Welcome to another episode of FAX.

I'm your host, Steven Boyce, joined by a special guest and colleague of mine, James Gilbert.

How are you, James?

I'm doing well, yeah, doing all.

Right, Welcome to fax for your first time.

I think hopefully many more because today's kind of a left lung, right lung approach.

We're going to go, you know, more the Orthodox Western, Eastern connection as we talk about two really, really important issues to the East and the West, and that's baptism, particularly infant baptism and iconography.

Because I can't think of any 2 subjects that could be any better to talk about coming from guys like Baptist, Reformed Baptist like Gavin Ortland.

And Gavin has put out two videos.

We're going to have the links for those in the actual description of this video.

You can go back and watch him.

We're going to time stamp and just kind of go through this quickly, but we want you to be able to make sure that we're being fair.

So we want you to hit that link if you're concerned we're misrepresenting Gavin.

I know Gavin personally.

I've hosted discussions and debates with Gavin.

He's a good guy.

We're not here to attack him as a person, but there's some comments that he makes.

One of his favorite buzzwords is accretions.

So we want to kind of breakdown terminology, words, meanings, are all accretions bad in that sense?

So those are things that we're going to be talking about.

All of that'll be available for you to follow along with his videos in the links.

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James, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Obviously, you're a teacher.

We teach together at the same school.

Tell us about your background.

Tell us about your education.

What brought you into subjects like especially iconography?

Sure.

Yeah, Well, First off, thanks for having me.

I I feel like we missed the opportunity to do right and left with the right left lung.

Oh yeah, I I'm on the East right now.

Although, yeah, I guess it depends how you're looking at the camera.

Yeah, we might be OK actually.

Yeah.

So I'm, I'm James Gilbert.

I am currently Abd that is all but dissertation.

So I'm, I'm beginning that process currently, which you know, is exhausting and I probably should be working on it right now to be honest.

But I grew up in Kazakhstan in Almadi.

My parents were I'll use some code language here.

I'm used to doing this for security purposes.

My parents were M workers in, in Central Asia.

So I grew up my whole life pretty much in Almadi loved my upbringing there.

It was excellent.

I had a wonderful experience, nothing to complain about that was raised kind of Reformed Baptist, I would say largely speaking.

So this is I know that term has some qualifications, but I was largely a Baptist with some kind of Reformed soteriology probably would be the way I described it.

So I ended up getting my undergrad and interdis with Christian studies and history.

It's kind of a history theology dual major kind of thing.

I then went to Texas to do my master's in ancient Near Eastern archaeology, which is kind of a proxy term for like biblical archaeology.

And then we were there happily working until COVID hit.

My program was moved in Mass to Nashville.

Crazy set of circumstances.

So I finished my master's actually at Lipscomb University in Nashville, and that's an ancient Near Eastern archaeology got through my coursework of my dissertation or my, my PhD up there.

And then I've moved, you know, where we are now.

So my field is ancient Near Eastern archaeology.

Broadly speaking, I'm comfortable talking on those topics.

That being said, my emphasis and my my research has tended to focus on late antiquity.

So I'm more of a late antiquity kind of guy, which of course has a lot of overlap with early Christianity especially.

So this is kind of where we had our conversations begin in this area.

But yeah, that's me.

I have a wonderful wife and and two kids.

And yeah, I've also, of course, converted to Eastern Orthodoxy.

So we have the East West going on here.

That was after a long period of prayer and study.

I have nothing but love for Baptists, actually love, love Baptists.

I have nothing negative to say.

It was just a matter of being compelled by, I think, the Orthodox Church and its claim.

So that's kind of my story.

Everybody's journey is a little bit different.

We've talked about that in the show.

Many of you have shared your stories.

Some of you have converted to Orthodox, some of you converted to Lutheran, some of you converted to Catholic Anglican.

We've got a lot of people, people on this channel that have kind of gone through different journeys and one of yours is is really tied to looking at icons.

That was a big one and probably one of the hardest ones for most people that are converting either whether you're going east or West on this matter, it is a very big point of contention and Anglicanism as it relates to the 39 articles we talked about that.

Some would say no, the articles teach that it's fine as long as you don't worship, which they're just repeating.

I see a 2 at times would some would say others are like, Oh yeah, we should use icons, we have the freedom and who cares?

You know, Nicaea too said yes.

So therefore we follow the councils.

And so there's a lot of debates based on where you're at on these things.

But what's really not debated even in most Protestant circles, is the idea of baptism.

Gavin claimed in his video that the idea of infant baptism was an inconsistent accretion where there were spotty places where maybe you could argue it.

But then the documents that many of those that defend infant baptism would go too far, They would say, well, you know, we we talked about actually Polycarp saying that he had been a follower of the Lord for all those years, like, well, that must be from the time of childhood and infancy.

But he'll, you know, assumption can't prove it.

Trying to use language of the dedicate language of other writings that deal with it in that time period.

And he would say, so really you could argue yes, maybe or no, not at all.

So those are bad arguments.

We shouldn't even use those on either side.

Fair enough.

Then he jumps into others like Justin Martyr and Irenaeus and Tertullian, ultimately to conclude that the normality of the usage of infant baptism came after the Pelagian controversy in North Africa, which started in England and places in in the West, up in Europe, and then overtook the northern part of Africa, and then Augustine and all of his powerful persuasive writings.

Somehow one man was able to convince the entire churches, both East and West, to follow this protocol.

And he uses examples of Eastern fathers who were not baptized as children, who were raised in Christian homes, and they didn't get baptized till later.

So we'll get into some of that.

But he does say that infant baptism is a later in creation that connected itself in our history based on Agustin and the teaching of original sin that was going against Pelagianism.

Now we're going to talk about all of that, but let's talk about the idea of terminology, accretion, innovation, development.

I think these words are being used too loosely.

I want you to kind of give us some working definitions because not all innovative ideas are bad.

Now remember, and I see it too, is claiming, especially on iconography, this is not an innovation, but we need to look at it from their understanding.

How did they in these councils look at innovation and stay close to?

Them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And this is a very important question.

I think defining the semantic arrange of words is always a valuable thing to do.

If you don't do that, you're, yeah, you're running prey of anachronisms.

Yeah.

There's just a high likelihood you're going to misread things.

I also think that it's important to talk about this idea of innovation.

I think when you get into like a, a Orthodox Catholic dialectic, there's often this claim and counterclaim that, you know, Orthodox, we don't believe in development of doctrine that Catholics do.

I think it's probably also an unhelpful designation.

I think everybody's going to have to see to some form of development.

I think a Trinitarian formula in and of itself is 1.

You could, you could qualify that as an accretion.

The question is, is are the, you know, the essential concepts underlying those designations?

Are those themselves accretions, or are the principles derived from these essential doctrines accretions?

Right.

One could easily say that, you know, the Trinitarian doctrines flow from Scripture that may not be explicitly stated therein, right.

That's a very clear point to be made.

So I think that's an important part of understanding, you know, yeah, later clarifications.

Can fall under the category of an accretion, but the idea itself is not an accretion here.

Here's a perfect example.

We're on baptism.

Baptism is not unique to Christianity.

Christianity did not form baptism for the first time.

It's like, oh, they went to a river and started purging or washing or ceremonially cleansing people from some sort of sinful attachment lifestyle connection.

John the Baptist was doing something very similar to what we see in Qumran places that even in the ceremonial cleansings in with Mick the mikvahs, looking at it from that perspective.

So baptism itself in Christianity is an accretion by definition because it does develop its connection.

Jesus adding the Trinitarian connection, baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is an accretion from John's baptism from that perspective.

So talk about the importance of just that.

Looking at baptism.

Let's start before we even touch infant baptism from a near Eastern context that what John was doing was an accretion from something else and Christianity is doing an accretion from him.

Therefore, baptism in general, whether you're pedo credo, all look at it from an accretion standpoint, which isn't always bad.

Sure.

Yeah, we talked about this before as well.

But one thing that I spent a lot of time in my field that I have more familiarity with is looking at the archaeological record.

And in the archaeological record in Judea, particularly in the first centuries AD and BC, we see tons of mikvah, or mikvah oat as they're often called, and Judaism, as we all know, ritual washing was a very important part of cleansing oneself from ritual impurity, right?

The the Old Testament and then subsequently the fair cycle system had a very strict set of principles they followed in how they ritually cleanse themselves from all sorts of things.

For example, they even would if we see this in Galilee especially, they often use stone vessels as opposed to ceramic vessels because they believe that ceramic vessels retained impurities from Gentiles or from other unclean sources.

Which is fascinating that they would even think that deeply.

Right.

Oh, oh, my goodness.

I mean, you read, you read some of the disputations and the Talmud and even, you know, before this, there's a whole lot of controversy around this, funny enough, in the wedding of Cana when Christ, you know, when those are stone vessels.

Right.

And yeah, so yeah, they're not like pick up barrels where you can just walk out the room with them.

And you see an intensification of ritual purity desires amongst especially devout Galilean Jews, whereas we find less of those stone vessels when you get into the kind of high affluent Sadducee, you know, Sanhedrin type elite Jews in Jerusalem.

Which is no shock there.

Absolutely right.

So we see reflected these ideas reflected in the archaeological record.

Mikvahs are everywhere.

In fact, almost.

It's almost like a Jewish identity designator speaking when we find mikvahs because it just expresses a need for a local community of Jews or people who are Jewish to have a place readily available for ritual cleansing and with regard to Christian baptism, right?

One thing that people often don't realize is that when John the Baptist was calling people to get baptized, this was very much in the mode of Jewish practice in one sense.

But what he was doing is calling for Jews to get a baptism of repentance, and the kind of baptism he was calling them to do was a baptism that was usually reserved for non Jewish converts to Judaism.

Yeah, proselytizing people, yes, so.

One of the reasons that people didn't like John the Baptist, or at least some of the Pharisaical school, is that he was basically telling people, look, you have to be converted to the faith, truly.

That's offensive to.

Jew very offensive and also this shows that they weren't living correctly they now have to be brought in and live life of repentance awaiting the Messiah Yeah right.

So when John's offering this baptism of repentance, This is why the early church, when they meet people baptized by John, they go, Oh yeah, and here's the Messiah he was Speaking of.

Let's bring you in, right.

There's a there's a process of confirming that baptism in a sense.

So we see mikvahs everywhere that what John's doing is kind of a a subset of those kinds of ritual washings.

And then the Christian Church in their baptismal rites and their sacraments, they're deriving their practice from that John the Baptist type convert baptism right, That Christ of course prefigures for.

Us and and one of the things that we've learned and it's it's in the literature though we would admit the dating is later, but it's looking back at older practices right is that especially when when you're proselytizing somebody if somebody's coming from the Gentile world into the Christian world, when these people go through their ceremonial cleansings and purgings and washings, they didn't just baptize the adults they did baptize children too.

So kind of kind of talk about that because you discussed that from one standpoint where we look back at history and it's like, OK, so if a family comes over that are gentiles, if they have children, it didn't matter.

Two years old, two months old, 20 years old and they're being converted with the parents, the boys are being circumcised.

There's no dispute.

I don't, I don't even know anybody that would dispute that.

But that wasn't the only thing that happened for the adolescents and those that are in childhood, not just circumcision for the boys, but ceremony cleansing for those children as well.

Yeah.

Yeah, I was pouring through some of the Talmud in the Mishnas.

Weird.

Which is always dangerous, by the way.

It gets a little bit pedantic at times maybe, but you get into this debate and I think Ferguson mentions this as well, but there's this one, there's this one reference where Gemara states that Ravi Huna, who's like the 3rd century rabbi.

So we're looking at like early to mid 3rd century.

He says that when a convert to Judaism, and I'll quote him exactly, says with regard to a convert who is a minor.

So this is in the context he's talking about a woman or man who comes into the Jewish community and a part of their conversion, circumcision if necessary, and then of course, baptism are, you know, mikvah, ritual washing.

As a part of this, he says with regard to a convert who is a minor, one immerses him in a ritual bath with the consent of the court.

As a minor lacks the capacity to make halachic decisions, the court is authorized to make those decisions in his stead.

And later they set the precedent of well, when this child comes of age, he can then either affirm or deny this this.

Boy, that sounds a lot like a sponsor in baptism.

I I I feel like I've heard that before in church.

Yeah.

I think you could make a strong argument this is analogous.

Now again, this is not 1st century.

To be fair, it's a later 3rd, 4th century reference to a 3rd century source, but it speaks to this kind of common milu within Judaism that convert baptisms would also mikva.

Ritual washings would also be given to the infants with the consent of those who kind of sponsor or speak on his behalf.

So this is presence in Judaism pretty early on and probably again, this is not universal.

Many scholars do a a test that the Mishnas are kind of drawing from earlier Second Temple Judaism sources.

It makes sense with what we see.

You know, what they've excavated at Qumran and you being an archaeology know this.

It seems to be a practice that was continued that John the Baptist actually continued in his own way like you talked about.

He, he created an A, a accretion of it himself.

Jesus continually uses this concept.

And by the way, I mean, even looking at baptism, I mean even the apostles themselves took Old Testament ideas, concepts like the ark and the flood.

Peter uses that, you know, going through the waters, being saved through water.

This idea, Peter took an idea in the Old Testament coming from Genesis, looks at it, likens it to baptism.

John does the same thing.

He talks about his baptism and then the baptism of fire.

I mean, the, the ideas we have, unfortunately in growing up Protestant baptism was an exclusive idea to just Christianity.

And then you actually study the ancient year East, you even look at Pagan washings.

I mean, it's not, it's not even just the Christians or the Jews.

I mean, there were massive types of so-called if you had baptisms or washings or purgings that come through the waters that are even in Pagan ideology, not just Christian.

So everybody's kind of doing a similar cultural idea and adding an accretion to it that brings us about.

But the consistency is there.

Pagans.

When they did this they would include children, Jews.

Whether they started randomly doing that in the 3rd century I doubt it seems to be something much earlier.

Or Christians when an entire family was converted and this seems to be the language of Acts.

Whether you're talking about Peter, repent, write and be baptized, all of you in the name of Jesus.

This promises for you and your children.

Next passage.

And then you see like households coming together because this is the big debate, right?

Is well, when the household got baptized, you're assuming children are involved.

Well, you're assuming they're not involved.

It's like no, no, no.

But from the ancient year Eastern mindset, whether it was a household with no children or children, the application of, of ceremonial cleansing was consistent.

If it was a bunch of older kids, younger kids, kids that could speak because it couldn't speak.

We have overemphasized that.

Well, what does household mean?

Household could be or or would be or should be.

If there's children and it applies, baptize them.

If it doesn't apply, then obviously you're not baptizing children.

You're baptizing teenagers and adults or whatever.

At the end of the day, which also involves servants and everybody else, I mean, so anybody under that household.

So this whole contention has been so narrowed in definition, but it is clearly understood by the culture, Pagan, Jew and Christian, that everybody that converts through a patriarchal household set up all came together and experience this ceremonial cleansing.

Yeah.

One, one thing for me as well, I think culturally speaking that that helped me in my own, I guess process of looking into this was understanding just how hyper individualized I as an American in the 21st century AM.

We think of people as individuals.

Fundamentally, fathers don't have the same kind of rights over their children as fathers did in the ancient or Eastern and Greco Roman context for that matter, right.

In one sense, the the seed of the father is almost like, you know, that their views of like passing down your, your progeny in a sense is and they're much more intrinsically tied to one another.

I won't get into those details right now, but Needless to say, the father essentially owned and had complete control.

Over his family.

That's why he was able to give his daughters off and married absolutely.

Absolutely.

And you know, of course, this idea of somehow the children being fundamentally separate from their parents just again, is, is not, I think, really rooted in that context very much.

So that's another thing to consider I think too.

So let's keep that in mind.

We we've, we've looked at the we got the Jewish, the Pagan, the Christian, We're floating around the idea of an accretion.

Not all accretions are bad.

Some of them are better developed where we look at creation, and this is the beautiful thing about what we're going to look at in I See a 2 and icons and things like that.

We believe in the Christian context of the incarnation changed everything between the divine and the human world.

When you're looking at the spiritual and the physical, we're not Gnostic, we're not dosatist.

We believe that God operates in his creation through physical created things.

When God created the universe, He said it was good and He intended it.

I mean, we see this in the very beginning, the Spirit of God moving on the face of the waters.

And there's a lot of debate about the Hebrew there too.

What does that mean?

But but what we do see is God influencing creation through physical means.

He created man from dust, right?

He he could have just spoke him, but he chose to use physical substance of earth and he made man from it.

And we see this even with miracles of Jesus.

Like I think of the blind man who is Jesus, took dirt from the ground, spit on it, made mud, stuck it on his eyes, tells him, hey, go walk halfway across town blind while your face is covered in mud and go wash.

Why not just say the word and my soul shall be healed, right?

I mean like, why not just say the word in his eyes and be restored?

He could have done it.

But Jesus, even his miracles showed us in the incarnational miracles, he was going to continue to use physical means to do miraculous works, Dirt, saliva, water, bread, wine.

He took these substances, turning the water into wine.

He he could have just like took empty cups and people look down and go, oh, my cup's full, it's full of wine.

Why did he take the ceremonial cleansing and, and turn all those into wine, right.

So Jesus, he loved using physical means to do spiritual realities through them.

And so we should not expect him to give ordinances as the Baptist column or the Sacramento ideas of baptism and Eucharist and oils and anointing and go, oh, Jesus wants to use physical things to do spiritual realities, just as his whole ministry had painted.

No shock, right?

And.

This is reflected in the ancient or Eastern world too.

I mean, one thing you notice when you study this stuff is we look a lot at sacred space in archaeology.

We look at the way that space is created to designate sacredality.

The way that they view the world is, of course, filled with this idea that things are imbued with sacredality.

So when you look at the ancient or Eastern world, the ancient Israelite context, I mean, they had a whole swath of what, you know, some more Gnosticizing people may call, you know, superstitious or magical beliefs, right?

And they did sacred places, sacred spaces, sacred objects.

They thought that, you know, oil was anointing.

It had some kind of efficacious power, right?

The talismans we find archaeological evidence, for example, the oldest text of the Bible that in existence, the Keta phenom fragment was literally a rolled up metal Talisman you would wear for protection.

Yeah, this is the mind of the.

Superstition.

Absolutely right.

So when I got familiar with that world, for me, it was walking into an Orthodox liturgy that I thought, okay, this is very foreign to me, but I recognize it.

It's the same kind of mind present in the ancient world and would have been the same world the apostles inhabited, right?

So this idea like you mentioned of of nature being used by God and sacredality being imbued into things around us, This is a very present throughout the.

Ancient world, yeah.

I mean, you can't read the Old Testament and look at the things that were supposed to be done.

The type of wood used in Solomon's temple, the images of angels, the the way the gold was beaten and refined.

All of these things are important to a Jewish mind and their acts of worship.

You didn't walk into the temple the same way you walk into a home or the city market.

I mean, there, there is a sacredness to the place and its items and its dedication.

Why else do they dedicate the temple that they, they just believe that that was like a, a ceremonial welcome.

Here's the temple.

No, they believe there was a sacred because God was present in the building.

He was in between these things.

You had the law, you had this the rod, you had these things in the ark of the covenant were beautiful representations of God works through these means.

Why the rod?

Well, look what God did with the rod all through that what why did God have to use the rod of Moses and Aaron to turn into snakes, turn the Nile into blood, all of these objects.

Why why the the manna from heaven?

Why the object of the tablets of stone, all of these things were physical objects that God created in the world and said it is good, it is good and he wants to exist in that world.

So we shouldn't expect any different when we get to baptism.

So kind of covering Gavin here, he, he gets into some of the the key figures, 2nd century figures like Justin the martyr.

And one of the things that he claims about Justin the martyr is the baptism in which he speaks could not connect specifically the idea of illumination to somebody who didn't come to repentance on their own, meaning they had the conscious ability to to have saving faith.

And he doesn't include any idea of infants or toddlers or anything like that.

Now here, here's the problem.

And by the way, you can find that in the video at the 37 minute mark.

So if we're going to time stamp that, but here's here's some things to consider.

The idea of illumination, which is the term even the writer of Hebrews uses those who were once enlightened that that has always been understood.

In fact, the Syriac considers that word for baptism.

There has always been understood that baptism is some sort of enlightenment, some sort of illumination that comes to play.

And Justin is clearly, in my mind, Speaking of pagans that are converting to the Christian faith, not Christian families who are bringing their newborn child to the priest or the Bishop or something like that.

Here.

Here's some of the clues, folks.

Justin says these words, those who are persuaded and believe.

So just like we talked about people being proselytized into the Jewish faith, they go through the act of cleansing and their whole family with them.

These are pagans that are coming into Christianity, and that's consistent with Justin because he's defending Christianity against Pagan ideas.

He's talking about people that have converted from paganism to Christianity.

They are persuaded.

He's not talking about a child who was raised in a Christian home his whole life or something like that.

So this implies a prior life that didn't involve Christian belief and practice.

A second quote from Justin the Martyr is we were born in ignorance and bad habits.

And so he's describing conversion from a non Christian way of life.

Like we, we did these things basically ignorantly.

We we worship these idols.

We spent time doing these practices.

We didn't know any better.

I mean, we just followed what we were raised in.

Clearly not somebody who is raising Christianity.

A third key of Justin is he states the promise they have can live accordingly.

There is a moral conversion of code of conduct that is changing in the mind of these these believers.

So I think to use Justin the Martyr is a is a horrible way to look at this because he's clearly talking about Pagan conversions.

And Gavin was using him to be like talking generally about baptism as a whole, not exclusively about converts who are born in bad habits and ignorance, who believed their way of life was proper and they had a different conduct of morality.

And they had to be persuaded and believe that the Jesus of Nazareth way is the way of eternal life for a person and change their whole mind to that.

He's clearly talking about convert.

So of course he's not going to mention all of these other elements that we would see maybe in Augustine or something like that.

Then later in that same video, the 40 minute mark, he talks about Tertolian.

Now Tertolian's an interesting subject.

The church to this day has to be overly cautious and how they approached Tertolian because Tertolian, you know, he kind of got into some bad thinking there for a while.

I would argue by the end of his life he seems to abandon this concept.

But he got into the mountainous the Montanist ideas and that is you delay baptism as long as you can because if you, if you for lack of better term, if you commit a mortal sin before baptism, you're doomed.

Now this becomes a major point of contention from misunderstanding Hebrews that once enlightened, if you sin willingly after this enlightenment baptism, there is no more forgiveness sin.

So you could commit some sort of mortal sin.

You go out and kill a guy, you're doomed, you're done.

Like doesn't matter.

You could get baptized 100 times, it won't save you.

You are past saving.

And so the thinking was, and Constantine fell into this because Constantine himself did not get baptized till the end.

Well, let's just say baptism to the end of the day and wait as long as we can so we don't screw it up.

I've I've presented some papers on Constantine and I've studied his life quite a lot.

It's funny that some of the older rationale for questioning his authenticity as a Christian convert is to suggest, well, he got baptized at the end of his life, this is a mere formality, or it was just a get out of hell free card he wanted to employ.

But rather, I think this reflects a common belief at the time that, you know, he knew the kinds of sins he'd have to commit as an emperor.

He was a sophisticated person.

He was not a perfect.

Person not at all that.

Being said, I think it's actually a testament to his belief in the efficacious power of regenerative baptism that he delayed it.

Quite the contrary.

And this is, you know, the mainline scholarship now is definitely not on the Constantine with some kind of conniving, you know, political player for Christianity necessarily.

They much more now we think, yes, he had authentic belief wherever that emerged from.

And his delayed baptism, you know, was actually a reflection of a belief in the power of baptism itself.

And think about that for a minute, because if you're talking about if, if you truly believe that you can damn your children, so to speak, like you baptized them before that they are fully conscious of sin and actions.

And then they go out and commit a mortal sin at 17 years old.

And you kind of as a parent feel guilty in the sense of like, oh, well, I'm not justifying it.

I'm saying like, if that's what they believe is really happening.

So for example, Tertullian says it's on baptism.

The sponsors likewise, not just the parents, the sponsors should be thrust into danger.

Like he's asking a question.

Should should sponsors just rush into danger by by standing behind?

So we'll speak for this child who can't speak for himself, which goes back to the practice you talked about, who both themselves, by reason of mortality may fail to fulfill their promises and may be disappointed by the development of an evil disposition and those whom they stood.

He's asking questions, like, should we rush into this?

Like, shouldn't we just let the child dam themselves if they're going to be damned?

Like, this is his idea.

But by the way, Tertullian recognizes that the practice was infant baptism, right?

Yeah.

Why else would he bring that?

Up That was the thing for me looking at this and again, fairpoint from Gavin, I think it's obviously worth mentioning Tertulli and he always has been a point of contention on this topic, but it seems pretty clear to me that he's speaking out of his Montanism.

I think, you know, one of the critics that's always one critique I think is rightfully levied by some Protestants is, oh, you ignore this figure or father origin for Talian because they're not orthodox and fair enough.

But in this case, I think Protalian's Montanism was the driving factor behind his questioning of infant baptism.

But it still reflects the practice as it existed.

This is very early anticipation to that so.

Yeah, he's not.

He's not denying the reality.

In fact, Gavin cites Tertullian's preference of delay, but the idea of a delay means that there was already a practice of not delaying and he thinks it's in the best interest.

And not only thing Gavin knows that Tertullian was influenced by Montanism and we all, you know, Montanism was not, you know, a prevalent orthodox position going around the church.

But he should also acknowledge that this presumes in existence the acceptance of it in the Church.

But his concern is added into this in North Africa, particularly in the early 3rd century.

But I also find it interesting that he ignores Irenaeus's statement completely, because Irenaeus comes into play too.

And notice what Irenaeus says in Against Heresy's book too.

He states he, Jesus, came to save all through himself, all I say, through whom through him are reborn or born again in God, infants, children, youth, and old men.

Now in this Irenaeus emphasizes that Jesus became a child to save children, an infant to save, you know, infants, a teen to same teens, an adult to save adults.

So he believed that Jesus didn't just come to the world and land on planet earth this 3830 year old man, because he came through every stage of life to reach each person at that stage.

And he emphasizes the idea of being reborn in God through Christ.

Now that's a strong phrase here because he talks about rebirth in other places.

He stayed through he through him.

He passed through every age, becoming an infant or an infant, sanctifying infants, a child for children, etcetera.

And so Irenaeus believed that being birthed, if you go to his commentary of what he believes is happening in John Three, he must be born of water, right?

He talks about it being born again is born from above, but it involves the act of the Spirit and water.

And he clearly defines that as being particularly the, the form of baptism.

He states in the lost fragments of writings of Irenaeus, except a man be born again through water in the Spirit, he should not enter the Kingdom of heaven and all of that.

He explicitly defines what baptism is.

So therefore, for a child, an infant, to be reborn, he must go through water, a toddler must go through water, a teenager must go through water, an adult must go through water.

Based on what we know about his stance and he even talks about it using the example of Naman, right?

He mentions Naman was an old man suffering of leprosy was purified upon being baptized, and he says that example in the Old Testament is for us, that we too must go through and have the sin of leprosy washed off in the water.

So he explicitly teaches.

Us this also ties into the much later Orthodox, you know, Eastern idea of recapitulation.

You know, it's funny.

This is also probably where Irenaeus gets this kind of odd idea of Christ being 50 because he doesn't want to emphasize the, but you know, we can debate that later.

But this ties into St.

Maximus, who says that when Christ incarnates, he recapitulates human nature and humanity itself, which I think fits nicely with the idea of him taking upon every stage of humanity.

You you'd also appreciate this, again speaking from archaeology, some Byzantine baptismal fonts later on, 4th, 5th, 6th centuries.

They actually are shaped like a womb.

Isn't that cool?

Like oh wow.

Type a lot.

Of heartening's to like you're entering, you're being reborn again out of the water.

It's kind of a cool, you know, a cool harkening to that.

Let's make.

That cool again?

Yeah.

I mean, let's bring that back.

Again, maybe not anatomically similar to how we think of wombs, but they did kind of, you know, point to this idea of birth in there.

Yeah, that's a beautiful analogy because you're being born again through water again, which Peter used that example as well.

So in the in these places here in the 40 minute mark for Gavin, he talks about, he asserts the significance between Augustine and earlier figures and he mentions Tertullian.

But then he brings up the subject of original sin.

He suggests that Augustine particularly viewed infants born guilty in the need of baptism because of original guilt.

Original sin.

Now Eastern and Western contentions here are minimal and and semantical and some natures we we all kind of land at the idea of original sin, but we have some nuances to guilt, right?

But he acts like in the video, and I thought this was interesting that Gavin acted like Augustine is the one that actually brought this out.

He's not the only one that talks about this idea of original sin or the concern of original sin.

I mean Tertullian himself deals with this, Cyprian others deal with this concept.

So I found it very interesting that Tertullian got the same position of original sin.

Like hear what he says here on the soul.

Every soul then by reason of its birth has its nature and Adam, until it is born again in Christ.

Moreover, it is unclean all the while that it remains without this regeneration, and because unclean, it is actively sinful and suffuses even the flesh by reason of their conjunction with its own shame.

So.

And there's other places where Churchillian implies that the soul born into the state of a condition of Adam has inherited the sin of Adam.

So that's not like unique to Augustine, I mean Tertullians.

Teach and even on this East West divide, we might some extent differ on what we mean by inherited guilt or sin.

You know, ancestry original, what is that?

Whatever that means, the Orthodox still teaching the East that baptism for infants washes away that that original sin, that ancestral sin.

So I mean on on that point we can agree.

Yeah, I I the term original sin.

You know I've some Eastern Orthodox.

You know the duck.

But then if you actually sit down and listen to each other talk about what do you mean by ancestral sin or what do you mean by original sin, we're saying the same thing.

And then, then I'm I'm sure not all Catholics affirm the Augustinian distinctives either.

So I mean, there's there's that to discuss, but that's not my.

Special this this fan of Augustine does Augustine, you know, is I'm more of an Augustinian, you know, guy, but not you're right.

Not, not all do some take a nuance, but we're all agreeing at the end of the day, everybody involved in their perspective agrees that some sort of sin is being washed, including on the infant.

Now St.

Cyprian seems to imply newborns need their souls saved too.

I mean, for example, and I'll read this, it's in his Epistle 58.

It's kind of long stay with me, But in respect to the case of infants, which you say ought not to be baptized within the second or third day after their birth and that the law of the ancient circumcision should be regarded.

So that you think that one should be born, not should be born, should not be baptized and sanctified within the 8th day.

Here's the point and then I'm going to read the rest of this.

He's saying some people are like well you shouldn't baptize the child on day 2.

Day three because we're following the act of circumcision which happens on day 8.

Cyprian saying nonsense like don't wait till the 8th day.

But this applies a couple things.

1, he believed a child needs to be washed of some sort of sin #2 Cyprian is also saying that baptism and circumcision are linked and it and he would interpret Colossians that the new circumcision is baptism in that manner because they were taking so literal.

It's like, all right, if baptism is a new circumcision, then we can't baptize children until day 8, right?

And he's like, no, that's not true.

He even says we all thought very differently in our council and he's speaking in North Africa.

He's like, actually our council's just has looked at this and said, no, even though baptism is in the likeness of circumcision, we don't follow the actual day of eight.

If the child is day 2, baptize the child on Day 2.

Like there's nothing wrong with baptizing the child before day 8.

This is what he's getting at.

He says for in this course which you thought was to be taken, no one agreed.

He's saying, in fact, we put it up for a vote and unanimously everybody said you don't have to wait till day 8.

So all the bishops in North Africa are saying no, no, no, we don't have to wait, but we all rather judge at mercy and grace of God is not to refuse on anyone born of man.

For as the Lord says in His Gospel, the Son of Man has not come to destroy men's lies, but to save them as far as we can.

We must strive, that is, if possible, that no soul should be lost.

For what is wanting to him who had been once formed in the womb by the hand of God to us indeed, and to our eyes, according to the worldly course of the days, those who are born appear to receive an increase, but whatever things are made by God are contemplated by the majesty and work of God their Maker.

And again, that's Epistle 58.

Cyprian obviously believes in the washing of some sort of sin, and that no parent should ever delay even to day eight of the circumcision day in order to give this child a saved soul.

So no soul should be lost.

So clearly he believes that infant baptism has salvific imposings on that child by the influence of holy water, right.

So then this brings me to my main issue with Gavin's claim about Augustine.

In the 4th century.

He presented Agustin as introducing an accretion, this idea of something new that became more developed.

Maybe there were some isolated, you know, decisions here.

But he argues in that video and again the links in the description that the rise of Pelagianism move the hand of Augustine to say, look, we need to normalize infant baptism.

Now I, I explored this in a previous video.

You can go back and watch that.

I was also Co writing a script with Trent Horn on his channel.

We addressed it more as well.

So again, when we look at all of this content, but we look into the discussion of Pelagianism, we look into what Pelagius himself admitted.

I demonstrated multiple times, and I'm not going to read it except for one line or two lines here.

Even Pelagius himself said who would deny baptism to infants?

So he says this writing to the Pope saying, well, I shouldn't be excommunicated from the church.

Who's saying that I don't agree with baptism of infants.

Now it's interesting that Pelagius doesn't bring up original sin in this this letter he's writing to the Pope, right?

And he's trying to get Pope Innocent the first to restore him.

He writes a letter.

Now Pope Innocent the first guys, by the time the letter gets there and his successor comes behind him and just reaffirms it.

And then they really reaffirm it at 4:31 at the Council of Ephesus.

So the, the idea of condemning Pelagianism and original sin and acts of that, the East and the West must agree because they came together at Ephesus and condemned Pelagius.

So it's not like, by the way, that's important because there's this new movement that's saying, oh, Pelagius was misunderstood.

He's been misrepresented.

Darn that Agustin guy.

He sat there and sabotaged this man's life.

It's like, you do realize an ecumenical council came together and all of them together condemned Pelagianism.

Yeah, I'm telling you.

But he asked Pelagius said.

Who is so impious as to which would exclude infants from the Kingdom of heaven?

By what?

By forbidding them to be baptized and to be born again in Christ, Pelagius, even denying original sin, must have had some belief that a child has to be saved through baptism.

He's like, what kind of heretic would ever deny an opportunity for a child to be saved?

I don't believe that Pope Innocent, who told you that these rumors are faults, right?

He says.

Who indeed is so impious as to have the heart to refuse common redemption of the human race to an infant of any age whatsoever?

And then he goes on to say let them read our brief book we have sent to your blessing as he's like, look, it's in my book, read my book in which we hold fast to 1 baptism, which should be administered on the same Sacramento words for infants as they are for adults.

Then he says always in need of the help of God.

That's in his letter and confession of faith to Pope and it's in the 1st and then he talks about these other issues that go into it as well.

So looking at it from that perspective, to say that Agustin like normalize some sort of practice that that the whole church is starting now baptizing infants because there's a battle of original sin.

He's appealing to the Pelagian crisis as the means of normalcy to go through infant baptism.

And it doesn't work for you, my friend Gavin, It doesn't work.

Pelagius is even in the camp of infant baptism and believing that baptism saves the child and that to withhold it would be would be disgusting and no heretic would even go that far.

So if the heretics themselves would be willing to deny infant baptism, that tells me it is the normal practice in the Church.

So much so that the East joins in on this later and agrees with Pope Innocent and the others and says, yeah, I mean, that was condemned.

This guy, His writings are heretical.

There is no debate about whether children should be baptized heretics.

Orthodox.

It's it is reminds me funny enough.

Shout out to Perry Robinson.

But there's this classic text that is attributed to Jerome as a commentary on Romans, that it's actually a commentary of Pelagius on Romans in which he uses the phrase a faith alone.

Like he teaches literally the term Solafidae.

And it's funny how often times those, you know, Perry Robinson pointed this out that I think somebody had used this quote supposedly from Jerome to justify the Protestant doctrine of Solafidae.

But what we see is that actually Pelagian was the one who used this term, so it was Pelagius.

So if Pelagius can use the term Solafidae, you know we have to look at the concepts behind the terms, right?

It's not enough to just.

Say that's 16th century.

That's another whole discussion, but it does remind me a little bit of how you know, it's Pelagian will affirm what you know, we might want him to, but you know, what is he actually getting at behind be?

Careful if you want to use Pelagius as your means of justifying A doctrine.

But one thing's for sure, he didn't deny infant baptism, right?

And by the way, neither did the Donatus, who are the heroes of the Baptist in the trail blood.

I did a whole series with Tyler on that.

It is in the archives.

If you're on YouTube, just go to the compilations of the series that we did.

It is all together.

We did a four part series on the on the different myths behind the trail blood and the Donatus is one of those.

And here in the Council of Carthage, in the year 419, Canon 47 and 48 talk about what to do with children who were baptized by Donatus ministers.

And by the way, this right here proves A baptized children concerning the Donatus.

It seemed good that we should hold counsel with our brethren and fellow priests, Cerseus and Simplician, concerning those infants alone who were baptized by Donatus, lest what they did with their own will would they be converted to the Church of God with solitary determination.

The error of their parents might prevent their promotion the ministry of the holy altar.

Here's the question they were asking.

Should the Donatus children who are baptized as infants be re baptized before taking Eucharist?

And the Council decided to know that the baptism of the Donatus was actually valid and that they didn't need to be re baptized.

Notice what it says later in here that no re baptizings nor reordination should take place and the Bishop should not be translated.

So they argued that the orders of the Donatists were valid, the baptisms, the sacraments, but that they were, if you would, in today's terms, sorry for my Eastern friends, illicit on the basis of the fact that they were operating outside of communion with the Church.

So the Donatists in North Africa, they weren't saying, oh, you know, their orders are invalid and therefore all their children who are baptized are invalid baptisms.

We got to re baptize.

They concluded the opposite.

So even the heroes of the Baptist, the, the, you know, Anabaptist, the Donatists who didn't baptize children, that was their rebellion.

Actually, no.

If you read the canons of the Council of Carthage, clearly they did baptize their infants.

And the church at one point had to say, well, now that they realized their parents were in error and they're like, we're going back to the church.

We're not going to be Donatists anymore.

The church is like, we'll do, do we re baptize them?

Do we?

What do we do?

And then and the Canon said no.

So guess what?

The Donatists also practice infant baptism.

So the two opponents of Augustine, Pelagius and Donatism were to believe, or at least led to believe by Gavin, that the church normalized infant baptism in response to these issues.

And it turns out that it couldn't be infant baptism that was the issue because his 2 greatest opponents were baptizing their infants.

Sure.

That's it's problematic.

All right, so in this we, we can conclude that the idea of accretion is not so Now I want you to speak to this before we go to icons.

He mentions a lot of the most important patriarchs, most important people of the East, whose parents did not baptize them until they were older or let them get baptized to order.

He used that as his.

See, this is not the normal practice.

We have examples in Eastern Christianity where parents who raise their children in Christian homes didn't baptized.

Now I'm going to, I'm going to comment on that when you're done.

But you being an Eastern Orthodox, I want you to comment on some of your your most important figures of that period.

They did have people that waited not to baptize their children and they let them make that decision on their own.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

And this is, again, Constantine being an example of this, of course, which is kind of interesting, but I think it's is it Gregory Nazionzis?

I, I yeah, Gregory Nazionzis famously delayed his.

I think one of them had a, a near death experience and quickly afterwards said, oh, OK, I shouldn't have waited.

You know what it's it was almost seen as like a mistake by some of them.

And again, the fact that it wasn't universal for every Christian parent to baptize their infant does not negate the practice existed as we've seen here.

It also I, I think we pretty clearly demonstrated, at least you have here that this was not a Pelagian reaction.

Again, part of the problem archaeologically is there's not much I can speak to because, you know, early Christianity baptismal fonts would be adult sized, but people often use that as a point against infant baptism.

But I I simply say that doesn't follow at all.

You can baptize a child in an adult font as well.

The primary convert, the primary, you know, conversion space in that era is going to be from converted adults.

So you need a baptismal font that can accommodate that, right?

When you get to Christianity being so universally established that there are very few adult baptisms, then you might begin to normalize a baptismal font that's for children.

And sometimes we even see this in Byzantine churches.

We'll see a transitory period where we'll have a baptismal font with a smaller one attached to, if you're built in next to it to accommodate both.

So again, there's not a ton I could speak to in terms of the the history as much, but it does not negate, you know.

But this is an important point.

Those same figures that are used as analogies all emphasize baptizing children could be that they disagree with their parents because they themselves baptize their own children.

After that, they it's like, all right, well, you know, you ought to baptize your children.

Just because they weren't didn't mean that that was the normal practice.

Now I will say this, I think Augustine drew, I'm not going to downplay Gavin's point.

I think Augustine drew awareness to the dangers of these families that are delaying because Agustin writing against these other groups, the Montanus had already brought this dangerous aspect into play.

And what probably happened and reason Agustin get so much credit is he did bring an alert to this is a bad practice like the church has always practiced this.

So why are we delaying out of fear of XY and Z?

These are invalid reasons to delay.

So it could be that parents were operating like Gregory's or his brother or whoever else or his family, his children, their grandchildren, whatever.

That whole group, maybe they were a part of those of yeah, you know, we can delay it.

Let's delay it.

It doesn't mean that they were, like, following in suit with the normal practice.

It just that may have been a personal preference or an issue for them.

Or even a matter of, of mistaken piety.

Right?

Let's delay it because you know I I want to make sure my son has the best chance possible.

Of not feel the experience or something like that.

Maybe he can get more out of it if he and so these things are not standardized like, well, that's that.

Well, that's it.

The whole E didn't baptize their children.

You know, it could be that Agustin raised an awareness on the subject of original sin of like, let's not play around with this, which led to Gavin concluding that they're yes were infant baptisms.

And the reason we know that is they were only done for maybe sick or dying children because we have found these inscriptions on tombs for these young children who died.

You had some thoughts on that, Like there are excavations of graves of children who died at infancy or very?

Yeah, well, I found it interesting when I think I remember watching Doctor Orland's video when he'd mentioned, you know, seeing a lot of Roman graves that had children who were baptized and died maybe 718, a little bit older.

And I found that odd because, again, tying back to the issue of Montanism or this issue of wanting to delay baptism for practical concerns with ritual or not ritual, but, you know, purity and regeneration, it's like, yeah, you would often have parents who'd want to bury their children later.

And so when they did start to get sick, it's like, oh, we gotta get them baptized now.

Which one points to a belief in regeneration and baptism?

YLC urgency, I mean, yeah.

It also, again, there's not a lot to draw here.

One of the problems with graves and grave inscriptions is that the likelihood of seeing graves and then additionally for them having inscriptions increased with the wealth of a community, right?

Burying ones dead and touring them actually became a normal practice a little bit later on.

Romans mostly cremated their dead until about the first or second centuries.

Then they began to actually bury them and then turn them more often than not, especially in the East.

But when Christians were doing this early on, they were largely poor until about the 3rd century.

Christians start getting a good amount of wealth by the 3rd century, especially in Rome, as we see from the catacombs.

But there's that.

You're not going to often be able to mark your graves.

It might be a simple headstone with a cross.

It might be, again, finding evidence of older children in the, you know, second thirds, 4th centuries being, you know, baptized later on.

There's a lot of evidence you're not going to be able to consider there that I think would cause one to be hesitant probably at least.

Yeah, I I don't think the graves are a good way of what what we can say is that a lot of these children were baptized.

There's no doubt.

To assume that it was only for sick ones would be to assume that every child that dies died with an opportunity to be baptized and delayed, not a rapid death.

Like you wake up and your child dies in the middle of the night and you find a dead child.

That the assumption that only sick children were baptized implies that all children that died had a week or two or three or a month of dying of some illness that slowly killed them and they had time.

It doesn't assume a rapid death of A being martyred, B being killed in an accident.

So it implies that only sick children who had time are the ones that were baptized.

And that's an assumption on those graves that that child died of a one month illness or died of a three-week illness or something like that, not a rapid death.

It's also hard, you know, a lot of I've seen some of the scholarship I think that was drawn from tries to create the the narrative that infant baptism was a response to hardship and times of extreme difficulty.

It's like mid maybe I see I did might certainly increase the the proliferation of it.

But at the same time, there were many crises that hit Christian communities far earlier than this.

I mean, you could go back to the Antonine Plague.

You could go back to, you know, even conflicts that happened with the Jewish revolts of Barakva and later on that implicated Christian communities.

You could, I mean, several different plagues and invasions and, and hardships all over the Empire.

It'd be hard for me to pin down.

You know, I certainly persecution increased in the 3rd century, the late 3rd century, of course, definitely.

But again, it's, it's kind of a hard connection to make without explicit evidence.

And I haven't seen a lot of explicit evidence making that connection.

So it's possible, but I yeah, caution against that.

Yeah, I would as well.

So let's move on to iconography.

Let's let's talk nicely too.

Pat and I did a whole episode in this, so we're not going to repeat all the points, but we're going to respond specifically to a video last year by Gavin and a couple of minute marks there as well.

And he makes a couple of points, and we're going to do some slides on this one so you can see some images, especially since iconography is a big part of your passion.

But let's talk about icons and sacred images.

A couple claims from Gavin the the whole idea of the falsification event.

He says quote icon veneration functions as a litmus test for a larger ecclesial claims.

It is a potential falsification event for ecclesial claims.

Now he's he's specifically addressing Nicaea 2.

What is your reaction when when you hear that this idea of falsification event?

He's arguing, obviously, that this is a later accretion that happened either in the late or early part of the 8th century.

And he tries to use Robert Price, which we'll get into in a minute.

But what do you think of when when you hear that falsification event in?

One sense I understand what he's saying right?

If if these dogmatic decrees are false, that would falsify the the dogma of the Church.

And perhaps.

One thing I I'd like to do as somebody who likes to investigate world views and ideas and tries to evaluate evidence is understand just kind of how human humans work.

When we evaluate A worldview, we don't, you know, take one piece of evidence in isolation.

What we do is we try to create kind of what like John Frank calls a web of belief, right?

We have our core ideas and we have webs of ideas that are implicated and branch off from this a central tenant.

And we can then establish evidentiary backing to these beliefs, right?

So I can, I can look at Orthodoxy and I can be like, I'm very convinced of infant baptism, of baptism, regeneration, of Apostolic succession of the real presence in the Eucharist and all of these things.

And if I have solid backing for all of these, but let's say I don't have as much, let's say kind of modern evidentiary evidence for something as I'd like, that doesn't necessarily mean that immediately I discard my whole worldview because every worldview has fundamental difficulties.

You have to wrestle with atheists, do Christians, do Protestants, do Catholics, do Orthodox.

Do, you know, it's more helpful to, I think to kind of approach it with a Bayesian analysis where you go, you know, given this position, what is it likely?

What should we likely see?

And you kind of evaluate things holistically.

And I think if, if you're kind of investigating or you're caught on the edge, as I was, iconography was my major hurdle in becoming Orthodox.

I got to a point where I was like, I'm, I'm very convinced of everything else here.

I'm most of the way here on iconography.

This is suggestive of the truth of these broad contours that I'm looking at.

So that's OK.

You know, it's, it's OK to make that jump if necessary or if you're mostly shown all the way there.

That's how human beings work.

I mean, not everybody.

We can't prove, you know, evidentialist standards every single event in the Bible that.

'D be nice.

It'd be nice, but it's impossible of anything really.

It really.

Is so, so, you know, can I not, you know, well, I just don't know if, if Jonah was really swallowed by a giant fish.

And I think this is essential and you know it.

Well, I can't prove this and it seems unlikely based on my other presuppositions about naturalism, miracles.

Therefore I'm going to discount all Christianity.

It's like, hold on.

I I don't think it's how we actually look at world views.

I think what we have to do is look at these things holistically.

If you're unsure about iconography, which I understand, it's a very valid.

It's a.

Tough one.

Absolutely I'm.

Not I got it.

I got over it.

Saint Michael helped me get over it.

If you're hesitant about it, totally understand that I was for a long time, that doesn't then mean that you know, we wholesale discounts entire systems or ecclesial communities.

I think because then if you if you want to reject Nicaea too, you have to bite the bull on a huge number of issues.

For me, this is a big part of it.

I realized that it by rejecting Nicaea too, there were further implications down water of that.

That were going to be.

Just as difficult for me to swallow.

That would maybe even undermine parts of Christianity per SE, right?

Like if I'm going to deny, if I say this about Nicea 2, what am I saying about the entire church?

Broadly speaking, it's going to lead you down some restorationist rabbit holes that might make you a bit uncomfortable and and also might implicate things like Nicea one and other councils as you've gone through recently that that you know in many cases are.

It's a downward spiral.

Relying on on certain kind of theological developments that are naturally coming from Scripture, but are still developments in one sense.

So yeah, and and they're more so development in in parameters like the doctrine of the Trinity was there.

You used that at the beginning of the program.

But but you have to hone that in.

It's like, oh, God in three persons, blessed Trinity, right.

But what does that mean in the nature of Christ?

Like what does that mean in relationship to, you know, historianism?

What does that mean in relation to what they dealt with it Chalcedon and looking at the Holy Spirit and the involvements and all these aspects of the nature of Christ, What does that mean about his will to give one will to give two wills?

I mean like the like you, you can make a fundamental declaration that we see in the early language of say Ignatius of Antioch who talks about Jesus is the blood of God.

And that is in the early Syriac and that is also in so short retention and middle recession manuscripts.

It's not till the later that you see blood of Christ.

So it seems like Ignatius had this idea that Jesus has gotten.

He explicitly says that in his salutations as well.

But the blood of God and he had no problem calling Jesus God and saying that he bled.

I mean, it's like.

So the Aryans, right?

Maybe they can.

Say, well, I mean, it's but, but so it needed clarity.

It needed clarity.

So these these accretions aren't always necessarily like, oh, the whole concept is new, like iconography or something.

It's that it is developed into parameters like what point does this become worship?

At what point does this become veneration?

What are the parameters?

These councils were meeting for clarification of already established doctrine where abuses are now happening or somebody has said, well, what that really means is Jesus is like half God, half man, or he had one will because, you know, if you had two wills then he would have sinned or whatever.

Now these clarifying factors are required.

So in a sense of accretion, yes, but it's it's a little bit misleading to look at it in that sense.

It's almost.

I like the analogy of a tree.

If you see a tree in front of you, a more primitive understanding is that, well, this is a tree.

It has bark and wood and branches.

As our knowledge increases as we ask deeper kinds of questions, as we get into the nuances of what this tree actually is, it's like, well, actually, let's talk about photosynthesis.

Let's talk about the cellular structures, all this systems.

Also, you're talking about things that seem to bear no commonality with this is a tree a tree?

But you are still talking about the tree.

If the discussions of Nicaea, too, are talking about fundamental biblical principles on the incarnation and all these other things, but they're getting into like, you know, bowing and candles and incense and you're like, wait, wait a minute.

I don't see this as much in the early 1st century.

What's going on?

Yeah, I think this is a helpful analogy in terms of what a creation actually is or what that looks like.

Well, his biggest issue is well in his video is on the ananthemas, right?

So the ananthemas, that's at the seven minute mark.

He says the things which we've decreed being thus well supported, it is confessingly beyond all question acceptable and well pleasing before God.

The image of our Lord Jesus Christ as man and those that undefiled Mother of God.

They have a Virgin Mary.

The honorable angels and Saints should be venerated and saluted, which is what you were talking about like through either you know, some sort of bowing or or kissing.

And if anyone does not so believe, but undertakes to debate the matter further, is an evil afflicted with regard to the veneration to the sacred images, such as one our holy ecumenical counsel, fortified of the inward working the Spirit of God about the traditions of the Fathers of the Church anathematizes.

Now ananthema is nothing less than complete separation from God.

For if any are quarrelsome, and will be not obediently accept what has now been decreed, they kick against the pricks and injure their own souls.

And fighting against Christ and then taking pleasure at the insults of which offered to the Church, they clearly show themselves to be those who are madly make war upon piety and are therefore to be regarded in the same category as the heretics of old times and their companions and brethren and ungodly.

So that's the actual quote.

Now at the seven minute mark, you know, Gavin puts up the line in an anthema is nothing other than separation from God.

And an anthema means damnation, removal from heaven.

So he is defining what an an anthema is.

But I gave you the whole quote.

I gave all of us the whole quote of what the church is saying.

And there is a part of this where the Ecumenical Council says this is the inward working, the Spirit of God.

By the tradition, the fathers, these ananthemas are being put here, and it's not nothing less but separation from God.

So they clearly define an ananthema as separation of God.

And they believe that the unwillingness to salute and venerate is damnable.

And that's the part that most Protestants have an issue with.

Right.

And this is where it gets.

It gets quite complicated because, yeah, I think you can look back at all the councils and all of them have anathemas.

In fact, that's like a universal feature of them.

So I don't know if it's anathemas per SE we have problems with.

Maybe it's Protestants.

They might not have problems with anathemas per SE.

And even I think it's biblical to anathematize certain heretical positions.

I think Paul says let them be a curse, let them be a curse, right?

This is where this comes from.

That's what anathema literally means, right?

So I think the idea of having anathema isn't the problem.

I think this is really a rooted issue in ecclesiology.

For me, this is what this is about, right?

Because the anathema is within the context of Nicaea 2 are dealing with a world in which everyone is a part of this ecumenical church, this Church of the empire, right?

And so when they're saying anathema, they're not saying, oh, you know, you Protestant living over here in, in America in the 21st century, you better come do this or we're going to.

This is for people in the church who had been involved in iconoclasm, which was not a pretty thing on both sides in Italy.

There was a lot of killing and murdering.

And.

Persecuting and forcibly making monks, Mary confiscating monastic property.

It was a messy.

Remember, they're responding to the Council.

Of and Nicaea too, was largely, in my opinion, and a reaction against imperial imposition into the church.

In many respects it was imperial overreach, starting with Leo the Third on to his successors for several generations.

And the church is saying, look, if you are going to be an iconoclast, you're essentially saying that we are all idolaters, the church is idolatrous.

And fundamentally, I think in the modern context, you're saying the church has lost its the lost the Holy Spirit essentially fallen away, right.

The church is a theandric institution.

When you are, you know, when you are as it says, fighting against the church, you're essentially saying no, actually the church isn't infallible.

It doesn't have this charism of the Holy Spirit, doesn't have this protection from error.

I think that's what this needs to be situated in.

So.

And they look at idolatry a little differently than what we well.

That's what we're going to talk about.

My, my expertise is not theology and history of the council.

My, my expertise is more into the archaeology, which I think is worth going into because that's what I, I think is also important to define what an idol actually is.

And if you're going to critique iconography, it's hard to avoid the accusation that this is wrong because it's idolatry.

And this is where I definitely shifted my thinking through my study in my own field because I mean, there are very particular things involved with making idols in the ancient.

World.

So let's do that, let's get the look of idolatry, veneration, these terms, because the the the Council made that distinction.

Right, they did.

They actually did.

They made a distinction between how idols are made and what idols actually are versus images in general.

So hit some key points there.

OK, so people think idols and they think, OK, this is just a picture of some figure of a God or something, right?

And it's worshipped.

That's usually our conception of an idol, however ubiquitous in the ancient E everywhere from Sumerian texts all the way even to the Roman period.

Bashing an idol not was not just the creation of an image, it was the creation of an image coupled with in many cases a ritual called the opening of the mouth or the nostrils.

And this is really interesting.

So there are a lot of references to this.

I'm not going to get into all the textual data here, but you can look at texts from like the Earth three period.

This is 2000 BC.

You have Old Egyptian, Old Kingdom, Egyptian texts from the Dynasty Tomb of Method.

You have 90th dynasty text that's New Kingdom in Egypt.

You have 9th century Babylonian texts, you have 7th century Assyrian texts.

You even have 6th century Babylonian texts all the way up.

And they kind of have these general contours.

So I'm looking at scholarship from Walker and also from classic texts like Miller and Jensen and McBride.

So basically what happens is when you make an idol, you would first basically do three things.

First, you would have to take the idol that you created and purify it, ritually speaking.

Then you would have to do what's called the vivication of the image.

You would have to enliven it ritualistically, and then you have to enthrone the image.

OK, so this is kind of cool because the Bible actually acknowledges this distinction and actually has some cool, the cool things going on in the Old Testament with this.

But so there's one Acadian text, for example, that says a ritual statue.

So like a statue made to become an idol cannot smell incense, it cannot eat food, it cannot drink water until this ritual's been performed.

So even the ancient Eastern peoples who made idols understood that the image itself was hint was inert and was not an idol until this ritual had been completed.

And the ritual, if you want to know, is essentially a way of making the idol a body of a God.

So we often think that the critique of idolatry is simply, well, you made something out of wood and call that your God.

Okay, that is a valid critique.

But the Pagan response would have been, hold on a minute.

Yes, this is plain blue.

This is nothing, but upon doing this ritual of opening the mouth or opening the nostrils, it then becomes inhabited by the spirit, or even you could say like the hypostasis.

The person of the God is imbued into this body, and then we treat the body as a localized presence of this deity.

And we then do things like give it a temple, which is a house, right?

Temples aren't really like churches, like we think of, you know, going to worship together.

No, a temple was the House of a God.

It's sacred space that only the priest could enter to serve this God in his house.

Offer him gifts and gifts of patronage and offer him food that he would then consume ritualistically in communion with his worshippers, right?

So basically they would take the idol, they would lay it down.

Sometimes they would make it touch gold or precious metals.

They would often wash the mouth before the ceremony.

Then they would do something.

Usually it follow along this line.

They like open the mouth or sometimes in Egypt they would have a tool to cut open the mouth of the idol or to like carve a mouth in it.

And then they would do a ceremony to invest it with the spirit or the breath of the God or you know, some kind of spirit coming into it.

And then they would enthrone it.

So they then put it onto the idol stand.

They put it in the shrine, they put it in the temple as kind of a ritualistically.

Now this this idol is resting in its temple.

It is now sitting and throned in power.

And there are rituals associated with that cool fact about Genesis, right?

So Genesis is written, obviously in this milieu.

What does God do in Genesis, right?

He creates a temple on a mountain.

It's a garden.

That's where gods live on mountains.

And he doesn't make an image and he doesn't sit in there.

He makes an image of us.

He makes his image and what does he do?

Breathe into the breath of life.

He.

Breathes life into it.

I mean, there's a lot of scholars that agree with me on this.

There's some clear, you know, opening of the mouth ceremony overtones.

There are also some explicit ones.

So for example, in Psalm 135, it says the idols of nations are but silver and gold, the work of man's hands.

They have mouths.

They do not speak type of the mouth.

OK.

They have eyes.

We do not see.

They have ears and do not hear, nor is there any breath in their mouths.

Notice this idea of breath coming into the This is totally a connection most scholars think, to this idea of the opening of the mouth ceremony.

Habakkuk 219 Woe to him who says to a piece of wood awake.

That'd be a part of the ritual.

Awaken, O idol, right to a mute stone.

Arise and that is your teacher.

Behold is overlaid with gold and silver.

The idea of purifying the idol.

In some cases there is no breath at all inside of it, right?

So this idea of God's spirit or breath coming into man who is his image is totally clearly demonstrated in Genesis.

Also an Exodus.

One cool thing about Exodus, you look at the garb of the priests in God's Tabernacle, very similar to the garb they would put on idol images in ancient Egypt in the new Kingdom.

Interesting.

So it's like what is what is God doing here, right?

There's no image of God, his nature in the Tabernacle.

You in a sense are his image.

I'm putting on the human form, the clothing of like the similar to what the Egyptians would use in their their ceremonies.

So it's very interesting.

There's a lot of polemics going on in the Bible.

The Bible is full of these anti Pagan ancient near Eastern polemics.

You could call them perhaps that that are just replete throughout the text like this.

So when when I was, you know, when someone accuses iconography or the practice of entering the icons as being idolatrous, I always kind of chuckle because I'm going hold on a minute.

No one's here is taking this icon, imbuing it with the spirit of the Saints or of Jesus and and then offering sacrifices to it.

Because again, an important thing to note is that in the ancient Uranus worship, though it involved singing and bowing and, and praying and ritual procession and ceremonial participation, worship at its essence was sacrifice, not just for the Jews, but also for all the pagans around it.

If you said I'm going to go worship my God, you wouldn't think, oh, we're going to go in the temple and we're going to hold hands and we're.

Going to sing songs.

No, you go to the priest who acts as an intermediary.

You offer him the sacrifice, the priest then puts it on an altar, which functioned as kind of a transitory sacred space where the divine and human met the altar.

And then often you're offerings were purified as well.

And and so you have the offering put in the altar and that incense or that smell or that aroma going up to the God was you then eating a meal with the God?

You then eat the meat, The priest would eat the meat, and the God is eating.

The meat, which is what Paul was arguing about in the New Testament.

Meat.

Awful to I exactly.

Can we eat that meat?

This is everywhere.

So I think it's important to distinguish what worship versus veneration is.

I think that's very clearly both biblical and also rooted in Pagan idolatrous practice, right?

Because if I'm worshiping a God, it's really about sacrifice.

This is why I think the Eucharist being a sacrifice is so key, right?

What are we doing?

We're communing with our God by eating a meal with him.

And in this case, the meal happens to be God himself, right?

And it's like this, this ritual, it's all in the altar, of course, functioning as this kind of intermediary place between God and man.

God meets us at the table, right?

It's all, it's, it's beautiful, right?

This is, this is what idolatry was in the ancient Near East.

And to then kind of equate that with showing honor to an image, I think is this analogous.

And I think that's a problem for you to go that far.

Yeah, and I think the Council was very careful to explicitly define the distinctions.

And so the idea of what does it mean to venerate or what does it mean to worship the way we have interpreted that from our understanding, no, no graven images, Exodus 20, right.

Right, except when there were the temple.

Right.

And then, then you go, then you go to the Old Testament and they violate that, if that's what that means.

And they violated over and over again.

They violated the same section of history where God told them told Moses to go build a brazen serpent, put it on a pole and use it to be the means of which people look and be healed that Jesus later added to whoever looks up to me when I'm lifted up will be saved like uses that idea.

Well, one minute God is using a brazen beaten bronze to be put on a pole in the in the form of a fiery serpent that is used to heal God's people in faith.

And then later in Hezekiah's day, it is being worshipped, so much so that Hezekiah has destroyed this.

Thing right, right.

Which shows that images can shift from this inert status to a vivified idolatrous status.

They can't.

And certainly the Council recognizes this.

In Nicaea.

There were some, for example, excessive practices that were later condemned where people were like taking flakes off the icons and mixing them with the Eucharist.

I mean, these are certainly.

The.

Council is very moderate in condemning those.

Additionally, at least in the East especially, there is a hesitation toward depicting God the Father because God the Father wasn't Incarnate.

Christ was.

We depict him.

Now, again, there's some debate as to how that looks symbolically and how you can depict the Father.

We're not gonna get into that today.

But you know, there are parameters set here, and there is a way in which an image certainly can become idolatrous.

But again, I think you have to look for the sacrifice element.

And this is what I also think Irenaeus is even talking about when he does critique this weird Gnostic group that's like crowning images of philosophers and the Saints and Christ together and doing certain rituals around it.

It's like, OK, what are the rituals being done?

That's where the worship comes, yes.

Not necessarily the creation of images, which we know was very common in the ancient church, even pretty nicea.

Yeah please stop using Irenaeus Protestants for your anti iconography because he was speaking in the context of what was just explained, not in the sense of all images.

It was the form, function and usage.

And so because, because what it showed at Nicaea 2 is that they recognized people did go too far, that there were churches that were going too far.

Why else would they put the parameters on?

Here's the line.

Don't, don't cross this line because this was contentious because you just had two emperors prior saying, you know, they're tearing down, you know, crosses and all kinds of things that that was done at the Council of Hiareea, which no patriarchs represented.

Then they actually Irene brings with the mentorship of the younger, brings this together, said, let's let's sort this out.

Like we've we've seen reactions, imprisonments, beatings over this thing, like let's figure this out.

And so they argued, well, we have always this is not an innovative thing.

This is not an accretion.

They're saying it's not an accretion.

So the idea of icons come into major, major play here as not something new.

But they do see the need to put parameters against abuses, right, that have been practiced.

So they're not ignoring, Like, can you find stories where these things were improperly done?

Like Irenaeus calling out?

Of course.

I mean, they're admitting like, yes, there are abuses of this.

Right.

And for me, when I was looking at this question, I kind of narrowed down parameters of what I think you need to get off the ground because again, I would say a properly qualified view.

And I think the Council kind of supports this and what it actually says is Apostolic.

I think you need at least to acknowledge that images were allowed.

They were illicit.

They were not condemned.

Moreover, that that some kind of venerative practice associated with images was also allowed.

You don't necessarily, I think, have to defend that.

You know, the apostles, as soon as Christ ascended, they're like, all right, let's make an icon.

Let's bow to it three times while crossing ourselves.

Yeah, right, right, right.

I don't.

Think anyone's saying that?

I also don't think the the fathers of Nicea too were saying this.

There's some good work looking at what actually is cited and how they're citing it.

The fathers of my CH2 seem to be appealing more to 4th 5th century fathers of the foundation, harkening back to the Apostolic witness of a permission of of visible imagery.

And I think we'll see archaeologically, there's some very early imagery replete just everywhere throughout the.

Yeah, we'll, we'll look at some of those and.

We'll look at those a minute.

But I also, I mean, so for me it was like 4 things.

OK, it's is the, does the prototype type distinction follow?

This is the main idea kind of grounding a lot of Nicaea 2's argumentation.

If you show honor to a image, does it pass to something else?

I think you can defend this from a number of places in Scripture.

I think it also just kind of makes sense if I was in Syria and ISIS put a gun to my head and said, hey, if you don't, if you don't spit on this picture of Christ and stomp on on the floor, we're going to shoot you.

If I was going to deny the prototype type distinction, I probably would just say, Oh yeah, it doesn't matter.

I'm going to do that.

I know what I actually believe.

I'm just going to stop on it, right?

But I think it's fundamentally all of us would probably say actually no dishonor that's given to Christ's image is in one sense dishonor to Christ himself, right?

Every morning I pledge allegiance to the flag of America and no one looks at me and goes, are you worshipping a flag?

Are you pledging allegiance to a flag?

They understand though.

The allegiance I pledge to the flag passes to its prototype, passes to the nation itself.

And you know, I think most people implicitly agree with the prototype type distinction.

I think the question comes down to, you know, are are images allowed?

I think strict iconoclasts like Calvin would probably say totally not.

I think that's untenable.

I really do think it's untenable.

Even if I wasn't Orthodox, if I was still Baptist, I would definitely say images in church liturgically are totally permissible.

In fact, encouraged the.

Well, Protestants can When?

When it's Christmas in the Nativity, the weather now you know, there's no other outside of that.

I don't.

Know if you've seen this?

Really funny, like little block wood nativity sets for Cal.

It's funny.

Anyway, I have some great Presbyterian friends I make fun of on that.

That's good.

But for me it was the mode of veneration motive.

And I think this is where I think Gavin totally fair to him.

Again, I don't even think it's a bad.

I'm not saying it's a dumb argument.

No, it makes a lot of sense what modes are proper when it comes to veneration.

And for me, it was like, OK, the ones that seem sketchy to most people who are just unfamiliar culturally with Eastern Orthodox or Catholic practice is the bowing and kissing, because those are often associated with and properly associated with worship.

But then I looked through Scripture and I was like, OK, is bowing and kissing per SE prima facie worship even when given to things other than God or Christ or what represents God or Christ?

And I'm like, well, I have like 45 verses for you.

I won't go through all of them, but I can go through some of them.

If you want to do 44.

We'll do 44.

I can go through so many of examples of people bowing down to something or to someone or kissing them and that not being considered at.

All Give us your top five.

OK, let's see, Moses went out to meet his father-in-law and bowed down and kissed him, and they asked each other of their welfare and went into the tent.

Exodus 18, Seven.

Is Moses worshipping his father-in-law?

Next, Joshua tore his clothes and fell to the earth on his face before the ark of the Lord until the evening, Bowing before the ark.

We understand he's not worshipping an ark.

He's bowing before the ark because he's God's presence.

OK, God's presence is there, right?

When the sons and prophets who were at Jericho saw him opposite them, they said the spirit of Elijah rests on Elijah, and they came to meet him and bowed to the ground before him.

Second, Kings 215 Afterwards David arose and went out of The Cave and called after Saul, my Lord the king.

And when Saul looked behind him, David bowed with his face to the earth and paid homage.

Wow.

Again, David is commended constantly by the biblical authors and in the and in those texts for his treatment of Saul, despite Saul's treatment of David.

This is a huge theme running throughout Kings and Samuel, Right?

And so there's no condemnation of this action on David's part.

When Abigail saw David, she hurried and fell before David on her face and bowed to the ground.

So he came to the king and bowed himself on his face to the ground before the king.

And the king kissed Absalom.

OK.

And he bowed before the king with his face to the earth, and said, Blessed be the Lord your God from Second Samuel, Second Samuel 2240 For you equip me with strength for the battle.

You made those who rise against me sink and bow before me.

And then he came in before the king and bowed before the king with his face to the ground again.

So this is this.

I can give you so many more.

I mean, in the in the ancient world, bowing down before somebody and kissing them could constitute worship.

But in many cases, like we understand with kings and Queens, you bow before your king and pay him homage and honor.

That is not worship, right?

And so I think if you're going to grant, I think you should biblically that bowing per SE isn't worship.

I don't think you can say with certainty that bowing before a a type prototype dynamic is necessarily worship.

Again, you could say it's not patristic.

Fair enough.

There are good arguments there, but I just think it seems unlikely to me that bowing and kissing per SE is always a bad.

Thing yeah, I mean, we even see this later development where a ring was kissed on the king as well, but that that wasn't like there wasn't a like Oh my goodness, he just worshipped the ring the the ring represented.

It he's Gollum, he's.

Yeah, yeah, my precious.

Yeah, yeah, but, but you even see that, like Lord of the Rings.

I mean, you see this, you know, where the king reaches out, you know, a ring or somebody kisses it.

There's there, there's an aspect where that ring represents especially even in the Jewish idea, you have the signet ring, right?

I mean, these, these are major decrees being stamped and used.

Some believe David wore one of those.

So it's representing that position, that authority, that power.

There's something behind the image itself.

It's not necessarily worshipping a ring or worshipping the the person, the prophet that was bowed to, the king that was bowed to, the father-in-law that was bowed to, or an item that was bowed to.

Like the ark, that which the ark had golden sculpt cherubim on their eastern.

Context were definitely hybrid animal.

Human likely had figural components to them.

They weren't just symbols.

They didn't have just wings.

They were, they were.

Things they would have had people this idea of, you know, serpent teens as well, like this idea of what?

What did angels look like?

Some believe like they're the brazen serpents.

That whole look, that idea that that Moses probably etched A fiery serpent out of.

Yeah.

Could have been I think.

I think Heiser argues that he does Egyptian cognitive Sadapim or serpent is.

Influenced that understanding of the Seraphim that you see in Isaiah 6, for example.

So these images, the, the Jews had images.

I mean that the other issue as well is not just, you know, there's, there's images, there's relics.

This idea of relics was used and I see a mosaics.

I mean, there was not just just paintings, but but even the idea of relics and mosaics.

Now you had your criteria here, all right, so.

It's four things right?

It's it's does the prototype type distinction follow?

If that's true that that allows for yeah, starts it are portraying does portraying spiritual beings, angels, Saints and Christ.

Is this justified Now again, the Council of Nicaea grounds this in the incarnation.

So we're we're not claiming we're to see all these images of God and and of the Holy Spirit in Judaism and pre, you know, Old Testament times.

We're saying that in the incarnation something shifts fundamentally, just like in in the incarnation, in life of Christ, something shifts fundamentally with the Sabbath.

And that was their argument in the Council.

So something shifts here.

To deny the icons is to deny incarnational ideas.

I'm not going to expect to see icons of Yahweh in ancient Israel.

No, no, no, no.

Now, there might be illicit portrayals which probably did exist, but yeah, I'm not going to expect to see that.

So prototype distinction.

Can you portray holy holy figures in liturgical context?

The temple is just.

My goodness, I mean.

So you can have images in liturgical context.

There is a prototype type distinction I think that follows.

Even biblically, it's bowing and kissing worship per se.

I think biblically that's not the case.

The last one is the one that I think is the big the big point.

It's it's the historic and patristic witness, which again, when I was a Protestant, this was also my biggest sticking point.

And I do respect, I really do those that have issue with it.

I'm not saying because it's one of those things where baptism, regeneration you probably have almost universal.

Yeah.

Disbelief.

It's it's impossible, I think.

To do talk about accretion.

Oh my goodness, Baptism.

Regeneration was the most obvious thing to me that first.

Universal.

Iconography, though, we do have some patristic witnesses that either seem to be an iconic or even iconoclastic and some that aren't, some that aren't.

And there's nuance there.

And This is why I think the argument has been so probably as hotly debated the past few years of like everyone is, you know, talked about it after Gavin's video.

Because yeah, I think it is one of the places where the patristic witness isn't as complete as we'd like it to be.

But hopefully, you know, today we can show you kind of the degree to which pre Nicene imagery is contiguous with post Nicene imagery and how there's a commonality here.

We can also discuss some of the the sources patristically that do seem to speak against imagery.

We'll talk about those in context and what they're actually talking about.

I know we can also, you know, point to some pro iconographic sources as well, but yeah, there's a lot.

There.

Yeah.

And and this wasn't new to them.

Again, we just talked about the Jews.

Look at the temple.

Jesus talks about how the graves, the prophets were adored with these different things.

Like, you know, Matthew's gospel talks about that.

We see bones of Elisha raising people from the dead.

I mean, shadow of Peter, the handkerchief of Paul, I mean, these items can be seen scripturally, even doing spiritual things because the incarnation, you know, teaches us that God is working in the physical means of the earth.

Especially even like, you know, Peter on the day of, of Pentecost looks over and says, is it, is it David's tomb over here with us?

Like meaning everybody comes and pays some sort of venerating idea to the tomb of David King David's right here.

But he could have been talking about himself when he says that, you know, my soul will not see or my, my body would not see corruption because he's dead.

It's corrupted right here.

Like so they had points of references.

They had honor and homage and veneration.

2 things that have come into play.

So the Jews do this, Christians did this.

So what I want to do is I want to transition to some some visuals here.

Now I'm going to close this portion out for those that are listening on the podcast, we're glad you joined us because you won't be able to see this portion of it.

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We appreciate you coming into the episode and taking the time to hear us out as we continue through these things.

For those that are continuing on the side of YouTube, stay around, We're going to show you some visuals of what kind of things were seen through the eyes of these maybe 8th century church fathers.

Looking back, talking about like this isn't innovative.

They may have had some images, ideas in mind.

So thanks again for everybody that's joining this.

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