The Exorcist Files - Were There Demons In the Old Testament? with Dr. John Bergsma

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

Dr. John Bergsma a renowned scholar and theological mind joins the Exorcist Files to dive into the supernatural activity of the Old Testament. Thank you to our sponsors!Wild Alaskan Co- WildAlaskan.Com/exfiles for $35 off your first order. Exodus90- Exodus90.com/exfilesThe Born Again Identity- Watch hereBubs Naturals- Live Better Longer with BUBS Naturals.  For A limited time get 20% Off your entire order with code EXFILES20 at Bubsnaturals.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Every time that we sin, we're giving at least a small permission to the evil one and to spirits to work in our lives. My church members would have things going on in their homes and would also manifest irrational behavior in public or in private. That was not explicable in terms of normal psychological categories. We're definitely at that point where it's becoming more widespread than it was in the past because of the waning influence of Christianity. in our culture in general. So Bail was a demon, Kymosh was a demon, Wolok was a demon. St. Paul tells us that the gods of the pagans are demons. You know, concert culture, it's like ancient pagan worship, where you employ drums to conjure up what they called gods, but were really demons. Do you ever find it interesting, or is there a simple explanation for why there was a serpent in the garden? Why was it

permitted to be there? Was that always part of the plant? The garden was the prime. The garden was the primordial temple or sanctuary, a place of holiness, place of worship. And so nothing unclean should have been allowed to enter. The fact that the serpent is in the garden talking to Eve implies that Adam had failed. Welcome back to the Exorcist Files, the show that models you how to fight sin and spiritually win. I'm your co-host on the far left coast, Ryan Bethay. And today we are hopping in our DeLorean and heading back to back to the Old Testament and bringing you 1.21 gigawatts of spiritual warfare discussion. My next guest is a professor and a scholar who was once a Protestant pastor,

but now as a Catholic finds himself, quote, unpastorized. If you're asking, what's with the third degree? Well, you'd be within your rights because my guest has a master's in divinity and a master's in theology from Calvin Seminary. And yes, he was predestined to succeed, along with a PhD in theology from Notre Dame, or as I call it, the USC of Indiana. please welcome a mind that is hard to find a leader of biblical readers and an expert on jubilation and scrolling

that's dead sea scrolling dr john bergsma welcome to the show thank you ryan it's great to be on with you i try to do introductions to everybody to do them justice etc did i miss anything crucial it's hard when you have a cv like yours that was poetic i was i was so impressed uh yes is was that all in the spur of the moment, or did you prepare that in advance? No, I prepare intros in advance. So long before you entered this podcast, you were prayed for, and I built out your introduction. I just want everyone to feel great before we go on and talk about anything. So at the very least, you got a good confidence boost today. Yeah, as if you need it. Sok. Amazing. Well, Doctor, I have so many questions to talk with you about today. But let me start here, because we are a spiritual warfare

podcast. And I'm just curious if you have any personal experience with it that you, because obviously we can talk about theory and a lot of, you know, there's a lot of theology around this. But obviously when it comes down to brass tax and what we've experienced as individuals, that is particularly interesting. So I'm curious, what has been your experience with spiritual warfare? Yeah. So, I mean, spiritual warfare is a, is a daily reality, correct? I mean, we're always in combat and, you know, the struggle over sin always has a spiritual warfare dimension to it. It might be a less obvious dimension. It might be very obvious in the case of, you know, full-blown possession, etc. But there's always a spiritual warfare element when we're struggling for holiness,

for purity. And I would say every time that we sin, we're giving at least a small permission to the evil one and to spirits to work in our lives. But I'll share with you, Ryan, you know, what I have shared with many parishes and groups around the country that as a Protestant pastor, a young man, I was 25, I was in seminary, I was kind of thrown into the inner city environment in one of West Michigan cities. and in a neighborhood that was full of petty crime, where abortion was very common, there was a lot of drug dealing,

there was a lot of prostitution going on, and any time you have these kinds of activities, you're also going to have the activity of evil spirits. And my parishioners, my converts, those who joined my church, simply by becoming Christians, that didn't necessarily free them from all of the harassing,

or the baggage, the spiritual difficulties, the afflictions of evil spirits that they had been engaged in prior to joining my church. So I didn't see the most dramatic things personally, but my parishioners, so to speak, we didn't use that term, but Catholics understand what that means. My church members would have things going on in their homes and would also manifest irrational behavior in public or in private. that was not explicable in terms of normal psychological categories. And Ryan, when I started seeing this, I really was unprepared because our seminary did not have

courses in spiritual warfare. So luckily, one of my parishioners put me in touch with an older gentleman who was what we called as Protestants a deliverance minister and had been involved in it for over 20 years. and he said, sure, I can help you out with anybody who has afflictions. And so I began taking parishioners out to him. He lived out in the suburbs, far out of town. I would take people to him. And his methodology was when we arrived, you know, we'd get to know each other a little bit,

and when we'd establish some rapport, we'd go into a room where there'd be prayer support, a couple of Christians there, myself there, the parishioner to be delivered. and he had a huge binder full of a massive list of sins, categorized in seven different major categories. He would open up this binder, turn it around, push it across the table to the person delivered, and have them read down that list and audibly confess and renounce anything that they had ever done

in this atmosphere of prayer support. And oftentimes that procedure, Ryan, would take about two hours. essentially what we were doing was a non-sacramental general confession in the presence of believers in obedience to James 516. And what we discovered was that methodology led to greater freedom and longer lasting freedom than the more classical power encounter, we called it, which was closer to the extraordinary right of exorcism in the Catholic Church. Protestants do do power encounters. and the name of Jesus is powerful. And it can be effective, just like we see in the Gospels,

the man who's casting out demons, who's not part of the 12. And, you know, John comes and says, you know, what should we do about that guy? And Jesus says, let him alone. I always say that guy was the first Protestant because he was casting out demons and using the name of Jesus. I obviously had faith in Jesus,

but he wasn't part of the visible church, which was constituted at that time by the 12 apostles. So that's what I see going on there. And anyway, Ryan, it was interesting. I talked to this deliverance minister later. He was much older than me. He was in his 70s. I was in my 20s at that time.

He had been doing this since the 1970s. It was in the 1990s, the late 90s, when I encountered him. So he had over 20 years experience in this. And he said that they began back in the 70s with power encounters, but of course that was dangerous for all different reasons. And they found that if they could get people to confess the sin that had given entrance into their lives to the demon, that the demon would leave.

But then the issue was, how do you identify what that sin was? And so they just had adopted a kind of nuke-at-all philosophy, just like confess everything comprehensively, exhaustively, and then the demon would not have, you know, the handhold on the person's life. and soul. And so we kind of backed into a reality that was confirmed by Father Gabriel Amorth in his books, which I later read after I had become a Catholic, where he explains that what he would do for people that came to him from around the world. Remember, he was the chief exorcist of the Diocese of Rome under John Paul II, and people would fly to Rome to get an exorcism from him. But he would always start

with a general confession. And he found that most of the time that was all the time. that they needed was a general confession in order to attain freedom. And it was only in particularly difficult places like circumstances like being cursed by one's parents or something like this, very, very hard kind of thing that he'd have to go forward with the extraordinary right. So, you know, so I talk about this a lot, actually. Just talked about this last week at a regional gathering. Where were we?

in Baton Rouge, as a matter of fact. And I just encourage Catholics to really understand that confession is the front line for spiritual warfare. And we need to confess regularly and make sure that we're not giving permissions to the evil one to work in our lives. I liken it to accepting cookies on the Internet with your phone or your laptop. You know, whenever, I like to say, whenever Satan approaches you with temptation, when you sin, you're accepting cookies from him. And, you know, what those do on your laptop or your phone is give permission for an external server to do something to your device. In the case of Satan, when you sin, you're giving him, you know, leeway to operate within your life, within your soul. And that permission needs to be denied.

And we do that definitively through the sacrament of reconciliation. Wow. Yeah. You know, it's always been so fascinating to me. And again, I grew up what I lovingly now referred to as Frozen Chosen and Presbyterian, which was not the most exciting experience. And then I remember in college when I went to my first charismatic church, and I thought, wow, like, this is so cool.

It's like, as John Wimbery say, we were doing the stuff. And it was so beautiful to see. But one thing that was really interesting to me was that in the charismatic circles are like, of course there's demons, right? That's like, you know, God uses them as some like pawns of his, you know, master plan and, you know, he uses them to accomplish as good. But there were so many in my earlier tradition that were like, no, you just, you know, it's just not a thing. It doesn't happen. And I always found that, that dissonance with like the incongruency with that experience and then just the entire rest of the world and how every culture on earth has like a framework for evil spirits.

And I'm just curious. Why do you think, I mean, you went to, you know, Calvin a seminar. it's like why where did this idea creep in that if you're a christian like because i just don't understand how you can read the scriptures and come to a conclusion that you're somehow immune when everyone close to christ like basically gets murdered or like you know you know marred and it's like the idea that like everything's going to be totally fine and like you can't and like that there's going to be nothing like going forward like after other apostles go we're covered no one needs any more protection spiritual warfare is not a thing it's father's son and holy counseling like how did that

that creep into our experience? Yeah, I'm not sure exactly, Ryan. It'd be an interesting thing to study. I would say that one influence has got to be Enlightenment philosophy and worldview that was very skeptical about the reality of the spirit world in general and often tended towards atheism. But in Enlightenment thought, if you were going to acknowledge a God, it was usually kind of deistic, you know, so, you know, God is a creator. And then there's a denial of the middle. I had a professor of missiology at Calvin Seminary who would always talk about this, the rejection of the middle. And that is the intermediate realm occupied by angels and demons between God and us.

And so in Enlightenment thought, there's this rejection of the middle. You know, God is just this abstract creator who gets things started and then lets it run by material processes. So the influence of that thought, which is, of course, foreign to Christianity, but creeps into Christianity through our intellectuals and through those who are sent to the university to learn different subjects. You quickly find out at the secular university that if you talk about angels and demons, you looked out as a wacko. So you kind of are socialized out of thinking of those things. And then another aspect of it might be that, you know, the spiritual warfare was less direct or less obvious in a lot of European countries where virtually everybody was baptized. And, you know, the influence of the church was so strong. And it's taken a long time for that the influence of Christianity and the power of baptism and Christian culture to,

wane in the West in in Europe and in the United States such that more obvious manifestations of you know the activity of evil spirits are starting to crop up but we're definitely at that point where it's becoming I think more widespread than it was in the past because of the waning influence of Christianity in our culture in general so less people praying less people baptized, et cetera, and it's paving the way for more external manifestations of the activity of the spirits. Now, I've shared on the show a lot. I do love seafood.

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Things are tough right now for a lot of people. I know many of my friends are struggling, wondering just what the future holds. I've been there too. And identity is something that I have and continue to wrestle with. And that is why it was such an incredible experience for me to journey through the born again identity with my dear friend. Each episode tackles an element of how we can discover who we are, what God is doing with us, and why he made us. It's available on YouTube now. And if you just click the link in the show notes, you can start the journey. So check out the born again identity with Father Gregory Pine on YouTube today. Yeah, and I've also wondered, too, if it also likens back to, I know, like with St. Francis Day Sales and some of the debate that was happening around the Reformation was the Catholic Church justifying its primacy by the work of the Holy Spirit and its miracles. And I remember, you know, St. Francis Day Sale, like challenging Calvin, like, hey, show me your miracles. And I could see a response from the reformers saying, well, you know, you guys are fabricating this and we don't need that. And somehow maybe that and maybe there was less of that work.

in there. And so somehow maybe that creeps in as well as like an over over correction against the Catholic miracles and claims there maybe. Yeah, that's probably the case. Interesting. Well, I, all right, so one question I want to ask you because there's a huge trend right now. And obviously the Catholic Church has, you know, I don't think they've put out a definitive teaching on Nephilim or things like that. But one thing I found blowing up the internet, and I had the chance to interview Dr. Michael Heiser and just a beautiful man really enjoyed getting to know him. He influenced a lot of my circle. And I started hearing a lot more sermons on the watchers, the Nephlet, like, it became, Genesis became this entire, and Book of Enok became this,

like, this focal point. And I remember a friend of mine was saying, hey, like, I wish I heard the gospel like three times as much as I heard messages on the unseen realm of the heavenly corset, which was fascinating. But what do you make of this, you know, movement, for lack of a better term, of you know, oh, from the book of Enoch, these are disembodied spirits of the Nephilim and the kind of alternate, you know, take on demons that's kind of, you know, surging through the internet as a scholar. Yeah. That movement hasn't really impacted academic biblical scholarship so much in the academy. It's just kind of been ignored. But I would say that there are many elements of what Heiser is suggesting that are absolutely true. part of Judeo-Christian heritage. So the idea of the heavenly court, sure, in the Old Testament, there are, you know, Elohim, and Heiser makes this point, Elohim is not used exclusively of God.

When the term Elohim has a singular verb, then it's, you know, typically God with a capital G as we're used to, but there are many places in the Old Testament where the Elohim are referred to in the plural, and those are the gods. And, you know, it's just a term for spiritual being, right? And there can be good spiritual beings and there can be bad spiritual beings. And later in the tradition we come to differentiate between good spiritual beings and bad spiritual beings with the term angels and demons. So there's definitely something to the heavenly court.

You know, in Christian hindsight, we would call it the angelic court. So absolutely. of Revelation shows, you know, the God and the lamb, you know, holding court, so to speak, surrounded by the angels and the saints. So you don't even have to go to the Old Testament to have this idea of the angelic court, not just the angelic court, but the saints are present there as well in these New Testament texts. And 100% the Essines at Qumran were very aware of the middle okay, the angelic and demonic realm. You've got the Book of the Watchers present in Kumran among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

You have the book of Jubilees. The idea of the Nephilim as fallen angels who cohabited with women is very strongly present in the Dead Sea Scrolls. That influences early Christianity all the way up till Turtallian. You know, Tertolian was very much attracted to that hypothesis. In the Catholic tradition, the one who put the kibosh on that kind of speculation was St. Augustine, who pointed out that it's metaphysically not possible for demons actually to procreate children with human beings because we're different species, basically we're different kinds of beings. But there's a modification of the understanding there in Genesis 6 of what's going to,

on. It talks about the sons of God, cohabiting with the daughters of men and having these, the Nephilim as children. There is a kind of a sexual perversion going on there. The Hebrew text implies that the sons of God were practicing polygamy, okay, with the daughters of men. Now, Augustine establishes the common interpretation within the Catholic tradition, which is that the sons of God is a covenantal term referring to the line of Seth, which is the covenant-keeping community to use Augustine's worldview. They are the city of God. They are the community that's trying to follow God. And the daughters of men is the line of Cain, which is not trying to follow God. It was broken the covenant outside the covenant. And so you're having intermarriage between the city of God

and the city of man, between, you know, anachronistically, the church and the world, so to speak. but significantly polygamous marriage there because the terminology implies they were taking as many wives as they chose and of course the motivation for that would be lust. All right. So was there demonic activity going on there in Genesis 6? I would say, yeah, you know, the sons of God were falling prey to demons of lust and taking multiple wives, which is not the divine plan. You know, the divine plan is monogamy.

man, one woman. I think this is already implied in Genesis 2 with the Hebrew terms that are used to describe Adam and Eve. But then, you know, notice, Ryan, the flood becomes the great vindication of monogamy. And the Essines saw this. You see this in the Dead Sea Scrolls. They comment. One of the reasons that they, you know, the Kumran Essines were firm defenders of monogamy. They did not believe in taking more than one wife in one's lifetime. And one of the defenses of monogamy from the Old Testament that they employed was the fact that everybody who goes onto the ark is monogamous all the animals go on two by two the humans go on two by two whereas the sons of god were taking multiple wives and so those outside the ark that are drowned they broke outside the

bonds of monogamy the ones on the ark are within monogamy so the flood was was the vindication of monogamy. So in any event, yeah, I would not hold that the Nephilim are literally, you know, cross species, beings of demons and humans. I don't think that's possible, but there was demonic activity going on in the events described in Genesis 6. Human beings were falling prey to temptation and doing things that were evil and contrary to the natural law and the moral law. And really, the Old Testament, Ryan, I would say that there is no secular warfare in the Old Testament. Every battle was spiritual warfare. Every time the Israelites go to combat with the Amalekites, with the Philistines, they are calling

upon the names of their gods. And it was a fusion of the spiritual and the physical. They lived kind of with a very strong sense of the imminence of the spiritual realm in the ancient world. And it's only because of the influence of false modern ideologies like materialism, that we kind of drive a wedge between the physical and the spiritual and live in a kind of an unreal culture where we don't see, we don't fully see reality because we've got these blinders on that prevent us from seeing the full spectrum of really what's going on around us. And so just I have it, right, because again, I love Tyser's work.

and that Psalm 82, Elohim stands in the judgment of other Elohim. I remember the one that blew my mind was the Micaiah story. It was buried in Kings, and I'd never read it, and I thought, this is so wild that, like, they all show up, and God's like, I'm going to end Ahab's life. How should we do it? And it's like, I'm going to send a lying spirit out. It was like, wow, there's been hidden in plain sight the whole time. And so I loved that.

But I think, right, the idea, the interesting kind of fringe theory is that the Nephilim, if they were sort of like cross species or whatever, whatever were mating and it was because they wouldn't have souls, I think was the logic that they would be these disembodied, you know, elements. And so there are people going around saying, oh, there's fallen angels and there's these like disembodied spirits. And I've say, look, you know, some of this is, I don't know how, like, I can't prove this stuff. And as long as Jesus gets rid of whatever they are, I'm kind of cool with any, any framework. But I guess to put a bow on that, right, you would say that's, that's not the case, though, because

of Augustine's take that metaphysically that's not what's happening and so while there is something evil and demonic going on there you wouldn't put much stock in the idea that there's disembodied soulless residue from these these unions happening no i wouldn't i wouldn't affirm that okay yeah i know it's why i mean what do you say yeah i totally believe in the activity of the demonic but i don't believe in like tertium quid you know it's like some third other thing besides demon or human. Yeah, I'm not going to go there. Father Martin's here. Today's episode is brought to you by Exodus 90, a Catholic brotherhood built on prayer, asceticism, and fraternity to help men find true freedom from worldly

distraction. In the Old Testament, God deliberate Israel from Egypt through 10 plagues, a divine combat defeating demonic powers in what was essentially a massive exorcism. The pillars of Exodus 90 used those same ancient spirit. warfare weapons, prayer to depend on God, asceticism to break bad habits and attachments, and fraternity so you never fight alone. Men, we may not be under Pharaoh, but we face modern bondages like endless distraction, lust, and excessive comfort and pride. You were created for more. Exodus 90 gives you concrete daily disciplines to break free and reclaim your life in Christ. Download the Exodus 90 app today. You can join up for a single challenge or subscribe

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After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Yeah. And as far as because Genesis is, you know, could you comment quickly too? Because obviously one thing Heiser did a great job too is just like kind of opening our eyes to how wild Genesis is in some ways. And so when people look at that and go, man, like, you know, wow, you've got Nephlim and just kind of weird offhanded remarks that, you know, I don't want to build theology around. but what are some thoughts on just like how we can better appreciate Genesis, like what it is saying and what it's actually like not saying?

Yeah. So you mean specifically Genesis 6 or all of Genesis? Yeah, I mean, maybe just like maybe some of the weirder parts, right, that people kind of tend to, we kind of gravitate towards where you're like, oh, that is kind of just overlooked that. I never really heard sermons on that on Sundays ago. And it's just like, oh, yeah, that's in the creation account. And I loved your, I never thought about. the flood upholding monogamy of entering in two by two.

And I look at that, wow, that seems to make total sense. Right, right. Yeah, well, you know, the activities of angels and demons are very present all through the Old Testament. We have, you know, the origin of the term angel is really messenger. It comes from the Hebrew Malach, which is a messenger. And so literally, if you're reading in Hebrew, you know, God is always sending the these messengers to human beings.

And, but sometimes, sometimes the messenger of the Lord or the angel of the Lord has virtually all the attributes of the Lord himself. And in some of those cases where the angel of the Lord shows up, you know, the fathers saw the angel of the Lord actually as the pre-incarnate Christ, as the second person of the Trinity coming down and taking an, like an angelic form, which is pretty much a humanoid form. so to speak of like appearing as a human being. That's how angels often appear to us. And I accept that from the fathers,

that the angel Lord oftentimes is the second person, the Trinity coming down. And there's beautiful things going on like in Genesis 2 when after the sin, okay, which is that's demonically influenced, you know, the exact relationship of the serpent to Satan is debapeuting. is the Satan, is Satan possessing this animal and speaking through him, or is the serpent like a supernatural, you know, body that Satan is assuming to tempt the one? But certainly that's spiritual warfare going on right there in Genesis 3.

We haven't even gotten three chapters in, and we've got spiritual warfare going on. And she falls prey to that, and it has cosmic effects, you know, it has physical effects on the environment, the sin, you know, so we see that there's a fluid relationship. between the spiritual and the physical. It's not like they're in, you know, as Descartes thought, you know, in completely different categories. And they fall prey to sin. But then God comes down to speak to them in the garden.

And there's a beautiful expression there, Ryan, where Adam and Eve, of course, are hiding. But it's usually translated. They heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden. But the Hebrew allows that. the interpretation, they heard God's voice walking. And it's one of a number of cases in the Old Testament where the voice or the word of God is personified as, you know, we see this in the prophets as well where it will say that the word of the Lord came to the prophet. And it's like it's a person

shows up, like the word is a person. And I see all of these as ultimately references to the second person and anticipations of Christ. So yeah, you've got spiritual warfare going on in Genesis. Without a doubt, you have the constant activity of angels throughout Genesis, the Malachim, the messengers of the Lord coming and doing things. And then when we get into when we get into the books of Samuel, you've got evil spirits, you know, plaguing Saul, for example, the first and clearest exorcist

in the Old Testament, in the proto-canonical books of the Old Testament, is in fact David. And so in 1st Samuel 16, we see that when he's anointed by Samuel, the Holy Spirit or the Spirit of God rushes upon David from that time forward. and he's got the stable possession of the Holy Spirit. The fathers looked upon David as essentially living in the new covenant in advance,

interestingly. And what the presence of the Holy Spirit, one of the many things that he gives for David is this power to cast out evil spirits through his music, right? And so immediately after being anointed and having the Holy Spirit rush upon him, Samuel is able to go and exercise Saul through his, essentially his praise music. You know, he takes his guitar, gets in there's brothers on the jembe, you know, blessed is the name of the Lord, blessed is the name.

Okay. There we go. Yeah. The spirits are fleeing. So it's, but that tie with David and exorcism, we see that even into the New Testament, because in the Gospel of Matthew, for example, when the crowds witnessed Jesus exercising the spirits, casting them out, their response is specifically, can this be the son of David? Now, why do they say that? Why do they not say, can this, can this be the son of God, or can this be the son of man, or one of many different mezzanic titles?

But no, they narrow in when he casts out demons on, is this the son of David? and that's specifically because there was this Davidic tradition of exorcism. David as an exorcist in 1st Samuel 16, but then honestly, in post-biblical Jewish tradition, it was Solomon who became identified as, you know, the great exorcist. And so the wisdom of Solomon, chapter 7, for example, there Solomon is speaking, and he says that God gave him knowledge of the activities of spirits. And when we look at the big psalm scroll from the Dead Sea Scrolls, it's called 11Q Psalms A. It's very interesting, Ryan, because around Psalm 91, which I would say is the quintessential spiritual warfare Psalm, Psalm 91, okay?

This is interestingly, this is the Psalm that the devil quotes back to Jesus in the temptation narratives. And I think that the devil knew this Psalm very well because it was employed from ancient, times to drive him out of people. But anyway, Psalm 91 is about the angels protecting you from evil, the sun and the moon. I would say that the references to the sun not harming you by day or the moon by night in Psalm 91 is really the sun god and the moon god. It's a spiritual warfare psalm. But in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Psalm 91, and probably other guests have mentioned this to you, it's surrounded in that Psalms manuscript with non-canonical prayers of deliverance that invoke Solomon specifically. And so this gives us some insight into how Jewish exorcists

operated before the coming of Jesus. They would employ the Psalms, and they would also pray to Old Testament saints, in particular Solomon. And so we also find, archaeologically, from the first century and earlier periods, amulets and bowls and other sacred items that were inscribed with prayers to Solomon because he was reputed to have exorcistic power. Wow. So it is a bit of a family affair than exorcism. Yeah. I would also think, so did Solomon also learn this? And all his wives he married from all the different religions that I'm sure he picked up a few bits of experience, right? Yeah, I imagine. So, Yeah, he dabbed a little bit too much in that stuff, and it kind of didn't work out well towards the end there.

Oh, yeah. No, wow, that's fascinating. Before I forget, I want to come back to, do you ever find it interesting, or is there a simple explanation for why there was a serpent in the garden? I've always found myself wondering on why was it permitted to be there? Was that always part of the plan? I've heard different takes on this, but what's your read on that? Yeah, my read on that is that, you know, the serpent is an unclean creature, and in Genesis 215's, Adam is placed into the garden to work and to guard there.

That's priestly terminology. Working meant celebrating the liturgy and guarding meant keeping the sanctuary free from anything evil. It's very clear from Genesis 1 through 3 that the garden was the primordial temple or sanctuary, a place of holiness, of worship. And so nothing unclean should have been allowed to enter. And so I think that the fact that the serpent is in the garden talking to Eve in the beginning of Genesis 3 implies that Adam had failed in his responsibility to guard the garden and keep anything unclean out of it. And so his failure to exercise a kind of a husbandly headship, a priestly headship and a priestly defense of his home and of his wife creates the conditions of possibility for the sin.

But, you know, why is the evil one permitted? You know, the church fathers acknowledged that, you know, already prior to the creation of human beings, there was the angelic fall. And some of them saw in Genesis 1 where it says God created the light and the darkness as already, you know, the light as referring to the good angels and the darkness referring to the fallen angels. And this being a cryptic reference to a pre-anthropic, excuse me, before man, okay, angelic fall during the creation. And so, and essentially I hold to that worldview that prior to the fall of man, there's an angelic fall. And so, and God permits this influence of the angelic fall on human beings to test our love for him and our trust in him.

So are our first parents going to keep the original covenant? Are they going to honor God as their father? Are they going to trust him as their father and love him? Or are they going to buy into a worldview that sees his fatherhood as oppressive and not in their best interest and doubt? his love for them. As we all know, they choose the latter, unfortunately. But I think it's permitted by God as a testing of love. If there's not a real choice to the contrary, then love can't demonstrate itself. So this is why the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is permitted in the garden. This is why temptation is allowed in order to give human beings a real opportunity to

demonstrate their love for God and sadly failed in that first instance. Yeah. Do you find it, I want to ask two maybe potentially silly questions, but the fact I've always marveled to that Eve talks to the serpent and the first response is not, whoa, you can talk. So is that a dynamic that suddenly, apparently they had, were they like, so like, I don't know, spiritually in touch with God and the creation that, I mean, they just could somehow commune with animals. And I thought that's because my first response, she has like this rational.

conversation with a snake, and I thought that was very interesting to me. Yeah, yeah. So it seems to be, you know, different texts in scripture seem to reflect the reality that if you're perfectly at peace with God, you're also perfectly at peace with nature. And so it's like the vertical relationship and the horizontal relationship. So this is implied by like the prelapsarian state of Adam and Eve. They seem to be, you know, perfect. like, as you say, being able to communicate with the animals without any difficulty.

But then our Lord seems to have this as well. You know, he just tells the fish to get into the net. They all do. He tells the waves to calm down, the wind to be still. It does. He seems to have this ability to communicate with nature. Some saints that have been very conformed to Christ like St. Francis of Assisi also seem to develop this ability to communicate on a more limited basis.

but, you know, I think, you know, where there's smoke, there's fire. So behind these legends about him preaching to the birds and the wolves, I think there really was something that he was, you know, had this, this communication with nature. So yeah, I think that's implied that, you know, if all is right in one's relationship with God, then one is able also to communicate with the creation and not have an impediment there. Now, this might be an absurd question, but I have posed this to a few friends of minor faculty at others, just because it's fun. So permit me this. But were there dinosaurs in the garden, potentially around the arc period?

I've always been fascinated with, you know, versus either they're a demonic deception to some of my fundamentalist friends or, hey, death hadn't entered the world yet. So what's going on? And I'm like, you know what? I don't know. But would you, could you dignify that with a positive of a guess? No, I'm still in a state of trying to try to see what possible, what plausible reconstructions of early history of humanity there could be. So I stay in contact with the young earth people.

You know, I just interviewed a young earther on my podcast just a few days ago, as a matter of fact. Oh, really? Just threw a couple of questions to him. I've also interviewed, I've also interviewed, you know, theistic evolutionists and so on. So I'm, I'm in a state of acquiring information and, and, uh, investigating to see whether it's possible to put together a plausible paradigm in which, you know, you have everybody living together at the same time and not the, you know, the vast ages that are described. But, um, I'm, I'm not, uh, not a position yet to put it all together.

So I'm going to hold you to it. That's okay. Yeah, that's okay. I'm all, yeah, and also I think it's interesting because, you know, maybe Genesis also seems to give a wide birth for like, you know, and maybe dinosaurs are part of a chaotic nature period. And, you know, it's like before, I don't know, like it's, it doesn't drive me nuts, but I was like, if they're going to be on the arc, that would be tough.

Yeah, what's, what's really interesting, though, is when you, when you look at, you know, the high point of dinosaurs is just kind of the, violence of existence that's suggested by their anatomy. So you got these massive T-Rexes with the biggest teeth you've ever seen and then, you know, all these armor plates on Stegosaurus and T-Seratops. And it just seems like, you know, there was this real fight for survival that's not like fuzzy. Even predators nowadays are kind of warm and fuzzy compared to, you know, T-Rex, right? Lions and tigers, you know, have fur and you can tame them and pet them.

and stuff like that. I don't think you could do that with a T-Rex. But then Ryan in Genesis 6, it says the whole world was filled with Hamas, okay, which is the Hebrew word for violence, you know? And this is what provokes the flood is the rampant violence everywhere. And then you look at the fossil record with all these, which is virtually the whole fossil record is laid down by ocean water, by the way.

And marine creatures are mixed through all of the fossils. And you find sharks and T-Rexes, you know, mixed up together in these fossil graveyards. And that's weird because they certainly did not live in the same ecosystem when they were alive. But here you have the carcasses of fish, sharks, and dinosaurs all mixed together. So it looked like ocean water just, like, buried them all, you know, together catastrophically. But just the violence of it, you know. Everybody's armored. Everybody has huge teeth or plates or something either defensive or offensive.

or offensive. So anyway, you know, I don't know if there's anything there or where to go with that. I think you hit on something. What if, I mean, because also, I don't know if this is compatible, but what if it is as the world is getting, you know, redeemed, right? If creation is being tamed and maybe there is something there where, you know, it's like softer and softer and, you know, I don't know. And then that's a, but it's good.

I'll have to call Spielberg and see if he's going to greenlight my sequel, Jurassic Ark. or we're going to have a couple of velociraptors be let loose on the ark and you know what you're going to need a lot of prayer well that's awesome all right you're good you'll get there's there that's awesome that's awesome um i want to ask you too so uh speaking of david and his exorcistic ability it is interesting you mentioned uh king saul i have had a couple scholars tell me oh no that's madness that almost like a naturalist to take oh the lord's spirit was potentially on a And then when it was removed, he just went mad. But is it pretty clear there that is, because my readings, it was just an evil spirit.

Is it pretty clear to you that Saul was demonized? Yeah. I've never seen any reason to doubt that. And again, look, when we sin, like I said, we give permission to the evil and to work on us. And, you know, he was, yeah, giving in to covetousness, to envy, to, you know, anger to murder to wrath, all these kinds of things. So he was opening himself up. Excuse me. He was opening himself up to the workings of evil. And it's not like, oh, you know, reality somehow fundamentally changes when Jesus comes so that now, you know, after Jesus, there's

spiritual warfare and there wasn't before. No, absolutely there was before. So yeah, I don't see any reason to doubt that. Yeah. I'm curious to, so when Jesus arrives on the scene, could you contrast maybe, I guess in the time of David and up until the time of Jesus, if I was living at the time and it said, hey, I'm being afflicted by an evil spirit. Would they go, oh, of course, like, that makes total sense. We can, let's call someone to figure out. What was their protocol and what do we have as far as, like, evidence of that? Because I know a lot of people look, when they listen to our show, they go, oh, in the New Testament, there's like demons everywhere popping up. And Jesus cast us. about and Old Testament, you know, we have obviously Saul, but it doesn't seem to be mentioned as much, but it sounds like we're saying is they would have had a total paradigm for this. Yeah, they definitely had a paradigm for this. And they had Jewish, pre-Christian Jewish exorcists. We have, like I said, evidence of this in the Dead Sea Scrolls with, you know, prayers of deliverance surrounding Psalm 91. Psalm 91 was prayed for deliverance. So we don't have a ton of information, Ryan, about how Jewish exorcists operated. They definitely, you know, they're portrayed

in the book of Acts, like the seven sons of Shiva, as everybody knows. And, and Jesus refers to them in, what is it, Matthew 12, let me think here, where, you know, where he's accused of casting out demons by Bielzable. So look, they've got a term for Satan, you know, and they recognize these evil spirits. And then Jesus says, if I'm casting out by Bielzbo, by whom do your sons cast them out, right? So that's an indication that Jewish exorcism

was definitely being practiced. What appears to be the case, Ryan, excuse me, the best that we've been able to piece together the remnants of information that comes down to us from that time period is that Jewish exorcists would try to wheedle the demon out using prayers to Old Testament saints and passages of scripture. And so it was a longer and messy process that had some success, obviously, otherwise they wouldn't have done it. But what's dramatic about Jesus is he just gives a command and bang, it's gone.

So it's immediate, it's authoritative, it's dramatic, whereas, you know, Jewish exorcism took place in private, took a long time, you know, calling on different authorities, you know, saints and angels, et cetera. And so, yeah, the, the, it's. It's not that people had never heard of an exorcism before, but they did not see it performed with the kind of dramatic definitiveness that Jesus delivers. Yeah. And then obviously, you're an expert in Dead Sea Scrolls. How did the discovery of those scrolls like change?

Were there any like monumental shifts in our thinking about spiritual warfare? as a result of discovering these and any kind of new insights that we got from them? Well, I would say that there was less awareness of the prominence that what we've described as the middle, right, the angelic and the demonic. There is less awareness of the prominence that the angelic and demonic played in first century Jewish war. worldview prior to the discovery of the scrolls because the rabbinic literature does far less with the demonic and exorcism than what we see at Qumran. So it's not that we didn't know about this. I mean, you know, the Gospels give plenty of testimony to an awareness of the angelic and the

demonic within Jewish culture, but this is kind of reinforced by the discovery of the scrolls. and, you know, I think, you know, Josephus always told us about the Essines. We've always had the works of Josephus, and it tells us quite a bit about them. But I think that before the discovery of the scrolls, people didn't know how seriously to take Josephus, whether he was really giving us the straight scoop or whether he was exaggerating this religious community. I think that there's a very close dovetail between the picture of Essine, thought, and practice, belief in practice that we see in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and what Josephus tells us about them.

And Josephus also tells us that they're about, he estimated about 5,000 Pharisees in Israel and 4,000 Essines. So they're about 80% as large as the Pharisee movement. And of course, the Pharisee movement was quite prominent and quite influential. We see them all over the place in the Gospels. I have my own theories as to why the S-scenes are less prominent in the Gospels. I definitely believe that we can identify S-scene characters in particular places in the Gospels. If you know what to look for, you can see, oh, that person's an S-scene or this person's an S-scene

by little, you know, tell-tale signs. But anyway, I think a lot of the S-scenes converted to Christianity because Jesus delivered on a lot of the things that they expect it. I mean, their worldview was very open to the angelic and the demonic. And, you know, the drama of Jesus' engagement with the spirit world, I think really would have appealed to those who had been formed in Esseneism. And so I think a lot of them came over into the early church. And the early fathers, I think, are influenced by, you know, Essing Jewish thought in certain areas. So, yeah, I would say it's, the Dead Sea Scrolls didn't exactly tell us anything that we completely didn't know before, but it certainly raised the visibility of a form of Judaism that was more in touch with the unseen realm than later forms of rabbinic Judaism tended to be.

Yeah, and it seems like we do see a very sacramental view of the world in the Old Testament as far as the integration. of spirituality and God's dwelling in nature and parts of it, I think of the Syrian commander who wanted to take some earth back for his own worship of the Lord in a pagan territory. But if you were to go back to these kings, I'm curious. So when they talk about the high places and Israel's constant return to Mulek or Abol, etc. Was the predominant thinking that obviously everyone's like, oh, everyone knows, oh, yeah, Yalway's real.

That's like, that's the God of the Jews. But he was one of many. and it was sort of a competition, and they would drift towards one or the other, but they always recognized that he was there, and maybe you could nuance a little bit of that for us when all the kings who refuse to take down the high places, but still some of them still worshipped Yahweh,

but they didn't fully remove the other gods. Yeah, that's right. The error that those kings and many Israelites are falling into is just to see God as one God among the gods. but what the prophets maintain is that, no, the Lord is the Creator, okay? That's the real difference here. If the God that you're worshipping is not the Creator, he's not God with a capital G, okay? So there's a fundamental difference between God, the Creator, and other spiritual beings,

which He created. So God, the Creator is what we call in philosophy, you know, the necessary being. He is existence itself. his existence is his essence, he gives, he grants existence to others and it all comes out of himself and everybody borrows their existence from him, as it were. So that's a fundamentally different reality. And the error that the ancient kings of Israel are falling into as well as many Israelites themselves is just to see the Lord, the God of Israel, as one spiritual being among others. So, you know, Ammonites have Kimosh and the Moabites have Molek or or vice versa. And we've got the Lord, right?

Well, no, no, no, no, no. It's not like that. Okay. And that's the message of Genesis 1 through 3, that the Lord God is the creator of the universe. And these other spiritual beings were created by him and they do his bidding. Even the evil ones do his bidding in an indirect way. And we see that in the book of Job, for example, right? Satan kind of reporting to God, and God, you know, gives him the parameters within which he can work, can't work out, work outside of the permissive will of God. So, Bail was a demon, Kymosh was a demon, Molok was a demon, St. Paul tells us that the gods of the pagans are demons. And there was, you know, paganism worked. They, they, they, they, they, placated these demons and they got natural blessings from it. Okay. Um, they called, you know,

they offered blood sacrifices and these demons had periodically, you know, come through for them and grant them victory in battle and, and so on. And if it completely didn't work, they wouldn't have, they wouldn't have done it. So there was, there was a, a kind of a spiritual reality, but it was a perverse one. And the worship that they engaged in often involved, um, well, you know, blood sacrifice, but human sacrifice evolved sexual immorality. We see that in the golden calf episode, for example, when they revert to one aspect of Egyptian paganism, they worship the calf, which I think is a representation of apis, the Egyptian bull god. They worship him through, yes, animal sacrifice, but also through immoral behavior. When the Bible says that they sat down to eat and drink

and they rose up to play. And so the, you know, we see that in numbers 25 with the worship of Ba'al peor, that immoral behavior was part and parcel of the worship of these pagan gods. And so I think it's very much actually still with us when you look at, you know, club culture and rock, you know, concert culture and so on with the heavy beats and the the whole ambiance of that, it's like ancient pagan worship, where you employ drums to conjure up what they called gods, but were really demons, and you get engaged in various kinds of immoral behavior and worship of these evil spirits. And so I think it's still with us under a different guise.

But what if it's like Bon Jovi, and they're singing, living on a prayer? There's some sort of liturgical value there, right? You know? Well, okay. I've never done a deal out. I'm going to have to pass. Bon Jovi play for us. But no, I, you know, so this is something that's always been fascinating to me about the Old Testament is what, you know, God seems so clear in his covenant. And he seems to break through.

So it's like, hey, if you follow me, things will go well with you. And, you know, it's interesting, I'm obviously not a prosperity gospeler, and I've grown up around certain aspects of that. But I do appreciate if you look back, like God seems to offer a pretty clear deal. And he obviously, each one of the king, like, hey, if you work, if you walk in my ways and like you do as, you know, David did, like, I'm going to take care of you. And yet Israel, after all these dramatic, I mean, just cycle after cycle of slowly descending into depravity and then God punishing them and then breaking through. What do you, I mean, in that time, place and world, do you think, is, is there anything there for us is today that mirrors that like the slow, drift away from God. And how I just find it fascinating how they kept returning to the gods of old.

Like does that ever, do you find that interesting there? Or does that make sense to you given the human condition? Yeah, it makes sense to me. I mean, on the one hand, I think in the Old Testament, there is a kind of pedagogy of God's people going on. And there's a maturation of God's people that takes place as you move from the old covenant into the new covenant in that God treats Christian believers as well as the church. more as adults, whereas Israel was treated more like a child, and what do I mean by that?

But I think that frequently in the Old Testament, in this childlike state of the people of God, just with a child, you have to have like immediate rewards and immediate punishments for them to get the idea and to get trained and, you know, to recognize good and avoid evil. And so when we're in the Pentateuch, for example, and we're wandering through the wilderness, oftentimes God's punishments and rewards are like quite immediate and dramatic and that was necessary to inculcate just basic virtue in the people of God in their youth so to speak now with the fullness of revelation through Jesus Christ it's not so direct and we're often even though that we're trying to strive after holiness God draws us in a mysterious way into Christ's sufferings, okay, which are not a punishment for

our wrongdoing, typically, but are, you know, an opportunity to grow in our love for God. So there's more of a, you know, a treating of the church and believers as adults in the new covenant. So with God's covenants, you know, what do you say to the prosperity gospelers today who point out and say, hey, God, and obviously God does want to bless his people. It's not like he wants some of the hell on earth that we have going on. But, you know, how do we nuance? Because I have a lot of Christian friends who will read, you know, some of these Psalms. And I know they're not, you know, declaring promises for all place and all time. But when they say, I've never seen the righteous go hungry, right? The Lord has given me victory all my days. Like it's just, I know these are more statements. but how would you parse out to maybe the curious Christian who's looking back at this Old Testament covenant with God and reconciling it with obviously kind of what we see today and obviously the fate of everyone close to Jesus for the most part? Right. Yeah. Well, I would say that those statements in the Old Testament about the prosperity of the righteous and so on, that is a statement about the natural order and all things being

equal when the when the created order is operating, it is absolutely true that wisdom and righteousness are rewarded by the natural order and following the natural law and the morality that undergirds the cosmos and is written into the very nature things, that leads to blessing and prosperity and the opposite doesn't. Now, the monkey wrench in the works is both the debauch. The demonic and also those who give in to the, you know, human beings who are doing evil. And so, you know, all things being equal, yeah, hard work brings its reward and, you know, all of these virtues bring their reward. But then you've got, you've got conscious players in the mix.

You've got evil spirits and you've got evil humans who are persecuting the righteous and, you know, introducing disorder. into the created order that God established. So, yeah, so the wisdom literature, it says, you know, virtue leads to reward and vice leads to destruction. That's true enough. That's the way God created it. But then there's a monkey wrench in the works,

which is evil persons, both, you know, demons and humans. And so those statements about prosperity have to be balanced with things like both forms of the beatitudes, you know, Luke's form, which is both natural, like Blessed are the Poor, he just says, but also Matthew's form, which is more spiritual, you know, Blessed are the poor in spirit, right? And the picture that we get from the Beatitudes is that the one who follows Christ is going to experience hardship and persecution because following after holiness provokes a vicious response. from the evil actors in our world.

And so, but what is GSA, blessed are you if you are persecuted because of righteousness sake? If you're persecuted for me, you know, they say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake, et cetera, for thus they treated the prophets who were before you. And I think that last line of Matthew's beatitudes, you know, thus they treated the prophets who were before you, suggests that when we're, baptized into Christ, and when we dedicate our lives to following Christ as his disciples, we enter into a prophetic tradition. And just as the prophets were persecuted in the Old Testament,

remember, you know, like as Jesus says, can any prophet die outside of Jerusalem? You know, the sawn and two, you know, harassed, executed. We see Elijah being persecuted by Jezebel and so on. So we enter into this prophetic tradition which experiences persecution from the evil, which is in the world. And this is going way back into the Old Testament. It's been this way. You know, every person that walks in the path of a prophet is going to experience that. So I think that, you know, the health and wealth gospel, the prosperity gospel, it's really misleading because that's not the dominant message. that our Lord gives us. He tells us, if anyone would follow me, let him deny himself,

take up his cross daily, and follow. He promises us just persecutions and difficulties. In this world, you will have trouble, he says, in the Last Supper discourse. But take heart, I have overcome this world. So the dominant way that Christians should really be thinking is not about, you know, attaining prosperity in this life, but about embracing. the cross and following it after a Lord and not to be surprised when we run into tribulations of many different kinds, both unseen tribulations, you know, tribulations coming from the spirit world as well as from other human beings because, you know, you know, Peter tells us this, you know, when addressing, I think it's in 1st Peter 5, you know, don't be surprised

by this trial that's come upon you as if something, you know, surprising is taking place because, you our Lord told us it was going to be like this. So, yeah, I would say to sum up and to kind of wrap up, I would say, yes, in the Old Testament, you get these, this kind of like, if you do good, you're going to be blessed, you do evil, you're going to be cursed. And God did work with Israel in that way during that period of spiritual childhood of the people of God. But now we're invited into this mystery of sharing a Christian. Christ's sufferings. And as St. Paul says, making up in our own flesh what is lacking in Christ's

sufferings. Of course, there's nothing objectively lacking in Christ's suffering. The only thing lacking is our participation in them. And so, you know, the life of Christians in this world during this period of the church militant is going to be a life of self-denial and mortification. Yeah. One more question on. some Old Testament stuff before I do, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you a little bit about your past as a Protestant and I really enjoyed your interview with Matt Frad and I got a couple questions there. But I'm curious, you know, I always, I try not to build theology's out of like one verse, but every now and then you get a verse dropped and it's like, whoa, is that a little

glimpse into the paradigm? But I love Daniel. I think it's Daniel 10 and the Prince of Persia contending with Gabriel as a message is being delivered. Is there anything we can conclude from that or is that just a potential another lens by which we can view spiritual warfare and Daniels? Because I loved it. He started praying. And he said from the moment you started praying, the answer went out. Yet I was delayed until I had backup. And I thought, that is so interesting. Yeah. Yeah, it is. No, I mean, those that I talk to who are involved in deliverance ministry and, you know, spiritual warfare attests that there do seem to be spirits attached to place. places. It is a great mystery. You know, obviously God is sovereign, but he allows us to go on. And so there is,

you know, struggle between the good angels and the bad angels. It's a commonplace within Catholic theology to understand that there is an angel, for example, assigned to every parish church, that a diocese has an angel as a guardian that it's a common belief. It's not. It's not. like dogmatically defined, but it's a common belief that an ordained man gains an additional guardian angel that's kind of like attached to his role as a priest in addition to like his personal guardian angel. St. Hussein Re Escriva, whose spirituality I follow had a great devotion to the angels and he accepted these these ideas as well. So the guardian angels are very real. we each have a guardian angel.

You see this reflected in the book of Acts when Peter is released from prison in Acts 12 and he appears to the church gathered at the upper room. At first, Rhoda, the maid who sees him, well, yeah, she doesn't think it's his angel, but she's told, oh, you must have seen his guardian angel. And that reflects an early belief among Christians, not only that every believer has a guardian angel,

but also that your guardian angel looks like you. Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, yeah. That was an early Christian. Which version of you? Do they look like the younger, like mid-20s prime version of me?

Or are they aging in appearance to keep up with my earthly appearance? So they take on the form as I get older. I don't know that. But I would hope that they would be us at our past. But anyway, you know, When Jesus says, for example, don't mistreat these little ones because their angels always behold the face of my father in heaven, that seems to be indicating that, you know, he's talking about the guardian angels that represent and intercede for, you know, the children and that they have a special place in the heavenly court. So, yeah, so all of that is, I think that's very real. And I think that there are both angels and demons attached to particular places on the earth.

Angels attached to holy places, demons attached to unholy places. Yeah, there are these power structures, excuse me. It's mysterious to us. I don't understand it all. God allows it by his providence. But there's enough data in Scripture as well as the personal experience of people that I know love and trust. to confirm that this does seem to be the way it is. Absolutely.

All right, well, we're talking about Daniels. This is a good little segue because I noticed, you know, having had, you know, only 66 books in my Bible, I was shocked to learn that there's more to Daniel, and I thought there's like a director's cut. I'm like, what is this bell in the dragon? I was like, what is happening here? So I'm curious, you know, I love, you know, we're a very ecumenical show on this. And we have a lot of listeners of all different denominations. but I find the Deuter Canon is actually becoming more popular, and we have a lot of folks,

like a dear friend of mine, Dr. Gavin Orland, who I have immense respect for, is like, yeah, we should be reading these and studying these, et cetera. What is as an academic your quick case for, hey, one, everyone should read these, regardless of whether you, what, you know, denomination you subscribe to, and two, the case for why they should be included versus not be. Yeah, absolutely. Well, all right, I'll lay out a quick place, and obviously this is going to, you know, this is going to be a totally Catholic case based on Catholic theological principles for their inclusion. So super quick. Jesus gives the authority to Peter to bind and loose, to cut to the chase, binding and loosing. refers in first century Judaism to the authority to make authoritative decisions on religious matters. And one of the big controversies within Judaism in the time of our Lord was what books make the hands unclean?

Now, it's very counterintuitive, but in Judaism, if your hands contact a holy book, it produces uncleanness of the hands. I don't know, that's like counterintuitive, but that was the case. And so in Judaism, it's interesting, the question of what books are inspired and what aren't came under the rubric of cleanliness and uncleanliness, because it became a question of, again, what books make the hands unclean? So binding and loosing was the authority to make decisions of this nature. So Jesus invests Peter with that authority. he also invests the apostles as a group without authority to bind and loose in Matthew 18.

There he uses the U plural. He says, y'all, you know, whatever y'all bind and loose. To Peter, he uses the U singular, whatever U bind in loose. And in the Catholic tradition, we've understood this to refer to the authority, which is passed down to the successors of Peter, as well as the successors of the apostles. You know, how do the successors of the apostles make a decision? Well, that's when the bishops get together into what we call an ecumenical council.

How does Peter make a decision? Well, it's more obvious. You know, that's the popes. So what happens, actually, in church history, is that the successor of Peter, Damasus I, around 382 A.D., gathers together the bishops in what we call the Council of Rome, 382 A.D., excuse me. And a decision was made about what. books are inspired. They weren't deciding, like, based on no precedent or all. They're basically

saying, what is the tradition that's been passed down to us by previous successors of the apostles going back to Jesus? And the list that they wrote down was the 72 books that are in the Catholic Bible. And you see that affirmed by other early church councils. You see them listed by Augustine, you know, and that's significant because Lutherans and Calvinists really revere Augustine, but if you look at Augustine's writings, he gives all 72 books, including the so-called Deuterocanicals. You see them employed by Thomas Aquinas. I mean, when I was going to seminary, even Calvinists respected Thomas. And Thomas has all seven Deutero-canonical books. St. Bonaventure has them. You know, so the early church councils established that. You see them using,

by the fathers and doctors all the way through the Middle Ages. And then we have an ecumenical council in 1441. It's called the Council of Florence. And that council, which had representatives of both the Greek-speaking east, as well as the Latin-speaking West, they're all gathered there in Florence, trying to recreate Christian unity to present a common face against the Turkish-Muslim front.

You know, they saw that Constantinople was vulnerable. Constantinople fell in 1453, just a decade in some change after the Council of Florence. They were trying to prevent that by getting all Christians on the same page. And anyway, the Council of Florence lists the whole canon there, all the 72 books, including the Deuteroconical books. So this was listed at an ecumenical council before the Reformation broke out. I just point that out because oftentimes Protestants will say, well, the Catholic. Church added these books at Trent to get ammunition to go after Luther. And that's not the case. It was an ecumenical council before the Reformation broke out, already established these

books as inspired and canonical. So as a Catholic, and not just as a Catholic, but as a Christian as reading the scriptures, you know, I think that Matthew 16 and 18 do show Christians that Jesus was investing Peter and the apostles with authority. And the early fathers talk about the bishops as successors to the apostles and continuing the apostolic ministry. So they have the authority to make these decisions. And they're not making these decisions as if the church is deciding, well, we're going to make this book inspired or something like that. No, it's a discernment on behalf of the church on what is.

inspired or not. So that would be my case for why the Dudero-canonicals belong in scripture. Sometimes it said that, well, they were kicked out because they weren't written in Hebrew. That's not the case because several of them were written in Hebrew. First Maccabees was written in Hebrew and then translated into Greek. We've lost the Hebrew, but it was definitely written there. All the so-called extra chapters of Daniel were written in Hebrew originally and then translated into Greek. We don't have the Hebrew original. Tobit, interestingly, was probably originally written in Aramaic, and we found five copies of Tobit in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Previously, we were reliant only on the Greek translation. We knew it

had been written in either Hebrew or Aramaic. Those two languages are so close, it's hard to tell from which they are being translated, but four Aramaic copies of Tobit in the Dead Sea Scrolls and one Hebrew copy of Tobit. Looks like the Hebrew was actually translated from the Aramaic. So probably the original language of Tobit was Aramaic. But the number of copies that we found of Tobit in the Dead Sea Scrolls suggest that they regarded the book very highly. We have more copies of Tobit than of 12 other Old Testament books.

You know, for example, Ezra Nehemiah. are pretty much absent from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Esther's not there. Yeah, so the Proverbs, I think there's like one or two scraps, but we have substantial remains of five different copies of Tobit. So it does suggest that the Essings revered Tobit and may have regarded it as inspired. So, you know, you can talk about ancient Jewish use of these different books,

and it is true that they showed up in the collections of the Septuagint and so on. But really what's theologically definitive is, are we going to accept the authority of the apostles and their successors? And if we do accept their authority, then their decision is reflected in that of early church councils. And that becomes definitive for Catholic believers. Sure. And so, and real quick, when Augustine and I think it was Jerome and they were debating over the inclusion, et cetera.

Was Jerome just one-off or were there questions about these books early on? Like is there, you know, obviously I think Catholics refer to them as scripture, but was there anything, I'm just curious what like marked the debate at all if there was any early on. Was it because they weren't included in some ancient Jewish canons? Is that why they were kind of a little minor asterisk next to them early on? Right. So, yeah, Cherome is kind of an interesting character because Pope Damascist asked him to translate the Bible into Latin, which he dutifully did. And he translated all the books that were listed in the Council of Rome 382.

He dutifully translated. But in his prefaces to some of the Old Testament books, he expresses his own, you know, reservations about the canonicity of some of the Deutero-canonical books because they were not accepted as canonical by the Jewish community in St. Jerome's Day. Remember that St. Jerome went to Bethlehem, learned Hebrew, and so the, you know, so to speak, the Jewish community that St. Jerome was in contact with in the land of Israel around about the town of Bethlehem did not accept the, Deuteroconical books as inspired. Now, Jews, you know, large groups of Jews did accept them and it's inspired. Otherwise, they would not have been translated into Greek for the Septuagint.

And that the Septuagint project began in 250 BC. So there's, you know, I think, I think what happens historically is that prior to the rise of Christianity, there was, you know, I think, I think what happens historically, there was greater openness to these later Old Testament books. They were accepted no problem. But when Christianity begins to rise and become very influential, and Christians use predominantly the Septuagint, the Greek translation in evangelism and catechesis, in the land of Israel, there arises a conservative reaction

to that and a kind of reversion to, oh, no, just the, you know, the Hebrew truth of Scripture is kind of like an older, more conservative theological position on inspired books. So whereas, for example, in the letter of Aristus, which is this, a pre-Christian document, you know, the Septuagin is praised, and there's this openness to reading and using the scriptures in Greek translation. In later rabbinic sources, there is a reaction against the Septuagint translation and the books associated with it. So I think that you see that kind of development going on. Now I've kind of lost the train of my thought here. No, no, I got. I was just curious. Yeah, no, you got it. It was more just, you know, curious, to be fair to Protestant listeners, they'd say, yeah, like there's certain

books, there's no dispute because they're out there's written by apostles. There's certain card category, and I was just curious that the Duder Canon from early stage where the kind of asterisk debate began. Yeah, yeah. So there are some early councils prior to Roman 32 that don't include all the Duderian canonicals. But I would encourage everybody, Catholics and Protestants, to read what St. Augustine says about canon. And I think it's book two, I want to say it's book two of his work on Christian doctrine, regardless, but he has St. Augustine in his work on Christian doctrine, De Doctrina Christiana is the Latin title.

He talks about how you discern what books are in the Bible. And he says, basically, you give preference to those books accepted by more churches rather than books accepted only by a few churches, and you give more weight to those books, accepted by older and larger churches rather than smaller and younger churches. So that's his reasoning. So more churches, bigger churches, older churches, those have greater weight than the opposite or the converse. And then he says when you apply this, this is the list that you come up with.

And then he gives the list that was established at Rome in 382. So it's interesting. but that gives you a window into how, you know, a very major figure, you know, a major theological figure in the early church was thinking about how you decide what's in the Bible and not. And the basis isn't some kind of external criteria, but it's what the churches accept. That's the majority, the oldest, and the largest churches, what they accept. That's what you go with, according to Augustine. Yeah, and it's been a thought exercise for me on my own spiritual journey too, as I say, okay, you know, if there's roughly or just under two billion Christians, what percentage of them

accept more than 66 books in the Bible, regardless of the number, you know, 70s, 72, the Ethiopian is more, what percentage believe in some form of post-death refinement or purgation, what percentage believe in ongoing prayer access to intercession? I mean, I was with some Anglican ministers, and I can't speak for. for all the different Anglican churches, obviously. But the two I was always said, oh yeah, we absolutely believe in intercession saints, but we direct the parish to God.

And then it's kind of like just to be doubly safe. God, would you ask so-and-so to pray with me? Which I actually really resonate with that because I was like, oh, I love that because it's like, hey, I can, you know, I'm praying to God, so I'm not violating anything. That's what we do. And I'm saying, hey, by the way, you're up there. Would you have Mr. Aquinas put in a good word?

I hear he's really smart. It would be great for some intercession there. But yeah, it's a good, it's a good thought exercise to consider. And again, majority doesn't dictate truth necessarily. We see there's a lot of people who are not Christians and massive religions that we would say are not the truth. But it is an interesting thought exercise. So that's something I've been personally wrestling with.

I did want to ask you as we wrap up here. I mean, you were, so as a former Protestant, yeah, I heard you say on Matt show you called Protestantism like partial Christianity and you have a lot of affection. And yeah, I'm curious. one of things that has been really interesting for me is the fruit that I just see in so many Protestants and nominations. And I do see efficacy. I see God. And again, we know miracles are not, miracles and supernatural acts are not proof of anything necessarily because we know that there's counterfeits. But when I see people preaching Christ's name and especially for context,

when I think of like the ministries of Billy Graham, right, or I think of friends of mine who've had dreams to go like meet someone in the Middle East somewhere. And it's like this God supernaturally like pairs them up in an airport, just wild things. And I think, man, what is going on in there? So I'm curious, you know, as a Catholic who is a former Protestant, how do you think through the seeming like blessing that God seems to be having on a lot of Protestant ministries and churches? Yeah. Well, I see, I would say you already see that like I say in the Gospels where you got, you know, a guy who's just independent and believes in the name of Jesus and is casting out demons in Jesus' name. And, you know, seriously, he's not part of the organization

that Jesus is founding there. He's not, you know, given a role among the 12, but he is a believer in Jesus. And that's a good thing, and that's a start. I would want that man eventually to be incorporated into the body, the visible body as well. So in Catholic theology, there's a thing called sacrament of desire where, you know, a good Catholic theologian would admit that if you have a pure desire for, say, the sacrament of baptism or for the Eucharist or for reconciliation, that, you know, God will grant you what we call the grace of the sacrament, even without the medium of the sacrament. And I believe I saw that as a Protestant minister.

I think that we had a – there are times when we had an absolutely – pure desire for the grace of the Eucharist without knowing the terminology for it. And I think that God was giving us those graces, an absolutely pure and sincere desire for the grace of reconciliation, you know, in conversions that people undergo, you know. And so I think that God was granting the grace of those sacraments to us. So there's definitely plenty of room within, you know, classic and orthodox Catholic theology for understanding that God is active in his Holy Spirit outside of the visible church. And so I give thanks. I mean, it's always a good thing to pray to Jesus and to give one's life to Jesus. And, you know, the, you know, the classic sinner's prayer

to receive Jesus spiritually into your life. In Catholic theology and spirituality, we call that a spiritual communion. And that kind of thing was highly praised by many Catholic saints. And people were encouraged to make many spiritual communions every day. St. Saint-Aemarrova recommended that. And Teresa Valle and others. So I think there's plenty of room within, you know, not like wishy-washy, progressive Catholic theology.

I'm talking about classic Catholic theology. that's faithful to all the teaching of the church for understanding that the Holy Spirit and the Lord himself is active outside of the visible structures of the church. Having said that, I would also say that my experience in Protestantism was one of like theological chaos

because ultimately the principle of soul of scripture means that the interpretation of someone, scripture is up to each one of us individually. And so you have all these competing interpretations and it's hard to resolve, you know, differences of opinion. Well, it's basically impossible to solve differences of opinion. And that's why you have tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of different Christian groups. And Jesus did provide us a way to resolve our differences. And it's Peter and the apostles and their successors who have the power to bind and loose. You know, with the the gift of infallibility to the Pope, the successor of Peter,

is really so that Peter's successor can stop arguments within the church. And if you think about it, if he doesn't have infallibility, he can't stop an argument because he would just give a decision and then everybody would say, oh, well, that's just your opinion, and they would continue to argue. So if we want a voice in the church that can arbitrate between different theological opinions, you have to have infallibility.

And infallibility is a gift because it enables arguments to stop. and for peace and resolution to be within the church and for us to move forward and not always be arguing and fighting with each other. So that's how I see it as a Catholic. Well, not just as a Catholic, but as a Christian, I think that Catholicism is not just for Catholics. It's for everybody. It's like the old orange juice commercials, you know, orange juice is not just for breakfast anymore. You know, it's like, you know, Catholic is not just for Catholics. It's just Christianity.

It's based on the scriptures and on Christian tradition. You know, and having said that, you know, I have goodwill towards all my, you know, you mentioned Gavin Orton. I love them too. Disagree with them very strong. I'm not certain things, but just love them. And have many, many different wonderful evangelical Bible scholars on my podcast. I'm so grateful for what they do. Jewish rabbis on my podcast as well. And I'm grateful for

their work as well, some very good Bible scholars who's doing good things for all those that love the God of Israel. So anyway, so I'm open, but I do think there is a way that's right, and that's for everybody. Yeah. No, for sure. And I, and you hit the nail on the head. That's something that I personally have wrestled with, like, is even to say, you know, I'll take an issue like baptism, which there is disagreement on. And there's some strong language on baptism. And I've seen two spirit-filled, brilliant, godly people look at the same verse and come to different things. And I'm going, okay, that's really tough to have the unity.

On the other hand, I do appreciate Gavin's take. And this is something I always thought, because my Catholic friends would be like, all Protestant is just picking and choosing everything. I was like, well, at a human level, every human is engaging their mind, their faculties, their experience to look at the text and say, I believe Rome's interpretation. I believe that. You know, so I thought that's, but to your point, there's a practicality of, all right, you know, I think it'd be helpful to discuss this as what if we view this as a tiebreaker,

just so we can get closer to being one. Because, you know, and the other question, I'm like, well, that's not a big issue. Like take, you know, I'm Baptist, I think it's a huge issue, but they'll take other things. And I'll be like, well, who decides what a big issue is, right? I mean, these are all important, important things. So, I hear you. Yeah. Yeah, and when I got into reading the church fathers at Calvin Seminary,

I realized that not only was there a difference between modern Christianity and the church fathers in terms of the decision-making process, but there was also a difference on what was considered to be an important question. And the church fathers really regarded virtually everything as important, and that the church should be unanimous. on all of its doctrine. And that's only possible if you have a decision-making apparatus within your organization, a way to make a final decision. And the Catholic Church does have a way to make a final decision. And I think that's implied by the ecclesiology that we see in the New

Testament in, say, Matthew 18, which implies that taking it to the church is the final answer. and when Paul in 1st Corinthians, sorry, 1 Timothy 315 refers to the church as the pillar and the bulwark of the church. I think that also implies one visible church that can make decisions and express its voice. All right, doctor, I know you got to leave us. Thank you so much. We ran out time. Where can people find out more and they want to hear more of you?

Where can they get your books, podcasts, everything? Where should they go? Sure. John Bergsma.com. We'll get you there, or Catholic Bibleteacher.com, we'll redirect if you can't remember how to spell Bergsma. We'll link to it in the show notes for everything. But, Doctor, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. God bless you, and thank you for all the work you're doing. You bet. Thanks, Ryan.