Yes, I think I liked

it.

Okay.

So I haven't seen the movie, so I'm basing this only on what Damien says in his email.

And that means, because he says, I'm controlling a flesh-and-blood robot.

Now, even though if you read the original play, Rossum's Universal Robots, that gave us the name robot, they end up being living beings that are intelligent living beings.

That's not what the word means to most people.

Just went through a little bit of purgatory with that last discussion, but how does time work in purgatory? Will we have to revisit all the moments where we've fallen short in order to right those wrongs? Or are we frozen in time until our final judgment? Or does time continue to flow linearly like it does on earth? Or is there some other theory that I haven't mentioned or thought of myself?

Do animals praise God in their own way?

Well, there's certainly passages in the Bible that you could cite in support of that.

For example, if you look in Psalm 148, the psalmist is writing and he says, "'Praise the Lord from the earth.'" use sea monsters and all deeps, wild animals and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds.

So the psalmist just names several different types of animals.

Sea monsters is not an exact translation, but it basically means big sea beast.

So, you know, sea creatures, wild animals, cattle, which are domesticated animals, And it's more than just cows, like goats and sheep are also considered cattle, the way the term is used historically.

Also creeping things that would be, you know, like lizards and various creeping insects.

Are sightings of cryptids, UFOs, ghosts, etc., all thought projections or

Yeah.

'Cause he's ...

Now, whoever edited this, they've thrown together a bunch of different things, and there's not a consistent through line on it in, in terms of what he just said, it doesn't make a lot of grammatical sense, but there is a common underlying element that it's gonna be more obvious to a Calvinist listener than to someone from another perspective, because James White is a, um, he's a Calvinistic Baptist, or Reformed Baptist, as it's commonly said, and he's doing something that a lot of Calvinists do.

Um, now, in the Calvinist view, God, uh, determines everything, every single thing that happens in world history.

God makes a choice for where every molecule moves in space, and so if any event happens on a Calvinist view, it's 'cause God chose that, and this generates problems for most Christians.

Most Christians are not Calvinists.

They will say there needs to be a role for free will where God doesn't pick the choices that you make, and if He does pick them, your will's not generally free.

Mm-hmm

Yeah.

Um, you may have already crossed it and not realized it.

Um, also, it's an intrinsically difficult area to, um, analyze because, uh, even though Aquinas has, correctly here, has two clear categories, perfect and imperfect drunkenness, there's They're like colors on the spectrum.

There's a difference between yellow and red.

But then there's this fuzzy orange category in the middle.

And the truth is, between perfect and imperfect drunkenness, you don't just take one extra alcohol molecule and bang, you've lost your faculties.

There's a gradient of how much of your faculties have you lost.

Mm-hmm

I'm just wondering what you think.

Okay, well, I'm happy to talk about where the Star of David came from, but first I need to correct a few ideas that it seems you've encountered.

The first is the Jewish holy book is not the Babylonian Talmud.

The Jewish holy book, at least their most holy book, is the Bible.

Specifically, it's what in Jewish circles is referred to as the Tanakh.

Tanakh stands for the Torah, which is the first five books of the Bible, the Nevi'im, which is the prophets, and the kethuvim, which is the writings.

And this basically corresponds to the books that you'd find in the Protestant Old Testament, or what Catholics would call the proto-canonical books of the Old Testament.

How can you debate somebody without putting them down but also having them listen to your point?

Like, You can be related to King David a thousand years before you and just be a member of the family or the tribe, you know, or is he the direct royal line descendant of David or is it something else? Like, how do we think about the relationship between Jesus and David?

Well, it all depends on how the line of succession works in a given country.

And different countries have different rules for how this works.

For example, in ancient Egypt, and we don't have a complete understanding here, but we do have a pretty good one, you needed, in order to become Pharaoh, you needed to not be descended from the right person.

You needed to marry the right person.

And so there was a royal woman that you needed to marry, and she's the one that needed to be descended from someone.

And then whoever her chief husband was, or her only husband was, that person became Pharaoh.

My parents, who I would charitably call lukewarm cafeteria Catholics, and I can go in more detail on that if you'd like, but I just wanted to get some initial advice from you on both of those.

I'm just kind of just wanting to pick your mind on that.

Okay.

So I'll mention a few things connected with all this.

We had some difficulty hearing you, but I got the sense of what you were asking about.

I'll mention a few things for the sake of other listeners in the audience who may not have caught it all.

You said you were reading Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trifo, which is a work from the mid-second century, and he does discuss this view.

It's sometimes called Chileasm in Catholic circles.

My question is, how do I get over the programming that there's 66 books in the Bible to now there's 73?

Yeah.

And it was a very it was a very beautiful.

powerful moment in a debate, and it kind of caused West to rocket up to, you know, quite a degree of notoriety in Christian apologetics.

Unfortunately, West isn't really an apologist, and that shows in his later work.

This was just a lucky moment.

But I can tell you what Codex and Codex Vaticanus are, so I'll start with what they have in common.

First, they're both codices, and what a codex is, is what we today think of as a book.

Okay, Rhonda, let's let Jimmy

So I want to ask your thought process here in terms of why this book? What compelled you to write this book in this way?

Well, it occurred to me that there is a kind of a gap, especially in Catholic literature, but outside of Catholic literature too, of books that argue directly for Jesus Christ being the Messiah.

There are plenty of books that argue for the existence of God, and there are plenty of books that argue for the Catholic understanding of the Christian faith, but there's a middle step.

between those two.

I mean, you could say, well, God is true, but after you establish God is real, you need to establish that Jesus Christ is his Son.

That's what shows Christianity is true.

And then once you've shown that, you can go on to argue the Catholic understanding of Christianity is true.

And in fact, there were particular health benefits associated with it, health benefits that we don't often think about today because we're so far removed from both the hygiene reality, but also just the historical reality of that time in Israel.

And, uh, I was just wonder- wondering how the, uh, these, uh, two different, uh, judgments evolved.

evolved.Okay. Well, one thing that, um, that is part of the, um, deposit of faith that comes to us from Christ and the apostles is that one day in the future, there's gonna be a great reckoning, and Jesus is gonna come back and He's gonna judge everybody, the living and the dead.

And at some point, you know, no later than the ministry of Christ, uh, this fact that there's a future judgment became clear to the Jewish people.

Um, and so, uh, it's, it's implied in various, uh, texts in the Old Testament, like in, um, Daniel 12, it refers to the resurrection, and it says that when the resurrection happens, some will wake to everlasting glory and others will rise to everlasting shame and contempt.

And so that would imply that there's some kind of judgment to distinguish, well, who gets the glory and who gets the shame.

Um, but it wasn't necessarily clear that this is a fu- a future event.

You could say, "Well, maybe the-- they were judged as soon as they died, and there's no future judgment." Um, but no later than the ministry of Jesus, it was realized there is a future judgment, and which is gonna involve everybody.

... focus on this one for now.

So, but, um, that's sort of my question, if that makes sense.

Okay.

Well, um, the-- so the principles of cooperation with evil are based on the fact that i-in this world, we have to interact with fallen humans, and, uh, we can't just leave this world.

And so we're inevitably gonna be in situations where, uh, we're reque- where we're gonna be asked to, no matter what your job is, where we're gonna be asked to, in some way, do something that, uh, may facilitate someone else doing something evil.

And that's forced moral theologians to consider the question of, well, i-if we can't stop other people from doing something evil, um, you know, what, what are our duties regarding that? Do we have to, uh, pull up stakes and not have any interaction with other humans? Because that's what would ultimately be required, and it's clear that's not what's required of us.

St. Paul himself talks about how, um, you know, God calls us to be in the world and, and not of the world, but he makes it clear that does not mean we'd have to leave the world.

And so we are gonna be asked to do things that could have an impact on someone else who's gonna choose to do evil.

St. Michael's intercessory prayer on my behalf, I was wondering if he has any authority or power, like obviously stemming from God, but of his own that he does; or when I ask St. Michael for his intercession, is he solely praying for me? I was wondering if the, there's a, like a church doctor, a theologian, or church teaching on this.

Sure

...

so there is not confirmation on many of them.

So when you're asking about the evidence for today, well, we have a lot of claims, a lot of reports, but very few of those reports have been investigated.

And so we can't say from an evidential perspective one way or another whether they're, uh, which ones are genuinely miraculous and which aren't.

So I would say this is a matter on which People may have suspicions and intuitions about where the correct answer lies that will differ from each other, but evidentially, I don't think we can, we can say with confidence anything in this area because the needed investigations have not been done.

Um, one way that, uh, would be, or one thing that would be interesting to investigate are reported healings, um, and re- because, you know, they...

Yeah

Oh, yeah.

These are ones where someone is having...

Is maybe dying, but is at least having a near-death experience, and someone else perceives what's going on in that experience.

So it's, it's kind of a participatory thing.

And this is a new, um...

I mean, near-death experiences themselves have only been carefully studied since 1975, and shared death experiences are even more f- more recent, but they do happen, and so we talk about those.

And this c- this Friday, so today, when this episode airs, we're talking about a UFO contactee.

Is it blasphemous to think or call God the Father and his angels aliens? What do you think about this misinterpreted technology?"

Imagine that

Yeah.

And so why would an angel lie? How could a good angel do that? And, um, and if you have the, the view that all lying is bad, and there are no exceptions to that, then, um, y- the angel couldn't have been lying here because he's a good angel, and if it's always bad to lie, then a good angel couldn't do that.

And so you'd then have to propose this is some kind of mental reservation or something like that.

And I'd be very interested, Jack, in seeing what, you know, what was proposed in, um, in the looking that you've done about wordplay and such.

But I would be very skeptical of it.

To me, at least based on the study I've done thus far, to me it looks like the angel's just lying.

Uh, Noah in Washington watching on YouTube, uh, did we drop you, Noah?

Um, so just wondering Jimmy's thoughts on Jesus being the face of the waters.

Well, I guess let's, let's take this apart, 'cause there are several issues that are related here.

Um, the first thing we need to, um, investigate is- how the text is being interpreted.

Now, there is more than one layer of meaning in scriptural text because scripture has more than one author.

Uh, the human author has a limited perspective, and there are certain things that the human author is trying to communicate through the text, and those are referred to as the literal sense of the text.

Um, the behind the human author is God, the divine author, and God is aware of more things than the human author is, so God can build additional meanings into the text that the human author is not aware of, and those are called the spiritual sense of the text.

So is-- So which of the divine persons are mentioned in the literal sense first? Well, we've got an explicit reference to God, uh, which would have been understood as a reference in Christian terms to the Father.

Uh, the phrase Paul uses, "After the order of Melchizedek," is there an actual order of priests that he belonged to with, with that name? And is he mentioned in any other books in the Bible, or ones that aren't in the canon even? Thank you.

Can you please share with us? We're still talking about the 1 Samuel 28 narrative.

Yeah, so we need to make sure folks remember this narrative.

Now, it's at the end of Saul's career as king, and he's on the outs with God, and he's really terrified because there's a Philistine army that he's going to have to do battle with, and he wants to know what he needs to do.

So he tries consulting God in multiple different ways, but God is not picking up the phone.

So he decides, even though he's previously cast all of the mediums out of Israel or forbidden them to contact spirits for people, he gets his men to hunt him up a medium, and he calls up the soul of the ghost of the dead prophet Samuel, who he had known in life, and says, what should I do? and Samuel says, well, I'm afraid I can't help you out, and in fact, you're about to die.

And indeed, he ends up being killed by the Philistines.

So it didn't work out too well for Saul, and this passage has been widely debated by Christians.

I invite you to shed light on that.

Like, is there a waiting period we're supposed to have before we're allowed to do these things?

Well, um, so you said church teaching, and there's not a church teaching that deals with this.

There is a principle that's articulated in the New Testament that intersects with this.

It's not directly on point, but in 1 Timothy 3:6, uh, St. Paul is writing to Timothy about, um, what qualities a man needs to have to be appointed as an elder or a bishop, priest or a bishop.

And he says that he must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil.

So we've got a prudential warning from St. Paul about not putting, uh, recent converts in ordained ministry.

Now, ordained ministry is not the same thing as just, you know, evangelizing.

[chuckles]

... forgiving sin unilaterally.

Okay.

Okay.

So I'm gonna have to do the same thing that we did with Richard.

I'll address, I'll do my best to address the underlying principle here, but then for specific things, which is sola scriptura, and specifically the, the passage that you mentioned from Jeremiah 23, um, but for specific applications of that principle, like, um, the issue of asking the saints for their intercession, or I think you mentioned another one, uh, I believe it dealt with confession, I'm gonna have to refer you to catholic.com because we've got tons of resources there for free that you can access to, to see what a Catholic would have to say about those.

But in terms of the basic principle that Catholics do things that are not e- expressly taught in scripture, well, that's true of all Christians.

All Christians engage in practices that are not taught in scripture, like having bathrooms and air conditioning in churches.

... earthly ministry where He might have, uh, smelled more like a regular human.

Uh-huh.

Because this has, this imaginary church has all the same benefits as the one you're currently going to, but you shouldn't go to that because it has this doctrinal problem.

And so what that means is we can't just look to our feelings and say, "Do I feel fed here?" And, "Do I like this music?" And, you know, "Is there enough variety?" And things like that.

Instead, we have to look at the question of truth, because that's what the Satanist church does not have that Christian churches do have.

So if truth rather than our feelings is the ultimate criterion of where we wanna go, then the question is gonna turn into, well, does this non-denominational church or does the Catholic Church have more truth? And speaking as a Catholic and as a Catholic apologist, I would say, well, it's the Catholic Church that does.

Now, um, you, you mentioned that, uh, I'll also...

So that's the fundamental principle, but I'll also touch on a few particular points.

No.

Do Catholics believe in the Rapture?

Well, it depends on, uh, on what you mean.

Um, now, the, uh, one of the things that I always try to do in my apologetics is rather it- it- rather than just assuming an oppositional point of view to non-Catholic perspectives, I like to look for common ground.

And, and say, "Okay, what can we agree on here?" Because there's a particular verse that people who do talk about the rapture point to.

That verse is in, uh, 1 Thessalonians 4.

In particular, it's 1 Thessalonians 4:17, where, um, St. Paul says that at the r- at the second coming, the dead will be raised first, and those of us who are alive will be caught up to be with Christ, and we're gonna be with Him forever.

Okay.

Yeah.

Can we circle back to that part? [laughs]

And, yeah.

And, and He, He gives the Olivet Discourse in response.

So if you're a first-century Christian living in, say, AD 34- One of the signs of what's coming up is the destruction of the temple, but that happened in AD 70, so that's, that sign is now in our past.

There is, however, one other really indisputable sign that we find in the New Testament, and that's found in, uh, Romans.

If you read Romans nine through 11, St. Paul has a discussion of the Jewish people and how they fit into God's plan, uh, of the ages, including prophetically how they fit in.

And he indicates that the Jewish people in his day who had by and large rejected Christ, not all of them, 'cause as Paul points out, "I'm a Jew myself," he says.

[chuckles]

I figured a Catholic would know the answer.

Well, uh, I, uh, I would, I would expect I do.

What I don't know is who wrote that or exactly what they said; because if you make the claim that, um, if you make the claim that it's a mortal sin to let a child starve to death if you have the means to feed them, my first question would be which child are you talking about? If it's your child- And you have the me- and, and you have the means to keep 'em fed, and you let 'em star- your child starve to death, yes, that's a mortal sin.

On the other hand, if there's some child elsewhere on the planet and you have no reasonable way of getting food to that child, well then it's not gonna be a mortal sin.

You know, nothing is a mortal sin that you can't reasonably do.

And so I would say, like, if I had a child, it would be mortally sinful for me to let that child starve if I had the ability to not have them starve.

If there...

Uh, so but a very good, uh, question from AJ: "Why does it seem that the church is coming down unfairly on those who hold a more orthodox or traditional stance of church teaching, and allows those who take a more liberal take on the faith to run freely?"

So is that something that's possible for someone?

Okay.

Well, um, so the New Testament does not...

It, it does r- refer to different types of spiritual gifts at various points.

Uh, St. Paul gives several lists of them, and, you know, they include things like prophecy, healings, teaching, um, tongues, interpretation of tongues, hospitality, all different kinds of things like that.

None of these lists, though, mention a gift of tears, and there are some folks out, particularly outside of the Catholic community, who would say, "Well, it's not mentioned, so there must not be one," um, as a spiritual gift.

Now, that wouldn't mean that God can't give people spiritual experiences that involve tears.

Really?

So I was hoping maybe you can clarify what exactly these two words mean.

Sure, yeah.

So, um, the place that, uh, contains the official definitions is in the Code of Canon Law, and specifically, it's Canon 751.

So I'm gonna read you the definitions of both of them, and then I'll walk back through it and explain what they both mean.

Now, here, these definitions apply to the canonical crimes.

So the sin of heresy and the sin of schism can be a little bit broader, but if it's being committed in a way that it becomes a canonical crime, here are the definitions.

"Heresy is the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt, after the reception of baptism, of some truth which is to be believed by divine and Catholic faith." So that's what heresy is, and I'll explain that in a minute.

Is it objective gr- my question for Jimmy Akin is, is it objective grave matter to, um, make a slasher movie?

So I'm like wondering like what's that, one, the evidence in the Bible and historical that I could maybe bring up more, and then as well as like how do I stop someone from keep, you know, moving that goalpost every time I give them the answer, but it's not like, I guess, satisfactory to them?

Well, this is something...

This touches on a saying that I often have, which is you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him think.

And you can't stop another person from, from raising the goalposts or changing...

Moving the goal is another way it's sometimes put.

So, you know, because people are committed to their opinions, and i- i- unless they're being really honest with themselves and really scrupulous about, you know, does the evidence have any bearing on whether I should change my opinion, they're just gonna stick with their opinion, and they'll ignore evidence to the contrary.

So when you present them with evidence to the contrary, they'll just, uh, find a way to ignore it, and that may be asking for a new kind of evidence or a new quantity of evidence or something like that, and you can't stop them from doing that.

Um, is it possible that Isaiah may have referred to a, a, an Egyptian army, a Nubian pharaoh, as an angel of God in that s- in that story?