A Protestant Talks With a Coptic Priest

hey everybody i'm matt this is the ten minute bible hour and in the last couple of videos we went and toured a coptic church in chicago illinois together is fascinating this is by far the most cold i've ever walked into one of these i don't know anything about the coptic church it's in egypt and it's orthodox it's not catholic but i learned a ton from the tour i hope you have as well but all that did was pop more questions into my brain so i'm gonna sit down right now and do a deep dive interview with father james once again from st paul coptic orthodox in chicago illinois and we're going to get into church history and theology and more about why they do the stuff they do and where they are now i think you're going to find it super interesting and i'm even going to ask them if i count as a christian in their tradition and i think you're going to find that answer very fascinating as well all right i'm matt this is the 10 minute bible hour more on the coptic church here we go what does coptic mean so the coptic church or the coptic orthodox church in terms of the full name is part of the orthodox family um so it is actually when we're saying you know when one was just founded uh we go back all the way to christ so christ appointed the apostles which saint mark the the writer of the second evangelist is right so st mark as in the evangelist st mark went to egypt and did a great job and he preached and thank god he did he preached christianity to egypt and then from that first century uh so you're you're looking at a first century church that was evangelized by saint mark who was ordained by jesus himself yeah apollos of alexandria right who he who paul meets in ephesus aquila and priscilla are there so is the assumption then that apollos would have received some of his training from mark or does he predate mark a little bit there could be some people some jewish people who after pentecost right so jesus died he rose he ascended into heaven and then on the 50th day basically on the day of pentecost is when the holy spirit came upon all and they and there was lots of people there because pentecost was a jewish feast as well sure so at that point people were from all over and if you read acts chapter 2 it will mention egypt as well so there could be some people who okay they went to jerusalem for pentecost which is custom one of the three major feasts to go to jerusalem but then after that they went back went back to rome whatever constantinople egypt so there could have been some christians uh or somebody that that was there from the time of pentecost so maybe apollo i'm not sure the background of apollos uh from from alexandria but in terms of formally bringing the gospel so saint mark is an apostle apostle so we call our church not only an orthodox church but an apostolic church meaning it has apostolic succession okay so when i got ordained i got ordained from a pope who was ordained from a previous pope and he's number 118 and number one is saint mark so we can trace i can trace my priesthood all the way to saint mark okay that has a ton of implications uh one st mark but isn't he buried in venice so did they did they steal his body is that the story that that there's like a right okay back in the 60s okay that's he worked out some kind of deal great and if you look at videos and stuff there was probably one of the happiest days for coptic christians uh it was the time of one of the most famous popes in our history uh pope pope carlos the sixth so we there is a celebration of receiving the body back from from italy so the second thing that staggers me from what you just said is you have popes but these aren't the catholic popes this is a different it's a different set of popes yes and and we say pope again we use some words interchangeably um archbishop we do have a hierarchy the orthodox church in general is is a hierarchical church as is the catholic church however we have bishops so you can be a metropolitan you can be an archbishop but basically in terms of authority the bishop is the authority of that city so there is no one person in the church that has ultimate authority we do not have that we work in conciliar fashion so um so same term but it functions differently it functions differently of course they respect him as a father and all that but functionally and author authoritatively the bishop of l.a the bishop of colorado the bishop uh you know whatever of whatever city of france really has full jurisdiction and they all meet as equals so they'll meet twice typically in our church only twice a year and what we call the holy synod so every decision is not based on one person the decision is based in a conciliar fashion with every bishop has a vote including the pope the pope has one vote and decisions are coming out of that holy synod and then the bishops basically of all the areas will conceit to whatever decisions that were made in that so that's how we tie in to like one church so you are more centralized than my tradition where we have a home office but it's it's a lot of very autonomous i mean my tradition has free in the name so you're you're more centralized than us but it sounds like less centralized than a roman expression of faith roman it's a little bit different in that he has all authority and and and can make decisions where we we can the pope cannot make a decision in the church on his own so you don't have the principle like ex cathedra or the pope's ability to correct we speak in ways that make confirm doctrine i want to be respectful to my catholic friends yeah try to get the details right correct so we do not have that okay so so what does the pope do in your tradition so again he's also the archbishop so a good ware is an archbishop so he it does have other duties as well and especially for places that don't have a bishop so there are some places for example like a major city like chicago does not have a local bishop so he takes care of this area for example so that means you were ordained directly by the pope correct correct that had to be quite the honor quite the honor and actually he was at the time uh we were kind of like the first batch of pope to wedge so it was extra special for me in that like i was one of the first priests ordained by uh this this current uh patriarch so then your your wife was interviewed by the pope as well wife was interviewed by the pope yes to make sure she was like on board with the whole thing to be on board absolutely and she likes doing it she's having fun with this she's she's a great uh we have names every every church has a different name we have we call them tosonis or sister um so she's she's doing a fabulous job in the church and supporting me first and foremost which always what i need but so many ministries as well that we have in the church has clerical marriage always been a thing within your tradition yes so i mean it's very it's it's actually very exceptional it is possible to have to be a celibate priest but that's very exceptional that's that's not interesting the norm is all clerics uh all all those in the clergy are married do you guys have kids yes we have we have two boys two boys wonderful i got one of those i got two girls too and it gets to be quite the mix they play sports they play lots of sports yeah especially one of them is wasn't one of them as a gymnast um yeah all through high school but he plays uh they both play football and volleyball basketball they're very active which is great but you mentioned to me when we were setting things up and shooting the breeze yeah that this is kind of a lifetime appointment in your tradition yes which means you sort of end up having two families to care for because if you're here for life i mean you're in all the ups and downs and highs and lows of life for however many people attend and then you're also a husband and a father i mean that's got to be a lot to shoulder yeah yeah but as st paul says and i believe it's in in first timothy i'm a father i'm a husband first i'm a father to my biological kid second and then of course i'm a father which is the title that the the church gives us it's not like a prestige at all it's it's it's fatherhood uh that i take care of this flock of this of this sheep um but in that order we're talking about apostolic succession which means that i would assume that ordination is every we call it a sacrament yes absolutely do you have seven of them like the roman catholics or the catholics in general or how do you guys do it we preach seven of them it's a little bit of a discussion point um however we believe in many sacramental acts as well so there's formal sacraments we we have even what we call salvific salvific uh sacrament which ones are those uh the ones that are directly out of the bible so the baptism when christ had that conversation with nicodemus in john chapter 3 and he said unless you are born of water and spirit you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven so we have the sacrament of baptism we have the sacrament of chrismation which is found in many of paul's letters you know in terms of being sealed by the holy spirit so we we they go hand in hand once you're baptized you get charismatic chrismation is separate to baptism and that that's when we receive the holy spirit that sounds different than the western tradition to me so these are two separate things yes but you do them on the same day we do them on the same day and what is what does it look like to chris mate i don't even know the word i'm sorry yeah to chrismate a person yeah i mean what do you do what do you say what do they do what do they say what happens sure uh so what we do and in the earth in the in the coptic uh and right in the coptic faith is once they're baptized we chris mate so you're right in that verb and we actually do it um and we actually anoint in the form of a cross 36 times so we had to get to 36 yeah well if i could do it on myself i would it's very easy so we anoint basically all everything in the head so we're knowing the head the ears the eyes the two nostrils the other eye the the ear and the mouth so that should be eight so everything belongs to christ we are sealed we are consecrated my mind i want it to be consecrated to for christ to have good thoughts my ears i shouldn't be listening to everything out there not everything is is very good for my ears they're consecrated now i'm a consecrated member of christ my mouth shouldn't say everything it's a consecrated member uh my eyes shouldn't be looking at things that are not appropriate i am a consecrated member um so that is that's the first part and then we do all basically the join so we do the the uh the chest and the heart and then the spine and the back and that's four more getting us to 12 so again the same type of thing my heart should be for the lord i'm consecrated for my back my spine my will my labor my yeah so the things i do my will i should be looking at what's the will of god not just doing what i want you know again he died for me he made me i should be living for him as saint paul said we we um not only do i i die for the lord i live for the lord i live for the lord then we do all the joints so we do basically the uh the shoulder and then underneath the elbow and on the other side and then the wrist and on the other side and then we do the same thing for the other hand and then the two legs and if we add all those so six so six times four there is 24 and then we have the eight is 32 and then the four gets us to 36. so you ever miss a part or two on somebody have to go back and get it later again you do your best but it's again uh so yes symbolic but of course we we try to anoint every piece basically letting that person know that we are consecrated members we are consecrated for christ yeah so does a person become a christian at the point of baptism or at the point of chrismation again so because we do both of them at the same time you know it's one i mean you you get you you get uh you're baptized meaning we are born again no more again we need if like saint paul says flesh dies but spirit lives this is basically we we die with the lord and we live with the lord um so just like he went through a crucifixion and a resurrection so do we we die in the baptismal font and then we rise again anew so a new man a new man what's that new man a spiritual man because spirit lives flesh dies which is what saint paul says in all his letters so it's the spirit that makes us uh live so we are we need the baptism to make a spiritual people okay the holy spirit inside us helps us he's our helper he's a comfortable but we we mess up a lot we mess up a lot i've observed the same so we're supposed to consecrate my eyes are not supposed to look at the wrong things my ears are not supposed to hear but i do well guess what the church has a solution through christ we have the sacrament uh and and the mystery we actually call in the orthodox church we mention more the word mystery than sacrament because it is a mystery okay like how does water change me how does oil honestly sorry the anointings are not with my just my finger they're actually with oil okay what kind of oil it's actually chris oil which is which is taken through um all the way from the actual oils that that that the when they came to anoint christ so that oil basically of course you know it just gets diluted but that oil continues on and given to all the churches so that they anoint uh using that same oil that they anointed christ at the time sorry of of the burial so it's from the same plants and stuff it's the same recipe or it's like like a relic like from the same jar this is fr from my understanding from my understanding it's from the same jar whoa so what we so that was obviously given to the apostles and that's what they were using uh oh that's what again uh that's what's being was used at that point i gotta say this every time you talk about any kind of relic or something there's a part of me that wants to do the western rationalist thing and be like i'd like to put that under a microscope i would like to examine and carbon date that and then there's the other part of me that's like but he's not saying that he said mystery and so it's a mystery how do i put oil and and that's basically that's when the holy spirit comes how do i like i said we mess up so what does the church do uh we we have confession we have the sacrament of confession um so again like just christ before giving them holy communion he washed their feet so before you you come to the table you need to be washed and that's our washing that's our washing because we believe in one baptism we do not you know just like say paul says in the book of ephesians chapter four we believe in one faith one lord one baptism so we don't baptize again but we do confess and that's the washing that's the second what we call the second baptism or actually again saint paul calls the second baptism in romans 6. that's when we wash ourselves so yes we mess up even though i have the holy spirit but i have i can be clean again and i can be forgiven not by the priest but by god himself and then i need to be connected to life if i'm going to live forever doesn't it make sense i need to be connected just like you have all these things connected that this won't live on its own i can't live on my note i need to be connected to christ and that's our holy communion um so when i eat life he is life he is the way the truth and the life he is life so how do i can how do i connect myself to this by holy communion so that's what we call the four salvific um sacraments baptism christmas nation repentance of compassion compassion confession and then again like he said unless you eat of my body and drink in my blood you have no life in you do you call it the eucharist do you call it union okay both interchangeable okay eucharist is probably the best we're eucharist is thanksgiving we're so thankful again i i've mentioned a few times it is the best gift that he's given us the worst thankful so i want to ask an uncomfortable question and i won't be offended if if the answer is disappointing to me even it's okay but in my tradition i guess salvation would be understood as being in a place where i believe that jesus is the son of god that he's redeemer at the cross that he defeats death and his resurrection through the power of god that he exists eternally from before existence as we understand it yes in the three persons of the trinity i married say the same creeds yes but i've never had the eucharist i've had communion a symbolic celebration of the work of christ on the cross and his resurrection am i a christian in the coptic tradition or am i something else yeah look all we can say is is what there's two things um there's there's the umbrella a big umbrella what we call holy tradition and under that and this might make some people uncomfortable under that hopefully it was all making people uncomfortable man under that and i don't mean under as in below but i mean under meaning like holy tradition captures a few things one of them is holy scripture one of them is the liturgy one of them is our church fathers one of them is our icons so there's lots of things under holy and i don't mean tradition i mean holy tradition and there's a big difference between the two which one's the big one holy traditionally yes holy tradition tradition is like outfits you wear like this is the kind of pews we do or when we stand that's it yeah like we're talking about songs you know our tradition is we sing these types of this is not you know it's not holy tradition this is just a tradition it's a cultural thing okay whereas holy tradition is is what basically what what saint paul says in first thessalonians is what's passed on right even saint john the evangelist said i i can't write everything like jesus is so amazing i i don't have enough paper i don't have books to say everything i don't have it what does that mean that means obviously at least obviously what we infer is some things were not all mentioned in scripture okay so that's what we have as the apostolic tradition and what we have from the book of acts um and then all the early writings the apostolic fathers apostolic fathers are like like the church had christ and then he had the apostles but then they had their disciples right the disciples are disciples so what did they do and what did their disciples do we do not trust one person ever ever it's too dangerous if we see a common thread and everybody's following this then then we we adhere to that teaching if that person really has that question about you know okay is the eucharist the true body do i need the eucharist maybe i would just point them like do a little bit of research and say what is what did the church do so christ gave them the eucharist god created the holy communion and then what did the church practice and if we see in the book of acts there is mention of it and then if you read anything in the first second third fourth and onwards it's always mentioned um and and it was the central part of the service so all i would say is like i don't know what to tell you but all i can say is i know what what they did and we're just following suit because that is what the church was doing and and it found it as the central part of the service so all i know is what christ said and he did he mentioned that unless you eat the flesh of the son of man unless you drink his blood you have no life in me and and we take that as yeah it makes sense because again the whole connection thing i it's a plug if i'm dead i need to be plugged in and that's our connection um it's our understanding it's our belief and it's it's what the church was practicing so i would just kindly maybe point that person to maybe that all i can say is what we know and what where the church is i'm not going to say where the church isn't fair enough and you know what first of all thank you cause i that's a incredibly awkward spot to put somebody in but we've hung out enough today that i felt like you probably wouldn't freak out by the question but i mean isn't that that's what everybody wants to know when they talk to somebody from another faith right it's like so like your thing seems real cool but am i in like right what do we do with that and so i i so appreciate you just being a good sport and letting me ask and and knowing that i wouldn't be threatened by your answer one way or another and for being so gracious on how you answered the question the i think i think from in my tradition we would say the same thing i certainly know of traditions who wouldn't say the same thing they would say i can tell you where the visible church is and i can draw the lines precisely and tell you everything that isn't a part of the visible church i think there are some things that we could both comfortably point to and say that is not christ's bride they think that's not whoa like that's crazy over there but i agree there's a lot of stuff that it really comes down to one or two assumptions what did jesus mean when he said this is my body did he mean it in the platonic aristotelian transformative greek sense did he mean it in the equally as greek symbolic metaphorical sense i don't know i have a whole theology that i've been raised in sure that's built around the assumption that there's metaphor there and that he is the eucharist like literally him and that transaction happens invisibly in the larger sense in the life of the believers they're indwelt by the spirit but if we read that passage one degree different it changes a lot of assumptions yeah it's it's we cannot ever make the judgment of of judging i mean there's one judge there's one judge how god will judge i don't know i don't and i'm i you know i'm not gonna be that's not my position my position is i know like again i know where the church is i know what it what what the church was practicing and what we rely on part of the church like remember that whole umbrella of church of tradition is the holy fathers both the apostolic fathers like when you have a disciple of john john the apostle and clement of you know right behind peter sure like so it gives confidence it gives like okay so there has to be some suggestion what did christ do with them for 40 days right yeah like there's he didn't just fish with them is that why you guys do 40 days in the monastery is it is it mimicking that 40 days of him equipping i've never had that link but we have 40 days as a lot of numbers 40 days where christ fasted 40 days when moses was on the mountain sure i should know this but i'm not sure why we should maybe any of those or all of them could be any of those those are all 40 days as well so part of that tradition is our church fathers so yeah which helps and again if somebody we don't say that they're flawless and flacked we actually say the opposite we say they could make mistakes and that's why we never the same thing when i was mentioning we don't follow one like there's not one pope because any human being we're all human and we share we share that we have sin we have mistakes so it's very dangerous to go after one so if one father says something it's okay what do the others say so why we that's why we have consensus petrols like what's the consensus of all the fathers yeah what did they say about the eucharist and that we do have consensus for that for example so it gives us that's why we practice it so that's why anybody i would say just point back see the history see if it makes sense i would just say see if it makes sense uh and and there's some things that are not consensus well then then that's then but it's definitely not in the dogma in the actual teaching you will always have consensus on the holy trinity on you know sure you know that you know that there is a baptism um you know there's there's many things that we will have consensus on okay i mean the protestants put it this way we say when you come to a difficult passage in the bible you interpret the less clear in light of the more clear this was something drilled into me in seminary and i think it's a good principle i think it checks out so what i'm hearing is that you're using the same to use a fancy word hermeneutical technique when considering the testimony of all the different fathers if if there's lack of clarity with an outlier here or there you're trying to take yeah the more clear statements absolutely and evaluate the less clear yeah yeah no matter who the person is no matter who the person i mean augustine i mean gene another like how many how many uh how many passages did he comment on how many beautiful interpretations but then you know he also believes in predestination which is and you don't we do not okay we do not so so you believe in in free will of course the individual yes so who acts first in your tradition god okay god god is with all his great love he's always the initiator but it takes us to respond it's his grace he is so loving he is so gracious so he wants he desires all to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth he does not wish the death of the sinner at all but that they repent so he like the famous you know the famous painting or even an icon of him knocking like you know revelation 3 20. i knock at the door but you got to let me in i will not come in and he it's like oh i'm knocking on this door because i know he's going to be chosen but i'm not going to if god again if he desires all then we don't the predestination doesn't sit well it means that he's chosen some and and not the others where he desires everyone everyone and underline everyone to be saved when it comes to the bible and what is bible are the writings of athanasius bible no so the church fathers writings are not bible after a certain point but i would assume we have the same books in the new testament yes uh you and your run-of-the-mill protestant like me yeah all 27 books yes okay what about like shepherd of hermes or the ddk beautiful but not scripture not scripture okay tradition so again we the big umbrella for us is holy again i should when i say tradition holy tradition and under holy tradition is scripture again not under it's not important like i said i think i mentioned how much of our our liturgy and our sunday is scripture right how much we value scripture but also the church fathers because they were inspired to to interpret uh scripture as well so we look at their interpretations otherwise if i look at my own well what if somebody reads the same verse and he you know i didn't look at it that way i thought he meant that well who's right right who's right and which the protestant would look at and be like yeah but the church fathers disagree on stuff too from time to time what's the consensus and we would say what's the consent like the consensus historically yes um so on the example of alexander or alexander excuse me augustine that you brought up yes like there is so clearly no consensus on determinism and free will and that is not even consensus within me i don't know what to do with that i wish i had your level of certainty right that's that's a tough question that's a tough question and so there's a saint and he said we say right what did the others say they didn't say that so we don't take it okay so we take the good you know again he's human it's we don't trash augustine no no no he's got genius stuff so let's take the genius but this part look at the end of the day we are human right so what are what do humans do we we we look at what our experience was and he was a not so great guy right at the beginning it was pretty converted he did an absolute 180 and his mom and god were looking out for him beautiful right beautiful stories uh so we can't say just as a human right he must have been influenced a little bit about what he went through he's like there's no way there's no way i did this on my own like god must have like god must have been amazing right okay like i would take that as normal if i was saying augustine and and i was conv i would have probably put everything on god how about that you know because i was so bad there's no way i have nothing good in me but that was your personal experience augustine not maybe all of us i've never i mean that's a story i've been familiar with for a long time i've never thought of it from that perspective i suppose all of us will gravitate toward certain interpretations hopefully that are at least within the reasonable boundary markers of something that resembles christianity and orthodoxy but i i know there are certain things that i feel myself wanting to think because it fits better with my upbringing my circumstances my suffering whatever it might be but that don't seem quite as legitimate in terms of church tradition or the bible and that that creates a friction in me so i i can i can hear what you're saying all right my friends here's the game plan we're gonna do one more video so it'll be a total of four with father james it'll be the second half of the interview you just watched the first half of and i'm sure there are some of you who are like what i come on you did a video with my tradition and i got a beautiful tradition you only did one video without you know four with the coptic church what's the deal and you are making a very valid point i could always be doing more with all of these videos but the truth of the matter is i'm just going to let you in a little secret here i have no idea what i'm doing i just walk in i got the camera and i'm like hi i'm matt and then we meet and we start talking about stuff and uh i think part of the deal with the coptic church is that i really just knew so little going in that every little thing was new and fresh and fascinating and it just prompted more questions and father james is super patient so we took a bunch of time we went through everything i could think of so we are gonna do one more video and i think you're gonna really enjoy it as we get to the home stretch of this thing but i do have i guess two quick thoughts on what we just did here while it's still fresh for you and i quick thought number one did you catch the stuff about the chrismation oil and the provenance of that it's fascinating that he was saying that the oil they use and all the coptic churches everywhere is at some point mingled with oil that was mingled with oil there's that word again that was mingled with oil that was mingled with oil that i guess mark brought with him from the first church in jerusalem he just had it in his backpack when he showed up in alexandria he's like hey we're in christianity now and also one of the things you do in christianity is you have this oil i brought it with me and it's from jesus and stuff and then you know maybe mark goes away later on and somebody's like yeah you know that's pretty cool that that's kind of a point of connection uh sort of a touchstone with where this whole thing started and came from we should hang on to that and it's kind of neat and so i don't know if there's any actual way to subject that to scientific scrutiny to figure out if that oil was actually mingled with the other oil but the concept of that is is brilliant i mean i don't have any reason to doubt it one way or the other but the concept itself the metaphor is incredible and the metaphor doesn't really work in protestantism in my tradition because for us we don't really do what's called apostolic succession most protestants would look at the history of christianity and we look back through time we're like you know what what i see back there is a whole bunch of christians now there are probably a few protestants where like everything about christianity was great and then paul died and everything was stupid until martin luther in the 1500s and then everything got better again i don't know many protestants who think that i don't i don't think that i think what we have is this incredible shared history of the universal church there's disagreement within it there's diversity within it there's tricky stuff there's beautiful stuff within it but the one thing that all christians have in common is christ the guy for whom the religion is named and so anything that helps to illustrate that spiritual connectedness or in the case of the coptic church i mean even a little degree of physical connectedness with that oil i think it's a really cool thing so that stood out to me and yes i'm completely sidestepping the other side of the question of apostolic succession which is is there any unique authority that comes with it and i know that this is a place where i see things differently than my catholic friends and i just i super like you anyway and we can just agree to disagree on that for the moment so the oil thing was cool a unique metaphor for our connectedness with other christians not just in this moment in time but throughout all of time and even christians coming up in the future really cool the second thing that i thought was really cool is is kind of on a personal level but i put father james in a weird spot and i probably didn't ask that question as well as i could have but he was really gracious about it you know i put him in a weird spot by asking am i a christian in coptic thought would i count because we don't do the eucharist the same way we don't interpret what the bible says about communion quite the same way i mean we're talking about the exact same jesus the exact same work that he did on the cross and all of that stuff but you know we view it as a a symbolic expression a very important like one of if not the most important things that we do as christians as an act of worship as an ordinance of the church but we don't view it as being something that is uniquely distributed and only rightly distributed by someone who comes again from that succession of people who came before who can trace their lineage back to this or that claim for the beginning of the historical church so i put him in this odd spot and i asked him this question and did you see what he did he pivoted the language just a little bit i asked me like am i a christian and he pivoted to okay if someone were to ask me that i would say to such a hypothetical person this this and this and he didn't pretend not to think what he thinks i wanted to know what he thinks and he told me that but he also showed tremendous concern for the other person on the other side of the conversation from him i thought that was really neat and i also really liked it we got done with the answer that described very gently what they think and then was quick to say but we don't get to draw the lines of christianity we don't claim that authority i don't get to be the decider about who exactly fits where or how that works so there's a lot of humility and a lot of concern for me i just thought it was really stinking classy and i know that we're in kind of a weird place in our relationship together we used to all just exist in our little religious pockets or not religious pockets and we're all separate from each other and our thought ghettos our expressions of religion are not religion ghettos but now we're all crammed into the same thing and we just got dumped into it because the zuckerberg guy invented the facebook deal and now we're all in there sharing pictures of our kids and our cats and stuff and also yelling about politics and religion and getting bent out of shape with each other and i think that maybe it's that electronic mediation or we're just not practiced up yet on what it's like to all be together again and so it's like an awkward family meal the holidays all the time with all of our opinions coming to the table and we're used to just barfing them out and everybody around us nodding and being excited but now we're not in the thought bubble anymore and it's weird and it's awkward and it's clumsy and then we get amped up and insecure and mean and mad because somebody didn't think the thing i think and i'm used to being affirmed and just all of these really human things get triggered in us and we just don't do the best but that guy did great didn't he look even if you read that is him saying like matt respectfully no i i think you have to receive communion in this way for you to truly be a part of the body even if you read it that way and i don't necessarily read his comments that way he's still concerned with how i'm doing he cares about the fate of my soul he gives a rip about people who aren't exactly like him and i want to be like that i want to i want to steal that vibe i want to be that kind of person i want to be that kind of christian and so even in moments where you might feel or i might feel tension or amped up or defensive or maybe even this trigger of flash of anger because that's not my thing and i don't really know how to say what my thing is and that made sense and that disturbs me even as those things might flash or flare up in me i'm just gonna i'm gonna keep father james's example in the back of my brain i'm gonna try to imitate that more because i really like his style and i think what he is doing right there how he's thinking about his community how he's thinking about the people who go to his church how he's thinking about the people who doesn't or who don't rather go to his church i think that's sustainable i think i think that's the kind of thing that can make a real difference not just in the world but in the the christian notion of the kingdom of god i appreciated seeing his lifetime of faith manifest in that moment in the way he treated me i thought it was cool i've gone on and on and on we've got one more round of this interview with father james i think it's really fascinating stuff and you're going to enjoy it thank you for being the kind of person that is interested in this kind of stuff thank you to the people who support the program at patreon.com tmbh you're investing in internet like this you're investing in people like father james being the kind of person that he is in front of others and i'd like to think that it's one small drop in the bucket of maybe making the conversation a little bit better it's happening because of you thank you for doing that thanks to those of you who are here don't kick in on stuff on the internet you're awesome glad to have you as well i'm matt this is the 10 minute bible hour let's do this again soon

Channel: The Ten Minute Bible Hour

Views: 98,957

Rating: 4.9439774 out of 5

Keywords: Bible, Theology, Study, Matt Whitman, TMBH, No Dumb Questions, Matthew, Jesus, copt, coptic, egypt, heresy, orthodoxy, oriental

Id: xJUo6z_zdZw

Length: 39min 23sec (2363 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 20 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Joe_Med]

Makes me Proud to see people fascinated by your church 🤗 Saved it for later because its kinda long but his expression in the beginning of the video makes me proud to be a son of the coptic church.

[u/kingdavid0033]

Beautiful...thanks for sharing

[u/UNAMANZANA]

His explanation of conciliarity is actually one of the most straightforward ones I've ever heard.

[u/beardedkamasu]

Is St.Macarius and St.Anthony the great Coptic ?

[u/sinner_man123]

hello, is the Coptic Church in communion with the Catholic Church?

[u/Aizsan]

The Copts are not EASTERN ORTHODOX, although we do respect them because they are martyrs for the faith in Egypt.

[u/BroomClosetJoe]

wait he mentioned a pope, I thought us Orthodox didn't get ordained by the pope?