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Teaser

[00:00:00] John Dickson: When we read of the bad behavior of our leaders, we should take it first as a warning to ourselves, ’cause we’re made of the same stuff, right? We’re just as prone to the same evils. Now, this is not to excuse bad behavior, but it’s to say we need to see it in ourselves and adopt a more humble posture.

—

Reading from The Criminal History of Christianity by Karheinz Deschner

“I am therefore concerned with a history of the forms of action and behavior of Christianity beyond all institutional and confessional barriers. I’m writing the history of the undeviating intertwining of so-called temporal and spiritual politics, including the secularized consequences of this religion: criminality in foreign policy; in agricultural, trade, and financial policy; in educational policy; in culture; in censorship; in the continued spread of ignorance and superstition; in the unscrupulous exploitation of sexual morality, of marriage law, of criminal law.

I am writing the history of clerical criminality in private enrichment, in the haggling for office, in pious fraud, in the cult of miracles and relics, in the most diverse types of forgery, et cetera, et cetera. In short, I am writing a history of crime in the entire breadth of state, church, and social life in Christendom.”

Kaley Payne (Studio)

[00:01:33] Kaley Payne: Well, that’s a quote from Karlheinz Deschner, a German author whose life work was an enormous 10-volume account called The Criminal History of Christianity. He wrote it over almost 20 years before his death in 2014. It’s really hard to find an English translation of it, actually. It was published in its original German, and there are abridged English versions.

But Deschner was a harsh critic of Christianity, and he aimed to write a kind of church history read differently, as a history of crimes committed with the approval or applause of the Church. What we’re to make of these types of accounts is one of our questions for this, our 17th Q&A episode. I’m producer Kaley, and with the help of director Mark, we’ll be taking you through today’s episode while we save John’s voice to actually answer your questions.

I’m not John Dickson, but this is Undeceptions.

Each episode we explore some aspect of life, faith, history, science, culture or ethics

[00:02:41] Mark Hadley: that’s either much misunderstood or mostly forgotten with the help of people who know what they’re talking about

[00:02:47] Kaley Payne: and for this episode, that’s John. We’re trying to undeceive ourselves and let the truth out.

—

Kaley Payne (Studio)

One of our listeners, John from Switzerland, recently read a bit of Deschner in the original German and sent us this question. Director Mark’s going to read it for us.

QUESTION 1

[00:03:32] Mark Hadley: I recently listened to your episode about Gregory the Great, which I found truly inspiring. Gregory seems to have combined leadership with humility.

His letters show the qualities of a wise and capable leader, yet they also reveal how deeply he carried many burdens. After listening, I came across a German 10-volume work titled The Criminal History of Christianity, don’t know whether there is an English translation, by Karlheinz Deschner. Essentially, Deschner collects everything negative that figures like Augustine and Gregory the Great ever did and leaves out all the good, ending up with a very grim picture of Christianity as a whole.

He takes this approach throughout the entire history of the faith. Because I remembered an episode of yours emphasizing the importance of engaging with different opinions, I decided to read parts of his work. I discovered some things about Gregory that I hadn’t known. I read about a monk named Justus, a physician at the Monastery of St.

Andrew. On his deathbed, he confessed to another monk, Copiosus, that he had stolen three golden coins. When Gregory learned of this, he reportedly ordered that no one should visit Justus again and that his dead body should be thrown onto the dung heap with the three coins placed beside him. The monks were told to gather and shout, ‘To hell with you and your money.’

Justus, upon hearing this from Copiosus, is said to have died of grief. Deschner relates this with bitter sarcasm, comparing Gregory’s severity towards a poor monk to his own relative wealth, noting that even 13 years after becoming a Benedictine, Gregory still owned several estates. I must say, this account sounds rather appalling.

What do you do with stories like this?”

Answer 1

[00:05:18] John Dickson: Thanks, John, uh, for this multi-layered question. There are a bunch of things to say, uh, but I’ll try and be brief. The work you reference is so polemical that honestly, it isn’t trusted very widely. The best deceits always contain a little bit of truth. Now, in our episode about Gregory the Great, we never wanted to make out that he was completely pure, that he was the ultimate example or anything like that.

Every historical figure has a dark side because every human being, even the best of us, has a dark side. But we can say a few things about Gregory that a responsible historian, which Karlheinz Deschner isn’t, um, would have to throw into the mix to give an accurate account of this particular story you raise.

We do know the story of the monk named Justus, but only because Gregory’s the one who tells it in his famous book, The Dialogues, and we’re gonna link to The Dialogues in the show notes. There’s a pretty decent translation out there. And it’s clear from Gregory’s own account that he thought he was acting for good reason, and that afterwards he regretted how harsh he was.

Um, it’s hard for us to understand Just how important it was for the Benedictine Order to shun the love of money. The, the whole Benedictine movement was, um, a, a born out of a revulsion of the worldliness in Italy in the time of St. Benedict. Um, yes, Gregory himself had been obscenely rich, but that’s because he came from the senatorial class.

He was an elite Roman. But the thing is, he gave it all up to fulfill his ministry as a leader of the church, and he led the church reluctantly. Now, that a monk in the Benedictine Order would deceive everyone and retain three gold coins was, in that context, the greatest of the possible sins. And perhaps it’s our own love of money that prevents us from seeing what a betrayal of the order that really was.

So yes, Gregory did impose an overly harsh penalty. Poor Justus, as he was dying, wasn’t allowed any visitors in his final days, and he wasn’t given the honorable burial that he would have hoped for. In chapter 55 of Gregory’s dialogues, though, he makes clear that he imposed this harsh penalty for two reasons.

He wanted to shock Justus into heartfelt repentance. That was part of it. And secondly, he wanted to leave a dire warning for the rest of the monks. Gregory was an austere leader, but he was also humble in the sense that he always made decisions, powerful decisions, with the good of others in mind, and sometimes he made the wrong decisions.

But here’s a bit that’s overlooked by Deschner. Gregory makes clear in the dialogues that 30 days after Justus’ death He had compassion on him. That’s what Gregory says, “I had compassion on him, and with great grief thought of his punishment, and wondered what means there might be to help him.” Now, the Protestant in me doesn’t like what Gregory does next, but it does show his heart.

He ordered for 30 days of masses to be celebrated for the monk’s soul. The hope was for his final deliverance. But there’s also a general principle that I think we need to hold in mind when we think about this stuff. When we read of the bad behavior of our leaders, we should take it first as a warning to ourselves, ’cause we’re made of the same stuff, right?

We’re just as prone to the same evils. Now, this is not to excuse bad behavior, but it’s to say we need to see it in ourselves and adopt a more humble posture. Here’s the sort of thing I always try and remind myself about when I read history in generally, but particularly stories like this. I imagine Gregory and his monks looking at my life with all its luxuries, pleasures, opportunities, and I sometimes fear that they would wonder whether I was a Christian in any meaningful sense.

They may have erred on the side of harshness from time to time, I admit that. But most of these ancient and medieval Christian leaders had a theology and a morality of money that reflects the teaching of Jesus more than do my own sermons and my own life. So I just say, “Lord, have mercy on us all

Kaley Payne (Studio)

[00:10:42] Kaley Payne: Our next question comes from Lester in Illinois.

Question 2

[00:10:45] Mark Hadley: Where does the idea of being a missionary come from? It’s not a word I can find in the Bible.

Answer 2

[00:10:52] John Dickson: Thanks for that. Hopefully I can make this clear. Uh, you’re right that the word missionary isn’t there in our English Bibles, but the concept is certainly there. The Latin word missio just means sending, right? So missionaries are just those who are sent with due Christian authority to do the work of God somewhere else in the world, and that concept is everywhere in the Bible.

You could even say that Abraham is the first missionary in the sense that he was taken from his own land and sent to a new land to convey the blessings of God to the world. The word sent is frequently used in connection with Old Testament prophets as well. They are sent by God to Israel. Uh, in a sense, they’re missionaries, um, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the gang.

Of course, in the New Testament, we see this idea of missionary most clearly. The Greek word for send is apostello, and it’s the exact equivalent of the Latin missio. Um, we get the word apostle from this word, and that just means a sent one, so like in Matthew 10 and John 20. Now, what’s interesting is that the word apostle is used for more than just those people sent by Jesus.

It’s used for more than just the 12 apostles, which is how we’ve come in the modern world to, to think of it. But the 12 are actually a smaller group of sent ones compared to the wider group. So- In the New Testament, Timothy is said to be an apostle in 1 Thessalonians chapter 1 and in chapter 2. Barnabas is said to be an apostle in Acts 14.

Uh, some anonymous Christian workers from Macedonia are called, uh, missionaries, or they actually are called apostles, uh, 2 Corinthians chapter 8. Even Epaphroditus, who was sent from Philippi to Rome to help Paul, he’s called apostle in Philippians 2. There it really just has the meaning of missionary or representative.

And all of this biblical background lies behind the concept of the missionary. The church simply kept on sending officials to do God’s work in different places. One of the most famous historical examples is Gregory the Great at the end of the 6th century. He sent a whole preaching team to England to bring the gospel to England, particularly in the southern part of England.

They were missionaries, and we could explore missionaries just like that in pretty much every century up to modern times. In the modern world, we simply continue this tradition using an English word derived from the Latin missio. We call them missionaries. I hope that helps.

Media: The Chosen

[00:14:07] The Chosen Clip: No one wants to be called a Judas. It’s become shorthand for an unfaithful friend, a traitor even. Historical Judas was both of those things. That’s only half the story…

Mark Hadley (Studio)

[00:14:26] Mark Hadley: That’s a bit of The Chosen’s YouTube series, More to the Story, which gives you a behind-the-scenes look at how certain decisions were made in the making of the hugely successful TV show created, directed, and co-written by filmmaker Dallas Jenkins. The Chosen is a drama, an artistic interpretation of the Gospels and the life of Jesus, and it’s got plenty of critics, as you can imagine.

But one reason it’s become such a huge success is it’s helped to humanize Jesus, and particularly his disciples. The writers have filled in the disciples’ backstories, making them more complex, relatable, with emotional arcs. It helps us to see them less as characters and more as actual people. They’ve done this with the character of Judas as well.

He’s not just the guy that ends up kissing Jesus on the cheek to identify him as the Messiah to the Roman authorities, effectively handing him over to his death. We’ll leave it to listeners to decide what you think of the backstory of Judas that The Chosen creators have come up with in an effort to explain why Judas betrays Jesus.

Historians, though, have long wanted to know what really happened, what led Judas to this decision. But historian and author Bart Ehrman said recently in an interview with Alex O’Connor, “We really just can’t figure out what motivated him. There’s no way to know what was in Judas’ head.” Dan from Sydney had this question about Judas.

Producer Kaley, take it away.

Question 3

[00:15:54] Kaley Payne: My question is, what exactly did Judas Iscariot do in betraying Jesus, and why did it warrant a payment from the Jewish leaders? The Jewish leaders knew who Jesus was and interacted with him many times. Why did they need Judas’ help to point him out and arrest him?

Answer 3

[00:16:11] John Dickson: Hey, Dan.

Thanks. Good question. Um, I reckon a little bit of historical context makes good sense of all of this. The first thing to understand is that while Jesus was, of course, publicly known, not everyone had an accurate picture of his face. I mean, this was before there were photos, obviously. Next, um, Jesus moved around a lot.

Those who wanted to get rid of him wouldn’t have known his daily schedule. We get the strong impression from the Gospels that Jesus simply kept his own itinerary, sometimes appearing, sometimes withdrawing. Only those who were closest to him would have worked out how to keep close tabs on him. Now, add to that the fact that the authorities were trying to arrest Jesus during the Passover festival, when Jerusalem itself swelled at least two times its population.

Some scholars argue four times the population. It was crazy busy, and they were trying to pull this off at nighttime. So what Judas gave the authorities was a very clear idea of when and where Jesus would be. And in the dark of night, with thousands of other people on the Mount of Olives, Judas provided invaluable service.

He could tell the temple guards exactly where Jesus was and then pick him out of the crowd in the dark by a kiss. And the authorities thought that this deserved payment, hence the 30 pieces of silver

 

Question 4

[00:17:50] Kaley Payne: This question comes from Jane in Sydney. “Hi, John. Love the podcast. Love to hear an Australian producing a Christian podcast with so much scope.

I’ve just listened to the episode African Jesus and can’t help wondering why there was no mention of the Coptic or Ethiopian churches. Surely they deserve a mention.”

Answer 4

[00:18:09] John Dickson: Thank you, Jane. Love this question. Uh, the simple answer is that that episode focused on Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa, not so much the older historical story of Christianity in North Africa.

There’s certainly a great episode to be done about North African Christianity, and we’d begin in Egypt, of course, like you suggest. We’d look at the whole Coptic tradition, but then we’d move right along the north coast, uh, to Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and, uh, maybe all the way to Spain. All of these in the ancient world were provinces of the Roman world, and Christianity spread like wildfire throughout those regions.

But that would be a very different episode. It would be a historical tour, whereas the African Jesus episode was meant to be about contemporary Africa and how they’ve received the gospel, uh, in more recent times and importantly, how African Christians understand Jesus himself and what we can learn from their understanding, and that seemed like a worthwhile conversation.

It certainly filled an hour, as you know. So I’ll happily take your question as an encouragement that one day we really need to do the ancient churches of the East and Africa, the Syrians, the Coptics, the Ethiopians. We’ll include the Armenians and all the related traditions. That would be an extraordinary tale to tell.

Kaley Payne (Studio)

[00:19:45] Kaley Payne: I’ll add that to our ever-expanding list of episode ideas, which you can get a sneak peek of a little later in this episode. We’ll be back after this short break.

BREAK

Reading from newspaper

[00:19:58] Mark Hadley: Titanic founders off Newfoundland. From London. When off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland at 10:25 o’clock New York time, Sunday night, April 14, the White Star Company’s giant liner Titanic, the largest steamship in commission in the world, while on her maiden trip from Southampton to New York, came into collision with a giant iceberg and was so badly damaged that she sank yesterday morning at 2:20 o’clock.

It is now reported that of the 2,358 souls on board the great ship, only 675, mostly women and children, have been saved.

Kaley Payne (Studio)

[00:20:40] Kaley Payne: That’s the lead from the New York Herald that ran the day after the Titanic sank in April 1912. “Souls on board” is a phrase from maritime tradition, and was passed to aviation too, with pilots and air traffic controllers referring to their passengers as souls. I reckon it sounds rather ominous, a phrase we now associate with disaster.

I went down a rabbit hole with this one, wanting to know where the phrase originated. I’m not sure I got to the bottom of it, but some articles I read suggested that the phrase was inspired by Bible passages like Acts 27. In that passage, the writer of Acts, Luke, is traveling with the Apostle Paul, who is a prisoner on a ship caught in a violent storm while being transported to Rome for trial.

It’s been weeks of severe weather and fasting, and Paul tells everyone on board to eat and keep up their strength. And then Luke writes, “Then were they all of good cheer and they also took some meat and we were in all in the ship two hundred, threescore and sixteen souls.” The point, I hear you asking, is that our next question comes from Jane, that’s a different Jane, about the difference between the soul and the spirit.

When a pilot or captain of a ship recorded the number of souls on board, they were counting the number of living people. That was the point. It was regardless of hierarchy or status. It was denoting the whole person differentiating from possibly deceased cargo and avoiding confusion about whether people were passengers or sailors or prisoners and so on.

Soul was more holistic. It’s meant to represent our very life. And I reckon the maritime way of talking about souls on board is a pretty close analogy to what John says here about the soul and Christianity. It’s very different to the platonic idea of the soul that we talked about in our episode, “Spiritual But Not Religious” earlier in the season.

That’s the classical Greek idea that we are a soul that’s come from heaven, imprisoned in a body, and the soul is waiting to go back to heaven. That’s actually not what Christianity says. Here’s Jane’s question.

Question 5

[00:22:38] Listener Question: I’m really confused. I’ve been a Christian in Christ for over 30 years, and I really don’t understand the difference between the soul and the spiritual, uh, self in Christ after we become a Christian I didn’t understand that I didn’t understand this until right now.

So I want it to be made clear what it means to be in Christ. I just read your article. I’m still confused. I was taught the mind was– or the s- flesh was the mind, the will, and the emotions. I, I don’t get it. Please explain to me.

Answer 5

[00:23:29] John Dickson: Your question, Jane, seems multifaceted, so let me try and break it up into the parts as I understand it anyway.

First, it can be a little bit confusing the way the New Testament uses different words that seem like different parts of the human person. But actually, these Greek words, uh, speak of the whole of a human from different perspectives rather than them being different parts of what it means to be a human.

So the word spirit usually seems to refer to the whole person, but viewed from the perspective of spiritual things, our relation to God Himself. Uh, then there’s the word body, which also refers to the whole person, but from our creaturely physical perspective. The word flesh has roughly the same meaning, but it’s usually used in the New Testament to refer to the weakness of our body.

So it’s our whole person, but in the sense that we are also corrupted beings. Then there’s a word like heart, which refers to our motivations, our mind, which of course refers to our mental life. But the New Testament doesn’t really say these are separate parts of a human being. The word soul is an interesting one, the, the one you focused on, because it usually just means our life or our life principle, and it isn’t really anything different from our body and spirit.

It’s just another way of speaking about our existence. So when Jesus says something like in those famous words, “What does it profit a person to gain the whole world but lose their soul?” He doesn’t mean losing one part of ourselves. He means losing our very selves, our very existence. Now, my philosopher friends will be listening, and they’ll be crying out at this point that there’s a whole wonderful philosophical discussion to be had from within Christian history about the soul being the proper form of human existence.

It’s a complicated theory known as hylomorphism. It’s fun, and you can check it out. Maybe we’ll put something about it in the show notes. But it basically means that the soul is not a different part of us. It’s the principle that makes us the living beings that we are, all of us, body, mind, soul, et cetera.

On this view, body and soul are not separate things that are temporarily joined together. They belong together as a single human being But all of that gets very nerdy very quickly. Then you ask an additional related and excellent question about the recurring phrase in the New Testament, in Christ. What does it mean to be in Christ?

It’s particularly an expression you find in the letters of Paul, and it’s honestly been the subject of enormous scholarly discussion in New Testament studies. The most important thing to realize is that it doesn’t primarily refer to Christ living in us in some spooky sense. It’s actually a relational term.

It’s Paul’s way of saying that we belong to Jesus, that we’re united to Jesus by faith in him. And because we’re united to him, we are guaranteed all of the benefits of belonging to him. Forgiveness, the gift of the Spirit, suffering with him, but also glory because of us being in Christ. So the expression in Christ isn’t really mystical, it’s relational.

Now, it is mysterious in the sense that the benefits of being in Christ far exceed our possible imagination, but it isn’t primarily about an ecstatic spiritual experience. It’s not like some Christians are more in Christ than others. It’s about our assurance that we belong to Christ, and because of that, all that belongs to Jesus will belong to us.

Media: Empire Podcast

[00:27:52] Empire Podcast Clip: Yeah. So in e- in essence, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, um, share many scriptural traditions, and one of the scriptural traditions they share is this notion that God, or Yahweh as he’s known within Jewish cultures, um, and traditions, that God was essentially always a solitary deity. There were no other gods, uh, that should be worshiped.

But that kind of notion of God is a relatively late development within Yahweh worship of the Iron Age.

Kaley Payne (Studio)

[00:28:20] Kaley Payne: That’s British biblical scholar Francesca Stavrakopoulou speaking with William Dalrymple on the popular Empire World History Podcast earlier this year. She’s talking about her view of the evolution of the deity Yahweh.

That’s the personal name of the God of the Israelites of the Hebrew Bible. She suggests that the Israelite version of Yahweh is a culmination of traditions that came before.

Media: Empire Podcast

[00:28:43] Empire Podcast Clip: So the earlier form of Yahweh, the original form of Yahweh, was quite different. He was one of a number of deities. He was a warrior god.

Um, he had a consort, the goddess Asherah. And he was a god who was gradually, slowly prioritized as a political patron over several centuries by particular ruling groups within the communities that we know as ancient Israel.

Now, you’ve just said a lot of stuff that’s- Yeah … that you packed into two sentences, enough to sort of blow the minds of every believing one of the …

Kaley Payne (Studio)

[00:29:16] Kaley Payne: Turns out that did indeed blow the minds of several listeners, including one of our own Undeceptions listeners, Debbie, who’s from country New South Wales, and she asks this question read by Mark.

Question 6

[00:29:28] Mark Hadley: I am a great podcast fan, especially anything to do with history, so of course I love Undeceptions podcast too. I recently listened to this one from the Empire podcast with historian William Dalrymple and Anita Anand, and was a bit concerned with an interview they did with their guest, who was very confident about the history of the Abrahamic religions and talked about some things I’d never heard of.

For example, that God, Yahweh, originally had a wife, Asherah, and that this is depicted in ancient texts and images. That the Israelites’ first god was El, and that there are etymological links to Allah, El, with Israel intimating the same deity. There was some other quite disturbing alternative history about the development of the Jewish religion and family tree.

What’s going on?

Answer 6

[00:30:18] John Dickson: Thank you, Debbie. Uh, you’re quite right, uh, to pick up on this. It’s quite a common view among a particular kind of Old Testament scholar today. A lot of scholars spend their time trying to read between the lines of scripture. Then they look at the archaeological evidence and offer a completely alternative view of the origins of Israel and Israel’s God.

Now, the Old Testament definitely speaks of fertility cults within Israel, Asherah poles, and all that jazz. It speaks of lots of Israelites worshiping those entities. Added to this is the fact that we keep finding exactly those kinds of pagan idols and trinkets within the borders of Israel, dating to roughly the time that Israel was in the land.

So it becomes quite easy to construct a story that says this is where Israelite worship began, as a pagan fusion of deities. Um, by the way, the word El is just an ancient Semitic word that lots of languages used for God, for deity. Now, I would say the literary and archaeological evidence does cohere with this revisionist account of the origins of Israel’s religion.

The only flaw is that the evidence also perfectly coheres with what the Old Testament itself says about all of this, namely that the Israelites were meant to worship the one true God, but constantly, time after time, adopted the gods around them, the Asherah poles and all that. So these particular scholars are choosing to reject the actual lines written in the Old Testament literature, preferring to read between the lines.

It’s a classic strategy. These texts can’t mean what they appear to mean on the surface. They must mean something else. which is much cooler, more innovative, more publishable, to be a little bit cynical. The other interesting thing is to realize that genuine monotheistic worship of Yahweh could only really leave evidence in literary texts that survive.

By definition, genuine worship of the one true God was opposed to idols and trinkets depicting the creator. So we shouldn’t expect to dig up little statues proving Yahweh worship. There w- there were no such trinkets. Me, I’m sticking with the literary and archeological evidence and the Bible’s own explanation of all of that evidence.

Israelites were meant to worship the one true God, Yahweh, but in their disobedience, they frequently incorporated all sorts of other local deities.

Mark Hadley (Studio)

[00:33:12] Mark Hadley: Our next two questions are just for plus subscribers. There’s one about whether there’s a biblical basis for women preaching in church, and the other is whether Psalm 22 really does, as so many apologists have claimed, preview the specifics of Jesus’ crucifixion hundreds of years before it actually happened.

So head to undeceptions.com/plus to sign up and get our extended episodes and a bunch of other stuff.

[00:33:40] Kaley Payne: We’ve actually changed up our plus offering from the 1st of September too, Mark, so there’s new benefits that we hope our listeners are going to love. Go and check it out, undeceptions.com/plus

[00:33:52] Mark Hadley: Anyway, for the rest of us, here’s our last question.

Question 7

[00:33:56] Kaley Payne: If producer Kaley were to list all the episode ideas John has, how long would that list be?

Answer 7

Kaley Payne: How long would that list be?

[00:34:07] Mark Hadley: It’s, it’s, it’s funny that, uh, actually the moment we hear that question we both laugh

[00:34:12] Kaley Payne: because- It’s so… It’s really long. I was, um… So we do actually have, like, a proper list. Yes. And there’s almost 100 episodes on that list.

[00:34:21] Mark Hadley: So if we were to map that out at 30 episodes a year… we are, we’ve got three years without trying.

[00:34:29] Kaley Payne: Yeah.

[00:34:29] Mark Hadley: You know? Like, that’s easy.

[00:34:29] Kaley Payne: Which actually doesn’t sound that long.

[00:34:32] Mark Hadley: Are you kidding me? Can you imagine doing those 100 episodes?

[00:34:36] Kaley Payne: I know. But the issue that we always run into, like last week you and Socials Sophie and John and I had lunch to discuss what we were going to do for next season and the season after. And instead of going through the episode list of ideas that we had,

[00:34:49] Mark Hadley: Which we should have…

[00:34:49] Kaley Payne: … uh, we were like, “Oh, we have all these other ideas that we can do.”

[00:34:55] Mark Hadley: Part, part of the problem is John is an ideas machine.

[00:34:58] Kaley Payne: Yeah.

[00:34:58] Mark Hadley: So he’s- He just keeps coming up with them … yeah, and he has this sort of sense where he has just read something or met with someone or gone to a conference somewhere and this would make the best episode ever.

[00:35:08] Kaley Payne: Yep.

[00:35:08] Mark Hadley: And I don’t he’s a… I don’t think John was designed to look backwards.

[00:35:12] Kaley Payne: No.

[00:35:13] Mark Hadley: So, so- I think he’s always looking forward

[00:35:14] Kaley Payne: Yeah, the list, the list is really just, like, a panic button list. Yeah. But, um, but I think, I think those types of episodes, uh, where John is like, “I’ve heard this thing and I’ve been really thinking about it”- Mm … are the most exciting episodes to do because he’s really engaged with it.

[00:35:28] Mark Hadley: Yeah.

[00:35:28] Kaley Payne: Yeah. Um, rather than, “Well, uh, well, I don’t know.”

I would say- Like, like the friendship episode- Yeah … that we both wanted- That he- … but he was like- He was like, “I’m not really into it” … “I’m not really into it.” But that ended up being an excellent episode. Yeah. So sometimes we’re just… We must be just very persuasive, Mark.

[00:35:42] Mark Hadley: Yeah. I, I think, um, I think sometimes we get an idea in our head and we just say, “John, this is a good idea.”

[00:35:46] Kaley Payne: Screw it, we’re just gonna do it.

[00:35:47] Mark Hadley: And he’s a very nice guy about that. Mm-hmm. You know? He, he, he doesn’t mind being ganged up on.

[00:35:52] Kaley Payne: Yeah.

[00:35:52] Mark Hadley: And so- Pulled along … so long as we have a good argument. Yeah. He won’t, he won’t settle for anything that doesn’t have a good argument. But it’s not just the new idea stuff that he works with or where he’s engaged at that point in time, there’s some things he’s been thinking about for a very long time.

[00:36:05] Kaley Payne: Mm-hmm.

[00:36:05] Mark Hadley: Like, uh, Christianity’s troubled relationship with Islam.

[00:36:08] Kaley Payne: Yes.

[00:36:09] Mark Hadley: Now, he’s b- he’s written on that, he’s got a book, you know, associated with that. It is a, um, it’s a topic he’s been thinking about forever, and it’s been on our list since I would say year one.

[00:36:19] Kaley Payne: Yeah. Which is another, um, thing that, uh, part of my job is to really think about, it’s not just the idea, but often it’s…

Oops. It’s not just the idea, but often it’s the guest that really makes the episode. And we have- Yes … either we have a particular guest in mind that we’re just finding it hard to work with their schedule or they won’t email me back. Um- And so we just wait. Drop it. We’re like, “That’s okay.” Go on, go on. Drop some names.

We will, we will live in hope Drop some names. Um, well, oh, no, I don’t think we should. Um-

[00:36:48] Mark Hadley: Why? Well, we could only embarrass them to come on the show.

[00:36:51] Kaley Payne: There is a particular, there is a particular scholar that John has really wanted- Mm … for Alcuin of York.

[00:36:56] Mark Hadley: Mm.

[00:36:57] Kaley Payne: And we desperately wanna do an episode on Alcuin of York.

He’s, like, John’s favorite figure in history, one of. Mm. Mm. Um, and we’ve had, we’ve had multiple people go like, “Why haven’t you done an episode on this yet? Surely this is, like, an obvious episode.” Mm. It’s really obvious, but there’s a, there’s a scholar that’s- That John just really wants- Mm-hmm … and we just haven’t been able to get yet. Um, so I’m working on it. Every so often I go on a bit, bit of a, um, a stalker kind of episode where I’m just constantly like, “Hey, you wanna come on the show?”

[00:37:27] Mark Hadley: Yeah sometimes we get them. Do you have a dream person that you would like to see on an episode?

[00:37:32] Kaley Payne: Um, oh, like we’ve really tried to get Nick Cave.

[00:37:37] Mark Hadley: Yes. Yeah.

[00:37:37] Kaley Payne: Um, because he’s just a really interesting thinker and just a cool guy.

[00:37:43] Mark Hadley: Yeah.

[00:37:43] Kaley Payne: Um, tha- I think that’s probably more like John’s, one of John’s like dream guests.

[00:37:48] Mark Hadley: Yeah.

[00:37:48] Kaley Payne: Uh- At the moment, both of us, is Malcolm G- Githe.

[00:37:51] Mark Hadley: Oh, look, Malcolm Githe, I’m gonna… Malcolm Githe would be fantastic. Hello, Malcolm-  if there’s any chance. Come on our show. Come on, please. Please. Um, but you know somebody else who I’d really love to see on the show, only because it’s, it’s very much, uh, where my head is in the present, and that’s Jonathan Haidt. Ooh, yes. You know? It would be wonderful to talk to him. Um, one of the episodes that we’ve been thinking about is truth in the information age.

Mm-hmm. And, and what the information age is doing to us as people. Jonathan Haidt would be great to talk to about that. Yeah, wouldn’t he? Yeah. He’d be great. And what about, what about… Come on. You’re … We’ve got a list of 100. Give me five.

[00:38:27] Kaley Payne: Yes. Um, ones that I’m ex- particularly excited about?

[00:38:29] Mark Hadley: Yeah. Yeah. Come on.

[00:38:30] Kaley Payne: Okay.

[00:38:31] Mark Hadley: Um- And now, um, people, I just wanna say here that, um, by mentioning these things, it, we’re tacitly cornering a topic for ourselves.

[00:38:38] Kaley Payne: Mm-hmm.

[00:38:38] Mark Hadley: Mm-hmm. So it’s, it’s kind of like Kaley’s now gonna name the ones which I can’t do, you know?

[00:38:44] Kaley Payne: This is the one I’m going to  work on.  Um, so I mean, this was a, um, a John idea, but I would really, really like us to do it, is tracing the history of libraries.

[00:38:53] Mark Hadley: Mm.

[00:38:53] Kaley Payne: Mm. Um, in fact, I went away and just bought myself two books just so I could read them because as soon as I heard that as an episode idea, I was like, “Well, I’ve never he- thought about that before.” Mm. “And I would love to be able to work on that.” Um, like including the claim that Christians destroyed the Great Library of Alexandria um, or shunned books through the Dark Ages. There’s just so many things that we could talk about that are really interesting. Mm. Um, and definitely misconceptions somewhere. Mm. Um, that, that excites me. Um, we talked about one at lunch about, uh, Christianity and conspiracy theories. I just think… I, I’m not exactly sure, you know, I don’t quite have a sense of how we would like hug that into an episode.

[00:39:32] Mark Hadley: I can

[00:39:32] Kaley Payne: see- But, um-

[00:39:33] Mark Hadley: I could see you getting your militia outfit on for the recording

[00:39:35] Kaley Payne:. Right? And, um, just the, the researching that would be really fun.

[00:39:40] Mark Hadley: Mm.

[00:39:40] Kaley Payne: Um, so that, that sounds like a really fun episode to do. Mm. And then, um, uh- Uh, yeah, I think those two, I think those two might do. I think

[00:39:49] Mark Hadley: they do Oh, I, I, okay.

I’ve got a longer- There’s lots … list than that. I’ve got a long list. Um-

[00:39:52] Kaley Payne: Okay, you

[00:39:53] Mark Hadley: can

[00:39:53] Kaley Payne: go for it …

[00:39:53] Mark Hadley: okay. Um, I wanna do Pilgrim’s Progress.

[00:39:56] Kaley Payne: Oh. Yeah. Uh- Oh, do you know, I played Hope in my high school- Oh … musical version of Pilgrim’s Progress.

[00:40:02] Mark Hadley: I’m, I’m going to … I … That is fantastic. I don’t know how I’m gonna top that.

Mm. Oh, here’s an idea. Um, uh, for, for about, uh, 15 years I read Pilgrim’s Progress every year. Um, I-

[00:40:13] Kaley Payne: Oh, gosh. It’s like your Lord of the Rings.

[00:40:15] Mark Hadley: It is one of my Lord of the Rings. You know, it’s, it’s one of those books, there’s a few that I cycle through pretty much every year to two years. Um, but Pilgrim’s Progress had such a profound effect on me, and for that matter on literary history-

[00:40:27] Kaley Payne: Mm

[00:40:28] Mark Hadley: that, you know, it would be fantastic to do an episode on Pilgrim’s Progress. Yes. That would be great. Yeah. And- That’s

[00:40:33] Kaley Payne: not on our list, Mark.

[00:40:35] Mark Hadley: Um, well, it is now.

[00:40:37] Kaley Payne: Up it goes. Ex- 101. And, um,

[00:40:41] Mark Hadley: uh, G.K. Chesterton. Mm.

[00:40:43] Kaley Payne: Mm.

[00:40:43] Mark Hadley: Uh, we talk a lot about C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis, um, is a brilliant mind. Um, but G.K. Chesterton, a little underrated, but a fantastic mind, an incredible mind, to think and push and fight.

Is this the

[00:40:54] Kaley Payne: time that I confess that I’ve not read any G.K. Chesterton?

[00:40:57] Mark Hadley: Oh, gee. Um, well-

[00:41:00] Kaley Payne: Oh gosh, this job just keeps me in reading … it’s just, just, uh- I’ll just be reading for the rest of my life based- Yeah … on episodes that we’ll never do.

[00:41:06] Mark Hadley: Yeah. Well, um, maybe, maybe. We’ll get there. Like, these are the ones that we push in.

Like I know … A- and one of the other ones, and talking historically, ’cause this is John’s sweet spot, his happy place, hospitals.

[00:41:18] Kaley Payne: Mm. Yeah.

[00:41:18] Mark Hadley: You know? I, I’ve stood on the, I’ve stood in Rome on the, the site of some of the earliest hospitals, uh, in the, uh, empire, and it would just be good to tell that Christian story.

Fabiola, I think that would be a brilliant thing. Mm. So yeah. Yeah. But what about next season?

[00:41:36] Kaley Payne: Um, oh gosh, next season. Look, we’ve done, we’ve done a couple of those interviews already. Like John’s done a couple of the interviews. We’re gonna be doing an episode on the place of law and justice- Mm … and how Christianity has helped to shape that.

Mm. Which I, I mean, I studied law at university, and I’m really interested in that, but we’ll try and make it interesting for everyone else. Mm. But I think law is one of those things that you don’t really think about and you don’t really appreciate- Mm … um, but it impacts everything. Um, oh gosh, help me Mark, where, what else have we got planned?

[00:42:10] Mark Hadley: Oh, look, um, one that I have been pitching since I think about year two, and we’ve had several aborted attempts at it, um, story.

[00:42:20] Kaley Payne: Yes.

[00:42:20] Mark Hadley: So we’re, we’re, we’re going to have a look at story, uh, the human fascination with storytelling.

[00:42:26] Kaley Payne: Mm-hmm.

[00:42:26] Mark Hadley: Uh, and, uh, did, did we mention that Malcolm Guite, please come on the show.

Please come on the show.

[00:42:33] Kaley Payne: We’ve both read, we’ve both read Galahad. Yeah. We’ve both read your first book. Yeah. We desperately want you.

[00:42:38] Mark Hadley: Yeah. No,

[00:42:39] Kaley Payne: look, look- He would be amazing. But there’s so many … there-

[00:42:41] Mark Hadley: There’s just so many … are so many really good, you know, authors who’d be able to- Mm … contribute to that discussion.

So we’re looking forward to that coming off one way or another. Yes. You know, maybe- Oh, um- … like, you know, maybe next season. But that, that’s the plan …

[00:42:53] Kaley Payne: another, another one that I’ve kind of, um, it’s not really bullied John into, but it’ll be a shorter episode on, uh, St. Nicholas for Christmas. Mm. Mm. Um, which I think is gonna be really fun.

And, oh, we, we’re kind of… It’s we’re kind of developing a Halloween episode, which is more about pagan mythology and how all of that works, but it’s got kind of a Halloween bent to it- Yeah … which, um, I think is gonna be pretty interesting.

[00:43:22] Mark Hadley: A lot of interest to that. Um- Lot of interest to that. I think, um, maybe we should close with what we need help with.

You know, because I was actually gonna say to you, um, the audience prob- who’ve been following us for a while will probably know that every Easter and every Christmas we do a Christmas or Easter focused episode.

[00:43:44] Mark Hadley: And we’re running out of ideas. So if, if you think that there is a Christmas idea we really should tackle,

[00:43:52] Kaley Payne: um- That we

[00:43:52] Mark Hadley: haven’t

[00:43:52] Kaley Payne: done

[00:43:52] Mark Hadley: already

that we haven’t done already, um, or an Easter one, you would be doing us a favor. You know? We, we’d love to hear from you on that one.

[00:44:00] Kaley Payne: That’s a good idea. Yes.

[00:44:01] Mark Hadley: Yeah.

[00:44:02] Kaley Payne: Why not? Um, how do they, how do, how can you contact me? Oh- Producer@undeceptions.com.

[00:44:08] Mark Hadley: There you go.

[00:44:09] Kaley Payne: That’s, that’s the email address to send me all your Christmas and Easter ideas.

Awesome. Well- I’ll,

[00:44:14] Mark Hadley: I’ll, I’ll hold off … three years,

[00:44:16] Kaley Payne: onwards and upwards.

[00:44:40] Mark Hadley: Undeceptions is hosted by John, my best friend, Dickson, produced by Kalie Payne, and directed and edited by me, Mark Hadley

[00:44:49] Kaley Payne: Sophie Hawkshaw is on socials and membership

[00:44:51] Mark Hadley: Siobhan McGuiness is our online librarian

[00:44:54] Kaley Payne: Lyndie Leviston remains John’s wonderful assistant

[00:44:58] Mark Hadley: Santino Dimarco is chief finance and operations consultant

[00:45:02] Kaley Payne: Undeceptions is the flagship podcast of undeceptions.com, letting the truth out.