Speaker 1: All right, thank you for having me. Glad to be here.
Speaker 1: So I didn't really plan anything, so all I brought
Speaker 1: was a history of the popes. So I'm just going
Speaker 1: to start from page one and try to get comfortable
Speaker 1: because we got a good way to go.
Speaker 2: I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1: Jim said to be sure to talk about your heritage.
Speaker 1: And when I mentioned that I would be out this conference,
Speaker 1: somebody on Twitter said, are you really from the South,
Speaker 1: Where are you actually from? What's your actual heritage? I said,
Speaker 1: I am from the South. I'm from South Kazaria, and
Speaker 1: I'm a CAGBJ and I'm here to wreck and infiltrate
Speaker 1: and destroy and subvert. I'm just kidding. That's a joke.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of people can't take jokes, but no,
Speaker 1: I am a full blooded Southern. My dad's side is English.
Speaker 1: The Dyers tended the Royal Swans, which I don't know
Speaker 1: if that's something to be proud of or if that
Speaker 1: was something that's kind of of ignominious. That's true. And
Speaker 1: then my mom's side is Clan. We're Scottish, so we're
Speaker 1: Clan scott and Clan I forget the other one. But
Speaker 1: when I looked into this. It turns out that we
Speaker 1: have a castle. It's all in ruins, but the queen
Speaker 1: owns the castle, so I'm not happy about that. Car
Speaker 1: labor Locke is the name of the castle, and I
Speaker 1: want to get that back from the queen. So we've
Speaker 1: got to figure out how to do that later. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So let's talk about something that you probably won't expect
Speaker 1: me to talk about.
Speaker 3: This.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about how philosophy is worthless. And
Speaker 1: you know, I prayed about this, and this is kind
Speaker 1: of what came to me to talk about, and it
Speaker 1: ended up vibing synergizing very well with the talks that
Speaker 1: we've heard so far, because I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people hear Ortho Bros. And they hear people arguing and
Speaker 1: talking about philosophy, and a lot of people assume, oh,
Speaker 1: you just like to talk about philosophy, you have to argue,
Speaker 1: and you just want to talk about all this high
Speaker 1: abstract stuff. But what I think both my good friend father,
Speaker 1: Deacon doctor Annonius, and I have discovered, as we have
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time in philosophy, is actually that
Speaker 1: philosophy is quite worthless. I don't mean real philosophy in
Speaker 1: the sense of Christ as the wisdom of God or
Speaker 1: something like that. But I mean the secular, abstract discipline
Speaker 1: of philosophy. If we think about the logos in John one,
Speaker 1: this is not the logos of Marcos Aurelius's meditations. It's
Speaker 1: not the logos of Hellenism. There might be some overlap,
Speaker 1: there might be some parallels, but the logos in John
Speaker 1: one is pulling from the Hebrew wisdom tradition. It's not
Speaker 1: an impersonal abstract force. It's the I am. In fact,
Speaker 1: the logos of John one we know in the Triads
Speaker 1: of Saint Gregor Palomos he talks about in Exodus three
Speaker 1: when God said I am in fourteen and fifteen. He
Speaker 1: did not say I am it, but I am He.
Speaker 1: That is the personal, relational covenantal God that Israel has
Speaker 1: a relationship with. This is the one who can show
Speaker 1: his face to Moses. But as Jesus says in John
Speaker 1: one to eighteen, or as John says in John one eighteen,
Speaker 1: and Jesus says in John six forty six, no man
Speaker 1: sees God, no man sees the Father at any time.
Speaker 1: Yet someone saw this God in Exodus three, the same face,
Speaker 1: the same presence, the same angel is said chapters later
Speaker 1: in twenty three to remit sins he has the name
Speaker 1: of Yahweh in him. We don't find that in created beings.
Speaker 1: Even throughout the Old Testament, in dozens of other passages,
Speaker 1: we also find that Yahweh and his angel presence face
Speaker 1: Glory Messenger, also have his spirit accompanying this presence, this manifestation.
Speaker 1: So the God of revelation, this is a personal god.
Speaker 1: This is a triad revealed throughout the scriptures, throughout divine
Speaker 1: revelation as the Father who is the source, the found
Speaker 1: the ark that eternally begets his son, and the Spirit
Speaker 1: who proceeds through that son and manifests and shines forth
Speaker 1: through that son. In Orthodox theology and trilogy, this one
Speaker 1: cause or Arkae is the Father, the soul cause that
Speaker 1: keeps this deity personal. Why am I talking about this, Well,
Speaker 1: One thing that we have engaged in is a lot
Speaker 1: of interactions with other religions other non religious people over
Speaker 1: the last several years, last seven or eight years, And
Speaker 1: one thing that comes to the fore is there's commonalities
Speaker 1: that I've noticed between the other religions and what they offer,
Speaker 1: what they present the deity that they discuss there might
Speaker 1: be some idea that there's a personal relationship with the
Speaker 1: Jewish God, with the Muslim God, or something like that,
Speaker 1: but it's certainly nothing like what we offer. And so
Speaker 1: in the domain of philosophy, this is usually referred to
Speaker 1: as classical theism. Doctor ed Fezer, the famous Thomas, for example,
Speaker 1: writes about the classical theist God is the god of Aristotle, Plato, Plutinus, Mimaonides, Mohammad,
Speaker 1: and Aquinas. Really since it was a little off there,
Speaker 1: something something's a little off, because again, to quote Saint
Speaker 1: Gregory Palamas, when God appears in Exodus three, it's not
Speaker 1: a supreme essence, it's something a supreme thing. It's I remember,
Speaker 1: didn't Biden say something like, yeah, we believe in the
Speaker 1: theme talking about God the theme? I was like, is
Speaker 1: Biden a classical theist? What's he talking about? No, we
Speaker 1: talket we believe in a deity that is uniquely contrast
Speaker 1: did too the type of deity that we see amongst
Speaker 1: the world religions and classical theism In Orthodox triadology, this
Speaker 1: one calls this father archae that has a son and
Speaker 1: a spirit. When and I'm not this talk is not
Speaker 1: mainly about theology. Believe it or not, it's actually going
Speaker 1: to be a little more down to earth. But this
Speaker 1: part is theological. When the son takes on the hypostatic
Speaker 1: property of the Father, what happens is we have a
Speaker 1: move towards what many theologians have called essentialism or the
Speaker 1: premissy of the divine essence, or the ussia or the
Speaker 1: one over against the starting point of theology and our
Speaker 1: relationship with God and the ordo theology and our actual relationship.
Speaker 1: These aren't abstract. These are connected. We have a movement
Speaker 1: away from God as personal to God as metaphysical, beating
Speaker 1: to study a thing, to program like an algorithm, a
Speaker 1: science project, something to look at in a test tube
Speaker 1: and try to figure out. But that's not what we
Speaker 1: read about in scripture, for example. To tie this into
Speaker 1: the South, the Bible Belt, the Bible, I grew up Protestant,
Speaker 1: and so I was, and I'm thankful for being given
Speaker 1: a lot of Biblical indoctrination and a biblical heritage, you
Speaker 1: could say, from the South. And I'm glad that we
Speaker 1: heard Flannery O'Connor sided many times. She's one of my favorites,
Speaker 1: and she talked about the South as Christ haunted, the
Speaker 1: Christ haunt, the ghost of Christ that haunts the South,
Speaker 1: because it's not exactly fully Christian, but there's the ghost.
Speaker 2: Of Christ there, which I think is a profound idea.
Speaker 1: And that's why Orthodoxy really makes the most sense for
Speaker 1: a Southerner, believe it or not, because everything that the
Speaker 1: Southerner kind of prioritizes kind of lines up with what
Speaker 1: Orthodoxy prioritizes, the virtues to honor the tradition, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But if we contrast this to the Latin theology of
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages, particularly Roman, Catholic, Tomistic, and even and
Speaker 1: Sealmian theology, we get, as I said, the move away
Speaker 1: from the beginning point of the person of the Father
Speaker 1: in our theology and our relationship with God, and they
Speaker 1: moved towards a philosophical essentialism, the monad as primary, thus
Speaker 1: subordinating the personal the existential to the metaphysical and the abstract. Thus,
Speaker 1: the philosophical God of the Hellenists, of Plato, of Aristotle,
Speaker 1: of the Pristocratics, et cetera, is a god of abstract principles,
Speaker 1: is more like a number or a force. The personal
Speaker 1: god that is Orthodox. In Orthodox Christianity is relational. He
Speaker 1: is not abstracted, he is not far off. In fact,
Speaker 1: Paul says this when he's preaching the Word is near you,
Speaker 1: even in your heart. So God, we could say, has
Speaker 1: being as one of his divine energies. But God is
Speaker 1: not identical to pure being, as the philosophers say, the
Speaker 1: God of the philosophers. If we were to contrast this
Speaker 1: deity to our deity, and I'm speaking kind of generally
Speaker 1: here as a survey of a lot of the Greek philosophers,
Speaker 1: cannot be in time and space. In fact, doctor ed
Speaker 1: Faser himself in his book Five Proofs, in the chapter
Speaker 1: on the Neoplatonic proof of the classical theist God, quote
Speaker 1: cannot be in time and space. Well, that might be
Speaker 1: a little problematic if you believe in the incarnation. This
Speaker 1: God is absolutely simple, undifferentiated unity, a pure monad, a
Speaker 1: purely active eternal actualizer in Aristotle impersonal thought, thinking itself
Speaker 1: eternally moving a world or the heavens. Opposite of him,
Speaker 1: this deity is cashed out in opposition to the many,
Speaker 1: to flux and to temporality. So what's ontologically better is
Speaker 1: the one is stasis and is eternality, and he's opposite
Speaker 1: all the things that are not that this God or
Speaker 1: this deity is eternally willing itself at all times for
Speaker 1: all eternity, and is thus unchanging and supposedly pure actuality.
Speaker 1: In fact, Quinas goes so far as to say that
Speaker 1: the divine persons are only notionally or conceptually distinct from
Speaker 1: the divine essence, and so in that sense it would
Speaker 1: seem like the divine persons.
Speaker 2: Are also reducible to pure actuality.
Speaker 1: Well, this is not the deity that becomes incarnate, the
Speaker 1: God of Aristotle, of Platonis, etc. If he is all
Speaker 1: of these categories and characteristics that we've listed these attributes,
Speaker 1: that's not a God who responds to prayer. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that God changes, but rather that God condescends
Speaker 1: to interact with and synergize with his creatures. It's not
Speaker 1: that we act upon him to change his essence or
Speaker 1: force him to do anything he wills to have that
Speaker 1: reciprocal relationship. But that is impossible for the God of
Speaker 1: the philosophers. So the God that we serve is not
Speaker 1: found in Roman Catholicism, Islam, Judaism, Unitarianism, etc. Because all
Speaker 1: of those religions and faiths explicitly want and desire a
Speaker 1: classical theist God. Now, many Roman Catholics are better than
Speaker 1: their theology. I'm not saying that they don't love God,
Speaker 1: or that they don't have degrees of grace and so forth.
Speaker 1: But the confession of system itself, the public theology that's dogmatized,
Speaker 1: is really the root issue here. That it attempted to
Speaker 1: make the faith accessible to the world, and thus classical
Speaker 1: Theism is just simply a foreign deity. The thing that
Speaker 1: I've noticed in the last seven or eight years of
Speaker 1: interacting with all kinds of people across the board, particularly
Speaker 1: all of the top Muslims. And I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: to a brag. I didn't ever expect that that happened
Speaker 1: totally providentially. I had no interest in Islam whatsoever. And
Speaker 1: we had some friends in the UK who became Orthodox,
Speaker 1: and one of them was for a while catechist under
Speaker 1: Bishop ere name, and he said, Jay, we've got to
Speaker 1: respond to Islam. And I said, why I live in
Speaker 1: the Bible Belt. I don't see Muslims, although now I
Speaker 1: do because this was twenty seventeen, and now when I
Speaker 1: go to Nashville, or if I drive around Jacksonville, I
Speaker 1: see mosques suddenly everywhere. We drove to Las Vegas last
Speaker 1: year and I saw a mosque on an Indian reservation.
Speaker 1: I started to read about the Saudis and others and
Speaker 1: how this is actually going down, and they've been putting
Speaker 1: billions of dollars for many, many years into Islamic education,
Speaker 1: the building of mosque and so forth. The point I'm
Speaker 1: saying is we will be encountering the Muslim discussion, I
Speaker 1: guarantee you in the next several years, because what we
Speaker 1: see in places like the UK, they're really just ten, fifteen,
Speaker 1: twenty years ahead of what's intended for us.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Maybe providentially won't get that way. I feel like it will, though.
Speaker 1: I feel like we will continue to encounter things like Islam,
Speaker 1: maybe not so much Judaism, although I've had had minimal
Speaker 1: jud debates with Jews.
Speaker 2: And so forth in the last few years.
Speaker 1: The point of all this is that there's a common
Speaker 1: threat I've noticed between the interactions with the Jews and
Speaker 1: the Muslims, and the Roman Catholics and the others, the
Speaker 1: other world religions, the Unitarian world faiths, is that the more,
Speaker 1: that we go to the scriptures, we see how preposterous
Speaker 1: those religions are, even though they lay claim to some
Speaker 1: degree of attachment to the Torah or something like that.
Speaker 1: We know that, of course Judaism is actually temutic. We
Speaker 1: know that Islam is actually based on copy paste weird
Speaker 1: things out of the scriptures, out of gnostic texts, and
Speaker 1: that Islam itself actually borrows from the Talmud. Many people
Speaker 1: don't know this, but there's quite a bit of tumutic
Speaker 1: influence on Islam as well. So what this gives us
Speaker 1: is this unknowable, unreachable Unitarian deity that's pretty much the
Speaker 1: same deity as the philosophers, the classical feist God, the
Speaker 1: god of pure act, who cannot be in time and space,
Speaker 1: cannot manifest. And when you debate with the more scholarly
Speaker 1: people from these religions, well Christianity and christ and the Trinity,
Speaker 1: it's all illogical, it's irrational, doesn't make any sense. And
Speaker 1: so Allah or Hushim or God or the thing the
Speaker 1: one has to be this perfect thing and perfection is
Speaker 1: a presupposition based on what they believe metaphysics dictates. But
Speaker 1: as we've seen tonight or today in the previous talks,
Speaker 1: again providentially, it fits perfectly with what I want to discuss.
Speaker 1: This deity is not that data. We do not put metaphysics,
Speaker 1: the arbitrary dogmas of Aristotle and Plato and Aquitness or
Speaker 1: whoever else before divine revelation doesn't mean that philosophy can't
Speaker 1: be a helpful tool. Certainly, the Cappadocians made heavy use
Speaker 1: of various Neoplatonic philosophical ideas, terminology, and so forth, say
Speaker 1: Maximus utilize both Neoplatonic and Aristotilian ideas and categories. But
Speaker 1: it's never, at least at least the intention is it.
Speaker 1: Maybe sometimes even some of the saints and fathers were
Speaker 1: too philosophical, but the intention was never to have philosophy
Speaker 1: dictate and confine divine revelation. And so though all way
Speaker 1: it goes so far as to say that in a
Speaker 1: strict sense God contradicts himself. Many Orthodox theologians have talked
Speaker 1: about God transcending logical categories and transcending the antinomies, or
Speaker 1: what we think from the humane vantage point, are oppositions
Speaker 1: or contradictions. The Trinity is a mystery. It transcends created
Speaker 1: logical categories, but it's not crazy or incoherent. Fact, it
Speaker 1: is itself foult all throughout divine revelation. The strongest case
Speaker 1: I've seen against Islam and Judaism has been in fact
Speaker 1: that the Old Testament teaches the Trinity everywhere, and if
Speaker 1: you really pay attention, with divine illumination, these Theophanes are
Speaker 1: quite often, almost usually Christophanes. So the Christophanes the long
Speaker 1: ago have refuted the unitarian deity of the philosophers and
Speaker 1: the Jews and the Muslims. And that's because our deity
Speaker 1: is much like the deity that appears to Jacob. In
Speaker 1: Genesis twenty eight, we read Jacob went out from the
Speaker 1: well of Oath towards Heran. He came to a certain
Speaker 1: place and stayed there all night because the sun had set.
Speaker 1: He took one of the stones of that place that
Speaker 1: has put it at his head, and he lay on
Speaker 1: that place to sleep. When he dreamed, behold he saw
Speaker 1: a ladder, and it was set up on the earth.
Speaker 1: Its top reached to heaven, and there the angels of
Speaker 1: God were ascending and descending upon it. Behold, the Lord
Speaker 1: stood above it. So the Lord is standing. And we
Speaker 1: find this many many times in the Theophanes that God
Speaker 1: comes down and he stands there, which is a bodily reference,
Speaker 1: even though Christ doesn't incarnate yet. The Lord stood and said,
Speaker 1: I am the Lord, God of Abraham, your father, and
Speaker 1: the God of Isaac. Do not fear. I will give
Speaker 1: you this land and you will be a great nation, etc.
Speaker 1: So again reiterating the promise to Abraham. And then in
Speaker 1: Genesis thirty one we have another Theophany, another appearance of
Speaker 1: Christ to Jacob. The angel Lord spoke to me in
Speaker 1: a dream, Jacob, here I am, lift up your eyes,
Speaker 1: see the male goats and the rams, etc. I am
Speaker 1: the God who appeared to you at Bethel. So an appearance,
Speaker 1: a manifestation of theophany where you anointed the pillar and
Speaker 1: made a vow I will be with you. And then
Speaker 1: we read. Then Jacob asked, this is Genesis thirty two.
Speaker 1: Tell me your name. He said, why do you ask
Speaker 1: my name? Very similar to what is said to Samson's parents.
Speaker 1: Why do you ask my name? Seeing as it is wonderful?
Speaker 1: So we know it's the same speaker that spoke to Manoah.
Speaker 1: Why do you ask my name? It is wonderful? He
Speaker 1: blessed him there. Jacob called that place the form of God.
Speaker 1: For I saw God's face. I saw God face to face,
Speaker 1: much like Moses is said to see God face to face.
Speaker 1: And thus my soul was saved when the form of
Speaker 1: God passed by the sun rose on him, but he
Speaker 1: limped on his hip. This is, of course, after the
Speaker 1: wrestling with the Lord. This makes no sense according to
Speaker 1: classical theism. This deity doesn't appear. He certainly doesn't wrestle
Speaker 1: with Jacob. He's not called the form in the face
Speaker 1: of God in time and space. That's just not philosophically possible.
Speaker 1: And yet once again, what do we read in Leviticus
Speaker 1: Leviticus nine, we have a very similar situation. But I
Speaker 1: really like this passage because problematic for any position that
Speaker 1: again wants to restrict what God can and can't do
Speaker 1: based on arbitrary categories of human created or created human logic.
Speaker 1: I know, saying God didn't create logic, but just calling
Speaker 1: it created categories. Aaron lifted up his hand towards the people.
Speaker 1: This is Liviticus not and he blessed them and came
Speaker 1: down from the sin offering, and they'll burnt offerings and
Speaker 1: the peace offerings After this, Moses and Aaron went into
Speaker 1: the tabernacle, and they came out and blessed all the people,
Speaker 1: and the glory of God appeared to all the people.
Speaker 1: How do all the people see the glory of God? Well,
Speaker 1: we know about the glory cloud in the Old Testament,
Speaker 1: and we know again in numbers twelve we're told that
Speaker 1: the Lord came down in the cloud, descended in the pillar,
Speaker 1: and stood at the door of the tabernacle. So again
Speaker 1: bodily movement standing there at the tabernacle. For example, when
Speaker 1: he appears to Gideon and Judges, I think it's a
Speaker 1: Judge six it says Yahweh turned his face to get in.
Speaker 1: The God of the philosophers doesn't have a face, he
Speaker 1: doesn't have a form, he doesn't manifest in time of space.
Speaker 1: He's not a Theophanic deity. Thus this is so key
Speaker 1: and so simple actually for those that are biblically literate
Speaker 1: in terms of combating and refuting other world religions that
Speaker 1: also lay claim to these same passages and texts.
Speaker 2: At least to some degree with Islam Judaism.
Speaker 1: But again, mainly I think Islam is the thing that
Speaker 1: we will be combating in the future because the system
Speaker 1: of the establishment of the global elite. They really see
Speaker 1: that this is a way to alter and change the West.
Speaker 1: More so than perhaps in the other cults or sex
Speaker 1: or groups, new agers or whatever. This one seems to
Speaker 1: have the real meat when it comes to altering people
Speaker 1: groups and changing demographic warfare. Let's just call it that.
Speaker 1: Well again, Philippians, too, we read that Christ, who was
Speaker 1: in the form of God, did not consider it robbery
Speaker 1: to be equal with God, but humble himself and took
Speaker 1: on our form. This is the famous Kenosis passage where
Speaker 1: we know that God willingly got the son, willingly limited
Speaker 1: himself in time and space. He didn't lose any in
Speaker 1: his powers, but in a sense, he didn't exercise every power,
Speaker 1: every dunamus that he had when he became incarnate. When
Speaker 1: he was walking around in Jerusalem, he was not doing
Speaker 1: the conflagration.
Speaker 2: He was not creating the world.
Speaker 1: This again is why there's a difference between what God
Speaker 1: is his essence, and what God does his actions or
Speaker 1: his energies. But if Christ is the deity that becomes
Speaker 1: incarnate and steps into time and space and becomes our advocate,
Speaker 1: our redeemer, our or savior, our perfect Man. Then it's
Speaker 1: not the god of classical theism, and all of the
Speaker 1: strivings of classical theism and the God of the philosophers
Speaker 1: really didn't amount to much. Thus, I think philosophy is
Speaker 1: kind of worthless. And I'm speaking here of worldly philosophy.
Speaker 1: Certainly we have Saint Justin, Martyr of the Philosopher, but
Speaker 1: even perhaps Justin at times might have been a little
Speaker 1: too philosophical. And certainly many of the disciples Tation and
Speaker 1: others who were known as the logos apologists made this
Speaker 1: mistake of putting philosophy in metaphysics before what we're actually
Speaker 1: taught in divine revelation. We read in Saint Justin Popovich
Speaker 1: Orthodox Faith in Life in Christ an excellent section where
Speaker 1: he talks about perfection. And you notice the idea of
Speaker 1: perfection in the classical theist tradition or the world religions
Speaker 1: is this metaphysical thing. It's the one that's got to
Speaker 1: be no distinctions, and it's out there. It's not in
Speaker 1: time and space, and it's totally abstract. It's this and that.
Speaker 2: It's eternal.
Speaker 1: It's opposite time and space and flux. But what a
Speaker 1: perfection isn't mainly just some metaphysical speculation. What if it's
Speaker 1: actually about a person. And I thought this was a
Speaker 1: really good insight that And again this matter is because
Speaker 1: when you say debate a Muslim, a Muslim says, well,
Speaker 1: God Allah is perfect because he's not in time of space.
Speaker 1: He can incarnate, That's why he's perfect. Well, how do
Speaker 1: we know that that's what is perfect? It's just an assumption.
Speaker 1: And Saint Josephovich says, was Plato perhaps the perfect man? Well,
Speaker 1: why did Plato want to leave this world to get
Speaker 1: back to the ideas, the eternal ideas? If he was
Speaker 1: the perfect man. What about Buddha, Well, Buddha wanted to
Speaker 1: escape and achieve nirvana, so he wasn't perfect. What about Moses, Well,
Speaker 1: Moses continued to seek help from heaven. Moses made his
Speaker 1: own mistakes. What about Mohammed, Well, Mohammad was a bloodthirsty
Speaker 1: warlord and he offered a sensual paradise after destroying the infidels,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't seem very perfect. What about Kant and
Speaker 1: the philosophy of German idealism? Now the meta rationalistic being
Speaker 1: on zick the world of the beyond that we can
Speaker 1: never know really.
Speaker 2: Puts us in a skeptical state.
Speaker 1: What about what about great literary figures like Shakespeare, say
Speaker 1: Justin Bobovitch as well, Shakespeare pointed us to the worlds above,
Speaker 1: But that doesn't really seem like a perfect man.
Speaker 2: And then he lists other characters, Nietzsche and others, And.
Speaker 1: What's missing in all these is that none of them
Speaker 1: are the god Man. What if the god Man is
Speaker 1: just simply the perfect Man, and that perfection isn't an
Speaker 1: abstract category that we judge God or metaphysics by, But
Speaker 1: the divine revelation of the Son of God is perfect God,
Speaker 1: perfect man, and thus the god Man himself is the
Speaker 1: perfect example of philosophy come to life life as living wisdom.
Speaker 1: Philosophy is an abstract really ultimately, I am the way,
Speaker 1: I'm the truth, and the life is a personal, living
Speaker 1: philosophical being, but not abstract philosophy. It's a lived, practical,
Speaker 1: experiential philosophy. He says, the one who has the fullness
Speaker 1: of mystery, the wondrous god Man, in a divine way,
Speaker 1: perfect and humanly real. His human goodness is divinely perfect
Speaker 1: and complete. His human love is divinely perfect and complete.
Speaker 1: So is his righteousness, his mercy, and his compassion, his eternality,
Speaker 1: and his beauty all are humanly real, but also divinely
Speaker 1: perfect and complete. Nothing is miraculous because he has transformed
Speaker 1: all things human to divine. He has completed and perfected
Speaker 1: everything by the divine. In one word, the whole man
Speaker 1: in him is divinely perfected and divinely completed. So he
Speaker 1: is the god Man. And I think that's really the
Speaker 1: key differentiation here is that at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: all this philosophical stuff, all these world religions, in the
Speaker 1: classical theist God, it's just missing the incarnation.
Speaker 2: And that's pretty much everything.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm over time or if this
Speaker 1: is the limit or where we're at.
Speaker 2: Is there any more.
Speaker 1: Five minutes? I'll take questions if anybody has any questions,
Speaker 1: four or five minutes only, So raise your.
Speaker 2: Hand if you have any questions, that's okay.
Speaker 1: Question, Okay, anybody got a question. We canna do five
Speaker 1: minutes of questions.
Speaker 2: I'm just curious that if you're going.
Speaker 4: To be talking to someone in an apologetic sense, if
Speaker 4: you're trying to use the word, how would you describe perfection?
Speaker 4: Because it's hard to break out a really common.
Speaker 1: Sense of the word depends on yeah, if you right,
Speaker 1: oh absolutely, if you're talking to your ever average, every
Speaker 1: day dude, you don't have to go into the philosophical
Speaker 1: stuff because most of the time people are going to
Speaker 1: be thinking in the way that Saint Justin Papovich is
Speaker 1: laying it out moral perfection. If you're talking to a
Speaker 1: philosophy guy or some trained Tomas, they're thinking in terms
Speaker 1: of metaphysical categories. But I agree with you that if
Speaker 1: you're talking with the philosophy guy, that's when I would say,
Speaker 1: how do we know that that's what perfection is? For example,
Speaker 1: they'll say something like, well, absolute unity is real true perfection. Well,
Speaker 1: I thought God was a triad, and the Cave Docians
Speaker 1: say that he's equally triad as much as he is Monat.
Speaker 1: He's not more one than he is three, or more
Speaker 1: three than he is one. So there's an equal ultimacy
Speaker 1: in the trinity. And so Thomas or Romancalock has an
Speaker 1: example or a Muslim, they're going to start their assumption
Speaker 1: about what perfection is with their system. Well, we know
Speaker 1: what perfection is because Allah is perfect, and to be
Speaker 1: perfect is to be purely one and to not be many.
Speaker 1: But then you say, well, well wait a minute, Alla
Speaker 1: has ninety nine attributes and most soon hees think they're
Speaker 1: really distinct. So now you're in a you know, a bind.
Speaker 1: So that's what I would do, and just say, how
Speaker 1: do we know what perfection is?
Speaker 2: On what standard?
Speaker 1: Great question?
Speaker 3: Other question, Jay, repeat the question for the recording.
Speaker 1: Yeah, his question was how do we know what to
Speaker 1: say in terms of apologetic discussions when the idea of
Speaker 1: what's perfection comes up? Which actually does come up quite
Speaker 1: a bit if you're talking to a Muslim or something
Speaker 1: like that, And I was distinguishing that from well, if
Speaker 1: you're talking to like a regular guy, they're probably thinking
Speaker 1: moral perfection and you don't have to worry too much
Speaker 1: about critiquing the word and the presuppositions. But if you're
Speaker 1: speaking to a philosophical guy, you might want to say,
Speaker 1: how do we know what perfection is? And says who
Speaker 1: where did you get that arbitrary standard? It's a question back.
Speaker 3: There, Jay louder.
Speaker 1: So, I think that the question was other religions talk
Speaker 1: of love.
Speaker 2: Buddha talks about love, other people talk about love. What
Speaker 2: is the difference for us?
Speaker 1: Love is twofold. There's human created love that every man
Speaker 1: every woman has to some degree for their relations for others,
Speaker 1: and there's uncreated love. None of these other world religions
Speaker 1: are going to have any conception of uncreated love and
Speaker 1: the participation in the uncreated energy of divine love.
Speaker 2: That's the big difference.
Speaker 1: So you have to stress create a creature distinction, and
Speaker 1: that none of the world religions because they don't have
Speaker 1: the us and centery literally, Orthodox Christianity is the only
Speaker 1: religion that has the Essen center distinction. Thus, to talk
Speaker 1: about love or other virtues, there's created versions of those
Speaker 1: that humans have. You can say naturally, but that's not
Speaker 1: all we need. We also need divine love and to
Speaker 1: meld with and to blend with, as the Capadocians say,
Speaker 1: not that we lose our created properties, but to really
Speaker 1: participate in uncreated love.
Speaker 2: That's the difference. And the world religions don't have that.
Speaker 1: I mean they have they might have some kind of
Speaker 1: melding into the the divine, but you lose your identity
Speaker 1: in your existence if you meld into that in other
Speaker 1: other world religions.
Speaker 2: So that's where the energies come in.
Speaker 1: Last one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this requires those uh. Regardless of whether or not
Speaker 4: God or still.
Speaker 1: An expredit area. God either exists as ab.
Speaker 4: And it's just the same way you and I do,
Speaker 4: and therefore under categories or exists as existence.
Speaker 1: In the set of categories like candy is a or
Speaker 1: existence in all categories and is like.
Speaker 4: The essence of existence itself, which is probably what's a
Speaker 4: most blades.
Speaker 1: Systems, which one of those three are implanting goodies, none
Speaker 1: of them. Saint Gregory Palama says that existence is a
Speaker 1: divine energy. So anything that you predicate of God, even
Speaker 1: God's unity, even God's existence, are themselves also energies. So
Speaker 1: it's none of those categories or systems, because Orthodox Christian
Speaker 1: theology is completely unique, all right,