Because there are these sort of elements of seduction in the conversation between the serpent
and Eve. Yeah, but the Bible functions like that, Like the Bible
also will not say something like the serpent slept with Eve, But because of
the structure of the conversation, you understand that she is submitting herself to him
like she would to her husband, in a way that suggests a kind of
sexual union without necessarily having to go into the idea that they actually united sexually.
By the way, this happens all the way through Bible, and in
positive ways too, where for example, Christ when he meets a Samaritan woman,
the entire structure of the conversation is one of Christ taking her as a
wife. But we know that he didn't marry her, and he didn't have
he didn't sleep with her. But it's to signify the meaning of the relationship.
So we have to be careful not to fall into the same kind of
materialism that we're criticizing when we read these stories, but rather be attentive mostly
to what they're trying to help us understand of what's going on, and let's
say, the structural meaning, rather than just wondering like Okay, so did
Eve really sleep with his snakes? Like, that's not what it says in
the scripture, but you can understand that that's what's going on in terms of
a relationship. This is Jonathan Fehel Welcome to the Symbolic World. So hello
everyone, I am here with Father Stephen the Young who I know needs no
introduction to the people who are watching my channel. Father Stephen he is a
priest in the Antiochian Church, but he is also the host of the Lord
of Spirit podcast, of which you know we're all huge fans of. He's
also in several books, and he is key in helping people re understand the
ancient way of thinking, kind of coming back and bringing back an integrated cosmic
view. And so we really appreciate Father Stephen coming to talk to us.
A few things to say. Father Stephen is going to be speaking at the
Symbolic World Summit in February. We are so excited that he is coming.
It'll be great to everybody. It's good. I think there'll be so much
like buzz in the room with Father Stephen there and then everybody there. It's
going to be quite quite crazy. And he is also he's also submitted an
article for the Symbolic World Journal, which we will be publishing very soon,
and that is partly what we're going to talk about today. So Father Stephen,
thanks for coming back. Yeah, it's good to be back again.
Everything is you know, you have the the Lord of Spirits conference coming,
you publish, you read some book Apocrypha, things are just theme rolling ahead
with your project. Yeah, there's I mean, I don't want to give
the impression I'm churning things out, but you know, there's I'm in a
period of my life where I'm I'm blessed to be able to be very productive.
So I'm trying to steward that well because I'm sure there will come times
in my life later where I won't be able to be as productive as I
am right now. And so before we start the actual conversation, i'd like
I want to hear from you what you think if you've seen because now Lord
of Spirits has been going on for a while, with like two years or
a year and a half, three years, three years. Man, times
flies like crazy, and have you seen a difference, let's say, in
people's perceptions, like have you kind of seen a mark change in the way
that people perceive the world, also perceive scripture, perceive their place in the
tradition. Since you started the podcast, I think so. The thing I've
always liked most right to be the most flattering thing has always been, like
in my ministry as a passtor has always been when I see someone saying something
I said and not crediting me for it. And the reason it's important that
they don't credit before it is that they're saying it just from their own heart
and mind, right, meaning it's sunk in and they've sort of made it
their own. And so with Lord of Spirits, the thing again that makes
me most happy is not when people sort of fall on over Lord of Spirits
or you know whatever, but when I see people talking about Orthodox Christianity,
talking about religion and you could tell that it it's been shaped by sort of
the topics we've been talking about. You pick up phrases, but that they've
internalized it in a way you know that they don't need to give me a
footnote. It is really becoming it's kind of becoming their own worldview. And
then that's what you're hoping, Yeah, yeah, that it's not well,
Lord of Spirits said this right, but that you know, they say that
this is what's really going on, you know, so that's that's heartening to
me because that's nothing I do. And I'm sure Father Andrew feels this way
too. Has ever been about me trying to raise my own profile or get
fans for me, or impress people with how clever I am. It's always
been about trying to recover you know, in English speaking, Anglophone Orthodoxy is
so impoverished in terms of how much of the Orthodox tradition is it available to
us in our language, and so it's always been about trying to recover those
things that aren't really lost. It's just we're still kind of in the mission
field stage of Orthodoxy and trying to bring those things out. And it's great.
You know, a lot of the you know a lot of the keys
that you've been offering, you know, all these the kind of cosmological keys
that that that you've been offering had been really helpful to people. And I'm
seeing it, you know, Richard Roland and I we just started this course
on BeO Wolf, you know, and just reading reading the first lines,
like the early lines, just in the the in when they set up Grendel
as the as the monster, like right in the first part. You know,
it's like you can just see the world that the Anglo Saxons were living
in, and it was really they were lived in a kind of this kind
of cosmic vision of the world. And you know the obviously Grendel is is
a descendant of Kine. He's a he's a monster, he's a giant,
you know, and and the whole book like actually the Beowolf is in a
larger book which has like where the manuscript was was in a larger book which
had all these monster stories in them, and it was like, you know,
uh, the letter of Alexander to Aristotle, there was a legend of
Saint Christopher and that was that it's been it's in that that book, and
so you could just see that, uh, it's it's making us notice things
that people did that people people didn't notice before and realizing, oh, like
this this vision was is the one that the ancient had, whether you lived
in Constantinople or if you lived in England, you know, it was the
cosmic world they lived in. Yeah. Yeah, and this is a place
where we are in sort of impoverished by modernity, where there's been this this
reduction right, which didn't have to be the case. Scientific understanding could have
been additive, right. It could have been we have this that we already
understand, now we have this additional, deeper level of understanding of this part
of right, the universal reality. But instead it was accompanied with this rejection,
an idea of replacement, that we can replace this spiritual wisdom accumulated over
millennia with scientific insight newly gained. Yeah, you know, yeah, but
that time is over. I mean, it's it's over. But a lot
of people don't realize it. I think it, you know, there we're
still running on the fumes of the nineteenth century. It seems like very thin
fumes, but still we still are. But we're you know, we're on
people that are talking about the things that you're talking about, or I do
think that I'm talking about in some ways, are this strange leading edge even
in terms of you know, I don't know if you if you followed some
of the conversations I've had, but I'm in a point now where I can
talk to secular you know, cognitive psychologists. They're secular scientists and talking about
demons and angels and talking about worship and talk about God even, and they
just kind of nowed along because they realize that these the question of agency,
you know, of transpersonal agency for example, has become inevitable to deal with,
like we it's actually even from a materialless point of view, the idea
that agency exists only at the human level and doesn't if it scales down into
animals but doesn't scale up into higher organizations. It's like it doesn't even their
own system. Actually, it's it's like there's this weird superstitious thing and they're
thinking that make prevents them from wanting to see agency kind of coming down from
above. And so you're you're, you're, you're in this situation where you
know, even like I said, even people who wouldn't call to say their
believer wouldn't even belie even God, or like, yeah, well we kind
of have to acknowledge that there are these these intelligences that are acting on us.
Yeah. I think there's always been a sort of intuitive knowledge of it
and then sort of a denial of it. Yeah, right, then the
act as if but then if you ask me if if you believe it,
like no, no, I don't believe that but it's like strangy enough,
you still act as if that that was true in a lot of these actions,
you still act as if these these things coming from above are real.
Yeah, I've never I've never read I mean, I've read plenty of history
books by outright Marxists who it sists they're doing completely material history, but it
always reads like a story. Yeah, it always, you know, And
if you ask them, they'd say, well, yes, to some extent,
you know, my book is a false construct, right, because they
have to like deny their own yeah understanding, right, they see there are
things that work here, that there's a pattern, and they're bringing it out
through their work, but they know, based on their views, there shouldn't
be. Yeah, So they're in this performative contradiction where the very the very
like decrying of the pattern, like this revolutionary trope is itself a story that's
as old as you know, the cosmogony, and so the idea that that
because they're introducing this revolutionary kind of that's a destructuring, destructuring trope in there
thing that it's not a story. It's like, well, it's just another
it's a it's another myth, you know. It's like you know, Saturn
castrating as father. That's what you're doing. It's not it's not a big
it's not a big surprise, like it's not something you know, and so
you you're stuck. They're stuck in the religious world. Ultimately, you just
don't realize it. Yeah. Yeah, and it's just sort of known and
denied rather than He's all right. So the thing I want to talk about
today is some thing you know. You keep handing me these amazing golden keys.
In my own work, I mentioned before that one of the keys that
you handed me was for years I wanted to mention traditions that were kind of
Inochian traditions, but I knew that the fathers had put that aside. But
I also knew that there were some aspects of it that were really useful.
And I knew that the problem was like the demon and angel, the demon
and women problem. And then when you handed me the ritual part of it,
where you said, you know, these are just ritual it is.
It is true, it is actually happening, but it's happening through ritual proxy,
and that is how these things get embedded into the world. I was
like, oh my goodness, you just handed me the best key even for
my own work, and since then I've been like willing to talk about these
things more openly. But now you've handed me another key, which is that
Okay, So I want you, actually you, I want you to lay
out your theory because it has to do with a very difficult not difficult,
but a weird passage in the Book of Genesis when after the flood, you
know, Ham discovers his father's nakedness. And I want you to lay it
out and then we can talk about it because it's for me, it's like
a massive key. Yeah, yeah, so there is, and it is
weird, right. It's this episode that comes after the flood story is basically
over, and it seems in certain ways that odds with the preceding story because
the emphasis, of course, in the most of the flood narrative in Genesis
six through nine is that Noah is this one righteous person from his generation,
and then after the flood you have this whole story with him becoming drunk and
these other things unfolding. Part of the reason it's so weird is that it's
kind of bowdlerized in all the English translations, so we aren't getting sort of
the direct and because most English readers aren't as familiar with the rest of the
Torah as maybe we should be. So Genesis really is the prologue to the
rest of the Torah. Yeah, and that's one of the very basic he's
to interpreting it, understanding Genesis. If you don't keep that in mind when
you're reading Genesis, that this is leading up to Exodus, right, this
is leading up to the rest of what's in the Torah, then you'll sort
of end up misinterpreting it. And so there's a theme here, and this
is the place where I go to kind of lay it out because this is
a place where it's most complete. But it's a pattern that repeats in Genesis
and the patriarchal narratives that make u chapters twelve through fifty of Genesis. So
what's described if you just read it in English is Noah plants a vineyard,
He gets drunk in the vineyard, and his son Ham sees his father's nakedness.
His father's nakedness is uncovered and goes and tells his brothers Sham and Jath,
Him and Jay Fith go and cover their father's nakedness. And then when
Noah sort of recovers from his inebriated state. He curses Canaan, the son
of Ham, who is the fourth son of his third son, and disinherits
him. So he disinherits the fourth son of his third son. Yeah,
so definitely, already there's a massive narrative problem, and it's a narrative problem
that we gloss over, and I've done it myself. We gloss over it
by saying that Ham is the cursed one. But that's not what's written in
the tex right, right, And there's all kinds of bizarre and even racist
theories about the curse of Ham, and Ham is not cursed in the narrative,
that's right. So yeah, So in order to kind of figure out
what's going on here, we have to understand sort of what uncovering the father's
nakedness means. And if you go to Leviticus chapter eighteen, Leviticus chapter seventeen
through people cut it off in different places in twenty two or twenty three,
it's what's called the Holiness Code and has regulations covering holiness. Leviticus eighteen is
discussing sexual immorality, so that's where the command it's are about about sexual morality,
and that takes the form, because we're in a patriarchal society, that
takes the form of telling men primarily who they're not allowed to sleep with,
because they, of course were the ones making the decisions regarding that culturally.
And one of those commandments is you shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's
wife, for this is your father's nakedness. And something similar is actually said
about your father's daughter. Right. This is and so this idea of it's
like all the incest laws are are are portrayed as uncovering your father's nakedness.
I think it's even like like your aunt and like yeah, your father's sister
your yeah, yeah. And so this phrase of uncovering the nakedness, right,
is this reference to sexual relations, particularly that are forbidden, right,
and you can see why that would be right. The idea is that the
father, the patriarch right within the family, is the one who is charged
with safeguarding in the case of the daughter, in the case of the sister,
right, and even his own wife. Safeguarding is sort of protecting them
from sexual exploitation from right, and so it belongs to him and it's his
job to cover it, right, it's his job to right sort of protect
it. So once you have that in mind, right, and we go
back to this story in Genesis, what Ham is doing here sort of makes
sense, right, so we can now understand when it says he, you
know, went into his father's tent, right, this is talking and uncovers
the nakedness of his father. This is him having relations with his mother.
And then when this comes to the attention of Noah, we see him disinheriting
Ham's youngest son. And why would he need to do that? Well,
Canaan, Ham's youngest son is the son he bore. Who is his mother
bore him? Yeah, so it's a child conceived through those illicit sexual relations
and the covering of the nakedness is talking about protecting that again, So the
other brothers, once they find out this is going on, move to stop
it, right, move to protect their mother from from him their brother Ham.
Right, And so the question then becomes sort of why would Ham do
this? Right, aside from just maybe perversion, right, like, why
would he why would he do this? This is actually I don't want to
call it an institution or a practice, but because it was not well looked
at, right in the in the ancient world. But in the ancient world
and in other places in the scriptures, we see what's called family usurpation.
The idea here is that what Ham is trying to do is he's trying to
bear a son with his father's wife, who replaced father, right to replace
his father, and then that son would be come the air, and so
he would be effectively taking over the family structure. Yeah, it's a it's
a kind of revolutionary it's a revolutionary move where he's trying to take take he's
replaced his father in terms of authority, take his body, like, take
his take his wife, take his and then also take the inheritance and take
the take everything away from his father while his father is still is still alive,
right, right, And and this becomes especially clear when you know how
inheritance and the right of prima genitor worked, Right, they should societies which
was firstborn son inherits everything, Yeah, and then can choose whether or not
to share that with the other right brothers. Yeah, the others become dependent
on him, like they become subsidiary to their older brother. When father does
right, he takes his father's place when his father passes away, and they
have a place in the extended family only in so far as they're connected to
him and maintain relationships with him. And this is true throughout the ancient period.
So even in the Gospels we find someone comes to Christ and says,
teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me, right, And
Christ says, you know, you know what, don't worry about the inheritance.
Come follow me, right, don't worry about the money. But even
there, you see how there could be problems when first word son just says,
nah, I'm just going to keep all this and you guys can and
buzz off. But so Ham would not have inherited anything unless he, you
know, maintained this relationship and remained subsidiary to his older brother. He then
enacts this plan to try to displace his father and take over. And that's
why then Noah has to disinherit this child and reject it. And maybe you
can tell people because obviously it's like, okay, father Stephen just pulling this
out of his hat here, you know, in Genesis itself and then later
in the Bible, there are examples of that exactly happening again. And so
there are places where this type of behavior is repeated, right, and and
this is just sort of a clear case of it, but there are other
clear cases. I mean, later in Genesis, Ruben is going to sleep
with one of his father's concubines to attempt to do this, and that's it
a sort of an especially shocking case because Reuben actually was the firstborn son.
Yeah, so he's sort of tried to usurp Jacob while he's still alive,
right, And Ruben was disinherited because of that, he lost that firstborn status.
Because of that, it ends up passing to Judah. Because there's also
Absalom. Yeah, Absolom does this with David's wives and concubines during the period
where he served David's power. But Absolom actually did this publicly. He made
a public display of it, right to signal to everyone, I'm the I'm
the head that he had now taken over. This is something that was an
attempted. One of the first places where we see the office of queen mother
in the Old Testament is with Solomon has his mother Bathsheba and throwned in his
right hand, and the first person to come to her and make a request
to the king through her is trying to do this. He requests, now
that David is gone, that he'd be given one of David's concubines as a
wife. And Solomon's said, uh, I know where this is going.
So this is happening. So this is this directly is a pattern in the
sense of other people doing this in the context of family usurpation. You also
see that pattern in other places less literally, yeah, right. So one
of the biggest examples is in Genesis three. Now there's this stuff in Protestant
circles it's called the serpent seed doctrine, but there have been Gnostic sex that
thought this and stuff too. The thought that Cain was like literally the son,
the son of the devil. That's not what that's not what it says
in the Bible though, right right, you have to be really, but
that's not based on nothing, because there are these sort of elements of seduction
in the conversation between the serpent and Eve. Yeah, yeah, but the
Bible functions like that, Like the Bible also will not say something like the
serpent slept with Eve, but because of the structure of the conversation you understand
that she is submitting herself to him like she would to her husband, in
a way that suggests a kind of sexual union without necessarily having to go into
the idea that they actually united sexually. By the way, this happens all
the way through Bible and in positive ways too, where for example, Christ
when he meets a Samaritan woman, the entire structure of the conversation is one
of Christ taking her as a wife. But we know that he didn't marry
her, and he didn't have he didn't sleep with her. But it's to
signify the meaning of the of the relationship. We have to be careful not
to fall into the same kind of materialism that we're criticizing when we read these
stories, but rather be attentive mostly to what they're trying to help us understand
of what's going on, and that say, the structural meaning, rather than
just wondering like, okay, so did Eve really sleep with the snakes like
that? That's not what it says in the in the scripture, But you
can understand that that's what's going on in terms of a relationship, right right,
that there is this sort of seductive element and that after all, is
what the serpent is trying to do. It's it's an active usurpation. Yeah,
and in that case it's because he can't create. Right. And so
this this idea of usurpation, whether it's directly in this family context or outside
of it, right, is over again sort of the opposite of it.
It's what it's a sin against is creation, creating something, putting something in
which is putting something in order and filling it with life. Right. So
you look at Abraham, right, he builds this family unit, right,
which has structures, people have roles right within this extended family, which includes
not just biological family members, but his servants, his herdsman, his right,
this whole unit that he's built, and he's filled it with life in
the terms of I mean most directly in terms of reproduction, right, but
also it's sort of the prospering right of everyone and everything involved. And sort
of the shortcut of that is, no, I'm not going to build something
of my own. I'm not going to participate in continuing to build this up
and fill it with life and keep it in order. I'm going to try
and take it over. I'm going to try and make this thing that someone
else created mind. Yeah, and that of course is what the devil is
doing right from the beginning. God is your insight is perfect, so you
can understand that the image of usurpation itself, or the image of the pride
of Satan who wants to you know, even like whatever version of the fall
of the devil you you take, and whether it's a kind of Miltonian or
version or the more ancient one of the fall happening at the creation of Adam.
Right, In some ways, the idea is that the devil wants to
become our God, you know, like the devil wants to be for us
what is God and then take over take over creation, and that becomes in
some ways make trying to make creation his wife. Right. It's like that's
what the devil is always trying to do, and that's what every single temptation
that you face is trying to do for you. Right. So it's like
what every sin that tempts you is trying to make you its life, you
know, it's trying to is trying to come up above and master everything underneath
and use it as its body in order to be able to grow and to
have more power in the world. So it's like it's a fractal thing that
happens at every level of reality, this idea of something which wants to come
up, usurp and then take the body for itself. Yeah yeah. And
it's important then to also have the positive side, right of we're called upon
to create, right to build, to put an order, right to fill
with life. And it's interesting in sort of the popular zeitgeist, like you
look at HBO shows, you have Game of Thrones, and then as soon
as it ends, you have Succession, which is all about shell or in
trying to usurp and sees some kind of power, something that was created by
sort of a previous distant father, and all kinds of chaos and mayhem and
murder and destruction taking place in that context, rather than anyone trying to build
anything, create anything, bring life to anything. Yeah yeah, Okay.
So then the next step, and this is the one that I don't know
what you think about this yet. I kind of wrote you an email proposed
a little bit because one of the reasons why this story in particular had my
fascination was also because I noticed a pattern in scripture which has to do at
the beginning of something and it seems like when something begins, we always find
in some ways a we could call a pattern of in that is there at
the beginning. It seems like in some ways there's the It's like the sin
of the beginning seems to be incest, and the sin of the end seems
to be something like confusion or going to the strange woman or that. So
you we have these two extremes. You could say, it's like, you
know, Solomon saying, don't go to the strange woman because basically you'll lose
everything, like everything will kind of give be given to the stranger. But
then if you look at the pattern, you see this weird pattern of incest
as the scandal of the beginning. So and that's why when I was looking
at this story, I was like, that seems to be what it's referring
to. But I always thought that it was that it was like a like
a homosexual relationship between Ham and Noah. But I was like, I don't
want to talk about that because it's just like I and the reason why I
see it is because I want to give people the examples. It's like in
Genesis, after a Sodom and Gomorrah, you have Lot who's leap with his
daughters. Then you have at thet when God reveals himself to Abraham, you
find that Abraham also is married to his sister, like his half sister,
which is which would be which would be a sin, like which would be
something that would be prohibited in the in the law later and then when you
when you so you so you have Noah, you have law, then you
have Abraham right right there in Genesis, these three iterations of the beginnings of
worlds where there seems to be this this this trope, and then when you
bring it into Genesis, then you have it right at the beginning. And
now it's like, obviously it's not a it's not a sin at this point,
but you have the idea that you know, Eve is taken from Adam
and is his own is his own body basically is like it's him that is
that is taken out of out of him and so and so, now when
you when you say when you bring when you mentioned you said, no,
it's it's really based on the law. What you see in the law,
which is that there's a relationship with Noah's mother, Noah's wife, and then
the descendants of that are curse. I'm like, yeah, then that it
fits it even better with the way that I saw it. It kind of
kind of makes this a pattern that repeats all over all over Genesis. So
I don't know if you notice that or what do you think about my perception.
So part of there's also another corresponding trope on the other side, and
that is so if incest is too close, yeah, right, it's sort
of joining the same with the same right. Yeah. Then you also have
the trope with Esau right where they go and you know, Abraham is very
concerned with Isaac that he not marry one of the people of the land.
Yeah, right, yeah, because it's going even even in Abraham, you
have the same thing where he wants to find the right distance so for his
sons, he wants his sons to marry like a cousin or like a second
cousin or something far. Then it will it will basically take all your strength
away into the stranger fits too close. Then it creates this weird internal loop
that it will that will cause absolute chaos. Yeah, that brings about this
sort of chaos of destruction. And so both of those right, you see
set out as these as these polarities, and that really goes back to Adam
and Eve, right, and the whole idea. When Eve is created as
an Hebrew the it'ser connecto and connecto. Really it means fits together like puzzle
pieces, right. And there's a literal, very literal material biological sense that
is there, like pieces, but it goes beyond that, right, It's
not limited to that. And so the idea that yes, she is not
she is bone of Adam's bone and flesh of his flesh. But at the
same time, right, she is full in the places he's empty, right,
And and so that is the place where there is this sort of this
sort of perfect connection, right, that then is able to sort of produce
life and produce good order. Yeah. Right, So the incestuous relationship can
produce life, but but not order. Yeah, it's a new because it
actually creates confusion. And this is technically it's technically true like it because the
world has an order of manifestation. Right, It's like a father with a
mother and then children and then you know, the father has relationships like sisters
and brothers at this level and then the children come down. But if a
child has a relationship with someone that is, you know, at the same
level as their father, either their father or their mother or some or like
an uncle or whatever. Then then the relationship has become actually confused. The
identity of the people become confused because what is the child? The child is
the child? My brother? Is he? My son? Is he?
My is he? My uncle? Like? What is this child? It's
it's it's now creating confusion in the order of reality itself. It's like it's
it's literally doing that when you when you when you break the normal order of
causality of the world, right and and you end up destroying what you're trying
to you serve exactly what you're trying to gain control of, Yeah, which
is the very pattern of revolution itself. You see that, that's what That's
what happens like in the in the cosmogony, you have a very powerful image
of it, which is that you know, it's like, you know,
Saturn castrates his father, but then he has to eat his children because he's
created now a confusion of order that makes it that he's now afraid of his
own children because it's like they are they are not in the right relationship with
with him. They're gonna come to get him, and he doesn't know what
to do. And so you have this, you have this this confusion that
that yeah, that self basically like that self destroys at some ultimate yeah yeah,
and it becomes again rather than producing life, it becomes parasitic. Yeah,
it drains it away. Yeah. So so, and it's interesting because
my my brother mentioned this in his interview with Jordan Peterson, like how he
said all the scriptures about that, like all the scriptures about finding the right
distance, like the right wife, you could say, like between that which
is too close and that which is too far right the stranger that loves you
ultimately you could say, which is not a stranger that's so far that they'll
kind of swallow you up. And if you take that trope now that we
mentioned and we see that it's there this idea of you don't want to go
to the strange woman because she'll bring her gods in and then you'll be usurped
also in that way. But you also don't want to be too close because
you create this confusion of identity. In Christ, you have this weird transcendence
of all these things. You have this way in which it all kind of
gets expanded and collapse at the same time. First of all, the Samaritan
woman, I think seems to be a direct reference to this question because one
of the things Christ does is, first of all, he talks about the
well and the fountain, which is the image that Solomon uses when he talks
about this strange woman. He says, like, keep your fountain to you,
don't let it run into the streets. And he uses this images of
wells and the fountains to talk about not going towards the strange woman. And
then Christ basically is the only one who can marry this strange woman but not
be taken over by her. Right he can go to the ends of the
world, he can go all the way to the edge, but he's never
subsumed by the strange woman. Well, and that's and I think the reason
for that is the incarnation part of the theme. When you read the prophets
and they're describing the relationship between God and Israel, and why that doesn't work
is that they're too different, they're too far apart. And you look at
the analogies there. The way Israel is described, it's always as sort of
this foreigner, you know, who God finds in the desert, you know.
And Mary's right, but it's it's too far apart. But and this
is why calceed is so important, right, Christ is consubstantial with the Father
according to his divinity, and consubstantial with us. Yeah, you can see
that in some ways. It's it's because one of the things that I've noticed.
You we did this whole Seminar and Exodus, And in the Seminar and
Exodus, you can see the problem constantly of mediation, that God is constantly
conceding mediations. But he like, it's almost like he knows that this is
going to cause problems in the long run. It's like, oh, you
know, you know, you want Aaron, but then Aaron makes the golden
calf, you know. Okay, so now you have all these laws and
it's complicated, and then you see, you know, and then later in
Samuel is like, oh, you don't want a king, Like why would
you want If you want a king? All this mediation is gonna is going
to turn against you. But in some ways God's constantly conceding it because he
knows that it's inevitable because of this problem of distance. And then ultimately Christ
ends up being the key to the whole problem from the beginning of mediation,
right, so, and so Christ can make that marriage work. Yeah,
and so that's why so Pentecost is like, so when rophets say, you
know, one day the spirit of God will be poured out on all flesh,
It's like, you can imagine how weird that sounds, even to people
who now have been told to not marry the strange woman, to not go
to the stranger, to not but they it's like they know that ultimately,
at some point, you know, this marriage will be a universal marriage,
will be a marriage with all of humanity. But then how is that possible?
Considering this problem of distance? You could say, yeah, yeah,
and so humanity has to become bone of God's bone and flesh of God's flesh.
Yeah, like Eve was to Adam. And so then this is this
is to me because this is something that I've seen a few like writers try
to take on, because when we look at the symbolism of the Mother of
God in in Christianity, we have this weird thing going on, right,
which is exactly the symbolism that I'm a trick that I'm talking about, which
is that she's represented both as Christ's mother and as Christ's bride. So you
have this sense in which it's suggesting a weird like ancestual thing. Ah.
And but then when you realize what is actually happening, even if you use
the image of the Samaritan woman as example, you realize it that Christ is
in some ways he's beyond that. Do like he he doesn't have that problem.
He's kind of he's kind of transforming the whole question, you know.
And of course I'm not suggesting in any way that there was something inappropriate between
Jesus and right and Mary. But I'm saying is that the symbolism that's been
kind of expanded is that ultimately those two you know, in in in Christ
are kind of that that problem is transcendent somehow. Yeah. Part of the
problem with that, frankly is the modern American and maybe broader Western sort of
obsession with sexual relations proper in the material sense. Yeah. Well, that's
why we can't see the pattern if it's not like that's why people will struggle
to say, well, the serpent is trying to seduce even It's like,
I'm not suggesting the serpent slept with even some weird material way, but I'm
just showing you that these patterns they have different iterations, you know. Yeah,
But this is and this is this is the problem with the Augustinian treatment,
frankly, of human sexuality is that it fails to see physical sexuality as
the material signifier of a spiritual reality that remains regardless of the presence of that
material signifier. So what I mean by that is, and I've said this
to people in marriage counseling a lot. If you have a a you know,
twenty three year old couple who just got married, and you have an
eighty three year old couple that's been married for sixty years, right, the
twenty three year old couple is having a lot hotter sex, right, that's
a lot more often, probably, yes, But the eighty three year old
couple, right, has a relationship at a deeper level that goes far beyond
that, yeah, right, far far far beyond that. Yeah, in
some ways, and also kind of in that physical aspect of it, let's
say, kind of fading away, they capture there the pearl, like they
they're they're they're moving into the into the deeper part of what of what it
is that they were moving towards in the first place. And those two are
not unrelated exactly, they're directly related, right, but the one is this
sort of material signifier right of the of the deeper reality. And so but
every time we think about any of these concepts, our contemporary minds move immediately
to just the material signifier, right to just you know, titillation, and
you know, oh, you're you're talking about says like, no, we're
talking about the reality behind that, right, yeah. And so in some
ways, what it requires of us is really a complete reversal of the way
we think of what is real, you know. And it's not because we
tend to. We tend to and you see it most people today, even
you know, they tend to like oppose opposed normally the spiritual and the material.
They oppose it. And so either they fall into one or the other.
Either they wanted to to kind of uh, you know, pooh pooh
the the material practice and the material world and want to live just in the
spirit, you know, like people who say I'm spiritual but not religious,
that kind of that kind of that kind of nonsense. And then on the
other hand, you know, we have people who think that, you know,
this material world is so real, like that's what we need to chase
after. But both of those are are a mistake, you know, ultimately
to see it in this scale of hierarchy where the physical materiality is the bottom
part and the most the most let's say immediate, but ultimately has to move
us into what it's height or what it's not hiding in the bad sense,
but when it holds in its center, like what's holding it together? What
lies behind it? Yeah? Yeah, and again what lies behind it is
there, even if you want to try to deny it, Like people who
live very promiscuously, that does things to your heart and to your soul over
time. Yeah, because you can't be intimate with people physically and not also
have developed intimate connections in other ways. Yeah, like leave some part of
your soul with that person. Yeah, so because they're so intricately bound together.
Yeah. And you know, and I think that it's not The way
that the church represents our union, you know, is not arbitrary, and
the way the reason why we insist on marriage is not just some kind of
moral finger wagging, right, it is. It is and you can see
like people who live with promise, with a lot of promisecuity in their life,
and especially people that that you know, obviously don't come to repentance and
don't come to kind of transformation, you know. They they they end with
bitterness, like it's hard not for that not to not to happen. Yeah,
And repentance again is not like feeling bad and whipping yourself. Repentance is
being healed from the damage that's been done, you know. And and yeah,
so there there there sort of is there is hope for that. Yeah.
And and part of the part of the problem with the way we talk
about marriage now is that we've got this very modern idea of the nuclear family
behind it. Yea, And that conception of marriage and family leaves a lot
of people out and has caused us a lot of problems. So I'm a
big advocate as people who listen to Lord of Spirits it I describe it as
arguing for the abolition of the nuclear family just to get everybody freaked out,
but that we need to come back to within our church communities and things,
a more robust idea of family, like the kind of families we see in
Genesis of extended family. You know, that includes a lot that that is
is able to include a lot of people, It's able to include an adult
who for whatever reason has not gotten married. Yeah, but it doesn't mean
like I understand what you're saying, but the nuclear family should I would see
it this way. I'd rather see it as like the nuclear family should be
just expanded into this. Right, for an expanded family to exist, you
need someone to have been a strong nuclear family and then be able to expand
that like breathe out and to include the uncle that, like you said,
don't get married or like whatever, someone who got divorced or some you know,
someone who died and the child gets up ends up kind of going to
their brother whatever, like that has to be something that has to in order
for us to be able to live in that more expanded way. Definitely.
Yeah, I think the older, the much older, what family meant for
most of human history, Yeah, has just been ground down to the nuclear
family. Definitely. You know, And and I think right now, so
much effort is put into trying to preserve that little bit that's left that we
really need to redirect into rebuilding. Not just trying to preserve what the culture
and society has left us, but build out, build back, and build
out from there. Again. So I have another question that just to get
back to the to the Noah's story and everything. Do you think there's do
you think or do you see a relationship between the way that also you're interpreting
first of all to serve of Noah, then also the the the story,
the way that we talk about the fall of the the idea of the Nephilin,
and all this questions that when Saint Paul talks about the covering, you
know that weird, that weird sentence when Saint Paul says, you know that
that that women should wear coverings for the sake of the angels, do you
think that there's a relationship between this idea of uncovering and and the union,
let's say, in that sense. Yes, can you help us work that
out a little bit? Yeah, because we all have that intuition, but
it's fuzzy, like it's a fuzzy it's a fuzzy thing. Yeah, we're
gonna get into all the really wild stuff here in this one video. So
there's a phrase that Saint Paul uses in that context that's often translated in English
symbol of authority. So the word there, I'll go ahead and say it.
The word there is the Greek word for scrotum. Mm hmm, yeah,
I didn't want to know that. So and so, part of what's
going on there is uh Saint Paul seems to be referencing uh Greco Roman medical
texts, so the understanding in Roman medicine. And you see this if you
read how Saint John Chrisostom deals with this past the larger passage, you can
see it reflected in what he says to But if you go and read like
the Hippocratic corpus, they believe that hair served as sort of a receptacle for
male seed, that it was sort of drawn up into the body by hair.
And therefore, so a woman who wore her hair long exposed was presenting
herself as sexually available. And likewise, a man who wore his hair long
culturally was considered to be presenting himself as sexually available to other men. And
that's why, say Paul says, having long hair as a shame right to
a man. And you're going, well, wait a minute, what about
Nazareites and stuff. Right, he's not referring to that he's talking about in
this context, right, And so because of that, essentially a woman's long
hair was seen as a genital structure. That's why he can use that word
right to refer to it. And so to have that exposed in worship,
right, would be presenting oneself as sort of sexually available within the context of
worship. He's writing this to Corinth where, to be super blunt, most
of the religious festivals were accompanied by orgies, right, and saying there is
there is no place for that within right, the Christian worship context, and
then is referencing in terms of the because of the angels, is referencing back
to the idea of the nephelo Yeah, right, which proceeded, as you
mentioned earlier, out of this ritual context, Yeah, which is happening,
which is a ritual context in the worship like they are in a ritual context
there. And so there's like a confusion placing yourself as available to receive the
influence of higher states, but not being properly covered so that you could become
like a you could become like a receptacle for the wrong, like for for
the let's say, for the yeah, for for for the intermediary beings.
You could say it that way. Maybe right, this is and this is
the ability to bring life into the world is a power that women possess that
needs to be protected because of how powerful it is. Yeah, and so
I mean it makes sense. It's very it's complex because it's working, it's
working on it's working on all these multiple levels at the same time, which
is in some ways we can understand. It's something like, if you were
going to be very boring about it, we could say something like, if
the woman is uncovered in in the in the in the in the context of
worship in a religious ritual, she is opening herself to influences that are that
would be kind of these free floating intermediary influences, you know, that aren't
God himself, that are kind of like this kind of intermediary world that's messy
and full of mixture of angels and demons or whatever. Uh, and that
and that in some ways that would be dangerous for her, dangerous for the
church, dangerous for yeah. Right. And and Noah's sin that in the
case is not just oh he got drunk and embarrassed himself. Somehow he got
drunk and did something embarrassing, which you know you shouldn't do. But in
terms of like severe sins, right, not probably top of most people's list.
His his sin is being drunk and inebriated right on the good things of
this world and failing to protect right the the his nakedness right intact. Yeah,
well them is there large because Laud gets drunk before he becore before right
he passes out, and yeah for his daughters, and so there's like a
there's definitely a narrative relationship between the two. And I think that it's because
ikonographically, like we represented straightforward me and so if you if you have an
iconographic representation of the scene, you will see you will see like a vine,
You'll see Noah drunk, and then you'll see Ham like pointing at his
nakedness usually, and then you'll see like the the two sons walking backwards,
you know, with like a sheet something. And I think that it's it's
completely appropriate to kind of take it at the first level, especially if we're
going to represent it visually, but if you want to understand how it relates
to the rest of the Bible and how it relates, you know, to
all these these moments of beginnings and all these moments of transgression all the way
into Christ, and we have to see that it's more than just this kind
of like this kind of weird thing because if you think about it, like
you know it, it's like anything, right you you think, Okay,
so all of Canaan is cursed, like the whole, not just the sun,
but like the oldest sentences of Canaan is cursed because his father saw his
own father naked. It's like, man, that's rough. That's a that's
a rough thing. But that's also see that's a the father son thing.
In scripture is always talking about repeating the pattern. Yeah, right, So
the Canaanites had come and laid claim to this land that belonged to God,
and that was not their inheritance. It was someone else's inheritance, that's right.
Yeah, So it repeats it in the in the context of the two
people's right, and so that that that pattern piece. Yeah. In the
lockcase, the idea of him failing to protect his daughters is really brought out
leading up to that because if you read closely of the story, he had
betrothed both of them to men of sodom, yes, right, yeah,
and he basically he proposed to basically like just throw him out there man,
to give them to the mob. Right and and so yeah, that final
episode, right, is of it as it's really restrowth for sin. Like
it's like it's always like it's a pendulum where he was willing to give his
daughters up to these these destructive men, and that was like the sin of
the too far, you could say. And also this this, and then
finally turns back on him, and then he becomes the father of his own
grandchildren, you know, right right, Yeah, Abraham is so concerned he
wants to find Isaaca wife or besode people, whereas Lot is just like a
couple of the guys here in town. You guys could marry them. That's
fine, that's fine. Yeah, well, and especially in that sense because
you also see in the in the they're already in Genesis, you have this
image where who is it Hamore who wants to marry into the Jacob's family and
says, if we marry their daughters, then we'll basically take them over.
Like it'll take a while, but you know, at some point we'll just
take whatever they have because we'll just keep taking their daughters, and then we'll
overwhelm them and then they'll they'll basically disappear and stop them exactly, you know.
And so it's like that's the image that Solomon tries to bring about when
he talks about marrying the strange woman or the idea of the strange gods,
Like, you have to find that balance so that you're not swallowed up by
the by the outside. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And that's and you
can apply to the I mean, I don't want to sound like I'm making
this tripe, but you can apply this at every level of structure that we're
involved with. Like they say, you have any kind of team, you
know, it's like and you're doing something like if you just constantly circulate within
yourself, like you know, it's like you just constantly everybody is always withinside
the team in a way that at some point, you know, just becomes
circular. You're going to break down. Like, if you do that for
a while, it's going to break down. At some point you won't be
able to But if you just like go on the street and just hire anybody,
just go out and like, oh, you you you're not doing anything,
why don't you come work on our team, then you run the risk
of becoming You have to find that balance between you know, what we're doing
and innovation or new or new blood, and so you have to kind of
find you're always trying to find that balance between that which will invigorate the team,
but won't you know, basically take its identity away in the long term.
Yeah, well, I think it's even I think it's even true.
At the level of the human soul, we're very much now able with the
Internet, for example, to put ourselves into an echo chamber. Yeah,
where we only ever talk to people who endorse everything we ever say do and
think, you know, who agree with us about everything right right now,
that's exactly right, you know. And the solution to that is not the
opposite is not to just expose yourself to everything and be completely credulous and believe
anything anyone tells you and sort of sell everything out. But there's again the
middle distance. Yeah yeah, and you can see when you don't do that
what happens. Like there's a this is a weird example, but it's the
one that comes to my mind, which is that there's an interesting debate online,
a monk debate between uh it's like Matt Tebe and forget I forget his
name, and like Malcolm Gladwell, right, and yeah, I've actually heard
it. See that it's about media captured. And you can tell that the
Malcolm Gladwell side was so much in their echo chamber. They didn't even understand
the arguments of the of their opponents, and so they kind of they were
just in this illusion of their coherent world. And then their world just got
shattered on stage, like smashed into visas, and they lost the debate by
the biggest margin anybody's ever lost a monk debate. And they don't they still
don't understand why that happened, because it's like they're so into their own like
and so you can actually see it. It's like it's actually even as a
Christian, let's say, and if you just have these weird like can turn
things like that, you're just talking to other orthodox Christians and all you talk
about are like divine energies like all day and then and then you haven't ever
you never encountered anybody from the outside, You haven't discussed with with with anybody
outside. Then at some point when you when you're challenged, you'll just you'll
shatter. Yeah, and there's no there's no creative power in that. Yeah,
that's ever gonna go anywhere and produce anything new, like give life to
anything. Yeah, anything living, Yeah, exactly, all right, this
was this was wonderful. I mean, we really went right to the edge
there. Yeah, I'm pretty sure you weren't going to try and monetize this,
so that's probably good. It's like I, I didn't expect you to
use you to use the word scrotum in our discussion, but there you go.
That's that's how it goes. And so I and so thank you for
a time. Thank you also for everything you do and and everybody I am
also you know, and I'm really excited to have you talk to us the
Symbolic World Summit. It's gonna be it's gonna be amazing. And don't forget
people also to look out for the Symbolic World Journal, which we'll have his
father Stephen's exposition about this very question in printed in the journal. So,
so, a lot of great things coming on the horizon. Is there something
you're working on that you want to give us a peak on, Well,
Lord Willing the next book. I've been doing this big project on Saint Paul,
so sort of from an orthodox perspective. So that's probably the next thing
in print you'll see coming. All right, that'll probably sometime next year wonderful.
All right, thank you, father Stephen. It's great to talk to
you. If you enjoy these videos and podcasts, please go to the Symbolic
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