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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
PJ:
Hello and welcome to Chasing the Viathen. I'm your host, PJ Weary, and I'm here today with Dr. Stephen Miwad, Assistant Professor of Theology at Caldwell University, and we're talking about his book, Beyond Virtue Ethics, a Contemporary Ethic of Ancient Spiritual Struggle. Dr. Miwad, wonderful to have you on today.
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Thank you so much for having me, PJ. Very excited for our conversation.
PJ:
So first question I generally ask is, why this book?
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
So spiritual struggle is really something that I have sensed the West in general, and who am I to judge, but from my reading at least, or from my sense, spiritual struggle is something that the West is missing, and that the West once had, and if I might say that the West was built upon. So this religious notion of the pursuit of the divine and that it requires... struggle in the body. I think it's something that we've lost and we have some telling signs in society today that we are missing some of this spirituality. And so it's something that because of my religious background I'm familiar with as a Coptic Orthodox Christian. But and I grew up sort of between East and West. I mean I was born in the West but... I grew up with this Eastern notion of spirituality that I kind of had to shut off at times when I was engaging in the West, or I had to curtail, or I had to use different language. So this book is really bridging my two worlds and offering each side what I learned from each side, from the other side.
PJ:
Yeah, yeah. One, that's really interesting and thank you for sharing. Why, and it seems that you target, you kind of put virtue ethics in the crosshairs. Why virtue ethics?
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Yeah, I think, so ethics in general is the language of the people, if you will. Tell me why, tell me what to do and why I should do it. Right, it's sort of the end game. And I'm trying to bring ethics back into religion, because it's been divorced for a couple hundred years.
PJ:
Ha ha ha!
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
In my Eastern Christian background, They're not really divorced. Even when I try to communicate with my Egyptian elders, if you will, as to what I do, the language is almost missing, actually almost missing when I try to communicate what it is that I study, because this conception of ethics apart from religion is new. And so virtue ethics is a way... by which I think it's really helpful in doing that. It's bringing the discussion of ethics back to... ancient Greek philosophy, early church philosophy, where it's more about character formation and less about the simple assessment of actions or principles or consequences. It's more about what ought I to do to be formed well, rather than informed perhaps,
PJ:
Mm.
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
just through reason alone.
PJ:
So I'm on a shorter production schedule than normal, so your episode will come out a little sooner. And I kind of love it because I just talked to Dr. John Coleman on John Locke and his views on religion and morality and his American students, kind of disciples, if you will. and their views on how hard they're trying to separate those two. And so I think it'll be really fun to have yours following it up. Because the big thing, and this has come up a couple of times as I've done kind of this like pursuit, but a big frustration or like a constant problem that's coming up, coming up with all the Supreme Court decisions. It's just coming up in our culture a lot is can we divorce? metaphysical or ontological claims from moral reasoning. And, you know, still an open question, obviously, like that's why you're writing your book, but it sounds like you kind of come down on like, it's good to bring those things back.
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Yeah, yeah, that's precisely it. So, actually I was just teaching a class today on Hume.
PJ:
Yes, yes.
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
And I can't really know anything in its essence. I can't know anything in its nature. And even if I were able to, I can't abstract metaphysical principles and I disagree. Yeah.
PJ:
Yes, yes. Yeah, like, I mean, this idea that like, well, cause is just like patterns that you just like, but you don't know for sure it's going to happen again. And it's like, I see what you're trying to say. But yeah, I disagree.
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Oh, no.
PJ:
The So in just a for our audience, and I know, like, these are the kind of questions that are painful for philosophers and for theologians, but What is virtue ethics? You know, you talked about character formation, but I think that'll set up nicely for what you mean by beyond as well.
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Sure. So, in the West, generally there are three options. When you ask, how do I be an ethical person, religiously or not religiously, the three main options are deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics. Just generally. So deontology is something like, tell me what the rules are, my obligations, my responsibilities, the principles. If I follow them, I'm a good person. Consequentialism is, tell me the consequences of my actions. If the consequences are good, then I should do those things. And virtue ethics is, tell me what kind of person these actions turn me into. Do they turn me into a good person? Moral character, my disposition, who I am. How am I changed in the process of doing this or that? If that thing changes me into a better person and towards the good life as they would say it, then I ought to do it and that is virtue ethics. Those are the three main options that are at our disposal.
PJ:
And your goal here is to go beyond virtue ethics.
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Yeah.
PJ:
And I cheated, I read the end of the book. So
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Thank
PJ:
I think
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
you.
PJ:
I know where you're going with that, but what does it mean to go beyond virtue ethics?
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Yeah. So a little bit to my initial comment of the divorce between theology and ethics. The project itself of coming up with an ethical system apart from any sense of the transcendent or the divine, God in particular, is a difficult, technically impossible endeavor. So you can come up with proposals as how to be a good person. You can't defend those proposals. There's a difference. Right? You can say, I'm an atheist who is a good person. or I'm an atheist who believes this ethical system is correct. But you can't necessarily defend your stances against somebody who might not be against somebody who is grounded in something transcendent. And so what I mean by beyond virtue ethics is virtue is only an excellence to be pursued in and of itself. Because it finds itself in the character of God. And so when you pursue God, when you go beyond virtue, God is the one who is beyond virtue. So you pursue God, virtue comes as a byproduct. If you pursue virtue for the sake of virtue, it's self-effacing in many ways. You fall short of it, you become prideful, you become selfish, right? You want it just for your own excellence. It's like this competition against yourself and against the rest of humanity. So... It's the pursuit of God is how it was presented in ancient Christianity and as a marker to tell you if you're on the right track you get virtue and as a byproduct virtue you acquire virtue.
PJ:
Um, just kind of a shot in the dark here. Um, is this tied in any way to the concept of theosis of that divine participation?
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Yeah. So in my book, I have a little caveat as to the terminology of theosis and deification and divinization. Yes, it is that concept. The reason I don't use that language is one, it can be misunderstood. So sometimes it's understood as acquiring the very nature of God. That's not what's meant by the terminology. The second reason is because The West is not familiar with that terminology. They tend towards a union or unity with God. And as a Coptic Christian, I actually tend towards that language as well. But yes, it's a similar concept of assimilation to God, becoming like God, similitude to God, growth in God. So that's really, that was... the central guiding principle for all Christians prior to the Reformation. It was that singular, this was the essence of Christianity.
PJ:
Yes, it's Donald Fairbairn, I don't know if you're familiar, but he wrote a book, Life in the Trinity, where he's trying to recover that for Protestants, that idea of theosis. And I have definitely run into, I love the book, really, I felt it made me a better person. We'll start with that, you know, we don't have to get into all the theological debate about it. But then when I tried to talk to other Protestants about... About like yeah, the idea is that you become more like God, you know I I'm like even though it says and like I think it's second Peter, you know that we are partakers in the divine nature That's the main man you talk to Presbyterians Lutherans all the idolatry stuff start it starts coming up and so that's just really It's really this idea of spiritual struggle. I might just I might steal some of the terminology So talk to me, so we've talked about theosis a little bit. Talk to me about this spiritual struggle, especially like this embodied, you mentioned asceticism and sacred reading. Actually, first, let's start with what do you see that's missing in the Western world that this idea of spiritual struggle addresses?
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Yeah, so it's been a slow and steady deterioration. I think that part of what happened in the West is that people were no longer formed and I'm a product, I'm not separate from the West, I was born in the West. We slowly were desensitized. it's an epigenetic phenomenon where as a society, we stopped engaging the spiritual practices that have worked for millennia. And that changed our very perception of the world. For one, it moved us into thinking that in order to arbitrate between, to be arbiters of good and evil. you required your mind alone. Because I no longer saw the value in, for example, a prostration, bowing my body down. Well, that's just the, you know, it's just some random spiritual act that doesn't actually do anything because all that matters is your mind. But I think the opposite, it's not that we came to that realization because our minds were strong all of a sudden, it's because our bodies were desensitized from spiritual practice. And so we thought then that I no longer needed them. And we in fact kept going with that ideology. And so, I mean, it is a very bold thing to think that we can depart from spiritual practices. It is one of those common threads through all world religions. And so when you see something like that, it's a huge, it's a big flag and if you reject that, you have to have a very good reason as to why to reject that. For example, fasting. Fasting would fall on their spiritual struggle. All of the world's religions believe that they have spiritual experiences when they fast. How and what defense can we give that fasting doesn't work? I mean, people enjoy eating. Why would they wouldn't have? Why the reason? Why would anybody just all of a sudden think of fast, you know, it's... What's the word I'm looking for? Anyway, eating is desirable, is my point. And so, for so many common attestations across geography and across chronology to attest to this spiritual experience, there must be something there. And so, there is this... I think the virtues themselves are recovered when you said what's missing, when you're missing spirituality. I think immediately to the humility that a person gains or realizes when they're fasting. I no longer need the material. I am no longer reliant on that which is external to me. Something internal to me is central to who I am. And I think, I mean, read the... enlightenment philosophers and postmodern philosophers and it is the exact opposite. It is that it's not something internal to me, right? It's, there's something else. I need internal help but the way I'm going to get it is not through, you know, these religious experiences. It's something else. It's through a fixing of something intellectual. And I think the realization only comes when you engage in those spiritual practices. I wonder how far we've gone from that.
PJ:
Yeah, even as you talk about this, I mean, I think a lot of people feel fractured, right? Like there's this disconnect between their mind and their body, and that when we talk about the body, for instance, and our minds, there is an overemphasis on quantitative measurement over qualitative measurement, right? So even when you talk about, I had someone on who talked about how sloth is not laziness as we think of it, it's the loss. It's someone who refuses to affirm life. refuses to affirm what is good. So a lazy person, of course, does not do that because they just won't do anything. But someone who is working 100 hours a week, if they are just going through the motions and they're not really engaging with their life, that person is actually, by the definition, like the monastic tradition, is also slothful. And I think in the same way as we talk about gluttony, there's this idea of consumption. And so the person, and I think actually, C.S. Lewis talks about this with ladies who are obsessed with their food. His example's like, you know, like spinsters in like the Victorian era, because that's like, I mean, I think our example would be like Instagram, you know, models who are obsessed with their eating, right? We think of gluttony as like someone who is fat, which that's a whole other discussion in our culture, right, but also like we're talking about people who are obsessed with the consumption.
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Mm-hmm.
PJ:
and they're measuring things, like they're constantly focused on their body in ways that are unhealthy, instead of seeing it as a discipline and really the integration of the whole. Is that
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Yeah,
PJ:
like, yeah, let's go ahead.
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
absolutely, absolutely. Another way, I mean, the gluttony of delicacy is another way that, you know, all these interesting eating food network shows and it is this reliance on external particularities. It is this And it's transformed in our times for sure. I mean, with the rapid technological advancements and God knows what AI holds around the corner,
PJ:
Hahaha
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
it's how attached, how reliant am I on that which is external to me. And this is not, I'm not purporting stoicism here where, you know, I shut myself off from everything and anything affecting me that is external to me, but there is a little bit of that. There is something to it. I ought to be sad when a loved one departs, but I ought not to be sad to the point of stopping my life. and not living with the zeal with which I previously... so there's, you know, Christianity balances stoicism, I would say, or completes it or rectifies it, but yes, certainly, I mean, we have... quite an array of different ascetical practices we can go through that I think would be helpful in the West. But also I want to say in the same breath... I'm not, what I'm not saying to do is to extract ascetical principles and you know, I didn't write a self-help book because, and that's exactly what I mean by beyond virtue ethics. So
PJ:
Yes.
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
virtue ethics would be something like, you know, okay, meditate for 10 minutes a day, this will give you psychological stability. That's not what I mean because I think that's still turning to the self for answers. self-help.
PJ:
Yes, yeah.
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
But yeah, so it's really spiritual struggle. The other portion of my thesis is orientation to God. And so spiritual struggle is not good in and of itself. It ends up being good because there is so much wrong with the universe that in order to go through the darkness and the depths end up at the good, it requires suffering and it requires struggle. But just to pursue struggle for the sake of struggle and suffering for the sake of suffering is not helpful either. The idea again is spiritual struggle oriented to God. And so finding God in your struggles.
PJ:
And I mean, I think we can feel the answer, but if you don't mind my asking, what is the benefit? If I can, that feels like such an inadequate way to ask. What's the benefit of pursuing God though? What does that add, that going beyond?
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Yeah, so this is the question of ontology. If God doesn't exist, there is no benefit. So I disagree with the notion of live as though God exists. And I think that does a disservice to religion because then it's like, okay, well, actually it's better to live as though God exists. with the acknowledgement that he doesn't exist. Because if we acknowledge he doesn't exist, we won't disagree, we won't have wars, we won't have turmoil, we won't have disagreements. And so live as though he exists, but acknowledge he doesn't exist. That would be better. Live, so why pursue God if he's real? And I always start with the premise of, okay, if God does exist, let's start there, okay? Because... We all have the same evidence, we come to different conclusions. So let's start with the premise. Some people start with the premise, he does exist, some people, he doesn't exist. If God exists, wouldn't it make sense for God to communicate himself to humanity, to direct humanity? I think that's a logical conclusion. Some way, whether you say it's through nature, whether you say it's through revelation, okay, well then figure out how do you think God... Again, you're going with the presumption that he does exist. How do you think he is communicating? Check all of the supposed revelations. Check naturalistic religions. Check natural religion, as Hume would put it. Check Islam, the revelation to Muhammad. Check the Old Testament and what it says about the Messiah to come. Check the New Testament. Does it verify that? Is there anything weird in those revelations that doesn't jive with what you sense to be goodness? Because there is this sort of experiential, reasonable portion that you have to assess it by. And so, if God revealed Himself, then... What how did he reveal himself and what does that say? I? think generally If God created humans I logically The meta narrative that makes most sense to me is that I am meant to be with God Whether you call unity with God or simulation to God or like God I am meant to he fulfills me I am made from him if you want to say or I am made out of him. He is life, I live. He is the existent one, I exist, something like that. And so what ought I to do to make, to live with him, in him, through him, something like that? I'm trying to make this general theistic language. And so, back to ontology, if he exists and if he communicates himself in ways by which to express how we ought to fulfill our humanity, then it would probably be in my benefit to do those things that make my humanity flourish. So it would be a real connection to God. It's not like... pursue God because you become a good person. Yeah, it depends on how you define goodness. If God is goodness, then sure. But it's not so that I can have psychological well-being or stability, it's not for financial gain. It's not so I can live peaceably. Yeah, those are all byproducts. But it's because that is by definition what fulfills my nature, what completes my nature. Again, if God exists. So, I find that that's... That's the hinge point. If you're willing to sort of suspend yourself for a second and jump in, if you will, if you use that as your starting point. Of course, you can work backwards and say, these are proofs for God's existence, logical proofs, but.
PJ:
That stuff gets really dicey really fast, yeah.
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
The whole other conversation.
PJ:
a whole series.
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Yes.
PJ:
I actually just talked about this in my last podcast about Kierkegaard and the concept of anxiety and the fact that some forms of knowledge are only possible by committing yourself. Those tend to be the most embodied forms of knowledge. It probably says more than I would like about myself that I was talking to my girlfriend, she knew we were getting engaged. So we were walking to the bridge and I was like, this is just like Kierkegaard's concept of anxiety. I'm like, I have no idea what's coming next, but
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Yes.
PJ:
I know that I will learn so much by doing this.
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Yeah.
PJ:
So she still married me, really
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Oh, hell.
PJ:
ridiculous. As you're talking about not being fair to religion. I think on its own terms that is an important thing to make sometimes you'll have like these people who try and combine Atheism and religion and just kind of like well does it really matter as long as it makes us happy and At least on like from the New Testament, you know, it's like if there is no resurrection we're of all men most miserable, you know, and you just look at that and it's like Yeah, I gotta be honest. There's a lot of things that I would rather do than would I rather sleep in some Sundays? That would probably be nice. Or another good, I have to admit, I didn't like your gluttony of delicacy example, but that's because that's my vice, right? That's, you know,
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Thank you.
PJ:
that's my, yes. I like, like. That's how I bond with my five year old. We watch videos on like different meat videos. They're
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Yeah,
PJ:
like cooking
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
yeah, yeah.
PJ:
like whole lamb and stuff. And he's like, what's that one? That one's beef, that's lamb, you know, it's sick.
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Yeah.
PJ:
Anyways, so that's somewhere that I probably need to be more aesthetic. But so, sorry, I started thinking about those videos and now I'm hungry, it's my fault. As you talk about, and I have felt this, that the metaphysical claims at least make for something, they answer why better, right? And I think why eventually becomes important in moral discussions. And that's why I noticed you start talking about Nietzsche, and even you look at Foucault's morals, and at the time, I kind of got it, but it didn't really mean much to me, but he says, Politics is war by other means and of course like if you look at his very first book He says all of his work is a quest done under the Nietzschean Sun Right this idea that you know, you're like if God exists and then you state what you have to say and of course with Nietzsche, it's God is dead. Um, and so How and I think this is where people will probably get tripped up How can we communicate about moral reasoning than if our metaphysical claims are so different and metaphysical claims are so important?
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Hmm. Oh, that's a tough one. That's a tough
PJ:
Sorry.
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
one. Yeah, because the question of how do we communicate when we have different starting points, right? So that's the American landscape right now. We're not really talking about abortion, are we? Aren't we more fundamentally talking about who the human person is? And when you ask who the human person is, aren't you more fundamentally talking about what your religious views are and what your perspective of God is? And so. I mean, my answer in a utopia would be, if everyone recovers their spiritual bone, then perhaps we'd be talking more on the same playing field. For example, the ancient Greeks, they disagreed a lot and you had different schools of thought, but not as much as we disagree. So, right, because they're at least in the same playing field. They're saying, Yeah, for example, we're pursuing the good life. We disagree as to whether or not there even is a good life. Right? Whether there is some sort of, whether there's something beyond us, or whether there's something even inside of us that is to be fulfilled. Or is it just sort of random acts of peaceable living and a sustainable future for future generations? How do we overcome I don't know. My answer is I don't know. I would say I know if I could wave my magic wand and just have everybody engage in similar spiritual practices or just spiritual practices generally, I think we would all sort of tend towards the same metaphysical plane. It's also telling that we have... the spiritual but not religious movement. I mean, I ask any of my undergraduate, not any, but many of my undergraduates will say something like, I'm spiritual but not religious. And that's where it ends, because you ask something, well, tell me how you're spiritual. Well, and I, you know. I sound a little facetious here, but I respect their not wanting to get rid of that witch's spirit. But also, there has to be something there that you're engaging in order to claim some sort of spirituality. Anyway, I'm not gonna get into a spiritual, but not religious rant, but I think that there's something there about wanting to reclaim spirituality. And I think it logically comes in a postmodern age or whatever age we're in, after the age of reason. where we focus so much on intellectual deliberation. And I think it's a common, if you've really tried to pursue truth and philosophy, and you come to these answers, and then you start engaging something spiritually, you're like, ah, wow, it was really different talking about them than it was practicing them. Really
PJ:
Mm.
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
different. Like, very different philosophizing about prayer than praying. it's just it's not the same thing. It's something that Aristotle noticed and most of the ancient Greeks noticed. So my short answer would be something like if maybe we start practicing spiritual practices, authentic spiritual practices, and we might start seeing the world more similarly.
PJ:
I actually started a thought and I realized I didn't finish it. So my apologies, but your comment about the American landscape. When I first read it, I didn't understand politics is war by other means. And then over the next 10 years watching American politics progress as it did, all of a sudden I was like, oh my gosh, this is it. This is what we're seeing, right? It's no longer cohesive. It's splintered as you said. Another thing I've seen the rise of as you talk about this kind of spiritual but not religious You know you're talking about they can't agree That there is a good life. Another thing is that we can't even agree that life is good and something I'd never heard Yeah, and I'm not like you know Maybe this is what old people say I'm not that old But I don't remember ever hearing anyone talk this way and now all the time online I see people saying things like I didn't ask to be here Right? And so that they disengage from the public sphere or they disengage from other people and they even disengage from their life because they're like, I was forced to be born. Right? And what's interesting to me, and I did not get a chance to go through all the aesthetic practices that you have, but that's a direct attack on gratitude. Right? Life is not seen as a gift, it's seen as this thing, it's like this unwanted obligation. So I don't know, what are some of the other aesthetics? I'm sure gratitude fits in some of those other spiritual exercises, but what are some of the other spiritual exercises that you
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Yeah.
PJ:
cover in your book?
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Let me first say that's a very sad statement. And you know, it breaks my heart, that nihilism, that life is meaningless. And I wouldn't even say, you know, I hear it sometimes from my students. It's not something where it's like, oh, well, you ought to be more grateful. You ought to... practice the virtue of gratitude. It's like, well, we failed as a society to imbue life with meaning and purpose. And I think that's what I mean by pursue God because it's not meaningful to get your dream job. It's not meaningful to get your dream house, right? It's to get your accolades and your degrees. That's the most telling sign for me that we're created for unity with God. Why God? Because he fulfills human nature. How do I know he fulfills human nature? Because nothing else fulfills me. It is mind-boggling. How can I not just, you know, constantly be filling myself with certain drugs that will constantly keep me on a high? Or how is it that if I had, you know, billion dollars that I still wouldn't find perpetual happiness. It's illogical. And so I, part of my drive for doing all of this is because I feel the struggle, especially of my students. They're left with few options. They're left with so much gratification and yet so little fulfillment. So yeah, gratitude certainly, but gratitude presumes a receiver of the gratitude. The ones that I engage in my book, the two that I primarily engage are asceticism, which is the discipline of the body.
PJ:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
or the nourishment of the spirit. It's pretty much don't let your body get in the way of the upward calling of your soul. Or a better way of putting it is use your body in a way that lifts up your soul. So don't be weighed down by the pleasure of the body. St. Gregory of Nyssa would say something like, your soul is just flying, it just wants to fly and soar to the heights of goodness. The only thing that'll weigh it down is your attachment to fleshly desires. So that's the idea behind the Settism there. So I call it spiritual struggle applied to the body because. I think spiritual struggle can be applied to anything. Spiritual struggle applied to friendships, spiritual struggle applied to the body, spiritual struggle applied to reading. And that's the second one that I have in my book, sacred reading. So... Again, the enlightenment project of reading scripture, the postmodern project of reading scripture as a historical document or through the historical critical method would be something like, let me see what my mind can get out of the text. Let me see, can I get to the historical reality behind the text? Can I verify the facts of the Bible? Go ahead and do that. And I think you should do that to a certain extent, right? There needs to be this rationality. And yet, do it and prove everything correct. You're still missing something huge. You still haven't even begun to tap into a sacred text because the sacred texts are meant to be embodied. They're meant to be transformative. And so it's this sort of jumping in, the early church gave priority of interpretation to those who embodied the text, for example. And so to escape, I guess, perhaps this nihilism, it requires... to engage with some level of suspension of our skeptical lenses. That it's difficult for me to do. It's difficult for, I presume, for most of us to do it. And my students would always respond to that and say, well, where do you begin? Because part of the issue is that, well, you're talking something, some 1500 religions is what some estimations give and how do you know where to begin? Well, you know where to begin. Begin with your mind, begin with your experience, begin with reading and you get somewhere, but. There's a lot more, there's this message of, you know, if you just try hard enough, if you just work hard enough, if you just, you know, pursue your jobs hard enough, you'll get to somewhere meaningful. And I have not found that to be true. And I'm saying this as a theology professor. My job itself
PJ:
Ha!
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
is supposed to be meaningful, right? So So I'm supposed to be teaching people about God. Even the profession itself does not fulfill me. Yeah, it's nice. Students will tell me they learned, you know, they're changed. But even, okay, someone changed last year. Am I still fulfilled by that? Maybe I think about it time to time and it keeps me going, but it's not this permanent fulfillment. And so I'd use that as ammo. to start your pursuit of the highest values and the highest forms of meaning and purpose.
PJ:
Yeah, I am and a lot of what you're saying dovetails with a lot of my own research. So I apologize for the constant. It's just it's really fascinating to me as I'm going through this. You look at Descartes and in many ways the start of like modern philosophy, you know, obviously people are going to disagree about its philosophy, but common start for early modern philosophy. and a lot of it is the Cartesian method, this idea that if you break things down into little bits, understand the little bits, you can build it back up. And one of the early critiques of Descartes was Jean-Baptiste Vico, and his critique, and I have felt this especially, I homeschool my kids, so he's like, that doesn't work for kids. And I was like, he's right. Like, if you try and teach your kids from the smallest and build it up to the biggest, they will get lost, right? They aren't able to collate it. And what's missing, even as you talk about, there's knowledge and then there's wisdom. And it's really this embodiment, it's what I think in unconscious terms, it's a faculty, right? And the way that he has like, you have good judgment, it's something you have to develop. And so in the same way that like, if you feed your kids, TV tray dinners, they're not gonna be able to become chefs until they taste good food because they have no way to judge what is true and what is right. And so even as you're talking about like, when you have students who are in college, in a lot of ways, I wouldn't say completely, they're just gonna have to start over, but it's too late, right? Like a lot of times the reason they feel adrift is because they have not been given some kind of grounding at all. And so you can... create new grounding, but you have to have some level of competency in judgment to do that. Is that,
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Yeah.
PJ:
like...
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Yeah, that's, um... Yeah, so I experience this sometimes when I have my students who, by the way, a lot of my courses are mandatory courses. Yeah,
PJ:
Oh the joy
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
yeah. So when I have students just jump into scripture, for example,
PJ:
Mmm.
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
The competence isn't there, right? And I don't blame them, but you know, the Christian in me, I don't like phrasing it like that. I'm a Christian, and so I just, I trust God. Whoever's breathing has hope. That, you know, if, yeah, if you ask me logically, do they, are they off to, do they not have the competence? Yeah, they don't. No, they don't. And are they, did they get off to a bad start? Would it have been better if they were brought up a different way? Would it have been, you know, even if they were just reading the ancients, would they be more acquainted? If they were, you know, atheists, but spiritual, but not religious, would it be more helpful? Yeah, right? So some sort of grounding and footing, but insofar as a person is a living, breathing human being made in the image and likeness of God. I believe in the goodness and the grace of God. And I never underestimate, you know, how God can work. But yeah, if you're asking me just from a logical perspective, it's just different playing fields. And unfortunately, sometimes it takes tragedy to turn people,
PJ:
Hmm.
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
or can just take some sort of. you know, extreme apathy or experience of the nihilism or emptiness of worldly pursuits. But no one is beyond, no one is beyond redemption. If I'm not beyond redemption, no one is beyond redemption.
PJ:
I appreciate you saying that
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Okay.
PJ:
and I hope I didn't, that wasn't my intention for it to come
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Yeah.
PJ:
across that way. I, this idea that in order to first learn, you have to accept some authority, I think is a better way to say it than to say, I'm not saying, like once you're in college, you're expected to like discern things yourself and if you've never accepted any kind of authority, it's hard to reach a level of competency, right? Like you have to accept something what Kant would call the exemplar. I do feel like, I think I may have misspoken
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Thank you.
PJ:
that came out wrong. So I apologize if that came
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
none.
PJ:
I would not want to say some people are just lost causes. That
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Hahaha.
PJ:
is not my goal here so thank you for Really a beautiful way of talking about how everyone has that chance that That chance at redemption and that's really like the value of these kind of the spiritual struggle, right? When you talk about sacred reading, how does that help people in this spiritual struggle?
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
So there's different levels of reading a text. You can read a text just for simple moral extraction. The text says, you know, help elderly ladies cross the street. Okay, check mark. Right? Help the poor and the sick and the widowed. Check mark. And so you extract moral principles from it. That's a good start. But that's not really how sacred texts are written, it's not how scripture is written. There's other levels, it's unpacking what the text is really saying, and there's multiple levels that don't necessarily contradict each other. So something like, if you eat of the fruit you will die, they eat of the fruit they don't die. The text is saying something a little deeper than that, it's not a typo. You eat of the fruit, you're kicked out of the garden. Aha, okay, so being kicked out of the garden is death. Why is it death? Well, okay, so they did eat of a fruit. The literal is taken. They were banished from a garden. That's also accepted. They were separated from God, ah, the place of the presence of God. And then you start to trace that in scripture. So that's another layer, that's another means by which to read scripture. still deeper. You read and you embody and you struggle with it. And that's not right. You know, he who is, you know, when someone enters a room, take the lower position, not the higher position. But I walk into a room and it's like I'm self-conscious and, you know, I don't want to appear weak or something. Well, let's embody the text, see where it leads. Why is it that you feel self-conscious or that you need to exalt yourself a little bit? What is it in you that's not fulfilled and you take that home and you reflect on it? The next time you walk into a room, perhaps you're ready to give, not to receive. You're ready to give a word or to give a smile and that gives you confidence, but you're not seeking confidence, you're seeking fulfilling the word. And so there's this means by which I embody. and the more I embody, ah, okay, now I get what the text is saying, so does this open up more texts to me? And that's why the privilege of interpretation is given to those who embody. Because your very spiritual senses are transformed. That's what I'm missing,
PJ:
Hmm.
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
that's what we're missing. And that's why I, you know, when... I won't go into a tangent on like anachronistic readings of the early church fathers. Well, let's first enter into their spiritual milieu, if you will, and then we can understand what they mean by this. That's why I love the ancient writers so much is because first and foremost, how do I become transformed? And so you see something as simple as reading scripture. You can spend the rest of your life trying to uncover whether or not these artifacts are really Noah's arcs, from Noah's arc, or spend your entire time, what was normative in the understanding of gender in scripture, and it's helpful for our time. But I caution myself as a scholar. you can get really bogged down with the intellectual and forget that the whole point of fighting through the academic is for the spiritual. Or that the strongest thing you can pursue is perhaps the marriage, the remarriage of both. And the early Church would read origin. He was not scared of either spiritual formation or intellectual rigor. That's where truth lies, at least the truth that's accessible to us.
PJ:
I just finished his On First Principles. So, definite, I will second that plug. He's
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Thanks.
PJ:
a phenomenal read. I was surprised. I thought it was original with Augustine, but I think that's probably
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
He's
PJ:
a common misconception.
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
probably, yeah.
PJ:
Yeah, well, I was, Augustine talks about the Trinity as like the light and the brightness. And that actually is in the, at the end of Origins book. And I did not realize that was, I don't know if it was original to him, but it was definitely, obviously he's not talking about trinity per se but he is talking about the relationship between the father and son um and actually was in uh he's talking about theosis that our eyes participate in the light like um the brightness that is jesus we participate like eyes participate in light um
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Yeah, just from a historical perspective, just as historically at least, even if
PJ:
Yes.
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
people reject Pauline theology, there is no Christianity without St. Paul. Similarly, there is no Christianity without origin, just because historically everyone was influenced by him. So
PJ:
Yes.
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
you can reject his ideas, but you were still impacted by his legacy.
PJ:
Yeah, yeah. I wrote something down that, and I can't remember, I think it was The Greatest Salesman, which is not that great of a book, I'll be honest, but for 12-year-old me, it was powerful. Because I just felt this disconnect between my mind and my body, and I know in our culture, action, we know that action follows thought, but something that's missing in our culture is that thought also follows action. And so as you talk about embodying, you've already referenced it a couple times, but just, I want to be respectful of your time, but if you could talk a little bit about what does it really mean to embody these things and what is the goal and what is the use of embodying spiritual struggle.
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Yeah, I think there's a project, I don't know if it's already out. I think it's Paul Gavriliuk and Sarah Coakley. The spiritual senses, the development of the spiritual senses in early church fathers. I only note this because when I was doing my doctoral studies, it was like an aha moment, but it was so out of reach. It was like, this is it, the spiritual senses. What did the early church fathers mean by spiritual senses? we don't have a language for it. I mean, it sort of makes sense to us, right? We have our corporeal senses, we have our visceral senses, but something is transformed. And you know, when you read, there's a big difference between just reading like an intellectual work and a spiritual work. When you read some of the spiritual works of the mystics or however you wanna understand them, sometimes they say things like, they'll start explaining and then they'll say, but. When you experience it, you'll know what I mean. It's like words fall short. St. Paul says it a little bit. I mean, he's taken up to a higher heaven and he can't quite articulate it. But the mystics aren't so far. They simply have experiences of God that they just can't quite articulate. And I think a simple way of expressing it is something like praying or meditating and sensing the peace of God, right? That's a very fundamental way. Well, tell me about this piece. I wasn't perturbed. Okay, well, I wasn't perturbed when I was eating my pizza either. You see? So someone, I can describe it to you. I can tell you I was happy. Well, I was happy when I was doing a lot of things. When I was watching TV, I was happy. And so words fall short. That's why this embodiment or this jumping into spiritual struggles starts to change the way we perceive the world.
PJ:
Yeah.
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
And we could talk about it, but it's all about doing. That's the paradox here.
PJ:
I'm mildly lactose intolerant, so the pizza would be perturbing. But
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Right.
PJ:
yeah, even as you talk here, I mean the chafing that even your students have against the idea of like, I just have to do what they say, is the same we feel as children when talking to parents about things like, you'll understand when you're older, right? Like how annoying was that phrase? And then you're older and you're like, oh. Yeah, I don't know how else you'd explain it, right?
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Thank
PJ:
Like there
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
you.
PJ:
are some things that just have to be experienced. Let me say thank you so much for coming on today. If you could leave one thing for our audience to meditate on this week, what would you leave for them?
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Part of life is struggling and suffering. Life becomes all the more meaningful when that struggle and that suffering, which you're going to endure anyway, is oriented towards the ultimate being. That's what I would say.
PJ:
Yeah, that's a great and beautiful summary. Dr. Mewad, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you.
Dr. Stephen Meawad:
Thank you so much.