[music] one.

Hey fellow G&T, do of a selector spirituality with a twist. So we are doing a very very G&T thing. We are trying to do these education projects at time. That's part of our mission statement and we're doing a deep dive into understanding Christianity and really Christianity and sort of its history. Uh, and this little project is related to one of our other things we have going on, which is our version of project 2025. America, what the hell? Because America has got to has become this chaotic quasi authoritarian place or whatever terminology one wants to use. And uh, part of what we've been observing about this is there's a Christianity party problem as part of this. And uh there's this toxic version of Christianity associated with nationalism which is at least part of the problem. So part of our way of trying to talk about this since we like to educate on these things as much as we can do the best we can with it is to really talk about Christianity and maybe think about Christianity from a bigger perspect picture picture perspective. This topic is particularly uh uh related to what we're going to be trying to do today which is talking about this group of early Christians which are called the protoorthodox the people that will become the orthodox Christians and probably the people who are most directly kind of the forerunners of like the more authoritarian types of Christianity. But before we get into the deep parts of our project, uh if you could do all the things that people always ask you to do, like, subscribe, uh write a review, send an episode on to someone else, as Danielle always says, this is a labor of love for us and uh you know, we love doing what we're doing and uh any support you can give would uh obviously always be appreciated. Thank you so much. Otherwise, we're into it. Anything you want to say before we go, uh digging in deeper?

No, we're good.

I had two minor caveats. The first thing is that we've been trying to make the point that we're not trying to say in any way that all Christianities are bad. There are people who do that kind of thing and that is not what we're trying to do.

Right?

And then the other part is when you say Christianity, it's funny because I wrote it in my notes Christianity and the spell checker put like multiple red lines under it like that word doesn't exist,

you know.

But that is the right word because as we talked about in our previous episode, if you want to go and check it out, we did a couple of the other early branches of Christianity. this group called the Ebianites, this group called the Marcianites. And that's the right way to talk about it. There are these like different categories. And if you don't know about this, this is like probably not just a fascinating history to understand, but in terms of spirituality and probably even in terms of like trying to understand culture and the culture in the world that we live in, like just to see this is like I think a pretty powerful project. So, okay. Well, I guess we're going to talk about the Oh, the other thing I wanted to say about this, Daniel, you know, is the fact that there are these multiple Christianities. I suppose you could feel different ways about that. I think I was listening to one of the people who I was doing the backstory research with this and he has this idea that, you know, Christianity will fall apart if you sort of realize how unstable its history is. But I don't want to look at it that way. My sense of this is more that it's kind of a freeing thing in a way or can be seen that way that it gives you more freedom to choose whatever version of Christianity that you can relate to personally because there's lots of options then on the table. So I don't know. Do you agree with that in principle?

Yeah, I think if you want to look at it in that way. I mean it you might have to face the fact that there's no definitive real Jesus or real Christianity you know but it does and I mean obviously that depending on your view that can be painful in some ways you know but like it does open up the idea that you can choose a different spiritual adventure for yourself right because

well even if there

even you know even if there is a historical Christ there is not one particular view of him obviously not as can be seen in the New Testament. There's, you know, multiple apostles who write multiple stories about him all from different angles. So I I think, you know, on one hand, you know, there we can you can certainly have a debate on if there was a historical person. I you know, I I tend to think that there was, but it's less sort of important because his words haven't really, you know, haven't survived intact. They are memories, interpretations, you know, and that's what's survived intact. And so we're sort of getting a story of a story. And whenever you have that, regardless of whatever it is that you are talking about, whether it be a historical figure or something that happened the other week, you know, you're getting only one perspective. And then to take that singular perspective as if it's the only perspective and then to kind of dunk on other people who might have different perspectives is just being, you know, like logically fallible, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I kind of like to think of it as like different spiritual paths emerging out of either a real person or some kind of spiritual figure, however you want to think about that,

right? But different paths emerge out of that framework and then people take that in different directions and now that flur that goes down to our present day or something, right?

Yeah.

But like again I you know the other side of that is this idea that um you know the arguing over who's the real Jesus and who's the real Christians. Like I don't this has to stop at some time in humanity, right? Otherwise we're just going to go around these same [...] things like forever, you know? Like has to end at some point.

That's what's going to happen though. It's a delusion, you know, in the true Buddhist sense, this is delusion.

But even even in Buddhism, Eric, there's different schools, you know, there's different

You don't have to like fight to the death about it. That's the big difference. I think

you don't have to fight to the death, but in in in traditions, there's there's any tradition, any religion, any, you know, whatever, there's always going to have be some kind of purity sort of test. And that's one. And then the other one is the I don't know the maybe the battle for people's attention much like how I always say that the world is is after your attention now even watching this podcast you know.

Yeah.

And so the in the drive to garner people's attention you have to delineate yourself between the other viewpoints that are very close to yours by the way. So you're going to have to really highlight the differences and then drive the wedges in between those to show that you are the right one. People should follow you and they should donate to your cause and they should bring their friends to your congregation and they should show up to your things over and over again because you're the right one and not the other ones. You know, it's almost inherent in the uh battle for following.

Yeah, I know this is really kind of leads into like what we'll be talking about today, this proto orthodox question.

All right. I think when I think about like a nodal figure like whether there was a Jesus or not a Jesus obviously this creates a whole flourishing of spiritual past whether it was a Buddha [clears throat] or not a Buddha there's this whole explosion of spiritual paths

and you know I think what you're saying is true you know the uh the way like a Tibetan Buddhist tantric person thinks is way different than like a Thailand you know uh uh monk right who's in the terra tradition they're not thinking the same thing that I think the confict though you have to get out of this conflict and fight over what's the real this or the real that until we get out of that you know I know what you mean it feels like we're in a doom spiral like this will never end I hear what you're saying but like if you want to get to the spirituality of this from that point of view it's it's delusion and it has to break at some point hopefully right

but that's it I mean we want to get to the spirituality of it

I I don't think that like most people do I I I don't think so you know I know we've been having this conversation off podcast, but we'll bring it on here and we do talk about it on occasion. But this way of thinking, this way of being, you know, the the Dowist way, the the tantric way. It's different. I'm not saying it's better because that would be being logically fallible, right? Which I just said is right, not what we want to do. But it's different and it is not for everyone. And you have to kind of hold some things that are outside of the confines of society's norms uh very close to yourself so that you can you know see outside the box a little bit because what you're talking about is not only I was going to say merely but not only a matter of division within a particular viewpoint but it's division within one's own mind. It's division between one person and another. It's division between one group and another group. It's division between that one nation and another nation. It's it's duality. This is the this is the point. This is yoga. This is the the yin-yang or as the people call it here, yin and yang, you know, it's the masculine and feminine. This is both two sides of the same coin. But you cannot have the coin without either side. And so as we look to sort of use wisdom to transcend artificial barriers, not I don't think people are looking to do that. I really do feel like that brings people together and and removes division intentionally obviously, but that makes it less powerful in a sense because it moves the power away from the uh institution and puts the power in the person. But if you have empowered people, they don't need the institution anymore. It's there's there's no there's no real like drive to go to it because you're your own battery, you know, and now it's my choice to show up. And of course, somebody could argue and say, "Oh, well, it was always their choice to show up." Yes and no. If you're at least in my opinion, you're an independent practitioner of any tradition it doesn't matter or religion what or whatever or artist or something you know the the necessity that you have to seek guidance on a regular basis is not as high. I'm not saying that those people are better and of course we need community and things like this is a very important piece of of human existence but you can find your own answers if you search for them and if you know how and that makes um seeking outside answers from other people who are going to do the same thing that you can do much less important to you and that's damaging to the structures to the power structures

and it's obviously like it undermines authority and this is like perfect for like talking about the brother Orthodox.

Sure. [clears throat]

And the other part about that for me is if you want to talk about better um and I know we we have this thing where we don't want to say oh daoism is better than sufism or blah blah like we don't want to go down those roads because that never ends right.

Yeah.

And that's really like that's just wrong at the core. But the only thing I would say and this again goes to this discussion of this group that again we'll get to the proto orthodox. The way things can be better is you can leave space and freedom to allow different people to find their way. And that's I think where you can say one thing gets better than another. If your concept is I'm not going to leave other beings the space to find their way. I'm going to like impose my vision

upon these other don't share it. Well then you can say well that's not better. That's worse.

Right?

And that gets right into the heart of this question. So okay we'll do our little history on like what we're calling what is called by scholars of the field. We'll try to share what we know about this idea called the protoorthodox. Where does this language come from? So protoo meaning like before the orthodox and the orthodox becomes the name for the group that sort of wins out in the end in the whole story of early Christianity which we will try to share. Orthodox the terminology is interesting because orthodox means like right view. So it's the people who feel like they have the right view which already should ring some alarm bells you know if you're going to say we are the right view people. And then what this [clears throat] group does just to finish the language of it is they end up going after the heretics.

What the the the heresy people and you know like there's this term if you never heard it before called heresiologists

people whose specialy it was to go after heretics. So this is where this whole thing kind of comes out of. That word is so interesting based on what you were saying earlier Daniel because I jotted it down in my notes for this. That word heresy actually comes from a word apparently that means choice. So the idea was you had a choice and you made the wrong one. Therefore you're a heretic because you have the wrong view. But like linguistically that was so interesting to me especially as to what you were saying earlier because basically what it means linguistically speaking that you're going after the option of choice and you're going to hunt down and destroy choice. [snorts]

Yes. And I think for everything we do here, there's no spirituality if you hunt down choice and you kill choice.

So anyways, it's very telling language, I guess, if you, you know, like when you really kind of dig it apart

kind of wild and really fits into what you were saying earlier.

Yeah.

Okay. So, who are these protoodox folks? Well, I think a lot of the standard beliefs that we would recognize now as being Christianity kind of find their root back to these folks. So if you went through a list, it would be like divinity of Jesus. Again, we've seen groups of people like the Ebianites who didn't believe Jesus was a divine person. He was just a prophet who was like extending the teachings that were before him, but they didn't necessarily see him as more than a human. Um the idea of the Trinity, which we'll get to eventually talk about a little bit. They're supporters of the four gospels, so they put the the New Testament together in its final structure. Definitely as you were talking about earlier, Daniel, the authority of the church and you have to trace that back to Peter initially, right? I was raised Catholic. You know, you were we were both Catholic kids, right? So that was the big deal. The you know, the Holy Roman Eposc centered in Rome. I think I said that every week

in my youth, right, when I would do the creeds.

Um and so, you know, that whole thing. And it was interesting for me like thinking about this group because I was trying to like I was talking with some people about these episodes. I was going, "What did I think when I was Catholic?" You know, I was out with my son over the weekend watching some football games. Daniel and I were talking about that before. And we were watching the San Francisco 49ers play the Seattle Seahawks, which if you paid any attention to football at all, was a complete asskicking. So, there was nothing to watch.

And then my son was asking me about like what I believed when I was a kid about these religious things. Like, he's interested now. You know, he's 13 years old. He's asking these questions. And I was like, that's an interesting thing. What did I think? You know, u but obviously I was raised in this sort of what you would call orthodox coming out of this pro protoorthodox tradition. And it's kind of interesting to think what you actually think about that.

I guess I believed in some sacraments and I believed a lot of these things, but it's hard to remember back.

And my son was asking me tough questions like, well, did you really believe in it?

But then he was asking me, well, did you really reject it? [laughter] So he's asking me the tough questions which I guess we all have to face as we go through a conversation like this one.

Ultimately the understanding of Jesus here is that his death is a sacrifice for sin. That's the protoorthodox people too. Not everybody thinks that way and we'll have other visions of people who don't think that way. It's not obvious. The Marcianites don't think that way. And we talked about that group last week, right?

They see Jesus more as like again like an avatar type figure who was bringing a message of salvation. the fact that he was crucified is like the reactions of the powers that be but wasn't quintessential to what the teaching was. So you know it's all over the place. So but the things that we would think of as being predominant also the last piece I guess I would add to this and maybe if you want to talk about Paul St. Paul related this, but the rejection of the Jewish law, right, in some way or another as part of this tradition, too.

But I think if we [clears throat] trace this down to us now, like sort of like what you might call the cherry-picking of the law, right? We choose the parts that we want and we kind of a lot of times bash other people with them, you know?

That's a terrible problem. So anyways, how does this happen is the next part. Do you have anything like you want to add to that, Daniel, before I

No, how does how does what happen?

Well, how did this like situation develop? So, I was doing some research around this. I wanted to share like the best historical perspective I could on this. And basically what it was was there were sort of like these different Christianities we've been talking about all kind of like coexisted

and they appear like very early. It's a strange story. It's hard to know totally what it means, but in different parts of like the Roman Empire, all these different Christianities kind of pop up.

So again, we were talking about we'll eventually talk about some gnostics. They were really big in Egypt. I guess if you go back and you look

at like early Christianity and we're really talking like in the first hund and something years, you know,und and whatever years, there's already these different groups that are springing up in different parts of the Roman Empire with like different ideas, radically different. And then they're kind of overlapping one another in some ways by location, but you could tell that some of them are concentrated in some loces more than others. So, the Gnostics are hanging around in Egypt. The Marcianites, who we were just talking about last episode, you know, they have this very controversial belief about the God of the Old Testament is not the same God as the God of the New Testament, and you have to follow this other god. You know, they're around Turkey. So, there's these different groups that are in different places. And then the protoods are like kind of centered around Rome. And when you look at it, they have sort of more power, more money, and more influence than other people because they're like in the the head of the empire, right? They're just richer people, like more strong administrative stuff going on and sort of like more money, more power, and they're able to eventually sort of put the squeeze on a lot of their opponents.

So, that's kind of interesting. That's one side of the story, right? that you had a certain group that had a lot more they had a leg up on the other groups and they had a lot more power which yeah it's almost like you were talking that's probably to be expected right

yeah and then the other piece of it and I wanted to do this because you know what's distinctive about especially this protoorodox vision of Christianity like is some of the things that maybe we trace back to things that we might be still questioning to the present day and I'm curious what you have to think about this Daniel but so what was it about Christianity like what was unique about it is another interesting question here too and it seems like that there again historians perspective that we're trying to share the a lot of innovations happened in what Christianity was doing especially when you get to this proto orthodox group so apparently what was really unique and I'm again I'm really curious about your opinion about this Daniel in the in the the pagan world that world was this idea of exclusivism in religion like that didn't exist before. So if you were a pagan person, you could go to the temple for Athena, you could go to the temple for Zeus, you could go to the temple for Apollo. It was all good. There was no problem.

Even if you joined like kind of a mystery cult, you could be in the mystery cult, you could go hang out in the other place later on. There was no expectation apparently that you follow like one thing. M

so apparently this idea no you follow our thing to the exclusion of all other things in that way was like a real innovation like they didn't think that way back then and I think that's kind of fascinating. Eric, does this I mean you've studied the Cabala much more than I have. Therefore, your influence on you know Judeaic teaching maybe not the Talmud but at least in the Cabala is this and if you don't know you don't know but is that is that sort of like uh exclusionary monotheistic ideology that's well said uh in that tradition I think like when I was studying the ancient history I'll kind of try to answer maybe I'll get to it one one way or the other Okay. Uh maybe a little roundabout but we'll get to it. So I was interested in that question and a lot of people that I was using as the historians for my prepping my notes for this were addressing that question. So the interesting thing about like uh Judaism and you know uh Jewish people at that time whether there was even what we would call Juda Judaism as exists now exists now that's kind of a question I guess but when we're going back to the time there where these events are happening

they did have a monotheistic religion going on right

but they also didn't have an idea that they expected other people to convert to their religion you know you could if you wanted to but no one had the expectation of it And when listening to historians talked about talk about it, it wasn't even like they thought that it like obviously they felt like well our way is the right way for us but there wasn't this idea so strongly right

that there was like one particular right way

you know or at the very least it was like well this is just what we're doing and there wasn't that same sense of like tension that's going to come out of this right there's definitely going to be a tension that's going to eventually rise out of this when you [clears throat] think about like Cabala and I think we should do something on it at some point because it's right

it depends on when you think that all begins you know like people debate when you like Cabala really becomes the Cabala but there's no doubt that they were developing some of the things that we'll see like uh when we talk about Gnostic stuff and other stuff that they were developing interpretive traditions that were being a little bit more flexible in reading the scriptures that's for sure

right

so they were going through and they were like looking for the symbolic meanings of things and there was more of an openness to doing that, right? Which I guess could be challenging to other, you know, people who are practicing Judaism, right? If you can start reading them very symbolically in these other ways.

Yeah.

And that tradition kind of grows. I guess when we get to it, I'll be fascinated to talk about books like the Zohar and the Bah and these things because they're doing very creative reads on scriptural stuff, you know, but they'll say some little passage in the book of Kings tells you the secrets of like the whole universe.

So, they're doing these very creative reads. And um as far as like how they envision the divine, that's also kind of interesting too because they kind of look at like the divine having all these different aspects that are coming out, right? So it's monotheistic, of course, but there's a kind of a wiggle room in this, you know, in a funny way. There's a great story where the Daly Lama was looking to talk to other people who were in exile to figure out like, okay, now the Tibetans are exile, what do we do about this? There's a great book written about it called The Jew and the Lotus. And um so he's trying to talk to all these different Jewish leaders who can't who can't agree with each other [laughter] as you would imagine, right? But at some point he's talking to the guy who's the cabbalist who I really love this particular cobalist. And the Dalai Lama realizes like well you have all these different powers and all these different aspects of the divine that's pretty close to us. And so they have this great conversation around that. I guess that's a long answer to the question. Does that get to any of the stuff that you were kind of

I mean I guess am I you know you're talking about this very uh this sort of like kind of revolutionary idea that the protoorthodox people had.

Yeah.

That you know this sort of exclusionary monotheistic ideology as a a prerequisite if you will to be part of their you know whatever.

Yeah. It seems like that's it. And it seems like that was just different. Like other pagans, I think, were like, "What?" You know, because it never occurred to them, you know,

and the I don't want to say it, but like the bastardization of paganism,

you know, via, you know, basically via Christianity. I don't know who else, you know, Catholicism, whatever.

You're talking about like a v a vilifying or something like that ultimately.

Yes. Yeah. Vilification. Yeah. Probably a better better word, right? Um, very strong. Very, very strong. I I mean, I knew the word pagan before I even understood the definition.

Yeah. Cuz you know it negative, right?

Because you know it negative.

Porative. Yeah, that's true.

Yeah. And the idea of like false idols and and idols, idolatry, you know, not worshiping idolatry. Oh, by the way, look at that picture. [laughter]

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uhhuh.

Right. You know, um, so yeah, it's smart.

No, it's wild because I had the same reaction like when you hear the word pagan and you're and you don't know the context that that just means like the religion of like ancient Rome and Greece and so on, right? It just it means bad,

right? Yeah.

Right. It just means bad. Oh, you know, primitive and bad and probably nasty and

Yeah. Probably. Yeah. Primitive in particular. Yeah.

Yeah. I was like really floored by this because I didn't realize that it was so much that the contrast was so strong on this point. But Christianity, I guess, really comes up with the idea like, well, no, if you're following us, you're only following us. That's it.

And that was like apparently really like out of tune with the rest of like the ancient world. And the other part of this which is connected was for a lot of people in like what we'll call the pagans in a neutral way, right? Mhm.

Greek

and Romans, they uh I guess Egyptians too, they were um more into like what you would call practis practice as opposed to having a particular belief system.

So it wasn't like you said, okay, here's our creed following Apollo. It was like, okay, what do you do to follow Apollo? We'll go through the rituals and do the things.

Right.

Right. And if we did that for, you know, Venus or Aphrodite or something, that's cool, too. And you know, there's no problem there, right? it had more to do with like what you did rather than like having a like these are my beliefs. So I guess the other weird thing is emphasizing this idea of like you have to like have this particular set of beliefs was also surprising for people too. And I was listening to like again one of the historians on this and he said like a lot of intellectual pagans not like your your folks who were just practicing their everyday life religions and doing their things but the people who were like the you know the intellectual figures and all that they were like what are you talking about there's all kinds of paths to the divine like this is almost like a direct quote and they were like stunned. They were like what do you mean you can get the divine multiple ways? What do you mean you can only do it one way? That was like shocking to them. Mhm.

And apparently a lot of the more again like intellectual pagans, spiritual pagans were like,

"Of course you can get there multiple ways." And I I when I translate this forward, I kind of got in my mind listening to this like this problem has never disappeared, right?

No.

This gets established and it just doesn't stop for like 2,000 [...] years.

What do you mean doesn't stop? Period.

Yeah.

Doesn't stop, you know? And I again, it's a kind of a

it's kind of an innovation. The other part that's wild about this was that there weren't any evangelists before. Apparently, evangelicalism is like a Christian thing to do. In the pagan world, I guess you wouldn't you could make a case for like, hey, we should all worship Apollo or something, right? And you make your case. But no one had to convert. So, there wasn't like that same evangelical energy. It just wasn't didn't occur to people, you know? And I didn't know that either, you know, prepping this, right? had heard a little bit, but it was really interesting to go a deeper dive into it and I was like, "Oh, okay." So, there wasn't like a thought of like we'll have an evangelical movement where people are trying to convert other people.

So, that really apparently didn't exist in the pagan world either because there wasn't really any need for it, right? Because you weren't converting

in this very distinctive way. And I thought, okay, that's interesting, too, to know something about and you can kind of just feel how the energy of that builds into the same problems

that we have down to the present day. And then one of the guys again, Bart Erman, who's one of the people I rely on for this material, he does a very good job of presenting like the scholarly state of the field. and he said like when people look at this apparently it wasn't like how you might envision it like a like a Billy Graham style meeting and there's all these people preaching and everyone's listening in the square or something apparently a lot of it was like word of mouth where one person would tell someone and then maybe they would convert and so on right so it was spreading over the years but the like part of the reason why Christianity I guess had this force behind it was if you converted to Christianity, you really converted and you cut away all the pagan stuff.

And so you were kind of like taking away pagan people and they were getting pulled over to this other side. But even if I converted you to Apollo, you'd still be worshiping whoever,

whatever. Yeah.

Zeus.

So there wasn't this thing of pulling people away from this one population. I guess you can look at that however you want to look at that. I suppose if you want to look at it cynically, you could, right?

Or you could just look at it like we have really really strong beliefs and you should follow it. But like this problem seems like it just hasn't gone away.

Still in the midst of this stuff. I I found that to be kind of amazing. Going back to the episodes you brought up last week about like patriarchy, Daniel,

the patriarchy thing was kind of part of this too in a weird way

because what it would be was you'd have even in the conversion process you'd have like these patriarchs who were the head of like a whole family and they have all people under the family. So if they switched everyone in the family switched

correct

so eventually like I guess what you were doing is you were converting families like through the patriarch.

Yeah. And then the other people under that patriarch would have to flip too. So I don't Yeah. Go ahead. Sorry.

Yeah. No, but the the the thing about that though, Eric, is that like from again from my research, and that's, you know, not super extensive, but enough. the people who convert, the the the families that converted, the people at the top of the the head of the family, the the more wealthier individuals in the family converted in in I guess in like show, right? like outwardly, but then their own practices never really changed, you know,

and they sort of maintained their own, you know, their own practices, the mystery schools, the those types of rituals, they did those things. They continued with those things that never really stopped because despite what um you know, people would say, yeah, the religion spread very, you know, quickly if you if you want to call it that. I don't know what people would consider quick or not. small group in hundreds of years. You have millions of people in it in hundreds years.

It spread very quickly, of course, with the the backing of the Roman Empire, you know, and the backing of the patriarchy to get the entire Roman Empire behind it really. You know,

it's kind of interesting what you're saying because some of the points in the beginning, I don't know if you like if you converted for show. Definitely after Constantine converts, I hear what you're saying. You're probably converting for show, right? M

you don't want to run into problems with state authority.

I don't know what it means if you convert like because Constantine doesn't convert until 313 or 312 or something like that, right?

So kind of later in the story. So I don't know those people who are converting ahead of time, but I I think the patriarchy struck me what you were talking about before because well grandpa converted now we're all Christians now I guess. So maybe grandpa do it whether you're privately still worshiping ISIS or something. Maybe

I don't even know if I don't even know if it was privately because the thing is if you're talking, you know, we're talking about hundreds of years between that and then like the the Nian meetings,

Yeah.

you know, to to codify what the Bible is now, it's a couple hundred years.

In that time, if there were not people carrying forth the the traditions, you know, the the rituals, the the you know, whether you want to call it pagan or you want to call them mystery schools or whatever you want to, you know, right? whatever these kind of like elite cults, if you will, they would have they would have disappeared. So, they had to have been carried forth.

Well, even at the time that Constantine converts, you have a lot of pagans running around. You just have to shut them down.

Right.

Right. You're going to have to squash them,

right? And then these these, you know, people who still believed in these things carried forth their beliefs and practices even in the midst of this ma these mass conversions

in some more clandestine way even after Constantine converts. You're still going to have that. Right.

Right. Yeah. You're still going to have it. And I mean and it's prevalent. It's not that it's like a little bit off or there. I mean they there's historical data on it. And then you know from again just from my research and Eric you know we we talked a little bit about this last time but then you know Christianity became a unfortunately kind of a tool of suppression you know selling

like once you get like it's the religion of the state.

Yeah.

Yeah. And it's, you know, it sold people a dream, a dream that uh can never be proved, but one that uh, you know, is is an an absolute part of subjugation, which, you know, regardless of what school you believe in or don't believe, you know, what whether we're protoorthodox or Benedictines or we're Franciscans or whatever we are, I don't think that any of those people would say that their views are pro-subjugation. It's weird to know, you know. It's weird to know. I got one last thing on this and maybe like uh so I was looking at what were the things that were unique features of this. So

the exclusivism was a unique thing,

right? The emphasis on like it's not what you do. You have to have like a creed. You have to follow our vision, which is why people end up fighting so hard

over who has the right vision, right? Because that matters and you're still fighting over that to the present day. if you want to think of it in that way, right? You did it through like this kind of word of mouth conversion where you were like flipping families apparently, right?

And then the other part was like heaven and hell, which I think gets a little bit to what you were talking about too, Daniel, which I wanted to bring it up because again, like looking at the history behind this, you know, apparently in the pagan world and even in like the Jewish world at that time, no one was worried about going to hell. So, it's almost like you could frame it like we invented a problem and then we're going to give you the solution to it.

Oh,

the problem is you could be tortured for infinity and here's the solution. Our guy will solve that problem for you. It's

like a it's like a mob boss that comes in here. It's a real nice shop you got here. Would be real bad if something happened to it. You know what I mean? You know,

be really sad if you had to be tortured for infinity.

Yeah. [laughter]

Be really bad. Right.

So, I mean, it's kind of a funny thing and again, I didn't really understand that as well. You know, you know, you do this horse historical research and like again, it's amazing and like very enlightening. I was raised in sort of like a combination of like uh Irish Catholic, Polish Catholic. There's lots of hell [...] flying around there,

you know, like you're hearing a lot about that. And um a lot of it had to do with that. So, I don't it's hard to imagine how that was even framed for people, but it's like, okay, now we have this savior figure who's going to save you from being tossed into a hell for infinity by the god that he's a part of or is.

But, you know, I think that was part of like again when I was reading like the innovative things about that, that was an innovation too.

For a lot of people back then, it was like, well, I do my I want help with love so I go to Venus or Aphrodite. I want to go to war, so I talk to Mars. I'm interested in like

how I'm going to handle like the crops, so I go to whoever, right? You know,

and then the local deities of the city or something you're supposed to offer sacrifices to and all this kind of stuff. And all of a sudden, you get this completely innovative thing, which is wild.

I wanted to share this comment, Eric, that uh somebody left for us a little while ago. It said uh he said I grew up in well I think it's a he I'm not sure but somebody said uh I grew up being told by churches that if I don't earn God's love I would be the offspring of Satan.

Yeah that's an innovation too.

And I don't know I'm interested in the question. There's whole books written on the history of Satan as a thing. So maybe we'll talk about it at some point,

you know, but like you know, Satan in uh in the beginning was like a divinity whose job it was to like challenge God,

right? It wasn't like some force for evil and then eventually that flips too.

So it wasn't obvious. I don't know at the time. I'm a little fuzzy on that question. At the time were Jews already into the idea of Satan as a fallen angel? I'm not sure, you know,

but like in the book of Job, God is debating and betting with Satan.

Yeah, we've done episode we did a couple episodes on Job a while back

when we did the Carl Young stuff with it.

Yeah, that was totally fun episodes. I I'll share a little bit more about it, you know, and maybe we'll wrap it up for the week. But what's so interesting about to me then and you brought up the council of Nika.

Mhm.

I guess the the Bible itself was already standardized. But the debate they're having there is like about these technical points about like what does the trinity mean? Is Jesus higher or or is God above Jesus and Jesus is like secondary or God and Jesus like indistinguishable? Like they're having these debates about these little technical points. And I guess once Constantine converted, he was like, "Okay, I'm not going to let you people run around having arguments about these technical points. I want this religion to work for me, so figure this [...] out." You know, but it does illustrate the I think one of the things that's wild about like who has the right creed? Who's the right one? Who has the right vision of Jesus? Who is the real one? Who is the right one? this argument, if you go back to that, you're talking like 1,700 years of arguing about this, right?

And like we're still arguing in the present day.

Yes.

Wild.

I'll share one more thing about this. Um uh because uh and I I'll get your opinion on it as we're getting to the end, unless you want to save it for next time. You want to save it for next time? Well, I was only going to say that like that that the Nyian council the the debates that were going there again from the histo, you know, I'm I'm reading things from a historical perspective, not not pro-religious historical perspective, right?

Yeah. Agreed. We're both doing that really.

Yeah. So, it's just it's information and probably more agnostic really if anything because they're they're historians, you know.

Yeah. And um one of the points that somebody made is that from their perspective, the that trinity was framed in the way that it was as to be uh not fully understandable and that in the tradition at least in the way that they understood it debate was not uh ex I'm not going to say not accepted but was definitely not part of the tradition. Whereas in like in in Judaism for sure debate is a big part of it.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's a Yeah. debate let's talk let's let's have it out you know and so you used ragic ragic rationale and logic in order to drive points home to quell the mind but in here intentionally it was done as illogical a which and maybe there's reason for that. Who knows? I I wasn't there. But that if you questioned it then you were looked at as a heretic

right? And that itself kind of makes you feel even at least in my interpretation more separate from that which you believe because you are not able to question the thing which is you know why one of the the pieces of Buddhism that I like so much is that it's like yeah no question please do like it it's actually it's up to you to question we it's part of the tradition. you know, the discussions are part of the tradition. And so

to not have that and to have it intentionally be quelled,

you know, it just it in my opinion, it just seems something that you want to distribute to a mass population that is not going to question. But inherently, I feel like human beings are curious creatures and should question things. And then once they come to the answers that are deep within them that have been run through the ringer uh quite a bit, they'll hold on to that beyond just this life. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's a [clears throat] wild question because like at Nika and we're talking about after Constantine converts, there's this famous council of Nika and they're trying to there's like one major question that they're debating which is this really weird esoteric point.

Yeah. like is God the father higher and Jesus is sort of like a little bit lower and the holy spirit so whether it's a little bit hierarchical or whether or not somehow this mystery of the trinity thing is the right way

and you know maybe people believe that like that that answer mattered I mean I think they were probably debating that for a long time if I understand the history but it is weird because you come up with the mystery of the trinity in the end and I guess the idea is it's supposed to be beyond explanation or something

of course

but then the weird part and I think we agree on this and it's come up on episodes where we've been trying to talk about this where all of a sudden now you end up with this thing which is a complete mind scrambler [laughter] like there's no way to understand it

and any way you understand it will probably turn you into a heretic [laughter] [clears throat]

if you try to make sense of it so if you try to make sense of it heretic and then the history becomes kind of bizarre to the extent that I understand it then because then for you do this and then for hundreds of years afterwards you're just pronouncing different people still heretics It's a wild situation to find that that's the end of it. Yeah, I agree. And I wonder what that means down to the present day. I've had the thought about this that if the whole thing is like in a certain sense like unintelligible, right?

You could say the positive side is we make it a mystery, but the negative side is you make it like completely unintelligible. Like

yeah, undigestible.

It's uncrackable. Mhm.

Your rational mind can't do anything with it. You know, it might as well be like trying to digest a stone or something.

Mhm.

You know, it's like there's nothing you can do with it. Then I don't know what that does to people who are I'll say it in the like the more strong way under the thr of this kind of thinking because then you you're so vulnerable to irrationality. Maybe that ends up being true because you squash the rational part of the person.

Yeah. And then when people who are trying to exercise power over you, you just can't see and think straight. Right.

Right. And so I and I I think you know we can if someone's going to make the counterargument they'll say well you know you want to be you know religion or spirituality or what however you want to call it this this kind of faith let's call it faith should be out of your head and more in your heart. And so making something that is not logical moves you into less of a conceptualized space and more of an abstract feeling kind of space that's fine. I I can accept that as an answer. However, to your exact point, what does that do for those who are handing that to you while they're also taking from you at the same time? because you have disarmed your discernment feature to say, "Oh, wait. You don't understand this either." You know what I mean? And now I'm here getting information from you when you simultaneously you're taking from me. And by the way, all the people who are here in this congregation, none of us can question because we're all supposed to be feeling. This creates sheep intentionally. And that doesn't, you know, that doesn't sit right with me. It hasn't since I was a child. Yeah. There's something fishy about it. And then like when you get to the kind of socioultural problems we're having now, well then you could see how you get a bunch of people who can be having to turn off their rationality and they can't question and then it's presented as a virtue or something. Right.

Right. I'm gonna steal your imagery and I'll let you explain it, you know, get to the end of the episode, but you talking off Mike ahead of time like

there's multiple there's two rails

to carry the train and part of it is the emotional part, the feeling of love and compassion, you know,

those emotional mindsets, but the other part is like

wisdom.

Yeah.

You were just sharing your your vision of this earlier, right? And you're right. I didn't mean to steal your imagery, but it seemed like a perfect time to drop your imagery into the conversation because it's a two- rail system.

Yeah.

Right. And if I just break one of the rails, well then

I can't run a train on it.

You can't run a train on it

unless Yeah. That's it. You know, the train won't run.

Yeah.

So, I mean, I think that has to be I mean, something for each of us individually. We That's a powerful thing to recognize. This is a two this is a two- rail system.

Yeah. I need to refine my emotional states to get more feelings of compassion and love and these kinds of things. Work on my emotions,

right? But the other part is I have to be able to think critically to develop wisdom and discernment and insight.

If someone tells you, we're just going to blow up one of those rails, boom,

right?

How you going to get anywhere as an individual? And then what does it mean when all of a sudden you get people who are going to potentially be abusive?

Yes.

Your loss of like what you said very well, your loss of the discernment factor, right? Mhm.

And you're Yeah. So, yeah, I think we nailed it.

Yeah. I mean, and and people forget that they are the conductor of their own train regardless of whatever uh religion or practice that they are uh investing in for some time or for their life. They are still the conductor of their own train. Regardless and the you know that

by definition almost right like

you are the conductor just by definition it's you.

It's you.

Yeah.

It Yeah. It's always you. And so you can totally take uh well, if we're going to use a, you know, transit analogies, you could totally get directions from somebody for sure, but you have to put them in your GPS. You have to put them in your vehicle and then you have to drive there. So ultimately, you're still in control. You're still in control. And if you seed that control at any point and the tracks break, then the train is derailed. the vehicle is is derailed and what do you have now? You only you know where are you going now without one or the other one? If you're if you're seeking knowledge only without it being based on compassion, what is that? This is this eventually is going to yield you power, right? Information is going to yield you power and you will probably use that power nefariously because you're going to justify your own skewed views.

Oh, it's dry, right? It's dry and brittle, right?

It's dry and brittle, but it's just

Yeah,

it's justification for uh delusions

because you're not bas, you know, it it's it can be very it could be twisted much very easily. It can be twisted.

There's a danger in that for sure. Right.

Yes. I think we're seeing that in our world now and we'll get to like tech bro Christianity which is kind of dry and like lack those loving qualities, right? We'll do it toward the end. Yeah. Then let's then let's do it next week and we'll just continue on this.

Uh all right. Well, we we things to cover, but I agree with what you're saying, right? And it ends up being dangerous, right?

Yeah. Totally.

Yeah. And then the idea that uh that uh well there's the Philip K. Dick line. The empire never ended. Right.

Right. Correct.

Rolling on because all we did was scramble people's brains and they won't question. We keep running the same story. Right. Yeah.

Here we are.

Thanks so much for the conversation.

Yep. Thanks so much, Eric, as always. Gracias amigo. Uh people here, everybody listening, you know, seeing us here, uh like, comment, subscribe, you know, give us an email. jin antragmail.com. Uh hit us up at the podcast, Jinatra podcast. Do all the things that people ask you to do, we're asking you to do it. Uh you know, this is of course a labor of love and and you know, we do enjoy doing this. We're, you know, always learning things and I think things that we find useful and interesting, we weave into this. uh just like any good tantric practitioner would do. Uh we got our retreat coming up which we'll leave some information uh in this and we'll do a little little video on that coming up here soon as well. So uh wishing everybody good practice and good success in their life at this crazy crazy time. Um for Eric, this is Daniel. We'll catch you guys on the next one. Peace. [music]

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