Church History for Chumps

The Reign of Constantine: "You Get a Church, and You Get a Church!"

• ay big dog media • Season 3 • Episode 23

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"Nice pagan temple. Be a shame if someone...Christianized it."

-Constantine, probably

The conversion of Emperor Constantine to Christianity was one of the most groundbreaking events to occur in the history of Rome. The single most influential political figure in the world had official changed divine allegiances. 

But as we'll talk about today, the implications for this change would be felt in the religious spheres of the Empire as well. Across territories, Constantine would go about building some of the most ornate churches the world has ever seen. 

Join the boys as they get back into arguing about Constantine and whether the movie was any good or not. Also Taylor is in ketosis, and Thomas is pretty uncomfortable about it. 

(Banter ends 9:15) 

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UNKNOWN:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02:

Hey everybody, welcome to Church History for Chumps. My name is Johnny the Jet, Simon, and I'm here with my two best pals. We got Taylor, Terabyte, Treadway, and Tommy, the Who's Dat Boy Duel. What's good? Who's dat boy? I like that. Yeah, you like that? Classic Terabyte. Classic. How we doing, boys? How's the evening treating you?

SPEAKER_04:

I went to Lazy Dog for dinner.

SPEAKER_02:

Don't they sell furniture there? Chinese restaurant?

SPEAKER_04:

Oh

SPEAKER_02:

my. Alright, Chump Nation. Whose joke was funnier just now?

SPEAKER_03:

Definitely

SPEAKER_02:

Tommy's. Mine was dumb. Thomas' was racist. I know it was. It wasn't bad though. What kind of restaurant is Lazy Dog?

SPEAKER_04:

Lazy Dog is pretty popular out here in SoCal. I want you to think if Texas Roadhouse I want you to think if Texas Roadhouse met like if that dad met some like vegan lady and then they had a kid.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. And then that kid grew up and bought a restaurant.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

So

SPEAKER_02:

it's like steak, but they have a lot of... Yeah,

SPEAKER_04:

they got like health options.

SPEAKER_02:

Like jicama.

SPEAKER_04:

That's part

SPEAKER_02:

of the reason.

SPEAKER_04:

No, I want you to think like I'm doing keto right now because I was...

SPEAKER_01:

So it's like the steaks are like seared in like grass-fed butter. Yeah. You guys want to know why I'm doing keto?

SPEAKER_04:

Nope, don't care. What are you

SPEAKER_02:

doing keto for, Taylor?

UNKNOWN:

Why?

SPEAKER_04:

One of the pastors in Africa, he didn't realize, he said I was fat. I

SPEAKER_01:

feel like it was like a compliment for him, but for you it just kind of, oh, you are very,

SPEAKER_02:

very fat. And then he proceeded to

SPEAKER_04:

say, and maybe in heaven, my skin would be white like his. Oh, my.

SPEAKER_02:

No, no, no. This is a very interesting value system change. And I

SPEAKER_04:

said, no, no, in heaven, my skin will be dark like yours. And then they all went, oh. And I'm like, dude, I'm out of my element here, man. They

SPEAKER_01:

all hand him$5 in imperfect English. He just says, I told you I could get him to say it. Oh, that's good. Oh,

SPEAKER_02:

man. So you feel like you need to lose some weight because a couple African pastors called you big boned?

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, pretty much. So I had

SPEAKER_02:

keto. I

SPEAKER_04:

had lettuce wraps for dinner.

SPEAKER_02:

Are you in ketosis right now? I

SPEAKER_04:

sure am.

SPEAKER_02:

Could you put the ketosis up to the microphone

SPEAKER_01:

so we can

SPEAKER_02:

hear

SPEAKER_01:

it for some reason?

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Are you in ketosis right now? Sounds like such a violating

SPEAKER_03:

question. I don't know why. I'm like trying to think of it. What does ketosis sound

SPEAKER_00:

like?

SPEAKER_04:

It's like, hey guys, I'm ketosis.

SPEAKER_03:

It sounds like Lucas in those music. Don't feed me no sugar. We're talking jerky. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, man. That's good. That's good. I have avocados and

SPEAKER_03:

eggs for breakfast.

SPEAKER_04:

I don't know. My favorite part is when people are like, yeah, I'm on keto, and they call it dirty keto, and you're like, oh, what'd you have for breakfast? It's keto voice, right? Six pieces of bacon, an avocado, and six eggs. I'm like, well, you just ate your calorie limit. Good job.

SPEAKER_02:

Actually, we were just talking about that health food junkie culture thing. I feel like Dirty Keto would be a great hippie punk rock band name. Yeah. Dirty Keto. I don't know. We could start it. But I don't think the ukulele fits well in most punk music. Or

SPEAKER_01:

POC music for that matter. Or any music for that

SPEAKER_02:

matter. How about Hawaii, pal? Where's that? I almost said country. There's a whole island full of ukulele players. Thank you. You step off the airport and everyone's just singing somewhere over the rainbow.

SPEAKER_04:

Shout out Spam Musubi.

SPEAKER_02:

Speaking of shoutouts, Malta, dead to us. We fell off their rankings. Ireland, also dead. You know who we popped off for this week? If only. Germany. Bro. Germany is once again in the headlines. This time, for all good. Well, couldn't talk, Germany. Couldn't talk.

SPEAKER_03:

Couldn't talk, my friends. My friend. We gotta be like the only podcast that as soon as they start trending anywhere, we just roast them. We just bully them into not listening to us anymore. You want to know,

SPEAKER_04:

when we had our layover in Germany, and I got to say, guys, your country, man, it's like we're going through customs, and there's just straight-up guys with MP5s and extra ammo, bulletproof vests just staring you down. You're just like, here's my backpack. Please scan it. I have a Nintendo DS.

SPEAKER_02:

That just shows they take security very important. And I'm sure they were... I can't say it. No,

SPEAKER_00:

I can't.

SPEAKER_02:

I was going to say, I'm sure that guy was just following orders. Oh my gosh!

SPEAKER_03:

Man, that feels awful. I didn't like that.

SPEAKER_01:

You just fell off in Germany. No,

SPEAKER_02:

stop. Don't say that. Yeah. Or I'm gonna taste that joke in purgatory for a couple decades. Alright, well, gang, should we, uh, who's on deck tonight? Tommy, is it you? I got one ready. Okay, well, let's hop in. Are we recording two tonight? If we can. I mean, Taylor's pretty cynical. I think we can.

SPEAKER_01:

Cool.

SPEAKER_04:

Let's rip it.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, this episode is titled Constantine II Electric Boogaloo. Ooh, alright. Does this one also have Keanu Reeves? You can if you want. Keanu is always available to show up wherever you need him.

SPEAKER_02:

I am disappointed, though, that we didn't make any jokes about how the film Constantine was a really, really accurate depiction of the life of Constantine. Because I think it was about a vampire hunter.

SPEAKER_04:

Oh, let me see.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, okay. He's an exorcist. Oh, thank you, Taylor. Yeah. I should have known this was right up your alley.

SPEAKER_01:

Has there been any good movies made about Constantine? I don't think so.

SPEAKER_02:

It's called Constantine. No, they, uh, what's that one they made about? No, that's about the crusades. That's about a thousand years later. Come on, John. Uh, no, the answer

SPEAKER_01:

should be kingdom of heaven.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, the one with Legolas.

SPEAKER_04:

Hey, chat,

SPEAKER_02:

you want to know something? I

SPEAKER_04:

really want to watch that. You want to know something, chat? John Simon and I watched Constantine together many, many years ago, and he doesn't even remember. I

SPEAKER_02:

don't think that's true.

SPEAKER_04:

It is true! I watched it at your house!

SPEAKER_02:

Just because you watched it at my house does not mean I was there.

SPEAKER_04:

It was the young man's game where we would all... Load up like seven unnecessary hookahs and we would sit around the TV and just watch and

SPEAKER_02:

enjoy. Oh, we did do that. Maybe, are you sure it was Constantine? Positive. Dang, and I was there. I probably packed the hookahs. Probably. Rats. Okay. Shia LaBeouf is in this movie?

SPEAKER_04:

Oh my gosh, we need to start.

SPEAKER_02:

Bro, I'm in a terrible spot. Okay, alright, this is the end of the banter section now. Alright, Tommy, run with it.

SPEAKER_01:

Alright, so this time we're going to talk a lot about Constantine's building projects. There's still a whole other aspect of Constantine's life that we're not going to really cover, which... I mean, we could do probably three or four more episodes. Maybe we'll mix them in over the next couple years. Constantine can be like an old faithful. But if you didn't listen to the first Constantine episode, you might want to go back and listen to that one. I think the three of us did a pretty good job kind of chopping up some of the myth versus fact. So after he kind of rises to power and is controlling the empire, He's made Christianity be in favor. One thing I'm not sure if we talked a whole lot about in the last episode was he didn't make paganism or other religions illegal. He just made it not popular. He made it hard. It seems like there was times when he would possibly persecute religions, if they were... I think it was like... I think when he found out that in Jerusalem, which we might talk a little bit about this, but in Jerusalem and some other holy sites like in Palestine were being kind of overrun by pagans, I think he would actually stop them. But for the most part in the empire, he just wanted to favor Christianity. And the biggest way that he did that was by building... And he built some of the most important churches known to history, churches that are still there to this day that are very, very important historical sites. Like Saddleback? Dude, that reminds me. There is an Instagram account out there that blames Constantine for everything. Absolutely everything. Red lights are red for way too long. Thanks, Constantine. But yes, Saddleback. I wonder if we dig underneath. You never know. Maybe there's a portal to Rome there. That'd be pretty cool. We're going to talk about three different areas. We're going to talk about what he did in Rome. Then we're going to talk about Jerusalem. Then we're going to talk about Constantinople. So let's start with Rome. Before Constantine, other emperors were prone to building temples. But his building of churches was a way of communicating that Christ was God of the Roman Empire at this time. Okay. I want to note before we really dive in, again, I'm relying really heavily on the scholarship of Peter Lightheart and his book Defending Constantine. And I'm going to be quoting from that fairly extensively. But where, here's a little pop quiz. What is the name of the, well, other than the Vatican, where does the Pope live? Or what's the name of the church that's there? You guys know? St. Peter's Basilica? That's right. Yay, let's go. All right. So if you were to go to Rome and go to Vatican City, which is actually its own nation, by the way, if you were to go to the Vatican City, you would find, I believe you would actually find two basilicas there. So there's what's called Old St. Peter's Basilica, And then there's St. Peter's, which is the enormous basilica where, you know, you can, I think they can put like 50,000 people in there. Oh my gosh. Crowd into that outdoor area outside of the church. But old St. Peter's Basilica was the church buildings, and I'm reading from Wikipedia right now, the church buildings that stood from the 4th to the 16th century, so a long, long, long time. And it's where St. Peter's Basilica stands today in Vatican City. So it is, I think, incorporated with and sometimes under portions of the new St. Peter's. Actually, you know what I was going to do? Just for you guys, just for fun, I'm going to share my screen. Oh, no, it's not going to let me without doing some... crazy system setting stuff never mind

SPEAKER_04:

Jamie pull up the tape

SPEAKER_01:

yeah you guys can look it up on your own if you want so it was built over the historical site of the circus of Nero so that was another thing that I think is kind of fascinating historically is that Constantine built this I'm not sure if he had to demolish the circus of Nero to do it or if it had already been broken down some But the Circus of Nero would have been a place where Christians would have died. And he's putting this new church on the same exact site. So he ordered it to be built and the construction began sometime between 318 and 322. And it took about 40 years for them to finish it. And then over the next 12 centuries, I mean, this really became like the hub of Western Christianity to the point that obviously it became the home of the Bishop of Rome. And yeah, very important site. They tried to build it over what they believed to be St. Peter's grave. And there's some Roman Catholics who actually, I think a lot of them believe that it's Theologically significant that the, the Vatican is basically over his grave and they, they point back to the hole on this rock. Um, I will build my church.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I could totally see that,

SPEAKER_01:

which I don't know if you guys saw this, but last week, the, the new Pope basically came out and said, what we Protestants have been saying for forever, which is, that's not what that meant. And, uh, he, he's, He basically, I think he made the statement that he's talking about Peter's faith and that Christ is also speaking about himself, but he's not talking about Peter himself, which was hilarious for me to see. And I haven't got the chance to talk with any Roman Catholics about that yet, but pretty interesting development, actually.

SPEAKER_02:

yeah yeah that's interesting I feel like we're always like you know looking for these one liners that popes drop to like catch themselves kind of contradicting themselves too so I always get kind of suspicious when someone's like oh did you hear the pope said that you know gay people are going to be in heaven next to the martyrs and it's like I don't know if maybe but I don't know I haven't heard about this one there could be some sauce behind

SPEAKER_01:

this one it was part of a larger article that I read with several things that he had said, I think in the same day. It's kind of like a continuing in the Vatican II direction of basically trying to bring more people into communion with Rome. I think bringing the East into communion with Rome is actually really what he's going for. I don't think he's thinking about Pastor Bob's First Baptist

SPEAKER_02:

Church. Sorry, Taylor. I

SPEAKER_04:

know.

SPEAKER_01:

We are

SPEAKER_04:

irrelevant. You

SPEAKER_02:

guys might be the last ones ever brought into communion with the Catholics, which I think most Baptists would be pretty psyched about.

SPEAKER_04:

No, they would. That's the thing that drives me nuts about Baptists. And I love all my Baptists, obviously. I've in a way dedicated my life to serving Baptists. So I speak with love. They're like, you're like, what do you know about Catholics? And your average Baptist is like, do they just worship Mary? They just worship her. You're like, okay, maybe we can have a more ecumenical understanding.

SPEAKER_02:

Not quite. So, so that's, so, okay. So back to the church conversation. So I have a question about the practical side of it. Because like, I can imagine that going to church is, in this time period, which this would still be fourth century. Like, like I, I mean, I definitely understand like the optics of building a gigantic church, especially in like relevant city areas to be like, this is the place. And this is what we are kind of centering our, our public square around. But like on a practical level of like, would this be a place that would have the liturgy practiced every Sunday? Is this a place that people would be, I don't know if member is the right word to use in this time in history, but yeah, how did that work?

SPEAKER_01:

So this building could house between 3,000 and 4,000 worshipers at once.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow.

SPEAKER_01:

It was, I'm going to quote Lightheart, Now, it says that it was the largest of all Christian churches of the time. So, one thing that Constantine started doing around Rome and in other places, which is now kind of the... If you go into older churches, more traditional churches, especially cathedrals, you'll find this pattern. It's actually made in a cross pattern where there will be a really long nave and then... Like the floor plan basically is in the shape of a cross with the altar kind of being in the middle. So the nave alone was 295 feet long and the entire interior was 390 feet long and 210 feet wide. It had a transept as tall as the nave itself that separated the nave from the large apse. Don't ask me to define all of these. Before the apse was the tomb of Peter, marking the transept as the martyrium proper. After St. Peter's, the cruciform shape became the standard cathedral form. Constantine's conversion was a response to the sign of the victorious cross, and the cross had been painted on military gear and impressed on coins. Fittingly, the cross also became the shape of sacred space. So when you make a building in a cross shape like this, it helps you get more people close to the action of what's going on. I mean, you have to really ask the question. If you just look up, I've seen videos of Westminster Cathedral where the queen will come in for a special liturgy And she'll walk up that thing, and it takes them freaking five minutes to get to the front of the room as they walk. And you kind of have to ask the question, how far away can a worshiper be before they're not really there, especially without amplification? Ask the back

SPEAKER_04:

row Baptists.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Yeah. well but like even you know in this time and in modern Catholicism like the front of the church is relevant because it's not just where the preacher is it's where the host is so to be half a mile back like that does kind of represent this significant distance from the whole point of the worship service right right

SPEAKER_01:

the cruciform pattern helps but they also were just trying to deal with like Honestly, something that had never, I think, really in history been needed before, which was dedicated worship space for a lot of people all at once. So this was really fascinating to me. This is Lightheart again. He says,"...the very form of Christian church buildings communicated the triumph of Christianity in the Roman world and Christ's victory over the Roman gods. The choice of the basilica form for church buildings was virtually forced on Constantine." and other church builders. And this was answering your question a minute ago, John. Domestic spaces could no longer house the crowds that now crammed into meeting places for worship. Ancient temples were designed to house an image of the God, not to accommodate mobs of worshipers. In the Roman world, only one style met all the needs of the church, the basilica. Oh, wow. I see. They had basilicas before, but they were always used for civic purposes. They needed to... Have an election or this is where politicians could address people. Like a city

SPEAKER_02:

hall kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

They needed it for worship space.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, that's really interesting. Okay. So they had these temples, but I guess two things. One is that Christian worship and Roman worship were very different. And basically these Roman pagan temples were not... were not constructed to accommodate a bunch of people coming for mass, essentially, is what you're saying.

SPEAKER_00:

That

SPEAKER_02:

is really interesting. Okay, so they kind of had to co-opt these, like you said, these public centers into, it'd be the equivalent of taking a city town hall and converting that into a church, basically.

SPEAKER_04:

Or a basketball arena. Stop

SPEAKER_02:

it.

SPEAKER_03:

What? Okay, Lakewood, I

SPEAKER_04:

didn't look. Yeah, okay, there's problems with Joel Osteen, but it's what they did. It's the same thing.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Till it starts to rain outside, big dog. That

SPEAKER_04:

was a deep cut to explain to Thomas, because Thomas clearly didn't get that joke. When Houston was flooded, they didn't want to let people

SPEAKER_01:

in. Oh, they didn't let people in.

SPEAKER_02:

I think they only didn't until... They eventually let people in. And you could say it's because of bad press or maybe there was a communicate. Honestly, I could see a church just having a big communication issue of being like, I don't know. We've got worship practice on Saturday and we're not supposed to open up the doors for anyone on Friday

SPEAKER_01:

to dirty up the carpet. Probably what happened is somebody was like, well, we usually charge people money to come in here on Sunday. So do we need to do that today? Oh, I wish I knew the answer.

SPEAKER_02:

Can we get like a PayPal or something first? I don't know. Scan the QR. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

But it's super, it's super interesting that the, the, basically the, the building that they knew how to build that facilitated the most people just became the standard practice for.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Yeah. Now that is a good point, Taylor. I'm sorry for giving you a hard time.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. That's fair. I forgive you. I forgive

SPEAKER_02:

you, Simon. Reconciled.

SPEAKER_01:

All

SPEAKER_04:

right.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

All right, so let's talk about Jerusalem now. Ooh. Jerusalem becomes a really fascinating place because basically from in between the time of the destruction of Jerusalem all the way up to the time of Constantine, Jerusalem had really lost its Jewish flavor. I mean, it had really become such a Roman city at that point that Lightheart says that... romans when they would hear christians talking about their home being jerusalem they were like well they can't be talking about jerusalem jerusalem so there must be some secret military base somewhere in the east they're referring to um but uh so what ended up happening is constantine's mom um her name was helena she made a pilgrimage to palestine um one thing that we talked about um in the last episode is a chance that she may have actually been a christian even from constantine's uh birth we don't know for sure but she uh probably definitely was by this point and she goes to palestine much like people like to do today to go find um religious sites and she found it uh really overrun uh by paganism. There was what looked like Eusebius actually thinks that there was a deliberate ploy by pagans in the area to kind of cover up some of these religious sites in order to obscure them. I'm going to read you some more Lightheart here. Eusebius tells the story of the sepulcher, so the site of the tomb of Jesus, and of Constantine's decision to erect a magnificent church on the site. Eusebius' description of the church is breathless and not altogether clear, but the overall impression is unmistakable. It had the same massive size and luxurious ornamentation as the other structures Constantine built. Though the original church focused more on Golgotha than on the site of the resurrection, eusebius was obsessed with the cave and then this is eusebius he says for at the side opposite to the cave which is this is the cave where jesus his body was which by the way that they absolutely knew what cave his body was in and they still do to this day i mean you can go see it this is a pretty well documented historical fact going all the way back to the first century i can't remember what was the episode where we were talking about the um the practice. Oh, it was during the catechumen process episode. We were talking about how they would spend a lot of time outside of this cave during Lent. But at the opposite side of the cave, which is the eastern side, the church itself was erected. A noble work rising to a vast height and of great extent both in length and breadth. The interior of this structure was floored with marble slabs of various colors while the external surfaces The surface of the walls, which shone with polished stones exactly fitted together, exhibited a degree of splendor in no respect inferior to that of marble. With regard to the roof, it was covered on the outside with lead as a protection against the rains of winter. But the inner part of the roof, which was finished with sculptured panel work, extended in a series of connected compartments like a vast sea over the whole church, and being overlaid throughout with the purest gold, caused the entire building to glitter, Hmm. Hmm.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, dude, I just had to take a little trip down memory lane because I've actually been to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre back when I lived in Israel for a few months. Man, they really do say that, what is it, strength is wasted on the young. Well, I think travel opportunities are also wasted on the young because I did not give a rip about the Church of the Holy Sepulchre when I was there. I was like, oh, cool, a bunch of Catholics come here to worship Satan. satan wow fun because i was they go there to

SPEAKER_04:

worship mary oh

SPEAKER_02:

sorry yeah because i was a kg calvinist loser when i went to israel and this was the end of my tenure so i had almost come out of my cocoon and i i showed myself as a butterfly but i just i just didn't care um but i i still i remember i went there by myself it was one of the few places that i traveled alone uh because the old city was about a 20 minute bus ride from where i was living Really, the only word that comes to mind is remarkable because when you go to the old city... they essentially section it off into different little squares. I mean, they call them the quarters where there's like the Muslim quarters, the Jewish quarters, I think the Catholic quarters and the Armenian quarters, which I think are just Orthodox because there's an interesting relationship between Armenian Orthodox and the Sea of Jerusalem. But when you go there, it's literally like the three most significant sites in of three different religions. You've got the Wailing Wall, which is the surviving wall of the temple, of David's temple. And then you've got, David didn't build a freaking temple, Solomon's temple, sorry. So you've got that, which is of course a huge site. You've got the Dome of the Rock, which is this big, you know, incredible thing for the Muslims. And then you've got the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. So you go inside and it feels very rustic and historic and lots of marble, like you said. And I mean, it's an incredible place. Even just looking at some of these pictures that I took over 10 years ago I'm still like, dang, this place was sick. So yeah, love this place. Probably the best church I went to when I was in Israel.

SPEAKER_04:

I didn't realize Dome of the Rock was there at the grave of Jesus.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I'm going to make sure I didn't just talk out of my neck. Oh yeah, there we go. Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Yes, I was correct. And the Dome of the Rock is... Yeah, because it's where Muslims believe that Abraham something, something, something.

SPEAKER_01:

I thought the Dome of the Rock was on the site of the Second Temple.

SPEAKER_04:

That's what I thought.

SPEAKER_01:

You might be right. Hold on, hold on. That's why the dispensationalists want to blow it up so that they can

SPEAKER_04:

build the Third Temple. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, it was built on the site of the second Jewish temple, which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. Yes, that's right. That's right. You don't even know where you

SPEAKER_04:

went when you were in Jerusalem.

SPEAKER_02:

Here's the thing. I was really just afraid that I accidentally said that big place that's in Saudi Arabia in Mecca. I was really afraid I was going to see that instead. Again, we're not smart, and I am least of the not smarts. So carry on, Thomas. You can say that again.

SPEAKER_04:

So

SPEAKER_01:

if you remember from the last episode on Constantine, we talked about how something really big that's happening right now, theologically and in the civic space, is this movement from blood... being the main way to connect with the gods, that is going away now through the bloodless sacrifice of Christian worship. Because of Christ's perpetual atonement, there is not a need to continually sacrifice in order to communicate or appease the gods if Yahweh is the God of your life. And so what's going on here in Jerusalem is really significant. Here's another Lightheart quote. Set in Jerusalem, however, the church was more than... Do I still have you guys? Can you still hear me? Yeah, you're good. Okay. Sorry, for some reason, I can't see you anymore, but that's okay. Set in Jerusalem, however, the church was more than the center of the city... It was conceived of as the new temple, the Umbilicus Mundi. The 12 columns in the hemisphere of the apse symbolized the 12 disciples and the 12 tribes of Israel, and perhaps the columns and pillars of the Holy Sepulchre were echoes of the sacred forest of religious mythology, just as the inner atrium was in fact understood as a sacred garden or paradise. Jerusalem was, in imagination, if not in administration, the hub of Constantine's Eastern Empire, so much so that he celebrated his tricenalia in Jerusalem rather than in Constantinople. Medieval maps that show Jerusalem as the center of the world perpetuated the Constantinian vision. With the Christianization of the architecture of Jerusalem, the baptism of public space was complete. At the place where ancient sacrifices had been offered, in a building that rivaled the splendor of Solomon, Christians now gathered to offer their bloodless sacrifice of praise.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Yeah, that is cool. They're kind of like, you know, they're Christianizing not just where their paganism was, but I mean, I think there is definitely something really powerful about taking the site of Christ's crucifixion and, yeah, kind of setting it apart, kind of like... Making it sacred in a way. I mean, more sacred to say.

SPEAKER_04:

I'm really conflicted because he's using government funds to pay

SPEAKER_02:

for all this. Taxpayer money, big dog. I know,

SPEAKER_04:

dude. I just have to tell myself this was a completely different world. But then that little... Theonomist that lives in the back of my soul is like shouting. He's shouting. And he's like, what have we replaced Planned Parenthood with churches? What if? What if, Taylor? And

SPEAKER_02:

I'm

SPEAKER_04:

like, oh, what are you doing back there, little guy?

SPEAKER_02:

It makes me wonder, though, all the Christian hardcore libertarians that we know, would they be like, this taxation is theft? Is

SPEAKER_04:

it? You have to be consistent. Shouldn't you steal

SPEAKER_02:

from pagans? It's like Christian Robin Hood. You steal from the pagan and you give to the church. I'd watch that movie.

SPEAKER_01:

Ew, man. If we ever have a Christian emperor again, you guys are going to be really excited about the churches. We do have

SPEAKER_04:

a Christian emperor right now.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's the problem. Is that if we ever have a Christian emperor again, they're going to suck. Because mainstream Christianity is not good. I

SPEAKER_04:

mean, that really just goes to show, obviously the Lord works in church in countries where Christianity is completely outlawed. The Lord works in countries where it's... Right. Which hadn't happened just yet.

SPEAKER_02:

Constantine's just making the pagans kind of squirm, but it's not illegal for them to do what they do.

SPEAKER_04:

No, but he did kick them out of these places. He

SPEAKER_00:

said, this is ours now. That's probably

SPEAKER_04:

true. There was a Reddit thread that was very upset.

SPEAKER_01:

Constantine is hashtag concerning for Reddit homies. Lightheart spends a good bit of time thinking through that question in his book, and he notes at one point, he says, this might be evidence that Constantine was trying to rope Christ into service to the imperial cult, but it seems more likely that it was a confession of his subordination to the greater Lord. He had baptized public space. Paganism still had its place, but temples were increasingly overshadowed by large and numerous churches. And if you think about, like, for the emperors of this time, what their role of the gods were for them. Constantine building churches wasn't just showing religious preference as much as it was him acknowledging where he fit into the authority structure of the cosmos, which is pretty novel idea for emperors who otherwise claimed. I mean, if you remember at the time of when Jesus was born, augustus is making claims to be god i mean right right the euangelion the the gospel of caesar augustus the son of god um mark is directly conflicting that at the beginning of his his gospel so i think this is an important turn theologically for sure

SPEAKER_02:

i think that's where context

SPEAKER_04:

Go ahead, John Simon.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, thank you. Sorry, I don't know why I was so rude about that. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Again, I'm sorry. I think that's also, yeah, context I think is important too because the emperor was seen not just as a civil role, but also as a religious role. He was the god. He was the ambassador of the gods of Rome, which means that he was always going to be seen in a religious light. So all he was doing was saying, well, I actually don't affirm the gods of the Pantheon that you are associating me to, that the former emperors were associated to. I'm actually on board with this Christian God. And so it would make sense in that context, again, that a quote-unquote baptism of the public square would involve actually... changing the... religious centers to represent the actual faith of the emperor because Julian the apostate is going to do that too pretty soon where he's going to be like nah forget this we're not Christians we can still be pagan he's going to try to pull the uno reverse card and Theodosius is going to follow him and do the exact same thing so I mean yeah when you're in a state like Rome when you're the emperor of an empire it would make logical sense that you would have some influence over what public religious spaces looked like

SPEAKER_04:

dude that's why i 100 believe constantine's intentions were pure with this

SPEAKER_02:

yeah i don't i don't think he was a pragmatist

SPEAKER_04:

you have to think like you know people people are the same throughout time roughly cultures change all that but like at the end of the day we're all people and i know we're like poking fun at theonymous but like this is the same line of thought that they have Like, well, what if we were in charge? And what if we were, like, able to just say, no, we're doing Christian stuff now. We're Christian. That's what we do. And you're like, you know, that does feel pretty good. And then, you know, you get into the ramifications of that. And I think the next 1,500 years of church history proves that you really don't want to mend the two or blend the two.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, there's different ways of going about this, right? So like it's possible to acknowledge that if there is no God above the state, then the state is God without placing undue religious restrictions on everything other than Christianity, which this is one of the biggest things was eye-opening for me reading about Constantine is the religious tolerance that he exhibited was actually pretty, profound and i think that a lot of a lot of the um a lot of the way that america was structured as far as religious liberty um is actually rooted in kind of further working out of what constantine was kind of like playing with i don't know how much actual theory he had here but

SPEAKER_02:

yeah well he inherited he inherited roman political theory essentially which

SPEAKER_04:

was a religious state

SPEAKER_02:

Right, right. That's a very important thing to know. And you're talking about America. The founding of America was definitely affected by liberalism, but they were coming from very religious states also. So we're always kind of co-opting the culture that formed us. That's kind of a big part of how we see this stuff. Which is

SPEAKER_04:

why we need to have grace when interacting with people that are from different cultures than us.

SPEAKER_02:

I think the opposite is true.

SPEAKER_04:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, before you guys get into another little cat fight, let's jump into Constantinople. Again, Lightheart had such a great description of Constantinople. I'm just going to read it to you. It's a little bit of a long section, so if you guys want to jump in at any point, I'll just mark my spot and we can chop it up. Inspired by a dream, Constantine founded the city.

SPEAKER_04:

Mark your spot. I'm jumping in. Go for it. I just wanted to say that I love John Simon. Oh, nice. Very good. He just got so excited. I'm just a big fan of John Simon. He's adorable. Okay, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01:

Constantine founded the city shortly after his victory over Licinius and dedicated it on May 11, 330. Eusebius found no hint of ambiguity. In celebration of his victory over the tyrant Licinius, Constantine established the city as an explicitly and thoroughly Christian civic space, having first cleansed it of idols. Thereafter, he embellished it with numerous sacred edifices, both memorials of martyrs on the largest scale and other buildings of the most splendid kind, not only within the city itself, but in its vicinity. um i don't know if it's in this section or if i just remember reading it from somewhere but apparently he filled uh constantinople with so much art that he had pulled from other parts of the empire that other people were like at the time were writing and like dang it man like he like took all of our stuff like just like packed it all into constantinople it was literally like he was playing sim city over there in the east just like doing whatever. He had all the hacks on and he was just building whatever he wanted.

SPEAKER_04:

And he took some random town and Gaul took the one statue of Saint so-and-so they have.

SPEAKER_02:

They're like, no, no, please.

SPEAKER_04:

It's

SPEAKER_02:

all we have.

SPEAKER_01:

Let's go to

SPEAKER_04:

Constantinople.

SPEAKER_01:

You can come see it in Constantinople for$5.99.

SPEAKER_02:

If you guys had to name a town, your new favorite town in the empire after you, like Constantine did, what would you call it? I think Taylor Town's got a nice ring to it.

SPEAKER_01:

My initials are T-E-D, so I think it'd have to be Tedland. Tedland. I'm

SPEAKER_04:

going like old English, like the origins of Treadway is like Trethaway. I'm going with Trethaway. Not Taylor Town. Taylor Town sounds like there's like giant plastic dinosaurs that are faded in the sun and they're like on the edge of the freeway smiling at

SPEAKER_02:

you. Oh man, Taylor Town does sound like an exhibit at a Disneyland knockoff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Sounds like a cult commune is what it sounds like.

SPEAKER_03:

Johnstown. Oh, man. John... Johnstown. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, no. That is the cult. Yeah. Dang it, man. Oh, shoot. Okay, well. What about, like,

SPEAKER_04:

Simon's Reach?

SPEAKER_02:

Ooh. I like something possessive, like Simon's Landing.

SPEAKER_04:

Simon's Landing.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I like that. All right. All right. So Constantinople, I mean, and this was before the new Rome stuff had been started. It's so he's kind of planting the seeds for the future endeavors. Yep. He's

SPEAKER_01:

just going crazy. So back to our description by honoring the martyrs, the emperor was simultaneously consecrating the city to the martyrs. God, the emperor insisted that the city be free of idolatry. So, uh, Even though he was very tolerant to paganism and idolatry throughout the empire, there were specific spaces where he was not about it at all. And then he wrote that henceforth no statues might be worshipped there in the temples of those falsely reputed to be gods, nor any altars defiled by the pollution of blood. It's so metal.

SPEAKER_04:

Oh

SPEAKER_01:

my gosh. Above all, he prohibited sacrifices consumed by fire, as well as, quote, demon festivals... and all other, quote, other ceremonies usually observed by the superstitious, end quote. On the positive side, Constantine filled the city with Christian symbols. One might see the fountains in the midst of the marketplace graced with figures representing the good shepherd, well known to those who studied the sacred oracles, and that of Daniel also with the lions forged in brass and resplendent with plates of gold. Indeed, so large a measure of divine love possessed the emperor's soul. I think that might have been Eusebius. Eusebius was most impressed with a vast, sorry, with a, quote, vast tablet displayed in the center of its gold-covered paneled ceiling in the palace, end quote, where Constantine ordered, quote, the symbol of our savior's passion to be fixed, composed of a variety of precious stones richly enwrought with gold. For Eusebius, this symbol he seemed to have intended to be, as it were, the safeguard of the empire itself. I'll pause there for a minute. That

SPEAKER_04:

sounds so good. You just got to think, though, you got to think everything that sounds so good. He's like, I'm going to just be a little rude here. Like, for every one of these things that he's doing, there's, like, Thomas is wondering what I'm about to say. There's, like, an equivalent of, like, a blue-haired, septum-pierced, like, screecher, like, angry about it. Like, I can't believe you're taking away my pagan festivals. And then, like, the nice family is, like, walking in behind as they're being dragged away by the police to, like, enjoy their now Christian space is effectively what's happening.

SPEAKER_01:

Taylor's really upset for blue-haired screechers 2,000 years ago for some reason.

SPEAKER_04:

I'm not upset for them. I'm conflicted because this sounds great. But I don't think it's a good idea.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, maybe it's a good reminder that a blue-haired creature is still a human being made in the image of God. I know. And they can have some lousy views and still have a lot of value. And maybe they weren't blue-haired creatures. Maybe they were just Jewish people, pagans, heretics, all types of people who wouldn't fit in Orthodox Christianity, but who maybe didn't need to be... forcibly relocated. I don't know! There's a little question mark to throw out

SPEAKER_01:

there. Maybe they were sacrificing animals to demons and having sex magic in temples and Constantine was like, how about no?

SPEAKER_02:

Extremes exist, so do moderates.

SPEAKER_04:

It's really important that we make the connection here that the equivalent of this is the government walking into Planned Parenthood and saying, well, we're not going to do this no more. and saying, kick all the doctors out, maybe even put them in jail, and we're going to build ourselves a nice little Christian park here with a nice little crucifix.

SPEAKER_01:

So this takes an interesting turn because he was still building a Roman city and there was not, it wasn't like it was, I don't know, we see some cracks here. So let's listen to this. From what we can tell at this distance, Constantinople's break with the pagan past was not so self-evident. Constantine included no Colosseum, but built a hippodrome for racing that mimicked the Circus Maximus at Rome.

SPEAKER_04:

Did they race hippopotamuses?

SPEAKER_01:

Dude, that would be epic. Terrible. Notable churches dotted the city, including the first form of the Church of Holy Wisdom and the Church of the Apostles, where for a time the emperor was buried. Christian imagery was evident throughout. Yet, he also treated the city as a project continuous with the Roman past. As a celebration of his victory over the tyrant, Constantinople was the city of Rome's victory, not merely of Constantine's personal triumph. Further, he erected a statue to Tisci, the goddess of good fortune. And at the top of a... I don't know how to say that column. It still stands in the center of the old square of Constantinople. He placed a golden statue of Apollo looking toward the rising sun, whose face was remade into the face of Constantine with an inscription that, quote, intended to signify that instead of being a sun god, Constantine gave his allegiance to God who made the sun, end quote. And then here you go. He moved so much existing art into his new city that Jerome said, complained that all the cities of the east have been stripped bare oh poor jerome

SPEAKER_04:

jerome's hometown's got nothing pretty to look at okay so thomas you're saying that he like did all these extreme things and then still was like well let me give you a few pagan things to look at like he's okay i'm not a monster yeah i don't know if you're gonna do something have some tishy If you're going to do it, do it all the way, Constantine.

SPEAKER_02:

He also, I mean, he repurposed an Apollo statue to look like him. That's amazing. And I mean, that's just, I don't know. Here's the thing. I didn't think of a

SPEAKER_04:

certain president that would do that.

SPEAKER_01:

Can you imagine if the Apollo statue had been taken from your town and then you go to... Constantinople and you're like looking closely and you've got like your little primitive binoculars and you're like

SPEAKER_03:

that's his face he put his face on it

SPEAKER_02:

I would love it even more if it wasn't even well done if it was just like a sheet of paper that had like some scribbly eyebrows scribbled over it that's like what that's not Apollo that's not my Apollo yeah I mean like I said all of this makes sense It makes sense within the context of an empire where there was no line between religious expression and government. I don't know if we can quite learn things for that and necessarily apply them to today. Because, I mean, we don't... Like, there's no Christian parks that we have. Like, they're just parks. A park is a park.

UNKNOWN:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, here's the deceiving thing. It sounds nice to have a Christian park. It sounds nice to have Christian things. But then what happens is the second when you have a state church and they get something wrong, the second you say, well, me and my church and our elders believe something else, like you're now labeled as the enemy, even just

SPEAKER_02:

treason.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, you're trying to follow the scriptures in good conscience. That's why all of this doesn't work. Even if it sounds nice to have the Christian park. So no, you just, you have religious freedom and then you have a nice park. I, I feel like, I feel like I'm like convincing myself. I'm like reminding myself of what I believe. I feel like that's what's happening.

SPEAKER_01:

Cause it sounds so nice. Yeah. I mean, uh, I don't think, I mean, yeah, I'm going to argue with you a little bit. I think it's possible to have sacred space. When we're talking about the conversion of Ireland and Irish Christianity, we really love talking about how there's so much sacred space there that also was public space. It wasn't just like they had private land that they were making into... sacred space so I don't I feel like we have a an unfair rubric that we pass these things through where we really want to like if somebody has a lot of power in their enacting these things then we it seems like at least maybe the American tendency is to want to like shirk away from it But if they happen organically, then it's really cool. And I think my position is just that, hey, man, anytime we have space that is dedicated to glorifying God, I'm not mad about it.

SPEAKER_02:

But who has the power to designate what space is sacred or not?

SPEAKER_01:

If you're the emperor, you can do it. I mean, we're talking about the Roman Empire here, not America.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. But yeah, no, I mean, I know that in Constantine's case, that makes sense. But I mean, I mean, we don't I don't know if there's a lot of historical record of this, but if Constantine built a church and the church didn't like. Right. Right. I just think the dangling in the balance of orthodoxy is such a hard thing. And the scriptures give us a way to hold the church accountable for orthodoxy, but not the state for orthodoxy, the state for justice and for righteousness. But orthodoxy, I don't know if we see that in the same way.

SPEAKER_04:

I'm going to read a quote from Roger Williams, who is a big advocate for separation of church and state. This is in the Bloody Tenet of Persecution, 1644. God needeth not the help of a material sword of steel to assist the sword of the spirit in the affairs of conscience.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm not even

SPEAKER_02:

sure I can jump on board with that one, big dog. The government is a sword. That's the one thing it's called in the Bible. To

SPEAKER_04:

assist the spirit in the affairs of the conscience.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. You just pulled me right back into the middle here.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm not sure if that's fully relevant to Constantine's project.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

He's definitely using the sword, the power, I don't think he really did, though, to that extent. I mean, he allowed paganism to exist, but he did create specific space where he said, this is Christian land.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Yes. You just contradicted yourself,

SPEAKER_02:

Big Doc. How do you remove somebody from a land? I didn't say... I just said only Christians can live here. And if you happen to live here currently... You know what, Thomas, though?

SPEAKER_04:

Thomas, I appreciate you having a side. How's the fence post feel on your butt, John Simon?

SPEAKER_02:

It's great. The spirit is making it more and more comfortable every day, brother. Very

SPEAKER_01:

convenient. Let's... Let's bring it down to a very relevant local issue. I'm just curious where you guys would land on this. Sure. Although I think I know how you're going to answer. So let's say you've got a small town in Iowa that has a town council that is 100% populated by evangelical Christians. Can they be Southern Baptists? Sure. They're Southern Baptist. And then you got the one random RCA guy, gal, RCA gal. There we go. Pastor Christine.

SPEAKER_02:

Something didn't sound right. Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Now I'm on board. And Pastor Christine, while being pro-women's ordination, is very anti-Satanists doing a Satanic worship service in the town park. And the representative government of this little town in Iowa makes a unanimous decision to not allow Satan worship in the town square in little town Iowa.

UNKNOWN:

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04:

What's your

SPEAKER_02:

question? I mean, isn't, isn't that an opposition to the, to the bill of rights, freedom of religion? Um,

SPEAKER_01:

I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. I mean, I, I would, I would say, you know, I, I think that as Christians, they have, uh, they're obligated to their Christian conscience, but as city council members, they have an obligation to the limits and boundaries set by their role and, And if what they ordain is something that opposes the basic principles of American liberties, then yeah, they, they, they probably should be restricted. Cause I think when you say that, I think of the opposite scenario in, uh, wherever Taylor's living, where a bunch of Satanist city council members are going to say that Christians can't hold a worship service on a Saturday night where some big megachurch has rented out a public park to have a worship night for the whole city. If they restrict that... then I'd say boo on both of them. Sean

SPEAKER_04:

Fwaik is going to have his lawyer sue the pants off of him. Okay, I got a good answer. I got a good answer. First off, I'm going to assume that in this home we don't call the cops. It's one of those situations, so I don't care what the Bill of Rights says. So that's my assumption that I'm operating from. If I was on that city council and a couple edgy Satanists came up and were like, we're going to have a worship service, and we're going to worship Satan, and everyone's going to be offended by it, I would say, okay, look, whatever they do is going to be dumb, and it's going to have no power, because we're going to take all our little churches, and Pastor Christine, I want you to bring your church, and we're all going to go and sit outside the park and pray against everything that's happening, and all seven people that go to their cringy little worship service are allowed to do it, and they're going to feel real silly. And we're going to show love and be kind, but we're going to let it happen. Because if you outlaw something, you're making it bigger. It's

SPEAKER_02:

martyrs. You're making martyrs. You're

SPEAKER_04:

making martyrs out of them and giving them talking points. So the people that don't like your church because, you know, whatever happened, they're going to see, oh, well, Satan church is sticking it to them. I like that. I don't know. That's

SPEAKER_01:

my practical off-the-cuff thought. I think that's a good answer.

SPEAKER_04:

If you're going to say no, then you have to allow no worship in a public space. Why? Because, once again, it all comes back down to the second the state takes a position and says, this is what the Bible says. Local congregations are now no longer allowed to discern the truth for themselves.

SPEAKER_01:

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.

SPEAKER_04:

Oh my gosh. We don't have time to get into that. We should have a special Trump debate. Not a Trump debate. We don't do that.

SPEAKER_01:

Trump

SPEAKER_04:

debate. Have a Trump debate. There

SPEAKER_01:

might be some Venn diagrams. I don't

SPEAKER_04:

know. Guess what side old Don is on for you, Tommy.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. He's not a Christian, but he'd love to be the Pope.

SPEAKER_04:

Tommy's the greatest. We love Tommy.

SPEAKER_01:

We should have AI Trump talk about us and put it on the Instagram.

SPEAKER_04:

Oh, that's actually a really good idea. I

SPEAKER_02:

think it's a good question you're asking, Tom, because it's essentially saying, do we as Christians esteem Christianity with the same weight that we do other religions? And I think that's a valuable question to ask. I do think that... there are a long slew of historical evidences that have shown that when christianity is shown universal prevalence it's not often orthodoxy that thrives or even it's not even like good Christian ideals that happen. I mean, there were some dark times throughout Europe and medieval history that were not good for a lot of people, whether they were vulnerable, foreigners, exiles, all kinds of things. So I don't know. I mean, like, does the thought experiments of a good Christian emperor sound appealing? Yes. Do I think that will even come close to happening short of literal King Jesus? No.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I don't think you have to argue for, and I'm not arguing for Christian emperor here. What I am trying to point out is that if we're going to take our modern, we're going to try to put our modern lens on Constantine, then we should at least examine our modern lens. And we should do an episode sometime about how church history in America is affected by freedom of religion, separation of church and state, because I'm curious where, Taylor, in particular, you and I may have a different perception of things, because I am absolutely convinced that what our founders meant by freedom of religion was freedom to be Anglican or Roman Catholic or Lutheran or whatever, and they absolutely did not have Satanism and Islam in mind. Now, obviously, that is absolutely not where our court system... has gone since then but i i'm pretty convinced okay

SPEAKER_04:

well now you have christians that say the pope is the antichrist so that is the church there's christians that say the pope is the church of satan so look man as we land the plane i just want you to know when jesus returns for his millennial reign which i know you believe in 100 nope

SPEAKER_02:

Are we all three flavors of eschatology right here? I'm assuming you're pre, and I'm assuming Tommy's backslid into post. Yeah, see, this is eschatology matters. This is why John Simon's just

SPEAKER_04:

a fence sitter, because he's an oboleal.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm literally not. I just don't agree with either of your garbage takes. Unfortunately, the truth is somewhere in the middle, bro. Thomas

SPEAKER_04:

thinks that through the state... The church will usher the world into it. We don't have time. I reject that. I

SPEAKER_02:

just believe, I just believe that. I don't know. Maybe, maybe Christ will have a role in this story of redemption. That's, that's my only thought.

SPEAKER_04:

When he comes back and read,

SPEAKER_01:

we're going to have a couple of talks to reach, get to just say whatever we want. So Taylor can do one about how separation of church and state. Jesus is going to come back and go, wow, I'm so glad that's how you did it. I'll do one on ecclesiocentrism and how it's the, how it's the future and how it's not the enemy. It's you guys got to

SPEAKER_02:

stop making up new theological terms, bro. That's really, it's, it's, it's grading on me, man. It's got a, there's enough,

SPEAKER_01:

there's enough terminology out here. I think, uh, I think our listeners are going to love this, this heavy banter that we had at the end. No. And listen, Hey,

SPEAKER_04:

if you're listening, make sure you check out Friday. We're having a bonus episode drop of Chuck. Chomp

SPEAKER_02:

Talk. They'll get a notification. They'll find out. Chomp

SPEAKER_04:

Talk 2 is going to drop. And it's Taylor's. I love that guy. It's his Ethiopia stories. What's

SPEAKER_02:

your name again? Taylor Terabyte?

SPEAKER_04:

Yes. Beep boop.

SPEAKER_02:

Beep boop. All right. Let's wrap it up. You guys good?

SPEAKER_04:

Yes, sir. Walmart.

SPEAKER_02:

Love you guys. Bye.

UNKNOWN:

so so

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