance between Germany and Japan in World War II.

00:47:13.518 --> 00:47:19.038
Why did Japan not open a second front for the Soviet Union from the East?

00:47:19.038 --> 00:47:21.978
What alliances are wise for a Christian nation?

00:47:21.978 --> 00:47:27.898
I think I will probably comment on that one next time, because it's sort of a broad topic.

00:47:27.898 --> 00:47:33.998
The short answer for Japan is they just didn't have the manpower and the fuel, they couldn't have done it.

00:47:33.998 --> 00:47:35.918
It would not have been a very successful campaign.

00:47:35.918 --> 00:47:41.358
They were already very much overstretched, overtaxed at that point in the war.

00:47:44.378 --> 00:47:46.658
What is my favorite Lord of the Rings movie?

00:47:46.658 --> 00:47:50.678
I don't know that I necessarily have one.

00:47:50.678 --> 00:47:54.938
Woe is the one who watches more movies and things, and this one always surprises people.

00:47:54.938 --> 00:48:02.778
Not that he watches more, but when people ask me questions about pop culture, just how little I know tends to surprise people.

00:48:02.778 --> 00:48:12.198
So if we are ever doing a game, a quiz at a pub or whatever, you need someone else who knows pop culture because I am going to get them all wrong.

00:48:19.423 --> 00:48:20.983
When confirmed, I chose St.

00:48:20.983 --> 00:48:22.483
Michael as my patron saint.

00:48:22.483 --> 00:48:27.603
Why would the church offer a figure in the Bible with little to no information on him?

00:48:27.603 --> 00:48:33.423
There are many figures in the Bible with very little information, and some of them are very important.

00:48:33.423 --> 00:48:35.903
I mean, Melchizedek.

00:48:35.903 --> 00:48:40.883
It says that Christ is a priest after the order of Melchizedek.

00:48:40.883 --> 00:48:47.783
Melchizedek appears from nowhere, brings out wine and bread, and then disappears into the ether.

00:48:47.783 --> 00:48:48.743
He's still pretty important.

00:48:49.223 --> 00:48:54.503
He's very important to the book of Hebrew, certainly, and the arguments presented therein.

00:48:54.503 --> 00:49:13.623
So, I don't think that just because someone, some individual has very little airtime, as it were, in scripture, means that we can't hold that individual in high esteem, and even have, I don't believe in patron saints, of course, because I'm a Lutheran, not a Roman Catholic, but with regard to St.

00:49:13.623 --> 00:49:15.163
Michael, it has always been held that St.

00:49:15.163 --> 00:49:20.123
Michael is basically the protector of the Christian Church.

00:49:20.123 --> 00:49:28.843
And incidentally, I think there's possibly a wrinkle there, this perhaps harkens back to the previous question.

00:49:28.843 --> 00:49:32.543
Historically, if you look at the pages of scripture, when it speaks of St.

00:49:32.543 --> 00:49:43.343
Michael, he is the angel responsible for the protection of Old Testament Israel, but when you get to the New Testament, he's described as the protector of the Church.

00:49:43.343 --> 00:49:55.263
Now, that's not inconsistent, of course, because you have a large part of the Church in a certain period of time in the Old Testament being Old Testament Israel.

00:49:55.263 --> 00:50:03.003
Now, you have a difference, of course, between the nation of Old Testament Israel and the believers who were a subset of that nation.

00:50:03.003 --> 00:50:13.483
I'm not going to get into that in depth right now, but if you look at what happened there, the Jews lost their archangel.

00:50:13.963 --> 00:50:27.543
They lost their national angel, because if you have the national angel of Old Testament Israel, as Saint Michael, and then he is the angel of the church, well, that means they don't have one anymore.

00:50:27.543 --> 00:50:31.163
And the reason for that is what they did in Pilate's courtyard.

00:50:31.163 --> 00:50:34.503
They chose a different angel as their national angel.

00:50:34.503 --> 00:50:35.723
They chose Satan.

00:50:35.723 --> 00:50:38.943
So they still have one, but it's not Saint Michael.

00:50:38.943 --> 00:50:45.103
So, no, I think that Saint Michael is a great symbol to use for the church, because he is the protector of the church.

00:50:45.103 --> 00:50:48.763
It's very clear where scripture speaks of him in that role.

00:50:48.763 --> 00:50:55.723
And so, no, I have no problem with Saint Michael, even if he's only mentioned a handful of times and not particularly in depth.

00:51:05.213 --> 00:51:11.353
I'm only about 17% ethnically German, but I do feel a strong connection to that heritage as a white American.

00:51:11.353 --> 00:51:16.573
Is it inauthentic to think of myself as a German American despite not being very German?

00:51:17.793 --> 00:51:22.833
Well, you can always just say you're Germanic, because that is broadly true.

00:51:22.833 --> 00:51:32.373
That's basically all of Western Europe, because I've mentioned it before, but you have a number of large divisions among the sons of Japheth.

00:51:32.373 --> 00:51:38.373
You have the Germanics, and then you can include the Nordics in that or not, if you want to separate them out.

00:51:38.373 --> 00:51:45.053
You have the Slavics, the Italics, and it's basically, you can use whatever term you want for the Southern Europeans.

00:51:45.053 --> 00:51:49.793
I know that if I say Italics, the Spanish are going to object, and if I say something else, then the Italians will object.

00:51:49.793 --> 00:51:53.833
But you basically have Southern, Western, Eastern.

00:51:53.833 --> 00:51:56.573
Those are the big divisions of the sons of Japheth.

00:51:56.573 --> 00:52:01.013
And so if you are German and Dutch and English, you're Germanic.

00:52:01.013 --> 00:52:06.153
There's nothing wrong with saying that you are particularly attached to your German heritage.

00:52:06.153 --> 00:52:16.573
You should feel strongly about your other heritage as well, because if you're 17% German and 80% English, you should have some attachment to your English ancestry.

00:52:16.573 --> 00:52:19.673
They are part of who and what you are.

00:52:19.673 --> 00:52:47.453
And in the case specifically, of course, for Americans, we're still sort of forming up, firming up our national culture, our national racial identity, because we are a mixture of a number of different things, because we are, we're basically sort of a reunification of almost exclusively the Western, but with some Southern and Eastern as well, European sons of Japheth.

00:52:47.453 --> 00:52:53.093
And so we are a Germanic nation, but we do certainly have that Celtic admixture.

00:52:53.093 --> 00:53:01.993
We have a number of Italians who came over and have sort of blended into the population over the last half century, century or so.

00:53:03.253 --> 00:53:12.133
So in the US context, there is some complication there, but no, I don't think there's any problem with identifying with your Germanic heritage.

00:53:12.133 --> 00:53:22.993
So go ahead and say that you're a German American, but don't denigrate your English and Scottish ancestry as well, because that's certainly part of who and what you are.

00:53:23.253 --> 00:53:28.493
I am majority German, but I also have 12, 13% Scottish.

00:53:28.493 --> 00:53:31.413
And so I recognize that is also part of who and what I am.

00:53:31.413 --> 00:53:33.213
That's part of my history.

00:53:33.213 --> 00:53:35.453
I can't ignore that.

00:53:35.453 --> 00:53:37.613
And so I'm not going to denigrate the Scots.

00:53:37.613 --> 00:53:42.093
I'll make some jokes, of course, because I think that's part of the fun of it.

00:53:42.093 --> 00:53:48.793
But recognize that you are all of those things at once.

00:53:48.793 --> 00:53:55.433
So yes, you're a German American, but you're also a Scottish American, a British American, a Swedish American.

00:53:55.433 --> 00:53:58.913
I saw the follow up there in the chat.

00:53:58.913 --> 00:54:05.873
So no, there's nothing wrong with saying that you recognize that you have that Germanic, that German heritage and celebrating it.

00:54:05.873 --> 00:54:06.793
That's perfectly fine.

00:54:14.712 --> 00:54:16.772
Does God see the future?

00:54:16.772 --> 00:54:20.692
Does this present any problem with original sin or culpability of God?

00:54:20.692 --> 00:54:25.672
This one comes up a lot, obviously, historically, particularly.

00:54:25.672 --> 00:54:39.292
It's the question of the difference between prescience, pre-knowledge, foreknowledge, whatever term you want to use for it, and sort of a hard form of predestination or determinism.

00:54:39.292 --> 00:54:42.472
God knows the future, God knows all things.

00:54:43.632 --> 00:54:47.452
God does not dictate all things that will happen.

00:54:47.452 --> 00:54:49.672
He permits things to happen.

00:54:49.672 --> 00:54:51.212
He permitted Satan to fall.

00:54:51.212 --> 00:54:54.652
He permitted Adam to refuse to rebuke Satan.

00:54:54.652 --> 00:54:57.612
He permitted Eve to grasp the fruit.

00:54:57.612 --> 00:55:02.192
That does not make God responsible for those things.

00:55:02.192 --> 00:55:04.732
Again, it does mean that he permitted them.

00:55:04.732 --> 00:55:11.132
So a good sort of analogy that we can use in illustration would be how parents interact with their children.

00:55:11.952 --> 00:55:17.312
You don't always stop your children from doing absolutely every stupid thing they are going to do.

00:55:17.312 --> 00:55:30.412
You stop them from some of the worst things, and so there are certainly plenty of times in your life where God has stopped you, almost certainly from doing something particularly bad or dumb, but he's not going to stop you from doing everything.

00:55:30.412 --> 00:55:33.812
He's going to let you learn some of your lessons the hard way.

00:55:33.812 --> 00:55:39.132
So God's foreknowledge does not dictate the outcomes, because we have free will.

00:55:40.372 --> 00:55:45.192
And this is one of the reasons that I am a staunch philosophical proponent of free will.

00:55:45.192 --> 00:55:51.212
Because if you don't believe in free will, ultimately, you have to assign evil to God.

00:55:51.212 --> 00:55:53.572
And that's obviously philosophically incoherent.

00:55:53.572 --> 00:55:55.132
You can't do that.

00:55:55.132 --> 00:56:04.352
So it is the free will of created beings that is the source of evil, which is to say it's the source of turning away from God.

00:56:04.352 --> 00:56:07.532
Because evil doesn't have any actual substance of itself.

00:56:07.632 --> 00:56:09.352
It's not an actual thing.

00:56:09.352 --> 00:56:16.512
It is a rejection, corruption, a destruction of the good, the beautiful and the true.

00:56:16.512 --> 00:56:26.052
And so when a free will of a created being chooses to turn away from God, it is turning away from that which is good.

00:56:26.052 --> 00:56:31.632
God didn't cause it in the sense that we use cause in modern parlance.

00:56:31.632 --> 00:56:38.952
I'm not talking specifically at the different forms of causation in philosophy, because obviously, you're talking about final cause and things like that.

00:56:40.132 --> 00:56:52.952
You can say that God caused sin, but that is a very specific philosophical sense of cause, and it is going to be heard wrong by basically everyone, because it's not the way we use cause in everyday speech.

00:56:52.952 --> 00:56:56.752
God is not, in everyday speech, the cause of sin.

00:56:56.752 --> 00:56:59.652
It is the will of free creatures.

00:56:59.652 --> 00:57:01.672
It is our will that is the source of sin.

00:57:02.352 --> 00:57:11.432
And so, no, God's foreknowledge does not cause sin, and it doesn't make him culpable for sin, because he gave us freedom.

00:57:11.432 --> 00:57:19.272
Because obviously the only alternative would be to make us robots, automata, and that's not what he wanted to do.

00:57:19.272 --> 00:57:21.672
He did that to some degree with certain things.

00:57:21.672 --> 00:57:25.012
Plants don't have free will, but human beings do.

00:57:25.012 --> 00:57:33.252
So, no, foreknowledge and sin do not combine to make God the moral agent responsible for sin.

00:57:41.328 --> 00:57:43.828
Let me pull up another question here.

00:57:52.559 --> 00:58:06.159
The frequent recurring question here, what are those who are sort of abstracting out the question here a little bit from the specific one, but what are those who are mixed race supposed to do?

00:58:06.159 --> 00:58:15.479
And this is one of those questions that does not have sort of a one size fits all answer because it is going to be fact dependent.

00:58:15.479 --> 00:58:17.999
You know, what is the mix?

00:58:17.999 --> 00:58:19.059
What is the percentage?

00:58:19.859 --> 00:58:28.239
Because if you are half Russian and half English, does that matter that much?

00:58:28.239 --> 00:58:46.739
It does because you're sort of torn between two nations that are very different because Eastern Europe and Western Europe are certainly different, but it's nowhere near as big of a problem, and you can certainly live your life without any real conflict there as being half Russian and half Ugandan.

00:58:46.739 --> 00:58:48.559
That's going to cause you more trouble.

00:58:48.999 --> 00:58:53.999
You are going to have more difficulty because you are truly torn between two different worlds.

00:58:53.999 --> 00:58:57.739
Those are two vastly different races, two vastly different peoples.

00:58:58.899 --> 00:59:04.459
So generally speaking, the best thing you can do is pick.

00:59:04.459 --> 00:59:11.179
You're going to have to pick one of those sides as it were, and you're going to be that.

00:59:11.179 --> 00:59:19.199
You're going to live your life as that, marry into it, have children that are that, and continue down that line.

00:59:19.199 --> 00:59:21.299
It's the best thing you can do.

00:59:21.299 --> 00:59:29.779
And it's one of those instances, one of those cases, where there is no easy answer, because sometimes there are no good answers.

00:59:29.779 --> 00:59:37.479
There are times where all we have are imperfect options, which is most of the time in a fallen world.

00:59:37.479 --> 00:59:40.239
Granted, of course, remember, these are problems for this life.

00:59:40.239 --> 00:59:44.019
You get to the next life, these problems don't exist in paradise.

00:59:44.019 --> 00:59:49.979
In paradise, there are no problems, there's no fighting between or among the races.

00:59:49.979 --> 00:59:57.979
You know, we don't have the issues that we have here in time, because crime isn't a thing, murder isn't a thing, rape isn't a thing.

00:59:57.979 --> 01:00:05.439
All these problems we have here that have a very strong racial component aren't present in paradise.

01:00:05.439 --> 01:00:11.039
So, but we need to get there, which is sort of the most important part of this.

01:00:11.039 --> 01:00:21.939
And those who ignore the issues regarding race and things like that simply decrease the odds of more men and women getting into paradise.

01:00:21.939 --> 01:00:38.499
Because in ignoring those issues, they create a false world, a false worldview, and they really set men up to believe in an idolatrous sense of these things and reject Christ in the process.

01:00:38.499 --> 01:00:41.139
But I've sort of gone off on a tangent a little bit there.

01:00:42.319 --> 01:00:45.819
The central point is you're going to have to pick.

01:00:45.819 --> 01:00:51.599
If you are half African and half European, you're probably going to have to pick the African side.

01:00:51.599 --> 01:01:01.979
Because the simple reality of it is that admixture is going to make you closer to the African side than to the European side.

01:01:01.979 --> 01:01:05.819
And I think we all watch that play out, day in and day out.

01:01:07.199 --> 01:01:14.979
Now, we watch it play out many times, and certainly a particularly pernicious way in which you have those who pick the African side and then hate whites.

01:01:14.979 --> 01:01:16.219
Don't do that.

01:01:18.139 --> 01:01:20.079
But there is a difficulty there.

01:01:20.079 --> 01:01:27.959
I recognize that, of course, because you're going to feel a little bit of resentment against at least one of your parents.

01:01:27.959 --> 01:01:38.979
And this is one of the reasons that we've been so clear and we have taught on this issue and why we're willing to say things in Stone Quire and elsewhere and why I'm willing to say things here, that make others very uncomfortable.

01:01:38.979 --> 01:01:40.879
They don't want to say them.

01:01:40.879 --> 01:01:50.479
Because the reality is, when you produce children who are miscegenated, who are mixed, you are creating problems for them.

01:01:50.479 --> 01:01:53.119
Now, you're creating problems for your society as well.

01:01:53.119 --> 01:01:55.379
You're creating problems for yourself.

01:01:55.379 --> 01:02:03.219
But they're not as personal, because you're not the one who is now torn between two worlds in yourself.

01:02:03.439 --> 01:02:05.999
That's a fundamentally different thing.

01:02:05.999 --> 01:02:15.219
So one of the reasons we are so clear on this, so willing to address the issue, is we don't want men to have that problem in their lives.

01:02:15.219 --> 01:02:17.299
And it's completely avoidable.

01:02:17.299 --> 01:02:19.079
It's not something that has to happen.

01:02:19.079 --> 01:02:35.979
We don't have to make life harder for ourselves and for those around us, particularly just because we happen to have a fetish, which is often the case here, which makes it so much worse when people are willing to destroy their lives and others as well because they have a sexual fetish.

01:02:35.979 --> 01:02:38.139
That's not a good reason to make any decision.

01:02:38.139 --> 01:02:53.099
Certainly not a reason to make as important of a decision as having children and erasing your family line, your racial line that has carried down to you again, fourth commandment, carried down to you for thousands of years.

01:02:53.099 --> 01:03:05.599
So the short answer is the best thing you can do is pick which one you're going to be and go all in, because your parents have admittedly made your life more difficult than it would otherwise be.

01:03:05.599 --> 01:03:09.619
All you can do is the best with what you have been given.

01:03:09.619 --> 01:03:15.919
You can't make a perfect world, you can't perfect yourself here in time, because that wholly belongs to God.

01:03:15.919 --> 01:03:20.619
We can only do the best that we can with what we have been given here in time.

01:03:35.765 --> 01:03:41.445
I think I probably got most of the questions from the chat.

01:03:41.445 --> 01:03:49.885
I'm sure that I missed a few in the scroll, but someone asked, what are the objective standards by which you define human?

01:03:49.885 --> 01:03:54.965
That is sort of a long and complicated answer.

01:03:54.965 --> 01:04:01.525
I did answer that one in large part in a thread, a really series of threads, unfortunately.

01:04:01.525 --> 01:04:11.105
It's not a very neat thread, but a series of question and answers on X, because I believe that was Jeff Durbin, is that his name?

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Anyway, he asked me some questions because I offered him the opportunity, and one of the ones that came up was the image of God and things like that.

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And so I did answer it on there, but sort of the short answer is that there are two different answers, because really this is getting, the core of the question here is the image of God and man.

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And there are two ways I answer that.

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And this is not just the way that I answer it, I want to be very clear on that.

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This is also the church fathers and many orthodox, again, lower case O, theologians have answered in this way.

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There is the binary, which is man is made in the image of God, period.

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But that is not sort of an extensive definition of the image of God, it's just, yes, man is in the image of God with no real deeper examination or extension of what the image itself actually is.

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And then the second one is that deeper examination.

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This is particularly found in Augustine and some other church fathers, but the image of God in man is also related to man's attributes, because part of it is man's ability to image God to creation.

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And so that would be things like our capacity for beauty, our capacity for truth, intelligence is going to play a role, emotional capacity is going to play a role, our appreciation of beauty.

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There's a whole bunch of things that make up what it is to be a human being.

01:05:50.485 --> 01:05:51.845
And of course, we recognize this.

01:05:51.845 --> 01:06:01.005
We all know that to be a human being, you have all of these various attributes, and some men have more than others, and some men have less.

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The one that always comes up is intelligence, but it's not the only one.

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It's just the one over which everyone wants to fight, because IQ makes men uncomfortable.

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That's just the reality of it.

01:06:11.905 --> 01:06:20.365
But with regard to what it means to be a human being, then can you say that there's sort of a binary?

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You are or you aren't?

01:06:21.425 --> 01:06:22.365
Yes.

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Are you a member of the species Homo sapiens?

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If you are, you're a human being.

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That's the binary.

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But then you can also give the answer in the same way of, well, what are the attributes of a human being?

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If you have an IQ of 100, your average, European average, for IQ, is that different from having an IQ of, let's go extreme, 45?

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The answer is absolutely yes.

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Is the person with the IQ of 45 less human in a very real way from the person with an IQ of 100?

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Yes.

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That's absolutely true.

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If you have no sense of beauty, are you less human than someone who has a refined sense of beauty?

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I think the answer again is yes.

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And so, you have two different answers to that question.

01:07:14.065 --> 01:07:19.065
Are you human if you're just a homo sapiens, if you're just a member of the species?

01:07:19.065 --> 01:07:20.945
The answer is yes.

01:07:20.945 --> 01:07:23.965
But can you be more or less human within that?

01:07:23.965 --> 01:07:25.885
The answer again is yes.

01:07:29.405 --> 01:07:32.685
Do animals have souls and go to heaven when they die?

01:07:32.685 --> 01:07:46.345
Scripture is pretty much silent on that, but I think that you can answer it theologically and philosophically, because all things that are created by God are good, and the destruction of that which is good is evil.

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And so, I don't think that God is going to destroy the animals and everything like that.

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And it also speaks in Scripture of the renewal of all things, because Christ came to redeem all things, not just to redeem human beings.

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He came to redeem creation, because remember, it's creation that is groaning together in the birth pangs of that which is to come.

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And so, no, there will be animals and plants and all those things in paradise.

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And I happen to think that he's going to take the ones he created and perfect them, and they will still be there.

01:08:18.485 --> 01:08:22.945
So yes, I think the sort of underlying question there, will you get to see your dog again?

01:08:22.945 --> 01:08:26.245
I think yes, I think that is definitely the case.

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What would heaven look like?

01:08:31.425 --> 01:08:34.865
I have a friend of mine who had a still birth a month ago.

01:08:36.265 --> 01:08:41.965
The question there is, do those who die in infancy go to heaven?

01:08:41.965 --> 01:08:44.845
And there are two answers to that.

01:08:44.845 --> 01:08:46.185
I'm going to be completely blunt.

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I'm not going to sugarcoat it.

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For those who are born to unbelievers, we have no promises.

01:08:53.565 --> 01:08:55.005
We have no word from scripture.

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We have nothing saying that they will be saved because it's very clear, and sin did my mother conceive me.

01:09:00.985 --> 01:09:11.565
And so, we don't have hope in that case, but we also don't have absolute proof, absolute conclusion from scripture that all those who are born to unbelievers go to hell.

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We don't know.

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We leave that to the wisdom, mercy, and justice of God.

01:09:17.925 --> 01:09:22.665
With regard to believers and their children, we have absolute comfort.

01:09:22.665 --> 01:09:34.325
And the reason for that is there are a few places in scripture where it's very clear that when the children of believers die, they go to paradise.

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The best example for this is with David and Bathsheba, incidentally.

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You have the first son of David and Bathsheba dies.

01:09:44.705 --> 01:09:49.585
God kills him as punishment for the wickedness of David and Bathsheba.

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But David, who is a prophet of God, who is speaking in the Spirit, who is speaking what will go into the pages of scripture, when his son dies, says, he will not return to me, but I will go to him.

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There are only two ways you can conclude that that means either that David's saying he's going to hell, and his son is there, or David is saying that he will one day see his son again in paradise.

01:10:14.905 --> 01:10:19.145
And I think it's very obvious that he's saying he will see his son in paradise.

01:10:19.145 --> 01:10:24.605
And so his son died in infancy, very early in infancy, but he will see him again.

01:10:24.705 --> 01:10:31.865
So we have complete assurance and comfort when the children of believers die, that they are in paradise.

01:10:31.865 --> 01:10:39.305
And notably, his son died before he was circumcised, before he was given the mark of the covenant.

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So even for children who die before they're baptized, we have assurance that they are in paradise.

01:10:45.485 --> 01:10:49.825
So for a stillbirth, miscarriage, anything like that, you will get to see that child one day.

01:10:59.200 --> 01:11:09.100
I did not see the interview with Piers Morgan and Tucker Carlson, so I have no opinion of that, other than Piers Morgan is rather obnoxious.

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Evil and obnoxious, but mostly obnoxious.

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For how long do you see the Eastern Orthodox Online Fad lasting?

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How do you see its end precipitating?

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I think that it is similar to Neo-Paganism in terms of the reason that some men, few notably, there are very few of them, despite how loud they are online, but I think that it has the same sort of force behind it, pushing men in that direction as Neo-Paganism.

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They go one of the two ways.

01:11:47.480 --> 01:11:53.120
Granted, there are some who just become apostates, but they do it because of the weakness of Christianity.

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The churches are so weak and in fact, in many cases wicked these days, that you have these men who are looking for anything to which they can cling.

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And if something pops up and happens to look like it's traditional or strong or impressive, like it's doing something, they're going to cling to that.

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And you see men doing that with regard to Neo-Paganism, and you see men doing that with regard to Eastern orthodoxy.

01:12:24.040 --> 01:12:56.260
And so I think as the older, weak leadership die off and retire and become irrelevant, to go back to Doug Wilson and James White perhaps, but as they are removed, as they simply age out, whatever it happens to be, the churches will continue the rightward shift, continue returning to actual Christianity, and these men will come back to the church, because they recognize that strength matters, that power matters, and I don't think they're totally wrong on that.

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I'm never going to condemn them fully for that.

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What they have chosen to do is wrong, because what they should be doing is helping those of us who are fighting the fight to restore the churches, but they have the right impulse to believe that there should be some strength of force, some strength of will, behind that which is true.

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And it does not look like many of the churches have that today.

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That's why they're going that direction.

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And as the churches are brought back into the Christian fold, as if we have to, better churches are started with actual adherence to scripture, adherence to historical Christianity, not the nonsense we have today.

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As that happens, as that continues to happen, as that intensifies, those men will rejoin the churches.

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And so, I'm not particularly worried about them, because I know that they will come back to the fold, but I would really prefer they came back to the fold sooner rather than later, because we could use their help.

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And I don't want them to die while they're off in the wilderness, because that's apostasy.

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So I can't give an exact timeline, because I don't know, but the next 10, 20 years, I think that it'll fizzle out, because it's just, it has no staying power.

01:14:16.180 --> 01:14:18.520
Neither one of those groups has staying power.

01:14:21.060 --> 01:14:22.460
What is your opinion of Adam Green?

01:14:22.460 --> 01:14:23.660
I had a debate with him.

01:14:23.660 --> 01:14:28.000
He is a deliberate subverter, not misled.

01:14:28.000 --> 01:14:32.220
He is doing what he is doing out of evil in his heart.

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He's certainly making some money off of it, and of course, that's always going to be part of it for certain men.

01:14:40.060 --> 01:14:41.360
They're going to be incentivized by that.

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Most men are incentivized by money to some degree.

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We all have to eat, you know.

01:14:45.860 --> 01:14:50.480
But, no, I think that he is primarily...

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His primary impetus is wickedness.

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He is deliberately subverting.

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He is leading men astray.

01:14:56.580 --> 01:14:59.920
And there are a number of neo-pagans like that, unfortunately.

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There are some evil men in that camp.

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There are, like I just said, some men who are just very deceived, led astray, who are frustrated with the church.

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But I'm talking about the men who are in positions of leadership or power in that camp.

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Some of them are wicked men.

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Not all.

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Some of them are just deeply deceived, but some of them are doing it out of a desire to see things destroyed, because they are just fueled by a particularly nasty form of hatred of Christianity.

01:15:33.640 --> 01:15:39.320
And again, I recognize why some of them look at the church and say, I want no part of that.

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Because if the only churches you ever see have the rainbow flag and the BLM flag and all that nonsense to understate the matter, then of course you don't want to be part of that as a white man.

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Because they're saying they hate you.

01:15:51.040 --> 01:15:53.020
That's what both of those flags mean.

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Particularly, well, really both of those flags, but then you also have the trans flag and all that stuff.

01:15:58.340 --> 01:15:59.700
They're just saying they hate white people.

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That's what all of those mean ultimately.

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The foundation of those worldviews is hatred of the white race.

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And so, of course, they don't want to be part of that, and I don't blame them.

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But they are drawing the wrong conclusion, because you have to have a wider view of things.

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You have to have an historical view of things, not just this microcosm that is the post 1960s degeneration of everything.

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And as I pointed out many times before, the churches collapsed last.

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Everything else had already been conquered by the time the churches started to fall away.

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But you can't just look at that, because European history didn't start in 1945.

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And the church has been around a lot longer than these modern churches that don't actually hold to Christianity, that have rejected Christendom.

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So they've drawn the wrong conclusion, they've gone down the wrong path.

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But many will come back to the fold, despite the evil men in their ranks, deliberately trying to harm them and others.

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See if there are other questions here.

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I think I have probably answered most of the questions here in the chat.

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If I missed any questions, go ahead and add them to the forum or elsewhere.

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I don't know that I will necessarily read through the chat again to find them, but if I missed your question, it's an important question, you really want an answer to it, then go to the forum and submit that.

01:17:38.883 --> 01:17:39.943
That's the best way to do it.

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So I guess I'm sort of wrapping up now.

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I will add a link to that in the description and elsewhere.

01:17:48.823 --> 01:17:56.143
That is the best way to submit the questions for this, because that way, it makes it easier for me to know the question is there.

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I can organize them, I can link them in the show notes, so people can find them in the future, which is the purpose of this, so that I can link to things that I have answered already, instead of answering them many times.

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And so, others can do the same as well.

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And so, they'll be searchable, because I will have transcripts that will be searchable, and so you can find my answers, you can find a specific word, whatever happens to be.

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I think that's probably the best way to do this, and sort of the whole point, because it's not just an ephemeral sort of thing.

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These are questions that endure, these are things that have been asked for centuries in many cases, and sometimes it's nice just to have someone take the time and give the verbal answer to the question, instead of say, go read these 87 books, or whatever happens to be.

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So thank you for your time, and thank you also for submitting the question, for those of you who did, particularly to those of you who submitted on the forum, because again, that makes it much easier for me, and again, is just the nice way to do this.

01:19:03.663 --> 01:19:14.783
So, happy Thanksgiving to those of you who are American, and of course, happy Thanksgiving to the rest of you as well, and other parts of the world, even if it's not your particular national holiday.

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I know that you have them on other days, particularly Canada's in October, for instance.

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But happy Thanksgiving to all of you.

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Thank you for your time.

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Thank you for the questions.

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May God bless you, and may you have a wonderful rest of your evening.

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And I will see you all next week.

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God bless.