Unashamed with the Robertson Family - Ep 1349 | Ancient Rome’s Collapse Sounds Too Much Like America’s Future

Episode Date: June 5, 2026

Rome’s decline sounds uncomfortably familiar as Al, Zach, John Luke, and Christian compare the empire’s political chaos, devalued currency, and hunger for centralized power to warning signs in America today. The guys discuss why Christianity has always threatened governments that want ultimate control, since believers answer to God before the state. Al connects Diocletian’s leadership reforms to the biblical wisdom Jethro gave Moses, and they wrestle with the difficult duty to pray for leaders even when Christians strongly disagree with them. Need a refresher on Ancient Christianity? Check out the previous episode on this topic at https://youtu.be/vP3u0pQP74c?si=cnpxf7EFOI2nMmnQ Today’s conversation is about Lesson 8 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 Al’s Awkward Haircut Dilemma 05:30 Old-School Barbers & “Bughead” Trauma 11:04 Rome’s Money Problems Sound Familiar 16:01 Why Rome Saw Christianity as a Threat 19:08 Freedom Without God Starts to Devour Itself 24:28 The Wisdom of Shared Power 30:03 Galerius Brings Peace, Heresy Follows 36:18 Wrapping Your Brain Around the Trinity 40:16 The Church’s Role in the Secular World — Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I am unashamed. What about you? Welcome back to the Unashamed for Hillsdale podcast. We do this every Friday. We're taking courses with Hillsdale. These have been amazing. And they're free to take, by the way. You guys, I want to encourage you to take the course with us and then listen to our kind of discussion around the course. You can sign up for free at Unashamed for Hillsdale.com. We've been on a six-week journey through colonial America, which, guys, was that not absolutely? amazing or what. I love it. Insane. Yeah. It definitely brought out some of the best stuff that I hadn't thought about. It was high key. No cap. It was really good. It was good. No cap. Low key.

So we're back and we're back into our ancient Christianity course, which we took that six week break on. And here's what we're going to do. We're still doing the contest. We're going to pick one listener to come down to Westman Road to watch a live recording of moneyshamed with us. We're going to pay for travel and lodging for you and the guests

up to $1,000. Each, all you got to do is take the ancient Christianity course with us, finish all the quizzes, finish all the quizzes, send us your certificate of completion. You can send that and upload it at watchunashame.com, and then you guys will be entered in for the drawing and we'll pick a winner in June. So hopefully you guys will do that and love to see you in person. And here we are back in our lecture eight. I don't know, what have you guys been traveling?

What's been going on in your worlds? I was going to ask you guys something. So I had, so I've had my, the woman who cuts my hair has cut my hair for 35 years. Wow. I have followed her through so many different professions and she's cut on the side. And I mean, she's like, you know, we're bonded. And so, but recently, about six weeks ago, she lost her son, unfortunately. 49 years old had a heart attack.

And so she's been out of commission. And so I was going to ask you about this because I don't know who cuts your hair, but like you build a relationship with these people. And then it's hard to like, so I'm like, so like I've been encouraging her and talking to her about, you know, grief and all that kind of stuff. But I haven't wanted to ask her, you know, when are you going back to work? Because I need a serious haircut. My hair was out of control.

I mean, now that I've gotten older, there's more gray. And so the longer it gets, it just turns into this big poof of like willies. if he didn't have the bandana because it's just gotten curlier as I've gotten older and so I wasn't sure like what's the proper way to do that like how do I

continue to encourage her but then so I would send her a text like hey how are you doing you know which was legit because I love her but it was also like is there anything back do you have social media

uh well I do but I don't really do you have social media I don't know we could just like post a picture and been like hair's been looking rough lately the old general suburbia post and then she'll be like oh I should reach out to out

so here's what happened so yesterday so Lisa finally says like because I'm preaching this Sunday and it's like okay something's got to be done I can't because I can't wear a hat there like I can wear hats here and kind of cover it up

but there it's just going to be right out there and I'm starting to look like what's the old painter that died Bob Ross I'm starting to look like Bob Ross and so I'm like so Lisa lines me up in a poem yesterday

at the place where she gets her haircut. And so I go in there and I just feel like I'm a foreigner in a foreign land. Because I've had this person I'm so used to. And I almost feel like I'm being unfaithful. That's a tricky situation because, yeah, you only go somewhere else. No, of course not because she's my lady, you know. But I also don't know how much she'll do it her whole life. I mean, like she's not committed to me until death.

But at the same time, it was the weirdest feeling. So I go in there and I'm already. like just feeling kind of weird about it. And then there's people and I don't know. They're here. The lady that owns the place I know well and she's great. And this new person is going to be like, because they're in your space.

It's like a doctor or something. You know, it's personal. They're touching you. And so I'm sitting there and I'm looking at these people and I'm having all these thoughts. And I almost just got up and walked out. I mean, I was literally like feeling like,

I don't need to be here. This is not good. And so just as, because I had to come back and do a podcast for a duck hall room. And so I'm about to get up and leave. I texted Lisa and I said, look, you're just going to have to tell these people. I said, but I'm fixing to leave. And then she walks around the corner and she's like, okay, you ready?

I'm like, okay, yeah. And so she did a great job. It was great, but I just had this. Now it's the tension of if you never go back. And she lines me up another appointment. Because then she was like, well, I don't know, because I told her up front. I was like, look, I've got my lady. And so, but I know how, and I told the situation and she said, oh, that's so sad.

And I said, it is. and she said, well, do you want to just make another appointment just in case because you don't know what she's going to do? Well, now I feel on this pressure. If this was a sideboat episode, it would be like, you would like be getting two haircuts. Well, look, this was a sidebolt episode where, and so Jerry is like he's moonlighting with this other person,

so it's like he's having an affair. And so the guy comes to his apartment and cuts his hair, and then another guy comes in, it's like, look at, what does that hair do it? Yes. So it really was a sound phone episode. I thought it was pretty funny, but I just wondered if you guys have ever had an experience like that because it was so strange.

Yeah, when I was in college, I went to this barber and he was only, he only did walk-ins. You couldn't make an appointment. Walk-ins only. I try to think of the guy's name. I want to say it was Bob or something like that. It was in Searcy. It was an old guy, like old-school barbershop, like the old, like the leather strap, the whole thing. and so my first time in his chair, he said he was like, all right, son, I can see you're new around here.

So here are the rules. So he had rules. And he clearly laid them out in advance. He said, here's the first rule. I'm the only person that can cut your hair if you're going to be my customer. I was like, wow. He said, the second rule is if I'm out of town, you are permitted to go to somebody else. But they have to be a barber.

if you go to a cosmetologist yeah you could never come back you're dead to me so you can you're dead yeah so he was like that I said before we proceed he said do you agree to those terms and I was like yeah and so that was pretty much what I did in college but it is awkward because like I had

at the church at the church we went to there I had two barbers but I would always like one guy was like my main guy But then if he was out of town, then I would use the other guy. Or if the scheduling didn't work out if we were traveling or something. But it is awkward if you see one of the other that didn't cut your hair and you haven't, you noticeably got a haircut. Yeah.

So it was all excited. I'll get a haircut. They're good to see in the middle. And they're kind of looking at you. It's like, yeah, I've gotten a haircut since. So I'll tell you this to write this story that you'll find interesting because there is a link back to everybody around this table. the very first person that cut my hair horribly was my own dad who had no business but because we

didn't have any money so he literally would just take scissors and put a bowl on my head and cut around it you know so the early pictures of me are just seen the pictures yeah you see them they're horrific and so finally you know we got here and we're starting to do a little bit a little bit better and we're living out on the river and so my first real barber was at a barbershop Zach you described and guess who it was, Jacob Mayo's grandfather. It was Mayo's Barbershop, and he used to be over there by the mill for years. And so I would go there with my grandpa.

So that was interesting that that's a tie to you guys. And now Trace cuts my hair. Really? Yeah, Jacob's brother. Trace is good. Trace is very good. It's just to go to him now. So it would be a return.

I'll tell you he's a horrible barber. Who? Who? My dad. Well, I was just saying, you know how my second guy was? Gordon Dasher. I was about to say, one of my earliest. haircut memories was Gordon Dasher.

Yeah, he was my son. Yeah, and I couldn't wait to get out of it. His hands, if you watch him, if you're watching, his hands are, they shake all the time. I'm like, I would never let you cut my hair now. I mean, like, and they've been shaking for years. I'm like, how do you even, he used to give me the worst haircuts.

That's why I never got a haircut in Colorado. Yeah, he went to Kyleman. That five year old. Yeah, oh, yeah. Coins Beauty School right here local. I did not know that. Was he a, well, he went to bar, He's a cosmetologist.

Was he at the main event? He was at the main event? That's where I got. Well, here's what's funny. When I went to middle school in the sixth grade, because of the way he cut my hair, I got a nickname. And that was very insecure about it. It still kind of hurts to talk about it.

Wait, what is it? My nickname was bughead. They called me bughead. Bughead. And I'm still, like, if somebody says, if I heard someone say, hey, bughead, it would be like, I would, it would be like, I would, through all that trauma just like in a moment.

Is that kind of a log bed somewhere in my somewhere in my vault of a moment? You're taking, okay, I don't know what you're doing, but there's going to be so.

Is that why you always wear a hat? It's true. Yeah, because I don't want to anybody call me bughead because the way my dad cut my hair. So yeah, look,

it's all childhood trauma. Right. We all got our issues, right? So, man, how do we segue into the speaking of childhood trauma,

these early Christians, really they had a lot rougher than bad hair cuts yeah good point good point so we're

we're back to to ancient Christianity Zach and after a little delay but it's been interesting to get

back into this and this guy is it Diocletia so he was the he's been sort of the transfer out

as we're getting back into this because you know in the last podcast which has been a few weeks ago now

we were were talking about how tumultuous the third century was for Christianity because Rome was so tumultuous. I mean, it had leadership changes back and forth. And so like with anything else, a lot of times with stability, you know, things kind of get to some place of normality. And so what were they calling it, the 10 years apiece or something like that during this era? Yeah, yeah, yeah. which kind of after so much persecution to the early church and the early Christians, it was nice for them to just get a break.

I mean, you know, you just thinking about it's a decade, but that would make such a difference if you were under this, you know, these different things that kept happening in cycles along the way. So I think it's, I thought it was interesting just from a political side because Dr. Calvert spent quite a bit of time talking about sort of how he restructured Rome, would sort of change things. Because like any culture, I think power, you know, doesn't like a vacuum. And so what happens is that's why they keep assassinating each other and taking over.

But this guy actually had a plan to have kind of, I mean, I see some roots into even kind of what our founders did for our country. The idea is to have power that releases itself and then passes it on. Because he came in with the idea, we're going to have a 20-year rule. which in some ways is a little more stable than even what we do with four years because you know how it just it seems like it's so unstable. And the idea is then we're going to relinquish. And so he set up these four quadrants of the Roman Empire was sort of a senior and a junior, which I think about our Senate kind of like that.

And the idea is that then we're going to roll over the second in command moves up to the first. Then we have somebody to replace him. So I thought it was a great idea. Unfortunately, the one thing that struck me that Dr. ever said, it lasted one time. One time. I mean, it's like, it shows you how that people do not want to relinquish power once they're in power. And so I think that's what happened here. But it was a time of stability

at the very least. Well, one of the things that he did, too, was, it's such a, there's so many parallels to where we're at now. So one of the things that was happening in the Roman Empire was the devaluation of currency because they had just accumulated a lot of debt. And so we're, but we're doing that now. We're the term you would use in that current language. We monetize their own debt, which means basically we just print more money and put that into the money supply.

So when he took over, the Roman already kind of experienced a pretty significant devaluation of their currency, but he just kind of amplified. They tried to stabilize it, but he couldn't quite do it. Try to put it in price controls, which creates an underground kind of economy.

So you can think about the black market. So he was trying to like solidify. and bring some stability to the Roman Empire. But once a society kind of goes to this point, you just can't really pull it back. So it's kind of scary because, you know, when you look at how the Roman Empire declined, it does seem very similar to kind of maybe what's happening in America as well

and the West as a whole, because you can't print your way out of these issues. And I think that they were trying to mint new coins and do things. But yeah, he wasn't really successful. It's funny that you said that, Zach, because I wrote down Make Rome Great again. It's very similar to some of the things they were there and kind of what we see in the Trump era of Trump as well. I want you to sign up and take the course with us for free at Unashamed for Hillsdale.com. And even including the strong military, you know, I mean, it was a lot of the similar.

One of the things I thought was interesting was the his dichlishment. or whichever one it was, one of his arguments against Christians, like the reason he was against Christians was because of their lack of religion and his perception of lack of following the gods, which was the conservative position politically. And the same argument that we make against secularism of these new atheists don't have morals, they don't hollow religion. like he's making the same case against Christians,

but it was a misunderstanding of what Christianity is. Well, right, because he didn't really know. And it makes sense if you think about it, because they never really did figure out that Christianity had come out of Judaism, but it wasn't a part of Judaism. But it was some weird cult that they couldn't figure it out. Yeah, I just imagine the people of the Diocletian's time,

like the old men and they're drinking their beat Jews, whatever they have at the time. Ivan the more, they're like, these liberal Christians are going to ruin this country. They're the downfall of Rome, low morals, no religion. Well, because what he's trying to do is he's, I mean, and I guess it worked temporarily. You know, he had like a, what, a 15, 20 year reign of stability. But in the end, it just doesn't work because what he's trying to do is create a cultural identity around paganism. And so that's what he, again, is just,

another person now in charge that sees Christianity as a threat. I thought about the French Revolution when I was going through this particular lecture, lecture 8, because in the French revolution, they tried to eradicate France of any remnant of Christianity. They turned the Cathedral of Notre Dame into the temple of the goddess of reason. They changed the how many days are in a work week to like they they did everything they could possibly do to try to remove anything of Christianity from the culture and instead implement um you know basically paganism or humanism in the case of France and it's just it's just funny to me that it just doesn't work which goes back to you know six weeks ago we were talking about this we were had mentioned uh tertulian and he was

making the argument that it's actually the way of Christ is better for the society just just from a pragmatic, you know, standpoint, this way is better. And I think finally, you know, when you get to the American Revolution, you actually see a society that kind of grabs a hold of that idea and then centers that into their declaration of independence. Thomas Jefferson wrote that, right? We hold these truths to be self-evident that all of them that are created equal. So that whole system was that we are a part of now, you know, we get to be. We got the benefit of that truth, you know, some 250 years later. Well, just to comment on the paganism, I think the reason it didn't work in De Clesian's time,

it doesn't work now, is that central belief of like the pantheon of gods and Zeus and the religion he was trying to push. Central to that is that the might is right idea. Like, whosoever God is the most powerful. Whoever follows Zeus, whose ever is the son. or daughter of Zeus or daughter of Athena or whatever. Like whoever's regional God is the most powerful should rule. And there was no, and whoever is weak, who's ever losing the battles,

God is against them. Like that's their whole thing. So there was no like call to justice or equality compared to the Christian stance of that we are all created equal, like that central tenet that God is the God of all. And that we're free. And so it's interesting exactly you brought up the French Revolution, because in Torch Bear, which was the movie the dad did and that you co-wrote and helped produce, in there, I remember you saying through the script that, you know, it feeds on itself because the same one that decapitated, literally, the, you know, monarchy and leadership of France, along with trying to take out all things God, itself was decapitated. what, within a decade, Zach? I mean, like the first group that decapitated the first group,

then guess what? They weren't good enough less than 10 years later, and so they kill all them. And this is what happens. It feeds on itself because both the American Revolution, the French Revolution, were based on freedom, but from a totally different perspective. And without God, you know, freedom feeds on itself,

you know, because of power and because of the evil one, because of paganism, because of whatever you want to fill in that blank. But our founders had the, the idea to embrace God, to embrace the idea of belief, along with that freedom. And they were like, you can believe in whoever you want to, but we're going to have that as part of our, you know, fabric. This is the pushback I would have against anybody who is just adamantly opposed to any form of what would be called Christian nationalism. Again, this is a very nuanced conversation when you talk about Christian nationalism, because there are versions of it that I would say, yeah, that's not good.

but if you remove Christianity from the foundation of America, you don't have any, you don't have America. You don't have what we have. It's just not fair. You have the French Revolution. And so when you think about like you had said about the paganism, John Luke, I think you said might becomes right. The way I've always phrased that is, is the one who's got the biggest stick,

gets to determine what's right and what's wrong. and if you think about that as an exercise, who has the biggest stick at the end of the day? It's the state, the government. I mean, the collective power is always going to have the biggest stick or the biggest, the most power. So you think, well, why would, why would Diocletian, why would he want to reform Rome's religious practices to essentially strengthen paganism is because to strengthen paganism is actually to strengthen the state. It's actually to put the power. So when we have any form of paganism, all that really means is we just have man-made gods. These are things that we made. And so if you worship these things that

we made, then you're actually worshipping us. And so then might becomes right. And the state retains its power structure. And so where Christianity is uniquely qualified to be be the dominant threat to the state is that Christianity actually says, no, there's a power above the state. There's a power above the state, which is called, we call it God. And that is the one to which we are all beholden that our rights actually don't come. This is how kind of natural law emerges later on way past this, but you're starting to see the center of this in the early, early church. And you know that these principalities, that are ruling over Rome that we can't see.

There's demonic powers that are in the heavenly realms that are actually orchestrating what's happening in the Roman Empire. And I believe that those powers, I believe they did know what Christianity was going to ultimately do. So everything that the devil can throw at Christ and his church, he's going to do it. You see it right here.

There's a reason why Diocletian, you know, him and his crew, why they persecuted the church, because that was a threat to the state in the end. It still is to the state. Well, yeah, I want to read this quote from, this is from our usippus, from Tuterlian again, which I think is like this intersection of Christianity and nationalism. And he's talking about the emperor because the case against Christians was they were against Rome because they weren't bowing to Caesar. Turilian said, but why, but why, but why, but why need I say more of the religious awe, the piety of Christians where the emperor, where the emperor is concerned. We must, we must, we must needs respect him. It's a little, let me paraphrase. What he's saying is,

so I have the right to say, Caesar is more than yours appointed as he is by our God. to paraphrase because I thought I would just read the end but you really need more of the context what he's saying is God appointed Caesar like we believe God appoints our leaders and is working in this the Bible teaches that higher theme

in that we are called to pray for our leaders and obey them in respects to what Jesus calls us to live in justice and equality and so Caesar while they were making Christians the enemies of Rome de Trinian was saying no, we are called to pray and obey our leaders, and in this case is Caesar.

And I think that's the case, like, where we see now of we are also, whoever is in power, like we are called to live in that political sense of that God is working higher in the leader's thing. Yeah, and whether in our situation, every four years, they may have a different leader that you agree with politically or is your party, but you're still, he's still your leader. Right. And so, and now, might they go to some place, pouring out the wine before the statue, where we just have to say, no, sure. But for the most part, you're right.

I mean, I always pray for those in leadership. I think I pray harder when there are people I don't agree with, because I don't want them to see established things that they're not have to live with for the next, however many years. So that's a great point, John. And Paul teaches that clearly in Romans 13 and 14, and that being our approach to it, is that God is still in. charge, no matter what. And we are above. We want you to sign up, take the course with us for free at Unashamed for Hillsdale.com. Go ahead, Christian. Well, as you can say, so after Diocletian stepped down, would he have seen kind of all the things he built, resort back to kind of like the way it was before? I'm assuming he would because you remember one of his guys, what was the guy's name,

was there later who basically reversed course. Was it Galerius? Galerius? Galerius was his son. Yeah. I googled. I just Googled. I didn't know that.

Yeah, I didn't either. That didn't come out in the lecture. Yeah, because it was constant. Because you remember, he kind of reversed course. He was really one of the harder ones, and then he winds up sort of relenting. That's what it said. It says, Galeris, who was initially the Tetraarch, most insistent upon persecution, announced an edict of toleration, which allowed Christians to worship and peace.

And it said that he basically, he recognized that the persecutions were ineffective. at stopping the spread of Christianity, and he desired to bring order to the empire. So that was in 311, and Diocletian died 316. So he would have seen his own son basically kind of reverse what he did, which is super interesting. Yeah, and another thing I was thinking about is that even to your point, John Luke, about God being overall kind of this higher plane of the kingdom of God being bigger than even what's happening on earth. And it always has been, even though it didn't really come into focus until Jesus came. But I thought about it. Even sometimes when you swerve into something, maybe you didn't know

you were doing for the right reasons, because obviously they were pushing paganism. He was anti-Christianity. But this idea of the breaking down of power and the spread of power has been a God principle from the beginning. And it made me think about Exodus 18, Zach, because I know you guys preached to Exodus. When you remember Moses, he's led the people out, and he's been away for a long time. You remember he went out and spent 40 years in the Midian desert, and there he gets married, he becomes a shepherd. He kind of loses his confidence as a leader because of everything that happened while he was in Egypt when he was the first 40 years. And so his father-in-law is a guy named Jethro, who's a priest there in Midian. So when he comes back through, now he's leading this whole

nation of people, and he comes across his father-in-law again, and he's having trouble because he's trying to lead a whole nation, and this has been guesstimated in the millions of people, by him making every decision about everything, every dispute, everything's being brought before it. So I don't know about y'all, but sometimes when I feel overwhelmed, I mean, I'm thinking Moses had it in spage, right? And then his, so he asked his father-in-law about it, and his father-in-law says, what you were doing is not good.

You and these people who come to you, and this is verse 17 of, of, of, you know, of Exodus 18, you and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy. You cannot handle it alone. And so then he starts telling him how to break down into groups that are manageable and put judges over this group and break them down to 50s and hundreds. And so he takes this idea and he sort of flattens out the idea of the people that you can trust to them put in charge of these other people. So I thought about that's a godly principle from Moses' father-in-law, who was a median priest and it doesn't really fit into Israel at all, but understood about leadership. And I think about this, in this case, you know, Dioclesian wouldn't have known anything about that. But when he swerve

closer to a godly principle, guess what? Success happens. And so I think it's the same thing for any world leader today, whether they realize they're doing it or not, because God's in control. When they swerve into the ways that he says to lead, you lead properly. So what I'm saying is when you swerve towards the principles of God and biblical principle, your leadership is always going to be better. Whether you know you're doing it or not. Dr. Ecclesian had no idea he was doing that, but what he was doing was what Jethro told Moses thousands of years ago. When you flatten out leadership and you get closer to people, you're better off. Your leadership is better. This may be a bad example, but like modern, so it'd be like Trump and Barron. So it'd be like if Trump left office and was still alive

and then Barron succeeded and then like reversed everything Trump had done. It's kind of like diocletian and Galeris. It's like he's still alive when his son takes over and he like does the opposite of what his dad did. But might be a bad example, but modern terms, this is funny to imagine Trump's still alive

and his son do the opposite of kind of what he was doing. Galerius is hilarious. I was wondering somebody was going to say because I thought it. Galerius is hilarious. Anytime he overturned your father's edict, you know, that's, that's hilarious. That's what I'm saying.

That's hilarious. And he really just did it because of kind of political pressure. I mean, it's not like he really believed it, I don't think. You know what I'm saying? Well, he had Constantine on the other side. Yeah, well, that's where it's all headed to Constantine, and that's where things get really solidified in terms of the organization of the church. But think about the, it's so true of kind of the story of Israel, too,

when times are hard, it's like Israel like reconcilates. They're like, oh, what do we do? And they come back to the basics. You know, man, let's just get back to the basics. And then in times of peace and prosperity, what does Israel do? Well, they erect the azurepoles again. They bring in the prostitutes in the temple. They do the whole, they call the idolatry, comes back in.

And so the same thing happens here, you know, where in the moment of peace where Galerius gives the new edict, that now the church is, is worshiping and peace, but all these other things start to come in and all these, one of the, probably the, I got, they'd say it was the first heresy, the first documented heresy, Aryanism, Arias, a deacon in Alexandria. I feel like he said that on the lecture. It's not in the notes, but I think he might have said that in the lecture. Yeah, so this is like a really serious heresy that enters in.

And by the way, this heresy still exists today. And we've actually dealt with it ironically on, well, in some form on this podcast. There's different heresies that will come in to play in the early church. One is Arias here. He was a deacon in Alexandria, and he began to teach in this time of peace, where the church could worship in peace. He began to teach that Jesus was not actually fully God. there was a, that he was actually born and created. What you kind of see even remnants of this today.

I mean, there's theologies out there that we got to certainly push back on that would lead us to maybe an idea that God, Jesus was not actually fully God. Maybe he's just a man that God created and God was not eternally a father. And so this is all like coming up into, before we get to Constantine, these are things that Constantine is going to have to deal with. And it's also, Zach, kind of, I feel like it's an evolution of the early seeds that we do read about it, even in scripture, because we're doing, we've been studying first, second, third, John, this idea that first with the docitism and then later Gnosticism, which started out with the idea that, well, you know, God couldn't really become flesh because, you know, flesh is not good. And so there's no way he could do that. And so that was the kind of, to me, that was the genesis of where this goes. And so then you eventually get to the point, well, if he was born, he's really not God. Because if he, so it's like somewhere over the course of that 150 to 200 years, people started saying, well, you know, he was definitely here, but he couldn't have been God. So he had to be born.

He wasn't really, you know, this, he's something different. But you see where it had to start way back earlier because it still goes with this Greek linear thinking, even into Rome, that it's something. He cannot be a man. Because maybe we talked about origin and some of the early guys. He cannot be like us and be God. I mean, that's where the fault line was early. And now this is kind of, to me, the evolution where it culminates is that, well, okay, then, yeah, he was born, but he just wasn't really God. He was just this man.

Yeah, well, he taught that on Jesus. But then his position on God, too, he was saying that God cannot have been God the father until Jesus became the son. So I guess that, you know, so 2,000 years ago, that's when God became God the Father. So his position was, God has not always been the Father until Jesus was created, which we don't believe that. No, we don't. Yeah, I think because you're trying to make sense of this God who's triune, right? I mean, you read the scriptures, even in the Old Testament. This is interesting because this is not an invention of the New Testament that God is eternally father and that God has an eternal,

internally begotten son, you actually see it in the Old Testament too, in the way the language will read. It will say something like the word of Yahweh, and in the same context, it'll say Yahweh. And the way that it reads is they're like two separate, two, or not separate, two different or distinct persons, but somehow they're one in their union together. And so the early, you know, the folks that, what would they call them? that would interpret the, they would actually interpret the Torah in Aramaic,

what they call this guy, the Targums or Targamous. And they would, they would, yeah, they would read this and they would say, they said, there seems,

there seems to be a separate person here. And they called that person, the word of Yahweh, they called that person the Logos. So you get to like John 1 in the beginning was the Logos. The Logos was with God. The Logos was God. I mean,

the clear teeth. of the Gospels, particularly Gospel of John, is that Christ was fully God and fully man, and that the Christ was the incarnation of the eternally begotten Son. There was never a time when God was not Father, and there's never a time when the Son was not begotten from the Father. And even the third of them, Zach, even the Spirit of God. You see him there hovering over the waters in the creation. you see the Spirit of the Lord all throughout the Old Testament being present

and doing amazing things throughout Jewish history. So I would add even the third component. You see that all those years of history. And so you're right. When you see the moment of Jesus' baptism, where you see those three, where you actually watch the picture of it together, where you've got the voice of the father,

the son standing here in a human body, and the spirit descending that looked almost like a bird or a dove that was coming down upon him, you physically and audibly and every other way of your senses can see that God is these three. And so it is interesting to see that from the moment he was here until this day current, you said, there are people that have denied that. When we were in Israel, we were talking about Genesis 1, where it talks about the spirit hovering over the waters.

And then in the New Testament where you have Jesus, and he's walking on water in the storm and the disciples from the boat, and they think it's a ghost. So he was making the connection of Genesis 1 with the spirit having over the waters to where Jesus is walking on the water and the disciples seeing it and thinking it was a ghost. So kind of that spirit element to it. So I've always thought that was such a cool connection between Genesis 1 and Jesus walking on the water. Well, and then that's what makes the kingdom so exciting is because Jesus continued to tell his disciples, look, when I leave here, you know, I'm going to send the Holy Spirit in a way that's going to pour out and be available for all,

not like it was in the past where it was just selected people, where the Holy Spirit was indeweled people or given to people, I'm going to make it available for everybody, which then makes you connected to me in a unique and new way, which is powerful. So we want you to sign up and take the course with us for free at unashamed for Hillsdale.com. I was going to say, well, last lecture, you know,

lecture seven, when we were talking about, who was it again that talked about the penance and you can come back? let's slip in my mind who was teaching that oh that was we didn't say it was that Cyprian yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah Cyprian yeah yeah because I was talking because you know Zach you talked about that idea of you know during the persecution but then when there's peace how they're still like that's when you know these other things are coming up these idols and you know and you talked about the Astro Poles and things and it was talking about how like even even when

it's there's peace like there's no persecution like there's still so many divisions and he was talking about the new group called the Dotonists and they were they believe that any Christian who had given into the pagans during the persecution should be punished and even that idea of man like when when the persecution ends and you think there's going to be this peace like it's still not peaceful like there's still all these divisions and you know and we're seeing that now where it's like there's still there still is that pharicetical spirit of just, you know, judgment and harsh and this lack of grace, kind of like what you talked about. And I like you use pharicetical because we had mentioned this in the previous podcast about

this as well when I was talking about Babylon and the people that held the line for Judaism, Daniel, those guys. Well, that's where Phariseeism came from. And so the concept was so good. Like the Pharisees sect came out of, we're going to. to be lineholders. We're going to be people that do it the right way. We're not giving into culture. But over the course of, what was it, 600 years from when that happened, to you get to the Jesus Day, they had morphed in this group of people that weren't open to the

Messiah. So as much as they wanted the whole line for Judaism, the one thing that had been promised throughout all Jewish history was the Messiah would come. He was standing in front of him, and they were like, nope, can't be him. And they just could not open their eyes to see it. So that is the problem sometimes when you lose your focus on Jesus in terms of us in the in the 21st century is that then you sometimes can get into these things and you lose your cultural ability to make an impact. I personally believe that's why that we're our cultures in some of the state it's in is because I felt like the church has spent too much time inwardly focusing on what is the differences between the groups and the fighting and the infighting and the moral failures of spiritual

leadership and all those things we get into. And then we just kind of miss the fact the whole thing's burning down around us. Yeah, because it speaks against just the comfortability aspect too. Because it's like if all the way up to 311, if these persecutions hadn't have taken place, then it wouldn't have spread the way it did. Like if there were these, you know, these these longer periods of peace, then it would not have, it would not have spread. And then you have galarius who ends up saying this is ineffective because we're not stopping the story. We're not stopping the spread of it. So I think you actually theoretically stop the spread of it by not persecuting them because then they just, like, because we have the prone, we're prone just to get comfortable.

Which I think is what we're going to see going forward when we get in Constantine, right? I mean, we see some great victory there in one sense, but also just what you're describing. Sometimes now we've taken that flat leadership and we've pulled it back up again. And so now we're going to deal with that for several hundred years. of what happens when you move away from people in terms of the church and the leadership of it. Well, you'll see the great consolidation of power again through the papacy, which is interesting, because then you have the great schism that happens as a result of that, and whatever that was, 10, 10, 26, whenever it was.

And then you have the Reformation Movement that is a deconsolidation of the church. And so you can kind of see this whole thing unfolding. I mean, we're all Protestants here, our professor, I think, is Catholic. But I think that each, I think there's so much like history here to the church that it does, I do have a little bit more of an ecumenical appreciation of how this unfolds because like you think about what Constantine was able to do and we'll see this. But like even like later, folks like, you know, Augustine come into play in the late 300s. And then think about his contribution to even our current understanding of the nature of God. And you'd mentioned earlier, even about the spirit huffing over the water. And the way that Augustine would talk about the spirit, you know, the father is the lover, the son is the beloved, and the spirit is the love between them.

We start to see the faith gets a lot more kind of teeth in it, like historical anchors that actually preserve the faith. even when these heresies emerge, like Arianism or modalism that would seek to diminish the triune nature of God, there is a historical account now. God is using all of these people that he is raised up to preserve the church. And so now, you know, we are like benefactors of that. Like we are we benefactors? We get the benefit of this now some 2,000 years later from this, but I'm very appreciative of it to see that what we're a part of now is an ancient faith that is actually tied into real historical events.

I mean, that's a big deal. I think that is why this is important to learn this stuff and to take these courses and learn about these early church fathers because like this heresy right here, that with the Aryan heresy I think is a conflict of the philosophical God of what God should be

that we can determine through reason versus the personal God that we actually have of like how did he actually act on earth like I think from a philosophical standpoint saying that you've got God the full

creator and then he created the sun separate than himself like philosophically I think that sense. Like that goes back to like the old, the atheist saying of like, well, who create God? Like that stands to reason if there would be someone else. But what we actually see through history and through the acts of God and through Jesus is that that's not the case. It's that we have God who exists in a triune. We have God who's the ultimate God. We have the son who is and a part of the father in a way that we might not understand, but that's the way that we see it.

we are still arguing about some of these things today. Like we still have these problems in the church of the difference in the philosophical of God versus the one we actually have. Because people will take it both ways. Like you go too conservative with just, I'm only taking my interpretation of a little reading of the Bible and then we miss so much of Jesus. Or you go the other way of, well, God is just this idea or this thing. that he should do or, you know, based off what my belief on love is, he should act this way, but that's not actually who we have. Yeah.

Well, I think it's definitely, we continue on the study of it. It's a great study for us to do it. And I appreciate we just finished, you know, studying the early American experience. And the idea that freedom of religion is right at the cornerstone of people making the choice is the way it should be. Even if people choose something we don't believe in, everybody should have. a choice for anything, including Christianity. This isn't a forced thing. God gave us a choice. We choose him. And I think people should be able to make that choice in a country. And so that's

why I like this idea about the toleration that at least hilarious came around to the, whether he was forced there about the wrong reasons. Again, when you swerve into what's right, you're going to make good decisions. And that was one of them. Yeah, sir, thank you all for joining us. By the way, take the course for free. Unashapherhillsdale.com. We are going to finish out this ancient Christianity course. I want you guys to finish it with us, get that certificate and upload it. See you next time. 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

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