Unashamed with the Robertson Family - Ep 1289 | John Luke Robertson Celebrates His New Twin Daughters!

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

John Luke celebrates the arrival of his twin daughters, instantly becoming a father of five and giving the guys plenty to talk about when it comes to the miracle and chaos of childbirth. John Luke, Christian, Zach, and Al swap stories about witnessing labor for the first time and reflect on how the arrival of new life can feel both overwhelming and deeply spiritual. That leads into a bigger discussion about why Christianity makes such a bold claim: that the Creator of the universe chose to enter the world the same way every human does, through birth. The guys connect that moment to how the humble birth of Jesus reshaped human history and still anchors the story we’re all living in today. In this episode: John 1, verses 1–4; John 1, verse 14; Genesis 1, verse 1; Genesis 3, verse 15; Acts 17, verses 22–31 Today’s conversation is about Lessons 1 & 2 of Ancient Christianity taught by visiting Hillsdale Professor of History Kenneth Calvert. Take the course with us at no cost to you! Sign up at http://unashamedforhillsdale.com/. More about Ancient Christianity: Christ entered the world during the reign of Caesar Augustus. The tensions between Christianity and the Roman Empire shaped the daily practice of the Christian faith and led many Romans to distrust and persecute the early Christians. But Christianity also benefitted from the Roman world. And when Rome collapsed in the West, Christianity provided the hope for preserving civilization. In this free, eleven-lecture course, Professor Kenneth Calvert will explore: How the Jewish, Greek, and Roman cultures all contributed to preparing the world to hear the Gospel. Why many Romans distrusted and persecuted the early Christians. The inspiring stories of Christ, His apostles, and faithful ones throughout the first four centuries of Christianity. The arguments of key early Christian apologists—Ignatius, Irenaeus, Justin, Athanasius, and more—who defended and defined the Christian faith amidst the animosity of the Roman world. The conversion of Constantine and how he brought stability to Rome, and how the rivalry between his sons almost returned Rome to paganism. How Augustine’s writings helped preserve the message of Christianity during the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West. You will discover the uncertainties, trials, and triumphs of the earliest Christians as they confronted controversies within the faith and persecutions from outside it. Join us today to discover the improbable and miraculous story of Christianity. Sign up at ⁠http://unashamedforhillsdale.com/ Check out At Home with Phil Robertson, nearly 800 episodes of Phil's unfiltered wisdom, humor, and biblical truth, available for free for the first time! Get it on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, and anywhere you listen to podcasts! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/at-home-with-phil-robertson/id1835224621 Listen to Not Yet Now with Zach Dasher on Apple, Spotify, iHeart, or anywhere you get podcasts. Chapters 00:00 The Most Prolific Man at the Table 03:00 The Wild & Spiritual Reality of Childbirth 07:20 Why Christianity Includes God Becoming a Baby 12:00 Jesus Connects a Distant & Personal God 18:00 Greek Philosophy & the Search for the Creator 25:30 Paul Challenges the Philosophers in Athens 33:30 Why Christianity Spread Across the Roman Empire 41:30 Caesar Augustus vs. Jesus: The Real “Son of God” — Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I am unashamed. What about you? Welcome back to the Unashamed podcast. We're back at it, our Friday at Hillstale. We're back. We left the episode before last saying if we come back, then we're going to continue. So Hillsdale has decided to continue this journey. I will give a little caveat this morning. You might hear some construction noises in the background, but you got to be patient with us, because you guys got hammered by the storm down there. And apparently, Sadie's studio flooded, which is right next door. So they're doing, I guess, roofwork?

What's going on? Yeah, they're replacing the roof of the whole building. Yeah. I love the thing that I didn't do the Sadie's podcast. I think it's just a building. No, it wasn't her podcast, but her studio. We're just saying when something happens to Sadie, everything comes to a screen. But the noise is not coming from there.

My office also flooded. They didn't care. Nobody did. I don't get one bit. Well, good news that Maddie has sent a message to the foreman. So I'm expecting everything to come to a screeching hall, just any second now. But to your point out, if the Unashamed Studio was falling in, I do think that they might drag their feet a little longer. I don't know.

If the other than a furtices. And then we would be going from the side of the road. We're all going to be at my house. You'd be back out at the layer. Exactly. We'll be back at the layer. Yeah. So as they say, pardon our progress.

if you hear the noise. And then we also got big news, Papa over there. Tell us what, what, down in your world. Wait, no. You got to set it up better than that. I mean, what, what has happened is John Luke is now the most prolific man around this table. He has the most, because you adopted the number five, but he, this man has five children. I mean, I'm impressed.

Are you not impressed? It's impressive. It's very impressive. He spawned five children. Five kids. When I met you, you had no kids. Zero. Now you're at five.

Yeah. And we're at three. So now we have eight kids. That's amazing. That's crazy. Yeah. Twinsies. You had the twinsis.

So you're a weekend, right? Is it a week ago today? A week today. Yeah. So tell us about that. And he's here. He's doing the podcast. That's what's my.

Yeah. We had punted, right? We had Christian. You did not punt. You told me the day of the Twinsburg. You said, hey, if you see Luke tonight, ask him about the podcast. I was like, I cannot ask him about the podcast. I see Christian in to do the heavy list

And I was like, just float the idea. You never know. By a week away, he may be ready to get out. But it was more so for Mary Kate's sinking, not John Lewis. No, and I was if I'm not like a, yeah, good luck Mary Kate. See you later. Going back to work. Well, I know that.

I'm taking the full week. But this, we worked it out. So my mom's there watching them. Yeah, it was awesome. Twins is, I mean, the birth was, I let Mary Kate tell the story when she's ready. but suffice to say it was rougher than a single one. But they both came out healthy. It was awesome.

And then we went home at the normal time, which is weird for twins. It really is. And that was a blessing. Yeah. Labor's not for the fan of heart. I don't see it, yeah. Yeah, I was thinking Phil. I won't say what Phil told me what looked like,

but it's not for consumption on this podcast. Maybe I should say what he used to tell me about before Jill had a baby. Should I say this? I don't know. I'll say it. If we end up cutting this, then that'll be, you know, you guys can decide if we should cut it or not. But when we were pregnant with our first child, Layla, and Jill was about to get ready to go into labor. And Phil was, you know, obviously he's looking at Jill.

She's nine months pregnant. And he was, oh, it's a brutal process, son. It's like, it looks like somebody's gutting a deer. And, of course, Jill's like, that's not the thing you want to hear before you get with time. Yeah. Yeah, thanks for the encouragement, though.

He says, it's like gutting a deer. He said, it's a brutal process. You can't unsee it, Zach. He's telling me that, but Jill's like right there. So, dad had a way of, uh, it was his, is his way of doing small talk with women. But I finally just said, dad, it's probably better if you just nod and give a thumbs up.

Just, just to walk on by. Yeah. The nurse told me in the hospital. She was like, are you going to be okay? Are you going to make it? And I was like, yeah, I think I can do it. She said, we had a dad pass out yesterday in the room. We had to, like, drag them off to the corner.

And that is the truth. If you are a man about to watch, do not think, oh, yeah, I can handle it. Like, I've seen, if you haven't seen stuff like that, you cannot handle it. It is not. I was a head above the curtain guy. Yeah, yeah, you didn't get it. You didn't see the whole process. And I will tell you this.

I'm still of the error. I was the sit-in-the-waiting-room guy. Yeah, you still, you did it. I said back in the old days. I wouldn't even, that didn't even let me in, which was a, you know, I can't believe. A blessing. Well, no, it's not a blessing. I'll tell you why, because when I was there for all of the birth, every birth of our kids, the first four,

and we were there right after Ruth was born. I literally came in right after she was born. But it was the strangest, moment of I'm watching the whole thing unfold. And this, particularly with the first one, because you just have no, you can't anticipate what you're about to see. And I went from like, I'm going to pass out. I had that feeling like this is like, I cannot watch this.

It was too gruesome to like the most spiritual moment like I've ever, like to see a like life coming to the world. And it was, it was a weird like, I didn't, I was like to pass out. I'm about to go down. and then boom, and then you're like, wow. I mean, it really is. Like, you see the whole process of life immersed. I was glad that I sat in on it because it really was such a spiritual experience.

Well, I saw Jay Stone ball in like a baby when he came out when Carly was first born. And I was like, well, that's something about, there's a miracle right there. Both the miracle of birth and the fact that you could make Jay Stone cry about anything. It was pretty good. Well, it's interesting because if you think about, by the way, this is, Unashamed for Hillsdale, you can go to Unashamed for Hillsdale.com, sign up for the course. We're doing ancient Christianity. I'm really excited about this one, just to hear and learn about the history of our faith and that it is really an ancient faith.

Well, actually, the code open, Zach, is the perfect lead-in to our first topic about this because I love what the, what was it, Dr. Arndt said at the beginning in the intro of this course, that Christianity is a strange. religion and mainly because I mean you think about it what we believe is is that the creator of the cosmos chose to come to earth and and do what we just described come through a woman to you know birthed into you know to become one of us yeah just think about that I mean what no other I mean no other religion of all time whatever have you know come up with this that's why we we know it's true because who would make this up, right? Yeah. I mean, it's so incredible that Jesus came as a baby, even in a miraculous way.

But I love that they were talking about many miraculous bursts throughout history that they kind of kept this dream alive of Messiah. So it is pretty unique and interesting. And anytime I go and speak now at a pro-life event that's using my opening line, it was like, if you wonder whether we're on the right side in the pro-life debate, our creator decided to come here through the womb of a woman and it was a very unplanned pregnancy

at least from her perspective and she was a teenager and she was unmarried. So if you're wondering if you're doing the right thing in this pregnancy resource center by helping these young women who were coming in, that's how Jesus came here in that exact same situation. So we're doing the right thing by protecting life.

That's what I thought too. Listening to this episode one thing I had never thought about in the Bible to use X word, one motif I had missed is that birth motif of how it was an unusual birth all the way from Adam. I mean, even you can call Adam,

he actually doesn't say that, I just thought this. You can call Adam like a kind of a miraculous birth and Adam Neve like creating them from the ground. But then you've got, you've got Abraham, you've got Sarah, you've got birth order mixed up, you've got who Joseph was as, you know, another wife, you've got wife from prostitutes, you got all these things all the way up to Mary, which was like the ultimate miraculous birth. And that seems like something God is very, he likes.

Is that like humble, circumstance birth? Yeah, an unplanned idea. And even John the Baptist, right, right before. Right. Same situation. Unplanned on our part. Unplanned on our part. Right.

On the part of the father, I mean, he planned the whole thing. Yeah, it's interesting because when we, you know, I was thinking the same thing out of, and we did not plan that, by the way, the cold open, we just happened to be that John Luke just had twins. And it is. I mean, it's the process of that is painful. So you kind of, I was thinking all the way back to the fall, you know, when God said at the curse, I'm going to greatly increase your pain and labor to the woman and to the man.

He said, you know, I'm going to, the ground will be cursed. You'll work it, but it will produce thorns and thistles for you, but you're going to work it by the sweat of your brow. But some of what's going to pop up is going to be like a brower patch. And then obviously he gave the curse to Satan. But when he made the prophecy to Satan, if you remember, he said that from the woman, there's going to be a child that will be born and his heel will crush your head. You'll bruise his heel, but he will crush your head in the process, speaking of the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ that would come through the seed, literally the seed of Adam and Eve. Out of that lineage, Mary came, and then the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary with the Christ.

And so, you know, when you get to the story of Christianity, you know, it is, he used a couple terms that I wanted to unpack. I want to say this too, you know, if you're, because some people listen to the podcast, like, man, this is like the CS Lewis got kind of heavy. You know what I mean? And I read some of the comments. I said, this is heavy. It is heavy, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't lean into it. And so some of the terminology you may not be familiar with, but lean into the discussion

because you're going to really find a lot of encouragement from this. But there were two words that he used I wanted to talk about when it came to God, transcendent, and then imminent. And I don't know if y'all picked up on those words or not, but they seem to be contradictory, right? Yeah, and the idea of transcendent is that God is so far, it just means that God is so other than. He's so beyond us that he's like,

no, you can't even approach him. He's just, he's out there. He's beyond above. He transcends whatever plane we're on. And then imminent is right here, right now, right next to me. And these two things seem to, to be in contrast with one another. But in Christ, we find that fulfillment.

And I don't know if that hit you guys when he was talking about that at all. Did you all that? Do you have any thoughts on kind of that? There's two competing ideas and how Christ fulfills that or links that? Yeah, I thought it was spot on. And it also goes right after that he talked about the tension that's always there between humanity and God. And the same thing.

I mean, it's the same idea. there's a tension, the idea, how is God everywhere, and how is he here? But the same tension is there is in our relationship with God, this idea that there's love and he loves us and we love him. But then there's rebellion and you don't act like you love him. You don't act like you love your brother, you know, all the stuff we've been talking about in First John. And so I think those two go together. That's the idea is that, because God created us in his image. And sin came in and obviously threw everything off and off kiln. which was the whole idea about Jesus coming to begin with,

was that he would then recreate that garden. And I love that you read that as that, because in that moment, you think about it from God's perspective of being outside of time and space and yet in our time and space at the same time, when he said that to Satan, it was going to be 2,000 years before it happened.

But he said it in the moment, like it was going to be one of Eve's kids. You know what I mean? It's like it seems so sudden, and yet 2,000 years are going to be. go by before Jesus shows up, you know? And now 2,000 more years have come by since he was here. And yet we still see his purpose in coming. So I just, I think that is the tension for any of us is to understand the bigness of God and yet the warmth of God. You know, every time I get on

an airplane, I just flew and did an event that we have this moment. And I always felt like when I'm, you know, another 35,000 feet higher, I'm just a little bit closer in some way. And so I just, I love having that conversation with God and feel like he's right there talking and with me. And then at other times you feel distant. So I love the tension that's always there with that idea. It was really good. I thought it was cool how we started the lecture kind of talking about the audacious claim of what the Old Testament and the New Testament makes.

Because I feel like sometimes, especially as much as we talk about the Bible as much as we're kind of ingrained in it, I think sometimes you can lose sight of truly how audacious of a claim it is of what God through Jesus did. And I thought, I thought him setting up that framework was really cool because then he goes on to talk about Judaism, you know, Judaism and then Greek philosophy and all these things. But that idea of the monotheism and how audacious of a claim that really is. I thought, I thought it was cool how he set up the lecture going that. Well, we kind of all testified to that. I mean, you think about, you mentioned that that time gap of four or five, probably what, four or five thousand years between Adam and in the coming of the Christ.

But that was a development of human history. even in Judaism you see kind of this, but you see it not just in, well, I'll say Judaism, me back up, in pre-Judaism. You see that before, you know, there were any nations, you see the default posture of man is to see God as transcendent,

correctly see God as he's out, he's up there. And so in the story that pops in my mind is Genesis 11 when they build the tower of Babel. They're like, we're going to build our way up to, the God. You know, we're going to, we're going to climb our way, we're going to make a ladder, we're going to climb up the ladder. That's like the idea that you see God is transcendent. And then, so what they're thinking is, we got to go up there and get to him. And that really was pretty much the view of all world religions, you know, from really the corruption of man, is that we're

going to work our way and we're going to go up to God. And so God was way up there. And to the, you know, Dr. Calvert's point, you know, the shocking claim, the audacious claim of the Old New Testament is that the God of the universe, who spoke the universe into existence, that God now incarnates. And that's the word, that's the link between the transcendent and the imminent. It's, what links that is the incarnation of Christ. And so when you think about the word incarnate, that word carninal, carnivore, right? What pops in your mind?

Meat. Bless you. Meat. Yeah, I mean, God came and put himself into the physical meat of a human being. And it's just like, what? I mean, it really is like one of the most, it is not one of it is the shocking central truth

of Christianity is that God put on a human body. the fullness of deity, to quote from Scripture, was pleased to dwell in a body in bodily form. That's the central teaching, and that is really the birth, pun intended, of the Christian faith. Well, and I thought Dr. Calvert did a good job of contrasting that to Greek religion as well as Roman, that that's the one thing they would never believe. Like there were tenants that they had about their philosophy that helped create the opportunity for Christianity, but they could never go there. Because the one thing God is never going to do is he's never going to take on flesh because flesh is bad, right? Because it's all about the mind. It's all about the intelligence.

And so that's why it was so hard for them to get that. Don't forget to sign up and take the course with us for free at Unashamed for Hillsdale.com. I wanted to read, he read it in the lecture, but I wanted to read it again. here because it's so central to our faith and to this whole discussion. But in John 1 through 4, John laid it out this way. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him, all things were made without him. Nothing was made that has been made. In him was life and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not understood it. And then down in verse 14, the word became flesh

incarnate, as Zach said, and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only who came from the Father full of grace and truth. And so that central core is everything about our faith, but it's also everything that contrasts us and makes us different from every other religion in the world. And even today, to this day, all these thousands 2,000 years later, the contrast of religion is that, is that our Savior, our prophet, our king, you know, whatever name you want to give him, whatever title, he is one of us. And he is one of us for eternity, you know, and he's glorified. So it is, it is powerful. It's unique. But it also speaks to what people need. You know, I mean, it's a felt need of humanity to have a Savior

who understands us. That's what makes us different. That's what makes it different. Yeah, I thought it was interesting, too, because he was talking about the Greeks, the Romans, and how, you know, they were all, you know, polytheism. But he was saying they were all super religious. And I was kind of thinking about that compared to now, because now, you know, the way we evangelize and share the gospel, most of the time it's people don't believe in a God. But then it was, they all believed in gods. It was just, you know, trying to convince them that there was one God, which is the monotheism. But I was just thinking about that when he was saying, no, everyone then was religious, whether Greeks or Romans or whoever. Like, they believed in many gods.

And I was thinking about that compared to today to where most people are either, they either believe in a God or they're just atheist. What was the thing, Zach, he talked about, and they kept a fire burning in their own? Yeah, a constant fire burning. Yeah, what was that? Do you know what that was about? He didn't explain it, but I didn't, I'd never heard that before. for. Is that some sort of,

that's to sacrifice, right? It's a constant sacrifice, to constantly be giving up sacrifices to the gods. You know, in what Judaism brought to the table was that the Greco-Roman world, you know,

according to Dr. Calvert, had no concept of a monotheistic god. They worship the gods. When you think about Zeus and Apollos and all the Greek mythology,

but not just, I mean, all the pagan religions, it's the gods. It's the gods. Judaism had the long history of the idea that God is one. You know, the Lord your God is one God. And so, but the Greco-Roman world had, they had what I would call general revelation. You know, and the Jewish culture and Judaism brought really specific revelation from the Torah and from the Old Testament that we now is, you know, the precursor to the New Testament.

but the Greco-Roman world, they were accessing things about God through just general revelation, like Aristotle, you know, his unmovable object observation. You know, that was not something that was revealed to him in a scripture. You know, he had no clue of the Jews or certainly Christianity because Christ hadn't occurred yet. But he, through mathematics and through logic and through the logos, through reasoning, he was able to observe the universe and he was able to say, wait, Objects are moving. Why are they moving?

Well, something else that was moving bumped into it and made it move. Well, what made that object move? Well, another, something else that was moving, bumped into that. And he was just using kind of like really mathematics. And he determined there's got to be some object that doesn't move that makes all the other objects move. Well, that's like right in line with the Bible. Genesis chapter one, God created the earth.

And Dr. Calvert mentioned this ex nihilo. out of nothing. That's that causation argument that nothing exists and then everything begins to exist in an instant. And we say that because of the Bible. Aristotle did not have the Bible but came to the same conclusion based on logic and mathematics. So you bring these two together in this time that Christ came and then you see the emergence of Christianity really in this incarnation moment of Christ's.

arriving in the form of a baby. I need to confess something real quick. I must have not paid attention to history in high school. I did not know Aristotle and Alexander the Great were both before Jesus. I thought they were like way after. Yeah, they were before. Yeah, but I mean, is that like a common, I don't not know that Alexander or that Aristotle was like a couple hundred years before Jesus was even born.

Yeah. It's kind of wild. Common knowledge? I thought that. It is if you pay attention. I was watching the lecture. I was walking the lecture and I was like, B.C.? I was like Aristotle.

I was like, it was like, I was like mind-blown. The Great War before the Romans. That was my, that was my history lesson confession. So I'm learning a lot from this, from this, this course. Chris is like the true blue college student. It's like, wow. Now I'm like, now I get it. And I was like, Alexander Great was B.C. too?

I was, I thought it was. I thought they like got it wrong or something. That's so funny. Yeah, they, yeah, just a little more into the Greek and Roman religious beliefs. And why Christian is different. I thought this was so, it was so good to make that contrast of Jesus coming down as a baby and how that was hard to grasp because he was fully God and also vulnerable. Yeah.

Because the Greeks and the Romans also had, I would call it, you call it miraculous birth. Like they had the demigods. Hercules and Achilles and all the different people from the gods coming down. But in all of those instances, it was a sneaky rape, essentially, of Zeus to whatever the woman was. And then that child grew up to be a terrible person. I mean, their whole thing was that they were good at killing other things in basically every circumstance. or they turned into monsters or whatever. And then the contrasts out with Christianity is you had that same thing.

You had the son of God, and when the Greeks heard that, they were like, or the Romans heard that, they were like, oh yeah, son of God. We got tons of sons of God. Same thing. But then the early Christians could say, no, it wasn't a carnal sexual act that produced this. It was a spiritual birth. It was a spiritual act of love. and this child was not just God, but fully God,

who then grew up to sacrifice himself for everyone else. And that is radically different than what they had. It was similar, but so different. You're right, because they took the same thing and then applied it to even the emperors, which he talks about that in the lecture with Caesar Augustus. And the idea that then everyone after was always like, oh, yeah, this is he's a God, you know.

And so it was easy to apply, that to just anybody. I think, Zad, and you do a good job with this, I think in Act 17 is probably the clearest picture we see in the scripture, at least. Did I mention that already, or did you just come up with that? Because I was just thinking that. No, you haven't. You didn't, but I thought where our minds think alike, because I think this was, that's the time when you see these, sort of a clash of Greek thinking. And I think, and you can talk about it, Zach, because you do a better job with me. But I think that Paul, like when he first starts in, they're loving it.

When he's talking about this idea of the vastness of God, they're like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now we're scratching the itch here because that's Aristotle, that's us. And everything's going great until he gets to the resurrection. It's record stopped because it's a what? I mean, why would you want that? We need to get rid of these bodies. We don't need to come back, you know, because that's the last thing you want. And so I think it's interesting you see that picture. Paul was brilliant because he knew exactly how to lure him into the conversation. But at some point, we got to talk about Jesus. And that's when he went to the resurrection. So tell a little bit about that kind of what that speech was about because I think it's very powerful.

Yeah, what's interesting about it is that when you think about where he was at, right, he's in, and we've been there. It's in Athens and that place where he was. where Paul was interacting with the Greco-Roman world, it was actually the exact same place that Aristotle would have been. I mean, obviously he existed before Paul, but he lived before Paul, but it was the Ariopagus where the Greco-Roman elites, the philosophers would go to discuss all the latest ideas. This was like the center of their intellectual expression in the community

and in Roman, Rican Roman life. And so Aristotle would have hung out there, Plato, if Socrates is a real figure. Socrates, we can talk about that later. But this is where these ideas would have emerged from. Even like Aristotle's causation argument, I imagine that he presented this in this same place. And now all of a sudden, you got the apostle Paul,

who had a very unique role in the unfolding of the Christian faith in that he was called to bring the gospel to the Jesus. Gentile world, even though he was actually the Jew of all Jews. This guy was incubated in the Torah. He was the Pharisee of all Pharisees, but he also happened to be a Roman citizen. So he also knew kind of the Roman philosophies as well. And when he goes into this space, he merges the two together. You know, he says, you know, I notice you guys have all these statues and all these gods, you know, lowercase G, these gods you're worshipping. I noticed a statue that said to an unknown God.

And he's like, that's the one I want to tell you about is the one you don't know. And then he gives them the gospel of Christ and the idea that God actually became human and incarnated. And so it's interesting because one of the things that is brought out in this course is that this word logos, which is a Greek word. And in Greek it means reason or rational thought. but the professor you know professor calviter also says it implies a force that brings reason into and unifies the cosmos

so I think this is important because when you get to that John one passage that you mentioned earlier that in the beginning was the word the word was with God all things were made through him the Greek word there is logos that's the word that the apostle

John uses to describe who Christ is the logos and so this is a little interesting fact, it wasn't in the course, but it's actually true. In the first century, they had these, these, they were called Targamous. And what they would do, their function was to take the, essentially the teaching of the Torah,

translated into the common language of the day, which, and then, which was the, I think, Aramaic. And then they would basically teach the Torah to people in that way. and the word that they use for what they called the second Yahweh was the word logos because they had figured this out. The Jews had figured, they're reading the scripture and they're like, there seems to be like Yahweh,

but then there's this other weird thing going on that's called the word of Yahweh, and they seemed to be maybe different. They couldn't quite figure it out, right? They were like dancing around the Trinity, but they couldn't quite figure it out. So the word that they actually used for the word of Yahweh it was Logos.

And so when they got into the, I'm sorry, what I'm trying to say here, cut this part. So what happened here is that the Greek philosophy actually gave these Targamous, the language to start to explain out who God actually was. And so you see that starting to emerge even in Judaism in the first century. I know that's heavy, but it's important. And Paul would have understood a lot of this. And then when Paul comes, he's bringing the full revelation of Christ into the discussion. And that was really when Christianity started to expand outside of just Judaism, but into the Greco-Roman world.

There's a passage, I can't recall exactly where it is. I think it's in Galatians where it says the time had fully come. And then this happened. And the idea was it wasn't accidental. And they make a good point of that to show the idea of how it took. the common language of the Greeks, along with the commonality of the Roman Empire, for this to happen in that moment for Christianity to explode the way it did, to have its beginning and its start.

And so this, you know, this wasn't, God obviously knew that, and that's exactly why he came during this, this era and this time. It would be much harder, and you'd think it'd be easier because of the Internet now, but really not, because now we have more borders than ever, more countries than ever, you know, more people that are unaware of what goes on. I mean, you think about what's happening in some country in Africa, right? We have no idea. We don't know what's going on.

And they really don't know. They know more about us than we know about them. But, I mean, there's a lot more isolation because the world's so much bigger now. I mean, you'd think it would be easier. But it's not. It's difficult. I mean, here we are trying to, like, get the message out as much as we can. And it's hard to do.

In the first century, when this happened, it went everywhere, almost at the same. time and it exploded and so it really was interesting to be able to look back and see about why God did it the way he did it. We want you to sign up and take this course with us for free at Unashamed for Hillsdale.com. Yeah, we're doing, I mean, let me say this real quick too because I know this is a lot of heavy material, but we're doing ancient Christianity. And one thing, one of the things we're going to do, by the way, I meant to say this earlier, we want you guys to finish the course. Like if you, and if you finish the course, what we're going to do is we are actually going to to have a drawing if you finish the course and we're going to invite we're going to invite

two people and a guest that we're going to you guys be invited to actually sit in on a podcast that we record on the unashamed podcast you guys can like sit in we don't have like a really studio audience but um how many chairs are are there out in front of you you're looking at there's about five or six and we can bring in a few more so like if if you want to sit in and watch this record you got to finish the course with us i know it's i know it's kind of get a kind of push through it on some of this stuff because these terms or terms maybe we're not used to. But I think it'll give us a good understanding and a deeper appreciation for our faith. But this idea of the Greeks, one of the things that they brought in was it was a philosophy

called Platonism. And, you know, think about Plato. And what was the contribution of Platonism to Christianity? you know, Platonism really prepared the world and this first episode or this first lecture talks about this. Platonism, it does stand in con... There are some contradictions

between Platonism and Christianity, mainly that the world, Platonists would see the world as bad. The material world is bad. God is transcending. He's other than. That part we agree with. We don't agree that the world is inherently bad, though.

And the other thing, is they didn't have an idea and could not comprehend like a personal god yeah he was an impert it was an impersonal force yeah other than but impersonal but it

did at least prepare the way for the idea that there is some transcendent god the part that that platonism could not accept was that god would become man which is the central teaching of the Christian faith is the

incarnation. But I am, I think we should be appreciative, at least, of the contribution, because it did provide, you know, we're basically Greeks. We're not Greeks, but I mean, in the Bible, we're Gentiles. And it was this philosophy that Judaism could come into and the full revelation of Christ could come into. And then, oh, then we begin to see this thing like unfolding. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, that was what he said. He said, the Platonist could not accept the idea of a transcendent God becoming a man, and then the Stoics cannot accept the idea of a God who would love cry and be able to die on a cross. Yeah, the emotion aspect was a problem.

But you're right, the Trinity idea is there. Also, just from a practical point of view, Zach, you think about Western civilization, anything about the Greeks and the Romans, I mean, our whole system of governance, everything is linked back to a lot of the beliefs and systems that were there. They're different, but it was there. and even the idea of under Roman rule, the idea of freedom of religion, which is still something that we believe strongly in America as well, even outside of Christianity. And that's another thing that was talked about by Dr. Calvert in the lecture was the idea that that allowed Christianity to move was because of this idea that you were free to do that and talk about it and have these open ideas. So I think there's that part was kind of I hadn't thought about it that much until they brought that out about the idea about how Western civilization ideas have opened the door for us to be able to thrive, you know, in our Christian faith, which was something I thought was very powerful.

I loved it. I hadn't thought about it. I was thinking about it just in like a backing up view of this whole lesson, ancient Christianity. Because in one sense, I thought, you know, like, why is this? matter to us today, you know, and why it's really history matter, and I think that's kind of the question. And I think that what, how this kind of helps me in my day to day and looking at the news is seeing how God acted from the very beginning up until now informs me on how what God is currently doing in the world at large and what my response to that is.

You know, to think about ancient Christianity. I had this kind of thought while listening to this is we are Christians. We call ourselves Christians, but our religion didn't start 2,000 years ago. It started in the beginning of time. Yeah. Beginning of humanity. Of humanity. Yeah.

When God said, you know, when God created humans whenever that happened and we started worshiping him, that is our religion. Like we're Christians, but we're also, God followers from way before and God did different things all over the world all the way up to Christ who kind of threw a curveball and changed everything and then we call ourselves Christians because we follow him

but now God is still doing things in the world and seeing God working through knowing that God works through humble births and knowing that God works through fishermen and priests and in the wilderness and all of these things keys me into what are the things I need to be paying attention to today. Such a smart point because you think about it, it does. Christianity then has its roots in Judaism, but then we have roots beyond Judaism because when you go back to Abraham and Sarah in the garden, there was, I mean, that was predating Judaism.

So, I mean, literally it goes back. to just a relationship idea. And I love that one of the lines that he said, I wrote it down because it was profound, he said the fall of Eden was not a tragedy. It was just the beginning of the whole story. And I thought, man, I've always looked at it as a huge tragedy. Like, you know, it's terrible.

They were in this garden. They had this perfect situation. But from our perspective, that's just when the story begins with the fall, you know, and how it was there. And I thought that was really rich because that helped me to understand that, look, This thing, it is ancient, but you're right, Luke, it's also so relevant because God is still working.

We still have questions. We still face the same struggles. You know, we're still trying to fight death. Even though we know we've conquered it because of the resurrection, man, I'm still not ready to jump in the hole in the ground, right? And so all the same things are still there that we still battle. That's a good way of saying it, the story, because it's like if you, I think I used to view it as the garden was like the mess up. like God had a plan. Yeah.

Oh, man, I really missed that. I didn't plan on right. Okay, start over. Let's do it. Now let's do it over again. Oh, then the flood happens. God messes up again. Okay, let's start over.

I flooded the earth, killed everybody, saved eight people. Okay, Tower of Babel. And I've always, Jesus has God continuing to mess up until finally he figures it out. And then Jesus came and everything was replaced. And it's not really that. It is a story. And it's not a story in a sense of like a fairy tale. I don't mean it like that.

It is the story. What's your story? What's the story of humanity? What's the story of the world? So we're actually entering into a story. And I love that language about story because when say religion, it is a religion. But the problem is that in modern translation, that just means one among many, right? Well, there's a lot of religion.

This is my personal faith. This is what I kind of hold on to personally. but it's just my private belief. It's not actually true. This is true for me. That's not the story of Christianity. The story of Christianity is this is objectively true. This is the story of all of humanity.

And it hit me, you know, the kids are on tour right now with Larry Fleet. And I went to one of their shows in Atlanta this weekend. And they have a moment in the show, which I hadn't seen their set yet. So I was a little bit like, I'm just out there, I'm watching. And they're doing it's like country music songs and like folk music. And Max introduced this one song and he said, you know, we're storytellers is what we are at heart. We're just telling you guys stories. And of course, everybody, they're all screaming.

He said, but I want to tell you this next song is about the story, the true story of all of existence and why we're here. I mean, this is, if you don't miss anything, if you miss anything, don't miss this. And then they sang the song, it's just three verses, were you there when they crucified my Lord? And the next verse, were you there when he was buried in the tomb? And then the third one, were you there when he rose up from the grave?

And man, it was like a moment of just, I mean, everybody in that place was just like in reverent awe of this moment. Because what it did, it took that secular, sacred divide and it just, in that moment,

He entered into history. And it was so powerful. I think it was powerful moment because, and that's why I love this course on ancient Christianity. And this isn't like, here's the history of Christianity, as if it's one of many. What we're talking about here and what this course is, and I think what Dr. Calvert is doing such a great job in this,

he's actually anchoring the story of humanity. And he's walking us through how this anchors into the very foundation of reality, who is God, Yahweh, to try you and God. This is more than just a fairy tale. This is a true story. So I love that language, y'all. That was so good. Yeah, it was great.

And yeah, that's, you know, it's kind of our approach to when we go and speak, because we go and speak in different settings. We were just at a marriage event this last weekend. But sometimes it's other things that we're doing, raising funds for something. But we're, we always, the way we put as Zach is Lisa and I, we say that the story of Christ, when that intersected our story, our life, when that intersection happened, then there was this change and then this transformation that's still going on to this day. And so, again, that's the backdrop and the impact that it has on us as well.

Be sure and be sure and sign up and take the course with us for free at Unashamed. for Hillsdale. Yeah. Well, think about this. When Christ shows up on the scene and going back to the Greco-Roman world,

I mean, they really did have a very, they had a strong divide between the secular and then the sacred. Or the transcendent and the eminent. Like, what was here

was this was all the Caesar Augustus and all the, whoever was the ruling power. You said, Alexander the Grey, like it was, and then they had the gods up there.

And so, think about this, this was just hit me in the course of just kind of the comparison of Caesar Augustus to Christ, to Jesus Christ. I mean, Christ enters into human history. God enters into human history.

And the birth of Christ was in such a humble way, particularly as you compare it, and Dr. Calvert does this. He compares that to Caesar Augustus. I mean, Caesar Augustus, I wrote this down, the two things that he referred to himself. One was he called himself the first citizen, which was a nod to the old, the precept. Yeah, that was the term.

And that just means a first citizen as a nod to the old Republican citizenship, right? And so he's kind of like, I'm just one of the guys here, right? I'm just one of y'all. But then he also refers to himself as the chief priest of the Roman. I mean, Caesar Gus is just like self-establishing himself

as like, I'm the guy. and then crisis comes in to this manger, born in a manger to this, essentially a peasant. And you have these two figures here that two men who claimed divinity, and one ended up, we end up seeing which one actually was the one that we're still talking about. Yeah, well, it says the Romans believed Caesar got us to be the son of God, the bringer of good news, and the savior of all his people. So it really is this, yeah, it's this direct parallel. Pellalism completely contrasting from, yeah, from Jesus' birth, the way he lived his life.

Yeah, he had that inscription, which I was kind of confused on, he said they found that in Turkey and the inscription that was on something. But yeah, it was using the word, you know, gospel. I can remember if it said you on Gellion, but it was the good tidings part where Caesar Gusses was. Yes, not the gospel. Yeah, he had his own gospel, which is interesting because they say that's why a lot of the language in the New Testament, especially written in Greek, a lot of it is kind of playing off of what things like that were happening at this time. They're right, well, you have a gospel. Let me tell you what the actual gospel is. And that's why they're kind of using words like that to contrast Jesus.

But yeah, I didn't really fully know that the Romans believed him to be all those things. I knew they believed him to be, you know, like he has the gospel, the good news, but the idea of being the son of God and actually a savor to the people. Well, and it carried on, because remember they said it went to, what, 284 A.D. So this idea was that now this is, whoever the emperor of Rome is, that's the son of God. That's the gospel we adhere to. And until you get into Constantine there, I guess, who finally submitted his own life to Christ. So, yeah, it's interesting that that became the thing. for them was what was what he brought out that I had never thought about was that Jesus though

had the pedigree because he would have been an aristocrat had he been a known Jewish because of his pedigree you know you read the lineage in Matthew 1 and Luke 3 and you see that I mean Jesus had the pedigree all the way back to be the guy in terms of the Jewish faith and yet he was it was so humble even the leaders of the day had no idea who he would they didn't even know where he was from. And they were like, Nazar, what good? That's, you know, what good comes out of there? And so they didn't even know he was born in Bethlehem.

They didn't know any of the ideas about you. He came so humbly and so quietly that, and for 30 years he was nowhere, and then all of a sudden he shows up and he's everywhere. And so I just think it's brilliant, obviously the way God did it through Christ, and

it was such the opposite. It's such a good contrast to see. If we were humans in trying to make up our gods, we see how we do it. We'd come up with us Caesar Augustus. That's the way we would do it. But with God, it was like, no. The opposite of everything you think is what I mean. Yeah, because

we went to Rome, Al, me and you went to Rome with Phil. We filmed there for I don't know, a week or so. About a week, yeah. Yeah, we saw the Roman Colise. And we filmed outside of the Roman Colise. We did all the gardens. New York. We did the whole tour. And I remember

one of the guys who are with, I think I've said this before on the podcast, after surveying the ruins of the Roman Empire. This is not Rome in its heyday. This is the ruins of the Roman Empire. And you try to transport yourself back 2,000 years ago, and you think it was so impressive. I mean, their architecture is so impressive.

Like, I mean, even by today's standards, you're like, how do they do this without cranes and modern engineering and bulldozers and all the things? And you look at what they built. And then you imagine somebody coming in, from a mud hut in Africa. They're coming in from Africa and they walk into the Roman Empire and they're

looking around and they say Caesar Augustus is God. Yeah. Okay. I can see how they would believe it, right? Exactly. And so in that time period, I think his claim probably was believable by a lot of people and then you got this guy in Jesus

who shows up in a manger and you're like nothing good comes out of Nazareth. I mean, to your point, the contrast of those two stories, this guy should win every time, but in the end, the Roman Empire fell and Christianity has exploded. I got a book behind me about Tom, I forgot the guy's name, Dominion, and you read the impact of Christianity on the Western, on the world. Since the time of Christ, it is undeniable that Christ won. So I know we're out of time there, but Christ won and Christ

reigns. And I'm just thankful that we can be a part of it. So if you guys want to go sign up. It's unashamed for Hillsdale.com. We are in the course ancient Christianity. Let's do this together. Let's learn about our faith and the history of our faith together. Unashame for Hillsdale.com. Join us every Friday for Unashamed Academy powered by Hillsdale College. Make sure to go to unashamed for Hillsdale.com and sign up. It's no calls to you. That's Unashamed for Hillsdale.com. And don't miss an episode of the Unashamed podcast by subscribing on YouTube. And be sure to click the little bell and choose all notifications to watch every episode.