Speaker 1: All right, we are getting live here. Welcome everybody. I
Speaker 1: hope you can hear me just now clicking on. We
Speaker 1: want to make sure do the audio test. Make sure
Speaker 1: everybody can hear us. Fine, but I'm sure we're gonna
Speaker 1: be getting fussing, echoes, fussing. Can everybody hear me? Okay?
Speaker 1: Let it catch up here? Make sure they can hear us.
Speaker 2: M delicious.
Speaker 1: All right, everybody can hear me now if you would,
Speaker 1: we have father, a deacon and an eyas with us again.
Speaker 1: Give us a little sound check there. Make sure that
Speaker 1: they can hear you.
Speaker 2: Okay, my sound check is happening right now. Hopefully it
Speaker 2: sounds good to everyone.
Speaker 1: Can you guys hear him?
Speaker 2: Complaints? Can you hear me?
Speaker 1: They'll let us know here in a second. It always
Speaker 1: takes a second for the chat. Catchup. All right, everybody says,
Speaker 1: both are great. Thank you. By the way, I want
Speaker 1: to congratulate you on your technology stream. That was a
Speaker 1: great stream. I watched the whole thing. It was very
Speaker 1: relevant to the material that we cover at Jasonnalysis. I'm
Speaker 1: thankful to also have the Larchet book. I'd got to
Speaker 1: copy that from my priest a few weeks ago. So
Speaker 1: thank you to him, and I will I think I've
Speaker 1: added that to my reading list at Jays Analysis. If not,
Speaker 1: i'll do it, but I think it's.
Speaker 2: On that great book. Great book.
Speaker 1: For a long time, I've been wanting to do a
Speaker 1: stream Jerusalem and Athens because we keep coming back to
Speaker 1: the issue of in all the debates discussions with the
Speaker 1: Roman Catholics or whoever, we keep coming back to this
Speaker 1: issue of what is the correct relationship between revelation and
Speaker 1: human reasoning, between Jerusalem, Moses and this hate when this
Speaker 1: thing readjusts and autonomous reasoning. So I want to talk
Speaker 1: about that because that relates to philosophy, the medieval synthesis.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about logos and logi because a
Speaker 1: lot of people have a lot of questions about that.
Speaker 1: If we can, I'd like to talk about some of
Speaker 1: the things that you brought up in your stream that
Speaker 1: I didn't know. I didn't even I never knew as
Speaker 1: a apologies as in a Catholic I've never heard the
Speaker 1: objection that one of the reasons that they got rid
Speaker 1: of Mary Clergy was so that the church could get
Speaker 1: the money. That's a that's so obvious. I never I
Speaker 1: never thought about that. So I want to talk about
Speaker 1: a lot of those objections that you pulled up, and
Speaker 1: then a couple other ones you mentioned I'd never heard actually,
Speaker 1: so we'll do some of those, and then I want
Speaker 1: to talk about Amazon's synod. I've looked over the documents.
Speaker 1: I think many of us have if you haven't seen
Speaker 1: them Allso okay, it's not a big deal because we
Speaker 1: kind of I see it as kind of the next
Speaker 1: stage beyond Vatican two. And so for everybody out there,
Speaker 1: remember to subscribe to Norwegian News when he talks. I'll
Speaker 1: by the way, I forgot to know I did add
Speaker 1: his channel in there. I think his channel is in
Speaker 1: the yeah, gets in there. So everybody subscribe to our
Speaker 1: friend Norwegian News on YouTube. And then the second half
Speaker 1: of this talk will of course be for subscribers, So
Speaker 1: you have to subscribe to Jay's analysis or you can
Speaker 1: subscribe on the YouTube channel as well. Either way, it's
Speaker 1: the same material, it's no different, just two different ways
Speaker 1: to subscribe to the same content. So let's get into this.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you a question. Playing Devil's Advocate. I've
Speaker 1: answered this a lot on my streams and on my
Speaker 1: shows and podcasts and essays, what would you say to
Speaker 1: the person who says, you know, look, you come at us,
Speaker 1: say a Roman Catholic, or could even be a Protestant
Speaker 1: for that matter. In some cases, with this critique of Hellenism,
Speaker 1: and you're criticizing Hellenism, isn't orthodoxy just Hellenism itself. Doesn't
Speaker 1: it have a medieval synthesis of its own? Aren't you
Speaker 1: just being hypocritical and having a double standard by calling
Speaker 1: out the attempt to merge your revealed Hebrew theology supposedly
Speaker 1: with the ideas of the Greeks. I mean, isn't that
Speaker 1: what's going on when John says the word logos. I
Speaker 1: know we've touched on this a little bit last time,
Speaker 1: but I want to reiterate this because it's a big deal.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, So I'd say that it seems the primary
Speaker 2: difference is, and I mentioned this in my in my
Speaker 2: last talk talk, that are you guys getting an echo
Speaker 2: in an echo?
Speaker 1: They shouldn't be getting one now because if you're talking,
Speaker 1: I'm on mute.
Speaker 2: So okay, okay. You know, we've discussed that it's impossible
Speaker 2: for people to be one wrong one hundred percent of
Speaker 2: the time, and it's because we're made in the image
Speaker 2: of God, and so so what that requires is that
Speaker 2: for the Orthodox, we're still getting echo. People are saying,
Speaker 2: I don't I don't.
Speaker 1: Know behind, so hold on, I'll see this every time.
Speaker 1: I don't know why it does this, And every time
Speaker 1: I fix it and I set the settings to be
Speaker 1: the exact same for the next installment, and then it
Speaker 1: does it again.
Speaker 2: I don't know why, because it's the devil. Why.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm gonna fix so. I know you can't
Speaker 1: focus with the echo. I'm gonna fix it. Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: not talking to you, I'm talking to them. I get
Speaker 1: frustrated with these people.
Speaker 2: The chat echoo.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind people that the chat that I see
Speaker 1: is it's staggered, so I can't immediately see what's going
Speaker 1: into the chat. It's about thirty seconds to a minute
Speaker 1: behind what I see, So it takes me a minute
Speaker 1: to figure out where we're at. And then once we
Speaker 1: get it right, we'll roll. I know it's it's so
Speaker 1: let me think how this works. There's three different inputs.
Speaker 1: That's the problem. Let's because they can't hear me.
Speaker 2: So can you guys hear me? When I'm can do
Speaker 2: you hear an echo everybody, and I'll wait one minute
Speaker 2: for your response.
Speaker 1: All right, how about now, how do we sound?
Speaker 2: How do we sound? Guys? Small echo, but I guess
Speaker 2: it sounds better for people perfect. I'm getting the thumbs up.
Speaker 1: Okay. I think it has to do with Indie source.
Speaker 1: If Indie I source is turned up, it causes the echo.
Speaker 1: So if I have to let me make a note
Speaker 1: of that, so I remember, turn Indie source down.
Speaker 2: Are you on mute jay?
Speaker 1: Let's say if you would talk a little bit, make
Speaker 1: sure we can hear you.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's see if we are sounding good, sounding good,
Speaker 2: it's a good thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know the echo. I know the echo is
Speaker 1: on his side. It's it doesn't have to do with that.
Speaker 1: It has to do with the way that it's set
Speaker 1: up when you're using Indie, So Indii causes it creates
Speaker 1: two different sources when you try to pipe in somebody
Speaker 1: through Skype. It's confusing. I don't even understand it. So
Speaker 1: I have to do this every time. So I think
Speaker 1: I just need to turn down the Indie source is
Speaker 1: the key. So I've got that noted for the future,
Speaker 1: for future, because that had the same problem last night.
Speaker 1: With Owen anyway, I'm sorry, father, dig go ahead. What
Speaker 1: do you say to the person who says, hey, look,
Speaker 1: we're all doing medieval synthesis. We're all just trying to
Speaker 1: merge with and talk the language of philosophy. Why is
Speaker 1: it such a big deal.
Speaker 2: Again, So there's a distinction between the Orthodox using philosophers
Speaker 2: where they get things wrecked right, where they're speaking truth.
Speaker 2: As I said that it would be impossible for any
Speaker 2: one person to be wrong one of the time, and
Speaker 2: so obviously is Christianity is spreading through the Ah, through
Speaker 2: the Empire, within the Greek language, and people embraced Hellenism
Speaker 2: is saturated through the entire empire. The Church had a
Speaker 2: duty to use philosophy to show them the things of faith.
Speaker 2: Now that's quite different than using philosophers to point to
Speaker 2: the truths that are higher truths in the faith, than
Speaker 2: to actually take one's theology and marry it to a
Speaker 2: particular philosophy. Then you're committed. So for example, we see
Speaker 2: this synthesized and reach its pinnacle and aquinas in the Scholastics,
Speaker 2: and therefore you're admitted to certain type of Aristotelian evenimes
Speaker 2: neo Platonic language, potency, actuality that really ends up causing
Speaker 2: some theological problems. So it's not that again that we're
Speaker 2: fideist that we wouldn't use philosophy. The difference is embracing
Speaker 2: a whole metaphysics and forcing your theology into a philosopher.
Speaker 2: And as we talked, one of the primary problems that
Speaker 2: arises from this is the Greek understanding of being necessity
Speaker 2: and the divine is an impersonal, absolutely simple force that
Speaker 2: when you embrace that, if you can't separate from that,
Speaker 2: you're going to have some theological problems as we do. See.
Speaker 2: So I think for you and myself that this is
Speaker 2: what we're pointing out. We're not saying that we never use,
Speaker 2: you know, philosophy. We don't embrace the metaphysics the philosophical
Speaker 2: projects and then try to force our theology into those paradigms.
Speaker 2: The West has done that, and that's why we have
Speaker 2: theological problems in the West.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you're right, we did touch on that last time.
Speaker 1: I've got a really simple example that I've used many
Speaker 1: times in my talks, and I want to reiterate it
Speaker 1: for viewers. I wanted to get your take on it.
Speaker 1: Fe free to disagree or qualified if you see it
Speaker 1: as it needs to be more nuanced. But if you
Speaker 1: want to illustrate this problem, let's take an example of
Speaker 1: something like saying, well, do you believe in one God? Now,
Speaker 1: a lot of people would say, yeah, I believe in
Speaker 1: one God. So let's take the phrase one God. Does
Speaker 1: that mean that because many different religions, many different groups
Speaker 1: would say I believe in a God or one God.
Speaker 1: That therefore the meanings across all these systems are synonymous. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, of course not right. So if I said
Speaker 1: I believe in one God, could I join forces with
Speaker 1: someone who believed that that one God was Satan? What
Speaker 1: about one God equaling Father? That would be our view,
Speaker 1: We believe in one God because of one Father, Paul says.
Speaker 1: Or what about a Greek philosopher Aristotle, perhaps Plato? The
Speaker 1: one quote God is just an abstracted monad thought thinking
Speaker 1: itself the one whatever. Right, So we can have a term,
Speaker 1: a phrase that means that has different meanings in a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of different context. Now, I know that's kind
Speaker 1: of a basic common sense idea, but unfortunately, especially in
Speaker 1: the Tomistic scheme, the idea of generic theism, the idea
Speaker 1: of classical apologetics. The tendency that we run into is
Speaker 1: the assumption that words are synonymous across systems. Right, And
Speaker 1: I think we did illustrate this. Yeah, they have a
Speaker 1: unifical meaning across systems. I'm not talking about Aquinas saying
Speaker 1: that we can't predicate unifically of God. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: system to system. Right, when the Satanist says there's a God,
Speaker 1: or if a I don't know, a Buddhist says there's
Speaker 1: a God, right, they all mean different things. So the
Speaker 1: phraise the we can't commit what's called the word concept fallacy.
Speaker 1: And that's what's key here. And I'm saying this because
Speaker 1: this is a problem that I've run into over and
Speaker 1: over and over so many times with the Thomas. It's
Speaker 1: a problem I had, and I've seen it come up
Speaker 1: this weekend debates and discussions. It's an issue I had
Speaker 1: when I was a Thomas and I was looking at
Speaker 1: orthodoxy and I kept wanting to say, well, look, we're
Speaker 1: all just saying the same thing. We use the same words.
Speaker 1: Why can't it just be that we're speaking the same language.
Speaker 1: But we got to just be clear on what we're
Speaker 1: saying and realize that we're all saying the same thing.
Speaker 1: And then I realized, oh, we're not saying the same thing, right.
Speaker 2: And you know, this idea comes up in philosophy too
Speaker 2: with intentionality. Now an intentionality within philosophy, that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: I have an intention to do something, but it means
Speaker 2: words and thoughts that are about something and directed at something.
Speaker 2: And we can use the same words and hit different
Speaker 2: realities and entities. So, for example, what was a late father?
Speaker 2: Thomas Hopgot talks about love who's not? For love? Love
Speaker 2: is great love? What love? How love? Who? And what
Speaker 2: he's getting at. It is the same principle that you know,
Speaker 2: we have the secular culture of saying love wins. We
Speaker 2: have Crolyism saying love is the sum of the law.
Speaker 2: These are all the same words with entirely different meanings.
Speaker 2: For the secular world and the occult love means something
Speaker 2: like personal desire. For the Christian and the Orthodox, love
Speaker 2: is canotic, it's pouring out, it's sacric it's just the opposite.
Speaker 2: It's the inversion of surprise, surprise of the world. And
Speaker 2: so it's very important that we understand, well, what are
Speaker 2: we signifying what reality? The word isn't important. It's the
Speaker 2: concept that it's signifying. And Christ realizes us too when
Speaker 2: he says, who do you say that I am? Or
Speaker 2: you get the evangelicals say this all the time, I'm
Speaker 2: a believer? Is he a believer? Believer in what? Who?
Speaker 2: An historian? Jesus, the ary in Jesus the you know,
Speaker 2: take your pick. That everybody has a different gen So
Speaker 2: it's quite important to hammer these things out that. Obviously
Speaker 2: the word is equivocal in this sense, and it's important.
Speaker 2: So going back to this kind of generic notion of
Speaker 2: God that we'll all just mean the same thing. What's
Speaker 2: the analogy that man's blind and God's an elephant? Ridiculous metaphor,
Speaker 2: but we're all just trying to describe different in different
Speaker 2: ways because we're limited. Well, first of all, the problem
Speaker 2: with that is a denial of what's revealed in scripture.
Speaker 2: God is the Lord and he has revealed us himself
Speaker 2: to us. And that's what's so important about the Orthodox
Speaker 2: faith is where is our starting point? Is it in
Speaker 2: pagan man made specuative of philosophy, in which case, yeah,
Speaker 2: we are all blind and not only not feeling the elephant,
Speaker 2: we're just locked in our heads doing this metaphysicals and
Speaker 2: ontological speculation about and of course you're going to get
Speaker 2: all kinds of different descriptions. But when your starting point
Speaker 2: is the Lord God, who has revealed himself to us,
Speaker 2: then he tells you who he is, and he's not
Speaker 2: a generic monad. That God's being and this was the
Speaker 2: problem with the Greeks, is that God's being an existence,
Speaker 2: was through his ussia, his his substance, and that is
Speaker 2: Basil and the other Fathers explicate and explain that God's
Speaker 2: existence is contingent upon his hypostasis. It's God is hypostasis,
Speaker 2: the father hypostasis that gives his being, and not the
Speaker 2: other way around. That you see it as first and
Speaker 2: then let's try to work out personhood. And so when
Speaker 2: you embrace that type of philosophy, then of course you're
Speaker 2: going to come up and say things like, well, we're
Speaker 2: all just worshiping the same God and different stuff. And
Speaker 2: that's why Besil says you cannot conceive of God apart
Speaker 2: from trinity. There is no God apart from hypostasis. The
Speaker 2: Greeks never were able to develop a notion of personhood.
Speaker 2: And I would argue, as you would as well, probably
Speaker 2: the West has never developed any sufficient or robust understanding
Speaker 2: a personhood. And for the Greeks, being was the unifying principle,
Speaker 2: the united the many in the universe. But there was
Speaker 2: the universe and cosmos. For the Greeks had a notion
Speaker 2: of necessity. And so this question arises within Christianity and Orthodoxy. Well,
Speaker 2: is God utterly free to create? And these are issues
Speaker 2: that you brought up with the problems with absolute divine simplicity.
Speaker 2: If all predicates are absolutely ontologically ident identical with God's essence,
Speaker 2: in what sense is he free as creator? His nature
Speaker 2: is Usiah would bind him. And so the Greeks were
Speaker 2: never able to work out this dichotomy between being is
Speaker 2: necessity and the cosmos and the freedom that lies in
Speaker 2: person of it. And this is what the Orthodox are
Speaker 2: able to do by saying that God is first and
Speaker 2: foremost person, and that his being himself the divinity is
Speaker 2: not through his usia, but through the hypostasis of the Father,
Speaker 2: and therefore he's utterly free. And you and I talked
Speaker 2: about this too. In what sense does hypostasis transcend nature
Speaker 2: or being? Ussia it's because is I might have a
Speaker 2: nice quote here from Basil at Saint Basil.
Speaker 1: If I might add two, it's Epistol thirty eight that uh,
Speaker 1: if you if you've not read Basil's letter thirty eight,
Speaker 1: that's where he goes it to great length to distinguish
Speaker 1: usia and hypostasis. Uh. So I'm actually going to link
Speaker 1: that for everyone because this is, you know, probably one
Speaker 1: of the most important texting the Church Father is one
Speaker 1: of the most important letters. I mean, obviously everybody should
Speaker 1: be familiar with letter two thirty four because it deals
Speaker 1: with as and synergi distinction. But I'm gonna put this
Speaker 1: in description as well, and let me add two. So
Speaker 1: I've added that. I want to add as well that
Speaker 1: the if you want to read Edward Fesser, the famous
Speaker 1: tomester my Nosi festor Is. I mean, he has three
Speaker 1: essays on Plotinus's doctrine of simplicity, and if you read
Speaker 1: those essays, I've got a link there, you'll see that
Speaker 1: he says everything that I've been saying. There's no I've
Speaker 1: not been wrong on any of the critiques of Tomism.
Speaker 1: In fact, I've had it right the entire time. And
Speaker 1: I want to make a point too that what you're
Speaker 1: getting at here is that we could look at another
Speaker 1: diagram that might handy little diagrams here if we took
Speaker 1: the word hypostasis. If you read the Aeneids, Plotinus uses this. Okay,
Speaker 1: he uses this term. Now where exactly he got it
Speaker 1: is an interesting question. Perhaps he got it from Greek philosophers,
Speaker 1: perhaps he got it from New Testament writers. Right, we
Speaker 1: don't know. Maybe some philosophers or scholar knows. But let's
Speaker 1: keep in mind that what this means in this scheme
Speaker 1: is not what it means to us in Orthodox theology.
Speaker 1: And that's why when you read that letter Basil, you'll
Speaker 1: see that it doesn't mean the same. So, for example,
Speaker 1: in his scheme, if I recall I'm going from memory here,
Speaker 1: Plotinus thinks that you have the one, the one gives
Speaker 1: birth to the diad I think is the noose in
Speaker 1: his scheme. And then these two together, looking at one
Speaker 1: another and loving and reflecting on one another, produce the
Speaker 1: world soul, the anima mundi, which is the third principle.
Speaker 1: So you get this this succession of beings that that
Speaker 1: kind of comes into being the world soul or the news.
Speaker 1: I forget which one I had some article pulled up here,
Speaker 1: I can't remember one of the two links our world
Speaker 1: to that world. I think the noose links our world
Speaker 1: to the ideal realm. Anyway, it doesn't mean the same. Look,
Speaker 1: noose is another example here. Noose here does not mean
Speaker 1: what we think Noos is. Okay, Noos for us is
Speaker 1: not some second demi urge principle in the original triad
Speaker 1: of platonis. You see, so hypostasis doesn't mean the same thing.
Speaker 1: Noose doesn't mean the same thing. Right. These are terms
Speaker 1: that the same terms in Orthodox Christianity used in Platinas,
Speaker 1: but they have completely different meanings. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: By the way. By the way, I'm gonna grab more coffee,
Speaker 1: but keep talking because I am listening and the audience
Speaker 1: is going to see you, So feel free. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna pour more coffee, but you won't see me.
Speaker 2: Jay, while you're at it, could you grab me a
Speaker 2: cup of coffee too, and I will.
Speaker 1: Important I'll splash it on the screen.
Speaker 2: Okay, So it would be like.
Speaker 1: It would be like Pat Robertson. If you just put
Speaker 1: your hands up to the screen, I'll pass the caffeine
Speaker 1: through the screen into your bloodstream. It'll be a miracle.
Speaker 2: Hallelujah. So, as Jay pointed out in Saint Basil's Letter
Speaker 2: thirty eight that he talks about the substance, we see,
Speaker 2: the being of something never ex is in a naked state,
Speaker 2: without hypostasis, without a mode of existence. And so in
Speaker 2: this sense, this is exactly what Jay and I were saying.
Speaker 2: In what way does hypostasis or a person transcend nature being?
Speaker 2: And in this sense exactly that obviously being substance is
Speaker 2: dependent upon its archaean principle, which is hypostasis. And so
Speaker 2: it is the Father who is the cause of his
Speaker 2: being and the processions as well. It's his hypostasis, and
Speaker 2: that is and again, when Jay gets back, I think
Speaker 2: it would be nice to talk about how the Greeks
Speaker 2: use the term hypostasis and versus the fathers and why
Speaker 2: that change occurred.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great topic. So enlighten us on that.
Speaker 1: How does hypostasius come to change? Because we know by
Speaker 1: the way John Damascus will treat of this. And I
Speaker 1: actually just got a Metropolitan Herotheos's book on person Orthodox tradition.
Speaker 1: I've read a bunch of that. Now. John Damascus covers
Speaker 1: it in the Fount of Knowledge, and he covers it
Speaker 1: multiple places in exposition of Orthodox Faith. It's also dealt
Speaker 1: with very well in God history and dialectic, especially the
Speaker 1: way it's treated of in Volume one, which I want
Speaker 1: to touch on a few quotes out of this. When
Speaker 1: you make your point, so go ahead.
Speaker 2: So if we go back to ancient Greek philosophy again,
Speaker 2: there arcade and first principle of all things is being
Speaker 2: or one or the logos and essence being. All of
Speaker 2: these things are considered to be general. Person was concrete,
Speaker 2: it is concrete. And so one of the problems that
Speaker 2: we have going back to ancient Greece, and it's carried
Speaker 2: out through the West, is this problem of dialectics and
Speaker 2: the inability to synthesize what appears to be contraries. And
Speaker 2: one of these was that again substance or usia is
Speaker 2: the general, unifying principle of nature. So it's abstract and
Speaker 2: it's general, whereas person is concrete in particular. And so
Speaker 2: again you get this with Plato. What's his ultimate arcade
Speaker 2: the form of the good being, and then the form
Speaker 2: of the good which gives being too. The forms, but
Speaker 2: that's all general, and so he was not able to
Speaker 2: work out any kind of individual concretization of the abstract idea.
Speaker 2: So again we see these dialectics that are unable to
Speaker 2: be synthesized. And then obviously with Aristotle you get just
Speaker 2: the opposite. You get an emphasis on the concrete individual man,
Speaker 2: but you have a separation from the eternality of being
Speaker 2: in the generals. So this poses and again with the
Speaker 2: notion of being or substance of the unifying principle of
Speaker 2: the cosmos, you get problems of necessity. So we've got
Speaker 2: two issues here going on. The inability to synthesize a
Speaker 2: kind of arcane first principle of being with a concretization
Speaker 2: of the individual, the individual man, the individual book. Greek
Speaker 2: philosophy isn't able to work that out, and subsequently as
Speaker 2: well necessity and freedom. And there's obviously a link because
Speaker 2: in Greek philosophy hypostasis stasis standing under is the idea,
Speaker 2: and so hypostasis and Greek had the notion of substance,
Speaker 2: and obviously there's a link between hYP personhood and substance,
Speaker 2: but it's never articulated and worked out and tell the
Speaker 2: fathers where they have to address these things. And so
Speaker 2: what you begin to see is a changing of those words,
Speaker 2: you start to get a little bit of some Tertullian Obviously,
Speaker 2: it gets worked out much more in the Cappadocian Father
Speaker 2: of Saint Basil Saint Gregory, because they're having to address
Speaker 2: these issues when critiques are coming in. And here this
Speaker 2: is why Saint Basil says that being cannot exist in
Speaker 2: a naked state nature, essence in the sense of essence
Speaker 2: cannot exist on its own, but always exists in the
Speaker 2: mode of hypostasis, the person. And so in that sense,
Speaker 2: person or hypostasis is primary. And then when you make
Speaker 2: that primary, is the father say it is the hypostasis
Speaker 2: of the trinity that creates the world and creates being.
Speaker 2: And so Platinus doesn't have this right. He has this
Speaker 2: kind of monad, and he tries to draw these kind
Speaker 2: of distinctions out and to create world spirit and this
Speaker 2: notion of creation, but they're unable to articulate it, and.
Speaker 1: Ats that they have a lesser ontological status. And plotonis
Speaker 1: as well. I mean, the world's soul is like the
Speaker 1: third tier down from the monad because the assumption in
Speaker 1: the system, as Fessor points out, and as many have
Speaker 1: pointed out, the assumption in that system. This goes all
Speaker 1: the way back to what Parrell pointed out in God
Speaker 1: History and Dialectics. The assumption in that system is that
Speaker 1: distinction entails not just composition or division, but also lesser
Speaker 1: ontological status. Right. The fact that we are distinct beings
Speaker 1: from the one requires us to go on our long
Speaker 1: platonic mystic journey back to absorption into the one.
Speaker 2: And that's because for the Greeks again, utmost reality super
Speaker 2: ends right, supra existence is unity, right, and therefore any
Speaker 2: distinction or properties is always considered not only less being,
Speaker 2: but moving towards non being in non existence, and so
Speaker 2: again you see this dialectics of opposition where it's like
Speaker 2: they cannot synthesize the one in the many. And this
Speaker 2: is exactly what the Fathers do by changing the term. Again.
Speaker 2: It still has a link to being in the original
Speaker 2: sense in the Greeks, but now it's given a new
Speaker 2: meaning and provides a context in which being can exist
Speaker 2: because it cannot exist in the mode of nakedness, right,
Speaker 2: but always in the mode of person that you get
Speaker 2: the synthesis between the one and the many. That again,
Speaker 2: and this is going to play out also in the
Speaker 2: essence energies distinction too, right, How can you have one
Speaker 2: in many?
Speaker 1: Right? And it's also going to be useful to point out,
Speaker 1: as Saint Gregor Palamustas to barlay onm that the energies
Speaker 1: are all in h hypostatized. They're also personal energies. They're
Speaker 1: never you know, generic, they're never they're never purely natural
Speaker 1: energies that come to us like New Age forces or
Speaker 1: you know, the force in Star Wars or something. It's
Speaker 1: always hypostatic, hypostatized because they're coming to us from the person,
Speaker 1: because nature is always instantiated in the mode and the
Speaker 1: tropos of persons. This is why, in perfect harmony with
Speaker 1: what Basil says in the Letter thirty eight, this is
Speaker 1: why Saint John Damascus can say in Book three that
Speaker 1: all the heretics, the root of all the heretics errors
Speaker 1: is in the confusion of nature and person. Says that
Speaker 1: on page two seventy two. If you have this volume,
Speaker 1: it's book three, chapter three of whatever volume they have.
Speaker 1: And so then he goes from there to moving on
Speaker 1: to talking about the person of the Father, right being
Speaker 1: the sole arcade of the trinity. This is another reason
Speaker 1: why we don't have the philioquay because we can't confuse
Speaker 1: the father's hyposthetic property with the son. The son can't
Speaker 1: take on the father's unique hyposthetic property. He goes on
Speaker 1: to kind of illustrate and lay out in a more
Speaker 1: clear way than he did previously, in what sense nature
Speaker 1: is common amongst the father's son and spirit, and then
Speaker 1: in what sense each of the persons are distinct. And
Speaker 1: this is important too for the philly Okuay. I didn't
Speaker 1: really intend to get off into philly okuay, but it's
Speaker 1: just the way John Damascus takes it in his work.
Speaker 1: Because we don't want to We can only say things
Speaker 1: about God that either are applicable to him in terms
Speaker 1: of his unity, or they're applicable to him in terms
Speaker 1: of the persons. So if we say sonship, right, that's
Speaker 1: an that's a property, a hypostetic property that's unique to
Speaker 1: the sun. But if we use the term love, that's
Speaker 1: a attribute and energy and operation that's common to all
Speaker 1: three persons. Now we might be able to say, as
Speaker 1: Gregor Palomos does, and as the counselor Blackernae does, that
Speaker 1: there's a sense in which perhaps the spirit manifests eternally
Speaker 1: love in a special way, but that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: he is more love or he's identified with an attribute
Speaker 1: those That's where you get all the confusions and nonsense
Speaker 1: in the Roman Catholic scheme is they will collapse eternal manifestation,
Speaker 1: the eternal processions into hypostatic properties. And this is a
Speaker 1: very important This is something I never got as a
Speaker 1: Roman Catholic, as a Tomis and it's because I didn't
Speaker 1: make these proper triadic distinctions, because that's where it begins,
Speaker 1: right in the triad in this theology. And by the way,
Speaker 1: everything that's true in this sense in the triad is
Speaker 1: then I mean obviously not saying that there's each ternal
Speaker 1: energetic processions in the incarnation. I mean they do come
Speaker 1: to us from the Father through the Son in the spirit,
Speaker 1: but I mean it's not exactly the same. But what
Speaker 1: I'm saying is that the way that we conceive of
Speaker 1: the relationship between Father, Son and Spirit, person and nature
Speaker 1: is also going to be applicable to the incarnate Christ
Speaker 1: because all of the teachings and beliefs that we have
Speaker 1: about the hypostasis in the trinity, it's going to be
Speaker 1: consistent with one hypostasis entering into the mode of the
Speaker 1: state of being incarnate. So we have to have a
Speaker 1: doctrine which allows for that, if we have an absolutely
Speaker 1: simple essence doctrine. Again, the way look at the way
Speaker 1: that Fessor explains and explicates the standard Roman Catholic view
Speaker 1: of simplicity. There's no way that one hypostasis in the
Speaker 1: trinity could enter into a mode of existence that the
Speaker 1: other two do not, right, if that doctrine of simplicity
Speaker 1: is true. So it all hinges on what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here with person nature making that distinction. Making in
Speaker 1: distinction doesn't mean they're divided, right, So it's all it's
Speaker 1: a distinction without confusion, without division, and it protects the
Speaker 1: father's soul causal role. Right. And then when we come
Speaker 1: to Christology, when we understand what Saint Cyril did so
Speaker 1: brilliantly with hinosis, which is where he compares the relationship
Speaker 1: of the body and the soul and man, where he
Speaker 1: says that that kind of of a union. It's not
Speaker 1: a perfect analogy, but it's a kind of useful analogy
Speaker 1: because here we have a human whose body and soul
Speaker 1: it's a it's a true union. But we don't mix
Speaker 1: and blend and confuse soul and body even though they're
Speaker 1: truly united. And that's Cyril's analogy for what goes on
Speaker 1: in the incarnation, in that the divinity and it's not
Speaker 1: just a generic divinity. This is why we can't have
Speaker 1: this roma caa the misunderstanding of the incarnation to think that, oh, well,
Speaker 1: it's just the divine nature melding or uniting with the
Speaker 1: human nature, and that equals Jesus. No, No, Jesus possessed
Speaker 1: his hypostasis from all eternity. He's the eternal Logos. That's hypostatic, right,
Speaker 1: and then he assumes the human nature, and the human
Speaker 1: nature has for its hypostasis the person of the logos.
Speaker 1: There's no human there's no created hypostasis in Christ at all.
Speaker 1: That's period and that's why Cyril is so important.
Speaker 2: You have you noticed the same the same theological errors,
Speaker 2: the same theological as philosophical errors that occur in the
Speaker 2: West as well. So either you get a collapsing and
Speaker 2: confusion of soul and body in forms of materialism or
Speaker 2: on the opposite of the spectrum substance dualism. And again,
Speaker 2: if if you go back to kind of Chalcedonian formula
Speaker 2: completely united but distinct, that we don't have a problem
Speaker 2: with that because we have a paradigm that allows us
Speaker 2: to express this and to see this. And so obviously
Speaker 2: one of the problems that we as Westerners before we converted,
Speaker 2: when you were a Roman Catholic, we were saying, I
Speaker 2: wasn't able to grasp this is because the paradigm that
Speaker 2: if you embrace this sort of Greek Aristotilian paradigm where
Speaker 2: you're unable to make the proper distinctions, then you don't
Speaker 2: see it. And I mean we see this all across history,
Speaker 2: for example, that our paradigms don't allow us to see
Speaker 2: certain realities. If we have the incorrect paradigm, we're limited
Speaker 2: in that sense. And so that brings up a really
Speaker 2: good point that we've got to make sure that we
Speaker 2: have the right paradigms so that we can be able
Speaker 2: to articulate and see the realities that are present around us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I would just add that if if somebody
Speaker 1: does want to dive deeper into this, Uh, this I've
Speaker 1: been reading is pretty good this week. There's some areas
Speaker 1: where I don't think I don't think he's totally correct.
Speaker 1: I think he's got a few things wrong. But person
Speaker 1: in the Orthodox tradition is pretty good. Byzantine Christ is
Speaker 1: really good. It's very deep, very difficult. I just got
Speaker 1: a hold of this and I haven't I read a
Speaker 1: little bit of it, but the concept of person and
Speaker 1: Gregory of Nissa by Lucian Rescuescu, you would know more about.
Speaker 1: I don't know my Romanian but and then got what's
Speaker 1: that one? Have you read God History and Dialectic?
Speaker 2: No, that's a good I've read parts, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you like that anyway, So those and by the way,
Speaker 1: the the book, the John McGuckin book on is really
Speaker 1: good for really laying all this out. So that's really
Speaker 1: what cured me of my Calvinism was and errors and
Speaker 1: even retaining Calvinistic ideas and to Rome Catholicism was the
Speaker 1: mcguck and book on Cyril, because he really shows how
Speaker 1: what in hypostatized means. And like you said, it's nature
Speaker 1: existing in the mode of person. But it's also not,
Speaker 1: just as we said last time, just an instance of nature, right,
Speaker 1: that's not what a person is. A person's just an
Speaker 1: instance of nature. Then when it comes to the trinity,
Speaker 1: we would be Sibelians, we would be modalists. We would
Speaker 1: just say, well, the son is just an instance of
Speaker 1: the divine nature. The father is just a particular instance
Speaker 1: of the divine nature. And that's not what it is.
Speaker 1: There's a real distinction, a real say level up right
Speaker 1: beyond what usia is. That is person that instantiates the nature,
Speaker 1: all right, And this is how we can be truly
Speaker 1: trinitarian and truly have a distinction between the first the persons,
Speaker 1: And as was pointed out last time, that's why the
Speaker 1: grace that we get is not just generic nature. We
Speaker 1: don't just participate in some uncreated generic energy. We participate
Speaker 1: in sonship. We participate in a hypostatic, uncreated grace. You see.
Speaker 1: If it was just generic, then we wouldn't be made sons.
Speaker 1: We would be made gods, you see. But we're not
Speaker 1: just making god. We're not making gods in a generic sense.
Speaker 1: We participate in sonship obviously by ad option, because we're creatures.
Speaker 1: But that's why the grace is hypostatic. That's why it's
Speaker 1: important to understand that uncreated grace, as secondary or Palma
Speaker 1: says to the barley mine, is in hypostatized and to
Speaker 1: say that does not mean that persons are therefore oh
Speaker 1: their intense like you said, you said it well last time, Oh,
Speaker 1: they're intension with nature. Right, the person is so mysterious
Speaker 1: and it goes so beyond nature that we just can't
Speaker 1: even know it or talk about it. And therefore maybe
Speaker 1: we should consider like perennialism or something, right, like all
Speaker 1: the religions are teaching it. You know, that's where somebody
Speaker 1: might try to take that kind of a mistake of
Speaker 1: going too far in the mystery of personhood, that it's
Speaker 1: it's totally you know, we can never say anything about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's qualify that what we mean by that personhood
Speaker 2: in hypostosis both how's the mystery and transcends nature. Is
Speaker 2: that obviously not in the sense that you just explained
Speaker 2: and articulated there, but that again by nature. For example,
Speaker 2: we'd like to say there are no metaphysical or natural
Speaker 2: laws that can encapsulate hypostasis in personhood, and therefore in
Speaker 2: that sense it transcends because what laws are really nature
Speaker 2: and being right the way that we work out metaphysics
Speaker 2: and the natural philosophy as well. And so one of
Speaker 2: the problems too, is that and this ties into your
Speaker 2: comment about you better be careful if you don't make
Speaker 2: these distinctions, because you'll run into Sabelianism. Is that for
Speaker 2: the Greeks, person lacked ontological content. This is why Prosopone
Speaker 2: had this meaning of a mask. The real being was
Speaker 2: the Usa in the essence, and therefore the mass lacks
Speaker 2: any ontological content and has to be put on to give.
Speaker 2: In Orthodoxy it reverses that again that personhood in hypostatsis
Speaker 2: is what gives being to Usia, because Usia, being in substance,
Speaker 2: cannot exist in any can state. And this is why
Speaker 2: Saint Basil and the Fathers say that it is hypostasis
Speaker 2: that has created the universe and sustains it in not ousia,
Speaker 2: not being. And if you don't make that distinction, you
Speaker 2: either go into Sibelianism or you can end up in
Speaker 2: Try Try Theism.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, that on Not Three Gods talks about that.
Speaker 1: And so we want to be careful too, because we
Speaker 1: want to point out that the son's relationship to the
Speaker 1: father is one that is truly distinct. I mean he
Speaker 1: is truly distinct from the father, not because he has
Speaker 1: a different nature. It's completely the same, the father communicates
Speaker 1: to the son the full divinity, but he really is
Speaker 1: a different, distinct hypostosis. And so there's some sense then,
Speaker 1: in which hypostosis each of the divine hypostaces fully instantiates
Speaker 1: or fully includes the divine nature. There's no lack there, right,
Speaker 1: the son doesn't have any lesser divinity.
Speaker 2: But at the same Periodorus, right, you exist, they exist
Speaker 2: inside each other, within each.
Speaker 1: Other, right peracrid That's another way to prove this doctrine.
Speaker 1: But just in the sense of each type of stasis,
Speaker 1: it's itself possessing the fullness of divinity, right, it does.
Speaker 1: Yet at the same time, hypothesis is useful in distinguishing
Speaker 1: the persons, because the father really does eternally beget a
Speaker 1: son who is distinct from him, And even though they
Speaker 1: share common natural properties together, as the spirit does, they
Speaker 1: really are distinct. And I think that a lot of people,
Speaker 1: as you've been pointing out, when they try to do
Speaker 1: trinitarian theology, they will miss the mystery aspect of it
Speaker 1: in a real sense. Here I'm not saying mystery in
Speaker 1: a bad sense, but in the sense that we have
Speaker 1: to accept what revelation and tradition tells us in that
Speaker 1: God is just as much one as he is three,
Speaker 1: and he's just as much three as he is is one.
Speaker 1: And this is the way that we avoid falling into
Speaker 1: on the wrong side of that false dialectic right of
Speaker 1: absolute divine simplicity over here, or perhaps we're so stressing
Speaker 1: distinctions that we, like you said, fall into tritheism. This
Speaker 1: is the only way to really properly balance this. And
Speaker 1: that's why the Fathers are so important, is because they
Speaker 1: have hashed this out over many centuries.
Speaker 2: Yeah, here's another good point too. So what the ancient
Speaker 2: Greeks don't have that Orthodox fathers were able to add
Speaker 2: is again, personhood in hypostasis is not an adjunct to
Speaker 2: be added to being, but rather like as a category
Speaker 2: you add to a concrete entity. Because remember they're struggling
Speaker 2: with this dichotomy between general being in concrete individualization of
Speaker 2: the personhood. And therefore what the Fathers are able to
Speaker 2: do is say that being it is itself the hypostatus
Speaker 2: of being. Personhood, like you said, it exists, so nature
Speaker 2: and being always exists in the mode and tropos of personhood,
Speaker 2: and in that sense it's primary and it transcends, so
Speaker 2: not only in the sense that we have no metaphysical
Speaker 2: or natural laws that can encapsulate and bring down personhood
Speaker 2: the way that we can with being in nature, but
Speaker 2: also in this sense that it's the primary archaic, the
Speaker 2: first principle of being itself. And this explains to what
Speaker 2: you were talking about with the essence energies distinction, that
Speaker 2: God's entergaea is his eternal actctivities are being. This is
Speaker 2: what in the West they don't get because they associate
Speaker 2: God's essay in the senseia is one. But we understand
Speaker 2: and only through this distinction. This is why these distinctions
Speaker 2: are so important to make hypostasis primary and as the
Speaker 2: arkae is that it is the cause of being, and
Speaker 2: therefore yes, you can only explain that. So what you
Speaker 2: get is a consistent theology when you have the distinctions
Speaker 2: between essence and energies. So the energies are being not becoming,
Speaker 2: so they're not creating grace, they're not becoming into being.
Speaker 2: They're eternal in their God and they find their source
Speaker 2: in the Arkae, the Father, the hypostatis in personhoods. So
Speaker 2: what we're going to argue again is it's consistent theology
Speaker 2: all the way through and that we pick up on
Speaker 2: the Greek words because we are christianizing the Greek pagan world.
Speaker 2: Then so we have to use their concepts in language
Speaker 2: without embracing their enterprise and their metaphysics. And then what
Speaker 2: we do, through God's grace and the Holy Spirit, is
Speaker 2: we're able to baptize those words in Orthodox Christianity in
Speaker 2: order that we may solve the distinctions that the Greek
Speaker 2: Hellenistic paradigms were unable to do. And so if you don't,
Speaker 2: if you do not have this theology, if you're committed
Speaker 2: to a scholastic embrace of Greek Hellenistic Aristotelianism or whatever
Speaker 2: other philosophy and ancient Greece, you're not going to be
Speaker 2: able to work these things out theologically, and you're going
Speaker 2: to have inconsistencies, which is exactly what we point out
Speaker 2: with Rome. It's not that they deny the incarnation, it's
Speaker 2: not that they don't deny the trinity, but given their
Speaker 2: principles and their commitments, there's inconsistencies exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It reminds me of an argument that came up
Speaker 1: not too long ago where somebody was essentially saying, look,
Speaker 1: God perfect the law of laws of logic, law of
Speaker 1: non contradiction, the law of identity. They perfectly reflect God
Speaker 1: and the mind of God in a one to one correspondence,
Speaker 1: such that God could never ever be beyond that. And
Speaker 1: you're an idiot because you say God transcends logic, all right, Now,
Speaker 1: what I said God transcends logic. I was quoting Gregory
Speaker 1: Palamas who says that, and he's actually quoting Dionysius and
Speaker 1: the Divine names. He says that God transcends the logical categories.
Speaker 1: This doesn't mean God's irrational and illogical. It just means
Speaker 1: that God, because he's infinite, he transcends the conceptual human order. Right,
Speaker 1: there's a realm of the mind we could call the
Speaker 1: noetic realm. That's that's true. It's created by God. There's
Speaker 1: noedic energies when we think we're in this realm, right,
Speaker 1: that's still a created realm. It's not a realm of
Speaker 1: the uncreated. We're not Platonists, right, So that's still a
Speaker 1: created realm, and we do have there is a sense
Speaker 1: in which the logi does kind of come into to
Speaker 1: overlap with that realm. You could say, as well as
Speaker 1: a created the physical realm. You know, I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to make a distinction between the physical, but there is
Speaker 1: a distinction between and the fathers, the noetic realm and
Speaker 1: the physical realm, all right, and the spiritual realm plays
Speaker 1: into the noedic realm as well. So I say that
Speaker 1: because there's a lot more nuance in our philosophy and
Speaker 1: our theology and our worldview that the realman Catholic scheme
Speaker 1: doesn't have. So if somebody were to say to me,
Speaker 1: why would you dare say that God transcends logic? That
Speaker 1: sounds like you believe God can contradict himself. That's not
Speaker 1: what we're saying. I'm not saying that. We're saying that, yes,
Speaker 1: the laws of logic are a reflection of the Divine mind.
Speaker 1: They are not a one to one correspondence to the
Speaker 1: Divine mind. That would make us platonists. That would make
Speaker 1: us Hellenis neoplatonists. Right, we would be like Pythagoras, thinking
Speaker 1: that numbers are God or something that's not true. We
Speaker 1: don't believe that. So it's very important to make the
Speaker 1: distinction between saying, on the one hand, yes, we do
Speaker 1: have a kind of medieval synthesis. If you want to
Speaker 1: call it that by what you termed baptizing these terms,
Speaker 1: baptizing the language. I mean, if you think about the septuagen,
Speaker 1: that's what the subtuagen is. The Septusian is an attempt
Speaker 1: to take the Hebrew revelation put it into the language
Speaker 1: of the Greek diaspora so that they could understand it.
Speaker 1: But the key there is that they weren't baptizing pagan
Speaker 1: philosophers per se. Right. I mean, even in the Book
Speaker 1: of Maccabees there's apologetic treatises. You could argue against Greek
Speaker 1: the gayness of Greek wrestling that's actually argued against in
Speaker 1: the Maccabees. They bitch about the the gross gayness in
Speaker 1: the Book of Maccabees that's going on in Hellenic culture, right,
Speaker 1: So they're not melding with the pagan aspects of the culture.
Speaker 1: They're taking the terms and the concepts of putting it
Speaker 1: into that language. Anyway, long story short, I really like
Speaker 1: that you pointed out that the cause if we understand
Speaker 1: why does this matter? Who cares? Why does this? Because
Speaker 1: if we understand that the cause of being in general
Speaker 1: is personal and not just a super essential essence, that
Speaker 1: we start with that we reason down from or reason
Speaker 1: up to in the tomistic analogious scheme, when we understand
Speaker 1: that we're starting with I am, that I am, and
Speaker 1: that that's personal, that leads us to understanding that reality
Speaker 1: is personal, all reality is personal. God's personal, and in fact,
Speaker 1: the entire Greek project of impersonalism is undermined through this
Speaker 1: apologetic and through this point.
Speaker 2: And by the way, here's a good addition to in
Speaker 2: a very similar vein to saying that, well how, because
Speaker 2: what we're saying is that yes, God is identified with
Speaker 2: logos logic and also transcends it as well. This is
Speaker 2: the same sort of arguments that Clement of Alexander is
Speaker 2: making when he says God is both won and he's
Speaker 2: not one. He's beyond the one you said.
Speaker 1: Exactly, this is this is actually what I said to
Speaker 1: that guy. I forgot to mention that the guy who
Speaker 1: said that, I was like, well, is God one and three?
Speaker 1: And if he's one and three at the same time,
Speaker 1: then he transcends the law of identity.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, great, great point. So that is just adding to
Speaker 2: your argument there.
Speaker 1: Uh, real quick, I wanna take a look at this chap,
Speaker 1: this this little paragraph here from God history and dialectic.
Speaker 1: And I always quote this because it's such a great
Speaker 1: summation of the point that we're making here, and it's
Speaker 1: the one of Saint Basil versus the one of Platini's
Speaker 1: all right, toe in toe on, And basically he just
Speaker 1: points out that if you read it, he says that,
Speaker 1: in addition to employing the term simplicity, we know that
Speaker 1: the one is a reference to God. Right here Basil
Speaker 1: does so in a unique sense that confounds any attempt
Speaker 1: at a neoplatonic analysis. In the Greek, the one is
Speaker 1: in Poltoni's system, referring to the neuter toe end right,
Speaker 1: as evidenced by his use of the pronoun it to
Speaker 1: describe the one. The one's an it. God is an it,
Speaker 1: a thing, a substance. For Platonis, the one is that
Speaker 1: which exists, that thing which exists you see, or simply
Speaker 1: it's translated as a being. Again, in the neuter toll
Speaker 1: on for Saint Basil, God is never referred to, but
Speaker 1: in the masculine the one for him is whole ice.
Speaker 1: I think that's correct. I'm not a Greek scholar, but
Speaker 1: and referred to as him. Likewise, the one is he
Speaker 1: who exists hole on this seemingly minor point will assume
Speaker 1: crucise significance when we turn to the application of the
Speaker 1: dogma to art in the iconography of the First and
Speaker 1: Second Europe. He's talking about the first millennium of the
Speaker 1: Church being Orthodox, as the second millennium in terms of
Speaker 1: the West being Roman Catholic. And even more significant when
Speaker 1: we look at the Second Europe as a process of
Speaker 1: the application of the gnostic technique of assigning new meanings
Speaker 1: to old terms. And then we'll come to understand the
Speaker 1: tetragrammatim of Exodus as I am who I am. He's saying,
Speaker 1: the Second Europe of Roman Catholicism will not interpret this
Speaker 1: as the personal god of Basil, but in the abstract,
Speaker 1: impersonal essentialism of Plotinus. And that's exactly what we see
Speaker 1: if you go through Jilson. When Jillson executes Exodus three fourteen,
Speaker 1: he says, this means I'm perfect super essence and being right.
Speaker 2: And a lot of people don't realize this, that they
Speaker 2: think of Quinas as thoroughly Aristotilian, but he has this
Speaker 2: neo Platonic influence on him. For example, not only in
Speaker 2: what you cited there but that Aquinas comes up with
Speaker 2: this idea and essa essensia that beings stands to essence
Speaker 2: as what is it? Form is to matter, so matter
Speaker 2: can't exist within itself the being gives that to Now
Speaker 2: where are you going to find that an Aquinas, I
Speaker 2: mean an Aristotle? What what gives being to the forms?
Speaker 2: What gives becoming to matter? You don't find this anywhere
Speaker 2: in Aristotle whatsoever? This is again some neoplatonic influence that
Speaker 2: so he's not just the hardcore Aristotilian. You can find
Speaker 2: a lot of places that he is actually very neo platonic.
Speaker 1: Right, and and by the way, let me let me
Speaker 1: pose another objection to you, hypothetical objection to from our
Speaker 1: from our haters. What would you say to the person
Speaker 1: who says to me, yeah, exactly, father deacon. We know
Speaker 1: that Aquinas is very influenced by Dynysius. In fact, he
Speaker 1: quotes Dionysius more than anybody else in the Suma. So
Speaker 1: if you're going to argue that Aquinas is influenced by Neoplatonism,
Speaker 1: then you Orthodox are are undercutting yourself because you think
Speaker 1: Dinysius is a saint. Well, Aquinus quotes him all the time.
Speaker 1: So you're saying that that therefore orthodox, he is Neoplatonism, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously what we would say too, is that
Speaker 2: Aquinas and and quoting Dionysius, that he's not understanding it
Speaker 2: the same way that that that we would, and that
Speaker 2: we've worked very difficult, very hard to make these distinctions
Speaker 2: between neo Platonic thought and the terms and that that
Speaker 2: we're using.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let me give let me give you one example.
Speaker 1: So in two places, right off the top of my head,
Speaker 1: I can think of where Dinysius and the Divine Names
Speaker 1: talks about the energies, he calls the names of God
Speaker 1: energies in two separate places. For us, they're uncreated energies.
Speaker 1: When Aquinas quotes and discusses the Divine Names, he does
Speaker 1: discuss what Dynastius says. But just like with John Damascus,
Speaker 1: he quotes John Damascus, he'll quote Dinasis, He'll say, the
Speaker 1: names are just distinguished in our human conceptions, they're not actual,
Speaker 1: real distinctions in God or in reality. And we simply
Speaker 1: depart from that and we say we think that Diagnosius
Speaker 1: really did believe that the energies were real, distinct energies,
Speaker 1: and that that's true into Basil, and it's true into Maximus,
Speaker 1: and it's true all the way into Saint Gregor Palamas.
Speaker 2: Right, So they're not reading, they're not reading the same way.
Speaker 2: It's the same thing that comes up to with the
Speaker 2: Bishop of Rome and the arguments that they make for Premissy.
Speaker 2: They're so used to making arguments to the Protestants and
Speaker 2: that that will just be able to be transcribed straight
Speaker 2: over to Orthodox And it's like we and you can
Speaker 2: cite all the passages from the Fathers, We agree with them,
Speaker 2: but you're reading it in a different way. You're reading
Speaker 2: in a very later development of Vatican wants in reading
Speaker 2: your paradigm into the father. This is why paradigms are
Speaker 2: so important, and it's why we don't. For example, I
Speaker 2: brought up in the last podcast that when you see
Speaker 2: the Fathers arguing with heretics and the councils, for example
Speaker 2: of Nicea with Arius, and Arius is a master of
Speaker 2: citing scripture and knowing scripture. What you don't find is
Speaker 2: that the Holy Fathers get down at the same level
Speaker 2: and just start matching scripture with scripture. Well, that's not
Speaker 2: the correct understanding. They operate in terms of presuppositional apologetics.
Speaker 2: You do not have the correct starting point and paradigm
Speaker 2: to interpret these. And likewise, look, we have the same verses,
Speaker 2: we have the same words, we have God, we have
Speaker 2: both having a sort of premiacy, but given your paradigm,
Speaker 2: you're going to read those with entirely different meanings. And
Speaker 2: so rather than getting down at the level of your opponent,
Speaker 2: we analyze things in terms of paradigms and starting points
Speaker 2: and make our critiques from there. Most people don't do that,
Speaker 2: and so they get very aggravated.
Speaker 1: That's a great point in fact. Yeah, I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: glad you likened that too. What goes on with with
Speaker 1: the proponents of papal infallibility, because I noticed that in
Speaker 1: the in the debate with Abara, because you know, Abara
Speaker 1: is going to put out these these ideas when he
Speaker 1: wasn't citing forgeries, by the way, but he's going to
Speaker 1: put out these ideas that are fine in orthodox way, Right,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have a problem with an appellate structure, right
Speaker 1: that there were appeals that that kind of went up
Speaker 1: the but in his mind, oh well that's Vatican one,
Speaker 1: that's your appealing to the guy who's infallible, right, what
Speaker 1: else would it be? Right? So, yeah, the assumptions are
Speaker 1: read into these things, and there's a lot of nuance.
Speaker 1: It goes into a lot of these examples. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of contact that's ignored, especially like you know, people
Speaker 1: that go to Catholic Answers and they go to the
Speaker 1: Papal premiscy page and they just kind of throw out
Speaker 1: all these, you know, machine gun the quotes from the
Speaker 1: Catholic Answers page on Papal premiascy without understanding that in
Speaker 1: a lot of these cases there's context and a lot
Speaker 1: of these cases. Let's take Jesus himself, this is a
Speaker 1: really powerful one. Two chapters after Matthew sixteen, Jesus says
Speaker 1: the exact same thing to the College of the Apostles. Right,
Speaker 1: So the keys text of Matthew sixteen eighteen remit and
Speaker 1: retain sins. Two chapters later he says the exact same
Speaker 1: thing to all of the Apostles. Whoever sends you remit,
Speaker 1: they're remitted. Whoever sends you retain, they're retaining. It's not
Speaker 1: specific to Peter in Matthew eighteen. So the point being
Speaker 1: is that we can't take that one verse of Jesus
Speaker 1: and say, ah, that's the verse that means all of
Speaker 1: the papal premiacy texts that I presuppose, and that's I'm
Speaker 1: going to read that into that text. And as I think,
Speaker 1: who was I talking to a recently, somebody had a
Speaker 1: great point recently that it was the French guy. How
Speaker 1: often it then became this norm by especially Jesuit apologists
Speaker 1: and so forth, to take literally start taking texts that
Speaker 1: are prophecies of Christ and start reading those about Peter,
Speaker 1: like the Cornerstone of the Old Testament. Oh, that that's Peter. No,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's talking about Jesus, right, And that.
Speaker 2: Just shows two again why it's important that we point
Speaker 2: out that the Latin project is the Greek project. That
Speaker 2: they were married in a race, so they're not just
Speaker 2: pulling pieces out of the philosophy, but that the West,
Speaker 2: all the wey, beginning with the pre Socratics, has a
Speaker 2: problem with dialectics and either or dichotomy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if something that one can't see.
Speaker 2: Right or here, if Christ is saying it to Peter,
Speaker 2: he can't be saying it to the rest of the apostles.
Speaker 2: It's an either or, and you can go through all
Speaker 2: of these theological errors and oftentimes point reduce it to
Speaker 2: this problem of dialectics that I've got to fit it
Speaker 2: into either box. And again Protestantism inherits the exact same paradigm.
Speaker 2: This is why if you point out that there's only
Speaker 2: one church, it's the Orthodox Church, what are you going
Speaker 2: to hear, particularly from evangelicals. So you're saying, I'm not saved,
Speaker 2: that Salvation's is in or everything's read is an either or,
Speaker 2: because they don't have the paradigm to be able to
Speaker 2: make the nuances and synthesize what would otherwise appear to
Speaker 2: be contradictory or contrary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, that's what I
Speaker 1: saw so consistently, not just in the debates about the
Speaker 1: triad when it came to the Arians and the Trinity,
Speaker 1: but eventually by the time of all the way up
Speaker 1: into the dispute that Maximus has with Pearis. If you
Speaker 1: read the dispute with Pearis, you'll see that eventually what
Speaker 1: he's arguing against is a kind of almost Jansenist view
Speaker 1: that's subtly present amongst the mon Inenergists and the Monothelites
Speaker 1: that the human will has to be in some natural
Speaker 1: tension with the divine will. So in Christ there couldn't
Speaker 1: be a real symphonia in harmony of the two wills.
Speaker 1: There's got to be some like button heads going on here.
Speaker 1: And so the Monothelites and the mono inergists argue that
Speaker 1: there has to be some sort of subsuming and overriding
Speaker 1: of the human will to replace the natural human energy
Speaker 1: in the will of Christ, so that the divine basically
Speaker 1: just kind of controls it or something, you know. And granted,
Speaker 1: some of the language of the Fathers can be difficult
Speaker 1: at times because sometimes actually from Athanasius to Maximus, you
Speaker 1: have the logos Sarks terminology, where the logos who's already
Speaker 1: possessing person at where's the humanity like a suit, where's
Speaker 1: he's in fleshed right, So that's not always wrong, And
Speaker 1: as Bathrello's points out, you can even read an orthodox
Speaker 1: correct that's not Monophysite or it's not a Pollinarian view
Speaker 1: of the logos Sarks christology. There's nothing wrong with that
Speaker 1: as long as we don't deny to the humanity the
Speaker 1: fullness of humanity, right, as long as that's guarded against
Speaker 1: that terminology is not wrong because it's used in John one.
Speaker 1: He's the logos became enfleshed, right. So what I'm saying
Speaker 1: is that there are many places where we can find
Speaker 1: similarities of philosophic language. We have to be careful and
Speaker 1: nuanced with the language, but all the way up into
Speaker 1: the Sixth Council and the debates there, we can see
Speaker 1: the assumptions of dialectics at every point, whether it's in
Speaker 1: the Trinity, whether it's in Cyril and his debates with Thestorius,
Speaker 1: or whether it's the Fifth Council and the Postcusceledonian Cyrillic debates,
Speaker 1: then the Neo kirillions that won out in the Fifth
Speaker 1: and sixth Council, we can see that we're dealing with
Speaker 1: this constant assumption that there can never be a harmony.
Speaker 1: There's always going to be this kind of tension. Jesus
Speaker 1: can't have, you know, truly human will, because that would
Speaker 1: mean that if he does, he's fighting against God, and
Speaker 1: that's not possible. But the assumption is that he is
Speaker 1: human will would fight against God. It doesn't fight against God.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah, great point.
Speaker 1: You mentioned a couple of things that I want to
Speaker 1: get to before we take super chats, and then we're
Speaker 1: going to do more of this talk. We're going to
Speaker 1: get into the Amazon Synod. We're going to talk about
Speaker 1: how a lot of the theology and presuppositions in my view,
Speaker 1: and I don't know all of your views on this,
Speaker 1: will get your take on it. You may disagree or
Speaker 1: you may agree. I think what we see is a
Speaker 1: long train of theology that's led to where we are
Speaker 1: with the Amazon Synod in the roalman caalvoc Realm. Vatican
Speaker 1: two is just a stage in this long process. I
Speaker 1: think that we're going to be vindicated on that analysis.
Speaker 1: So we'll get to that in the second part. So
Speaker 1: if you want to hear the rest of this talk,
Speaker 1: this is a half and half, you'll want to subscribe
Speaker 1: either here on YouTube or over at Jay's analysis in
Speaker 1: the subscription section, through PayPal, credit card, or whatever you
Speaker 1: want to use. So let's take some of these super
Speaker 1: chats before we get to that part two. Bruder Klaus,
Speaker 1: thank you for becoming a member to the website. Appreciate
Speaker 1: that much, appreciate it. You'll look under the community tab
Speaker 1: there for the posts for members. Beys Chungus one ninety
Speaker 1: nine do you have any thoughts on the aerial toll houses.
Speaker 1: Thank you for the great show. I think that, yes,
Speaker 1: there's something to the toll houses. I don't think that
Speaker 1: we have to go into an extreme of like every
Speaker 1: little literally every little detail of there being eight or
Speaker 1: ten or two, twenty three or one thousand and you
Speaker 1: got to pay all these debts and every but there
Speaker 1: is definitely something to the return of the soul after death.
Speaker 1: We pray for people have your death. I don't know
Speaker 1: what your take on that is, if you want to answer.
Speaker 2: That, Ah, that's exactly my take too. We don't have
Speaker 2: to be with the Fordham crew and Aristotle p that
Speaker 2: a rejection of the toll houses again, is it not
Speaker 2: this false dialectics again that I either have to accept
Speaker 2: it and this insane detail and have this whole you know,
Speaker 2: robust theology built around it, or I reject it. That No,
Speaker 2: it's again, this is a mystery, but it's a tradition
Speaker 2: in the Orthodox Church.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 2: From Holy Men again is Orthodox, not Scholastics. And so
Speaker 2: the proof in the pudding when it comes to truth
Speaker 2: is holiness. And so I look to people that are
Speaker 2: particularly holy because I trust them and all of knowledge
Speaker 2: is based on trust, and so we have to see
Speaker 2: are we trusting the right people? And how am I
Speaker 2: justified in making that trust? And for us Orthodox it
Speaker 2: is the mind is polluted and diseased, and is Saint
Speaker 2: Isaac the Syrian says, it's through the news and asceticism
Speaker 2: that we begin to cleanse the mind so that it's
Speaker 2: able to see correctly speak correctly. And that's our anthropology.
Speaker 2: And so because they have credentials, because they're holy, and
Speaker 2: that's good enough for me without having to go into
Speaker 2: the exact detail of what exactly you know is absolutely
Speaker 2: truer about it in what detail? I think that's to
Speaker 2: get distracted from the issue.
Speaker 1: Roll thingk stakes five bucks, Thank you for the show.
Speaker 1: What's your response to people that say Judaism, Islam, and
Speaker 1: Christianity believe in the same god, the God of Abraham.
Speaker 1: I would say that in a sense, perhaps you could
Speaker 1: say that that's true because for example, in Judaism, yes
Speaker 1: they still have aspects of revelation, but you could view
Speaker 1: it kind of like a cult, like the Jovah's witnesses
Speaker 1: have aspects of revelation, right, but they don't have they
Speaker 1: have a corrupted you know, New World translation version of
Speaker 1: the Bible. So it's corrupted, it's it's not authentic, it's
Speaker 1: it's corrupt. And so in the same way, yes, in
Speaker 1: a sense, do we worship Allah well in the Arabic
Speaker 1: translations of our liturgies and Orthodoxy that use the term Allah.
Speaker 1: But is that equated to like we talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: And if we have the term I believe in Allah,
Speaker 1: I believe in one God? Is that the exact same?
Speaker 1: Do we mean the same thing just because we're using
Speaker 1: the same syllables and vowels. No, Because when we say
Speaker 1: who we mean who is our one God? It's the
Speaker 1: Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ. And the only way
Speaker 1: to him is John fourteen six through Christ in the spirit, right,
Speaker 1: So you have to be trinitarian. So no, I mean
Speaker 1: in one sense with the limited aspects of truth that
Speaker 1: are in Judaism and Islam, because they do have some
Speaker 1: aspects of revelation. Yes, But also no, because just like
Speaker 1: Jehovah's witness, they have aspects of the revelation like we do,
Speaker 1: but they corrupt it to the extent that it's it's
Speaker 1: not selviffic, is my view.
Speaker 2: Right, Absolutely, So they can say true things about God
Speaker 2: because is and I'm so glad you gave a shout
Speaker 2: out here to our man from Romania, one of the
Speaker 2: best theologians, Demetri stan OLOI, and both j and I
Speaker 2: rec men especially chapter one on natural revelation, and that
Speaker 2: we don't make this dichotomy strong dichotomy the the West does,
Speaker 2: and saying natural revelation versus supernatural revelation supernatural, that we
Speaker 2: receive supernatural revelation through nature, and so yes, I would
Speaker 2: imagine just as the Greek philosopher's you can get things right.
Speaker 2: But are we talking about the same God. Well, if
Speaker 2: you think about what Saint Basils says, you cannot conceive
Speaker 2: of God apart from trinity, then no, we're we're not.
Speaker 2: So I think it's perfectly fine to say as you
Speaker 2: did in a way yes, in a way no, And
Speaker 2: then I can provide the distinctions. You can say true
Speaker 2: things about God, but you don't end up, in your intentionality,
Speaker 2: end up hitting and talk helping, you know, and worshiping
Speaker 2: the same God because you have to have this necessary
Speaker 2: component of trinity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean think about you know, like a like
Speaker 1: a Joe's witness could say, well, I believe in God
Speaker 1: the Father, and I believe that there's Jesus Christ, and
Speaker 1: I believe that there's a spirit. Okay, that sounds good
Speaker 1: in terms of the terms, but when you ask them
Speaker 1: what they mean, they don't mean anything close to what
Speaker 1: we mean, so it's completely different. Net Cup for has
Speaker 1: focused five bucks. Thank you for this. Do you have
Speaker 1: any favorite hagiographies or biographies. I'm currently reading Father sur
Speaker 1: from Rose is massive biography right now. It's very good.
Speaker 1: I've read a lot of the biographies of church fathers.
Speaker 1: Those are really good. That's probably my area where I've
Speaker 1: put most of my time in terms of hagiography. If
Speaker 1: you go to the liturgy, you know you'll hear a
Speaker 1: lot of the hagiography. So, but I don't know of
Speaker 1: a specific book personally. Do you have a specific book
Speaker 1: he'd recommend on just the Lives of the Saints?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Where is that book? What's We actually got a
Speaker 2: really nice one on women's saints that was that I
Speaker 2: bought for my wife. That's an excellent one. I can't
Speaker 2: remember it offhand. What another? And then you have into
Speaker 2: obviously you have individual books like Elder Patios. Sorry about
Speaker 2: my mess back here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Herman Middleton has a good book on the elders.
Speaker 1: If you know Hermann. Herman's book is Vessels of what
Speaker 1: is it, Vessels of the Spirit. I think that's a
Speaker 1: good book on the elders.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I definitely recommend Elders mount Athos by hero Monk Isaac.
Speaker 2: That's an excellent one. They're trying to see. Well, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to waste you guys time by coming through
Speaker 2: my library training to find but perhaps I could post
Speaker 2: some some links to recommended books on that issue. So
Speaker 2: great question.
Speaker 1: Let's see Bruder. Wait, no missed one. Richard rawl five bucks.
Speaker 1: Justin Marter said states in his oratory address to the
Speaker 1: Greeks that many times over Plato and Aristotle took from
Speaker 1: Moses in the Old Testament when you went to Egypt.
Speaker 1: Do you have any thoughts on this? This is actually
Speaker 1: an argument that comes up commonly in the Church fathers
Speaker 1: and their apologetics. I think that's entirely plausible. I don't
Speaker 1: know if we know for sure, but yeah, I could
Speaker 1: easily see Plato and Aristotle being influenced by Isaiah or
Speaker 1: the prophets, or you know, something like that. Maybe they
Speaker 1: read Moses. It's entirely plausible. I don't know if hey
Speaker 1: Mody knows for sure, but what do you think on that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just I'm trying to remember where I just
Speaker 2: read something. It was in response to this kind of
Speaker 2: critique what Tatulian asked, what has Athens to do with Jerusalem?
Speaker 2: And that you particularly get this within evangelicals, that Greek
Speaker 2: philosophy perverted the New Testament and all this different stuff.
Speaker 2: And the counter argument to that was, in fact, there
Speaker 2: is some evidence that the Greeks themselves were introduced ideas
Speaker 2: of revelation from Moses and the patriarchs of old in
Speaker 2: the Old Testament.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I've made an argument many times. It's entirely plausible,
Speaker 1: and I may have heard it from a Bible professor
Speaker 1: many years ago when I was at Bible College. I
Speaker 1: can't remember where I've first heard this, But you know,
Speaker 1: the Jews went to Egypt. Joseph is raised up to,
Speaker 1: you know, right underneath Pharaoh in the Book of Genesis,
Speaker 1: and then you know, we know that the Egyptians embalmed
Speaker 1: and buried there they're dead. So it's entirely possible that,
Speaker 1: you know, we get the impression that because Joseph marries
Speaker 1: Pharaoh's daughter. Presumably she converted. Presumably people in Egypt converted.
Speaker 1: We know that when the Jews left Egypt there were
Speaker 1: many converts who actually went with them, Exodus says, so
Speaker 1: it's entirely possible. It's entirely plausible that the theology of
Speaker 1: the Jews did also influence Egypt. We know there was
Speaker 1: overlap there. I mean, it says Moses learned and knew
Speaker 1: all the mysteries of the Egyptians, so there was some overlaps,
Speaker 1: some interchange there. That's entirely plausible. Maybe that's why the
Speaker 1: Egyptians had a period of monotheism. But I don't know
Speaker 1: that anybody knows for sure. But I believe the Genesis account,
Speaker 1: so I believe that that, you know, Joseph really did
Speaker 1: do what he did. Needs it, Amy Polino twenty bucks.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Amy, always shouting out getting them fat super chats.
Speaker 1: Much appreciated. Amy straw hat Bear five bucks. How how
Speaker 1: do you read notes? Do you read note intensive or
Speaker 1: eyes to words solely or it depends. I'm a slow reader,
Speaker 1: as you can see. I do it with intense crazy
Speaker 1: sticky notes. And when I write my notes in the
Speaker 1: sticky notes, and in the book it helps me remember.
Speaker 1: So that's how I do it. But do you want
Speaker 1: to share any tips on how you read?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like your I'm going to start adopting your
Speaker 2: sticky tabs.
Speaker 1: By the way. One reason that I wish I had
Speaker 1: for all these years, I you know, have thousands of books.
Speaker 1: I've collected many many books, and I wrote in them all.
Speaker 1: And now I regret it because a lot of the
Speaker 1: books that I have are rare and out of print,
Speaker 1: all marked up, so they will be worth a lot less.
Speaker 1: Not that that's that big of a deal, but they
Speaker 1: would be worth a lot more if I'm not written
Speaker 1: in them all.
Speaker 2: What I'd like to do is get a piece of
Speaker 2: paper out and then illustrate that with cartoons. And so
Speaker 2: I just doodle out and drop. And I'm kidding.
Speaker 1: That I thought you were serious. Sounds like that's not
Speaker 1: a bad idea.
Speaker 2: We're like, wow, what a great idea. I'm ia try
Speaker 2: that I.
Speaker 1: Would draw a little, fat, little aquinas when I'm reading
Speaker 1: through the Suma and like he's talking in little bubbles, and.
Speaker 2: That actually might not be a bad idea that I
Speaker 2: feel terrible if I write in pen because I so
Speaker 2: I'll do in pencil, and then I feel like, you know,
Speaker 2: if I can always go back in a race some
Speaker 2: of those things. So I'll tend to highlight certain relevant
Speaker 2: areas and then I kind of go through stages. So
Speaker 2: once I have certain areas highlighted that stand out to me,
Speaker 2: then I'll transcribe that into kind of more detailed further notes,
Speaker 2: and eventually what I try to do is start to
Speaker 2: write stuff out, just solidify. I don't know if that's
Speaker 2: the best method, and the reason why is because everybody's
Speaker 2: different they use. There's not a one size fits all
Speaker 2: because we learn in different ways. But that's kind of
Speaker 2: my motors operandi.
Speaker 1: I'm definitely a more visual learner, so my mind pictures
Speaker 1: the page and I think about what the page look like.
Speaker 1: So that's how it works for me. Let's see who's next.
Speaker 1: Brewder Klaus upgraded his membership from silver to gold. Much
Speaker 1: appreciated brewder Claus. I'll have to put the sign into
Speaker 1: the archives for the gold members on YouTube so that
Speaker 1: you can sign in on Jay's analysis to the archive.
Speaker 1: Franklin Chan ten bucks, thank you for all the great work. Jay.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Franklin Chan longtime supporter much to you, much
Speaker 1: love to Amy and Polino and the long time jasonnalysis
Speaker 1: NERD supporters Drunken Warlock ten Bucks. A question for both
Speaker 1: of you, what is your famous favorite book on the
Speaker 1: saint or saints? Well, as we said a minute ago,
Speaker 1: he gave, we gave a couple hagiography examples. Uh, my
Speaker 1: favorite book would probably still be something theological. So I'm
Speaker 1: trying to think of what would be the most important book.
Speaker 1: I think on the Incarnation by Saint Nathanasius is very
Speaker 1: very important. I mean it's such a great, you know,
Speaker 1: thirty page encapsulation of the whole of our theology. That's
Speaker 1: a good one. I don't know of one specific book
Speaker 1: on a saint or saints. I guess since my patron
Speaker 1: is Daniel, the Book of Daniel holds a very prominent
Speaker 1: place in my heart. Do you have any more thoughts?
Speaker 2: Ont did you know that yesterday on the new calendar
Speaker 2: was the feast day for Dionysius the arapea guy. And uh,
Speaker 2: we had a young adults Orthodox group and I have
Speaker 2: a text on I mean remember the author on Dionysius
Speaker 2: arape guy. I love Dionysius that and so I would
Speaker 2: recommend that also my favorite and I remember reading that
Speaker 2: as a freshman in college. Was affamacious on the incarnation.
Speaker 2: That's good. Did they want more of a biography to
Speaker 2: feel I tend to well, I like biographies too, So
Speaker 2: it's it's hard. You know, there's biographies and then there's
Speaker 2: the hardcore theology. I love them both.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's a you know, if you go back
Speaker 1: drunken Warlock, you could hear some of the previous statements
Speaker 1: about books on the Saints seven me becomes a silver member.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Shot seven, much appreciated. Look under the community
Speaker 1: tab for the uh we've been working through. I post
Speaker 1: one about every day or two of the archived material
Speaker 1: content on YouTube, so you'll find those under the community tab.
Speaker 1: Traditional Christian also became a silver member. Thank you again.
Speaker 1: Look under the community tab. Much appreciated. Glad to have
Speaker 1: you as a member. Orthodox Pilgrim fifty bucks. Wow, thank
Speaker 1: you man, much appreciated. Thank you, he says, keep the
Speaker 1: discussions going. You are reaching people. Well, that's good. God's
Speaker 1: peace to both of you. Remember everybody subscribed to Norwegian News.
Speaker 1: I've got his channel linked in the description. Definitely follow
Speaker 1: his work. Neo Crusader has become a Gold member. Wow.
Speaker 1: Thanks man Again. I'm going to put the log in
Speaker 1: stuff for you guys after this talk on the community
Speaker 1: tab so that all the Gold members can also now
Speaker 1: access the archives. It is Nelysis and Warlock two dollars again.
Speaker 1: Do you have an orthodox view on concealed carry firearms?
Speaker 1: I believe that firearms are I don't. I don't think
Speaker 1: there's any I mean, people from Fordham University would tell you,
Speaker 1: you know, but no, I think that self defense is biblical.
Speaker 1: I've always heard it was biblical. I never heard anybody
Speaker 1: say it's not. Do you have any differing view on that?
Speaker 2: Well, that's a good lithemus test. Find out what Fordham's
Speaker 2: saying and do the opposite.
Speaker 1: That's funny. Yeah, I mean I saw one of those
Speaker 1: guys saying, please please take away everybody's guns. So they
Speaker 1: were there was the argument was, I'm not kidding, it
Speaker 1: was Byzantium didn't have guns. You couldn't have guns in
Speaker 1: Byzantian as. If these people care anything about a Byzantine civilization,
Speaker 1: give me a break.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. And that was actually, uh, that was
Speaker 2: civil law and that was not canon law. Interesting and
Speaker 2: also I think it was military grade weapons, so that's
Speaker 2: not going yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, you're right, as if in Byzantium, if
Speaker 1: somebody came in and attacked your family, you're just supposed to,
Speaker 1: okay that my family, who I'm supposed to do anything.
Speaker 2: Orthodoxy doesn't believe in passivism, right, we pray for I
Speaker 2: pray for our military. I'm not saying the military always does.
Speaker 2: In principal, military is good and supported by the Orthodox Church.
Speaker 2: Now doesn't mean that your particular military is doing good
Speaker 2: things or anything like that. So that's an important distinction.
Speaker 2: But what we see is in principle there's nothing wrong
Speaker 2: with and we have tons of passages from the Fathers
Speaker 2: and liturgy too that to take up your sword even
Speaker 2: outside of military work as well. Now as for clergy,
Speaker 2: we take on a different role. So so it might
Speaker 2: be one thing to go hunt or target practice or
Speaker 2: something like that, or hunt for food, but because we
Speaker 2: take on the role of Christ and Marredom that we
Speaker 2: as clergy would not use guns for self defense. We
Speaker 2: would lay our lives down. But for the lady, Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's absolutely no no conflict.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point too, that this is something
Speaker 1: that's distinct and Orthodoxy like you don't in the Middle Ages,
Speaker 1: in the Latin tradition, you have like these warrior bishops
Speaker 1: and cardinals who would like go out into battle and
Speaker 1: this is weird, weird stuff like that. There's not we
Speaker 1: don't have that orthodoxy. Early drunken warlock became a member.
Speaker 1: Thank you man, welcome skullduggery nerd bear of the reprehensible
Speaker 1: five dollars? Is it pot? Is it difficult to keep
Speaker 1: fast days on the carnivore diet. I'll let you handle
Speaker 1: that because you just covered this in your stream yesterday
Speaker 1: when people were asking you how do you do it?
Speaker 1: And I think you gave a great example in terms
Speaker 1: of economium.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Again.
Speaker 2: So what's wonderful about Orthodoxy and unique too, is that
Speaker 2: we don't have this pharasitical legalism. We have the law,
Speaker 2: and you must always understand that the laws and means
Speaker 2: to an end. And Christ says the sum of the
Speaker 2: law is love of God with all your heart, mind
Speaker 2: and soul, and love of neighbor is self. And so
Speaker 2: if you ever see that the law comes into contradiction
Speaker 2: with the ends in which it's to obtain, it is
Speaker 2: the bishop who has the discretion and authority how and
Speaker 2: how much to apply the law. And so this is
Speaker 2: the principal economia that's not present outside of the Orthodox Church.
Speaker 2: And this is why you get this kind of pharasitical legalism.
Speaker 2: And so again, every priest that I've talked to, if
Speaker 2: you go first and foremost, you need to go to
Speaker 2: your father, confessor, your priest and discuss these things with
Speaker 2: don't listen to lady Lady asks any clergy Lad, You're insane.
Speaker 2: They have all kinds of crazy ideas. Okay, we have
Speaker 2: a hierarchical structure. We go to you know, we're trained
Speaker 2: for a reason. Go talk to your priest about certain
Speaker 2: health concerns. In that well, Father, what am I supposed
Speaker 2: to do during the fast if I'm eating only animal products?
Speaker 2: There's other ways too fast. I've never come across a
Speaker 2: priest that says, I'm sorry. You have to commit to
Speaker 2: the letter of the law, even if it destroys the
Speaker 2: ends to which it's your health, or that it's trying
Speaker 2: to obtain an achieve And so priests will give the
Speaker 2: blessing and they'll have you fast in other ways, and
Speaker 2: we get so caught up and thinking that fasting only
Speaker 2: applies to food.
Speaker 1: This is a great point you made too. Yeah, fasting
Speaker 1: isn't just oh, what's the what's the food? What's the food?
Speaker 1: You talked about how this is a time for not
Speaker 1: talking too much. It's a time for meditation, contemplation, it's
Speaker 1: a time for alms. Yeah. Absolutely, that was a great point.
Speaker 1: That's that's forgotten because we just focus on whether we're
Speaker 1: eating or not right.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I would say everybody, if you
Speaker 1: didn't hear Father Deacon's stream on technology, go to his
Speaker 1: channel and watch that. It was really good. Na kept
Speaker 1: for us focus became a member goal. Thank you for that. Again.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna post the log in for the archives. If
Speaker 1: you're a silver member, if you just joined, you get
Speaker 1: access to all the ones that I've posted so far.
Speaker 1: They're going up one by one. There's no other way
Speaker 1: to do it since YouTube granted me the member's feature.
Speaker 1: But of course, remember if you don't want to do
Speaker 1: it that way, you can always go to Jay's analysis
Speaker 1: and purchase a membership there as well. So for hour two,
Speaker 1: he and I will continue this topic. We're going to
Speaker 1: talk about Amazon synod and what's coming up and what's
Speaker 1: going on there. That will be for subscribers. It'll be
Speaker 1: posted later on either later tonight or tomorrow, and then
Speaker 1: in another hour, probably about seven thirty or eight, I
Speaker 1: will live stream on my twitch because I'm having I
Speaker 1: just want to build up the twitch a little bit
Speaker 1: as a backup. You know, you never know what's going
Speaker 1: to happen. I'll put my twitch here in the chat
Speaker 1: for anybody who wants to. I'm gonna be playing what's this.
Speaker 1: It's this medieval game what's it called? Plague of Innocence
Speaker 1: where you're trying to escape during the plague. So it's
Speaker 1: been fun so far. We'll be talking philosophy, theology there
Speaker 1: as well a lot of weird medieval Latin stuff going
Speaker 1: on in this Plague of Innocence game. So head over
Speaker 1: to my twitch. I'll be there in an hour after
Speaker 1: Father Deacon and I finish up the second half, but
Speaker 1: that will be available to subscribers. Let's see we got
Speaker 1: another membership, Diego. Thank you, Diego much appreciate it. Glad
Speaker 1: you're here. Drunken Warlock asks another question, what do you
Speaker 1: think about pre marital kissing? I will let Father Deacon answer.
Speaker 2: That better talk to your Priest's.
Speaker 1: Number one easy way out of that one, Yeah.
Speaker 2: The easy way, but it's it's because again, the priest
Speaker 2: is the your father confessor, and your priest is the
Speaker 2: one who administers medicine, and everybody has different situations that
Speaker 2: must be contextualized and so again, and it's the same
Speaker 2: thing that goes with the bishop's applying canon law is
Speaker 2: that they see this within context. There's not a one
Speaker 2: size fits all as far as the prescription of the
Speaker 2: medicine for healing the soul. So for example, if somebody
Speaker 2: has a serious problem with lust or something like that,
Speaker 2: the priest might say, you know what, I don't want
Speaker 2: you to do that. And that's why it's so important
Speaker 2: to develop a healthy relationship in confession and outside of
Speaker 2: confession with your priest and discuss these concerns with your
Speaker 2: priests so that they can give you the appropriate medication.
Speaker 2: And what I'd also add too, is that on this
Speaker 2: kind of medical analogy, that a lot of people will
Speaker 2: have multiple priests as confessors, and that's equivalent to doctor shopping.
Speaker 2: That you might get contradictions in the medicines that are applied,
Speaker 2: and so you stick with one that doesn't mean that
Speaker 2: you can't later go find a spiritual father, but there's
Speaker 2: issues that come up. I have people write me that
Speaker 2: I have two priests that are giving me contradictory suggestions
Speaker 2: and prescriptions on and it's like, well, that's a perfect
Speaker 2: reason why you need one spiritual father at a time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you, great points there. Okay, that's all for now.
Speaker 1: So again we're going to continue this and then I'll
Speaker 1: be at my Twitch channel in one hour, maybe a
Speaker 1: little over an hour, and we'll be doing plagy of innocence.
Speaker 1: If you guys want to chat with me, joke around,
Speaker 1: ask some questions, I'll be there. Thank you. Norwegian Noos
Speaker 1: Father Deacon Ananias follow him as we said on his channel.
Speaker 1: There it's it's listed and if you want to hear
Speaker 1: the second part, you'll want to subscribe to Jay's analysis
Speaker 1: and we will continue with the Amazon discussion.