https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=PUum_dh9QpI
What are the negative consequences of systematizing, articulating the feminine mystery? Why do postmodern thinkers do this? So the negative consequences of systematizing the feminine mystery is that it will end up being a kind of, a kind of desacralization. It’ll end up being a, okay, so there are things which are true, which when they are uttered, can become untrue. And so this is the problem. Let’s say it’s very clear, like in St. Ephraim the Syrian and St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Maximus the confessor and all the saints that I espouse and I look at, it’s very true to say that the purpose of creation is so that God would unite himself to his creation and that creation would become God by participation. And so the purpose of creation is a form of deification. And there’s nothing weird about saying that in a strictly orthodox perspective. But if you say, I am God, that’s not the same. That’s not the same. That’s the devil. That’s Adam’s sin. That’s all that’s wrong about our world. And so there are some things which cannot be uttered and there are aspects of the feminine mystery which should not be uttered and should remain a mystery. And we saw that problem even in the orthodox church with a movement called sophiology where certain theologians tried to articulate the feminine aspect of the divine and did so in a manner which I think had that very effect to betray the mystery and to expose something which ended up looking shameful when it was exposed but is not shameful in its mysterious form, you could say. That’s the only thing I guess I can say about that. So why do postmodern thinkers do this? Yeah, I mean, it’s a revolutionary move. It’s still a revolutionary move even though they don’t say it is. Okay, my grandmother’s orthodox church has a stained glass window with a figure whose hands are cut off. Who is that and what is the significance of his hands being cut off? I don’t know which image you’re talking about. If it’s the, it could be the image of the dormition of the mother of God. And in that image, there is a man who gets his hands cut off. And so what does that mean in that story? There’s a, it’s based on a tradition which is that when Mary, when the mother of God died, there was a miracle. And in that miracle, all the apostles, all the disciples who were all over the world evangelizing kind of were brought in spirit to the place of the death of the mother of God. And they kind of attended her funeral. And so, and then during that time, there was someone who wasn’t a Christian. There was a Jew who was there who wasn’t a Christian who tried to touch her, who tried to touch the mother of God on her deathbed. And that there’s an angel that cut his hands off as he was trying to touch. And so what does that, what does that refer to? Yeah, all right, so what does that, that refers to an event in the Old Testament where the Ark of the Covenant was being carried and no one except for the priest was allowed to touch the Ark of the Covenant. It was a sacred thing. It was a mystery. It was a sacred mystery. And so, well, there’s a story where someone, the Ark actually goes to fall. The Ark is gonna fall down, right? And someone goes up and touch it. It stops the Ark from falling. And that person immediately dies. And it’s a really crazy story. It’s a crazy story to show the intensity of the sacred, the intensity of the mystery of the secret and how the secret has to be preserved. There’s another story which is similar to this story of the person getting his hands cut off, which is that there’s a tradition which is that when, it’s almost the same story. When the mother of God gave birth, she had two midwives with her. And then, as a midwife would do, the one of the midwives went to, I think the story is that she couldn’t believe that the mother of God was a virgin. So she went to check, right? She’s the midwife. She went to check whether or not she was a virgin. And then her hand got burned down, like her hand got burned off or got melted down or some story like that, right? And so it really has to do with this protection of the mystery. And it has to do with this notion of this hierarchy, right? This idea of the outsider whose hands are cut off as he approaches the mystery, right? It’s no different than the idea that if you invited a salesperson into your house and then you turned around and that salesperson all of a sudden was in your bedroom. What would you do? You would take them and you would physically oust them out of your house, right? And so this idea of transgressing the hierarchy, like transgressing the hierarchy of intimacy or the hierarchy of the sacred. And that’s what that story, that’s what that story refers to. Self-Defense