You can't have those two at the same time. The actual reality is that
it's neither of those. It's neither of those. That it's Christianity. As
Christianity took cold, it integrated the things that could integrate, it kind of
let fall to the side of things that couldn't be integrated, and it ended
up with a world that was based on the ancient pagan world in terms of
a lot of the forums, but moving using its meaning pointed towards God and
towards Christ. You know, yeah, this is Jonathan Peshel. Welcome to
the Symbolic World. Hello everyone. I am happy to be back with Father
Andrew. It's been a while since we've had a discussion. We felt like
this would be a great time to catch up with some of the things that
we're doing. Father Andrew has been publishing a wonderful podcast called The Wolf on
the Cross, which documents his visits to Lithuania and exploration of Lithuania as this
amazing center where Orthodoxy thrive, where Catholicism is there, and that is actually
what we're going to talk about. So Father Andrew had the idea of looking
at how the church has dealt with the question of its encounter with other religious
traditions, you know, the opposition, the compromise that also bringing in all
of these types of things. So I'm looking forward to our discussions. Father
Andrew, Thanks thanks for meeting with me again. Thank you very much for
agreeing to talk to me. I think this is a really interesting topic that
does not get a lot of press in our very polarized days. Yeah,
and for you also, this whole adventure in Lithuania is also a very personal
encounter, like it's a personal journey, let's say it is. I just
came back a few weeks ago from my second visit there, and just to
show how personal it is, one of the things I got to do in
the second visit was I visited the small town that my great grandfather was from,
where I had been before, but this time I actually got to go
inside the Catholic church that is the one church in that town. Basically everybody
in the town belongs to that church. The pastor of that church is the
pastor of the town, which is hard for us who live in the West
to imagine that. But he gave us a very long and beautiful tour.
And one of the things I got to do while I was there is I
actually got to touch the baptismal font that my great grandfather was baptized in one
hundred and forty years ago, and I got to stand in the place where
my great great grandparents were married one hundred and sixty years ago, or however
many it was. But yeah, so it's extremely personal. And now I've
made a number of friends that are there that I talk with pretty much every
day, and so, yeah, it is. It is something very very
close to my heart. So tell us a little bit about what because I
imagine that this provokes some insights and also some research into this question because Lithuania
has been such a place of melding and you know, things coming together.
So tell me a little bit about what your insights about how the church deals
with Yeah, so a lot of people don't know where Lithuania is even on
the map. So if you're looking at eastern Europe and then your eye kind
of goes up towards the top, that's where it is, up towards the
top, right on the Baltic Sea, right across the Baltic Sea from Sweden.
It's next to be Larus, It's next to Poland, next to Latvia,
and a little piece next to Russia. So if you think about that
on the map, that's actually really important part of what we're talking about.
When Christianity splits, you know, in the eleventh century give or take.
Eventually, you know, Eastern Europe becomes Orthodox later on, largely speaking,
although there's already some some of that going on by the time the split happens.
And if you look at where the border is between Orthodox East and cas
West, it basically runs right there. That's exactly the place where the border
is. Lithuania is interesting in that regard. Now. Of course it's Catholic
now, but it was also the very last pagan nation in Europe. It
did not become Christianized until the very end of the fourteenth century. And yeah,
so that's pretty recent relatively speaking. And so the encounter of Christianity with
Paganism, I mean, most of us were know anything about church history.
We think about the encounter of Christianity with paganism, but we think about it
a thousand years before that, right, So it's all very nicely in the
past. It's all very nicely in the books. All of that has been
worked through. You know, we don't really even see the lines that much,
you know, unless someone's looking for them, especially trying to undermine Christianity,
let's say. But with Lithuania, it's very much more recent, just
a few hundred years in the past. And even when Catholicism becomes the national
religion, there's pockets of paganism that exists for a while. And this is
the thing that I really want to talk about today. There's a lot of
indications of the way that Christians dealt with paganism and the way that Orthodox Christians
dealt with being in what was a Catholic majority country. So when that Christianization
began to happen in the late fourteenth century, Orthodox Christianity was already there.
Catholicism was of course already there. So you get these two Christian traditions kind
of competing in the same space for the hearts of pagans, but also simply
living with them and being married to them and you know, doing life with
them. Right, So it forms a really interesting place to look at this
question. But I you know, before we get into that too deeply,
I want to just actually talk a little bit about the backstory of Christianity with
regards to dealing with other religions, because if we don't know that, then
what I'm going to talk about in Lithuania might seem weird. You know,
it might seem surprising or you know, let's sweep that under the rug kind
of thing. But actually it's it's normal. It's pretty normal in fact,
right, So, you know, beginning with the Bible itself, just in
the Old Testament, for instance, you get the encounter of the people of
Israel with the pagan religions of the ancient ear East right Bail worship of course
number one. Also there's a worship of a god named Shemesh, who is
a Canaanite sun god. And so here's the funny thing, Like we all
know about the sort of polemic against pagan religion in the Old Testament. You
know, there's there's all kinds of mocking pagan gods and all this stuff that
we love. You know, it's a lot of fun to read. We
love the showdown on Mount Carmel between Elijah and the prophets of Bayo, you
know, you know, with a fire from heaven and so forth. But
also what a lot of people don't know is that some of the bail imagery,
like the fact that he's the writer on clouds. That gets used for
the Son of Man in Daniel and in the Gospels when Christ ascends into heaven.
Right, it's really important. It's important to notice that that it's happening
in the Old Testament, especially because people don't understand, for example, why
we call the Theotokis the queen of heaven, because they see that as a
title for ancient pagan goddesses. And it's like, yes, that's it.
We took it, like I not just took it, but like we showed
you what the real queen of heaven is, right, right, I mean,
okay, So Shemish is another good one. Right. So one of
the hypostases of Shemish that was worshiped actually in Jerusalem, in pagan Jerusalem,
you know, was called Shemisheka and soeka or it means justice or righteousness,
and so it's the sun Shemeish means son, like the son in the sky,
the son of righteousness or son of justice. Well, this gets used
in Malachi to refer to the Son of righteousness who rises with healing in his
wings. And then in the Orthodox Church we use that same phrase son of
righteousness in our Nativity of Politichian to talk about Christ who gets worshiped by star
worshippers who now go on to worship the real son of righteousness. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, you know, the Trabaria and the Christmas Trebarian is a
great example of that, exactly where we show how those did worship the stars
are now worshiping the maker of the stars based right, yeah, and we're
doing it by taking their pagan language and applying it to Jesus, you know.
So it's again it's in Malachi, so it's in the Old Testament,
so it's nothing new for Christians. It's in the Old Testament, right,
But the New Testament of course does this stuff too. And there's a lot
of examples we could point to, but particularly I like to look at Saint
Paul and the Areopogus, where right before that chapter before that, it says
he's really mad because he sees that Athens is full of idolatry. Right,
So initially you get the sense of, oh, okay, so when he
goes up to the Areopogus, he's going to let him have it. He's
going to be polemical Paul, right, But of course that's not what happens
when he's on the areopagus. Instead, he takes this altar to the Unknown
God and says, I'm here to proclaim it this unknown God to you.
I mean that alter was a pagan altar that pagan sacrifices were offered on.
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see you there. That alter was a pagan altar that pagan sacrifices were offered
on, right, it was not some crypto Jewish altar or something like that.
This is a pagan altar. But you know, even more interestingly,
probably a little less obvious, he quotes from two pagan poets. So he
quotes from Epimenities of Crete, who that line in him we live and move
and have our being. He also quotes from a Ratus who talks, who
says, you know, and we also are his offspring. Well, both
of these lines are about Zeus, like this is Zeus poetry, and Paul
is saying, yeah, I'll take that, you know, I'll apply that
to the One True God. Right, So he's he's subsuming it into what
he's doing. He doesn't look at it as being sort of hopelessly polluted.
Yeah, this is so import I mean, especially when you look at I
mean the main objection obviously to Orthodoxy and to Catholicism from Protestants are often these
types of things where they look at the styles of worship or aspects of worship
that they can see in the pagan world, they see it coming into Christianity,
and then they wonder. You know, it doesn't mean that well,
they're not the wonder. They declare then that the worship is pagan. But
this is something like even in terms of the revelation of the Tabernacle from God
himself. You know, the structure of the Tabernacle is this the structure of
every single pagan temple in the world, A three tiers structure, you know,
with like the most holy place where you would have that usually they would
have the idol there that would be hidden and they would be revealed on a
certain uncertain in certain feasts or whatever. But the structure itself is a universal
structure, and so and so it's the way to see it. It's like
you could see it in a bunch of ways, which is that on the
one hand, the pagan traditions are actually twisting the true faith, and now
God is twisting it back towards what towards its rightful direction. Or you could
see it that God is able to cover over our sins. Right He's like,
okay, this is what you do. I'm gonna take this, I'm
gonna make it I'm gonna turn it in its right direction. But either way,
whether it's one or the other, you know, that seems to be
what God is doing all the time, which is saving that which is lost.
Yeah. I mean it says in the Psalms right that the earth is
the Lord's in the fullness thereof. But sometimes people who have this idea of
kind of religious cooties, they would say, the earth is lords and the
fullness they're of, except for these parts which are sort of hopelessly not his
anymore, you know, don't touch that. Yeah, So this kind of
thing continues, right, So I gave just a couple of examples from the
Old and New Testament. I could we could talk for hours about just the
Bible, but Christians continue doing this. So of course, as an iconographer,
you know full well that the tradition of Byzantine iconography owes a lot to
the tradition of Egyptian funereal art, right, Like if you look at the
art that was on that was related to Egyptian funerals, I mean again,
these are pagans, demon worshippers. Yea. Even the Roman, it's Roman,
It's exactly, it has that Egyptian aspect. To it. And then
it also has a very strong Roman element, the way that Christ his blessing
hands, Like would we say that Christ is blessing like this, That's a
Roman sign of address. It's a you can see the Roman emperors doing it
in the first century on statues, and so you know this is but it's
funny because the funniest thing about this, honestly, Father Andrew, is that
the same person that can look at ancient pagan practices and see how Christianity transformed
them towards the worship of God will like without non apologetically have a rock band
on stage in church and like and I realized that it's like, you know,
using the language of the culture to and transforming it. And it's not
even transformed usually in terms of the rock band on the stage, but it's
like the Christians actually did a very deliberate theological bringing in these elements and transforming
them, like the way that Roman arch, for example, moves from paganism
to Christianity. You can see it happening. You can look at you know,
the essential elements being toned down, you know the different these different elements
are being toned down, these are played up, you know, the use
of the halo was used for the emperor, for example, So now we
we it's a pagan sign that was there before, and so then we're like,
no, we're going to reserve this only for the saints, only for
Christ and his mother. And so you can see the transformation happening. But
it's a it's not just accidental, like, it's not just like it's not
just like taking a rock band and putting it on stage in your church.
It's a theological transformation. Yeah, the pagan things into the there's a creative
engagement, right, it's not just sort of adoption. There's an adaptation also
happening. Yeah. I mean there's some things that you could point to as
being almost adoption at least initially, and then the adaptation happens later. One
really obvious example are Christian calendars. So the Julian calendar, I mean,
it's not name for Saint Julius, you know, it's named for the divinized
exact. It's literally named for what Pagans would have regarded as a pagan god.
Julius Caesar is a is a god, you know, from a Roman
pagan point of view. And it's not just the Julian calendar. I mean,
the Coptic calendar is based on Egyptian paganism. You know, now we
think of these as being calendars that belong to churches, but they didn't start
their lives that way, and the churches did not say, let's start with
something brand new. And what's funny is they they didn't really take the Jewish
calendar very much. I mean, there is there are elements in the church
calendar that are from the Jewish calendar, but the basic idea of a solar
year, for instance, of three hundred and sixty five or so days,
these are pagan things. One of the probably more obvious ways that Christians dealt
with paganism early on, and you see it in a lot of saints' lives,
is that pagan temples get turned into Christian churches. So the altars that
were, you know, had had pagan sacrifices put on them, become altars
to God. Or sometimes what they'll do is they'll take the building, smash
the altar, replace that, and but the structure is is, you know,
a pagan temple, like lots of examples of that. The Parthenon and
Athens, of course, was actually a Christian Church longer than it was a
pagan temple. But it was a pagan temple, you know, now it's
a museum. But you know, there's a number of of well, the
Pantheon in Rome is one of the most also the most shining, biggest example
that's still at church now. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. So I
mean there's there's a gazillion examples of this pagan temples that become Christian churches.
And even the Basilica architecture itself was from pagan's civil architecture. Yeah, you
know, so it wasn't even for worship, it was you know, although
there's no such thing as secutarism in the ancient world, so civil architecture is
sacred architecture in the ancient world. Another one of my favorite examples, of
course, is the class treat Us by Saint Basil the Great call the address
to young men on the uses of Greek literature, and essentially it's his take
on how you read Homer and he's Yacht and so forth. And he doesn't
say like that's pagan, don't read it, but insteady actually says, this
is the weird part. He says, you need to master this before you
can read the Bible, which I mean, I don't preach that, and
I would never counsel anybody with that here in twenty twenty three, but I
mean it's the pretty Yeah, well, we do something like that, father
Andrew, which is that you know, it's like I actually made the mistake
with my kids at the outset to just like straight up read the Bible stories
to them, which which which was probably not the wisest thing to do.
And I realized that actually fairy tales are a good ramp into Bible stories,
and so we usually do something like that with our kids. Is that our
kids know the fairy tales more than they'll know the Bible stories at the outset,
and as they get older, you know, like eight, nine,
ten years old, then it's easier for them to kind of to take again,
especially those Old Testament stories that are that are rough at the outset.
And so we see, I think we do something similar with fairy tales that
Sam Basil talks about in terms of the ancient Yeah. Yeah. Another example
of this, and this is one that's a little controversial, but I'm gonna
at least mention it. Uh Saint Johnathan Damascus. He wrote a text called
The Life of Saint Sparlam and Joe as Staff. Yeah, and a lot
of people say that this is essentially just an adaptation of the life of Gautama
Buddha, Buddha the Buddha. I don't know if that's true. I mean,
I've never really studied this closely. It may be that he simply took
that story and told his story in a way that's reminiscent of it. Who
knows, I don't know, but it's but but there is a possibility that
there's at least some kind of influence. And that's not even you know,
that's not the comfortable paganism. No, yeah, exact very far, which
is so funny, Like it's funny. We think of demon worship by Greeks
and Romans and Egyptians as like we can deal with that, but Buddhism like
whoa, whoa, whoa. That stuff that's freaky, again controversial. I'm
not saying that that's where he got it from. I don't know, but
you can read about it on the internet some other stuff that's probably a little
bit more provocative, but much harder to just whisk away. So within Germanic
Christianity, so this is later, right, this, you know, Germanic
peoples get Christianized later in church history, not until largely like the eighth ninth
century. And as you're moving on, because it's moving north, right.
So a fun example I like to point out to people is there is an
object called the Frank's Casket, and I saw it in the British Museum.
Yes, amazing, Yes, it's most of it is at the British Museum.
There's one panel of it that's in France, although I think they have
a copy of that panel at the British Museum, so you can see the
sort of the complete thing. Yeah, Frank's Casket is really interesting. So
it's made in eighth century Northumbria, so that's northern England, and it's generally
believed to have been made by mocks okay, and it was based on the
size and shape, it's probably a reliquary. We're not certain, but probably
a reliquary, yeah, you know, and it's called a casket, but
it's it's it's you know, it's it's this little box. Yeah, it's
yeah. Yeah, it's not like to hold a body, but it's the
same shape as what we would put a body in. And that's deliberate because
if you're going to put a put the relics of a saint in something,
you would want to put it in something that looks like a coffin. You
know, at least that's what most of Christian history has done. So if
you look at the the the images on the Frank's casket, one of them
is the three wise Men, you know, approaching the Virgin holding Christ and
they're offering their gifts, and you're thinking, okay, good, this is
a good, strong Christians image, no problem. But then you start walking
around the casket, you know figuratively of course, because again it's just a
little box. On one side, you've got Romulus and Remus, the founders
of the Pagan founders of Pagan Rome, you know, like northern England.
Like right, It just shows you that universal history thing that we keep helping
getting people back to. And we should say, how many Pagans are there
in Northumbria in the eighth century. Probably none, it's probably all Christian,
yeah, exactly, So there's a Christians making this thing. There's at least
one of the panels that people aren't sure exactly what it is. Another one
is a battle that takes place in Jerusalem. And then the one if you
look at the panel that has the three Wise Men and the Virgin on it
and the Lord. It's actually there's a it's a fifty to fifty panel.
So on one side you've got that. On the other side you have Wayland
the smith, who is this semi divinized Germanic smith, you know, divine
smith big You're who makes magical weapons. Uh, and that often gods get
apprenticed to so they can become powerful. Like it's it's clearly and so it's
it's this pagan image right next to a Christian image on this site. But
it's it's it's it's interesting in the in the casket because the Christian image is
the image of the pagans coming to worship Christ. That's what the that's what
the image is. Yes, it is, yes, it is, you
know, so it's interesting, you know, this Northern English thing, and
so it's got this Germanic pagan image, but then it also has stuff from
Roman history all together, because that's the cultural soup of Northern English Christianity in
the eighth century. But it's it's but it's if you listen to some of
the arguments that you've heard when you were younger like that, you heard people
say you could you had these two arguments. One was Christianity is just syncretism,
it's all just borrowing from Pagans whatever. And then the other one is
christian he destroyed all the ancient cults and they went in, they broke everything,
and they ruined the whole Christian world. It's like, you can't have
those two at the same time. The actual reality is that it's neither of
those. Yeah, that's right, it's neither of those. That it's Christianity.
As Christianity took cold, it integrated the things that could integrate, it
kind of let fall to the side the things that couldn't be integrated, and
it ended up with a world that was based on the ancient pagan world in
terms of a lot of the forums, but moving using its meaning pointed towards
God and towards Christ. You know, yeah, yeah, another fun thing
from that same period of Anglo Saxon Christianity. And I just have to mention
this because I don't know if Richard's going to mention this in your Beowolf class
you're doing with him, But this was something I came across as I was
doing translation work on Beowulf. So there's a phrase that shows up in it,
which is in Old English. It's alf Walda alf Wlda, right,
and a lot of editors actually edit this to make it all walda, to
make it a single word, all Walda. Now that single word means all
ruler, so it's like pentocrat, right, And this is referring to God.
It's pretty clearly referring to God. But if you look at the actual
man's manuscript, it's two separate words alf and walda. So Walda's ruler alf
means elves. Oh yeah, so it refers to God as the ruler of
elves, which, you know, adjust the translation a little bit, you
get lord of spirits, right, So that's interesting. So that's clearly a
Germanic pagan reference. You know, elves, right, Elves are just kind
of spirits in Germanic paganism. But again, it's an eighth century Christian writing
this. Yeah, yeah, alf walda. So okay, a couple examples
from Norse Christianity because I'm comfortable with the Germanic stuff. So in the thirteenth
century, there's a church built in Norway called the Helistods Stave Church. The
church doesn't exist in anymore, but its door posts still do and they're in
a museum now, but they were on a couple of different churches. If
you look at the door posts, they are carved wood. It's beautiful stuff.
It's really really astonishing. And it is the legend of Sigurd and Fafnir
from the Volsunga saga, which again is dramatic paganism. You've got, you
know, Sigurd, who is this sort of semi divine figure. You've got
Reagan, who's definitely divine figure. You've got Fafner, definitely divine figure.
Fafner, of course, is a dragon. In the legend. You know,
Sigurd goes down and kills Fafnir because Reagan wants him to so they can
get the enchanted gold. And then they decide to they're going to eat him,
because when you eat a dragon, it makes you, gives you magical
powers, and he actually tastes some of the juices from the heart and it
gives him the ability to understand the language of birds, as it always does.
But this was on the front of a church. Yeah, you know,
I had someone tell me one time when I said, can you explain
this to me? And they said, oh, well that was probably to
Lauren. Pagans they would see this and they would come in and then they
and I'm like, okay, well, number one, let's imagine you're a
pagan, Norse pagan. You see this and then you go in and it's
clear that this building is dedicated to worshiping some other God, like is that
really going to work on you? And number two, there are no pagans
in thirteenth century Norway exactly, They're gone for hundreds of years, for several
centuries back, hundreds of years. And another example, of course, from
that time and place, well not that place, but close to that place,
Iceland, you get the pros Eta, which is one of the major
sources of Norse pagan mythology. This is written by Snorri Storlsen, who is
a Christian. Again, he's never met a pagan in his life because his
great great great great great great grandparents all got baptized, you know, so
he we don't have any sources of Norse paganism that aren't written by Christians.
Yeah, and you see, I mean, and you can if you look
at the closer like closer to the Mediterranean, you see the exact same thing
happening. You know, you know the fact that we have Boethius's text,
which is a Christian text written with so much pagan subtext, and all of
these allusions to these to these allegorical figure, the fact that you'll find in
the Middle Ages people still invoking the muses. You know, these are just
things that were part of Christianity. Yeah, and to try, yeah,
to try to parse it one way or the other is is is just the
wrong way to go. And to say that Christianity is basically infiltrated or whatever.
No, this was a conscious thing. When you get to Dante.
You can see that when Dante wrote his poem, it didn't shock anyone.
It's not like everybody was like, oh no, look at him. He's
like meeting all these It's like he's mixing Christianity and Paganism. It was just
like, oh wow, this is a great, you know, nice synthesis
of what we pretty much think and we've always thought, we've always believed for
the last you know, eight hundred years or whatever. Yeah, I mean
it's funny, like you mentioned Boetheist, right, so his consolation, the
philosophy the big major text. When Alfred the Great does his translation into Old
English of Boethius, he adds in bits about giants from Biblical and Enochic texts
to sort of expand out that stuff. So we just talk just think about
the layers in that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. So I
want to fast forward a little bit. Another example of Christian you know,
and relatively recent Christian engagement with paganism in Alaska, very famous Athabascan spirit houses,
which you can see, they're not too far from Anchorage if you ever
visit Alaska. Worth seeing. I mean, this is a pagan practice of
building sort of little houses over graves for the spirits to live in for a
while. And you know, the saints, the Orthodox Saints who engage with
these people in the eighteenth century let them keep that, but sort of reinterpreted
it, you know, got them away from cremation, you know, but
reinterpreted this. I mean, you can go see this. So if you
go there and you see this wear houses they have three barred crosses on them.
Yeah, you know, it's it's really something. And then another thing
I wanted to mention that probably would would freak some people out. The numeral
system that we use. We commonly call them Arabic numerals, right, which,
okay, that doesn't sound too threatening, but actually they are traditionally called
Hindu Arabic numerals because they are Hindu in origin and also then really developed by
Muslims. So in that by using those numbers, we are using a system
that was designed in many ways for numerology and all kinds of stuff like this
every day. I mean, we're all doing this. So it's it's a
system that's a combination in some ways at least how it got to us of
Islam and of course Hinduism, which is essentially a sort of pagan set of
traditions. So that's that's a lot of fun. Okay, So okay,
that's Christianity and Paganism. There's lots of things more we could say about that,
but I wanted to talk about historical now, historical Christian Orthodox Christian engagement
with non orthor Christianity and other Christians. Right. Again, we know full
well the polemics, we know full well the anathletizations of heretics. I affirm
all of that, right, but also with what's going on right now,
it's it's a little tricky, all of it with the synod of synodality or
whatever. I know, it's all in the air. God bless them.
Yeah yeah. So so I affirm all that I'm not a dissenter. I'm
Orthodox. But also in our history alongside that, so there is one there's
a feast of the Martyrs of Najron, which I can't remember the date of
that right now off top of my head, and I didn't write it down,
but one of the main figures in that he's often called Saint Arethus now
his Arabic name is actually al Ji. So where is nas Nasron is basically
southwestern Arabian peninsula, and the they were Christians, and there was a a
of the Judaizing king named dun Nuas who came in and wiped out almost all
of them, I mean there were some left after he did what he did.
And so they are commemorated as martyrs on our on our calendar, Like
if you're an Eastern Orthodox Christian of whatever variety, the Martyrs of Nazaran are
on your calendar of Saint Arethas and so forth. So what kind of Christians
were they in Nazron? Were they Byzantines? Were they no, it was.
It was. They were mostly what we would call Oriental Orthodox, but
there was also a significant presidence of the Assyrian Church of the East than historians.
So they're on our calendar. These are actual saints that are on our
calendar. And someone someone might say, well, you know, you know,
martyrdom, you know, martyrdom kind of cleans up some of the I
mean, actually, we have saints saying that the the blood of martyrdom does
not wash away the state of heresy. And yet these are martyrs that are
on our calendar. Yeah. Right, Another related figure from this time and
places. He's called Saint Caleb or Saint elis Bon. He is the king
of Aksum. So anyone who's been watching your show, your channel for a
while and knows he's a saint in our in our on our calendar. Yeah,
oh yeah really because because he yeah yeah, because he's related as he's
sort of a protector of these Nasron Christians. Again, I mean he's the
king of Ethiopia or Ethiopian Kingdom, which makes him and this is late enough,
that makes him what we would refer to as Oriental Orthodox. Again,
he's a saint in our calendar. I did not know that this is amazing
information for yeah, yeah, yeah, So another example I would give.
You know, Saint Isaac of Syria not a martyr. Not a martyr as
far as we know, he dies in peace. Canonically he belongs to what
we would recognize as the Assyrian Church of the East, and historians, yeah,
I've never heard that there's anything in his theology or and he was writing
that is Nestorian. Yeah, but his whole life was spent outside the canonical
boundaries of you know, what we would recognize as the Orthodox Church. What
would you do without Saint Isaac though? And his writing isac Through his writings,
he becomes a saint to the Orthodox Church. Right again, what do
you do with that? I don't. I don't have a theory for this,
by the way, like some sort of method by which you I think
it's probably the best way to understand it is that it's not it's not there's
the rule, and then there's the messiness of the reality. Right, It's
like there's the there's the kind of organic recognition of holiness that the church that
the church does, and it's like, how did it happen? I don't
know what it happened, but there it is. And it's like, don't
argue with Saint Isaac, dare you too? It's like he's he's such an
amazing saint. Yeah, and it's been I mean it's been long enough.
Like there's no there's no going back on this, Yeah, exactly, you
can't kick him out, you know. Yeah, although there are examples where
we did. Yeah. So one example not talked of about a lot,
talked about a lot, but there was I can't remember which one it was
now, but there was a metropolis in Greece that some centuries ago celebrated the
feast of Thomas Aquinas. Hmmm, really, I mean, oh yeah,
yeah, yeah. In fact, I think there are recordings available of his
hymns, Orthodox hymns for Thomas Aquinas. Now, is that still happening,
No, it's not. But you know, he was another example of someone
that through his writings, because there's a whole like Orthodox history of engagement with
the writings of Thomas Aquinas. Ye, through his writings, at least in
one place, for a while he became celebrated as a saint. It did
not last. And I know there are some like for example, there's a
pilgrimage site our Lady of Walsingham in England that is recognized by the Orthodox and
that the Orthodox go to on pilgrimages, but that is from after the schism.
It's like, yeah, it's got an Orthodox chapel there, Yeah,
exactly that that I think is maintained by an Orthodox nun. You know.
So I want to give one final example before we start talking about Lithuania.
But I just kind of wanted to set up these patterns that exist, that
exists everywhere in church history. There's thousands more we could probably talk about.
So a writer named Lorenzo Scupolis, the sixteenth century Roman Catholic priest, and
he wrote a book called Spiritual Combat. It's about I mean, it's it's
about what it says on the label. So this this, this work became
very interesting to a lot of Orthodox Christians. And in the eighteenth century,
Saint Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, you know, the guy who puts together
the Rudder and the ex and malugtai on, you know, and the Ortho
Orthodox, like the most Orthodox. Yes, yes, people look at him
as like super hardcore, you know, anti everything. I don't like.
H he takes this work and edits it a little and puts it out in
Greek. I mean, this is again, this is about sixteenth century Catholic
priest. Right. And then it gets further revised and published in Russian by
Saint theof on the Recluse. Wow, so Saint Theophon, you know,
does even more with it. Right, So Saint Nicadimus just sort of edits
a little bit. I'm not sure how extensive the edits were, but Sat
Theophon's edits were much more extensive that I know. And then you know,
there's even a sort of set of volumes that were actually put up I can
still your press a long long time ago, with titles like Victory and the
Unseen Warfare and sort of stuff like this that was a sort of layman's version
of this, you know, like taking it apart and looking at it and
explaining it and so forth. Right. So this is a Catholic text that's
made its way into the Orthodox Church and actually been handled and promulgated by saints.
Yeah, by saints. You know. Again, no one doubts the
orthodoxy of Saint Nicodemus, No one doubts the orthodoxy of Saint theF on the
Reckless. These are significant saints of the you know, relatively modern period.
That's amazing. I mean, but I think in some ways to me at
least, what it does is it it's I think it. It's there to
also keep us humble and to be careful, you know, to understand that
God we don't we don't ConTroll. We have the canons and we should live
by them. But that also God is not in the box that we think
he is. God does not you know, it's like we need God and
God does not need you could say, does not need us. In the
same way, let's say that that that that God is is manifesting himself where
where he pleases. That's right, Okay, So let's talk about Lithuania,
all right, with all that background. Yeah, you know, everywhere you
go there pretty much every Catholic church and I've even seen some of this and
some of the Orthodox churches, although most the Orthodox churches are there are very
Russian, but almost everywhere you go you see the sun cross, right,
and so it's and again it's what it says in the label, right,
it's a cross with a sun sort of imagery integrated into it. There's lots
of versions of this, and sometimes you'll see a crescent moon at the bottom,
which is interesting. You know, Orthodox Christians seeing a crescent moon at
the bottom of a cross, we largely might think of, okay, this
is about conquest of Islam. But in the Baltic case, it's not.
You know, the Baalts are not conquering Islam. It exists there, but
only it's always been a minority, you know. Yeah, so it's the
sun and moon, you know. And this cross was a pagan symbol.
It was absolutely a pagan symbol. And now you see it on the top
of almost every single church in Lithuania. You know, there are no Lithuanian
Pagans to the round, although there are some neopagans, but that's a newer
thing. They're just LARPing anyways, God bless them. I think that is
true. So so one a really interesting bit of material culture from pagan Lithuania
is something and I'm no I'm going to mispronounce this, but you probably don't
have a lot of Actually you do have some Lithuanian fans, you do it.
I met some of them when I went to Lithuania. In fact,
when I gave I gave a year ago, when I gave a talk at
a church in Vilnius. One of the first questions that someone asked me was,
do you know Jonathan Page. It's like, well, he's Canadian's Canadian.
Why do that mean that I need to go to Lithuanian I've always wanted
to go. Oh you totally. If you go, I will go with
you, all right, if you would accept me to go as your fellow
pilgrim, let's do it. I think you would find it a very interesting
place to go. So yeah, So there's a figure from Baltic Paganism called
the diev Dibis, And what that word means literally is god maker. So
a god maker is a carver of religious images. Oh, there you go.
So that's that's what that is. Uh. And so back in the
day, you know, this guy would have been essentially carving idols, right,
idols and also then used in actual pagan worship, but then also essentially
pagan icons that are used for devotional purposes, right, right, And so
these are these traditionally were placed up on top of wooden poles. And so
this is called I know I'm going to get this wrong too, couplet stus,
a couplet stupas, which means chapel pillar now is sort of the idea.
So you can see that where couplet is related part of that that piece
couplet is related the word chapel, and so it would be a wooden pole
and then on top of it you would have this this carved statue and then
there would usually be a roof over top of it, and then often the
sun cross on top. Right, So this uh survives. But now if
you find one of these things, and they're actually all over Lithuania, like
you could just be driving along and just see one by the side of the
road, often in the middle of nowhere. You know, if you see
one, now you're not going to find Djevas or Pericunas. You know,
who are these these Baltic gods. You're not going to find them on the
coupled stupas. You're going to see. Most often there's a figure called Rupentoyellis.
So Rupentoyellis Is is Christ as he's going to his passion. So there's
sort of two different poses you'll see him, like his face and his hands
like this often called the pensive Christ, or you sometimes see him standing and
bound. You know, his hands are bound. Yeah, so this is
Rupinoyelis often called the Pensive Christ. That's the most Russian tradition of that too.
Of like in some of the remote places of Russia they have this whole
carving tradition with that figure very important. Where do you think they got it?
Yeah, yeah, it's probably it's from there. It's from the Baltics,
and of course it spreads into it's throughout the former Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth,
so you've got it in Poland as well. They've got it in Bilarus,
they've got it in the Ukraine. Yeah. Often, then you'll see if
you don't have rupinto Yelis there you'll see the Virgin Mary. You'll see lots
of saints, especially Saint George is pretty popular. Also, of course the
Catholic Saint Casimir, who is the Catholic Patron of Lithuania. Not an Orthodox
saint, but he's he's their big saint. He's buried there in their national
cathedral. So related to that, you'll also see again the same the carver
or the wood carver called a krijbis which means crossmaker. Uh. And you
know, the the Lithuanian standing crosses are basically an extension of this, Uh,
do you have have Dibis practice. That's the name of the person,
but I don't remember what the name of the practice itself is. But it's
an extension of that. But it's but obviously focusing on the cross itself,
right, And they can be incredibly ornate. Yeah, you know, I
just made one by the way, Oh really, Yes, three meters like
nine foot cross with a single mass that that goes into the ground and it's
three goes into three, and there's a Mother God and Saint John and the
Sun and the moon at the top, and a little roof at the at
the top. Yeah. Yeah, massive project, yeah yeah. Uh.
And so sometimes there will be little statues embedded right at the point where the
cross pieces meet, usually Christ again often usually the rupe andto yellows, but
it can be other figures sometimes too. And again you'll see these by the
side of the road. They will be placed there sometimes in commemoration of an
event or of people. A lot of pious people just put them in their
yard, like so you'll still be this ten to fifteen tall cross in the
front yard, you know. And a lot of churches have them in the
churchyard. Yeah, as well so. And then of course the classic you
know place where people might have seen these is the Hill of Crosses, where
there's hundreds of thousands of them, and there's actually a legal limit on the
size of a cross you're allowed to place there, which is nine meters.
That's amazing. If you're gonna if when we go to Lithuania, decide you
want to put across there, just beware it's less. I love it.
It's hilarious because it's like in North America, you would expect it to be
like five feet or something something like some ridiculous nothing. It's like, oh,
there is a legal limit, but nine meters, don't go beyond that.
These things tower over you. I mean it envelops you. It envelops
you. And you know this is in many ways, this is a spiritual
heart of this country. And it's not just Roman Catholics that go there,
although obviously mostly Catholics. You can go there and you can see Orthodox crosses
there and and Protestants go there as well, you know, and often you
see people writing on many of them. It's usually lists of names of people
that they want to pray for, and most of the writing of courses in
Lithuanian, but you can see many languages, many many languages from all over
the world. People that have made their pilgrimage brought their cross there. So,
I mean it's largely regarded as a kind of a Catholic place of pilgrimage,
but Orthodox Christians go there. I've been there twice now myself. I've
placed across there both times and brought, you know, two of my children
with me. They placed across there with the names that they wanted to pray
for on there. You know, what is the this hill? What is
the story about the hill? Like, why why do people go there?
What's the what's the legend or the story related. Yeah, so there's a
lot of there's a lot of different origin stories for the Hill of Crosses,
but the one that I think is the truest one is so the Hill of
Crosses seems to have arisen during the Russian Imperial period. That's the earliest references
to it, So you're talking like early nineteenth century possibly, And there's a
tradition that there was a man who had a daughter who was very very ill,
and so he was at her bedside every night praying to God to please
heal her. And then finally, after a long time of this, the
Virgin Mary appears to him and says, take up your cross and bring it
to the place that I'll show you. And so this man becomes a Kris
Durbis and he fashions this wooden cross and he starts carrying it, you know,
and it's a long distance. And then finally she appears to him him
again and says, this is the place. And so now Lithuania has no
mountains. So actually the word gunless for mountain is just means a hill,
you know, So they'll use the same word like they would have used coulness
to refer to the mountains that we have here in North America. But they
know full well that there's no comparison between them, you know. So it's
a hill, and it's kind of a long hill, so it's spread out,
you know, over a ways and has a couple of peaks to it.
And so he places the cross in this hill and then he begins to
walk back home. And then when he is reaching his where his home is,
two people come running out of the house to greet him. One is
his wife and one is his heeled daughter, who now can not only stand
but run, you know, and so so then it the tradition then grows
that you if you're going to go there, you bring a cross, and
it can be I mean, people bring crosses that are like this, everything
from this to you know, nine meters. Smaller ones people will hang from
bigger ones. So you can find crosses that have like hundreds of crosses hanging
from them, leaning up against them. I mean it's just a mess of
crosses, but a beautiful mess. Yeah. And then you know, it
gets especially during the Soviet period, the Soviets of course hate this place,
so they would bulldoze it down or light it on fire and they would wipe
it all out, and then overnight it starts growing back because people just come
and they place their cross and they pray their prayers. You know, some
place the cross there because they're praying for someone who's ill, or praying for
someone who has died. Some place it because of a happy occasion, like
the first time I went. For instance, there's a woman who's bringing along
her boy and says, come on, let me show you the place where
I put the cross when you were baptized, you know, So that kind
of thing. Again, it's a place of sort of universal Christian pilgrimage.
They don't check your religious ID card at the door. So yeah, another
one that's probably a little bit controversial from Lithuanian history, and people might not
realize it's Lithuanian history, isn't the Orthodox Saint Peter and Mohila. So Saint
Peter Mohila is the Metropolitan of Kiev and during after the the you know,
the loss of the churches to the to the unions, So Kiev of course
in Ukraine, but the Grand Duchy of Lithuania includes most of Belarus and Ukraine
at that point in history, and at that point is actually then part of
the the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. Right, So St. Peter Mochila. A
lot of people pointed him and say he's a Latinizer, you know, he's
just he's using Latin textbooks, he's a Latinizer, he whatever. But he's
a saint, he's an actual Orthodox saints. So that means you have to
deal with what he did. We can critique it, but there's actually been
you know, so some scholars of course, like father George Fluroowsky really critiques
him and says, this is a Latinization and so on and so forth.
But there's other scholarship that you can read now that essentially says, well,
Saint Peter was actually trying to do with Catholic theology that was around him and
that he had to deal with because he's living in it. Mm hmm.
He was trying to do with that like the early Church fathers were doing with
pagan philosophy. So I'm not an expert to tell you what the truth of
the matter is, but I mean, this is another way of interpreting him,
and it's worth kind of exploration. So that's actually a theological engagement.
It's not just sort of material culture stuff. It's actually like language and so
forth, you know. So that's a really he's a really interesting figure.
I want to finish up by talking about a couple of icons, but before
I do that, there's a significant practice that I want to mention. So
in Lithuania, there's a two day holiday called Valinus so villainus from the word
I think it's vellous, which means soul. So Velinus is November first and
second. Basically exactly, it's the feast of all saints and all souls,
and in the Catholic tradition and the practice in Lithuania on those days is to
visit the graves of your departed loved ones. So if you go to Lithuanian
cemeteries, they're not like most cemeteries in North America, where it's just ropeon
row of stones and they've hired somebody to mow the lawn and there might be
flowers that people put that die, you know, whatever. You know,
there's sometimes there's more to that, more than that. But I mean most
cemeteries in the US, I don't know about Canada, but mostly pretty bare.
Yeah, in Lithuania, every single grave plot is outlined in either cement
or stones, so they're like little or sometimes a fence, and they're all
like flower gardens, and they're immaculately taken care of. And it's not because
there's some gardener. Can you imagine how much work that would be. You
know, they're that way because the family takes care of them. I went
to the cemetery where my ancestors are buried, and I went to the grave
and we found the grave actually of my family, which was an astonishing moment,
you know, and it was immaculately taken care of. Everything was in
perfect order, perfect order, right. So Lithuanians visit the graves of their
relatives twice a year, once on the day that is the anniversary of the
death, and then also at Villainous right, and particularly at Velinus, they
will bring candles and place them there. And so if you go to cemeteries
in Lithuania at night during Villinus, it's almost like another city with all the
candles. I mean, it's just you can see an outline of the cemetery
in candles, and it's just completely filled in with these little flickering flames.
So Orthodox Christians do this in Lithuania on those days, even though those that's
not the Orthodox beast of all souls or of the departed, but they do
it. They visit the graves of their relatives, they put the candles,
there are specific prayers to be prayed when you go there. Now, it's
interesting, there's a sort of Orthodox adaptation that's occurred. So the Saturday before
the feast of Saint Demetrius at the Slniki is traditionally a Saturday of souls,
right, we think of usually the ones in Lent, but or around Lent,
but that's also a Saturday of Souls traditionally in the Orthodox Church the Saturday
before October twenty sixth, right, So of course most Orthodox Christian Lithuinia on
the old calendar, so that would mean that it's about November eighth or whatever
is when that or actually it's a Saturday before November eighth, which sometimes would
kind of coincide with Villainous, right right right, you know, because of
course Catholics are on the new calendar. So what they do is they visit
the cemeteries on Villainous and then on that Saturday, that's usually right after they
go to church and they pray for the departy in church. So they created
this hybrid practice. You know. Again, they're just they're they're taking something
from Catholic practice and they're engaging in it themselves. And there are you talk
to Lithuanian Christians and a lot of them will say, now, I don't
know if the truth of this. A lot of them will say, oh,
Villainous actually is is pre Christian, which is believable, you know,
totally believable. So yeah, so they make this kind of annual pilgrimage to
the graves of their family. And again it's not because it's a fea stay
in the Orthodox calendar. Now, those those are public holidays in Lithuania.
One of the advantages of what is at least still officially a Christian nation.
They have religious freedom, but you also get November first and second off from
work in school. You also get you know, August fifteenth off, you
get you know, June twenty fourth, you know, like in fact,
Saint John's Day in June is a it's called Nianis is a huge holiday there,
huge huge holiday, right, and a fun little thing. I was
talking one of my Lithuanian friends one time because we had started to see fireflies
in our yard. I don't know if you have them where you are,
And I asked him, I said, do you have fireflies in Lithuania.
He said, oh, yeah, we have fireflies. We call them jon
Vabalis. I was like, what is jon vabalis means? He says,
it means Saint John's bug. So they literally name the fireflies after the forerunner
there in Lithuania. Mm hmm. Probably because of the probably because of the
summer feast time of your June twenty fourth, that's right, right, exactly
exactly. Okay, So I want to I want to finish up with Lithuania.
Talk about two different icons. One that a lot of people probably know
about, and I think we talked about when I was with you with Richard,
when we talked about this documentary The Wolf and the Cross before, and
that's Our Lady at the Gate of the Dawn. I won't go into a
lot of detail because we talked about it before, but it's worth noting that
this icon, which is on above a gate in Vilnius, the capital,
there's some possibility that it might have an Orthodox origin. There's some possibility that
it might have spent some time in Orthodox churches, but there's no good evidence
for that even if all of that is true. For most of its life,
it's been in a Catholic chapel. In fact, one of the times
I went to see it in my most recent trip, mass was going on
right in front of it when I went there, right this is the national
icon of Lithuania, Our Lady at the Gate of the Dawn, and it's
it's the Theotoko says. She's depicted in Revelation chapter twelve, clothed in the
sun, the moon at her feet, a crown of twelve stars like that's
that's the image, right, And a copy of this icon was very likely
to be given to Saint Seraphra Mupsatov and is the famous icon in front of
which he prayed and in front of which he died. Yeah, you know,
given to him, probably in Kiev, because veneration of this icon spread
throughout you know, the Polish Lithuania Commonwealth, Grand actually of Lithuania. You
know, Orthodox Christians make pilgrimage to that icon, venerate that icon. It
has a feast day on the Orthodox calendar. This, as far as anyone
has ever known, Catholic icon is celebrated on the day after Native and local
Orthodox Christians, including the bishop, including clergy, go and pray. I'm
eleven in front of this icon on the day after Christmas in this Catholic chapel,
right, and it is you know, this is the calendar of the
Russian Orthodox Church has this iconon lesser known and this is one of the visits
I made in my most recent stop in Lithuania. So there is a monastery
in your Konas. Soconus is sort of the second city of Lithuania. It's
in the center of the country. It was for a time the capital during
the inter war period, because Vilnius was held by the Polish during that period,
and so the capital gets moved to Konas and the second largest city.
So there's a monastery in Rconas called Preziseless Monastery. So Preziseless was built,
as I recall correctly, in the either the sixteenth or seventeenth century, and
it was built as a Catholic monastery, right, so it's built by Catholics
for Catholics. And you know, this is the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth period,
and so Catholicism is the official state religion of the whole commonwealth. Of course,
there's still Orthodox minority, a significant Orthodox minority, especially if you look
at the areas that are now Ukraine and Bilarus. But even still in Lithuanian
proper there was some Orthodox. So Presisis Monastery. One of the things that's
made for this monastery is an icon of the Virgin Mary, and so it's
called Our Lady of Pezeisis right, And if you look at it, it's
it's painted probably by an Italian. It seems to have been a gift from
the pope. If you look at it, it's a very Western sort of
Renaissance depiction. You know, it's it's not sensual at all, right,
it's actually very restrained. You know, there's a sort of a circle of
roses in the icons, so I mean it's not a businessine ict at all,
like a circle of roses, like if you put that on an icon,
you know, that would get returned probably, you know. And so
it's definitely a very Western depiction painted by the Italian gift from Pope for this
Catholic monastery, okay, and it's venerated, you know, miracles start to
be associated with this icon. So in the late eighteenth century, the partition
of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth is complete with a third partition and Lithuania becomes part
of the Russian Empire. Okay. So the Russian Empire, I'll just say
was not kind to Lithuania and in many cases engaged in religious persecution, which
if you're interested in that episode four which has not yet been made, but
episode four of The Wolf from the Cross is going to be talking about Lithuanian
the Russian Empire. It's not going to be a comfortable story for a lot
of people. It's just the reality the Russian Empire engaged in religious persecution of
non orthodox and so one of the things that happened was churches and even monasteries
that belong to the Catholic Church were taken and given to the Orthodox right.
And Prezisis Monastery is one of those places. So in the I think it
was in the nineteenth it becomes an Orthodox monastery. And I should mention,
by the way, you know, the architecture and the interior decor of this
monastery is absolutely astonishingly beautiful. It's really something very different from a lot of
Western churches, definitely different from Eastern churches. But it's really really worth looking
up anyway. So what do they do with this icon that's like the altarpiece,
you know, so it's a major, very prominent image in this church.
What do they do with this icon? They say, oh, look
at this Italian thing, Let's get this out of here. Get some good
Russian iconography in here, you know. No, they keep it, yeah,
and they venerate it, and they take the Catholic feast day of the
icon and put it on the Russian calendar, so it becomes a feast of
the Orthodox Church of this miracle working Catholic icon Orthodox Christians make pilgrimage to it.
They especially will go on the dor mission. The feast day is July
fifteenth. It remains on the Russian Orthodox calendar if you go there. Now
it is once again a Catholic monastery. And so it was given back and
when Lithuini became independent in nineteen fifteen, I think it was from the Russian
Empire, a lot of churches that have been taken from the Catholics were given
back to them, you know, and so it reverts to being a Catholic
monastery. So here's a couple of fun details. Not only do Orthodox Christians
continue to make pilgrimage to this Catholic monastery to venerate this wonderworking icon that has
a completely Catholic origin, but it was sort of Orthodox for a while.
The Orthodox Church maintains the feast day of the icon, even though the Catholics
have moved it. So what you're looking at when you see the July fifteenth
beast is the old Catholic feast day maintained by the Orthodox Church even now,
right, Yeah, so this is still like you can look this up.
The Russians call it Puziska Yaya, which I'm sure I'm probably mispronouncing, but
it's probably pretty close. But the name of the monastery is Prezseless, you
know. And so again this is an example of this sort of hoorous border.
Yeah right, it's you know, one could look at that and say,
ah, syncretism, you know, but what's happening is simply as we
looked at the tradition of the Church from the Bible, early Christianity and so
forth. Right. So, so those are just some examples that I could
point out. I mean, there's there's a number of other things that we
could mention, like burial practices. For instance, Orthodox burials in Lithuania tends
to rather than having the cross at the foot, which is sort of the
Orthodox tradition, they often will put the at the head, which is you
know in the West. Yeah, you know, there's other things you could
mention like that. But yeah, so you know, in our life,
I mean, it's like in our life. This is at least from my
life, it is true, you know, to be honest, it's like,
you know, you're not going to take my Christmas songs away from you.
I don't know what to tell you. It's like, I love Western
Christmas songs. I think they're beautiful. I think they're wonderful. I wouldn't
want them sung in liturgy, but you're not going to completely take them away
from me, Like you will hear them in my house and we will sing
them and we will love them. You know. So there's some of that
all over the place, I think. Yeah. I mean, like just
like, let's just look at Orthodox Christianity here in the West. We've taken
a whole bunch of stuff from other Christians, largely without a lot of analysis
in many cases. Right, So Sunday School, I mean Sundays, I
thought exactly. Sunday Sunday School is the probably the most obvious seminaries. I
mean, you know, now seminaries exist in Orthodox history before it ever made
it to hear. But seminaries are not the ancient Christian tradition, Like there
are other ways of training clergy. You know, you mentioned Christmas carols.
I mean that's a really, really good example, Christmas carols, and you
know it's great. You know, many many Orthodox in the West will seeing
the Christmas carols from wherever their tradition is from. But I mean you can
still get to hear joy to the world and Silent Night, and you know
the stuff that's that's just the English language Christmas Carol repertory. You know.
Another great example I think of this is the fact that we have parish membership.
Yeah, yeah, that's not a thing mostly on the other side of
the Atlantic in Orthodox parish councils and all that stuff. Parish councils are another
big example of that. And you know something that's dear near and dear to
both you and me, media using using especially modern media for Orthodox purposes,
the Catholics in the process where they're long long before us. Right, So
all right, so I mean, like, what, what's the takeaway from
all of this stuff. Yeah, it doesn't mean that anything goes. I
think it's important to be careful. It's like, we're not at all saying
that. All right, so then you know whatever, like it all,
it's all, it's all. But it's really about hierarchy, you know.
It's usually just an understanding of hierarchies that we have. We have the main
traditions, we have the canons, we have all of these things which guide
us, and then we have to understand that those are not like a machine.
They're not like a computer that runs and that that tabulates it's an organic
reality that's connected to the world, and there's room for God to act within
that in ways that surprise us constant. Yeah, I mean, you know,
like so like why does the church do this? How does the church
do this? The first question I think is easier to answer than the second
one. But I should say it's not about putting a stamp of approval on
non orthodox religion. Obviously not the same Old Testament that you know pokes fund
at the gods of the nations also steals their stuff, you know, right,
So so it's not about putting a stamp of approval. It's not right.
It also doesn't happen without creative engagement, like there always changes me to
the work to make it conformed to Orthodox Christianity, and it can be maybe
a little uncomfortable to see that in process change clean it's not a clean thing.
It's metals and and you know, I've I've studied this, and I
intend to study this a lot longer, but I haven't found like a theory
of it, like this is how you do that well or correctly? You
know, But it's it's still a thing. It's it's happening. Right,
So like the why of it, right, it's because whatever is being adopted
and adapted. I think it's important to put those two words together. In
this adopted and adapted it was seen as being for the salvation of Christians.
Like, it's not about like, oh, I want to adulterate my pure
or or oh I'm some kind of you know, liberal acumenist. That's not
what's going on. That's that's not what's going on. It's it's like,
oh, here's something that we can use for the salvation of people. And
like I said this in the most recent episode of Wolf Lacross, an icon
of the Theotokos is an icon of the Theotokos. Yeah, like it is
what it is. Like it might have been made by somebody that I would
regard as as a heretic. It might have spent all of its life in
the hands of people who are not Orthodox Christians, but it still is what
it is, and the Church is able to recognize that and does recognize them.
It's funny we have this saying now from the zeitgeist, love is love.
Now they don't mean by that what I'm about to say, but love
is love, which means that someone who's actually engaging in acts of love,
real love, Christian love, is doing it, even if that person is
not a member of the right church. It is real. All truth is
God's truth. I mean, Saint Justin Martyr very famously he talks about the
spermaticos, logos, right, the logos and seed form that he sees everywhere.
I mean, he's looking at pagan philosophy, and we should remember the
pagan philosophers are not just not a bunch of Ivery Tower academics who never sully
themselves with religion. These are actual demon worshippers. Yeah. Well, also,
I mean it it's like read Plato, folks. It's there's stuff in
Plato that you would blush at. And so you know, so the idea
that we can read it as Christians and we can take the good and let
leave the bad fall to the wayside is something that Christians did from the very
beginning and continue to do through a whole history. Yeah, I mean this
is you know, like, this is what Saint Basil says in that text
that I mentioned earlier. He says, be like the bee, right,
this is the original b the bee, you know, go to the pagan
flower, take what you need and leave the rest. That's that's what he
says. You know, he doesn't say, you know, don't go near
that, right And and he's living in a time when paganism is on the
wane. He doesn't have to do that. He's not he's not feeling pressure
from the society. Yeah, exactly, Yeah, on the winning side at
that point. Yeah, yeah, late fourth century. I mean he's yeah,
they're they're they're winning, you know. So I think that, you
know, as if we look at this question of creative engagement, I believe
that, particularly at this time of polarization, that we have so much of
that where it's really about lining up all the guns and blasting the other side,
which I mean polemic is sometimes appropriate. The church fathers do it,
especially when someone is attacking or trying to undermine the church. They I've never
seen them do it simply because someone who has a wrong belief or wrong practice
just exists. You know. It's really about it's it's a defensive thing to
do. They're not being defense in the sense that we talk about it now,
but they're being defenders. But they're actually defending against actual attacks. They're
not looking for enemies. They're not looking for people to debate, they're actually
defending against real attacks. Right. And here's the thing. I believe that
if we can begin to understand this creative engagement better, not only can we
do it ourselves and God willing to do it well, probably with some stumbles
along the way, like we're going to make some mistakes, but we can
make them in good faith. But I think that this in many ways is
a way forward out of there are polarizing. It's a demonic spirit, actually
the spirit of polarization. It's a way forward out of that because it's actually
about humility and demons can't do humility. And it's not I would also say,
it's not just something that, oh, this is a good idea for
now here in twenty twenty three. I think it's pretty clear this is what
the Church has always done because the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof
or as Saint Paul said, you know, whatever things are good, whatever
things are true, whatever things are honest, whatever things are beautiful, think
on these things. He didn't say whatever things are in this box that I'm
presenting you with. It's whatever things. And he himself did this he took
some of these whatever things and made use of them. You know, so
the same guy who said don't worship Zeus also took Zeus's poetry and applied it
to it to God. That's right. Well, thanks father Andrew. This
is amazing. I mean, you know, I'm gonna re listen to this
just for all the examples. There are so such wonderful examples that they can
help us see just to what extent this has been happening. And you're really
also bolstering the you know what, Richard and I's universal history position is,
which is it? Like you said, this is something that Christians have always
done, that even the Old Testament is already happening, and so we need
to yeah, humility, move forward with humility and also attention, you know,
and prayer. So thanks father Andrew. This has been wonderful. And
also good luck, good luck with the continuation of the Wolf and the Cross.
Can wait see all that. Thank you. It's a big it's a
big project, bigger than I think we realized, but we decided we wanted
to be big, so we're just going for it. I mean, it's
gonna be nine episodes of two to three hours each so we just released episode
three. So, as I like to say at the end of each episode,
we've got a lot more stories to tell, all right, Thanks father
Andrew, thank you