https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=3LvbPS6w4U0
Jeffrey Muter asks, if Santa exists, do the mythological gods also exist since we live out their particular stories constantly reviving them in media and is this a conflict with Christianity? I think that I think the mythological gods exist. I think that the proper way to formulate their existence in Christian terms is to say they’re demons and I’ve explained that before. I explained it in the sense that because they are they are not pointing towards the hierarchy, the divine hierarchy, that they’re not pointing towards the center of the story in which we are participating, then they are demonic in the sense that they are fragments and they’re fragmentary and they pull things away but it doesn’t mean that we can’t get some insight from their stories because they are principalities and so it’s important to think it’s important to pay attention to those stories but that is definitely but the reason the fact that they are demons in that sense that the fact that they are are kind of residues kind of chaotic residues of a form of world and they also kind of pull the world apart and I think they let’s say you can see that the Romans were trying to find some kind of you know Sol invictus they’re trying to find this notion of a unifying thing because they could see that all these different gods and you know all these different cultures all these different gods was very problematic they’re trying to unify things in the worship of the Emperor and this notion of Sol invictus you see it in the time of Diocletian but it but it was kind of artificial it wasn’t a real story so Christianity came and filled that need where it gave the world a coherent hierarchy and a coherent story to enter into and then the figure of Christ became you know that union of heaven and earth you know that is far more real than the Emperor and you can see it in the gospel you see you know in the beginning of I forget which gospel it is the beginning of the gospel of st. Luke I think I’m not sure that that it says in the time of in the time of of Caesar of Augustus Caesar and Augustus and Caesar Augustus was called the son of God you know you see that you see that in the poetry around Augustus and the worship of the Emperor began with Augustus and Christ was there so in the text in the Bible you have this sense that Christ is represented as the Son of God but you also have Augustus kind of it’s really this subtext it’s very far in the subtext that Augustus is also the Son of God you have these two sons of God and so one of them is this humble you know that the the humble Christ who you know changed the world was elevated to to to be the highest and then there’s Augustus who is this political figure and so the it turns out that they were kind of moving towards this idea of the worship of the Son of God but it was they were seeing it just in a political sense I think Christ came and filled in that need for a regular like an actual story you can live in and and that could that could encompass all the good aspects of of of Greek philosophy of the best of soicism all of that could kind of enter into it which they were struggling to do at the time of Diocletian and after that anyway that’s my that is my vision of it you