The Eucharist - Real Vs Spiritual Presence

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Thinking of these news story things and stuff like that.
You know, you're having a good time. You were able
to relax over the summer, have a good time.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
To have a good time. My cat just had a
heart attack?

Speaker 3 (00:38):
Are you serious?

Speaker 4 (00:38):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Heart You ever hear such a crazy thing?

Speaker 1 (00:41):
No, I didn't know they got things like that.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Yeah, they get a heart attack. So I got it
off Steve Corn, this writer up. Yeah, so he gives
me his cat. Turns out it's some kind of a
defective cat, you know. So he's a nice cat and
everything I'm getting along with him. I came back to
my apartment last week. The cat's like foaming at the mouth.
You sh shaken like this, He's foam coming out. So

(01:03):
I didn't want to get near it. I thought, maybe
you know who knows he was delirious. Maybe you think
I'm a mouse. So I said I didn't want to
get near him, so I phoned nine one one. You know,
I panicked. I phone nine one one, which turns out
it's just for people. I didn't know that.

Speaker 5 (01:21):
I didn't know either.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
They got mad. They said they would have me arrested
if I phoned. Oh okay, but anyways, you know, I
love this cat. It's a good cat. So I took
him down. I got him in a cab and I
took him down to the hospital, like the animal hospital.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Uh huh.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
And the guy tells me he's my cat had a
heart attack. He takes hi away. He says, oh, yeah,
he had cardiac arrest and stuff. And he started asking
me questions about like he says, I said, what would
cause that? He goes, you know, the diet stress stress. Yeah,
he had a big promotion coming up. So and then

(02:01):
he made he let me visit the cat.

Speaker 3 (02:03):
Uh huh.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
He says, you can visit the cat. You know, there's
visiting hours, like all right, So you go in this
room and then they bring the cat in in a cage.
He's all drugged up. And then they put the cat
like on a bed, and then the guy goes, okay,
we'll be back in half an hour. You have half
an hour you know with the cat, like for half

(02:24):
an hour. After five minutes, you know, I figured I
got a life to get.

Speaker 6 (02:28):
Back a cat. So we go out.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
And so afterwards he told me he had a lot
of He said, okay, I could out he could have
an operation which was like four thousand dollars, which you know,
I could buy like a hundred cats for that, you know,
But then I figured what the hell.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
Would do with a cat?

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Right right? So you got the cat you sprung for
the operation.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
I didn't. Oh no, there was there was another thing
where where he's on medication. You know, I have my medication.
I have this medication, he said, he said, He said
there was some good news and bad news.

Speaker 6 (03:05):
He said.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
The bad news was the cat only has like a
twenty percent chance of survival. But he says the good
news is, uh, it's just a cat.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
Last welcome everyone to read out. Alrighty, thank you for
joining us on a Sunday evening. Christian, how are you
doing tonight?

Speaker 3 (03:31):
Good man? Good? How about you guys?

Speaker 1 (03:34):
Great? How are you going to be?

Speaker 5 (03:36):
Good?

Speaker 3 (03:36):
Good?

Speaker 5 (03:37):
I struggle to open a bottle of body armor.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Now it remind me his body armor like a pre workout.

Speaker 5 (03:46):
No, no, no, it's just it. It might as well
be a tasty drink with no calories. That's literally it
kind of a sweetdrink. They claim, like, oh, you know
it has like whatever vitamins and minerals you need. Now,
it's just it's just a nice tasting drink.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
Yeah, that the bottle looks I don't know, like a
like a fruity kambucha or something. I want to talk.
I'm drinking a bright orange drink here. This is a
naked and famous which is approol lime juice.

Speaker 5 (04:13):
You couldn't you couldn't have picked a more fruity name.

Speaker 3 (04:15):
For that.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Great brandy. Yeah, I know, it does help. It does help.

Speaker 5 (04:20):
The first Henry Cavill's dreamy. Then you're drinking what was it,
naked and famous?

Speaker 1 (04:25):
Naked and famous, my friend. Yeah, it's April lime juice,
mezcal and one other ingredient that that's escaped me. Oh,
yellow green yellow charts juice normally, although I actually make
it with a substitute.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
But you know, I make fun of you, but I
probably would like it myself.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
So it's it's quite tasty, and it doesn't it doesn't
taste fruity at all. It's just, uh, it's got a
funny looking color, but it's it's quite good. The smokiness
in the mescal really comes through. Alrighty Well, today's topic
is perhaps a little bit heavy, but appropriate for a
Sunday evening. We've got a few video clips pulled up.

(05:07):
We've I put together a PowerPoint slide just to help
organize my thoughts. I want to walk through something of
a of a survey of the different ideas around uh
the Eucharist or the Lord's Supper or communion or Christian
what's a distinctly Catholic term for.

Speaker 3 (05:29):
It, trans substantiation?

Speaker 1 (05:32):
Well, sure, yeah, or yeah, the host or I'm just
trying to think of as I guess you just call
it mass mass mass, right, So it goes by many names.
But but this this this thing that we all do
as Christians, some more than others. Uh, And there's a
lot of different practices, a lot of different doctrines around it,

(05:53):
and I think it's worth there's a lot of misconceptions
as well, so I want to uh cover all of that.
I have a slightly unique way of approaching the survey
that's a little bit different from the sort of the
classic four views approach, although I can I can map
those four views onto the way I like to talk

(06:15):
about it, So I think the discussion will be a
little different than what you've normally heard, although very much
consistent with the classic dialogue on the Lord's Supper. So
happy to to dive in here and happy to have
you all along for the ride. We got several people
in the chat, so thanks for joining us even alrighty,

(06:43):
that's a.

Speaker 5 (06:47):
That's true, that's I did. I did set up some
some very funny stream alerts for my own stream, but
they're not appropriate for this stream, so we're not.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
We have to be careful about the crossover, alrighty. So
I think probably the best way to dive in is
maybe to play the Pints of the Quinas clip that
Christian put up where he's going over the a few
of the historical figures that have talked about it, and
we can just start at the point where I put

(07:15):
a time stamp in there for when he launched into that.

Speaker 5 (07:19):
Yeah, it's the what early Christians believed about the Eucharist
with Matt Frat, should we give a very brief, like
actual overview for people who may not know? I imagine
everyone does, But I think something I was talking with
Christian about us that a lot of Protestants don't even
know like what it is or what it's supposed to be,
or the different views on it, especially if you come

(07:39):
from like a really lase a faire Baptist or non
denom sort of background, like it's for most people there, Oh,
it's it's a symbol. It's just a remembrance, ceremony or
something like that. It's not actually, you know, anything real whatsoever.
It is just like a memorial basically.

Speaker 1 (07:58):
Well that is part of the question, isn't it. Yeah,
So that there are just a few terms that you'll
hear thrown around. And this is kind of the the
initial intro to Matt Frad's video, and I'll get into
it in more detail later. But typically Protestants have a
more symbolic view of the Lord Suppers. The Lord Suppers

(08:19):
when the body and blood of Christ represented in the
bread and wine that we take on uh, when we
take when we practice the Lord Supper, practice communion, and
Protestants tend to have a more symbolic view of it,
where meaning symbolic in the sense that when we interpret

(08:43):
Christ's words of this is my body in a symbolic fashion,
whereas Catholics view it at more. Literally is a word
that gets used, but what actually literally means is a
topic of some debate, and that's one thing I'm going
to get into. But they see it as as not
being just symbolic or metaphorical and there are a number

(09:04):
of views in between as well. But the doctor of
transubstantiation in the Catholic view is that the bread and
the wine actually do trans not transform, that's not the
right word, but the substance of.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
It transformed exactly. The physical presence of it is still breaded, right,
So that's.

Speaker 5 (09:21):
We're going to get into the accident substance distinction later
on because that is very, very complicated.

Speaker 1 (09:27):
So we will touch on a little bit of the
Hellenistic philosophy as well. So that's that's enough, I think
to get people and get folks in the door, and
all these things we will cover in more detail. Yeah,
let's real the quick Well, let's.

Speaker 5 (09:41):
Help if I actually pulled it up here first.

Speaker 7 (09:44):
Book more closely at the details of the text.

Speaker 5 (09:47):
However, we need to be.

Speaker 7 (09:48):
Sure that we are reading the text the way that
the ancient audience did, and that means it's useful to
look to what the earliest Christians believed. If, for example,
the earliest Christian believe that when Christ said this is
my body, this is my blood, he meant it metaphorically,
and the Catholic belief in the real literal presence is

(10:10):
completely unheard of until the Middle Ages, then it would
make sense to me to go with the more ancient interpretation. Conversely,
if it can be shown that the early Church did
believe unanimously in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist,
and the view that the Eucharist is merely a symbol

(10:30):
was basically unheard of until the last few centuries, well
then again I think it makes more sense to go
with that ancient belief. Now, don't misunderstand me. I'm not
equating the writings of the early Christians with the Bible.
The Bible is the instant.

Speaker 5 (10:48):
Well, one thing I did want to say about this
is that a lot of the times in Protestant circles,
like even a very famous pastor like Francis chan I
talked to Christian about this again a little bit before
the stream started it. But somebody who most Protestants, I
would say not all, but most Protestants are very unaware
of any historical interpretations or you know, the way that

(11:11):
the early Church ran or what the church fathers actually believed.
This is post apostolic, but still within that same timeframe,
some of the very early church fathers actually thought about
the different sacraments, the reading of the text the way
you exegete things right, So not looking at it from
a modern interpretation, but from people that are much closer
to the actual source. Some of these people actually knew

(11:32):
some of the apostles specifically like John and whatnot if
I might get the name wrong, but some of them
are very very close to the actual apostles themselves what
they believed. And the reason why I bring up Francis
Chan is because Francis Chan, who is somebody I remember
watching in high school people would do like his video
series on like Love and whatnot. And then just a
few years ago he came to the conclusion that, like,

(11:54):
you know, looking back at the church fathers, they like
they actually believed in like a real presence. And again
this is somebody who's a pastor for like twenty thirty
years and to just I guess never been taught or
never looked into what the early Church actually believed about
the Eucharist and communion and whatnot. So I think that
this is something that is drastically underserved in Protestantism.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
Yeah, it's it's a conversation that we don't often have. Well,
Presbyterians do have this conversation, but Protestants writ large, I
think very often, well, I think neglect it.

Speaker 5 (12:25):
Yeah, specifically like Presbyterian, Anglican, Lutheran all have a higher
view of it. They're more high church, they have that reputation,
and then it's like Baptists historically shaky and then non
denom almost nothing. Yeah, so that that's kind of the
way that it goes.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
Yeah, I think somebody would they would just hand you
bread and wine to go on your way out the door,
which is just right.

Speaker 5 (12:53):
Well, and yeah, so as somebody who was raised Baptist,
like it was, you know, whether it was once a
month or every week, depending on what they would have
a different regiment for how they issued it. But it
was always a memorial. I'd never even heard about like
real presence until I was like a you know, a
late teenager or something like that, when somebody said, oh,
Catholics believe in transubstantiation, and I'm like, I don't know

(13:14):
what that word means.

Speaker 3 (13:15):
Cool, But to your point, James, I remember going to
non denominational like megachurches with my mom back in the
day when I was young, and they would literally just
like tear off a piece of you know, a bread
and hand you some welchish grape juice on your way
out the door. So that's actually how they we do it.

Speaker 5 (13:29):
So yeah, yeah, I mean, I think that most Protestants,
like classical Protestants, are all spiritual presence of different variants.
It's really only the non Denoms and some Baptists where
they kind of say, well, it's purely symbolic. There is
no real or spiritual presence, right.

Speaker 1 (13:50):
So, and that's where I think we're going to see
in the reading of the Church Fathers here. I suspect
I haven't actually watched this video ahead of time, but
I suspect that they're all going to say something along
the lines of it's really there or it's it's real.
But that is sort of the question I mean assumings
Wingley's out right. Zwingli is the first one to really
pose the mere memorial concept. Assuming that that's a historical

(14:15):
the question still remains, what does christ body being really
present mean? What what does really mean in that context
or in any concept of some degree. There are some
pretty fundamental metaphysical concepts that we have to address to
to really even understand the different viewpoints.

Speaker 7 (14:33):
So we'll get into it inspired and inerrant word of God.
The writings of the early Christians are not individual. Early
Christian writers, no doubt believed in even taught errors. But
the early church fathers were closer in time and culture
to the Apostles, and they shed important light on the
question of how the original audience would have understood the text. Also,

(14:57):
what they wrote concerning the real the presence of Christ
in the Eucharist is what was handed on to them
from the Apostolic age, and they handed that down to
us through a hundred successive generations. So what did they
hand down to us? Well, we only have time in
this short video to take a look at four early Christians,

(15:20):
but in the description below I'm going to share many more,
so please be sure to check that out. The first
early Christian we'll look at is Saint Ignatius of Antioch,
who lived in the first century and likely heard the
preaching of the Apostles, particularly Saint John. Ignacious was named
Bishop of Antioch during a time when being a Christian
in the Roman Empire was punishable by death, and he

(15:42):
was actually sentenced to public execution by wild beasts. In
his letter to the Christians at Smyrnia, he tells them
not to associate with certain gnostic heretics who denied that
Christ really became man in it. He discusses the Eucharist.
What says, take note of those who hold heterodox opinions

(16:04):
on the grace of Jesus Christ which has come to us,
and see how contrary their opinions are to the mind
of God. They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer
because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the
flesh of our Savior, Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for
our sins, and which the Father in his goodness raised

(16:24):
up again. Next we'll look at Saint Cyril of Jerusalem,
who was named Bishop of Jerusalem in AD three point fifty,
and who participated at the Council of Constantinople in three
eighty one.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
He was a great defender of the faith.

Speaker 7 (16:37):
Against the heresy of arianism, which is the idea that
there was a time when God the Sun did not exist.
Here is what Saint Cyril wrote about the Eucharist. The
bread and wine of the Eucharist, before the holy invocation
of the Adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine. But
the invocation having been made, the bread becomes the body

(16:59):
of God Christ and the wine the blood of Christ.
The third early Christian I want to look at is
Saint Ambrose of Milan, who was named Bishop of Milan
in eighty three seventy four. It was Saint Ambrose who
helped save Saint Augustine from remaining a gnostic heretic. Listen
to what Ambrose has to say. Perhaps you may be saying,

(17:22):
I see something else. How can you assure me that
I am receiving the body of Christ. It but remains
for us to prove it. How many are the examples
we might use? Christ is in that sacrament because it
is the body of Christ. The fourth and final early
Christian I want to look at is Saint Augustine, who

(17:42):
was named Bishop of Hippo in modern Algeria in eighty
three ninety six and is held in great esteem by
both Catholics and Protestants alike. Here's what he had to
say about the Eucharist. What you see is the bread
and the chalice. That is what your own eyes report
to you, which your faith obliges you to accept, is
that the bread is the body of Christ and the

(18:04):
chalice is the Blood of Christ. This short list of
four early Christians is enough for now, but you can
find more quotes in the description below. Of these four
early Christians, one lived in the first century and likely
heard the preaching of the apostles themselves during the time
of the early persecutions of Christians, and the other three

(18:25):
lived in the fourth and fifth centuries, during a time
of great confusion in the church when Saint.

Speaker 5 (18:32):
And I'm not sure how much further you want to
go in there, but that's basically just kind of laying
the foundation of the early church fathers and some of
their positions on it. Now you can find let me see,
as I pulled them up, you can find some quotes
as well that don't necessarily line up with the transubstantiation,
although Catholics will argue back and forth on that. So

(18:55):
I did pull up some of those quotes. If you
if you wanted to go over those at all, or
if James went to move on to something else.

Speaker 1 (19:03):
Yeah, well, let me let me just kind of launch
into the PowerPoint and then we can kind of come
back to some of the other.

Speaker 5 (19:13):
Clips.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
But I think just sort of to lay the groundwork,
I think that might be helpful. So let me try
sharing my screen here. This is my first time. By
the way, is my it was cutting out a little
bit in the video for me. Is that just my
connection or okay, I think it might just be my
connection is a little tentative. All right, so we're sharing screen.

(19:36):
Let's see.

Speaker 5 (19:38):
Well, so before you get into that, I think, as
full Metal Jackal says, in other words, the early Church
took it quite literally. There might be some variation of
spiritual versus real, or or the distinctions they're in, but
I will say that none of them, it appears that
none of them believed it was purely symbolic. So that

(19:59):
modern interpre rotation is completely a historical You can argue
variations maybe between real and spiritual and some of the
church fathers, but you can't argue the not real just symbolic.
I don't think that's a historical interpretation.

Speaker 1 (20:16):
At all, because when you're looking at like a moment
of change right where where the invocation is given and
something actually technically changes that that's certainly going beyond just
a symbolic change. If it is just something that you
do in remembrance, then you know there wouldn't be any

(20:38):
any particular importance to the invocation so yeah, I think
that that is a novel view. Can you guys see
my screen?

Speaker 5 (20:49):
Let me pull it up on I got it, Oh,
I can get it. Take him off at that stage.
There it is, We got it.

Speaker 1 (20:56):
Okay, all right, all right? So Christ, the main dispute
is around Christ's words, this is my body. And so
the key question is in what way are the bread
and wine truly the body and blood of Christ? Because

(21:17):
I think we would all agree that they are the
body and blood of Christ in some sense. So the
question is in what sense? And so this is where
I would propose four different answers that different people will give.
And these don't map exactly to the classic four views
that you'll hear people talk about. So I will get

(21:39):
to those in a second. I'll just list them out
right now. The typical when you pick up like there's
as a book. I don't know if it's Crossway or
one of the other Christian publication houses has a book
called four Views on the Lord Supper, and it's just
basically a written debate by a number of different theologians.
But you'll see the mirror moyal view, the real spiritual

(22:01):
presence view, which is typically associated with Calvin, the consubstantiation
view that's the Lutheran view, and then the transubstantiation view,
which is the Catholic view. So those are the typical
four views that you will see talked about. I have
a slightly different The four that I'm going to put
up here are a little different, but I will go
back and map those four back onto this. So again

(22:24):
we're answering the question in what way are the bread
and wine the body and blood of Jesus Christ. And
so the first answer that you'll see Christians give is
symbolically only. That's the mere memorial view. So that is
the Szwingling perspective that maps pretty much directly. But even
diehard Baptists that do see it as being purely symbolic

(22:47):
don't much like the term mirror in terms of memorial.
So they might still call it they might still really
believe that it's only symbolic, but they still want to
elevate the symbol that they want to talk about it
as being a very important symbol, being you know, a
high single. They don't want to talk about it as
being a mere memorial. But when you when you press

(23:07):
them in terms of the importance of the symbol it
is in what it symbolizes. The thing itself doesn't have
much importance, The ritual itself doesn't have much importance beyond
what it points to. And and so I think that's
you know, it's kind of like.

Speaker 5 (23:28):
Well, in kind of a weird way. Doesn't that make
the bread and wine almost like an icon in that
way where it's it's merely a proto or it refers
to the prototype, not to itself.

Speaker 1 (23:38):
Well, yeah, I mean that that is sort of the
attack against transubstantiation or the higher views of the Lord's
upper is that they are idolatrous. Is that they replace
veneration of God with veneration of this early thing, which
seems to be a direct contradiction to what we're supposed
to do. But of course, if it is really the

(23:59):
body and blood Christ, then perhaps we are supposed to
direct it there. But then aren't we aren't we, you know,
doing the classic mistake that all pagans make of taking
God's creation and pretending that that is God. But then
if Christ said this is my body, then to maybe
this is licit in this one instance. Yeah, so you'll

(24:20):
see some different shades around the mere memorial perspective or
that the symbolically only, But I think that generally the
trueness of the statement this is my body is in
the symbolism that the power that it has, because they'll
still talk about it as being powerful, but the power

(24:40):
that it has is in being the ultimate, true symbol.
And you know, it's a true symbol of Christ's body
and what Christ did for us. And so it's powerful
in that sense in that it directs us to Christ
and his power. But it has no power in and
of itself. It has no incarnate power. It has no
power in the actual taking of the ritual, which does

(25:01):
to some degree raise the question why do we even
need to take it at all? Could you just if
it's purely symbolic or purely spiritual, could you just spiritually
participate in the Lord's Supper? Could you just think about
Christ's death and resurrection and be doing just as well,
which in practice is often how it comes out in

(25:22):
the lives of many Baptist, non denominational lower eucharistic views.
Any other thoughts on that one before I go on, No,
I think that's good, all right. So again we're answering
the question in what way are the bread and wine,
the body blood of Christ. And so these are additive
by the way, so each one doesn't necessarily take away

(25:43):
from the earlier ones, but it just adds to it.
And so the second answer I see is symbolically and truly.
So now we're talking about it is a symbol, but
it's more than just a symbol. So we do take
it as a memorial, we do take it as to
in remembrance of Christ. Christ says that do this in
remembrance of Me, so that there is at least that significance,

(26:06):
but there's something more. So this is kind of the
the the anti mirror perspective. So it's not a merror memorial,
but it is still a memorial. But but it could
also even go beyond that, where you know, this truly
could encapsulate the real spiritual presence that Calvin talks about,
but it could also be it could also be less

(26:27):
than that. It's it's unclear. Well we'll get into this
a little bit. But but the distinction between real presence
and real spiritual presence, it is a lot less fuzzy.
And if you just make it all about the spiritual
side of it and not about the actual fact that
you go through the motions and you do the thing
in a ritualistic way, then you're really a lot closer

(26:47):
to the symbolically only perspective, uh, you know, than a higher,
higher view. So so this is just adding to the
symbolism by saying that it really is, it truly is
the bodying blood of Christ. But then we still have
to explain what that even means. And so then the
third answer is symbolically and truly and literally. Now this

(27:11):
is where it gets a little tricky, because the word
literally is an incredibly tricky word, almost impossible to define
somewhat famously. So just to look at the entomology for
a second, etymology meaning, the source of the word literal
is derived from the word for letter. And what are

(27:32):
letters if not symbols? Right? Letters are symbols of things,
And so to say that something is literally true is
a lot less clear than we think. And I'll get
into this a little bit more in the metaphysical side
of things. But the best definition that someone can give
for the word literally is usually in contrast to something else,

(27:55):
in contrast to metaphorical. Okay, so I have literally, you
have metaphorical. But if you do an actual language analysis,
what you realize is a lot of the things that
we now treat as literal statements and idioms, at one
point were metaphorical. There's an interesting study around the word breath.
At one point, the word breath used to be the

(28:17):
same word that would be used for spirit, and it's
it's unclear at one point that that branched off. But
I don't think that we should look back and say
that the the You know that the older generations were
simply much more poetic, and they saw our literal breath

(28:37):
and spirit as being or they would always speak in
these metaphorical terms. It's it's actually there's a theory that
they really saw these two things as being one thing,
like our breath and this concept is spirit were we're
actually one concept. That's why they just had one word
for it. And so, uh, the point is a lot
of our our literal language was at one point metaphorical,

(29:00):
and a lot of our metaphorical language might, in sustence,
be a lot more literal than we think. And so
it's very hard to pen down what this word literally means,
and especially when you apply it to the concept of transubstantiation,
where you're talking about something. And again we'll get into
this a little bit more, but the details you have,
it's trans substantiation, not transformation. It's it's it's the substance

(29:24):
has changed. And so in Hellenistic philosophy you have the
substance of something, and then you have the accidents and
in the accidents being all of the things that we
can interact with with our five senses, and the substance
being the thing itself. So, for example, when a leaf
changes color, the accidents have changed the way you see

(29:44):
it has changed, but the leaf is is still itself.
This gets more complicated when you talk about, you know, personhood.
So for instance, if you have some sort of a
freaky Friday event where two people swap minds, who is
the person?

Speaker 3 (29:59):
Right?

Speaker 1 (29:59):
Can you even say that so and so is now
in someone else's body and vice versa. That's a very
interesting philosophical question that doesn't have a clear answer. Probably
the reason it doesn't have a clear answer is because
that kind of event could never happen. Like it is.
We are hylomorphic beings. We are body and soul or

(30:21):
body and spirit in one entity. You can't it's unnatural
to separate us and the only time, we do seem
to separate the soul and the body is in death,
but you don't then go and inhabit another body, but
you are separated from your your physical being. But that's

(30:41):
an unnatural state. The more natural state is the what
will be the final eternal state in heaven, in the
new Heaven and the new Earth, when we actually get
bodies again. And so this this in between state that
we do seem to there is you know, clear evidence,
biblical evidence that we do go into where we are
just spirits for a little while. That is a less

(31:05):
natural state in some respects than even our current state
where we have body and soul united.

Speaker 5 (31:13):
And then well, yeah, so the Aristotelian methodology is going
to be very important when talking about transubstantiation because Aquinas
draws directly from Aristotle. So people were saying, oh, no,
not another Greek lesson in Chat but yeah, it's the
reason why is because Aquinas sporrows directly from Aristotle on
his methodology.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
Yeah, it does play a big role. The last one
here is symbolically and truly and literally and physically. Now
this perspective is actually held officially by no one. If
by physical we mean that the accidents transform or change
in addition to the substance of the thing. No one

(31:55):
really believes that when you eat the bread it transforms
miraculously into you know, body tissue. You will see certain
examples what they'll call eucharistic miracles, where people will say
that that it did change into heart tissue later, but
that's seen as extraordinary. That is not an example of

(32:18):
what is supposed to normally take place. The actual accidents
of the bread and the wine are supposed to remain,
and yet the substance changes. The substance is what changes.
And to go back to number three where we're talking
about Catholics use the word literally, so it's literally true

(32:38):
that this is the body of Christ. But if we're
talking about something that is true of the essence but
not the accidents, that sounds a lot like spiritual. That
sounds a lot like the spiritual things has changed, but
the the everything material remains the same, which which is

(32:59):
basically what they mean by by transubstantiation. And it's hard
to parse that in any clear way without getting really
into the weeds of Aristotilian philosophy. What how to distinguish
that from like a real spiritual presence. And so that's

(33:20):
where I think the difference between two and three is
not clear at all, where it's a lot less clear
than a lot of people think. And like I said,
no one really believes in four. No one believes that
in the everyday case of taking the Lord's supper you
are eating a material body and blood. So we're really

(33:41):
talking about something a material, We're talking about something that is,
that is beyond the accidents, and that sounds a lot
like just spiritual and so anyways, so it gets it
gets a lot more fuzzy. And so if you can
put Cow somewhere between two and three, which I think

(34:02):
you could, I think Calvin wouldn't even necessarily deny three.
He might not use the word literal, But the distinction
between two and three is really unclear, and I think
you could fit Calvin, Luther, Catholics, Orthodox all somewhere between
two and three, and the exact distinctions are a lot

(34:23):
less stark than many people realize, even people within those sects.

Speaker 5 (34:30):
Any thoughts so far, Just one quick thing, were you
meant to be switching between slides on your display.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
You should just be seen more things building up.

Speaker 5 (34:43):
Okay, it hasn't changed for us. What do you see
just the slide slide one? I don't know if you're
in preview mode.

Speaker 1 (34:52):
Okay, well that's disappointing. Yeah I am.

Speaker 5 (34:58):
See that changes when you click on the What do
you see now? Now you're on slide to?

Speaker 1 (35:05):
Just stop sharing and reshare okay, okay, so now it's
joining side to you.

Speaker 3 (35:09):
All right.

Speaker 1 (35:12):
Yeah, it must be my internet.

Speaker 5 (35:14):
But let me just share it if you if you
want to, you could just email it to me and
I can pull it up if that works for you.

Speaker 1 (35:22):
Yeah, I can. I can do that, can you guys?
Is it resharing?

Speaker 5 (35:27):
Yeah, it's for sure. See you know it's on slide to.

Speaker 1 (35:32):
Okay, so slide too, so you should see the last
thing on the slide should be what is the difference
between number two and number three?

Speaker 5 (35:46):
Well it's it's not full screen. I don't know if
you mean to have it full screen or not, but
it's not so like we see like the slides on
the left and there.

Speaker 1 (35:54):
It is on my end. So it must just be
my internet connection. Yeah, let me just send it to you. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (36:00):
Interesting, okay, sorry about that, guys, No, no, you're.

Speaker 1 (36:06):
Good, all right, I might stop sharing, just send it
your way, all.

Speaker 5 (36:14):
Right, let me know when you send it over, I'll
pull it up. Reformed renegade says, no, Calvin believed the
imparted grace for believers only Luther believed anyone who takes
the Eucharist receives Christ. I believe Calvin made the analogy.
Correct me if I'm wrong. That it's like a bottle
with a quark on it, So you can take the items,

(36:35):
but you don't actually receive what is inside, because as
if you're not a Christian, you don't have access to that.
You don't have that spiritual gift to receive the Eucharist,
like in the spiritual presence sense.

Speaker 1 (36:50):
Yeah, the effects of taking it in different states is
going to be something that will there will be some
disagreements on and there are some big disagreements more in
the UH beyond the question of transubstantiation in terms of
the sacrificial nature of the Lord Supper. That that is
a key difference, I think, a much more significant difference.

(37:12):
The point I'm making here is just with regard to
the concept of transubstantiation, not with regard to really any
of the other doctions around the Lord's Supper, but just
with regard to what is what actually happens and the
answering the question, uh, the the the body and blood
of Christ, how are they really the How are the

(37:33):
bread and wine really the body and blood of Christ?
That's that's specifically the question I'm addressing, because that is
one that there's a lot of misconceptions around.

Speaker 5 (37:53):
All Right, John, that's.

Speaker 1 (37:54):
Going your way. Do you want to do you want
to play another clip in the meantime?

Speaker 5 (38:00):
Well we did. Do you want to do the Aristotle
versus conclip? I have that one pulled up? Or do
you want to say, yeah, that's short? Yeah, okay, we.

Speaker 1 (38:09):
Can Yeah, it's short, so we can play that.

Speaker 5 (38:12):
Okay, we've put this on to be true of.

Speaker 4 (38:17):
Now, that's an important difference between Plato and Aristotle, but
their agreement is much more important than their difference. Nominalism,
which denies the objective reality of universal forms, entirely departs
from both Plato and Aristotle, far more than they depart
from each other. The relation between Plato and Aristotle is

(38:37):
like the relation between Protestantism and Catholicism. They disagree about
some very important things, such as the authority of the
Church and Christ's real presence in the Eucharist, but they
agree about even more important things about the reality of
God and the divinity of Christ. The difference between them
is relatively small compared to the difference between either of

(38:57):
them and atheism. Similarly, the difference between Plato and Aristotle
is small compared with the difference between either of them
and the typically modern mind. Aristotle is Plato tweaked. For Aristotle,
matter and form are not beings, but principles of a being,
aspects of a being. Aristotle's name for concrete individual beings

(39:22):
or entities is substances, as that which stands under substant's
accidents or qualities. To unify them, the same person is
happy one moment and sad the next. The same leaf
as green in September yellow in October. This distinction between
the substance or essence and the accidents or the changeable

(39:45):
properties or characteristics is one of the most important and
essential philosophical distinctions in common sense sanity, which is increasingly
uncommon today. I think it is significant that the only
two essential ethic dogmas that depend on secular philosophical categories
and are framed by them, in fact the two most

(40:06):
essential ones of all concerning the very center of the
Catholic religion, Christ himself. Are the two that depend on
this Aristotelian category of substance. First that Christ is consubstantial
with God the Father Homo ussion in Greek, the same
in being essence, essential nature, or substance. And second that

(40:29):
in the Eucharist, it is the very substance that changes
from bread and wine to Christ's body and blood transsubstantiation.
Another example of one of the most practical and useful theories.

Speaker 1 (40:44):
Perfect So this is from a series of twelve I think,
twelve lectures from a Word on Fire, which is Cardinal
Robert Barn's organization I believe, and this is Peter Krafft
I think. And it's an excellent lecture series. It's pretty
surface level, but even still, in about twelve thirty to

(41:07):
thirty five minute lectures, you get about twenty four major
philosophical thinkers. He goes through each one contrasting two different
philosophers in each lecture. So we'll do like the Sophists
versus Socrates, he'll do in this one Aristotle versus Kant
And so he'll often take one more modern or one ancient,

(41:30):
or he'll take two from around the same time period,
but the basically just talking about the philosophical conversation as
it's progressed throughout time. So very good series. But in
this point, in this part of this particular lecture, he's
making the point that transubstantiation, that specific phraseology does require

(41:54):
a Hellenistic underpinning. That's why we use transubstantiation rather than
real spiritual presence. Right, Real spiritual presence makes a lot
more sense just just going from the biblical data, right,
That's why Calvin used that sort of terminology. But transcendentiation
works and means something pretty similar, but it works within

(42:17):
the context of this Aristotilian thinking. When an Aristotle inherited
a lot of the same vocabulary from Plato as well.
So just this overall Hellenistic vocabulary that was being used
to good effect by the early Church. I mean, a

(42:38):
lot of our language does inherit a lot of good
sound vocabulary, if nothing else. I mean, they were using
these Greek terms to describe things that they really didn't
have terms for, and this is this is what they
were grasping onto.

Speaker 5 (42:55):
But the the.

Speaker 1 (42:58):
Dogmatic holding to transubstantiation specifically as the formula that we
must use when talking about the Eucharist. Is That's one
that I think canon should be called into question by
anyone who who holds Scripture to a much higher standard
than Hellenistic philosophy, as I think we all should. The

(43:21):
only reason why Catholics do hold these things dogmatically is
because they're proclaimed to be true by the Church, So
they even hold, you know, they hold scripture in the
Church this authority over Hellenistic philosophy. But the way the
Church has talked about things has been through this lens
of Hellenistic philosophy, and so in many ways, Hellenistic philosophy

(43:41):
has been elevated to a level of infallibility that maybe
should be questioned in some regards. But again, I'm not
convinced that real spiritual presence is actually all that different
in terms of this particular question of in what ways
are the bread and wine the body and blood of
Christ in that particular question, I'm not sure that real

(44:02):
spiritual presence and transparentiation are actually all that different positions.
I think that's mainly a semantical debate. It's mainly just
different words describing something that's pretty similar. There are other
differences that are more interesting that we should talk about.
But the point I just made is something that I
think basically no Protestant, very few Protestants even that have
heard about the debate between Protestants and Catholics on this point,

(44:25):
that they really realize how close all of the different
high views of the Lord Supper are.

Speaker 5 (44:36):
Yeah, it does come down to philosophy and interpretation at
that point, especially when we the accidents and substance distinction
is interesting, right because you are saying that in the
Catholic theology that the accidents don't change, but then the substance,

(44:59):
what it actually is, has changed, even though the taste,
the texture, the size, the look of it.

Speaker 1 (45:04):
Is all the same, right, Yeah, which sounds like a
spiritual change to me. All Right, So, yeah, this was
the slide I was I was trying to show, and
it was it was showing up on my end nicely
presenting one at a time. But sorry, that wasn't showing
up for you guys.

Speaker 5 (45:25):
Go back one.

Speaker 1 (45:26):
There was a there was a couple more point at
the bottom of that slide. You there, you go slide too,
So just to map some of the common terms. So, yeah,
spiritual presence versus real presence, I think we've talked about
about that. I think that it just comes down to
what you mean by real and so I think that, uh,
and what you mean by literal and so it's really

(45:48):
hard to make that distinction, and I'm certainly not able
to right now with common vocabulary. There are distinctions that
you can make, but they really start to get into
the weeds in terms of transperstantiation versus consubstantiation. So that's
the Catholic view versus the Lutheran view. Because Luther was
really uh hard on this. I mean he he thought

(46:08):
Zwingli's perspective was just downright heretical, and basically he condemned
it so much that he thought that the Zwingli was
not a Christian right away basically except for that yep.
So it was it was big to Luther. But consubstantiation essentially, Uh,
the big difference between that and transubstantiation is that the

(46:32):
the substance of the bread and the wine still remain,
And that's the big difference. Catholics would say that it
is it changes from bread and wine to now having
the substance of the body blood of Christ, whereas with
Luther he would say, yes, it does add the body
Blood of Christ, but it keeps the bread and the wine.

(46:56):
The bread and the wine substances are still there, just
like the accidents are still there. But also now you
have the body and blood of Christ, which is a
much more incarnational view, right, that would be very much
like the act of the incarnation where Christ takes on
human form, whereas the Catholic view is really the transparentiation
is not an act of incarnation. It's related, but it's

(47:17):
it's it's not because uh, the substance has u has changed,
but the accents don't change, which is very different from
the kinnosis, the the the the the act of of
Christ taking on the limitations of man.

Speaker 8 (47:36):
It.

Speaker 1 (47:36):
So I'm not even sure that that Luther would say
that that the Christ is really a purely incarnational act,
but I think that that view, the conspistentiation view, is
much closer to to to the incarnation. And then yeah,
so then we talk about substance versus accidents. So yeah,
that's everything from this slide.

Speaker 5 (47:58):
Yeah, and I mean this, this honestly wouldn't probably be
as big of a deal if in the Council of
Trent the Catholic Church hadn't anathematized everyone who didn't take
the transubstantiation. So that's when it was dogmatized, which was it.

Speaker 3 (48:15):
Was actually dogmatized prior to that, in the twelve hundred.

Speaker 5 (48:18):
I wasn't yeh oh, okay, I have it. By the way,
it wasn't anathematized until the Council of Trent and so,
which was probably in a response to the Reformation.

Speaker 3 (48:30):
Yeah. So yeah, it was a dogmatized at the Fourth
Latian Council in twelve fifteen.

Speaker 1 (48:36):
Yeah, but this is interesting. Yeah, the Orthodox don't engage
in this debate.

Speaker 5 (48:42):
The correct well, and so that is actually something that
I like a lot more about them. It is because
they they allow for it to be a mystical, mysterious
work of God, right, and the exact mechanics are.

Speaker 1 (48:57):
Not of interest, which is the point I'm trying to that. Well, yes,
at least agree on that.

Speaker 5 (49:02):
Yeah, I think that's a way simpler way to think
about it, whether you know, because you don't have to
bind yourself to Aristotilian ontology of things, right, you don't
have to bind yourself to Greek philosophy to believe in
a real presence. How is it real? Not sure? And

(49:22):
it's not really up for us to like understand the
workings of God in this way. And again the issue
with the Catholics is that they anathematize everybody who had,
like any disagreement on just the foundational philosophy.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
But one thing that I think is important to note
between points two and four here is all all of
those views, especially well yeah, basically anything after after the
first one all recognize the importance of the ritual aspect
of the Lord's Supper. That we do this, that we
do this physically, that we actually eat the bread and wine.

(50:02):
And I think that that is key. And and to
go beyond that, I think it is good to have
a high view of the Lord's Supper where you actually
see it as being there is something that is taking place,
there is some real power that is happening. I mean,
even Calvin basically saw this as I mean, they were
very careful about fencing the bread and the wine from

(50:26):
people that shouldn't be participating in it. And that's that's
another term that it's on the next slide. But basically
fencing the Lord, fencing the table is what they call it,
where you basically prevent people because Christ says or Paul
says that if you eat and drink when you shouldn't,
then you can bring down judgment upon yourself as opposed

(50:48):
to the benefits.

Speaker 5 (50:50):
In Paul's view, he says, like people have died because
of taking it improperly. Right, So whether that's people might
argue that they were implemented improperly or having a non
contrite spirit when taking it, or like the actual ritual
itself was done improperly, whether the priest or the bishop
or whoever it was, was not performing the ritual as

(51:11):
it's supposed to. Basically, yeah, there can be lots of
errors with it.

Speaker 3 (51:21):
All, right.

Speaker 1 (51:22):
So yeah, so just a couple of the terms. So
this so the first one here, sacrifice. This is a
much bigger difference, I think one of the biggest differences
between the Catholic and the Protestant view. And I'm actually
curious what the Orthodox perspective is on this, so please
let me know in the chat. But the sacrifice, eternal sacrifice, okay, sacrifice.

Speaker 3 (51:44):
So the.

Speaker 1 (51:47):
Protestant view is that when Christ, when it says that
Christ died once for all, we do not need to
reenact that every single week in the Mass, that that
that is not a a an additional sacrifice. It's like

(52:09):
it happened once. We are doing this in remembrance of him.
That doesn't take away from the power, doesn't take away
from the the realness of it. But it's not a
repeated sacrifice, whereas the Catholic view is that there is
an actual sacrifice taking place, and sacrifice there's a way
to technically define it and includes Yeah, I think there's

(52:32):
like four different parts, and I think we could probably
even agree on a number of the different elements of
what what comprises a sacrifice. But ultimately Protestants do not
view the Lord's Supper as being sacrifice because we feel
like that would go against Paul describing this as you know,

(52:54):
Christ dying once for all and and so that I
think is a much bigger although even there you start
to get into some semantic differences where Protestant see it.
This is the second bullet point here. Protestant see it
has been a representation of the sacrifice, So regardless what

(53:14):
you think about the real presence, we Protestant see this
as being a representation of the sacrifice, whereas Catholic see
it has been a re presentation of the sacrifice, like
a reenactment of the sacrifice. They do. They still hold
to Christ dying once for all, but somehow he's dying

(53:35):
again every single time, and then I think Orthodoxy I
would see it as an eternal sacrifice. I don't know
if there's a difference between Catholic.

Speaker 5 (53:40):
Views as far as I understand, which is actually in
the clip that I pulled today for the Orthodox argument
for it is an infinite payment model. So essentially Christ
is infinitely good, Our sins are infinitely bad, and so
it is the infinite sacrifice. Christis are prepared tool sacrifice

(54:01):
four our sins to God basically, if I quoted that correctly.

Speaker 1 (54:10):
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I'm curious if there is
a distinction between that view and the Catholic view.

Speaker 5 (54:20):
There probably is, but it's even more, even more nuanced
than the real versus spiritual presence.

Speaker 1 (54:29):
So yeah, Well, and Orthodox are generally a lot more
comfortable with just accepting the mystery, which is good to
a point. There are some things that perhaps shouldn't be
as mysterious, but it all just depends on, yeah, where
scripture allows us to go, and I think that, yeah,
there are many places that are just not left open

(54:51):
to much deeper penetration. And then so pedo communion. Just
to finish off off this list here, paid a communion
is a practice still practice, I believe by Orthodox. I
don't know if there's any Catholics that practice this, maybe
in the Byzantine Churches, I'm not sure, but some Orthodox,

(55:11):
if not all, do practice communion. Some Presbyterians practice paid
communion as well. In it's rather rare, but you'll see it.
Like Doug Wilson, who we talked about last stream, I
believe their church does do pedo communion, but basically that's
giving the bread and wine two infants, or at least
the bread. I don't know if they do both, but

(55:35):
that is seen as a furthering of sort of this
covenant theology of if we're treating them as members of
the church, then we should also give them all of
the benefits of members of the church. Whereas the traditional
perspective is that there is a difference between someone who
is a covenant member of the church and someone who
is a communing member of the church, meaning taking the

(55:58):
Lord's Supper, and the reason for that distinction is the
explicit discussion of fencing the table, where it's clear that
there is a certain amount of rational assent and thinking
that's important to taking the Lord's Supper correctly. And therefore
it seems like there is explicit biblical data to restrict

(56:20):
communion from certain individuals, even if you accept their membership
in the church. And so that goes back to the
conversation we had on baptism, where the or paedo Baptist
view baptism as being the next iteration. It has a
lot of continuity with circumcision, and we only draw discontinuity

(56:41):
where scripture explicitly gives us that discontinuity. So, for instance,
the process of circumcision is very different from the process
of baptism, and so, but that's called out very clearly
in scripture. Well here again, if we didn't have it
explicitly said don't give communion to people that shouldn't be
taking it, then we would give communion to everyone. Certainly,
we give it to all members, including infants. But because

(57:05):
it says that there's a certain amount of rational forethought
required to taking communion properly, then we restrict that from
people that have not made a public profession of faith.
And I think that's the same. It's it's generally shared
amongst Presbyterian and Catholic circles. Chris, do you know if

(57:29):
there are any Pato communion groups within Catholicism rit large.

Speaker 3 (57:35):
Not that I'm aware of. No, Pato communion is not
practiced whatsoever. You got to go through the sacraments before
you receive your first communion.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
So then frequency again, we're just sort of going through
some key concepts around communion just to give a survey.
There are a number of different views on how often
you should partake, and historically it was given about once
a year by the Catholic Church. That was the expectation,

(58:09):
and it was usually only the bread. That's the last
point here, that communion under both kinds or both species.

Speaker 5 (58:17):
Well, yeah, so I actually pulled some stuff up on that.
So it was actually it was argued by Aquinas. I
think I have it here, So yeah, Thomas Aquinas spoke
of it as a practice already prevalent in this time,
being only the bread, and he recommended it as a
way of avoiding reverence and spilling. Alexander Hales, who died

(58:39):
in twelve forty five, said that it was only permissible
for lay people to receive the Eucharist under the species
of bread. As was done almost everywhere in this day. Now,
that to me seems strange to say that lay people
can only have the bread. And again, this is in
twelve forty five. Now, in the Council of Constance in

(59:00):
fourteen fifteen they banned both forms of communion, and there
was there's another type of communion where because people essentially
they didn't want to just share from one chalice, but
they were not allowed to use multiple chalices. They could
only use one because that Jesus only used only consecrated
one chalice, right, so they weren't allowed to use two

(59:21):
or three or four or more, just one. In the East,
they had a practice of taking the communion and dipping
it in the wine, right, But then that was banned
as well in some places. And then in Vatican two
specifically they allow it under both species in some places

(59:42):
where the law permits is kind of how it's phrased, sore.
There was this kind of strange gap where early on
in the Church you would have both. In the Middle Ages,
things get a little fuzzy depending on where you are,
and then Vatican two they're like, you can have both
depending on where you are, so it's still really dependent.
I guess on where you are, And do.

Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
You know why they were, why they wanted to just
do one, why they would restrict it?

Speaker 5 (01:00:09):
Well, so, according to them, is Christ's body only in
the consecrated host? Is the wine consecrated wine only his blood?
So no, So, according to Saint Pius a tenth, both
under the species of the bread and under the species
of the wine, the living Jesus Christ is all present
with his body, his blood, his soul, and his divinity,
both in the host and in the chalice. Jesus Christ

(01:00:31):
is whole and entire because he is living an immortal
in the Eucharist, as he is in heaven. Hence, where
his body is there also are his blood, soul, and divinity.
And where his blood is there are also his body,
soul and his divinity, all these being inseparable in Jesus Christ.
So their idea behind it is that the wine is
simply not necessary.

Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
Well, that's the justification for why it was Okay, but
there is but but there is a further justification for
why it was good to restrict the wine from the lafe.

Speaker 5 (01:01:00):
I'm not sure of this gentleman that I quoted earlier,
because yeah, Thomas Aquinas didn't like the wine because he
was a he didn't like it for practical purposes, for
possible irreverence or spilling or right, you know, whatever it
might be. And then I'm not sure why this guy
Alexander of Hales in twelve forty five said that it

(01:01:20):
was only permissible for lay people to have the bread. Now,
it could be just that when Christ shared the wine
it was only with his apostles, right, so they're you know,
bishops at the time, right, So not not lay people
by any stretch of the means. So I mean you
might be able to draw a distinction there. I maybe

(01:01:41):
some of the in the early Church bread was the
normal means and then they serve saved the wine for
priests or higher class. I'm not exactly sure what his
reasoning for that is, but I just the point being
that there has been different views of what species are
permissible for what people at different times in the Catholic Church,
which to me seems strange because where we get the

(01:02:04):
whole thing from is Christ giving both the bread and
the wine both. So again from a Protestant perspective, I
have never seen a communion service, not have you know,
bread and wine, And I say quotation marks because it's
it's bread and wine. It does it always mean bread
and wine and Protestant circles.

Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
Yeah, I think it directly derives from the idea of transgentiation.
And when you consider that the the body does include blood,
then it works out. But if you are just simply
looking at the biblical data and looking at the way

(01:02:49):
that it, you know, Christ instituted the sacrament, then you know,
from a Protestant perspective, it feels wrong to do it differently,
just on a on a philosophical technicality, right, because that
is what it is.

Speaker 5 (01:03:05):
It's it's a.

Speaker 1 (01:03:07):
Technicality that works on the basis of Hellenistic presuppositions, which
might be valid, but it's really impossible to say biblically
whether they are or not.

Speaker 5 (01:03:28):
All right, let me pull your thing back up, all right,
and next light, go back real quick.

Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
Let me see there's anything else. So taking together communion
in communion versus private masses, that was a big thing
in the Reformation, was a lot of the Reformers wanted to.
I think the Westminster Confession officially condemns all private masses.
So Presbyterians and most Protestants in general only take communion

(01:03:55):
as a group in communion with other believers, and I
think a lot of that was I think a lot
of that was just practical. I think there are some
spiritual reasons, but I think there it was a reaction
to the private masses that would be offered to richer people,
to lords and priests, and I think it was just

(01:04:17):
seen as a way of basically dividing the body unnecessarily.
And we see this as a communal dinner and communal activity,
so that that is a key distinction that you will see.
I'm not as familiar with the exact justifications for one
versus the other or why that was such a big deal,

(01:04:38):
but I know that that was a thing coming out
of the Reformation, eliminating private masses.

Speaker 5 (01:04:43):
Now, what about this idea that in Catholicism it has
to be from a pre consecrated and that the moment
of consecration is when the transubstantiation happens. But I've also
heard stories of like people, this is obviously very very
special circumstances. So this is like a one off where
like people in concentration cams or POW's or whatnot, there

(01:05:06):
are no ordained priests, but they still seek to take
communion as a body of believers or whatnot. So they
take whatever they can, you know, whether it's fermented juice
or just generic bread, and they they kind of perform
their own communion in these very isolated special circumstances where
they obviously they don't have an ordained priest there, they
don't have the real elements so to speak, or the

(01:05:28):
proper elements as they would be in like a regular mass.
Do those still have some sort of validity? And I
imagine if there was an exception it would be for
those sort of cases.

Speaker 3 (01:05:38):
You know, I'd have to look into it and do
some more research.

Speaker 5 (01:05:40):
But sorry, I think I lost your guys's audio, so
I will be right back, Okay, worries.

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
Keep going chation.

Speaker 3 (01:05:49):
So I was actually looking into this about confession, which
kind of correlates. So you are encouraged to go to
confession and confess to a priest as soon as you can,
but if you're not able to, I believe, through Catholic doctrine,
you can confess your sins directly to Christ, but you
are encouraged to go through the set the proper sacrament

(01:06:12):
in order to do it. So if the circumstances cause
you to perform the sacrament a little bit in unorthodox
layer without the Church, then I think it would be
deemed okay, but I would have to do some more
research into that doctrinalal Wise, I would assume.

Speaker 1 (01:06:30):
With what I've read in other cases within their sacraments
as well.

Speaker 3 (01:06:34):
Yeah, yeah, but I would assume if that's the way
it is for a confession, which is pretty on parer
with the communion, I would assume it's very similar.

Speaker 5 (01:06:44):
Makes sense.

Speaker 1 (01:06:45):
You can go to the next light. Oh, there is
one thing about the frequency I want to talk about.
You can stay on this slide, that's fine, But the
frequency discussion has so some you had just once a year.
Then at the time of the Reformation, a lot of
Protestants would do it more often than once a year.

(01:07:05):
They wanted to emphasize it, but some saw there was
a lot of different views on how often you should
take communion, And even prior to the Reformation, you would
have a lot of variations where sort of the upper
classes and the priesthood they would take it much more regularly,
sometimes every single day, sometimes once a week, and so
you'd have a lot of variations. There's a particular story

(01:07:28):
that I think is very interesting because it talk goes
back to the Church of Genevas. For anyone who is
a Calvinist or or has a great respect for Calvin
and his work in Geneva, you have a very interesting
use case study in frequency of taking the Lord's supper
in this one church of Geneva. So when they first

(01:07:49):
embraced the Reformation, they were doing communion once a quarter,
and I think that was an improvement over the once
a year. When Calvin came in at to help with
the Reformation, he and his colleague Feral I think William
Ferrell wanted to do it every week. And this is

(01:08:10):
one of the things that they were butting heads with.
Some of the other that the leaders at Geneva over
was the frequency of taking the Lord's supper. And Calvin
and fair were both kicked out of town for probably
good reasons. They were causing they were being a little
bit too strict and basically excommunicating people for reasons that
were probably unjust. So they needed a little bit of humility.

(01:08:35):
So they were kicked out of town because of strife,
and then eventually Calvin was invited back, and when he
came back they were still doing it once a quarter,
still doing communion once a quarter, and rather than pushing
for once a week, he compromised two once a month.
And what I love is that right there in the
Church of Geneva you will see, which you know is

(01:08:57):
John Calvin's church, you will see all three three common
Protestant forms of communion that once a quarter, once a month,
and once a week all present as examples in terms
of the actual practice and the preferences. So it really
is even in you know, traditional Calvinists Protestant circles, there

(01:09:19):
is a lot of latitude there. I do think that
once a quarter is too infrequent. I like the idea
of once a week, but I actually think that once
a month does tend to make it a little bit
more special. It tends to set it apart from other
Sunday services, which is something that I personally appreciate just

(01:09:40):
in terms of making allowing a certain build up. But
the current church I go does it every single week,
so I'm not sure that there needs to be much
dogma around that. But I do love that you see
all the three most common Protestant forms of frequency right
there in the Church of Geneva.

Speaker 5 (01:10:03):
Now correct me if I'm wrong. But in Catholic Mass,
you have eucharistic adoration every week, yes, but yes participation.

Speaker 3 (01:10:11):
No, So it's not done at Mass, it's done off
like off schedule of Mass. And yeah, it's just a
consecrated host is brought out in a what is it called.
I just looked it up to and I already forgot
what it's called. But anyway, it's like the the gold
plated or silver plated glass thing that the yeah, yeah,

(01:10:34):
and that's placed on the altar and then yeah, you
just pretty much it's like very similar to venerating Mary.

Speaker 1 (01:10:42):
So this slide and some of the next slides are
getting more into the philosophical discussion, and I think you
guys probably need a break from hearing me talk about that.
So maybe we should do another clip before we get
to that.

Speaker 5 (01:10:53):
Well, I kind of had, so I I wanted to
talk about eucharistic miracles and because I know Chris, you
brought some of those up, which which is fun. And
then I have a jdire counter clip specifically to the
eucharistic miracles, which, again my position isn't either of those things.
So I just thought it would be fun to kind
of talk about those back and forth. Oh absolutely, Uh,

(01:11:17):
this is the first one that you had. Is there
a time stamp for this one?

Speaker 3 (01:11:22):
No, I didn't really time stamp it, but.

Speaker 5 (01:11:24):
Okay, just the whole thing. Sure, yeah, well, and just
let me know when to stop.

Speaker 9 (01:11:29):
A Gentlemen, your masks.

Speaker 10 (01:11:31):
When the priest utters the words of consecration, sometimes God
makes it visible. This was Archbishop Bergoglio, who is he
O Francis now in a small church which I went
to visit.

Speaker 9 (01:11:45):
I wanted to learn everything I could about this.

Speaker 10 (01:11:47):
The priest was told that a consecrated host had been
desecrated and was on a small candle holder.

Speaker 9 (01:11:54):
In the back of the church. The priest could not
consume it.

Speaker 10 (01:11:59):
That's pretty sid That means there was something on it,
like feces, and he could not consume the host.

Speaker 1 (01:12:07):
It was desecrated.

Speaker 10 (01:12:08):
So they put it into a glass of water, see
the glass of water, and they put it back into
the tabernacle. When a host can't be consumed, what's the
proper way to dispose of it?

Speaker 3 (01:12:21):
Burn it right?

Speaker 9 (01:12:21):
You place it in water, it dissolves.

Speaker 10 (01:12:23):
And you either pour it into the ground, onto the
ground or into a saquarium. Socrearium, not an aquarium.

Speaker 3 (01:12:33):
Now, So a scraium is essentially a special sink that
you pour the consecrated host down once it dissolves in
holy water, and the drain leads straight into the earth,
as opposed to the super So it's a more respectful way,
I don't want to say to dispose of, but a
more respectful way to dispose of a consecrated host that's
been desecrated.

Speaker 5 (01:12:57):
Yeah, good, put this host in.

Speaker 9 (01:13:01):
The water for it to dissolve. But here's what happened.
What should have taken just a couple of days to
dissolve didn't.

Speaker 10 (01:13:11):
When the priest came back and opened up the tabernacle
doors eight days later, the host that he saw had
been transformed. It was now a piece of bloody tissue
which was much larger than the original host. And so
the priest decided to keep the host in the tabernacle,
not publicizing it or its origin. A very humble man.

(01:13:35):
And I met him, and he didn't want any media coverage.
He didn't want any news, and so he left it
in there. Take a guess how long he left it
in there.

Speaker 3 (01:13:50):
Three years.

Speaker 9 (01:13:54):
And it never decomposed. This bloody tissue remained.

Speaker 10 (01:14:00):
Bread can't last three years in water, and so the
bloody tissue never decomposed.

Speaker 9 (01:14:07):
No special attempt was made to save it. This had
not decomposed. This is extraordinary.

Speaker 10 (01:14:13):
It's virtually impossible to explain, especially because no attempt was
made to preserve it. It wasn't sealed, it wasn't put
in some hermeneutic container. So all of a sudden, one
of the good friends of our mariand Father's community got
wind of this, and here he is at the National
Shrine of the Divine Mercy. This is doctor Ricardo Castingyong Gomez.

(01:14:34):
He lives in Bolivia, and he got wind of this.

Speaker 3 (01:14:38):
He is a.

Speaker 10 (01:14:40):
Neurological surgeon or a neurosurgeon and a cardiologist, a heart doctor,
and he got wind of this and he went and
he got.

Speaker 9 (01:14:50):
The bloody tissue.

Speaker 10 (01:14:51):
So we took a sample of the bloody tissue fragment
and he sent it to New York City. Now, since
he he did not want any prejudice of the scientific community,
because if they found out this was a Catholic host
from a mass it would have been dismissed. And he
knew that they would examine it in New York. The tissue,
and he did not want to reveal its source, so

(01:15:14):
he sent the subject or the top of the matter,
to New York and a team of five scientists was assembled,
including the famous cardiologists and forensic pathologist, doctor Frederic Zugaby.
He's the author of many books on forensic pathology, and
he testified I got majorly.

Speaker 9 (01:15:36):
Involved in this case.

Speaker 10 (01:15:38):
And so doctor Frederic Zugaby testified that the material is
a fragment of human heart muscle found in the wall
of the left ventricle of the heart. The muscle this
muscle is responsible for the contraction of the heart.

Speaker 9 (01:15:59):
The left card act ventricle pumps blood to all parts
of the body. It keeps the body alive.

Speaker 10 (01:16:08):
But he said, this heart tissue is in an inflammatory
condition and contains many white blood cells. This indicates that
the heart was alive at the time the sample was taken.

Speaker 9 (01:16:26):
They said, we have a murder. We have a murder.

Speaker 3 (01:16:33):
I think you can cut it there. I think we
got the gist. I want your guys's takes.

Speaker 5 (01:16:42):
Well, So I don't. I don't deny eucharistic miracles or
miracles in general. I think that's that's a bad position
to take an anti stance on this sort of thing. Personally, however,
I do think that you need to be very careful

(01:17:02):
when accepting miracles or basing your theology upon them. In Galatians,
it's very clear this is a sinful generation that will
look for signs and miracles and follow those rather than
the words that I've given you, Right, So I want
to be very careful because the counterpoint to this, which

(01:17:24):
isn't the counterpoint to this, So I wouldn't deny this
specific example at all, Like I don't think this is
out of the realm of possibility whatsoever for God to
transform a Eucharist into his real physical like actually like
heart tissue, like his own heart tissue, in that sort
of sense, Like, I don't believe that's out of the
realm of possibility whatsoever. But I could also point to,

(01:17:45):
like at a Coptic church, a Mariyan apparition, right, and
you have like hundreds of witnesses say that this happened.
But I wouldn't convert to a Coptic Christianity, if you
want to even call it Christianity, just because of some
marrying apparition or supernatural miracle.

Speaker 3 (01:18:04):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:18:05):
So it's very cool, but you also want to be
very careful. So that's that's my I don't know if
James has a take on it as well.

Speaker 1 (01:18:15):
My take is pretty similar. I think that I think
there's a couple of things. I mean, one, yes, absolutely
the supernatural as possible, and so God absolutely could do this.
I think, you know, there are a number of issues
in terms of verifying these as being truly miraculous. I
think there are all kinds of holes you could poke
in the stories, even even this one. I mean there's

(01:18:38):
just chain of custody issues. There's sure all kinds of
things that you could poke in it, but I'm not
sure that's necessary. I think that it is to your point, John,
I think it is dangerous to be too emphatic on
this is definitely nothing supernatural. It's like, well, God can
do things, and he absolutely I think he does work
in miraculous ways, even you know, in this stage of

(01:19:01):
after his you know, revelation is the canon may be closed,
and I think that is something that that Catholics and
and uh Protestants tend to agree on, although I'm not
sure exactly where Catholics fall, but certainly the Presbyterian viewers
that the canon in terms of uh Christ. Well, I
guess this probably isn't actually something we're on. But the

(01:19:23):
Presbyterian view is that the canon in terms of the reliable,
infallible revelation is closed. We're not going to get any
new revelation special revelation from God that we can rely
on in the same way that we do rely on scripture.
But that's not to say that God does not work

(01:19:44):
miracles or still even reveal himself in in special ways
to Christians. Some Protestants would go as far as saying
that that God basically doesn't provide any new special revelation,
but I certain wouldn't say that. I think that God
absolutely can speak. So like some people would say that
that the age of prophets, like what Paul talks about

(01:20:07):
in Corinthians, I believe in terms of some of the gifts,
that that was just sort of a first century thing
and that basically died away with the Apostolic age. I
don't see a need for that. I think that you
can still have people receiving special revelation, but the rest
of the church's responsibility or requirement to accept that as
being some kind of infallible and reliable revelation is closed

(01:20:32):
that we no longer have a way to fully verify
that kind of thing. And so typically the way I
see those acts of special revelation, if they occur and
miracles like this are in a primarily confirming work, it's
God using miraculous means to confirm his truths to his people.

(01:20:54):
And I think God can do that in all kinds
of ways that may or may not match a particular
theological perspective. And so I see, I don't really I
don't see eucharistic miracles as being a problem for Protestants
because it's not like Catholics believe that it actually transforms

(01:21:19):
in terms of the accidents into the body and blood
of Christ. And so this is clearly something extraordinary that's
happening even in the Catholic system, and in the Protestant
system this would be something that's very extraordinary, you know,
perhaps to emphasize the real presence. But again, what does
really even even mean here? But so this is equally
extraordinary in both systems, and so I don't see this

(01:21:40):
as being a problem in terms of Protestant theology. The
bigger question would be some of the miracles around, like
the Marian dogmas where you have Mary and apparitions, but
even those I don't I don't feel the need to
necessarily refute. I mean, some of them are very suspect,
and I think we should be skeptical to your point
on but I don't. I don't see the need to

(01:22:01):
necessarily reject all of them, because I think God does
reveal himself in certain ways to individual people to confirm
their faith as they need it confirmed. And you know, so, yes,
the Marian apperations do seem to like like there's one
I think where Mary appears to someone and specifically refers

(01:22:26):
to herself as being immaculately conceived or something along those lines,
and that's supposed to be even part of the proof
that it's a miracle is because that person would have
never who's too young to have ever heard that term
immaculate conception, something along those lines. And you know, I
am certainly skeptical of those. But even if that truly

(01:22:48):
did happen in a miraculous fashion, that doesn't tell me
that I now have to believe in the immaculate conception
in a Catholic or even Orthodox way. So uh yeah,
I guess that's that's how I see.

Speaker 5 (01:23:04):
It, right, And so like there's other cool things too,
like you can point to the shroud of Turin, right,
and other things that are like these are really cool,
really really cool. However, I again, I would be hesitant
to base my faith upon some of these, right because
like let's say, it's like I see the shroud of Turin,
I'm not a Christian and that's what converts me, right,

(01:23:25):
It's that it's that that realness of it, and then
like a year later it comes out that, oh, well,
actually we figured out how it was made, and it's
not it's like, well, that thing, that miracle that I
just put my faith on, you know, rather than the
Word of God, rather than his Church, whatever you want
to say about it, Well that just got taken away. Right.
So while I think that these things can be very

(01:23:46):
cool and very helpful, I don't think that miracles can
be the foundation fear faith. Now, some people experience miracles,
like personally, like you can talk about like west Huff
or something like that, where they experience like a a
unexplainable medical phenomenon where they were, you know, either going
to die or had some sort of condition that was

(01:24:06):
never going to be healed, becomes healed, documented by doctors,
whatever you want to call it, and they had that
personal experience and that is a foundation of their faith, right,
But I think it is. It's it's very cool. I
don't want to downplay it. But at the same time,
I don't think these are the cornerstone of like all
of our faith, right. Sure, I think that's kind of

(01:24:27):
a misappropriation of it.

Speaker 3 (01:24:28):
But I guess one could argue that Jesus even got
a lot of people to follow them through miracles.

Speaker 5 (01:24:36):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I think that was a tool
of him for sure. Yeah, And so that's why I
would be very careful to not downplay it. But also
again in Galatians, Paul explicitly warns them not to follow
like miracles because you know, demons can interact with the
physical world as well, so you got to be very
careful about it, right.

Speaker 1 (01:24:58):
And Jesus miracles were always secondary to his message. Jesus
is pretty clear that when he would heal the sick,
he was ultimately confirmed concerned with the forgiveness of sins,
with the salvation of their souls, and he would heal
to show that he could he had the power to
forgive sins. And so it was a confirming work, even

(01:25:19):
in the work of Christ.

Speaker 3 (01:25:21):
No, absolutely, one dred percent agree with you. But no,
I just thought it was kind of cool. And I mean,
there's an entire website dedicated to eucharistic miracles and this
this guy's actually gonna be cannonized as a saint, I
believe September seventh of this year, and he died of
His name is Carlos TUIs if.

Speaker 5 (01:25:42):
I okay, carl the creator of the exhibition.

Speaker 3 (01:25:45):
Yeah, and he died at fifteen of leukemia.

Speaker 5 (01:25:47):
Oh that's very tragic.

Speaker 6 (01:25:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:25:50):
So speaking of eu Christ, the word Euchrist, does anyone
know what the etymology of Christ is? The thing you do? So, yeah,
well I would have as well. I would have thought
that it was true Christ if I if I was
just thinking from the roots. But it actually has nothing
to do with the word for Christ. And even the

(01:26:14):
U part of it doesn't really mean true in this instance.
It's actually chorus, which is grace, and the U is
more like well, and so it's more like well wishing
or wishing grace on someone or thanksgiving, and so Eucharistia,
I believe, is one of the roots of it. And

(01:26:35):
it's basically just graceful or thanksgiving is what it initially can.
I think eucharistos is thanksgiving and so yeah, so it's
basically to give thanks is what Eucharist is derived from.
That was interesting, So I think it goes more towards

(01:26:55):
the breaking of the bread and giving thanks.

Speaker 5 (01:26:59):
This was sort of in that, in that vein of
of why it's dangerous to base your entire faith upon miracles,
not that they're a bad part of your faith, but
just to base your entire faith. This is a dialogue
between Jay Dyer and a Catholic on some of the miracles.

Speaker 11 (01:27:20):
I'mut, hello, yep, hey, I've been on before, but last
time I was on this was like, I guess a
few weeks ago.

Speaker 6 (01:27:30):
Yeah, the culture after you still do.

Speaker 5 (01:27:33):
Uh yeah yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:27:34):
I got interrupted by the police last time. So I
was talking last time about exorcisms and Catholicism and one
of the and I guess you brought up Deuteronomy and
how there's kind of like basically miracles aren't sufficient to
validate Yeah, let.

Speaker 6 (01:27:49):
Me give an example.

Speaker 12 (01:27:50):
So I just read the Resicrucian chapter in the Cambridge
Companion to Western Misticism and esoterism, and uh. The founder
of Rescriutionism claimed to be an incorruptible So should I be.

Speaker 6 (01:27:59):
As a Christian?

Speaker 8 (01:28:03):
The founder claimed to no, I don't think. Well, I
think the argument I was making took a little bit
more development, and you know, to be fair, I didn't
articulate it very well, and I but I guess I could.
I should probably formalize this and lay it out as
premises to make it easier, you.

Speaker 6 (01:28:15):
Know, said Baba claimed to have a lot of miracles?
Should I be a Hindu?

Speaker 8 (01:28:21):
Well, it depends on the miracle.

Speaker 6 (01:28:22):
Oh, so we just tack on more and more arbitrary.
So how do we know that that's the thing that
proves it?

Speaker 8 (01:28:28):
Well, I think there's some miracles that are kind of
like magic tricks.

Speaker 6 (01:28:30):
And Okay, you don't see how silly this is. I
don't think it is silly, right, I'm sure you don't.

Speaker 8 (01:28:35):
Yeah, because someone being free from demonic oppression is intrinsically good.

Speaker 12 (01:28:39):
You're missing the point, though, because while it's true that
somebody being freed from that depression is good, me hearing
a bunch of different claims does in no way tell
me which one is the right.

Speaker 8 (01:28:47):
One, Right, but I just want the in the instance
in Deuteronomy, though for example, that's an insense where the
prophecy actually does come to pass, but because they lead
them after other gods, they're still a false profit right.
So in that case, I'm just saying that that's an
example of something that might appear miraculous that maybe isn't sufficient,
and I think there's other miracles.

Speaker 12 (01:29:08):
So you understand that you're basically just every time there's
a problem for that position, you're just qualifying and saying
that that miracle doesn't count or that sign roman doesn't count.
And then then you arbitrarily said, but this specific type
of exercise a miracle is the one that proves it.
That's all arbitrary.

Speaker 8 (01:29:21):
Bro, what I guess the way I came to this
conclusion it wasn't. This is actually how I became Catholic,
not how I try to like justify it looking back.
And the reason it persuaded me anyway is because.

Speaker 5 (01:29:35):
Jay does this where he gets incredibly tired of people
talking to him in like two minutes, but he streams
for three or four hours only talking to other people.
So this is this is the way most of his
clips end up.

Speaker 3 (01:29:49):
For me.

Speaker 8 (01:29:51):
Correct, Well, no one argued this. It was just me
reading the gospels. They convicted me because I I mean
I didn't the is seeing that. Jesus believe that was
very strong evidence and condemned the Pharisees for rejecting it when.

Speaker 12 (01:30:04):
They're missing the point though, that the miracles attend to
the true faith. But how do they necessarily prove the
true faith when we're all in a position of hearing
countless different miracle claims?

Speaker 6 (01:30:15):
You don't know?

Speaker 8 (01:30:16):
Can I ask you? Why can't? Why would it have
been wrong for the Pharisees to use your argument from
Deuteronomy to reject Jesus since he claimed to be God.

Speaker 12 (01:30:22):
Because that's why Jesus goes to great links to prove
that he's not. In contrast to anything in the Torah,
you understand. Look when Jesus with the guy who's in
Abraham's bosom, Jesus says, even if one rites from the dead,
they won't believe.

Speaker 6 (01:30:37):
This refutes you.

Speaker 12 (01:30:38):
The very thing you claim, even more powerful than an
exorcism would be a resurrection. Jesus says, even with the resurrection,
they're not going to believe. Why because they have Moses
and the prophets. And if they won't hear Moses in
the prophets, they're not going to believe. Though one rise
from the dead. That refutes your whole position. Now, So
in regard to jesus attitude to the Old Testament, he
doesn't just do a miracle to say that, look who

(01:30:59):
cares about the Old test Here's a bunch of miracles,
designs and wonders. In fact, he actually criticizes everybody asking
for miracles and signs and wonders, because he says a
faithless generation seeks signs and wonders, and he says the
only thing that will be given to it is the
sign of Jonah.

Speaker 6 (01:31:11):
Rather, he argues constantly that he is the fulfillment of
the text the prophecies. So he puts text and prophecy
first and miracles second.

Speaker 12 (01:31:21):
You and all the other Roman Catholics put miracles first,
and you miss the whole fallacy of why this doesn't work.
And I asked you, I think last time, if the
Coptics have Mary appeared to thousands of people, why does
that not prove Coptic theology?

Speaker 8 (01:31:33):
Well, I just want to I'll concede very quickly than that.

Speaker 5 (01:31:39):
He gets so paid so fast, it's it's entertained, but
I don't know. Yeah, well, but that he's I think
he cuts right to the chase. Basically, it's like, miracles
can't be good, great, fantastic. We don't even deny miracles.
We don't say that they don't happen, even if they
happen outside of what you claim to be the one
True Church, because you have the example where Jesus tells

(01:32:01):
his apostles like, you know, we see other people doing
miracles if they're not against us in their force, that
sort of thing. But you can't just base everything on
miracles because then, yeah, some crazy Hindu guy is going
to say, well, look I've healed a thousand people in
a night. Believe me, I guess right. And even if
you have like some really good evidence for some of
these miracles, if they are pushing you away from the

(01:32:24):
Word of God or the One to True Church or
whatever it might be in your specific paradigm, you know,
I would be very wary of them. So which is
why when I look at like a Catholic miracles or
Orthodox miracles, or really any miracle, I think great, awesome.
But also I you know, I just I have that
I don't want that to be my cornerstone. It's basing

(01:32:45):
everything off the miracles.

Speaker 3 (01:32:46):
Oh yeah, that's fair.

Speaker 5 (01:32:49):
So I don't know if you guys want to go
through the rest of this clip, it is very entertaining.
But if you guys want to move on to something else, James,
if you want to get back to philosophy and etymology,
we can go back.

Speaker 1 (01:32:58):
Like, hey, if this is with it. The only thing
I would I would add is that I disagree somewhat
with Jay's take that that this person is convinced by
unreliable arguments or bad evidence. I mean, because I think
that we need to separate the psychology of conversion from

(01:33:23):
the justification for it. I think that very often certain
things things convince us that won't necessarily convince other people.
But that doesn't make it an illegitimate belief because ultimately,
all knowledge, period and I can I can prove this.
I hope to at some point show this pretty clearly.

(01:33:44):
This is an argument that I've spent a lot of
time formulating. All knowledge ultimately rests on faith. And the
question really is what is the basis for your faith?
What is the inductive reasoning for your faith? And miracles
can absolutely be a part of the induction that leads

(01:34:06):
us to accept certain presuppositions on faith that we that
then lead us to other conclusions. And so, yes, miracles
do not prove anything deductively, but they can be a
part of the overall inductive evidence that leads us to
adopt a certain set of presuppositions. And and there's nothing

(01:34:27):
invalid about that. So a particular miracle being particularly convincing
to someone, being something that that really affected them in
their their own personal reasoning is not invalid as long
as they're not relying on that as sort of some
sort of syllogistic this happened, Therefore I must believe this

(01:34:49):
that that does have issues. But if you're just simply
saying that this is one piece of evidence that confirms
this particular presupposition, and then from that presupposition I draw
these conclusions, that's really the only way to validly think.
And I think that miracles can be a part of that.

Speaker 5 (01:35:08):
Yeah, and I think there's a huge emphasis on like
personal miracles or things that happen. I'm not muted at it, Okay,
perfect I was on the wrong screen. Yeah, But like again,
people who have cancer and have it cured, like just
goes away one day, right, like a huge effect on
them personally. But it cannot be the foundation of everybody's
belief now.

Speaker 1 (01:35:28):
Of course not, Asian Massogephy says, incorrect. My knowledge rests
on observation and experience. But this is the point. In
the end, your observation and experience still have to be
filtered through this process of faith. This is the induction.
The inductions are abstracted from your observations and your experience.
But you have to take on faith a whole number

(01:35:48):
a lot of presuppositions that you can even rely on
your observation and experience. I mean, how do you know
that you're not just dreaming all of these things? How
do you know that when you dream that's not the
real world and this world that you living is actually
the dream? You take that on faith. Now you have
good reason to believe that, right, I mean, for one thing,
just the sheer percentage of the time you spend in
this world versus the dreaming world, and the constant changes

(01:36:11):
in the dreaming world. You know, there's all kinds of
reasons why you can believe that this is the real world,
that's the fake world. But ultimately you can't prove that.
You can't prove that, you know, the decart idea of
maybe we're just all being tormented by a demon in
our head that presents the world as we see it
to us, and we all have our own little demon.

(01:36:32):
I mean, it's basically the simulation or the matrix. There's
no way to conclusively prove that any things aren't true.
They might seem paposterous to you, and there's all kinds
of reasons to believe that they aren't true. I certainly
don't think that we're living in a simulation, but you
can't prove that. You have to just take on faith
that your observations and your experiences are even valid, and
in many cases they're not valid, and that's another thing

(01:36:54):
that you have to Then you have to abstract from
the bad observations, the times when you thought you saw
something but you actually saw something different. How do you
deal with that? And you have to deal with that
through by by reconciling that with other observations and other experiences,
and you start to abstract the more fundamental truths, and
eventually the most reliable truths are the presuppositions that you

(01:37:17):
hold at the very base level, your your first principles,
the the the postulates of your your logical system, and
then from there you can build syllogistically, you can build
logically deductively upon those, and so no one can escape
this process, and everyone ultimately has to rely on certain presuppositions,
and presubpositions by definition have to be accepted by faith.

Speaker 5 (01:37:40):
Well, yeah, observation and observation and experience are pretty meaningless
considering that, like, experience is based off of your memory,
and memory is not a particularly useful or authentic in
terms of anything. And yeah, sometimes your observations are also
just wrong. So it's I don't know how you could
you could base your you off of that and be

(01:38:00):
like I only sense data. It's like, oh is your
sense data always correct? No, well there's your world. You've gone. Congratulations,
Jesse faces me right now. We all have those moments.
We all have those moments.

Speaker 8 (01:38:18):
That doesn't because there's something else I wanted to say.
One of the fulfillments that Jesus brings is the miracles
that he does.

Speaker 6 (01:38:24):
Already you do not hear what I said, but Jesus predicts.

Speaker 8 (01:38:28):
That his followers will do the very same things that
you get.

Speaker 6 (01:38:30):
Again, none of that proves your position. Yeah.

Speaker 12 (01:38:31):
Again, miracles attend the true faith, and there are signs
of it, but they cannot be the thing itself that
proves it.

Speaker 8 (01:38:39):
I mean, I would say that it's an indication that
your biblical objections to Catholicism or other maybe maybe you
should reconsider them.

Speaker 12 (01:38:46):
No, that's just another dumb representation of your position. That's
an even dumb restate of your position.

Speaker 8 (01:38:52):
Well, because if the Pharisees, for example, like they believe
their interpretation was correct, and on that basis the edge
of Jesus, Jesus said, you searched the scream.

Speaker 12 (01:38:58):
Do not listen to anything that I said when Jesus
were house the Pharisees. He says, a wicked, adulterous generation
seeks a sign, seeks the miracles like you, and none
will be given to it, but the sign of Jonah,
which was what a thing in the Bible in the text. Rather,
he says that though one rises from the dead, they
will not believe they have Moses and the prophets.

Speaker 6 (01:39:16):
Don't you understand that refute?

Speaker 8 (01:39:17):
You don't remember? And John three Nicodema said, we know
that you are or you are from God, because no
man does the signs that you do unless God is
with him.

Speaker 12 (01:39:24):
Correct, So the signs are indicated, the signs are indicators
that he has that divine power. But the thing that
Jesus himself uses is not the signs and the wonders.
In fact, he says that signs and wonders are a
sign of weakness of faith. You've missed the whole point.
A faithless generation seeks signs and wonders, and you want

(01:39:46):
to tell me that that's the way that we prove
Catholicism and signs of wonders.

Speaker 6 (01:39:48):
So thanks for admitting that you're faithless.

Speaker 8 (01:39:50):
No, no, I would say so, I would say that
that Jesus's words apply to like an atheist saying give
me a sign, or if he's not.

Speaker 6 (01:39:55):
Talking to atheens, No he's not. That's totally not true.

Speaker 8 (01:39:58):
He's talking to Jews who reject him, who are demands.

Speaker 12 (01:39:59):
They're as exactly not Jews. But here's the thing, so
all the context doesn't matter now to prove your position.

Speaker 8 (01:40:05):
No, No, my argument to you is not prove that
prove orthodoxy by doing a sign. I'm not demanding that
you give me a sign.

Speaker 6 (01:40:11):
I'm of course we're not saying that nobody Again that's irrelevant.

Speaker 8 (01:40:15):
No, it's not, because that would be relevant. That would
be me doing what the Jews were doing that Jesus
condemned them for. Is demanding a sign, But I'm not
demanding a sign and said, I'm presenting the signs that
the Catholic baith.

Speaker 6 (01:40:26):
Brings the whole point.

Speaker 12 (01:40:27):
It begs the question because signs and wonders themselves don't
have any meaning without this.

Speaker 1 (01:40:33):
This is something that I care a lot about, and
like I said, I've spent a lot of time formulating
this argument, and what Jay is doing right here is
actually not great. He is conflating induction and deduction, and
this is something that I care deeply about because this
is actually a an issue that you will see throughout philosophy.
Pretty much all philosophers do this at one point or another,

(01:40:54):
where they will conflate induction and deduction. They will they
will make an argument or in this case, so Jay
is saying, you can't prove Catholicism by what you're saying,
you can't prove Catholicism from miracles, and the other guy
is saying, no, I'm not trying to prove it deductively.
I'm just saying that it's evidence, it's inductive evidence, and

(01:41:15):
that confusion between induction and deduction is a perennial mistake
that you will see in philosophy, and so it's just
worth calling out because you'll see it here, you'll see
it in other debates for sure. Pretty much every single
debate I've ever watched at some point makes this mistake.
But you'll see it throughout the entire conversation of philosophy,
where people will really neglect induction altogether, but when they

(01:41:41):
and use this argument of you can't prove it from that,
when that's never what someone is trying to do. They're
actually talking inductively, and someone will misunderstand them as talking
deductively and then use that to say they're either begging
the question or they're they're making invalid deductions, when they're
never trying to make deductions at all. They're just trying
to make inductions. And to go back what he just

(01:42:02):
said about begging the question, begging the question does not apply.
Begging the question is circular reasoning when you can assume
your your conclusion. Begging the question does not apply when
you include induction. Induction is breaks out of the syllogistic,
the purely deductive system, and now you are you are

(01:42:23):
actually including information that is non logical, that that is
coming from observation, from experience, it's not coming from within
this chain of deductions, and begging the question is only
a fallacy within your deductions. If you are arguing deductively
and you assume your conclusion, then you've made a logical fallacy.

(01:42:43):
But if you are including inductions that happen to relate
to your conclusions, so right, you're inducing from your conclusions,
that's actually okay because you are breaking outside of the syllogism.
You're breaking outside of deductions, and so it's okay to
include things that are part of your conclusions. To take
your conclusions and feed those back into your observations and

(01:43:06):
pull induce truths from that and then build on those deductively.
That's actually okay. That is not a circular reasoning, That
is not a fallacious way of thinking. And people will
make that mistake all the time where they will assume
that someone is begging the question. Really what they're doing
is they're just taking their conclusions using it to understand

(01:43:26):
their observations better, using that to abstract their presupposition, get
the presupositions more fine tuned, and then feeding that into
the deductive chain. That's not circular reasoning, that's not begging
the question.

Speaker 5 (01:43:41):
Well, so I think I get where the Catholics coming from,
because he is trying to use the miracles as supporting
of his beliefs, right, But I think Jay's refutation is
simply that the miracles themselves don't matter. You can try
and cite them as evidence, right, But it's the same
thing if he pulls up a hindusword, if he pulls
up a gnostic source for a miracle, it's like, well

(01:44:02):
you can. You can all claim miracles, right, So that's
that's not a great basis for faith or position.

Speaker 1 (01:44:10):
But they but they are evidence. They are evidence, and
they're valid evidence, and they're evidence without begging the question.
That's what I'm trying to say.

Speaker 5 (01:44:17):
And well, yeah, I think I did tell James he
needs to call on Jay's show specifically for this for
this reason, Yes, because it would make one fantastic content
in and of itself, and it would be fun to
then break it down later on to see how off
the rails it goes.

Speaker 1 (01:44:33):
I started. I started watching his live streams just to
kind of get a sense for how we are.

Speaker 5 (01:44:36):
Yes, well, did you did you watch this one from today?

Speaker 1 (01:44:39):
Not today? No, I think I watched one on Saturday.

Speaker 5 (01:44:41):
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. But just whenever you feel like it, man,
just get a topic, call in and yeah, and then
I'll just keep out. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:44:49):
I'm sure he'd make fun of me. I'm sure he
would get upset, just in the same way they'll.

Speaker 3 (01:44:54):
Give him a stroke, dude.

Speaker 6 (01:44:55):
Yeah, the entire context of the paradigm, that's the point.
You don't understand that.

Speaker 8 (01:45:00):
I understand that, and I think that the context is
Jesus predicted that those who believed in him would do
the things that he did.

Speaker 6 (01:45:05):
But that doesn't prove the position. You don't understand why.

Speaker 8 (01:45:10):
I just don't think that it should be completely discounted.

Speaker 6 (01:45:12):
I didn't discount it. I said that they attend the
true faith. They cannot prove it.

Speaker 8 (01:45:17):
But I think you're when you bring up Deuteronomy the
way that you do, it seems that you're just trying
to the way I do.

Speaker 6 (01:45:22):
How does Paul do it? In Galatians want.

Speaker 8 (01:45:25):
In Galatians want, Well, there he's there. He says, if
someone preaches a different gospel, do you know.

Speaker 6 (01:45:30):
That's not always? Says that's not always says what does
he say?

Speaker 8 (01:45:33):
Yeah? He says, though we are an angel from heavy Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:45:35):
So and if an angel appears right right?

Speaker 8 (01:45:38):
Well, okay, so you believe that me distinguishing between something
like an exorcism and an apparition is arbitrary? But you
could you get particle.

Speaker 12 (01:45:46):
You're just picking and choosing the miracles and the signs
of the wonders that you want, and you can't even
tell me why those are the ones that actually prove it.

Speaker 6 (01:45:51):
It's arbitrary. Stop being arbitrary.

Speaker 8 (01:45:53):
Wait, do you genuinely believe I never explained why I
think that they're different? Can you?

Speaker 1 (01:45:56):
Ever?

Speaker 12 (01:45:57):
The argument that you gave was arbitrary, and it rests
on the thing that's in question. But because those a
the miracles that the ghostbusters in Rome have, but most
of the good and improve them.

Speaker 8 (01:46:05):
No, that's not the reason. It's because Jesus himself condemned
the Pharisees and warn them about wall.

Speaker 6 (01:46:08):
That doesn't know that.

Speaker 12 (01:46:09):
But that doesn't dude, that doesn't tell me that your
criteria of the ones that count to prove Christianity, the
miracles and the ones that don't.

Speaker 6 (01:46:16):
It's true.

Speaker 8 (01:46:17):
But okay, I would say that an angel that appears
and preaches a close gospel to you is probably a demon.
Would you agree?

Speaker 6 (01:46:23):
That is the point? Correct?

Speaker 8 (01:46:25):
Okay? But a demon cannot perform an exorcism, can it.

Speaker 12 (01:46:28):
It's begging the question because number one, we don't even
know if it's a real exorcism. Do you are you
able to don't listen, dude, you're missing the whole point.
Are you able to go and investigate every claim of
the Romancollic Church to see if it really happened?

Speaker 6 (01:46:41):
No, so you have to take it on the claims.

Speaker 12 (01:46:43):
And the point is that if I'm in a position
of hearing a thousand different claims, whether it's Czibaba or
whether it's the Coptic Church in Egypt, look, all I
have to do is tell you why does Mary's apparition
and ze tune you did not prove Coptic theology?

Speaker 6 (01:46:56):
Tell me why.

Speaker 8 (01:46:59):
I don't. I haven't looked into that particular example, however.

Speaker 6 (01:47:02):
Because it disproves your whole dumb argument.

Speaker 8 (01:47:04):
But well, here's the thing. Also, I'm more and I
think Catholicism.

Speaker 6 (01:47:08):
Is more exalt you than you.

Speaker 8 (01:47:09):
I mean, yeah, we're more econmenical than you are.

Speaker 12 (01:47:11):
Right as if that proves anything, All that proves is
that you're more wrong than we are.

Speaker 8 (01:47:15):
No, it means that I'm open to they weren't.

Speaker 12 (01:47:17):
They're not with us with they're casting out my position
can admit that that there's miracles and exercism that occur
outside of the church. I just don't take that as
a proof of which one is the true church, because
what comes as the proof is, according to Dieraomi thirteen
Deremy eighteen Galatians one, the texts and the message, not
the signs and wonders. And you just bypass every time
I quoted to you, a wicked and adulterous generation seeks
a sign in a wonder You argue that that's the

(01:47:39):
thing that proves that the true Church.

Speaker 8 (01:47:41):
Well, I think that it's a misapplication of that and
the and the how is it a missed application because
the rising, well, when it comes to the text about
rising from the dead, the issue there is people neglecting
the poor, not people differing on it.

Speaker 12 (01:47:52):
Again, that's not what the passage in part is about
the fact that the guy didn't help the poor. But
he says, if I rise from the dead, my brothers
will believe Jesus. As though one rise from the dead,
they will not believe.

Speaker 8 (01:48:04):
Right.

Speaker 6 (01:48:05):
That refutes you.

Speaker 8 (01:48:07):
But the issue is do you think that the problem
with the rich man was that he had errant theology.

Speaker 12 (01:48:10):
Or that he was none of that has anything to
do with the point about the miracle itself. You're just
deflecting off into the moral of the parable, which is
not primarily what we're talking about right now, which is
does the miracle of does a resurrection convince a person
to believe?

Speaker 6 (01:48:22):
Well, okay, you're tag dude, so now we're going to
go to tag again. You're missing the whole point.

Speaker 1 (01:48:28):
I'm not entirely. I mean, Christ is in that parable.
Christ says you could raise from the dead and they
wouldn't believe. That doesn't necessarily mean that they shouldn't believe.
He's just saying that that wouldn't convince them psychologically, not necessarily.
That shouldn't be something that would that that would convince him.
I think that he's really condemning them for not believing

(01:48:49):
on the basis of something as obvious as.

Speaker 5 (01:48:52):
He's because as he says, they have profit, they have
Moses and the law, like they have that already, and
he's he's talking to Jews in this circumstance like of
course they should, like I am physically here, right, So.

Speaker 1 (01:49:06):
I almost feel like Cristi is saying they they should
have been convinced by these things. Yes, they don't prove
it again deductively. And this is where if you just
started using the term deductive and inductive in your in
your day to day conversations when you're talking philosophy, it
would clear up so much, because I feel like these
two guys are just talking past each other completely in

(01:49:26):
terms of which type.

Speaker 5 (01:49:28):
Of I feel like that happens.

Speaker 1 (01:49:30):
It does, it does? Yeah, and yeah, I mean this
is something that I care about a lot. I really
feel like if people would just start to clarify whether
or not they're talking about inductive evidence or deductive evidence.
I don't even like to call deductions evidence. I think
evidence makes more sense to just refer to evidence as
being inductive.

Speaker 5 (01:49:49):
But so you're talking about deductive like in for him almost.

Speaker 1 (01:49:53):
Yeah, yeah, well it's yeah, same thing, deductive deduction in
prince syllogism, all synonyms, all referring logic, all referring to
this sequence of inevitable, necessary conclusions that must follow from
a set of premises, and logic is helpful in terms

(01:50:16):
of clarifying the knowledge that we have from the collection
of evidence, from the collection of observations and experiences that
we have. We can make abstractions and inductions from this
wealth of observation that leads us to have certain presuppositions
that we have to accept by faith, and then from
there we can we can do deductions, syllogisms, inferences, and

(01:50:42):
those conclusions must necessarily follow if they're done correctly, from
our presuppositions. But we still have to take our presubpositions
on faith, which means that we could be wrong if
those presubpositions are wrong. And it also it makes the
deduction somewhat like they're helpful in clarifying a particular perspective.
But ultimately everything has to all of the prerequisites for

(01:51:03):
any conclusion that comes from a logical process has to
be contained in the premisses any conclusion, all of the
actual information that's there must already be contained in the premisses.
If you look at Euclidean geometry, all of the conclusions
that follow. You know, there are hundreds of conclusions that
follow from ten axioms, but all of the the So

(01:51:31):
that's the kind of information you get. You can get
these hundreds of conclusions, but the information is already baked
in to the ten axioms. So whatever learning you're doing,
it can be real learning. But it's clarifying, it's making
it sharper. It's making the information sharper and clearer and
more easy, easy to use and apply. But you're not
actually adding any new information into the system. You only

(01:51:55):
get new information when you accept new axioms or new premises,
and that can only be done on the basis of
uh induction.

Speaker 5 (01:52:10):
Should we finish out this, slipper? Do you want to
move on to another topic?

Speaker 1 (01:52:20):
Let's uh, well, we can finish this. It's what a
couple more minutes? I want to see him crash out?

Speaker 5 (01:52:25):
It's like a minute and a half left.

Speaker 12 (01:52:27):
Yeah, example again, you understand the easiest way to refute
this is sytuned Egypt, and that's what you keep going
away from it.

Speaker 6 (01:52:33):
You don't want to talk about it.

Speaker 12 (01:52:34):
Thousands of thousands of people in Egypt, thousands of people
in Egypt claim that Mary appeared in Sytooned Egypt over
the Coptic Church.

Speaker 6 (01:52:42):
Why should I not be a Coptic silence?

Speaker 8 (01:52:48):
God can perform miracles in other.

Speaker 12 (01:52:49):
Jurnys that because you But dude, are you like twenty
IQ seriously? Because you just argued that Roman Catholicism is
proven by these types of signs of wonders. Now you're
saying God can form the miracles at the Coptic Church,
but it doesn't prove Coptic theology.

Speaker 8 (01:53:04):
There's a few qualifiers.

Speaker 6 (01:53:06):
That's arbitrary.

Speaker 12 (01:53:06):
So now you get to tackle on the things that
so in other words, miracles don't prove it, we need
all this other stuff that's arbitrary from you.

Speaker 6 (01:53:20):
Exactly. I can't think.

Speaker 1 (01:53:25):
Uh hey kicks them out?

Speaker 6 (01:53:27):
Yeah, okay, heind glick.

Speaker 5 (01:53:30):
Oh sorry I clicked on that debate.

Speaker 1 (01:53:34):
I do want to watch I've only gotten part way
through the I watched the whole thing. You watched some thing, Okay, yeah,
I want to watch that. Okay, that actually might be
fun to do a response to.

Speaker 5 (01:53:45):
At some point. No, No, it's four and a half
hours long.

Speaker 9 (01:53:49):
That's true.

Speaker 1 (01:53:50):
Do they actually go the entire time?

Speaker 5 (01:53:52):
They there's like a five minute break every hour and
a half, I want to say, but no, I watched,
I watched, I was watching it live. I was like
an hour two hours behind. Very good debate from both sides.
I thought that they did. Both did a really good
job explaining their position. Obviously, like I leaned towards the
side that it's Catholicism has some issues when it comes

(01:54:12):
to like uh Vatican two in some of the earlier documents,
whether it's uh G eighty lumigenteum all other things right,
and so there's and obviously I'm not a papist, so
I don't believe in the pope. So I mean I
lean more towards jade Ir on that, but I think
that Tim Gordon did a really good job on that.

Speaker 1 (01:54:31):
Yeah, probably a better uh Jay Dyer debate to do
would be Jay Dyer and Trent Horne on a natural
theology because that directly, yeah, that's kind of rimology, and
that is what I'm what I'm trying to talk about,
and this is what I if I call into Jay Dyer,
it'll be on this topic. I want to understand his
apologetic specifically, because apologetics necessarily follows from your pistemology, and

(01:54:54):
as I understand Jaydyer is something of a presuppositionalist, which
is most associated with the Protestant Van Til, and you
get Bonson and several kind of disciples from Ventill and
Francis Schaeffer even had his own brand of presuppositionalism in
some respects. I guess I kind of fall into the
presubpisitionalist camp in my own epistemology, but I reject the

(01:55:19):
Ventillian concept of UH. Basically, the defense of presuppositionalism that's
generally given by presuppositionalists is a fallacious circular reasoning, and
they say that all reasoning is actually circular, and that's
what I just reject. And I don't think that that

(01:55:41):
a proper presuppositionalist view is actually circular. As long as
you start to include induction in its right context into
the conversation, it clarifies a lot of your epistemology. And
I'm really curious where Jay would would fall into that
whole conversation. I'm also just curious where orthodoxy in general,

(01:56:03):
if you're a presuppositionalist orthodox, how much of Van Tillion.

Speaker 5 (01:56:08):
They reject natural theology and Greek philosophy.

Speaker 1 (01:56:11):
Which Van Til would as well but I'm curious. I'm
just curious how much what else carries over if if
he's if he is citing people like Van Till and Bonson,
or if there's a unique brand of Orthodox presuppositionalism that
I'm not even aware of that's uh, that that comes
before Van Till. I don't know. I'm just I'm curious
sort of whether he falls into the same school of

(01:56:32):
thought philosophically as Van Till and and sort of his descendants,
or or something different. So I don't know, it'd be
an interesting conversation. Hopefully I can I can talk with
at some point. Yeah, And I mean he streams like
three to five times a week, so.

Speaker 5 (01:56:47):
Trying to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:56:48):
Yeah, so let's talk for a Yeah, yeah, go ahead
and pull up the slideshow again. So I want to
talk just for a little bit more about metaphor metaphor
and meaning and this this word that we have of,
you know, real and whether or not the metaphorical thing

(01:57:12):
is real or or the spiritual thing is real. So
just I've mentioned this a little bit in the past,
but I wanted to clarify a little bit what I
was talking about with some some slides and some illustrations.
So yeah, just to dive in. Metaphors can only go
so far in describing something truly. So, for example, you

(01:57:34):
can describe God. Describe God as being a rock, and
this is true with regard to his steadfastness or the
fact that he's a shelter. This is how it's typically
used in scripture when they talk about God as being
a rock. But obviously the metaphor breaks down when you
talk about God's love or his personhood or his eternality.

(01:57:55):
These things do not relate to a rock, and so
a metaphor. All metaphors go so far, but not farther.
There is always a point of departure when it comes
to metaphorical speech. All right, so when it comes to
ye rock, You've got this smaller physical thing called a rock,

(01:58:16):
and then you have this much larger thing that is God.
And there is a God is sort of part of
God could be described with this rock. But the metaphor
breaks down pretty quickly. So go to the next slide.
All right, So here we've got the point of departure. Uh,
let's see. Yeah, it's the first one. Okay, there we go. So, yeah,

(01:58:39):
we've got the point of departure. You can see the
distinction between the physical and the spiritual. So God is spirit,
so he would fall into the spiritual category. Although the
incarnation kind of throws a monkey wrench in that because
now all of a sudden you have God entering into
the physical world, which is it. Really it starts to
break down this entire concept of metaphor, and it really

(01:59:01):
that's why the incarnation in any system of theology must
be a mystery, because it just destroys any way of
philosophically thinking about these things. All right, so go to
the next line or yeah, next, Yeah, you said it.
So when you talk about go back, it's just one
at a time. So when you talk about God as Father,

(01:59:22):
the question is is that the same kind of thing
where it's it's similar to like rock. Is that just
a metaphor to refer to God. We've talked about this
in a previous dream. But the answer is no, Father,
is this this? You know, our human concept of Father
is not the ultimate concept of Father that we can

(01:59:45):
talk about in the same way, where it's a sort
of an anthropomorphism, as we might say, where there's a
point of departure where it goes so far in terms
of we can relate our concept of Father to God,
but we can't go any farther because you know, God
doesn't propagate through sexual means or you know, all the
things that we think about when we think about the
definition of Father. That would be one way to think

(02:00:06):
of it, but that's the wrong way to think of it.
You actually have to flip the metaphors to go to
the next hit it again. Here we go yet the
flip the metaphor and realize that the real concept of Father,
what is real when we think about Father, is Godness
and his and when he talks about himself as the
heavenly Father, he is the archetypal Father, and the metaphor

(02:00:27):
is really the physical. Now the metaphor is flowing in
the other direction. When we talk about rock and God,
the metaphor flows from rock to God in the sense
that it goes so far but not beyond that. Well,
now the term Father goes so far in the other direction,
but not beyond that. And so we can only participate
in some of God's ultimate you know, fatherness, but we

(02:00:49):
can't participate in all of that. And so we can
be fathers in a in a physical sense, but not
in an ultimate sense. And so some metaphors go this way,
some metaphors go that way. Rock goes that way, Father
goes this way. And then there's always going to be
a point of departure between the physical and the spiritual.
So the next one, right, So the question is is

(02:01:11):
what is is real? Which one is more real? And
uh And that the direction of the arrow is kind
of what indicates which one is going to be the
more real. And so in some cases, when we talk
about like rock, it almost seems like like a rock
is the real thing, and when we just use that
to describe God, the rock is still the real thing.
But when we talk about Father, it's like the real

(02:01:32):
Father is God, not us. Whereas when we talk about rock,
the real rock in a in a definition of rock,
is is the physical thing. And so which which direction
is is reality? Going? All right? Keep going, hopefully this
is making some sense.

Speaker 5 (02:01:50):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (02:01:50):
So Another example I like to give is when we
talk about Genesis one, the days of creation. This is
a big debate in Catholic, Protestant, pretty much all Christian circles.
You'll have proponents of both views when it comes to
what Genesis one means by day. Some people hold to
a literal twenty four hour days, and some people hold
to more of a metaphorical day or more of a

(02:02:13):
poetic day. Now, regardless of your exact position, I think
that the metaphor flowing from day to the days of creation,
as using Genesis one, that's the wrong direction of the metaphor.
The metaphor should flow from days of creation to the
days in Genesis one. In other words, or or twenty

(02:02:36):
four hour day. When we use the term twenty four
our day, we shouldn't think of it like a rock.
We should think of it more like the term father,
where our twenty four hour days are participating in some
concept of day that is established in God's active creation,
where He's setting a pattern, an eternal pattern in place
that we then get to participate in, and our twenty

(02:02:57):
four hour days participate in that pattern as the established
in God's creative work. Now, when you just think of
the minutia, it does seem a little bit prostrous to
me that a you have a twenty four hour day
prior to the sun being created, which is the whole
you know, the sun and the Earth's relationship is where

(02:03:19):
we get the twenty four hours from now, God certainly
could be looking at a you know, a spiritual clock
and marking his work by this twenty four hour thing
that he knew that he was going to create in
his foreign knowledge. That certainly is possible. And and then
of course, you know, Moses, writing much later, could have
used that word day to refer to something, you know,

(02:03:40):
literally twenty four hour days like we currently understand them.
But I just think that that's trying to get into
the minutia that is missing the point. God is setting
a pattern of work, of days, of six days that
you labor and then one day you rest, and then
this thing that we experience as day in our life

(02:04:01):
is participating in that pattern in that metaphor. And so
again in this case, when we talk about the days,
you know the word day as it's used in Genesis one,
our concept of day is participating in something that is
greater than our concept of day. And so the point
of departure is going to be well, it's hard to

(02:04:24):
exactly know where the point of departure is, but regardless
of where it is, the metaphor flows in this direction
from God's concept of day to our concept of day.
The spiritual is the more real Okay, so then go
to the next slide. So when it comes to transcepstentiation,
when it comes to the bread and the body, that

(02:04:47):
gets a lot more complicated because now we're talking about
something it's hard to tell where the exact point of
departure is, and there is an essential equation being set up.
We could talk about it in terms of metaphorical Maybe
I was speaking metaphorically and saying that, you know, my
body is the bread in a metaphorical sense, So it

(02:05:09):
goes this far, but no far than this. So it
goes this far in terms of the substance, but not
the accidents, right. That would be the Catholic perspective, and
so that has the metaphor flowing in this direction from
from God, from the spiritual to the material, whereas Protestants
would often more think of it as being at least
in the mere memorial perspective, would flow in the other direction,
where you have it from the physical to the spiritual.

(02:05:32):
But I'm I'm concerned that perhaps neither of these fully
describes what's going on, certainly if you think of it
as being so yeah, hit hit. The next two is
the point I was making earlier about whether or not.
Trans Statiation is something of a of an incarnational act,

(02:05:52):
and transpstantiation as described by Catholics can't be the answer
would be would be no, because the incarnation involved taking
on the accidents, whereas in transubstantiation, as it normally occurs,
does not take on the accidents of of God. The

(02:06:16):
accidents remain readily, whereas this substance is now godly. So
I'm not entirely convinced that that we really think it.
I think the Orthodox are right that it's a mystery
that we can't fully understand how to parse the metaphor

(02:06:37):
from the literal, or even how to separate those two concepts.
When we're talking about something that is so spiritually laden,
it's just dripping with spirituality. You cannot escape the spiritual
significance of what's happening here, and so to try to
speak in terms of what is metaphor and what is
literal gets very, very difficult.

Speaker 3 (02:06:57):
So my question is, was do you think he waseaking
metaphorically when he said drink my blood and eat my flesh,
Because he never encouraged his followers to stray from Old
Testament law, and even when he did say these things, people.
He lost a lot of followers, and people looked at him, like,
what are you talking about, Like, we're not supposed to
drink blood, that's Old Testament law. So is this like

(02:07:20):
the only instance where he tells them to stray away
from old lass? So was he not speaking metaphorically? Like
is my question?

Speaker 5 (02:07:29):
What would you say?

Speaker 1 (02:07:30):
What would your answer be?

Speaker 3 (02:07:31):
I would say he's speaking literal because this is probably
the only instance where he's telling his followers to stray
from Old Testament law.

Speaker 1 (02:07:38):
So you're saying this it is an example a distinction.
I I don't know, because it seems to me like
the Old Testament law would still be referring primarily to
the accidents. So I'm not sure exactly how that. You
know it doesn't you know, Christ came to fulfill the law,
not to that's true reject it. So I'm not you know,

(02:08:01):
I don't I'm not particularly convinced by the argument that
this was a hard saying, therefore he must be meaning transbstantiation,
Like I think that it's a hard saying because it's
hard to understand. Uh, And so yeah, I can understand
people walking away because they just had no clue what
he was talking about I don't think and it does
sound cannibalistic, so that could be part of part of
the con the the issue, but it's not cannibalistic right

(02:08:23):
in any you know, true understanding of it. So no
matter what I think, the people that walked away didn't
understand it, and that's why they That's ultimately is why
they walked away.

Speaker 6 (02:08:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:08:37):
So again I'm not exactly sure where I where I
fall into sort of how you square the circle, so
to speak. It is a complex issue, and I think
that ultimately you just kind of have to throw your
hands up and say this, this is mysterious, and the
equation between body and bread is perhaps uh not open

(02:09:02):
to as much penetration as I mean as I would
argue the Catholics attempt. Yeah, that's the end of my slideshow, John,
What do you think?

Speaker 5 (02:09:20):
Well, I mean, I think I'm more in line with
you in that where it's it seems like it is
very difficult and muddy for us in our human paradigm
to understand exactly what is happening in the Eucharist, whether

(02:09:42):
it is this sort of mystical changing of the bread,
the substance of the bread and the wine into Christ's
body and blood, whether it is a spiritual realness that
we accept, whether it's only Christians who can partake in it.
I I do think that there is sort of an

(02:10:03):
unknowable aspect to it, if that makes sense, Like it
is it is otherworldly in that sense.

Speaker 1 (02:10:10):
So are you guys hearing a cricket in my being
surprised that doesn't get Yeah, the stream yard has really
good audio, uh background audio removing technology.

Speaker 5 (02:10:28):
But sorry, Yeah, when you stop talking, it's gone. But
when it yeah, like it's gone, and then as soon
as you say anything, it's just right back. But yeah,
I mean, so transubstantiation, it's kind of it is the
same thing almost, if you want to broaden your perspective

(02:10:49):
a little bit on it, where it's only the the
accidents stay the same, but the substance changes. But if
the accidents the the attribute use that we can see
are all the same, except for in the eucharistic except
for in the eucharistic miracle sense right where the accident's

(02:11:10):
actually changed, where it can be a noticeable difference. I mean,
it's almost I don't want to say it's a distinction
without a difference, because it is different.

Speaker 1 (02:11:20):
Or you know.

Speaker 5 (02:11:21):
I don't want to say it's like the consubstantiation route
Zwingley's methodology, but it is. It is very close.

Speaker 1 (02:11:29):
Consubstantiation is Luther's your memorial would be doing it. Yeah, yeah,
I think that's that's that's about right.

Speaker 5 (02:11:40):
And again, as a Protestant, I don't have to accept either, right,
But as a Catholic you can't. You can't. You can't
denied transubstantiation, which I I And again, even from where
I'm sitting, transubstantiation wouldn't be a crazy leap at all,
but it would just be a hard definition where or
so this I suppose this is the difference between like,

(02:12:02):
if you have a normative authority, which is the Catholic Church,
they say this is what it is and you say, okay,
fair enough, or if you don't have individual certainty, right,
so can I individually know that this is the exact
process that is happening in the Eucharist when I've partaken it? Like,
probably not. But I can have a normative authority that

(02:12:22):
tells me, yes, this is what it is, so it is.
And I think that's perfectly fine for the lay person
to just be like, this is what my pri says,
therefore you know this is what it is.

Speaker 1 (02:12:38):
Yeah, I mean I tend to think that I when
I have because I used to not understand transitt initiation.
And so I had a Catholic friend and I just
we sat down for I don't know, a good thirty
forty minutes and just hashed it all out. And by
the end of it, I came away thinking, Okay, I
think we're basically ninety percent aligned. And now i'd actually

(02:13:00):
almost would say maybe ninety five percent of the way aligned.
It just seems like there's maybe a five percent issue
that that's it seems superstitious to me within Catholicism. But really,
at the time I thought that maybe.

Speaker 5 (02:13:14):
I would say it's more defined almost because if you
take the mystical interpretation, you are leaving something up to mystery.

Speaker 1 (02:13:22):
Well, yeah, you're thinking of superstition in a different way
than I was thinking. I guess I was thinking at
the time, I was thinking that Catholics still believed that
there was an actual physical transformation that took place, like
it wasn't like the accidents did actually transform. And since
then I've realized that no Catholics, you know, accept in
extraordinary cases don't even believe that, and so, really that

(02:13:42):
was that was the ten percent superstition that I was
thinking that and so, and I'm sure there were plenty
of first generation Catholics that believed that the accidents changed.
There are plenty of Catholics today that believe the accident's changed.

Speaker 2 (02:13:54):
Right.

Speaker 1 (02:13:55):
They hear about the egoistic miracles and they just assume
that that's what normally occurs, right, that it does trans
form in there.

Speaker 3 (02:14:01):
You know, I was going to say that to the
most of these miracles that have happened to desecrated hosts, so.

Speaker 1 (02:14:07):
So exactly right, which is why I included that fourth
point in my You know, when I when I have
my four commonly held views on on the echorist in
terms of of what how the bread and body are
the uh the sorry, how the the body and blood
are the bread and wine, I include symbolically and truly

(02:14:30):
and literally and physically because there are plenty of Christians
that do actually hold to that view, just no institutions
that officially hold to that view. So there are plenty
of people that sort of misunderstand the the their doctrine.
But you remove that and I think, really, I don't
I don't with a deeper understanding of what substance means.

(02:14:52):
I'm not exactly sure how you parse that from Calvin's
conception of spirituality, of a real spiritual presence. It's like
we're talking about something that is non material, sounds like
spiritual to me and is real and true. And so
I think, assuming you're rejecting Platonism, which would say that

(02:15:15):
the most real is always the non material, right, Plato's
idea of the forms is that there are these, you know,
there's a perfect triangle, a form of a triangle, an
idea of a triangle that exists in the world of
the forms. That all triangles that we see are simply
examples of imperfect examples of this perfect form the triangle.

(02:15:41):
Whereas Aristotle said, no, you can't say that in fact,
the universals are real, but they're real in the examples, right,
So Aristotle would they call them like a soft idealist,
although some people would call them like a soft nominalist.
But basically Aristotle he recognized is the existence of the
universals the concept of triangle. But he saw it, there

(02:16:05):
is no concept of triangle without examples of triangles. He
saw the universals as being real as they were demonstrated
in the physical things that we saw around us. But
in order to know whether or not a thing is
a triangle, you still have to have a concept of triangle.
And where do you get that concept of triangle? If

(02:16:26):
you're only looking in a purely materialistic, purely what's the
term we're looking for empiricist way, you still have to
ask where do the universals come from? What is the
standard of triangle?

Speaker 5 (02:16:42):
What is this? You know?

Speaker 1 (02:16:44):
Where where does the standard for anything come from?

Speaker 3 (02:16:47):
And so.

Speaker 1 (02:16:49):
It's not quite clear. I mean, the best answer that
is given in philosophy is the mind of God. The
universals exist in the mind of God, which sounds a
lot like Plato's idea of the world of the forms,
like the world of the forms is the mind of God,
which is basically what Augustine would have said then. But still,
if you just elevate the world of the forms as
being the most real and neglect the material as being real,

(02:17:13):
you end up in a place that is not.

Speaker 5 (02:17:17):
Holy.

Speaker 1 (02:17:17):
Christian Christianity. One of the key innovations that Christianity makes
when it comes to Hell. Taking hell in philosophy and
improving it is to emphasize the importance of the material,
the importance of the world around us, which is something
of an Aristotilian innovation. But then Christianity goes even farther.
Thomas Aquinas goes takes Aquinas or takes Aristotle and and

(02:17:40):
and uses his philosophy in a Christian context. And Christians
emphasize the importance of the material. We do not simply
reject the material in favor of the spiritual, but we
actually see them as being both part of the real.
And that is the key. I think the cricket's gone,

(02:18:01):
is it? You guys still hearing the cricket.

Speaker 5 (02:18:03):
I don't hear this a little bit.

Speaker 1 (02:18:04):
Yeah, he's arguing with you, all right, But anyway, so
that that's that's key. It's key to Christianity that we
we do not think of the spiritual as being the
most real. We do see both material and spiritual as
being real, and exactly how they relate is still up
for debate. There's still a lot of conversation that takes

(02:18:26):
place around that, and and this particular you know, discussion
of transperscentiation is part of that larger conversation.

Speaker 3 (02:18:34):
Yep.

Speaker 5 (02:18:37):
Well, as I said it was going to be a
very heavy topic. Yeah, not quite as bad as arguing
over one word in Greek for two.

Speaker 1 (02:18:49):
Hours, but yeah, yes, all right, were out of c
or is that everything?

Speaker 3 (02:19:01):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (02:19:01):
I covered all the official com that was.

Speaker 5 (02:19:02):
That was what everybody brought for today, and I think
I think that exhausted the different perspectives on the Eucharist,
eucharistic miracles, and we had got we got a full
sermon in there, basically, thanks James, got or not maybe
not a sermon, maybe a lecture, maybe a lecture.

Speaker 1 (02:19:18):
You you've reminded me there was one thing I wanted
to say that is more sermonic and this is just
something that was mentioned. The sermon today was on the
Lord's Supper, and there was just one little devotional thing
that I think is uh. It really made an impact
on me. There's a line in Jeremiah too. I forget
the exact reference, but in Jeremiah too where he says

(02:19:42):
a a a bride will not forget her jewelry when going,
you know, on her wedding day, but you have forgotten me.

Speaker 5 (02:19:56):
Right.

Speaker 1 (02:19:56):
This is Jeremiah talking about the people of Israel, and
and this is God talking through Jeremiah about how the
people of Israel, even though you know a bride isn't
going to forget something as trivial as our jewelry, the
people of Israel have forgotten God. And then you relate

(02:20:16):
that to Christ saying do this in remembrance of Me.
That really you can feel the pain in God's voice
when He's talking to the people of Israel saying you've
forgotten me something. You know you'll remember something as trivial
as jewelry, but you've forgotten me. You don't think about
me on a day to day basis now true? Could
this be of us even in our day to day

(02:20:36):
lies when we forget the God who allows us to
breathe every second? And so do this in remembrance of
Me is not a trivial command. We must remember God,
we must we cannot forget this God that we worship.

(02:20:57):
And you think even if Christ's words when right after
that is the garden of gastemacy guestimony, yeah, uh and uh,
and the disciples are are falling asleep while Christ is
is in agonizing prayer, you know, sweating drops of blood.
You know they're already forgetting what they should be thinking about.

(02:21:22):
And so just to emphasize the importance of this conversation,
the importance of, regardless of where you stand on transubstantiation, uh,
the importance of.

Speaker 3 (02:21:33):
The the act, the the.

Speaker 1 (02:21:35):
Ritual of the Lord's Supper.

Speaker 3 (02:21:38):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (02:21:39):
It is a key moment of remembrance and not something
to be.

Speaker 5 (02:21:44):
Forgotten.

Speaker 3 (02:21:46):
There you go.

Speaker 1 (02:21:47):
I thought that was a really good message, and I
just wanted to know that.

Speaker 3 (02:21:52):
Before we go. It's Hook still in the chat. I
want to know how that Lutheran service went.

Speaker 5 (02:21:58):
Yeah, he was here just a few minutes ago, so Hook, Yeah,
how was your Lutheran service?

Speaker 3 (02:22:02):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (02:22:02):
My sermon not or not my sermon, but the sermon
I was at today was on John six one through seven.
It's the woman caught in adultry? What about you, Christian?
What was your homily on Oh, let's.

Speaker 3 (02:22:20):
See, it was on the verse where Christ says, I
do not know you depart from me forget where That
is heavy topic. Yeah. I have not done much research
on that one, so it was interesting.

Speaker 1 (02:22:35):
Yeah, that that's a worthwhile topic for another stream because
it goes into the question of what really is required
for salvation, and it touches on the question that is
very important with regard to Vatican two of can you
be saved potentially without knowing the name of Christ? Right,

(02:22:57):
if there are some people who know the name of
Christ but they aren't aren't saved Christ words seem to
also imply maybe that there are people that don't necessarily
know his name or don't don't necessarily have perfect theology,
that that that maybe are saved. It's it's I don't
that might be too much of a of an extra

(02:23:17):
extrapolation from that particular passage. But there there's a whole
question around you know that the people that through natural
religion alone and they be brought to God, you know,
through even no one gets to the Father but through Christ.
But but we don't, you know. C. S. Lewis talks
about how we don't know the exact mechanism by which

(02:23:40):
we get to the Father through Christ. Right, we know
that it has to be through Christ. Uh, And even
the Catholic Church will say it has to be through
the Catholic Church. But in Vatican too, the Catholic Church
seems to say that there might be other ways of
getting through the Church. And you know, and do Muslims
worship the same God? And you know, all of that
is contained.

Speaker 5 (02:24:00):
All the denominations. When you boil down to it, they
all say that there are extra normative means of grace
right where Christ through Again, an extra normative means can
say people outside of the church. But that's not a
great bet. I think that's what everybody would argue.

Speaker 1 (02:24:15):
Right right for sure? Yeah, all right, looking at us
Charred comments before we go here, We had a couple
of comments on Calvin, someone talking about Yeah, one of
the differences between Calvin and Luther was that Calvin believed
that the real presence, the real spiritual presences Calvin would

(02:24:39):
have said in his institutes, was only present for believers,
whereas for unbelievers, who should be you know, fenced from
the table when they took it and ate and drank
judgment on themselves. The judgment was from God, but they
weren't actually consuming Christ in the same way that believers were,
Whereas Luther would have said, no, regardless of whether you
are a believer or unbeliever, you are are consuming Christ.

(02:25:01):
And and that's why you get judgment because you improperly
consumed the real presence. I tend to think the latter
is probably more valid. I do think that if you
hold a high view of the real presence, even a
high real spiritual presence. It does seem like the the
condemnation on people that do it incorrectly would imply that

(02:25:21):
there is the presence is there, whether whether you believe
or not, and that's that's why there's the condemnation. But
I'm not entirely sure where I fall, but that's that
is an interesting distinction, and I think that comment is correct.
And then full Metal Jacket said that he has no
respect for Calvin, which is a problem. Come on, man,
Calvin often misrepresent anything Calvinistic well, and Catholics often do

(02:25:47):
as well. Although, like I said, true Tomism is a
lot closer to Calvinism than many Catholics realize. Orthodox probably
don't have that same link and so they don't have
orthodog worry about it.

Speaker 5 (02:25:58):
Reject homism as well.

Speaker 1 (02:26:00):
But the one thing I'll say about Calvinism is most
people understand Calvinism through the five points, right tulip. The
five points of Calvinism, as they're often called, those five
points are were never stated by Calvin. There's a whole
question that there's a big debate about whether or not
Calvin himself would have been a four point Calvinists or
a five point Calvinist.

Speaker 3 (02:26:20):
Right.

Speaker 1 (02:26:21):
The five points of Calvinism, as they are termed, derived
from a post Calvinistic synod that occurred in Dort, the
center of Dort, and it is a reaction to the
five Points of Armenianism, which no one here should be
in Armenian not Armenians the nationality, but Armenians the people

(02:26:46):
that believe in that are anti predestination and pure free will.
The five points of Calvinism are a reaction to the
Five Points of Armenianism and are in no way a
complete summation of Calvin's theology. And it's there's even a
question of whether or not they are a good approximation

(02:27:08):
of what Calvin would have thought in terms of specifically
the limited atonement. I think is the is the big
question in whether or not you're a four point Calvinist
or a five point Calvinist. I tend to be a
five point Cavenist, but I think that there are some
valid critiques of the concept of limited atonement, and perhaps
there might be it might be better left up to
to mystery, which I think what the four point Calvinists

(02:27:30):
would say. But all that said, Calvin himself was a
serious thinker. If you actually read Calvin himself, he is
not nearly as objectionable as a lot of people are
led to believe in their sort of common understanding of
his theology. And you certainly can't just go to the

(02:27:50):
five points of Tulip to understand all of Calvin's thinking.
He also had plenty of problems. He was very proud,
very stuck up in a lot of ways, and needed
attle bit of humility. He got a little bit of
humility at different parts in his life, but he remained
a little bit stodgy, as the British might say. So
there you go, but don't don't discount Covin. He's nice,

(02:28:12):
he's good.

Speaker 5 (02:28:15):
That's funny. I'm done, all right, guys, let's get out
of here, bros. Two and a half hours on the dot.

Speaker 1 (02:28:26):
M good stuff. Well, thank you everyone for being here.
We had had good attendance throughout, even though we didn't
have the kick from Focus Trips regular stream. I think
we're gonna keep doing Sunday at least. We do have
a couple plans for some midweek streams as well. I
know we've got at least one in the works with
someone that might have an inside take on Mormonism, so

(02:28:49):
stay tuned for that. But in the meantime, do expect
us at the very least next Sunday, if not before,
and we will see you next time.

Speaker 5 (02:28:57):
God blessed, Yeah, God blessed.