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Speaker 1: We just did, like in this seminar on the Gospels,

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where we spend a whole week, four hours a day

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talking about the Gospel and saying we're just going to

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go into the gospels and then say what we see

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what we see there. At some point someone comment I

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think it was even Dennis Brager, He's like, why is

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it where like three quarters of the way through this

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and no one has said the things that I usually

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hear from Christians, from a certain branch of Christians, not like, well,

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because it's not there. It's not. It's like it's I mean, yes,

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you can maybe get it through Saint Paul, but it's

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not there in the Gospels.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 3: I've gotten some feedback and there have been some reviews

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posted the book where people are saying, like, this reading

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of Saint Paul fits with Jesus a lot better. Right,

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there's not this sort of split anymore. The fact that

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reading him in context, all of a sudden, he sounds

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a lot more like he's saying the same thing as

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Jesus did. No one comes to Jesus, it says, you

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know what must I do to inherit eternal life?

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Speaker 2: And Jesus says nothing.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, God already, Goden already, Josy you have.

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Speaker 2: Then you know, whatever, what are you going to do? God? God,

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it's a free gift.

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Speaker 3: Just accept right, like that's not He talks about commandment

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keeping and then you know, adds to that sell everything

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you ever, give it to the poor.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: This is Jonathan Pegel. Welcome to the Symbolic World. Hello everyone,

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I'm here with the Great Father Stephen the Young. Many

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of you have seen him on my channel before. He's

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also looking more like Santa Claus these days. I noticed

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h And so Father Stephen, as you know, he is

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one of the hosts of the Lord of Spirits podcast

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the Whole Council of God, but he's also written several books.

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He was on the Symbolic World Summit. We put up

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a discussion that he talked about the Body Resurrection guided

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by fred Rick Nietzche, which was really amazing. And Father

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Stephen is now publishing a book on Saint Paul, and

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so I thought it would be a great opportunity to

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actually talk about Saint Paul. I don't I don't talk

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about Saint Paul that much on my channel, at least

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not explicitly. So I thought it be, it would be

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a great opportunity. So, Father Stephen, thanks for coming coming on.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, my pleasure, My pleasure.

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Speaker 1: And so until now you've talked a lot about uh,

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you know, you've tried to connect a lot of things

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to Second Temple Judaism. You know, you try to to

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try to create this sense of continuity between the Old

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Testament and the New Testament. It's been very fruitful. And

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so how how does it fit into writing a book

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about Saint Paul.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well, so.

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Speaker 3: Saint Paul and his epistles and the interpretation of them

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is sort of at the center of most of the

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disputes within contemporary Christianity when you get down to the core.

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And that's I mean, depending on where people watching this are,

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they may have immediately had different things popped to mind,

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Like so they might have had well, yes, you know,

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Martin Luther's interpretation of Saint Paul basically was the Reformation

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right and is sort of what separates Protestantism from Roman

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Catholicism or Orthodoxy. Or they might have thought about what

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Saint Paul says about women in ministry as being a

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split right between more progressive and more conservative forms of Protestantism,

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and on and on and on. When you trace these

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things back, it comes back to Saint Paul. And I

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think the biggest problem in terms of how Saint Paul

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is used in all these discussions is that very rarely,

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if ever, are we reading Saint Paul as a Jewish Man,

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specifically a Pharisee living in the first half of the

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first century a d. His epistles have been kind of

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disassociated from that, so that we now read, in fact

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that the Luther's reading is basically to read him over

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against the Judaism of the first century, right, that he

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represents this criticism and even an attack on Judaism of

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the first century. Yeah, and and or you know, the

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text gets isolated in and of itself due to sola

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scriptura and other things, where it's just sort of like,

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oh no, these are words beamed sort of directly from God.

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We don't have to worry about when it was written, where,

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to whom, why, Right, But when we understand Saint Paul

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as the history oracle person he is, then what he's

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saying suddenly makes a lot more sense, is a lot

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less nebulous. There's still questions, of course, right, because we're

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in a different context today. How do we apply what

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he was saying then in that context to our context today.

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But that's a very different discussion than presenting radically different

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views of what he even said.

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Speaker 5: Hello everyone, this is Annie Crawford inviting you to join

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me this January for a symbolic world reading of Till

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We Have Faces. The book C. S. Lewis calls far

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and away the best I've written. Till We Have Faces

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is Lewis's modern retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche,

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a mysterious tale of dark idolatry, classical enlightenment, and the

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shocking discovery of true religious vision. In our four week

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online course, together, we'll explore what cus Lewis has to

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show us about the nature of myth, the dangers of love,

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the limits of reason, and the secrets of genuine re enchantment.

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This is a book, an author, and a class you

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won't want to miss.

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Speaker 1: And so, what are some of the examples, let's say,

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of the fact of considering his context and the fact

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of considering the tradition in which he was embedded. You

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know what, give me at least one or two examples

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of how that enlightens the text and help us see

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it in different light.

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Speaker 3: Right, Well, what are the biggest examples in terms of

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more contemporary readings of Saint Paul is that there's this

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phrase that Saint Paul uses works of the law, which

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would really be translated more like works of the Torah. Yeah,

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just in general, the fact that we now translate it

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as law rather than Torah already skews the picture a

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great deal tour to kind of view of kind of

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legal legalism and that kind of thing.

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Speaker 2: But it's works.

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Speaker 3: The tour has been interpreted since Luther in the Reformed

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and Protestant tradition as just meaning good works, doing good things, right,

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trying to do things to please God. Right, And therefore

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Saint Paul's criticism of that has taken to be this

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criticism of doing trying to do good and trying to

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please God in your life. Whereas it becomes increasingly clear

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and Matthew Thomas published his dissertation on this where he

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went back to not just the scripture itself and St.

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Paul's context, but went back to everyone in the second

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and third centuries who comments on Saint Paul. I found

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that every single one of them understands works of Torah

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to mean the specific commandments that separated Jews from other people,

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so circumcision, keeping kosher, right, the things that were sort

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of boundary markers for the Jewish community. When you read

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Saint Paul with that in mind, and understand that he's saying, look,

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you are you aren't given the forgiveness of sins by

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being Jewish, right, you aren't given the promises of Abraham

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by just being biologically descended from him. He points out,

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you know, Esau is biologically descended from him, Ishmael is

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biologically from right, the Moabites are biologically descended from his family.

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Speaker 2: That's not a guarantee.

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Speaker 3: Then, not only does what he's saying make more sense

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when you read it, but you can also see that

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his positive picture of what faith is is really something

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more like faithfulness, right, that it actually includes that he's

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actually encouraging people to try to do good and please

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God in their life. He's actually encouraging people to struggle

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to keep the commandments and to repent when they don't. Right,

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That this is not something he's making a break with.

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This is something he's reinforcing over against a view a

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sort of identitarian view of what religion is.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think your insight is wonderful. That's what I mean.

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Meditating on that for a while that it seems like

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one of the ways you can twist the words in

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the scripture is that it's actually simply something like excessive

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focus on a concept. You have a you have a

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concept that's there, and then you youooge, you ontologize it,

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you make it the structure of reality itself. And so

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you say something like there's a text about works and faith,

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and then you say, well, works actually just means anything

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that you do. It's actually it's actually it's almost metaphysical

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like it's it's like all things that you do are

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empty and all you can do is, let's say, received

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from God something, and it's like and downstream from that,

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if you follow the line, then you end up with

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things obviously like double predestination and all the crazy things

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that end up happening in prosentism, because it's like it's

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not that it's not there, and the text it's that

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you've you've isolated it. You folk hyper focused on it

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to the detriment of all the other things that Saint

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Paul and Christ and and and the other writer say,

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and you've made it like a kind of jewel, like,

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you know, like a center point around which the entire

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scripture turns, let's say, And it made me realize what

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extent tradition is important, because you could do that in

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many places in the text if you wanted to. You

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could say, everything has to be interpreted in the light

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of this text. So now this text becomes like the

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center of the world, and now every other text is

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relativized based on that. It's like, this is the metaphysical

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center of the Bible. And so it's like it's a

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weird trick that people play, because it actually can be

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a little convincing when you think of it. At first,

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you're like, well, does say that? Doesn't it?

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Speaker 5: Right?

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Speaker 1: It says that, and so.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, right, And the argument to make that sound reasonable

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is you get something like, well, you have to interpret

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the difficult passages of scripture based on the parts that

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are clear.

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Speaker 1: Oh, clear, exactly.

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Speaker 2: Of course.

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Speaker 3: The parts that are clear are the parts that I

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sort of already agree with. It seem to fit what

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I believe. Yeah, then the hard parts are all the

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ones that seem to disagree with that that I then

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explained away in favor of the ones right that agree

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with me. And that's obviously it's super problematic. You know, if,

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especially if you're from a Protestant background, where the scriptures

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are your sole source of infallible authority, that becomes a

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huge problem because there's no way to sort of correct yourself.

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Speaker 1: Ever, No, and it really is, and people can really

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become self diluted. It's not it's not also like can

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I say this, it's in some ways it's it's a

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factor of reality, right you when you're dealing with reading scripture,

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but not just reading scripture, like even your experiences in

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everyday life, sometimes there's something that shines really brightly, right,

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you have this experience and then it shines brightly, and

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the danger is to say, now this is the key

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to all of reality. And now, like you said, I

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basically make it the focus and I and I relativize

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everything because of the insight that it brings. So you

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can imagine like Luther, you know, struggling with confession, you know,

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going over and confessing every time, and you know, realizing

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that his thoughts are coming back, and like he would

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want to go to confession every two seconds, and he's

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like no, this can't be. And then has this insight

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you know, God has saved me through faith, and then

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it's a real insight. Right, it's like a real insight.

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But then it you kind of bear, you kind of

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focus in on it, and then it becomes the thing

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by which everything else exists.

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Speaker 2: It becomes the Gospel.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it becomes the Gospel. That's a good way of

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thinking about it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: And uh, one of the things getting feedback from the book,

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and I hadn't particularly thought about it this way, but

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one of the ways that it's hit people is part

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of what's happened downstream from some of those readings of

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Saint Paul is that it's very hard to get that

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reading of Saint Paul out of Christ in the Gospels.

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Speaker 2: And the things Christ says the guest, it's so interesting.

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Speaker 1: Because we just did. We just did, like in this

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seminar on the Gospels where we spend a whole week

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like two hours, four hours a day talking about the

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Gospel and saying we're just going to go into the

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Gospels and then say what we see what we see there.

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At some point someone comment, I think it was even

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Dennis Brager, He's like, why is it where like three

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three quarters of the way truth this, and no one

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has said the things that I usually hear from Christians,

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you know, like that from the from a certain branch

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of Christians there like well, because it's not there, it's

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not it's like it's I mean, yes, you can maybe

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get it through Saint Paul, but it's not there in

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the gospels.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 3: And so I've gotten some feedback, and there have been

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some reviews posted the book where people are saying, like,

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this reading of Saint Paul fits with Jesus a lot better. Right,

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there's not this sort of split right anymore. And that split,

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you know, Muslim apologists and Jewish apologists in so far

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as there are Jewish apology apologists because they don't proselytize, right,

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but they're doing sort of counter missionary stuff. Yes, Christians, right,

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they make hay that perceived difference, right to say, like,

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how come Saint Paul seems so different than the Jesus

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according to you, right, And so the fact that reading

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him in context, all of a sudden, he sounds a

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lot more like he's saying the same things Jesus did.

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No one comes to Jesus and says, you know, what

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must I do to inherit eternal life?

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Speaker 2: And Jesus says nothing.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, God already, God already, Josie. If he hasn't, then

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you know, whatever, what are you going to do?

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Speaker 2: God? God, it's a free gift, Just accept right, Like,

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that's not He talks about commandment keeping and then you know,

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adds to that, sell everything you ever to give it

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to the poor. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's very that's very interesting. And so and so

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what is your you know, I'm seeing what is your

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take on the relationship between Saint Paul and a lot

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of the other stuff you talk about, because that interests

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me because I see in some of the text where

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he's clearly talking about hierarchies of angels, he's clearly talking

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about principalities, and you know, and so I'm wondering, what

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if you brought that out in the book at all?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, well, yeah, and this is part of the caricaturing

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of Saint Paul, right, so, and and it doesn't start,

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I want to be fair, Martin Luther wasn't trying to

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do a caricature of Saint Paul, but he was very

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much reading Saint Paul in terms of.

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Speaker 2: His own experience, yea.

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Speaker 3: And so he presents Pharisaic Judaism as having been this

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sort of legalism, which is how he perceived the Roman

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Catholic Church of his own day. He kind of reads

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that back into them, that there's sort of these dry legalists, right,

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you think you earn salvation by by keeping commandments, keeping Torah?

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Speaker 2: And then Saint Paul is that sort of radically radically

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opposed to that.

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Speaker 3: And then Saint Paul though is coming out for Mark Luther,

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coming out of that background and rejecting it, right and

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rejecting it. And so what that leaves out on the

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table is all the mystical experiences Saint Paul describes having, yeah, right,

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his discussion in one Corinthians fifteen about angelic bodies, right,

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like celestial bodies. All that gets sort of left aside

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to the point that I'm not going to name names,

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but a non Protestant biblical studies professor once recently, when

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asked about this, was asked about Saint Paul and mystical

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experiences and practicing mysticism and gave the answer, well, no,

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he was a Pharisee, so he wasn't into all that, right,

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which right, is just the acceptance of this kind of

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care cuture yea.

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Speaker 2: And so.

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Speaker 3: That has gone unexplored, and where it is explored it

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in I mean, I really you know, this may rub

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some of your audience the wrong way, but I really

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think the idea of the West is a fiction. So

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I hate saying Western Christianity, but it's sort of the

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only convenient term to group together Roman Catholicism and traditional Protestantism.

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So it's what we're stuck with. But in Western Christianity

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and Medieval Roman Catholicism, basically this sort of schism developed

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between on one hand, scholasticism and on the other hand mysticism,

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like they were pulled apart. And you see that really

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radically in the person of Thomas Aquinas, where he has

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this profound mystical experience and stops work on the suma

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right because it just seems worthless to him after what

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he's experienced.

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Speaker 2: That's pulled apart.

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Speaker 3: And so I think that gets read back into Saint

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Paul too, this idea that he either had to be

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this kind of scholastic theologian. You know, Romans is a

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systematic theology da da da da da. If he's that

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then he can't have been serious about mystical experiences. Yeah, right,

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And so I'm amazed at how many people don't realize.

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For example, that in the Book of Acts after the

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Road to Damascus, Christ appears to Saint Paul twice in

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person at different points in his life, and he describes

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other in his epistles other mystical experiences he's had. Yeah,

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but that doesn't fit with the oh well, the Road

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tomat because is just describing his conversion, right, that's where

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he got saved, and right as if Christianity and Judaism

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were separate religions in eight thirty five, where you can

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convert from one to the other. But so, yeah, all

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of that gets left on the table. Everything having to

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do with the demonic gets left on the table. That

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makes it very difficult to understand his view. For example,

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why he's trying to go see Caesar, right, who during

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much of his ministry is Caligula, later on is Nero.

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So these aren't even like quote unquote good emperors, right,

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These aren't like philosopher emperors or something who you could

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reason with, right, But he sees them as being humans

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like everyone else. The problem is sort of the demonic

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power that stands behind Rome, that stands behind the emperor.

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Speaker 4: Mm hm.

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Speaker 3: That the emperor is sort of embodying. But if you

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preach the Gospel to the Emperor and he accepts it,

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that would pride him loose from that. Yeah, and now

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the Emperor receives the Holy Spirit and that would transform

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literally the whole world.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, which is which is what happened ultimately, Yes.

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Speaker 2: Right, mean say, Constantine is the payoff of Saint Paul's bishop. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And it's interesting to think about what you said, because

350
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it's funny. I never had thought about it the way

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that you that you had that you that you said it,

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which is the idea in some ways that Saint Paul

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was trying to do what ended up happening, you know

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in the church. Like he understood this idea of the

355
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importance of principalities in the world and how they they

356
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come down that they came kind of come down on

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on on on reality.

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Speaker 2: Uh.

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Speaker 1: And and he understood that like it's not was it

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just about saving individuals, but there was a sense that

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we could if we could save a nation in some ways,

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you know, by removing this this influence from from from

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evil spirits or something.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and that that would that would then transform things.

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So yeah, that when that gets left out, what you

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have is always just trying to convince people to join

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his religion and see things his way and then exercise

368
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whatever the power they had to try to force other

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people to do likewise.

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Speaker 1: Yes, so in some ways he understood that. In some

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ways what you know, with Saint Dionysius, the Arapa guy

372
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later would would inscribe, which is there's a relationship between

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the divine hierarchies and the hierarchies in the world, like

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they lay themselves out in similar structure as you could say.

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Speaker 2: Right, and and that.

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Speaker 3: The nature of humanity is to sort of synergize.

377
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Speaker 2: Right.

378
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Speaker 3: And he gets into this, I mean famously in Philippians

379
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to thirteen fourteen. But that human activity, there is human activity,

380
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there is a human will, there is you know, sorry

381
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Calvinist friends who are monogists. But the nature of that

382
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activity is to participate in and bring into the world

383
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to be guided by spiritual wills and energies and reality.

384
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And so it's not sort of independent. There's this kind

385
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of say John Cash, and this is how he connected

386
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Pelagianism and Nestorianism. That Pelagianism, which is a kind of

387
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modern monarchism that separates human activity from God's activity and

388
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demonic activity. It has human activity starts standing by itself.

389
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That that is a kind of Nestorianism, because it's pulling apart. Ultimately,

390
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you have to pull apart Christ who is he went

391
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in divine And that's the exact opposite of what Saint

392
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Paul is teaching.

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Speaker 2: So you kind of.

394
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Speaker 3: You can't understand human ethics apart from a sense of

395
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spiritual warfare. And since ancient politics is ethics writ large

396
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at the level of community, you can't understand that.

397
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Speaker 2: Apart from spiritual warfare.

398
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Speaker 3: So the emperor, the governor, whoever else, they are embodying

399
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and bringing into reality the will of certain spiritual powers,

400
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and that's going to transform things in one way. And

401
00:24:42,599 --> 00:24:44,880
if that is those spiritual powers are replaced with the

402
00:24:44,920 --> 00:24:49,119
Holy Spirit, that's going to naturally transform things the other way.

403
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But it's not a question of part of the problem.

404
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That is, we as modern people, even a lot of

405
00:24:56,799 --> 00:25:00,240
modern Christians, then impose on it this idea that, well,

406
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our modern way of doing things is better. So why

407
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didn't God like miraculously reveal that to them, right. And

408
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I've said this before on Lord of Spirits, and I

409
00:25:10,920 --> 00:25:12,920
know people don't like people talking this way, but.

410
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Speaker 2: I'm sorry.

411
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Speaker 3: One of the stupidest things I ever heard at an

412
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academic conference was, and this is self criticism because it

413
00:25:22,319 --> 00:25:27,279
was an Orthodox the Elogi. We could put scare quotes

414
00:25:27,279 --> 00:25:32,680
around the ellotion uh criticizing the Council of Nicea for

415
00:25:32,720 --> 00:25:37,839
not abolishing slavery in the Roman Empire, right, which is

416
00:25:37,880 --> 00:25:41,880
just so anachronistic and bizarre. Right, like these bishops can

417
00:25:41,960 --> 00:25:45,480
just take a vote and change the means of production

418
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like in the Roman Empire in the early fourth century.

419
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And what would they have changed it to. I mean,

420
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I guess capitalism. I guess like modern capitalism, because that's

421
00:25:54,039 --> 00:25:58,119
perfect and flawless and has no issues from a Christian perspective.

422
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's it also, I mean, this whole

423
00:26:03,960 --> 00:26:07,799
question of slavery, ah man. I don't like to talk

424
00:26:07,799 --> 00:26:10,839
about it too much because it's it's definitely controversial. But

425
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I think in some ways people don't they don't think

426
00:26:13,839 --> 00:26:16,440
out the reality of how the world functions. And in

427
00:26:16,480 --> 00:26:18,960
some ways, the way I think that the early Christians

428
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and Saint Paul and the people there they and so

429
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exactly the way that you said, in some ways, there

430
00:26:23,319 --> 00:26:26,400
is no such thing as freedom in the way that

431
00:26:26,480 --> 00:26:28,160
we think of it. There is no such thing as

432
00:26:28,200 --> 00:26:34,599
not being bound or submitted to higher authorities that act

433
00:26:34,680 --> 00:26:37,960
on us and and that you know that bind our behavior.

434
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So the idea that there are these like just completely

435
00:26:40,359 --> 00:26:44,759
free individuals that don't that that aren't we don't like

436
00:26:44,799 --> 00:26:47,480
the word own, but to some extent owned by higher

437
00:26:47,799 --> 00:26:50,880
powers in some ways like we can't we you cannot

438
00:26:51,119 --> 00:26:55,079
avoid that. What what Christianity and even Judaism before, and

439
00:26:55,119 --> 00:26:58,599
the and the ancient Israel did before was was mostly

440
00:26:58,720 --> 00:27:04,799
to call on people to act properly with the people

441
00:27:04,839 --> 00:27:07,039
that were under them. It was to say you have

442
00:27:07,119 --> 00:27:09,920
to crisis, saying it's not that I'm going to free

443
00:27:09,920 --> 00:27:11,759
you in the sense that you won't be bound to

444
00:27:11,920 --> 00:27:15,440
like some higher will that will bind your behavior, but

445
00:27:15,480 --> 00:27:18,559
that those that are there should be treating you in

446
00:27:18,640 --> 00:27:21,640
the as if they're acting towards me. That is what

447
00:27:21,839 --> 00:27:25,119
the call has always been. And so you know, when

448
00:27:25,200 --> 00:27:27,799
Israel was freed from Egypt, it's like it was freed

449
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from Egypt in order to then be bound to God

450
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like in order to be bound to his law, to

451
00:27:32,319 --> 00:27:35,480
his you know, and so they were making themselves slaves

452
00:27:35,480 --> 00:27:38,680
to God after being freed from Egypt. The idea that

453
00:27:39,000 --> 00:27:42,559
we're completely free is wrong, and so the approach of.

454
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Speaker 2: Like we right.

455
00:27:45,279 --> 00:27:48,240
Speaker 1: Now like are owned to some extent by our states.

456
00:27:48,279 --> 00:27:50,480
If you tried not to not pay your taxes and

457
00:27:50,519 --> 00:27:54,680
see what happens. Like an ancient serf, what he owed

458
00:27:54,759 --> 00:27:57,880
to his lord was far less than what we owe

459
00:27:57,920 --> 00:28:00,920
to the people that own us right now. We give

460
00:28:01,039 --> 00:28:04,480
up way more to to to the to our overlords

461
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than the people like the serfs that we consider slaves

462
00:28:07,240 --> 00:28:09,480
in the Middle Ages. So we have to be very cautious,

463
00:28:09,519 --> 00:28:13,240
I think in the way that we understand these things.

464
00:28:13,240 --> 00:28:17,079
It's the the cosmic vision makes you see that it's

465
00:28:17,119 --> 00:28:22,000
more about how a steward of reality has to treat

466
00:28:22,400 --> 00:28:25,319
that which it stewards. Right, So it's like a leader

467
00:28:25,440 --> 00:28:28,960
or a chief or someone who acts on others has

468
00:28:29,000 --> 00:28:31,559
to treat them in the spirit that God has given

469
00:28:31,599 --> 00:28:33,720
them with love. Basically, that's the that's the key to

470
00:28:33,839 --> 00:28:35,720
Christians offer right right.

471
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Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and Chris Donald's slavery discussion is another one

472
00:28:38,440 --> 00:28:40,799
that runs right through Saint Paul because of what he

473
00:28:40,839 --> 00:28:41,480
says about it.

474
00:28:42,599 --> 00:28:46,640
Speaker 2: And yeah, just in.

475
00:28:46,640 --> 00:28:52,720
Speaker 3: The real world, right, you you have a whole economy

476
00:28:52,720 --> 00:28:58,799
in the Roman Empire that's based around slavery, right, and

477
00:28:58,839 --> 00:29:01,680
that's not a good thing, right, say Paul never says

478
00:29:01,680 --> 00:29:04,839
slavery is a good thing. He tells fy Liban, you

479
00:29:05,400 --> 00:29:09,039
can't claim to own your brother in Christ, right like,

480
00:29:11,839 --> 00:29:17,240
But that's on an individual basis, right, And so yeah,

481
00:29:17,279 --> 00:29:21,799
the approach Christians took starting with Saint Paul was right.

482
00:29:21,880 --> 00:29:25,839
Here's how we can live within these institutions, corrupt, sinful,

483
00:29:25,839 --> 00:29:29,559
flawed as they are. Right, Here's how we can live

484
00:29:29,599 --> 00:29:32,359
in a God pleasing way within them. And then when

485
00:29:32,400 --> 00:29:35,000
the opportunity comes, then we will change them. But even

486
00:29:35,039 --> 00:29:37,559
when we have the opportunity to change them, you can't

487
00:29:37,599 --> 00:29:40,839
just do that with one vote, right, Like, This is

488
00:29:40,880 --> 00:29:43,079
going to take a lot of time, and so you

489
00:29:43,240 --> 00:29:48,039
end up with a world in which Christian societies are

490
00:29:48,079 --> 00:29:49,920
the only societies in history of the world who have

491
00:29:49,960 --> 00:29:51,200
ever abolished slavery.

492
00:29:53,079 --> 00:29:53,960
Speaker 2: Right Other than.

493
00:29:53,839 --> 00:29:57,160
Speaker 3: That, slavery is universal, but that takes time and function

494
00:29:57,240 --> 00:29:59,359
to do it. If you're you know, but you're thinking adult,

495
00:29:59,519 --> 00:30:03,000
you should be able to understand that that you can't

496
00:30:03,039 --> 00:30:05,480
just overhaul the economy of a global empire.

497
00:30:07,160 --> 00:30:09,599
Speaker 1: See that there are degrees like you can see it

498
00:30:10,559 --> 00:30:13,440
in some ways, like taking what Saint Paul said, you know,

499
00:30:13,480 --> 00:30:15,519
how to treat your servants, how to treat people that

500
00:30:15,559 --> 00:30:20,240
are under you became became the pattern by which then

501
00:30:20,359 --> 00:30:24,640
that structure transformed moving into the Middle Ages. Like you

502
00:30:24,680 --> 00:30:28,240
would have much preferred being a serf in the Middle Ages,

503
00:30:28,319 --> 00:30:31,960
then you know, a slave in the Roman Empire. Yes,

504
00:30:32,119 --> 00:30:34,359
because you had you actually did have rights. You were

505
00:30:34,359 --> 00:30:37,039
bound to the land. There were things that your lord

506
00:30:37,160 --> 00:30:39,000
was not allowed to do. He couldn't chase you away,

507
00:30:39,200 --> 00:30:40,880
He had to take care of you. He actually had

508
00:30:40,920 --> 00:30:43,240
to take care of your needs. All of these things

509
00:30:43,240 --> 00:30:46,119
were a complete transformation, and we're in some ways the

510
00:30:46,200 --> 00:30:49,079
beginning of what we now believe authority is for like

511
00:30:49,119 --> 00:30:52,599
we we believe that our state is there in some

512
00:30:52,680 --> 00:30:55,079
respects to care for us, you know, like a father

513
00:30:55,240 --> 00:30:57,720
or like you know, take care of our needs. Whereas

514
00:30:57,799 --> 00:30:59,640
that was not the case for the Roman slave. There

515
00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:02,799
were basse just animals like that that could be killed

516
00:31:02,799 --> 00:31:05,279
and you know, disposed of whenever they needed to.

517
00:31:05,839 --> 00:31:14,400
Speaker 3: And the most basic elements were immediate, immediately immediately from

518
00:31:14,400 --> 00:31:17,720
Saint Paul on right, you can't use your slaves sexual

519
00:31:17,759 --> 00:31:24,880
for your sexual gratification. That's kind of huge for enslaved

520
00:31:24,880 --> 00:31:28,960
people of the Roman Empire, right, I mean that that

521
00:31:30,279 --> 00:31:36,960
freedom for being raped, right is pretty big, right, including

522
00:31:37,359 --> 00:31:39,799
children who are slaves. A lot of dark stuff happened

523
00:31:39,799 --> 00:31:42,079
to the Roman Empire. Is one of my problems with

524
00:31:42,400 --> 00:31:44,920
both of the Gladiator movies is they're kind of presenting

525
00:31:45,000 --> 00:31:48,480
Rome as this sort of idyllic dream that people had,

526
00:31:48,519 --> 00:31:51,799
and it's kind of a dream of domination and violence.

527
00:31:51,839 --> 00:31:58,680
I'm sorry, Yeah, that's uh, you know, as as Lovey said,

528
00:31:58,680 --> 00:32:04,119
they created a wasteland and at peace, you know. But

529
00:32:04,119 --> 00:32:07,400
but yeah, so and those things were overnight. Those things were, oh, well,

530
00:32:07,400 --> 00:32:09,200
there's going to be a process by which you have

531
00:32:09,279 --> 00:32:11,960
to stop sexually abuse of your slaves. It's like, no,

532
00:32:12,079 --> 00:32:16,400
that ends now, right, and you know, beating them to

533
00:32:16,440 --> 00:32:25,119
death ends now. And you know, uh, but changing the institutions, right,

534
00:32:25,240 --> 00:32:27,960
someone coming up with the idea of wage labor was

535
00:32:28,039 --> 00:32:31,359
not going to happen overnight, right, getting everybody on board

536
00:32:31,359 --> 00:32:35,039
with it, and you know, hmmm.

537
00:32:35,559 --> 00:32:39,599
Speaker 1: And so there's a there's a text I forget where

538
00:32:39,599 --> 00:32:41,519
it is. I'm horrible I'm not a chapter in verse guy,

539
00:32:41,559 --> 00:32:43,880
but there's a wonderful text in which Saint Paul talks

540
00:32:43,880 --> 00:32:46,759
about how Christ is ascending at this moment, like he's

541
00:32:46,759 --> 00:32:50,319
descending the hierarchy of principalities, and he's he's like dominating

542
00:32:50,759 --> 00:32:53,200
the the the the principalities.

543
00:32:53,599 --> 00:32:54,200
Speaker 2: Uh.

544
00:32:54,240 --> 00:32:58,119
Speaker 1: And it's a like to me that text is very

545
00:32:58,200 --> 00:33:01,000
is wonderful because it, you know, when you think about

546
00:33:01,079 --> 00:33:05,599
the situation which Paul was right both in his own

547
00:33:05,920 --> 00:33:09,880
you know, Jewish world and you know, compared to what

548
00:33:09,920 --> 00:33:12,240
the Romans, how the Romans were treating themselves. The fact

549
00:33:12,279 --> 00:33:14,599
that he could foresee that it seems amazing to us

550
00:33:14,640 --> 00:33:18,440
now because all of it happened, right, Christ was secretly

551
00:33:18,480 --> 00:33:21,519
ascending the hierarchy and dominating these principalities, and at some

552
00:33:21,599 --> 00:33:24,920
point the fruits of that, like you said, became visible,

553
00:33:25,240 --> 00:33:28,680
you know, in the transformation of the Roman Empire, you know,

554
00:33:28,799 --> 00:33:33,039
and you know, you can really realize that if you

555
00:33:33,160 --> 00:33:36,680
read when you read Saint Paul from our point of view,

556
00:33:36,680 --> 00:33:39,160
now we can kind of we can kind of make

557
00:33:39,200 --> 00:33:42,000
the mistake and think the Christians had already won. But

558
00:33:42,119 --> 00:33:46,319
in fact, it was really powerful insight that he had

559
00:33:46,359 --> 00:33:47,839
that this was in some ways he could see that

560
00:33:47,880 --> 00:33:48,920
it was going to happen.

561
00:33:49,839 --> 00:33:54,359
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, So in his mind Christ had won, yeah, right,

562
00:33:54,440 --> 00:33:58,160
And now for him, this is coming out of his

563
00:33:58,400 --> 00:34:02,559
reading of the Old Testament and the way in which Yahweh,

564
00:34:02,599 --> 00:34:09,039
the God of Israel, led the people of Israel in battle. Right,

565
00:34:09,119 --> 00:34:11,440
it was very clear he's the one who's winning the battle.

566
00:34:11,440 --> 00:34:14,199
He's the one who's winning the victory. And then he

567
00:34:14,320 --> 00:34:16,760
shares the spoils, you know, his people sort of come

568
00:34:16,800 --> 00:34:22,519
in after right and collect the results of the victory

569
00:34:22,760 --> 00:34:25,880
and come and occupy the territory. But he's the one

570
00:34:25,880 --> 00:34:27,920
who's got and won. And so say Paul applies that

571
00:34:27,960 --> 00:34:33,760
really to Christ. He's won the victory, and so now

572
00:34:33,840 --> 00:34:37,320
what he's doing is going in He's not really I mean,

573
00:34:37,360 --> 00:34:40,519
there were battles, there are still skirmishes. After the war's

574
00:34:40,519 --> 00:34:43,679
basically over, right, there's still skirmishes and battles and things

575
00:34:43,679 --> 00:34:44,119
that happened.

576
00:34:44,880 --> 00:34:46,159
Speaker 2: But that's how he sees things.

577
00:34:46,239 --> 00:34:50,800
Speaker 3: And again, he doesn't have this disconnect between material reality

578
00:34:50,840 --> 00:34:54,760
and spiritual reality. Right, So the spiritual reality is playing

579
00:34:54,800 --> 00:34:59,679
out in material reality. So when he goes to Thessaloniki

580
00:35:01,920 --> 00:35:07,880
and he gathers a Christian community there. That Christian community

581
00:35:08,000 --> 00:35:12,039
is sort of an outpost and everyone who's drawn into

582
00:35:12,079 --> 00:35:15,800
it and out of the broader world of Thessalainiki that's

583
00:35:15,840 --> 00:35:19,519
dominated by this spirit that they called Aphrodite, which is

584
00:35:19,559 --> 00:35:25,360
a spirit of lust and sexuality and sexuality, right, is

585
00:35:25,400 --> 00:35:29,079
breaking the power that that spirit has over.

586
00:35:30,440 --> 00:35:31,119
Speaker 2: Thessilainiki.

587
00:35:32,119 --> 00:35:37,639
Speaker 3: And then when that's ultimately completely broken, right, then Christ

588
00:35:37,719 --> 00:35:42,199
replaces that spirit in the hierarchy with one of his

589
00:35:42,320 --> 00:35:49,800
own appointees, right, Saint Demetrius, right comes. It is now

590
00:35:49,880 --> 00:35:56,519
part of the new administration, right under new management. But

591
00:35:56,840 --> 00:35:59,960
that's not just this hypothetical thing where like, oh, now

592
00:36:00,039 --> 00:36:02,239
Saint Tumetrius is the patriot saint of Thessaladiki.

593
00:36:02,320 --> 00:36:04,239
Speaker 2: Right. For Saint Paul, this is a very real thing

594
00:36:04,280 --> 00:36:04,920
that is happening.

595
00:36:05,199 --> 00:36:05,519
Speaker 1: M hm.

596
00:36:07,199 --> 00:36:12,079
Speaker 3: Yeah, these spirits are being removed and replaced with by Christ,

597
00:36:12,199 --> 00:36:16,880
with his own people who will shepherd the world and

598
00:36:16,960 --> 00:36:20,079
the things in it in the way they were supposed

599
00:36:20,119 --> 00:36:21,039
to hm.

600
00:36:21,400 --> 00:36:23,800
Speaker 1: And so do you yeah, you think you see that

601
00:36:23,840 --> 00:36:29,280
Saint Paul was really already talking about this in his epistles,

602
00:36:29,280 --> 00:36:36,239
that he is intimating that the saints are replacing these principalities.

603
00:36:36,559 --> 00:36:42,000
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, absolutely, yeah, and he sees them on a

604
00:36:42,000 --> 00:36:44,320
lower level. This is I know we talked about this

605
00:36:44,360 --> 00:36:46,079
once before, but in terms of how I understand what

606
00:36:46,119 --> 00:36:49,079
he means by baptism for the dead, that this is

607
00:36:49,159 --> 00:36:53,440
asked to do with patron saints. Right, that's replacing the

608
00:36:53,480 --> 00:36:58,159
gods of this family. Mm hmm, right, that's replacing the

609
00:36:58,559 --> 00:37:05,679
these spirits. Actually that that's an atological reality. And so

610
00:37:05,760 --> 00:37:09,320
that's why often some of our Protestant friends will say, oh, well,

611
00:37:09,360 --> 00:37:11,679
the veneration of the states and this stuff, that's like

612
00:37:12,880 --> 00:37:16,920
paganism and all the pagan gods and polytheism. But it's like, well, no,

613
00:37:17,000 --> 00:37:23,920
we believe that that ontologically actually happened. Those spirits actually

614
00:37:24,000 --> 00:37:28,199
got replaced by the spirits of the righteous made perfect.

615
00:37:28,639 --> 00:37:31,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it seems I mean, you can see it.

616
00:37:31,440 --> 00:37:34,880
It's intimated by Christ. I think one of the the

617
00:37:34,920 --> 00:37:38,199
mistakes people make is that they because they have this

618
00:37:38,440 --> 00:37:41,239
idea of eschatology, which is something like you know, you

619
00:37:41,280 --> 00:37:44,199
know in the future, that is that like when everything's over,

620
00:37:44,639 --> 00:37:48,119
then we will reign with Christ and will be like

621
00:37:48,320 --> 00:37:51,000
you know, some people can kind of accept that, and

622
00:37:51,039 --> 00:37:53,599
they don't totally. It's hard to understand exactly what it

623
00:37:53,679 --> 00:37:56,760
means for them. But the idea is that no, that

624
00:37:56,920 --> 00:37:59,719
is that this is happening, It's happening already, that it

625
00:37:59,719 --> 00:38:02,760
is the Kingdom of Heaven is already there, and that

626
00:38:02,840 --> 00:38:06,079
there is an eschatological reality in which all of that

627
00:38:06,159 --> 00:38:08,440
will be will reach its finality you could say, or

628
00:38:08,639 --> 00:38:12,239
be revealed in its fullness, but that the Saints are

629
00:38:12,199 --> 00:38:17,280
already ruling with Christ, you know, right after his resurrection.

630
00:38:17,800 --> 00:38:19,920
Speaker 2: Yeah. And this is the influence of Puritanism.

631
00:38:20,280 --> 00:38:20,679
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.

632
00:38:21,440 --> 00:38:24,880
Speaker 3: That's where this comes from, right, which is a rejection

633
00:38:24,960 --> 00:38:28,920
of monarchy, a rejection of hierarchies, and so they recast

634
00:38:30,320 --> 00:38:34,760
Hell as a hierarchy, the devil at the top, Like

635
00:38:34,800 --> 00:38:38,719
look at Milton, who's appearing, right, So now evil has

636
00:38:38,760 --> 00:38:41,480
a hierarchy, the pagan gods have a hierarchy.

637
00:38:42,800 --> 00:38:44,519
Speaker 2: But then that gets done away with.

638
00:38:44,559 --> 00:38:47,920
Speaker 3: By Christ in terms of this sort of blessed peaceful anarchy,

639
00:38:49,320 --> 00:38:51,920
right where all of these authority structures are taken, are

640
00:38:51,960 --> 00:38:54,719
not replaced, but take it away.

641
00:38:55,000 --> 00:38:59,719
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, and then it's God, it's God above,

642
00:38:59,800 --> 00:39:04,559
and then a bunch of free anarchic individuals here below

643
00:39:04,639 --> 00:39:07,519
that are kind of freely associated with each other, but

644
00:39:07,599 --> 00:39:10,400
there's no hierarchy amongst them, and there's no hierarchy left

645
00:39:10,440 --> 00:39:11,360
in the world, and.

646
00:39:11,320 --> 00:39:14,480
Speaker 3: Any one of them who tries to take power is

647
00:39:14,519 --> 00:39:17,280
sort of being like the way they've now recast Satan.

648
00:39:17,880 --> 00:39:18,800
Speaker 2: Yeah.

649
00:39:19,280 --> 00:39:22,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, But the thing it's funny because in some ways

650
00:39:22,480 --> 00:39:26,519
that's actually true. It's true that if you try to

651
00:39:26,599 --> 00:39:29,679
take power usually that's what ends up happening. But that's

652
00:39:29,679 --> 00:39:32,599
not how it manifests itself in the Christian tradition, you know,

653
00:39:32,679 --> 00:39:35,639
And it's like that there's people who it's not that

654
00:39:35,679 --> 00:39:37,840
people are taking powers, that they're receiving it.

655
00:39:38,000 --> 00:39:38,159
Speaker 2: Right.

656
00:39:38,199 --> 00:39:41,440
Speaker 1: That's where we have this idea of apostolic succession. You know,

657
00:39:41,519 --> 00:39:45,079
we would someone self declaring themselves a bishop or a

658
00:39:45,079 --> 00:39:51,239
priest today is as much excommunicated, you know, although it's happened.

659
00:39:51,280 --> 00:39:54,119
Obviously we know it's happened, but it's still we view

660
00:39:54,199 --> 00:39:56,840
that as as a serious issue. That is not the

661
00:39:56,920 --> 00:39:58,599
right way it should happen.

662
00:39:59,159 --> 00:40:02,400
Speaker 3: Right, right, because we would say that was exercising and

663
00:40:02,440 --> 00:40:07,519
this is so this is the core I think if

664
00:40:07,519 --> 00:40:10,039
you want to isolate what Saint Paul is saying in

665
00:40:10,119 --> 00:40:15,039
terms of salvation in the Gospel, the core of it

666
00:40:15,079 --> 00:40:19,039
is this idea of faithfulness, but not just a kind

667
00:40:19,079 --> 00:40:23,760
of general universal faithfulness. So there is that level, there's

668
00:40:23,800 --> 00:40:26,960
that level at which everyone, every human is called to

669
00:40:27,639 --> 00:40:30,599
you know, put off sexual immorality, put off idolatry. Right,

670
00:40:30,679 --> 00:40:33,840
So there's a common put off lies, put off.

671
00:40:33,920 --> 00:40:38,599
Speaker 2: Right. But then for Saint Paul, every person.

672
00:40:39,800 --> 00:40:42,440
Speaker 3: Receives their own gifts from the Holy Spirit and has

673
00:40:42,480 --> 00:40:44,239
their own particular calling from God.

674
00:40:45,519 --> 00:40:45,679
Speaker 2: Right.

675
00:40:45,760 --> 00:40:48,719
Speaker 3: His is to become you know, the apostle to the gentiles.

676
00:40:49,880 --> 00:40:53,719
The emperor's colleague is to be emperor, right. The governor's

677
00:40:53,719 --> 00:40:55,840
college is to be emperor right. And and you know,

678
00:40:55,880 --> 00:40:58,360
Saint Peter's college is to be an apostle right to

679
00:40:59,360 --> 00:41:02,239
the community Jerusalem and then right, So every person has

680
00:41:02,239 --> 00:41:06,719
their own particular calling, and it is faithfulness not just

681
00:41:06,840 --> 00:41:10,400
to that broad calling, but to that particular one.

682
00:41:11,880 --> 00:41:14,280
Speaker 2: That is where you find salvation. Right.

683
00:41:14,400 --> 00:41:19,000
Speaker 3: So it's it's in the particular time and place where

684
00:41:19,000 --> 00:41:21,480
God has placed you and the gifts He's given to you.

685
00:41:21,480 --> 00:41:25,440
Speaker 2: You're called to fulfill this role, right.

686
00:41:25,559 --> 00:41:28,760
Speaker 3: And so wherever that role is in the hierarchy, right,

687
00:41:28,880 --> 00:41:33,639
wherever that role is in terms of the esteem of

688
00:41:33,679 --> 00:41:38,679
other people, it is through fulfilling that role that you

689
00:41:38,760 --> 00:41:44,760
find that you find salvation. And this cuts against again

690
00:41:44,840 --> 00:41:47,880
that puritan kind of generalizing thing where it has to

691
00:41:47,920 --> 00:41:50,960
be the same for everybody. Yeah, which is which is

692
00:41:51,000 --> 00:41:54,199
why a lot of Saint Paul could totally understand Saint

693
00:41:54,199 --> 00:41:58,880
Simeon the stylight, but most Christians today can't understand Saint

694
00:41:58,880 --> 00:42:01,840
Simme in the stilt. Why is it good for him

695
00:42:01,880 --> 00:42:06,039
to sit on a pole and be covered with bugs

696
00:42:07,119 --> 00:42:12,480
and be filthy and right receive this wisdom from God?

697
00:42:12,559 --> 00:42:12,719
Speaker 2: Right?

698
00:42:12,760 --> 00:42:16,400
Speaker 3: This just seems totally bizarre, yeah to people today, But

699
00:42:16,480 --> 00:42:20,360
Saint Paul could totally understand that. No, he's like Ezekiel

700
00:42:20,400 --> 00:42:25,119
who wandered around naked, you know, yeah, yeah, the Jewish.

701
00:42:24,880 --> 00:42:25,440
Speaker 2: People for a year.

702
00:42:25,719 --> 00:42:28,920
Speaker 3: This is this weird radical calling that this one person

703
00:42:28,960 --> 00:42:30,440
has gotten from God and.

704
00:42:30,480 --> 00:42:33,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, no one else should do that, but he needs

705
00:42:33,800 --> 00:42:35,360
to do that. Right.

706
00:42:35,519 --> 00:42:37,800
Speaker 1: That is such a great point because you definitely see

707
00:42:37,840 --> 00:42:40,920
that all the time where people use this content imperative

708
00:42:41,039 --> 00:42:43,719
idea about reality and they apply it everywhere. They have

709
00:42:43,760 --> 00:42:46,880
this idea that you know, you know, if everybody did

710
00:42:46,920 --> 00:42:49,800
what Saint Simeon, or if everybody became a monk, then

711
00:42:50,039 --> 00:42:52,360
it means that there'd be no more human. So obviously

712
00:42:52,400 --> 00:42:55,800
monasticism can't be what God wants because you know, God

713
00:42:55,840 --> 00:42:59,440
said be fruitful and multiplied. Therefore, if they are monks,

714
00:42:59,440 --> 00:43:02,079
it has to be like against God's will. And like

715
00:43:02,159 --> 00:43:07,639
you said, there is a way in which there are

716
00:43:07,760 --> 00:43:10,400
there is a hierarchy of callings, and that hierarchy of

717
00:43:10,440 --> 00:43:13,840
calling leads apathetically towards the kind of self sacrifice as

718
00:43:13,840 --> 00:43:16,119
you move up. But what it does, it does the

719
00:43:16,119 --> 00:43:18,559
opposite of what people think. It actually yields the world.

720
00:43:18,599 --> 00:43:24,400
It's like the monastery yields families downstream from itself, not directly,

721
00:43:24,440 --> 00:43:26,800
not the monk himself, but the fact of monks and

722
00:43:26,840 --> 00:43:29,920
the fact of character. Crazy characters like Saint Simeon or

723
00:43:30,159 --> 00:43:32,079
you know, the hermits that live in caves, you know,

724
00:43:32,199 --> 00:43:36,159
down the mountain from them are like fruitful, large families

725
00:43:36,239 --> 00:43:39,039
that are living faithfully. That's what that's what it yields.

726
00:43:39,079 --> 00:43:41,639
That's what in some ways, that's one of the things

727
00:43:41,639 --> 00:43:45,039
that understanding hierarchy can can do is to help you

728
00:43:45,159 --> 00:43:51,239
understand how how the world kind of proceeds down how

729
00:43:51,400 --> 00:43:54,880
when you have characters that shine, that become these examples

730
00:43:55,280 --> 00:43:58,960
that they they open up, they open up the world, right,

731
00:43:59,079 --> 00:44:01,440
and and all of that makes how can help you

732
00:44:01,480 --> 00:44:03,320
make sense with so many things? You know, like the

733
00:44:03,360 --> 00:44:07,599
idea that Christians believe that the highest ideal is something

734
00:44:07,760 --> 00:44:13,199
like a someone who like Saint Simeon the stylight, or

735
00:44:13,440 --> 00:44:16,039
I say Modses the black You know that that that

736
00:44:16,039 --> 00:44:19,039
that I let themselves be killed by bandits or you know,

737
00:44:19,119 --> 00:44:21,079
do all these kinds of stuff that are very extreme

738
00:44:21,440 --> 00:44:24,519
that downstream from that is actually nations that defend themselves.

739
00:44:24,800 --> 00:44:27,519
Like now, downstream that is actually like healthy, you know,

740
00:44:28,519 --> 00:44:31,840
nations that are able to or doesn't mean that it

741
00:44:31,880 --> 00:44:34,119
has to happen it. How can I say this, Like

742
00:44:34,119 --> 00:44:37,639
the apothetic yields fruit, it doesn't make the whole world

743
00:44:37,719 --> 00:44:40,880
stop to disappear like it doesn't. It doesn't like swallow

744
00:44:40,880 --> 00:44:43,000
the world into it. I don't know if that makes sense.

745
00:44:43,000 --> 00:44:45,760
I'm kind of on the edge here by thinking.

746
00:44:45,679 --> 00:44:49,599
Speaker 3: Well, right, but it also doesn't make everything the same yeah, yeah, yeah,

747
00:44:49,639 --> 00:44:54,119
and everyone the same? Right we have This is one

748
00:44:54,119 --> 00:44:57,920
of the wonderful things I think about Orthodox iconography as

749
00:44:57,960 --> 00:45:01,320
an object lesson in this look at visit ted icidography,

750
00:45:01,360 --> 00:45:03,559
and on one level, all the saints kind of look

751
00:45:03,599 --> 00:45:07,320
the same, right in terms of the style and everything, right, Like,

752
00:45:07,440 --> 00:45:11,480
there's definite patterns, right. But on the other hand, they

753
00:45:11,480 --> 00:45:16,159
also are all different, and that's important because they show

754
00:45:16,239 --> 00:45:19,559
us a thousand different ways to follow Christ and be

755
00:45:19,599 --> 00:45:20,719
faithful to one's calling.

756
00:45:21,960 --> 00:45:28,000
Speaker 2: Right, So you're not being called all Christians.

757
00:45:28,000 --> 00:45:30,519
Speaker 3: Aren't called to just you know, adopt the same mode

758
00:45:30,559 --> 00:45:34,440
of dress and attire and way of speaking and tone

759
00:45:34,480 --> 00:45:40,360
of voice and and all these quite the opposite, right,

760
00:45:40,599 --> 00:45:43,039
quite the opposite. There are people who are called to

761
00:45:44,280 --> 00:45:53,119
different different things, and and pride struggles against that mightily

762
00:45:53,440 --> 00:45:56,639
because we all want to have the callings that get

763
00:45:56,639 --> 00:45:58,039
more prestige.

764
00:45:59,079 --> 00:46:02,920
Speaker 2: And more thanks for they're humans. You know, people want

765
00:46:02,960 --> 00:46:03,480
to be priests.

766
00:46:03,519 --> 00:46:06,719
Speaker 3: They don't want to be church janitors, right like aspirationally,

767
00:46:08,719 --> 00:46:12,480
but there are times where the things the janitor does

768
00:46:13,280 --> 00:46:15,440
are more important to the life of the community than

769
00:46:15,719 --> 00:46:16,800
than what the priests might be.

770
00:46:16,760 --> 00:46:19,440
Speaker 2: Doing that day.

771
00:46:19,559 --> 00:46:22,800
Speaker 3: You know, there's a lot of there's a lot of that.

772
00:46:22,880 --> 00:46:26,159
But but that could be mistaken, as the Puritans did,

773
00:46:27,119 --> 00:46:31,119
for there being something wrong with someone trying to exercise

774
00:46:31,199 --> 00:46:32,159
God given authority.

775
00:46:32,559 --> 00:46:37,159
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I think that Christian Christian hierarchy and

776
00:46:37,199 --> 00:46:39,920
the way that Christ sets it sets it up is

777
00:46:39,960 --> 00:46:42,679
in some ways, I always thought that it's the solution

778
00:46:42,800 --> 00:46:45,719
to hierarchy, you know, because there's a sense in which

779
00:46:45,719 --> 00:46:48,480
we actually we can't avoid hierarchy. We need it, there's

780
00:46:48,480 --> 00:46:52,719
no way around it. Even your actions are organized hierarchically,

781
00:46:52,760 --> 00:46:56,280
even your perception is organized hierarchically, you just can't avoid it.

782
00:46:56,719 --> 00:47:01,719
But the vision of the relationship between the people who

783
00:47:01,719 --> 00:47:05,239
are an authority and those that follow them, you know,

784
00:47:05,400 --> 00:47:08,039
in some ways, it's like a self sacrificial authority, and

785
00:47:08,079 --> 00:47:10,840
that what that does is it actually grounds hierarchy in

786
00:47:10,920 --> 00:47:14,039
something which fills fills the world, right, it fills the

787
00:47:14,079 --> 00:47:18,119
world with and so the leader is there. The people

788
00:47:18,199 --> 00:47:21,119
serve the leader, but the leader gives himself, right, gives

789
00:47:21,159 --> 00:47:24,079
himself down to the people that serve him. And that

790
00:47:24,239 --> 00:47:27,360
seems to be the way the world works. It actually

791
00:47:27,400 --> 00:47:30,639
seems to be the way that that that that reality functions,

792
00:47:30,880 --> 00:47:32,800
and that Christ has revealed that to us in a

793
00:47:32,960 --> 00:47:36,119
in a very powerful way. But we always fall back

794
00:47:36,159 --> 00:47:40,360
on the old models of obviously of power. But that's

795
00:47:40,360 --> 00:47:41,559
not what Christ showed us.

796
00:47:41,960 --> 00:47:44,719
Speaker 2: Right, right, and it's and it's sacrificial on both sides.

797
00:47:45,159 --> 00:47:45,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.

798
00:47:47,119 --> 00:47:51,679
Speaker 3: And you know, as much as it's it's very easy

799
00:47:51,719 --> 00:47:54,119
for us to point to, well, yes, our leaders should

800
00:47:54,119 --> 00:47:56,280
be more self sacrificial, it should be more christ like.

801
00:47:56,360 --> 00:47:59,239
That it's true, right, I as a preach should be

802
00:47:59,280 --> 00:48:03,079
much more christ Like than I am.

803
00:48:03,159 --> 00:48:06,199
Speaker 2: But most of us struggle more with the other side

804
00:48:06,239 --> 00:48:06,360
of that.

805
00:48:06,639 --> 00:48:10,039
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially especially like in America, especially in North America,

806
00:48:10,119 --> 00:48:11,480
we struggle with the other part.

807
00:48:11,719 --> 00:48:19,440
Speaker 3: Right, because even if there are situations right, there are

808
00:48:19,440 --> 00:48:23,159
situations where not with my bishop. My bishop is wonderful,

809
00:48:23,159 --> 00:48:29,079
it never makes mistakes. But you know, certain times I

810
00:48:29,079 --> 00:48:32,840
have been around other bishops, of course I won't name right,

811
00:48:33,000 --> 00:48:37,079
and I've got PhD in Biblical studies, and they'll say

812
00:48:37,079 --> 00:48:40,360
something about the Bible that I know is just not

813
00:48:40,480 --> 00:48:48,039
true right, or just not correct right, or needs a

814
00:48:48,079 --> 00:48:49,880
lot more nuance at least right.

815
00:48:50,760 --> 00:48:55,239
Speaker 1: The actually aspect of even is just burning inside that they.

816
00:48:55,079 --> 00:48:57,920
Speaker 3: Are above me in the hierarchy, and so I have

817
00:48:58,000 --> 00:49:02,679
to muster the humility to say no, mhm right and

818
00:49:03,280 --> 00:49:04,880
not try to correct right.

819
00:49:05,079 --> 00:49:09,280
Speaker 2: And but that you don't need a PhD to have

820
00:49:09,320 --> 00:49:10,320
that experience. Right.

821
00:49:10,440 --> 00:49:12,599
Speaker 3: The first time your spiritual father gives you advice that

822
00:49:12,639 --> 00:49:17,159
you don't like you have that experience right of well, no,

823
00:49:17,440 --> 00:49:19,760
this seems right to me, and I know the scriptures

824
00:49:19,800 --> 00:49:21,679
say the way that seems right to me has its

825
00:49:21,760 --> 00:49:27,679
end in destruction. But but what he's saying seems wrong

826
00:49:27,719 --> 00:49:29,079
to me, and so I don't want to do it,

827
00:49:29,199 --> 00:49:29,400
you know.

828
00:49:31,199 --> 00:49:33,119
Speaker 1: Yeah, And there are so many beautiful examples in our

829
00:49:33,159 --> 00:49:37,599
tradition of people who find themselves in unjust even sometimes

830
00:49:37,719 --> 00:49:41,280
unjust situations, and to a kind of wisdom and a

831
00:49:41,360 --> 00:49:45,119
kind of way of having reverence towards the authority without

832
00:49:45,199 --> 00:49:50,159
necessarily giving into them moral aspects or whatever, they're able

833
00:49:50,199 --> 00:49:54,400
to transform the situation, you know, you know, without rebelling,

834
00:49:54,400 --> 00:49:57,239
you could say, rebelling explicitly, like without trying to take

835
00:49:57,280 --> 00:50:00,480
over authority, revolution rulet revolutionary thinking.

836
00:50:00,960 --> 00:50:03,199
Speaker 3: Yeah, well yeah, I mean you think of David's men

837
00:50:03,360 --> 00:50:09,119
standing there with him, saying, look, you've already been anointed king. Okay,

838
00:50:09,599 --> 00:50:14,039
God has anointed you king. He's trying to kill you, right,

839
00:50:14,599 --> 00:50:19,480
just take about We'll say it was self defense, right,

840
00:50:21,599 --> 00:50:22,559
he's striving to kill you.

841
00:50:23,119 --> 00:50:26,119
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, and there's no.

842
00:50:29,639 --> 00:50:31,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty amazing. Yeah, there's so many, there are

843
00:50:31,920 --> 00:50:36,079
so many powerful you know stories of uh, there are

844
00:50:36,119 --> 00:50:38,639
so many powerful stories of that. I forget I think

845
00:50:38,639 --> 00:50:40,440
it was is it? I forget? I think is it

846
00:50:40,519 --> 00:50:45,719
saying Elizabeth, I'm it's horrible. You know the story of

847
00:50:46,119 --> 00:50:50,280
you know, certain corrupt priests who are acting, Oh it's

848
00:50:50,360 --> 00:50:53,679
Saint Francis has done this, like in the in the

849
00:50:53,719 --> 00:50:56,719
Western tradition where he somebody asked him, like a priest

850
00:50:56,760 --> 00:50:58,280
is living with a woman, and he says, you know

851
00:50:58,320 --> 00:51:00,400
what about this guy? You know, he's leaving a woman.

852
00:51:00,880 --> 00:51:03,159
And Francis like gets down on his these and kisses

853
00:51:03,159 --> 00:51:05,199
his feet and says, I'm not worthy, you know, to

854
00:51:05,280 --> 00:51:08,360
even be in this person's presence. And it's like, then

855
00:51:08,400 --> 00:51:11,239
the this whole image of Saint Paul saying like, you know,

856
00:51:11,280 --> 00:51:14,400
putting coal on someone's head, like they're basically shoving coal

857
00:51:14,440 --> 00:51:16,960
on their head. It's like, man, can you imagine that

858
00:51:16,960 --> 00:51:19,519
that priest then like going back home after that and

859
00:51:20,239 --> 00:51:23,920
like having a serious decision to make about what his

860
00:51:23,960 --> 00:51:24,679
life is going to be.

861
00:51:25,599 --> 00:51:25,800
Speaker 5: You know.

862
00:51:25,880 --> 00:51:27,280
Speaker 1: So they are beautiful moments like that.

863
00:51:27,840 --> 00:51:31,039
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so that's yeah.

864
00:51:31,119 --> 00:51:35,840
Speaker 6: And again you know, talking about taking Saint Paul its

865
00:51:35,960 --> 00:51:41,599
historical context, right, the idea of some kind of anarchic

866
00:51:42,760 --> 00:51:46,000
situation or sort of it's just everything is just between

867
00:51:46,000 --> 00:51:46,320
me and.

868
00:51:46,320 --> 00:51:55,159
Speaker 2: God or you know, ah, it just is ridiculous, right,

869
00:51:55,360 --> 00:51:56,679
it's absurd.

870
00:51:57,320 --> 00:52:00,320
Speaker 1: There is this accusation father, that I've heard, you know,

871
00:52:01,280 --> 00:52:03,920
from different circles, that in some ways we're the Church

872
00:52:03,960 --> 00:52:06,599
of Saint Paul. Right, you know, this this idea also

873
00:52:06,679 --> 00:52:09,880
coming out of different supposedly the idea of different Christianities

874
00:52:09,920 --> 00:52:12,880
that would have existed at the time, that the conflict

875
00:52:12,880 --> 00:52:15,079
between Saint Paul and Saint Peter was actually more than

876
00:52:15,079 --> 00:52:16,880
what we think. You know, I've even heard people say

877
00:52:16,920 --> 00:52:20,559
that Simon the Magus is actually Peter. You've heard these

878
00:52:20,599 --> 00:52:24,400
these these these legends, these ideas that modern scholars have,

879
00:52:26,840 --> 00:52:29,679
you know. And so how do you see I think,

880
00:52:29,719 --> 00:52:32,239
in rereading Saint Paul in the contexts, you know, how

881
00:52:32,239 --> 00:52:35,239
do you see him as an more of an extension

882
00:52:35,280 --> 00:52:36,639
of Christ? Is the way you talk about?

883
00:52:37,320 --> 00:52:40,679
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, the big problem there is that there's

884
00:52:41,239 --> 00:52:44,679
this assumption that, again because of the caricature of first

885
00:52:44,679 --> 00:52:49,079
century Judaism, that Saint Paul is somehow anti Judaism.

886
00:52:49,079 --> 00:52:50,039
Speaker 2: And so when you look at.

887
00:52:49,960 --> 00:52:53,639
Speaker 3: Saint James and you look at Saint Peter, who are

888
00:52:53,800 --> 00:52:57,480
very clearly practicing Jewish Christianity, meaning they're still keeping.

889
00:52:57,360 --> 00:53:00,960
Speaker 2: The Torah right there, there's still keb kosher.

890
00:53:00,639 --> 00:53:04,480
Speaker 3: They're still doing all those things that therefore, and if

891
00:53:04,519 --> 00:53:08,440
you then misread Saint Paul to be saying all those

892
00:53:08,440 --> 00:53:13,840
things are bad and you should stop doing them, then

893
00:53:14,719 --> 00:53:17,719
it seems like there's this obvious dichotomy. But if you

894
00:53:17,760 --> 00:53:20,920
actually read Saint Paul, he literally never says they're bad

895
00:53:20,960 --> 00:53:22,360
and that people should stop doing.

896
00:53:22,239 --> 00:53:25,599
Speaker 2: Them, and he.

897
00:53:26,960 --> 00:53:32,159
Speaker 3: His epistle to the Galatians is basically him explaining and

898
00:53:32,440 --> 00:53:36,480
helping circulate the epistle that Saint James sends out in

899
00:53:36,559 --> 00:53:43,719
Acts fifteen, which is to say that the Christians from

900
00:53:43,760 --> 00:53:48,519
the nations, because that's what gentiles means right, are to

901
00:53:49,159 --> 00:53:52,239
enter into the Christian communities, to enter into the Church

902
00:53:53,079 --> 00:53:56,400
as whoever they are, and remain that. So if you're

903
00:53:56,400 --> 00:54:00,800
a Greek, right, you become a Christian Greek. If you're

904
00:54:00,800 --> 00:54:03,480
an Egyptian, you become a Christian Egyptian. If you're a Syrian,

905
00:54:03,519 --> 00:54:10,119
you become a Christian Syrian. You don't become Jewish right

906
00:54:10,159 --> 00:54:15,000
in order to become Christian. But Saint Paul is also

907
00:54:15,119 --> 00:54:17,840
very clear over and over again, and you have to

908
00:54:17,880 --> 00:54:20,239
do a lot of twisting around to get around some

909
00:54:20,280 --> 00:54:22,840
of these passages. Frankly, you have to do the whole

910
00:54:22,920 --> 00:54:26,159
well clear unclear thing. Right, So here he's clear that

911
00:54:26,320 --> 00:54:29,719
you know, usually the places where they say he's clear,

912
00:54:29,760 --> 00:54:32,119
places where he's talking to gentiles and telling that these

913
00:54:32,159 --> 00:54:33,159
things don't apply.

914
00:54:32,920 --> 00:54:35,239
Speaker 2: To you, and he's talking to nod Jews and say

915
00:54:35,280 --> 00:54:35,760
these things.

916
00:54:35,639 --> 00:54:38,400
Speaker 3: Don't apply to you, which every Jewish person at the

917
00:54:38,440 --> 00:54:42,880
time and every Jewish person today would agree with, by

918
00:54:42,920 --> 00:54:45,199
the way, yeah.

919
00:54:45,079 --> 00:54:46,159
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah right, and.

920
00:54:48,000 --> 00:54:50,239
Speaker 1: This is this is, this is this is going to

921
00:54:50,280 --> 00:54:52,480
be a little more controversial. Sorry, you feel free to

922
00:54:52,480 --> 00:54:56,239
answer or not. So, you know, there was there did

923
00:54:56,280 --> 00:54:59,280
come a time, you know, in the later centuries where

924
00:54:59,360 --> 00:55:04,079
there were more or explicit canons and rules against the

925
00:55:04,119 --> 00:55:06,960
practicing of the Jewish fees. For example, you know, we

926
00:55:07,519 --> 00:55:12,960
don't we don't practice the Sabbath, and there are certain

927
00:55:13,519 --> 00:55:17,159
you know, there are certain rules later that made it

928
00:55:17,159 --> 00:55:19,199
that we wouldn't, you know, like even I think our

929
00:55:19,239 --> 00:55:22,639
pasca can never be on the same in the in

930
00:55:22,719 --> 00:55:28,719
the or that's not true, all right, okay, yeah, yeah,

931
00:55:28,760 --> 00:55:34,719
all right, okay, uh And so how would you I mean,

932
00:55:34,480 --> 00:55:37,280
I'm trying to think about it, like maybe think about

933
00:55:37,280 --> 00:55:39,119
it in like a modern sense. So if you were

934
00:55:39,639 --> 00:55:42,320
let's say, if you were Jewish today and you converted

935
00:55:42,360 --> 00:55:46,519
to Orthodox Christianity, do you think there would be room

936
00:55:47,079 --> 00:55:52,000
for people still maintaining some of their Jewish practices? You know,

937
00:55:52,039 --> 00:55:55,039
because this is the whole Spanish inquisition question.

938
00:55:55,599 --> 00:56:00,960
Speaker 2: Right, So there are actually a bud to variables there

939
00:56:00,960 --> 00:56:03,000
to consider. Okay, right.

940
00:56:04,400 --> 00:56:06,320
Speaker 3: Now, I do have to say, and I'm not going

941
00:56:06,400 --> 00:56:09,880
to out anybody here, but there are cases in our

942
00:56:09,920 --> 00:56:14,280
own day of people who were religiously Jewish. So it's

943
00:56:14,360 --> 00:56:23,719
relatively rare that religious Jews convert to Orthodox christ secular right, right,

944
00:56:23,760 --> 00:56:26,719
And so there's two different issues there, right, So a

945
00:56:26,800 --> 00:56:30,159
secular Jew who hasn't been practicing these.

946
00:56:29,960 --> 00:56:32,159
Speaker 2: Things, has it been keeping kosher, has it been practicing

947
00:56:32,159 --> 00:56:35,280
any of these things? Who joins the Orthodox Church.

948
00:56:35,320 --> 00:56:37,280
Speaker 3: The Orthodox Church is not going to say, oh, well

949
00:56:37,280 --> 00:56:40,199
you need to start doing all.

950
00:56:40,039 --> 00:56:42,519
Speaker 2: These things, right, obviously, right.

951
00:56:44,119 --> 00:56:47,639
Speaker 3: But if you have a religious Jewish person, right, the

952
00:56:47,760 --> 00:56:50,599
question is is the does the Orthodox Church tell them, well,

953
00:56:50,599 --> 00:56:53,320
you need to stop, you need to start eating double

954
00:56:53,400 --> 00:56:56,800
cheeseburgers and put bacon on them to boot, right, you

955
00:56:56,880 --> 00:56:59,239
need to start doing these things or stop doing those

956
00:56:59,239 --> 00:57:05,239
things and change. And again, without outing anybody, I could

957
00:57:05,239 --> 00:57:07,880
tell you there are cases of this in the present

958
00:57:07,960 --> 00:57:14,039
day Orthodox Church where bishops have encouraged those Jewish Orthodox

959
00:57:14,119 --> 00:57:19,559
Christians to continue in those things. The bigger issue there

960
00:57:19,639 --> 00:57:24,280
with individual conversions, though, is the life of the community,

961
00:57:25,199 --> 00:57:28,920
because then you've got one person keeping kosher in an

962
00:57:29,039 --> 00:57:31,559
Orthodox Christian community that isn't.

963
00:57:33,280 --> 00:57:34,719
Speaker 2: Because no one else there's Jewish.

964
00:57:35,519 --> 00:57:40,400
Speaker 3: That causes problems, you know, after at coffee hour on

965
00:57:40,480 --> 00:57:46,079
Sunday at Caposcope East at the And so it's important

966
00:57:46,079 --> 00:57:50,599
where we think very individualistically as wider people, right, And

967
00:57:51,960 --> 00:57:57,079
the Torah is not designed to be practiced individually. Yeah,

968
00:57:57,159 --> 00:58:00,400
it's designed to be practiced as a community. And from

969
00:58:00,400 --> 00:58:02,920
the Jewish side, you have to have ten adult Jewish

970
00:58:03,000 --> 00:58:07,840
males to have a Jewish community and to put these

971
00:58:07,840 --> 00:58:12,280
things into practice. Right, So to me, the question becomes

972
00:58:12,320 --> 00:58:15,719
more if and this would be wonderful, Like let's say

973
00:58:15,719 --> 00:58:20,559
tomorrow the chief Rabbinant of Israel converse to Orthodox Christianity

974
00:58:20,840 --> 00:58:23,400
and comes into the Patriarchate of Jerusalem. This would be

975
00:58:23,400 --> 00:58:26,719
a wonderful miracle, right if this were to happen, because

976
00:58:26,719 --> 00:58:28,920
if they did that, you'd have this mass conversion of

977
00:58:29,000 --> 00:58:35,559
Orthodox Jews right to Christianity in their communities, where you

978
00:58:35,599 --> 00:58:38,880
have a community that is entirely made up of Jewish

979
00:58:39,000 --> 00:58:45,119
Orthodox Christians, right, I suspect that it would look a

980
00:58:45,119 --> 00:58:48,679
lot more like first century of Jewish Christianity, and that

981
00:58:48,719 --> 00:58:51,039
there would be significant parts of the Torah that they

982
00:58:51,079 --> 00:58:56,239
continued to keep, possibly like keeping kosher and those kind

983
00:58:56,239 --> 00:58:59,840
of things, right, that would continue. But the key thing

984
00:59:00,079 --> 00:59:02,840
here is, and this is what this is what really

985
00:59:03,760 --> 00:59:07,440
makes these discussions controversial, is that we're thinking like Protestants.

986
00:59:08,760 --> 00:59:11,000
We're thinking like Protestants in the sense that both in

987
00:59:11,039 --> 00:59:18,639
that universalization and in terms of we make everything about like, well, does.

988
00:59:18,480 --> 00:59:21,159
Speaker 2: That mean to go to hell? Are you saying Jewish

989
00:59:21,199 --> 00:59:23,039
people have to keep kosher, they go to hell?

990
00:59:23,800 --> 00:59:31,000
Speaker 3: Are you saying that It's like, go ask a Jewish person, right,

991
00:59:32,000 --> 00:59:34,760
are you keeping kosher? Because if you don't, you won't

992
00:59:34,760 --> 00:59:35,320
go to Heaven?

993
00:59:35,800 --> 00:59:37,559
Speaker 4: Yeah?

994
00:59:37,719 --> 00:59:38,960
Speaker 2: They'll laugh at you.

995
00:59:39,039 --> 00:59:44,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, That's never how it worked, right. It is

996
00:59:44,360 --> 00:59:49,280
much more like and this should be understandable to Orthodox Christians, right,

997
00:59:49,320 --> 00:59:51,920
because we have the same thing if we're honest.

998
00:59:53,079 --> 00:59:57,679
Speaker 2: Within Orthodox Christianity, just like in Orthodox Judaism, there's levels

999
00:59:57,679 --> 00:59:58,440
of observance.

1000
00:59:58,960 --> 01:00:01,079
Speaker 3: Of course, we have people at our church who keep

1001
01:00:01,119 --> 01:00:05,000
the fast very strictly, and we have people who don't

1002
01:00:05,079 --> 01:00:07,519
keep them at all, yeah.

1003
01:00:06,920 --> 01:00:07,960
Speaker 2: And everything in between.

1004
01:00:09,280 --> 01:00:13,159
Speaker 3: And you have Jewish people even who identify as Orthodox,

1005
01:00:13,519 --> 01:00:16,880
who keep Kosher very strictly, yeah yeah.

1006
01:00:16,400 --> 01:00:17,960
Speaker 2: And who don't keep it at all.

1007
01:00:17,800 --> 01:00:21,880
Speaker 3: And everything in between, everything between, right, and and so

1008
01:00:23,079 --> 01:00:27,880
those things are functioning the same kind of way, right

1009
01:00:28,000 --> 01:00:31,760
as the traditions we've received as Greek Orthodox or Russian Orthodox,

1010
01:00:31,920 --> 01:00:35,559
and those are titentical, right.

1011
01:00:35,480 --> 01:00:37,679
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean what about I mean, I

1012
01:00:37,679 --> 01:00:41,320
guess one of the questions is circumcision. You know, I

1013
01:00:41,360 --> 01:00:46,320
do have I have some friends that have Jewish ancestry,

1014
01:00:46,400 --> 01:00:49,400
you know, practicing Jewish ancestry, and you know, they decided

1015
01:00:49,440 --> 01:00:54,559
to circumcise their son even though they are Orthodox. And

1016
01:00:54,920 --> 01:00:57,639
that was an example of a place where I was

1017
01:00:57,679 --> 01:00:59,800
I was kind of wondering in my you know, I'm

1018
01:00:59,800 --> 01:01:01,960
not of I'm not a rigorous I'm not a rigorous

1019
01:01:02,039 --> 01:01:04,119
and so I thought that it was a that it

1020
01:01:04,320 --> 01:01:07,639
was appropriate, you know, to kind of to respect that

1021
01:01:08,079 --> 01:01:10,960
tradition if they if it's something that came all the

1022
01:01:11,000 --> 01:01:13,840
way down to them. But I wondered I'm like, I

1023
01:01:13,880 --> 01:01:17,559
wondered what some of the ecclesiastical authorities would think about that.

1024
01:01:17,960 --> 01:01:21,360
Speaker 3: Right, Well, so if I was, if I was that

1025
01:01:21,440 --> 01:01:26,280
person's spiritual father, and this wasn't a case where I

1026
01:01:26,280 --> 01:01:28,559
felt like I needed to punt to the bishop, right,

1027
01:01:31,599 --> 01:01:34,079
which with difficult cases, that's the right thing.

1028
01:01:33,920 --> 01:01:40,360
Speaker 2: To do, by the way a priest's But I what

1029
01:01:40,480 --> 01:01:44,719
I would want to know is why, right? Why?

1030
01:01:47,079 --> 01:01:50,559
Speaker 3: And if they told me, like, well, this is what

1031
01:01:50,679 --> 01:01:52,679
makes them a child of Abraham and an heir to

1032
01:01:52,719 --> 01:01:56,840
the promises of God, that would be a problem m.

1033
01:01:56,960 --> 01:02:00,440
Speaker 2: Hm, right, like that as opposed to their baptism.

1034
01:02:01,719 --> 01:02:07,920
Speaker 3: Right, if they said to me, this is the ancient

1035
01:02:07,920 --> 01:02:13,400
tradition of our people, give it us by God, right,

1036
01:02:13,679 --> 01:02:16,760
and we think this is a good thing, and.

1037
01:02:16,719 --> 01:02:18,760
Speaker 2: Here's what it represents to us.

1038
01:02:19,440 --> 01:02:22,800
Speaker 3: Right, and they had a thoroughly understood view of baptism

1039
01:02:23,559 --> 01:02:27,000
in addition to that, right, and they were baptizing the

1040
01:02:27,039 --> 01:02:31,159
baby too, right and everything. I think that would be

1041
01:02:31,199 --> 01:02:37,800
a place where it would be salutary, right, because we

1042
01:02:37,880 --> 01:02:39,440
have to deal with the fact that, like Saint Paul

1043
01:02:39,440 --> 01:02:44,800
has Saint Timothy get circumcised. Yeah, right, I mean we

1044
01:02:44,880 --> 01:02:47,199
really we when it comes down to it. If you're

1045
01:02:47,239 --> 01:02:50,039
really going to deal honestly with Saint Paul, you have

1046
01:02:50,119 --> 01:02:52,159
to deal with the fact that, right, not only did

1047
01:02:52,199 --> 01:02:55,199
he take a Nazarite vow at one point, but he

1048
01:02:55,280 --> 01:02:58,000
went and paid for the animal sacrifices at the conclusion

1049
01:02:58,039 --> 01:03:00,840
of a bunch of Christians taking Nazarite vows. Mm hmm,

1050
01:03:02,440 --> 01:03:06,760
animal sacrifices including a sit off, right hmmm, after the

1051
01:03:06,800 --> 01:03:10,880
accession of Christ. Yeah, right, this is just the reality.

1052
01:03:11,000 --> 01:03:13,280
There were those Jewish Christians in the first century. They

1053
01:03:13,280 --> 01:03:15,679
included many of the most notable apostles like Saint James

1054
01:03:15,719 --> 01:03:19,280
and Saint Peter, who continued to practice these things. So

1055
01:03:19,320 --> 01:03:23,039
there was a Jewish Orthodox Christianity of the first century.

1056
01:03:23,599 --> 01:03:26,199
Speaker 1: Well, when you see like when you see that it

1057
01:03:26,280 --> 01:03:30,159
says that the that the apostles and the disciples went

1058
01:03:30,199 --> 01:03:33,559
to the temple, It's like, what, that's what happened at

1059
01:03:33,559 --> 01:03:34,960
the temple. And so if they if they were going

1060
01:03:35,000 --> 01:03:37,079
to the temple all the time, it meant that they

1061
01:03:37,079 --> 01:03:39,719
were participating in these in these rituals. There was no

1062
01:03:39,920 --> 01:03:41,599
it seems like there's no it's a little different when

1063
01:03:41,599 --> 01:03:43,320
it says they went to the synagogue. Then you could

1064
01:03:43,559 --> 01:03:46,000
kind of sneaking kind of. But when it said they

1065
01:03:46,039 --> 01:03:48,800
went to the temple, it's like, yeah, that's what was

1066
01:03:48,840 --> 01:03:49,679
going on, right, And.

1067
01:03:49,639 --> 01:03:53,280
Speaker 3: It makes everybody uncomfortable, but we have to be honest

1068
01:03:53,320 --> 01:03:54,280
with that and record with that.

1069
01:03:54,320 --> 01:03:56,320
Speaker 2: And I think the way we reckon with that is.

1070
01:03:58,000 --> 01:04:01,039
Speaker 3: Those were things given to the Jewish people right until

1071
01:04:01,079 --> 01:04:02,199
the temple was taken away.

1072
01:04:03,679 --> 01:04:03,840
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1073
01:04:03,920 --> 01:04:06,400
Speaker 3: Then and then God took the temple away, and so

1074
01:04:06,519 --> 01:04:12,280
that was no longer a part of things. But everywhere

1075
01:04:12,280 --> 01:04:16,639
else the way Christianity was practiced was additive, right. So

1076
01:04:16,960 --> 01:04:21,800
they went to the synagogue on the Sabbath, right, And

1077
01:04:21,840 --> 01:04:24,559
then there was a gathering just of the Christian subset

1078
01:04:24,679 --> 01:04:28,599
of the Jewish community on the Lord's Day, which actually

1079
01:04:28,599 --> 01:04:32,079
started at sundown, but this is where that gathering started.

1080
01:04:32,119 --> 01:04:37,159
But and that was centered around the Eucharist, right, which

1081
01:04:37,199 --> 01:04:39,719
was a sacrificial thank offering.

1082
01:04:40,199 --> 01:04:43,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so it.

1083
01:04:43,400 --> 01:04:47,440
Speaker 3: Was seen as this is right, this additional ministry right

1084
01:04:47,639 --> 01:04:52,119
with its own Christian priesthood and its own things.

1085
01:04:52,239 --> 01:04:56,199
Speaker 2: And then it went for being a supplement to being

1086
01:04:56,199 --> 01:04:58,960
the thing. But you know you mentioned you mentioned h

1087
01:05:00,599 --> 01:05:01,159
the Sabbath.

1088
01:05:01,840 --> 01:05:06,480
Speaker 3: Uh interestingly, Uh, go ask a Jewish person if gentiles

1089
01:05:06,480 --> 01:05:08,079
should be able should keep the Sabbath.

1090
01:05:08,760 --> 01:05:09,119
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.

1091
01:05:09,239 --> 01:05:11,440
Speaker 2: They'll tell you Gentiles aren't allowed to keep the Sabbath

1092
01:05:11,920 --> 01:05:14,480
mm hmm. Right.

1093
01:05:15,960 --> 01:05:19,119
Speaker 3: And I would also point out that in Christian countries,

1094
01:05:19,239 --> 01:05:22,119
actual Christian countries where they don't name the days of

1095
01:05:22,159 --> 01:05:26,519
the week after pagan gods, uh, the name of that

1096
01:05:26,639 --> 01:05:30,239
day is still the Sabbath, right, and then the day

1097
01:05:30,239 --> 01:05:32,559
of the day after that is the Lord's Day.

1098
01:05:32,960 --> 01:05:35,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it is still it's still for us

1099
01:05:35,480 --> 01:05:39,239
because Sabbath, because Sabbath is also Saturn, Like, we still

1100
01:05:39,280 --> 01:05:40,639
have Saturn to Saturn day.

1101
01:05:41,000 --> 01:05:43,320
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, so we go it. Yeah, we also do.

1102
01:05:43,360 --> 01:05:45,920
Speaker 1: We also still have an idea that that Saturday is

1103
01:05:45,960 --> 01:05:48,760
the Sabbath day. Although it's a little it's it's like

1104
01:05:48,840 --> 01:05:54,000
once removed, but it's still definitely definitely. I mean, this

1105
01:05:54,159 --> 01:05:56,400
is really fascinating. It'll be interesting to see how people

1106
01:05:56,440 --> 01:05:59,000
react to some of the things we said in the comments.

1107
01:05:59,320 --> 01:06:01,719
Speaker 3: And so finally, on a good day, I get called

1108
01:06:01,760 --> 01:06:04,480
both a judaizer and an anti semi at the same time.

1109
01:06:04,559 --> 01:06:06,960
Speaker 1: There you go. Yeah, I've seen people. I think people

1110
01:06:07,199 --> 01:06:09,880
kind of kind of call you that. I think, you know,

1111
01:06:10,000 --> 01:06:14,119
it's interesting for me to think about that because it

1112
01:06:14,199 --> 01:06:18,719
seems like in the evacuation of Christianity from popular culture,

1113
01:06:19,320 --> 01:06:25,039
there is no other solution besides going back and reconnecting

1114
01:06:25,079 --> 01:06:28,320
things together, you know, because it was understandable that in

1115
01:06:28,360 --> 01:06:32,039
like the year sixteen hundred in Serbia or something, that

1116
01:06:33,559 --> 01:06:36,440
we just were baking. We're just soaking, like we're soaking

1117
01:06:36,519 --> 01:06:39,400
in all of this tradition. Everything is there, and so

1118
01:06:39,719 --> 01:06:42,039
there isn't maybe as much a need, for example, even

1119
01:06:42,039 --> 01:06:44,199
for people to know the scripture, like to know all

1120
01:06:44,239 --> 01:06:46,920
the Old Testament stories, like you know, some villager and

1121
01:06:48,000 --> 01:06:50,360
it wasn't something that was that was needed for their

1122
01:06:50,519 --> 01:06:52,920
for their spiritual life. Maybe a little bit, but not

1123
01:06:52,920 --> 01:06:55,760
not as much as as now. Now we almost have

1124
01:06:55,880 --> 01:07:00,320
no choice to really kind of redive dive back into

1125
01:07:00,320 --> 01:07:03,239
the cosmology of the first century to help people kind

1126
01:07:03,280 --> 01:07:07,400
of see how it affords a world for us at

1127
01:07:07,440 --> 01:07:11,039
this moment. And strangely enough, this is what I also believe,

1128
01:07:11,079 --> 01:07:14,400
is that we are in a moment with these weird

1129
01:07:14,760 --> 01:07:17,719
artificial intelligent things happening, with all of this kind of

1130
01:07:17,760 --> 01:07:22,239
technification of our reality, we are in a world where

1131
01:07:22,880 --> 01:07:25,760
the actually the cosmology and the vision of principalities and

1132
01:07:26,519 --> 01:07:28,480
you know, the Council of God, all of these images

1133
01:07:28,519 --> 01:07:31,360
that were there in the first century, they are actually

1134
01:07:31,440 --> 01:07:33,880
the thing we need to understand right now in order

1135
01:07:33,920 --> 01:07:36,199
to understand the world we live in. And so there's

1136
01:07:36,239 --> 01:07:40,199
a strange there's these strange threads kind of being pulled

1137
01:07:40,199 --> 01:07:43,239
together where we just have to be more deliberate about

1138
01:07:43,280 --> 01:07:44,000
this stuff today.

1139
01:07:44,920 --> 01:07:49,519
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think one of the major functions of tradition

1140
01:07:50,840 --> 01:07:58,480
has been to preserve context m right. So one example

1141
01:07:58,519 --> 01:08:01,920
of this that I've used a lot before is and

1142
01:08:01,960 --> 01:08:05,880
I know not all Orthodox churches do this every pasca,

1143
01:08:06,400 --> 01:08:08,360
but the knocking on the doors and the lift up

1144
01:08:08,360 --> 01:08:13,719
the heads oe gates, right, which we understand it's quote

1145
01:08:13,719 --> 01:08:17,039
from a Psalm. We understand this to be connected to

1146
01:08:17,079 --> 01:08:21,479
the heroic of Hades. If you go back to the Psalm,

1147
01:08:22,159 --> 01:08:22,640
you can.

1148
01:08:22,840 --> 01:08:24,720
Speaker 2: Kind of see how that works.

1149
01:08:24,960 --> 01:08:29,199
Speaker 3: It looks like this weird allegorical reading of it. But

1150
01:08:29,399 --> 01:08:31,920
now since in the nineteen sixties we dug up the

1151
01:08:31,960 --> 01:08:37,239
city of Ugarit and have read the bail cycle in Ugarritic,

1152
01:08:37,960 --> 01:08:41,079
we now know that that psalm is referencing the bail cycle,

1153
01:08:42,680 --> 01:08:44,600
and so what the psalm was talking about in its

1154
01:08:44,600 --> 01:08:49,119
original context was Yahweh descending into the deather world to

1155
01:08:49,159 --> 01:08:53,840
defeat Bail And so now we've taken that and applied

1156
01:08:53,880 --> 01:08:55,479
that to the heroic of Hades.

1157
01:08:56,800 --> 01:08:58,119
Speaker 2: Right in Christ's.

1158
01:08:57,840 --> 01:09:01,039
Speaker 3: Resurrection, and so that all fits together and makes it now. Yeah,

1159
01:09:01,279 --> 01:09:04,039
right now, for centuries, they didn't need to read the

1160
01:09:04,039 --> 01:09:08,439
Bail cycle. They didn't need tradition had preserved that interpretation

1161
01:09:08,560 --> 01:09:09,039
of the song.

1162
01:09:09,479 --> 01:09:11,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, liturgically, right.

1163
01:09:12,119 --> 01:09:14,800
Speaker 3: But now we've come into an age where we have

1164
01:09:14,880 --> 01:09:17,840
a lot of people, even our fellow Christians, going, well,

1165
01:09:17,880 --> 01:09:21,399
that tradition of hers just seems weird and arbitrary. Where

1166
01:09:21,399 --> 01:09:23,560
are you getting that right? Where you get that that's

1167
01:09:23,560 --> 01:09:25,199
just some tradition somebody made up sometime.

1168
01:09:25,600 --> 01:09:26,119
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1169
01:09:26,239 --> 01:09:30,960
Speaker 3: And so now simultaneously with that, we've had these finds

1170
01:09:31,039 --> 01:09:35,279
like the Dead Sea scrolls and who gar it right,

1171
01:09:35,359 --> 01:09:40,039
and going back into the text and uncovering that original context,

1172
01:09:40,079 --> 01:09:44,319
which to me, when the more you understand it, the

1173
01:09:44,359 --> 01:09:47,600
more you see the bay what it is that tradition

1174
01:09:47,680 --> 01:09:52,239
has been preserving, hmm, right, And and it all kinds

1175
01:09:52,279 --> 01:09:54,279
of falls and kind of falls into place.

1176
01:09:54,720 --> 01:09:54,880
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1177
01:09:54,880 --> 01:09:56,720
Speaker 1: And I think, at least for me, that's one of

1178
01:09:56,720 --> 01:10:00,800
the greatest roles that you're playing, is because a lot

1179
01:10:00,840 --> 01:10:04,439
of these texts, these old ancient texts have been used

1180
01:10:04,439 --> 01:10:08,439
to attack Christianity, right, people, they discovered all these these

1181
01:10:08,439 --> 01:10:11,039
ancient text and they're saying, well, here's another vision, like

1182
01:10:11,079 --> 01:10:13,880
here's something that you didn't know, and it's it's actually

1183
01:10:14,000 --> 01:10:17,119
undermined the Christian message. And I think one of the

1184
01:10:17,159 --> 01:10:19,560
greatest things you've been able to bring is to say, no, actually,

1185
01:10:20,000 --> 01:10:23,279
it's very opposite. It actually enlightened. It actually illuminates the

1186
01:10:23,960 --> 01:10:28,039
text and ground it and and shows us how what

1187
01:10:28,119 --> 01:10:31,960
we thought about it traditionally until now is right all along,

1188
01:10:32,119 --> 01:10:34,000
you know. And like I said, even though we had

1189
01:10:34,079 --> 01:10:37,760
lost the explicit connections. You know, the tradition has preserved it,

1190
01:10:37,960 --> 01:10:40,600
and now we can if we can draw the explicit connections,

1191
01:10:40,760 --> 01:10:43,920
that's great, but it was already there, you know, right right.

1192
01:10:43,960 --> 01:10:49,359
Speaker 3: And so yeah, and I think that's that's part of

1193
01:10:50,159 --> 01:10:52,640
you know, people are talking now because of that article.

1194
01:10:53,840 --> 01:10:56,079
Speaker 2: About people coming into the Orthodox Church.

1195
01:10:57,920 --> 01:10:59,279
Speaker 3: And they want to try and make it all about

1196
01:10:59,319 --> 01:11:01,239
masculinity so that I can try and make it into

1197
01:11:01,279 --> 01:11:05,359
this weird alt right thing. Yeah, but in my experience,

1198
01:11:05,399 --> 01:11:10,000
I mean the people who bluntly, the people who are

1199
01:11:10,000 --> 01:11:12,279
like looking at your content and then coming and listening

1200
01:11:12,279 --> 01:11:14,319
to the Lord of Spirits and then coming into the church.

1201
01:11:15,199 --> 01:11:17,479
What I hear from them a lot more the ones

1202
01:11:17,479 --> 01:11:20,800
who are coming from sort of evangelical backgrounds. It's not like, oh,

1203
01:11:20,840 --> 01:11:26,880
I wanted to be super manly, but more that you know, oh,

1204
01:11:27,399 --> 01:11:29,119
now all of that sort of makes sense.

1205
01:11:29,520 --> 01:11:29,760
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1206
01:11:29,800 --> 01:11:32,920
Speaker 1: The deeper, the deeper connection, the sense of like a

1207
01:11:32,960 --> 01:11:36,920
whole well of possibilities of understanding that is more than

1208
01:11:37,039 --> 01:11:40,479
just up here. But it's like, it's this, this grounded,

1209
01:11:40,880 --> 01:11:43,199
it's it offers the cosmos is what it does in

1210
01:11:43,199 --> 01:11:43,720
some ways.

1211
01:11:43,920 --> 01:11:47,439
Speaker 3: Yeah, XYZ never made sense to me, but now I

1212
01:11:47,520 --> 01:11:51,039
get it. Yeah, right, And that's and making those connections

1213
01:11:51,199 --> 01:11:52,479
is very attractive to people.

1214
01:11:53,359 --> 01:11:54,039
Speaker 1: I totally agree.

1215
01:11:54,079 --> 01:11:54,760
Speaker 2: I totally agree.

1216
01:11:55,119 --> 01:11:57,039
Speaker 1: So, Father, what are you hoping, let's say, if you

1217
01:11:57,079 --> 01:11:59,520
could reduce, if you could bring it to one thing,

1218
01:11:59,520 --> 01:12:01,279
what do you hope being that this book's going to do,

1219
01:12:01,359 --> 01:12:03,079
this book on St. Paul, Like, what are you hoping

1220
01:12:03,119 --> 01:12:05,279
that it can help people understand? Mostly?

1221
01:12:05,640 --> 01:12:09,119
Speaker 3: Yeah, Honestly, my biggest goal, the best compliment I could

1222
01:12:09,159 --> 01:12:11,720
get after somebody reads it, and I've said this a

1223
01:12:11,760 --> 01:12:15,960
couple times before, is that people feel like they know

1224
01:12:16,199 --> 01:12:22,199
Saint Paul better as a person after reading it, because

1225
01:12:22,199 --> 01:12:25,960
it's structured like a biography, but also there's commentary on

1226
01:12:25,960 --> 01:12:26,479
the epistles.

1227
01:12:26,479 --> 01:12:28,359
Speaker 2: There's a new translation of the Epistles.

1228
01:12:31,199 --> 01:12:36,760
Speaker 3: One person who read it, who has a PhD in history,

1229
01:12:38,520 --> 01:12:43,479
told me that when they were reading the translation, they said, oh,

1230
01:12:43,560 --> 01:12:46,079
this sounds like it was written by the.

1231
01:12:46,079 --> 01:12:51,159
Speaker 2: Person you were talking about, like in the first part

1232
01:12:51,159 --> 01:12:51,600
of the book.

1233
01:12:51,720 --> 01:12:52,239
Speaker 1: Right, that's right.

1234
01:12:53,520 --> 01:12:55,439
Speaker 2: I took that as a great compliment. Right.

1235
01:12:57,560 --> 01:13:01,119
Speaker 3: That I think is my biggest goal is to try

1236
01:13:01,159 --> 01:13:05,439
to bring people into sort of contact with Saint Paul,

1237
01:13:06,199 --> 01:13:11,760
the actual person, right, And and so these other things

1238
01:13:11,800 --> 01:13:16,600
like I said saying, oh, well, wait, now I see

1239
01:13:16,600 --> 01:13:19,359
how Jesus and Saint Paul fit together, right, Or I

1240
01:13:19,359 --> 01:13:21,279
see how Saint Paul fits into the rest of the Bible.

1241
01:13:22,119 --> 01:13:24,399
Or oh wow, this makes a lot more sense of

1242
01:13:24,439 --> 01:13:26,840
the Old Testament than the other way of trying to write.

1243
01:13:26,880 --> 01:13:31,479
Speaker 2: Those are all sort of icing on the cake to

1244
01:13:31,520 --> 01:13:32,520
me afterwards.

1245
01:13:33,199 --> 01:13:36,560
Speaker 1: Wonderful, Well father, thanks for everything you do, and everybody

1246
01:13:36,640 --> 01:13:38,479
check out the book. I don't have a copy. I

1247
01:13:38,520 --> 01:13:40,159
was supposed to have one, but I think the mail,

1248
01:13:40,199 --> 01:13:41,640
our mail has been on strike, and so I was

1249
01:13:41,640 --> 01:13:43,319
supposed to have a copy that I could show you,

1250
01:13:43,359 --> 01:13:46,319
but we'll well, we'll post a link to it in

1251
01:13:46,359 --> 01:13:48,359
the description so you can so you can all get it.

1252
01:13:48,399 --> 01:13:52,199
And hopefully this is once again. We'll talk again father

1253
01:13:52,279 --> 01:13:52,800
as usual.

1254
01:13:52,880 --> 01:13:56,880
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure, yeah, I'm sure at some point. Thanks