Speaker 1: Up shop also.
Speaker 2: Saw Dom Dom Dom.
Speaker 3: Welcome, Welcome, another episode, another installment of Jay's analysis. We
Speaker 3: have a real treat tonight. We've got not just doctor Bradshaw,
Speaker 3: but a couple of my other cohorts. We've got, of course,
Speaker 3: Father Deacon, doctor Ananias, and we've got our good friend Lewis,
Speaker 3: the Ortho bro from our discord server. And we have,
Speaker 3: as said the eminent doctor David Bradshaw, thank you for joining.
Speaker 4: Us, well, pleasure to be here, thanks for having.
Speaker 3: Me absolutely, and he is the author, as we said
Speaker 3: in the description of the really really helpful work, especially
Speaker 3: if you're into philosophy, if you are a person who's
Speaker 3: from the tonistic background, if you have not heard of Aristotle,
Speaker 3: East and West, that's what you're gonna want to get into.
Speaker 3: And we're gonna go tonight, alternating in our questions from me,
Speaker 3: father Deacon Lewis, and we're gonna ask doctor Bradshaw. We're
Speaker 3: gonna pick his brain until he is basically past out,
Speaker 3: hopefully not from the coronavirus, but just passing out from
Speaker 3: the exhaustion of our increasingly difficult questions. We're not trying
Speaker 3: to stump him, but we want to enlist his wisdom
Speaker 3: in this in these these difficult topics. So we're gonna
Speaker 3: go from the more basic kind of questions that arise
Speaker 3: around the topics of Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Thomas Aquinas, Palamos, Energies, Aristotle,
Speaker 3: and we're gonna move into progressively maybe more complex levels
Speaker 3: of question up into some of the more tonistic scholars
Speaker 3: and their questions and responses. So I'm gonna let Lewis
Speaker 3: kind of take over as the MC, and then we're
Speaker 3: gonna have kind of back and forth roundtables. So Lewis,
Speaker 3: if you want to, you can introduce the first question.
Speaker 3: And remember, everybody, I've got links to If you go
Speaker 3: to my website, you'll see the link to doctor David
Speaker 3: Bradshaw's book. Highly recommend this book if you are into philosophy, Tomism,
Speaker 3: or any of these topics that we've discussed. So Lewis,
Speaker 3: I'll let you take over now.
Speaker 5: M Hello everyone, it's a pretty honor to be here.
Speaker 5: I just want to kind of sit it up as
Speaker 5: meta topics. So I guess, first of all, Dr Bradshaw,
Speaker 5: I read your book about two years ago now, and
Speaker 5: I thought it was really good because it traced really
Speaker 5: from the beginning to the end the concept of the
Speaker 5: energies from Aristont all the way to San Gregy, Panama.
Speaker 5: So I was just wondering if you could start you
Speaker 5: guys could or talk about a basic basic introductions.
Speaker 6: Yes, energy is distinction.
Speaker 5: Briefly, why it matters in real life, because.
Speaker 6: I know a lot of people think this is just
Speaker 6: abstract stuff.
Speaker 5: But why why it might actually matter in terms of
Speaker 5: real life, in church, in life as well as a
Speaker 5: history of the terms in Latin Greek.
Speaker 4: Uh huh, Well, yeah, I'm glad. I'm glad you kind
Speaker 4: of want to start there, because it is some thing
Speaker 4: that a lot of people, I think assume is esoteric
Speaker 4: and purely abstract, and it's really not. There.
Speaker 1: You.
Speaker 4: The word that we translate as energy is in the
Speaker 4: New Testament. It's a word that's used about well a
Speaker 4: couple of dozen times by Saint Paul counting. Also a
Speaker 4: verb inner gain that's cognitive to it. And the reason
Speaker 4: we don't we don't recognize that is because it's usually
Speaker 4: not translated as energy. It's usually translate translated as operation
Speaker 4: or working. And then you know, same with the verb
Speaker 4: it's translated as to operate or something like that. And
Speaker 4: there's a history for why it's translated that way. It
Speaker 4: really goes back to the Vulgate in Latin. But if
Speaker 4: you look at these occurrences in Saint Paul closely, and
Speaker 4: I've written an article where I do this in some detail,
Speaker 4: I think it's pretty clear that he is talking about
Speaker 4: what we would call energy. He's talking about the activity
Speaker 4: of God as it is present and active in him
Speaker 4: or elsewhere in the church, enabling him or the church
Speaker 4: to do what it does to you, enabling his ministry
Speaker 4: to take place. So one example of that Colossians one
Speaker 4: twenty nine. Here's a verse where he says, for this
Speaker 4: I toil striving with all the anergion, all the energy
Speaker 4: which he that is Christ is inspiring. Or it's actually
Speaker 4: a passive verb, which actually I would translate it as
Speaker 4: being which is being effectively realized an ergo menane within me.
Speaker 4: So he used to the word twice in this one verse.
Speaker 4: Once is a noun, once is a verb an erga menane.
Speaker 4: And what he's referring to is that Christ is active
Speaker 4: and present within him and enabling him to perform his ministry,
Speaker 4: to do all that he does and that doesn't mean
Speaker 4: that he's therefore a puppet or some kind of you know,
Speaker 4: programmed robot that God is simply controlling. This is his
Speaker 4: own free activity, but now it's also God's activity, and
Speaker 4: so what he's really describing here is what people often
Speaker 4: call synergy, which is that union of human with divine activity.
Speaker 4: And you know, if you want to try to translate
Speaker 4: the word synergy, I guess you'd have to translate at cooperation.
Speaker 4: But that really doesn't capture the full force of the
Speaker 4: idea because cooperation is typically between two independent agents, whereas
Speaker 4: synergy is where one agent, God is acting in another
Speaker 4: and thereby enabling that other, the creature in this case
Speaker 4: of Saint Paul, to be himself and to do what
Speaker 4: he was meant to do, what he was created to do.
Speaker 4: So it's really only, properly speaking, the Creator who can
Speaker 4: do this. Now, there are passages where Saint Paul also
Speaker 4: refers to a kind of demonic an airbea as well
Speaker 4: in Second Thessalonians and others. Let's see, I could find
Speaker 4: those if you like. But it's kind of mimicking in
Speaker 4: a way this divine activity. Well, all of this was
Speaker 4: recognized by the early Church fathers. If you go through
Speaker 4: and you look at the works of the Apostolic Fathers
Speaker 4: and then the Greek apologists in the second century, people
Speaker 4: like Justin Martyr and Athanagaris and others, what you find
Speaker 4: is they used this word group very much in a
Speaker 4: way that kind of mimics the way Saint Paul is
Speaker 4: using it, and that's a difference from the way it
Speaker 4: had been used earlier throughout prior Greek literature. So you
Speaker 4: mentioned the history of the word, so let me just
Speaker 4: touch on that. And ergia actually is a word that
Speaker 4: was coined by Aristotle, and it literally means being at work,
Speaker 4: and then you have aragon, which is work or deed,
Speaker 4: and so he put those two together to mean the
Speaker 4: state of being at work or being active. So an
Speaker 4: Aristotle it's often translated as activity. But the things that's
Speaker 4: kind of different in Aristotle that's a little more subtle
Speaker 4: and nuanced, is that Aristotle also, you know, as a metaphysician,
Speaker 4: he's interested in, well, what distinguishes an activity from the
Speaker 4: capacity to act, And so the difference is at least
Speaker 4: in part, that the activity is something actual and real,
Speaker 4: whereas the capacity is just to something potential. And so
Speaker 4: an ergia also becomes a word he uses for what
Speaker 4: we would call actuality, and that's it's translated that way
Speaker 4: as well. Well anyway, that's you know, we can get
Speaker 4: back to that. But what happened in later Greek then
Speaker 4: was that it became a common term for activity, but
Speaker 4: not just of God. It was used for activity of
Speaker 4: the natural elements, of the organs of the body of
Speaker 4: you know, a doctor who's operating on a patient. Pretty
Speaker 4: much any active agent you could speak of, that agent's anergia.
Speaker 4: It was really only within Saint Paul that he restricts
Speaker 4: it just to referring to supernatural agents, whether God or Christ,
Speaker 4: or the Holy Spirit or or else. Like I mentioned,
Speaker 4: demonic activity that's active in another, okay, and it's sort
Speaker 4: of empowering and enabling that other. And that's what the
Speaker 4: what the early Church fathers picked up on. And so
Speaker 4: from that point in the second century on, it became
Speaker 4: almost a technical term in Patristic Greek for this idea
Speaker 4: of supernatural activity that bestows some kind of an energy
Speaker 4: or capacity to do things that one couldn't do otherwise.
Speaker 4: And you see that, like I mentioned, a lot in
Speaker 4: the Greek apologists they use it very frequently for the
Speaker 4: activity of demons, you know, because that was that's a
Speaker 4: major theme in their work, because they considered the pagan
Speaker 4: gods to be demons and they saw that demonic activity
Speaker 4: in the world around them. And then well, later, okay,
Speaker 4: to skip ahead a little bit, in the fourth century.
Speaker 4: It comes up very prominently in the Trinitarian controversies because Athanasius,
Speaker 4: in one of his late works, called the Letters to
Speaker 4: Serapion in the early three sixties, he has to face
Speaker 4: this question. Well, you know, he's already argued extensively by
Speaker 4: that point that the Son is of one essence homusion
Speaker 4: with the Father. But then in this late work the
Speaker 4: issue has kind of shifted to the divinity of the
Speaker 4: Holy Spirit, and so he gives to come up with
Speaker 4: a sort of a more general argument for well, how
Speaker 4: do we know that the three persons, Father, Son, and
Speaker 4: Holy Spirit are equally divine and are all fiddly called God.
Speaker 4: And his argument is, well, they share the same and
Speaker 4: arrogant What he means by that, as he explains, it
Speaker 4: is that anything one of them does, the others are
Speaker 4: also involved in and cooperating, and in fact are equally
Speaker 4: active in that act. So he gives the example of
Speaker 4: creation in Genesis, where God speaks and the word that
Speaker 4: he speaks, the Logos is in a sense the Son,
Speaker 4: or at least the Son, as he is active in creation.
Speaker 4: The logos is sort of the uttered word of the Father,
Speaker 4: and the spirit of God was upon the waters. And
Speaker 4: so you see already, you know, in the first couple
Speaker 4: of verses of Genesis, you see the three persons of
Speaker 4: the Trinity already involved cooperating in the act of creation
Speaker 4: and with redemption or prophetic inspiration. You know, same kind
Speaker 4: of thing. That it's the word of God that comes
Speaker 4: to the prophet and he's moved by the spirit. Right,
Speaker 4: and when Christ becomes incarnate, it's by the will of
Speaker 4: the Father that the Son becomes incarnate. And you know, Luke,
Speaker 4: when it describes it, it's the Holy Spirit that comes
Speaker 4: upon and overshadows the theatopahs. So his point is that
Speaker 4: because they share the same and air view. And here
Speaker 4: I think it is activity, okay, activity operation, that's fine
Speaker 4: because that's one. Therefore there who see it as one.
Speaker 4: So it's an inference, and that becomes a really sent
Speaker 4: idea in Patristic teaching about the trinity, and from that beginning,
Speaker 4: you know, that kind of dual in beginning in a sense,
Speaker 4: I mean the pauline meaning that the kind of centers
Speaker 4: around the idea of synergy, and then the trinitarian meaning
Speaker 4: you know, later patristic thought sort of builds upon that basis,
Speaker 4: and a raga becomes one of the words that they use.
Speaker 4: It's not the only one, but it is one important
Speaker 4: word they use to describe God as he is present
Speaker 4: and active in the world. You know, So one of
Speaker 4: the famous passages. I guess I'll just mention this or
Speaker 4: maybe read a little bit of it, and then I'll
Speaker 4: stop because I've gone on a long time. But this
Speaker 4: is a real locus classicist for the whole idea. This
Speaker 4: is Saint Basil's Epistol two thirty four. He's replying to
Speaker 4: a Eunomian. Now, Eunomians were kind of aryan. They were
Speaker 4: denied the divinity of the sun, and uh. The the
Speaker 4: argument that he's replying to here was that, well, you
Speaker 4: you people like Basil, the Cappadocians and others who are
Speaker 4: defending Niceah, you say that the essence of God is unknowable.
Speaker 4: The Usiah. That's the word that we usually translate essence.
Speaker 4: And uh, the Eunomians ridicule that because they said, well,
Speaker 4: then how how do you know who it is that
Speaker 4: you're worshiping if you don't know the divine essence? Okay, Well,
Speaker 4: so that's the the the argument that Basil is replying to.
Speaker 4: Now here's what Basil says. He says, we say that
Speaker 4: we know the greatness of God, his power, his wisdom,
Speaker 4: his goodness, his providence over us, and the justness of
Speaker 4: his judgment, but not his very essence or lucia. But God,
Speaker 4: this interlocutor says, is simple, and whatever attribute of Him
Speaker 4: you have reckoned as knowable is of his essence. That's
Speaker 4: the view that he's replying to. Well, Basil says, the
Speaker 4: absurdities involved in this sophism are innumerable. When all these
Speaker 4: high attributes have been enumerated, the wisdom, the goodness, and
Speaker 4: so on, are they all names of one essence? And
Speaker 4: is there the same mutual force in his awfulness and
Speaker 4: his loving kindness, his justice and his creative power, his
Speaker 4: providence and his foreknowledge, his bestow of rewards and punishments,
Speaker 4: his majesty and his providence. In mentioning any of these
Speaker 4: do we declare his essence. The energies and their gai
Speaker 4: are various in the essence simple, but we say that
Speaker 4: we know our God from his energies, but do not
Speaker 4: undertake to approach near to his essence. His energies come
Speaker 4: down to us, but his essence remains beyond our reach.
Speaker 4: And so that becomes sort of the governing idea that
Speaker 4: the energies, which include things like God's power, wisdom, goodness, providence,
Speaker 4: fore knowledge, bestole of rewards and punishments, etc. Both attributes
Speaker 4: and activities, Okay, and that's sort of the way we
Speaker 4: would tend to distinguish those. But Basil does not. He
Speaker 4: considers them all to be divine energies. And the energies
Speaker 4: come down to us. They're what we can know and share,
Speaker 4: participate in, whereas the Essence remains beyond them as their
Speaker 4: source and can never be known, not only by us
Speaker 4: but even by any creature, including the agents. And that
Speaker 4: too becomes just a fundamental teaching of the Greek fathers
Speaker 4: and all that's in the fourth century, you know, Athanasius
Speaker 4: and Basil and the other competition's fourth century, so long
Speaker 4: before later Byzantines that people sometimes assume wrongly I think
Speaker 4: originated these ideas. They didn't. It was really in the
Speaker 4: fourth century that most of it all came together. And
Speaker 4: then later authors like you know, Saint Maximus or Pomaus,
Speaker 4: they did they kind of systemaized systematized it a little more.
Speaker 4: But the basic ideas are already there at the time
Speaker 4: of Saint Days.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd like to add that that's one of the
Speaker 3: clearest places. Definitely, you can also go to when Basil
Speaker 3: defends on the Holy Spirit. He'll actually argue that very
Speaker 3: point front as you pointed out from Athanasius, that the
Speaker 3: common energy signifies common nature. So if the Son and
Speaker 3: the Holy Spirit possess the same powers and energies that
Speaker 3: the Father has, it stands to reason that they have
Speaker 3: the same nature. And you'll find that that line of
Speaker 3: argmentation all the way up into as you said, even
Speaker 3: Saint John Damascus will say that energy is the signifier
Speaker 3: of nature, is not identical to it, but it's the
Speaker 3: signifier of it. I'd also recommend, I know, just for
Speaker 3: the sake of the audience a lot of people out there,
Speaker 3: this comes up a lot, especially when we discuss with
Speaker 3: Roman Catholics, the topic of what is athenationis view of simplicity.
Speaker 3: And if you read the famous Florowsky paper Creation st.
Speaker 3: Athanasians in the doction of Creation, he'll show you demonstrably,
Speaker 3: I think, beyond any shadow of a doubt doctor Bradshaw's
Speaker 3: point that Athanasius was really making this distinction between what
Speaker 3: pertains to God's counsel and will and what actions pertain
Speaker 3: to him naturally. And if you don't make that distinction,
Speaker 3: you're kind of forced into the position that the Arians had.
Speaker 3: So anyway, I just want to stress that point. But yeah,
Speaker 3: that was great. Lewis you want to or father Deacon,
Speaker 3: you want to ask anything.
Speaker 7: Let's see, I'm trying to hold off doctor Bradshaw the
Speaker 7: more sophisticated questions towards the end.
Speaker 8: Let's see.
Speaker 7: Oh, you know what would be interesting, since you already
Speaker 7: picked up on you touched a little bit on this,
Speaker 7: that perhaps some people get concerned that we Orthodox have
Speaker 7: a doctrine of development, because you see that these words,
Speaker 7: whether it be energeia, kind of develop and become used
Speaker 7: in different sense or even let's say hypostasis, the way that.
Speaker 8: The Greeks and the philosophers use.
Speaker 7: That is to be I mean the Latin word substantia,
Speaker 7: like the usia, and how this changed over time to
Speaker 7: respond to certain issues that were coming up within the
Speaker 7: history of the church. How that's not actually development of doctrine,
Speaker 7: but being able to have the freedom to use the
Speaker 7: richness of these words, but being able to give them
Speaker 7: different nuances. You've already kind of touched a little bit
Speaker 7: on that. Perhaps you would like to say some more
Speaker 7: about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, there's a difference between development and the sense
Speaker 4: of change and development in the sense of articulation and
Speaker 4: use use of new terms to state more clearly, or
Speaker 4: at least in terms that are intelligible to a new audience,
Speaker 4: a different audience, what was already believed.
Speaker 3: I mean, with the.
Speaker 4: Trinity, I don't think we believe in the Trinity any
Speaker 4: more firmly or clearly than it's Saint Peter or Saint Paul.
Speaker 4: In fact, it's from them that we learn our belief,
Speaker 4: as well as from the from the gospels. Right, So
Speaker 4: although we do with words like usia and apostasis, is
Speaker 4: try to state that existing belief in a way that's
Speaker 4: efficiently clear that it can be understood in a modern context,
Speaker 4: or you know, with those terms even a fourth say
Speaker 4: a fourth century context. You know that, and that's that's
Speaker 4: always going to be the case, that language evolves, society changes,
Speaker 4: and terms you know that made sense or that were
Speaker 4: adequate at one time no longer really resonate in a
Speaker 4: new time. And that's fine. On the other hand, you know,
Speaker 4: whenever you do that, whenever you do that active articulation,
Speaker 4: you have to make sure that you really are articulating
Speaker 4: what's already there and not introducing something new. And that's
Speaker 4: why I think it's important with the essence and Energies,
Speaker 4: just as one can with the Trinity, you know, to
Speaker 4: show the biblical basis and to you know, that's it's
Speaker 4: very helpful that in a way, and the essence energies
Speaker 4: is in a way even more firmly grounded in scripture
Speaker 4: than those words we see an apostasis, which are not
Speaker 4: in the New Testament, at least not in the meaning
Speaker 4: that they later had, whereas an ergia is right there
Speaker 4: in the works of Saint Paul.
Speaker 3: I want to ask a question that's on the basic
Speaker 3: level of things too. On that very point you did well,
Speaker 3: I think in the book and kind of hearkening back
Speaker 3: to this being the in continuity with the original revelation
Speaker 3: given to Moses. Can you talk about how we see
Speaker 3: this in Exodus. We see the revelation of God's goodness
Speaker 3: to Moses, and yet at the same time we're told
Speaker 3: in scripture that no man can see God and live,
Speaker 3: and yet Moses saw God face to face, talked with him,
Speaker 3: and was a friend of Christ. Actually it's who it is.
Speaker 3: So maybe you could explain that, you know, this kind
Speaker 3: of goes back and then up into even the period
Speaker 3: of Filo.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Right, There is a long tradition of reflection on the
Speaker 4: biblical Theophanes, and you know it's complex, and these theophanes
Speaker 4: are mysterious, typically like the Burning Bush as well as
Speaker 4: the one you mentioned is the encounter with God in
Speaker 4: the darkness on the top of Mount Sinai and Exodus
Speaker 4: thirty three, and you know that one in particular is
Speaker 4: sort of helpful because you find in that passage this
Speaker 4: distinction where God says, no man can see my face
Speaker 4: and live, but I'll put you in the cleft of
Speaker 4: the rock, and I'll pass by, and you shall see
Speaker 4: my glory and you'll see my backside. But anyways, as
Speaker 4: the text goes on, what he sees is described as
Speaker 4: God's glory, and so the Greek fathers, like Gregor the
Speaker 4: theologian is one kind of keyed in on that, and
Speaker 4: they correlated that with this distinction that's also in that
Speaker 4: passage I read from Saint Basil between the divine nature
Speaker 4: as it is in itself or in its own right,
Speaker 4: and God as he is known only to himself, okay.
Speaker 4: And then what Greger Nancansen calls the nature that reaches
Speaker 4: down to us or another term they used is the
Speaker 4: things around God, and that they'll often identify with the
Speaker 4: divine glory from scription. So this is very important, you know,
Speaker 4: for some of the later Greek fathers, also because another
Speaker 4: revelation of the divine glory may be sort of the
Speaker 4: climactic revelation is the transfiguration, and it's the transfiguration. The
Speaker 4: disciples see this radiant glory around Christ, and that's what
Speaker 4: the monks, you know, they're practicing the prayer of the Heart,
Speaker 4: particularly in the later era in the fourteenth century, you know,
Speaker 4: at the time of Saint Gregor Palamas, they also experienced
Speaker 4: that uncreated light and they identified it with the light
Speaker 4: that shined around Christ at the transfiguration what they call
Speaker 4: the taborical life right table, and that was really you know,
Speaker 4: that identification they made was what sparked the whole controversy
Speaker 4: that occurred in fourteenth century. But the idea that they
Speaker 4: were using and that tradition of interpretation, you know, it
Speaker 4: does go back way way back in history if you
Speaker 4: want to trace it back to Philo. Filo is one
Speaker 4: who does identify the divine power, if I recall correctly
Speaker 4: in the Divine Glory, and if you know, in Philo,
Speaker 4: the idea is that well, anything any name we give
Speaker 4: to God, we're always naming one of the divine powers.
Speaker 4: Both Lord curios and God fails, he says or names
Speaker 4: of different divine powers. And already in Philo, you know,
Speaker 4: before even Christianity, he already has this idea that the
Speaker 4: divine essence is something that cannot be known or named
Speaker 4: in itself. What we can name and what we can
Speaker 4: know are the powers that come from it, and that
Speaker 4: it sort of executes. And the Greek fathers adapt that idea,
Speaker 4: but they typically they'll use the word power us, but
Speaker 4: they'll also use the word in rabia activity. And ultimately
Speaker 4: an ergea becomes sort of the more prominent term there.
Speaker 4: But it's a similar idea that that essence, it's unknowable
Speaker 4: in itself or as it is in itself, is knowable
Speaker 4: in its revelation, in its in its manifest activity. So yeah,
Speaker 4: and that's really what you see in all the Biblical theophonies.
Speaker 4: The burning bush would be another case that we would identify,
Speaker 4: you know, as a revelation the manifestation of the uncreated light.
Speaker 4: And there are other cases of the divine worry in
Speaker 4: the Old Testament as well, So all of those are
Speaker 4: also sort of contributing to this interpretation of that term
Speaker 4: in Erbia in that the divine glory from scriptures to
Speaker 4: be understood is in a way that the visible form
Speaker 4: of the divine in Eric.
Speaker 6: Lewis Yes, so as alive, I just I just missed
Speaker 6: my cue, I guess.
Speaker 5: As a as a convert from atheism, I became very
Speaker 5: I took on a very kind of tomistic concept of
Speaker 5: God because it seemed very coherent and intelligent.
Speaker 6: And one of the reasons why that was for me
Speaker 6: at least, was.
Speaker 5: The the classical arguments, you know, the five ways for example,
Speaker 5: and they all conclude with God, as you know, pure act,
Speaker 5: so and you know, on on the basis of their
Speaker 5: not being able to be any any potency in God
Speaker 5: mm hmm. And so shifting this up a gear, getting
Speaker 5: a bit more technical, I was wondering if you could
Speaker 5: go through, because in your book you could you talk
Speaker 5: about dunamis and then you talk about the grades of
Speaker 5: act and potency in.
Speaker 6: Relation to God.
Speaker 5: I was wondering if you could talk about that, how
Speaker 5: we would understand God as perhaps pure act and how
Speaker 5: we would conceive of divine simplicity.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, Well there's a you know, a lot of
Speaker 4: history there also. That concept of God is pure act
Speaker 4: is one that really goes back to Aristotle in Metaphysics
Speaker 4: LaMDA Lambda six, where he first introduces the idea of
Speaker 4: the prime mover. He says that the prime mover is
Speaker 4: that his Usiah, his essence is an erga okay, and
Speaker 4: as Aristotle is using the word there and you know,
Speaker 4: as he goes on to explain this in the next chapter,
Speaker 4: and Ergia I think is both activity and actuality, okay,
Speaker 4: because what he was goes on to explain is that
Speaker 4: the activity that the prime mover performs is thought nosis,
Speaker 4: you know, And it makes this famous statement that it's
Speaker 4: thinking is a thinking of thinking, self thinking thought. That's
Speaker 4: how some people sometimes describe the Prime Mover, and that's
Speaker 4: in a sense all that it does, all that it
Speaker 4: or he. You know, it's not really clear that we're
Speaker 4: talking about a person here, but Aristotle does use I
Speaker 4: think of masculine pronoun all that Aristotle's God does. But
Speaker 4: that thinking, then, because of its perfect full actuality, is
Speaker 4: and also because of another key idea from Aristotle, okay
Speaker 4: that from the dayanima, that thought at the highest level
Speaker 4: of actuality is identical with its object. And I can
Speaker 4: come back to that if you want to, but just
Speaker 4: for the moment, let's just posit that. Well, because of that,
Speaker 4: the Prime Mover's thinking, the object of its thought is
Speaker 4: in one sense, it's itself. In another sense, it's everything,
Speaker 4: the whole intelligible content of reality. And one simple way
Speaker 4: to kind of see that is that if that were
Speaker 4: not the case, then there would be something that the
Speaker 4: Prime Mover could still learn and still find out about it.
Speaker 4: And he denies that when he says that it's Usia
Speaker 4: is in arrogant because what he also argues in that
Speaker 4: same passage is that there's nothing that the prime mover
Speaker 4: could do that it doesn't already do from all eternity,
Speaker 4: and so pure actuality, pure actuality, there's very essence is actuality.
Speaker 7: You get this in book twelve, Chapter I'm trying to
Speaker 7: see what is that ten seventy one.
Speaker 4: Anyways, go ahead, yeah, yeah, Book twelve is lambda, Chapter six,
Speaker 4: I believe so. Yeah, so, so that's the idea of Aristotle. Now,
Speaker 4: Aristotle's God is not a creator. Okay, Aristotle believes the
Speaker 4: cosmos has always existed. What his God is is the
Speaker 4: highest is the highest first principle, the arkae, and the
Speaker 4: intelligible cause of everything else, at least of the order
Speaker 4: and the intelligibility of everything else. But he doesn't ever
Speaker 4: do anything in the sense of calling things into being
Speaker 4: out of nothing, and he certainly doesn't do anything in
Speaker 4: the sense of answering prayer or performing miracles or giving
Speaker 4: a revelation. Again, that's just not the kind of being
Speaker 4: we're talking about here. We're talking about a philosophical first principle,
Speaker 4: but not an active personal god. Well, okay, so for Aristotle,
Speaker 4: there's really not problem in saying that what the prime
Speaker 4: move does, it does eternally, continually and necessarily because you know,
Speaker 4: we're not trying to make room for anything like free
Speaker 4: will or free choice, much less for reciprocity or interaction,
Speaker 4: you know, with their creature. Well, because of that, this
Speaker 4: is not at the first glance at least a very
Speaker 4: promising idea to sort of pick up and transpose into
Speaker 4: Christian theology. And the Church Fathers didn't do so. I mean,
Speaker 4: they were aware of Aristotle, he was a well known
Speaker 4: author in antiquity, but they make very little use, in fact,
Speaker 4: pertually no use of Aristotle's theology. They do make use
Speaker 4: of his logic, and in the fifth century, you know,
Speaker 4: to no aristateologic sort of becomes required education for anyone
Speaker 4: who's going to get involved in the Christological controversies, and
Speaker 4: they'll they'll use aristatia and terminology like form and matter,
Speaker 4: species and genus essence. But this idea of God is
Speaker 4: pure act who has no unrealized capacities doesn't really appear
Speaker 4: in Patristic Greek Patristic theology. The place it does enter
Speaker 4: Christian thought is in the thirteenth century in the West.
Speaker 4: And you know what's important here is that the works
Speaker 4: of Aristotle, apart from the logical works that have been
Speaker 4: translated by Believius, but most of Aristotle's Corpus was unknown
Speaker 4: in the West for most of the Middle Ages until
Speaker 4: the thirteenth century, and suddenly there was this influx of
Speaker 4: translations into Latin, and it was a little bit overwhelming,
Speaker 4: you know, because these are works of so much sophistication
Speaker 4: in such deep thought that they presented a challenge to
Speaker 4: the Christian thinkers.
Speaker 8: In the West.
Speaker 4: How do we, you know, maintain our own belief in
Speaker 4: the face of this, given that Aristotle, say, does deny
Speaker 4: the world came into being. He also denies the immortality
Speaker 4: of the soul. So they're clear issues. But how can we,
Speaker 4: you know, how can we reject Aristotle given the power
Speaker 4: of his reason? And so it became sort of the
Speaker 4: central agenda in particularly the University of Paris in the
Speaker 4: thirteenth century, to show that either they're compatible or that
Speaker 4: Aristotle can be refuted where necessary, and so people lack aquittance.
Speaker 4: But also others like Albertus Magnus and even you know,
Speaker 4: to some extent, Saint Bonaventure. We're all we're engaged in
Speaker 4: this project of sort of wrestling with Aristotle and appropriating
Speaker 4: the parts that they could and refuting the parts that
Speaker 4: they believe no Christian could accept. Well, Aristotle was a
Speaker 4: little bit more toward the appropriating end, I guess than
Speaker 4: say Saint Bonaventure was. So he did incorporate a great
Speaker 4: deal of aristatute and theology, and including as you mentioned,
Speaker 4: the five ways. Well, the first two of them are
Speaker 4: you know, the first one in particular, the argument from
Speaker 4: emotion is right out of Aristotle, but even the second
Speaker 4: and the third are sort of an airstatic form, a
Speaker 4: pattern of reasoning that's based on the rejection of an
Speaker 4: infinite regress. Well, so he then, coming out of the
Speaker 4: five ways, and especially the first way, draws the same
Speaker 4: conclusion that Aristotle had, namely that God is pure act
Speaker 4: in Latin, its act as pueris. And in my opinion,
Speaker 4: that's kind of, you know, a wrench in the works
Speaker 4: from the beginning for for his whole project, because this
Speaker 4: idea that was so natural and so much at home
Speaker 4: within Aristotle's way of thinking about God. It is very
Speaker 4: hard to reconcile with the Christian understanding of God, because,
Speaker 4: you know, Christianity, God acts. He does choose to create,
Speaker 4: He could have not created. There are many many things
Speaker 4: he could have done differently, which all looks like he
Speaker 4: has capacities to act in ways that he doesn't, okay,
Speaker 4: and so those those are unrealized capacities. And furthermore, he
Speaker 4: not only acts, he interacts. He is in some sense,
Speaker 4: and I grant you this is you know, has to
Speaker 4: be kind of worked through carefully. But you know, he's
Speaker 4: grieved over our sin, and he loves us, and he
Speaker 4: rejoices when we repent and turned to him. And you know,
Speaker 4: this again is very scriptural, and you really can't have
Speaker 4: Christianity without embracing that reciprocity that exists between God and man.
Speaker 3: Deed, if pure actuality doesn't become.
Speaker 4: Incarnate, right, Yeah, well, the incarnation is sort of the
Speaker 4: climax of that reciprocity, where God takes on the Sun
Speaker 4: takes on the form of a server.
Speaker 5: So it sounds like you're teasing out a kind of
Speaker 5: potency that is acceptable within our framework of simplicity.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, power nuonymous is also you can ord
Speaker 4: you can often translate potency or potentiality. But yes, God
Speaker 4: has many do names, and there's no intrinsic necessity to
Speaker 4: his nature that he has to realize all of them
Speaker 4: in every poble a way, because he's infinite, you know,
Speaker 4: and so why should we think that he has to
Speaker 4: realize every every every act he could possibly perform. That
Speaker 4: just seems crazy. And there's nothing in the in the
Speaker 4: Bible that would suggest that, and nothing in the teaching
Speaker 4: of the fathers. So you know, if you want to
Speaker 4: call that an unrealized capacity, I think it's fine. I
Speaker 4: don't see any problem with that, as long as we
Speaker 4: realize that that's not in any way an imperfection, and
Speaker 4: it's also not any way in which see I think when.
Speaker 7: Yeah, doctor Bradshaw, Oh yeah, yeah, could you talk about
Speaker 7: that that with the latinization of denonness and energe into
Speaker 7: potency and actuality, that the kind of a lot of
Speaker 7: understanding potency is a lack of perfection. Yeah, if you're
Speaker 7: already kind of touching on it, So if you just
Speaker 7: for the audience, might kind of explain that, so we
Speaker 7: could talk about NamUs actually not being the lack of perfection.
Speaker 8: But if you move into kind of a very strict.
Speaker 7: Latinization of what, for example, Aquinas means by potency, then
Speaker 7: you kind of restrict the way that you can speak
Speaker 7: about this, because potency really is a lack of perfection.
Speaker 4: Right it is. Well, it's really, as I understand, at least,
Speaker 4: an idea that that also comes from Aristyle Aristotle in
Speaker 4: Book A to the Physics. You know, he develops this
Speaker 4: complex argument that does lead to the conclusion that there
Speaker 4: is some prime mover, some first mover. But part of
Speaker 4: that argument is that everything that's moved ultimately is moved
Speaker 4: by something else, uh the and the only only one
Speaker 4: thing is moves without being moved, and that's the prime mover,
Speaker 4: the unmoved mover. Everything else both moves and is moved,
Speaker 4: and that being moved obviously requires some prior mover. So
Speaker 4: nothing that's potential can be realized as actual without the
Speaker 4: agency of some prior cause. All right, that's the key idea.
Speaker 4: And this is also something that's prominent in the metaphysics
Speaker 4: of Aristotle, and there he kind of refers to it
Speaker 4: as the priority of actuality. That's in book nine. Okay,
Speaker 4: priority of actuality over dunamus or potentiality. Well, so that's
Speaker 4: why on this Aristatuti and I view, the presence of
Speaker 4: an unrealized capacity or dunamus would be a kind of imperfection,
Speaker 4: because there would have to be some external agent that's
Speaker 4: going to bring that capacity into realization. And so people
Speaker 4: sometimes think that if you say God has unrealized capacities,
Speaker 4: that you're saying, oh, so he he's imperfect because something
Speaker 4: will have to act upon him to realize that capacity.
Speaker 4: But that's not correct. That's again, I think if anything,
Speaker 4: a kind of an aristatute and prejudice. You know, it's
Speaker 4: precisely who God is that he can act spontaneously. I mean,
Speaker 4: that's the whole idea. Whether that's what creation max Neilo
Speaker 4: is exactly, yeah, right, there's nothing that acts upon God
Speaker 4: to make him create. So I just reject that premise
Speaker 4: that that every that no capacity can be realized without
Speaker 4: the agency of some prior.
Speaker 3: Agent.
Speaker 4: I just don't think that's correct.
Speaker 5: So that is really to strike at the core of
Speaker 5: what simplicity is in Orthodox Christianity.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well again, you know, it's a lot of this
Speaker 4: in the West comes from the attempt to incorporate as
Speaker 4: much as they could of that Aristotilian framework. And you know,
Speaker 4: as someone who works in the history philosophy, when I
Speaker 4: look at that now, you know, I'll probably offend some
Speaker 4: Tomas who are out there because they have their own
Speaker 4: way of reading this history. But when I look at
Speaker 4: this history, I just see a lot of what occurred
Speaker 4: in the West, in the Middle Ages was sort of
Speaker 4: people were, you know, groping in the darkness because they
Speaker 4: didn't have access to all the sources. They didn't have
Speaker 4: the works of Plato, they didn't have Platinus, they didn't
Speaker 4: have any of the Middle Platonists, they didn't have most
Speaker 4: of the works of the Greek fathers. And so when
Speaker 4: Aristotle's works were recovered in the thirteenth century, it was
Speaker 4: this enormous illumination, and people thought, this is sort of
Speaker 4: the voice of reason, and we've got to somehow incorporate
Speaker 4: it and embrace it. But if you see Aristotle in
Speaker 4: his historical cond text and as sort of part of
Speaker 4: a much larger development in ancient Greek philosophy that really
Speaker 4: culminates with Neoplatonism, I would say, especially with Platinis, well,
Speaker 4: then you know you don't come to that conclusion. You
Speaker 4: just see him as sort of a step along the way.
Speaker 4: And that was more the position the Greek fathers were
Speaker 4: in that they had they had access to all those sources.
Speaker 4: None of these were ever lost in the East, and
Speaker 4: they always, you know, when they read philosophy, it was
Speaker 4: always sort of in light of that whole history and
Speaker 4: never taking any one figure as the sole authority. So
Speaker 4: I just see what happened in the West is kind
Speaker 4: of a you know, a result of a lot of
Speaker 4: historical contingency that has largely to do with language, just
Speaker 4: the in the non availability of translations, as well as
Speaker 4: some differences that come in when you try to translate
Speaker 4: Greek intolabin. So I just I feel it's been a
Speaker 4: huge mistake for so much of Western theology to sort
Speaker 4: of remain fixated on the thirteenth century as if that
Speaker 4: was the golden era, and it really wasn't. It was
Speaker 4: just a you know, it was a people were coming
Speaker 4: to terms with new information, new ideas, and it was
Speaker 4: just a step along the way.
Speaker 3: On that question of question of simplicity, I'd like to
Speaker 3: ask a follow up there in the section on Palamas.
Speaker 3: Not to get too far ahead, but you touch on
Speaker 3: that that that Lewis just raised about. It seems that
Speaker 3: the idea of simplicity originally was more so a question
Speaker 3: of acting and acted upon as opposed to whether there
Speaker 3: were distinctions. Could you could you explain.
Speaker 4: That well, yeah, I would. I would say originally, I mean,
Speaker 4: simplicity just means not having parts. And Aristotle does talk
Speaker 4: about the prime mover being simple, and Platinus actually, you know,
Speaker 4: Platinus has three hypostases, okay, right, the same term that
Speaker 4: gets used later in Trinitarian discussions. For him, they're the one, intellect,
Speaker 4: and soul, and in that order, the one is highest,
Speaker 4: then intellect comes forth from the one, and soul comes
Speaker 4: forth from intellect. Each one of those is simple in Platinus,
Speaker 4: and he uses that term, but there are degrees or
Speaker 4: sort of levels of simplicity, and actually those three platinum
Speaker 4: hypostases are one helpful way to sort of think about that.
Speaker 4: This soul, you know, soul has hypostasis. That's not any
Speaker 4: individual soul, Okay, it's sort of soul as a as
Speaker 4: a principle, is simple, but it is temporal. It does
Speaker 4: exist in time, and it you know, can be located
Speaker 4: space in the sense that it's present throughout the whole cosmos.
Speaker 4: And so it's not perfectly simple in the highest way,
Speaker 4: but it is simple, and that it's in material doesn't
Speaker 4: have material parts and doesn't a should I put this well, Okay,
Speaker 4: let's just leave that in for soul, because when you
Speaker 4: get to intellect, which is the second Platinium hypostasis, you
Speaker 4: get a higher kind of simplicity because intellect is not temporal.
Speaker 4: Platinus says that the life of soul is time. Time
Speaker 4: is the life of soul, whereas the life of intellect
Speaker 4: is eternity. Okay, intellect is all that, It is all
Speaker 4: that once. It doesn't do different things at different times.
Speaker 4: In fact, intellect and Platinus is essentially his version of
Speaker 4: what Aristotle had said about the prime over. It thinks everything,
Speaker 4: all intelligible content, all at once in a single, unified act. Well,
Speaker 4: so it's simple in a much higher way than soul
Speaker 4: because you can't draw temporal distinctions within its activity or
Speaker 4: its being. But it's not the simplest in the in
Speaker 4: the very highest way, and in this splutonium system, because
Speaker 4: the first hypostasis is the one, and he says the
Speaker 4: one is beyond both time and eternity. And that's because
Speaker 4: eternity being the life of intellect, Well, the one is
Speaker 4: itself beyond intellect. It's not an object of intellect. It's
Speaker 4: not something that intellect can apprehend. And the reason being
Speaker 4: that it doesn't have any form or any distinct intelligible Well,
Speaker 4: so you know, what can you say about the One?
Speaker 4: And a lot of what he says is what the
Speaker 4: One is, not as I just did, but it is
Speaker 4: also you know, and this is something he would affirm
Speaker 4: that it is the source of all other things, the
Speaker 4: ultimate ArKade, the ultimate, first principle, the ultimate, It on
Speaker 4: the ultimate cause, and from it it comes intellect. And
Speaker 4: also the other thing you can say is that it's
Speaker 4: the good yet advice, the one and the good. It's
Speaker 4: that to which all things seek and to which they return.
Speaker 4: So you have in Neoplatonism what's called precession in return. Well, anyway,
Speaker 4: so there's an even higher kind of simplicity in the
Speaker 4: One than there is an intellect, because whereas the intellect
Speaker 4: embraces all intelligible content in a single eternal act, the
Speaker 4: One is beyondtinct intelligible content and beyond eternity. So it
Speaker 4: has the kind of simplicity that consists in having no
Speaker 4: form all.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 4: Now, one simple way I think to look at what's
Speaker 4: going on in the Greek fathers, as they sort of
Speaker 4: you know, as I mentioned, they'll never take anything from
Speaker 4: Greek philosophy and just you know, plug it in like
Speaker 4: it's good. You know, that doesn't work that way, but
Speaker 4: they will use ideas and concepts and sort of adapt them.
Speaker 4: So I think you find both of those higher forms
Speaker 4: of simplicity in the way that the fathers understand God,
Speaker 4: in the sense that the divine essence as they understand it,
Speaker 4: they'll use a lot of the same terms the Platinus
Speaker 4: used in describing the one that it has no name,
Speaker 4: that it's beyond intellect, it's beyond being, it has no form,
Speaker 4: but is the source of all forms, all right. And
Speaker 4: then a lot of what Platinas says about intellect, they'll
Speaker 4: use that kind of language in describing the divine energies
Speaker 4: as being the way in which that transcendent, unknowable divine
Speaker 4: Essence is manifest and can be known and participated and named.
Speaker 4: All right. So in a sense, you know, they'll never
Speaker 4: just adopt the idea of forms per se from grateful
Speaker 4: and in a sense, a lot of what Platinists would
Speaker 4: say about the forms that are the objects of thought
Speaker 4: of intellect, they would say about the divine energies, that
Speaker 4: they're the names that the intelligible objects that we can
Speaker 4: apprehend and seeking to know their transcendent source. Well, okay,
Speaker 4: so the point being that simplicity itself is complex. There
Speaker 4: are different ways being simple, and you know, you know,
Speaker 4: it's so people talk about the doctrine of divine simplicity. Uh,
Speaker 4: there are different doctrines of divine simplicity, and you've got
Speaker 4: to be careful which one you have in mind. And
Speaker 4: I think the fathers, the Greek Fathers, definitely do believe
Speaker 4: in divine simplicity, but they don't articulate that the same
Speaker 4: way that it comes to be articulated in the wayst.
Speaker 3: Well, the way the way you word in the book.
Speaker 3: You say, Palamos argues in fact that to possess a
Speaker 3: multitude of powers is not a sign of composition, but
Speaker 3: of simplicity. So ironically there it's more so a question
Speaker 3: what I was what I was getting at was the
Speaker 3: way it develops in our Orthodox tradition is that it's
Speaker 3: conceived of as mutability, whether or not there's liability to change,
Speaker 3: rather than whether there are distinctions.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Right, Uh, that comes up when he's re responding
Speaker 4: to Barlin. Uh. Yeah, and so for him it's one
Speaker 4: more sign of God's simplicity that God is not happy upon.
Speaker 4: Mm hmm.
Speaker 6: So so given the.
Speaker 5: Doctrine of divine simplicity that the.
Speaker 6: St.
Speaker 5: Thomas a quietness, sorry Thomas Aquitetas and the Thomas have
Speaker 5: committed themselves to, maybe I thought, if it's not too jarring,
Speaker 5: we could segue into a discussion about problems in Tomistic
Speaker 5: natural theology and perhaps starting to talk about the logie first.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so, uh, the logi. So what do you have
Speaker 4: in mind there?
Speaker 5: Well, Jay has some critiques regarding the logi and the
Speaker 5: and the doctrine of design simplicity and intomism.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, Jay, would you mind just explaining that a
Speaker 4: little bit? Sure?
Speaker 3: I guess what I was getting at is that to me,
Speaker 3: it seems like the two are are kind of irreconcilable.
Speaker 3: The first reason, I think that the Tomistic conception of
Speaker 3: locating the exemplars in the divine essence itself is problematic,
Speaker 3: so we have to see them as works of God
Speaker 3: that are not identical to the divine essence. That's I
Speaker 3: think the first departure point that we would we would
Speaker 3: notice between Saint Maximus's conception of logi and what you
Speaker 3: get in the West from Augustine up into Quitas, because really, again,
Speaker 3: this would be another way of compromising the doctrine of
Speaker 3: God's free creation. If creation is patterned on archetypes and
Speaker 3: exemplars that are in the divine essence, then if they're real,
Speaker 3: then creation is just as necessary and just as willed
Speaker 3: necessarily as God's essence and as the Since they're in
Speaker 3: the essence, they are the essence. Right, So creation, I
Speaker 3: would say, then kind of becomes more of a patterned,
Speaker 3: determined emanation rather than a free action, which is why,
Speaker 3: as you point out in the book, Saint Maximus does
Speaker 3: not equate the logie with the eternal energies or attributes
Speaker 3: of God. They are only in reference to the created order.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, okay, I got you. Well, you know what
Speaker 4: what the Aquinas says is about the divine ideas is
Speaker 4: that they are the distinct ways that God knows that
Speaker 4: his essence can be imitated. Exactly, which is I mean, well,
Speaker 4: I mean it's it's problematic because you know, you've got
Speaker 4: that in the further step that God chooses some of
Speaker 4: these to actually be imitated in creation and some not. Right, so,
Speaker 4: so he has the idea of unicorn, but he doesn't
Speaker 4: choose to in stand shiate that one. So yeah, it's
Speaker 4: you know, it does take you back to the whole
Speaker 4: issue of divine freedom, which I do think is problematic
Speaker 4: on that kind of a view. So this this issue,
Speaker 4: I think, you know, it's not posed the same way,
Speaker 4: and the same problem doesn't arise for the Greek fathers
Speaker 4: because they just take from the beginning that, yeah, the
Speaker 4: logi are acts of will. They're not forms of divine
Speaker 4: self understanding there, they're dynas part of me thought will. Yeah,
Speaker 4: thought wills. I think that's the term the Saint John
Speaker 4: Damascus uses, uh Dinysius calls him divine and good acts
Speaker 4: and will the laymantagh and Maximus uses that as well.
Speaker 4: He quotes that from Dionysius, And so it's really just
Speaker 4: taken for granted that and union. The other thing that's
Speaker 4: interesting is that there there's a distinct act of will
Speaker 4: for every individual creature, you know, so you have your
Speaker 4: own logos and I have mine as well as there's
Speaker 4: one universal logos for for humanity and a higher level
Speaker 4: one for an animality, right, yeah, so they're both generic
Speaker 4: and specific and individual. And the other thing that's a
Speaker 4: very important difference between the logo and the divine exemplars
Speaker 4: and aquinas is that we as free creatures have a
Speaker 4: kind of a calling to realize, and you know, the
Speaker 4: extent to which our logos is actually realized in time
Speaker 4: and space and time is of us. That's where they
Speaker 4: that synergy comes back into it, right, and synergy is
Speaker 4: is it does require our human co operation. So they're
Speaker 4: not simply the exemplars by any stretch. They're more like, yeah,
Speaker 4: they're individual creative acts that call us into being the
Speaker 4: define who we are with our native capacities and what
Speaker 4: we're meant to be. But then we have to realize,
Speaker 4: you know, we as free creatures, we have to realize
Speaker 4: the logos.
Speaker 3: I would also ask too, it seems that in the
Speaker 3: Tomistic conception, the tendency is to equate universals in the
Speaker 3: same way with the divine essence. They seem to be
Speaker 3: located there. I could be wrong on that. You can
Speaker 3: correct me if i'm not. But there's a difference, a
Speaker 3: very fine point distinction in say, Maximus that even universals
Speaker 3: are liable to perish, which if they were ultimately located
Speaker 3: in God, they wouldn't be liable to perish, and so
Speaker 3: it seems that even the universals themselves are part of
Speaker 3: the created order that big forty two he speaks of
Speaker 3: Christ recapitulating. That's, of course one of the most of
Speaker 3: the difficult of the ambiguous, but understanding as I read it,
Speaker 3: and again I want you to correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 3: it seems that Christ's a recapitulation of the created order,
Speaker 3: gathering so to speak, the logi back into the logos
Speaker 3: that the Fall in a way had kind of like jolted,
Speaker 3: I'm speaking of the created aspect of things that partaking
Speaker 3: a corruption. As you pointed out, it's our duty to
Speaker 3: recapitulate the virtues themselves in ourselves, and that's kind of
Speaker 3: us getting realigned with the tilos, the logi purpose that
Speaker 3: Christ had for us all along, and so we have
Speaker 3: to participate in Christ and Theosis to recapitulate those virtues
Speaker 3: so that in the Escaton we will experience ever well
Speaker 3: being instead of ever ill being, because even the unrighteous
Speaker 3: will have their natures restored in the Escaton, but because
Speaker 3: they haven't recapitulated the virtues, their experience will be ever
Speaker 3: ill being.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 3: Do I have that correct?
Speaker 4: I believe so far as I you know, I couldn't
Speaker 4: cite you chapter in verse on all of that where
Speaker 4: it is in Maximus, but it sounds like very much
Speaker 4: definitely his idea, you know, in a big of a
Speaker 4: forty two. It's Christ. So humanity did have the vocation
Speaker 4: of being the mediator and the microcosm in which all
Speaker 4: of creation is sort of encapsulated and returns to God
Speaker 4: and the five divisions of being are overcome, right, And
Speaker 4: because of the fall, we failed in that vocation. And
Speaker 4: so Christ, becoming man, does what we were meant to do,
Speaker 4: and he overcomes and reconciles those five divisions. And now
Speaker 4: you know, by being in Christ, we too partake of
Speaker 4: his salvafic work, you know. And and there's the adoption
Speaker 4: of sons, I guess as one of the Pauline terms.
Speaker 4: Exactly there on Lewis.
Speaker 3: Lewis's point, he asked the question in regards back to
Speaker 3: natural theology. So we have in Maximus the threefold embodiment
Speaker 3: of the logos, and uh, He's uses that that imagery
Speaker 3: of the even the created world being a kind of
Speaker 3: a garment that the Logos is wearing. So to speak. This,
Speaker 3: in my understanding, is what led Father Stanneloy in Orthodox Dogmatics,
Speaker 3: and say Saint Justin Popovich in his book Orthodox Faith
Speaker 3: in Life in Christ, where he analyzes Saint Isaac the
Speaker 3: Syrian's view of mystical union and the Logi, to point
Speaker 3: out that there's there's not, really, strictly speaking, in the
Speaker 3: Orthodox conception natural law and natural theology in the tonistic sense.
Speaker 3: So it's fine to use that word and that terminology.
Speaker 3: We're not getting hung up on the on words. But
Speaker 3: the way that the Tomistic conception will have a actual
Speaker 3: content of natural theology is in no way different. Ultimately,
Speaker 3: I think then the way that we get it in
Speaker 3: Saint Maximus, where you ultimately the content of nature and
Speaker 3: natural law is the logi, that's the meaning of nature.
Speaker 3: And this is why Father Stanieloid can say that in
Speaker 3: the Orthodox conception there's not strictly speaking a Tomistic natural
Speaker 3: law theory, because what's in script The truths of Scripture
Speaker 3: are the logi, the truths of nature are the logi.
Speaker 3: The difference is rather not so much the it's it's
Speaker 3: it's the way that the information comes to us. Right.
Speaker 3: The rocks and trees are different from written text, but
Speaker 3: Saint Maximus says in a way that the whole whole
Speaker 3: of reality is a kind of text of the logos.
Speaker 3: So it's not so much this two tiered system of
Speaker 3: nature and grace. There is a distinction between nature and grace,
Speaker 3: but the idea and tonism of like natural truths, natural law,
Speaker 3: and then you stack on top of that the supernatural
Speaker 3: truths and supernatural revelation. We don't see that kind of
Speaker 3: a division in Saint Maximus. We see more of a
Speaker 3: unified view, and rather it's two different ways or the
Speaker 3: content is the logos of both, but the ways, of
Speaker 3: the means of the mode by which that information comes
Speaker 3: to us is obviously different between written scripture and the
Speaker 3: natural world.
Speaker 4: Yeah well yeah, so for the Greek fathers to understand
Speaker 4: nature properly requires ascetic transformation, repentance exactly. The senses have
Speaker 4: to be purified. And so you know, there's these the
Speaker 4: three forms of contemplation that were distinguished by I think
Speaker 4: origin initially, and then a vigorous and others Practica being
Speaker 4: the first or sort of the most basic and fundamental.
Speaker 4: That's that's a setic practice, and that you know, it's basic,
Speaker 4: but it's not something you ever get beyond any any
Speaker 4: Christian and certainly any Monk is going to be always
Speaker 4: until the end and engaged in that sort of ascetic
Speaker 4: discipline that teaches us to view natural things rightly, not
Speaker 4: as objects of appetite or possession and pleasure, but as
Speaker 4: creatures made by God that are there to glorify God.
Speaker 4: And by the way, liturgy also, you know, has this
Speaker 4: same sort of meaning embedded or transmitted that you learn
Speaker 4: what our bodies are meant for. You know, they're meant
Speaker 4: for bowing, for prostrating and kissing and and and so,
Speaker 4: you know, there's a sort of ascetic liturgical education that
Speaker 4: we have to undergo. And according to Maximus, you know,
Speaker 4: as one does, so, your senses are He uses this
Speaker 4: interesting term that they're rendered rational. They're made to be rational,
Speaker 4: They're made to be able to see things as they
Speaker 4: really are. And that's the stage, the second stage of
Speaker 4: contemplation physically, the natural contemplation, uh that does perceive the
Speaker 4: logoi that are in nature. And as you mentioned, you know,
Speaker 4: that's what he says are analogous to Christ's radiant garments
Speaker 4: and so but that in turn is a stage toward
Speaker 4: the highest level, uh theologia, which is, you know, pure
Speaker 4: prayer and that that he says is analogous to the
Speaker 4: vision of Christ's face. Yeah, so anyway, that's yeah. They
Speaker 4: they use the term natural law, and I don't think
Speaker 4: they would, you know, object to a lot of what
Speaker 4: the West has to say about natural law. But if
Speaker 4: you don't have that basic idea, then nature can only
Speaker 4: be under known properly through ascetic and liturgical transformation, then
Speaker 4: you're going to end up creating what is just a
Speaker 4: human philosophy, you know, and that is unfortunately, I think
Speaker 4: what what did occur? Mm hmm, yeah, hm hmm.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I was wondering what kind of critiques you might
Speaker 5: have of the classical arguments, say the five ways, And
Speaker 5: I know that father and I has some views on
Speaker 5: this too, as someone who was very familiar with them
Speaker 5: and found them as kind of kind of the lynchpin
Speaker 5: of apologetics. How would you approach these things?
Speaker 4: Well, so, I guess I've never been moved if you will,
Speaker 4: by the argument for motion that it's an ariostyle.
Speaker 8: Never been moved by the first move.
Speaker 4: I guess part of my you know, so my personal
Speaker 4: history I was a physics major, and I worked as
Speaker 4: a physicist before I'm back to school and got my philosophy.
Speaker 4: So anyway, I just I don't think that motion is
Speaker 4: what Aristotle says it is, you know, and I was
Speaker 4: I mentioned this earlier, right, that he thinks that every
Speaker 4: every real change requires some antecedent, actual cause, And I
Speaker 4: just don't see how there there's room for spontaneity in
Speaker 4: that world. And you know, real spontaneity, I think kind
Speaker 4: of enters philosophical thought through Christianity, because we understand man
Speaker 4: to be made in the image of God, and God
Speaker 4: is spontaneous in the sense that there is no external
Speaker 4: cause and he acts out of the abundance of his
Speaker 4: own goodness, and you know, that is sort of the
Speaker 4: paradigm the archetype that we're made as an image of.
Speaker 4: And the Greek fathers when they talk about what they
Speaker 4: call out exusion, you know, self determination or sometimes that's
Speaker 4: translated to free will, that's what they say is that
Speaker 4: that's part of our being made in the image of God,
Speaker 4: that we have that out exusia, that self determining capacity.
Speaker 4: So partly for that reason, partly because I just did
Speaker 4: the mismatch with modern physics, I think, or even Newtonian
Speaker 4: physics for that matter, I don't. I don't think that
Speaker 4: air Strateian understanding of motion is is really inadequate one
Speaker 4: and because of that, I've never seen much power in
Speaker 4: the in the first way, and the other, you know,
Speaker 4: the other has a reason, I would. I also don't
Speaker 4: like the conclusion, right, I think that when you end
Speaker 4: up drawing that conclusion that God is pure us, that
Speaker 4: just loaded yourself with a bunch of unnecessary problems.
Speaker 8: So and how about yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, just to kind of round up the thought
Speaker 4: about natural theology, when you do look at the way
Speaker 4: that fathers argue for the existence of God, it's primarily
Speaker 4: some form of the design argument that they use very frequently.
Speaker 4: And but the way they use it isn't really to
Speaker 4: then become the basis of a systematic philosophical sort of
Speaker 4: unfolding of all the divine attributes and so on. They
Speaker 4: use the divine argument to say, yes, there is a
Speaker 4: creator and we can learn that from nature. But now
Speaker 4: and we and we we have good grounds to believe
Speaker 4: that Creator is good, being good? Wouldn't he give us
Speaker 4: a revelation?
Speaker 6: You know?
Speaker 4: Why would he leave us alone, and so then they
Speaker 4: turn toward revelation. So they don't really do this sort
Speaker 4: of typical Western natural theological project of trying to, you know,
Speaker 4: push natural reason to the to the limit and build
Speaker 4: up a whole theory of God on that basis.
Speaker 3: Before before Father Deacon takes over one last question on
Speaker 3: that point, Another area I think would be difficult to
Speaker 3: reconcile Saint Maximus with natural theology and the tonistic scheme
Speaker 3: would be in Questions and Doubts. There's a couple of
Speaker 3: places where he talks about Trinity's in nature. I know
Speaker 3: this is a little a little controversial, but obviously didn't
Speaker 3: we don't want to read too much into that in
Speaker 3: the sort of Latin Augustinian sense where we read the
Speaker 3: the triads that are in nature back into God. But
Speaker 3: there is I think a valid move in Saint Maximus
Speaker 3: too at times notice that the creative world does have
Speaker 3: a triadic feature. He does this in multiple different places,
Speaker 3: but in Questions and Doubts he even considers the possibility
Speaker 3: in question one thirty six of a natural proof of
Speaker 3: the Holy Trinity, where he talks about the logos of
Speaker 3: beings and then the wisdom and the Spirit, that the origin,
Speaker 3: the logos, and then the place of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 3: In terms of things being hyposthetized, that he seems to
Speaker 3: think that this relates to the Trinity. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: not that long. I'm not going to read the whole thing.
Speaker 3: But he says that all beings are believed to exist
Speaker 3: in three modes essence, difference, in life. And we believe
Speaker 3: on the one hand that there is some essential being
Speaker 3: from the logos of the essence of beings, who is
Speaker 3: the Father. And on the other hand, there is some
Speaker 3: essential being from the difference of beings, that is wisdom,
Speaker 3: that is the Son. For from the wisdom of the
Speaker 3: imparting to each nature of an offered selfhood takes place,
Speaker 3: and it's wisdom manifests each thing that exists as both
Speaker 3: distinct and unconfused, both towards his self into the rest.
Speaker 3: And there is some essential being from that that is
Speaker 3: the Holy Spirit. But in the case of God, these
Speaker 3: things are in high postatized as such. So each one
Speaker 3: of these, this this triad of principles that he sees
Speaker 3: in nature, he says, actually in God are in hypostatize,
Speaker 3: which is where he has improved upon the sort of
Speaker 3: Plotinian arguments. Right, just like with the logi, the logie
Speaker 3: are not impersonal. Maximus takes them and makes them in hypostatize,
Speaker 3: and he does the same thing with these these principles
Speaker 3: here in nature. And I would think that really that
Speaker 3: would be completely foreign to any kind of natural theology
Speaker 3: Tomistic conceptions. Whereas you do have some medieval Latin theologians
Speaker 3: you think there might be little trinities in nature. In
Speaker 3: the Tomistic scheme, that would be impossible.
Speaker 4: I would think, why would it be impossible, Because.
Speaker 3: The doctrine of the Trinity would be a doctrine only
Speaker 3: known by supernatural revelations. So I'm speaking in terms of epistemology, right,
Speaker 3: So a Thomas could conceivably say that the reality of
Speaker 3: the world does have some triadic structure, perhaps ontologically, but
Speaker 3: in terms of in terms of a pistemology, there's no
Speaker 3: way that I can look at the natural world and
Speaker 3: see Jesus or the Trinity, because Jesus and the Trinity
Speaker 3: or any kind of doctrine that appeals to revelation is
Speaker 3: not part of natural theology. So, and this is why
Speaker 3: the Tomaistic tradition has pretty consistently said that natural reason
Speaker 3: and natural theology has to operate autonomously, like the reasoning.
Speaker 3: I'm speaking epistemically, I realized that Atomas would not say
Speaker 3: that metaphysically speaking, man's natural reason is autonomous, But in
Speaker 3: terms of epistemology, they do affirm that man's reasoning is
Speaker 3: autonomous and apart from any revelation. So in other words,
Speaker 3: they wouldn't say that you need revelation to interpret the
Speaker 3: natural world. But the natural world has fallen, right, the
Speaker 3: world as it is has fallen, and if it is fallen,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to be able to properly interpret it
Speaker 3: without a doctrine of the fall. Hence why a lot
Speaker 3: of times in saying the Enlightenment period you get people
Speaker 3: reacting to classical pologetic arguments by pointing out that you know,
Speaker 3: you see, you see people like Nildergrass Tyson, you know,
Speaker 3: the atheists. They'll still make these arguments. Now, well, they'll say,
Speaker 3: when I look out at the natural world, I mean
Speaker 3: it looks to me like it's created by a psychopath,
Speaker 3: because who would have designed a world where, you know,
Speaker 3: parasites feed on parasites. So, in other words, they because
Speaker 3: they're not taken into account the doctrine of the fall,
Speaker 3: which is a doctrine that's revealed. What I'm saying is
Speaker 3: that in the Tomistic epistemology you have this division between
Speaker 3: revealed theology and natural theology, and they don't recognize that
Speaker 3: you need revealed theology to properly interpret the natural world.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Well so you'll notice, you know, the Greek
Speaker 4: Fathers never talk about natural reason. Yeah, as you know,
Speaker 4: as sort of a separate wait, knowing things as opposed
Speaker 4: to revelation. That again is a largely an artifact. I
Speaker 4: think of the way Aristotle was recovered, so the West
Speaker 4: had already made this distinction even before that, but it really,
Speaker 4: you know, becomes really kind of a structure that structures
Speaker 4: the whole way they think about things in the thirteenth
Speaker 4: century when they identify Aristotle as the voice of natural reason,
Speaker 4: you know, than the Bible we have that gives us
Speaker 4: the revelation, and the Greek fathers thought that, well, reason,
Speaker 4: the reason is a form of revelation, you know. Reason,
Speaker 4: the reason we have is our participation in the divine logos. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and so when we know things, we are sharing in
Speaker 4: that divine understanding, and so there's not really a line,
Speaker 4: a sharp line that one would draw. They typically don't.
Speaker 3: I think, is it Fetus at Rachio, the John Paul
Speaker 3: and cyclical feather Deacon, and then I mean and the
Speaker 3: Leo the thirteenth and cyclical also, which reaffirms you know, Tomism.
Speaker 8: And then you'll get this in Vatican one as well.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly, Okay, go ahead, Yeah, do.
Speaker 5: You have anything to add to that, Father An and
Speaker 5: ees the whole natural theology thing, and then we can
Speaker 5: just round that up and then we can move on
Speaker 5: to you.
Speaker 7: Well, it's amazing because my question was one of my questions.
Speaker 7: You just answered that you believe that a quitas is
Speaker 7: assertion that God can be known a posty or i
Speaker 7: from creation by what the Thomas would say, by the
Speaker 7: natural light of reason alone, and that means without any
Speaker 7: new natural or supernatural revelations. So, as you'd rightly pointed out,
Speaker 7: natural revelation is seen within the light and participation of
Speaker 7: the supernatural revelation.
Speaker 8: But it seems that what developed in the West was well,
Speaker 8: we can know that.
Speaker 7: From the light of natural reason alone, and no God
Speaker 7: is is from his creation, just as we know the
Speaker 7: cause is knowable from it's a fact, and you've already
Speaker 7: answered it. It simply seems to reduce to the assertion
Speaker 7: that's really dependent upon the aristituting epistemology and metaphysics a
Speaker 7: whole exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, m hm, very nice. Before let me just
Speaker 4: kind of add to that thought. So, you know, synergy
Speaker 4: is a way of knowing God, and it's uh, it's
Speaker 4: not it doesn't fit in one of those pigeon holes.
Speaker 4: You know, it's not natural reason, it's not revelation in
Speaker 4: the sense of the sort of body of propositional knowledge.
Speaker 4: It's experience. It's it's knowing God as the one who
Speaker 4: was present and active within you within the church, and
Speaker 4: knowing him the way you know your own activity. And
Speaker 4: so that's the kind of knowledge I think Saint Paul,
Speaker 4: you know, and some of those passages I mentioned is
Speaker 4: sort of speaking from you might say. And so there's
Speaker 4: there's a tendency to sort of pigeonhole wasting knowing God
Speaker 4: that I think can be very constricting. And in the
Speaker 4: New Testament there are not those pigeonholes. You know, God
Speaker 4: is present everywhere in all things, including in us, and
Speaker 4: and including in our activity.
Speaker 3: The word is near you, even in your heart exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 5: So I thought that now we would do a segue
Speaker 5: into perhaps both defenses of Tomism as the Siltinemism and
Speaker 5: revel and how that is in their view with revelation,
Speaker 5: as well as critiques of the Orthodox essence energy is
Speaker 5: distinction and related the old and these objections will get
Speaker 5: They will start simplistic and kind of what you might
Speaker 5: come across in the popular.
Speaker 6: Sphere of apologetic Sir Dr Bradshaw.
Speaker 5: I'm not sure how how familiar you are with that,
Speaker 5: but you'll see what it's like, and then it will
Speaker 5: get kind of more and more complex. And Father Deacon
Speaker 5: has some very much more complex ones. So one of
Speaker 5: the popular things going around.
Speaker 6: Now, this one's a bit more complicated the one's about.
Speaker 8: To go with.
Speaker 6: But this is very separate, it's very distinct.
Speaker 5: One of the popular things going around now is to
Speaker 5: try and say that the Scotistic formal distinction is the
Speaker 5: bridge almost between in a sense, perhaps Tomism and our
Speaker 5: conception of God and his activity. Could you please explain
Speaker 5: what a formal distinction is for people who may not
Speaker 5: be aware, and what your opinions are on that tempt.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, well that's that's an idea that's been around
Speaker 4: a long time. You know, some people think that George
Speaker 4: Scolario's advocated that. I think he actually didn't, but it
Speaker 4: has been attributed to him. So a formal distinction from
Speaker 4: scotis done. Scotis as I understand it. So that's where
Speaker 4: you have two things that can be defined separately that
Speaker 4: cannot exist, okay, and the difference between them is something
Speaker 4: that is based in the nature of the object, okay,
Speaker 4: even though they're not different parts. So here's some examples,
Speaker 4: something like let's see, well this may not be totally clear,
Speaker 4: but let's just try it. The soul and its faculties.
Speaker 4: I believe he says that those are formally distinct, So say,
Speaker 4: the soul and the capacity of reason, or the nutritive
Speaker 4: capacity and the faculty of sensation. That may not be
Speaker 4: a perfect example, because sometimes you know, some souls exist
Speaker 4: they don't have reason, right, their souls animal and vegetables soul.
Speaker 4: But at least in the case of a human being,
Speaker 4: you can't have the soul without all those faculties. And
Speaker 4: at the same time, the faculties don't exist without the soul.
Speaker 4: But they're defined totally in a way that totally distinct.
Speaker 4: Another example that he gives is being and other transcendentals
Speaker 4: like unity, truth, and goodness, which none of which can
Speaker 4: exist without the others, but they're all defined all right.
Speaker 4: So anyway, that's that's the idea in Scotus of what
Speaker 4: he calls a formal distinction. And I think there's a
Speaker 4: grain of truth to the idea that some of the
Speaker 4: energies you could see as being formally distinct from the
Speaker 4: divine essence, namely the ones that are eternal and necessary
Speaker 4: divine attributes like goodness and wisdom and power and so forth.
Speaker 4: A guy named Mark Spencer are all familiar with his work.
Speaker 4: He's a philosopher at the University of Saint Thomas, and
Speaker 4: he wrote a paper a couple of years ago in
Speaker 4: International Philosophic Quarterly that was arguing this. He's a he
Speaker 4: calls himself a Thomas. He's a very broad minded Thomas.
Speaker 4: And he said, well that that you really need the
Speaker 4: statistic formal distinction and you need the essence energy distinction.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, he wasn't really arguing that the formal distinction ession.
Speaker 4: He wasn't arguing that the essence energy's distinction is a
Speaker 4: form of the formal distinction, just that you need them both. Well,
Speaker 4: let's see, So what do I think about that? As
Speaker 4: I said, it's not totally mistaken in that limited case.
Speaker 4: But you have to always bear in mind that there
Speaker 4: are many forms of the divine energy. They're the gifts
Speaker 4: of the spirit, you know, the Saint Paul talks about
Speaker 4: one Corinthians twelve. Those are and the fathers often called
Speaker 4: energies of the spirit. There are the divine logi that
Speaker 4: we were just talking about, the good divine and good
Speaker 4: acts of will by which God creates. There's the date
Speaker 4: and light. So sometimes people want to kind of shoehorn
Speaker 4: the essence energies distinction into this western issue or category
Speaker 4: of the divine essence and attributes. That's not what it's about.
Speaker 4: That's you know, some of the some of the energies
Speaker 4: are what we would call attributes, yes, but by no
Speaker 4: means all of them. And so what happens then is
Speaker 4: if you try to uh, kind of break off the
Speaker 4: ones that we call attributes and say, oh, those are
Speaker 4: formally distinct from the divine essence, well, then you've lost
Speaker 4: the unity of the concept the fact that the fathers
Speaker 4: refer to all of this broader class as divine energies,
Speaker 4: and you know that's important for them. You're what you're
Speaker 4: losing is that active dimension where what we call attributes
Speaker 4: actually are forms of self manifestation. And so I think
Speaker 4: it's it's not so much wrong as it is sort
Speaker 4: of a small minded, you know, way of thinking that
Speaker 4: the misses out on the real point that they're making
Speaker 4: the attributes.
Speaker 3: It's not like things you own. The attributes are in hypostatized.
Speaker 3: They're personal manifestations of it of a nature, of a
Speaker 3: divine nature. Right. So, even whether it's the logie, or
Speaker 3: whether it's God's love or God's justice or mercy, or
Speaker 3: whether it's the attributes that apply from all eternity or
Speaker 3: the attributes that apply to creation like foreknowledge, they're always
Speaker 3: in hypostatized and so therefore they're always first and foremost
Speaker 3: personal energies.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 3: So they come hypostatically. But they but but because energy
Speaker 3: signifies nature, they show us they manifest divinity.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if they're they're hypostatic in the sense, you know,
Speaker 4: the fathers will use this expression that they issue from
Speaker 4: the Father or the center induspirit from the Father is
Speaker 4: the source sort of the fountain head, and then are
Speaker 4: brought to you know, realization by the sun and perfected
Speaker 4: by the spirit. Or they'll they'll have different ways of
Speaker 4: putting that, but they're they're kind of restating that point
Speaker 4: that Affamation Affinacious had made that every work of the
Speaker 4: of the Trinity is a joint work, and so there's synergy,
Speaker 4: you know, within the Trinity as well. And so anyway,
Speaker 4: the reason I mentioned that is because you can't ever
Speaker 4: look at one of the energies and say this is
Speaker 4: just the energy of the spirit. Not right. We call
Speaker 4: some of them energies of the spirit because that's biblical language,
Speaker 4: but we don't mean that the Father is not giving
Speaker 4: that gift. Of course he is. So that's the That's
Speaker 4: the only caution I would have about saying that their
Speaker 4: hype that they are sort of revealed the hypostasies. I
Speaker 4: don't think they reveal the distinction of the hypostasies per se,
Speaker 4: although all three of the hypostases are always active in
Speaker 4: any right, Well, let.
Speaker 3: Me qualify that because what I was, what I was
Speaker 3: getting at, was that so the Basil's triadic who from
Speaker 3: the Father, through the son and the spirit. As I
Speaker 3: understand it, it's true of the energies that are eternally manifested.
Speaker 3: It's true of the energies that apply to creation. It's
Speaker 3: true of the action of creation. It's also true of
Speaker 3: the movement of redemption. So this is how you can
Speaker 3: have each hypostasy in the in the in the triad
Speaker 3: have a unique role not just in creation but also
Speaker 3: in redemption.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 3: So the father sends the son, but only the son
Speaker 3: enters into the mode of being incarnate. So there's there's
Speaker 3: roles that each person plays, but there's one. The energy
Speaker 3: itself that's that's acted is one, but it's brought into
Speaker 3: reality or manifested by each hypostasis in a unique way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, good good. Well, you may remember in the book
Speaker 4: I try to give an analogy for that of a
Speaker 4: husband and wife who jointly give a gift, though you know,
Speaker 4: life went out about it and the husband paid for
Speaker 4: or what have you. They can do different things that
Speaker 4: are jointly constituting the single act.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: This is also important too. I would add, just to
Speaker 3: add on to that, is that if we understand eternal manifestation,
Speaker 3: not that I'm claiming to understand out. But it's an
Speaker 3: important distinction that's missing in Roman Catholic theology and dogmatics
Speaker 3: most of the time, unless perhaps a UNI acknowledges this.
Speaker 3: But most of the time it's not there because the
Speaker 3: docrine of eternal manifestation is part and parcel with the
Speaker 3: idea of the essence energy sinction and a distinction between
Speaker 3: different types of you know, the eternal energies or attributes
Speaker 3: and the attributes that apply to the created order. So likewise,
Speaker 3: if you have that understanding, you could then see how
Speaker 3: it's possible that some of the energies manifest from all eternity,
Speaker 3: from the Father through the Son, in the spirit as well.
Speaker 3: But at the same time there's different types of actions
Speaker 3: that also manifesto tritic way, but only relate to the
Speaker 3: created order. And this is always a big hang up
Speaker 3: when you're arguing with the Roman Catholic because they don't
Speaker 3: make that energetic manifestation distinction. But that's necessary to not
Speaker 3: confuse something like the action of love with a hypostasis.
Speaker 3: So all I was trying to say is that every
Speaker 3: energy is triadically manifested in a personal way, but we
Speaker 3: have to say that for example, Singragya Palmos, when he
Speaker 3: explains how there is a sense in which we can
Speaker 3: call the spirit the love between the father and the son,
Speaker 3: he says that only applies at the level of energetic manifestation.
Speaker 3: In no way does it identify that the energy of
Speaker 3: love which is common to father, son and spirit with
Speaker 3: the spirit. He's only speaking in the sense of eternal manifestation.
Speaker 4: So starting with some some.
Speaker 5: Low hanging fruits, I guess the reason why these are
Speaker 5: going to sound a bit because they all on the
Speaker 5: popular sphere, so people would really like to see how
Speaker 5: a scholar responds to these. So the first one is
Speaker 5: kind of more something that would come from like a
Speaker 5: hier critic. They would ask, well, given this, and Gregor
Speaker 5: Palomas relies so much on Dionysius because Dionysius is called
Speaker 5: Pseudodonysius and therefore an apocryphal source, does this not undermine
Speaker 5: the continuity of the theology from the apostles?
Speaker 4: H Well, you know, I argue in the book that
Speaker 4: a lot of what's in Dionysius is already there in
Speaker 4: the Capitoceans, you know, just different terminology. In fact, that's
Speaker 4: why later authors like Palomas found it so natural to
Speaker 4: incorporate this, you know, the Dynastian approach into sort of
Speaker 4: a sort of a larger synthesis that also includes the
Speaker 4: Cappit Oceans and and other there's people like Maximus et cetera.
Speaker 4: Because the ideas are so similar, the terminology is often different.
Speaker 4: You know, I read the passage from Basil Epistle two
Speaker 4: thirty four Essence and energy Dinysius, it's more often sort
Speaker 4: of the cooper ussios Ussia the essence beyond essence and
Speaker 4: then the divine processions. Okay, so he uses that word
Speaker 4: procession protos that is not there in earlier others. But
Speaker 4: what he says about or what he uses that word
Speaker 4: to say, turns out to be very similar. And so
Speaker 4: you know, I've written a lot about this sort of
Speaker 4: what's what each one of these fathers is sort of
Speaker 4: adding in the sense of sort of taking a given idea,
Speaker 4: carrying it a little further, adding more unity, more comprehensiveness
Speaker 4: to the to the vocabulary. Dinasius is really just one
Speaker 4: further step in that process. But he's by no means
Speaker 4: a sort of a radical break. The more you read
Speaker 4: the cap of Oceans, you more they realize that, well,
Speaker 4: a lot of those so called neoplatonic ideas are really
Speaker 4: already there. So you know, that's my short answer, I
Speaker 4: think a long answer. You just have to read these texts,
Speaker 4: these primary texts, in chronological order for yourself, you know,
Speaker 4: and you'll see that gradual unfolding take place.
Speaker 7: So this is the next you want plenty of time
Speaker 7: to do by away, guys, now that you're all quarantine,
Speaker 7: I want all of you to get started on and
Speaker 7: we'll provide the list of books for you to read.
Speaker 5: I wish I was quarantined, but yeah, So the next low,
Speaker 5: low hanging one is well. In the Triads, Sint Gregor
Speaker 5: Balamas seems to recognize, recommend very specific breathing techniques quote unquote,
Speaker 5: focusing on the navel and what is often plementally called
Speaker 5: self worship or compared with the yoga.
Speaker 6: How would you respond to this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, he actually, if you read the Triads, he
Speaker 4: doesn't really recommend them for the reader. He simply says,
Speaker 4: you know, yes, these are things that we do with
Speaker 4: the monks of Mount Autos, and we found them helpful.
Speaker 4: But he's not by no means saying therefore you should
Speaker 4: go do this. You know, these were practices that had
Speaker 4: developed through you know, and may perhaps you might say
Speaker 4: trial and error, or at least sort of the accumulation
Speaker 4: of experience over many years. But they require a personal instruction,
Speaker 4: and I think he'd be the first to agree that
Speaker 4: they could be dangerous if practice the wrong way. And
Speaker 4: you know, Barlin apparently had talked to some monks. I
Speaker 4: don't think he ever actually visited Mount Athos, but he's
Speaker 4: he talked to some monks who are from Anautos and
Speaker 4: heard them talking about different colors of light, and apparently
Speaker 4: some colors of light, as he understood what they were saying,
Speaker 4: or sort of indicate the divine light, and some were demonic,
Speaker 4: and he ridicules this. Palamas, I don't I don't recall it.
Speaker 4: Palamus talks about it directly, but he doesn't, you know,
Speaker 4: he doesn't go into that because those are matters for
Speaker 4: personal knowledge and experience. Uh, sort of the kind of
Speaker 4: thing that's passed down from an older monk to a disciple,
Speaker 4: and by no means meant to be sort of universally
Speaker 4: practiced by all Christians because they're just too dangerous. And
Speaker 4: you know, even some of the later Heseikus in Russia
Speaker 4: will tell you that, And so anyway, I hope that's
Speaker 4: That's kind of what I would say is, well, he's
Speaker 4: not saying, therefore go do this.
Speaker 6: This is the last one. Well that's sorry. Two more
Speaker 6: asking a bunch for the sack of time.
Speaker 8: I guess.
Speaker 6: One one which was a concern to me, which.
Speaker 5: Was confusing to me, and I think a lot of people,
Speaker 5: is this idea of uncreated energies.
Speaker 6: That have a beginning, and how how does how is
Speaker 6: this is? Does this mean that.
Speaker 5: Uncreatedness and eternality are separable in reality?
Speaker 6: And how does this not imply some kind of.
Speaker 5: Mutability on God's part? I know we did a cover
Speaker 5: of this earlier, but yeah, I am curious about that,
Speaker 5: and that is an apologetic an argument often used.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, well, uh, it does mean I think that
Speaker 4: not everything uncreated is a terminal. So, as I mentioned,
Speaker 4: you know, the energies of the spirit or the gifts
Speaker 4: of the spirit clearly are not eternal because they're given
Speaker 4: to creatures who themselves are not eternal. Right, So the
Speaker 4: gift of prophecy, for instance, you know, that's not eternal.
Speaker 4: Human beings haven't always existed, and certainly the particular ones
Speaker 4: who were given this gift, the gift of I don't know,
Speaker 4: spiritual discernment, gift of healing. Those are our energies of
Speaker 4: the spirit. And and if you look first Corinthians twelve,
Speaker 4: Saint Paul uses the word and entergamental. You know that
Speaker 4: that's that's why the fathers come to call them that way.
Speaker 4: Another example that they use, the Briga palamask uses is
Speaker 4: the act of creation itself. That isn't a divine energy.
Speaker 4: It's something God does that manifests his character is nature.
Speaker 4: But clearly it's not eternal because you know, you read
Speaker 4: Genesis and God rested on the seventh day, so it
Speaker 4: began and it ended. And now of course God maintains
Speaker 4: creation in existence. That's true as well, but that's not
Speaker 4: the same as the act of creating its described in Genesis.
Speaker 4: So that's why not everything that is not everything uncreated
Speaker 4: has to be eternal, right?
Speaker 5: What was the second part of the question was, it's
Speaker 5: just how, how how this doesn't have some kind of
Speaker 5: mutability on God's part. I think a struggle for people
Speaker 5: is because when people think of uncreated, they think of
Speaker 5: something that is eternal, because to be created, I mean,
Speaker 5: Quitta says this to be creative is to have beginning
Speaker 5: in time, I think, so, how yeah, it seems to
Speaker 5: because the divine engines of God. It seems to be
Speaker 5: that the critique is that it's a mutability, will change
Speaker 5: and violence. God's im mutability.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well it doesn't because God is eternal. But He's
Speaker 4: perfectly capable of acting in time and revealing himself differently
Speaker 4: in different ways in different times. And that's what the
Speaker 4: energies are, you know, they're they're divine acts that manifest
Speaker 4: God and that in which we can share and so
Speaker 4: or at least many of them, not all of them,
Speaker 4: but things like the energies of the spirit and even
Speaker 4: the uncreated light. But you know, that's just basic Christianity,
Speaker 4: that God the eternal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, every one of the Theophanes right kind
Speaker 3: of answers this question that, I mean, the thought theovines
Speaker 3: were specific to time and location. And this is raised
Speaker 3: by Acandnos to to Saint Gregory, and he says that
Speaker 3: he appeals back to Dynastius, and he says that God
Speaker 3: transcends the logical categories such that he's not bound by
Speaker 3: the either or dialectics of what's normative for created logic,
Speaker 3: you could say, so God is can enter into and
Speaker 3: undergo in some limited notion a type of change, while
Speaker 3: at the same time he transcends change. I mean, every
Speaker 3: every incarnate action of Christ would be negated if there
Speaker 3: could be no temporal specific actions of God. I mean
Speaker 3: Christ manifested the divine energy and his divine power when
Speaker 3: he changed water to wine. Right, walking on water is
Speaker 3: an action specific to time and space. That is clearly
Speaker 3: I mean, Sir John Mascus says that signifies his divinity.
Speaker 3: So if we if we negate these tim poral actions,
Speaker 3: which are uncreated because they're actions of God, but they
Speaker 3: are specific to time and space, then we really remove
Speaker 3: the possibility of incarnation and God acting and within time
Speaker 3: and space at all.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's that leads into one of my questions that
Speaker 7: I'd like the doctor Bradshaw to answer. And let's Lewis
Speaker 7: you had another question.
Speaker 5: Yeah, just the last one was the idea of the
Speaker 5: the people. Will a lot of POI press on this
Speaker 5: idea of the upper and the lower divinity of the
Speaker 5: Upper the lower Godhead, and how God's essence even transcends
Speaker 5: to an infinite degree and an infinite number of times,
Speaker 5: even his eternal, uncreated energies, and they will say, well,
Speaker 5: this is polytheism because you have two gods basically.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well that that that became a huge issue between
Speaker 4: Palamos and a Kindonos, and it's to my mind, it's
Speaker 4: kind of it was a fixation that a Kingdonos had
Speaker 4: that if you actually look at the texts, he he
Speaker 4: misrepresents what Palamas said, and he totally he just never
Speaker 4: seems to grasp that what Palamus actually said was simply
Speaker 4: repeating what's already there in Maximus and Dionysius. In fact,
Speaker 4: if anything, Colamus kind of tones it down. But you
Speaker 4: have in Maximus in the you know, the Theological Chapters
Speaker 4: on Theology and Economy, book one, section forty eight to fifty,
Speaker 4: there's a really key discussion of what Maximus calls the
Speaker 4: uncreated works of God. And they're what we would call
Speaker 4: divine attributes of things like goodness and power and wisdom.
Speaker 4: But he calls them works of God that were not created,
Speaker 4: and he says that God infinitely transcends them, okay, and
Speaker 4: even he calls God their creator, their demi ourgos. And
Speaker 4: so that's where Paula Musk, you know, takes that phrase
Speaker 4: because what Maximus is referring to as these uncreated works
Speaker 4: of God he identifies as among the divine energies. And
Speaker 4: you know, there's a as I mentioned, there are a
Speaker 4: number of different terms the Greek fathers will use things around.
Speaker 4: God is one of them, and and that's essentially what
Speaker 4: what Maximus is talking about in that passage. Well, okay,
Speaker 4: and then Dionysius also, he's the one he uses the
Speaker 4: word theot's divinity as a name of a divine procession,
Speaker 4: and Palamas again is identifying the processions as among the energies. Well, so, anyway,
Speaker 4: I've written about this. I have an article that's forthcoming
Speaker 4: goes into all the textual detail, but a kind of
Speaker 4: nose is just frankly, he was kind of thick headed
Speaker 4: or else just you know, so stubborn. It's just unbelievable
Speaker 4: because he kept coming back to this and Palomas had
Speaker 4: to explain it over and over and over. You know,
Speaker 4: that's not what I said. That's not what I said,
Speaker 4: that's not what I said. So anyway, but again, it's
Speaker 4: one of those things that if you read these sources
Speaker 4: in chronological orders. As I mentioned, Dionysi the Cappadocians Dinysius
Speaker 4: Maximus Palomas. You'll see that everything Palamas says is just
Speaker 4: following in the division exactly.
Speaker 7: Prog Yeah, So, kind of picking up on the second
Speaker 7: to last question, if on the Latins absolute divine simplicity doctrine,
Speaker 7: if God's energies are really just his essence, because they'll
Speaker 7: speak about that, but they just identify with his essence.
Speaker 8: Then, as a quit As claims, if He's not to.
Speaker 7: Enter into a central compositional creatures when he just remained
Speaker 7: shut up in himself and not be able to energize
Speaker 7: creation in the manner that Saint Paul talks about.
Speaker 4: Uh, yeah, that's what I think.
Speaker 8: Good.
Speaker 4: Next question, that's where the whole necessity for created grace
Speaker 4: comes from. In Aquinas, you know that you don't have
Speaker 4: the possibility of a real participation in the divine energy,
Speaker 4: and so what can you do? You know, there's this
Speaker 4: created similitude that he God kind of bestows upon a creature,
Speaker 4: but it's not the same as that synergetic participation in
Speaker 4: the divine life.
Speaker 7: Also, a previous question I had when we were talking
Speaker 7: about Aristotle, because Aquitas is going to pick up on this,
Speaker 7: so we have basically two places in Aristotol you'd mentioned
Speaker 7: in the Physics and his the kind of first Mover,
Speaker 7: but then in Metaphysics book Lambda, chapter six, where he
Speaker 7: talks about that kind of defines God not only whose
Speaker 7: essence is pure actuality, but self thinking thought in pure actuality.
Speaker 8: What's puzzling is, well.
Speaker 7: How does he bridge these kind of two concepts such
Speaker 7: that thought thinking upon itself can actually be the cause
Speaker 7: of the physical motion of the planets and the heavens.
Speaker 7: Do you think that Aristotle ever solves that and that
Speaker 7: does it become a problem in scholasticism?
Speaker 4: Uh? Well, you know That's what chapter two of the
Speaker 4: book is about, where I try to tease out what
Speaker 4: is Aristotle's answer to this very puzzling question, how does
Speaker 4: self thinking thought cause motion? And the best I can
Speaker 4: make of it is that that key idea again of
Speaker 4: the identity of fault with its object means that the
Speaker 4: prime mover is identical with the fully realized forms of
Speaker 4: all natural entities. And Aristotle's teleology, you know, understands every
Speaker 4: natural process as some as a natural entity seeking to
Speaker 4: realize its form in some way. That includes both the
Speaker 4: growth of living things, you know, the acorn growing of
Speaker 4: the ooak and also the motion of the of the
Speaker 4: of the four elements, because when earth fault moves toward
Speaker 4: the center of the cosmos is seeking to real lies.
Speaker 4: It's Tellos being at the center. So you know, if
Speaker 4: you sort of incorporate all that, then you can see
Speaker 4: how it's at least plausible or makes sense in the
Speaker 4: air staty in worldview that yes, the prime mover is
Speaker 4: self thinking thought causes all natural motion. I do think
Speaker 4: there's an issue even in Aristotle, well, what about human
Speaker 4: free choice or what Aristotle call rational potencies, which are
Speaker 4: in the ability to do a or not a what
Speaker 4: causes one or the other? You know, this is the
Speaker 4: sort of thing that the liveness it's you know, gotten
Speaker 4: right well, and Aristotle really just doesn't ever address that
Speaker 4: question other than just to say what we do or
Speaker 4: it's our choice, which is fine, But then isn't there
Speaker 4: a kind of motion that isn't caused by the first member? Right?
Speaker 7: I mean this kind of sets up a problem that
Speaker 7: Aerostol has the kind of cosmos of necessity, and it
Speaker 7: makes it difficult to kind of parse these issues that
Speaker 7: you raise about human choice and freedom possibly within those.
Speaker 8: Kind of restraints.
Speaker 4: It's very striking when you read Aristotle. He's just not
Speaker 4: bothered by a lot of questions I think we would
Speaker 4: be bothered by because he's a pre Christian author, you know,
Speaker 4: And as mentioned earlier that in Christianity, the spontaneity of
Speaker 4: God is a fundamental belief, and then man is made
Speaker 4: in the image of God, and so in Christianity that
Speaker 4: element of human spontaneity, the ability to act in a
Speaker 4: way that simply expresses your character without being determined by
Speaker 4: any external prior cause, that's really fundamental. And Aristotle just
Speaker 4: doesn't have that kind of a view of who we are,
Speaker 4: and certainly not of our relation to God. And for
Speaker 4: that matter, it doesn't have that view of God, right,
Speaker 4: the Prime Mover doesn't have that kind of spontaneity of
Speaker 4: free choice. So that's why I think he's just kind
Speaker 4: of not alive or or awake to these issues in
Speaker 4: the way that we are.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's a that's a great lead off to the
Speaker 7: next question, because I mean, if you in studying Aquinas,
Speaker 7: who's drawing from Aristotle on these issues, when we start
Speaker 7: thinking about God's act of will, that Aquinas articulates this
Speaker 7: within his kind of conception of absolutely divine simplicity, that
Speaker 7: God's act of will is conditioned by God's essence, nothing else.
Speaker 8: There's no terminus.
Speaker 7: Outside of God's essence, which serves us some sort of cause.
Speaker 7: But then that would appear that, well, God's not completely
Speaker 7: free and unconditioned in the full sense.
Speaker 8: But it seems as in the case with the Orthodox
Speaker 8: conception of God, and that the essence and energies.
Speaker 7: And that God's not even bound by in any conditioned sense,
Speaker 7: or referring back to his essence to freely will through
Speaker 7: the logo to create gives us a more robust and
Speaker 7: completely unconditioned and free God in the full sense of
Speaker 7: the meaning.
Speaker 8: Would you agree with that? And how would you expect
Speaker 8: the Thomas to respond to that?
Speaker 4: Well? You know, so, I think one place where we
Speaker 4: do agree with the Thomas is that God necessarily wills
Speaker 4: the good, you know ready in Hebrews chapter six, right
Speaker 4: that there God cannot be false to himself. He can't
Speaker 4: square both falsely. So there's not this voluntarist idea that
Speaker 4: something is good.
Speaker 8: Just by God willing it whimsically.
Speaker 4: So yeah, yeah, So that I think is sort of
Speaker 4: the opposite extreme that we should avoid so, and the
Speaker 4: and the Capitocians say this very openly or explicitly, that
Speaker 4: God necessarily does will and good. But the thing is
Speaker 4: that there are many ways of being good, in many
Speaker 4: forms the good can take. And you know, they're thinking largely,
Speaker 4: I think, in platonic terms, where you have the form
Speaker 4: of the good, and then just think of all the
Speaker 4: vast array of images of that form, the things that
Speaker 4: participate in the form, the different you know, finite forms
Speaker 4: of good, how different they are. Right, And God is
Speaker 4: free in that he can realize, you know, this infinite
Speaker 4: array of different kinds of good things, and there are
Speaker 4: all ways in which He expresses and manifests his own
Speaker 4: goodness and a lot of that. I think all of
Speaker 4: that the Thomas would agree, and I think we have
Speaker 4: common ground. The difficulties arise because again it's as you
Speaker 4: mentioned earlier, you know, identifying then the divine will and
Speaker 4: the divine operation with the divine essence, you you kind
Speaker 4: of end up locked into a box where the essence
Speaker 4: can't be different, right, So how can the will be different?
Speaker 4: How can the operation different?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Exactly, Yeah, So that's that's that's good. Great, you pass
Speaker 8: on that Okay, next test, I'm not kidding.
Speaker 7: So one thing that might be a concern for US
Speaker 7: Eastern Orthodoxy is that to see that the West might
Speaker 7: be placing a premissey or even superiority of the one
Speaker 7: over the many, essence over personhood, and as a result,
Speaker 7: we would worry that maybe let's just returning to the
Speaker 7: same problems of Greek essentialism.
Speaker 8: And if that's so, wouldn't this lead if we committed.
Speaker 7: Ourselves as far as our theological projects, to this kind
Speaker 7: of embracing the premise youre superior of the one over
Speaker 7: the many and essence over personhood. Well, if we carry
Speaker 7: that out in various ways, isn't that exactly what leads
Speaker 7: to the numerous heresies that we see in history.
Speaker 4: Well, but I think we'd have to have a whole
Speaker 4: further two hour discussion to, you know, to tease that out.
Speaker 4: And I know, people like Metropolitans, Azulus, you know, have
Speaker 4: said a lot about how person cannot be reduced to
Speaker 4: nature and so forth, and I think there's some truth
Speaker 4: to that, but I do think often the ways is
Speaker 4: you know, people have tried to articulate it, including in
Speaker 4: his case, are either unclear or just not well grounded
Speaker 4: than the fathers.
Speaker 7: Ultimately, well that's because he spent too much time doing
Speaker 7: continental philosophy.
Speaker 3: Yeah his approach, I kid, I kid, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, well, he does have a heavily philosophic approach,
Speaker 3: I mean in terms of because I've got being a
Speaker 3: communion and metropolitan orrotheos has I think a pretty good
Speaker 3: treatise on nature in person. But I mean, we know
Speaker 3: that a person has to in some sense not just
Speaker 3: be a concretization or instantiation of nature, because if it was,
Speaker 3: we would be modalists, right, The Father of the Son
Speaker 3: and the Spirit would just be sort of instantiations of
Speaker 3: the divine nature. They are instantiations of the divine nature.
Speaker 3: But there really is something unique about the you know,
Speaker 3: hypostasis of the sun that in some way transcends just
Speaker 3: merely an instantiation of nature. Which is why, as some
Speaker 3: people have argued, I would say, you know, our I
Speaker 3: think just surfrom Hamilton has a good point about this
Speaker 3: that you know, if it was just a participation in
Speaker 3: divine nature that we were experiencing or looking for here,
Speaker 3: then we wouldn't be called sons. But the fact that
Speaker 3: we are called sons means that we are participating in
Speaker 3: a relationship that is hypostatic. Right, It's the logos the person,
Speaker 3: second person that God had that adopts us, and so
Speaker 3: therefore we are made sons, and therefore it's a personal participation.
Speaker 3: It's not just an essentialist participation. And so therefore a
Speaker 3: person is more than just an instantiation of nature, even
Speaker 3: if we can't give like a perfect, you know, sort
Speaker 3: of philosophical scientific definition of what a hypostasis is.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's a good way to kind of tease out
Speaker 8: what was implicit in that question. Thank you too.
Speaker 3: What do you think about that?
Speaker 4: Doctor, Yeah, yeah, I think that's that's well said. I
Speaker 4: don't know if you know the work of Father Nicolaus Ludovicos,
Speaker 4: but he has a book on Saint Maximus where he
Speaker 4: he kind of develops the theme of what he calls
Speaker 4: a diological reciprocity that you know I mentioned earlier, how
Speaker 4: our each of us, our logos is something that we
Speaker 4: have to realize through our own free action, and the
Speaker 4: way Maximus understands that it's never a sort of a
Speaker 4: one and done sort of thing. You're always engaged in
Speaker 4: this dialogue with God in which your free acts are
Speaker 4: responding to the good that He presents to you. And
Speaker 4: even when you refuse that good, he is still He's
Speaker 4: going to present to you another form of the good, right,
Speaker 4: And that's sort of just his way of presenting this
Speaker 4: fact that we're always called to repent, we're always called
Speaker 4: to seek God, are closer to Him no matter where
Speaker 4: we are in our lives. So there's this continual dialogue
Speaker 4: between each person in God, and that's what constitutes us
Speaker 4: as persons.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: I think it's you're never going to find a single
Speaker 4: definition or a single term that really encapsulates everything there
Speaker 4: because it's it's sort of the whole of the Christian life.
Speaker 4: So anyway, I would agree, and I think the ideas
Speaker 4: of as a personhood is absolutely central in the whole tradition.
Speaker 4: But the term is not that these terms like hypostasis
Speaker 4: and prosiphon, they have distinct meanings, you know, and we
Speaker 4: have to have to be careful to respect what they
Speaker 4: actually meant within a given context, and which not all
Speaker 4: the burden of sort of the concept of person who
Speaker 4: had asked to what rest on any yeah, individual term?
Speaker 3: I think, you know, Father Fluorowsky and Father stun Eloy
Speaker 3: have pretty good, in my view, extensive discussions of hypostasis.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think Experience of God is really good
Speaker 3: in terms of how he deals with it. I think
Speaker 3: he does try to ground it in a patteristic mindset
Speaker 3: because he is, you know, very critical of Tomism in
Speaker 3: that in that uh that series.
Speaker 5: This father is standalalie, yeah, yeah, father, and I did
Speaker 5: you have the kind of top end sophisticated Tomist critique?
Speaker 7: Okay, yeah, okay that you're they going to get a
Speaker 7: little bit more complex, so bear with me.
Speaker 8: So we've already spoken about.
Speaker 7: Is a Tomistic notion divine simplicity compatible with divine freedoms?
Speaker 7: We spoke a little bit about that. If we answer no,
Speaker 7: there's a certain critique of our position that states, well,
Speaker 7: if the energies could have been different from what they
Speaker 7: in fact are, then, according to the Tomis, then there'd
Speaker 7: be a reason.
Speaker 8: Why they are as they in fact are.
Speaker 7: Thus there would be some, as they understand it, contingent
Speaker 7: cause which would account for the divine energy being multiplied
Speaker 7: in creatures in the way in a way, not in
Speaker 7: another way.
Speaker 8: How would we respond to this this criticism.
Speaker 4: Well, it sounds to me, if I understand the idea
Speaker 4: sort of like an argument not against our viue, it's
Speaker 4: an argument against any belief in free will. You know,
Speaker 4: free will, by its nature just is the spontaneous the
Speaker 4: ability to act spontaneously in a way that's not determined
Speaker 4: by any prior cause. And if we have that, certainly
Speaker 4: God has it. In fact, we have it because God
Speaker 4: has it. That's that's part of what makes us in
Speaker 4: the image of God. And so I think granted that
Speaker 4: there's not any additional problem, you know, with understanding some
Speaker 4: of the divide energies to be free. That's simply sort
Speaker 4: of given in and understanding God to be free. So
Speaker 4: I mean there's something I'm missing.
Speaker 8: In the in the no no, I think that. I
Speaker 8: think that's a good uh. And again, I think a
Speaker 8: lot of this comes down to.
Speaker 7: Once you kind of put yourself in a certain kind
Speaker 7: of metaphysical box with terms and concepts restricted in such
Speaker 7: and such a way, then you kind of set up
Speaker 7: your own problems and it becomes impossible to kind of
Speaker 7: answer these questions. But if you know, as in the
Speaker 7: Orthodox notion, you have a lot more fluidity, Like a
Speaker 7: stand away says, you know, the Orthodox Church never embraced
Speaker 7: any one philosophical project or metaphysics, and therefore it is
Speaker 7: free to be able to use the truth of philosophy.
Speaker 7: That gives us, I think, a much more robust freedom
Speaker 7: to be able to articulate what's been received in divine
Speaker 7: revelation without getting into these kind of apparreas and problems.
Speaker 8: Good, yeah, and one, Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 4: I was just good to say. It's been over two hours,
Speaker 4: so we probably should.
Speaker 3: Ye, we're coming down to the end here. Yeah, thank
Speaker 3: you for your time. We'll go ahead. We'll go ahead
Speaker 3: and let you go because I know you've got probably
Speaker 3: other stuff you've got to do, but you've been very
Speaker 3: gracious and maybe we can get you back in the
Speaker 3: future when you're free, and we won't and we'll try
Speaker 3: to hold you so long.
Speaker 4: Oh, no problem. Yeah, I just I'm thinking there are
Speaker 4: probably listeners out there who are maybe nearly as exhausted
Speaker 4: as I am.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 8: Don't worry about them. Worry about yourself, all right.
Speaker 4: Well, it's been a pleasure talking to you guys.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Doctor Bradshaw was great and I hope to see
Speaker 7: you soon. And it was wonderful seeing you. What was
Speaker 7: that last month and wonderful having you on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was an honor to meet you.
Speaker 6: Well, it was a great honor to meet you.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, I hope we can, Lewis, I hope we
Speaker 4: can meet in person one of these.
Speaker 8: Days, but otherwise hoping.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I do go to England every now and then.
Speaker 4: You know, they have that great Patristics conference at Oxford
Speaker 4: every four years, and I make that.
Speaker 6: Every four years.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, yeah, well you other times too. There's the
Speaker 4: Eyeways like it's like.
Speaker 7: Like a fifth of my life, or doctor Bradshaw, we
Speaker 7: just will just put together a conference and have it
Speaker 7: over there and round every all those scholars up well
Speaker 7: and excused to see Lewis.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, thank you, Doc Brutshaw. It has been great.
Speaker 3: And everybody be sure and get a copy of Aristotle
Speaker 3: East and West. As you see, I have that linked
Speaker 3: in my show page. You go to my website, you'll
Speaker 3: see the links there to his book. And have a
Speaker 3: good night, doctor Brushaw.
Speaker 8: Okay, yeah, blessed evening.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you, good talking to you.
Speaker 3: All right, thank you Lewis and father Deacon. Can you
Speaker 3: stay around for super chats or you guys got to go?
Speaker 8: Yeah, no, I'll be up.
Speaker 7: I can stay for another three hours. If all of
Speaker 7: you in the chat are willing to stick.
Speaker 6: With me on this, I stay for another one.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, let's get to the super chest, So
Speaker 3: John Alice for ten dollars. Since God's lucie is beyond ussia, actuality,
Speaker 3: and potentiality, is it also correct that God's energy is
Speaker 3: beyond energy, actuality, and potentiality Or are these categories properly
Speaker 3: applied to God's energy? No, So, the what we speak
Speaker 3: of as beyond is God in himself, right, God in
Speaker 3: his essence, what he is in himself is what's beyond.
Speaker 3: But when we speak of potentialities, when we speak of
Speaker 3: energies and actions, those are in relation to creation. So
Speaker 3: they are beyond us in the sense of that even
Speaker 3: those are divine and actions uncreated. But they're also in
Speaker 3: a sense knowable and interactable others. We can participate in
Speaker 3: those things. So I would not say that that the
Speaker 3: energies themselves are beyond energies. I would say that that
Speaker 3: doesn't make any sense. Although there are energies and works
Speaker 3: that we don't even know about. Some of the fathers
Speaker 3: do say that, I don't know if anybody has any
Speaker 3: other question, any statements on that. Yeah, Jeff Jablonski, what's
Speaker 3: up five bucks? What's the difference between Ussia and Fusis?
Speaker 3: That would have been a great question for Broadshaw, since
Speaker 3: he has sort of the technical specifications when it comes
Speaker 3: to the linguistic differences. I would just simply say that
Speaker 3: as the theology crystallizes in the east nothing, it eventually
Speaker 3: is not distinguished.
Speaker 6: Well, I it's funny, me and father and I we
Speaker 6: were listening to this long.
Speaker 5: Stream night and I think I have an answer here,
Speaker 5: but you guys can correct me here because I think
Speaker 5: I in actuality as such, they're not distinct, that's synonymous.
Speaker 5: But the word nature kind of picks out a different
Speaker 5: aspect that essence does. So essence would pick out kind
Speaker 5: of what what a thing is, that that what makes
Speaker 5: the thing is, but nature would kind of pick out
Speaker 5: perhaps the activity of that thing.
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure that I'm pretty sure is Dona Mascus
Speaker 3: says that they're the same. They're just used the same.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I know the same, but I'm saying that.
Speaker 8: The same notionally same.
Speaker 7: So ontologically the reference which they refer to is ontologically
Speaker 7: the same, but they have different notions within the mind
Speaker 7: of I e. Connotations maybe a little bit different, nuanced,
Speaker 7: exactly squashed out.
Speaker 3: Are we talking about in our theology or to Montoism
Speaker 3: or what where are we talking about this? Because I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm not trying to be contrary. I'm just I'm pretty
Speaker 3: sure save oh.
Speaker 8: I was actually just no, Yah, donalds it is no difference.
Speaker 8: I was actually just thinking of.
Speaker 7: There might be do you think within the connotation of
Speaker 7: fusus or nature versus ousia.
Speaker 8: But the same They're referring to the same thing. But
Speaker 8: what it it is of a being.
Speaker 3: There is a section where Donnamscus touches on this, but
Speaker 3: I think he comes to the conclusion that really there's
Speaker 3: not it's not it's not that big of it. There
Speaker 3: might be different people who used it in specific ways,
Speaker 3: but what we intend is the same thing. Jeff Doblonski
Speaker 3: For ten dollars, she says, question two is God's is
Speaker 3: God's energy and actualization of the nature or the essence?
Speaker 3: Is this how we partake of the nature? And second
Speaker 3: Peter one four? But the ushi remains transcendent. Remember that
Speaker 3: the actualization is always brought into actualization by persons, right,
Speaker 3: So it's not just an essence that's actualizing. It's a
Speaker 3: person with an essence actualizing. That's the key thing here.
Speaker 3: And that's why we always say that the actions of
Speaker 3: God are in hypostatized. So I would say that that's
Speaker 3: the first answer there, and then the part about second
Speaker 3: Peter one four Are we partakers of the divine nature? Yes,
Speaker 3: through the divine energies, but not directly God's essence. So
Speaker 3: yes and no. You know, one comments on that. There's
Speaker 3: a great book on that. By the way, The Deification
Speaker 3: of Man touches on that, if you want to read
Speaker 3: the classic Father manser Rites. That's what I was holding
Speaker 3: up during the interview. He he touches on all that
Speaker 3: in not too long of a treatise. Jeff again five bucks.
Speaker 3: Does the Osis relate to Saint Maximus's appeal to Aristotle
Speaker 3: dividing Fusis into ushia and potentiality and actuality? Again, I
Speaker 3: don't think that eventually. I don't think that. So maybe
Speaker 3: Father Deacon he's talking about Aristotle divides Fusis into usia, potentiality, actuality.
Speaker 4: Is that?
Speaker 3: Does Aristol do that?
Speaker 8: I don't think so.
Speaker 3: Actually, Okay, I don't think Saint Maximus would do that,
Speaker 3: because I think by Saint Maximus and Saint John A. Mascus,
Speaker 3: this time fussis and usha begin to be used in
Speaker 3: the same way. I could be there could be a
Speaker 3: technical section or maximism, but I don't know. If you
Speaker 3: read the one hundred chapters, excuse me, two hundred chapters,
Speaker 3: you'll see at the beginning, within the first ten pages,
Speaker 3: he'll say, in what sense we use aerosol and what
Speaker 3: since we don't so? And he actually addresses that very
Speaker 3: sense in which God is first cause and not first cause,
Speaker 3: first principle and not first principal. Russian Anime bought five dollars.
Speaker 3: Here is some Dugan dollar for comrad bless blessings from
Speaker 3: Putin and Dugan to you. Russian Anime book Palmer, Eric,
Speaker 3: Palmer l Rick fifteen dollars, Great talk, guests, Thank you, gentlemen,
Speaker 3: Thank you very much, Palmer el Rick. Who's next? Nicodemus
Speaker 3: the Pharisee? Five dollars? Can you expand on the Theophanes?
Speaker 3: Are they uncreated divine forms?
Speaker 4: In a way?
Speaker 3: Yes, they are uncreated manifestations of God. They're hypostatic. I
Speaker 3: wouldn't necessarily say their forms if you mean do they
Speaker 3: come in some form within time and space? Yes? How
Speaker 3: is that possible? Because God transcends the logical categories and
Speaker 3: he can step into time and space. And every time
Speaker 3: somebody says that he can't do that, they're denying the incarnation.
Speaker 3: Do they detract from the incarnation if they aren't angelic
Speaker 3: special effects? No, They, as the Eastern Fathers consistently argue,
Speaker 3: are intimations of the incarnation. They pre signify and prepare
Speaker 3: mankind for the incarnation because they are the pre incarnate logos.
Speaker 3: They're not angelic holograms. They're worshiped. You can't worship angels
Speaker 3: or creatures. You can only worship God. They are worshiped.
Speaker 3: They are the logos. There's no question in the Eastern
Speaker 3: Fathers about that consistently, so the Theophanes again ahead, Yeah.
Speaker 7: And this is only a problem when you commit to
Speaker 7: thistlicity model, since that you since the absolute divine simple
Speaker 7: essence cannot enter into to nature and be composed and composite.
Speaker 7: And this is really a problem I was trying to
Speaker 7: hit on earlier with this kind of tension in the
Speaker 7: West between the one and the many.
Speaker 8: Yes, so that's what Jay's talking about. Transcends the logical.
Speaker 7: Uh laws, particularly I mean God's you know, contradicting himself.
Speaker 7: But there's a part of logic that's uncreated and then
Speaker 7: created within you know, the human symbols. Obviously, Aristotle develops
Speaker 7: and what you start to see the development within logic
Speaker 7: starting from Aristotle is this kind of tension between the
Speaker 7: one and many that plagues Western philosophy. And so then
Speaker 7: it becomes well, then how could you know the absolute one,
Speaker 7: you know, divine simple essence enter into.
Speaker 6: The world.
Speaker 3: Well, that's not a problem for us is not subject,
Speaker 3: he's not subject to the antonomis and the logical contraries,
Speaker 3: is what Palema says. Correct, correct, Wu ladd two dollars.
Speaker 3: Do the logie have a more real existence than the sensibles.
Speaker 3: Sensibles are would all have their own logie. But the
Speaker 3: logie are just the archetypes, patterns, principles, predeterminations, and divine
Speaker 3: ideas behind the created order. That's all they are. So
Speaker 3: they're also thought wills, right. They only relate to the
Speaker 3: created world. They're not identical to the essential eternal attributes
Speaker 3: of God. They only relate to the created order. They
Speaker 3: are uncreated, they're divine ideas. It is a form of
Speaker 3: divine conceptualism. It is a form of exemplarism, but not
Speaker 3: the same as the Western view, which sticks them in
Speaker 3: the divine essence. Sat Maximus makes them personal, It makes
Speaker 3: them relate to the Logos who brings them into being.
Speaker 3: Right again, as we heard from doctor Bradshaw, from the
Speaker 3: Father through the Son in the spirit, as you've heard
Speaker 3: me say consistently, and so the Logos has the role
Speaker 3: of bringing them into being. If you want the biblical
Speaker 3: sense for this, look at what Paul's talking about Colossians.
Speaker 3: The lug doctrine, the Logi doctrine is not some philosophy.
Speaker 3: It's in Paul. Paul says that everything came to be,
Speaker 3: and it's sustained in being and is being brought to
Speaker 3: being by the Logos. So you have the creating of
Speaker 3: the creative world on the pattern of the Logi. You
Speaker 3: have the sustaining of being to the Logos brought to
Speaker 3: perspection in the spirit.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: So Father is the initiator, the Son brings them into being.
Speaker 3: The Spirit perfects this. This the creation. That's a triadic
Speaker 3: mode that I just read from Saint Maximus in the
Speaker 3: Questions and doubts that threefold structure of reality, he says,
Speaker 3: mirrors the triad. And so I wouldn't say that the
Speaker 3: logi have any sort of more real or less real existence.
Speaker 3: They're just the patterns, principles, archetypes, predeterminations, divine ideas, thought,
Speaker 3: wills of the created order, and God didn't have to
Speaker 3: bring them to be so for the number seven or
Speaker 3: any other kind of universal or whatever principle or me
Speaker 3: or you, there's an individual logi for each one of
Speaker 3: those things. Universals also have it logi. But universals are created.
Speaker 3: We are created, right, and we're created on the pattern
Speaker 3: of uncreated patterns, you see, So hopefully that's helpful. Scandinavian
Speaker 3: sunset twenty dollars ninety nine in California Bucks or Canadian Bucks.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Thank you for your work. Jay. With the
Speaker 3: anaphora of Adi and Mari, I guess you're talking to
Speaker 3: the stream that we did with David, where we talked
Speaker 3: about the David the real metright, some of the problems
Speaker 3: in the uniate system where they will do they will
Speaker 3: reference Nestorian and these kinds of anaphras which don't really
Speaker 3: make sense. So yeah, that's probably I guess that's what
Speaker 3: you're talking about Scandinavian sunset. I'm not sure, Nicodemus the
Speaker 3: pharisee two dollars. Due created energies exist before they began.
Speaker 3: They didn't have a beginning. They are uncreated, right, So
Speaker 3: uncreated things are not the logie, do not exist. They're
Speaker 3: always in the mind of God, but they're not brought
Speaker 3: into reality unless God decides to create.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 3: So this is the point, is that God can have
Speaker 3: all kinds of ideas that he doesn't bring into actuality.
Speaker 3: That's not really possible in the Roman Catholic scheme you
Speaker 3: see on the basis of their doctrine of divine ideas.
Speaker 3: So I don't think it makes sense to talk about
Speaker 3: uncreated energies existing before they began or begin. It's a
Speaker 3: nonsense question, because did the incarnation happen before it began?
Speaker 3: I mean, that's a retarded question. Email surrec twenty dollars.
Speaker 3: Is there an official Orthodox position on the composition of
Speaker 3: human nature? Is it bipartit or tripartite? Saint Paul seems
Speaker 3: to be clear on the matter. Saint John Damascus in
Speaker 3: many places favor as the former. It's tripartite, but when
Speaker 3: you understand that the news is actually the integration of
Speaker 3: the mind into the heart. The news, it's not a
Speaker 3: third thing on top of it's the mind being reintegrated
Speaker 3: into the heart. So the mental, intellectual faculty and the
Speaker 3: heart are just different aspects of the soul. So John
Speaker 3: Damascus does mention the news. In fact, he's not a
Speaker 3: So that's how you reconcile these two positions, because there's
Speaker 3: the news, is the mind functioning in unison and synergy
Speaker 3: with the heart, So it's not a third other thing,
Speaker 3: you see. So that's how those two positions are reconciled.
Speaker 3: And John Demascus does mention the news, but he mentions
Speaker 3: it as the intellect. But the intellect in terms of
Speaker 3: the way Saint Gregor Palomas conceives of is that the
Speaker 3: intellect is reintegrated into the heart. You see, this is
Speaker 3: something that happens after the fall. I would say that
Speaker 3: if you read the Saint Justin Popovich s on Isaac
Speaker 3: the Syrian, his theory of Knowledge, where he talks about
Speaker 3: the Logi and the noose, that will resolve this question.
Speaker 3: But good question. I've had that same We had that
Speaker 3: question in the discord actually the other day Lewis raised
Speaker 3: it justin s Dan ten dollars, catching the tail end
Speaker 3: of this off topic. Can you speak on the life
Speaker 3: confession before baptism. I don't know what that means.
Speaker 5: I think, well, it's not a universal practice in the church,
Speaker 5: but I went through a life confession. It's essentially just
Speaker 5: so it's it's for those of you that don't know
Speaker 5: anything about this, because do you.
Speaker 3: Mean where you confess all your life, all your sins.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you confessed like you do, like a broad confession
Speaker 5: of your sins in your life, but you don't receive
Speaker 5: like sacramental absolution because the baptism is the you knowchnical absolution.
Speaker 5: So it's just kind of a it's just kind of
Speaker 5: the motions of repentance.
Speaker 8: It's not like I did.
Speaker 7: I did as a one before ordination too, not that
Speaker 7: that's a universal thing to do, but my priest wanted
Speaker 7: me to so once before baptism and once before ordination,
Speaker 7: just to clean out all the cob webs.
Speaker 6: Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 5: It's just it's just kind of a recapitulation.
Speaker 6: In a sense. I guess.
Speaker 3: That's good gen Z philosophy. Two dollars. He says, uh, oh,
Speaker 3: justin Sam says, Catholic friends are confused on why I
Speaker 3: would have to do that. When I joined the Catholic Church,
Speaker 3: we did that. We did a full on lifetime quote confession.
Speaker 8: So and by the way, we are Catholic, you mean
Speaker 8: Roman Catholic?
Speaker 3: Ye workout exactly.
Speaker 8: Well.
Speaker 5: I also wouldn't use the Catholic mode of reception of
Speaker 5: converts or baptism as like a standard either, because I
Speaker 5: don't know as far as I'm aware that a lot
Speaker 5: of stuff is and a few things have been cut
Speaker 5: out that are in the Byzantine right down in the
Speaker 5: Catholic right.
Speaker 3: Gen Z philosophy two dollars did the human image?
Speaker 9: Yeah, go ahead, Hell, where's we have a big fifty dollars?
Speaker 9: Oh yeah, well, I'm super chat.
Speaker 8: We can't we can't leave.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry. Yeah, So they didn't say anything. It says
Speaker 3: warm soda fifty dollars. My bad. So I didn't see okay,
Speaker 3: I didn't see any text as well.
Speaker 8: Just a big big thank you to absolutely Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 3: So much Warm Soda. Much appreciate it, and I'm sorry
Speaker 3: for overlooking that. Gen Z philosophy two dollars to the
Speaker 3: human image of Jesus appear in the Old Testament. No,
Speaker 3: because Christ was not incarnate as a human yet. So mankind,
Speaker 3: I think you could argue, many fathers say, is in
Speaker 3: a sense made in the image of the Logos. There
Speaker 3: is a triadic aspect to mankind's creation. Sat Maximus says this,
Speaker 3: So in a way you could see the creation of
Speaker 3: Adam as intimating the incarnation. But Jesus did not have
Speaker 3: a human nature yet, because he took that from Adam.
Speaker 3: So I don't think there would be any sense in
Speaker 3: saying that Jesus had a human image when he appeared
Speaker 3: as the Logos. Those were Theophanes. Theophanes are somewhat mysterious,
Speaker 3: but yet nevertheless they occurred, and we believe it on
Speaker 3: the basis of revelation. So when the Logos appeared within
Speaker 3: time and space, he wrestled with with Jacob. Right, So
Speaker 3: how'd that happened, I don't know, but it did.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So Nicodemus, a pharisee two dollars, was Christ's created body
Speaker 3: worshiped by the magi. This is solved by Saint Cyril
Speaker 3: of Alexandria at the Council of Ephesus, which is that
Speaker 3: we worship the whole Christ with one worship. So the
Speaker 3: whole Christ hypostatically unite it both natures is worshiped in
Speaker 3: the incarnation. We don't separate the worship or adoration of Christ.
Speaker 9: That would be to fall like Nestorius. Yeah, that would
Speaker 9: be to be anus orient correct.
Speaker 6: Yeah, because we do believe in a kind of mea physis.
Speaker 5: Correctly, as if you watch the real Medwife. He goes
Speaker 5: into this real depth. The natures are only distinguished after
Speaker 5: the nature, after the union in the in the mind,
Speaker 5: in the mind right. But what we what we interact
Speaker 5: with an experience, is the whole Christ.
Speaker 3: So yeah, and St. Cyril makes this argument on the
Speaker 3: basis of the Eucharist uh in against Mystorias. He says,
Speaker 3: are you eating the flesh of just a dude or
Speaker 3: are you partaking of the body of the god Man
Speaker 3: and therefore the uncreated energies of the god Man that
Speaker 3: have been transferred to the human nature and thus the Eucharist.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 3: Sorry, Roman Catholics, you don't eat the essence of God,
Speaker 3: all right? So anything anybody want to leave us with,
Speaker 3: be sure and subscribe to Father, Deacon doctor Ananias, be
Speaker 3: sure and get your copy of Aerosol East and West.
Speaker 3: It's a really crucial text on this issue. Anything you
Speaker 3: guys want to leave us with failure, I said, be
Speaker 3: sure to subscribe to Father Diagon doctor Ananias. Is there
Speaker 3: anything that you guys want to want to leave us with?
Speaker 3: And I'll put your channel in the in the description.
Speaker 8: Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 6: Let me know, guys if.
Speaker 7: You want me to do the third lecture series of
Speaker 7: the Logic of course this upcoming week. I didn't want
Speaker 7: to stress everybody out with too much too fast, and
Speaker 7: blessed Lan, make sure you keep upers for everybody. Think
Speaker 7: of others instead of yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when you're when you're smashing people over the head
Speaker 3: to get the toilet paper in the cost code, be
Speaker 3: sure to think of others.
Speaker 8: And when you do, think about the arguments that we
Speaker 8: just did in this video and let the people know.
Speaker 3: All right, everybody, have a good night, God bless thank
Speaker 3: you very Lloch stupid. Yes we've got one more from
Speaker 3: gen Z philosophy. He says, thank you for the answer.
Speaker 3: Here are some super jaggles, uh, blessed Lint and thank
Speaker 3: you much appreciated. All right, everybody have a good night.
Speaker 8: Thank you, blessing Night
Speaker 3: All right, that was based