16 Jan 2026 (Q&A)

0:03 It is the 16th of January 2026. I am Cory J. Mahler, and this is at any cost. And this is the third question and answer episode of 2026. I have uh quite a few questions at this point actually in the backlog. I don't know how many I will get to this time, but I do promise that I still have your questions if If I do happen to have missed one in a past episode in the chat or elsewhere, feel free to submit that on the forum, and that way I at least have a record of it and I will get to it in the future. And of course right as I went to click over to start the stream both of my streaming lights decided to disconnect from my Wi-Fi. Curious timing that, but at any rate they came back, so I think I will go ahead and jump into the questions here.

0:52 Let me pull up my list of questions. I do see that we have a few questions in the chat already. I've copied those down for the future. I don't know that I'll get to them necessarily in this particular episode. So the first question for tonight is not necessarily a light question, an important question, but a lighter topic. It is about Dungeons and Dragons, incidentally. Can you talk about dungeons and dragons? Is it witchcra is it witchcraft or close to it? What about players casting spells in the game? Should anyone play it, and if so, to what extent What extent? The basic answer would be that there's no problem with playing those kinds of games.

1:52 You could certainly take them overboard, and I think that certainly some of the people who get really into cosplay, for instance, and like dressing up like demons, that starts to be a little questionable. We could think of perhaps Elon Musk and his particular hobby. But I don't think there's anything wrong with those sorts of fantasy games. And typically speaking, although yes, you do often have the rogue player who's basically a murder hobo, but typically speaking, you are fighting against evil in those games. You could think of it the same as sort of like the Doom franchise, incidentally made by Mormons, but someone asked him how he felt about the fact that he made a game involving the Demonic

2:35 and he said, the whole point of the game is to kill the demons. That's pretty clear anti demon message there. So I don't think there's necessarily a problem with those kinds of games. For instance, if you play I'll pick a game and perhaps date myself, although everyone knows how old I am anyway, but if you play StarCraft or StarCraft II, right, because most of those in the chat probably aren't old enough to have played StarCraft I no one playing that thinks that he's a Zerg or a Protoss, right? It's fantasy. You're deliberately putting yourself into a fantasy universe. And so I would say it's the same sort of as reading fantasy, which isn't inherently sinful either. Are there topics that about which you shouldn't read?

3:16 Certainly, there's plenty of fiction these days, particularly women's fiction, that is a moral hazard. But Dungeons and Dragons is fine. Don't make it your entire personality if only for social reasons, but I don't think that it's sinful to play that sort of game. Let's pull up the next question here. my tab decided to disappear, which I have to say is not the most helpful thing that it could have done. But I think I will just go to the next question here an easy question, sort of to answer, although transitioning more to practical theology we'll call it. Question about how I feel about the passing of the peace. And for those who aren't familiar with this, this is a practice that is common in really a lot of churches at this point,

4:15 where basically in the middle of the service you stand up and greet people and shake hands and in some churches hug. Less so in the German and Scandinavian Lutheran churches certainly, not so much hugging there. But But to read the fullness of his question, what do you think of the sharing of the peace in the divine service? Is it appropriate? It seems out of place and just modern. From what I understand it was used in the early church, fell out of use, and then came back after Vatican two. I think that's an accurate historical subject. You can certainly see the equivalent of it and sort of an injunction for it in the scriptures when you see the greeting of others with a holy kiss. That's part of that culture, of course, Mediterranean cultures are more physical

4:59 in their greetings than, say, Northern European cultures. If you run around kissing everyone in a German Lutheran church, they may have you committed. That's not something that you necessarily do there. So I don't think it really is appropriate where it is located in the divine service. And I think that for a number of reasons. One, I think that it just breaks up the flow of the service in a way that is seemingly designed to increase levity in a service that should be to some degree solemn. And so I don't think it's appropriate in that sense because it is sort of a break in the service, and it's a break not just in the structure of the service, but in the nature of the service and in the psychology of the thing.

5:46 There's something important about coming before God and worshipping God in a serious and solemn manner. It's not that we're dour and unhappy and the other things of which we're constantly accused. Rather, it's that you recognize when you're in the presence of your king, and in this case it's your king and your God, and your savior, when you're in his presence you should behave in a certain way. So I don't think during the service it's appropriate. There's also the aspect of it where it really just kind of turns into a chat club. That's inappropriate for a number of reasons. Again, it breaks up the seriousness of the service, you're sort of behaving in an inappropriate social register. And there's also the fact women are commanded to be silent in

6:31 the churches. If you have the sharing of the peace in the middle of the service, are you just going to tell all the women to sit down and not greet people? I don't think that's appropriate. Are you going to stand tell them to stand up and talk to each other? That's also not appropriate. Because they're commanded to be silent in the churches, which is the gathered church while you have the service ongoing So I think the solution is pretty simple, just have that before the service or after the service, which is really what you would have seen in the early church because generally speaking, they shared an actual meal. It wasn't just the Eucharist, it wasn't just the Lord's Supper. So it wasn't just bread and wine.

7:13 Yes, bread and wine were certainly involved, but you had an actual meal. That's the natural place to stand up and greet people and talk and have the social interaction. Not as part of the divine service, but yes, it should be part of your church. These days, you know, it's coffee and donuts or maybe have something available it's a little healthier than donuts, I say as someone who maybe is a little hypocritical there because I always brought donuts to my previous churches. But at any rate, that's the appropriate place for it. I don't think that it should be right in the middle of the divine service. It's just a very weird placement that seems almost deliberately designed to make the service less serious, to introduce levity where it's not appropriate.

8:04 I guess now that we've gotten a little bit into the stream and YouTube won't immediately notice, we can talk about the third reich, since that's the next question. Do you think they will eventually recognize the Third Reich or its leader, which is to say Adolf Hitler, as Christian to smear us? Once the Judeo Christian narrative starts to crack, they'll need something else to keep the would be Christians on the reservation. Do you think they might try something like Nazis bad, Nazis are Christian, therefore Christians are bad? This has actually been done a number of times historically. This is definitely something that has cropped up even not just, you know, decades ago. Although at this point I guess that would include my lifetime, but

8:47 even within the past ten years, say, this was something that every so often it would cycle in, particularly on social media. You would get it was sort of the new atheists and some others like that who would try to use that argument against Christianity because they would say, well, the third Reich claimed to be Christian, they did all these evil things, and therefore Christians are evil. The argument, even if you formalize it a little better, is of course not logically sound, but that hardly matters for rhetoric. So the question is, will they try it again and will it be effective? I don't think so, because it's not a very good tactic for them, particularly because all it does is drive those who would never

9:30 look at the Third Reich and what they actually believed and would simply mindlessly believe the propaganda. So whatever they were told in fifth grade basically, and whatever video they sh they saw, probably Schindler's List or you know, read the diary Van Frank or whatever it happens to be, both admitted pieces of fiction, incidentally. One more proved in a court of law, one admitted, because of course Schindler's list is admittedly fiction. It's not even contended it's real, much like Knight is also a work of fiction admitted by the author. So you would have people who would believe those things. But if you start pushing the Third Reich was Christian, some percentage of those men are going to say, okay, why are they saying

10:17 that? Of course they're going to think initially, oh, they're just attacking Christianity, I don't care. It's just crazy leftist atheists attacking Christianity, whatever. The problem is that that percentage of them will go hang on a minute, I want to look at this now. If they say they were Christian, is there any evidence? There's never that many people who will do it, but if you lose two percent, three, five percent, that's a big deal for them when they're already losing people day by day who are looking at the truth. So I don't know they're dumb enough to pursue that. But it doesn't mean that they aren't, because quite frankly, they sometimes do things that are particularly stupid. And there's also the fact that Satan just drives them to do

11:02 dumb things. They are compelled to be evil, and so sometimes they just do things that don't benefit them, but they do them anyway. So It could happen. I don't think it's likely. And I think what's more likely is that our side continues to push the truth and continues to push back against the false narrative. And that is what starts to bring people over. And I think they're going to try to double down on the post-war consensus, the new global religion, and try to conflate that with Christianity and say that you are not a Christian unless you believe X, Y, and Z. Never mind the fact that no one pre 1965 believed any of this stuff, right? In particular the one that's blowing up now, because of course it

11:47 is interracial marriage. Well, until very recently in this country, Loving V, Virginia, it was a crime. A punishable crime. It was a crime in many historical countries. It was a crime in most of the Western world until not that long ago In this country until very recently. And so you have people who are saying that you can't possibly be a Christian and believe that should be banned or think that it's wrong in any way. Well, what are they actually saying? They're saying that no one born before loving V. Virginia, or at least no one born and not changing his views, so no one who died before it could possibly be saved. Because well, you're not a Christian if you believe these things. It's completely ludicrous.

12:30 The same as the slavery issue and so many other things because we see all of these men down through the centuries of Christendom who believed these things firmly and we're much better Christians than the men we see arguing you can't believe these things and be Christian. I think they'll keep trying to double down on that because that's sort of they back themselves into a corner, it's all they can do. If they give up any of those positions, the entire edifice crumbles, which is of course their great weakness. They can't lose anything in their little edifice because it is so weak. It's a house of cards. And any link in that chain, if you can break it, you can get people to question the next one.

13:14 It's one of the reasons why they have to defend interracial marriage so vehemently, because they recognize that that's a link pretty far back in their chain because all of the civil rights stuff and the tolerance so-called for homosexuality and the legalization of homosexual so-called marriage, all of that flows logically and legally, incidentally, the legal cases are also a chain, from Loving V, Virginia, from the Civil Rights Act, from all of these arguments about MLK and all that stuff. They can't lose any of that and not suffer significant downstream consequences. So they'll just keep doubling down. Which is of course an opportunity for us. The next question, a fairly common sort of area for questions, is

14:16 marriage a command of God? And I think the short answer to that is of course yes, but not But not absolutely yes. And the reason it's not absolutely yes is be of course there is the issue of celibacy, which is something that is granted to some men. But that's the key. It's granted to some men. It's not granted to many, in fact, you probably don't have it. And generally speaking, you should not try to exercise a gift that you don't have because it could be sinful, depending on the gift and what it is you're trying to do. So, you know, obvious one would be if you don't have the gift of prophecy and you stand up and say I'm a prophet, there are some problems here. But if you have if you do not, rather, have the gift

15:08 of celibacy and you try to exercise it, you're going to set yourself up for failure and you're going to fall into sexual sin. That's the reality of how that is going to go. Because at some point, biology is going to make some demands and you're going to have a very difficult time withstanding those demands. That is the reality of being a fallen creature. It's not to say that you can't live a chaste life even if you do not have the gift of celibacy, because of course you can live a chaste life. Being in marriage is chaste, but you could even live a chaste life as a single individual, but it's going to come with challenges. It's going to come with very real challenges. And you can spare yourself that by using the only cure for

15:51 the temptation of which God speaks in Scripture. Other than, of course, self-control, which, yes, you can exercise self-control to a certain degree. But when scripture speaks about the solution for sexual sin, it gives marriage as the cure. And so there there are a number of verses, of course, we can look at for this, and I'll just go over a handful of them here. The first one, of course, is Matthew nineteen is going to be one of the most important ones, because this is where Christ speaks about the fact that not everyone is given this. Not every one can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given, for there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men,

16:32 and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of he's not speaking exclusively about physically making yourself a eunuch here. This has been dealt with to death in the ancient church. So when neopagans and others say that you're supposed to emasculate yourself in order to deal with the temptation to sexual sin that is never commanded, that is self abuse, that is not something Scripture commands, anywhere. That aside. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it. Well that's a limitation. Not everyone can receive this saying, let the one who is able to receive it receive it. So if you don't have the gift, don't try to exercise it. You'll get married.

17:15 That's the solution. Because if you don't have the gift of celibacy, the temptation will be there. So cure the temptation with the only medicine God provides. And so another passage that is related to this to the unmarried and the widows I say it is good for them to remain single as I am. But if they cannot exercise self control, they should marry. And this is one of the key verses here, this part, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. This is a question of do you have the gift of celibacy, which is that continence set that's self control. And if you don't use the medicine God has provided. And the way that I always explain this to people is very simple. You can tell if you're celibate very simply.

18:05 Have you ever had a sexual thought about a woman? If the answer is yes, you're not celibate. Because celibacy in that sense is basically asexuality. You lack that temptation totally. God gives that gift to some men because he wants them to perform some task for the church. That is something that is given seemingly exceptionally. It seems like very few men have had it. And we certainly know that men who have attempted to exercise it when they don't have it, have fallen into horrible temptations and horrible sexual sin. We all know what happens historically with monasteries. It doesn't mean that all monks are bad. I'm not condemning all monks. I would condemn monasteries. I don't think monasticism in that form is good.

18:50 Now, if it's just men who live in a retreat for a certain period of time to study scripture and then go back into the world, totally different thing. That happened at some points in history. That's fine. If you simply unilaterally declare, I am going to attempt to be celibate despite the fact God didn't give me the gift, you are going to fall into the sorts of sins that plagued the monasteries for centuries. Not necessarily the worst kind, but there were certainly problems between monks and nuns down through history. That was often what happened. And that leads to additional sins in some cases, particularly egregious sins in some cases historically. Don't try to create your own medicine when God has provided a

19:37 cure. And of course we can go to passages of scripture dealing with marriage as being a blessing from God, marriage as being something that God wants you to enjoy. And I'll I'll just go ahead and use the ESV instead of switching over to the Septuagint for this. It is close enough in this case, so let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely dear, a graceful doe. Let her breast fill you at all times with delight, be intoxicated always in her love. It's hard to say that God doesn't praise marriage highly, to say nothing of the fact that the Song of Solomon exists in scripture. Incidentally, one of the books that I do skip during the only book actually that I skip during the Through the Bible in a

20:22 year podcast. If you want to read that, you can read it for yourself. I'm not going to read it to you. Later on in Proverbs, he who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord. Marriage is praised very highly in Scripture. Marriage is never something Christians should denigrate, it is not something that should be uncommon, it is something that should be held in high regard. It is something that should be recommended. In fact, the Book of Concord goes so far, and this is something by which Lutherans are of course bound, it goes so far as to say one of the duties of the sovereign, of the state, of the government, is to ensure that marriages are contracted among the populace, and that those who are not given the gift of

21:02 celibacy marry. That's assigned as a duty of the state, according to Lutheran doctrine. And I would say also according to the scriptures. And one of the marks of false teachers here in First Timothy, those who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods. Right, and we can think of churches that have done that historically, some who do it today. If you forbid marriage, that is one of the signs of a false teacher. You cannot condemn marriage. And I think I'll end the commentary on marriage with probably one of the most important ones that people often don't think of. When they really should. This is the penultimate one. I'll go to that one next. But and God blessed them, and God said to them, be fruitful

21:48 and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. You cannot, in God's scheme, so to say without sinning, fill the earth without marriage. And the last comment I would make is that Adam walked with God in the garden. Adam spoke with God face to face. That's of course Christ, the pre incarnate Christ, if You want to deal with the timeline issues. And yet God said it is not good for man to be alone. Man who saw God face to face, walked with him in the garden, God called alone, and said, Of all the things in creation, that was not good. That is how highly God prizes marriage and wives. We should never speak of them in any other terms, because that is how highly God praises it, and the only, again, only medicine

22:45 God gives for the temptation to sexual sin. So the short answer is is marriage commanded? In almost all cases, yes. Unless you have the gift of celibacy, which you probably don't I think I will just go with the next one that also is exegesis go over a few more passages of scripture here. To what extent can a woman be a deaconess today? What is the purpose of one today? To me it seems as a way to subvert authority. Short answer is yes, and slowly get women to be pastors and have authority. Again, short answer is yes. I remember Wo possibly saying that deaconesses in the early church would help young women in the community, and not be your try to

23:46 be a pastor in all but name. That is certainly true. That is their role, because you can think of the only times where it speaks of the role of women specifically in the church church in scripture, and I will get into the scripture passages as well, but when it speaks of that, it speaks of women in a service role, in a support role, which is the natural role for women. What is woman? A helper fit for man? That is what woman is to be in the church as well. She is not to teach. We know that, of course, because what does Scripture say about women teaching? Well it says I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man. Rather she is to remain silent. That pretty much precludes her taking on a teaching role, and so

24:34 a deaconess, so called, cannot be a teacher. One of the first problems, of course, is deaconess here, and let me see if I can there it is. So actually I've already got it typed in, that's convenient The word here is diaconos, which is a masculine term, incidentally, but it does appear one time in scripture, only once, in the feminine. And I can say in the feminine because of the context, and I'll explain that for those who are less familiar with how grammar works in languages that aren't English. Because English is a little loose. But in this case, we're dealing with a second declension noun, diaconos here. It is masculine, but it can be feminine. All you have to do is change the article. If you change the article, that's the little omicron here.

25:28 If you change the article and make it a feminine noun instead, then you have the feminine version, deaconess as we would call it in English. It appears once. However, the problem is you don't have to have the article in Greek. And so in this case, all you have is diaconos, or diacon, actually, because it's in the accusative. It's in the accusative But the accusative in the second declension has the same ending in masculine and feminine, which is sort of a long grammatical way of saying it's the same word, masculine or feminine. But you can tell by the context. Because of course I'm speaking of the book of Romans, the end of Romans. And so probably helps if I type the title not in Greek. So let's go to Romans 16.

26:19 And of course we're talking about Phoebe. They love to bring up Phoebe because Phoebe is I see that OBS has decided it would like to make part of Logos disappear, so I'll fix that real quick here. There we go. I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church at Senkrea. And then it goes on. Notably it doesn't say that she's teaching. It doesn't say that she's doing pastoral anything. In fact, really all it says of her is that she is a servant of the church and that she is a patron of many. That's later on in the same verse. Servant there is Diakonos. And we know it is feminine because of two things in Greek. One it has to agree with Phoebe, of course, sister here is the feminine, because this isn't a positive.

27:09 This is describing this person. And then there's also the fact Greek participles, just a verb form, agree with the thing about which they the thing they're referencing. And so you have that here as well. So we know this is a feminine use of this word. The only time it appears in the feminine doesn't say anything about teaching or authority. It just means servant. Because if we go and look up the word here, I'll look it up in two just the two standard dictionaries, which is BDAG and LSJ. Diaconos, one who serves as an intermediary in a transaction, so that would be an agent. You have some uses in scripture. One who gets something done at the behest of a superior, an assistant. That's all a servant means.

27:55 And so you can think of the men who were serving as deacons. You have waiting tables and things like that as part of their duties. They are servants of the church. They are not in a position of leadership. It's not what you think of today when we think of deacon, because the way we've transformed it in English, the way we use it, is sort of an elder, a ruling elder in the church. It depends on your polity and how your church is organized, of course, different churches are different. But that's not what we're dealing with in the case of the Greek. We're dealing with something completely different. And for some reason it decided not to pull that up for all of you because it pulled it up in the wrong window.

28:40 I love when Things cooperate. So that's what I want. Except for it disappeared again. Minor technical difficulties. At any rate, there's D Econ. I read the definition for you, so quite frankly, I don't need to have it on the screen. But the other one will just be LSJ. See if I can get it to cooperate with this one. Logos seemingly opens in whatever window it feels like. The same thing. Attendant, you can't have an official templar religious guild, that's an ancient Greek, we're dealing with Koina Greek here, so it's different. But servile, menial. Servant. You're dealing with a servant of the church. And so no, a deaconess is not a way for them to sort of bring women in via the back door to make them

29:40 into pastors and all but name, which is what is often done in the churches. It's very clear what women are permitted to do in the churches and what women are not permitted to do. If it tells women they have to be silent in the churches, not teach, except children, other women, and not exercise authority over men. Well a deaconess can't be anything can't possibly be an office that can do those things. That would be a violation, and so that would be eisegesis instead of exegesis. We just say improper interpretation of scripture instead of proper interpretation. And it also speaks of typing in Greek again. It also speaks of what older women are supposed to do with regard to younger women, right?

30:21 When it speaks of the older women, what are they supposed to do? Older women, likewise, are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women, here's the list for young women, to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind and submissive to their own husbands. That's the list of what women are supposed to do. Anything incompatible with that list is not something women are supposed to be doing. It's very clear what scripture teaches. Those who want to make deaconesses into a lesser office under pastor in the church and permit them to teach and exegete and even just read scripture in front of the congregation, things like that.

31:12 are simply defying Scripture in order to shoehorn feminism into the church. God is not a feminist. Scripture has feminism absolutely nowhere in it. You cannot possibly faithfully exegete scripture and turn it into a feminist text. It tell again, it tells women to be silent in the church. Not just not to teach, not just not to exercise authority, but not to speak. If we just obeyed that command, a lot of these problems would go away. Add to that the head coverings and you pretty much get the right picture. So obviously yes, the answer to deaconesses is they should not be a thing A thing. They're just not a thing. You can have women who are serving in certain roles in the church, taking care of children, visiting the sick, the elderly, things like

32:07 that. That's perfectly fine. That's a servant, which is the core sense of Diaconos, not a leadership role, not exercising authority, because that's improper. A woman is not her own head, she does not exercise authority. Go to I think this is the only other potentially exegetically heavy question. I don't think I'll go into the exegesis as much on this one. I've gone into it before and we've touched on it on Stone Choir, so I don't think I have to go into as much of the exegesis here so much as just explaining the doctrine. This is about atonement, basically limited atonement, the reformed conception versus the Lutheran conception of how these things work. In the tenth chapter of John, Jesus says the good shepherd gives

33:07 his life for the sheep, and to the unbelievers Jesus says that they are not from his sheep. True. How do Lutherans understand those passages where Christ mentions that he gives his life specifically for the sheep or for the church, of which not all are part of? So basically the question is the difference between the Lutheran conception, which is the universal justification is the term we would typically use, unlimited atonement is a fine way of describing it as well, versus the reformed conception of limited atonement being the L in Tulip, right? And so the Lutheran breakdown, I'll go over the Lutheran view first. The Lutheran view is that there is the objective, also called the universal justification, and the subjective, also called the personal, which subjective and

34:02 personal are basically the same word, but slight nuance there. The subjective or personal justification. And so the objective justification is Christ's work in redeeming creation. That's Toncosman in the words of John three sixteen, because it says he redeemed all things, right? For God so loved the world, Toncosman, and incidentally the same word for universe, which is all things that exist in the Greek mind In the original Greek, that's what it means. So he redeemed the world because it is creation that is groaning together for the coming Messiah, for the restoration, for the renewal of all things. It's not just mankind, it's literally everything. It's the mountains, it's rivers, its trees, it's all of creation is

34:50 awaiting the renewal of all things. And so that of course is what Christ redeemed in his perfect work. He made satisfaction for all sins. He redeemed all things. The issue for human beings, because of course we are made in the image of God, we're moral agents, we're the most relevant thing in this. We are, of course, descendants of Adam, Adam being the pinnacle of creation, the head of creation, which is why all of creation fell in Adam, because it fell in its head. Not an Eve, but an Adam. The issue of how justification is applied is the distinction here. All things are redeemed in Christ, but only those who are in Christ by faith are themselves redeemed in the sense of going to paradise instead of hell.

35:42 That is the subjective justification which takes place by the means of grace, which bestow faith, which is the means by which the instrumental means, by which God applies salvation the atonement to you, by which you personally subjectively are justified. That is the, I would say, the teaching of Scripture, and it is the Lutheran position on the justification. Someone brought up a hymn, of course, which is always good to see. So all things are redeemed in Christ, the scope of the atonement is unlimited because it is universal in the fullest sense. All sins are erased in Christ. Because of course, Christ's payment was of infinite value, so it atoned for all things, being infinite. But it has to be applied to you by faith for you

36:36 to be saved by it. Which is to say, all of those in hell, their sins have been forgiven. They do not benefit from it because they are not in Christ. The reformed understanding, on the other hand, what they do, and I won't necessarily get deep into Thingli and Aleosis and all that stuff because it's not really the point of the question. Kind of is, but at the same time. Their view is called limited atonement. So they believe that Christ died for the elect and for no one else. Not for those who are in hell. The reason they argue for this, and I'll sort of steel man their position, and then tear it down, but The reason they argue for that is because they think, or at least they advance, that it is an insult to Christ, in the

37:30 sense that his work was not effective for some of those Who would it be included in it in the Lutheran and the view of others as well? Because if they are not saved, then it seems like Christ failed, right? We Lutherans don't view it as Christ having failed. It's rather some reject the free gift of faith. It's a different thing. Christ achieved the atonement perfectly in his life, in his work, in his death. Christ achieved the atonement, the redemption of all things. Just because some people elect not to benefit from it, because some people reject the free gift of faith does not mean that Christ failed. It means those people are wicked. That's what that actually means. We think the other problem with what the Reformed contend is that

38:25 it does not address all of the verses that speak of Christ having renewed and restored and redeemed all things. It doesn't say he redeemed the elect alone. Like I said, in John three sixteen, we're dealing with the ton cosmon, we're dealing with the universe, which is again all things that exist. I don't think they can deal with those verses. I know that Swingli talks about his aliosis, which basically means you change the object when I don't want to get too deep in the grammar here, but it's basically you change the target of what the verse is saying in order to align with the fact that it can't possibly mean all, it has to mean all in the sense of all the elect. I find that to be an impermissible alteration of what scripture

39:14 says. I read all things and I believe it means all things. That's the difference, and so to go to the passage that he wanted to specifically have addressed, of course we're dealing with John here. I will pull that up on screen. Okay, so John ten eleven. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. And then of course it goes on with he use a hired hand versus the shepherd, the hired hand runs away, the the good shepherd will actually fight for the sheep. And then down to verse twenty-six I told you and you do not believe, the works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. And so the Lutheran interpretation of this is this is dealing with

40:05 that subjective justification. This is also pastoral in a sense, Christ is acting in a way as a pastor here. And so it is a distinction from dealing with Christ's work of the atonement itself versus the application of that atonement. We take this passage to mean the application of the atonement to individuals, and they are called not his sheep, because they are not among the elect, they do not believe, they do not have faith. That would be the distinction there. He's dealing with the sheep versus the goats. These are goats. So they're not his sheep. Their sins are forgiven, but they do not believe, and so they do not benefit. An example that is sometimes used that isn't exactly identical, but it

40:51 is good enough to get the point across. If I put a million dollars in a bank account, and then I gave you a debit card and the PIN, and then you stick it in your desk and forget about it, or you say I don't believe you, or you shred it. Well, the million dollars is still there, but you don't benefit from it. Because of your actions, because of, in this case your foolishness, but with regard to sin because of your wickedness. That's the distinction there. And so we don't find that there's any conflict, it's just dealing with different aspects of the doctrine, the objective slash universal versus the subjective slash personal I think I'll probably get to at least uh two or three more questions here.

41:47 I think I will get a drink of tea first. I know someone said the teapot was stealing the show, which it does add to the ambiance, so it is. But at the same time it's nice to have tea. So and it does stay warm that way. Let that cool slightly. Someone asked about in the chat about keeping the Sabbath. That one I would probably as a Lutheran obviously, I'm just going to go to the catechism, but you can also just go, of course, to the words of Christ, because the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. You would start there, and then you could point out also that he brings up David. David broke the Sabbath, in fact he broke several rules when he

42:48 ate the bread of the presents and did things like that. And then there's the fact that the priests who served in the temple profaned the Sabbath, but they were not guilty because of that fact. The point of the Sabbath, the keeping of a day of rest, is not just to do nothing. Right? That's the Jewish interpretation. They think, oh, I can't possibly do anything. I have to just sit and do nothing and I have to set up my oven so that it turns on on its own and all the weird little things they do to try to Jew God, which is what they're doing. Right. That's not what the Sabbath is. I don't know why it keeps trying to change the resolution on my browser here, but I will just go full screen on it instead and absolve the problem there.

43:34 So what is the third commandment? And of course, the Lutheran numbering, the Augustinian numbering, the traditional numbering, those who are of reform persuasion or whatever can remember it in their head. Thou shalt sanctify the holy day. What does this mean? We should fear and love God that we may not despise preaching in his word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it. That's part of the observation of the Sabbath, that is, the small catechism, of course, is meant to be a summary, it's meant to be enough for people so that they can understand the core of the Christian faith and be a Christian. You can be saved if you know just what is in the small catechism. But there is more to it, and of course that's why we

44:18 have the large catechism. I won't read all of it because the large catechism is in fact longer. So I would recommend you go and look at that. I will put that in the show notes as well. But it goes over more of it because part of the point of the Sabbath is it's a day of rest. You can see that clearly in the fact that it's compared to the fact that God rested. Man is supposed to rest as well. The biggest part of that, and Luther goes into this in the large catechism and elsewhere, staunch Christians who have you know an unshakable faith, and particularly those who are of upper class, as ri and you'll see why that's relevant, don't really need a Sabbath. Don't really need a day of rest. Servants, the working class today, those who

45:08 have a day in, day out, perhaps a grueling job, need to have time off. Human beings were not meant to work twenty four seven no matter what capitalism may tell you. And so it is vitally important to give your workers a day off. God is going to judge harshly those employers who drive their employees too hard. You are supposed to treat them well, and just because they're called employees today instead of slaves or servants or whatever term you want to use doesn't change the reality of the relationship, you still have that position of authority and duty to those people under you, even if you are simply paying them an hourly wage. Don't think that your duties end when you sign that check. That's not the end of it before God.

45:57 So it is necessary to observe these things, but it is not a matter of some of the examples given here, right? You can particularly think of the things the Jews will do. I can think of one particularly salient example that may make the point for some of you. There is a website that has been retailing and it's got a physical location. I think it's it's in New York. Mostly camera gear, but a lot of Mac stuff as well and all sorts of high end electronics and things like that for many years. Very well known site, used by particularly people in the photography industry, but also Apple users and others. It's BH Photo, I don't mind naming them. Their website is offline for orders on Saturdays because they're Jewish.

46:42 They think that's obeying the Sabbath. They're giving their server servers don't need a rest. Servers don't get tired. Servers break down when their hardware fails, but the Sabbath is not for that. The rest aspect of it is for human beings and animals. Not for your server, not for your electricity, not for your gas or the physical road or anything like that. You give your animals a rest if you have farm animals or other beasts of burden. There are things that you do that are an aspect of rest, the other part of it, as was pointed out in the small catechism, is that it's a day set aside in order to have some time to learn the word of the Lord, to listen to preaching, to listen to teaching, and the reason that that ties into

47:29 other things here is because those who do not have the amount of free time that the upper class has because the upper class has more leisure time. That's just the reality of how the world works. The working class has less leisure time. Particularly historically, today it's a little different in some cases, but that time needs to be set aside to come together and learn the word of the Lord. It's also a matter of good order, because if you just showed up to church at whatever time and day you felt like, probably not going to work very well if everyone does that. You kind of need a time and a place. There are different aspects of obeying the Sabbath, of sanctifying the holy day, as it says in the small catechism.

48:12 It's not a matter of just not doing a bunch of things. It's not just take a nap. It's not what the Jews think it is where like I said before, your oven has to have a weird timer and Sabbath mode and all these things and maybe you can turn on lights or you can't turn on lights. That's completely ridiculous. Which is what Christ points out to them when he says who wouldn't pull his ox out of a well? Come on, it's ridiculous how they were doing it. He mocks them for it because it's so dumb. That's not what the Sabbath is for. It is for something completely different, and Christ is Lord of the Sabbath, and again the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So observing it is not a matter of just not doing certain

48:57 things. It is a matter of resting, it's a matter of listening to the word of the Lord, it's a matter of treating those entrusted to your care, whether men or animals, well, giving them rest it's all of these things in one, but not in a legalistic way. Now, that being said, do I believe we should take that commandment more seriously than we currently do as a society? The answer is absolutely yes. I think we should go back to having almost everything closed on Sundays. I think we should go back to having those sorts of restrictions in place, not selling alcohol, things like that. You should plan ahead for your communion wine. You shouldn't have to run out on Sunday morning. I think it would be good for our society to do that.

49:42 It's good not just socially, I think it would be good religiously, and I think it would be truer to the commandment. And no, I don't think there's anything wrong with the fact that we observe it on Sunday. The reason we do it is because that's what the ancient church did, and because Christ rose on Sunday, we're celebrating the fact that we have a Savior who rose from the dead, and that one day we will do the same. So it's appropriate to do it on the day he rose from the dead. And of course, yes, I pointed out before that you can't really trace back and say that, oh, this day of our week is that day of the week in their calendar. We don't have that sort of resolution, a historical record, so you

50:21 literally can't trace back to the exact day of the week on which God rested. You can't do it. To say nothing of the fact that you have the problems of the calendar and the problems of the Earth going round the sun, which is not an exact number. Right? That's why we have leap years and the formula is not just every four years, it's much more complicated than that. So you literally can't figure out when Saturday was in Creation Week. So God is not going to give you a command that is quite literally impossible. He's going to give you one that you can aspire to and maybe not reach the standard because of course, for instance, all of the commandments are aspirational in a sense, because in a fallen world

51:06 the way we live today we can't possibly reach them. This is one of those things where you just can or can't, and you literally cannot hear. You can't figure out when Saturday was in Creation Week, and so Sunday is the day that we have picked as a civilization. We've picked it for very good reasons. We've adhered to it for centuries. We should continue to do so. It is appropriate to do so, so I'm answering sort of the sabbatarian question at the same time. That is an important aspect of Christendom, having the Having this day, this universal day of rest and worship of the Lord. And I think that's an important part of our culture we've sort of let slip away. We let capitalism erode it. We decided that being able to have the convenience of buying things

51:52 whenever we feel like it and going out and doing all these things on every day outweighed obedience to God. So yes, I think we should take it more seriously, but again, it's not a legalistic thing. It's just a desire to, as Christians, obey God. Having been renewed by the Spirit, we should participate, again, synergistically, in sanctification. Part of that is obeying the commandments as best we can. I think we could do a better job as a society, as a civilization, with the third commandment. Or whatever number you want to use in your system. I'm going to actually finally drink my tea now. I have a Roman Catholic who thanks me for the work that I've done and offered to buy me a pint. As a German I'm obligated to accept, so Trappist is always good,

52:56 I do like those beers as well. I am, of course, partial to the German beers, but there are plenty of other good ones from Europe and elsewhere. Certainly US has good beer now as well. Think I'll get a couple more questions here. Let's see. I was thinking about answering this one next time, but I think I will answer it now a question from formerly Twitter now X Most black African Christians I have met or seen online seem to be far more strongly against witchcraft, the demonic Harry Potter, and such, than other Europeans. Than Europeans, rather. How does this fit with the idea that syncretism is rife in Africa? I would start off by saying part of it is selection bias, because statistically, if you run the statistical analysis with the available

53:47 data, syncretism is much more of a problem in Africa. Just it simply is. There are a number of good books that go over that. Let me see if I can remember one. There's. I think it's called I Am Not Afraid. It was a book specifically from a Lutheran perspective. Yes, it is. It is I Am Not Afraid, Demon Possession and spiritual warfare. If you're interested in the subject, probably worth grabbing to read it. You can probably get it cheaper on Amazon than directly from CPH, but find it used, whatever it happens to be. Find a PDF. But it deals with the issue of how rife and rampant syncretism is, particularly in this case in the Malagasy Church, the Madagascar Lutheran Church. Since this is something that Lutherans have been combating over there,

54:38 And you have this syncretism with their traditional sort of ancestor worship slash animist religion. That is a problem that is basically universal in Africa. Obviously, some countries are worse than others. You know, Ethiopia is better in some ways, Ethiopia has been Christian longer. Ethiopia had trade and a relationship with Old Testament Israel, so they've had access to some parts of Christianity much longer than others, that has benefited them. So they are better off in some ways. Still not great, if you look at the violent crime rates and things like that. But insofar as syncretism is concerned, it is much more of a problem in the third world, and it's not just Africa, but Africa is the one that stands out, than it is in the Western world.

55:31 Now, that's not to say the Western world doesn't have problems. We have plenty of apostasy and atheism and yes, witchcraft and things like that. There are probably more witches in the Northeast of the United States and there are Lutherans, for instance. That's a very real problem. That's something we have to address. But syncretism specifically is not a big problem that we have. We have plenty of other problems. We have corruption of doctrines. We have liberalism. We have all these things that creep into the churches, but it's not really syncretistic practice that is a problem. It's really rank apostasy in many cases instead. Which you can argue if that's better or worse. It's better in some ways, it's worse than others.

56:17 It's just a matter of how difficult it is it is to surmount that in an individual case, but syncretism specifically is more of a problem in the third world. In these places that are much closer to their ancestral religions, so-called, because of course the ancestral religion of everyone is Christianity. When Noah's three sons walked off the ark, they were Christians. There were some problems with Ham, but at least he knew the doctrine, at least he knew the gospel. That had been passed down. So that is the ancestral religion of all men, but these corruptions that crept in and became their quote unquote ancestral religions, they are much closer to that practice in the third world than in the Western world, because we have that separation that was Christendom.

57:08 It has since decayed, unfortunately, and collapsed, but it at least gives us a separation from those practices. And in many cases, the pagan practices of our ancestors have been lost. We can't even restore them. Th those in the third world have a continuity because it's still practiced in many places. So they can go right back to it because shamans are still around in Africa and elsewhere. So they have that problem and we have different problems. Another aspect of it is also that they have exposure to it in a way that we don't. You have witches who call themselves witches in the West, but really it's usually just weird women who collect crystals It's not good. And a lot of times they do engage in things that are

57:57 at least verging on the demonic, but usually it's a LARP. Usually they believe in energies and collect crystals and burn sage. Okay, that's not good. But it's not the same thing as open demon worship. Some of them engage in demon worship, absolutely. Some of them engage in rank, awful demon worship, things that would be criminal if they were caught doing them. Absolutely that happens even here in the United States. But they have sort of created their own new religion because that stuff didn't survive the filter of Christendom. Whereas again, the older practices in the other parts of the world, Africa in particular, but also in some parts of South America, you have this syncretism because the old religions from which they converted

58:52 never died. They never disappeared. The practice has never stopped. You've had voodoo going on in Haiti since you had people in Haiti, who brought voodoo with them from Africa, of course. The original inhabitants practiced other things that were also demonic. And so that's why you have that problem there. But that fact that they don't have the separation means that they have more of a reaction to it when they convert. Because they have converted away from that thing, then sometimes they recognize the evil of the thing that they gave up, the thing from which they fled, the thing from which they were rescued. And for a lot of Europeans, a lot of those in the West, We don't have that anymore. Because we take for granted all of the good things that Christendom

59:42 gave us, all the things we inherited from our faithful Christian ancestors, and there are those who don't recognize what they have, what their patrimony is, and so they don't have the same reaction to seeing evil because they have not had to deal with it in the same way as those who have lived in places that Cases where shamanism and human sacrifice and things like that are still practiced, even if in the shadows in some cases. That is a problem for us to overcome in the West. It's a problem for them in that they have the syncretistic tendency. It's a problem for us in that people think that water doesn't exist when there are fish swimming in that water. So it's different challenges. It's not to say that one is better than the other to

1:00:29 have, because they pose different challenges, not necessarily easier or more difficult. In some cases, it can be a little more difficult to overcome the challenges in the West, because at least when you go to someone in Africa or wherever else it happens to be, you can say, Look at these practices of your traditional religion, look at what God says. It's absolutely all incompatible. You're doing something that is rankly demonic, and they can look at it, and you can bring them out of that, and they recognize that there's been a significant change. It can be very difficult to do the same thing with those in the West, to say nothing of the difference in intelligence because those in the West are going to mount a stronger opposition.

1:01:12 It's one of the reasons that some people like to go do missions in the third world. It's easier. They do it because there are a lot of reasons, I don't want to get into all that now, but sometimes it's because it's easier. It's easier to go deal with those people than it is to deal with your own. That doesn't mean you shouldn't deal with your own. In fact, it's sinful not to deal with your own. Because God gave them to you, you should care for them first. So I guess that's sort of a long-winded perhaps way of addressing that issue. But I think it's worth bringing up all of the different facets of that. It's not that they necessarily have less of a problem with that particular kind of demonic activity as they've come out of it and

1:01:54 so they personally have a recognition of that problem whereas we don't have that anymore in the West. But it doesn't mean that they don't have a problem with syncretism because statistically according to the data, if you go deal with people on the ground over there as it were, they really do have a problem with syncretism. And it is a challenge for missionaries. Someone asked about the appropriate the appropriate rather marriageable age for a woman. I'm just going to give the standard Western European answer. You can go and look at the Hajnal line if you're so inclined on Wikipedia because there is a divide between Western and Eastern Europe, Eastern Europeans have historically married earlier.

1:02:41 Western Europeans have historically married later, but it's still twenties. And for women it's usually early twenties. It's like twenty-two to twenty-five, something like that. A little earlier is fine, a little later is fine. Earlier is probably better because obviously there's a fertility window for women. And then men are usually a little later, but still usually either late twenties or early thirties. That's pretty much been the historical standard. It varies a little over time with the centuries and warfare and things like that, but that's been the standard. And then Eastern Europe, I can't remember the exact numbers, but it's like three to four years earlier. So So, instead of having a 21-year-old and a 27-year-old marry in

1:03:23 West, it would be a 24-year-old and a 19-year-old. That's not inappropriate. That's totally fine. Obviously, this is coming up because of various things that have happened in the news in the last say year, and then other things that have happened with certain individuals in the last say few days. And no, it is not appropriate to be defending the marriage, we'll be charitable here, of forty and fifty-year-old men to fourteen and fifteen-year-old girls. That is Categorically unacceptable. That is not something that has ever been standard practice, certainly in Western Europe, and it is not something for which we should ever advocate. The reality of it is that you are not an adult until you are at least in your late teens, and probably later

1:04:15 than that. It's not that you have to be, you know, your brain fully developed and everything. You can't get married before that. I'm not saying that, because quite frankly, the research seems to show that maybe it's not until you're thirty that your brain's done fully developing. No one's going to seriously well, okay, some people will, but they're not serious people. No serious person is going to seriously say you have to wait until that age. And God seems to have designed it so that you don't, because probably the neuroplasticity helps build that relationship in the early years, which then carries you through the rest of your life. That's probably part of how God designed the system to work.

1:04:52 So I think the ideal probably is something like twenty-one for women and, you know, twenty-five, twenty-six for men. I think having a little bit of gap in terms of age is good. It helps to reinforce that headship and the authority of the man over the woman, but it shouldn't be too big of an age gap simply because of the biological reality. Part of it is, you know, you're not going to live as long as a man as the average woman. You probably don't want to leave your wife as a widow for ten years. If you can avoid it. You know, four or five years isn't as bad. She She's probably going to outlive you by that much at least anyway. So there's there's part of it is that. There's also the aspect of it.

1:05:33 Yes, the fertility window for women is significantly more important than the one for men, because the one for men basically doesn't exist. But But you do run into more problems, birth defects, and things like that. The risk increases with the age of the father. Not as severe as the age of the mother. You don't simply lose the ability to produce children when you hit a certain age as a man, but there are considerations for the health of the children and just how many children you're going to have. And the simple fact of the matter is, if you have a child when you're 20 or 25, 26, whatever it happens to be, you are going to be at the peak of your energy and physical fitness most likely in order to raise that child appropriately.

1:06:17 If you're 55 and you have your first child, you are going to be unbelievably tired throughout the years of raising that child. You're going to be 65 when the child is 10. The by The biological reality is it is what it is. And you you may find it unpleasant, you may find it harsh, but that doesn't change it. So we should be trying to minimize harm is what we're really trying to do, and to maximize the blessings from God. And part of that is getting married young. And also, obviously, I already spoke about sexual temptations and things like that, but if you're going to live through your twenties and your thirties unmarried, it's going to be a lot harder for you to stay celibate, to stay chaste, than chaste is more appropriate than celibate

1:07:10 there, to stay chaste, than if you're married. That's the reality of it. It's easier to do that as you get older. Again, biological reality. But yes, the the marriageable age should be basically twenties. That is sort of the ideal. At least at this point in creation. Obviously, it was different back in the age of the patriarchs and things like that, but I don't personally plan to live to 600, and I doubt anyone in this chat is going to do that either. Despite the promises of the tech oligarchs. Let's see if there are other questions in here.

1:08:18 Yes, certainly an aspect of the Sabbath that I I could have mentioned, I have mentioned elsewhere, is that some services are necessary. And I I did address that with the fact that the the priests so-called profane the Sabbath by working on the Sabbath historically, obviously we don't priest today, in that sense. I'm not saying you can't call a pastor a priest, I don't really care which term you used. I prefer pastor a little bit, but it it doesn't matter that much. Necessary services should obviously continue. We're not going to shut down our hospitals on the Sabbath because well that would kill people. Probably not good. You still need police on the Sabbath, you still need firefighters on the Sabbath.

1:08:56 You need necessary workers, and there are such a thing, there is such a thing as a necessary worker. Those people can go to a Saturday service or Friday or Wednesday, whatever it is that happens to fit their schedule. God is not going to curse you because you are doing necessary work on the Sabbath. You can think again of pulling the ox out of the well. I definitely have more questions, but most of them are getting into the sort of long answer. So I think I may wrap it up here for this week. I did want to mention some of the questions I've received are going to be longer answers and I don't necessarily want them to take up the entire episode for a given week. I could do that, of course, but that's not really the goal

1:09:57 I'd like to get through a at least a fair number of questions, you know, at least five or six instead of two. But I think what I will probably do in order to address those is I will release additional episodes on this same show, but not as a QA episode, more a stand-alone answer to a particular question. Those will be in the feed for the podcast version of this, which is audio only. But I think I will also upload them to YouTube and elsewhere so people can find them more easily, whichever platform it is you happen to use. Most people are on Are on either X or YouTube, so those are sort of the two key platforms, unsurprisingly. So for the questions that require a longer answer, I think that's

1:10:47 what I will do. I think that fits in well with the overall goal because then I can give the detailed answers for the more complex, the more involved questions, and continue to answer a good number of questions each week in these shows as well. So if you have a question that is a little more involved, expect to get an answer like that. I can't promise a particular time because it's really whenever I happen to have the time to get this done I do have a fair number of things to get done as well. Someone said is it unreasonable to want ten kids from a wife? I guess I can answer that one in passing I don't think it's unreasonable. If you can manage that many, you know it's a matter of wisdom. That's the short answer for children is it it's a matter

1:11:32 of wisdom. Children are a blessing from the Lord. They're always a blessing from the Lord. There was a question on that topic. I will get into that question either next week or the week after, I believe. But children are a blessing from the Lord. You know, the man who fills his quiver with them, the children of his youth. He will not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate. So no, have as many children as God will bless you with, assuming that you don't have, you know, some biological issue that you're going to pass on to them that's going to kill them in early childhood. Like there there are wisdom considerations. But if you have ten healthy children, your wife is able to

1:12:11 bear that many, God gives you that many, by all means, go for it. That's great to be blessed that much by God. That doesn't mean you have to have them one right after the other. You are permitted to exercise discretion and have gaps between the children. That's not a sin to do that. There are sinful methods, but use the ones that aren't. The church has recognized that for centuries. But insofar as again, complicated questions, long answers, I think I will do that that way. But I think that's it for this week. I will add the other questions that I did not answer from the chat and elsewhere into my growing list of questions, which I think is growing faster than I am answering them, but that's always

1:12:59 how it's sort of going to be. I have on a related note to some things I touched on tonight, I have an article I'm going to be posting hopefully tomorrow I think I will get it done and posted. about the nature of women, the relationship of men and women, because that issue just keeps coming up again and again and again. And I know why, and I've explained it before, and it's vitally important to get it right. I think it will make feminists very angry, and that's probably part of the point and it's a good thing. So I will be publishing that. You can find that on my website and of course Telegram and elsewhere there'll be notifications for that. So if you want to sign up for the audio only of this for whatever reason, that can be found at podcast.coreyjmoller.com.

1:13:47 You can submit your questions. There is a link in the description on whichever platform you're on right now, it's also in the show notes for each episode. Preferably submit the questions on the forum because it's just easiest for me and it helps to organize and so other people can find them in the future, which is kind of the point to make these accessible in the future not just as a transitory sort of thing. I think that pretty much covers it for housekeeping though. And I hope you all have a great rest of your weekend or all of your weekend if it's just starting now. So thank you for your time. Thank you for those who submitted the questions. And even for those if I did not get to your question,

1:14:28 I will again in the future try to do that. And again I hope you have a good weekend. God bless you all. See you next week. Hopefully on Thursday.