This is the transcript of Restitutio episode 535: Kingdom Journey Interview with Sam Tideman

This transcript was auto-generated and only approximates the contents of this episode.

Sean Finnegan: 
Hey there, I'm Sean Finnegan. And you are listening to Restitutio podcast that seeks to recover authentic Christianity and live it out today.  I've been putting out podcast episodes on Restitutio since 2015. I've interviewed many authors in that time. However, I have never been interviewed as an author. That changed a couple of days ago when Sam Tiedeman of Transfigured had me on his show to talk about my new book, Kingdom Journey. We discussed the biblical idea of God's Kingdom coming to earth for well over an hour. It was an awesome chance to share about the central theme of Scripture and the clear emphasis of Jesus's ministry. Although it breaks my heart that so much of Christianity still clings to heaven as their home and destiny, I'm optimistic that the word will get out about the biblical vision of a renewed. World with everything wrong with it made right. We had a wonderful discussion and with his permission I'm reposting that interview here on Restitutio, though slightly edited. Here now is Episode 535 Kingdom Journey interview with Sam Tiedeman.

Sam Tideman: 
Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of Transfigured. I'm here again with Sean Finnegan. We will be talking about Sean's new book, Kingdom Journey. I'm very excited to talk about this book. I think that this is really important and interesting topic. Sean, you are the pastor of living. Nope. In upstate New York in Albany or the Albany area. Yeah, and.

Sean Finnegan: 
We're about 10 minutes north of Albany. Yeah.

Sam Tideman: 
And you are the host of the Restitutio podcast. You're on the board of the Unitarian Christian Alliance, and I'm sure I'm missing a couple other things that you do. You've been on my channel before, but for anyone coming to this video for the first time, do you want to give a sort of a brief biography and then how you got interested in this subject and decided to write this book?

Sean Finnegan: 
Well, thanks for having me on transfigured. I'm a big fan. I really appreciate your work, Sam. My story is growing up as a pastors kid and being educated in Christianity and and you know, a cursory knowledge of the Bible as much as a kid would pick up. And then in my teenage years, I rebelled a lot and took kind of a stereotypical pastor's kid route of. Just partying and neglecting anything to do with Christianity went to college. My birthday fell at a funny time, so I ended up going to college. I was only 17, moved out, and went to a state school and just crashed and burned. Academic dismissal basically lived the life of hedonism. Crash and burned and really kind of made a mess of. Things after that I eventually turned to God and. Really started to to try at school. I figured, you know, if I was going to be a Christian and take my faith seriously, I should actually try. So after that, I I pursued engineering and that's kind of like, I think, why I have such an appreciation for categories and like a systematic treatment of the subject. I graduated school from engineering and then really felt God calling me into and onto the mission field. And I ended up going on a trip to Africa, which I write about in the book a little bit and went to Bible College. And you know, ended up going into to ministry. You know, I I I don't think you want me to give the long version here, but let's just say you know it it's not the life that I. Would have predicted for. Myself, I don't regret it at all. I I think it's been a great ride, you know, walking with God and you know, I'm eager to see. What he. Has next. So at this point. I've been pastoring for almost 20 years. Since 2019, I've been the lead pastor here. And I have four sons and one wife, so. That's where I'm.

Sam Tideman: 
At you talk sort of early on and I should also say that Sean and I have very parallel church upbringings, both growing up sort of in the shadow of the way international. But as groups that sort of broke off from that, tried to find their own way. Sort of. You under your your father's ministry and me was sort of my dad and Chuck Lamattina here in Chicago land. We didn't know each other for a long time. We met for the first time in 2018. Was that when converge was 20/19? It was before 2017 and it was pre COVID, but I've been listening to your podcast for a while so I know who you were, but you didn't know who I was. But you talked about sort of your church going through a reevaluation period.

Sean Finnegan: 
I think it was 2017. Who knows?

Sam Tideman: 
And linking up with Anthony Buzzard and some people who emphasize the Kingdom of God and sort of a new approach to final things in eschatologies can you sort of talk about what that was like?

Sean Finnegan: 
It was so disorienting. I was a late teenager, and this was just like as I was starting to take my faith seriously. Everything was changing, and it was just like, what is going on here? And the preachers kept saying at at different events, like our summer youth events and then our our big gatherings. They kept saying this phrase don't take my word for it. Check it out for yourself and and speaking in this kind of really interesting way that I hadn't heard before that. And that's because they were literally changing our doctrine of our faith community and it was tremendously exciting. But at the same time, scary, because we have all these songs about going to heaven and. You know, we had little sayings about going to heaven and all of a sudden the various ministers were saying. We're not going to heaven, we're going to be on a renewed earth. We're going to be on a restored Earth and that's called the Kingdom of God. And I, I remember my response to it was just like, come on. There's no way that, that there's. No way we could all be. Wrong about this? Like all Christians know, heaven is our home. That's our destination. And yet they have the Bible on their side, and I really tried to find verses to support going to heaven because I was pretty happy with that idea.

Sam Tideman: 
It's a pretty compelling idea for a lot of.

Sean Finnegan: 
And then. People. Yeah, it it it it's it's very like fantastic in the sense of. Heaven is whatever you want it to be, and so if you're like you, you know we were talking before you. You talked about how you like to go fishing. So if you're a fisherman, heaven is like going fishing. And every time you throw it in, you catch the. Big one, right?

Sam Tideman: 
You see, it can't be that easy. You see, that wouldn't be quite right either. You know, you have to. It's more satisfying you. Have to work. A little bit for the fish and a couple days of disappointment followed by a really good day. I remember watching a twilight Zone episode where the this guy had died and he was.

Sean Finnegan: 
In this place and you know, he was playing a game of pool and he and he went to shoot and break it and all the balls went into all. The holes on. The first try and he's like this is incredible. Let's do it again. He does it again. He does it again and. And the whole premise of it is that he thought he was in heaven, but he was actually in hell because in hell you always get what you want. And it's utterly predictable and boring and terrible.

Sam Tideman: 
This is a tangent, but did you watch the good place? It was a a show. Was on Netflix or some other streaming pro? I mean, it wasn't great, but it had some interesting and good points, right? And it's that same premise, like, hey, you've died, you're welcome to heaven. Here's heaven. And only later do you actually learn that you're actually in hell.

Sean Finnegan: 
Yes, I did. I thought that show was really interesting. It accurately portrayed the folk ideology that many, maybe even most American Christians hold if you really. System minus like all, like the philosophy stuff. I don't think most people care about right moral duty and.

Sam Tideman: 
Right that there's someone counting your good score and someone counting your bad score. And as long as your good score outweighs your bad score, then you get to go to the nice place when you. Die. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sean Finnegan: 
But here's the problem. And that's not in the Bible. Yeah, heavens in. The Bible for sure. You know, God dwells in heaven and talks about angels and and all that. But it it doesn't talk about God's people going to heaven. It talks about heaven coming to earth that when Jesus returns, there's going to. Be this. Exciting period of renewal of creation and everything wrong with the world being set. Right. And that to me is more sustaining. Then this this sort of fantasy idea of like, I get whatever I want whenever I want it in this magical place. I I think if you really think about it, that sort of idea of a heaven is not really sustainable long term, but a world like our world but without sin and. Sickness and death. There will still be frustration. There still would be.

Sam Tideman: 
Days where you don't catch any fish.

Sean Finnegan: 
Get. Yeah, and there'd still be days where you don't catch any fish, Sam. And inexplicably, fishermen like you would still keep trying.

Sam Tideman: 
Inexplicably, that's fair enough. But so tell me about the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of heaven in the Old Testament. Cause I think there are some people who might be like. Ohh, this really heavy emphasis on the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of heaven. That's sort of like a synoptic gospel thing. But it's not really other places. But you spent a. Lot of time developing this idea from Old Testament prophecy, so could you talk a little bit about that? What the Old Testament has to say about the renewal of creation?

Sean Finnegan: 
Yeah, yeah, sure. The the Old Testament is replete with references to a golden age, sometimes called the day of the Lord, and other times, like Isaiah 2 says in the last day. Phase. This will come to pass and and so forth, so it's not like all the profits talk about the eschaton all the time. They're much more concerned with their own people, but there are little Nuggets here and there and pretty much every book of prophecy, almost every book of prophecy where you'll get a little glimpse of the ultimate the ultimate goal that God has for his people. Probably the clearest place. To go would be Isaiah, because it's just, it's just got so many of them in it. But Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Daniel, Hosea Amos. Zeff and I and Zechariah, I mean just off the top of my head. You know, there there are prophecies in all these places. And what what really strikes me when I look at. These prophecies is that they're so tactile, like Amos's prophecy of the ploughman overtaking the Reaper and the. The the person who's treading the grapes, the one who's planting them and and and the this idea of just abundance and prosperity. But it spoken of in very physical ways rather than ethereal ways. And you know this idea of. Judgment I I think a lot of us don't think of judgment as something properly fitting to the idea of heaven, for example. But when it comes to the prophecies about the Kingdom of God, and the ultimate way that God is going to heal our world. And the prophets is almost always paired with a prophecy of Doom, a prophecy of judgment and or. Circle of how God is going to punish the wicked and then followed by the restoration that is then able to occur as a result of the wicked being taken out of the picture and the righteous being able to flourish like a plant that has plenty of sun and water. If you really want to know about. Now the Kingdom of God, the place to. Go is the prophets. They're the ones that paint the picture for the rest of the Bible. You can find little snippets here and there, and the wisdom literature of the Old Testament, and I would argue that the whole Kingdom of Israel was, in a sense, a foreshadowing of the ultimate. Then that's going to come as those good. Divided kings weren't that many good ones, but the good ones foreshadow the coming of the ultimate Messiah. So the Kingdom and the good times would foreshadow the coming of the Kingdom of God when Christ returns. But yeah, the prophets really fill in the details of what it will be like, and you know, I don't know what most Christians do with these prophecies if they just say to themselves. Ohh, that that's all been fulfilled. And it's all metaphorical, but I don't see Jesus making that move, or John the Baptist making that move. Or the apostles. I see them taking it very seriously. And very literally, as an actual future, Jesus promises to his disciples. You're going to sit on 12 Thrones judging the 12 Tribes of Israel, you know.

Sam Tideman: 
And and the nations will bring their tribute and riches to Jerusalem, right? And like you said, there's a a strong tactility and embodied Ness and a sensory Ness to a lot of these prophecies, like, even they will beat their swords into plowshares. OK, well, that right. And so that that's not like moving from 1 realm to a separate. Home it is reorienting from war to peace. But you the only reason why you would need a plowshare or a pruning hook is if you're still farming. Yeah, right. The idea is peace and abundance and proper ordering of creation, not a removal from earthly existence or something like that.

Sean Finnegan: 
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would add to that justice as well. And there's this idea of immortality, which the Old Testament doesn't get into very much. There is a a beautiful prophecy in Isaiah 25 versus 6 through 8 where it talks about. How in that day God will swallow up the covering of death, which is spread upon all nations, and his people will cry out. This is the Lord for whom we have waited, but it's not spoken of very much. In Ezekiel 37, you know, people debate how literal the valley of Dry bones prophecy. Is I tend to take the view that it is interpreted in the chapter itself as referring to physical resurrection in the future, as opposed to just sort of like a revitalization of the nation after captivity. But you know, I know that's that's somewhat disputed. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't base my whole case on that. But yeah, very tactile language. It's the idea that God did not mess up when he created a physical unit. Reverse that. He did it. He did a good job it, says Toff, Toff, Toff, Toff, toff 6 times over. Good, good, good, good, good. In Genesis chapter one. And then in Chapter 2, it says very good. And so the idea is that God did a great job in creation in making physical bodies and making brains. Trees, gravity. All the things. And the problem is not the physicality. The problem is the fallenness and the age should come as this idea that the fallenness is removed by judgement and restoration to a period of wholeness. I love Michael Heiser's phrase Eden globalized. You know, I think that's a a nice simple way to refer to the Kingdom of God that that this vision of the garden that we had in the very beginning and we kind of lost access to. Is ultimately going to to fill the whole Earth, and that's this beautiful image of the Kingdom of God.

Sam Tideman: 
And that there there's a a humanity to it right there. There is a actual city, Jerusalem. It's not just that we go back to wandering around naked in a well taken of garden or landscape there there's a city now newly and there there's a king ruling from a city. The city has, you know, 12 gates. Etcetera. Well, that and and leading into the New Testament, but that there is a political order. And that there is technology, right? You have cities, you have pruning hooks. Pruning hooks are a form of. Technology and tools and stuff like. That so it's not.

Sean Finnegan: 
Now, actually a culture as well.

Sam Tideman: 
So it's not just like we returned to some primordial innocence that we lost, but we're now flourishing in a way that Adam and Eve had been pointed in the direction of but didn't get to make it to also.

Sean Finnegan: 
Yeah, you know it. It's counterfactuals are difficult because, you know, everyone has an idea of what would have happened if Adam and Eve had not short circuited the maturation process God had in mind for them. But you know, I would imagine it, it would have, you know, time to it for them to develop and then eventually developing technology and. Build probably building a city. I would, I would imagine over time. Of course, that's hard for us to know. But you're right and you know, Tim Keller makes the same point. Sam, that in Genesis we have a garden. But in revelation we have a city. And so it's not. It's not just completely returning to innocence. There's no returning to innocence. For people like us who have experienced this kind of world that we that.

Sam Tideman: 
Right.

Sean Finnegan: 
Live in, but there is a conquering in Revelation 2 and and three talk about the one who conquers. He will sit on a throne and he will rule. And as I have conquered and I sit on a. Throne with my. Father. So I think the idea is we conquer and then we're able to, in an embodied state as physical bodies. Resurrected bodies enjoy this future world with Jesus as King. My goodness. What? How? That be, and that we would bring culture and we would do things and we would create art and we would have entertainment and it would be like the world today, but without sin and dysfunction and suffering.

Sam Tideman: 
So let's talk a little bit about how the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of heaven appears in Jesus's ministry. How important was the Kingdom of God to Jesus's teachings and to Jesus's actions, and what do we see in sort of the Gospels in Jesus's life regarding the kings?

Sean Finnegan: 
Understanding the Kingdom of God is really the key to unlocking what Jesus was all about. I think it's really that big. I actually, I think I'm kind of under under selling it a little bit there. It would be like being friends with Joe and not realizing he's the President of the United States. You know, it's just like you don't really know Joe, if you don't really. If you don't know that about. Him so it. Is with Jesus you you say? Oh, I know. Jesus. I love Jesus. Jesus is all the world to me. But you don't realize that he is destined to be ruling over the world. And that's really what he's all about in his mind. So he does all these miracles. You know, he casts out demons and the demons know who he is. They say, oh, you're the you're the Christ or you're the Messiah. You're the. You're the holy one of God. He has authority over them that is fitting of a king, you know, fitting of someone that God has invested with this authority. You see it in the exorcisms. You see it in the miracles. I don't think his miracles were, were just acts of compassion. I think they were demonstrations of the Kingdom. And I make a big deal about that in the book. When John the Baptist sends a delegation to Jesus. I think that was in Luke 7 and they say to him are you are you the one? Are you the one who is to come or do? We look for another.

Sam Tideman: 
Hmm, sort of coded language right? Cause running around calling yourself the Messiah was a death sentence in the Roman Empire. And so they're using code language to ask the question. Yeah.

Sean Finnegan: 
Yeah, very subtle. And Jesus gets it. You know, he he's not. Jesus is brilliant. He gets it. And he says go and tell John what you see and then what he does is this is kind of a a nerdy textual thing intertextual thing. But he quotes Isaiah 30. Five and Isaiah, I think it's 65 and and he sort of mixes them together or maybe it was Isaiah 62. Two different chapters from Isaiah. Both of them are eschatological descriptions of the Kingdom of God and in the Kingdom Age you don't have deaf and blind and lame people. It says the lame will will leap like the deer, and so the the vision of the future is a vision of restoration. And if you have physical maladies. That's something that's going to be fixed and not just fixed like you might even get an upgrade over the rest of us depends on how literal you want to take it. But. Jesus says look at my miracles. So John the Baptist Messenger said, are you the Messiah? Jesus says look at my miracles. So to me that's Jesus under his own self understanding of his miracles as integrated with and testifying to his messianic identity and the Kingdom that he represents, which is to come. I draw a lot on into you right in my understanding of this. You know, this whole idea that Jesus is doing already, what will happen in the future as a testimony of.

Sam Tideman: 
Yeah, you used to fancy words.

Sean Finnegan: 
What is to come? And and so that's really how. We're way of thinking about it.

Sam Tideman: 
You had a fancy word for this. What was that fancy word? I remember reading this where I'm like, I don't. That's not in my vocabulary. And I'm forgetting. Yes, like.

Sean Finnegan: 
Proleptic proleptic technology or proleptic ethics. Yeah, yeah, that's that's a Lee camp where I'm a big Lee camp fan. He's an interesting guy, but, yeah, that's the idea of looking to the future and. Embodying or anticipating it by how you live now. So like, if you're if you're about to go on a beach vacation. You want to get ready by losing your overhang, so that's like the embarrassing part that that goes over the bathing suit, right? So I was just on a beach vacation. And of course, you know, I'm running every day and I'm. I'm like, just trying to ditch my overhang, which, you know, it's a nice padding to have in the winter. But in the summer it's it's not so cool. So.

Sam Tideman: 
Or like an engagement ring.

Sean Finnegan: 
The future affected my presence to such a degree that I started to live in light of that future, and I think that's what Jesus is doing. Jesus is going around saying, look, the Kingdom of God has drawn near. I think he's talking about himself. I think he's he's saying like, hey, I'm the king. I'm I represent the Kingdom. You know, I'm I'm here. And around Jesus there's a bubble of the Kingdom. There's justice, there's restoration, there's healing, there's wholeness. And there's a challenge. There's a totalizing challenge. Make a commitment, repent, make a commitment to be wholeheartedly in service of God and and come and follow me to read Jesus and not just in the synoptics. I would argue in the Gospel of John as well. I think the language is different. John prefers to use the phrase eternal life, but it's the same thing and you know, Jesus is pretty clear. And John Chapter 18 with pilot about, you know, his Kingdom. It's not from this world, but it certainly is for this world. If you really want to understand Jesus Christ, you gotta understand Christ and what Christ means is king of the Kingdom. Ohh there you. Have it.

Sam Tideman: 
That's good. You you talk about you kind of draw this contrast between sort of you you quote, the Billy Graham Jesus prayer or the forgiveness prayer where the idea, especially in a lot of evangelicalism. But this is even just beyond that. A lot of people think this that the gospel is. Jesus died for your sins and now you get to be forgiven. The cherry on top is that you get to live forever and. Heaven. But the gospel is equated with sin, forgiveness, kind of in in just a one to one sense. And of course, you're not saying that Jesus didn't die for your sins, or that that's not part of the gospel. But what does gospel mean when Jesus is telling his disciples to go out and preach the gospel? What would you say is the fullness of the word gospel in in the way Jesus is using?

Sean Finnegan: 
It well I I think the the real key section is Matthew 16. When Jesus says to the disciples, who do you? Who do you think that I am and Peter answers correctly and Jesus. Because, hey, I'm gonna suffer and die and Peters response is so telling. He totally doesn't accept that Jesus is going to suffer and die for his sins like this is Christianity 101. Like everybody knows that. Come on. And Peter's just, like, totally shocked, totally scandalized, to such a degree. That he takes Jesus to the side and reproves him, rebukes him. And of course Jesus says get behind me. Jayden, why in the world would Peter be so shocked? Well, it's because Jesus hadn't been preaching about his suffering and death publicly or even privately. That was his first time even talking about it privately and it freaked his own disciples out. So the question is, well, did Jesus just not preach before that? Well, of course you did. If you look in. Matthew 423 he's he's preaching the same message that John the Baptist preached in 417. If you look in Matthew 935, you'll see that he was his like his modus operandi. His was to go from village to village to preach about the Kingdom of God to teach the people to heal them, to cast out. Payments. It was a it was a total messianic package of what he did from town to town and. If he's preaching the gospel, and yet he's not talking about his suffering in his death. What is he talking about? And it's very clear he's talking about the Kingdom and he's calling people to get right in light of the coming of the Kingdom. These and he doesn't define it. The people know what he's talking about. Why do they know what he's talking about? Because they read about it on the Sabbath. Yeah. When they go to the synagogue and they and that there's a public reading of scripture and they read from Isaiah and they read from Daniel and they read from these other prophecies that we find throughout the Hebrew Bible. It's it's right there. So people knew it. They didn't have all this other stuff mixing them up yet like we do today, yeah.

Sam Tideman: 
Now to me like the big contrast is is that your salvation? The cleansing of your sins is so that you can become a citizen of the Kingdom of heaven. Your salvation is the means. And the end is to be a sanctified, glorified member of the Kingdom of Heaven as part of Christ's rule on Earth. But a lot of people make the salvation that the end right the the forgiveness of sins is is the end, and that that's the end of the story with a little bit of heaven stuff. But the salvation is the means of creating the. People that can be the citizens of the king.

Sean Finnegan: 
Yeah, Revelation 59 and 10 is is my go to on that where it says you were slain in purchase for God people from every tribe, nation of language and have made them to be a Kingdom of priests and they will reign upon the Earth. So the idea and I love how that integrates atonement with eschatology. The idea is that the death for our sins is so that. There would be a people. To reign in the Kingdom of God. That's not the only reason why Jesus died. I think if you look at the totality of Scripture, you'll find several reasons and they're not in competition. You know, it's a both hands or thing. You know, the big biggest one of all is so that we would be able to enter the Kingdom and the resurrection too. So I I I have a three pronged gospel, I believe it's. Jesus died for your sins. God raised him from the dead and he's coming back to rule. You know those 3 components together, the Kingdom, the cross and the resurrection. And you know the resurrection of Jesus is what proves him to be the actual Messiah. Lots of people get crucified. There's nothing special about that. There were other people crucified at the same time as Jesus. We don't have. Searches for them. So you know, why is Jesus so special? Why does his death? Have significance? Well, because God raised him from the dead, which also then prefigures our ultimate resurrection from the dead in the age to come when he returns. Paul makes that connection very clearly in First Corinthians 15, I think like 21/22/23 somewhere in there where he talks about how Christ was the one that was raised, but then at his coming we will be raised and he uses the term first fruits. He's the first fruits from the dead, indicating that we would then follow that pattern. And I think that's so helpful too, that as Christians, we have the pattern of Jesus he died. He was in the he was buried, you know, he was in the The Cave, the tomb. And then he was raised from the dead. There's no indication of of going to heaven in that period. In fact, there is a verse where it says that as Jonah was in the, what was it like? The the belly of the whale or, yeah, whatever it was for three days.

Sam Tideman: 
Little what?

Sean Finnegan: 
Very nice. So will the son of man be in the heart.

Sam Tideman: 
Of the earth. So right. And then acts 2. You did not leave my soul in Hades. Right. And then and Ephesians 3 or 4 for he who ascended is also he who descended into. The lower parts. Of the earth and even the apostles, Creed gets still gets this part right that, you know, he died and was buried and descended into hell. It's often translated in English, but it's, you know, Hades, it's the realm of the dead. I remember at my most recent church that excommunicated me in a Bible study. This was before they knew the rest of my heretical. I was like, well, and you know, Jesus was in hell for those three days and they were shocked and offended at this idea that Jesus wasn't how I'm like, well, not like the hell where Satan's poking you with the pitchfork. He he's in haitis. He's below the earth. He's in the grave for those three days. And they were. They were like, aghast at the idea. I'm like, well, where do you think he was? It's like. He was in heaven. It's like, well, then why did he come back down, only to go back up again? You. Know anyway I. I I still have a beef with that. I'm like, that's in the apostles Creed guys and there are clear verses on this thing so.

Sean Finnegan: 
I tell you this, this it so. Fires me up, Sam, because. You know, I go to funerals, you know, obviously, if it's a funeral with my church or our network of churches, then it's different. But most of the funerals I attend of other kinds of Christians, whether Catholic or Protestant, every time they preach him into heaven or her into heaven. And it's like, what about the Bible? You know what about all these scriptures? And to be honest, even some of these really. Cutting edge Christian thinkers like Tim Mackie and to you, right, Tim Keller, they know the Kingdom. They got it right. But then they're like, well, but in the in the meanwhile, we're just gonna go to heaven for a little while. But that's not really what matters. What really matters is what happens when Jesus comes, when when we focus on the Earth. But it's like, look, man, if you give. The the populace, if you give the people an idea of like going to heaven when they die. They're not going to care about. Everything else, they're just. They're all they're going to care about. It's like an eclipse. The moon is like out in front of the sun, like that's all you see is. The moon, you. Don't see the sun anymore and I fear that the this whole heaven and death thing has. Eclipsed the Kingdom message. And you know, the Bible offers this idea of sleep. And obviously it's a metaphor. We know dead people aren't literally sleeping. But whatever the metaphor means, it can't mean that they're awake, no. So if you are asleep, whether you whether you believe in physicalism or you believe in soul sleep. Whether you're a monist or dualist, or some other transhumanist. Thing I don't know, I I. Think the the. Idea is still, if we're gonna be biblical about it, needs to take into consideration that you are unconscious and you know a lot of people will say ohh Sean. But that's just talking about the body that's not talking about the person. That's not how the Bible talks. It doesn't talk about, you know, his body. When Mary went to the tomb and she encountered the gardener, it was really Jesus. But you know, she thought it was the gardener. She didn't say to him. Tell me where you have laid his body, and I will take it away, she said. Tell me where you have laid him and I will take him away. This whole idea of like, only just talking about the body in an impersonal way, it's a very modern way of talking. It's not. It's not there in the in the book. You know, if you ask somebody where's Jesus during that period? Well, he. Well, he was buried, they would say, well, he's in his tomb. Just like they talk about David, he's dead and he's buried his. In his tomb, he did not ascend. It he literally says he did not send it to heaven and acts.

Sam Tideman: 
Yeah. Yeah. Don't cling to me for I. Have not yet ascended to my father and your. Father, my God. And your God? I pulled that verse out also to in that previous conversation I mentioned so.

Sean Finnegan: 
Well, I was. Talking about David, but you're right, that's also true. Of Jesus, Jesus flat out denied having gone to heaven in.

Sam Tideman: 
Yeah, yeah. To Mary.

Sean Finnegan: 
Was that John 27?

Sam Tideman: 
Yeah. So because of this transfigure, let's go into church history. So we have this really clear idea where we've got the Old Testament prophecies that describe this earthly Kingdom of God that has all these wonderful attributes and the bad attributes removed. But it's very earthly, embodied. Tactile etcetera. We have Jesus running around preaching about the Kingdom of heaven even before he's mentioned anything about his death, but we didn't talk about this very much. But you know, we have the apostle Paul and all the Epistles and the book of Acts. People are running around. They're preaching the gospel. Of the Kingdom. So how did we end up in a place where in 21st century America, when? You're going to a funeral that's for a different denomination. There's all these people talking about going to heaven when they die. Billy Graham's Evangelical Association talks about it, and we feel like this embittered, embattled theological minority trying to cling to the biblical truth. How did we get to? This state what went wrong?

Sean Finnegan: 
Alright, I I just gotta challenge one word. There. I I don't. I don't think we should be bitter. I think we should be hopeful. I think we should be helpful because ultimately the truth is going to win. I take more of a Martin Luther King Junior's stance on that. The arc of the moral universe may be long, but it bends towards justice, like eventually all will be.

Sam Tideman: 
Fair enough.

Sean Finnegan: 
Be revealed, even if we get our eschatology wrong, what's going to happen is going to happen and God is going to bring it to pass. So I take a lot of comfort in that. But yeah, basically what happened is Christianity had a battle over this doctrine over the doctrine of what happens when you die. And this is something that I was very keen to study when I was at Boston University, it was, it was really a major area of interest in my later time there like my last couple of semesters in particular. And I was just amazed to to find not just like the smoking gun, but like the whole. A whole like record of all the different battles and maybe not battles, is is a fair word. But you know the evidence in the literature. As the centuries rolled on and what I found were really three reasons why early Christians started to reject the Kingdom, one is they saw it as too crude. It was too. It just seemed ridiculous based on the their education of their, their worldview, their cosmology, their cosmogony. And so they they said, well, this just seems stupid. You know, we can't really believe in that this idea of like living on Earth forever in a world that changes just seems really out of touch with like, you know, modern sophisticated thinking. And their second reason is that it's too Jewish and Christianity was small and Judaism was big in the early centuries. And so there was a a real competition between the church and the synagogue and the Jews, I think, were pretty much outperforming Christians in debates and dialogues. Their Christian response was all right. What we need to do is figure out a way to answer the question. Why is Jesus the Messiah? If the Jews reject him and the Jews are saying we reject him because he didn't bring the Kingdom, so the the move was to say alright well Jesus is the King, Jesus is the Messiah but of a spiritual Kingdom the Kingdom of heaven as opposed to the Kingdom of God on earth. And you are reading the Scripture too literally. We're reading it allegorically, which was a well established, sophisticated way of reading holy texts. Like Homer, for example, and therefore your criticism of Christianity is invalid. And then the third reason was because it was too hedonistic. This whole idea of eating and drinking and you know, just enjoying the embodied existence rubbed against the sensibilities of the cynicism of their time. So those are the three reasons that I found. It's not like anybody stated those three reasons in in just the way I did. But you know looking at the critiques of the idea of the Kingdom or Christians who believed in the Kingdom, I was able to discern these as 33 major reasons why Christianity. Eventually decided you know what this Kingdom idea is no good. Let's reimagine it as a disembodied existence in a spiritual realm. And what was motivating that? Well, three people in in, in particular, Plato, Plato and Plato. You know, maybe I've given plate of too much credit, you know, platinus and porphyry are in the mix. So we could give you a free, you know, pious and poor free. But Play-doh, Play-doh, Play-doh, sounds sounds more humorous. So.

Sam Tideman: 
But they're just downstream from Plato, yeah. Yeah. How long do you think this centrality of the message of the Kingdom hung on in early Christianity?

Sean Finnegan: 
Oh, for centuries.

Sam Tideman: 
Yeah. So just a little bit like what are some of the the church fathers are evidence that there's there was still the centrality of a future coming Kingdom and an emphasis on resurrection in. So it wasn't just like. By the time Paul and Peter get killed by Nero, everyone else forgot about it thereafter. Or something like that. Like, what's the timeline that you imagine this transformation?

Sean Finnegan: 
Happening as with almost everything, the transition is slow. It's not sudden. If we look at the Apostolic Fathers, which is the first Christian authors outside of the New Testament. We can find a couple of, like, really strong indications of believing in the Kingdom, for example. The **** talks. It has like a mini apocalypse. In the last chapter, and it talks about the coming of the son of man. There's a statement in Barnabas about this idea of there being 6A Sabbath week. So you have like 6000 years, then you have 1000 years where? The world has renewed and. This is the the whole millennial idea. You find other little snippets here and there where they talk about, especially in Clement, I think it's second. Clement off the. Top of my head where they talk about entering into the Kingdom or entrance into the Kingdom, and nobody's talking about going to heaven like the closest we get to this have an idea. Is, I think. Like with the martyrs, maybe they martyr them with Polycarp. You, you have that idea a little bit in there. What happened? And this was kind of a slow process, is that as Christians were getting married. A theology eventually developed which took time that the martyrs went straight to heaven, but the rest of us would have to wait until.

Sam Tideman: 
So there's a special class that could like if you if you got martyred then maybe you would get the honors that Jesus got, but that that was an exceptional case or something like that. Yeah. And and it certainly didn't negate.

Sean Finnegan: 
Yeah, yeah. I don't think I've seen the. Bible anywhere. Maybe they use the little part of the vision and Revelation 7 where or maybe 14 where you know they're these like souls and they get robes or whatever. But. You know, like that's I think. Literalizing the vision in it all inappropriate kind of way.

Sam Tideman: 
Yeah, I remember reading Irenaeus and you talk about Irenaeus and and right. And so I was reading Irenaeus with actually Beau Branson, he he was the guy who sort of taught me how to read the.

Sean Finnegan: 
Oh my goodness here. And it's brought me to tears.

Sam Tideman: 
Search for. And we got to that passage. You know, the one that I'm talking about where he talks about the importance of resurrection. He talks about these Gnostics who are teaching this idea that you have some inner, you know, spirit within you who who the main goal is just to escape this body and get back to heaven or the pleroma where it belongs. And that our existence down here is this bad thing that's happened to us, and we need to, you know, get back to where we come from. And Ernas is railing into this idea. He's like Jesus was in the grave when he was dead, you know, making the same point we made earlier. Do you think you'll get greater honors than Jesus got when he died? Right. And you know what about the Kingdom? It's all about the resurrection, and then he's bemoaning this idea that the going to heaven when you die starting to. Creep into the church. Itself, but it's these gnostic ideas and these gnostic tendencies that are distracting from the importance of when you're dead, you're in the grave. And I think you're in and you see this in some church fathers. The idea that you might not be unconscious, but you're sort of like in a dream like. Semi consciousness underground in the intermediate state and that's where it could relate. Maybe to like the parable that Jesus says about the bosom of Abraham and stuff like that. So there's like this underground realm that is like it's OK. But you know, don't get me too excited for it. The real exciting thing is the resurrect. And you're an *****, you know, putting a stake in the ground that we can't get. Let this idea of going to heaven when you die, get in and infect orthodoxy from the the Gnostic teachings. And and I think you can see that there. And Irenaeus isn't alone. You can see that in a lot of the early church fathers that that fight to hold the line on this.

Sean Finnegan: 
Yeah. Well, I mean, Justin Marker, who proceeded earnest certainly took a strong stance on believing in the physical Kingdom. On Earth, and condemning anyone who would dare to say that when they die, their soul goes to heaven. To him, that's an absolute apostasy. That's absolute heresy. And Justin, by the way, might have been the guy that invented the concept of heresy. Just going to throw that in there in his book, The Syntagma which was. Lost because Irenaeus is against heresies, I think basically just took it on and then expanded it, so nobody copied it anymore. Probably. But we could almost say I don't want to say it's like the first heresy, but like one of the one of the earliest heresies on record in the when would we date dialogue with trifle like one 60s, something like that and then Uranus to the one 80s somewhere in.

Sam Tideman: 
Yeah, thereabouts.

Sean Finnegan: 
So these two like powerhouse guys are both presenting themselves as orthodox, as mainstream Christians, and both are taking incredibly hard line positions over against other Christians that are saying that when you die, you go to heaven and you escape this physical world. Now we refer to them as the Gnostics, but it's not. Not like they were thinking of themselves as part of a different religion at that time. And what? What were the Gnostics really all about? The Gnostics were about combining sophisticated modern scientific, philosophical thinking with scripture in a way that made sense, and people don't think of the Gnostics that way. They think of the Gnostics as just like a bunch of wackos. In like a a fantasy genre or something, you know, inventing this elaborate myth, but like what they were doing was very palatable in their day, or else they wouldn't have been such a threat that the Christians spent all this time refuting. If they weren't so cool. And if you read Timaeus, if you read Plato's account of the origin of creation, and then you read the Gnostic myths. You're like ohh. This makes perfect sense. What you're doing here you're you're finding a way to work together. Timaeus and Genesis using this pre myth that makes sense of everything. Because it's a brilliant thing, I think it's totally wrong. It's absolutely genius, though, and people were very impressed. Like ohh really. Ohh that's what was going on. That's that's the deal with the tree of the knowledge of good, OK. And Christians are responding to it. But then later on. The same thing that motivated the Gnostics, middle Platonism eventually came into Christianity in a very strong way with the Alexandrian scholars, especially Clements and origin of Alexandria. It's hard to overstate the influence of origin of Alexandria. Everyone is either an originalist. For an anti originalist after origin, he's that kind. The guy and even the anti ones are sort of like secretly admiring him.

Sam Tideman: 
Yeah, you you get shaped by your enemy. More than you expect to, yeah.

Sean Finnegan: 
Yeah. So and what does origin do? He brings in the newest form of philosophy, which scholars today called Neoplatonism, which he learns, possibly at the same time as Platinus, learned it under ammonia sakis in Alexandria. And you know, it's sort of just like middle Platonism. That's a little more contemplative. A little more focused on the ascent of the soul. He's like meditative exercise. Is Augustine talks about it in the confessions, like how he was doing it a couple centuries after. Yeah. So origin is just such a genius. He's such a powerhouse. And he and he really comes up with a better way of combining the Bible with. Platonism that's that doesn't have this whole pre myth. Like the Gnostics had, and so it was more. It was more convincing to mainstream Christians. So I don't think Gnosticism influenced Christianity so much as the same thing that was motivating narcissism motivated Clement and origin and those who. Were, you know, educated in that world to make sense of their faith in light of the philosophy of the time.

Sam Tideman: 
Yeah. And I think it's funny because. You were pretty down on allegorical interpretation in your. Book and I'm a little bit more. Pro allegorical interpretation than you might be, but I do agree that the allegorizing method enabled origin to detach himself from the the teachings. And that I it was origins, cosmology which is really this goofy thing. Like people. I don't think people even really realize or have come to terms with how absolutely different origins cosmology was. You know, he thinks that all of our souls used to exist and based off of our fidelity to God we were put into bodies. Recording with our rank, like if you're a really good soul, you might get to be in the in the sun like the sun, like the actual thing in the sky. If you were really bad, you might be a demon. If you're somewhere halfway middling, you might. Human and that there are going to be multiple ages of this literal reincarnation, as we all sort of work our way back up to escape our embodiment and that it was even kind of karma. Like, you know, if you did good in one life, then in the next life you might be a little higher in the next life, hopefully higher or if you mess up you might fall back down for a little bit. But eventually everyone will get there. And how in the world did you fit the Kingdom of heaven into this? You know successive ages that's coming from these, like weird stoic and platonic ideas. And it's like, how could you incorporate with that with Christianity? Well, you. Have to do a. Whole heck of a lot of algorism to get there I think is really sort of the short answer and a lot of Christianity. Would later drop some of the weirder parts of origin, but there was still I agree with you a whole lot of influence after that, but let's hear.

Sean Finnegan: 
Well, honestly, it's a genius way to deal with the odyssey. You know? Why are? Why are some children born with? Disabilities or, you know, even deadly diseases that kill them very young. You know, origin would say, well, that's because they weren't paying attention well enough to contemplating on God's what effulgence or something. And so it's like, it's their own fault. That's their punishment. Don't worry about it. They'll come back around next time. As a child that doesn't have the disability and they'll have another shot. So it's a genius way of dealing. With the issue. Of the Odyssey, I just think it's totally wrong.

Sam Tideman: 
So another thing that I wanted to talk to you about is, of course, sex. So you talked about that one of the forms of resistance, the idea of the Kingdom was viewing it as too hedonic. So what do you think is the role of asceticism in sort of the? Growing Christian resistance to the idea of the Kingdom.

Sean Finnegan: 
This is the first time anyone said to me. I want to talk to you about sex on a public interview. Before, so you have. To pardon my snickering, but it's a funny thing that early Christianity, and this is a currents that entered the Christian mindset. Very early in the 2nd century. They started to have this hang up about sexual intercourse and starting to think that it it just wasn't fitting for a righteous person to have any kind of, even within marriage, to have any kind of sexual relations, and that if you're going to be a real Christian, if you're going to be, you know, strong in your faith, you should deny yourself. Any bodily pleasures? So the classic, perhaps one of the most extreme examples is once again origin, who, as legend has it, castrated himself and.

Sam Tideman: 
I for the record, I'm not sure how actually true that is. I think that might have been an anti originalist rumor slur against him. But in any case, it is. It's hard to know what actually happened, but anyway, so the way the way you see this portrays origin is that he doesn't wear shoes.

Sean Finnegan: 
He doesn't eat meat, he doesn't drink wine, he doesn't sleep on a bed because he's training himself like an athlete. In Ascesis is like the word in Greek. We get for asceticism, but it means training. And so the idea of like training yourself is very stoic, kind of perception, so that you can be prepared for anything. And this is cynicism enters Christianity way before origin. By the time he gets on the scene in the third. He he really flourished. He's like 185 to 253. So like, he really flourishes like the two 20s, two 30s in that period there by then, this is a dominant idea within metropolitan areas of Christian. Entity and it's it's totally incompatible with the Bible. You know, this idea, like Paul straight up rebukes it. He's like, don't listen to these people that forbid marriage. He says this in Colossians and they say don't don't touch this, don't touch that. You know, Jesus is called a glutton and a drunkard because he he goes to all the dinner parties and he hangs out. With the sinners. It's it's a really funny thing. That was part of just the Greco Roman sensibility probably due to this Stoic influence. That then enter Christianity and combined with it in this strange way that eventually to be like a real committed Christian, like a a a priest for example, you shouldn't. You shouldn't be married.

Sam Tideman: 
I'm going to test you a little bit on this idea because I'm not quite sure if you're right, so I about the relationship of sex negativity, I guess you could say in early Christianity. Now what? And I think it might be a form of what you were, what the the word that you talked about earlier, Pro Lepta, where you're acting out something before it's actually true prolepsis. So my question would be, is how often do you think we'll have sex in the Kingdom of God?

Sean Finnegan: 
Yeah, prolepsis. I don't know. I don't know about that one way.

Sam Tideman: 
Or the other. So what about where Jesus says for they will neither marry nor be given in marriage, but shall be like the angels in heaven, in the Kingdom, right in respond like the Sadducees, test them on resurrection and they ask about the woman married to seven people. And Jesus says you're mistaken. We will neither. Marry nor be given in marriage and be given in marriage is what happens to a woman. Married is what happens to a man, but we shall be like the angels in heaven. So I think there might be this idea. And you can maybe pull it from a couple other verses as well, that we are asexual, I guess. In the Kingdom of Heaven, because there's no longer, perhaps any need to reproduce or anything like that. And that some of the sex negativity that you see and you can see a little bit of in the New Testament too. You know, Jesus says some people are born unique, some people are made eunuchs. Some people choose to be eunuchs for the Kingdom of God. Paul says I wish you could all be that I am. But if you can't, then lest you burn with passion, it's better to be married. So he's not anti marriage, but he's still sort of like it's a second best kind of idea. Yeah. And so I think that there might be this idea that the Kingdom of heaven is asexual, because that's for the purpose of reproduction and procreation now, which isn't relevant then, and that this elevation of virginity was something of a a prolepsis in terms of us. Acting like the Kingdom of Heaven now, as opposed to just a form of sort of gnostic or platonic bodily denial or something like that. So I'm wondering, I I'm not sure I'm right, but I'm I'm pushing you a little bit on that particular question.

Sean Finnegan: 
Yeah. Well, I I would just want to see any evidence to support that. You know, as far as connecting those two things together, you know, it seems that as the years roll on, this becomes a standard way of attacking people that believe in the Kingdom of God, accusing them of being like. Desirous of having sex because they think in the Kingdom of God, you're gonna have sex. And I think this was a criticism of Cerinthus. In Irenaeus, if I'm not mistaken, just trying to think about that, but as far as like whether or not we're going to have sex in the Kingdom of God, like I said before, I have no idea. I just don't find it really compelling one way or the other. That text that you mentioned about being married or given a marriage, we have to be careful about lifting. A theology out of a a context that's not really designed to address that I I think you can do it.

Sam Tideman: 
Although he does. Say in the Kingdom, right. I think he does say.

Sean Finnegan: 
Yeah. Yeah. But I think we just have to be careful with it, not to like take it as like, a definitive statement for all time, more as like a response to the question which was. This woman married seven guys and that whole, like Stumper question. He was dealing with. I I know that asceticism is big in the Greco-roman world in general. OK, I don't need any Christians to tell me that because we have the writings of the the philosophers and the thinkers of the time. And we know what they thought about sex and what they thought about. Eating and drinking and sleeping too much. And so I I think this is.

Sam Tideman: 
And I'm wondering.

Sean Finnegan: 
Just like a funeral.

Sam Tideman: 
If there might be a possible distinction we could make between sex negativity and full blown asceticism. Because when I like in Justin Martyr and Irenaeus and Tertullian, there is a high level of sex negativity. Justin Martyr will say. We Christians only sow enough seed to reap the harvest that we seek to desire in marriage. I'll. I'll let the listener fill in the blank on their their form. Of family planning was you only get to do it when you're ready to make a kit and you shouldn't do it any other. Time. But as we already mentioned, Justin Martin is very Pro Kingdom. He's very pro resurrection, very pro future Kingdom and the sex negativity in Christianity is super early. Like you mentioned, the action tackle that's probably from the early 2nd century. Justin martyr. You're an as all this is. Second century when the the idea of the Kingdom is still quite strong. But that the this. Of valorization of virginity, I guess as a higher, nobler calling than a sexually active life. And if you're going to be sexually active in marriage, you should funnel it towards its proper use. It's hard for me to see any evidence of a form of Christianity that almost didn't have that even in, say, the 2nd century or something like that. Except like some of those weird gnostic sex cults that Irenaeus described. So yeah, we we need to get into that. Assume we're. We'll both assume that that's wrong. So I'm wondering, I don't know. I I think that perhaps the sex negativity is not necessarily the same idea as.

Sean Finnegan: 
We don't need to. Get into that.

Sam Tideman: 
Is only eating bread sleeping on the ground, living in the desert like Saint Anthony or something like that? That might be some example of. We're viewing the Kingdom as an asexual thing, and we're proleptically valorising virginity in the present for that reason. And of course, Jesus himself being a virgin example of a perfect life in his own day. So anyway I I'm I'm curious. Your response to that particular pushback.

Sean Finnegan: 
Well, like I said, I'd like to see somebody talking about it in a proleptic way. You know the the reason why I brought in the the idea, the concept of prolepsis. Was because I see it in the Ministry of Jesus and I and I see it very clearly with his miracles and some of the things that he said, like for example, he casts out a demon. He says if I cast by the finger of God, I cast out demons in the Kingdom of God has dropped on you. You know, like falling upon you in your midst. You know that he's he's sort of like using the future as a present reality and and making that connection. And so I would want to see some sort of like evidence you're laying out a hypothesis that the sex negativity is due to a desire to imitate what will be the case in the age to come. So I would just want to see some evidence of that before I went with you in that direction. I don't. I don't think it would be particularly devastating to my hypothesis. In general, but you know I'd want to see some evidence, and I I would say this too, the Jewish people don't have this issue. I mean, there's a reason that song of Songs is in the Bible.

Sam Tideman: 
I I agree, I agree.

Sean Finnegan: 
And it's a celebration of physical sex as a good that God gave, and I would argue that Ecclesiastes, which is a very depressing book, has a very positive view of sexuality and of work and of eating and drinking. You know that we do have, like, this sort of like. Jewish culture that is embedded in Scripture and that Jesus and. Paul are operating within. You know what I mean? So if you abstract out from their lived matrix the Jewish matrix, some of their sayings, you can easily take them in an ascetic way. I agree. But if at at the same time you're living in a society that has all these festivals and only one day of fasting and just really enjoys. Eating and drinking and. Weddings like Jesus turned water into wine and a wedding. You know, it just doesn't fit that aesthetic mold very well. And the Jewish view of sexuality, I think, is different than what you said about Justin Martyr. And so I I don't know. I like. I haven't studied the whole idea of sex negativity in Justin and Irenaeus in some of these Pro Kingdom. Guys, so that would be an. Testing subject to look into a little.

Sam Tideman: 
More sure question when does it start to come back and what do we see in the process and reformation and various times after that?

Sean Finnegan: 
Certainly with the Reformation we get very strong turn with the Anabaptists. Well, even before the Anna Baptist, I think Martin Luther was friendly. To it, I don't know to what degree we could really claim him as a a Kingdom advocate, but he certainly did hold to the sleep of the dead, and so did William Tyndale. So these are two powerhouses in the 16th century in those early reformation years. And we add to that the Anabaptists and and we have really quite a few people who are just. Reading the book. And saying this is talking about this is talking about a Kingdom of God coming on Earth and really challenging the established traditional view of going to heaven or hell when.

Sam Tideman: 
You die. Yeah. You can see some of the magisterial Reformation trying. To they didn't like the Anabaptists, they viewed them as sort of dangerous, politically destabilizing rabble rousers. And so you you have some of those quotes, especially from the Calvinist tradition. That's very negative on the anti Baptists and the millennial lists and and stuff like that.

Sean Finnegan: 
Well, everyone murdered the Anabaptists, the Catholics, Protestants, the governments. Everyone saw them as a threat they were offering. A a free version of Christianity. A disestablishment version of Christianity that wasn't associated with governmental structures that wasn't controllable, that was voluntary rather than state sponsored, and and it was just like an incredible threat to the status quo, to everyone. Because the way that the. The early Reformation function is rather than. This whole idea of everyone just going wherever they wanted to church it was all determined by your location. So if you lived in a a Canton, for example, that had a Protestant Prince, you went to a Protestant church. And if it was a Catholic Prince, you went to a Catholic Church. You hear the Anabaptists are going door to door. They literally went toward to door like Jehovah's Witnesses. And said, you know, have you been baptized since you believed? And they're like, well, of course I was baptized like, you know, this is Europe we talked about, you know, it's like, oh, but you didn't have any faith as a baby. So your baptism wasn't valid. You haven't been baptized yet. You're you're you're in danger. You know, why not come to the come to Jesus? You know like this? I'm. I'm making this up as far as, like, a hypothetical conversation. But like, just the incredible force of the Anabaptist is call people to get baptized as adults, which they arrived at that from a plain reading of scripture which challenged the tradition. And so the Kingdom was another one of these ideas that they're like, hey. Jesus is talking about this all the time. It's all over the Old Testament. You you have the book ends of Genesis and Revelation. Like if you read the book, you're going to come away with this whole idea of paradise on Earth rather than a disembodied soul idea. They were just incredibly threatening and. Everybody killed them. You know, if you look at Fox's Book of Martyrs, you're like, oh, wow, this is this is such a big book. Look at all these people. Then if you look at Martyr's Mirror, which is the Anabaptist version, it's like way bigger than Fox's Book of Martyrs because they were. Just slaughtered left and. Right for their non conformist stands for voluntary Christianity. Based on literal obedience to Jesus, and for that reason I consider them heroes, I consider myself to be an. Anabaptist even though my? Tradition is not is not even close. To it Baptist. But you know, I I I looked to them for, you know, an example of what it looks like to be a real Christian in a time that's very antagonistic to some of the things that Jesus had taught.

Sam Tideman: 
Yeah. So last question for you. How do you? Think the the gospel. Of the Kingdom should be shaping our lives now. Shaping sort of our preachings, shaping our churches and shaping our individual walks of faith.

Sean Finnegan: 
The big answer to that is that it relativizes all other political and social connections and ties and obligations, and sublimates them to the overarching allegiance to Jesus as king. All Christians need to have this mindset that says, I'm Allegiant. To the I'm a citizen of the Kingdom 1st and then I'm a citizen of whatever my country is. 2nd, that's a huge one I think. Also, this idea of prophesying that came in by how we live is absolutely a key towards 2 huge parts of ethics. One is moral motivation. I think when you tell Christians your lifestyle matters because it testifies of what the future is going to look like. So and and this is all first Corinthian 6. Almost like I can't believe you guys are suing each other and doing it before the pagans. Don't you know you're going to rule the world? You're going to judge the world. You're going to judge. Angels, you can't figure this out. You don't have one wise person in your church to to settle this for you guys, and you're gonna go to be for unbelievers. You know, you could just hear his his rage. Like you're undermining everything by this divisiveness. And so I think as Christians really got to fight for unity, we really got to fight for wholeness. And take our our ethics very serious. So for me it's very motivating to basically have this mindset that says. I am to prophecy the Kingdom by how I live and our community is to prophecy the Kingdom by how we live and obviously we're we're broken mirrors reflecting God's glory. We're not. We're not getting it perfect. Believe me, if you're my church, you know that we're trying and God is gracious. And he does miracles. But you know it's it's not. We're not in the Kingdom. That you know we're prop signing the Kingdom. We're we're anticipating it. And then the other point on ethics. Is that the Kingdom of God? Is our North Star is where our ethical compass, our moral compass, points to so and this, this this is, I think, fairly intuitive for people. You see what God plans to do in the world in the age to. Come and then you say to yourself. OK, I have to make a decision about something right now. Would this make sense in light of that age? You know how I treat this person? Or, you know, if I cheat just a little bit at work or whatever, you know? And it's like, no, that wouldn't fit. You know, if I'm a Kingdom citizen. I have to have a culture of the Kingdom that I live out in the present, and that includes Kingdom morals and I think that's what the Sermon on the mount is. Jesus mentions the Kingdom explicitly 8 times in the Sermon on the Mount. Like, I think that's what Kingdom living is. It doesn't make sense in this present evil age. It doesn't make sense in this world where people are like, oh, you can't possibly live that way. You're too idealistic. And it's like, well, Jesus did. The apostles did. The Anabaptist did. Why can't I and you know, let the chips fall where they may. And I I think when we do that, we take away a lot of the critiques of Christianity that have dogged us over the centuries because we're not engaging in a lot of the things that eventually we get criticized for. So I I'd say those are a couple things. There's there's some more points I make in the last chapter of the book Kingdom Ambassadors. People might be interested in as far as like the practical applications, cause I don't think this is an esoteric doctrine. I think this is a doctrine that really, you know, something at the the core of what it means to be a Christian. It just it just. Breaks my heart. That it's lost like the Scott, we didn't really talk about this, but the scholars all know this. Like since since. The turn of the 20th century for more than.

Sam Tideman: 
100 years.

Sean Finnegan: 
The scholars though this all the New Testament scholars know it. The Old Testament scholars know it. Some of the theologians know it, but but you know the regular people don't know about it. And a lot of pastors are still preaching the old medieval.

Sam Tideman: 
At some level, yeah.

Sean Finnegan: 
Full categories and you know, I think. The time is. Ripe for reformation on this.

Sam Tideman: 
Very good. Any last closing thoughts? You want to say before we go.

Sean Finnegan: 
Uh, no. I just appreciate your channel and your work, Sam. A real big fan of yours and you know, I wish you the best and your efforts here transfigured, I want to say hi to Hank. I know we've never met, but I've listened to hours and hours and hours of him talking. So just a little shout out to brother Hank who. Your church history dialogue partner, I appreciate this about you. I do this a little bit, but I I think you do. A lot more. You're totally unintimidated by other perspectives. You're willing to have someone on that you know you disagree with in some significant ways and and just have the conversation you've served as a a great example to us of how that can be done in, in a gracious way. So thanks for that.

Sam Tideman: 
Well thanks when. I asked you for closing thoughts. I wasn't fishing for compliments, but I'll take them in any case. And the book again is a Kingdom journey. I'll have a link down in the description of the video. So thank you very much, Sean, for your. Time I really. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Sean Finnegan: 
Let me just flip the mic around here. All right, welcome back. No, I'm just kidding. This is Sean. And I really did enjoy that interview. It was a weird experience. I'll just be honest because I'm on the other side of the mic and I found it a little bit challenging to answer Sam's questions rather than just go off. On my own tangents. And if I do get an opportunity to do another book interview like this, I will make a better effort to trust the interview process more and just allow the interviewer to lead me better. Anyhow, if you would like to make any comments or give any feedback, ask any questions about that episode. You can do that at restitutio.org. Find Episode 535 Kingdom Journey interview with Sam Tiedeman and leave your comments there. A whole bunch of people have already commented in on the YouTube version of this on Sam's Channel, which is called transfigured. You should go check it out if you're interested, especially in church history does a lot with the. And one of the things I found interesting about the comments, whether there were a few people who said what about this first, what about that first, what about Philippians 123 where Paul says I want to depart and be with Christ? What about second Corinthians 5/8 absent from the body present with the Lord? What about the rich man and Lazarus? What about what about what about? So I am. Honestly, in a sense not surprised and a little bit gratified that that was the response because. When I wrote Kingdom Journey, I thought to myself, if I were hearing this for the first time, I would want answers to my verses. And so that's what I put in. The appendices of Kingdom journey. I have responses to all of these verses and quite a few more, and they're not thorough responses, but they just give you a take on it that fits within a Kingdom. Conditional immortality mindset and that explains the verse in a very simple kind of way. Sometimes I'll quote a scholar, but typically I'll just give a little quick explanation. So anyhow, if you are in that category. Or you're talking to friends and they're bringing up verses to you. Check out the appendices at the back of Kingdom journey, and you may be able to find some help there. I did quote one of them and then I thought to myself, well, you know, I'm not sure how happy the publisher is going to be with me just copying and pasting from the back of the book into a YouTube comment. So I decided just to just to leave it there and if other people are interested, you can. You can take a look. On our last episode 534 read the Bible for yourself. Part 4 How to determine content and application, Sean wrote in saying. I'm also glad you pointed out the facts that Jesus lived under the old covenant, meaning he was bound to obey the Torah and fulfilled it. So many Christians ignore the fact that the New Testament. Not exist when Jesus walked the land of Israel. Thus the law he was teaching from was the Torah to fellow Jews mainly, and I believe he expected his followers to keep that Torah. Where we all get off track is trying to find out what, then applied to Gentiles because I'm not still sure that question was ever fully answered in the New Testament letters we have today. An example, I have a question about for you would be acts 1518 through 21 in this text, Gentiles are actually given two food law commandments regarding not eating. Blood and not eating things strangled. If Gentiles aren't under food laws, why were they given culturally relevant food laws in your opinion? Well, thank you for that question, Sean. Well, on this topic, I fear we probably disagree. I do not see and neither do Orthodox Jews today see any reason to think that Gentiles are bound to Torah. It's a covenant that was made with Israel and the descendants of Israel. I would argue, furthermore, that based on Galatians, Romans and Hebrews. Actually, that not only do Gentiles not need to keep the law, but neither do Jews if they believe in Christ. If they don't believe in Christ, then it would make sense that they would still keep the law, and I would. I wouldn't condemn them for keeping the law. But I think the greater understanding would be for them to come to Christ and to recognize the freedom that is available in Christ. As a as a result of the fulfillment of the old covenant, which Hebrews then makes the point made it obsolete. And and the replacement of that with the new Covenant. As far as Acts 15, I don't think there was a full understanding yet at that time. It was very early in the process. I don't think Paul had written very many letters yet, hadn't come to grips with the full understanding of the new covenant yet. I think there was a partial understanding. But but I also don't think it was an attempt of James. And the Jerusalem brothers to make the Gentiles keep the food laws. I think the focus was on table. Fellowship and the issue of being able to eat together. So that would be my guess. Obviously we don't really know what the motive was for specifying these two rules that you're right are part of the Torah that were were necessary for Jews to keep under the Torah. But I think it's pretty clear. From other like I mentioned, Galatians, Romans and Hebrews, other scriptures that. The Torah is no longer required for the people of God to keep. Now I realized there are plenty of Messianic Christians, and there are plenty of them that listen to this show and on this subject, I think we are just going to disagree. If you want to hear a more involved and deeper case for why I believe the way I do, which is. Just to clarify, the Torah is God's gracious gift to his people. In the time and place it was given up until the crucifixion of Christ which ratified the new Covenant, bringing the time of the Torah of the Old Covenant to an end and initiating the period of the New Covenant, and understanding that gradually dawned on the apostles over time, but which I believe. Was fully understood by the end of the New Testament. Period. And that puts the people of God, whether Jew or Gentile, under the teachings of Jesus that are the terms of the new Covenant, just as the teachings of Moses were the terms of the old covenant. And I would also like to add to that that the teachings of the apostles. I think are likewise part of the new covenant, or at least the outworking of the teachings of Jesus as applied to the churches and new situations involving people outside the land of Israel. So. So if you want to know more about that, see my class which you can access on YouTube called New Covenant theology. And that's pretty easy to find on YouTube. Just type in new covenant theology. If it doesn't show up right away, just search for my name and new covenant theology or living hope and new covenant theology. This was a class I taught at living hope, and it's on their YouTube channel. Yeah. So just concluding that comment that Sean made here, I don't think that what James was doing was putting the Gentiles under the food laws. I think he was putting them under a minimalist compatibility requirement of food laws that would just enable table fellowship to occur. Peter writes in saying you mentioned in your video that people no longer sacrifice food to idols. This is not true. We see it time and time again in various forms of Hinduism. Many Americans that have no connection to India's frequent Hari Krishna temples for the so-called Sunday Love Feast, which features food offered to Krishna. The idea is that Krishna gazes upon the food and eats it spiritually and then by eating the remnants that have been offered to God the individual ingesting the actual food is free from the effects of the karma that was caused in the production. Of the food. The notion is preposterous, and yet it perpetuates into today. I am well acquainted with this group because I was a member of it for many years. I was seduced by the religion in my quest for God and took a guru and initiation, and spent a considerable amount of time teaching and serving. Well, Peter, thanks so much for writing in. Appreciate that correction on food sacrifice to idols. I think the New Testament command, if you work together, 1st Corinthians 8 and also Chapter 10 is that it's not fitting for a Christian to participate in food sacrifice to idols. And that eating it as part of the ritual. Will would be inappropriate as well, as Paul says, you should not sit at the Lord's table and at the table of demons. So I think we should take seriously food sacrifice to adults, at least in the ritual sacrifice of the animal and the ritual redistribution of that meat and the ritual meal. But. The next day or you know, sometime later, a week later or whatever, it turns out to be that food does not retain any magical significance or tainted Ness. And so, as a result, Christians are free to eat that. Although I I think there are some restraints if that food is going to violate someone else's conscience, which is clearly spelled out in First Corinthians 8, but also Romans 14. So thanks for those comments. I guess I was speaking in reference to most people's experience in the United States. But you're right, most Americans have no connection to India. So I'll be the first one to admit there's a. Lot of ignorance. Including myself on Hindu practices. So thanks for writing in, Troy wrote in saying, hey, Sean. Enjoying the series, though. This is elementary stuff. It is good to be reminded of what you already know. Just to note regarding the name of our Lord, I agree that Yahshua is a made-up version and has no support. And Yeshua is his name in Hebrew. What I disagree with is that Jesus is just the way we say Yeshua in English. This is not really accurate the way we say or transliterate Yeshua into English is as Yeshua. The name Jesus is an English transliteration of the Latin transliteration of the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew, because the Greek alphabet did not have the requisite sounds to enunciate the Hebrew name precisely, we ended up with yesus. It then went into Latin and finally English. As Jesus, but without the hard J sound first, the hard J sound as in jam did not come into our alphabet until the 17th. Century the English alphabet does allow a precise transliteration directly from the Hebrew. Yeshua II have recently chosen to use Yeshua as often as possible, not because it is wrong to say Jesus or because it is more holy to say Yeshua or any other such reason. I simply think if we can say his name. More accurately, in our language, then why not do? Though anyway, I do not look down on anyone who uses Jesus to refer to our Lord. It is simply a personal matter for me. Well, thanks, Troy. Some some great points there. I think I'd push back just a little bit and say that the English language changes with time. If you want to ask an English Dictionary who is the Christ who died on the cross, it's not going to say. Joshua, I know that Yeshua is a word you can say in English and that, you know, maybe at some point it will become popular enough to enter common usage, but at this point it's still pretty esoteric, which obviously doesn't make it wrong. And I think you certainly have a right to use the more accurate name you show, but. I'm more concerned honestly with reaching people and connecting with people that don't have an understanding of Christianity or have a very little understanding of Christianity. And that's really my context here in New York as opposed to maybe your context down in Mississippi where the culture is different. So I don't dispute your point about the J sound and the circuitous route by which the name of our Lord made it into the modern English language. My point is simply that in modern English, when you're talking to people, especially people that aren't Christians or that are only vaguely familiar with Christianity, they. Call the guys name Jesus. Is that the most accurate way to say it? No. No, definitely not. That's the common referring term for it. And I think we use the common referring term for all of the other names. I think it's fine. We are speaking the English language. That's my point. I am an American in the 21st century speaking the English language. Some would argue that my accent is. Wrong because they don't say water like some folks in other parts of the country. Well, that's your opinion where I live. It's water, all right. Anyhow, I'm sorry. I'm getting a little distracted here. Good points, Troy. Don't disagree with anything you're saying there. I think we should have freedom in Christ to call them different names. And I'm glad we do both agree that yahshua is a fiction invented to make it sound better, but not actually existing in scripture anywhere, whether old or New Testament. I think it's fine to call Jesus, you show. I think it's fine to call him Jesus. I think it's fine to call him Yeshua. Or yehoshua. I guess you could call him Joshua, although that would be a little confusing. I was just reading Exodus this morning in the Sept 2 agent, and Joshua is called Jesus. I mean, that's just that's just what they called him in the Septuagint. So, yeah. What? Whatever you want to do, let's have some freedom in Christ. On this issue, I guess that's really my main point. So thanks for thanks for your comments on that. Troy. I always enjoy interacting with you and your work on your blog as well. On episode 306, foreknowledge and free will part 4 Leighton Flowers defending Arminianism. We just received a comment in from Kim who says I know I'm commenting much later, but I have never even thought about the possibility that God could not see the future until someone brought up open theism. To me, I think I've always been Armenian or I have viewed God as not seeing every little detail of the future, but that he can choose to know the future so he could choose to see the future. Or he could choose not to see the future on certain subject. X is there a middle ground view like this? It seems the most consistent with Scripture. Sometimes God's surprised, but other times he has the future events detailed, such as Psalm 22 with Jesus's crucifixion and Daniel's prophecy. I don't see how God could say everything that would happen in detail like that unless he controlled. Everyone like robots to make it happen, which he does not do. Is there a name for the view that God can choose to not know something? Cam, these are some really interesting thoughts you have here this. This episode was part of a series on foreknowledge and free will, and I did 2 on Open Theism, 2 on Arminianism and two on Calvinism. Although latent flowers subsequently said he's technically not an Armenian, he is a provisional list or some other name. Whatever. He's not a Calvinist. He's not an open theist. He believes God has exhaustive knowledge of. The the future. So that's the that's the view that he represents. Whatever label you put on it. Now Kim, your view is that God has access. All knowledge in the future. Exhaustively, he can see whatever he wants to see, but chooses not to make himself aware of most what most of the things that are going to happen so that people are able to retain their free will. This is a really interesting view. I don't know what it's called. I don't know that it has a. Name. So sorry if you were hoping I had the answer to that, but I I would just encourage those of you who are interested in the topic of open theism, Arminianism, Calvinism and really God in time that if any of you do know the name for this position, that Kim is sticking out here, that you would go ahead and drop a comment on episode 3. Six. And then we can all learn what it's called. I think this view has a lot going for it. I think at the same time, the open theist view can account for prophecy a lot better than you might think, because God can ensure that what he says will happen actually will happen much more than I can. I have told my 6 year old that I'm taking him. Skiing on Saturday. That's a prophecy I I guess. It's a declaration of intent, you know, I know that there could be 1,000,000 reasons why we don't end up going to the mountain. It's about an hour drive from my house. I could get a flat tire. I could have some other conflict arise. Some emergencies somebody could need help in the church. But generally speaking, I can pretty much guarantee it's going to happen and I have limited power and I'm working with free agents, right? But God is so much more powerful and. He has so many more free agents to work with, so to me it's not unthinkable for him to be able to arrange events so as to fulfill prophecies that he made in the past. But I do like your idea. I think it is pretty robust, although it may have some other philosophical problems with it, so I'll leave it to the. Philosophers to engage with this if they are. Did and see what labels they can throw around here? If anyone would like to reply to Kim's comment on restitutio.org, well, that's it for this episode. Thanks everyone for tuning in. If you'd like to support.us.youcandothat@restofstudio.org, we'll catch you next week. And remember, the truth has nothing. To fear.