1 00:00:00,640 --> 00:00:04,200 So this is all by way of saying, not only is the metric system 2 00:00:04,440 --> 00:00:08,759 demonic, but cause and effect is made up. In the Middle Ages, 3 00:00:09,199 --> 00:00:13,400 people did not see history and again you could read some of Valaskan's essays about 4 00:00:13,400 --> 00:00:15,599 this, and he's even got a whole section on it in a History of 5 00:00:15,640 --> 00:00:18,359 the Island of People are curious about this. But in the Middle Ages, 6 00:00:18,399 --> 00:00:22,920 people didn't see history as a series of causes and effects. They saw history 7 00:00:22,920 --> 00:00:26,879 as a battle between good and evil, which means that the most important thing 8 00:00:26,920 --> 00:00:30,640 in history has already happened, because that was the crucifixion and the resurrection of 9 00:00:30,679 --> 00:00:34,200 Jesus Christ. Right, But history is this battle between good and evil. 10 00:00:34,240 --> 00:00:37,679 This is what the whole Apocalypse of Saint John is about. Is history seen 11 00:00:37,679 --> 00:00:52,920 as this conflict between good and evil in which good ultimately triumphs. This is 12 00:00:53,000 --> 00:01:07,920 Johnathan Pejo. Welcome to the Symbolic World. So hello everyone, I am 13 00:01:07,959 --> 00:01:12,840 back with Richard Rowland for another Universal History episode. This week, Richard is 14 00:01:12,879 --> 00:01:17,719 going to give us a presentation that he's prepared in another context, but that 15 00:01:18,439 --> 00:01:21,920 I was very successful. It is about how to read like a medieval how 16 00:01:21,959 --> 00:01:23,920 to look at the ancient world, how to read the text how to engage 17 00:01:23,959 --> 00:01:29,000 with the ancient world in a way that's truthful for us today. And before 18 00:01:29,040 --> 00:01:32,879 we start, I just want to make sure you know about the Bewolf class 19 00:01:32,959 --> 00:01:37,519 that we are putting together. Richard is going to give a Christian reading of 20 00:01:37,519 --> 00:01:41,239 Bewolf that we're going to have on the Symbolic World Community. I will be 21 00:01:41,319 --> 00:01:45,159 part of it. I will be taking the class and also giving some comments 22 00:01:45,200 --> 00:01:49,799 in the discussion. And so look at the description. There'll be a link 23 00:01:49,879 --> 00:01:53,439 in the description below, and we would love to see you come in. 24 00:01:53,519 --> 00:01:57,159 This is a new thing we're doing, and we're really excited about this possibility 25 00:01:57,159 --> 00:02:01,120 of diving in way more than what we do in just these podcasts and helping 26 00:02:01,159 --> 00:02:05,480 you learn how exactly like what we're talking about today, how to read these 27 00:02:05,519 --> 00:02:08,879 old texts, how to make them relevant to you today. So Richard kick 28 00:02:08,960 --> 00:02:13,280 us off, all right, Well, thanks Jonathan. I'm very excited about 29 00:02:13,319 --> 00:02:15,759 both the Beowolf class, which is I mean, I think I've said this 30 00:02:15,800 --> 00:02:20,240 before on this podcast, but if I had to just have one book, 31 00:02:20,280 --> 00:02:22,719 that is the only book I could study and talk about for the rest of 32 00:02:22,759 --> 00:02:25,159 my life, you know, setting aside the Holy Scriptures, it would probably 33 00:02:25,159 --> 00:02:30,639 be Beowolf. So's there's nothing that I'm more excited to talk about and to 34 00:02:30,639 --> 00:02:32,439 get to talk about it with you and with all the people who have signed 35 00:02:32,520 --> 00:02:36,159 up to be a part of the class and a part of the live discussion 36 00:02:36,199 --> 00:02:38,319 everything else. It's going to be great. You guys can go to the 37 00:02:38,360 --> 00:02:40,479 Symbolic World Store. I think there's a link there we can get signed up 38 00:02:40,479 --> 00:02:44,919 for the class. So, but what we're talking about today, this is 39 00:02:44,960 --> 00:02:49,000 a talk that I gave at Father Footy Savant's parish, Sat. Sava's Orthodox 40 00:02:49,120 --> 00:02:52,759 Church here in Allen, Texas. So shout out to Father Photius, who 41 00:02:52,759 --> 00:02:57,520 I know listens to these to the Universal History episodes, and his family. 42 00:02:57,840 --> 00:03:00,199 They were wonderful. They, you know, really great church, really dynamic 43 00:03:00,280 --> 00:03:04,479 parish. If you can ever, if you're ever in the North Texas area 44 00:03:04,479 --> 00:03:06,759 and you can check out and support the work they're doing there, I think 45 00:03:06,800 --> 00:03:09,680 it's just incredible. He has one of the most like I would say medieval 46 00:03:09,759 --> 00:03:14,120 churches in the area in terms of the way that they've built their building and 47 00:03:14,199 --> 00:03:16,280 laid out the interior and the art and the iconography that they're doing now. 48 00:03:16,280 --> 00:03:21,000 It's just fantastic. But So this is a talk that I gave as a 49 00:03:21,000 --> 00:03:23,960 fundraiser for his parish, and a lot of people asked for a recording. 50 00:03:23,280 --> 00:03:27,280 It wasn't really recorded then, but I wanted to do it now in the 51 00:03:27,319 --> 00:03:31,039 context of the universal history discussion because one of the questions that I get the 52 00:03:31,080 --> 00:03:36,120 most often is something like, Okay, but how do we actually read these 53 00:03:36,159 --> 00:03:38,759 stories like and see the things that you guys are seeing when you're talking about 54 00:03:38,759 --> 00:03:40,919 them? Basically, like, well, how do I do this at home? 55 00:03:42,280 --> 00:03:44,840 How do I tell my kids about this stuff? Right? When my 56 00:03:44,960 --> 00:03:47,560 kid asked the question, you know, okay, but did dragons really exist? 57 00:03:47,840 --> 00:03:52,639 Or you know, okay, this thing happens in a Saint story? 58 00:03:52,639 --> 00:03:54,960 But did they really do that? Like? How do I answer that question 59 00:03:55,039 --> 00:03:59,639 for them? So what I wanted to do was to actually kind of pull 60 00:03:59,680 --> 00:04:00,599 back the hurt in a little bit, so it's can be a little bit 61 00:04:00,599 --> 00:04:04,800 of an apocalyptic episode this time, and just talk about some of the underlying 62 00:04:05,360 --> 00:04:13,280 assumptions or the underlying understandings that we use when we read these old stories and 63 00:04:13,319 --> 00:04:15,960 the way that we read them, and maybe that'll help people kind of move 64 00:04:15,960 --> 00:04:19,040 in that direction. So I wanted to start with a quote from C. 65 00:04:19,199 --> 00:04:23,879 S. Lewis, which is where all Orthodox converts, American Orthodox converts have 66 00:04:23,959 --> 00:04:26,639 to begin. Everything is with a C. S. Lewis quote. This 67 00:04:26,720 --> 00:04:30,959 is in his essay de Odendius Poetis. He says, there are two ways 68 00:04:30,959 --> 00:04:33,000 of enjoying the past, as there are two ways of enjoying a foreign country. 69 00:04:33,319 --> 00:04:40,160 One man carries his English re abroad with him and brings it home unchanged. 70 00:04:40,199 --> 00:04:43,480 We could say, like his americanness now, because I think Americans have 71 00:04:43,560 --> 00:04:47,120 displaced the English as like the worst tourists. But anyway, wherever he goes, 72 00:04:47,120 --> 00:04:50,120 he consorts with the other English tourists. By a good hotel, he 73 00:04:50,240 --> 00:04:54,759 means one that is like an English hotel. He complains of the bad tea 74 00:04:54,800 --> 00:04:59,600 where he might have had excellent coffee. He finds the natives quaint and enjoys 75 00:04:59,600 --> 00:05:02,279 their quot In the same way, there is a man who carries his modernity 76 00:05:02,360 --> 00:05:06,560 with him through all his reading of past literatures, and preserved it, preserves 77 00:05:06,600 --> 00:05:12,519 it intact. The highlights in all ancient and medieval poetry are for him the 78 00:05:12,560 --> 00:05:16,759 bits that resemble or can be so read that they seem to resemble the poetry 79 00:05:16,800 --> 00:05:20,759 of his own age. But there's another sort of traveling and another sort of 80 00:05:20,800 --> 00:05:26,199 reading. You can eat the local food and drink the local wines. You 81 00:05:26,240 --> 00:05:29,240 can share the foreign life. You can begin to see the foreign country as 82 00:05:29,240 --> 00:05:32,560 it looks, not to the tourist, but to its inhabitants. You can 83 00:05:32,600 --> 00:05:39,040 come home modified, thinking and feeling as you did not think and feel before. 84 00:05:39,680 --> 00:05:43,920 So with old literature you can go beyond the first impressions that a poem 85 00:05:43,959 --> 00:05:47,600 makes on your modern sensibility. By study of things outside the poem, by 86 00:05:47,639 --> 00:05:51,680 comparing it with other poems, by steeping yourself in the vanished period. You 87 00:05:51,720 --> 00:05:56,800 can then re enter the poem with eyes more like those of the natives. 88 00:05:57,319 --> 00:06:01,879 And so the premise that sort of like kicks off this our discussion today is 89 00:06:01,959 --> 00:06:06,240 that the situation for us as Christians should be that the world is a foreign 90 00:06:06,279 --> 00:06:11,360 country. Right, Saint Peter says, I urge you, as sojourners and 91 00:06:11,439 --> 00:06:15,160 exiles. I think the King James says, strangers and aliens, to abstain 92 00:06:15,199 --> 00:06:18,680 from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul. The world 93 00:06:18,680 --> 00:06:21,720 should be a foreign place to us, But for most of us, especially 94 00:06:21,800 --> 00:06:27,120 those of us who are moving out of a modern context back towards some more 95 00:06:27,120 --> 00:06:31,040 traditional form of Christianity. Right, it's usually the reverse. We come to 96 00:06:31,079 --> 00:06:38,000 the church finding it as a foreign country. And actually I would even say, 97 00:06:38,240 --> 00:06:41,920 for instance, you don't hear it actually very often anymore. But one 98 00:06:41,959 --> 00:06:46,600 of the sometimes one of the objections that I'll hear when somebody visits an Eastern 99 00:06:46,680 --> 00:06:48,439 Orthodox church for the first time, it's something like, oh, well, 100 00:06:48,480 --> 00:06:51,600 it's just it's too Eastern. It's too difficult for the Western mind to understand, 101 00:06:51,600 --> 00:06:56,759 et cetera. As though there's something like hard coded into the Western brain, 102 00:06:57,319 --> 00:07:00,040 you know, that can't understand people going in and out doors or something. 103 00:07:00,079 --> 00:07:02,079 You know, it's like a little what do you really mean? But 104 00:07:02,319 --> 00:07:06,079 but but what they're really saying though, and people people don't realize this, 105 00:07:06,160 --> 00:07:12,079 But what they're really saying is it's not modern enough, right, It's not 106 00:07:12,160 --> 00:07:15,360 an East West thing. And I've you know, I've said many times and 107 00:07:15,560 --> 00:07:17,959 I will keep saying it until I'm blue in the face, that the real 108 00:07:17,959 --> 00:07:23,160 difference is an East versus West, it's modern versus ancient. Right, So 109 00:07:23,439 --> 00:07:29,720 we come as modern people encountering a pre modern church, a pre modern holy 110 00:07:29,759 --> 00:07:32,759 tradition, and actually listen even if you're a Protestant and you've got no interest 111 00:07:32,879 --> 00:07:38,360 in becoming Eastern Orthodox or traditional Roman Catholic or something like that. The very 112 00:07:38,399 --> 00:07:42,199 fact that you have the Holy Scriptures, right, which is a pre modern 113 00:07:42,439 --> 00:07:45,079 you know, text or a series of pre modern texts, it is something 114 00:07:45,319 --> 00:07:48,279 which is actually not written for you. Now, all scripture is written for 115 00:07:48,319 --> 00:07:53,079 you because it's scripture, just like the liturgy is always for you because it's 116 00:07:53,160 --> 00:07:57,519 the liturgy. But you weren't the original audience, right, and it was 117 00:07:57,560 --> 00:08:03,000 something that was created, you know, through human tools, and those people 118 00:08:03,480 --> 00:08:07,480 that wrote those things were not, for instance, they were not twenty first 119 00:08:07,519 --> 00:08:13,879 century Americans. One time, when I was I was teaching this is my 120 00:08:13,920 --> 00:08:18,480 old church before we became Orthodox. I was teaching a family. We had 121 00:08:18,480 --> 00:08:20,160 a sort of a family integrated Bible study, so like an all age of 122 00:08:20,160 --> 00:08:22,360 Sunday School. Basically it's this is one of the things that I did. 123 00:08:22,800 --> 00:08:26,199 It was a great class, by the way, I love those people love 124 00:08:26,279 --> 00:08:28,639 that class. It was so fun. But one of the you know, 125 00:08:28,680 --> 00:08:30,879 we're going through some of the psalms, and so we come to some of 126 00:08:30,920 --> 00:08:33,879 these, like the Royal Psalms. The psalms have to do with like the 127 00:08:33,000 --> 00:08:35,399 king, right, And I just said, hey, guys, just to 128 00:08:35,600 --> 00:08:39,039 like, you know, just to because I'm an agent of chaos in the 129 00:08:39,080 --> 00:08:41,080 world. I just you know, I was like, I was like, 130 00:08:41,120 --> 00:08:43,559 hey, guys, So you know, as we get into this, we're 131 00:08:43,559 --> 00:08:46,200 going to read the Psalm, and it's about you know, God saved the 132 00:08:46,279 --> 00:08:48,080 king, right, That's what the Psalm is about. And then at the 133 00:08:48,200 --> 00:08:52,519 end, I said, now, having read the Psalm, what would you 134 00:08:52,559 --> 00:08:56,399 guys say the most biblical form of government is? And everyone in the class, 135 00:08:56,399 --> 00:09:00,360 I mean, there's like forty people in this class. We want to 136 00:09:00,360 --> 00:09:03,279 say, oh, obviously it's a representative republic, you know, not even 137 00:09:03,320 --> 00:09:07,279 a democracy. They said, representative republic is a good, good American conservative. 138 00:09:07,679 --> 00:09:11,840 But I mean, this is just it's a little silly of an example, 139 00:09:11,840 --> 00:09:16,240 but it's a classic example of sort of taking our frame and trying to 140 00:09:16,600 --> 00:09:20,000 take it to the way that we read the scriptures. Right, And so 141 00:09:20,559 --> 00:09:22,600 we do this because we're like that first kind of tourist, right, we 142 00:09:22,720 --> 00:09:26,639 fail to realize that that holy tradition, so the scripture, the liturgy, 143 00:09:26,679 --> 00:09:31,639 the Doctor, and the moral law of the Church that we've received was never 144 00:09:31,679 --> 00:09:37,000 intended to satisfy our tastes. So when we encounter things that are sort of 145 00:09:37,080 --> 00:09:39,559 quaint, we're like, oh, isn't that nice? They used to believe 146 00:09:39,600 --> 00:09:43,639 that. And when we encounter things that we don't like, it's because they're 147 00:09:43,679 --> 00:09:48,120 too strange, or they're too regressive, or they're too eastern or what have 148 00:09:48,200 --> 00:09:52,440 you. And so the point of actually this whole project, I would say 149 00:09:52,440 --> 00:09:56,759 the entire project of my adult life, has been to help people be the 150 00:09:56,799 --> 00:10:01,559 good kind of tourist. Right, Several people have said, you know, 151 00:10:01,679 --> 00:10:05,679 in the discussion around the Universal History videos, well, obviously you can't just 152 00:10:05,799 --> 00:10:09,799 turn your mind and you're you can't wind back the clock. You can't just 153 00:10:09,840 --> 00:10:13,279 become a thirteenth century Russian peasant, as much as maybe you would like to 154 00:10:13,279 --> 00:10:16,879 do. And that's that's true, that's true. But you could at least 155 00:10:16,879 --> 00:10:20,399 start by becoming the good kind of tourists. And so the idea is to 156 00:10:20,919 --> 00:10:24,120 is to kind of shift from seeing the Church and the scriptures as a foreign 157 00:10:24,159 --> 00:10:28,480 country to seeing it as our home right. That all of these things, 158 00:10:28,639 --> 00:10:31,919 including the Holy Scriptures, are foreign to us in the sense that they're pre 159 00:10:31,000 --> 00:10:35,879 modern, that they're Eastern. You know, Psalms were not written, you 160 00:10:35,919 --> 00:10:41,799 know, in you know, Kentucky. They're ancient, they're hierarchical. We're 161 00:10:41,840 --> 00:10:45,440 modern, we're postmodern. We're obsessed with up to the minute relevance with being 162 00:10:45,519 --> 00:10:48,320 egalitarian. And so when we try to wrangle with tradition by adjusting it or 163 00:10:48,360 --> 00:10:54,120 rebalancing it for modern day sensibilities instead of encountering it for what it is, 164 00:10:54,279 --> 00:10:56,279 then it it, you know, we end up doing violence to it, 165 00:10:56,399 --> 00:11:01,159 right, Yeah, And it's also like there's also something say that's important, 166 00:11:01,200 --> 00:11:07,039 which is that the modern world has been the world in which society has moved 167 00:11:07,039 --> 00:11:11,960 away from its faith, has moved away from its attachment, you know, 168 00:11:11,320 --> 00:11:16,679 to scripture to faith, and so it's not surprising that in a world that 169 00:11:16,919 --> 00:11:22,360 was set up the thing that brought us away from faith, in that world, 170 00:11:22,440 --> 00:11:28,399 it would be more difficult for us to understand the vehicle by which faith 171 00:11:28,559 --> 00:11:33,200 was brought into the West. And so we have to kind of humble ourselves 172 00:11:33,519 --> 00:11:37,679 and be careful because one of the problems that happens is that in the modern 173 00:11:37,720 --> 00:11:43,200 world you have two reactions. You have a kind of modernism that uses modern 174 00:11:43,240 --> 00:11:46,399 tools like science, like you know, a kind of materialism, a kind 175 00:11:46,399 --> 00:11:52,120 of rationalism to destroy the past, and then you have strange people that still 176 00:11:52,159 --> 00:11:56,240 embrace rationalism and materialism and a kind of that kind of attitude, but then 177 00:11:56,320 --> 00:12:00,159 use the very tools to try to defend text that were never meant to be 178 00:12:00,279 --> 00:12:03,759 that in the first place. Yes, my own childhood is I mean, 179 00:12:05,080 --> 00:12:11,679 I grew up in like a really hard line younger creationists, like literalist reading 180 00:12:11,720 --> 00:12:15,679 of Genesis, right, where basically, like they they'll they'll take certain lines 181 00:12:15,720 --> 00:12:18,440 in Genesis and try to like twist them to conform to sort of here's some 182 00:12:18,480 --> 00:12:22,320 fringe scientific theory. Right, And there's a whole discussion to be had around 183 00:12:22,320 --> 00:12:26,279 this. Let's say, I certainly believe God is the maker of all things 184 00:12:26,360 --> 00:12:35,919 visible and invisible, and really strongly there's something deep in my core that reacts 185 00:12:35,000 --> 00:12:41,720 against the myth of evolutionism. Right. But the problem with this approach is 186 00:12:41,799 --> 00:12:46,919 the way in which it subjects the scriptures to science. Actually, what both 187 00:12:48,120 --> 00:12:54,639 what both like the new atheists and the and the younger you know, answers 188 00:12:54,639 --> 00:12:58,519 to Genesis and those folks, what they both agree on is that science is 189 00:12:58,519 --> 00:13:01,080 the standard. Yeah. I've heard where people say science is the mind of 190 00:13:01,120 --> 00:13:05,159 God like in church. Yeah, science is seeing the mind of God, 191 00:13:05,200 --> 00:13:07,799 and I was like, yeah, I was like seventeen, and I was 192 00:13:07,799 --> 00:13:13,000 already like I don't know about that. That's that's really that's not good. 193 00:13:13,320 --> 00:13:16,200 Yeah, that's not great. Okay. So anyway, we want to help 194 00:13:16,240 --> 00:13:20,600 people be at least begin as being the second kind of visitor, the second 195 00:13:20,679 --> 00:13:22,360 kind of tourist, so that when we come to the church, the liturgy, 196 00:13:22,559 --> 00:13:26,919 and to the scriptures, we encounter them not as some kind of a 197 00:13:26,960 --> 00:13:30,519 foreign country that needs to change and good form to the culture that we came 198 00:13:30,559 --> 00:13:33,679 from, but actually as our true home, right, as the soul's true 199 00:13:33,679 --> 00:13:39,480 home. So one way to kind of frame this would be to say is 200 00:13:39,519 --> 00:13:43,679 to think in terms of mirrors, mirrors and windows. Right, that ancient 201 00:13:43,720 --> 00:13:48,759 literature and ancient liturgy could either be a mirror that reflects our own faces back 202 00:13:48,799 --> 00:13:52,039 to us, where we sort of see the things we're looking for, or 203 00:13:52,080 --> 00:13:56,279 it could be a window through which we gaze upon paradise, upon the stars, 204 00:13:56,320 --> 00:13:58,480 upon the heavenly city, upon the love that moves the sun and the 205 00:13:58,519 --> 00:14:01,200 other stars, as Dante would say. Right, And so that's kind of 206 00:14:01,200 --> 00:14:05,279 the goal here, is to cultivate this. I'll explain this at the end, 207 00:14:05,279 --> 00:14:09,919 but this mystogogical vision of the cosmos. So this being said, there 208 00:14:09,960 --> 00:14:13,000 are four things that I would put forward as these are shifts you must make 209 00:14:13,519 --> 00:14:18,519 if you're going to read ancient, any ancient literature, let's say ancient let's 210 00:14:18,519 --> 00:14:20,559 say pre modern literature, because it's it's really ancient and medieval. Right, 211 00:14:20,600 --> 00:14:24,240 So if you're going to read any pre modern literature and really read it charitably, 212 00:14:24,720 --> 00:14:28,320 there are kind of four shifts that you kind of have to adopt. 213 00:14:28,279 --> 00:14:31,559 So the first is a shift in the way that we think about authorship and 214 00:14:31,679 --> 00:14:37,399 originality. And this is where this is where a lot of the damage was 215 00:14:37,440 --> 00:14:41,399 done before people realized what was happening, starting in the nineteenth century. So 216 00:14:41,440 --> 00:14:46,559 we have this, we have this discipline called signed call textual criticism, and 217 00:14:48,879 --> 00:14:52,159 on its own, it's just a set of tools for figuring out when something 218 00:14:52,200 --> 00:14:54,399 was written and who wrote it. And so in that sense, you know, 219 00:14:54,519 --> 00:14:58,600 like like many tools, it could be used in a good way. 220 00:14:58,000 --> 00:15:01,799 I have, you know, in in my own academic career, I have 221 00:15:01,919 --> 00:15:07,600 engaged in textual criticism, specifically in and around Old Norse poetry. And actually 222 00:15:07,639 --> 00:15:11,639 some version of this has existed since the ancient world. Right famously, origin 223 00:15:13,080 --> 00:15:15,399 you know, one of the most important, you know, his most important 224 00:15:15,440 --> 00:15:20,200 contributions to the tradition was essentially word of textual criticism, looking, you know, 225 00:15:20,240 --> 00:15:24,840 comparing the Septuagint to the Hebrew Old Testament. People have always known that 226 00:15:24,879 --> 00:15:30,480 there were difficulties resented by manuscripts, and that manuscripts contradicted each other. Like 227 00:15:30,519 --> 00:15:35,480 people weren't stupid. It's true that literacy rates were generally lower, although not 228 00:15:35,519 --> 00:15:39,200 as low as people sometimes think they were. But people who were literate read 229 00:15:39,240 --> 00:15:41,759 a lot more than we do today. Like we live in a post literate 230 00:15:41,759 --> 00:15:45,919 society where we think we can read because we can read like a tweet or 231 00:15:45,960 --> 00:15:50,679 an x I don't even know what we call them anymore. But like we 232 00:15:50,679 --> 00:15:52,919 think we're literate because we can read like a status update or you know, 233 00:15:54,000 --> 00:15:56,000 a headline or something like that. But actually most of us just read two 234 00:15:56,159 --> 00:16:00,559 sentences and we skip to the next paragraph. We those first two sentences and 235 00:16:00,600 --> 00:16:03,759 so on. Right, we're actually sort of postliterate. But people who could 236 00:16:03,759 --> 00:16:08,720 read in pre modern times read deeply. They read deeply, so they noticed 237 00:16:08,759 --> 00:16:12,480 these differences. They noticed way more differences. Actually, sometimes I'll be reading 238 00:16:12,480 --> 00:16:18,279 along like in the you know, something like the Ambiguo, which is all 239 00:16:18,320 --> 00:16:21,799 about these difficulties, and you know, written by Saint Maximus or something like 240 00:16:21,840 --> 00:16:25,080 that, some text Like I'll be reading along and he'd be like, ah, 241 00:16:25,200 --> 00:16:29,279 now here, we clearly have what appears to be a difference between this 242 00:16:29,360 --> 00:16:30,759 gospel writer and this gospel right, And I'm looking and I'm like, well, 243 00:16:30,759 --> 00:16:33,519 it doesn't really actually seem like is a difference to me. Right. 244 00:16:33,519 --> 00:16:37,200 They were much more precise in the ways that they look for these things. 245 00:16:37,240 --> 00:16:41,840 So people always knew, and people always understood that that there were things like 246 00:16:42,000 --> 00:16:47,039 translation errors, copyist errors, right, which could render a phrase difficult to 247 00:16:47,159 --> 00:16:55,320 understand. But the pre modern mind saw these difficulties as being providential, actually, 248 00:16:55,360 --> 00:17:00,840 as an indication that there is some deeper meaning the reader was intended by 249 00:17:00,879 --> 00:17:06,759 the Holy Spirit to unearth. It's like it's like the uh say, like 250 00:17:06,759 --> 00:17:08,519 like the corner of a treasure chest poking up out of the ground, and 251 00:17:08,559 --> 00:17:11,359 you walk along, you trip across it, and then you noticed, oh, 252 00:17:11,359 --> 00:17:15,440 there's some very treasure right here. Yeah. But and I want to 253 00:17:15,599 --> 00:17:19,000 defend that very precisely for people, because people might think that it's just a 254 00:17:19,079 --> 00:17:23,480 cope, you know, And I think that you can actually structurally you can 255 00:17:23,799 --> 00:17:29,559 understand it, which is that Imagine a story that you tell and that you 256 00:17:29,640 --> 00:17:33,359 have to remember. And one of the things that makes you help remember a 257 00:17:33,400 --> 00:17:37,440 story is it's just general coherence. It's like if it makes sense, then 258 00:17:37,480 --> 00:17:40,240 you remember it better. Like if it makes sense, then you can attend 259 00:17:40,240 --> 00:17:44,359 to it more easily. But the fact that in stories that are very ancient, 260 00:17:44,960 --> 00:17:51,400 certain quirky details that are so weird are maintained in the story means that 261 00:17:51,519 --> 00:17:55,559 there had to be great effort to remember that, you know. And so 262 00:17:55,720 --> 00:17:59,799 I've mentioned that for example, like a very simple one that has nothing to 263 00:17:59,799 --> 00:18:03,720 do with it's like that with scripture itself. But for example, in translation 264 00:18:03,480 --> 00:18:08,519 about text about Saint Christopher, there was this weird change that happened between the 265 00:18:08,559 --> 00:18:15,519 idea of Canaanite like from Canaan and then canaan Like in terms of dog Canaanites 266 00:18:15,839 --> 00:18:19,799 in terms of dog, and the people interpreting it says, well, it's 267 00:18:19,799 --> 00:18:25,599 all ridiculous because it's just a mistake in transcription. But if if someone had 268 00:18:25,640 --> 00:18:29,960 made a mistake in transcription, and that mistake in transcription made absolutely no sense, 269 00:18:30,640 --> 00:18:33,920 it would have been corrected in the next iteration. But if there's something 270 00:18:34,000 --> 00:18:40,039 about it that is holding, then maybe that that mistake is then continued on 271 00:18:40,200 --> 00:18:44,400 mistake. It's not a mistake, it is something like a providential transformation of 272 00:18:44,440 --> 00:18:48,960 the text. And so I know it's hard for people to understand, right, 273 00:18:48,039 --> 00:18:52,200 if things are remembered and it tended to even though they're weird, it 274 00:18:52,279 --> 00:18:56,160 means there's something hidden underneath it. And so that's what that's how the church 275 00:18:56,200 --> 00:19:00,039 fathers would see it. It's like there's some weird detail that's so strange it 276 00:19:00,039 --> 00:19:03,400 doesn't seem to make sense, like why is it there? If it's maintained 277 00:19:03,400 --> 00:19:07,599 there? And this is actually I mean, the best example for this is 278 00:19:07,680 --> 00:19:11,799 just to understand. This is why we have four Gospels, not one. 279 00:19:12,079 --> 00:19:15,000 I mean it actually sort of is the one Gospel, right, but we 280 00:19:15,000 --> 00:19:18,559 have four gospel accounts. Let me put it that way. Yeah, so, 281 00:19:18,680 --> 00:19:22,400 actually it's not the first book of the New Testament, is not Matthew. 282 00:19:22,559 --> 00:19:26,359 It is the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. Right. This is how 283 00:19:26,440 --> 00:19:30,559 it's said liturgically, And even when I speak about it in like teaching class 284 00:19:30,559 --> 00:19:33,599 and things like that, I always try to use that precise language because it's 285 00:19:33,839 --> 00:19:36,839 the one Gospel. And in fact, we collect all four accounts into a 286 00:19:36,839 --> 00:19:38,359 single book in the Orthodox Church, which we call the Gospel Book, which 287 00:19:38,400 --> 00:19:42,720 we parade around and we kiss and we venerate, we read from and everything. 288 00:19:42,920 --> 00:19:47,680 So it's the one Gospel, right. This verbal icon of Christ is 289 00:19:47,720 --> 00:19:49,960 how the fathers speak of it. But we have four accounts, and those 290 00:19:49,960 --> 00:19:56,119 four accounts have these sort of subtle differences, sometimes major differences. But there 291 00:19:56,200 --> 00:20:00,759 were attempts actually, even quite early on, to create a single harmonized gospel 292 00:20:00,759 --> 00:20:04,680 account, you know. Tation's attempt is the most famous, but a lot 293 00:20:04,720 --> 00:20:08,079 of people tried this, and actually the Church rejected it, right, the 294 00:20:08,160 --> 00:20:14,000 Church rejected it. If we wanted just a single synthesized, smooth account, 295 00:20:14,799 --> 00:20:17,240 we could have had it, right, We could have kept it. We 296 00:20:17,279 --> 00:20:19,640 could have just picked one of the four gospels at any given point time where 297 00:20:19,640 --> 00:20:22,880 we could have made our own, you know, our own version that you 298 00:20:22,920 --> 00:20:26,839 know, smoothed out all the differences, included all the parts. If we 299 00:20:26,920 --> 00:20:30,799 wanted that, we could have had it. But it was not God's will, 300 00:20:30,000 --> 00:20:33,279 and it was not you know what the church agreed upon to have that. 301 00:20:33,359 --> 00:20:37,759 We have four gospel accounts, and some of these gospel accounts have subtle 302 00:20:37,759 --> 00:20:42,279 differences. Actually, if you look at I'll tease something which I won't pay 303 00:20:42,319 --> 00:20:47,359 off, and so people will have to go dig themselves for it. As 304 00:20:47,440 --> 00:20:49,759 as as I think you know this is this is this is how Christ teaches, 305 00:20:49,799 --> 00:20:53,160 so there's precedent for it. So the thing that I'll tease and not 306 00:20:53,200 --> 00:20:56,519 pay off is that if you go and look at the account of how the 307 00:20:56,599 --> 00:21:00,240 merd bearing women come to the tomb in the Synoptic Gospels, it's it's a 308 00:21:00,279 --> 00:21:03,000 little bit different in each each version, and the list of who's there and 309 00:21:03,000 --> 00:21:07,440 who's not there, and the time of Mary Magdalene coming and the apostles, 310 00:21:07,720 --> 00:21:11,440 it's all just like there are these little subtle differences. But if you go 311 00:21:11,559 --> 00:21:17,039 and you read, for instance, Saint Gregor of Palomas's homilies on these texts 312 00:21:18,359 --> 00:21:22,079 on the Resurrection, there is actually a really beautiful mystery that Saint Gregory and 313 00:21:22,119 --> 00:21:26,640 actually other church fathers saw as being hidden, as sort of being hidden there 314 00:21:26,680 --> 00:21:32,799 within the gospels concerning concerning the resurrection and the Mother of God. So I 315 00:21:32,839 --> 00:21:34,680 won't explain what that is, but I'll encourage people to go out and kind 316 00:21:34,680 --> 00:21:40,880 of research it for themselves. Okay, so this is like one commonplace example, 317 00:21:40,880 --> 00:21:45,519 but you could basically say, if you wanted to boil down this pre 318 00:21:45,640 --> 00:21:48,160 modern approach to authorship, you could say that they approached it this way. 319 00:21:48,559 --> 00:21:55,200 First of all, they approached reading with credulity. Credulity that is, they 320 00:21:55,200 --> 00:21:59,799 believe that the author loves you, because producing a book is an act of 321 00:21:59,839 --> 00:22:03,559 life. Right, books are extremely expensive in the ancient world. They create 322 00:22:03,599 --> 00:22:08,160 They they represent not just a lot of time and training that would have to 323 00:22:08,200 --> 00:22:12,000 go into some be skilled enough to produce a book, but also like the 324 00:22:12,119 --> 00:22:17,599 lost economic opportunity because most books are written on the on the on the skins 325 00:22:17,640 --> 00:22:22,319 of young animals, right, sheep and cattle specifically, Well, if I 326 00:22:22,440 --> 00:22:26,319 kill a young calf, that's a calf that's now out of my breeding pool. 327 00:22:26,359 --> 00:22:29,240 I can't ever get meat from that calf. I can't ever get milk 328 00:22:29,279 --> 00:22:30,359 from that you know, I can't get any of that stuff. Right, 329 00:22:32,400 --> 00:22:36,799 So it presents a tremendous like lost opportunity. And so this is actually why 330 00:22:37,000 --> 00:22:41,079 for instance, as you if you look at medieval texts, the farther north 331 00:22:41,119 --> 00:22:45,039 you go, in other words, the poor people get and the more scarce 332 00:22:45,319 --> 00:22:51,960 like animals become the more abbreviations are used in the texts, and so by 333 00:22:51,960 --> 00:22:53,960 the time you get to Iceland, it's like they have an abbreviation for almost 334 00:22:53,960 --> 00:22:57,400 every word. It's a total nightmare. Like if you read like, you 335 00:22:57,440 --> 00:23:02,400 know, you know, stuff on the continent and it's in this beautiful Carolinian 336 00:23:02,480 --> 00:23:06,920 minuscule and it's super legible and you can basically just read it off the page, 337 00:23:07,200 --> 00:23:08,839 and then you look at something that's happening like six hundred years later in 338 00:23:08,880 --> 00:23:12,920 Iceland and it's almost completely illegible unless you have a magnifying class. Why because 339 00:23:12,920 --> 00:23:15,759 they're trying to save paper, right, they're trying to save paper. So 340 00:23:17,400 --> 00:23:19,839 creating a book is an active love. The pre modern approach to reading is 341 00:23:19,839 --> 00:23:25,200 first of all this with an assumption that the author loves you, and then 342 00:23:25,359 --> 00:23:29,640 the assumption that the Holy Spirit has guided the process, not only of composition, 343 00:23:29,799 --> 00:23:33,480 which the sort of fundamentalist world that I grew up in are really big 344 00:23:33,519 --> 00:23:37,079 on this. The Holy Spirit has guided the process of the composition of the 345 00:23:37,079 --> 00:23:38,960 scriptures other than the Middle Ages. They would have actually said this is true 346 00:23:40,000 --> 00:23:42,799 for all good books. It's especially true for scripture, but it's true for 347 00:23:42,839 --> 00:23:47,759 all good books. But the Holy Spirit is guided not only the process of 348 00:23:47,799 --> 00:23:52,559 composition, but also that of transmission. Right, So that the Bible that 349 00:23:52,599 --> 00:23:56,640 you have is the Bible that you have, not some easier version of the 350 00:23:56,640 --> 00:23:59,200 Bible, not some version of the Bible that you would have made to satisfy 351 00:23:59,240 --> 00:24:03,799 like modern questions and concerns, because that's what the Holy Spirit has given you. 352 00:24:03,880 --> 00:24:06,720 Right. And so at the end of the day, they would see 353 00:24:06,720 --> 00:24:11,720 the book as a gift received from authority. That's what the book is. 354 00:24:11,839 --> 00:24:15,960 It's a it's a gift. In fact, our word authority right is the 355 00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:19,400 same root as author right. So a book is a gift received from authority 356 00:24:21,319 --> 00:24:25,960 in the modern world. Right. With this, the discipline of textual criticism 357 00:24:26,160 --> 00:24:30,640 is used to look for these differences between texts, no matter how minute they 358 00:24:30,640 --> 00:24:34,880 are right, and use them to propose proposed new theories. Why new theories, 359 00:24:34,920 --> 00:24:38,359 because people have to write dissertations about things. You got to get published, 360 00:24:38,400 --> 00:24:41,880 right. You can't get published saying something somebody's already said. So you've 361 00:24:41,880 --> 00:24:44,799 got to come up with a new theory. And so it's used to propose 362 00:24:44,839 --> 00:24:48,279 new theories about the age, authorship, provenence of text and of course, 363 00:24:48,319 --> 00:24:53,839 saygre text among them. And at its worst, and obviously this is again 364 00:24:55,039 --> 00:24:59,480 it's a useful discipline, it's something that I do and engage in on a 365 00:24:59,480 --> 00:25:04,319 regular base. But at its worst, this modern way of reading sees differences 366 00:25:04,680 --> 00:25:12,279 and difficulties as being something worse than mistakes right at their accidental tells that someone 367 00:25:12,319 --> 00:25:15,039 is being dishonest with you, that somebody is trying to pull the wool over 368 00:25:15,079 --> 00:25:18,000 your eyes. And so there's this idea that on the one hand, the 369 00:25:18,079 --> 00:25:22,759 apostles were these master con men, right, these master con men. They're 370 00:25:22,759 --> 00:25:27,519 fooling everybody into this construct of Jesus of Nazareth, that this new religion they 371 00:25:27,559 --> 00:25:30,119 started. But then on the other hand, they're so bad at their job 372 00:25:30,319 --> 00:25:33,920 that they didn't notice their own you know, you know, they couldn't get 373 00:25:33,920 --> 00:25:37,440 their stories straight. Right, it's just a little obviously, I think it's 374 00:25:37,480 --> 00:25:40,640 a little ludicrous. Right. But the assumptions of this way of reading, 375 00:25:40,839 --> 00:25:44,279 in contrast to the pre modern way of reading, are first of all suspicion, 376 00:25:44,359 --> 00:25:48,559 right, there's an inherent hermeneutic of suspicion. The author has an agenda, 377 00:25:48,119 --> 00:25:53,359 and then usually this idea that historical forces I say, in my most 378 00:25:53,400 --> 00:26:00,480 Marxist accent possible right, that economic, political, social forces guide it, 379 00:26:00,920 --> 00:26:04,160 not the Holy Spirit, but these forces, these forces guided both the composition 380 00:26:04,240 --> 00:26:08,279 and the transmission of the work. And so the book goes from being a 381 00:26:08,519 --> 00:26:15,240 gift received from authority and it becomes a text received from an author, right, 382 00:26:15,519 --> 00:26:19,920 a text received from an author, so as a text received from like 383 00:26:21,400 --> 00:26:26,759 patriarchal you know power, Yes, well that's really that's really that's when postmodernism 384 00:26:26,799 --> 00:26:30,839 comes in, right. And so this, this this modern way of reading 385 00:26:30,000 --> 00:26:34,759 focused on first and foremost on authorship, is the most interesting question because if 386 00:26:34,799 --> 00:26:40,799 we can know when someone lived and what their social splash economic circumstances were, 387 00:26:41,079 --> 00:26:45,160 then we're better able to understand the agenda of the text. But what postmodernism 388 00:26:45,200 --> 00:26:51,599 does is it comes in it deconstructs the modern way of reading further because it 389 00:26:51,680 --> 00:26:57,200 assumes basically liquidity. The author is dead, right, this whole death of 390 00:26:57,200 --> 00:27:02,000 the author thing. The author is dead and therefore any agenda that they might 391 00:27:02,039 --> 00:27:06,319 have had you you don't actually need to know or care about that because this 392 00:27:06,400 --> 00:27:10,480 book, the book is now a fluid reality which can be manipulated to serve 393 00:27:10,839 --> 00:27:15,519 to redistribute social and economic power via various critical lenses. And so this is 394 00:27:15,559 --> 00:27:18,519 when you get into well, let's do a let's do a post colonial reading 395 00:27:18,519 --> 00:27:21,960 of Beayowulf, which is a real thing that somebody has done. Yeah, 396 00:27:21,960 --> 00:27:26,759 you know, well, did anybody writing Beowulf have postcolonialism or even colonialism in 397 00:27:26,839 --> 00:27:30,880 mind? Yeah, but the disease is already there in the modern thinking. 398 00:27:30,000 --> 00:27:33,160 No, it is. It is, yeah, because in the modern way 399 00:27:33,160 --> 00:27:37,880 of thinking, what they would want to do is show how the let's say, 400 00:27:37,400 --> 00:27:41,200 the power structure, whether it's from a Marxist point of view or some 401 00:27:41,200 --> 00:27:45,960 something akin to that, is embedded in the text, and the fact that 402 00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:53,319 it was authoritative means that it participated in maintaining certain social orders that were important 403 00:27:53,319 --> 00:27:56,480 for the people of the day. And so they'll tend to look into the 404 00:27:56,519 --> 00:28:00,519 text and like to see the preservation if you look at at some of the 405 00:28:00,599 --> 00:28:04,599 Old Testament tide to critical writing. They see it as a conflict of different 406 00:28:04,640 --> 00:28:11,359 groups and different political factions that our society inside the text, and that there's 407 00:28:11,400 --> 00:28:15,400 this conflict that you can find inside the text that's showing a political conflict within 408 00:28:15,559 --> 00:28:21,200 Israel at the right. And the big problem that I am currently having with 409 00:28:21,279 --> 00:28:27,480 a lot of let's say broadly conservative reactions to postmodernity, is that they are 410 00:28:27,640 --> 00:28:33,359 trying to get back to modernity. Yeah, and this is just it's not 411 00:28:33,559 --> 00:28:36,920 far enough, right, It's not far enough for us as Christians. That's 412 00:28:36,960 --> 00:28:41,119 not that's not an acceptable solution. So to talk a little bit about the 413 00:28:41,160 --> 00:28:48,839 idea of like authorship, the the authorship in the ancient world was always understood 414 00:28:48,880 --> 00:28:52,920 is as being a composite thing. This is part of why like these these 415 00:28:52,960 --> 00:28:57,039 like modern the modern hyperfixation on oh, well, there's this group in the 416 00:28:57,039 --> 00:29:00,680 text and this group of the text, like you're just saying this is like 417 00:29:00,039 --> 00:29:04,200 sort of missing the point from a pre modern perspective, because well, first 418 00:29:04,200 --> 00:29:07,599 of all, putting the name of an established authority on a work, let's 419 00:29:07,640 --> 00:29:11,960 say, for instance, the Old Testament book the Wisdom of Solomon, this 420 00:29:11,160 --> 00:29:15,759 was often this is a link with the chain of tradition, right, It's 421 00:29:15,759 --> 00:29:18,480 not always an absolute statement about the origin of every syllable in the works. 422 00:29:18,640 --> 00:29:22,119 In the case of the Wisdom of Solomon, nobody thought that Solomon wrote wrote 423 00:29:22,119 --> 00:29:25,680 it. I mean it was everybody too. It had been written much later, 424 00:29:26,359 --> 00:29:29,559 but they named it that why, Because it's in the Solomonic wisdom tradition 425 00:29:29,920 --> 00:29:33,640 that goes back to proverbs. You've got the proverbs of Solomon. Did Solomon 426 00:29:33,680 --> 00:29:36,759 write all of the proverbs of Solomon? According to the Proverbs of Solomon, 427 00:29:36,799 --> 00:29:41,279 he did not. Well, but we still call them the proverb of the 428 00:29:41,319 --> 00:29:44,200 Solomon, in the way that we still call the Psalms the Psalms of David. 429 00:29:44,480 --> 00:29:47,319 Right, David is the author of the Saltier, even though if you 430 00:29:48,759 --> 00:29:52,119 in the actual text, he'll say he's not the author of every single one 431 00:29:52,160 --> 00:29:56,720 of the Psalms. This is again, this is not a problem for anybody 432 00:29:56,799 --> 00:30:00,200 before the nineteenth century, Like, nobody cares like like we understand what we 433 00:30:00,240 --> 00:30:04,759 mean when we say this. Right, So if somebody wants to say, 434 00:30:04,880 --> 00:30:08,599 if somebody wants to say, there's like a uh, you know, there's 435 00:30:08,640 --> 00:30:11,759 like a little bit of you know, oh, this later thing was added 436 00:30:11,799 --> 00:30:15,480 to one of the books of Moses, for instance, right, well, 437 00:30:15,480 --> 00:30:17,960 like the description of his death for example, right right, right, So 438 00:30:18,160 --> 00:30:21,720 simple exact, which is that someone else wrote the description of moses death, 439 00:30:22,039 --> 00:30:26,839 right right whatever? Who cares? Right? Not? Is that is that 440 00:30:26,880 --> 00:30:30,640 a problem for anybody? No? Not really, right, because again, 441 00:30:30,720 --> 00:30:37,440 we the pre modern person trusts that the Holy Spirit is guided not just the 442 00:30:37,480 --> 00:30:41,200 process of composition, but also the process of transmission. And so this is 443 00:30:41,279 --> 00:30:47,920 even when you get into like there are certain perickiepes in the gospel according to 444 00:30:47,920 --> 00:30:52,279 Saint John's specifically the one concerning the woman caught in adultery, right, which 445 00:30:52,319 --> 00:30:55,720 doesn't show up in some ancient manuscripts. Right. And so then you could 446 00:30:55,720 --> 00:30:57,559 sort of ask the question, well, you know, is this originally part 447 00:30:57,559 --> 00:31:02,240 of the gospel or not? And actually for our purposes it doesn't matter. 448 00:31:02,400 --> 00:31:07,440 What matters is uh, is that you know this is this is something at 449 00:31:07,480 --> 00:31:10,920 somewhere in the in the process of transmission, right, which the Holy Spirit 450 00:31:11,000 --> 00:31:15,240 oversaw this This story is one of the stories that's in this gospel. According 451 00:31:15,240 --> 00:31:19,680 to Saint John, it's in this yoanine tradition. And and then you would 452 00:31:19,720 --> 00:31:22,799 just look at, well, how did how how how how does the church? 453 00:31:23,000 --> 00:31:26,559 How do we use this, you know, liturgically? And that sort 454 00:31:26,559 --> 00:31:30,599 of will kind of clear up some of those questions. So, now, 455 00:31:30,720 --> 00:31:34,359 sacred text were copied with a great deal of fidelity. But the farther out 456 00:31:34,400 --> 00:31:38,480 you get from holy scripture, the more likely there are it is for major 457 00:31:38,559 --> 00:31:42,519 changes to be introduced. So a good example of this in in an essay 458 00:31:42,559 --> 00:31:47,359 of his called the Genesis of the Medieval Book, which is a really important 459 00:31:47,480 --> 00:31:49,599 essay that I think everybody who's interested in these things should read. C. 460 00:31:49,839 --> 00:31:53,680 S. Lewis uses the iterations of the Arthurian tales, and so he starts 461 00:31:53,720 --> 00:31:59,359 with Jeffrey of Monmouth as an example, who just includes a little bit of 462 00:32:00,200 --> 00:32:06,079 Arthur in his overall annals. Right, and then you've got Waste and then 463 00:32:06,279 --> 00:32:10,680 Liaman coming along and enlarging and massively improving on what Jeffrey did, Right. 464 00:32:12,000 --> 00:32:15,079 And it was understood that this is sort of like, oh, let's say 465 00:32:15,359 --> 00:32:19,839 far enough out in the narthex as it were, right, you know, 466 00:32:20,160 --> 00:32:22,160 near enough to the base of the mountain, that you have the ability to 467 00:32:22,240 --> 00:32:25,640 kind of improve things, but also bring in things that you've heard that the 468 00:32:25,680 --> 00:32:30,640 previous author maybe hadn't and stuff like that. Right, And so the way 469 00:32:30,640 --> 00:32:32,519 to think about a medieval book or a pre modern book is that it's a 470 00:32:32,559 --> 00:32:37,759 cathedral. Right. Every great cathedral built in the Middle Ages was built over 471 00:32:37,799 --> 00:32:43,920 the course of one two, in one case, six hundred years. Right. 472 00:32:44,000 --> 00:32:46,519 Well, you're going to start building a building that is going to be 473 00:32:46,559 --> 00:32:51,680 finished by your grandchildren and great grandchildren who are going to have totally different architectural 474 00:32:51,680 --> 00:32:53,799 tastes than you do, right, And so these great medieval cathedrals, a 475 00:32:53,799 --> 00:32:55,920 lot of times you'll have well, this bit was done here, and this 476 00:32:55,960 --> 00:32:59,039 bit was done at this time, and this bit was done at this time, 477 00:32:59,240 --> 00:33:02,160 and so everything like sort of doesn't match. But at the same time 478 00:33:02,279 --> 00:33:07,160 it totally goes together, right, because it just sort of grew up in 479 00:33:07,279 --> 00:33:09,640 this organic way. Right. But if you wanted to try to pick through 480 00:33:09,680 --> 00:33:13,839 and pull out and try to pull out the pieces that you could say, 481 00:33:13,880 --> 00:33:16,640 well, this is the original cathedral, then the building just collapses, right. 482 00:33:17,079 --> 00:33:20,480 And this is the kind of the same way that medieval books work. 483 00:33:21,359 --> 00:33:25,519 So Eugene Vonalascan, who you've had on the Channel before, who's a wonderful, 484 00:33:27,039 --> 00:33:32,359 wonderful fiction author. I'll hawk his new book once again, The History 485 00:33:32,359 --> 00:33:37,680 of the Island, which is actually it is a work of medieval universal history 486 00:33:37,960 --> 00:33:42,519 as a novel and it's just fantastic, so people should go read it. 487 00:33:42,559 --> 00:33:46,039 But he said in a really important essay of his called the Middle Ages, 488 00:33:46,039 --> 00:33:50,920 he said that it's important to note that there's a spectrum here that the stability 489 00:33:50,920 --> 00:33:54,519 of a medieval text depended in large part on its closeness to the Holy Scripture, 490 00:33:55,079 --> 00:33:59,559 the primary book in the Middle Ages, the Holy Scripture, the text 491 00:33:59,599 --> 00:34:02,359 of texts standing at the center of spiritual life, had a special fate. 492 00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:07,119 Any new manuscript copy of the Holy Scriptures was produced by drawing not on one, 493 00:34:07,159 --> 00:34:10,559 but on two or more manuscripts. The scribes looked after the integrity of 494 00:34:10,599 --> 00:34:15,360 the Holy Text by comparing manuscripts, correcting possible errors and deviations from the canonical 495 00:34:15,400 --> 00:34:20,920 text. At the other end of the spectrum that ends with maximal distance from 496 00:34:21,000 --> 00:34:25,239 the sacred one can see that the text changed significantly when reproduced, and everybody 497 00:34:25,360 --> 00:34:30,639 was okay with this right. What mattered wasn't so much who said something, 498 00:34:30,800 --> 00:34:35,559 but what was said you could say. And so they don't really have in 499 00:34:35,559 --> 00:34:37,760 the Middle Ages, they don't really have this idea of plagiarism, and in 500 00:34:37,760 --> 00:34:43,159 fact, they don't really have a strong notion of authorship. Most medieval authors 501 00:34:43,280 --> 00:34:47,039 simply did not sign their work unless they were a very important person like one 502 00:34:47,039 --> 00:34:51,920 of the church fathers or you know, an emperor or something like that, 503 00:34:52,440 --> 00:34:55,960 who had like the spiritual or social right to do so. But for most 504 00:34:57,480 --> 00:35:00,119 medieval authors, the idea that you would say by your work would be seen 505 00:35:00,159 --> 00:35:04,079 as kind of like an act of pride. So that's the first thing, 506 00:35:04,599 --> 00:35:07,800 is the shift in the way that we approach that we approach the question of 507 00:35:07,840 --> 00:35:12,519 authorship and transmission. And if we can actually just make that one shift, 508 00:35:12,639 --> 00:35:15,119 then ninety percent of people's problems and like hang ups and things like this, 509 00:35:15,280 --> 00:35:19,760 especially the kind of hang ups that very smart people tend to have, will 510 00:35:19,800 --> 00:35:22,679 go away, and then you can actually start reading the text. Right. 511 00:35:22,679 --> 00:35:25,199 It's the I always crack up whenever, like I buy a new edition of 512 00:35:25,480 --> 00:35:30,480 some patriistic text or medieval poem or something like that. And the actual text 513 00:35:30,519 --> 00:35:32,880 itself is not that long, it's maybe eighty pages. Before the eighty pages, 514 00:35:32,920 --> 00:35:37,800 you have one hundred and fifty pages of critical analysis of here's what the 515 00:35:37,840 --> 00:35:40,960 guy who put this book together, you know, basically this is his PhD 516 00:35:42,079 --> 00:35:45,840 dissertation, Here's what he thinks about the text. Right, And it's sort 517 00:35:45,880 --> 00:35:49,559 of clear by volume which thing is the more important in terms of what's being 518 00:35:49,559 --> 00:35:52,559 published. All right. So the second thing that I would want to kind 519 00:35:52,559 --> 00:35:55,679 of point out as a necessary shift, this is a much shorter point, 520 00:35:57,079 --> 00:36:02,000 is the meanings of words and things. Right. Modernism is a flattening and 521 00:36:02,039 --> 00:36:05,880 a separation of space and time. We'll talk about that a little more in 522 00:36:05,880 --> 00:36:09,440 a moment, But it also tends to flatten out meaning as well. So 523 00:36:09,679 --> 00:36:15,800 as such, modernism is usually capable of understanding something is either being literal, 524 00:36:15,960 --> 00:36:20,280 which by which we mean being understood its most obvious materialistic sense, like a 525 00:36:20,400 --> 00:36:25,480 measurable taxonomical category, usually something like if you had a camera. Yeah right. 526 00:36:25,559 --> 00:36:29,039 But of course, of course this itself is a bad test, right, 527 00:36:29,039 --> 00:36:31,480 because we all know perfectly well from recent events that you can have a 528 00:36:31,519 --> 00:36:37,639 camera on site and half the people watching the video see two totally different things, 529 00:36:37,719 --> 00:36:40,280 right, you know, Yeah, so that during the trucker protest, 530 00:36:40,440 --> 00:36:45,920 very clearly, Yeah, just trucker protests, and I mean lots of other 531 00:36:45,960 --> 00:36:50,280 things, you know, like almost any tragedy that gets fun for political purposes 532 00:36:50,400 --> 00:36:52,280 or whatever, somebody will have a video of what happened, and half the 533 00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:54,960 people who watch it see one thing, and the other half who watch it 534 00:36:55,039 --> 00:37:00,519 see the other thing. But anyway, but modern people will are you capable 535 00:37:00,559 --> 00:37:04,440 of understanding something as either being literal or allegorical, which by which they mean 536 00:37:04,519 --> 00:37:07,639 having a symbolic meeting. And that's that's what the thing we we you know, 537 00:37:07,679 --> 00:37:09,360 we we hit that all the time on the symbolic world because at the 538 00:37:09,400 --> 00:37:13,760 outset, when I started talking about these things, yeah, we just get 539 00:37:13,800 --> 00:37:16,360 backlashes of people saying, oh, you're saying it's all allegorical, it's all 540 00:37:16,400 --> 00:37:19,880 metaphor, you know, and I'm like, I'm not saying any of those 541 00:37:19,880 --> 00:37:22,119 things, but I still remember you're there is such a thing as literal video. 542 00:37:22,519 --> 00:37:27,400 Yeah, yeah, yeah, which is like purely medieval, like in 543 00:37:27,440 --> 00:37:30,559 the sense that that we're talking about now, which is that there there. 544 00:37:30,639 --> 00:37:36,920 You know, it's like the this idea of like this objective reality that is 545 00:37:36,920 --> 00:37:40,800 completely neutral, of of of importance. It's like even in the modern word, 546 00:37:40,800 --> 00:37:45,079 even though we have that category in the modern world, it it falls 547 00:37:45,079 --> 00:37:47,440 apart very fast. Right, And so this is this is I think one 548 00:37:47,440 --> 00:37:52,000 of the things that this one and the next I would say, the next 549 00:37:52,000 --> 00:37:53,719 three things, like there are four things. These next three things are the 550 00:37:53,719 --> 00:37:59,599 things that your channel has probably done the most open people's eyes on like this 551 00:37:59,599 --> 00:38:02,360 this under standing, like if you can just see that things can mean more 552 00:38:02,400 --> 00:38:06,400 than one thing, right, that words can mean more than one thing. 553 00:38:06,440 --> 00:38:09,360 But also that things that that that things that exist in the world have meaning, 554 00:38:09,400 --> 00:38:15,320 they have significance that you know, you can have a tree, right, 555 00:38:15,360 --> 00:38:21,559 and the tree is you could say in some in some objective secularist reality, 556 00:38:21,679 --> 00:38:24,000 right, that the tree is just it's just an arbitrary organism. But 557 00:38:24,039 --> 00:38:29,239 actually even materialists don't usually think this way because because they'll be, oh, 558 00:38:29,239 --> 00:38:31,239 well, you can't trees are good for the environment, right, you can't 559 00:38:31,320 --> 00:38:36,719 can't down trees. But actually, if we're if we're doing a secularist materialist 560 00:38:36,840 --> 00:38:39,639 devoid of meaning, the tree is just an organism. Its existence is just 561 00:38:39,679 --> 00:38:44,039 as arbitrary as every other organism's, right, unless I give it meaning, 562 00:38:44,039 --> 00:38:47,480 there's no reason I can't cut it down. Yeah, right. So medieval 563 00:38:47,480 --> 00:38:52,239 people believed, I just read that quote from Vadlaskin, because they believe that 564 00:38:52,760 --> 00:38:57,360 everything they wrote and read was, no matter what its style, to some 565 00:38:57,440 --> 00:39:02,320 degree, a continuation or a concreteization of the Holy scriptures. Because they believe 566 00:39:02,360 --> 00:39:09,039 this, they believe that books could have multiple complimentary layers of meaning. Very 567 00:39:09,039 --> 00:39:15,320 simple. We just for Orthodox Christians. Actually old calendar, New calendar, 568 00:39:15,440 --> 00:39:20,760 both would have recently finished the Dormssion fast. So every year doing the dormssion 569 00:39:20,760 --> 00:39:24,519 fast. My family reads the Life of the Virgin by Saint Maximus the Confessor, 570 00:39:24,519 --> 00:39:29,840 which is his sort of hagiography of the life of the Mother of God, 571 00:39:30,159 --> 00:39:32,440 and early on in it, you know, he's talking about Psalm the 572 00:39:32,440 --> 00:39:35,840 forty fourth Psalm, right, you know, the queens did at their right 573 00:39:35,880 --> 00:39:38,960 hand quote, and you know, and this is the this is like one 574 00:39:39,000 --> 00:39:43,920 of the primary you know, Psalms, one of the primary Old Testament passages 575 00:39:44,199 --> 00:39:50,039 that the church sees, and historically all Christians have seen as as talking about 576 00:39:50,079 --> 00:39:53,480 the Mother of God. And he says, but if you find somebody who 577 00:39:53,519 --> 00:39:59,039 says that the queen in this passage actually is the Church, there's no problem 578 00:39:59,079 --> 00:40:02,559 with that, because first of all, she is the Church. And secondly, 579 00:40:04,000 --> 00:40:08,239 and then he says, words authored by the Holy Spirit ought not to 580 00:40:08,239 --> 00:40:14,519 be understood as having only one meaning, very very just very very simple. 581 00:40:14,559 --> 00:40:17,320 Words authored by the Holy Spirit ought not to be understood as having only one 582 00:40:17,519 --> 00:40:22,920 meaning. Right, And so in the Middle Ages this eventually develops into something 583 00:40:22,960 --> 00:40:28,039 that probably most people who have taken some kind of a class on like the 584 00:40:28,079 --> 00:40:31,360 Middle Ages were read like Augustine's confess Saint Augustin's confessions in school or something like 585 00:40:31,440 --> 00:40:35,800 that will be familiar with. And that is the fourfold sense, right, 586 00:40:36,679 --> 00:40:39,559 And there's like there's actually even fun little Latin mnemonic poems to help people remember 587 00:40:39,559 --> 00:40:45,599 this, right, But basically it's the literal. We could say historical might 588 00:40:45,639 --> 00:40:49,159 be a better way of phrasing that. Right, here's what happened in history, 589 00:40:49,320 --> 00:40:52,239 right, although even that is maybe a little fraud, but let's just 590 00:40:52,280 --> 00:40:54,119 say, like, this is what happened in history, this is how it 591 00:40:54,159 --> 00:40:58,880 was recorded, this is the event that was recorded. Rights, that's what 592 00:40:58,960 --> 00:41:05,119 that is. Then there's that typological which would be in what way does this 593 00:41:05,280 --> 00:41:08,400 text, this story, or this symbol or something like that, and what 594 00:41:08,440 --> 00:41:14,079 way does it connect with the life of Christ, with the life of his 595 00:41:14,199 --> 00:41:15,960 mother, with the life of the church, et cetera. So a very 596 00:41:16,000 --> 00:41:20,920 good example is something like, you know the Old Testament, the serpent in 597 00:41:20,960 --> 00:41:23,079 the wilderness, right, the brazen serpent. Well, on the historical level, 598 00:41:23,760 --> 00:41:27,320 God told Moses to make a serpent, right, this is the literal 599 00:41:27,360 --> 00:41:30,440 reading. Okay, God told Moses to make a bronze serpent. He lifts 600 00:41:30,480 --> 00:41:32,760 it up on a pole, and everybody who looks at it or touches it 601 00:41:32,800 --> 00:41:37,719 is healed now on its own. That doesn't actually have a whole lot of 602 00:41:37,719 --> 00:41:42,119 meaning, right, It's just here's God gave you instructions to do an arbitrary 603 00:41:42,119 --> 00:41:44,400 thing. Yeah, and I always did it. I always take the literal 604 00:41:44,440 --> 00:41:46,119 meaning as like the way we talk about literal meaning. It's just like getting 605 00:41:46,119 --> 00:41:49,960 the facts right, right, text, they just getting this is what the 606 00:41:50,000 --> 00:41:52,800 text says like, text says this. Because one of the problems with sometimes 607 00:41:53,880 --> 00:41:59,360 in a negative sense we call allegorical reading, is that people gloss the text, 608 00:41:59,599 --> 00:42:02,440 yes, don't pay attention to it carefully, These kind of gloss over 609 00:42:02,480 --> 00:42:07,159 it and then give this like high meaning. But I think it's really important 610 00:42:07,199 --> 00:42:10,639 even in symbolic interpretation like that you say that you get the text right, 611 00:42:10,719 --> 00:42:15,280 you get you get everything there, right. Yeah. So the in that 612 00:42:15,480 --> 00:42:20,320 case, here's the historical event. God told Moses to do a thing. 613 00:42:20,400 --> 00:42:22,000 Moses did the thing, people were healed. Right. But then there's a 614 00:42:22,039 --> 00:42:25,039 typological significance, which has to do with the lifting up of Christ on the 615 00:42:25,039 --> 00:42:30,320 cross. This one is is easy because Christ himself explained it to us, 616 00:42:30,639 --> 00:42:35,039 right, which we don't always get. We don't always get. And then 617 00:42:35,039 --> 00:42:39,400 the third level is what's sometimes called the moral or the tropolripological level, and 618 00:42:39,719 --> 00:42:43,400 moral as in, this is the moral of the story. In other words, 619 00:42:43,440 --> 00:42:47,159 because this happened, here's how you should behave right, that's the moral 620 00:42:47,199 --> 00:42:51,960 of the story. This is Any one of these levels, by the way, 621 00:42:52,039 --> 00:42:52,920 is like a fine level, but if you treat it like it's the 622 00:42:52,960 --> 00:42:57,599 only one, then you get like an awful version of the story. So, 623 00:42:57,639 --> 00:43:01,280 for instance, there's a lot of like mangling of traditional fairy tales because 624 00:43:01,400 --> 00:43:05,840 people were you know, fairy tales which were not traditionally just stories for children. 625 00:43:06,360 --> 00:43:08,840 Yeah, but in the Victorian period when they tried to make them into 626 00:43:08,960 --> 00:43:15,119 just stories for children, they would always rewrite them with this sense of and 627 00:43:15,159 --> 00:43:17,079 then here's the moral at the end, right, And so it's just like 628 00:43:17,199 --> 00:43:22,119 it just like SAPs the vitality out of the story, which is actually mostly 629 00:43:22,119 --> 00:43:27,280 happening on the typological level, right. And then the finally, the fourth 630 00:43:27,360 --> 00:43:31,440 level that they would see would be was sometimes called the anagogical or the eschatological 631 00:43:31,760 --> 00:43:36,239 level, which is basically connecting the text with last things, the end of 632 00:43:36,280 --> 00:43:38,159 the world or the end of a pattern, the end of a cycle, 633 00:43:38,559 --> 00:43:44,960 or most importantly probably at the end of your life. Right. And it's 634 00:43:45,119 --> 00:43:50,760 important to note that people didn't just use these senses to read the scriptures. 635 00:43:51,760 --> 00:43:54,039 Yeah, they actually use them to read Homer, and they use them to 636 00:43:54,079 --> 00:43:57,480 read everything. And they would actually say, you could read the Odyssey, 637 00:43:57,760 --> 00:44:00,639 and there's a typological sense in which you can apply the Oudis to the life 638 00:44:00,639 --> 00:44:05,639 of Christ. Right, And they one hundred percent sincerely believed that. And 639 00:44:05,679 --> 00:44:08,440 what I'm sort of, you know, obviously trying to imply is that you 640 00:44:08,440 --> 00:44:10,519 can do this too. You can do it with something like the Lord of 641 00:44:10,559 --> 00:44:15,239 the Rings. I've got a whole podcast where that's what we do. So 642 00:44:15,639 --> 00:44:22,360 but in the same way, things can mean not just words, but also 643 00:44:22,440 --> 00:44:25,519 things like like the things that you encounter in the world can mean more than 644 00:44:25,559 --> 00:44:30,360 one thing, right again, rocks trees, basic things like that. My 645 00:44:30,360 --> 00:44:34,599 favorite example, honestly is bread and wine. Right. You know. Part 646 00:44:34,599 --> 00:44:38,760 of the whole symbolic literal argument you know, around the Eucharist in the Christian 647 00:44:38,960 --> 00:44:43,039 you know west over the last five hundred years, six hundred years now, 648 00:44:43,440 --> 00:44:46,960 has has been because people sort of see, well, it can only be 649 00:44:47,039 --> 00:44:52,480 one thing, like it can be bread and the blood and body right at 650 00:44:52,480 --> 00:44:54,880 the same time, Right, Like we have to collapse it to the body 651 00:44:55,119 --> 00:44:59,599 and then take the bread. What do they call it, like just like 652 00:44:59,679 --> 00:45:04,559 detail, like, yeah, accidents or whatever. Yeah, accidental, that's 653 00:45:04,639 --> 00:45:09,039 right. Yeah. So one of my favorite things that Dante wrote is actually 654 00:45:09,119 --> 00:45:14,960 a series of letters. Oh, I gotta plug my computer in is a 655 00:45:15,000 --> 00:45:19,519 series of letters that he wrote actually explaining the divine comedy, which is which 656 00:45:19,559 --> 00:45:22,280 is nice. Again, when the author like gives you an explanation of his 657 00:45:22,320 --> 00:45:24,760 own thing, pay attention. He may be wrong, you know, but 658 00:45:24,920 --> 00:45:30,000 still you should pay attention. So what he says is that we should call 659 00:45:30,079 --> 00:45:35,960 it that is writing polycemus, that is of many senses. First sense derives 660 00:45:35,960 --> 00:45:37,920 from the letters themselves. A second from the things signified by the letters. 661 00:45:38,159 --> 00:45:42,159 We call the first sense literal. So he gives his own explanation for this, 662 00:45:42,480 --> 00:45:45,119 and then he gives an example from the comedy. So it is to 663 00:45:45,119 --> 00:45:47,239 clarify this method of treatment. Consider this verse, when Israel went out from 664 00:45:47,280 --> 00:45:52,599 Egypt the house of Jacob from a barbarous people, Judea was made to sanctuary 665 00:45:52,800 --> 00:45:55,400 Israel his dominion, which, by the way, that's the psalm that the 666 00:45:55,440 --> 00:45:59,679 souls seeing when they're being brought to the mountain of Purgatory. At the beginning 667 00:45:59,639 --> 00:46:01,639 of Victorio, he says, now, if we examine the letters alone, 668 00:46:01,679 --> 00:46:05,800 the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt in the time of Moses is 669 00:46:05,840 --> 00:46:09,159 signified. That's the letter. That's the level of the letter we call the 670 00:46:09,199 --> 00:46:15,000 literal meaning. Right in the allegory, it's our redemption is accomplished through Christ. 671 00:46:15,840 --> 00:46:17,840 So that's the typological sense. In the moral sense, the conversion of 672 00:46:17,840 --> 00:46:21,400 the soul from the grief and misery of sin to the state of grace. 673 00:46:21,599 --> 00:46:23,599 So this is how I should behave because of this. And then in the 674 00:46:23,599 --> 00:46:29,280 anagogical or the eschatological sense, the exodus of the holy soul from the slavery 675 00:46:29,280 --> 00:46:32,440 of this corruption to the freedom of eternal glory. They can all be called 676 00:46:32,480 --> 00:46:36,320 And then he says, they can all be called symbolic. Right, of 677 00:46:36,320 --> 00:46:40,119 course, he means something different by that than most of us meet today. 678 00:46:38,199 --> 00:46:43,719 But this is actually how he uses this psalm in the comedy, because if 679 00:46:43,719 --> 00:46:46,880 you pay attention to those early cantos of Purgatory, that's actually what is happening, 680 00:46:47,000 --> 00:46:51,960 is all four of those things. It's you know, remembering this time 681 00:46:51,960 --> 00:46:54,079 God delivered his people. But also in the moral sense, it's the conversion 682 00:46:54,079 --> 00:46:58,199 of Dante's soul from the grief and misery of his own sin, right, 683 00:46:58,280 --> 00:47:01,039 and so on. So that's the That's the second thing that I would want 684 00:47:01,079 --> 00:47:05,800 to help people make the shift on, is that is the meaning of words 685 00:47:05,800 --> 00:47:09,000 and things, right, and their abilities to kind of have that the world 686 00:47:09,079 --> 00:47:13,360 of self is symbolic, the world of self is polysemous, and that these 687 00:47:13,400 --> 00:47:16,920 connections are not arbitrary, which is yeah, but the not arbitrary is very 688 00:47:16,920 --> 00:47:22,880 important because this is something that we run into with postmodernism, which is that 689 00:47:23,920 --> 00:47:30,360 postmodernism argues for polysemi as well, but they argue for free floating polysemy. 690 00:47:30,440 --> 00:47:32,800 So, like, the idea is that is that you have multiple meanings, 691 00:47:32,800 --> 00:47:37,559 but those multiple meanings are disconnected from each other, and there isn't, let's 692 00:47:37,559 --> 00:47:43,440 say, an underlying analogy between the different levels of meanings. And so interestingly 693 00:47:44,239 --> 00:47:49,159 enough is that because of that, when now people like you and I argue 694 00:47:49,199 --> 00:47:53,039 for polysemi, people accuse us of being postmodern because that's where they've heard that, 695 00:47:53,360 --> 00:47:55,320 and they're like, well, how can it have several meanings? It 696 00:47:55,320 --> 00:47:59,199 means that everything's going to blow up and then we don't know what's real and 697 00:47:59,239 --> 00:48:00,400 it's all made up. It's all on your mind and it's all that. 698 00:48:00,440 --> 00:48:02,880 But it's like, no, it's none, it's it's neither of those. 699 00:48:04,760 --> 00:48:10,280 The polysemic aspect of a text is all directed, right, it's all directed 700 00:48:10,400 --> 00:48:15,960 towards the truth. And that's what makes the different levels cohere together. So 701 00:48:16,000 --> 00:48:21,039 when Dante presents his different levels of what he means by that psalm, though 702 00:48:21,519 --> 00:48:25,280 it's not. They're not disconnected. They're just different levels of the same meaning, 703 00:48:27,920 --> 00:48:31,159 the different levels of the same truth. And it's because they had a 704 00:48:34,239 --> 00:48:38,480 you say, the pattern or the interpretive map that they're using, or both 705 00:48:38,519 --> 00:48:42,599 the Book of the Scriptures and also the Book of Creation. Right, is 706 00:48:43,159 --> 00:48:47,719 the passion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Right, that's the central thing that 707 00:48:47,760 --> 00:48:55,119 you have to take as completely necessary to this entire model. Right that without 708 00:48:55,119 --> 00:49:02,639 it, Without it, almost all Western literature just becomes incoherent. Right, 709 00:49:02,679 --> 00:49:07,480 even fairy tales, even fairy tales, most of the fairy tales written by 710 00:49:07,480 --> 00:49:09,440 the brothers grim and I'm talking like the first edition that had all the gnarly 711 00:49:09,440 --> 00:49:13,559 stuff in it before they kind of you know, made it polite later. 712 00:49:14,360 --> 00:49:19,880 Yeah, but the the the all those fairy tales, right, Those fairy 713 00:49:19,920 --> 00:49:27,159 tales actually have the Gospel story encoded within them, right on the typological level. 714 00:49:27,800 --> 00:49:30,400 And that doesn't mean it had to be a deliberate thing, right that 715 00:49:30,480 --> 00:49:36,239 this is just you know, I am, I mean, you're your thing 716 00:49:36,280 --> 00:49:38,480 that you say, right, This is how the world lays itself out right, 717 00:49:38,519 --> 00:49:42,519 this is this is the way that things are right. And that's really 718 00:49:42,519 --> 00:49:45,519 important because especially and it's weird because a lot of people have done the opposite, 719 00:49:45,559 --> 00:49:50,559 which is to try to make the fairy tales into non Christian things. 720 00:49:50,599 --> 00:49:53,920 And usually what they mean by that is because the fairy tales are immoral. 721 00:49:54,039 --> 00:49:59,800 Often actually they are actually they actually aren't usually about just like getting or whatever. 722 00:50:00,079 --> 00:50:02,639 They're quite a moral, they're quite mythological, and they can be quite 723 00:50:02,760 --> 00:50:07,280 jarring. But the truth is that like read the story of Samson again, 724 00:50:07,320 --> 00:50:10,239 I read the Book of Judges, this is actually part of our tradition. 725 00:50:10,440 --> 00:50:15,719 You know. The idea that everything has to be clean and moral and puritan 726 00:50:15,800 --> 00:50:20,440 is ridiculous. It's just not part of the tradition at all. Like these 727 00:50:20,519 --> 00:50:22,639 gnarly and kind of weird stories. The way that people read Homer there was 728 00:50:23,119 --> 00:50:27,519 there's very weird stuff in Homer, but they could nonetheless, when they could 729 00:50:27,559 --> 00:50:30,360 read Plato, people could read the Symposium and even though it had all this 730 00:50:30,480 --> 00:50:35,280 kind of dark stuff, they could see that there were still glimmers shining through 731 00:50:35,280 --> 00:50:38,599 it, you know, without having to accept thing this as just being an 732 00:50:38,639 --> 00:50:44,760 example a more or lesson about this or that. That's that's beautifully put. 733 00:50:45,559 --> 00:50:47,599 Yeah, this is this is like, this is the big thing that we 734 00:50:47,639 --> 00:50:52,840 got to get people to sort of understand because even then actually something something that's 735 00:50:52,840 --> 00:50:55,679 sort of come up recently. Now I'm off the reservation, I'm off my 736 00:50:55,719 --> 00:51:00,440 notes, but is the way that the way that somebody could read and be 737 00:51:00,480 --> 00:51:04,119 offended by like a Saint story like a work of how geography. Right, 738 00:51:04,239 --> 00:51:08,480 there's like weird, sometimes shocking stuff to modern sensibilities in the saints' lives. 739 00:51:08,679 --> 00:51:12,360 If you don't think that, then you just haven't read enough of them. 740 00:51:12,800 --> 00:51:15,159 Yeah, and so this sort of like we have this kind of idea of 741 00:51:15,239 --> 00:51:20,840 here's what like a like a clean, polite, well behaved, right Christian 742 00:51:21,039 --> 00:51:24,920 person is supposed to look like. And it's basically the product of basically it's 743 00:51:24,960 --> 00:51:29,000 like the nineteen fifties, right, Yeah, you know, like like it's 744 00:51:29,159 --> 00:51:31,639 it's like, at least in this country, we have like nineteen fifties America 745 00:51:31,679 --> 00:51:35,400 in our head, right, you know, that's the that's that's our golden 746 00:51:35,519 --> 00:51:37,400 era. So that's where we go back to, and we're like, you 747 00:51:37,400 --> 00:51:38,920 know, there's the lawn's got to be neatly trimmed and the you know, 748 00:51:39,480 --> 00:51:45,719 you know, all all that stuff, and uh man, it's it's you 749 00:51:45,760 --> 00:51:50,840 know, it's just that the tradition is so much weirder than that. It's 750 00:51:50,840 --> 00:51:54,639 so much more dangerous than that, you know. Uh uh and uh this 751 00:51:54,719 --> 00:51:58,719 is you know again, this is not to say, you know, I 752 00:51:58,719 --> 00:52:00,960 mean, nobody, nobody who knows me think for a moment that I'm you 753 00:52:00,960 --> 00:52:05,599 know, running down like the moral teachings of the Church or anything like that, 754 00:52:05,920 --> 00:52:08,039 and nothing like that. But but to say that that actually, if 755 00:52:08,079 --> 00:52:12,679 you if you go and look at actually what the tradition is, you know, 756 00:52:13,360 --> 00:52:16,039 in literature, in the church, in our hagiography, in the scriptures, 757 00:52:16,079 --> 00:52:19,920 all these things, if you look at what it is, it's it's 758 00:52:19,960 --> 00:52:22,519 not that it's not that just sort of clean. It's not that just sort 759 00:52:22,519 --> 00:52:25,920 of like clean. You know, the lawn is perfectly cut and and you've 760 00:52:25,960 --> 00:52:30,079 got the two kids, one boy and one girl, and like just that 761 00:52:30,119 --> 00:52:34,760 whole like sort of black and white image of here's what perfect life, you 762 00:52:34,800 --> 00:52:36,559 know, is supposed to be. If you're a good person, you go 763 00:52:36,599 --> 00:52:39,840 to church on Sundays. And this is where this is where fairy tales really 764 00:52:39,880 --> 00:52:45,360 fit into things. But they they would have read those stories, and they 765 00:52:45,360 --> 00:52:46,639 would have read but they would have also read Homer, and they would have 766 00:52:46,679 --> 00:52:52,760 also read even like the North Smiths. Right, there's some great work that's 767 00:52:52,760 --> 00:52:54,000 been written. We're going to talk about it some in the Bail of Class 768 00:52:54,039 --> 00:52:59,320 people. There's been some great stuff that's written about how Christians when they you 769 00:52:59,360 --> 00:53:02,079 know, the skin and and Germanic Christians when they converted, they were able 770 00:53:02,119 --> 00:53:06,079 to look at things like Igdrasill right, the Tree of Life right, the 771 00:53:06,400 --> 00:53:09,199 world tree right, and then to sort of see it as the cross right, 772 00:53:09,280 --> 00:53:14,719 and and then and then develop a really beautiful poetic tradition around the cross, 773 00:53:14,880 --> 00:53:17,920 which is actually deeply continent with the Byzantine poetic tradition around the Cross. 774 00:53:19,880 --> 00:53:22,360 So we'll talk about some of those things in the Bail Wolf Class. But 775 00:53:22,960 --> 00:53:24,400 just to move on real quick, because I know we're like way over the 776 00:53:24,440 --> 00:53:30,159 normal time for these kinds of things. The third thing that you need to 777 00:53:30,239 --> 00:53:34,840 understand, and and again this is something that you have been trying to tell 778 00:53:34,880 --> 00:53:37,360 people, and I think effectively telling people for years, is that heaven is 779 00:53:37,400 --> 00:53:45,559 above and hell is beneath. The medieval vision of the cosmos is not geocentric, 780 00:53:46,400 --> 00:53:52,199 right, that is the world at the center. It is rather the 781 00:53:52,280 --> 00:53:54,920 earth at the bottom. Right. And so you get this very clearly in 782 00:53:55,000 --> 00:54:02,239 Dante, where you've got the the the outer heaven, the empire Rian right, 783 00:54:02,280 --> 00:54:07,760 where God dwells, right, the divine rose, the beauty of everything, 784 00:54:07,840 --> 00:54:12,519 sort of like reality bounces back in on itself like a mirror image, 785 00:54:12,559 --> 00:54:15,360 and it's God at the center and everything around him. Right. But then 786 00:54:15,400 --> 00:54:19,760 you have these various tiers, the various different heavens, right, these different 787 00:54:19,800 --> 00:54:27,639 heavens, the heaven of the fixed stars and Saturn and Joe or Jupiter and 788 00:54:27,719 --> 00:54:31,599 Mars and Soul, the Sun and Venus and Mercury and the moon, and 789 00:54:31,639 --> 00:54:37,800 then beneath the moon. And basically in the Middle Ages, the really important 790 00:54:37,840 --> 00:54:42,639 barrier is the barrier of the moon. Right, things beneath the moon can 791 00:54:42,719 --> 00:54:45,480 change. It's the world of time, is the world where repentance is possible, 792 00:54:45,719 --> 00:54:50,199 but it's also the world where things die and decay. Beyond the moon 793 00:54:50,840 --> 00:54:53,960 is things are fixed and things move in kind of perfect order. Right. 794 00:54:57,000 --> 00:55:01,639 And so in Dante's Divine Comedy, when Lucifer, when the devil is cast 795 00:55:01,639 --> 00:55:05,079 out of Heaven, he's cast down to Earth. Why is he cast down 796 00:55:05,119 --> 00:55:07,039 to Earth? In out some other place? Which would actually be a perfectly 797 00:55:07,039 --> 00:55:10,519 good question to ask if you had like a Copernican model of the universe, 798 00:55:10,920 --> 00:55:15,320 right, why not why Earth? Well, it's a very simple answer. 799 00:55:15,480 --> 00:55:20,599 In the bottom is the bottom. It's as far down as you can go. 800 00:55:21,119 --> 00:55:24,079 So Lucifer is cast down to Earth, and when he lands, his 801 00:55:24,199 --> 00:55:29,880 body makes a pit because basically the Earth hates him and is trying to get 802 00:55:29,880 --> 00:55:32,320 out of his way, right, So he lands and everything is like sort 803 00:55:32,360 --> 00:55:36,920 of thrown up, and the dirt is thrown up on the other side of 804 00:55:36,960 --> 00:55:40,079 the planet that becomes the mount of Purgatory. And then Satan eventually lands at 805 00:55:40,119 --> 00:55:43,559 the center of the Earth. Why at the center of the Earth, Because 806 00:55:43,719 --> 00:55:49,199 in this you could say, like geography, this is as far away as 807 00:55:49,239 --> 00:55:52,639 you can get from God. That's the lowest point, the lowest point. 808 00:55:52,960 --> 00:55:55,880 So man did medieval man did not see himself as standing at the center of 809 00:55:55,920 --> 00:56:00,920 the universe. He saw himself as standing at the bottom of a great stairaway, 810 00:56:00,000 --> 00:56:09,440 looking up towards God. And of course the medieval medieval man understood the 811 00:56:09,559 --> 00:56:15,719 entire human life as the soul's longing, a desire to return to God who 812 00:56:15,719 --> 00:56:21,360 had made it right. And so it's really easy to remember this if we 813 00:56:21,400 --> 00:56:22,599 remember two things. One is that in the Middle Ages, nobody believed the 814 00:56:22,599 --> 00:56:27,239 world was flat. It wasn't like people all thought the world was flat until 815 00:56:27,280 --> 00:56:30,000 Christopher Columbus or whoever sailed around it and proved, you know, like, 816 00:56:30,119 --> 00:56:34,239 oh my gosh. The people that think that I still run into it. 817 00:56:34,280 --> 00:56:36,440 People are like, oh, Columbus prove the world was round, and I'm 818 00:56:36,480 --> 00:56:37,960 like, no, he didn't. The Greeks proved the world was round, 819 00:56:38,000 --> 00:56:40,000 and they did it with math, and they did it, you know, 820 00:56:40,159 --> 00:56:45,239 four thousand years ago and anyway, But then also the other thing is the 821 00:56:45,280 --> 00:56:49,119 other thing is and here's my little Enders game reference for Andrews game fans out 822 00:56:49,159 --> 00:56:52,480 there, like we just remember the Enemy's gate is down that is that is, 823 00:56:52,519 --> 00:56:55,280 you know, Hell is down right, the center of the earth right, 824 00:56:57,360 --> 00:57:00,039 And so in the medieval cosmology, there's no such thing as outer space 825 00:57:00,239 --> 00:57:04,239 doesn't exist. Not to say they didn't know that their stars, planets, 826 00:57:04,280 --> 00:57:07,159 comets, supernova, et cetera. But there's no such thing as outer space, 827 00:57:07,199 --> 00:57:12,840 this vast empty blackness where everything is just sort of arbitrary and Neil de 828 00:57:12,920 --> 00:57:17,159 grass tysony just kind of floating out there, right. I actually have a 829 00:57:17,239 --> 00:57:22,719 theory about that is that when we switch to the Copernican model, outer space 830 00:57:22,800 --> 00:57:27,280 becomes the limits of the Earth. It actually flips, it inverts weirdly, 831 00:57:27,400 --> 00:57:30,679 and and everything that used to happen on the edge of the of the world 832 00:57:30,880 --> 00:57:36,559 is now projected into outer space. If you watch that movie Gravity, it's 833 00:57:36,599 --> 00:57:40,440 really actually wonderful, like in terms of that cosmic sense. It represents outer 834 00:57:40,519 --> 00:57:47,599 space as this like place of death and strangeness that is outside the bound world, 835 00:57:46,639 --> 00:57:52,440 and basically like it's it's related to going into the water. That's why 836 00:57:52,480 --> 00:57:53,920 at the end of the movie, and she's in this in this thing, 837 00:57:53,960 --> 00:57:59,079 and she encounters Saint Christopher, and she encounters like this weird place where she 838 00:57:59,079 --> 00:58:01,719 doesn't understand Chinese, and then finally she dives into the bottom of the water 839 00:58:01,760 --> 00:58:06,360 and comes out like resurrection. It's like, that's a real good understanding of 840 00:58:06,360 --> 00:58:08,679 what outer space is. Really. Yeah, the the you know, the 841 00:58:08,719 --> 00:58:13,960 one of the other you know, really strong ancient images, including for like 842 00:58:14,039 --> 00:58:16,199 the Germanic people. So we're going to talk about this in the Babel of 843 00:58:16,199 --> 00:58:21,639 class the way that they they they saw the world as you know, as 844 00:58:21,800 --> 00:58:25,840 as midden yard, right, the middle Earth surrounded by the encircling sea, 845 00:58:27,679 --> 00:58:29,639 right, and where the sea is like, this is the abyss. This 846 00:58:29,719 --> 00:58:31,119 is the thing you can't like, God is over there on the other side 847 00:58:31,159 --> 00:58:36,880 somewhere, right. That's basically what space became for us when that switch happened. 848 00:58:36,920 --> 00:58:42,559 Yeah, exactly, Yeah, yep. So in this conception of the 849 00:58:42,599 --> 00:58:45,280 world, the world moves and is moved by love. Right. Dante again 850 00:58:45,960 --> 00:58:51,280 has this wonderful phrase at the very end of a comedy, referring to God 851 00:58:51,360 --> 00:58:54,760 is the love that moves the Sun and the other stars. So in the 852 00:58:54,800 --> 00:58:58,679 Discarded Image, she Lewis makes a really great point about this. He says 853 00:58:58,719 --> 00:59:01,559 that in the modern world, we conceive of a universe governed by laws. 854 00:59:01,679 --> 00:59:06,400 Right, we have the law of universal gravitation, the law of conservation of 855 00:59:06,519 --> 00:59:12,199 energy, the second law of thermodynamics, Right, and one of the things 856 00:59:12,199 --> 00:59:15,679 that basically postmodernity does is it starts to break down this vision of the universe, 857 00:59:15,760 --> 00:59:20,199 even even at the level like quantum physics, which again this is all 858 00:59:20,239 --> 00:59:24,079 stuff you've talked about, but it breaks down this idea of a world that's 859 00:59:24,119 --> 00:59:29,800 like totally governed and kind of predictable and determinable, governed by laws. And 860 00:59:29,840 --> 00:59:34,519 now we're actually saying perception is part of the you know, actually affects you 861 00:59:34,559 --> 00:59:37,239 know, reality on a quantum level, you know whatever that means, right, 862 00:59:37,960 --> 00:59:44,480 But it's got no compelling alternative with which reality could be unified. And 863 00:59:44,519 --> 00:59:49,840 in the Middle Ages they understood the world as being held together and moved by 864 00:59:50,000 --> 00:59:54,480 love, which you could say is is is held in a world that's tactually 865 00:59:54,519 --> 01:00:00,039 held and moved together by attention, right, and so free Chaucer and is 866 01:00:00,239 --> 01:00:05,440 his poem the House of Fame, which is not one of the Chaucer stories 867 01:00:05,440 --> 01:00:07,719 that you read in high school. I don't know why, you know. 868 01:00:07,800 --> 01:00:10,360 I guess it's because the teenagers. We figure teenagers can handle like the body 869 01:00:10,480 --> 01:00:14,800 humor of of the Canterbury Tales, and maybe that'll be more fun for them. 870 01:00:15,480 --> 01:00:20,719 But in the House of Fame, which which among other things, involves 871 01:00:20,760 --> 01:00:24,880 this this man sort of ascending up through the spheres, right, it's being 872 01:00:24,960 --> 01:00:28,960 you know, he's asking questions about how the medieval universe works the way it 873 01:00:28,960 --> 01:00:32,000 does. And he's told that every I'll just quote from it here, every 874 01:00:32,079 --> 01:00:37,679 kindly thing kindly as in the sense of according to its kind, not as 875 01:00:37,679 --> 01:00:39,599 in the sense of nice nice. So every everything according to his kind, 876 01:00:39,639 --> 01:00:45,480 every kindly thing that is hath a kindly stead, that is a home there, 877 01:00:45,719 --> 01:00:52,159 Hey, he may best in it, can serve it be unto which 878 01:00:52,199 --> 01:00:59,400 place? Everything, through his kindly inclining moveth forward to come to. So 879 01:00:59,559 --> 01:01:06,639 things move in the universe, Things move in the cosmos by by this process 880 01:01:06,719 --> 01:01:10,639 of basically everything trying to get back to where it belongs. So why does 881 01:01:10,679 --> 01:01:15,760 water sit on top of the earth Because water belongs here and the earth belongs 882 01:01:15,760 --> 01:01:17,239 here. If I drop the stone in water, why will it go down? 883 01:01:17,760 --> 01:01:22,159 Newton was not the first person to notice that apples fall from trees or 884 01:01:22,199 --> 01:01:24,440 whatever, right, you know, and be like, gosh, no one's 885 01:01:24,440 --> 01:01:28,760 ever noticed this before, you know. But the explanation that they would have 886 01:01:28,760 --> 01:01:30,880 given was that the apple falls because it's made of earth and it's trying to 887 01:01:30,880 --> 01:01:34,920 get back to where it came from. And of course Lewis I give another 888 01:01:35,000 --> 01:01:37,199 Lewis quote. He says, we could ask the medieval scientists, this is 889 01:01:37,280 --> 01:01:40,039 silly, why you're talking this way? Do you really think that a rock 890 01:01:40,119 --> 01:01:44,880 really loves the earth? Like whatever? And he would we could retort, 891 01:01:45,039 --> 01:01:49,159 or he could retort with a counter question, but do you intend your language 892 01:01:49,199 --> 01:01:52,920 about laws and obedience any more literally than I intend mine about kindly inclining? 893 01:01:53,159 --> 01:01:58,679 In other words, is there like a cosmic traffic court where if you disobey 894 01:01:58,760 --> 01:02:00,480 the law of gravity, like you get a ticket? Like? How does 895 01:02:00,480 --> 01:02:04,280 this work? How does this work? But what Lewis says is that on 896 01:02:04,320 --> 01:02:07,960 the imaginative and emotional level, it makes a great difference whether we with the 897 01:02:08,000 --> 01:02:15,039 medievals we project upon the universe our strivings and desires, or with the moderns 898 01:02:15,039 --> 01:02:17,639 our police system and our traffic regulations, Like what do you want to live 899 01:02:17,679 --> 01:02:22,239 in a cosmic police state? Which is even affect of the ways that we 900 01:02:22,280 --> 01:02:29,079 think about Christianity, like the reduction of Christianity to basically just moralism. Yeah, 901 01:02:29,159 --> 01:02:30,800 I mean, I've talked about this elsewhere, but I grew up in 902 01:02:30,840 --> 01:02:37,440 this fundamentalist group or sect that, among other things, believe that the Bible 903 01:02:37,519 --> 01:02:39,400 is a set of laws, of a set of principles. This is what 904 01:02:39,400 --> 01:02:42,880 they call them. And if you live by these things, then your life 905 01:02:42,880 --> 01:02:46,000 will go well, and that they're as immutable and as provable as like the 906 01:02:46,079 --> 01:02:49,599 law of gravity. I mean, they would have said that, right. 907 01:02:49,679 --> 01:02:54,000 And so do we want to live in a world in a cosmos that's governed 908 01:02:54,039 --> 01:02:59,480 by love or in one that's essentially a police state? All right? So 909 01:02:59,480 --> 01:03:01,679 the last thing I want to talk about space and time. So I'm going 910 01:03:01,719 --> 01:03:07,400 to read here a quote from Zigmunt Bauman's Liquid Modernity, which is an incredible 911 01:03:07,440 --> 01:03:13,119 book if people haven't read it, it uh by liquid zigment, Boman means 912 01:03:13,199 --> 01:03:17,000 that it is modernity can't hold the shape, it can't hold form. So 913 01:03:17,199 --> 01:03:23,039 he says that modernity starts when space and time are separated from living practice and 914 01:03:23,119 --> 01:03:30,599 from each other, and so become ready to be theorized as distinct and mutually 915 01:03:30,639 --> 01:03:35,800 independent categories of strategy and action. When they cease to be as they used 916 01:03:35,800 --> 01:03:40,679 to be in long pre modern centuries, the intertwined and so barely distinguishable aspects 917 01:03:42,159 --> 01:03:47,639 of the living experience locked in a stable and apparently invulnerable one to one correspondence. 918 01:03:49,039 --> 01:03:51,840 When I read this paragraph, I was just like, Oh, it's 919 01:03:51,880 --> 01:03:54,079 Matthew's book, and it's like everything Jonathan has been saying for years, and 920 01:03:54,079 --> 01:04:00,760 it's like, but somebody else, somebody else is saying it. So modernity 921 01:04:00,840 --> 01:04:03,519 basically is the separation of space and time. It's becoming two sort of separate 922 01:04:03,559 --> 01:04:06,760 things, right, And I think that you can tell me what you think 923 01:04:06,760 --> 01:04:09,800 about this, because I'm still kind of noodling on this idea. But I 924 01:04:09,840 --> 01:04:14,599 think that postmodernity could be understood as a further corruption of this, that once 925 01:04:14,719 --> 01:04:19,119 space and time are measured, separated, categorized, they eventually cease to have 926 01:04:19,199 --> 01:04:23,800 any meaning at all, and then we deconstruct them in order to kind of 927 01:04:23,800 --> 01:04:27,519 show how absurd they are. Right. I think about this a lot when 928 01:04:27,559 --> 01:04:30,440 I'm driving around in my car, because, like, it's the most absurd 929 01:04:30,559 --> 01:04:34,159 sort of separation of space and time. The fact that I can be somewhere, 930 01:04:34,480 --> 01:04:36,280 you know, one hundred miles away, I can be there in an 931 01:04:36,320 --> 01:04:41,199 hour and a half. Yeah, well, for sure that the technology has 932 01:04:41,280 --> 01:04:45,519 made this problem excessively great, in the same way that in your car you 933 01:04:45,639 --> 01:04:48,679 have that experience. We have the experience now like look at what we're doing 934 01:04:48,760 --> 01:04:54,159 right now, right, yes, right, yes, yeah, there's nothing 935 01:04:54,280 --> 01:05:00,519 more like break. Nothing breaks this sense of space? Is this zoom conversation? 936 01:05:00,760 --> 01:05:02,639 You know. Yeah, that's a good point. I think that I 937 01:05:02,679 --> 01:05:08,840 think that deconstruction is at its heart, it's a reaction to the subsurdity, 938 01:05:08,880 --> 01:05:12,320 and it's like a it's like an immune response. I mean, I mean 939 01:05:12,679 --> 01:05:15,440 this is I did not intend today to be the day that I've explained why 940 01:05:15,480 --> 01:05:19,320 the metric system was invented by demons. But the but but but but uh, 941 01:05:19,880 --> 01:05:28,440 as you know, here in America, we stubbornly refuse to use Listen, 942 01:05:28,679 --> 01:05:33,159 I'll I'll measure things in Universal Standard giraffes before I use the metric system, 943 01:05:33,280 --> 01:05:36,440 like like, oh, that's three giraftes long, Like I'll go there 944 01:05:36,800 --> 01:05:42,239 before I before I succumb to the use of the metric system. But I 945 01:05:42,280 --> 01:05:45,480 mean, the but if you think about the metric system, basically, the 946 01:05:45,559 --> 01:05:49,320 idea is, hey, let's measure the earth at a certain point that we've 947 01:05:49,400 --> 01:05:54,920 arbitrarly determined. Let's measure everything, yeah, and then divide it up into 948 01:05:54,960 --> 01:05:58,039 regular sections. And that's going to be our base unit of measurement from now 949 01:05:58,079 --> 01:06:00,440 on. And it used to be like a certain piece of metal that they 950 01:06:00,440 --> 01:06:03,400 had to keep a certain temperature because actually, if you get it out in 951 01:06:03,400 --> 01:06:06,039 the real world, it'll stop being that precise length. And now I think 952 01:06:06,079 --> 01:06:12,039 they use like lasers or something. But anyway, the point it's really important 953 01:06:12,039 --> 01:06:17,280 what you're saying, because this is, you know, the the the traditional 954 01:06:17,280 --> 01:06:23,199 way of measuring, which is clunky and it's difficult, is nonetheless based on 955 01:06:23,280 --> 01:06:28,039 human experience. It's clunky and difficult, but it's also easy and intuitive. 956 01:06:28,360 --> 01:06:31,119 Yeah, right, at a very base level to say, how many feet 957 01:06:31,199 --> 01:06:34,480 is this? Well, I've got a foot, I can check right, 958 01:06:34,519 --> 01:06:36,840 and and most of the time that's going to be good enough for most most 959 01:06:36,840 --> 01:06:42,159 applications. Right an inch, right, well, I've got a right, 960 01:06:42,360 --> 01:06:45,920 a cubit, I've got an arm, you know. But even like measurements 961 01:06:45,960 --> 01:06:49,320 of time, like like so many people have tried to monkey with the way 962 01:06:49,320 --> 01:06:53,840 that we measure time, and it's like like, well, we'll let you 963 01:06:53,920 --> 01:06:58,840 do the metric system with space. But when like when they try to introduce 964 01:06:58,880 --> 01:07:00,480 like the ten day week, just can't do it. You just can't do 965 01:07:00,559 --> 01:07:05,320 it. Like everybody has a seven day week, like it's it's completely you 966 01:07:05,360 --> 01:07:10,199 know. Uh, it's one of the most immutable things about the human experience. 967 01:07:10,280 --> 01:07:14,320 Yeah, and I mean just separating time into four quadrants of sun and 968 01:07:14,440 --> 01:07:17,239 dark, like light and darkness and sun and moon. Even though in in 969 01:07:17,400 --> 01:07:21,280 the the let's say, over the variation it changes, it's like you just 970 01:07:21,360 --> 01:07:26,719 can't change you just can't change that, right, Yes, it's yeah, 971 01:07:26,760 --> 01:07:30,320 so it's this, but this is this is the the kind of ways that 972 01:07:30,880 --> 01:07:32,719 this the sort of idea that if we sort of measure and quantify everything, 973 01:07:33,320 --> 01:07:36,960 right, then we we can control it and then everything is certain, right, 974 01:07:38,239 --> 01:07:42,679 this this basic idea. What it what it does is it separates time 975 01:07:42,719 --> 01:07:46,440 from space, right, because it separates space from any kind of experience of 976 01:07:46,440 --> 01:07:50,119 that space in a way that you know, human beings would would use it. 977 01:07:51,679 --> 01:07:59,400 So what father father Silvio Bunta in his this is from his his commentary 978 01:07:59,480 --> 01:08:01,840 on the Euroticon, which is like for people, it's like the priest book 979 01:08:02,800 --> 01:08:10,039 from the Seminos Petra monastery on Mount Athos. He says that he talks about 980 01:08:10,039 --> 01:08:14,880 how the Orthodox tradition we have two different words for time. We have chronos, 981 01:08:15,440 --> 01:08:17,600 you know, whence chronology right, this is what Father Alexander Schmamann called 982 01:08:17,640 --> 01:08:20,880 death. In other words, it's the it's experience of time and decay, 983 01:08:21,319 --> 01:08:27,319 right, the linear passage of moments. And then we have cairos and cairos 984 01:08:27,520 --> 01:08:33,920 is this uh this this, it's the eternal moment, right. Yeah, 985 01:08:33,960 --> 01:08:38,640 it's qualified. It's qualified time. It's like, yes, qualified time as 986 01:08:38,640 --> 01:08:43,279 a good Yeah. So Charles Taylor in a secular rate, he describes ch 987 01:08:43,319 --> 01:08:48,399 irotic time as how something that happened two thousand years ago can become closer to 988 01:08:48,439 --> 01:08:53,600 you than something that happened yesterday. So like if you go to Orthodox pasca, 989 01:08:54,279 --> 01:08:58,119 right, which even if you're not Orthodox, like it's not even close 990 01:08:58,159 --> 01:09:00,720 to your Easter this year, so like you have no excuse. Go go 991 01:09:00,720 --> 01:09:03,039 go find an Orthodox church area and go experience pasca, Like, go find 992 01:09:03,079 --> 01:09:08,800 out what that's like. When you go to Orthodox pasca, you are experiencing 993 01:09:08,960 --> 01:09:13,800 the resurrection as an event that is closer to you today than the moon landing 994 01:09:14,119 --> 01:09:18,119 or the assassination of JFK Or said, you know, the the you know, 995 01:09:19,039 --> 01:09:23,319 you know, the twenty sixteen election or something like that. I don't 996 01:09:23,319 --> 01:09:28,119 know why I couldn't pick a non controversial historical event. But mind just just 997 01:09:28,119 --> 01:09:34,000 file them up there. My mind wouldn't do it, Okay. So chronological 998 01:09:34,079 --> 01:09:36,720 time is the time of this world, right, but the chirotic time, 999 01:09:36,760 --> 01:09:44,640 the chiros this is this is a time that knows no chronology, ah and 1000 01:09:44,720 --> 01:09:46,760 what and but we have the same thing actually with space as well, which 1001 01:09:46,760 --> 01:09:48,760 I think is not as well known. In the Orthodox tradition. We have 1002 01:09:48,760 --> 01:09:53,640 two words for space. There is korra, which means like normal space, 1003 01:09:53,840 --> 01:09:57,520 like any any old space, and then topos, right, which means like 1004 01:09:57,520 --> 01:10:01,079 a particular place. Yeah, like it's like it's like that, it's like 1005 01:10:01,159 --> 01:10:08,359 this, there's a hierarchy to its existence. So in the liturgy, pronos 1006 01:10:08,399 --> 01:10:13,079 becomes cairos and space becomes place right, and all of these things are kind 1007 01:10:13,079 --> 01:10:16,800 of caught up into that eternal moment. And to give like an example of 1008 01:10:16,840 --> 01:10:20,439 this, So this is all by way of saying, not only is the 1009 01:10:20,439 --> 01:10:26,760 metric system demonic, but cause and effect is made up. In the Middle 1010 01:10:26,760 --> 01:10:30,680 Ages, people did not see history. And again you could read some of 1011 01:10:30,920 --> 01:10:33,359 Vaalalascan's essays about this, and he's even got a whole section on it in 1012 01:10:33,520 --> 01:10:36,199 a History of the Island of people are curious about this. But in the 1013 01:10:36,199 --> 01:10:41,399 Middle Ages, people didn't see history as a series of cause and effects, 1014 01:10:41,560 --> 01:10:45,159 causes and effects. They saw history as a battle between good and evil, 1015 01:10:45,079 --> 01:10:50,039 which means that the most important thing in history has already happened, because that 1016 01:10:50,079 --> 01:10:55,399 was the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Right. But history is 1017 01:10:55,439 --> 01:10:58,399 this battle between good and evil. This is what the whole Apocalypse of Saint 1018 01:10:58,439 --> 01:11:00,800 John is about. Is history see as this conflict between good and evil in 1019 01:11:00,840 --> 01:11:06,600 which good ultimately triumphs. But because we see history in this way, if 1020 01:11:06,640 --> 01:11:11,520 we, uh, you know, I if I slap Jonathan, or let's 1021 01:11:11,520 --> 01:11:14,720 say I insult Jonathan, I say something really mean about your mother, right, 1022 01:11:14,840 --> 01:11:16,720 and then you slap me. Right, we could say, well, 1023 01:11:16,760 --> 01:11:19,840 there's a cause which is I said something insulting and in fact, which is 1024 01:11:19,880 --> 01:11:23,439 you slap me. But in the Middle Ages they wouldn't have understood it this 1025 01:11:23,439 --> 01:11:27,359 way. They would have understood it as I sinned against the image of God 1026 01:11:27,399 --> 01:11:30,560 in you or your mother, and that God through your hand punished me. 1027 01:11:31,319 --> 01:11:34,720 Right. That's the that's the sort of difference. There's a we see sort 1028 01:11:34,720 --> 01:11:39,079 of history as being this flat, two dimensional thing. But they they would 1029 01:11:39,119 --> 01:11:43,119 have seen God as constantly, always intervening in history. And where this becomes 1030 01:11:43,159 --> 01:11:47,399 really important is when you understand something like the annunciation. So if you only 1031 01:11:47,399 --> 01:11:53,079 have this, this understanding of chronological time in which everything must proceed through a 1032 01:11:53,119 --> 01:11:57,880 course a series of ordinary cause it effects, something Lewis really struggled with when 1033 01:11:57,880 --> 01:12:00,239 he was writing Miracles, and he actually kind of had to go back can 1034 01:12:00,479 --> 01:12:04,600 revise quite a bit of it after a conversation with a Roman Catholic philosopher on 1035 01:12:04,640 --> 01:12:09,800 the subject. Okay, but if you see history as just being the series 1036 01:12:09,840 --> 01:12:14,560 of sort of normal causes and effects, then Mary is an ordinary Jewish girl, 1037 01:12:15,079 --> 01:12:17,359 one whose life must have gone on in the usual way, marriage, 1038 01:12:17,479 --> 01:12:21,119 childbirth, family life, old age, death as part of a part of 1039 01:12:21,159 --> 01:12:27,600 a normal succession of cause and effect. And so you'll have conversations with somebody 1040 01:12:27,600 --> 01:12:30,960 who talking about something like the entrance of the Theotogus in the temple, which 1041 01:12:30,000 --> 01:12:34,239 is an event that we celebrate in you know that most traditional all traditional Christians 1042 01:12:34,239 --> 01:12:38,640 celebrate, and most Christians around the world celebrate as a as a feast in 1043 01:12:38,680 --> 01:12:41,479 the church. But then you'll have a modern person come along and say, 1044 01:12:41,520 --> 01:12:44,560 well, that's note they never let women into the temple, so that couldn't 1045 01:12:44,560 --> 01:12:46,720 have happened. Well, listen, brother, nobody's saying that this is a 1046 01:12:46,760 --> 01:12:51,319 normal thing that happened. If it's not the point, it's a special that 1047 01:12:51,359 --> 01:12:55,319 we're talking about it, right, and so, but if you see time 1048 01:12:55,439 --> 01:13:00,319 is only in this way, then the nunciation and the incarnation become like a 1049 01:13:00,359 --> 01:13:04,680 blip or an interruption into the ordinary passage of things, which is otherwise just 1050 01:13:04,720 --> 01:13:11,079 part of the linear progress of humanity. But if you view it as as 1051 01:13:11,159 --> 01:13:15,840 happening in chirotic time is happening in Chiros, then all of the righteous actually 1052 01:13:15,840 --> 01:13:19,039 from across human history, Adam, Seth, Noah, Abraham, David right, 1053 01:13:19,119 --> 01:13:25,199 sort of narrow into a point so that by the time that the Word 1054 01:13:25,359 --> 01:13:30,319 is incarnated in the womb of the Most Holy Virgin, there's basically just the 1055 01:13:30,359 --> 01:13:34,520 one righteous family left in Israel. Right. But it's all from a chronos 1056 01:13:34,520 --> 01:13:39,319 standpoint, that's terrible, because look, you know, by a number standpoint, 1057 01:13:39,319 --> 01:13:42,720 bad guys are winning, right. But actually, from in terms of 1058 01:13:42,800 --> 01:13:46,479 Chiros, no it's everything is distilling, everything's condensing down to a single point, 1059 01:13:46,720 --> 01:13:51,000 so that all of God's interventions on behalf of his people throughout history are 1060 01:13:51,039 --> 01:13:55,720 actually rolled up into and made manifest in that moment. And this is why 1061 01:13:56,119 --> 01:14:00,439 the Magnificat, which is one of the oldest Christian hymns, a lot of 1062 01:14:00,520 --> 01:14:02,840 historians think that it was already being sung in church before the Old before the 1063 01:14:02,840 --> 01:14:05,720 Gospel, according to Saint Luke, was actually written, right, it's one 1064 01:14:05,760 --> 01:14:09,760 of the oldest Christian hymns. This is why the Magnificat, if you look 1065 01:14:09,760 --> 01:14:14,319 at it, it's really like a bringing together of every song of a victorious 1066 01:14:14,439 --> 01:14:17,760 righteous woman from the Old Testament. So you can look at Deborah's song and 1067 01:14:17,920 --> 01:14:21,439 Miriam's song of the Sea, and the song of the Righteous Hannah and like 1068 01:14:21,439 --> 01:14:25,880 like all of their prayers, right, you know, as the as the 1069 01:14:25,880 --> 01:14:29,840 weaker person praying for deliverance. Right, all of that stuff is kind of 1070 01:14:29,880 --> 01:14:33,279 rolled up into that single prayer that that she prays. And so this is 1071 01:14:33,319 --> 01:14:36,479 where we get to this idea that I think would be like the fifth and 1072 01:14:36,520 --> 01:14:43,920 final or the fourth and final maybe just to tell people see what what Richard 1073 01:14:43,960 --> 01:14:47,399 is alluding to is. In some ways there's a man in which you can 1074 01:14:47,520 --> 01:14:54,840 understand the let's say, the the annunciation of Mary as the cause of all 1075 01:14:54,880 --> 01:15:00,279 the other ones that came before in in in a sense of meaning, right, 1076 01:15:00,439 --> 01:15:02,520 It's like that's what Richard is trying to allude to, and that's why 1077 01:15:02,840 --> 01:15:08,720 when we talk about it's like that which makes all those other things worthy of 1078 01:15:08,760 --> 01:15:14,600 interest and important to notice and strings them together and makes them something is actually 1079 01:15:14,640 --> 01:15:19,359 something that happens after the event, and that is you know, and that's 1080 01:15:19,359 --> 01:15:25,199 why in some ways, like Christians have an eschatological vision of reality, which 1081 01:15:25,239 --> 01:15:30,399 is also that that which will happen in the future, like the Esketon that's 1082 01:15:30,439 --> 01:15:35,039 coming over the hill that never quite happens, is going to make sense of 1083 01:15:35,079 --> 01:15:40,720 everything and will show us and will reveal to us what the cause of everything 1084 01:15:41,039 --> 01:15:45,399 was in the first place. And there's a collapse between the end and the 1085 01:15:45,439 --> 01:15:47,800 beginning, when some ways the end becomes the beginning, or the beginning and 1086 01:15:47,880 --> 01:15:53,359 the end are brought into the person of Christ as this glorious figure that is 1087 01:15:53,399 --> 01:15:56,840 both the one that comes at the end but then revealed to be the one 1088 01:15:56,880 --> 01:16:00,600 that created is the lamb of God that was sacrificed before the foundation of the 1089 01:16:00,600 --> 01:16:04,359 world, although that happened at the crucifixion. That might sound like a weird 1090 01:16:05,159 --> 01:16:09,680 a weird way of thinking. But it actually is something that we experience all 1091 01:16:09,840 --> 01:16:13,640 all the time, that we experience in our lives all the time, which 1092 01:16:13,680 --> 01:16:18,079 is that the fact that we remember things in our past as being important is 1093 01:16:18,199 --> 01:16:21,520 usually based on things that are happening to you now, and that things that 1094 01:16:21,560 --> 01:16:25,800 are culminating for you now. It's like, oh, the reason why I 1095 01:16:26,039 --> 01:16:30,880 liked I like to play this game when I was young is because, oh, 1096 01:16:30,960 --> 01:16:32,600 it turns out I'm going to become a doctor or whatever. And we 1097 01:16:32,680 --> 01:16:38,920 kind of and it's weird because the postmoderns this something that they understood. Leota 1098 01:16:39,359 --> 01:16:44,520 wrote this little book called postmodern Explained to Children, and that was his definition 1099 01:16:44,560 --> 01:16:50,479 of postmodernism. Postmodernism was basically reinterpretation of the past based on the present. 1100 01:16:51,119 --> 01:16:55,560 But again, what the postmoderns got wrong is that they saw it as an 1101 01:16:55,640 --> 01:16:59,960 arbitrary exercise and power ultimately, which is that there's a way in which power 1102 01:17:00,319 --> 01:17:05,159 can now reinterpret the past and make it align with with with their present vision. 1103 01:17:05,199 --> 01:17:09,319 And they didn't have a sense in which none of this is actually arbitrary, 1104 01:17:09,479 --> 01:17:14,720 and ultimately all of this is playing in cosmic patterns that are that are 1105 01:17:14,800 --> 01:17:18,039 true, that are just simply true and are playing out in creation. You 1106 01:17:18,079 --> 01:17:24,800 could say that postmodernism is sort of a failure of eschatology. Right, you 1107 01:17:24,880 --> 01:17:29,079 don't have the capacity for an eschatological vision. You just you sort of like 1108 01:17:29,319 --> 01:17:32,199 you're reacting as the separation of space and time. But you still you still 1109 01:17:32,239 --> 01:17:36,039 accept the chronos the fact that he thinks they're just going to keep going, 1110 01:17:36,159 --> 01:17:40,159 right. Yeah, Well, Jacques Deda had this idea. He called it 1111 01:17:40,239 --> 01:17:45,359 open escatology, and it's an interesting idea because he understood in some ways that 1112 01:17:45,680 --> 01:17:49,960 the future is coming towards us and interpreting the past. But he didn't want 1113 01:17:50,279 --> 01:17:55,159 like he was like, no, it's not about saying come Lord Jesus. 1114 01:17:55,239 --> 01:17:59,760 He would just say come like just basically, you know, this this desire 1115 01:17:59,800 --> 01:18:01,800 to the future role on us. But you know, it's like that the 1116 01:18:01,840 --> 01:18:08,159 world actually does go through path does actually does actually manifest in patterns, and 1117 01:18:08,199 --> 01:18:12,039 I'm sorry to tell you, and so so it's not it's not arbitrary at 1118 01:18:12,079 --> 01:18:15,399 all, what's coming over the hill? Yes, yes, so this this 1119 01:18:15,479 --> 01:18:18,039 kind of brings us to like the final thing that I want to say, 1120 01:18:18,079 --> 01:18:23,319 which is that the goal of this kind of reading and the goal of again 1121 01:18:23,359 --> 01:18:26,920 my whole goal. I mean, it's really it was like when we sat 1122 01:18:26,920 --> 01:18:30,439 down we first started talking about doing the Universal History series, it was kind 1123 01:18:30,479 --> 01:18:32,439 of like, how do we get people that take this stuff seriously? Right? 1124 01:18:34,039 --> 01:18:42,000 It's this this idea that that uh, through these stories and through sort 1125 01:18:42,000 --> 01:18:45,560 of helping people understand these patterns through stories, right, to help them have 1126 01:18:45,680 --> 01:18:49,000 a relationship with the cosmos. That is, you could say, like a 1127 01:18:49,039 --> 01:18:55,319 mysticgogical vision of the cosmos, right, the mysticgad you being the relationship between 1128 01:18:55,640 --> 01:18:58,960 you could say, the earthly temple and the heavenly temple, right, And 1129 01:18:58,960 --> 01:19:02,880 and actually in Judaism and in traditional Christianity, those are actually the same thing. 1130 01:19:03,079 --> 01:19:08,800 There's no distinction between them. And so this this, uh, this 1131 01:19:08,840 --> 01:19:12,399 is a vision of a cosmos in which we see that the relationship between the 1132 01:19:12,439 --> 01:19:16,600 scene and the unseen is real. It's not just merely symbolic. It is 1133 01:19:16,640 --> 01:19:20,800 symbolic, but it's not merely symbolic in the way that you know, it's 1134 01:19:20,840 --> 01:19:26,079 not modern oracle or allegorical way that makes it arbitrary, right, Yeah, 1135 01:19:26,079 --> 01:19:28,520 And that's the next thing is just it's not arbitrary. You can't say this 1136 01:19:28,680 --> 01:19:31,600 enough, right. The patterns by which the example you've used sometimes, right, 1137 01:19:31,640 --> 01:19:34,680 is that the patterns by which the cosmos is laid out aren't just things 1138 01:19:34,720 --> 01:19:39,319 that we are making up any more than we see an arbitrary of arrangement of 1139 01:19:39,359 --> 01:19:42,640 pigments on a canvas and we discribed, we decide that they're a vang of 1140 01:19:42,640 --> 01:19:47,800 painting. Right. But it's also apocalyptic. And this is what I think 1141 01:19:48,039 --> 01:19:55,039 sometimes people miss a little bit in some of the conversations that I've seen, 1142 01:19:55,119 --> 01:19:57,960 you know, happening in various circles around the internet, talking about some of 1143 01:19:57,960 --> 01:20:00,159 the stuff, that it's apocalyptic in the original sense, you know, of 1144 01:20:00,239 --> 01:20:04,079 lifting up the veil, the lifting of a veil, right, that the 1145 01:20:04,159 --> 01:20:10,159 nature of this relationship is constantly revealing itself in man, who is a microcosm 1146 01:20:11,199 --> 01:20:15,359 of the universe. And then also first and foremost in the liturgy. Right, 1147 01:20:15,079 --> 01:20:18,479 So, and that's the final thing, is that this, this relationship 1148 01:20:18,520 --> 01:20:23,880 between the scene and the unseen is liturgical. That the relationships between these things 1149 01:20:24,239 --> 01:20:29,560 aren't static, they move, they dance as in the liturgy. And I 1150 01:20:29,600 --> 01:20:32,439 still remember the first time I ever went to a divine liturgy, and you 1151 01:20:32,479 --> 01:20:35,840 know, I'd done my homework, I'd read on things ahead of time, 1152 01:20:35,880 --> 01:20:39,439 because that's how I am. And then I got there, and despite the 1153 01:20:39,439 --> 01:20:42,920 fact that I had read, you know, description after description of what was 1154 01:20:42,960 --> 01:20:45,880 going to happen in the Divine Liturgy, I'm there and it's like this big 1155 01:20:45,920 --> 01:20:48,439 festa liturgy and there's a bunch of clergy and the coming in at the altar 1156 01:20:48,479 --> 01:20:51,000 and the going out of the altar, and they're doing I'm like, I 1157 01:20:51,000 --> 01:20:57,319 have no idea what is happening, but I'd had this deep conviction in that 1158 01:20:57,439 --> 01:21:00,800 moment that this is the shape of air. Right. And then of course 1159 01:21:00,880 --> 01:21:04,960 for us, ultimately the revelation of Jesus Christ, the god Man who is 1160 01:21:05,039 --> 01:21:11,239 himself, the total revelation of God, and the total revelation of the human 1161 01:21:11,279 --> 01:21:15,000 person. And that's the last thing. The last point is if you're gonna 1162 01:21:15,239 --> 01:21:17,760 understand the scripture, is, if you're gonna understand the liturgy, if you're 1163 01:21:17,760 --> 01:21:21,600 gonna understand any work of pre modern literature, you have to see man as 1164 01:21:21,640 --> 01:21:26,640 a microcosm, that is, as a little cosmos. Right, that this 1165 01:21:26,800 --> 01:21:30,800 vision of the world is not anthropostcentric man at the center, but it is 1166 01:21:30,960 --> 01:21:34,920 anthropole cosmic. We are not just a collection of cells any more than a 1167 01:21:34,960 --> 01:21:39,760 temple is a collection of bricks or the liturgy is just a collection of arbitrary 1168 01:21:39,800 --> 01:21:43,800 historical movements that a creed it over time. And this is again, by 1169 01:21:43,840 --> 01:21:47,880 the way, like there are certain certain like let's say, circles of conservatism 1170 01:21:48,279 --> 01:21:53,680 that are currently trying to wage war against the madness of our of our current 1171 01:21:53,760 --> 01:22:00,640 age by reducing things. So I saw this headline a few weeks ago in 1172 01:22:00,960 --> 01:22:04,520 a like a conservative website about about some transgendered person, right, and so 1173 01:22:04,720 --> 01:22:09,880 of say, but and they said that every DNA of this person's you know, 1174 01:22:10,399 --> 01:22:15,359 biology is male, you know. And but listen, folks, if 1175 01:22:15,359 --> 01:22:20,239 we are reducing identity down to cellular level, down to DNA, right, 1176 01:22:20,359 --> 01:22:25,880 we've actually already seated the ground to materialism. Yeah, right, Because that's 1177 01:22:25,880 --> 01:22:29,039 why C. S. Lewis says, it has this wonderful quote, and 1178 01:22:29,159 --> 01:22:34,399 uh, I think it. I forget in which book of the no I'm 1179 01:22:34,439 --> 01:22:39,600 talking about, in the Space trilogy, he says he says gender is more 1180 01:22:39,600 --> 01:22:43,199 primorial than sex. And it's like, and I quoted on Twitter, and 1181 01:22:43,199 --> 01:22:45,560 everybody was I saw somebody was enraged at you were like losing the mind and 1182 01:22:45,560 --> 01:22:50,239 thinking that I'm like agreeing with gender theory because they want to collapse gender and 1183 01:22:50,279 --> 01:22:54,399 sex together, which is actually not a traditional thing at all. Gender and 1184 01:22:54,439 --> 01:22:59,000 sex in traditional cultures has always been different. But the problems that they're not 1185 01:22:59,039 --> 01:23:02,760 free floating, right, they are coherent, and they are they play different. 1186 01:23:02,960 --> 01:23:05,880 They played the pattern of the same thing at different levels, and you 1187 01:23:06,079 --> 01:23:10,239 just it's hard for people to think that way, but that's just how it 1188 01:23:10,319 --> 01:23:13,680 is. Boats are female, that's right. What are you going to do? 1189 01:23:15,760 --> 01:23:17,239 Yeah, boats are feminine. There's nothing you can do about it. 1190 01:23:18,520 --> 01:23:23,640 Yeah, another lewis quo. I thought that's where this where we're going to 1191 01:23:23,680 --> 01:23:26,279 go. But to paraphrase something he says in the Voids of It on Tredder, 1192 01:23:26,279 --> 01:23:29,079 if you're talking about DNA, that's not what a man is. It's 1193 01:23:29,079 --> 01:23:31,800 only what he's made of, right. Yeah. So Archbishop Dmitri, who's 1194 01:23:32,039 --> 01:23:38,560 our beloved the founder of our diocese here in the OCA, the Diocese of 1195 01:23:38,600 --> 01:23:42,680 the South, he said that you know, during the first millennium since Christ, 1196 01:23:42,680 --> 01:23:45,319 the church was occupied with the question who is Christ? During the second 1197 01:23:45,439 --> 01:23:48,039 with what is the church is? When you have the Sism, the Great 1198 01:23:48,079 --> 01:23:50,840 Sism, the Reformation and so on, and that the great question of the 1199 01:23:50,840 --> 01:23:57,239 third millennium is going to be what is man right? But Archbishop Dmitri said 1200 01:23:57,239 --> 01:24:00,119 that Jesus Christ is the answer right. He says that Jesus Christ is the 1201 01:24:00,119 --> 01:24:03,760 truth about God and the truth about Man, since he is both God and 1202 01:24:03,880 --> 01:24:08,640 Man. God's real nature is completely revealed in the Son of God, the 1203 01:24:08,720 --> 01:24:12,239 incarnate Word, and the whole truth about man. His worth, his value, 1204 01:24:12,279 --> 01:24:15,479 and dignity are realized and made manifest to man in the Son of Man, 1205 01:24:16,319 --> 01:24:20,199 Jesus of Nazareth. So this is the first thing that we have to 1206 01:24:20,239 --> 01:24:25,159 really understand to read and understand ancient medieval literature, liturgy, all of our 1207 01:24:25,159 --> 01:24:29,560 scriptures, and we absolutely must understand if we are going to even start to 1208 01:24:29,600 --> 01:24:34,560 talk about salvation and what that means is that man is a microcosm. Just 1209 01:24:34,600 --> 01:24:38,800 a couple of quotes to finish this up, Saint Macari's have Egypt said, 1210 01:24:38,840 --> 01:24:43,479 the heart itself is only a small vessel. Yet dragons are there, lions 1211 01:24:43,520 --> 01:24:45,720 are there, There are poisonous beasts and all the treasures of evil. There 1212 01:24:45,720 --> 01:24:49,920 are rough and uneven roads, there are precipices, but there too his God 1213 01:24:50,239 --> 01:24:55,479 and the angels. Life is there, and the kingdom there to his light, 1214 01:24:55,960 --> 01:24:59,159 and there are the apostles, and the heavenly cities and the treasuries of 1215 01:24:59,199 --> 01:25:02,279 grace, all things lie within that little space. And this is why, 1216 01:25:02,680 --> 01:25:08,760 actually, this is why in the Orthodox spiritual tradition we talk about going down 1217 01:25:08,840 --> 01:25:12,960 into your heart, right like turning the eye of a heart inward upon itself. 1218 01:25:13,199 --> 01:25:15,960 It's not an act of just like self preoccupation, but it's actually because 1219 01:25:15,960 --> 01:25:20,319 the entire world is there. And that's why, that's why you could have 1220 01:25:20,399 --> 01:25:26,039 somebody who is a hermit who is actually upholding the whole world, right because 1221 01:25:26,199 --> 01:25:32,760 by praying, and this is say Siloon the Athonite once corrected somebody for saying, 1222 01:25:33,239 --> 01:25:35,479 you know, Lord Jesus christaid of God, have mercy on me and 1223 01:25:35,520 --> 01:25:39,439 on the whole world. He said, don't pray that way, just say 1224 01:25:39,560 --> 01:25:42,520 have mercy on me the sinner, because if you do that, then you're 1225 01:25:42,560 --> 01:25:45,479 praying for the whole world. Right. That's really that. You can't ask 1226 01:25:45,520 --> 01:25:49,359 God for anything more than that. The way that Saint Maximus the Confessor phrases 1227 01:25:49,399 --> 01:25:54,119 this is he says that the church building that the temple, but he means 1228 01:25:54,119 --> 01:25:57,359 like the building, the physical building is a human being, and every human 1229 01:25:57,439 --> 01:26:00,800 being is a church. And then he actually says, and the cosmos is 1230 01:26:00,800 --> 01:26:04,079 a human being, and every human being is a cosmos. And the scriptures 1231 01:26:04,079 --> 01:26:08,359 are a human being, right, and every human being is a scripture. 1232 01:26:09,159 --> 01:26:13,439 Right. And you know, from there there's a lot that we could say 1233 01:26:13,439 --> 01:26:16,239 about his mystagogical vision, which I think we're just like way over time, 1234 01:26:16,279 --> 01:26:19,720 so I'm not going to do that. But if you sort of like take 1235 01:26:19,760 --> 01:26:25,760 these these five things, right, then you can use them to sort of 1236 01:26:26,000 --> 01:26:29,479 understand when you come to liturgy or when you come to an ancient text like 1237 01:26:29,520 --> 01:26:33,880 Beowulf and we'll talk about this in the class, when you come to even 1238 01:26:33,920 --> 01:26:38,239 something like the scriptures and you come across something that's like offensive to your modern 1239 01:26:38,279 --> 01:26:44,119 sensibilities, come into the church and you see there's this big wall between you 1240 01:26:44,159 --> 01:26:47,279 and the altar, right, why is that there? Like are you trying 1241 01:26:47,279 --> 01:26:50,399 to keep me from God? What's going on? Like I thought the curtain 1242 01:26:50,439 --> 01:26:54,960 of the temple was torn into you know, and you know to that we 1243 01:26:54,960 --> 01:26:57,920 would just say it was. And when do you show that in your liturgy? 1244 01:26:57,920 --> 01:27:00,159 Because if you wait here in a minute, you'll see it, you 1245 01:27:00,199 --> 01:27:04,920 know. But if you come across these if you come across something that's so 1246 01:27:05,000 --> 01:27:10,840 offensive, to modern sensibilities like monasticism, like the relationship between the active and 1247 01:27:10,880 --> 01:27:15,159 the contemplative life. You know, why can't you know I'm a visit to 1248 01:27:15,159 --> 01:27:17,399 your church. Why won't you let me back in the altar area? You 1249 01:27:17,399 --> 01:27:19,359 know, things like that. And these are all real questions, by the 1250 01:27:19,399 --> 01:27:23,760 way, that I've tried to answer and had to answer for catech humans and 1251 01:27:23,800 --> 01:27:27,920 acquirers in my own parish. Right. But if we can understand, if 1252 01:27:27,920 --> 01:27:30,560 we can understand that the world is laid out in this way, we can 1253 01:27:30,640 --> 01:27:33,520 understand the human body as first and foremost a temple of the Holy Spirit. 1254 01:27:34,239 --> 01:27:41,199 Right. If that's our beginning point, then we can go from there to 1255 01:27:41,520 --> 01:27:45,760 address not just be the good kind of tourist, but also, as Christians, 1256 01:27:45,760 --> 01:27:48,359 address the passions and the pathologies of our day. So this is kind 1257 01:27:48,399 --> 01:27:55,479 of my elevator pitch, my really really long elevator right pitch for if you 1258 01:27:55,520 --> 01:27:59,000 can kind of shift the way that you're thinking about these different things, then 1259 01:27:59,319 --> 01:28:01,359 okay, you won't. I can't make you into like a native of the 1260 01:28:01,399 --> 01:28:05,720 Middle Ages, although maybe it's more possible than some people think, but I 1261 01:28:05,760 --> 01:28:09,319 can't. I can't. I can't make you into a native of the Middle 1262 01:28:09,359 --> 01:28:12,239 Ages. But what you could do is to become the good kind of tourist 1263 01:28:12,720 --> 01:28:15,760 who when you come to these things and when you come to these services, 1264 01:28:15,119 --> 01:28:17,520 right, and I'm really big about don't just read about this stuff. You 1265 01:28:17,560 --> 01:28:21,399 got to go to church, guys when you come, when you encounter these 1266 01:28:21,439 --> 01:28:26,680 things, instead of just being weird or foreign or Eastern, you can start 1267 01:28:26,720 --> 01:28:30,880 to see actually what's going on there underneath the surface. So anyway, I'm 1268 01:28:30,880 --> 01:28:33,239 gonna stop repeating myself now, all right, Richard, Thanks, This is 1269 01:28:33,239 --> 01:28:38,199 great, yah, and people, Yeah, go sign up for for for 1270 01:28:38,359 --> 01:28:41,159 Bayo if I really can't wait. It's going to be It's going to be 1271 01:28:41,199 --> 01:28:43,439 a lot of fun. And we're also we're going to figure out a way 1272 01:28:43,439 --> 01:28:46,880 for people to be able to ask questions, to participate where like a moderated, 1273 01:28:47,520 --> 01:28:53,039 moderated interactive discussion and a bunch of really cool stuff. I'm excited about 1274 01:28:53,039 --> 01:28:56,640 it because there are things that I can say to the Symbolic World crew about 1275 01:28:56,680 --> 01:29:00,640 Beowulf that I probably couldn't say in a more academic setting. You know, 1276 01:29:00,199 --> 01:29:03,159 people just wouldn't know how to receive it or accept it. But you guys 1277 01:29:03,159 --> 01:29:08,199 have been coming along with Jonathan on this journey for so many years and also 1278 01:29:08,319 --> 01:29:12,319 with me, like we've been doing universal history for more than two years now, 1279 01:29:12,479 --> 01:29:15,159 Like that's insane. So the groundwork has been you know, been laid, 1280 01:29:15,199 --> 01:29:17,039 so we should be able to just kind of get right into it. 1281 01:29:17,520 --> 01:29:20,239 So I'm excited about it, and I look forward to seeing everybody in September. 1282 01:29:20,239 --> 01:29:24,000 All right, everybody, we'll talk to you soon, alight. If 1283 01:29:24,000 --> 01:29:28,000 you enjoyed these videos and podcasts, please go to the Symbolic World dot com 1284 01:29:28,039 --> 01:29:31,199 website and see how you can support what we're doing. There are multiple subscriber 1285 01:29:31,279 --> 01:29:34,920 tiers with perks. There are apparel in books to purchase, So go to 1286 01:29:34,960 --> 01:29:38,840 the Symbolic World dot com and thank you for your support