Speaker 1: Jay, Dayah, it is wonderful to have you back. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Maria. I always enjoy our conversation, so I'm
Speaker 2: glad to be back.
Speaker 1: Likewise, I have to say, you know, since we met
Speaker 1: in person last year and did our book review of
Speaker 1: Orthodoxy in the Religion of the Future, we had a
Speaker 1: lot of good feedback on that and a lot of
Speaker 1: people interested in this topic. I recently conducted an interview
Speaker 1: with an Orthodox priest and I want to I really
Speaker 1: want to focus on this subject with you today. I
Speaker 1: know that we've touched on this in the past, Jay,
Speaker 1: but viewers may not be aware of your previous life
Speaker 1: and your transition into Orthodoxy. So if you will just
Speaker 1: take people through a little bit of that history and
Speaker 1: you realizing that the Orthodox Church was the one true church.
Speaker 2: I was raised a Southern Baptist and was nominal. I
Speaker 2: mean we would go some here and there, and then
Speaker 2: got more serious about religion in my high school period.
Speaker 2: My senior year, I started going to a lot of
Speaker 2: evangelical Bible studies and church meetings and decided I would
Speaker 2: study the history of the church more in depth. I
Speaker 2: got into theology and philosophy when I was eighteen nineteen,
Speaker 2: started studying that at the academic level for college, and
Speaker 2: then continued studying that in a related way in grad school,
Speaker 2: not so much the theology per se, but worldviews and
Speaker 2: the idea of what we call worldview warfare, and how
Speaker 2: systems and worldviews and paradigms work in people's as the
Speaker 2: models of people's belief systems. And then in my twenties
Speaker 2: I decided that Protestantism didn't really have a lot to offer,
Speaker 2: so I got really interested in the history of the Church,
Speaker 2: as I said, and at that time, a lot of
Speaker 2: the online discussion for the debates in their sphere were
Speaker 2: basically just Protestant and Catholics. I didn't know about the
Speaker 2: Orthodox Church in my twenties. I wasn't averse to it,
Speaker 2: I just didn't know much about it, and so I
Speaker 2: thought the debate was basically just Protestant versus Catholics. So
Speaker 2: I became a Roman Catholic in two thousand and three,
Speaker 2: I believe, and was in that world for eight or
Speaker 2: nine years, and a lot of I think when you
Speaker 2: live that for a while, you start to notice there's
Speaker 2: some pretty significant problems. But you don't want to jump
Speaker 2: ship too quick. So I attended the traditional Latin Mass
Speaker 2: for many years, and I was really into Thomas Aquinas
Speaker 2: and Tomistic philosophy and trying to be as traditionally minded
Speaker 2: as possible. As the Vatican continued to be more and
Speaker 2: more liberal, and eventually I just felt like there weren't
Speaker 2: solid answers to the questions that I had as Roman Catholic,
Speaker 2: and so I started studying Orthodoxy in about two thousand
Speaker 2: and seven. I made some friends that were Orthodox, and
Speaker 2: they recommended a lot of books. I was seeing a
Speaker 2: girl at the time and we were considering both with
Speaker 2: entering the Orthodox Church. At the same time, we were
Speaker 2: probably going to be married, so I went through the
Speaker 2: catechumen even back then and decided not to convert. So
Speaker 2: I held off and decided I would just kind of wait.
Speaker 2: I wasn't really ready. I have so many, so much
Speaker 2: theological ideological baggage from my previous beliefs as a Roman Catholic,
Speaker 2: that it took me a really long time to work
Speaker 2: through a lot of the issues. So I just held
Speaker 2: off and kind of got burned out even on going
Speaker 2: to church and going to the sort of standard Catholic services,
Speaker 2: and I was a little wild for those years in
Speaker 2: my late twenties early thirties, and then by about mid thirties,
Speaker 2: I guess I started getting a little more serious and
Speaker 2: getting back into reading a lot of philosophy texts, reading
Speaker 2: a lot of certain church fathers like Saint Maximistic Professor
Speaker 2: and certain Orthodox theologians like Vladimir Lawski or Father Dmitri
Speaker 2: stun Eloy. They stand out out as books that really
Speaker 2: writers that really influenced me to eventually convert. So about
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen I was getting more serious and kind of
Speaker 2: going back to church, and I guess it was about
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen that I went back into being catechumen and
Speaker 2: formally joined. So twenty seventeen catechumen. I think I was
Speaker 2: Chris made in twenty eighteen. So yeah, So that was
Speaker 2: my short form journey during the period when I wasn't
Speaker 2: really to go into church in my late twenties and
Speaker 2: early thirties. I didn't become an atheist. I think a
Speaker 2: lot of people have atheists phases or something, but I
Speaker 2: more so was just reading a lot of different perennial
Speaker 2: text neoplatonic stuff. So I wasn't atheist, but I was
Speaker 2: kind of interested in a lot of different positions. And yeah,
Speaker 2: I would say Father Stefrom Rose two had an important
Speaker 2: impact as well. His book Nihilism Roots of the Modern
Speaker 2: Revolution impacted me pretty significantly, probably in twenty fIF teen sixteen.
Speaker 2: So that's the short version of and then here we
Speaker 2: are today, where you know, I've spent a lot of
Speaker 2: time kind of discussing orthodox philosophy and theology for the
Speaker 2: last five or six years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I watch her debates all the time. We love
Speaker 1: your content here at Z Media. We encourage everyone to
Speaker 1: check out Jay's YouTube channel and his website. I'll bring
Speaker 1: all of that up throughout throughout the interview, But yeah,
Speaker 1: Jayson in our lounge room regularly, so.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Of course. I find, you know, some of the arguments.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because I think it's really easy to say
Speaker 1: not easy, and I'm not in any way diminishing those
Speaker 1: who do it, but I think it's easy to debate
Speaker 1: atheists in the sense that the atheist worldview just doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense. It doesn't make sense. There's no it's illogical,
Speaker 1: it's unscientific. And I'm talking about like say, double evolutionists,
Speaker 1: like it's to me, you know, you are placing your
Speaker 1: blind faith in a theory that has never been proven,
Speaker 1: the same way that someone with a religion in a
Speaker 1: belief in a god would. I mean, that's the way
Speaker 1: that I've always viewed it. And so, you know, I
Speaker 1: used to do People may not know this. I was,
Speaker 1: you know, in the Evangelical Church for many years, used
Speaker 1: to do street ministry, you know, talking with people on
Speaker 1: the street of people of all worldviews, very very highly
Speaker 1: Muslim populated area, so I got to talk to a
Speaker 1: lot of Muslims as well. It was great. I loved it.
Speaker 1: I loved doing it because I love people and I
Speaker 1: loved discussing world views, and so that was something I
Speaker 1: was very passionate about. But it was from an Evangelical stance.
Speaker 1: And then it was really during the COVID era that
Speaker 1: I returned to Orthodoxy, which is you know, I was
Speaker 1: baptized Orthodox as a child, and really you know, spent
Speaker 1: a few years there. It was about eight years in
Speaker 1: the Evangelical Church, so long time. And and and you
Speaker 1: know what I've found, Jay was a lot of unlearning
Speaker 1: has happened since that time of what I thought was
Speaker 1: correct doctrine, what I thought was correct theology, and there
Speaker 1: were a lot of sticking points for me, you know,
Speaker 1: coming to realize the truth about Orthodoxy that exist for
Speaker 1: a lot of Protestants these days. When I talk to
Speaker 1: my friends from my former church and I've returned to Orthodoxy,
Speaker 1: they think that I've become an idolator, an image worshiper,
Speaker 1: you know, all of this kind of stuff. So I
Speaker 1: want to focus on that with you, in terms of
Speaker 1: the you know, the common misconceptions or the common arguments
Speaker 1: that a lot of Protestants bring up. You know, for example,
Speaker 1: you worship saints. Let's just start with the biggest one.
Speaker 2: I think these are pretty common objections. You know, everybody
Speaker 2: has faces, especially if you have an atheist or excuse me,
Speaker 2: a biblical or evangelical background, You're going to have some
Speaker 2: of these roadblocks where there's stuff that seems foreign an
Speaker 2: odd and in that case, it's it's interesting that a
Speaker 2: lot of times atheists that convert typically maybe might even
Speaker 2: have less baggage because you know, they weren't hammered into,
Speaker 2: you know, thinking for many years that any kind of
Speaker 2: imagery is somehow inherently idolatrous. But yeah, I remember I
Speaker 2: kind of worked through a lot of those issues back
Speaker 2: when I was, you know, in my early twenties kind
Speaker 2: of sussing out between protest and Catholic, And I remember
Speaker 2: going to a church and seeing relics for the first time,
Speaker 2: and I remember thinking it was a little odd. It
Speaker 2: never really experienced that being you know, raised Baptists. But
Speaker 2: the logic of it is pretty solid if you you know,
Speaker 2: if you're familiar with the Old Testament, especially because we
Speaker 2: have stories where the bones of Elisha, right, that people
Speaker 2: get raised from the dead because they're exposed to those bones.
Speaker 2: In the Book of Back, we see you know, Paul
Speaker 2: casting out demons through you know, cloths that he that
Speaker 2: he had, that we're part, that we're near his body.
Speaker 2: We see Jesus's garments heal people, and so physical matter
Speaker 2: has the ability to take on the power or what
Speaker 2: we call the divine energies and the Orthodox sphere. So
Speaker 2: when I think, when we start to understand it from
Speaker 2: that perspective, that the point is that we would be
Speaker 2: participants in the divine energies, and that we ourselves in
Speaker 2: our bodies, even not just our minds or our souls,
Speaker 2: but our bodies become participants in the divine life as well,
Speaker 2: and that's the point of the resurrection. The resurrection is
Speaker 2: really the future eschatological end times reality that begins in
Speaker 2: the here and the now with the energies that we
Speaker 2: were take of in this life, and those divine energies
Speaker 2: are really just what we mean the Orthocers by grace.
Speaker 2: So it's an uncreated life, power and reality that comes
Speaker 2: to us not by our works, but by the grace
Speaker 2: of God. That's what we participate in. So it's a
Speaker 2: much it's more fleshed out, I guess you could say
Speaker 2: metaphysical notion of what grace is, rather than the typical
Speaker 2: Protestant idea that grace is just God's disposition towards you.
Speaker 2: So we do agree that there is a dispositional element
Speaker 2: that you move away from being kind of adverse to
Speaker 2: God to now being the friend of God or to
Speaker 2: being sons of God, et cetera. But to be in
Speaker 2: that role requires also the transformation of the person in
Speaker 2: a real metaphysical sense. So that's our view of grace
Speaker 2: and what it is. And you know, we see that
Speaker 2: in text like John seventeen, where Jesus says that he
Speaker 2: came to give us a share in the glory that
Speaker 2: he had with the Father before the foundation of the world.
Speaker 2: And of course glory, God's glory is not a creature, right,
Speaker 2: it's an uncreated reality. So we become partakers of the
Speaker 2: uncreated reality of God without participating in the divine essence itself.
Speaker 2: So we'll never become by nature what God is, but
Speaker 2: we do become like God by grace, and that's what
Speaker 2: we call theosis. And so that's the essence interview distinction
Speaker 2: that you probably hear a lot of people in Orthodox
Speaker 2: Church talk about. That's our conception of grace, and it
Speaker 2: also underlies the conception that we have of why would
Speaker 2: we why we would ask saints to intercede or believe that,
Speaker 2: you know, relics or icons have the ability to be
Speaker 2: positive influences in our life in a conduit of grace sense,
Speaker 2: so they become kind of sacramental realities for us. And
Speaker 2: it's all premised on the incarnation itself. Right, you have
Speaker 2: the second person of the Godhead, the Logos, assuming human nature,
Speaker 2: and by that very action of assuming it, healing it,
Speaker 2: repairing it, and making it itself a channel of grace.
Speaker 2: So Likewise, other physical material objects can also become channels
Speaker 2: of grace. So we don't worship them because they're material
Speaker 2: in themselves. They're still creatures, but those creatures can become
Speaker 2: condos of grace, just as we can as individual people,
Speaker 2: and our bodies even become conduits. And so that's the
Speaker 2: theological meaning behind relics, and that's why relics existed in
Speaker 2: the Old Testament and they continue to exist into the
Speaker 2: New Testament Church. And it's the same principle behind why
Speaker 2: For example, in the Book of Revelation, if you read
Speaker 2: chapters five to eight, when John sees into heaven, he
Speaker 2: sees a very elaborate, ornate worship service. In that liturgical
Speaker 2: worship service, it's very ordered, smells, bells, incense, vestiments, elders, right,
Speaker 2: priesthood offering, sacrifice going on in heaven. We believe that
Speaker 2: that's actually the exact same service going on in the
Speaker 2: Orthodox Church. And so that's why it's a reality. It's
Speaker 2: not just symbols for us. It's a symbol and a
Speaker 2: reality at the same time. And so likewise, we can
Speaker 2: ask those people who have gone on before us in
Speaker 2: the life of the Church to pray for us. So
Speaker 2: technically speaking, we're not praying to them like their God.
Speaker 2: We're asking them as fellow intercessors to pray. And that's
Speaker 2: why in the Book of Revelation, John sees the martyrs
Speaker 2: offering the prayers of the saints on the earth, and
Speaker 2: so that's the whole principle behind the intercession of the
Speaker 2: saints right there.
Speaker 1: So the I guess the I don't know if I'm
Speaker 1: the pre true rapture. People would argue that those people
Speaker 1: that have been martyred that are praying are those that
Speaker 1: you know, were left behind and then ended up being
Speaker 1: persecuted during the reign of the Antichrist, and therefore that's
Speaker 1: who they are. They're not actually the saints is as
Speaker 1: per the Orthodox Church. Then you'll have the people that say, well,
Speaker 1: there is one intercessor or one mediator, I should say,
Speaker 1: between God and men, Jesus Christ. Why would you pray
Speaker 1: to a saint?
Speaker 2: Right, So a lot of verses have to be balanced
Speaker 2: with other verses. So, for example, Paul says things like
Speaker 2: I think to Timothy, he says, if you follow my teachings,
Speaker 2: you will be able to save those around you. So
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean that Timothy literally becomes Jesus and becomes
Speaker 2: a savior. It means that he's a cooperator, a co worker,
Speaker 2: as Paul says about himself, that he's a co worker
Speaker 2: with Christ to bring people to salvation. And so sometimes
Speaker 2: in the technical theological terminology this is just called middle salvation,
Speaker 2: and it just means that the person that brings you
Speaker 2: to salvation is in a sense a savior for you.
Speaker 2: Doesn't mean that they are literally Jesus. It just means
Speaker 2: that they cooperated in that work. You read the Book
Speaker 2: of Amos, for example, this is an idea even in
Speaker 2: the Old Testament, that God decides not to met out
Speaker 2: the full punishment on Israel because Amos interceded. So intercession
Speaker 2: is something that's very real in those examples. And again,
Speaker 2: the saints that are in heaven are not what John
Speaker 2: is seeing is not the martyrs at the end of
Speaker 2: the world. He's seeing the people that were martyred in
Speaker 2: his day. So if you look at the Book of Revelation,
Speaker 2: it starts by saying the things that are listed are
Speaker 2: to come to pass. And the traditional acts of Jesus
Speaker 2: of the Church was never strictly speaking, anything like pre tribulation,
Speaker 2: rapture pre millennialism that exist as an early theory, but
Speaker 2: by the time of the Second Ecumenical Council, and then
Speaker 2: by the Third Ecumenical Council, it's excluded. And that's why
Speaker 2: the Creed says, whose kingdom shall have no end? So
Speaker 2: christ Kingdom is not a thousand year kingdom. A thousand
Speaker 2: years is just as symbolic as when it says God
Speaker 2: owns the cattle on a thousand hills. Does that mean
Speaker 2: that on thousand on hill one thousand and one that's
Speaker 2: not owned by God. No, it's just a symbolic time
Speaker 2: that expresses a really long ay honor era. And so
Speaker 2: christ Kingdom, as you notice in the Gospels, is where
Speaker 2: the king is. And so Jesus says, the Kingdom of
Speaker 2: God has not come with signs, it comes it's within you.
Speaker 2: And so the kingdom is an internal spiritual reality wherever
Speaker 2: the Holy Spirit is. So the Kingdom is the Church.
Speaker 2: And that's why Matthew sixteen he identifies it as the
Speaker 2: institution that he sets up that the gates of Hell
Speaker 2: would not prevail against it. And Peter and the Apostles,
Speaker 2: not just Peter, but Peter and the Apostles very Matthew
Speaker 2: sixteen and Matthew eighteen have a collegial reality that is
Speaker 2: identified with the Kingdom. The kingdom is chaired by the
Speaker 2: princes of the New Covenant, who Jesus later when he
Speaker 2: institutes the Lord's Supper, says, you will sit with me
Speaker 2: on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Okay,
Speaker 2: the twelve Tribes of Israel is the new Israel. The
Speaker 2: spiritual reality that Matthew twenty two, twenty three, and twenty
Speaker 2: four elucidate replaced the Old Testament Israel reality. So there's
Speaker 2: something evil inherently about Israel in the Old Testament sense,
Speaker 2: or not genetically evil or anything like that. It was
Speaker 2: a typological reality that's fulfilled in the spiritual kingdom of
Speaker 2: the Church. But spiritual, as many evangelicals think, does not
Speaker 2: mean anti physical, it doesn't mean antihistorical. It's a very
Speaker 2: historic institutional reality that's set up at the time of
Speaker 2: christ first coming. And the other element that I think
Speaker 2: evangelicals of Protestants oftentimes miss out on is the notion
Speaker 2: of Pentecost. Pentecost, especially if you look in Acts two
Speaker 2: and when it cites Joel three, Joel is not primarily
Speaker 2: talking about the end of the world. It might have
Speaker 2: an application to the end of the world. But when
Speaker 2: Acts two cites Joel about the Holy the Spirit will
Speaker 2: fall upon your descendants and your men, your women, your
Speaker 2: children will see visions, there'll be signs in the heavens.
Speaker 2: That's all fulfilled explicitly at Pentecost, and so the First
Speaker 2: Advent is typically where the locus of the action is.
Speaker 2: That most evangelicals and pre millennialists boot to the end
Speaker 2: of the world, which makes all of these important prophecies
Speaker 2: and fulfillments irrelevant. Because if Jesus is predicting in Luke
Speaker 2: twenty one the destruction of Jerusalem in seventy eighty, then
Speaker 2: what a powerful attestation to the veracity of the Gospels
Speaker 2: that is fulfilled in seventy eight. Now I don't mean everything.
Speaker 2: I don't believe the second Coming, but you'll find many,
Speaker 2: many passages where Jesus says that he would come, you know,
Speaker 2: on the clouds, and that he would punish you know, Israel,
Speaker 2: and so forth. Again. Luke twenty one, because it's written
Speaker 2: to a product to a gentile audience, is a lot
Speaker 2: more specific than what you get in Matthew twenty four.
Speaker 2: So Lake twenty one describes it in a very clear
Speaker 2: way that when you speakin to the audience there in
Speaker 2: Jesus presence, see Jerusalem surrounded by enemies, know that it's time,
Speaker 2: its desolation is near. That's exactly what happened a few
Speaker 2: decades later, because he describes this for his immediate audience,
Speaker 2: that they would see these things occur. And that's why,
Speaker 2: whether it's Athenacious, or whether it's Saint John Chrysostom, or
Speaker 2: whether it's Saint Cyril of Alexandria, all the earliest, really
Speaker 2: important theologians of the Church, the ones that solidified the
Speaker 2: doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine of Christology for us,
Speaker 2: they all believe that that was referring to seventy eight.
Speaker 2: They didn't primarily make it about the end of the world.
Speaker 2: I do think that seventy eight and the destruction of
Speaker 2: the Temple, which is what Hebrews is talking about, that's
Speaker 2: the end of the Old Covenant system, which is demonstrated
Speaker 2: by the events of seventy eight when Titus Vespasian destroys
Speaker 2: the Temple in Jerusalem. That's a sign that the Old
Speaker 2: Covenants done the New Covenant is here. The New Coven
Speaker 2: is the fulfillment of all those old Covenant types, and
Speaker 2: the New Coven is the reality. So what Protestanism Evangelicalism
Speaker 2: typically does, and it's not always intentional, is that rather
Speaker 2: than accepting the realities that the New Covenant brings, they
Speaker 2: typically want to go back to the symbolic structure of
Speaker 2: the Old Testament. Oh, Baptism just a symbol, the Lord's
Speaker 2: Supper just a symbol, right. The church is just this
Speaker 2: fallible human institution. That's a symbol, you know. And the
Speaker 2: New Testament, the Church is said to be the body
Speaker 2: of the god Man or the theanthroposts, the god Man,
Speaker 2: that's the body of Christ. We are the extension of
Speaker 2: the incarnation the churches. So there's not a whole lot
Speaker 2: of churches that can lay claim to that. And if
Speaker 2: you look at the study of the first thousand years
Speaker 2: of Christianity, and there is one institution that's the Orthodox
Speaker 2: Church at least least claim to that.
Speaker 1: When did Because church history matters a lot, and it's
Speaker 1: often something that you know, in Protestant circles, we need
Speaker 1: to return to the Book of Acts, we need to
Speaker 1: return to that time where there was you know, miracles,
Speaker 1: and the church was, you know, sold everything, they have
Speaker 1: gave everything. It was interesting. I remember chalaging good pastor
Speaker 1: of this a while ago, and I said, well, the
Speaker 1: church isn't really operating how it used to. And the
Speaker 1: response to me was, we'll sell everything you have and
Speaker 1: give it to me and then see how we operate,
Speaker 1: which was a fair challenge. But you know, you hear
Speaker 1: that from a lot of evangelicals, and we need to
Speaker 1: return to the Book of Acts and all of this
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. And yet if you read the Book
Speaker 1: of Acts through a non Protestant lens, you'll actually see
Speaker 1: the established of the original church and so all the
Speaker 1: beginnings of it. So can you talk us through the
Speaker 1: history of the establishment of the church? Why is the
Speaker 1: Orthodox Church the original Church?
Speaker 2: Well, if we look in the Book of Acts, we see,
Speaker 2: for example, Judas, his episcopos in the Greek is replaced.
Speaker 2: So when Judas dies, someone replaces him in his seat.
Speaker 2: And so this is the idea of the successors to
Speaker 2: the apostles, or apsolute succession. And we find this in
Speaker 2: Paul's epistles as well, that Paul says he laid hands
Speaker 2: on Timothy and he tells Timothy not to lay hands
Speaker 2: on anyone else in Ephesus hastily, because through the laying
Speaker 2: on of hands, you have the transmission of the gift
Speaker 2: and power of the Holy Spirit for the office of
Speaker 2: the bishop. And that is not in Protestants, and Protestism
Speaker 2: does not have a right or a theology typically where
Speaker 2: they recognize any sort of historic succession, do they laying
Speaker 2: on of hands back to the apostles. But that's exactly
Speaker 2: what Paul says in his epistles to Timothy, and he
Speaker 2: says basically that I point, did you no one else
Speaker 2: to be the authority, my representative, my successor in Ephesus,
Speaker 2: and you do Likewise, that's apisodic succession. So that's our
Speaker 2: reading not just of the Book of Acts, but also
Speaker 2: the book the Books that Paul wrote. And if we
Speaker 2: look at the Book of Acts, we see this point
Speaker 2: that I mentioned earlier about Pentecost, which is that in
Speaker 2: John fourteen to sixteen, Jesus really lays out the role
Speaker 2: of the Holy Spirit in the life and history of
Speaker 2: the Church. So if we understand this is a real
Speaker 2: historical context here where Jesus is saying that I will
Speaker 2: send the Holy Spirit. He will come and empower you.
Speaker 2: I will never leave you and never forsake you. The
Speaker 2: Spirit will lead you and guide you to all truth.
Speaker 2: The gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church.
Speaker 2: Then when that happens in Acts two, that historical church
Speaker 2: can't lose. The Spirit can't lose, the faith can't be conquered.
Speaker 2: There might be areas or churches that are part of
Speaker 2: the universal Church that fall away, even patriarch's bishops fall away,
Speaker 2: but the whole entire entity can't fail. And so that's
Speaker 2: why we believe that the Orthodox Church has maintained and
Speaker 2: continued that consistent testimony. And when you read the first
Speaker 2: thousand years, you find out that you know, one of
Speaker 2: the common Protestant objections, for example, is that, oh, the
Speaker 2: Church changed and became pagan at the Council of Nicea.
Speaker 2: So when I first started studying this back in two
Speaker 2: thousand and three, I bought the Church Father's set, all
Speaker 2: thirty eight volumes of it. I didn't read all the
Speaker 2: thirty eight volumes, but I went through first the early
Speaker 2: Church Fathers. So when you read the post Apostolic Fathers
Speaker 2: right after the death of John and Paul and all
Speaker 2: those people. You realize that Clement, Ignacious Aaron as justin
Speaker 2: Martyr Cyprian, all church fathers that were very prominent prior
Speaker 2: to the Council of Nicia. They taught all the things
Speaker 2: that the Orthodox Church still teaches and all the things
Speaker 2: that Protestants think the Council of Nicea and three twenty
Speaker 2: five corrupted. So you find them teaching about relics, you
Speaker 2: find them teaching about saints, you find them teaching bishops
Speaker 2: in a succession. You find them talking about the real
Speaker 2: presence of Christ and the Euchars. You find them talking
Speaker 2: about you know, councils, the church being run by synods
Speaker 2: modeled on Acts fifteen in the Jerusalem Synod, so sinodal
Speaker 2: church government, bishopric, hierarchy, you know, all of those elements
Speaker 2: are there in those early church fathers. And for me,
Speaker 2: that pretty much said, well, look, it's not Protestant, it's
Speaker 2: not Evangelical, so you know, it's got to be Orthodox
Speaker 2: or Catholic. I mean, that's the realization I came to,
Speaker 2: you know, back in my twenties. Again, I didn't know
Speaker 2: much about Orthodoxy at that time, but so I mean
Speaker 2: I think that but for the for the point against
Speaker 2: the Protestant idea of that pretty much I think solidifies it.
Speaker 2: And then when you get into, for example, more devastating
Speaker 2: issues like you know, for me as a Protestant, obviously
Speaker 2: I believed in Solar script Heira that the Bible is
Speaker 2: the only, ultimate, final, infallible authority. But then when you
Speaker 2: get into the history of the formation of the Biblical Canon,
Speaker 2: you realize that this didn't drop out out of the sky.
Speaker 2: You know, it didn't come about in a vacuum. The
Speaker 2: Bible is a collection of books, and the history of
Speaker 2: the Church is you can't divide that from the formation
Speaker 2: and process of the Biblical Canon. That's the books that
Speaker 2: were decided upon that would be in the Bible and
Speaker 2: would be accepted. And this is a centuries long process
Speaker 2: that really only gets solidified by about the fourth to
Speaker 2: sixth century in the East and the West in the
Speaker 2: first thousand years of Christianity. So for the Orthodox Church
Speaker 2: are acceptances the Council of Trello, which is then accepted
Speaker 2: by the sixth and seventh Council, and in the West
Speaker 2: is typically about the fourth or fifth century, and the
Speaker 2: decrees of Pope Damasis, where they basically accept the same
Speaker 2: canon as the Orthodox in the East. So basically we
Speaker 2: have a canon that's including the Deutero economical books or
Speaker 2: what Protestants called the apocrypha, pretty much universally accepted by
Speaker 2: the sixth seventh century. So Protestants again are really sort
Speaker 2: of on the outs in a historical when they say, well,
Speaker 2: we just choose the canon that Jerome had, Well, why
Speaker 2: do you pick one church father not another church father?
Speaker 2: It really becomes very arbitrary, and then they'll say things like, well,
Speaker 2: we just go with what the Jews said. Well, but
Speaker 2: by the second and third century, the Jewish canon was
Speaker 2: already anti Christian, so they were already trying to solidify
Speaker 2: their notion of a loose canon to combat to Christianity.
Speaker 2: So why would we listen to not the people that
Speaker 2: Jesus put in charge, the Apostles and their successors, the Church.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't the church have the authority to decide the canon. Remember,
Speaker 2: Peter Paul says to Timothy, the Church is the pillar
Speaker 2: and ground of truth. He doesn't say the Bible texts
Speaker 2: are the pillar and ground of truth. He says the
Speaker 2: actual living entity of the Church. And then he says
Speaker 2: to the Thessalonians and second Thessalonians that you should follow
Speaker 2: whatever I teach, whether written or oral. So Paul explicitly
Speaker 2: tells the Thessalonian Church to keep. Aren't just what is
Speaker 2: written texts or what written gospels and texts they might have,
Speaker 2: because they most of the early Church didn't have everything.
Speaker 2: They didn't have all the texts for many centuries. He
Speaker 2: tells them to keep the written and oral traditions.
Speaker 1: And in terms of the oral traditions, and you know,
Speaker 1: I suppose this does tie into apostolic succession and the
Speaker 1: authority of those that have been selected by the Orthodox Church,
Speaker 1: can you talk to us about the record of the
Speaker 1: oral traditions, because I see, you know, a pretty comprehensive
Speaker 1: record kept by the Orthodox Church of those traditions that
Speaker 1: are still kept to date. The Da Daki as one
Speaker 1: of those, you know, books that's often referenced back to
Speaker 1: which you know you've spoken to us about before as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we could look to things like the
Speaker 2: key or liturgical psalms and hymns that were cited in
Speaker 2: the early Church, and they might constitute elements of tradition.
Speaker 2: But I would want to give an example of something
Speaker 2: like the liturgy itself, right, I mean, for example, how
Speaker 2: do we get the worship service that we have if
Speaker 2: it's not in the New Testament. Well, the reality is
Speaker 2: that the Apostles, when they went and founded the various
Speaker 2: churches throughout the Roman Empire, many of them gave a
Speaker 2: kind of a basic pattern of the worship service. And
Speaker 2: so this is called a liturgical theology. This is the
Speaker 2: history where the church gets its patterns of worship, and
Speaker 2: the Apostles shows the rough outline the way they did
Speaker 2: it from both the temple service, the ancient Jewish temple service,
Speaker 2: and the synagogue system in its services. So they kind
Speaker 2: of combine elements of bose and that's why when you
Speaker 2: go to an Orthodox Church service, you will find it
Speaker 2: to be very reminiscent of both temple elements the imagery,
Speaker 2: and the synagogue elements of the antiphonal singing and liturgical
Speaker 2: patterns that you find. So both things are going on
Speaker 2: to help the Apostles kind of come up with the
Speaker 2: rough outline. But we notice that the New Testament itself
Speaker 2: doesn't tell us how we're supposed to worship, and worship
Speaker 2: is something very important. And when we find passages where
Speaker 2: Paul says for example, in Hebrews thirteen, that we have
Speaker 2: an altar which those who serve at the Jewish Tabernacle
Speaker 2: don't have any right to eat from. So there's an
Speaker 2: eating service and an altar. Okay, that right there is
Speaker 2: not Protestant because Protestantism rejects the idea of an altar,
Speaker 2: because an altar is a sacrificial thing, and Protestism believes
Speaker 2: that sacrifice is done and gone right Jesus. Jesus said
Speaker 2: it's finished. There's no longer any need or notion for
Speaker 2: priesthood or sacrifice. Well, but wait a minute, because the
Speaker 2: New Testament says that we have an altar that we
Speaker 2: eave from, and it also includes the idea idea that
Speaker 2: Christ's priesthood isn't done, It's not finished. It's a Melchizedecian
Speaker 2: priesthood that continues on. Yes, So the notion of priesthood
Speaker 2: is still there. The notion of a sacrificial eucharistic offering
Speaker 2: is also in the Book of Revelation going on in Heaven.
Speaker 2: Paul says we have an altar that we eat from.
Speaker 2: Jesus talks about the New Testament being a fulfillment the
Speaker 2: Lord's Supper, is a type of passover. So all of
Speaker 2: these ideas, even though yeah, the reality comes with the
Speaker 2: first coming, it doesn't mean that everything is done away
Speaker 2: in the sense of there's no more sacrifice, there's no
Speaker 2: more alter. So that's why when you go to an
Speaker 2: Orthodox church, you see there is a priesthood, there is
Speaker 2: an altar, there is a sacrifice, there are vestiments, there
Speaker 2: is incense. This actually fulfills the Old Testament prophecies and
Speaker 2: the Minor prophets that incense will be offered to my
Speaker 2: name throughout the nations among the gentiles. How would incense
Speaker 2: be offered if there's not incense in the church, and
Speaker 2: much most Protestant church churches don't believe in that.
Speaker 1: So that's like idolatry in some way exactly. You know
Speaker 1: that having a structure. It's really interesting though, because human beings,
Speaker 1: you know, are creatures of worship, and we're creatures of structure,
Speaker 1: and you know the and you know, this isn't like
Speaker 1: a Protestant bash, but for me, I can relate to
Speaker 1: it the most because I was one for so long.
Speaker 1: You know. You know, it's like, you know, God's not
Speaker 1: sitting here demanding that you stick to this format. He
Speaker 1: wants free worship. You know, David danced and he revealed
Speaker 1: himself as he was dancing because he was so excited,
Speaker 1: and you know, all this kind of stuff. And yet
Speaker 1: you know, there's like this format that everyone follows exactly.
Speaker 2: So let's think about that. That's a great point. So
Speaker 2: remember God's not the author of confusion. If you read
Speaker 2: the book Paul's letters to the Corinthians, he's buking a
Speaker 2: lot of their chaotic and things getting out of hand,
Speaker 2: and he says that keep the traditions that I delivered
Speaker 2: to you. He says the same thing to the Corinthians
Speaker 2: that he said to the Thessalonians. He doesn't mention oral
Speaker 2: traditions there. But if that's mentioned, what are the traditions, Well,
Speaker 2: Paul's talking about the teaching that he gave for many
Speaker 2: months years at these different locations. For example, we're told
Speaker 2: in Acts. I think it's Acts twenty that Paul taught
Speaker 2: for three years, day and night in emphasis. So when
Speaker 2: Paul tells Timothy to keep everything that you heard from
Speaker 2: me in the presence of many witnesses and passed that on,
Speaker 2: he's talking about the body of oral teaching. Exposition prophecy, etc.
Speaker 2: That Paul gave for three years straight, all of it.
Speaker 2: He doesn't say, I taught you for three years. Now,
Speaker 2: just hand down this letter that I wrote, and he says,
Speaker 2: the whole body of teachings. Okay, so they're catechizing, is
Speaker 2: what I'm trying to say. So like the same way,
Speaker 2: we can't think of oral tradition or that it's like
Speaker 2: necessarily going to be boiled down in a reductionist way
Speaker 2: to just this thing over here. Uh, it's it's a
Speaker 2: body of doctrines that would be passed down that might
Speaker 2: encapsulate Catechisis that meaning then the basic interpretive framework that
Speaker 2: you would have when you're baptizing brought into the church
Speaker 2: to learn the theology, to learn the interpretive structure of scripture,
Speaker 2: Because yes, you would have people reading scriptures as best
Speaker 2: they could. Many of the people would be illiterate, so
Speaker 2: they would have to be getting this information from oral catechisis.
Speaker 2: Most people couldn't read, and yet they were converting and
Speaker 2: becoming Christians, and most of the churches in the first, second, third,
Speaker 2: four fifth century it didn't have the whole Bible. Well,
Speaker 2: how are you getting Christians of the other so they're
Speaker 2: being taught orally from the bishops, from the Levi, from
Speaker 2: the deacons, which corresponds to the levit, and from the
Speaker 2: press beitheros or the priests. So this is universal in
Speaker 2: the church in the early days. But again, liturgy in
Speaker 2: the pattern of worship is very important because you know,
Speaker 2: Paul applies the same warning about unworthily doing the Lord's
Speaker 2: Supper leading to death. Yes, and that's the same warning
Speaker 2: that happens in the Old Testament with nadab and Abaye
Speaker 2: Whuo and people who offer strange fire and people who
Speaker 2: get creative with worship. So you have the same curse
Speaker 2: that Paul applies that's applied to the Old Testament. You know,
Speaker 2: violators of how to worship God by offering strange fire,
Speaker 2: they're killed. Paul says that you might end up, you know,
Speaker 2: God might strike you dead too, if you go against
Speaker 2: the little world. Why would that be so severe a
Speaker 2: punishment if it's just a mere symbol. It's a really
Speaker 2: severe punishment for things that are just plain and pure
Speaker 2: empty symbols. Suppose now I'm not saying empty, that proses
Speaker 2: they are empty. But so the point is that, no,
Speaker 2: there's a liturgical background to what Paul's saying, And just
Speaker 2: think about this. When Jesus went to church and he did,
Speaker 2: did he worship in a crazy, wild, do it yourself way? No,
Speaker 2: he worshiped dogs. Yeah, he worshiped in a synagogue structure
Speaker 2: that was very ordered.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: Why would Jesus himself, the son of God number one,
Speaker 2: he's the one that gave all the liturgical worship to
Speaker 2: Israel in the Old Testament anyway, and then when he
Speaker 2: comes to worship as our example, he worshiped liturgically in
Speaker 2: a very ordered way. And the assumption that many prisons
Speaker 2: have is that, like you know, in the Book of
Speaker 2: Acts or something, because they had this period of manifestations
Speaker 2: of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, that oh, well,
Speaker 2: then it was therefore chaotic. No, that's a non sequate.
Speaker 2: Doesn't follow that because there are healings and miracles or
Speaker 2: something like that, that it was chaotic. There's also assumptions
Speaker 2: that prayer language or something like this is some sort
Speaker 2: of gibberish. No, no, no. In the Book of Acts
Speaker 2: is very clear that when the apostles speak languages in
Speaker 2: a miraculous way, everybody's hearing this same language miraculously that's tongues. Okay,
Speaker 2: it's not gibberish, it's not rolling on the ground. Those
Speaker 2: are ridiculous manifestations that are rebuked and called confusion and chaos.
Speaker 2: God is not the author of chaos, Paul says to
Speaker 2: the Corinthians. So why would chaotic, nonsense, gibberous worship be
Speaker 2: the very way that is the true spiritual manifestation. So
Speaker 2: I'm just mainly speaking about like the Charismatics there, but
Speaker 2: even classical Protestants, you know, traditional Lutherans or Calvinists and Presbyterians,
Speaker 2: and you know, they have an order of worship that's
Speaker 2: not in the Bible that they have sort of constructed,
Speaker 2: and ironically, they've loosely constructed it for itself from older
Speaker 2: liturgical traditions of the Roman Roman Church. So you can't
Speaker 2: get away from this point of tradition even if you're
Speaker 2: a Protestant. Uh. And the irony is that, Paul, if
Speaker 2: we had, if the Bible was operating, if the Church
Speaker 2: is supposed to operate on a solar scripture of principle,
Speaker 2: why were we not given a pattern of worship in
Speaker 2: the New Testament.
Speaker 1: I'll argue that the traditions of men make the Word
Speaker 1: of God of null effect, and that that's actually what's
Speaker 1: happening in churches like the Orthodox Church, where it is
Speaker 1: very structured and traditions are followed.
Speaker 2: But again, as we saw with Paul's injunction to the Thessalonians
Speaker 2: as well as to the Corinthians, how if all the
Speaker 2: traditions are so, this is what's called a word concept fallacy. Right,
Speaker 2: So Jesus is talking about traditions that the Pharisees came
Speaker 2: up with, that supplant and a trump God's word, God's revelation.
Speaker 2: And Paul is saying, when I give you this pattern
Speaker 2: of doctrine that you are to hand down, that is
Speaker 2: also the word of God that you heard me preach,
Speaker 2: he says, So Heah identifies his oral teaching with the
Speaker 2: Word of God as well as what he wrote down.
Speaker 2: And again, the Bible itself doesn't tell us what what
Speaker 2: books go into the Bible. So we need we have
Speaker 2: to have this tradition of the church to even identify,
Speaker 2: for example, the tradition that Matthew wrote Matthew's Gospel, because
Speaker 2: for example, it doesn't we're not told who wrote it
Speaker 2: or that Matthew is the Matthew that we identify with
Speaker 2: an apostle. It's the tradition of the Church that says
Speaker 2: that that's who that was. And it's a tradition of
Speaker 2: the Church that said these other gospels over here that
Speaker 2: are called the Gospel of Thomas are fake. They're fake
Speaker 2: and gray, all right, So we know partly what books
Speaker 2: to include and not include by that same tradition that
Speaker 2: a Protestant is inadvertently denying by saying or assuming that
Speaker 2: all tradition is what Jesus is talking about. Now, Jesus
Speaker 2: affirmed and observed many traditions. For example, going to the
Speaker 2: synagogue worship service itself was partly a tradition because the
Speaker 2: synagogue system was set up posts Moses by Ezra, and
Speaker 2: it was a traditional way to set up worship throughout Israel.
Speaker 2: But we're not told explain how you're supposed to do
Speaker 2: it in the synagogue. That was something Ezra set up,
Speaker 2: So that was a tradition. Attending the service the Feast
Speaker 2: of Lights that Jesus does, that's the celebration of the Maccabees.
Speaker 2: We're never told that you're supposed to go to the
Speaker 2: Maccabee service. So Jesus is attending excuse me, services that
Speaker 2: are themselves fine, legitimate and good traditions. So the point
Speaker 2: is that there's good traditions and there's bad traditions. Good
Speaker 2: traditions are traditions that the church and those an authority
Speaker 2: have accepted, the whole church universally accepts. They're not problems,
Speaker 2: they're not contradicting or contravening the Word of God. Bad
Speaker 2: traditions are the traditions that do those things.
Speaker 1: So I want to ask you because you said that,
Speaker 1: you know, you came to the point where you realized
Speaker 1: it's either between Catholicism and Orthodoxy. What is it exactly
Speaker 1: you know that made you decide that it's not Catholicism
Speaker 1: because the Catholics will say, this is, you know, passed
Speaker 1: on Jesus past, established his church through Peta, and we're still,
Speaker 1: you know, carrying on with that.
Speaker 2: If I was to boil it down to the most.
Speaker 1: That's that's my incredibly basic explanation of Catholicism. But by
Speaker 1: the way, so forgive me, but that's you understand my point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and if I were to boil it
Speaker 2: down to maybe two or three of the main reasons
Speaker 2: why I think orthodoxy is these is the church and
Speaker 2: not the Roman Church? Is that? And the more I
Speaker 2: studied the first thousand years of Christianity, you find that
Speaker 2: you don't see the Roman Catholic idea of the pope
Speaker 2: and particularly his powers that are outlined at Vatican One,
Speaker 2: which is the Roman Catholic Council that dogmatizes the doctrine
Speaker 2: of the papacy and it's infallibility and so forth. You
Speaker 2: don't see that exercised and explicated in that way in
Speaker 2: the first years. And so because many even though Vatican
Speaker 2: Want itself actually says that it was always the case,
Speaker 2: many Roman Catholics, when dealing with this point or this objection,
Speaker 2: will say, well, but it evolved. But you run into
Speaker 2: a whole host of other problems with the idea of
Speaker 2: doctrinal evolution, because if that's the case, then it seems
Speaker 2: like it evolved to be where we are now, where
Speaker 2: you know, skittles unions can be blessed, right, so why
Speaker 2: can't it involve And now we don't have the death
Speaker 2: Pale team.
Speaker 1: Right now, I can a baptize aliens?
Speaker 2: I mean, well, yeah, if it can evolve, then it
Speaker 2: can reasonably evolve into the opposite of itself, and if
Speaker 2: all doctrinal positions are subject to some notion of evolution,
Speaker 2: then the idea that the doctrine evolves itself can also
Speaker 2: evolve and have become self refuting. So at a philosophical level,
Speaker 2: it's kind of nonsensical.
Speaker 1: That's a really good point, Jay, because I know a
Speaker 1: lot of faithful Catholics. We have them in our audience,
Speaker 1: and I've interviewed some and they are wonderful people, and
Speaker 1: they love Jesus and they love the Church, and they say,
Speaker 1: you know, what we're doing is fighting to preserve the
Speaker 1: roots of the Church, everything that the doctrine actually is
Speaker 1: supposed to be, rather than this bastardized version that this
Speaker 1: Satanic pope is sprouting now. But what you just said
Speaker 1: is if you go on the basis of that evolution
Speaker 1: of theology or doctrine or whatever the case may be,
Speaker 1: you actually it allows for this.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Unfortunately, although I understand why they feel that way,
Speaker 2: and I felt the exact same way when I was
Speaker 2: a traditional Roman Catholic in my twenties, you don't have
Speaker 2: that liberty as a Roman Catholic because of the nature
Speaker 2: of the system of Roman Catholicism. So if you go
Speaker 2: and read Vatican One, which I highly recommend people do.
Speaker 2: You go to Peopleandcyclicals dot net, type in Vatican One
Speaker 2: and read the full If you print it out, it
Speaker 2: might be ten to fifteen pages. What you'll notice is
Speaker 2: that you're actually bound to much more than just the
Speaker 2: so called fallible teachings. You actually have to follow the
Speaker 2: Pope pretty much across the board, and if you disagree
Speaker 2: in even what is considered quote nonfallible teachings, you're still
Speaker 2: supposed to submit with docility and humility of minds. So
Speaker 2: you're not actually allowed in that system, if they're consistent
Speaker 2: with it, to publicly oppose any of the moral and
Speaker 2: theological dogmatic teachings of Pope Francis. So while they might
Speaker 2: like to have the idea of rebelling against the papacy,
Speaker 2: the actual text of vaticant One in about four or
Speaker 2: five other places in Denzinger, which is their official dogma book,
Speaker 2: don't allow you to do that. In fact, you even
Speaker 2: have to submit to the Pope's decisions on mundane matters,
Speaker 2: juridical matters, decisions of the Holy Office, even you're supposed
Speaker 2: to submit to them. So this idea that you can
Speaker 2: be a traditional, faithful Roman Catholic and reject the last
Speaker 2: sixty seventy years of liberalism post Vatican two is just
Speaker 2: absolutely absurd and not the case, especially given the fact
Speaker 2: that Vatican two actually specifies and multiple times after Vaticano
Speaker 2: it's been specified in at least five places that you
Speaker 2: have to believe Vatican two, you don't have the right
Speaker 2: or the ability as Roman Caloty two reject an ecumenical
Speaker 2: council so consistent Roman Catholic papalism itself, I think is
Speaker 2: the ultimate defeater for Roman Catholicism. And so again let
Speaker 2: me give you a couple other key examples. The first
Speaker 2: thousand years of the Church, you have these econmenical councils
Speaker 2: that are shared between East and West for the most part,
Speaker 2: and those canons. Those councils produce what we call canons.
Speaker 2: Canons are ecclesiastical laws that are produced as sort of
Speaker 2: rules and guidelines for the church in each of those councils.
Speaker 2: And what's interesting is that every one of the first
Speaker 2: seven produces canons that contradict and don't line up with
Speaker 2: the idea of Vatican one's view of the papacy. For example,
Speaker 2: you have canons that talk about every bishop being limited
Speaker 2: in jurisdiction. Well, if every bishop's limited in jurisdiction, then
Speaker 2: there's no universal super bishop who has jurisdiction over everybody.
Speaker 2: And make a long story short, if you look at
Speaker 2: two important documents that the Vatican has approved, the Vatican
Speaker 2: has approved in the last few years. The first one
Speaker 2: is called the ch eighty document and the second one
Speaker 2: is called the Alexandria Document. Chad document came out, I
Speaker 2: don't know, twenty sixteen, somewhere in there. Gad document came.
Speaker 2: Alexander document came out last year. And both of those
Speaker 2: documents together, they're not that long on high they recommend
Speaker 2: interested people go read them. They actually admit, between the
Speaker 2: two documents, about ninety percent, I would say, of the
Speaker 2: Orthodox problems and critiques of the papacy for the last
Speaker 2: thousand years. Now, if we're at the point where Rome
Speaker 2: is now admitting and I don't believe the motivations are good.
Speaker 2: I believe the motivations are actually acumenism and to try
Speaker 2: to coax the Orthodox back into union with Rome. But
Speaker 2: if we think about it, well, now, wait a minute.
Speaker 2: If these documents are admitting that the Roman Church has
Speaker 2: basically been wrong about a lot of its critiques ninety
Speaker 2: percent of it the last thousand years, and his claims,
Speaker 2: then that actually means Vatican One's not true. It actually
Speaker 2: means that the Vatican One view of the papal indefectibility
Speaker 2: and infallibility is not the case. So to me, those
Speaker 2: are a couple of the strongest proofs that the ro
Speaker 2: Meancallic Church is not the one true church. And if
Speaker 2: you just think about it from kind of practical perspective,
Speaker 2: if everything hinges on one guy and it's the guy
Speaker 2: over in Rome, and if that guy gets compromised and
Speaker 2: co opted as a lot of evidence I think demonstrates,
Speaker 2: I mean, Francis basically works in lockstep with the world
Speaker 2: economic forms of Agenda and Klaus Schwab. Then to me
Speaker 2: that that demonstrates that that's not under this infallible guide
Speaker 2: and carorism of Jesus and Peter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a really good point. People may argue that,
Speaker 1: you know, I always think about the I guess because
Speaker 1: I did so much, you know, talking to people of
Speaker 1: different ideologies and sort of tackling arguments apologetics if you will,
Speaker 1: on a really small scale. But people may argue, oh, well, say,
Speaker 1: for example, you know, the Orthodox Church hasn't been absent
Speaker 1: when they do all these ecumenical meetings and I don't know,
Speaker 1: light flames with Hindus and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: We've had representation from the Orthodox Church at some of
Speaker 1: these climate things and you know, so, how then is
Speaker 1: that any different from what the Catholics are doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question, and it often comes up.
Speaker 2: And I think the important thing to keep in mind
Speaker 2: here is that it's two different structures and two different ecclesiologies.
Speaker 2: That just means the doctrine of the church. So the
Speaker 2: Romancality Church is a top down system at all. It's
Speaker 2: a house of car that either stands or falls based
Speaker 2: on what the guy in Rome is doing. The Orthodox
Speaker 2: Church is not like that. A lot of people think
Speaker 2: of it, like, especially if they're Catholic, they look at
Speaker 2: the Orthodox Church and say, oh, you're kind of like
Speaker 2: the pope and but you have like the patriarch concept
Speaker 2: and noople, or you have five patriarchs, and then therefore
Speaker 2: you're like a five headed church. You know, those are
Speaker 2: just canonical privileges. In other words, those bishops have privileges
Speaker 2: within synods. It doesn't mean or they have a large jurisdiction.
Speaker 2: It doesn't mean that they're popes. Every bishop is just
Speaker 2: as much a bishop as the next bishop. So the
Speaker 2: Orthodox Church surprisingly is decentralized. A lot of people might
Speaker 2: find that kind of odd or very foreign, especially if
Speaker 2: you're Roman Catholic, because you're sort of, you know, locked
Speaker 2: into that pyramid type of system, and the Orthodox Church
Speaker 2: is more I mean, this is a maybe not the
Speaker 2: best analogy, but it's a little more like a republican
Speaker 2: type of system. Then it would be like a top down,
Speaker 2: tyrannical type of you know, auto see. So you know,
Speaker 2: the bishops are are elected and chosen, and they have
Speaker 2: more authority than the priests, but there's no super bishop.
Speaker 2: And it's true that at times any one bishop, like
Speaker 2: the Bishop of Rome, he might try to get a
Speaker 2: lot more power because he might have honor and prestige,
Speaker 2: and then he might say, okay, well that honor and
Speaker 2: prestige actually now translates into like a divine you know,
Speaker 2: I'm the guy that everybody should look to. Right. That's
Speaker 2: our review of what happened in the See of Rome,
Speaker 2: because for the first thousand years we Orthodox would believe
Speaker 2: that the pope is Orthodox, but then he eventually departs
Speaker 2: when we have the schism. So likewise, if we thought
Speaker 2: about the patriarchal concept and noble for example, much of
Speaker 2: the Orthodox Church is concerned and believes that he's now
Speaker 2: trying to kind of be like the pope. He wants
Speaker 2: to have this prestige and authority even beyond what's normal
Speaker 2: like the pope. Now it's not I mean, it's a
Speaker 2: problem in the Orthodox Church, but it's not a problem
Speaker 2: for our ecclesiology because we believe and have no problem
Speaker 2: admitting that any bishop can be corrupted and become eventually
Speaker 2: a heretic or an apostate. So the problem is not
Speaker 2: so much. The argument is not the Orthodox Church has
Speaker 2: no problems and the calolgy Church has a bad popes.
Speaker 2: That's not the argument. The argument is that the system
Speaker 2: of Roman Catholicism hangs everything on one guy and his
Speaker 2: dogmatic teaching, such that if he makes a contradiction in
Speaker 2: dogma or morals, the system is not true anymore, whereas
Speaker 2: in the Orthodox Church you don't have everything hanging in
Speaker 2: on one guy. Though a patriarch can become a heretic
Speaker 2: and fall away. Many of them have. In fact, many
Speaker 2: of the most important heretics in the history of the
Speaker 2: Church have been patriarchs of Constantinople.
Speaker 1: Right, what do you think the key takeaways? I guess
Speaker 1: for the Protestant because we have a lot of evangelicals
Speaker 1: in our audience, right, so, you know, they got really
Speaker 1: angry with me for you know, talking about the fact
Speaker 1: that something that you brought up before, that the New
Speaker 1: Covenant really is like what is the new Israel? And
Speaker 1: you know, the Christians are the inheritors of the Covenant.
Speaker 1: It's moved on now to us. And in fact, you know,
Speaker 1: saying that we're somehow not the chosen people of God
Speaker 1: now it really diminishes what Jesus did and what are
Speaker 1: you established through the New Covenant? And so, you know,
Speaker 1: I find it insane how many people don't understand this.
Speaker 1: But what do you think is the key takeaway for
Speaker 1: the Protestants? Because so many of them genuinely love Jesus
Speaker 1: Jaye like they love Jesus. They they do. They try
Speaker 1: their hardest to be good people, good representatives of Christ
Speaker 1: on this earth, and yet are often so misled. What
Speaker 1: do you think they really need to understand about Protestantism
Speaker 1: and why it's really not the right way.
Speaker 2: Well, I would say, first of all, even in the
Speaker 2: Old Testament, the Jews had ways to deal with problems
Speaker 2: and issues in the church, and so you had a
Speaker 2: kind of a normative authority in the structure of the
Speaker 2: levites and the priests who were the interpreters and could
Speaker 2: then make judgments on the basis of the law. And yeah,
Speaker 2: they made mistakes and they were fallible men for sure,
Speaker 2: but there was still a structure, a normative structure in place.
Speaker 2: And when Jesus sets up the church and he causes apostles,
Speaker 2: he says very clearly, he who hears you, here's me.
Speaker 2: He breathes on them, it says in the Book of John,
Speaker 2: and gives them a power to remit and retain sins.
Speaker 2: Whoever sins you remit, they're remitted. Whoever sins you retain,
Speaker 2: they're retained. So that's a real power that's given to
Speaker 2: these apostles, believe by extension to the people that they
Speaker 2: set up. And what that means is that if there
Speaker 2: is a visible institutional body of bishops and that makes
Speaker 2: up the church and history, then they do have authority,
Speaker 2: and that means that that authority will continue with the church.
Speaker 2: It doesn't go away, it doesn't die. They continue to
Speaker 2: have the ability to excommunicate people. How could you excommunicate
Speaker 2: people and enforce these judgments if there's no living body
Speaker 2: that does it. It would be like to make an
Speaker 2: analogy having the Constitution but no supreme court to actually
Speaker 2: rule on the Constitution. It's just every man reading the
Speaker 2: Constitution for himself. Well, that would be nonsense and chaos.
Speaker 2: So that Jesus didn't even think to set up some
Speaker 2: body of people to make decisions and to be a
Speaker 2: kind of supreme court, so to speak, for his church.
Speaker 1: I mean, communication doesn't even really happen all that much. Jay,
Speaker 1: It's all very floppy, and I guess that would you
Speaker 1: know a purpose. It's all very floppy and flippant. You know,
Speaker 1: someone's found out to have been hiding pedophile secrets from
Speaker 1: his dad and you know, no big deal. God's grace
Speaker 1: will cover it. It's like, well, hang on a second,
Speaker 1: there is actually a process for people that have done
Speaker 1: egregious things. And you know, I mean maybe that's not
Speaker 1: the best example, but you know, there's a process for
Speaker 1: someone who's unrepentant for example.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean you could use those moral examples
Speaker 2: of individuals, but I was thinking more so, like, for example,
Speaker 2: what we see in the fourth century when the main
Speaker 2: challenge to Christianity at that time is the doctrine of
Speaker 2: arianism or semi arianism, which is the idea that Jesus
Speaker 2: isn't fully divine. He's not the second person of the Godhead.
Speaker 2: He's the first thing God created, so he's just a creature.
Speaker 2: And so this is why we have the Council of
Speaker 2: nicea meeting, is to solve this crisis throughout the Church
Speaker 2: and the Roman Empire, that most people are believing that
Speaker 2: Jesus is a creature or some kind of demigod, a
Speaker 2: created being. And the decision, of course, following sant Anthonatian,
Speaker 2: is that no, Jesus is the eternally generated son of
Speaker 2: the Father, and therefore he has the same nature as
Speaker 2: the Father. And therefore, because God cannot have degrees of divinity,
Speaker 2: there's no eighty percent God, or because the divine nature
Speaker 2: is the divine nature. If you're uncreated, you're uncreated, then
Speaker 2: the sun is uncreated. And so as the second person
Speaker 2: that God had, he must be believed in as fully
Speaker 2: divine Homousius to be saved, and so that's why the
Speaker 2: Nicene Creed comes about. And as a result you get
Speaker 2: the excommunicating of Arians and people that believe that Jesus
Speaker 2: is a creature, and then later on you get a
Speaker 2: further specification of other errors about Christ's nature in terms
Speaker 2: of Christology. So what I'm saying is that it's not
Speaker 2: just everybody fitting for themselves and reading the Bible for themselves.
Speaker 2: It's not The problem is not reading the Bible. The
Speaker 2: problem is that Jesus gave to his church a body
Speaker 2: of people that could make decisions and enforce these things.
Speaker 2: And if everybody's just DIY and it's just me and
Speaker 2: the Bible, and there's no practical way to have what's
Speaker 2: called normative authority in philosophy, not just the individual figuring
Speaker 2: out what's true and false and right and wrong, but
Speaker 2: an actual group of people that can bind people to
Speaker 2: these decisions.
Speaker 1: That's crucial because the argument from a lot of Protestants
Speaker 1: will be that we have the Holy Spirit, he teaches
Speaker 1: us in all things, and we don't need a body
Speaker 1: of people to tell us because we have the ultimate teacher.
Speaker 1: The problem that we have is that, in our human fallibility,
Speaker 1: we interpret things through our own lens, through our own culture,
Speaker 1: through our own experiences, and we think it may be
Speaker 1: the Holy Spirit teaching us, when in fact, it's just
Speaker 1: our intellect and our logic sorting through this. Now, that's
Speaker 1: not to say that you should take the authority of
Speaker 1: a man above your own sense, because that's often led
Speaker 1: people into the wrong path. You know, test everything and
Speaker 1: apply the test of you know, history and scripture and
Speaker 1: context and all of that, of course, but this is
Speaker 1: how we end up with I don't know, what is it,
Speaker 1: seventy thousand denominations.
Speaker 2: Jay, Yeah, So the question isn't can an individual come
Speaker 2: to know the truth? That's that's different. That's why I
Speaker 2: keep using this term normative authority. The question is who
Speaker 2: has the right to make those decisions? Because everybody, if
Speaker 2: you have lived very long and argued with people in
Speaker 2: the religious sphere or even within the sphere of what's
Speaker 2: called Christianity, everybody believes that they're guided by the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 2: So how do we resolve an issue when say, five
Speaker 2: different factions all believe that the Holy Spirit is leading
Speaker 2: and guiding them. That's why there has to be something
Speaker 2: within history that can make that decision. That's what I
Speaker 2: mean by normative authority. And for the Orthodox Church, the
Speaker 2: normative practice of that is called synodalism synods councils. So
Speaker 2: the Orthodox Church is concillier, meaning that it is governed
Speaker 2: by not one dude, but synods and councils, and most
Speaker 2: I mean some Protestant groups have that. But the problem
Speaker 2: is that in Protestantism, because they don't have the notion
Speaker 2: that there is one true church in history, the binding
Speaker 2: people to a decision or the excommunicating of people doesn't
Speaker 2: really do much. It doesn't have much force because you
Speaker 2: could go start your own church, you see. But and
Speaker 2: you might do that even if you're excommunicated from the
Speaker 2: Orthodox Church. But the point is that the theology is
Speaker 2: still consistent and the notion of authority is there to
Speaker 2: say that, Well, look, you know, if you're excommunicated from
Speaker 2: the Orthodox Church, you can't really go have another Orthodox church.
Speaker 2: It's very it would be very difficult to do that,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, Like you might wear the
Speaker 2: costumes and say that you're some sort of something, but
Speaker 2: it's not going to be recognized by the rest of
Speaker 2: the world. So it's probably not going to work. You know,
Speaker 2: no Orthodox person, for example, recognizes Protestant pastors as possessing authority.
Speaker 2: They just simply don't. They're just another layman like any
Speaker 2: other laymen trying to do those things. So it's not
Speaker 2: a question of is the authority infallible and is it
Speaker 2: then able to give me knowledge of what's true and false?
Speaker 2: That's not what we're saying. The question is how do
Speaker 2: you resolve an issue when five, six, twenty different people
Speaker 2: are claiming to be led by the Holy Spirit. There's
Speaker 2: got to be somebody with authority. Again, the Constitution, it
Speaker 2: wasn't just mailed out or written out in letter letter
Speaker 2: form to every American in their mailbox to then find
Speaker 2: for themselves. Doesn't mean that an individual Americans can't read
Speaker 2: the Constitution, but the point is that for practical purposes,
Speaker 2: there's got to be somebody that interprets it.
Speaker 1: I have a final topic I'd like to bring up
Speaker 1: with you, Jay, because I think it's vital and it's
Speaker 1: actually the topic that for a lot of Protestants when
Speaker 1: I speak with them, you know, after some time, you know,
Speaker 1: from my old church or whatever the case may be,
Speaker 1: and they say to me, you know, what the hell
Speaker 1: have you done, you idolata? And you know, I spent
Speaker 1: the time obviously explaining to them that they're misunderstood. But
Speaker 1: the one thing that I that I that really tipped
Speaker 1: me over was the topic of communion. And you brought
Speaker 1: this up before about how serious it is partaking in
Speaker 1: the wrong manner. I'd really love you to spend a
Speaker 1: bit of time talking about communion in the Orthodox Church,
Speaker 1: what it actually is, uh, and why it's so so
Speaker 1: serious to your soul uh to partake correctly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, I mean, for us, we believe that it
Speaker 2: is the actual, uh deified flesh of Christ. And we
Speaker 2: believe that when in John six, you know, when Jesus
Speaker 2: talks about eating his flesh and duringing his blood, that
Speaker 2: it's literal. And it's literal because when people are offended
Speaker 2: by that teaching in John six, Jesus doesn't say, oh wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 2: my bad. Don't get you guys got the wrong idea.
Speaker 2: I was just talking of it as a symbol. I
Speaker 2: don't know the Old Testament, rituals and writes, the levitical
Speaker 2: services and so forth, the temples.
Speaker 1: Sorry, if I could just say that a lot of
Speaker 1: them left him at that point because they were offended
Speaker 1: because they thought this guy's trying to get us to
Speaker 1: participate in cannibalism. So he like they took it literally.
Speaker 2: Correct, Yeah, and uh yeah, Jesus doesn't say no, no,
Speaker 2: it's just a symbol. He I mean, it doesn't He's
Speaker 2: not saying this cannibalism, but he's saying that, no, you
Speaker 2: really do have to partake of Me in the way
Speaker 2: that He chose to make that partaking possible, we believe
Speaker 2: is itself a fulfillment. Actually a lot of the things
Speaker 2: in the Old Testament. So for example, you'll notice many
Speaker 2: times when God meets with people like Abraham, they have
Speaker 2: a meal. When Abraham meets with Melchisedec, Melchisidic offers bread
Speaker 2: and wine, bread and wine. We believe that's a type
Speaker 2: of Christ offering bread and wine in the Melchizedecian priesthood.
Speaker 2: When you get to Exodus, when Moses goes up on
Speaker 2: the mountain, he eats a meal with God. When the
Speaker 2: Israelites get the levitical services established, many of those services
Speaker 2: deal with ways that you would have a meal with
Speaker 2: the priest and with God. So this idea of covenantal
Speaker 2: meals eating with God is all throughout the Old Testament,
Speaker 2: and the most famous would be obviously the Passover, and
Speaker 2: the Passover is the actual partaking of the passover land.
Speaker 2: Jesus is the passover Lamb. But the difference is that
Speaker 2: his blood and partaking of his blood and his flesh
Speaker 2: is the very thing that has to correspond to the
Speaker 2: passover with the Angel that comes and destroys the houses
Speaker 2: of the Egyptians, where there's not the blood of the Passover. Well,
Speaker 2: in the word the Dox Church, we are saying, no,
Speaker 2: you really are exposed to the blood. Protestants, you know,
Speaker 2: will say, well, I'm saved by the blood. They're power
Speaker 2: in the blood, power in the blood. And yet the
Speaker 2: blood is never actually what you you never come in
Speaker 2: contact with it. So we're actually a lot more literal
Speaker 2: in the sense of, you know, when Paul talks about
Speaker 2: being baptized into Christ, we think baptism really does accomplish
Speaker 2: that regeneration. When Paul talks about, you know, the blood,
Speaker 2: it's literally what you're talking about the Eucharist, So that's
Speaker 2: where you come in contact with it. It's not all
Speaker 2: just an intellectual notional thing. It's an actual, real thing.
Speaker 2: And I think that's the big stumbling block for a
Speaker 2: lot of Protestants is that they they hear this stuff
Speaker 2: and they kind of don't even realize their own gnostic
Speaker 2: presuppositions that they have. Well, that's flesh and physical and
Speaker 2: God is against flesh and physical stuff. Really, well, then
Speaker 2: why did he create the world, Why did he give
Speaker 2: us bodies? Why did Jesus resurrect his same physical body?
Speaker 2: Of God's against the physical. So there's just this innate
Speaker 2: sort of gnostic tendency within Protestantism that I think a
Speaker 2: lot of Protestants don't recognize. It underlies a lot of
Speaker 2: the iconoclasm, which is like Calvinism would be opposed to imagery. Well,
Speaker 2: I mean, the Book of Hebrews says that the son
Speaker 2: is the icon, the Greek word icon of the Father.
Speaker 2: So if God has a son and it's his direct
Speaker 2: image and likeness then and it's his icon, then God's
Speaker 2: not against icons.
Speaker 1: Oh, well, that would be you know, the point is
Speaker 1: not creating graven images for yourselves and all of this
Speaker 1: sort of stuff, but that's specifically worshiping those things. That's
Speaker 1: different to commemoration of the Family of God. It's different
Speaker 1: to commemoration of Jesus, artistic expression of Jesus. You know,
Speaker 1: Bethel as an example, will sit there and draw paintings
Speaker 1: while people wave ribbons and flags around. I mean, is
Speaker 1: that now, you know, creating graven images because you're doing
Speaker 1: that through a worship service. I mean, there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot of it's illogically right.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean the notion of graven images is
Speaker 2: it's not specifically only talking about literal engraving, image of image,
Speaker 2: because if that was the point that's being made there,
Speaker 2: then the temple itself violates this because the temple was
Speaker 2: full of images. It was full of seraphim angels everywhere.
Speaker 2: Those are images. The Arc of the Covenant is a
Speaker 2: golden box with angels on it, which is an image.
Speaker 2: And there's many places where in the Old Testament people
Speaker 2: prostrate before. They prostrate before. In the Book of Chronicles,
Speaker 2: I think a second Chronicles, they prostrate before Solomon and
Speaker 2: the arc when the Chicaina glory cloud comes down to
Speaker 2: the arc. So prostrating before created things is not itself
Speaker 2: the problem. Because Elijah, Elijah prostrates before Elijah, Moses, Sami
Speaker 2: Joseph prostrates before Pharaoh, We have examples in the Bible
Speaker 2: where people prostrate before another created being is a sign
Speaker 2: of reverence. So it's not the external action of drawing
Speaker 2: a picture or putting your body down on your face
Speaker 2: that is the idolatry. Idolatry is, primarily, as Jesus notes
Speaker 2: many times, a problem of the heart and the mind.
Speaker 2: So if I, you know, am believing and worshiping a
Speaker 2: created thing as if it's God, then that is what
Speaker 2: idolatry is. Idolatry is not revering a created thing, and
Speaker 2: that happens all throughout the Old Testament throughout the Bible.
Speaker 2: God says honor your father and mother because it's a
Speaker 2: way to show deference to God your father. So is
Speaker 2: that idolatry to honor my father? I mean a lot
Speaker 2: of the Protestant ideas are bound up with very simplistic
Speaker 2: and one dimensional understandings of words. For example, call no
Speaker 2: man father. Well, but the Ten Commandments say honor your father. Yes,
Speaker 2: So if I can call no man father, then I
Speaker 2: can't call my dad.
Speaker 1: Can you actually just address that what it means by
Speaker 1: call no man father? Please, Jay, because this is actually
Speaker 1: you know, when when I interviewed priest recently. The first
Speaker 1: one of the one of the comments, Maria, we're told
Speaker 1: call no man father. I cannot watch these.
Speaker 2: Well. Paul himself refers to himself as Timothy's spiritual father. Yes,
Speaker 2: so clearly it's not contradictory in this sense to literally
Speaker 2: never call a human being father, and nobody, no Protestant
Speaker 2: unless they're crazy, actually keeps that. In that sense, Jesus
Speaker 2: is talking about the ussurpation of God's place in a
Speaker 2: person's life and a person replacing that role and being
Speaker 2: themselves because there was this tendency, and it exists even
Speaker 2: in Telmuitic Rabbinic Judaism, where the rabbi can actually argue
Speaker 2: with and displace God in that theology. So Jesus, I think,
Speaker 2: is attacking this idea that the person that you're calling
Speaker 2: father might actually be extending beyond his authoritative place to
Speaker 2: be like God, you know, like a Guru or a
Speaker 2: you know, something like that. That would be replacing the
Speaker 2: natural position that God should have in that hierarchy. But
Speaker 2: Jesus is not saying literally, never call another person father.
Speaker 2: Jesus talks about people's fathers.
Speaker 1: I'm really glad we addressed that you know, for me,
Speaker 1: j I've certainly I said this a while ago, particularly
Speaker 1: when I was even looking at the at the subject
Speaker 1: of you know, who is rallies now and all of
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff, and it was very confronting for me,
Speaker 1: and I was very afraid to face some of these
Speaker 1: former beliefs that I had worried I was going to
Speaker 1: upset God. You know these I've been quite quite open
Speaker 1: about that with the viewers. And what I found was
Speaker 1: that if you just open your heart that and be
Speaker 1: willing to learn, that God will teach you. This is
Speaker 1: something everyone believes. It's really just about whether we're open
Speaker 1: to learning. And I think, you know, someone that's very
Speaker 1: close to me always says, if you really want to
Speaker 1: know the truth, it will always lead you back to
Speaker 1: the Orthodox Church, and so I think that that's you know,
Speaker 1: I've found that to be true. Certainly. Jay, you do
Speaker 1: a lot of debates, you do a lot of talks
Speaker 1: on philosophy, you do a lot of breakdowns of Hollywood.
Speaker 1: I know that you've recently watched June two and you
Speaker 1: were very impressed. I didn't even like the first one.
Speaker 1: What was so great about the second?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean I mentioned it. I would be interested
Speaker 2: to know why you didn't like it, because you know, people,
Speaker 2: I'm a big fan of the novels. I've read the
Speaker 2: first two. Yeah, and I was really impressed with Doune
Speaker 2: one just because of the depth of philosophical depth that
Speaker 2: it has. It's not it's not a Christian work. I'm
Speaker 2: not saying it's great because it's Christianity or anything like that.
Speaker 2: I just thought that I really appreciated the execution that
Speaker 2: Dennis Villainew had. I thought that it, for the most part,
Speaker 2: captured what was in the first book. The new movie
Speaker 2: is I think a technical achievement. The aesthetics, the art, direction,
Speaker 2: the sound, that's all phenomenal. It's not I think for
Speaker 2: moviegoers if you're a movie buff, you know, we haven't
Speaker 2: really had that type of a theater experience since like
Speaker 2: Lord of the Rings or something like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I saw you say that, and I thought I had
Speaker 1: no intention of watching it, And then I saw that
Speaker 1: you were like for fIF you said you it was
Speaker 1: like the experience you haven't had for fifteen years, and
Speaker 1: I thought, well, now I have to watch it. I
Speaker 1: wanted to know what made it.
Speaker 2: I mean, it might not be up your alley. I
Speaker 2: mean it's it's it's a very weird world. It's a
Speaker 2: very bizarre uh. You know, Frank Herbert was a GOP
Speaker 2: speech writer. He was a curiously not liberal so to speak, uh,
Speaker 2: sci fi person, and so, you know, in the in
Speaker 2: the world of science fiction, that's kind of unheard of.
Speaker 2: It's very rare there. They're usually soy men and they're
Speaker 2: always promoting kind of crazy stuff. So there are some
Speaker 2: conservative traditional elements within the Do novels that I think
Speaker 2: make it interesting in regard to how most sci fi
Speaker 2: is not that way. It also is, you know, a
Speaker 2: couple other ways it's unique is that it's not uh,
Speaker 2: there's not really aliens in that world. There are no uh,
Speaker 2: it's not pro AI. So it's a very unique sci
Speaker 2: fi where it's anti AI. And so I like those elements.
Speaker 2: That does not mean that that I think that the
Speaker 2: message of Dune overall is like, oh it's Christian. It's
Speaker 2: not Christian, it's more perennialism. But it's at least not
Speaker 2: like totally soy you know, it's not pro skal Oh,
Speaker 2: I'm serious. I mean most science fiction is just propaganda
Speaker 2: for for that stuff, you know, living in the matrix
Speaker 2: or getting a sexpot. I mean, and this is not
Speaker 2: that way at all. It also really it has a
Speaker 2: really weird religious expression. I mean, in this future ten
Speaker 2: thousand years from now scenario, there's a there's a blended
Speaker 2: world religion that's like Catholicism mixed with Islam and and
Speaker 2: all of that's very bizarre. But it's just a breath
Speaker 2: of fresh air for me. And I just did I
Speaker 2: just read the second one done Messiah and did a
Speaker 2: big breakdown of that a couple of months ago, so
Speaker 2: so it's always all still fresh in my mind. And uh,
Speaker 2: you know, from a predictive programming perspective, Dune is amazing
Speaker 2: because you have geoengineering, you have terror forming, you have
Speaker 2: MK ultra, you have espionage, sexpionage, you have intrigue, all
Speaker 2: of that in sci fi, which I mean, I'm not
Speaker 2: a huge sci fi nerd. I don't read a whole
Speaker 2: lot of sci fi, but I mean, how often do
Speaker 2: we get that kind of real conspiracy stuff in fi?
Speaker 2: Not very much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well I asked you because I wanted to highlight
Speaker 1: for you know, most people that watch our content know you.
Speaker 1: They really enjoy your our interviews together but for anyone
Speaker 1: that isn't for me. Now, this is the other stuff
Speaker 1: that Jay does, so it's not just religious discussions. He
Speaker 1: does a lot of I mean a huge focus. On
Speaker 1: his website you can go to Jay's analysis dot com
Speaker 1: lots of movie analysis.
Speaker 2: We're also doing a live event in LA I would
Speaker 2: add two if people want to come out and see
Speaker 2: us live with What we do in our live events
Speaker 2: is pretty diverse as well. We do I do comedy
Speaker 2: to a lot of impressions, so I end up doing
Speaker 2: like ten twenty minutes of impressions. Then we have a
Speaker 2: lecture from my wife Jamie. She does a lot of
Speaker 2: occult esotery, Hollywood stuff. Then I do a lecture that's
Speaker 2: a lot of deep geopolitics, philosophy, spirituality like we've talked about.
Speaker 2: And then at this LA event March fifteenth, we'll have
Speaker 2: Jamie Kennedy, the comedian from Scream, and he's going to
Speaker 2: be headlining. We did this. We did an event in
Speaker 2: LA about eight months ago and it was so much
Speaker 2: fun we thought we'd do it again. So this is
Speaker 2: not the same event. It's all new material, all new topics.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna be signing books, the Red book at this event,
Speaker 2: which is six hundred pages of all my geopolitics and
Speaker 2: philosophy and theology essays, so people can come out and
Speaker 2: watch us. The links the tickets are all on my website,
Speaker 2: on my Twitter penned at the top in the event
Speaker 2: bright link.
Speaker 1: We can find Jay on x jay under school d
Speaker 1: seven and there is the live event pinned post that
Speaker 1: he's talking about. I encourage everyone to follow him. He
Speaker 1: posts hilarious stuff. I just I shared he sent me.
Speaker 1: He sent me that. AI like the thing that you
Speaker 1: did with the microwave as well, Oh sorry, I've just
Speaker 1: opened one of your streams, and so really entertaining but
Speaker 1: also incredibly informative. I also encourage everyone to subscribe to
Speaker 1: Jay's YouTube. I'm not signed in, so that's why it
Speaker 1: says subscribe there, but definitely subscribe to Jay's YouTube. Anything
Speaker 1: else you want to mention.
Speaker 2: Jay, No, I appreciate that great conversation. Like I said,
Speaker 2: people want the books. You can go to my website
Speaker 2: and the shop and you can get the Red Book
Speaker 2: as the newest one. It's basically all of my essays
Speaker 2: the last ten years, six hundred and sixty pages on theology, philosophy, geopolitics.
Speaker 2: I have a smaller book on philosophy you can get.
Speaker 2: Then I have my two Hollywood books and those are
Speaker 2: all signed copies, so if you order it from the website,
Speaker 2: you get signed copies. You can follow me on Rockfinn.
Speaker 2: My sponsors Chalk dot com the best in supplementation. Use
Speaker 2: promo code J fifty J WIFEI Zeria get fifty percent
Speaker 2: off all Chalk products choq dot com. And that's all
Speaker 2: I can think of.
Speaker 1: Amazing, Thank you so much, Jay, really really love this conversation.
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll do more. Another book review is on
Speaker 1: the horizon.
Speaker 2: I think, oh yeah, we should definitely do that. By
Speaker 2: the way, you're also a co Fourth Hour host, and
Speaker 2: we both I think, have been pretty much killing it
Speaker 2: in the Fourth Hours.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, absolutely, Jay's been there a lot longer than me,
Speaker 1: but bringing amazing, amazing quality information to the Alex Jones
Speaker 1: Show each Friday? Is it Jay that your host?
Speaker 2: Yes, you do get confused because.
Speaker 1: For me it's Saturday. No, I'm on Tuesdays, which are
Speaker 1: Wednesdays in Australia.
Speaker 2: Gotcha, Yeah, I'm every Friday, and yeah, I usually I
Speaker 2: try to check out yours as well, so you've been
Speaker 2: killing it.
Speaker 1: Thanks Jay, really appreciate you. Thank you for all your work.
Speaker 1: God bless and we'll talk
Speaker 2: To you sin Likewise, thanking Maria