Ep 265: Did the Apostle Paul Actually Kill Believers Before Damascus?

In this episode I address the popular misconception that the apostle Paul, formerly Saul, was personally responsible for the killing of Christians before his Damascus Road experience. In popular Christian imagination, Paul was the ‘persecutor and killer’ of Christians before his dramatic encounter with the risen Jesus. While Paul did indeed viciously persecute the church, there is no New Testament evidence that any believer actually died by Paul’s hand. I look at all the New Testament texts which address Paul’s pre-Damascus attitude towards believers. In Acts, he endorses the killing of Stephen, binds and imprisons Christians, and even breathes threats of murder against them, but is never portrayed as doing the deed himself. The Roman provincial system left capital punishment, known as the ‘imperium’, in the hands of Roman rulers, and extrajudicial lynchings such as happened to Stephen were dangerous for local political leaders because they could draw the ire of Rome. Paul was too smart to play into that trap. Paul refers to himself as a zealous defender of Judaism in Galatians 1 and Philippians 3, and I explore the traditions of ‘zeal’ and “Judaism’ as a willingness to commit violence to defend Israel’s ancestral traditions, demonstrating that while Paul fit into that framework it did not result in the direct murder of believers by his hand before Damascus. I hope this episode helps dispel a popular myth about Paul and sets the record straight. 

Media Referenced:

Biography of Paul with Frank Thielman interview: https://libertarianchristians.com/episode/ep-202-paul-apostle-of-grace-with-frank-thielman/

The Protestant Libertarian Podcast is a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute and a part of the Christians For Liberty Network. The Libertarian Christian Institute can be found at www.libertarianchristians.com.

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Transcript

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This is the Protestant Libertarian Podcast, a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute and part of the Christians for Liberty Network. I really hope that you guys enjoy today's show. All right, guys, welcome to another episode of the Protestant Libertarian Podcast. I know I have a reputation for immediately jumping into the topic of whatever show I'm doing for the day, but I do want to talk to you about like two things real quick right at the beginning. You can skip ahead, maybe a minute and a half if you don't want to listen to this. But just a couple of housekeeping items. Number one, I'm recording this episode because I was supposed to have an interview today. And in fact, I did have the interview. We got about 10 minutes into it. An amazing guest, great topic. You're going to love it, but his computer crashed and we had to reschedule. So I think we're looking at a date sometime in early June. But I'm telling you, uh, it's on a very contentious social issue. He's got a brilliant perspective on it. I'm excited for you to hear it. That will come out sometime soon. So I needed to get something out, and I decided to record this, which leads me to my second housekeeping item. And that is that you might have noticed that on Tuesdays, I have been releasing a lot of extra episodes. And my wife had this really great idea. You know, we're we're I'm I'm teaching a small group right now. I just love talking about the Bible. And now that I'm done with my book, there are all kinds of biblical subjects that I've been exploring that aren't directly related to political and economic themes in the New Testament. And I love talking about that stuff. Sorry about that. So her thought was that maybe my Thursday episodes could be like a theology Thursday where I just talk about random issues in biblical interpretation that aren't necessarily directly related to political and economic concepts in the New Testament, which is what the show is all about. And I think that's actually an awesome idea. Uh, and the episode that I'm going to record today was going to be my kind of first official theology Thursday episode. But then when I was outlining it, I realized that I had a lot of text to go through and it's probably going to take me longer than 20 or 30 minutes. So, my question to you, my audience, those of you guys that listen week in and week out, or even if you're brand new to the show and you just want to hear me talk about whatever issue it might be, if you have thoughts about a future Theology Thursday series, it wouldn't be every Thursday, but maybe a couple of times a month, where I just talk about random Bible or theology issues, email me at the Protestant Libertarian Podcast at gmail.com or hit me up on the DMs on Twitter or YouTube or whatever. I would love to hear your ideas. Let me know what you want to hear me talk about on Thursdays. And we'll just talk about it. Whatever biblical issue you're interested in or theological issue you're interested in. I would love to just have an opportunity to talk about some of that stuff and, you know, work through this. We're all learning and growing in our faith. We're all trying to develop our understanding of the Bible. And so ever since I've been done with my book, I've been researching a lot of issues that are, you know, issues that I've dealt with in the past, but that I have not gotten a chance to track down and talk about. And so I'm excited that I'm continuing to grow in my understanding of the Bible. And I would love to have more conversations about that. So if you're interested in theology Thursdays and you have some ideas for some topics you would want me to cover, send them my way. I'd love to hear them. Okay, with that, let's get into the show today, which is kind of directly related to a political issue in the New Testament. Maybe not like a thousand percent, but I do think that if you listen to this show, you will be interested in this topic. And this is the question, a perennial question, one that I hear often and a lot. Did Paul, before his experience on the road to Damascus, actually kill believers in Jesus? It's a major question. The church that I grew up in literally is a Lutheran church too. So I think that this is kind of interesting given the fact that Lutheran churches are supposed to be all about Paul. Um, but the pastor in that church, every time, literally, every time, he talked about Paul in church. I can recite it by memory, and I'm going to here in just a second. He would always say the same thing about Paul. We're gonna read from a letter written by Paul, the, and this is what he said, persecutor and killer of Christians. So every time my Lutheran pastor talked about Paul, he always mentioned that at one point in Paul's life he had killed, murdered, killed him, killed Christians. This is a claim that comes up repeatedly in popular level works on the Bible, in popular level sermons and Bible studies. And in fact, the thing that precipitated this conversation is that my wife is going through a devotional or went through a devotional for Lent, and that devotional had a podcast that was attached to it that went beyond Lent. So it's a podcast that is produced on a regular basis, and it's for women that want to grow in their faith. And there's been some really good content on that. In fact, she sent me a couple of these episodes, and yeah, uh, it's me listening to three women. Um, you know, so I feel kind of like I'm on the outside, not that women can't talk about the Bible. We're uh, you know, obviously theological egalitarians here. Um, but uh it's just that uh, you know, I listen to a podcast with a bunch of women, and I just feel like, you know, kind of like a little bit of an outsider. Um but there's a lot of great content. But one of the things that she pointed out on that show is that one of the hosts also makes this claim that Paul was a killer of Christians, that before Paul had his powerful experience on the road to Damascus in Acts chapter nine with Jesus, that he did in fact actually kill Christians, that that was a part of his pre-Damascus Road experience. And that in order to properly understand Paul, we have to understand him as someone who killed or murdered Christians. Now, when I was in high school and I was listening to my pastor, I kind of bought into that for a little bit, but then I realized, you know, right around my senior year, after I'd read the New Testament several times, that there was just one problem with the narrative that Paul killed Christians, and that's that there's nothing in the Bible that says that Paul actually killed Christians at all. Like there's no evidence for it in the New Testament whatsoever. Not one line, not one word, not one letter in the New Testament suggests that Paul actually killed Christians, like physically killed Christians before his Damascus Road experience. There's literally no biblical evidence for it at all. And what I want to explore on the show today is the biblical evidence that suggests that, in fact, before Paul's experience on the road to Damascus, he never actually killed a single Christian himself. Paul never murdered Christians and he couldn't have really. I mean, I guess he could have murdered a Christian in cold blood, but we're gonna see here that legally that would have been very difficult for him to pull off and not get in trouble for doing. So I want to talk about this on the show today. And this might be one of those myths that maybe you have heard, because, like I said, this is a ubiquitous myth in popular culture and popular writings on Paul and sermons and podcast series, like the ones that my life, my wife listens to. And every now and then it comes up at my own church where someone will make the claim that Paul was at one point a killer of Christians. And I want to kind of put the brakes on that, take a look at the actual biblical evidence and see what exactly did Paul do to the church before his experience on the road to Damascus. So let's get into it. The very first thing that I think that we have to understand, and I I get it, I understand why popular level expositions of Paul would not take the nuances of Roman imperial law into consideration. But if we want to be historically faithful to the New Testament and we want to be able to address questions as to like if we want to be able to address questions like this one as to whether or not Paul did in fact murder Christians before his Damascus Road experience, then we have to be aware of the historical realities of his time. And the truth is that the Roman emp the Roman Empire, which dominated the Mediterranean in the time of Paul, did in fact control the entire Mediterranean basis. But realistically, given the technology of that time, the Romans could not micromanage all of the millions of people that were under their rule. So often what they did is they would leave the day-to-day political affairs up to local leaders. And so the Romans either throughout their empire, they did one of two things. They established, they established a provincial system. So they broke the Roman Empire up into a bunch of different provinces. And basically, in each province, you would have a ruling council. Oftentimes it was a ruling council associated with only one city in a particular province. And on a day-to-day basis, they would make all of the political decisions for that people. You got to understand the Roman Empire spanned a massive amount of area. It was multicultural in the truest sense of the term, multilingual. Uh, there were people from all different kinds of cultural customs and backgrounds. And the Romans were wise enough to understand that if a region was willing to submit to Roman rule, you leave, you leave good rulers in place because they understand the people better than anyone in Rome possibly could. So a part of the Roman imperial provincial system was that most political decisions were made at the local levels by local councils. And then not only did you have these Roman provinces, uh, but you also had client kings that were stationed throughout the Roman Empire. Herod in Galilee is a great example of a Roman client king that would rule on Rome's behalf, but also he was responsible for making the majority of the day-to-day decisions. And in the Roman province of Judea, which was run by in the time of Jesus, a procurator, we're all very familiar with Pontius Pilate, right? The procurator or governor of Judea that crucified Jesus. He was the one that exercised Roman rule in Judea. However, the Sanhedrin, which was the body of Jewish elders stationed in Jerusalem, were the ones that actually exercised day-to-day political authority. The Romans don't understand all the Jewish context and cultures. And so the Sanhedrin made a lot of political decisions. However, the Romans did reserve one political right for themselves, and that was the right to capital punishment, known as the Roman Imperium. And so these local political leaders, if they wanted to execute somebody for a crime that they found particularly heinous, let's say there's, for instance, a prophet from Nazareth in Galilee who's stirring up all kinds of social and political turmoil and making the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem look like a sham organization and announcing the coming kingdom of God and the restoration of God's people. Let's say that someone like that was to appear and the local leaders thought that they were enough of the threat to the peace that they wanted to get rid of them. The way that they would do that is that they would apprehend that individual. They would conduct a preliminary trial, and they they did have the right to punish these people. Like they could scourge them, they could throw them in jail, they could uh more or less torture them, beat them, release them. They had power over them, but they didn't have the imperium. They did not have the right to kill them. And so what they had to do was have a preliminary trial where they gathered enough evidence to take before the Roman authorities, the governors, so that the governors could decide whether or not this person was rightfully worthy of execution, whether or not they were rightfully worthy of capital punishment. And in fact, this is exactly what happens to Jesus in the Gospels. All right, we know that Jesus is apprehended in the Garden of Gethsemane by authorities that were sent from the Sanhedrin. Remember, the Sanhedrin is a it's a real political institution with real political powers. They had a police force and they had the ability to execute Jewish law and they had the ability to imprison and punish and fine and harm people for violating their law, but they didn't have the ability to kill them. So they have this trial with Jesus, and then they send the trial up to Pontius Pilate with all their charges against Jesus, and they basically make the case that he is enough of a threat to the peace and enough of a threat to the Roman imperial order that Pilate could be justified legally in exercising his right of the imperium and crucifying Jesus, which is exactly what happens, right? So we have to understand that the Sanhedrin did not have the prerogative, the legal prerogative under Roman rule, just go around executing anyone that stood in their way. They had to make a case and present it before the governor. Now, you might be thinking, if you're familiar with the book of Acts, well, what about Stephen in Acts chapter seven? Stephen is a follower of Jesus who proclaims this. Acts seven is so brilliant. Stephen's speech is so, but he gives this long speech about Israel's history and how Israel has been unfaithful to God, but God has restored them through Jesus. But that the Sanhedrin, the leaders of Israel, were being unfaithful, just like the uh the leaders of Israel of old. And for his trouble, he is stoned as a crime of passion by people that are aligned with the Sanhedrin. This is not a legally sanctioned killing. This is a lynching, right? A murder, an extrajudicial killing, one that was not sanctioned by Rome and that could have gotten those who were involved in the killing in trouble with the Roman imperial authorities. So what happens in Acts chapter seven is an excellent example of a group of people being incensed at an individual and taking justice into their own hands. But under the Roman provincial system, they didn't actually have a right to kill Stephen. It is an extrajudicial lynching. It's something that was, it was a killing that happened or that took place outside of the parameters of Roman law. And it needs to be understood that way. And in fact, that's going to be a very important point that I'm going to make when we get to the actual textual evidence for what Paul did to believers in Christ before his Damascus Road experience. But I want to make that point at the outset that the Romans reserved the right to Imperium and they guarded it judiciously because they wanted to make sure that they could exercise power over those who were in their empire. This is kind of like the ultimate political trump card for the Romans. So even on the face of it, had Paul wanted, which maybe he did, but had Paul wanted to go around and execute Christians, just make it a, you know, make it a sport, kind of casually execute or kill people that believed in Jesus, okay, he could have done that, but he would have run afoul of the Roman authorities and probably wound up himself in prison because he was exercising a right that was reserved explicitly for or exclusively for the Roman political class. All right, I'm going to take a little sip of whiskey out of my Protestant Libertarian podcast, Highball Glass, libertarian Christians.com slash shop. You can buy one. Okay, so that's the historical background. Now let's take a look at the textual background. I have one of my uh slowly becoming infamous black and white slideshows here. So if you're watching on YouTube, you'll be able to see these texts on your screen. And I uh am warning you ahead of time. Most of them are easy to see, but I did cram a bunch of numbers, like numbers like from the book of numbers, like a giant passage from the book of numbers into one of these slides. So it might be a little difficult to see. But we're gonna answer the question: is there actually any biblical evidence that Paul killed Christians? Let's take a look at this. Now, we're gonna start with evidence from the book of Acts before going to Paul's letters and looking at his own autobiographical information, the information that Paul provides us about his own pre-Damascus experience. So we're gonna take a look at this, these texts from Acts that talk about how Saul, who became Paul, related to believers before his Damascus road experience. And there's a lot of really interesting evidence here. Now, the first the first uh comment, the first time in the book of Acts that we see Saul, who will become the Apostle Paul, is in Acts 758. And this is right as the leaders of Jerusalem and or the people that are aligned with the leaders of Jerusalem are beginning to stone Stephen for his speech that he proclaimed against the leaders of Jerusalem, right? So Stephen is about to die. And here's what Acts 758 says it says, When they, the opponents of Stephen, had driven Stephen out of the city, they began stoning him, and the witnesses laid aside their robes at the feet of a young man named Saul. So Saul is there to witness the execution of Stephen, right? Like he sees the whole thing go down. But what Luke does not say is that Saul picked up a stone to throw at Stephen himself. He doesn't, he doesn't do that. Instead, Saul is there, and those who are stoning Stephen are presumably taking off their robes, you know, their outer garments, so that I guess they have more, you know, range of mobility for their arm. You gotta throw those rocks. You can't have a garment weighing your shoulder down here. So they take their outer garments, their rows off, and they put them at the feet of a young man named Saul. Now, here's what we see immediately following this in Acts chapter 8, verses 1 and 2. Saul, who's gonna be Paul, he really agrees with what they said with what they're doing. Here's what here's what Luke says. It says, uh 8 verse 1, 2, and 3. Uh Saul was in hearty agreement with putting Stephen to death. And on that day a great persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria except the apostles. Some devout men buried Stephen and made loud lamentation over him. But Saul began ravaging the church, entering house after house, and dragging off men and women. He would put them in prison. So again, was Paul, based on the two passages that we've already looked at in Acts, is there any textual indication here that Saul actually killed a person? No. Now, he was there when Stephen was lynched in Acts 7.58, and he probably facilitated that lynching in some way by taking the robes of the people that stoned him. But according to Acts 8.1, Saul was in agreement with putting Stephen to death, but Paul did not himself actually pick up a stone to throw at Stephen. So he didn't have a hand in actually killing him, right? Paul didn't do anything that led to his death other than giving approval to the scene that took place before him. Now, Paul very much approves of this according to Luke, right? He was right there. He was helping those that were throwing stones at Stephen. And as Luke is going to say in Acts 8.3, Saul, once this happened, there's a great persecution that breaks out against the believers in Jerusalem and Judea. And Paul is going to ravage the church. He's going to go in house after house and he's going to drag off men and women and throw them in prison. Something that if Paul is, and again, this is assuming that Paul is operating at the behest of the Sanhedrin, which he would have had to have been had he had the legal right to take somebody out of their home and throw them in prison. So Paul is operating on the basis of the legal parameters that were circumscribed by the Sanhedrin, the local rulers in Judea, and he was throwing people in prison. They had a right to do that. And Paul is apparently working for them, but they did not have a right to kill Christians. And Luke even says Paul did not kill them. He ravaged the church by dragging men and women off and throwing them in prison, but he didn't kill them. Now, right before Paul's Damascus Road experience, Luke once again talks about the behavior of Saul towards the church. Says, now Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the way, both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. So we see here that Paul is threatening the church, right? Uh he's breathing threats and murder against the church. So breathing it, right? He's not actually committing murder, and he is hoping to get from the Sanhedrin a letter that will allow him to go stay not just in Jerusalem, but to go to Damascus and bring people that are following Jesus back to Jerusalem. But again, the text does not say that Saul was murdering believers. The text clearly says in Acts 9, 1 through 2 that Saul was breathing threats of murder against the disciples, but it doesn't say that he was actually killing them. He's operating within the legal parameters that were granted to the Sanhedrin, right? Which is why he has to go to the high priest, who is the leader of the Jewish Council of the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, so that he can go to the synagogues in Damascus and imprison, capture those who are belonging to the way, following Jesus, and drag them back to Jerusalem, right? So again, what Paul is doing here is persecuting the church. There's no doubt about that. But he's not murdering anyone, he's not killing anyone, he's imprisoning them because that is something that he is allowed to do within the legal framework of the Roman imperial system. That's something that the synagogue was given a right to do by the Romans. They can imprison people, but if they want to kill them, they got to make a case and bring that case before the Roman governor, right? So we have already this dynamic before Paul's experience on the Damascus Road. And these are the three texts that talk about Paul's experience on the Damascus Road and his antagonism and persecution of the church. In none of these texts is Paul shown to be a murderer of Christians. He doesn't kill anyone in any of these texts. Now, what's funny here is that immediately after Paul, which he's immediately after Paul has this incredible experience on the road of Damascus, where Jesus appears to him and says, uh, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Right? That's what Jesus says to him uh on this road. And then Saul has scales over his eyes. He can't see. Um he's, you know, kind of starstruck and everything like that after this experience to Jesus. And he goes into Damascus, and God, Jesus, you know, asks Ananias in Damascus to take Paul in uh and to talk to Paul and to take care of Paul. And Ananias is a little concerned because Ananias has heard about Paul's reputation. And here's how Ananias responds to the Lord's request that he take Saul into his house. But Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much harm he did to your saints at Jerusalem. And here he has authority from the chief priest to bind all who call on your name. Right. So even in Ananias' response to Jesus, he's not saying, Jesus, I know you want me to take this guy into my house, but he's murdered a bunch of people, and we can't let him murder us. He's not saying that. He's saying, Man, this guy did a lot of harm to the believers in Jerusalem, and he wants to bind people up. He wants to imprison people. So even in this statement that's made by Ananias, right after Paul's experience with Jesus on the road to Damascus, Ananias is not making the claim that Paul ever killed anybody. He's simply saying that Paul was imprisoning people, which, as I've said before, was his legal prerogative. What else does Acts have to say about this? We'll see that the rest of the witness of Acts is uh is consistent. So Paul is going to have a transformative experience, put his faith in Jesus. And immediately after that, in Acts 9, this is what Luke narrates about those who are reflecting on Paul's change of heart after Damascus. All those hearing him continue to be amazed and were saying, Is this not he who in Jerusalem destroyed those who call on his name and who had come here for the purpose of bringing them down before the chief priest? So again, the same thing as we saw earlier in Acts chapter 9 with Ananias. No one's making the claim that Paul murdered anyone. He was trying to destroy the church in Jerusalem, and he was throwing people in prison by dragging them before the chief priest. That was Paul's modus operandi. He was not murdering anyone, he was not killing anyone, according to the early evidence in Acts. Now we get to later sections of Acts where Paul is on trial. I believe in the first two, he's before the Jews, and in the last one, it's before the Romans, so he's before a Jewish court and a Roman court. And in these texts, Paul is going to recount himself his own experience before Damascus. And this is what he says is Acts 22, 4 through 5. I persecuted this way to the death, binding and putting both men and women into prisons, as also the high priest and all the counsel of the elders can testify. From them I also received letters to the brethren and started off for Damascus in order to bring even those who were there to Jerusalem as prisoners to be punished. Acts 22, 19 through 20. And I said, Lord, they themselves understand that in one synagogue after another I used to imprison and beat those who believed in you. Notice, imprisoned and beat. Again, he had the legal right to do that within the Roman imperial system. He didn't murder them. And then number 20, or verse 20 of Acts 22, and when the blood of your witness Stephen was being shed, I also was standing by approving and watching out for the coats of those who were slaying him. So Paul is admitting here that while he approved of the lynching of Stephen, he did not directly participate in throwing stones at Stephen. He was not directly implicated in the violence that led to Stephen's death. Even though he gave approval to it, and he was holding the coats of those who were. There's one more statement in Acts 26, 9 through 11. This is what Paul says. So then I thought to myself that I had to do many things hostile to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And this is just what I did in Jerusalem. Not only did I lock up many of the saints in prisons, having received a sore authority from the chief priests, but also when they were being put to death, I cast my vote against them. Okay, so again, Paul is going to encourage the death of believers, but Paul himself did not engage in the act of murdering them himself. And as I punished them, here he said, often in all the synagogues, I tried to force them to blaspheme and being furiously enraged at them, I kept pursuing them even to foreign cities. Right. So let's go ahead and just step back and think about what Acts has told us about whether or not Paul actually murdered Christians. Yet he was breathing threats of murder when Christians like Stephen were being persecuted. He wholeheartedly endorsed their murder and killing. But Paul himself did not physically participate in the murder or the death of any Christian whatsoever. He repeatedly says, and Luke repeatedly makes the point that Paul wants to bind people. Paul or Paul participates actively in the binding or capturing of people, the beating of people, and the imprisonment of people. So Paul is responsible for all of those things before Damascus. He beat people, imprisoned them, and brought them down before the authorities. But Paul himself, contrary to popular belief, is not going around Judea and the regions surrounding Judea and going on an extrajudicial killing spree of Christians because that would not have been permissible under Roman law and he would have found himself in plenty of trouble. And again, if we want to take the evidence of Acts seriously, we cannot draw the conclusion from Acts that Paul himself was responsible directly physically for the murder of many Christians, the murder of Christians, as many people have claimed. Now, I suppose that in a very roundabout way, in a very roundabout way, you could say that Paul was implicated in the death of Christians, right? But this is much different than the claim that is made at the popular level that Paul directly murdered Christians. He just, he just, according to the witness in Acts, he just didn't. Now, some people, not you who are listening to the show, because I have a feeling that a lot of people that are listening to this show are probably feel more theologically conservative and traditionalists like me. But there are some people that would play the book of Acts off of the letters of Paul and say, well, we we can't really trust Acts because, as at least we can't really trust Acts as a witness to Paul because it was not written by Paul himself. It's more hagiographical. It's like uh it's a witness to Paul's greatness and not necessarily historically driven. I wouldn't necessarily agree with that. I do think it's hagiographical in a certain sense. They do generally, like genuinely, Luke does genuinely want to recount the life of Peter and Paul and Acts, and he does. However, uh, I don't think that there's, I don't think that the the book of Acts is in opposition to Paul's letters. I think the witness is exactly the same. And when it comes to the evidence as to whether or not Paul was actually responsible for initiating physically the death of Christians, we will see that there's no evidence for that in the letters of Paul. But Paul does make it abundantly clear that he persecuted the church and that he had every intent and hope that they would die, uh, which is still pretty bad, right? Like we're not trying to minimize the transformation that happened in Damascus, but we do want to take a look at the evidence that we see in Paul's letters. So we're going to start with Galatians, where I think Paul makes the clearest statement. This doesn't always come through in English translations, and for people that aren't familiar necessarily with the historical context, it can be easy to overlook this. But in Galatians, Paul makes the clearest statement about exactly what his feelings were towards the movement before Damascus. And here's what Paul says. There are two passages that are of relevance, and this is going to give rise to two ideas that we will discuss briefly following. So Galatians 1, 13 through 14, here's what Paul says. For you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism, how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure and try to destroy it. And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions. Now, if you're watching on YouTube, you'll notice that the word Judaism is used twice here in my English translation, the NASB 95, and I have those in bold, and then the word zealous is used, and that's also in bold. Paul will then go on later in Galatians 1.23 to say, but only they kept hearing, this is a reference to Paul, of what people were saying about Paul. He who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy. So we have a couple of autobiographical statements in Galatians that I think are relevant to this conversation. Paul talks about his former manner of life in Judaism and how he was advancing in Judaism beyond many of his contemporaries, and that he was extremely zealous. And then in Galatians 1.23, that everyone acknowledged that he once tried to destroy the faith. That is Paul's, that is Paul's legacy before the road to Damascus. There's a problem with the word Judaism, though, and this is where we gotta get a little technical. And I think it's really important that we understand this because of all of the issues that are related to New Testament interpretation, the modern concepts of Judaism and Christianity might be one of the most significant and also overlooked. Now, the Greek term behind the NASB 95's translation of Judaism here, which I think is pretty consistent in most English translation of the New Testament, is eudiasmos, which is actually a word that does not occur hardly at all in the ancient. It does occur some, and we're going to look at an occurrence of it in intertestamental work here in just a second, but it's an extremely rare word in antiquity. The problem is that modern people come to this text with their modern biases. And the assumption is that Paul and Jesus are the founders of a new religion called Christianity that somehow supersedes or diverges from another religion called Judaism. And in the modern world, we have a nice, neat little category for Christianity and Judaism. But there's a problem with that. The biggest problem is that Paul himself never uses the word Christian in any of his letters. It only appears twice in Acts and once in 1 Peter. And in all three contexts in which that word Christian is used, it seems like the word Christian denotes, at least to a Roman mind, someone who is affiliated with Christ. It's like it's almost like it's almost got political connotations to it. Like it's the they are those of the party of the Messiah. That's what the word Christian means. But that's not the primary way, as we even saw in the quotations from Acts earlier in the slideshow. It's not even the primary way that believers talked about themselves. They refer to themselves as followers of Jesus, as believers, as the way characteristic of Acts, but they did not refer to themselves self-reference self-referentially as Christians. And there's plenty of evidence in, even including in Galatians, at the very end of Galatians too. Like Paul still considered himself to be a Jew, like, and Jesus considered himself to be a Jew. The evangelists knew that Jesus was a Jew. Peter was a Jew. James was a Jew. All the early leaders of the church before the persecution of Stephen, almost all of them, are Jewish. Like they're all Jewish. And so they didn't leave Judaism in the modern sense of the term if what we're talking about is a particular interpretation of the Old Testament and a way of relating to God, right? So Judaism, clearly in Galatians 1, 13 through 14, does not refer to the modern religious category of Judaism. The word eudace actually has a much more specific and nuanced meaning that does actually have a direct bearing on our question today, whether or not Paul killed Christians. And obviously he had this animosity towards the church, and this animosity expressed itself in many ways. Now, what's interesting here is what Paul is saying is what Paul is not saying in Galatians 1, 13 and 14 is that he was in Judaism and then he became a Christian. Again, look at the end of Galatians chapter 2. Paul says, you know, Peter and I, we are Jews and not sinners from among the Gentiles. And then he talks about how he started to be transformed by the gospel of Christ, right? So like Paul is he never repudiates his Judaism. And in fact, he says at many points in his letter, uh in his letters, Romans 9 and Philippians 3 are both great examples of this, that he was a Jew in good standing and he remained a Jew in good standing for his entire life. He didn't repudiate what we call Judaism today. So Judaism has to mean something else. Again, it's eudiasmos. So I'm going to make the argument here that Paul describes his pre-Damascus life using two ideas or concepts: the idea of Judaism or Eudyasmos and zeal, which is Zelotes in Greek. All right. And so these are the two terms that he used to describe himself before Damascus. And if we look at the context of Galatians 1, 13 through 14 one more time, when Paul uses the terms Judaism and zealous or zeal to describe his pre-Damascus disposition, it is about his willingness to destroy the church, right? It's not necessarily about his individual keeping of the law or anything like that. It is about his willingness to try to destroy the church of God and protect his ancestral traditions from what he thought were his ancestral traditions from the encroachment of these people that believed in Jesus. So we're going to take both of these in turn. What did Paul mean by Judaism? And what did Paul mean by zeal? There's been a lot of really great research done on Judaism. I still point back, I don't have the page number. I talk about it in my book. So please buy the book when it comes out here in a couple of months. And there's like a page or two that's devoted to this. But it's from James Dunn's big book on Paul. I think it's the theology of the Apostle Paul or something. I cannot remember what the title is. It's a great book. Can't remember what the title is. It's probably sitting on the shelf behind me there. But he has a great section on Judaism and what that term means in that book. And there are a lot of other scholars that have picked up on this. So what does Judaism mean in this context? What does Eudyasmos mean? And if it is not the modern concept of a discrete religion, then what does Paul mean when he uses the Greek term eudyasmos in the context of his defense of his ancestral traditions and his desire to persecute the church? Well, the first extant example of the term eudiesmos that we have in all literature written in Greek in the ancient period comes from the intertestamental work of 2nd Maccabees. If you happen to be one of the Catholic listeners to the show, and I know that there are some out there, I love you guys. You all are awesome. Thanks for listening to the show. If you're one of the Catholic members of the show, 2 Maccabees is in your Old Testament. So you can just get your Bible, flip right over to 2 Maccabees and read these passages on your own. If you're not a Protestant, these are a part of the Apocryphal, the seven books that are not included in the Protestant canon that are in the Catholic canon. You can find them all over the place on the internet. I have the NRS V Annotated Apocrypha from Oxford Press. I highly recommend that. It's an awesome translation of the apocryphal text. I just pulled this one off of Bible Gateway and actually got this from, I believe, the NAB, which is the Catholic translation, the Catholic translation of the Bible that I prefer. So these are, as I said before, you have all of this Greek literature that is produced, like you have this Greek literature that's produced by Jews in antiquity. So Jewish literature that's written in Greek. And 2nd Maccabees is the first text ever that uses the Greek term euda. Now taking another drink there. Now, what I want you to do, if you're watching on YouTube or if you're listening along at home, be very, be very um, I want you to kind of slow down and really think about what I'm about to say. I've highlighted the terms Judaism on my screen on YouTube. I'm going to read through these texts. The three texts are 2 Maccabees 2, 19 through 22, which is the first text in the ancient world where the term Eudaeasmos appears in Greek. Then you have 2 Maccabees 8.1 and 2 Maccabees 14, 38. These are the three places where the term eudayasmos appears. And thinking about the context of Galatians 1 that we just talked about, where Paul uses the term eudaismos with respect to his willingness to persecute the church. Let's see if we can discover or discern any overlap between the concepts that Paul lays out in Galatians 1 and the way that the term eudiasmos is employed by the author of 2 Maccabees. Now remember, 2 Maccabees is about the Hasmonean revolt. The Seleucid king Antichus Epiphanes invades Judea in 167 BCE, and Judas Maccabeus and his brothers rise up and fight against him. And they are able to successfully push Antiochus Epiphanes out of Judea. It's one of the great military upsets of all time. And this is celebrated every year by Jews in the holiday of Hanukkah. So it's very important. Here's what the writer of 2 Maccabees says. This is kind of the preface to the entire book. He says this is the story of Judas Maccabees and his brothers of the purification of the great temple, the dedication of the altar, the campaigns against Antiochus Epiphanes and his son Eupir, and of the heavenly manifestations accorded to the heroes who fought bravely for Judaism, fought bravely for Judaism. And then listen to this: few as they were, they plundered the whole land, put to flight the barbarian hordes, regained possession of the temple renowned throughout the world, and liberated the city. They re-established the laws that were in danger of being abolished, while the Lord favored them with every kindness. So Judas Maccabees and his brothers fought bravely for Eudia Asmos. So what's going on here? Antiochus Epiphanes comes to Jerusalem, he shuts down the temple, he prohibits by death following the Jewish law. Judas Maccabees and his brothers rise up in a violent military campaign. They're willing to fight for their ancestral traditions, and they successfully wage a revolt that pushes Antiochus Epiphanes and the Seleucid forces out of the cities, even though they were dramatically outnumbered by the Seleucid forces. They reestablished the laws which were in uh which were in danger of being abolished, and they are able to preserve their ancestral customs. So, in this context, Eudiasmos does not denote the religion of Judas Maccabeus and his brothers. Rather, Eudyasmos denotes their willingness to fight and defend their ancestral traditions with violence if necessary. That is what Eudasmos means in its historical context. The Greek term euda is the willingness of Jewish people to use force and violence to defend their ancestral traditions, which is exactly what Paul says he does in Galatians chapter one. Now we know from the witness in Acts that Paul didn't kill anyone, but he did have people beat and he did throw them in prison and he did doing it thinking that he was defending the law, thinking that he was defending God, that he was uh protecting his ancestral traditions. And so in Galatians 1, when Paul says that he was advancing in Eudayasmos beyond many of his contemporaries, he's referring to this concept. Not he's a better Jew than his contemporaries, although Paul is pretty arrogant in some places, so maybe he really did think that. And in fact, I think he probably did if you read Philippians chapter three, right? But what he's saying when he advanced in when he advanced in Judaism, Eudyasmos beyond his contemporaries, he was more willing to use violence to suppress early believers in Jesus because he believed that the Jesus movement was a threat to his ancestral traditions. Now, there are two more occurrences of this term in 2 Maccabees, and they are exactly in the same kind of context. So this is talking about Judas Maccabees and his campaigns. Judas Maccabees and his companions enter the villages secretly, summon their kindred, and enlisted others who had remained faithful to Judaism. Thus, they assembled about 6,000 men. So this is recounting Judas Maccabeus amassing a force that is willing to go and fight against the uh against the Seleucids and Antiochus Epiphany. So again, Eudiasmos in this context obviously denotes a willingness to fight for your ancestral history. And then 2 Maccabees 1438, in the days before the revolt, he had been convicted of being a Jew and had risked body and soul in his ardent zeal for Judaism. Again, referring back to Judas Maccabeus before the result, his zeal for Judaism, his zeal for being willing to defend his ancestral traditions against the pagan hordes, against those that would suppress them. So we can see from the witness in 2 Maccabees that Eudiasmos has to do with the suppression of those who come against God and his law by force. So when Paul says that he was advancing in Judaism beyond many of his contemporaries, this is what he means by that. It's exactly what he says. You have heard of my former manner of life in Eudyasmos. Paul is not saying he no longer considers himself to be a Jew. That's not Paul's claim. What he's saying is that he no longer practices Eudiasmos. He's no longer willing to take the same route that Judas Maccabeus did and repress the gospel of God by force. That's what he means by that term. And if you look at this term in its historical context, and there are not a lot of uses of eudyasmas in antiquity, that has to be what it means. Now, what's interesting in 2 Maccabees 14, 38 is that we see yet another term that Paul uses in Galatians 1, and that is zeal. Now, zeal is another term that Paul uses to describe his attitude towards the believers of Jesus in his pre-Damascus life. Now, what does the word zeal mean? So we have Eudaasmas Judaism, which means the willingness to defend Israel's ancestral tradition by violence, and then we have zeal. Well, we're going to see that the concept of zeal means the exact same thing. Remember how at the beginning of the episode I said that one of these quotations was going to be really, really small? This is it. Now, this is another great part of James Dunn's work that again I would highly recommend. I don't agree with everything that James Dunn says in his big book on Paul. In fact, there's a lot of things I disagree with, but there's a lot I do agree with. And I think his take on Paul's use of the term Uda Asmos and Paul's language of zeal is spot on. And what James Dunn notes in that, and many scholars have followed, is that zeal is an idea that comes from the book of Numbers. So that when Paul appeals to his zeal, there is a biblical precedent for this. Now, we have to remember that the word zeal is synonymous with. With the word jealousy. So in the NASB translation of Numbers 25, 1 through 15, I've highlighted the words jealousy, but in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, this is the same root word in Greek that Paul uses to describe his own zeal. So whether you see zeal or jealousy in the text, we have to understand that it's the same root word, and therefore it's the same context. So I'm going to read the entire passage of Numbers 25. This is Numbers 25, 1 through 15. And this is about Phineas, the son of Eliezer, and his zeal or his jealousy for God and the covenant that God made with Israel. Here's the story. So Numbers 25, 1 through 15. While Israel remained at Shatim, what a great name for a city. The people began to play the harlot with the daughters of Moab. For they invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. So Israel joined themselves to Baal of Peor, and the Lord was angry against Israel. Again, gosh, Exodus 32, uh, the Ten Commandments that Israel's always, always committing idolatry against God. Here, so the Lord said to Moses, Take all the leaders of the people and execute them in broad daylight before the Lord, so that the fierce anger of the Lord may turn away from Israel. So Moses said to the judges of Israel, Each of you slay his men who have joined themselves to Baal of Peor. Then, behold, one of the sons of Israel came and brought to his relatives a Midianite woman in the sight of Moses and in the sight of all the congregation of the sons of Israel, while they were weeping at the doorway of the tent of meeting. When Phineas the son of Eliezer, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose from the midst of the congregation and took a spear in his hand, and he went after the man of Israel into the tent and pierced both of them through, the man of Israel and the woman through the body. So the plague on the sons of Israel was checked. Those who died by the plague were twenty-four thousand. Now, what what's kind of funny about this story is that this son of Israel brings this Minianite woman who worships Baal into the camp. And it appears that they are in the tent and they are uh how do I say this on a family-friendly show? They are engaging in romantic activities. All right. And Phineas gets up with a spear and just stabs them right through as they're in the middle of the act. So it is uh it is an interesting story, and then God checks his plague on the people. Now, what's even more interesting about this from our purposes is how his behavior is described after this event. So starting in Numbers 25, 10, take another drink here. Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Phineas, the son of Eliezer, the son of Aaron, the priest, has turned away my wrath from the sons of Israel, and that he was jealous with my jealousy, or zealous with my zealousy, zealousy, zealotry, among them, so that I did not destroy the sons of Israel in my jealousy. Therefore say, Behold, I give him my covenant of peace, and it shall be for him and his descendants after him a covenant of perpetual priesthood, because he was jealous or zealous for his God and made atonement for the sins of Israel. And then they talk about the slain man. We don't need actually that part, verses 14 and 15. If you want the details, you can go and read it. And then in Psalm 106, which I've quoted at the bottom of the page here, there's a reference to this story of Phineas, Psalm 106, 30 through 31. It says, Then Phineas stood up and interposed, and so the plague was stayed. And it was reckoned to him for righteousness. Wow, what a loaded term for Paul's letter to the Galatians. It was reckoned to him for righteousness to all generations forever. We do not have time to go down that road tonight. But I do want to make the point that there is a tradition within Judaism, not the Eudayasmos kind, but within Paul's Jewish heritage of zeal or jealousy for Israel's God. And jealousy, like the architect of jealousy, the patriarch of jealousy or zealotry of zeal, the patriarch of zeal is Phineas. And so the prototypical or archetypical example of a zealous, faithful Israelite becomes Phineas in numbers 25. And why is he zealous? Because God was about to punish Israel for their wickedness and faithlessness, for their idolatry. And Phineas actually did something about it and he used violence to stop God's wrath against Israel. And that's described as zeal, as jealousy for Israel's God. And what's interesting, and again, we do not have the time to get into this today. I'm just going to lay this down as a marker. Maybe this will be a theology Thursday episode, or maybe in another episode entirely, because this is just, I think, wildly significant for Paul's use of the term zeal in Galatians, but would take us too far afield. Um, he was jealous for God and made atonement for the sins of Israel. So in other words, in other words, the zeal of Phineas was the mechanism for atonement for Israel, right? Israel sinned, and it's Phineas' zeal that turned away God's wrath in this instance. And what is even more interesting about the reception history of this passage in Psalm 106, 30 is that Phineas is claimed to have righteousness reckoned to him, which is a very, very important phrase in Galatians, precisely because he was willing to use violence against those who were offending Israel's God. Now, might this mean, might this mean that in Galatians 1, 13 through 16, when Paul is recounting his former manner of life in Eudyasmos and saying that he was extremely zealous in the tradition of Phineas, that Paul's intentions were actually somewhat pure? I would say yes. If you take a look at the tradition of Judas Maccabeus and the Eudiasmos of expelling the pagans from Jerusalem and re-establishing the law. And if you go back and look at Phineas in his zeal and how in his zeal he was able to atone for the sins of Israel, maybe Paul thought about that in an eschatological manner. It is in 2nd Sam, it is in 2nd Maccabees 7, after all, where you have the story of the seven Jewish martyrs, and one of them says that one of them prays to God as he's being killed by Antiochus Epippanes IV that his death would be an atonement for Israel's sins and perhaps affect the restoration of Israel. Is it possible that that is exactly what Paul was trying to do in his pre-Damascus experience? Maybe. Maybe Paul, or I would say not maybe, Paul definitely thought that the believers of Christ were a serious threat to Israel's ancestral traditions, a serious threat to Israel's purification, a serious threat to Israel's theological integrity, and a theory, a serious threat to faithfulness to Israel's God. And so he, like Phineas and the Maccabees before him, had to practice his EudiaSmos and his zeal and use violence to persecute the Christians, maybe perhaps even to effect the atonement of the people of God and bring about the restoration of all of Israel. Paul perhaps might have seen himself as doing that. He certainly did after his Damascus road experience. And so it's quite possible that he felt that way before his Damascus road experience. Now, the difference between Paul and Phineas and Judas Maccabeus is that Paul is restrained by the confines of Jewish law. We go back to this idea of the Imperium again, that under, I'm not of Jewish law, I'm sorry, he was not restrained by Jewish law at all. In fact, he was taking that Jewish law to the max. He was doing exactly what the Sanhedrin wanted him to do. Paul was being constrained by Roman law, by the Roman right to the Imperium. He'd beat these people, he would bind them and throw them in prison, but he couldn't really kill them, right? Because that would put him in danger of running afoul of the Roman authorities and being unable to continue to persecute and harass the church. All right. So all that's going on here, there's a couple of passages, uh, I think two more passages, oh, there's uh two more passages I want to, or three more passages I want to take a look at real quick before we tie all this together, um, just for the sake of completion. All right, there are other passages where Paul talks about his pre-Damascus violence towards the church. So one of those he uses the term zeal. This is Philippians 3, 4 through 7. I've already referenced Philippians 3. Paul does not say in Philippians 3 that he is not Jewish anymore. He says that all of the things that he used to pride himself on are no longer no longer matter in light of the Jewish Messiah. Jesus, he's not saying he converted from Judaism to Christianity. He's still a Jew. He self-identifies as a Jew. He's the Jew that believes that Jesus is the eschatological Messiah who has brought about the kingdom of God and is currently ruling over all creation by virtue of his death, resurrection, and ascension. Okay, so Philippians 3, 4 through 7. Although I myself might have confidence even in the flesh, if anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more circumcised the eighth day of the nation of Israel of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law of Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to the righteousness which is in the law found blameless. So again, Paul references his zeal and in his zeal. This is that whole Phineas tradition, going back to Psalm 106 in Numbers 25. He persecuted the church in zeal, but he doesn't say that he murdered them. I mean, I guess someone could read through, like, I guess someone could like read Numbers 25 into this text and say, okay, well, Phinehas killed somebody, but again, as we've already seen, Paul is constrained by the Roman law on the basis of the evidence in Acts. And then here's what he says in two other passages about himself. 1 Corinthians 15 9 and 1 Timothy 1 13 through 16. 1 Corinthians 15 9, he says, For I am least of the apostles and not fit to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. Again, no indication that he murdered anyone, uh, like that he physically murdered somebody. And then 1 Timothy 1, 13 through 16, which I believe 1 Timothy was actually written by Paul, even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and violent aggressor. So Paul's not mentioned words here about what he was like before Damascus. Yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord was more than abundant with the faith and love which are found in Christ Jesus. This is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all. Yet for this reason I found mercy, so that in me is the foremost, Jesus Christ might demonstrate his perfect patience as an example for those who believe in him for eternal life. Okay, so what Paul is saying here is that God's grace has been poured out on Paul through Jesus Christ. And even though he was a blasphemer and a persecutor of Christ, a violent aggressor, as he says, he acted ignorantly and in apistis, unbelief, which is the Greek term behind that, lack of faith, the grace was more than abundant, um, and he was rescued from his sin, right? So this is Paul's witness to his own pre-Damascus experience. And we have with that examined all of the New Testament evidence for Paul having personally physically murdered Christians, and we even examined some of the Second Temple literature. So we've covered a lot of ground today on the show. It's 54 something minutes into the show, uh, which again, this is why this I'm glad this kind of worked out this way because this would be much longer than I want a Theology Thursday episode to be, um, unless they need to be that way for whatever reason. But I do think that it's safe, just in conclusion, if we want to be historically accurate about what the Bible actually says about the biblical witness, then we cannot say without being misleading that Paul was a persecutor and killer of Christians. Because when my Lutheran pastor used that phrase, every time he preached from one of the letters of Paul, he meant that Paul physically doing the stabbing hands on the screen here, that Paul physically killed believers himself. And there's just no evidence that Paul actually did that. Was he in agreement with the lynching of Stephen? Yes. Had he not been constrained by the Roman imperial system, would he have done more than just beat and bind and imprison Christians? You better believe it. He would have been a murderer and persecutor, like he would have been a murdering persecutor of Christians had he had the opportunity to do that. But he was constrained by Roman law, and so therefore we can't say properly that Paul was a killer of Christians. He might have helped facilitate the killing of some Christians, but he wasn't actually a killer of Christians, and there's no evidence to support that in the New Testament. And even the language that Paul uses to describe his own experience before Damascus, eudia smos and the pattern of Judas Maccabeus and his brothers, zeal and the pattern of Phineas in the Old Testament, these are analogies that point to his willingness to use violence against the church, not an indicator that he actually physically murdered anybody. And so here is my challenge to those of you who are listening. Maybe, just maybe, I don't think that my pastor from my childhood is listening to this podcast, but maybe one of the women of the podcast that my wife listens to, where they were talking about this, is listening. Or maybe you have just been acclimated to this trope throughout your life as a Christian, and you've just assumed that whenever you read about Paul and his pre-damascus experience that he was just going around murdering people, he wasn't. Now, what he says about himself in 1 Timothy is pretty powerful. He was still radically transformed by God. And he was transformed from a program of using violence, of using eudaism and zeal to defend his ancestral traditions, to one where, as he says in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, he desired to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified. Philippians 2, that believers should have the same attitude as Christ Jesus and be willing to die for other people. So there was a radical transformation of Paul's understanding of violence at Damascus. And in fact, much of my political philosophy is based on Paul's radical, completely paradigm-shifting movement away from a willingness to use violence to condone his beliefs about God from a complete embrace of cruciform nonviolence for the sake of spreading the gospel. That in and of itself is a powerful transformation. And we don't need Paul to have actually physically murdered anyone to reach the conclusion that Paul was powerfully transformed at Damascus. He was a persecutor of the church. He bound people, he threw them in prison, he had them tortured, right? I mean, I think beating is a form of torture. If you're beaten repeatedly, that's not great. All of that is well within the evidence that is presented about Paul in the New Testament. But he didn't actually murder them. But God still worked powerfully in Paul's life and completely transformed his heart. And I think that that story needs to be told and it needs to be told accurately. And we must always remember this is the Protestant Libertarian podcast, after all, that for Christians, as Paul fully recognized as he put aside his manner of life and eudace and his zeal that we have to embrace the cross of Christ. And we don't get to pick that cross up and crucify other people simply because we're participating in the political process. Progressive Christians and conservative Christians have a really hard time grasping that. And there's a lesson for today. See, I tied it all together right at the end. All right. Thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. I hope that we were able to bust a nice historical myth. Again, if you have thoughts about Theology Thursday or topics that you would like me to discuss on Theology Thursday, please reach out to me, email me, DM me. Um, and I would love to take some of this stuff on. I would love to advance the conversation. If you have thoughts on the show, share it in the comments below. Uh, reach out to me, you know, share it on Twitter, please. Um, you know, we're at a really critical stage in the podcast. They got a book coming out here in just a couple of months. I'm really excited about that. I want to promote it, not because I'm trying to get rich, believe me, I'm not going to, but because I want to get these ideas out there to the entire world. I believe that the church in America is actually going through something of a revival right now. And I think that's exciting. And we want to make sure that that revival doesn't lapse back into the tired old left-right paradigm that we grew up with. We want people to embrace the nonviolent path of Jesus. We want people to embrace the cross. We want people to follow him faithfully. And they cannot do that if they're committed to using political violence to suppress the ideas of other people. 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