#GruntGod ep.5: George Kalantzis
The fifth installment of a revolutionary exploration of faith and service.
Transcript
Introduction
[00:00:00] Hey, and welcome to Grunt Works. First formation Grunt God, season pass. This is Brother Logan Isaac. I'm broadcasting from beautiful Albany, Oregon. Nope, that's the wrong, out on both sides, Albany, Oregon. This episode of The Grunt God Season Pass is on GIS in the New Testament and the title. Early attitudes or the earliest attitudes, if you read God is a Grunt, or if you're a subscriber to the Grunt God season pass, which you can get at pewpewhq.com/merch.
You'll know that kind of the run. This is one of the more. Personally important, interesting chapters that for me to write because it involves soldiers in the New Testament. I have GIS in the NT and I keep going to that because it almost looks like grunt, but I could also say gospel grunts. Which I do, I think in the chapter that I've revised.
Anyway, this is a fraught situation because for [00:01:00] many years, and throughout my entire seminary education from 2010 to 2015, I didn't have access to this information. And I say that because it was only in 2015 that writing began to appear in which Roman military historians like qualified, scholarly. Roman military historians began combining that field with New Testament scholarship, and the first I noticed was with Christopher Zeichmann and Lori Brink, especially Zeichmann, he's really narrowing in on this. But Lori Brink Alex Hootin and some others that I talked about in the book. They began combining these two fields before that.
Those two subfields of scholarship didn't really talk very well. And the, what we had in academia was this kind of literary [00:02:00] genealogy that just happened to keep using this language, Christian attitudes in order to talk about what was the early church doing about how did it feel about military service and war?
In Scotland, I think it was my first semester in Scotland in fall of 14, where I studied with Tom Wright and Mark Elliot in origins of Christian theology, a class at Scotland and Wright. Elliot was a Patristic scholar and many of. The books that I just mentioned are also taking the stance of patristics.
They don't treat the soldiers in the Bible with as much attention as they do. Tertullian Origin, Augustine, some of these third, fourth century writers, so they're Patristics and George. I've had these conversations with him and I was so grateful to have this interview with him at, it was, yeah, it was great conversation.
But one of the things that he pointed out when I, when we had these conversations. Years ago, it was like, look, I'm a Patristic [00:03:00] scholar. I'm going to go first to the Patristic writers, and the Bible just isn't my strength. And that's fair. But what Wright does in this class, when I took this, they were not debating, but a careful listener would realize, like they don't align on everything.
And what Tom said was, look, theology is happening. In Paul in the fifties and sixties, theology doesn't just magically appear in the second and third century. If you have a high view of theology, it doesn't begin with a Patristic era. It begins in the first century. And that just blew my mind. And I wrote my em lit dissertation on this exchange between my former Dean Richard Hayes and who is a New Testament.
Bible Scholar and Nigel Bigger, who was an ethicist out of Oxford, who was, and to this [00:04:00] day is like defends empire and defends war. It's really weird. And each of them were having this conversation on the journalist, the Society of Christian Ethics, about soldiers in the New Testament, neither of whom were soldiers and both of whom had very, I won't say extreme, but like they were.
Polar opposites, like bigger is literally defending imperialism and he is British. Maybe that makes sense. And Hayes, in his book the Moral Vision of the New Testament said, soldiers are anomalies. They exist, and I'm not making this up and I'm not watering it down. They only exist as anomalies to show readers how far outside the good news soldiers fall And.
As a former soldier. Hayes was saying, I fall outside the church unless I completely reject my past life. And a lot of patristic theologians expected that of soldiers, but Jesus did [00:05:00] not. He had all these interactions. And Christopher Zeichmann, who has this background in Roman military history, brought some of that into New Testament scholarship.
And that's what I'm trying to popularize with this chapter and with this conversation with George who we've had these conversations for. Years, a handful of conversations and I've seen there be some movement on George's part, and I don't, I haven't been in seminary. I don't know how popularized or mainstream these conversations are, but this is my, this chapter.
And the one before it on the Divine Warrior and Christ and God. As a grunt though, these two were the backbone. If you were to ask me. These are the supporting chapters of the whole book. I couldn't have done it if I didn't really believe in these two chapters. The chapter on Christ and Joshua and this chapter on Soldier, the New Testament.
We have this great conversation for you. [00:06:00] If you order any of the books I've mentioned, order 'em through bookshop.org, support Grunt Works. Get Your Grunt God season pass at pqq.com/merch. By George's book Season of Lamb, they're getting a second edition that like just came out, which I don't even have yet.
And he's presenting two more books in the same theme in, I wanna say the antique period and then the early medieval period. So i'm loving it. So this is one of my favorite chapters, one of my favorite interviews. Take a listen. Enjoy what you have what enjoy it or not. I hope you do interact with it.
Send us stuff in the comments. But here's my conversation with George Klan's, professor of theology at Wheaton. And a patristic scholar that has yeah, a lot of really awesome things to say. An awesome scholarship that you should check out. So without further ado, here is George Kalantzis.
In my conversation on GIS in the New Testament.
Interview
Logan M Isaac: All right. I have Dr. George Kalantzis, author of the book, Caesar and the [00:07:00] Lamb, professor of Early Christianity at Wheaton.
George Kalantzis: Yes. The title is Theology, professor of Theology, but yes, I teach early Christianity and Classics. And and we were having this conversation because as I got out of the military in oh six and was reading the Bible or trying to read the Bible. And entering seminary at Duke.
Eventually there's this literary tradition around Christian attitudes that attitudes continued to appear. And I thought that's interesting. I started with John c Cadoux Roland Beton had one in there. Jean-Michel Hornos, and then Yoder wrote something, but he didn't wanna compete with Beton and then your Caesar and the Lamb.
Would you give us an overview? Listeners won't know this because I wasn't recording, but we just had this conversation. Would you gimme and our listeners a brief overview of your argument, Caesar and the Lamb, and how you came to that and Yeah. Of, as my listeners will know I'm very interested in the embodied [00:08:00] experience of military service.
I know you served for a short time. I think that would be really of significant value if our listeners Yeah. Heard your experience in the military and how that led and informed your scholarship.
Yeah. Just to make it very brief as a, I was born and raised in Greece. In Greece, we have conscription, we have a draft.
So everyone is, after the age of 18 goes to the military for two years, serves for two years, and then serves in reserves for another 30 years or so. You
Logan M Isaac: said elective. Do you get to choose any service? Yeah. Or does it have to be a military service?
George Kalantzis: When you are 17 one is given an option or to write down or to declare your preference.
Okay. Actually right now, this last month, they took away that preference. Oh. So one cannot volunteer for or mark Air Force or Navy. Now everybody goes to the army. Okay. But anyway, so my choice was at 17, coming from a [00:09:00] family that had served, et cetera like everybody else was for the Airborne.
I like jumping out of planes. And that sounds fun at the age of 17. Yeah. And
Logan M Isaac: I had the same opportunity. Did you get to jump out planes or did they I did No. Get to jump out of
George Kalantzis: planes
Logan M Isaac: because
George Kalantzis: Okay. I ended up serving was, I was too old for that. Ah. Yeah. I don't, I couldn't do it in my older age anyway, sorry.
Yeah. No, that's I still want jump out of a plane. Perfectly functioning plane. Not a wanting distress, but anyway, so long story short, I had a, I came to the US in the meantime. I had educational deferments because of undergraduate and graduate school. And I ended up serving, having to go back to Greece to serve when I was 31 years old.
As a older, like 31, when my drill sergeants were 19 and 20 that age difference, that age gap is [00:10:00] it's tremendous age gap. Yeah. Experience and understanding, et cetera, et cetera. So I was, I entered as a grant military, like everybody else. Basic training. And I was hearing the narrative of why we're supposed to be in the military.
This is not a volunteer condition or volunteer force. It's draft, it's mandated. You have to be here because our enemies and for Greeks, the historic enemies, Turks 'cause the Turks want to take your home, your house and take your, your women and children. And I'm going like, I went to school with Turks.
They, I guarantee you they don't wanna take my house. Can you name three people who wanna take my house? And eventually I hope we talk about those what if questions. Because many of those, what if questions that force us to do and to think and to take a posture that is particular actually are not
Logan M Isaac: real.
That was a really helpful, one of the books I read was, what Would You Do if by Yoder? Yeah. [00:11:00] I think it was one of the first books I read when I decided to start reading Passivist stuff openly. And I still remember determinism. He describes, he breaks down very logically, like how that hypothetical is completely nonsensical.
And I encountered things as maybe you had as well. If someone actually posed that question to you, they typically have a much narrower focus on what they want to ask you. Should I feel guilty for killing someone who's trying to attack me and Yoder? And I think the Christian perspective is.
Fundamentally yes, you've done something wrong. And I did notice in both of our stories, I joined up before nine 11. And so the patriotic stuff was there, but it was very clearly recycled. Was there something in your formation or your basic training, like when you, they, you said they, they tried to, you said earlier that it's not a target, it's a turk.
Was there something politically that was going on, or was that like, I got the sense in basic this is a game. [00:12:00] They're gonna yell at me. They don't go home and yell at their family like this. This is a test Yeah. Of, of a trial. Was there something going on when you were in was there a good reason to believe the hype?
No.
George Kalantzis: No. Absolutely not. So I went in 98. That's before nine 11? Yes. Yeah. From time to time, like every 10 years, 15 years, we have a little bit of a flare up. Okay, somebody burned something or, whatever, but you go, no, this is a game. This is like so that the military industrial complex can sell.
Yeah. Keep its wheels spinning. Yeah. Yeah. That's basically what it's but anyway, so I came back from basic, and in those, the years, the next 10 years as I was thinking through this other classes is, are my trainings in Roman history and Patristics, early Christianity. Especially as nine 11, right?
Remember in, in 92 with 91, 92, 93, we have Desert Storm. Yeah. [00:13:00] All that hype is rising in the nineties, and then it drops for us on that part of the world. We have the Bosnia, Croatia, Serbian War. Yeah. So that's my neighbor. We're neighbors. Greeks, Greek units. Actually Greeks support Serbs because they're Orthodox.
Oh yeah. Nobody likes the Bosnians because they're Muslim or the Kos of ours, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. Yeah. So it is, it's a mixture of politics, religion, ethnicity, history, all that. But fundamentally, I'm here I'm in the US and nine 11 happens and. I have good friends around me who are asking me proper and good questions, which are, we understand you have to do what you had to do because you know your country like your passport, they will not renew your passport if you don't do that.
So they haven't. But can we think about it? And the more I thought about it as a classicist, right? Forget the theology. As a [00:14:00] classicist who's just immersed in Roman history, I'm reading the texts of Rome, ancient Rome, and they sound very familiar. The arguments are the same as the American especially experience, right?
Propria is not a, is not an American, right? Yeah. Model. It's a Roman model. But we inherited. Del is, the Marines didn't come up with that. That, yeah. That, that, that was in the ring of every Roman general when they were elevators. The, to the rank of the general fetus faithful.
Oh, interesting. Yeah. So it's not a ntic it's not conceptual structure. It's a reality, lived reality. So I started reading the sources of early Christians before constant, before the fourth century, before Christianity moves slowly and then very rapidly from the margins to the center.
Logan M Isaac: You are about to say No. I the fourth century, like Martin of Tours is my [00:15:00] guy, and I see that kind of Martin and Augustine, they never interacted, but they're dealing with the same things. Rome Yeah. Is becoming ascendant. But no. Yeah, the fourth century I could always come back to it, but anyway, the, no, the cons, the fourth
George Kalantzis: century.
The fourth century is a completely different thing because in, in the beginning of the fourth century, Christians are persecuted. At the end of the fourth century, pagan are persecuted. Theosis after three 80 from Constantine to Theodosius, you have emperors who are baptized as at their deathbed.
All of them, Christian, including Julian, who's whom we call the Apple State because he left the affair. Yeah. After three 80 in Theosis, every emperor is baptized. So there's a, and that's the period of Augustine. So Augustine doesn't know a world in which Christianity is not, doesn't
Logan M Isaac: own the borders in the Army.
Is it also true that he didn't have Greek, [00:16:00] he doesn't seem to engage with origin or tutu. Is that true? Tar. He did,
George Kalantzis: Tartu in Latin. He downplays his Greek because, it's like my French, but he keeps on saying that he's, Greek tutor would beat him up because he was a bad student in Greek.
Ah, okay. Okay. Yeah. I don't know if he could compose long treaties as in Greek, but he was literate in Greek. Okay. And most of Greek literature is translated very quickly. Makes sense. Yeah. But anyway, so I'm thinking through these and I'm, and I start translating every document I can find my hands get my hands on of the first 300 years of the church. Many of the translations that we had up to the late eighties, perhaps even nineties. Came to us from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. So the [00:17:00] language, both Greek and Latin Origin's language is blended, like all the way through to make him more palpable. Yeah. You palatable because this is, he's so sharp.
He's a that people, eh, so making more mellow. Yeah. And as I'm translating, I'm going Yeah. No they took it seriously. Yeah. So you start asking the question, are a historian not a theologian yet? What is that they're looking at and what are they objecting to? For example, simple example, when one realizes in, in the Latin that buttu objects to his first objection not the whole of his objection, but his first OB objection is he asked the question, how does one enter scissors ance, the Roman military?
One has to take an oath. And you go, okay, an oath. An oath. An oath. Oath is neutral in English, but in Latin is sacramental. Yeah. The mysteries or the [00:18:00] mysteries mystery. Yeah. It's a sacred thing. Yeah. Why? Because the oath that the new ion was taking was in front of and in the name of the God.
Oh yeah. It's a sacred thing. Yeah. And he goes, can you be in the Sacramentum of Christ and the Sacramentum of Caesar? Yeah. So you see his objection is not only the violence and kill, what does that mean for et cetera, et cetera. But how do you enter this? What
Logan M Isaac: is this? It's a counters sacrament. He says, if I recall correctly in the book, you, one of the points you make is that yes, killing is bad, and Christians have always said that, but specifically what the early church is saying is that Caesar is not Lord.
If Christ, you have to make a decision. Christ is Lord, and that means Caesar isn't. That's right. Exactly. [00:19:00] And that's killing is like a secondary thing that
George Kalantzis: Fascinating. Yeah. Killing. Killing or reframing from speaks to who your Lord is or who is your Lord. If Jesus is your Lord, then killing is not an option, but rather being killed is the option.
If Caesar is your Lord, then killing is your option or your mandate, not only to protect your life or your body, right in the line next to you. But in the name of and the honor of Cesar. Yeah. So boom, one claims to be Lord, have authority over one leads to everything else. Yeah. I don't wanna get, that's why go ahead. And that's why we need to think like they thought. Not how we think after 1800 years of Christendom. [00:20:00]
Logan M Isaac: That's where I'm like, and maybe we can begin to get into Yeah. Scripture and other canon. Sure. Because I'm, I absolutely can see how the Kool-Aid in America privileges, be loyal to commerce, be loyal to the Constitution, be loyal to the President, and on in some, I'll say progressive imaginations.
The president or the office of the president is clearly expecting unquestioning loyalty. And I see that. I can absolutely see that. I can point to soldiers, many cabinet officials now who like, yes. That's basically it. And the reason I pointed out, or it was important to me or it's a different thing.
If I joined after nine 11, maybe I would've had to answer for like, how far does my loyalty go? But I signed up for college money, I reenlisted to become an officer for money. [00:21:00] And then I I, I was gonna become an officer. I needed a waiver. I decided instead of going for this waiver, I'm just gonna deploy because my news is deploying.
So I, someone could accuse me of choosing to go to war and that would not be false. But where I'm concerned or where I think there's more nuance that we don't get in the mainstream, even academia is okay. Yeah. Post nine 11, it's like after the bar coma revolt or like the destruction of the temple.
And then maybe we'll get into this in a moment. Like the more I read the Bible and the more I tried to engage the secondary sources and scholarship, the more it became apparent to me the authors between, maybe not Paul, but the gospels, the earliest mark is being written like in the middle of this big, destructive, oppressive force.
But if we try and chrono, or if we take a historical critical approach, like Jesus never goes to see a light skinned Italian born [00:22:00] soldier. The most he sees are people like me who are joining. The imperial promise to have money, clothing, food, and whatever, but most of them look like him. They're aware of his customs.
And maybe there's a good moment to perhaps ask one final question before a break. The place of hermeneutics, either for a classist or a biblical scholar, what is, where does that fall and how do you see that tension being played out?
George Kalantzis: Let's take a couple of examples. In English, English translations in the Greek talks about soldiers, Jesus, meaning soldiers.
Okay. Here's where hermeneutics comes in. You step back and say, what kind of soldiers Yeah. Are these Roman soldiers or these Herod soldiers? Because if there are Herod soldiers that haven't sworn allegiance to see, yeah. [00:23:00] They're basically the militia, the police force of the local warlord king.
Yeah. But if they're Roman soldiers like Cornelius, we'll come to Cornelius in a moment. They have Yeah. Pledge allegiance to see it. So who's you talking to? Yeah. And that's so critical. That is so critical that we keep straight who's talking to whom, arguing for what and what's the consequence?
Yeah. What is being said and what is not, does not need to be said. Tech Cornelius, I don't know if we have time to do Cornelius before the break, but let's get started and we'll pick it up after. Yeah. Okay. Let's think about Cornelius. Look, D look describes him in the book of Acts and describes him very specifically.
He's a centurian of the Italian Legion. Everyone in his audience understands what that means, what we hear. You and I here. Is he the soldier? Okay. And I spent time with that in [00:24:00] the book. Yeah. But what's his role? What does he do? Soldiers are not just, forming, cohorts in marching in battle.
Yeah. They that's a, if they do that ever in their 25 year career, it's a small thing that they do like once or twice. Yeah. Yeah. The rest of the 20 years, they don't do that. So what does it mean to be a centurion? Especially of the Italian cohort. That's a privileged legion.
Yeah. Set of legions. The role of the centurion is fundamentally to be not only the officer, but because he's the officer to be the high priest or the priest of his unit. Yeah. That's his job. Like literally, his job is to come on Tuesday morning. Everybody lines up, puts their uniform like on, they line up, they bring the altar, the movable altar in, and the centurions offer sacrifices to the gods on behalf of their soldiers.
The soldiers don't have to do that. [00:25:00] The centurions do. Yeah. You don't do that properly as the commanding officer, people die because the guards, they're gonna turn against you. So everybody's paying attention what the centurion does. So Cornelius is a centurion.
That's his job. He is one who's not exactly proselytized to, but he's close. He's likes the Jewish system way of being, their morality, et cetera, et cetera. It's attractive. He. We know the story. Peter comes, what happens at the end of that story? Do you remember? His household
Logan M Isaac: is saved and I don't remember baptized Peter goes back and yeah.
Oh no.
George Kalantzis: They're baptized. Yeah. In whose name are they baptized? The name of the Lord Christ. In the name of the Lord Jesus. Yeah. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Yeah. [00:26:00] Words matter. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Peter goes back and describes what happened and marvelous things, and the Holy Spirit comes and the whole, the Gentiles now believed in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Okay? So at his baptism, the Cornelius, the Centurion, the priest of the cohort who offers sacrifice for his soldiers says Jesus is Lord.
What does he do next Tuesday?
Logan M Isaac: Oh
George Kalantzis: yeah.
Logan M Isaac: Yeah. I think it's silent, isn't it? It leaves him absolutely silent.
George Kalantzis: Yeah. Because everybody knows what happened. Everybody knows what happened. It's either he lied at his baptism, Jesus is not Lord. Or he lied on Tuesday. Yeah. There's a third option which only happened twice empire, and that is [00:27:00] during this time the Julia Claudin time and then early in Diocletian's reign in the late third century.
And that is the option for whatever reason, soldiers to surrender their commission. They're also surrendering their pension because in the Roman religions they hold half of salary. Just honorable discharge yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yes. I had in mind Go ahead. So Luke doesn't tell us what happened to Cornel.
But that's where Hermeneutics comes in and says, okay, what does she do next Tuesday?
Logan M Isaac: What should we do next Tuesday? That's right. Yeah. There's one tiny piece that I'd love to get your feedback on after the break. We'll take a quick break, listen to some ads. We'll be back with Dr.
George Kalantzis to talk a little bit more about GIS in the New Testament. Keep it here. I'll preface, I'll share with you what I have [00:28:00] in mind before we get back into it. I wanna say it was Lori Brink and it may have been Lori Brink and a couple people, but especially Cornelius. I think it's Cornelius.
I'm not gonna check, but it's one thing to consider, one of their readings was like the way it's worded was he was an an a cohort, Italian cohort. But the way that they've, somebody is pointed out is that the ambiguity around the present or past tense. Is it that he was an Italian a cohort, blah, blah, blah.
And he is now retired somewhere out in, yeah. Was it Capernaum or Mar? Cesarea.
George Kalantzis: Cesarea. Ance.
Logan M Isaac: Yeah. So why would he be an Italian cohort in Cria? Like the, one of the hermeneutical approaches is maybe Luke is saying, look at this guy, this white skinned guy, and now he's in the Roman capital of Judea.
He's got all this privilege, but maybe he's not active duty. And I, I don't [00:29:00] know where I fall on that. I'm not a Greek person. Yeah. But I do want I'd love to talk when we do get back into it, Cornelius, but also the centurion of great faith and the extent to which, the extent to which civilian authors using military language in a way.
That we can get back into it in a moment, but I think that the hermeneutics gets confused when we realize like the Roman military was very specific and he was very specific, Greek and Latin terms. And here are these Greek writers, some of whom maybe weren't native Greek speakers, I don't know.
But I think of Heka, Tarka being a commander of a hundred. I can see somebody saying, oh, Logan was a sergeant and another. Veteran being like what kind, like we said earlier about soldiers. Yeah. Yeah. And I'd really love to run by you when we get back in about yeah.
Captain Marvel. That's why I call Centurian great faith. But we, if we could go through just like some of the [00:30:00] individuals, 'cause I, one of the things I did was I went through Cadoux and Yoder and Bayton and tried to find these individuals and see what each person said about them and figure out what was helpful.
Like the jailer of Yeah. Of Philippi was fascinating to me. Okay. How are we doing? Do you wanna Yeah. Should I remember to bring anything up that you're involved in now or should we just, we're good this conversation.
George Kalantzis: Okay.
Logan M Isaac: Yeah. Alright.
We are back with Dr. Kalantzis of Wheaton. When we had, before we'd taken a break, we were talking about Cornelius.
And I am not a Greek person. I didn't take languages at Duke or at St. Andrew's. But we were talking about hermeneutics and one of the things that I'm, because I didn't take language, is I'm just doing things as best I can. And one of the, I, it was either Lori Brink or Christopher Zeichmann, or both of them, perhaps, especially around Cornelius and the Italian cohort.
Yep. Is there credence to, [00:31:00] and I'm just going off of memory when they are referring to this soldier, this high ranking soldier in Cesarea, which is the Roman capital of Judea, the only place you possibly would've found light skinned Italian legionaries, protecting pilot or whoever the procurator was.
That is, I think one of the cornerstone of this argument is like whether. Within the Greek, they were saying he is a member of the Italian cohort and he's clearly not in Italy, or he was a member of the Italian cohort, like I was a member of the 82nd. And that names a certain like prestige and whatever in the military.
Yeah. But are we, is it possible that we're reading he is a hekaton, tarka a commander of one cohort or are some of these terms Yeah. Lost in some of these translations? Yeah. Both can be
George Kalantzis: true. Okay. Beginning with a latter parts that a centurion is not just simply [00:32:00] an officer in charge of a hundred people in the Roman world, in the Roman military, the cohort, the legion, and the cohort in which one is, and each cohort, each legion has multiple centurion.
Yeah. So the centurion of the first cohort is akin to a Lieutenant colonel. So even though he's called Centurion, he, his cohort, he's a centurion over the rest of the offices. Very high ranking. Yeah. Very high ranking. So a centurion can be anywhere from a ma master sergeant to a lieutenant colonel, so anywhere in between. That's why it matters when he's identified as, is he a pretty is he the first spear? Yeah. Or where does he rank? But it doesn't matter. Eventually the role is the same whether he's retired or not. Again, it doesn't matter why because that's not Luke's point. The fact that he is soldier is not Luke's point.
[00:33:00] He, Luke's point is the Gentiles Yeah. Have received the spirits. And he makes it like 15 times in fourth verses. Yeah. Behold the Holy Spirit has come to the gentil, however. That's why it matters that we understand who we talk about. As a centurion, retired active, in order to be a knowledge and received and respected, he functions for his men.
Whether other officers or whatever in a particular capacity. And very important that in that account, in 10 and 11 of Acts repeatedly, look, does that on purpose. He says not just, and he believed in Christ. Not that he believed in Jesus Christ, but he believed in the Lord Jesus [00:34:00] Christ. Peter's message to Cornelius is Welcome to the fold. Now you have a new Lord. That's, that, that's the end of the message. That's the beginning of the message. That's the end of the message. The Gentiles are in under the lordship of Christ. Yeah. Okay. What does that mean? You gotta make a choice.
If Jesus is your Lord, you just baptized when down the water, up the water in his name. If he's your Lord, how do you live your life? It as simple as that. Yeah. That's a, that's for Peter, at least in his preaching beginning and end of his gospel, is Jesus your Lord? This is what it means for you.
Yeah. And end of story. So when we think through these exchanges the audience first audiences understand immediately what we don't, we've lost it. It's if I speak about I have a dream every one of us [00:35:00] knows what I'm talking about, right? I was in African East Africa but a year ago talking about hermeneutics and said, I have a dream.
And they go about what? That meant nothing. Yeah. Yeah. You go That's the point. Huh? That's the point. So again, that's why the first objection of the Christians Early New Testament and post New Testament is not the killing. Yeah. The killing is the result of something else. Yeah. Who commands you to kill fundamentally in Rome?
It's the gods. Can we say the system that commands you to kill? Yeah. So you asked me early on if I'm a pacifist. Yeah. I don't think pacifist may biblical. I don't see it anywhere in scripture. Jesus doesn't say blessed are the pacifist. What does he say? Blessed are the peacemakers. Yeah. That's an active engagement.
Because in, in modern pa parlance, pacifism, especially [00:36:00] after the first World War, that's taken a wrap of being, amounts non interventions. Yeah. Yeah. Not intervention. I'm out. That's not a Christian. The Christian is very much engaged with a particular posture for a particular result.
And that posture is based on the principle that Jesus is Lord. Jesus is Lord, therefore, I'm not afraid and I'm not afraid of you killing me. Yeah. And therefore, I will stand against your violence or demand or command or expectation, whatever it is, with the certainty of the resurrection because Jesus is Lord.
You cannot do that. If you're following, Artemis and Mars.
Logan M Isaac: Yeah. And I think even with Cornelius, even if he's out, typically I mean by the second century when you got out, you were then stationed somewhere else with your diploma, the money in the plot of land to train more Roman soldiers.
And so he may not [00:37:00] have still been active duty in a sense. And I, so I wonder also, and part of the chapter on GIS in the New Testament is not, I don't think we disagree on the fundamental proposition in the gospels and Pauline letters. But I think how that begins to unfold through our hermeneutics Yeah.
Is where I'm trying to wrestle through. I remember reading it was Cadoux picked up on the jailer. The gayla of Philippi. Some, archaic. Term I, oh, the jailer Philippi Act 16. It opens with Lydia, who has this Yeah. Who has managed to get into the industry of purple selling, which was reserved for the imperium.
And she used to live where these shells were made. And as I read that, like Lydia bookends Act 16, it's in Philippi where we have a letter of Sauls to the Christians at Philippi, which would've been like a military colony. Yes. It was where the Republic died. This [00:38:00] is all loaded with meaning.
And Saul, Paul is, it's the only place where uses the Imperial Guard in reference. And he talks about, to me, like Phil, the letter of the Philippians is the letter to veterans. But Lydia I've read, I studied with Tom Wright in Scotland and I've asked is Philippine not an important part of our, I if.
If America has imperial ambition and we're looking for, or we're looking for proximity to that, like Philippians is. Gold. Yes. Lydia comes into this industry. This an unattached female with a lot of wealth that I contend she must have gotten through a spouse or a father, making her a military dependent.
And then we get the jailer Philippi, who I call Dez for Desmo. Flac. I think Yoder and Benton both were of the opinion that he was a civilian. He was just a jailer, but this is Philippi that's, they called it Little Rome. They had duo weary. They had [00:39:00] two people that directed, that reported directly to Rome.
I think a political prisoner in a place like that, you're not gonna trust to a, a civilian, you're gonna trust to maybe a Legionnaire because it would've been a recruiting station for the Empire. And I think Des is particularly important for the military because he fails at his job or he thinks he fails at his job.
And he is what do I do? I'm gonna kill myself. And we live in a world where military suicide is a, is just an epidemic. And so Saul intervenes, he's no. Don't you know we're all here. You didn't fail. We didn't escape. And Dez is baptized and Lydia's houses where Paul goes these are military families.
And I think it's Scotland wasn't as bad. I was there for the centenary. I was there in 1415, so the beginning of World War I. And I'm thinking they're gonna have all these banners and red poppies and it was very muted. I remember [00:40:00] when we were there. It was either in late 14, I think, there was a British soldier who was attacked in the streets by an Islamic terrorist, and he was killed.
And I thought, oh man, we're going to war for sure. There's nine 11 all over again. But the British imagination is it doesn't pump the military full of hot air. And so I get home and I mentioned in the chapter Richard Hayes's moral Vision of the New Testament. Like he has a pretty hard line with military families that made it almost impossible for me to do this kind of work while I was in seminary, leaving me to do it, a little bit later.
But I wanted to go back to another specific instance, and that is this character I call Captain Marvel, the centurion of great faith. And you had said, you'd pointed out that Cornelius, it's this open-ended question. We don't know what he does, but it's a loaded question everybody. Who has some sense about this text is what's he gonna tell the recruits next week?[00:41:00]
And I remember, or I'll say, I like your system. We have a system in place that makes it difficult to interpret texts in ways that don't reintegrate our own cultural assumptions. And so Captain Marvel in Luke seven, Matthew eight, and I would even contend John four and John four, this figure is Bekos a royal official who has a child who is sick and is healed.
And I believe it's, I believe it's kept in Marvel who has built the synagogue in Capernaum. And so anytime Jesus goes to Capernaum, there's some kind of like military. Anxiety because a veteran or somebody has done this thing. And so I'll connect this by saying we earlier talked about Hekaton Tarka and how it's a specific rank, but it's also this wide [00:42:00] rank like sergeant.
I wonder if Matthew and Luke call him a Hekaton Tarka and we think of him maybe as an aux, maybe if you're, very progressive. Maybe he's an Italian soldier, but in John four, I wonder if it's more accurate where he is this hero aristocrat expected in the futile kind of system to train up and command soldiers.
But he is really a Ian numeri, or maybe even not a numeri, maybe he's just a Ian. And I mentioned that because I wonder if before even acts, and you pointed out like Luke's point is Jesus is Lord, and we're talking about Acts 10, 11, you mentioned 16. I think of I'll wrap up or I'll eke my point up by saying, I remember reading Augustine and talking about Luke three in a very superficial way.
Jesus or John didn't condemn soldiers, so the military must be fine, which I don't disagree with, but also it [00:43:00] felt kind of it felt like he could do more with it. And so I'm reading Luke three 14, whom I call the rakes. And that whole encounter with John and Jesus. And then fast forward to Luke seven, John and Jesus don't see eye to eye.
Luke portrays John seemingly as being more anti imperial. He sends his own disciples to Christ and says, are you the one? 'cause you just healed a centurion's child. And I can't help but read that as like. Why did you help the bad guys? That kind of the progressive voice in the back of your head is like the military's bad, and John seems to share that, and Jesus is like, Jesus takes a very cautious tone.
But in Luke 7 29, it says, all of those who are with John in Luke three we're baptized and it says even the tax collectors. And so the, Luke three 14 as soldiers and so even the soldiers were baptized those [00:44:00] rakes. Yeah. These lovable scoundrels seem to have been John's disciples and have possibly followed Jesus into his movement.
Maybe for the remainder of our time, let's, I wonder if we could talk and unfold when we say the earliest Christian attitudes. Yeah. I began thinking this way about these texts because Tom Wright in the origins of Christianity class with Mark Elliot at St. Andrews in the spring of 15 said. Theology is happening right there in Paul.
And I can't help but thinking that theology is happening. Luke is writing about something that happened much earlier. The context is different that the temple has not been destroyed. They're much friendlier. Like I'm wondering how much work needs to be done maybe to rehabilitate, like there was a conscription in Greece, there was a conscription in the US until 1974.
That's right. And part of me wonders is like a political theologian is [00:45:00] like something changed when people like me choose the military to get into college, which we're all told we are supposed to do. Maybe I've said a lot. I love to hear your feedback and how yeah, it seems like we're missing something, but I don't know how to go about rehabilitating it or if so, how?
George Kalantzis: This is truly a lot. This is like a couple of hours of discussion, but let's try to take them in order. It, one of the first rules of approaching the text is to take it within its context, right? So the gospel narratives and after Acts two are two different narratives. 'Cause now we have in whatever form a church, a community Yeah.
Before we have
inquiries. What is this? Yeah. Including who for you what's happened. Let's start with I'm with you. He's [00:46:00] a Roman. Why? What's his instinct? Suicide. That's not a Greek instinct. That's a Roman instinct. Interesting. A, it's a Roman soldier who fails in their task from which suicide to keep their honor.
Yeah, they fell on their sword. They fall on their sword. Greeks don't do that. Greeks go to trial. Interesting. So that tells you immediately what, what's happening there. But let's leave that for a moment. Capernaum is a border town, right? So on the, it's a Capernaum is on the northwest of Galilee, almost straight west, but northwest up to the, if you look at the Sea of Galilee up to the very north, that's Herod's place.
That's Jewish control. After that, we have ces Philippi, that's de capitalist. That's Syrians and Greeks. Yeah. And the Romans in the legions, in the borders, especially [00:47:00] recruit from local people. They don't come from Italy. The Syrian legions are from. Syria. That's where they come from.
So it, it's not at all out of place for that border region 'cause of taxes. To be under military, police, official soldiers, all that presence. Much heavier than other places. So are they Ians, are they Romans? Are they, are Hebrews, are they Jews? Are they gentiles? Who are they? We don't know.
He built a synagogue that says all sorts of things. It could be from this is my town, y'all. I mean your part. So I'll contribute three bucks for your synagogue. Yeah. Two he's a Jew who is a ian. Still under the same structure. Two everything else, including being part of the, even though.
Jews are ex excluded from the Roman military [00:48:00] because of the religion, because they cannot take an oath. So in order for him to be part of the Roman military, he has to take the oath. So it could be a convert. And that's the other part where I want to go at this time, and especially for the next few generations, we have a number of, we have accounts of a number of soldiers, pigs, poor soldiers who become Christians while in service. And that creates a problem because four times a year they have to sacrifice to the gods. You can say, okay, I'm just a grunt. I'm in the back. I don't do the sacrifice. I don't like, I keep my mouth shut. And, Rome doesn't care about Jesus in my heart.
I'm good. Yeah. But every single time that we have the military martyrs, the stories of the military martyrs. When a pagan in the cohort says, wait a minute, you're a Christian. Are you not a Christian? Yes, I'm a Christian. Can you do this? No. [00:49:00] Aha. He cannot do that. And they kill him.
But we also have the church order documents that Yeah. Recognize this phenomenon. And they go, okay, so we have all these guys who are in the military who are Christians and being a Christian, they don't wanna come to church. Great. They come to the nor well, they wanna come to the Eucharist, but they cannot come to the Eucharist if they're not baptized.
But they cannot be baptized if they owe allegiance to Caesar. So not what do you do? We have a whole series of church order documents for the next three centuries. Roughly. A variation of if they come to baptism, tell them that they cannot kill. In other words, disobey the order. Can you imagine being a religion in formation about to attack?
And you go, guys, [00:50:00] I'm out. I'm not gonna, I'll march with you, but I'm not like I'm out. Yeah. That's not gonna end well. Does not compute. Yeah. Yeah. It does not compute it. So they recognize this the consequence is very serious in the church order documents. It also recognizes that there are young men, because the recruits are usually about 18, 17, 18, 19, who.
Remember, military service is the only profession in the Roman world that guarantees a pension. Yeah. We go, we volunteer for college, they volunteer for a pension. Yeah. Nobody else had a pension. 13 years of pension that Yeah. That's just in a world that dies of famine, of hunger. Yeah. You're guaranteed that. Yeah. And they say the doc documents say if a young man comes to be baptized and then wants to go to the military, send them away because they lied [00:51:00] twice. They lied to God and they lied to Caesar. So they recognize that in Jesus' stories. That's why it matters that we're not in Jesus' stories, in the gospels.
We're not in the church. Jesus was not a Christian. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. He's engaging with people where they are. So what I'm gonna, yes. Your faith has saved you. Yeah. Go. Or your faith has saved your servant or your son. Or your daughter, right? Yeah. Go. I actually never tells the parents whose children he raises or he heals from afar.
Huh? Nev. He never tells them, go and see no more. Not once. Yeah. So are they allowed to see No.
Interesting. You gotta play it [00:52:00] through. Yeah. We have to play the scenario through, right? Or are they expected to leave according to the, wait a minute, are you not the one? Who Paul was dying and like that dude, like who said, love your enemies. Still team. Yeah. You go.
Logan M Isaac: Yeah.
George Kalantzis: So why do you hate your enemies?
Logan M Isaac: Yeah. I think this brings us to an, in a very important and poignant point. So back to the fourth century, and part of my fascination with Martin is, and I followed Dave Woods' military martyr stuff. I have all of them, like saved on my, they're great. And he is also right that many of them are fictionalized.
But one thing that got me about the fourth century is through the dilution. Persecution and even Caesar, Julian, underneath Caesar, Julian, it's likely or at least possible, that he killed, [00:53:00] had two soldiers killed Juventus and Maximin. Martin of Tours comes through and the pacifist read, including his own biographer, was, oh, he entered the military at 15.
He traveled a little bit. He had the freezing beggar split. The Cape had the dream leaves immediately, but the numbers don't quite match up if because if he's at the Battle of Strassburg, it's not until 3 56 when Julian was on campaign and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but taking the literary record as literature instead of we'll say Canon or something, Martin would've learned of some of these soldiers who were killed.
Yeah. Even Juventus and Maximus under his own Caesar. Yeah. And so he's at, and I contend it's at the end of a 25 year term, if he's something like, if he's something like secret service, the Pretorian guard sometimes sought combat Strasbourg, but not always. Their main goal is protecting Caesar and had a lot of political power.
He seems to do with it what he [00:54:00] can. And so when he arrives at this point of decision, are you gonna go into battle? And he's and CES's giving him the gift to secure their loyalty. And he says, you know what, no, I'm not gonna do it. I've been your soldier long enough. I'm a soldier of Christ.
It's impermissible for me to kill. And he is locked up. He thinks he's going to get martyred. He thinks he's going to be killed, because that's all of what Christianity is talking about lately. And he is not. Yeah. And so he is for, and he's in his forties. He's got a dishonorable discharge. He doesn't have land or the money, which would've been given to him.
And he goes off and finds Hillary Poitier. He found some, and he spends another 20 years as a deacon and a, and eventually a bishop. And I mention that because we have these systems. I want these episodes to remain mostly timeless, but we don't have the best, we have a pretty dystopian administration, and I think this administration would be happy if you looked at [00:55:00] them as God.
But I don't believe every administration feels the same way. And back to hermeneutics I think our initial interaction was around classes the Patristic period. And me, I'm not a patris Patricia anyway, I'm much more interested in the Bible and political theology. But you can't do that without hermaneutic things in a world in which I don't think it's, it might change soon.
When I was in, I was not expected to pinch incense. I wasn't expected to call the president God. If anything, my sacramentum, my mysteries was to defend the constitution, which I very much. I still believe in the Constitution was pretty decent. It was made under messed up circumstances, but we've had successive generations of Americans that have made America embody its ideals more.
Yeah, and that's something I still feel like I can believe in, even as I see it [00:56:00] being taken away as Christians who have this deep tradition and scripture. What do we, where do you think that line is now? If we continue to have administrations that don't overtly expect pagan sacrifice, how do we navigate that line?
Are there boundaries or guardrails? Yeah. Is there a constant that we can look to? And I'll close with this. Many of the influential Christians I have associated with, not all of them, but many of them have said, I think the military is bad and I want your help getting people out of the military.
And I have a hundred percent VA disability. I had all the, everything I needed when I was in, and I look at poor families who see the military as a, as an economically viable ladder. I can't bring myself to tell them, don't enter the military. At [00:57:00] best, I'll tell 'em, find a job that'll give you all the training that's expensive in the private sector.
Then get out after three years and make the most of it. And I get like poo-pooed from the more progressive imagination and then the conservatives, I don't know, maybe they like me, maybe I don't know. But where does that leave us? I guess given what we have this deep tradition, are there guardrails or nuggets of wisdom that you think that the classical period has for us that we need, that what needs to be brought to the fore so that less people suffer?
George Kalantzis: Yeah. Remember the martyrdom for Christians is willing but not voluntary. We don't run into the street. And he said, kill me. Yeah. Yeah. But if you come for me, I will not rebel. I will not resist. Same thing. I have so many students who come to me and say I, the only way I can afford being here at school, and like my bill now after four years is like over $200,000 is to go and serve.
I go, [00:58:00] great. Go and be a medic. Yeah. Go and be a medic, right? Go and be a medic. Yeah. Presumably you don't care what uniform the person on your stretcher has. Yeah. Presumably I'm gonna presume that go and be a medic, but is there a difference between the truck driver who brings the ammunition to the front and the one who pulls the trigger?
Yeah. It's the same thing, but the medic is a different thing. Yeah. Some would say the chaplain, I'm not sure that the way the military uses or the, like the whole thing, chaplain sees a morale officer more than anything else. But go and be a medic. Put your body
in the gap between those who need and those. But more than that, I play a game with my students and myself. I said, how many of you have gone through the American, [00:59:00] school system? 90%. Okay. Okay. Can you recite the Pledge of Allegiance? And they'd laugh and look at me and they go, what are you, what? I think I know this.
Yeah. Good. It's pretty straight. Of course you can within four seconds, during, in unison, put the commas in the same place. It's one voice, right? Yep. And for all period, I go, great. Now recite Creed, I go which one? Oh yeah. And I wanna be Anglican in the back is gonna go, start reciting believ one God, and half the group is gonna go with them and within three lines and muffled down in the okay.
So what does that tell you? That the state capitalist state has formed you into citizens better than the church into Christians if for 18 years or 16 years or 12 years, [01:00:00] however long, every day of your life you stood in front of a piece of fabric and you pledge allegiance to it. And for the republic for which you sent like the whole idea like that is your representation, right?
That's your idol, right? Yeah. That's your statue of Caesar. And you say, I pledge allegiance to this and what it represents. Yeah. What does wrong represent that Gods, that superintendent? What does that piece of fabric represent? Whatever Wall Street tells us it represents Yeah. Huh? What's gonna happen when somebody says, let me light it on fire?
It's not gonna hit you here in your head between your ears. It's gonna hit you in your gut. Yeah. And you go, okay, so it's gonna hit you in your gut when somebody tells you, let me light on fire. That piece of fabric, where's it gonna hit you When somebody tells you, pick up a rifle and go and kill your brother who has a different uniform?
Logan M Isaac: Yeah. If you don't have if that [01:01:00] doesn't cause you pause. Yeah. Your formation is, yeah, that's right. Forget the enemy.
George Kalantzis: What about Iraqi Christians? Yes. Who have forced into service, right? I'm gonna shoot him because I'm gonna kill him because he wears a different uniform. Even though on Sunday we were at the table together, taking and receiving the body of Christ and the blood of Christ.
How does that make sense? It doesn't to me it doesn't. Yeah. It simply does not. Yeah. The other thing that doesn't is that we have forgotten that Christianity from the New Testament, from Jesus to this day, the core of Christianity is civil disobedience. Jesus. Practice it. I can see that.
Yeah. All practice it because we read th the Romans 13 without understanding what it says. Yeah. Be subject to the governor of authorities because they're appointed by God is [01:02:00] not do what they tell you to do. Be subject to them means do not rebel. The authorities tell Peter and John stop reaching and they go, oh, okay.
I guess you're appointed by God, therefore I'm out. Yeah. No. They say you cannot do that. But we are the authorities. We can beat you up and we can gel you. And they go ahead. Yeah. That's what's submitting to the authorities. That's what to use Peter's words. That is what honoring Caesar means.
Unlike the Maccabees and other groups, we're not going to rebel. Yeah. Yeah. You wanna kill us? Kill us. Yeah. That's civil disobedience. But what we have done is we have forgotten and corrupted what civil disobedience means. Yeah. We have made civil disobedience about, wedding cakes and masks.
Wearing masks. Yeah. Yeah. That's not civil disobedience, that's just stupidity. Civil disobedience is, I have the authority [01:03:00] to tell you what to do. And you say In the name of Jesus. No. Yeah.
Logan M Isaac: It's a really good closing argument. And I also notice, I was thinking about this just today. The Luke acts Yeah. We'll just say acts. There's this seems to be a progression. And I mentioned Luke 16, Lydia and Dez Cornelius in Acts 10 and 11. And the, I wonder if there's a linchpin or like a pivot point where soldiers and military families are just helpful allies.
They're God fears, they help build the temple. Not outsiders. I disagree with Hay's categorization. But in Acts 22, we see like the flip it, it almost turns Claudius Lys who, and Acts, he's clearly Assyrian auxiliary, he's a [01:04:00] tribune, but like he's had to pay a large sum of money for this freedom that Paul was just born with.
And we go from having these helpful allies who are allowed inside, but who don't come from inside to the soldiers. Claudia Lys, Felix Festus Serus policies in Acts 13, and he actually gets converted. But like from 22 through 27, we see soldiers that are doing the right thing. Claudius lysis is like, yeah, let's not let them beat this person.
Oh, he's a Roman citizen. Yeah. Let's, he deserves a trial. And so they go along, they don't get in the way or they don't seem to represent for the reader. A corrupt system they seem to represent, and this is just something I literally began thinking about this morning. There's, yes, there's civil disobedience and it's typically against the temple economy and its supporters, the temple police, right?
And through 22 onward, through Claudia's, [01:05:00] I don't know right. Allegiance and he doesn't, he may still be allied with the Roman gods, but he's not going to use that power to screw with a fellow Roman citizen. Anyway, I wanted to mention that because yeah, the peace about formation. Last question, I suppose you're, what tradition do you most identify with, and as our political system is becoming less predictable as a Christian, do you find.
Solace or structure in any particular tradition? Or is there an antidote or a, is there a formative system that we can enter and is it a denomination or is it something else? I'll answer that,
George Kalantzis: but lemme go back a moment and talk about families. Yeah. I don't remember if [01:06:00] I said that before we started recording or after we started recording.
Yeah. I'm sorry. But in, in our church we have had for 20 plus years a tradition of having outside of the sanctuary a set of wall of photographs of the children of the church who are in uniform or serving. And when they come back, parade applaud and all that.
Basil Caesarea brought a simple canon. He said, when a soldier comes back from campaign, they're excluded from the Eucharist for three years because one cannot ha come to the blood of the table with bloody hands. That's not punitive for Basel and everyone who translated as punitive. That's just completely missing his point.
It's pastoral care. Yeah. So what I want to propose is that actually for families, [01:07:00] we should have services of lament and repentance not for them to repent and lament, but our complicity that makes social, economic, political, spiritual, intellectual that makes it. Necessary for their children to be at war.
Every time a soldier comes back, we should go into a period of public lament as a church asking for forgiveness from them. Because the reason why they went to war is not for your freedom. And my freedom. The reason they went to war is so that I can drive an SUV and pay $2 a gallon in tax, in gas.
That's why they want to. Yeah, so that I can go to the store and buy a $7 t-shirt. That's what they want to, yeah. So it's my responsibility, it's my [01:08:00] complicity. I need to repent from that. And we as churches, rather than we had one of a wonderful, very faithful, pious women mother. Proud of her son.
Persona was a snip. In the Rangers. And she literally said that in prayer meeting, I praise God, I'm so happy, so proud of him because God made him to be a sniper. And I always fell off my pew. I'm going like, do you know what his job is? Yeah. Like his actual job. Yeah. So where do I find hope?
My tradition. So I grew up evangelical free in Greece, which is different than the us. But anyway, my ordination was a, is with a Greek free church. I was raised theologically by both Dispensationalist early on, but then, Methodists, very different groups. I attend an Anglican church [01:09:00] and I consider myself an Nana Baptist.
So I'm a sacramental Mennonite. Neither group likes it for obvious reason. Yeah. But it's the sacra mentality, the presence of God. I truly, I come back to that again and again. Not as a trope, but as a image in my head. I just was with you at this table being fed by the same Jesus, and I kill you tomorrow.
Yeah. But where I find hope is the black church. The black church in Chicago. I live in Chicago. The black church in Chicago and throughout from Detroit, everywhere else, the black church in the south, the black church has a long tradition of nonviolent resistance, of civil, disobedient, dis civil, disobedient.
Disobedience of civil action. Yeah. [01:10:00] You're talking about administrations. I don't care. Yeah. I never talk party, I talk politics. The still the record for extra judicial executions, drawn executions is not held by the current president. Yeah. But all sorts of other things. I don't care who the president is.
I care what the policies are and how they affect people. So when will we stand up? Think this way? You served in, in Iraq and Afghanistan. Think about, let's not make it personal because most of our audience may have been from these wars most 20 years back to Desert Storm. Yeah.
Hussein invade Kuwait. We're gonna fight for freedom To use Cornell West's analogy, what if Kuwait was producing CMOs rather than oil? [01:11:00] Yeah. Would we have amassed half a million troops to liberate it? I doubt it. Yeah. But let me push the analogy because it applies to our current situation. What if instead of half a million troops, a million Christians went in as doctors and engineers.
And teachers, yeah. And medics and social workers. And not to convert, but to say, just do their job. Yeah. Do what they do. Be Christian. Do what they do. What if instead of our first response is a punch. First response. Our first response is Christians is a hug. Yeah. Or at least to show up and say
documents are No. To get to them, you have to come through me. Yeah. Let the TV cameras [01:12:00] show 5,000 Christians surrounding a church. Were undocumented persons who seek refuge come. Yeah. Let's see what that looks like. Yeah. DC is taken over by police force or military force. What if DC was taken over by a million Christians who addressed homelessness?
Yeah. It'd be a very different nation. It would be a very different, it's that lack of imagination. And that's why I say the black church. Because the black church had to fight. For its life, actual life as a very small minority. Always. Yeah. The option of armed conflict in the black church though raised repeatedly from Malcolm to et cetera Yeah.
Is not a viable solution because you lose to the what ifs. The third question usually is, so what do you do if they come to kill your family? I go, so why are they coming to kill my family? He goes, don't worry about that. [01:13:00] If they come to kill no dude did I steal their house?
Or yeah, why am I, like, how many of them are they? Are there 50 or there two? Because like I have nine rounds in that chain. In that clip in there, right? Yeah. Okay. If they're 15, I run outta bullets. Now what?
Logan M Isaac: Yeah. And the context of it, like That's right. The instinct is to just reduce and yeah, take away all these things.
And I hear you saying imagination is also taking like a wider perspective and not assuming the same thing that you're expected to assume. And that point about the Pledge of Allegiance, you're absolutely right. One of our oldest kid, we I knew the nice scene constant in the Paul Creed and we said it at her birth and all the nurses just stopped and were like listening and it was beautiful.
And I think we did, no, we didn't do it with my older be or my younger because she had some medical issues. But yeah. And I [01:14:00] think yeah, imagination is such, yeah, it's maybe the best word to use. Yeah. I appreciate your time, George. Thanks. Oh, thank you for joining me. Was wonderful being with you.
Yeah, I, there's so much more that we could say, but we'll have to save it maybe for future episodes. Thanks for taking the time and yeah, thanks for your wisdom.
George Kalantzis: Thank you. And thank you for doing what you're doing. The being in this discussion is pivotal. Yeah. So thank you.
Logan M Isaac: Yeah.
