Transcription
Contemporary compendium question. How do you answer people that say the altar to the unknown god in Athens that Paul writes about is evidence that Muslims, Hindus, etc. all unknowingly worship the Christian God in their own way?
Yeah. I'm waiting to see which cardinal gets sent to Pakistan to tell them that Muslims and Hindus worship the same God and that it's the Catholic God. That should go over really well in Pakistan. Um.
Yeah. That's rough. So yeah. Um, well, I mean, what do I say to those people? I say that's dumb.
Yeah. Because that's wildly out of that's wildly out of context, right? Um, so we're we're dealing with Athens Greor Roman paganism. Really Roman paganism. They believed in regional and local deities, right? We have this view of like this pantheon that's like the Justice League or something of these like superpowered beings with different powers, you know, like these 12 guys, right? Um, who sit on top of Mount Olympus. That's not what they believed at all, right? They they'd been to the top of Mount Olympus. It's not that tall. They knew there weren't guys in togas hanging out there. Like there were regionally. So if you were in Athens, you're worshiping Athena and Heestus. Those were your local gods, right? And if you moved and you lived somewhere else, you'd worship Athena and Heesus from where you were from and you'd worship whoever the new local gods were, right? So if you've got a cosmopolitan city like Athens where you have travelers coming in from all over the world, right? Um, they would have shrines to all these different gods from all these different places for travelers from those places to come and sacrifice. And then they had this catchall one, right? The god we don't know about, right? So if you couldn't find yours, you could go there, right?
It covers the bases. Perfect.
Right. And so St. Paul just uses that as like a launching off point sermon illustration, right? To say, "Yes, I'm here to talk to you about the god you don't know about." Right? And and that's where the connection to that inscription ends. He just he uses it as a jumping off point. Right? That's like if I start a homaly by saying I saw this TV show this week, like I'm not saying that TV show is like canonical or part of Orthodox tradition or something or making any theological point about whatsoever. I'm using it as a jumping off point for what I'm going to say. Right? And then St. Paul proceeds in Acts 17 to teach them about a very different type of God than any God they had ever considered before. Right. He's not trying to say, "Oh, yes, add this one to your list."
Yeah.
That's the exact opposite of what St. Paul is trying to say. And he's not trying to say what like Athena or Hes or one of those other ones is actually the same god as the God of Israel. Right. So, I could see trying to use that and failing miserably with the Hindus. I don't know how that would even work with the Muslims. If I was going to try and do that with the Muslims, I'd use more like uh St. Fini, the Samaritan woman at the well, where Christ says, "You worship who you do not know, and we worship who we know." And try and say, "Well, the Muslims are worshiping the true God. They just don't know him." I try and play that thing. I'm steelmanning here. That's the best argument I could come up with. It's not good, but it's the best one I could come up. Right. And even that doesn't work because Islam is postchristianity.
Yeah.
Right. Whereas Christ is there referring to the Samaritan pre-Christian tradition.
Well, what they try to do because I've I don't know if you're familiar too much with the channel, but uh I I was doing a bunch of Vatican 2 debates not that long ago. Well, at this point, maybe it was like six months ago, so I guess it was you in YouTube terms. That might be a long time ago. Uh, but I I debated uh Dr. Trent Doerty, that uh Catholic linguistics scholar guy um on this subject. I debated I debated a couple of different people, but in that particular debate, it was uh I mean, you kind of just see the absurdity of the position because you get them to affirm and say, "Well, if it's the same reference, what's the what's the line of delineation?" He's like, "There is no line." Like it's you know, like everybody kind of worshiped the same god at the end of it was basically where we got to because he was like, "Well, the Hindus worship the same god. He said the Zorastans worship the same god. The Muslims worship the same god. The um uh the the Jews worship the same god." So on and so forth, even, you know, after and he's like, "Even if they reject Christ explicitly, they still worship the same." So at the end of it, you get to the get to the end, it's like, "Well, what what's the line of delineation?" There isn't one. It's just like kind of everybody's kind of doing their own thing. Uh, but the the line of reasoning that I give them often in these debates, which I'm holding off on debates for obvious reasons, uh, now, but.
Probably, which is good. The position you've taken with the channel and stuff is very respectable.
I I would I would like to try to be responsible with the uh this guy says Dr. Trick did amazing. Did you watch Did you watch the debate? He literally So I don't know if you saw Did you see the the debate?
No, I didn't. It got it got to the point where he got so angry and I was being very nice. I'm not I'm not a mean debater. I say things very plainly, straightforward. I'm not I don't get like uh frustrated, but I made a statement about his debate partner because we're talking about uh ecumenism within Vatican 2. And I was like, "Well, the fruits of radical ecumenism is he's he literally picked a debate partner that changed his name mid debate to bisexual atheist." So I just pointed out that he ch I'm like I'm like you are defending your doctrine Vatican 2 with a guy that his name is literally bisexual atheist right now. These are the fruits of radical humanism and he's freaks out. He literally he starts cursing me out saying I'm not a Christian. Cursing at me while calling me not a Christian. So that was that was how the debate ended up. So if you think that was an excellent debate ending, I don't.
Well, I mean, we're grading it on entertainment value.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. That was the most entertaining debate for sure. I think.
I don't know why I'm fuzzing out here on the camera. That's interesting.
It was too It was too entertaining. It just.
I look like an actor. One of those 50s romantic movies, right? With the soft lighting and the.
Oh. Um, the argument though. So they they get to they get to the same reference. They're like, "Oh, it's it's the same reference. It's the same reference." Okay. Well, his analogy is something like this. This is what he used. He said, "Well, you have you have Clark Kent. You have Superman. Um, so if he when he when he's got the glasses on already, okay."
Glasses off, right? So he was like, "Well, it's the same person whether or not he's got the glasses on or glasses off." I'm like, "Yeah, but what if he goes up to Lois and he's, you know, takes the glasses off or whatever, puts on the super suit." He says, "Oh, actually, I was thinking about Bizaro." Because that's more the case with the Muslims, right? They.
You know, it's not it's not like.
So what God is like disguising himself as like Vishnu?
Yeah. That's like this the thing like what.
Yeah, that was a mess.
Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's fascinating, too, because it's like the ultimate colonialism.
Like you're going to India and Pakistan and be like, "No, you guys actually worship my god."
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
You don't know it, you deny it, but it's true.
Yeah. Did uh did you see the recent I know I I want to wrap up here in a moment, but did you see that recent um we'll have to do this again. This was really fun.
Yeah.
Uh love to have you back on the show at some point, but um there was a recent document that was released by the Vatican uh dicastery for whatever was was saying something along the lines of uh they were they were congratulating the Hindus on their Diwali.
Festival or something and they were like they were like you're you're like earnest worship for God, capital G, you know.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
In the And it says at the tops in the spirit of Nostra Aetate.
Which I don't it's like uh you're trying to tell me that Vatican 2 extends to the Hindus worship the same god too. So.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. They got to send somebody to Pakistan. They've been killing each other over nothing.
Yeah. You were told it's the same guy. This is a misunderstanding. You know.
The Catholics can straighten all this out, right?
Yeah. That's it. That's it. Well, don't you know we got to get we gota this I I probably shouldn't say this, but I'll say it anyway. I feel like with the this papacy in particular, it's almost like very accelerationist. I I feel like I see a new crazy statement every single week. Have you noticed that or is it just me?
Yeah, it's so I'm I'm like I said, I'm in a 70% Roman Catholic area. We're getting lots of young Roman Catholic families.
Who just like.
Want to go to church, you know.
Yeah.
And and follow Christ and they don't understand what's happening and they want something that's not going to change.
Anytime soon, let alone week to week, you know.
Yeah.
Um and so yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's amaz So I I mean I was aware of how bad things were getting like we talked about William Lane Craig and Protestantism. Um like 10 years ago I was saying that within 50 years the Orthodox Church would be the only church that still affirmed the Nicene Creed.
Yeah.
I thought the Catholics would probably be the last hold out at least with their version. But now I don't know. Um.
Yeah, I'm not sure. It's it's honestly it's getting kind of scary in my opinion because I'm like uh you know I'm looking I'm looking at I I don't know because for for me even seeing like yeah I have disagreements with Roman Catholics. I just feel bad for a lot of them to be honest like the the especially.
Passion for the people.
Yes.
It's the institution that's collapsing and doing them wrong and abusing them.
Absolutely. I I see guys that, you know, I I like like Timothy Gordon having to sit there and, you know, defend the stuff or like Anthony Stein. I see him uh on on X. I actually like Anthony Stein's show, but he'll be like, "This is apostasy." Like, you know, talking about what Pope Leo said. I'm like, "Okay, I comment. I'm like, Anthony, if this is apostasy, what's what's the play?" You know.
When you know, are you getting aboard the ark or what? You know, that's just kind of like where I'm.