The Pete Quiñones Show - Reading Ivan Ilyin's 'On Resistance to Evil by Force' w/ Dr. Matthew Raphael Johnson - Pt. 12

Episode Date: June 24, 2026

54 MinutesPG-13Dr. Matthew Raphael Johnson is a researcher, writer, and former professor of history and political science, specializing in Russian history and political ideology.Pete and Dr. Johnson continue a reading and commentary of Ivan Ilyin's 1925 book, "On Resistance to Evil by Force."Tolstoy's "What is a Jew?"The Lies of Leftism: Ivan Ilyin, Atheism and the Death of Reason in the East and West by Dr. Matthew Raphael JohnsonDr Johnson's PatreonDr Johnson's CashApp - $Raphael71RusJournal.orgTHE ORTHODOX NATIONALISTDr. Johnson's Radio Albion PageDr. Johnson's Books on AmazonJohnson's Law in Action: Venezuela and the Foreign Policy of Mass PresumptionDr. Johnson's Pogroms ArticleThe Orthodox Nationalist: Karl Marx “On the Jewish Question” (1844)Article: Karl Marx’s Theses on the Jews and the Necessity of Free Trade: Zur Judenfrage (1844) by Matthew Raphael JohnsonPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

With election time approaching, political ads will be inserted into the episode, along with other ads that, frankly, I'm not going to like and you aren't going to like. So please ignore them, skip by them, whatever you have to do. I don't endorse any of the ads that are inserted, but it is another way for me to generate income. So I appreciate you guys putting up with them. If you don't want to deal with them, go to the Picanuena Show.com. can subscribe through Patreon. You can subscribe through Substack, which is my preferred one. Because with both of those, you get an RSS feed, only Patreon and only Substack give you an RSS feed. There's also a link to my website, Gumroad, and SubscribeStar, where you will get

the audio files that you can download and listen to or you can stream in most cases through those locations as well. So if you want to avoid the ads, consider supporting the show. If not, just know none of these ads get any endorsement from me. Skip by them, do what you need to do. I appreciate all of you. Head on over to Pekignana Show.com. You can get the show early and ad free over there. If not, here's a show. I want to welcome everyone back to our reading of Unresistance to Evil by Force by Ivan Eileen. Dr. Johnson. How are you doing today? Well, I don't want to alarm anybody, but my co-host today, I'm not known for having co-host, is cocaine totalitarian, who is unfortunately asleep. Not the best quality in a host, right next to me, though.

So if he wakes, we may meet him finally. Well, I mean, I'm still trying to figure out how cocaine totalitarian is actually sleeping. Yeah, well, you know, it, I was also listening to Frank Zappa at the time, cocaine decisions. You know, there's a whole bunch of things when I was sick and I was in the hospital and that camera that was following me everywhere. And that's where I came up with it. Well, that would be a great cat name. Oh, man.

To be in that mind. Sounds scary. Thank you. All right. Here we go. Picking up where we left off last time. All right. These are the fundamental conditions for correctly posing this problem.

The genuine givness of genuine evil, the presence of its correct perception, the power of love and the questioning soul, the strength of will and the soul that investigates and responds, and finally, the practical necessity of its cessation. The problem can be considered posed only if the poser acknowledges that all these conditions are given, and if during the process of inquiry, he affirms them with the power of his attention, not inadvertently losing them or extinguishing them through conscious affirmation or misinterpretation. The absence of even one of these conditions makes the question false and the answer illusory. Well, the greatness of this book, it lay in the fact that he's just not, he's not using terms and expecting you to understand what he means. That's a humongous problem, especially with, you know, internet debates we had on Facebook and all that stuff I used to have.

everything eventually comes down to the definition of terms. And of course, we live in a society that's so deeply divided that no one agrees on the definition of anything. Or speaks the same language, literally and metaphorically. And so what he's saying here is that we had to go through all of this in order to, in order to even begin talking about the issue. You know, we need to know what love is. We need to know what the free will is. We need to know what evil is. We need to know what resistance is. You need to know what force is.

That's not, we can't assume that, especially in an age where they're trying to ban people like us in America by saying that what we say is in fact violent. I think I said this before, but was Edgar Steele, poor guy, probably murdered in prison. one of our conferences years ago he said they're going to ban us by eventually labeling what we say as an act of violence the critical race theory is based on it that's part of its purpose I was forced to read that stuff

in grad school in 90s there's nothing new to me but that's the point blacks can't do it no one else can do it but whites remember in the flagship book there words that wound I mentioned it before um whites are the word white is um doesn't have a capital letter starting it uh blacks always has a capital B and I

thought that was very interesting so um at least I got an inside look into uh early critical race theory and it's really dealing with uh violence as words so this is all very important. And this is really how you lay down an argument. There's no other way to do it. Should I fight evil through physical resistance if there is no evil and what seems to be evil? There can only be one answer. No, I shouldn't. But what is the value of this imaginary answer to a question that abolishes itself? Should I fight evil with physical resistance if I do not see the evil and do not know what it is? What exactly does it consist of? And does it exist at all? And if so, does it exist now and where exactly?

There can only be one answer. Until you see it and find it, you shouldn't. But what value does such a reassuring answer have to the question of a naive or spiritually blind child? You know, he's kind of already covered this section. You have to know what evil is and have had to experience it before you can say, and has to occur right in front of you, you know, or have tremendous evidence for it. Can't just go off. You know, I think he's talking more on a personal level than a state level.

Because he says, I, in here. You know, you can't just get it third hand and expect to use physical force against. It's something you have to, you have to see you, something you have to witness. And he kind of said that already, but he's laying it down very clearly here. Should I fight evil with physical violence if the evil acts, act harms nothing or harms only what is worth unloved, or something that truly deserves neither defense nor support and should be treated with indifference? The answer is also clear. No, I shouldn't. Should I fight evil through physical resistance if my will is dead to everything external and right in its numbness? If it has no

goals or purposes outside myself and my soul and is not called to anything external, the answer is equally clear. No, I shouldn't. You know, he's predicting our age in a situation where we do have not in Google's sense of dead souls, a great book, by the way, but dead souls as in people with dead eyes, people who, people who, and people without standards using the word evil when their agenda is somehow harm. They have no idea what it is. In fact, they are part of it. you know and again of course the obvious statement

that evil is only worth fighting if it hurts something that matters that's you know you know I don't know why they stop prison riots that would be a sort of an evil that doesn't hurt anything that matters

but but I think that's what his general general idea. He's talking about people, and in addition, talking about people just simply who are dead inside, as we say, which is very common these days. Should I fight evil with physical resistance when affection, persuasion, argument, or appeals to shame and conscience or just as effective, or even more so, the answer is clear. Of course not. The correct formulation of the problem gives a completely different formula for the question, namely, if I see a stream of genuine criminality and there is no possibility of stopping it by mental and spiritual influence,

and I am truly connected by love and will with the beginning of divine good not only in me, but also outside of me, then should I wash my hands of this, step away, and give the villain freedom to blaspheme and destroy spiritually, or should I intervene and stop the villainy with physical resistance, consciously going to danger, suffering, death, and perhaps even the diminution and distortion of my personal righteousness. I mean, if we, the simple concept is, what would Tolstoy do? You know, he was very sheltered. You know, he was in the army, it's true, but, you know, what would a normal person do if he

walked into a room when a child was being beaten. I don't mean spank. I mean beaten, fist, bruises, blood, broken jaw, that kind of thing. I think it would almost be instinctual. There's, there's no way to just stand back. Oh, that's, that's their culture. That's, oh, that's just how they are. Some stupid excuse like that. Obviously, we have an obligation. And it doesn't matter if this guy could beat me up or whatever, it doesn't matter who it is. We have this obligation. And I know that's an extreme example, although these days maybe not so extreme. But, you know, that's a basic idea here. If I see a genuine criminality, a stream of genuine criminality, there's no possibility of stopping it by mental or spiritual influence. You can't,

John McGo into that room and quote the gospel of Luke to him. I think it's going to work very much. I'm truly connected by love and will, which even if you don't know the person, and, you know, there's still your people. They're still human. They're still, they know how to feel pain. You're still connected one way or another.

the intervention, I think, would be, in my case, would be instinctual. And it's got me in trouble before. Not something that extreme, but, you know, the abortion, we did a sidewalk, sidewalk counseling, we called it. at, um, in Hartwood University of Hartford. And one thing I noticed very interestingly was that almost every, everyone going in there was the man dragging the woman in. Now this abortionist who was Jewish, of course,

um, hired a bunch of, I think there were mostly homosexuals or, you know, black leather jackets, the old act up group. We were all probably dead now. Um, to serve as his security force for a while. And one of them came out and said, help me. And she's being dragged.

And I instinctually went forward. And one of these guys got in front of me and I hit him. I hit him hard. I know how to punch. And I got in a serious trouble for that. But, you know, it was when I went forward,

It was pure instinct. Even when I hit the guy, it was pure instinct. You know, I didn't sit down and reason this out in theocratic method, using dialectics to figure out whether I should act or not. With the one or only time, one never did that. And those, you know, abortion was my first issue bringing me into this life. That was my number one issue when I was in high school. And going on some, this is, you know, 1991, maybe.

And I was shocked when I saw that almost, almost always, the woman didn't want to be there. She was crying. She wanted to go back in the car. She wanted to do anything. But she was the only one. I was right there, I guess. You were not that far from each other. And she said, please help me.

Help me or please help me. I moved forward instinctively. I mean, I don't know what I was going to do. The guy got my way. That's what happened. So it's not even a matter of reason in this case. It's a matter of instinct. Here, he's saying that there is a legitimate reason for all this.

There's a reason for it, and it makes sense. Chapter 9. On the morality of flight. This is how the problem of resistance to evil is posed in its most acute, tense, and tragic aspect, resolving the question of the permissibility of physical coercion and suppression. It is clear from the outset that this approach not only differs significantly from the approach put forward by the preachers of non-resistance, but also completely rejects it. For their approach rests entirely on an insufficient flawed spiritual experience, one that is purely personal, objectively unverified, and philosophically immature. Wow.

I almost want to stop right there and let you, but I'll finish this. they do not objectively and authentically experience what they speak of, naively starting from their own spiritual states, and unaware that this is philosophically dangerous and unacceptable. Well, yeah, I understand. You know, when you read Tolstoy, his, there's an arrogance there. I mean, he comes right out and says that I'm the only one who is properly understanding Christ's words. I'm the only one who fully on it, you know, the churches be damned, I know better. And it was, at least in the, maybe it's, I read it in the English translation, but he seems to be very arrogant in that respect. But it's a very weak argument.

Now, I don't know about Tolstoy's personal experience. I don't know his day-to-day life even prior to being a landowner. but he was very sheltered. He lived in a very healthy society compared to, well, I guess anything's healthy compared to 2026 America. Our world, you know, totally recast this whole issue. And it's just, it's deeply, to say flawed is, you know, to understate the problem.

But he was absolutely convinced that he and he alone had the understanding of the gospel. Of course, totally rejected the Old Testament, including the Psalms and everything else. Didn't say so, but clearly he rejected the Old Testament, didn't want to even talk about it. He only used a few sentences in the New Testament, which is already, you know that someone's dangerous

when they refuse to do that. The Bible is a very substantial compendium of many books that are very different from each other and are, God, many centuries apart in their authorship or more so. And this gets me into the Old Testament issue. You know, most of my argument in favor of Christians being able to use violence in certain circumstances, you know, hypothetically speaking, just war theory kind of thing you know st augustine lorence there is a you know a reliance on the old testament there um that isn't telling us to wipe anybody out but christ never rejected anything

that they did the very fact that christ imitated the prophets who were violent men it's one of the first things he did was was you know kicking out the be money changes from the temple. That symbol has so much power. We could talk for years about what it really means. He made a whip for himself. He didn't want to hurt his hands. So he made a whip and sort of whack at him with it. He hurt them. He doesn't bring that up unless I miss it. He doesn't bring it up. But it's just a very, very weak. His argument is very weak. But he is one of the more extreme pacifist. You walk into a room and a kid is being molested. A tall story says you go and you talk to the guy. You tell him how awful this is. You shouldn't be doing them. You know,

I'm pretty sure a meth head wouldn't listen to you or something like that. You know, there's many reasons why someone won't do that, but that the use of violence against him would be incorrect. But of course, he lived in a society that's much healthier than this one. Each person's experience is limited, both in the extent of their given abilities and in the composition of the contents initially accessible to them. And each person has a task of cultivating, purifying, and deepening their abilities in objectively examining, increasing, and deepening their life's contents. Neglecting this, they condemn themselves to spiritual deterioration and poverty. This is a big deal. You know it's a big deal to me, which is why you paused before. no one really talks about the Old Testament

unless you're talking about the Psalms or maybe the Proverbs. Why? Because it's long. It's difficult. It's violent. And they have a tough time accepting a lot of that. Moses just by himself, let alone someone like Gideon and the rest of it. talking about so, you know, that the individual alone is capable of understanding all of this just by himself is absurd. It, you know, you're talking about ancient cultures.

You have to understand the basic context of everything. What these terms mean, what these ideas mean. They can come from nothing. And to reject the, you know, what's that one psalm that's really nasty? I think it's one, is it 121? He says, I want his wife to be killed, I want his mother to be killed, and want his father to be killed.

I forget it off the top of my head. I don't know what they do with that one, but I have seen New Testaments with Justice Psalms in churches before for funerals and things like that. But even the New Testament, it's not obvious what he means. You know, insults that he uses all the time,

like dogs your fathers of the devil you know this is and I won't say it here but you know that the vile terms that it would translate in English and he said that all the time Christ was a difficult man

he was rough he was tough and he was he used his mouth he was very harsh with his language what else could you do he's dealing with a corrupt class he's dealing with a corrupt class that was corrupting the Israel life that already had been long since corrupted. And well, the prophets didn't do it, so I guess I got to do it.

And you know he wasn't silent when he was whipping them out of the temple. But even talking about something like Leviticus, the layman can't read that. Even well-educated one. This is why the church exists. Church exists. The men who put the Bible together, the St. Athanasius and the St. Kiphrin and all those,

they also wrote commentaries on the very books that they included. And that's where you have to go. And even that's not easy. The church exists to translate this stuff into normal language. But I get, I get viscerally angry.

I mean, I just, I can't. When someone says, I picked up the Bible to read it the other day, you know, I went, okay, I got to be cool. You know, I didn't like it. I didn't like it. You know, this has happened to me, especially in college. It's not something you can read on the toilet. It's not something that you can read simply just one book out of many. And the Old Testament especially.

I don't have to tell you about revelations. The symbols there are so substantial. So that's really what he's getting to here. And that's what Tolstoy did. He took a few lines, the New Testament, and that's it, and built his theological edifice. That's what he's condemning here. By demanding this, he undermines his own work and transforms philosophical inquiry and research into a subjective outpouring and teaching into propaganda for, his personal way of life with all its shortcomings and false opinions. No matter how gifted a person may be,

he may like the bad and the ugly, he may overlook the profound and indifferent pass by the sacred and divine. His approval does not testify to the worth of what is approved. His censure may be based on purely personal aversions and passions or on the panicky deviations of his unconscious fears. His conviction may be the product of abstract invention, a tendency towards paradox, mental affectation, unbridled protest, or ostentatious stylization, woe betide the philosopher if the danger of such teaching escapes him. If religiosity fails to teach him intellectual humility, if he begins to revere his own passions and aversions, then his entire philosophy will prove, at best, an apt self-description, a self-portrait of his soul, and is teaching a call to reproduce this portrait in other souls.

This is exactly what I'm... He is, he is sending a bullet to Tolstoy here with this. Yes, he's an excellent writer. No one denies that. He was a very good landowner. You know, he had serfs, more or less. He was very good to them. That's true.

No one denies that. No one denies that in dealing with him. He was a decent man. It's also true. But, you know, claiming to know, and even if you say that Christ removed everything in the Old Testament, as many say,

well, what's the evidence of that? Christ was very specific of which parts of the Old Testament he removed, like the multiple wives, for example. A couple of other things, but he was very specific in what he removed. from the Old Testament. In other words, you know, and especially since he acted like the pray, he quoted it all the time. He quoted the Psalms. He quoted the Old Testament constantly in his own

speaking. Christ assumed that his listeners knew this, knew what we call the Old Testament, you know, at least marginally well. But we can't talk like that to the average American because they don't know anything. Their entire world is a sham. everything that the average American believes is false. They live in a bubble created by the regime. And it's great to say that, you know, the Bible, the bubble is popping. And there's, you know, some people are getting very upset by that. But, and these are the people who are going to go in and try to read Leviticus.

You know, it's a height of arrogance in the height of stupidity. All righty. to teach, for example, about the relationship between evil and love. It is not enough to imagine what philosophically unsophisticated laymen usually imagine. Evil is not at all what outrages me as love is not at all a pitiful shudder at the sight of another's suffering or satisfaction from another's success. If a thinker settles for this interpretation, and moreover, imagines himself the processor of the ultimate truth, that he ensures for himself, a tragic comic results in the form of a pretentious false teaching, and the matter is not at all

reduced to an error in a logical definition. The error must be sought not so much in thinking as in spiritual experience. Not every person has a genuine experience of genuine evil, genuine love, religiosity, will, virtue, etc. The vast majority of people do not care about acquiring it and and does not know how it is acquired. Many perhaps could not acquire it, even if they wanted to and began to try. That's, I mean, it's like, it's like I wrote this. They don't know that they don't know. I talk about this just, I've talked about this with you and other topics.

You know, questions aren't being answered. No one even knows those questions were possible. And to believe, as Luther did, that I'm inspired, and therefore I have a right to impose this on people. And told story was even far more dogmatic. Think of the peasant wars after Luther's Reformation. They saw in the Bible what they wanted to find. We're all equal. We're all spiritual equal.

We're all the same. therefore you can't we can't we don't have dues or corvay or anything else that's what they got out of it they got out of it exactly what they wanted to and it led to the deaths of many thousands um the movement in china after the opium wars i can't think of it off the top of my head the tai ping the tai ping rebellion think about 10 million people were killed because some guy claimed to be christ um or at least his representative I can't remember. It's been a while since I've gone through it, but because the dynasty failed to fight off the British and the country was dead to opium, the Taiping rebellion came into existence as a way to restore the truth in China, even though it was Christian or kind of semi-Christian. and the guy actually believed that he was inspired.

The Holy Spirit, I think he thought he was Christ, the second coming, I think. And just, you know, he reads this stuff, you know, in translations, doesn't listen to the church on the matter. He reads and gets whatever he, whatever he wants to get out of it. The problem with all the books of the Bible, it's true. today a modern man could pretty much find

sanction for anything but that's not the reality it's just extremely complicated complicated and that's what we're here for that's why you have scholars who understand the ancient culture

what Israel was what Babylon was what Egypt was what these symbols mean the context of these symbols this takes a lot of work I've always said the mark there's some great amateurs out there don't get me wrong

sometimes are necessary especially in medicine but the mark of an amateur historian is when they read back modern sensibilities into the ancient or medieval world they use phrases like human rights

or something like that that's their mark professional historians do that too of course but that's That's the mark of someone who shouldn't be studying this stuff. You cannot read our postmodern decayed, dying society and its language and its way of thinking into the book of Leviticus.

It doesn't, you know, but it's being done every day. What happened after Luther? Partisanism became what the Catholics said it was going to become. an insane just explosion of sex and sectarians to this day continuing to split and split and split

and split everyone claiming to have some conception of the truth and of course that's why the church the church exists there has to be an authority there has to be an authority

to say yes and no to these things just like you know any other thing there has to be an authority. It isn't just you. You know, when he says above, you know, we're limited. All of us are limited. We have all questions. We go to others to get them answered when it comes to. And they bet their soul on this stuff. They read the Bible, however they want. They bet they're betting their soul on their own private interpretation of something. They don't really know anything. And I've seen this a million times. I've debated with them a

million times. I get nowhere a million times. So you want to bet your soul on this? So that's, you know, that's what he's talking about and it's extremely profound. It would be difficult to demand this of every ordinary person, but the teaching philosopher, who is satisfied with his personal everyday ideas, introduces the spiritual boundaries of his personality into the sacred objects he depicts and consciously or unconsciously attempts to legitimize and canonize, his own weaknesses and blindness for humanity. Unfortunately, in Russian philosophical journalism, this method of creating and teaching is all too widespread,

and even exceptional artistic talent does not always save one from this false and harmful path. I wonder if he's referring to Berdyev there. I've read many times. I have an article on him, of course. you know he kind of created his own personal orthodoxy or later on well actually no not later on

this is 1920 in the 20s so Vladimir Slovia another one created an entire theology but the 18th century you know I'm sorry the 19th century

didn't know World War I or World War II you know pretentious false teaching you know, the pretension. I've used that word so many times. There's no nice way to say it. There's no nice way to correct somebody. No, that is not said in the book of Deuteronomy. That's not said by Solomon.

That's not said in the book of Davidica. Here's what's, you know, this is the issue. This is, you know, and of course, I'm limited in this. And they don't care about, you know, they simply don't, it doesn't bother them. And, um, legitimizing. and canonizing their own weaknesses. Yeah, I think either he's talking about either Vrdaev or Slovak there, or maybe both of them.

Posing the problem of the permissibility of combating evil through physical resistance requires from the philosopher. First and foremost, the presence of a true spiritual experience in the perception and experience of evil. love and further morality and religiosity. For this entire problem lies in the fact that a morally noble soul seeks in its love a religiously correct volitional response to the violent onslaught of external evil. To interpret the problem otherwise is to evade it or dismiss it from discussion. Oh, he didn't know the half of it. You know, he died a few decades later, but he didn't see what we have to do.

deal with. I'm sorry, I use incorrect grammar there as lay in the fact. Sorry, I can't speak English. You could tell that I interpreted a lot of this myself, but along with the machine. And, you know, the machine knows better Russian than name. So I'm definitely, this is definitely incorrect is that you know maybe not perfect but it's definitely correct um but to have a true spiritual experience well how do you know which one is true which one is false how do you know without an external authority um an experience of evil is the exact same thing you have to be able to confront it we are evil to too many people and love on top of it or subornos all these things, you know, to have direct experience with it,

not just having read about it in the book somewhere, which is why the, you know, the American, the official American scholars like Gary Hamburg, I always pick on him because he's such an idiot. At Notre Dame, you know, they fall into these traps all the time. They don't get it, and they know it to add another layer of BS to all this, is that they can't say anything that's politically incorrect when you're a major, tenured professor somewhere.

If you do, you have to, you know, just forget about it. Put it in the bottom drawer, as it said. So people have spiritual experiences. Well, how do you know this? How do you know it was spiritual? How do you know it was, you know, something good rather than something evil? I said this to people who claim to have powers, you know, these pagans who think that they can speak with the dead and all this. I said, how do you know who you're talking to?

How you don't sound a demon pretending to be, assuming that they are getting it from someone else? How do you know it's not a demon pretending to be some? The demons love to mess with human beings. They love it. They hate us. That's why they do it. And of course, I never get a straight answer. So, anyway, go ahead.

Thus, Leo Tolstoy and his followers try first of all to avoid this problem or to gloss over it. Under the guise of solving it, they are constantly trying to show the seeking soul that there is no such problem at all. Because, firstly, there is no such terrible evil, but there are only errors and mistakes, weaknesses, passion, sins and falls, suffering in disasters that are harmless to another spirit. Secondly, if evil were to be discovered in other people, then one must turn away from it and not turn to it. Do not judge or condemn for it, then it will be the same as if it did not exist. Thirdly, this problem will not even occur to a loving person. For to love means to pity a person, not to cause him grief and to persuade him to love to love to, and in other respects not to interfere with him, so that love to love him.

Love excludes even the possibility of thinking about physical resistance. Yeah, keep in mind, love is pity that he's talking about them. He's not talking about what love actually is. He's talking about the people who believe that a saint always, you know, has to, you know, like this with their head slightly to the side, as meek as could be. So he's talking about his opponents. Go ahead. Fourthly, this problem is empty because a moral person cares about

self-improvement and gives others freedom of self-government, turning his will away from them and seeing in everything that happens the will of God. And finally, if we are already fighting against external evil, then there are always other, better, and more appropriate means and measures. This means that the very essence of evil and the attitude toward it, the very essence of love and morality, the will in its direction, the very fundamental nature of religiosity, and even the composition of human relationships and conflicts from beginning to end are interpreted in such a way that the problem is ignored or removed from discussion. Its dramatic element is dissolved in sentimental ideology. Its tragic depth is hushed up. Virtue enjoys its love, while vice unhindered

pours its evil will into the world. Yeah, you know, he's talking about Tolstoy and his followers, like the Quakers and other sex like that that simply don't believe in evil and that there are nothing more than mistakes or errors. I've seen this in court shows before where someone has committed a heinous act and the lawyer said, this was a mistake he made. No, it's not a mistake. you know, throwing away your phone bill, that might be a mistake. Not this, not this pattern of things. You don't believe in evil to begin with. It's simply not going to matter.

And it's not going to come out. This notion that Christianity at Christ was this long-haired hippie who wanted to accept them. Where are they getting this from? But it's extremely common. Yes, he did have many tender moments. There's nothing in the New York. Testament where he even smiles or laughs. Not one thing. Never. He was difficult. He was he was he was he was he was rough on

everybody especially himself. You know and this the will of God. Oh well it's the will of God. I don't mean we can't fight fate all that so they don't have to do anything. Isn't that nice? They come up with stupid things like the rapture to take any because you know there's no there's no suffering in the rapture. you're just taken up while everyone else suffered. You know, got all these ex-momsters all turn to fundamentalism, evangelical. So it makes sense. They don't have to really do anything. So you notice that a lot of famous people who, you know, rock stars like Alice Cooper,

Nicol McBrain, who I always loved, they come to Christianity as not a Roman Catholic, not as Orthodox. they come to Christianity as evangelical because salvation is zero you don't have to do anything you know you have to confess your sins to God whatever that means you know in your own and pray in your own words once for a while that's it you're saved the day is over you know and as all of this garbage is going on vice unhindered poor It's evil will into the world. I can't believe it. You know, the Soloscriptora people,

you know, it's very rare that a Protestant has ever read the church's fathers. Very rare. And the men who put the Bible together believed in the Virgin Mary. You know that, right? And they said the liturgy with the real presence. You knew that, too, right? And on and on, on. These are the men who put the Bible together.

Usually I get nowhere with that. But this kind of institutionalized ignorance is what's going on here. And again, as that's going on, vice unhindered pours its evil into the world. Especially people who say, oh, it's the will of God, or you can't fight fate. It's the same movie, a law-abiding citizen. That was the slogan that was said many times in that movie. You can't fight fate as he's flashing somebody, which just makes life very easy. I never got this idea of atheists think that, you know, Christianity was invented for our comfort.

That's about the last thing Christianity is for. They're the last thing. There's nothing comfortable about it if they understood it. But they would have to understand it, but they don't feel like doing. So they're not going to bother doing that. And so they keep on with these silly ideas. Again, while vice unhindered forces evil into the world, evil will into the world. I was going to say they read the church fathers to look for errors so that they can dismiss everything that they write.

I mean, John Calvin said that St. Ignatius of Antioch's letters are just forgeries. He just dismissed him as forgeries, letters that were taken as not as scripture, but as historical documents for 15 centuries, all of a sudden they're just forgeries. which was a Jewish idea too. The connection between the development of Protestantism, post-Luther, and Judaism is very clear. Same thing for Islam. That's about as good as they can do. And how to hell would Calvin know?

You know, it's, but you take that idea and you make it writ large. And this is a society that we're forced to live in. People who, you know, have no standards. but they're going to condemn us for failing our standard. You know, we have very high standards. We're going to always fall. Someone without standards has no right to condemn us, but they do. And it's easy that way.

So it seems like atheism is created for our comfort. You know, there's nothing comfortable about the religions that we adhere to. But there is, it is comfortable to be a Protestant because you don't have to do anything. Thus, Tolstoy and his associates accept and present their escape from this problem as its solution. It is difficult to find in their writings any judgment on this matter that does not reveal the defects of their spiritual experience and their desire to evade the question and answer. And if we look more closely at this philosopher's escape from the problem, he is resolving, the deep foundations will inevitably be revealed.

Here it's enough to touch on the ethical foundations merely to point. them out in order to illuminate its origins. I think maybe we should stop here. And when we go back, the next time, we say that these are, these are the foundations here of what he's talking with. This is going to go on for a while. But unless you do you agree? I agree that works. Okay.

So, you know, I read in my... In my religion is a certain name of the book, my responses to critics, Tolstoy's saying. I read the whole thing many times. And talk about evasion, it doesn't deal with basic issue. He asks some good questions of themselves. This doesn't really answer them.

But it's just enough to have his followers, you know, accept it and go beyond it. Remember, Tolstoy based his entire, I mean, he can create a church, but in believing that he was the only one. Finally, Christianity's been properly interpreted. And he wrote it in a very dogmatic way. This is what Christ said.

This is what he meant. He was very dogmatic in how he spoke. And I found that very strange, sometimes even harshly how he listed things. This is what Christ meant. He bases his whole theology on a few lines. In the New Testament, talk about anything else. But we saw, and we read about his worship of the Jews early on,

we know that Tolstoy had a much larger agenda. The Judaizers go back to, many centuries, prior to that. I've written on that ad nauseum, you know, as a way to subvert the monarchy. But in my opinion, of course, he was not a philosopher. he was not a theologian. He was a first-class writer in a literary sense, and that's it. Now, all of a sudden, as he gets older, now he says, I and I alone know what, we're not necessarily I alone, but I have led the charge about learning what Christ really said and what it really meant, what he really meant.

Everyone else prior before me was absolutely wrong because they were involved in warfare and everything else. So his worship of the Jews, there was a strong Gnostic element to a lot of what he said, people around him. You know, it's shocking how he spoke in such a dogmatic terminology. You know, he did have a, yeah, I mean, I'm not, you know, it's, he's a credit to Russia in when it comes to literature. you know, the red pill issue with women was probably first laid out in Anna Karinana, with Voronski and the Hussar. And I have an article on that, talking about, you know, what women want, because you had a sexual revolution amongst the high nobility at the end of the 19th century.

Thanks to the Freemasons and other groups like this. The community of wives' idea of early ancient communism, that was pretty incredible. I don't know if he even meant to do it, but he certainly did. And, you know, but before his death, he spoke in these dogmatic terms.

And I don't think the church did any favors by communicating him. I think we all know what the stricent effect is. You know what the stricent effect is? Of course, yeah. You know, I think that's what they did. He was already quite famous, you know, excommunicating him. You know, he wasn't going to commune anyway. He didn't want anything to do with you.

It's like excommunicating Lenin. It didn't make any sense at all. But again, I keep repeating that. This crap goes on while evil, unhindered, pours its evil into the world. And that's really the key here. and these guys will not resist it, don't understand it, never experienced it,

or don't want to experience it. Or if they did, they're going to run the other way. And they'll say, it's the will of God that that'll happen. I had no responsibility for it. And we're getting to an age now where this stuff isn't just hypothetical anymore.

The father said that the church at the end times, as tiny as it's going to be, is going to suffer more than anyone else and he's going to deal with things no one else has dealt with before. They didn't even have a language for it. Like St. Nylos of Athos. You know, he talked about what the end is going to be.

He talked about sexual license and usuring all that stuff. But a lot of the stuff that we deal with, he didn't have, there was no Greek equivalent for it for it. Because that was inconceivable back then. I keep saying, take one of these saints and bring them from the fourth century and bring them to American University, see how long. He'll throw himself from a bridge. You're all possessed. I can't take it.

You know, and they have to understand that, especially when we're dealing with how we as individuals act. Maybe I'll edit this. Maybe I won't. Who the hell knows? I was just talking with myself muted. So waiting to see if Dr. Johnson gets back. I can add him back. We'll just have to end it with,

and edit what he up until that point. So go to the show notes and supports Dr. Johnson's work, and everyone take care of themselves. We'll see on the next episode. Take care.