Hello everyone, this is Father Paul and I hope
you're having a good day. You're listening to
Cops in Conversation. And welcome to this episode
of Cops in Conversation. And today I have the
pleasure of talking with Peter Abdelmalek. Someone
you've probably never heard of before and has
a very interesting story. I'm excited to get
into it. To begin with, let me just say a few
things about Peter. Peter is a physician by trade.
He is, in his own words, boringly average. Yes.
And in terms of what he likes to read, what he
likes to learn about, that's what we're going
to get to talk about today. So welcome, Peter.
Thank you, Abuna. It's good to be with you. Same
here. It's great to have you. I just want to
ask you to begin with. You're a physician and
you studied medicine here in Canada, Queens?
Yes. And how was that? How was your experience
as Coptic Orthodox on campus? Did you get to
meet other Coptic Orthodox students? Was there
a Coptic club? What was that like? I think in
university, what most people learn is there's
time for things that you care about, time for
things that you want to do. The thing that's
said to you in your first year is, you know,
they go, look, you're used to doing well in school.
You're used to learning lots of blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah. This is going to be like drinking
out of a fire hydrant. I'd done a degree in sciences.
And so I was more prepared for some of the elements,
let's say, than somebody who had a richer background,
say, in literature. So they brought some other
pieces. But when we were doing anatomy, I'd already
done it. So there was a lot to learn and a lot
to do, but at the same time, it's like, you know,
what are your priorities? So I actually tended
to come back on the weekends. I was engaged at
the time, and then my wife and I got married
right at the end of my fourth year, so I was
about to start residency. So I came back to see
her, but also for service. We had service Friday
nights, so I would leave promptly at noon on
Friday and make it back to Guelph. where my family
is and where I would come back to. And there'd
be service in the evening and then I'd be around
for church. Kingston is a lovely community, but
it's small. It's about the size of Guelph, but
a lot of people transition to and from Kingston.
You go there because it's good to career climb.
Queen's is a great university. career climb a
little bit there for a while or whatever but
you're usually few people although there were
some are stationed there to live there and to
have their family there and their next generation
will grow up in kingston that kind of thing so
the church community was was small but they were
doing as well as they could and they had they
had a rented property and priests would come
and visit and serve and abu was from the monastery
he came and served with us for a while um i think
kingston yeah yeah it was hoped that he would
stay and be the permanent priest in fact and
then one day he he sort of let us know there
was a monastery thing happening and he was integral
to it so um it was it was cool being at queens
i like i didn't have the same sort of community
that people in this area would and i think that
that is sorely missed and people in kingston
have a difficult time of it i had no other cops
in my year The year below me had two, and an
Armenian guy with an Egyptian dad. The year below
me had three Copts, essentially, if you will.
And then I had a few very devout Catholic people
who I was close with as well, and that kind of
thing. But it was isolated, for sure. Forgive
my boldness in this, but also some of the Copts
who went to Queens were trying to get away from...
their whatever their scene or they they just
didn't want to deal with other coptic people
or whatever and so doing a coptic club which
we did eventually have thanks to to actually
some of the guys underneath me in the year below
me um it was an interesting thing it was beautiful
though because you saw people who came to kingston
to get away from i don't know being around so
many copts if they were in mississauga brempton
guelph gta area that kind of stuff who sort of
started to come back because there were only
five or six people and they could actually get
close to all of them uh or somebody like one
of the homies god bless him you know he would
check up on everybody because obviously he could
and he has a great heart and you know him and
i know him and he's amazing and so um it was
kind of cool we did have a coptic club eventually
um For the disenfranchised, probably. But thank
God it did take off. And I believe it's still
going. I actually haven't checked up on it in
a while. And they have a permanent priest now.
They do. And the church is growing, thank God.
And the people there, the servants who are dedicated
there that are living in Kingston that will continue
to, they're all wonderful. They're beautiful
people. They do as best as they can to make sure
everybody feels like they're at home. So there's
a couple, for example, that would routinely host
the students. And they didn't have to. They just
said, you're coming to my house this coming weekend
and we're going to have food. campus events when
we'd have priests come and things like that whether
from the eastern diocese or from here yeah and
then go don't worry don't worry tanji she's gonna
do all the cooking and just gonna have tons of
food for your event so they were awesome that's
good to hear and um obviously experience on campus
differs from one person to the next but just
a lot of stuff that that happens on campus it
ends up being the place where you Really experience
the work of God. You know, you have all these
plans. You're going there for your own purposes.
And you have your own, you know, schemes. And
you're going to, you know, reinvent yourself
and all that. Only to go there and really discover
and encounter Christ. And He does stuff. You
know, He changes you. He shows you who you really
are. What you began as a service here in Mississauga
was something very interesting. when i heard
of it um this wasn't something that was common
something that i hear about happening in many
churches so you know piqued my interest and i
really wanted to know more about it and i heard
really good things about it and and i started
to ask about you know who's leading this this
meeting who's kind of in charge of this meeting
who's behind this meeting and the reason being
i wanted to know like you know this this meeting
must have someone who has spent a lot of years,
you know, studying theology and studying, you
know, church history and patristics and really
well versed in patristics and must have, you
know, gone to seminaries and degrees and all
sorts of things. And then, you know, to my surprise,
like that wasn't the case. It was just boringly
average Peter. It was boringly average Peter.
And again, that theme of boring the average keeps
coming through. And it's so important. It's so
key. And I want to know, the meeting that we're
going to be talking about is a meeting where
church fathers are discussed, are key, are primary.
And it surrounds their writings and their thought
and their teachings and their method and all
of that. And all of this, how did it... Did it
come about from someone who was boring the average?
Before we get into that, about you personally,
how did you get the church fathers? And maybe
how did you start reading them? How did you start
getting exposed to them? So I guess like for
those listening, Petristics is just the writings
or readings of the church fathers. And so coming
from the word pater for father. I sort of grew
up not entirely within the church. I was baptized
and I went to church and I came to liturgies
sometimes. But it wasn't really until I was a
young man, say 15 or 16. One, I liked having
debates and that was a bad thing. You know, the
debate the atheist in your class thing was very
popular in my generation. I'm sure you know that
scheme all too well, Abuna. And I'm a brash,
bold, whatever kid at the age, and I sort of
want to win these arguments. And then we had
a couple of servants, where I was growing up
at the time, who would ask these difficult questions
about why it is we think we should read the Bible,
what Jesus' death really means, why we celebrate
multiple feast days. And some of these just...
hilariously basic questions. You know, they think,
it's the Bible, man. What are you talking about?
Or, Jesus, he died. This is a fact. This is the
faith. What do you mean? Why are you asking me
what that means? And one servant in particular
was very good at then being like, you know, then
picking apart all our answers, doing that sort
of Socratic method where you'd suggest something
and he'd go, that's stupid. Here's why. You know,
or he'd say, if I was an atheist, that's baloney
or whatever. And so, Um, between that and, and
starting to, to mature a little bit, I think
I started to want to learn more and ask questions
and to figure out what does this mean? What's
the point of all of this? I didn't know any better
at the time, other than to like go to chapters
or Indigo or whatever it's called now, you know
what I mean? And, uh, and to pick up the random
books, unlocking the Bible. the case for christ
and so on um so i read a lot of what i later
found out were protestant authors and and i had
some family was protestant and all that stuff
and that wasn't bad it wasn't good it was just
what it was but it's all i had to hand you know
um there were there were some other books of
his holiness potion with it which i read um i
struggled with some of the translations you know
and things like that but i was also looking some
of the earlier translations were just not great
right and so so the ones are much better are
they yeah yes there are a few like a life of
repentance and purity that one's much much better
so um but i was i was looking for something more
you know i would i would read things like case
for christ and i'd go okay i can prove to you
that the tomb was empty you know and here's these
historical facts why but it struck me that nothing
of what i was reading was something that I would
go to die for. Like I had learned, even in passing,
the early Christians would, you know, from saint
stories, from saint movies, from my grandmother,
you know, from church, whatever, you would hear
these stories of the martyrs and defending their
faith. And for some reason, and I don't really
know why, but God works in the ways that he does.
And one day I'm sort of thinking like, I wouldn't
really go to die for anything that I read. The
fact that, you know, the secret gospel of Mark
was a forgery by a guy trying to make it big
in the archaeology industry, didn't transform
me. It was a fact, and facts aren't bad. They're
just facts. But I didn't find anything in them
that was life -giving or transformative or real
in that sense, even though they were real facts.
And so I really just wanted to figure out...
Why I was doing what I was doing, why it was,
you know, I was 16 or 17 having debates with
atheists in my class, but nothing of what I read
changed anything about my life. And so it was
then that through happenstance, it's not happenstance,
by God's grace, I happened upon actually Father
Peter Farrington's work, who I'm sure Otsak is
aware of. And it really struck me. He was talking
about the church fathers, but in a way that was
now personal. In a way that was now like, here
is what Ignatius of Antioch said. Here's what
Severus of Antioch, who he loves, talked about
and so on. And I go, this is fascinating. I mean,
this stuff is really cool. And then I learned
that there was this St. Athanasius guy who they
called apostolic in the church. And I was like...
That guy sounds really important. And of course,
the church here began with his chapel, which
is still here with us, thank God. And there's
a center now being built, I believe. So I was
like, this guy sounds important. I should really
read the guy that they call apostolic. That seems
like a pretty big title. And so I read on the
Incarnation. I know you love the Book of Muna.
And I was... so i didn't understand most of it
i think but i didn't know that at the time you
know i i read the book and i was like this guy
is fascinating he's asking all these difficult
questions he's he's saying why does jesus become
flesh why why would the logos do this okay so
he does it for this reason here's also how he
had to manifest how can you prove the resurrection
and he'd give all these answers that didn't make
sense to me And I think by God's grace at the
time, I was like, there's clearly something wrong
with me, why this doesn't make sense to me. So
for example, in that famous example that he gives,
he'll go, look, the way that we know that the
resurrection is true is that Christians go to
their death. And that really spoke to me at the
time because of my struggle. And I was like,
cool, that's not what I expected. What do you
mean we know the resurrection is true because
people are willing to die? And that took time
and God's work to really get into my heart. But
once I had discovered him, I was like, you know,
these church father guys, like there's something
here. There's a richness, there's a depth, there's
a reality that I really want to tap into. And
so then the next thing that I happened upon,
I believe also still through Father Peter Farrington,
but once you sort of get into the world, you're
in a sea of it once you realize, right? I figured
out that there were apostolic fathers, which
are just fathers who are disciples of, the disciples
themselves of Jesus. So when I found that out,
I was like, this is cool. This is nothing short
of miraculous that we have writings from guys
who sat with the apostles. And so then I found
that John the beloved, of course, St. John, because
he lived the longest, he had the most disciples.
And so I learned about St. Ignatius of Antioch
and St. Polycarp of Smyrna. And I was like, I
can't believe we have writings from guys who
died. within a lifetime or two of the Lord himself.
And who learned from the guy who we consider
the theologian, the first one properly called
theologian, John the Gospel writer. And so I
was like, this is mind blowing. So I read the
letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch. And in it,
I saw things like reference to bishops, deacons,
priests. And he'd say things like, without these,
there's no church. I'd read him talk about the
Eucharist, which I had struggled with. Is it
symbolic, as some Western Christians might say?
Is it literal? Is it whatever? This kind of stuff.
And he goes, look, those who deny this incur
death in the midst of their disputes because
they deny this, which gives life. And in another
letter, he calls it the medicine of immortality.
And I'm like, okay. Okay, cool. I need to be
more into church. I need to learn more, both
about my own faith. through the writings of the
church fathers, but also by really actually getting
into church for real this time. Because clearly
this is the place that has housed the faith of
somebody like Ignatius who learned from St. John.
And then the icing on the cake at the end of
that really was when I learned that Polycarp
then had a disciple named St. Erneos of Lyon
who died in about 202. And when I read his work
against heresies, of which the first volume has
a bunch of gems, and then... The rest of volume
one and volume two are mind -numbing because
he's summarizing the arguments of Gnostics at
the time, which we can get into later. But then
books three, four, and five of this 300 -page
text that is with us from 1 ,800 years ago is
an exposition of the faith. And I went, where
has this treasure been? I can't believe that
people have said, church fathers or things like
that, people have mentioned these things before,
but nobody ever told me this treasure existed.
And from there, from about when I was 16 or 17,
I was like, these are riches, man. And so I just
kept reading as much as I could, really, because
I fell in love with the church fathers. That's
amazing. And just curious, any of the atheists
you debated with and, you know, showing them,
you know, the facts of the case for Christ, case
for the resurrection, where did these facts lead
them? As Ozak knows, like nowhere. you know often
people and i think this is a really interesting
thing about orthodox quote -unquote apologetics
if you will because it's such a an overused term
today i think it is you know apologia just being
the word for defense um orthodox apologetics
has never looked the way that we do it in the
west necessarily right where saint justin the
martyr writes in apologia and he's not going
And St. Justin Lamar, to your story, for those
listening, is a second century church father.
He's not going, here's a fact about science.
Here's a physical law that proves God. Here's
some sort of constant that must be God driven.
He goes, this is the life of Christians. This
is what it looks like. You have to taste it if
you want to know what it actually is. And so
in orthodoxy, you know, we've always had this
teaching from the very first centuries of like.
here's here we can talk about why this makes
sense and it's reasonable and it's philosophically
coherent and all this good stuff but you're entering
into a relationship a marriage union with the
divine trinity not an intellectual debate with
with a smart guy and if if you know if you walk
into faith hoping to find somebody smarter you
may be disappointed you may not be we have tons
of smart amazing people but you're not going
to get what you're actually looking for, which,
if you're looking for real faith, is in union
with the living God. And that has to be experienced
and lived. And it was only years later, after
reading the Church Fathers, that I go, all those
arguments I had were so wrongheaded. And I would
get angry and impassioned and this kind of thing.
And the other guy would just sort of go, you
people and your faith is stupid. And now I realize
why that was the case, because I was giving him
something that was... really not a life just
a set of facts and nobody can fall in love with
a set of facts like dead knowledge you know giving
the the living experience of encountering christ
and i think that's part of the issue is that
uh people think that if only i have the right
answer or the right combination of arguments
presented in the right way Just people will be
convinced. And despite the best efforts of the
smartest people who take that approach, it doesn't
work. This is not how people are converted. This
is not how people come to the faith. This may
be the reason people and their curiosity might
be piqued. But if it stays there, if it stays
in that sphere, it's stillborn. ever you know
get to produce life you know they say that the
best way to make an atheist mad is to give him
a good answer because at the end like you give
him a good answer and you know it makes perfect
sense coherent logic everything and it just makes
him mad because you know now he's going to go
back to the drawing table and try to get something
to throw back at you and then you know the cycle
continues then maybe you go back to the drawing
table and figure something out so i i really
love how you got into the church fathers because
you know it it doesn't seem to fit the popular
idea of you know, people who are into the richness
of the tradition of the Orthodox Church, who
are, you know, the special group of you. Here's
just some 16 -year -old kid who is, you know...
talking about his faith and arguing with people
and and and starting to read and bit by bit he's
led into this deeper mystery this deeper encounter
with the church with christ with tradition and
that's beautiful and that's amazing um and that's
really going to be the theme for this conversation
is that boringly average is actually quite amazing
because all of this is accessible to all of us.
It's not something that's reserved for the elite,
for some sort of, you know, elite category of
believers who are, you know, only if you're inclined
philosophically and like you enjoy this kind
of, you know, philosophical debates, then this
is going to make sense to you. This is, you know,
this is for the boring. If you find yourself,
you know, saying, I'm just the average, you know,
church goer. This is it. This is it for you.
It's perfect. How has your experience been? uh
when speaking with others about church fathers
so um i don't know if this needs to be said but
but as your reverence was talking about we have
this meeting where we read the church fathers
together with the intent being like a lot of
people struggle with the church fathers right
or or they struggle even with the concept as
you said um that's for somebody with a doctorate
degree or is a member of clergy or whatever and
by god's grace we were able to start this meeting
where we were like okay let's read the church
fathers together not necessarily there at the
time of the meeting but read the text alone during
the week and we would pick up you know works
that had divided homilies and things like that
and then people would come and the goal was to
be like let's go through the text together what
what struggles did you have what questions did
you have what didn't make sense whatever and
then there was the opportunity to add context
you know where people would say I have no idea
what he's referencing here. And it'd be because
they had never heard of Apollinarianism, which
is lesser known, but was important at a certain
part of the church's life towards the end of
the fourth century, right? And so we would fill
in that context together so then people could
go back and reflect on the text and go, oh, that's
what that really means. One of the interesting
things, so I guess before that even maybe, one
of the guiding... quotes that has always sort
of been on my mind when I think about how to
talk to other people about the church fathers
is actually something from a modern Yaroslav
Pelikan, who I know knows the name. He was a
professor of church history at Yale, right, forever.
And towards the end of his life, he converts
and becomes Orthodox. And so I've always found
him really interesting because I guess it takes
a lot of gusto, I think, to be teaching other
people about the history of the church for 50
years and then to go, but you know what here's
actually where home is um in his 1962 jefferson
lectures before he even became orthodox he he
he has this dictum that i think is really fitting
he says look tradition is the living faith of
the dead traditionalism is the dead faith of
the living and so if you're thinking about tradition
as the living faith of the dead you know what
we're what we're talking about with the church
fathers is how do we inhabit and live in the
faith that they're passing us down, that's witnessed
by their lives, by their writings, by the stories
about them, by the hymns of the church. How do
all of these things fit together so that we have
the image of one passing a baton, not one saying,
here's a set of texts, read them, enjoy, as though
you're reading case law as a lawyer or something,
to know the precedents or something like that.
Sorry for lawyers. When I first encountered other
people reading The Church Fathers or being curious
or whatever, when the group started, there were
a bunch of very keen people who came. So they
kind of knew what to expect. And then a bunch
of people who sort of heard about it from somebody
else started to come. They came in, I think,
not knowingly and not nefariously, of course,
but sort of believing that we were going to talk
about that traditionalism thing, which is the
dead faith of the living. Cool. A guy named Cyril
of Alexandria who died in 444 said, so, okay,
that's nice. Awesome. Thanks. Great. Why would
any average person care about that if they weren't
a specialist or a member of clergy or whatever?
And so I think... What I was so intrigued about
was when we were able to make connections, when
people could go, wow, this Basil the Great guy
sounds like a great guy. And I'd be like, yeah,
he started the world's first hospital and the
world's first orphanage. And people would be
like, no way. That's an important part of Western
society. But yeah, you have the church to thank
for that because that's not an organic part of
the ancient Roman society. Ancient Roman societies
don't care. for people like that. They don't
care for those who are not their own. You know,
to illustrate this point, I even, I'll quote
to people a letter from Julian the Apostate,
who was one of the emperors that tried to bring
the empire back to paganism in the later fourth
century, who happened to be a school buddy of
Basil the Great and Gregory the Theologian. And
at one point, one of his letters to his priests,
he goes, look. The Christians clearly are outdoing
us because they're taking care of not just their
own and not just the Jews, but our people too.
And we don't even do a good job taking care of
our own. So let's start to try to imitate them,
which is so countercultural to paganism in the
ancient world. And so when I share things like
this with people, they go, no way. So these people
actually change things about the world. I go,
yeah, the world you live in is shaped by the
church fathers and by the life of the church
and how Christianity... pervaded everything that
we know and understand and think and so we started
to come to that people go maybe this stuff is
is really important and then you had the other
group and this was really beautiful there was
a whole other group of people that were very
very devout went to tasbih multiple times a week
still do um and and have probably memorized all
the liturgies we have and so on And it was like
lights would turn on in their mind when we'd
read something. They go, is that like the first
host when we say this, this, this, this, this?
I go, exactly. I think, well, no way it all connects.
And watching those things was really phenomenal
because you get people all of a sudden realize,
okay, this stuff matters. This stuff is actually
real. It's not just dead guys talking. And I
think those were the things that really got people
past the hurdle because there were a lot of people
who were like, I'm just not smart enough for
this man. There's still people who tell me, Peter,
I'm just not smart enough for you. And I look
at them and I sort of laugh because I'm boringly
average, as we've said. And I'm like, I'm not
that smart. I first read St. Athanasius on the
Incarnation, and then when I reread it a year
later, I was like, I didn't understand most of
this text. It turns out I'm an idiot. And then
when I reread it again, and every time I reread
it still, I'm like... oh, it turns out I missed
this whole section, you know, mentally. I just
didn't even understand something was happening.
And I think that's the beauty of it, is the more
and more we come to faith, the more and more
we come to our devotion to Christ, the more we
come to liturgy, partake of the Eucharist, we
get closer with our spiritual fathers who guide
us in the fight against sin and for virtue, the
more we get into the church fathers and go, oh,
wow, look at the depth of this. And so I think...
that that sort of real lived experience that
real like this stuff matters and actually changes
us has been what has helped some people at least
go okay you know what i do like this stuff and
i can read that and and maybe i can learn something
from it even though i don't have an advanced
degree or i'm not a i don't know philosophical
person or whatever and the thing is like there
are obstacles There are challenges, like you
said, there are hurdles to overcome, but the
whole process is so worth it that it makes these
hurdles, you know, a small price to pay. And
that's the thing that people don't usually realize
that these... hurdles in comparison with hurdles
that they've already gotten over in whether in
whichever career they're in like if they're in
medicine if they're in engineering no matter
what career they're in they've already spent
enough time reading and analyzing and learning
and it takes you know a fraction of that effort
to get into the world of the fathers to begin
to have a conversation with them right to read
their stuff and with understanding of course
that there will be technical jargon that's going
to need explaining there will be guidance that
we need to seek kind of you know someone holding
your hand taking you step by step but it's very
doable for like we started saying for the average
person right this is not something for someone
whose iq is you know in in the top 100 like 99th
percentile no this is for for everyone right
and as you as you mentioned the different people
coming from different places in their lives and
different things appealing to them or attracting
them and they begin to make these connections
but In order for these connections to be made,
what kind of requirements or prerequisites? I
mean, do I need to know philosophy? Do I need
to know history? In order for me to begin to
make connections and to begin to see what these
fathers are saying is relevant, and not just
relevant to what the church is saying, it's relevant
to life today, relevant to my faith today. What
kind of... prerequisites are required to kind
of begin to engage with the fathers i think in
terms of like necessity your spiritual life has
to be a focus because it's very easy to read
the church fathers and to feel like i'm justified
or i'm smart or i'm i'm better than whatever
because i can now tell you that uh you know severus
of antioch uh wrote these letters and That stuff
is cool and really important. But if it doesn't
come back to the living relationship that I have
with Christ, then these are just facts. The same
way those facts that I first learned about were
nothing to me. So I think that, to be very honest
with you, Abuna, and you can correct me if you
disagree, I think that's the only real requirement
as like, you must do this. In terms of what would
be helpful, I think... The beauty about reading
the Church Fathers is that there's something
there for everybody. So my friends who like art,
there's stuff there, writings about what would
be called iconoclasm in the 8th century and disagreements
about why we use or don't use icons or things
like that. There's writings about that. You know,
there's a book, for example, by a scholar on
the concept of beauty in the writings of St.
Gregory of Nyssa. If you are fascinated by the
philosophy of beauty and these ethereal out there
ideas that are really beautiful when you get
into them, there's a book for you. However, if
you're the person that sort of goes, I don't
really know. I just want to know how to repent.
Like, I need to know why I keep struggling in
my life. There's books for you, right? And when
I got into the Church Fathers, I was... I was
reading the old Nicene, post -Nicene Fathers
collection, which I was like, I thought was a
goldmine. You can access if you type in ccel
.org into your browser, click enter. And then
there's a tab for Church Fathers. You now have
38 volumes of the Church Fathers at your fingertips,
right? And I was like, this is amazing. but they're
from the late 1800s. And so I got very used to
that kind of writing, to be honest. I kind of
love it now because the long -winded sentences
with multiple subclasses now kind of attracts
me. But for a lot of people, it was difficult.
I was drowned in that. And so I sort of swam
whether I liked it or not. But now there's easy
to read, right? Church Fathers translations.
There's early Christian writings, which is a
series of translations. There's popular patristic
series, which a lot of people know about from
St. Vlad's. It's another series. There's ancient
Christian commentary, which a lot of people have
heard about. And it's great if you want little
selections about various verses and thoughts
and things like that, maybe even places to go
further. But I would suggest that. Whatever your
interest is, there's something in the Church
Fathers for you. Ask somebody who may know where
to start you off if you want. The big thing that
I tell people, though, I'm like, learn to become
a patient reader. Because especially if you're
reading the older translations where there's
a sentence with three different sub clauses,
it takes five lines to get to the point. You
have to read something and not go, what did I
get from the sentence? What's the fact? What
do I need to know? What are the five bullet points
that I'm going to regurgitate in Maharagan or
Sunday school? You need to be like, okay, I'm
going to bend the knee of my intellect, if you
will, and bow to this text in terms of my intellect
and say, what is it trying to teach me? If I
don't understand, maybe there's a problem with
me. And what I find is when people do that and
allow the text to begin to speak to them and
sort of go, how he said that really doesn't fit
how i think then they can allow it to challenge
their presuppositions and that's the hardest
thing right as a reader is to go oh how he's
using this word is not in any way what i mean
um i can illustrate if you think it'd be if you
think it'd be good absolutely so something i
i cite commonly and all my friends have heard
this a million times is i tell people like look
when when the lord says to a bunch of people
that are following him. He said, unless you eat
the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,
you have no life in you. A lot of us take that
as, okay, proof of the Eucharist, cool, point.
That's the end of the sentence. And of course,
our Western Christian friends in the Protestant
church go, no, that's figurative and so on. But
if you really want to get into what's being said,
what you really have to do is go back to Leviticus
and Numbers, books that many of us never read.
And realize that blood... Just gloss over and
say, especially the book of Numbers, it's just
a list, a bunch of lists. And then you go back
to those texts and you're like, cool, blood in
those texts is the life of an animal. And of
course, in there, in Moses' rights, as we have
in the church, he's the author of the first five
books. He says, you shall not eat the flesh of
an animal with its blood for all... The life
of all flesh is in its blood. I think about that
as a phenomenon. If you're watching it as a first
century Jew, when you kill an animal, when you
slit its throat to sacrifice or to eat or whatever,
you watch it writhe about a little bit. And then
when it loses enough blood, it sort of... gets
down and stops moving very much. And then when
it loses even more blood, it dies. And so what
you see with your own eyes, what your experience
actually tells you is blood is a life force or
a life thing. It communicates life. And there's
a bunch of other biblical images that can be
added to that. But when you take that to John
6 and you're like, oh, oh, so when the Lord says,
unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and
drink his blood, you have no life in you. He's
citing an example they understand. But all we
read as 21st century moderns is either cannibalism
or some really weird magical ritual, right? And
so that's a biblical example of something that
we have to get back to with the church fathers,
where when they say something, they may not mean
it the way we mean it. They may not use the phrase,
the idea, the context in the exact same way that
we do. But as modern sort of children of the
Enlightenment, we tend to think that the way
we view the world is just a fact. It's just a
given. So I tell people all the time, I go, look,
to give a quote -unquote TLDR to this long tangent,
I go, look, just don't presume you know what
the text is talking about right away when you
read it. Bend any of your intellect and say,
okay, I'm going to learn from this. It knows
something I don't, or this church father knows
something I don't, and I'm just going to be patient
and wait for the point to be made. I'm not going
to read a sentence or two or three and say, I
don't get it, this doesn't make sense, this is
stupid, and close the book. I'm going to go,
okay, I don't really understand what's happening,
but I'm going to keep reading. That I actually
lived through because I didn't, and this isn't
a good thing, but I didn't really have anybody
at the time when I started to read The Church
Fathers to tell me, what does this mean? Or what
am I reading about? Or what's this random controversy
that just got brought up? I just kind of got
thrown in the deep end. And what I realized was
I'm a lot dumber than I think I am. And that
was good because what it meant is I could learn
to be patient and go, okay, I have no idea what
happened for 20 pages. But if I just keep going
and then I read more writings of this particular
church father, I will get into his mind. Phronima
is the word we use for this in the church, right?
I will get into his mindset and start to understand
how he is saying these things and what the categories
mean to him, not to me. And I think that's the
really big thing with us as modern readers, because
we're impatient, right? There's a spark notes
for everything. There's a Wikipedia article for
everything. The last time any of us went and
got, you know, an Encyclopedia Britannica to
get background about something we didn't know
was never. My experience in university was I
was the sort of second, maybe third generation
of people who never picked up a physical journal,
right? To go, oh, you have a research paper to
write. go write it and we go okay cool google
fact about blank and blank right and then they
introduce the searches with the fancy advanced
searches and you go blank and blank together
you get a thousand electronic articles you don't
have to read them if you read the abstract you
pretended like you were an expert you quoted
it you had a bibliography as long as you are
your whole body and you sounded like a genius
yeah and i think that has that has debilitated
us as readers in general but especially with
people who lived at a time and thought in a way
completely different to us because we take our
suppositions go i know what he's saying about
this but it turns out we're completely wrong
most of the time right and that's very important
to note that you have to be a patient reader
you can't just assume that they're just because
they're using similar words that say that you
would use in a conversation in a sentence that
they mean what you would mean if you were saying
these words and being a patient reader means
that you're getting into not only their mind
but their world they had an educational system
that's different than our educational system
so for us to just presume that they break things
down and present their their understanding in
ways that we would do is it's almost leading
us in the wrong conclusions, right? We need to
be patient and get into their world and not just
get into the world, but understand like where
they're coming from, how they view the world.
We don't look back to the fathers, but we look
with the fathers to the future, meaning that
we look with them. In their mindset, we get into
their minds and we look with them at how they
see the world, how they see themselves, how they
see God, how they see all of these things interact
with one another. And with this, we begin to
understand what it means to have a patristic
faith, a tradition of the church that is alive.
It's not just a bunch of maxims or sayings or
quotes that we can just... pick and choose and
throw at you know our enemies or people we're
having a debate with and then you know call it
a day it's something that's living right so in
order for it to be truly living you need that
time you need that patience right The church
fathers are for everyone and they're not just
a matter of luxury that it's something that will
be nice to get into if I have time. And all that
is required, as you said, and I completely agree,
is that your spiritual life is in focus. That's
my goal. That's my aim. And the fathers had the
same goal and had the same aim, that pursuit
of perfection, that journey towards virtue. It's
very important for us to know that it's not just
something that complicates an otherwise simple
faith, beautiful faith. This is the simplicity
of the faith. This is the beauty of the faith.
For the fathers, it wasn't about just introducing
philosophical categories and big words and big
technical terms into an otherwise simple faith
and saying things that are needless. These are
all things that make the faith as accessible
and as experiential as possible. It's not just
an additional layer that we have to peel off
in order to get to the real faith. This is the
real faith. And everything we see in church,
everything we do, everything we experience in
church has their hands on it. you know they they
touched everything they they spoke everything
they experienced everything when we look back
uh at the writings of the fathers and we see
we see for example what they thought a church
is we only find you know the four uh uh the one
holy catholic and apostolic and we see like they
describe their experience. And it is through
reading their writings is that we get to live
their experience and being in conversation with
them and pray with them as they're praying. I
wanted to ask you another important question.
And this one... uh takes us beyond you know the
the the meeting which i hope is you know by now
everybody realizes that this is something quite
doable and uh and at the same time quite necessary
to have and it's something i hope that every
church incorp like if not having a a specific
meeting discussing the church fathers but at
least incorporate it into some sort of you know
bible study or spiritual meeting because This
is so important. They're not just kind of like
footnotes that you use to kind of support something
you're trying to say. You go and control F and
look for something. It's almost like without
the fathers, what you end up with is this shallow,
flattened presentation of the faith that really
leads you nowhere. other than a reflection of
your own ego a reflection of yourself right yeah
you need the fathers in order to be able to see
christ yes yes and the the analogy that saint
irenaeus uses as opposed to to pelican he says
the the faith is like a symphony you know and
it's got multiple parts and and multiple instruments
and vocals and so on He goes, what your role
is as a Christian is to enter into the symphony.
You're going to be a part that doesn't exist
anywhere else, that God has made uniquely in
your own way to participate. If you're out of
tune with the symphony, though, you're not going
to be part of it. And if you never jump in and
actually do your part, you're also never part
of it. So that kind of kills this modern, I call
it heresy, maybe a blasphemy of individualism.
But it also doesn't eliminate the person created
in the image and likeness of God who's meant
to be part of this choir. And so if you can enter
into the symphony in your own way, that's because
you've lived the life or you are currently trying
to live the life that has been passed down through
the writings and faith of the church fathers
and mothers so that you can actually now play
your part to stand in the same place on the shoulders
of giants, if you will. and now to preach and
live the same faith, which is why we continue
to celebrate the martyrs and the saints and this
kind of thing. Right. And when we go and look
at their writings, it's almost like we have these
specific questions and challenges that we're
facing today, and we're looking to them as if
it's some sort of list of Q &A, and we just want
the answer to the question so we can just plug
it in. But it's not... an answer that we get
but instead of we get a thought so when we were
facing challenges like today one of the biggest
challenges that we face is that everything has
to be on the individual level everything has
to be you know this individual pursuit of whatever
it is you deem to be meaningful or significant
the sense of community although um really felt
and seem to be important is pushed aside for
you know to give space to you know the individual
doing their own thing you know you're an autonomous
center of consciousness doing your own thing
pulling you know yourself up by your own bootstraps
and you know there's no one else and nothing
else and you're isolated into your own little
world and when you look at the fathers and say
like okay fathers tell me is it okay to do things
on my own Can I be an individual or do I have
to be part of a community? And sometimes we don't
find direct answers. But what we do find is the
thought behind the answer, the understanding
behind it. Because the questions, like nothing
new under the sun. The questions that keep coming
up over and over throughout the centuries are
little small modifications of heresies that have...
been challenged and faced by the church and the
fathers shed light on all of these things and
like for example when um we see a lot of challenges
or questions today about bioethics and questions
of bioethics you know with modern medicine produce
very unique challenges and situations that in
ancient world these particular situations were
unthought of simply because the technology didn't
make these situations possible. But it's not
like that makes the church fathers useless, for
lack of a better word, in answering or approaching
these questions because it's the thought that
they give us, the way of thinking, the way of
approach is what they give us in order to be
able to kind of even begin to formulate an answer.
What is human life? Where does life begin? Is
life important? Is life significant? And questions
about beginning of life issues, end of life issues,
pain and suffering. And for the most part, pain
and suffering today is frowned upon. The measure
of a society is how little pain and suffering
you have. And the less, the better. And then
we see a different vision with the fathers. pain
and suffering is just this thing that's central
in almost all of the writings. It's not something
that you can kind of avoid and see maybe if they
found a trick or two to kind of get around pain
and suffering and the necessity and the place
for it in our lives. But you look at the questions
or the challenges that we face today and it's
all like, you know... um if my life is too painful
to bear you know uh is it okay if i put an end
to it put a limit to it is it okay if i you know
avoid pain and suffering by any means that the
reason i focus so much on pain and suffering
is because it's it's one of those questions that
kind of touches a lot of people and a lot of
people when when they're faced with these questions
they want to know like What kind of opinions
out there? And when you Google stuff like this,
you get all sorts of answers coming from all
over the map, right? And you see the vision that
the fathers present, the tradition of the church
presents. And you see that this is something
that they saw it in a completely different light.
It's not something to be avoided. It's part and
parcel of that spiritual journey. So my question
is, in your experience with reading the fathers,
with discussing the fathers, with having this
meeting, in terms of mindset or methodology,
how has that kind of manifested itself in the
conversations? Are people looking for kind of
distilling what the fathers are saying into methodology
or basically looking for direct answers that
we can plug in? a kind of the the trend today
just we want the quick 30 second hot take on
this from this church father on this particular
issue and just call it a day so i think people's
inclination is to the latter right is to go okay
cool since there is a wealth or a bank of information
or whatever you want to call the writings of
the fathers um maybe we'll have answers to questions
and sort of like I think, unfortunately, sometimes
we leave Sunday school thinking, like, you just
have to have the right answers to the right set
of questions, and you're an okay Christian. You
know, what I would consider a sort of pseudo
-gnostic form of faith today, and we can talk
about what that means later. But I think in having
the meeting, what people have really come to
is to understand that changing your mindset or
your framework allows you not just to plug in
answers to questions you think you had, but to
really find out how to change the way you view
the world. And then suddenly you start to see
the world as Christ has made it, as opposed to
how we've been styled to by sin or by various
ideologies or whatever. It's hard to look at
God crucified in the flesh on a cross, on the
most humiliating, despicable way. possible, you
know, the Romans and the Eastern Persians and
so on disagreed about who invented crucifixion
because of how brutal it was, right? They would
argue like, no, no, it was the other guy. Yeah,
it wasn't us, it was them. Yeah, you know, it's
hard to look at God crucified in the flesh and
to be like, you know, suffering must be avoided.
When he then rises from the dead and goes, you
must pick up your cross and follow me. And he
doesn't just say, oh, some people have a cross,
some people have it bad. You know, some people
like Peter the Apostle are going to be crucified
upside down. He says, all of us have this role.
And so coming to the Church Fathers, you have
this opportunity to go, okay, what's different
in my thinking that doesn't allow me to access
this wealth of knowledge and to learn about this
faith in a real tangible way? To cite a couple
of examples, stories you should help to illustrate.
When you think about things where the church
fathers have answered questions for us, but they're
not sort of the way we would formulate it. You
have, for example, when I present this, I'll
tell people like you've all, whether in Sunday
school or to somebody else, taught this heresy,
but you don't know it, is a guy like Marcion
of Sinope from the second century. So Marcion
of Sinope. was a shipbuilder and had some money
and that kind of thing. And he donated to the
church, I believe it's the Church of Rome. And
he wanted to be incorporated and also validated
because what Marcion thought was the God of the
Old Testament sounds like a very brutal God and
Jesus is so lovely and dainty and all that stuff,
sort of like we have today, right? Jesus would
have never said anything mean to anybody. And
you're like, yeah, watch what he says to the
Pharisees next chapter. And Marcion goes, well,
the God of the Old Testament, and this, I mean,
to be clear for anybody listening, is heresy
and was condemned, right? The God of the Old
Testament is an evil God, what he called the
demiurge, who created the world. And therefore,
the world and all matter, all creation is evil.
And Jesus comes from the good God creator, or
the good God, rather, to free us from the evil
God. And so Marcion throws out most of the Old
Testament, basically all of it. And then he goes,
the only person whose testimony he's willing
to read in the New Testament is the Gospel of
Luke, probably because Luke wasn't Jewish. And
he would expunge from the rest of the New Testament
that he accepted. He would take out every single
mention of the Old Testament. Every time there
was an allusion or reference, he'd go, that's
baloney. That's from the previous unenlightened
idiots, you know. And it's funny today because,
of course, we still struggle. A lot of people
struggle. The first time they ever read an Old
Testament text, they go, oh my goodness, God
is so mean. I didn't know Jesus would do that.
And it's because we don't have the right lens.
We don't read as the church fathers do. So that
to cite a text that you somewhat alluded to earlier,
St. Gregory of Nyssa from the 4th century, he
dies in 396. He writes a book called The Life
of Moses towards the end of his life where he
goes, look. The details about Moses are not given
to us just to be like, here's a nice guy. They
clearly are telling us about the journey of the
spiritual life. And I love when he opens the
text, he begins with something that I hadn't
really noticed. I'd always glossed over. He goes,
you know, why is Moses described as a beautiful
baby? And that was a moment for me where I went,
hey, man, he wrote the book. What do you mean?
He says he's a beautiful baby. And Gregor and
this is like, this isn't haphazard, right? This
isn't Moses trying to, you know, like, you know,
give himself some sort of beautiful baby, you
know? Right. Yeah. Like, how would he know? Um,
but, but Gregor, this is like. This is Moses
trying to tell us that we can become the authors
of our own birth, either into virtue or into
sin. This is physical birth is given to us. We
have no choice in that. But we can give birth
to ourselves. He says, in a sense, we're our
own birth givers, our own parents in the spiritual
life by choosing virtue or by choosing sin. And
he then reads the rest of the life of Moses through
this lens of being like, Moses' story is not
just told to us for the sake of being a cool
story. One, they didn't write biographies like
this really in the ancient world. But two, the
scripture has nothing haphazard or completely
extraneous just for like detail's sake. So then
the thing that I think of too is he goes, look,
when... when in Egypt, Israel is enslaved and
they're making bricks. And Gregory of Nyssa is
like, what is brick making other than to be attracted
to the things of the earth? Because that's playing
in the mud and using straw and mud and water,
all those earthly elements. He says that is an
example of the individual who's obsessed with
the earthly life, who's obsessed with the material.
the physical, the tangible, lust, greed, envy,
so on and so forth. And he says, what we're being
freed from is the tyranny of Pharaoh, who is
the devil, right? And so, I mean, it's funny
always to say this as Copts, right? But if you
sent Egypt to somebody from any time contemporaneous
with the Lord, you immediately think slavery,
death, sin. the devil right because that's what
the land of egypt was which which is why the
lord's descent into that place is actually really
important we celebrate as a feast day but that's
a different matter um we tend to just do i think
it's like a nice day to celebrate but uh and
we're coming up to it soon thank god but um what
gregory of nissa says is he's like look when
we leave egypt that's when we depart from the
land of sin and slavery and being stuck to brickmaking,
those habits, those addictions that we have that
we're controlled by. There's interestingly multiple
studies on the medical side of addicts, and what
they find is that the more an addict uses a thing,
the more they rate their need to use the thing,
but the less they rate their pleasure obtained
from taking the thing. That's basically the definition
of addiction. And many of us have experienced
this, right? There's a thing that we're hooked
to. There's a thing we're addicted to. There's
a thing that has enthralled us and that we think,
you know what? I am better than that. I can get
away from it. Then something bad happens or we
have a rough day or somebody says something mean
to us at school or at the office or whatever,
depending on our life situation. We go right
back to it. And then we go right back to it,
like a master, right? Like somebody holding a
whip going, you know you're coming home. And
Gregory of Nyssa is like... That departure from
Egypt is all of us, and we go through the Red
Sea, having departed the land of sin and slavery
and death, and that's drowned in the Red Sea,
clearly a figure of baptism, but also a figure
of our repentance. It does both things. And then
to live baptismally for us after that is to die
to those things of the world, to sin, to slavery,
to addiction, and to live to God. And so you
read all of this in the life of Moses, and then
those people who we were talking about earlier,
who regularly went to Tazbah are like, wait,
wait, wait. That's why we start Tazbah with the
first host, where we read about Pharaoh and his
hosts and his army being drowned in the Red Sea.
I'm like, exactly. Because it's that journey
that we have that ends with the fourth host,
which is everything. Let everything that has
breath praise the name of the Lord. That's the
climax, right? That's the journey of the spiritual
life that we're experiencing in miniature when
we do Tazbah, when we have every day. when we
have every week, when we have every church liturgical
calendar. And so when you come to something like
that, you're like, wow, this scripture stuff
really matters. And you suddenly go, the life
of Moses is so much different than I thought
it was. I didn't realize that I was missing all
of these elements in the book of Exodus that
were actually educating me about what my life
today looks like. And I think it's in that sense
that... to come back to the original question
you asked many minutes ago now, it's in that
sense that together we have come to learn in
this meeting or with people who I know also read
the Church Fathers and we talk and things like
that, where we go, yeah, to obtain a mindset,
to enter into a mystery is so much different
than to say, well, where does it say what repentance
looks like? Apparently it looks like crossing
the Red Sea, but you could never... use that
as just a here's the fact kind of argument, right?
You'd have to have all of this context go, wow,
that's the image. And that's where I think reading
the Church Fathers becomes an exercise in changing
who you are rather than learning a few facts.
And when people come to that, I think people
have their own motivation to be like, yeah, this
stuff is real. I want to keep with it. And I
think that's the beauty of doing it. I hope you
enjoyed listening to this episode. For questions,
comments, feedback, or if you'd like to make
a suggestion on a topic for a future episode,
please feel free to reach out to the email in
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you and have a great day.