← Ascend - The Great Books Podcast
Ascend - The Great Books Podcast
Why Christians Should Read the Pagans with Alec Bianco and Sean Berube
01:29:29
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A
Today on Ascend the Great Books Podcast, we are kicking off the new year with a wonderful conversation. Why should Christians read the pagans? To answer this question, we turn to the early church fathers, especially St. Basil and St. Jerome, who both wrote letters encouraging Christians to read classical Greek and Roman works. This is really a question that's at the heart of our project here at Ascend. What is the relationship between Greek reason and Hebrew faith, particularly under Roman order, that gave the world this particular character that tilled the soil for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ? St. Paul says that Christ came in the fullness of time. So what is this unique interplay that happens between Greek reason and Hebrew faith? We're going to look at this in the writings of both St. Basil and St. Jerome and see how they encourage young people to read these texts, but also with a few guideposts along the way. So join us for a wonderful conversation today on why Christian education needs paganism.
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B
Foreign.
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A
Welcome to Ascend the Great Books Podcast. My name is Deacon Harrison Garlick. I'm a husband, father of five, and serve as the chancellor and general counsel for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa. I'm recording on a beautiful evening here in rural Oklahoma. If you're new to Ascend, we can help you read the Great Books. We have over 50 episodes to help you or your small group read the Iliad and the odyssey. We have 20 episodes on the Greek plays like the Oresteia, Antigone or Aristophanes the Clouds. We have about another 20 episodes covering the Platonic dialogues like first Alcibiades, the Apology and the Gorgias. So no excuses. You can read the Great Books with Ascend either by yourself or start a small group. You can check us out on X, YouTube, at Facebook and Patreon. We appreciate all of our supporters and visit thegreatbookspodcast.com for our reading schedule and more information. Today we are turning to St. Basil, the early church father, to discuss whether young Christian men should read pagan literature or in other words, should Christians read Greek philosophy? Tonight, to kind of guide us through this question, we have two excellent guests. So we have Alec Bianco, who serves as the marketing director for the Searcy Institute. He's a St. John's College alum and a believer in classical education. He's also a reader in the Orthodox Church and he joined us to discuss the Swineherd and the Odyssey and also for first Alcibiades. Welcome back, Alec.
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B
Thanks for having me.
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A
So just like, quickly, so like a reader, is that that's like a lecture, right?
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B
I think so. It's the. The lowest position, I guess, right above a layperson, but still technically a layperson. So it's not even like a minor order, but it's enough of a position that it's sort of a leadership position within the church, which means I'm held to a higher standard, thankfully.
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A
So you actually read scripture in the Divine Liturgy or no.
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B
Yeah, so it means I chant the epistles, read the Psalms, and I'm also the. The protopsaltis, the head chanter.
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A
Wonderful. And then are you in the pipeline for like, diaconate formation or is that a later decision or.
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B
No, I could be. The saying is that the reader is the first step to the priesthood. It's not something that my wife and I have decided that I should pursue right now.
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A
I'm sure you don't want to make any announcements tonight on the podcast for.
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B
Not tonight. Not tonight without having to sleep on the couch, but.
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A
Okay, good. No, I appreciate that. And then we have a new guest. We have Sean Baraby, who runs a great account on X with wonderful threads on Catholicism and the great books. He also has a men's mentoring program. Sean, welcome to the podcast.
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C
Thank you, Deacon. I'm happy to be here. And I have to say, it's refreshing. You know, this is probably the first time I've ever been on a podcast or an introduction where I've had someone pronounce my last name right. So that's good. That's a new one. And probably signed. It's a great conversation.
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A
Again, I'm not going to say your last name again. Then on this entire episode, I'm just gonna take my home run and go home. So that's good. No, I appreciate it. Hey, tell us a little bit about, like. So you have like a. You have like a men's mentoring program. Tell us a little bit about that.
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C
Yeah, most definitely. So it's basically effectively the marriage of the two things that I love, near and dear. I'm a personal trainer as far as day jobs go. And then of course, a lot of the writing I do online. I've got a deep love of literature and the faith. And so having this platform, I basically combined the two. It's a men's mentor program that's effectively just to simplify faith based fitness coaching for Christians. So, you know, three to six months, we work together, help you either lose weight and gain weight, put on muscle, whatever your fitness goals are. But we integrate that with a lot of deep dives on studies of Scripture. So it's really like having a deep walk in faith as well. Like really trying to discern, you know, how you can orient, you know, the physical, the spiritual. Really discern how the Holy Spirit is working through your life and finding God in the day to day.
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A
Yeah, that's beautiful. That's incredibly holistic. And then do you, do you box? Are you a boxer? Yes.
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C
Yeah, I am a competitive amateur boxer. I've been doing that for about four years. Not ever. Anything I've really aspired to do professionally, I joined that rather late. But whenever anyone asks why, it's like, well, to me it's just a nice again combines fitness. But there's something really nice about faith too. It's like that proverbial fear of God right before you spar or something. So I find really the physical fitness, it really does tie into the spiritual for sure. And like learning surrender and learning how to really embody the fruits of the spirit in your daily life. I think the more you can sort of integrate and marry the two, the richer your life becomes.
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A
Yeah, no, very much so. I am assuming that there's a lot of virtue building that comes with boxing. Probably a lot of humility, particularly on the front end.
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C
A lot of humility, A lot of iron, sharpened iron, for sure. A lot more learning moments, to say the least. But when you do get those few and far between wins, there's really nothing like it. So it really is. My coach says we train you to fight in here, but it's really so you can be ready for the real fighting that's out there. He's also a deep man of faith, so it was very providential. I found that gym.
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A
Yeah, no, that's wonderful. Yeah. So kind of turning to the subject for tonight's discussion, you know, I think all three of us, often on X, you know, are obviously sharing things about the great books, which includes a lot of Greek philosophy, a lot of pagan literature in general. I feel like this comes up every once in a while. Just like, why should Christians read these texts? Like, I have scripture. Why would I ever read Homer? Why do I need to read Plato? I mean, at best, sometimes it's just I just don't understand what I would get out of it. Like, why would I do this? And at worst, it's often something that's like antagonistic. Right. Like if I read Homer or somehow if I read Aristotle, this is going to be somehow corruptive to my intellect and into my own faith. So maybe just like to start off, because we're going to look at St. Basil's letter, which I found phenomenal. And St. Jerome wrote a letter as well on the same subject and I thought they both were incredibly excellent. I'm kind of a first time reader of both of them. But maybe Alec kind of tossing it to you first. How has Greek philosophy or pagan literature in general informed your orthodox faith?
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B
Yeah, it's a great question. It's a funny question because it comes up, you're right, quite often. And I grew up in the, let's call it the evangelical homeschooling world. And you know, there's this word thrown around quite a bit puritan, that somehow, you know, the real Christians don't read this stuff. They only read the, the Bible. Basically. I guess backs of cereal boxes don't count as pagan literature. But yeah, so anyways, so I've encountered this a lot and the question has arisen and it's a fun one to think about. So I'm really excited to talk about it tonight. But yeah, more particularly it was inescapable because even though I grew up in that sort of evangelical homeschooling world, there was this, this sense of which if we don't read at least some of this stuff, we're missing out on something really important. Now that question of, well, what that's. That to me is the question, why, what is it so important? What's so important about these books? And why do they matter so much to all the Christians for 2,000 years until, let's say relatively recently or maybe certain sects throughout time. But generally speaking, Christians have always taken that very seriously. And I then took that to heart as well. I'm a Christian, an orthodox Christian, how do I read these books? And it was less a question of as if they're sort of sitting on the table. I can choose to have this or not like it's a restaurant menu. But rather I'm already being told to read these things, I'm already reading them. What do I do with them and how do I sort of conform them to Christ's mind?
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A
And.
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B
It wasn't that hard. That's the thing that blew me away. It wasn't that hard to see how it aligned with the gospel especially. The stories that really stuck out to me the most were the Iliad, to this day is probably my favorite book or text, the Iliad. And just the, the, the virtue that's present in that, in that text is unbelievable. And then, but even like I'm going to call this pagan literature because he was a terrible person. But the old man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. Oh, I love that book. And it's so powerful. So powerfully aligns with the gospel message. But, yeah, he was a terrible, terrible man, really. Just. It's just so. Yeah. Anyways, all that to say, it was really amazing to me growing up and to this day, how easy it is to read quote, unquote, pagan literature and it not jar anything. It doesn't shake me at all.
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A
Yeah, well said. Yeah. I think it's one of those things that you have to experience, right. Like you can make arguments, which I think are good, but we have to read the Iliad together. And so I teach in our diaconate formation program. I teach. We have a great book sequence in it, and we read the Iliad together. That was our first great book that we read together. And there was a lot of. How should I put this skepticism of, like, why. Why are we reading this text? What? I'm. I'm in formation to become a deacon. Like, why? Why am I? No one's ever going to ask me about Homer. Like, you know, because we're very utilitarian in the way we think. Right. So even these questions presuppose that education is a form of training. I just need to be trained, right. To be a deacon. And yeah, I think there is something I, and I had to go through the same epiphany in my own life of reading these texts, seeing that they address many of the same subjects that scripture does, and then understanding that seeing these parallels and these comparisons only strengthen your faith and make you a better reader of scripture. So, no, I think it's something that we have to invite people to do, which is obviously, you know, part of the heart and charism of this podcast. But, Sean, what about you? Like, how has pagan literature, like Greek philosophy, you know, broadly speaking, kind of affected, like your own Christian walk?
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C
Yeah, I would say I actually owe a very great debt to the pagans for my faith, believe it or not. I was little of my backstory. I was cradle Catholic for 18 years of my life, confirmed in the church and everything, but never really had that more personal connection to the faith. There was far more of just a cultural thing. So by the time I'm in university, late teens, early 20s, I've sort of strayed away. Not like a formal I'm leaving, but just I'm man of the times, right. Sort of. Life doesn't really have any meaning, or if it does, I don't care. But, you know, in this sort of, you know, apathy of not really Caring about truth, greater things beyond myself, you know, started to get unhappy. Like, you know what? There's a. I can't explain my unhappiness. Like, everything's right on the surface. I'm doing everything people are telling me I should do. Why? Why am I unhappy? So professor told me to start reading books. So that's really where my love for the great books came, really before my faith. And many of my followers know this, but the Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. Love that book to death. That was like my first, like the first book I ever read that I actually got. I probably read that at 20 and I remember something just spoke to me. It was the first time that I had maybe what you might call a spiritual experience. But I was just like, whatever I just read here. It's like that spoke to something inside me. It's like this author, he gets me. So really it was first like Dumas maybe, who opened up this love of literature. And I'm like, I don't know what this feeling is, but I'm just gonna chase this and chase this. So, you know, love of the great books, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, I loved a lot of the early modernists. But then eventually, you know, this, this search for truth, I get to philosophy and it's particularly Plato. It was his apology that specifically made me, you know, love the idea of, wow, like, dying for. It's better to die for the truth than to live a lie or something like that, to speak simply. And so now with Plato, I don't just have this sort of, you know, horizontal look throughout the great books, but now I have this like idea of an elevation of, oh, okay. There's like a sort of ascent, like, pursue the good, the true, the beautiful, the highest good. And so that really primed me that, you know, by the time I'm in my mid-20s, I pick up the Bible out of curiosity and I just found myself naturally receptive to Scripture at this point. At first I may have just started to study it like any other text, but it was almost like right away from Plato to reading Scripture, everything was so seamless. And I'm like, oh, there's, there's something to this. And. Yeah, so ever since then, it's just like that really brought me back to the faith as far as like really taking my faith seriously and like, really trying to have a properly ordered life, a properly ordered hierarchy, a right relationship with God and neighbor. So all this is a long winded way of saying that I really owe so much of my life's journey of coming back to the faith and trying to proclaim the gospel to, you know, Plato amongst many other great pagans. And if you wanted to look at me as a. More of a. A pagan in the early 20s, it's like, I think that's the idea, is that pagan literature, especially Plato, ancient Greek philosophy, I really do believe it's a way that it can sort of prime the minds of those outside of the faith to be more receptive to the word, that there's a really nice sort of evangelization aspect to it. Like, it's almost like speaking to someone in their desires with where they're at and helping them be more receptive to revelation by meeting where they're at.
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A
Yeah, well said. Yeah. I think that, um, you know, in my own walk, coming in and converting to Catholicism, I came from, like, an evangelical background, just like, broadly speaking, which really had no. No appreciation for an intellectual life like a real one. Like, we read C.S. lewis. That was like. That was like the big intellectual that we could read. Right. And even that was somewhat scandalous because then people would be like, he believed in purgatory and, you know, things like this. But, you know, I. I came into the church at Ave Maria University. I think they still do, but back then when they're doing their master's program, you had your typical master's program in systematic theology, but then you also had a great book sequence. So I. I went down there as a Protestant, which confused everybody, but I went down there, and as I'm reading the Summa, like, in every class, I'm also reading the great books. I'm reading Plato's Republic and being introduced to all these things. So for me, it's really like my conversion to Catholicism and even my view of Catholicism and of Christianity, broadly speaking, is really concomitant with the Great Books. I'm not really sure to what degree they could be separated. And so, you know, as I was reflecting on this question, too, there's a few things that came to mind as I've kind of gone through this journey, both in my own personal life and then also kind of just like learning along on the podcast, because I'm certainly a student that's learning here, too. You know, one of them is I feel like I am a much better reader of Scripture. That's one I'd throw out, and that's kind of a practical one. But for those who are skeptical, I would maybe throw that out there. That I feel like, particularly after reading Homer and also certainly after reading Plato, I'm A better reader of Scripture because it's another ancient text that's written in a very similar way. It has layers. It doesn't have unnecessary details. If it gives you things, you need to pay attention to them. And so I remember, like, you know, just, you know, whether it's reading in Mass or reading with my family, I've just noticed that I'm much more keen in when I read Scripture. I'm much more kind of dialed in on the details. And I'm asking questions of why is the gospel writer? Including that, what should I be getting out of this? Because this is what we're trained to do after you read Homer and Plato. So I think that's one practical thing that I've really noticed in my own life. I think the big thing for me and what actually led me to convert and the great books were part of this, is that this harmony between scripture and pagan literature and the relationship they have is analogous to the relationship between faith and reason, that faith and reason are in harmony. And I still remember when I was a Protestant, like the first time I read the opening of Pope John Paul II's fetus adoratio, that faith and wing are the faith and reason are the two wings upon which the human soul arises to God. That was the first time in my life that someone told me that faith and reason could be in harmony. Because, you know, I grew up in a kind of a feedistic home, which faith had to trump the intellect. And then back then, this is when the militant atheists were very popular. And so reason for them was really actually. So it was even truncated still. It was really something like empirical, right? You had to be able to measure it and weigh it for it to be real. So I think the great books are really part of that overall harmony of knowledge, that harmony of truth, that there's only one God. Right? The God that gave me an intellect is the same God that died upon the cross. And so there really shouldn't be these antagonisms between faith and reason, or religion and science or scripture and philosophy. You know, I would hold that these have a deep harmony. Even when they seem antagonistic, I think we can work through them. So that's something that I think has really. I kind of hate this term, but it's really affected my quote, unquote, worldview, like how I view the world, right. I. I am seeing it as a cosmos, something that's ordered. And I think the great books have kind of kneaded that into me, particularly the pagans like Homer and Plato. As well, I think too lastly, if I kind of look at like what concepts have really informed my intellect, I think the concept of like the Logos, which we've talked a lot about, like with, with Plato, the concept of the Logos and of Eros, of, of that erotic love properly understood. Those two concepts have been really transformative on my own imagination. Just like how I approach the faith, how I look at it. But then when you read the early church fathers, like it's very normative, like that's, these are the ideas that they're pulling from as well. So I don't know. I found a lot of, a lot of richness in those two concepts most definitely.
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C
I mean I would say that where for me the richness is most pronounced is especially the more that you're, you're reading scripture and then you read the pagans is finding God and finding the work of providence in pagan literature. In Greek mythology it's like really, it's like you see that there seems to be an actual maybe like the classical view is that like you know, you have Greece and you have Israel, Jerusalem that are supposedly the pillars that foundation of the West. And sometimes I think there's a tendency to think that the two are separated. But I mean when you read a lot of the Greek myths and you can see the parallels like oh, here's a flood narrative and oh, here's like primordial giants or here's serpentine beasts, it's like, well, you see that there's some sort of crossover that shows that. Well, not that it's maybe a neat one to one know mapping, but it's like, well maybe there is some bits of like Jerusalem and revelation that trickled into Greek thought and vice versa. Maybe Greek reason had an impact on the foundation of the faith. And so for me I think it's, it's joyous because I think this sort of speaks to the Logos you're referring to of like wait a minute. Yeah, like the God. It's, it's not just something inside the Bible. It permeates throughout reality itself. And once you start finding it, you know, in pagan literature and then when you take the moral elements of seeing that same feelings or the same truths mapped out into your personal life, it's like there becomes such a joy and such a richness and usually this, it's like a positive feedback loop of that invokes wonder of like oh, like well then clearly like there's more to explore like where, where does this go or that. So it's almost like that's a Socratic. Like, I know that. I know nothing at all. That's joyous, that wonder that precedes a desire for learning and a desire for greater worship.
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A
Yeah. Piggybacking on what you said. Yeah. One of the mantras that we have here on the podcast, right. Is that Hebrew faith coupled together with Greek reason under Roman order, prepared the for Jesus Christ. Like, this is the fullness of time that St. Paul talked about. I think we have to take that seriously. Right. I think one of the problems with modernity is that we're constantly trying to reincarnate the gospel, if that makes sense. Like, we want to kind of make our time the fullness of time and kind of just redo the entire gospel according to our cultural presuppositions. We kind of usurp that role of providence. And so, no, I very much agree. I think this is something that's really kind of, again, been transformed. Formative to my own thought process is looking at history as something that's very pedagogical, that God has used for us. And like, I've become very comfortable with, I guess, talking, seeing, proclaiming that, you know, that. That God is using Homer and Plato and, you know, Greek philosophy, broadly speaking, really, that whole Hellenized culture as a way to prepare the world for Christ. That this movement of the Hellenized mind moving from, say, Homer to Socrates to Plato to Aristotle and creating this Hellenized culture that then kind of flowed into this Hebrew culture right prior to our Lord coming, that this is not something that's accidental to our faith. I mean, one of the best texts on this ever is Pope Benedict XVI's Regensburg address, in which he talks about what we have today is a de Hellenized faith and actually a de Hellenized world. Right. We've lost our faith in the Logos, in our capacity to have reason. So, no, I think there's a way to look at the world that's very harmonious and very kind of cosmic, if you will, that then I really appreciate, Sean, your use of the term wonder, because I think that's really what invites us in. Right. That's for a lot of people. For most of us, you know, that's the beginning of philosophy. That's the beginning of actually having an interior life, is that we start to wonder about things and something gets sparked in us. Kind of like you talked about with the Count of Monte Cristo, something gets sparked in us. We might not even know what it is, but we search after it and we pursue it, and it leads to you know, the true, the good and beautiful.
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B
Yeah, I was going to. As I say, I did a talk recently at the Belmont Abbey College on myths and fairy tales. So I got to spend some time reading Lewis and Tolkien and MacDonald and some of these. These guys. And I think one of the things that Tolkien points out in his. His essay on fairy stories that's so poignant for today is. Is exactly what y' all are talking about, which is that the. The. What fairy stories participate in is story. And that world, that the world is story. And there's story in who we are, the fabric of who we are. And like you said, with history and with music and art and architecture and food, like, there's stories that are woven. And I think it's, you know, so powerful to think about this image in the odyssey of Penelope weaving and unweaving. She's. She's keeping time in this sort of, you know, stuck space or something like that. But anyways, there's just something really powerful about these stories for that, and wonder and enchantment and realizing that, you know, goblins are real and dragons are real, and we have to slay these dragons, and if we don't guess what they turn into. AI. You know, we need to take these things seriously and care for them. Care about the. Care for our children and care about the fact that we're suffering. And just quickly, one other thing you said, Deacon, about, like, modernity. I'm going to pick on a word you chose, but I think you acknowledged it. But this. This world, this word, worldview. I think that one of the main issues that we're facing in history is that we shifted from logocentrism to worldviewism. And where does that put us? What puts it in me rather than in Christ? Truth. Truth comes from me as the viewer. And then the world conforms to my view. And so then I'm trying to find my tribe of people who have the same view as me. And then. Then this just creates this kind of factionalism and tribalism that we're seeing everywhere today. But if. If truth is in another person, the Logos, then. And then what I'm trying to do is conform my view, conform my sense of reality, conform my reason, my faith, my body, my life to the Logos, just like all things do, then there's a sense in which I am. Well, St. Peter says it best. I'm partaking in the divine nature. Or Saint Maximus says we become God. So, like, God became man for us. And I think Athanasius says the same thing that's what we need.
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A
Yeah, I agree. Yeah. The worldview is an impoverished term. That's really, it's kind of like another distinction between, say, values and virtues. Right. One's rooted in objective reality, the other one's rooted in relativism. So no, I think that's a good, a good call out.
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C
Yeah.
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A
Okay, so let's shift to the letter, right? So, because I want to, I could keep talking about this, but let's, let's structure our conversation and look at this letter. I'm a first time reader of this. I thought this was fantastic. I'm just like, oh, look, he's mentioning Hessian. Oh look, he just mentioned this guy. Like he mentioned so many people. I think that. Well, I'm getting ahead of myself. Okay, so there's a letter, at least in the edition that I have, which is available online, right. It's entitled Address to Young Men on the right Use of Greek Literature. It's a wonderful little letter. It's not too long, it's by St. Basil. So if you don't know St. Basil, so we're looking at like 330 A.D. he's a bishop, he's fighting against Arianism, and he's one of the Cappadocian Fathers, right, along with St. Gregory and also St. Gregory of Nyssa. So this is kind of a, I don't know what you want to say, a titan in our faith amongst the, the early church fathers. And for him to write this, I think is fairly prominent. And that's the other thing too that I would mention about this is that it's not simply an exhortation, as we'll see. His thesis is, yes, you should read, not only can you, but you should actually read pagan literature. You know, these young Christian men that he's, he's kind of counseling. But also the letter itself is kind of a tour de force of pagan literature. And him showing, I think the fruits of actually being able to read this literature and how it's actually informed his own writings. So if we look at this maybe just to kind of tee this up a bit. So, you know, he, his thesis here, right, is to actually take up this question, right? What's the right use of Greek literature? What's the right use of say, Homer and Hesiod and Plato and all of these thinkers that they're downstream from. Which is again, as we all kind of mentioned in our personal reflections, this is still a question that we're asking today. And what I really love about this, right, is that when he looks at, he kind of gives, like, an answer right off the bat that I thought was really fascinating. Which in the. In that second paragraph in which he says, yeah, not only should you read pagan literature, but actually he recommends that young, you know, Christian men read the pagan literature first. That it's kind of like the. This is not his analogy, but. Right. It's kind of like a shallow pool, like you. You can wade into this and start to understand this. And like, you actually should read Homer and Hesiod and Plato because they're actually going to kind of till the soil and actually make you more receptive to the gospel message. And I think maybe going back to my own personal experience earlier, they'll actually make you a better reader of scripture when you come to actually spend time in the texts. And I, I just thought that was a beautiful, wonderful exhortation right out the gate.
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C
I would agree. It's because I, I think the. When you consider the names that he mentions here in Hesiod, Homer, so on and so forth, two great things that I think reading this literature does to you is it touches on something that's very primordial, right. That the Greeks at this time, they were really doing a lot of searching, right? These are questions about, well, what is the meaning to life? Who am I? Where am I from? Where am I going? What is my relationship to fate and the gods, so on and so forth. So in the one sense, you get this idea that mankind is searching for answers. And I think this makes for more active reading. When you read Revelation, which is the answers, you can in a sense be able to look back and sort of judge maybe morality a bit like, oh, here's where the Greeks did well, and here's where there's maybe something that should not be accepted. But I'd say, moreover, in the, maybe in the more simplified sense that you're referring to here, Deacon, is just the. It really the. The training of desires, like the, the spirit of greatness. I really think a lot about, like, Thumas, that chess, that spiritedness, like reading about the Iliad and just seeing the arete of Achilles and his grandeur, or Hector's courage and piety, right? It's like this is almost like training and bringing out the. The passions in a sense of starting to learn and discern, well, what is virtue, what is good and truly loving it. Because, I mean, at the end of the day, that faith is not really just a matter of intellectual ascent, which is maybe a much more modern idea, but it's really also about loving the good so much. You Know, learning to find your life by losing your life out of love for the good, and willing to, if it comes down to it, die for it. And when you have that sort of love, that sort of out of body experience, it's like that really draws out the greatness in you and helps you discover, well, who you are as a person, is the meaning to life and so on.
- [31:06]
A
Well said. I think in the third paragraph, I think where I kind of like immediately fell in love with this letter, I'm like, okay, this is wonderful. Is his analogy that reading pagan literature. Well, hold on, take a step back. Reading Scripture is like a branch bearing fruit. That's great because that's a very common analogy, like in kind of the Christian imagination. But then he says that reading pagan literature is like the leaves on the branch that allows you to actually take in this nourishment and prepare you for that fruit. And I loved that metaphor. I thought that was beautiful. That's something that I'm certainly going to incorporate. Like when I talk about why we read the great books and these types of things, I think that's a really easy thing to understand. But I mean, does anything kind of stand out to you? I know we kind of gave these kind of broad personal answers, but when someone's like, how do you really like reading Homer? Like, I got to read the Iliad and all these guys getting speared in the face, like that's going to help me understand the Beatitudes. I mean, can we push into this a bit? Like where, like where, where does Homer actually help us understand scripture better? Or why does Hesia do this? Or Plato, like what. Can we, can we kind of maybe flesh this out just a little bit?
- [32:17]
B
Yeah, I was just one thing. Maybe I'm stepping back a little bit, but I think it's, it's going along with what you're saying. One thing I think it's really powerful about this particular essay is that I think St. Basil here is being a little bit cheeky in a way, if I can say that. St. Isaac calls him the Assyrian, calls him the unwavering light. So I'm certainly nowhere close to St. Basil in anything. But I think something while reading this that's so interesting is he's being very Platonic in a certain way, which is to say, well, there's a lot of ways in which he's being very Platonic, but in particular the form of the letter itself kind of gives a sense of, of him implementing what he's, what he's actually suggesting to them. And like you said, he's referencing hesseid and he's referencing Homer and Plato, but he's also using these sort of analogies and almost like Homeric similes to teach the young men, to teach them what he wants to teach them. Right? So in a sense he's almost writing a kind of pagan literature to them that he's suggesting, which I think is just a fascinating thing to think about, but particularly in that second paragraph he says, oh, he's describing the mirrors, which of course immediately I'm thinking of first Alcibiades, in which Socrates says to him that in order for the soul to understand itself, it needs a mirror to see. And then so St. Basil is saying, okay, that's exactly right, you need them, your souls need mirrors in order to see themselves, in order to understand and acknowledge that heaven is our home. And so how do we do that? Well, you read these. Well, what's interesting, I guess is. But then he's saying these pagan literature is a kind of mirror as well. So then I guess going back to your question, why isn't the scripture a mirror for the immature? But it is a mirror for these more. The pagan literature is a mirror for these more immature people. It's interesting.
- [34:53]
C
One idea that sort of jumps to me right off the top of my head is that scripture isn't always necessarily the easiest thing to approach, especially when you're younger or by yourself, that you see this more often than not that. I mean, even St. Augustine in his Confessions talks about how he had tried to read scripture many a times through his teens and twenties and couldn't understand it until he had the help of St. Ambrose's Sermons. And he said there's a need for authority. Right? Because scripture is, you know, very multi layered. There's of course the four ways that you can read and interpret scripture between literal, pedagogical, allegorical and moral. So I, I guess what I'm sort of wondering off the cuff here is because there's a lot of complexities to scripture and then you consider 73 books and they're all saying and doing different things. It's not always easy to take in at once. Whereas when you're just reading a great story again, it's like there's something just, here's like a clear cut narrative. It's like that might speak to something that's again, primal in you, that awakens, you know, what that Greeks were doing again, that searching, you know, what are the answers to life? How do I make meaning in the sense of the chaos, like Drawing out the heroic desire for search first. And then that's a sort of like a gem that you can take with you to search and dive into scripture. That's. I don't know. Does that go here?
- [36:06]
A
Yeah, no, I think it's really good. Yeah. Two thoughts on that one. You know, maybe, Sean, to your point, I think sometimes we forget that grace perfects nature. It builds upon nature. And so I do think that there is a certain wisdom that we can see off the bat in St. Basil's letter that, you know, these young men could focus on natural virtue. Like, let's focus on natural virtue and we'll kind of get to this because he actually takes a fairly large chunk of this letter to discuss virtue. But just like, broadly speaking, right, this understanding of grace and nature is that sometimes I think we forget that grace has to work upon nature. Right. I think about, you know, like seminarians, like, you know, if you have a terrible seminarian who has no natural virtue and you ordain him a priest, he is probably going to be a terrible priest right now. God can do whatever he wants to, and I don't doubt that. But right, there has to be this formation. Same thing for like a diaconate candidate, right? You can't simply take someone who has no natural capacities and then say, okay, well, grace will just fix everything. No, it perfects it, it lifts it, it elevates it. There has to be some of that. So I think that, Sean, to your point, I think there is a really natural progression here of the soul of really focusing on these natural virtues. I guess maybe another example would be that has occurred to me and kind of stuck in my imagination is our Lord's command to turn the other cheek. And I guess my reflection on that would be, you know, if you're too afraid to do otherwise. So if you're struck, okay, so this goes to, you know, Sean, you being a boxer. So like, if you're struck in the face and you're actually too afraid to strike back, and that's why you turn the other cheek. Have you followed our Lord's command? And my answer to that would. Would probably be, no, you haven't. That our Lord's command actually presupposes the natural virtue of courage, that when you're struck right, your natural reaction of having courage would be to be thumatic to strike back. It's the sacrifice of not doing that, of having the self discipline to then not strike. That's the sacrifice that I'm actually making. That's really, I think, an act of grace. That's something that we don't see in nature. Even though Socrates kind of gets close to this, I think a few times. And actually, I think maybe St. Basil actually highlights that. And so I think sometimes we forget the relationship between nature and grace. And so, Sean, I think your comments are well received. Can I go back to cheeky Alex comment about cheeky? Because no, I mean, I think this is what I talked about earlier, that the letter is kind of a tour de force on pagan literature. So I think there's an irony, right, that the guy they're writing to to say, hey, should we read pagan literature? That he's the spiritual authority, responds back in a letter that is absolutely saturated with pagan wisdom. So he's like, well, if you see me as a spiritual leader, you see me as having this like grace filled, you know, saintly life, the. What was it? The unwavering light. Well, guess what, guess what? The unwavering light has read Homer, Hesiod, Plato and half a dozen others and finds them efficacious for spiritual growth. So I think that's one of the arguments that's implied throughout this. But let's look at that kind of next section because I think he does progress very pedagogically. And so I think that he raises a really fascinating point which I think anyone would push back on here, right? This is kind of what I was pushing into, like when we read Homer and Hesiod, you know, et cetera, is that there's no way to argue that everything in there is good, at least from like an immediate surface level standpoint. Right? So Odysseus is going to make bad decisions at times. You know, they're going to pray. It seems like they're praising him for a bad decision. You can point out things from the Iliad that seemed to fall short, right? Even Plato at times seems to fall short. So it seems then in the. What is this, the fourth paragraph, he pivots to the natural question, which would be, is there a standard? Like, do I simply receive everything the pagans tell me? Like it's just a one for one. So if it's in the pagan literature, then it's good for Christianity. I don't think that's what he's saying here. Right. We know what the truth is. The truth is a person, Jesus Christ. And Christ then becomes the standard by which we, this translation used, discriminate that we actually start to pull through this. He actually has this one really wonderful analogy of being like a bee, right? The bees don't Visit every flower. They go to the garden, but they don't visit every flower. They go to the best flowers. And that's how we approach these pagan texts, is we're looking for these examples in that. So Christ becomes the standard. And I loved. Because I wish I would have known this when I was actually reading Homer, but I loved the example that he gives here. I think this is where he gives it. Or maybe I might be jumping slightly ahead. Yeah, I jumped slightly ahead in the Virtue. But where he just as an example, where he praises Odysseus when he becomes shipwrecked. And I thought this was fascinating. So remember, this is the scene where Odysseus, I think he goes to sleep, like, basically naked between the two olive trees. And, you know, one's wild, one's tame, and, you know, we could parse out what that means. But then he awakes and he's. He's basically nude. And there's all these young women, you know, washing clothes and playing with a ball and doing these types of things. Odysseus, particularly for this Homeric text, shows, like, a great amount of restraint and kind of gentleman qualities. I think one of the commentaries said that Odysseus was the first gentleman of Europe in this scene, right? Which. Which is fun, which is funny if you know Odysseus overall. But, like, in this scene, he does great, right? But like, St. Basil praises. It's like he goes out like he's modest. He won't. He doesn't allow them to bathe him. Like, he seems. There's a lot of things there that actually, I think don't immediately harmonize with, like, the Homeric text overall. Like, Odysseus is doing something that's unique in the scene as he talks to the princess, right. What's her name? Nautica. And so I thought it's really fascinating that he points this out as an example. He's pointing out as an example of virtue. But it's through the lens of Christ that we're saying, okay, no, this scene is a scene of true virtue, of natural virtue. What then could this teach me as a young man, a Christian man, about natural virtue? And I think that's, like, just an incredibly beautiful way to approach the text. Do we think that maybe to push back on this a little bit? I'm sure we've all had these conversations with our dear friends, many of them on X, that love Plato, but maybe have not found the light of Christ. And if you tell them that you're reading Plato through the lens of Jesus Christ. This is like, oh, you've polluted everything. You've corrupted the text. You're not understanding it. Like, this is just terrible. I mean, what do we say to those people?
- [42:57]
B
What does St. Jerome say in that letter? That he's standing defiling the whiteness of the church. Except in this case, it's the whiteness of Plato, the Plato's academy.
- [43:09]
C
Yeah. What I sort of take on this is, I mean, to me it would naturally cohere that. I mean, as we had already stressed earlier, you know, faith naturally perfects reason. And so for me, it's just always made sense then that if by definition God is the creator of the universe and his intelligence permeates throughout creation, then it's only natural that reason and the truths that one discerns through reason would naturally map on to that which appears in revelation. To me, it hasn't ever made a lot of sense to me to have this divorce between faith, revelation over here and reason here. I think that leads to a, a divorce. That's maybe, perhaps it explains part of the situation we're in now as moderns as far as that there is an agnostic skepticism of, well, what can reason really know about truth? And does reason actually map onto it? Or is this like a disingenuous, you know, act by Christians trying to force, you know, the Greeks into their framework? I think if you, you make that idea that, you know, reason cannot map onto, reason is not perfected by grace, it's not perfected by revelation. You get to this idea that you can never really have a true standard of the Logos. Right. That this is what sort of Pope Pius X warns about in his encyclical against modernism. Is that the sort of vital limit of divorcing faith and reason from together. That's sort of what leads to the sort of anti Logos, the worldview critique that you had brought up earlier, Alex. So to me, it's always just made natural sense that, okay, God is the creator of the universe, he is the true good and beautiful, then why wouldn't the reason that he has created map onto that which he has revealed, revealed to us, the faith?
- [44:48]
B
Yeah, I think that's right. And I, I, if I can defend our, our secular brothers and sisters here for a second, I think that they are potentially reacting against something that's actually valid, which is that I, and I've experienced this many, many times where somebody will read Homer in particular, especially narrative stories where it's easy to see morality, but even Plato or Aristotle or, you know, other philosophers and they'll read them through this. I think, like you're pointing out, Sean, this, this sort of worldview, like where Christianity has become a worldview as opposed to the ultimate truth and imposing that worldview. Christianity, you know, trademarked onto Plato and onto Homer and then trying to not engage. They're engaging with it disingenuously, if I can put it that way. And so instead of trying to understand what Plato's saying or to understand what Homer's saying, they're trying to understand where Homer went wrong and where Plato went wrong. But I think if we read this letter very carefully from St. Basil, he is not saying to read. I mean, it's hard. He's not quite giving us a hermeneutic, but he's not. I don't think he's suggesting that we ought to read these books in order to find out what's going wrong. He seems to be suggesting we need to be reading these books in order to find out what to do. Right. And then to be careful to separate the chaff out from the wheat. And I think that this, again, is. Is sort of the logocentrism. And then understanding this. What does St. Justin Martyr call it? He emphasizes this, the. The logos spermaticos. Right. That these seeds of the truth of the word are everywhere. And that's what we're actually trying to find. And I think we got it backwards where we are reading it and then trying to find what went wrong.
- [47:00]
C
I think St. Augustine just had great analogy from Exodus where he refers to the Israelites taking the gold out of Egypt as they. They leave. And I think that's sort of the idea you're getting to. There is, there's, there's gems and there's gold. And that's what, you know, we're not trying to. We should not be trying to tear down. Rather, we, we purify and take that which is good. And that sort of, you know, it doesn't add on to any deficiency in Scripture, but perhaps it helps us in our limited, flawed nature better understand and see the glory of God.
- [47:28]
A
Yeah, three. Three thoughts there. First. Yeah, I think Sean's point that is kind of the analogy par excellence when we talk about philosophy and theology is right, the despoiling of the Egyptians that as the Israelites went out of Egypt, they took what was good, right. They took silver and gold and these types of things that God asked them to do. And then that enriched, you know, the people of God. And so, yeah, St. Augustine comments on this. Origen comments on this. And it's I think, kind of alluded to or implied in St. Jerome's letter. Two, Alec, I agree 100%. One, that I think that St. Basil, in his letter is overwhelmingly positive that we actually read the pagans to find out positive things, but we have to understand how to discriminate according to Christ to not get choked. Or I think he actually uses the analogy of, like poisoned honey, that we actually consume something that we actually think is good, but it actually ends up being corrosive to our Catholic faith. And so I think that's. I think he has that approach, which I agree with you, is, is not the same as, like, I'm reading Homer to show you, you know, why, you know, the book of Isaiah is so much greater than him. Right. That's a different approach. But two, on your point, I think it is very valid. And I think what St. Basil would be pointing towards as well is that you really have to understand what Plato is trying to teach qua Plato before you start to get into the discrimination through, like a lens of Jesus Christ. Because if not, I think what ends up happening is you turn Plato into a caricature of some sort. I think if that makes sense, like maybe a cheap copy or projection. Because I think where I would find it is, yeah, some of our secular slash pagan friends that very much love Plato. You know, I enjoy conversations with them because I think I learn a lot about Plato, but I think where I disagree with them, and this is, this is the third point, is that there is no neutral. And I think we forget this. And I think a lot of times the secular mindset is that religion is somehow not neutral, but secularism is, or even like paganism in nature is, but there is no neutral. So even, like, if you're not reading Plato through, say, a lens of Christianity and Plato teaches you something, there's three parts of the soul, there's four cardinal virtues, whatever it is. And then you ask someone, do you find this to be true? They have a standard. Everyone has a standard by which they're then going to judge Plato's works. Right? No one says, like, well, Plato said it. I believe it by blind faith. No, you have some type of usual, like, you know, I'm sure someone out there does that, but you have, like, some observation of reality that you're then trying to say, does this comport with reality? So you have a standard that you bring to the text that is external to Plato. And so I think that from the Christian walk, the external standard that we bring there is, is Christ. And that's that's something very easy to point to and say, my standard is Jesus Christ. Right. Read this text. However, even our friends who are secularists or pagans themselves, they still have a standard by which they're bringing to this text to read it. And I don't think that's always apparent to them. And so they view maybe the lens of Christ to be somewhat corruptive or something alien to the text when reality. Everyone has this. And so we're all trying to grapple. And then I agree, as been said, there are probably legitimate and illegitimate engagements with the text. And I think the. The real one I would stress here is you have to understand the pagan qua. Pagan first. You have to understand what is Homer actually trying to teach. You have to understand what Plato's trying to teach before I think you start to move into some of these more Christian commentaries and, like, criticisms of the text.
- [51:29]
B
Yeah, I think that's really good. And I just wanted to go back to one thing you said. I think that's super important. Important, kind of at the beginning, which is that, you know, it's funny, we are. It seems like we're more today, contemporarily speaking, we're more willing to say, you know, those books, I don't need to read them. I can read these books. But those ones, not worth my time, whatever, either because I'm a Christian or because a particular type of Christian or. Or because, you know, I just have better use of my time because, you know, these other things are more important. So then. And so guess what gets, you know, on the chopping board the quickest? Oh, it's typically the good stuff. Good literature, good philosophy, good music. But then, I don't know why this is. But for some reason, when it comes to movies and TV shows, it's like, well, have you seen it yet?
- [52:28]
C
You can't.
- [52:29]
B
You can't say it's bad yet. Do you watch it? And then you have to watch it every night. And then you got to, you know, and you got to go see the movies every weekend. And then suddenly our concept of censorship just completely goes out the window when it comes to audio visual media. We can just. We can take that. And then we can say, too, well, in my soul, you know, I watched that bad scene in that movie, but honestly, it's not affecting. I'm totally fine. Like, I knew it was bad, so it's okay. But. But then for our children, we will say, you can't watch that show. It's so bad for you. You will never watch that. Show or, you know, you shouldn't read these books or whatever. And so I. I just think it's funny. We have such a warped mentality when it comes to this concept. I don't like to use the word censorship there because it kind of links to some other bigger conversations that I don't. We're not talking about. But it is a kind of censorship. In other words, a kind of exercising of prudence to determine. As St. Basil begins this address, he says, I'm speaking from experience, so listen to me. And then he says to them, some of you, because of immaturity, cannot handle this. And then St. Paul, of course, speaks the same way. He says, you know, do not cause the little ones to stumble. And, you know, if. If you have to follow more strict rules in order to not to prevent that from happening, then you should do that. And it seems to me that Christ says similar things. He says, you know, if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out, right? What is he saying? He's saying, err on the side of strictness and then allow yourself to see these things. But then we seem to want to apply that to these books. But then for certain other things, other forms of media, we're just like, ah, you know, it's okay.
- [54:27]
A
Yeah, that's funny. I remember that very vividly. Like, 15 years ago, I had a buddy who was like, hey, there's this, like, fantasy series that I think you'd really like. You need to read it. It's like, okay, fine. What is it? It's like, oh, it's Game of Thrones. Like, okay, like, whatever. So this is before the show. So I read, like, the first one, because I remember where I was, because I threw the book across the room at the ending. I was like, what is happening in this book? Right? So then the HBO series comes out, and obviously, I have clearly a presupposition about what that show is going to be like. And, like, all of my friends, like, Christian friends, are like, hey, have you watched the show? I'm like, no. Isn't it basically just like pornography? And they're like, well, yeah, but it's like, the writing's so good, right? And so, yeah, it's like this thing that, like, if you put it into a narrative, it doesn't count for some reason. Like, I don't understand that. I'm like, wait, you guys all get together and, like, watch this together, like, on account. Like. Anyway, yeah, there's weird. We do weird gymnastics. It's not just, like, film. I think everyone does this we have some weird gymnastics that we do where we're like hyper critical about things that aren't tempting to us. And then on things that we want to enjoy, we're like more laissez faire and et cetera. So, no, I think that's a good critique. Okay, so pushing a little bit further into the letter, he actually spends a good amount of time here on the subject of virtue, which I found really beautiful. And you kind of noticed that he has, like, he very much has a flow to this. And so if you look at like paragraph five, as we talked about the poets in virtue, he talks about Odysseus and kind of gives some examples there. He mentioned several other people. Then in six, he starts to talk about the philosophers in virtue, right? So he's kind of just moving through these pagans, kind of giving distinctions between the lessons of the poetics, the lessons of the philosophers. And then even in. What is this? Seven, I thought it was really interesting that basically this whole paragraph is pagan deeds, that sometimes it's not an explicit lesson that is given. And this isn't something that is fictitious, I guess maybe to use that term broadly, like with Odysseus or something like that. It's not something that's in a poem. This is actual acts of the pagans themselves, like historically. And I really love this because he talks about Socrates and some of the things that he does. And then he has a line in here that I thought was really fascinating after he talks about how all these pagans have actually done these highly virtuous things. And sometimes they're so naturally virtue, you typically don't hear about them outside of a Christian context. Right? So like Socrates, right, comes very close to an understanding of turning the other cheek about whether or not we can ever do harm to another, just as an example. And so he says here in this paragraph, he says, one who has been instructed in the pagan examples will no longer hold the Christian precepts impracticable. I think that is a huge claim and something that I don't know if we quite understand today. To maybe put that in different language, it's, hey, if we actually study these pagan deeds and we see what they did, we see actually the teachings of Socrates, we see what he did in his life, we see what several of these pagan philosophers were able to do. I also think of several of the Stoics, I think of several of the Neoplatonic thinkers themselves, like Plotinus would be an example as well. These guys that fasted, they really sought the divine These are guys that are doing all this without the aid of grace. So then how much more? And I think this is a lesson that we learned from Dante. When I tell people, why do we need to read Dante? And why does Dante put all these pagan examples in the Comedy? I think one reason he does it is because the more you elevate paganism, the more you elevate man's nature and say, this is what man is actually able to do according to nature alone and natural virtue, that doesn't diminish grace. It actually just elevates it and pushes it up. And then it becomes a critique of us, of, well, how much greater should we be who know Jesus Christ and are participating in the divine life? If this pagan can control his appetites, can fast, can pursue the divine as they know it, then what am I doing as a Christian? And I just think. I just think this is a phenomenal critique, particularly, I think, Sean, you've used the term several times. What I think is quite good for young men, for those who have that kind of thematic spiritedness to them that like, yeah, see this in the pagans, and then, guess what? It's only going to be perfected in Christianity.
- [58:58]
C
I completely agree. I think this is especially why Plutarch is remarkably celebrated. Right. When you're reading about the biographies of these great Roman and Greek statesmen and you really immerse yourself into that world again, yeah, these are just pagans and recorded history, but it's like as you're spending time with them, you begin to. And you really see their humanity. You begin to see yourself through them, right? That here, again, you feel that sort of emulation, that drawing out of. Well, if. If he did that. Well, certainly I can do that as well. And you almost feel like a moral element and like a healthy ideal being formed of, you know, and maybe when I think about moderns a lot of the time, I think one of our vices that hold us back a lot is sloth, right? Not necessarily just laziness, but as you like to say, the cooling of the passions. Right. That we. We almost seem to have a lack of a sense of, you know, just how important it is that we live up to our potential. And we almost. Well, like, what. What even is our potential? And sometimes I think there's just something, again, very vivid about reading the story of great men and history or mythology. And it's like, what is this that I'm. I'm calling to, like, I feel elevated or ascending towards something. It's sort of like, you know, Having an experience with the transcendentals rather than just hearing about it as maybe prosaic language of laws, which is maybe how oftentimes skeptics tend to first look at Christianity as simply a bunch of rules of do's and don'ts and all of that. But it's like, well, no, there's a calling, a call to adventure. And oftentimes that. That call to adventure, that sort of hero's journey that really tends to be channeled through the great acts and the great deeds of men in history.
- [60:30]
A
Any thoughts on the role of music in this formation? The back half of this letter actually has great recourse to music. And I'm not sure I. You know, on the podcast, we're actually setting ourselves up to read Plato's Republic. And so that's going to be, you know, as we kind of venture into the new year, we have a few episodes coming up on, like, the history of Platonic thought. And then we're going to read Dante's Purgatory for Lent, and then we're going to get into Plays Republic, which will take us about 10 months to read. And music is a subject that I think I'm not well formed in. Obviously, Plato talks about it in the Republic. It has an important role. But any thoughts on the role of music in this letter as he kind of. He talks about it as a parallel or comparison with athletic contests. Talking to these young men about, you know, again, John, to your point, being spirited about being able to pursue these goals. Look, if these guys can train, so this is basically your bailiwick, right? I mean, if these guys can train and fight and do all these things to get this laurel, like, how much more so should we who strive for eternal life? But then he also talks about music. And then later down in nine, he talks about music again, actually talking about David and Pythagoras both giving these kind of musical examples. Any thoughts on either his comments on athleticism or just music in general and the role of formation and virtue?
- [62:01]
B
I'm very glad you brought up music, because that was one thing I really wanted to talk about that's fascinating from a Christian historical perspective. So I don't know if you have this book or have ever read this book, but it's the Homeric Hymns. This is the Loeb edition, Homeric Hymns, Homeric Apocrypha. And you pull up some of these hymns to Athena or Artemis, and you read the form very carefully, especially in the Greek, but even in English translation. You read the form very carefully. You'll notice that I say this as if everybody does this. You wouldn't notice this. Nobody's going to notice this. I noticed it and I thought it was fascinating and I want to see if there's research on it. But the form is very similar to, in the Byzantine tradition of music, what we would call the apolitikia and the kontakia, which are these hymns that we chant every service for particular saints, Christ, the Theotokos, their feast days and then particularly saints. So when we're talking about one of the apostles or whatever, and the form is typically, you know, like talking to them, praying to them, but talking about their deeds that they accomplished, particularly in the Christian context and using similar words in the Greek, it's actually identical. It's this, it's hail, hail, you know, virgin, Hail Mary, Mother of God. That hail in the Greek is. And it's, it's the same word for the ancients when they're talking to Athena and Artemis and Zeus. And it's to this day in the Eastern churches we still use that same form. So, and then in the letter of St. Jerome, you know, he talks about how he goes through the scriptures and talks about how they reference different philosophers and, and poets and things like that of, of the pagans. So there's already a sense in which. And then don't get me started on Byzantine music. I mean that also, I mean it's the same when Socrates is talking in the Republic, he says these tones, these modes that we use musically that are, those are still used in the Byzantine Church to this day, the same modes. And St. John of Damascus talks specifically as an excellent treatise on this, where he talks about how the tones, the modes mold the soul and that listening to certain ones. So like the story that St. Basil says there of Pythagoras telling the flute player to play a Doric tune, know he's saying, switch the mode. And then it caused sober mindedness in the revelers, you know, the partygoers. And that's a really powerful point, I think that St. Basil is saying there. And it's something that Christians should take very seriously because music is a huge part of the liturgy and the services and then obviously even just in the secular life, it's, it's a huge thing. I think that to a certain extent, I don't think St. Basil is saying this as much, but we can draw this conclusion that in the same way that, you know, the bee is discriminatory on which flowers it takes its honey and pollen or whatever, whatever bees do when they do their work. And we should also do that with reading these texts. Likewise, we need to do that with this music and be discriminatory with the way we approach music and be discriminatory with the way that we approach athletics. I think ultimately St. Basil gets at this from the very beginning. In the first. The first paragraph, he says, we hold of little esteem or no esteem, this earthly life, right? It's not a supremely precious thing, he says, nor do we recognize anything as unconditionally a blessing which benefits us in this life only.
- [66:17]
C
Only.
- [66:18]
B
And then basically decries all of the pagan virtues. Pride of ancestry, bodily strength, beauty, greatness, esteem of men, kingly authority. So St. Paul, in First Corinthians, chapter one, does the same thing. He says, this is foolishness to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews. And then St. James, in his epistle, chapter three, I believe, says the same thing. He says that this, all of these earthly things that appear noble to worldly people is nothing to us, and that Christ did that on purpose. He became a slave on purpose in order to rebuke them out of love. I think Saint Maximus says that. He says by not responding to their blaspheming, not responding to the beatings, he heaped love on them and therefore rebuked them. And that, I think, is sort of what St. Basil is getting at, if I can kind of assert that. I think what he's suggesting is read these things carefully, do it with discernment, do it discriminatorily, but when you do that, you will find mirrors to imitate, to be virtuous, and you will actually. I don't know if he says this explicitly, but I think he's getting at this. You will repay love to them where they fail. And that's sort of the greatest thing I guess, we can hope for.
- [67:54]
A
That's really well said. I appreciate that. It seems then, like, on a high level, I think one of the reasons that he focuses on music, because I don't have the formation of music that you do. So I really appreciate you kind of parsing out some of those particulars, like a broad level. What. What it seemed like to me was that in a certain way, music is analogous to paganism because Christianity can't make a claim on all truth. Truth is truth. And so there's truth also in these pagan texts. But also not all music is Christian music. Not all music is, say, music in the Divine Liturgy or in the Mass. And so. But we see then that this music outside of that can be good. And efficacious, for us, it also can be bad. So it seemed like in a lot of ways the role of music theorist. He was giving another example that seems to fit this template that we engage with it for good or for ill. But it can be engaged in a very positive way because again, he doesn't seem to be a puritan or, you know, let's go create, you know, some kind of compound in the bayou and not talk to anyone else or anything like this. Right. He's actually stating like, hey, no, we should engage with these things. And so that just at a high level. I think that's one of the ways, one of the reasons that he included music there because it's kind of a brilliant analog to the overall relationship between Christianity and quote, unquote, paganism, or just things that are natural.
- [69:20]
C
I love the sort of moral element that's getting drawn out of here too, that even with good music that could be secular, not necessarily religious. If you think of maybe just Beethoven or Mozart. Right. That these are experiences with beauty that have a very sobering effect. As the, the story in Basil's lettering goes to, when the sort of ravelers that was chaos or drunken, I forget what you got the sense of chaos. But then once they had an encounter with beauty itself, there was a sobriety to them that silenced them and almost made them childlike and shamed them without any use of force or coercion in argument, and they walked away. So it's sort of like, you know, just like with great pagan literature, if there's great, you know, secular music, you. You have an experience with the divine that is very like efficacious for the soul. Again, that oftentimes then the best sort of moral instruction information of the soul is not necessarily words or just sheer moral instruction, but just simply out of body experiences that get you outside of yourself, that trains you to start to look more hierarchically. Right. And so again, that then easily ties back into scripture of, okay, there's a formation of the soul. As I desire more of this beauty, you can find more of that and be more receptive to that grace in your searches through scripture.
- [70:31]
A
Yeah, well said. Any other? I want to share a few quotes from the St. Jerome letter because I think it parallels this really well and there's some real beautiful quotes that we need to share and kind of discuss. But any other kind of final thoughts on St. Basil's letter? Any kind of subject? I mean, there's a lot here, but anything that we've missed or that you, you'd like to Talk about before we kind of shift over to St. Jerome. Okay, hearing none. The St. Jerome letter that we're looking at is letter 70. It's also available online on New Advent. So please go, you know, check that out again. Not too long. This is what Alec, you gave a wonderful parallel that earlier we were concerned that Christianity was ruining the pure, beautiful whiteness of paganism. But this is actually St. Jerome, who tends to be somewhat cantankerous. And so I enjoy reading him. What's the purpose of this letter? He says, this is the second paragraph. You asked me at the close of your letter, why is it that sometimes in my writings I quote examples from secular literature and thus defile the whiteness of the Church with the foulness of heathenism? I love St. Jerome. He's very combative in his writings. And then basically, what in here? It's a complete. It's a wonderful letter to read. It's a complete tour de force, then, of him showing the role of pagan literature. And it's. What's really beautiful about it is he shows that it's not even something really alien to Christianity. And that's something that I think we really have to focus on. So an analogous argument is, you know, sometimes, you know, our Protestant friends, who might be completely scandalized by this entire conversation, are stating that, you know, there was a pure biblical faith, like a Hebrew faith. It's like pure biblical faith. The Reformers talk about this, and then the evils of the Catholic Church corrupted it with paganism and pagan philosophy and all these things. Right? So there's some kind of, like pure biblical Hebrew faith. And then later it was corrupted in the Roman Empire through all these pagan sources. And again, kind of going back to the Regensburg address By Pope Benedict 16th, I think he shows quite well that this is a fantasy. It's a complete historical fiction in that really there's no way to separate historic Christianity from Hellenized thought. It just doesn't exist because, again, historically, right. That Hebrew faith come into contact with that Hellenized culture. And, yeah, sometimes that's really violent. Read first and second Maccabees. It could be horrific, but also it could be iron sharpening iron, for instance, like in the Book of Wisdom. You see, that which is the first time I think I'm aware of it, is that the author of Scripture makes the distinction amongst the pagans, that there's the pagans, like the Philistines that we all know, but now there's these new pagans that follow a monotheistic God and Seek God after, like philosophy and wisdom. And so you see then, for instance, the Book of Wisdom also lists the same four cardinal virtues that we find in, say, Plato and Aristotle. So you see that there's a lot of, I think, harmony between these two cultures. Obviously, another one is that the Septuagint, right, the first kind of canon of the Old Testament is written in Greek about what, 250 years before the Incarnation. And then obviously the New Testament's written in Greek. So I think what St. Jerome is really channeling in this letter is the same thing that Popenic 16th argues in his address is that you really can't actually separate these two. You can't really. You don't have a pure Christianity apart from, like, the evils of paganism, but rather, these two have always been in a dance. I mean, because he goes back, right? The classic example is he goes back and starts with Moses, that Moses was formed and taught as, you know, a member of the royal household in Egypt. So he was taught with all of the wisdom of the Egyptians. And this is something that the early church fathers point to time and time again, that part of Moses capacity to be the leader of the new nation, to be a lawgiver, to bring them together to create, say, structures like a judicial structure, things like this all comes from his pagan learning amongst the Egyptians. And so St. Jerome, I think, gives this wonderful tour de force in the second paragraph, pointing to Moses and then giving three examples in the New Testament in which St. Paul has recourse to pagan philosophers or pagan texts. And he just, I think he just knocks us out of the park. He then gives two fascinating examples of this. So the classic example is despoiling the Egyptians. That's the analogy that most people use. One that I had not heard before that's in here that I actually really enjoyed was quote, talking about David. For he had learned from the true David to wrench the sword of the enemy out of his hand and with his own blade to cut off the head of the arrogant Goliath. And I think that is a fascinating analogy, that David taking the sword of Goliath is Christianity taking the best of these arguments from paganism, but then with those arguments alongside the grace of Jesus Christ vanquishing paganism itself. So it took what was best of paganism and then basically defeated paganism with its own arguments and alongside grace. And so maybe to that point, he actually makes a really fascinating. Yeah, he makes a fascinating claim in the fourth paragraph that Origen wrote 10 books in which he compares together the opinions held respectively by Christians and by the philosophers. And this is a quote, confirms all the dogmas of our religion by quotations from Plato and Aristotle. It's just a fascinating take, I think.
- [76:26]
C
Yeah, I think one thing that you find interesting here, I mean, one. So of course the utility of understanding Greeks is important here in the sense that it helps with apologetics as far as, well, both defending the faith, but also the fact that, no, you can take the very same arguments and tools that say, the Greeks or the pagans have used and show them where their arguments are falling short or where they're flawed. So there's also a sort of evangelical tone here as well. But it seems that almost part of what's being drawn out here from Jerome implicitly is the idea that's really pushing back on this notion that Christianity must be kept pure and undefiled. It's almost the opposite that what he's saying here is no, Christianity if is either completely intermingled in somewhat, you know, the fate of Providence is working through the hands of all, even the pagans. Or if you're not comfortable with that, well, Christianity in and of itself as the truth is able to coexist with pagans and falsehoods and ideologies. And on the very, you know, the very fact that Christianity is the truth, it will, you know, conquer, you know, if God is with us, who can stand against us? So it seems then that there's almost that implicit mode of being both in study and how the Christian should conduct himself, that it's, no, you don't need to separate yourself from reality. You don't need a whole off. There's no purity to be protected. Rather, it's proclaim the truth and let it engage even with these others ideas and the truth shall purify them or conquer.
- [77:51]
A
Yeah, no, very well said. I have to share this other analogy. And then someone has to come up with a good comment because this can't be the last thing that we end on. But St. Jerome gives us like, fascinating analogy. That's somewhat famous actually. Dr. Prudlow, if we recall all the way back to last Lent, Dr. Prudlow on the podcast in discussing Dante's Inferno, actually made reference to this. And so I had to ask him where he got it. And so he, he talks about. St. Jerome gives this analogy that bringing the best of paganism into Christianity is like shaving the slave girl and taking her as your wife. Which is probably not an analogy that most of us immediately hold to. But he says he had read in Deuteronomy the command given by the voice of the Lord that when a captive woman had had her head shaved, her eyebrows and all her hair cut off, and her nails paired, she may then be taken as a wife. Is it surprising that I, too, admiring the fairness of her form and the grace of her eloquence, desire to make that secular wisdom which is my captive and my handmaid, a matron of the true Israel? Now, as funny as this example is, I was thinking about tonight as I was kind of driving home and working bees tomorrow on our little family farm. And so there's like 80 of these. I'm not in charge of this project. It's my wife's project. And so she's allowed to add. We have these rules on the farm. One of the rules, which I think is broken a lot, but is you're only supposed to add one thing to the farm per year, because if not, it just gets out of control. And so this year we're adding bees. And so there's like 80 of these little pants and we built our beehives. And so there's like 80 of these little panels that you have to, like, slowly construct. And I'll skip all the details, etc. It gives lots of time for reflection as you do menial tasks. I was thinking about this analogy just because it's funny on its face and comical, but I thought it was really interesting that I think in this process, why would you do this to a woman and then take her as your wife? I thought that maybe I'm torturing this analogy. But one thing I thought was really interesting is that you remove all of the grandeur. You remove all of kind of like the surface level attraction, and you still see, like, well, who's the person in front of me? Do I want to take her as my wife? And I thought this was actually really analogous then to the paganism that we're going. We're going to remove, you know, the glamour, the rhetoric. We're going to remove all of this and just see what is the beauty of, in form of the actual thing in front of me. And then that is what I accept and take into this, like, marital relationship, right? With. With the true Israel, with the church. And so I actually think, you know, it's a funny analogy, but I actually think it. It plays out. It plays out deeper maybe than at first glance.
- [80:44]
B
Yeah, I think what you said is good. And. And I think it's such a beautiful analogy in its own way because it paired, of course, with this letter from St. Basil. It reminds me of the story that he references, which is Hercules and virtue and vice as women standing before him. And vice, of course, looks beautiful and seductive and everything, but then virtue is sort of plain and clearly shows that this hardship and toil that will come and then Hercules makes the right choice in that sense. And maybe drawing on what you're saying, that's kind of exactly what St. Jerome's getting at, that if we tear away all of the seductions, all of the false teaching, all of the distractions, what we'll actually get is what. What Justin Martyr says, you know, you'll get this, the seed and of the Logos, and that. That's exactly what we need. And I think it's. It's cheeky too, right? But it is so beautiful. I mean, this idea, it's. And it's very reminiscent of the stories in the Old Testament of. Of Abraham and Moses and Joseph, who take in everybody else and kind of become leaders and rulers in the Gentile lands and in the Canaanite lands, which then, to something you said earlier, Sean, kind of raises the question, what does it even mean to be pure and undefiled in that sense? You know, I mean, God set apart his people and then willingly let in so many if they just, you know, obeyed him. And I don't know, I'm pure, I am impure and certainly defiled. And yet here I am. So it's.
- [82:57]
A
This is the grace of the sacrament of confession. Right? That's. Is wonderful. Yeah, Very good. Well, any, like, Sean, any. Any kind of closing. Any closing thoughts or anything that we missed?
- [83:10]
C
I mean, I think I might just. As a closing thought, because I think. I think it's beautiful and fitting that it's ending on this note of hints of marriage and hints of love. Right. You know, like you sort of invoking Hercules at the crossroads. It also reminds me, since Augustine's Confessions is fresh in my mind, I'm finishing off that. Read through. Now. Augustine has a similar experience when he's discussing his baptismal experience, right. That the last thing that was holding him back from his leap was he didn't want to give up lust. He talks about how he felt like lust was this woman that was like, you know, seductive and like, capturing his attention and like, clawing onto him. But then in the distance, he sees, you know, purity as a woman in this vision of his. And once again, it's something that is, you know, far more humble and gentle and welcoming. And it's like, come here. But you have to. It's. It's like. It's not easily apparent to. To love, the. The beauty of how he sees chastity. But as he sort of looks at her and meditates on her, he begins to see, you know, just how gentle and nourishing and how. How that's home. And it's sort of that meditate meditation upon the good that helps him have a true love for chastity, that brings him home. And so I guess what I'm getting at here then is we're looking now back onto, you know, the pagan literature here. That it's. I mean, it seems to be something about that this is how we also look at pagan literature. It's not necessarily something to be looked at as either, like, lusted after of, oh, look at how great all this poetry is and how seductive this is. Like, there's a sort of discernment process. But it's also true love. That, again, we're. It's not either. Like, we. We break this down. It's like, no, spend some time, work with it, nourish it. What are they trying to say? You know, understand and internalize what is being espoused here. And as you understand it, and then you add that sort of Christian element to it. It's like, now you can also. Now you can bring that sense of purity that. That sort of. Now you can truly love and nurture and nourish this work for what it is. And you can take those gems with you. And therefore, you know, engaging in pagan literature again, it's just like it's an act of love to better understand how providence is working through this literature and to better understand your faith and also understand how you can better, you know, speak and evangelize to those outside of the faith. So it's almost very fitting, then, that all this seems like everything that we're doing with this engagement and study, all of this is truly oriented and grounded in an act of love.
- [85:24]
A
Yeah, no, very well said. Yeah. I think a lot of this comes down to, as most things do, right? A proper training and bridling of Eros. Where are we actually satiating our erotic appetite? And I think a lot of these analogies, then, that use femininity in these ways is trying to teach these young men to actually orient their erotic love towards the higher things, right? To go up that ladder of love, if you will. And even Diotima in the Symposium, right? The body of the beloved awakens something in us, but then we understand the beauty of the soul, which can lead us into understanding the beauty of virtue, maybe even the beauty of Wisdom and then the beauty of God himself. And so yeah, the femininity is typically used as an icon of God's beauty. Right. That the beauty itself and God is reflected through that female form. And the corruptive idea is lust. But it's also not a puritan concept, but rather something that can actually be an invitation, I think, for the masculine to ascend. Right. And then climb to ladder of love. Yeah, no, very, very well said. Alec, any kind of final thoughts on your end?
- [86:29]
B
Yeah, I think that's. That's really good. Sean and Deacon, both of what you guys have said. Yeah, I just, if I can, I just want to end with a quote from Justin Martyr. I think that really sums it up. He says whatever things were rightly said among all men are the property of us Christians.
- [86:50]
A
That is good. Yes. Justin Martyr is someone that I has haunted a lot of these conversations and I just. I need to spend more time with him. I really do. I need to spend more time with this text because the more I come to really appreciate Greek thought, particularly Plato, the more Justin Martyr seems to just kind of be haunting off and to the side and constantly being a source that I probably need to spend time with.
- [87:12]
B
I recommend his. Actually the letter, it's Saint Aristides. A R, I, S T I D E S. Basically he has Justin Martyr's apology, but about as long as St. Basil's address. Read that one first because he's the one who inspired Justin Martyr and I think Jerome mentions him in his letter. But that's what I would start there is the apology of Saint Aristides and then it's a good place to start for Justin.
- [87:44]
A
Yeah, no, I appreciate that. I appreciate that a lot. Sean, where can people find more about you and your work?
- [87:50]
C
Yeah, I mean where I'm most active would just be on Twitter at my handle, Sean Baraby for. And then also if anyone's interested in the coaching, I have the SeanBaraby.com is my website where there's home to everything.
- [88:04]
A
Yeah, very good. And Alec, what about you and the Searcy Institute?
- [88:07]
B
Yeah, we're on Twitter X. We're on Facebook website searcyinstitute.org but please, we do online conferences and in person events and podcasts where. And all kinds of stuff. So we'd love to. And you can also interact with me just personally, Alec and Bianca.
- [88:30]
A
Yeah, no, very good. Well, I just want to say thank you to both of you. I appreciate all of your insights. I learned a lot this evening. Again, iron sharpening iron. I'm a first time reader of both these texts. I appreciate all the guidance that you gave. So thank you so much.
- [88:42]
C
Thank you.
- [88:42]
A
All right, everyone, the next couple weeks. Check out thegreatbookspodcast.com for our reading schedule. But we have coming UP, Plato and St. Augustine with Dr. Chad Pecknold out of CUA, and then Plato and Boethius with Dr. Thomas Ward out of Baylor, I believe. And then we have Plato and St. Thomas Aquinas with Dr. Donald Prudlow. So we're going to give a little sketch of Plato and kind of intellectual history of how he's affected some of our greatest saints. Go check us out on X and YouTube and all the other places you can find Ascend, the Great Books podcast. And we will see you next week. Thank you.