Let's Talk About: Other Religions

Dr. Bradley Melle sits down again with Fr. Joash Thomas -  priest, author of The Justice of Jesus, and descendant of the ancient St. Thomas Christians of Kerala, India - for a conversation that reframes everything Western Christians think they know about neighbours of other faiths and the afterlife.

• Why Western Christianity's fear-driven posture toward other religions is historically contingent (it didn’t have to be that way!) and what the 2000-year-old Indian church reveals about a different way
• The Synod of Diamper (1599): how the Portuguese Empire burned the ancient documents of the St. Thomas Christians and declared their form of Christian universalism heresy, because it wasn't Christian supremacist enough to serve colonial interests
• The "Law of St. Thomas" a form of Christian universalist eschatology that predates modern universalist theology by over a millennium, and what its suppression tells us about whose theology gets to count as orthodox
• What happened to Western Christian theology when Columbus encountered the Americas after 1492 and why the discovery of hundreds of millions of "unevangelized" souls created a psychological and theological crisis that Western Christianity still hasn't fully processed
• The Reformed tradition's version of Christian supremacy - more sophisticated, less loud, but structurally the same problem
• A 15-year-old Brad in suburban Edmonton, a Qigong class, and the moment genuine curiosity about other traditions got shut down, and what that cost
• Kerala, India: the first Indian state to eliminate extreme poverty, with near-100% literacy and what centuries of interfaith minority Christian witness had to do with it

This isn't really a conversation about tolerance. It's a conversation about what Christianity looks like when it was never the dominant power, and what the West might learn from that. 

For anyone who has ever wondered whether there's a Christianity that doesn't require fear of its neighbours (or fear for them...!) to function.

Transcript

It's been a long time since we talked. It's been a minute. I'm here with Father Joash
Thomas now, right? I am Father Joash Thomas now. It has been that long. Yeah, yeah. I'm a father.
That's right. You're a father. I'm a spiritual father. You're a physical father. Yeah, I'm a
physical father. That's how I identify. I'm a physical father. My dad did tell me this is the
hardest anyone has ever had to work to become a father. Very true.
So, you know, for a while, Josh and I would talk about all kinds of different topics,
usually related to something, something in the vein of like colonialism,
Christian supremacy, some of the darker sides of the church's history.
But, you know, with. looking at it like with complexity and if you've listened to other episodes
you know joe ash is a descendant of the ancient christians of india the saint thomas christians and
so you have a very different you have a very different sort of experience ancestral experience and
your own personal experience with christianity there than i do yeah yeah it's it is a very distinct
experience like i remember coming to the U.S. as an immigrant, and then later even to Canada,
and just being shocked by how terrified and fearful Western Christians tend to be of Hindu people,
Muslim people, Buddhist people, like Buddhist monks literally walking for peace, you know, trigger
reaction. And there's history, there's context for this, right? And what's fascinating is I've seen
both streams, even like growing up in the Indian church, where you've got,
the very hospitable, harmonious, peaceful,
pluralistic side. But then you also have like Christians who are very terrified,
really evangelicals in India who are very, you know, don't go into a Hindu temple.
It's demon possessed, you know, just like things like that, that were exaggerated and coming from a
place of fear instead of curiosity. And we've talked about that. Empire-shaped values,
colonial values. But yeah, man, I mean, you're a historian of early Christianity,
indigenous Christianity, Turtle Island 2. You've studied, like, empire, what it does. Like,
before I even share, you know, the experience of my ancestors in this area,
I'd love to get your thoughts on, like, how does what I just share resonate with you and your
research? Yeah.
I mean, it does get to kind of the heart of what I do want to talk about,
which is, you know, this sounds like a gigantic topic because it is,
but it's the topic of other religions. And one of the reasons I thought that you would be a great
person to talk to is because you come from the most religiously diverse country or civilization,
whatever you want to call it in the world. And your Christian ancestors were never the dominant
power. We're always a minority. And, you know, they have their own history.
It's complicated like anyone else is, right? But we're forced to relate and engage with people of
different sort of allegiances and faiths and philosophies than,
say, the average. much more than the average, like Western European Christian for almost all of its
history. So it's something I think about a lot. And so when you talk about,
you know, there's this one experience of like peaceful pluralism, harmony,
at least the pursuit of that. And then there's this other experience, which I'm sure you saw in
like the Pentecostal world in India, and evangelical in general of like,
hostility and fear driven like combat spiritual warfare and sort of turning things into this battle
yeah i wanted to i want to talk about some of those things i've got lots of questions i've got lots
of thoughts but i think what i'll start with is
A lot of Western European Christians, and I'm thinking mostly of Protestant evangelicals,
probably just because I've emerged from that world.
The Western Christian experience is one of Christendom,
is one of centrality, dominance, for a long time, uniformity,
like one church that everyone belonged to, and then it started to break apart. But for the most
part... Or most of the Middle Ages, which is where Western Christianity is forged.
Even its Protestant manifestations later on, it still comes from that same cradle of where the
Latin world and the Germanic met.
But what they knew was a world that was entirely Christian. Right.
With one... Sorry, two major exceptions. One was the Jewish community living inside Christendom as
a kind of tolerated but persecuted minority,
never allowed to flourish, always kept sort of contained.
And then, of course, the other is the muzzle. The Muslim representing to the Western Christian,
the enemy, the ultimate rival, the followers of a false prophet. And in a lot of ways,
that's all Western European Christians knew. That's how they saw the world.
Everyone is Christian, except for there's some pagans up in the far north still, but they're
getting converted. There's the Jewish other, which...
being Jewish in Christendom was not was was not a good thing. He was not a peaceful place to live
as a Jewish person. Right. And then you have the Muslim antagonist who doesn't you're not
encountering on a daily basis. They live over there far away as if as some kind of.
Honestly, from the from the perspective of Christendom, Dar al-Islam is like it's evil twit.
It's dark side. Right. And so it's like, that's the kind of people that then venture out by boat
and start encountering all the other peoples of the world, you know, indigenous communities,
African peoples, Asian peoples. And I just, it's on my mind that like their world in no way
prepared them for encountering an other like that. And it didn't.
go well at all and it's like it's still it still doesn't we still are living in the in continuity
with 1492 wow yeah That's so good. You know,
something I do want to talk about is within just global church history,
you know, I went to one of the top evangelical seminaries in America for two master's degrees and
never once heard about it. I was actually checking my church history textbooks the other day. Be
like, just to be sure. And all you hear is there was a schism east and west.
But even before that, there was an eastern church. an Orthodox branch of the church, right? But
there's zero attention paid to Christianity in the East. The story is just Christianity in the
West, and that's all there ever is. That's the main stuff of church history. Exactly. And so it's
basically erasure because at one point, India actually had more Christians than all of Europe.
And that's what historians, secular historians will say today, you know, that at a certain point in
history, you know, first 200, 300 years of church history, India actually had more Christians,
both in the south and the north. In the north, you had Armenian Christian communities who had
settled there and all the way until the Mughal Empire era, the medieval modern era.
So, you know, for so much of Indian history, India has had more Christians just as one country.
Coptic Christians in Egypt who are Orthodox, or you've got the Persian tradition.
And even today, Lebanese Christians and Persian Christians are being bombed to death with the
support of American Christians right now. But those stories aren't told. They're just painted as,
oh, they're all Muslim. Yeah, racialized into the brown other. Exactly.
And so there's nothing new under the sun, historically speaking, as you and I have talked about in
the past. Yeah, so this problem of erasure is a real problem.
And one of the reasons why I fought to write my book, The Justice of Jesus, to tell the story of my
community, and I fought to them narrate the audiobook for it because they don't trust Canadians and
Canadian accents to narrate audiobooks. That's the thing. Actually, Sarah Bessie told me that. And
so I had to fight for that. And the reason why I fought for that representation is because... I'm
fighting against this history of erasure where people, the number one reaction I get when I talk
about my St. Thomas and Jude Christian ancestors is, oh, we weren't aware. And then I borrow
language from indigenous Christians and I say, well, you weren't supposed to be made aware of it.
You were not supposed to find out about us because there is a better way that isn't empire shaped.
But it was so offensive to the empires of our day. And I can go more into that. But, you know,
I. There's this thing that happened called the Synod of the Ampere that we've talked about in 1599,
where the Portuguese Catholic Church and their missionaries in India,
who came with the Portuguese Empire, did the Synod with the St. Thomas tradition and tried to
basically, I mean, they burned a bunch of our ancient Romans. There's a historian that is...
unbelievably tragic right like what was lost there exactly just the knowledge right i was trying to
do some research recently on you know what was the saint thomas uh perspective on this or that i
can't remember what i was looking at and it was like we'll never know sorry the sources are gone
yeah they were there and now they're not exactly and that's just the the historical record being
erased is just one side of erasing of people and their influence.
Yes. And, yeah. And it was a race because, specifically, jumping into our conversational topic a
little bit here. Please do. It was because my ancestors weren't Christian supremacist enough,
the Portuguese umpire. Our ways of understanding God and neighbor were more pluralistic.
We're more at peace with our neighbors. It was more unifying. It was, hey,
They have things to teach us about Jesus, too. And we're so secure in our Christianity that we
don't need to control their beliefs. We let them be them, and then we learn from them,
right? In fact, I wrote a Substack piece recently basically saying that Hindu nationalism in India
today, the persecution of the Indian church today, is largely because of Western colonialism,
because empires from the West sent missionaries that...
these that unified these hindu sects across the country into one national religion common enemy
kind of thing right exaggerated like crap and then yeah it brings people together brings people
together and then you get militantly defensive so they got that from the colonizers i mean so all
to say you know um there were these ancient eastern ways of living at peace in the minority um with
your neighbors from other religions and actually learning from them, incorporating their
architectural style into Christian churches and the way they're built. Some of them are even
preserved. The Portuguese tried to burn a lot of them. There's so many customs from the Hindu
traditions that were incorporated into St. Thomas Christian customs, but that was too Hindu for the
Portuguese Empire, and they tried to burn that. They tried to erase that to ultimately purify our
theology.
Yeah, and purify the meaning to Westernize.
Exactly. To make it legible to them,
to the colonizer, so that they could recognize it as, this is Christian, right?
Yeah, it's... To steal our wealth, ultimately. Right. To keep us divided and steal our wealth,
right?
It's... I mean, the supremacy thing is such a problem. globally like it is just such a sometimes
insurmountable feeling problem right it's so deeply baked especially with white supremacy meets
christian supremacy which is really where like a lot of american christians live in the center of
that right and often a supremacy that is not not a supremacy that's like worn like a badge but it
it's like you're kind of it's invisible because it's so yeah it's so the truth that it becomes it
you start to mistake it for reality you know yeah yeah i have a question for you on this front yeah
i mean and really related to your experience um if you're okay sharing some of it right they're
like you and i have both learned from like the best of even the reform tradition right which is
like so much better than what american evangelicalism has to offer but it's an upgrade it's an
upgrade yeah but i wonder if you'd be willing to share like some of your observations of even how
some of this might be baked into a lot of the reform tradition that christian supremacy so it's not
as vocal it's not as american it's not as loud yeah but but it's there it's not as like um it's not
as bombastic or in your face or aggressive or even like maybe you think like patriotic right But my
experience of it is in reformed world is it's definitely still very much Christian supremacist.
It's just there's a much more sophisticated theological kind of world and resources that it's
working with. And so, you know, even something like what you're saying,
you're saying a very, you use the word that I want us to start using,
which is the word neighbor. You're talking about your ancestors and you're talking about their
Hindu neighbors. Or, and I mean, I know Hindu is in a way a modern construction.
It has many different sort of spiritual tributaries, right? Yeah. Something like that.
Yeah. Different sex. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of intersections between different sex. Yeah. So you have,
you know, how do we, like you said, it was such a simple phrase. Like they thought we can learn
from our neighbors. And we're like, whoa, that's such a like revolutionary way to think. And it's
like, that's not. That's very normal. That should be a very normal posture towards other people,
right? And what I find is that in the Reformed tradition,
because of its sophistication, it's like, no, no, those other religions, those other faiths have a
place. All truth is God's truth. And I get that, but it's still worse.
Our tradition is still the measure. And if there's any good in, say,
the the vedas right if there's any good in the vedas that good will be this will we'll find that as
well in christianity and i'm like that's not the same thing as learning something yes um and i i
already can hear the objections it's like no creational insight it doesn't have to be in the
christian tradition but i'm just like in practice i you know,
and I was really deep into the reformed sort of way. And I was like trying to see the whole world
through its lens. Yeah. I definitely did not look at practitioners of other faiths with the same
level of respect. You know, I wish I did, but I was trying to,
cause I'm always been interested always, ever since I was like a young teenager, I've always been
interested in. like non-Christian religions. I on,
this is like, you know, in the early two thousands, the internet's still pretty fresh. Then I would
spend a lot of my time on who knows even what websites, cause they, we didn't have like Wikipedia
and stuff. It was just websites that people made, but I would find ones that were,
you know, the history of Buddhism or Hinduism. I was always trying to learn. Um, I just,
I, It's like I had a natural curiosity for it, but then I had to kind of try and pull that
curiosity into, how do I say this? Like, yes, you can read about other religions and you can
excavate them for insight, for knowledge, for wisdom.
And it's going to mirror what you already know in Christianity. But that word, right? Excavate.
That's a colonial word. Boom. Mining. Right? That's it. And that's kind of take.
And so that isn't just a...
I would say that that kind of approach isn't your typical evangelical approach to other religions.
I think that one was a bit of me negotiating with my own curiosity.
Because the honest truth is I liked... Especially when I was younger,
reading out Buddhism. I think there's a reason why Westerners get so intrigued by Buddhism.
Like, because it must be offering something that our typical offerings don't give us.
That's good. And so we, it piques curiosity. We're drawn to something in it. Right.
Yeah. Which I think is actually very human. That's very normal again.
Absolutely.
And like, if I can add to that, like. I think you see this among Western Christians too,
with even the way they look down upon Eastern Christians and Eastern Orthodox. One of the most
beautiful things about Orthodoxy as a stream is that it tends to adapt really well into whatever
context it finds itself in, whether that's the Coptic Egyptian context or the Southern Indian
context or the Ethiopian context, or even... up in none of it um and you know indigenous regions
and territories in canada where the orthodox church has um really contextualized for those contexts
to be inclusive right and and so that's a very eastern different way of practicing christianity
than the empire-shaped western version of it that is you know that has been um accustomed to power
and control and dominance and when i say eastern i'm not talking white european eastern like
russian you know i'm talking like like in in places where christians were the minority truly in the
global south um what they call like the oriental orthodox exactly yeah exactly and and what's
fascinating to me is like you're talking about buddhism right and a lot of neighbors outside the
church and people in the church finding, wow, that's so different, right? But what I'm also saying
is that's true. And you would know that if you paid attention to the Orthodox stream of
Christianity, because that has so much of that same Eastern mysticism too.
Not same, similar. So maybe if you're uncomfortable going all the way to Buddhism just yet,
go to Eastern Orthodoxy. They're still within the bounds of the creeds that you and I hold to.
Definitely the Nicene Creed, you know, so, you know, go to Orthodoxy first and then from that place
of familiarity, go into the Buddhist context and Hindu context and Muslim context.
I remember when I was, I don't know, 15 and, you know,
I was, I grew up in suburban Alberta, suburban Edmonton. So pretty white.
Pretty like homogenous high school I was part of. And I remember one morning or one day was like,
we're not doing normal school today. This is a heritage day,
it was called. So people from different, it was like a multicultural day, you know,
and so you had different like. workshops you had to sign up for on kind of anything.
And when you're in 15 years old in high school, you're thinking like, this is just a day to kind of
breeze through and I really pay attention. But so,
you know, I don't even, I don't really know what I'm signing up for, but I saw, you know, right in
the morning, I think school started at like eight 30, a bunch of exhausted teenagers. I signed up,
you know, for the, my first workshop was a Qigong class.
And which is sort of like Tai Chi, but a little more focused on less on like the moving together
and more on the breathing stuff. Yeah. I just did it because I don't know. I just kind of almost
randomly picked. So I remember getting to the room, sitting down the chair and everyone's kind of
like slumped over. And then this practitioner of Qigong is like walking us through these kind of
energy.
exercises how to like get your chi or life energy vitality ruach would be the word you would use
and you know uh flowing the wind flowing through you yeah and i just remember when that ended an
hour later i felt like i could punch through a wall i i was so shocked at how how i felt coming out
of it like there was no denying it i was i felt like alive And so I was like,
again, I'm a curious person. I was like, I'm going to like look into this again. I want to do this
because I feel so good. And so I told my friends about that because I have another friend who came
with me and he had the same experience. He was like, I feel like I could throw a locker across the
school. It was pretty violent, but like that was how we were expressing.
So I looked it up on the school computer, like where I can learn more about Qigong and you to do it
with this practitioner, it met in a Buddhist temple. It's not a Buddhist thing, but it met in a
Buddhist temple. And so I had some alarm bells go off, but I also was kind of like,
that's okay with me. But I told my friends and they all were like,
you can't do that. Like you can't. You can't go into a Buddhist temple and pursue something that is
sort of, I guess you could see it as some kind of something spiritual. And I remember really at
first like kind of pushing back, but then just kind of crumpling and accepting it.
Not like they defeated me, but like they're right. As much as I wish they weren't right, they're
right. And the funny thing is, I never really forgot about Qigong.
I just saw that just down the road, there's a place that offers it. Wow. Just on over,
yeah, a block or two over from my house. And I was like, it might be time to honor that experience
again and go back to it. So it was kind of like, what I received just from that exercise was a
different approach. A different set of practices and assumptions about energy and power and life.
Things that were good that left everyone in that room feeling stronger and better and more present.
Wow.
And I don't know. I feel like it wasn't something that could have been offered to me in the
evangelical world I was in. Yeah. It didn't have those resources. So it wasn't just. I can read,
I can find the good in this through my Christian lens. It was like, I'm genuinely surprised by
that. There's other good things out there. Yes. I know again, that sounds so normal,
but the fact that it's like kind of revolutionary shows like that the Christian Western Christian
has a ways to go for relating to. other faiths and spiritualities in a,
in, in like a healthy way. Totally. Totally. I mean, like if this is the cosmos and we know that
Jesus is the savior of the world, the word is cosmos and the original Greek and new Testament,
right. If this is the cosmos, I mean, cosmos is, you know, quite infinite. Like we have no idea.
Yeah. I can't even like put boundaries here. We just sent the Artemis mission to a little over on
the other side of the moon and it's still so much to explore. Right. So. if but but if the cosmos
is infinite um this is maybe like christian imagination right and i would then say this is like
western christian imagination yeah and like Maybe this is American Christian imagination and
Canadian Christian. I might just go back in infinity, right? Yeah. And like I'm thinking of the
Celtic Christians who, for this very reason, and I think we've talked about this too, Celtic
Christians had this thing called a little book, this thing called a big book, right? The little
book was scripture, not because it was less important, but because it... only had like a finite
amount of pages at the end of the day. But then the big book was creation and the cosmos because
that's where God makes himself known to us. And, you know, a verse I often cite before even going
into these teaching conversations is Colossians chapter 1, verse 29. Sorry,
Colossians chapter 3, verse 11, which basically says Christ is all and in all. All right.
And it's talking about people groups, human societies, cultures. And yes,
religions, because religions are also a part of human society's cultures and Christ is there, too.
And of course, you know, that's definitely looking at it from like a Christian perspective.
But so many of us are afraid to even do that, to even go there. So what you're challenging us to do
is to look for frameworks outside of Christianity that. also have good in them.
And ultimately, I think as a super religious Christian priest also have Jesus in them and Christ in
them, because scripture teaches us that Christ is all in it all. I think that I think that that is
distinct from sort of the like, well, we'll examine the other religions and find what is like
Christianity. And that's what we'll say is true. That's correct. I think what you're saying is, is.
fundamentally better. Okay. Thanks. You know, where it's like, Christ is here.
What does he look like here? What does he say here? What's the, right? Yes.
That is very different. And, um, that would be anathema to a lot of Protestant Christians.
Yes. Like seeing that. And because I think what really, we, we cannot talk about how we should
relate to. people who are parts of other religions like we can't talk about that without the
elephant in the room which is hell because that's that's one of the reasons why like western
christians are not able to give themselves over to some kind of like real non-agenda driven love
your neighbor type posture towards people of different faiths because because there's the lurking
question like is this are these people damned like it gets really dark really fast yeah and i just
want to have point you to a little piece of history because um you know like i said in the medieval
west christianity was kind of all they knew most people who were most christians who were in part
of christendom were
assumed that they would, because they're participating in the church's sacraments, it's assumed
that they will, when they die, go to purgatory. The vast majority of people, if not almost all of
them, there are a few like super saints who, you know,
all sin is cleansed through their, in their earthly life. So they go straight to heaven when they
die. It's very focused on what happens when you die, right? And the only people who go to hell,
are those who died in like defiant mortal sin against God,
like an active rejection or people outside the church.
And so the vast majority of people are on their way to purgatory. And what was life kind of
spirituality in the middle ages for the ordinary peasant person was like, you know,
you kind of didn't want to spend as little time in purgatory as you have to, but if you're in
purgatory, you're on the way to heaven. Right. But you push a little bit here and you're like, so
wait, are you actually saying, like, are we actually saying, you know,
all those Muslims in, you know, West Asia, like, are they all going to hell forever?
And the Christian has to say yes. Like, but they don't know them.
They don't see them. They don't encounter them on a daily basis. So it doesn't feel as morally
abhorrent. Now you can easily push back on me and say, well, there was this, you know, theologian
or this mystic. We didn't think that. And that's true, but I'm talking about the main street. Yeah.
I'm talking about what the average experience was. If I said, Hey, do you think like, um, the
people who are followers of. go to hell yes of course they're outside the church so do protestants
so do and i know the catholic church of course is one of the it's it's actually quite a willing to
update and shift even you know it's yeah but what happens then when 1492 happens with columbus and
now there's this in not only are we like encountering
You know, these like mythic works, like there's some place called China Farah. And the other half
of the earth that there had been no contact with at any of any kind for 10,000 years,
except for like the Vikings and that little stint. Now you're encountering another entire,
potentially hundreds of millions of people who have never heard, but never had no exposure
whatsoever. And. You got to understand how much of a, how much of a like cognitive,
what's the word? Desonance or. Well, it's more than that. Like how much of like a,
this was just absolutely extraordinarily. Yeah. Like pushing down on all the capacity of what,
of Western theology of like hell and stuff like that. Yeah. Because you have to,
if you want to say, if you want to make the claim, you keep your doctrine tightened and say that
these people are, in hell forever yeah that does a real number on your like psychological totally
you have to dissociate from it totally and become harsh absolutely and callous or what happens is
the missionary movement is injected with this like catastrophic urgency to save as men it's like
this it's like a hemorrhaging of souls yeah that's what it's like to discover the americas they're
like oh my goodness there's millions of souls and you have a few missionaries who are like the best
we can do is like we got to they're dying of disease right from the immunity stuff right but they
brought over there that they brought over and then in in the spanish colonies they're like
enslaving them and they're and so you get missionaries for like we gotta save these hemorrhaging
souls before and you i just i was thinking about that sitting happening like yeah what a
nightmarish cosmos to live in yeah if that's really how it is and
I just think that in a way, the Western Christians still hasn't really processed that.
And we're still having those same conversations that someone like you with a different ancestral
heritage have so much to offer, like so much more than you might even realize.
Like we don't have the tools in Western Protestantism,
at least to. really manage this kind of question and are like,
well, there's some people who will probably be saved. It's not enough. It's not enough.
No, no. And what you end up doing, and this is where I'll tie in the story of my ancestors a bit
more, is what Western Christianity then ends up doing is you send missionaries to save the souls.
of the bodies that are enslaved and colonized by the same empires that you're coming with. Right.
And so literally, like you're showing up as a missionary to save these souls. But you're part of a
larger enterprise, a colonial enterprise that's harming the bodies of the people whose souls you
want to save. And you're doing both at the same time, supposedly, but you're not holding to account
the power. where you benefit from the status quo, you're not holding to account that power that's
harming the bodies. Now, there were some missionaries who did stand in the gap who tried to, of
course, and who were ultimately killed for it by empire or sent away by empire. Their work shut
down like Matteo Ricci or something. Yes, yes. Or Dinobili in India was this Jesuit from...
Portugal, who was told by the Portuguese empire, you know, you're going native, because he
essentially, you know, to translate scripture into local languages, started studying local
languages. And the best sources to study these local languages at that time were the religious
texts, right? So he's... studying local village and by studying local languages.
And what he ends up doing is he ends up seeing that these are very sophisticated religious belief
systems. We were told that They were pagan and, you know, there was an opportunity.
Yeah, savage. And the women were, you know, just demeaned brutally.
The men were over-sexualized. Women were over-sexualized, stuff like that. But now I'm reading
these religions and they're intricately beautiful. And there's so much of Jesus here,
so much Christ that has been revealed here already was his takeaway. And then he wrote these
letters back to the Portuguese Empire and the King of Portugal and the Vatican were basically like,
Yeah, you weren't sent there to teach us about them. You were sent there to convert those heathens.
So stick to your mission and don't go native. Right. And so this is what happened with many of
those missionaries, too. But we don't talk about those missionaries enough, you know. So but at the
same time, what I do want to point out is, you know, to your point, Brad, at the same time, there
are alternative Christian eschatologies and Christian understandings.
heaven and hell within the Eastern Church, right? So for example, I talked about the Synod of the
Emperor in 1599. One of the documents that was burned, one of the things that was explicitly
declared heresy at that Synod, and you don't have to take my word for it, look it up, is this thing
called the Law of St. Thomas, the Law of St. Thomas, which is basically this form of,
I think, Christian universalism. So the Law of St. Thomas, highlights a very different sort of a
very different approach to people of other different spiritualities and traditions yes yes yeah the
law of saint thomas is um basically this way of understanding uh the eschaton of the last days in
which um you know when jesus returns to judge the living and the dead as the creeds teach us
because My ancestors held to the Nicene Creed. When Jesus returns,
all of creation will be reconciled through Christ in the love of God.
And everyone will be saved by whatever means of divine revelation has been made available to them
through Jesus Christ. So it's essentially a form of Christian universalism.
that you also see in the early church, you know, in other parts of the world. But now that you see
at the Synod of the Emperor, where the Portuguese Empire condemns this as heresy and says,
you cannot hold to this because this isn't Christian supremacist enough. And we need to be
converting our neighbors so that we can steal their resources. And we can't have this way of
understanding God get in the way of that. Totally. That's a great way to say it. We cannot have
this understanding of God, of salvation, get in the way. There you go. Like that nail,
that hits on the head. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because ultimately like empires divide to conquer,
to steal and pillage resources, but the way of Jesus. according to the law of saint thomas and
according to you know so many marginalized readings of scripture the way of jesus unites to heal
unites to reconcile And this is what we see happening in the last days, even at the end of
Revelation, when Jesus returns, you know, and the lion and the lamb shall lie together. All of
creation is reconciled. And so this form of understanding the end times,
Christian universalism, hasn't been the dominant form of eschatology within global church history.
It was for the first few hundred years of the early church, for sure. Or it was at least a major...
Stream. Stream. Exactly. Because Origen was the most read theologian of the third century.
Yes. And so Origen, I know every time I bring up Origen,
every time I bring up Origen online or something, someone always goes, well, he's condemned later
on. It's a heretic. And I'm like, yeah, but you're a heretic. I'm like, you're a Baptist. Are you
kidding me? He's sitting here judging Origen. You're a Baptist. Yeah.
I don't actually care what the person is. I'm just like, it makes me kind of boil because I'm like,
what authority do you have? And Origen was not condemned. Some Origenist beliefs were by the
imperial church. That's not good enough for me. Who does the condemning?
Who declares someone as a heretic? Empire. That interpretation of God and salvation just...
That's not going to work for us. Yes. Right? And part of that is there is the cynical part where
it's like you're saying there's desire to divide and conquer and acquire resources.
And there's all those. That's real. Sure. But there's also the real genuine fear that when you pass
on, especially when you pass on the terror of eternal torture to children,
it gets so deep in their in their bones and nervous system that it can almost never be fully,
uh, relieved or released. It's part of a cycle that has to be broken intergenerationally because
it's just, it's too horrifying to the nervous system that we have designed to survive,
designed to fight or flee from threat that when you hear,
I'm sorry to tell you, but the true story of eternity is that the vast majority of people will be
tortured for all time because of their sin. Like I'm saying it like it's a caricature,
but that's not. No, it's said. Yeah. It's preached. Yeah. And it is,
unfortunately, the dominant empire-shaped narrative in so much of Western Christianity. But you're
absolutely right. At the same time, there's been this other stream present all throughout the
history of the church. Christian universalism isn't something that some German liberals came up
with in the 1800s. It's something that my ancestors believed in. for 1500 years,
1599 years before the Portuguese colonizers showed up and tried to get rid of that to control us
and to steal our wealth, right? And it hinged upon them getting rid of that to do that.
So look, and you don't have to listen to this and become a Christian universalist by the end of
this conversation, but sit in the tension of the fact that There are creedal Christians throughout
church history who held to a different view of hell and held to the Nicene Creed at the same time
and that the two can coexist at the same time and sit in the tension of the facts that you've just
presented here of how that understanding of God, that fearful understanding can be so harmful to
child development. It can. And to the common good. And then you tell people like.
You know, you tell people, I'm sorry, but that's just the way it is. That's what it says in
scripture, which is not a cop out. It's such a cop out. And it's not true. Yeah. But they want to
tell you, like, I'm sorry. You just have to accept that. And the only way for you to do that is to
dissociate. You have to break something in you. And then, you know, when you're like, well,
this makes God sound like a monster. And it's like, it makes them sound like a monster because it
is monstrous. Yes. And you can't just say to someone who's like. This is abhorrent.
This cannot be the way things are. You can't just tell them all God's ways are higher than your
ways. It's like that, like stop evading like this nightmare that you're describing.
It's a cop out, right? Yeah. What origin describes of the eventual reconciliation of every single
living thing to God restored is even the devil.
That's origins thing that really made people upset. Even the devil. But I have to tell you,
that is epic. That is beautiful. That is angering,
enraging, because it's like, that's not fair. All the emotions come out. I don't know if you've
ever read this short story called The Wise Woman. I haven't, no. You should. You should read it.
It's a short story by George MacDonald.
You know, George MacDonald. George MacDonald, yeah. And it's a story about this runaway princess.
who gets taken in by this woman, the wise woman. And I've never ever read a story where how much
like persistent grace was shown to someone, how much,
how angering it was to watch. It wasn't like, ah, isn't that warm and fuzzy? You,
by the end of the story, you are like the wise woman. You are so stupid.
You need to stop reaching out to this,
princess who is just a vile character and it completely changed my my view because i was just like
i'm sitting here angry at the wise woman's love because it's it's it's too much it's too i wish
jesus had a parable i know something like that two children one of them runs away from home the
other one feels like that grace isn't fair Read it. You'll feel the rage inside you.
And when I felt that, I was like, okay, all of my well-oiled theological ideas about grace are
nothing. Nothing compared to the grace of God, which is so vast and incomparable.
And that is what's vast and incomparable, not the wrath of God. Right. That's right. Not the
monstrosity that's just higher than you can understand. Right. No, I can understand enough. that to
know that this is like what you're describing is horrendous. Yes. And just cannot be what is the
truth. Because if it is, the world is truly a nightmare. 100%.
100%. And this is why I've appreciated the work of my new boss at St. Stephen's University,
Bradley Jernczak, has this great book called Her Gates Will Never Be Shut.
Her gates will never be shut. And in that, he... talks about these verses from Malachi that talk
about the fire, right? Or even revelation. Oh, fire, eternal fire. Actually, what is that fire?
If you read it in the full council of scripture, the fire is a refining fire. It's like a
laundromat. You put dirty stuff in and it doesn't permanently burn or incinerate the laundry.
It comes out on the other side, purifying, like refiant. It's a refining fire for all of creation
because God's love for us. His heart for us burns with so much intensity of love that it will
refine all of creation. And I don't know about you, man, but that sounds like good news. Hit me.
That sounds like the gospel. I know because that makes something in you light up. Yes.
Turn on. And you're like, that's the world. Is that you? You almost are like, dare I let myself
believe that that could really be where this universe is. like going and i think if you get to that
that place where you're like am i allowed to believe this like that's getting to that place where
it's like offensive like love and grace that you and not because we're so wicked and horrendous not
that's what i really don't want to mean that like that's the other thing in evangelicalism it's
like we have to marvel how god could like love such like such a total like shit show as me and it's
like that's not what this is about that's like the goal isn't hate yourself so deeply that like any
little bit of love to you is like i'm not worthy i'm a worthless yes yes no that is like that's not
how god sees you it's an abusive relationship yes exactly that's how you see yourself because of
how the umpires of this earth conditioned you to shame uh to see yourself in shameful ways but that
does not keep you small yeah keeps you controllable right But I think it's more like,
you know, you look, you look out into the world and you're like, could it be really that like all
will be well one day? And like that I participate in that and, you know, and you're like,
is God really going to be full of grace for all these horrendous evil? And what is that going to
look like? Those were all the questions that they were asking long ago and coming up with different
answers and drawing on different parts of scripture. painting new pictures like a lot of the a lot
of the christians in the first few centuries went went on a holy tangent with that fire imagery
yeah with like refining fire with remedial fire with it's painful but and you know you think about
someone like right now or we're encountering really like in your face evil people that i recently
talked about in a post of mine um how hell is was for that's what it was for Hell was from the
powerless. It was their hope that one day God would not just let the stuff that happened to them
just go, but would actually bring justice and throw the rich down,
like Mary talks about, right? Right, right. And to be clear, even within Christian universalism,
there are different sets of understanding where some Christian universalists do believe in...
penultimate hell as bradley jerzak would call a penultimate purgatory hell of some sort a temporary
hell but not an ultimate hubble ultimately we're all reconciled through christ right and so exactly
we know look we look out we see these really really evil oppressors yeah having another day in the
sun and we think there's got to be some kind of like not punishment it is but some kind of like
that person has to be accountable and It can't be a good,
wonderful, reconciled universe without that. And I feel like it makes perfect sense to me that
purgatory came up, that it wasn't just some invention. It was a logical need based on all the
available, you know? Yeah. But also with some humility being like, we don't get to peer and see
exactly how it works. Yeah. So that's interesting. I just, I do think that the conversation about
hell. And the conversation about how we can actually be neighbors to people of different faiths
because now the world's different. Yes. They're not over the sea. Like we're, or, you know,
across the Atlantic and we don't live in Christendom. Like my block has people from all different
faiths. Yeah. And I don't just walk around and be like, Oh, either a feeling of anxiousness.
Like I need to convert them to what, like, what am I be like me? And I don't think that's not the
way you want to go. You're a great guy. Yeah, yeah. And if it's okay, I do want to,
like, as we close here, I do want to paint. I'm a big picture guy. Please help it.
I do want to paint a picture of what could be possible, even in the West,
if we put aside our fear, work through our fear, and approached our neighbors from other religions
with curiosity. Because I'll tell you what has happened in the Indian state of Kerala. which is
home to St. Thomas Christians for the last 2,000 years. So the state of Kerala,
last November, the Indian government declared that it was the first state in the entire country of
India to completely eliminate extreme poverty. Wow. Completely eliminate extreme poverty.
Gone. Like extreme poverty. And what's even crazier is that Kerala, even since my child and for a
couple of decades now, has been... state that has had the number one literacy in the country of
almost 100% literacy rate right now, where there's been a heavy focus on women being educated.
And so much of this has come from St. Thomas Christians working in interfaith ways with their
Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist neighbors for the common good. Wow. And literally being the salt of
the earth, as Jesus called the church to be the salt of the earth, right? This is what's possible
if we overcome our fear and our division and our empire-shaped hatred for each other and persevere
through these things. There can actually be a taste of heaven on earth that we can get on this side
of eternity before Jesus returns. But it's going to take us approaching these things with courage
and not fear. And so what's interesting here is it's not like what you're saying is in Kerala,
in that state, because they had lots of Christians, things went well. It's because they partnered
with... As a minority. Yeah. Yeah. With no power. And what's fascinating is a lot of Kerala
Christians, not all, but a lot of Kerala Christians actually identify as communist. like the state
government in Kerala is actually communist. Now, that's going to blow some minds even more, and I'm
not endorsing communism in any way, but all I'm saying is there is so much out of the Christian
imagination in the West that we need to draw closer to curiosity with and ask questions and engage
and learn from, because... is what the context is in Kerala.
These Christians who have worked with people outside their faith for centuries now,
despite colonizers coming in and trying to divide and conquer, the salt that we got from the
Apostle Thomas has persevered for 2,000 years and has made a difference in our society.
And we didn't have to take over the government for that. We didn't have to be in power for that. We
just had to be a faithful minority on the margins, working for the common good.
That's our witness that draws people to Jesus. Um, because if, if not for that,
like what, what are we really offering to this world? If not good, what are we doing here?
Wow. Oh man, this, I mean, this topic we got. So there's so much more to talk about,
but I think this was really, really helpful for me. And I'm really thankful that you were able to
share some of that. stuff from carol off from the saint thomas perspective because we really do
need a genuinely different approach not just like a bit of a revision like a genuinely different
approach to other people of other faiths other spiritualities because if our christianity shapes us
to be okay with killing entire civilizations Two days after Easter Sunday,
when Jesus defeats death, like if our Christianity leads us to do that, burn that Christianity
down. And in its place, I think a truer, more Jesus-like Christianity will come.
Even endorsing it, even just a, well, you have to look at it. Even that, that's enough to burn it
down. Put that stuff through the refiners. Oh, yeah, and see with flour.
Yeah. All right. Thanks, Josh. Yeah, man. We'll see you again soon. It was great.