Transcription
Hey everybody, I'm Matt. This is the Ten Minute Bible Hour, and in the last couple of videos, we went and toured a Coptic church in Chicago, Illinois, together. It's fascinating. This is by far the most cold I've ever walked into one of these. I don't know anything about the Coptic Church. It's in Egypt, and it's Orthodox. It's not Catholic, but I learned a ton from the tour. I hope you have as well. But all that did was pop more questions into my brain, so I'm gonna sit down right now and do a deep dive interview with Father James, once again from St. Paul Coptic Orthodox in Chicago, Illinois, and we're going to get into church history and theology and more about why they do the stuff they do and where they are now. I think you're going to find it super interesting, and I'm even going to ask them if I count as a Christian in their tradition, and I think you're going to find that answer very fascinating as well.
All right, I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour. More on the Coptic Church, here we go.
What does Coptic mean?
So the Coptic Church, or the Coptic Orthodox Church in terms of the full name, is part of the Orthodox family. Um, so it is actually, when we're saying, you know, when one was just founded, uh, we go back all the way to Christ. So Christ appointed the apostles, which Saint Mark, the the writer of the second evangelist, is right. So St. Mark, as in the evangelist, St. Mark went to Egypt and did a great job, and he preached, and thank God he did; he preached Christianity to Egypt. And then from that first century, uh, so you're you're looking at a first-century church that was evangelized by Saint Mark, who was ordained by Jesus himself.
Yeah. Apollos of Alexandria, right, who he who Paul meets in Ephesus, Aquila and Priscilla are there. So is the assumption then that Apollos would have received some of his training from Mark, or does he predate Mark a little bit?
There could be some people, some Jewish people, who after Pentecost, right, so Jesus died, He rose, He ascended into heaven, and then on the 50th day, basically on the day of Pentecost, is when the Holy Spirit came upon all and they and there was lots of people there because Pentecost was a Jewish feast as well.
Sure.
So at that point, people were from all over, and if you read Acts chapter 2, it will mention Egypt as well. So there could be some people who, okay, they went to Jerusalem for Pentecost, which is custom, one of the three major feasts to go to Jerusalem, but then after that, they went back, went back to Rome, whatever, Constantinople, Egypt. So there could have been some Christians, uh, or somebody that that was there from the time of Pentecost. So maybe Apollos, I'm not sure the background of Apollos, uh, from from Alexandria, but in terms of formally bringing the gospel, so Saint Mark is an apostle, apostle. So we call our church not only an Orthodox church but an apostolic church, meaning it has apostolic succession. Okay, so when I got ordained, I got ordained from a Pope who was ordained from a previous Pope, and he's number 118, and number one is Saint Mark. So we can trace, I can trace my priesthood all the way to Saint Mark.
Okay. That has a ton of implications.
Uh, one, St. Mark, but isn't he buried in Venice? So did they did they steal his body? Is that the story that that there's like a, right? Okay, back in the 60s, okay, that's he worked out some kind of deal. Great. And if you look at videos and stuff, there was probably one of the happiest days for Coptic Christians, uh, it was the time of one of the most famous Popes in our history, uh, Pope Pope Carlos the Sixth. So we there is a celebration of receiving the body back from from Italy.
So the second thing that staggers me from what you just said is you have Popes, but these aren't the Catholic Popes. This is a different, it's a different set of Popes.
Yes, and and we say Pope, again, we use some words interchangeably, um, Archbishop. We do have a hierarchy. The Orthodox Church in general is is a hierarchical church, as is the Catholic Church. However, we have bishops. So you can be a metropolitan, you can be an archbishop, but basically in terms of authority, the bishop is the authority of that city. So there is no one person in the church that has ultimate authority. We do not have that. We work in conciliar fashion. So, um, so same term, but it functions differently. It functions differently. Of course, they respect him as a father and all that, but functionally and authoritatively, the bishop of L.A., the bishop of Colorado, the bishop, uh, you know, whatever of whatever city of France, really has full jurisdiction, and they all meet as equals. So they'll meet twice, typically in our church, only twice a year, and what we call the Holy Synod. So every decision is not based on one person; the decision is based in a conciliar fashion, with every bishop has a vote, including the Pope. The Pope has one vote, and decisions are coming out of that Holy Synod, and then the bishops basically of all the areas will conceit to whatever decisions that were made in that. So that's how we tie in to like one church.
So you are more centralized than my tradition where we have a home office, but it's it's a lot of very autonomous, I mean my tradition has free in the name, so you're you're more centralized than us, but it sounds like less centralized than a Roman expression of faith.
Roman, it's a little bit different in that he has all authority and and and can make decisions where we we can, the Pope cannot make a decision in the church on his own.
So you don't have the principle like ex cathedra or the Pope's ability to correct, we speak in ways that make confirm doctrine. I want to be respectful to my Catholic friends.
Yeah, try to get the details right.
Correct. So we do not have that.
Okay, so so what does the Pope do in your tradition?
So again, he's also the archbishop, so a good ware is an archbishop, so he it does have other duties as well, and especially for places that don't have a bishop. So there are some places, for example, like a major city like Chicago does not have a local bishop, so he takes care of this area, for example.
So that means you were ordained directly by the Pope?
Correct.
Correct. That had to be quite the honor.
Quite the honor. And actually, he was at the time, uh, we were kind of like the first batch of Pope to wedge, so it was extra special for me in that like I was one of the first priests ordained by uh this this current uh patriarch.
So then your your wife was interviewed by the Pope as well?
Wife was interviewed by the Pope, yes, to make sure she was like on board with the whole thing, to be on board.
Absolutely. And she likes doing it. She's having fun with this. She's she's a great, we have names, every every church has a different name, we have we call them Tosonis or Sister, um, so she's she's doing a fabulous job in the church and supporting me first and foremost, which always what I need, but so many ministries as well that we have in the church.
Has clerical marriage always been a thing within your tradition?
Yes, so I mean it's very it's it's actually very exceptional. It is possible to have to be a celibate priest, but that's very exceptional. That's that's not interesting. The norm is all clerics, uh, all all those in the clergy are married.
Do you guys have kids?
Yes, we have we have two boys.
Two boys. Wonderful. I got one of those. I got two girls too. And it gets to be quite the mix. They play sports. They play lots of sports.
Yeah, especially one of them is wasn't one of them as a gymnast, um, yeah, all through high school, but he plays, uh, they both play football and volleyball, basketball. They're very active, which is great.
But you mentioned to me when we were setting things up and shooting the breeze, yeah, that this is kind of a lifetime appointment in your tradition.
Yes, which means you sort of end up having two families to care for because if you're here for life, I mean you're in all the ups and downs and highs and lows of life for however many people attend, and then you're also a husband and a father. I mean, that's got to be a lot to shoulder.
Yeah, yeah, but as St. Paul says, and I believe it's in in First Timothy, I'm a father, I'm a husband first, I'm a father to my biological kid second, and then of course I'm a father, which is the title that the the church gives us. It's not like a prestige at all. It's it's it's fatherhood, uh, that I take care of this flock of this of this sheep, um, but in that order.
We're talking about apostolic succession, which means that I would assume that ordination is every, we call it a sacrament.
Yes, absolutely. Do you have seven of them like the Roman Catholics or the Catholics in general, or how do you guys do it?
We preach seven of them. It's a little bit of a discussion point, um, however, we believe in many sacramental acts as well. So there's formal sacraments. We we have even what we call salvific salvific uh sacrament.
Which ones are those?
Uh, the ones that are directly out of the Bible. So the baptism, when Christ had that conversation with Nicodemus in John chapter 3, and He said, unless you are born of water and spirit, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. So we have the sacrament of baptism. We have the sacrament of chrismation, which is found in many of Paul's letters, you know, in terms of being sealed by the Holy Spirit. So we we they go hand in hand. Once you're baptized, you get charismatic. Chrismation is separate to baptism, and that that's when we receive the Holy Spirit.
That sounds different than the Western tradition to me.
So these are two separate things?
Yes, but you do them on the same day.
We do them on the same day. And what is what does it look like to chrismate? I don't even know the word. I'm sorry.
Yeah, to chrismate a person. Yeah, I mean, what do you do? What do you say? What do they do? What do they say? What happens?
Sure, uh, so what we do and in the earth in the in the Coptic uh and right in the Coptic faith is once they're baptized, we chrismate. So you're right in that verb, and we actually do it, um, and we actually anoint in the form of a cross 36 times.
So we had to get to 36?
Yeah. Well, if I could do it on myself, I would. It's very easy. So we anoint basically all everything in the head. So we're knowing the head, the ears, the eyes, the two nostrils, the other eye, the the ear, and the mouth. So that should be eight. So everything belongs to Christ. We are sealed. We are consecrated. My mind, I want it to be consecrated to for Christ to have good thoughts. My ears, I shouldn't be listening to everything out there. Not everything is is very good for my ears. They're consecrated now. I'm a consecrated member of Christ. My mouth shouldn't say everything. It's a consecrated member. Uh, my eyes shouldn't be looking at things that are not appropriate. I am a consecrated member. Um, so that is that's the first part, and then we do all basically the join. So we do the the uh the chest and the heart and then the spine and the back, and that's four more, getting us to 12. So again, the same type of thing. My heart should be for the Lord. I'm consecrated for my back, my spine, my will, my labor, my yeah, so the things I do, my will, I should be looking at what's the will of God, not just doing what I want, you know, again, He died for me, He made me, I should be living for Him, as Saint Paul said. We we um not only do I I die for the Lord, I live for the Lord. I live for the Lord. Then we do all the joints. So we do basically the uh the shoulder and then underneath the elbow and on the other side and then the wrist and on the other side and then we do the same thing for the other hand and then the two legs and if we add all those, so six, so six times four there is 24, and then we have the eight is 32, and then the four gets us to 36.
So you ever miss a part or two on somebody? Have to go back and get it later?
Again, you do your best, but it's again, uh, so yes, symbolic, but of course we we try to anoint every piece, basically letting that person know that we are consecrated members. We are consecrated for Christ.
Yeah. So does a person become a Christian at the point of baptism or at the point of chrismation?
Again, so because we do both of them at the same time, you know, it's one, I mean, you you get you you get uh you're baptized, meaning we are born again. No more again, we need if like Saint Paul says, flesh dies but spirit lives. This is basically we we die with the Lord and we live with the Lord, um, so just like He went through a crucifixion and a resurrection, so do we. We die in the baptismal font and then we rise again anew. So a new man.
A new man.
What's that new man? A spiritual man because spirit lives, flesh dies, which is what Saint Paul says in all his letters. So it's the spirit that makes us uh live. So we are we need the baptism to make a spiritual people. Okay, the Holy Spirit inside us helps us. He's our helper. He's a comfortable, but we we mess up a lot. We mess up a lot.
I've observed the same.
So we're supposed to consecrate, my eyes are not supposed to look at the wrong things, my ears are not supposed to hear, but I do. Well, guess what? The church has a solution through Christ. We have the sacrament uh and and the mystery. We actually call in the Orthodox Church, we mention more the word mystery than sacrament because it is a mystery. Okay, like how does water change me? How does oil, honestly, sorry, the anointings are not with my just my finger, they're actually with oil.
Okay. What kind of oil?
It's actually chrism oil, which is which is taken through um all the way from the actual oils that that that the when they came to anoint Christ. So that oil, basically, of course, you know, it just gets diluted, but that oil continues on and given to all the churches so that they anoint uh using that same oil that they anointed Christ at the time.
Sorry, of of the burial. So it's from the same plants and stuff? It's the same recipe, or it's like like a relic like from the same jar?
This is fr from my understanding, from my understanding, it's from the same jar.
Whoa. So what we so that was obviously given to the apostles, and that's what they were using, uh, oh, that's what again, uh, that's what's being was used at that point.
I gotta say this, every time you talk about any kind of relic or something, there's a part of me that wants to do the Western rationalist thing and be like, I'd like to put that under a microscope. I would like to examine and carbon date that, and then there's the other part of me that's like, but he's not saying that. He said mystery, and so it's a mystery. How do I put oil and and that's basically that's when the Holy Spirit comes. How do I, like I said, we mess up. So what does the church do? Uh, we we have confession. We have the sacrament of confession, um, so again, like just Christ before giving them Holy Communion, He washed their feet. So before you you come to the table, you need to be washed, and that's our washing. That's our washing because we believe in one baptism. We do not, you know, just like say Paul says in the book of Ephesians chapter four, we believe in one faith, one Lord, one baptism. So we don't baptize again, but we do confess, and that's the washing. That's the second what we call the second baptism, or actually, again, Saint Paul calls the second baptism in Romans 6. That's when we wash ourselves. So yes, we mess up, even though I have the Holy Spirit, but I have I can be clean again, and I can be forgiven, not by the priest, but by God himself. And then I need to be connected to life. If I'm going to live forever, doesn't it make sense? I need to be connected, just like you have all these things connected that this won't live on its own. I can't live on my note. I need to be connected to Christ, and that's our Holy Communion, um, so when I eat life, He is life. He is the way, the truth, and the life. He is life. So how do I can how do I connect myself to this by Holy Communion? So that's what we call the four salvific um sacraments, baptism, chrismation, repentance of compassion, compassion, confession, and then again, like He said, unless you eat of My body and drink in My blood, you have no life in you.
Do you call it the Eucharist? Do you call it Union?
Okay, both interchangeable. Okay, Eucharist is probably the best. We're Eucharist is thanksgiving. We're so thankful. Again, I I've mentioned a few times, it is the best gift that He's given us. The worst thankful.
So I want to ask an uncomfortable question, and I won't be offended if if the answer is disappointing to me, even it's okay, but in my tradition, I guess salvation would be understood as being in a place where I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that He's redeemer at the cross, that He defeats death and His resurrection through the power of God, that He exists eternally from before existence as we understand it, yes, in the three persons of the Trinity.
I married, say the same creeds.
Yes, but I've never had the Eucharist. I've had communion, a symbolic celebration of the work of Christ on the cross and His resurrection. Am I a Christian in the Coptic tradition, or am I something else?
Yeah, look, all we can say is is what there's two things, um, there's there's the umbrella, a big umbrella, what we call Holy Tradition, and under that, and this might make some people uncomfortable, under that, hopefully it was all making people uncomfortable, man, under that, and I don't mean under as in below, but I mean under meaning like Holy Tradition captures a few things. One of them is Holy Scripture, one of them is the liturgy, one of them is our Church Fathers, one of them is our icons. So there's lots of things under Holy, and I don't mean tradition, I mean Holy Tradition, and there's a big difference between the two.
Which one's the big one?
Holy Traditionally. Yes, Holy Tradition. Tradition is like outfits you wear, like this is the kind of pews we do or when we stand. That's it. Yeah, like we're talking about songs, you know, our tradition is we sing these types of, this is not, you know, it's not Holy Tradition. This is just a tradition. It's a cultural thing. Okay, whereas Holy Tradition is is what basically what what Saint Paul says in First Thessalonians is what's passed on, right? Even Saint John the Evangelist said, I I can't write everything like Jesus is so amazing. I I don't have enough paper. I don't have books to say everything. I don't have it. What does that mean? That means obviously at least obviously what we infer is some things were not all mentioned in scripture. Okay, so that's what we have as the apostolic tradition, and what we have from the book of Acts, um, and then all the early writings, the apostolic fathers. Apostolic fathers are like like the church had Christ, and then He had the apostles, but then they had their disciples, right? The disciples are disciples. So what did they do? And what did their disciples do? We do not trust one person ever ever. It's too dangerous. If we see a common thread and everybody's following this, then then we we adhere to that teaching. If that person really has that question about, you know, okay, is the Eucharist the true body? Do I need the Eucharist? Maybe I would just point them like do a little bit of research and say what is what did the church do? So Christ gave them the Eucharist. God created the Holy Communion, and then what did the church practice? And if we see in the book of Acts, there is mention of it, and then if you read anything in the first, second, third, fourth and onwards, it's always mentioned, um, and and it was the central part of the service. So all I would say is like, I don't know what to tell you, but all
I can say is I know what what they did, and we're just following suit because that is what the church was doing, and and it found it as the central part of the service. So all I know is what Christ said and He did. He mentioned that unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, unless you drink His blood, you have no life in Me. And and we take that as, yeah, it makes sense because again, the whole connection thing—I, it's a plug. If I'm dead, I need to be plugged in, and that's our connection. Um, it's our understanding, it's our belief, and it's it's what the church was practicing. So I would just kindly maybe point that person to maybe that all I can say is what we know and what where the church is. I'm not going to say where the church isn't. Fair enough. And you know what? First of all, thank you, cause I that's an incredibly awkward spot to put somebody in. But we've hung out enough today that I felt like you probably wouldn't freak out by the question, but I mean, isn't that that's what everybody wants to know when they talk to somebody from another faith, right? It's like, so like your thing seems real cool, but am I in like, right, what do we do with that? And so I I so appreciate you just being a good sport and letting me ask, and and knowing that I wouldn't be threatened by your answer one way or another, and for being so gracious on how you answered the question. The I think I think from in my tradition we would say the same thing. I certainly know of traditions who wouldn't say the same thing; they would say, I can tell you where the visible church is, and I can draw the lines precisely and tell you everything that isn't a part of the visible church. I think there are some things that we could both comfortably point to and say that is not Christ's bride; they think that's not whoa, like that's crazy over there. But I agree, there's a lot of stuff that it really comes down to one or two assumptions. What did Jesus mean when He said, "This is My body"? Did He mean it in the Platonic Aristotelian transformative Greek sense? Did He mean it in the equally as Greek symbolic metaphorical sense? I don't know. I have a whole theology that I've been raised in, sure, that's built around the assumption that there's metaphor there, and that He is the Eucharist, like literally Him, and that transaction happens invisibly in the larger sense in the life of the believers; they're indwelt by the Spirit. But if we read that passage one degree different, it changes a lot of assumptions. Yeah, it's it's we cannot ever make the judgment of of judging. I mean, there's one Judge; there's one Judge. How God will judge, I don't know. I don't, and I'm I you know, I'm not gonna be—that's not my position. My position is I know, like again, I know where the church is; I know what it what what the church was practicing and what we rely on. Part of the church, like remember that whole umbrella of church of tradition is the holy Fathers, both the apostolic Fathers, like when you have a disciple of John, John the Apostle, and Clement of, you know, right behind Peter. Sure, like so it gives confidence; it gives like, okay, so there has to be some suggestion. What did Christ do with them for 40 days, right? Yeah, like there's He didn't just fish with them. Is that why you guys do 40 days in the monastery? Is it is it mimicking that 40 days of Him equipping? I've never had that link, but we have 40 days as a lot of numbers. 40 days where Christ fasted; 40 days when Moses was on the mountain. Sure, I should know this, but I'm not sure why we should maybe any of those or all of them could be any of those. Those are all 40 days as well. So part of that tradition is our church Fathers, so yeah, which helps. And again, if somebody, we don't say that they're flawless and flacked; we actually say the opposite. We say they could make mistakes, and that's why we never the same thing when I was mentioning we don't follow one; like there's not one Pope because any human being, we're all human, and we share we share that we have sin; we have mistakes. So it's very dangerous to go after one. So if one Father says something, it's okay, what do the others say? So why we that's why we have consensus petrols, like what's the consensus of all the Fathers? Yeah, what did they say about the Eucharist? And that we do have consensus for that, for example. So it gives us that's why we practice it. So that's why anybody I would say just point back, see the history, see if it makes sense. I would just say see if it makes sense, uh, and and there's some things that are not consensus, well, then then that's then, but it's definitely not in the dogma, in the actual teaching. You will always have consensus on the Holy Trinity, on you know, sure, you know that you know that there is a baptism, um, you know, there's there's many things that we will have consensus on. Okay. I mean, the Protestants put it this way: we say when you come to a difficult passage in the Bible, you interpret the less clear in light of the more clear. This was something drilled into me in seminary, and I think it's a good principle; I think it checks out. So what I'm hearing is that you're using the same, to use a fancy word, hermeneutical technique when considering the testimony of all the different Fathers. If if there's lack of clarity with an outlier here or there, you're trying to take yeah, the more clear statements absolutely and evaluate the less clear. Yeah, yeah, no matter who the person is, no matter who the person—I mean, Augustine, I mean, Gene, another like how many how many uh how many passages did he comment on? How many beautiful interpretations? But then, you know, he also believes in predestination, which is and you don't. We do not. Okay, we do not. So so you believe in in free will of course, the individual? Yes. So who acts first in your tradition? God. Okay, God. God is with all His great love; He's always the initiator, but it takes us to respond. It's His grace; He is so loving; He is so gracious. So He wants He desires all to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. He does not wish the death of the sinner at all, but that they repent. So He, like the famous, you know, the famous painting or even an icon of Him knocking, like you know, Revelation 3:20, "I knock at the door, but you got to let Me in; I will not come in." And He it's like, oh, I'm knocking on this door because I know He's going to be chosen, but I'm not going to—if God, again, if He desires all, then we don't—the predestination doesn't sit well; it means that He's chosen some and and not the others, where He desires everyone, everyone, and underline everyone to be saved. When it comes to the Bible and what is Bible are the writings of Athanasius? Bible? No. So the church Fathers' writings are not Bible after a certain point, but I would assume we have the same books in the New Testament. Yes, uh, you and your run-of-the-mill Protestant like me? Yeah, all 27 books. Yes. Okay. What about like Shepherd of Hermes or the DDK? Beautiful, but not scripture. Not scripture. Okay, tradition. So again, we the big umbrella for us is holy—again, I should—when I say tradition, holy Tradition, and under holy Tradition is scripture—again, not under—it's not important, like I said; I think I mentioned how much of our our liturgy and our Sunday is scripture, right? How much we value scripture, but also the church Fathers because they were inspired to to interpret uh scripture as well. So we look at their interpretations. Otherwise, if I look at my own, well, what if somebody reads the same verse and he, you know, I didn't look at it that way; I thought he meant that. Well, who's right? Right, who's right? And which the Protestant would look at and be like, yeah, but the church Fathers disagree on stuff too from time to time. What's the consensus? And we would say what's the consent, like the consensus historically? Yes. Um, so on the example of Alexander or Alexander, excuse me, Augustine that you brought up, yes, like there is so clearly no consensus on determinism and free will, and that is not even consensus within me. I don't know what to do with that. I wish I had your level of certainty. Right, that's that's a tough question; that's a tough question. And so there's a saint, and He said, we say, right, what did the others say? They didn't say that, so we don't take it. Okay, so we take the good, you know, again, he's human; it's we don't trash Augustine. No, no, no, he's got genius stuff. So let's take the genius, but this part—look at the end of the day, we are human, right? So what are what do humans do? We we we look at what our experience was, and he was a not so great guy, right? At the beginning, it was pretty converted; he did an absolute 180, and his mom and God were looking out for him. Beautiful, right? Beautiful stories. Uh, so we can't say just as a human, right? He must have been influenced a little bit about what he went through; he's like, there's no way; there's no way I did this on my own; like God must have like God must have been amazing, right? Okay, like I would take that as normal if I was saying Augustine and and I was conv—I would have probably put everything on God, how about that? You know, because I was so bad; there's no way I have nothing good in me. But that was your personal experience, Augustine, not maybe all of us. I've never—I mean, that's a story I've been familiar with for a long time; I've never thought of it from that perspective. I suppose all of us will gravitate toward certain interpretations, hopefully that are at least within the reasonable boundary markers of something that resembles Christianity and orthodoxy, but I I know there are certain things that I feel myself wanting to think because it fits better with my upbringing, my circumstances, my suffering, whatever it might be, but that don't seem quite as legitimate in terms of church tradition or the Bible, and that that creates a friction in me. So I I can I can hear what you're saying. All right, my friends, here's the game plan: we're gonna do one more video, so it'll be a total of four with Father James. It'll be the second half of the interview; you just watched the first half of, and I'm sure there are some of you who are like, what? I come on, you did a video with my tradition, and I got a beautiful tradition; you only did one video without, you know, four with the Coptic Church. What's the deal? And you are making a very valid point; I could always be doing more with all of these videos, but the truth of the matter is I'm just going to let you in a little secret here: I have no idea what I'm doing. I just walk in; I got the camera, and I'm like, "Hi, I'm Matt," and then we meet, and we start talking about stuff. And uh, I think part of the deal with the Coptic Church is that I really just knew so little going in that every little thing was new and fresh and fascinating, and it just prompted more questions, and Father James is super patient. So we took a bunch of time; we went through everything I could think of. So we are gonna do one more video, and I think you're gonna really enjoy it as we get to the home stretch of this thing. But I do have I guess two quick thoughts on what we just did here while it's still fresh for you, and I quick thought number one: did you catch the stuff about the chrismation oil and the provenance of that? It's fascinating that he was saying that the oil they use in all the Coptic churches everywhere is at some point mingled with oil that was mingled with oil; there's that word again—that was mingled with oil that was mingled with oil that I guess Mark brought with Him from the first church in Jerusalem. He just had it in His backpack when He showed up in Alexandria; He's like, "Hey, we're in Christianity now, and also one of the things you do in Christianity is you have this oil; I brought it with Me, and it's from Jesus and stuff." And then, you know, maybe Mark goes away later on, and somebody's like, "Yeah, you know, that's pretty cool that that's kind of a point of connection, uh, sort of a touchstone with where this whole thing started and came from; we should hang on to that," and it's kind of neat. And so I don't know if there's any actual way to subject that to scientific scrutiny to figure out if that oil was actually mingled with the other oil, but the concept of that is is brilliant. I mean, I don't have any reason to doubt it one way or the other, but the concept itself, the metaphor is incredible. And the metaphor doesn't really work in Protestantism, in my tradition, because for us we don't really do what's called apostolic succession. Most Protestants would look at the history of Christianity, and we look back through time; we're like, "You know what? What I see back there is a whole bunch of Christians." Now, there are probably a few Protestants where like everything about Christianity was great, and then Paul died, and everything was stupid until Martin Luther in the 1500s, and then everything got better again. I don't know many Protestants who think that; I don't I don't think that. I think what we have is this incredible shared history of the universal Church; there's disagreement within it; there's diversity within it; there's tricky stuff; there's beautiful stuff within it, but the one thing that all Christians have in common is Christ, the guy for whom the religion is named. And so anything that helps to illustrate that spiritual connectedness or, in the case of the Coptic Church, I mean, even a little degree of physical connectedness with that oil, I think it's a really cool thing. So that stood out to me. And yes, I'm completely sidestepping the other side of the question of apostolic succession, which is is there any unique authority that comes with it? And I know that this is a place where I see things differently than my Catholic friends, and I just I super like you anyway, and we can just agree to disagree on that for the moment. So the oil thing was cool, a unique metaphor for our connectedness with other Christians, not just in this moment in time, but throughout all of time, and even Christians coming up in the future. Really cool. The second thing that I thought was really cool is is kind of on a personal level, but I put Father James in a weird spot, and I probably didn't ask that question as well as I could have, but he was really gracious about it. You know, I put him in a weird spot by asking, "Am I a Christian in Coptic thought? Would I count?" Because we don't do the Eucharist the same way; we don't interpret what the Bible says about communion quite the same way. I mean, we're talking about the exact same Jesus, the exact same work that He did on the cross and all of that stuff, but you know, we view it as a a symbolic expression, a very important, like one of, if not the most important things that we do as Christians as an act of worship, as an ordinance of the Church, but we don't view it as being something that is uniquely distributed and only rightly distributed by someone who comes again from that succession of people who came before who can trace their lineage back to this or that claim for the beginning of the historical Church. So I put him in this odd spot, and I asked him this question, and did you see what he did? He pivoted the language just a little bit. I asked me like, "Am I a Christian?" And he pivoted to, "Okay, if someone were to ask me that, I would say to such a hypothetical person this this and this," and he didn't pretend not to think what he thinks. I wanted to know what he thinks, and he told me that, but he also showed tremendous concern for the other person on the other side of the conversation from him. I thought that was really neat. And I also really liked it; we got done with the answer that described very gently what they think and then was quick to say, "But we don't get to draw the lines of Christianity; we don't claim that authority; I don't get to be the decider about who exactly fits where or how that works." So there's a lot of humility and a lot of concern for me. I just thought it was really stinking classy. And I know that we're in kind of a weird place in our relationship together; we used to all just exist in our little religious pockets or not religious pockets, and we're all separate from each other, and our thought ghettos—our expressions of religion are not religion ghettos—but now we're all crammed into the same thing, and we just got dumped into it because the Zuckerberg guy invented the Facebook deal, and now we're all in there sharing pictures of our kids and our cats and stuff and also yelling about politics and religion and getting bent out of shape with each other. And I think that maybe it's that electronic mediation, or we're just not practiced up yet on what it's like to all be together again. And so it's like an awkward family meal, the holidays all the time, with all of our opinions coming to the table, and we're used to just barfing them out and everybody around us nodding and being excited, but now we're not in the thought bubble anymore, and it's weird, and it's awkward, and it's clumsy, and then we get amped up and insecure and mean and mad because somebody didn't think the thing I think, and I'm used to being affirmed, and just all of these really human things get triggered in us, and we just don't do the best. But that guy did great, didn't he? Look, even if you read that as him saying, "Like Matt, respectfully, no, I I think you have to receive communion in this way for you to truly be a part of the body," even if you read it that way, and I don't necessarily read his comments that way, he's still concerned with how I'm doing; he cares about the fate of my soul; he gives a rip about people who aren't exactly like him. And I want to be like that; I want to I want to steal that vibe; I want to be that kind of person; I want to be that kind of Christian. And so even in moments where you might feel or I might feel tension or amped up or defensive or maybe even this trigger of flash of anger because that's not my thing, and I don't really know how to say what my thing is, and that made sense, and that disturbs me, even as those things might flash or flare up in me, I'm just gonna I'm gonna keep Father James's example in the back of my brain; I'm gonna try to imitate that more because I really like his style, and I think what he is doing right there, how he's thinking about his community, how he's thinking about the people who go to his church, how he's thinking about the people who doesn't or who don't rather go to his church, I think that's sustainable; I think I think that's the kind of thing that can make a real difference, not just in the world but in the the Christian notion of the Kingdom of God. I appreciated seeing his lifetime of faith manifest in that moment in the way he treated me; I thought it was cool. I've gone on and on and on. We've got one more round of this interview with Father James; I think it's really fascinating stuff, and you're going to enjoy it. Thank you for being the kind of person that is interested in this kind of stuff. Thank you to the people who support the program at patreon.com/tmbh; you're investing in internet like this; you're investing in people like Father James being the kind of person that he is in front of others, and I'd like to think that it's one small drop in the bucket of maybe making the conversation a little bit better; it's happening because of you. Thank you for doing that. Thanks to those of you who are here; don't kick in on stuff on the internet; you're awesome; glad to have you as well. I'm Matt; this is the 10-Minute Bible Hour; let's do this again soon.