Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Welcome to the Truth Exchange podcast. This is a weekly program with Doctor Jeffrey J. Ventrella where he answers questions from subscribers around the globe, answering questions about worldview, cultural apologetics, and other miscellaneous items. I'm your host, Joshua Guillotine, and this is another edition of the director's Bag.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: This is a cute question. This is from Abigail from Kentucky, five years old. She writes well, I just know she didn't write. Her mom wrote for her. Mister Ventrella, when I go to heaven, will I still be a girl?
[00:00:41] Speaker C: Abigail, that is a great question, and I am so thankful that you understand that there's eternal life and to go be with the presence of the Lord. And the answer is yes, you will still be a girl. And the reason is because we have the resurrection of Jesus that shows us that our resurrected bodies retain their physical properties, including the properties of being male or female. Jesus our savior, who is at the right hand of God the father. And we celebrate that in coming weeks with his ascension. There is body and soul, I can say a human who's fully God, fully human, and my man in his being.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: That made me chuckle. I love that.
Gary from California writes, he's actually responding to one of the dictas lies that live part four embryos, IVF and means slash ends confusion while reading the article, it struck me that the arguments you cited that are used to justify IVF mortality are essentially the same ones used to justify elective abortion.
When pro life Christians or non Christians argue against the justification for abortion, but then accept the identical justifications for IVF, they completely neutralize their argument and testimony. It's not really a question, but more of a statement. And any thoughts about that, Doctor Monticello?
[00:02:15] Speaker C: Yeah, so they're not exactly parallel. I mean, hypothetically, I suppose you could, as I mentioned, I think in the dictum, that particular dicta, you could, you could hypothetically take one egg and have it become fertilized and then only implant that particular one. Now, there are other ethical questions with respect to that, including the heightened risk of harm to the new person and so on and so forth. But that being aside, generally speaking, I think that is correct. The lines of justification for in vitro fertilization largely justify at least the ethos of border abortion practice in the United States.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: And has there been, is there like an uptick in the IVF?
[00:03:11] Speaker C: Well, here's something that we, that's very difficult to trace. It is unregulated in the United States, largely unregulated. So we basically don't know a lot of stuff, but anecdotally my friend, and she's a researcher and a film producers, really delved into this. If you go into the Bay Area, you will see posted advertisements for co eds, in other words, women in Berkeley and Stanford, particularly if you have these features, an SAT score of a certain level of blonde and blue eyed, that sort of thing. We'll pay for your eggs. We'll get rid of your student debt by paying lots of money for your eggs. So we're seeing that women are being commodified by this industry. So there is an uptick that we think we know a little bit about. We also know a little bit about the embryo storages where humans are put in suspended animation. Those vaults that hold these people are doing booming business. So it seems as if there is an uptick. But again, because it's not regulated at all, all manner of mischief can be occurring, so you don't have compliance. And so these frozen humans unfreeze and die, which is what we're talking about here, through negligence and other things. So that's what's going on. I would encourage people to go read the Alabama Supreme Court opinion fairly recently, where the court there held that the unborn IVF created human is in fact a human for purposes of the law. And there's some very good stuff there, and it's pretty readable. It's not too technical, either legally or scientifically, to kind of give you a handle on what that looks like.
[00:05:08] Speaker B: Next question is from Wilson from South Carolina. And he writes, Doctor Ventrella, you wrote, how then should christians conceptualize the state in a way which disposes the lies we live? Has the Lord instructed us in such things? Indeed, because Christ is Lord, his divine power has, in fact, granted us all things that pertain to life and godliness. This includes life and godliness in public square, including a theology of the state.
So Wilson says, much of the New Testament seems to have an understanding that the kingdom of God is not of this world, quoting the Lord, and that we are pilgrims passing through. But here in the dicta, you seem to imply that we should be involved even to take the nation for God. How does this not lead to a type of christian nationalism? Is christian nationalism bad?
[00:06:00] Speaker C: Yeah, a lot of good thoughts there. And thank you for your considered question.
Let me play a little bit of popcorn here and start again with a predicate. All scripture is inspired by God or God breathe and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be equipped for every good work.
Question is the order of society, a good work. Does God prefer order or chaos? Is the work of statecraft a good work? Well, it's never condemned. And in fact, the magistrate, the civil magistrate, romans 13 tells us, is a good thing and is a servant of God, God's minister. So these are good works, and the word of God then equips us to engage in those good works prior to consummation. So that's the first point. It's not necessarily bad at all. In fact, it's positively good. Statecraft is good. Second thing I'd say is you use the verb, you know, christians take control.
I don't believe I said that because I think that the christian position is to propose solutions, not to impose them.
That's a christian political philosophy. Okay, so we are proposing solutions. Now, of course, if I'm duly elected and I have served in the public and been, you know, appointed by the secretary of state to do some things and that sort of stuff, well, then my duty is to follow the law and so on and so forth. So in that sense, I impose. But it's because there's authority behind me. It's not because I'm a Christian. It's a christian that I'm doing the job I've been called to do. So there's that issue. But again, we. We propose we do not impose.
The next thing I would say is the nature of the kingdom of God. It is not ethereal. It is, in fact, here now. It's something present. And when Jesus talked about it, it was in real, tangible terms, the healing of people, the raising of the dead, those sorts of things. And we are to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. That's the sermon on the Mount, Matthew six. And Jesus says that we are to have our light shine before men, that they may see our good works. That's very tangible, it's very earthy. And give glory to our father who is in heaven. And then he goes on right after that to talk about the very law of God. And so there's an evidential component to this kingdom, our light shining, and an ethical dimension to that kingdom. Now, you allude to the words of Jesus where he says, my kingdom is not of this world, meaning that the source of God's kingdom is not here, but it's certainly for this world.
Its source is not this world, but it's for this particular world. And then I'm just. I'm still parsing the question in my mind, but I think the last thing I'd say is we need to be very careful. When we deal with similes or metaphors in scripture, we are pilgrims and strangers. Well, that is certainly sad. We're also called farmers. We're also called soldiers. We're also called other kinds of things. These are illustrative of the nature of our life here on earth. And so I like it better when we talk about the actual Greek. When we're aliens, we are resident strangers. We have legitimacy here, and consequently, we have things to think and things to do with respect to our presence here.
So then it gets this question, and this is a, one of those hot button issues. It's completely. It's a, it's a, it's a term or a label that I don't think any christians should use because it's just so misunderstood and subject to misunderstandings. Christian nationalism.
I think that the Bible sets forth the notion of sanctifying every, excuse me, every area of life. This is why we have called our upcoming symposium in August every square inch that would include the public square. So in that sense, we would seek a christianized nation or a christian nation, a christian nation that has a, what we might call a christian culture. Not every single person may be converted, but, you know, they would respect the rule of law. They wouldn't kill people, they wouldn't countenance deviant behaviors and those sorts of things. That's a good thing. And that would benefit the common good and benefit everyone. That's a christian nature. The trouble with christian nationalism would be, I like to say, it's like christian adultery or christian pornography. It's not the christian part. It's the nationalism part.
It's the idea that we elevate the nation state as being the ultimate that takes totalism over the rest of society as opposed to our civic duties, as opposed to our associations, as opposed to our churches and other gatherings. So I think nationalism is a problem, and I cannot see it being christianized with respect to that. So I would reject christian nationalism. And we've written on this and myself and others with respect to that. It's deeply problematic.
There's a number of, unfortunately, in our culture, what I would call, along with some others, extremist religious challenges to constitutionalism, as well as to the broader theory of classical liberalism, which is the nature of the american system. Classical liberalism, okay, freedom, liberty, individual dignity, those kinds of things. Lot of echoes of Christianity there. One of those challenges is christian nationalism. Another one is something called, we call catholic integralism. Maybe we'll talk about that. It's a little bit, it's very timely, but it requires you know, going, getting in the deep end of political philosophy. Both of those are problematic and writing against them. And so, no, certainly I don't stand for christian nationalism, nor does truth exchange.
[00:12:23] Speaker D: This concludes the recording of the director's bag. For more resources from Truth exchange, please visit us online at www.truthexchange.com. you can follow us on x as well as Facebook for more updates and content related to Truth exchange. Be sure to join us next week for more questions from the director's bag. I'm your host, Joshua Guillo, and this is the Truth Exchange podcast.
