The Podvig with Joel Dunn

Your life, beloved, is a war and temptation precipitates each battle.  Saint Theophan the Recluse said it this way: “The arena, the field of battle, the site where the fight actually takes place is our own heart and all our inner man. The time of battle is our whole life.”  St. James tells us that every man is tempted from within, being lured away by his own lusts and passions, and is enticed.  (James 1:14) In Mark 7, our Lord says this: “Hear Me, everyone, and understand: There is nothing that enters a man from outside which can defile him; but the things which come out of him, those are the things that defile a man.”

There were two main problems with the garments of leaves. The garments were taken from a tree that didn’t belong to Adam and the woman as a selfish, external sacrifice, and, The leaves were an insufficient cover for their sin because they were too different from man.

After The Fall, Adam and the woman's instinct for self-preservation resulted in them taking and making clothing from fig leaves.  They dimly perceived their lack of self-sufficiency and attempted to cover themselves, to hide their shame, and to hold themselves together.

According to the Genesis 3 account of the fall of Man, the first and most immediate result of Adam and Eve’s consumption of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil was the realization that they were naked.  According to St. Ambrose of Milan: "Whoever has lost the covering of his nature and virtue is naked."

This episode focuses on sharing the afflictions of Christ through bearing our own cross. Sacrifice was established as soon as mankind was expelled from paradise where Adam and Eve did not sacrifice their own will, but instead took the fruit for themselves.  Love in sacrifice and sacrifice in love are the cornerstones of true Life. Without love, sacrifice kills; without sacrifice, love is barren sentiment.   Visit https://thepodvig.com to sign up now! Support the show! https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thepodvigpod/support

This episode delves into the concept of the cross as baptism from the Old Testament to the New, in which Christ calls His crucifixion a baptism. Sign up at https://thepodvig.com to get the full transcript episode! Support the podcast here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thepodvigpod/support

Like the wooden horse given to the city of Troy, the Cross of Jesus Christ is not at all what it seems. It is dead wood that produced the ripened fruit of eternal life; it's a sword disguised as gallows. Sign up at https://thepodvig.com to get the full transcript episode! Support the podcast here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thepodvigpod/support

The prophecy of St. Simeon the God-receiver involves both Christ and His mother. This episode explores the biblical, liturgical, and theological meaning of the Theotokos becoming the new Eve and her essential role in the Kingdom of God. Get the full transcript by signing up at https://www.thepodvig.com/ Support the podcast here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thepodvigpod/support

St. Peter teaches that “as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, “Be holy, for I am holy.” 1 Peter 1:15-16 So how does one be Holy? Is that just a platitude or is it actually achievable?  Support the podcast to help keep this thing going! https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thepodvigpod/support Visit https://www.thepodvig.com/ and sign up for full podcast transcripts and more!

In its ancient understanding, technology (“techne” in Greek) is a form of spiritual knowledge and skill granted to humans by the divine for their empowerment. Although we tend to think of technology as its physical application, it universally originates from the spiritual realm. Therefore, the use of technology doesn’t just have physical repercussions but spiritual ones as well. St. John of Damascus, in the “Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith,” writes: “Prayer is the raising of one’s mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God. But when you pray, you should seek with your whole heart and not be slothful, employing a certain skill (techne) in the art of prayer.” Because we are witnessing the continuous and exponential growth of technology, which will provide the type of power necessary to bring Transhumanism from a dystopian nightmare into reality. The only viable response to transhumanism is to become truly human, to become by grace what God is by nature.  As those around us are inevitably deceived into transforming their nature in accordance with the demons, Christians must be discerning and seek to become like God.  Check out https://thepodvig.com and sign up now for exclusive content and podcast transcripts!

A simple life is not about depriving ourselves of earthly joy, comfort, or material possessions. Rather, it is a deliberate choice to reorient our lives toward what truly matters. Simplifying our lives allows us to shed that which weighs us to this Earth, while at the same time knowing that: "The spiritual life does not remove us from the world, but leads us deeper into it." - St. Seraphim of Sorov. Get the full transcript and other exclusive content by becoming a member at https://thepodvig.com

Christ reconciled the entire human race through his death, burial, and resurrection, and, like Adam, provided both a body and the blood necessary for His bride, the Church. Pentecost is the recreation of the woman, wherein God breathes the Holy Spirit into the body and blood taken from the side of His Son on the cross. The power of the Holy Spirit, the uncreated energies of God, now animates the unified Body of Christ, which is the Church. Get the full transcript and other exclusive content by becoming a member at https://thepodvig.com

Humility is the preeminent Christian virtue. It is a disposition of the heart and mind, which recognizes one’s true self and one’s complete dependence on God. According to St. Isaac the Syrian, “The sum of all virtues is humility. By it, the soul is made like God." In this episode, we will briefly explore ‘humility’ from an Orthodox perspective, and discuss how to begin its cultivation. Get the full transcript and other exclusive content by becoming a member at http://thepodvig.com!

We are terrestrial beings, being made from Earth. Therefore we have physical bodies, but we are enlivened with God-breathed souls.  Therefore, mankind is made from a unique combination of earth and spirit. We have physical bodies, but we are not primarily earthen. While there is no official Orthodox dogma on the subject,  Sts. John of Damascus and Gregory the Theologian thought Angels were the first things created, because, according to St. John, “it was fitting that the mental essence should be the first created, and then that which can be perceived, and finally man himself, in whose being both parts are united.” The “spiritual” body is not a pale shadow of the material world we now know; the opposite is true. The resurrection body is the fulfillment of what God intends for our present body. It is the material fulfilled, not dematerialized.

Please forgive me for not posting an episode in a while. My wife gave birth to our 9th child recently and priorities had to shift. Not to mention the lack of sleep that made writing this episode much more difficult. The episode explores Divine Light as well as create light.

St. Gregory Palamas teaches that “[God] is not revealed in his essence (ousia), for no one has ever seen or described God's nature; but he is revealed in the grace (charis), power (dynamis) and energy (energeia) which is common to Father, Son and Spirit … Distinctive to each of the three is the person (hypostasis) of each… Shared in common by all three are not only the transcendent essence - what is altogether nameless unmanifested since it is beyond all names, manifestation and participation - but also the divine grace, power, energy, radiance, kingdom and incorruption, whereby God enters through grace into communion and union with the holy angels and the saints. “ In the book, The Orthodox Way, we learn that God “is outside all things according to his essence’, writes St Athanasius, ‘but he is in all things through his acts of power.’ ‘We know the essence through the energy’, St Basil affirms. ‘No one has ever seen the essence of God, but we believe in the essence because we experience the energy.’” St. Maximus the Confessor put it this way: "God - who is truly none of the things that exist, and who, properly speaking, is all things, and at the same time beyond them - is present in the logos of each thing in itself, and in all the logoi together, according to which all things exist …” Orthodox Christian Andrew Williams beautifully distills St. Maximos’ teaching. He says: “Without God, nothing is just nothing. And yet with God, out of nothing comes everything. He creates ex nihilo. In a sense, we can say that he imagines everything into being… Just like the icon painter, he puts the veils over nothing, and we come into being… individual, real persons in the image of God, each of us a veil over the face of God; each of us an icon of ultimate Reality. For Orthodox Christians, man as an icon of God may seem obvious at first glance, but let us consider this carefully. So what does it mean to be fashioned as an icon of God? In Colossians 1:15 St. Paul tells us that Christ is the “icon” of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. St. Gregory the Theologian says of this verse, “He is called “image” because he is of one substance with the Father; he stems from the Father and not the Father from him, it being the nature of an image to copy the original and to be named after it. But there is more to it than this. The ordinary image is a motionless copy of a moving being. Here we have a living image of a living being, indistinguishable from its original.” This ability to apprehend the knowledge of God and to participate in His divine energies is that likeness of being, which renders us icons. Our souls, enlivened by the breath of God, have the capacity to receive the sacraments of the Church, by which God imparts to us His grace and His very life to those who have been given “the right to become sons of God.”’ But to what end? St John of Damascus says that “although man, by reason of the infirmity of his body, is capable of repentance, the angel, because of his incorporeality, is not.” Both Angels and man possess reason, intelligence, knowledge and agency.  But only man is subject to mortality, which allows for his repentance. Man was expelled from the garden before eating of the tree of life, so that he would not attain immortality and solidify his corruption. For Christ taught that resurrected men are immortal and equal to the angels. Luke 20:36 It is the capacity to repent, to return to God and be healed of the wounds of sin that God preserved in mankind so that, according to St. Paul, his body could be sown in corruption and raised in incoruption by receiving the energies of God.

Pride was the first sin to enter the world through man. Adam and the woman desired to “be like God,” and consumed, without a blessing, the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. St. James tells us, God is neither tempted nor does He tempt, but “each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown brings forth death.”  James 1:14-15 The words of the serpent, according to St. Athanasius, averted man’s attention from the contemplation of the Divine Word and lowered it to the contemplation of the self. Mankind considered what it could obtain for itself by ingesting then forbidden knowledge. Adam, with his earthen body enlivened by the breath of God, brought a curse upon the earth bringing death instead of life into the world. According to the Fathers, this was not by disobeying the commandment not to eat, but by refusing to repent when confronted. Fr. Spyridon Bailey says that “suffering, accepted in the right way, will lead us to humility. It will strip us of the false belief that we are in control or the idea that peace may come through comfort…" And St. Paul affirms, “for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? Hebrews 12:6-7 After pronouncing the curse in the garden, God said to Adam, “for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” Genesis 3:19. St. Ephrem The Syrian observes that God is intimating that “Since you originate from dust and you forgot yourself, "you shall return to "your "dust " and your true being shall be recognized through your low estate." Thus, St. John Chrysostom says that “Salvation begins and ends with humility.” We might ask, what is the nature of salvific humility? St. Mark the Ascetic teaches us that “humility consists, not in condemning our conscience, but in recognizing God’s grace and compassion.” Adam, being chastised by God, did not despair of his plight, he did not “kick against the goads” (Acts 9:5), or fall into a state of despondency (Genesis 4:5). Instead, He humbled himself, and he remembered his proper place, and immediately resumed his initial vocation. “And Adam called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all the living.” - Genesis 3:20 St. Porphyrios instructs us that holy humility is “Complete trust in God.” Adam, having endured his chastening, and finding himself, although subject to corruption, yet not destroyed by sin, trusted that God would bring about the restoration of his life, not through him, but through his wife, whereby God would bring new life. Adam chose death. But God in His great love, chose to send the Son to show us true humility, by which death is transformed into life. St. Paul says in Hebrews 12:10 that God chastises us “that we may be partakers of His holiness.”  Cyril of Alexandria says that “He became like us that we might become like him. The work of the Spirit seeks to transform us by grace into a perfect copy of his humbling.” True humility is transformative. It is, according to St. Paisios, “the only thing God is asking of us.” If we will humble ourselves, we can, by the grace of God, ascend far above the garden of Eden to “Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels.” Hebrews 12:22 St. John Climacus says that “humility is the chariot by which we ascend to God.” thepodvig@gmail.com

Psalms 103:2 describes God as one: “Who cover[s] [Himself] with light as with a garment…” God’s first creation was light. Genesis 1:3 But it is not until verse 14 that God creates the heavenly bodies in the firmament that give off light. There was light before there were lights. This makes sense. We know there was light before there was creation at all. For our Saviour said “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’” -John 8:12 In Orthodox theology, this Divine light that emanates from God is called “uncreated light.” It is true light and true life. According to St. Saphrony of Essex: “Uncreated Divine Light by its nature is absolutely different from ordinary physical light.” St. Saphrony tells us that “[p]hysical light is the image of Divine light in the natural world…”  He says that “Faith is light but in small measure. Hope is light but not yet perfect. The perfect light is love.” God also created man in His image, after His trinitarian likeness. And Genesis 2:25 tells us that  “they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” The Greek word translated “ashamed” in the Septuagint is “aischuno.” According to Thayer’s word dictionary, this word means: 1) to disfigure 2) to dishonor 3) to suffuse with shame, make ashamed, be ashamed St. Augustine of Hippo observes from this verse that “[Man and woman] were aware, of course, of their nakedness, but they felt no shame, because no desire stirred their organs in defiance of their deliberate decision. The time had not yet come when the rebellion of the flesh was a witness and reproach to the rebellion of man against his Maker.” They were, in a sense disfigured and suffused with shame. Therefore, God made Adam and Eve “garments of skin and clothed them” before banishing them from paradise. St. John Chrysostom explains this verse: “[T]he loving God, when [Adam and Eve] rendered themselves unworthy of that gleaming and resplendent vesture in which they were adorned and which ensured they were prepared against bodily needs, stripped them of all that glory and the enjoyment they were partakers of before suffering that terrible fall.” that “[Man and woman] were aware, of course, of their nakedness, but they felt no shame because no desire stirred their organs in defiance of their deliberate decision. The time had not yet come when the rebellion of the flesh was a witness and reproach to the rebellion of man against his Maker.” Adam and Eve were created without physical clothing, but they were clothed by God like the angels, in the radiance of the Divine light. They were completely naive of sin, being completely illumined within paradise. In a very real sense, they were unaware of their physical nakedness as a result of their constant contemplation of the Divine. However, once they attended to the evil one, and in their disobedience to themselves, they fell from their blessed state. Immediately their eyes were “opened” and they perceived their nakedness, not just of the body, but of the soul. They were, in a sense disfigured and suffused with shame. Therefore, God made Adam and Eve “garments of skin and clothed them” before banishing them from paradise. Transfiguration is our aim as Christians. St. Paul tells us that “as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”  Galatians 3:27. For Christ, Himself tells us: “Behold, I am coming as a thief. Blessed is he who watches, and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame.” Revelation 16:15

In the Unseen Warfare, Saints Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain and Theophan the Recluse tell us that “the enemy watches [us] constantly, waiting for an opportunity to sow evil in [us].” They implore us, “be doubly watchful over yourself, lest you fall in the nets spread for you.”  St. Maximos the Confessor observes that “God allows the demons to attack us for five reasons: through being attacked and fighting back, we should learn to distinguish virtue from sin. having acquired virtue by struggle and labor we should keep it firm and unalterable. that progressing in virtue we should not think highly of ourselves but learn humility. that having experienced in practice the wickedness of sin we should hate it with perfect hatred. The fifth and most important is that, having been freed from the passions we should not forget our own weakness and the strength of Him that helped us. Remember the words of St. Paul in 2 Corinthians: “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled. (2 Corinthians 10:3-6) But do not allow this to unsettle you, dear Christian. There is a reason for spiritual warfare. St. Nicholas of Serbia says: “Just as people do not enter a war in order to enjoy war, but in order to be saved from war, so we do not enter this world in order to enjoy this world, but in order to be saved from it. People go to war for the sake of something greater than war. So we also enter this temporal life for the sake of something greater: for eternal life.”

Acquiring patience is a hard lesson and one that persists to the end of our earthly sojourn. In the Church, patience is considered a virtue. St. Paul famously lists patience in his discourse on the fruit of the spirit. Noah Webster defined Patience as The suffering of afflictions, pain, toil, calamity, provocation or other evil, with a calm, unruffled temper; endurance without murmuring or fretfulness. Patience may spring from constitutional fortitude, from a kind of heroic pride, or from Christian submission to the divine will. To be patient literally means to suffer and endure for the sake of something greater.  In an age of technology, the concept of waiting for anything is anathema. When an Amazon package is delayed even one day, it can send us into anger and/or despair. We justify our impatience by telling ourselves waiting is a waste of our limited time. As Job lamented, “For I will not live forever, that I should patiently endure.” It is only the patient, according to Christ, that bring forth fruit from the seeds of God’s Word that are sown in their hearts. And as for that in the good soil, they are these who, hearing the Word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bring forth fruit with patience (Lk 8.15). According to Saint Gregory Palamas: “For our love of God is demonstrated above all by the way we endure trials and temptations.” Patience must be practiced at every opportunity, no matter how small or insignificant. Because in times of real persecution, when Christians are delivered up to answer for Christ, being “hated by all for His name’s sake,” the Lord ­counsels His followers: “in patience, possess ye your souls,” which means, “through your endurance, you will gain your lives” (Lk 21.19). But we also cannot forget that because patience is a virtue, it is exclusively a grace of God. It is ONLY fruit of the Holy Spirit. We cannot attain patience ourselves from within our own will. “Escape from temptation through patience and Prayer. If you oppose temptation without these, it only attacks you more strongly.” Saint Mark the Ascetic Protopresbyter Thomas Hopko says in “The Orthodox Faith” that Patience is the power bestowed by God to “stay on the cross no matter what,” for the sake of pleasing God alone. And that “Patience must be renewed daily through fasting, prayer and communion with God in the Church.” As St. Justin Popovich observed, “God hears and fulfills the prayer of a man who fulfills His commandments. "Hear God in His commandments," says St. John Chrysostom, "So that He might hear you in your prayers." A man who keeps the commandments of God is always wise, patient, and sincere in his prayers. Mystery of prayer consists in the keeping of God's commandments.”