Theology in the Raw - Bonus Q&A: Who Are The Spirits In Prison Christ Preached To?

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

Who Are The Spirits In Prison Christ Preached To? If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe to my channel! Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw -- 0:00 Introduction0:18 How do you explain the odd passage in 1 Peter about Christ being put to death and proclaiming to the spirits in prison?5:57 ls the MAGA movement blasphemous and heretical? Can we call a spade a spade?21:07 How do you view celibate partnerships? Are they biblical?29:04 Is reading smut equivalent to viewing porn?30:48 My church holds to a side B view of gender/sexuality, however they believe it's an "agree to disagree issue" with other churches. Thoughts? 33:50 Is the gospel of John trustworthy? I've heard different ideas about its reliability.37:13 Does complementarianism imply that every female pastor has a "more worthy" man somewhere in the congregation? Consdier Debra...39:41 Many Christians argue that much of the Old Testament is 'mytho-history' and that only the spiritual lessons matter. Thoughts?43:30 What are the benefits of a complementarian reading of scripture? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What did Peter mean when he said Christ proclaimed to the spirits in prison? Is the magna movement blasphemous and heretical? Are celibate partnerships biblical? Is reading smut equivalent to viewing porn? Is the gospel of John trustworthy? These are just some of the questions I'm going to address in this bonus Q&A episode. If you would like to participate in these Q&A sessions and raise questions for next month's Q&A, you can go to patreon.com forward slash TheologyNaral, become a member of the Patreon community for as little as five bucks a month. Get access to all kinds of free content that is behind the Patreon paywall. So check it out, patreon.com forward slash The Algen Rob. Okay, let's dive in. Ben wants to know, how would I explain that odd passage in 1 Peter about Christ being

put to death and proclaiming to the spirits in prison? What are the options and where do I lean? Let me read the whole passage to get context here. 1 Peter 3, 18, For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the Spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey when God's patience waited in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared."

So, as far as I'm aware, there's two main views here. There's probably 16 others. You always think there's two main views until if you go and look up like some big critical commentary, who's, you know, some people take 15 years to write a commentary on 1 Peter, and they find, you know, there might be like a dozen different views on this passage. But the two main ones that I've often heard, and you might have often heard, is that this passage is either talking about Jesus proclaiming victory to spirit beings in prison, metaphorical prison, or he is preaching the gospel to the souls of dead humans who have rejected him, and he's now giving them an opportunity to be

saved. Okay? So, is it spirit, is it saying, I beat you to the spirit beings, or is it, you know, come repent to humans who rejected him during their lives? I strongly lean towards the first view. That's just lean. I believe the first view. I think that one's correct.

I mean, there's two main reasons for this. Number one, just look at the wording. It says, he proclaimed to the spirits in prison because they formerly did not obey when God's patience waited in the days of Noah. So, he's talking about a distinct group of people or beings. For sure, it can't be referring to, you know, all the humans who rejected Him in this life. Jesus goes and evangelizes them and gives them an opportunity to repent. At most, I guess, He could be talking about, you know, people who died in the flood, maybe, the spirits who are in prison because they formerly did not obey, you know, it's in the context of knowing the flood.

That, you know, that is a possible reading. The thing is, though, Peter here is reflecting the widespread view in early Judaism that that weird passage in Genesis 6, 1-4 about the sons of God and the daughters of men and the Nephilim, that that passage was talking about spirit beings, the sons of God. Sons of God is a term that can be referred to just angelic beings. We see this in Job 38 and other passages. That the sons of God were spirit beings that sinned by having sex with human females. beings that sinned by having sex with human females. And one view is that the Nephilim are the offspring of that sexual union. Genesis doesn't quite say that the Nephilim were the offspring. It just says they were on the earth in those days. But maybe it's implied. I'm kind of agnostic on that. But it is the unanimous view in early Judaism that this was a significant event.

I mean, you could read almost, I mean, just tons of Jewish books written between the Testaments that talk about this way of reading Genesis 6. And Peter's language here reflects how Jewish writers talked about that Genesis 6 passage. He also, in 2 Peter 2, references the same thing. So, we already see in Peter's letters an awareness of this way of reading Genesis 1-6. So, yeah, that's the view I hold. I think it is Jesus proclaiming victory over the spirit beings who sinned against God in a profound way. And Jesus, in a sense, His death was undoing all the evil that was unleashed in the world through that, quote, fall of these angelic beings in Genesis 6. Michael Heiser, the late Michael Heiser has a lot of stuff on this. And yeah, I would need to

go back and reread his section on this to see if I fully agree or mostly agree with it. But I do know he's got a lot of work on this in his book, The Unseen Realm, and probably some of his other books. But I remember The Unseen Realm, and probably some of his other books. But I remember The Unseen Realm, he dealt with this extensively, the first Peter 3 Genesis 6 connection. And I think he's, I think, I remember when I read it, I was like, oh yeah, this totally makes sense to me. All right, next question. John wants to know, is the MAGA movement blasphemous and heretical? And can we just call a spade a spade, please? Woo, Nellie. Here we go.

All right. John, it's a good and complicated question. I just, you know, my passion to avoid sweeping statements, or at least really, I always want to break down statements, questions to make sure we're being extremely precise with what we're saying. So like when I hear the phrase MAGA movement, movement is very broad. I need to really be specific about who we're including in this quote movement before we label every single person blasphemous and heretical. Are we talking about Trump himself? Are we talking about his elite supporters like the million and billionaires at the top

and the politicians that are driving the MAGA engine? Are we talking about the oligarchical system that put them there in the first place? I mean, we call it a democracy. It's not, I mean, not real, like kind, sort of. It's more of an oligarchy. You either have to have tons of wealth or access to people with tons of wealth to even make it on the ballot. That's So maybe the MAGA movement, there is a certain system that allows for something like Trump and his co-pilot, Elon, to be running the country right now. Or are we including anybody who voted for Trump? Because even that, people are voting for Trump. And I think that's a very important point. is co-pilot Elon to be running the country right now. Or are we including anybody who voted for Trump?

Cause even that, like people vote for Trump for all sorts of reasons. Some are full on MAGA. They have 36 MAGA hats. They wear them every day. They march in parades. They were there on January 6th. You know, they're, you know, people who are all in two feet,

two hands, one head, like everything they're, they're, they're in, they're all in, they're volunteering at MAGA offices. I don't know. Is that a thing? But then on the other side of the spectrum, you have people who are like, I don't want to vote for Trump. He's not a nice person. He lies all the time. He's immoral. He's bad for the country. But I think the other option is slightly worse. And so I'm not voting for Trump. I'm voting, say, against Kamala or, you know, against Biden for various reasons. So that's not, are they part of the MAGA movement just because they cast a vote for Trump? I personally, I would say, I don't consider them part of the movement. And somebody could say, well, their vote helped put them there.

I'm like, okay, I guess you can say that. But I just, I think things are a little more complicated than that. So I would want to be careful making a broad statement, MAGA movement, are they blasphemous or radical, without really defining who exactly are we including in mega movement and who are we not including in mega movement. So, my thoughts on your question though, once we define mega movement, I, so my thoughts, my response is rooted in my political theology of empire, which I, it would take a whole book to unpack

that idea, which I did in my book, Exiles. In short, a Christian's place in the United States of America should be understood through the lens of how the Book of Revelation and other New Testament passages consider the Roman Empire to be Babylon, one of several manifestations of Babylon. And so, I think America is an empire or empire-like. My friend Malcolm Foley says it is an empire. Maybe it is, but it's not, I mean, I would say at the very least empire-like. It has imperial qualities to it, meaning it is expansive, it influences and has influence over how other nations do things.

It sometimes controls other nations. I mean, the US's Secret Service has been involved in dozens and dozens of election tamperings of other elections in other countries over the last many years. We've overthrown over 70 leaders of foreign countries over the last 130 years or so, especially during the Cold War, but not limited to the Cold War. The US is heavily involved in the affairs of other nations, motivated by self-interest, often financial self-interest, like what we did in Iran in 1953, where we overthrew the democratically elected leader and installed a brutal Shah, like what

we did in Guatemala with the United Fruit Company and just did horrible, horrible things to other countries out of self-interest. That's very imperial, even if America is not randomly going over and conquering the Canary Islands because we want a vacation spot for the country. That would be more like what the Roman Empire did. I think the United States of America does its imperialism a little more subtly, and it's kept under wraps, but it still has imperial qualities too. Okay. That's way too long. I want to go on that. Yeah. So I think Trump is simply one manifestation of empire. He's the Republican wing of the empire. But the problem with Trump runs deeper than, you know, he's a bad person and he's immoral. I don't want to critique Trump from

the perspective of anti-Trump. I don't want to critique the right from the perspective of the left. I don't want to critique Republicans from the perspective of Democrats. I want to critique all manifestations of empire from the perspective of the kingdom of God. I'm a terrible drawer, but I wanted to draw like, kind of a picture of kind of the difference here. It's hard to explain it. I don't know, it's hard to, I feel like I feel it in my gut and I don't always explain it in the way that's understandable. Because I think it is a subtle distinction but I think it has massive implications. Because I see so many Christians that are either pro-Trump or anti-Trump. They're pro-Trump because of their anti-leftism, or their anti-Trump ends up being just repeating

talking points of why secular left-wing people don't like Trump. And at the end of the day, though, they don't like Trump because they want power. They want the power. This is the game that American politics plays, right? Each side wants power and they will spend millions and billions of dollars convincing people that they shouldn't be in power, we should be in power. And then when they're in power, the other side does the same thing. All of that is a manifestation of empire. So my beef isn't with Trump, isn't primarily because he's like a worse Caesar compared to the others.

Maybe, I don't know, like at the end of the day, maybe he is. I mean, obviously his stuff on, I don't, I'm not an economist, so I know nothing about tariffs and most people aren't even though, so I know nothing about tariffs. And most people aren't, even though they're super opinionated about it. I don't know. His rhetoric is atrocious. His stuff on Gaza and Israel-Palestine is absolutely delusional. America's view of Israel-Palestine is pretty bipartisan, right? I mean, so, and I think it's pretty atrocious in how it approaches the whole situation. But Trump is particularly delusional in some of the things he says with that. I thought he would be better on foreign policy, but now he's not

doing a great job with foreign policy. So I thought he was going to be more, you know, he was like pride himself on, you know, under Trump, he started in new wars. We tried to end wars that we're involved in. And now his militarism is a lot stronger than I thought it was going to be. So that's disappointing. So I could go down to Laundry List,

but then it's like, I can do the same thing with the other side and one side. And depending on who you're listening to, if you just listen to one side of the propaganda aisle, you're going to be utterly convinced that one side is way better than the other. And then you get sucked into the game of empire. The empire wants to suck you in and, and draw you in to be a support base for one side of the empire. And that's where I just say, no, my beef with Trump isn't probably primarily because he's a worst Caesar compared to others, but because I don't believe the world should be run by Caesar's and in the end, God's going to judge Babylon and all of its Caesars and any political theology, I think, or perspective perspective that ascribes messianic status to Trump or messianic status to any kind of

anti-Trump movement, I think both are blasphemous and heretical, quite literally. Like, go through the book of Revelation and what John, the vision John received about Babylon, the Roman Empire, the book of Revelation is profoundly political. I would map a lot of that on how we should view the empires of today. Doesn't mean everything the empire does is evil. Doesn't mean everything the Roman Empire does was evil. I mean, there's many good things that you can point to in the Roman Empire. I mean, they built an amazing road system.

They kept thieves at bay. There were some laws that were very focused on the family-ish, not in the organization, but they focused on the literal family. They outlawed adultery. They rewarded people for having kids, settling down, whatever, and not running around having sex. They tried to address some forms of sexual immorality. I mean, it's pretty selective, right?

But I mean, again, there's some things we can say, well, that's good. This is good. I'm sure there was beautiful things about the Roman culture and architecture that was amazing and all these things that we can say, well, that's good and this is good and that's good. But at the end of the day, it is an empire and it is competing with the kingdom of God. It is doing a terrible job at ruling the world and in the end, God's going to judge Babylon and all of God's people will celebrate God's judgment of Babylon, Romans, Revelation 17 and 18 and 19. So, I don't want to get sucked into the empire games of, again, critiquing, becoming a sheep or parrot to one side of the empire that wants me to hate the other

side of the empire and, in a sense, be sympathetic with their side of the empire so that they can use me to gain votes and power. As a Christian, my identity is in a different kingdom. It is a clash of kingdoms. I mean, kingdom was a political term in the first century. And we are part of the kingdom of God, and that puts us in opposition to the kingdoms of this earth, even though we are to live in this tension of being a good citizen, praying for its leaders, seeking the good of the city. But at the

end of the day, our identity in the kingdom of God is fundamentally at odds with the identity in the kingdoms of this world. So, is the Trump MAGA movement blasphemous and heretical? Again carefully define. On the one hand, of course it is because Babylon is blasphemous and heretical. And I would say the other side of the empire that's trying to take out Trump and gain power and is going to spend billions and billions and billions of dollars and propaganda and this that to try to, to try to gain power in the next election cycle, that's blasphemous and heretical too. So I think that, okay, but isn't there something unique about the mega movement that's particularly

problematic? I would say yes. And it is a fact that it has used Christianese rhetoric to gain the allegiance of huge, or large portions of the evangelical church in America. That's where it gets especially sinister. And yeah, so I think that that is where it is particularly problematic, because it has done a great propaganda job at wooing evangelical people in to give their allegiance to it, to ascribe to Trump in MAGA type stuff, lowercase M, messianic status to where their support of MAGA is almost like seen as an

extension of their Christian faith. And I think that is profoundly problematic. And you definitely see way more of that on the right than you do on the left. But when I do see some more anti-Trump Christians become so anti-Trump, you know, they call it Trump delusion syndrome. Trump delusion syndrome? Am I getting that right? Why am I blanking on that? Anyway, I think that some Christians have become so anti-Trump, they end up just kind of parroting the rhetoric of the left wing of the empire. And I'm like,

hey, can we just get out of this binary back and forth, remove ourselves from that way of thinking and situate ourselves in a global kingdom of God and critique the empire from that perspective. That's my view. So, all right, moving on. How do I view celibate partnerships? Are they biblical? Get tired to be saying this. It depends on what we mean. Okay? So, if you're interested, the organization that I helped run, the Center for Face, Sex, Wife, and Gender, we did a, Greg Coles, my colleague, led a sort of like information-led study on what even are celibate partnerships. And he surveyed a bunch of people in celibate partnerships to not argue for or against them. That wasn't the point of the article, despite how some people misread the article.

We state it very clearly in the intro. Hey friends, I hope you enjoyed this portion of the Patreon Only Q&A podcast. If you'd like to listen to the full-length episode and receive other bonus content like monthly podcasts, opportunities to ask questions, access to first drafts of my research and monthly Zoom chats and more, then please head over to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw to join theology in the raw's Patreon community. That's patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.