https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=6U7c_89FeWM
Hello, everybody. I am here with Father Andrew Damick, who doesn’t need much of an introduction. But for those who don’t know, he is he is head of ancient fate publishing content. And he just published a new book called Arise, O God, the Gospel of Christ, Defeat of Demons, Sins and Death. And I just finished the book. It’s a very interesting and succinct introduction to all the amazing stuff that that he’s been talking about with Father Stephen on the Lord of Lord of Spirits podcast and just kind of introducing people to a more cosmic and a more story version of the salvation that Christ brings. And so I’m really happy to be able to to talk about that with him right now. This is Jonathan Peugeot. Welcome to the symbolic world. Thank you very much for having me on, Jonathan. It’s it’s always a joy to be with you. So tell us a little bit about the kind of the impetus for writing this new book of yours. Right. So I most of my writing comes from a sense of frustration, actually, which I don’t know if that’s the best way to do it. But it’s what I’ve got. And my frustration in this particular case was that I wanted a book that summarized the gospel from a truly Orthodox Christian point of view that I could use for evangelistic and catechetical purposes and just trying to relate what the Orthodox Christian faith is to people, you know, for whatever reason they might be interested in it. And there as far as I know, at least in English, there there isn’t such a book that does that. And so I had the idea of particularly framing it in terms of a lot of the things that we talk about in the Lord of Spirits podcast, because not just to kind of, you know, promote the podcast, whatever, but because that’s what I actually believe the gospel is about. Right. And so I was really interested in that. Right. And so, you know, the basic frame is that there is a cosmic war on and we are caught up in the midst of it. We’re kind of in the crossfire. And the gospel is what happens to us really in response to that war. It’s what God does in the midst of that war that has something to do with us as human beings. And so that’s the the Genesis behind the book. I’m very, very interested in an evangelistic work and in education and so forth. And so I’m always looking for new ways to convey this kind of thing to people. Yeah, one of the great parts of the book, let’s say, especially in, let’s say, Protestant Catholic North America, especially kind of Protestant culture in North America, this idea that the gospel is, you know, this how you’re going to be saved. Basically, it’s framed as what the individual it’s a frame that’s kind of the advantage to the individual and how you’re going to go to heaven. And you need to believe these things and kind of have faith in the broad sense in this atonement, this kind of substitutionary version of of Christ’s sacrifice. And that way you go to heaven. But you present something just far more cosmic and is more about the gospel being this proclamation of what’s happening. Right. This is what’s happening in the cosmos. Now, how are you going to participate in this transformation? Right. Yeah. You know, I was raised as the son of evangelical Protestant missionaries. And so what is the gospel? How do you communicate the gospel? That’s was on my mind from a very, very early age. And one of the things that I found is the way that most people in the English speaking world think of what the gospel is, is they think it’s about what Christ can do for them. Right. And I mean, I could I could express that in very cynical terms like, you know, how can Jesus make my life better? Or, you know, much better terms like, OK, the gospel is about how you are saved from from hell, how you are saved from from sin and death. You know, and while it’s true that the gospel is related to those things, if we put it in those terms, right, that it’s essentially about something that that fixes a problem in my life. Let’s say if that’s what I understand the gospel is, then that means that communicating the gospel to people is essentially a kind of sales pitch. Right. Because, you know, if someone’s selling something to you, they come to you and say, OK, you have a problem or you have a lack in your life. You know, there’s something there’s a problem that you need to be fixed. And I I have the answer. I’m here to give this to you. Right. And, you know, so so again, looking at it, not cynically saying, well, I’m here to give you the answer for free. You know, you just have to get on board with whatever version of get on board that means. Right. But looking at it cynically, it comes across as a kind of sales pitch. And a lot of times, especially people who are not not believers in Christianity, they experience it that way. And they take it very cynically, like, well, you just want me to join your thing so you can get money out of me or you just want me to join your thing because, you know, you want to just, you know, it’s affirming for you of how many converts you can make or that kind of thing. And, you know, that’s the problem with understanding the gospel as being how I get saved, because then it’s completely about what is the problem of the person in front of me? How can I sort of sell them? You know, my solution? I mean, I might really believe in it and not be profiting from it in any way, but still, it’s essentially a kind of sales pitch. You have a problem. I have the solution. Right. Whereas the gospel, as it’s expressed in the Bible, is not that there is no point in which any apostle ever comes up to someone says, let me tell you about what Jesus can do for your life. Like, there’s no point in which they say, you look, you have a problem and I have the solution to your problem. Mm hmm. Like that’s that never happens in scripture. Right? What happens is when the gospel begins being preached, they pick this word for it. Evangelion is the Greek word, right? Which most of the time you see that word explicated by people that say it means good news, and that is literally what the word means. If you pull it apart, etymologically, good and news, right? But in the ancient world, that’s not how the word was used. The word was actually used in the ancient world to refer to something that was about to happen, the announcement of something that was happening and that really you didn’t have much choice about. Actually, it was something that was about to happen to you, in fact. Right. And I’ll explain why I’m not a Calvinist in just a second. But it was about that, like the idea of a victory of an emperor, the victory of the emperor is coming. Everybody be ready. This is good. This is it is in a way for them the way they were presenting with. It’s good news. It’s like, you know, Caesar has vanquished our foes. You know, now we will have this. These riches will have this. And he’s accumulated glory for Rome. And so there’s this kind of sense of this vanquishing of foes and this kind of heroic gesture. Yeah. And the Evangelia, they usually expressed in plural, was when a herald would ride into the city and he would open up his scroll or whatever and say three things. This is the Lord whom I serve. Let’s say he serves Caesar, Augustus, whoever. This is who he is, you know, maybe listing off all his amazing titles. This is what he’s accomplished, listing off all of his victories in battle. And, you know, and he’s bringing this along with him. And now this is what he expects of all of you. Yeah, right. He’s coming to take over the city. And so you can either get on board with his rule or you can be put outside the rule, which in the Roman world largely meant that you were gonna be slaughtered. Uh, you know, the idea of moving somewhere else to find a new government just was not a thing. Yeah, right. And so when, you know, when the apostles choose this word Evangelion saying, by the way, this is the gospel, they are saying the same thing. They are identifying who their Lord is, Jesus Christ. They’re saying what he’s done. He’s defeated his enemies and they’re saying what he expects of you, you know, if you’re going to be part of his kingdom, part of his rule. Yeah, right. And so that’s what the gospel is. It’s actually a declaration of victory. It’s not an offer. No, exactly. It can help you understand a lot even of the way that the Orthodox represent, for example, the crucifixion. We always have Nica in the crucifixion in the sense that there is this in the story of Christ, there is this almost kind of incomprehensible joining of opposites in which his death vanquishes death, in which, you know, his humiliation turns into glory. But it is nonetheless participating in the most surprising way in this idea of the king who takes his throne, of the emperor who vanquishes not just his enemies, but basically the enemy of all, which is death itself. Right. Yeah, you know, there’s a lot of people who have heard of this model. They call it Christus Victor, right? The idea that Christ is victorious and which is good. Right. But sometimes the circle is not extended out very far. It’s only extended into Christ is victorious over the problems of my life. Right. So, I mean, that that is true, but it’s really a narrow, narrow understanding. We have to understand that, like I said, there was a war, you know, if it’s an announcement of victory over enemies, then you have to know who those enemies are. And people in the ancient world who were living in under idolatry, they had an actual day to day experience of interacting with demonic beings and in many cases, relying on them or thinking they can rely on them. Right. So, so it’s a victory, not just over sort of metaphysical problems or a victory over the problems of my life. It’s a victory over actual spiritual enemies who are being defeated, actual fallen angels and actual demonized human souls who have participated with those fallen angels. Right. So, so we’re being rescued, not just from a kind of internal problem. We’re actually being rescued, rescued from the domination of dark powers. Yeah. And it’s, I mean, there is an analogy between the two that is it like, what we’re saying, it doesn’t mean that Christ won’t. If you participate in his life, you participate in the sacraments, if you live the life that Christ directed for us, like that, you won’t solve your problems. You will solve your problems. But that’s not, that’s not the limit of what Christ does. Right. Right. The connection between these principality, which I’ve been ruling over the world, which have kind of led the world into degeneracy and into violence, into all these, these kind of dark places, that these are real and that Christ defeated them both in you. That is the passion that has a cosmic virgin in these demons, but then also in the world. We’ve yet to see it fully realized, but we have these burgeoning images of that in the saints, in the, in the communion of saints and in the communion that we all participate in the church itself. Right. Right. Exactly. You know, there’s, there’s a macro and a micro level to all of this. And the reason why that’s important, right, is not just so that we have the big picture. It actually affects the way people live their lives. If they understand that they’re part of something bigger, you know, I’ll just give a really good example, a very small example, but one that actually affects people all the time. So as a priest, you know, I hear confessions and a lot of times people talk about the evil thoughts that they have and sometimes where they act on those evil thoughts. I mean, this is an experience we all have. Yeah. Right. And most of the time they will say something like, I don’t know what’s wrong with me or I can’t make those thoughts go away. Right. Or something like that, you know, is, is, is, is, am I just not really a Christian or, you know, something like that? Right. So there’s this, this sense of a closed system that they’re experiencing and they, they, you know, because for their, from their point of view, Christianity is about fixing what’s going on in that closed system. But if you understand that Christ’s defeat of demons, his defeat of cosmic enemies of God, right. That, that, that, you know, mediates all the way down to us on our individual level, then you begin to understand that evil thoughts actually come from outside. And so the fact that you keep having an evil thought doesn’t mean that you have a fatal flaw. It means that the enemy continues to attack you, right? That the enemies of God are not me or people doing bad things in the world. The enemies of God are actual spiritual beings. Right. And so it, you know, if we reduce the gospel to how can God solve my problems, even understood in the best possible way, then, then the temptation to despair is very easy. Right. And, you know, it’s interesting if you read, especially the writings of some of the modern holy elders of the Orthodox church, they talk about demons all the time. All the time, you know, it is constant because they understand very clearly that the, the intrusive evil thoughts that we have are temptations coming from outside. Right. And the fact that we keep having them doesn’t mean I’m, you know, a spiritual loser. Right. It just means that the enemy continues to shoot his darts at me. Yeah. Well, you read the story of saints who, you know, after 30 years of fasting and doing all, they’re still struggling. They still have these thoughts that kind of intrude on them. And sometimes, like you said, it’s true that even when I read those texts, I am tempted to despair because I’m thinking, okay, man, this, like, I’m not even, you know, like a 10th on the road of this amazing aesthetic. But, but it’s like, it seems like this, that this problem is something that is, that is going to kind of follow us, you know, until we’re fully glorified, let’s say. It’s true. I mean, like there’s that beautiful, amazing icon of St. Anthony in the desert being attacked by demons, like physically attacked by demons. And he hears a man who is super advanced spiritually. Right. And yet he’s experiencing these attacks and I’m sure he didn’t say, unless some demon whispered this idea to him, he didn’t say to himself, I guess I just have a fatal flaw. You know, right. You know, and, and, you know, part, so part of what the book does is it sets up the battlefield. Like, why is it that this, we are having this experience of demonic attack, you know, it’s because of the sort of the three problems of mankind that mankind experiences. Right. So the introduction initially of death, right. Which that comes through the influence of a demon talking to Eve and then Adam gets on board with that. And then the introduction of sin, which comes as a result of demonic attack on Cain, because death kind of opened the door for sin to be released into the world as this evil influence. And then, and then eventually, especially after the Tower of Babel, you get the domination of the nations kind of by direct rule of demons. Right. And so, yeah, this is something that people don’t know a lot about because it doesn’t say that in the story of the Tower of Babel says it later. I think it’s in Deuteronomy, where the idea that God set upon the world, these angels that we’re supposed to manage, that were kind of that were these principalities that were supposed to manage the world. It also helps us in our like both you and I, we have this argument against monotheism in the silly sense, like in the simplistic sense, like there’s just God. No, God functioned through all these principalities and intelligences that come all the way down to us. But that at the Tower of Babel, these principalities were set upon the world and then they started to accept worship. And so there’s a fragmentation and the fragmentation that we see almost in the story of the Tower of Babel seems to reflect that fragmentation itself, where people started to just worship their own thing or have their incomprehensible language that was self-contained. And so they worship these demons. And so this version, the book really does take you on the cosmic story, very kind of nice and tight version of this cosmic story of the fall of the relationship between these cosmic intelligences. And the individual, how we move all the way into Christ is kind of solving the puzzle. And so, like I said at the beginning, it’s for people that like a lot of people, when I tell them go into Lord of Spirits, they look at the amount of podcasts and like the three hour podcast one after the other. And they think, oh, my, you know, and even even Father Stephen’s book, Religion of the Apostle, which is great. But it’s a little like for some people, it might be a little much to chew on at the outset. So your book really is a very nice type narrative version of this whole kind of cosmic story. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like one of the things that some people have said, so I’ve got a copy of it right here. Well, you go. Some people have said it. They’re like, this book is really small. Yes. And it’s I think it’s about like twenty six or seven thousand words total. But that’s actually super deliberate because it’s focused specifically on what is the gospel. And, you know, it starts out by saying like, what’s not the gospel? Right. So it’s not the offer. It’s not a sales pitch. Now, people do have a choice to get on board when Caesar rides into town. You can either get on board with Caesar or you can resist him and then suffer the consequences of that. Right. So you have a choice. Again, I’m not a Calvinist. But then I explain also like why what’s the need for a gospel. Right. So I talked about, you know, the these three problems of mankind that all have to do with demons. Death, sin and direct domination by demons. And then I flip I show I flip it then and show, OK, so here’s the announcement. Here’s who Christ is. Here’s what he accomplished, which he fixed those three problems and essentially the reverse order. So he begins by, you know, he releases us from domination by demons, by exorcism. He releases us from slavery to sin, by forgiveness. And then he destroys the power of death by resurrecting. Right. And and then and then having shown what the announcement to the gospel is, then I ask the question, well, how do you how do you respond? Right. So you see this in the Bible at times. Someone an apostle preaches the gospel to someone and then and then they say, what must I do to be saved? Right. They don’t they don’t say, oh, you just told me what I have to do to be saved. Now, what must I do to be saved? Right. Because if the if the gospel was what must I do to be saved, then why would they say that? And they ask that exactly. Yeah, it’s the announcement. Oh, wait, someone’s coming. He’s coming to judge the living and the dead. What do I have to do to get on board with this? Right. And then and then and then, you know, very succinctly, I also then talk about what happens when you do get on board with it. You know, how is how does this actually change you and your your destiny? And and what does that have to do with? So if demons are connected with all of our problems, then actually angels are connected with all the solutions. Yeah, as a matter of fact, and we then become like them. Yeah, that’s something which I think I think you really illuminated for so many people. The idea that in understanding the divine counsel and understanding God sitting in his divine counsel as, you know, all these managing principalities that that that kind of sit over the cosmos with God as their king or God as the infinite source of these these smaller powers, then all of a sudden the idea of becoming like gods or, you know, or, you know, becoming like angels is not just a little metaphor that we can kind of understand as becoming more spiritual or something like that. But it is really this idea of this this possibility of human beings becoming real principalities in the world and becoming managers and pillars by which reality actually, you know, shows itself. And little examples of that, of course, are in the idea of a patron saints for different aspects of reality, but also patrons of of places and patrons of churches, patrons of communities as this this little seed or this burgeoning image of how we will ultimately reign with Christ and become like angels. Yeah, right. You know, most Orthodox people and a lot of other people have studied early Christianity. They probably know this phrase from St. Athanasius the Great in on the incarnation where he says, and you could translate this several different ways, but God became human that man might become divine or sometimes God became man that man might become God with a small G or a big G, depending. Although in ancient Greek, you don’t have it’s just all big, big. Actually, it’s a big theta. It’s not a G, you know. But what’s interesting, so then a lot of people see that like, okay, wow, so, you know, through the incarnation of Christ, if we participate in that, we can become like God, we become divine in some sense, right? What’s really fascinating is St. Athanasius actually puts all of this in the framework of adoption. Adoption of sons, right? And again, a lot of times people then they’ll see that and say, oh, we’re the children of God. But you actually have to plug in that phrase, sons of God into an existing framework in scripture, right? Which that phrase sons of God actually refers to a very high rank of angels. So, you know, Christ himself mentions this in Luke 20 36, which when I was an evangelical, I don’t think I ever heard a sermon about this verse. But Christ says that the sons of the resurrection becomes sons of God and equal to the angels. Go look it up yourself. It’s Luke 20 36. You know, so so he says that those who are in Christ, those who who are who, you know, rise in Christ and rise to life everlasting, they are sons of God. Again, that’s a rank of angels. And he says to kind of bear down on the idea equal to the angels, which means that this process of theosis is very intimately connected with our angel ology. Right now we don’t become we don’t take on angel nature. I don’t you know, we can’t do that. We remain human, but we become equal to the angels. Right. Which means that we then we begin to do their works because their works are to do the works of God. And so if we do the works of God, then we are functioning the way that the angels do. And as you said, you know, we see this in in the idea of patron saints who they function exactly like angels. I mean, look at what saints do in the history of the church. They do all the things that angels do in scripture. They appear to people, they take care of people, they they hear their pleas. And with God’s power, not their own, with God’s power, they they they help them. You know, they they protect them. They do battle against evil spiritual beings. They they guide people into into knowledge of God, like all of these things are angelic functions. They bear messages from God. These are all things that the saints do. So they are becoming the sons of God. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And so and this kind of narrative, more cosmological version of the transformation of the person in no way has to stand in competition or go against the more mystical transformation that we see in the field. You know, in the notion of this kind of transformation of the person, you know, being free from the sins, you know, becoming more in the image of God in a in a in a proper sense that is really being transformed as a being into light, into, you know, being united with this uncreated light. This kind of more mystical vision, which in some way has been more popular maybe in the in the 19th, 20th century because of just because we’re materialists and we struggle with the more mythological image of that. That no, we need those two versions of it. One, which is almost like a more technical or more theological description of the transformation of the person. And the other one, which is more of this kind of participation in a cosmic story, which is there in scripture the whole time and moves into the eschaton, you know, and the images of of the last judgment and all these wonderful images that we see, you know, in in the iconography that this is part of what this transformation reveals to us, let’s say. Right. Yeah, that, you know, those, those visions are completely integrated within Orthodox tradition and in the scriptures. The reason why we tend to disintegrate them is because of individualism because of modernism and individualism. Right. So, you know, theosis becomes about my journey in Christ, you know, like, which is like, it’s not wrong, but it’s super incomplete and actually can distort what we’re doing. Right. And, you know, this is this is everywhere for instance in Orthodox Like there’s there’s one him that I I heard for years and years, which talked about, you know, Christ going after the lost sheep and then adding it to the heavenly hosts. Yeah. Wow. Like literally it says he goes after the lost sheep and then makes it one of the, you know, part of the angelic hosts. And I heard that that him for years and I, I just let it kind of fly by and until I really realized like, wait, this is what sons of God means that we become part of the hosts of heaven. Then now, I mean, this stuff is now popping everywhere. I was under lights, little dots of light are starting to connect into a pattern. Right. Right. And and and honestly, it’s very inspiring and exciting. You know, it’s not just okay. I’m on this sort of solitary journey to greatness. But rather, I’m, you know, by God’s grace, I’m headed deeper and deeper into this, this vast host of of divine beings. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And theologically, we understand it more easily, right. In the sense that as we kind of rise towards God, our prayers and our love of others is kind of bringing others into God with us. We kind of understand it when we say it abstractly. But when we really understand it cosmologically, then it actually appears, like you said, as patron saints who appear to people who, who make who do miracles who, you know who, so it’s not just a it’s not just a like an abstract thing. It’s something which actually, you know, it’s not just a, it’s not just a, it’s not just a, it’s not just a, it’s not just a, it’s not just a, it’s not just a, it’s not just a, it’s not just a, it’s not just a, it’s not just a, it’s not just a, it’s not just a, it’s not just a, it’s not just a, it’s not just a, it’s not just a It’s a, it’s a binds communities together with visions and transformations and miracles and all this stuff at the same time. Yeah, yeah, there’s so many kind of apologetical problems that we create by accepting individualism. You know, if we can set that aside and and recover this cosmic sort of mythic understanding of what’s going on in scripture, then all of these things kind of fall into place, much more easily like if you understand who the sons of God are then you kind of don’t really need to give an apologetic for the intercession of the Saints because it’s already there or like someone would say, well, why do you have Saints? You know, I see angels like, well, actually the angels are the original Saints like the word is being used for them in scripture, the holy ones of God. Saints and holy ones are literally just different English, you know, expressions from two different parts of our inheritance that mean exactly the same thing. You know, the angels are the original Saints. Yeah, and we’re just saying that people are being added into that. And in such a beautiful image of this movement, you know, into the fall and then into the the New Jerusalem, for example, as this is glorification in Christ of man all of this, it just makes so much sense when you see the grand story of scripture that this will be part of the transformation. And so I wanted to as we’re talking about this kind of mythical understanding of Christianity, something we’re both very excited about, I wanted to ask you a little bit about something else that you’re working on. I know maybe some people don’t know that Father Andrew is actually now in the universe, despite all the crazy things that he’s doing, all the podcasts, all the books, managing ancient faith content. He’s also back in school studying. I think it’s is it Anglo-Saxon northern mythology? Exactly. What are you studying? So, OK, so I’m studying at Signum University, which is a fully online master’s degree program. And the degree is language and literature. And I have two concentrations within that. So on the one hand, there’s a concentration that’s called classical literature or something like that. But I’m basically steering it towards mythology. Right. And then the other concentration is Tolkien studies. The cool thing is, there’s a lot of overlap between those two. And right. So it’s I’m taking one class a semester. So that’s three classes a year. The first class I took was called Tolkien and tradition. And it’s literally these two things together, looking at mythological sources alongside what Tolkien did with some of them. And then the second class I took was introduction to Old English. So it’s just straight, you know, learning a language and translating and stuff. And now I’m doing Beowulf in Old English. And so we’re translating about 300 lines of Beowulf a week, which is super labor intensive. I mean, it’s a little crazy. Yeah. But but it’s you know, Beowulf is interesting because I think a lot of times, especially before Tolkien started getting hold of it and really talking about it publicly in the middle of the 20th century. A lot of a lot of people looked at Beowulf as just being sort of a monster story, you know, like, and well, you know, among our various pieces of mythology, this is not really the best of them. You know, Beowulf doesn’t go on to found some great civilization or something like this. Tolkien complains about this in an essay that he wrote called Beowulf the Monsters and the Critics. So Beowulf is indeed a monster story, but the whole point of it actually is this this collision between a Christian world and a world that frankly is about monsters and dealing with monsters. And so Beowulf is this sort of demonic, giant-ish, you know, being who lives in a kind of grotto underneath a lake in the mountains and the sort of bog area. Right. And, you know, he has this he hates the the festivity and the the I was like, you’re not Beowulf himself, I’d say. Did I say Beowulf? You said that? It’s fine. I just don’t want to give you the right. I kind of got here. That’s what you’re saying. But yeah, Grendel is the monster. Yeah. Beowulf is the hero who thinks. But, you know, and it’s interesting, like, just to give you the interesting thing to me, one of the interesting things about Beowulf is it’s set within a Christianity that understands this mythic view of the world. And like there isn’t another one to even compare it to. Like, this is simply the world they live in. To give you one little example. So Beowulf kills Grendel first by ripping his arm off. And then, you know, Grendel, you know, runs away and dies down in his cave. But then his mother comes and begins to to do the same evil to the high hall that her son had been doing as kind of her revenge for him. So Beowulf has to go down and deal with the mother as well. When he goes down there, he finds all these weapons down in the cave. And it doesn’t say this in there. But, you know, again, this is a kind of bog monster. So there is this suggestion, if you know something about bog sacrifices, that perhaps these are things that had been shoved down in there by pagans who were making offerings to these demonic beings. Now, this is not written in the poem, but that is part of what this world includes. Yeah. Right. So Beowulf finds all these weapons down there. He gets this sword, this mighty sword, and he uses it to slay Grendel’s mother. And then while he’s at it, he decides to cut the head off of Grendel, who’s already dead. And then the blade melts away because of the sort of the toxicity of the blood of these monsters. But then on the hilt, there’s some kind of depiction or writing there about the Giants and their war with God and about how God sent a flood to deal with the Giants. So like this conflict, the gigantomachy, right, the war against Giants, is embedded into the story with this short little reference that everyone who listens to the poem in the eighth century is going to know. Right. This is there. And there’s stuff like this all throughout. Yeah. I think Grendel is even suggested or presented that Grendel is a kind of descendant of Cain. He’s the descendant of Cain. And so I remember reading scholars talking about Beowulf saying how all of this was just a kind of cheap add-on to the story. And I think that’s where, you know, like these Christian references were just kind of added on to make it acceptable to Christian audience. But I think it’s those scholars that didn’t understand just how integrated this vision of the world, these ideas of the monstrous races and the Giants, and how it’s actually really part of the Christian story from the beginning. Right. You know, you’ve been doing, you’ve had some videos with Richard Roland talking about this question of universal history. And the truth is, is that pretty much every ancient mythology has a number of elements to it that they all share. Right. So like a great example is almost all of them have some kind of flood story. Yeah. And a lot of people know that. Oh, like there’s all, you know, maybe there was some kind of big flood, you know, and so they all talk about this. But a lot of people don’t realize is that connected with the flood story is usually also a story of Gigantomachy, a war against Giants. And it’s in almost every mythology that’s out there. Right. You know, even not just European ones either. You get it, you know, even in Native American stuff. Giants and then a flood comes and wipes out the Giants. Right. This happens over and over again. You know, in Norse mythology, when Odin and his brothers decide to kill the big sort of primordial giant Ymir, his toe begins bleeding and the blood floods the entire earth and kills mostly Giants. You know, like this is this is everywhere. Or, you know, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, you know, and Kidu is basically like Noah. I mean, there’s a Noah figure in the Norse story, too, although weirdly Noah is a giant in the Norse version. And, you know, like this kind of thing is everywhere. And so like the reason that I’m studying mythology, occasionally I get people ask me like, why are you studying all this pagan literature? You know, why would you want to read that? Right. And number one, people should understand actually that most pagan literature that we have did not come directly from pagans. Almost all of it came through Christian scribes. Yeah, exactly. Who preserved it and copied. I mean, you know, making books before the advent of printing was a super slow and expensive process. And Christians for centuries upon centuries decided to spend a lot of their resources on retaining pagan literature. Yeah, right. And it’s not because they were syncretists. It’s because they saw this literature as representing something true about their world that they were part of. Now, you know, they weren’t saying, you know, you should just simply accept everything that’s in here and like we’re going to worship these gods and, you know, whatever. They’re not saying that. But rather like St. Basil the Great actually has this text called it’s usually called something like an address on the uses of Greek literature to young men or something like that. So he’s talking about education. And he actually says the crazy wild thing that you should read and master Homer before you ever read the Bible. He actually says, now I do not teach that, you know, but he actually says this in the fourth century. So why would he say that? I think part of it is that the scripture is so much responding to what’s happening in paganism that we have to understand that in order to understand the scripture correctly. Yeah, right now in Basil’s time, paganism was really on its way out. There were still some pockets of it in the Roman Empire, but not too many, right? By the time you get to the late fourth century. But so it’s not like Basil is saying like, you know, we need to fight against those pagans, right? He’s not really saying that. I mean, there are pagans around, but not a lot. But he is saying that this body of knowledge, this body of story is part of our story. Yeah, right. And you get, for instance, like there’s a lot of ways that that gets sort of dealt with. You know, one of my favorite examples comes from, I think, a 13th century church in Norway, where if you were to walk up to the front of the church, you know, to the front doors, you would see these beautiful wooden carvings on either side of the door that clearly depicting scenes from a story. Well, it’s the story of Sigurd killing the dragon Fafnir, which is a story from Norse mythology. Yeah. Right. And like, well, what’s going on here? And I’ve had people suggest to me, oh, they’re trying to sort of trick pagans to come in. And I’m like, well, how stupid are pagans? Seriously? Like, there’s a cross up on top of this church. You know, like, they’re not that and like, as soon as they get through the door, they’re going to see Jesus everywhere. It’s not like they’re going to be like, oh, well, I came here thinking I was going to go ahead and worship Thor. But, you know, I might as well stay for Jesus. Like, that’s not what’s going on. Rather, these are Christians who are saying this is, in a sense, part of our story. You know, and especially on the outer door, it’s like, it’s almost in the way that St. Basil said, you almost have to kind of have these stories, this network of stories before you enter into the church. Right. But just like we have in the narthex and many monasteries, you know, the Greek philosophers and this kind of idea that the pre-Christian world has something bubbling in it, which can then be kind of pointed towards Christ. And right now it seems that, like, when I heard that you were studying mythology, you know, for me, it made so much sense because as we kind of, in a way, not knowing these ancient stories and not knowing mythology was a leisure of a Christian world. Like, it was the leisure of a world that was so fully Christian that we could almost forget the cosmic story around which, in which Christianity was born. But now in this, as the Christianity is kind of evacuating public space, as it’s fragmenting into all this, this kind of nonsense, then all of a sudden the relevance of these ancient stories and of the pagan stories become important again, in my opinion, because we need to be able to kind of represent in the secular world this cosmic vision and how all these stories ultimately do point to Christ because people are tempted by them. People, you know, all these neo-pagans and all these people looking at other cultures and looking at Buddhist stories and Vedantic stories and, you know, all these other myths. And if as Christians we’re not able to see the bubbling in those stories and the kind of kind of frothing that is pointing towards Christ, then we’re missing an opportunity to kind of find the lights in the darkness, let’s say. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things I earnestly believe is that demons are coming back. Oh, yeah. Now, I don’t think that they went anywhere. Right. You know, they haven’t, they haven’t, they have not actually all been cast into the abyss, although fortunately for us most of them have. But there are still enough to cause massive problems. And they cause bigger problems when we engage with them in a cooperative way. And I think that as you as you said, you know, as Christianity continues to recede from public life that more and more people are cooperating with demonic powers. And so I think it’s especially important that we understand exactly who those demonic powers are and what they do. And that is also part of why I’m reading mythology is, you know, it’s not necessarily that there is a demon called Thor who does Thor things and I need to find him and point him out or whatever. But rather, if I understand the stories about Thor, then I can see interactions that people actually are having with demons in the ancient world because, you know, like we have this idea that pagans made up stories of gods in order to explain natural phenomena that didn’t understand. But that is never the way they said it. Yeah. Right. That is that is we’re imposing that narrative on top of them. And we say that they all talked about actually meeting spiritual beings and interacting with them. So now we can decide, OK, I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you. Every single culture throughout the history of the world for thousands of years. I don’t believe that any of you actually had these experiences. Yeah. Or maybe I think it’s harder to do. It’s harder to justify that right now with the return of psychedelics and all these getting harder and harder getting involved in these these kind of returning to hallucinogens than having experiences which are objective across individuals. You realize that, OK, no, no, there’s something going on right now in the world. There’s some kind of there are these cracks that are forming and there’s there are these things seeping in. And we find a relationship between the Inokian story of downfall with the turn to magic and technology into hybrids and to Chimera. And we can see the very same obsession that are popping up right now. And it’s and the fact that it’s actually related to people taking these substances and then encountering these beings. It’s like, no, I think it’s harder even for atheists and materials to argue with what’s going on. Right. And, you know, in the ancient world, taking substances in order to directly connect with your gods was something that was totally normal. Yeah, so like some of my ancient Baltic ancestors, for instance, I don’t know if they had access to psychedelics or not, but there was actually a saying that unless you drink enough beer, the God can’t hear you. So there’s this notion that drunkenness was kind of required for prayer of a certain kind. Right. And, you know, the other way that ancient people actually directly interacted with gods was by offering sacrifices to them and eating them. And there are people now doing that again. Yeah, right. Their food being offered in front of idols of gods and people are eating them. So that actually puts you directly into communion with that God. It’s the you it’s the pagan Eucharist, essentially. Yeah. Right. You know, the reason why the Eucharist works is the same reason why that works. But the big difference is who you’re doing it with. Are you doing it with the God who made you and loves you and has sacrificed himself for you? Or are you doing it with this lesser spiritual being who actually just wants to drag you down into the abyss with him? Yeah. And it’s going to make all kinds of false promises to you along the way. Yeah. And there’s even it almost seems like there’s even like the way that it’s happening now, the way it’s manifesting itself and kind of these new age movements and new pagan movements. It’s almost even more chaotic than what you see in like a regular pagan cult. It’s like it’s completely unhinged and chaotic and improvised. And there’s it’s almost like people are just it’s as if the pagans, even though they were dealing with demons, they maybe they had found a way to maybe like hold the fire in a box or something. They were kind of had a way to tame it somehow, like not really, but at least a little bit. But now it feels like people are just running around with matches in houses filled with explosives. And they’re like, oh, look at this effect. Look at what happens here. Oh, this actually works. This blows up. Woo. It’s like they just have spiritual experiences and they think that that’s enough to justify their behavior. Right. And you know, the difference between us now and ancient peoples with their paganism is, you know, ancient peoples were doing this in community, right? They saw that the worship of the God bound them together. The God became part of their community. They became part of that God’s community. Right. And they had notions of gods that they worship that were supposedly going to do good for good things for them. And they also knew that there were there were, you know, gods who were going to harm them. And so they did things to ward them off. Right. So you’re the modern person engaging with these spirits does not have even that pagan wisdom. No discernment, zero discernment. Yeah, yeah, it’s individualistic because this is this is through the lens of modernism now. So it’s individualistic. It’s it’s my personal journey. What’s happened is this is paganism through the lens of individualistic distorted Christian gospel selling. Right. So it’s it’s now instead of let me tell you what Jesus can do for your life. It’s let me tell you what this angel that I met, you know, through doing drugs can do for your life. Right. So what we’ve done is we now have this this reformation reduced gospel and we’re now using it in a pagan way. Right. And and so, I mean, it’s just it’s utterly frightening and horrifying. Right. Because because even even the community kinds of safeguards that pagans put in place, you know, that’s not even there. This is just people in their in their own homes, doing these things separately. And, you know, because we live in a time where everything is contested and contestable, even where communities do form of of neo pagans and or people doing these doing drugs together. And so forth. It’s still all very fluid. Yeah, because they’re not, for instance, bound together by place. Right. You know, most of these networks exist on the Internet. If they are bound together by place, there’s almost nothing preventing them from moving somewhere else. You know, like an ancient person did not tend to move very often unless he was spurred by necessity somehow. Yeah. You know, now it’s like, oh, well, I just want to move to this place. I’m gonna move there. Or, you know, I got a job in another state. I’m gonna go there. You know, I’m gonna go to another country. So all of the all of the kind of limitations that the ancient world provided people are no longer there. And so it’s just this utter explosion of spiritual engagements. And it’s very a lot of it is very, very dangerous, very, very dangerous. And it gives you insight into the flood. Like it gives you insight into how this type of behavior and these types of practices can lead to such a fragmentation, you know, or the Tower of Babel, like, you know, where everybody ends up. It’s even worse than the Tower of Babel. It’s like every individual just ends up speaking their own idiosyncratic spiritual language, and there’s no relationship between anybody else. I mean, this is what it’s in Scripture. Every man did what was right in his own eyes. I mean, that that’s like that, you know, in the modern world, that’s not a bug. That’s a feature. But it really is a bug. You know, that’s that’s what it’s that is the damning thing that is said about the immediate pre flood civilization. Every man did what was right in his own eyes. Yeah, it’s amazing. Yeah, it’s amazing to realize just how just how much it’s it’s like what we’re going through now gives us insight into what is in the Scripture and vice versa. But it’s not necessarily pleasant to have that insight. It’s actually quite frightening to kind of feel on the edge of the precipice and to see kind of everything toppling over. Right. And you know, there is even a distorted version of this that’s hitting Christianity, too. Right. Because so Christianity is a universal message and call. It’s absolutely universal. It involves nothing less than the whole cosmos. Yeah. Right. But now there is also this idea of, well, I should have more of a universal message. There’s also this idea of, well, I should have my version of Christianity, maybe my nationalistic version, maybe my ideological version, my whatever version. Right. And I’ll have my little sect. And, you know, the more positive versions of that just say, well, this is this is for these people who live in this place, you know, we’re going to keep those other people at arm’s length. But then the dark version where it inevitably goes is it becomes about conflict and it becomes about conquest. This is literally the narrative of paganism playing out under Christian guise. Yeah. The sort of nationalisms and all of this is a very, you know, identitarianism of every kind. It’s interesting to see that there, like you said, there are versions of it on both sides of the political spectrum. Right. There’s there’s the kind of weird nationalism and this holding on to these national identities versus others. And then there’s the kind of consumer version of that where I want I shop around for a church that meets my needs and, you know, whatever has the best like the best babysitting is like back to the church. I’m going to go to like whichever church fills my needs the most is the one. And so you have virgins both on the right and the left, you could say, of these types. And one there where it’s like, I’m going to go to church that everybody agrees with me politically, that everybody agrees with my ideology. It’s just a general phenomena of this kind of is break. Yeah. And, you know, you can see. So the opposite of that is the way that, for instance, the Orthodox Church talks about saints of particular places. Right now, some people see that and say, Oh, look at these Russian Orthodox Saints or these Greek or whatever, whatever adjective you want to put on. But actually, the way that the church talks about scenes in particular places, it says the saints who have shown forth in this land. Right. It’s not that they are that that land defines them. Because they belong to the heavenly hosts who are a cosmic reality. Yeah. So it’s closer to the idea that the universal history as we’re presenting it. It’s like it’s actually a way for these particular places to kind of be joined up into the story of Christ and into the life and body. Right. And that’s what gives those places their in their particular beauty. Right. It’s only as they refer to the cosmic narrative that they actually can shine forth when it becomes when the gaze gets turned back down towards created things. That’s when it becomes idolatrous. That’s when it becomes essentially pagan. You know, any kind of anything that draws a spiritual border between me and another person, it becomes a dark distorted thing that actually doesn’t have anything to do with Christ. But when we are both looking to Christ, then then our particulars shine forth in their specific beautiful way. Exactly. And that’s really the whole cosmic mystery that we see in St. Maximus. You know, that’s what we see in all these these saints that show us how multiplicity, you know, when it’s turned towards God, when it’s turned towards Christ, then it starts to shine. But when it turns towards itself, just like when Adam took the apple, you know, just all the sins of pride that we see in the Bible, then you sink down in the mire and you you know, you lose that that that brightness. Yeah, you know, the it’s hard because like we this problem of the universal in the particular has always been sort of with us. Right. And and a lot of times when people see totalitarian approaches to things, right, then then they resist the idea of any kind of universalism. But the problem with a totalitarianism is not that it’s universal. It’s that it’s universal in the wrong way. Yeah. Right. It’s about universal power or something like that or, you know, making everyone think exactly the same. But but Christianity is truly universal and the way that it’s universal brings out the light of everyone that’s within it. Yeah. You know, that’s that’s hard for us, you know, because like we hear the call of the universal call to, for instance, the universal call to the And that can then take us, we can become totalitarian if we don’t refer that to God. You know, but but if we react against that, which I think is, you know, reacting against totalitarianism is a totally normal and utterly appropriate thing to do. But the way the way we need to react against it is not to say I’m going to draw my little fortress here and and I’m going to invite the people I want into it and everyone else is not welcome. You know, what however they wanted to find that the right way is to say, you know what? The kingdom of God is the kingdom. You know, and in my father’s house, there are many mansions, right? That’s that’s the way that it actually works. It’s only with that king that you can actually have a universal society. You know, it’s not no other king will suffice, you know, and and any other king that exists needs to refer his throne back to the throne of God or else it’s going to become a very dark and and distorting kind of kingdom. Yeah, yeah. And it’s I it’s a warning to all of us to not draw our to not draw our life from politics, you know, and to not not discounted. It’s important. It exists. We have to deal with it. But to not feel like that this is where our life come from because it because it’s not yeah, all that stuff has to be relative to the kingdom of God. Yeah, yeah. Well, Father, I think this is a great this is a great place to end. You know, this is a thing that I think is a great place to end. You know, this is a thing that this call is is right. And everybody get you know, get the book Let God Arise. It’s just came out. It’s fresh off the off the presses. And we’ll definitely check in with Father Andrew again, you know, as he kind of discovers this the the mythological worldview more and more. We’ll definitely find places to to connect again. So thank you, Father Andrew. Thank you very much.