The Pete Quiñones Show - Reading Ivan Ilyin's 'On Resistance to Evil by Force' w/ Dr. Matthew Raphael Johnson - Pt. 37

Episode Date: October 3, 2026

48 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 Pekignanay 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 Pekignona 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 On Resistance to Evil by Force by Ivan Eileen, Dr. Johnson. How are you doing today? I'm doing all right. I like the little smirk you have. you ask me that um as some as you know my um have we got over this already my my book on the

russian royal family's murder has been is out i have eight more coming i guess or something like that um it's i can't even keep up with them anymore it's like self-imposed torture um although i do have to say my my ukraine book is one of the best have ever done And it's definitely worth your reader's time, listeners time. I guarantee you there's nothing else like it. There's nothing else like anything I do. I get money, I think, half the time because I'm unique. No one talks like me.

And so when someone tries to talk like me, it's clearly plagiarism. So, yeah. We went away on Wednesday for a couple, Tuesday for a couple days. I needed it desperately to turn my brain off to a place called Ohio Pile, which needs a new name, as I've said to you before. It needs a new name. It's a terrible name for any place. But it was necessary. My wife is having a brutal time now with her in the, my wife is having a brutal time now with her in.

Trariatic arthritis. But when she gets into a hot tub, disappears. years goes away like she's perfectly healthy person. You know, it's really an incredible thing. She doesn't deserve to suffer like this. It's such a fairly young age, you know. But she still, you know, she doesn't take it out on me or anything else. And that's something that I credit her for.

And it's a big deal. That's why I say she's one of the few real good ones out there. You have one of those, don't you? I do. We just got back yesterday. from Savannah. I think we were there for five days. Yeah, we had a good time.

She got to celebrate her birthday there. It was fun. And you did no work. You did no mental, you know, like this kind of work, right? Oh, I live streamed on Sunday, but I got permission first. You had an intellectual work at all. You didn't do any of it? No, I live streamed, which really is an intellectual work.

It's just, you know, bullshitting. Oh, okay. All right. Yeah, I did nothing. I watched The Simpsons, and that's, you know, I had to shut down completely. My brain was simply, you know, it's just like any, it's like a muscle. It will get eventually get tired. Even one that's in as good as shape as mine's in, but it can get brutal.

That's with the crap we have to deal with every day. And we do it so people, other people don't have. to. We can analyze it and bring it to them so they don't have to worry about it. We do all the legwork, which is okay, it's what we do, but, you know, that does take a toll. It takes a toll. And we have to be careful, just because we get older. Yeah. Yeah, you have to take a break from study and research every once in a while, or else you just, your brain starts to melt. Yeah, intellectual Exhaustion

It's completely different from physical exhaustion Totally different Physical exhaustion, you know, a couple days off, you're fine Intellectual exhaustion, you know, lead you to just You know, anxiety, depression, you just It's just, it comes back, of course, but it's not something I wish on many people And it happens, especially in our age

we know the truth but no one listens to us it's like a curse that we have so every once in a while you gotta shut down get away and say I don't care I'm watching the Simpsons I don't care what the hell happens all righty let's uh let us move forward with the reading here let me see

see how much of this we got left till the next we should finish this off today this chapter We'll see what happens. All right, here we go. The tragedy of evil and the struggle against it is resolved precisely through the acceptance and fulfillment of this feat. And the feat itself proves all the greater, the more vivid the ability to illuminate it with the ray of divine perfection remains in the one performing it. One must see not only the necessity of one's own effort and action, but also the human hopelessness that gave rise to,

it. What is needed is not the expedient psychic mechanism of the sword, but a spiritual organism, clear-sighted in its decision and strong enough to endure this vision, not only to perform the deed, but also to illuminate it afterward with God's light and, having seen its unrighteousness, and to perform it again according to the measure of spiritual necessity, and accept all this not for personal reasons, but in a religious manner. Okay, we're at the, essentially the summary of what we've been dealing with for however many weeks. What is it? 32, 33? Oh, 38? Hit the wrong button.

And we're at the, you know, this is the conclusion. Everything we've been dealing about in bits and pieces is now coming to, coming to a conclusion. And it's not necessarily easy to put together. Oh, shoot. I didn't mean to do that. Hit the wrong button. Audacity's coming on now. We'll keep reading. I've got to take care of this. Go ahead. The struggle against evil always demands heroism.

Not only when it is waged through inner efforts that nurture a person and cultivate their spiritual wings, but also when it is waged through the compelling and severing power of the sword. The heroism of the sword lies not only in the difficulty, the turmoil, the deprivation, the danger, and the suffering, but also in the fact that the swordsman requires special spiritual effort to defend the personal spiritual Kremlin. For his heroism is the heroism of a consciously and confidently accepted injustice. Moreover, a man who takes up his sword and a hopeless struggle against evil is heroic because he thereby lifts the burden of the world, faced with a fundamental tragic dilemma, leaving him no moral solution. He religiously accepts this hopelessness and choosing the least unjust and most difficult path of the sword.

He accepts this path as his destiny. Well, we just talked about that before we started the reading. It is heroic, so to speak. It's a very, very difficult life. And when he talks about the spiritual, he's talking about the walls that you have, your own standards, in other words. The Kremlin walls. Your parameters, so to speak, you can't violate. It's very hard to engage evil on the battlefield or anywhere else and not seek.

glory or credit for it, even though that's not supposed to be what you're doing. There's a whole bunch of very good men, usually men, who are excellent warriors, who want the credit for it, and pretty soon they're doing it for their own glory. They're doing the right thing for the wrong reason. And this is, again, part of the conclusion here. He doesn't really mention Tolstoy much anymore. But the final refutation, this isn't about violence. This isn't about, this is, this is about the restoration of something good. This isn't about human glory. This is about God's glory only. You think about the small number of people who are capable of that, who are capable of waging, you know, sacrificing so much on any level, whatever they're doing in the cause,

and yet refusing to, you know, take any credit for it whatsoever. You know, the old epic tragedies are that way. The old heroic dramas were all that way. You know, none of us really necessarily wanted to do this. We were dragged to do this because the world around us was dying. I wanted to be a musician, and yet I was dragged to this kind of thing. I didn't want to talk about race, but I have no choice. It's everywhere. It's being swushed at my face. There's nothing I can do about it.

You don't like it. But we do this, you know, for the sake of the restoration of natural law, which includes nationalism, the proper understanding of the individual or the person. And of course, remember, he's writing this in Weimar, Germany. will come to the end of Weimar, Germany where there's riots every other day in Berlin and everywhere else. And there's very few men that could fit that bill. I get all upset when I get plagiarized.

I shouldn't be happy that this stuff is getting spread around, even by big names. I shouldn't be upset by that, but I am. It's very difficult to try to try do this just solely for the good and not for and not for yourself. It's almost almost impossible. Religious acceptance of one's fate is the fundamental heroism to which every human being is called, not an acceptance of fate in the sense of quietism, determinism, weakness of will or fatalism, but a volitional, vital and religiously devoted acceptance that contemplates life as a service,

illuminates it with the ray of one's calling and pours all one's personal strength into the religious service of the religious calling. Man's destiny is to deal with the rampage of intractable evil in his life on earth. There is no escaping this fate. There are only two options, either to unworthily turn away from it and live it out in blindness and cowardice or to worthily accept it, understanding that acceptance as service and remaining faithful to one's calling, but this is precisely what it means to take up the sword in the name of God's work. Now, I know this isn't a precise analogy, but I just finished reading a book on the French Foreign Legion.

And to those who actually have criminal background, not severe criminal background, but enough that they have to leave their country. They get a new name. you know, their passport is gone. They learn how to speak French. And it's almost as if they are making up for their sins by fighting for whatever the French government wants them to do. Now, it has nothing to do with whether or not it's just or unjust what the French government wants them to do. You don't hear about them very much anymore.

But it's just that you are, you know, when they were Indo-China, they were fighting a great evil. They were fighting Marxism. But if they were fighting just in Algeria and colonialism, okay, maybe that's not the best cause, but the point is that you're making up, you personally are building your virtue. You're making up for something.

You can't just pretend. And keep in mind, a sociopath doesn't understand any of this. A sociopath is such an easy life. he's no conception of whether he's done well or good. He'll say it. He knows how to act it out. But in reality, he doesn't know what any of it means. So it's not even turning in blindness and cowardice.

He just doesn't care away the other. Worthly accepting our place in the struggle. We all have a place, I guess. Even if it's writing checks to us or people like us. Or going into the front lines like I did. Charlottesville many other places. But I always saw it as religious calling. We'll see here later on as he builds this conclusion over the next few,

with only one chapter left. And there really is no conclusion. So that's what I'm saying. We're in it now. We fight, we do these things, at least in part, it covered over our many sins. And that has something to do with it as well. In this acceptance of his fate and a sword, man lays down his soul and affirms his spirit and dignity.

He lays down his soul not only in the lower sense that he agrees to give up his earthly life and the struggle against the enemy, but also in the higher sense that he takes upon himself the commission of deeds whose burden he bears, perhaps for the rest of his life, shuddering and revolting at the immediate memory of them. He accepts not only the burden of death, but also the burden of killing, and the burden of killing, and the burden of killing lies not only the heaviness of the act itself, but also the heaviness of the decision, responsibility, and perhaps guilt. And in this outcome, in this heroic resolution of the fundamental tragic dilemma, he is not righteous, but right.

You know, many times I have been, I've just destroyed someone in a debate online. But one thing that I always do, always do, Not even online. Is build them up. Well, you made a couple of good points, though. You know, he realized he has nowhere to go. And you don't want to just pile on. You don't want to humiliate the guy.

You know, that would be totally destructive. You did have a couple of good points there. I understand why you're saying what you're saying. But you have to say things like that. You can't the people love those people who love piling on maybe aren't the proper people to be a part of this. Whether it's guilt, you know, that I did this to them, that I've destroyed their self-esteem for the, you know, short-term. You know, yeah, it's funny sometimes, but not really.

When I was much younger, I was on the other side of that. You know, I was defeated in debate with professors and stuff like that. That's how I got to be pretty good at it. But no, no, when you start winning, you have to start being nice. And I don't care what anyone says about that. You can't just pile on once they're finished, once you're done. You know, a boxer doesn't do that. They just start pounding the guy even when he's, you know, down.

That's not the Western way of war or fighting. We don't do the same thing verbally or intellectually. You know, we try to, you know, that's how you convert people. That's how you bring people over. I suppose it's kind of what we're doing, that we're in the business of conversion. Christ did not teach the way of the sword. He taught love, but not what. once, not in a single word, did he condemn the sword? Neither in the sense of organized

statehood for which the sword is the ultimate sanction, nor in the sense of military rank and deeds. Already his first disciples, the apostles Peter and Paul, 1st Peter 2 13th through 17, Romans 13, 1 through 7, revealed the positive meaning of this non-condemnation. True, the apostles were instructed that the sword was not their business and that all who take up the sword will perish by the sword, Matthew 2652, and Christ did not desire militant defense for himself. However, it was precisely in this refusal to defend himself and in the question of paying the tax, Matthew 22, and Mark 12, and in the conversation with Pilate, John 18, and 19, that one can sense the spirit of free, royal loyalty, which the apostles later affirmed,

and which such world deniers as Athenegros, Athenegoras, Tertilian, and others subsequently failed to grasp and loss. So earthly death from the taken sword remains the highest gospel punishment predicted for the sword bearer. Well, he clarifies that over the next chapter or so. But, you know, the Jews of that day, or the Israelites, we should call them. Whatever, as corrupt as they had become, beyond corrupt.

They saw the Messiah as this military figure, was going to destroy the Roman Empire, at least, as far as the Middle East is concerned, rebuild the temple at Jerusalem, you know, and just, and really change everything. Christ was pro-Roman. It was nothing that Christ said that suggested otherwise.

He used a, when he talked about the coin, the taxpaying issue, he mentioned in Matthew 22, and had a picture of Caesar on it. Well, observant Jews at that point couldn't use that. They had an image on it. Christ was using it. Remember, Christ was raised, despite his, you know, going to the temple for his education, He was raised in an area, Diacopoulos, with a heavily Greek, Greco-Roman background. And his human side knew it very, very well.

So he was the very last thing that these Jews wanted. You know, one of the ways you know Christianity is true is that if you wanted to build a religion at that time, you would do the complete opposite of what Christ did. He pissed everybody off. you know, everyone at one point or another, he angered beyond belief. Being pinned up to the cross was the ultimate humiliation. This is, really? That's what they would say.

How can you possibly think? And what the two men on the cross also said to him and the two different attitudes on either side of him. But we talk about the word palermo or fullness. Well, Rome was the perfect place to spread the faith. whether in Greek or in Latin, the system of roads, everything else, this was the time for Logos to become Fletch. That's another use of the word Burma that we could, it has many uses, but it comes up in this book quite a bit. And again, and his refusal to defend him, he's not making a principle of not defending himself.

He knew he had to go and die. That was as part of the mission. It did mean that. for in general um this conversation with pilot he did he showed no obviously you know how to speak latin the human side of him did um and when the um roman soldier came to him and asked him how i should how i should how can be saved you have to give everything you have to give everything away and he walked away sad didn't say anything about resigning his commission said nothing about uh putting a sword away never as a matter of as a matter of principle and we have so many military saints you know in the first centuries of Christianity um Rome was a huge part of of Christ's mission basically supporting it

which is why the Jews in the Talmud hated everything Rome was everything at Rome could be in a third Rome in Moscow especially and but people forget about you know a Jew couldn't use a coin that had Caesar's picture on it would be in violation of one of the commandments, right? Christ was making fun of them and using it because he didn't accept some of that stuff. Everything he did, whether it be his humiliation

or having his, what was the first sinned like? All the apostles cut and run, ran, get away from him, denied him, hid somewhere, except for John. This is how you get to build a religion? I mean, even if it's true, you're going to lie about it. You're going to act like they were, you know, courageous or something.

But this was the truth. There's no one back then. We've ever accepted this as something worthwhile unless it were true. And this is why we know Christianity is true, and hence worth fighting for. Christ taught love, but it is love that lifts many things, both the sacrifice of unrighteousness and the sacrifice of one's life. Yes, those who take up the sword perish by it, but it's love that can motivate a man to accept this destruction. He who takes up the sword is ready to kill, but he must be prepared to be killed himself.

That is why accepting the sword is accepting death, and he who fears death should not take up the sword. However, in love, not only does the fear of death disappear, but the foundations and motives that lead to the sword. death is not only a punishment inherent in the sword itself, it is also the living measure of its acceptability. For taking up the sword makes sense only in the name of that for which a person is truly worth dying, in the name of God's work on earth. It is pointless for one who knows and has nothing in the world higher than himself and his personal life to take up the sword. For such a one would be better off throwing down the sword and saving himself, even at the cost of betrayal and humiliating submission to evildoers. For God's work, in oneself, in others, and in the world,

it makes sense to face death. For he who dies for it gives up the lesser for the greater, the personal for the super-personal, the mortal for the immortal, and the human for God. It is precisely in the surrender that he makes his lesser greater, his personal super-personal, is mortal, immortal, for he bestows upon himself, man, the dignity of God's servant. This is a sense in which death is the measure of the sword's acceptability. That's funny how Christ operated. He didn't promise, you know, the 72 virgins. You're going to have a brutal life of rejection, especially back then, for a chance, maybe, of making it into heaven.

That was his big pitch. And again, you wouldn't say that unless it were true, and you certainly wouldn't write about it, and then die for those things, as the apostles all did. The sword could mean many things, of course. I'm not a fighter, but my mouth is my sword, or my, you know, pen, so to speak. others are really called to the military apparatus, but only in the sense of, you know, like we say in the orthodox liturgy for the Christ-loving army. Well, in the U.S., you don't have a Christ-loving army here. You have quite the opposite. Maybe it was different in the Cold War, but not anymore.

I've used, and I got this from Michael Hoffman, but I use a Greek word of Wulia once in a while. And it's not just, it means being essentially lethargic. very typical American word, not just because, you know, you're lethargic because you have nothing to believe in. There's nothing worth living for. Those are the ultimate people. That's the ultimate way to control people. A bulia is a mental illness. It's a way to control people here. You don't have, you have nothing to fight for. Not even a culture. So, you know, but everyone who goes and starts off, on this path, matter what path it might be, could be military, could be what we do, could be anything like that. Yeah, there's a chance we end up in a cell. We know that.

You know that, you know, Sven Longshanks was in a cell for two years and came out better than ever somehow. Of course, that's in Wales. You all know that that's the possibility. Especially, you know, centuries ago, you're in the Byzantine army. You're fighting Muslims. clearly you're you know Muslims are expanding you're guarding the walls you have a legitimate cause you're fighting for the church here but not everyone's necessarily called to that and I suppose there's some that's not called

that aren't called anything and I guess at an absolute minimum those people at least could not harm those who are called the thing he says it right here taking up the sword makes sense only in the name of that which a person is truly worth dying That was a strange sentence. Sorry about that. But you know what I mean. The name of God's work on earth. It's pointless for someone who knows and there's nothing in the world higher than himself with personal life. Take up the sword. For what? What would you be fighting for? You know, and he wouldn't do it anyway. And the word of Boulia is very important here. I think that's a very specific American disease, just so you have white males. That's very, very specific to white males. you're not even allowed to have things worth fighting and dying for. All the people that we know who have died in prison,

people who are unjustly in prison right now, it's terrifying. And I don't think, you know, I said this before, but you don't need to build gulags when the regime has created a gulag of the mind. You know, it is heroic for those of us to rise up, above this materialist scum that we live in and go to war against it. Yeah, it's heroic and it's brutal, but it comes at a huge sacrifice. This entire spiritual compromise revealed and affirmed by us is inevitable for man in his earthly life. It cannot be reduced to it, but ultimately rests upon

it upon the very foundation of externally coercive statehood. Statecraft is utterly reducible to the sword, yet the sword is its final and necessary support. He rejects the sword, destroys the state, but he vainly thinks he thereby frees himself from compromise, for he merely prefers a weak-willed, cowardly, treacherous, and hypocritical compromise to a strong-willed, courageous, selfless, and honest compromise. The sword is a symbol of human separation until life and death is not, of course, the morally optimal outcome in the relationship of man to man. But this lesser evil is spiritually necessary in human life. Not everyone is capable of taking up the sword, fighting with it, and remaining at the spiritual heights in this struggle. This requires

not the worst men, but the best men. Men who combine nobility and strength, for the weak will not bear this burden, and the wicked will betray the very calling of the sword. I think it's interesting that he points to the symbolic nature of what a sword is. Clearly, he's talking in metaphor. here the sword isn't all that relevant today in battle he's talking about a just war against our enemy whatever form it might take and as in a few paragraphs maybe a little while a couple weeks when we're finish up I think the next next and final chapter he's going to explain in great detail what this is compromise actually is. That compromises are possible and absolutely necessary.

Thus arises one of the tragic paradoxes of human life on earth. It is precisely the best men who are called to wage war against evildoers, to engage an inevitable interaction with them, to confront their ill will to curb their evil works, and to wage this struggle by less than ideal means, among which the sword will always be the most direct and noble. Waging a state-sponsored struggle against evildoers as a necessary and spiritually correct undertaking, but the paths and means of this struggle can and Duke become unjust, and only the best men are capable of enduring this injustice without becoming infected by it, of finding and maintaining its proper measure, of remembering its injustice and its spiritual danger, and of finding personal and social antidotes

to it. Happy, in comparison to state rulers are monks, scholars, artists, and contemplate, contemplatives, contemplatives, excuse me, they are given the gift of performing pure deeds with pure hands, but they should not bring judgment or condemnation to politics and war, but gratitude, prayers for them, wisdom, and purification, for they must understand that their hands are pure for work only because others have found pure hands for impure work.

They must remember that if the fear of the sin were stronger than the love of goodness in all people, life on earth would be utterly impossible. This is going to be his final point and the summary, which is in the next and final chapter. Compromises, he means moral compromise. The fact that we're killing people, in warfare, they kill people they don't know, if someone tells them to, because they're told that they're part of a movement that's negative, as opposed to them, that's not a good thing. In an ideal world, we'd be able to talk it out, but that's not, it's not an ideal world.

That's the impure work he's talking about. In Byzantium, there was a, when you came back from campaign, at least at Byzantium's height, that was a penance of two years before you could receive communion again. And I always kind of scoffed at that, thinking, you know, it's real easy to put that on somebody while you function only because they have suffered out in the field. You're surrounded by the most professional army on the planet, which at the time was the Byzantine infantry. And that's why you can do this. I understand it, but it is impure work. It is unjust in that very strange sentence of the word.

The very act of killing people, that's no different than Canaan enable. Killing by itself, it's a problem. But we don't live in an ideal world, hence we're forced to make compromise it. And this last sentence here, if the fear of it, if the fear of it, sin were stronger than the love of goodness, life on earth would be utterly impossible. You know, the point is, those guys out in the field can't use perfect holy methods every time. There really is no such thing as the holy battle. Maybe a just war, you're still killing people.

You're still altering your view of the world. You're still changing yourself for the worst, maybe. They understood things like PTSD back then quite a bit, more than people realized. St. Augustine certainly did. But their hands, the artists, everyone else you mentioned, are pure for pure work. One because others, meaning military, have found pure hands for impure work. Well, impure, in a sense, yes, they're killing people. They're hurting people.

And sometimes they're lying and, you know, using all kinds of, uh, ambush tactics and things like that that are not forthright to do it. You see this in the Old Testament as well. I've used the example of Montenegro many times, as we've been talking about this. That sainthood seems to be based on how many Turks you've killed, because if the Turks were to win, they would be forcibly brought under Islam. the wife would be taken to the harem, which is true, and they'd be subject to the double tax. What's the double tax?

Well, it's not money. It's your kids. So they'll do anything to fight. When you're the small of the country, the less this will make sense to them. As I've said before, the, you know, Christian powers of the Balkans brought this on themselves by bringing in the Turks to settle scores with other people. but I said this in the very beginning about Tolstoy. Tolstoy was able to do what he did in a prosperous society, only because it was made that way through the defense of the army.

No one denies that the entire focus of Islam is expansion. The first thing it did, the minute it came into existence, it was an armed camp that expand outward. That's what it does. therefore it has to be fought. No one likes fighting. No one likes even talking like this. But we have no choice in the matter. And the two-year penance, maybe there's something to that.

I don't know. It really depends on how bad off they are when they get back. But I think that's sort of like approaching his point here. The fear of sin were stronger than the love of goodness in everyone. We would not be able to function. All right. Last paragraph here. We'll finish up the chapter. In one of his letters, St. Ambrosa Milan tells of the sorrow that overwhelms angels when they are forced to leave the bliss of heavenly contemplation, with its peace and purity and fly down to earth at God's command, bringing judgment, punishment, and the fires of God's wrath to the wicked.

It is joyless and sorrowful for a good being to leave the pleroma. How do you pronounce that word? Pluroma, yeah. Pluroma. To leave the pleroma, turn to evil and repay it with justice. And in this image, every noble bearer of power and sword must find consolation and a source of strength. He does be very careful. He doesn't mean angels are actually evil.

He's using this terminology. I couldn't find anything else to, you know, this took me a while to get through. Yeah, of course, they would much rather. live in the absolute gratuity of contemplation of God's energy. But the word angel means messenger. And sometimes they're asked to do things. My middle name is Raphael, who in the book of Tobit, one of the books that the idiot Luther took out, had a whole mission with Tobit, his marriage, everything else.

I love that book. Gabriel, you know, that was far away from heaven. Of course, Michael, always bringing down fire and sword on the evil. Angels that brought about the suffering of Saddam and Gomorrah, same thing. It's not evil. It's certainly just. It's been earned, but it's leading to the incineration of thousands of people. That's what he means by, you know, turn to evil, repeat.

pay it with justice. It's a odd way to state it, but I, I don't know, someone's better, someone's Russian is probably better than mine. They come up with a better way to put it. But the fact that we are forced to live with our circumstance, which is, you know, post-the-pulse expulsion, the Garden of Eat, where we can and do kill each other, things get worse and hinder recapitulate that through all kinds of violence, even if it's justified. The very fact that it does damage to the killer, they're killing, they're not murdering, they're killing. Murder is by definition negative. Killing isn't. And he just, I don't know who he's talking to with this last paragraph here, but he means, you know, soldiers going off to

war. If they're fighting for a just cause, they need to know. that. You know, they're not going to be the same again. And yet, they're going to find themselves doing things they'd rather not do. But it doesn't make them evil in the absolute sense, only in the very relative sense. And that's why he says every noble bearer of power in the sword must find consolation and a source of strength. All righty.

Let's say we've got one more chapter left. So a couple more episodes. And we'll be done here. Yeah, this is going to be, don't expect a wrap-up. Apparently, that's not how he works. You know, you know how repetitive he can be, but rather than being the simply repetitive, he gets into more detail each time.

And he has to deal with the fact that while wars can be just, it doesn't make killing a good thing, at least in how it affects you, person who doesn't know on how just you might be. You remember in the very beginning, you know, in order to fight evil, we have to be in a certain spiritual state. It's not just being able to recognize evil. That's one thing.

But we have to be good to some extent, you know, more or less, especially in our minds. And that's what he's going to be filling out in, on the purification of the soul. and he uses the word compromise a lot because even a Christ-loving army right now in Ukraine how awful is it Orthodox people are killing Orthodox people boys Putin didn't want this

he was forced into it and one of the reasons he's moved Well a goy slave will jump in right now and go well then why did he do it Well they have to buy my book And they'll realize the massive army that both NATO and Ukraine had massed right on the borders of Novo Russia. So that's, you know, the part of Eastern Ukraine had declared independence. And what do you think we're going to do when they took it over?

It would have been a purge, a huge purge. They've already proved it. They already do all kinds of acts of terror against it. So that's why this, that's why this happens. And that's why, you know, he hasn't hit a lot of, he hasn't done the terrorism that the Ukraine, Ukrainians have done, partly because, you know, civilian structures, well, those are built by Russia in the first place. And second, they affect civilians. But they're forcing them into it. Yeah, there's certain justice to it, but it is also unjust. That's the ambiguous position here,

And that's what he's talking about. There's a million other examples of that we can talk about. But Orthodox fighting Orthodox roots. Catholics fighting Catholics is an awful thing. But it is done. And, you know, so that's what, that's what I, that's what I would say to the person who would jump in there and say something stupid like that. That's why he did it.

All righty. Head on over to the show notes. Head on over to the descriptions on the video. So please donate to Dr. Johnson's work. I have a link to his book on Ukraine there. In the show notes, I have a link to the new, we just did an episode on his book on the murder of Zar Nicholas and his family. There are links there, links to his Patreon,

other ways that you can support him. So please go ahead and do that. Thank you, my friend. Thank you, Dr. Johnson. Talk to you in a couple days. All right, man. Bye-bye.