This episode chronicles the history of Christian nationalism up to about 1300, interspersed with commentary from James Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments. Madison concluded that the mixture of church and state produced "pride and indolence in the clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both superstition, bigotry, and persecution." Informed by the history of power working through depraved humanity, Madison saw a close mixture of church and state as invariably corrupting both. The episode describes the quid pro quo arrangement between church and state emerging out of the creation of the "Holy Roman Empire. Both Church and State sought to co-opt the other, leading to a very unholy Holy Roman Empire, not to mention a corrupt Church. Madison found the Church's unholy collusion unbiblical, "every page of it [the Scriptures] disavows dependence on the powers of this world."
When morality is man-centered and not God-centered
This episode explodes anthropocentric morality as the standard for good works. Deism is cited as a prime example of a philosophical or religious system that defines good and bad based on outward morality. Love of God in the great commandment is not the primary objective, virtue itself is the goal. This redefining of good and evil in terms of outward morality apart from love of God is typical of modernity's penchant for commending itself outside of the standard of God. Repentance from dead works is the repudiation of any man-made system of morality that doesn't have love of God as the prime directive.