Who Are the REAL Christians?  ## Metadata - Author: [[Data Over Dogma]] - Full Title: Who Are the REAL Christians? - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/386d5fd8-3c70-46a7-b781-b499b0c3fc09 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Sweaty Walk And Slippery Shoes** - Dan McClellan shares a light personal moment about sweaty shoes while walking and needing better socks. - The casual anecdote sets a conversational tone before deeper topics. Transcript: Dan Beecher Issues. Dan McClellan Yeah, it's going to be a juicy day. I went for a walk earlier today, and my shoes were pretty juicy by the time I was done. I've got really comfortable shoes that I like to walk around in, but if my feet sweat, I'm just slipping and sliding all over the place in those shoes, and I hate it. But that's neither here nor there. I do need better socks. Touche. Yeah, indeed. Dan Beecher All right. Well, what we're going to be doing, we have two segments ([Time 0:02:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9627ddc5-1db1-4ba0-b56c-bcac47b40f41)) - **Modern Political Identity Is Contingent** - Political issues like abortion became central to modern evangelical identity for contingent historical reasons. - Dan McClellan argues these markers were deliberately adopted to build political power, not derived from Jesus' direct teachings. Transcript: Dan Beecher The first segment is a taking issue. And what we're going to be taking issue with is what counts as a Christian? What are the markers of a Christian? Yes, and who gets to decide, too? Spoiler alert, it's me. I get to figure it out. So you'll have to come to me to know for sure if you're actually a Christian. And then the second half of our show will be a what's that. And the what's that that we're talking about are the sons of God? Dan McClellan B'nai Elohim. Dan Beecher Yes, the sons of God. The sons. That's a plural thing. Yes. We're not talking about just the son of God. Nine. So that'll be interesting. That'll be fun to dive into but first uh let's take issue and this week we're taking issue with uh with christians we're taking issue with you christians yeah we're gonna go off the beaten Dan McClellan Path this week and uh and we're gonna blaze a new trail through the tangled undergrowth of contemporary Christian identity politics. We had a wonderful discussion with my friend David Congdon a while ago on Who is a Christian, his book that he published. I thought that was a fascinating discussion. But this was catalyzed by a recent discussion that was had on the Joe Rogan podcast when Texas state representative. Dan Beecher And Opie Taylor lookalike. Dan McClellan Representative Tallarico. I believe James is his first name, right? James Tallarico. James Tallarico, who, if I understand is hiding out somewhere right now i don't know if he's uh right if uh the uh sheriff and his posse have uh have caught up someone check mayberry because He's probably there down by the fishing hole yeah check the fishing hole he's got a cane pole on him i know it um and and by the way oh man that brings back memories Cane pole, poppers. I don't even want to get into it. I cannot get sidetracked. I don't know all of your drugs talk, weirdo. No, this is growing up on a farm in West Virginia. But that is also neither here nor there. Nothing is here or there for this discussion. And he made an interesting point when he was talking to Brother Rogan. He was talking about, Rogan asked him about a biblical case for legalized abortion. But there was one part where James made the case that he said, I get suspicious when people say certain issues need to be at the center of our identity as Christians. Right. Dan Beecher When Jesus never said anything about them. He's specifically referring to the fact that the political right and the sort of the Christian right of the United States have coalesced very strongly around the subjects of abortion And the rights of LGBTQ people. Yes. As the identity markers that make you Christian. Dan McClellan Yeah. And one of the things he concluded with was he said, I just don't think it's fair that to be a Christian, or when people understand that you're a Christian, they automatically assume That you're against abortion and against gay folks. And he says, because there are lots of Christians who do not subscribe to those particular policy positions. He's one of them, specifically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there are many of them. And I thought he made a pretty good appeal and also pointed out, he said, you know, my Christian brothers and sisters, they will have their passages to which they point in defense of their Opposition to these things. And we can have that debate and we should be able to have that debate. And he said, this is different from my concern, which is the notion that you have to oppose abortion and homosexuality if you're a Christian. ([Time 0:02:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f0e7f08d-e38a-4bd1-8c6b-c2cf609d92d2)) - **Religious Labels Have Fuzzy Boundaries** - Religious categories function like prototype-based concepts with fuzzy boundaries. - Dan McClellan says definitions harden only when people want to exclude undesirable members. Transcript: Dan McClellan And the reality is that when we form conceptual categories, and religious identity is 100% conceptual categories, we actually focus on prototypes. We focus on the center of the category, and membership radiates out towards non-existent, initially, or fuzzy boundaries, membership is debated. And there's a lot of examples that linguists will use to talk about this. If you had a hundred different pieces of dining in a row going from a cup to a bowl and just kind of incrementally changing a tiny bit between the two ends of that, where do you say this is No longer a cup, this is now a bowl? It's entirely arbitrary. And so that's absolutely the case with something like religious identity. There's no inherent essence to being Christian. There's no inherent boundaries to what makes a Christian. And so when people try to define it overwhelmingly in order to exclude, because those fuzzy boundaries, they really only harden up when you need to exclude something. When you run into an argument about whether or not this is a member of the category and it's an undesirable member. That's when you tend to come up with boundaries. And there are so many different ways that that plays out in how we use our categories today. Like I have a paper that's going to be coming out in a volume on monotheism. Hopefully next year I'm editing the volume and I'm very slow, but the other editors will do a better job than me. But one of the things I point to is the, you'll recall every now and then the argument flares up about whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich. And this is kind of a rather silly example of how attempts to define things cause problems. Yes. When it's like, well, when you look at the definition of a sandwich, a hot dog qualifies. And it's like, well, these are conceptual categories. Definitions are arbitrary. They're imposed upon the category. They don't actually have anything to do with how categories function in real life. ([Time 0:16:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6b74b6f5-a971-4e55-a6aa-5b0724f45731)) - **Reject Universal Gatekeepers** - Don't let any individual or group claim universal authority to decide who is a Christian. - Treat self-identification and local ecclesiastical membership as the real markers of belonging. Transcript: Dan McClellan Really, it comes down to consensus and ecclesiastical hierarchy. If there's a group out there where you actually have to have a membership card, or you have to have the tattoo, or you have to have some kind of indication that you are an official member Of that group, that's the only time somebody can say, you're not a member of our particular group. Dan Beecher But there is no such group. Every individual Christian church can say that. Dan McClellan Yeah. And there's no group that has authority over all Christians. That just doesn't exist. So there's no person or combination of people who has any authority at all over anyone's ability to identify just as a Christian. And anybody who pretends to arrogate that authority to themselves is just playing identity politics. ([Time 0:30:59](https://share.snipd.com/snip/59600e08-44fe-451d-95fb-8ba271a09733)) - **Religion Is More Than Doctrinal Claims** - Protestantism narrowed religion into competing truth claims, but religion is broader than beliefs. - Dan Beecher emphasizes community, ritual, and meaning-making are core to religious identity beyond creeds. Transcript: Dan McClellan And I think one of the things that Protestantism did was it reduced Christianity, at least, but religion, really, because our conceptualization of religion is a thoroughly Protestant Conceptualization, but reduced it all down to a set of truth claims. Right. So now people think of religious identity and religion as just a set of truth claims, but it's never been that. It's never been reducible to that. It's community. It's ritual. It's behaviors. It's meaning-making. It's behaviors. It is death anxiety curating. It's all of these things all wrapped into one, and there are an awful lot of people who enjoy everything about it, but maybe not so much the truth claims. That doesn't make them any less Christian or Jewish or Muslim or atheist. ([Time 0:34:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0eb62e5a-ef7f-406f-8456-0fa76a42d8a7)) - **Prioritize Ethical Marks Over Labels** - Evaluate Christian identity by ethical practice, not just doctrinal correctness. - Romans 12 lists marks like genuine love, hospitality, and contributing to needs as central indicators. Transcript: Dan Beecher What makes a Christian? You'll get a lot of different answers. But one of the things that I never, like you'll, you know, you'll get people that say you have to personally accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, or the, you know, the Bible is the final Authority on whatever, blah, blah, blah. And what I've never hear is the one section of Romans, I think it's Romans 12. Romans 12. Where Paul is talking about, is this actually Paul? I never remember which one. Dan McClellan Oh, yeah, yeah. Romans is one of the genuine Pauline epistles. Dan Beecher Okay, so Paul is talking about, well, the section, Romans 12, verse 9 through the end of the chapter, the section in multiple translations is marked, marks of the true Christian. Yes. And you know what it doesn't say? Any of the things that I hear people say when they're asked what a true Christian. Dan McClellan Well, yeah, there's nothing about belief in here. There's certainly nothing about whether you are diaphysite or monophysite or miaphysite or whatever. I don't know what those words mean at all. I don't know what any of those things were. Those are, remember we talked about saying the same thing but using different language These are some of the debates that raged in the third and fourth and fifth and sixth centuries About when you're whittling down your conceptualization of Jesus, it came down to, well, how do you understand the distinction between Jesus's divine and human natures? Because that's just, we are at an impasse. We can go no further until we settle this, and you are all now ejected from our kingdom if you cannot say the right word. But yeah, there's nothing about belief in there. Dan Beecher It says, let love be genuine, hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good, love one another with mutual affection, outdo one another in showing honor. You know, it's real nice. Dan McClellan Here's one verse that I think a lot of people would do well to take note of. Contribute to the needs of the saints. Purs hospitality to strangers so the for the folks who are like hey i'm sorry we gotta you know snatch jesus from the parking lot of the home depot that he's working at and send him off to A gulag and leave his kids in the car that is running right because of romans 13 1 it's like but you just entirely ignored Romans 12.13, which is quite a bit more central to defining Christianity If we take Paul's word for it. Right. ([Time 0:35:32](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6f8ff50e-cfec-4379-a8f9-f6f8c372cd2c)) - **Genesis 6 Is Ambiguous About Nephilim** - Genesis 6 mentions 'sons of God' and Nephilim but doesn't clearly state parentage or relationships. - Dan McClellan notes the text's ambiguity permits multiple ancient interpretations rather than a single straightforward meaning. Transcript: Dan Beecher Yes. Our jumping off point, our springboard, so to speak. Our springboard, if you will. And we'll just start with, because Genesis 6 opens up with people multiplying. We're in the early days of humanity in this. Yes, we're about to segue into the flood. Right, right. Dan McClellan Yeah, the multiplying of people is about to get yeah it's not subtle it's a quick it's a quick pivot yeah um so it says when people began to multiply on the face of the ground and and it literally Says that alpene hadamah uh the face of the ground. The sons of God, the b'nei Elohim. Oh, it says daughters were born to them. And then it says the sons of God. Daughters were born to the people. To the people who were multiplying like rabbits on the face of the ground. The sons of God saw that they were fair and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. So the b'nai Ha'elohim or B'nai Elohim, if you're nasty, that is what we're talking about here. But Genesis 6-3 says, then Adonai, the Lord said, My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh. Their days shall be 120 years. Dan Beecher Which is a weird, weird thing to say in chapters before Noah. Dan McClellan Because it did not turn out to be 120 years. Dan Beecher Yeah, he theoretically lived way longer than that. Dan McClellan As did all the patriarchs, except for one. I forget which one it was. It might be like Isaac or something, I forget. But somebody was like, oh, darn it. They didn't get to live as long. And then we get to verse 4, which is the peculiar verse. The Nephilim, or Nephilim, if you're nasty. If you're wrong. If you're wrong. People tag me on videos where people are like, I'm going to drop some knowledge on you'all about the nephilium. It's like, is this a battery that you—they were on the earth in those days and also afterward. When the sons of God went into the daughters of humans who bore children to them, these were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown. And so here's a peculiar thing about this passage, which I think is unclear, both in the English and in the Hebrew. It does not say that the Nephilim were the offspring of the union of the sons of God and I think Benod Hadam, the daughters of humanity. It just says they were there. It. It's like this was when those weirdos were around. And so it does not necessarily say that. It gets interpreted that way by an awful lot of folks. But it's not clear to me that this text is stating that the Nephilim were the offspring of the sons of God and the daughters of humans. That is how 1 Enoch takes it. Oh, okay. So that is the traditional reading. I don't think it's necessarily there. Dan Beecher But there may have been a cultural understanding of who these people were that isn't present in this text. Dan McClellan Right. And we may have a little hat tip in the direction of a similar cultural understanding, because it says the Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterwards. ([Time 0:38:51](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d5b3435f-27d8-42d6-8121-5926d029575e)) - **Nephilim As 'Fallen Ones,' Not Just Giants** - 'Nephilim' likely means 'fallen ones,' not literal giants; later translations like the Septuagint render them as gigantes. - The textual oddity of 'there and also afterward' fuels scholarly questions about editorial layers and flood chronology. Transcript: Dan McClellan And I mentioned to Dan earlier, you know things are about to get wild when they say, open up the book of Numbers. So Numbers 13, verse 33, the word Nephilim occurs twice there. And this is part of the, what do they call it? The wicked report? Dan Beecher The bad report? If that's not the title of someone's TikTok channel, the wicked report. Dan McClellan Somebody's missing out. So that is when the spies are sent into the land and they come back and they're like, oh, yeah, it sucks. It all sucks. We shouldn't go in there. We should go back to Egypt. But one of the things they say is that they saw the Nephilim and we were like grasshoppers to them. And this is, I think, where we get the idea that Nephilim means giants, because the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, renders gigantes. Or I think I might be slurring my Spanish and my English together. It's probably not gigantes. When they, in those days, no, that was right. Gigantes. Okay. So, um, they, uh, they render, they translate Nephilim as giants and Nephilim does not mean giants. Uh, the, our best, best bet is that it means fallen ones and probably is a reference to, kind of post-mortem fallen warrior race or class or something like that. Dan Beecher They're zombies? Something like that. Yeah. Dan McClellan I like it. They're zombies. Yeah. And so they get translated as giants. And I think probably because of the other story where the spies come back and they're like, ooh, we were like little grasshoppers to them, which is probably hyperbole. Right. They probably weren't like literally they're 300 feet tall. We average 5'4", they were at least 10 1⁄2 feet tall. I don't know that that verse ought to be taken so literally. And they link them with the, what was it? The Anakites. Yeah. Yeah. Dan Beecher This season, the game begins before the games begin. On August 26th, it's FanDuel Futures Day. 24 hours of deals on all your football season predictions. Futures Day is coming. Visit the FanDuel app to learn more and get your picks ready now. FanDuel, play your game. 21 plus and present in Iowa. Gambling problem? Call 1-800 Right now at the Home Depot, you'll find storage solutions made to fit your needs. Grab an HDX Tough Tote to protect your tools. Or keep your sports equipment contained with reinforced Snap-Fit lids. Or stack up and make better use of your space with bins and totes built to last. Whatever your story, we've got the gear to keep it organized and protected at The Home Depot. How doers get more done. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. When you visit the doctor, you probably hand over your insurance, your ID, and contact details. It's just one of the many places that has your personal info. And if any of them accidentally expose it, you could be at risk for identity theft. LifeLock monitors millions of data points a second. If you become a victim, they'll fix it. Guaranteed. Or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year at LifeLock.com/podcast. Terms apply. The other interesting problem here is that this is theoretically post-Diluvian. We're after the flood in this moment. Yeah. So presumably the Nephilim either were drowned. So how could the Anakites come from them, or they had snorkels. Yeah, they drowned in the flood. Dan McClellan They're so giant that their heads were above water the whole time, and they just waited it out. I always want to point out, be like, yeah, they drowned in the flood. Trailing off, i'm thinking of frank drebin uh when he's like got the evidence that so and so was involved in all these crimes and he's like and where is this evidence and it's well it burned In the fire um so so yeah they uh but but that's what verse four is uh like parenthetically they're like oh and they were there afterwards, too. Yeah. We're not going to tell you how, because according to the flood tradition, everything that drew breath, everything that had the breath of life in it was snuffed out, was destroyed. So they should not have survived. And this is one of the clues that combines with a number of other clues to convince, I think, most critical scholars that the flood tradition is a secondary insertion into the primeval History. How dare you? How dare you, sir? Dare, dare. That's another, not too deep a cut, but dare I say, dare, dare. That is, that's Blazing Saddles, excuse me. But yeah, that's, this is probably why the Nephilim were there before and after, because there was no flood. ([Time 0:42:42](https://share.snipd.com/snip/881b4b19-7788-4635-bc12-9e2782841ddf)) - **Enoch Recasts Sons Of God As Angels** - The Enochic tradition reinterprets the B'nai Elohim as rebellious angels who descend, mate with humans, and produce giants. - This later mythologizing shaped early Jewish and Christian discussions about angels and demons. Transcript: Dan McClellan That's one of the reasons, I think, that you have later elaboration on it by other texts, and the main one being First Enoch, which kind of takes this text in the Greco-Roman period, the Hellenistic period, and runs with it. And one of the first things that they do is they reinterpret the B'nai Elohim as angels. Okay. And this is part of the post-exilic kind of squishing down of the divine council, which occurred alongside the elevation, the exaltation of Adonai, the God of Israel. Basically, they're trying to distinguish and separate these two groups of deities, Adonai in one group, and then everybody else on another group, and they get shoved down into angelic Status. And so these are now angels, and they're given a bunch of names in Enoch, and you have the head malevolent angel and all this. And so a bunch of angels rebel and descend to Mount Hermon on earth, and then they have sex with all these human women, the offspring are the giants. And then the giants give birth to the Nephilim and then the Nephilim die and their spirits rise up and become the disembodied demons that inhabit the earth and possess people. Dan Beecher Wow. Okay. ([Time 0:55:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ccd61a14-1db2-439c-8a75-80cf548d971b)) - **Two Ancient Readings Of 'Sons Of God'** - Ancient debate split between literal angelic intercourse and human-line (Sethite) readings of Genesis 6. - Dan Beecher and Dan McClellan show both views coexisted to avoid theological problems about angelic agency and sex. Transcript: Dan McClellan Because they're like, wait a minute, so the angels had sex with humans? Yeah. And they were rebelling against God. Right. And you had a bunch of different people on different sides of this going, wait a minute, angels can't rebel. They don't have their own agency. They can't do that. And then there were other people saying they're not sexually compatible. They're not made of flesh and bone. Never mind. So to speak. Yes. As it were. As it were. Um, in the parlance of our time. And so, and, uh, and so you had a bunch of different ideas developing about the sexual compatibility of angels. And so there are, and, and you see actually different, uh, positions in the New Testament because you have the idea that, uh reflected in one of the epistles, I think, Peter, that these Angels—no, it's Jude. We talked about this. The angels kept not their first estate, and they came down and did the naughty. And then it talks about Sodom and Gomorrah in like manner, pursued other flesh. And so this is condemning the angels who are trying to have sex with women as this perverse abomination, just like the men of Sodom who tried to have sex with angels. We're crossing boundaries here that ought not be crossed. And there's a wonderful paper from, oh gosh, now 40, 53 years ago, written by Philip Alexander called Targumim and the Early Exegesis of Sons of God. But he talks about a lot of early Jewish debates about this. For instance, some of the folks said that the Testament of Reuben says that there was no actual intercourse between the angels and the women. The angels changed themselves into the shape of men and appeared to the women when they were with their husbands. Oh. So, yeah, they were basically just leering at them in the shape of male humans. And what does it say? Oh, and the women lusting in their minds after their forms. So the women are with their husbands in the biblical sense. And suddenly an angel decides to take the form of a human male. And the ladies are like, hey now. And this resulted in them giving birth to giants. For the watchers appeared to them as reaching even unto heaven. Wow. Now I'm thinking of Isaiah 6 and what exactly it was that filled the temple. Right, right. I know the reference, yeah. And now we're getting into the sympathetic magic with Jacob and the sticks in front of the sheep. They saw these well-endowed, in who knows how many ways, angels while they were doing the hibbity-dibbity with their husbands, and so they conceived giants, evidently. And then you have others. Let's see. Another text that said, Rabbi Joshua ben Karcha said, the angels are flaming fire. As it is said, his servants are flaming fire. Psalm 104.4. The fire had intercourse with flesh and blood, yet did not burn the body. But when they fell from heaven, from their holy place, their strength and stature became like that of the sons of men, and their frame was made of clods of dust. As it is said, my flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust. Job 7.5. And so says, The implication is that real intercourse took place, made possible because the angels assumed material bodies of evidently fire and dirt. Dan Beecher I mean, it's like in Superman 2 and Superman goes into the chamber and reverses the thing. And then he's suddenly not Superman anymore. Dan McClellan And then he tricks him. And so the one guy goes, huh! Yeah. Whoa, spoiler alerts, man. Hey, if you have not seen Superman 2 yet, I'm not going to ruin Superman 4. What's the guy's name? Nuclear Man or something like that? Oh, my goodness. Well, listen, when you get a hair from Superman, what are you going to do with it? Yeah. Um, so, so basically there was just, there was a lot of controversy about sexy angels. Yeah. Um, stupid, sexy angels. They stop being so hot. And so this is what's going on. We we've talked about Jude. That was one of the things that was going on. However, the folks who were like, wait a minute, angels can't rebel. Wait a minute, angels can't have sexual intercourse with human women. Another interpretation popped up. ([Time 0:57:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c5d1af8c-dce7-4b29-8890-2bdf9954abdf))