Orthodoxy, Mystery, and Mary: A Conversation with Michael Papazian

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This episode explores the Orthodox Christian tradition—and specifically Mary’s place within it—through a warm, curious conversation with philosopher and Orthodox theologian Dr. Michael Papazian. Together we look at how Orthodoxy understands salvation, worship, and church authority, then dive into what that means for honoring Mary.

• What makes Orthodoxy distinct? (spoiler alert: theosis, richly sensory worship, and a decentralized view of church leadership)
• How does Armenian Apostolic faith fit alongside Greek and Russian Orthodoxy—and why did some splits start centuries well before the Great Schism of 1054?
• Who is St. Gregory of Narek—monk, poet, and recent Doctor of the Church—and why do his 95 heart-piercing prayers (“Speaking with God from the Depths of the Heart”) matter today?
• What can Gregory’s Marian theology teach across traditions—about intercession, typology, holiness, and even women’s roles in the church?
• And how do Catholics and Orthodox differ (and overlap) on ideas like the Immaculate Conception?

It’s history without the dust, theology without the tribalism. We even play a quick round of “Which Mary Said It?”

The views expressed on Church Potluck are solely those of the participants and do not represent any organization.

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_01 (00:13):
So you said sabbatical is going well, huh?

SPEAKER_04 (00:17):
It's been going very well.
Yeah.
I've I've been able to focus onmy work, which is good.
And so what does focus on yourwork mean?
Are we are we putting in 14-hourdays?
No.
I did the last my lastsabbatical, my previous
sabbatical.
I mean, one one reason is I'molder now, but also the fact

(00:39):
that I just know more about thetopic now.
I'm more efficient in my work.
So I can put in like four orfive hours a day and I get as
much done as I was doing likeseven years ago.

SPEAKER_01 (00:49):
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 foranother day, but uh uh what is
your maximum brain capacity thatif you worked hard and uh that
that your brain tires out?

SPEAKER_04 (01:02):
Oh, um I I've never actually experienced my brain
tiring out.
Okay.
Um it's more like uh I guess mybody tires out time for a nap or
whatever, but but yeah, butyeah, my brain can go for quite
a while.
Great.
And uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (01:16):
And that's why you are the professor that you are.

SPEAKER_04 (01:18):
Yes, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 (01:19):
Well, welcome everyone to Church Potluck,
where we are serving up asmorgasboard of Christian
Curiosity.
I'm your host, Dale McConkey,sociology professor and retired
United Methodist pastor.
And you know, we say it everyweek.
There are two keys to a goodchurch potluck: plenty of
variety and engagingconversation.
And that's exactly what we tryto do here at Church Potluck.

(01:42):
We sit down with friends andshare our ideas on a variety of
topics from a variety ofacademic disciplines and a
variety of Christian traditions.
And today we have opted to gowith quality instead of
quantity.
We have Dr.
Michael Papasian.

(02:04):
It's just you and me today, sir.
And by the quality, I meant you.
Not me.

SPEAKER_04 (02:10):
It's the synergy.
There you go.

SPEAKER_01 (02:12):
There you go.
And uh you've got one of thosefancy titles in front of your uh
name as well, right?
You don't you don't have like auh a Smith professor or Reed
professor or Nichols professor?

SPEAKER_04 (02:23):
If President Um Sumder is listening, here's your
chance.
You can give me a title if youwant.
But no, I don't need titles.
I'm fine.
Well in fact, don't even call meprofessor.
What does it really mean?
Well, I'll tell you what we callyou behind your back.

SPEAKER_01 (02:35):
So call me that instead.
That's what I've always told mystudents.
I said, you can call me Dale, oryou can come.
I said, but just whatever youcall me in my face, please use
that behind my back as well.
And that's that's that's been mymy only principle.

SPEAKER_04 (02:47):
I mean, titles don't really mean anything anyway.
So yeah.
Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 (02:49):
Well, you don't seem like that kind of a person, but
your career I'm actually I'mshocked.
I kind of assume that you did.
That's why I brought it up inthe first place.
Because you know, obviously youhave had a very stellar career
in all facets, but you arecertainly one of our pinnacle
scholars uh here at here atBarrie College, and that's uh
that's a big deal.
Trevor Burrus, Jr.
Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 (03:08):
That's quite a compliment given how great our
colleagues all of our colleaguesare.
Yes.
I mean, that's that's yeah,because yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (03:14):
Absolutely true.
And uh we're here to talk aboutyour research a little bit
today.
But we're gonna we're gonna, inmy mind, do kind of a a funnel
of orthodoxy.
So you you yourself are are arelet me let me try that again.
Right, yeah.
Look at all those vowels.
You are an Armenian Orthodox.
Those are lots of tonguetwister, isn't it?
Yes, that is a bit of a tonguetwister, but but so and so I

(03:37):
thought we would start off and Iwant to do more episodes on this
because people have expressedfascination on the few things
that you have mentioned inprevious podcasts.
So I want to start off todayjust talking about orthodoxy in
general.
Uh what is it for our audienceto learn a little bit more
there?
And then your particulartradition, Armenian Orthodoxy.
Sure.
And then a guy that you seem tobe kind of fond of within the

(03:59):
tradition, Gregory of Norik.
Right.
And then specifically yourdissertation, not your
dissertation research, you're alittle bit past that.
Your your sabbatical research.
Yeah.
Specifically, what is it thatGregory of Norik said about the
Virgin Mary and why are youcurious about that?
So I'm I'm that's a we can dothat.
Yeah, that sounds that soundslike a tremendous amount of fun.

(04:20):
And let's sort of start off.
We here in the United States, wetend to think of Christianity as
Protestantism and Catholicism.
And there's this other verymajor strand all throughout the
world that we don't totallyignore it, but we don't it
doesn't get much attention inthe United States.
And it's a and I find it to be avery important tradition.

(04:40):
And increasingly, I becomefascinated, very intrigued by
orthodoxy in general.
So let's just get started.
If you had to give an elevatorspeech, what is what
distinguishes orthodoxy?
I keep on I keep on using thatphrase elevator speech.
I just need to call it if youhad to give a potluck speech.
Potluck speech.

SPEAKER_04 (04:57):
A potluck speech could last for a while.
I mean, it could be the whole itcould be like the keynote
address at the potluck if theydo that.

SPEAKER_01 (05:02):
Well, we have to be careful about that.
But just uh if you're sittingdown at the table and someone
says, Oh, what is what isorthodoxy?
What would you tell them?

SPEAKER_04 (05:10):
Yeah.
Okay, so yeah, I mean the shortanswer is uh uh that uh what
happened was that there overtime, you know, when the church
uh started, there was just onechurch.
It was the church of JesusChrist.
And uh I mean there still isjust one church.
Uh we can get to that later ifyou want.

SPEAKER_01 (05:25):
Well, that's an important point.
Yeah, that that's very much anorthodox way of thinking, right?
Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (05:30):
I mean, I I I I differ a little bit on how uh on
how I frame that from otherorthodox, so we can talk about
that later if you want to.
But the idea is that, you know,over time, uh culturally,
politically, theologically, allsorts of things happened, and
the churches in the differentregions of the world began to
sort of um you know move awayfrom each other.

(05:50):
There was a lot ofmisinformation and uh lack of
communication.
Some of it was linguistic,because in the eastern part of
the Roman Empire, the learnedlanguage was Greek.
There were some other languagestoo, like Armenian.
We can get to that later, butright now let's just keep things
simple.
So, yeah, the Greek East.
Too late for that already.
Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm almost donewith this.
And then Latin, let's just sayGreek in the East, Latin in the

(06:13):
West.
I I see a long elevator ridehere.
But just think about, you know,they're talking different
languages, they're readingdifferent theologians.
In the West, they're readingAugustine, and the in the east,
they're reading Gregory ofNazianzis, who, you know,
whatever.
And they just over andculturally and politically there
were issues too.
And gradually the two churchesjust split apart.

SPEAKER_01 (06:32):
The distinction between the what was now the the
big split that we all know aboutwas in around 1000, 1054.

SPEAKER_04 (06:38):
But there were some earlier.
So the way I usually think aboutit is let's talk about not so
much about orthodoxy, butEastern Christianity.
Okay.
And there are Eastern ChristianChristian world is actually
quite diverse.
And it's all kind of orthodox, Iguess, but there are differences
between them.
But in any event, that that'sthat's what happened.
So yeah, that that was theschism that sort of separated
the uh the Western and theEastern churches.

(07:00):
And Orthodoxy is the what is thedescendant of that uh Eastern
Church today.

SPEAKER_01 (07:06):
Aaron Ross Powell And so theologically speaking,
if if someone said, tell us if Iwent if I was to s speak to uh
an Orthodox theologian, whatwould feel different than if I
talked to a Protestant or aCatholic theologian?
Would would there be anyspecific difference that I
really notice right away?

SPEAKER_04 (07:22):
Aaron Ross Powell A lot of it is more about
emphasis.
And uh so for example, inthere's a basic idea in
Orthodoxy.
It's it's in the West too, wehave it, but it's more prominent
in Orthodox theology.
And it's in Greek the word forit is theosis.

SPEAKER_01 (07:38):
This is this is a very key point that I that was
one of the main reasons I'm sointrigued by orthodoxy.

SPEAKER_04 (07:44):
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 (08:07):
Probably from many Protestant perspectives that
that that's really creeping upon blasphemy because there's
such a distinction, God issovereign and we are not, and so
there's a very big uh gulfthere.
And like I said, I I definitelywant to have a much longer
conversation about this in thefuture, but that really does
shift the way that like thecrucifixion is understood
because of that, correct?

SPEAKER_04 (08:28):
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah.
So it's not just so much, it'snot so much just about it's not
that Jesus didn't save us fromour sins.
He did.
We are sinners and we needsalvation 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 thispackage from of Christianity
than just being saved, becausethat's great.
That's a wonderful gift.

(08:49):
But wouldn't you want to shareeternity with God?
And so you you become almostlike God, right?
So I I originally I said webecome gods, but you sometimes
they hedge their bets a littlebit and say, we become
divinized.
We we now have a glorified body,not the current body that is
diseased and corrupt, but wehave this glorious body that is

(09:09):
more godlike.

SPEAKER_01 (09:10):
Aaron Powell This is the interesting thing that I
find about this concept oftheosis is that it's in there in
the way Protestants talk interms of glorification.
Aaron Ross Powell SanctificationAnd sanctification, thank you
very much.
That's more common in the West.
That is a big old Wesleyan term,right?
Sanctification is really big inmy tradition.
But then the idea ofglorification, and in the very

(09:30):
beginning, we were created inthe image of God, right?
Yes.
And and our sin has sulliedthat, but the whole goal is to
be restored back into thatimage.
And if you are in the image ofGod, I I feel very uncomfortable
saying we become godlike.
But that's kind of what Yeah,that is.

SPEAKER_04 (09:48):
It is it's in a way, you know, when we say we become
gods, that's sort of like meantto almost be to shock people.
But it it's essentially, as yousaid, it is to restore the
original pristine image of Godthat 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 theosisprocess happening impossible
here on earth, or is itsomething that happens in the
hereafter?

SPEAKER_04 (10:16):
Yeah, sure, sure.
In fact, that's what uh thesaints, you know, the people who
are living these holy, piouslives are working on that.
That's uh that's uh somethingthat 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 weshould know about, just as a
starting uh little starter kithere.

SPEAKER_04 (10:41):
The more sort of mundane issues between uh the
Catholics and the Orthodoxcurrently center predominantly
on the papacy and the role ofthe Pope.
So Orthodox recognize the Popeas the Bishop of Rome, as one of
the patriarchs, the leaders ofthe church on earth.
Uh, and Orthodox will oftenspeak of the uh bishop of Rome

(11:05):
as having a kind of a primacy,because Rome was the major
center of political power.
Uh, we sometimes talk about theassociation between Rome and
Peter, the chief of theapostles.
So there's a sense in which Romehas a kind of primacy, but it
doesn't have this kind ofjurisdictional authority over

(11:26):
the entire church that hasdeveloped over time in the
Western Catholic understanding.
Um, so uh so that's one of themajor stumbling blocks in terms
of the path towards union, whichOrthodox 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 oftried 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 ofa 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 ourlisteners are familiar with the
Anglican tradition, but in theAnglican tradition you have all
these bishops that kind of havepurview in different regions of
the world, but then there's thearchbishop in England who is
kind of seen as first amongequals.

(12:18):
Yeah.
And so would there be that kindof sense that the that the the
Pope has a bit of a primacy, asyou said, and there's there's an
acknowledgement of the specialrole that the Pope plays.
Yeah.
But there but the Pope is notthis only leader, there are
these other regional leaders aswell 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 thein, you know, in a in an ideal
situation, if if we were uhunited again under the Orthodox
understanding, the Pope wouldhave kind of like uh the ability
to judge disputes betweendifferent churches.
So if there's some like, forexample, if the church in Egypt,
you know, has some sort ofconflict with the church in
wherever Greece, then the Popewould uh adjudicate, would

(12:56):
decide.
That would be the the extent ofhis uh authority.

SPEAKER_01 (13:01):
Well, that's a a nice little primer.
Yeah.
Uh lots of other very quicklytell us about uh one one more
thing.
Just tell us about the role oficons in the liturgy and just
the the richness of worship andthe 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 uhconcrete faith.
And and that's a reflection ofthe incarnation, which is very
important, right?
So and and all Christians sharethis.
We believe that you know thatGod became man, that the word
became flesh.
He uh Jesus was a true humanbeing with a body like ours.

(13:34):
And so uh we come to know Godthrough the physical, through
the material, through oursenses.
So it's a it's a it's a verysort of, you know, the church is
supposed to use all thedifferent images, the beauty uh
of art and music to bringpeople'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'sa lot of smells in the incense,
you know, during the divineliturgy, which is um what the
Catholics call the Mass usuallyin the uh Eastern Church is
usually called the DivineLiturgy.
Liturgy means public work, soit's a public prayer.
And uh in my tradition, we callit the holy sacrifice, because

(14:19):
of course it is the central act,is the sacrament of the
Eucharist, uh the communion,holy communion.
But in any event, the idea isthat you've got the artwork.
And so a great contrast is go touh, you know, if people have
been in the uh college chapelhere, I haven't seen any
pictures.
You know, you go in, it's blandfrom all sorts of things.

SPEAKER_01 (14:39):
It's not as austere as some of the more Calvinist
traditions, Presbyterian, but itis close.
Yeah.
Even for anEpiscopalian-inspired chapel,
you're right.
It is kind of stripped of its uhornateness.

SPEAKER_04 (14:52):
So for an Orthodox, that's quite uh when you walk
into a house of worship likethat, that's kind of jarring,
right?
Whereas if you go some Orthodoxchurches I've been in, it's like
there's paintings all over.
Every wall is covered with likeimages of the crucifixion, of
the Virgin Mary, of the saints.
And you just get and and I canimagine coming from, let's say,
a more like Calvinist tradition,going into an you I think you

(15:15):
would just be like reallyoverwhelmed with uh with all the
imagery and all of the artworkthat's around you.

SPEAKER_01 (15:22):
So it's interesting.
In one tradition, you kind ofstrip all the ornamentation so
you are focused on God and Godalone.
Where the other one, theornamentation, the icons, the
decor is to fill the senses withthe 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 throughJesus, who is a physical man.
So so that's a reflection ofthat 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 saidthat you know the Eastern
Christian world is is a littlebit more diverse than just so we
normally talk about um theEastern Orthodox, but there's
more than just EasternOrthodoxy.
Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 (16:06):
And Eastern Orthodox would be some of the biggest
names we recognize, right?
The Greek Orthodox, the RussianOrthodox.

SPEAKER_04 (16:11):
Trevor Burrus, Jr.
Yeah, Antiochian, Serbian,Romanian, and so on.
These are the Eastern Orthodoxchurches.
And the reason why there's adifferent Orthodoxy that's now
called Oriental Orthodoxy.
Oriental is just another way ofsaying Eastern, so it's really
just another word, but it's away of distinguishing uh the
Eastern from the Oriental in thesense that what had happened was

(16:32):
that there were disputes aboutChrist and Christ's nature in uh
in the um in the East primarily.
And uh there were questions, soso there were some Christians
there uh called Nestorians,they're followers of the
patriarch of Constantinople, uh,whose name was Nestorius.
And essentially Nestorius taughtthat there were two Christs,

(16:53):
like there is the divine Christand the human Jesus.
And they're they're like twopersons that were somehow
associated with each other.
And that was viewed as a kind oftwo beings in the one body.
Two beings in one body, yeah.
Yeah.
And that was considered a heresybecause unless there was just
one Jesus, we can't be saved.

(17:14):
I mean, if there's if there's agap within the person of Christ,
or he's two persons, thenthere's a human Jesus.
But how does the human Jesusconnect to the divine?
And if the human Jesus can'tconnect to the divine Jesus,
then how does humanity connectto divinity?
Right.
So that was considered to be a aa dead end.
It does not allow for salvation,uh, right.

(17:35):
So so a lot a lot uh Nestoriuswas condemned at a council that
was held in Ephesus, which isnow on the western coast of
Turkey.
This was in 431 A.D.
And uh the doctrine that wastaught there is that uh no,
there's just one person ofChrist, and whatever you can say

(17:55):
about the human Jesus, you canalso 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 callMary the mother of God, right?
Because she gave birth to Jesus.
Jesus is God.
Ergo.
A little bit of logic there foryou.

(18:16):
Your formal logic class wouldtell you that you could make
that connection, yes.
Therefore, she's the mother ofGod.
And now Nestorius thought thatwas wrong.
It was wrong because a womancannot be the mother of God.
I mean, God has no mother,right?
So God is not born, right?
So anyway, so but that wassettled at Ephesus.
But then a few years later,another council was held called
the Council of Chalcedon.
That was in 451, I believe.

(18:38):
And at Chalcedon, there was sortof an attempt to kind of uh
maybe reach out to theNestorians, uh, whatever.
But anyway, the the doctrinethat was um espoused at
Chalcedon is what's called thetwo-nature Christology.
So there's one person, Jesus,but he has two natures, human
and divine.
Okay.

(18:58):
And most Christians acceptedthat.
So today the Eastern Orthodox,like the Greeks and the
Russians, uh, and the Catholics,and I think most Protestants
accept that Chalcedoniantwo-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 ofthe church, right?
Yeah.
Now the Armenian Church was notpresent at that council.

SPEAKER_04 (19:19):
They had no bishops there because they were actually
engaged in a war against Persiaat the time.
The Persians were trying to, thePersians were, um, their
religion was Zoroastrianism, andthey were trying to impose
Zoroastrianism on the ArmenianChristians.
Which is a very dualistic kindof uh faith, right?
Yeah, in fact, that's animportant point.
It's dualistic in the sense thatyeah, there's a good God and an
evil God.
And and and you can see why theArmenians they're, you know,

(19:42):
they're they're uh they get kindof nervous when people get
dualistic.
Yes.
And they thought of Chalcedon askind of dualistic.
They're two natures, right?
But there's only one nature ofChrist, isn't there?
And that nature is both divineand human.
It's mysterious how that can bethat one nature can be both
divine and human, but it is.
And so they eventually, notright away, right?

(20:03):
So other Christians, uh mostlyin Egypt, the Coptic Christians
that we might be, you might hearabout today, uh, that who live
in Egypt and and outside Egypttoo.
Uh there's actually a Copticchurch right here in outside
Atlanta in Roswell.
Uh, but anyway, they they uhalong with many of the Syrian
Christians uh objected toChalcedon and said that we uh we

(20:26):
are going to adhere to what theyconsidered to be the earlier
one-nature view of Christ.
And the Armenians kind of, youknow, at first they kind of were
not, you know, did not getinvolved, but later on they
joined with the Copts and theSyriacs, and they formed and the
Ethiopians too.
And there's an Indian OrthodoxChurch that uh traces itself
back to St.
Thomas because of the traditionthat Saint Thomas, the doubting

(20:49):
Thomas, was the apostle to theIndians, the first person to
bring Christianity to India.
Uh anyway, those churchcommunities formed what are now
called the Oriental Orthodox.
So there is this schism thatstarted in the fifth century
between the Eastern OrthodoxChalcedonian Christians and the
Oriental Orthodoxnon-Chalcedonian Christians, uh,
and the Armenians belong to thatOriental Orthodox uh and that's

(21:13):
that's the tradition I I uhbelong to.

SPEAKER_01 (21:15):
So just a little side note, it's interesting.
So you as a group still use theterm Oriental, even though using
the term Oriental to refer tothings Asian is has fallen out
of fashion, you know, culturallyin the United States, but your
tradition still will refers toyourselves as Oriental Aaron.

SPEAKER_04 (21:34):
Actually, we tend to not to.
I don't even know who startedthat terminology.
I mean, I think it's fairlyrecently.
Okay.
And um because they wanted torecognize 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 Greekmeans one nature.
But given the ecumenical spiritthat has prevailed uh among the

(21:56):
churches, it was decided that uhthese are Orthodox, Armenians
are Orthodox, you know, and sobut they're not Eastern Orthodox
because they're notChalcedonians.
So let's just use another word,Oriental.
We tend not to call ourselvesthat much Oriental Orthodox, but
that's the term that's and Inoticed that, I mean, I listen
to a lot of Catholic podcastsand all, and that, and and um

(22:16):
they're familiar with thatterminology and the really good
theological podcasts that areout there.
They'll routinely use the wordOriental Orthodox.
Uh so that term is out there,and it's generally used, though,
by people outside, more peopleoutside of my church than not.
We'll just call ourselves weactually call ourselves Armenian
apostolic.
We don't often call ourselvesOrthodox, although we do uh

(22:39):
sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 (22:39):
And that's just for the outside audience uh to help
us.
Yeah, we'll just categorizeapostolic.

SPEAKER_04 (22:45):
I mean, apostolic means that we can trace
ourselves back to the originalapostles of uh of Christ, right?
So the tradition is that two ofChrist's apostles, uh Thaddeus
and Bartholomew, uh, went toArmenia.
They were martyred there, butthey were the first to bring the
gospel to Armenia.
So that's why we call ourselvesapostolic.
But there's a recognition thatwe're part of this Orthodox

(23:06):
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 ofthe Orthodox tradition breaking
off in the great schism of 1054,great schism of 1054, your
tradition and the associatedtraditions really were more five
almost 500 years before that,even before in the more around

(23:31):
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 thingsbecause sometimes they say it
was in the mid-middle seventhcenturies, around 651, that the
Armenian Church had a council inwhich they they ratified the
non-Calcedonian Christology.
But even after that, they werestill um in commu having taking
communion in Greek Orthodoxchurches.

(23:53):
So the there isn't like one dateyou can give, like, okay, this
is when everyone recognized as adifferent church.
The people at the time thoughtthis is gonna blow over.
Okay, this is a dispute thatwe're having, but you know, give
it a couple of years and we'llbe back together.
That didn't happen, right?
But uh, but that was the waypeople thought.
So the idea that, oh, we're awhole new church now, I don't

(24:14):
think that's the way people arethinking in the sixth century.
It just gradually opened time,the I the gelled, this idea that
no, we actually are a differentchurch with our own bishops.
And yeah, so because that'swhere 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 findconnection.
I'm actually gonna maybe go toan Orthodox uh church this this
weekend in America, uh OrthodoxChurch of America.
Uh now is that something wherewhere I would be able to partake
in communion, or do you have tobe a member of the Orthodox

(24:49):
Church typically to be incommunion?

SPEAKER_04 (24:51):
Yeah, the Orthodox are are kind of really strict
about this, that uh you do haveto be Orthodox to uh receive
communion.
And uh so uh yeah, yeah, so thatis uh the general policy.
There they're even stricter thanthe Catholics on this.
And is that right?
Yeah, interesting.
Because Catholics will allowOrthodox to receive communion if
they don't have any Orthodoxchurches available to them.

SPEAKER_01 (25:11):
Very cool.
Well, all that is veryinteresting.
We've checked off another uhlayer of the funnel here, and
again, more to come in futureepisodes, I hope, because I find
it fascinating.
But now you seem to beparticularly fascinated by a
particular monk in yourtradition.
This Gregory of Narik.
I know you've been focused onhim for quite a while now.
And so tell us a little bitabout this guy.

SPEAKER_04 (25:32):
Yeah, so uh this is um he lived in the 10th century.
So uh we're talking now aboutthis 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 isdeveloping its own identity.
And the 10th century is kind ofan interesting century for
Armenians because it wasrelatively peaceful.
Uh, most centuries, you know, wewe've had to endure invasions
and wars and all, but theArmenians began to have a little
bit of more autonomy and freedomuh to develop, and the church

(26:06):
was allowed to um it was gainmore freedom than it had before.
Uh, so there was this effort toreform the church, to uh revive
the spiritual traditions of thepast.
And so monasteries, newmonasteries were founded.
And one of the monasteries thatwas founded was in the city of
Nodek.
This is in what is nowsoutheastern Turkey.

(26:29):
Okay.
And so uh it's uh on the shoresof a big lake, Lake Vaughn,
right?
Uh in Turkey now.
Is it still there in any form?
Uh there's well, there areruins.
Apparently, uh I've been in thearea, I didn't go to Nadik, but
um the reports I've heard isthat um the monastery was
dismantled and a mosque wasbuilt in its place, right?

(26:50):
Because there is no um, this isthe legacy of the there's no
Armenians living there anymore,because the um uh there was
during the um early 20th centuryuh the Ottoman government uh had
a started a genocide against uhnot just the Armenians but the
other Christian minorities inTurkey.
So that there is essentially noArmenian presence anymore.

(27:10):
And the Turkish government isnot particularly interested in
uh maintaining any evidence ofour Armenian population there.
So they will deliberatelydismantle or destroy any
evidence of Christianity in thatregion of the world.
Uh so uh if you were to go therenow, yeah, you mostly would just
see ruins, uh, nothing, no verylittle intact, with one

(27:31):
exception.
There's a cathedral that,because it's a tourist location
very uh on an island in the inLake Vaughn, that the uh Turkish
government has uh maintained.
But other than that, they're notparticularly interested in
maintaining any evidence of anArmenian population there.
Gotcha.
But but in any event, themonastery was uh established
there, and in the middle of the10th century, there was uh St.

(27:55):
Gregory was uh he was born orprobably around 945, let's say,
we don't know exactly.
But his his father, who after hewas widowed, became a bishop and
was also a theologian.
In fact, I'm reading some of hiswritings right now.
His father uh had decided to,after his wife had passed away,

(28:16):
to uh Gregory had just beenborn.
I mean, may it's quite possiblethat his mother died in
childbirth, having uh having haduh Gregory, uh, decided to
dedicate him and his olderbrother to this new monastery.
So they weren't monks yet, butthey were put in the care, like
a foster care of the monastery.

(28:37):
And then eventually both of thebrothers grew up to take their
monastic vows and to becomepriests too.
So Gregory became a monk and apriest.
And almost even when he was inhis twenties, he was recognized
as having these really greatspiritual uh gifts and literary,

(28:58):
too, that he was a great writer.
Uh he was commissioned by anArmenian prince to write a
commentary on the Song of Songs.
And that's his earliest extantwriting that we have that uh
that it's still it's beentranslated, 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 viewof the early Christians.
The Song of Songs is anallegory, and it is, of course,
as if you don't if people don'tknow, this this is a work in the
Bible that's actually it's inthe Old Testament.
It's it's actually romanticpoetry.
Yeah, right?

(29:36):
It's it's a love song and avery, very, you know, there's
some steamy parts in there, youknow.
Yeah, yeah.
Using using get embarrassedreading it.

SPEAKER_01 (29:44):
Using allusions that don't really uh match our our
contemporary uh metaphors, butso 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 Biblethat's not specifically about
God?
Uh it was a problem for theJews.
And in Judaism, theinterpretation was that this is
it's there because it should bein the Bible, uh, because uh
it's it's an allegory aboutGod's love for Israel, that uh
God loves Israel the same way aman loves uh his wife or a woman

(30:15):
that he's uh uh enamored of,right?
That that's how strong the loveis.
Erotic love is the strongestattachment that we can
experience, and that's how muchGod loves us, even more.

SPEAKER_01 (30:25):
There's just a tremendous amount of yearning
and desire of reconnecting uhwith his love.
Yeah.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (30:31):
And the Christians picked up on with him.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Christians picked up on this andthey 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 actuallythis this sort of gets into the
uh what I was talking earlyabout the incarnational nature
of Orthodox theology, right?

(30:51):
So you we tend to sort of uhdistinguish between the
physical, the sensuous, and thespiritual, right?
But in if there's one Christ whois both, you know, uh God and
man, right, then then in fact,erotic love, physical love, is

(31:11):
really, you know, just a maybe alower manifestation of that
higher spiritual love.
It's not that there's like likethere's distinction between the
two, but you we can talk abouterotic love as a way of
understanding God's love.
Yeah.
And so that's that's how Gregoryinterprets 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 earthlysensuality, but Eros, there, uh
you you summarized it verynicely, which is kind of also it
wouldn't have been a big dealduring Gregory's time.
This is also a very big pushbackagainst 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, youknow, his monastery was involved
against them, you know, againstthese uh essentially Gnostic
type Christians who were denyingthe physical and denying the
body of something that is good.
So I think that one of thereasons why he was asked to

(32:10):
write a commentary on the songwas essentially to push back
against Gnostic trends.
Yeah, because they never goaway, right?
The there's still Gnosticismaround, and there was in his own
day.
There were, we know this, weknow that there were heretical
movements that were opposed tothe Orthodox Church in Armenia
and other parts of uh of theworld at that time.

SPEAKER_01 (32:31):
Now, are my background sources by that I
mean ChatGPT?
Are is it accurate that GGregory was well known for just
kind of fusing the this cosmicworldview and very, very meta uh
understanding of the world, butalso very personal at the same
time.
Yeah.
And so is that something thathe's well known for?

SPEAKER_04 (32:51):
Yeah, yeah.
So so what he's most well knownfor is a series of prayers, a
prayer book that he wrote overthe over his lifetime and which
he compiled and uh put togetherjust prior to his death.
He died a little bit after athousand, so a thousand and
three, I think, is usually thedate that's given.
And it's given different titles.

(33:12):
Um sometimes it's called theBook of Lamentation, but it's
more commonly also known asspeaking 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, isprobably a more accurate
translation uh accurate title.
Uh I mean there is a lot oflamentation in it because he's
confessing sins and he'slamenting 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 knownfor for very humble and he's
he's uh his awareness, eventhough he comes from this
tradition that really emphasizestheosis, 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 torecognize your own sins and to
confess them, right?
And to try to to seek God'sforgiveness, right?
So that contrition is veryimportant to him.
And so it's a series of 95prayers, and they have really

(34:14):
been they're considered like asecond Bible by Armenians.
Most uh, you know, if you go toan Armenian household, they'll
if they have the Bible, they'llalso have what that they it's
now called the Nodic, right?
I mean, it's so associated withhim and his monastery that just
people just refer to it as theNodic, this but this book of
prayers.
And it's supposed to have greathealing powers.

(34:35):
Very I even people I know haveuh who are really very sick, you
know, have have used the prayerand have been have been healed
almost like miraculously.
There are stories about this.
So so it has a very it has avery important place in Armenian
spirituality and and and uh inour culture too.

(34:56):
He's considered to be ourgreatest poet as well.
I mean, his his writing is Imean, he he sort of transforms
the language, he invents newwords, he uses alliteration on
all sorts all different kinds ofpoetic devices.
So he's recognized as a literarygenius 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 ofphrase.
He's been compared to Dante.
He's been, yeah, so yeah.
And just a complete coincidencethat 95 prayers, 95 theses of
Martin Luther.

SPEAKER_04 (35:32):
Yeah, that's a good point, right?
There must be a connection theresomehow.
Okay.

SPEAKER_01 (35:36):
I was gonna I don't know, but I don't know.
Well, the very interesting thingabout him recently, and recently
by the you know, within the lastdecade, is that the Catholic
Church has recognized him.
We've we talked about this on aprevious podcast, but it's kind
of fascinating that the CatholicChurch has reached out and
acknowledged this Orthodox monkas a saint.

(35:57):
No, no, I'm sorry, not as asaint, but as a doctor.

SPEAKER_04 (35:59):
As both, right.
So to be a doctor, you have tobe a saint.
So yeah, yeah.
I mean, that this is why this ishow I got into this.
To be a doctor, you have to be asaint?
That that that's not been myexperience.
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 ofthe 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 uhjust recently announced that
he's going to name Cardinal JohnHenry Newman, who actually is a
convert from Anglicanism toCatholicism.

(36:34):
On November 1st, he is going toformally declare Cardinal Newman
uh doctor of the church.
He's already a saint.
But in any event, we have 38.
Doctor means teacher, and sothere are these important
figures in Catholic history whohave written important works and

(36:54):
have influenced uh the teachingsof the church and are kind of
authoritative.
So Saint Augustine is a doctor,Saint Thomas Aquinas is a
doctor.
We also have some women doctorsnow.
Uh so uh Saint Catherine ofSiena, Saint Teresa of Avila, uh
Saint Hildegard of Bingen, uhthey're all considered doctors

(37:15):
of the church, these eminentteachers.
And so what was extraordinary,and I think it was one of the
most extraordinary things thathas happened in recent history,
in church history in any event,is that in 2015 Pope Francis
formally named Saint Gregory ofNodic a doctor of the church.
Now, just kind of explain thecomplications.
We've talked about EasternChristianity before.
And so all of the EasternChristian communions, like the

(37:37):
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, mygrandmother on my mother's side
was raised Armenian Catholic,and I have many Armenian
Catholic uh families on mymother's side of the family.
These are Armenians who havemaintained the liturgy of the

(38:00):
Armenian Church, so ourtraditional divine liturgy and
our other traditions, butrecognize the Pope as the
supreme head of the uh of thechurch.
So they're Catholic, they're infull communion with the Catholic
Church, but there are ArmenianCatholic churches that uh uh
follow the Armenian Rite, as wesay.

(38:21):
Okay.
And then there are the ByzantineRite, too, there are Ukrainian
Catholics who also follow theEastern Ukrainian, the Byzantine
Rite.
So so this is uh there are quitea few of these.
So it's not people when you talkabout being Catholic or Roman
Catholic, you usually thinkabout the Latin Church, but
there's more to the CatholicChurch than just the uh uh the

(38:42):
Latin Church.
Uh so and so the ArmenianCatholics have always had a
strong uh bond with SaintGregory.
And so he already was recognizedas a saint in the Catholic
Church prior to Francis naminghim a doctor.
But what had happened was, and Idid some research in my first

(39:02):
book, I got into this, uh, isthat um po uh the pre uh
previous Pope John Paul II hadin a number of his writings and
encyclicals.
These are these areauthoritative 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 Idon'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 notnecessarily this is from God and
not able to be disputed in anyway.

SPEAKER_04 (39:36):
Yeah, I think there have only been two so far ex
cathedra pronouncements thathave been declared ex cathedra,
and those those both both dealwith Mary, uh both the doctrine
of the Immaculate Conception andthen the assumption so far.
But in any event, in John Paul'swritings, he mentions Saint
Gregory of Nodic as a veryimportant Armenian.
He even calls him a doctor,right?

(39:57):
He calls him an Armenian doctor,and uh and also he refers to him
as is Mary, his writings aboutMary as especially uh valuable.
So that got the ball rolling,where some Armenian Catholic
bishops decided to petition theVatican and ask them to declare

(40:17):
St.
Gregory of Nodek a uh a saint.
Since if St.
John Paul, or he's now a sainttoo, John Paul uh is if if John
Paul likes him, then why not?
Maybe he's he might havesomething valuable to say to the
entire church, not just to theArmenians, right?
Because up to now the only theArmenians really knew about him.
And he he was very important inthe Armenian tradition, but you

(40:38):
know, outside of that,relatively unknown.
And so that started uh in the Iguess was the 1990s, and then it
had to go through two Vaticancommittees.
So this is like going viralbefore going viral was a thing.
Yeah, it wasn't like Francisjust decided when he just woke
up one morning and said, Let'sname St.
Gregory of Nodic.
No, this was going on for uh uhdecades, and both committees

(41:00):
said, Hey, this guy's reallygood.
He's Orthodox, he's very pious,his writings are tremendous,
right?
So they were both extremelyimpressed, and so they they gave
their recommendation to thePope.
And then finally, uh Francis in2015 formally declared um Saint
Gregory a doctor of the church.
And the reason why that'simportant is because here we

(41:21):
have someone who it's hard tosay.
I mean, he's Armenian Orthodox,but he's also venerated by
Armenian Catholics, so he'sactually both Catholic and I
mean he's he's in heaven, okay.
And and so we have at least onesaint in heaven who's both
Orthodox and Catholic after theschism between our two churches,

(41:42):
yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (41:42):
Um which is makes him a a great icon or a great
exemplar of kind of what yourlife's ambitions and life work
has been.

SPEAKER_04 (41:51):
Right.
So he's a symbol of the unity ofthe church that in heaven these
distinctions don't mean anythingbecause he belongs to everybody.
To the church universal, to thechurch universal.
Yeah, and that's why when I saidearlier there's only one church,
yeah, that's what that means.
Yeah, there's only one church,right?
It just so happens as bothOrthodox and Catholic, and I may

(42:11):
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 sistersin Christ, right?
Let's act like it.
You know, I wish we didsometimes.
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 bookabout this.
I I shouldn't use the royal we.
I mean, I I because Pope Francisgave me a gift.
I mean, he he made he named hima doctor.

(42:35):
Now there needs to be, I mean,already people and great
scholars, greater scholars thanI have done translations and
studies of him.
But we need a book to introducethe world in English.
English is almost the universallanguage, uh, that would
introduce someone who's they'venever heard of St.
Gregory.
You know, you might be Catholicand you just heard about what
Pope Francis did and want toknow more about that.

(42:56):
So I I wrote this book.
I did this on my last sabbaticalin 2017.
Uh, wrote the book and then gotit published.
It was published by LiturgicalPress, uh, which is a great
publishing house uh based inMinnesota.
It's Benedictine, it'sassociated with the St.
John's Abbey and um anduniversity out there.
And they have and they'vepublished a lot of books, great

(43:17):
books on monasticism andspirituality.
And so they published it in2019.
Um review did pretty well.
It actually won two awards.
Can I say that?
Uh yeah, the Catholic PressAssociation named it as it was
second place in in the categoryof history of theology in uh

(43:37):
2020.
Very cool.
Very cool.
I I didn't expect that tohappen, so I was very happy.

SPEAKER_01 (43:42):
That's that's truly an amazing accomplishment.
And hence why I was so surprisedthat you don't have a title in
front of your title.
And that brings us to yourcurrent sabbatical.
Yes.
Uh you've done all thisbackground on Gregory, and now
you're you're going into a verymore specific topic within this
topic of Gregory, specificallyabout her uh his writings on the

(44:05):
Mary.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (44:05):
Yeah.
So so what have a uh uh so oneof the chapters in my previous
book uh was focused on Gregory'swork on Mary, but it was it was,
you know, in a one chapter in abook was not enough, uh,
especially given that, you know,as I mentioned, Pope John Paul
had really highlighted theMarian prayers and devotion of
Gregory.
So I thought we really need abook that would focus on that

(44:28):
aspect of his uh work uh and hiswritings.
And uh uh it turns out also thatthere are some uh uh interesting
controversies that we can getinto.
Like the uh apparently earlierthis year, some YouTube
YouTubers were these uh whatevertheological YouTubers were
discussing my book, my firstbook, uh uh dealing with the

(44:48):
controversy of the doctrine ofthe Immaculate Conception, which
for those uh in our audience whodon't know, this is a Catholic
doctrine that Mary was born freefrom the stain of original sin,
right?
So that's what the ImmaculateConception means.

SPEAKER_01 (45:05):
Which is a very unusual thing for Protestants to
hear because we think of Jesusas 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 thanJesus, has sin, then didn't Mary
have sin.
Now, interestingly enough, theOrthodox believe that Mary was
sinless too, but they have notaccepted the doctrine of the
Immaculate Conception, right?
And there are complicatedreasons for this.
But in any event, the uh uhthese guys were arguing about,

(45:31):
you know, the Catholics weresaying Gregory saying Gregory
would believed in the ImmaculateConception is clear now that and
others saying, no, no, you'remisreading him.
I mean, this wasn't the reasonwhy I wanted to write it, but
clearly there's an interest init in this question.
Did he?
Hey, if your book becomes aYouTube debate, of course it be
it calls for a follow-up.
Yeah, so obviously, yeah, yougotta go where the the uh where

(45:53):
the debate where thecontroversies are.
There you go.
So I mean I don't want to makeit controversial, but part of
the book will deal with thisquestion about uh to what extent
Gregory or any of the otherEastern fathers or or
theologians adopted the view,the current view of the
Immaculate Conception.
But I'll get into the other whatI'm doing is I'm I'm looking at
all he has a lot of prayersspecifically, and I know uh for

(46:15):
Protestants this might be anissue that some of his prayers
are addressed to the VirginMary.
We in the we Orthodox pray toMary and the other saints, too,
as the Catholics do, asintercessors.
And I know I've had uhdiscussions with some
Protestants who have uh had uhsaid this this is not biblical.
And I always say it is, becauseit's in the Gospel of John,
right, the wedding at Cana.

(46:36):
And uh who do who is the one whoconvinces Jesus to turn the, you
know, to turn the water into awine?
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?

(46:58):
But eventually, I mean,eventually, you know, a son has
to do what the mother says.
Eventually he runs.
Well, in fact, he never saysyes.

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'troll her eyes and say, Oh, it's
not easy being the mother ofGod.
But uh anyway, so you got anidiot 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 andtalk uh and talk about inner
intercession.
Yeah, uh just because it's apotluck and you go with the
conversation goes.
I and have enjoyed talking aboutintercession.
I don't do it a lot, but when Iwhen I have done it with
Protestants, that uh it seems sobizarre, right?
Oh, I'm praying to this person,this person, this person, right?
And I I heard someone who grewup Catholic, uh a Catholic

(47:45):
comedian make it making a jokethat was funny, that that the
way that that she was told wasuh Jesus is too busy for that
kind of a prayer.
You can you know, you go go tothis person over here and don't
bother Jesus, he's too busy.
But I don't think that's the wayintercession is really really
thought of, right?
That in intercession in theApostles' Creed, we talk about
we believe in the communion ofsaints, right?

(48:07):
And those are people who areboth dead and alive, that
there's the the host of ofbelievers.
And just like I would go to youand 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 placeto pray.
Well, if these are saints whohave passed on to glory but but
are still part of the communionof believers, you just ask them

(48:30):
to pray for you just as youwould your your friends.
And so there's a same thing.
There's a is that a pretty goodthing.
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 diedto this world, but in some ways
they're more alive than we arebecause they were in God's
presence.
So uh just as I can ask you topray for me, all right, and vice
versa, I can ask a saint inheaven to to pray for me too.
And there are prayer of arighteous man is very effective,

(48:56):
I think James says.
Yes.
That we know that these arerighteous 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 notwhen 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 Godis is the source of all grace
and all goodness.
I mean, we we believe that, butwe can ask someone else to pray,
and whether they're here with uson earth or in heaven or
wherever, their prayer can beeffective.

unknown (49:32):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (49:32):
Very cool.
So what do we need to know aboutGregory's take on Mary beyond
what we've already said?
Yeah, well, it's it's it's it'suh My guess is just like your
other writing, you're trying tofind ways that, well, maybe we
don't fully believe in theImmaculate Conception, but
here's the ways that we canunderstand one another and
bridge bridge ourmisunderstandings.

SPEAKER_04 (49:50):
So a lot of it is meant to be that kind of
ecumenical bridge building toshow how much common ground we
have.
And and and I don't think notnecessarily just with Catholics
and Orthodox, but I think withI'm gonna reach out to
Protestants too, and uh and alsoto Islam, uh, and it's not an
area I know very much about.
I know our colleague who was onuh uh your your I think at the

(50:13):
podcast uh recently, uhCatherine Heidelberger, who is a
specialist on uh Mary in in theIslamic tradition, too.
Uh I think I can learn a lotfrom 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 becauseGregory's living in an Islamic
world.

(50:33):
I mean, he's where he is inArmenia as it is today, you
know, Armenia in the 10thcentury was just uh emerging
from uh domination of Arab, uhArabic invasion that had
occurred uh starting in theeighth century.
And so there was a very strongArabic and Islamic influence.
And I'm interested in developingsome of the connections.

(50:54):
Was there any sort of didGregory know about Islamic views
about Mary?
Was he trying to, you know,reach out to this is all
speculative, but so so I seethis as really a wonderful way
of bridging differences betweendifferent faiths, not just among
Christians.

SPEAKER_01 (51:14):
I love it.
And that sounds like a greatepisode to bring you and
Catherine together and we canget someone from the Catholic
tradition to talk.
Yeah, let's let's uh let's makea uh a point uh a point to do
that.
So let's uh take a little breakhere.

SPEAKER_04 (51:30):
Oh yeah.
And are you ready for a gameshow?
Oh, I didn't know we were gonnado 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 ornot?
Are you gonna do the new gameshow?
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 WhichMary Said It.
Oh right.
So I'm gonna give you a quoteand 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, andmy 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, thatwas 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 Marysaid that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, I know this is a veryhard game show, but I figured

(52:42):
you're so smart that you mightknow 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 ofMarys.

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 onlythe best man I ever knew, but
the best man I ever saw.
Which I don't even understandthat quote, but Yeah, I don't
understand it either.
My husband is not only the bestman I ever knew, but the best
man I ever saw.
Okay.
I don't know.

(53:14):
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 youmight be able to get.
So if I had a hammer, I'd hammerin the morning.
Oh, isn't that loud, Peter Paulin the morning?
Yes, well done.
Good job.
You got that one right.
All right, how about this one?
With silver bells and cockleshells and pretty maids all in a

(53:38):
row.
Oh, that's um with silverbellsand cockle shells and pretty
maids all in a row.
Is that Maria von Trapp?
Is that from No, that's MaryMary Quite Contrary.
It's from the children's nurseryrhyme.
Okay, got it.
Yeah, Mary Mary Quite Contrary,how does your garden grow?

(53:59):
And then she answers with silverbells and cockle shells.
Okay.
Uh and the final one, I'd saythe guy who gets married gets
the prize.
The guy who gets married getsthe 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 hardone, but uh a hard game show.
But I still thank you forplaying.
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 FrankensteinMustang.

SPEAKER_04 (54:44):
You could actually do this with just the Marys in
the Bible, because you got MaryMagdalene and you know the the
other Marys too.
So it's hard keeping track ofall 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 desertmothers.

SPEAKER_01 (54:57):
Yeah, we decided to expand.
We we needed you to have like uhyour trivia team here, you know.
So we needed to get some someadditional folks to help because
that that ranged uh acrossdifferent topics there.
But anyway, what else what elsehaven't we said about Mary from
Gregory's perspective that wewant to talk about?

SPEAKER_04 (55:15):
Yeah, well there I mean there it's it's it's
interesting because the thequestion is why he has such I
mean in in Orthodoxy, of course,Mary is very important, but in
in essence, and one of thethings I'm one of the major
points in the book um that I'mdeveloping is this idea that
Mary is essential forunderstanding Christ, right?
So that if you're if you'rewrong about Mary, you're gonna

(55:37):
be wrong about Jesus.
Wow.
They come together, right?
So the idea is whatever you say.
So and and essentially it'sbecause Mary is what uh the way
I put it is she keeps Jesusreal, right?
In other words, we were talkingabout Gnostics earlier, and
there is this notion of theGnostic Jesus who's not fully

(55:58):
physical, or or the the heresywas called decetism, right?
This belief that Jesus onlyseemed to have a body, but you
know, somehow because he's Godand because matter is polluted
and bad, God really can't have abody.
He's really more like a ghost,right?
And so of course that's that's aheresy.
God has Jesus has to be fullyhuman.

(56:19):
Totally denies incarnation,right?
It denies the incarnation.
Well, Mary is essential becauseshe is the one who makes the
incarnation possible, right?
And so the fact that when youneglect Mary, in some sense,
you're opening yourself up tothese more Gnostic Docetic uh
tendencies, right?

(56:41):
So she literally gave birth,right?
She was the mother of Jesus andtherefore the mother of God.
So the incarnation is up to her.
And it was her choice.
I mean, she, you know, at theenunciation, she said, let it be
with me according to your word,right?

(57:01):
So she's that's the fiat, right?
The uh not the car, but the theLatin, let it be, right?
So so in a way she's bringinginto creation the divine, right?
So in order to maintain thatthat orthodox understanding of
Christ, we have to always affirmand be mindful of Mary.

SPEAKER_01 (57:19):
And that's something I imagine that both Catholics
and Orthodox look at asProtestants and say, we are
we're very often missing out ona significant understanding and
grounding of Jesus because wetend to minimize the the role of
Mary.
Yeah, that's right.
We we bring her up duringChristmas.
Yeah, yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_04 (57:37):
And and and yeah, and and I realize, yeah, you
don't I'm not claiming thatyou're Gnostic or anything,
right?
But there is this notion thatyou know you do have to have
this attention to Mary isimportant because not because
it's not focused so much on Maryherself, but because of her
connection to Christ, right?
So in Orthodox iconography, inin Western iconography, you'll
sometimes have um, you know,either statues or um paintings,

(58:00):
icons of Mary alone.
But that's relatively rare in uhin orthodoxy.
In the Armenian church, thecentral icon uh above the altar
is always Mary holding theChrist child.
So there's always the connectionthere, 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 atangent, and I don't know if
this uh bears upon your researchat all, but something I've
always wondered about, I thinkabout it more in terms of
Catholic tradition, but I I'mguessing it's fairly true in in
Orthodox tradition as well, isthat these traditions that
venerate Mary so much, that havesuch a high view of Mary, are

(58:38):
also traditions that very oftenrelegate 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 amother, and so uh is it that
because Mary was a mother,women's roles are seen as quite
limited, or do you see an avenuethere that because Mary is is so

(59:01):
respected in these traditionsthat maybe women should be you
know given given a higherstatus?

SPEAKER_04 (59:07):
It's kind of a paradox there, because you know,
and it's interesting because inin actually in in one of uh
Gregory's works, the ones I'mone I'm working on, he has this
extensive uh I mean I uh youcould call it kind of a sermon,
but it would be like athree-hour sermon if it ever was
given.
I mean, it's it's it's a uh it'sactually called it's called an
encomium, which is um meaning awork of praise.
Okay.

(59:27):
Uh, and and it's an extendedencomium on the Virgin Mary.
He presents her as not only, andsome of this is coming out of
apocryphal traditions, not fromthe gospel, Mary as a very
learned woman that she had readextensively because she was
dedicated to the temple andlived, according to uh the proto

(59:47):
evangelium of James, which is aum, although it's not a biblical
work, it influenced the waypeople think about Mary, that
she was dedicated to the templein Jerusalem when she was three
and she remained there and shelost she was twelve.
And that she was almost like shelived like an ascetic life and a
life of study.
So she wasn't illiterate.
She was actually very uhaccomplished.

(01:00:09):
And sometimes she he evenGregory presents her almost like
she's a priest because she'soffering Christ to us, right?
That uh very interesting.
And so I begin to wonder.
I mean, my tradition has notreally picked up on this, but
you know, does this actuallygive us an avenue of expanding
the role of women?
That she's not just someone who,you know, not that, you know,

(01:00:33):
being a mother or being acaregiver to an infant is easy.

SPEAKER_01 (01:00:37):
I mean, that's nor nor lower status.
Right, or lower status.
I don't mean but nor does itneed to be the limiting only
only factor for women.

SPEAKER_04 (01:00:44):
She was, according to the way Gregory presents her,
she was more than that.
I mean, she was like a supermom.
And and so you wonder, you know,if you take that seriously, does
that mean that we we have a toonarrow, and I think we do, the
churches, many of the ourchurches do have too narrow a
view of the role of women in uhare you gonna have a chapter or

(01:01:06):
an angle on that in your in yourbook and research?
I've been reading a lot of workby feminist scholars on Mary,
uh, and I I think I want toinclude something on that too.
Yeah.
Very cool.

SPEAKER_01 (01:01:18):
So when I think of Mary as this poor little peasant
who had a ride on a donkey downto to Bethlehem, that's that
might be uh uh a limiting itthat fits my theology and the
just how how humble God wascoming into this world, you
know.
Right, yeah.
So yeah, so that fits mytheology big time.
But you're saying maybe I needto think of Mary as as as more

(01:01:40):
than just uh just a humblelittle teenage uh yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (01:01:44):
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 laterwritings on Mary.
I when I say later, I'm likesecond century.
Some of the later apocryphalwritings on Mary were in
response to Jewish accusationsthat Mary was basically a very

(01:02:05):
not a very intelligent orimportant woman that and she was
lying about all this.
And so there was a tendency tokind of elevate her and make her
more educated and all.
So some scholars say this isjust a sort of a Christian
response to to Jewish polemicsagainst Mary, but others say no,

(01:02:28):
this actually might representsome.
There's more to the story, youknow, this is kind of like the
prequel, right?
These apocryphal tales that wereuh stories that were written
that we have.
This, these, these they wereleft out of the gospels, but the
this might be true.
And so yeah, and apparentlyGregory did think that.
I mean, he clearly was readingthese apocryphal works in their

(01:02:51):
Armenian version.
So, and he's basing his uh hiswritings on Mary on them.
Very interesting.

SPEAKER_01 (01:02:58):
Have we left anything unsaid?
I mean, we've left a lot unsaid,I know, but but is there
anything we need to talk aboutbefore we wrap up here?

SPEAKER_04 (01:03:04):
I think we're good now.
All right, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 (01:03:06):
Well, thank you.
That was fascinating.
And and I want us to to do thissome more.
Uh, best wishes on yoursabbatical research as it goes
on, and we will pick up.
And I do, I want to let's have aconversation specifically about
Mary with other traditions aswell.
I would love it.
We'll do that soon.
So well, great.
And I want to thank you, ouraudience, for sitting around the
table with us today.
I hope we have provided you withsome food for thought and

(01:03:27):
something to chew on.
And uh Michael and I might havea few leftovers here, but it's
just the two of us, so probablyless so today than normal.
But we appreciate your support.
And as part of that support,please consider subscribing and
rating and reviewing ChurchPotluck wherever you are
downloading it.
Until we gather around the tablenext time, this has been Church
Potluck.

(01:03:48):
Thank you for listening.
Leftovers will do it.
But anyway, well, thank you.
Did we capture mostly what youwanted to say?
I think so.
Yeah.
That's uh that's veryinteresting.

(01:04:09):
I think the audience will findthat interesting too, just
because I was afraid we werejust talking about my research.
The ratings will not be so good.
Well, maybe we'll get those twoYouTubers to at least listen to
the podcast to get moreammunition.
So were they being kind ofhostile towards you?

SPEAKER_04 (01:04:23):
Well, what one of them was a Catholic YouTuber.
No, no, no.
Uh like they were using my bookto defend their view.
So the Catholic YouTuber waslike, oh, clearly Gregory
affirms the ImmaculateConception.
And the Orthodox one was, no,you you stupid.
Whatever.
You know, you know how thesepeople are, right?
The YouTubers are, right?

SPEAKER_01 (01:04:40):
That's why I don't that's why I try to avoid it.
So in classic postmodernfashion, you provided the text
and they and they interpret ithowever they wanted.

SPEAKER_04 (01:04:48):
Now, to be fair, I mean I I don't come in my first
book, uh, the previous book, Ididn't I don't come to any sort
of clear conclusion.
I just leave it open that maybehe did affirm something.
So I want to be more definite inthis coming book, but uh I did
leave it kind of open so thatboth Catholics and Orthodox
could recognize that there areways that you could defend your

(01:05:09):
doctrine using his right.
And but a lot of it isanachronistic because in the
10th century these issues uhreally were not there.
I mean, it took a while for thedevelopment of doctrine for
people to um get clear whatexactly the immaculate
conception means.
He does talk about Gregory as uhexcuse me, Gregory talks about
the he refers, he uses theArmenian word for immaculate to

(01:05:29):
refer to her, but whether thatmeans that she was conceived
free of original sin, thatassumes that we had a defined
view of original sin in the 10thcentury, that you know, all
Christians accept it, which isprobably not true.
So a lot of it has to do withhow we define sin and how
Gregory understands sin.

SPEAKER_01 (01:05:49):
Well, it's it's uh it's it's it's all very
fascinating.
Did I lost my train of thoughtwhen you left it open-ended in
the first book?
Yeah, were you thinking thatthis would be a line of that you
would pursue later on?

SPEAKER_04 (01:06:01):
Yeah, I didn't think it necessarily would be a book.
It might have been just anarticle, but uh then when I just
thought, you know, I think youcould have a whole book just on
Gregory and Mary, right?
Not just on the ImmaculateConception, then I thought I I
would incorporate it as part ofa book.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (01:06:15):
And I I mentioned this a little bit in the
podcast, but you are in in mymind, the way I've the way I'm
starting to interpret the lifeof Dr.
Bapazian is that this is justanother brick in your wall of
making an effort to bridge thegap between Catholicism and
Orthodoxy.
And this is in Mary would be a auh possibly a key sticking

(01:06:36):
point.
And so here's here, hey, here'show you two folks can uh think
about this to uh to bring ustogether.

SPEAKER_04 (01:06:42):
Right.
I mean, we've we've got a uh asaint who's both Catholic and
Orthodox at the same time, anduh and he's written extensively
on Mary, so he's a greatresource for let's just expand
his influence and hisunderstanding into and I think
he won, I think he wanted this,right?
Because uh, I mean he only wrotein Armenian, and of course, you
know, very few people uh canread Armenian, and certainly not

(01:07:05):
his Armenian, which is 10thcentury medieval Armenian and
actually quite complex.
But uh in in his first prayerand at the beginning of the that
speaking with God, he says thatI'm writing this book for all of
the people of the world.
Uh one of the things that Ireally like about Gregory is
he's he's you know, Orthodoxyhas a problem with nationalism.
I know you're gonna do do a showon Christian nationalism coming

(01:07:27):
up, and I actually have a theorythat the Armenians invented
Christian nationalism, but I'mOh, that's so funny.
I thought that I thought thatthis morning.
I thought that this morning whenI was reading a quick history.
Yeah, yeah.
Because uh because the uh thenotion is that to be an Armenian
is to be Christian, and Armeniais considered to be the first
Christian nation.
So already in the 6th century,5th century, Armenians were had

(01:07:47):
a nationalistic view ofChristianity.
I'm not proud of that, by theway.
But nevertheless, Gregory is theleast nationalistic, I think, of
our he's the most universalCatholic, in that universal
sense of Catholic.
He's the most Catholic of theArmenian saints.
He's he he does not dwell onArmenia that much.
He is interested in thesalvation of the world, and

(01:08:11):
that's one of the reasons why II uh I'm especially attached to
him.

SPEAKER_01 (01:08:15):
That's very cool.
One last thought I have.
With him writing only Armenianand Armenian, as you said, a
sort of complex language,limited language, he's known for
being incredibly poetic.
So is it hard to translate hiswords?
Um you would think that it wouldbe need to be fairly accessible

(01:08:36):
for the the poetry to come out.

SPEAKER_04 (01:08:39):
Yeah, it's it is hard.
But uh it's a challenge, right?
It's kind of like translating isa puzzle, and I enjoy doing
those things.
I know I I always fail.
And I've I've actually for awhile I was studying, I was
reading a lot of books onpoetry, on I'm I'm I read a lot
of poetry, like really goodEnglish poetry like Milton, to
try to get, you know, theirunderstanding of how poetry

(01:09:01):
works, especially in English,since I'm translating it to
English.
I've read books on uh the theoryof 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 toknow 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

(01:09:24):
close as I possibly can to theoriginal, knowing that I'll
never have you had literaryscholars or poets write back
about about your translations?
Um I'm trying to think I don'tknow if anyone no nobody has
criticized me for formistranslating or but I think in
many of the reviews uh I thinkthat people were uh appreciated
the way I I translated.
And there isn't just one rightway of translating it.

(01:09:45):
I mean the speaking with God uhprayer book was has been
translated by some really greatscholars, and uh they've used
different techniques intranslating them.
Uh some of them are less,they're not as literal, they're
just trying to capture themeaning, some of them are more
literal, and the both both ofthose are valid ways of
translating.
I'm sort of more, I'm trying tomore convey the spirituality

(01:10:08):
that would be uh understandableby um English speakers who are
conversant with Christianity andwith scripture.
One of the things I've done inthe book is to, so he's really
big on typology, right?
As you so this idea that thatthe Old Testament contains these
uh these images or these symbolsthat then are referring to

(01:10:30):
things in the uh in the NewTestament, right?
So that uh, you know, I meanPaul, Saint Paul does this,
right?
He in himself, right?
He says that uh Christ is thenew Adam.
So Adam is the type of Christ.
Yes, that symbol for Christ.
And then later Christians saidEve is uh the type of Mary,
right?
And but there, but then thereare other images, like uh one

(01:10:52):
that's pretty prominent is theburning bush, uh, right?
So so the burning bush isconsidered to be a type of Mary
because she contains God withinher, but she is not consumed,
right?
So God is this powerful firewithin her, but nevertheless,
she's not destroyed by havingGod within her, right?
And so he loves all thistypology, and he he actually

(01:11:14):
comes up with his own, too.
I mean, the images in the OldTestament that I haven't seen
other church fathers use intheir writings.
And so what I try to do in mytranslation is because most of
our, you know, most of us arenot monks and we're not just l
reading the Bible all day orlistening to it, so we're not
maybe as biblically literatemany of us as uh as people were

(01:11:35):
in Gregory's day.
So I try to make the typologymore transparent, like uh make
it clear that this is an this isa reference to, oh, Exodus.

SPEAKER_01 (01:11:45):
Yeah, without that context, you would have no
connection.

SPEAKER_04 (01:11:48):
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'sit represents her her virginity.
That it has not been beenpenetrated, right?
So that might be a littlex-rated there, sorry.

(01:12:08):
But that's the way they'rethinking.
Yeah, there are these images ofvirginity throughout.
Yeah in Ezekiel and the Song ofSongs that then point towards
the virginity of Mary and herperpetual virginity too, which
is another issue we get intobecause I know Protestants have
some differences, and even theCatholics and the Orthodox on on
what the not they they bothaffirm the perpetual virginity
of uh of Mary, but they havedifferent views as to what we do

(01:12:31):
with the brothers and sisters ofof Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 (01:12:33):
I just had that conversation with somebody the
other day.
So yeah.
And in in the Song of Songs, uhshe wants her garden penetrated.
So yeah, so that's different.
So anyway, well, thank you.
That's uh but only by the HolySpirit.
There you go.
All right.
But that's that's Mary, butthat's not the woman in the Song

(01:12:54):
of Songs.

SPEAKER_04 (01:12:54):
Right, but she's a symbol of she's a type.
So she's a shadow.
So she's the shadowy uh versionof what is then fulfilled in the
New Testament.
Gotcha on our view.

SPEAKER_01 (01:13:03):
Very cool.
Uh more to continue for sure.
Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_04 (01:13:05):
Oh, thank you.