SPEAKER_01: 0:13

So you said sabbatical is going well, huh?

SPEAKER_04: 0:17

It's been going very well. Yeah. I've I've been able to focus on my work, which is good. And so what does focus on your work mean? Are we are we putting in 14-hour days? No. I did the last my last sabbatical, my previous sabbatical. I mean, one one reason is I'm older now, but also the fact that I just know more about the topic now. I'm more efficient in my work. So I can put in like four or five hours a day and I get as much done as I was doing like seven years ago.

SPEAKER_01: 0:49

You're much more efficient now, right? Yeah, I'm much more efficient. And I was gonna ask you that. Uh that's another topic for another day, but uh uh what is your maximum brain capacity that if you worked hard and uh that that your brain tires out?

SPEAKER_04: 1:02

Oh, um I I've never actually experienced my brain tiring out. Okay. Um it's more like uh I guess my body tires out time for a nap or whatever, but but yeah, but yeah, my brain can go for quite a while. Great. And uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16

And that's why you are the professor that you are.

SPEAKER_04: 1:18

Yes, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19

Well, welcome everyone to Church Potluck, where we are serving up a smorgasboard of Christian Curiosity. I'm your host, Dale McConkey, sociology professor and retired United Methodist pastor. And you know, we say it every week. There are two keys to a good church potluck: plenty of variety and engaging conversation. And that's exactly what we try to do here at Church Potluck. We sit down with friends and share our ideas on a variety of topics from a variety of academic disciplines and a variety of Christian traditions. And today we have opted to go with quality instead of quantity. We have Dr. Michael Papasian. It's just you and me today, sir. And by the quality, I meant you. Not me.

SPEAKER_04: 2:10

It's the synergy. There you go.

SPEAKER_01: 2:12

There you go. And uh you've got one of those fancy titles in front of your uh name as well, right? You don't you don't have like a uh a Smith professor or Reed professor or Nichols professor?

SPEAKER_04: 2:23

If President Um Sumder is listening, here's your chance. You can give me a title if you want. But no, I don't need titles. I'm fine. Well in fact, don't even call me professor. What does it really mean? Well, I'll tell you what we call you behind your back.

SPEAKER_01: 2:35

So call me that instead. That's what I've always told my students. I said, you can call me Dale, or you can come. I said, but just whatever you call me in my face, please use that behind my back as well. And that's that's that's been my my only principle.

SPEAKER_04: 2:47

I mean, titles don't really mean anything anyway. So yeah. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01: 2:49

Well, you don't seem like that kind of a person, but your career I'm actually I'm shocked. I kind of assume that you did. That's why I brought it up in the first place. Because you know, obviously you have had a very stellar career in all facets, but you are certainly one of our pinnacle scholars uh here at here at Barrie College, and that's uh that's a big deal. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Thank you.

SPEAKER_04: 3:08

That's quite a compliment given how great our colleagues all of our colleagues are. Yes. I mean, that's that's yeah, because yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 3:14

Absolutely true. And uh we're here to talk about your research a little bit today. But we're gonna we're gonna, in my mind, do kind of a a funnel of orthodoxy. So you you yourself are are are let me let me try that again. Right, yeah. Look at all those vowels. You are an Armenian Orthodox. Those are lots of tongue twister, isn't it? Yes, that is a bit of a tongue twister, but but so and so I thought we would start off and I want to do more episodes on this because people have expressed fascination on the few things that you have mentioned in previous podcasts. So I want to start off today just talking about orthodoxy in general. Uh what is it for our audience to learn a little bit more there? And then your particular tradition, Armenian Orthodoxy. Sure. And then a guy that you seem to be kind of fond of within the tradition, Gregory of Norik. Right. And then specifically your dissertation, not your dissertation research, you're a little bit past that. Your your sabbatical research. Yeah. Specifically, what is it that Gregory of Norik said about the Virgin Mary and why are you curious about that? So I'm I'm that's a we can do that. Yeah, that sounds that sounds like a tremendous amount of fun. And let's sort of start off. We here in the United States, we tend to think of Christianity as Protestantism and Catholicism. And there's this other very major strand all throughout the world that we don't totally ignore it, but we don't it doesn't get much attention in the United States. And it's a and I find it to be a very important tradition. And increasingly, I become fascinated, very intrigued by orthodoxy in general. So let's just get started. If you had to give an elevator speech, what is what distinguishes orthodoxy? I keep on I keep on using that phrase elevator speech. I just need to call it if you had to give a potluck speech. Potluck speech.

SPEAKER_04: 4:57

A potluck speech could last for a while. I mean, it could be the whole it could be like the keynote address at the potluck if they do that.

SPEAKER_01: 5:02

Well, we have to be careful about that. But just uh if you're sitting down at the table and someone says, Oh, what is what is orthodoxy? What would you tell them?

SPEAKER_04: 5:10

Yeah. Okay, so yeah, I mean the short answer is uh uh that uh what happened was that there over time, you know, when the church uh started, there was just one church. It was the church of Jesus Christ. And uh I mean there still is just one church. Uh we can get to that later if you want.

SPEAKER_01: 5:25

Well, that's an important point. Yeah, that that's very much an orthodox way of thinking, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 5:30

I mean, I I I I differ a little bit on how uh on how I frame that from other orthodox, so we can talk about that later if you want to. But the idea is that, you know, over time, uh culturally, politically, theologically, all sorts of things happened, and the churches in the different regions of the world began to sort of um you know move away from each other. There was a lot of misinformation and uh lack of communication. Some of it was linguistic, because in the eastern part of the Roman Empire, the learned language was Greek. There were some other languages too, like Armenian. We can get to that later, but right now let's just keep things simple. So, yeah, the Greek East. Too late for that already. Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm almost done with this. And then Latin, let's just say Greek in the East, Latin in the West. I I see a long elevator ride here. But just think about, you know, they're talking different languages, they're reading different theologians. In the West, they're reading Augustine, and the in the east, they're reading Gregory of Nazianzis, who, you know, whatever. And they just over and culturally and politically there were issues too. And gradually the two churches just split apart.

SPEAKER_01: 6:32

The distinction between the what was now the the big split that we all know about was in around 1000, 1054.

SPEAKER_04: 6:38

But there were some earlier. So the way I usually think about it is let's talk about not so much about orthodoxy, but Eastern Christianity. Okay. And there are Eastern Christian Christian world is actually quite diverse. And it's all kind of orthodox, I guess, but there are differences between them. But in any event, that that's that's what happened. So yeah, that that was the schism that sort of separated the uh the Western and the Eastern churches. And Orthodoxy is the what is the descendant of that uh Eastern Church today.

SPEAKER_01: 7:06

Aaron Ross Powell And so theologically speaking, if if someone said, tell us if I went if I was to s speak to uh an Orthodox theologian, what would feel different than if I talked to a Protestant or a Catholic theologian? Would would there be any specific difference that I really notice right away?

SPEAKER_04: 7:22

Aaron Ross Powell A lot of it is more about emphasis. And uh so for example, in there's a basic idea in Orthodoxy. It's it's in the West too, we have it, but it's more prominent in Orthodox theology. And it's in Greek the word for it is theosis.

SPEAKER_01: 7:38

This is this is a very key point that I that was one of the main reasons I'm so intrigued by orthodoxy.

SPEAKER_04: 7:44

Yeah, so it means it's often translated as deification, divinization. And the short and the slogan is, you know, why did God become man in the person of Jesus Christ? God became man so that humans, humanity, could become gods. That sounds almost blasphemous.

SPEAKER_01: 8:07

Probably from many Protestant perspectives that that that's really creeping up on blasphemy because there's such a distinction, God is sovereign and we are not, and so there's a very big uh gulf there. And like I said, I I definitely want to have a much longer conversation about this in the future, but that really does shift the way that like the crucifixion is understood because of that, correct?

SPEAKER_04: 8:28

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So it's not just so much, it's not so much just about it's not that Jesus didn't save us from our sins. He did. We are sinners and we need salvation and only Jesus can uh give us that. That's what Orthodox believe. But there's more, right? It's like you get more from this package from of Christianity than just being saved, because that's great. That's a wonderful gift. But wouldn't you want to share eternity with God? And so you you become almost like God, right? So I I originally I said we become gods, but you sometimes they hedge their bets a little bit and say, we become divinized. We we now have a glorified body, not the current body that is diseased and corrupt, but we have this glorious body that is more godlike.

SPEAKER_01: 9:10

Aaron Powell This is the interesting thing that I find about this concept of theosis is that it's in there in the way Protestants talk in terms of glorification. Aaron Ross Powell Sanctification And sanctification, thank you very much. That's more common in the West. That is a big old Wesleyan term, right? Sanctification is really big in my tradition. But then the idea of glorification, and in the very beginning, we were created in the image of God, right? Yes. And and our sin has sullied that, but the whole goal is to be restored back into that image. And if you are in the image of God, I I feel very uncomfortable saying we become godlike. But that's kind of what Yeah, that is.

SPEAKER_04: 9:48

It is it's in a way, you know, when we say we become gods, that's sort of like meant to almost be to shock people. But it it's essentially, as you said, it is to restore the original pristine image of God that we all bear.

SPEAKER_01: 10:02

Aaron Powell Yeah. And just uh uh real quickly, what does that imply about here and now? Is that is that a theosis process happening impossible here on earth, or is it something that happens in the hereafter?

SPEAKER_04: 10:16

Yeah, sure, sure. In fact, that's what uh the saints, you know, the people who are living these holy, pious lives are working on that. That's uh that's uh something that we do now as as you know and we take uh sacraments.

SPEAKER_01: 10:31

We experience that theosis in a in a sense here and now. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, very cool. Anything else about orthodoxy we should know about, just as a starting uh little starter kit here.

SPEAKER_04: 10:41

The more sort of mundane issues between uh the Catholics and the Orthodox currently center predominantly on the papacy and the role of the Pope. So Orthodox recognize the Pope as the Bishop of Rome, as one of the patriarchs, the leaders of the church on earth. Uh, and Orthodox will often speak of the uh bishop of Rome as having a kind of a primacy, because Rome was the major center of political power. Uh, we sometimes talk about the association between Rome and Peter, the chief of the apostles. So there's a sense in which Rome has a kind of primacy, but it doesn't have this kind of jurisdictional authority over the entire church that has developed over time in the Western Catholic understanding. Um, so uh so that's one of the major stumbling blocks in terms of the path towards union, which Orthodox and Catholics are actively working on today.

SPEAKER_01: 11:43

And you actually, a lot of your writings and a lot of your scholarship has kind of tried to contribute to that unification.

SPEAKER_04: 11:49

That's why I'm one reason why I'm one reason why I'm so focused on St. Gregory is because he is kind of a symbol of that unity.

SPEAKER_01: 11:56

Yes, and we'll definitely get to uh to that uh more here in just a little bit. Is this a good analogy then? Uh I don't know how many of our listeners are familiar with the Anglican tradition, but in the Anglican tradition you have all these bishops that kind of have purview in different regions of the world, but then there's the archbishop in England who is kind of seen as first among equals. Yeah. And so would there be that kind of sense that the that the the Pope has a bit of a primacy, as you said, and there's there's an acknowledgement of the special role that the Pope plays. Yeah. But there but the Pope is not this only leader, there are these other regional leaders as well throughout all the bishops.

SPEAKER_04: 12:34

So it's a little bit more decentralized, and the idea is that the Pope would have the in, you know, in a in an ideal situation, if if we were uh united again under the Orthodox understanding, the Pope would have kind of like uh the ability to judge disputes between different churches. So if there's some like, for example, if the church in Egypt, you know, has some sort of conflict with the church in wherever Greece, then the Pope would uh adjudicate, would decide. That would be the the extent of his uh authority.

SPEAKER_01: 13:01

Well, that's a a nice little primer. Yeah. Uh lots of other very quickly tell us about uh one one more thing. Just tell us about the role of icons in the liturgy and just the the richness of worship and the what what is the what is the divine liturgy?

SPEAKER_04: 13:13

Yeah, so so so the way I understand it is that orthodoxy is a very, very uh concrete faith. And and that's a reflection of the incarnation, which is very important, right? So and and all Christians share this. We believe that you know that God became man, that the word became flesh. He uh Jesus was a true human being with a body like ours. And so uh we come to know God through the physical, through the material, through our senses. So it's a it's a it's a very sort of, you know, the church is supposed to use all the different images, the beauty uh of art and music to bring people's minds to God, right?

SPEAKER_01: 13:54

Do you also use the term bells and smells?

SPEAKER_04: 13:57

I usually hear that as kind of a derogatory or yeah, smells and bells is but there's a lot of smells in the incense, you know, during the divine liturgy, which is um what the Catholics call the Mass usually in the uh Eastern Church is usually called the Divine Liturgy. Liturgy means public work, so it's a public prayer. And uh in my tradition, we call it the holy sacrifice, because of course it is the central act, is the sacrament of the Eucharist, uh the communion, holy communion. But in any event, the idea is that you've got the artwork. And so a great contrast is go to uh, you know, if people have been in the uh college chapel here, I haven't seen any pictures. You know, you go in, it's bland from all sorts of things.

SPEAKER_01: 14:39

It's not as austere as some of the more Calvinist traditions, Presbyterian, but it is close. Yeah. Even for an Episcopalian-inspired chapel, you're right. It is kind of stripped of its uh ornateness.

SPEAKER_04: 14:52

So for an Orthodox, that's quite uh when you walk into a house of worship like that, that's kind of jarring, right? Whereas if you go some Orthodox churches I've been in, it's like there's paintings all over. Every wall is covered with like images of the crucifixion, of the Virgin Mary, of the saints. And you just get and and I can imagine coming from, let's say, a more like Calvinist tradition, going into an you I think you would just be like really overwhelmed with uh with all the imagery and all of the artwork that's around you.

SPEAKER_01: 15:22

So it's interesting. In one tradition, you kind of strip all the ornamentation so you are focused on God and God alone. Where the other one, the ornamentation, the icons, the decor is to fill the senses with the sense of the divine. That's right.

SPEAKER_04: 15:36

And and it is because the only way we can know God is through the physical, right? Because we know God through Jesus, who is a physical man. So so that's a reflection of that theology. That's what's going on there. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01: 15:47

Definitely more later.

SPEAKER_04: 15:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 15:49

Your particular tradition is distinctive within Orthodoxy as well, yes?

SPEAKER_04: 15:54

Yeah. Okay, so yeah, earlier I said that you know the Eastern Christian world is is a little bit more diverse than just so we normally talk about um the Eastern Orthodox, but there's more than just Eastern Orthodoxy. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01: 16:06

And Eastern Orthodox would be some of the biggest names we recognize, right? The Greek Orthodox, the Russian Orthodox.

SPEAKER_04: 16:11

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah, Antiochian, Serbian, Romanian, and so on. These are the Eastern Orthodox churches. And the reason why there's a different Orthodoxy that's now called Oriental Orthodoxy. Oriental is just another way of saying Eastern, so it's really just another word, but it's a way of distinguishing uh the Eastern from the Oriental in the sense that what had happened was that there were disputes about Christ and Christ's nature in uh in the um in the East primarily. And uh there were questions, so so there were some Christians there uh called Nestorians, they're followers of the patriarch of Constantinople, uh, whose name was Nestorius. And essentially Nestorius taught that there were two Christs, like there is the divine Christ and the human Jesus. And they're they're like two persons that were somehow associated with each other. And that was viewed as a kind of two beings in the one body. Two beings in one body, yeah. Yeah. And that was considered a heresy because unless there was just one Jesus, we can't be saved. I mean, if there's if there's a gap within the person of Christ, or he's two persons, then there's a human Jesus. But how does the human Jesus connect to the divine? And if the human Jesus can't connect to the divine Jesus, then how does humanity connect to divinity? Right. So that was considered to be a a a dead end. It does not allow for salvation, uh, right. So so a lot a lot uh Nestorius was condemned at a council that was held in Ephesus, which is now on the western coast of Turkey. This was in 431 A.D. And uh the doctrine that was taught there is that uh no, there's just one person of Christ, and whatever you can say about the human Jesus, you can also say about the divine Jesus because he's one person. So it's perfectly acceptable, for example, we'll get to this when we get to Mary, to call Mary the mother of God, right? Because she gave birth to Jesus. Jesus is God. Ergo. A little bit of logic there for you. Your formal logic class would tell you that you could make that connection, yes. Therefore, she's the mother of God. And now Nestorius thought that was wrong. It was wrong because a woman cannot be the mother of God. I mean, God has no mother, right? So God is not born, right? So anyway, so but that was settled at Ephesus. But then a few years later, another council was held called the Council of Chalcedon. That was in 451, I believe. And at Chalcedon, there was sort of an attempt to kind of uh maybe reach out to the Nestorians, uh, whatever. But anyway, the the doctrine that was um espoused at Chalcedon is what's called the two-nature Christology. So there's one person, Jesus, but he has two natures, human and divine. Okay. And most Christians accepted that. So today the Eastern Orthodox, like the Greeks and the Russians, uh, and the Catholics, and I think most Protestants accept that Chalcedonian two-nature Christology, as it's called.

SPEAKER_01: 19:11

Yeah, we would say that that was a council where it was agreed upon as the body of the church, right? Yeah. Now the Armenian Church was not present at that council.

SPEAKER_04: 19:19

They had no bishops there because they were actually engaged in a war against Persia at the time. The Persians were trying to, the Persians were, um, their religion was Zoroastrianism, and they were trying to impose Zoroastrianism on the Armenian Christians. Which is a very dualistic kind of uh faith, right? Yeah, in fact, that's an important point. It's dualistic in the sense that yeah, there's a good God and an evil God. And and and you can see why the Armenians they're, you know, they're they're uh they get kind of nervous when people get dualistic. Yes. And they thought of Chalcedon as kind of dualistic. They're two natures, right? But there's only one nature of Christ, isn't there? And that nature is both divine and human. It's mysterious how that can be that one nature can be both divine and human, but it is. And so they eventually, not right away, right? So other Christians, uh mostly in Egypt, the Coptic Christians that we might be, you might hear about today, uh, that who live in Egypt and and outside Egypt too. Uh there's actually a Coptic church right here in outside Atlanta in Roswell. Uh, but anyway, they they uh along with many of the Syrian Christians uh objected to Chalcedon and said that we uh we are going to adhere to what they considered to be the earlier one-nature view of Christ. And the Armenians kind of, you know, at first they kind of were not, you know, did not get involved, but later on they joined with the Copts and the Syriacs, and they formed and the Ethiopians too. And there's an Indian Orthodox Church that uh traces itself back to St. Thomas because of the tradition that Saint Thomas, the doubting Thomas, was the apostle to the Indians, the first person to bring Christianity to India. Uh anyway, those church communities formed what are now called the Oriental Orthodox. So there is this schism that started in the fifth century between the Eastern Orthodox Chalcedonian Christians and the Oriental Orthodox non-Chalcedonian Christians, uh, and the Armenians belong to that Oriental Orthodox uh and that's that's the tradition I I uh belong to.

SPEAKER_01: 21:15

So just a little side note, it's interesting. So you as a group still use the term Oriental, even though using the term Oriental to refer to things Asian is has fallen out of fashion, you know, culturally in the United States, but your tradition still will refers to yourselves as Oriental Aaron.

SPEAKER_04: 21:34

Actually, we tend to not to. I don't even know who started that terminology. I mean, I think it's fairly recently. Okay. And um because they wanted to recognize so before that they called us monophysites, right? Which is a heresy, right? And that's not what we believe. But it but monophysite in Greek means one nature. But given the ecumenical spirit that has prevailed uh among the churches, it was decided that uh these are Orthodox, Armenians are Orthodox, you know, and so but they're not Eastern Orthodox because they're not Chalcedonians. So let's just use another word, Oriental. We tend not to call ourselves that much Oriental Orthodox, but that's the term that's and I noticed that, I mean, I listen to a lot of Catholic podcasts and all, and that, and and um they're familiar with that terminology and the really good theological podcasts that are out there. They'll routinely use the word Oriental Orthodox. Uh so that term is out there, and it's generally used, though, by people outside, more people outside of my church than not. We'll just call ourselves we actually call ourselves Armenian apostolic. We don't often call ourselves Orthodox, although we do uh sometimes.

SPEAKER_01: 22:39

And that's just for the outside audience uh to help us. Yeah, we'll just categorize apostolic.

SPEAKER_04: 22:45

I mean, apostolic means that we can trace ourselves back to the original apostles of uh of Christ, right? So the tradition is that two of Christ's apostles, uh Thaddeus and Bartholomew, uh, went to Armenia. They were martyred there, but they were the first to bring the gospel to Armenia. So that's why we call ourselves apostolic. But there's a recognition that we're part of this Orthodox family of churches. Very nice.

SPEAKER_01: 23:09

And so just uh real quick, just to summarize it up a little bit. So whereas we tend to think of the Orthodox tradition breaking off in the great schism of 1054, great schism of 1054, your tradition and the associated traditions really were more five almost 500 years before that, even before in the more around the fifth century.

SPEAKER_04: 23:32

Yeah, and we can't, it's it's hard to give an exact date for any of these things because sometimes they say it was in the mid-middle seventh centuries, around 651, that the Armenian Church had a council in which they they ratified the non-Calcedonian Christology. But even after that, they were still um in commu having taking communion in Greek Orthodox churches. So the there isn't like one date you can give, like, okay, this is when everyone recognized as a different church. The people at the time thought this is gonna blow over. Okay, this is a dispute that we're having, but you know, give it a couple of years and we'll be back together. That didn't happen, right? But uh, but that was the way people thought. So the idea that, oh, we're a whole new church now, I don't think that's the way people are thinking in the sixth century. It just gradually opened time, the I the gelled, this idea that no, we actually are a different church with our own bishops. And yeah, so because that's where we are now.

SPEAKER_01: 24:27

And I know your heart, and it seems to be the the the heart of your tradition, is very much how can we find the you find unity and find and find connection. I'm actually gonna maybe go to an Orthodox uh church this this weekend in America, uh Orthodox Church of America. Uh now is that something where where I would be able to partake in communion, or do you have to be a member of the Orthodox Church typically to be in communion?

SPEAKER_04: 24:51

Yeah, the Orthodox are are kind of really strict about this, that uh you do have to be Orthodox to uh receive communion. And uh so uh yeah, yeah, so that is uh the general policy. There they're even stricter than the Catholics on this. And is that right? Yeah, interesting. Because Catholics will allow Orthodox to receive communion if they don't have any Orthodox churches available to them.

SPEAKER_01: 25:11

Very cool. Well, all that is very interesting. We've checked off another uh layer of the funnel here, and again, more to come in future episodes, I hope, because I find it fascinating. But now you seem to be particularly fascinated by a particular monk in your tradition. This Gregory of Narik. I know you've been focused on him for quite a while now. And so tell us a little bit about this guy.

SPEAKER_04: 25:32

Yeah, so uh this is um he lived in the 10th century. So uh we're talking now about this is 500 years after the Council of Chalcedon.

SPEAKER_01: 25:41

So that's almost recent history for you.

SPEAKER_03: 25:43

Yeah, it's gone, it's very close.

SPEAKER_04: 25:45

So already we have uh a church that uh, you know, that the Armenian church is developing its own identity. And the 10th century is kind of an interesting century for Armenians because it was relatively peaceful. Uh, most centuries, you know, we we've had to endure invasions and wars and all, but the Armenians began to have a little bit of more autonomy and freedom uh to develop, and the church was allowed to um it was gain more freedom than it had before. Uh, so there was this effort to reform the church, to uh revive the spiritual traditions of the past. And so monasteries, new monasteries were founded. And one of the monasteries that was founded was in the city of Nodek. This is in what is now southeastern Turkey. Okay. And so uh it's uh on the shores of a big lake, Lake Vaughn, right? Uh in Turkey now. Is it still there in any form? Uh there's well, there are ruins. Apparently, uh I've been in the area, I didn't go to Nadik, but um the reports I've heard is that um the monastery was dismantled and a mosque was built in its place, right? Because there is no um, this is the legacy of the there's no Armenians living there anymore, because the um uh there was during the um early 20th century uh the Ottoman government uh had a started a genocide against uh not just the Armenians but the other Christian minorities in Turkey. So that there is essentially no Armenian presence anymore. And the Turkish government is not particularly interested in uh maintaining any evidence of our Armenian population there. So they will deliberately dismantle or destroy any evidence of Christianity in that region of the world. Uh so uh if you were to go there now, yeah, you mostly would just see ruins, uh, nothing, no very little intact, with one exception. There's a cathedral that, because it's a tourist location very uh on an island in the in Lake Vaughn, that the uh Turkish government has uh maintained. But other than that, they're not particularly interested in maintaining any evidence of an Armenian population there. Gotcha. But but in any event, the monastery was uh established there, and in the middle of the 10th century, there was uh St. Gregory was uh he was born or probably around 945, let's say, we don't know exactly. But his his father, who after he was widowed, became a bishop and was also a theologian. In fact, I'm reading some of his writings right now. His father uh had decided to, after his wife had passed away, to uh Gregory had just been born. I mean, may it's quite possible that his mother died in childbirth, having uh having had uh Gregory, uh, decided to dedicate him and his older brother to this new monastery. So they weren't monks yet, but they were put in the care, like a foster care of the monastery. And then eventually both of the brothers grew up to take their monastic vows and to become priests too. So Gregory became a monk and a priest. And almost even when he was in his twenties, he was recognized as having these really great spiritual uh gifts and literary, too, that he was a great writer. Uh he was commissioned by an Armenian prince to write a commentary on the Song of Songs. And that's his earliest extant writing that we have that uh that it's still it's been translated, and uh you can read it.

SPEAKER_01: 29:13

Very quickly, what was his take on the Song of Songs?

SPEAKER_04: 29:16

Well, essentially, I mean, it is uh it's keep in keeping with the general uh view of the early Christians. The Song of Songs is an allegory, and it is, of course, as if you don't if people don't know, this this is a work in the Bible that's actually it's in the Old Testament. It's it's actually romantic poetry. Yeah, right? It's it's a love song and a very, very, you know, there's some steamy parts in there, you know. Yeah, yeah. Using using get embarrassed reading it.

SPEAKER_01: 29:44

Using allusions that don't really uh match our our contemporary uh metaphors, but so right away there was a problem for that.

SPEAKER_04: 29:52

Like, why is there, you know, why is this all this erotic literature in the Bible that's not specifically about God? Uh it was a problem for the Jews. And in Judaism, the interpretation was that this is it's there because it should be in the Bible, uh, because uh it's it's an allegory about God's love for Israel, that uh God loves Israel the same way a man loves uh his wife or a woman that he's uh uh enamored of, right? That that's how strong the love is. Erotic love is the strongest attachment that we can experience, and that's how much God loves us, even more.

SPEAKER_01: 30:25

There's just a tremendous amount of yearning and desire of reconnecting uh with his love. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 30:31

And the Christians picked up on with him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Christians picked up on this and they uh adapted that Jewish reading and said that, well, it's it's about Christ's love for the church. That's what it is, right? So again, and and I actually this this sort of gets into the uh what I was talking early about the incarnational nature of Orthodox theology, right? So you we tend to sort of uh distinguish between the physical, the sensuous, and the spiritual, right? But in if there's one Christ who is both, you know, uh God and man, right, then then in fact, erotic love, physical love, is really, you know, just a maybe a lower manifestation of that higher spiritual love. It's not that there's like like there's distinction between the two, but you we can talk about erotic love as a way of understanding God's love. Yeah. And so that's that's how Gregory interprets this work.

SPEAKER_01: 31:30

Uh so there's kind of an affirmation then of that kind of Eros is good. Yeah, I was gonna say earthly sensuality, but Eros, there, uh you you summarized it very nicely, which is kind of also it wouldn't have been a big deal during Gregory's time. This is also a very big pushback against Gnosticism, in which the the physical world is evil, right?

SPEAKER_04: 31:49

And it's well it was in his time because there were still heretics around. And he was uh actively uh, you know, his monastery was involved against them, you know, against these uh essentially Gnostic type Christians who were denying the physical and denying the body of something that is good. So I think that one of the reasons why he was asked to write a commentary on the song was essentially to push back against Gnostic trends. Yeah, because they never go away, right? The there's still Gnosticism around, and there was in his own day. There were, we know this, we know that there were heretical movements that were opposed to the Orthodox Church in Armenia and other parts of uh of the world at that time.

SPEAKER_01: 32:31

Now, are my background sources by that I mean ChatGPT? Are is it accurate that G Gregory was well known for just kind of fusing the this cosmic worldview and very, very meta uh understanding of the world, but also very personal at the same time. Yeah. And so is that something that he's well known for?

SPEAKER_04: 32:51

Yeah, yeah. So so what he's most well known for is a series of prayers, a prayer book that he wrote over the over his lifetime and which he compiled and uh put together just prior to his death. He died a little bit after a thousand, so a thousand and three, I think, is usually the date that's given. And it's given different titles. Um sometimes it's called the Book of Lamentation, but it's more commonly also known as speaking with God from the depths of the heart. And each one of these prayers.

SPEAKER_01: 33:20

I know which title I think is gonna be more likely to increase sales.

SPEAKER_04: 33:25

Yeah, the most recent translation of it is speaking with God. And that that, of course, is probably a more accurate translation uh accurate title. Uh I mean there is a lot of lamentation in it because he's confessing sins and he's lamenting the fall of humanity.

SPEAKER_01: 33:39

Well, that's the next point I was gonna go to is that he's also very much known for for very humble and he's he's uh his awareness, even though he comes from this tradition that really emphasizes theosis, he's very aware of his human frailty. Right. That's how we start.

SPEAKER_04: 33:54

In fact, that's the first step in in the path towards theosis, is first to recognize your own sins and to confess them, right? And to try to to seek God's forgiveness, right? So that contrition is very important to him. And so it's a series of 95 prayers, and they have really been they're considered like a second Bible by Armenians. Most uh, you know, if you go to an Armenian household, they'll if they have the Bible, they'll also have what that they it's now called the Nodic, right? I mean, it's so associated with him and his monastery that just people just refer to it as the Nodic, this but this book of prayers. And it's supposed to have great healing powers. Very I even people I know have uh who are really very sick, you know, have have used the prayer and have been have been healed almost like miraculously. There are stories about this. So so it has a very it has a very important place in Armenian spirituality and and and uh in our culture too. He's considered to be our greatest poet as well. I mean, his his writing is I mean, he he sort of transforms the language, he invents new words, he uses alliteration on all sorts all different kinds of poetic devices. So he's recognized as a literary genius in addition to being a spiritual master, too.

SPEAKER_01: 35:17

So kind of a William Shakespeare of his time in terms of new new words and coins of phrase. He's been compared to Dante. He's been, yeah, so yeah. And just a complete coincidence that 95 prayers, 95 theses of Martin Luther.

SPEAKER_04: 35:32

Yeah, that's a good point, right? There must be a connection there somehow. Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 35:36

I was gonna I don't know, but I don't know. Well, the very interesting thing about him recently, and recently by the you know, within the last decade, is that the Catholic Church has recognized him. We've we talked about this on a previous podcast, but it's kind of fascinating that the Catholic Church has reached out and acknowledged this Orthodox monk as a saint. No, no, I'm sorry, not as a saint, but as a doctor.

SPEAKER_04: 35:59

As both, right. So to be a doctor, you have to be a saint. So yeah, yeah. I mean, that this is why this is how I got into this. To be a doctor, you have to be a saint? That that that's not been my experience. Right.

SPEAKER_01: 36:11

Oh, oh, oh, oh, okay.

SPEAKER_04: 36:13

So yeah, so uh a bit let's backtrack a little bit to just explain what a doctor of the church is. So so in the Catholic Church, um, there are there are actually going to be 38 now. Uh so uh Pope Leo the 14th uh just recently announced that he's going to name Cardinal John Henry Newman, who actually is a convert from Anglicanism to Catholicism. On November 1st, he is going to formally declare Cardinal Newman uh doctor of the church. He's already a saint. But in any event, we have 38. Doctor means teacher, and so there are these important figures in Catholic history who have written important works and have influenced uh the teachings of the church and are kind of authoritative. So Saint Augustine is a doctor, Saint Thomas Aquinas is a doctor. We also have some women doctors now. Uh so uh Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Teresa of Avila, uh Saint Hildegard of Bingen, uh they're all considered doctors of the church, these eminent teachers. And so what was extraordinary, and I think it was one of the most extraordinary things that has happened in recent history, in church history in any event, is that in 2015 Pope Francis formally named Saint Gregory of Nodic a doctor of the church. Now, just kind of explain the complications. We've talked about Eastern Christianity before. And so all of the Eastern Christian communions, like the uh the Armenians or whatever, the Ethiopians, uh, they also have an Eastern Catholic church, too. So they're Armenian Catholics. In fact, in my own family, my grandmother on my mother's side was raised Armenian Catholic, and I have many Armenian Catholic uh families on my mother's side of the family. These are Armenians who have maintained the liturgy of the Armenian Church, so our traditional divine liturgy and our other traditions, but recognize the Pope as the supreme head of the uh of the church. So they're Catholic, they're in full communion with the Catholic Church, but there are Armenian Catholic churches that uh uh follow the Armenian Rite, as we say. Okay. And then there are the Byzantine Rite, too, there are Ukrainian Catholics who also follow the Eastern Ukrainian, the Byzantine Rite. So so this is uh there are quite a few of these. So it's not people when you talk about being Catholic or Roman Catholic, you usually think about the Latin Church, but there's more to the Catholic Church than just the uh uh the Latin Church. Uh so and so the Armenian Catholics have always had a strong uh bond with Saint Gregory. And so he already was recognized as a saint in the Catholic Church prior to Francis naming him a doctor. But what had happened was, and I did some research in my first book, I got into this, uh, is that um po uh the pre uh previous Pope John Paul II had in a number of his writings and encyclicals. These are these are authoritative papal documents that popes occasionally issue.

SPEAKER_01: 39:18

Are by definition encyclicals? Are they ex cathedra? Are they coming are they? No, they do I don't think I don't think they're officially ex-cathedra.

SPEAKER_04: 39:25

They do have, you know, obviously uh um some.

SPEAKER_01: 39:29

So they have authority, but they don't they're but they're not necessarily this is from God and not able to be disputed in any way.

SPEAKER_04: 39:36

Yeah, I think there have only been two so far ex cathedra pronouncements that have been declared ex cathedra, and those those both both deal with Mary, uh both the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception and then the assumption so far. But in any event, in John Paul's writings, he mentions Saint Gregory of Nodic as a very important Armenian. He even calls him a doctor, right? He calls him an Armenian doctor, and uh and also he refers to him as is Mary, his writings about Mary as especially uh valuable. So that got the ball rolling, where some Armenian Catholic bishops decided to petition the Vatican and ask them to declare St. Gregory of Nodek a uh a saint. Since if St. John Paul, or he's now a saint too, John Paul uh is if if John Paul likes him, then why not? Maybe he's he might have something valuable to say to the entire church, not just to the Armenians, right? Because up to now the only the Armenians really knew about him. And he he was very important in the Armenian tradition, but you know, outside of that, relatively unknown. And so that started uh in the I guess was the 1990s, and then it had to go through two Vatican committees. So this is like going viral before going viral was a thing. Yeah, it wasn't like Francis just decided when he just woke up one morning and said, Let's name St. Gregory of Nodic. No, this was going on for uh uh decades, and both committees said, Hey, this guy's really good. He's Orthodox, he's very pious, his writings are tremendous, right? So they were both extremely impressed, and so they they gave their recommendation to the Pope. And then finally, uh Francis in 2015 formally declared um Saint Gregory a doctor of the church. And the reason why that's important is because here we have someone who it's hard to say. I mean, he's Armenian Orthodox, but he's also venerated by Armenian Catholics, so he's actually both Catholic and I mean he's he's in heaven, okay. And and so we have at least one saint in heaven who's both Orthodox and Catholic after the schism between our two churches, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 41:42

Um which is makes him a a great icon or a great exemplar of kind of what your life's ambitions and life work has been.

SPEAKER_04: 41:51

Right. So he's a symbol of the unity of the church that in heaven these distinctions don't mean anything because he belongs to everybody. To the church universal, to the church universal. Yeah, and that's why when I said earlier there's only one church, yeah, that's what that means. Yeah, there's only one church, right? It just so happens as both Orthodox and Catholic, and I may be Protestant too, yeah. But I'll go on Limb.

SPEAKER_03: 42:14

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 42:15

I mean, we're all Christians, that's right. We're all brothers and sisters in Christ, right? Let's act like it. You know, I wish we did sometimes. There we go. That's a good place to end on. Okay, let's stop right there. That's enough. So so that that's it. Okay, we need to write a book about this. I I shouldn't use the royal we. I mean, I I because Pope Francis gave me a gift. I mean, he he made he named him a doctor. Now there needs to be, I mean, already people and great scholars, greater scholars than I have done translations and studies of him. But we need a book to introduce the world in English. English is almost the universal language, uh, that would introduce someone who's they've never heard of St. Gregory. You know, you might be Catholic and you just heard about what Pope Francis did and want to know more about that. So I I wrote this book. I did this on my last sabbatical in 2017. Uh, wrote the book and then got it published. It was published by Liturgical Press, uh, which is a great publishing house uh based in Minnesota. It's Benedictine, it's associated with the St. John's Abbey and um and university out there. And they have and they've published a lot of books, great books on monasticism and spirituality. And so they published it in 2019. Um review did pretty well. It actually won two awards. Can I say that? Uh yeah, the Catholic Press Association named it as it was second place in in the category of history of theology in uh 2020. Very cool. Very cool. I I didn't expect that to happen, so I was very happy.

SPEAKER_01: 43:42

That's that's truly an amazing accomplishment. And hence why I was so surprised that you don't have a title in front of your title. And that brings us to your current sabbatical. Yes. Uh you've done all this background on Gregory, and now you're you're going into a very more specific topic within this topic of Gregory, specifically about her uh his writings on the Mary. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 44:05

Yeah. So so what have a uh uh so one of the chapters in my previous book uh was focused on Gregory's work on Mary, but it was it was, you know, in a one chapter in a book was not enough, uh, especially given that, you know, as I mentioned, Pope John Paul had really highlighted the Marian prayers and devotion of Gregory. So I thought we really need a book that would focus on that aspect of his uh work uh and his writings. And uh uh it turns out also that there are some uh uh interesting controversies that we can get into. Like the uh apparently earlier this year, some YouTube YouTubers were these uh whatever theological YouTubers were discussing my book, my first book, uh uh dealing with the controversy of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which for those uh in our audience who don't know, this is a Catholic doctrine that Mary was born free from the stain of original sin, right? So that's what the Immaculate Conception means.

SPEAKER_01: 45:05

Which is a very unusual thing for Protestants to hear because we think of Jesus as being the only one who's free of sin.

SPEAKER_04: 45:11

In fact, that that is one of the issues. Like if all of us, other than Jesus, has sin, then didn't Mary have sin. Now, interestingly enough, the Orthodox believe that Mary was sinless too, but they have not accepted the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, right? And there are complicated reasons for this. But in any event, the uh uh these guys were arguing about, you know, the Catholics were saying Gregory saying Gregory would believed in the Immaculate Conception is clear now that and others saying, no, no, you're misreading him. I mean, this wasn't the reason why I wanted to write it, but clearly there's an interest in it in this question. Did he? Hey, if your book becomes a YouTube debate, of course it be it calls for a follow-up. Yeah, so obviously, yeah, you gotta go where the the uh where the debate where the controversies are. There you go. So I mean I don't want to make it controversial, but part of the book will deal with this question about uh to what extent Gregory or any of the other Eastern fathers or or theologians adopted the view, the current view of the Immaculate Conception. But I'll get into the other what I'm doing is I'm I'm looking at all he has a lot of prayers specifically, and I know uh for Protestants this might be an issue that some of his prayers are addressed to the Virgin Mary. We in the we Orthodox pray to Mary and the other saints, too, as the Catholics do, as intercessors. And I know I've had uh discussions with some Protestants who have uh had uh said this this is not biblical. And I always say it is, because it's in the Gospel of John, right, the wedding at Cana. And uh who do who is the one who convinces Jesus to turn the, you know, to turn the water into a wine? It's Mary, right? She goes to to her son and says, you know, they're they're out of wine. Right. And and at first he's like, oh, you know, woman, what does this have to do with you and me? But eventually, I mean, eventually, you know, a son has to do what the mother says. Eventually he runs. Well, in fact, he never says yes.

SPEAKER_01: 47:05

She just she just turns to the to the guys that do what he's do what he says.

SPEAKER_04: 47:09

Yeah, and Mary, of course, says perfectly do whatever he says. I mean, you know, she doesn't roll her eyes and say, Oh, it's not easy being the mother of God. But uh anyway, so you got an idiot an example of intercession right there.

SPEAKER_01: 47:22

Yeah, and let's let's just let's just take a little pause for a second and talk uh and talk about inner intercession. Yeah, uh just because it's a potluck and you go with the conversation goes. I and have enjoyed talking about intercession. I don't do it a lot, but when I when I have done it with Protestants, that uh it seems so bizarre, right? Oh, I'm praying to this person, this person, this person, right? And I I heard someone who grew up Catholic, uh a Catholic comedian make it making a joke that was funny, that that the way that that she was told was uh Jesus is too busy for that kind of a prayer. You can you know, you go go to this person over here and don't bother Jesus, he's too busy. But I don't think that's the way intercession is really really thought of, right? That in intercession in the Apostles' Creed, we talk about we believe in the communion of saints, right? And those are people who are both dead and alive, that there's the the host of of believers. And just like I would go to you and say, you know, Mike, I'm I'm dealing with something heavy, could you pray for me? Same thing. We ask people all over the place to pray. Well, if these are saints who have passed on to glory but but are still part of the communion of believers, you just ask them to pray for you just as you would your your friends. And so there's a same thing. There's a is that a pretty good thing. That's right, that's right.

SPEAKER_04: 48:36

So we shouldn't think about the saints as dead. I mean, they they they've died to this world, but in some ways they're more alive than we are because they were in God's presence. So uh just as I can ask you to pray for me, all right, and vice versa, I can ask a saint in heaven to to pray for me too. And there are prayer of a righteous man is very effective, I think James says. Yes. That we know that these are righteous men and women, right, that we're praying to.

SPEAKER_01: 49:03

And so that would be the the purpose behind intercession, then. Exactly. Which which when you it's not when I think of it that way.

SPEAKER_04: 49:13

It's not that we think that uh, you know, that uh that Jesus ultimately that God is is the source of all grace and all goodness. I mean, we we believe that, but we can ask someone else to pray, and whether they're here with us on earth or in heaven or wherever, their prayer can be effective.

unknown: 49:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 49:32

Very cool. So what do we need to know about Gregory's take on Mary beyond what we've already said? Yeah, well, it's it's it's it's uh My guess is just like your other writing, you're trying to find ways that, well, maybe we don't fully believe in the Immaculate Conception, but here's the ways that we can understand one another and bridge bridge our misunderstandings.

SPEAKER_04: 49:50

So a lot of it is meant to be that kind of ecumenical bridge building to show how much common ground we have. And and and I don't think not necessarily just with Catholics and Orthodox, but I think with I'm gonna reach out to Protestants too, and uh and also to Islam, uh, and it's not an area I know very much about. I know our colleague who was on uh uh your your I think at the podcast uh recently, uh Catherine Heidelberger, who is a specialist on uh Mary in in the Islamic tradition, too. Uh I think I can learn a lot from her, so it's not an area I'm very familiar with. But uh in Islam, of course, there's a very tremendous uh veneration of Mary. And it's interesting because Gregory's living in an Islamic world. I mean, he's where he is in Armenia as it is today, you know, Armenia in the 10th century was just uh emerging from uh domination of Arab, uh Arabic invasion that had occurred uh starting in the eighth century. And so there was a very strong Arabic and Islamic influence. And I'm interested in developing some of the connections. Was there any sort of did Gregory know about Islamic views about Mary? Was he trying to, you know, reach out to this is all speculative, but so so I see this as really a wonderful way of bridging differences between different faiths, not just among Christians.

SPEAKER_01: 51:14

I love it. And that sounds like a great episode to bring you and Catherine together and we can get someone from the Catholic tradition to talk. Yeah, let's let's uh let's make a uh a point uh a point to do that. So let's uh take a little break here.

SPEAKER_04: 51:30

Oh yeah. And are you ready for a game show? Oh, I didn't know we were gonna do the game show because there are just two of us, but anyway, yeah, we're we're doing a game show. So is it like, did I say this or not? Are you gonna do the new game show? I'm good with that.

SPEAKER_02: 51:43

Ladies and gentlemen show.

SPEAKER_01: 51:54

All right, welcome to the Church Potla game show. And today's game show is Which Mary Said It. Oh right. So I'm gonna give you a quote and you have to tell me which which Mary said it. Are you ready? Uh here we go.

SPEAKER_04: 52:07

How many Marys are there? We're gonna find out.

SPEAKER_01: 52:09

We're gonna find out. Here we go. My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior. Bless the magnificat in Luke.

SPEAKER_04: 52:18

So it's Mary, the Virgin Mary, the blessed Virgin Mary.

SPEAKER_01: 52:20

Yeah, very good, very good. Gave you an easy, you know, that was that was that was for 200, Alex, right? That was at the 100. All right, so the next one. In my end is my beginning. In my end is my beginning. Am I supposed to say which Mary said that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I know this is a very hard game show, but I figured you're so smart that you might know some of these. I don't know. That is Mary Queen of Scots. Oh, Mary Queen of Scots, okay. All right, that makes sense. You know, there are thousands of Marys.

SPEAKER_03: 52:52

This is not an easy game.

SPEAKER_01: 52:53

I've gotten rid of some of them that I said this one. So um uh My husband is not only the best man I ever knew, but the best man I ever saw. Which I don't even understand that quote, but Yeah, I don't understand it either. My husband is not only the best man I ever knew, but the best man I ever saw. Okay. I don't know. Mary Todd Lincoln!

SPEAKER_04: 53:16

Oh, I should have gotten that.

SPEAKER_01: 53:17

All right. So here you go. Here's one I you might I you might be able to get. So if I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning. Oh, isn't that loud, Peter Paul in the morning? Yes, well done. Good job. You got that one right. All right, how about this one? With silver bells and cockle shells and pretty maids all in a row. Oh, that's um with silverbells and cockle shells and pretty maids all in a row. Is that Maria von Trapp? Is that from No, that's Mary Mary Quite Contrary. It's from the children's nursery rhyme. Okay, got it. Yeah, Mary Mary Quite Contrary, how does your garden grow? And then she answers with silver bells and cockle shells. Okay. Uh and the final one, I'd say the guy who gets married gets the prize. The guy who gets married gets the prize.

SPEAKER_04: 54:11

Okay, so which Mary is this? Yeah. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01: 54:14

And it's Mary Jensen from the movie There's something about Mary.

SPEAKER_04: 54:18

All right. I would not have gotten that. I didn't get that.

SPEAKER_01: 54:20

It was a very hard. I knew it was gonna be a hard one, but uh a hard game show. But I still thank you for playing. Who's that Mary?

SPEAKER_02: 54:30

Ladies and gentlemen.

SPEAKER_01: 54:38

Also was trying to get Mary Shelley in there, but it can only get uh Frankenstein Mustang.

SPEAKER_04: 54:44

You could actually do this with just the Marys in the Bible, because you got Mary Magdalene and you know the the other Marys too. So it's hard keeping track of all the Marys. That would have been St. Mary of Egypt is also, I mean, not biblical, but a little bit later on, one of the desert mothers.

SPEAKER_01: 54:57

Yeah, we decided to expand. We we needed you to have like uh your trivia team here, you know. So we needed to get some some additional folks to help because that that ranged uh across different topics there. But anyway, what else what else haven't we said about Mary from Gregory's perspective that we want to talk about?

SPEAKER_04: 55:15

Yeah, well there I mean there it's it's it's interesting because the the question is why he has such I mean in in Orthodoxy, of course, Mary is very important, but in in essence, and one of the things I'm one of the major points in the book um that I'm developing is this idea that Mary is essential for understanding Christ, right? So that if you're if you're wrong about Mary, you're gonna be wrong about Jesus. Wow. They come together, right? So the idea is whatever you say. So and and essentially it's because Mary is what uh the way I put it is she keeps Jesus real, right? In other words, we were talking about Gnostics earlier, and there is this notion of the Gnostic Jesus who's not fully physical, or or the the heresy was called decetism, right? This belief that Jesus only seemed to have a body, but you know, somehow because he's God and because matter is polluted and bad, God really can't have a body. He's really more like a ghost, right? And so of course that's that's a heresy. God has Jesus has to be fully human. Totally denies incarnation, right? It denies the incarnation. Well, Mary is essential because she is the one who makes the incarnation possible, right? And so the fact that when you neglect Mary, in some sense, you're opening yourself up to these more Gnostic Docetic uh tendencies, right? So she literally gave birth, right? She was the mother of Jesus and therefore the mother of God. So the incarnation is up to her. And it was her choice. I mean, she, you know, at the enunciation, she said, let it be with me according to your word, right? So she's that's the fiat, right? The uh not the car, but the the Latin, let it be, right? So so in a way she's bringing into creation the divine, right? So in order to maintain that that orthodox understanding of Christ, we have to always affirm and be mindful of Mary.

SPEAKER_01: 57:19

And that's something I imagine that both Catholics and Orthodox look at as Protestants and say, we are we're very often missing out on a significant understanding and grounding of Jesus because we tend to minimize the the role of Mary. Yeah, that's right. We we bring her up during Christmas. Yeah, yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_04: 57:37

And and and yeah, and and I realize, yeah, you don't I'm not claiming that you're Gnostic or anything, right? But there is this notion that you know you do have to have this attention to Mary is important because not because it's not focused so much on Mary herself, but because of her connection to Christ, right? So in Orthodox iconography, in in Western iconography, you'll sometimes have um, you know, either statues or um paintings, icons of Mary alone. But that's relatively rare in uh in orthodoxy. In the Armenian church, the central icon uh above the altar is always Mary holding the Christ child. So there's always the connection there, Mary and Christ. They go together. Uh they're not separated.

SPEAKER_01: 58:16

Yeah. Now I'm going off in a kind of a tangent, and I don't know if this uh bears upon your research at all, but something I've always wondered about, I think about it more in terms of Catholic tradition, but I I'm guessing it's fairly true in in Orthodox tradition as well, is that these traditions that venerate Mary so much, that have such a high view of Mary, are also traditions that very often relegate women's roles to much lower to much lower statuses. And so you lift Mary up so high, but then women in general are kind of said, well, Mary was a mother, and so uh is it that because Mary was a mother, women's roles are seen as quite limited, or do you see an avenue there that because Mary is is so respected in these traditions that maybe women should be you know given given a higher status?

SPEAKER_04: 59:07

It's kind of a paradox there, because you know, and it's interesting because in in actually in in one of uh Gregory's works, the ones I'm one I'm working on, he has this extensive uh I mean I uh you could call it kind of a sermon, but it would be like a three-hour sermon if it ever was given. I mean, it's it's it's a uh it's actually called it's called an encomium, which is um meaning a work of praise. Okay. Uh, and and it's an extended encomium on the Virgin Mary. He presents her as not only, and some of this is coming out of apocryphal traditions, not from the gospel, Mary as a very learned woman that she had read extensively because she was dedicated to the temple and lived, according to uh the proto evangelium of James, which is a um, although it's not a biblical work, it influenced the way people think about Mary, that she was dedicated to the temple in Jerusalem when she was three and she remained there and she lost she was twelve. And that she was almost like she lived like an ascetic life and a life of study. So she wasn't illiterate. She was actually very uh accomplished. And sometimes she he even Gregory presents her almost like she's a priest because she's offering Christ to us, right? That uh very interesting. And so I begin to wonder. I mean, my tradition has not really picked up on this, but you know, does this actually give us an avenue of expanding the role of women? That she's not just someone who, you know, not that, you know, being a mother or being a caregiver to an infant is easy.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:37

I mean, that's nor nor lower status. Right, or lower status. I don't mean but nor does it need to be the limiting only only factor for women.

SPEAKER_04: 1:00:44

She was, according to the way Gregory presents her, she was more than that. I mean, she was like a super mom. And and so you wonder, you know, if you take that seriously, does that mean that we we have a too narrow, and I think we do, the churches, many of the our churches do have too narrow a view of the role of women in uh are you gonna have a chapter or an angle on that in your in your book and research? I've been reading a lot of work by feminist scholars on Mary, uh, and I I think I want to include something on that too. Yeah. Very cool.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:18

So when I think of Mary as this poor little peasant who had a ride on a donkey down to to Bethlehem, that's that might be uh uh a limiting it that fits my theology and the just how how humble God was coming into this world, you know. Right, yeah. So yeah, so that fits my theology big time. But you're saying maybe I need to think of Mary as as as more than just uh just a humble little teenage uh yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 1:01:44

I mean I mean, of course, there are scholars who have written a lot about this, that you know, that um some of it was a um some of the later writings on Mary. I when I say later, I'm like second century. Some of the later apocryphal writings on Mary were in response to Jewish accusations that Mary was basically a very not a very intelligent or important woman that and she was lying about all this. And so there was a tendency to kind of elevate her and make her more educated and all. So some scholars say this is just a sort of a Christian response to to Jewish polemics against Mary, but others say no, this actually might represent some. There's more to the story, you know, this is kind of like the prequel, right? These apocryphal tales that were uh stories that were written that we have. This, these, these they were left out of the gospels, but the this might be true. And so yeah, and apparently Gregory did think that. I mean, he clearly was reading these apocryphal works in their Armenian version. So, and he's basing his uh his writings on Mary on them. Very interesting.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:58

Have we left anything unsaid? I mean, we've left a lot unsaid, I know, but but is there anything we need to talk about before we wrap up here?

SPEAKER_04: 1:03:04

I think we're good now. All right, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:06

Well, thank you. That was fascinating. And and I want us to to do this some more. Uh, best wishes on your sabbatical research as it goes on, and we will pick up. And I do, I want to let's have a conversation specifically about Mary with other traditions as well. I would love it. We'll do that soon. So well, great. And I want to thank you, our audience, for sitting around the table with us today. I hope we have provided you with some food for thought and something to chew on. And uh Michael and I might have a few leftovers here, but it's just the two of us, so probably less so today than normal. But we appreciate your support. And as part of that support, please consider subscribing and rating and reviewing Church Potluck wherever you are downloading it. Until we gather around the table next time, this has been Church Potluck. Thank you for listening. Leftovers will do it. But anyway, well, thank you. Did we capture mostly what you wanted to say? I think so. Yeah. That's uh that's very interesting. I think the audience will find that interesting too, just because I was afraid we were just talking about my research. The ratings will not be so good. Well, maybe we'll get those two YouTubers to at least listen to the podcast to get more ammunition. So were they being kind of hostile towards you?

SPEAKER_04: 1:04:23

Well, what one of them was a Catholic YouTuber. No, no, no. Uh like they were using my book to defend their view. So the Catholic YouTuber was like, oh, clearly Gregory affirms the Immaculate Conception. And the Orthodox one was, no, you you stupid. Whatever. You know, you know how these people are, right? The YouTubers are, right?

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:40

That's why I don't that's why I try to avoid it. So in classic postmodern fashion, you provided the text and they and they interpret it however they wanted.

SPEAKER_04: 1:04:48

Now, to be fair, I mean I I don't come in my first book, uh, the previous book, I didn't I don't come to any sort of clear conclusion. I just leave it open that maybe he did affirm something. So I want to be more definite in this coming book, but uh I did leave it kind of open so that both Catholics and Orthodox could recognize that there are ways that you could defend your doctrine using his right. And but a lot of it is anachronistic because in the 10th century these issues uh really were not there. I mean, it took a while for the development of doctrine for people to um get clear what exactly the immaculate conception means. He does talk about Gregory as uh excuse me, Gregory talks about the he refers, he uses the Armenian word for immaculate to refer to her, but whether that means that she was conceived free of original sin, that assumes that we had a defined view of original sin in the 10th century, that you know, all Christians accept it, which is probably not true. So a lot of it has to do with how we define sin and how Gregory understands sin.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:49

Well, it's it's uh it's it's it's all very fascinating. Did I lost my train of thought when you left it open-ended in the first book? Yeah, were you thinking that this would be a line of that you would pursue later on?

SPEAKER_04: 1:06:01

Yeah, I didn't think it necessarily would be a book. It might have been just an article, but uh then when I just thought, you know, I think you could have a whole book just on Gregory and Mary, right? Not just on the Immaculate Conception, then I thought I I would incorporate it as part of a book. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:15

And I I mentioned this a little bit in the podcast, but you are in in my mind, the way I've the way I'm starting to interpret the life of Dr. Bapazian is that this is just another brick in your wall of making an effort to bridge the gap between Catholicism and Orthodoxy. And this is in Mary would be a a uh possibly a key sticking point. And so here's here, hey, here's how you two folks can uh think about this to uh to bring us together.

SPEAKER_04: 1:06:42

Right. I mean, we've we've got a uh a saint who's both Catholic and Orthodox at the same time, and uh and he's written extensively on Mary, so he's a great resource for let's just expand his influence and his understanding into and I think he won, I think he wanted this, right? Because uh, I mean he only wrote in Armenian, and of course, you know, very few people uh can read Armenian, and certainly not his Armenian, which is 10th century medieval Armenian and actually quite complex. But uh in in his first prayer and at the beginning of the that speaking with God, he says that I'm writing this book for all of the people of the world. Uh one of the things that I really like about Gregory is he's he's you know, Orthodoxy has a problem with nationalism. I know you're gonna do do a show on Christian nationalism coming up, and I actually have a theory that the Armenians invented Christian nationalism, but I'm Oh, that's so funny. I thought that I thought that this morning. I thought that this morning when I was reading a quick history. Yeah, yeah. Because uh because the uh the notion is that to be an Armenian is to be Christian, and Armenia is considered to be the first Christian nation. So already in the 6th century, 5th century, Armenians were had a nationalistic view of Christianity. I'm not proud of that, by the way. But nevertheless, Gregory is the least nationalistic, I think, of our he's the most universal Catholic, in that universal sense of Catholic. He's the most Catholic of the Armenian saints. He's he he does not dwell on Armenia that much. He is interested in the salvation of the world, and that's one of the reasons why I I uh I'm especially attached to him.

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:15

That's very cool. One last thought I have. With him writing only Armenian and Armenian, as you said, a sort of complex language, limited language, he's known for being incredibly poetic. So is it hard to translate his words? Um you would think that it would be need to be fairly accessible for the the poetry to come out.

SPEAKER_04: 1:08:39

Yeah, it's it is hard. But uh it's a challenge, right? It's kind of like translating is a puzzle, and I enjoy doing those things. I know I I always fail. And I've I've actually for a while I was studying, I was reading a lot of books on poetry, on I'm I'm I read a lot of poetry, like really good English poetry like Milton, to try to get, you know, their understanding of how poetry works, especially in English, since I'm translating it to English. I've read books on uh the theory of translation, and but eventually I just stop and say, if it sounds good, I'll go with it. I mean it's it's it's good to know a little bit of the theory, but eventually it's just like, okay, let's try to translate this and make it sound good, make it sound as uh as uh as close as I possibly can to the original, knowing that I'll never have you had literary scholars or poets write back about about your translations? Um I'm trying to think I don't know if anyone no nobody has criticized me for for mistranslating or but I think in many of the reviews uh I think that people were uh appreciated the way I I translated. And there isn't just one right way of translating it. I mean the speaking with God uh prayer book was has been translated by some really great scholars, and uh they've used different techniques in translating them. Uh some of them are less, they're not as literal, they're just trying to capture the meaning, some of them are more literal, and the both both of those are valid ways of translating. I'm sort of more, I'm trying to more convey the spirituality that would be uh understandable by um English speakers who are conversant with Christianity and with scripture. One of the things I've done in the book is to, so he's really big on typology, right? As you so this idea that that the Old Testament contains these uh these images or these symbols that then are referring to things in the uh in the New Testament, right? So that uh, you know, I mean Paul, Saint Paul does this, right? He in himself, right? He says that uh Christ is the new Adam. So Adam is the type of Christ. Yes, that symbol for Christ. And then later Christians said Eve is uh the type of Mary, right? And but there, but then there are other images, like uh one that's pretty prominent is the burning bush, uh, right? So so the burning bush is considered to be a type of Mary because she contains God within her, but she is not consumed, right? So God is this powerful fire within her, but nevertheless, she's not destroyed by having God within her, right? And so he loves all this typology, and he he actually comes up with his own, too. I mean, the images in the Old Testament that I haven't seen other church fathers use in their writings. And so what I try to do in my translation is because most of our, you know, most of us are not monks and we're not just l reading the Bible all day or listening to it, so we're not maybe as biblically literate many of us as uh as people were in Gregory's day. So I try to make the typology more transparent, like uh make it clear that this is an this is a reference to, oh, Exodus.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:45

Yeah, without that context, you would have no connection.

SPEAKER_04: 1:11:48

What does this mean? Uh, you know, there's the um, what is it, the um the enclosed garden in the song of songs, right, is uh also considered to be a type of Mary because it's it represents her her virginity. That it has not been been penetrated, right? So that might be a little x-rated there, sorry. But that's the way they're thinking. Yeah, there are these images of virginity throughout. Yeah in Ezekiel and the Song of Songs that then point towards the virginity of Mary and her perpetual virginity too, which is another issue we get into because I know Protestants have some differences, and even the Catholics and the Orthodox on on what the not they they both affirm the perpetual virginity of uh of Mary, but they have different views as to what we do with the brothers and sisters of of Jesus.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:33

I just had that conversation with somebody the other day. So yeah. And in in the Song of Songs, uh she wants her garden penetrated. So yeah, so that's different. So anyway, well, thank you. That's uh but only by the Holy Spirit. There you go. All right. But that's that's Mary, but that's not the woman in the Song of Songs.

SPEAKER_04: 1:12:54

Right, but she's a symbol of she's a type. So she's a shadow. So she's the shadowy uh version of what is then fulfilled in the New Testament. Gotcha on our view.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:03

Very cool. Uh more to continue for sure. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_04: 1:13:05

Oh, thank you.