https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=0FuO88QVlN0
So there’s this idea that the saints have that the more we focus on Christ, the more we are moving towards Christ, the more we have to humble ourselves, the more we have to sacrifice ourselves, lower ourselves, because we recognize how flawed we are, how sinful we are in comparison, right? And maybe to an external observer, it would seem like we’re becoming sanctified. Various saints would say, like at the end of their life, you know, oh, I haven’t even begun to repent. So these kind of inversions of that, this like a simultaneous movement toward God and the sense of moving away because we’re just so, I hate to say repugnant, because of our sins, but it’s our perception of that. It’s not saying anything about God’s perception of us. It’s only speaking about our perception of ourselves when we start to really know ourselves in relationship to Christ. So hello everyone. I have the great joy to be here with Father Joseph Lucas. Father Joseph is the priest and pastor at Christ the Savior Cathedral, the OCEA Cathedral in Florida. He’s also become a good friend and he is the editor of the Rule of Faith Journal that you can look up on Amazon. It is an Orthodox journal of theology. But here I have him here with me today because we had amazing discussions when I was there. He has published his own thesis on the question of sacrifice in St. Cyril of Alexandria. I am lucky to have a copy of it here. And I thought that it would be really wonderful to explore that with him now and look at how the Church Fathers, obviously especially St. Cyril, sees the question of sacrifice in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, how Christ transforms the question of sacrifice and just in general, the insight that he provides. And so Father Joseph, thanks for coming with us. Thank you for inviting me. And so when we talked, you said you had watched, I think, even one of my videos and you thought there was some interesting connections to make with the manner in which St. Cyril presents the question of sacrifice. So maybe you can start us there and tell us what it is that you think, what insight you think that he provides. Well, I think for one thing, it’s great because St. Cyril really had a, he focused his career, I would say, he focused his career on trying to understand the Old Testament and how the New Testament is the fulfillment of the Old Testament. And because sacrifice is such an important part of the law, he had to deal with it a lot. And it comes up frequently throughout his writing. So he gives a very deep interpretation of it. But it’s also important, I think, to understand it as part of his overall biblical interpretation, like what he’s trying to do with the law, how he’s trying to bring the law into the church in a way that can be understood properly. And so sacrifice, I think, is at the root of that. And so what does he think sacrifice is for? Well, the very first reference, if you go sort of chronologically through the Bible, the first sacrifice is Cain and Abel. And he mentions it two places. So he has his commentary on the Pentateuch. So he mentions, you know, he goes into it there. And then he also brings it up again in his commentary on John, which is much later in his career. And between the two of them, we come away with a few ideas. And the first one, I think that’s really important is the idea that the sacrifice is innate in human nature, because there’s no commandment. God doesn’t tell Cain and Abel, go sacrifice. He never says, you know, here’s how you do it. They just spontaneously do it. There’s lots of ways you could come at that you could say, well, there’s other things not written in the text. That would be one way of looking at it. But St. Cyril approaches it that there’s this natural desire for humans to want to offer to God something, to sacrifice to God. He doesn’t flesh that out until a little bit later what that ultimate sacrifice should be. But in that context, he said it’s just something natural. And so because one of them was a shepherd, and one was a farmer, they just took from what gifts they had, and naturally wanted to give something to God. And when I first read that, it struck me because, you know, that kind of ties in with say, like an anthropological or perennial idea of the fact that sacrifices is in every single culture throughout the world, right? That innate desire is there. People want to do something for whatever it is, the numinous, the supernatural, you know, there’s whatever they perceive God to be. They want to make offerings. And so the very first offering that’s recorded then in the scripture of Cain and Abel is about that innate desire, and then how God responds to that desire, the right way to do it, and the wrong way to do it. So Abel’s the right way to do it, Cain’s the wrong way to do it. So that’s kind of where it starts out. So for sure, at the outset, it’s important to notice that St. Cyril doesn’t see the sacrifice of Cain and Abel as in any way a propitiatory sacrifice. He doesn’t see it as something that is like kind of sacrifice for our sins the way that a lot of people think sacrifice is only for. Right. I think, well, a good point would be to define what we mean by propitiation. So if we mean propitiation in the sense of just it’s pleasing to God, that could be an acceptable definition. Our father, Stephen Young, and I just, he was here last week and we had a long talk about that and the fact that it can be used in that way, right? But the problem is, is that it came to mean in the West assuaging or removing anger that God has, right? So it’s like, so that’s kind of a pagan definition and definitely you won’t find that pagan definition in St. Cyril. Later on, when he starts talking about the law, that’s when we get into how he defines it and probably the word I use a lot is expiation in English because it clearly connects to what St. Cyril is trying to do. But definitely not with the Cain and Abel sacrifice. There’s no sense of God being upset with them and they need to somehow turn God’s face back towards them or something like that. You know, get them to be in commune with God. It’s just, St. Cyril sees it as a natural desire to want to offer to God to be in relationship with God in some way. Yeah, it’s kind of, yeah, it is. It’s almost like to give back to God or to offer back with that which has been received. And so, I mean, this is a, I don’t, maybe he doesn’t, but what does he see as Cain’s misoffering? Because in the text, it’s very vague. It just says basically God doesn’t accept it. Does he talk about that? Well, the subdued gen gives us a little clue and he hones it on the subdued gen because the subdued gen says you did not rightly divide it. Okay, so he picks up on that, you know, so what does it mean to not rightly divide it? Well, it means he offered the leftovers basically is how, you know, to paraphrase him. Like what, so you have Abel. He didn’t offer the best part. Exactly right. He didn’t take the very best and offer it to God. He took what he already didn’t want. Interesting. That would also connect it in some ways to the classic story of the sacrifice of Prometheus, like in the Greek myth where Prometheus is supposed to, like the people are supposed to offer the meat, but then he offers the bones and just hides it with the skin so that, you know, they trick the gods basically. Yeah, so that’s, so it’s about disposition from the beginning. And that’s kind of, that’s another theme that runs throughout St. Cyril’s commentary in the Old Testament, this idea about the right disposition when you offer. What does it mean? So there’s an internalization, you know, it’s what’s coming out of the heart that’s being exhibited through the external action, you know, through the sacrifice itself. But I didn’t know that about that in the subdued gen. There’s a hint about why it is that he, the sacrifice, and that’s interesting because, I mean, that’s one of the most, I mean, the subdued gen is one of the most ancient testimonies of biblical interpretation we have in the translation. It’s like, this is how we translate it, it means that this is how we see it. So that’s a, that’s fascinating. And so then, so then after that, I guess, Cyril kind of moves into the story of sacrifices. How does he come from this, this early sacrifices up to Christ? Like, how does he see that relationship? Well, it’s the way he approaches the law in particular is that everything in the law, so this is part of, I think we have to look at how he interprets the scripture, what his exegesis method is. And the first, well, I would say, you know, the experts disagree on this, but I take this side, is that his earliest work is called on worship in spirit and truth. That’s the phrase from St. John’s Gospel. And there’s a debate whether that was first or whether he wrote his commentary on the Pentateuch first, but it seems that that would make more sense. He wrote on worship in spirit and truth first, because he lays out how he’s going to interpret the scriptures. And it seems that he followed like throughout his career. He started with, then he went on to the Pentateuch and he kind of moved in chronological order through the scriptures and got to the gospels and epistles later in his career. And why that’s important is because he starts out his book on worship in spirit and truth with how do we interpret the law and how does it relate to the New Testament? And he has this probably imaginary indelicator that he’s talking with. And this guy is walking along with a copy of the gospels and, you know, this perfect setup, you know, he says, oh, you know, Cyril, how do we reconcile these two things? And he quotes first Matthew when Christ says that he didn’t come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. How do we reconcile that with where he says in the gospel of John that we’re going to worship in spirit and truth? It seems that he’s doing away with the law. And then St. Cyril says the answer is in St. Paul. It’s the transition from the letter to the spirit. And then he kind of the rest of that text, he’s kind of unpacking what that looks like and applying it in a kind of a almost looking at like the meta narrative of scripture, like what St. Athanasius called the scope of scripture, which like, you know, the sort of arc of a story from Genesis all the way to Revelation. And he goes through and he shows how the two things relate. And he has some pretty strong things to say about the law. Like he picks up on what St. Paul says when the law is a type and a shadow. And so he says the law is a type and a shadow and the formation of a piety that is still in travail and has the beauty of truth hidden within itself. And he says that the law was imperfect only because they weren’t ready to interpret it through Christ. There’s this transition that happens where the law had its purpose, but it could never do what it was meant to do. He says that very clearly. It’s never able to do what it was meant to do until the fulfillment of the law came Christ. And then through the lens of Christ, we understand it in an anagogical or elevated way. And so that’s kind of his starting point. So then he applies that to sacrifice. All the sacrifices are in some way pointing to some aspect of what Christ was coming to do. And so that’s kind of the way he looks at it all the way through is he takes these very sacrifices and he reinterprets them and says, this is how it pertains to Christ, or this is how it pertains to the church, you know, sort of this type and anti-type relationship throughout all the sacrifices. So can you give us some examples of what, let’s say, let’s take one, let’s say the Yom Kippur sacrifice. Does he talk, does he deal with that? Because I would love to hear how he says about the two, like the goat and the sacrifice the goat is given to Azazel. How does he reconcile that with Christ? Yeah, so Azazel for him is the devil. That’s interesting because, but it’s interesting that he says it’s not offered to the devil. It’s not offered to the devil. You know, essentially, he says that that would be a myth. He said to say that it was offered to Azazel as the devil would be a myth. But the idea is that, so he starts out with saying that that the symbolism of the two goats, they have to be absolutely identical. And the reason is because they’re just two aspects of the same offering. Just two different aspects of the same offering. The first one represents the blood of the goat taken into the temple represents purification or expiation. So it shows the fact that Christ would come to die and through him, we are purified of sin. Okay, so that’s the first, the meaning of the first half. The second half, he does talk about Christ carrying sin away, right? Connects it to the ascension. The idea is that Christ going off into the desert land, where Azazel is where the devil is, is him going carrying Hades and then ascending up, rising up and then ascending up into the heavens. And then he calls it the untrodden land beyond is paradise, right? He goes up to be enthroned in the heavens. And so he sees it in a very different way. So basically the two goats represent the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension. And that’s kind of what together they mean. They’re all part of the same offering, but different aspects of the same. So he sees the goat that’s cast into the wilderness as resurrection and ascension? Yes. Yeah. Now he doesn’t, he says that he does tie in at one point and say that definitely he carries away our sins. Yeah. So I can imagine like the herring of Hades, that makes a lot of sense to think of that in the sense that he takes the sins and he kind of goes into, it goes into the world of death, you could say, but it’s interesting to think of it as ascension and- Yeah. That one’s kind of surprising. It’s a surprising interpretation. Let me see if I find a quote right here. He says he likens himself to the scapegoat in order to be sacrificed for sins. So in some sense he connects himself to sin, but then he says, for he rose and departed to the untrodden land, meaning into the heavens, in some way carrying our sins to the city on high to present himself before the father on our behalf. So it’s a weird connection of all of it, taking the sins on, carrying them away, but then ascending up and then he’ll connect a little bit later to the idea of him being the high priest mediator. So he carries them up to offer them up before the father as our mediator to be purged of these sins in the heavens. So it’s in a sense still a connected expiation. Yeah. But it’s unusual how he connects it to the resurrection and the ascension up, but he uses that same theme a couple of different ways with Yom Kippur. Yeah. So he says the untrodden land. So he’s connecting in some ways the paradise with the strange land. There’s a land that we don’t know, like as if the paradise in some ways is a land that we don’t know. So he’s using the image of wilderness for paradise. To me, that’s weird. That’s a surprise, I have to say. Yeah, it’s unusual. It’s not what I expected because when you first do a cursory reading of the fathers, when you’re trying to come up with a hypothesis for a thesis to examine the text, that’s not what I would have come up with initially. And then of course you read the text to let the text teach you. And then you get to these things, and it’s a very different perspective than I thought. Yeah, but it’s interesting, definitely. And so does he still have this idea also of the offering to God, like the crucifixion is an offering in the sense of the Cain and Abel sacrifice. Does he talk about that a little bit? So he’s fine with saying that the offering was made towards the father. So this would be more, because it’s not until about the 10th century that they work out this whole idea that the son is also the receiver. But he does mention elsewhere that the son as God also receives the offering. So he kind of presages that a bit by about five centuries, which gets worked out later on in a local council in Constantinople where they say that the son is also the receiver along with the father and spirit. So he does say that. So on one hand, yes, it’s the son in his human nature. So this is something that would be controversial to maybe some people who think that Cyril is kind of like an actual monophysite in some way. He has a definite idea of the distinction of the two natures. And so Christ’s mediation is really in his human nature, right, or through his human nature. So through his human nature, he’s offering himself up to the father. But as God himself with the father, he’s also receiving that offering. So he does mention that as well. So there’s this kind of connection there. But one of the things he’s very clear about is that there’s no point in which the father somehow is disconnected from him in this offering. Yeah, that’s important. Because this is something we’ve seen recently, this idea that when Christ says, why have you abandoned me, that God did abandon him. This is something that I think Martin Luther ends up saying explicitly that God abandoned Christ in that moment on the cross. But St. Cyril does not go in that direction. No, in fact, we don’t have any idea who he’s responding to. At least I haven’t. I don’t know. And I haven’t found any other researchers who have looked at this. But he’s responding to somebody when he says that, you know, there’s some there’s some who would say that the father looked away from the cross when the son offered himself. And he goes at links to say why this is a ridiculous idea. He said, first of all, you know, first of all, there’s two reasons. One is that he is with one nature with the father. And that’s obviously on a theological level. But then he says, just on a very practical level, he said, why would the father look away from that which he desired? You know, this this offering was the will of the father and the son, and that which is most honorable? Why would he look away from something so honorable as the self offering of his son? So there’s this idea that, you know, there’s nothing tainted in the offering of Christ. This is what was meant to be. And the father would never would never distance himself from that offering. He’s a part of it in two ways. The fact that he’s at one with the son in nature, and also that and that he and the son both desire this. They have a common will that they desire this thing to happen. And there’s no sense of even in his human nature, because that’s the one thing Syro does, even though he definitely makes clear that there are these, you know, there are two natures, a human and divine nature. It’s always the incarnate son acting. I think that’s one of the important principles of his theology is this, it’s the one incarnate Lord acting, you know, and so therefore you cannot even though it’s through his human nature that he is the high priest. Yeah, divided. Yeah, he’s not divided anyway. So how does he I mean, maybe you don’t have an answer to this, but how does he interpret that phrase, you know, when Christ cries out to his father? So he he has essentially laid out throughout this is more so not so much in his exegesis, more so in his, his theological writings, but especially in response to the story is he makes clear that all the things that Christ Christ went through, he did it not because he needed for his own for his own sake, but in order to transform it for our sake. So for example, the the Gardening of Gethsemane is very important for him. Yeah, Gardening of Gethsemane is a point where one of the blameless passions, one of the things that human beings all suffer through, you know, even if they’re if even if they were perfected, would be the fear of death, because it’s natural for us to really die, we want to live, we have a sense of eternity. And the fear of death is real, and that humans have to face this. And so in the Gardening of Gethsemane, he takes on the the human fear of death and its fullness in order to transform it for us, he says, and does the same because he accepts finally, that’s always what people have to understand is that although he goes through that anguish, then ultimately he accepts, he says yes to the to to what is going to happen. Right. Yeah, he always, St. Cyril always emphasizes the idea this is a voluntary offering, it has to be voluntary, it has to be Christ doing this fully, taking it on active in every single part of it in order to transform it for human nature going forward. Yeah. So yeah, there’s in the Garden of Gethsemane, there’s so many mysteries about that, because one of the things that I think is going on in the Garden of Gethsemane is that we’re actually facing we’re actually seeing Christ in the garden about to eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. But he he doesn’t want it. But that’s the difference between him and Adam. He actually knows that if you eat of that fruit, you will die. And he says, No, if I can be spared the fruit, if I can be spared this cup, then then then then but if that is your will, then I’ll do it. And so it’s like God gives him the fruit and now he takes it and dies. But then that is the image of his being God. Like it’s you could say that it’s his deification, he’s already God, but like it’s his moment where he does in fact manifest fully that he he is like God by eating the fruit. Right. Well, it’s a it’s a it’s a you know, the self emptying keeps happening throughout his entire earthly life. You know, it’s not just it’s not just that he he poured himself out in the conception in the Theotokos his womb. It’s not that’s not the only moment in which he he becomes humble and enters into the you know, the status of a slave. There’s an ongoing, you know, self emptying throughout his life all the way up to the cross. Asim is part of that progress. And then on the cross, when he’s saying, you know, my lord, my lord, why, why have you forsaken me? He’s taking on the he’s taking on that, the the the human sense of separation of dejection of, you know, and this is again, part of him accepting all the blameless passions and, you know, because those are things we don’t have control over, right? We all just like hunger and thirst and all the other things he’s taken on. He has to ultimately take on the fear of death, the fear of separation from God, and then death itself is the final foe he has to take on, you know, in his that he overturns through the resurrection. And you know, I know I know Father Stephen Young, in part and others have pointed out that in that moment where he calls out and and and ask God ask his father why he abandoned him, there’s also a prophecy happening while he’s saying that because he’s quoting from a psalm in which at the end of the psalm, God raises up, you know, David out of the pit. And so it’s like, he’s actually so he’s saying, like you said, he’s purifying it. He’s like, he’s like, I’m going to I’m going through this truly. But there’s a secret prophecy hidden in what he’s doing, which is that God will raise him up in the in the in the end. It’s very powerful. And it’s always Sam Searle uses the the phrase, you know, for our sakes all the time. Right. So his ideas, I like to think of it, this is if you remember back in the maybe late 80s and 90s, I don’t know if you had this in Canada, but we had the oxy clean commercials when they first came out. And you had the tank of oxy clean, you know, the white powder thrown in the water, and they stir it up. And, and they have this immensely dirty cloth or something. And they, they dip it into the oxy clean. And they make a point of saying instead of the oxy clean looking dirty, the cloth comes out white, you know. And so this is this is my analogy to try to try to put a put forward exactly what St. Cyril was explaining. Right. So so he’s like this oxy clean, right. So sin and these things are trying to, you know, to attack him. And in his human nature, he instead of him being affected anyway by this, and he doesn’t that’s why St. Cyril points out, you know, that Paul says that he’s without sin. He’s like us in all ways, but he’s he’s without sin. Is that when sin tries to tries to attack him or any of the blameless passions tried to affect him, instead of him being affected, there’s an immediate reversal for the sake of human nature at large. Right. So he reverses it or repels it in a sense. And because he’s of one nature with us, according to his humanity, we share in the benefits of that in a potential, right, we potentially share in the benefits of that when we by faith are united to Christ, we we are given that power to repel the sin to not be affected by it. So it’s part of his it’s part of his overall idea of how we’re saved how we’re transformed. It’s all rooted in how he, you know, how he responds to these things. So what’s interesting with which kind of comes to mind in terms of what the way that he presents sacrifices that it seems like if the sacrifice of Cain and Abel at the outset is natural in the sense that it’s something that is in us to want to give up to God, then it wouldn’t if that’s how he sees the origin of sacrifice, then it makes sense that he would move towards the idea of self sacrifice, right, where ultimately you realize that the ultimate sacrifice is the giving of of oneself. And so maybe you can talk a little bit about his ideas on that and how Christ brings us into that, that that that difference. So the first thing is that is that the law was a way to channel the innate desire. That’s the first thing, right? So so people have this innate desire, like Cain and Abel. And so all of humankind was, you know, in some way making offerings and, and reaching out to what they understood God to be. But in the revelation that God gives the beginning with Moses and forward, he’s basically channeling that he’s basically giving order to it, arranging it. But he’s doing it. The one of the things that St. Cyril is very clear about is that none of it was necessary, right? There was no God’s God is without necessity. He doesn’t need any he doesn’t need meat offerings. He doesn’t need anything, right? There’s what you said, which is said in like, it says that inscription, that’s really important to remember that. Right, exactly. I mean, especially in the prophets, you know, it’s all through like Isaiah and Ezekiel and things like that. And he does. One of the things I focused on in my in my thesis was also on the the prophets, you know, how he sees that in the prophets. So so none of that, let me just say one thing that’s really important, because because if we believe that, then we understand that the idea of the trade sacrifice like the of the simple trade of like, you know, or also the idea that God needs sacrifice in order in order to forgive our sins or some kind of weird idea that this is necessary in from the point of view of God for this to happen in order like as if there’s this like weird rule that, you know, well, now you’ve sinned, so now you’re impure, so you got to kill these things so that God will God will that you can have access to God again, like that is not nowhere. Right. This type of thinking, there’s no quid pro quo. Yeah, in the offerings. Yeah, there’s there’s a sense that God doesn’t need it. And so he does two things. So for one thing, he makes it clear that, that he’s going to organize and sort of channel this desire entirely to prepare people for his coming and the only necessary offering of himself. He’s the necessary offering to accomplish what he desires to do, which is to save humanity, to overcome death, for us and things like that. So that’s that that is what he would say would be the unnecessary offering in the way that that God wants to to help mankind. So he basically establishes or channels this this Old Testament offering system in order to point everything towards Christ, where everything is pedagogical. He takes up that that idea from St. Paul, that the laws of is a tutor or pedagogue. And so it’s all pedagogical or symbolic to point towards the one true offering of Christ. And then he can then he can go through and and apply the spirit of the law, which the spirit of law is the intent. So so what’s the true intent? And he goes, he presses this really, really far, because he essentially says that, that the Old Testament law really had, at some points, he says it wasn’t efficacious in any way. Right, there’s nothing it could actually do. There’s a couple points where he concedes a little bit and says that so long as the as long as the Israelites were doing it with the right intention, their faith had some efficacy, right, there was something they were gaining from being faithful and obedient to God, but that it couldn’t actually do anything. Because it wasn’t just a like a mechanical system, like obviously that that’s ridiculous to think that right that anyways. Right. Well, that’s that’s why that’s why it gets condemned by the prophets. The prophets say, look, you think it’s an automatic thing. It’s all about your intention about your acting and faith. You’re doing this in obedience and faith and love towards God. When you do it in the right way, then God is somehow blessing you. That’s what St. Cyril is basically saying. God is God will bless you in response because you’re doing it out of faith. So he’s channeling this desire for sacrifice. If they do it the right way with the right intent, like like Abel with the right with the right heart, then God will respond back with blessings for them. Okay. And let me just say, I just want to say to the people, for the people watching, to understand how this is organically true in anything that has to do with any type of relationship that you engage with others, whether it’s hierarchical or whether it’s it’s it’s across levels is that, you know, if you it’s not just like, okay, so shake the person’s hand, you know, do this and that. And if you do all these things, then you’ll be in a right relationship with others. Like we all know that’s nonsense. Like that’s not true. Of course, we have to shake the other person’s hand. Of course, we have to we have to be polite. We have to do all these things that are kind of like rules. But if they’re not done with the right intention of entering into communion with the person, then we know that we could do all the right things. And and then we would find ourselves in disharmony with others. And so it’s it’s as true for a family meal for how you relate to your children, to your parents, to your to your spouse as it is for how we also relate to God. So it doesn’t mean that we completely remove the the rituals, the rituals are there to embody the intention. But without the intention, then the rituals ultimately can become can become pernicious even, you know, it’s like if you shake someone’s hand and you, you know, you give them that look like, you know, it’s like, I actually hate you, then the handshake is no, you know, Yeah, symbol plus intention. I think that’s that’s a good way to say that what what saints zero, how he defines it, you know, you have to have the the meaning is there, but the meaning has to be backed up by the right disposition. But the here’s what he says, though, this is so it’s this idea that that the anti type Christ is the only one who imbues meaning to anything that happened, any of the types, the type only only exists for the sake of the anti type. And so, so for example, he says, he says, though the law of old was not sufficient to help those in olden times, mystery of Christ was outlined in it. But with the coming of Christ purification by a type, then of necessity fell in abeyance since the reality was now present. And then he goes on to say that, you know, that the real reason that there was any kind of, you know, efficacy in the Old Testament sacrificial system was because already Christ was there in it. And now the crisis come it falls away. And it sounds like some of the wording he uses, I don’t know if you have you ever read Milito Sardis, St. Milito Sardis is this is a great if you have time to get it sometime. I know it’s in the same class popular patristic series. It’s on Pascha. It’s the sermon that St. Milito Sardis gave in the second century, probably like on the eve of Pascha. It’s like it’s like a poetic sermon that he gave. And there’s sections of it that are quoted later on in our possible him not himnography. So actually got picked up in the church and it’s many scholars think that he was a Jew who converted to Christianity and became the Bishop of Sardis. And so St. Milito, I’ll read this little section of St. Milito. It’s very similar to what St. Cyril’s writing a couple centuries later. He says this about the Passover and the blood of Christ. He says, Tell me, O angels, the angel of death, at what were you turned away at the sacrifice of the sheep or the life of the Lord at the death of the sheep or the type of the Lord at the blood of the sheep or of the spirit of the Lord? Clearly you were turned away because you saw the mystery of the Lord taking place in the sheep, the life of the Lord and the sacrifice of the sheep, the type of the Lord and the death of the sheep. For this reason, you did not strike Israel, but it was Egypt alone that you made childless. So it’s like the angel of death comes and he already sees the mystery of the Lamb of God who comes to take away the sins of the world and he’s turned away by that. Very similar to what, in fact, I like to write an article at one point seeing if there’s any connection if St. Cyril had any access to St. Milito because there’s a sense in St. Cyril that everything, any kind of response, positive response God had to Israel in the Mosaic system was because he saw that they were fulfilling what would ultimately point to Christ. Christ, the one giving it power in some way. He says otherwise it would become ineffectual if they did not, if it was not connected directly to Christ. And so then how does St. Cyril or does he connect this ultimately with the Christian life? That is to show that our life is a living sacrifice, right? There’s these phrases that we say in our liturgical practice that we see that we are meant to give ourselves ultimately, that that is what all of this is leading to in terms of our own practice. Yeah, that’s actually, that’s, I would say that’s probably what everything is about for him because he says, you know, so the sacrificial system points to Christ and then Christ accomplishes what he needs to accomplish. And so what is the spirit of the law now? The spirit of the law now is to see how we become Christ in our self-offering. So basically he sets up this idea that we have to voluntarily die and then he connects that to this idea of picking up our cross each day and following after Christ. Every day is like a spiritual death or our own self-emptying for the sake of God. And this kind of sets up an entire way of looking at the world, you know, this idea that the Christian is the one who’s constantly sacrificing himself. Yeah, it’s interesting. I tried to, you know, when I was completing the dissertation, I spent a couple years just reading all the literature on sacrifice I could possibly find. And so I had to read, I had to read like, you know, you name it, Gustav Allen, all these different ones. I read everyone who talked about different aspects of sacrifice and some of them Christian, some non-Christian, anthropological studies. And I came to René Girard and I was trying to see in what ways like his scapegoat, you know, idea, you know, and there’s a sense that I saw that there’s some parallels between his idea of the scapegoat and how he says that Christ ultimately fulfills that. He becomes one who takes on everything, you know, but it was a little, it’s still a little bit too Protestanty for me, you know. Well, it’s not just that. It’s that Girard misses another aspect of sacrifice. And so if you take the Amkipur sacrifice, for example, it’s like there are two sacrifices, my friend. There’s one that is out to the wilderness and there’s one that’s offered up. And the sacrifice that’s offered up is not the same, is not, Christ brings them together and in a very, very mind-shattering way, but they’re not the same. And so, you know, it’s like, for example, like the pouring out of libations and all of these types of behaviors that the ancients said cannot be reduced to scapegoat sacrifices. So Girard, it’s as if Girard gets half of the story right, but he’s missing an entire half of the story, which makes his theory, in my opinion, insufficient and means that it’s difficult for him to reach this conclusion. So his tendency will be to say that Christ has abolished sacrifice and now there’s no more sacrifice. Right. Now there’s no more sacred. There’s actually no more sacred anymore. Whereas the Christian, the true Christian position is to say Christ has shown how all of this has to become internalized and that we can be, take the sins of others to some extent even, that we can sacrifice ourselves, that we can become the scapegoats in many ways, but that is a healing and that internalized process now is the way that we live. And it’s actually the way that it’s actually our morality is based on that implicitly or explicitly is based on that image of what sacrifice is. I think, well, in the 20th century and St. Silouan the Athonite, he has this idea that the ultimate goal is for us to all become Adam and take on the sins of the world in a sense, right? To be like Christ is to be able to become a scapegoat ourselves, to become the Passover offering ourselves, to the entire, all the symbolism of the Old Testament sacrificial system capitulated in Christ, we have to imitate that. We have to take that on in some way and live a life of self-offering of constant sacrifice. And it’s unbearable. I hate every moment of what you just said. I just hate that. I don’t want to do that, but I can see in the stories, if you look at some of the stories of the saints, you have very powerful images, especially in the monastic stories of monks who do exactly that, who actually take on blame of things they did not do towards the salvation of others. And when people see the monk taking the blame for their sins onto themselves, they’re transformed in ways that reproach or that just scolding or whatever punishment would never be able to accomplish. Some of these stories are pretty amazing. But if I could branch off into just something else for one second, it ties in with, my whole project over the last 20 years has been looking at, you know, soteriology, how salvation works through the Father’s interpretation of the Bible. And before I started working on sacrifice and expiation, I looked at justification. And so I put out a little book back in 2010, based on my research on that, and it was focusing on the Desert Fathers. And so the Desert Fathers were picking up on the Gospel of Luke, where in the Gospel of Luke, in the parable of the publican, the Pharisee, the publican basically by accepting all blame, he descends down, and he’s the one who’s vindicated or justified by God, because he descends down by taking on all blame, and God’s the one who vindicates and lifts him, right, he exalts him. And then the Pharisee, he exalts himself and God lowers him, right, he brings him down and condemns him. And of course, the word in Greek for to justify or vindicate, vikio, it’s opposite is kata vikio, which just means to condemn, those two words are used in the parable. So it’s the opposite of to vindicate, he gets condemned down. And that gets picked up in Orthodoxy in the hymn for one of the troparia for that Sunday of the publican, the Pharisee during Lent. It says for the publican exalted himself or lowered himself, based himself, and he was exalted up, and the Pharisee exalts himself and he was abased, he was brought down low. So we have this idea that when we take on the blame, when we take on and become that offering, we allow God as judge, Christ as judge, to be the one to lift us up and exalt us. And he’s the one who takes us up to the heights rather than ourselves. So it’s kind of linked to this. That’s why you see this sort of language throughout, especially like the ascetical writings and epic fathers, the desert fathers. Yeah, and the understanding that way makes so much sense of so many Bible stories, even from the beginning, from Genesis. And so that’s how you can understand that what God is asking of Adam to not raise himself up, to not himself take the fruit, to not pull himself up, that what God wanted for him was for that God does, that God was going to raise Adam up. And you see that in the scripture. And sometimes it’s tricky for people because people might find it hard to see that in the text because it’s like, well, it’s a bit tricky of St. Ephraim to say that God wanted to give him the fruit. It doesn’t say that in the text, you know. But if you take the entire scope of scripture and you kind of see it together, you realize it’s there all through. Like even the story of Solomon, when it’s like, God asks Solomon what he wants. It’s like, I will give you. And then he says, I want the knowledge of good and evil. And God is like, good. Yes, that’s exactly what you should ask for. And I’m going to give it to you. But he’s not trying to take it for himself. So this weird moment in Solomon shows us already that this was there in the whole narrative scripture, this idea that what was received from above is different from what is taken for ourselves. It’s the opposite in some ways. And we’re lifted up when we abase ourselves. It seems contradictory, but once you kind of see the logic, you’re like, well, actually, no, that’s really how reality works. Yeah, yeah, it’s so prevalent throughout all of the, at least in the, I’m not as familiar with the Western liturgical tradition, but in the Eastern liturgical tradition, I mean, this idea of humbling yourself is just ubiquitous. It’s everywhere. I mean, it’s just, I mean, all of Lent focuses on that, right? All the hymns and the various themes of the services is almost always about how do we humble ourselves before God. Repentance is of course, part of humbling, which is so important during the fasting seasons, because repentance is about admitting, you know, that we are against God and turning back towards him and reestablishing relationship because we’re in the wrong. We take on the blame. And the more we take on the blame, you know, we allow God to be God because when Christ says that, you know, that he says, judge not, lest ye be judged, he’s not talking about a lack of discernment, right? Because the same word, crito is the same word to judge or to discern. They’re not two different words. We sometimes translate them differently, but they’re the same word used in different parts, positively and negatively in the New Testament. What he’s saying is, is don’t usurp my position. I am the Lord. I sit on the throne of judgment. I hold the keys, you know, to life and death. Don’t usurp my position. It’s not your place to determine, you know, the outcome of, you know, human affairs or individual humans. You have to humble yourself and see yourself only in comparison to me, he says. Right. And so again, in the desert fathers, there’s this idea of, you know, it says, you know, who is man that, you know, he’s made a little lower than the angels. And they take that and they say, you know, God placed us down here, you know, in this reality and, you know, this idea of up and down, right, of above and below. We should only be looking up. We should only be, we should, we’re down here only looking up at the Lord and comparing ourselves only to him. And we compare ourselves only to Christ. We can’t really exalt ourselves in any way. You know, in fact, this ties into like in Isaiah six, when Isaiah, who’s probably the holiest man of his time, right? He’s this incredible prophet and he gets initiated into the throne room of God. He’s there in probably what St. Paul would call the third heaven or something like that. And, and he says, I am undone. I’m a man of unclean lips. So there’s this idea that the, that the saints have that the more we focus on Christ, the more we are moving towards Christ, the more we have to humble ourselves, more we have to sacrifice ourselves and lower ourselves because we recognize how, you know, how flawed we are, how sinful we are in comparison, right? That comparison, it’s like, it’s like this weird inversion where we’re moving towards Christ and maybe to an external observer, it would seem like we’re becoming sanctified. Our own perception of it. We realize how much further we’re getting away from him simultaneously. So various, various saints would say like at the end of their life, you know, oh, I haven’t even begun to repent, you know, or, you know, or I’m afraid, you know, they’re glowing with the uncreated light. And then, and the people there hear him talking and say, you know, oh, he says, he’s, he’s responding to the demons. I don’t have any hope, you know? So these kind of inversions of, of that, this like a simultaneous movement toward God and the sense of moving away because we’re just so, I hate to say repugnant, you know, because of our sins, but it’s our perception of that, right? It’s not saying anything about God’s perception of us. It’s only speaking about our perception of ourselves when we start to really know ourselves in relationship to Christ, you know, and the more we’re able to offer ourselves up freely to Christ, the more we move towards him, but the more we realize how much more work we have to do in offering ourselves up. Yeah. Yeah. And you can see like, you know, you can see how this applies either at lower levels, you know, when you think, you know, when you think of the problem, the politician, you know, the problem of democracy, for example, which is that you end up with like narcissists, you know, because you have to, you have to fight so much to get it, like you have to do everything, you know, and basically to get that position of power, you have to be willing to do anything, lie, do whatever it takes just to get there. Whereas what we really want is something like a reluctant king. Like that’s what we would really want. Someone who we know is the best to be the king, but really he doesn’t want to be the king. And we always have to force like to say, no, you’re the king, you know, like all these stories of the ancient bishops, you know, they go get the monk in the cave and see, say, okay, you’re the bishop. And you would just run away and bring it back. No, no, we do it. We know that you’re the bishop. So that’s what we would want, but it’s a, it’s, yeah, it’s difficult to, yeah, it’s, it’s at the one hand impossible, you know, it just feels impossible. But on the other hand, you know, that it has to be that way. And that’s the, that’s actually the best image of reality. Right. Father Joseph, this was amazing. Like, thank you so much for, for, for this conversation. And, and, and, and, and yeah, and I hope I will see you. I think you’re, you said you’re going to come to the symbolic world summit and so people can, will be able to meet you there. Yeah, that’s my plan. I’ll hopefully get up there. I mean, it’s not that far. I mean, Tarpen Springs, we call it a, a Tarponi Peehee, but it’s, that’s a Greek, because it’s, it’s entirely Greek. Exactly. It’s like the Greek capital of America. I try to get up there once every year or so and my family and walk around the sponge docks and buy some Greek stuff and bring it back to Miami. So, so definitely looking forward to, to, to seeing you again. And thanks for your insight and thank you for your time, Father. Yeah.