I’m so happy I found Father Andrew through the Symbolic World. I love Tolkien and I’ve always loved how he wrote his faith into his works, and seeing a priest talk about it(and learning he has a podcast on it!!) is just great. Keep up the good work Johnathan, God bless
It is true that rational arguments (and Enlightenment ideals as a whole) fall short (even as a worldview) when it comes to human beings. As Fr. Andrew explains, Enlightenment thinkers believe they can alter a way a person lives his life, yet everyday experiences confirm this to be false: rational arguments fail to move human beings. Yes, rational discourse DOES and MUST have a place in society, I believe, but it cannot be relied upon as a dominate form of discourse. Something more is needed. Even if one man convinced a second man, for example, that being overweight is bad for your health, he would still struggle (and most likely fail) to get the second man to change his diet and exercise. We can then conclude that making the decision to change one's life is only done by the intellect, but is also done on a deeper (or higher, depending on your perspective) level. As to what level that is, I do not fully understand. Would definitely like to see more discussions, especially the topics discussed in this one, more often. Very insightful! Thank you for the great discussion!
Yes, Jon, I believe what you are talking about is demonstrated in maths and logic itself, in Godel's incompleteness theorums. This is a great video on the subject: ruclips.net/video/O4ndIDcDSGc/видео.html . The higher order outcome is that humans are capable of making statements that apply to the axioms but are not provable by the axioms! Meaning that the concious human embodying Logos is capable of being super-ordinate in the heirarchy of truth to any axiomatic system. However since humans are ALSO capable of making incorrect statements that do not describe the axioms, or making axiomatically provable statements there are states of logos and not-logos that human speech and mind can exist in.
It truly is remarkable how people always seem to bring up how they saw a person with such a different attitude as the reason why they changed their behavior. This is especially true when it comes to conversion. People always say that seeing a person with such peace, love, and difference made them look into the religion and ultimately convert.
@@adomalyon1 Thank you for the video, it was interesting, but I must admit that I am not very familiar with mathematical theory. But from what I understood, there was some similarity in what I was talking about -- yet I am still unsatisfied. I wish I had the proper vocabulary in order to articulate what I am experiencing (it's one the main reasons why I watch Jonathan's videos).
@@jonathancraig No worries! So the big philosophical takeaway of Godels theorums is that humans can make statements about axioms which are true but unprovable by the axioms. Therefore there is a Logos which humans can embody which is superordinate, objectively, to both statements bound by axiomatic limitations and altogether incoherant statements.
16:00 Re: The Hobbits' physical journey mirrors their psychological journey as they learn to integrate themselves into a larger reality and narrative: It's not just the Hobbits that this happens too, other characters also undergo a forced paradigm shift as events cause them to realize "all the old tales never really ended, they are still going on" as Sam tells Frodo. Many times in the LOTR trilogy individuals are confronted by the reality of something they believed to be a myth stepping out of the mist or "springing up out of the grass before" them; in multiple instances it is the hobbits themselves who are the agents of this paradigm shift, being themselves myth-become-reality to Eomer and others, just as the Ents, Elves, and others are to them.
1:42 Tolkein and Orthodox Christianity 3:26 Parish Priest, Husband, Father 5:52 Long for Paradise 9:19 Tolkein's Letters 13:53 Tolkein Podcasts 18:51 Hill of Wind 35:47 Sumerillion, Tolkein's Old Testament
Tolkien is really popular among the Orthodox, even here in the Slavic countries. He also has a Slavic origin, this may also be why he's so in tune with the Orthodox people today and why he had that medieval-ish, traditional mindset that is recognized by religious people for its mysticism and natural sense of wonder, compared to lets say Harry Potter which is disliked by almost everyone I know. A fun little detail, his name in Slavic is spelled Tolkin, and read backwards it's Niklot, a Slavic warchief from 11th century and ancestor of the House of Mecklenburg.
@@frandrewstephendamick Father Damick, his family comes from East Prussia which was ethnically Slavic and Baltic before the germanization after the wendish and teutonic crusades. So it's a very distant past. There are many examples of Germans of Slavic origin - Leibniz was a Lusatian Sorb, scientist Otto von Guericke officialy a Prussian yet all german surnames ending on -ke are of Slavic origin. Not that it matters and I'm sure Tolkien himslf couldn't know about it but I just always found it very interesting especially his enigmatic surname that almost sounds Russian to Slavic people and spells Niklot, an important historical figure when read backwards. I have a feeling Tolkien's family history is very interesting. Little known fact is that Tolkien also knew Serbian language and studied our local history. He was especially interested in early 19th century uprisings against the Ottoman empire. Minas Tirith was partially inspired by Belgrade (also meaning White City) and there's a pretty strong foundation in support of this theory, I won't get into details but another parallel is that Belgrade was a last stand against the invading Turks in 1456 (I'm not saying that Tolkien's orks are turks but there are small parallels, even name kinda sounds alike). As you said, Tolkien hated allegories but he definitely barrowed from various historical sources and combined them into his epic. Even the name Shire has a meaning in Serbian. Something like "to spread wide" and in English it stands for a division of land. Hobbit homeland is described as "wide enough to allow forested areas". And name Boromir sounds tyypically Serbian or just Slavic in general, meaning something like "fighting for peace".
@@boreanknight Knowing your people, I am pretty amazed by your ability to withold saying "Tolkien was Serbian!" after all :) Additionally, if there is any relation in the tales to the Ottomans as you are saying, it would make more sense to me that he has been inspired by Miklagard then Belgrade, but in any case I doubt that it was based on any of these suggestions.
Thanks again Jonathan. As a Christian from the Reformation perspective, we share a lot of that transcendence/imminence in our liturgy as well as our understanding of being tied to The greater story. We live inside so many covenants (often expressed in narrative form in Scripture), which ties us to the death in Adam, the promise to Abraham, and the Life in Christ (I'm being brief). Our liturgy brings us near, where we ultimately come to the Lord's Table in faith. What a blessing it is to be in that liturgical life, even if our hearts may not be in it week in/week out. That structure and that habit help to see our life in God's story as he redeems us and makes all things new.
Never clicked on something so quick in my life, this is going to be fantastic! I've been a Tolkien fanatic since I was little and lately I've been gaining a new appreciation of the depth and beauty of his work, particularly given where we're at culturally right now. As a kid I couldn't fully appreciate the internally consistent moral philosophy and rich symbolic structure poetically woven into his stories, but they always affected me in a profound way, particularly the Silmarillion. As an adult it's absolutely striking how intuitively and symbolically "correct" his fictional works feel and I previously never had the words or arguments to articulate precisely why that was.
Living out a story has been in the back of my mind since I can remember (age 4? 5?). I had stopped giving it credence, harboring it as my secret, inner world of "playing pretend." However, listening to these discussions, as I concurrently explore the Catholic church as a way of being part of community, gives me permission to consider that inner world a Real Way of Being in Life.
Just had to say that really, with C.S. Lewis, I never understood what the fuss was about until I read his Space Trilogy and Till We Have Faces. I never much cared for Narnia, but many of his other works are fantastic.
Hello from Bulgaria. Yesterday I met with one other admirer of yours. We live quite close to each other and we met in the store by accident. I was quite sweaty from my afternoon run but anyway. I mentioned to him that you talk a lot about the importance of "identity" in relation of so many interesting thing, but at the same time you kind of avoid talking about the subject of this term in the depth that it deserves. I think that he suggest that this is too obvious not to be on purpose. He have more in depth knowledge of philosophy, religion and psychedelics, so I proceed in asking him a number of questions related to this. Like: What is personal identity? How is it formed and how it is sabotaged? What is it relation with more broad personal identities (p.i.)? What is it to have strong or weak p.i. What are the down and upsides of it? What is the role of the honesty in generating it?... and so on down the rabbit hole. What stared as shopping for toilet paper for me and cat food for him ended up in this hard philosophical question that at this moment only you can help. It was getting dark, cold and windy and we kept talking and talking. Now my gay, recovering atheist ass have cold and I must take pills and hot showers. On the joking side it was all your fault, but in all seriousness, can you please provide us with this big piece of the puzzle? Sorry about this needy and long post. Thanks for all the great videos! Please keep the good work. Amen!
The spoiler thing is very interesting bc i see that people today care about spoilers sometimes, but fans of certain pieces of fiction will watch or read or play a story over and over, and they still come back. The entire story has been spoiled for them but that doesn’t really matter, they can still get excited about what is going to happen, and tense about the conflicts in the story because they are engaging with the story. I think another aspect is doing this with others. I am watching a show that my little brother and I have already seen, but both of us are watching it with my other siblings. We know what is going to happen and so you might think there isn’t much of a point to watching the show, but to see everyone’s reactions to the show and what they think is going to happen is a wonderful experience and is more than just watching a show I like. I have even done this with shows they have watched without me. They will be on maybe season 3 of the show where all of these things have happened and I have no idea what the context is, but merely watching the show with them completely destroys my worry about getting something spoiled, I immediately engage with the story
I'm a big C.S.Lewis fan and whilst I have appreciated Tolkein, I find him harder to grapple with at times. This video made me want to revisit his books.
Great discussion, thanks. I would love to hear both of you have a similarly deep discussion on the liturgical life of Orthodoxy. As someone raised in a modern / postmodern culture, I would be fascinated to come around to that totalising liturgical perspective. Thanks!
I agree with the guest that Till We Have Faces is CS Lewis' most deeply Christian work. It plumbs the depths of human experience in terms of relating to the divine in a post-freudian culture.
Hi Jonathan - please read JRRT's 'Smith of Wootton Major' (assuming you haven't) and then give us your thoughts on it. It's a very short story, and in my opinion the very best thing Tolkien ever wrote.
Watch Boromir's death scene in the movie. Immense sense of failure and defeat. And what is it that Aragorn says that finally gives him relief? "Our people." Aragorn's deracination ends, and he accepts his responsibility as King to save his people. Hearing him accept this, Boromir knows his work is done, and sighs in deep relief, dying peacefully.
Rewatching this while I wait for the first Halloween special of Lord of Spirits, thank you for connecting us to these people Jonathan. As a curious modern agnostic type, I've let a lot of people proselytize me over the years, but Orthodoxy consistently feels like I'm just learning more about the reality that I live in! Maybe you and Father Andrew are really good at what you do ;) Something about ex Evangelists as well seems very prominent in revitalising the relationship the west has with this Eastern practice
Jonathan Pageau Yeah man, I hear ya. I’m a rambler myself, tangential thinking + non-verbal artistic discipline = omelette like statements. This is why I write songs and poetry, and play instruments!! The rest of the story is, your content is great ;)
As an Atheist, I truely do enjoy talks like these. Terry Pratchett is my favorite fiction writer, one of my favorite aspects is that his heros never save the world, they just try hard enough that the world can save itself. A cultural preservation even at the cost of one's life. What does a culture want to do? Why does it grow and form as it does? Why does it poke about inside and outside of itself looking to the old and the new for answers. To me, even if you are not a Christian, it's best to act like one that's read a little Aristotle. You may not be able to measure faith or reason in a lab, but you can measure their effects culturally over time. My belief in justice, liberty, or empathy are really no more real than your God. What does it take to ensure good beliefs continue to transcend for generations to come?
It seems that if the connection between figures is laid out too obviously, there’s no mystery. You already know the story so it’s really apparent where the allegory is going. It’s like traveling down a road your familiar with already.
We don't really conceive of the Areopagus as an interview show but rather as conversation within relationship. So all our guests have an actual relationship with at least one of us. Neither of us knows him, I'm afraid.
I agree. Till we have faces is CSL's best work and you will never forget it. LOTR is very Catholic in its world view especially in its portrayal of women; to me they do not seem very human but like the Byzantine symbols of women.
The Silmarillion is the best one by far, IMO. You will love it. Long periods of time, epic stories, but less pages for each. Quite the opposite of the Hobbit and LOTR, which can get bogged down by Tolkien’s (very, very, very long) cringe-y songs/poems, and great orations.
Planet Narnia is a book by Michael Ward that proposes the third level of unifying symbolism in the Narniad is the medieval conception of the seven planets. I really want to hear Pageau respond to it.
Jonathan you should read St. John Henry Newman. 19th century Anglican convert to Catholicism by way almost entirely of reading the fathers and realizing that Protestantism had no legs. Notional vs real assent (and much more)
@3:25 how do you do it, as Orthodox how do you come up to the threshold? What does it mean and practically how do you access "liturgical life"? Thank you
I also agree that the imperative parts of the Bible are the least powerful (Proverbs, Leviticus, etc.) The reason the Bible and other scriptures are still interesting after thousands of years is that they have stories and symbols that can help us understand the challenges of the modern world. Simple do-this, don't-do-that statements can sometimes be interesting if they are less obvious, but I don't think they age very well. I remember in a high school bible study one of the lessons had all of the students write their own proverbs. I think this is evidence that that form of writing is the simplest--there was no way they were going to ask us to write a parable or a prophecy, hahaha.
Jonathan, I'm dying to know what you think of A Song of Ice and Fire. Don't judge it by the show. Game of Thrones was painfully superficial. The books are deeply symbolic and to my novie point of view seem very consistently structured.
Around 12:00 they were talking about Narnia and how some of the images are too obvious and it's not as deep. I kind of thought that too until I read Michael Wards. Planet Narnia he dives its symbolic depths and it turns up many unexpected things. Read the book, I was blown away their is a lot more going on than lewis gets credit for.
I like and respect Tolkien's work (only read The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit) and I agree that it is valuable as applicable "history," but I also can't help but think that he is somewhat responsible for the massive proliferation of super-large fantasy stories that have been written in the past 50 years. Before him, people didn't get away with writing series of books, 500 pages or more each. Personally, I value conciseness, so I kindof resent all of that. I think what makes his works interesting is that there are many small, self-contained parts, so you don't feel like you have to read everything to enjoy one of his stories. This is something that most modern fantasy authors that I've read have failed to emulate.
You know those voluminous knightly epics that are found in Don Quixote's library? Well, they aint just Cervantes' invention: just check out the size of the volumes of Amadis of Gaol.
Good point, our ability to make stories longer and longer is impressive and ancient. Still, I think modern authors indulge more than the historical average.
I keep wondering why orthodoxy in north America is so different in a very good way from where I’m from (Russia and Ukraine). American orthodox priest seem to be way more serious about faith then anywhere else I’ve seen. Seems like as soon as certain faith becomes “national” religious is starts to plummet to be something else but the church!
question regarding pronunciation of the his last name, Day-mick really sounds like the americanised pronunciation. I would say Dah-mick is much more accurate, as Pageau used in the intro, to the euro pronunciation. anyone?
When my great-grandfather invented "Damick" (adapted from "Domeika"), "DAY-mick" is how he pronounced it. So it's the only pronunciation ever used in my family, and it's entirely American in its history.
I've learned that there are other people in the US who spell their last name the same way. I believe that they are Italians, however, and were "D'Amico" in Italy. I'm not sure, though, and I don't know how they pronounce our homonymic surname, as I've never met any of them.
Quick question guys, for someone who's never experienced Orthodox Christianity, would you recommend attending Greek or Coptic? St. Andrew vs St. George..
Greek because Monophysitism (Coptics, plus Armenians and Ethiopians) is a different animal from Eastern Orthodoxy (despite use of the word “orthodox”). Dyophysitism connects a lot of dots once you realize a God who created everything can easily make something comprise of the entirety of two things without them bleeding into each other.
@@senorsiro3748 thank you. Would you say the distinction between monophysitism and dyophysitism is the main point of bifurcation between the two Orthodoxys?
DamnItDarin By definition. It was the issue of the council of Chalcedon, where and when the Oriental orthodox split officially occurred. Chalcedonian dyophysitism in Eastern Orthodox theology is part of what further affirms the applicability of the resurrection as the conquest of death for normal humans.
JJR Tolkien was of course a Roman Catholic: a Traditional Catholic, and that's important, as his wonderful depiction of mystery, magical reality, divine order and justice and spiritual longing mingled with the beauty of the physical creation etc all derives from his faith. He lived to see the beginnings of the transformation of the Catholic Church post-Vatican II, and he totally rejected those changes, recognising them for what they were - essentially means to secularise and desanctify the faith and to empty the sacred liturgy of awe, supernatural power and transcendence. Protestants like Fr Andrew was, loving Tolkien's vision, are likely to be drawn to the Orthodox Church in their quest to realise that vision spiritually, because the mainstream Catholic Church has mostly lost it (discarded it in a failed attempt to conform to the "modern" world). But it is still to be found in Traditional Catholicism in all its beauty and power. This was Tolkien's religion and source of inspiration, and it still inspires today. The Traditional Mass and practice is flourishing while the mainstream modernist Church is dwindling and basically ageing along with the baby-boomers who make up the vast majority of churchgoers now. But Tolkien's Catholicism, the ancient faith, is ageless and timeless because it belongs to another world outside time. And young people are flocking to it. Along with Orthodoxy, this is Christianity's best hope, the light when all lights go out and the darkness closes in.
Can you do a video on Christian ethnobotanical traditions? Maybe look at John Allegro's argument in his book The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. It's a perplexing topic, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on whether there's symbolic significance in the associations between Christian theology and humanity's relationship with plants.
Orthodoxy is inward looking Christianity where as Catholicism and Protestantism is more outward looking. Extroverts have much lower intellectual activity and they supplement it by being more active in the world where as Introverts are the opposite they get overstimulated by their own ideas that they shy away from the world. Orthodoxy is difficult and intellectual.
That might make sense from looking at Orthodoxy purely from a theoretical viewpoint such as one might find on the Internet, but the reality is that Orthodoxy is the faith of about 250 million people now and many millions for two millennia across multiple cultures. And in any Orthodox parish you will meet both extroverts and introverts (and "ambiverts," as I've heard them called). And this is true from the thousands of saints' lives in Orthodox tradition. If it were merely "difficult and intellectual," it wouldn't be possible for it to be the faith of whole communities comprising so many times and places and people. The truth is that Orthodox Christianity is for everyone, no matter what their personalities are like. Everyone will live it a little differently, and that's okay.
38:00 Nonsense, I say. Aragon set the tune and began the tale, Legolas complimented it in form, and Aragon finnished the narrative, perhaps in a traditional form. Then Gimli justly declined to continue the tale. Of course it could have happened. Both Aragon and Legolas were rich in song and lore. Composition of that sort is a logical expression of grief for such people.
Logical, sure, but it takes time to compose something like that (this isn't freestyle rap!), and time wasn't really something they had much of at that moment. Too many of the details in it are so specific to Boromir that there's no way it could have been essentially in-the-moment pastiche.
I actually agree with horsemumbler. When you spend enough time immersed in a poetic mode, it’s not impossible to compose on the spot. The highly elevated quality of the verse may be somewhat unrealistic...and yet even that, considering the strength of feeling present in that moment...I buy it. It totally could have happened. :)
Ah, but I make no claim to be rich in song and lore. Just because I couldn’t do it doesn’t mean someone immersed in verse forms for the entirety of a longer-than-usual life couldn’t. :)
“Avengers infinity war is the most ambitious crossover event in hi-“
☦️: “BEHOLD!”
Pageau talking about Tolkien = I hit like before the video starts
Till We Have Faces broke my heart and changed my life. That sounds trite but it really is one of Those Books.
The best Lewis' fictional book IMO. Perfect artistic illustration to his "The Four Loves" and to the chapter about pride in "Mere Christianity".
Tolkien in part was responsible for my return to catholicism, one of the best writers, his books are just awesome!
I think that's true for a lot of us.
Thanks to you both....Some stories are more real than what we generally think of as reality. Thank God.....
I’m so happy I found Father Andrew through the Symbolic World. I love Tolkien and I’ve always loved how he wrote his faith into his works, and seeing a priest talk about it(and learning he has a podcast on it!!) is just great. Keep up the good work Johnathan, God bless
Thank you for keep bringing such an interesting guest, Jonathan.
It is true that rational arguments (and Enlightenment ideals as a whole) fall short (even as a worldview) when it comes to human beings. As Fr. Andrew explains, Enlightenment thinkers believe they can alter a way a person lives his life, yet everyday experiences confirm this to be false: rational arguments fail to move human beings. Yes, rational discourse DOES and MUST have a place in society, I believe, but it cannot be relied upon as a dominate form of discourse. Something more is needed. Even if one man convinced a second man, for example, that being overweight is bad for your health, he would still struggle (and most likely fail) to get the second man to change his diet and exercise. We can then conclude that making the decision to change one's life is only done by the intellect, but is also done on a deeper (or higher, depending on your perspective) level. As to what level that is, I do not fully understand.
Would definitely like to see more discussions, especially the topics discussed in this one, more often. Very insightful!
Thank you for the great discussion!
Yes, Jon, I believe what you are talking about is demonstrated in maths and logic itself, in Godel's incompleteness theorums. This is a great video on the subject: ruclips.net/video/O4ndIDcDSGc/видео.html . The higher order outcome is that humans are capable of making statements that apply to the axioms but are not provable by the axioms! Meaning that the concious human embodying Logos is capable of being super-ordinate in the heirarchy of truth to any axiomatic system. However since humans are ALSO capable of making incorrect statements that do not describe the axioms, or making axiomatically provable statements there are states of logos and not-logos that human speech and mind can exist in.
It truly is remarkable how people always seem to bring up how they saw a person with such a different attitude as the reason why they changed their behavior. This is especially true when it comes to conversion. People always say that seeing a person with such peace, love, and difference made them look into the religion and ultimately convert.
@@adomalyon1 Thank you for the video, it was interesting, but I must admit that I am not very familiar with mathematical theory. But from what I understood, there was some similarity in what I was talking about -- yet I am still unsatisfied. I wish I had the proper vocabulary in order to articulate what I am experiencing (it's one the main reasons why I watch Jonathan's videos).
@@jonathancraig No worries! So the big philosophical takeaway of Godels theorums is that humans can make statements about axioms which are true but unprovable by the axioms. Therefore there is a Logos which humans can embody which is superordinate, objectively, to both statements bound by axiomatic limitations and altogether incoherant statements.
@@adomalyon1 Now I understand what you mean! Thanks!
This nearly has me in tears of excitement
Thank you Fr. Damick, I am here to hear you!
16:00 Re: The Hobbits' physical journey mirrors their psychological journey as they learn to integrate themselves into a larger reality and narrative: It's not just the Hobbits that this happens too, other characters also undergo a forced paradigm shift as events cause them to realize "all the old tales never really ended, they are still going on" as Sam tells Frodo. Many times in the LOTR trilogy individuals are confronted by the reality of something they believed to be a myth stepping out of the mist or "springing up out of the grass before" them; in multiple instances it is the hobbits themselves who are the agents of this paradigm shift, being themselves myth-become-reality to Eomer and others, just as the Ents, Elves, and others are to them.
1:42 Tolkein and Orthodox Christianity
3:26 Parish Priest, Husband, Father
5:52 Long for Paradise
9:19 Tolkein's Letters
13:53 Tolkein Podcasts
18:51 Hill of Wind
35:47 Sumerillion, Tolkein's Old Testament
Tolkien is really popular among the Orthodox, even here in the Slavic countries. He also has a Slavic origin, this may also be why he's so in tune with the Orthodox people today and why he had that medieval-ish, traditional mindset that is recognized by religious people for its mysticism and natural sense of wonder, compared to lets say Harry Potter which is disliked by almost everyone I know. A fun little detail, his name in Slavic is spelled Tolkin, and read backwards it's Niklot, a Slavic warchief from 11th century and ancestor of the House of Mecklenburg.
What is the Slavic origin you mention? He himself identified "Tolkien" as German. The Tolkien family has been traced to early 17th c. Prussia.
@@frandrewstephendamick Father Damick, his family comes from East Prussia which was ethnically Slavic and Baltic before the germanization after the wendish and teutonic crusades. So it's a very distant past. There are many examples of Germans of Slavic origin - Leibniz was a Lusatian Sorb, scientist Otto von Guericke officialy a Prussian yet all german surnames ending on -ke are of Slavic origin. Not that it matters and I'm sure Tolkien himslf couldn't know about it but I just always found it very interesting especially his enigmatic surname that almost sounds Russian to Slavic people and spells Niklot, an important historical figure when read backwards. I have a feeling Tolkien's family history is very interesting.
Little known fact is that Tolkien also knew Serbian language and studied our local history. He was especially interested in early 19th century uprisings against the Ottoman empire. Minas Tirith was partially inspired by Belgrade (also meaning White City) and there's a pretty strong foundation in support of this theory, I won't get into details but another parallel is that Belgrade was a last stand against the invading Turks in 1456 (I'm not saying that Tolkien's orks are turks but there are small parallels, even name kinda sounds alike).
As you said, Tolkien hated allegories but he definitely barrowed from various historical sources and combined them into his epic.
Even the name Shire has a meaning in Serbian. Something like "to spread wide" and in English it stands for a division of land. Hobbit homeland is described as "wide enough to allow forested areas". And name Boromir sounds tyypically Serbian or just Slavic in general, meaning something like "fighting for peace".
@@boreanknight Knowing your people, I am pretty amazed by your ability to withold saying "Tolkien was Serbian!" after all :)
Additionally, if there is any relation in the tales to the Ottomans as you are saying, it would make more sense to me that he has been inspired by Miklagard then Belgrade, but in any case I doubt that it was based on any of these suggestions.
@@ognard Ok
Thank you very much.
Thanks again Jonathan. As a Christian from the Reformation perspective, we share a lot of that transcendence/imminence in our liturgy as well as our understanding of being tied to The greater story. We live inside so many covenants (often expressed in narrative form in Scripture), which ties us to the death in Adam, the promise to Abraham, and the Life in Christ (I'm being brief). Our liturgy brings us near, where we ultimately come to the Lord's Table in faith. What a blessing it is to be in that liturgical life, even if our hearts may not be in it week in/week out. That structure and that habit help to see our life in God's story as he redeems us and makes all things new.
Never clicked on something so quick in my life, this is going to be fantastic! I've been a Tolkien fanatic since I was little and lately I've been gaining a new appreciation of the depth and beauty of his work, particularly given where we're at culturally right now.
As a kid I couldn't fully appreciate the internally consistent moral philosophy and rich symbolic structure poetically woven into his stories, but they always affected me in a profound way, particularly the Silmarillion. As an adult it's absolutely striking how intuitively and symbolically "correct" his fictional works feel and I previously never had the words or arguments to articulate precisely why that was.
No... One... Carss
@@macbeth8393 Well of course no one "carss," that's not an actual word. When we use cars as transportation we call it "driving."
@@jagpro91 aha you win this one
Loved this! ❤️💙
Living out a story has been in the back of my mind since I can remember (age 4? 5?). I had stopped giving it credence, harboring it as my secret, inner world of "playing pretend." However, listening to these discussions, as I concurrently explore the Catholic church as a way of being part of community, gives me permission to consider that inner world a Real Way of Being in Life.
Jenuine Yoga you mean when your pretending your in a movie playing a character but in your actual life?
Just had to say that really, with C.S. Lewis, I never understood what the fuss was about until I read his Space Trilogy and Till We Have Faces. I never much cared for Narnia, but many of his other works are fantastic.
That Hideous Strength is eminently relevant nowadays, with the rise of transhumanism.
Thanks Fr. Andrew and Jonathan.
Hello from Bulgaria. Yesterday I met with one other admirer of yours. We live quite close to each other and we met in the store by accident. I was quite sweaty from my afternoon run but anyway. I mentioned to him that you talk a lot about the importance of "identity" in relation of so many interesting thing, but at the same time you kind of avoid talking about the subject of this term in the depth that it deserves. I think that he suggest that this is too obvious not to be on purpose. He have more in depth knowledge of philosophy, religion and psychedelics, so I proceed in asking him a number of questions related to this. Like: What is personal identity? How is it formed and how it is sabotaged? What is it relation with more broad personal identities (p.i.)? What is it to have strong or weak p.i. What are the down and upsides of it? What is the role of the honesty in generating it?... and so on down the rabbit hole. What stared as shopping for toilet paper for me and cat food for him ended up in this hard philosophical question that at this moment only you can help. It was getting dark, cold and windy and we kept talking and talking. Now my gay, recovering atheist ass have cold and I must take pills and hot showers. On the joking side it was all your fault, but in all seriousness, can you please provide us with this big piece of the puzzle? Sorry about this needy and long post. Thanks for all the great videos! Please keep the good work. Amen!
Til We Have Faces changed my entire worldview in a positive way
Excellent conversation. We need more of these.
Great discussion. Thank you very much. Keep up the good work.
Thanks for this interview. Greetings from Serbia
The spoiler thing is very interesting bc i see that people today care about spoilers sometimes, but fans of certain pieces of fiction will watch or read or play a story over and over, and they still come back. The entire story has been spoiled for them but that doesn’t really matter, they can still get excited about what is going to happen, and tense about the conflicts in the story because they are engaging with the story. I think another aspect is doing this with others. I am watching a show that my little brother and I have already seen, but both of us are watching it with my other siblings. We know what is going to happen and so you might think there isn’t much of a point to watching the show, but to see everyone’s reactions to the show and what they think is going to happen is a wonderful experience and is more than just watching a show I like. I have even done this with shows they have watched without me. They will be on maybe season 3 of the show where all of these things have happened and I have no idea what the context is, but merely watching the show with them completely destroys my worry about getting something spoiled, I immediately engage with the story
THE video i was waiting for!
Wish you would explore chiastic storytelling as symbolic in itself. Great talk!
I'm a big C.S.Lewis fan and whilst I have appreciated Tolkein, I find him harder to grapple with at times. This video made me want to revisit his books.
+1 for Mrs. Pageau and Braveheart. I have a small vhs/TV combo and watch the grainy 2 tape version often, makes it feel like an old documentary.
Great podcast, really love Amon Sul and LoS. Aragorn and Gandalf are like St.'s showing how to embody The Way.
Great discussion, thanks.
I would love to hear both of you have a similarly deep discussion on the liturgical life of Orthodoxy.
As someone raised in a modern / postmodern culture, I would be fascinated to come around to that totalising liturgical perspective.
Thanks!
Go directly to the podcast here: tolkienpodcast.com
Thanks, folks!
Thanks to God Fr Andrew! Many years!
Heavens to Betsy, that's my online week mapped out!
I agree with the guest that Till We Have Faces is CS Lewis' most deeply Christian work. It plumbs the depths of human experience in terms of relating to the divine in a post-freudian culture.
Hi Jonathan - please read JRRT's 'Smith of Wootton Major' (assuming you haven't) and then give us your thoughts on it. It's a very short story, and in my opinion the very best thing Tolkien ever wrote.
Watch Boromir's death scene in the movie. Immense sense of failure and defeat. And what is it that Aragorn says that finally gives him relief?
"Our people." Aragorn's deracination ends, and he accepts his responsibility as King to save his people. Hearing him accept this, Boromir knows his work is done, and sighs in deep relief, dying peacefully.
Rewatching this while I wait for the first Halloween special of Lord of Spirits, thank you for connecting us to these people Jonathan. As a curious modern agnostic type, I've let a lot of people proselytize me over the years, but Orthodoxy consistently feels like I'm just learning more about the reality that I live in! Maybe you and Father Andrew are really good at what you do ;) Something about ex Evangelists as well seems very prominent in revitalising the relationship the west has with this Eastern practice
My feeling as well it's all real, especially the St
George legend
This was awesome.
Nice.
This is brilliant
If you FF through all of Jonathan’s talking, this is ❗️
Had to love your comment. It is Lent after all.
Jonathan Pageau Yeah man, I hear ya. I’m a rambler myself, tangential thinking + non-verbal artistic discipline = omelette like statements. This is why I write songs and poetry, and play instruments!!
The rest of the story is, your content is great ;)
Une merveilleuse vidéo....une des plus féconde je crois...
As an Atheist, I truely do enjoy talks like these.
Terry Pratchett is my favorite fiction writer, one of my favorite aspects is that his heros never save the world, they just try hard enough that the world can save itself.
A cultural preservation even at the cost of one's life. What does a culture want to do? Why does it grow and form as it does? Why does it poke about inside and outside of itself looking to the old and the new for answers.
To me, even if you are not a Christian, it's best to act like one that's read a little Aristotle. You may not be able to measure faith or reason in a lab, but you can measure their effects culturally over time.
My belief in justice, liberty, or empathy are really no more real than your God. What does it take to ensure good beliefs continue to transcend for generations to come?
Like I used to tell my guitar students who didn’t practice: try harder.
Just keep listening ☦
It seems that if the connection between figures is laid out too obviously, there’s no mystery. You already know the story so it’s really apparent where the allegory is going. It’s like traveling down a road your familiar with already.
Read The Silmarillion, Jonathan!
Fr. Damick should interview Paul Vanderklay on the areopagus podcast. Just a request.
We don't really conceive of the Areopagus as an interview show but rather as conversation within relationship. So all our guests have an actual relationship with at least one of us. Neither of us knows him, I'm afraid.
Sad day
@@frandrewstephendamick great pretext to get acquainted :)
NNNEEERRRDDDDSSS!!!
Bruce Wayne 😂🤣
good stuff!
Beren is only an elf in the earlier versions. The novel has a few of them, including the Silmarillion version and the one you mentioned.
I agree. Till we have faces is CSL's best work and you will never forget it.
LOTR is very Catholic in its world view especially in its portrayal of women; to me they do not seem very human but like the Byzantine symbols of women.
The Silmarillion is the best one by far, IMO. You will love it. Long periods of time, epic stories, but less pages for each. Quite the opposite of the Hobbit and LOTR, which can get bogged down by Tolkien’s (very, very, very long) cringe-y songs/poems, and great orations.
Planet Narnia is a book by Michael Ward that proposes the third level of unifying symbolism in the Narniad is the medieval conception of the seven planets. I really want to hear Pageau respond to it.
Jonathan you should read St. John Henry Newman. 19th century Anglican convert to Catholicism by way almost entirely of reading the fathers and realizing that Protestantism had no legs. Notional vs real assent (and much more)
@3:25 how do you do it, as Orthodox how do you come up to the threshold?
What does it mean and practically how do you access "liturgical life"?
Thank you
Have you read Fleming Routledge on Tolkien's narrative structure? It really is wonderful.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Jonathan look this giddy in any of his conversations.
I also agree that the imperative parts of the Bible are the least powerful (Proverbs, Leviticus, etc.) The reason the Bible and other scriptures are still interesting after thousands of years is that they have stories and symbols that can help us understand the challenges of the modern world. Simple do-this, don't-do-that statements can sometimes be interesting if they are less obvious, but I don't think they age very well. I remember in a high school bible study one of the lessons had all of the students write their own proverbs. I think this is evidence that that form of writing is the simplest--there was no way they were going to ask us to write a parable or a prophecy, hahaha.
Eminent or immanent?
I like the concept of the “quantitative world” as a description of the material world as understood by science..
14:56 : Applicability concept is introduced.
Jay Dyer will be yelling at the screen
Mathew, Mark, Luke and John are in five part harmony with the Holy Spirit.
Jonathan, I'm dying to know what you think of A Song of Ice and Fire. Don't judge it by the show. Game of Thrones was painfully superficial. The books are deeply symbolic and to my novie point of view seem very consistently structured.
The books are great
Around 12:00 they were talking about Narnia and how some of the images are too obvious and it's not as deep. I kind of thought that too until I read Michael Wards. Planet Narnia he dives its symbolic depths and it turns up many unexpected things. Read the book, I was blown away their is a lot more going on than lewis gets credit for.
I like and respect Tolkien's work (only read The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit) and I agree that it is valuable as applicable "history," but I also can't help but think that he is somewhat responsible for the massive proliferation of super-large fantasy stories that have been written in the past 50 years. Before him, people didn't get away with writing series of books, 500 pages or more each. Personally, I value conciseness, so I kindof resent all of that. I think what makes his works interesting is that there are many small, self-contained parts, so you don't feel like you have to read everything to enjoy one of his stories. This is something that most modern fantasy authors that I've read have failed to emulate.
You know those voluminous knightly epics that are found in Don Quixote's library? Well, they aint just Cervantes' invention: just check out the size of the volumes of Amadis of Gaol.
Good point, our ability to make stories longer and longer is impressive and ancient. Still, I think modern authors indulge more than the historical average.
I keep wondering why orthodoxy in north America is so different in a very good way from where I’m from (Russia and Ukraine). American orthodox priest seem to be way more serious about faith then anywhere else I’ve seen. Seems like as soon as certain faith becomes “national” religious is starts to plummet to be something else but the church!
When will there be another Areopagus podcast? I need more ecumenical conversations.
We're recording a new episode on Tuesday.
You two should review Andrei Rublev by Andrei Tarkovski.
Matango what is your display picture?
You mean avatar?
Matango yeah?
@@alexanderleo6809 it's a combination of the human eye and the photographic iris. It's from an old film poster.
Have you ever considered doing an analysis of The Simpsons Movie? I think it would be right up your alley.
I read or whatch lord of the rings at least once a year. Now i know why
Anyone know what happened to his Black Panther video ? I was going to use it for a lecture :(
www.bitchute.com/video/2wrtZkOihjKH/
nv bv THANK YOU SOOO MUCH !
Anyone know what app they use to record the podcast?
Everyone knows that Sean Bean has to die at the end of the first season, not the start of the second season.
Does someone know which podcasts are doing Tolkien's reading +commentary? I have never read his books and I would like to start somehow.
My favorite is The Prancing Pony Podcast.
@@frandrewstephendamick thank you very much, I will definitely check it out.
"Hello. A question, what were the ancient stories of the ancients?"
question regarding pronunciation of the his last name, Day-mick really sounds like the americanised pronunciation. I would say Dah-mick is much more accurate, as Pageau used in the intro, to the euro pronunciation. anyone?
When my great-grandfather invented "Damick" (adapted from "Domeika"), "DAY-mick" is how he pronounced it. So it's the only pronunciation ever used in my family, and it's entirely American in its history.
@@frandrewstephendamick gotcha
I've learned that there are other people in the US who spell their last name the same way. I believe that they are Italians, however, and were "D'Amico" in Italy. I'm not sure, though, and I don't know how they pronounce our homonymic surname, as I've never met any of them.
Woah....
Quick question guys, for someone who's never experienced Orthodox Christianity, would you recommend attending Greek or Coptic? St. Andrew vs St. George..
Greek because Monophysitism (Coptics, plus Armenians and Ethiopians) is a different animal from Eastern Orthodoxy (despite use of the word “orthodox”).
Dyophysitism connects a lot of dots once you realize a God who created everything can easily make something comprise of the entirety of two things without them bleeding into each other.
@@senorsiro3748 thank you. Would you say the distinction between monophysitism and dyophysitism is the main point of bifurcation between the two Orthodoxys?
DamnItDarin By definition. It was the issue of the council of Chalcedon, where and when the Oriental orthodox split officially occurred.
Chalcedonian dyophysitism in Eastern Orthodox theology is part of what further affirms the applicability of the resurrection as the conquest of death for normal humans.
Greek! The Copts are not a part of the Orthodox for an extremely long time.
DamnItDarin Do you have any other churches around that aren’t Greek, like Russian, Antiochian, Romanian, etc.?
JJR Tolkien was of course a Roman Catholic: a Traditional Catholic, and that's important, as his wonderful depiction of mystery, magical reality, divine order and justice and spiritual longing mingled with the beauty of the physical creation etc all derives from his faith. He lived to see the beginnings of the transformation of the Catholic Church post-Vatican II, and he totally rejected those changes, recognising them for what they were - essentially means to secularise and desanctify the faith and to empty the sacred liturgy of awe, supernatural power and transcendence. Protestants like Fr Andrew was, loving Tolkien's vision, are likely to be drawn to the Orthodox Church in their quest to realise that vision spiritually, because the mainstream Catholic Church has mostly lost it (discarded it in a failed attempt to conform to the "modern" world). But it is still to be found in Traditional Catholicism in all its beauty and power. This was Tolkien's religion and source of inspiration, and it still inspires today. The Traditional Mass and practice is flourishing while the mainstream modernist Church is dwindling and basically ageing along with the baby-boomers who make up the vast majority of churchgoers now. But Tolkien's Catholicism, the ancient faith, is ageless and timeless because it belongs to another world outside time. And young people are flocking to it. Along with Orthodoxy, this is Christianity's best hope, the light when all lights go out and the darkness closes in.
“Day-mick”*
35:22 irrational amounts of applause for letting your nine year old son read that
Wait, Aslan is Jesus? I thought he was Liam Neeson.
That's a Vatican II trick, it was really supposed to be Morgan Freidman.
Can you do a video on Christian ethnobotanical traditions? Maybe look at John Allegro's argument in his book The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. It's a perplexing topic, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on whether there's symbolic significance in the associations between Christian theology and humanity's relationship with plants.
No.
JP dont know nothin bout Beren and Luthien...
Orthodoxy is inward looking Christianity where as Catholicism and Protestantism is more outward looking. Extroverts have much lower intellectual activity and they supplement it by being more active in the world where as Introverts are the opposite they get overstimulated by their own ideas that they shy away from the world. Orthodoxy is difficult and intellectual.
That might make sense from looking at Orthodoxy purely from a theoretical viewpoint such as one might find on the Internet, but the reality is that Orthodoxy is the faith of about 250 million people now and many millions for two millennia across multiple cultures. And in any Orthodox parish you will meet both extroverts and introverts (and "ambiverts," as I've heard them called). And this is true from the thousands of saints' lives in Orthodox tradition. If it were merely "difficult and intellectual," it wouldn't be possible for it to be the faith of whole communities comprising so many times and places and people.
The truth is that Orthodox Christianity is for everyone, no matter what their personalities are like. Everyone will live it a little differently, and that's okay.
10:05 Tolkien's subcreation as an alternative Old Testament
38:00
Nonsense, I say. Aragon set the tune and began the tale, Legolas complimented it in form, and Aragon finnished the narrative, perhaps in a traditional form. Then Gimli justly declined to continue the tale. Of course it could have happened. Both Aragon and Legolas were rich in song and lore. Composition of that sort is a logical expression of grief for such people.
Logical, sure, but it takes time to compose something like that (this isn't freestyle rap!), and time wasn't really something they had much of at that moment. Too many of the details in it are so specific to Boromir that there's no way it could have been essentially in-the-moment pastiche.
I actually agree with horsemumbler. When you spend enough time immersed in a poetic mode, it’s not impossible to compose on the spot. The highly elevated quality of the verse may be somewhat unrealistic...and yet even that, considering the strength of feeling present in that moment...I buy it. It totally could have happened. :)
Well, Father, if I ever do meet you in public, we shall have to test your abilities in this regard! :)
Ah, but I make no claim to be rich in song and lore. Just because I couldn’t do it doesn’t mean someone immersed in verse forms for the entirety of a longer-than-usual life couldn’t. :)
"um, actually?? My last name is pronounce day-mick"
*proceeds to mispronounce Tolkien for an hour*
It's "TOL-keen," right? That's what I thought I was saying. Oh, well.