Transcript

Thank you, thank you, thank you for watching.

Thank you!

I am thrilled to be here on a Thursday evening.

By the time you, the audience, are watching, it will be a Saturday evening.

I’m joined by my dear friend Father Deacon Dragani, and I am also joined by another dear friend of mine.

It’s my very first time having him on, and I’m thrilled to have him on.

Everybody knows him by the name Byzantine Scotist: my friend Gideon.

Gentlemen, how are you all this evening?

Doing great, thank you for having me on, William!

I’m thrilled to have you all on and thrilled to talk about the Incarnation.

Now, I like doing one show or more every year, kind of in a roundtable format on the topic of the Incarnation.

I love talking about the Incarnation.

I couldn’t think of a better person, a better individual to pick brains on when it comes to the topic of the Incarnation.

Father Deacon has done a lot of incredible work in every area of theology, and of course, Gideon, whom by the time the show airs, there will be a link to his channel down below, has done a number of incredible works.

I believe he has debated a few times in the Pints with Aquinas series; he’s done a lot of great work.

Let me begin with you, Father Deacon.

When it comes to the Incarnation, it tends to get a little bit lost in the shuffle of the holiday season that we’re in at times.

How vital and important is the Incarnation when it comes to being a Christian?

Yeah, like you said, it gets lost in the shuffle during the holiday season, but also oftentimes when we talk about salvation, the Incarnation gets lost in the shuffle as well.

There’s been a tendency to always focus on the crucifixion and the resurrection when we talk about salvation.

That’s been a tendency for a long time.

You know, we talk about the crucifixion, the atoning death, the resurrection, but we forget that the Incarnation is just as vital to our salvation as the other two.

Really, those three things work together.

Without the Incarnation, we don’t have salvation.

And you know, an interesting observation: if you look at the Nicene Creed, where does the word salvation appear?

In the phrase, For us men and for our salvation, he became man, right?

So the Incarnation is very much linked to salvation, and that often gets lost in the shuffle.

Very, very good point, sir, and I appreciated that.

Really digging into the Creed there, it tends to get people to not really pay attention to what is being said.

Very good point, sir!

Now, one area where I've read a lot and done a lot of digging in, because I am, like my friend Gideon, a massive devotee— I have a great devotion to the great Blessed Duns Scotus and what he has to say, in particular, about the Incarnation.

I’ve found it to be incredibly fascinating, really central to pointing out the great love that our Lord truly has for His creation.

Now, Gideon, when you approach the Incarnation generally, what thoughts do you have?

And if you have any thoughts on what the great Don Scotus believed in terms of the Incarnation, feel free to share whatever you have in your mind.

Yeah, so for Scotus, there’s a famous belief attributed to him she held called the Absolute Primacy of Christ.

Now, a lot of people miss what actually is the Absolute Primacy of Christ for Scotus.

So Scotus, at one point, is discussing whether or not God would have become man if Adam and Eve had not sinned, and he answers that God still would have become man.

But that itself is not the Absolute Primacy.

Something I think far more profound is the Absolute Primacy, which is that Christ is the first intended in God's will.

God willed to love Himself ad intra, but now, if we're considering His will outside of Himself, what order does He will in?

And he says, well, He’s not going to will something greater for something lesser, right?

I’m not going to will to have a son so that I can get some sort of tax benefit from it.

You know, that would be a very disordered way of willing.

I’d be willing something greater for something lesser.

But God wills in a most orderly way, right?

We might, because of our passions, have bad incentives for doing good things, but God is going to will in the perfect order.

And so, he says, we know, right?

God didn’t have to become incarnate, but we know from the facts of history that He freely did become incarnate.

So, considering the fact that He did become incarnate, in what order in His will did that decision happen?

Did He first will to create the universe, to create man, then He saw that man sinned, He saw there needed to be a remedy for sin, and then He chose to become man?

So he says no, that would be the wrong way around.

God first wills the Incarnation, then what would be greatest for the Incarnation?

There has to be a mother to give birth to the Son, so He wills Mary.

Then He, from there, goes on and wills all of creation so that all of creation can be this place for Christ.

He wills Christ as the head of the Church, then He sees that man sins, and so He sends Christ also to save man from sin.

But He first wills Christ.

So, going back to this first point of what is the Absolute Primacy, it’s not merely that God would have become man even if man had never sinned.

That follows from the Absolute Primacy, but the Absolute Primacy itself is this beautiful idea that all of creation is willed for the sake of Christ.

I want to point out that this belief actually was generally accepted after Scotus, even by people very opposed to Scotus on the view of the Felix Culpa, whether Christ would have become incarnate if not for sin.

So, the Salmantic and Carmelite Thomists, who generally adopted what ended up becoming sort of the standard Thomist position, actually conceded that Scotus was correct on the Absolute Primacy, even if they still weren’t willing to adopt that God would have become man even if it wasn’t for sin.

Now let me pick your brain a little bit there, Gideon, in terms of the theology put forth by Duns Scotus that Christ would have still come incarnate.

Do you hold to that as well?

Yeah, I think it’s very, very clear from the teachings of the Scriptures.

I think if you look at passages like Colossians chapter 1, or Ephesians chapter 1, or 1 Peter 1:20, all of these passages very clearly state that Christ was willed first in the intention of God's will.

And actually, in 1 Peter 1:20, it says before the foundation of the world.

I’ve actually been doing a study recently on this phrase, the foundation of the world.

As far as I can tell, I’m trying to do a deeper study to see if it ever comes up before the New Testament, and I have not found any examples of it being used in Greek before the New Testament.

But it comes up ten times in the New Testament, and it’s first used by Christ within His ministry.

It’s used, if I remember correctly, three times within His ministry.

And then another seven times, both in the Epistles and in the Book of Revelation.

So clearly, the apostles are drawing on this theology first laid out by Christ in His ministry, and the phrase is kataboles kosmos in Greek.

There are two different prepositions that we find with kataboles kosmos.

We find pro, which means before, and we find apo, which means from.

Now, from the foundation of the world doesn’t necessarily have to entail actually at the very beginning of the world.

For example, at one point in His ministry, Christ says that the blood of Abel was shed from the foundation of the world.

Clearly, some number of years after the creation of the world at the time of Abel was still from the foundation.

But we also find this phrase before the foundation of the world, which is used three times, as I said.

One of those times is Christ saying that the Father loved Him before the foundation of the world.

This is a much stronger sense than from the foundation of the world.

We also find that in 1 Peter 1:20. Let me read this verse from 1 Peter so people can get a sense of what I’m talking about here: He was destined before the foundation of the world but was made manifest at the end of the times for your sake.

So, God, before the foundation of the world, predestined the Incarnation.

It’s in the same sort of time in which the Father loved the Son.

It says very early on in the intention of God's will, He willed it.

But this was unknown, right?

Some Fathers seem to think that this was revealed to the angels; others seem to think it wasn’t revealed to the angels.

But at the very least, it was not revealed to man until the coming of Christ that there was this secret implanted within the world.

Another time Christ uses it is when He’s quoting from Psalm 82, if I remember correctly.

He says that these things that were hidden from the foundation of the world are now being revealed.

It seems like this mystery was willed by God from the very beginning.

St. Paul also says in Ephesians chapter 1 that the predestination of the saints was before the foundation of the world.

So the Father loves the Son, He wills the Son to become incarnate, and He wills the predestination of the Church with Christ as its head—all before the foundation of the world.

I think we’re getting this very profound teaching on God’s will and God’s intention in creating and how this was made manifest in salvation history in these verses in the New Testament.

I often think it’s interesting how in the New Testament, Christ and the apostles will say stuff almost like what I’m saying about the Incarnation is obvious.

And we go and we read these sorts of passages and think, how in the world is this sort of thing obvious?

But to them, once they got a deep understanding of the Scriptures and God's will, which had been infused in them by the Holy Spirit, they were able to look back and say, oh, of course it’s obvious!

The Incarnation had to happen; this is the only way everything could have happened.

There’s no other way that would be fitting.

Incredible points there, Gideon—great, great points!

Father Deacon, anything to add to that?

Oh, absolutely!

I do, yes.

So, first of all, I’m not as familiar with Duns Scotus as you are, Gideon.

I was not aware that that was his viewpoint—that the Incarnation was always the plan.

I find that fascinating because that’s very much the perspective of the majority of the Eastern Church Fathers.

They’re very clear on the idea that whether or not Adam and Eve had sinned, the Incarnation was the plan from the beginning.

One Church Father that did a beautiful job explaining this is St. Isaac the Syrian.

St. Isaac the Syrian, who’s pulling from the Gospel of John, said the Incarnation happened because of love—because of God’s love.

The Incarnation was always the plan, and that’s why it occurred.

It was not a response to Adam and Eve’s sin; it was not a response; it was the plan from the get-go.

And again, you find that in Saint Maximus the Confessor, you find that in Saint Athanasius, Saint Gregory Nazianzus—they all take the same approach.

And you know, one way of looking at it is this: If you look at the creation account in the Book of Genesis, the way it’s laid out, if you look at the structure of it, in many ways it reflects how temples were built in the ancient world.

You know, the process of building a temple—and typically what would happen was the temple would be built, and then, when it was finished, the god would be placed within it.

If you look at the way the creation narrative is structured, it’s God building a temple.

He’s building a temple, but that temple is waiting for God to be put inside of it, to be placed in it.

The plan is that God the Son will take on human flesh, and He will be the God inside the temple.

It’s being built to house Him, so this world is really a temple being built to house God—God the Son in human flesh.

So, the Incarnation was always the plan from day one—or before day one.

Beautiful!

Yeah, building on that, if people are doubting that the Church Fathers taught what Father Deacon just said, I would highly recommend the articles of Father Dominic Unger, who was a Scotist—an American Scotist—in the early 20th century.

He wrote quite a number of detailed articles showing that the Church Fathers all taught the Absolute Primacy.

I think he actually has one on St. Isaac the Syrian even.

He’s also working with a lot fewer sources than we have now because he's writing these in the 1940s.

In the one on Saint Maximus, he goes on for many pages to argue that Christ is the final cause of all of creation according to Saint Maximus.

All he has is the Responses to Thalassius, and he doesn't have the Ambigua, which would have made this incredibly clear and wouldn’t have needed detailed argumentation.

But it’s just amazing how much insight he was able to get from so little.

And if people want to read those articles, they’re actually all free on JSTOR. You can make a free account; you can’t download the articles, but you can read them all for free on there.

So yeah, especially with St. Maximus, who has this beautiful passage in all the Responses to Thalassius where Thalassius is asking him— I think it’s Thalassius; I’m probably butchering his name there; I can always mix up the order of his name— he is responding to, but he is asking essentially what is the reason for the Incarnation?

And St. Maximus says, “This was the mystery that was hidden from all the ages but intended from the very beginning.”

In another spot in St. Maximus' writings—in the “Centuries on Charity”—he has one spot where he says, “Don’t consider why God made at one time rather than another,” right?

This mystery of how it could be that God is outside of time—that’s so beyond us; we’re just going to be driven insane by trying to figure it out.

But he says, “Do ask why God created.”

He doesn’t answer the question in the “Centuries on Charity.”

It’s only if you go to his work in the Responses on Scripture that you get the answer—that it’s Christ from all the ages that we have to meditate on that truth.

Also, then on the discussion of the temple, it’s very interesting that there are some parallels on this within 17th-century Scotism.

So, Angelo Volpi was a famous 17th-century Scotist, and he was working on the three offices of Christ—His priesthood, His kingship, and His prophethood.

I have not researched as much into what he said on the kingship or the prophethood, but on the priesthood, I’m drawing this also from Jared Goff, so full credit to him on this.

Volpi is synthesizing what Bonaventure and Scotus say on the topic.

Bonaventure discusses how the Son is the mediating term in the Trinity—that the Son comes from the Father, and the Spirit from both Father and Son.

So, in some sense, the Son is this middle term within the Trinity.

He uses this as a basis for the eternal priesthood of Christ.

Then he brings in Scotus and introduces the idea that the whole world is made for the Incarnation.

So, in some sense, then, the whole world is made as a temple for the Son, because the Son is the eternal priest within the Trinity.

Volpi was doing this without any of the modern scholarship on ancient Near Eastern temples and the tabernacle.

If you go try and read commentaries from like before the modern world on the tabernacle, you can tell they’re trying to get at it, but there are just a lot of issues.

They don’t have the depth of scholarship that we now have on it.

But we now have very deep scholarship, especially on the Hebrew of these texts, because a lot of the connections between Genesis 1 and the tabernacle are going to be missed unless you’re paying close attention to the Hebrew words.

For example, when the sun, moon, and stars are placed in the sky, they’re placed as lights in the sky.

That Hebrew word for lights there is a pretty rare word, but it's used again for the seven-branched lampstand within the tabernacle, and it’s placed in the Holy Place—the same spot that would correspond to the firmament in the construction of the world.

You can go quite in depth about this.

So it’s very interesting that the tradition has affirmed these things about Christ that have now been vindicated in more depth in the Scriptures through modern scholarship on the temple.

Really, really incredible points!

And you were talking about the foundation of the world.

Now, I have not looked at the Greek of the Epistle of Barnabas, but I’m sure you know what I’m referring to, where we read that He is the Lord of the whole world to whom God set up the foundation of the world: “Let us make man in our image and our likeness.”

Have you looked at the Greek of that?

I have not!

I was not even thinking of that passage.

So I’m going to absolutely research this, and that’s making me think I should have looked more into what the Fathers were saying on this phrase.

As I continue to research this, I should absolutely look into that more.

I hope the Greek does bear out.

I do not have the Greek in front of me, but perhaps after the show, I’ll look at it.

But that really, really is quite fascinating, particularly if you find it in any of the Apostolic Fathers or any of the early Church Fathers, which I imagine you probably will find a decent amount of connections.

Father Deacon, any thoughts on any of the comments that Gideon just made?

Oh, just, you know, it’s fascinating stuff, and it’s one of those things we oftentimes don’t think much about the Incarnation.

We kind of take it for granted.

But the deeper you delve, it makes sense of things.

It’s almost like there’s a puzzle, right?

You know, salvation—God's work through human history—is a big puzzle, and the Incarnation is like the key piece.

You know, it’s really the central piece, and once you have the Incarnation understood—understand its significance—everything fits together so much better.

Yeah, without a doubt!

And we know that the Incarnation is denied by Islam.

You’ve got a number of religious groups that deny the Incarnation; it is really central and very important to our faith.

Now, one particular scripture you all talked about—a number of incredible Scriptures—another one which has an incredible prophecy is found in Isaiah 9, where it tells us, For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders, and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God.

Now, we know that a massive amount of early Church Fathers viewed this as a prophecy that does come into fulfillment.

There are a number of profound and incredible passages that foreshadow the Incarnation.

We even have in the Deuterocanonical texts.

Gideon, you briefly mentioned Father Unger, right?

I believe Father Unger has done an incredible work, particularly in his masterful compilation in Genesis on the Protoevangelium.

There’s nothing like it of its kind, where he really— I mean, goodness, how many early Fathers does he really comb through there to show an incredible uniformity of belief?

There’s not only Holy Mary as being the woman of Genesis 3 but our Lord, including Him, being the seed of the woman.

He’s done a lot of great work, hasn’t he?

Yeah, and on that passage in Isaiah 9, I actually think we also find it in Isaiah 7. Really, through Isaiah 7 through 11, we keep having this discussion of the child, and we see what is the child named?

He’s named God with us.

But even more clear, I think, than this—right?

But maybe since I'm a convert from Judaism, even though I was never a religious Jew, it’s often in my mind to consider what might the Jewish objector respond to with these things.

Now, you might say, oh, maybe this is referring to someone holy who might have the Spirit of God resting upon them, and in that sense, it's God with us.

But in Isaiah 59, this theme is picked up once again, and we have this whole discussion in chapter 59, verses 1 through 15. There’s this discussion of how there is no justice in society and everyone’s doing evil.

Society's broken down at every level.

We see there, starting from verse 15, Isaiah says, The Lord saw it, and it displeased Him that there was no justice; He saw that there was no man and wondered that there was no one to intercede.

Well, actually, that word intercede there—it's intervene in the Revised Standard Version translation I’m looking at here—but actually, the Hebrew word there is intercede, and the last time we saw that Hebrew word used was in Isaiah 53, where the servant makes intercession.

The suffering servant, who dies for our sins, makes intercession for the transgressors.

Now we see that there is no man who can make intercession because we see any man there continues to be injustice.

We go on, so we have this crisis that no man can bring justice.

Then we hear that no man can make intercession.

Well, we already heard of a man who makes intercession!

And then we see, oh, God is going to put on armor.

It’s the sort of description that you would have of a human putting on these things, and so I think this is a prophecy of God putting on human flesh in the Incarnation to make justice and make intercession for the transgressors because no man can achieve this.

That really, really is an incredible insight there, and I think you’ve brought up a number of great points.

You have a number of great prophecies in Isaiah— I had forgotten about that one!

Also, Isaiah 7, you’re right about that.

It’s a great one.

You’re correct!

We read, The virgin is a child shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel.

As we know, that is picked up in the Gospels and without a doubt referring to our Lord, referring to the mother of the Messiah as well.

Very, very good points there!

I’d like to get your thoughts on that, Father Deacon, and then we can talk about the one that, of course, everybody should know—an incredibly important one in John 1—but maybe your thoughts there, Father Deacon?

Well, I wanted to back up a bit and reflect on something you said earlier, William, about Islam.

You know, Islam denying the Incarnation.

That’s a big part of the issue with Islam—the denial of the Incarnation.

But also, if you look at some forms of Christianity, there’s a tendency in some varieties of Christianity to downplay the Incarnation or to not consider the logical ramifications of the Incarnation.

So, what do I mean by that?

Well, first of all, we talked earlier about salvation.

Some forms of Christianity focus almost exclusively on the Crucifixion and the atonement, and they look at salvation as being a legal thing—almost like a legal exchange.

If you approach it that way, the Incarnation is nothing more than just a stepping stone toward the Crucifixion.

You find that in some forms of Christianity.

Likewise, if you take the Incarnation seriously and you really understand it and its significance, you’re going to realize a few things.

You’re going to realize that God works through matter—that God became a physical, material being; He took on human flesh.

You know, in the ancient world, most religions viewed matter as being bad and spirit as being good.

But here we have God taking on matter, making matter good.

If you take that as a logical conclusion, things such as the sacraments make a lot more sense.

That God took on matter, He became a material being, and He works through material things—things like bread, wine, water, and oil.

Varieties of Christianity that deny the sacraments or see the sacraments as only symbolic and having no spiritual power or meaning aren’t really thinking through the ramifications of the Incarnation.

This also continues on to things such as images.

There are some forms of Christianity that are very much opposed to images—images of Christ, images of holy figures.

Islam is also very much opposed to images and any kind of worship.

But if you consider that God took on human flesh, and that God became a human being, it’s perfectly fine to depict Him in images and to depict saints in images as well because that’s also, you know, God working through physical material things, sanctifying human beings.

So, iconoclasm kind of goes out the window when you really consider the Incarnation.

Finally, there’s the issue of Mary.

If you really take the Incarnation seriously, you’re realizing that God took on flesh and became one of us inside of the womb of a specific person—inside of the womb of this one woman.

When you think about that, that does make her the new Ark of the Covenant; that’s where God’s presence is found.

So, if you take the Incarnation seriously, things such as the veneration of Mary, things such as the sacraments, and religious artwork depicting humans and depicting Christ—all of those things make sense if you take the Incarnation seriously.

But sadly, many forms of Christianity don’t really think that through.

And building on what Father Deacon said—thank you, that was a very wonderful point—I wanted to build on a point you made, both on Mary and on certain forms of Christianity that will place a great emphasis only on the Crucifixion.

An objection you’ll hear from some Protestants on our teaching that Mary was sinless is they’ll say, Oh, if Mary was sinless, why didn’t she die on the cross and redeem us of our sins?

Why do we need Christ to come?

As though the only thing that was necessary is a human who happened to be sinless, not that God actually had to become man.

Well, how would a sinless human dying actually save us from our sins?

There has to be God become man in order to save us from our sins.

That really is a profound point.

That's an excellent point there!

Yeah, great point!

And to really piggyback off of what you pointed out there, Father Deacon, and even Gideon, I think they’re very important points because when we look in early Church history and even when we get to the time of Islam, how incredibly connected Christology is with Mariology.

You find some of the lowest Mariology and lowest Christology in those heretics who denied that our Lord was eternal God.

It’s really incredible how it all really goes hand in hand, as you pointed out, Father Deacon.

I stop and I think of particular figures like Helvidius, Eunomius, Substantinus, and other figures who had a very distorted view of our Lord.

The early Fathers were very clearly squarely against them, but they also had very poor Mariology in terms of denying the perpetual virginity of Mary because they simply didn't think it was possible that a humble maidservant could have remained a perpetual virgin.

So it really does go hand in hand, and I think it’s important to point out because I've dialogued with a number of Islamic scholars.

I know Gideon has done a lot of work within Islam, and Father Deacon as well.

I’ve had a number of them tell me—in fact, I did a show with Dr. Shabir Ally perhaps about a year or two ago—where he told me, you know, there’s a lot we can affirm about Mary that we agree upon.

You know, we have no problem agreeing upon Mary as perpetual virgin, and there are a number of Muslims as well, including myself, that believe—he said—that believe that Mary was assumed into heaven.

But the clear disconnect will always be the fact that they deny the Incarnation.

If they deny the Incarnation, they’re going to deny Mary as Mother of God.

So that’s clearly connected and very clearly problematic within Islam.

You’ll hear them have a big problem with how God can ever come into His own creation, as if that is just horrific, abhorrent, and impossible.

Gideon, have you ever encountered that?

I have not done too much work on Islam, but I think this is a serious issue in terms of their view of Mary.

There was a good interview Matt Fradd did with Jacob Imam, who’s a friend of mine and a former Muslim.

Jacob Imam made the point that their view of the Annunciation and the virgin conception of Christ is much more of God forcing it upon Mary—that God comes and says this is what’s going to happen—versus in Christianity, as we see it in the Gospels, where the angel visits Mary and gives her a choice to accept or not accept it.

I also think in Islam, you see this emphasis upon the law rather than upon theology.

If you look both in Judaism and in Islam, they’re both going to prioritize legal decisions and how you ought to live according to the law.

In contrast, in Christianity, we have a much deeper idea of a theological tradition and trying to better understand the Incarnation.

It’s probably a lot out of discussions of the Incarnation that we get such a rich theological tradition in Christianity.

I think it’s ultimately because, as St. Paul talks about in his letter to the Galatians, the Incarnation delivers us so we can live according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh.

So, ultimately, Islam ends up being about living under the flesh, as you have in Judaism.

But unlike Judaism, where they don't evangelize, right?

Just their people—in Islam, it then seeks to bring everyone in the world back under the flesh.

Yeah, Father Deacon, your thoughts?

Yeah, you know, Islam is interesting to me because if you look at Islam and the history of Islam, there are some pretty interesting echoes of Christianity in it that don’t necessarily seem to match with what Islam actually teaches.

For one thing, you find in Islam a pretty interesting veneration of Mary.

Mary is viewed as a significant figure; there’s a whole chapter in the Quran all about Mary.

In a weird way, there is more veneration of Mary in Islam than there is in most forms of Protestantism, which is very strange when you consider that in Islam, she is not the Mother of God.

That veneration is there, and it’s pretty palpable.

You also find things in Islam, such as the belief in the virgin birth—that Jesus had no human father.

Muslims believe that Jesus ascended into heaven and that he’s going to come again at the end of time.

They’re also looking for the Second Coming of Jesus like we are, but yet they don’t believe that He is God in the flesh, and they see Muhammad as being the greater prophet, even though Muhammad had a human father and Muhammad died.

So, there’s a lot of historical stuff that’s rather fascinating because a lot of it doesn’t seem to add up with Islamic theology.

I think if you delve deep enough, you probably see that Islam grew out of various forms of Christianity that were not necessarily orthodox Christianity.

Yeah, I know one interesting example you find is that in Islam, there is a tradition that Jesus spoke from the cradle, which comes from a 5th-century Gnostic gospel.

Arabia at the time was an incredibly religiously diverse place, and we know Muhammad was not literate.

So, my thought is probably that he was a merchant and he probably hears in the marketplace all the time all these different stories people are telling, and it ends up being a blending of different things.

Father Deacon, Anthony was saying it’s quite interesting if there are traditions of Islam that venerate Mary.

I wonder if those came about in part because of Christians whose families became Muslim but continued this tradition of venerating Mary into that?

Well, you find it in the Quran itself.

There’s a whole chapter about it in the Quran, so it goes back even before that.

But yeah, you know what you brought up, Gideon, is always fascinating to me.

It has Jesus speaking from the moment he's born, and His first words are, I am a slave of Allah.

You know, so that again—it’s fascinating stuff like that.

And like you said, you find Jesus speaking from the cradle in various Gnostic texts and whatnot.

I'm not an expert in the history of Islam, but I've read enough about it that I have some interesting thoughts of my own.

As you’re probably aware, in the Western Church, there was a tendency to execute heretics—put heretics to death—because they saw heresy as a disease that would spread and kill the soul.

In the Byzantine Empire, the tendency was to exile heretics more than to execute them.

A lot of the heretics were actually exiled to the places we now call the Arabian Peninsula, and many of those movements kind of took root in the Arabian Peninsula.

Now, we know that Muhammad, before he became the prophet of Islam, was a caravan worker, so he traveled all over the Arabian Peninsula with his caravans.

He encountered Jewish groups and he encountered various Christian communities, most of which were not of the orthodox variety.

So I think he heard stories from them, and he took things in, creating this mishmash of various potentially conflicting beliefs, which would explain a lot of this.

But again, there are different theories as to where this actually came from.

An interesting thing about Islam is that it does not have a temple theology like Judaism and Christianity do.

You’ll notice one thing that’s significantly absent from the Quran is discussion of the construction of the Tabernacle and the Temple.

In contrast, the Bible has about 20 chapters in Exodus just going through the construction of the Tabernacle, then the entire Book of Leviticus instructing you what to do within that Tabernacle.

We get that discussion again in the Book of 1 Kings, where there’s a discussion of the building of the Temple and how all the spots correspond back to the Tabernacle.

In the New Testament, we have a long discussion in the Book of Hebrews about the fulfillment of the different parts of the Tabernacle.

This is probably, in part, because the Tabernacle—no, the Temple, rather—no longer existed in the time of Muhammad.

So it wasn’t something that probably would have been frequently publicly discussed by Jews and Christians, even if it would have been within their theology.

But it is interesting that this is one of the primary themes in Scripture—the discussion of the Temple—and it’s just absent within Islam.

As I’m thinking about it now, I wonder if there is some connection between that and the Incarnation as connected to Christ's priesthood, as we were discussing earlier in the show.

Just to jump on that, what Gideon said is fascinating again—how there is no temple theology in Islam, no emphasis upon the temple.

But at the same time, this always struck me as odd.

When the Muslims conquered Jerusalem, one of the first things that their leaders asked to do was to be taken to the place where the temple used to be.

They actually were given the opportunity to pray with Christians in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but they didn’t want to go in there; they wanted to go to the location of the temple.

They went there, and at that point in time, it was all rubble—this rubble sitting on top of the mountain.

They cleared away the rubble and found the stones—the stone where the altar used to be in the temple, the stone where Abraham went to sacrifice his son—and that became their holy site in Jerusalem.

So again, there’s no theology of the temple there; there’s no understanding of the temple, but yet that was the place they wanted to claim as their own in Jerusalem.

Again, I’m not sure why or how that adds up, but it is kind of fascinating.

It echoes Christianity and Judaism before it.

That’s really fascinating!

I never thought about that, but yeah—those are very, very good points.

You all earlier brought up how, I think it was Father Deacon or Gideon, brought up how early on it was very evident within Islam that it was kind of like a mishmash of a lot of Christological heresies.

Indeed, along with different groups, even flavors of Gnosticism really just blended in there.

You can really tell, and I don’t say it to be rude or ugly, but you can really get an idea that Muhammad was not very well educated.

You can tell by the number of traditions that he just adopted, which are common to his area.

You brought up, Father Deacon, how you’re right; within Islam, there is a veneration of Mary.

I think that the one thing that is a little bit dangerous is we have a lot of Catholic people who will then get told by Muslims, “Well, look, we love Mary too!

You know, read the Quran!

We have a way more dedicated chapter in our holy book to Mary than you do in your holy book.”

People that may not be very well catechized or may not know their faith well are at times really taken in by that.

It really is problematic because the Mary that is presented in the Quran, as Catholics, we would not believe to be the historical Mary.

There are a number of problems there with members of her family and what is said about Mary.

To really add to that as well, one thing that I have noticed, Gideon and Father Deacon, is that with all the veneration—yes, they respect Mary greatly—you have a very clear problem in the Quran where you can tell Muhammad believed that Catholics worship Mary.

By virtue of saying that Mary ate regular food, that Mary was not God, which is very clearly pointed out in the Quran, that to me is very problematic.

Because if the Quran, if its primary author was Allah, how could Allah have created or made such a blunder and not known better—not known that we don’t worship Mary?

We give Mary honor and veneration.

And this, to me, is a glaring problem—a problem that, you know, when you read the Quran, you’ve got today a number of scholars who are embarrassed by it.

So they’ll give you different answers.

In a debate I had with Dr. Shabir Ali, he told me, “No, no, no!

Muhammad was not wrong there.

He was not referring to mainstream Christians; he was talking about the Collyridians.”

I know you all have probably heard that before, but very likely, we don’t have any evidence that the Collyridians were even around at the time of Muhammad.

Then you talk to a different scholar, Dr. Musharraf Hussain, who would then tell me, “No, no, no!

Muhammad was not referring to the Collyridians; he was referring to you guys!

You guys do worship Mary!”

To me, this really does show a major problem there because if this holy book has primary authors, all of you know, you’ve got a big issue there when there are glaring theological errors that show you that Muhammad didn’t even really know what he was railing against, what he was attacking.

Perhaps your thoughts on that, Father Deacon?

Yeah, so really the whole root behind the veneration of Mary is the Incarnation.

That’s where it all comes from.

Mary, without the Incarnation, is not that significant.

Why would we even venerate Mary if there was no Incarnation?

We wouldn’t! So it’s kind of, again, one of those disconnects.

I talked about how there’s still this attention paid to Mary, but there’s no Incarnation, which doesn’t really add up.

And like you said, the Quran shows a real misunderstanding of what we think about Mary—a very significant misunderstanding.

Again, without the Incarnation, what we’re doing with Mary makes zero sense.

But again, it fascinates me how that echo of Christianity is still in there.

What you said, too, about the Quran being offered by Allah—yeah, if God really is the author of the Quran, He knows what Orthodox Christians—with a lowercase o—think about Mary.

He knows what we believe about Mary.

So it would be very strange to have that big of a glaring error in a book actually written by God.

It relates to a very sort of strange aspect of the Quran that they treat the Quran like we treat Christ.

They think that it eternally exists—like Sunni Muslims; I’ve heard Shiite Muslims do not believe this—that the Quran eternally existed in the mind of God.

But the Quran is awfully caught up in a lot of details that are very contingent on the affairs of 7th-century Arabia, such as apparently some tiny sect that would not exist for most of Christian history that actually did worship Mary.

Also, connecting Mary with the Incarnation, Scotus has a very interesting point in this, and it's actually taken up in Ephebalisteus, a papal encyclical dogmatizing the Immaculate Conception, where Scotus says that Mary—and the encyclical says the same thing—was predestined in one and the same decree with Christ.

As soon as we consider the Incarnation, the Incarnation requires being born of a woman, and so there has to be a mother.

Mary is immediately predestined with Christ.

The efficient cause is the Immaculate Conception; that she has to be immaculately conceived to be the Mother of God.

And then also as the final cause of the Theotokos, that she is going to be the Mother of God.

That’s very much within the very first intention: before God wills to create any other people, He first wills to create Mary to be the Mother of God.

Okay, baby, I'm recording the show—sorry about that!

Yeah, great, great points there!

I was trying to look for my document; I did go ahead.

Yeah, and I have it here.

I have all of the incredible parallels you clearly have, and that’s what you were hearkening to—the language of Scotus.

There really is no doubt there.

Father Deacon, your thoughts on that?

One thing that kind of saddens me today, unfortunately, is that I see more and more strands of Christianity that are outright denying the Incarnation.

I’ve seen this—I’ve seen this!

So, you know, when I was studying in my undergraduate, I went to a secular university and took all these courses on things related to Christian theology—Christology, Scripture—and we’re reading these scholars, many of whom are very well-respected in academic circles, many of whom are actually clergy in various Christian churches or communities, who were outright denying the Incarnation or explaining it away and trying to have a Christianity without the Incarnation.

More and more, I see Christianity kind of dividing, especially in the Protestant world, between...

...those who deny or ignore the Incarnation altogether, and then on the other hand, there are those who are becoming more and more fundamentalist.

That worries me.

It worries me because Christianity without the Incarnation is not Christianity.

Seeing this becoming increasingly mainstream—if you look at some of the big biblical scholars today in the Protestant world, you see this a lot—that has me worried.

And that perhaps is why, to a certain degree, our country is becoming further and further separated from its Judeo-Christian roots.

America was kind of founded on Deism, and then a kind of Protestant Christianity dominated.

But that Protestant Christianity, a lot of it, has become less and less Christian as time went on.

I think Christless Christianity, or Christianity with no Incarnation, ultimately leads to a kind of frightening secularism and nihilism.

I also think there’s a concern even in places where they are affirming the Incarnation within contemporary Protestantism—that they’re trying to downplay it quite a bit.

To give an example, the biblical theologian N.T. Wright—I think Wright has done an excellent job defending the Incarnation as actually being present in the Gospels and its theology there.

But I think his understanding of the Incarnation at times is a bit problematic.

So, in his book— I think it’s in his book Simply Christian, which is his version of Mere Christianity—he says that Christ did not know He was God until after the Resurrection.

That sort of the human mind of Christ entirely dominated from the time of Christmas until his Resurrection.

But if you look in the Fathers, they’ll talk about how Christ knew He was God the whole time.

Even when they take that phrase in the Gospel of Luke that Christ grew in wisdom, they’ll say it’s either according to His human mind or they’ll say that He is continuing to more greatly manifest His wisdom as He grows up.

He lives as a human and takes on all these different aspects of human life.

People often take it like He was actually ignorant and then learned new things, essentially downplaying the reality of the Incarnation within human history.

That, to me, is a very concerning trend that’s even crept into a lot of Catholic biblical theology.

So to give an example of this, I had a friend who was a master’s student at a Catholic theology program—a very, very well-respected one.

I won’t name names, but he said that he was taking a Christology course, and I was fascinated by this.

You know, I had just started my undergraduate at the time, and I was really interested in theology, just starting to get into it.

I asked him, Well, what are you guys reading?

Are you reading like St. Cyril, Pope Leo, St. Maximus?

What are these sources on Christology?

And he says, No, we’re reading about Christology, as if maybe the Gospel of Mark had an adoptionist Christology, then the Gospel of John, you get more of a Logos Christology.

If they haven't really gotten all the way...

I’m thinking, how does any of this have to do with the Christology taught by the Catholic Church?

It’s very concerning that apparently, it seems like in this entire semester, they never actually dealt with what any of the tradition says on the Incarnation.

That’s massively problematic.

There, Gideon, what a great point!

I greatly appreciate how you really focus on the masters of Christology.

You talked about the great St. Cyril of Alexandria, you talked about the great Pope St. Leo the Great.

We know the Christology ensconced beautifully at Ephesus and beautifully in the tomb of Leo at Chalcedon.

What incredible points you really bring up there, points that the audience really should know.

I mean, this is what you need to be reading—really delving into—if you want to learn what Christology is, if you want to learn what the early Fathers taught, if you want to know what Scripture taught, because they relied upon what was taught in Scripture and what was handed down to the early Fathers.

Indeed, the echoes of everything we’ve been talking about, you can find in the Apostolic Fathers, like the great St. Ignatius of Antioch.

So really, this is unfortunate, and I have noticed it often as well.

I think that liberal scholarship has done a great disservice because I’ve talked to people, even good friends of mine, who will recommend books that are just really filled with problems.

I think the one thing we need to realize is that we don’t bow down to academia.

There are a lot of people who are wrong within the walls of academia.

You need to really read.

In my opinion, the one thing I’ve always pointed out is to go to the first-hand source material.

I don’t mean, Okay, no, you’ve got to learn Greek; you’ve got to learn Latin.

You know, you can find it in English; go ahead and read it in English.

But rather than relying upon what other people tell you the Fathers taught, go read it firsthand.

You get a lot of great stuff for free on New Advent, and then you’ve got a lot of great resources.

You know, save up your pennies and get books from Catholic University of America; they’ve got a lot of really good volumes there.

Your thoughts, Father Deacon?

Yeah, you know, what Gideon said is so true about the scholarship and the way it’s impacting people.

It’s tragic that it’s being taught in Catholic master’s programs, but you know, in my experience, it’s being taught in a lot of seminaries as well.

I think, to a certain level, this is one of the root causes of the problems we see in the Church today.

We had a whole generation of young men who wanted to be priests, who wanted to serve God, and they went to seminaries where that was the biblical scholarship they were weaned on.

That kind of biblical scholarship has the power to kill your faith, and I think it produced a generation of clergy in the Catholic Church where many had faith that was very, very weakened from their seminary experience, if not destroyed by it.

That could have led to a lot of the problems we’re dealing with today—scandals, the general fragility of the Church in this nation—I think largely goes back to that seminary experience and then being weaned on a biblical scholarship that is completely devoid of faith, completely devoid of the Incarnation.

Again, the Incarnation is really at the very center of our faith.

If you’re trying to instill Christianity but you downplay or remove the Incarnation, you’re not really teaching Christianity; you’re teaching something else.

And on that point about the issues in a lot of these programs and seminaries, I just mentioned an anecdote recently of someone I work with who was speaking with some priests.

I do a lot of work in the area of theology of creation, and so he wanted to see what’s being taught.

He talked to some priests who are part of a very large order, and he asked, “What were you guys taught about the theology of creation in seminaries?”

They said, “Oh, we never had a class on that.”

You never had a class on creation?

In like four years of seminary education?

This is a very significant issue!

Very important points of theology are either not being discussed in seminaries, or when they are, they're filled with liberal scholarship.

It’s very unfortunate.

Often at these seminaries, there are some very good professors, so they have to be very careful about what they say and how they say it so they don’t get in trouble.

Yeah, that really is true and really is unfortunate as well.

I think one thing more than anything we need to pray for are a lot of these seminarians.

We need to pray for them fervently—fervent prayer!

We need to also realize that we have a lot of them that are really hungry to learn and really do want to learn, but they are not getting taught well.

They’re not getting properly educated.

I think people, rather than scoffing at the idea of prayer, need to realize that a lot of these people end up in parishes, some of them vicars of a parish, and what they’re going to be preaching in the pulpit is going to be going into the minds of everybody there at the parish.

It really is very unfortunate, very sad, and it is something that we need to do a lot better about.

We need to really—Gideon, what are your thoughts?

What can we do to better the kind of education that they’re receiving?

I think a big part of it is just putting out better resources out there.

So, like your YouTube channel, for example, William, and the books you’ve done—many seminarians will actually read that stuff.

A lot of them now know that when they’re going into seminaries, they’re going up against a lot of their bishops and their own professors in trying to understand the faith, and they’re going in their free time and reading often much better material than they are getting from their seminary education.

Yeah, and so I think we also need to produce better resources and also talk to seminaries and bishops where things are better.

Perhaps we can get better resources in there.

Part of what I'm hoping to do eventually in the area of the theology of creation is provide better catechetical resources that hopefully one day can get into some of the better seminaries.

You can also just do catechesis on a lay level.

There are a lot of people who are hungry for good, solid teaching, and if we can get that content out there to them, I think a lot of people are going to be very receptive to that.

I think this is why we’ve seen the ballooning of Catholic educational content on places like YouTube, right?

I had someone point out to me once that years ago, you would not have been allowed to have a YouTube channel if you didn't have all the degrees and so on.

You would not have been able to teach on the Catholic faith.

And I said, you know, you're very right, and I wish I didn't have to do this because I wish the people who had those degrees and credentials were out there doing the right work.

I also think part of it is that I have talked to quite a lot of academics in private, and they will be willing to be much more public about certain views in private that they are not willing to put into writing.

They know that if they have that put into writing, they will never get a job at a university; they’ll be ousted from wherever they are.

No one will ever take them seriously.

And so as a result, they’re very, very cautious about what they say publicly.

You know, I was at a conference this summer on the theology of creation, and we had a professor there from one of the top universities in Rome.

If you heard his talk at our conference, he’d probably be fired from that university right now.

So they have to be very careful of what they say publicly on these matters because of that.

Oftentimes, it ends up being those of us who don’t have the degrees who have to be the ones talking about it.

Your thoughts, Father Deacon?

What Gideon just said is so true.

I work in academia; I'm a professor, and you have to be careful.

There are certain things that if you say them, you could pretty easily destroy your career—even at Catholic universities.

That’s a real concern.

Even at some very good Catholic universities, if you say the wrong thing, you can be labeled as a hate monger or somebody who’s small-minded or fundamentalist.

So you’ve got to be really careful.

That’s just the reality of higher education.

It’s sad because academia is supposed to be a place where there’s freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of thought.

In my experience, most colleges and universities do not tolerate actual freedom of thought.

If you think outside the orthodoxy of their belief system—whatever it may be—you’re not tolerated, you’re not welcome there, and your career is destroyed.

That is sad.

I was also thinking about a friend of mine who’s a priest, and he told me this story.

He attended a really well-known Catholic seminary in Canada, and while he was a student there, while he was a seminarian studying for the priesthood, the stuff they had him reading for the classes was just awful—it was absolutely awful.

He wanted to read authentically Catholic theology, but he had to be careful because if he was caught with those books, he would have been in big trouble at the seminary.

So he actually, like, smuggled in books about the Church Fathers or books by Joseph Ratzinger, you know, and he had to smuggle these books in—Thomas Aquinas—and he actually put fake covers on them so if anyone saw them, they wouldn’t realize he was reading this stuff.

You know, it’s kind of ridiculous, but that’s the lengths he had to go to read actual Catholic theology in a Catholic seminary.

It’s kind of sad—kind of sad!

And this stuff is not even just being taught to seminarians, either, right?

Maybe seminarians are going to be reading other stuff; they’re going to be a bit stronger and hopefully, if they’re really catechized, will be able to go up against very problematic theology.

But it’s also often taught at much lower levels.

So to give one example, in my undergraduate degree, I was a classics major, but I took quite a number of classes in theology.

I took a course on Mariology, and our professor told us on one of the first days that the perpetual virginity of Mary was made up in the third century.

So I explained to her how the Gospel of Luke—specifically the angel’s statement to Mary that I know not man, or Mary’s statement to the angel that I know not man—would not make sense unless Mary was vowed as a perpetual virgin.

She said, “Oh, that’s a later interpretation of the verse.”

Well, now we have— I was well catechized, luckily, in the background, but I had spent a lot of my free time studying Mariology.

I was in a class of about 30 people, and this was a non-majors course, so I bet you at least 20 to 25 people in that class had probably never read anything on Mariology before in their life besides what they heard in their confirmation classes back then, you know?

And they’re going to walk away with, “Oh, well, I guess that contradicts it.”

I had a friend who came into a master’s in theology program.

He started out as an undergrad in both undergrad and his master’s in theology, and he started out very devout, believing everything the Church teaches.

By the time he was done with this program, he was arguing to me that we only have to believe in the theological meaning of the perpetual virginity of Mary, not that it historically happened.

This is a sort of—so even people who are very well-catechized and know what’s right, when they hear day in and day out for years these heresies, it slowly influences them.

What broke him is he was in a class on the Old Testament, and they were telling him that most of the Old Testament was written by pagans.

He had never researched the true Catholic teachings on the Old Testament, so he was hit in an area where he didn’t have any response, and that broke him.

Then everything else tumbled apart.

I think that’s something even for those who know the right thing and are very strong in it—when they encounter something they’ve never heard of before, it can shake them.

So I would give advice to everyone out there: when you hear something that seems to contradict what you think is correct about the Catholic faith, don’t simply believe it right away.

Make sure to investigate it and research it before accepting it, because very often, it’s not correct.

Yeah, very, very good point.

Very often, you’re right; very often, it’s not correct.

Now, as we come toward the end of our program, I do want to look at one final passage, and that would be in the Gospel of St. John, chapter 1. I think it’s very fitting that, as we’re closing out the show, we look at one of the most important passages.

We read, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The same was in the beginning with God.

All things were made by Him, and without Him was made nothing that was made.”

Now, we can talk about many other passages; there are others.

Indeed, I believe there are passages even in the Gospel of Mark.

Or I believe in the Gospel of Mark, you can show that Christ is clearly Yahweh, the eternal God, there by His hearkening to His identity as the Son of Man.

But we’re talking right now, particularly about John 1—it’s a really incredibly beautiful passage and quite fitting to read that during the time of Advent that we’re going through right now.

I’d love to get both of your thoughts on those beautiful Scriptures before we round out the show.

Father Deacon, perhaps your thoughts first?

Yeah, so it talks about how everything was created through the Word, right?

And I keep coming back to this point: St. Isaac the Syrian talks about how the Incarnation was ultimately an act of love.

What we’re thinking about here is this God—the Word created all things.

He created all things with so much love, so much love for us.

But He chose to unite Himself with us.

So not only did He create the world, but He chose to join it; He chose to join creation and become a part of creation by uniting Himself with us human beings.

In doing so, He makes it possible for us to become like Him.

We didn’t get to it today, but from the Incarnation comes theosis, deification.

We’re each called to become partakers of the divine nature, and that comes through the Incarnation.

Again, it’s because God created the world and He loved what He created so much that He became a part of it; He united Himself with it.

And that which He assumed, He saved.

Your thoughts, perhaps, Gideon?

Yeah, I want to give a reflection.

I was reading in St. Lawrence of Brindisi's commentary on Genesis, because on verse 1:1, there he says, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

Now, we often think in the beginning here simply means the beginning of time, and that’s true...

But what does St. John tell us?

He says, In the beginning was the Word.

So that phrase, that Hebrew word there Bereshit, St. John tells us that this is referring to the person of the Son.

St. Lawrence actually gives a whole bunch of patristic testimony of Church Fathers who say that by this Hebrew word that means in the beginning, it refers to the person of the Son: in the Son, God created the heavens and the earth.

And through Him, I also want to mention very briefly, since you mentioned Christology and the Gospel of Mark, a very, very powerful proof of the Incarnation just came to me, and I wanted to mention this to viewers.

You’ll often hear it said that the Gospel of Mark does not teach that Jesus was God.

You do read the first verse: The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

And they’ll say, Oh, well, this title ‘Son of God’—King David is also called the Son of God in the Old Testament; it could just mean simply someone highly favored by God.

And that’s true, but in the next two verses, it’s actually impossible to square unless Jesus is God.

He says, and then we see St. John the Baptist coming.

Well, St. John the Baptist is obviously the one who cries in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord.

But what is the word Lord there?

If we go back to Isaiah chapter 40, that word Lord refers to Yahweh.

So the Hebrews, in the time of Christ, would not speak the name of God in the Old Testament—Yahweh, Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh.

They would instead say Adonai, which means Lord.

And so in the New Testament, as Christ was within this practice in His time, it always says Lord rather than Yahweh.

But if we look at the original Hebrew of this verse, it is Prepare the way of Yahweh; make His paths straight.

So the Gospel of Mark is quoting Isaiah, talking about Yahweh, and applies this to Christ.

So from the very beginning, in the first three verses of the Gospel of Mark—supposedly the earliest of the Gospels—it says Yahweh is Jesus.

Wow, I was not aware of that!

That’s a really awesome point.

Thanks for sharing that—great, great point there, Gideon!

I greatly appreciated how, number one, I agree with you when it comes to the Gospel of St. Matthew.

But you make a great point that, you know what, okay, we’ll give them that.

If they want to begin with the argument that Mark has to be the first, well, we can prove that he’s God—eternal God—even from the Gospel of St. Mark.

There’s no problem with that.

So, a great apologetic point and great theological points!

You both have been incredible this evening.

I have been beyond edified by your presence—by both of you taking your busy time out of your schedules to talk about a vitally important topic.

I know the audience will be incredibly edified as well.

Before we wrap up, I'd like to give each one of you the chance to put in a plug for anything you might be working on—webpage, YouTube, books—anything.

The floor is yours!

Now, I would like to give you the floor last, but Father Deacon, perhaps Gideon, you can go first if you don’t mind.

All right, sure!

So, if people want to know more about the Incarnation, I want to recommend a few important resources, especially on the Scotus view of the Incarnation.

If people want an in-depth study of the Absolute Primacy of Christ within the Scriptures, I recommend Jean-François Bonafoy’s book on it.

I’ve probably butchered the French pronunciation for his name horribly, but he has a book called Christ and the Cosmos, which was in French but has been translated into English.

You can actually find a free version of it on archive.org,

and he goes into an in-depth, like 300-page study of the primacy of Christ in both the Old and New Testaments.

There’s also, as I mentioned earlier, Father Dominic Unger's articles on the Absolute Primacy of Christ and the Church Fathers, and I actually highly recommend his two articles on Saint Irenaeus because you’ll see that Saint Irenaeus in the second century already figured out all this theology; he already has Christ as the Absolute Primacy of Christ.

Father Deacon, your turn!

He already has Mary as Co-Redeptix in his theology.

He doesn’t use the later language that we use, but already in the second century, he figured out what it’s taken us like 2000 years of theological reflection to reverse engineer.

I also recommend a very good introductory book, A Primer on the Absolute Primacy of Christ by Father Maximilian Mary Dean.

It’s a very good introduction to the issue.

If someone wants a Thomist view on this, I also recommend the work of Father Dylan Schroeder, who has both translated the work of the Carmelite Solomanists I mentioned earlier in the show and has also published his PhD dissertation as a book on the Solomanist position, which I disagree with, but it’s a very interesting position to read about.

In terms of my own work, I have a YouTube channel.

Since I now have a son, I unfortunately don’t have as much time to put into my YouTube channel, but I’m going to be trying to do sort of more just live show Q&As where I talk with people and they can ask me questions and so on.

There’s also a blog I write for called the Creation Theology Fellowship.

If you just look up creationtheologyfellowship.org,

we have a blog there—many resources.

I write some articles, and other people write articles.

I’m editing an article right now for the blog on bioethics and the theology of creation that someone else submitted to us.

We’ve actually also been doing an Advent calendar on how creation can help us reflect and prepare for the Incarnation.

If people want to continue to follow that, in addition, I have been hired to help start an organization called the St. Basil Institute for the Theology of Creation.

Our website is still under construction; hopefully in the next week or two it will be up.

But we are going to be hosting in April an online conference on our need to care for creation, reflecting on what the Holy Father has said in Laudato Si’. We have a lot of great speakers for that.

Like, we have Jared Goff who will be talking about Bonaventure within Laudato Si’. We have Patra Edmund Waldstein talking about political theology and natural philosophy and the need to care for creation.

We have Sean Dougherty who will be talking about his work as a Catholic philosopher in sustainable farming.

So we have quite a number of interesting people on different topics that will be reflecting on Laudato Si’. Probably when this show is up, we will not yet have a link to register, but sometime in the next month we will have a link up to register for that.

Incredible!

And definitely everything you talked about—your blog, your YouTube page—we’ll definitely link that down below.

Let me pick your brain before I go to Father Deacon right away.

I don’t know if you brought it up, but I have really enjoyed it.

Would you recommend the book?

I don't remember his first name, but Cross on Duns Scotus—it's from the Great Medieval Thinker series.

Would you recommend that book as well?

I would not recommend it as an introduction to Scotus, only because Cross is a Protestant, and so we have some somewhat Protestant interpretations of Scotus at times.

I thought he completely lost the faith already, though.

Oh, did he?

I didn't know that.

I think he did, yeah.

That is a warning there.

If you're interested in more technical studies of Scotus, he has some very helpful books, especially his book on the natural physics of Scotus, which is very helpful if you’re interested in more in-depth studies.

But I think I would not recommend it as much as an introduction.

What I would recommend as an introduction to Scotus, actually, is Thomas Ward's new book Ordered by Love, which is a very good introductory work to Scotus.

A lot of times, people ask me about introductions to Scotus, and there’s a lot of good stuff, like Mary Beth Ingham's book, but they all presume you pretty much have a degree in medieval philosophy and know a lot of the background terminology.

This work does not assume you know any background terminology whatsoever, beyond basic Catholic theology, so I highly recommend Thomas Ward's book.

Awesome!

Father Deacon, anything you’d like to say before we wrap up?

Yes, yes!

First, on the topic of the Incarnation, I want to recommend a couple of resources.

I highly recommend one of my favorite books on the Incarnation by St. Athanasius.

It is so good—it is so good!

It really does a great job of explaining why the Incarnation is at the core of our faith.

So I highly recommend that.

There are a number of good translations out there; there’s one translated by Father David Anderson that’s very good, and there’s a version out there—a newer translation—with a foreword by C.S. Lewis.

Lewis, so I highly recommend checking that one out on the Incarnation by St. Athanasius.

We also talked about some of the bad Christology that's out there in biblical scholarship.

A good book that does a great job of debunking a lot of the bad Christology is called The Real Jesus by Luke Timothy Johnson.

Have you seen that one?

I have, yep.

It’s great!

It does a phenomenal job of kind of debunking the worst trends in biblical scholarship related to Jesus, you know, the trend of de-divinizing Him that you find in so much modern scholarship.

So I recommend checking that one out.

Also, if you’re interested in my stuff, check out my website, From East to West.

I answer questions on there and have resources on Eastern Catholicism, showing how Eastern Christian theology and Roman Catholic theology are compatible.

You can find that at east2west.org—that's

east, the number two, west.org.

I’m also part of a series called Becoming Byzantine, which I’ve been doing with Father Daniel Dozier, Father Michael Wynn, and Robert Kleska from EWTN and a few other people.

We’ve been pretty much going through the Catechism, Christ Our Pascha, and explaining the basics of the Eastern Catholic approach to things.

You can find our YouTube channel just by typing in Becoming Byzantine on YouTube, and we have some more videos coming in early in the year, I think January or February as well.

Incredible!

Father Deacon, thank you very much for your time.

Gideon, thank you very much as well.

Father Deacon, could you perhaps pray for us to close the session up?

Certainly!

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Dear God, thank You for bringing us together and for the blessings You’ve given us...

Thank you for the gift of Your Incarnation, the Incarnation of Your Son, Jesus Christ, and what it has done to offer to humanity and to the world.

We ask that we keep focused on what’s true and good during this holiday season and that, more than anything, we live to be worthy servants of You and disciples in Jesus’ name.

Amen.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Thank you so much, Father Deacon.

Thank you so much, Gideon.

I look forward to having Gideon on to talk about the moral stuff as well as you, Father Deacon.

Both of you—all—God bless!

Happy Advent!

I look forward to talking to you incredible brothers in the faith again soon.

Thank you so much for your time!

Thank you!

Thank you!

Thank you!