Pornography VS Iconography w/ Jonathan Pageau

g'day there welcome to pints with aquinas my name is matt fradd and i'm really excited to have jonathan pagio on the uh on on the episode today jonathan pagio is a professional artist writer and public speaker i've seen him give lectures with jordan peterson and brett weinstein and others uh he gives workshops and conferences all around north america he teaches carving speaks on art but mostly explores symbolic structures that underlie our experience of the world today we're going to be talking about the difference between iconography and pornography i've had this idea for a while that pornography is almost like the anti-icon whereas the icon reveals pornography conceals the mystery of the person that's what we'll talk about and i'm sure that jonathan will have a lot of interesting things to share before we do that though i want to tell you guys about hello which is a fantastic app that can help you pray so if you've been wanting to pray meditate more it's the new year and all that this will help you do that hello.com matt fradd it is the number one catholic app on in in in north america number one downloaded that tons of five star reviews very sophisticated a hundred percent catholic it has sleep stories it'll lead you through lectio divina's if you know what that is you can do examinations of conscience at night it's really well done now they have a free version of their app so you can just go download it right now and get a bunch of free stuff and you'll see how well produced it is but they also have um a whole lot of other content that you can only get access to by subscribing but if you want to get three months for free and get access to everything on their app click the link in the description below hello dot com slash mattfradd use that as a promo code mattfradd and then you'll get everything on the app for free for three months if you don't like it you can just cancel you won't be charged to send i have it my wife has used it we really like it and i think you will too hello.com mattfradd hello.com slash mattfradd all right here is my interview with jonathan pagio thanks jonathan pagio did i get that right yes that's right good that's cool that's a cool way of saying it australians are really great at butchering names that should sound lovely like that like peggy peggy oh or something it's hard to say my name in english because we don't usually the ajo is not an english pronunciation like the normal way would be to say pat joe or something like that it's just not it's it's a very french way of saying a french name french is my first language so okay yeah that's awesome well it's really lovely to meet you i don't know how we first connected somebody told me i should interview you and then i i looked i looked you up and i really enjoyed you know the things you had to say and i i go to an eastern catholic church and so you know all that you were doing with icons i found super intriguing so it's really nice to finally touch base yeah same i've had several people in my let's say people following me or said you know you know matt fred what he's doing and so i looked into what you're doing so i was happy that you connected with me and i thought i think you connected with me in march and then with the pandemic and everything things just kind of we didn't we didn't follow through and then recently someone said again you know you need to to contact him and i i think i remember an email by him so i went in and i said yeah perfect let's do this that's right so i mean it's hard for me to kind of gauge reality at this point i'm about to move to steubenville ohio but right now i'm in georgia and i don't know if i've just drunk the kool-aid or what but like any kind of lockdown any kind of mandatory whatever just like really rubs me the wrong way meanwhile my family in australia had this six day lockdown they weren't allowed to walk their dog i don't see the reason anyway so it really bothers me and i've seen a few things up in canada where these police have broken into a person's house gestapo style and i find it super troubling i just was interested what you thought yeah it's very i find it very troubling as well we just have they've started a new lockdown now which is uh with a apm curfew you know you're not allowed to walk with other people not allowed to i think they said if if someone is living alone one person is allowed to go visit them or something like that frigging generous yeah exactly so it really pisses me off i like who the hell are these people to tell us this kind of stuff and i know i think up in canada i'm how old do i look i'm cleaning my glasses i'm just old and curmudgey everything pisses me off it's not just canada um you know i i've heard i've got some friends up in canada and they say they're kind of encouraged to snitch on their neighbors if they have large gatherings what a great way to destroy the sort of social fabric well that's what it feels like what it feels like is is a difficulty it's there's a kind of materialism which is seeped in you know where we think that the integrity of the body is the only thing that matters you know and so it's it's in line with a kind of insipid materialism that we live with and then there's a kind of objective sense where they feel like because we're talking about medical therefore there's no opinion to be had there's no there's no morality involved it's just we're gonna save lives and we're gonna do anything we can for people to stop dying uh and so they feel people just accept it and also we've we've accepted the role of the state as this totalizing thing in our in our lives it's something which has been seeping in you know after world war ii it just started to grow and grow and grow and grow and now everybody has just accepted it and we think that basically the state can tell us what to do they basically manage our identities they manage they're allowed to tell religious groups if they can meet or not and you know and they all do it for our our good and so it's a very it's a strange situation that we've we've kind of seeped into a authoritarian uh state and people tell me it's for a good reason and i and maybe i don't know but it's authorian states have always said it's for a good reason you wouldn't install authoritarianism for a bad reason it's always we're doing it for your good right we're doing it to help you so yeah it's a frightening moment yeah yeah yeah gosh i i just saw recently these greek orthodox christians were like you know meeting regardless of the for epiphany regardless of the covert laws which i thought was just super badass i was pumped about that um yeah there's just part of me this is like we've almost like totally given them this control we've allowed it so like it's times like this that make me look at my like conservative conspiracy theory friends like tell me what you were saying again because it's yeah it definitely feels like there is some at least agreement among nations because they're all using the same words they're all using the same language you know we've heard this build build back better used by biden and then trudeau and then you know boris uh in england and so it's like everybody's using the same language and so it's even though you don't necessarily need to think of a top-down conspiracy there's at least a strange agreement about what it is we're doing and and uh and the sacrifices we're willing to make in order to get there and i think that's what no one talks about is is that we we have this goal and we think they talk as if we're willing to sacrifice everything to get to this goal and we don't want to talk about the cost in terms of everything else mental health society uh the the cohesion of groups you know the even the abandonment of the elderly like we've completely in quebec like the elderly have been completely abandoned and we do it for them like we're we're doing it for their good but we're not allowed to visit them they're not allowed to see anybody they're i know some people whose uh uncle's parents are in an apartment and they haven't left for months and they're not allowed to even walk out on their balcony and so it's insane did you see that parlor just got shut down because amazon kicked him off their servers and app do you know what parlor is yes yes yes no that's the try and look it up it doesn't exist anymore no it doesn't exist it's been nuked this is ridiculous yep i always tell you there's a there's a serious lockdown on information that and it all it fits together even if it doesn't even if it's not whether it's planned or not it fits together because as we're at home and we encounter the world only through the internet then that becomes the frame for reality yeah so if you're able to now control that frame then you have a control over what reality is and you can tell people what's happening and they have no way to know besides accessing reality through like i get the argument when someone says these are private companies they can do what they want but as you say when twitter and facebook and instagram have become the town square and then you say and you are not allowed to come um and then say you know it does really feel like you're canceling free speech and it doesn't feel like a breach of the first amendment even though i know technically it isn't but not only you're not allowed to come to the town square but we're going to shut down any other town square that you tried to open so it's not just that i know it's like can we go meet over here and chat no that's band too this is insane i um i i'm just sort of waiting i was talking to my wife today and i'm like okay i just hit a hundred thousand subscribers on youtube i'm excited cancel it like come at me i just i just can't wait like so here we go maybe this would get me kicked off if you are a if you are a catholic or an orthodox out there go find a priest who will flout the covert rules to bring you eucharist uh if this thing gets locked down i've already found some priests like absolutely he's like we're going to print out mapquest directions we won't even let have people use google we're going to meet in a parishioner's home and you'll receive eucharist bring it well it's it seems like i mean i think that that's the kind of thing that's been happening uh just privately i would say and i know that some churches are being stricter in terms of the the the guidelines and some are being at least secretly more permissive and so it's hard because we're also called as christians to to obey the rule of the state we know we we try to not be to reveal the rule for no reason of course if the law is reasonable we should obey it it's a tough situation it's a very difficult it's a very difficult place that we are in right now that's for sure and it's hard to know what is the right thing what is the right thing no it's totally you're exactly right i mean everyone with a bloody youtube channel thinks they're an expert exhibit a and i know nothing i know nothing except it's going to be left alone to worship god and be with my friends and family but so i'm fully you know fully admitting that i don't know what i'm talking about in many respects and i know we all we're all listening to people who know what they're talking about either and then just whoever feels the most appealing to us we i don't know it's crazy so i just want to take a quick moment to tell you about ethos logos investments because they're an amazing catholic invest in investment group that will help you invest with character i used to think that investing was something only rich people did or old people did or people who were i don't know like just good at complicated things but this is actually not a complicated thing to do at all if you go to el investments.net points click the description below you can see like a five minute interview i did with the founder of this group and see why this is a really smart thing to do especially in a time like this el investments dot net slash pints because you could invest with a different kind of investment company and end up profiting from evils like sex trafficking or pornography or embryonic stem cell research and the like you don't want to do that so go to ethos logos investments that's el investments.net points and let them help you invest with character today securities offered through securities america inc member finra sipik ethos logos investments and securities america are separate entities go check them out today all right um i want to talk to you about icons it's like it's hard to talk about anything besides what's happening and i totally i totally understand that because what are we like that's imagery has been so crazy like the imagery of the of the capital takeover was so mad like it was one of the maddest things that i've seen the imagery of that shaman with like the horns you know walking through the capitol with like face paint on feels like we're in a video game that's what it feels like yeah it was gross for sure how did how did canadians sort of respond to it i don't know i don't i know how i respond i don't get out so you haven't spoken to them exactly and i don't watch the news because i'm tired of the propaganda so it's hard to even know it's hard to get like i can't watch cbc because i want to wrench if i try to watch cbc here and and it's difficult to find alternative it's a little harder to find with the alternative media in canada than you know than in the us yeah and we'll see how long they're around for but but honestly though like i was thinking this the other day i was driving in my car and i was listening to some political talk show and i just thought this is not good for me at this point like i could be listening to like bulgarian orthodox chant or soothing jazz or something but not this like i know i would be healthier if i just unplugged um that's not to say that we shouldn't kind of keep abreast of these issues and have an idea of what's going on but at some point it's like how much politics can i take in and we all we've all heard the stories of those you know fathers and grandmothers who have been told by the doctor you need to stop watching fox news you know whatever so i mean this kind of comes to the point about talking about iconography and religious things like for you as an as an artist not wanting to go insane i mean what kind of suggestions do you have for for christians like me and others yeah well it's the same i think that i have to apply my rules to myself one of the things i've been doing now you know for the for a little while is i make sure that when i get up in the morning i pray before i do anything else like before i pick up my phone and before i look at my notifications with any of that i tried to pray before that can i ask you what you pray i just pray the morning prayers the orthodox morning prayers and then i i try to do a little bit of the jesus prayer you know which is these days is not super successful because we're so we're so like our minds are so taken up that it you know i find myself wandering in my thoughts while i'm doing the jesus prayer so uh hopefully that will get better but i agree i've had the same since christmas i've kind of decided to to break away a little bit and not get not listen to too many political podcasts not be too and try to get the bare minimum to at least know what's happening but not get involved in the commentary and and the infighting but then now recently because it's the social media world that is being affected itself because i mean i'm thinking it's the same for you in a way this is my part of my job you know it's like when the youtube videos start to get uh shadow banned and there starts to be warning on your youtube videos then that's affecting me so i need to i it's harder to to uh to stay neutral and to to to break off from that so at least you have a respectable skill like art and carving i just yell about things that is true and i try like i've been trying to also do that uh i've been doing better like get up in the morning pray go carve for like three hours and then after that get into emails and stuff that way i'm not as frantic as i am when i start right away on the on the emails and the and the social media stuff you're such a talented guy because i mean i've been looking at your uh i'm gonna pull it up right now and uh i'm going to show people some of your carvings it's absolutely incredible did you ever kind of um you know as i say write icons or is it just has it been carving is that considered writing i don't understand well i i kind of joke because the word to write in uh in greek is actually uh it means to incise and so i think that i win when i say i carve icons that i you know that i just carved them but the writing icons things is complex i don't like to use that term but i just i carve i carve icons uh it's kind of a marginal art let's say in the in the orthodox tradition but it is uh it is legitimate and there are icon carvings you know from the beginning all the way until recently it's being revived kind of like icon painting was revived in the mid 20th century and so i think that right now icon carving is also being revived by a few people myself included and then a few carvers all over the world yeah i'm showing folks uh right now what it looks like it's amazing i mean when did you get into this well when i was i grew up uh baptist protestant and then when i was in college i studied painting but i was really struggling to join my theology which i wanted to take seriously and the art making it feel like it just didn't jive together so all my art in college was about image making and the problem of image making as a protestant and in the western tradition and so it just became like this weird self-referential thing which is great for post-modern art but it's not good for your spiritual health and so i and that's one of the things that kind of pushed me towards uh becoming orthodox is as i discovered at first medieval art and fell in love with the let's say internal language of the church that the church had developed this beautiful uh sacred visual language that you could find all over christendom you know uh from syria to spain basically and so i i discovered this and at first i was kind of sad because i thought it was gone and that it wasn't accessible anymore but then when i discovered iconography and how it was still alive in the orthodox church it was one of the things that led me to uh to convert and so i wanted to paint icons which is what most people want to do but at that time it was in 2001 2002 um icon painters were very difficult to access it was hard to find someone to teach you and act just just happenstance my parents cut down a tree in their yard and they said you want to you want to have that go with this and i thought i'm going to make a blessing cross and so that was it and that was the catechumen at the time and then that's kind of what started it all i see i'm showing people right now these kind of crucifix medallions that you've put together as well that's amazing what's that made out of it looks like stone so a lot of yeah one of the things that i'm carving is uh steatite so it's kind of a kind of soapstone okay um it's an old tradition from the old byzantine tradition which kind of went away when constantinople fell but i'm trying to revive that because we don't really have access to carving ivory so much anymore it's very difficult and so the steatite or the stone is a way to to kind of regain a certain look of ivory and miniature and stuff and so it's the thing i really like the car the most actually i'm looking at this seed of wisdom uh statue of our of our blessed mother and our lord that is just beautiful those were those were someone a few catholic patrons have asked me to make statues and statuary isn't usual in the orthodox tradition it's hard to fully know exactly why it has something to do with iconoclasm and it's not sure exactly why statuary didn't develop so much in the in the east but um so when i i've had some catholic patrons asking me to to make statues and i i said i'll do it if you accept that i try to kind of integrate it's kind of eastern iconographic language in the statue and so it was a interesting little game to play between the statue and this the the more let's say kind of medieval but at the same time looking more eastern i i actually prefer it a lot more and i've been thinking about why that is the case you know i've been going to a byzantine church now for about six years um and and i think it's i don't know what it is but like here's how i here here's how i explain it if somebody took a photo of a beautiful woman say dressed up like the theotokos i wouldn't want to use that um in in a you know while praying and i think a lot of people would agree like well yeah no like you don't want someone who like looks like jenny down the road um and and statues kind of have that they they i mean i know icons can look tacky if they're not well done i think statues have a better likelihood of looking tacky but i actually really like this of the theotokos it's it's kind of yeah it is a really beautiful blend between eastern well east and west i guess and if you you they look a little bit i tried to make them look a little bit like the seed of wisdom statuary that was popular in the 11th 12th century in the west as well tried to find trying to recapture you know the strength of the medieval christian art you know in a in a way that is surprising at the same time golly this is outstanding i'm just clicking around and showing people what they look like this one of our blessed lord what does that mean in greek i think it's greek pantocrator is that the truth means the ruler of all the lord of all okay it's usually it's the image that you find in the dome of the church for example right so it's like christ coming back at the at the last judgment gosh that's beautiful so as you had this sort of um conversion if you want to the orthodox church did you find we i mean were you a serious baptist as a child yes i would say so i was very involved in the youth groups and you know i was kind of artistic and so in my young adulthood i wrote a lot of plays that were performed and kind of toured around quebec you know kind of event evangelical these big evangelical type plays so i was quite involved but i would it was really at least starting in my early 20s i would say it became like a a crisis really like a major crisis in terms of the depth of uh of the understanding but also the problem of art um and so that's really it was really kind of my desire to find coherence that led me to to the to the orthodox church and reading the church fathers especially saint gregory of nisa um and ultimately sam actually was the confessor just like that was it like i found really the power of the chris the christian worldview you would say i felt like i discovered i felt like i grown up in a world where scientism was the world view and christianity was like this weird arbitrary revelation on top of it whereas in discovering the church fathers i discovered that there's there's actually the shape of the world is christian and it's and the scripture actually describes how the world is like how it how it appears to us and so so i i really fell in love with that that's beautiful um what's it been like you know i know you've given some lectures on the same platform as people like brett weinstein and jordan peterson what's it like kind of discussing the faith with people who may or may not have a sort of more of a secular mindset so they can appreciate christianity for what's what it's given us but they they hold to a form of religion while denying its power yeah how's that been for you well it's it's really been a surprise to be honest because before i met jordan peterson i was mostly talking inside right so i was talking about christian symbolism to orthodoxy just describing symbol symbolism and icons and all this stuff so for years i ran uh i was editing a journal called the orthodox art journal with other people um and so when jordan kind of threw me out there like he just kind of threw me out into the public i encountered this secular crowd and i tried to find ways to talk about these things in a way that would be understandable to secular people yes and um and i've i mean i've been really surprised to see that you know there are a lot of people that are staying on the secular side but i've seen thousands of people convert to christianity you know because they're at the end of the nihilism they're at the end of the of the you know of this kind of weird po modern post-modern world that has been given to them and they're at the end of scientism as well and so they i i've seen a lot of people finally understand at least under because one of the problems we've had is that people don't know what christianity is talking about you know a lot of a lot of times they think it's just a kind of either it's a kind of moralism or it's a kind of arbitrary thing that if you don't believe this you go to hell you know that kind of nonsense but when people start discovering that it's actually discussing about this talking about the structure of reality and it's it's discussing how reality exists and how you need to engage with reality uh then then they they're surprised and they're excited that you know that this is still available to them yeah i think that's why jordan peterson has been something of a gateway drug into christianity for many people who have abandoned the faith as kids he kind of helped it become intelligible to them in a way that they hadn't seen before they they didn't realize it was that sophisticated they just i don't know maybe thought it had something to do with people who denied evolution or something well that's what i mean it's also because of the it was kind of like the new atheist moment which took over in in the popular culture you know and it i don't know if it really took over in the high intellectual spheres but it definitely took over popular culture and so you could have a barely you know a somewhat intelligent not super smart person who had all the arguments laid out of how how stupid religion is and how all these contradictions in scripture all this kind of stuff um and how it doesn't fit with science but then it's also because they were facing a bunch of people who are trying to read science into genesis 1. yeah which is which is so so then these two things that face each other create this weird monstrous cultural moment where we think that that's what christians believe and then there are actually some christians who do think that yeah yeah and so they've never encountered traditional christianity before these people yeah like you you meet a uh like a kind of debunker and they talk about what most christians believe and what they mean by most christians isn't most christian no i know it's like it's like bible belt like this very narrow strip of and i find i find the most the most i mean i know there are a lot of very rational fantastic atheists i get it but i think the most kind of angry ones tend to be people who kind of grew up in a fundamentalist home you know talk about how they grew up christian and you're like oh that doesn't the kind of christianity you're describing that you grew up with doesn't actually sound like something i would i would get on board with either yeah and i mean most cr the biggest christian group is catholic in the world it's not it's not this this fundamentalist group and and catholicism and then we have our own baggage right with the craziness going on with all this talk of pedophilia and yeah something the pope said about something that he may have been taken i mean so we have our own way of making christianity as a whole look suspect yeah for sure i mean but that's there's a difference between there's a difference between let's say the world view and the doctrinal positions which are something and then there are the the kind of hypocrisy that you find in any any group any world and and you know the kind of the traitors that we find within the hierarchical structure you know and so i think that it's important to be able to differentiate that because totally you know but it just gives people an easy way to dismiss you like if i want to dismiss you and then i find out you're you have hypocrites in the ranks easy done i take the moral high ground i look super great i get to point to your immorality while you've been trying to tell me to be moral you know and and it's also it's easy because because catholicism is such a hierarchical structure you can point to anybody let's say anybody who has any authority in the in the catholic church and say that's catholic and you can kind of incriminate the entire ins this entire one of the biggest institutions in the history of the world probably the biggest and incriminate the entire institution because of oh the fact that in that massive billion people institution there are some people who are using it to their own perverse advantage yeah i've often said you know if you're looking for a perfect church as soon as you join it it won't be like suppose you were to have found it you join it have you met you you're disgusting it'll be awful you know it's like it's yeah it's a lot easier i guess if you've got a small church down the road with 10 people to try to keep you all together but when you've got a billion plus you're going to find hypocrites for sure so one of one of the things i've done in my work in the past is i've written on the topic of pornography and i've just found it really interesting because it's definitely in my history it's something i'm tempted to from time to time it's something i hate um but i see the appeal of it i see how it's kind of dragging people um into hell and into just a kind of boring monotonous existence that they don't want to be in but they feel they have no no choice to be in and i just wanted to chat with you about that because i've had this idea which isn't terribly insightful but i think it is accurate that pornography is like the anti-icon so if the icon sort of kind of brings us into this larger reality pornography does the opposite it suppresses the personhood of the performer and sort of hollows her out or him out as it were and leaves us with less than what's there yeah for sure i think there's a there's a very good it's very interesting to differentiate let's say the the the idea of the icon and the pornographic image because the pornographic image is probably one of the closest places where we could find idolatry today in terms of understanding what ancient idols were actually were which is that you create an image or you create a statue or an image and then that statue becomes a vehicle right it becomes a kind of vehicle for some demon like some spirit which which which and then your encounter with that spirit is is going to bring you something right and it and pornography plays exactly that role like if you don't believe in incubit incubi and succubi like you're an idiot because that's exactly what pornography is doing you're not encountering the person right like you said they become hollowed out shells and they become they become vehicles for your passion and then ultimately vehicles for these you know let's say the way in which your passion that mode of being links together with others is through a kind of principality which is driving this whole thing right because your passion isn't driving the industry of pornography but all the passions of people brought together and kind of as this strange entity is what's driving this thing and and so the the pornographic image becomes uh becomes a place where that manifests itself and it leads to a form of ecstasy just like a an idol it like an idol would it leaves it can give you something like it gives you some momentary power or momentary ecstasy but then like you said because it is it is ultimately an idol and it's not connected to to god like an icon like an icon of like when you meet a saint or you meet a holy person that person is actually revealing christ to you you know in the opposite way then pornography is breaking you away from what the true purpose of sexuality is what the true purpose of love and relationship is um and so it's it's a it's a it really is like you said a kind of anti-icon yeah i mean if we think of like an icon as how would you define icon just as um well the word is just means sacred image like it's the word icon just means image but it's usually shorthand for holy icon which is that you have a sacred image uh and a sacred image what it does is it it reminds us first of all that god gave us renewed the image that he had placed in us like renewed the image of himself uh that he had put in adam he renewed it in christ and so the image of christ participates in the way that god reveals himself to us um and then the images of the saints they also remind us and they help us participate in the fact that we're all together in this this church we're all together in this body this cosmic body which is moving towards the eschaton um and so that's what icons do so when you look at an icon of a saint you're you're this it's present saying the same to you but behind that it's also present saying christ to you just like when you meet a person right that's kind of what i wanted to get to you know i'm not sure if you've heard of anthony esslin or not but he's an excellent thinker he has here's this quote of his he says we sense that the human body is a precious thing worthy of our reverence it is not a tool not an object of consumption like a steak or a keg of beer not an animate provider of pleasure it is the outward expression of a profound mystery that of another human being um and that's the evil of pornography right there it uh yeah we ch it's almost like it does what death does in an analogous way it separates body and soul and says i just want this exactly right it really does it is a cleaving it's like a cleaving of the person and especially because we already get a little bit of that just in the technological image itself like it's a dangerous game we play with these screens it's already a danger but when when that let's say when that danger gets brought to the extreme through this kind of explicit sexual act and also the kind of raw how can i say this the the nudity of shame you could say you know where you you have the permission to look at something which is meant to be secret and meant to be holy like it's it's it's a desacralization of something which is meant to be to be holy uh and so all of that brought together is exactly what you said it turns the body into pure meat pure object of desire um and uh and it's not even the body it's like an image it's like this deincarnated image like it's like this it is it's almost like this like i said it almost is like a like a subtle body in the in the very traditional sense which manifests itself to you of these these kind of demonic demonic forces oh wow yeah well let me let me just kind of unspool here a little bit about my opinion on the difference between pornography and naked art and then i would love you as an artist to kind of help me kind of flesh this out a little bit right because um you know the word pornography entered the english language in the mid-19th century comes from two greek words which means the writing or drawing of the prostitutes and it's clear that the the kind of creators the producers of pornography mean for their product to interact with the consumer in the way that a prostitute would so pornography is always meant to be a substitute for a prostitute and i was just thinking like in this crazy lockdown time that we're in if you were a prostitute and had to work online what would that look like well it would be pornography because i think one of the primary maybe the only notable difference between pornography and prostitution is that there is a camera in the room um but with naked art it's something altogether different you know you don't find people sort of being tempted to masturbate in the sistine chapel you don't find them going to some beautiful art museum and and and finding that temptation and yet you see the body and all of its beauty the breasts and the genitals and this is all lovely and it seems like though you're being drawn into an interior world there's something going on there is a complexity and interiority to the person um where i mean i don't i i tend to be not on i'm not on the on this let's say i i don't mind the fact that nudity exists in the art but it's it's definitely to me like when nudity started to reintegrate art let's say in the during the renaissance and later it seemed to me like that it was a a strange pagan move oh really because if you if you read the if you read the early councils when they they accepted the images in the church and when you read how the church fathers talk about one of the reasons why icons look the way they do is because roman art was erotic roman art was extremely erotic and so what the christians did is they took the roman forms and they if you look at the figures they're using roman tropes everything about iconography is based on roman tropes the the you know the the folds the clothing every the poses even the contrapposto all of this comes from roman statuary in roman painting but it was de-eroticized and so the all the figures are covered and then the contrapposto was adjusted slightly so that it's not as sensual so all of it there's like a and you can read i think it was even uh saint basil i'm not sure don't quote me on that sure one of the fathers talked about how you know the the images that are represented in the church have to be not to not to attract attention to your desires like they need to be they need to have a sobriety to them so that you're not tempted by them um and so i do think that because like in the sistine chapel you even the sistine chapel now they've been restored but it didn't take long for the nuns to paint thing vines over the over the genitals which were removed now they've been running by john paul ii which i thought was that's cool that we disagree on this because i think that i think i disagree with you on that i think that i mean whatever we might say of christian tradition and the fathers and their opinions i mean the argument that that one would make would be that the body can be portrayed in a way that is decent and good or not and so would your argument be that you actually can't portray the body through drawing or painting in a way that i think that i think that the best way that i would understand that is mostly that the body or the naked body is has two aspects to it there are two nakednesses you could say and those those are related to the story in genesis like one is the nudity in the garden and it's the nudity in uh the secret place where you're you're in communion with god and then that when at the fall that nudity gets turned into the nudity of shame and in the outside of the garden then you cover yourself and so i think that that duality remains the same and so i think there is of course like you said absolute dignity and beauty and power to the human body but there's something of the altar in that in that that power there's something of the sacredness of the body which needs to be preserved and hidden uh for the moment of the bride and the groom like for the for the the encounter of the bride and the groom in the hidden chamber so that's kind of more of the way that i i understand it so your idea would be that since the time of the fall is no longer appropriate to depict the body naked well i would say that it's hard to depict it naked without the shame and so that's why christ was represented not fully naked on the cross but let's say as naked as possible and it was somewhat scandalous even when it started christ started to appear that way on the cross christ was represented fully clothed until like the early let's say i didn't even know what the first time the i think it was in the 9th century around the time of charlemagne that christ started to appear as naked on the cross or as almost naked and i think that it was meant to represent the nakedness of shame it was meant to the nakedness or a way in a way you could say joining the nakedness of shame with the nakedness in the garden in a very strange very surprising way the way christ unites opposites and extremes together but but that was one of the only places where that where the kind of the body was shown was when christ was dead on the cross and i would say that it's mostly that it has to do with the secret it has to do with a mystical reality which is still kept you could you could say something like i imagine that in paradise we'll all be naked right like in in the kingdom maybe or clothed in glory the way that we might be wearing nike we won't be wearing nike that's for sure or clothing glory the way the the the fathers talk about the nakedness of the garden something like that what's your opinion on those beautiful breastfeeding madonna icons i don't know i think i think that they i think that they start out okay and then they get more and more disturbing you know and by disturbing do you mean sensual like leading to sexual definitely i think that in the baroque period there is a there's a there's a kind of sensuality like you look at a reuben's painting and it's just it's just all it's very sensual i mean the body what's he what's that cold sorry i want to look it up rubens so ruby i shouldn't look it up i guess rubens what would i type painting yeah reuben's painting yeah okay yeah no i see what you mean how they become more sensual well let's i don't want to put a pin in that i do want to keep flushing that out but just kind of back up a little bit you know i suppose when we talk about um you know pornography you know you could talk about it from different angles right like there's the one who produces the pornography there is the one who quote unquote performs in the pornography then you have the consumer right and i suppose in fact i would say it's it is the case that one can look at pornography and not sin because you know you we have these sort of police officers who have to say look at images of child pornography in order to identify victims and catch these people or you might have a mother say who accidentally stumbles upon what a child has been seeing and and scrolls through to to understand it you know i would say that this because of the intention of the viewer watching pornography while it may always be harmful to some degree one isn't always culpable for it yeah but but i um and i suppose it's possible that someone could look as you say upon these reuben paintings or even the icon of the breastfeeding madonna and feel lust uh and have their sexual their sort of lower passion stirred up um but i've always thought i guess that you know especially in regards to say the icon or even the sistine chapel that the problem wasn't with the art it wasn't with depicting the body which is good it's always been with the the the person that there's a problem in the heart if i am to look upon something holy like the breastfeeding madonna icon and feel lust so that's not a problem with the depictions it's the problems with with me but no i think you're i think you're on just i think you're on to the you're right in the in an absolute sense but i i i still nonetheless think that it's a dangerous it's a dangerous i think i see what you mean because at the very least like let's say one says you can depict the body in a responsible way which i'm not you it sounds like you're leaning towards not necessarily after the after the garden right but it but even if that were the case um there's the temptation of like leading people into sin because there are people who are seriously perverted and so maybe maybe that's an argument for why you shouldn't just be having these these naked images in churches um i i mean i am definitely a traditional iconographer so i don't advocate for the naked people in churches but if you look at for example the way that nakedness is portrayed like i was trying as we were talking i was trying to think of other scenes where the saints are represented naked and it does it does happen and it's usually uh aesthetics like ascetics are sometimes represented naked yeah mary of egypt yes saint mary of egypt is sometimes represented naked in a way where she's an almost a skeleton yeah like she's she's a barely she barely has any flesh on her and so there is a way in in which the nakedness of the aesthetic is is also this weird place where scandal and glory come together you know like you can imagine when um saint francis of assisi would disrobe or ask his his franciscans to disrobe uh before the in public like it wasn't it was obviously not to entice their entice other people's sexual desire but it was rather for the person to kind of descend into that shame of nakedness in a way that would liberate them from the liberate them from that shame in a way yeah i don't know of that particular story um oh that saint francis would disagree i i've heard stories of you know people that maybe francis rolling in the snow or these sorts of things to avoid temptation but is it the case that francis asked some of his brothers to actually strip naked yeah well francis himself did it and so francis when francis kind of uh he started giving his father's money to to build a church and then they brought in that's right from now on our father who out in heaven right and so he took his cl he this robe then he gave his cloak to to his father to the priest that was there and but then he also asked some of his brothers to do the same at some points and this probably doesn't mean undergarments right though i'm sure he's not like i don't know yeah i don't because if that were the case i mean far be it from me to criticize a saint but i'd be like that doesn't seem cool francis yeah but um i guess i can see well the holy fools the holy fools are capable of engaging in this kind of scandalous behavior uh but they take the consequences for it but it's also it is this weird moment like i said where this strange moment where the the nakedness of christ on the cross is both the nakedness of scandal and the the return to the garden at the same time so i just really want to understand your argument so forgive me for for going back to this so is your argument and maybe you haven't fully thought this through so i'm not i'm not pressing you on it or anything but it seems to be like prior to the fall one could look upon another body and and see it in all of its glory and splendor and without wanting to use the body but since the time of we've left the garden that's no longer possible and so we shouldn't depict nudity in art i don't think we should depict it in a sensual manner at least not at least not in the church aren't at least not no i agree but then but i wouldn't consider like i wouldn't consider the the the nudity in the sistine chapel to be sensual in any sense like i agree that that those reuben paintings were sensual from what i saw um so would you say though that you can depict nudity um in a non-sensual way that would be appropriate or are you i mean people have done it on the with christ on the cross forever and so i mean without necessarily showing christ's genitalia that christ is is basically i would be open to that i would be open to a beautiful icon displaying christ's genitalia yeah and i would see i would i would until this conversation would have thought that would have been appropriate or could be appropriate i don't know i think that i i i'm not sure i i get the sense that that one might be disclosing the disclosing the the the secret in a way that might not be appropriate in the public i would say something say it that way because he was crucified naked by all accounts right i think that's probably he probably was completely naked yeah yeah this is this is really fascinating feel free to feel free to expand on this if i'm not giving you enough time to flesh out your thoughts but that's what i that's what i think i think that if you look at the story of art you'll notice that when the from the roman period to the christian period there was a transformation in the way that the body was represented and you can see that there's a use of all the roman tropes but transformed into a more sober vision of the human person which focuses on the face especially this encounter with the person right because you encounter someone in their eyes and their face and their expression and so you can see that that's where the art towards what the art went and um and then during the renaissance which which i mean this is this would be a big argument to have but i think that renaissance is a is a return to paganism at least for a little moment uh during the renaissance then there's this return to nakedness uh in in art and also a return to a lot of the pagan subjects right you know if you look at the way that that michelangelo represents god it's basically zeus right i mean who is this figure like who is this bearded guy like who i'm not sure who who is this bearded guy that's touching adam is it christ like who is it is it god the father father it's the father right yeah so until then like until the 14th century god the father was never represented in heart interesting you know it's funny so like very very freak events but it's like during all the middle ages the father was never represented because you don't represent god well that's interesting i know what's interesting is um i heard dr william craig who i'm sure you're familiar with yeah he was asked a question about iconography you know and i've got my standard responses right to protestants who tell me i'm not allowed to kind of depict things in heaven and earth um and it was interesting because he said that he gave one of the responses i've given right and he said well you know the second person of the blessed trinity and becoming man made an icon of himself and so he can see an argument for that but he he he holds to what you just said that you shouldn't be making an icon of god the father but that's interesting because i'm in trouble if that is true right because i belong to a tradition which does often um depict god in that way yeah well less and less and even in the orthodox in the orthodox tradition if you look at in starting in the 15th 16th century there starts to be images of god the father that are represented at first they kind of try to fudge it by representing uh they call him the the ancient of days and so they show the ancient of days and then the the in the vision of daniel where he gives his power to the son of man and so they represent like christ with white hair and then also christ as a as a child on his lap so they try to fudge it but then that figure of the ancient of days finally becomes god the father and they start representing god the father in iconography but now modern iconographers there i know almost no modern iconographer that represents god the father i i could probably not even count them on one hand and what would you say the argument for that is the argument is for why you shouldn't respect the second commandment in the sense we under we respect the notion that you cannot represent god but through christ because christ is the image that god gave to us and so we can see god in christ but that we cannot see god directly outside of the logos like you can't see god the father no like every theophany in the old testament is is the logos like we even have this idea for example that when when god says i am the one that is it's christ that's why in the halo of christ i uh orthodox people would often write the one that is right yeah so the one the one who is is basically saying you know that vision that moses had that's what we saw he saw christ he saw the divine logos huh i'd have to think more about that what about when moses sees the back of god are you saying that's christ too i mean i would say he hasn't become incarnate at this point so why does it matter why do you have to say it's the sun well because the sun is the principle of manifestation of of the of the trinity right the the the sun is that by which all things are made but it's ultimately also that by which all things appear right all the qualities all the names all come through the sun and so all categories of existence are manifested through the sun what does that mean all categories of existence say what does that mean that means that everything that exists yeah is revealed or manifested through the sun okay i don't know what that means manifested because i'm thinking of john 1 where it says nothing came to be except through him that's right but what does that mean that's a good way that by him by by so god created the world through the divine logo so the the logos or the the word is the means by which god reveals his himself into creation does that make sense yeah i think so say it again so so so so let's use let's use secular terms so so the interview with that episode of the office where michael scott says explain this to me like i'm five just that's kind of what it is the unbounded infinite that is beyond all categories totally beyond all name and also comprehension yep all comprehension manifests himself through a concentrating point a son like his that he engenders and that son nah and i'm not in secular talk anymore i i i said i'm going to stay and second talk and then and then so then that's how so it's like this you can imagine the infinite and then through the logos then the world starts to manifest the categories so the difference between christianity and any other religion because that idea is there in a lot of other traditions but the difference is that we say that the logos is co-eternal with the father that we don't think that the divine logos is created we think that the divine logos is uncreated and therefore the world creation is called to participate in god because the way by which it's made is not lower than god it's not like a lower stage than god so when god speaks it's him and through his speech then all things appear so this idea for example like so christians could never have this idea that creation is bad could never have this idea that creation in itself is fallen because the means by which god creates is god including including the naked body including the naked body in a hierarchy in a hierarchy of being yeah yeah no i wasn't i wasn't trying to be a smart artist i was just saying like that's true right like i mean you do have like strands of christians that you know speak of the body or speak of sex or speak of sexual desire in an anti-body way well for sure there is there is a strand of of gnosticism which is just always there in christianity this idea that the world is fallen in itself that like you said the body is evil in itself or that sexuality is evil in itself whereas the the traditional way of understanding and the right way of understanding is that that all things ultimately point to god if they're in their proper place it's just about things being in the right place yes yeah okay beautiful man all right thank you i'm gonna have to i have to listen to my own podcast i think that's true again that was really cool i appreciate you uh how do we get we started with pornography and got to to like talking about that well that's a much that's that's uh that's the way that's the way you want to go you don't want to start from art and go to pornography um hey i've heard some people say that icons can be therapeutic not just therapeutic but kind of healing they can kind of heal the wound that pornography has created i don't know how i feel about that obviously i think it's a beautiful thing to stare upon icons but what would you say to that someone who says you know i was looking at pornography it really messed me up and so to help heal me of that i just started sitting before icons i mean i think it's possible i would say thank god if that's the case you know i don't i wouldn't see it as a formula like i was yeah nor would i that's what i'm having a trouble that's what i'm having trouble with because i it sounds really pious but i'm like i don't see how that could like just do this and then this will happen i think that's true i don't think there's any silver bullet at all you know no exactly it's like confession yeah and fight and pray and fall and get back and pray and confess and i mean what else like that's life you know that's just how it works yeah cool all right what else should we talk about i don't know what do you want to talk about i mean tell me a little bit because i know a little bit about you know who are you talking to like who are the people that who do you feel is your audience when you're talking to people uh who is i i guess i i i think that catholicism is true and i want to help people understand the catholic faith through a sort of domestic lens i did my undergrad and masters in philosophy and a lot of it was domestic philosophy i love thomas aquinas and uh very often on our show we'll kind of like take a text from the sumer or some other commentary of his and just sort of look at it um he's a very clear thinker he writes almost syllogistically you know he he he steal man's i'm not sure if you've heard of that term have you yeah yeah yeah he still means his opponent's arguments and so it's just always interesting you know like in the summer he'll present arguments i know you know this but for those who don't he'll present arguments against the position he wants to make and then he'll make his position then respond to those arguments but then there are other works of his i have one over on my shelter it's called day marlow on evil where he'll present up to like 20 arguments against the position he wants to make and then respond to those and and not in a way that you feel like he's straw manning the position i i just find that really intellectually honest and i know i'm sure i fail at it but it's something i try to do as i consider opposing opposing ideas you know so yeah i guess yeah that's who i speak to more and more we have orthodox christians who who are viewing the channel but i say probably a lot of protestants and a lot of confused catholics right who are just we're all going i'm sure this is true in the orthodox church churches too right we're all going through this turbulent time it feels like there's this division you know not just in politics um but in religions right where you've got the people who are identifying as the traditionalists and then the soy boys that's probably not what they identify as but like it's like it feels like this is splitting apart every kind of group and i i think there's just a lot of kind of confusion and this desire to find something to anchor themselves to and that is jesus christ and the scriptures and the patristics and the liturgy you know but yeah yeah i think that i mean i think it's wonderful because you're right there is such a i think there's such a chaos like we're we're definitely going through a period of intense chaos of of strange upside-down things you know happening and and it's it's infecting the church and it's everywhere you know it's for sure i would say in the orthodox uh church because it's so slow it's not as prevalent but it's coming and you can see it coming and you can see all the the kind of uh the same type of conflict that you find you know in the western christianity are starting to kind of come into the orthodox tradition one question i had for you is and i know you're a baptist who became orthodoxy sometimes i see a lot of vitriol online from orthodox people towards catholics and i don't know if it's like the the kind of big brother syndrome where you just hate whatever's bigger than you and um it's kind of like why new zealand hates australia but we're like they're cute they're fine we love them you know i don't know if there's that thing going on or but i i suspect there's a lot of protestant converts who may have had an anti-catholic sort of bias and brought that into orthodoxy i'm not saying there aren't things to critique yeah in catholicism and if you're orthodox you you're right to kind of reject what you believe to be false you know i'm not saying that makes you anti-catholic or anything like that um but yeah i'm just wondering how that's changing the kind of landscape of orthodoxy in north america or if you've noticed that i think i mean i think that the the let's say the hostility towards catholicism that you find in orthodoxy has a long story and because like and so because orthodox are also very slow slow-moving you know it's like you talk to orthodox people like they're they're still living in the fourth century like to them the arguments that were happening in the fourth century are still live right now yes and so because of that there really is this sense that the crusades happened not that long ago and you know and not just the crusades but then also the holy roman empire and the the you know the kind of taking over of certain orthodox lands in the modern times so all of that is is very prevalent in the way people thinking because eastern europe is that place where the two political aspects of the of christianity just kind of constantly were embattled and so you have countries that were orthodox before they became catholic and then some that have this weird you know this and then there's the kind of like you said eastern catholics that are kind of in between but they're not on one side and not on the other and so because of that i think that's why you get the hostility um but you know i myself i don't i'm not interested in that stuff i'm just i don't find it interesting because i feel like the world is falling apart to be honest so much is happening that you know i think we can we can recognize the differences we have acknowledge the differences but then also understand that on most fronts we're on the same side on most fronts of what's going on in the world we're on the we're on the same side and there's also a strange thing which is happening which is that you start to notice for example that the let's say the lines the battle lines or the the cultural lines are going across different christian groups and so you end up having people who are serious about their faith and take it seriously in their life and in the way they view the world and want to use their faith as a lens for how they perceive reality and you see that across all different denominations yeah and then you have people in all the same denominations who who desperately want to be accepted by the world who desperately want to be progressive and to kind of change the way that christians understand things in order to adapt to the modern world and then you see those also all across the denominations so sometimes you end up sometimes i end up feeling more sympathy with a catholic or a baptist or even a pentecostal who who who takes scripture seriously who takes christ seriously then another orthodox who just wants to be accepted by the u.n or whatever who just wants to be loved by the you know by the popular thinking so yeah that's that's interesting and you know in in catholicism right now because we had this big reform right of the liturgy um after the second vatican council and now there's this like desire to return to our tradition which i'm all in favor of and i wonder if there's like an awkwardness in that you know like tradition is meant to be this thing that's passed on that's almost second nature it's it's kind of weird when you have to like grab and artificially impose upon yourself and your way of life a tradition that wasn't yours and maybe that's just what we have to do until it becomes second nature again but i think that's one of the most thing things catholics love about orthodox brothers and sisters that they never had that same sort of that same sort of uh yeah uh change in in the liturgy you guys have your tradition and that really feels stable i mean this has been the line i keep saying like in a time of chaos you stick you seek stability if there's a storm outside you go to wherever feels safest and and that can that can mean tradition in a healthy way but i guess it could also mean a sort of a kind of awkward white knuckling sort of um rigid rigidity too i mean yeah it's it's hard to find the balance when the world is kind of pushing you in a direction and i i sympathize for people who kind of kind of buckle down and kind of hold on um but it can be it can be its own idol of course at the same time if you're not careful because you you know we always have to we always have to remember that christ both you know both uh would would criticize the pharisees for for not embodying the law properly but then he would also talk to samaritans and you know and he would talk to heretics you know he didn't stop himself estimate if you understand that samaritans were heretics at the time of christ then all of a sudden a lot of a lot of you can understand the the possibility of engaging with people that are that you feel that don't aren't right on every point of view you know it anyway so i i'm not a big i'm not a big fan of the hyper traditionalists i find that they that they kind of sometimes miss the essential but i'm also definitely not a fan of the super progressive yeah i'm with you yeah i'm with you i'm more sympathetic to the hypertraditionalists because i feel like i can see what they're reaching for yeah um and uh yeah man it's it's crazy hey are you aware of of these kind of western orthodox folks who celebrate one of the western liturgies in barahua orthodox yeah they they always struggle to find their place like they're they i think it's an interesting idea i mean it's probably like me it's probably like me right who's like adopting all of these eastern traditions he goes to divine liturgy it's it's an awkward place to be and i heard someone say it's it's like being the child of divorced parents you just feel kind of out of sorts out of place i think most of the people who are western orthodox are kind of ex-anglicans who who kind of have a desire for anglo-catholicism uh can't have it in them to let's say convert to catholicism yeah and so and so they they end up becoming orthodox but wanting to keep their kind of anglo you know anglo-catholic liturgy and there's also like a weird neo-celtic uh thing in there like a kind of idea of celtic spirituality and and so what makes that weird because that sounded pejorative right because i i kind of feel like if anglicanism hadn't split from catholicism the catholicism you would have today would actually be less roman and more celtic in an appropriate sense the way at least that my understanding of the west the western orthodox is that they have a sense that the the let's say the celtic church was colonized by rome in that right you know saint augustine uh actually imposed the uh the saint augustine of canterbury kind of kind of brought in the latin and kind of impose the latin form and kind of marginalize the celtic practices and that they're trying to kind of revive these these celtic uh practices at least that's my not everybody it's hard because it's such a it's a mess of people like it's it's all people that are that are kind of doing different things but that's the sense and i it's like i don't i'm not against it i just i i'm worried some about things that are kind of archaeological in their approach where you know the traditions that are the traditions that are gone it's hard to revive them from the outside like you find these texts you find these old texts that aren't even fully there that are missing pages and they're missing things and you try to reconstruct the liturgy of of like some fifth century celtic saint it's like i don't know man it's it's it's maybe maybe i'm not in i'm not there but i i think it's better like you said to have something which is handed down and which is which has continuity and what was tough with me and maybe tough of you is i didn't have anything handed down to me like even as even as a as a western catholic it was just sort of the the nonsense of this you know secular music being played in church and you know i wasn't even taught how to pray the holy rosary we didn't have incense in church all of that was gotten rid of because the kids want to be entertained anything his father wasn't as funny as seinfeld and the band wasn't as good as metallica so he just came across as that but i think that that but that's it's a good thing right now because i think that that's one of the things that that's one of the aspects that is bringing people back to traditional yeah uh liturgical practice is that at some point you realize that it works for a while to try to carbon copy the world but you you run out of breath because you can never compete with the devil like you can't compete with you can't compete with the thing you're taking it from and so it ends up it ends up always looking like a pale like a pale imitation totally and if liturgy is the work of the people then we go to work we we go to we go out of justice to give god his due to the degree we can not to sit back and be entertained yeah not totally totally too and also because the forms that we have are so awesome like the the relationship between the architecture the liturgy the images it's like uh it's it's it's this this this intertextual you know language of references that will blow your mind once you start to look at them more profoundly and you all of a sudden it's like you know i always kind of joke with people that you know people who like marvel comics or lord of the rings and all this stuff where it's like all these characters that interrelate with each other and they have crossovers and everything like that's what liturgy is that's what the whole liturgical cycle is and the relationship between the architecture and the processions and all of this it's it's basically like a giant marvel comics universe but it's the one you can live in it's not it's not something you look at from the outside you can actually be inside this intertextual uh world of relate of references and relationship and some parts of this icon appear in this icon and then you know all of a sudden you listen to a hymn and then it says something and you realize why christ is represented this way on the cross there's something in the hymn which is connecting that and then to the story of jonah and then to adam even it's like it's it's just this amazing ride you can get on when you start to see all these references and how they connect to each other oh man that's really beautiful hey what's your opinion on theistic apologetics because from from the short discussion we've had here it sounds like i don't know it doesn't sound like it plays a primary role in your christian life maybe i'm wrong no not at all okay so why is that and what's your opinion of it generally i i don't have a i don't have a problem with apologetics i think i well i grew up i grew up baptist and i grew up having at some point you know having to go knock on doors and tell people that jesus loved them and i always i always promised myself that i would never evangelize when i became orthodox it was just never evangelizing is that why orthodox don't evangelist there is there is no baptist who had to go knock on doors but then when i started encountering atheists and atheists started writing me and asking questions and everything all of a sudden i realized that there may be another way to evangelize and it's mostly just talk about how beautiful this is and not try to explain it in a way of defending the positions and everything but mostly try to so the way that i talk about christianity is always trying to show you how powerful this pattern is and how you can live inside it and how you know you won't find a better story than the story of jesus there is no better story like the story of jesus has encompasses all strains of storytelling in in its story and i can show it to you i can slowly point at different aspects of jesus story and show you how it how it brings in all these different elements that you like to watch in movies but they're all there they're all brought together in the story of christ in a way that will blow your mind once you start to see it right so that's mostly been my approach is just to try to surprise people with meaning surprise them with beauty rather than try to defend this or that moral position or this or that you know yeah yeah no and i think you're even though i think there is absolutely a role for theistic apologetics because you know for a lot of people they're like it works for some people there are i mean there are people who are like i actually want to believe i'm not being stubborn i'm not trying not to believe just show me how this is logical um but i think you're right and for many people they've been down that road so many times and can't kind of make themself believe which is interesting because you know blaise pascal has that answer to those who want to believe but don't know how he's like well just act like a christian like take holy water and say your prayers and and just do the things christians do and see the coherence you know your life will will adopt maybe maybe that's more in line with what you're saying well there's something about like there's something about the experience of the liturgy for example you know if you do if you go in with like this openness and you this desire to encounter it and or the encounter with an icon or the encounter with a very beautiful traditional church that that it goes beyond the argumentation you know and there's something about orthodoxy which is just always traditionally been that you know when they when saint vladimir uh of kiev converted to orthodoxy they always say that it's because you know they invited his mother to hagia sophia and they said here come see what we're doing and they brought her into the church and she went through this magnificent liturgy with huge choir and you know the sound reflecting in all these golden domes and then she went back home and she said i was in heaven like i just came back from heaven so and so i think there's something that is something in the orthodox tradition which kind of is conducive it is it's more it's more incarnate right because if we stick to the kind of head arguments what you're saying to your friend when you invite him to liturgy is like bring your entire being with you not just your intellect like in experience it and see what happens yeah yeah and like one of the things i'm doing for example is helping people see the story of christ appear all over and also the inevitability because one of the things that people don't realize is just how christian they are without knowing it you know and there are certain tropes for example in storytelling that are extremely popular right now or just inevitable right now that didn't exist before christ they just didn't you know the the image of the knight for example the image of the strong person who is willing to fight to defend the weak and to sacrifice himself for those who can't fight for themselves that is a christian story it's not a there was no none of that in the pagan world pagan heroes are all jerks they're all selfish like boorish uh people who only care about their honor whereas the knight has that idea that you can fight yeah uh for the week and so i was just reading robin hood lately it's my like bed bedside story and it's it's exactly that and so you and so you can't avoid it like the image or the image of the hero who gets knocked down and you know kind of stays down for a while and you feel he's going to lose and he's going to be beaten and then he gets back up at the end rocky that's such a cliche but without the resurrection that story is not it just wouldn't be part of our of our uh tropes and so i try to point to people they say how much the story of christ has imbued all our forms and that as we actually as we move away from christianity it even becomes more apparent because we start to notice now all of a sudden that every marvel comic store every marvel movie is about jesus basically yeah and it's just in the just little parts of of jesus's story that are that are appearing in those i mean i watched i watched the first thor um which i know is kind of based on mythology anyway but a lot of them are in some way and that's just so christian i mean he yeah he comes to earth he dies and saves us and resurrects and then ascends and he tells his bride he will be back for her not his bride but his girlfriend you know yeah exactly he's coming back for very high i think the first thor movie was kenneth branagh so he probably was doing it very very much on purpose but even like the whole arc like if you look at the the avengers end game and all that stuff that at the end like this i'm going to spoil them i mean everybody's seen it by now so it's your fault if you haven't continue yeah exactly it's your fault so i i i keep telling people like when so when uh at the end the iron man takes the gauntlet right and then kills thanos using the gauntlet he's making a lord of the rings move he's taking the ring and he's using it to fight evil and so the question is what's the difference like what's the difference between why and the lord of the rings they can't do that like if they take the ring they're gonna be corrupted by its power why is it that uh that iron man can take take the ring tony stark can take take the ring and use it to defeat evil without being corrupted and the reason is that because he sacrificed himself it's because he died doing it and that's the only reason why he could do it is because he knew that he was going to die when he did that and it's a christian story it just ends up being a christian story where he takes the power of death uses it against death to save the world from death but he has to die himself in order for it to be legitimate in order for it not to be a form of satanic pride he has to die and it's like what are you gonna do you can't avoid the story it's just gonna it keeps coming back and back and back yeah trample death by death that's beautiful yeah okay cool all right well hey um i've loved our chat and thank you so kindly for for coming on the show and i hope we get to chat again um maybe for those who are watching on my channel where can they learn more about you and the great stuff you're involved in so i mean you can find my carvings on my carving website pedro carvings i'm also on youtube on the symbolic world where i talk about uh symbolism in all its forms i have a website called the symbolicworld.com as well where we have a blog and different people talking about symbolism as it helps you understand the world we live in and so those are mostly the place where and then you also have a great teespring account that i'm showing people right now did you come up with these designs did are these your guests or well not all there's a few that there's one at least one or two that i ask someone i care about that cosmic mountain one i'm gonna buy like a hundred of them as soon as soon as we're done that's a that's like the work of that's like the work of 20 years i would say so i've been thinking about this cosmic the idea of representing everything in one image for a very long time and so finally last year i had the guts to kind of put it together oh it's beautiful tell us about it because it's on the screen for people to see right now it's based on the let's say a kind of bringing together of the story of genesis with the crucifixion of christ but also it joins all different elements of iconography together in one image i have a video on my youtube channel people want to find out about what what elements that i drag into this this picture but it's also a description of uh let's say the the hymns on paradise vicente from the syrian and uh you know the the ascent of the moses of moses on the mountain in saint gregory of nisa's life of moses so all of the things that i love about christianity basically brought into one image just like cosmic image so it's really terrific and so how did you do that i mean did you do that on the computer was it a carving that you oh it's a drawing it's a it's a hand it's a hand drawing yeah oh my goodness dude you're a very talented man and i'm glad you're doing what you're doing thanks thanks for having me it was a lot of fun i enjoyed it good stuff thanks thank you very much for watching before you go i want to invite you to consider supporting us on patreon.com when you do you get a bunch of free things in return like you know books sent to your door stickers sent to your door free beer steins you get access to these online courses that we've done on saint augustine's confessions or dante's divine comedy or the bible or the great books of western civilization um you just get to join an awesome community of catholics and non-catholics we have catholics and non-catholics over on my patreon account who love to engage in thoughtful and interesting discussions so please consider it patreon.com mattfradd patreon.com fred and when you do as i say you get a bunch of free things in return i really appreciate it thank you

Channel: Pints With Aquinas

Views: 30,590

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Id: pQMQ7weBDFs

Length: 79min 40sec (4780 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 21 2021